A black sky opened up before him, tinted with volcanic orange and ethereal fire. He stood on the precipice of a great chasm, awash with blood and corpses whilst their screaming faced judged him from amidst the tempest. A great eye blinked out of the darkness and stared into him from the bloody sea, a questing look before shutting and melting back into thousands of rotten bodies. Despite the horror he merely looked on impassively, barely batting an eye at the disturbing sight, and walked away from it into the destroyed landscape around him, leaving the judgement of the dead to be swallowed up by the mechanisms of the mind. [i] “I did what I had to, I did what must be done for the sake of the Moon and Star cause.”[/i] Voices arose in the darkness, his voice. A much younger and less tired voice. [i] “Dr Tempest! You can’t be serious, whatever hopes you hold for this project they are completely unfounded, the true calling lies in magic! Not biology!”[/i] A sharp biting voice, Dr Hayworth. [i] “It is of fundamental importance! If we don’t understand the basic primary methods of magical diffusion, how can we return a power yet unseen since the sister’s disappearance to this world? How can we expect to be able to restore control over to the Pegasi and the subequine races if we do not understand the infusion of magic on its most basic level?”[/i] [i] “Through proper dedication and magical study! That is the policy of our ever faithful Archmage! Magic is the way forward, not the subequine race’s machines and science, Magic and Faith! That is the Future! And you should not be so apt to question one of the greatest minds in Equestria Dr Tempest, or you will find yourself demoted very quickly.” [/i] He remembered that incident, Patient 443, one of his primary studies. After that his work was terminated in that sphere, and the noose had begun to tighten around his unorthodox experiments. Black tendrils waved and flowed in the distance now, dancing with languid gestures in the desolate landscape before him like the tendrils of the legendry Leviathans. Beneath his hooves crawling vines circled and wrapped themselves around him, their orange and black bodies ripping and swaying like snakes. They lifted him upwards into the sky, like a huge treelike construct with him at the top, slowly arching into the volcanic heavens of fire. The air cleared before him, and through the fog of brimstone and smell of charred meat he saw something, a bright shining flash. It was suddenly there, and then gone, blinking out of existence in an instant… Then it came back again, and even stronger this time, the vines beneath him crumbled and he tumbled into a new scene upon the clouds of fire. He got back up on his hooves and stared in awe at something which was not memory, or surreal dream… but vision. Before him it stretched, his city of brass, great towering walls of basalt lined with banners, towering castles and fortifications stretching for miles, street lights, railways, engines of glittering metal, lightning power plants powered by condensed storms from the Pegasi. Great Zeppelins soared through the sky, and fearsome fighting machines strode across the Earth, and an infinite stream of soldiers poured out of the exquisite brass gateway. A great eye emerged from the sky, and starred him down, a glowing violet orb with a strange sign in the centre, something which inspired a feeling of power within himself, even as he felt repulsed by the eyes horrifying stare. He shielded his eyes from the light with a hoof, and suddenly he saw something emerge from the very centre of the eye. The air around him was now filled with signs and languages long dead, but he was certain it must mean something… The thing from the eye was growing ever more distinct and he realised it was a pony floating upright on its back hooves. As it drew nearer he realised it wasn’t just a pony, for it had wings and a horn… but there was something deeply wrong with it on a basic level. Then his eyes picked up on it and his mind was flooded with information and primordial terror. The pony was made nearly entirely out of metal and chrome, machines, plates of armour, hydraulics and micro-engines, not an inch was spared from the workings of steel and science. On the centre of his chest sat a cylindrical shape, an orb of dark pulsating light emanating out from the within and flooding their burnished silver surroundings with dark purplish violet light. Upon its back rose a series of three sets of unmoving wings with razor sharp blades in replacement of feathers, upon the central blade stood strange orbs which looked like violet crystalline eyes which drilled into his very soul, connected to a network of glowing magical veins which pulsed obscenely with each beat of the creatures glowing heart. The only thing of flesh was its head, a white, bloodless corpse like emaciated face with closed eyes and a smile of sickly bliss, wiring and cords ran beneath its skin and on occasions it twitched as the magic charges delivered an occasional increased energetic burst. The hair, or what was left of it, was nothing less than metallic power cords, linked to the skull, and from that, the heart core. It circled the disproportionally sized horn, the flesh around it cracked and brittle as if destroyed by the power contained within it. About it the cording releasing ambient magic which emanating from a series of jewels which coated each segment of them. The thing smelt of toxins and oil, making him feel disgusted at its presence, it tainted the air and almost made him vomit with sheer concentration of chemicals. There was something beneath the smell though that heightened the effect, the thing felt strange and otherworldly… something alien to its very core… As he had been taking in these things, the entity, the equine machine had settled before him, hovering above the broken ground by a good hoof length its eyes still closed, its face still blissful. He shivered. [i]what a work of art… I can see even the minute details… the runeing, the patterns, the workings of my deepest research… it is perfection… It is horrible... it is magnificent... It is an abomination.[/i] “W-who are you?” he asked, nervously, his blood almost frozen in his veins. He did not know whether to be terrified or enraptured. The thing stirred, and he took a step back, then another and then another. It opened its eyes and he almost gasped in surprise. Beneath the lids, the eyes were crystal, optics, wiring and machinery working behind a veil of biology, and glowing with dark purple light. “I am me, and you are I” a strange many voiced reply came back. It spoke as if experiencing the finest glories of otherworldly bliss, but hardened and dragged to earth by the hollow effects of machinery and cybernetics... it was as if talking to the emotive true voice of god, and the cold emptiness of metal and void. Truth undivided. “What do you want?” “I have a message… for you!” it chuckled, the pausing, distorted laughter putting him distinctively on edge. “... What is the message?” The thing cocked its head, a pair of pointed elfin ears swivelling towards him and smiled. It opened its mouth, as if savouring the air, revealing long series of pointed knife like teeth and a whip like tongue, the edges of its pointed mouth dribbling with what looked like oil, and spoke. [center][b]“काला सूरज”[/b][/center] Scalpel woke up with a start, his body rushing with adrenaline and fear, the words echoing through his mind like lightning. He rose silent from his blankets in the houses master bedroom, barely noticing the chill of the night as he walked through the hall and towards his study. When he arrived, he lit a gas lamp and opened one of his many notebooks, riffling through pages of research and documentation to an empty portion. Soon the pages were covered with artistry, impressions, images, designs drawn from the dream, to someone else it would have looked like the diary of a madpony, but to Scalpel it made perfect, amazing, brilliant sense. Diagrams and sigils covered every inch of paper and were underlined with a almost illegible number of notes and speculation, but two words stood out the most. Those two words he had barely understood, but with the assistance of ancient texts and books of lore he had managed to transcribe their most basic meaning. [center]Black Sun.[/center]