The portal dissipated as instantly as it formed. D27 collapsed to the ground below. He was surprisingly depleted; he had greatly overestimated how much magic he had still contained within him, and underestimated how much it had required to breach the dimensional gap.

He pause for only a moment, lying on the stone beneath him, staring at the smoky sky above. It was lit by no sun, nor a moon, but rather by lightning that slowly crept across it, leaving trails of deep red in its wake through the gray and green-yellow haze. From that sky, and from the energy that was rapidly flowing back into him, he knew that he had been successful. He had successfully reached the Gloame.

Slowly, he stood up, although for him it was less of standing and more of reconstructing himself from a highly viscous puddle into what he had come to accept as his default form, a tall, narrow bipedal form.

All around him, the shadows shimmered. Even through there was no sunlight, D27 seemed to cast several shadows, and all stared back at him with pairs of luminescent, white eyes. They watched him for a moment as he began to walk, but then retreated into the forest, their eyes following him from the darkness they produced.

Even the Gloame had changed, D27 found. What had once been a largely empty dimension of rocky, lifeless caverns now housed a tremendous forest of strange, fungoid growths. They resembled trees, or massive mushrooms, and some seemed to be vaguely luminescent; they were things, like him, from elsewhere that had found their way to the Gloame, perhaps drawn to its energy, adapted to a lightless and strange existence.

The shadow beings followed him as he passed through the forest. Through he had lived with them and familiarized himself thoroughly with their habits, D27 knew very little about them. Often, on the cold and endless nights, he had spoken to them. They had never once replied with anything except the blank and perpetual stairs of their glowing eyes.

D27 wandered the forest for some time, following the ethereal trails that would bring him to his destination. In time, though, he came across a clearing, and instantly gained a better understanding of why the Gloame had changed.

There, a large swath had seemingly been gouged from the land, a place where the ancient granite below had once been exposed. This pit, it seemed, had become the grave for the uncountable souls whose skeletons now filled it.

D27 approached one, and to his mild surprise, saw that it was that of a monohorn. There were others as well. They were all ponies, but not all monohorns. Some were Pegasi, and others earth ponies, and a few were something similar with hard, calcified shells and short legs that D27 knew no name for. Most of them were wearing armor, and the remnants of breathing apparatuses. There were also weapons scattered around them.

Approaching one, D27 waved away the shadows and reached down. He lifted one of the weapons. It was preserved almost perfectly, and surprisingly heavy. It appeared to be some kind of energy weapon, but not of Cerorian design. Racking his mind, D27 found that he knew of no word for this type of device, meaning that the pony he had taken his vocabulary from did not know of it. That probably meant that the weapons were obsolete, and far superior weapons existed back in Equestria.

These skeletons, D27 decided, were the result of a rather brutal battle that had taken place in the Gloame. The question, though, was who they had been fighting. They all seemed to be facing the same way, and yet there were no bodies on the other side of the battlefield.

Whoever it was, this battle had taken place long after the war that D27 was familiar with. His only concern was that their enemy might have been Choggoths, which was highly unlikely considering that the Gloame still existed. Choggoths probably could not have entered the Gloame, though. D27 had created a number of seals and protections to ensure that only one Choggoth would generally be able to get through.

Whoever the enemy had been, the battle had provided D27 with an advantage. He had immediately come into position of a vast number of reasonably well-preserved skeletons. Shadows ate flesh, but never consumed bone or horn. D27 had left instructions in his absence; he wondered if the choice skeletons had already been selected for him. For all he knew, there might still even be ponies present, still following the orders they would have found countless eons ago.

So he stood, and began making his way to the castle.

The structure had hardly changed. It was essentially a cave in a monolithic, towering stone structure, but modified through D27’s own manipulation in ancient times as he ate away at the dark stone. Now, it was surrounded by lowland forest where the frozen oceans had once been in the past.

D27 climbed slowly through the stairs he had created so long ago, taking his time as he went and being careful not to step on any mines that the interlopers might have left long ago.

Finding his way inside, D27 was actually somewhat glad to find that there were no ponies in his house. Instead, it was infested with shadows. There was also an ubiquitous sound of clicking footsteps from an unseen source.

Perturbed by his lack of a greeting, D27 sought out the source of the footsteps. In one of the many cavernous rooms, he finally found one of the sources: a tall creature consisting of asymmetrical rock and crystal slowly making its way across the floor.

Noticing D27’s entry, it turned slowly, several crystalline parts of it suspended magically from its structure. It saw D27, and released a surprised sound that was vaguely reminiscent of a drum being beaten underwater.

“Yes,” said D27. “I am back. How long has it been?”

The creature responded.

“Yes, of course. The math. I suppose I can do it later. Easier question: how many of your kind are there now?”

The rock-creature responded, walking across the floor on its four legs, as if about to leave and ignore D27’s return. The reply, though, was most interesting. The number, it seemed, had not changed, despite D27’s best efforts to encourage the creatures to dwell around his castle. That made sense, though, at least on some level. Although they were willing to accept orders, the creatures were quite stubborn, which made the fact that they were the basis for Draconian golems almost ridiculous.

Another several of the creatures entered. They were smaller, resembling crystals with numerous smaller crystal legs. They scuttled about like spiders, releasing squeaking sounds, and D27 smiled. He was, indeed, finally home.

An inspection of the supplies indicated that the proto-golems had indeed followed his orders. The vaults were filled with monohorn skeletons, as well as a much smaller number of earth ponies and Pegasi. D27 doubted that he could use a Pegasus skeleton to fly properly, but it was good to have a few if he needed them.

The old vaults were also largely intact, and despite being hermetically sealed still filled with shadows. There were numerous trihorn skeletons prepared for use, as well as others of the species of D27’s own time. Hopefully, those would not need to be used; a problem with properly preserved and prepared skeletons was a tendency to absorb some elements of the original owner’s personality. Trihorn skeletons almost always led to viciousness and cruelty.

It also seemed that various weapons had been collected, though not processed. There were entire artillery pieces, and heavy armor, as well as endless racks of the weapons that the skeleton ponies outside had previously used. All were in excellent condition, and tests proved that they did, indeed, operate.

With this many weapons and skeletons, retaking Equestria would probably be less difficult. The problem, though, was that D27 had no idea what the conditions of Equestria were; he did not know if the war he had left had been finished, or if his work had been successful, even in part.

He had sensed, however, the presence of certain magic. The type that had awakened him had mostly vanished into the background noise from the sun and moon, but there had been something else of a similar type as well, a beacon of Order pouring out over the land.

There was no time to rest, or to sleep, two things that D27 had already been doing for a very long time. He lingered only long enough to regain his magic from the surrounding environment, and to refit the resources he lost. He refilled himself with mass, and acquired a portal-generation system that was far less power intensive than manual gating.

Then, when he was ready, he turned to whatever proto-golems happened to be around.

“I’m off,” he said.

They only grumbled unintelligibly back.

D27 held out the point of his arm, and developed a hand. A set of precision engineered crystals. Lifting them with his own magic, he produced a triangle, and opened a gate. It was much less noisy and painful that the last one, and he was able to step through with ease.

Immediately, he found himself surrounded by dankness and moisture. The sun was in the sky, but filtered thoroughly through the overgrown trees of the forest. In his restored state, though, the heat of the sun was of little consequence to D27.

D27 felt the air, turning his body slowly to try to find where the signal was the strongest. Indeed, there was something present, a familiar magic, one profoundly different from the type generated by ponies. It was stronger, but also colder, more rigid and sharper.

Upon finding the origin of the magical source, D27 began to move in that direction.