Forward: Fidelitas und Gennaiodo̱ría

In the Arena

A red dawn signaled the start of a new day.

Hovering above the arena sat the Omenatica, that floating blasphemy dedicated only to the godless and the perverse. Forged by a people long since fallen into ruin, the great bronze bowl was once meant to honor the bountiful harvest and their many suns looking down upon them, and every inch of the floating citadel was once engraved with righteous prayer. But the script had been scoured clean long ago by hateful hooves, and the bronze had now turned brown from so many years of unwashed blood caked on the perimeter like layers of strata of dirt atop a grave.

The Omentica was not always called such, but its true name along with that of its builders had long since been lost to memory. Now it bore a title bestowed out of mocking contempt, that in the forgotten tongue of that forgotten people, was the closest approximation to "heresy". Once, it was meant to serve as a final epitaph for for that forgotten people who revered song and dance and laughter and all the warm things in life. Now it marked the opening ceremonies of the Ascendancy, the most revered event in all the fell city.

Seven hundred condemned soldiers, still faithful to their delusions, line the perimeter. With silver swords grasped in their teeth, and bedecked in silver war plate polished to a mirror finish, they were every part the Honor Guard to the tomb of their beloved ruler. The seven hundred sacrifices shined like impossible beacons of light in such a dark place, but only to make the irony all the sweeter. No feast could compare to the delicacy of false hope.

Seven priests, garbed in robes the color of entrails, stood in the center with hoods drawn tight and wearing masks glowing with an inner baleful red light. Perhaps more than anyone, they were eager, if not anxious, to see how events unfolded.

All of them, both hero and heretic, waited for the signal.

The black dragon hovers above even them, miles above his blasphemous kingdoms, for it is decreed that nothing else can be placed higher than the Lord Baal the Stygian, Despoiler of the Seven Exemplars, the Bloodied Claw of Kas'Kasr, the End of Empires, Master of the Last Free City of Vel'el'sessuloth. The dragon was the fulcrum upon which all of Vel turned, and he would let none forget it. Let every petty warlord smile as their hidden schemes and shadowed plots unraveled before their very eyes, at the end of every day none of them would ever reach so high, yet all of them still hoped to depose the mad king. And hope was a delicacy without compare.

Lord Baal turned his gaze upward to the poisoned red skies, before staring downward at his perversions. Satisfied with the infinite heresies, the wyrm opens his colossal jaws and roars out a long stream of black fire.

It began. Seven hundred soldiers, the last survivors to a kingdom long since shattered and broken, fell on their swords in unison. Not a one made a sound as the steel pierced their hearts and they slid down the length of the blade. To show pain was to show disloyalty to their forsaken faiths, and worse, a show of fealty to Lord Baal above. That would not do at all, for only traitors may anoint the perverted rituals of the Godless.

The blood ran down from the rim and into the center below, crimson rivers pooling around the feet of the priests.  The unholy ponies spread out to skein the potential glories and the candidacy of the day. Some tentatively licked the life fluid from their reddened hooves, others tracked invisible patterns and prophecies in the swirling gore, one even noted the angles at which the soldiers died and the contortions of agony etched on their faces. This continued for some time before the priests reconvened again at the center. Satisfied, the seven ponies huddled together and shared their thoughts, despite the fact that their tongues had been cut out. They exchanged whispers and whimpers and perhaps even misgivings, while one still idly licked blood off a rusted blade as he pondered the higher mysteries of prophecy.

At last, the seven priests came to a decision, and a pegasus, a pitiful thing garbed only in the bones of his murdered family, flies up to relay it back to Lord Baal. This day was outside the Plan, the priests said, and no god would ever dare to bless this it. To dare the heresy of holding games would invite damnation from every deity above, below, and even in the spaces between.

Lord Baal smiled as he swallowed the messenger pegasus whole. It was a good day indeed. More blood had been promised than ever before, and he and his city intended to collect.

The massive dragon swooped back down past the Omenatica to the arena below. The crowd cheered for their lord, but not out of adoration. The thousands cheered because they hope to see the wyrm die, for this was the one day he would be made vulnerable, and the ponies of Vel so dearly hoped to feast on dragon flesh tonight.

Lord Baal would have it no other way. Worship is for the weak and the deluded, and respect is merely its larval form. What could be better than this, to be the most hated thing in existence? Hatred is the primal driving force of Vel, the energy that animates the blasphemous city and the paradoxical cycle of survival perpetuated by a collective self-destruction that allowed it to grow and thrive like a festering cancer spreading out into the world. In Vel'el'sessuloth, hatred was tangible power, and none are more hated than he.

That pleased Lord Baal to no calculable end.

The one true master of the fell city swoops down to upon his throne, carved from the skull of a fallen colossus from a forgotten chapter in Vel's blighted history. To the dragon's right sat the Vermillion Knight, clad in frozen blood, paired chimeblades sheathed on his back. To the dragon's left sat the amalgamation of fused spines and skulls that was his chief adviser, Shyrrd. And filling the stands were the innumerable masses of Vel, roaring and stomping in the discordant sound that was the unbearable anticipation. Quietly, Lord Baal shared in their excitement. With the champions arrayed today, and with the signs foretold tomorrow, these games promised to be very interesting indeed.

Far below the red skies and carnal debaucheries of the arena wait the slaves, the fodder meant only to serve as minor distractions for greater warriors. Above, the hundreds of slaves could hear the thousands of deranged and depraved cry for murder. The subdued roar seemed to drown out any sound, stifle any thought, even sap the energy from their limbs and their souls. Each wears tattered rags that might have once resembled the uniform of the Hauthorn Seventh Armored, and now the frayed cloth is their only tenuous connection to sanity. Moved between arenas, brutalized and murdered, the former soldiers had been whittled down to the hard-bitten survivors that the Lord Baal needed for his games. Although the rusted armor provided to all slaves would provide better protection, each still wore only the uniform. They do so to remind them that they were once in fact ponies, not animals, and so might still yet be saved.

In one particular cage sat either the greatest of them or the absolute worst, depending on your point of view. She is one of the greatest warriors to ever come to Vel, and any who disputed that now lay bleeding in the dirt. Millions admired her and the glorious death she brought, and they marveled at how one deemed so pure could fall so far. The Hundred Agonies, they call her, after her duel with the Dagger Twins. Azarec the Fell-Hooved, after she strangled the hated sorcerer and took his scalp and name as a trophy. The Hundred Agonies, for atrocities she cannot even recall, nor would she wish too. And perhaps the worst of all, the diseased hordes of Vel mockingly chant her name as the Betrayed, for the crowd knew it reminded her of what she once was, and they knew it drove fresh barbs into her soul.

She was all of these things and none of them. Once pure, then lost, now caught somewhere between, unable to return to either extreme.

The ponies of the Seventh Armored once admired her. Incorruptible, unassailable, she was the bastion they believed could weather such surroundings and endure. But after she returned from Lord Ebon's chastisement, after she charged out into the blood-soaked arenas and laughed as she tore them apart with all the glee of a foal finally discovering her cutie mark, the survivors of the Seventh Armored finally learned that Vel and its horrors broke everyone in the end.

With the champion are what few allies she had gathered during her time fighting for the lords of Vel. On one side, sharpening his blades and preparing for the coming slaughter, sat the deranged killer Gear Head. A bloodied skull carved in place of a cutie mark, his coat slathered in crude war paint, and with collection of rusty knives and broken swords hung about his waist, Gear Head appeared every part the scum of the arena. Deranged even to the eyes of an outsider, she would never consider trusting a creature like him, who had forsaken his equinity for the blessed release of bloody murder, but she knew his allegiance was assured. She knew that deep down the psychopath was a coward, and no matter how much he loved to kill he would do whatever it took to survive.

Pacing the pen was the pegasus Nocturne, with a coat the color of absolute darkness and vacant eye sockets staring blankly ahead. They took his eyes, but that triviality would not blind him. A useful trait in a place containing so many shadows. He could have escaped at any time, regardless of his injuries, yet supposedly all he ever needed was a reason. She was still skeptical, but for now his skill-set would be invaluable.

Two more rounded out this ragged committee. One is the impromptu medic Saw Bones, who has seen so many bleed out beneath his hooves that the fact that the old stallion still possessed a modicum of sanity is in itself a miracle, and sitting back observing them all Corporal Fast Track, the highest ranking officer of the Seventh Armored still left alive. Bones appeared apprehensive, while the corporal was in all likelihood contemplating if he should try to kill the monster that had so wantonly slaughtered his comrades.

She had already spoken her piece. Now she only awaited their response.

“It's insane,” said Saw Bones, always the first to call her out. He was the only that knew what she had become, and was no longer afraid of what potential horrors she might unleash upon them. Although he brought no forces or skills to bear, that alone is why he sat on this impromptu war council. And now, in the deep breath before the plunge, Saw Bones was attempted to dissuade her one last time. Before they told the corporal what he needed to know.

After a long silence, Gear Head looked up from sharpening his knives, stared back at her with a vacant expression, and gave a feral grin. “I like it,” he finally said, as if hearing of a new and ingenious way to prank the mean teacher.

The corporal gave the murderer a look of absolute contempt. Saw Bones ignored both of them. She supposed her insane scheme has confirmed his fears, and that all of this is merely an elaborate mass suicide.

“That just proves my point!” said Bones, perhaps the closest thing she has to a friend in this wretched place. “What you're suggesting isn't just impossible. It's downright absurd! Even if everything goes according to plan, Karkull-”

He was interrupted by the low whisper of Nocturne, who spoke like a rolling mist. “I will handle the chainmaster, and anything else standing in the way of my objective.”

Silence. It was time to fill the corporal in.

“You killed us,” said Fast Track, "a lot of us, back at Skalliri."

"I did," she said, "They attempted to take control of me using sorcery. I almost fell, but I did not fall all the way, so I was brought back."

"Some of us finally lost the way when we saw a Bearer had turned to the enemy. First you abandon the line at Pale Ridge, and then you were the executioner in the arena." Fast Track's voice was level, but there was so much hate in him that he was almost quivering with it."

"You can hate me corporal, and refuse to have anything to do with me. Or you can put that aside for a few hours and cooperate with us. If you do the latter you might actually have a chance of seeing the next day."

Fast Track leaned back against the cell wall and looked at the other ponies gathered in the chamber. A psychopath as bad as the city they were trying to survive, a surgeon who had probably served as Lord Baal's spy in the pens for most of his time here, a blind and wingless pegasus of the Invisible Will, and lastly her, a Bearer turned Butcher.

"What are our chances?" asked Fast Track, sounding unimpressed.

"I would not have smuggled you in here,” said Nocturne, "if there was no point in doing so."

"You're lucky I didn't kill you the moment you put your filthy hooves on me," said Fast Track to the exiled assassin.

"Then you understand why I had to use uncultured methods," said Nocturne smoothly. She only trusted Nocturne to make it out of the slave pens and back without detection, and at her order, the pegasus had brought the unconscious Fast Track from his punishment in isolation and back to his former company.

"Then what's the plan?" asked Fast Track.

“Kill 'em all.” said Gear Head with a smirk.

Fast Track dismissively snorted. "That's it?"

“It's a bit more subtle that that,” she said, "but essentially, yes. If we can force an uprising among the slaves, a riot in the arena is sure to follow. Should that happen, Lord Baal is sure to bring his Wyrmguard to quell it, giving us a suitable distraction for our escape. Believe me, the crowd can be a weapon for us if we know how to use it."

"So I hear," said Fast Track. "They say a white mare was behind the mess at Gorgon. I'm guessing it was you, because there aren't too many mares around. Except even if you're right, there are a few here who remember how that revolt turned out. Every single one of the runners died. Even if we break out, we're still stuck on this plane, and we can't hold out long against the Wyrmguard."

"Golden Girl here says she's got a plan for that," said Gear Head. "She isn't being too open with it though."

"The fear of any revolt being crushed is what truly keeps us here," she said, "us and every other slave of Vel. If we overcome that, if we show these creatures that we still believe in something, then we shall become unstoppable. Faith will carry us through better than these shows of savagery they so idolize."

"I don't need fancy speeches," said Fast Track, "I get enough of those from Light and his cult down below. What I need is something this city can never seem to give me. I need a guarantee that for once, I won't have to fight tooth and hoof just to live another day."

"I can't give you that corporal," she said, "whether we were in Vel or Pale Ridge or even back home with your family. If there is one thing my time here has taught me, it is that every moment of our lives carries that chance of oblivion, however small it may seem. Yet we still carry on, we still endure even when the world does all it can to smother us. I offer you a chance to leave this place. I offer you a chance, perhaps for the first time in your life, to fight back."

Fast Track pondered that for a good minute. He weighed all he had to lose against all he had to gain, and at last reached a decision. Although skeptical, he offered a hoof in agreement. “Deal.”

Nodding, she accepted and gave it a firm shake. It is then that the odd assortment began to set their plans in motion.

Eventually, the pit masters came to gather them. Feral beasts born and bred by Lord Baal for the express reason to torture, the bloated dog creatures were the terror of the prisons. They charged in roaring obscenities and heresies, goading each slave out of their overcrowded pen with bladed whips and barbed spears. Some slaves died of course, ponies were such bloated and fragile things, some were already dead and left rotting in their cells from crude suicides, but eventually the enslaved horde moved down the aisles to the iron gates marking the final fight of their lives.

They mass at the great iron gate, and she is at the forefront. Clad in segmented armor forged with hellfire by a damned blacksmith, with a massive broadsword hovering at her side, she truly did look the part of the favored champion of Vel. This is what the crowd has come to expect, this is what they demand, and to see her in nothing less than all the tainted glory that was the Betrayed would be akin to heresy.

The dogs moved up into the scaffolding above, ready to pry the gate open and begin the main event. They were led by Kruhkull, a giant among giants with his dog face smashed in from decades of abuse. He had become almost mythological for the slaves, the godless god of the pits who existed only to make their brief existence as horrible as possible.

Great chains can be heard grinding as the gates began to part. “Rejoice, my little ponies!” Krukull roared, ponies cringing at the mere sound of his guttural voice. They have been conditioned to learn that when he spoke, the bladed whips were not far behind. “For today is the day you die!”

Loping like a great ape, the behemoth stood above the colossal arena entrance as the pit masters below slowly hauled the doors open. Pain and rage and madness and HATE!, brayed the slavemasters in an unholy mantra. Four aspects that had subsumed the entirety of their existence.

Pain and rage and madness and HATE!

“Can you not smell it? Can you not smell the coming tide of blood and battle? Are you not eager to die so gloriously?" Kruhkull bellowed with maddened glee, Pain and rage and madness and HATE! "Death is your servant! Welcome him, you lucky ones! Death is your lord! Accept him into your heart, lose yourselves in sweet annihilation!”

Pain and rage and madness and HATE!.

He heaved his massive hooks above, the dogs around him howling their assent. “Your gods curse your name and the worms shall feast on your bloated corpse! Is it not beautiful? Are you not blessed to meet such a bitter and violent end?”

PAIN!

The gates opened with an unholy moan, the dogs devolving into a screaming cacophany. The roar of the crowds beyond is almost deafening. Beyond, she can see the sands, and the black dragon looming overhead The people of Vel wanted death more than anything, and they wanted it now. Soon so many would die for the enjoyment of so many more. She wondered just how many skulls had been wagered between warlords, just how many fortunes would be won and lost based on how many would die before her blade.

RAGE!

By Celestia, she hated this place.

MADNESS

“Justify what remains of your pathetic little lives. Earn what little glory you can by the point of your sword and the strength of your hooves! Lord Baal smells the blood you let! DIE FOR HIM!” With that last unholy assurance by Krukull, she stepped out into the arena. The crowd saw the Betrayed and impossibly became even louder. They cursed her and praised her in every way possible. For a brief moment, she felt like a Goddess. It was a horrible feeling

HATE!

HATE!

HATE!

Ahead of her stood every horror Vel could conjure, every monster and every devil, every killer and every sinner and every thing too perverse even to name. They all stood before the small unicorn and all of them are prey.

Rarity smiled a bitter smile. They had come to see the Betrayed, and now, at last, they could watch her die.

In the Endless

“Go left!” said Dash.

“Go right!” said Rainbow.

“Shut up," said the one, but not the only, Rainbow Dash, "and let me drive!”

Speeding across the waters, Rainbow Dash flew for her life. And not just for her life, but for every other Rainbow and Dash caught between the convenient spaces of what was real and what was maybe. It was only a few miles more distance, she could make it, all she had to do was fly straight and try to avoid the big nasty currently behind her. Unfortunately, flying straight was a problem, as each wing literally had a mind of its own, and were competing to go separate ways. Luckily she still had higher control, else the pegasus would be torn in half, but it was still beyond frustrating to have to actually convince her wings that dying might not be the optimal choice here.

“We need to warn Fisher and the others!," roared Raindash Bow over the miasma of the storm and seaspray, "This thing'll flatten em!” Luckily, Raindash Bow really didn't know what the buck she was talking about and should shut up and let the professionals handle it.

“Oh, buck you," replied Raindash Bow, "I know exactly what I'm talking about! I can hear your thoughts, in case we forgot!” Sweet Celestia's crooked crown, there was nothing more annoying than an argument with yourself.

“They won't have time to evacuate!" Bowrain Dash spoke up, hopefully willing to compromise. "We need to draw it away from Cilia and back to the Mote!”

The storm worsened. Rain poured down almost like solid walls, thunder crashed and lightning flashed as the spell began to take hold. Wouldn't be long now...

“Are you crazy?" yelled Dashbow Rain. "How can we possibly stop that thing!”

“Aw, we can take it!” replied Rainrain Rain.

Now they/she/I/me (ARGH) were talking. Honestly, despite having chosen such an incredibly stupid nickname, Rainrain Rain always seemed like the smartest one of the lot.

The composite could not effectively function with so much discordant noise crashing about her multispacial head, so she (they) was/were forced to come up with a series of increasingly stopgap solutions in a desperate attempt to preserve the original sanity.

Solution One: Settling on a singular tense. Past had been decided would be most convenient for brevity's sake, present always did make her seem either like a little foal learning her letters or some artsy-fartsy college professor writing some super artsy-fartsy story, and thinking in future when only one of the twenty-three had glimpsed through the rim would probably drive each facet into some inter-dimensional equivalent of cross-eyed bafflement.

Solution Two: Deciding who should lead. It was agreed that a total democracy was downright impossible, with so many warring personalities vying for an independent course of action, and a dictatorship seemed kind of hypocritical at this point. After all, hadn't this entire situation arisen from the many minds forced into submission?

Rainbow Dash knew what she had to do. Forcing an override of central motor control, she spun around and rocketed forward. Rainbow Dash could hear the others scream protests, or assertions, or sometimes a mixture of both as twenty-four (Twenty-six? Did those other two even count?) of the same person instinctively knew this was the right thing to do. The storm worsened as reality began to slowly fracture, and a swirling vortex almost two hundred yards wide loomed ahead of her. From the gaping maw sprouted a ring of colossal bone shards, each at least four or five Rainbow Dashes tall.

All the same, Rainbow Dash flew towards it with all the force of a falling star. Forget all this was and will crud that was starting to make her head (heads?) hurt, all that mattered was the now. All that mattered was the speed, the sensation, and the knowledge that no matter what she might or might no have done, or even who she really was, Rainbow would still Dash.

Slowly, it began to rise. A head came first, then a body, then more body, then the entirety as the leviathan awoke and began to slowly heave itself from the depths. Eyes the size of Ursa Minors. Teeth the size of Sugarcube Corner. A thousand tentacles that each redefined the definition of titanic flailing about and churning the waters for miles around. Tidal waves were formed that would later become tsunamis, themselves caused by seismic events powerful enough to send the entire continental shelf dancing. For the first time in many an age, the unseen land beneath the Endless Expanse was shaken out of its rigor mortis and into some modicum of motion.

Twilight would know what this thing was called. Probably something really wordy like Giant Giaganticus. Unfortunately, Rainbow Dash remained Rainbow Dash and as she stared at the rising titan all twenty-four of herself found themselves at a loss for words. As she closed the distance between her and what she and the other hers had colloquially labeled as the BIG FREAKY THING, she knew she should be afraid. Any sane pony would be.

Luckily, Rainbow Dash and sanity were not on speaking terms at the moment.

Meramon the Bringer roared, a call so loud it transcended the sound barrier and struck the world almost as a physical assault, the first blow in a renewed battle between the exiled architect and his wayward creation. Soon, the seaponies of the Endless and all their aquatic allies would learn that even the oceans could, and would, burn with fire stolen from the forges at the end of all existence.

Those were the rules, anyway. But the game had changed, pieces were in play on different boards, and in some cases certain players had already been ejected from the room.

Let the jerkhead gods delude themselves. They could never stop the Dash.

She accelerated beyond the definition of accelerate. Rainbow Dash, fueled by so many subsequent versions that all believed they were the epitome of what it meant to be a pegasus, flew faster than perhaps any of her kind had before or ever will. Out of self preservation twenty-four minds united behind one for the singular action of forward, and not even the supposedly inviolate laws of reality could slow her down.

Rainbow Dash broke the sound barrier almost as an afterthought, moving so quickly that not even her signature rainbow trail could catch up. Speed overtook every sense and washed away every sin until all that was left was the purity of motion, a sense of nirvana so profound it eliminated higher thought.

So it was with a state of mind she could only describe as awesome, and a speed that she could only describe as woah, that every version of Rainbow Dash impacted the singular Bringer.

The result was, to say the very least, spectacular.