Alarms screamed throughout the tortured corridors of the dying strike cruiser. Fire bled from severed chemical lines, explosions ripped through the ammunition banks, and precious atmosphere bled into the void through fatal rents in the ship’s hull. Mortal slaves died by the hundreds as bulkheads were breached and sections of the ship tore away under the relentless fury of capital guns. Debris spun away as the cruiser rolled under the punishing onslaught of macro shells and lance beams.

Deep within the ship, in the engineering sector, were two armored figures. Astartes, ancient and terrible, betrayed by their brothers and traitors in turn, were surrounded by the sundered bodies of friend and foe alike. The defenders had killed their aggressors, but at cost. And now the enemy was wreaking their final vengeance.

Only one remained truly alive in the room, held in the unmoving arms of his battle-brother. He reached up and placed a hand against the high-crested helm of the Rubricae, using the last of his strength to impart a message, mind to mind, soul to soul. One last command.

++I am so sorry, brother. The Long War was forced upon you, the Rubric, the millennia of nothing. But at last it is over. Be… free…++

The Rubricae watched the life fade from his longtime lord and friend with his ephemeral sight, the light of his soul flickering and fading. He barely registered the armored form in his arms fall to the floor from his grip. He failed to acknowledge the disintegrating hull around him. He did not perceive the warning klaxon of a warp reactor overload. All he saw was the blinding brilliance of the energies building in the warp drive.

And then the world was Chaos.

Twilight Sparkle had always loved the night sky. Stargazing was a true joy and the new telescope she had been given was a housewarming gift from Luna. The huge crystal castle that was now her home could certainly use some warming up. It did not have the pleasant coziness of home that Golden Oaks library had provided. Perhaps new memories made with her friends within her new abode would help it grow on her.

She contemplated one of several astronomy books she had laid out on the balcony to reference during her stargazing, and a quill floated softly above an inkwell placed next to a mostly blank tome. Her own personal star journal. She was just beginning a lazy outline of her thesis on the nature of the Horsehead Nebula and what may theoretically lie within its foggy confines when the quill violently scratched across the page.

She watched, jaw agape, as a nova of wholly unnatural colors blossomed into the night sky for a moment. She flipped the page and began frantically taking notes on the phenomenon, noting as much as precisely as she could, until she recoiled. A sickly aura washed over her, senses screaming at the presence of something at odds with the world. As quickly as it came, it passed, the light in the sky fading.

Lights across Ponyville flashed on, ponies throughout town awoken by the disturbance. After a few moments, the night sky flickered with a shooting star here and there. The meteor shower quickly grew to a meteor storm, and the awoken ponies in town gasped in wonder, summoning others to enjoy the display together.

Princess Twilight Sparkle, however, raced inside, calling for her number one assistant. She had a letter to compose and send, and duties to perform.

And most importantly, there was research to be done.

The Rubricae stood up. It had been thrown about mercilessly after the strike cruiser had taken an incredibly unnatural plunge through the immaterium. It reached slowly to its thigh, finding nothing there, then to its back, similarly missing what it sought.

Boltgun.

It panned its gaze around, and while it did not yet identify its weapon amongst the sandblasted wreckage, it did see something else.

Jutting up at an angle just shy of vertical from a section of the wall which now served as his floor was a glinting khopesh. The sorcerer’s force sword.

It moved slowly towards it and stopped within arms reach, head tilting down as if to contemplate the sword. It remained this way for several minutes, sand and bits of immolated hull brushing against pauldron and greaves in the dry wind. Finally, as if a decision had been reached, a heat blackened gauntlet reached out and grasped the sword. With a powerful yet smooth tug, the blade was free and in hand. After a moment’s more pause, it was slung at its hip, ancient mag locks holding it in place with a metallic thud.

The Rubricae panned its gaze around the wreckage again before finally spotting what it sought. It walked over to a pile of debris and pulled a battered but functioning bolter from the pile. The disturbance shifted the detritus and it fell away, revealing the burned out armor of the sorcerer. Another Son turned to naught but ash.

Once more the Rubricae stood as if in contemplation. Then, it turned to face a rent in the engineering section that revealed windblown sand and sky of the most remarkable blue, taking the sentry stance it had employed for millennia.

Her first task had been to send a letter to the other princesses. The Sisters were currently hosting a delegation from the Griffon Empire, and thus would be unable to depart to investigate. Cadance was similarly occupied with a representative of the Zebras. The only consolation was the furnishing of a platoon of the Royal Guard to assist Twilight in maintaining the peace and quarantining anything of concern.

While helpful in many capacities, their stony demeanor and utter deference to her left her exasperated rather quickly, although she would admit that they certainly secured the impact site she had traveled to quite quickly and effectively.

Much of the debris she had seen had burned up before touching down, but a handful of larger pieces had made landfall. Of them all, the biggest had landed out in the desert near Appaloosa, which is where the only unoccupied princess had traveled. Most of her friends had been too busy, or in Fluttershy’s case, terrified, to accompany her. Rainbow Dash had accomplished her daily tasks in “ten minutes flat” and proceeded to catch up to the group in record time.

As such, she was floating lazily above Twilight, and was about to complain about how boring it was for the seventh time when she noticed Twilight had become completely still and was wide eyed, wings tightly pinned to her sides. Rainbow rolled over and followed the alicorn’s gaze and proceeded to fall out of the air onto her hooves and let her jaw drop.

Within the largest block of wreckage stood a towering form, what appeared to be a charred statue. It was nearly twice the height of either of them, and bore marks of combat, gouges and nicks in its surface a liturgy of endless conflict. It stood silent sentinel over a similar form, lying sprawled and broken in a pile of twisted metal crammed into the corner during the impact.

They approached cautiously, and, noting that it remained completely unmoving, Twilight closed to inspect it. Under the blackening that covered the majority of the armor, she saw the gleam of metal with small flecks of blue, paint peeled or burned away by the intensity of heat and friction. Across its chest it held a boxy object with a protrusion curving downwards, a hollow cylinder extending from one end with a hole on each side. When she made her way around, she noted the curved sword hung on its hip, and the more she saw, the more she realized it was not a statue.

It was a suit of armor.

Then she inspected more closely, noting runes etched subtly into the trim all over the armor, most prominent on the pauldrons and plastron. Its high-crested helm bore two crystal lenses for eyes, the emerald fixtures glowing almost imperceptibly. The runes were unlike anything she had ever studied, and some seemed to turn away her vision, or make her head go numb. Staring at others too long threatened a headache or nausea. But they all had significance, of that she was certain.

Giving Rainbow a warning to get some distance, she reached out with her magic to examine it. The amount of magic that had been infused into the armor was absurd, and it felt nothing like anything she knew. But it was almost familiar. Where had she sensed magic like this before?

The Crystal Empire, in the chamber under the throne. The door infused with magic.

Sombra’s dark magic.

As the shock of recognition filled her mind her attention wavered and her magic touched something wholly different and foreign to her. It was a presence, something even more fundamental than magic.

She touched a soul.

She looked up into the eyes of the armor as the dim lenses blazed into life and a consciousness older than anything she had ever known overwhelmed her. She felt locked in place as the world slipped away. Visions of alien worlds and unimaginable battles of a scope she could scarcely comprehend flooded her perception. She saw glass pyramids, and a strange cyclopian being with coppery skin and untold wisdom in his single eye. Knowledge and lore flashed through her mind’s eye too quickly to glean anything useful. Then came the righteous fury, the countless battles, the martial pride and the loss of those who were as brothers. Then a verdict, despair, and betrayal. Unholy magic and a transformation.

It was at this point that she began screaming. Rainbow Dash had been shaking her, trying to snap her out of it, but upon hearing her scream, she turned and lunged at the source of the problem, futilely pounding away at unyielding ceramite. Guards came storming in, some trying to aid the princess, others discovering just how useless the armaments they possessed were against the menacing suit of armor. Spears merely scratched at the charring. Spells deflected off ceramite and the ancient wards etched into the very fabric of the defensive plates.

Twilight perceived none of it. She was too busy desperately willing her mind to cope with the impression of transformation left in her mind. She was aided by the numbing sensation of altered existence, the hazy and foggy memories that had accrued during millennia of servitude as naught but an automaton. She feared she would never break free until she perceived the final lasting mark on the soul.

Be free.

And so she was again.

It had been standing for the better part of two days before the creatures had arrived. Auto-senses had detected movement and pheromone traces in the wind and indicated movement outside the sundered engineering block. No significant electromagnetic signals indicated a lack of higher technology, and magnetic signatures indicated simplistic weaponry comparable to the late middle ages of Terra.

Little of this made any lasting impression upon the consciousness within the armor. No threat was present, and even if there was, there was nothing here to defend. Self defense was not even a concern.

They had immediately frozen in place when they spotted it. It watched impassively as one of the creatures approached, curiosity overcoming the fear in her posture. Then the horn protruding from its equine skull began to glow and a familiar sensation brushed against it. It was not until the mental connection was made that consciousness truly manifested.

His soul hungrily drew strength from foreign energy. He felt a power similar to that of his sorcerous brethren, yet on a completely different wavelength. And as he regained a semblance of self memory returned as well. When this pool of experience connected with the new energy, he felt that connection form.

His mind was immediately awash with views of a grand city built into the side of a mountain, an immaculate alabaster creature similar to the one before him, a rural town and all manner of insane creatures and magics. His analytical mind, forged in the libraries of Tizca and honed by the warrior-scholars of the XV Legion Astartes, processed it all even as part of his psyche boggled at the bizarre new knowledge he was acquiring. He witnessed feats of spellcraft so very different to the ones he had witnessed in his service to the legion. He experienced a transformation so far removed from his turn to dust that he might have wept had he been capable of the act.

And then it was over, and he did not ponder what he had observed any further as the power receded and his consciousness regressed once more.

The Rubricae stood passively as unicorn and pegasi guards continued to wail upon it in futility.