Dreams of the Damned

Chapter 6

“Come on…” Nightmare pressed the button multiple times, grumbling to herself.

“Nightmare…”

“Quiet! I know what i’m doing.” She stared intensely at the button, before finally giving up and pressed it again.

“Nightmare, pressing the button multiple times does not make it come faster.” Luna tried to suppress a giggle at her alter-ego’s actions, but mostly failed.

“I know that! I’m just impatient.” She rolled her eyes.

“Wait, how are you impatient, but i’m not? Isn’t our personality the same?”

“Humor for storytelling sake.”

Luna paused, processing what she had said. “What?”

Suddenly, there was a ding, and the elevator's doors opened, revealing the empty interior of the metal box. The squad entered, Nightmare pressing the button for the top floor. They all stood there uncomfortably until the doors opened, and a scene of complete destruction greeted them.

The courtyard where she had first seen Vessel was in ruins, with the walls cracked in some places, scorch marks where explosions had gone off, spent shell casings littering the ground, and she counted at least a few bodies sprawled out on the floor, red pools of blood forming around them. There were two groups of ponies and assorted creatures, each standing on either side of the room, shooting at each other. The sound of both bolt-action and automatic fire, the shouting, and the rumble of explosions was defining in the enclosed space.

The two sides were taking cover behind what seemed to be sandbags and portable metal walls that had been hastily constructed. One side wore the now familiar uniforms of her captors, the grey and white shirts, while the other wore, in comparison to their enemy, seemingly outdated iron helmets with the purple emblem of the Royal Equestrian Sun Guard emblazoned on the front. It seemed the enemy was trying to stop them from reaching the stairwell and the elevator, most likely to stop them from reaching the rest of the base. The elevator they had just come out of.

She couldn’t have accidentally planned that better.

“Fire!”

When the smoke cleared, the defenders were all bleeding out on the ground, or had bolted down the stairwell. The survivors were quickly rounded up and treated, before being taken to the surface.

“Princess!” Luna looked up to see a familiar pony walking toward her, his normally white coat and blue mane stained red and brown with blood and dirt.

“Ah, General Shining Armor, good to see a familiar face. I presume you’re in charge here?” He came up to her and saluted, flanked by two ponies. “Inform Cadence that Objective One has been completed, and tell the troops to move on to Objective Two.” The two ponies nodded, and left to complete their tasks. Now alone, he answered.

“No, although my wife is. We were worried that they had moved you once our attack stalled, but it seems you managed to fight your way out. While your letter had said that they had advanced weaponry, we weren't quite expecting… this.” He gestured to the fallen weapons, some of which were beginning to be picked up and placed into piles. “We are collecting as many examples as we can so we can transport them back to Canterlot so our scientists can study them, and now that you are here we can shift our focus from finding you to collecting information about this place.”

“If it's information you need to find, I can be of use.” Vessel walked up to them, her eyes and horn glowing purple.

“Uh, who are you?” Shining backed away slightly from the newcomer, wary of her appearance.

“She’s an ally, and she has considerable information about the inner workings of this base, as well as its layout.  She could point you in the right direction.” Luna cast a sideways glance at Vessel, but stepped back and let her direct him.

“...and whatever you do, don’t open the big door metal door in Containment. There are a whole load of angry prisoners back there, and it would be unwise to let them out unless we had a proper place to transport them to.” Vessel said about ten minutes later, pointing to the prison on a map of the base she had conjured up.

“I see, ill make sure of that.” Shining nodded, and turned to Luna. “Princess, tell your soldiers to head topside. We can provide transport for your extraction. You guys have been through enough these past few days.”

Luna glanced to her soldiers, who had grouped together in one side of the room, occasionally casting glances back towards her. “Roger that General, ill get them out of here. You said you had extraction?”

He nodded. “We have multiple armored chariots inbound from Canterlot. I’ll make sure that your stallions are on one of the first ones out.”

“Thank you general.” Shining nodded, saluted, and walked away, most likely to relay the information Nightmare had given him to his officers. She turned to Vessel/Nightmare. “Whats with the eyes?”

“Oh, this? Sorry.” The purple aura around the horn and eyes disappeared,, leaving Vessel momentarily confused, before glancing at Luna and then looking around the large room. The ghostly form of Nightmare appeared beside her. “Sorry, guess I should have told you about this. Since i’m a spirit, I can possess my host, but I can only do it for a limited time because it uses a lot of my energy, and being in a brightly lit room isn’t helping.”

“Any other crazy powers I should know about?” Nightmare shook her head as they walked over to the waiting soldiers. “Nothing that you can’t do yourself.”

Luna just sighed and shook her head, exhausted.

Changeling Hive, Changeling Badlands

Horizon Military Command, Equestrian Division

“Fifteen years!” If looks could kill, he would be a flaming pile of ashes on the ground. He could almost see the hate rolling off her. “Fifteen years ago, you arrive here from some far away land, and offer your services in protecting ourselves from our northern neighbors, and ever since then we have been living under your oppressive rule! The attack on Canterlot, that you claimed was “for the good of my people”, was cause for concern, but now this! Your sending some of my most loyal, best soldiers on a… a suicide mission! My kind has served and slaved to your crown for fifteen years, and this is how you repay us?!”

“I fail to see your concerns. Your soldiers kidnap and then impersonate major political figures, take the love meant for them, and return it here, where your subjects can feed off it for generations. What's the problem? This is what your kind has evolved to do, isn’t it?” He looked out over the parade field, where one of the local armored divisions was assembled for inspection, the tanks lined up in neat rows, their crews standing proudly beside them, the emblem of Ethernia painted proudly on the sides of the turret. It was beautiful.

“Yes, no problem, for you!” She was standing now. “The only reason you want the Princesses removed is because the Equestrian command will be thrown into disarray when you launch your invasion! And, if my soldiers get captured, Equestria will have no choice but to declare war, and then you win anyway!”

“What, invasion? Me, planning an invasion of Equestria? I don’t know what your talking about.” He sneered, sarcasm evident in his voice.

“Oh please, I know about your troop movements. How you keep calling in more and more units for “defense”. How your factories churn out weapons and tanks and aircraft. How you have all this equipment just laying around, and yet my soldiers get none of it.” She leaned in close. “I know how, when war finally is declared, you will order my soldiers into Equestria armed with nothing more than spears and swords, and how, when my armies get annihilated, and then when the ponies march up to my hive, you plan to sit back and watch as my people and my home gets razed. And then, when its all burned to a crisp, you bomb the defenseless ponies to oblivion, and march into Equestria unopposed. I have seen the plans. Is my kind just cannon fodder for you?”

“Yes.” He said bluntly, now finally turning toward her, cigar in his mouth. “But, now that you know, what are you going to do about it?” He sat in his chair, smirking evilly at her.

She remained silent.

“Yes, that's right, nothing. Because there is nothing you can do about it, can you?” He pulled out a drawer underneath his desk, stuffed full of folders. He grabbed the one he was looking for, and opened it. “Because, you know if you do, another “accident” will occur, like, lets say… a cave collapse, trapping hundreds of poor changeling miners underground in the darkness? Or, maybe, while performing some tests of my new poison gas, the wind suddenly shifts, causing the smoke to drift towards a nearby settlement? Or, ooh, I like this one... a rogue dragon attacks?” Each time he listed an outcome he flipped to a new page in the folder, until he left her absolutely horrified at the end.

“You wouldn’t…”

“I already have.” He laid back on his chair. “I assume that, since you seem to have somehow been given access to classified documents, you read about what happened in… what was that little countries name? Oh yes… Zepland?” She gasped. “Same, really. I liked their food.”

“You're a monster.”

“Yes, I am.” He shrugged. Then, an idea struck him. “Actually…”

He flipped to the last page of the folder, took it out, and passed it to her. “Let's take this personal, shall we? Last I checked, Chrysalis, your children were still in our custody?”

The Changeling Queen could only cover her mouth in horror at the events described on the page.

“I will bring you to them. You will be reunited with your children, but it won't last. I will take them, one at a time, and strap them to a chair so they won’t escape.” As he spoke, his grin only grew wider. “First, I will remove their wings, all of them, one at a time. Then, their legs. Then, you will stand there and listen to their screams as they bleed out, begging you to tell them to stop. But no matter how many times you beg and plead, we won’t. Then, as their screams die out, we will bring in the next one, and do the same. And the next one. And the next one. Do you understand?”

The paper fluttered to the ground, Chrysalis in a daze. She weakly nodded. “Good.” He shut his folder and returned it to the desk. “Security!”

Two burly guards entered the room, each wielding a rifle. “Return the Queen here to her chambers.”

They grabbed her and dragged her across the floor, as she was still in a daze, and too shocked to stand.

“You won't get away with this.” She called back weakly.

He just smiled.

As she was leaving, a low-level officer entered the room, looking nervous. “General?”

“Yes?”

“Outpost number 48 is reporting that they are under attack. We requested more information, but the line went dead. Nearby bases are sending reinforcements, and a squadron of fighters has launched. What should we do?”

“Do we have any Verti’s in operating range?”

There was a pause as the officer flipped through some papers. “Yes sir.”

“Order them to ferry a squad of special forces on target, we can’t let any documents fall into enemy hands.”

The officer closed his folder and saluted. “Yes sir.”

The officer left the room, leaving him alone. He picked up a document that had been left on his desk, and began to read.