Starlight quietly gathered her belongings into a pile and stared down at the meager assortment of objects. She didn't have much from her hometown- not after her falling out with her family and having a particularly cringeworthy phase with her teen years, but the sort of cracked mirror and bits and baubles and the one notebook that stared up at her showed that she had put all her eggs in one basket and if this didn't pan out. . .well that would have been all for naught. Gathering up her few artifacts she had rightfully acquired in Canterlot, she tossed them in a bag and slung it over her shoulder.

She quietly applied her paint to her cutie marks and sighed. Sometimes being at the top of the ladder didn't feel great. She stared into the mirror and psyched herself up, the thought of seeing Tempest again weighing heavily on her mind. "You got this. You are doing this for Sunburst, even if somehow everything goes wrong and this falls apart in the most beautiful mess. At least losing an Equestrian town should get Sunburst to notice me. Though that would be ridiculous that'd come to that cause I've planned for everything and I'd think I'd notice a rebellion."

She giggled at the thought as she got up and opened her window, quietly staring down on her town. It was a mostly well running machine, barring the uncommon times the spells started to break. If she had to think up a success rate, ninety seven percent for satisfied and compliant ponies? How exciting.

She heard the baying of the Diamond Dogs, a reminder and weird custom that the savage imbeciles had to highlight their approach. She quietly brushed her hair and teleported out to greet them. Dusting off her coat and checking her paint marks, she cantered on over to the meeting grounds.

"Hey, wait up."

Starlight glanced back to see Moondancer struggle to keep up, her eyes baggy and dark with circles. Starlight groaned as Moondancer huffed her way towards her, her jet black exterior hiding a vastly out of shape nerd underneath. "I would have expected you to look presentable for something like this." Starlight clicked her tongue as she glanced up and down the unicorn.

Moondancer rolled her eyes. "First of all, I'm your troop leader. Not a mind reader. I can't just wake up two minutes before a thing you barely, if at all, ever mentioned and also while I don't do makeup- your beds are woefully inadequate to sleep in when your science project was moaning in her sleep." Moondancer rolled her eyes.

Starlight barely was able to collate the new information in her mind when she saw the pack of dogs roll in, their howling deafening her mind from thinking too hard about calibration errors and possible failures. A dog that she remembered led the pack today- not Fido or whatever his name was. One of his wives. Some supposedly nice looking dog, if a bit dim. Though Starlight had rarely seen her, she'd thought she wasn't terrible for a dog. She was leading the caravan of ponies like a slave driver as she and her pack corralled their pack animals into a general mob of riches. Starlight begrudgingly thought that at least she could give one concession to a lesser race of beings- the dogs knew how to control crowds of ponies. Even if the ponies were functionally zombies- at least they could eke out something from her failures and her disloyal ponies better than she could.

The dog cupped her paws together as the group approached and her voice echoed through the silent town. "Here jewels for your Clap Of Thunder. Hope it good."

Starlight tried to smile as she hated trying to decipher dogspeak. It was some guttural half Equestrian that wasn't pleasant on her ears. "May the Storm King be ever so forceful in his ways." Starlight cantered up and inspected the carts, each full of palladium and gold. She didn't know exactly what the stuff was being used for since Tempest was super tight lipped about what she needed rare earth minerals for in the Storm Lands, but Starlight hadn't complained. She was just the middlemare.

She saw the tall and lean caravan leader slide off her cart and amble towards her. Her gait was sure and steady and as the border collie approached, she felt the eyes of every dog turn on her. The female dog lifted her paw and every mutt there fell deathly silent. "If gems good, then talk payment." The dog sat on her haunches and looked down at the unicorn, barely even registering Moondancer.

Starlight glanced around, noticing the tension and silently thanking her luck in having Moondancer here. "Okay, so I don't want to be pushy, but I have to know how many of you are even in your mountain." Starlight sighed. "This would be so much easier if your leader was even here. What even is your name? I mean probably like how you dogs can't tell ponies apart, I can't really keep all of you apart."

The dogs growled. The dog leaned over and stared into Starlight's face, her breath reeking of meat. "Name Roxie, and Roxie knows good and bad ponies, Little Grey One."

Starlight coughed. "Yes, well, Roxie. . .going by the terms of the treaty it's more like we give you what we can generously provide and you give us what we can't produce. So that would be twenty thousand pounds of meat from the Storm Lands at a fair trade of one seventh the value." Starlight didn't say who was getting the worse end of the deal.

Roxie scratched her muzzle with a paw and grinned. "Sounds bad. Deal off."

Starlight sputtered staring at the mountain of gems that she sat right in front of. "You can't do that. That's not how any of this works. I can't renege on the treaty you signed, that's not even in my job description. And it's not like you and your brood haven't been fine and dandy cogs in the well oiled machine so I think reneging on your deal would be in bad taste."

Roxie placed a firm paw on Starlight's shoulder and pressed down hard. "Roxie knows. But pony friends think you bad. Plus you grey, grey is bad color. Now where yellow pony?"

That was when Starlight started to feel the ground beneath her hooves start to move. She looked up to see the dogs all with large predatory smiles on their faces. She inwardly screamed and sent out orders to the town as she forced each and every one of her paranoid protocols into jarring motion. She was a locus for her town and she'd protect herself. Even if a part of her begrudgingly liked her successful ponies- though more for selfish reasons than not, since she still wanted to parade a small contingent of her ponies to Sunburst to show off her own studies.

But that was for another time now.

Pinkie breathed out and focused on the earth in front of her, her hooves pistoning through the ground like a jackhammmer, her thoughts focusing on one thing. She could feel the motions of the carts start to slow and stop as the howling cries of the dogs above were signals to follow, the baying and lowing an undulating mass of sound she knew well.

She could feel Fluffy besides her pushing her excess dirt away from her, the gruff and mean dog begrudging her some respect for her speed. She grinned as that reminded her of Rockville. She hummed lightly to herself as she thought of what she would do once she breached the surface.

"Pinkie, I hope you don't overshoot the mark." Rarity's singsong voice echoed softly through the tunnel. Rarity quietly followed, her dainty hoofsteps muffled through layers of dirt and grime that she gingerly stepped through, her face contorted in a mix of disgust and agony as the muddy earth stained her coat.

Pinkie rolled her eyes. "Of course, Rarity. Why do you think I've been slowly angling our way up? I mean it would be fun to punch through feet of earth and rock above us, but I don't think that would be super duper awesome if we got flattened or all that junk from a wrong move. The clay and rock mix here is stable unless I hit a sandstone portion and we fall into a sandstone cave. There's some rather nice ones around here, if Maud told me correctly."

Rarity almost did a double take. "Oh. . .that's right, I sometimes forget you know rocks almost as well as I know gems. Silly me."

Pinkie sighed. "That's years of daily rock farming for you. I can list every type of rock and its facts necessary for farming, the ways to mine them, and how to grow rocks the easy way. It's what I did. It's not like I did something super memorable. Everything kind of blurs together sometimes and with Ponyville, I have good memories there. Memories that stand out more at least"

Rarity wanted to facehoof. "I didn't mean that. It's just that I forget about what you did before Ponyville. Not because it's unimportant. That's hardly relevant. But it's more like I barely remember your first day there. Honestly, it took a while for you to warm up to everypony."

Pinkie laughed. "Well I was like ten and ran somewhere to find myself. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Getting off the train felt like I was entering a dream world. Rockville's tiny compared to Ponyville and I was just intimidated. Then I found the Cakes and, well, that's it." Pinkie's voice wavered. "I don't know why I'm talking about this."

Rarity walked closer, dodging clumps of dirt and rock and laid a hoof on Pinkie. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up bad memories. After all you mentioned how you felt when Twilight was indisposed."

Pinkie glanced back and wistfully smiled. "No worries. I mean I wouldn't change anything that has happened to me. I mean Twilight often talks about how 'changing one variable' would change the past so I wouldn't change anything. Even the bad parts."

Fluffy growled, his body slouching in the small confines of the hole. "Ponies too soft."

Pinkie teased him. "Well let's have our own opinions since I think some diamond dogs are cute and all."

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Oh please, I had to deal with these fine hounds for days and you don't see me sing their praises all too often."

Pinkie shot her unicorn friend a look. "Well looks like they changed and come on 'Wailing Diamond' I feel like they feel something towards you. Oh Fluffy, I just thought of something. Now what if we get out of this all fine and dandy and then we celebrate with a party." Pinkie thought about the ideas swirling around in her head. "Now let's see, I want ponies to be able to eat cakes, but I think dogs can't eat sugary sweet foods? Or was it cats? Oh well. I could try a meat pie idea though I would have to use fish."

Fluffy pricked his ears up at the thought of meat pies. "Now pony, why no other meat? Fish not common dog food."

Pinkie groaned. "Well I'm not going to feed you ponies for very obvious reasons. And pigs and cows are out. I mean cows speak all the time to Applejack. That'd be cruel."

Rarity felt queasy as the two debated the party's logistics. She turned her body away as she tried not to gag. She heard a low baying howl as she turned and she remembered Twilight and Roxie's plan. "Pinkie, that's the signal."

Pinkie pushed her semi curly hair out of her face and grinned. "Ready Fluffy?"

The male dog had a hint of a smile as he looked at the pony he had grown to at least tolerate. He, like all dogs, understood the idea of treats. "Sure."

The pair began digging up, their motions in sync and as Rarity watched the earth move, she wondered how many dogs were out there doing the same exact thing they were at that moment. Digging up and ever forward into a town they probably didn't care for.

All because they thought what she said was important. Rarity's eyes cast down into the dirt as she thought about that. Fashion she could understand easily yet here she felt like a fraud as she tried to balance her distaste for the dogs, her memories clouding her mind, and the dogs themselves. She couldn't figure out how to reconcile that.

She levitated herself out of the hole and saw the sun creep into it. She hadn't seen the sun shine that bright in a long while.

Eyelids crashed open as the mental cry to arms flipped every switch Starlight's little play army had in their head. Bodies stumbled out of their beds, their limbs on overdrive as they ran through the buildings each dead eyed pony shambling about. A stampede of hooves crashed onto the wind as their movements were in lockstep, a clipped succinctness to it, almost mechanical as they wanted to complete what their mental fog told them to do.

Be happy and do what their leader wanted, no questions asked, without a peep of discontent.

They breathed as one, chests rising and falling in motion, unicorns letting their mental blocks unstiffen, horns glowing for the first time in either months or years, atrophied mana reserves screaming bloody murder as they reached out and felt a connection to something in the fog of war. Earth ponies drew on the earth for the first time and felt their limbs strengthen immediately and pegasi whose wings were stilled by just a word from Starlight took off into the air again, their wings light. Not because of natural give and take, but because Starlight told them not to fly unless she let them.

And she usually didn't. All in the name of capital E Equality.

Ponies streamed out of their homes, barely caring on where they were going, moving in a mass of limbs one pony ending where another began, a chain of thought so focused they were silent but from the humming of magic in the air, wings, and hooves on dry dirt that crunched underneath.

It was primordial movement.

The dogs watched the horde of ponies, unflinching as the ground shook and trembled as two forces met in the middle.

"Dogs, sit. Ponies magic strong but heart of dog is stronger. " Roxie barked out, her low voice echoing through the quiet town as dogs grasped onto sharpened obsidian weapons, the ceremonial daggers and spears sharp and black in the early morning sun. Some gripped onto jeweled weapons that they had carried across Equestria, amethyst blades and ruby weapons, peridot bracers adding color to a sea of black. Silence reigned as the two breathed as one.

Moondancer grinned as she saw Starlight arch her back in faux triumph. The jet black unicorn felt nothing as she marveled at the image forming so nicely in her brain, the idea of an explosion so late in the game to hint of treachery just sitting there and ruminating in her jeweled heart. She felt a connection to the bombs far underneath, just in the corner of her mind and she smiled. She breathed in slowly and sidled up to Starlight. "So what now?"

Starlight looked at her with just a faint gleam of fear, Moondancer saw it flit around the corners of her blue eyes, and she wistfully smiled. Moondancer heard Starlight whisper back. "Fight back and win.Murder everyone here if I have to." Starlight laughed a tired laugh, her throat clenching up at the end. "At least I get what I want out of this. I mean just think of it here. Celestia loses a town because of me. You think I'm coming out of this clean? Fuck no, and Sunburst would finally hear how important I am. I won't have to even come to him, he'll come to me. And it's not like the Storm King would take me back anyway. I'd lose years of research and be in debt to his regime for decades."

Moondancer did a quick double take. "Okay, so I'll just go all the way over there," Moondancer vaguely pointed at a moving clump of dirt that she picked at random. "and be focusing on that. I think you got the fort here." Moondancer shambled off as quick as she could, her body evaporating as she shifted into her umbral form.

Starlight hummed to herself as she saw her leave, her mind running through thoughts of Sunburst as she let her aura caress the book in her bag, the gilt cover and childish writing inside calming her and bringing a quiet fury in her eyes. She whistled long and low, her legion of ponies forming up behind her. "Sunburst, this one's for you."

Hell broke loose as she let her ragtag army loose, her mind barely registering the Storm Beasts that some forward thinking pony had loosed, their blue, soulless eyes staring forward at all the new meat they could have. The gibbering hulks ran towards the line and broke like waves upon rocks, dogs barely holding them back with pointed spears.

Starlight felt pure anger and annoyance at whatever these supposedly rational dogs were doing just because they thought they could get out of a deal because of some notion of friendship. Which that wasn't legally binding in the slightest. Red energy danced across her fur as she approached the center, magically amplifying her voice to be heard over the deafening give and take of the waves of each side. She walked past bodies of ponies she barely knew in her town- not because she forgot their names since she knew their faces well enough, but that she just thought of them, in effect, like rotting bags of meat that she could just not care about since everypony there was disposable. She did this for Sunburst- he told her when he was a child that he wanted to create a perfect world once. One where everypony was judged on their own merit instead of a cutie mark. That's what was truly important to her. The idea. Not the ponies. Everything was a means to an end and she looked to the wagons of jewels pulled by even less remembered ponies that she threw away was a statement of that fact.

Ideas were everlasting.

She didn't have friends. Friendship was a completely useless concept since every time Starlight had ever reached a hoof out to somepony they came back and hurt her. Friendship was childish and painful. Equality though had the idea of making everything an equal playing field where finally ponies could be on the same level. And without a cutie mark, ponies could finally be free of ridicule and everything like that- she was trying to build a perfect world and it was falling apart around her.

By the time she reached the front lines, her anger was coming off of her like waves, it's recoil reaching out and carelessly grabbing anything nearby and killing it. She left a swath of destruction in her wake as she looked back, blood pooling around her hooves, her body vaguely covered in a red mist, the ground beneath her sticky and clotted with intent as she let go her emotions fully for the first time in years.

And it felt cathartic as the emotional bomb exploded outwards, a primal scream of pain rising up as dogs were impaled by their own spears in the red hurricane. Starlight watched coolly as Storm Beasts withstood the assault of magic and were treated like literal pincushions as bladed rain fell upon the center mass.

She felt nothing as she surveyed the bloody ground. If only the dogs had waited one more day like civilized idiots. Then maybe she wouldn't have needed to loose her anger.

Roxie breathed in hot air as she picked out shards of sharp obsidian out of her fur. She could see the dogs from below crawl out of their holes in her peripheral vision. They did not act like warrior dogs and she wanted to loudly berate their bitch mothers for raising dogs with no backbones. She felt like she should, but she couldn't, the barking tone came out. Only a small whine as she looked down and saw dogs that she had raised as pups in the communal nursery laying motionless at her paws. She reached down and grabbed a nearby broken sword, its owner staring blank at the sky. She pitied the dead dog. Diamond Dogs weren't supposed to die staring up at the shapeless sky; they were supposed to be facing the earth with its horde of jewels, the dead ones spending time in the earth ever mining and collecting wealth for their descendants.

And yet here were dogs barely out of their pup growths, never with a bitch to continue their pedigree.

Roxie growled as she looked at a nearby Storm Beast that was casually stripping dogs of their jewelry, the lumbering beast having some sentience but Roxie didn't care. She strapped the broken weapons scattered all around her to empty holsters and straps she had on her and dipped her paws in the slowly congealing blood of her tribe. Wiping the blood over her muzzle, she growled and leap towards the Storm Beast, an unfortunate thing in her way.

Roxie breathed in and gripped a broken sword, its jagged edge sharp to the touch, and held it fast as she stabbed the creature, looking at a moment just so she wouldn't get a gout of blood in her eyes. She wanted to stab all the big burly creatures she could see, months of being stuck and working for a faceless evil just to survive weighing her whole tribe down.

The ponies gave her tribe a chance again. The shamanic dogs told of Wailing Diamond coming back, and she did.

She felt the Storm Beast lose its footing in the red stained dirt, its eyes pale blue and unfocused. With one swift motion, she brought up another sword and cut the beast's throat, red waterfalls staining fur white as snow, its magical armor Twilight had warned every dog about in passing doing nothing against cold stone.

"Become like rock. Cold, grey, lifeless." She huffed as she moved on, looking at the horde of ponies ahead of her and the lagging wounded dogs that straggled on behind her clutching bloody stumps and weapons. Fido told her to be like the birds of the sky, quiet and aloof, and yet she played her paws too early or untrained pups dug too loudly and this bloodbath was the result.

She had to move on and deal with that thought as she howled, her strained voice echoing through the hills, small clumps of dogs answering back and forth. They would mourn their hounds later, after the rending and gnashing of teeth was over. Dogs would remember this day.

Moondancer grimaced as she counted down the minutes until she could explode her payload. Too soon and it would look like some kind of betrayal in the eyes of a pony who just blew up a whole lot of dogs, and honestly Moondancer couldn't always rely on these new smoke powers, she still had a red jewel in her body like a giant target. So she had started to count the seconds in her head and somehow it had only been ten minutes. Ten minutes of things just dying without a thought. Her mind was conflicted since she could easily turn the tide of battle in the favor of Twilight and her friends and her mind came up with many a sexy idea as to why that would be a fantastic idea, but her jewel whispered ways to rout the dogs and listen to the lamentations of their bitches. Which also sounded just a little bit appealing to her.

She slunk into the shack that she had holed that Fluttershy or whatever Twilight had called her. She didn't really care what their name was exactly when the whole town was having the most violent dick measuring contest she could think of. She said the first sentence that came to her mind as she poked her head around. "Hey, you done being all mopey about pointless shit?"

Rainbow turned her head, her glassy blue eyes telling the void black unicorn all she needed to know.

"So no then. Great. I told you the whole mental stuff was a fake thing anyway, so while I think your blubbering is adorable and all that, we have far more important things to do."

Rainbow Dash turned away, her eyes still red from emotion. "Okay."

Moondancer pulled Dash out the door, her lethargy annoying the black mare. Things were falling apart and having Starlight one shotting most of the army wasn't something Moondancer had planned for.

Though honestly Moondancer hadn't expected a Diamond Dog army to raise up and start revolting.

Must have been Twilight and her friends' reckless idealism pushing them to idiotic murder sprees. She had read enough of the Friendship Journal in order to edit it down to a more palatable size and fit a general audience. Twilight could get blood out of stones. Fucking literally if Fluttershy teaching Discord of all things about friendship was to be believed and it wasn't some weird reality ploy that Discord cooked up. Moondancer rubbed her head in remembering the absolute mess Canterlot was when Discord got out of his prison. She still couldn't drink chocolate milk due to the sheer amount that flooded Canterlot during that time.

Moondancer pulled the lethargic pegasus out of the shack she hid her in. Moondancer breathed in the blood fumed air and almost gagged at the smell. For all her experience with dealing with bloody situations, she primarily had focused upon the Changeling solution so green ichor was what she was used to, That smelled like you were entombed in a swamp; this smelled like iron and dust, its smell blinding her. Her body worked on autopilot as she tossed the yellow pegasus out to the wolves.

"Hey dogs, look here's the pony you wolf types wanted, right?" Moondancer bluffed her way through most of her life at times, she had to admit, but when a world full of pastel ponies worked on sheer force of will alone, she had to work her damnedest to not flub everything every moment of the day.

It wasn't the easiest decision, but at least some dogs should survive rampant magic blasts. She was one pony and while she was now stronger and far more cunning than usual thanks to her jeweled heart, she was also a realist.

And separating herself from a pony who wasn't even supposed to be conscious added some plausible deniability. She waved the pack away as a sign of goodwill. At least she hoped she did. She was notoriously terrible at sign language. Or was it charades? Moondancer pondered the thought as she shifted into her umbral form, its tendrils of darkness curling and twisting in thought as she let waves of dogs try to mow her down.

They were unsuccessful, of course. Though she did like the rush of air as blades tried to cut her, the feeling of tickling as they cut her smoky form in half, her blood red eyes scaring the cowardly dogs as she blasted magical beams that looked dangerous. She missed each shot, but it looked convincing and if she had to play act to make a crazy bitch think she was on her side, she'd do it.

She did worse things for less. She breathed in and felt the magic bomb far below the ground, on her periphery, and she smiled a devious smile as she knew exactly when she'd let those explode.

Tempest Shadow stared down upon the world and frowned. For a pony such as herself, she knew that by Equestria's logic, she should be horrified at what she was planning to do to cut ties with yet another loose end. She rubbed her scar and felt her horn crackle with emotion as she though back on where she was before meeting the Storm King. And maybe she'd be labeled a war criminal by alicorn standards, but the world was ever so much more grand than the center of the world. She knew of things that ponies would tremble at in trepidation, letting their dignity dribble out and pool around them as they looked at the lost cities around the globe, failed empires that rose and fell before the dawn of time and yet here was Equestria equivocating themselves. Saying they were the important ones, saying that everypony had friends and were treated the best they could be. Hiding the dark underbelly of what she had to go through just because she defended some of her friends from a monster. Losing the thing that made her what she was. She rubbed her aura horn and felt the jagged bits of her horn remind her of her past.

"Uh, Tempest? You wanted me to tell you when we were close to the mountain. or was it the town?" Grubber awkwardly tried to laugh as he thought about what Tempest said. "I mean either way their like right next to each other so like its fine, but I really wanted to give you a heads up before you stepped on the ground again. And I mean I would totally be worried too if I came back to my home and all my hedgehog buddies were there. I mean hypothetically of course. I'm not complaining but the Storm King really likes making examples of towns doesn't he?" Grubber rubbed his hands together.

Tempest shrugged. "Personally, if the Storm King killed all of Equestria to prove a point, I wouldn't be hemming and hawing about it." Tempest eyed the creature and sighed. "But since you're a weak and defenseless specimen, that doesn't apply to you at all."

Grubber sighed. "Thanks for the compliment. I think."

The broken unicorn had a slight hint of a smile. "You'd know if I was actually reprimanding you." Tempest picked up the hedgehog in her wavering magic and looked him in the eyes. "I mean I was joking. If I was reprimanding you, I'd have tossed you out of the ship and watched you fall screaming until you became a tiny speck and then I might have caught you with my magic. Or I might not. It really doesn't matter. Except I'd lose the last sapient thing on this ship that brings some kind of conversation during these forays into distant places. So thanks to every soldier on this ship being functionally loyal and brain dead, you do your job perfectly. But you still annoy me."

Grubber beamed. "That's both the longest time you've talked to me and the nicest thing you've said. Are you sure going to Equestria won't make you-" Grubber's voice stopped as he felt a cold pressure around his neck.

Tempest turned away. "No, I can feel hints of what you were going to say next. That the trip would make me a big softie and weak?" Tempest laughed. "Hardly. It's just that I've been thinking about the past, and realizing that I have something here that I would never have got elsewhere. If that made me wax poetic about a dust mite like you, so be it. I want to be crystal clear. What I will do once we reach this Ironhoof will be a declaration of war. And I am okay with that. I've made my peace. Got it?"

"Got it." Grubber choked out the sentence and then was slammed to the ground as Tempest sat back down.

"Prepare the petrification cannon. Now."

Grubber scampered off, his feet pattering on the steel floor of the airship.

Tempest looked at the noonday sun and sighed. "Stupid. I should have, no. Think of the mission and excise all worries." Tempest breathed in, focusing on her center and breathing out. In, out. She felt the stress and anxiety leave her body as she watched the mountain ahead of her come ever closer. She didn't want to admit it, but a tiny, and long forgotten filly found the sight breathtaking.

And then she squashed the feeling and felt calm again. She quietly repeated her mantra over and over. "I am a rock. Cold, hard, and emotionless. . ." She whispered the mantra over and over. She had to lie to herself to keep herself sane.

Rarity dodged behind a wall as she weaved between magical blasts, silently thanking that she had taken dance lessons during her fillyhood, the quick thinking on her hooves built on years of focused steps. Though she had to laugh to herself in the chaos since this was the most literal way to interpret dance. Weaponized steps building to an inevitable climax full of passion and love for the art. She saw Pinkie in the corner of her eye mirroring her movements, slightly sloppier due to less muscle memory, but the pink pony was adding her own flair to the dance. Rarity inwardly sighed. Pinkie was Pinkie.

Rarity cringed as she used her gem location spell and found the weapons she was looking for.

Twilight had obliquely mentioned before she sent them out on this reconnaissance mission that, no matter what, they might have to do some things that were distasteful. Rarity grimaced as she looked down and saw the tiny diamonds hovering in her magic, like tiny decorative arrowheads, swirling around her in defensive patterns that reflected back magic and cut a swathe through more stubborn ponies.

Not by murdering- far from it. That would be far too barbaric for a refined lady such as herself. It would look bad on the branding if she'd do something so rash and abrupt. So whenever necessary she interpreted the vague order as 'incapacitate' not 'murder'. That was her true dance, pacifism by a thousand cuts instead of one decisive blow.

She learned the trick building up her business, her mind wandering as she drew inward and didn't focus on the carnage and pain she was causing, thinking of how she built up her business with just a few bits and word of mouth. Then she slowly grew her business into a slightly recognizable name for outsiders- posh but middle class Canterlotians had her name on their lips. They went to her first, draining the businesses in Canterlot from their business model they had relied upon until the societal pressure and lowered business made Hoity Toity and the fashion industry in general take a side eyed glance at her. Then she opened her first stores outside of Ponyville and the rest was future history.

Rarity wiped a spray of blood off her coat, slightly worried about how blood would be ever so difficult to get out of it. She muttered to herself as she watched Pinkie pirouette past a Storm Beast. "I told Twilight I was a fashion designer, not a strategist." Rarity felt spells run past her face, the heat singeing her coat. She winced and sent the diamonds away, their shimmering magnificence bringing up ideas for dresses in her mind. She quickly filed them away past the locked door of bad ideas.

"I'd rather not commit fashion homicide for commemorating a battle. That just seems too gauche. Though there has to be a market for that somewhere. Possibly Griffonstone. Rainbow mentioned how much griffons love the hint of a good battle." Rarity strolled through the battle, her mind lost in thought as she wondered who would buy a dress with bloodstained diamonds. Even the idea of opening up a possible Griffonstone location felt wrong somehow. "Maybe that's a little too on the nose."

Fluttershy opened her eyes and rolled out of bed, her eyes were unfocused and blurry with a massive headache that was pulsing through her mind like a jackhammer on her brain. She wiped her eyes and leaned heavily on the makeshift pallet she had been laying on, her legs weak and heavy with unnatural movements. She could hear things shuffle around in the vague darkness and she stumbled towards any hint of light, a hoof up on a wall tracing the way out, running over rocks and gems alike. Fluttershy breathed in slow as she tried to see.

Then she took a wrong step and the world tumbled out from beneath her. Her side scraped the rocks and as she felt the air get knocked out of her in a huff, she laid there and coughed up a day of phlegm and her body retched and heaved as it wanted to vomit out nonexistent food.

She lay there in the darkness and tried to call out for help, her cries of "Help" echoing through the cavernous space.

It couldn't have been more than a minute, but it felt like aeons as two ponies she knew the voices of picked her up and mumbled among themselves.

She could hear Twilight, but not see her clearly as it was like the world was currently in grayscale due to the darkness. "Fluttershy, don't move. Applejack, hold her steady. Not there, under her forehooves."

"I told you, Twi, that we should have moved her outside. No sense having her in darkness when she can't see nothing clearly. I mean would you like being stuck in a cave in darkness, I reckon not."

Twilight huffed. "I didn't expect her to move so sue me on expecting a bloody rambling mess, no offense Fluttershy, to get up and walk around. But I hoped it might happen. Maybe that means that Rainbow's okay?"

Applejack helped Fluttershy back on the pallet and stretched, Fluttershy feeling the side she was holding onto move as the orange pony's muscles reacted. "And I keep telling you that sure, she might be awake, but we can't do nothing about it. I mean you're connected to Pinkie through that mental hoodoo you got going on."

Fluttershy was lost, her mind reeling with questions. She didn't want to pipe up and be a bother, but she needed to figure out what was happening. "Um, I'm really sorry, but I don't know what's going on."

Twilight's exasperated sigh came as a response. "It's not going well outside. And that's after I planned for things, I mean the dogs told me about how many ponies should be in Ironhoof and I helped them figure out possible ways to circumvent antimagic armor. Though Applejack did give the final solution."

Applejack's voice rose and fell in hearing that faint praise. "I mean it was nothing really, just if Twilight couldn't break their powers or whatever, I just said to brute force it with weapons. I mean sure it's not what I expected to use my knowledge of farming for, but you don't use a fancy solution to a problem when a quick and simple one does it in a quarter of the time."

Twilight cleared her throat and continued. "Yes, well, I was thinking of how antimagic fields could even work in the context of leylines since everything has magic. It's like antigravity spells. While they seem simple to cast, there are usually some problems in flagrantly waving away laws of physics."

Applejack's voice told Fluttershy all she had to know- she could see the farmer roll her eyes in her head as the sarcasm dripped off her like honey. "Yeah well you also broke time once and we're still here. And I've seen you break gravity so unless you got some dangerous world ending things we don't know about stashed away in your noggin, I think we're fine. I mean Discord breaks all kinds of natural laws and we haven't turned into weird abominations of nature."

Fluttershy piped up. "Well Discord is a special case."

Applejack laughed. "Oh he's special all right. But yeah Twilight said we should push up some rebellion stuff up cause you got all bleeding from the eyes and look where that's got us. Got Twilight saying Pinkie's seeing some horrible garbage and we're stuck in a cave caring for you cause I'm indisposed and Rarity told me in no uncertain terms that if I step out of this here cave, she'd keep me locked up in my own house for the next eight months and Twilight's here keeping you from going blind."

Twilight's voice fell. "Well, I mean it's unprecedented so I don't think I did it perfectly, but if there's any hiccups in your sight, Fluttershy, just tell me and I'd have Celestia and Luna check you out. I mean of course once this is over, but I mean I feel like I kind of caused this to happen so. . ." Twilight's voice trailed off.

Fluttershy didn't want to try and reach out, not that she was angry or anything, she just was unsure on where exactly Twilight was now standing due to the darkness. "It's fine." Fluttershy awkwardly got up and stretched her blue wings. "I mean I can probably help."

She could hear them vaguely start to say stuff as their brains caught up with what Fluttershy of all ponies just said.

Fluttershy walked out and felt her way towards the beginning of the cave. "I can't hear you girls. I'm-" Fluttershy's eyes blinked as light filtered through, a white disc of shocking light that her eyes were now unaccustomed to. She shimmed her way to the cave's mouth and stepped out, the air murky and smelling rancid with a smell she was used to in small quantities. "Oh."

It was blood. And she could only see red as far as she could see. It was like looking at a bleeding cut that had to be stitched up, the oozing lifeblood pooling and clotting as fast as it could to save somepony's life. And yet she knew that this was futile, the howls and muffled screams on the air showing that this wasn't going to end perfectly tied up in a knot.

Fluttershy frowned and took off into the air, her borrowed wings shooting as fast as she could towards a town that was on the verge of collapse.

Starlight fumed as she ran through each possibility in her head. She had the artifacts of the Pillars of Equestria stashed away in her bag so if things went any further in Tartarus she could slink away with her tail between her legs like a good pony. Or she could drop the few actually dangerous relics and murder everyone here. She was walking the tightrope of morality now and she could honestly go either way. She aimed a crimson red beam at a Diamond Dog and watched the sad little thing explode in a rain of gore. How pathetic of all these dogs expecting some mercy when they came in her house and trashed a deal she couldn't change. She muttered to herself, "I was going to be so very merciful if they had turned around and left me alone."

She felt a whoosh of air and glanced over to see the one ray of light in her world at the moment, Moondancer, reforming into a full pony, wisps of smoke trailing her like a long, black cloak. "So how is the battle going?"

Starlight rolled her eyes. "Worse than expected if I am brutally honest. I didn't expect a full fledged war in my town, so anything of the sort is the worst possible scenario. Though if I take my disappointment with a grain of salt, then perfectly fine. These Diamond Dogs have no magic to speak of and so it's like fighting a defenseless infant. Or is that too harsh? What do you think Moondancer?"

Moondancer shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe? Though I don't really think this is the time for debating if you're being too harsh on the dogs. I mean look around you, isn't this turning into a bloodbath?" Moondancer sighed and tossed aside a charging poodle, his paws flailing in the air. Things were just too obnoxious and stupid now. "But I mean if you want to argue semantics, I feel like I just saw some dogs kidnap your yellow pegasus bitch or whatever."

Starlight stopped and turned slowly towards her black unicorn acquaintance. "What was that?" Red energy crackled around her fur as she spoke coldly and as slow as she could to keep her cool.

Moondancer vaguely pointed at the mountain in the distance, knowing full well that getting Starlight unbalanced was the best course of action. Hitting her brain with enough bad situations or keeping her off balance enough, if she remembered the last few days correctly, brought out the best and worst characteristics in Starlight. Extreme mood swings and wanting to keep control at any cost, and also a loss of focus and a slow descent into paranoia.

Moondancer had to almost laugh as she almost reminded her for one moment like the way Twilight described herself in the Friendship Journal, her failures and mistakes being a result of her own curiosity and a slowly devolving situation.

Or maybe unicorns were just fucking insane.

Starlight stamped her hoof on the ground and facehoofed. "Fine. What the fuck ever. But if I have to clear out the whole damn nest to get her back, I'll do it. I mean honestly, you'd do that too."

Moondancer cocked her head. "I don't think committing an act of genocide would be on my list of things to do."

Starlight drew Moondancer in close, her eyes distant and wide. "Of course you would. I mean come on, what about all those insects I heard about? I'm honestly surprised you haven't made a bug spray to air out those exoskeletons and clear the air with them. It's not like Celestia or Luna probably haven't murdered hordes of unwilling things through the years. Just follow their example and murder the shit out of fucking every piece of refuse you see." Starlight smiled. "It'd make you feel better. I mean if I didn't focus on that, I'd have probably aimed my horn at a nearby mirror and lobotomized myself just cause my whole dream of a perfectly running society is in the fucking shitter and Celestia damn it I'm doing gangbusters." Moondancer glanced over and saw Starlight's insane twitching eyes and rictus grin told Moondancer all she needed to know. And while she hated to admit it, at least going with the crazy unicorn might give her an out.

Cause who can blame you if the town explodes when you aren't even there?

"Sure, why not?" Moondancer tried to hide her excitement as they went off to a mountain that didn't have the pony Starlight was looking for.

Pinkie danced around the unicorn magic, their heat singing her fur as the spells ricocheted off walls and doors, her body trusting in her Pinkie Sense as much as she could. She'd probably expect Rarity to explain her extrasensory perception as some sort of dance routine or something equally silly. Pinkie giggled to herself for one moment, the levity of the thought blotting out the horrible thoughts coming in from all around her, her mind providing her with new twitchy twitches that she had to figure out on the fly as it relegated new information into her brain at a rapid pace.

Pinkie took it in stride, but she secretly worried that it would be a bit too much to handle, as the twitches she felt everyday were almost another language she was fluent in. She had had years of practice discerning exactly what constituted a 'heavy falling object imminent' or 'you almost added too much sugar'. The twitches weren't always easy to figure out. They could be anywhere from a slight tickle to feeling like your bones were going to snap right out of their sockets and use you like a puppet. Those were weird and bad, but manageable. Mainly cause Equestria wasn't the big, bad outside. Even Ponyville, for all it's raucous charm, wasn't the Everfree Forest. That place and other places like it set her off like a firecracker, the danger signs everywhere and coming in hot. So overall, Pinkie Sense was just something she had to deal with and was a part of her life that she counted primarily as a blessing at times. Almost losing Twilight? That was a medium to high danger one. She still felt pangs of void emotions as she felt the recent memory well up. That was bad. But there were far worse Pinkie Sense feelings. Death for one felt like she was having an out of body experience for a second while she watched her body have almost like a constant seizure as it tried to parse death signals.

Pinkie grimaced at the thought. She had very few of those catastrophic Pinkie Senses. And now surrounded by death and dying dogs barking out and whimpering in pain, she realized something.

There could always be a worse and far more painful Pinkie Sensation.

She rolled out of her hidey hole and slunk around the back of the house she had taken some quick shelter in, her vision cloudy with emotions welling in from Twilight and she whisked them away, locking her marefriend's connection to her mind away for a moment to focus in on taking out a Storm Beast yet again, her mind partially focusing on payback for the day or two of Pinkamena feelings she had to feel again.

Popping out like she was surprising a foal, she quickly dodged the fists of the creature, the hot breath and blue eyes being the only things she could see for a moment in her vision, her body twisting and turning as it naturally bent itself into a shape that kept her out of its reach.

Pinkie didn't feel anything, her mind thinking of her childhood pulling rocks from the ground, her body moving as fast as she could in time with her family, their speed outmatching her in every way as she just tried to keep her head above the water as rocks popped out of the ground fully formed and ridiculously heavy.

She felt the same feeling she did so long ago, her body remembering how it felt hoisting a heavy rock, picking it up in her hooves and twisting it just slightly to get a better grip, pulling on it just enough so it would pop with a slight bang or rolling stop and she'd move on to the next one, the constant motion keeping her body from rebelling and feeling tired and in constant aching pain. It was just pulling rocks from the ground during the fall, winter being a terrible time to grow rocks, the snow and ice breaking rocks into unusable pieces. Doing that for years from before the sun was up to when the sun went down every day that they could just to survive and get enough to pay rent was back breaking labor. She barely had a childhood to speak of and here she was thinking back on those times with some sort of nostalgia. And yet she loved her family that was true, but she still had trouble connecting with her parents.

She rolled off the body, the creature's limp form going to the floor as she tossed aside the helmet.

She mentally told herself that what was inside the helmet was a rock. It made her feel better. She silently thanked Celestia that she was bright pink for a moment cause it was far easier to not realize that she was turning into a darker shade of pink, red running up her hooves as she continued her focus.

"Darling? Are you okay?" Rarity's voice slightly trembled as she looked upon the scene, her hooves had followed the commotion and Fluffy's nose had followed Pinkie's scent through the blood clotted air.

Fluffy hunched down and looked at the corpse that was on the floor, slightly sniffing the air as he pushed the headless body around and looked back at Pinkie. "Pony strong, good pony and Fluffy are on same tribe side now. Grey One stronger than fat look seems."

Pinkie rolled her eyes. " I'm not fat." Pinkie tried to smile for a moment. "I'm fine, Rarity. Just the situation hitting me hard again. I sure hate doing this because this really isn't my favorite thing to do. I mean I'm Laughter for crying out loud and I didn't want to be good at that-" She turned away and pointed around the mayhem in the house, "but I am I guess. I don't know. I just want to make ponies happy with parties and be happy and yet I'm doing neither of those right now. And yet I'm still here and we're still here and I want to throw up and all that but I really haven't eaten anything and I can't just close my eyes and wake up from the nightmare I'm in right now and I want this to go back to something so much easier and it-" Pinkie breathed. "it just can't cause I feel like I'm going to close my eyes and know I'm good at this. And I'm scared about that." Pinkie's eyes welled with tears as she slumped to the floor.

Rarity and Fluffy shared a quick look. The hulking dog spoke up first, his words shaky with weird pony emotions confusing him. "Fluffy gets point. Go be sure no stupid ponies ruin weak moment." The dog stretched out to his far taller position, his head scraping the short ceiling. "And Grey One, be safe. You came to mountain loud, sad, gray thing. You left mountain warrior." Rarity could swear her mind was playing tricks on her as she thought she saw the gruff male dog almost crack a smile at the compliment. "You relax while Fluffy deals with the problem, Grey One just try to make plan for feast good." Before Rarity could thank the dog, he rushed out, charging through the wall in one fell swoop.

Rarity huffed. "Do I have to outline exactly what doors are to these dogs?"

Pinkie lay back and stared up at the ceiling. "Maybe."

Rainbow felt like she was in a dream. She looked down and saw red blood all over the place and she couldn't understand it. She had to still be in the dream somehow because the idea of violence on this scale didn't mesh with her mind as it tried to keep up with reality, the false memories still there in her head crawling around like toxic roaches.

She glanced up at the wide open sky and wondered if it was going to change to some nightmare again as she tried to come up with a question that could try and tell her exactly if she was awake or not. If only Fluttershy was here she could come up with some question. She was the one that was good at asking them anyway. Rainbow remembered a joke Fluttershy came up with once about themselves. The way Fluttershy told it, Dash liked to hit and run in situations, while Fluttershy liked to just stay there and try to relax.

Rainbow remembered bringing up that she definitely remembered multiple times that Fluttershy was a mess too.

That had been an awkward conversation and a bone of contention for a while.

At least Rainbow had learned that Fluttershy was absolutely terrible at humor. Or at least she didn't get her humor. Even after an hour of explaining the joke she had meant, Fluttershy still wasn't able to realize that she didn't tell a joke. Just a weird observation and nothing more.

"Why do I even remember that? That's not even important." She rolled her eyes at her addled mind and looked down, her mind now registering that somehow she hadn't realized that she was being carried by a pack of dogs.

Yep this had to be a dream.

"Great, what now? Is everything here going to die or something cause this is getting ridiculous." Dash noticed that the pack was slowing as they came to an important looking dog that oddly looked like Applejack's border collie. Dash chalked it up to some random feeling she had or something.

"Halt." The female dog wiped blood from her face and sniffed the air, her body losing her tension as she came closer to the pack, her head bowing as she walked around them marking her dominance. She smelled Dash, her breath hot and stale with blood that made the pony gag quietly with dread. "Smell like pony who bled from eyes." The dog picked herself up and stretched her limbs, only moving as much as she needed. "Twilight mentioned to look for you." The dog grinned. "Roxie thought battle necessary. Roxie wrong."

Dash nodded, her mind expecting something extra horrible to happen. She gingerly bumped her hoof to the diamond dog's paw and slightly recoiled as she waited for the earth shattering kaboom or something. "Uh, yeah. I guess you were?" Rainbow's voice trilled upwards in slight confusion as she tried to understand how exactly some random dog knew Twilight. Or if it was some weird dog name for like the moon or something. Fluttershy was the one who liked animals. "Can we like get out of town cause I've spent like four days here and I hate it."

Roxie laughed. her husky chuckle resounding through the raucous town. "Roxie like joke."

Dash would have laughed at the deadpan delivery, but her feathers stood on end as she felt the temperature drop enough to tell her immediately that a cold front was coming in. She looked to the sky and looked around and she could see on the edge of her sight that there was one lonely black cloud in the sky.

Which never happened in non-Everfree locations so that raised a red flag. Dash took a breath and just prepared for the worst. "Yeah can we leave now? I really don't like here at all."

Roxie rolled her eyes. "Ponies always worried about small stuff. Look around, this big picture."

Dash looked and thought that it really wasn't a fun time. She kept trying to figure out if she was truly awake and the image of bloody bodies laying on the sands reminded her too much like the worst images the spell gave her. And yet she hadn't found an exact reason why she was still awake. And that made it somehow worse cause while the last few memories she had before today were tinged with horror, at least she told herself that she would go away from most of that in time. This? This wasn't Celestia's plan at all.

If Twilight was near her at the moment, Dash knew instructively that the alicorn would explain the exact date and time that Equestria last had a battle close to this caliber.

"Yeah. Big picture. More like bloodbath. Got it. Can we go inside a place and hold out for a while cause while I love a good brawl against stuff, I feel like something bad's going to happen."

Roxie waved her dogs away, her paws telling of secret signs that the dogs understood while to Dash they were an incomprehensible language only A.K. Yearling would put in an appendix to flesh out her Daring Do adventures. The female dog bent down and patted Dash on the head like a foal. "If pony says weather bad, we go then. Ponies seem to know the sky above all better than dogs. But dogs know earth better." Roxie wiped her bloody paws and sighed. "Dogs know earth better."

Dash didn't ask.

Moondancer's life was ruined when she saw who was only yards away. Fucking Twilight. She cursed under her breath as she tried to play it cool. It wasn't like she was standing right next to the bad guy of the week while being decidedly helpful to said bad guy while Twilight was sitting their being stupidly hot or anything at all. No, it was perfectly fine that this was going to go south immediately as soon as the whole world went to Tartarus. She quickly threw out the jewel's insistence on snapping Starlight's neck and tossing her down the nearest canyon. That would be slightly evil. And while Twilight might understand, what with all she had to deal with, Moondancer knew her old friend well and Twilight was a goody two shoes through and through. So armed with a list of curse words a gryphon sailor would find excessive, she pulled Starlight behind a wall of rocks and shut her mouth just in case.

"Shut up. Looks like we might have to get creative here."

She could feel Starlight staring holes in her head. Moondancer slowly let go of the little tyrant's mouth. Starlight took a long deep breath and rubbed her mouth. "What gave you the idea to just pull me behind some stupid rocks?"

Moondancer sighed and pointed. "You know sometimes I wonder how you ran the town before everything turned to shit. Probably fantastic."

Starlight glowered at the pitch black unicorn. "I managed." Starlight poked her head out for a brief second and popped her head back behind the rock. "By Storm, this blows."

Moondancer tried to think of a plan but she kept coming back to the whole idea of explaining everything to Twilight. "You have any idea how to deal with them?"

Starlight sighed. "Just one." The pink unicorn got up and stretched her limbs, carefully keeping the three ponies sight as she did so. "Cover me."

"Wait, no. Don't-"

Starlight got up on the rocks and cupped her hooves together. "Hey, alicorn bitch, how'd your nap feel?"

Moondancer screamed inwardly. Starlight kept finding new ways of beidng a pompous idiot.

Twilight and Applejack looked at Starlight for a moment in silence. As the awkward silence reigned for a moment, Fluttershy lightly set down onto the ground as well. Twilight spoke up first once the shock of being called out for no real reason passed. "What? I can't hear you."

Moondancer facehoofed hard.

Starlight's horn glowed red as she cast a quick spell to get her point across. Clearing her throat, she cupped her hooves again and yelled as loud as her newly amplified voice could go. "I said you ruined my town and I totally want to punch your stupid face and ruin your life, you stupid dolt."

Moondancer rubbed her temple and decided to take matters into her own hooves. Things were getting rather obnoxious and Starlight was being a literal child now."Fuck it." She felt her magical bombs in her mind, miles below her and pressed her mental trigger. She felt the first one go and she smiled as she waited to see the mess that freeing a town full of controlled ponies would look like. If Starlight thought her plans were ruined now, just wait.

Her gloating was short lived.

Applejack rolled her eyes. "Now wait a cotton picking minute, we barely even were in your town."

Starlight pointed back at her town and was going to respond until the world exploded behind her.

Moondancer was thrown off her feet as the distant shockwave hit, the multiple magical bombs she had placed below the earth acting as one explosion building off of itself until it couldn't anymore. She felt dazed and confused as her head connected with the rocks, her world going white for a moment.

Starlight stood there mouth agape as her town reeled and rocked like a sinking ship, massive boulders shooting up into the sky and falling down on everyone like the angry wrath of an ancient god. "What the fuck did you do? I get out of my town for two seconds and it blows itself to smithereens." Starlight's eye twitched, her emotions fully out of whack, red energy cascading off of her in powerful waves. She turned her head, her eyes blood red from the bleedback of her own emotions. "That's it."

Pinkie's body shook violently as she felt the largest Pinkie Sense shock she'd felt in a long while, her teeth chattering as she tried to speak. Her voice didn't come out, as she worked on autopilot, her body picking up the slack as she gripped tight to Rarity as she tried to figure out where the most imminent dangers were coming from.

"Darling, are you okay?"

Pinkie shook her head, trying to be calm as the first shake hit, the earth below them roiling with untapped potential as an earthquake like feeling shook the house they were in. She could hear dogs of all stripes and sounds barking and wailing as they tried to react to new sensations and feelings.

"Where's Fluffy?" Pinkie spat out through clenched teeth. Her head was on fire as the world was blaring at her, screaming bloody murder about danger and she wanted to be proactive. Even if she couldn't save Twilight once, she could try and save a few from danger.

Rarity tried to hold on to the door jam and pointed outside. "He hasn't come back from out there."

Pinkie's teeth rattled as the ground opened up and exploded. The only thing she noticed beyond the pandemonium and mayhem all around her was that she could hear new voices add into the mix of despair and pain around them.

Pony voices. Screaming.

Fluffy breathed in the putrid air as he tried to relax from the day's events. As he scavenged the deserted town for anything to help the good gray pony in her strange pony ways, he saw friends splayed out like leftovers, their eyes looking at nothing and everything all at once. Fluffy didn't like death, it felt like a battle one could always lose. He didn't care for battles like that. Where was the sport in that? If two forces met and fought a great and mighty battle, one should enjoy the spoils. Not death, death wins every time and there was no way for dogs to survive. Yet death was a natural part of battle.

He was in a field of death and it was the main thing on his mind, besides the thoughts of parties that the grey one could give him, images of meat pies both exciting and disgusting him as he trudged through the village of death.

"Stupid pony leader ruin meat pies for Fluffy. That impossible, meat is meat." He huffed as he moved through the street.

He felt the ground tremble slightly, his senses honed by years of knowing the feeling of dirt between his paws, his body used to swimming through layers of rock. Unlike most soft, squishy ponies he knew exactly what a tremor to an earthquake felt like and this wasn't it. He barely paid it attention as he saw a pack of ponies looking around for straggling dogs.

He smiled a toothy grin and rose up on his back paws, he felt like this might be fun. He had been holding back for the ponies- only knocking out the creatures he saw, their cold dead eyes staring back like winter, hard and cold with biting intentions.

Fluffy rolled on the ground, trying to keep abreast of the ponies, the ground providing any sense of unrest in these trying times. "Come to Fluffy," he growled.

That was when the world turned crazy as he saw a flicker of life within the group of ponies. Their faces turned from slack jawed, crazy zombies into the faintest glimmer of life within their ranks. The purple one, a unicorn, Fluffy didn't care for names, the ponies all having cute names that were meaningless. Fluffy was Fluffy because his sire and bitch thought he was the fluffy one in his litter. He wore that name with pride, even when larger dogs made fun of him. But Fluffy had the last laugh as he was one of the biggest and strongest dogs in the tribe.

His name had meaning, unlike. . . Fluffy tried to think of the cutest name he could, his mind unaccustomed to the task. "Bone Steak." He grinned at the thought of a pony having that name, the idea of that amusing him as that would be the most adorable thing to his standards.

He was surprised when he looked up to see the ponies awkwardly staring at the carnage, their eyes blinking with recognition at the horror surrounding them.

"Oh Celestia." The unicorn breathily spoke, their words muffled behind the hints of tears welling up in their eyes.

"Where's Starlight? We have to find Starlight, everything has to make sense. This doesn't make sense, I was just in Canterlot and now I'm here. Why am I here?" An earth pony, short and green tried to hold their world together as they almost hyperventilated themselves into a stupor.

Fluffy almost wanted to laugh at the ponies, but he remembered Gray One and her strong outside and soft, chewy inside of emotions. He took a breath and was going to try and show some hint that he wasn't going to skewer their heads and hear the lamentations of their bitches. Or something like that. But the world turned completely topsy turvy as he felt the earth give way and he rolled to the side as a giant hole rent through the ground.

He blinked and saw the green pony for a second, their face streaked with dirt and confusion as the village rent itself in two with new screams piercing his senses. Everything was so loud. He took a quick step, looked up and saw a sight he would never forget.

He saw whole rocks lift up and over arcing through the sky, their momentum making them fly through the air with magnificent speed and grace, hundreds of thousands of tons of rock upending itself through the air and raining down like they were pebbles.

He almost wanted to bark out to say something to the ponies around, the two in particular that seemed to be freaking out just standing there, their voices barely being heard over the explosions and death all around He could hear the faint mumbling of a prayer on their lips as he watched a boulder careen into them, thousands of pounds of rock briefly being slowed by a magical aura trying to surround it, its speed too great and the unicorn's magic too weak from disuse and malnutrition that he only watched as the pair was made into a fine red paste that misted over him. The last thing he saw of the ponies before they had turned into gore was their bodies compressing down into their component parts, bones shooting through skin and flesh, brains and eyes exploding with the sheer force of weight and a unicorn fountaining blood as her magic tried to hold up an unstoppable force for the final death rattle, her neck snapping backwards under the strain. Looking straight at the diamond dog, her eyes having a hint of fear as the tomb closed above them, only Fluffy knowing what he saw and what that particular rock held beneath.

The sickening splorch of that sound echoing through the town heralded things like that happening over and over.

Fluffy wiped his face and felt hot acidic bile tickle the back of his throat.

Dash cursed her luck as she tried to hold onto something as the shockwave of explosions hit her. She tried to flap her yellow wings, scowling as she remembered that Fluttershy's body wasn't like hers at all. Too large and unused to flying made her wingpower woefully inadequate when it was truly needed. "Come on you piece of garbage; I just need to get out of here. Nothing much." She felt her borrowed body flag as she got to the door, it's porthole to the world listing at a 180 degree angle, showing her the sky instead of the much more comforting ground.

She felt Roxie inch her way up her body, her paws reaching some rather inappropriate places as her paws tried to grab hold of something close to stable.

"Roxie not want to look down." The dog whined, her tail inbetween her legs as she looked down into the black maw of emptiness below, the sinkhole that had been created a endless void below.

Dash huffed as she reached out a hoof to grab onto the door jam, praying that the wood could hold a heavy pegasus and a fully grown diamond dog for a brief moment. "Yeah well I'm trying and if you got your paws off the merchandise, I might be able to get out of this death trap." Rainbow felt like she was almost back to normal. Sure, she still felt like there were parts of her missing and she still felt off, but the adrenaline that had hit once the building faltered had brought her partially back to reality.

Even if it reminded her far too much of her nightmare.

She felt the wood start to buckle under their combined weight. "You aren't going to like this."

Roxie's ears perked up at the words. "What?"

Dash partially let go of the door and held onto it with one hoof. Thanking that Fluttershy had a hidden reservoir of strength that she usually kept hidden behind good intentions and introversion, she quickly rocked back and forth. She breathed in and out and she heard Roxie whimper below her, her nails digging ever so slightly into her coat. She unfurled her yellow wings as far as they could go, hoping beyond hope that the added wind resistance and time might arc the move she was planning on doing just enough so they wouldn't plunge into the abyss below. She let her training as a Wonderbolt and weather pegasus take hold and hope that all the training she had got in flight school was enough. She let go and dropped into the hole, hoping that she timed it right. Either she misread the situation and there wasn't going to be a drastic rise in air pressure as the underground air rose up to meet the hot outside or it was and they would be saved.

She closed her eyes and let her wings out enough, hopefully enough to clear the door without shattering every bone in her wing structure for her daring trick. She had done that particular hospital stay far too many times to want to do it again.

She felt the air envelop her and her cargo, the pressurized air working overtime, its surface broiling with purpose as it hit her like a ton of bricks, the falling momentum transferring into the rising airstream, her wings trying to cup the air under her as much as she could. She couldn't hear Roxie over her ears popping from the drastic change in pressure and she didn't care. She didn't care if the dog was screaming or if she was laughing cause the only thing that mattered was riding the wave of air and laughing like a maniac as she and the dog blasted out through the doorway, the entire house they were in finally giving up the ghost and falling to its doom.

The air felt magical, the one cloud in the sky predicted rain with its dark and foreboding appearance but she didn't care.

She had pulled off a trick in Fluttershy's body. That had to count for something. Her jubilation was short lived as she turned and saw the massive devastation that the town was in, the chunks of rock and the stupid statue that Starlight hated for some reason standing as the only things recognizable in a landscape full of half destroyed houses and mayhem all over.

Ponies were awake now, the view from up here making them out like ants, their pastel colors being the only things that told them apart in the dust and haze of the explosion or something that had rendered a town into a crater. She could hear faint screams and she felt a pang of guilt in her chest. Only one thing was on her mind. And one unicorn in particular in that case.

"Moondancer, you planned for this to happen?"

Moondancer did not expect for Starlight to fully have a mental breakdown. But the pony sure was having something close to it as she became clouded with rage. The black unicorn had to say that Starlight's strategy was now completely thrown out the window.

Sad really.

Starlight's body glowed a faint crimson as her emotions overtook her, casting everything she was touching in a red glow of righteous fury. "You destroy my town I've spent years cultivating in a matter of days and you cause it to fall into a massive hole and saw that it's somehow not your stupid fault?" Starlight grit her teeth and blasted a rock that Twilight was currently behind.

Twilight rolled to the side as the boulder disintegrated under the magical force. "You attacked Canterlot. Of course I'd come and try to investigate why and anyway you seem to be using a spell I used before in order to get what you want." Twilight quickly set up a shield spell as heat blasted her again. "I didn't expect all this to happen and I'm sorry but I didn't blow up your town. As a Princess of Equestria, I don't really do that."

Starlight rolled her eyes. "Eat me. You probably had one of your five friends do it for a laugh and do some weird plausible deniability shit. I mean all the power you have as an alicorn and you haven't overthrown a nation yet? I thought you fuckers needed a kingdom to lord over or do I somehow forget about Equestrian history?" Starlight dodged Fluttershy's clumsy attempt at a punch, quietly deciding to switch targets and bringing up a magical shield of her own.

Applejack poked her head from behind a rock, deciding to get as far from the impromptu battle as possible. Not because she didn't enjoy a good tussle every now and then, but she remembered Rarity's very impassioned plea of not fighting. She rather liked being outside and being cooped up in Rarity's frou frou boutique for months on end sounded like mental torture. "Well I don't know about Equestrian history all that much, but I feel like that ain't really a good point since you took over a small town." Applejack ducked as a large boulder was tossed her way.

"You think I wanted to control a town for the hell of it? I had my reasons. And you know how expensive running a town cut off from the rest of the country is in a long term experiment? It's not bloody cheap, I'll tell you. And some stupid idiot ruined all of my research by blowing up my town and probably killing every citizen there."

Twilight groaned. "Well I don't perform that kind of experiment, but I get the feeling." Twilight reached out and thought of ways to physically incapacitate Starlight without long term damage, her mind coming up with multiple ways, but she picked one at random and cast a binding spell, the purple aura acting like ropes as it tightened itself around the unicorn, Starlight's struggling only tightening the aura around her.

Starlight's rage faltered. "I give up. You win, Twilight." Starlight spat out Twilight's name. "The lowly unicorns here just can't compete against your mighty plans." Starlight turned away, her biting sarcasm sharpening her tongue as she watched the fire spread through her town, the mix of dogs and ponies confused and painful cries on the silent wind. "I did this all for one reason and look where that got me."

Twilight looked at her friends and mouthed to them to stay back. "I know how you feel, I've lost months of my life wasting time on a project. And I bet Moondancer has lost. . ." Twilight saw Moondancer violently shaking her head no. "Well, she's lost a lot of time doing stuff like this."

Starlight looked up and let the rage leave her for a slight moment. "Well at least everything here is going to die. Too bad. If only you didn't have the diamond dogs riot, I could have given the Storm King what he wanted from me. And now. . ." Starlight paused. "I don't know. Wonder where all the palladium they mined is now. Probably the huge hole." Starlight sighed, looked up at the one cloud in the sky and laughed. "Hey Twilight, have you ever heard of the story of Somnambula?"

Twilight grimaced as she tried to keep her focus. "Every Equestrian scholar knows of the Pillars of Old Equestria."

Starlight grinned. "Then I won't have to feel bad when I say that our mutual friend here has been rather stingy with her use of the artifacts they use. Like her glowpaz stone necklace given to her by Prince Hisan. What do you think would happen if I just use it?" Starlight's horn lit up, her bag glowing with her intent as it opened with a necklace snaking its way out of it.

Moondancer tried to shift into her umbral form, shadow tentacles trying to grip onto Starlight before she could do anything stupid. Like getting away. The necklace glowed as it reflected the sunlight, the artifact amplifying a source of magic by factors of ten- Celestia's own connection to the sun used as a weapon to get out of a bad situation. Twilight dropped the spell she had been trying to hold Starlight, her need and curiosity on why the unicorn did what she did overriding her sensible action of just wrapping up her horn as well.

Starlight looked and wryly laughed. "Guess even when you try and make good help, you can't." Her horn lit up and the world turned white as she blinded everypony there. Moondancer felt a hoof on her shoulder as her senses screamed at her. Starlight's voice whispered in her ear, words echoing in Moondancer's head as there was a slight pressure in her head, images of the Crystal Empire dancing through her head as her memories reacted to the name that Starlight said.

"Sunburst."

Moondancer tried to bring up her mental defenses to keep the images within her, but the light and the sound and her stress kept her mind open like a boring book.

"Thank you." Starlight's voice echoed on the wind as she teleported away.

Twilight shook her eyes, blinking heavily as she looked around for her two friends. "Girls? Are you all okay?"

Fluttershy nodded, her polychromatic hair in her face. "I guess so. Though I wonder what she meant by what she said."

Applejack scoffed. "I'm more against the underhoofed trick she did. I mean we had her on the ropes. I think?"

Twilight looked up at the sky and shuddered as she switched her vision to see if there was anything in the air that could get Starlight from visibly angry to afraid in a matter of minutes. She scanned the sky and saw what she was probably noticing. Her fur stood on end as she noticed a massive ship being cloaked by some sort of unknown technology. "Oh Celestia. Okay while we could have done everything here far better, I feel like Starlight is the least of our priorities right now."

Applejack's eyebrows raised. "Now wait just a cottonpicking second, Starlight's the main reason we got here, how in the blazes of Tartarus is she less important now?"

Twilight just pointed to the sky as the cloaking device on Tempest's ship was lowered, bringing a massive battleship into view above an already battered town.

"That's why."

Tempest Shadow stared at the devastation below her, remembering the myriad times that Starlight had briefly mentioned the jewel in the Equestrian East. She looked at the town incredulously, trying to figure out what exactly had happened between then and now. Sad really. There was just so much potential in having ponies be free of cutie marks. Even if the methods were invariably flawed.

She sighed and held her face in her hooves, her horn fizzling with annoyance. "Let's get this over with. Grubber, send the order to fire on Ironhoof. The Storm King has a schedule to keep."

Grubber slightly hesitated. "Are you sure? I mean it looks like the town's been-"

Tempest shot him a look. "I know that. But he said that no matter what, we have to test out the weapon's viability. So you get on the intercom and tell the idiots to fire on the town or so help me, I'll do it myself."

Grubber stayed quiet as he picked up the microphone connected to the ship's systems. "This is Grubber speaking, to all Storm Creatures on the ship, we will be firing the cannon once this message is over." Grubber hovered his hand over the console that controlled the ship's guns and hovered over the one that he was apprehensive about testing. Closing his eyes, he pressed down on the button.

The world below lit up green as the petrification magitech laser was aimed directly at the center of Ironhoof. Tempest watched as the town slowed down, her mind imagining every living thing having problems moving as they reacted to pure arcane magic set to affect every living thing if they touched an affected creature.

The Storm King's scientists had called it a magical virus that spread through normal decency. The only problem was that pure magic had a radically short shelf life once used, minutes to an hour after it became completely inert. But the army ran on the element of surprise so hitting any town could be feasibly possible.

Tempest looked coldly on the devastation. She felt her chest burn heavy as she tried to keep the decent part of her down. Even after a decade being in the Storm Lands, she still had issues of being too forgiving. "Grubber, tell me exactly when the petrification effect is done. I'm going down there once it's safe."

"Won't that be a really bad idea?"

"We need to collect data and find the materials Starlight procured for us. Else this mission is a complete failure."

Dash rolled to the side as the ship opened fire, its magical beam being far too close for her comfort. She felt unwieldy as she tried to balance herself on wings unaccustomed to the strain of long term flight. She wanted to set down and relax, her yellow wings screaming at her as she flapped them as hard as she could, the new silence of the world now unsettling as the town quieted to a whisper. "I knew something had to be up. There was no way a stray thundercloud should be traveling when the situation didn't make one. Equestrian magic is too damn consistent about that."

Roxie growled as she felt the cold fire almost touch her. "Can talk later. Metal thing causing pain now."

Dash didn't want to say anything as she tried to find a good place to land now that a massive ship was in the area. She really was flying by the skin of her teeth at this since her Wonderbolt training didn't involve hypothetical live fire situations. The Wonderbolts were used for morale and sometimes some state of emergency things- like when Spike rampaged Ponyville. The Royal Guards were the ones that dealt with things like this.

She noticed a barely standing house and aiming directly at it, she let both her and her cargo down hard. It wasn't her fault exactly since she was working with unforeseen variables, but it still hurt to bounce on wood with a heavy diamond dog in tow. Shaking her pink hair out of her face, she now could see the devastation on the ground far better than any bird's eye view could. Things really hadn't changed a lot since she looked down last time- ponies and diamond dogs still horribly dead, but she soon saw what the weapon was capable of.

Because the ground was littered with lifelike statues at the point of the laser, with more coming out in concentric rings around it. But as she looked, she noticed that as she traced her eyes around the mess more and more statues were in states of semi movement, the angles of the statues being far more pained and horror stricken as living creatures became statues.

Roxie brushed herself off, a slight limp in her step from the awkward fall, and looked as well. She didn't say anything as she watched. She just stood there and watched her tribe be turned into stone.

"New plan. Same as the old plan. Let's get out of town."

Roxie just nodded, her eyes somber and grey with emotion.

Fluffy gripped a obsidian dagger as he scrambled across the stony ground. He had tried to dodge the walking death that was this thing that came from the sky. Old shamans said of dangers that came from the air and Fluffy had taken their warnings to heed, trusting flying things as far as her could throw them.

Which since he couldn't fly wasn't far at all.

He watched sandstone ponies, part flesh and bone, part stone, amble down the street. Their faces in agony as their insides hardened and their joints became fused together. Fluffy looked away as he realized that there might be an uncountable number of things worse than death.

He kept up his guard as he knew the stragglers of the town could still be alive somewhere, this plague spreading quickly and without restraint. It was like the end of the world as he looked around and could now no longer smell blood.

A clotting smell just disappeared on the wind.

He slunk behind a rock, carefully checking if it wasn't something her knew. He could no longer trust if the rocks were just that. With all the strange things going on, a chance of respite could be a trap. Fluffy huffed in air as he tried to stay calm.

"Uggh." A feral howl broke his concentration as he looked to the east.

Fluffy turned and saw a Diamond Dog, loping towards him, half rock, his front half frozen in metamorphic rock, barely able to stand as it stood there almost blind as rock outcrops of congealed blood exited its own eyeholes. It lumbered over and as Fluffy looked down, he decided that if he had to- obsidian should beat any type of stone it was made of now, its eyes barely recognizable as he wondered what turning to stone would do to the soul.

Fluffy huddled down and charged, bringing the dagger towards the dog's face, it's hollow eye holes staring back at him, its mouth flecking with basalt spit as it clenched its teeth. With one fell swoop, what felt like an eternity, but was only a second, Fluffy brought the dagger to hilt directly in the dog's head.

He did it. AS he was almost ready to celebrate though, the dog had one final death throw and reached out and touched Fluffy, its stone hand brushing his just briefly. With a final slump, the feral dog looked up at the sky and stood still, his body contorted into a death rattle, his teeth bared and his chest rising with an incomplete breath.

Fluffy briefly nodded and then looked down at his hand.

The hand up to the wrist was now obsidian. The fur texture still existed, but Fluffy wondered how it would feel to the touch, imagining it as sharp knives that bristled with pain. He looked back down at the feral dog and glanced at his obsidian dagger. He grimaced at the thought of what his mind knew what he had to do, but to possibly get out of this mostly intact, he had to have the heart of the warrior like every Diamond Dog and cheat death for another time.

Gripping the dagger, he began his messy work.

Pinkie felt the sensation of what Fluffy was doing as he did it. She shivered at the thought, her mind on autopilot as she carried Rarity away from the town, her self preservation and guilt over not saving her friends before weighing heavily on her mind. And anyway, the dog was resourceful. Pinkie hopped from safe place to safe place, her body pirouetting past the straggling horde of walking stones, her connection to Twilight providing a beacon of where to go.

Pinkie never thought she'd hate rocks. Sure, she didn't like rocks all the time, but whatever this weapon was, was completely wrong. She felt the magic of the earth cry out in pain as the light had hit it, twisting it into something that Twilight would just love to study. And while Pinkie loved her marefriend's insatiable curiosity, she didn't care for this. This was what her family would call a sundering, earth pony texts barely referencing a possible overflow of magic in an area- one that overpowered the earth's magic and just used it all at once.

There were few places that acted out of sync with the world and she felt this might become one, her parent's strange religious fear over what that could mean silently echoing in her ears.

She wondered what they had meant before of stone hearts, but whatever that ship used reminded her far too much of her father's apocalyptic warnings. Pinkie felt her hair straighten at the thought of having to talk to her parents again. She really hadn't talked to them in a very long time. Not since Pinkamena was her norm. And that was years ago.

Pinkie sighed. At least she could talk to her sisters about a visit sometime. She at least wanted to see if Maud was doing okay.

She was lost in thought as her body bounded out of danger and back into a normal world.

Tempest slid on her armor, her black chest plate emblazoned with the light blue Storm King symbol that she had become so very used to, she carefully connected her helmet, its massive horns curving around her. She remembered the one and only time she mentioned a costume change a brief few years ago due to how heavy and ugly it was. She remembered the bright tone the Storm King had at that moment souring. Tempest breathed in as her memory flooded back, his angry, malicious expression staring daggers into her soul. He said one sentence that had stuck with her. "The look isn't for you; it's for the things your be killing- the idea of fear is something to use."

Fear. Her greatest asset. She fired up her horn, her armor attuned to her, siphoned off a fraction of it to create a self sustaining shield that could take a few hits. It glowed blue for a second and dissipated, its mana suffusing itself to her like a comforting blanket made of metal. She quietly whispered her mantra. "I am a rock. Cold, hard, emotionless." to herself, the slight modulation in her helmet dropping her voice down an octave, its sonorous tone fitting more with stallions or the grunts of her lackeys.

She stared at the closed bay doors that could open to the outside world and nodded to Grubber, her hedgehog helper pressing the button open them as he quickly held onto the nearby straps that kept him from flying out of the airship.

The deafening sound of air entering, the woosh of excitement that she lived for, made her body drop the stress she had been wrestling with and brought clarity to her actions. She stared down at the broken town and smiled to herself as she stepped out into the air. Her inability to fly letting her drop like a stone. She had heard of there being possible spells that could technically make her fly, but that was not her style. She had given up the idea that she could be a mage worth her salt- the horn being her very own reminder of her disability. She could use magic, but it was volatile and dangerous.

Like herself. Years of training, years of working out solutions for her capabilities made her the sharpest knife in the Storm King's arsenal for a reason and that was because she would get the job done. No matter what cost.

She hit the ground like a bullet, her momentum stopping as fast as it could, her shields flickering dangerously close to critical for a moment as they took the brunt of the hit, her body instinctively rolling to cushion the rest of her fall. She breathed in, her armor filtering out any form of dangerous magic or unforeseen dust with a heavy breath. Letting it out, she quietly pulled out her tools and got to work.

The landscape of blood and gore made it feel so very much like the Storm Lands and she reveled in it.

"Now if I was some gems, where would I be?" She powered up the rudimentary gem spell she had learned in jest once in a bar's back room while drunk. She hated using long term magic like this, the constant headache even the easiest locator magic gave her wasn't usually worth it.

But the Storm King wanted a new ship. Tempest sighed as she stared down the hole and gently changed the frequency of her spell to focus in on the palladium. She breathed a sigh of both agony and relief, her teeth gritted in defiance as her brain tried to rebel against her usage of magic. The strobing pain got worse and worse as she got closer to the hole. Turning it off, she talked to Grubber through the magical communication link in her armor.

"Found it. Send down the Storm Beasts cause these ponies and Diamond Dogs aren't worth shit to us now." Stared out into the most beautiful sight she had seen in years, the ponies and Diamond Dogs frozen in wordless agony, their limbs bent in unnatural angles and the few she could see were partially alive after the laser's potency wore off were on their way out, their bodies barely conscious as their organs went through stages of organ failure as flesh and stone were antithetical to one another in one body.

It was like seeing a glimpse of what Tartarus' sculpture garden could be like.

Today was a good day.

The friends all straggled in one by one, each giving quiet and unsure looks of what to say. Pinkie held Twilight tight as she finally felt the Pinkie Sense feelings end, her body slumping in exhaustion as she lost all her adrenaline that had fueled her for the last few hours. Moondancer awkwardly stood in the back as she stared at the pair's emotional reunion, her face a mask of emotion as she looked back at the town she had helped destroy, her reasons for doing so now muddled and lost in the shuffle of time.

Roxie and Fluffy sat apart from the rest, Roxie bandaging Fluffy's stump of an arm with cloth Rarity had scrounged from the dresses she had brought on a whim, blood seeping through them and ruining their complex patterns and light colors with splotches of red. Rarity didn't care about that once Pinkie had shushed her.

Rarity laid her head in Applejack's lap and looked up in the sky. Applejack slowly ran her hooves through Rarity's mane, untangling the mess her purple mane had become. They just sat there in their embrace and let their tired emotions wash over them in the moment.

Dash draped a wing over Fluttershy as the six took their first collective breath in a week. As she gathered her thoughts, Dash drew ever closer to Fluttershy, almost being on top of her as she looked at Twilight for an answer. "Did we actually do anything here? I mean look at us and that town. That has to be a loss, right?"

Twilight looked down sheepishly. "I don't know." She stood there holding Pinkie. "But once we are back in Manehattan, I'm going to tell the Princesses all about this. Starlight, the town, the ship- everything." Twilight sighed. "It's not going to be a fun time." Twilight looked at the sun's shadow on the ground and groaned. "We should probably start heading out cause it'll be getting dark in a few hours."

Everyone nodded, too dazed to worry about the miles of walking they would now have to do.