Chapter 33

When Caballus would later try to recall the battle, he would only remember it as a hectic blur, pure noise and motion. The Bullgryns were unlike anything he’d ever faced in his years in the Friendquisition. They were forces of nature: immense, unstoppable, and faster than anything their size had any right to be. The Equestrian forces unloaded everything they had at the monstrosities, but pies and cupcakes did little more than annoy them. When the Battle Fillies unleashed their rainers on the pair, they fared little better; the Bullgryns’ thick hides blistered and cracked under the heat, but only drove them into an ever greater frenzy.

Hairtrigger fired a cupcake from his slingshot, and though it was his third direct hit, it had no more effect than the first two. The bull didn’t even seem to notice as it flipped a crane-carriage onto the unfortunate House guards who had been hiding behind it. “What’s it take to kill one of these bastards?” he shouted, his voice nearly lost in the roars and din of battle.

Something bigger than we have, Caballus thought grimly. Bullgryns were the strongest and toughest of the sanctioned ungulates to begin with. But these two showed clear signs of surgical enhancements, internal augmetics, and the unnatural gifts of the Tenebrae. Whatever had gotten its hooves on these bovines, it had distilled them down to nothing but meat and bone and hatred. The perfect killing machines.

The shock of the bulls’ attack all but crushed the remaining constables’ resolve. They scattered and ran, and though their cowardice shamed them in the eyes of the Princess, Caballus couldn’t really blame them. Even the Ver Kaufer guards, who had participated in none of the morning’s brutal combat, seemed stunned by the ferocity, and reluctant to stick their heads out of cover. The only ones to stand fast were the Battle Fillies.

“No quarter for heretics and monsters!” Sera shouted from above. The pegasi among the Sororitrots circled just out of the bulls’ reach, swooping down to strafe them. Those who couldn’t fly formed into ordered fireteams and keeping up a steady rate of pastry, pausing only to dive away from crushing hooves and scything horns before reforming and resuming their barrage. Not all were fast enough, however, and Caballus was forced to duck when the limp body of an unfortunate Filly sailed above his head. Even wearing power armor, she had been all but crumpled by a powerful kick and sent flying across the railhead.

Caballus’s thoughts turned to Velour. He called to her, and she descended to him, a new pair of pegasi bodyguards hovering at her flank. “You need to go,” he said, “now!”

As she started to protest, he cut her off. “It’s too dangerous here. Go and tell Meister what’s going on here. Tell him to mobilize the CDF and alert the Arboates. They might have something heavy enough to deal with these... creatures.”

“Stay with her,” Caballus added, to the bodyguards, “no matter what. If anything happens to her, you’ll answer to those two,” he said, pointing to the rampaging bulls. They nodded emphatically, as intimidated by Caballus’s intensity as they were relived to be withdrawing from the battle.

Velour almost looked like she was about to object, but she steeled herself instead. “Please be careful, Swift,” she said, and took off.

As he watched her leave, Caballus heard Roughshod calling to him. “Boss, look!” The Inquisipony followed his friend’s gaze toward the heavy cargo lift. There, a few of the Children were sliding the cage gates back into place, preparing to descend once again. Going to report back to Sniffles, no doubt. Or worse yet, fetching more reinforcements. With the House security forces already locked in a brutal shootout with the Children, and the Sororitrots busy dodging the bulls’ horns, any more heretics would see the Equestrians quickly overwhelmed.

“Sera!” he cried, “take your Fillies and move toward the exit!”

High above, the Canoness let loose another burst of Ponythium down onto the Bullgryns below. The strafing run brought her right over the Inquisipony “No! We fight unto death or victory! We will not flee from these misbegotten beasts!”

Caballus shook his head. “I’m not asking you to flee. Just distract them. Draw them away from here. I need to get to that lift without being trampled. Can you do that for me?”

For the briefest moment, Sera’s features softened, and the fire in her eyes cooled into fondness. “For you, dear friend,” she said, “I will.”

With a few barked commands, the Battle Fillies had begun their tactical withdrawal, luring the bulls away from the lift gates. It cost them dearly, but it gave Caballus the opening he needed. “Roughshod, Hairtrigger, Mystic,” he said, taking off for the lift, “on me!”

The cultists had nearly slid the gates all the way closed when they found the metal under their hooves shimmering with a green light. Suddenly, it was yanked back open, wide enough for Hairtrigger and Roughshod to rush in and clear the lift with swift and brutal precision.

The Arbitrotter confirmed his kills, then looked to Caballus. “Now what?”

“Now we go down,” he replied.

“Down?” Mystic said, “To where those things came from?”

Caballus could understand her reluctance, but he nodded all the same. “Exactly. While they’re busy up here, we can follow their trail down there, and maybe find out where the Children are hiding. It’s our best lead.” He pressed his hoof to the large button marked with a down arrow, and mumbled a brief Rite of Activation before pressing it. The cage rumbled, drowning out the sounds of the ongoing battle, and began its slow descent. By the time any of the cultists noticed the lift had been taken from them, it was already underground.

The cargo elevator took the lift several minutes to reach the bottom, where a pair of Children sentries was waiting, eager to hear news of the fight. They were surprised, though only briefly, to find the cage filled with servants of the Princess instead. Beyond their corpses, a dark and menacing tunnel greeted the Throne Agents.

“Tunnels…” Hairtrigger grumbled. “Always with the tunnels…”

Roughshod craned his neck toward the ceiling. It was several times taller than him, and a string of weak, flickering mine-lights overhead meagerly lit the path forward. “Pretty spacious. You can move a lot of hardware though here.”

“It’s definitely not supposed to be here,” said Caballus, checking against a blueprint of the facility. “Waffen must have been running supplies to his friends through here. Looks like it heads back in the direction of downtown. Let’s go.”

With Hairtrigger taking point in the air, the other three trotted down the corridor, as quickly and as quietly as they could. After nearly half an hour, the tunnel finally came to an end, where it intersected a massive storm drainage pipeline, the kind a city like Pferdian needed to move the billions of gallons of water that fell on it every rainstorm. From the accumulated debris on the ground, however, Caballus guessed it had been a long time since any water had flowed through this particular line. Odds were, another channel had been dug that was more efficient, and this one had been sealed up and forgotten, as was often the case in large, old cities like this.

Only like many things buried in the past, it hadn’t stayed forgotten. There were fresh hoofprints in the pipeline. Caballus knelt down to get a better look at them, but a distant sound prickled his ears.

“Somepony’s coming,” he said urgently. “Hit the lights.”

A series of soft popping noises coincided with Mystic telekinetically gripping and crushing every source of artificial illumination in the tunnel, shrouding them in darkness. Hairtrigger hovered silently near the ceiling, while the others huddled behind Mystic. She cast an illusory camouflage screen over them, one that mimicked the pattern of the rough-hewn tunnel wall, like she had done in the warrens under Applemattox. Even after practicing the spell since then, it was a struggle for the unicorn to maintain it.

The clop of hooves grew steadily louder, until the beam of the first luminator peeked around the last bend of the pipeline. Others followed, marching in single file until the leader stopped them at the intersection to fish something out of her saddlebag. Six ponies altogether, they gathered around in a circle, unaware of the hidden eyes around them.

“Let me see that,” said one stallion, swiping the piece of paper the lead pony had produced.

“We’re going the right way,” the mare replied, indignantly. “I was just checking our progress.”

Another stallion gave a derisive snort. “Last time you said that, we got lost. Your first ‘shortcut’ is the reason we aren’t already there.”

“Hey guys,” said another mare. “Is anypony else getting the feeling that there’s somepo-”

She never got a chance to finish that sentence, as her mouth filled with pie. In the span of only a couple seconds, all six heretics were cut down. Caballus picked up the paper where it had fallen on the ground. “It’s a map,” he said, shining a luminator at it.

“A map to where?” said Roughshod.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. Get their clothes.” At Caballus’s direction, each of them discarded their Rogue Trader costumes and put on the outfits of the dead heretics, doing their best to clean off cupcake crumbs and pie filling. Caballus and Hairtrigger dressed as simple laborers, while Mystic donned the robe of a lowly Admanestratum clerk. Too big for any of the clothes, Roughshod simply threw a couple of battered saddlebags over his back and smudged some dirt on his coat, looking the part of a street thug without needing much help at all.

After several minutes of reading, orienting, walking, reorienting, and even some arguing, Caballus could eventually claim he had a firm handle on the map. For which he was thankful, because without it they never would have been able to find their way in the twisting bowels of Pferdian. The drainage pipeline soon linked up with a maze of cramped sewers and maintenance tunnels, which seemed to go in forever. At times, they crossed into the ruins of neighborhoods that had been buried by centuries of city growth, or artificial caverns that had been dug out long ago, but reconstructed over the years, their original purpose forgotten or changed. There was occasional evidence of habitation: rickety shanties tucked into dark corners, tools and trinkets scavenged from refuse, soot spots from trash fires. At one point, Caballus caught a flash of a dirty, ragged vagrant fleeing them when they happened upon the wretch’s hovel, like a cockroach fleeing the light.

But they weren’t alone for long. The map led them to a long, vaunted sluiceway, ending in an auto-locked gate. Though the path ahead was blocked, there was a circular hatch overhead. Standing on Roughshod’s back, Caballus twisted the handle, and with a rusty screech, he lifted it open to poke is head up. A light blinded him, and he found hooves lifting him from above. Surprised and fearing an ambush, Caballus yelped. He wriggled himself free of the grip holding him, and reached into his saddlebag for a weapon. But when he heard a shout from his abductor that sounded just as surprised as he was, Caballus hesitated.

“See, I told you,” said an unfamiliar mare. “I knew I heard somepony walking down below.” The luminator’s beam aimed away from his eyes, and Caballus’s vision adjusted again to the dark. There were seven more ponies, similar to the group he and the others had dispatched earlier.

“Guess we’re not the only ones running late,” another replied, the stallion who had pulled Caballus up from below. He was now holding out a hoof to help him up. “Sorry to frighten you like that, friend.”

Though his heart was racing, the Inquisipony nodded, and accepted the hoof. “It’s… it’s alright. My group and I, we’ve been down in the dark so long by ourselves, I guess I’m getting jumpy.”

The strangers chuckled. “No problem,” the stallion said. “You can relax, though. Nopony else comes down this deep. Just us Children. Besides, we’re almost there. Here, let us help your friends up.”

Caballus poked his head back down through the hatch, and found five worried eyes looking up at him. A quick hoof-sign let them know he wasn’t in any danger, and after a few minutes, mostly spent lifting Roughshod through the hatch, they were on their way with some new travelling companions. As they hiked, the Inquisipony noticed the tunnels widening, and spotted heretical symbols scrawled on the walls. Must be close…

“Keep your map handy,” the heretic stallion said, speaking the first words either group had uttered since they had met. Caballus nodded, and soon enough, dark figures appeared up ahead, guarding a large metal door. As they approached, his ears detected a dull, droning roar coming from the other side. The stallion approached the guards first, offering his map to them. Caballus guessed every Children cell was given one, and it doubled as both directions to this secret meeting place and proof of membership. The guard kicked the door once, paused, and kicked twice. With a rusty groan, it swung open, and the roar of a great crowd spilled out.

When it came time for Caballus’s turn, he held out his own stolen map. For a moment, while the guard was scrutinizing it, he held his breath and silently recited the Prayer for Deceiving the Enemy. Behind him, the Inquisipony glanced and saw his agents shifting and shuffling, probably stealthily reaching for their weapons. But it was unnecessary; be it divine intervention or their convincing disguises, the heretic sentries let them pass.

Once inside, they had finally reached their destination, and it chilled Caballus’s blood. Here lay what he guessed to be Pferdian’s central cistern, the place where all excess rainwater for the entire city would collect, until it could drain away safely. To hold such an immense volume, a massive cavity had been excavated, hundreds of meters across, and covered up again. Row upon row of rockcrete columns, each wider than five ponies standing end to end, held up the ceiling somewhere above. Countless torches, chemical glow-lamps and jars of fireflies gave the space some semblance of light, but every moment it threatened to collapse beneath the hungry shadows above.

There were ponies packed into every nook and cranny of the cavernous room. Earth ponies stood shoulder to shoulder, while flocks of pegasi circled overhead. There had to be hundreds, if not thousands of Children here, and they were all looking toward one direction. In the distance, in what must have been the center of the room, stood a makeshift platform. Built out of a fallen column and some primitive scaffolding, it was illuminated by several spotlights. Whatever we’re all here to see, it’s going to be there.

Caballus gestured to his friends to follow him as he wound his way through the herd. Halfway there, Roughshod tapped his shoulder, and suddenly the murmurs of the multitudes became a cheer. Though he could barely hear Roughshod, Caballus could make out the only word that mattered.

Sniffles.

At this distance, Caballus could clearly see the Pony Marine ascend the platform, taking the adulation in stride. After basking in the spotlight for a moment, he held up his hoof. In an instant, the only sound in the cavernous room was a lingering echo.

“Brothers and sisters!” the putrid Marine proclaimed. Vox-casters amplified his voice, bouncing his nasal words off the walls and bringing them to every ear in the room. “I come to you today to tell you that your long oppression is finally at an end. Today is the day of liberation!”

“LIBERATION!” the herd shouted in unison. The sheer volume of the sound made Caballus wince. Sniffles beamed.

“How long, my faithful friends? How long have you suffered under the Equestrian yoke? How long have the noble houses and crime lords stood upon your backs, and held their boots to your throats? How long have the streets of Pferdian run red with the blood of your sons and daughters, innocent bystanders caught in their petty wars? How long have the Admanestratum scribes and Heliarchy priests told you it’s your honor and your sacred duty to bow your heads and obey?”

These questions brought uproarious cries from the audience. I’ve heard this before, Caballus thought. After the Skyroan Crisis, all those years ago, Caballus had joined Banehoof in picking up the pieces of war-torn Hippopolis. He lost count of all the Children’s cultists he’d interrogated in the months that followed, but their minds had all been twisted by the same seductive rhetoric. He preys on their frustration and malcontent, whips them into a frenzy, and then points them at the object of their resentment. It was a formula that had served the Children well in the past. A disgruntled population like this was only one demagogue away from a rebellious one.

“Has it been years?” Sniffles continued. “Decades? Generations? Has the Princess ever answered a single one of your prayers? Has Pferdian ever known true freedom? NO!”

The Pony Marine let the resulting applause die down before he spoke again. Caballus pushed forward through the herd, glancing back to make sure his companions were following. He could already smell the putrid pony’s oppressive stench, and he was close enough to make out the slime dripping from his nose.

“But it shall, my brothers and sisters. Together we will rise up, and take the reins of this city! We will cast down the nobles and the Adepts! We will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all Pferdians! But who shall lead us? Who has the strength and vision to make our liberation a reality?”

“THE HIGH APOSTATE!” the cultists chanted, “THE HIGH APOSTATE!” Caballus had heard the title before. When Mystic recounted the attack on the hotel, she mentioned the Children were under direct orders from a so-called “High Apostate.” Many cult leaders gave themselves similarly lofty titles to impress their impressionable flock.

“Yes, the High Apostate,” said Sniffles, “and it is with great pleasure that I present him to you now.”

It was not the deafening applause that gave the Inquisipony pause this time; it was confusion. He’s not talking about himself? But… if Sniffles isn’t their leader, who is?

A pit of unease had been growing in Mystic’s gut since they had entered the mighty cistern, and it grew with every step Caballus took.

It wasn’t the fact that they were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of screaming, raving heretics. Nor was it the possibility of her being discovered as a unicorn and blowing their cover. No, that was a very familiar tension. As long as she could focus on the mission at hand, she could keep her head down and her hood up. That kind of pressure hanging over her head wasn’t a cakewalk, but it wouldn’t crack her.

But this wasn’t that feeling at all. It was unnamable, intangible. A needling sense of dread that made her hair stand on end and her breath shallow.

Hairtrigger appeared beside her. “-lright, little missy?” he said, concern clear on his face. She could barely hear him through the din, but she nodded to reassure him. He didn’t seem convinced.

More and more, Mystic felt like she was walking underwater. Her movements felt sluggish. Sounds blurred together and seemed to fade into the background. Darkness crept into the edges of her vision. It took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t just her. The illumination was getting dimmer, and the rest of the herd was noticing as well. A hush settled over them as they looked up to the luminators, chem-lamps, and torches. Every light was shrinking.

Or are the shadows growing?

Mystic was unable to dwell on the notion, however. She heard murmurs ahead of her, spreading through the herd, and she turned her eyes upward toward the central platform. Tiny black specks were floating in the weak spotlights around Sniffles. They danced delicately in the air, descending like the soot that fell on the Stabledregs of Hippopolis, and landed on the stage beside the Pony Marine’s hooves. Just a few drifted down from the blackness above at first, but more followed. In moments, a dark blizzard descended down on the Pony Marine. The flecks collected there, as though magnetically drawn to the same point.

The faster the specks fell, the more light-headed Mystic felt. She realized her horn was tingling, resonating with the magic that was manifesting before her. A rushing noise, like a howling wind through sickly trees, invaded her mind, smothering her thoughts more with every passing moment. The unicorn closed her eyes as a sudden, nauseating vertigo nearly overwhelmed her. Almost swooning, Mystic felt a strong, steady presence next to her, propping her up. She opened her blurry eyes to find Roughshod there beside her. He said something to her, but she couldn’t hear him. The rushing drowned everything else out.

Just as soon as the dizziness and the noise in her mind seemed to reach a crescendo, a single sound cut through. A chuckle, deep and cruel. An echo of her nightmares.

Her head lolled around, looking back toward the platform. The falling specks had formed into a formless black void beside Sniffles, about the size of a pony. They took shape, morphing and twisting into a quadrapedal form. Then the excess shadows melted away and evaporated into nothing, leaving behind a tall, blue stallion. A unicorn.

Mystic’s blood froze, and her body trembled. “No,” she whispered, her eyes wide with realization. With recognition.

“Please, not him.”

The High Apostate smiled to his herd with glistening fangs. “Greetings, my Children.”