Getting help from Vinyl could only take so much of a toll on Twilight’s nerves and body before she opted to find her own sanctuary. She’d still picked up some maneuvers for self defense, but using her as the punching bag was the last straw. That, and Applejack was starting to reek worse than usual.

“Warface, warface, I got it.”

Twilight anxiously stood before the slightly rust coated door of room 428, a bead of sweat ran down her forehead.

“Rainbow Dash had told you what attacked her. You’re lucky something worse didn’t try to tear you a new plot!” VInyl had said while swiping a wet cloth over Rainbow Dash’s bleeding flank. “On the streets, you could be murdered for a piece of bread. In the spires, the city lords drink the souls of ponies like us with their dinner. No mercy! No regret! You or them!

“Unlearn everything you ever thought you knew about friendship and pick this little tip up; everypony dies with a smile.”

And the smile Vinyl enacted was burned into Twilight’s memory, looking so willing, so content with death. The ‘warface’ Vinyl was so strict about was a very effective psychological weapon. The first time Twilight tried the warface, Vinyl connected a slap to the face.

“Bullshit! You didn’t convince me!”

It still stung.

Twilight readied a spell that enveloped her rear hooves in a blackened void-light. Vinyl had said it was for hoof-to-hoof combat, but never specified what it was supposed to do. Something about bucking.

She wheeled around, primed her hind legs, and launched back. The door then disintegrated on contact. It was time for the warface. She snapped up to stand tall, outstretched her wings, barred her fangs, and used her magic to make her mane stand and slither like a gorgon’s serpentine hair.

She hissed bitterly, “Everypony get out of here! This place is mine!”

The inhabitants, a deflated, blister-poxed man, his similarly diseased wife, and their son, not twelve years of age stared in a silent, momentary confusion before the man quickly opened a drawer, tossed two knives to his family and launched himself at Twilight.

She immediately dropped her act in terror, got into bucking stance again and struck the man dead square in the chest. He went flying back with the clear sound of several ribs snapping and a thick yellow sludge came oozing from his mouth. He still recovered and charged again, this time with his wife in tow and Twilight fled, managing to move faster than their affiliated bodies.

“What did Vinyl say about these guys? Headshots? Headshots!”

The architecture of the building was covered in spikes, so there was quite the copious number of ways she could do this. Twilight wrestled one back and forth until it snapped out of place and sent it hurtling down the hall, piercing the man straight through the forehead.

Her fight or flight instinct snapped off then and there and she froze. The scene seemed to go in slow motion as the man’s frenzied face became more lazy and limp. His forward leg buckled and the rest of him came crumbling like a house of cards, ending with a heavy thump on the floor.

The next thing she saw was the wife becoming even more wide-eyed and overcoming her illness into a sprint, and tackling her to the floor. The lady’s slavering, snapping jaws accompanied the dull blade she tried the thrust into Twilight’s throat against the resistance of her hooves. The little boy had a clear shot and as he brought his knife down for the kill, a size-seven boot said otherwise, driving into his face and sending him rocketing down the hall and crashing out the far window.

“GOOOOOOOOAAALLLL!” A familiar voice cheered, before grabbing the woman’s head and thrusting her knee up into her jaw with a solid round of snapping teeth.

For the first time, Twilight had been happy to see Cultist as she drove a dagger into the assailant’s skull and yank it back out of the limp cadaver with shreds of greymatter on the barbs. She worked its jaw up and down and performed the worst ventriloquism in the history of the art.

“Cho bee oar nawt too bee? Jat eez teh kwestyon.” She proceeded to throw it down and smash its skull under her bootheel in a splatter of rotten flesh and cranial fluid. “NAWT!”

Twilight staggered to her hooves, gasping and grasping for an understanding of what just happened.

“Luuks, yoo beet off moar tan yoo kan choo!” Cultist giggled, glancing at the eviscerated skull of the gangly man.

Twilight vigorously shook her head. “Whah... how? Where did you come from?”

“Mah parenchs! Hwer elshe?”

“No, I mean just now.”

Cultist pointed back to an open door not twenty feet away. “Herd teh noyze and rekognaized yoor skreeming!”

Twilight looked at the bodies with a wave of nausea bubbling up. It was bad enough that they were already writhing in disease, but now they were decomposing faster than anything she’d ever seen and a strange sight caught her attention.

A pair of dull green lights glowed in their bodies, which rose until two marble-sized orbs came rolling off their chests and onto the floor.

What Vinyl had done to Octavia came back to Twilight as a firm reminder.

“Those are... their souls?”

“Yeah.” Cultist picked one up and rolled it around between her fingers. She didn’t seem too interested in it though.

For a moment, Twilight considered what happened to Vinyl after she consumed one. A heightening of power of some sort.

”Hot damn! You don’t know how good this feels!”

But it was like cannibalizing the dead, a thought that made Twilight shudder and stick her tongue out in disgust. Cultist carelessly flicked the soul out of her hand and it shot straight past Twilight’s tongue, riding it into her mouth.

She choked for a second as it got lodged in her throat and the gag reflex kicked in, forcing her to swallow.

“What was that for?!” she coughed.

“Shorry.”

It was kind of sixty-forty mix in terms of Twilight’s feeling of relief and disappointment that nothing seemed to happen. No sudden sprouting of extra limbs, no feeling that she was on top of the world.

At least until now.

She doubled over as her abdomen rocked form the inside out in an explosion of an indescribable, pure euphoria that boomed outward like a tidal wave until it snapped away in the tips of her tail and ears. Her eye turned to the other soul and she licked her lips.

“You’re not going to have that one too, are you?”

Cultist shook her head and tossed the other to Twilight. As she popped it with great fervor, she thought, ’Is this what Pinkie Pie feels all the time?’

Pinkie sucked up the blue strands of hair like spaghetti and one last gulp brought her snack squeezing down to her belly. With a content, smiling sigh, she let herself fall back in a beanbag chair and rested her hoof and claw on her squirming paunch.

“How is it in there?”

After a couple seconds, her occupant responded, “Kinda nice actually.” Vinyl put her hooved behind her head and laid back against the rippling surface like a waterbed. “It’s warm, soft, and stretches easily so it’s almost roomy. What did I taste like?”

“Blueberry sour tape and lemon ice cream.” Pinkie recalled.

Vinyl pouted. “Hmph. I thought I’d be more of a pina colada. Anyway, you wanted advice with this Whooves you’re after?”

“Yeah. He keeps pushing me away, but I think it’s because he’s just not ready yet.”

“Mhmm. So you want something to speed up the process? There’s a method where you take a part of their soul, and they come to fall in love sooner or later.”

“But isn’t that like mind control? I don’t want to force him to like me.”

“No, no. You tell him you’ll give it back if he just spends a little time with you. The falling in love part, that comes naturally as he learns more about you. It’s kept Tavi and I together since half of me is in the gem in her tie. She says it works like catnip.”

Pinkie’s stomach grumbled as it picked up the taste of its meal and slowly worked itself into motion. To Vinyl it was like a wet full-body massage, until Pinkie started ‘helping’ by kneading her belly very roughly.

“Hey now! I don’t wanna be basted like a turkey and have the juices working faster. You can get me out of here, right?”

“Um... I think so,” said Pinkie with an air of uncertainty.

Vinyl let out a nervous chuckle and sat upright. “Let’s see if you can do that now actually.”

“Aww... Just a few more minutes?”

“No, I’d feel a lot better knowing I can survive this.”

Pinkie reluctantly got up and positioned herself front down to the floor and rear in the air to have gravity help. She started wheezing like a cat with an imminent hairball. Her stomach violently jerked and heaved, forcing Vinyl back up her throat. She used her tongues to pull her up and out like a cat from a sack, covered in spit and stomach acid.

Pinkie’s stomach growled again. “Now you know I can do it, can I have you back inside?”

Before Vinyl could answer, they heard applause from beyond the flaps separating the two rooms. Vinyl recognized the last few lines of the song they clapped to and shook her head.

“No can do it looks like. My shift starts soon.” Pinkie made an annoyed huff and let Vinyl slip from her hooves. “Might wanna take cover for this.”

After Pinkie ducked and curled up behind the beanbag chair, Vinyl shook like a wet dog, her mane and tail whipping the muck all around the back room in a spattering of purple slime. By the end, she was largely dry, only looking a little wet.

“Before I go up, how ‘bout we wait over a mug?”

Pinkie poked her head back up with a wide smile and followed Vinyl through the flaps. The Tome of Corruption was a small pub with rarely more than a dozen patrons at any time. Scattered on elegantly woven ottomans and stands were artistically decorated vases and pitchers which poured wine, blood, or some mixture thereof. The patrons partook in bowls of overripe fruit and dabbled in the arts of their choosing under the chains lazily hanging from the ceiling.

Some wrote stories, painted, or canoodled their lovers. Most have an unnatural grey-pearl tone to their skin and some of their eyes were animalistic, completely blackened with nary an iris or pupil to be seen.

The center of their applause was the cellist on stage. Octavia bowed her head with a half-satisfied smile.

The overseer of the establishment was a delicate creature, a balance of hideousness and enchanting beauty at the same time. She stood on backward-arched, cloven hooves, had silver rings pierced across her body, and four arms. One held a serrated sword, another carried a book on a chain, and the last two sported tremendously long and thin crustaceous claws, almost like Pinkie Pie’s.

She rapidly clacked the pincers in her own form of applause. "Bravo maestro, play on!"

Octavia nervously nodded and picked another song from memory. The woman motioned to a pegasus to dance with her, who graciously accepted.

Vinyl showed Pinkie to the bar area where a magenta pony hung on the racks. It had no legs but at least six long, spider like arms and crawled around, grabbing and pouring bottles and barrels for her customers. It smashed a bottle and shook it at Pinkie and Vinyl.

"There you are, Scratch! I thought you were gonna be late again. Who's your friend here?"

"Something to whet the whistle first,” the unicorn said as she took a seat “The usual."

“Coming up.” The web of limbs took down several bottles, popped their corks with strong thumbs, and tipped them into a special mixing container which she shook like a maraca and made a tall pour into two tankards, ending in a mushrooming foam finish.

Pinkie stared in wonder at this frothy treat as they were slid over and picked up with earnest. She immediately gulped down the whole thing, cup and all while VInyl took herself a long swig and slammed the mug down.

"Now, Berry, this is Pinkie Pie. Pinkie, Berry Punch."

"You passing through, Pinkie?" Berry asked.

She gave an affirming nod. "Mmhm! Me and my friends are staying until this Wadladladl thing blows over.”

“You mean the WAAAGH!!!?” Vinyl corrected.

“Oh yeah. It sounds like something you’d just shout every time you say it.”

“Well it is spelled in all caps if you write it, with no less than three exclamation points.” Vinyl took another chug. “It’s the only consistent thing about the orks.”

"I don’t think we have much to worry about,” Belly said while she ran a cloth inside a glass, “Because I heard the Brass Beast is coming back."

Pinkie giggled at the name, "That sounds funny. The Brass bass grassy nasty beast."

"He's nothing to laugh at.” warned Vinyl. “He and the pony he rides around on have wrecked this place’s shit so many times. He’s put his cult of Khorne flakes together out of the most vicious, bloodthirsty psychopaths in the city."

"Many say he spent a whole day in the Warp." Berry exclaimed.

"Warp time, or our real time?"

"Warp time."

"Poor bastard."

"How long is that in real time?" Pinkie asked.

"At least three years."

"The warp can't be that bad, can it?"

Vinyl raised a brow and glared at Pinkie as if she needed things explained slow and simple."You look at her and tell me a million of those isn't gonna fuck him up," she said and pointed to the daemonette.

At the conclusion of the dance, she had snipped the pegasus' head off. It's face silently laughed as she skinned it and fit as a bra cup for one of her three breasts.

Pinkie retracted her statement.

"Then there are horrors, flamers, and the lords of lhange,” Vinyl went on, “bloodletters and bloodthirsters, plaguebearers and great unclean ones, all fighting this endless, infinitely huge war in a dimension fucked up by the gods."

“Sounds like some party!” Pinkie said.

"Yeah, speaking of a party.” Vinyl wheeled around in her chair as the music stopped. “Yo Octavia, you're putting everypony to sleep!"

"I do grow weary of this style for the time being,” The daemonette tittered. “A change of tempo is needed!"

"And I'd be honored to provide it." Vinyl leaned to Pinkie and nudged her in the side, "These dipshits don't know anything about magic electronics. My stereo riles 'em up every time."

As Vinyl approached the small stage, Octavia’s objections were drowned out in applause for the unicorn and a patron began roughly dragging her away, barely clutching the cello in her side. She reached out with her bowstring, severing the human’s legs and dropping him to the floor.

"I'll get down myself!" she snapped, got up, and waddled off.

Vinyl brought the writhing, legless man to center stage and unsheathed his knife.

"Not before I take what I need." She hissed darkly.

Octavia sighed, took the ruby out of her tie and tossed it to her. Grinning, Vinyl drew out a fragment of her soul and consumed it. Cringing and moaning, her teeth grew long and fused with their counterparts on the opposite row, the notes across her body giving off a faint hum in random pitches. The wall fixture vibrated from the low, blaring sounds of her deep breathing.

"Dark prince of pleasure!" She screamed, "You demand perfection, entertainment, but my friend could not provide!"

Those writing, painting and pleasuring one another found their attention focused on her.

"Take this soul so that you may see that my time is worthy of your attention!"

Her horn crackled and sparked, striking the knife and she plunged it into the man's heart. He laughed with a mad grin as dark clouds began gathering around him, and moments later he was torn asunder as his flesh and blood caved into the blade, then burst into a howling pink abyss in the floor. From it rose a large assembly of turntables and a wall of speakers. She wrapped a cable around her horn, one down to her voicebox and funneled a great amount of energy into them. She drew a very long breath.

"You digging this air!? I think we need more air, and food and drugs and wounds and alcohol and everything else I didn’t think of!"

"I can't take it anymore! I can't live in these conditions!" wailed Rarity as she rolled up her materials in a bedsheet

Applejack amusedly watched, virtually refusing to help. "Ya mean it this time, or ya just gonna get over it agin?"

"No, this is the last straw!" Rarity held up a slab of armor that was quickly rusting over and growing weeping blisters. "You did this on purpose! I’ve been working on this armor all week, and now somehow it’s bleeding!"

"I said it was an accident! Ya keep goi'n on about how ah make everythi'n dirty and stink it up! Even if it was on purpose, I’d say it’s 'bout time ah got ya back for makin’ me feel like garbage!"

Rarity threw the chest plate at Applejack who ducked her head and Rarity stormed out with the sack over her back.

“If Twilight can find her own residence, I can too!”

"Good! I can't wait to see ya outta here!" Applejack scoffed.

The armor had hit Fluttershy, bouncing off the sheet that covered her. She turned to see what hit her but Whooves pulled her back.

"Focus on me, ok?" She nodded. He held out a scrap of brass."Just hold this and try to keep from taking it in."

She looked at the scrap with shaking eyes. "I-I don't think I can."

"Come on, timidity doesn't keep anypony alive."

She slowly held out her hoof and Whooves placed the brass right in the middle of it. The shard stung to the touch and began to sink. It rose back when Fluttershy put more concentration into it. Drops of blood that had replaced the iron mare’s sweat ran down her face.

Whooves tried to keep an honest, confident face, but it was sometimes shaken by how much maintenance Fluttershy was in convincing her she wouldn’t lash out at something as small as a fly.

"Good. Keep it there, just for a little bit."

She shivered, fighting to hold the shard without absorbing it. Small bumps rose around her joints, and down her spine that lengthened into spikes. As the mark carving in her chest cracked, her flaming heart started beating faster and faster.

The painful balancing act ended as she appeared inexplicably aggravated and Whooves snatched the brass back. Fluttershy felt sharp pangs all over when the spikes quickly retracted. She huffed with exhaustion and relief that the exercise was over.

"Still have to work on it," he said with a nervous smile.

Fluttershy nodded and returned to her safe room, the closet while the Doctor dragged a hoof down his face. "Applejack, you and Rarity really have to work out what’s going on between you.”

“Why should I?” she growled. “She practically hates me now, sayin’ all I do is stink up the place and leave piled of maggots where she sleeps.”

“Whatever she feels about you and what you feel about her, It might just be the feelings Nurgle and Tzeentch have for each other. They’re opposites where Nurgle is about stagnation and despair and Tzeentch is hope and change. You’re not drifting apart, they are trying to take you apart.”

Applejack rolled her jaw and pondered it. “Maybe we can sort things out if I tell her that too. I’ll see if I can catch up with her.”

Rarity peered into a crack in a door. The space was free of occupants and full of things that filled her with such eagerness, her horns crackled. Under the archway at the bottom of another apartment complex some ways away from where her friends were, she had a good view of her surroundings with the eyes all over her body.

"You or them... Everything is free game." she repeated, Octavia's words resonating in her head like an angry beehive. "This is going to be easy!"

She contemplated how to get inside; she leaned on the door, and accidentally wiggled one of the scything talons under her arms into the lock. The extra limb had come from nowhere some days ago. It was then Rarity found out Tzeentch was into random, and rapid mutations. Noticing this, she figured she could use it to feel for the tumblers. She closed her eyes in concentration, the rest of them following soon after, found a couple of the metal nubs and clicked them.

A thump hit her shoulder, hard and heavy, and when she opened her eyes, a disfigured light green unicorn had her gnarled hand on her shoulder and shocked her to the ground in a jolt of magic.

"You thought you were just going to break into my home?" the unicorn hissed with her hand clasped around Rarity’s neck. Rarity could barely shake her head. before the unicorn shouted, "Yes, you did!" They stamped on Rarity’s head with the unmistakable sound of her jaw snapping, and picked her up, shaking her madly. "You think it's that easy!? To steal a home? To ruin six years of work?"

The unicorn raised their crooked arm and engulfed it in flames. "Nopony is going to keep me from my destiny. I must become whole!"

The blaze brightly illuminated the archway and as they brought it closer, they hesitated. The fire extinguished and they grasped Rarity's arm, fervently examining its humanoid bone structure. Feeling a severe burn rise in her body, Rarity raised her other arm to the assailant’s face and let her storm unleash. Lightning surged between them and her captor foamed at the mouth, dropping the home invader. The pain forced Rarity to finally blackout.

"Is... that... it?" Lyra sputtered.

She ignored the twinges and stink of her smoking fur and dragged Rarity inside.

"One step closer."

Rainbow Dash took another crack at going outside, taking a far more cautious approach by avoiding contact with the wicked denizens below.

As she broke the clouds, the heat and light of the sun was absent and her jaw dropped at what was there. Howling winds blew from twisted columns connecting to a second layer of clouds far above. She gazed up at a humongous wall of hardened white clouds with countless hatches. Great banners of a partial solar eclipse streamed from the parapets, some of them immaculate, while others were worn and tattered.

The wall appeared to be moving closer, as well as the spikes braced along its base. She walked backward, keeping pace with the wall and scanned around at the array of towers and obstacles.

“Woah...”

The banner nearest had woven on it, Victoria Cloudsdale

“C-cloudsdale...” Rainbow stammered.

From her fillyhood home, gone was much of the ancient Heliopolitan architecture, gone were the open archways, and what struck her most was the missing waterfalls of vibrant rainbows. Where the Rainbow Factory used to be, she saw its smokestacks billowing a pitch black smoke.

This couldn’t be it. Whatever this was, it was a fortress, not a city.

She’d been practicing her transformations and tried for something to get by the hatches. She visualized her target form. ’Just like a changeling. Think like a changeling,’ she thought. Her feathers started folding in, collapsing her body into a smaller and smaller form until a rainbow-colored ladybug flew up to the wall and crawled under the smallest gap in the hatch.

Inside was a soldier in the dark, leaning against the wall to the side of the hatch. All along the interior was a line of cannons, and their crews looked to be combat ready as the powder-ponies ran the precious gunpowder to their guns and the others loaded their weapons.

’What's going on here?’

She buzzed through the battery, following the soldier traffic in the opposite direction until she was on outside the wall, on the inside of the city. It was in much the same state of alertness as the wall. Columns of militiaponies marched in good order to their positions along the defenses. The soldiers themselves were almost hilariously under armed and armored. Most had mere scraps of armor, leftover pauldrons or leg guards, while a noticeable number didn’t have any armor at all. Nothing but thick leather or thick cloth to protect them.

They were led by these mad looking pegasi chanting passages from a book each of them carried. Unfortunately for Rainbow, they seemed to be in another language, but the carvings on the inside of the wall was plain and clear. across the great span were etched countless names and texts. One of the many plaques along the base read:

Those who gave their lives to the defense of the Holy City, beacon of the princesses’ light, shall have their names remembered as long as these walls stand. They are the martyrs against the Terror. They are the defenders of Cloudsdale. They are the Sentinels, and the princesses know the name of all who have fallen in their names.

Rainbow’s antenna twitched in confusion. “What is this? It’s like the princesses are pretending to be gods! And... Are these all the names of everypony who’s died fighting here?”

The words and the thought of how so many could die in one place made her feel strangely queasy. She looked up from the plaque and saw a name engraved slightly larger than the others.

Thunderlane - steed of mercenary captain Voland of Voland's Venators

"Last one to die is a sissy!"

‘Thunder? I knew that stallion!’ the little Rainbug thought.

She hovered along, to find other names. Dumbbell, Score, Hoops, those bullies who harassed her in her filly hood. Less than pleasant memories of them filled her thoughts.

As she hovered along the wall, more personally close names popped up. Blue Skies, Nimbus, Snowcatcher, Rainbow Dash—

She covered her stinging eyes and her ears were suddenly full of wicked laughter. When she opened, a new name was engraved where hers was, now in a leafy halo.

Soarin - 1st Lieutenant to Governor General Spitfire

Her heart sank with several similar etchings listed under Wonderbolts Company. The originals who she idolized were carved at the top. She read the whole list and every original Wonderbolt was there, killed in battle, all save Spitfire.

Rainbow put a tiny leg against the wall and hung her head. "What else are you gonna take from me!?”

"Everything. We will take your name, your identity..." the voices cackled.

Thunder rocked the clouds, sounding more like a roar. The clouds started to lurch and churn more violently. Lightning shot across the sky and through the cloud columns. What few civilians who were still on the streets scrambled for their homes.

The lightning branched into several arms as it struck all over the city, leaving behind creatures similar to the fury or blasting buildings apart. The instant the creatures landed, they began an ungodly, and relentless slaughter on all those they saw, driving tooth and claw into the body of the pegasus closest to them.

Rainbug could only watch her home town’s populace be rendered limb from limb. So many of them dropped their weapons, clutching their heads or clawing at the ground as if trying to escape before the battle even began.

They were going mad, but not with fear; something was entering their minds and rendering them mental.

“But why isn’t it happening to me?” she thought.

“Because we own you, and we wouldn’t want out property to break,” responded the voices.

A streak of light gray smoke launched up from the top of the city, arced down and came streaking toward the battle. Rainbow made them out in blue armor plate and streaked in yellow lightning bolts.

The leader, with a voice that commanded authority, ordered, “The militia wither in the face of the neverborn. Let them wither, for your task is the daemons themselves!”

“Aye!” the hundred pegasi acknowledged.

“For the Wonderbolts!”

“For the Wonderbolts!”

“Break!”

With great precision, they broke into 10-pony squads and dove on the chaos. Extending the retractable hoof blades built into their armor, they tacked and almost instantly took out over a dozen daemons in the first strike.

Being a tiny insect, Rainbow took to making a beeline for the darkness of an alley.

“I can help them!” she thought, watching her favorite group fight for their survival. “I can turn into something strong, right?”

Rainbow tried to visualize again, mentally painting herself in the image of a Wonderbolt, but then she remembered,

“Wait... My friends. I have to be careful, be safe. For them.”

She returned to her original form in a flurry of feathers. “I have to find somepony to hide with.”

She turned around and found a Wonderbolt behind her, reeling on his hind legs. The last thing she saw was his steel-clad hoof driving into her face, and the last she heard was,

“We finally have you, daemon.”

"Never again... So... c-c-cold...."

Twilight sat so close to the fireplace, she might as well be in it. She was moist with sweat, yet shivered as if in an ice bath. Applejack was barely able to tell between one who was sick or well anymore.

“So they don’t got no thermometers,” Applejack said as she came back from the kitchen with a bowl of water and a rag. “But we’ll see if this’ll cool ya down.”

Of course, Applejack couldn’t touch it as she’d contaminate it immediately. So Twilight dipped the cloth in the water by hoff as even her magic seemed impaired.

The water boiled and hissed the instant it touched her, creating a plume of scalding hot steam.

“That ain’t natural,” Applejack gawled.

Nevertheless, Twilight slapped the rag over her forehead, producing the same screaming steam cloud. Even then it still stung like ice cubes.

“There ya go! Lookin’ better already!”

In Applejack’s eyes, Twilight’s cracking and burning fur was a sign of improvement. The unicorn found it slowly getting more and more difficult to breathe, and even the wood boards beneath her smoldered and burned.

“Hey, Twi. Eyes open, okay?” Applejack clopped her hooves in her face, drawing no attention. Twilight became more lazy-eyed and let the rag fall from her forehead. She finally faced Applejack, opening her eyes a little more. “There y'are. Feelin’ any better?”

Chomp

“Hey uh, sugarcube, you kinda bit my neck and...” Applejack pushed a little to get Twilight off, but she didn’t budge, her fangs still firmly locked in place. “If you can just let go, that’d be great.”

Applejack tried to stay calm and pushed a little more forcefully, but Twilight refused to move and completely broke as she heard Twilight start to draw blood.

“GAH! Get off me!” Applejack backed up, but Twilight followed, countering every move she made, throwing her head side to side or just trying to run. Twilight kept her head anchored in place.

“Fluttershy, help!”

The machine mare poked her head from the closet and saw the alicorn and pseudo-zombie in their parasitic tug-of-war.

“She ain’t listenin’ ta nuthin’! Get her off!”

“Just like separating fighting animals,” Fluttershy whispered to herself. “Just like that.”

Fluttershy didn’t have to take two steps closer before Twilight let Applejack go, clutching her stomach like bombshells were going off in it. Applejack was drained to a living bag of bones. All of her coagulated blood, pus, and plasma were sucked away and Twilight was reaping the side effects of Nurgle’s blood.

It would not be pretty.

The spears at her back kept her moving and with her forelegs tied above her head as she struggled to walk upright. Rainbow Dash was tired from her concussion, her head in a throbbing quake.

A priest chanted passages from a large tome, in his unintelligible language that made Rainbow feel even more nauseous. The Wonderbolts led her through the fortress with a rope gagging her mouth.

Traversing from the outer walls to the inner, Rainbow saw how Cloudsdale had changed. It was a dystopia like she’d never seen. Some kind of religion, nothing less than a cult ran the place, throwing an almost blinding amount of their iconography on every surface. The soldiers were everywhere and became better armed and armored toward the center until she was brought into a citadel guarded by the Wonderbolts themselves.

What was once a troupe for airshows was now a militarized order, headquartered at the center of the city. The bastion of towers and capillaries of walkways spoke of an intended maze of architecture.

Rainbow was brought high up in the most fortified tower of the complex, up a great winding stair that ended with a chamber of ten cages, suspended from the ceiling. They surged with warp energy, containing daemons banging at their bars, yowling and screaming curses and unholy litanies as the energy was constantly drawn out of them.

“Welcome to your new home,” a sun-yellow pegasus smirked.

Rainbow squeaked when she saw her. On her navy blue fatigues was pinned striped military honors badge with more colors than any rainbow. The tassels of her gold shoulder cuffs swayed with her fast, purposeful stride. Her mane was as fiery as ever, but there was an obvious sign of harm. In her right wing, some of the feathers and skin was cut away, exposing a gunmetal grey surface where a bone ought to be.

She poked the joint in Rainbow’s kaleidoscopically colored face. When Rainbow had changed back, she was an unrecognizable palette of constantly shifting colors.

“A couple of iron rods can go a long way. Next time, try to cut through the whole wing.” The pegasus started going back to the cages, but paused a moment and looked back with a dark grin. “Oh, that’s right! there won’t be a next time. Wonderbolts! Line up!”

The door was closed behind Rainbow and all the wonderbolts rapidly assembled in formation before the yellow pegasus. Rainbow felt in a void by herself with the burning gaze of the soldiers on her.

“How are the casualties at the Celestial Wall?” the general asked an older soldier.

“We counted six hundred militia and thirty percent of the Wonderbolts detachment, Miss Spitfire.”

“Hmm,” she nodded. “Not as bad as last time we passed over Mordheim.” She turned to the rest of the warriors. “ At ease. Let me introduce the newest member of the family, the scourge that had plagued us for seven years, the Changeling(1).”

Rainbow shook her head and muttered unheard objections through her gag.

“Don’t be shy! Come on over and meet your caretakers.”

Rainbow squeaked again and didn’t move.

“Aw, it’s scared,” Spitfire mockingly cooed. “Here, let me help.”

She kicked Rainbow’s hooves out from under her and she landed, face first on a n unyieldingly hard floor. Spitfire dragged her along by the mane and held her up in front of one of the Wonderbolts.

“This is Thunderstorm. His team will be taking care of you during the day.”

The stallion snorted a hot, misty breath in Rainbow’s face with a sneer.

“This is Silent Night. You can guess when you’ll see him each day.”

This one’s eyes didn’t move, but stared daggers into Rainbow’s eyes. They actually stung.

“Oh, you two will get along great. I can feel it! Last but not least, is Lightning Dust.”

Spitfire dragged Rainbow before a mint green mare whose amber-eyed gaze was most hostile.

“Permission to speak freely,” she said.

“Granted.”

“You remind me a lot of Rainbow Dash.” Lighting moved her face closer. “I hate Rainbow Dash. And guess what.”

“Whaah?” Rainbow sputtered.

“I’m your top overseer.”

“Ah nah.”

Spitfire started bringing Rainbow to the only open cage. “I can’t wait to see what you really look like. I heard you have three arms, but even you don’t remember what you look like.” She threw her in like a duffle bag and slammed the cage shut. “Now let’s find out.”

The priest drew his gem encrusted warhammer and the ringing stung Rainbow Dash's ears. Her insides squirmed slightly. He hit it again and to the prisoner it was head splitting. Her skin tore and bone poked through. The pain was unbearable but her headache prevented her from forming into something normal. One more grunting strike and she lost it.

More flesh and bone seemed to materialize from nowhere. She looked like a growing, endlessly shifting cactus with unnaturally huge thorns. The soldiers fixed their guns on her, anticipating disaster. The energy of the transformation and another slam from the hammer sparked the cage into activation and electrocuted her. She shrank down and developed light blue feathers and fur. Spitfire nervously brought her rainbow-colored ascot to the outside of her suit to compare it to the growing mane of the prisoner.

"This...isn't..." Her head ached, trying to grasp what she was seeing. "K-k-kid...?"Rainbow dash lay convulsing on the floor, wide-eyed and foaming at the mouth. "You... saved my life once. Why?"

With no answer from the seizing prisoner, Spitfire tore off her ascot and sadly looked up at the soldiers. "What are you looking at!? Just... Back to your duties! GO!" They hastily returned to their original posts and Spitfire ran out.

Lightning Dust watched Rainbow with a growing sadistic smile.

“Dreams really do come true.”

It wasn’t that hard, following the smell of Rarity’s burning fur. Not that it was a good thing, because this meant Rarity must be undergoing several uncontrolled self-shocks.

One of the few benefits Applejack saw in her state was that her repulsive stench kept a small bubble of space around her that many other people tried to avoid.

“Make sure Rarity’s alright and it’s right back ta help Twilight.”

She caught herself in mid yawn and her yes slowly closing and forced them open again.

“Nope! Not fallin’ asleep. Not fallin’ asleep.”

She picked up her pace into a weak and hasty trot. After Twilight bit her, it took awhile for her body to fill back out to where she could stand on her own again.

The smell continued to lull her into slowing down and it wasn’t too long before the aroma of burning flesh and meat brought her to a crawl.

“Stay... awake... I’m not... a... a...”

Lyra resecured the straps holding Rarity against the eight-pointed star on the wall. Rarity’s fur was charred to patches of blackening ashed and she was clinging to consciousness.

“Don’t pass out now,” Lyra whispered hastily as she lightly slapped Rarity’s cheek. “I need one more surge and the rift can work!”

She ran back across the lab space and clipped a pair of clamps to her horn and sat behind a smaller star. The room was rigged for this. Wires led back and forth between Rarity, Lyra and the rift circle. As she charged her horn again, Rarity was linked to her and squirmed in futile resistance that ultimately resulted in her releasing another deluge of energy, coursing across her and down the wires to Lyra.

She received it with little grace, stumbling as her muscles spasmed, but managed to keep enough control to redirect it again to the second star. It sparked and cracked with a flaring witchlight and each prong cast a beam into the center of its circle. Lyra grinned as the disturbance grew to take up the whole desktop circle in a murmuring pink and purple abyss.

“Finally...”

She looked at her crude arms. Their backward elbow joints and fat sausages of fingers would be an unmissed sight. She cautiously stuck her arms through the light and the moment she was up to her wrists, it yanked her in up to her shoulders and elicited the grinding pain as if her arms were being rent apart.

"Great Raven." she started painfully, "Dark lord, my god, I beseech thee. Great has been my pain, long my suffering, but I have kept hope in my heart that I would take another step toward humanity. Your designs are magnificent and your plans for the world are grand. I love the part I play, however small, and by thy grace, I seek a gift for my service."

Rarity began coughing a mixture of blood and dust in her cries as the rift howled and groaned, carving away at Lyra’s arms. It's steel arrows bent toward her face but she remained steady, confident in the Changer of Ways. The arrows poked at her face, increasing in pressure until they drew blood. She grunted as the rift suddenly exploded, sending a wave of residual magic across the room. Lyra was thrown back, landing against the far wall as Rarity’s spike faded.

Lyra raised an arm to wipe her cuts and paused at the sight of them. The inside of her arms were still settling, but she didn't notice the squirming of her bones and muscle and marveled at their form. She wiggled her fingers, the popping and aching that came with every movement was gone. For the first time, she could raise her arms over her head and fell backward again, unfamiliar with her range of motion. Rarity couldn't tell if her captor was giggling or crying as she ran the refined appendage down her face.

"If only you could see me now, Bon Bon," Lyra gasped as a tear escaped her eye. “Why didn’t you follow me?”

There was a single, hard thud at the door that Lyra ignored to approach Rarity. "Thank you, so much! I couldn't have done this without you!" She grabbed her by the neck and her elbow ignited.

Another thud.

"I just have to show thanks for this and you get to be the lucky sacrifice to Tzeentch." The fire traveled down her arm and Rarity's chin just started to burn when the third thud rocked the door. But still Lyra tried to focus on her sacrifice.

Low moaning shook her resolve. In a frustrated grunt, she cast flames under the door to scare off whatever was there. The whoosh of air and heat was powerful. Something certainly burning on the other side, the crackling of flames assured her of this, but the moaning and pounding on the door persisted. The center of the door developed bubbles that fizzled and steamed until a hole was being bored in it. The hole enlarged to reveal a snapping mouth with four rows of teeth, its caustic green saliva burning through the door. Lyra tried to ignite it again but, being moist with bodily fluids, it kept going with its only its oily mane burning.

"Darn it, die already, stupid plague zombie!" she shouted.

It rammed the door again, shattering the weakened woodwork with its head and forced its forelegs in.

"No, no, no!"

Lyra kicked it back out and breathed deeply. Her arms blazed, fired through the hole, and engulfed it in a hissing firestorm. Rarity sweated from the heat, even on the other side of the room. Lyra slumped over, panting forcefully, and wiped her nose when it started to feel wet. Her hand was streaked in red.

She slowly walked out to see her handiwork through the smoke. The moaning had stopped but she still heard movement in the smoky arch. She stepped on a scorched skaven's head and as the smoke cleared, the rotting pony was busied in devouring its intestines, itself also severely burned.

"Nurgle isn't taking my sacrifice, you sack of puke," spat Lyra. She kicked its head, but it didn’t react, continuing to eat the rat is if nothing else mattered. Lyra went back in, unhooked Rarity and lugged her over her shoulders.

She lugged her past Applejack, bearing Rarity’s weight on her back, when a splitting headache seized her and froze. She stood motionless for a full two minutes, staring into the sky and then grinned.

"His brilliance truly knows no bounds."

"App...Applejack...h-help." Rarity mumbled.

Applejack remained fixed on her meal, her eyes covered in dust scratches from having not blinked in days. She didn't notice Lyra carry the burnt, multi-horned unicorn back inside and levitate the rat's body far away, making her mindlessly follow.

When she came too, she couldn't tell how long her thoughts wandered and rubbed her eyes, only smearing a bloody sludge into them. She found herself chewing on a soft spongy substance with something in her other hoof. She felt stiff and her vision came back into focus. Her body had been burned black and she stood over a huge rat's skeleton with its skull cracked open. She swallowed the mush in her mouth and found half a brain in her hoof. She stepped back, trying to grasp the situation while a rain of maggots fell from her abdomen. The ground seemed to end and she almost fell off the roof of the building she was on. It was a good thirty foot drop.

“H-h-how did I get up here? How am I gonna get back down?”

There was no sign of how she’d gotten up either. No pile of boxes, stairs, nothing but a few holes in the wall and a trail of her slime leading up the side.

The sight of this brought the first sensory feeling in a while to her foreleg, where something was squirming underneath the skin. A line of lumpy objects balled together in the hoof burst the fleshy cover. Applejack tried to tuck it under her other leg to contain it, but it kept changing with the sickening snap and clatter of bone.

When It stopped, she didn’t know what to expect, but her leg felt heavier and longer. So heavy, it was almost unwieldy in fact. An ossified axe’s head, lined with short but sharp canine and molar teeth, and supported by the twin bones of her foreleg had torn itself into being. For reasons she didn’t understand, there were even the faces of three ponies’ skulls on the flat of it, arranged in a triangular pattern.

Applejack’s first reaction was to calmly and carefully—

She grabbed the axe head and tried to yank it off. She didn’t care for the damage as she wouldn’t even feel it, but it was firmly rooted on her. Even as she rolled around on the roof, frantically prying at it to the point that her other hoof broke off, it refused to budge.

She went rolling over the side of the roof and the instant before she hit the ground in a screaming freefall, she could swear she felt her heart leap.

Splat

After a moment of wondering if the white light would appear, Applejack found that it didn’t. She could still hear the people in the street, and was acutely aware of the melody of bodily destruction she made.

It did feel weird , trying to manipulate the shattered joints and tendons that were torn asunder. As she peeled her face off the concrete, a shredded lump of swollen yellow muscle fell from her mouth and wetly slapped to the cobblestones.

It was her tongue.

Still, the axe was in perfect condition, even after she saw her ribs bursted through her chest, hind legs bent backwards, and a fairly large radius of bodily fluids spread out from ground zero.

She couldn’t stand on her eviscerated limbs, so settled for reaching out, digging the axe’s spike into the ground, and dragging herself on her torn belly.

’I’m alive! Ha! I’m alive! Sweet Celestia, I gotta get outta here!’

Author's Notes:

(1). There is a Changeling daemon in the Old World, it is a daemon of tzeentch. Its abilities are just like the insectoid changelings, but don't get them confused. One's the mlp bugs, the other is the chaos daemon who's been terrorizing Cloudsdale.