Visitors From the Starsby The PsychopathChaptersThe Blue FingsArmored GiantsFearlessnessTechnological MagicThe Darker SideGecwideMedium-WeightJust A Blink Away (+ book news)The Blue FingsFluttershy looked down at her green bowl made of dented metal with rusted spots here and there. She grumbled, splashed some errant stream of water onto its interior, and shoved it back into her voluminous pack. The heavy rains of the past few days had caused water to cascade off the ruins the Forty-Second Equestrian Pegasus Attack Company had taken shelter in. The angry splashing of water on the stone, twisted metal, and rotted wood irritated Fluttershy greatly as she gazed at the plants being showered by the flood of water going through the many holes of the makeshift 'shelter'. Of course, it helped the survivors of the recent battle with resupplying themselves in water, and the mare could smell the stench of burning wood as water was boiled in large cauldrons then poured into containers for later consumption. The ground was damp and slippery from all the moss that had taken over whatever this large building used to be for, but Fluttersy didn't care about that. She listened to her comrades laughing with each other as they shared stories from back home. Mare and stallion talking about their significant others, escapades with their children, how they used to hate life on the farm but now missed it, or even some that displayed excitement for the war." The pale-yellow pegasus grunted and clutched her right foreleg and instinctively pulled her right hindleg toward herself. She still bore the scars of war from one of Sombra's artificial creatures stabbing her with creatures. She had almost lost her life if her friend Rainbow Dash hadn't intervened. Every step was taxing thanks to the constant pain she suffered through, but Fluttershy pushed through regardless. She didn't really have a choice, did she? "Fluttershy!" captain Saltlick called out. "Want to sit by us this time?" The white pegasus presented an array of fried wheat porridge and fruits sitting over a makeshift grill heating up from the fire beneath it. "I can assure you that you'll love it." The mare looked down at the food, feeling the smell affecting her tired nostrils and shook her head. "No. That's okay. Thank you." The stallion raised a hoof briefly in disappointed acceptance before poking at the food with a stick again. "Suit yourself." "Told you she'd never eat with us," one of the privates said. "She never does." "Think we'll get a rotation now? We've been at this for five days now," another soldier commented. Saltlick furrowed his brow as he flipped an apple slice. "Got no word from headquarters about that yet, but I could do with a break. Maybe find a marefriend to cuddle with," he mused. The first soldier cackled. "You're still young, captain. No need to set down roots yet." The white pegasus chuckled. "I think twenty-two is pretty old in field soldier years." Fluttershy heaved a tired sigh and moved to one of the collapsed walls, letting her body be taken over by the cold winds coming from the storm outside. As she rested, several mice popped out of their burrow at the base of the wall's remnants to investigate the world around them. The pegasus felt her heart warm up almost instantly at the sight of them and smiled. "Oh, hello there, Mr. Mouse!" Fluttershy said calmly. "What are you doing out so late at night? You might catch a cold, you know." The mouse's nose twitched as it looked up and squeaked in fear, pushing its family back into their burrow. "W-wait, please! I won't do anything to you or your family! I'm just concerned!" It was too late, however. They were already gone, leaving the pale-yellow pegasus alone again. She gritted her teeth, holding back tears as her comrades remained silent on the whole event, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Looking down at a puddle, Fluttershy could see several patches of her pink mane shortened and missing, sections scarred over from past battles, leaving naught but a patchwork of rose hair. Her face was likewise disfigured, with a portion of her right muzzle chipped off around the nostril, a few striped scars leading down her throat, and a fake eye made of red gems, giving her a six-pointed star pupil that helped her see thanks to the magic it had been enchanted with. She was more than grateful to receive such a gift, but her disfigurement meant that most animals instinctively saw her as ' unnatural' and fled. She missed Angel. The hours went by and the storm finally settled while the others fell asleep, taking turns to guard their supplies and fellows. Fluttershy looked up at the cloudy sky unmarred by the industrialization of Equestria, showing off the vast recesses of space and the sea of light it held. The mare imagined herself soaring through this sea, unbothered by all the problems and bloodshed of life, surrounded by cosmic animals of fantastical origins. So many colors. As she opened her eyes, she bore witness to a shooting star flying near the moon, per her perspective, and an idea came to mind. Just a bit of fun to relieve tension. "I wish that this war would end. That everypony could go home!" she whispered loudly to herself. "I...I just need somepony to make it stop. Help make it stop..." She looked over her shoulder to see several ponies sleeping soundly amidst the rubble and debris in their sleeping bags. Several were kicking and mumbling to themselves as their fears of the next day grasped their souls. Fluttershy grabbed her bag and pulled out her own sleeping bag. It was about time she went to sleep too. There was a long day ahead of them. "Lieutenant Fluttershy, we're closing in on the field of battle." "Deliver the replacement radio equipment to the field commanders," the pale-yellow pegasus ordered. The pegasi looked over the destroyed farmlands below, replaced by mud and craters as ponies used rifles attached to their shoulders and pulled the triggers using an array of wires attached to one hoof. Cannons yelled loudly as their charges were sent through their mouths to cursed the blocky beasts of crystal and flash that wandered through the fields, supported by their own fake ponies of black magic and crystal using their own gunpowder weaponry that seemed to blow up in their faces more often than not. "There's some giants over there," one of the pegasi pointed out. Fluttershy shook her head. "No time for them. The hunters can take them out. Where is the artillery?" "But m'am, we--" Fluttershy gave a sharp stare at her soldier who immediately shut up. "We were given partial freedom to make decisions here so long as they were tactical, then to join up with the group here and receive proper orders." The mare grumbled. "We're already delivering new communications equipment to them. Might as well deliver a clear sky, too." One of the pegasi was looking around with binoculars, catching glimpses of air battles nearby and flanking enemies. He growled when he reached for his radio, realizing the soldiers on the ground had yet to get everything set up. The giants below were towering masses of disgusting material of varying shapes and sizes. Made from blackened meat and corrupted crystals, these lumbering masses acted as the shock troops and siege equipment of Sombra's military, and he had tons to spare. Fluttershy wished he had just lost whatever means he had to produce them. "Down there, behind the white cliffs!" the scout shouted. The soldiers looked to white clay, unmarred by battle, and bore witness to multiple flashes behind them. A few dozen ponies were torn apart when the shells impacted the ground, frustrating Fluttershy's platoon. "Let's deliver a strongly worded complaint to the mailmares," Fluttershy said maliciously. "I agree," one of her soldiers stated. "They've been quite rude with sending in damaged packages to us. I think it's time to look elsewhere, so let's send them back their parcels!" The platoon of twenty-three pulled out multiple ovals from closed, brown pouches of false leather around their chest and flanks and clanked them together. They cheered quietly as they dropped the steaming and whistling items on top of the immense cannons pointed upward and watched as their delivery ripped apart flesh and melted metal. Several of them hit large piles of cylindrical items and set off the gunpowder barrels near them, causing gargantuan explosions that made a fire so powerful that the black smoke reached high into the sunny sky. "Prepare for interception by enemy air f--" Fluttershy started. "Two enemy platoons incoming. I count a little over sixty troops!" the scout interjected. "We can't fight that many!" Fluttershy realized. "Fly as fast as you can back to our lines! We'll get support from the soldiers in the back lines. That should make things easier." She cursed under her breath. "Those radios would be helpful right about now!" With minutes to spare, the ponies pushed their bodies as hard as possible, dodging errant shrapnel and dirt from explosions, doing their best to survive to the line. The enemy pegasi approached closer and closer, spear and sword in hoof, when everypony was deafened and pulled away in the air. So fierce was the sudden shift in wind that the air was pulled out of Fluttershy's lungs and all sound stopped. Hovering in the air with her soldiers, Fluttershy eventually recovered her wits and realized she only had about thirteen soldiers left, and the enemy pegasi had been shrunk to around twenty, but something else was odd. Why had the gunfire and artillery ceased suddenly? Everyone was staring to Fluttershy's left, following a trail of black smoke. There was a massive, glowing crater a few kilometers from the central battlefield. Whoever was at the impact site was likely gone. The lieutenant felt her heart tightening and her blood starting to freeze over. The firefight restarted almost instantly where the glowing, smoking crater was, and Fluttershy felt like everything was going to go back to the horrible 'normal' she was used to, but several glints blinded her from above and the mare bore witness to falling stars numbering in the dozens. "What have I done?!" the mare gasped in horror. She was able to catch some sort of metallic abomination as it flew in front of her. Hanging off its hull were four, huge, blue, humanoid creatures that passed by in a blur, and if she didn't know any better, the mare would have assumed they were having the time of their lives. Their hooting and hollering only reached Fluttershy's ears when the craft was far away, crashing near the other crater. The ponies watched silently as one managed to land mostly 'intact' behind Sombra's lines, tearing away defenses and the few still intact trees, revealing a misshapen mass of scrap metal with no rhyme or reason to its shape and design, its rear belching out thick, black smog. Fluttershy narrowed her eyes, realizing that the hull of this ramshackle mess was covered in more of the blue things she caught a brief glimpse of that were now ripping off parts of their craft and throwing them at the soldiers beneath them. The pegasus overheard the soldiers below cheering as their enemy was assailed by this new one from the sky. Several thought the princesses managed to negotiate aid from neighboring countries and fellow ponies, but who ever heard of or even seen these things? "We've got reinforcements! They're taking out Sombra's troops!" one of Fluttershy's surviving soldiers declared. She grabbed Fluttershy's shoulders and shook her in joy. "The stalemate is ending!" Why, then, did Fluttershy only feel worse? She looked into the distance and saw that weapons from both sides were firing at the glowing crater. What did that mean? She got her answer in the form of two more of those immense vessels floating above the battlefield near Fluttershy's locations, their sizes dwarfing that of battleships, and their bellies roaring as loudly as possible as flames stabilized it and burnt the ground beneath, cooking the mud. Unfortunately, the second one crashed into the first, impaling itself and causing the two to smash into the ground, the impact mostly absorbed by the mud. "By the sun..." Fluttershy gasped. Massive bodies of blue poured out of the flaming wrecks and flooded over the defenders of both sides, overwhelming the still cheering ponies before their officers broke them out of their stupor to start attacking these new invaders. "What have I done?!" Fluttershy thought to herself. Author's Note ~~You'll find the link to~~ ~~Lux Locus: The First Awakening here~~~~.~~ New cover art is being made and the book is getting looked over a third time. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work. Armored GiantsWhile the ponies couldn't understand what was being said by the blue giants, they could at least understand the excited tones the creatures had, and now that they were closer, Fluttershy could make out their appearances. These immense behemoths sported deep blue skin and large overbites with long and crooked lower teeth growing from their lower jaws. Their bodies were rippling with muscle and absurd strength judging by one picking up a pony-sized boulder to chuck it at one of Sombra's monsters with very little effort. Weirder still was the lack of conformity with these creatures: They all sported different types of clothing of various colors and states of wear as they rested underneath rusted and bent armor. Those closest to the survivors of the impact pulled out rusty mallets, bulky clubs, or spikey maces, and while these earth ponies and unicorns were beaten down by the brief confusion, Fluttershy and the remnants of her platoon watched as the creatures were gunned down by their rifles, artillery, and magic spells, but not without considerable effort. "I...I thought they were going to break from that..." one of Fluttershy's soldiers said with a trembling voice. Fluttershy watched as one of the visitors found his head taken by a cannonball and its comrade next to it pointing and laughing hysterically before having its head hollowed out by a piercing spell. "They think this is funny..." Fluttershy gasped in disgust. She looked around, seeing the miles of trenches and craters, and grimaced. "If we can keep to the trenches, they'll get sandwiched between us and Sombra's forces." She turned to her remaining soldiers. "Ready lances and dive on my signal! We're doing hit-and-run tactics." The ponies pulled out foldable lances hidden along their spines and unfolded them, their points sharp and hungry for carnage. Without a moment of hesitation, the pegasi flew higher before plunging, building up as much speed as they could and heading toward the massive brutes headbutting the fortifications along the many large hills dotted about the area. With screams of rage and dying breaths, the blue creatures were injured and fell backward, but Fluttershy realized their lances weren't dealing killing blows. The skin or muscles of these beasts were far denser and tougher than she initially expected. She continued undeterred with her platoon, joined by others that took to the skies from the backlines whether they were injured or not. The lieutenant saw one of Sombra's bulky monsters using its four arms to stallionhandle one of the blue monsters when others seemingly came to its aid, only to join together and push the abomination away. She was horrified when a far larger and bulkier blue creature carrying a massive warhammer pulled away and tossed one of its kin over its shoulder to headbutt the abomination in its deformed approximation of a face. It did it over and over again to the cheers of the smaller things before being grabbed by the throat. She didn't follow further as she had done at one of the creatures climbing its kin to jump over fortifications and barbed wire, only for Fluttershy's lance to go through both sides of its neck. "Lieutenant, watch out!" Fluttershy's concentration was interrupted when one of her platoon soldiers was shot down by a flashing ball. One of the blue creatures was holding an assortment of cylinders that only vaguely resembled a rifle and pointed it at her. What was the rectangle sticking out of the side for? She screamed in terror when the weapon started to fire off its payload, nearly missing her several times. "They can fire in quick succession?!" It was joined by the others throwing sticks and rocks at the defenders, often missing completely and hitting their own, only for it all to explode, something Sombra's forces suffered through as well. "Lieutenant Fluttershy?" a garbled voice spoke to the mare in her ear. "Oh, thank the Sun. The radio works again," Fluttershy said with a sigh of relief. "Yes?" "Pull back! They're doing something to those carcasses that fell from the sky!" There was barely anything left of the vessels that crashed down into the center of the battlefield. Instead, Fluttershy bore witness to multiple vehicles sporting metallic wheels or a weird system of interlinked metal plates she had never seen before. The lot of them were as mismatched as the vessels themselves, often sporting a cannon or so on them. A few were surrounded with hastily-soldered plates of metal while others seemed to revel at the feel of the wind across their bald heads when the vehicles all roared to life. A few exploded, leaving behind blue creatures left blackened and charred but laughing heartily at the outcome of their 'project' only to quickly get back to rebuilding somehow. It was as quick as their intervention. It had only been two hours since this third party had arrived, but they already created working war machines while under a constant barrage of bullets and artillery. "We need to fall back and regroup!" Fluttershy shouted. "I don't know what these things are, but they're loving this and actively attacking both sides with no regard to whom it is their targeting." "But we can't pull back now!" the soldier on the other side said. "We almost--" "We have no choice! It's either that or we all die and these things invade Equestria! Relay that to the lieutenant-colonel and his aides!" "Yes m'am!" Fluttershy readjusted her communications piece and spoke to her platoon. "Any surviving ponies of my platoon, pull back immediately. We're retreating! Watch the ground and drop whatever you have left as explosives on the heads of these blue things." After several minutes of diving and dodging the bullets fired by these creatures' weapons, the rectangle constantly hitting them in the stomach while they did so, Fluttershy finally received a response. "Lieutenant," the radio operator started. "The heads agreed. It's a general retreat on all fronts. These blue things have appeared everywhere. We're to pull back to the border of the Crystal Empire and Griffonia." Fluttershy gawked. "That far back?! Fine!" Most of the equipment and supplies meant to reinforce the frontline and replace damaged equipment had been placed there, so did that mean everything was going to be used actively in this war? The mare grit her teeth, her bones rattling to the sound of repeated explosions followed by smaller ones crawling along the ground and destroying blue monster and pony alike. She paled at the source: Flying craft belching flames behind them as the blue things stayed on its hull and actively caught and resoldered plates of metal falling off of it. As the bulky metal beast flew past Fluttershy, one of the invaders made a grab for her and grumbled loudly when it missed, much to the amusement of the pilot. Three more of those things flew toward Fluttershy but made a u-turn, and unleashed a wave of screaming rockets at one battle site further away, peppering both the Equestrians' and Sombrian's positions in explosives, sending mud and viscera everywhere. Artillery in the backlines began a rain of fire that kept the monsters at bay as soldiers retreated, but not without firing a round or two. Unicorns did their best to put up barriers, but the angry vehicles were coming, digging through the mud like it was nothing, and then they got close. It was the worst thing Fluttershy had ever experienced so far. Hundreds of bullets going everywhere all at once like a dozen canister shells had been fired. Massive explosions coming from cannons as big as she was. A bunch of smaller explosions doing the same from smaller cannons. One pony that was caught in the mud had been grabbed and crushed against the cannon breech when it fired, horrifying Fluttershy. Soldiers sat, exhausted, at the armored line in the Crystal Empire running along its whole border. It had taken them years to get so far in the war. They were just a few days of walking to reach the capital. They lost all that progress in mere days. Thousands dead. Millions injured. All for nothing. It was insulting bright and sunny, too, and Fluttershy was blinded by the sunlight above. She and the remnants of her platoon were hiding away in a bunker, listening quietly to the radio as the ground troops readied their rifles and brand new 'machine guns' inspired by the creatures' weaponry, although it was allegedly already in development. "We've been stuck here for a month, chasing those things off," one ground troop muttered to herself. She checked the trigger of her rifle and set it back into place. "All we do is sit here and chase them off when they approach. How much longer are we going to stay here?" "They've just been using everything we left behind and using it against us." "Or blowing up." Fluttershy peered through the thin slit in the concrete building, grimacing to herself. "They're here again." The soldiers scampered to their hooves and one rushed to a table with a radio on it and frantically pulled down several maps of the area, relaying the information to the other bunkers and defensive lines. Once again, the air was filled with the sounds of bullets flying and explosives hurtling through the air while the blue monsters came in with their ramshackle weaponry. One of the flying machines was overloaded with the monsters and spun around when it got in place, chasing off and throwing its passengers everywhere onto their dead kin below in the muddy trenches. "We can't keep doing this..." the mare from earlier whined. "I'm so tired!" Another looked at the three clips in his bandolier. "And we're running out of ammo." Fluttershy picked up a rifle from the wall and sat beside the soldiers. "Nothing we can do now but keep fighting until they tired out." She groaned and dragged a ragged hoof across her face. "I wish I was back in my cottage..." She tensed up when she realized what had just come out of her mouth. The other soldiers stared at her, their faces starting to look just as weary and fatigued as her own. It was too late now. The blue monsters attacked just as the clouds started to roll in on their own, unfettered by the will of the pegasi too embroiled in battle and industry to control the weather. The fighting continued like this for several more days until the ponies ran out of ammo and looked at their opponent in horror as they all adopted a rictus when they realized what had happened. "Swords and spears to hooves!" Fluttershy and several other voices ordered loudly. "We can still funnel them into the bunker entrances!" A familiar sensation crept along her spine and the loud, guttural cries of the blue beasts broke her from her panic as they all pointed in excitement at something coming from the sky. Several let go of the ponies they were about to kill to rush over to whatever it was instead. Two of their ramshackle craft flew overhead and started to open fire on whatever was coming, only for one to receive multiple massive shells in its body that ripped it apart in the sky. The other was pierced by a long vessel made of rings that were dented and folded in various areas, having caught the shells of its would-be destroyer. Flashing lights could be seen far above, through the empty spots between the clouds, showing that these blue things were still somewhere in the sky of Fluttershy's world and attacking whatever these newcomers were. "Don't be tricked like last time," Fluttershy said apprehensively. "No need to worry, lieutenant," a mare whispered. "We learned that the hard way." They watched as the makeshift ballista bolt spun around and landed on the ground with a violent thud. It slid across the ground, kicking up dirt and debris and crushing several of the monsters before finally coming to a halt. Several craft flew overhead, going elsewhere Fluttershy couldn't see. She couldn't figure out how they were flying as she didn't see the black fumes coming from anywhere, only a very loud humming that seemed to change in pitch as the oddly 'spherical' craft flew away. "From the ship!" a soldier pointed out. Several tall creatures covered in segmented armor protecting loose clothing beneath emerged from the rear of the craft followed by two, gigantic, bipedal machines topped with what Fluttershy could only describe as a weapons platform. They quickly unfurled themselves and let loose dozens of rockets, ripping apart the monsters as they stomped forward, ignoring every explosive they stepped on, their bulk, rectangular forms unbothered by everything around them. The tinier entities immediately used whatever was around them as cover, much to Fluttershy's surprise, and started opening fire on the blue monsters. Three of them brought forth a glowing, blue machine that looked like several small rifle barrels floating in a blue cloud. A third brought a glowing blue pack and attached it to the machine, interconnecting the barrels and showering the monsters with a fire rate that burnt and consumed their flesh. As this new battle raged on, several of the larger creatures used their kin as living shields and got into range to use their melee weaponry. Two of them had their torsos disintegrate instantly without so much as a pop. Another was blown apart with a single punch. Three bipedal figures had emerged from another section of the craft, these ones seemingly as big or slightly bigger than the blue monsters. They were clad head-to-toe in metal, as though they were statues made from a single block of steel. However, all their joints glowed a pale blue and created a checkerboard pattern with every movement. Two of them holding rifles seemed to have their weapons connected to their thighs by a blue stream of light holding bullets the pegasus couldn't recognize. They were colored in bright, flash shades as their lower left and upper right sections were candy red while the other two were deep sea blue. The trim around their neck protection, shoulders, and knees were a golden hue, but only one seemed to have an orange trim on their left shoulder and wrist. Finally, the one at their front was wearing sun-bleached armor and a pure black helmet. Fluttershy couldn't make out the precise details of said helmet, but she could make out the hands of this monster that were thrice the size of the others' hands' and crackling with brown energy that seemed oddly...pale. "Now what?!" Fluttershy moaned. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work. Fearlessness"What is this now?!" one of the soldiers complained. "What, there's more? I thought they might be allies but the blue things are just attacking the newcomers too!" Fluttershy took a broken pair of binoculars and looked through the intact tube to get a better view of the newcomers. "The ones wearing uniforms of some kind look a bit like minotaurs and apes mixed together, but much smaller." The soldiers in the bunker muttered to themselves. "The big ones..." Fluttershy shivered. Whatever they were wearing was mostly devoid of any finer details save an occasional spot of blue light glowing around the joints that expanded, contracted, and twisted with every minute movement the armored giants made. Their helmets also seemed fairly impractical. One of the red-and-blue bipeds had two separate 'eyes' and the equivalent of a gaping, toothy maw right beneath it. The pegasus wiped her eyes and, for a brief moment, realized that the armor was seemingly enchanted to have that appearance and had a solid, rounded plate under the 'eyes'. The other one was far stranger: It had nothing at all. Just one solid mass of metal. How was it able to see? But, the longer the mare looked at the featureless helmet, the more unnerved she became, like some kind of eldritch horror was slowly breaking through reality and that helmet was the anchor point. She felt like whatever it was wanted to grab only Fluttershy and drag her into some twisted abyss she had no envy to experience. It was like she was stuck staring at it, only to be freed from her stupor by a loud bang. Some of the blue creatures were throwing discs onto the ground and jumping on them using their armor-plated back, just for said disc to explode as loudly as something that size possibly could and be sent careening through the air. They were hooting and hollering with jubilation as they did so, although Fluttershy recognized cursing when she heard it when they would miss the flying craft of the newcomers. Going back to the newcomers, the armored giant deck in sun-bleached gold's helmet was more standard for her, although it seemed to carry a lot of tiny antennas that hung from the back. It sported a single, long visor that was also black but reflected sunlight, but with no other traits around. It watched with its fellows as the blue creatures ran toward their craft and the smaller creatures shot at them with everything they had, unbothered by the fanatic approach and howling. The gigantic machines unfurled two cannons from their center and ignored the charging monsters, focusing instead on the machines on approach kicking up dust and debris as they let loose bullets and shells haphazardly in every direction. One of the bipedal machines was struck directly, producing light and fire and caused it to stumble back slightly, but a flickering blue wall seemed to have absorbed most of the impact. "What is even happening?" one of the ponies gasped. With a loud 'bang', the two fired in sync at the enemy vehicles in rapid succession. Fluttershy started counting the seconds between shots. "One, two, thr--" Bang. "One, two, thr--" Bang. It could take the ponies fifteen seconds at best to reload their own cannons, and they couldn't even sustain such a fire rate. The ponies watched as the armored giant with a gaping, toothy maw leapt over the defenders, kicking one of the giants in its face, dislodging teeth and sending it flying. It aimed its rifle and fire without pause, a low humming coming from its weapon. It took out four of the blue creatures in a flash, and its own blue 'sphere' appeared around it whenever the monsters shot at it with bullet or explosive. One of the creatures flanked it from its right and raised a mighty club in the air, only to see its face ripped apart when the monster's opponent pulled one of the bullets from the blue stream linking to the top of the rifle, planted it in the monster's face, and slashed across. The other with the giant hands kept punching and ripping apart every enemy that it encountered, showing a deft skill in melee combat that Fluttershy wished she possessed in the past. She would have been able to help her fellows had she--Another explosion. The smaller creatures didn't react at all, but the ponies around that were outside started fleeing. "What is with these things?" Fluttershy gasped. "It's like they were born in war." "We need to relay this back to the princesses in Canterlot," a sergeant relayed. The radio operator nodded and started relaying the information, but the observers paled when the golden giant watched its opponents run, but a hand to its head, then turn and stare at the ponies directly. It gestured for the faceless one to follow it as it stomped toward Fluttershy's bunker, causing her to curse in response. "Grab your rifles and watch the entrance!" the sergeant ordered. She pointed at the radio operator. "You stay there and keep relaying the info. This is of vital importance." She failed to hide her worry, causing her face to wrinkle. "Equestria...no, our whole world might be doomed, and I don't want that to happen, so everypony needs to know what's been happening." The ponies complied and rushed through the twisting and turning corridors, waiting in the corners and aiming through the viewports in the thick walls at the armored door locked into place with multiple very heavy locks, beams, and levers. "They're not going to manage to get through that, are they?" one pony whispered. "Just shut up and focus. Stop making us stress out more than we already are!" another chastised. Every moment of waiting tested the ponies' wits, the silence being worse than the loud explosions and sounds of active combat. They could hear each other's breathing and the sounds of their weaponry shifting as they moved about wearily. Then came the multiple thuds. They were quiet. Muffled, at first. Then, gradually and unmistakably, grew louder and closer. Fur became drenched in cold sweat and hearts pounded loudly as the steps stopped just shy of the door. They all flinched when a few light knocks hit the outside of the door, and several of the ponies felt like they were on the verge of collapsing. They screamed when both sides of the wall encompassing the door were broken through, and familiar, giant golden fingers reached in, grabbed the door, and squeezed the metal before ripping the whole thing off its hinges and pulling it away with rebar, cement blocks, and broken pressure pipes meant to hold everything in place. wIth a casual toss, it threw the door behind it, creating a space that was quickly filled in by the other metal titan aiming its strange, bulky rifle at the ponies. "Fire!" the seargeant yelled. The ponies complied and pulled the triggers. Loud bangs followed by the clicking and whirring of bolts moving into place filled the area. When they ran out, they would use their teeth to pull out clips from a banolier around their neck, ppull the rifle down diagonally, insert the clip, then lock everything back into place and repeat the action. After several seconds of firing and replacing the atmosphere with smoke, the equines were horrified to see that the giants were unharmed and unbothered. Several of the ponies screamed, with a couple fainting when the giants stepped in. Fluttershy stood firmlyu as they approached and ignored the swords and spears clanging and breaking against their armor. Tall as they are, they needed to duck to walk in the bunker. The golden giant casually pushed Fluttershy back, its hand somehow as big as her whole body. When they came upon the radio operator, said pony froze in fear. "Leave him alone!" Fluttershy shouted. She picked up a spare spear from the wall and placed it in a locking strap around her right shoulder to point at the giants. "Get out of here!" The other titan stepped forward, its helmet scraping against the ceiling and ripping out concrete, and deftly ripped the spear in half while the pony still held it. It stared at her silently, dropping the spear hand that had been crumpled like it was made of aluminum foil. The pegasus could only stare in disbelief at the ease with which they crumpled the metal of the spear, as if ripping a metal door designed to hold back even Sombra's monstrous beasts wasn't enough. The giants seemed to communicate with each other, although the ponies couldn't hear them. Fluttershy braced for them to kill her, clenching her teeth, muscles, and eyes. However, when nothing happened, she hesitantly cracked an eye open, only to realize the giants had left without hurting anypony. The sergeant rushed to Fluttershy, her red fur standing from the fear and stress. "Lieutenant Fluttershy?" Said pony put a hoof to her chest, barely able to move from the terror gripping her. "Y-yes?" "They didn't hurt you?" "No..." The sergeant became filled with concern and looked toward the slit in the bunker wall. "Maybe these ones are different from the blue monsters." Fluttershy gulped and breathed heavily. "What if we make allies with them and they stab us in the back afterward? The kirin of the western mountains did that to us before." The sergeant scratched her head and shrugged. "These things come from outside our world. They might not have the same moral concepts as we do, and unlike the blue things, they don't seem intent on attacking us or destroying everything haphazardly because they think it's funny." The lieutenant mulled it over. "Then we need to find a way to establish contact and try to learn what we can from them while it's possible." Fluttershy grit her teeth. "We can't afford anymore surprises against these po-...creatures." "It's Princess Celestia!" a pony outside shouted. Fluttershy and the sergeant cursed under their breath and rushed outside after the giants despite the other soldiers' protests and hid behind the wall, preferring it to the obvious opening in front of the fortification. She was accompanied by several armored carriages being pulled by heavily armored pegasi and landed just shy of the huge vessel the new creatures came out of. As the vehicles touched down, their occupants rolled out and pointed their rifles at the new invaders, opening fire. The carriages continued forward, crashing into the remaining blue giants and trampling over them. Several of the larger ones caught them and the ponies, flipping them over. Fluttershy and the sergeant watched as the smaller invaders hid behind sandbags and thin, metal plates planted in the ground, doing their best to avoid getting shot. The few unicorns that had accompanied Celestia were bombarding them with explosive spell and beam from every angle they could cast in. Celestia, garbed in golden armor bedazzled with purple gems glared furiously at the fortified position near her bunkers. "We've suffered enough at the hooves of Sombra's monsters. I don't need to see more of my ponies trampled upon by third parties!" she howled. "Leave Equestria, now!" "They don't understand her!" the sergeant whispered to Fluttershy. "Should we step i--" The yellow pegasus put a hoof to the sergeant's mouth. "If go in we'll get caught in the collateral damage. I don't want to be struck by Celestia when she uses a spell more complex than a ball of energy or a beam of light." Her fellow agreed reluctantly and rubbed her muzzle. However, as they argued, the faceless giant watched silently, ignoring the bullets ricocheting off its armor. A blue light shone whenever a spell was directed at it, absorbing the hit and doing naught much else, but when Celestia stepped forth and started to summon storm clouds under the fire of the bipedal machines, it leapt forth. It grabbed what Fluttershy assumed was asword handle with no blade. Under her eyes she saw pieces of metal fly up from the hilt and interlock under a blue light, creating a blade that left a wisp of blue energy behind it. Two bodyguards of Celestia's, covered in very thick and heavy plate armor, charged at the giant with their own weapons, but seeing its faceless helmet caused their strength to weaken, causing them to falter when one jumped on the other to create a two-leveled sword swing. Despite its size, the giant jumped to the side, avoiding the swipes. In that split moment, it kicked the lower pony away, caving in its chest armor and open-palm struck the higher one, crushing its helmet and likely breaking its muzzle in the process as they flew past the princess. With her guards being suppressed by the other bipeds despite the magic shields being put up to help block their rapid-firing weapons. A third bodygfuard came in from the side and found its weapon and helmet being chopped apart with one downward, diagonal swing? Celestia gasped in horror at the sight as red came from the wound inflicted and let her magic go wild. "No more deaths for my little ponies! This day you will die instead!" Her whole body shimmered with a bright light, cooking the ground around them and causing the ponies and bipeds to flee and cover their eyes. The alicorn let loose waves of boiling-hot flame, burning away the land and striking the giant, b ut the same, shimmer blue bubble appeared to take the brunt of the attack as it closed in. Fluttershy flew to the sky to focus the light of the sun above already focused by the storm clouds the alicorn created to focus light through the atmospheric disturbance and let loose a carriage-sized beam of searing light that melted away all the stones and errant bits of metal it came across. Fluttershy and the sergeant could only watch this display of terrifying magic while the other two giants watched behind the smaller bipeds. The faceless one grabbed a rock as big as a pony's head while running from the beam and chucked it at Celestia with speed that would make a baseball player pale. The alicorn narrowly dodged the attack and would have continued focusing on her spell if a second rock hadn't struck her horn, hurting her tremendously and disrupting the flow of magic. With a loud pop and bright flash of light, the mare fell down, smoking from the aftershocks of her disrupted spell and injury. Trapped on the ground, she glared up at the faceless giant. "I won't let myself be struck down by some faceless invader just because you disrupted a small spell," she bluffed. The mare jumped up, striking the giant's chest with her horn in a shower of sparks as it slid backward across the dusty, fractured soil. Undaunted, the giant rushed forward and swung at Celestia, the alicorn barely blocking with magic in time. Fluttershy knew alicorns were inherently magical in nature and were able to creates small spells without their horns, but seeing Celestia being pushed to such an extreme was shocking. The alicorn continued to use her hooves to strike at the giant, but no matter how much she hit it, the armor wouldn't get damaged, and she was only exhausting heself in the process. "We can't just let her die like that!" Fluttershy said fearfully. "What are we supposed to do, then?!" the sergeant asked her. She spun the lieutenant around and looked her straight in the eyes. "What can we do?" Celestia screamed in pain and fell backward, her leg and chest armor cut and bleeding as the giant struck her and the ponies that broke from their positions to attack it and defend their princess. Fluttershy's eyes widened as she had an epiphany. "Twilight will kill me if I don't help her!" The mare pushed past the sergeant and rushed forward. "Princess Celestia!" She flew past the giants and smaller hominids and made to tackle the giant, knowing that she likely wouldn't survive the outcome, but Celestia had to live. The princesses were all they had left in Equestria. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work. Technological MagicFluttershy bounced harmlessly off the giant like a piece of thrown bread and grumbled when the golden giant seemed to laugh at her while going around. She stood up on wobbly legs and looked in disbelief as the faceless titan was stopped, nodded once, then returned to the craft. Grabbed Celestia with both of its oversized hands and got her back onto her hooves, weak as they may be from the magic blowback. It nodded and followed it compatriot, much to the confusion of everypony watching. As Fluttershy slowly approached the princess, her eyes unable to remove themselves from the new invaders, she sat down next to the stunned alicorn. "I...I don't understand..." Celestia muttered. She removed her helmet showing her face and dropped it onto the cracked ground. "They were trying to kill me. You all." Fluttershy looked up at Celestia, somehow seeing her as paler than usual. "But...these ones are different, somehow." She looked behind them to see the blue things fleeing back toward some large smoke sources in the distance that she couldn't make out the details of. "The golden one ripped off the metal door to our bunker, moved in while ignoring our weapons, and, when they saw our radio operator, just left." The alicorn grimaced, like she was recovering from too much alcohol. "So they don't actively attack us? Have they attacked Sombra's forces?" Even though Celestia spoke calmly and with tact, Fluttershy could still hear some faint hint of hope in the mare's voice. Hope that would have lived a very short amount of time. The pegasus shook her head. "I'm afraid not, your highness." She watched the life fade from Celestia's eyes. "But, they have been focusing on the blue monsters and ignoring us, at least here." Celestia's ears twitched while she looked at the creatures talk with each other. "I was told they appeared everywhere the blue monsters are located as well." She looked at Fluttershy from the corner of her eyes. "A potential shared enemy, I suppose?" "We'll, both did come from the stars." The princess nodded, looked at the battlefield eating away the land and the trees, then looked at Fluttershy carrying a stern expression. For but a moment she hallucinated the meek, sensitive pegasus that was a friend to all animals and stifled her sorrow. "What has become of us that the Elements of Harmony have become so ripped apart?" Celestia lamented. "Princess?" Fluttershy wondered. "You were the kindest of the six. In fact, that encompassed your element." The princess kicked a small pebble on the ground and let her ponies tend to her wounded guards. "I could have prevented this if my sister and I had found Sombra's form hidden in the Blind Chasms north-east of Griffonia, but I was certain the elements had taken care of him..." "I know, princess," Fluttershy said as she pat the mare's leg gently. "I miss my animal friends greatly, but any that I meet now..." She saw a bit of her head reflected in a piece of glass in the ground created by Celestia's prior spells and scowled. "Now they all just run away. It's...heartbreaking." "War has a way of changing ponies, Fluttershy..." The empathetic alicorn quickly turned red with rage when she saw one of the blue things far away dragging several destroyed cannons with a rope and considerable effort. "But now these things come in from nowhere and destroy Equestria even further. My only solace is that more of them are focused on Sombra's front and his artificial creations." She yiped when one of the bipedal machines shot at the puwandese, calculating the trajector and distance with near-perfect precision, leaving a creater where the creature was and blowing apoart the cannon husks. "They're very thorough with how they...kill..." the princess trailed off. "The blue things are worse," Fluttershy said while furrowing her brow. "They destroy everything, rip apart the remains, then put it back together again for their own use. Several stole our two-hundred millimeter mortars and plopped them onto one of their vehicles and fired shells that were far more powerful then what we had for those wapons. They kept cheering after every explosion!" the mare grumbled. They watched as the creatures seemed to be arguing each other and the giants. This went on for several minutes until there were a moment of silence and some of the smaller bipeds hopped over their defenses and corraled the ponies to their immense craft. "What are they doing?" Celestia groaned and she struggled to walk. "I think they're escorting us," Fluttershy explained. She gestured to those keeping their weapons up and looking around for any threats. "But why? They have no reason to care about us." Celestia limped forward, glaring at the faceless giant that did not reciprocate any acknowledgment of her existence. "Unless...They know that I'm an important figure of sorts, perhaps?" Fluttershy scanned Celestia and failed to act surprised. "Yes, your highness. You do stick out." The alicorn grumbled. "Well, I suppose a giant pony wearing golden armor will stick out in a field of normal Equestrians." Getting help from the soldiers in the bunkers and Celestia's escorts, the mare was sat near one of the vessel's feet. Horror quickly replaced the moment of relief she was about to feel. "Where are the carriages?!" Her escorts shook their heads. The alicorn dropped her head in her hooves and took a deep breath, shivering while her lungs filled with the tainted air. "We were supposed to beat those creatures back and reinforce the frontline..." Using her experience, and the kindness she still held within her battered body, Fluttershy patted Celestia on the back. "It'll be alright, princess. You can't blame yourself for every loss in a war, no matter what you think." The alicorn poked a swollen eye out to look at Fluttershy. "Sombra started it, and these creatures came in without warning. There's no way we would have been able to predict any of this." The lieutenant pased a hoof across her scars and clenched her teeth. "We just live as we can and try to survive while expecting the future to get better with our efforts." Many of the ailing ponies turned to see one of the bipeds scratching a pony behind the ear and making her squeal with delight. The scritching slowly halted as it noticed all eyes on it. With a sheepish smile it retracted its hand and slowly backed away, only to get smacked on the back of the head by another and yelled at. It quickly hurried back to the front, tripping over its own feet. Every word seemed to have strong 'R' sounds and 'th' noises that roled with every other word they seemed to make. The golden giant stepped in front of the two ponies and knelt down, its armor being dirtied by mud. "What do you want?" Fluttershy spat. Even kneeling it still stood above Fluttershy but was at Celestia's eye-level when sitting. However, the two followed when it slowly rotated and pointed a giant finger into the distance past the wreckage of ramshackle vehicles and torn carriages, causing the two to pale. The other ponies gasped and mumbled in horror and terror at the sight. Far on the other side of the battlefield were two blue creatures. One was significantly smaller than those they had seen up until now and stood up straight. Its body was surrounded in clean, smooth, masterfully crafted armor with no single color to it, but it covered and protected its body efficiently. In contrast was a mountain among behemoths, and Fluttershy could have sworn it was as big a house and just as wide. It was encased in many, many layers of metal scraps that had been punched into shape, judging by the dents on it, and melted into place. In its right hand was an array of at least a dozen barrels of varying size all connected by just as many belts of some sort leading to a backpack as big as the regular blue monsters she had seen so far. It was laughing at the sight and dragging away a pile of the destroyed vehicless stacked on top of each other with one arm. "How strong do you have to be to do something like that with just one arm?!" Fluttershy gasped. "That thing puts minotaurs to shame..." one of the soldiers stated in shock. The blue creature put a finger in its nose and stuck out its tongue at the group, not that anyone but the pegasi could see it. It patted its shiny fellow with another finger, almost making them fly forward and laughed as it grabbed its loot, disappearing into the dregs of the forest. "What was that all about?" Celestia wondered. The giant with a gaping maw stepped to the golden one and the two seemed to have another discussion which Fluttershy still couldn't hear. The smaller creatures seemed capable of hearing them, however, and Fluttershy didn't understand how. The ponies gathered together around Celestia, with many of the higher ranking ponies organizing everyone into small platoons with what they could find. Despite the morbidness of the task, some groups went out to search the battlefield for dead ponies and equipment that could be recovered. "Never thought regular soldiers would be assigned to work as death harvesters," Fluttershy lamented. Celestia slowly blinked. "I'm sorry, assigned as what?" "Death harvesters? They go on the battlefield after a fight to grab dogtags and equipment," Fluttershy explained. She looked onto the muddy landscape, her eyes seemingly glassing over. "It's...better to recover what we can and reuse it, if not for its practical applications then for its material to be sent back, then to fight with our hooves and no protection." "But...I've seen the amount of equipment being manufactured." Celestia paled. "It's not enough? Even at that level?! All the industrialization Equestria went through just for this war..." She shook her head. "Well, Twilight and Luna warned me. I suppose this is the consequence." "I don't think it matters anymore," Fluttershy said. "Look." The pegasus pointed up to the sky where a few dozen of the orb-like craft and much larger, wider one came in, landing on the battlefield and letting hundreds, if not thousands of the bipeds onto the field. They were accompanied by multiple wheeled vehicles carrying immense, metal containers; and mopre vehicles with the odd, interlocking mechanisms their many wheels used. Unlike the blue monsters', these ones were elegantly and minutely crafted and carried only a single cannon, although the chassis had an odd design, acting like an angled trap meant to bounce every shell into the driver's viewport. Fluttershy and Celestia could not understand such a thing for my reasons. The rotating object housing the cannon even had a rounded by to keep anything from getting trapped beneath. Before they could take in the rest of the equipment the creatures were bringing off their ships and setting up, one of these stepped in front of Celestia. Its body was covered in sealed, loose cloth of dull wine red. Before and after its joints were black rings keeping the cloth in place, and black gloves to protect its hands. Fluttershy, concerned and stressed out, looked at a head also draped in cloth and tightened around the neck, with two large, black lenses reflecting her glare back at her. Around its mouth was a series of vents and tubes, creating an obvious wheeze as they expelled whatever this creature breathed in. Sitting on its chest were an assortment of rectangles and blocks that reflected those Fluttershy could see peering over its back. Perplexed, Celestia remained silent as the entity seemed fixated on her and bounced in surprise when all the equipment on the creature's chest and back started to unfurl, creating multiple glowing screens, antennae, and what she could only surmise as receptacles whatever substance or substances this creature picked up. It started typing very quickly on a keyboard, watching lines slide across one of the screens then pushed it to the side and pulled down a black, flat board covered in interlocking, blue dots. With its left hand it started tracing things in the air, producing odd, twisting symbols Celestia had never seen before. The alicorn watched in amazement as the symbols started growing in number and fusing together until the entity slammed the object into the sound of its keyboard, started typing more as its equipment flowed blue, and a projection of a plain chariot formed in the air. It fiddle with its breathing apparatus and stared straight at Celestia. "Crætwæn." Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work. The Darker SideSombra looked over the map of the Crystal Empire, dusted off from years being in storage. He gripped the table with a hoof, never expecting to need it until after the Equestrian lands were conquered. His sharp teeth grit against each other, producing the occasional spark that died off as fast as it was born. His planning room was overgrown with dark crystals of varying shades, all having black exteriors with colorful cores. It was like a disease overtaking everything in the palace. A giant table sat in the middle, roughly carved from a giant, purple gemstone found some ways outside the empire in the royal gemstone mines. A relic of Sombra's prior dominance of the land, it was left abandoned in the war room due to its sheer size, but the king's return gave everything new purpose. Multiple smaller tables with boxes and sorting cabinets for folders held a plethora of documents concerning the daily needs of Sombra's servants and the empire. The walls were still barren of any art, but with the crystals growing over them, there wasn't much room for such leisure, but they had their own colors to compensate. He looked over several piles of paperwork that his military councilors were helping him with, although there were only two at the moment. The rest were on the front lines. "Only two thousand pony prisoners this time," the king thought to himself. "And thirty-seven losses for my monsters... The war is progressing too slowly." One of the councilors pulled a map out and started measuring it. "Looks like our forces west of Equestria managed to capture several mining pits." She scratched her neck and grimaced. "We're going to have to start building railroads to transport everything that gets mined there to our refineries." Sombra tilted his head as he looked at his councilors, a sense of pride welling up within him. These creatures were made with a dash of pony flesh and fused to a new breed of crystal he had managed to refine during his exile, and each one sported the coloration of any particular crystal they crew from. These two were almost entirely black with a colored outline that displayed their features at certain angles. The mare's was yellow while the stallion's was orange. The stallion scratched at his missing eye while a crackling and rubbing of stones seemed to come from his head. "This damnable wound is getting on my nerves," he complained. "Stop picking at it!" Sombra howled. "Your eye is regenerating. Doing that will delay the effect." The fake pony snorted and went back to sifting through the papers and reports. "I wish you made us with instantaneous regeneration." Sombra cackled. "This isn't a book where anything can be done with the stroke of a quill." He leaned back in his chair. "Your crystals require material and magic to fuel their regeneration, and I won't accept my subjects to be used as food for regeneration, let alone our slaves and prisoners." He sifted through some documents and shook his head. "We'll need them to work the factories and the mines now." The akward silences were interrupted haphazardly by the rustling of paper and folding of cardboard. Despite the darkness in the room thanks to the windows getting covered by the growing crystals, the three equines could see just fine. It also acted as a sort of cloak for any outside spies if they could peer inside. The two fake ponies bounced in terror when the door slammed open, shattering some growths on the wall and revealing an exhausted fellow fake equine. "Your highness!" the pony wheezed. "Bad news! Something happened on the front!" Sombra slammed his hooves onto the table, throwing off quills and weights holding down maps and causing some of the said weights to roll off onto the floor, creating muted thuds. "What? What happened? I had ensured my monsters could handle and disperse the princesses' magic if they showed up!" The fake pony shied away from his lord's fury. "I-it wasn't th-them! It was something else!" The king's sharp teeth ground against each other, producing dark sparks. "What is it, pony?! Speak!" Sombra hollered. The soldier took a deep breath and looked at the stern, heavy gazes of the three high-ranking ponies before him, each able to have him executed immediately. "Some weird things came from the sky and interrupted the battle at the border near a supply core of ours at the border. They started attacking the Equestrians." At first, Sombra was going to have this claim dismissed and have this soldier flogged for incrrectly relaying information, but he and the other two ponies broke into an uproarius laughter. "Did you hear that, my king?" the orange-tinted stallion shouted. "He wanted to give us good news!" "It sure is good!" the mare added. "You have brought me some good news, soldier. I have needed a good laugh in quite a while, now leave. You shan't be flogged for this ridicule," Sombra said with a wave of his hoof. "But your majesty, I aml not lying! It really--" Sombra slammed a hoof onto the table. "There is naught but stars and darkness outside of Equestria. I have gazed at the sea of the night for many a cycle and have found nothing of note." He then pointed at the soldier. "I still feel the mirth you have given me, but contain to push and I will have you executed through repeated flogging." He watched as his fake pony shook in place, his lips pursed. "Has the spell malfunctioned?" Sombra thought to himself. "They shouldn't be having conflicts." Suddenly, a dozen envelopes swollen with reports from multiple battlefields landed on the table, forcing more of the paperwork and office supplies to tumble everywhere. The stallion concilor grabbed two and opened them with his magic. As he and the mare read through both, their eyes cracked the more they went through. Shocking Sombra, the two hurried through the others and started mumbling to each other. Then came a dozen more envelopes apparating from above the table, and a dozen more. "What is happening?!" Sombra panicked. "The Black Fields to the south-west, the Gold Flamingo Islands east of Equestria...the borders connecting us. Even some of our allies on the other continents have reported the same thing," the stallion gasped in horror. The mare dropped the paper and dropped her face into her hooves. "That soldier was right...It's not possible to spread such stupidity across entire continents in so short a time." Sombra stuttered and stammered as he tried to formulate words that wouldn't leave his addled mind. "Then what exactly is happening?! Stars are attacking us and the Equestrians?!" The messenger shrugged. "I do not know, your highness. I was told told to inform you before the reports came in so you wouldn't be overwhelmed." Sombra's eye twitched and his gaze filled with a burning fury that made the soldier wish he was dead, but the strike never came. "Let us wait and see what happens and how our troops react to this newcoming. It will aid us in understand and eventually dealing with whatever these monstrosities are. After about a month of gathering information and putting the factories on overtime as well as pouring his magic and strength into the vats of growing flesh and crystal to make hundreds of new false ponies and forcing the failures into monstrosities he used as shock troops, Sombra ad joined the new frontline that had the arrogance to dig deep into the melting snows of his territory. Worse, still, were the many black crystals rising high into the sky like skyscrapers, their uneven and crooked shapes harnessed by his warlocks as absolute area control artillery. It was something he tried to bring to the frontline to destroy the Equestrians, but without the Crystal Heart, they crumbled like a deck of cards and were forced to be within his lands. He grimaced as he approached the line with his cohort of armored troops and rifleponies, a strange sound beating and whistling in the air around him. Crafted, hexagonal bunkers of dark crystal had been hoofmolded and ground down to a near perfect smoothness as a make-shift defensive structure, and the king could see a few, significantly larger constructs through which the barrel of artillery cannons poked out. Even as he passed them by, the many artillery regiments in the back were actively gathering, distributing, and organizing artillery shells. A few of the bunkers and walls had elevated walls or deeper pits in which a crew of mortar ponies resided. Sombra wasn't a huge fan of this new technology, but he enjoyed the results and vowed to be taught everything it offered in the modern day. He saw runners going up and down the lines, relaying information or delivering supplies of food and ammo to the troops waiting nervously for the upcoming assault. Even the monsters Sombra was so proud of were not bouncing in place, roaring, slavering, and yanking on their chains for freedom. In fact, to his shock, they were free! They were waiting patiently, quietly, and calmly behind the artillery and defenses. "What could cause even my mutated failures to be so apprehensive? They never displayed such thing with the Equestrians," Sombra thought out loud. One of the infantrymen pointed to a field of destroyed buildings, mud, burned trees, and mounds of rotting flesh and rusting metal. "Perhaps that is why, your lordship." As he and the reinforcements got closer to the defenses, the strange mounds in the mud and refuse grew with detail, showing that dozens of his monsters were lying dead. They surrounded themselves with a plethora of giant blue creatures that had been ripped apart, chopped up, melted, chewed on, or any other number of physical actions. "At least they went out fighting." "Your highness!" a soldier realized. "Stay at your posts!" Sombra ordered. "And what is that infernal noise?!" A machine gunner rolled onto her side to look at her king. "It's the blue things. They've been singing and chanting in our old trenches and those buildings over there. We don't know what they're doing." Once more gazing into the distance, sombra could see dozens of smoke stacks, each darker than the last, rising high into the cloudy sky. Sparks grew between the ruins of the village the creatures stayed in, working on whatever weaponry they had in place. The sounds of hammers seemed in sync with their almost orchestral howling echoing off of nothing, making Sombra feel like he was in an orchestral theater. Metal banged and clanked in rhythm to steam escaping pressurized confines and explosions accentuated the voices while material was bent and melted into place. Sombra grimaced at this orchestra of unease, the music bringing discomfort and anxiety to his soldiers and even him. Even the monsters seemed to cower. Enough was enough. "You call yourselves the ponies of my Crystal Empire?!" Sombra shouted. "You exist because I made you, and you will recover from your wounds because I demanded it from your growth! You have nothing to fear, so are you cowards or my shadow crystal ponies?!" The machinegunner gawked at him. "B-but your majesty, they--" "Organize and attack!" Sombra ordered loudly. The ponies that had gathered in the trenches in front of the bunkers and machinegun nests cheered in unison at their king's speech and hopped over the steep walls of dirt reinforced with wood and crystal. The artillery and mortars sounded like drums, crashing into the enemy lines after seconds of waiting, and bringing pride and amusement to Sombra as he saw his gigantic monsters fumble alongside his ponies, but his smile quickly soured, leaving way to an increasing amount of dread when he saw the massive blue things soar out of the ruins and trenches, weapons in hand and raining bullets and explosions everywhere. "They have portable machine guns?!" Sombra gawked in horror. His monsters crashed into the blue lines, sending the creatures flying, and to the king's shock, they immediately got back up, jubilating at the event that transpired and laughing at any lost limbs. "They're...they're crazy..." Loud roars drowned out the sounds combat as monstrous machines running on what Sombra could only perceive as chains with no holes hopped over hill and drifted around walls. The bunker artillery opened fired, hitting several of these ramshackle machines, shattering them apart, but others dodged comfortably, running over soldiers and blowing others apart with their weaponry. One of Sombra's failures open its maw, unleashing a dozen tentacles that caught one of the vehicles and ripped it apart in its fury, but that didn't stop the others from peppering it with lead and gunpowder. "I tried to warn you, your highness," the machinegunner said between volleys. "They're attracted to us more than the Equestrians because of your monsters." Several lasers from the crystal skyscrapers beamed down, razing the ruins of the old village off the map. Two were even used to create a ball of intense gravity that moved slowly along the creatures' line as it sucked them and their crafts up, crushing them into thin plates and growing its field of attraction. Even overhead they weren't safe, as odd craft soared, dropping explosives on the fake ponies and their defensive line while being chased by pegasi and flying beasts. One section managed to get through the blue creatures' lines, only to start fleeing in the other direction, enraging Sombra. Unfortunately, he didn't get to voice his objections to this event when multiple lights shone through the darkness and he was deafened by the loudest boom he had ever heard. Everypony was stunned, including the monsters, but as the hearing returned, the blue things were cheering. Something wider than an appartment complex slowly rolled into view, its wide, heavy body covered by a cannon that Sombra could only describe as the size of a corvette. In his horrified mind he was certain that was a clear exaggeration, but the sheer bulk of this ralshackle abomination stunned him. How did it move? How did it work? How anything? He could see eight separate rows of the thick chains moving underneath it, protected by multiple layers of thick armor. In fact, the armor was so thick and the body s o huge, that it carried a plethora of smaller cannons out of its hull, on its sides, and even had a few turrets hastily slapped together sitting atop it. Worse yet, even though the artillery and bunker weapons were hitting it, it was covered with so many random plates of scrap metal that they would simply flake off on impact, and the blue things hanging off the side, shooting at his monsters and soldiers would jump down, roll on the ground, grab the sheets, then climb up and hammer everything back in place excitedly. It stopped in place while the turret adjusted, but instead of aiming at the frontline, it aimed up. "Brace!" Sombra ordered as he magically covered his eyes and ears. A few of the ponies w eren't able to comply, and the shockwave shattered them in front of their fellows. The cannon's power was so great that it caused a vacuum effect at its barrel mouth, sucking back some of the enormous fire it had created which was expelled almost immediately back out several 'pores' along the metal cylinder. Sombra turned to see one of the crystal skyscrapers collapsing. They were meant to hold off the entirety of Equestrian might! They could shrug off Sombra's most powerful spells! He had designed them that way! "How?!" the king shouted in indignation. "Hoooow?!" The blue creatures continued fighting, unbothered by the event, with many laughing at their fellows getting shot to death and some grabbing their bodies to use as shields and make-shifts clubs. This wasn't a war Sombra wanted. He hated this mockery of something noble and honorable. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work. GecwideCelestia and Fluttershy sat on the sidelines with the ponies being tended to by their own medics while the visitors worked on their own fortifications, somehow using the muddy and polluted landscape as building grounds. A few ponies were trying to communicate with the oddly garbed creature showing objects on its image projector and repeating words. It would type something down when the ponies would repeat something just as they were writing things down in soiled notebooks with quills and just the barest amounts of ink left. "This is..." Celestia heaved a long sigh. "Quite frankly, I am unsure how to react to this. It's completely unprecedented. In the span of two months we've had two alien species come to our little world, shattering our perceptions of existence as we know it." Fluttershy giggled. "Twilight would be absolutely ecstatic right now." The alicorn remained silent as did Fluttershy as the akwardness set in. "Heoru," the strange biped said as it pointed to the sword. "Heoru." "Uh..." The ponies shifted in place. "Heethoo..." "Heoru," the biped insisted. "Heahroo..." "He. Oh. Rrrrru," it emphasized. "They have a strangely rhotic language," Celestia noted. "I'm not sure anypony in Equestria or any creature outside has ever spoken with such a language." She rested her head on a hoof and grumbled. "They're so..." "Alien?" Fluttershy suggested with a cheeky grin. Celestia furrowed her brow. "Yes, Fluttershy. You're very funny." She stood up, taking in a deep breath as the pain flowed through her aching body. "I need to return to Canterlot and assure the people I am fine, then I need to convene with the military and wartime council to figure out what we should do going forward." She looked to the bipeds and gulped. "And decide if we can work alongside these creatures." "Princess!" Fluttershy was quick to call out. "I've seen what those blue monsters can do. You'll need somepony that's been on the battlefield and seen everything with her own t..." The mare raised a hoof toward her false eyes and grit her teeth. "With her own eye to convince them." Once again, Celestia felt the pangs of failure when looking at the Element of Kindness so...damaged, to put it gently. "They might just dismiss your claims as you being shell shocked, but..." The alicorn looked at the strange flying craft and the walking automatons stomping everywhere, with new ones sporting enormous arms carrying containers of sizes the likes of which she had never seen before as though they weighed nothing. "But being the Element of Kindness should also sway them favorably." "Sword," one of the three interpreters said as he pointed to the weapon in his hoof. He grew concerned when the biped ceased moving. "Swoooord." "Sood." "No. Sword. Swoooord." The biped tapped away at its keyboard before responding. "Soooord." The ponies heaved a sigh. "That's close," a mare said with a weak smile. They shared their notebooks with the biped that shared its glowing parchments with them, leading to many shared 'ooos' and 'aaas' as they tried to figure out patterns in their languages. "At least they're having fun," Fluttershy said. She paused a moment. "How long does it take to translate languages like that?" the mare wondered. "When there's no documentation and no pony to interpret?" Celestia said. She stretched her wings. "Depending on the complexity, it can take decades. However, we both have interpreters and are actively exchanging words and pronunciations with each other. Might only take a few years." "Should we get going?" Fluttershy asked. Celestia nodded, and with a crackle of the magic in her horn, alerted her guards to join her. "Without our carriages we will have to fly to Canterlot, meaning there will be no points of rest, exchanging who pulls our transport." The alicorn snorted, ignoring the loud noises and whirring the bipeds were creating. "It might take us three days of flying." "Can't you teleport us all there?" Fluttershy asked. The alicorn shook her head. "No. It's a very meticulous process just for one pony, especially for that distance. We'll have to hoof it the old-fashioned way." As Celestia unfurled her wings and her muscles tensed to take off, the golden giant jumped in front of her, holding out his giant hands. The guards moved in but relented when Celestia shook her head. She and the other ponies watched as it reached to its black helmet and tapped it multiple times until the gases holding it in place were finally freed with the lessening of pressure. They were met with astonishment at the sight, finding the creature to be an uncanny resemblance to apes and minotaurs. Its skin was extremely pale, nearly white, and its hair followed a similar pattern with just the faintest hints of yellow. Hair that draped over the neck protection it bore. Its eyes were stern and hardy, and it looked like it had seen its fair share of war that Celestia wished she never had to go through in her life, long as it was. It was a gruff, tired exterior that she was all too familiar with and which somehow surpassed the fatigue her ponies had. It wasn't something natural. The other two giants stepped next to it, and the golden one spoke with a deep, masculine voice as it gestured to all three of them. "Sind Pillar Scieldan." He then pointed to himself with a thumb. "Ic eom Killigan Ghor. Hwa eart þín naman?" While his words left confusion in the minds of the ponies, Celestia was able to discern what he was saying more or less by his physical gestures, so she followed suit and pointed to herself. "Celestia." She looked to her ponies and cringed. "I'm sorry my little ponies, but I need you all to bow to me for them to understand..." She hated using her authority in such a manner and didn't realize the visitors had noticed the slight facial shifting. "Of course, your highness!" the ponies conceded with a bow. Celestia had to use every ounce of willpower to not shake her head and groan in disappointment. She watched the golden giant look around and put his helmet back on before he turned to face his comrades and pointed them to the smaller bipeds. One with strange things on its shoulders rushed to others wearing similar symbols, and they immediately packed up what served as their equipment and went up the ramp at the front of the vehicle. In a few seconds the machine roared to life, belching flames into the ground beneath it without even moving. The faceless biped gestured to Celestia to follow it, but did not insist. She, Fluttershy, and Celestia's personal guards followed toward the central section of the ridged vessel and climbed a ramp into a holding compartment that seemed capable of holding dozens of the smaller bipeds. Seats draped in security harnesses lined the walls, but there was no sign of windows or anything of the sort. "Why are we in here?" Fluttershy asked. She watched as the three bipeds sat in much larger seats and secured themselves in place. "I don't understand why you followed them suddenly." Celestia looked at the golden giant whose helmet made him seem headless in the darkness. "I just have a feeling." "With all due respect, Your Highness, that's not very logical," one of the princess' guards told her. "What if they take us off-world? There's no telling what these creatures might want." A second guard pushed past the first. "And we don't know if you'll be able to stop them with your magic." She looked at the faceless giant. "They were able to handle your power and fight you on equal footing." Celestia furrowed her brow, and her horn sparked briefly. "It wasn't equal footing," she corrected. "They may not have even a fraction of the magical power I possess, but their usage of it is more...surgical." She swallowed her nerves and straightened herself up. "These creatures could have killed all of us whenever they would have wanted, and rather than consider us as collateral when fightiong the blue monsters, they moved aside us and started attacking." She stepped forward, her hooves banging on the metal floor. "We must work with them and see what they'll do next." The golden giant banged his giant hands against the wall to his left once, causing the compartment to reverberate. The ponies were startled when the wall slid back, revealing a single biped draped in thick clothing and wearing a helmet that hid its face. The cockpit, which the ponies had trouble seeing, seemed to hold four seats that were actively being worked on. Fluttershy watched as her princess entered the cockpit with mild difficulty and the door slid closed. The bipeds held themselves in their chairs when the vessel started shaking shortly after, prompting the ponies to jump at the seats and hold on for dear life. They had no way of using these, but they could at least hang onto them. Clenching their teeth and closing their eyes, the equines braced as the vessel took off almost instantaneously, but the extreme gravity they felt seemed to cease almost instantly. Opening their eyes, they noticed that blue lines ran along the floor, seemingly protecting them from the g-forces being exerted by the craft. Better still, they stared in awe as the walls seemed to part in sections, revealing the world outside through windows. One guard tapped it with his hoof then tapped the solid wall next to it and gawked. "It's still the wall. How are they doing that?" "Is this what you pegasi see all the time?" "I mean, not this high, but kinda, yeah." "That's amazing!" "It's too high! We're gonna fall!" Fluttershy looked through a mostly free window and saw the devastation to the landscape the war with Sombra had caused. Barely any forestry left. Mud and burnt land in place of grass and shrubbery. Villages and homes turned to rubble as far as she could see. She could even see the blue monsters' camp far away surrounded by a very subtle wall of metal and stone. "Almost looks like a volcano waiting to erupt," a guard said. Fluttershy furrowed her brows. "Considering they love to fight, I wouldn't be surprised." They were silent for a moment, taking in the scenery, when the guard broke the silence. "It's...how many of our comrades have been left down there, in the mud and trenches? Blown to bits, never to be seen again..." He looked at Fluttershy, his magenta eyes watery. "Do you think we're doing the right thing? Do you think the layers above look down on us with hate or empathy?" Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably. "I try not to think of things like that." She glanced over her shoulder to the metal giants and frowned. "I know one thing: Those things have killed and murdered more things than we'll ever see if Equestria was at war for a century." The guard became perplexed. "How do you know? We've never seen their kind before." "I may not know their expressions, be it physical or vocal, but..." The lieutenant took a deep breath. "I can feel it. A lot of us can...but they push on, and it doesn't seem to be that much of an obstacle to their mental health, unlike us." "Woah!" one of the ponies yelped. The vessel took off at blinding speeds, something that not even the strange magic within could fully nullify. Canterlot started coming into view making what would have taken a little under twenty-eight hours with constant flying rotations in chariots, three days by wing, or a week by hoof, a mere fifteen-minute trip. The ridged craft flew over the castle proper and readjusted itself to land on the royal garden. The many gardeners scattered when the engines started burning away all the carefully tended plants and statues, leaving naught but burnt debris when it finally landed despite the guards' protests. The door to the cockpit slid open, leaving Celestia to saunter out, dazed and unsteady on her hooves. The pilots laughed at the sight before closing the door and shutting off the vehicle. Luckily for the princess, her guards and Celestia managed to catch her just as she fell. "That was...a unique experience..." she said with a dazed smile on her face. Author's Note I'm doing my best with Anglo-Saxon. It's hard to find anything concerning its conjugation and grammatical structure online. Yes. The humans of the Terran Expanse speak anglo-saxon. Medium-Weight"Theht's meyn, yeh soggy gump!" "Gevh et here! 'N who 'er yeh callin' eh soggy gump, yeh screhp breyn!" "Dey's feytin' 'ere!" "Get the splodeys!" "Woooooo!" Mixyum watched his fellows start pummeling each other and others bringing 'splodeys', as they called it, into the fight, causing loud explosions and flashes of light that were sending everyone and everything in all directions. He grumbled at the sight, distracting him from his meticulous task of wiring and soldering. It was the one moment he felt at peace with himself and his fellows. Even if he was what they called a 'shiny metal 'un' just because he polished and maintained his equipment, didn't meant he didn't enjoy the same eccentricities as them. After all, he was still a puwandese. "I jehst wehnt tae make 'em good, prehpur equipment," Mixyum lamented under his breath. He was almost deafened by raucous laughter and nearly sent flying by a back-slap from the Warboss Big 'Un. "Big 'Un Smashnsplode," he grunted. "Ey'm addin' meyre guns." The big 'un was, as his name implied, so immense that Mixyum was to Smashnsplode what a hume's baby was to an adult. "They're jehst bored!" the titan laughed. "Couldn't feynd any kol-katan. Next best theng!" He scratched his chin and picked at sharp, long teeth jutting from his overbite. "Them's tiny thengs ain't too gun teh feyt. Heydin' behind their heyrd bexes." "Yeh mean benkers?" Mixyup corrected. The titan scoffed. "Jehst semthin' teh 'splode." Smashnsplode's expression became somber before he leaned over the tiny puwandese, his armor creaking and straining under the effort. "Theh humes 've come." "They've behn fellowin' us teh whehl teym," Mixyum said while trying to suppress his fear. Several loud engine roars muffled what the big 'un was trying to say, followed by cheers of the blue beasts at their vehicles not exploding when turned on. The warcamp was immense, having torn down a massive chunk of the forest when their spacecraft landed or simply crashed. The big 'un snorted the toxic odors floating in the air. A mixture of oil, burning fuel, dangerous gases, and a whole assortment of materials they had looted from their ships that made their skin tingle when holding or being near them. Walls of shattered wood and melted slag rose high into the sky, bigger than anything the locals could make, according to the puwandese themselves. Hundreds of them were digging into the ground, pulling out oil and gemstones that were plentiful under the planet's skin and launching everything into massive, roaring machines that belched out black gunk the the blue creatures immediately passed into barrels. It was such a self-imposed competition that they would boost the machines to work as fast as possible, and the beasts would fill as many barrels as they could to beat the others in speed and gathering. "How's meey erhmer doin'?" Smashnsplode asked. "Ey'm meykin' it. Yeh wented yeh're oompher teh be mey're shooty 'n splodey," Mixyum explained. The big' un made to yell and punch the smaller puwandese away but paused and put a mùetay, armored finger to his chin. "Oh yeah. Yeh're reyt." He glared at Mixyum and spoke as softly as a puwandese could. "Yeh behtehr hurry ehp. Neht very patient. Gehta crump theh fuzzy thengs 'fore grippin' everytheng." "Of course." With that, the blue titan backed away and stared at the pile of puwandese punching and exploding each other in a pile and saw a group of the larger beasts carrying a scrap tank and swinging it around to knock away seven of their fellows and shattering the ramshackle construct. As they continued to pummel each other, the ground began to tremble, and one of the puwandese saw an unstoppable force rushing toward them. "Theh big 'un!" he bellowed. The puwandese screamed in fear as Smashnsplode jumped high into the air to fall down over the fighters with his body spread wide. Dozens of guards, caretakers, and guests of Canterlot Castle rushed to the ridged craft, awed at its size. Everypony was frozen, unable to figure out what to do. Even the higher-ranked guards were hesitating. "K-keep on guard!" one of the sergeants ordered. "We don't know if this is something from Sombra, so I don't want anypony playing hero and tempting fate!" A ramp fell down, revealing the compartment the ponies had entered, and as the castle's inhabitants approached the dark interior, they watched as something bright and golden started approaching, every step banging against the metal. "It's a headless monster!" one of the newer guards blurted. She started shooting the strange monster in a panic, causing the others to fall into their own hysteria. Not seeing his head made things convenient to Killigan, taking the shots in stride and ignoring any attacks against him as he casually strolled down the ramp and took in the surroundings. Unfortunately, what he expected to be just a bit of burnt land turned out to be a completely burnt garden, and the castle grounds were excessively fortified with multiple layers of walls and artillery sitting on them. It reminded him of home. Realizing that the land around was barren thanks to his ship and enclosed on all sides, Killigan made to return inside the vessel and bring the equines out, but he was intercepted on the ramp by what seemed to be an errant blast of some type of weaponry. Righting himself in mid-air, the giant slid along the ground, his boots burying themselves in the dirt. "It's Princess Twilight!" one of the nobles cheered. Twilight's body was glowing and crackling with magic power as she flew in the air. "What are you, another monster created by Sombra?" the princess roared. She faltered briefly from seeing the giant stand up as though nothing happened. "Have some magic dissipating crystals in your armor, huh? Well, I won't let you destroy Canterlot or harm the inhabitants! Your king", she spat. "destroyed everything already!" She paused to hold back her tears as memories flooded in. "You won't be leaving her intact." Killigan raised his immense hands in a sign of peace, but the ponies did not understand the gesture. They only had hooves. He would need to subdue this equine and any others that might attack him, but they were all so fragile. The giant furrowed his brow behind his helmet as his gauntlets glowed with a brown, rotting aura. It felt like he was on the other side of the invasion of-- The giant didn't have time to finish his thought. Several sharp discs of magic flew from the flying alicorn and dug into the ground, rushing toward him. Killigan dodged the first two that dissipated before they hit the crowd behind him, but he crushed the last one by punching it on both sides right before it touched his armor. His gauntlets burst with tainted mana, killing the plants around him and causing insects to fall, made sickly by the wave. The soldiers had broken out of their stupor and quickly started escorting everypony out of the ruined gardens and away from the fight. As Twilight readied another spell, she realized that, even with the failsafes of her spells, the onlookers might be harmed. A barrier engulfed her instead, shimmering and resonating with multiple layers of mana. Killigan staggered at the sight, the layers reminding him of something that was tearing its way through the galaxy. A thing that didn't belong. The giant took a deep breath and steadied himself when he saw a white thing stumbling out of the vessel. "Twilight!" Celestia attempted to call out. Unfortunately, she fell off the ramp and faceplanted into the ground. She was quickly followed by her personal guard calling out to her and tumbling over each other like newborn kittens. Several of them frantically removed their armor to vomit and others passed out instead. "Princess!" Twilight screamed in horror. She immediately dissipated the magic she pooled around herself and rushed to her former teacher, panic gripping her heart. She pulled the white alicorn out of the mud and wiped as much as she could off her face. "They...they're not enemies, Twilight," Celestia wheezed. "Wh-what? But--" "That craft...thing...ship...of theirs. It's...it's really fast...not made for ponies." She turned green a moment and vomited on the side, eliciting disgust from Twilight. "Don't fight them." "Well, what do they want?" the lavender alicorn asked. She eyed the giant and glowered. "It destroyed the-them?!" Twilight immediately realized. "What do you mean them?" She stared in horror as two other giants, these ones clad in red and blue, jumped off the sides of the ramp, avoiding the ponies. The guards on the wall started to grunt and cover their faces when they saw the faceless one while only a few seemed to react with fear when looking at the one with the gaping maw on his helmet. They ignored Twilight and rejoined the golden giant with their weapons in hand, weapons that seemed oddly terrifying to the mare. They were far bigger than anything the alicorn had ever seen, and even though she was used to the usage of clips for rifles, she wasn't entirely certain where said bullets went. The weapons weren't big enough to carry any large amounts of ammo. "Are these the things that came from the stars and have been destroying everything?" Twilight asked. Celestia shook her head. "No, Twilight." She coughed from the stomach acid burning her throat. "These ones came in just a few hours or so ago." Fluttershy stumbled to her hooves and fumbled to Twilight. She failed to lean against the castle's wall and fell sideways. "Hey, Twilight." "Fluttershy helped me to understand what happened," Celestia said with a smile. Twilight immediately teared up and jumped to her friend when she realized that Celestia could hold herself up comfortably. "Fluttershy!" the alicorn cried. "I haven't seen you in years! I was worried you had died!" Regaining her sense of balance, Fluttershy's eyes stopped spinning, allowing her to look her friend straight in the eyes. As the seconds flew by, Twilight's elation gradually faded from her face to be replaced by shock and pity the more she took in Fluttershy's features. "Hey, Twilight. Didn't think we would meet under these circumstances," she said with a nervous smile. "You...you've gone through a lot..." Fluttershy nodded. "Yes. It's been...very, very hard on me and everypony else." Unwanted memories started popping up in her mind. "Sleeping in ruins. Trenches are under constant fire. Monsters swarming the field..." "We need to get to the council chambers," Celestia interjected. "I'm sorry to cut your reunion short, but this is important."As for your prior question, I think these ones came here to scout us." Twilight and Fluttershy immediately got to their hooves, followed by the recovered guards joining together in a two-line formation. Celestia gestures for the bipeds to follow her, which they did. Every step they made was around four or five for the ponies, and the weight of the giants' armor cracked the white floors, revealing more of the gray imperfections of the tiles. The new 'guests' were a stark contrast to the almost-sterile entrance, bringing in color where mostly white and gold were used. Fineries had been hung from the walls, creating tapestries of old artists that had been maintained by the newer generations. However, the sun from the doorway and the large windows along the walls had bleached them, removing any color they may have once had. Statues draped in armor seemed to guard the base and top of the stairs, their golden metal reflecting the ivory steps and rails they sat next to. As the soldiers and alicorns made their way up, the giants hesitated for a moment. "It's okay!" Celestia called out to them with an encouraging tone. "It's been designed to withstand multiple minotaurs!" Twilight hesitated and leaned toward the princess. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I think they might be too heavy to--" She was interrupted by a loud crack and sighed. "Of course." The giant with the gaping maw pulled his foot out of the hole made in the steps and looked back to Killigan, shaking his head and shrugging. The ponies watched them as they walked around, looking for a solution. "I think we need to lift them up here," Twilight mused. "That won't work," Fluttershy said. "They're immune to magic." Twilight looked at her friend, her face paled. "They're what?" Celestia chuckled. "They aren't immune. They're just...very resistant. I believe it's their armor." The alicorns and nearby unicorns shivered suddenly, perplexing them, prompting everypony to look over the guard rails. "What are they doing?" Twilight wondered. They watched as the three started discussing something they couldn't hear, but magic was definitely pooling around their bodies. This event culminated when a small portal formed in front of them and opened up next to the alicorns and Fluttershy. The three walked through and let their spell collapse, but they were visibly breathing heavily despite wearing armor that was hiding their bodies. "...They know magic, too?" Twilight said monotonously. "Great..." Just A Blink Away (+ book news)Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.
The Blue FingsFluttershy looked down at her green bowl made of dented metal with rusted spots here and there. She grumbled, splashed some errant stream of water onto its interior, and shoved it back into her voluminous pack. The heavy rains of the past few days had caused water to cascade off the ruins the Forty-Second Equestrian Pegasus Attack Company had taken shelter in. The angry splashing of water on the stone, twisted metal, and rotted wood irritated Fluttershy greatly as she gazed at the plants being showered by the flood of water going through the many holes of the makeshift 'shelter'. Of course, it helped the survivors of the recent battle with resupplying themselves in water, and the mare could smell the stench of burning wood as water was boiled in large cauldrons then poured into containers for later consumption. The ground was damp and slippery from all the moss that had taken over whatever this large building used to be for, but Fluttersy didn't care about that. She listened to her comrades laughing with each other as they shared stories from back home. Mare and stallion talking about their significant others, escapades with their children, how they used to hate life on the farm but now missed it, or even some that displayed excitement for the war." The pale-yellow pegasus grunted and clutched her right foreleg and instinctively pulled her right hindleg toward herself. She still bore the scars of war from one of Sombra's artificial creatures stabbing her with creatures. She had almost lost her life if her friend Rainbow Dash hadn't intervened. Every step was taxing thanks to the constant pain she suffered through, but Fluttershy pushed through regardless. She didn't really have a choice, did she? "Fluttershy!" captain Saltlick called out. "Want to sit by us this time?" The white pegasus presented an array of fried wheat porridge and fruits sitting over a makeshift grill heating up from the fire beneath it. "I can assure you that you'll love it." The mare looked down at the food, feeling the smell affecting her tired nostrils and shook her head. "No. That's okay. Thank you." The stallion raised a hoof briefly in disappointed acceptance before poking at the food with a stick again. "Suit yourself." "Told you she'd never eat with us," one of the privates said. "She never does." "Think we'll get a rotation now? We've been at this for five days now," another soldier commented. Saltlick furrowed his brow as he flipped an apple slice. "Got no word from headquarters about that yet, but I could do with a break. Maybe find a marefriend to cuddle with," he mused. The first soldier cackled. "You're still young, captain. No need to set down roots yet." The white pegasus chuckled. "I think twenty-two is pretty old in field soldier years." Fluttershy heaved a tired sigh and moved to one of the collapsed walls, letting her body be taken over by the cold winds coming from the storm outside. As she rested, several mice popped out of their burrow at the base of the wall's remnants to investigate the world around them. The pegasus felt her heart warm up almost instantly at the sight of them and smiled. "Oh, hello there, Mr. Mouse!" Fluttershy said calmly. "What are you doing out so late at night? You might catch a cold, you know." The mouse's nose twitched as it looked up and squeaked in fear, pushing its family back into their burrow. "W-wait, please! I won't do anything to you or your family! I'm just concerned!" It was too late, however. They were already gone, leaving the pale-yellow pegasus alone again. She gritted her teeth, holding back tears as her comrades remained silent on the whole event, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Looking down at a puddle, Fluttershy could see several patches of her pink mane shortened and missing, sections scarred over from past battles, leaving naught but a patchwork of rose hair. Her face was likewise disfigured, with a portion of her right muzzle chipped off around the nostril, a few striped scars leading down her throat, and a fake eye made of red gems, giving her a six-pointed star pupil that helped her see thanks to the magic it had been enchanted with. She was more than grateful to receive such a gift, but her disfigurement meant that most animals instinctively saw her as ' unnatural' and fled. She missed Angel. The hours went by and the storm finally settled while the others fell asleep, taking turns to guard their supplies and fellows. Fluttershy looked up at the cloudy sky unmarred by the industrialization of Equestria, showing off the vast recesses of space and the sea of light it held. The mare imagined herself soaring through this sea, unbothered by all the problems and bloodshed of life, surrounded by cosmic animals of fantastical origins. So many colors. As she opened her eyes, she bore witness to a shooting star flying near the moon, per her perspective, and an idea came to mind. Just a bit of fun to relieve tension. "I wish that this war would end. That everypony could go home!" she whispered loudly to herself. "I...I just need somepony to make it stop. Help make it stop..." She looked over her shoulder to see several ponies sleeping soundly amidst the rubble and debris in their sleeping bags. Several were kicking and mumbling to themselves as their fears of the next day grasped their souls. Fluttershy grabbed her bag and pulled out her own sleeping bag. It was about time she went to sleep too. There was a long day ahead of them. "Lieutenant Fluttershy, we're closing in on the field of battle." "Deliver the replacement radio equipment to the field commanders," the pale-yellow pegasus ordered. The pegasi looked over the destroyed farmlands below, replaced by mud and craters as ponies used rifles attached to their shoulders and pulled the triggers using an array of wires attached to one hoof. Cannons yelled loudly as their charges were sent through their mouths to cursed the blocky beasts of crystal and flash that wandered through the fields, supported by their own fake ponies of black magic and crystal using their own gunpowder weaponry that seemed to blow up in their faces more often than not. "There's some giants over there," one of the pegasi pointed out. Fluttershy shook her head. "No time for them. The hunters can take them out. Where is the artillery?" "But m'am, we--" Fluttershy gave a sharp stare at her soldier who immediately shut up. "We were given partial freedom to make decisions here so long as they were tactical, then to join up with the group here and receive proper orders." The mare grumbled. "We're already delivering new communications equipment to them. Might as well deliver a clear sky, too." One of the pegasi was looking around with binoculars, catching glimpses of air battles nearby and flanking enemies. He growled when he reached for his radio, realizing the soldiers on the ground had yet to get everything set up. The giants below were towering masses of disgusting material of varying shapes and sizes. Made from blackened meat and corrupted crystals, these lumbering masses acted as the shock troops and siege equipment of Sombra's military, and he had tons to spare. Fluttershy wished he had just lost whatever means he had to produce them. "Down there, behind the white cliffs!" the scout shouted. The soldiers looked to white clay, unmarred by battle, and bore witness to multiple flashes behind them. A few dozen ponies were torn apart when the shells impacted the ground, frustrating Fluttershy's platoon. "Let's deliver a strongly worded complaint to the mailmares," Fluttershy said maliciously. "I agree," one of her soldiers stated. "They've been quite rude with sending in damaged packages to us. I think it's time to look elsewhere, so let's send them back their parcels!" The platoon of twenty-three pulled out multiple ovals from closed, brown pouches of false leather around their chest and flanks and clanked them together. They cheered quietly as they dropped the steaming and whistling items on top of the immense cannons pointed upward and watched as their delivery ripped apart flesh and melted metal. Several of them hit large piles of cylindrical items and set off the gunpowder barrels near them, causing gargantuan explosions that made a fire so powerful that the black smoke reached high into the sunny sky. "Prepare for interception by enemy air f--" Fluttershy started. "Two enemy platoons incoming. I count a little over sixty troops!" the scout interjected. "We can't fight that many!" Fluttershy realized. "Fly as fast as you can back to our lines! We'll get support from the soldiers in the back lines. That should make things easier." She cursed under her breath. "Those radios would be helpful right about now!" With minutes to spare, the ponies pushed their bodies as hard as possible, dodging errant shrapnel and dirt from explosions, doing their best to survive to the line. The enemy pegasi approached closer and closer, spear and sword in hoof, when everypony was deafened and pulled away in the air. So fierce was the sudden shift in wind that the air was pulled out of Fluttershy's lungs and all sound stopped. Hovering in the air with her soldiers, Fluttershy eventually recovered her wits and realized she only had about thirteen soldiers left, and the enemy pegasi had been shrunk to around twenty, but something else was odd. Why had the gunfire and artillery ceased suddenly? Everyone was staring to Fluttershy's left, following a trail of black smoke. There was a massive, glowing crater a few kilometers from the central battlefield. Whoever was at the impact site was likely gone. The lieutenant felt her heart tightening and her blood starting to freeze over. The firefight restarted almost instantly where the glowing, smoking crater was, and Fluttershy felt like everything was going to go back to the horrible 'normal' she was used to, but several glints blinded her from above and the mare bore witness to falling stars numbering in the dozens. "What have I done?!" the mare gasped in horror. She was able to catch some sort of metallic abomination as it flew in front of her. Hanging off its hull were four, huge, blue, humanoid creatures that passed by in a blur, and if she didn't know any better, the mare would have assumed they were having the time of their lives. Their hooting and hollering only reached Fluttershy's ears when the craft was far away, crashing near the other crater. The ponies watched silently as one managed to land mostly 'intact' behind Sombra's lines, tearing away defenses and the few still intact trees, revealing a misshapen mass of scrap metal with no rhyme or reason to its shape and design, its rear belching out thick, black smog. Fluttershy narrowed her eyes, realizing that the hull of this ramshackle mess was covered in more of the blue things she caught a brief glimpse of that were now ripping off parts of their craft and throwing them at the soldiers beneath them. The pegasus overheard the soldiers below cheering as their enemy was assailed by this new one from the sky. Several thought the princesses managed to negotiate aid from neighboring countries and fellow ponies, but who ever heard of or even seen these things? "We've got reinforcements! They're taking out Sombra's troops!" one of Fluttershy's surviving soldiers declared. She grabbed Fluttershy's shoulders and shook her in joy. "The stalemate is ending!" Why, then, did Fluttershy only feel worse? She looked into the distance and saw that weapons from both sides were firing at the glowing crater. What did that mean? She got her answer in the form of two more of those immense vessels floating above the battlefield near Fluttershy's locations, their sizes dwarfing that of battleships, and their bellies roaring as loudly as possible as flames stabilized it and burnt the ground beneath, cooking the mud. Unfortunately, the second one crashed into the first, impaling itself and causing the two to smash into the ground, the impact mostly absorbed by the mud. "By the sun..." Fluttershy gasped. Massive bodies of blue poured out of the flaming wrecks and flooded over the defenders of both sides, overwhelming the still cheering ponies before their officers broke them out of their stupor to start attacking these new invaders. "What have I done?!" Fluttershy thought to herself. Author's Note ~~You'll find the link to~~ ~~Lux Locus: The First Awakening here~~~~.~~ New cover art is being made and the book is getting looked over a third time. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.
Armored GiantsWhile the ponies couldn't understand what was being said by the blue giants, they could at least understand the excited tones the creatures had, and now that they were closer, Fluttershy could make out their appearances. These immense behemoths sported deep blue skin and large overbites with long and crooked lower teeth growing from their lower jaws. Their bodies were rippling with muscle and absurd strength judging by one picking up a pony-sized boulder to chuck it at one of Sombra's monsters with very little effort. Weirder still was the lack of conformity with these creatures: They all sported different types of clothing of various colors and states of wear as they rested underneath rusted and bent armor. Those closest to the survivors of the impact pulled out rusty mallets, bulky clubs, or spikey maces, and while these earth ponies and unicorns were beaten down by the brief confusion, Fluttershy and the remnants of her platoon watched as the creatures were gunned down by their rifles, artillery, and magic spells, but not without considerable effort. "I...I thought they were going to break from that..." one of Fluttershy's soldiers said with a trembling voice. Fluttershy watched as one of the visitors found his head taken by a cannonball and its comrade next to it pointing and laughing hysterically before having its head hollowed out by a piercing spell. "They think this is funny..." Fluttershy gasped in disgust. She looked around, seeing the miles of trenches and craters, and grimaced. "If we can keep to the trenches, they'll get sandwiched between us and Sombra's forces." She turned to her remaining soldiers. "Ready lances and dive on my signal! We're doing hit-and-run tactics." The ponies pulled out foldable lances hidden along their spines and unfolded them, their points sharp and hungry for carnage. Without a moment of hesitation, the pegasi flew higher before plunging, building up as much speed as they could and heading toward the massive brutes headbutting the fortifications along the many large hills dotted about the area. With screams of rage and dying breaths, the blue creatures were injured and fell backward, but Fluttershy realized their lances weren't dealing killing blows. The skin or muscles of these beasts were far denser and tougher than she initially expected. She continued undeterred with her platoon, joined by others that took to the skies from the backlines whether they were injured or not. The lieutenant saw one of Sombra's bulky monsters using its four arms to stallionhandle one of the blue monsters when others seemingly came to its aid, only to join together and push the abomination away. She was horrified when a far larger and bulkier blue creature carrying a massive warhammer pulled away and tossed one of its kin over its shoulder to headbutt the abomination in its deformed approximation of a face. It did it over and over again to the cheers of the smaller things before being grabbed by the throat. She didn't follow further as she had done at one of the creatures climbing its kin to jump over fortifications and barbed wire, only for Fluttershy's lance to go through both sides of its neck. "Lieutenant, watch out!" Fluttershy's concentration was interrupted when one of her platoon soldiers was shot down by a flashing ball. One of the blue creatures was holding an assortment of cylinders that only vaguely resembled a rifle and pointed it at her. What was the rectangle sticking out of the side for? She screamed in terror when the weapon started to fire off its payload, nearly missing her several times. "They can fire in quick succession?!" It was joined by the others throwing sticks and rocks at the defenders, often missing completely and hitting their own, only for it all to explode, something Sombra's forces suffered through as well. "Lieutenant Fluttershy?" a garbled voice spoke to the mare in her ear. "Oh, thank the Sun. The radio works again," Fluttershy said with a sigh of relief. "Yes?" "Pull back! They're doing something to those carcasses that fell from the sky!" There was barely anything left of the vessels that crashed down into the center of the battlefield. Instead, Fluttershy bore witness to multiple vehicles sporting metallic wheels or a weird system of interlinked metal plates she had never seen before. The lot of them were as mismatched as the vessels themselves, often sporting a cannon or so on them. A few were surrounded with hastily-soldered plates of metal while others seemed to revel at the feel of the wind across their bald heads when the vehicles all roared to life. A few exploded, leaving behind blue creatures left blackened and charred but laughing heartily at the outcome of their 'project' only to quickly get back to rebuilding somehow. It was as quick as their intervention. It had only been two hours since this third party had arrived, but they already created working war machines while under a constant barrage of bullets and artillery. "We need to fall back and regroup!" Fluttershy shouted. "I don't know what these things are, but they're loving this and actively attacking both sides with no regard to whom it is their targeting." "But we can't pull back now!" the soldier on the other side said. "We almost--" "We have no choice! It's either that or we all die and these things invade Equestria! Relay that to the lieutenant-colonel and his aides!" "Yes m'am!" Fluttershy readjusted her communications piece and spoke to her platoon. "Any surviving ponies of my platoon, pull back immediately. We're retreating! Watch the ground and drop whatever you have left as explosives on the heads of these blue things." After several minutes of diving and dodging the bullets fired by these creatures' weapons, the rectangle constantly hitting them in the stomach while they did so, Fluttershy finally received a response. "Lieutenant," the radio operator started. "The heads agreed. It's a general retreat on all fronts. These blue things have appeared everywhere. We're to pull back to the border of the Crystal Empire and Griffonia." Fluttershy gawked. "That far back?! Fine!" Most of the equipment and supplies meant to reinforce the frontline and replace damaged equipment had been placed there, so did that mean everything was going to be used actively in this war? The mare grit her teeth, her bones rattling to the sound of repeated explosions followed by smaller ones crawling along the ground and destroying blue monster and pony alike. She paled at the source: Flying craft belching flames behind them as the blue things stayed on its hull and actively caught and resoldered plates of metal falling off of it. As the bulky metal beast flew past Fluttershy, one of the invaders made a grab for her and grumbled loudly when it missed, much to the amusement of the pilot. Three more of those things flew toward Fluttershy but made a u-turn, and unleashed a wave of screaming rockets at one battle site further away, peppering both the Equestrians' and Sombrian's positions in explosives, sending mud and viscera everywhere. Artillery in the backlines began a rain of fire that kept the monsters at bay as soldiers retreated, but not without firing a round or two. Unicorns did their best to put up barriers, but the angry vehicles were coming, digging through the mud like it was nothing, and then they got close. It was the worst thing Fluttershy had ever experienced so far. Hundreds of bullets going everywhere all at once like a dozen canister shells had been fired. Massive explosions coming from cannons as big as she was. A bunch of smaller explosions doing the same from smaller cannons. One pony that was caught in the mud had been grabbed and crushed against the cannon breech when it fired, horrifying Fluttershy. Soldiers sat, exhausted, at the armored line in the Crystal Empire running along its whole border. It had taken them years to get so far in the war. They were just a few days of walking to reach the capital. They lost all that progress in mere days. Thousands dead. Millions injured. All for nothing. It was insulting bright and sunny, too, and Fluttershy was blinded by the sunlight above. She and the remnants of her platoon were hiding away in a bunker, listening quietly to the radio as the ground troops readied their rifles and brand new 'machine guns' inspired by the creatures' weaponry, although it was allegedly already in development. "We've been stuck here for a month, chasing those things off," one ground troop muttered to herself. She checked the trigger of her rifle and set it back into place. "All we do is sit here and chase them off when they approach. How much longer are we going to stay here?" "They've just been using everything we left behind and using it against us." "Or blowing up." Fluttershy peered through the thin slit in the concrete building, grimacing to herself. "They're here again." The soldiers scampered to their hooves and one rushed to a table with a radio on it and frantically pulled down several maps of the area, relaying the information to the other bunkers and defensive lines. Once again, the air was filled with the sounds of bullets flying and explosives hurtling through the air while the blue monsters came in with their ramshackle weaponry. One of the flying machines was overloaded with the monsters and spun around when it got in place, chasing off and throwing its passengers everywhere onto their dead kin below in the muddy trenches. "We can't keep doing this..." the mare from earlier whined. "I'm so tired!" Another looked at the three clips in his bandolier. "And we're running out of ammo." Fluttershy picked up a rifle from the wall and sat beside the soldiers. "Nothing we can do now but keep fighting until they tired out." She groaned and dragged a ragged hoof across her face. "I wish I was back in my cottage..." She tensed up when she realized what had just come out of her mouth. The other soldiers stared at her, their faces starting to look just as weary and fatigued as her own. It was too late now. The blue monsters attacked just as the clouds started to roll in on their own, unfettered by the will of the pegasi too embroiled in battle and industry to control the weather. The fighting continued like this for several more days until the ponies ran out of ammo and looked at their opponent in horror as they all adopted a rictus when they realized what had happened. "Swords and spears to hooves!" Fluttershy and several other voices ordered loudly. "We can still funnel them into the bunker entrances!" A familiar sensation crept along her spine and the loud, guttural cries of the blue beasts broke her from her panic as they all pointed in excitement at something coming from the sky. Several let go of the ponies they were about to kill to rush over to whatever it was instead. Two of their ramshackle craft flew overhead and started to open fire on whatever was coming, only for one to receive multiple massive shells in its body that ripped it apart in the sky. The other was pierced by a long vessel made of rings that were dented and folded in various areas, having caught the shells of its would-be destroyer. Flashing lights could be seen far above, through the empty spots between the clouds, showing that these blue things were still somewhere in the sky of Fluttershy's world and attacking whatever these newcomers were. "Don't be tricked like last time," Fluttershy said apprehensively. "No need to worry, lieutenant," a mare whispered. "We learned that the hard way." They watched as the makeshift ballista bolt spun around and landed on the ground with a violent thud. It slid across the ground, kicking up dirt and debris and crushing several of the monsters before finally coming to a halt. Several craft flew overhead, going elsewhere Fluttershy couldn't see. She couldn't figure out how they were flying as she didn't see the black fumes coming from anywhere, only a very loud humming that seemed to change in pitch as the oddly 'spherical' craft flew away. "From the ship!" a soldier pointed out. Several tall creatures covered in segmented armor protecting loose clothing beneath emerged from the rear of the craft followed by two, gigantic, bipedal machines topped with what Fluttershy could only describe as a weapons platform. They quickly unfurled themselves and let loose dozens of rockets, ripping apart the monsters as they stomped forward, ignoring every explosive they stepped on, their bulk, rectangular forms unbothered by everything around them. The tinier entities immediately used whatever was around them as cover, much to Fluttershy's surprise, and started opening fire on the blue monsters. Three of them brought forth a glowing, blue machine that looked like several small rifle barrels floating in a blue cloud. A third brought a glowing blue pack and attached it to the machine, interconnecting the barrels and showering the monsters with a fire rate that burnt and consumed their flesh. As this new battle raged on, several of the larger creatures used their kin as living shields and got into range to use their melee weaponry. Two of them had their torsos disintegrate instantly without so much as a pop. Another was blown apart with a single punch. Three bipedal figures had emerged from another section of the craft, these ones seemingly as big or slightly bigger than the blue monsters. They were clad head-to-toe in metal, as though they were statues made from a single block of steel. However, all their joints glowed a pale blue and created a checkerboard pattern with every movement. Two of them holding rifles seemed to have their weapons connected to their thighs by a blue stream of light holding bullets the pegasus couldn't recognize. They were colored in bright, flash shades as their lower left and upper right sections were candy red while the other two were deep sea blue. The trim around their neck protection, shoulders, and knees were a golden hue, but only one seemed to have an orange trim on their left shoulder and wrist. Finally, the one at their front was wearing sun-bleached armor and a pure black helmet. Fluttershy couldn't make out the precise details of said helmet, but she could make out the hands of this monster that were thrice the size of the others' hands' and crackling with brown energy that seemed oddly...pale. "Now what?!" Fluttershy moaned. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.
Fearlessness"What is this now?!" one of the soldiers complained. "What, there's more? I thought they might be allies but the blue things are just attacking the newcomers too!" Fluttershy took a broken pair of binoculars and looked through the intact tube to get a better view of the newcomers. "The ones wearing uniforms of some kind look a bit like minotaurs and apes mixed together, but much smaller." The soldiers in the bunker muttered to themselves. "The big ones..." Fluttershy shivered. Whatever they were wearing was mostly devoid of any finer details save an occasional spot of blue light glowing around the joints that expanded, contracted, and twisted with every minute movement the armored giants made. Their helmets also seemed fairly impractical. One of the red-and-blue bipeds had two separate 'eyes' and the equivalent of a gaping, toothy maw right beneath it. The pegasus wiped her eyes and, for a brief moment, realized that the armor was seemingly enchanted to have that appearance and had a solid, rounded plate under the 'eyes'. The other one was far stranger: It had nothing at all. Just one solid mass of metal. How was it able to see? But, the longer the mare looked at the featureless helmet, the more unnerved she became, like some kind of eldritch horror was slowly breaking through reality and that helmet was the anchor point. She felt like whatever it was wanted to grab only Fluttershy and drag her into some twisted abyss she had no envy to experience. It was like she was stuck staring at it, only to be freed from her stupor by a loud bang. Some of the blue creatures were throwing discs onto the ground and jumping on them using their armor-plated back, just for said disc to explode as loudly as something that size possibly could and be sent careening through the air. They were hooting and hollering with jubilation as they did so, although Fluttershy recognized cursing when she heard it when they would miss the flying craft of the newcomers. Going back to the newcomers, the armored giant deck in sun-bleached gold's helmet was more standard for her, although it seemed to carry a lot of tiny antennas that hung from the back. It sported a single, long visor that was also black but reflected sunlight, but with no other traits around. It watched with its fellows as the blue creatures ran toward their craft and the smaller creatures shot at them with everything they had, unbothered by the fanatic approach and howling. The gigantic machines unfurled two cannons from their center and ignored the charging monsters, focusing instead on the machines on approach kicking up dust and debris as they let loose bullets and shells haphazardly in every direction. One of the bipedal machines was struck directly, producing light and fire and caused it to stumble back slightly, but a flickering blue wall seemed to have absorbed most of the impact. "What is even happening?" one of the ponies gasped. With a loud 'bang', the two fired in sync at the enemy vehicles in rapid succession. Fluttershy started counting the seconds between shots. "One, two, thr--" Bang. "One, two, thr--" Bang. It could take the ponies fifteen seconds at best to reload their own cannons, and they couldn't even sustain such a fire rate. The ponies watched as the armored giant with a gaping, toothy maw leapt over the defenders, kicking one of the giants in its face, dislodging teeth and sending it flying. It aimed its rifle and fire without pause, a low humming coming from its weapon. It took out four of the blue creatures in a flash, and its own blue 'sphere' appeared around it whenever the monsters shot at it with bullet or explosive. One of the creatures flanked it from its right and raised a mighty club in the air, only to see its face ripped apart when the monster's opponent pulled one of the bullets from the blue stream linking to the top of the rifle, planted it in the monster's face, and slashed across. The other with the giant hands kept punching and ripping apart every enemy that it encountered, showing a deft skill in melee combat that Fluttershy wished she possessed in the past. She would have been able to help her fellows had she--Another explosion. The smaller creatures didn't react at all, but the ponies around that were outside started fleeing. "What is with these things?" Fluttershy gasped. "It's like they were born in war." "We need to relay this back to the princesses in Canterlot," a sergeant relayed. The radio operator nodded and started relaying the information, but the observers paled when the golden giant watched its opponents run, but a hand to its head, then turn and stare at the ponies directly. It gestured for the faceless one to follow it as it stomped toward Fluttershy's bunker, causing her to curse in response. "Grab your rifles and watch the entrance!" the sergeant ordered. She pointed at the radio operator. "You stay there and keep relaying the info. This is of vital importance." She failed to hide her worry, causing her face to wrinkle. "Equestria...no, our whole world might be doomed, and I don't want that to happen, so everypony needs to know what's been happening." The ponies complied and rushed through the twisting and turning corridors, waiting in the corners and aiming through the viewports in the thick walls at the armored door locked into place with multiple very heavy locks, beams, and levers. "They're not going to manage to get through that, are they?" one pony whispered. "Just shut up and focus. Stop making us stress out more than we already are!" another chastised. Every moment of waiting tested the ponies' wits, the silence being worse than the loud explosions and sounds of active combat. They could hear each other's breathing and the sounds of their weaponry shifting as they moved about wearily. Then came the multiple thuds. They were quiet. Muffled, at first. Then, gradually and unmistakably, grew louder and closer. Fur became drenched in cold sweat and hearts pounded loudly as the steps stopped just shy of the door. They all flinched when a few light knocks hit the outside of the door, and several of the ponies felt like they were on the verge of collapsing. They screamed when both sides of the wall encompassing the door were broken through, and familiar, giant golden fingers reached in, grabbed the door, and squeezed the metal before ripping the whole thing off its hinges and pulling it away with rebar, cement blocks, and broken pressure pipes meant to hold everything in place. wIth a casual toss, it threw the door behind it, creating a space that was quickly filled in by the other metal titan aiming its strange, bulky rifle at the ponies. "Fire!" the seargeant yelled. The ponies complied and pulled the triggers. Loud bangs followed by the clicking and whirring of bolts moving into place filled the area. When they ran out, they would use their teeth to pull out clips from a banolier around their neck, ppull the rifle down diagonally, insert the clip, then lock everything back into place and repeat the action. After several seconds of firing and replacing the atmosphere with smoke, the equines were horrified to see that the giants were unharmed and unbothered. Several of the ponies screamed, with a couple fainting when the giants stepped in. Fluttershy stood firmlyu as they approached and ignored the swords and spears clanging and breaking against their armor. Tall as they are, they needed to duck to walk in the bunker. The golden giant casually pushed Fluttershy back, its hand somehow as big as her whole body. When they came upon the radio operator, said pony froze in fear. "Leave him alone!" Fluttershy shouted. She picked up a spare spear from the wall and placed it in a locking strap around her right shoulder to point at the giants. "Get out of here!" The other titan stepped forward, its helmet scraping against the ceiling and ripping out concrete, and deftly ripped the spear in half while the pony still held it. It stared at her silently, dropping the spear hand that had been crumpled like it was made of aluminum foil. The pegasus could only stare in disbelief at the ease with which they crumpled the metal of the spear, as if ripping a metal door designed to hold back even Sombra's monstrous beasts wasn't enough. The giants seemed to communicate with each other, although the ponies couldn't hear them. Fluttershy braced for them to kill her, clenching her teeth, muscles, and eyes. However, when nothing happened, she hesitantly cracked an eye open, only to realize the giants had left without hurting anypony. The sergeant rushed to Fluttershy, her red fur standing from the fear and stress. "Lieutenant Fluttershy?" Said pony put a hoof to her chest, barely able to move from the terror gripping her. "Y-yes?" "They didn't hurt you?" "No..." The sergeant became filled with concern and looked toward the slit in the bunker wall. "Maybe these ones are different from the blue monsters." Fluttershy gulped and breathed heavily. "What if we make allies with them and they stab us in the back afterward? The kirin of the western mountains did that to us before." The sergeant scratched her head and shrugged. "These things come from outside our world. They might not have the same moral concepts as we do, and unlike the blue things, they don't seem intent on attacking us or destroying everything haphazardly because they think it's funny." The lieutenant mulled it over. "Then we need to find a way to establish contact and try to learn what we can from them while it's possible." Fluttershy grit her teeth. "We can't afford anymore surprises against these po-...creatures." "It's Princess Celestia!" a pony outside shouted. Fluttershy and the sergeant cursed under their breath and rushed outside after the giants despite the other soldiers' protests and hid behind the wall, preferring it to the obvious opening in front of the fortification. She was accompanied by several armored carriages being pulled by heavily armored pegasi and landed just shy of the huge vessel the new creatures came out of. As the vehicles touched down, their occupants rolled out and pointed their rifles at the new invaders, opening fire. The carriages continued forward, crashing into the remaining blue giants and trampling over them. Several of the larger ones caught them and the ponies, flipping them over. Fluttershy and the sergeant watched as the smaller invaders hid behind sandbags and thin, metal plates planted in the ground, doing their best to avoid getting shot. The few unicorns that had accompanied Celestia were bombarding them with explosive spell and beam from every angle they could cast in. Celestia, garbed in golden armor bedazzled with purple gems glared furiously at the fortified position near her bunkers. "We've suffered enough at the hooves of Sombra's monsters. I don't need to see more of my ponies trampled upon by third parties!" she howled. "Leave Equestria, now!" "They don't understand her!" the sergeant whispered to Fluttershy. "Should we step i--" The yellow pegasus put a hoof to the sergeant's mouth. "If go in we'll get caught in the collateral damage. I don't want to be struck by Celestia when she uses a spell more complex than a ball of energy or a beam of light." Her fellow agreed reluctantly and rubbed her muzzle. However, as they argued, the faceless giant watched silently, ignoring the bullets ricocheting off its armor. A blue light shone whenever a spell was directed at it, absorbing the hit and doing naught much else, but when Celestia stepped forth and started to summon storm clouds under the fire of the bipedal machines, it leapt forth. It grabbed what Fluttershy assumed was asword handle with no blade. Under her eyes she saw pieces of metal fly up from the hilt and interlock under a blue light, creating a blade that left a wisp of blue energy behind it. Two bodyguards of Celestia's, covered in very thick and heavy plate armor, charged at the giant with their own weapons, but seeing its faceless helmet caused their strength to weaken, causing them to falter when one jumped on the other to create a two-leveled sword swing. Despite its size, the giant jumped to the side, avoiding the swipes. In that split moment, it kicked the lower pony away, caving in its chest armor and open-palm struck the higher one, crushing its helmet and likely breaking its muzzle in the process as they flew past the princess. With her guards being suppressed by the other bipeds despite the magic shields being put up to help block their rapid-firing weapons. A third bodygfuard came in from the side and found its weapon and helmet being chopped apart with one downward, diagonal swing? Celestia gasped in horror at the sight as red came from the wound inflicted and let her magic go wild. "No more deaths for my little ponies! This day you will die instead!" Her whole body shimmered with a bright light, cooking the ground around them and causing the ponies and bipeds to flee and cover their eyes. The alicorn let loose waves of boiling-hot flame, burning away the land and striking the giant, b ut the same, shimmer blue bubble appeared to take the brunt of the attack as it closed in. Fluttershy flew to the sky to focus the light of the sun above already focused by the storm clouds the alicorn created to focus light through the atmospheric disturbance and let loose a carriage-sized beam of searing light that melted away all the stones and errant bits of metal it came across. Fluttershy and the sergeant could only watch this display of terrifying magic while the other two giants watched behind the smaller bipeds. The faceless one grabbed a rock as big as a pony's head while running from the beam and chucked it at Celestia with speed that would make a baseball player pale. The alicorn narrowly dodged the attack and would have continued focusing on her spell if a second rock hadn't struck her horn, hurting her tremendously and disrupting the flow of magic. With a loud pop and bright flash of light, the mare fell down, smoking from the aftershocks of her disrupted spell and injury. Trapped on the ground, she glared up at the faceless giant. "I won't let myself be struck down by some faceless invader just because you disrupted a small spell," she bluffed. The mare jumped up, striking the giant's chest with her horn in a shower of sparks as it slid backward across the dusty, fractured soil. Undaunted, the giant rushed forward and swung at Celestia, the alicorn barely blocking with magic in time. Fluttershy knew alicorns were inherently magical in nature and were able to creates small spells without their horns, but seeing Celestia being pushed to such an extreme was shocking. The alicorn continued to use her hooves to strike at the giant, but no matter how much she hit it, the armor wouldn't get damaged, and she was only exhausting heself in the process. "We can't just let her die like that!" Fluttershy said fearfully. "What are we supposed to do, then?!" the sergeant asked her. She spun the lieutenant around and looked her straight in the eyes. "What can we do?" Celestia screamed in pain and fell backward, her leg and chest armor cut and bleeding as the giant struck her and the ponies that broke from their positions to attack it and defend their princess. Fluttershy's eyes widened as she had an epiphany. "Twilight will kill me if I don't help her!" The mare pushed past the sergeant and rushed forward. "Princess Celestia!" She flew past the giants and smaller hominids and made to tackle the giant, knowing that she likely wouldn't survive the outcome, but Celestia had to live. The princesses were all they had left in Equestria. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.
Technological MagicFluttershy bounced harmlessly off the giant like a piece of thrown bread and grumbled when the golden giant seemed to laugh at her while going around. She stood up on wobbly legs and looked in disbelief as the faceless titan was stopped, nodded once, then returned to the craft. Grabbed Celestia with both of its oversized hands and got her back onto her hooves, weak as they may be from the magic blowback. It nodded and followed it compatriot, much to the confusion of everypony watching. As Fluttershy slowly approached the princess, her eyes unable to remove themselves from the new invaders, she sat down next to the stunned alicorn. "I...I don't understand..." Celestia muttered. She removed her helmet showing her face and dropped it onto the cracked ground. "They were trying to kill me. You all." Fluttershy looked up at Celestia, somehow seeing her as paler than usual. "But...these ones are different, somehow." She looked behind them to see the blue things fleeing back toward some large smoke sources in the distance that she couldn't make out the details of. "The golden one ripped off the metal door to our bunker, moved in while ignoring our weapons, and, when they saw our radio operator, just left." The alicorn grimaced, like she was recovering from too much alcohol. "So they don't actively attack us? Have they attacked Sombra's forces?" Even though Celestia spoke calmly and with tact, Fluttershy could still hear some faint hint of hope in the mare's voice. Hope that would have lived a very short amount of time. The pegasus shook her head. "I'm afraid not, your highness." She watched the life fade from Celestia's eyes. "But, they have been focusing on the blue monsters and ignoring us, at least here." Celestia's ears twitched while she looked at the creatures talk with each other. "I was told they appeared everywhere the blue monsters are located as well." She looked at Fluttershy from the corner of her eyes. "A potential shared enemy, I suppose?" "We'll, both did come from the stars." The princess nodded, looked at the battlefield eating away the land and the trees, then looked at Fluttershy carrying a stern expression. For but a moment she hallucinated the meek, sensitive pegasus that was a friend to all animals and stifled her sorrow. "What has become of us that the Elements of Harmony have become so ripped apart?" Celestia lamented. "Princess?" Fluttershy wondered. "You were the kindest of the six. In fact, that encompassed your element." The princess kicked a small pebble on the ground and let her ponies tend to her wounded guards. "I could have prevented this if my sister and I had found Sombra's form hidden in the Blind Chasms north-east of Griffonia, but I was certain the elements had taken care of him..." "I know, princess," Fluttershy said as she pat the mare's leg gently. "I miss my animal friends greatly, but any that I meet now..." She saw a bit of her head reflected in a piece of glass in the ground created by Celestia's prior spells and scowled. "Now they all just run away. It's...heartbreaking." "War has a way of changing ponies, Fluttershy..." The empathetic alicorn quickly turned red with rage when she saw one of the blue things far away dragging several destroyed cannons with a rope and considerable effort. "But now these things come in from nowhere and destroy Equestria even further. My only solace is that more of them are focused on Sombra's front and his artificial creations." She yiped when one of the bipedal machines shot at the puwandese, calculating the trajector and distance with near-perfect precision, leaving a creater where the creature was and blowing apoart the cannon husks. "They're very thorough with how they...kill..." the princess trailed off. "The blue things are worse," Fluttershy said while furrowing her brow. "They destroy everything, rip apart the remains, then put it back together again for their own use. Several stole our two-hundred millimeter mortars and plopped them onto one of their vehicles and fired shells that were far more powerful then what we had for those wapons. They kept cheering after every explosion!" the mare grumbled. They watched as the creatures seemed to be arguing each other and the giants. This went on for several minutes until there were a moment of silence and some of the smaller bipeds hopped over their defenses and corraled the ponies to their immense craft. "What are they doing?" Celestia groaned and she struggled to walk. "I think they're escorting us," Fluttershy explained. She gestured to those keeping their weapons up and looking around for any threats. "But why? They have no reason to care about us." Celestia limped forward, glaring at the faceless giant that did not reciprocate any acknowledgment of her existence. "Unless...They know that I'm an important figure of sorts, perhaps?" Fluttershy scanned Celestia and failed to act surprised. "Yes, your highness. You do stick out." The alicorn grumbled. "Well, I suppose a giant pony wearing golden armor will stick out in a field of normal Equestrians." Getting help from the soldiers in the bunkers and Celestia's escorts, the mare was sat near one of the vessel's feet. Horror quickly replaced the moment of relief she was about to feel. "Where are the carriages?!" Her escorts shook their heads. The alicorn dropped her head in her hooves and took a deep breath, shivering while her lungs filled with the tainted air. "We were supposed to beat those creatures back and reinforce the frontline..." Using her experience, and the kindness she still held within her battered body, Fluttershy patted Celestia on the back. "It'll be alright, princess. You can't blame yourself for every loss in a war, no matter what you think." The alicorn poked a swollen eye out to look at Fluttershy. "Sombra started it, and these creatures came in without warning. There's no way we would have been able to predict any of this." The lieutenant pased a hoof across her scars and clenched her teeth. "We just live as we can and try to survive while expecting the future to get better with our efforts." Many of the ailing ponies turned to see one of the bipeds scratching a pony behind the ear and making her squeal with delight. The scritching slowly halted as it noticed all eyes on it. With a sheepish smile it retracted its hand and slowly backed away, only to get smacked on the back of the head by another and yelled at. It quickly hurried back to the front, tripping over its own feet. Every word seemed to have strong 'R' sounds and 'th' noises that roled with every other word they seemed to make. The golden giant stepped in front of the two ponies and knelt down, its armor being dirtied by mud. "What do you want?" Fluttershy spat. Even kneeling it still stood above Fluttershy but was at Celestia's eye-level when sitting. However, the two followed when it slowly rotated and pointed a giant finger into the distance past the wreckage of ramshackle vehicles and torn carriages, causing the two to pale. The other ponies gasped and mumbled in horror and terror at the sight. Far on the other side of the battlefield were two blue creatures. One was significantly smaller than those they had seen up until now and stood up straight. Its body was surrounded in clean, smooth, masterfully crafted armor with no single color to it, but it covered and protected its body efficiently. In contrast was a mountain among behemoths, and Fluttershy could have sworn it was as big a house and just as wide. It was encased in many, many layers of metal scraps that had been punched into shape, judging by the dents on it, and melted into place. In its right hand was an array of at least a dozen barrels of varying size all connected by just as many belts of some sort leading to a backpack as big as the regular blue monsters she had seen so far. It was laughing at the sight and dragging away a pile of the destroyed vehicless stacked on top of each other with one arm. "How strong do you have to be to do something like that with just one arm?!" Fluttershy gasped. "That thing puts minotaurs to shame..." one of the soldiers stated in shock. The blue creature put a finger in its nose and stuck out its tongue at the group, not that anyone but the pegasi could see it. It patted its shiny fellow with another finger, almost making them fly forward and laughed as it grabbed its loot, disappearing into the dregs of the forest. "What was that all about?" Celestia wondered. The giant with a gaping maw stepped to the golden one and the two seemed to have another discussion which Fluttershy still couldn't hear. The smaller creatures seemed capable of hearing them, however, and Fluttershy didn't understand how. The ponies gathered together around Celestia, with many of the higher ranking ponies organizing everyone into small platoons with what they could find. Despite the morbidness of the task, some groups went out to search the battlefield for dead ponies and equipment that could be recovered. "Never thought regular soldiers would be assigned to work as death harvesters," Fluttershy lamented. Celestia slowly blinked. "I'm sorry, assigned as what?" "Death harvesters? They go on the battlefield after a fight to grab dogtags and equipment," Fluttershy explained. She looked onto the muddy landscape, her eyes seemingly glassing over. "It's...better to recover what we can and reuse it, if not for its practical applications then for its material to be sent back, then to fight with our hooves and no protection." "But...I've seen the amount of equipment being manufactured." Celestia paled. "It's not enough? Even at that level?! All the industrialization Equestria went through just for this war..." She shook her head. "Well, Twilight and Luna warned me. I suppose this is the consequence." "I don't think it matters anymore," Fluttershy said. "Look." The pegasus pointed up to the sky where a few dozen of the orb-like craft and much larger, wider one came in, landing on the battlefield and letting hundreds, if not thousands of the bipeds onto the field. They were accompanied by multiple wheeled vehicles carrying immense, metal containers; and mopre vehicles with the odd, interlocking mechanisms their many wheels used. Unlike the blue monsters', these ones were elegantly and minutely crafted and carried only a single cannon, although the chassis had an odd design, acting like an angled trap meant to bounce every shell into the driver's viewport. Fluttershy and Celestia could not understand such a thing for my reasons. The rotating object housing the cannon even had a rounded by to keep anything from getting trapped beneath. Before they could take in the rest of the equipment the creatures were bringing off their ships and setting up, one of these stepped in front of Celestia. Its body was covered in sealed, loose cloth of dull wine red. Before and after its joints were black rings keeping the cloth in place, and black gloves to protect its hands. Fluttershy, concerned and stressed out, looked at a head also draped in cloth and tightened around the neck, with two large, black lenses reflecting her glare back at her. Around its mouth was a series of vents and tubes, creating an obvious wheeze as they expelled whatever this creature breathed in. Sitting on its chest were an assortment of rectangles and blocks that reflected those Fluttershy could see peering over its back. Perplexed, Celestia remained silent as the entity seemed fixated on her and bounced in surprise when all the equipment on the creature's chest and back started to unfurl, creating multiple glowing screens, antennae, and what she could only surmise as receptacles whatever substance or substances this creature picked up. It started typing very quickly on a keyboard, watching lines slide across one of the screens then pushed it to the side and pulled down a black, flat board covered in interlocking, blue dots. With its left hand it started tracing things in the air, producing odd, twisting symbols Celestia had never seen before. The alicorn watched in amazement as the symbols started growing in number and fusing together until the entity slammed the object into the sound of its keyboard, started typing more as its equipment flowed blue, and a projection of a plain chariot formed in the air. It fiddle with its breathing apparatus and stared straight at Celestia. "Crætwæn." Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.
The Darker SideSombra looked over the map of the Crystal Empire, dusted off from years being in storage. He gripped the table with a hoof, never expecting to need it until after the Equestrian lands were conquered. His sharp teeth grit against each other, producing the occasional spark that died off as fast as it was born. His planning room was overgrown with dark crystals of varying shades, all having black exteriors with colorful cores. It was like a disease overtaking everything in the palace. A giant table sat in the middle, roughly carved from a giant, purple gemstone found some ways outside the empire in the royal gemstone mines. A relic of Sombra's prior dominance of the land, it was left abandoned in the war room due to its sheer size, but the king's return gave everything new purpose. Multiple smaller tables with boxes and sorting cabinets for folders held a plethora of documents concerning the daily needs of Sombra's servants and the empire. The walls were still barren of any art, but with the crystals growing over them, there wasn't much room for such leisure, but they had their own colors to compensate. He looked over several piles of paperwork that his military councilors were helping him with, although there were only two at the moment. The rest were on the front lines. "Only two thousand pony prisoners this time," the king thought to himself. "And thirty-seven losses for my monsters... The war is progressing too slowly." One of the councilors pulled a map out and started measuring it. "Looks like our forces west of Equestria managed to capture several mining pits." She scratched her neck and grimaced. "We're going to have to start building railroads to transport everything that gets mined there to our refineries." Sombra tilted his head as he looked at his councilors, a sense of pride welling up within him. These creatures were made with a dash of pony flesh and fused to a new breed of crystal he had managed to refine during his exile, and each one sported the coloration of any particular crystal they crew from. These two were almost entirely black with a colored outline that displayed their features at certain angles. The mare's was yellow while the stallion's was orange. The stallion scratched at his missing eye while a crackling and rubbing of stones seemed to come from his head. "This damnable wound is getting on my nerves," he complained. "Stop picking at it!" Sombra howled. "Your eye is regenerating. Doing that will delay the effect." The fake pony snorted and went back to sifting through the papers and reports. "I wish you made us with instantaneous regeneration." Sombra cackled. "This isn't a book where anything can be done with the stroke of a quill." He leaned back in his chair. "Your crystals require material and magic to fuel their regeneration, and I won't accept my subjects to be used as food for regeneration, let alone our slaves and prisoners." He sifted through some documents and shook his head. "We'll need them to work the factories and the mines now." The akward silences were interrupted haphazardly by the rustling of paper and folding of cardboard. Despite the darkness in the room thanks to the windows getting covered by the growing crystals, the three equines could see just fine. It also acted as a sort of cloak for any outside spies if they could peer inside. The two fake ponies bounced in terror when the door slammed open, shattering some growths on the wall and revealing an exhausted fellow fake equine. "Your highness!" the pony wheezed. "Bad news! Something happened on the front!" Sombra slammed his hooves onto the table, throwing off quills and weights holding down maps and causing some of the said weights to roll off onto the floor, creating muted thuds. "What? What happened? I had ensured my monsters could handle and disperse the princesses' magic if they showed up!" The fake pony shied away from his lord's fury. "I-it wasn't th-them! It was something else!" The king's sharp teeth ground against each other, producing dark sparks. "What is it, pony?! Speak!" Sombra hollered. The soldier took a deep breath and looked at the stern, heavy gazes of the three high-ranking ponies before him, each able to have him executed immediately. "Some weird things came from the sky and interrupted the battle at the border near a supply core of ours at the border. They started attacking the Equestrians." At first, Sombra was going to have this claim dismissed and have this soldier flogged for incrrectly relaying information, but he and the other two ponies broke into an uproarius laughter. "Did you hear that, my king?" the orange-tinted stallion shouted. "He wanted to give us good news!" "It sure is good!" the mare added. "You have brought me some good news, soldier. I have needed a good laugh in quite a while, now leave. You shan't be flogged for this ridicule," Sombra said with a wave of his hoof. "But your majesty, I aml not lying! It really--" Sombra slammed a hoof onto the table. "There is naught but stars and darkness outside of Equestria. I have gazed at the sea of the night for many a cycle and have found nothing of note." He then pointed at the soldier. "I still feel the mirth you have given me, but contain to push and I will have you executed through repeated flogging." He watched as his fake pony shook in place, his lips pursed. "Has the spell malfunctioned?" Sombra thought to himself. "They shouldn't be having conflicts." Suddenly, a dozen envelopes swollen with reports from multiple battlefields landed on the table, forcing more of the paperwork and office supplies to tumble everywhere. The stallion concilor grabbed two and opened them with his magic. As he and the mare read through both, their eyes cracked the more they went through. Shocking Sombra, the two hurried through the others and started mumbling to each other. Then came a dozen more envelopes apparating from above the table, and a dozen more. "What is happening?!" Sombra panicked. "The Black Fields to the south-west, the Gold Flamingo Islands east of Equestria...the borders connecting us. Even some of our allies on the other continents have reported the same thing," the stallion gasped in horror. The mare dropped the paper and dropped her face into her hooves. "That soldier was right...It's not possible to spread such stupidity across entire continents in so short a time." Sombra stuttered and stammered as he tried to formulate words that wouldn't leave his addled mind. "Then what exactly is happening?! Stars are attacking us and the Equestrians?!" The messenger shrugged. "I do not know, your highness. I was told told to inform you before the reports came in so you wouldn't be overwhelmed." Sombra's eye twitched and his gaze filled with a burning fury that made the soldier wish he was dead, but the strike never came. "Let us wait and see what happens and how our troops react to this newcoming. It will aid us in understand and eventually dealing with whatever these monstrosities are. After about a month of gathering information and putting the factories on overtime as well as pouring his magic and strength into the vats of growing flesh and crystal to make hundreds of new false ponies and forcing the failures into monstrosities he used as shock troops, Sombra ad joined the new frontline that had the arrogance to dig deep into the melting snows of his territory. Worse, still, were the many black crystals rising high into the sky like skyscrapers, their uneven and crooked shapes harnessed by his warlocks as absolute area control artillery. It was something he tried to bring to the frontline to destroy the Equestrians, but without the Crystal Heart, they crumbled like a deck of cards and were forced to be within his lands. He grimaced as he approached the line with his cohort of armored troops and rifleponies, a strange sound beating and whistling in the air around him. Crafted, hexagonal bunkers of dark crystal had been hoofmolded and ground down to a near perfect smoothness as a make-shift defensive structure, and the king could see a few, significantly larger constructs through which the barrel of artillery cannons poked out. Even as he passed them by, the many artillery regiments in the back were actively gathering, distributing, and organizing artillery shells. A few of the bunkers and walls had elevated walls or deeper pits in which a crew of mortar ponies resided. Sombra wasn't a huge fan of this new technology, but he enjoyed the results and vowed to be taught everything it offered in the modern day. He saw runners going up and down the lines, relaying information or delivering supplies of food and ammo to the troops waiting nervously for the upcoming assault. Even the monsters Sombra was so proud of were not bouncing in place, roaring, slavering, and yanking on their chains for freedom. In fact, to his shock, they were free! They were waiting patiently, quietly, and calmly behind the artillery and defenses. "What could cause even my mutated failures to be so apprehensive? They never displayed such thing with the Equestrians," Sombra thought out loud. One of the infantrymen pointed to a field of destroyed buildings, mud, burned trees, and mounds of rotting flesh and rusting metal. "Perhaps that is why, your lordship." As he and the reinforcements got closer to the defenses, the strange mounds in the mud and refuse grew with detail, showing that dozens of his monsters were lying dead. They surrounded themselves with a plethora of giant blue creatures that had been ripped apart, chopped up, melted, chewed on, or any other number of physical actions. "At least they went out fighting." "Your highness!" a soldier realized. "Stay at your posts!" Sombra ordered. "And what is that infernal noise?!" A machine gunner rolled onto her side to look at her king. "It's the blue things. They've been singing and chanting in our old trenches and those buildings over there. We don't know what they're doing." Once more gazing into the distance, sombra could see dozens of smoke stacks, each darker than the last, rising high into the cloudy sky. Sparks grew between the ruins of the village the creatures stayed in, working on whatever weaponry they had in place. The sounds of hammers seemed in sync with their almost orchestral howling echoing off of nothing, making Sombra feel like he was in an orchestral theater. Metal banged and clanked in rhythm to steam escaping pressurized confines and explosions accentuated the voices while material was bent and melted into place. Sombra grimaced at this orchestra of unease, the music bringing discomfort and anxiety to his soldiers and even him. Even the monsters seemed to cower. Enough was enough. "You call yourselves the ponies of my Crystal Empire?!" Sombra shouted. "You exist because I made you, and you will recover from your wounds because I demanded it from your growth! You have nothing to fear, so are you cowards or my shadow crystal ponies?!" The machinegunner gawked at him. "B-but your majesty, they--" "Organize and attack!" Sombra ordered loudly. The ponies that had gathered in the trenches in front of the bunkers and machinegun nests cheered in unison at their king's speech and hopped over the steep walls of dirt reinforced with wood and crystal. The artillery and mortars sounded like drums, crashing into the enemy lines after seconds of waiting, and bringing pride and amusement to Sombra as he saw his gigantic monsters fumble alongside his ponies, but his smile quickly soured, leaving way to an increasing amount of dread when he saw the massive blue things soar out of the ruins and trenches, weapons in hand and raining bullets and explosions everywhere. "They have portable machine guns?!" Sombra gawked in horror. His monsters crashed into the blue lines, sending the creatures flying, and to the king's shock, they immediately got back up, jubilating at the event that transpired and laughing at any lost limbs. "They're...they're crazy..." Loud roars drowned out the sounds combat as monstrous machines running on what Sombra could only perceive as chains with no holes hopped over hill and drifted around walls. The bunker artillery opened fired, hitting several of these ramshackle machines, shattering them apart, but others dodged comfortably, running over soldiers and blowing others apart with their weaponry. One of Sombra's failures open its maw, unleashing a dozen tentacles that caught one of the vehicles and ripped it apart in its fury, but that didn't stop the others from peppering it with lead and gunpowder. "I tried to warn you, your highness," the machinegunner said between volleys. "They're attracted to us more than the Equestrians because of your monsters." Several lasers from the crystal skyscrapers beamed down, razing the ruins of the old village off the map. Two were even used to create a ball of intense gravity that moved slowly along the creatures' line as it sucked them and their crafts up, crushing them into thin plates and growing its field of attraction. Even overhead they weren't safe, as odd craft soared, dropping explosives on the fake ponies and their defensive line while being chased by pegasi and flying beasts. One section managed to get through the blue creatures' lines, only to start fleeing in the other direction, enraging Sombra. Unfortunately, he didn't get to voice his objections to this event when multiple lights shone through the darkness and he was deafened by the loudest boom he had ever heard. Everypony was stunned, including the monsters, but as the hearing returned, the blue things were cheering. Something wider than an appartment complex slowly rolled into view, its wide, heavy body covered by a cannon that Sombra could only describe as the size of a corvette. In his horrified mind he was certain that was a clear exaggeration, but the sheer bulk of this ralshackle abomination stunned him. How did it move? How did it work? How anything? He could see eight separate rows of the thick chains moving underneath it, protected by multiple layers of thick armor. In fact, the armor was so thick and the body s o huge, that it carried a plethora of smaller cannons out of its hull, on its sides, and even had a few turrets hastily slapped together sitting atop it. Worse yet, even though the artillery and bunker weapons were hitting it, it was covered with so many random plates of scrap metal that they would simply flake off on impact, and the blue things hanging off the side, shooting at his monsters and soldiers would jump down, roll on the ground, grab the sheets, then climb up and hammer everything back in place excitedly. It stopped in place while the turret adjusted, but instead of aiming at the frontline, it aimed up. "Brace!" Sombra ordered as he magically covered his eyes and ears. A few of the ponies w eren't able to comply, and the shockwave shattered them in front of their fellows. The cannon's power was so great that it caused a vacuum effect at its barrel mouth, sucking back some of the enormous fire it had created which was expelled almost immediately back out several 'pores' along the metal cylinder. Sombra turned to see one of the crystal skyscrapers collapsing. They were meant to hold off the entirety of Equestrian might! They could shrug off Sombra's most powerful spells! He had designed them that way! "How?!" the king shouted in indignation. "Hoooow?!" The blue creatures continued fighting, unbothered by the event, with many laughing at their fellows getting shot to death and some grabbing their bodies to use as shields and make-shifts clubs. This wasn't a war Sombra wanted. He hated this mockery of something noble and honorable. Author's Note You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here. It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books. Here's the description: Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.
GecwideCelestia and Fluttershy sat on the sidelines with the ponies being tended to by their own medics while the visitors worked on their own fortifications, somehow using the muddy and polluted landscape as building grounds. A few ponies were trying to communicate with the oddly garbed creature showing objects on its image projector and repeating words. It would type something down when the ponies would repeat something just as they were writing things down in soiled notebooks with quills and just the barest amounts of ink left. "This is..." Celestia heaved a long sigh. "Quite frankly, I am unsure how to react to this. It's completely unprecedented. In the span of two months we've had two alien species come to our little world, shattering our perceptions of existence as we know it." Fluttershy giggled. "Twilight would be absolutely ecstatic right now." The alicorn remained silent as did Fluttershy as the akwardness set in. "Heoru," the strange biped said as it pointed to the sword. "Heoru." "Uh..." The ponies shifted in place. "Heethoo..." "Heoru," the biped insisted. "Heahroo..." "He. Oh. Rrrrru," it emphasized. "They have a strangely rhotic language," Celestia noted. "I'm not sure anypony in Equestria or any creature outside has ever spoken with such a language." She rested her head on a hoof and grumbled. "They're so..." "Alien?" Fluttershy suggested with a cheeky grin. Celestia furrowed her brow. "Yes, Fluttershy. You're very funny." She stood up, taking in a deep breath as the pain flowed through her aching body. "I need to return to Canterlot and assure the people I am fine, then I need to convene with the military and wartime council to figure out what we should do going forward." She looked to the bipeds and gulped. "And decide if we can work alongside these creatures." "Princess!" Fluttershy was quick to call out. "I've seen what those blue monsters can do. You'll need somepony that's been on the battlefield and seen everything with her own t..." The mare raised a hoof toward her false eyes and grit her teeth. "With her own eye to convince them." Once again, Celestia felt the pangs of failure when looking at the Element of Kindness so...damaged, to put it gently. "They might just dismiss your claims as you being shell shocked, but..." The alicorn looked at the strange flying craft and the walking automatons stomping everywhere, with new ones sporting enormous arms carrying containers of sizes the likes of which she had never seen before as though they weighed nothing. "But being the Element of Kindness should also sway them favorably." "Sword," one of the three interpreters said as he pointed to the weapon in his hoof. He grew concerned when the biped ceased moving. "Swoooord." "Sood." "No. Sword. Swoooord." The biped tapped away at its keyboard before responding. "Soooord." The ponies heaved a sigh. "That's close," a mare said with a weak smile. They shared their notebooks with the biped that shared its glowing parchments with them, leading to many shared 'ooos' and 'aaas' as they tried to figure out patterns in their languages. "At least they're having fun," Fluttershy said. She paused a moment. "How long does it take to translate languages like that?" the mare wondered. "When there's no documentation and no pony to interpret?" Celestia said. She stretched her wings. "Depending on the complexity, it can take decades. However, we both have interpreters and are actively exchanging words and pronunciations with each other. Might only take a few years." "Should we get going?" Fluttershy asked. Celestia nodded, and with a crackle of the magic in her horn, alerted her guards to join her. "Without our carriages we will have to fly to Canterlot, meaning there will be no points of rest, exchanging who pulls our transport." The alicorn snorted, ignoring the loud noises and whirring the bipeds were creating. "It might take us three days of flying." "Can't you teleport us all there?" Fluttershy asked. The alicorn shook her head. "No. It's a very meticulous process just for one pony, especially for that distance. We'll have to hoof it the old-fashioned way." As Celestia unfurled her wings and her muscles tensed to take off, the golden giant jumped in front of her, holding out his giant hands. The guards moved in but relented when Celestia shook her head. She and the other ponies watched as it reached to its black helmet and tapped it multiple times until the gases holding it in place were finally freed with the lessening of pressure. They were met with astonishment at the sight, finding the creature to be an uncanny resemblance to apes and minotaurs. Its skin was extremely pale, nearly white, and its hair followed a similar pattern with just the faintest hints of yellow. Hair that draped over the neck protection it bore. Its eyes were stern and hardy, and it looked like it had seen its fair share of war that Celestia wished she never had to go through in her life, long as it was. It was a gruff, tired exterior that she was all too familiar with and which somehow surpassed the fatigue her ponies had. It wasn't something natural. The other two giants stepped next to it, and the golden one spoke with a deep, masculine voice as it gestured to all three of them. "Sind Pillar Scieldan." He then pointed to himself with a thumb. "Ic eom Killigan Ghor. Hwa eart þín naman?" While his words left confusion in the minds of the ponies, Celestia was able to discern what he was saying more or less by his physical gestures, so she followed suit and pointed to herself. "Celestia." She looked to her ponies and cringed. "I'm sorry my little ponies, but I need you all to bow to me for them to understand..." She hated using her authority in such a manner and didn't realize the visitors had noticed the slight facial shifting. "Of course, your highness!" the ponies conceded with a bow. Celestia had to use every ounce of willpower to not shake her head and groan in disappointment. She watched the golden giant look around and put his helmet back on before he turned to face his comrades and pointed them to the smaller bipeds. One with strange things on its shoulders rushed to others wearing similar symbols, and they immediately packed up what served as their equipment and went up the ramp at the front of the vehicle. In a few seconds the machine roared to life, belching flames into the ground beneath it without even moving. The faceless biped gestured to Celestia to follow it, but did not insist. She, Fluttershy, and Celestia's personal guards followed toward the central section of the ridged vessel and climbed a ramp into a holding compartment that seemed capable of holding dozens of the smaller bipeds. Seats draped in security harnesses lined the walls, but there was no sign of windows or anything of the sort. "Why are we in here?" Fluttershy asked. She watched as the three bipeds sat in much larger seats and secured themselves in place. "I don't understand why you followed them suddenly." Celestia looked at the golden giant whose helmet made him seem headless in the darkness. "I just have a feeling." "With all due respect, Your Highness, that's not very logical," one of the princess' guards told her. "What if they take us off-world? There's no telling what these creatures might want." A second guard pushed past the first. "And we don't know if you'll be able to stop them with your magic." She looked at the faceless giant. "They were able to handle your power and fight you on equal footing." Celestia furrowed her brow, and her horn sparked briefly. "It wasn't equal footing," she corrected. "They may not have even a fraction of the magical power I possess, but their usage of it is more...surgical." She swallowed her nerves and straightened herself up. "These creatures could have killed all of us whenever they would have wanted, and rather than consider us as collateral when fightiong the blue monsters, they moved aside us and started attacking." She stepped forward, her hooves banging on the metal floor. "We must work with them and see what they'll do next." The golden giant banged his giant hands against the wall to his left once, causing the compartment to reverberate. The ponies were startled when the wall slid back, revealing a single biped draped in thick clothing and wearing a helmet that hid its face. The cockpit, which the ponies had trouble seeing, seemed to hold four seats that were actively being worked on. Fluttershy watched as her princess entered the cockpit with mild difficulty and the door slid closed. The bipeds held themselves in their chairs when the vessel started shaking shortly after, prompting the ponies to jump at the seats and hold on for dear life. They had no way of using these, but they could at least hang onto them. Clenching their teeth and closing their eyes, the equines braced as the vessel took off almost instantaneously, but the extreme gravity they felt seemed to cease almost instantly. Opening their eyes, they noticed that blue lines ran along the floor, seemingly protecting them from the g-forces being exerted by the craft. Better still, they stared in awe as the walls seemed to part in sections, revealing the world outside through windows. One guard tapped it with his hoof then tapped the solid wall next to it and gawked. "It's still the wall. How are they doing that?" "Is this what you pegasi see all the time?" "I mean, not this high, but kinda, yeah." "That's amazing!" "It's too high! We're gonna fall!" Fluttershy looked through a mostly free window and saw the devastation to the landscape the war with Sombra had caused. Barely any forestry left. Mud and burnt land in place of grass and shrubbery. Villages and homes turned to rubble as far as she could see. She could even see the blue monsters' camp far away surrounded by a very subtle wall of metal and stone. "Almost looks like a volcano waiting to erupt," a guard said. Fluttershy furrowed her brows. "Considering they love to fight, I wouldn't be surprised." They were silent for a moment, taking in the scenery, when the guard broke the silence. "It's...how many of our comrades have been left down there, in the mud and trenches? Blown to bits, never to be seen again..." He looked at Fluttershy, his magenta eyes watery. "Do you think we're doing the right thing? Do you think the layers above look down on us with hate or empathy?" Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably. "I try not to think of things like that." She glanced over her shoulder to the metal giants and frowned. "I know one thing: Those things have killed and murdered more things than we'll ever see if Equestria was at war for a century." The guard became perplexed. "How do you know? We've never seen their kind before." "I may not know their expressions, be it physical or vocal, but..." The lieutenant took a deep breath. "I can feel it. A lot of us can...but they push on, and it doesn't seem to be that much of an obstacle to their mental health, unlike us." "Woah!" one of the ponies yelped. The vessel took off at blinding speeds, something that not even the strange magic within could fully nullify. Canterlot started coming into view making what would have taken a little under twenty-eight hours with constant flying rotations in chariots, three days by wing, or a week by hoof, a mere fifteen-minute trip. The ridged craft flew over the castle proper and readjusted itself to land on the royal garden. The many gardeners scattered when the engines started burning away all the carefully tended plants and statues, leaving naught but burnt debris when it finally landed despite the guards' protests. The door to the cockpit slid open, leaving Celestia to saunter out, dazed and unsteady on her hooves. The pilots laughed at the sight before closing the door and shutting off the vehicle. Luckily for the princess, her guards and Celestia managed to catch her just as she fell. "That was...a unique experience..." she said with a dazed smile on her face. Author's Note I'm doing my best with Anglo-Saxon. It's hard to find anything concerning its conjugation and grammatical structure online. Yes. The humans of the Terran Expanse speak anglo-saxon.
Medium-Weight"Theht's meyn, yeh soggy gump!" "Gevh et here! 'N who 'er yeh callin' eh soggy gump, yeh screhp breyn!" "Dey's feytin' 'ere!" "Get the splodeys!" "Woooooo!" Mixyum watched his fellows start pummeling each other and others bringing 'splodeys', as they called it, into the fight, causing loud explosions and flashes of light that were sending everyone and everything in all directions. He grumbled at the sight, distracting him from his meticulous task of wiring and soldering. It was the one moment he felt at peace with himself and his fellows. Even if he was what they called a 'shiny metal 'un' just because he polished and maintained his equipment, didn't meant he didn't enjoy the same eccentricities as them. After all, he was still a puwandese. "I jehst wehnt tae make 'em good, prehpur equipment," Mixyum lamented under his breath. He was almost deafened by raucous laughter and nearly sent flying by a back-slap from the Warboss Big 'Un. "Big 'Un Smashnsplode," he grunted. "Ey'm addin' meyre guns." The big 'un was, as his name implied, so immense that Mixyum was to Smashnsplode what a hume's baby was to an adult. "They're jehst bored!" the titan laughed. "Couldn't feynd any kol-katan. Next best theng!" He scratched his chin and picked at sharp, long teeth jutting from his overbite. "Them's tiny thengs ain't too gun teh feyt. Heydin' behind their heyrd bexes." "Yeh mean benkers?" Mixyup corrected. The titan scoffed. "Jehst semthin' teh 'splode." Smashnsplode's expression became somber before he leaned over the tiny puwandese, his armor creaking and straining under the effort. "Theh humes 've come." "They've behn fellowin' us teh whehl teym," Mixyum said while trying to suppress his fear. Several loud engine roars muffled what the big 'un was trying to say, followed by cheers of the blue beasts at their vehicles not exploding when turned on. The warcamp was immense, having torn down a massive chunk of the forest when their spacecraft landed or simply crashed. The big 'un snorted the toxic odors floating in the air. A mixture of oil, burning fuel, dangerous gases, and a whole assortment of materials they had looted from their ships that made their skin tingle when holding or being near them. Walls of shattered wood and melted slag rose high into the sky, bigger than anything the locals could make, according to the puwandese themselves. Hundreds of them were digging into the ground, pulling out oil and gemstones that were plentiful under the planet's skin and launching everything into massive, roaring machines that belched out black gunk the the blue creatures immediately passed into barrels. It was such a self-imposed competition that they would boost the machines to work as fast as possible, and the beasts would fill as many barrels as they could to beat the others in speed and gathering. "How's meey erhmer doin'?" Smashnsplode asked. "Ey'm meykin' it. Yeh wented yeh're oompher teh be mey're shooty 'n splodey," Mixyum explained. The big' un made to yell and punch the smaller puwandese away but paused and put a mùetay, armored finger to his chin. "Oh yeah. Yeh're reyt." He glared at Mixyum and spoke as softly as a puwandese could. "Yeh behtehr hurry ehp. Neht very patient. Gehta crump theh fuzzy thengs 'fore grippin' everytheng." "Of course." With that, the blue titan backed away and stared at the pile of puwandese punching and exploding each other in a pile and saw a group of the larger beasts carrying a scrap tank and swinging it around to knock away seven of their fellows and shattering the ramshackle construct. As they continued to pummel each other, the ground began to tremble, and one of the puwandese saw an unstoppable force rushing toward them. "Theh big 'un!" he bellowed. The puwandese screamed in fear as Smashnsplode jumped high into the air to fall down over the fighters with his body spread wide. Dozens of guards, caretakers, and guests of Canterlot Castle rushed to the ridged craft, awed at its size. Everypony was frozen, unable to figure out what to do. Even the higher-ranked guards were hesitating. "K-keep on guard!" one of the sergeants ordered. "We don't know if this is something from Sombra, so I don't want anypony playing hero and tempting fate!" A ramp fell down, revealing the compartment the ponies had entered, and as the castle's inhabitants approached the dark interior, they watched as something bright and golden started approaching, every step banging against the metal. "It's a headless monster!" one of the newer guards blurted. She started shooting the strange monster in a panic, causing the others to fall into their own hysteria. Not seeing his head made things convenient to Killigan, taking the shots in stride and ignoring any attacks against him as he casually strolled down the ramp and took in the surroundings. Unfortunately, what he expected to be just a bit of burnt land turned out to be a completely burnt garden, and the castle grounds were excessively fortified with multiple layers of walls and artillery sitting on them. It reminded him of home. Realizing that the land around was barren thanks to his ship and enclosed on all sides, Killigan made to return inside the vessel and bring the equines out, but he was intercepted on the ramp by what seemed to be an errant blast of some type of weaponry. Righting himself in mid-air, the giant slid along the ground, his boots burying themselves in the dirt. "It's Princess Twilight!" one of the nobles cheered. Twilight's body was glowing and crackling with magic power as she flew in the air. "What are you, another monster created by Sombra?" the princess roared. She faltered briefly from seeing the giant stand up as though nothing happened. "Have some magic dissipating crystals in your armor, huh? Well, I won't let you destroy Canterlot or harm the inhabitants! Your king", she spat. "destroyed everything already!" She paused to hold back her tears as memories flooded in. "You won't be leaving her intact." Killigan raised his immense hands in a sign of peace, but the ponies did not understand the gesture. They only had hooves. He would need to subdue this equine and any others that might attack him, but they were all so fragile. The giant furrowed his brow behind his helmet as his gauntlets glowed with a brown, rotting aura. It felt like he was on the other side of the invasion of-- The giant didn't have time to finish his thought. Several sharp discs of magic flew from the flying alicorn and dug into the ground, rushing toward him. Killigan dodged the first two that dissipated before they hit the crowd behind him, but he crushed the last one by punching it on both sides right before it touched his armor. His gauntlets burst with tainted mana, killing the plants around him and causing insects to fall, made sickly by the wave. The soldiers had broken out of their stupor and quickly started escorting everypony out of the ruined gardens and away from the fight. As Twilight readied another spell, she realized that, even with the failsafes of her spells, the onlookers might be harmed. A barrier engulfed her instead, shimmering and resonating with multiple layers of mana. Killigan staggered at the sight, the layers reminding him of something that was tearing its way through the galaxy. A thing that didn't belong. The giant took a deep breath and steadied himself when he saw a white thing stumbling out of the vessel. "Twilight!" Celestia attempted to call out. Unfortunately, she fell off the ramp and faceplanted into the ground. She was quickly followed by her personal guard calling out to her and tumbling over each other like newborn kittens. Several of them frantically removed their armor to vomit and others passed out instead. "Princess!" Twilight screamed in horror. She immediately dissipated the magic she pooled around herself and rushed to her former teacher, panic gripping her heart. She pulled the white alicorn out of the mud and wiped as much as she could off her face. "They...they're not enemies, Twilight," Celestia wheezed. "Wh-what? But--" "That craft...thing...ship...of theirs. It's...it's really fast...not made for ponies." She turned green a moment and vomited on the side, eliciting disgust from Twilight. "Don't fight them." "Well, what do they want?" the lavender alicorn asked. She eyed the giant and glowered. "It destroyed the-them?!" Twilight immediately realized. "What do you mean them?" She stared in horror as two other giants, these ones clad in red and blue, jumped off the sides of the ramp, avoiding the ponies. The guards on the wall started to grunt and cover their faces when they saw the faceless one while only a few seemed to react with fear when looking at the one with the gaping maw on his helmet. They ignored Twilight and rejoined the golden giant with their weapons in hand, weapons that seemed oddly terrifying to the mare. They were far bigger than anything the alicorn had ever seen, and even though she was used to the usage of clips for rifles, she wasn't entirely certain where said bullets went. The weapons weren't big enough to carry any large amounts of ammo. "Are these the things that came from the stars and have been destroying everything?" Twilight asked. Celestia shook her head. "No, Twilight." She coughed from the stomach acid burning her throat. "These ones came in just a few hours or so ago." Fluttershy stumbled to her hooves and fumbled to Twilight. She failed to lean against the castle's wall and fell sideways. "Hey, Twilight." "Fluttershy helped me to understand what happened," Celestia said with a smile. Twilight immediately teared up and jumped to her friend when she realized that Celestia could hold herself up comfortably. "Fluttershy!" the alicorn cried. "I haven't seen you in years! I was worried you had died!" Regaining her sense of balance, Fluttershy's eyes stopped spinning, allowing her to look her friend straight in the eyes. As the seconds flew by, Twilight's elation gradually faded from her face to be replaced by shock and pity the more she took in Fluttershy's features. "Hey, Twilight. Didn't think we would meet under these circumstances," she said with a nervous smile. "You...you've gone through a lot..." Fluttershy nodded. "Yes. It's been...very, very hard on me and everypony else." Unwanted memories started popping up in her mind. "Sleeping in ruins. Trenches are under constant fire. Monsters swarming the field..." "We need to get to the council chambers," Celestia interjected. "I'm sorry to cut your reunion short, but this is important."As for your prior question, I think these ones came here to scout us." Twilight and Fluttershy immediately got to their hooves, followed by the recovered guards joining together in a two-line formation. Celestia gestures for the bipeds to follow her, which they did. Every step they made was around four or five for the ponies, and the weight of the giants' armor cracked the white floors, revealing more of the gray imperfections of the tiles. The new 'guests' were a stark contrast to the almost-sterile entrance, bringing in color where mostly white and gold were used. Fineries had been hung from the walls, creating tapestries of old artists that had been maintained by the newer generations. However, the sun from the doorway and the large windows along the walls had bleached them, removing any color they may have once had. Statues draped in armor seemed to guard the base and top of the stairs, their golden metal reflecting the ivory steps and rails they sat next to. As the soldiers and alicorns made their way up, the giants hesitated for a moment. "It's okay!" Celestia called out to them with an encouraging tone. "It's been designed to withstand multiple minotaurs!" Twilight hesitated and leaned toward the princess. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I think they might be too heavy to--" She was interrupted by a loud crack and sighed. "Of course." The giant with the gaping maw pulled his foot out of the hole made in the steps and looked back to Killigan, shaking his head and shrugging. The ponies watched them as they walked around, looking for a solution. "I think we need to lift them up here," Twilight mused. "That won't work," Fluttershy said. "They're immune to magic." Twilight looked at her friend, her face paled. "They're what?" Celestia chuckled. "They aren't immune. They're just...very resistant. I believe it's their armor." The alicorns and nearby unicorns shivered suddenly, perplexing them, prompting everypony to look over the guard rails. "What are they doing?" Twilight wondered. They watched as the three started discussing something they couldn't hear, but magic was definitely pooling around their bodies. This event culminated when a small portal formed in front of them and opened up next to the alicorns and Fluttershy. The three walked through and let their spell collapse, but they were visibly breathing heavily despite wearing armor that was hiding their bodies. "...They know magic, too?" Twilight said monotonously. "Great..."
Just A Blink Away (+ book news)Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.
