Chapters
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But the end was not what Princess Luna expected. A night stretched long, delaying the sunrise well past its appointed time. But before it could stretch beyond the first day, it was already over.The end was not the extinction of Equestria by freezing death, taking even Luna's beloved bats with her. It came, rather, in the arrival of another mare.Princess Celestia came in light. Compared to the two pale figures in that lonely crater, her body burned like a star, flame that made no smoke. No heat to sweep…-
87.2 K •
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Ruby River shouldn’t be here. She didn’t need the archeological team’s procedure to tell her she didn’t belong down here; she didn’t need orders from the princess’s official commission. Ruby knew she was doing something stupid, yet here she was.Her saddlebags were heavy with tools, tools the earth pony team upstairs hadn’t even bothered to bring with them during the last few days of excavation. Why should they bother, when their strength alone could open any barrier they found? But breaking…-
35.3 K •
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Ruby glanced nervously over her shoulder, preparing whatever string of excuses she would need. Deep Silver didn’t appear in the hallway with the rest of the excavation team, though—it was only her imagination. It must be dawn by now. Do they think I went up to the city for coffee? Maybe Deep Silver thought she’d abandoned the project completely. It wouldn’t be beyond him to give up on something.The wall shuddered with each tap of her pick. She moved it delicately, conscious every minute of the…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin was adrift. She had felt such strange disconnection before when the Grineer queen interrupted her transference, poisoning her with her essence in an attempt to steal her body. Catlin had felt like this—severed from her own body, as though left to float away through the fiery tendrils of the Void. But back then, Teshin had been there to guide her mind, feeding her memories of an ancient Orokin palace and freeing her powers from Margulus’s bonds.There was no guiding influence now, no thread of…
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35.3 K •
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In Catlin’s years fighting for the Origin System, she had seen hundreds of Orokin towers, crawled through hundreds of derelicts, and fought the infestation time after time and invasion after invasion. But never in all her years had she seen a derelict quite like this. The architecture was familiar, buried under many layers of infestation. But that was where the similarities ended. Many corridors and hallways twisted back on themselves, a maze of collapses and cave-ins. Yet for all the damage, she could…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin heard the distant screaming—ponies on the wall, shaking with terror as forces they knew they could not possibly contain came barreling towards their loved-ones. She'd seen the defenses now, the high walls, the boiling oil and crossbow-wielding soldiers. They had minutes, perhaps, before the enemy breached their gates.In the room all around her, resistance crumbled. Luna's generals saluted to her, then sprinted off without a word. To command their troops, if they were brave. To cower in the…
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35.3 K •
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Princess Celestia took her down, way down. Down beneath the castle, through a spiral staircase hidden behind a wall of bricks and metal plates. Dust filled the air around them as they walked, glowing like the solar wind in Celestia's wake. Catlin walked on her own two feet the entire way, even if having the frame to give her strength would have made it much easier on her strained limbs. Some part of her suspected that if she retook the frame, the princess would attack her with another concentrated blast of…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin did not make it far with this new frame. But she couldn't stand to remain in the presence of this half-broken Sentient, slowly rotting in their own decaying sanity. She needed to get up into the castle proper, where at least things made more sense.The frame was not so strange as the first time she took on a non-humanoid form. But this one was leaner and more graceful, the sort of frame Catlin preferred. It reminded her a little of her beloved Titania Prime, without the tiny fairy wings, or bizarre…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin watched from the wall, suspended in the moment before the battle started. Behind her, her powerful companion prepared her attack, drawing down the power of the Void in a way no Tenno could ever do. The stakes here weren't all that different than the ancient battle, when Tenno united to free the Origin system from Orokin domination. This was just one planet, less technologically advanced perhaps. But if she failed here, they would be no less dead. The sun one could claim they would burn the city to…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin should've died there, in the skies above an alien world built by the ones who hated her. She was out of power, without a frame, and without hope.She felt the air whipping past her distantly, as though it was happening to someone else. No fall had threatened to harm her, not in all the years she had fought for her ancient Orokin masters. Distance was only a matter of perspective, something to be consumed by the Void.But she had no power left for that. She couldn't fade, she couldn't retake any of her…
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35.3 K •
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