At first, Rainbow Dash thought it was a mountain range that reared up suddenly into the sky. Getting closer, however, she made out monolithic towers, gatehouses, and banners. It was too big to be real.

Lightning Dust’s pencil flew across her notepad, recording the sight speedily. “At least eight hundred feet tall, ground to walking level… You trying to mimic a fish or something?”

Rainbow Dash finally shut her mouth after some minutes in awe at the titanic wall that filled the horizon. Towers that were castles in and of themselves, decorated with golden griffons and dotted with gunports, offshooting lookout growths and multilayered firesteps. Airships of Equestrian design lazily drifted between towers like fat bumblebees, but whether they were on patrol or ferrying men and material was a mystery.

Lightning Dust replaced the pencil with binoculars from her saddlebags. She was efficiently strapped with equipment. Binoculars, bandolier, snub-nose pistol, lever-action carbine, cracker ration, canteen, and more. Rainbow Dash carried a similar array of gear, save any firearm.

Reconnecting with Lightning Dust had been a little less than cordial. Lightning didn’t like new meat for her team, but a shapeshifter? Even Rainbow couldn’t mess it up that badly, she thought. And being the master to her inexperience, it felt good to show her up in the beginning. Grudges from fillyhood died hard.

“Archaon’s not gonna like this,” Lightning murmured, tapping the pencil to her lips. Glancing at Rainbow Dash, she was fidgeting with the trappings of her own equipment vest.

“They couldn’t load you down with any more?” she snapped. “Maybe lug around a whole campsite.”

“It’s called logistics, Dash. Amateurs who only care about being ‘tacticool’ don’t last long. Trust me, I’ve needed everything on me for one thing or another.”

"Even that rubber chicken I saw you pack in your bags?"

"Used it once to distract a tentacled elderbury bush," she shrugged.

Rainbow blinked. "What?"

"They really don't like you getting close to take their berries, so you need to throw something at them to distract. Lifelike rubber chicken? Perfect." She looked a little annoyed at Rainbow's stare. "What? I ran out of food, it was a long mission."

"Anyway…" Rainbow said at length, "I’ll fly in there and scout it out myself if it means I can get out of this for five minutes.”

Lightning Dust puzzled it over, scanning the highest ramparts through binoculars. They were too far to make out more than specks of people moving atop them. She pulled a pair of marble-sized crystals from a pouch.

“No distractions. Get the layout, potential weak points, and most of all—”

In the time it took Lightning to blink, she was looking at a perfect copy of herself. “Keep your form?” Rainbow said mockingly. “I got it, for the tenth time.” Her forelegs shrank to stubs, and disappeared into her barrel, mane and fur darkening to glossy brown. Now a twitching eagle, she snatched the gem in her talons.

Lightning gathered up the equipment Rainbow had shed. “I’ll hold down the fort, you stay discrete.”

Rainbow saluted with one wing, and took off toward the man-made mountain. She glanced back to where Lightning had hunkered down, and couldn’t spot her, already invisible in the foliage. Climbing, she could feel the altitude, the chilling, thinner air, and hugged close to the sheer sides of the wall.

“I’m losing sight of you now,” the shimmering marble buzzed. “Good luck.”

No luck, all skill. Rainbow thought with a grin.

She perched atop the hammer of one of many golden griffons adorning the tower, beak slack at the infrastructure put in place. Rail lines ran to both ends of the horizon, and on them were two trains in queue at a station, letting troops off by the hundreds. Lifts hoisted men in padded undercoats, materiel, artillery and more to the peaks of the bastion. Extensive barracks, warehouses, medical stations, and…

A buckball field?! Ouch, my fillyhood.

Rainbow sailed lower, eyeing a group of galloping horsemen in gleaming armor heading for a dome structure connected to the wall. The building itself was surrounded by engraved lodestones and etched in row upon row of runes and arcane scripture.

Serfs grounded the horses as the knights dismounted and addressed a tall grey mare and man waiting for them. Rainbow stuck low to the grass, changing form to a squirrel and, scurrying past the handlers, pretended to gnaw on the marble like an acorn.

Hands shook hooves, introductions brief. Inky Rose, an outright depressed-looking mare, her dress webbed in spider silk, buttoned with onyx arachnid-shaped jewels. Ludwig Schwarzhelm, white-bearded and wrinkled. What business did that guy have in such heavy armor? Kurt Helborg; apparently he and Schwarzhelm had a history. They joked, giving each a slap on the shoulder.

“I found a group that looks important,” Rainbow squeaked. “Do Schwarzhelm and Kurt Helborg sound familiar? I’m close to the both of them.”

She could hear faint chewing on the other end. “Yeah. Schwarzhelm’s the Emperor’s bodyguard. Helborg’s the highest general after the big E himself. If they’re in the same place, it’s definitely something important. Keep on them.”

“They’re going in a pretty empty room. I don’t think I can bring this with me.”

“Okay. Communication silence. I’ll be waiting for your contact.”

Rainbow Dash buried the marble in the grass in the crevice between the structure and bastion. She shifted into roach-form, colored as the cobblestone floor.

The snow continued to fall in blizzards, unrelenting and growing seemingly stronger as the Norscan army marched further into Kislev. In truth, the Ice Queen of Kislev was not yet done with her deadly command of the elements. Beasts of burden pulled ploughs, and giants dragged their feet to make paths. Yet Norscan resilience kept the army moving even in the harsh conditions. Survival of the fittest was always the rule in northern society; keep up, or you were food for the hounds.

Cheerilee and Twilight Sparkle commandeered the yurt of one of the many chaos cults attached to the horde. That of The Murder was dedicated to the Changer of Ways. The cloak of the grandmaster drifted gracefully in magical suspension in the center.

Cheerilee sipped a steaming cup of tea. The vapors were intoxicating, the sight of a skull throne filling her thoughts. “Tell me, Twilight. You’re standing on the shore of a lake, and you see a filly drowning in the water. what would you do?”

Twilight was almost offended by the question, and that bit of ire crushed the blood fruit she was juicing into her cup into a raisin. “Save them.”

“Even if they were foolish enough to jump in without knowing how to swim?”

“Of course. They need to learn the importance of those skills.”

“And what if they try to fight you off, because they’re afraid of you?”

Twilight folded her webbed wings in tighter, and took a sip. “Save them anyway, kicking and screaming.”

“So you know you’re in the right?”

“They might even be ungrateful, but I think they’d prefer not being dead.”

Cheerilee got up and headed for the grandmaster’s cloak. She passively compared the immaculate white silk and blue feathers to her tattered rags. “You seem quite confident. Let me ask again, why did you want to see me?”

Twilight sipped her tea, pondering for a long moment. “Did you ever ask for what you have now? Do you have any regrets, coming to this point?”

Cheerilee stared. No face could be seen under the blackness of her hood, not even the ambient light could reach in. Twilight had yet to see an inch of Cheerilee not covered in bandages, scripture paper, or cloak.

Cheerilee wrapped the cloak around herself. “Great individuals would seek power, to elevate themselves and their people in the eyes of their gods. But it’s the gods themselves who spin the threads of fate. For those they choose to do their work, great power is thrust upon them. Come.

“When Equestria burned, and ponykind was hurled through the Immaterium, I think I lingered longer than most. Days and years blurred, but what I saw will stay with me forever. In that time, I found that this was the way. All must learn this, whether their eyes are opened and they see the truth, or if we send them to the gods directly.”

Cheerilee chuckled, throwing the cloak around Twilight’s neck and lacing it up. “I love what I do, Twilight. I love the young, the impressionable. That’s always been the case since I started teaching and my cutie mark appeared. I didn’t ask for what I became, but I thank them for it. Countless champions have razed cities, killed millions for what you’ve been given. I feel it.”

Cheerilee placed a hoof on Twilight’s chest. She felt the heartbeat of a storm, swirling immaterial power and… tension, bound up and miserable.

“There it is. You’re fighting it. I could see something was wrong since Archaon’s coronation day. You looked uncomfortable.”

Twilight undid the feathered cloak and threw it back to the suspension field. Her expression turned ill, frustration and fear fighting for supremacy. She levitated the teacup to her lips and downed it in a single swallow.

“So much of the time I feel like I’m going to explode,” she growled, trotting around the perimeter. “It’s happened twice before it just runs roughshod, and I don’t feel like myself. The first time, I caught fire, and the second, I woke up with broken teeth, and claw marks on my neck. I don’t know what’ll happen if I slip up again, but I know if I let it build up too long, then anything could happen.”

Cheerilee cantered alongside her. “Archaon too had a crisis, much like yours. He was once a templar of Sigmar, and read of a prophesy that the one to bring about the reign of Chaos would be him. He went to the Great Cathedral in Altdorf, and prayed before the statue of the Heldenhammer, alone. The one destined to destroy his Empire offered himself up on a silver platter in despair and surrender, and what did Sigmar do?”

Twilight slowed to a halt. “Nothing," she whispered, realisation washing over her.

“Nothing.” Contempt dripped from Cheerilee’s voice like venom. “If you have any doubts that this power is anything but a gift that only needs to be controlled, let them die here. You’ve already shown tremendous willpower holding it in until now, but it's time to let yourself breathe.”

They both went back to the tea set. Cheerilee poured a cup of Dread Bloom tea and offered it to Twilight.

“To a clear head.”

Twilight took the cup, and a deep breath. Cinders left her fanged jaws in a sigh.

The reports from forward scout teams were spot on. The bastion stretched from the Sea of Claws to the World’s Edge Mountains, and positively radiated magic. With the altitude advantage, imperial guns could reach far. Too high for any siege tower, and the rock itself actually healed itself even as it was bombarded by hellcannons.

Information discovered by scout team Rainbow Dust was most valuable. The Emperor, the princesses, the Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic in person, generals, and more top staff would gather to install Valmir von Raukov as commander of the Sea of Claws sector. A single blow could be struck to decapitate the Empire from within. Pressure would have to be applied another way to maintain the appearance of the circling predator.

The day the hordes of Chaos came within view of the Auric Bastion, the entire length was alerted. Forty-thousand stood ready, expecting minor skirmishes, and probing attacks with throwaway-hordes of screaming cultists. The bastion was armed and manned. The day passed in quiet and, as night fell, the sky caught fire.

----------------------------------------------

The wind whipped at Volkmar von Hindenstern, hot one moment, biting cold the next. His robes and scripture parchment whipped wildly, several purity seals having already been torn away and cast skyward. Sulfur and the coppery stench of blood was on the wind. What sorcery was the foe attempting?

Countless campfires burned among the horde, twinkling as though the earth and sky had been reversed. The epicenter was a swirling vortex of iridescent flame, impossible colors, and oozing twisted faces of every expression.

“Don’t look at it for too long,” warned Volkmar, hearing someone vomiting on the lower firestep. He marched between two towers, the loud hum of an orbiting airship’s engines mostly drowning out the chanting and laughter far below.

In his years of study and battle he had seen such several such fires before. Meant to breach the walls between realspace and the immaterium, and bring forth the horrors of the void. He wondered how many sacrifices were made to open this rift. How many thousands of men, women, children? He recited the Words of Warding aloud, and several guardsmen joined him, knowing it by heart.

Good men, he thought. Here they were, like Wilhelm III, and the men of the crusade of Magnus the Pious. Here, these men would carve their glory into the flesh and steel of the most hated enemy.

Volkmar felt a speech coming on, but had no time, as the vortex burst, and a flood poured out.

No amount of preparation could truly make someone ready, the first onslaught fell so suddenly. Its herald was a salvo from hellcannons, firing high, their shots arcing like mortars.

Rushing for refuge inside the towers, some were caught outside when the rounds landed. Detonating bolts of soulstuff struck the top of the wall and boiled men to meat-slag within the fireballs, and surrounding survivors screamed, cried, turned weapons on themselves and one another, or hurled themselves from the walls in madness. The fire-flood crashed against the Bastion like great ocean waves against cliffs, boiling and screaming at the touch of the holy magic binding the walls together. Innumerable daemons churned and howled in the miasma, clawing at the too-smooth walls to gain a grip.

The defenders reeled, stunned. Hundreds were already dead or seriously injured as the Bastion was bombarded in dozens of places. Officers rallied the dazed soldiery, and the reply began. With rifles, crossbows, dozens of great cannons and mortars, handheld and artillery-scale hellstorm rockets, the response was monumental. Once they’d begun to fight, a gleeful fury took the Imperials. At last they could address the enemy and fire in anger. It was absolving.

Dozens of cannon batteries opened fire, peppering the ethereal horde with grapeshot and high explosive, vaporizing thousands of daemon-spawn back to the warp. The planned killing fields were more than two-hundred meters deep, and the assault ran three kilometers along the wall.

Volkmar knew this assault could not be stopped by force of arms alone. The tide continued to rise, as if all the world beyond were filling up with evil, but it couldn’t continue indefinitely. Power was needed to maintain this rift, and this would be a battle of attrition. Which would break first, the spirit of the Empire, or the souls of the foe’s sorcerers? Volkmar bellowed his calls to action roaring hateful defiance to the burning sky as the daemons clawed up to the ramparts. He waded in among the troopers, white-knuckling the Staff of Command, and struck the first monstrosity in reach with his golden warhammer.

Despite even the magics enchanting the Bastion, magic was still the stuff of the warp. Trickles of daemons bled through the bastion, reaching the other side in breaches a hundred at a time. Each was contained by warriors on the ground, but still at cost. A food silo was set ablaze, a mortar battery butchered and general confusion in sending up reinforcements.

“So many. So many,” drolled a mind-numb officer, well into the third hour of the attack.

Living towers of daemonflesh arched up, latching onto the ramparts with hundreds of spindly, eight-fingered claws. It vomited nurglings and acidic pus onto the soldiers, clearing the way for what may become the first foothold on the Bastion for the hordes of Chaos.

It would be ended by the Hero of Hell’s Reach, as this particular stretch of wall would be known. A warrior whose name would never be known, but a grenadier by the amount of ordnance he carried. He dove into the monster-tower's gaping maw, swallowed whole in its mindless greed, and detonated in its throat, decapitating it in an squall of rotten gore.

After the fourth hour, the tide receded. The remaining daemons of Chaos still tried to crawl forth to kill, but the power sustaining them was gone. Scant few would be able to draw another drop of blood before fading away, and the ground outside the wall was lifeless. The defenders cheered wildly. After action reports would record forty percent losses among the first defenders.

The Auric Bastion had held.

Between the Empire and Border Princes lied the expanse of the Grey Mountains. There were few speedy routes through the southern reaches, one of them being Blackfire Pass. Three great battles were fought there between Man and Dwarf, and Greenskin kind. Here was where the eternal alliance between Men and Dwarfs was signed in blood as Sigmar and High King Kurgan Ironbeard defeated the hordes of Vorbad Ironjaw.

A pilgrimage town was built in the walls of the pass, alongside the dwarfs of Karak Hirn and Zhufbar. Dwarfen statues, two hundred feet tall lined the kilometer-wide valley, set in among jagged obsidian and waterfalls of liquid earth.

It was midday, yet every soul was asleep. In the markets, in the streets, at work, the guards, pilgrims, and farmers slumbered in the sun.

Three jet-black carriages rode into the town, the lead letting out a stream of purple haze that swamped the land in sleeping magic. The withered carcasses of horses pulled them, whipped and driven by immaterial, chittering spirits. They moved with unnatural silence and grace, disturbing none as they sped in and pulled up before the Mausoleum of Blackfire Pass.

Vlad von Carstein was first inside, clipping to his armor the keys he took off a guard. He brushed a hand along the crypt’s shelves, the remains of officers and various unit leaders, dead flowers and personal items entombed with them.

Nightmare Moon maintained the sleeping fog over the pass. Her horn burned bright with the effort, but she still had power aplenty to mix the winds of magic for necromancy. “So the letter to Franz was designed to be rejected?” she asked.

“A thought seeder, yes. With the northmen at the gates, the Patriarch’s project will fail, and they will be desperate, knowing they swatted our hand away. Who better to shore up a failing defense than the dead themselves? Would you care to take first pick?”

“Gladly.”

With a thought, every shelf drawer shot open with raking slams. Twelve Drakenhof Guard inspected the crypt in silence, pushing aside mindless corpses that began to walk again with their flaming skull-bearing tower shields.

Mannfred bore his position with simmering anger. Rising alongside the first of the von Carstein bloodline, he had enjoyed almost unlimited influence in Vald’s absence after the first of the vampire wars, but no longer.

The Mausoleum forked soon after the entrance. Vlad and Mannfred went one way, Nightmare Moon, the other.

“Oh, this looks important,” she smiled.

A wide octagonal chamber spread out before Nightmare Moon. The yellow and black banners of Averland hung from each side, illuminated by the glow of magically infused crystals. At the center were a pair of coffins, one of wood, the other engraved in sculpted obsidian and gold.

Nightmare Moon rounded the central coffins, unable to find any names. She glanced up, spotting one of the Guard moving to pry one of the coffins open.

“Stop. You will remain at the entrance here and tell me when Mannfred or Vlad are coming.”

He nodded, and took up the post.

Tendrils of magic spread out from her horn, seeping into every coffin as she channeled necromantic power. She could feel the power sinking into the very ground, the catacombs must run deep. Screaming erupted from every one, a hellish choir that fought against their return to life, coffins violently shaking with their convulsions.

Nightmare Moon opened them, and the dead marched out. A command staff, by the looks of them. A drummer, standard bearer, and more than a dozen great swordsmen. Still, the central two coffins didn’t make so much as a noise. She leaned over the corpse inside, staring into its empty sockets for some sign of animation. Finally, she had an identification on it, engraved into its onyx-black armor, Marius Leitdorf. On the inside lid of the second coffin’s lid, Daisy Kurt von Helboring II

And in a fraction of a second, its fist connected with her face.

“We will never surrend...errr! ...Wh- What is this?”

While Nightmare tended to her muzzle, Leitdorf sat up, dazed and confused at his command cadre shambling about like drunks. Breath rattled out of his ribcage in an eerie laugh, and he gripped the sides of his coffin, gaily bouncing in place, and loudly jarring his bones.

“Ha ha! We’ve won, didn’t we? Strange hospital, this is… Miss Helboring!” he cried at the shaking, rattling coffin beside him. "Don’t just stand there, you daft fools, help the poor lady!”

His guard stumbled to assist and tore off the lid. A desiccated, white-furred horse jumped up, whinnying and bucking men away in panic. Leitdorf guffawed like a madman, clapping his hands together while the recently-raised animal kicked and stumbled around the floor, narrowly missing clocking him in the jaw with a hoof.

"Yes! You made it, dear! Bless every one of y—"

“ENOUGH!” Nightmare Moon bellowed, her already-powerful voice ringing through the cramped walls like a church bell. Her mighty exclamation forced the raised men to their knees by sheer force of will. Even Helboring sat still and attentive like a well-trained pet.

Just as smoothly, Nightmare Moon gave them a quick glance up and down, wrinkled her nose, and said, “Make yourselves presentable. Off with this meat weighing you down.”

The wights began to pull and scratch at their tight skin, peeling it off in slivers, tearing into their own guts and ripping them out. Control, subjects. This was what it was about. Dominance. From these beginnings, a grand new army would rise.

Leitdorf and Nightmare moon locked gazes. She could sense his confusion, and a million questions in his mind. He leaned to his horse. "Miss Helboring, you didn't tell me you had such a frightening grandmother."

“The greenskins were beaten, wight, and that is all you need concern yourself with. Your men clean themselves, they’ve slept for a long time. Join them.”

“The battle’s won? Good then.” Leitdorf tended an itch on his cheek, that scarred and peeled until he was skinning his skull. Climbing out of his coffin, he extended a hand to Nightmare Moon. “Usually, I have someone to introduce me for me.” His skin was loose, and his skull was bare and caked with dry blood with a single demasking pull. He brushed off and replaced his poofy hat.

This one’s a clown, Nightmare thought. “I know who you are. Your history is enough to fill an anthology. Another time for your tales, we must go further to wake your men.”

“Sleeping, the slackers,” Leitdorf growled. Drawing his sword, he took Helboring by the hoof, and charged down the stairs. “Come, help me rouse these sloths to meet your gran. Wake up ya whoresons, we have a guest!”

“You had better have been a genius in life,” Nightmare muttered. “Guardsman, we’re going further down. Come.”

“Yes, master—”

A crump of metal and a grunt cut him off. The guardsman collapsed in a heap with a crossbow bolt through his cranium.

Impossibly silent, several figures in black armor and crimson helmet plumes strode into the chamber, firing crossbows into the undead with mechanical precision and speed. Nightmare Moon turned her puppets around, even as they dropped and the light of unlife extinguished from their eyes. Nightmare attempted to resurrect them again, but the necromantic energies slipped around them to no effect. The knights dropped the crossbows for their blades as the dead fell upon them.

The knights did not flinch in the face of the growing terror that snuffed out all light, and penetrated their minds to fill them with terror. Faith and duty, and rest for the dead. The Knights of Morr would serve.