Celestia 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.