Lyra's World

I woke up in a morgue. Not in one of the little freezing drawers where they put dead ponies, but on a metal table surrounded by a marked lack of health monitors or IV drips or anything that you would use to keep a pony alive while you operated on them. Instead there was a large scale with a bucket instead of the normal platform, the sort you’d use to weigh the pieces of a dead pony as you dissected them, and a machine that was probably meant to remove all the blood from a pony’s body and replace it with formaldehyde, given that it had a blood-draining tube attached to it. I don’t know why you’d need a machine for that, actually – gravity usually does the job just fine.

Yes, when I was growing up I briefly considered going into funeral services, seriously enough to break into a mortuary and watch them prepare a dead pony. My mother thinks that that might have been the source of my strange fascination with death, but I think she’s mixing up cause and effect.

At any rate, I wasn’t alone in the morgue. An earth dragon with a full-body protective suit was standing over me, holding a scalpel, and arguing with somepony that I couldn’t see.

“This just seems like such a waste. We’d learn so much more from interrogating her.”

I was still kind of drugged, and the notion of taking any action was quite foreign to me. My senses all seemed to be working, at least, for all the good it did with the blinding lights illuminating my body and the nearby equipment, and keeping the rest of the room dark.

“Well, how long would it take to build a containment facility? We could keep her drugged until then.”

The drugs were starting to wear off, enough that I was beginning to feel the little aches and pains that a body normally feels, especially if that body has just been shocked with lightning and then laid out on a hard metal surface for Celestia-doesn’t-even-know how many hours. So being kept drugged ‘until then’ sounded like a really good idea. I almost managed to summon the effort to smile at the thought, but not quite.

“Yes. Sir. You are in charge,” the dragon said. “But if your soldiers never manage to capture another specimen of this variety, and we end up losing the war because of the information we didn’t get from the interrogation, I’m going to make sure the council knows that this was not my idea.”

She turned to me, and took a deep breath, which was blurred by a bit of static from her mask. “Beginning initial incision.”

She lowered the scalpel to the edge of my neck, and sliced me open. Two quick cuts – shoulder to sternum, then the other shoulder down past the sternum, all the way to my crotch. It took seconds, my hide parting like butter beneath the razor-sharp edge of her scalpel. It was sharp enough that it almost didn’t hurt, until it did – lines of fire flowing down by body, followed by cool relief as the incisions healed, as if they’d never existed.

So she tried again.

I couldn’t move, or even scream. I was awake and aware, but paralyzed, while the dragon looming above me inflicted brief agony with clinical precision. It was amazing. The sort of pain you could never inflict in the real world, at least not over and over and over like that without leaving your partner a bloody mess.

“Subject has a remarkable healing factor,” the dragon said. “Even while unconscious, the incisions are healing in mere seconds. I am going to attempt to determine if different kinds of trauma inhibit this regeneration. Switching to the cauterizer.”

I’m not sure what a cauterizer is, but it hurt a bit more – it burned right from the start, and took longer to heal. She also couldn’t make the incisions as quickly, needing to make multiple slow, shallow cuts to get to the same depth as her scalpel had in one quick stroke.

And still, I couldn’t react. I wanted to cry out – to moan, to writhe on the table and beg her to cut me harder, deeper – but all I could do was lie there while she teased me with tiny slice after tiny slice. It was maddening!

She tried a few other things – various caustic chemicals that burned like acid, followed by dousing me in flammable oil and literally setting me on fire for a few minutes, which was just as unpleasant as the last time I’d been set on fire. Still, the burns healed and my fur regrew within seconds of the flames sputtering out. So she applied a constant buzzing field that made my otherwise paralyzed muscles tense up painfully, like the little lightning throwers had earlier (she called it ‘electric current’). She left it running while she repeated a few of her previous attempts, to no better result.

“Vivisection does not appear to be a possibility,” she said, at last, her options exhausted. “I will now regretfully attempt to end the subject’s life in order to allow dissection to proceed.” She felt around my neck with her gloved claws until she found my jugular vein, then punched the sharp tip of the blood-draining tube through the skin, and started the machine. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the tube fill up with dark blood, as I was drained.

It didn’t kill me, of course.

“Removing the subject’s blood does not appear to lead to the cessation of vital functions. Perhaps the healing factor is replacing the blood as quickly as it is being removed?”

One thing it did do was start to clear the drug from my system, as the newly regenerated blood was fresh and untainted, and quickly diluted the toxins. As my mind cleared a little, I started remembering that things like time existed, and felt like I’d put up with this for long enough. My attempt to roll off the table didn’t quite work out, though – one of my legs twitched, and I managed to turn my head to look at my tormentor.

“Subject is regaining consciousness,” she said, fear showing in her eyes through the transparent faceplate, although her voice remained even. She backed into the darkness for a few seconds, and returned with a small red axe that she held tightly in both foreclaws. “I will now attempt to inflict sufficient trauma to overwhelm the subject’s regeneration.”

Unicorns have thick, muscular necks, but it’s still an obvious weak point. Her first hack sank deep into the flesh and crushed my trachea. The second hack crushed my trachea again, before it could fully heal.

“Subject continues regenerating –“ She slammed the axe into my neck again, this time sinking all the way down to my spine “—but repeated trauma –“ the next swing was almost a miss, failing to deepen the existing wound and instead opening a second bleeding gash “ – appears to be able to overwhelm –“ through the fiery agony in my neck, I felt something crack as the heavy metal wedge slammed into my vertebrae “ – the rate of healing.”

With a final overhead swing, the axe sliced through my spine and the rest of the muscle and hide holding my head in place, and since I was a bit too long for their table, my severed head went rolling off and landed on the floor with a splat. My right cheek started to soak up the warm blood pooling beneath me, while the left side of my face was splattered with the pulsing jets from the severed arteries of my neck. Of course, now that it was no longer part of me my body stopped regenerating its blood, and the flow quickly dropped to a dribble – although not before making me a sticky mess.

I groaned, and sat up to pull my head out of the blood pool. The rest of my body was pristine and untouched, without a trace of the drug, and the only bloodstains being the rivulets that ran down my neck from my face and mane. “That was amazing! Do it again!”

Or at least, that’s what I tried to say. My face was still drugged and mostly paralyzed, so it came out as more of a zombie moan. I can’t really blame her for burying the hatchet in my forehead in response.

I inhaled sharply at the sudden stabbing headache, and staggered back, my thoughts muddied. The dragon tried to keep hold of the axe, but I twisted my head and wrenched it out of her shaky grip, then lit my horn and tore the thing free from my skull, burying it in the chest of the decapitated unicorn body still lying on the slab.

“Security!” she cried, her voice wavering at last as she backpedaled towards the door. A claw grabbed her and pulled her to safety, two armless-crossbow-wielding guards taking her place. They started shooting me right away, over and over and over, flame and noise dazzling me while more of those ridiculously fast crossbow bolts shredded my body. Annoyed, I tore the weapons out of their hands, flipped the things around in midair, and left them hovering to either side of my head, the business end pointing at their previous owners.

“I come in peace,” I said, as the tiny bolts embedded in my body worked their way back out of the holes and clattered to the floor like unusually metallic popcorn. “Take me to your leader.”

Or, well, "Ooaaaeeee! Aaaeeooouuueeeeerrr!”

They obviously didn’t understand paralyzed zombie groaning, because instead of standing down and letting me moan threateningly at whoever was in charge, they pulled out their backup weapons and tried to shock me with lightning again.

I’m not even sure what spell I cast, or if it was even a spell. I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t a wish, I wasn’t about to use a wish just to avoid a little pain! I think it was the sort of instinctual magic that I’d read about but never really experienced as a filly, the sort guided by your cutie mark. The little darts full of lightning struck me, but the lightning itself was turned, and arced back along these little wires and shocked the guards instead. They collapsed, twitching, just like I had the first time they’d used them on me.

I stepped over them and through the doorway. The doctor was already retreating as fast as her awkward bipedal gait could take her, and the dragon with her was close behind. Giant metal doors – like the door on a bank vault -- closed in front of me, blocking off the passageway, but telekinesis is telekinesis and insanely overpowered telekinesis is all you need to crumple steel like it was aluminum foil.

It wasn’t a very large base, and it didn’t take long to find what appeared to be the command center, judging by the gigantic glowing spherical map hovering in midair in the center of the massive chamber. They’d called in every dragon they could find to defend it – half a dozen guards with their rapid-fire crossbows, and a dozen other dragons with smaller weapons of the same sort held in one hand. After enduring a few seconds of being shredded by the massive volley, I lifted one of the heavy metal desks – which was nailed down, but I just ripped it loose – and held it in front of me to block most of the bolts.

“Stop it!” I said. “Stop. Stop. Sssstooop.” By the last repetition, I was pretty sure I was speaking clearly enough to be understood, but they didn’t listen. “I’m not here to hurt you,” I added.

“Hold your fire!” came a voice from across the room, and the loud bangs of the dragons’ weapons gradually died down. When they’d stopped completely, I lowered the desk enough to see who’d spoken. My vision went blurry for a second as one of the dragons took the opportunity to shoot me in the head, but it wasn’t as powerful as the sniper’s bolts and I was healed before I had time to fall over.

“I said hold your fire!” the voice repeated. It was coming from one of the dragons that wasn’t a guard, and also wasn’t dressed as a scientist or a doctor. He was wearing a sweater, of all things. It did have a little ‘X’ patch sewn on it, which seemed to be the symbol of this nation’s military.

Then he turned to me. “If you aren’t here to attack us, why are you here? Why did the aliens send you to destroy Sanctuary Hills?”

“That was an accident,” I said. “I was trying to explain that when you blew me up and killed Phoebe. I didn’t come here to cause trouble.” I set down the desk, and turned to the side so that every dragon in the room could see my flank. “I came because my special purpose is broken, and it needs to be fixed. This symbol on my flank gives me a talent for weather control – I want to change it back to a talent for music.”

“How is coming here supposed to accomplish that?” he asked. “We don’t possess that technology.”

“Yet,” said the doctor. “We don’t possess it yet. Perhaps with study…”

He shook his head. “I’d be more interested in figuring out her regeneration.”

The doctor’s face was grim. “Give me time, and I will unlock all her secrets.”

“Um… the regeneration is special,” I said. “It’s not just magic, it’s… unreality? Reality? It’s an expression of the same timelessness that lets me grant wishes.”

The male stared at me incredulously. “You can grant wishes. Like some sort of alien genie.”

“Yes, unfortunately,” I said. “It hasn’t done me a lot of good. I’m certainly not going to try to change my cutie mark with a wish, not after all the ways it’s gone wrong so far.”

“What do we need to do to get you to grant us a wish?” he asked, ignoring the part where I told him that the wishes were so dangerous that I wasn’t even going to use them on myself.

“If you solve my cutie mark problem, I’ll grant you a wish,” I said. “If you don’t, I’ll grant you *three* wishes.” I met his gaze and glared. “And just in case you don’t understand what’s going on here, let me note that the last person I granted a wish wished for infinite wishes. She didn’t survive to make a fourth.”

“I wish I had a million dollars!” shouted someone from the back of the room. I glanced in his direction, and let the wish form inside me, then tossed it his way. A briefcase appeared, and little scraps of green paper went fluttering about in the air as it burst open upon landing.

“I wish I could live forever!” said someone else. Why not? I tossed the wish his way, and he instantly vanished.

“Where did he go?” the leader asked.

I shrugged. “How should I know? He apparently wasn’t going to live forever staying here.”

“I wish I had the power to transform into any animal!” This time, the lucky guard was transformed into a unicorn, his armor and weapons clattering to the ground around him. “What? How?”

“Unicorns can learn a transformation spell,” I told him. “It’s difficult, but anypony with enough determination should be able to figure it out.”

“Can you teach me?” he asked. She, rather, since she’d ended up as a bright pink mare with an annoying screechy voice.

“No, I don’t know that spell,” I said. “Besides, all I can cast right now are weather control spells, because my special purpose is broken. Now, does anyone else want to commit suicide by wish, or can we move on to the part where you agree to fix me?”

There was a brief pause, before someone chimed in that they also wanted a million dollars, which started a rush, the dragons dropping their weapons and racing towards me with claws outstretched. Luckily for them, the ‘briefcase full of paper’ wish was perfectly repeatable. I’d gotten to about half of them before the leader shouted over the crowd.

“You idiots do realize that all that money is either counterfeit or stolen, right?” he said. “Unless she’s secretly working for the Federal Reserve, she doesn’t have the authority to create legal tender.”

That calmed them down for about a second, before somedragon blurted out, “I wish for a million dollars in gold!”

It poured out of a hole in midair, a stream of molten metal that splattered across his helmet and ran down his face and neck before anypony could react. He had time to scream, briefly, before the screaming noise became steam escaping from cracks in his roasted skull, his flaming body collapsing to the ground under the weight of a thousand pounds of searing liquid. Most of the dragons nearby managed to scramble away before getting more than a few drops splattered on them – their clothes caught fire, but they were able to roll around and put it out, wounded and wailing in agony, but alive. One of the civilian-looking dragons wasn’t so lucky – she was shoved back against the original victim and sank into the gold, sticking there firmly enough that she tried to push herself free with one hand, which only succeeded in flash-cooking her entire lower arm. She screamed for a while, before she died.

I stared back at the commander over the infernal glow of the slowly cooling pile, as the stench of burning flesh and clothing filled the air, and said loudly, over the screams of those still alive, “I’m still waiting for your answer.”

“You’re a monster,” he said.

“They were warned,” I snapped back. If it sounds like I didn’t feel a lot of remorse for these idiots, then… it’s true. I kind of wanted them dead, after what they did to Phoebe. It wasn’t her wishes that killed her – it was them. These weren’t good dragons like Spike, or Phoebe. These were bad dragons, and I knew how dangerous bad dragons could be.

“Very well. If you’ll agree to keep yourself and your wishes contained within the laboratory, I’ll instruct Dr. Vahlen to study your… ‘special purpose’.”

“Cutie mark,” I corrected him.

“I’m not calling it that,” he said. “It’s silly.”

“It’s the –“ I started, and then paused. I’d just helped several of his people kill themselves, teleported one away, and transformed a fourth, all while he stood there unable to stop them from destroying themselves. Whatever authority he had was probably on fairly shaky ground, which meant that he was going to try to assert himself in any way possible until he’d satisfied his own sense of honor. I was probably better off giving in on the things that literally didn’t matter. “Fine. You can call it whatever you want.”

Dr. Vahlen seemed unfazed by the flurry of disasters the dragons’ wishes had caused. “Do not worry, commander. I will keep her contained.”

“Just one more thing,” I said, as I circled around the still-flaming golden death-pyre. “You still have to make a wish.”

“I wish none of this had ever happened,” he said.

I shook my head. “No paradoxes. Do you know what happens if you change the past?”

“It has been theorized that a split timeline develops,” Dr. Vahlen answered.

I nodded. “But only the new timeline is real. The old timeline withers and fades, slowly enough for the ponies trapped inside to see their doom approaching, a timeless stasis that’s a million times worse than death.”

“Could I wish that my men were alive again?” he asked.

“You could,” I said, “but Phoebe was eight years old and even she knew better.”

“It is the classic wish gone wrong from all the storybooks,” Dr. Vahlen remarked. “It is also a petty, selfish wish. These people – all of us here – are expendable. It is the struggle against the alien invaders which is most important. You should wish for something to aid us in our struggle. Perhaps for knowledge?”

“Right,” the commander said. “Knowledge.” He turned his back to me and stared up at the giant floating map. “We have satellite coverage of the entire globe, but we still know nothing of the aliens’ movements. Except for your blatant show of power, they’ve managed to stay stealthy. Hidden. I want them exposed.”

“So you wish… that the aliens would show up on your map?” I asked. “I’m not sure a wish can do that. It sounds like an ongoing effect.”

“Then alter our detection equipment,” he said, turning back to me. “I wish that our satellites would do their job and detect the alien invasion that I know is happening behind our backs!”

I wasn’t sure what a ‘satellite’ was – did he mean the moon? Did the world have multiple moons? – but I did my best to feed his desire into the timelessness, hoping that it would do the extra work of figuring out what he meant, just like it always did the extra work of figuring out how to do anything at all.

And just like that, the map exploded – in a good way. Sort of. Red flashing pictograms appeared all over the map, and a loud alarm started blaring.

“Oh my god,” he said, staring at the result. “Washington DC, London… Moscow! It’s even worse than I thought!”

“Indeed,” Dr. Vahlen said. “It looks like and your soldiers have your work cut out for you. I will escort the subject to the laboratory so that we may begin the examination. Hopefully she will be more cooperative this time.”

I followed her towards one of the exits from the central chamber. “I’m probably still going to heal if you try to cut me open. That’s not under conscious control.”

“Do not worry. We have ways,” she said. Just as she reached the doorway, she turned back to the room. “And send the newly transformed unicorn to join us,” she said to her commander. “We can always use more specimens.”