As soon as Praeratus rammed the demon through the walls of the Hall, Thorax grabbed his still groggy brother and helped him on his hooves.

“Pharynx are you okay!?”

“What do you think it looks like? That's the last time I'll attack something bigger than me without turning into a giant monster.” Groaned the older changeling while he did the same to Ember. “And you, Dragon Lord?”

“Can't say I've been better.”

Meanwhile, Celestia, Novo and the equestrians were tending to Twilight, who was still unconscious, but at least stopped bleeding.

“How is she?” Asked Raven worriedly.

“She's okay, I've managed to tie the wound before she bled out.” Replied Celestia. “But she lost too much blood. And there's no arm to reattach either.”

“What's her blood type?” Asked Glenda, who stood next to her liege.

The overall medical technology of Equus (Equestria, Mount Aris and Griffonstone basically) was advanced enough to reattach severed limbs and repair broken bones, but while they did practice blood transfusion, it was a relatively recent thing, and most creatures refused to donate their blood, not simply because compatibility (ponies, yaks, minotaurs, deeer and mammals in general, for example, were uncompatible with dragons or changelings; hippogriffs and griffons, on the other hand, were compatible with both mammals and birds), but also because they deemed it unnecessary and several other reasons (ponies simply found it disgusting; griffons refused to give their blood unless they got money from it; dragons and yaks thought that sharing blood was a show of weakness...). And to make things worse, despite their willingness to help her...

“She's M.”

The creatures present looked at each other with worry and dispair. Raven and Novo were E type, the rest were either C or D, and Celestia was ED: all of those the most common blood types in Equus. M, on the was the rarest blood type. Not only that, even if they could save her, she would still be missing an arm.

“Is she going to... die?” Asked Glenda in a sad tone.

“It appears so.”

Celestia, however, was not one to give up, not when she had the means to help.

“No she won't.” She said before picking up Twilight with her magic. “I can save her.”

“How?” Asked Ember, who was behind them.

“Remember what I told you of Praeratus saving me from death? I actually died, but he brought me back.” Everypony but Novo (who knew it already) gasped at the revelation. “And he did that with a device he has on his ship. I can teleport myself there with Twilight and put her on it.”

“Wait wait wait, teleport to the ship outside where currently two super strong aliens are duking it out?” Asked Ember.

“Praeratus wouldn't hurt me.” Celestia said in a slightly ofended tone.

“ I wasn't talking about Praeratus.” Replied Ember in a defensive tone with her hands raised. “I meant the 10 feet tall monster that can read minds and eat arms.”

“The monster will be busy fighting him, and besides, the ship is closed and locked down. The defenses aren't online, which is actually bad, but other than that we'll be fine.”

“Good luck then, we're going with the others.” Said Novo. In truth she would have preffered to say something else, something in the lines of helping her friend, but as much as she was ashamed of it she was terrified of the thought of going near a demon that was not just stronger than even Praeratus, but also quite eloquent (at least with its mind).

Celestia nodded in gratitude of her concern and, with a flash, teleported herself and Twilight to the ship's cockpit.

The alicorn didn't waste time and rushed to the Med-Pod room with Twilight floating behind her, but when she got in front of the door that lead to the room thoughts of fear plaguing her mind. Would she be quick enough to save Twilight? Would the others be okay? What was happening out there? Was Praeratus okay!?

'What if that monster does kill him!?' Thought Celestia with horror. Despite knowing that the battle-hardened, older than her and overall powerful therawyrm was quite capable of handling himself in a fight, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that the genetically-engineered monster could kill Praeratus. It was, after all, capable of 'talking' and standing like a person (the coloquial and polite word that meant sophont, a sapient being; Praeratus told her that calling a 'person' a 'creature' was offensive in practically every world of the Milky Way. He never called them on this because, in his own words, 'you had no way of knowing this'), and able to hold a grudge against the one who shot off his arm. The last one didn't sound that exceptional, but according to Praeratus the demons were always angry and thought only of slaughtering the inhabitants of Equus. The one that ate Twilight's arm, on the other hand, was calm enough to concentrate its anger on the one who hurt it and her, the keeper of the sun that orbited Equus. Sure, her death wouldn't really meant doom for the planet (Luna and Twilight could raise it, as could Discord, and there were a few unicorns that could do it too, like Starswirl and Starlight, but it would take them much more effort to do so), but the equestrians would, as Praeratus said, 'lose it' if their most beloved princess got killed.

Celestia shook her head, forcing herself to look at the unconscious Twilight to finally enter the room focus on the matter at hand, getting her into the Med-Pod. Carefully laying her former pupil on the sarcophagus-like pod, Celestia sealed the pod and went to the console. Praeratus, being the prepared man he was, had taught her how to operate the device in case of an emergency, just like this one. The Med-Pod, aside from mending grievous injuries and bringing back the dead it could also replenish lost blood, somehow never depleting its supply of plasma. Not even Praeratus knew how it worked, but since it worked anyway, he didn't care. He told her that, at first, he tried to rationalize it, but one day he gave up trying to explain the proccess and, not willing to disassemble the pod to see how it worked in fear of not being able to assemble it again, decided he simply couldn't understand.

Of course, while it could synthetize and restore the blood of a patient in a short time, regrowing an arm from a stump was much more difficult. It wasn't impossible (in fact, once Praeratus cut off his left arm and grew it back with the Med-Pod to show Twilight and Luna its healing properties, after which he gave the arm to Cyranus, who to the horror of the mares ate it, although only after his friend prodded him a bit, and even then with some reluctance), but it took at least several minutes, minutes that she, as much as she disliked to think, didn't want to pass waiting when Praeratus was outside fighting.

Celestia, seeing that the proccess had already begun and that her guidance was unnecessary at this point, decided to go to the cockpit, which had a terminal linked with the hidden cameras in the hull, to see how was Praeratus doing, somewhat certain that the demon was dead and that Praeratus discovered where did the rest hide. Only somewhat certain, because the last time he fought a demon he needed the help of Cyranus to kill it, and this time he was both alone and against a more self-aware enemy.

Her concern turned into horror when she saw the xeno-hunter pinned down by two other demons while several smaller ones ripped off his legs with their teeth.

“PRAERATUS!!” She screamed futilely before running to the ship's door. 'What can I do, WHAT CAN I DO!?'

She didn't know what to do, her magic was useless against them and even the small ones could easily kill an armored pony or griffon, as several of her foolish guards and others discovered the hard way, but she still wanted to save him!

But then she remembered something that made her stop in her tracks, just before she pressed the button that opened the door to the outside.

'The armory!'

The alabaster alicorn, ran through the ship to the room that housed Praeratus' weapons, some of which she was sure could kill the demons. Praeratus, prepared as he was, had told her the code that unlocked the door, but also told her that she should only open the armory without his consent in emergencies. Unfortunately, this was an emergency.

Celestia unlocked the door and went inside, looking for a weapon that could kill the demons quickly. Around her were rifles, pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons and more of all types: some were mass drivers, other were laser weapons, a few were plasma throwers... there was even a shoulder mounted gauss cannon at the back of the room, which according to Praeratus was powerful enough to rip an Ursa Major in two with one shot.

But she already saw what she needed for the occasion, a rifle that hung on the left wall of the armory: the R-90 heavy hunting rifle, a plasma thrower designed specifically to deal with heavily armored beasts. This was the only weapon she knew how to handle aside from the P-95, and even then it was a simply quick course in which she never even fired a shot, but she was desperate and in need of a powerful weapon, which the rifle was: she knew that a bolt from this weapon was powerful enough to disable a portable energy shield that could shrug a grenade (a weapon that aside from explosing dispersed hot metal fragments, extremely lethal to normal infantry and lightly armored vehicles but not a problem for heavy infantry or tanks).

Celestia rushed back to the door with the large rifle held in her hands, opened the door and looked outside.

The bioweapons were still pinning down Praeratus, and the smaller ones were busy killing off the surviving guards and scaring away the assembled creatures, just like what she saw in the screen. What she didn't see was that Praeratus had beaten the 'talking' monster to a pulp, literally; now it looked more like those manticore or bear rugs that freaked out herbivores like ponies and deer but that griffons, and sometimes yaks, considered fashionable.

But most importantly, all of them had their backs turned to her.

Without hesitation, Celestia aimed at the head of the closest monster and pulled the trigger.

[Before we get to the results of Celestia's bravery, there's something that you, cosmic readers from another dimension, must understand about weapons in this universe we call Stellaris.

Laser weapons are the mainstay of most militaries in the Milky Way in both of their forms (longer but slower-firing beams and shorter but quick-firing pulses), thanks to being literally recoilless, no bullet-drop in atmosphere, lightspeed, batteries instead of magazines and, by extension, easier logistics, and ease of use, but whereas starship lasers are the common armor-melting weapons for capital ships, infantry lasers are usually 'deflected' by standard infantry armor unless they hit the head of joints or the laser is a prolonged beam.

Kinetic weapons (commonly called mass drivers despite the existance of railguns and coilguns), firing magnetically propelled metallic slugs, are much, much slower and give quite a kick, but just like lasers their role changes with size: whereas ship cannons are used mostly to deplete the energy barriers of enemy ships, hypersonic bullets are better at penetrating personal armor than laser pulses, and quite frankly, kinetic discharges have a more intimidating roar instead of the slightly quieter laser shots.

Plasma weapons are a different beast altogether, firing an incredibly hot bolt of ionized hydrogen contained on a magnetic 'bottle' at supersonic speeds by forcing it through a barrel via magnetic field accelerator. This makes them somewhat less efficient in the marksman role since aside from pistols bullets are usually hypersonic and have more range, but since the bolt has no mass it keeps flying until the magnetic bottle disperses or hits something. Then there's the fact that even plasma pistols can punch through a therawyrm or zoclap and kill them unless they are wearing armor, which is impressive given how tough both of these species are. On the othe hand, they still require ammunition to fire, and the recoil, while more forgiving than kinetics, is still an issue, and since unlike lasers the bolts can't be modified before firing, most plasma weapons are always lethal to mid-sized species. Still, plasma weapons are highly feared throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, and regulated in the Confederation, for a very good reason]

A large blob of green energy flew from the barrel and hit the back of the head of the demon almost instantly, reducing the heat to a burning mush. It also the side effect of making the pulverized monster miss the mark when it was about to impale Praeratus with a spear.

'What was that!?' She heard it scream, something that gave her a grim satisfaction. Apparently, despite the demon being a monster literally born to kill, was panicky enough to not bother hiding its thoughts.

“Get away from him, you monster.” She said, making the monsters and Praeratus look at her.

The therawyrm, despite obviously being in pain after having his legs bitten off, smiled at her, a smile she returned.

The blue psionic demon was another story.

'You, kill that bitch, NOW!' It screamed to the other livin bioweapon, which roared and charged at her. Celestia, now scared for her life but still unwilling to run away, fired the rifle several times in hopes of hitting the demon, who managed to dodge the first three deadly bolts of superheated plasma until a fourth one, either by sheer luck or because it was slower than it thought, ended up hitting its left let, which caused it to fall mere meters away from Celestia, its snapping jaws already inside the ship trying to bite her legs.

In another occasion, Celestia would have froze in terror. Now, though, she glared at the monster with all the repressed anger she had kept for two hundred years, anger for all those stallions lost, and shot the monster, disintegrating it piece by piece until its body became barely more than a big pile of blackened bones covered ashes.

'Frack this,!' Swore the blue psionic when it saw its able-bodied brother die in the hands of a primitive xeno. It was already growing its bones back, but it would take a while for it to heal completely. 'You two, get me the hell out of here! The rest of you, kill that horse bitch!'

Two of the young bioweapons came to their senior and lifted him up with their claws with surprising ease before leaving at full speed. Celestia didn't see them leave though, busy as she was shooting at the screeching mass of claws and fangs that tried to get inside the ship and rip the pony apart, all the while ignoring their dwindling numbers due to said pony f

Unfortunately for them, the imps had forgotten about Praeratus, who despite lacking legs was still a former soldier and knew how to move on the ground without using neither his legs nor psionics to lift himself up.

The xeno-hunter grabbed two of the imps by the tails and yanked, but rather than pulling the monsters themselves to him he ripped their tails off, after which he used them as a makeshift whip (or in this casea a one-thong scourge made of steel-hard vertebrae) to lacerate the other monsters and draw their attention away from Celestia and to him. As for why didn't he use his psionics to wipe them out or at least kill the psionically adept one, it was simple: he didn't trust himself using them when wounded. This was due to an incident that happened in the War of Orion's Arm against the Selenites during one of the last missions of the conflict, besieging a Selenite base covered by a barrier. An enemy grenade landed near him just when he was about to attack an enemy armored vehicle with a psionic lance (which was similar to a psionic bomb, but instead of propelling an sphere the launcher focused the energy on a spear-like bolt, which didn't explode but was in turn much more effective against armored enemies) and, since he wasn't wearing his helmet because Centurion armor was hermetically sealed (and therefore useless for psionics unless he let a part of his body uncovered; this was the reason why most psionic troopers didn't wear helmets or full armor), the explosion ripped nearly half of his head.

Psionics and injuries didn't mix, what with the pain distracting the psionic when they were using their abilities. At best the psionics were unable to do anything, but at worst people died if the psionic was blue or higher, and quite a lot at that.

And unfortunately for everyone around Praeratus, both Confederates and Selenites, he had reached the blue spectrum a hundred years prior.

The energy he had gathered to form the psionic lance was violently released in the form of a psionic shockwave that crushed everything in a radius of a hundred yards. Fortunately, the Confederates had several psionic warriors that managed to raise a barrier that kept it away from their lines. The Selenite defenders that were near, though, were not so lucky: the psionic shockwave pulverized the Selenites outside the base and bypassed the barrier, blowing up the generator and... Well, Praeratus and the others didn't come inside, but those who did came out with looks of awe mixed with a bit of fear. Later they discovered that every Selenite inside the base had been turned into jelly-like blobs of raw flesh and liquidified bones. Of course, while the troops didn't mind it at all (and in fact had expected Praeratus to do the same, although with his fists)

After that debacle, as the higher ups called it, all psionic warriors and psionic-capable Centurions were forbidden to use their powers when heavily wounded, an order that Praeratus took to heart to the point that he refused to use his psionics with any kind of armor on. Even after years of enduring pain and ending up accustomed, many times he resorted to his fists or Cyranus after spending his ammo when hunting because he didn't trust himself with a broken ribcage or an eaten arm.

Of course, there were a few moments when he was seriously wounded, had to fight and all he had at hand were his psionics, like the bioweapon that attacked Canterlot, although to be fair he wasn't that badly injuried by it: cuts and broken bones can't be compared to severed legs after all.

Praeratus, having finally killed all of the small bioweapons, crawled to his legs and inspected them, comparing the gaping wounds with his own stumps.

'Mmph, the nerves have to wrecked.' He thought morosely when he saw the damage the serrated teeth had done to his legs from the thighs down. Just like he felt, it was like a maniac with a chainsaw sawed them. 'Well, look at the bright side Praty, at least they let the groin alone'

“I did it...”

Praeratus looked back to where the voice of Celestia came from and saw the alicorn covered in ashes , with a large splotch of red blood (which fortunately wasn't hers) in her dress. Aside from that she looked unscathed.

But Celestia didn't seem to realize this, busy as she was staring at the carnage in front of her that she herself did.

Worried, the xeno-hunter crawled up the stairs until he stood next to the frozen alicorn, who had still watching. His instincts and experience told him to get to the Med-Pod and reattach his legs before he lost consciousness and bled out, but he wanted-no, needed to know if Celestia was alright. Besides, this wasn't the first time his legs were severed.

“Celestia, are you okay?”

She didn't respond, and despite the fact that her head was turned to him she wasn't even looking at him, but through him.

“Celly?” Celestia had told her that, since they were friends, he had to call her nickname, 'Celly', from time to time.

Having promised her to never read her thoughts, he was surprised when the usually composed alicorn broke down into tears and slumped to the floor.

Despite the angry expression she had when she killed the first demon, Celestia hoped (in the naivete that was characteristic to ponies) that pointing a weapon capable of killing them would send them running away, not remembering that she tried the same thing with the first one two hundred years prior, where she blasted a rock near it to scare it.

It replied in kind by doing the same to a hundred royal soldiers, bursting them to flame with an new, unknown type of magic that now she knew was called psionics.

In the end, the Princess of the Day managed to kill it, but not before it slaughtered her army and nearly killed her. Killing it wasn't the only thing that traumatized her though; she

“Celestia! Celestia what's wrong!” Praeratus exclaimed while lightly shaking her by the shoulders.

“I-i've killed living, breathing creatures again!” She managed to say between sobs before she clasped her arms around Praeratus and sunk her head on his chest. The therawyrm, not knowing what to do, simply hugged her back.

When Novo, Thorax and the others, after calming down the other creatures, they saw Praeratus embracing a still weeping Celestia.

Sorry for the shortness and possibly lower quality of this chapter. It's just... I've been watching Primal, the new Adult Swim mini-series from Genndy Tartakovsky and, well, it made me cry despite coming from the man that gave us Dexter's Laboratory and Hotel Transylvania (although he also gave us Samurai Jack, Sym-Bionic Titan and Clone Wars). Watch it if you can guys, it'll be worth your time.

As always, thumbs up, comment and fave the story.