It was late afternoon in Canterlot. The sun had slowly and inexorably traced its way across the horizon until it was just touching the mountains in the west. Its orange glow bathed the city in a radiant, dying light, and long shadows marched from one side of the street to the other. In the throne room, the sun’s rays were distorted by the stained glass, and their colored splotches repatterned the tiling, carpet, walls, and ponies within. Twilight Sparkle wouldn’t have noticed, so engrossed in the story was she, until a blinding bolt of red light struck her square in the eyes.

Flinching, Twilight leaned back and twisted her face, trying to rub out the sunspot imprinted on the back of her retina with a clumsy hoof. Only then, separated from the journal’s tale, did she realize how late it was.

From her throne, Celestia smiled and gently shut the journal, setting it down at her side. “I suppose now is as good a time as any for a break,” she said, her voice gentle and tender. Looking out the window, her horn lit up, tugging the golden orb floating in the sky further towards the western horizon. “It is almost time for Luna to raise the moon, and if my memory serves me right, she may want to hear these next bits when she’s done with that.”

Twilight nodded and stood up, stretching each of her limbs in turn until she cracked the stiffness out of her joints. Walking in a small circle to get the blood flowing back to her hooves, she glanced over to see how the Commander was faring after sitting (or standing) for so long.

The blue-gray pony was no longer standing by the door. Out of instinct, Twilight glanced up, searching the stunted platform ringing the ceiling. It was home to many statues of ponies, some wearing armor, some not; some pegasi, others earth ponies and unicorns; some mares, and others stallions. But Twilight knew better than to look at the edges. Instead, she looked toward the very center of the platform directly above Celestia’s throne. There, she recognized the statue of a pegasus soldier even before it began to move and its stone turned back to flesh.

It was a simple enough trick afforded by wearing Hurricane’s armor. As Twilight had learned before by asking the stallion, the armor supposedly was able to amplify the effects of pegasus Empatha, and in this particular instance, summoning earth Empatha allowed the wearer to turn to stone. As the pegasus spread his wings and glided down to the throne room floor at Celestia’s hooves, another question came to Twilight’s mind, one she hadn’t considered before starting her research into the armor’s original owner.

“Commander,” she began, taking two steps forward. The blue-gray pony turned from Celestia to her, slightly raising his eyebrow as the only other indication that he had heard her. “When did Hurricane’s armor get that enchantment? I haven’t seen any record of him using it in all my research so far.”

The Commander glanced at his armor and shrugged. “It was long after his time. Somepony modified it during the Twilight War to help give its new wearer a leg up on Luna’s thestrals.”

Celestia winced. “Nightmare Moon’s thestrals,” she corrected.

The Commander’s wing twitched, as if taking the effort to shrug off Celestia’s comment was asking too much. Turning back to Celestia, he courteously nodded. “Of course,” he said, but Twilight could still hear the bile dripping from his teeth. Straightening back up again, he looked between the two mares in the room. “I have business I need to attend to. Lt. Star needs to be debriefed about the Saraneighvo incident.” He cast Twilight a knowing glance, causing the mare to blush and duck her head. “Enjoy your story. Let me know if anything interesting comes up.” He moved to leave the room.

“Hold on one second,” Celestia said, her horn coming to life. The Commander obeyed, looking over his shoulder at the white alicorn seated behind him. Celestia’s Arcana wrapped around the two feathers she had rested by her throne, and she levitated them over to the pegasus. “Take these with you. They still have Typhoon’s and Cyclone’s Empatha in them. They might be useful in the future.”

With a small dip of his head, the Commander reached out a hoof and caught the two red and blond feathers as Celestia’ let go of them. Then, whistling four notes to a tune Twilight didn’t recognize, the Commander pulled on the suddenly unlatched lightning bolt in the center of his armor to reveal a hidden compartment. Twilight couldn’t see exactly what was inside; it was too obscured by the stallion’s hoof safely depositing the feathers inside. With a click the compartment shut again, and the guardspony extended his wing in an archaic salute before leaving the throne room behind.

The door shut with a heavy thud. It was just Celestia and Twilight alone in the throne room now, and the last rays of the late winter light faded behind the mountains, to be wholly replaced by the sudden raising of the half-moon in the east. Walking around the room, Twilight noticed the scroll at Celestia’s hooves, mentioning something about King Sombra’s Tomb. A thought came to her, one she had when going through the journal with Celestia earlier.

“Celestia?” she asked.

“What is it, my little pony?” Celestia replied, a smile plucking at her lips.

“That unicorn… thief. That wasn’t Sombra, was it?”

Celestia thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that was not Sombra. Luna knew that pony more than I did. Suffice it to say, however, that I did know Sombra in his time. He was… well, a different sort of pony altogether.”

Twilight’s eyes widened just a tick. “Really?”

Celestia nodded. “We might just come across him yet.” Checking a large grandfather clock against the side of the throne room, she shifted position. “It is still early in the evening, perhaps too early to eat, unless you favor yourself an early dinner.”

The lavender unicorn glanced at her stomach as if to see what its opinion was. Receiving no immediate answer, she shrugged. “I’m not all that hungry yet, but I imagine I will be later.”

“If you say so,” Celestia gently said. Picking back up the journal again, she flipped to where she had left off. “In that case, would you be interested in reading another chapter before dinner? We can dine with Princess Luna before going any further. She most certainly would like to hear this story with us.”

Twilight eagerly nodded. “Sounds like a plan, Princess.”

Celestia gave Twilight a smile and shifted positions to sit more comfortably in her throne. “Very well then.”

“Well, good luck, sir. Are you sure you’ve got everything you need? It’s the last outpost between civilization and madness.”

Hurricane nodded and placed his helmet back on his head. “Thank you, legionary, but I have everything I need. I need to travel fast and light.” He reached a hoof towards his flank and patted the small saddlebag strapped to the armor. “I can’t have anything besides the essentials slowing my flight.”

“If you say so, sir,” the legionary replied. “I doubt I need to warn you about what’s beyond these walls, but I’ll pray to Mobius for your safe return.”

Hurricane saluted his subordinate. “Keep up the good work, soldier.”

The legionary returned the salute. “Of course, Commander.”

Turning away, Hurricane left the wide canvas requisitions tent and trotted into the open. He was in the center of an Equestrian outpost far past the northern borders of the nation itself, almost at the foot of the Mountain of Dawn, the solitary and lonely towering behemoth of stone in the central highlands. The mountain had some sort of religious significance attached to it by the unicorns and earth ponies, and while Hurricane personally disregarded these rumors, he had nonetheless authorized a legion of soldiers to aid in the establishment of a colonia there. If he flew up high enough, he could see some of the quaint cottages some of the settlers had already constructed in the surrounding countryside.

A group of training milites trotted past Hurricane, a centurion hot on their hooves as he forced them to march from one end of the camp and back again. Looking around, Hurricane saw even more pegasi training with their gladii, or getting repairs made to their armor. Despite the colonia being a device of Equestria, everypony, especially Hurricane, knew that it was a Cirran institution through and through. The soldiers were all Cirran legionaries, all pegasi, with not a unicorn or earth pony to be seen. Hell, it was a colonia and not a colony, and this particular colonia was named Tempestatem, not something more Equiish in nature. Despite the general melting of the three cultures into one Equestrian society back in Everfree, the practices of the old Cirran nation were still very much alive far from the capital.

It had taken Hurricane half a day’s flight to reach Tempestatem from Everfree, and he had spent the rest of that day gathering information from the locals and the soldiers in the colonia. When he had heard an account of a demon flitting through the shadows the night before from not one but two farmers, he knew he was on the right track. With that knowledge to confirm his suspicions, Hurricane then met with the centurio prior in charge of Tempestatem to plan his search for the next day.

“If there’s any place the bastard’s going to, it’ll be the Mountain,” the centurion had said, pointing to the aforementioned mountain on a large map. “Unfortunately, the land’s so hilly and forested that finding him in that mess will be damn near impossible.”

Hurricane had thought on that for a while before pointing to a shield of rock against the mountain where the forest melted into stone. “If he and whomever else he’s working for are smart, they’d hole up right here. It’s fairly defensible, difficult to notice from afar, and it’s likely got numerous hidden escape routes. That’s where I’ll start looking tomorrow.”

They had shared a few more ideas, but Hurricane ultimately left with a copy of the map and retired for the night. The centurion had offered to accompany Hurricane, but the black stallion had declined, holding to his original reasons that he moved faster on his own and was, quite frankly, skilled enough to handle whatever the thief could throw at him by his lonesome. The centurion reluctantly acquiesced, but with understandable apprehension; no Cirran wanted to be known as the soldier who let the Commander Maximus wander to his own death alone.

The following day, Hurricane had woken after a good night’s sleep and drilled with some of the colonia’s soldiers as a warm up. The stallions had no idea that their Commander would be training with them, but Hurricane could tell that his presence was uplifting to the generally younger and inexperienced soldiers that he assigned to outposts like Tempestatem to learn how to fight like true legionaries. Apprehensive at first, the soldiers nonetheless came to him for advice or a few friendly words by the end of their drilling, and their morale seemed mostly unharmed by the fact that the stallion who ought to have been retired had beaten the entire team of eight, single-hoofedly. It was a remarkable experience to the aging legionary; he resolved to tour the Legion more often upon his return, assuming he could get out of most of his political obligations.

When that was concluded, all Hurricane had left was to quickly stop by the requisitions tent and gather a few supplies for his search, namely some fresh water, a few bandages for any odd injuries, and a new skysteel guard scale for his left wingblade, which had begun to jam on him and impair his flight on the way up. He had also procured a flagon of strong ale which he then tucked deep in his saddlebags. Hurricane hadn’t been much of a drinker five years ago, and even now he still wasn’t, but some nights he needed a little help to keep himself from waking and realizing that the other half of his bed was empty and cold.

That brought him to where he was now, walking through the center of the colonia and towards the north. Fully equipped and armed with sharpened blades and oiled armor, Hurricane flapped his wings once, twice, three times, and rose above the tents below. He hovered in place for a moment, gaining his bearings, and then caught an updraft, spiraling in slow, lazy circles as he gained altitude from the warm air. Even at forty-six, the summer air made Hurricane feel alive, and he doubt it would ever fail to impart that feeling. So many things may have changed, but flying was still something that the graying pegasus owned, wholly and completely.

Once he was half a mile above the ground below, Hurricane gently straightened out of his spirals and zeroed in on the mountain to the north. The rectangular colonia walls below him faded to the south, and so too did the few scattered cottages near it, heavy plumes of gray smoke leaving chimneys that protruded through thatched roofs as the ponies inside prepared the midday meal. In a few moments, forest and highlands dominated the landscape, and it was then that Hurricane noted he had truly left Equestria for the first time in five years.

It brought a smile to his lips.

If there was one thing that Pan Sea regretted in his life, it was not getting to know Twister sooner. The mare was amazing at her work; everything was neat and organized, nothing was late, and she still found the time to be a good wife, mother, and friend. When she stepped into Pan Sea’s office just across the bridge from the castle, she was still tidying up her appearance after giving her husband, Echo Wing, a kiss and a hug goodbye.

“Twister!” Pan Sea greeted, standing up from behind his desk and moving around to meet her. “Good to see you! My, you look like you’ve been busy.”

Twister nodded. “I just finished up a particularly heated session in Parliament. The unicorn nobles are calling for another tax hike, while the earth ponies are demanding the opposite. Trying to work out a deal that’s suitable for the pegasi and the other two sides has been anything but easy.”

Pan Sea nodded, only marginally familiar with the latest news out of Parliament by virtue of the papers he had to sort for Commander Hurricane. “I heard about that,” he lied, trying to make friendly conversation. “You’re closer to the action than I am; what does that mean for the rest of us?”

Twister brushed around Pan Sea and found a chair. “Well, it’s no secret that Equestria’s barely scraping enough money to support the Legion, our social care programs, administrative duties, and the nobles’ pockets,” she said as she began stripping off the annoying and nonessential pieces of her Legatus garb. “While the nobles are saying that they need the tax hikes for the first three, we all know that about half of that revenue is going to go to the last one. The earth ponies are staunchly opposed to it and instead want to reduce taxes, but they aren’t going anywhere with that one without help.”

Pan Sea cocked his head. “Really? I thought the earth ponies controlled the majority of the house.”

“No,” Twister said, shaking her head. “The earth ponies control around two hundred of Parliament’s five hundred seats. The pegasi own one hundred and seventy-five of the remaining three hundred, and the unicorns have the rest. They need more support to get the simple majority that they need to push the bill through, but that isn’t going to happen unless they gain pegasus support.”

“Oh,” Pan Sea said, suddenly understanding the dilemma. “The patrician families from the Senate aren’t going to support the earth ponies because their policy means cuts to the Legion’s budget, right?”

“Right,” Twister said. “Meanwhile, I’m trying to organize a rewrite of the bill, but about half of our patrician senators are siding with the unicorns because they want to line their pockets too. That leaves me with about a hundred honest senators willing to put out the right bill for the nation, but since few of them are patricians, they don’t have any influence in Parliament.” Moaning, Twister slouched back in her chair and held her hooves to her heart. “This is why our government is going to fail, sooner or later. We don’t have a selection of Equestria’s population to represent it; we have the nobles, which are all unicorn, we have the plebs, which are all earth pony, and we have the Legion, which is all pegasus. This isn’t a representational system; this is a system that functions on influence, intrigue, and brute-force voting!” Her forelegs flopped down against her sides, and she released an exasperated breath. “Mobius have mercy on my soul.”

Pan Sea smiled sympathetically and took his seat across from the mare. “Couldn’t you mine more gems and bring them in to keep the government afloat? I mean, Queen Platinum found dozens of gems just inches below the surface back at Platinum’s Landing. They’re not that hard to find.”

Twister shook her head. “That was the nobles’ other solution, but I can’t allow it. Bringing in all these gems is only going to cause massive inflation to Equestria’s economy, and the poor who are already finding it difficult to buy food and basic supplies won’t be able to at all. Sure, it’ll create some jobs in the short term, but not enough to give the economy a nice boost.”

The yellow stallion thought on that for a while. “But what about—”

Twister held up a hoof. “As much as I enjoy talking politics and domestic policy, I already do too much of that. It’s called my job.”

The secretary faltered a bit. “Oh. Then, well, what did you need to see me for?”

The legatus leaned forward and tapped her hooves together. “Two days ago, a thief broke into Star Swirl the Bearded’s special storeroom and stole something incredibly important and dangerous.”

Pan Sea’s eyes widened. “What?! Really?” When Twister nodded, he looked around him, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to figure out what to say next. “That’s just… wow. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Twister countered, opening her posture. “But it happened.”

Pan Sea shook his head again. “How come I haven’t heard of this until now? Is that why the Commander is gone?”

The mare bobbed her head. “That’s right. And you haven’t heard about this because Star Swirl and Hurricane didn’t want others to hear about it. Too many nobles would want to get their hooves on Electrum’s Orb, or try to seize some power while we’re all scrambling to recover it.”

Pan Sea’s head tilted to the side. “Electrum’s Orb?”

“Electrum’s Orb,” Twister restated. “It’s an incredibly powerful artifact that’s the equivalent of a scrying sphere. Only, this one never fails.” Leaning back from the desk, her cheek puffed out as she released a tense breath. “But that’s not important to us. Hurricane’s going to recover the Orb, and I don’t doubt that he’ll succeed. What he asked me to do, and what I’m asking you to do, is to try and gather some information on the ones responsible for this.”

Pan Sea appeared confused. “You mean there’re more ponies than just the thief?”

“That’s what Hurricane believes, and I’m inclined to agree with him,” Twister said. “Think about it; the riots have gotten out of hand lately. We’re seeing sections of the population threatening to take arms against us that have no business being angry in the first place.”

“You can’t really know that for certain,” Pan Sea said, resting his forelegs on his desk.

“Uh huh,” Twister said, deadpanning Pan Sea with a stare. “It’s only my duty to understand what makes this nation tick.”

Pan Sea resisted the edge to squirm in his seat, despite being several years Twister’s elder.

The mare continued, waving her hooves for emphasis. “There’ve been assassinations, murders, muggings, and disappearances of notable figures over the past several months. Several unicorn families have kept their banners unreasonably close around them, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. If there isn’t something going on behind the scenes, I’d be damned surprised.”

The yellow stallion sighed and put his hooves together. “Alright. So if we suppose you’re right, and there is somepony else behind this all, how are we going to stop them?”

Twister sighed. “First things first, we need to figure out who these conspirators are. I seriously doubt that it’s just one pony, and in that case, we need to trace somepony back to the group.” She tapped her hoof against the desk, and Pan Sea noted that she was wearing steel shoes underneath her hooves. He didn’t get the chance to ask about it before she pulled her hoof away again. “Following a grunt, tracing somepony’s mail, hell, if we capture a boss that’d pretty much put this group away. The fact of the matter is, we need to catch somepony.”

An uncomfortable feeling settled in Pan Sea’s gut. “So what’s our plan for that, then? Do you have any leads?”

Twister reached into a concealed compartment on the ornamental cuirass that she wore as part of her legatus garb and pulled out a tightly bound scroll. Without any ceremony, she simply tossed the paper to Pan Sea, who awkwardly caught it in his hooves. “Here’s how I’m thinking we should handle this. I’ve got much more pull in Parliament than you do, since you’re only a secretary. I can gather rumors on ponies, places, and events with a few favors, a little money, and a touch of mare’s charm.”

Pan Sea blushed as an image crossed his mind. “Your… husband’s okay with that?”

Twister rolled her eyes. “Not like that. Although making stallions think it is like that is important. Anyways, I’ll spend my time in Parliament gathering names and other rumors that we might want to take a look at.”

Pan Sea paused, knowing what was coming next but dreading it all the more. “And…?”

Twister pointed to the scroll in his hooves. “You’re going to investigate them for me, then.”

“What?!”

“Come on, Pansy,” Twister said, allowing a pointed lapse into her brother’s pronunciation of the stallion’s name. “You used to be a soldier in the Legion, and you still are, if rank and oath mean anything to you. Besides, I guarantee that you’ve faced worse in the call of duty than what I’m asking you to deal with.”

Pan Sea felt his guilt getting the better of him. He hated when ponies played to his guilt. “I know, I just… I don’t know.”

“Ugh… Look, with Hurricane out of town, you don’t have much of anything to do for him other than making sure the papers he has to go through when he gets back are stacked nice and square.”

Pan Sea deflated alongside his resolve. “Alright, alright. I’ll take a look at what’s going on.” Placing the scroll on the table, he began to work at the ribbon tying it together. “Before I get into this, just who or what am I investigating first?”

Twister stood up and gathered her things about her. “The first place to start is close to home with the obvious targets, so I picked the most obvious one.”

“Who? The earth pony representative, Speaker Carrot Cake?”

“No, you won’t be taking a look at many of the ponies in Parliament,” Twister said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “I keep an eye on them enough during my job.”

With the obvious choices (to Pan Sea at least) ruled out, the stallion looked at the half-opened scroll in front of him with a quizzical look. That expression soon turned to one of disbelief as he read the name and saw the picture. “Wait a minute, you want me to look after—?!”

“That’s right,” Twister said as she moved towards the door. “I want you to investigate Mayor Greenleaf.”

“Eyes about you, soldiers. This isn’t a walk in the park.”

Typhoon’s eyes slid underneath the shadow of her helmet as she crossed the threshold into Everfree’s slums. She could tell simply by the feeling in her hooves as they left mildly clean cobblestone and gravel and immediately began picking up mud and other sticky substances. Behind her, four other centurions, three stallions and a mare, followed closely.

Everfree itself wasn’t exactly a grand city to begin with. Most of it was raised in barely a few months after the populations of the Compact Lands crossed the Narrow Strait. As such, the majority of the buildings were rough-cut around the edges and lacking in the polished refinement common to unicorn architecture. Still, it at least had the framework of a proper town, and even if it was a pale light in comparison to the cities of old, it still had the foundations to become a mighty city in its time.

The slums were notably different. There was a distinct and definitive line where the relative prosperity of Everfree ended and the poverty of the less fortunate began. This line was a street running almost the entire length of the city, partitioning the slums and Everfree proper with a fifteen foot wide dirt road stained with blood. The road was manned on one side by a complement of legionaries and a hoofful of various malcontent and angry ponies on the other. The separation looked like a heavily patrolled checkpoint between two nations, and for that reason it had become known as the Choke.

Ponies were technically free to enter and leave the slums as they pleased; it was a part of the city after all. With the riots, however, security had tightened down enough that the phrase “papers, please” was akin to an insult in slum life. Typhoon and her company of trusted centurions had to process their names and military papers through a legate watching over the whole area before they were allowed to enter.

The legate smirked as he looked over Typhoon’s papers. “So, you’re going in to do a little cleanup, ma’am? Well, you’ll find no shortage of a mess, that’s for sure. Just try not to get lost in there.”

Typhoon raised an eyebrow. “I don’t normally patrol the slums. Anything I should be leery of?”

The legate, a tall, blue stallion with streaks of electric yellow in his mane, shook his head. “Not for a pony as capable as yourself, ma’am. Just be wary of the seedier parts of the slums. Soldiers go in, and sometimes they don’t always come back out.”

The Praetorian frowned and snatched her papers back, stuffing them into her armor. “Thank you, Legate. Keep up the good work here.” Turning around, she pointedly left before the older stallion could reply. Typhoon may have been one of the highest ranking Praetorian Guards, but the fact that she was still twenty-two and barely considered more than a filly still gave some of the other soldiers purchase to jab at her from time to time. Typhoon had learned to ignore it; her breath was more valuable for other things than to be wasted in dealing with legionaries poking harmless fun at her.

A few seconds later, her soldiers had assembled in a wedge formation at her sides, with Typhoon taking point. With a few flaps from their wings, they hopped over the barricade in the Choke and touched down in the center of the street. Once there, Typhoon turned around, halting them with a wing.

“I just want you all to be clear about one thing,” she said, looking each soldier in the eyes individually. “This is not Everfree. The slums are akin to a warzone. See those ponies?” she asked, pointing over her shoulder to a group of stallions wearing dirty rags near the shell of a decrepit house. Noticing that they had received the soldiers’ attention, the stallions bared their teeth and withdrew into the shadows, one of them flinging insults as he retreated. “Those are the kind of ponies we’ll be dealing with,” Typhoon continued once they were gone. “We’re Cirran, and we’re military. They hate us on principle.”

Walking up to each of her soldiers, Typhoon inspected their gear. Stopping at the mare, Typhoon drew the centurion’s sword and hoofed it to her, earning a surprised look from the soldier. “Rule number one: don’t get separated. If you get split, you’re good as dead. Rule number two: nopony approaches you. You give them warnings and make sure they approach slow and don’t have anything concealed in their robes. If they don’t listen to you, you have the right to defend yourself and cut them down.” Tapping the mare’s sword, Typhoon looked her in the eyes. “Don’t forget that.”

The mare nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Typhoon nodded in return before looking back over the rest of the group. “Rule number three: check your corners and walk along the center of the road. A lot of these ponies would love to take a stab at you from the shelter of an alley and escape into the shadows. Don’t become a casualty. And the last rule,” she said, opening her wings for emphasis, “is no flying. You fly, you’re a target for any unicorn who wants to do you harm. If you have to get out of a bad spot in a hurry, stay low and move fast. But don’t go straight up. Am I understood?”

The four centurions nodded as one. “Ma’am.”

“Good,” Typhoon said. “I’m on point. Starbreaker, Balefire, you two are with me. Hailstorm, Tau, you two keep an eye on our six. Make sure nopony sneaks up on us.” Receiving a series of affirmative salutes, Typhoon turned around and crossed the street into the slums. Her centurions followed hard on her hooves, watching their quarters diligently and not without a little trepidation.

Typhoon drew her own sword as she began to walk down the main road in the slums. Her wings angled out at her sides, the blades lining their crests meaning danger and death to those who thought about rushing her. She received more than a few cold stares, and several ponies spit on the ground as she passed. To her left, she saw a withered mare shepherding dirty foals away from the streets. On her right, she caught a quick glimpse of a stallion’s scowl before he turned away and disappeared inside his house. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled, and she quickly rolled her shoulders, letting her armor rattle as she worked out her tension.

The slums themselves were little more than districts of rotting wood and mud held together by dirt and excrement. The little wooden shanties were packed close together, so close in fact that Typhoon felt they only had one thin plank wall to separate them—at best. Several hastily thrown together shelters were piled literally one atop the other, and boards too irregular or too rotten to be used in construction were driven into the ground as fences. Everywhere, murky puddles of brown water collected in the divots of the muddy and uneven road, and the smell was enough to suffocate a pony. Grimacing, Typhoon skirted around a pile of refuse in the middle of the street. No wonder the nation was in turmoil, especially Everfree.

A stallion’s voice snapped her back to reality. “What are we looking for, ma’am?” one of her soldiers asked, Balefire by the sound of it. He had accelerated just enough to walk at Typhoon’s side, and his eyes watched the ponies standing by the edges of the street wearily.

“Anything odd,” Typhoon said. “Gang signs, shady figures, tails that we might have picked up…” she shrugged. “Anything that helps us connect a pony to these riots.”

Balefire scratched his forehead. “A tough task on a good day, if you don’t mind, ma’am.”

Typhoon nodded. “I know. I used to do lots of this work back in Amber Field. I know how to pick out shifty ponies…” Her voice trailed off as she spotted a figure turn around and slip into the crowds, drawing up its hood as it went. “Shifty ponies like that.”

She quickened her pace, leaving Balefire to whistle to his fellow centurions to hurry up. Once the new pace was set, he returned to Typhoon’s side. “Well, doesn’t look like you needed our help with that one, ma’am.”

“I didn’t bring you for your help,” Typhoon coldly replied. “Just your protection.”

It quieted the stallion for a few minutes, at the least.

Approaching the crowd of bustling ponies, Typhoon spread her wings and began moving for them to step aside, having to shake her bladed appendages every once in a while to get a particularly jaded resident to back off. Behind her, her centurions maintained the wedge, forcing the crowd further away. Their foreheads dripped with sweat as the crowd closed back up after them, shaking angry hooves and flinging rotten fruit and other harder things at them.

“Easy, easy,” Typhoon commanded her shaken guards. “Remember, don’t strike unless your life depends on it.”

She could just barely see the hood of the figure moving through the crowd. The pony glanced back on occasion as if he was checking to see where Typhoon and her soldiers were. Typhoon swore to herself as she realized with all the commotion it wouldn’t be very hard to guess. Looking away, she watched her target out of the corner of her eye as he caught sight of her to make it look like she had lost him. In that instant, however, she took note of what she could see of his appearance.

He was a black stallion by the looks of it. Not very tall and quite lanky, but he had a thick and protruding black horn set above hauntingly blue eyes. He didn’t seem to have a mane, as far as Typhoon could tell, but then again with the hood covering his head and shoulders it was difficult to tell. Before she could see more, however, he turned around, satisfied that nopony was following him. Frowning, Typhoon quickly nickered to her companions and immediately began to close the distance on him.

Shaking off a few last indignant ponies from her wings, and the splatterings of a rotten tomato from her cuirass, Typhoon finally broke through the crowd and emerged on the other side. She immediately took her eyes off of her target to make sure that the rest of her soldiers got through safe and sound. With a little bit of scuffling and ducking, they made it out mostly unscathed, and the five pegasi quickly trotted away to get away from the ire of the impoverished.

The only problem was now Typhoon had lost her target. She looked high and low for him, but the hooded figure was nowhere to be seen. Cursing, she regrouped with her companions and redoubled her pace. At the very least, there was only one street, curving to the left and into the center of the slums. If her target had fled, he had to have gone that way.

“Balefire, Starbreaker, break wide as we enter the square,” Typhoon commanded to the two stallions at her sides. “I want the place locked down. There’ll be a crowd there, but only a few exits. But make sure you keep the rest of us in sight.”

“Ma’am!” both ponies affirmed, quickly saluting with their wings before moving to break off. They didn’t get very far, however, before the mare’s scream cut them off.”

Typhoon, who had been looking down an alley, suddenly spun around. “Tau! What’s wrong?!” She darted over to the mare’s side, noting in transit that she didn’t appear harmed.

Tau was unable to speak. Instead, she just pointed with a hoof towards something in the center of the square.

Typhoon turned to look, just as the rest of her soldiers uttered curses and shouts. At first she didn’t see anything; just a wooden beam in the center of the square. Then she stopped looking past the beam and her gaze traveled up. She too cursed and opened her wings in alarm.

Hanging from the pole was what appeared at first like a collection of rusted metal. Upon further inspection, however, Typhoon could see it was anything but. It was the corpse of a pony, hanging by its tail, still wearing its armor. What Typhoon had mistaken for rust was actually its browned blood, dry and clinging to the skysteel and the brutalized coat of the pony inside.

“Mobius!” Typhoon cursed. Tightening her grip on her sword, she trotted into the square, her fellow soldiers not too far behind. “There’s no way they would… gods!”

She could barely—just barely—recognize the hanging pony as a pegasus stallion. His face had been beaten, cut, and burnt, and two charred and twisted masses of muscle along his back marked where his wings used to be. As the body slowly twisted around, the air pushing on it, Typhoon could see that his ribs had been caved in and scorched. His left foreleg was shattered in several places, and one of his eyes was missing. Hatred flared through the Praetorian, and she took an angry step forward. This pony’s death had not been quick. She had no intention of making the deaths of those responsible anything else.

Balefire cautiously approached the lynched legionary. His sword quivered in his mouth, and his wings twitched nervously. Typhoon followed him at a distance, with the rest of her soldiers taking up points around the square.

“I think I know what happened to some of those soldiers the legate said went missing,” Balefire commented, stopping at the foot of the pole. A drop of blood fell on his nose, and he jumped back, quickly rubbing it off. “Shit… and this was recent, too.”

“Recent,” Typhoon echoed. Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Whirling around, she looked over the square. Aside from her soldiers and herself, there was nopony there. The windows of the taller buildings surrounding the plaza were dark and empty. Even the noise from the crowd they had just pushed their way through had died off.

She gulped. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“Balefire, get his tags,” Typhoon ordered, walking away from the corpse. “Tau, Hailstorm, Starbreaker, keep your eyes peeled and get ready to pull out. I don’t want to be in this place any longer than I have to.”

Nodding, the soldiers set about their tasks. Typhoon took her position at the rear of the diamond formation her three centurions on the ground had set up, while Balefire opened his wings and fluttered up to the mutilated corpse. Finally reaching it, he choked back some bile and hesitated before gingerly reaching for the stallion’s neck.

“Hurry it up, centurion!” Typhoon called out, her eyes scanning the neighboring buildings. So far, she hadn’t seen anything; perhaps whomever had done this just wanted to leave a message. She turned around, looking past a series of low-lying wooden shacks, where she caught a glimpse of some shadows moving.

Balefire struggled with the corpse. “I’m trying, ma’am! He’s a little stiff; the tag won’t…” his voice trailed off as he caught sight of perfectly cubic diamond attached to the soldier’s tags. It was barely an inch across, but he could’ve sworn he saw something spark inside of it as he knocked it off one of the tags. “Uh… ma’am, what’s this?”

He never got the chance to know. With a tremendous explosion, the corpse was vaporized and Balefire was ripped to gory pieces. His shattered and twisted armor flew off at random, the pieces of skysteel skipping across the dirt in the square or flying straight through the wooden planks of nearby buildings. Typhoon felt a heavy shard of his cuirass slam into the back of her armor, little more than three inches below her neck, and deflect off the onyx plating. The shower of gore and blood didn’t, however, coating her blond coat and feathers a sticky red and black.

“Holy fucking shit!” Starbreaker screamed, stumbling back as he tried to wipe Balefire off of his armor. “Gods, what the fuck was—?!”

“Contacts!” Hailstorm shouted, taking two steps back as several figures materialized from the nearby shacks and shadows. “There’s a lot of them!”

Typhoon pivoted in place, her breathing frantic and ragged as the ambush closed on them. Dirty ponies all wearing heavy black robes surrounded them. As far as she could tell, they were earth ponies and unicorns; then again, if there were any pegasi in their group, their wings were hidden by their cloaks. The earth ponies wore bladed horseshoes, some rusted, some new, or clutched daggers and knives in their teeth. The unicorns behind them held straight longswords or curved Cirran gladii that they had scavenged from dead soldiers. Altogether, Typhoon figured there were about forty ponies to her four.

“Stand your ground!” she called, backing towards her companions. “Square formation and push forward! They aren’t trained; we can take them if we stick together!”

If her guards had anything else to say, they weren’t given the chance. With a maddening cry, the ponies closed in on them. In seconds they were entirely surrounded, and blood began to spray into the air.

The first pony to reach Typhoon, an earth pony holding a twisted dagger, shouted through the handle of his weapon as he lunged at her. Taking a deep breath, Typhoon sidestepped out of the way and angled her left wing into the air. Gritting her teeth around her sword, she pivoted down and to the right, bringing her bladed wing down on the earth pony’s neck. The whistling of skysteel through the air was suddenly replaced with a squelch and a brief cry of pain that soon turned to red gurgling as she cut through the pony’s neck.

She barely had time to kick that stallion away before three more ponies pounced on her. Time slowed in midair as Typhoon’s ice Empatha flowed through her veins, dulling pain and fatigue and calming her senses until there was nothing to focus on but moving her blades to ward off each attack. Her extended wings each caught a pony’s knife between their scales, and her sword scraped a gladius away. Grunting, she pushed forward with both of her wings, knocking the attackers on her sides back, and rotated her neck to get her sword on top of the swordpony’s weapon. With a slight shuffle forward, her sword glided up the scavenged Cirran gladius and sliced clean into the pony’s nose. While the sword didn’t go deep enough to kill, the burst of ice Empatha from the cirrus skysteel blade froze the pony’s nerves, causing him to collapse in a comatose state.

Flicking her wings, Typhoon used the hooked scale on each wingblade to disarm the attackers at her sides of their weapons, casting the daggers back over her head. One of the disarmed ponies tried to tackle her, but she folded her wing so that he leapt onto a series of razor sharp scales which split him open from neck to spleen. The other pony turned tail and fled, only for his spot to be filled with another assailant.

Behind her, Typhoon’s centurions were holding their own. Tau had one corpse at her hooves and was in the process of making a second, her sword skewering the length of a unicorn’s body. Hailstorm ducked under the sword swing of an earth pony and retaliated by slamming his helmet into the pony’s chin, almost assuredly breaking it and forcing the attacker to drop his weapon. With a practiced swing from his wing, Hailstorm was able to decapitate his foe and quickly block a slash aimed for his right foreleg. Next to him, Starbreaker had four dead and dying ponies scattered around him, their bodies tripping up his attackers and they tried to reach him. Fire ran down the length of his skysteel as his Empatha gripped the weapon, and by simply waving it he shied most of the earth ponies away before they could get close.

“Keep it up!” Typhoon screeched around her weapon as she plunged it through another pony’s body. “We’re cutting through them! A little bit more of this and they’ll scatter!”

Just then, several random shots of arcane energy went whizzing by Typhoon’s ears, sending her ducking for cover. Although not actually striking her like the unicorn had hoped, their shots still forced Typhoon to abandon a sword swing against her next opponent. The other pony faltered from the shots for a second, losing his initiative, and Typhoon made him pay for it with a savage uppercut that left her right wing embedded in his ribcage. Seeing a spark in the distance, she pulled the pony close and ducked behind his dying body, letting his flesh take the shots the unicorns fired.

There was a screech behind her, and Typhoon barely spared a moment to see Hailstorm fall and clutch at a magical burn on his neck. A rather hulking earth pony advanced on him, and sparing no time, pivoted on his front hooves to deliver a powerful buck from bladed horseshoes on his hind legs. There was an audible crack and a spray of blood as the front of Hailstorm’s face was broken apart from the kick. The pegasus collapsed, barely conscious and breathing, before the earth pony stomped hard on his skull.

Kicking away from the body she was hiding behind, Typhoon darted across the open space and forced her cirrus sword straight through the earth pony’s neck. The pony gasped and clutched at the weapon, trying vainly in his dying breaths to remove it, but Typhoon pressed her leverage and only wedged it deeper into his neck. Then her hooves slipped on Hailstorm’s splattered brains, and she fell onto her back, the earth pony collapsing on top of her.

“Commander!” Starbreaker screamed, waving his fiery sword in a wide arc to stave off the ponies in front of him before turning to help his pinned superior. With a quick shove he helped Typhoon force the body away, then spun in place to barely catch a unicorn swinging a floating longsword at him on the final scale of his wingblade. Typhoon immediately scrambled upward and ripped her sword out of the earth pony’s neck before she caught a glimpse of a massive buildup of Arcana being released in her direction.

“Down!” she shrieked, lunging forward just before the blast hit. A powerful explosion shook the earth and blasted the air aside, picking Typhoon up and flinging her across the square. She gritted her teeth as her armored body slammed straight through a wooden hut and kept going, knocking over a crude table and shelving before she finally hit something more solid and stopped. The breath was knocked from her lungs, and it took her a few seconds to stand up again.

Blood dripped from her face and down her armor, and her left eye was beginning to swell shut. Diverting a little Empatha to the wound, she managed to chill it enough to stop the swelling and keep her vision clear. She had lost her helmet in the explosion, and a quick search revealed it to be halfway lodged in the remains of the wooden table. One of the cheekpieces was badly mangled, so much so that Typhoon couldn’t fit it back on her head. Cursing, she chucked the thing aside and tripped her way back through the hole in the shack.

The ponies at the center of the blast, including Tau and Starbreaker, were just getting up. Looking skywards, Typhoon could see the unicorns responsible for the explosion standing on the roof of a nearby shack, their horns still smoking from the release of Arcana. Gritting her teeth, Typhoon spat blood around the handle of her sword and ran back towards the square.

“Centurions!” she called out, trying to reach them. “Centurions, here, here! We’re not done yet!”

Starbreaker made to take a step forward and stumbled, suddenly finding that the hoof he was about to put his weight on was no longer attached to the rest of his body. Down he went, blood spilling from his foreleg, and the haze of his pain obviously too much for him to even scream. Behind him, a unicorn approached with a longsword and plunged it deep into his neck.

“No!” Typhoon yelled, starting to run forward but immediately feeling dizzy on her hooves. She probably had a concussion from the blast, and moving fast only hurt her and put red in her vision. She tried to focus her Empatha to clean her mind while she still had the chance.

In the center of the square, Tau hopped up and looked at the ponies gathering around her. Completely surrounded and with no support, her instincts got the better of her and she spread her wings, taking off into the air.

Typhoon stepped forward, desperately waving a hoof to the fleeing centurion. “Tau, no! Get down, get—!”

Her words were cut off as the rooftops, bristling with horns, lit up. Arcane bolts filled the sky around the mare before one of them cut clean through her right wing. With a terrified scream, the centurion fell into a death spiral and slammed into the ground head first. Her body crumpled into a pile in the square and lay still, until it was shot a few more times from the unicorns on the rooftops.

Some of the ponies near Typhoon noticed her and began to advance. Stepping back, Typhoon realized that she was now alone, deep in hostile territory. When the first pony reached her and tried to buck at her with rusty horseshoes, the Praetorian sluggishly moved out of the way, avoiding the attack by a few hairs. With her slipping concentration, she barely managed to hook her wing under the pony’s neck and pull, releasing a fountain of red into the dirt below. Her head reeled and her stomach churned. She was in no condition to fight.

Apparently, she was in no condition to take a hit either. Hooves connected with the back of her skull, and she immediately collapsed onto the body of the pony she had just killed. The world spun in a dizzying array of blurry grays and reds, and she was left gasping for breath. Her whole body ached, and black spots dominated her vision. Her father had been right when he said the city was just as dangerous as the wild, if not more so. She closed her eyes and awaited the end, trying not to imagine the heartbreak her father would have when he returned from his journey to find that another of his family had been killed.

Thoughts of Tempest filled her mind, and she whimpered in despair as she felt hoofsteps approaching.

Instead, a noose of Arcana wrapped around her neck and pulled her up, choking her in the process. Her hooves clutched at the invisible and incorporeal hand squeezing the life out of her, but there wasn’t anything physically there to fight against. She was left to flail as she was brought face to face with a black unicorn with blue eyes, his horn awash in an emerald glow.

“Commander Typhoon,” the unicorn spoke. His voice was calm, smooth, and deep, and his teeth flashed white as a malignant smile spread across his face. “You should not have come here. You were much better off staying in the castle and dealing with the symptoms of our little plans rather than trying to find the cause.”

The grip on her neck loosened just enough for her to breathe, and the rush of oxygen to her brain allowed her to put two and two together. The unicorn holding her captive and threatening to squeeze the life out of her body was the target she had been chasing earlier. She kicked herself over and over in her mind. She should have known this was a trap! But the unicorn had been so convincing in pretending that he thought he had lost Typhoon and her soldiers. Because of that, all her caution had meant nothing in the end.

“Who are you?” she gasped, finding enough air to cough out the word, “Are you the one behind this?”

The unicorn smiled. “Not I, Cirran. Others. Others whom you’ll never meet. After all,” he said, smiling cruelly, “it’s hard to meet them when you’re dead.”

Typhoon tried to swing at his horn with a foreleg, but she was an inch too far. Frowning, the unicorn’s horn flared up again, and he slammed her into the ground while reapplying the pressure to her neck. “Now now, there’s no need for that.” Pulling a knife out of a pocket in his robes, he held it up to Typhoon’s face. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about our feelings in private.”

“Pr… private?” Typhoon wheezed. Her vision was beginning to fade on her. She needed to breathe, and soon.

The unicorn nodded. “A little someplace quite far from here. After all, I can’t just kill you; I need to know what you know first. And I know just how to get it.” The tip of his dagger ran along Typhoon’s cheek, drawing a thin line of blood.

The Praetorian was too occupied with struggling to breathe to notice. “You won’t get… anything from a… corpse.”

The black unicorn’s smile actually struck fear into Typhoon’s heart. “No. That’s where you’re wrong.”

Standing up, he took the dagger away from Typhoon’s face, but kept her pinned to the ground. “It’s much, much easier to get what you want from a corpse. They don’t fight back.” His horn flared one last time.

The blade sunk deep into Typhoon’s chest, right between her ribs, and quickly turned red as blood bubbled around it with each slowing beat of the mare’s heart.