Reman huffed as he struggled up the steep incline, the harness digging into his shoulder with every hard-won step as his claws dug into the soil for purchase. The rocky mountainside had proven too steep for the ponies to walk over, not while pulling a carriage in any case, and they needed to conserve their energy if Cyrodiil’s side of the range was just as steep. The wolf glanced up to see Glade and Rainbow Dash circling overhead; with the knowledge of pegasi being hyper-perceptive when in flight, they were the obvious choices to act as scouts while the rest of the group trudged on the ground. With a final grunt, the werewolf pulled the carriage to level ground; he shrugged off the harness and fell over, surprisingly exhausted.

“Boundless energy, huh?” Glade teasingly asked as she touched down next to him, hardly breaking a sweat from her scoutings. Admittedly, flying above mountains was a bit less difficult than pulling a weighed-down carriage for two days, but she had to make sure her forebear ate his words. She snickered as he looked up and shot her a death glare as best his canine face could muster. “I’m joking, you big lug.”

“Oh! Oh! The map says we’re just outside Cyrodiil!” Pinkie excitedly shouted, pointing at the red, dotted line that denoted Skyrim’s southern borders. At the rate they were travelling, they’d be hitting the downhill portion of their travels around sundown, maybe sooner if they didn’t stop much, or found a quicker way to move the wagon over rocks without exerting unicorn magics that were better used in defense. “You’re almost home, Reman!”

At that, the lycan leaped to his feet, still in his beast form, and ran over to her; he would only transform inside the carriage to avoid freezing anything he’d rather keep. Pinkie was, of course, entirely correct; County Chorrol lay just over the horizon, and the city not too far beyond that. He smiled a doggy smile and went inside to change, leaving the party pony with the map and a giant grin plastered on her face. She was excited, energetic in a way she hadn’t been in a long time, like the weight of Skyrim’s crisp air was finally leaving her shoulders and letting her breath again.

“So, this part of the journey should be relatively safe, I take it?” Celestia asked, peeking through the mesh screen to see how close Reman was to coming out.

“Quite the opposite if we don’t do things right,” the imperial replied, stepping out on the carriage’s opposite side. He, like most of the ponies, was dressed in simple, insulated clothing that sacrificed style for functionality; even Rarity only whined a little about the stuffy, hot fabrics, but that was just what she did. “Cyrodiil is no less dangerous than any other province, but where Skyrim’s dangerous were everywhere and mostly obvious, Cyrodiil’s climate lulls travelers into a state of security, then throws them for a loop.”

“More monsters?” Applejack asked, pulling her coat tight against the fireproof bodysuit she wore, though what she thought warranted such dress was beyond the others. Reman nodded to answer her question, waving a hand in a gesture that made it clear to everypony he was searching for the right words.

“Mostly bandits if we stick to the roads; the temperate weather means they have a wider range, and with Cyrodiil’s surplus of old forts…”

“They have plenty of places to nest,” Rainbow Dash finished, looking at the map. Many forts along the major roads were highlighted, but she knew there were easily dozens that were undocumented, either forgotten or written over as their importance dwindled. “Humans can walk, what, five or six miles in an hour? Even if they were loaded down, every fort between Chorrol and the Imperial City is within that range of the main road. If we take it directly, we’d be up to our necks in them.”

“Which is precisely the reason we have you and Glade scouting ahead, so we see trouble before it sees us,” Princess Celestia explained, checking the map for herself. Dash was, unfortunately, correct, and the entire road was more a minefield than a means of transportation. While receiving bad news was not in itself a bad thing, it did nothing to lighten the mood.

“Meaning we’ll at least know there’s nowhere to run before we’re beset from all sides,” Renoir cut in with a smile, but he meant nothing with his gallows humor. “What we need is a defensive edge to make up for our lack of maneuverability.”

“Well, unless you’ve got an army tucked under your leathers, we need to get creative,” Springs said, poking his head through one of the carriage’s windows. He’d taken to sleeping during the day so he could help at night, so it was a bit strange for him to be awake to so close to noon. “We could disguise the carriage with magic while inside each of these zones.”

“If we use our magic to armor the carriage so we can ride down the mountain, we’d be too tired to maintain an invisibility spell long enough to make it through the first hotspot.” Twilight held out her own notes on how much power each unicorn in the group could put out in a single day, and while she had most everything factored in, using both plans was entirely impossible. They’d be exposed taking a longer trip down, but would be unable to hide if they went as quickly as they could; there simply was no middle ground unless Princess Celestia used her own power, and that was reserved for any dragons who thought the carriage made a good meal prospect. “A magical disguise is out of the question, especially if we stand a chance of being swarmed if we used the roads to reach Chorrol.”

“Maybe we can make them think we’re bandits too?” Pinkie asked, looking a bit hopeful. “I have an eyepatch, and we can make peglegs easy.” She smiled at the deviousness of her plan, but very slowly, she realized she had bandits and pirates confused. She didn’t understand how; pirates were much cooler.

“Bandits, no, but we can make them think we’re too tough to hit.” Reman’s realization had begun to dawn on him as soon as Springs mentioned an army. They could not hide away an army, nor make it appear they had an army, but looking like they had connections to an army, or a number of armies, was easy enough to do. “All we need is a House Tullius banner, that way we’d look like a wealthy member of the clan travelling on business.”

“I was under the impression you are exactly that,” Rarity said, not too impressed with the idea. It seemed a bit simple to work, especially given how devious imperials were supposed to be. “The only banner we have is of the Equestrian royal family, and it doesn’t look anything like the ones hanging around Castle Dour.”

“Well, I never had a chance to have my own banner before I left home,” the imperial admitted, faking an embarrassed grin. As the second in line for clan heir, he needed a banner to unite his men under, and when Julius died, the need became much greater. Sadly, he was infected before the first design could be drafted, which was a lengthy enough process without having to change heirs.

“Dibs on making it,” Glade said, sticking a hoof in the air. For once, she wasn’t acting out of a desire to play a joke on Reman, but to see him carrying a banner deserving of a good breeze. “But, how are we going to make it if all we have is the Equestrian banner?”

“Oh, leave that to me,” Rarity interjected, eyes gleaming with visions of gold embroidery and complex heraldry. She had grand dreams for what she could weave into a genuine battle standard; she needed Glade’s help, of course, so with her leading the project, it gave her the best chance of making something striking, something that would endear her works to the Empire. “But, before we begin, are there any conventions we need to adhere to?”

“Glad you asked; I nearly forgot,” the imperial replied, running a hand through his hair as he laughed at his mistake. “Right, it has to include the family crest, and can’t be too grandiose.” He pointed to the intricate patterns on Renoir’s armor as an example. “It should look less like his,” he explained, before pointing to his own suit. “And more like mine.”

Rarity looked from the knotted designs the vampire had woven into his leathers to Reman’s near-blank, Dwemer-made plate, and nearly cried as she realized how little she could work with.

Princess Celestia was a creature often prone to introspection, a being whose millennia of experience allowed her to learn from lifetimes of mistakes; as she gazed into the book Reman had peered into so often over the last few days, she wondered if she was making another mistake in trusting him with so much. Each page was slathered with necromantic arcana, uncoded and free for any wandering eyes to read; the imperial didn’t even hide the book from her, knowing the laws in Equestria that forbade such study, let alone the experimentation recorded by this Mannimarco monster. Those research notes were the diary of a sick, diseased mind the likes of which she had only seen a few times in her memory.

“We’ve got a moment now, princess,” Renoir whispered, sitting down next to her. Unlike before, he wore no mask, and seemed nearly as human as anyone else, if one looked past the deathly pale skin and swirling eyes.

“I will never get over that you can sit in broad daylight without burning.”

Renoir chuckled and nodded his head, genuinely amused by the princess’s confusion. “If you see a Cyrodiilic vampire, it will not be during the day.” Truthfully, even he had no idea why different clans had different weaknesses; some vampires burned in the sunlight, like those of Vvardenfell, and some could stave off the burning, like the Cyrodiilic strains, but those of Skyrim, either the true or degenerate progeny of the Volkihar line, were only weakened while standing in the light. “The cause if more interesting than the effects, as I’m sure you’ll find Mannimarco believed if you delve deeper into those notes.”

“Your necromancers have interests in vampires?” she asked, her curiosity now piqued. In her experience, it was usually the other way around, but if there were mortal humans who delved into the darker magics, and did not turn into bloodsuckers, then perhaps her first ideas about necromancy were incorrect. “Now you have me interested.”

“Oh no, princess,” the vampire snickered. “You said you had something to tell me, and I intend to find out before I tell you anything that book you’re reading can’t.” His trickery was not malicious, nor was it entirely playful; Celestia found it was simply his way of initiating an agreement between them, a method she had used a number of times herself. “So, if you are willing to tell me, I feel we can both learn from this.”

The alicorn rolled her eyes and smiled, knowing she’d been had. “Alright, alright,” she began, shaking her head as she suppressed a laugh. “Over a thousand years ago, I knew a stallion by the name of Sombra; he was a king, well, technically an emperor, but he held on to his older title.” She closed the necromancer’s book and set it aside so she could better face Renoir, better speak to him as an equal. She had made a similar mistake with Reman, treating him as an underling or an outsider to be kept at a safe distance. “We were, and I’ll not gloss over this, romantically involved for some time, so I knew him better than most.”

“And he betrayed your trust somehow?” Renoir asked, a bit worried he knew where the story was headed.

“Oh, no, he never betrayed my trust,” she admitted, a tone of sadness touching her voice. “In fact, it was his loyalty to me that ruined things. I’m immortal, as I’m sure you may have found out, and Sombra was very much a normal unicorn, albeit a powerful one.” Now the vampire thought he saw where things went, how they played out, and where Celestia’s healthy fear of vampires turned into an obsessive desire to prevent them from preying on the living. “As mortals do, he aged, and as he aged, he looked into ways of prolonging his life. To him, vampirism was the most obvious option, and for a few years, it worked fine.”

“I’m surprised,” Renoir coughed out, thoroughly confused about what went wrong, and how. The little game of back and forth was now a little too far back for his liking, but even if he didn’t like it too much, he enjoyed the banter. “It wasn’t vampirism that drove you two apart was it?”

“No, but it did play a large part,” she confessed, her sorrow evident in her eyes. “We enjoyed spending time in the sun, long walks, picnics, everything we could think of, and when he became a vampire, we were limited to the indoors, or to the night.” It was clear she had been infatuated with Sombra, very dearly if one analyzed her tone. “We could not bear to be kept apart so much, so, rather than look for a cure and return to mortality so we could enjoy the rest of his life together, he sought an alternative through evil magics.”

“Necromancy,” the vampire whispered, and he wasn’t asking a question; he had learned of Equestria’s laws forbidding necromancy, as well as the curious fact that it was the only offense aside from assassinating a princess that warranted death. Celestia only nodded in response, before solemnly continuing her story.

“He experimented on his subjects, using only volunteers first, and I knew of those initial trials.” Her tone suggested she felt nothing but guilt over allowing him to continue after learning of his actions. “Later, he started using criminals in his dungeons, then street urchins, then political enemies, and things just kept spiraling out of control.” She blinked back a few tears as she recounted the last bit, but swallowed the lump rapidly forming in her throat so she could finish. “Eventually, he made himself, body and soul, into a creature of darkness, but he could once more walk in the light.”

“You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to,” he said, understanding her fears in full. “And, maybe when we get to Chorrol or the Imperial City, we can lay your worries to rest?” Unsure of what to do, he patted her on the shoulder; he hadn’t dealt with mourning in seventy-odd years, so it was a bit difficult for him.

“Well, what do you think?” Glade asked, beaming as she saw Reman’s stunned face. She took his silence as approval even before the corners of his mouth turned up. “The gem was originally in the wolf’s mouth, but Rarity figured it would give the wrong message.”

“She was right,” the imperial replied, a bit flattered if he was honest. He finally had his banner, and it kept with his family’s traditions. Emblazoned on the white cloth was a midnight black wolf wearing a spiked war-collar clasped with a red diamond, his family’s symbol. Anyone who looked at the standard would know a scion of House Tullius was on the move. Glade, seeing his appreciation, nuzzled against him and smiled. “Now that we have our protection ready, let’s round everyone up; we’re rolling down this mountainside in two hours.”