Chapter 29: The Dawn Breaks

Discord was careful not to drop a single egg as he ran. He was exhausted, more so than he'd ever been in his entire existence. But at least he was safe.

He slowed to a stop to catch his breath, lowering the Dragon eggs down between the large roots of an oak tree, before he noticed something peculiar.

Amist the browns and greens of the Everfree Forest, an inconspicuous pink drew his attention. When he peered the bushes obscuring his vision, his eyes widened with horror.

"FLUTTERSHY!!!" The Spirit of Chaos shouted as he dashed to the unconscious Pegasus, his exhaustion and the Dragon eggs forgotten.

He saw the blood pooling around her leg and the crude vine tourniquet that had come loose. Instinctively, he snapped his fingers. The crushing severity of the situation dawning on him when nothing happened.

"No...oh no oh no oh no no no. Not her. No not her...CHEGORACH!! BRING HER BACK! BRING HER BACK OR I SWEAR I'LL MAKE YOU COWER BEHIND SLAANESH!!!" Discord shouted to the heavens.

"How do you plan to do that as a mortal Discord Bringer?" A familiar voice came from behind the Draconequus.

Discord whirled around to face Tallik, his rage slightly dissipating when he saw the Solitaire holding Grogar's Bewitching Bell. "What are you waiting for, a thank you? Hurry before she dies."

"You can bring dead mortals back at any time. What does it matter if she expires?" Tallik inquired.

"I am not in the mood for your games Tallik. Give me my powers back, and I promise I'll onlyprankyou for revenge." Discord stated.

"First you must promise that your pet will be the only one you restore." The Eldar declared.

"She is not a pet you bastard! She is the galaxy's greatest hope!" Discord explained.

Tallik tilted his head. "The Equestrians will recover from her loss. And Kindness' succussor will soon be revealed. What does one Pony matter?"

Discord snarled...exhaled...and started laughing. "Hehehehehahahahaa...one Pony...one village...one planet...one species...it always comes down to the bigger picture...we never consider the smaller pieces...or that the picture falls apart without them."

Tallik raised his head in recognition. "You speak of the Necrontyr, of your attempts to lengthen their lives before your kinsmen imprisoned you for it. That is when you were named Discord Bringer, was it not?"

Discord ran his talon over Fluttershy's mane. "My people had no need for names. We even forgot the name of our species. 'Old Ones' indeed. Hmph, senial old fools...I wonder if Fluttershy would ever believe I became known as a bringer of Chaos for trying to commit an act of kindness that would've saved the galaxy?"

"If your powers are not restored, she never will." Tallik stated.

"...Fine. I swear on my immortal soul that I will not resurrect anypony or creature that has been killed in this war." Discord declared.

Gong!

Tallik was already gone when Discord snapped his fingers. It didn't matter, he would speak with an Orkish accent for the next thousand years. But Discord couldn't have cared less right now.

"Hhhrrrmmm..." Fluttershy moaned as she slept, her injuries gone without scars and her lost blood rapidly replenishing. She would awaken soon, but not before it ended.

Elsewhere

Aries flexed the fingers of his recently reattached hand. The wonders of Equestrian magic never ceased to amaze him...though Celestia did state that if his arm hadn't been recovered, he would've required a cybernetic.

"The xenos are not retreating, they are regrouping. We need to recollect our forces and get ready for the next assault." Aries stated.

"I feared as much, their types never learn their lesson." Celestia grimaced.

"What lesson? Their losses were minimal. They gamble on being able to replace those losses with profits made from selling new slaves." Aries stated.

The Royal Sisters were taken aback. But sure enough, the majority of the slain attackers were the brainwashed creatures of the Everfree. Too few Equestrians had been able to cause lethal damage to their attackers during the initial ambush.

"...es...Aries!" The War Hound turned to find Shining Armor galloping towards him. "Aries! It was them! The Dark Eldar were the ones who attacked the Crystal Empire and destroyed my shield!"

The Royal Sisters were aghast, but Aries held a greater concern. "I trust there is more to this information than a demand for revenge."

"...They did it with one attack." Shining Armor clarified.

Aries understood the gravity of the situation immediately. His eyes went to the heavens, searching frantically for something he hoped he wouldn't see...yet it was there.

Aries did not see it in time, it made itself known when the nearby city of Cloudsdale vanished into steam from a series of explosions. While everypony stared horrified at the destruction, Aries stared with outrage beyond the fading steam to the sight of their deaths. A Dark Eldar Void Ship.

"They'll scatter us. The purpose of their first attack was to draw us into a tighter group, now they mean to decimate us and hunt the survivors at their leisure." Aries stated. His superhuman mind frantically searching for a way to turn this around...and finding none.

The ship was already repositioning itself to fire on Ponyville. Aries knew there was only one thing to do, and every fiber of his being cursed him for it. "SOUND THE RETREAT! WE NEED TO EVACUATE AS MANY AS WE CA-"

Elsewhere

"...Belatrixx...was SLAIN!?" Clarissa screeched in outrage.

"We've captured her slayer mistress. We will bring to your private chambers when we return." Said the Wych on the other line.

Clarissa waslivid. A filthy Mon'Keigh dared to vanquish her best fighter. Her own flesh and blood! She didn't care if every single worthless beast on that miserable planet died in the bombardment, this one washers, and her fate would be the worst possible. After Clarissa finished shattering her soul, she would toss the husk to the flesh covens and let them twist into the possible form. Oh yes, her suffering would be infamo-

Elsewhere

Aries visibly reacted with shock, for what he saw would've caused most humans to pass out at the sheer impossibility of it.

One minute he was staring at the Dark Eldar vessel. The next, he was staring at the moon...in midday.

He turned his head to Luna, who was holding a hoof to her head and groaning in pain. "Oooh...I'm going to be feeling that for a week."

...is this what fear feels like? Aries thought to himself.

Elsewhere

Greenskin knew that the battle wasn't over even before Cloudsdale perished, of course the Drukhari Gitz weren't finished yet...they hadn't won. And the thought of them losing without at least taking him back was just absurd.

...Almost as absurd as a Wierdboy throwing a moon at them...which is when Greenskin finally dared to believe. "...We...we won?"

His blank expression slowly turned to an ecstatic grin. "We won. WE WOOOON!!! TAKE DAT YOU DRUKHA- NO! YOU PANZEE GITZ!!! WE BEAT YOU!! WAAAAGH!!!!"

Greenskin jumped around and hooted and hollered. Swinging his cleaver over his head and smashing it into the ground. The nearby Dragons and liberated animals joined in the primal festivities. Letting out victorious roars and shooting flames into the sky.

The animals departed back into the Everfree Forest while the Dragons went deeper into Ponyville to find out what had happened and what they would do next. Greenskin moved to join them...when he noticed something.

Tirek, or what once was Tirek and was now a ruined pile of meat, was still moving.

All of dat Choppin an burin an we still didn't hit da brain. Greenskin thought to himself as he readied his cleaver to put the Centaur out of its misery once and for all.

The movement came from a single leg, but the closer Greenskin got, the more he started to think that it wasn't Tirek moving it, but something under him.

Did he fall on a Wrak or sumfin? The Ork as he grabbed the twitching appendage and moved it aside.

Most would've jumped back in horror, but the Ork only let out an 'ah' of realization when he discovered living half-body of a Pegasus filly. "You'ze must be dat runt dat stole me Choppa an gave it tah Teerek."

The filly squirmed and screamed silently. Her vocal cords had been removed, possibly because Praxis was one of few haemonculi who preferred to work in silence.

Few were the Orks that were capable of pity, but Greenskin knew exactly what it felt like to be skinned alive. It had been done to him a few times in fact, it wasn't pleasant. "You'ze may ave been a good fer nuffin git, but ya didn't deserve dis."

Greenskin raised his cleaver to put the filly out of her misery...when something struck him in the head.

Orks have a high pain tolerance, and Greenskin's life in Commorragh had push that pain tolerance far beyond the norm, to the point that even Ghazghkull himself would cry out before Greenskin did. Thus, he only paused to scratch where he had been struck before raising his cleaver again.

Is this what you want? Greenskin recognized that voice. It was the Spirit of Harmony. He followed it to an object on the ground in the shape of a pink butterfly. "Hmm, wut dat mean?"

Do you truly wish to kill this filly? The voice clarified.

"Huh? Um, well, not really. But what else can I do?" The Ork asked the voice within the strange object.

Do you wish to save her? Greenskin thought about it. He thought about things more often than most Orks. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that this is what the Panzees wanted.

"...How?" The Ork asked.

Take this jewel in your hand. The spirit said to him.

Greenskin grabbed the pink butterfly, and remembered.

Before he was sold to the Kabal of the Shattered Soul, he had spent his youth in a cage in a room full of caged Orks. Human and Tau children would be brought before the Orks, and their parents would have to choose between subjecting their children to the lives of slaves in Commoragh, or feeding them to the Orks.

The Orks howled and roared in demand for the soft flesh and undeveloped bones that added the perfect crunch, but Greenskin didn't, because he knew this was what they wanted.

One day, when Greenskin had been given a humie girl, he had tried to protect her. This ultimately sealed his fate, and ensured he was sold to crueler masters. But the more he recalled that day, how the Panzees were furious with him, how the humie and her mother were shocked and grateful, and how even the other Orks were impressed that he turned an easy meal into a proper scrap with the Panzees, the more he realized that the best way to stick it to those gitz wasn't to put their victims out of their misery. It was to truly save them.

As he remembered this, the butterfly changed into the unmistakable maw of an Attack Squig. But not just any Attack Squig, but the sort commonly used by Runtherdz to herd around undisciplined grotz and snotz.

The Squig glowed the colors of a rainbow and emanated an aurora of the unmistakable bright green of waaagh energy.

Greenskin pointed the Squig shaped jewel towards the suffering filly and it unleashed a wave of energy. When the energy faded, the filly was whole and unharmed...but still laid upon the ground in a state of pure shock.

"Dere dere, it'z alroight. I'll take care ov ya."

Author's Note:

The next chapter will be the last. So, I have concluded my first week of work, and found it tolerable. However, as it goes from 2pm to midnight, I'm going to have to save my writing for the weekend. So if I don't post the final chapter tomorrow, it'll be a whole week before I have time to write some more.

Luckily I have most of it in my head already, as it's mostly just setting up future stories and foreshadowing the wider plot of the saga. But for now, let's talk about this chapter.

Yes, as I foreshadowed all the way back in Chapter 8, Discord is an Old One who tried to lengthen the lives of the Necrontyr, thus violating whatever bullshit laws the Old Ones have which got him imprisoned and allowed him to survive the War In Heaven.

There is more to his backstory that involves the Cabal and the founding of Equestria, but I'll try to add that into the final chapter.

I know I kinda ended things a little fast, but the moon thing was just too funny to pass up.

And before anyone jumps down my throat about Greenskin only using one Element, Season 9 confirmed you don't need any Elements, you just have tobelievewhich is the Orks' whole thing.

That's all I got, see you all next time.