“Natz, what’s wrong?!” Matt shrieked, his own horn aglow. The only reply he got had been nothing more than an off-white hoof pointing at the area beyond the tank. He turned around and his jaw had likewise dropped open upon seeing the distant dots accompanied by the sound of beating hooves.

“Great, are the hippogryphs of Frostbite coming to maul us all?” Lance groaned, following Natalie’s hoof towards the tank. His torn ears swiveled, their irregular and tattered ends as upright as a normal set.

“They couldn’t have followed us with the storm raging last night.” Anna shook her head, squinting her eyes as she peered at the vast area behind the tank. Gradually, oh so gradually, the sound of many galloping hooves picked up in intensity. “And maybe it snowed again and covered the tank’s tracks…”

“Then what, pray tell, could be making that noise?” Alexander questioned, turning to the green-maned unicorn with a perplexed frown on his beak.

Twilight got onto her hooves, her own horn shimmering in a magenta aura. She glanced around at everyone else, only stopping when her eyes hovered over Katie as the wraith pried herself from the snow. The thin changeling shook her head free of the snow, only for her long ears to stand upright and begin twitching afterwards. One ear turned its folds to the west and back, and the other ear turned east and back—these particular movements almost immediately caused her to quirk a brow.

“Are your ears alright?” Twilight asked nervously, her question garnering a look from the wraith.

Katie’s eyes had narrowed. “They are alright,” she answered, her hollow tone now adorned with a faint note of bitterness. She glanced down at the snow and threw her front hooves into the crystallized white, pushing small mounds aside with an almost suspicious amount of haste. Twilight watched as the thin mare frantically dug into the powdery residue, shouting a frantic “Cover me, please!” as she disappeared from sight.

Anna turned around and spotted the hole, and the snow that’d been pushed aside in a frenzy. A green aura enveloped the snow piles and heaped them into Katie’s oversized gopher hole and patted it down so it became even. The magic spread the snow so thoroughly that it looked as though nobody had dug into it at all, let alone been launched into it at some point.

She trotted over and glanced back at the tank, plopping her rump down on the spot just as the distant silhouettes started to become clearer as they approached. She squinted her eyes and began to make out unicorn horns and black eyes with glowing dots on frighteningly pale stallion faces, all with colors so blanched it had been hard to tell whether or not they were white to begin with. The incoming pale ponies also boasted clawed horseshoes on the ends of their legs that hacked and slashed away the snow, thus propelling them onward.

“Bunch of armored wraiths incoming,” Anna hissed, her muzzle scrunching as a frown graced her features.

“Wraiths?” Dash piped up, looking at the green-maned mare with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” Anna confirmed with a nod. "Kinda like our changeling, except in suits of metal."

“In suits of—they're armored?” Applejack mused, eyelids slanting in worry.

“We won't know until they show up,” Alexander sighed, shaking his head. "I wonder what they're doing here."

“Well, if they’re armored, like you say…” Twilight’s eyes briefly glanced at the green-maned unicorn and widened until they were the size of dinner plates as she paused, “doesn’t that mean the wraiths have might a military force?”

“Doubt it,” Lance answered. He frowned, and he gradually rose a hoof to reach for his gunblade. “If they do have a military force, then I might want to meet with their commander.”

“Why do you want to meet their commander?” Dash flew a few feet into the air and threw her front hooves in front of herself for emphasis.

“It's just Lance being Lance. He wanted to meet you, and met up with Frostbite's elder yesterday.” Alexander shot the rainbow pegasus a look marred with a firm frown. "Maybe the wraiths don't have a commander," he joked.

“Then what explains their armor?” Anna questioned in a serious tone, keeping her eyes focused straight ahead as the thundering of hooves on soft snow got louder.

“Maybe they just found it lying around somewhere,” Matt replied and shrugged. He opened his trap to continue speaking when he saw at least a dozen stallions with horns and black eyes sporting glowing dots dart around the tank like deer. All of these stallions had sported black tails billowing about like shadows and sets of rusted, firm knight-like armor of deepest black on their bodies. They had helms covering their heads, necks, and most of their faces. The backs of their neck-and-head-covering helms sported openings for their equally dark manes to fly freely in the wind as they galloped.

The armored wraiths stopped mere feet from the group, and all had their eyes narrowed as they eyed the pic’-n-mix bunch before them. One of the stallions took a step forward, this one the only one amongst the troop that had greaves on his legs.

Matt took a step towards the wraith, horn still aglow in gold. “What do you want?” he asked simply.

“Listen here, insolent pony,” the wraith with the greaves hissed, orbs of purple alight with anger, “what me and my fellow wraiths do is none of your business.”

“Oh really?” Matt skeptically asked, eyeing the armored stallion as his horn began glowing in a purplish-black aura. The wraith let off a spark of magic next to him, from which appeared an old and somewhat-rusted spear crafted almost entirely of metal. He scoffed and let a flash of magic appear next to his black-and-white frame, and from it he procured the Heaven’s Gate. “Then why do you draw your weapon?”

“Pot, kettle, black, Matt,” Lance scoffed, the handle of his gunblade resting in the crook of his foreleg.

“You haven’t the room to yak your claptrap, Lance,” Natalie groaned, a hoof connecting with her face. She ran the hoof down the bridge of her muzzle before setting it down and looking at the lot of armored, black-maned stallions that had all let sneering grins frame themselves upon their muzzles.

The only real differences she could spot between any of them, aside from the greaves and the spear the one addressing Matt happened to be juggling, were the color of the orbs set into their black voids. There were some reds and jades, one set of purple, and another of gold. “Pray tell, why do you guys look the same?” she asked. “Are half of you secretly changelings?”

Instantly, the whole troop of wraiths snapped their heads in her direction, their sneering grins morphing into hardened scowls. One raised a horseshoe-laden hoof and pointed it at her accusingly. “Shut your mouth, insolent whorse!” he cried, to which Natalie responded with a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes.

Matt’s eye began to twitch. “Excuse you?” he hissed, both eyes narrowing as a gleam, cold as ice, flashed in his irises. His lips tugged into a frown, and one so firm Lance shot him a look before glancing back at the wraith stallions.

“Why did you just call a mare, who you know next to nothing about, a whorse?” Lance snorted with a huff, a torn ear flicking as he awaited his question’s response. "For all you know, she could be princess or something."

He didn’t have to wait long. The wraith who shot the insult at Natalie began to smirk once more as he said, “Because all she’s good for is having cock shoved up her cunt and getting knocked up.”

Now, Natalie’s eyes narrowed, and she began to glare at the wraith. With a glow of her horn and a flash of light, she called forth her crystal-tipped staff. “Why don’t you come over here and say that to my face? I’m right here, and all ears, you lifeless bastard,” she spat, pointing her staff at the stallion as if it were her hoof.

The Mythonian mares, including those who had just snapped out of their sky-high-induced dazes in that moment, exchanged concerned glances. They turned their attention to the wraith stallion as he waltzed right up to Natalie and leaned in so close to her their muzzles were just inches apart. “All that you’re good for is being fucked senseless up the cunt and bearing foals, whorse,” he repeated in a low whisper, his smile widening into a grin lined with rotten, yellowed teeth.

Mere seconds later, he received a slap across the face from the staff, and then another from a cream-colored hoof in rapid succession. He staggered backwards, almost bumbling into one of his fellow wraiths rear-first, but stopped in his tracks before his rear could connect with the barrel of the dead pony’s chest behind him. As soon as he halted, the stallion who’d been whapped proceeded to merely shake his head to shrug off the minor sting of the onslaught.

“‘Twas nothing more than futile attempts to be anything but a whorse.” The stallion grinned triumphantly as he decided to chance another glance towards Natalie. Now, he could make out the veins that started to crop up around her still-glowing horn, whose aura took on a hue of stark red with bits of yellow and orange. “It seems we shall have to… correct this insolence, at once,” he added, and in unison the other wraith stallions nodded their heads and knelt forwards with orbs-for-eyes gleaming brightly.

Anna summoned her stone-and-crystal bow, and wasted no time in nocking an arrow and pulling the drawstring taught. The stone flexed and bent to accommodate the pulled thread, as if somehow malleable. “Sounds like a few dumbfucks want to pick a fight with us. Oh well; their loss,” she chided with a snort.

“Pick a fight?” Lance mused, reaching under the flap of his saddlebag before producing a few bullets and loading them into the revolving chamber of his gunblade. “No, no, no, Anna. I think the words you’re looking for are ‘get pummeled into the permafrost beneath the snow.’”

Anna sighed, and for a fraction of a second, Twilight could’ve sworn her eyes briefly flickered with a red glow. She opened her mouth to comment about the brief change in eye color, but could not speak as the arrow had been released, whistling through the air in spite of its stone shaft and crystal head and fletching.

It landed with a dull thrum on the head of one of the wraiths, who let off a short-lived and unearthly shriek as the projectile cleanly shot through his skull right beneath his horn. He fell over and twitched for a moment before his form stilled, the orbs in his black sclera fading out like lightbulbs being shut off.

“Oh, look! Another whorse that needs correct—” another wraith stallion howled, but didn’t get the chance to finish as Matt thrust his blade forwards with his magic. Imbued with a white glow, the silver of the sword sliced cleanly through the wraith’s neck-armor, almost entirely decapitating him within minutes.

The stallion who carried the spear charged brazenly onward, aiming his weapon right at Lance. Said pegasus stood on his back legs and swung his gunblade in a low sweep before jolting it upwards with his front hooves, and threw the spear off. He stilled, grinning as the head of the pike landed in the snow just inches behind his rear hooves.

“Is that the best you've got? Honestly, I was expecting more from my opponent,” Lance taunted in a cold tone, removing a hoof from the handle of his gunblade before slamming it into the wraith’s muzzle and watching as his adversary stumbled back to land on his rump. Without hesitation, he aimed the gunblade at the dead unicorn’s head and used the same hoof he just threw in a punch to pull the trigger.

A vicious crack rang out and the pegasus nearly staggered back from the recoil of his attack in the process, but stopped himself as said shot had been followed by another dull crack. The bullet tore a clean hole through the armor that covered the side of the wraith’s head, and a smile curled on his burnt orange muzzle. As with the one who got hit with a stone arrow, the armored stallion fell over in the snow, not a sound escaping from his hollow throat.

Five of the remaining armored wraiths approached Natalie, only to be halted by a flame-tinted aura that embraced their armored hooves. Natalie donned a firm frown as white flames began circling her quarry before they found themselves screaming in pain. The white flames crept up their legs, turning the pale skin charcoal black in their wake. Within minutes, five more corpses joined the fallen, adorned with the remnants of pearl-colored embers on their decrepit forms.

Lance took aim with his weapon again, firing off five more bullets that tore through armor and felled another five wraith stallions. Now, only one adversary remained, and his ears were folded onto the back of his head as his mouth quaked in an attempt to form words. In haste, his horn began glowing, and the pegasus procured another bullet, loaded it into the gunblade, and aimed his weapon at the remaining dead pony. He stilled, pausing, as the sod frantically stripped away his armor; helm, shoes, and all.

“Yeesh, he’s thin as a pencil! Let him gallop with his tail between his legs, boys!” Anna scowled as the wraith turned tail and began to gallop away. She glanced at the others and relaxed as they stood down, watching the last stallion as he retreated. She stood up and trotted towards Lance for a bit before stopping and using some of her magic to dig up the snow she’d buried the dead changeling under. As soon as she had been freed from her powdery prison, Katie clambered out and shook excess snow from her body before flaring her wings and buzzing them rapidly to become airborne.

Katie ascended for a bit before pausing to survey her surroundings. Almost instantly, she spotted one last wraith stallion barreling away, and started flying towards him with her front hooves outstretched before her. “Come back!” she cried, her voice tinged with mock excitement, “Don’t you wanna play with me?!” She gained ground on the fleeing dead pony, who took one glance over his shoulder to see who it was that had tailed him.

He stopped immediately, a frown marring his features, his horn coming to life with an aura of light beige. “You! You were the one who’s—” his words were cut off by a scream as Katie lunged towards him like a bullet, her torn maw opened wide as she drew nearer and nearer to him. Her flight only halted when her target found his horn clamped down by rotten, pointed teeth with a vise-like grip.

Pain seared through his head as the sharp, fetid jaw-daggers bore deeper into one of the crevices of his horn, and the stallion began to jerk and buck his head wildly in an attempt to shake the mare off. This only resulted in her teeth drilling deeper, neatly filling in some parts of the nooks of his forehead spire. The glow from his horn ceased for a second before sparking to life again, and his body writhed and twitched as sparks of lightning danced around both their frames.

His struggles and cries became weaker and weaker, until he became nothing short of a still, smouldering husk in a frozen hellhole. As soon as his attacker let go of the horn she’d clamped on with her mouth, an arc of lightning immediately out shot from the stallion's spire and hit her squarely in the face. The attack sent her careening backwards, forcing her headlong into Matt. Said pony staggered as the mare connected with the barrel of his chest, and he landed on his rear as the dead mare slid off him like he had coated himself in butter before plopping in the snow before his front legs.

“You… you barbarians!” Rarity exclaimed, eyes that had narrowed shooting fleeting looks at the four ponies and the wraith who had gotten hit with magic. She waved a hoof at the dead stallions for emphasis as she went on, “I do agree that they have said some very horrid things—in fact, I'd have probably smacked them myself for uttering such vile words—but that gave you no right to ruthlessly murder them, especially the last stallion who had turned and fled!”

“This wouldn’t be the first time we had to kill some wraiths, and those guys looked about ready to use their shoes to stab us all,” Matt stated and shook his head in response, which only earned him an aggravated huff from the ivory unicorn. He turned to Katie and added, “Though, this is the first time I’ve seen a wraith kill another, and with just her mouth to boot, right as the other turned tail.”

“She did clamp down on his horn and somehow restrict his mana flow. I guess she lucked out and got a tooth in one of the grooves of his horn—I’m impressed he’d still been able to hit her posthumously.” Natalie nodded, trotting to the wraith mare as she began stirring.

“Why are flying ducks around my head?” Katie groaned weakly, wings stiffening as they spread wide for a few seconds before falling limp at her sides.

“You’re dizzy, that’s why,” Natalie sighed as she embraced the wraith with her magic and hefted her out of the snow. Her limbs fell limp, and her head drooped. “Hey, do you feel any tingly sensations? Like your body’s constantly prickled all over?”

“No,” Katie moaned in response, one long ear twitching in Natalie’s direction. “But my everything hurts.”

“Just take it easy, shorty. You need to conserve whatever energy you have left,” Matt sighed, noticing her ears swiveled in his direction. He stood up and glanced towards Natalie, “Keep an eye on her, and carry her on your back if you need too.”

Lance shot a look at Twilight and her Mythonian compatriots and sighed when he took note of their half-shocked, half-scornful expressions. “I did tell you lot we wouldn’t attack without provocation. What else were we supposed to do, turn our other cheek?” he asked in a very blunt tone of voice, his visage betraying not one flicker of emotion as he sheathed his gunblade and returned to standing on all fours.

“You could’ve just talked to them and tried to diffuse the fight before it began!” Rarity groaned, her glare easing somewhat.

“They’re brick walls,” Katie mumbled as Natalie loaded her thin frame onto her cream-colored backside. “I should know—I tried once.”

“I’m guessing you’ve been around wraiths for a while?” Anna mused, turning to the thin pony with a quirked brow.

“Only up until a few months ago,” Katie murmured, one ear turning to the archer in response.

“Personally, and I don’t mean to sound offensive to the wraith-changeling among us, I’m taking what she just said with one hundred and fifty grains of salt,” Armin stated, his wings buzzing for a second before resting on his back. He shot a glance at Katie, then at the fallen wraiths, before turning to the Mythonian mares and drake. “But then again, those stallions did call Natalie… something terrible within the first five minutes of seeing her.”

“Eh, it’s nothing new with us,” Lance groaned, gesturing towards the wraith-changeling with one of his hooves for emphasis. “I think you guys could see that those wraiths wanted our heads on pikes, right?"

“Lemme get this straight: you guys have actually fought wraiths before?” Twilight asked, one of her brows rising high until it had been neatly hidden beneath her bangs.

“We tried not to fight in the past, and look where we're at,” Alexander spoke up, nodding his head glumly. “I'd rather do away with obviously-hostile creatures, wraiths and living, than to have my feathers forcibly plucked and my flesh cooked for dinner."

“Alright, so maybe you did try to be diplomatic, but that still doesn’t excuse cutting off the mana flow of the last wraith stallion after he stripped himself bare and tried to flee. Since that resulted in his self-electrocution, I dare say that was very brutal and slow,” Rarity chided, shaking her head.

“Don’t look at us; direct that ire to the wraith-changeling mare solely responsible for that, please,” Lance retorted, again using his hoof to gesture to Katie for emphasis.

“The others stopped when that dude ditched his armor, Rarity; I watched them the entire time the fight was going on. Heck, even that green-maned mare called for a halt once he ditched his plates,” Spike piped up, garnering a glance from the ivory unicorn and smiling as her glare eased up some more. “He’s right; maybe we should talk with the wraith-changeling about that later.”

“After she recovers from the posthumous backlash of cutting off a wraith unicorn’s mana flow,” Natalie groaned, chancing a glance towards the thin mare on her back. “She’s still alert; once she gets a good nap, I feel she’ll be in a good-enough mood to take a lecture or five.”

“Alright, that I can agree to. It would be improper of me to wake her up while she’s in a weakened state in order to rattle off all the reasons regarding why her being barbaric was wrong in the first place. Why, if I did do such a thing here and now, her ears might fall off trying to keep pace!” Rarity took a few deep breaths as she spoke, and as each exhale left her mouth, her glare eased up until it was all but a neutral look, a mask betraying little to no emotion at all.

“Well, at least everyone’s reached one agreement so far,” Natalie remarked. She nodded and let a small smile grace her features.

“Alexander, could you do us a favor and bring the tank closer? Not run-everybody-over closer, but close enough that we could clamber in it without trotting a ways towards it first?” Lance questioned, turning to the dark-coated gryphon as the question left his mouth.

“Can do, General,” Alexander replied, spreading his wings and flapping them to become airborne. He flew off towards the Valkyrie, keeping his altitude low. At this, the entire Mythonian lot, ponies and non alike, turned towards the red-eyed pegasus with wide eyes.

“‘General?’” the six mares and dragon asked in unison. Angel and Harry let off a squeak and a growl, respectively, at the same time the ponies and dragon had spoken. All sets of otherwordly eyes glinted in askance.

“Yes. In fact, the gryphons and changelings are under my command,” Lance stated with a nod, gesturing to said gryphons and Armin for emphasis. “I run an army.”

Rainbow let off a low whistle. “Y’know, for a pegasus with broken wings, that’s quite impressive to have gryphons and changelings as part of an army,” she said, a perplexed frown on her muzzle. “How in the hay did you manage to pull that off, let alone get the position of head honcho?”

“It’s a long story,” Lance replied. He gestured to his fellow Fantaisian ponies with a hoof as we went on, “Matt and Natalie accompany me to make sure I don’t overstep my bounds as General, and Anna joined them in rank a few months ago—around the time the wraiths started running into us, and she was a standard soldier before then. As for Katie, we’re just dragging her with; look at that mare, that is not the build of a wraith who knows what in hell she’s doing.”

Twilight’s brows shot right up to hide under her bangs. “And you need at least two ponies to keep you from overstepping your bounds because…?” she trailed off, unsure of why a General could even need such a thing in the first place.

“He came close to overstepping a boundary too many, as far as running the army goes,” Matt answered, a frown set in his muzzle. “He employed me and Natz to keep him from doing that again, and as he said and we can attest to, Anna joined in later. As far as the General goes, he’s gonna need as much help as he can get—someone in his position can never be too careful.”

“Any one of you girls or your drake and animals know anything about the thing that broke the barrier between the worlds?” Anna piped up, eyeing the Mythonian lot as she waited for one of the otherworldly visitors to speak up.

“No, but I was thinking I should throw a the-barrier-has-broken-party to celebrate that the everything in the worlds can interact at last!” Pinkie chimed, a wide grin spreading on her muzzle. At this, the Fantasian ponies looked at her with their jaws dropping and their eyes widening.

“Did I hear that right?” Matt mumbled, ears falling flat on his head.

“Yes, you did… is there something wrong with that?” Applejack questioned, noticing the looks on the Fantasian ponies’ faces.

“Uh, yeah, there kinda is,” Natalie replied, nodding frantically. When Harry let off a questioning growl and shrugged, she clarified, “There’s something that’s out to destroy the worlds, but we don’t know what it is. All we know is the end times are coming, or something of the sort. The guy who told us this was very vague about it.”

“You're darn tootin’,” Applejack scoffed, eyes slanting in worry.

“That’s what we were told, sadly, and the whole ‘the end is coming’ part is all we have to go on. Still, we vowed to stop the damned thing before it can destroy us and everything we know. Put it like this: we’re still stuck on square one in that regard,” Anna replied, shaking her head. She paused, one ear turning sideways, as a gradually rising rumble vibrated in the air. The mare turned her head and noticed the tank getting closer.

Soon, the tank stopped mere feet from the group right in its tracks, its front just barely touching the rear hoof of the dead wraith that had tried and failed to shake Katie off earlier. Rainbow kept her altitude low as she flew around the Valkyrie and scanned its features. “Now that I see it up close and personal, this looks like a pretty rad vehicle,” she stated as soon as she landed back in the snow with her fellow Mythonian mares. “Could use a bit of decoration, though.”

“Bah, the tank’s dark for a reason,” Lance scoffed, his remark garnering him a questioning glance from the cyan mare. He went on with a snort, “It makes it hard to see at night if the sky is very dark. But here, in places like this frozen hellhole, I may need to provide it better cover—snow makes it easier to see.”

“Good luck pulling that off. Those drills stick out like a cactus in a desert, regardless of what the time of day is,” Twilight retorted, a frown on her muzzle.

“You can sit out in the cold and freeze to death before being run over by us and turned into a pancake or you can get in the fucking tank,” Lance deadpanned. “Your choice.”

Matt playfully shoved the pegasus into the snow with a hoof, a smirk on his face. “Like you’d actually run over a bunch of strangers with your tank,” he chided mockingly. “And besides, you said yourself you wouldn’t be hostile to the Mythonians.”

“Hypocrite,” Natalie murmured, lightly kicking the fallen pegasus in the shoulder with a back hoof as he pried his head from the snow and shot stony glares their way.

“Is it nap time?” Katie moaned, her face buried into the back of Natalie’s neck.

“I’ll put her in her corner,” Quicksilver sighed, one corner of his beak twitching to the point it gave him the appearance of a bizarre half-smile. He spread his wings and flapped them to become airborne and ascended for a bit, flying around until he hovered over the cream-colored unicorn’s form. He scooped up the thin wraith in his talons and flew into the tank.

“Is he really that cranky?” Pinkie questioned, pointing a hoof at the red-eyed stallion as he stood onto his hooves.

“Usually, yeah. Dunno what keeps getting his goat, though,” Anna answered. She shrugged, giggling at Lance as he turned to glare at her.

“You, shut your piehole,” Lance growled, only to get a cream-colored hoof shoved into his mouth.

“Don’t tempt her, Lance. You don’t want an arrow stuck in you, right? 'specially not up the ass after it's been tipped with ginger?” Natalie sneered, turning to the archer and noticing a strange, red glint in her eyes as a smile curled on her tan-beige lips.

The pegasus’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head with a muffled, “Mm-mm, mm-mm!”

“Alright then,” Natalie sighed. She nodded and removed her hoof from his maw, shaking off the scant few bits of saliva before wiping her hoof on the barrel of her chest.

“How about this: most of us stay in our airship tonight, but one of us stays with you guys in the tank? Would that make everyone happy?” Spike piped up, garnering a look from everyone who still stood in the snow.

“I’ll stay in the tank; if it’s rad on the outside, then it has to be rad on the inside!” Rainbow proclaimed, holding a hoof to her chest as a smile beamed on her muzzle.

Twilight shot her cyan compatriot a frown and a skeptical shake of her head. “Are you sure about this, Dash? You saw what the Fantasian ponies did to the wraiths,” she murmured.

“Yeah, I’m sure. If trouble starts boiling over, I can just fly out of there in ten seconds flat,” Dash proudly stated and nodded, still smiling.

“Alright, sugarcube, I trust your judgment. Just let us know if they do something else that’s out of whack.” Applejack slowly nodded as she spoke, a frown on her face.

“Don’t worry,” Matt beamed, playfully patting Lance’s withers with a hoof. “We’ll keep Mr. Disgruntled in line, and we won’t do to your friend what we did to the wraiths.”