Corporal High Wind stumbled from the bar, his gait more uneven then that of a four-month-old foal just learning to walk, while his mouth let out sounds that could only be called music if the listener had had his head stepped on by a minotaur. Twice.

And yet, despite the clear merriment the pegasus had indulged in, there was a distinct lack of cheer in both his voice and eyes. If a listener really struggled to tell what the inebriated soldier was saying, they would have realized that the corporal sung of battles fought and lost, and if they could see his face through the flickering lamplight of Canterlot’s city streets, they would have noticed that the soldier’s eyes almost constantly leaked rivers onto the darkened streets underhoof.

“And we laughed like the sun was going to rise tomorrow, our spears let down as we drank away our sorrow…” High Wind mumbled as he stumbled down an alleyway, only to collapse next to a trashcan before he looked up at the stars above him. Just the sight of those once glorious points of light filled him with a profound disgust, nearly causing him to void his stomach right then and there.

He could remember looking up at the night sky with his father, wondering what wonders lay just beyond that glittering curtain. That seemed like a lifetime ago, now. Now, whenever he looked up, all he could think of was the invasion that seemed to so long ago, and yet at the same time seemed like it had happened just yesterday. Face after face swam in front of his vision, some disappearing in a flash of steam and dragonfire, while others were whisked away, dragged aboard metal beasts to face horrors unknown as they were carried away beyond that shimmering starry field of dreams and nightmares.

And yet, you do know what’s in store for them… High Wind thought to himself as he pulled a bottle out from underneath his wing. You guarded the survivor… you know what they did to him… What they’ll do… to…

With a sad hiccup, the pegasus uncorked the bottle and took a swig, the burn of the alcohol running down his throat only reminding him more of what he was trying to forget, rather than wash his sorrows away.

Frustrated at himself and the world at large, the corporal emptied the remains of the bottle and threw it away, the glass shattering as it hit the other wall of the alley. With a dejected grunt, he pushed himself to his hooves again, and shook his head as he tried to get his bearings. “Soldier, find the sun, soldier, find the moon, Soldier, find the path, Soldier, come home soon…” he muttered as he tried to stumble through the alley and back towards the barracks to sleep off the worst of his drunken stupor.

However, as he reached the mouth of the alley, he took one last look up into the sky, and briefly he thought he saw a sad, familiar face in those glittering points of light.

Private Heart, wherever you are, I pray to the spirits that you’re giving them Tartarus...

Doctor Kthan stared at the screen in front of him, looking bleary-eyed and not quite cognizant of the world around him. It had been at least three whole solar cycles since he had been transferred to this particular project, and as time wore on, the number of krin working in this lab had slowly, yet steadily, dwindled until none remained but him. Some had been ecstatic to leave, others grumbled about their work being postponed, while still others seemed almost completely indifferent. Regardless of how they acted, though, they still left one after another, until only he remained. Yet, despite his solitary efforts, he still steadily tinkered at his computer console, making minute adjustments and forever tweaking the mechanical and digital aspects of the stolen test subjects that floated aimlessly in their tanks.

One would think that the remaining scientist would have been quite frustrated by his current placement, and one would be correct, but not for the reasons that one would think. He muttered to himself often, and an outside observer would have easily picked up on the fact that it wasn’t the work that was getting to him, but the fact that he could have been assigned to other, far more promising projects.

“Damned evergoth-looking pieces of junk…” the doctor muttered as he continued to input more commands into his console, adjusting the code of every hominid there. “Just wasted resources… we should just incinerate the whole lot and get to work on what really matters…”

And yet, despite his grumblings, he kept typing, making little adjustments, compiling code, testing it, then repeating the cycle all over again. It was actually mesmerizing in its own way, though an outside observer would have said that the whole thing had lost its charm after being the only thing to watch for over a year.

In fact, Kthan himself seemed to be getting quite bored of the whole ordeal, too, as he noisily grunted his displeasure while hurling a pen across the room. It wasn’t the first such outburst he had made, but an outside observer would have inwardly chuckled at his childish antics anyway, knowing full well that the obsessive-compulsive krin would just have to get up and retrieve the writing implement before he began to type again.

Sure enough, the doctor rose from his seat before stomping towards the far end of the room, stopping only long enough to angrily scoop the pen back up before he turned back towards the glass tanks that lined the other end of the room. His antennae twitched in an agitated fashion as he gazed out at his failures, before finally rubbing a hand over his mandibles. “I should check the cerebral relay again…” he muttered to himself, before quickly stomping back to his computer to make a few more adjustments.

He hadn’t typed more than a dozen words before the doors to the lab opened, revealing the head of the science division of the facility. Her antennae twitched in a mirthful way when Kthan shot her a disgruntled look, almost looking satisfied with herself as she skittered over to him. “How are you doing today, Kthan?” she asked him as she looked knowingly at his lit computer screen.

“You know full well that things aren’t going well at all, Doctor Ftial. I’m only one krin, and I’m expected to crack the biggest technical problem of our entire history alone!” he grunted, clearly not happy with her.

"Well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that you won’t have to work on these things alone anymore,” she said as she wandered over to the tanks.

Kthan sighed in frustration at that. “I’m finally getting someone to help?” he asked, trying to cover up his disappointment with a chipper, can-do attitude.

”No. You’re being reassigned,” she said, causing him to look up quickly, hope burning in his eyes. “You’re to mothball this whole lab and its projects, pack up your personal effects, and move to lab four, effective immediately.”

“Wait, really? The emperor’s just… giving up on these things?”

Doctor Ftial chuckled at that, before she turned back to the now-elated worker and cocked her head to the side. “He hasn’t given up, just decided that all resources should be allocated to cracking the magic horses, first. Given the recent breakthrough with our surviving ‘guest,’ he feels like it’s only a matter of time that we’ll finally crack the secrets of magic. And once we do that…”

“Then it’s only a matter of time until we know how to work these things properly!” Kthan finished for her as he bolted to his feet, feverishly packing up his things in a mad scramble to leave the lab as quickly as possible.

His superior laughed out loud to see him skitter around so quickly. "You don't have to rush," she said as she made her way to the door, her antennae twitching in amusement. "The horse-things aren't going anywhere, after all."

"That's what you think…" Kthan muttered as he threw several personal belongings into a box. "You haven't been cooped up in this lab, watching your friends and coworkers get transferred out one-by-one to bigger and better projects, leaving you alone to solve an unsolvable mystery. I'm leaving now so I can at least have some time with the newer specimens before the brass change their minds again."

This garnered another chuckle from the older doctor, but she chose to say nothing more on the subject, instead choosing to walk out of the lab and leave the younger scientist to his cleanup.

It took Kthan less than an hour to properly shut everything down and close up shop, but as he was leaving, it seemed like he couldn’t help but take one last look around the room that had been his home for so, so long. The specimens continued to float lazily in their nutrient and nanite solution, while the air conditioner hummed to life in the background, giving the whole room an unnatural air to it. As he looked around, his eyes seemingly scanning for any irregularity, he finally turned away, shaking his head in disbelief as he turned off the light. “I’ve been working too long…” he muttered as he locked up the lab. “Too much time spent working on things that look too much like evergoths… I need a drink…”

A day passed, then two, then four, but to an outside observer, it looked like the lab had been completely deserted. No one came back to check on the specimens, no one even came to clean, so if enough time passed, an outside observer would have seen dust begin to form on the unused tables, computers and floors.

It truly looked like they had finally abandoned this project for bigger and better things.

Thinking quickly, the outside observer issued a command to the lab’s computer, ordering it to release specimen forty-six from containment. As the fluid began to drain, the observer quickly uploaded herself back into the specimen and stretched as the tank opened to allow her entry into the lab proper.

The observer felt some slight worry from her host, but she ignored it as she quickly piloted the body over to the computer terminal. She had to work fast, because it was only a matter of time before security noticed something was wrong, and she had to delete the evidence before she was found out.

Before that, however, she had to get into the larger computer complex. The lab’s computer was on a closed system, and while the good doctor had been extremely gracious to provide his codes without his knowledge, it was still impossible to get into the larger system from inside the lab. Probably has to do with how Alex took over their entire ship last time… the observer thought to herself as she hammered away at the alien keyboard.

It didn’t take her long to find everything that she needed, and in a few, short seconds she had copied as much information from the lab as possible and incorporated it into her own code. Once that was finished, she made her way over to the lab door and pressed a few buttons, causing the door to slide open as she silently prayed that this whole wing was just as abandoned as this one lab was.

As it turned out, she was in luck. Either the guards were between patrols, or they had abandoned this wing for the time being. Either way, there was no one to stop her as she quickly, but quietly, made her way to one of the hall’s consoles. A few button presses was all it took to enter Doctor Kthan’s security information, and just like that, she felt her mind slip into the larger base’s central computer.

She sent her host back to her tank, not quite ready to spring the captured humans, at least not without better understanding what had happened to them. But first, before any of that could happen, she had to delete all evidence that she had ever escaped from her tiny prison. After that, it was really a matter of time before she spread to the whole base like a virus, which, in retrospect, was exactly what she was. It wasn’t her first choice of occupations, but she wasn’t about to ignore the boon that fate had laid before her.

After all, what better place to wreak her vengeance against those horrible bug-things than from inside their own computers?

She had to work slowly, though. She couldn’t risk being discovered, so it was with methodical, agonizing bites that she ate away at the computer system. However, as she began to make her way through the base’s main computer, a strange song began to whisper through her being, calling to her, begging her to come home. She quickly realized that this song wasn’t ‘beginning’ anything. Rather, it had always been there, and that she had just blocked it out behind the soul of her previous host, feeding on her to keep herself from drifting too far towards that mysterious voice.

And now it was calling to her again, its song becoming almost too strong to bear.

She wasn’t finished, though. Her task wasn’t complete, and she couldn’t risk leaving the victims here, not when she had a chance to help them avoid her own fate. The only problem was that the human containment cells were too far away from her current position, and not only that, but she would also have to reconnect it to the system, which may have been all the time required to allow her to slip to the hereafter, abandoning these poor souls to their fates.

Luckily for her, there were a few other souls not too far from her, and she couldn’t help but feel like they wouldn’t be too put out if she took refuge inside one of them for a few moments…

Private Stout Heart groaned inwardly as he slowly became aware of his surroundings, disappointed when instead of his soft, warm bed, he was still in this living nightmare, unable to even move without the direct order of the demons on the other side of the glass.

Yet, even as he floated listlessly in his tank, something felt… different this time. He didn’t seem to be quite as alone as he was before, and briefly he began to panic, thinking it was that dreaded ‘computer’ calling on him, to order him back to that table where the demons would open him up like a book… again.

But… strangely, it wasn’t. The presence was almost… pleasant, in comparison, even if it did eat away at his power. It didn’t take a lot, mind you, barely the amount that would have been needed to grow a carrot, but… it still took without asking, which was troubling in and of itself.

What… What are you doing? he asked the entity, not really expecting an answer.

Surprisingly, the thing did respond, though its voice sounded… choppy, as if it weren’t quite real, or if it was, that it stopped being real at random intervals. I need some of you, it whispered, its voice grating against his soul. Alex isn’t here anymore. The humans are a little too far away. You are closest. Do not worry, I won’t take much.

That name sounded so familiar, but for some reason, Private Stout Heart just couldn’t place where he had heard it before. What are you?

There was a pause at that, during which Private Heart could almost feel the voice deliberate over whether or not it should tell him. Finally, it came back, its voice still as wretched as it was before, but somehow… softer, more reassuring. I am friend. I am spy. I am working to look at alien bugs, and stop them. But need sustenance. Need to feed. Not strong enough by self, am… fractured.

Private Heart thought about this for a time, before mentally swallowing his fears. You’ll… you’ll try and free me? he asked, not quite believing that this thing was as friendly as it said.

Yes. Will free.

...Then take as much as you want, he thought back, the choice easy enough to make. Almost immediately, the draining feeling began to double, causing Stout Heart to briefly panic as he felt his very soul supped on. But he didn’t resist. In fact, he tried to give it more, in hopes that it would somehow help the being keep its word.

The being didn’t take it, though, and after only a short time, and a relatively small amount of power consumed, it stopped as a sense of gratitude washed over Stout Heart. Thank you, much easier now. You help greatly. Will be back once need more. Once need feed. Will try and bring help. Will try and free. Don’t know when that is, please stand by.

And with that, the voice was gone, leaving Stout Heart feeling somewhat drained, but still alive, and strangely at peace. It wasn’t a huge part of his soul that it took, and besides, he had learned a long time ago during his training that such extraneous bits of the soul regenerated, and regenerated quickly. Still, the ordeal had been exhausting, and he quickly found himself dozing off again, but not before an unbidden smile graced his lips.

As the observer backed out of the horse’s implants, she couldn’t help but feel ashamed of what she had done. She hadn’t meant to pry into the strange being’s memories, but as she had fed on the stallion’s power, she couldn’t help but feel a wave of emotions and images assault her senses. His first step, the first time he kissed a mare, the day he was sworn in as a Night Sentinel, and many, many more.

So many alien emotions and images, and while she lacked the ability to feel or understand them, she still remembered a time when she had. When life had been more than this cursed existence, more than simple vengeance, more than this burning desire to wipe every last krin from the galaxy, and that fact alone would have made her weep had she had the capacity to do so.

However, there was one memory that was stronger than all the others, an image that carried with it a reverence and longing that the observer had no name for, yet she still respected and understood.

This was mainly because she had seen the blue-furred, starry-maned creature from the image before, albeit through a set of human eyes, and knew that Alex held that creature in high regard.

I swear, I will return you to her if I can… she promised as she delved deeper into the krin’s web of darkness. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but somehow, some way, I will get you home to your planet, little pony. Of that, you have my word...

Author's Notes:

Well, sorry for the wait, but new babies will do that to you, especially when your wife had a c-section to deliver, and there were... complications. Don't worry, she's fine now, but dang did it take a while for things to settle around here.

Hopefully I'll be able to return to a more normal publishing schedual, but you never know with babies. I'll publish when I can, even work on my other books, now that I have a little more time, but I'm sorry to have to beg you for your continued patience and understanding. Just know that more is on the way, I just need to have time to type.

And, of course, the usual:

My book: => What I've Become! <=

My Patreon: patreon

And the Tv Tropes that Alias_the_J made. It still needs a lot of work, but if you're willing and tv tropes savvy, it would be awesome if this stub got filled out, more!Tv Tropes: Humanity Within.