The funicular had little in common with the swift, efficient electrical services that connected the different levels of Neon Heights, very little indeed. Up at the top end, planted firmly into the Megastructure of Geartown, stood a wood fired, stationary steam engine. This engine in turn drove a giant winding wheel, which in turn was connected to a length of haulage rope that was long enough to be lowered down to the receiving terminus so far below in Ponyville.

About half a league beneath the ledge of Geartown a boundary that marked the transition between the Geartown zone and the Ponyville zone meant that any platforms that were ascending from, or descending to, Ponyville were essentially reliant on a propulsion system that existed in another state of existence.

Naturally, the whole operation was fraught with danger.

The enterprise, one of a dozen such operations that sat dotted around the lowest ledge of the Geartown zone and Canterlots base, was slow, unreliable, and prone to the occasional appalling, limb-shattering accident. But as damn-right dangerous as such a method of transportation proved to be, it was still the most efficient way of moving goods, and occasionally ponies, between Geartown and Ponyville.

Once Mac's contacts had delivered them to the upper terminus, there was some minor bribery to be done before Dash manage to secure them two seats on the next shipment, a dozen or so cars of a down bound corpse consignment.

The pair found themselves shivering inside a wooden cabin that was mounted on the steeply angled chassis of one of the funicular carriages, with hatches set into the floor where ice could be shovelled onto the dead below to stop them from defrosting. The sole source of illumination was a flickering candle, that sat, half melted, in a metal lantern hanging from a nail in the wall. In the car below them, the bodies of the deceased were stacked on horizontal racks, covered with begrimed white sheets that were soon to be reused on the next lot of bodies later.

It wasn't much, but it was the best that could be done to give the ponies below some dignity in death.

Big Mac had found them extra coats and scarves, the Purple Dragon spa-house always kept a well stocked supply of lost clothing. But, as Dash had so vehemently put it, more layers wasn't always a guarantee of keeping warm.

"Fuck, I'm freezing! This jacket doesn't do shit!"

Twilight simply nodded in silent agreement, afraid that if she opened her mouth the cold would freeze her tongue. Unlikely, but she wasn't willing to take the risk.

The descent itself would only last a dozen or so nerve-shattering minutes, but there was still a half-hour wait at each terminus as the procession of cargo cars was loaded and unloaded. Twilight struggled with a pair of gloves, trying to sort through her saddlebags for the right type of antizonals for the crossing that was about to come, a dose that could be safely taken on top of the drugs that were already pumping through her system.

She knew she  was off-chart by now in prescription terms, treading that fine line between too little, which meant exposure to zone sickness, and too much, which meant a slow, wasting death as the drugs in her body began to shutdown her organs one by one. The best she could do now was navigate by her instincts and trust in Dash's past experiences.

"Just dose me up, Cutter."

That was all the mare had to say on the matter.

The faint spark of triumph warmed Twilight for a brief moment as she withdrew her hoof to find that she was death-gripping the right bottle of pills. Unscrewing the lid, she doled out two pills, passing them to Dash. "Take these now, " she muttered through her scarf.

"This is all you got, Cutter?"

"Too much is as dangerous as too little, Rainbow Dash. I can only estimate the cumulative damage your nervous system must have sustained from our journey so far, and have to prescribe in accordance with my results regardless of hei accuracy."

"The damage is already done, Cutter," Dash said with sullen grace, pulling down her scarf and throwing back the pills. Twilight was thankful at the least that the pegasus hadn't attempted to supplement the dose with some of her own drugs, one could never be sure exactly what was involved when it came to illegal antizonals.

"Be that as it may, Dash, I don't want to risk causing any additional damage. You know what Joe's like, you can see it as plain as I can. For all we know, you could only be only one miscalculated dose away from ending up like him, and something tells me that there's no room in the business for a extractor who can't even leave their own zone."

The cabin lurched into motion beneath them, the floor rocking as the platform was slowly slid forward onto its guide rails. Both of the mares sat in silence until a loud creak from above signalled the start of their descent and, with an all too ominous squeal of strained wood from the crane above, the platform began to slowly descend, beginning its journey to Ponyville far below. Twilight held her breath, whilst across from her Rainbow Dash sat leaning back against the wooden wall, her forelegs crossed and her head lowered like a filly after a hissy fit.

Outside the wind whistled, sometimes picking up into a deafening roar or lowering to a chilling whisper, but never truly dying down. Above them, the ropes that held them continued to creak and squeal under the strain, accompanied by the harsh grate of metal on metal as the platform shifted on its guide rails.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash were sharing the carriage with corpses making their final downward journey after Ascension Day, travelling the final few leagues down to the very base of the Canterlot Godscraper for internment in the sacred earth of Equestria.

Those who didn't adhere to the age-old custom often referred to the practitioners as ghost-riders, Pre-corpses or, less charitably, alicorn-meat. Of course, Twilight knew the last insult to be a mere speculation and urban-legend. Alicorns had no more desire to eat flesh than any of the three Pre-equine subspecies, despite the fact they possessed canines, natural tools perfectly designed to rend flesh and tear meat from the bone. Twilight had once had such implements, but they had been removed before her insertion into Neon Heights.

While advanced medical services were unavailable to most of the citizens of Canterlot by dint of the conditions of their zone of birth, there was one exception that had transcended even the quandary of the boundaries.

Ascension Day.

Those who were sufficiently close to death that they had little to lose could submit to being scanned, and possibly even healed, by the technological miracles of the Celestial Levels, ancient devices known only to the alicorns since time immemorial. To do so they would have to leave their own zone and travel as rapidly as possible through the intervening enclaves of Canterlot, moving up and up until they reached the domain of the alicorns so far above.

Most citizens could only hope to take on such an endeavour alone, after many years of meticulous saving. If the sudden onset of a massive maladaptive trauma hadn't killed them or left them mentally incapacitated by the time they reach the Celestial Levels, then those few who were lucky enough to survive stood the chance of having their consciousness being preserved after death, kept in stasis for the rest of time within the massive data-storage programme of the Celestial Levels primary cogitator engine, the Eternity Matrix.

In most cases something could be recovered, and with a few cases the cumulative damage, perhaps even the underlying illness or malady that had facilitated the journey in the first place, could be made good; patched back together to function once more. Nonetheless, less than one in a hundred souls who ever dared the arduous task of Ascension Day ever reached the Celestial Levels, and fewer still was the number of those who ever returned from the realm of the alicorns. As for those who died on the way, their remains were taken down to the base of Canterlot, to the fringes of the Outzone where they would be buried in the sacred earth of Equestria.

The priestesses of Faust taught that in its most basic sense, Ascension Day was a one way trip, a holy pilgrimage ordained by Faust to test both the strength of the body and the tenacity of the mind. For those who made it to the Celestial Levels, immortality was theirs. They became Post-equines, transcending the limits of their flesh to reach an accord with the servants of the divine. For those who failed, a return to the earth was the only way to guarantee safe passage into the realm beyond. They had failed in their quest to ascend, but by no means was this ever considered a defeat, as Faust had created them all, whether they were an earth pony, a unicorn, or a pegasus, and would accept them whether they had succeeded in their quest for ascension or failed.

Certainly for the majority participants, Ascension day was a one way trip. Unless coming back down as a corpse counted.

Twilight shivered under her cloths rubbing her hooves together and pulling her thick coat tighter around herself. Her breath was a jet white vapour trail. Ice crystals had already begun to form on Dash's eyebrows. Seeing them, Twilight began to internally berate herself. She'd made no consideration for how the cold would affect either Dash's metabolic rate or her own, whether it would impede or accelerate the uptake of the antizonals. Nothing could be done now; it would have been nothing short of guess work, even if she had taken the cold into consideration.

She checked the watches strapped around her hoof and found that they were beginning to read different times. How much of the difference in tolerances was caused by the imminent transition ahead of them or, more likely, cheap manufacture she couldn't guess.

"Dash, do you mind if I ask you something?" she ask, as much to keep her teeth from chattering together as a desire for information. "Back in the spa-house, Lotus, I think that's what she was called, she mentioned something about you not always being the way you are now. And then... what Macintosh said about the Testament and that tongue of yours."

"Two different thing, Cutter."

"Would you care to enlighten me? Our trips still got a fair way to go from what I can tell, and I still don't even know the basics about you, apart from your name."

"Call me retarded, Cutter, but things seem to be working out just fine the way they are."

"I'm still entitled to my curiosity. I've done some research in the past into different types of long-term neurological trauma: brain damage associated with repeated zone crossings, and the frequent use of high-strength antizonals. In some cases the damage manifested itself as unusual impairments or idiosyncrasies in the subjects speech-patterns. My results did suggest that there was a correlation between ponies with... profane tendencies and severe neurological damage. Is that what happened to you?"

"Congratulations, Cutter." Dash said sourly, her forelegs tensing. Twilight realised she may have over-stepped a very obvious line. "You hit the fucking nail on the fucking head with that one."

"There's no shame in it. You can't help it if the transitions across the boundaries caused the problem."

"Who the fuck said anything about shame?"

"My apologies, Rainbow Dash. I just assumed that it may occasionally lead to situations of... social awkwardness. But what you have is a simple medical issue, nothing more and nothing less. With the right therapies and drugs it may even prove to be treatable."

The mares voice was thick with sarcasm. "Thanks, Cutter. I'll be sure to look them up when I get back. I feel excited already."

"And, on the other matter. Macintosh said something about the Testament?"

There was a pause, Dash took a sharp breath. Leaning forward, she let her coat blow open in the wind, giving Twilight an eyeful of the various sharp implements she had stored within. "Listen, Cutter. My faith is my fucking business and my fucking business alone, so shut the fuck up before you see how damaged I really fucking am."

Twilight gulped.

The transition came moments later, arriving more quickly than their previous crossing from Neon Heights to Geartown. The platform continued to descend at a steady rate, carrying them smoothly across the boundary and into the Ponyville zone. Twilights eyes met Dash's own, both acknowledging the moment when it came. Twilight was cold already, but as she passed through the boundary she felt that the icy draught of the transition made the carriage snug and cosy by comparison.

The fierce, shattering cold of the transition lingered in her bones for a few minutes after they'd made it across. Then she began to feel the zone sickness as it took hold. It wasn't any worse than she'd imagined it, but she still felt her skin perspiring and her body shudder as her vision went spinning.

But such unpleasantness was nothing more than was expected from residual zone sickness. If Twilight hadn't administered medication to herself before to cushion the blow of the transition, she would most certainly by now be bent double and vomiting her guts up.

At least the fact she wasn't proved that she guessed the dose right.          

"Is it always this harsh?" she asked Dash after the wheeling sensation had finally abated and the chill in her bones had begun to subside. She opened her eyes, having pressed them shut during the transition, and found that even the dull light of the carriages single candle lantern was too harsh for her to look at.

"The first few hundred times, yeah. After that it gets a bit easier." Dash sullenly replied, scratching the back of her head.

They lapsed into silence for the rest of the journey, Twilight feeling too ill to continue the conversation and Dash seemingly too brooding to be roused. Even as the dull thump of wood on wood signalled that they'd arrived at the Ponyville terminus the pair remained silent, and it was only after their half-hour wait, when the guards needed bribing to allow them safe passage, that Dash spoke again.

Twilights first thought, after they'd managed to leave the transhipment dock unmolested, was that there was nothing about Ponyville that she had not already seen Geartown, half a league up Canterlots tapering needle. The warehouses and clerical offices bordering the funicular terminus were, at least in Twilight's eyes, architecturally and functionally similar to those at the upper terminus. The lamps here burned wood resin instead of gas, making their illumination sparse and more subdued in its effect, but she still felt surprised by how fundamentally civilised and well ordered the community seemed.  

Looking down from Neon Heights at night, Ponyville was little more than a thin, dark margin that marked the boundary between the base of Canterlot and the Outzone, a place that seemed to have no nocturnal existence whatsoever. Now though, she saw just how inaccurate that impression had been, and shuddered as she felt that small, visceral tingle that always came with shifting preconceptions.

But when her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark light of the resin lamps, the darkness in-between begun to yield its secrets, she only had glance up to have the wild, shimmering electrical haze of Neon Heights burned back into her retina.

It was, she slowly realised, the reason why the denizens of Ponyville favoured wide-brimmed hats, even at night. They didn't want to have to keep looking up, they didn't want to be permanently reminded of a place of swift machines and electronic miracles; a place only a few would ever know, and even then only when they passed through it on Ascension Day.

Beyond the transhipment dock, Twilight slowly revised her initial impressions of the settlement. Only a minor few buildings were made of anything other than wood, with brick being reserved only for civic and corporate centres of obvious importance. As for everything else, it seemed that nearly every building in Ponyville possessed a ramshackle air, as if all of them had collapsed and been rebuilt many times over, with any of the relatively few new structures perched on the sagging, decayed remnants of the old.

The street and thoroughfares were ludicrously narrow, even when taking into consideration the fact that the only form of motive energy was pony power, made to move with sweat and hard work. Nowhere was there a building any taller than four or five storeys, but the manner in which they sagged over the street, with opposing buildings almost touching overhead, gave Twilight a greater sense of vertigo than she had ever felt when staring up at the fifty-storey blocks of Neon Heights, or the towering crystal wonders of the Celestial Levels, embedded so faintly at the back of her memory.

Everywhere the inhabitants of Ponyville had attempted to make travel easier for themselves, and their efforts were more than clearly visible. Threading the buildings together like wooden vines, bridging between buildings and tentatively hanging across streets, were covered and uncovered walkways, all of which and an unsettling sense of flimsiness to them.

The buildings themselves had their walls criss-crossed with black timbers, buff-white rendering stuffed into the gaps between. Through the occasional gaps in the buildings Twilight managed to steal a few brief glimpses of the great plains that stretched on for miles away from Canterlot's base, a harrowing blackness that seemed to be intensified by the lights of the tiny, huddled communities that dotted the land all the way up to a thick, menacing bar of solid black that signalled the start of the Everfree Forest.

They were near the base now, Twilight knew; the winding spiral of the cities Megastructure terminating into the ground less than half a turn from their current position.

The smell, however, was by far the worst aspect of the bottom rung of Canterlot society. It hit Twilight full in the face mere moments after they'd cleared the ordered precincts of the transhipment depot. It came upon them in slow, choking waves, each blast a few increments worse than the one before, playing upon her sense of smell like a discordant symphony. Running beneath the myriad stenches was the profound reek of open sewage, the dull, permanent stain of effluence clear for all to smell.

Above that, and only a fraction more tolerable, was the heavy chemical shroud of the various processing industries that scrounged a living on the waste of Canterlot. Processing plants, situated at the mouths of the sewage outlets dotted around the base of the city, that used basic chemical reactions to harvest useful elements and substrates from the refuse of those above. With every frigid breath that Twilight sucked into her lungs she could taste wood smoke. The chill in the air was sharper down here, given Ponyville's proximity to the Outzone.

"You thought it was gonna get warmer closer to the ground, didn't you, Cutter?" Dash asked as Twilight pulled up the collars on both her coats. "Maybe that's how the world used to be."

"And now?"

"World's been getting colder beyond Canterlot for years now. Only reason you don't feel it up in Neon Heights is because you've got the thermals coming up from the levels below, warming up the air, and giving the alicorns some decent currents to ride on. Down here, though? No more levels to go from here. This is what life's gonna be like for you now, Cutter, and believe it or not, we're the lucky ones. Being bang on top of the equator like we are, we've got the best of it. But head further north and further south, the wind gets cold enough to freeze a witch's tits."

What if Equestria really was getting colder? Twilight wondered. And what if no one in the warm, illuminated levels of Canterlot was bothering to pay any attention?

There would be no chance of getting out of Canterlot until the morning, since the border patrols forbade either the entrance or the exiting of Canterlot to all parties once Celestia's sun had descended. Knowing that this would be the last chance to get some decent sleep before they left Canterlot, Dash found them a room above a gaming house that wasn't far from the border point that she usually used.

Twilight sat on one of the two metal framed beds, grimacing at the state of their surrounding accommodations. The mattresses where stained with substances only Faust could know, and the thin white sheet reminded her all too much of the shrouds covering the corpses of those who had attempted Ascension Day. The window was cracked and draughty and something kept scuttling under the floor boards, rushing back and forth from side of the room to the other as if it had a long list of errands to complete.

None of it seemed to matter to Dash though, who washed her hooves in a small rusty basin in the corner of the room, removed her thick, olive green coat, lay down on the bed, and promptly fell asleep, snoring contentedly. Twilight extinguished the oil lamp, removed her own layers and took off her tinted glasses.

Exhaustion took her like a velvet vice.

She woke to a colourless, wintery day, the watery light pressing at the thin curtains. Dash was gone. Sitting up Twilight could see the imprint her body had left on the bed opposite her. The room key was still on the nightstand with her glasses, her saddlebags propped up against the side.

She rose from the bed, stretching the stiffness from her hooves. Trotting over to the basin, she tolerated the cold long enough to give herself a quick wash before rubbing dirt off the surface of the cracked mirror that was mounted on the wall above the basin.

It seemed as if she'd gotten thinner since the last time she'd checked on her wings, and her spinal column rose from her back like a mountain chain, the gray light showing everything with a stark, anatomical clarity. Her wing buds, soft and obscene, protruded from the top of her back like a pair of hooves was trying to push out of her body. She dressed again, and was settling her glasses over the bridge of her muzzle when she noticed the little black book on Dash's nightstand, a horse-shoe of gold paint imprinted on the cover.

She wasn't sure what, but something compelled her to pick it up. The testament was bound in worn black suede, the cover rough to touch, creased and worn like her own saddlebags. She opened it gently, half-expecting some sort of trap to go off in her face.

The pages of Faust's holy book were translucently thin, the ink on one side showing on the other. Dense columns of scripture, with minute numbers at the start of every verse. Some parts were in plain font, whilst others, most likely quotes or important passages, were laid out in italics or printed in bold.

The book looked older than Dash, though Twilight couldn't pin exactly what made her so certain of this. she flipped the page, a furtive edge in the sound of the pages as they whisked against one another.

And in that time, before the gates of Paradise were closed to them, mares and stallions were as foals, and so bountiful were the treasures and fruits of Paradise that they lived four-score years, and some lived yet longer.

And Equestria was warm and blue, and many were its provinces.

So it was that the Pre-equines came together and built Canterlot, so that they might transcend the mortal plain and become one with the divine. Up and up they built, until so vast was the spire, so majestic in its grandness, that it pierced the heavens themselves. And Faust did turn her eyes to the Godscraper, and sent her alicorns to watch over it.

For none who are mortal may possess the key to become immortal.

But the Pre-equines of that day knew no honour, no loyalty, only greed. And it was in their greed that they rebelled against the alicorns, and waged war on one another for control of the Godscraper. Unknowing, even as brother fought brother, that the Divine lay watching.

Seeing the failure of the Pre-equines with her own eyes, Faust knew that such creatures were not fit to be permitted the bounties of paradise, and in her fury did turn on Equestria, reaping a bloody harvest in recompense for the mortals sins. So it was that the Eye of Faust burnt through the world, and the gates of Paradise were sealed.

They have not opened since.

Twilight closed the book, hearing hoofsteps coming up the creaky staircase from below, then along the landing. There was a knock at the door. Twilight put the Testament back down on the table as Dash entered. Subtly conscious that it was not quite as she'd found it, and that Dash would not fail to notice this.

"Time to ship, Cutter," she said. "I've got our papers sorted and supplies secured, let's blow this joint." Dash pulled out a small metal box from a coat pocket. "I know I will," she said with a faint grin.

Dash reached from the Testament, slipping it into a deep pocket on the inner lining of her coat without giving it a second glance.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

As the first weak rays of Celestia's sun began to light up the chill morning sky, four alicorns stood in waiting.

Before them stretched the derelict stretch of no-pony's-land that separated the Celestial Levels from the Cyber Polities. The wasteland was an industrial ruin, the remains of once proud structures now nothing more than shattered blocks of ferrocrete and duraplast. It was easy to separate the blunt, plain architecture of the Cyber Polities from the delicate finesse and grace of the Celestial Levels. On the other side of the boundary, the outermost buildings of the Trottingham Polity gleamed a dull grey in the morning light, their sharp corners and plain aesthetic sending dagger-like shadows scattering across the ledge.

In the Celestial Levels structures of luscious crystal, wrought with such delicacy as only the artisans of the alicorns possessed, reached skyward, their inner glow mirroring the dying light of the few remaining stars. They were a riot of colour, some a soft cherry-blossom pink, others cyan and cerulean blue, but for the most part they were stark white, reflecting the growing light of day to unreal intensities.

Tiberius, newly declared patriarch of the Celestial Guard, surveyed the boundary with a hawks eye, wary of any trickery as a party of cyborgs from the polities performed a stately procession across the boundary. In their midst he could make out the white gleam of a casket, levitating in the air on a set of primitive anti-grav generators, and he breathed an internal sigh of relief.

Captain Shining Armour was being returned to them.

The alicorn himself was resplendent in the ancient power-armour of his station, golden ceramite forged in millennia past. It covered the pure white coat of his barrel, segmented plates running down all four limbs to offer maximum protection, whilst a golden helm crowned his head, complete with a thick plume of phoenix feathers that were, even centuries after the creatures death, ablaze with crimson fire. Roundels shored up any gaps left in the plating, and strapped to his side was the ancient power-axe Starlight Wrath, a venerable weapon that had been forged in a time beyond living memory.

Behind him, the three alicorns of his squad stood in brooding silence, drawn up in a phalanx formation behind their patriarch. Each wore power-armour of the same golden colouration, though they were lass baroque then their leader. Armed with tall halberds, tipped with gauss weaponry and pennants of the Celestial Levels, the warriors were a forbidding sight, their expressions grim and their eyes dark with brooding countenance.        

The cyborgs came to a halt at the centre of the boundary, their crude implants and cybernetics wiring and straining as they struggled to cope with the state of flux brought upon them by proximity to the gulf between the two zones. One of the group, presumably the leader by the ornamentation on his battle armour, began to issue orders to his squad, but from this distance Tiberius found himself unable to interpret anything.

"Celestial Guard," he barked. "Form up." The three alicorns behind him snapped to attention with the deep, uniform growl of their power-armours internal nova reactor. "Our captain awaits us. Let us not leave him a moment longer with the barbarians of the Polity."

"Yes, Patriarch." Came the unison reply. Tiberius began the march, and behind him came the reassuring tread of his soldiers as they began to enter no-pony's-land.

Though he did well to keep it from showing, Tiberius felt edgy as they began to approach the boundary. For alicorns, there could be no life other than that of the Celestial Levels, for nowhere else either in Canterlot, or even the whole of Equestria, did there exist another zone that was capable of supporting Post-equine life. Even the conditions of the Cyber Polities, a mere seven millennia of technological development behind the Levels, were inimical to the alicorns.

Naturally, this led to all alicorns developing an almost inherent fear of other zones, but Tiberius knew that in the face of the cyborgs he couldn't show any weakness. Even the slightest hint of fear could give the cyborgs a dangerous advantage in the approaching exchange.

That was something Tiberius wouldn't allow.

They were closer now, close enough to begin picking up more discrete details about the cyborgs. Tiberius counted four shock troopers in their midst, creatures that seemed more machine then pony, positioned, two aside, around the floating casket.

Like the soldiers behind him, each trooper was encapsulated in heavy duty armour, but that was where the similarities came to an end. It never failed to disgust Tiberius how far the citizens of the Polities were willing to rend their bodies in order to surpass the limitations of their own flesh. All four of the shock troopers had had their legs amputated and replaced with military grade augmetics, armoured with the matte gray of the titanium alloy so favoured by the polities.

On top of the near sacrilegious alterations they'd made to their own bodies, the troopers eyes had been removed and instead replaced with cerebral enhanced targeting arrays, leaving behind sunken pits in their skulls, two dots of crimson red light being the only indications that they were still capable of sight. Along the ridge of their spinal columns, fins of metal protruded through their coats, acting a sinks for the incredible amount of heat that was produced by the internal machinery that powered their bodies.

The extent of their enhancement was only compounded by the fact that all four were identical in form and aesthetic.

Towering behind them was the monstrous form of a Centaur. Armoured head to hoof in the same gray alloy of the shock troopers, the lower half of the pony's body had been amputated and instead replaced with a completely artificial construct that stood on four mechanical hooves. What was left of the pony's torso had been biomechanically fused to the construct, with his forelegs replaced with formidable weaponry. His right hoof swapped out for a multi-barrelled autocannon, and his left replaced with a deadly electro-flail, a glittering cluster of ligaments that hummed with barely contained energy.

Tiberius brought the squad to a halt a mere twenty yards from the boundary, dangerously close by alicorn standards. Since the zones of both the Celestial Levels and the Cyber polities were much higher state than those of Circuit City or Neon Heights, the spread of the boundary was very thin, meaning that even this close to an alien zone Tiberius still wasn't feeling the adverse affects of such proximity to the boundary.

The leader of the cyborgs stepped forward, moving closer to the boundary until he was a bare three feet away from the metaphysical division. He was the most equine of all the cyborgs, with only his right foreleg swapped out for an augmetic enhancement. One of his eyes had been replaced with a glimmering holo-projector, which currently seemed to be projecting some kind of schematic, most likely the latest treatise of co-existence that existed between the polities and the Levels. The rest of his body was clad in a mechanical exoskeleton of scarlet metal, a pair of exhaust ports growling quietly over his flanks.

"Come, good sir," he called to Tiberius, a faint smile crossing his features. "Standing so far away. Surely this is no way for an exchange for the Pre and Post equines of Canterlot to take place?"

Tiberius kept his face passive. By the terms of the treatise, any Pre-equines who weren't participants of Ascension Day were barred from entering the Celestial Levels. Naturally, the same applied for the alicorns, but such a term was rendered moot when the Post-equines couldn't function beyond their own zone. Flicking his tail left and right in a silent command to his soldier, Tiberius steeled his nerves and began to approach the boundary.

As soon as he was within ten yards of the boundary, Tiberius' body began to feel the effects of the transition, though through strength of will he managed to keep his mind aloof from such sensations. A feeling of numbness was beginning to spread its way through his barrel, slowly diffusing into his limbs. As it expanded Tiberius had to fight harder to show the discomfort from showing on his face. It was the Nanotrites in his body beginning to fail, their delicate inner-workings beginning to fail under the stress that the flux of the boundary was applying on them.

The damage was repairable, the nanoscopic machines would soon be able to construct new replicates from the ions and minerals in his blood stream, but prolonged exposure would cause the Nanotrites to denature to an inoperable state. If he were exposed to the boundary for too long or, Faust forbid, forced into another zone, the damage the flux would cause to his biomechanical nervous system would be catastrophic.

First the machines in his blood would be rendered useless as their minute internal systems were destroyed due to the lower state of existence in the opposing boundary. Without the machines the naturally occurring mechanical elements in his vital organs would be without maintenance, and that would be when the true pain would begin. The organs would soon collapse without the careful monitoring of the mechanical components within, which in turn would cause them to shut down one by one as they simply deteriorated into cancerous, maladaptive tumours. Just like what happened to all alicorns that fell from the Celestial Levels. Just like what had happened to the captain.

Tiberius tried not to think about it.  

Roughly five feet from the boundary he came to a halt, unsure if he could will his body any further. The chill in his barrel had spread to all corners of his body, and even in his mind Tiberius could feel icy trendils slowly stretching across his consciousness. The cyborg must have sensed his uneasiness, as the faint smile on his muzzle grew a fraction larger, a wicked gleam flashing across his one eye.

"I am Tiberius, Patriarch of the Celestial Guard and warden of the boundary," Tiberius introduced himself, inclining his head slightly. The scarlet cyborg nodded before bowing with a flourish.

"I am Scarlet-beam, commander of the cybernetic cohorts of the Trottingham Polity." The pony righted himself, an electric flicker in his circuitry causing the muscles in his muzzle to spasm slightly. "I had the grace of sparing with you former commander in my time. How unfortunate that your Goddess saw fit to give him such an ignoble death."

Tiberius felt his jaw clench. Shining Armour had been a paragon of duty, a true example for any soldier to aspire to, even as one as verminous as a Pre-equine. Tiberius wanted to strike the cyborg for his comment, but knew that such an opportunity would never present itself. So long as the pony remained on the opposite side of the boundary Tiberius would be denied the satisfaction of breaking his muzzle.

But, no. With such an option unavailable, there was nothing he could do but simply grit his teeth and allow the cyborg his cheap insult. "The Patriarch was a good pony," he said, a murderous expression briefly flickering across his face. "Easily worth twenty of your mechanical monstrosities."

The cyborg simply laughed.

"True, true. I remember the Vermillion War, your commander gave me quiet a fright. For two hours we fought, until we'd managed to grind each over to a standstill." The pony flexed his augmetic leg. "He took my leg that day as well. I managed to give him a scar in return, but such an injury is far from the same league as mine."

Tiberius nodded. He remembered the Vermillion War, when the Polities had banded together to invaded the lower ledges of the Celestial Levels, taking a brief pause from their near constant infighting to untie against the common foe of the alicorns. It had been the greatest incursion into the Celestial Levels for over two thousand years, and it was only by stint of the boundary that separated them from the Levels that the cyborgs had been spared a brutal reprisal.

"But enough of talking." The cyborg emitted a series of high pitched squeals from somewhere near his flank, and behind him the enormous bulk of the Centaur roared into life as the pilot within was roused from its drug induced stupor. The construct gripped the casket with a set of ligament mechadentrites that emerged from a grill just below its organic torso, marching forward with thumping hoof-steps, pushing the casket before it. "Despite our differences, Shining armour was respected amongst the warriors of the Polities for his courage and valour. In Trottingham, it is an ancient custom to bequeath the weapon of a foe to the deceased, as a token of their fighting prowess."

The casket pulled alongside the commander, the anti-grav generators beneath it humming dully as it floated on a cushion of zero-gravity. The cyborg augmetic leg whirred, and the plating around the knee joint retracted to reveal a small compartment. Within lay a simply dagger, the blade gleaming with a dull inner light. Removing it, the commander spun the blade on his hoof, watching as the weapons edge caught the light of the rising sun.

"This is the blade I used to scar your Patriarch, but I believe it's safe to say that he was the one who won the dual that day." The pony glanced across to Tiberius. "Would you begrudge me if I bequeathed it to you Commander? I can assure you, in my Polity there is no greater honour."

Tiberius shook his head.

Turning to the casket, the cyborg to a moment to stare at the blade one final time before sighing and placing onto the flat surface. "Goodbye, Shining Armour. Faust knows you deserved better than this. Hell, if I'd had a say in this I would have taken revenge for my leg, you old fool." Stepping back, the cyborg emitted another electrical squeal and the casket slowly made its way across the boundary, bobbing slightly higher as it entered the higher state zone of the Celestial Levels, tolerances slackening as it made the transition. "Give my respects to his wife, I've been made to understand that this loss will be dear to her."

"You were close to the Patriarch?"

"Young buck, I was crossing force-blades with your commander whilst you were a stripling of a mere three centuries. They say one should keep one's friends close, but one's enemies closer." The cyborg gave him a weary smile. "With your commander gone, I fear the council of the Polity will have no further need for an old ninth generation model like me."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, young foal. I may have been close with your commander, but what I've done here is nothing more than follow the codes of honour. This doesn't change anything between our two worlds." The smile on the cyborgs face dropped. "The blood and oil of many a loyal citizen has been spilt by your former Patriarch, such transgressions are not forgiven lightly. The Polity never forgives, the Polity never forgets."

Tiberius nodded in recognition. "Of course."

"Again, my respects to his wife." And as simple as that, the exchange was over. Scarlet-beam of the Trottingham Polity bowed once more before turning and returning to his squad, a shrill whistle emanating from somewhere beneath his throat. With the uniform precision of machines, the shock troopers saluted their commander as he passed, performing an abrupt one-eighty spin and marching away. The hulking form of the Centaur made its own ponderous way behind them, tremors travelling through the Megastructure beneath them every time one of the constructs trunk-like hooves touched the ground.

Tiberius remained at the boundary, watching for any signs of trickery as the cyborgs departed. But even after the cohort was long gone without the slightest inclination of trouble the Post-equine remained, wrapped up inside his own thoughts. Behind him, the alicorns of the Celestial Guard stood in resolute silence, pennants snapping in the thermals that were rising up from the lower levels of Canterlot.

"You... you were a fool, Sir," Tiberius muttered to the casket beside him. "Throwing away your life like that, jumping blindly into the dark, and placing your trust in mere hear-say and rumours. Tell me, Sir. Did you find her, the fallen alicorn?"

The casket didn't reply.

"No... I thought not."

He sighed. Alicorns were immortal, years, decades, and even centuries were capable of slipping past in the blink of an eye for those creatures who would never age. But for Tiberius, these past dozen or so hours had been the longest of his life. The agony of indecision still burnt raw in his heart. What was there to do now? With Shining armour gone, Tiberius was now left to defend the true princess of the Celestial Levels from the forces of the usurper.

Protect the princess, follow your orders, duty and honour; these were the virtues that had been impressed upon the alicorn since his induction to the Celestial Guard at the tender age of one and a half centuries. Once, it had all seemed so foalishly simple, but then the Patriarch had sacrificed his life in such a desperate gamble, and now the prerogatives of duty were becoming blurred. The stark contrast between friend and foe, the clear line that separated ally from enemy, was becoming harder to discern, the boundaries becoming as blurred as the metaphysical divisions that segmented the different enclaves of Canterlot.

"You were a fool, Sir."

Turning back to his squad, Tiberius cast a simple tether spell. His horn momentarily glowed an ultramarine blue as an invisible, ectoplasmic trendil of magic energy reached out from his fluted appendage and burrowed itself into the casket. "Celestial Guard, form up," he barked to the call of armoured hooves snapping to attention. "The commander has been returned to us. It is now our duty to ensure that he is returned to the catacombs for a burial fitting for a Patriarch of the Celestial guard."

"Yes, Patriarch."

They formed up two aside, Tiberius and one of his squad on the right, the other two on the left. "March," he called, and with the uniform thump-thump of power-armoured hooves on raw Megastructure, the four alicorns began their return to the Celestial Levels; Tiberius feeling none the worse for leaving the boundary.

The Patriarchs death, he knew, was only the first of a new set of trials that were about to face the Celestial Levels, the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Daily, it seemed, the situation was becoming worse and worse. Whilst tectologists working the Eternity Matrix continued to calculate ever more disastrous conclusions for the coming zone shift, processing calculations and equations in their thousands to find even so much as a sliver of hope for the Post-equine race, the politics of the Levels were becoming dangerously perilous.

The princess was struggling to maintain order in the face of what seemed to be near impossible odds. With the prospect of a massive realignment fresh on everyponies lips, the last descendant of the ancient bloodline of Canterlot was struggling to maintain social order amongst her subjects whilst at the same time trying to ensure that sufficient precautions were in place to guarantee the survival of as many of her subjects as was equinely possible.

To make matters worse, the Cyber Polities below were becoming increasingly agitated and even overtly aggressive. The Polities didn't possess tectological technology that was in the same league as that of the Celestial Levels, but even the few primitive instruments they had were predicting nigh-apocalyptic readings. So, in a manner that was tiresomely typical of all Pre-equines, they were lashing out at those they held to be responsible, their mundane minds failing to realise that the alicorns had as little control over the zones as anypony else did.

Then there was the usurper.

Few beyond the boundaries of the Celestial Levels knew it, but the Post-equines were primed for civil war. In the face of the growing social unrest a powerful and twisted alicorn named Sombra, a foul practioner of forbidden necromancy and the black arts, was calling for a war of conquest, a crusade that would sweep away the filthy Pre-equines and install the alicorns as the rightful rulers of the Canterlot Godscraper. The treason of the alicorns words were only compounded by his claim that he was a descendant of the rulers of the mythical Crystal Empire, an ancient and forgotten realm that was said to lie far to the north at the heart of the Bane itself.

Tiberius wasn't one for vulgarity, but, as the citizens of Neon Heights were prone to say when faced with such blatant lies, he called bullshit on that one.

And at the root of all the chaos was the one thing that had every Pre and Post equine in Canterlot, from the humblest farmer at the outskirts of Ponyville to even the princess herself, worried sick to the bone.

The zone shift.

They'd seen it coming for centuries, ever since the tectologists of the Eternity Matrix had detected the first twitches of instability during the Vermillion War. At the time, the Eye of Faust was prone to near constant minor fluctuations, with the boundaries up and down the height of Canterlot readjusting themselves on a monthly basis. But even decades later the twitches were getting worse, becoming more erratic. Not only that, but the shifts were occurring deeper inside the Eye, meaning that each new flicker, each new shift, would be capable of causing even greater damage. Estimates from the tectologists had placed the next major realignment years ago, and now Canterlot was three centuries overdue.

What they were about to face would affect all citizens of Canterlot, not merely the Post-equines. With the prospect of a major realignment engrained into everyone's minds, combined with the rising threat of the Cyber Polities and the slander of the usurper, the coming storm was set to be the greatest the last city of equine kind had ever faced. Whether or not they would be able to weather it or not, Tiberius was unable to say, but of one thing he was certain; he wouldn't be able to do it alone.

What he needed was a mentor, somepony whose experience far outstripped his own. Somepony who would be able to show him how to defend the princess from both the aggression of the Polities and the ruthlessness of politics. An alicorn, a leader without peer, somepony respected beyond measure, who had never failed in both the execution of his duty and the upkeep of honour. For Tiberius, only one pony came to mind, only one pony possessed the raw skill and charisma necessary for the monumental task he was about to face.

And that pony was lying dead in the casket next to him.    

Next Chapter: VII: A day in court. Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 43 Minutes