Author's Notes:

Destroy the foul beasts! Touch not the purple slime, harm not the ones that appear as skinny minotaur cows. For life, for harmony, for Equestria!

Since I know some are conjecturing truly malicious intent by Celestia rather than a simple overreaction to a purple slime substance that ruins the land it occupies by draining everything useful out of it. It couldn't possibly be like that other purple slime that destroys land after all...

Wait...

I feel Liz shaking me, which really isn't helping and she should know better. Three of my zerglings pop like zits as they are struck with some kind of magic projectile, and a fourth is impaled on a lance as a pegasus drops out of the sky and stabs into the ground. Six green beams destroy the black-carapaced brood, leaving only a trace amount of dust behind, and I order my last two soldiers to my side while trying to get back on my feet. "Liz...this isn't a dream..."

"YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DREAMING!?" I cringe at the anger in her voice, raising my hands in front of me to attempt to ward off anything more than verbal retaliation. "Why the hell would you think this was a dream? Under what circumstances would this possibly be something that you would dream up?"

"Food poisoning from bad sushi, or hallucinations from that guy dressed as Carnage slipping us something. We arrived in the middle of an arctic blizzard and I could barely even feel the cold, then an angelic horse appears talking nonsense that becomes intelligible English within a few seconds. You can stop me anytime something I say starts seeming like it makes any kind of sense based on the reality that both you and I have been experiencing for the last thirty years! Why the fuck wouldn't I think this was a dream based on what is going on?" I try to push my own anger down, but a little of it escapes anyways as I order the two zerglings to burrow quickly, causing the two pegasi that were diving at them to arrest their descent. "Why would it be wrong for me to still have some fanciful ideas that would make this a plausible dream?"

"Frana tet drao ku?" Where did they go? Oh fuck, they're close enough for me to hear everything. Princess Celestia must not have told them about that yet. The voice is deep, and likely masculine, but the two soldiers appear identical.

"Ihtan dra knuiht, sunuh. Knyp dra lufc yht dyga dras du dra bnehlacc." Under the ground, moron. Grab the cows and take them to the princess. This voice has a somewhat higher pitch, but a more commanding tone as well. It is simple enough to assume that this one, at least, is female.

"What did you just call us?" I know it's a bad idea to let something so small get to me, but I am most certainly not fat. My anger clouds my judgement, as does the prickling pain I'm feeling remotely as spells begin to assault my hatchery. I can even feel my eyes start glowing this time as I scream with both my voice and my mind at once; "Stop attacking my hatchery this instant! Celestia! What is the meaning of this treachery?" Ow, that's going to leave one painful headache later.

I jump back as a wide beam of flames and light blasts the ground in front of me and over to the guards; grabbing onto Liz's shoulder to avoid falling over as I lose my balance yet again. A tall horse covered in golden armor that has flames coming from every joint, seam, or crack in the metal lands in front of us. She emits a glow along with the flames, creating a zone around her that is almost as bright as day in the deepening dusk. "Drec ec hud dnaylrano. Oui tet hud damm sa dryd ouin teckicdehklnaydina fumit dinh ehdu cusadrehk dryd lnaydac Smooze. Drec ec tecbucym uv tyhkanuic cipcdyhalc." This is not treachery. You did not tell me that your disgusting creature would turn into something that creates Smooze. This is disposal of dangerous substances.

"Disposal of dangerous substances? This isn't smooze, whatever that is, this is creep." I kick at the slime-covered ground, my foot impacting with a slight squish. "It's a living surface on which zerg buildings grow; one that drains nutrients and digests biomass to grow and spread to better facilitate the growth of a fully functional zerg base. Cast your translation spell again so Liz can understand what you say. She can't read the surface of your mind to get the meaning." Press your luck a bit more, Sarah, she's not actively trying to disintegrate you yet...

Celestia doesn't do anything for a moment other than stare at us. Her horn glows briefly and her voice sounds almost embarrassed once her spell is complete; "Could you repeat that, please? I do appreciate you not shouting into my mind this time, but that does make it rather hard to understand you when we do not yet speak the same language." I oblige her request with a smile on my face, this time leaving off the bit about casting the spell for Liz's benefit. "You call this substance 'creep' and say that it is not dangerous, yet you admit that it drains nutrients from the soil as well as dissolving anything that touches it that is not alive. Draining nutrients from the soil means that it will kill plants and digest them."

"So what? A few plants die off, the soil loses some growth potential in the future which is easily replenished with the next year's leaves dropping off to decompose. We're in a peat bog, not exactly prime farmland what with the fact that this is called Flame Geyser Swamp, and you yourself mentioned a number of dangerous-sounding beasts so it's not likely to become prime farmland anytime soon."

"And if it gets out? If this 'creep' were to spread outside of the swamp and begin to grow into areas where we do have valuable and vulnerable farms? What happens when it absorbs enough magic to start moving under its own power? What happens when it starts attacking and digesting living matter? What happens when it starts draining my ponies of their will to live? I have seen this substance before, and creating more of it is not something that I can condone at this time."

I open my mouth to declare such concerns ridiculous before thinking, but I do manage to stop myself from actually saying those words just yet. "Are you sure you have seen this exact substance before, and not just something that looks quite a bit like it?"

"Bnehlacc, suna pmylg suhcdanc ybbunylrehk!" A mare's voice calls from somewhere nearby, seeming worried.

"So kill them like you did to the previous ones. Surely you have more than one disintegration or similar deadly spells available before you head into a battle." Celestia turns her attention back towards us. "Honestly, it's as if they've never fought anything more dangerous than a kobold before when I'm in their vicinity." I can practically hear her rolling her eyes behind that helmet, and Liz actually starts laughing. "I last saw smooze that could move on its own about four thousand years ago, and I lost some good friends shortly thereafter. That was fifty years before the first sighting of these bug-pony monsters, though I have never seen them in this concentration before."

"So, wait, are you telling us that this planet has had a zerg infestation for the last four thousand years? How the fuck are you not completely overrun and assimilated into the swarm yet?" I nod in agreement. Liz might not be quite as up on the lore as I am, but we both enjoyed playing the game enough to know the basics.

"Power of the sun, focusing on learning combat spells and training soldiers to kill these monsters on sight, predation from stronger wild beasts? I don't know what your point of reference is, but we do have a flourishing ecosystem with many creatures dangerous enough to even pose a threat to myself if I were to be caught off-guard, and at night."

"Well, then let us work together to find the source of these pony-zerglings. Don't destroy my hatchery so I can create reinforcements of our own in case one of your soldiers is injured or runs out of spells. I swear that I will allow you to destroy that one building to prevent possible 'smoozification' of the creep after we have destroyed whatever it is that has been speaking to me and controlling this rival brood. Just, have them stop killing things that are clearly helping me, no matter how repulsive they may be to you." My two remaining zerglings emerge from the ground next to her, and do nothing other than walk over to my side where I stroke their heads almost like dogs.

"Very well, we will not attack your pets." She unsheathes a disturbingly large flaming sword and holds it in the air before rising to be fully visible to her soldiers. "The creatures that are not covered in black carapace are to be left unharmed, for they fight at our side as the pets and soldiers of the skinny cow with bone wings."

"Humanoid or biped. Please, don't call us cows, skinny or otherwise." I can feel Liz shaking as I keep a firm grip on her arm and a hand over her mouth. I'm doing my best to stay polite while feeling a bit angry myself. "It's a cultural thing, but that comes across as a rather extreme insult to call a thin woman a cow. It's insulting to call any woman a cow, but the less accurate the comparison the worse the insult is."

"Well, even diamond dog females don't like being called bitches, so I suppose I can see your point, but my soldiers needed an easy reference and you bear a stronger resemblance to minotaurs than dogs." Celestia stops herself, clearly struggling for a moment between diplomat and commander modes. "This is hardly a good time for this kind of discussion. Let us destroy this infestation and then we can sit down and work on some kind of resolution."

That being said, Liz and I share a look and a nod before I let go of her and we begin to fight alongside our equine allies. Liz stays back with the spellcasters, and I head to the front with the few land-bound combatants that remain uninjured. The waves of enemies start coming in greater numbers and greater frequency after a few minutes, but that has given me time to command a number of overlords to spawn as well as a dozen or so fresh zergling eggs. I use my lightning to pick off any of the neon bugs before they can get close enough to injure anything but a couple of my own troops; though trying to keep myself focused when I'm seeing through over a dozen points of view is proving to be a bit problematic, and the burning sensation of my injured wing regenerating is not helping matters.

It takes us three hours to locate the enemy base in the bog. Three hours in which five ponies have been severely injured and every unicorn has run out of their internal reserves for casting spells. Celestia has even taken off some of her armor and given it to a retainer that was teleported in after a solid hour of fighting. More than fifty of my own zerglings have died to surprise attacks by the neon baneling analogues. A hill of stone, nearly eighty feet tall and wider at the base than five hatcheries side-by-side. A small opening is visible near the base, creep visibly oozing out of it and forming a small ring around the exterior. A dozen black-carapaced creatures pour out of the opening as we watch, but only four of them are of the proper build to be the sergling-like soldiers we have been fighting the entire way here. This is proven to be true as the other eight run around the creep perimeter and start to nestle down into it as if to sleep, only for the purple substance to form a cyst-like structure around them. "We have less than a minute to get inside of there before those drones finish mutating into something likely to be harmful to us. Good thing there's only four of them in our way."

Liz and Celestia both nod, with Liz quickly firing off another round that rips one of the approaching zerglings in half. Celestia conjures one of her impossibly powerful solar rays to utterly obliterate the other three, and the three of us follow a wave of my own zerglings towards the hole in the hill. We don't manage to make it before the first of the drones finishes mutating, but the result is what shocks me. "That...that's just a creep colony."

"Kill now, examine later!" Liz's shout cuts off any further thought I may have at the moment, bringing my attention back to the cave entrance where Celestia stands with her mane hanging nearly limp and almost entirely pink instead of the multicolored aurora it was when we first met. "Sunbutt's running out of juice if her mane's any kind of indication."

"I'll forgive the use of that name this once on account of our mutual need for support; do not use it again."

I roll my eyes while running towards the opening, and a single leap carries me through it with inches to spare above the lower lip. Celestia lands next to me seconds later, with Liz dropping down off of her back. I hold my hands a good foot apart while charging them with lightning, creating light as a byproduct as the energy arcs from one limb to the other through the air. Two tunnels oozing with creep lead up and away from us to the left and right while a third is directly in front of us. The beast arrives. I notice Celestia flinch at the thought being imposed into her mind, but Liz shows no reaction whatsoever. Know that I am Cerebrate Skrau, servant of the Overmind and made immortal by its will.

"Well, Cerebrate, you may be immortal, but I know it will take you time to revive when I destroy this body. I also know that a weapon such as those weilded by the Protoss can kill you without allowing you the opportunity to revive." I walk forward slowly, expecting to see a titanic brain in the room beyond that inner opening. What I find is much more disturbing, and I hear Celestia gasp, while Liz utters a single syllable expressing her disgust.

In the center of the room is a pulsing mass of flesh with brain clearly visible behind the thin-stretched membrane, but attached to the side facing the opening is half of a pony. The brain of the cerebrate appears to have burst out the back of its skull, and stray wisps of hair still grow in random patches of olive green mane on what remains of the head as well as along the 'Cerebrate' body. Defying all logic, the pony appears to still be alive and in pain if the fruitless twitching of the remaining forelimb and butterfly-like wing is any indication. Its mouth is locked open as a larva crawls out and impacts the creep-covered ground with a wet slap, followed by hacking coughs and retches. "Liz; shoot as fast as you can. Celestia; use that sun-blade spell you destroyed my overlord with, and try not to think too much about how that pony got in this condition. I swear it is not something I will ever allow to happen again."

As if you have any control over what I can or cannot do. This mare that birthed me has been my plaything for millenia. I don't need to hear anymore, I don't want to hear anymore, and I give in to the anger that rises in me at all of the implications that word brings along. I charge at the cerebrate and leap to begin attacking it with every weapon I can bring to bear. A shot from Liz blows a hole in the flesh and a crater in the neural cells beneath which I quickly exploit by jamming both of my wings into and starting to pull apart. I hang slightly below the gaping hole I am tearing into the alien mind, creating the perfect target for Celestia to cast her spell on while I interfere with anything it tries to do by zapping it with my lightning every couple seconds. You cannot defeat me! I will be reborn again and again! I will never allow you to rest!

Celestia blasts it with three lances of light, each one searing deeper into the brain and actually cooking some of the meat that it passes near if the scent is anything to go by. I feel the physical form begin to quiver and unleash a focused bolt of lightning down the tunnel left by Celestia's spells. "You're clearly outclassed, Skrau. I am the Queen of Blades, and I take control of this hive cluster from you for the safety of the people of this planet. "

"Grenade!" Liz finally seems to have found that little feature of the cannister rifle, and a red-glowing grenade round flies down the fleshy tunnel; landing a good fifty feet inside the vile creature. I release my wings' hold on the tissues of the cerebrate, effectively sealing the blast inside of it while I carefully step back a few dozen feet and watch as the entire thing begins to dissolve in a wonderful, yet revolting, display of teamwork destroying something truly evil.

"Are we done here...because I feel like I need to sleep for about a week, followed by having a lovely little meltdown over actually being in a different world."