“That dragon.” A unicorn Oaka said, it looked a lot like Lilly. “I saw him at the train station, earlier.” I chuckled lightly seeing hundreds of the naked Oaka walk out from the woods into the open.

“That feeling.” One of them said and I paused. I had forgotten I had left Lilly alone far too long, my spell wore off around sun set.

“I'll have to do this fast then.” I mumbled.

“What?” An earth pony Oaka asked.

“I’m here to slaughter you all, and all that stuff, so yeah.”

“What?” The unicorn Oaka asked. I pulled out a stone and wrote a symbol, then blew fire onto it engraving it. “What do you mean you’re here to kill us?!”

“As it sounds, you’re wanted for mass murder of ponies. You and your entire colony will be executed under my order.”

“Yeah you want what army?” A pegasus Oaka asked making me grin as hundreds of Oaka moved forward into the light.

“I’m glad you asked.” I growled lightly. I threw the stone and it exploded. Portals opened up and my thousand clay soldiers walked through with numbers on their armor, one through a thousand. I had used numbers to give them names, it allowed them freedom at the same time being able to word like a hive mind, perfect efficiency.

“Oh sh.” One of them stared and my soldier appeared next to it cutting off its head with a clean swing of its sword.

“Attack.” I growled deeply and my soldiers went forward, but the Oaka weren’t pushovers, they were just as well armed and battle worthy.

“ATTACK!” One of them shouted as one of my solders cut off its head. I held out my hands and swords appeared. I ran into the fray easily chopping the heads off. The only thing that I couldn’t do was cut off a limb or two. The Oaka were just like my clay dolls, they would regenerate another soldier ready for combat if they had the energy.

“Use magic fools!” An Oaka shouted as I kicked his body off my sword. I blew fire roasting a few of them, and a sword cut into my shoulder from behind. I pulled out the sword from my shoulder, and threw the Oaka in the air cutting off his head blocking two more swords with my own.

After a while this became a losing battle for me. Each time my soldiers would kill one, two Oaka would cut off another’s arms, and grow two more soldier. My soldiers were being overwhelmed by the countless spawn. Without a real factory and foundry with plenty of material, to make real weapons and armor, I couldn’t call this army my spit.

“Kill the spawners!” I ordered and the few of my free soldiers rushed them cutting off their heads, but the spawners weren’t simply a few of them. All of them around the spawners cut off one arm and moved to attack. Swords of the dead became weapons of the newly spawn.

“Die!” An Oaka shouted, I dodged a sword’s blade just barely as a Oaka aimed for my neck. There was no coming back from a cut off head, at least not for a few hours, and by then who knows what they would do to my body.

“Kill the clay’s commander!” One of them shouted and I jumped back as a dozen swarmed me. I swung my blade slicing their heads clean off. I then jumped flying into the air breathing hard.

My army wasn’t working as I had hoped, with my army we had killed nearly fifteen thousand Oaka, but there were still five thousand left now. While impressive, they were somehow feeding on a very powerful magic source that I couldn’t see. Spawning anything, rather clay or not, need magic power, and unlike unicorns, Oaka can’t just make it that fast.

“Whoa!” I turned looking at Dash appear next to me.

“What are you doing here?!” I asked panicked, I hadn’t expected anyone to find out about my clay soldiers.

“Ah, I heard a loud amount of noise and rushed over.” I paused. It was almost sun rise, I had been fighting for hours, and I hadn’t noticed. “What are those things?”

“My soldiers.”

“What?!”

“Shut up, don’t tell anyone, I'll explain later, don’t go anywhere.”

“Wait I can.”

“NO! Unless we cut off the heads, the Oaka will regenerate from the blast, you’ll only kill or damage my soldiers. I need you to go look for a power source, they are feeding on some kind of magic source, and I can’t finish them unless I find it.”

“On it.” She flew off and I healed jumping down crushing an Oaka flat. I started chopping again and they swarmed me time and time again. “Seffron.” Dash landed next to me slicing with armored wings cutting off heads easily.

“What?!”

“I found it, I think!”

“Good enough.” I grabbed her and jumped flying into the air.

“Where are they all coming from.” She asked looking around.

“Look.” I pointed at spawners. “They can make new ones by cutting off limbs, but the spawn only live for a short while, you can see a large group back there. They don’t want to join the battle. Now where did you find it?”

We flew a ways back and she pointed at a large glowing stone being carried by several of them. I grinned, talk about power! That could give me more power raw than Celestia, and I wouldn’t have to eat it.

“Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“What do we do?”

“You will fly back and make sure none of them get to Ponyville, I’ve spent far too long fighting, I probably let a lot of them through.”

“Why didn’t you find this earlier then?”

“I, kind of got sucked into the battle, I didn’t realize till it was too late, and not a word of this too any pony, is that clear?” She nodded shooting off. I landed and the Oaka looked at me with surprise. I grinned, it had been shielded from my eyes. I couldn’t see super powerful objects till I released my full power, a gift from the lich sadly.

“Kill h.” The front one couldn’t even finish two words as I cut off all their heads, and cutting off the Oaka’s power source. They would be cutting off arms to find that they wouldn’t grow back or spawn new soldiers for a few weeks. I went over to it and felt it.

Thousands of Oaka turned noticing the power gone and rushed for it. I grinned as all of their heads were cut off in seconds killing the entire real group in seconds. Their spawn fell to the ground dead losing the link of their hosts.

My soldiers walked over to me in shattered armor and chipped weapons. I looked around counting them. Only about a hundred had survived this battle. Enough magic can destroy them, but it wasn’t simply burn them away, they had to be destroyed completely in less than five seconds, or it wouldn’t kill them.

“Master, congratulations on this victory.” A doll said. I snapped my claws making all of them heal, and bringing back all the clay soldiers with their armor and weapons intact. While they were destroyed there was always a way to bring them back if there was just one ounce left intact. “Thank you master.”

“Take all the weapons and armors from the dead, burn the bodies and any items they might have had. Make sure to get every piece of metal, strip their bodies if you must.” It nodded and they fanned out.

I picked up the stone. It glowed rainbow light, and I flew it back to the mines placing it next to its younger sister. The one I had was about the size of a bowling ball, this one was the size of a good size pine tree.

It would last me decades if I made a feeding link to it, if not longer, but I didn’t have the time to do that. Of course though if I had to fight the lich fully regenerated, it would only last a few minutes.

I flew back to Ponyville and paused seeing it under siege by tens of thousands of Oaka making me frown. A line of pony royal guards were holding it back, but there were just a few dozen of them, not enough to hold every last one back. I held out my hand and white balls appeared. I shot them like bullets wiping out the army by the dozens.

Each shot took out at least thirty of them leaving large holes in the ground. I fired just right, cutting a trench making it harder for the Oaka to get up to the guards. It gave them enough time to catch their breath between each kill. I laughed with excitement as I could feel the power course through my body, just one touch gave me plenty.

“DIE!” I shouted swiping my claw and sending razor sharp nets down on them cutting them to bits! Without the power source it would take hours for the parts to grow into more soldiers! They were going to die.

I swiped again and again till the army was a bunch of moans of pain and suffering, the guards cleared out the final bunch walking out and cutting the heads off of any still living Oaka around them

“DASH!” I heard Trixie scream, I turned, I didn’t know how I had heard Trixie’s voice over a mile away, but I didn’t second guess it. I teleported to my house appearing in front of a bloody Dash as a sword was raised to cut her down. An Oaka’s sword ripped through my side cleaving off my left arm, side and leg completely. I swiped with my sword barely sending out a magic blast evaporating the last bit of the Oaka, probably the females.

“Seffron!” Dash shouted as I fell to the ground.

“Ugh!” I shouted as pain coursed through me, this was a wound which would have normally been fatal, so it was painful. I looked at Dash covering Lilly, then at Trixie covered in her own blood and Oaka’s blood. In fact we all were covered in blood heavily.

“Seffron!” Trixie shouted running over to me.

“Don’t.” I fell back and my body grew new limbs, sucking in my organs that had spilled out and closing my side. I sat up after a few minutes. My armor was still repairing from the battle with Celestia, as well as my real sword, so I didn’t have anything I needed.

“Thank goodness.” Trixie said and I stood up.

“Are you okay Dash?” I asked and she smiled showing a sword in her back. I pulled it out making her scream. I snapped my claws making her heal. “Shut up it was only a flesh wound, I had my whole left side cut off.”

“It hurt you meanie!”

“Lilly you alright?” She nodded. I looked around, Dodge was gone. “Where’s Dodge Trixie?” I looked around pausing. “Trixie?” I scanned around for a few seconds. “Where’d you go?” I went around the sofa and stepped back. “NO!” I shouted going over to her, I pushed all the magic I had into her bring her back to life. She gasped and cough a little.

“What happen?” She asked looking at me in slight pain.

“You’re an idiot, I’m going to punish you later for this.” She looked at me as my body started to rot away. My left arm fell off rotting away in seconds.

“NO!” She got up healing me and I chuckled.

“I’m not going to die! God you’re an idiot! I thought I taught you better than that.” She bit her lip. “Well go get me my emergency gems!” She rushed away and I fell down onto the floor as the rotting started to slow. She came back a few minutes later giving me a few, I ate them quickly and the rotting stopped, I let out a breath of relief.

“I’m sorry.”

“Shut up, Dash you hurt anywhere else?”

“A few places.”

“Trixie.” I grumbled, and she went over healing Dash and Lilly before coming over to me. “No, go help the town make sure the Oaka aren’t coming back. You will get too tired if you heal me, and I won’t have the energy.”

“Right.” She ran out of the hole where the front door once was.

“Are you alright?” Dash asked coming over to me.

“Yeah, just a bit overused. I over used my power, next to the Egg Con, and these things, I used way too much. Also I brought Trixie back, that took almost everything I had to do, the Lich is crazy strong, then again he does get the tree of life.”

“Tree of life?” Lilly asked.

“A magic artifact more powerful and unlike any other, if.” I laughed. “I’m so stupid, I swear, even if I died, I could just use the tree to come back. Even in this world I’m connected to it. I should have just let myself rot away. That’s stupid!” I growled laughing.

“So you can’t die?” Dash asked.

“No I can, but I just can come back to life a certain amount of times. However the Lich can use it as many times as he wants to. He can also do it for his army, I could have done that for Trixie. I did not think that through.”

“So you can bring any pony back?”

“Yeah, an unlimited amount of times to. You see I require an entire fruit of life because I can use Lich magic freely, but for any other pony, it doesn’t even scratch the surface. I just panicked because it’s been a long time since I’ve had to, though in my world I destroyed the tree of life so the Lich couldn’t come back.”

“Oh, wait what about the Lich here?”

“We have years before that happens. The tree has to ripen, and when that happens he’ll come back. I'll just make it so I'll kill him in his sleep, that way he won’t be able to come back again. Dying in your sleep is pretty much forever, well not for me.”

“Why not for you?”

“Because his sleep is different than mine. He’s is a regeneration sleep, mines just normal sleep.”

“So why don’t you kill him now?”

“His tome is impossible to get inside of till a certain time. Anyway, can you put me on the sofa.” Dash helped putting me onto the sofa. “Did any pony die?” Dash paused for a few seconds looking at me.

“Not that I can tell, the main force was being handled by the guard. I went straight here after that, they had already blasted through here. Trixie was being overrun at the time, but I pretty well wiped them out. One bit me when I got in the way of Lilly and then, well one stabbed me and, yeah. You appeared after that.”

“Well lucky us then.”

“So you going to tell me what those.”

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Lilly go to your room and lock the door please.”

“But I can’t find Dodge.” Lilly whined.

“She’ll join you in a minute.”

“Okay.” Dash set her down and she ran upstairs.

“So?”

“It’s call a clay army, I started building it a while ago. It was to stop things like this, but I didn’t expect the Oaka to attack so soon. I’m keeping it secret because it’s dangerous. If any pony knew about it, things would get bad.”

“What do you mean bad, by the looks of it, they were doing pretty well.”

“They are nearly indestructible, so they are perfect soldiers, but they have a near unlimited number of uses. Rather it be a maid, or a partner, trainer anything you can think of, they can be. They are programmed and off they go, ready for anything. Doesn’t matter if they lose an arm, it grows back.”

“I can see that a lot of pony would want one.”

“Yeah, but I want to keep them all to myself, create as large of an army as possible, so I can stop things like this from happening.”

“Yeah I saw that, we would have been easily overrun if it wasn’t for them.”

“Yeah, and that was only a thousand of them, it’s going to take me a while, but I'll be able to make an army of millions. I'll be able to replace the army we won’t be able to get from ponies. Though to do that I need no pony to know about it.”

“I won’t tell any pony, but you should tell Celestia about it.”

“No, especially not her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well there’s a point to where they are just mindless drones, wining battles will require more than simple brute force, they can be destroyed, they aren’t invincible, and they have major flaws. I need living, breathing soldiers or we’re going to have some really dark days. She’ll want to only use them.”

“Fine, I won’t tell any pony.” All together I got lucky today, if Dash hadn’t come to Ponyville, they would have been wiped out, probably all of Equestria. “So, um, are you going to be alright? You look a little gross.”

I looked at my side, it was really quite disgusting, it was as if my side was shredded, and worms were digging in with other insets. My healing had finally caught up to the rotting, but that didn’t mean that part of me was any less a corpse in the ground, rotting away.

“Could you fly me somewhere?”

“Sure.” She put me onto her back, she was already covered in filth, so she really didn’t mind at this point.

“Same place you were trying to spy on me from.”

“Wait that was the scout you were talking about?”

“Yes.” She took off flying. We looked down at Ponyville, it was for the most part untouched, just the area to the north was covered in Oaka parts. Wagons were being rolled around picking everything up. She flew me to the spot I had snuck up on her.

“There.” I pointed and she landed.

“Where?”

“That wall, walk through it.”

“What, you can’t, oh, magic forgot sorry.” She walked through it and she paused.

“Oh master,” the doll said. “You’re alive, good, when I lost the mental link I feared the worst, I’m am glad you’re alright.”

“Did that thing just talk into my brain? That felt weird.”

“Doesn’t have a name yet, once it gets a name it’ll change to look normal. Now lead us to the power, I need to heal.”

“Right this way.” Dash followed it and we stopped at the power source.

“So you’re keeping this as well?”

“The army needs power, or else they are just clay. This stone could probably power all of Equestria for a generation.” I touched the stone and I healed instantly. “There we go.” I got off cracking my body feeling the power. “I need to hook up to this thing.”

“So basically you don’t want any pony to know about this thing as well?”

“Trixie knows, and so does Pinkie.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Trixie’s from my old world and Pinkie was told by her future self so. Yeah they both know, just don’t talk to them about it in public, only at my house.” I snapped my claws cleaning us up. I pulled out a red gem and started to crave into it.

“What’s that?”

“A connection gem, it’ll basically allow me to access it from far away, I didn’t really have time to do this the first time around. So when I brought Trixie back it nearly killed me, which isn’t a problem.”

“So I’m guessing bringing a pony back normally is really hard?”

“It would take Celestia all her power for about a minute to bring a pony back completely from the dead.”

“Whoa.”

“It takes a ton of power, but with this I could bring back any number of pony, of course from now on I’m going to just use the tree of life. That’ll slow down the Lich from coming back since I'll be leaking power from the tree.”

“Cool.”

“It’s very cool.” I cut my arm pouring blood onto it and the gem turned pure black. I pushed it into it slowly molding it onto the power source and it melted into it and disappeared after about twenty minutes. “Much better, now then, let’s go help clean up, but first.” I pulled her up pinning her to the wall, she stood on her hind legs staring at me shocked.

“What are you doing?!” She asked panicked a little.

“Stop fighting.” She stopped. “I need you to understand, this isn’t a game, please, do not tell any pony about this. I need your loyalty on this, you cannot betray me. I want you to promise me that you won't.”

“You can trust me.”

“Promise.” She sighed.

“I promise, you have my loyalty, now can you let me.” I kissed her pulling her close to me.

“Thank you.” I set her back on all four. “Now let’s go back.” She blushed a little and we flew back landing on the battlefield with the Celestia and the others looking out at the thousands of corpses.

“Hey.” Dash said, and they all looked at us.

“There you are!” Twilight said.

“Where were you?” Celestia asked with a grave tone. “We had an army on our door step and you disappear till the last moment.”

“Hey he was dealing with the main force!” Dash shot back and they all stopped. “Yeah you heard me, the main force was more than five times this.”

“Really?!” Applejack asked coming over to us.

“Yes,” I said. “I intercepted the group at sun set, I was fighting that entire time, I only made it back after that.”

“By yourself?” Celestia asked and I frowned.

“No, Dash helped me find their power source, I stopped them from being able to regenerate almost instantly. Which is why there were so many of them. They could make nearly never ending amount of copies.”

“What happen to the power source?” She asked narrowing her eyes.

“I ate it.” She frowned. “I needed to heal, my battle wasn’t any easier than yours.”

“It’s alright.” Pinkie said appearing next to me, I stared at her for a few seconds. Her eyes were completely clear, it gave her a rather scary look.

“Excuse me, I think Pinkie and I need to talk.” They all stared at her. I grabbed her teleporting home and she landed on the bed.

“What was that for?! And can we do it again?” She giggled a little bit. I picked up a mirror and showed it to her. Her eyes went wide creeping me out a little bit. “No, did they all see this?!”

“Yes.” I pulled her close and had her bite me. “Now drink.” She started to drink and pulled off once, I pulled her back forcing her to drink more.

“Stop!” She pushed back coughing.

“You need to drink more!” She pushed off and her eyes still had a crystal look to them, they weren’t normal yet. “You need to drink till your eyes turn back to normal. Now keep drinking till you can’t drink any more, then drink more.”

“No.” I pinned her down.

“You don’t have a choice!” Her lowr lip trembled a little. “Now you will drink or I'll force you to painfully.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Pinkie, you will drink or do you want Fluttershy to know you’ve been killing her sweet little animals, I’m sure she wouldn’t be happy to hear that.” She gulped, then bit into my neck softly and started to drink. Tears went down her face and she stopped after a while licking her lips a little. Her eyes were back to normal, and she was on the edge of tears.

“Please don’t tell Fluttershy.” I moved to the side and got up.

“Pinkie think for a minute. What did you do today that made your eyes look like that, like a monster’s?” She paused.

“I was fighting, there was a lot of blood, but I didn’t drink it.” I sighed. “I guess I was thirstier than I realized.” She looked down. “Are you mad at me?”

“Pinkie if I was mad at you, would you really think I would grab you and force you to drink? From now on you’ll drink when I say, if you miss a single appointment I'll find you, is that clear?” She nodded. “Now you can leave if you like, and if any of them ask you, tell them that I gave you magic power, that’s why you can teleport and stuff, but it will turn your eyes clear after a while.”

“Okay.”

I got up and walked into the hallway, I snapped my claws cleaning up the house and repairing it. I looked at Dodge as she walked over to my legs regenerating. I smiled a little, then went to Lilly’s room and opened the door. Trixie and Lilly were on the bed. They looked at me, they were clean and didn’t have any wounds.

“Seffron.” Lilly said and I moved to the side letting Dodge in and she jumped onto the bed. “Dodge!” Lilly jumped away from Trixie and Dodge and Lilly started to play around. I motioned for Trixie to come and she came out into the hallway with me. I grabbed her hugging her.

“Hi.”

“I can’t believe how stupid you are.” She smiled a little. “Don’t you ever do that again, you’re my pet, you don’t ever give your life up for anything. Is that clear?” She nodded. “Now then, how many died?” I picked her up and we went down stairs sitting on the sofa.

“No pony died, a few guards were hurt but I healed them easily. I was on the front lines till they started coming for the house, so no pony died.”

“And where was Celestia?”

“She didn’t make it to any of the battle. Nor did Luna, but they were in Canterlot so it’s a few hours flight no matter what.”

“What about Twilight and the others?”

“Twilight, Applejack and Pinkie joined the battle quickly and they ripped through the enemy lines like they were nothing. I did the same, but I at least I’m trained, they were sloppy and wasted a lot of their power. Dash only made it back near the end. She saved Lilly and me from being overrun.”

“Then sending her back was a wise choice, I need to get my clay army up and running, or we’re going to all die. I only had a thousand.”

“That’s amazing!”

“Not really.”

“I know you’re not one to sit back and control, you were in the fray weren’t you?”

“Yeah I was, I was in the worse of it, I killed more than all of the clay soldiers, but they helped me greatly. I couldn’t have done it alone, I didn’t have the power to beat them on my own, and now I do.”

“Really?”

“Their power source, it was beautiful, I have it, and now I have all the power I need, at least I hope. Anyway I'll be able to grow the army nicely, it’ll be a great help to me. How are you feeling by the way?” I kissed her neck.

“Great, I’m sorry I was an idiot.”

“It’s fine, I just can’t stand to be alone in this world, I'll go mad without someone to torture.” I hugged her tighter. “Also Dash now knows, I just hope she doesn’t tell any pony about this.”

“She won’t, she’s very loyal, she won’t do that.”

“Good.”.

“So is it over? I mean do we have to hide Lilly?”

“Yes, for a while longer, we just have to be careful, I have to make sure not a single one of the females survived. I'll have to watch her closely now, more than ever. I won’t be able to leave her alone for any amount of time. They know she’s here, so it won’t be easy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” I kissed her. “I should however start cleaning all this up. I think I’ve made Celestia my enemy. I need to gain her trust, and that won’t be easy or simple. Do you have any ideas?”

“Talk to her.”

“Fine.” I set Trixie down and teleported.

“Thank you Twilight Spar.” Celestia said stopping as I appeared behind her. She turned around quickly and frowned.

“You and I need to talk, in privet.” I grumbled and she looked at her guards, then at Luna and Twilight before looking at me. “Right now.”

“It would seem I’m needed to have a long overdue talk. I will be back shortly, you all know what to do.” We started walking going for a ways. “I hardly see what’s so important that you need to speak with me alone.”

“You and I are on the wrong side of each other.” I turned to her, we were far enough away that no pony could hear us. “Ever since I got here I’ve been on your bad side, I’ve hurt you, pissed you off and attacked you. Then when you actually beat me, your victory was taken away from you by Pinkie. We need to work out some kind of trust, or we’re only going to end up fighting again, and next time one of us are going to die if we don’t work this out.”

“My problem is not with the battle, it was actually fun, I enjoyed it, it let me see just who you really were. As for trust you have yet to earn that. All I feel from you are lies and darkness, I can’t trust you.”

“I’ve helped you, saved countless ponies. Would you rather I just walk away? Go to another land and leave you to die with your ponies?” Her eyes went wide. “If you don’t start trusting me, then I’m going to do that. I can wait out the storm, you live here, you have ponies you care about here. You can’t escape the coming storm, I can.”

“Now I never said I wanted you to leave.”

“Well then stop acting like you do. Tell me right here and now, do you want me to stay, and if you say yes. You know very well what must come with that answer.” She stared at me for a minute and then looked down.

“Very well, you have won, I want.”

“Stop,” I said interrupting her. “This isn’t a game, there’s no winning in war, you live or you die, you don’t win. There’s no victory to be had in killing. I just wiped out an entire race of creature because I didn’t want them to take over. You need to say more than I win, or I’m not going to be here to be killed off.” She sighed.

“Very well, I want you here, I need you here.” I frowned at her voice, she was lying to me, her body gave every motion of lying. “I cannot protect my ponies alone, Luna and I cannot be in several battles at once, and we cannot just appear on a whim. We couldn’t even make it in time for this battle. It took us hours, had we not stationed a guard here, Ponyville would have been wiped out. Are you happy now?”

“Do you want me to leave?” I said grimly.

“No.”

“Then stop acting like it, I want a true yes, I don’t care about anything else, till you can say yes to me, I won’t help you. All I’m hearing is a, yes, I want you to be my slave. Not a, I want you to stay and help me save my pony.”

“I want you to stay.” Half truth now. I sighed, it was probably going to be as good as I was going to get.

“You just hate me too much to give me a real yes, but I'll take it, I’m not going to get a better answer than that.” She smiled. “But even if you don’t really want me to stay, you will give me your trust. I’ve earned that, I’ve killed and bled for you and your ponies. I won’t keep doing that without you trusting me, and that means not having Dash spy on me.”

“She told you?”

“I didn’t have to ask, it was clear who she was doing it for, and I am hiding things from you, but that’s my choice. Everything I do is for the good of your ponies, do not think I’m doing this because it’s fun. Realize I’m not a hero either, I’m just a dragon.”

“I’m sorry.” I smiled.

“Now that was want I wanted to hear. Now let’s get back, there’s a lot of work ahead of us.”