"In my dream, the sky was a silken portrait of lights, which bathed the misty world below in a surreal glow. I saw nothing alive, save for a strange man made of black smoke. He moved as a wraith, an incorporeal entity floating over the ground and passing through objects at will. He was absent of face, yet I always felt as if his eyes were upon me. I was fearful, not of him, but of why he had come, and of what he intended for me.

I'll never forget his words. He spoke to me 'Welcome to my world, the end of all things.'"

- Translated from "The Beyond", c. 1010 CE

Taylor had been hoping that he wouldn't need to use the weapon he had been lugging around; being forced into a fight was his greatest concern. Throughout his life, he had always avoided physical confrontation, so it was unlikely that he would be able to do much more than flail around wildly. Even if he knew how to fight, he had never even held a battleaxe, so his ability to use it would be minimal at best. Everything was working against him and he began to wonder why he had agreed to this in the first place. Overconfidence, or perhaps arrogance? The latter seemed most accurate. He felt from the start that this was a bad idea, but his own narcissism managed to overpower logic and send him into the belly of the beast. It wasn't the first time he had made a rash decision out of some foolhardy idea that he was untouchable.

"Why did Celestia let me do this? Does she know something I don't, or did she send me here hoping I wouldn't make it out? Is this her idea of a test?"

Taylor took a deep breath and stepped forward, placing himself between the Inquisitor and the others. He turned his left side toward the new arrival, adopting a slightly crouched posture. Adrenaline coursed through his body, and he became only vaguely aware of the weight of the weapon in his hand, which usually seemed to pull him down like an anchor. Every natural instinct screamed at him to run, but there was something forcing him to stand his ground - a single impulse which he didn't fully understand.

"Move," Taylor growled at the nameless foe.

The stallion at the end of the hall remained stationary, bearing a disturbing grin. One might liken it to that of a serial killer, with clear focus and malicious intent. This was no ordinary Inquisitor, and all present knew it.

"I said move!" Taylor snapped, a primal snarl forming on his face. In his world, such a feral expression might have made him look like a furious mental patient, but in Equestria, he had the advantage of being viewed as some manner of mythical beast. He chose to see it as playing the part to his advantage.

The Inquisitor didn't seem to consider the human's blustering a threat. His hooves remained firmly planted and his gaze unchanged. It was as if he were daring Taylor, or anyone else to strike at him. It was unsettling, to say the least, that this foe showed no fear or hesitation when facing off against superior numbers and an enemy of unknown strength. It was unlikely that he was simply bluffing, but even so, it seemed possible that he could be overestimating himself.

"There's no way he knows what I can do, right? He couldn't possibly know. I'm the only one of my kind in this world."

Lyra stepped forward to place herself at Taylor's side, horn crackling with energy. Her eyes were alight with the same ferocity Taylor witnessed two nights prior when she saved him from the Order. Such a pronounced transformation in the normally pleasant unicorn made Taylor a little nervous, but he appreciated the backup.

Light flashed abruptly from Lyra's horn, startling Taylor. From the tip, three white-hot bolts of magical energy manifested and soared across the hall with a shrill screech, exploding into dense gray clouds on impact with the Inquisitor a fraction of a second later. As the smoke cleared, it became apparent that the attack had inflicted no damage, but it gave Taylor an idea.

"How many of those can you use at once?" he asked Lyra, never averting his gaze from the Inquisitor.

"Not many. I'm guessing you have a plan, so whatever it is, you'll need to be quick about it."

Taylor shifted his stance, placing the majority of his weight on his rear foot. "That won't be a problem. Just try not to hit me with one of those things."

Lyra steadied herself, inhaled deeply, then began to unleash another barrage of magic at the Inquisitor. Meanwhile, Taylor pushed off from his position, staying as far away from Lyra's attack as possible while charging down the hall. Even so, he could still feel the intense heat radiating off of each shot, the last of which landed a mere fraction of a second before he would be in range of his target. He chose to strike from below, concluding that his foe would likely be bracing for a high or center strike. Furthermore, even if the attack was only glancing, a hit to the leg would at least give them an opportunity to run, should the situation become even less favorable.

Mid-swing, Taylor caught a glimpse of something hoof-shaped through the smoke, heading directly toward his face. Unable to evade, he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and forced the blade of his axe toward his target with every bit of strength he possessed. This was going to hurt, but at least he wouldn't be the only one bleeding...

...or so he thought.

The sound of metal clattering loudly on stone struck his ears first. Taylor's sudden loss of momentum did nothing to stop that of the axe, which had wrenched itself from his grasp and flown harmlessly past the Grand Inquisitor, crashing against the wall. Next came the chilling realization that his gambit had failed catastrophically and he was going to lose this fight. Third and finally, he felt the blinding pain from having been kicked solidly in the face. He could feel blood pouring from his nostrils as he lay pitifully on his side, howling in agony.

He heard Lyra calling to him over the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats.

"Stop right there. You're outmatched and outnumbered, little filly," the Inquisitor warned, placing himself between Lyra and Taylor. "It would be unwise to resist."

Lyra hesitated. She wasn't even close to being strong enough to take on this particular foe directly - that much was certain - but she was by no means outnumbered. Unless...

"He's right, you know, just like he was right about your pet human. It doesn't take much to manipulate one so blindly arrogant," Sophie mocked as she passed Lyra. "Honestly, I'm disappointed at how easy this was. I expected a struggle, or at least a chase."

Taylor managed to open one eye, looking up into Sophie's face. She stared back, expressionless, before her horn flashed, enveloping Taylor in a blue glow. He was suddenly overcome with lethargy, and fought just to keep his eyes open.

Taylor's reached out with a trembling hand, grasping Sophie's foreleg weakly. "You bitch. I knew... we couldn't..."

Without even the energy to finish his sentence, Taylor gave in to the spell, allowing his body to go limp, and he drifted into unconsciousness. Sophie then turned on Lyra, striking her with the same spell. She collapsed on her side almost instantly.

"Come along, Imperator," Sophie called back to Bon Bon. "It's thanks to your warning that we were able to stop them. For that, I think you've earned a front row seat to our Queen's return."

A very confused Bon Bon simply nodded and followed obediently. She trusted Sophie absolutely, but disliked that her scheme was going this far, taking them this close to the revival of Queen Chelsea.

With all of Equestria on the line, such bold measures were unsafe, to say the least.

The double doors to the Archives were thrown open violently with a burst of magic, immediately preceding the arrival of a very irate Cerise storming into the room. She looked around, observing nothing out of place, which she found very suspicious. Every time she was forced to come down here, the room was a disaster, and Adrastos was always in the center of the book storm. Today, everything was neat and pristine, and the only other pony in the room was the middle-aged pegasus with a snow white coat who tended to the upkeep of this section of the Order's private library. She was usually nose deep in a book, and today was no exception. Cerise could never remember her name - not that she bothered to learn the name of anypony whose rank was below her own, save for a select few - but she was quite familiar with the librarian. The one thing that made her stand out from most members of the Order was her timid nature, and Cerise found endless delight in making her squirm.

"Hey you! Have you see anypony else here today?" Cerise barked, startling the mare. "I'm looking for Adrastos."

The mare, Winter Skies, flexed her wings nervously in the presence of a superior - just the type of reaction Cerise wanted to see.

"I've seen nopony in here today, Imperator." she squeaked back, trying (and failing) to mask her anxiety.

Cerise looked the pegasus up and down, glaring at her as if she were somehow to blame for the absence of her quarry. She briefly considered ordering 'the lowly bookworm' to go look for him to save herself the effort, but opted instead to turn sharply and flick her tail in the mare's face as she proceeded to search the room.

"For your sake, I'd better not find out he's in here," she spat, "because if I do, I'll see to it that you end up in an even more degrading and meaningless role within this Order."

The bitter pink unicorn took an excessively long and thorough look around the circular room, searching for anywhere that Adrastos might be hiding, and even checking a few locations which simply weren't capable of concealing a stallion his size. After several minutes of this, Winter considered mentioning to Cerise that she had already scoured the entirety of this room half a dozen times and come up empty, but thought better of it. To criticize her was a terrible idea no matter who you were, but to do so when she outranked you? Winter grimaced, remembering the fate of last unfortunate recruit who had done exactly that.

Cerise sighed in her usual melodramatic fashion. Certain that her subordinate was not present and particularly upset at having wasted the time searching for nothing, she was forced to accept defeat and made her way toward the exit wordlessly, kicking the door closed behind her. It shut with a resounding slam, rattling the stained glass windows on the opposite wall.

"I hope you fall down the stairs," Winter muttered, returning to her seat.

She waited in silence for several minutes, eyes occasionally darting up to check the doorway, then back down to the pages of her book. Once she was satisfied that Cerise would not be returning, she got up from her chair, pushed it away from the table, and walked to the edge of the circular rug that dominated the center of the room. After taking another moment to be certain she was still alone, she leaned down to grab the edge in her teeth. A quick tug revealed an Inquisition symbol carved into one of the stones that made up the floor of the room. Without delay, she ran her hoof in a circle around it quickly and carefully, with the precision of one who had done this many times before, then pressed firmly in the center. The symbol flickered red, then sunk downward, beginning a cascading reaction which caused a small section of the floor to "collapse" to reveal a hidden staircase.

Winter's eyes remained fixed on the door as she trotted quickly over to the outermost wall of the Archives where a heavy wooden bookcase fit snugly into the shallow stone alcove. She rapped her hoof on the solid wood shelf once, paused, then struck twice again in rapid succession. The same pattern was returned to her from behind the wall, followed by a faint mechanical click. Slowly, the bookshelf began to pivot, opening a path just wide enough for Adrastos, who had been waiting on the other side, to squeeze through.

The two ponies nodded to each other in passing but spoke not a word. Winter closed up the hidden passage while Adrastos made for the staircase with all haste. He had just enough time to clear the floor level before the stones began to shudder, then snapped back to their previous positions, magically sealing the entrance. Winter quickly covered everything up with the rug, careful to smooth it out so it appeared exactly as it had just a moment ago, then took her seat once more.

"Good luck," Winter whispered softly.

"...I just hope the Princess is willing to hear you out."

Taylor groaned and opened his eyes slowly, feeling the chill of dirt and stone beneath him. He was still dazed and struggled to maintain focus, but in the brief moments of clarity, he was able to see the night sky. The stars were plentiful and glimmered brightly, as if they were competing for the attention of those below. A few wispy purplish clouds hung overhead, not at all like the kind found in Equestria. They were much more reminiscent of those from his world, but their formation was surreal, appearing as a large spiral whose arms stretched all the way across the sky. It was certainly impressive, but something just seemed to be missing, and it didn't take long to determine what that was.

"Where's the moon?"

That thought - his words, in his voice - echoed off of every surface, but he hadn't spoken. Somehow the contents of his mind had been projected outward. Taylor sat up quickly, immediately regretting the decision as an intense bout of nausea struck him. He fell back to the ground, shutting his eyes tightly and repeating the same muttered obscenity. After taking a moment to recover, he slowly struggled to his feet, looking around.

He was in the center of what would have been some sort of cell, if the walls were still standing. It was apparent that they had long since crumbled away, leaving only the fragmented arrangement of dark gray bricks forming a rectangular shape around him. The rusted remnants of a heavy barred door lay in front of him, all but destroyed by time. Beyond that were more piles of brick and many destroyed furnishings, all of which appeared to have been grandiose and expensive in their time. In the distance, a shredded rectangle of cloth hung pitifully from a wooden shaft, a banner of some sort - still standing, but barely. It was a vibrant blue, a stark contrast to everything else in this place, wherever he was. In the center of the cloth was an all too familiar pastel orange sun.

Taylor took a step backward, an unconscious attempt to distance himself from the what he was seeing. Something crunched beneath his footfall, and he spun around to see what he was stepping on (suffering another wave of nausea for this mistake). It appeared to be a tangle of some sort of vine, but the outer surface resembled black glass. Inside was what appeared to be red smoke drifting so slowly that it was difficult to tell it was moving at all. Whatever these things were, they were plentiful, snaking their way up nearly every vertical surface in the area. Taylor found it strange that something so fragile could grow in such quantity, even stranger that something such as this could grow at all.

He turned back toward the front of the entrance of the decrepit cell and found a dark figure on the other side of what used to be the entrance - or at least, he thought it was facing him. Whatever this creature was, it seemed to be made of a dense fog coalesced into the shape of a human with no facial features, and its skin (if it could be called such) was pitch black, so dark that it seemed to swallow any light that fell upon it.

"Greetings," it said in a deep flanged voice that echoed for what felt like an eternity. "I've been waiting for you to arrive for some time now."

Taylor opened his mouth to respond, but found himself unable to produce any sound. Confused, he held a hand to his throat and tried again. He felt the the vibration, but still heard nothing. His eyes went wide and his heart raced as he began to panic. He felt his legs shaking beneath him and allowed himself to fall to his knees, breathing heavily.

"What the hell happened to me!?"

His thoughts exploded outward, piercing the silence of this place. It wasn't until the echo had subsided that he looked back up at the dark figure, who remained still.

"You've already begun to understand, have you not?" it asked knowingly.

"Uh... hello?"

Again, Taylor's thoughts had been given sound, but this time with a much less distressing volume. 'Speaking' with one's thoughts was unnatural, and would take a lot of getting used to, but at least he now had a way to communicate with whatever this creature was. Somehow Taylor got the impression that the dark figure was pleased, though it showed no outward sign of any emotion.

"Good, now come. There are things you need to see."

The figure began floating away without waiting for a response. Taylor wasn't in any position to protest and hurried out of the cell after him, narrowly avoiding tripping over the fallen door. He walked in silence behind the dark figure, occasionally stopping to more closely examine something he had seen, then quickening his pace to catch up before he could be left behind, just as an easily-distracted child might follow their parent. They passed many collapsed structures, most of which looked to have been destroyed by some manner of explosion.

Taylor began to notice things that seemed wildly out of place. Typical Canterlot architecture, the large gray brick that the Order used for much of its underground structure, and the gold-capped white spires of Canterlot Castle all seemed to mesh into one another, creating a mind-boggling scene.

"If you spliced Dali and Escher's DNA, this is what the hideous resulting offspring would paint."

That thought wasn't supposed to be audible. Embarrassed, Taylor glanced at the dark figure, who continued onward, either not having heard or simply not caring, the latter of which seemed most likely. The weathered cobblestone road on which they traveled, much like the one which spanned the length of Canterlot, stretched onward as far as the eye could see, though it would only be another few minutes at this pace before the rows of destroyed buildings would abruptly end, leaving only the path below. Taylor hoped that whatever he was being led to would be in the wreckage of one of the upcoming buildings. The prospect of following this nameless thing down a seemingly-endless cobblestone road for an indeterminate period of time to who-knows-where wasn't exactly an exciting one.

Without warning, the figure vanished. Taylor's eyes darted around, looking for any trace of his spectral escort, coming up empty. He shouted a curse at the top of his lungs, but somehow it just didn't have the same effect when he was being silenced by this place. He kicked a loose stone in frustration, watching it sail off toward a building up ahead which caught his attention. The color had faded, but Taylor could still recognize it as the one he had been led to by Sophie. It was in surprisingly good shape, with the only noticeable damage being a hole in the roof about the size of a small car. Relative to the condition of the other buildings in the area, many of which had been completely leveled, it was practically pristine.

Taylor walked quickly toward the entrance. He didn't know what he would find inside, or even why he had so suddenly been compelled to explore. At least he would be doing something productive, instead of waiting around for something to happen, he thought.

Mid-stride, he felt a sudden chill and the world disappeared, replaced by a new scene. He was standing atop one of Canterlot Castle's highest spires. It was in horrible shape, looking as if it had suffered extensive damage, but worst of all was a series of enormous black crystalline spikes that pierced it in several places. Inside of each was the same red smoke as the strange vines Taylor encountered earlier.

To his left, the dark figure from before stood stoically, as if waiting for him. Taylor struggled against his extreme fear of heights to stand next to the figure. His hands gripped the tarnished golden railing so hard that they trembled. What he saw as he looked out over the world did little to ease his fears. The land looked like it had been torn open by giant hands, creating a deep canyon that ran from the base of Canterlot Mountain to the edge of Ponyville, or what was left of it. Most of it had been completely destroyed by fire. The only remaining identifiable structure was the windmill, of which only the circular stone base still stood. Further in the distance, the lush forests which once bordered Ponyville had fared no better against the raging flames.

The dark figure turned toward Taylor and waved his hand over the landscape slowly. "Welcome my world, the end of all things..."

"...Welcome to Terminus."