PaP: Bedtime Stories

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Other, Changelings, Original Character, Science Fiction, Adventure, Violence, Anthology, Sunset Shimmer, Profanity, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Death, Alternate Universe, Human
Length: 188668

Earth used to have humans living on it. Now it has ponies, some of which used to be human. It will take ten thousand years for every human alive on earth to return. A lot can happen in that much time.

On May 23, 2015, the world ended. It wasn't violent, it wasn't bloody, and it wasn't even very dramatic. The entire population of the planet vanished. But they didn't stay gone; almost at once, refugees started trickling back. Unfortunately for them, they didn't come back with their humanity intact.

Demons lurk beneath the sea, while strange spirits whisper promises in dreams. Empires rise, dictators control, and ponies have nowhere to turn for help. Nowhere except themselves, and old-fashioned hard work.

This story is an anthology. Each chapter will be independent, though some chapters may reference characters or events from previous sections. This story began as a series of blog entries, so those who read those may have seen some of these before.

In general, each of these chapters was written in an hour and was not edited to my usual standard, so expect a few minor errors (sorry!). Chapters are posted in chronological order, so new chapters may appear in the middle of the story.

One final note: This story has no regular posting schedule. It will update whenever I feel like it.

Published 2017-02-14 08:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-10-31 19:00:01 UTC

First Princess on Earth

Author's Note

If you've been following anything I've been up to over the last few months, you probably know I've been doing a print of Last Pony on Earth. (check it out here: Le Book. I ordered some extras if anyone didn't get a chance to order one )

While the campaign was actively fundraising, I had a perk level for those who wanted a custom chapter. One generous donor requested a story about Sunset and her involvement in early earth. Now we have this little story. I hope you enjoy.

First Princess on Earth

The sky shattered.

Once, the magical energy required to bridge the worlds was a mere sip, possible even for a single unicorn to perform with the right spell and practice. But after years of drift, the distances were so vast that the greatest magical powers in all Equestria were required.

Lightning tore at the sky, striking the snowpack in a dozen places and melting huge patches of blasted white permafrost. The wind roared, and for a second the aurora cut the sky even during the height of midday.

Then a pony landed on the snow.

Sunset’s hooves touched lightly at first, wings she could barely control spreading by reflex. She shuddered, tucking them back in a moment later.

She soon stood in a melted slurry, sloshing around her hooves and making her shiver. “This is it, Sunset. The largest stretch of unoccupied land on their whole planet.” Her voice echoed strangely off the snow, sounding somehow more alone than she already was.

Sunset stared up for another few seconds, as though saying farewell to the last vestiges of magic from her home. There was no telling if Equestria would ever be close enough to reach, even in the vast lifetime of an Alicorn. And even if it was, almost every creature she knew would be long dead.

“No turning back even if I wanted to. The only ones who could open the door are on the other side.”

Sunset adjusted her heavy winter jacket—it was one of the few things she’d brought, a final gift from the princess who had once taught her. Celestia’s own cutie mark was sewn into the corner. She was probably imagining things, but it felt as though the jacket was warmer than it should’ve been.

Sunset wasn’t completely alone on the ice. Before her was a row of near-identical buildings, each one standing tall on strange concrete stilts. Leave it to humans to do things the hard way. Instead of adjusting the climate to suit their needs, they’d insisted on trying to somehow survive it.

Sunset tucked her wings back into the slots in the jacket, pulling the hood up over her head and making her way towards the nearest building. Unlike all the others, there was light shining out through one of the nearby windows. This had to be the one.

Snow swept under the structure in an uneven drift through the stilts, nowhere actually reaching the floor above. Sunset found the nearest human stairwell, and climbed her way past the flags of some human countries.

Too bad you’re not here to ask for advice, Day. But you’ve got your own kingdom to start.

Sunset reached the door, a massive steel slab ringed with rubber and with a handle out of reach. She twisted it with magic, then stepped through it into a little room packed with human survival gear. The sudden transition from blasting cold to cozy warmth reminded her a little of the California sun she’d left behind.

Sunset hung her coat, looking back at her reflection in the polished metal wall. She was a full head taller now, her horn sharper, her body leaner. It barely felt like this body was her own.

Everything I ever wanted. Yet now that she’d finally reached it, the reward didn’t seem so much deserved as it was necessary.

A little face appeared on the other side of the glass, a pegasus mare wearing a light jacket. Her eyes widened as she saw Sunset, and she hopped up, hovering to take the door in her mouth and open it for her.

“Hello,” Sunset said, waving with one wing. There would be no concealing her true nature with the jacket off. There was no real point. She couldn’t take command of this colony if she pretended to be just another pony. “I believe you’ve been waiting for me.”

The pony landed as soon as she was inside, bowing suddenly to the ground. “Forgive me, Princess! Princess, uh… you’re new. Of course you are. You’re the human sent to lead us in crusade, yes?”

“Not exactly.” Sunset reached down with a hoof, lifting her back up. “The supply of human princesses was… nonexistent. I’m the substitute, recently promoted. Is everypony hiding in this building?”

“We’re, uh… we’re using all of them,” she said feebly, hurrying to catch up with Sunset.

The Alicorn didn’t slow down. She could hear voices coming from just down the hallway, past a scenic lobby with lots of human flags and a little model of the planet.

“It feels warm in here, but I see you haven’t made alterations to the weather outside. What kind of spell are you using?”

“None,” the pony said. “There’s something called a ‘reactor’ in one of the buildings. The human got it working for us.”

The human. She turned those words over in her head, wincing at their implication. They’d come to preserve the integrity of humanity’s future, and already some human had reached them. So much for the perfect place to build a secret city. “I need to find Director Golden Vision, is he in this building?”

He was. Sunset met with the leaders of the Earth Colony in the human cafeteria, where they’d erected a sort of temporary city hall.

“We knew somepony would be coming for us,” Golden Vision said, as soon as all the awkward bowing was over with. “It’s a shame we couldn’t find a human to fill the position.”

It’s more than that. It’s our fault we couldn’t understand them well enough to know they didn’t have princesses. We should’ve realized they weren’t like us. “I met a promising candidate, but she wasn’t going to be ready in time. There were no human Alicorns, not one on the entire planet. None was close enough to respond to conditioning once they were brought to Equestria, either.”

The longer she stood there, the more ponies slipped into the room. Quietly, unobtrusively—but word was obviously spreading.

“Well, Princess Sunset. Everypony in the Earth Colony will want to meet you. I’m sure you’ll want to address everypony… but I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job.”

Because you haven’t been doing yours? Sunset thought. She bit her lip, fighting back what the old Sunset might’ve said. “I’ll do that, but I do have a few questions first. I thought the plan was to adjust the climate. It’s very snow out there, Director Vision.”

“Ah, yes.” He winced, looking away. “We’ve, uh… had a spot of trouble adapting the Empire’s warmth emitters. Their magic seems to… rely on the Crystal Heart. Which we don’t have.”

No wonder you all look like you’ve just seen Tirek. “That’s a very serious setback. But I can’t believe that Cadence would’ve failed to consider it. She was part of the planning committee, I remember. There must be a way.”

Somepony else stepped up—another unicorn. A gangly mare this time, wearing what had to be a “borrowed” human labcoat from the way it trailed on the floor. “Princess, uh… Princess…”

“Sunset Shimmer,” she supplied.

“Princess Sunset,” she continued. “Princess Cadence did include instructions, but they were more complicated than any of us have been able to figure out. Possibly Alicorn-level magic? We were waiting for our princess.”

General mutters of agreement filled the room. She could feel it then—hints of resentment that she’d implied they hadn’t been working. Just because it looks like they were hiding out in these human buildings doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard for them.

Sunset couldn’t risk angering them now. She needed their cooperation, maybe more now than ever.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Ponies of Earth Colony—I know you didn’t really come here to build a city. Most of you are here because our monsters followed us to Earth. You’re here to protect creatures who cannot yet protect themselves. Together we will finish the first task, so we can go to work on the second.”

Time passed. Sunset had much to do to organize her new ponies of the Earth Colony. Without the magic working that would change the climate and make way for their new city, they were barely surviving. Only thanks to the human structures had they survived as well as they had.

The “human” her ponies had referenced wasn’t just some old book, either. Using the site of human construction meant that they had their first human refugee.

He was even more eager to talk than most of the ponies in McMurdo were to meet their new princess. Sunset recognized instantly what she was looking at, when the pony barged their way into her thaumaturgical workshop and scattered her nervous “magical assistants.” Really they were just the best unicorns she’d been able to find.

On the workshop between them was the future crystal core of Summerland, only a few light blue scraps as it grew within the intricate circle of runes. An immensely delicate spell, one that could be easily disrupted by almost anything that touched the table.

“You,” he said, his voice so harsh that several ponies in the room with them actually gasped. “You’re the one everyone told me to wait for, yeah? The… leader? Prime Minister of… Horses. Something like that.”

Sunset rose from her seat, letting the spell fade from her mind. “Take five, everypony,” she whispered, before moving between the intruder and her work. He was a unicorn himself, which unfortunately meant he could probably buck up the spell regardless. She would have to handle this delicately.

“I am,” she said, spreading her wings slightly as she’d seen Celestia do a dozen times before. Sunset Shimmer wasn’t much taller or stronger than an ordinary pony, so she didn’t have those same advantages. But she still had confidence. “I understand we owe you a great debt. You were the one to get the… ‘reactor’ running again. The device heating these shelters.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The pony insisted on wearing what would’ve amounted to fully human clothing. Boots on all four hooves, a lab coat, and the stretchy black underclothes that many of the humans here had probably worn prior to the Event. “I was glad to help. I wasn’t going to let you primitives freeze to death out in the snow or anything. That just wouldn’t be…” He shook his head definitively. “Every one of your damn… people… kept telling me that I had to talk to you when you got here. The one in charge was coming, she’d be able to get me home again.

“And here you are. You’re back, and I’ve got a few thousand kilometers to get back home. Something tells me the US government is going to have some bigger fish than sending a C-130 out here for one crusty old scientist. I don’t know how you’re going to get me back to the mainland, but… I don’t know how any of you got here, either. No one will tell me fuckin’ anything.”

Sunset winced as his horn briefly sparked and hissed with the energy of his words. Any moment, a stray wisp of magic could undo everything they’d done for hours.

She glanced over her shoulder, then met his eyes. “Would you walk with me? We can have this conversation somewhere private.”

He raised a suspicious eyebrow. “If you’re thinkin’ of offing me in the dark somewhere, I wouldn’t. I’ve kept to myself about how the reactor works. Do you want the rest of its twenty-year service life, or do you want about… a week? Because that’s how long you’ll keep it if I’m dead.”

Sunset’s eyes widened. A few of her ponies gasped. Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t rely on their ignorance to insulate them from the human’s harsh words. Everypony in her camp could speak perfect English.

“Absolutely not, uh…”

“Tucker,” he said. “Call me Dr. Tucker.”

“Dr. Tucker,” she went on, advancing on him. “I swear that no harm will come to you. I would not harm the pony who did such a great service for the ponies of Earth Colony.”

“Pony…” he repeated, rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine. Outside then.” They left, to her ponies’ great relief.

Sunset didn’t say anything until they’d shut the door again, protecting her crystal. “How much did they tell you, Dr. Tucker?” she asked. “About what happened to your world?”

“Nothing,” he said. “For a while, I thought they were as confused as I was. Except their accents were… academic, and not one of them seemed to know what the hell they were doing. Given I look like you, my running theory is that you’re responsible for it, somehow. Either that, or I’m in hell.”

Sunset told him everything. There was no playing coy like she’d done with Lonely Day, avoiding tainting her perception of Equestria by waiting for the princesses to reveal the critical information. Tucker was so tainted by Equestria at this point that they couldn’t really make it any worse.

By the time they’d finished their conversation, they had made it all the way back to the lobby, and the little model of the globe.

“So I can’t send you back,” Sunset finished. “It’s going to be a long time before we have that ability, decades at least. But even if I could, there’d be nothing to send you back to. Your loved ones are almost certainly not there. Your society is gone. Everything that was ever built to support it is gone.”

Dr. Tucker’s expression was unreadable. He watched her in a daze, occasionally glancing towards the window. “I wished you were wrong,” he said. “I want you to be wrong more than… anything. But considering how long I’ve been ignored. Considering every method of communication that went unanswered… I must at least entertain that some of your insane story was true.”

He slumped to the floor, looking away from her. “And I am erased.”

She settled one wing gently on his shoulder. He tensed under her touch, yet he didn’t push her away. “But there is a place for you, even so. My ponies and I are going to build a nation here. I’m going to bring the summer sun to the Antarctic, we’re going to raise crops… and eventually, fight monsters. Maybe you’d like to help with that.”

He didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he looked up. “Can you… tell one of your ‘ponies’ to sew me some pants that fit?”

She laughed. “I think we can arrange that.”

The Dare

"So, you realize this is a bad idea," Alex said, her voice exasperated. "Like, maybe the dumbest idea ever."

Richard had spent his whole life hearing ponies talk about how important Alex had been as mayor of Alexandria. He found it a little hard to believe now that she was working behind the desk at a pharmacy, shorter than he was, and probably younger too. But she also happened to be working the hospital pharmacy, and so there would be no way to buy what he wanted without getting her approval.

Richard pushed forward the pile of plastic chits again—what amounted to an enormous fortune at his age. They had been hard-fought, but if this was what it took to rub Cody's smug face in it... he'd pay. "I want one dose of poison joke antidote. I know you grow the plants here, and that you keep the potion in the fridge. I want to buy one."

"I don't know where you found it..." Alex whispered. "But it's not something you should play around with. Just because nobody's died from using it doesn't mean you couldn't."

"Are you gonna sell to me or not?" Richard asked, annoyed. "We both know the town will just give me the antidote if something goes wrong. But I'm being responsible." He pointed to the money. "I'm using safely. Now give me my potion." Alex grumbled, turning away from him with a harsh flick of her tail. Richard stared after her, unapologetically appreciating an earth pony who had joined the growing trend of not wearing very much.

The pony he was interested in almost certainly would be wearing clothes tonight. Amy was frustratingly obsessed with dumb humans and their dumb old culture.

Alex set the potion on the counter across from him, a few ounces of brown slop in a translucent plastic container. She had to use her mouth to lift the scanner from under the counter and check his chits one at a time, tossing them into the register. She pushed half of them back. "Chaos magic is no joke," she finally said. "It plays on your insecurities. It never does what you want the way you want. Whatever you have, you should burn."

"Thank you very much," Richard said, levitating the bottle and his change both into his satchel. "Bye."

He left. There were far more important things to be doing than talking to Alex.

He returned to his own home, where his best friend Cody was already waiting. The young stallion watched him come in with anticipation on his face. "She shut you down, didn't she? She laughed when you told her what you were planning, and she didn't help."

Richard made his way past him, towards his own open bedroom door. Clothes already waited inside, clothes Amy had picked for him. Probably not expecting him to wear any of it. On his desk was a worn-looking laptop computer, the plastic yellowing from the sun. He'd forgotten to switch it off when he left, and the screen flickered even now, with a few dead pixels scattered across it in uneven patches. It was in quite good condition for something owned by a teenager. Beside the computer was another bottle, a worn-looking glass bottle with deep blue potion inside it.

Richard didn't answer as Cody followed him into the room, just levitated out the antidote and set it next to the first potion.

Cody gaped. "No shit. She actually... what the hell did you say to make her give it to you?"

"I bought it," Richard said, truthfully, levitating over the blue bottle as though it were nothing. He put on a show of not being afraid, anyway. He was terrified. Despite everything he'd read about this potion, there was no tangible way to get a guarantee about what it might do to him. It very well might not affect the change he wanted. Not the one I want. The one Amy wants. It was only because he was so disgusted at the prospect that made him so sure it would do what he wanted.

"You're actually gonna do it?" Cody sat down on his haunches in the hallway, staring in at him with indignance. "I don't think you've really thought this through. What if it works?"

"ThenI will have a girlfriend, and you won't."

"Alright," Cody grumbled. Richard could sense his frustration, and his fear. His friend was too scared to do what Richard was about to do. He was the one who had always had a crush on Amy, but he was too afraid to do what it took. Richard would get the mare tonight, not Cody. It was about time he win at something. "But suppose she likes you?"

"Then I'll have a marefriend," Richard said again, smug. "So what?"

"You're gonna stay transformed forever, idiot?" he asked. "Why do you think I said no? Because if we have to change to have a relationship, we aren't right for each other! You want someone to like you, not you potioned into something else. Unless you plan on staying that way forever."

Richard hesitated, considering a weakness in his plan he hadn't thought about. Then he shrugged, and downed a long draft from the bottle. It tasted floral and strange, but then eating flowers had always been more an earth pony thing to begin with. Poison joke was supposed to be a flower, one that was boiled and concentrated to increase its potency. But at first, he felt nothing. "We'll see what I decide." He set the bottle down, mostly empty now. "Our parents were two-legged monsters, and they got used to being ponies. Maybe I could get used to being a filly." He said it, but didn't really mean it. Disgust practically rolled off his tongue at the thought. Few considerations in his life seemed more degrading, more awful.

Richard had spent his whole life listening to his mother complain (when she didn't think he was around) about how awful it was to be transformed into a mare. Richard had heard all those fears, and made them his own. And now he was defying them, daring the magic to work so that he could have what Cody couldn't. He would win tonight.

"Whatever." Cody turned, with exactly the same gesture his mother had used only an hour earlier. "I'm gonna go meet Amy at the arcade to wait for you not to show. If you don't come by nine, we'll stop by to make sure you didn't dry up as a fish, or..." He glared at the potion bottle. "Whatever that thing does to you."

"I'll see you in a few hours!" Richard called after him. "Your favorite mare and I are going on a date!"

* * *

Richard felt the eyes on her. There was no reason for it—nopony would be expecting a pony with her same blue mane and yellow coat, wearing a short dress that actually fit and shuffling nervously into the laser arcade. Though it didn't look like anypony was paying more attention to her now, Richard would've sworn there were always at least two pairs of eyes on her, making it impossible to concentrate. Okay, maybe that wasn't the only thing that made it hard to concentrate.

There was no escaping from the reminder that things were different. Ignoring the strange absence between her legs, ignoring the fabric of a garment she'd never worn, ignoring that her steps moved to a different rhythm, everything was bigger now. The universe had grown a foot taller, stretching upward. She wasn't just shorter, Richard had become frail and dainty as well. Exactly what she had feared. Exactly what she needed to be to have what Cody couldn't have.

The arcade was always one of the more popular nightly destinations for young ponies in Alexandria—basically everyone was here. It didn't just have an amazing arena in back, with exciting recreations of pre-Event settings to fight each other with aging laser-tag equipment—it had a bar, and a restaurant, and a stage. Richard generally came for the drinks, despite what his mother thought. What will mom think if she finds out I did this? Moriah was an easy pony to upset, and this very specific kind of magic was one of her most sensitive areas. Richard could only imagine what she might do. But she won't find out. I can change back tomorrow morning.

Her friends were waiting at their usual table at the back of the bar. They had stacks of trading cards piled up on the table in front of them, some boring human game that depicted colorful monsters of the pre-Event world. Richard had never learned it, and just now doing so was hardly the first thing on her mind.

Cody recognized her first. She recognized the exact moment when his jaw hit the floor, and his eyes started doing things she'd never seen him do before. He quickly stuck his muzzle into his drink, and didn't look up again. This caused Amy to turn, brushing her mane out of her eyes as she looked up over the chair at Richard, only a few paces away by then. Her expression too was one Richard had never seen on her before, though it was very similar to the way Cody had been looking. Just a little more obvious.

"So, uh... I was right," Richard said, pulling up an empty cushion and sitting down without introducing herself. "It was exactly like I said it would be." She smiled over at Amy, expectant. "That means I get that date, right?"

Amy took several seconds to respond. She yanked one of Richard's forehooves over, turning it over and inspecting it. Her eyes were wide, watery, and her tone quavered a little. "Yeah, Rich. Sure. We can have that date."

"Awesome!" Richard said, loud enough that a few ponies from nearby tables turned to stare at them. As usual, they looked more at her than either of the others. Being a mare shouldn't be this weird. Half the population does it all the time. Why are they always looking at me?

"Sorry, Cody," Amy said, looking across the table, sympathetic. "He actually did it. A promise is a promise. We can... tell you about it in the morning?"

Cody got to his hooves, shuffling all his cards into his saddlebag with one hoof, then slinging it halfway over his back. "Sure thing, Amy. Just... think about what I told you, alright?" He paused, glaring at Richard this time. "Don't say I didn't warn you. This is an awful idea." He left.

Richard shuffled uncomfortably on her hooves, settling herself into Cody's now-vacant spot at the table as best she could. "So, uh... have you eaten yet? I know that's how dates are supposed to start. Ponies go somewhere nice to eat. Or I guess they could finish that way."

"That sounds nice," Amy said, still staring at her. She looked almost like the other onlookers, if not even more insistent than their many eyes. "There are some places still open. Where do you want to go?"

"Wherever you want to go," she said, thinking it the proper thing to say. It was the sort of thing a stallion with a girlfriend would say, she was sure of it.

"Right here." Amy finally looked away from her, where she started sweeping up her cards with one wing. "Walking would be a waste of time... I can't believe you actually did it." She shook her head slightly, pointing. "You sound different, you smell different, you feel different... you were willing to do all that so I'd let you take me out? That's... the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me."

Richard grinned, raising one hoof to signal the waiter. This was starting out exactly the way she had imagined. "Yeah, I guess I am pretty awesome," she said. "Err... you're pretty awesome. And I know you'd never go with a stallion. Cuz you don't want a boyfriend." She winced, wishing she could take back what she'd said the instant the words were out of her mouth. She was getting a little nervous—sitting so close to Amy, all alone. If she had expected her feelings towards mares to change because of her transformation, she was apparently dead wrong. Her friend was just as attractive as she remembered. Tall, willowy, her wings fluffy and clean. The kind of soft she just wanted to squeeze.

Amy hardly even seemed to notice her bumbling, or her looks. "You turned out pretty good for a curse. That dress is... really flattering. I'm glad someone short enough to wear it came along."

The restaurant didn't have waiters so much as an attentive owner who worked the kitchen while delivering food at the same time. She'd finally noticed Richard, and hurried over with the menu. They ordered, Richard watching nervously as she stared, wondering if she would recognize her. But she eventually just took the order and left, leaving them alone again.

"I'm not short," Richard finally said, folding her forelegs together on the table. "Unicorns just aren't freakishly tall, that's all. We're from a noble lineage."

Amy giggled loudly. "You didn't get that one from your mom."

"No. Everypony knows to stop listening whenever she talks about ponies and humans and stuff. I might be pissed too if I'd come back with a broken horn. I know my dad would be."

And so, their conversation went on. Richard was amazed at just how relaxed Amy became after only a few minutes of them together. She watched Richard almost all the time, her expressions becoming increasingly distant and vague.

Then they finished eating, and it was time to do other things. Richard could already tell her date was going to be one of the best ever.

Author's Note

And here's the first part of an idea suggested by Sparktail on my Patreon. Thanks for your support!

First Date

Richard had not planned very far beyond her first sip of the potion. She knew the way she wanted this night to end, though she was a little fuzzy on some of the details. She'd known she wanted a new marefriend by morning, who she could show off to Cody. Nothing else really mattered, so long as Richard could accomplish that goal.

And for a good several hours, it looked like that was exactly where the night would end up. Once they'd had their meal, Amy joined her for a few rounds of laser tag, and didn't even complain the way she did when Cody tried to get her to play. But they didn't drink—Amy apparently had a better place in mind. "You'll like it," she insisted, leading Richard away from Alexandria's main thoroughfare and down a side street. Richard grew increasingly nervous as she walked—it wasn't that much happened to ponies in Alexandria, there was almost no crime. But if something bad was going to happen, it would be just like fate to make it happen when she was most vulnerable.

"Don't be such a baby!" Amy teased, as they finally reached their destination. A barn just on the edge of town, looking deserted from the outside. Nopony lived out this way, so there was nopony to hear it. Or to see the bright lights slipping through the holes in the building. "They won't card us here. I know the bartender."

"I thought only the arcade was open on weekdays," Richard squeaked. "Why haven't I heard about this place?"

They made their way around to the back, where there weren't any more exterior markings of what must go on inside, but at least there was a smaller door. One that would feel less crazy than just opening up the gigantic, rotting barn doors.

"Because it's a place for misfits," Amy answered, lowering her head. "For people who aren't ponies, or... people who aren't into the same relationships as everyone else." She nudged Richard from one side, warmer and more affectionate than she had ever felt from Amy. "You wouldn't have liked it before. Now you're a freak too, so you're invited." She opened the door.

Whoever had set up this place had taken great pains to make it not look like an old barn inside. There were new floors, flashing lights, and no dirt anywhere. The air was thick with the musky smells of ponies who hadn't washed in a long time, and the air was smoky with all kinds of different things. Loud pre-Event music played, poppy beats Richard never would've listened to on her own. But somewhere like this, with lights that flashed with the music and bodies crowded on the floor, maybe they wouldn't be so bad.

Amy was right about the sort of ponies who came here. Lots of not-ponies were dancing on the floor. Changelings out of their disguises, griffons, and the weirder ponies. Ponies like Amy, who ignored what was sensible and logical and were interested in the wrong sex. It doesn't count for me. I'm really a stallion under all this magic. I'm not weird.

They made their way over to the bar, which was high enough that there was no place to sit. Richard's mouth fell open as she saw the pony working behind it—the same pony who had sold her potion earlier today. Only Alex had braided one half of her mane, while spiking the other half with crazy gel. Her clothes as well were as crazy as everypony else's here, bright colored fabric with random, sensual openings. "What..." she stammered, even as Amy muttered their drink order. "What are you doing here? Aren't you grown up?"

Alex looked her over, recognition coming to her face far quicker than it had for Cody. She didn't even look surprised. "Oliver's working all night again. He has fun with his job, I have fun with mine." She tossed a few iced glasses from under the table, flipping them through the air with such precision Richard almost thought she was a unicorn. She shook up something cold and poured it over ice, then added a layer of bright green over the cream and passed the glasses over. "Try this. But don't have more than one."

"Thanks!" They took their glasses over to a quiet corner, with standing-height tables looking out at the dance floor. From the way the room was arranged, it was quite clear what ponies were expected to be doing here. There wasn't very much room for observers.

"It's something different every time," Amy said, sipping on her glass. "Always good, though. I don't know where they get all their flavors. It isn't brewed in Alexandria."

Richard took a sip, eyes widening. She'd never have admitted it, but the sweetness of mixed drinks like these always seemed better than the harsh burning of more masculine drinks. She only pretended to like those when Cody was around. "You come here all the time?" she asked. "Without getting a girlfriend?"

"Not yet," Amy admitted, setting her glass down. "Most ponies are too old. We haven't grown up enough yet, so adults get nervous." She glanced briefly over her shoulder at the way they'd come, then scooted closer to Richard. "Be careful with how much you drink. Less mass means—"

"I know." She levitated the empty glass down onto the table. "I'm not scared. I'm with you! That means I'll be safe."

Amy's eyes widened. "I had no idea you were like this, Rich. All these years, you've been kind of a jerk. I didn't know you could be..." She reached out, running her wing along Richard's side. "So soft. How are you the same person?"

She shrugged, leaning closer to Amy and enjoying the sensation. She'd always wanted to be close to somepony, though she hadn't imagined Amy would be the one. Not until their conversation, a few days earlier. When Amy gave Cody her ultimatum. "I dunno. Guess you just didn't know me as well as you thought."

"Guess so," she said, still a little disbelieving. "I've never seen you dance. Can you dance? We should go out there." She didn't wait for an answer, grabbing Richard by her dress and yanking her away from the table, towards the floor. Before Richard would've just laughed if Amy tried to force her to go anywhere, but now she was shorter and smaller and apparently light enough to get dragged across the room.

"I don't know how!" she argued, though she wasn't really struggling that hard. The music and the smells and the alcohol were already starting to play tricks with her mind. Maybe she wanted to dance a little after all. If it meant a chance to get closer to her new marefriend... "I don't know how this body is supposed to move!"

"Like this!" Amy exclaimed, before proceeding to show her.

It was more fun than she would've thought. More fun than she'd had in months, really. She could only imagine what her mom might've said, if she had known where Richard had gone and what she'd been doing. But Moriah wouldn't find out—there were only two ponies in this place she recognized, obviously that meant that none of them recognized her either. Alex isn't close with Mom anymore, she won't tell. And Amy… Amy was her marefriend now, she'd practically admitted as much! She wouldn't tell if Richard asked her not to.

The night didn't end with dancing. That was, as Richard had expected, only how it began. Things didn't go quite as far as Richard had been hoping, but in some ways, that was probably for the best anyway. She wasn't sure she wanted her first time to be in a body she completely hated and planned on getting rid of the next morning.

She did eventually fall asleep with Amy on the couch in her small apartment, surrounded by pre-Event artifacts.

That was also where she woke, when Amy brought in a few cups of coffee and offered her one.

"So, uh... now what?" Amy asked, shuffling nervously on her hooves as she watched Richard drink. "Have you thought about… maybe... not changing back?"

Richard set her glass down, completely drained in only a few minutes. She was still a little sluggish as she started to wake up, but that would change quickly enough. Coffee might be the only good thing humans had ever invented.

“I… I guess I didn’t,” she admitted, honestly. “When Cody chickened out, I didn’t know if this was gonna work. Poison joke does what you’re most scared of… that’s what my father told me… but how do you know what you’re scared of? I thought I knew, but it was really just a lie. You… can’t tell Cody I said that. I told him how sure I was, but… secretly, I half thought I was gonna turn into a cow or something.”

Amy shivered involuntarily. “That would’ve been less pretty. Also more dumb? Cows are dumb.”

“Anyway,” Richard continued. “I haven’t thought about what I would do when it was… over.” She sat up in bed, looking down at herself. She still felt disgusted by what she saw—but that reaction didn’t feel as authentic as the memories of her night. It was someone else’s fear, not really her own. Good thing the poison joke can’t change its mind.

Amy crawled back onto the couch, resting against her. Richard had been a little drunk when she got in, hadn’t really noticed… but now she did. Noticed how nice it felt to be held. Amy was taller than she was, and stronger too. Maybe one night hadn’t been long enough. “I have a suggestion.”

Hating the transformation was one strike against, but Amy was worth at least two in the other direction.

“If I stay…” Richard said, speaking slowly. “People will find out. They’ll think I’m weird! Or just crazy…”

Amy shrugged. “People do crazy things for love.”

“Couldn’t you do it?” she began, prying her way free of Amy and getting up. She began pacing back and forth in front of the couch—the coffee was hitting her stronger than usual. “Cloudy doesn’t care what you do, you’re not even living at home anymore. She wouldn’t care if you changed into a…” She trailed off, stopping in place and looking down at her hooves. “Oh.”

Amy giggled, watching her. “Yeah. That doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it? Unless you’re suddenly interested in stallions. I’d do it too, if… but I don’t think there’s any guarantee poison joke would do what we want.”

She shook her head vigorously, sticking out her tongue. “N-oh. No no no a thousand times no. I don’t know what my mom is thinking.”

Amy giggled again. “Don’t ask me. I asked Alex that same thing, and she can’t explain. I think every single one of them is lying. To themselves, or to me. I don’t know which.” She didn’t sound serious, but there was bitterness in her voice all the same.

“But if I do try to stay this way… my dad will just think I’m crazy, but Mom… she’ll kill me. Tear me apart with her own hooves. Stab my eyes out… something.”

“She wouldn’t,” she argued. “Moriah isn’t that bad. She just… went through more than most ponies. Besides… poison joke worked for you. Just give her some! Maybe her husband’s a little upset, but he might not even notice. Barely even leaves school to begin with.”

“She’s tried it,” Richard said. “Didn’t work. And maybe she wouldn’t kill me… but she might throw me out.”

"You could move in with me!" Amy suggested, gesturing around the apartment. "I mean, I know it's not much. But it's not like the rent costs that much. We just have to do maintenance work on the empty apartments on our floor. It'd take half as long if you helped me! Maybe even less, since you're so magical."

Richard looked away, blushing. “Maybe I’ll… see what happens. Pretend it was an accident, but… not ask for the antidote. Maybe that’ll work.”

“Yeah!” Amy began. Then she winced, looking down at her hooves. “Poor Cody. He’s gonna be heartbroken.”

“That’s the friendzone for you,” Richard said, grinning mischievously. Telling Cody about last night was something she was very much looking forward to. She was gonna take it nice and slow, maybe embellish the details. For once, I win.

“Shut up.” Amy pushed her with one of her wings. “Don’t go changing back into old Richard. You’ve gotta be nice about it.”

“Uh…” She looked up. “Okay, fine. I’ll be nice to him. But in exchange, you have to shower with me.”

This time Amy was the one to look thoughtful. Then she shrugged. “Why wouldn’t—” Then Richard kissed her. She probably figured it out after that.

* * *

They met Cody for lunch at the usual time, when he was off from work at the power plant. Cody was the only one with a “real” job, which also meant he was usually the one to pay for what they did. Well, he usually just bought Amy’s food, but this time he paid for all three of them, bringing over a huge container of hayfries along with their usual milkshakes and burgers.

Richard hadn’t felt hungry when she first woke up, but she felt hungry now, levitating the whole tray over to her mouth and lowering her head like she really had been changed into a cow and it was feeding time.

“Guess you two had a busy night,” Cody said from across the table. The only one sitting on that side. “What’d you do to her, Amy?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Amy said, expression flat.

Cody’s expression was almost worth the price of the embarrassment that flooded her at the implications. She might be pretty clueless sometimes, but she was no Joe. She could tell what Amy was implying.

But what did I expect? I didn’t have to do this.

“Well, uh…” He took a long sip from his milkshake. “That’s great, you two. I guess that means that you’re both…” He touched his front hooves together. “An item?”

“Yep.” Richard’s mouth was still full of food, so she couldn’t answer before Amy did. “Yep. Rich and I are… together. My first girlfriend. I think her’s too?”

“Yeah.” She finally finished chewing, straightening in her chair. “Mine too.”

“Alexandria will not fucking believe this,” he said, after a long pause. “Richard, of all people... I can’t believe it. I’m happy for you both, don’t get me wrong. But…”

“Don’t even start.” Richard cut him off. “I know what you’ll say. I don’t know how long I’m gonna stay. But Amy convinced me to try it. I don’t want you acting even a little bit different until we’re done.”

“Really?” Cody’s eyebrows went up, and he stuck out his hoof. “You owe me three chits for lunch.”

“Except that,” she corrected. “I will permit you to pay for my meals like a gentleman. But nothing else.”

Cody rolled his eyes, and Amy giggled. There was a long, confusing moment, while the two of them just looked at each other. Richard stared, trying to make sense of it—but there wasn’t any magic. No telepathy was hidden in their changing expressions. Even though it seemed like there should be.

“Well, I got you this.” Cody reached around and stuck his nose in his saddlebags, lifting a tightly folded bit of paper onto the table. It looked like maybe twenty pages, printed on yellowing pre-Event sheets. “I got it from my mom. It’s her early journal entries. The ones that, uh… talk about what you’re going through. She thought it might help.”

“Oh, thanks.” Richard levitated them over, though in reality she had no intention of even opening the bundle. She stopped when it was halfway there, holding it in the air between them. “Wait, you told Alex?”

Amy shoved her with her wing again. “Stupid, we saw her last night. She already knew.”

Cody rose to his hooves. There was something strange about his tone—something Richard had never heard from Cody before. She didn’t know what it was. Whatever he was feeling, Cody obviously wanted to leave. “It’s not my mom you have to worry about, Richard. It’s yours.”

He left.

Richard and Amy ate in awkward silence after that, though Richard did most of the eating. Amy didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.

“He’s right,” Amy said, after a long time. “When you go home… are you ready?”

“Nah.” She shook her head, grinning. “I figured it out. I just won’t go home. Cody can get my laptop… I don’t really care about anything else. I’ll just live with you, like you said. You’ve got everything I’d need… I can keep going to school, help you keep the place up…”

“Really?” Amy looked like Christmas had come early. “You mean that?”

“Yep.”

And so it was. Richard had Cody collect some of her stuff—a little more than just the laptop, but not that much more. Amy lived in a cheap apartment right across the street from the University, so she didn’t have to walk as far to class. Yeah, the apartment had less amenities than her parents’ massive mansion, but having fewer beds and showers was an advantage in her mind, not a detriment.

Aside from what they did together, living with Amy wasn’t all that different from living at home. Both Moriah and Amy were obsessive about humans, talking about them constantly. The biggest difference was that Amy didn’t wish she was one of them, she only liked reading about them.

It was an important difference.

The three days Richard spent with Amy were the best of her whole life. Then Moriah found out.

It didn’t happen in Amy’s apartment—that would’ve made things too easy. Maybe it might’ve ended differently if she’d been able to get away.

But she hadn’t been in the apartment, Rich had been at the store, getting ingredients for Amy to use to make their dinner (just because she was a mare now didn’t mean Rich didn’t have standards about her mate). By then, just about everypony in town had heard about her. She hadn’t changed her habits at all, still spent her time with the same ponies, and sat in her same seat in school. It had only been a matter of time.

Moriah cornered her in the back of the store, by the cooler. There were no other ponies around—few did their shopping a few minutes before the store closed. Richard had meant to do it earlier, right after school. But she’d been tired, and distracted, and that hadn’t worked out.

Then the lights went out. Well, the back lights did, along with the cooler. Moriah stepped out from the aisle leading around the corner to the rest of the store. Her horn already glowed from beneath the prosthetic.

“Hello Richard,” she said, her tone icy. “We have to talk.”

“Just Rich,” she muttered, backing up as her mother advanced. “I’m… Amy suggested I just go by Rich.”

“That’s interesting,” she said. “That’s really interesting.” There was no anger in her voice, no emotion of any kind on her face. She looked colder than Rich had ever seen her. “Did you really think I would allow this?”

“I don’t…” she began. “I’m not committing to anything. Just trying a few weeks with—”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said. “You’ve been manipulated, son. Everything about pony magic is a trick. You’re not the first one to be fooled by poison joke. There was a woman, ended up a shark… she got away. Right into the ocean, before we could cure her. Far as anyone knows, she’s still out there. Tricked into becoming a monster. Just like you.”

Rich’s flank touched the chilly wall of the cooler. Where was the owner of the store? Hadn’t Stockroom noticed the lights were going out? Rich thought about calling for help, but decided against it. Moriah was a powerful unicorn, with the most powerful unicorn in the world as her husband. She knew enough magic to level city blocks, prosthetic horn or none. What was some dumb earth pony going to do to stop her?

Moriah levitated a bottle out of her saddlebags. Rich recognized it at once as the potion she’d bought to cure this, back when she’d thought she would only stay this way one night. She removed the cork with her magic. “I’m going to save you, son,” she said. “There was no saving what those fucking horse monsters did to me. Only Joseph knows how, and he won’t teach me. But you? You I can save.” She kept getting closer.

Rich tried to push the bottle away, but her magic might as well have been a gnat. Moriah dispelled it without looking like it cost her a second’s concentration.

“I won’t drink it!” she protested, loud enough that she was sure ponies would hear. They had to! “You can’t make me.”

“Funny thing about this potion.” Moriah smiled at her, her first real emotion since walking into the store. It was the most terrifying thing Rich had ever seen. “I don’t have to.” She smashed the side of the bottle against a nearby shelf with such force the entire top half broke free. Then she brought the rest down in a violent jerk, pointing it at Rich.

She was completely soaked by the brownish sludge. She could feel its magic begin immediately, though she couldn’t identify it.

“I don’t blame you,” Moriah said. “You thought ahead, bought yourself this.” She dropped the empty bottle to the ground, letting it shatter. “Obviously this wasn’t meant to be permanent. I smoked pot when I was a teenager, can’t blame you for trying something forbidden. You’ll thank me once the damage wears off. And considering your friends were going to let you do this to yourself, maybe you’ll think about making some real ones.” She vanished with a faint flash of light, and the lights flickered to life.

Rich ran out back, past the edge of the store, and jumped in the lake as quickly as she could. Maybe if she could wash it off… but no, she hadn’t done it in time. An hour later, and the magic was reversed. And I can't get more Potion... I'm not afraid anymore. It won't work.

Richard floated in the lake alone and cried until it got dark.

Author's Note

And here we have the second half of Sparktail's Patreon minific submission. Again, thanks so much for your support! PaP suggestions in particular are always fun to write, even if they don't always work out for the characters involved.

Poison Bloke

Richard was moving out. He already hadn’t been living at home for some time, not for the weeks he had been living with Amy. But now, now that he was welcome to return if he wanted to, Richard intended to never see the house again.

Moriah probably wanted to stop him. She’d been fuming up and down the mansion for the better part of a day, as soon as she realized what he was doing. But he was an adult now, a citizen of Alexandria as much as anyone else. Her power might be tremendous but trying to force him was a crime.

She wasn’t vindictive about it. Richard had heard horror stories from the ponies in Amy’s freakshow bar, of parents or other “loved ones” who had tried a scorched earth policy to retain control of the ponies in their lives. If Moriah tried to stop him from taking what little possessions he had, he probably would’ve had to go to his father for help.

Well, he was anyway. But Moriah wasn’t being like that. No—that would’ve given Richard the excuse of more righteous anger to make the transition easier. Instead—once she calmed down—Moriah started following him. She didn’t interfere as he packed things away—camping supplies, mostly, or anything he thought might have some value in trade. Instead, she tried to persuade him.

“I know this seems awful now, but it will get better.” Didn’t have much impact on him. Though some of the other things she said almost persuaded him. “If Amy really cared about you, she wouldn’t expect you to change for her,” and “I know exactly what it feels like. But you shouldn’t change so much about yourself for something as fleeting as a relationship. You’re young, Richard. You don’t understand how short these things last. What would’ve happened six months from now when Amy moved on to some other girl? Same exact thing. I just made it easier, that’s all. Before the bones in your mind could all set improperly and need to be broken again.”

Richard was not persuaded. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, when his saddlebags were packed with everything of wealth or practical value he owned. “But this is it. Probably goodbye. Maybe forever, I don’t know. I’m leaving Alexandria.”

“It won’t be—” Moriah cut herself off. She stared at him for a long moment, apparently considering his words. Then she sighed, and hugged him. He tensed visibly, expecting some violence, but there was none there. “Be safe, son. I don’t know what you think, but you’ll always have a place here. No matter what happens out there.”

She sounded sincere, but Richard didn’t believe her. He left.

His father hadn’t even been there for any of that adventure—Joseph spent most of his time in the university these days, attending to increasingly esoteric magical concerns. The last time he’d been meaningfully interested in Richard’s life, at least in his mind, was when Richard had managed to get into an advanced spellcasting course he was teaching. But he didn’t have the same talent for the arcane his father did, and that was obvious. He hadn’t passed the class.

And by the end, he hadn’t wanted to.

Mystic Rune was easy to find—his laboratory was the place with the most “no access” signs, most of which penned by Joseph himself with poor grammar or punctuation. The school didn’t have guards, or anything else that might actually enforce the ban, so Richard just followed the signs to their source.

He could feel the magic seething around the former chemistry lab. There was so much of it in places that bits of wall or table had gone clear and crystalline, calcified into something Richard knew was called ‘Tass.’ Mystic Rune himself appeared to be tinkering with a chunk of quartz crystal wrapped in copper wire, which he’d suspended with lots of plastic arms and was yelling at like it was one of his students.

He didn’t notice Richard enter. He stayed back at first, wary of spells that might go flying in a lab like this if he wasn’t careful. They weren’t likely to be the subtle, mocking kind that poison joke might perform on you, but the “smoldering corpse” sort. Strange how big Mystic Rune had seemed while Richard was growing up. Now he realized he was taller than his father, who didn’t look any older. Was that strange? Nopony in Alexandria really looked older. Twenty years just wasn’t enough time when compared to the lifespan of a pony.

“Dad,” he said, as soon as Mystic Rune fell silent and didn’t look like he was casting something. “I need to talk to you.”

The stallion spun around to face him, looking angry—but then he saw who had spoken, and only looked confused. “Richard. Can’t you read the signs? Nobody’s supposed to be in here, it’s dangerous.”

He ignored the question. Can’t you see what I’m wearing? But then, his father hadn’t reacted. He could see, he just couldn’t understand. “I need your help with something magical, Dad. There isn’t anyone in Alexandria better at this stuff than you are.”

“Okay.” Mystic Rune adjusted his tweed vest, straightened his bow tie, then sat down on his haunches. “What is it?”

“I need a permanent transformation spell,” he said, suddenly looking down at the ground. He couldn’t look Joseph in the face while talking about things like this. “The permanent part is important.”

“For an object, or something alive?” Joe asked. “The former is easy; the latter is almost impossible.”

“Why?” He hoped he didn’t sound too desperate, too angry. “Ponies are saying you’re the best wizard in the world! If Equestria changed you permanently, then surely you can change just one pony.”

“I did say almost.” Joseph turned away from him, crossing over to a huge sliding whiteboard. He slid it up, revealing several more covered with writing, until he found a layer that was clean. “An object’s pattern is fixed, but anything alive is always changing. That change erodes the spell over time, and eventually it collapses. Living things want to be what they are. Even if they’re too dumb to want anything, like a flower or a fish.”

Richard followed him carefully to the whiteboard, careful to step nowhere that his father didn’t walk first. There were so many machines in here, each of which buzzed with power. He couldn’t even imagine what each of them might do if triggered accidentally.
“I know how it’s done, academically,” his father went on. “You have to trick the pattern into thinking it was meant to be that way all along. Sort of like… getting vines to grow up a wall. Or something. Is that a good analogy?” He didn’t wait for a response. “That kind of magic is difficult, though. It’s called the practice of Dynamics. I haven’t figured it out. I only know one pony who has.”

He levitated something off the shelf—an old almanac. He spun through the pages until he settled on a map of the southern part of the planet, pointing at a particular spot on it. “Right there. That’s where she is.”

“That’s… Antarctica,” Richard muttered. “Sky said penguins lived there when I was in kindergarten. I don’t think I’ve thought about that place since.”

Joe shrugged. “Maybe penguins do live there. But there’s an Alicorn down there. A… a powerful magical being, who knows the art better than I do. For now. She hasn’t moved from about there ever since I set up my thaumic seismograph.”

“How do you know who it is? If she’s never moved, she can’t have visited you…”

Joe shrugged. “I just know it’s a she because Alicorns always seem to be. In Equestria, anyway. The men with the ambition always seemed to roll over and let them take what they wanted. So, it’s probably a she.”

“And she could change me?” Richard asked, voice low. “Permanently? Not just for a few hours.”

“More than that, Dynamics isn’t really that hard… yes, though. What are you trying to change?”

Richard didn’t answer. Instead, he embraced his father, perhaps for the last time. “Can I take your map?” He didn’t wait for permission, just ripped those two pages right out of the book as he left. “Goodbye, Dad. Thanks for everything.”

He wasn’t all that surprised that Mystic Rune was too stunned to reply.

He made his way through the streets, conscious all the time of the stares he got, particularly around the university. His little adventure with Amy had been a minor scandal in Alexandria, at least once word got out of what he’d done. Nonstandard relationships weren’t terribly controversial in a world where everyone had been transformed into aliens—but using magic to do it was more extreme than most were willing to go. Poison Joke in particular had a bad reputation.

I won’t care about any of you for much longer. Richard pretended not to hear them, ignored their talk about his dramatic capture and Moriah’s “treatment” not long after.

Eventually he reached the lower-end apartments, where he’d been living with Amy for their weeks together. She wouldn’t be at work today. This was Richard’s last chance to convince her.

Richard knocked loudly, though a week ago he would’ve just let himself in. But Amy had been as hurt by this as anyone, and probably wouldn’t be happy about that anymore.

She opened the door after a few seconds of persistence, emerging with a bedraggled mane and bags under her eyes. In less than a second, she was more discerning than his father. “Threw you out?”

“No,” he said. “I left.”

“Richard…” She was the first one to look away from him. “Richard, you know I’m not… we can’t keep going the way we were. I wish we could, but—”

He silenced her with a gesture. “I know. But there’s another way. Mystic Rune told me about it. I can fix this.”

“Come in,” she gestured. “You can tell me about it.”

And he did. Amy was much less impressed than he’d been expecting. “Richard—” She pointed at the map. “That’s the south pole. Do you have any idea how far that is?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, maybe… three times the distance to St. Louis? Maybe four times?”

“No.” She removed a pencil from the table, laying it across the map. “At this scale, St. Louis is about… a centimeter away. This pencil doesn’t even reach that far. It’s so far away that even before the Event our powerful ancestors with their machines and wisdom barely ever went there.” She pointed again. “Most of this map is ocean. You can’t even swim!”

He shrugged. “So what? Ships go in and out of New York. I’ll… I’ll go there! I’ll pay for a ride down… it can’t be that hard.”

“It’s impossible,” Amy argued. “Look, Rich. I wish it wasn’t true. I wish there was a way to get to that magical… whoever’s down there. But there’s not. There’s a reason ponies like your mom didn’t get to change back. We are what we are. Eventually… we just have to accept that.”

“Yeah?” Richard rose, puffing out his chest. “What happens when I do it? What happens when I prove you wrong? I’m going to go to the end of the world for you, Amy! It’ll be just like one of those stories you like. Your handsome prince, returning with tales of glory.”

“Well, handsome princess,” Amy corrected. “But… those are just stories, Richard. They’re for fun. I know they didn’t really happen.”

“I hope you’ll wait for me,” Richard said, shoving back from the table and heaving his pack back onto his shoulders. “I’ll be back, one day. I’ll prove everyone wrong.” He left, hiding his tears all the way out.

It was a long journey—more difficult than anything Richard could’ve imagined. His younger self could not possibly have conceived of the dangers he would face. The walk down to St. Louis nearly killed him, as did the year he worked in a warehouse to pay for passage to New York.

He learned many things in the next few decades. He learned his mother had been right—but she’d been wrong too. He learned that he was stronger than he thought.

He had many adventures—made new friends and knew them as he had never bothered to know his old ones. He forgot the reason for his quest—or maybe it had never been a good reason to begin with.

A little over a century after leaving Alexandria, Richard’s ship the Enduring Favor went down just south of New Zealand, and no more was heard of him again.

Many, many years later, a strange creature walked through the streets of Alexandria. He had arrived by train, though no one would say from where. He looked strange—a little like a unicorn, but with slick skin instead of fur, and a fishlike tail. He brought more magic with him than common ponies, and whenever he spoke he seemed to sing, too.

He looked old—lean and withdrawn. But he looked so strange, nopony could tell what he was, much less how old he might be. Nopony asked.

The creature made only three stops. First—to the Alexandria department of public records, where he looked up a few old newspapers and obituaries. Then to a flower shop, where he bought a few bouquets of white flowers. Finally, he reached the graveyard.

The strange creature visited only two graves that day—or rather, one grave and one monument. One was located in a prominent section of the city’s graveyard, with many statues and lots of flowers.

The specific marker he had come to visit had none, though. He knew why—she had no children and had lived most of her life away from her extended family. The message carved into the stone had been cut there by hoofwriting he recognized well—Alex’s.

She was loved by all who met her. The sweetest things end the soonest, but their memory endures forever.

The stranger swept the monument with magic, and left it overflowing with flowers. “You were right. I never did make it. I guess you found your princess closer to home.”

The second monument was tucked further away, without a husband and with only a single child’s memorial nearby. There were a few offerings here, dried from a recent festival. The stranger replaced them with fresh flowers, and spent a few hours humming the words of a mournful tune.

No one dared speak with him.

When the morning came, the stranger boarded the express train for St. Louis, never to return.

Author's Note

So this chapter was written on my patreon at the request of users Lightwavers. Thank you so much for your support! Sadly that could not mean a different ending for poor Richard.

Good Timing.

Lonely day wanted to strangle somepony. She wasn’t sure who to target, wasn’t sure if she would even get the chance. But it was exactly what she wanted.

It wasn’t all that unusual for her to receive anonymous gifts. Her work with the HPI created a fair number of refugees who would remember her face, even if at the time they would’ve been far more concerned with simple survival. But when years passed, once they secured themselves in what was left of the earth, many wanted to express their gratitude.

Even if Alex did nothing to advertise her presence, it wasn’t hard for them to find her. She lived in a tiny guest-house on Cloudy’s property, where she could come and go at strange hours without waking anypony in the main property. Besides, building it had been great practice for another home she maintained, one that would have to last for far longer.

This gift had arrived like any other, waiting on her doorstep when she stepped out in the morning. A simple bouquet of white flowers, with a few tiny blue blossoms tucked away on the inside of the paper sleeve, making the whole thing glow with a gentle pastel blue when she held it up to the light.

Alex did the same thing to it she always did, cleaning out an empty vase and setting it up in her living room. Keeping flowers like this was excellent practice for an earth pony honing their craft, and Equestrian lore suggested that a skilled florist could keep them alive indefinitely. Alex washed an oversized human vase, settled it on her pony-height windowsill, and filled it with fresh water. The water ran, to her pride, and came out sparkling. Thanks to the work of thousands of ponies, Alexandria still resembled a city as she knew one, even if their old-world relics broke down.

It was only when she wrapped her lips gently around the stems that she tasted something off. Six decades of life had given her occasion to eat many things, including flowers. But she’d never tasted that flavor. For a pony with a perfect memory, that was concerning.

She dropped the vase on instinct, eyes widening as the possibilities blurred through. Was it another assassination attempt? Didn’t they realize those didn’t stick?

Alex ran to the cupboard, where a slim white pouch marked with three letters rested beside her cans of vegetarian chili. It unzipped as she got close, opening to reveal the bevy of drugs inside. “Your life signs read—”

She didn’t hear what the HPI emergency doctor said, because at that moment the magic took effect. She dropped to the ground, mewling and kicking at the wood. It took only a few seconds, seconds of indescribable sensations. It was like someone had tossed her into a campfire.

As quickly as it came, the spell was finished. Alex groaned, blinking confused eyes and trying to stand—only to flop uselessly to one side. Wait a minute. I’ve been through this before. Had something just changed her back?

Impossible. If something undid the preservation spell, I’d be dying right now. But she wasn’t in pain, even the transformation hadn’t been painful so much as disorienting. She could still see fur when she looked down at her foreleg. Even if it didn’t look quite right.

Am I a… biped? Alex closed her eyes, trying in vain to remember what it was like to stand on two legs. Her perfect memory didn’t extent to her brief human life, and what she remembered of it was no clearer than any geriatric might have of their childhood. Something like…

She rose to her hooves, sort of. Her legs didn’t work quite right—obviously she remembered less about walking on two legs than she thought. It wasn’t falling forward from one step to the next, it was more of a hop, bracing both legs and lunging forward a little, using her arms to balance the jump. Was that right?

She had a mirror in her bathroom, the only one in the house. It was best to look at herself as little as possible. She loped over, keeping one foreleg against the wall when she could. She tried to curl fingers around the edge of the table, or the top of a chair, but that wasn’t working quite right either. If this is what hands are like, my memory is bucked up. They were way nicer than this.

She kicked the bathroom door open, having to stand up on her tiptoes to reach the lights. Humans aren’t smaller than ponies.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, eyes glazing over as she saw…

She was a rabbit, apparently a fairly large breed and enough control to hop on two legs. There were the gigantic ears, the tiny button nose, the stupid tail sticking out from behind her. But aside from being a rabbit, she wasn’t changed that much. Her colors were the same, her mane was the same, even her braid was the same as Amy had tied for her a week earlier.

“Uh…” She reached up, touching the huge teeth emerging from between her lips. “That’s… not great.” Except she spoke with a lisp, trailing the s. Her tone had been childish enough without butchering every word.

She felt her ears fold down in embarrassment as she saw the rest of her reflection, whimpering once. At least being a pony meant that her anatomy was out of sight, and that had helped her adjust to the nudity thing over the years. But like this—there it was in front of her, just like her ancient human self remembered.

“You’re bucking kidding me.”

She turned to one side, trying a few more steps—now that she knew what she was dealing with, she didn’t fall over. She couldn’t walk, only shuffle uselessly forward. Or hop, pushing off with comically oversized paws and landing a stride ahead.

“Why would…” she landed beside the flowers, spread where she’d dropped them beside the paper wrap. Now that it was removed, she could see a note written on the inside, one she hadn’t been able to see when she unwrapped it.

Enjoy the holiday, Archive. And my flowers.

There was no signature, and she was utterly positive she’d never seen that handwriting before. She looked down, sniffing at the flowers. They were closer to her now—if she had to guess, she was about the same height as a foal, and about half the size in general.

She hadn’t smelled them before, but now that they were unwrapped, the poison joke overwhelmed the roses. “I though we got rid of you.” She said, glowering down at the little blue flowers. They didn’t respond.

At least I didn’t eat any. There were rumors—just rumors—that the changes they caused when injected couldn’t be cured.

The cure recipe filled her mind, as fresh as if she’d recently made it. But it didn’t matter. Today was Easter, and the school was shut down. Even if she could somehow get halfway across town as a rabbit, she didn’t like her chances of taking Joe away from his video games on a holiday to brew her a cure.

I’m stuck until tomorrow, she thought. Fantastic.

First things first. Alex hurried to the fireplace, having to hop up on the bricks beside it to reach the handles and pull it open. She reached forward, gathering lumps of small sticks in her mouth. They tumbled out all over the floor. “Not this again!” she whined, one leg thumping rapidly against the brick in agitation. She reached for the sticks with her paws, but they didn’t have thumbs or even fingers. She could dig a hole with these, but not start a fire.

“Great. Something worse than being a pony.” Alex hopped down off the fireplace, finding she settled naturally onto four legs when she jumped down from something taller than she was. The position felt natural, and a few more steps reinforced that. Push off with her hindlegs, catch herself with her forelegs, then push off again.

Alex stopped beside the flowers, lifting them up into her mouth and loping back to the fireplace. Even if she couldn’t burn them now, she could at least get them out of the way. Other ponies didn’t have to suffer because she’d been exposed.

She couldn’t bleach the floor, even if there was a bottle under her sink. She’d just have to hope there wasn’t enough pollen. Now, who can help me. There was only one answer—the same pony who always helped her.

Alex stood up, gripping the door with difficulty between her forelegs. The knob was meant to be opened by mouth, I the earth pony way. But her paws didn’t have quite the gripping strength. At least not until she braced her legs up against the doorframe and kicked. It swung open slowly, letting the midmorning sun spill in.

And lots of other smells. Chickens in the yard, which her nose passed over as quickly as usual. Then her guard dog, a little less so.

Sadie was a husky mix, a puppy Cloudy had received along with a foal she’d adopted recently. She was taller than Alex even when she was a pony. But now—there was danger in the air. This was predator’s territory. The grass wasn’t worth it here. She should run somewhere else.

Alex shook her head once, landing on four paws again and edging forward on the wooden deck. How far away was Cloudy’s house, really?

With her head so low to the ground, it looked like a mile. Grass stretched away into the distance, with a tall wooden fence separating the house from the rest of town. Alex the pony could jump it easily. At half that size, Alex the bunny couldn’t imagine landing it.

She ran. Even if the motion had nothing in common, this at least was something her pony self could relate to. It was like galloping, but moreso. Her powerful legs flung her several body-lengths forward, where she could briefly catch herself with her forepaws and push off again another second later. She smiled despite herself, feeling her braid stream out behind her as the house rushed up to meet her.

She was moving so fast she nearly smacked directly into Sadie. The dog dropped low, baring her teeth and growling at her—a towering monster compared to what she was used to.

Alex squealed in surprise, making a panicked sound that was neither pony nor human as she rolled to one side. Her body turned much sharper than a pony could’ve, twisting in near ninety-degrees directly past the dog. She didn’t stop to think, couldn’t try to tell apart the happy barks from the protective sounds it made when strangers got too close to the house. She just ran.

She felt Sadie following more than she saw her, through the thumping whenever her paws connected with the ground. She squeaked and pushed herself as fast as she could, little heart beating several times as fast as any pony could manage.

Oh god what if she eats me right now Cloudy will have a heart attack. Idon’thaveacutiemarkmaybeiwon’tcomebackohgod—

She felt teeth closing around her and she kicked out desperately, pushing straight up instead of sideways. Something closed around her fluffy tail, shortening it painfully—but she kept going. Instead of moving forward, she fell in a wide arc, landing on the other side of the porch railing.

Sadie stopped, sniffing at her and glowering, but she was too big to fit through. She’d have to run to the back to get around. “Stop chasing me!” Alex pleaded, her voice coming in agonized gasps. Her old Huan would’ve recognized her instantly, she was sure of it. He’d been the smartest dog she ever knew.

Sadie tilted her head to the side, like she’d understood.

But just for a second. Instead of running to the backyard to try to get up, she jumped, landing with her forelegs on the railing and scrambling with her hindlegs to push her up.

Shit! Alex bolted as fast as she could, running for the front door. It was already swinging open, maybe she could get—

Sadie was right behind her, growling furiously. I’m just a bunny! Why do you hate me so much?

“Sadie, what’s going on sweetie?” Cloudy asked, her voice reproving. “I don’t see anything on the street. Are you barking at the delivery truck again?”

Alex landed beside her legs a second later, staring up at Cloudy from much lower than she ever had before. Her fur felt rougher, her voice lower, but none of that matter. She darted behind her, pressing herself desperately against her friend and cowering. “She’s trying to kill me!” she squeaked. “I didn’t do anything!”

Cloudy Skies stopped dead, eyes glazing over in confusion. Sadie didn’t, and she kept charging straight on, only skidding to a halt on her claws when she nearly bit into her master. She lowered her head, barking so loudly at Alex that her ears started ringing.

“Sadie, sit,” Cloudy ordered. The dog was only slightly shorter than she was, and weighed about the same. But in spite of everything, she sat. Her barks relaxed into a constant low growl, baring her teeth at Alex.

“Now, did I hear something?” Cloudy took a step back, dragging her with her along the floor. She backed all the way inside, letting the screen door bang closed behind her. “What are…” She pushed Alex to one side, ignoring Sadie’s wines from the other side of the door.

For a few seconds, Cloudy just stared down at her, just as shocked as she’d been before. “I didn’t know Alex was breeding me a pet. I guess she is full enough of herself to make it look like her.” She leaned forward, touching her brad with a gigantic nose. But where the dog outside smelled like danger, a pony only smelled safe. Only because she knew this one, obviously. They were friends, that was the only reason.

“Or maybe someone slipped her poison joke,” Alex said, lisp and all. “Did you maybe think about that?”

Cloudy winked, then turned to shut the front door and shut out Sadie’s sounds completely. “You always wonder what it will do to your friends,” she muttered. “I never thought it would make you something so, uh… topical?”

Alex rose onto two legs, clearing her throat and tapping one paw on the wood floor. It resonated with a thump each time she struck. “How about going for some help?”

Cloudy shook her head. “On any other day, maybe. But I’ve got a better idea.” She walked away, returning a few seconds later with a wicker basket in her teeth. She dropped it onto the floor beside Alex, as large as she was. “Maybe you could help me hide these?”

Alex stuck her tongue out, then kicked out with one leg. The basket slid slightly, not even falling over. “No.”

Cloudy’s response was interrupted by a faint crying sound from the kitchen. Cloudy left the basket behind, hurrying away towards the distressed foal.

It was Apollo, the baby refugee Cloudy had recently adopted.

Alex followed behind her, though she was beginning to doubt whether she would get any help from her friend. Maybe she’d just keep making jokes.

The foal sat on a low cushion in front of an even lower table, with a bottle now rolling slowly away.

“I don’t understand why you keep going through this,” Alex muttered. But most of that was her own frustration. Cloudy might’ve already asked her to help if she wasn’t a comparable size and even more useless.

Cloudy ignored her completely, but the foal didn’t. Apollo stopped crying, his eyes never leaving her. He grinned with only one tooth. “Bun!”

Cloudy set the bottle back down in front of him, but he didn’t so much as glance at it. “Bun,” she repeated, offering him the stuffed doll on the cushion beside him. An old human toy, meaning its coat had gone more gray than white. It was also the same size as Alex, though the shape was much less realistic. “There you go, sweetheart. Your bun.”

“Bun.” He shoved the doll aside, then pushed away from the table.

Pony infants had a few distinct advantages over their human counterparts—they were far less helpless. In less than a second, he was standing beside her, his off-orange coat glowing in the sun and his stubby wings extended uselessly. “Bun!”

“Yes,” she answered, exasperated. “Unfortunately.”

The foal leaned forward, nuzzling her affectionately. Alex finally relaxed, letting him do it. The foal was gentle enough that she didn’t feel threatened, with the same safe smell as cloudy. “You’re cute, Apollo. I’ll give you that.” She tried to push him away with a paw, unsuccessfully.

“Mine!” He wrapped one leg around her, pulling her in up against his chest.

“Be careful with her,” Cloudy cautioned. “She’s not a toy, Apollo.”

He just grinned back.

“Call Joe,” Alex muttered, her voice only partially muffled by the pony looming over her. “I want my antidote by tomorrow.”

Cloudy approached, looming over her. “How about we see how good you are at hiding those eggs first?”

Author's Note

Zutcha made me do it.

Catastrophic

Author's Note

So here we are, at the four-year anniversary of this little slice of fiction called PaP. This far out, the universe doesn't have the same attention on it that was here during its hayday. I've mostly finished with stories here, and there are only a handful of others still going. But every now and then inspiration strikes, and I just want to do something.

After my Message hardcover print ended successfully, I've been wanting to take all the lessons I learned and push them towards a print for the original last pony on earth, finding ways to get the price and shipping down so that it's more accessible for people in more places. My plan was to announce that project today.

Unfortunately the cover just wasn't ready in time. I didn't want to do the project in bits and pieces the way I did with Message, but get it right out all at once with the real books to see on the table from the beginning. That means we've got to wait until the art is finished for me to get the proof copies I would show off.

But since that wasn't possible to get done quite yet, I wanted to do something for the occasion. So here's a cute story about cats to go with the bunny story from last time. As before, it has its roots in a cute sketch Zutcha did, rather than any specific need to write this story. But it felt like I could do something fun with the idea, and I hope you agree.

Many of the stories of Last Pony on Earth may be finished--but for me, I expect them to remain a part of my life for many years to come.

Discord is still open, by the way. If you haven't already, stop in and say hello. The Event didn't come around this year, but... there's always next year.

-Starscribe

Catastrophic

Alex hopped along behind Cloudy, annoyance on her face. It wasn’t that she wanted to bounce along the floor like an animal. But Alexandria’s master wizard, the most skillful spellcaster in all the world, hadn’t made her cure.

“I meant to get to it,” Joseph said as they walked, in a tone that suggested he hadn’t thought about it once until they showed up at the door. “I was working on something else. Didn’t… get a chance.”

“We gave you a whole day!” Alex squeaked. She wasn’t sure her voice was even reaching the unicorn. Joseph had yet to respond to her, even once. “How is that not long enough?”

They descended another set of steps, past the first level of basements that had been here when they commandeered the high school, long ago. The construction here was cruder, with the marks of earth pony pickaxes and strangely melted rock where unicorn teleport had removed it. Rough I-beams of steel were placed at regular intervals along the walls, secured into concrete pilons meant to do something Alex didn’t understand. All she knew was how important she’d been told this was.

“The potions department is in the old gym, isn’t it?” Cloudy asked, her tone a little more subdued. “Why are we going u-underground?” She walked a little closer to Joseph, a detail the unicorn didn’t miss.

“Because we aren’t going to potions, we’re going to research,” he answered. “Like I said, I didn’t have time to brew your cure. This is a good opportunity to test something better. Potions are slow, and the somatic components are a scalability problem. Ideally we would use enchantment for everything—empowered by even stupid unicorns, and repeatable results each time.”

“I didn’t come here to be a test subject. I just want you to use the cure we know works and make me a pony again!” She tried to hop up onto Cloudy’s back, but she couldn’t quite make it. She had the height, but just not the aim. She fell short, landing on a nearby desk and knocking over several large stacks of paper as she rolled head-over-heels.

Joe did stop this time, looking down at her with annoyance. “Should we put her in a cage?” She felt something lifting her, a terrifying pressure from all sides. Magic was always scary, but most unicorns didn’t have the discipline to just pick up a whole pony. Joe lifted her into the air without any regard for the apparent drop underneath her.

Alex kicked and squealed. “Stop it, Joe! Stop it right now and let me down!”

“She doesn’t like that,” Cloudy said, reaching out with a wing to pat her on the head. “Shhh, Day. Deep breaths. You’re panicking, rabbits shouldn’t panic. You can die from it.”

“I’m not a fucking rabbit.”

Joe shrugged and released her in a flash of magic. She fell, and would’ve dropped all the way to the ground if Cloudy wasn’t there to catch her on her back.

They reached a locked door—solid steel, with complex cylinders connecting it to thick concrete around the outside and faint runes etched inside. Alex peeked up from Cloudy’s head, looking them up and down.

It was a complex security spell. Alex couldn’t tell what it was immediately, other than redirecting teleports from the outside to this spot. There was power here, enough to deep-fry a pony who tried to bypass its protection. She could feel it even in her stupid animal body.

The door swung open, permitting them into a lab that Alex had never seen before. There were a dozen tables and magical workbenches, with glowing crystals instead of electric lights. They ignored each of his tools, many of which resembled things she’d only seen drawn in Equestrian books. Joe had been busy recreating the apparatus of Equestrian science here, with remarkable fidelity. “Is this where those university appropriations checks keep going?”

But Joe didn’t answer her. Not as they reached the far wall, and a towering wire rack of crystals. Each one was a perfect cylinder, covered in runic markings too tightly scrawled for her to read. She could read the labels written on the shelves, saying things like “Water purification,” “spatial compression.”

Joe ignored both shelves, and many others with sensible names, lifting a cylinder off the back of a shelf called “Make Pokémon Real.” With only two other cylinders stored on it. Alex tensed, leaning a little closer to Cloudy. “You’re shitting me.”

“I don’t get it,” Cloudy said, with a little more tact. “That’s going to cure Alex?”

“Yes,” Joseph answered, turning away from them with the cylinder levitating along beside him. He seemed to be marching for the center of the room, where a complex crystal machine melded an entire rack of expensive servers and more Equestrian contraptions. “Well, it will when I multiply a few values by negative one. Unfortunately this line of research was largely unsuccessful… but maybe we can change that.”

He reached the machine, sliding the cylinder into place and stepping up to the controls. “Just go stand beside her on the pedestal,” he said, waving a casual hoof towards the center of the machine.

Cloudy obeyed without question, taking Alex with her along for the ride. “Are you sure I need to be here? I’m not a rabbit.”

Alex scanned the machine, trying to make sense of how it worked and what it was meant to do, but she’d never seen anything like it. Even reading every Equestrian book on magical research didn’t prepare her for this strange hybrid of supercomputer and spell. As Joseph worked the computer, a faint mist began to rise from the server rack, along with the mechanical sound of a pump and the rushing of fluid overhead.

“Positive,” Joseph agreed. “We’re just… repurposing a spell I made to… create more of something by copying species. Simple, really. No need for stupid potions if we just make her directly into a pony. Cast a spell, and I can go back to my work.”

“I don’t like this one bit,” Day whispered. “I’m an earth pony, not a pegasus. Copying you won’t work.”

Cloudy looked up. “That sounds like a shortcut, Joe. She’s not the same species as me. Shouldn’t we at least get an earth pony from upstairs?”

The crystals around the outside already began to glow, and the cylinder spun. As it did, faint mental prongs traced along its edge like a record, translating its tiny grooves into the motion of the huge pony apparatus all around them.

“Too slow,” Joe said, having to raise his voice over the machine. “I can’t think of any I trust with this place. At least you two have been here from the beginning. Anyway, hold still. It shouldn’t hurt. My last volunteer was only unconscious so they wouldn’t see their way down.”

“Wait, what?” Alex asked—before the magic hit her.

The spell lifted her right off Cloudy’s back, holding her frozen in the air. A shaft of light blasted from the far end of the machine, shining through several of the large crystals before aiming back at Cloudy. It shone so bright it passed through her, connecting the two of them in a single line of power.

Then she dropped. Instead of bumping and rolling awkwardly, this time at least she landed gracefully on her paws, feeling the magic wash over her. This wasn’t like the Poison Joke—unicorn magic and enchantment were natural things, and they weren’t painful. She felt her back stretch and bend back into place, her legs lengthen back into what she expected.

Finally, this nightmare is over. Alex closed her eyes, letting the rest of the transformation take its course. Her tail got longer, her face stretched, her ears shrunk back down. She’d been wrong to be worried about Joe’s laziness in not just brewing the cure properly. Maybe he knew what he was doing after all.

“Mystic Rune…” Cloudy squeaked from beside her. Her voice no longer seemed so big and far away, but coming from right beside her. It also sounded higher, and stretched somehow. “I don’t think this is right…”

Oh god. He switched us, didn’t he? She’s a bunny now too.

Alex opened her eyes, and nearly squeaked with fear at what she saw. There was a cat in front of her, all sharp teeth and predatory scents. Except that instead of any color she knew, this cat was soft pink, with a creamy underside and light blue… hair? Alex wasn’t sure the last time she’d seen a pink cat with cloud cutie marks.

Joseph didn’t seem any closer, still towering over her from his controls. Alex looked down, and instantly saw why. He still didn’t have her hooves back, but light green paws connected to her usual darker green coat. Her back arched, and something lifted high behind her. A tail, longer than anything she’d ever had.

“Joe, you really screwed this up. I’m a cat, Cloudy’s a cat… you’re going to fix this right bucking now.”

He finally looked up from his controls, eyes widening in horror. “Damnit, that is not what was supposed to happen. You’re both cats, err… I’m pretty sure I got all the variables.”

“I just said that,” Alex took a few cautious steps to the edge of the pedestal. She found they came much easier than movement had as a rabbit—her walking might be more fluid and graceful, but it was still walking, not the strange bounce-step-hop that she’d been stuck with for the last few days. “Cloudy, why is he being such a dick to me?”

“Because most ponies can’t understand animals?” She winced suddenly, looking up. “Muffins, that means me too now.” She leapt to the edge of the pedestal, waiving a paw up at Joe. “Hey, Mystic Rune! Could you please change us back?”

There was no eye contact, no sign of comprehension on his face. Just nervous fear. “This is bad, this is, uh… right. They aren’t acting like animals. There’s still a brain in there somewhere. Uh… you two! If you can still think at all, listen to me. I’m going to take samples from both of you, then… get you out of my lab before you get yourselves killed. Just… don’t die for a bit while I work it out?”

He aimed his horn at each of them in turn. Alex felt a faint pinch and several strands of her hair-mane-fur-whatever got ripped up by the roots, hissing faintly at the sensation. Cloudy only deflated at the touch, like someone had dumped a whole pitcher of water on her head.

“You aren’t going to change us back now?” Cloudy whimpered, settling onto her haunches on the edge of the pedestal. “Joe, there are young ponies at my house. My kids can cover for a day or two, but I can’t just…disappear. Foals need stability.”

As before, Joe didn’t seem to be watching her very closely, or listening enough to understand what she said. “Okay, that should be good. I’ve got to run some tests on these. I’ll… get you back when I’m ready?”

“Wait, stop!” Alex raised her voice, hopping up onto the controls beside him and baring her teeth. “Don’t even think about it! We’re staying right here until you fix this!”

His horn flashed, and the world was ripped out from under her.

Alex landed with a yowl, though as before she caught herself on her paws with ease. She looked around, and was at least relieved to see she wasn’t alone. Kitty Skies stood there, her back arched and eyes wide. But most importantly, she was about the same size—mirroring their species also did something for age, so that Alex hadn’t come out a kitten compared to her or anything.

“It’s like he wasn’t even trying,” Cloudy muttered, glaring down at the grass in front of them. Alex followed her gaze, and wasn’t all that surprised to see Joe had dumped them somewhere completely stupid.

They were standing outside City Hall, in the grassy garden on one side of the building where average citizens sometimes came to eat their lunch while on business, and the very poor could come to find it.

There were no ponies here now, just the grass and spring wildflowers. But there were dozens of ponies less than a hundred meters away, walking between the shops and structures of Alexandria’s downtown in the shadow of the university spire.

“Oh no, are you saying that it’s frustrating to have a pony not take it seriously when you’re in danger?” Alex began to circle around her, her tail flicking back and forth behind her as she grew more confident. The grass rose most of the way up her legs in most places, where ponies hadn’t come to eat it in some time. But that was fine, it just meant they’d be harder to see from the street. Besides—if she listened, she could hear little juicy things moving in the grass. “At least he didn’t make us, like… hide plastic eggs or something first.”

“It was Easter!” Cloudy squeaked in protest, though her ears were flattened to her head. “What do you want me to say?”

Alex thought about what would satisfy her, but then she realized that she was already behind Cloudy, and the cat wasn’t looking at her. She wouldn’t see it coming.

Alex jumped, pushing her to the ground in a pounce that sent them rolling through the spring growth. Alex put her mouth near her neck for a second, just long enough to hold her down against her squirming. Cloudy Skies might not have wings anymore, or be a pegasus, but she still felt lighter somehow.

“You win!” she mewed. “Quit it, Day!”

She let go, nudging Cloudy up with her nose. “Next time, you’re going to help me right away, won’t you?”

“Yes, Day. Promise.”

“Good.” She pointed off into the grass, where something warm and juicy was hiding from them. “Stay here. I’m going to sneak up from the back and lead it this way. If you catch it, we can share, kay?”

Cloudy’s mouth hung open. “You’re… what are you talking about?”

“Smell it,” Alex crept slowly away through the grass, lowering her voice to a whisper. “And listen. Are you hungry or not?”

As it turned out, Cloudy was hungry. But two mice, one canary, and a squirrel later, and they were less so. More than once a group of ponies would walk nearby, either to enjoy the garden or just to cross it to the street on the other side of the square. Alex and Cloudy darted for cover in every case, sheltering beneath the larger bushes. They were lean and quick, and any ponies who did glance their way were too slow to stop them.

Until another predator came. Alex could smell it before she even saw it, even if her nose didn’t quite know how to make sense of it. Her old perfect memory mixed with instinct, and she ended up freezing still on an old concrete bench as a dark figure approached from the amber glow of evening streetlights.

He was completely black, with openings in his legs and lots of little scratches on his coat. Alex recognized him instantly, and for a moment forgot about the complex work of establishing their territory here in city hall against the cat smells further out.

This predator hadn’t come to compete with them, but his size made him demand respect. “Well this is interesting. The pony I seek isn’t at home, but here I find a cat with her cutie mark on a bench.”

“There’s no point,” Cloudy mewed from the ground beside the bench. “Changelings can’t ever talk to animals.”

Indeed, Chip glanced once down at Cloudy, eyes widening slightly. “That’s not a cat color either. Curious.”

“Chip!” Alex rose to her paws, pacing back and forth in front of him. “We need help! The University Headmaster dumped us here… I smell big bad things everywhere! Can you help us get to… somewhere safe? There’s not much shelter, and I smell tomcats everywhere.”

“Won’t work,” Cloudy said from the ground, a little louder this time. “Don’t bother, Day. He just thinks we look funny.”

Chip glanced once over his shoulder, at the mostly empty streets. Empty of ponies, though there were other things. Stray dogs, cats, a thestral or two. But none seemed to be watching the garden.

There was a brief flash of light from in front of them, blinding Alex’s sensitive cat-eyes. The changeling was gone.

Wait, no, not gone. Something hopped up on the bench beside her, a soot-black cat with a few patches of white on his muzzle. A tomcat, twice her size and a powerful, confident smell. Don’t be afraid. He’s Riley’s male, he won’t do anything to you.

“Never been a cat before,” he said, yawning and stretching. “I’m not sure I like it.”

“Says the changeling,” Cloudy hopped up from the ground, settling on Alex’s other side and baring her teeth. “What do you want?”

Chip winced, ears flattening. He backed up, near the edge of the bench.

Not this again. “Wait!” Alex bounced towards him, wrapping one forepaw around his so he couldn’t get away. “You understood her! Don’t run off, we need help!”

He stopped, relaxing. “For you, Alex. But I don’t think I can dispel this? Whatever’s on you is on good. Stronger magic than a changeling could break.”

“I know,” she let go of him, grinning. “Do you think you could take us to the university? If we don’t stay close to Joe, he’ll forget and not cure us. We need to pester him constantly.”

“I guess so,” Chip glanced at Cloudy one more time, eyes narrowing. “Will she let a changeling help you?”

“Yes,” she winced, lowering her head apologetically. “I’m sorry, uh… Chip, you said? I just… today didn’t go the way it was supposed to, okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “Fine. Good enough I guess. Now come on.” He hopped down off the edge of the bench, tail raised high. “I think the university is this way?”

Alex hurried after him, having to move quicker to keep up with those long tomcat legs. “Aren’t you going to change back? We’d be safer with a changeling.”

“Maybe,” he grinned eagerly. “But I don’t think it’s fair to judge a form with just a few minutes, you know? Being a cat might be useful.”

“Great,” Cloudy said, from his other side. Without prompting, they both fell into step behind him, a signal to any other animals that might be watching: they were already taken.

At least she wasn’t alone this time.

Unwanted Crown

Author's Note

Sparktail made me do it. Zutcha might've inspired this though. You'll see why.

Unwanted Crown

“It’s been the same for the last three nights,” Alex said, staring down at the floor. Jackie’s little corner of their shared room had all the lights covered, and survived only on the glow that came in through the crack in the door.

But the bat seemed true to her name—she hadn’t once bumped into anything or expressed regret about making it so dark. “It doesn’t get any better. I’m always in the same place, I’m always… well, you’d have to see it. But it’s bad, and it’s making it hard to work during the day.”

She yawned exaggeratedly, shaking her tail and staring up towards the bat. Jackie was older than she was, but her gratitude at being saved still carried quite a lot of weight.

“The same nightmare every night?” Jackie repeated, circling around her with an almost clinical expression. But whatever she was looking for, Alex lacked the magic to guess. Her wings had granted her flight, not the magic of bats. “I thought you knew everything, Alex? Just cast a spell. Do what you did for me.”

“There aren’t any spells for it,” Alex said, voice tentative. “I mean… none I know of. It’s not… the sort of problem ponies had to deal with. There are spells for a dreamless sleep, but that screws you up over time. I’d rather… tackle the problem at the source.”

“And you can’t tell me anything solid about this nightmare because… it’s always changing?” Jackie suggested. “It’s changing too fast? I guess that makes as much sense as—”

Alex cut her off, raising a wing. She might not be able to fly or do anything useful with them, but at least they were good for times like this. “You just have to see. I’ve tried all the basic spells I can think of, and nothing helps. I need an oneiromancer.”

Jackie shrugged. “That’s… optimistic language to use for someone who’s only solved their own problems with dream magic, and only with your help.”

“Well… you’ve got the magic,” Alex said. “And you could do more than that. A lot more. The ponies of Equestria never really dug into that magic much, but there’s no reason you have to repeat their mistakes.”

“Tonight,” Jackie said. “I’ll help you. But I’m going to need you to cut it with the vague shit. I know it’s bothering you… I need a lot more than that if you want a solution. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, looking away. “You’ll recognize it when you see it, trust me.”

Alex didn’t have much free time working in Paradise Crater. Mostly it was engineering—overhauling their reactor prototypes and getting ever-closer by the day to truly sustainable fusion. That moment might not be far away at all, but it took so much of her time that she returned home from work every day drained and weak.

That had saved her from the nightmares at first, but not so much anymore.

They had dinner together as a little family, with Ezri sitting in her lap and eating only the affection she could harvest from the two of them. She was getting big—not as big as Riley, but she wouldn’t ever be a queen.

Ezri went with her to bed—though she didn’t know what was bothering Alex. Hopefully you never do, sweetheart. Jackie’s gonna fix this before I get too exhausted to work.

Jackie appeared beside her bed with a sleeping bag in her mouth and a pillow on her back. She gestured for Alex to move over, then hopped on without invitation. There was plenty of room—Paradise Crater was built entirely for humans, so even pony inhabitants outside the range of the anti-magic had lots of furniture bigger than it needed to be.

Alex blushed a little as Jackie set up her sleeping bag, but they weren’t even remotely close enough to touch. “Right, right.” She rolled over, grinning. “You know the drill about all this. Sweat to protect your dreams, guard against the outsiders… be with you tonight.”

“Of course,” Alex said. “I agree. But does it work when you describe it like that? Doesn’t Luna’s spell have specific words, and ingredients, and…”

“Sure, but whatever.” Jackie flopped onto her back, spreading both her wings so that they covered a good portion of the bed. Alex couldn’t get in without touching her a little. I’m not ready to date another girl, Jackie. This won’t work.

But she wasn’t cruel enough to say that. Her friend was helping her, there was no reason to be cruel.

“It’s not about the words, it’s about intention. I think the spell your princess came up with was really about guiding the ones who do this. I don’t need guidance when I know exactly why I’m going in.”

“Oh.” Alex layed back down, waving the hoof through the air that would shut off the automatic lights. Ezri curled up against her, and Alex settled one hoof on her back.

“Feel better,” the little drone said, her voice pained.

“She’ll be fine,” Jackie said, apparently having heard her. “This will be almost painless. Just… get to sleeping. I’ll see you over there.”

Alex might’ve fought with insomnia in her earlier years, but she’d found a cure for that real quick—work so hard that she wanted to die, and she could always flop into bed and sleep in minutes. She couldn’t have said how long it took, but the next thing she knew she was back in her nightmare.

She was in a castle somewhere, tucked into misty mountains and surrounded by high walls. She sat up in bed, shuddering at the feeling of silk wrapping around her body. Her hands clenched into fists, and she stared out at a full-length mirror.

She was dreaming of being human again, just not in the way she might’ve liked. Alex had been in this body before, even before the nightmares. But now it seemed she could never leave. She groaned, sat up, flung herself sideways out of bed. She was a little unsteady on her feet, but didn’t fall over. She could make it to the window.

A massive city was tucked into the mountains before her, a more Earth-like version of what she remembered from Canterlot. The buildings looked mostly new, but with a style meant to imitate the old. Thousands and thousands of people went about the streets down there, huddled under roofs and awnings to keep away from the blanket of snow.

And in the way of dreams, Alex was somewhere else. She sat at the head of a massive table, so large and imposing that no person got within fifty feet of her. She sat alone surrounded by food—all the human food she’d been missing. A breakfast of thick bacon, steaming sausages, and breakfast burritos assembled from every other breakfast food that ponies could eat.

She wasn’t wearing a nightgown anymore, but an almost comically cute dress in colors vaguely reminiscent of her pony coat. The fabric was soft and silky, but also got in the way whenever she moved. There was no getting around it: she was a princess, with a little crown perched on her head and a castle all her own.

Someone laughed, a strangled sound that quickly exploded into noise that silenced the eating crowd. The guards standing by the walls—with little pins of Alex’s cutie mark on their chests—moved slowly towards the table.

But just like that, they weren’t there. There wasn’t even a puff of smoke, or any sign from the crowd that they’d noticed.

Dream magic.

And there was no mystery about where that magic had come from. A girl had appeared in the empty seat right beside the throne, picking bits of meat off the plates with her bare hands.

It looked like she had made a near-identical copy of Alex’s own outfit, pausing only to tweak the colors and make some holes in the back for the wings she never gave up.

She’d already stained her gloves with syrup, though she didn’t seem to care. “Hmhh… here I was expecting something serious,” Jackie said, tossing an empty plate to the floor beside them. It shattered on the stone, and for a few seconds there were more stares. There were no more guards, but the nobles near them on the table had started to stare at her. Who was this girl who matched their princess so closely?

“I’m trapped here,” Alex muttered, her head slumping forward to the table. “Unicorn magic doesn’t work here for me, so I can’t use that. I’ve tried every way to get out of this damn castle you can think of. I’ve climbed to the roof, I’ve made ropes out of sheets, I’ve explored the dungeon. There’s no way to escape. I’m losing my mind down here!”

“You’re losing your mind,” Jackie repeated. She snatched the crown from Alex’s head, tossing it up and down in her hands. The soft gold reflected the light streaming in through stained glass, but that was it. Taking the crown off didn’t make the nightmare end. “Because you have to pretend to be a princess in a fancy castle. I don’t know what kind of childhood you had, but this was basically every little girl’s dream during their first few years. All these beautiful servants, a never-ending flow of interesting people. The handsome prince.” But then she got up, pushing the chair back so hard that it fell over behind her as she stood up.

“Not me,” Alex said. “I didn’t have that kind of childhood.” She rose as well—the guards usually wouldn’t let her leave until she finished eating, but there weren’t any guards anymore. The poor figments watching her didn’t seem to know what to do. A few rose from their places, bowing awkwardly and pretending not to be annoyed that their breakfast was cut short.

“You can all… enjoy yourself,” she called, her voice quavering in the huge hall. Earth ponies had powerful voices, teenage girls not so much.

Jackie yanked her by the elbow, tugging her toward one of the nearby doors. “You don’t have to talk to them like that, Alex. These aren’t people. They’re not even holodeck characters. They might as well be stuffed animals.”

“They sure do act like people,” Alex muttered, so she could have something to argue about. But Jackie didn’t rise to it, and soon enough they were wandering through the halls.

“So, just to be clear,” Jackie said, walking so fast that Alex nearly fell over in her heels. She had all of no practice walking in these things, and the ones her royal outfit included were not modest. But whenever she wobbled, Jackie was there to keep her from falling. “There’s nothing supernatural at work here. There are no demons trapping you in loops, your mind hasn’t drifted outside the universe. This is completely mundane and not supernatural at all.”

Alex yanked her arm free, pointing at a gigantic mirror behind her. “You think this is normal? Getting stuck in a loop, the same nightmare over and over…”

“First of all…” Jackie settled one hand against her shoulder. “I don’t think you’ve been looking around very closely, because this isn’t a nightmare. Look, there in the mirror. I want you to spin for me.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You want me to… what?”

Jackie demonstrated, twirling around in something that might’ve been taken right out of a ballet studio, or maybe a Disney movie. “Like this.”

Do I have to? She didn’t ask, though. She could already see from Jackie’s expression what the answer would be. So she spun. It wasn’t so bad--when she stood in place, she could keep from falling over. But she could feel her face getting redder as the dress lifted around her ankles, up towards her knees. “How’s that?”

“Perfect.” Her guide took her hand again. “So, the first step is to stop being such a bitch about this. You’re beautiful, this castle is perfect, your dress is pretty, stop complaining. About your dream… hard to say all the reasons why it might repeat, different for everyone. There’s some information on it left over from people science, but I don’t believe most of that. That’s all Freud and cigars.”

She gestured out the window, down at the village far below. Thousands of people flowing like water as snow poured down on them from above. Then just like that, they were down there. They stood in a brilliantly-lit city square, with a choir of singers performing familiar carols in the background. Thousands of people went about their days—until they saw her. All activity in the marketplace stopped. Street-merchants stopped shouting about their wares, beggars stopped begging, the choir stopped playing. They all stared at her.

Alex felt herself blushing, wrapping her arms around her chest, trying to look smaller. Being a pony had insulated her from feeling this way. She was not supposed to be a female human.

“I can tell you what I think,” Jackie went on, as though there had been no interruption. The crowd dutifully remained silent, like the extras in a movie. “Ponies are magic, and just a trickle of that magic gets into your dreams. It moves you through the dream world… towards good stuff and bad. I got into some of that myself.”

“But I’m not a bat pony,” Alex protested. “I don’t have any dream magic.”

“No!” Jackie was suddenly beside her. She reached up with one hand, pushing Alex’s mouth closed. “Don’t interrupt me.”

She waited, maybe to see if Alex was going to try and cut her off again. Only when she didn’t did she finally continue.

“Magic isn’t in your horn, it isn’t in your wings. It’s in here.” She tapped against her head with two fingers. “Humans dream here too, you know. We could visit them if we wanted, and be no danger to their sleeping bodies. I think… well, nobody knows. Luna didn’t tell us. But I think you’re causing your own pain. You aren’t trapped by a demon, you’re trapped by yourself.” She took Alex’s hand, running forward into the crowd so fast that Alex almost fell over. She wasn’t very good at walking around on two legs anymore, and certainly not with heels.

It’s no fair, you had two legs more recently than I did. And I bet you knew how to wear these stupid shoes.

“Here.” Jackie stopped right in front of a section of the crowd—a merchant with his cart, surrounded by children who had been there to buy candy. “Who rules these people?”

“I-I…” Alex stammered, pulled her hand free, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Or at least, couldn’t make herself say the words. “I think that… maybe…”

“Excuse me, sir,” Jackie said. “Who is the ruler of this city?”

“H-her,” the merchant said, nodding respectfully towards Alex.

Alex’s skin went pale.

“And what kind of ruler has she been?” Jackie continued, either not noticing how much she’d stiffened, or not caring. “Go on, it’s okay. She wants your candid opinion.”

“Why… the best!” he said. It was all simple phrases—always was, with “extras” like these. “We’ve never known such peace, such prosperity. The Archive is the best ruler we’ve ever had.”

“Thank you.” Jackie turned her back on him with the same disregard she’d had for the nobles up in the castle. “You draw this to you, Alex. Attraction theory might be bullshit out in the real world, but here everything is a product of the mind. You call, the Dreamlands answers. There’s spooky shit out there, Alex. Go out with me sometime—or ask Ezri, she’s come with me. I think there are… I think there might be gods out there…”

She took Alex’s hand again, and suddenly they were on the castle walls. Alex immediately jerked herself away, clutching against the stone and lowering her head, trying to catch her breath.

“You’re afraid of being in charge,” Jackie said. “I don’t have to be a genius to see that. But it doesn’t look like you’re afraid for the same reason as most people. You’re not afraid of being bad… you’re afraid of being good. And I can’t understand why.”

“Because it doesn’t last,” Alex spurted, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm. As she spoke, the dream behind her changed. Fire swept across the city, consuming it all and leaving only stone corpses behind. “Everything looks perfect, then it isn’t. If all the ancient knowledge of humanity made me perfect at this job, then all the perfect humans would still be ruling too. But they aren’t, and I’m not. Los Angeles still burns. Motherlode still enslaves. Charybdis rises from the deep one day, and everything still dies.”

“Ah.” Jackie was quiet for a long time. Ash drifted through the air in front of her instead of snow, burying some of the ruins. It was like watching thousands of years pass in seconds, until the castle walls were at ground level.

Then Alex felt an arm wrap around her shoulder. “Course you can’t be perfect. Nobody gets to control everything. But you should talk to the people of Motherlode before you think you did a bad job. Wait, I’m right here, you were excellent. I don’t know about Los Angeles, but I’m sure that wasn’t your fault either. And demons… who the fuck is going to fight them better than you? Equestria left us for dead, Alex. Those pretty pony princesses won’t come back. We have to make our own.”

She reached up, straightening the crown on Alex’s head. “How about it, huh? This ‘nightmare’ isn’t going away until you get used to it. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be wearing it.” Her own vanished as she said it, though her silly outfit remained. “Now how about we go see some really interesting nightmares together.” She put out her hand. “We could go on an adventure, like old times? That stupid computer can’t keep us from having fun in here.”

“Sure,” Alex answered. She wasn’t sure it would make a difference—wasn’t sure if Jackie was right. But it was worth a try.

Tower

Author's Note

So, at the behest of my editors, I've finally decided to move a few chapters out of Earth Without Us and into Bedtime Stories. Originally, EWU was created to be an anthology series, but that is what bedtime stories became. This chapter and the next one are not new content if you've read EWU. But the chapter at the bottom of the story is. Sorry for the confusion! (I'm doing the switch today so that people hopefully won't be double-notified.

Tower

Nicole could barely lift her hooves. The snow was so thick that some steps brought it cascading onto her back, or up through her cloak and down her hood. The sliced and re-glued waterproof fabric of her clothes protected her from the worst of the moisture and wind, but even so she felt like every step cost her a few minutes of life.

It wasn't as though she was walking through a blizzard, either. The mere cold of winter was enough. The unicorn mare was almost as large and healthy as an earth pony, with strong legs and confident steps. That did not mean she would live, though.

The windswept wilderness around her bore little sign of human habitation. There were no more roads, no more farmhouses or fields as she imagined she would find. Only the desolate, snowy wilderness as far as she could see.

Her coat was a creamy white only a few shades different from the thick snow, though it was broken with brown splotches of a few different shades. Her mane and tail had both been cut short and ragged, though what was left of them were several different brown layers.

Nicole could barely remember how long she had been walking. Long enough that she had run out of rations and spent the last few hours before nightfall scavenging for food each night. Long enough that much of her belongings had been damaged and she had abandoned them to conserve weight.

Conserving every ounce was the essence of what made fastpackers like her so good. It hadn't helped at all that she was herself getting heavier with each passing month. How much bigger can I get before I can't keep going? Nicole didn't know the answer, but she supposed losing weight would've been an even worse sign. A mother who lost weight as a pregnancy progressed was in dire straits indeed.

Nicole had no company in the wilderness but the Wailin' Jennys echoing from the earbuds she had hung into her ears. The sound came through quite clearly even though the cables had started to fray and she had needed to patch them with a few precious inches of electrical tape. So long as some loud noise didn't startle her, or her changing moods didn't make her lower her ears and dump the earbuds.

Nicole walked all day, as she always did. Usually she kept going until her backpacking watch gave her two hours to sundown. She didn't keep going that far today, though. Instead, it was the tower.

The terrain here was very flat, without mountains or even many hills to break the monotony. There were scraggly trees, but even these didn't add very many obstructions. It was hard to tell for sure, but Nicole thought she could see for fifty miles at least.

There, in the direction she was heading, was the tower. Nicole's eyes widened and she sped up, searching for somewhere clearer she could use as today's campsite. She didn't have to go much further, just into another stand of scraggly bare trees. She stopped, making sure she could see the tower all the while, a tired smile spreading across her face. "I don't wanna get your hopes up, but... I think I might've found it."

She glanced over her shoulder, concentrating. She felt the rush of energy up into her horn, the firm state of mind she had practiced. Separation dissolved and the saddlebags on her back became a part of her. She commanded them to open, and they did. She lifted a worn leather case out, holding it in front of her.

The sleeve had once contained Nicole's bible, along with several other church books. It didn't anymore, though she was fairly sure God would forgive her for that. It's His fault I had to leave it behind—I wouldn't have if He had stopped the world from ending.

Nicole unzipped the case, unfolding it in front of her. There was a book inside, with an old-fashioned cover and thick block letters. The paper was frail and yellowing, which was part of why she protected it so reverently.

"The Foal's Guide to Unicorn Spells, Cantrips, and Enchantments" it read, along with a simple magical design. Nicole turned a few pages, until she got to the introduction.

There on the flaking paper was an illustration, and it was this she held up to the horizon with simple levitation magic. There was the swept spire of the tower, curving slightly as it went and glittering in the light. The illustration was only simple black lines, yet it matched the real thing before her eyes perfectly.

The image was a seal, with the words "In Scientia Opportunitas" written in flowing letters around it. There was also a printing date, though Nicole could make no sense of "Printed Nocturnus 949 AE."

Nicole didn't leave the precious volume open to the air any longer than she had to. The book was so delicate a stray breeze might tear the pages if she wasn't careful. Protecting it was more than just good sense—it was honoring a sacred trust.

She worked quickly, tossing the saddlebags off her back and removing the tent from one side. Her ultra-lightweight backpacking tent had fairly small parts, little titanium rods and stakes and a few cords that had to be tied. If she hadn't been able to levitate them all around, Nicole wouldn't have stood a chance of getting it set up in time.

With the help of her horn, it only took her a few minutes. She tossed her bag inside right away, unzipping the little vent at the top of the tent for what would come next.

Despite her excitement about the proximity of her destination, Nicole didn't allow herself to be distracted. She searched diligently through the forest, digging through the snow with a light titanium trowel and freeing edible underbrush. She gathered the dryest dead wood she could find as well, though she favored sticks far thinner than what most people burned in their fires.

"Last night of gathering firewood out in the wild," she muttered to herself. Well, maybe there was at least one other she wanted to hear, but she knew that wasn't rational. "Last night of wishing we weren't alone. Derek was so much better at this. I know you weren't... still wouldn't remember, but... before winter, he could find enough food for all of us during the walk. It seemed almost magic how good he was at knowing what we could eat and what we couldn't."

Nicole was a fairly experienced naturalist, which was much of the reason she was still alive. Where others wouldn't have known the difference between holly berries and wintergreen, Nicole could easily judge the differences in their leaves, just as she could identify every edible thing along a trail regardless of the season. Granted I'm not sure how many of the plants I pass up this body could handle... Her single book didn't talk about that.

By the time she was walking back to her makeshift campsite, it was dark enough she had to light up her horn for illumination. This spell too came easily for her now, though it had sent her into a migraine headache whenever she tried it during the first few weeks.

It was an amazing relief to make it back to her tent and seal it up behind her. Even with the light of her horn, she knew better than to be out at night. As fast as she travelled, there was no extra weight for things like "weapons." If something big decided she was food, well... she probably would be.

Nicole's backpacking tent was barely large enough for two adults to sleep in, but that made it positively spacious for a single pony. She dug around in her saddlebag in the dark, eventually digging out the contraption more responsible for her survival (or at least her sanity) than any other.

It looked like a little stove, though there was an opening for sticks in the bottom instead of any other kind of fuel. This she filled from some of her haul, lighting the kindling with a flint striker and stoking with a few sturdy breaths. She made sure to place the little stove right in the center of her tent, directly under the vent.

It still wasn't the smartest idea. She never dared sleep with the little stove burning, or else risk any number of different deaths. After trekking alone across a continent, she sure as hell wasn't going to suffocate of carbon monoxide or burn before she could wake up. Not on her last night, that was for sure.

The little stove gave her some warmth, as well as heat for her single little pot, which she filled with snow from outside. While it melted, she plugged her phone into the charging port.

No signal, as usual. She resisted the temptation to keep listening. Nicole wanted to be alert for predators, but that wasn't the only thing she was listening for.

Why haven't you heard or seen anyone coming from Alexandria? she asked herself. Why aren't there any roads?

None of that mattered. She would reach the city tomorrow, she was sure of that. She would arrive and find it full of ponies, just like she had been imagining since Derek died. "We'll find out what that disease was," she muttered to herself. "We'll find out what happened to the world. The people there will know. They've got to know."

* * *

Nicole slept uneasily that night. This was not terribly uncommon for her, not since she had come back after the end of the world. Strange dreams seemed as much a part of being a pony as walking on four legs and peeing standing up.

Lots of it was taken up by totally mundane nightmares—watching Derek come down with the strange sickness, digging his grave, watching their tiny house burn down...

Well, technically those were all memories first, so it was hard to blame the whole "pony" thing for any of that. Nightmares were a regular part of Nicole's life, though they were stranger than usual today.

Long walks and tears faded easily into the background, and rarely lingered with her until morning. Something did, though. A vast, crumbling space she had never seen before, packed with collapsing bookshelves and smelling of mildew. Only a few little candles burned, and didn't get nearly high enough to include the ceiling far above.

It seemed appropriate that the only other she saw in the massive space would be a bat, or at least have batlike wings. "You're too late," she said, sounding a little bitter. "If you'd come here a century earlier, you would've loved it. Not anymore."

"I know the world ended!" Nicole shouted, since she couldn't actually see the speaker yet. "I'm an animal now. My husband was too, before..."

"That's not what I meant." That was when she saw the creature clearly. She was larger than Nicole, her teeth pointed and wingspan huge. She didn't look old the way the last pony she had seen looked old, with the color fading from her coat. This pony looked bright and alert. "You came all the way to goddamn Alexandria, but there's nothing there anymore. There's nothing anywhere. Look."

Nicole looked, and the cavernous space was gone. She stood instead at the base of a massive crystal tower, a whole structure of glittering gemstone. In front of her was a statue of a rearing pony without wings or horn, pointing up at the sky. The pony's features had all faded—there was no mark on the flank and she couldn't guess at gender. She could still read the inscription though, half buried in sand. "My name is Archive, final hope of Mankind. Look upon my knowledge, ye wise, and despair."

Without knowing how, Nicole recognized the huge structure before her as a university, larger than many she had known from her world. It was in ruin now, ceilings fallen in like London after the Blitz. "You won't find your answers there, refugee. Not anymore."

"Then you tell me!" Nicole screamed, as loudly as she could. "If you know so much, what happened to the world? What killed my husband?"

Nicole woke screaming, without any answers.

"It's not true," she told herself, snacking on the rest of her food. She washed herself with more melted snow and a rag—she wasn't going to wander in a barbarian, even if she had been one for months now. "When we get there, it's going to be a bustling city." She packed up the tent, rolling up her ultralightweight sleeping bag and packing away her wood-fired electric stove. "They'll answer all of my questions." Strangely specific nightmares didn't mean they would be accurate, even if they were a little more convincing.

* * *

Nicole could tell something was wrong from the moment she first saw the wall. That Alexandria had been a walled city she could tell from far away; huge stone blocks rose up at least five stories in some places, with still-higher towers breaking periodically.

"Maybe Derek was wrong," she muttered to herself, as she moved briskly up a flat area that might've once been a road. "Just because we have all the same plants and the land looks similar—this might not be Earth." So far as she knew, North America hadn't ever had cities like this.

As she got closer, she could see the disrepair she had guessed from a distance wasn't the natural erosion of time. Huge black craters had been torn in the sides, and whole sections were falling over. Nearest her direction, one of the towers had fallen over onto the land in front of the city, with stone blocks seeming to melt together, as though from some inhuman heat.

There were no voices from up ahead. No smoke rose from the city as from primitive fires, and no sound of cars or other machines. She heard only the cheerful songs of birds, and caught only the mournful eyes of squirrels and other woodland creatures.

It was late afternoon when she finally reached the wall, and the huge tear into the side that the missing tower had made. Up close, it looked as though massive hands had gripped the thing, taking huge gouges into white marble. Despite the terrible stress, much of the walls appeared intact around it. Her horn hummed faintly to her as she got close, a sure sign of still active spells coursing through them.

There was no gate in this direction. It seemed foolish to walk around and find one with such obvious damage here that allowed her to clearly see inside.

Just as her dream had warned, she saw no people within the gates. Mere feet within the walls cobblestone streets began, with huge buildings leaning narrowly out over them. Nicole clambered over huge stone blocks, hopping back down onto the cobbles and making her way inside.

It was hard to make specific guesses about what the city had looked like, because the whole thing had been burned. Many of the structures had been at least three stories, packed tenements not unlike some European cities. There looked to be glass windows and power lines too, and metal tracks were set into the center of the street. A little way further she came upon the charred wreckage of a trolley, still tangled in the lines. There were no living people inside, though she could make out the bleached white of bone from within rotting cloth and wood.

"Ugh!" She pulled back and away from the trolley, hurrying a little faster down the street. She soon reached an intersection, and turned in the direction of the tower. This close to the university, she could make out the glittering crystal spire, several different shades of sea-blue melting into green as it got lower. Several smaller towers rose up around it, tall enough to still be visible over the wreckage of the city.

"Maybe... maybe the press survived?" She sounded weak now, even to herself. There was no reason to suspect the school would've done any better than the rest of the city. This wasn't a natural disaster—if it had been, the bodies wouldn't have been left to rot.

As she walked, Nicole took in the city. Not all the buildings were burned, and those that had survived gave her some idea of what it had been like. Many had been white once, though the whitewashing gave way to smoke and other unsavory stains. There were many wide windows, many chimneys and sloped roofs. There were lots of old-style Edison bulbs, rising from the streetlights wherever they hadn't been completely shattered.

The writing was English. Nicole passed what she took for a grocer, though someone had scrawled "NO PRODUCE TODAY" across the chalkboard. The shop within had been totally looted—just like all the other structures she had passed. Nowhere on ground level did anything useful remain.

Eventually she made it to the university. There was no doubting she had made it, for the location was exactly as it had been in her dream. A massive campus, with its structures seemingly constructed from a single unbroken sheet of glittering minerals. It was far enough away from the burned buildings on its sides that there were no scorch marks around it, though there was other damage. What might've been elegant gardens looked like they had been eaten down to the dirt, with only a few feeble scraps of field grass peeking through the snow.

The garden of statues had all been torn down, broken and cracked. Only the one she had seen in her dream remained, though it was so melted and charred that only the plaque was distinguishable. Every window on the building looked like it had been shattered, though that did little to mask the powerful sense of latent magic.

It was hard to tell, but it seemed to be coming from the exact center of the tower, a glow more intense than any she had felt.

Nicole couldn't keep going. She had become a widow, crossed the country with a pregnant belly, fought depression and fear and loneliness, and survived the winter. To finally arrive in her destination and find it filled only with ice and corpses... it was too much.

She couldn't bring herself to care as the sun went down. Couldn't bring herself to care as she finally stopped shivering. She would die here, in front of the monument to a nameless pony who had not come for her. She would die, and so would the last shred of her husband.

Time swam, and Nicole knew none of it. The moon rose in the sky, and the snow and its spire of crystal seemed to catch fire. As the rest of the city crumbled, the former university didn't seem to care. Neither did she.

Something shook Nicole's shoulder. She didn't notice at first, but the shaking got worse, and she blinked. She had long since run out of tears, though there were streaks of ice down her cheek. She looked up.

There was a pony there—a unicorn stallion with gray streaks in his lime-colored mane and bright green eyes. "You shouldn't be out here."

She stopped crying, though she didn't really care that someone had seen. How long had it been since Nicole saw someone who wasn't a corpse? Months? Years? She wasn't sure she could trust her memory. "A-me- real?" Her words came out in a slur, mostly from the cold.

"Peace." His horn glowed the same bright green as his eyes which fixed firmly on her chest. Nicole felt sudden warmth blaze into her chest, reminding her just how painfully damaged her body was becoming. She wasn't just cold, she was freezing to death! Her limbs had gone numb, there was ice on her face and around the edges of her hooves.

She started to shiver violently, shaking water from her mane. "W-what..."

"Hold still, child." The warmth didn't fade, growing brighter and brighter from her chest. Ice along her coat began to melt, as the glow spread out from her chest and down her limbs. Snow all around them boiled to steam, leaving strange arcane patterns on the ground. "Almost..."

Pressure exploded from around her, a crack that scattered snow for hundreds of feet around and left her dry. Her mane fluffed a little at the sudden heat. More importantly, she no longer shivered, no longer even felt a little chilly. Except for the wind.

The stranger collapsed onto his haunches, breathing heavily. His horn still glowed, though the green was quite faint; equivalent to the light her own horn might make. "A young mother shouldn't spend the night out in the cold."

She felt alive, it was true. At least, she felt more alive than she had. That didn't mean she didn't feel angry. Without meaning to, her horn started glowing. "My world hasn't fucking cared about what 'should' be. Not since the world goddamn ended." Nicole bared her teeth at the stallion—if he thought she was going to be an easy victim just because...

It was hard to tell for sure, but she was fairly sure this pony was much older than she was—either that, or his mane was just naturally that gray, and his face that grizzled. He visibly recoiled from her anger, raising one hoof in a placating way.

"You're a refugee?" He cleared his throat. "That explains the accent."

"I'm from Manitoba, eh." She spoke without thinking, exaggerating her vowels and truncating her consonants. The gesture settled a little of her anger, if only because it was familiar. "What's a refugee?" She still sounded defensive, and she was still cold. She still didn't care.

"It means you're from Earth. Arinna, it's been..." he trailed off, looking up at the sky. "I couldn't even tell you. The triple digits all blur together." He shook his head, rising to his hooves again. The gesture seemed to cost him a little. "Look, it's not really safe out here. It's winter—if I don't freeze to death, wolves or raiders will catch us. I don't think I've got the juice to fight them off just now." He tapped the side of his horn with one hoof, then turned away. "I could show you where I'm living. You'll probably get more answers there than the university."

"The university printed books." Nicole found herself speaking without meaning to, following him a few steps. "I'm sure they know more than just one person could. Even if you are... into the triple digits." Those last few words came out with more than a little skepticism.

"It would've been before they burned the library." He shrugged one shoulder, glancing back at her. "Really, they should've seen it coming. Name the place 'Alexandria', what do they expect? Should've named it 'The City Where Nothing Bad Ever Happened.' More proscriptive that way, eh?"

"Don't you do it." Nicole wasn't sure what made her trust this pony. Maybe it was that he was the first friendly face she had seen in months. Maybe it was that he knew far more about her world than the only other pony she had ever met had. Well, besides Derek...

He might be taller, but he was also older, so it didn't take long for her to catch up. "It's okay for me to make fun of my own accent. It's, like... racist or something when Americans do it." She didn't sound very convincing though, not even to herself.

"Racist." He repeated the word with a tone almost like awe. "You really are a refugee." He stuck out his hoof, grinning. His teeth were white and well cared-for despite his apparent age. "You can call me Karl. It's simpler than the truth."

"Alright, Mr. Karl..." She touched the edge of his hoof with her own, however briefly. The gesture didn't really make as much sense for ponies as it did for humans. "I'm Nicole."

He started walking again. Karl seemed to know where he was going, because he took some streets while avoiding others. He didn't seem to be heading back into the ruined residential district, but further into the official-looking parts of the city. "First order of business—we'll need to come up with a better name for you."

She stopped right in the street, glaring up at him. "Excuse me?"

Again Karl looked placating, lifting up one hoof. "Nopony uses human names anymore." He lowered his voice, barely loud enough for her to hear over the wind. "Ponies blame refugees for..." He looked up, around at the city, and shivered all over. "This. Half of the ponies who might’ve found you—even the good ones—might just decide to make an offering of you. Keep the plague off their foals for another year."

Nicole shuddered and started walking again. "I think... I think I know what plague you're talking about."

"Aye." He nodded slowly. "If you ever find somepony else you say your name is..." He leaned a little closer to her. "Adventure Time. Got a real adventurous cutie mark, so that ought to pass."

She forced her mouth to close, hurrying to catch up with him. "You're not serious. You want me to tell people I'm a cartoon show?"

"I want you to tell ponies that you're..." He smiled. "You know the classics? Well, you come up with something better if you like. Just make sure it sounds like it shouldn't be a name—that's how you know you're on the right track."

She ignored his snide smile. "Why don't you live in the university?" She flicked her tail behind them, towards the massive crystal structure. Its whole outline seemed to glow in the night, little flickers of frozen moonlight darting from the base to the tip in fairly regular succession. "Looked pretty stable. There's lots of magic coming from inside, I bet—"

He cut her off with a look. "The 'university' is the first place raiders go when they get here, Nexus notwithstanding. You get sick of killing desperate, starving ponies after a while. Trust me." His ears flattened, and he quickened his steps a little. "Besides—grow up with modern amenities, and it's hard to give them up. I like my electricity and running water, and the university doesn't have either."

"You're joking," she said, eyes narrowing as she looked around them again. "I don't know what this place looked like before it burned, but it doesn't look like it was ever modern."

"I... guess not." Karl slowed down again, looking wistful. Here the buildings were made of stone, and so they had fared far better. Even so, they had the look of state structures about them: massive columns, impractically gigantic doors and high windows. Much damage was apparent, including tons of graffiti in a language she couldn't read. "I didn't see it founded, but I saw it a few years later. Wasn't... much of a town then. Everything was still working though, which was nice."

Her guide didn't seem to be seeing the same buildings as he spoke. "Old movie theater was right here. I used to go there all the time, but... I don't remember what I watched." He shrugged. "Whatever, doesn't matter. We're almost home." He crossed another street, towards what looked a little like a park. Would've been, if there weren't broken statues and a giant crater in the center.

Nicole wasn't really thinking about that, though. "Derek was right." She sighed, glancing down at her belly. "It's Planet of the Apes, if the apes were us." Karl wasn't the only one seeing things that weren't there. "How long?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. My memory gets really fuzzy each time I..." He shook his head. "Alexandria fell in 1021 AE. I... guess it's been at least that long."

"Over a thousand years?" Nicole repeated, though there was no disbelief left in her voice. She didn't really have the energy, not when she was surrounded by so much evidence. "Guess it makes sense nothing would be left."

"Almost nothing." Karl stopped at the edge of the crater, his horn beginning to glow. It was deep—as though there had been stairs here once leading down. They had all collapsed now, though that wasn't the worst. Much timber and other refuse had been brought here, all of it burned.

As Nicole looked, she saw bones mixed in with the refuse. She withdrew a few steps, mouth opening in horror. "What the hell is—" The smell hit her then—a wave of death that overwhelmed the cold and poured into her equine nose. She couldn't help it: Nicole turned her head aside and wretched.

It took her a few minutes before she could think clearly again. "What the fuck is this place?"

Karl lowered his head respectfully to the crater, raising one hoof to his chest. "Arinna give them rest." He sighed. "I really wish we didn't have to come this close. Come on; be careful as we walk around the crater."

Nicole followed, though not nearly as close to the edge as Karl walked. She did her best to see in as little as possible, dimming her horn until it was just barely enough light to see by. Even so, she had to tread carefully. There was no snow here, but there were patches of ice, blending into the dirt and scraggly dead grass. It was only the reflection that let her see them at all.

"Your home is near a grave?"

She couldn't see Karl's face in front of her, yet she could hear his voice break as he spoke. "I wanted to bury them, but raiders come back too often. They'd know someone had been here."

"Not that." She flicked her tail back towards the rest of the city. They were very near to a wall here, perhaps only five hundred feet or so away. It rose tall and proud here, unbroken by damage as other sections had been. "Why would you live here?"

"No choice." He stopped walking about a hundred feet past the crater, tapping the ground with one hoof. The dirt sounded a little different here, though it was hard to say how. "We're here. You ever teleport before?"

There was no indignation left in Nicole anymore. "I can't say I have."

"First time for everything." The stallion glanced around, surveying the land all around them. He seemed to be searching for something, though it was hard to say what. After a few seconds, he seemed to find it: a burned stick with enough intact wood to write with. The stick levitated towards them, then started drawing on the ground all around them. "You'll probably want to pay attention—any new spell is a spell worth learning."

"Spell." She repeated the word, the same one her scrap of half-rotten book always used. "You just draw it onto the ground? Draw, and... things happen?"

"Not quite." He tossed the stick aside. "This pattern is a focus for the power, as well as my mind. A better unicorn than I wouldn't even need it for such a short distance." He climbed over the marks, careful not to touch any of them with hoof or tail. "Come in here. When I say go, close your eyes and breathe out as hard as you can."

"Sure, whatever." Nicole rolled her eyes as she stepped inside. "That makes about as much sense as any of the rest of this nightmare."

Karl ignored her. His horn, only faintly glowing before, seemed as though it had caught on fire. It was light as she had seen it earlier, a radiance of magic she had never manifested in herself. "Open wide the gates," he commanded. "Through the threshold." Green light swirled around them, choking light and air away. "Now!"

Nicole shouted, slamming her eyes closed and covering them with a hoof. Time ceased to flow as strange sensations danced around her—scorching heat that threatened to burn at her fur, chilling cold far worse than winter. There was no air to breathe, and something seemed to be drawing the life right out her throat.

The awful moment passed, and Nicole fell a few inches. Not far, and soon enough she was on her hooves again with only a little jerk. "That was awful," she coughed, wiping something away from her face with a hoof. Frost?

"Yeah," Karl admitted. "I was already a little drained from warming you up. But it was either teleport anyway, or spend the whole night in the dead city."

There was no longer any breeze, no longer moonlight or cold or smell of fire and death. Nicole opened her eyes, but there was nothing to see. She concentrated, and her horn started to glow again.

Emptiness became a cavernous tunnel, easily high enough for a human to walk. In the glow of her horn she could make out the faint tiles of a mosaic set into the ceiling—a pair of nude human figures, arms outstretched. Just as with her old book, there was a little Latin written there too. "Ad Vitam Aeternam," she read, then sighed. "Guess they didn't get their wish."

"No," Karl agreed. "Not even close." In the faint glow of her horn, the elderly stallion looked much the worse for wear. His face had a sunken caste, his whole body more shriveled. Could a unicorn use so much magic they starved? "B-but... it's still home. The others will be..." He rose slowly, using a worn-looking stone handrail to keep himself steady. There were no stairs, but instead one long ramp. It stretched down below them in one direction as far as her light could go.

In the other direction there was only rubble and dirt, apparently from a serious cave-in. No doubt the crater was at the other end. "Are you gonna be alright?"

"Yeah." He nodded, and started walking again. Without meaning to, Nicole found herself walking closer to him, suddenly concerned. What if he slipped and rolled down the ramp? "I'll be fine." He looked up, and seemed a little healthier. "It's not far. I just need a little rest, is all. Come on. I think you'll find the rest of your answers down there. Let's check out the accommodations."

* * *

Nicole found that the lower they got, the more she could see without her horn. Whatever else he might've told her, old Karl wasn't lying about a home waiting here.

"I don't have the energy to give you the tour now, I'm afraid," Karl explained, as they made their way down. She let the light from her horn fade as glowing crystals set into the walls seemed to be doing that job, filling the whole space with soft yellow.

At the base of the stairs was stone scarred by burns and other signs of battle, and numerous sharp spines and barricades pointing at them. Only a thin aisle was open in the center, with enough space for only one pony to walk at a time.

Unlike above, there was no blood or other signs of combat here. Whatever war there had been down here had been cleaned up well.

Behind the barricades was a gigantic sign, still readable despite numerous burns. "Welcome to the Alexandria Museum of Human Achievement!" Much of the rest had faded away, or been painted over with things she couldn't read. "You... live in a museum?" she found herself asking, following as close as she could without getting a face full of Karl's tail.

"Sort of." Karl didn't turn to look back at her, since doing so might've ended up with him skewered. Nicole could sense more than just physical dangers from the space on either side of the aisle, too. Probably there were magical "spikes" waiting in there worse than the wooden ones.

"Same structure." There were two doorways through the spikes, and light only came from one. He gestured vaguely at the dark one as they passed it. "The Museum is in there. We haven't visited much since things fell apart, but... you'll probably want to tomorrow."

He stopped in front of the other doorway. "This building was designed by..." he trailed off. "A pony named Archive. She insisted on building underground to preserve this place through time. I can't really remember how it looked super clearly, but..." He shrugged, walking forward again. "When I took ownership of the property, it included copies of the original blueprints. No joke, they excavated twice the space the museum needed, and had this whole area boarded up. Arinna knows I built what the engineer intended."

There was a bright hallway, with several wide doors stretching off in different directions. There were signs painted on the walls, but none of these were English, so Nicole couldn't read them. It hadn't been built with nearly the same level of care as the previous hallway—much of the walls were still unadorned stone, and the ground was still flat concrete.

The ceiling itself was the strangest thing—each was a cylinder of different sizes, despite evident crumbling and decay around the edges. "I've never seen a building like this before..." she muttered, not even looking at her guide anymore. "It's a little like the transit system in Montreal, but not nearly as pretty."

Karl shrugged. "Archive knew what she was doing. Well... at least about construction. She was pretty lousy at not getting her dumb ass killed." Was that bitterness in his voice? It wasn't exactly the first time Nicole had heard anger like that from someone she thought was older, but...

"Who was Archive?" she continued, trying to sound conversational. Of course, she had learned so little about this world that she would take anything. "More of those silly noun-names?"

Her guide abruptly stopped, and as he turned his anger was all for her. He glanced around her, as though checking to see each of the doors around them were securely shut. They were, each one like a submarine airlock. "There's nothing silly about the proper way we name things Adventure Time." He leaned down towards her, only a few inches away. She quavered as his hot breath brushed about her face. "Remember what you saw out there. Many ponies would happily add you to the pyre if they knew where you were from.”

He waited expectantly until she nodded, and only then let her pull away. His expression relaxed. "Her human name was Alex… something. Arinna knows it’s been so long since I’ve heard it..." He abruptly stopped at one of the doors, his horn glowing as he twisted the seal. Metal squeaked, and air rushed all around her.

"Can't be that long," she muttered, as he opened the door. "Horses live what, forty years? We look like we're mostly horses."

"Horses live about forty years, so thank compassionate Arinna you didn't come back as a horse. The rest of us, well..." He shrugged. "Most ponies do about two centuries, though some do three. More if you cheat." He pushed the door open with a hoof, gesturing at the room beyond. "Your pod."

Nicole barely even saw the pod. Had Karl really just—"Three centuries?" She shook her head. "You really expect me to believe a little animal could live that long?"

"Not tonight." He stuck his hoof into the pod. Faint light glowed from within, as though activated by the motion. "I need rest, and so do you. Tomorrow we can go through the museum and answer your questions."

"Alright." Nicole strode past him, into the pod beyond.

She had barely made it a few feet in when she heard Karl start walking again. "I'll have somepony get you for breakfast in the morning. Don't say anything stupid." Soon enough the stallion was gone, his footsteps vanishing around the corner.

Nicole stood in the open doorway another moment, looking down at her belly. "Well... here we are. Made it to Alexandria.” She dropped onto the ground, not even bothering to shut the door. "Wish you'd made it too, Derek."

Answers From the Dark

Nicole didn't sleep in the entryway that night, much as she was tempted. As she explored the room, she found what she might've expected at an expensive Tokyo hotel, not a primitive bomb shelter. The whole space was perhaps twenty feet long and eight tall, with every inch utilized to the fullest. There was a bed mounted above a little work desk, and a bathroom with a shower that could fill the whole space.

It wasn't just looks, either. The amenities might be made of crystal and strange marks, but they worked. When she twisted on the hard red rock in the shower, warm water really did start pouring down from above her.

Nicole was used to the dirt of exploration; she had been around it her whole life. Considering she hadn't had a warm shower since the propane in their tiny house had run out, though...

The pod she had been given seemed quite similar to the house she had shared with her husband, actually. There were actually two beds, and enough space that a small family could probably use the pod comfortably. It might be spartan—mostly concrete construction with only a little wood or crystal detailing—but what did that matter if the lights came on and there was clean water to drink?

Despite the grave upstairs, despite Karl's passionate warning that the truth about her couldn't be revealed, Nicole slept well. Her tiredness came at her so fast that she didn't even bother taking off the plain (and pony shaped!) bathrobe that had been hanging outside the shower. There were no animal noises outside to listen for, though she did keep her hunting knife beside her on the mattress while she slept. Karl might've saved her from freezing to death in the cold, but that didn't mean she trusted him yet.

When the morning came, Nicole awoke to banging on the metal door outside her pod. "Breakfast! Are you awake yet, Time?"

She moaned in response, crawling down the stepstool and over to the door. She straightened her mane with one hoof, then cracked the door. "What time is it?"

A pony was outside, the third I've ever met. She was tall and willowy, with a bright pink mane with several faint stripes, and an orangish coat. She had one of the marks too, a wooden spoon looking like it was in the middle of a stirring motion. Her strangest feature was the wings folded at her sides, with feathers to match her coat and apparently looking natural as anything.

"Dunno. It's been almost eighteen hours since Karl brought you back, though. Figured you should probably get up." She had only one thing in common with the stallion Nicole had met yesterday: she looked worn. One of her eyes looked glassy and unhealthy, and there were several deep scars down that side of her face. They seemed to continue down her neck, though it was hard to tell for sure.

"I really slept for that long?" She shoved on the door with her hoof, but it didn't swing much further. These things really were as heavy as they looked. "No way."

"It's easier than you think." The pony held the tray closer to her, and Nicole found her mouth watering. She couldn't even guess how this pony could balance a tray with a bowl on a single hoof like that without spilling. She didn't seem to have a horn, or any sign of glowing or magic. "You've been regulated by the sun for your whole life. With no sun to wake you up..." She shrugged. "I'm Breezy Morning, by the way. You can... probably just call me Morning."

"Nice to meet you, Morning." Nicole wanted to shake hands, but... obviously that was out of the question. Instead she moved out of the way. "If you don't mind that I look like I just woke up." Her eyes widened suddenly as she saw the other pony, really saw her. She wasn't wearing anything.

"What?" She raised an eyebrow as she walked inside, unfolding the table from where it rested in storage against a wall and setting the tray down atop it. "Does something smell wrong with the oatmeal?"

"No." She shivered, walking past Breezy and hopping up onto the padded seat. Despite her athleticism, the step was far harder than it would've been a few months earlier. Thank God I found this place when I did. We probably would've starved if I had to keep walking much further. "I'm just not used to how... little people wear."

"Oh!" She laughed, her whole body visibly shaking as she did so. "It's been so long since... Most ponies don't bother anymore. Particularly down here—there's no cold, so there's not really a point."

"Oh." She glanced briefly at her robe, then shrugged and let it slide down her back. "Weird." There was a spoon on the tray beside her bowl. She had to resist the urge to drop her head into the bowl and lap up the steaming oatmeal like a dog might with a toilet. It had been ages since Nicole had eaten so well, so long she couldn't even really remember what it was like.

If Breezy had cooked for her, she very much knew what she was doing. As she swallowed her first bite, Nicole could practically feel her eyes start to water. Not too mushy, with just enough brown sugar and cinnamon.

The other pony seemed to know what she wanted to say before she said it, because she beamed with pride as she watched. "My mom's old recipe. I already ate, you just enjoy it." She shrugged one shoulder. "Karl told me to tell you he's sorry he won't be around until evening, but he's sent me to take you through the museum and answer all your questions in his stead."

Nicole nodded, not even bothering to take her mouth away from the spoon. It was all she could do to keep enough concentration to levitate. Yesterday, she hadn't really believed in miracles. Today, though...

"Do you know enough to answer my questions?" she eventually asked, looking the winged mare up and down. "Like, if I asked you what you were and why you had wings..."

Morning laughed. "I'd tell you I was a pegasus, and we all have wings." She gestured towards Nicole's forehead with one hoof. "There are three basic types of ponies. The ones with horns are called unicorns, the ones with bird wings are pegasi, and earth ponies are the ones with super strength."

"That makes sense." She scraped what little she could salvage from the bottom of the bowl with her spoon, not willing to give up even a few drops. "So where's the old man gone, exactly?"

"Old stallion," Morning corrected. "Your guess is good as mine. Probably scavenging in the city. Our supplies won't replenish themselves." She gestured at the bowl, then hopped off the bench onto her hooves again. "Even just a few of us can eat through this pretty quick."

"How many is that?" Nicole got up too, leaving her robe behind as she made her way to the mirror. She didn't bother with any of the homemade clothes she had been wearing—aside from being horrendously dirty, they were also thick and bulky, made to get her through the winter.

Morning looked away, shifting on her hooves. "Not very many." She didn't elaborate, and the poor pony looked so unhappy that Nicole didn't press her.

"Okay, well..." There was a little wooden brush in front of the vanity. She took it to her mane, combing out some of the tangles. "Maybe you can explain how all this stuff is working. I can tell there's magic involved, but..."

With the change in subject, Morning's whole demeanor changed. She grinned again, walking up beside the vanity. She stayed away, not close enough for Nicole to accidentally strike with the hairbrush. "It's magic all-right. Way new compared to the rest of this place. Fifty years, maybe? The water comes from a well, and the magic is..." She shrugged. "There's a crystal in here somewhere, but I don't know what it runs on."

"There's no such thing as a free spell," Nicole recited, levitating open her saddlebag from the floor and unzipping it. She set the book down on the counter next to the sink where Morning could see it. "I mean, not that it really matters or anything, but... all the laws of magic are in here. I'm assuming they're real, since the spells I've read about so far seem to work..."

"Oh, yeah." Morning glanced at the book only briefly. "They haven't changed since the Event. Ponies at the university have been testing the things we got from Equestria ever since, but so far that much has been true."

Nicole set the brush down. "You're... going a little fast for me. Event, Equestria... I can guess what the university is." She frowned. "Does magic for pegasus ponies work the same as it does for unicorns?"

"No." She blushed, looking suddenly away. "Not really. Except for the first law, but not many other types of ponies ever tried to break it with their magic."

Not many. Always with the exceptions. "The first one, that's..." She thought a moment. It didn't take long—that book had been Nicole's only source of pony-related knowledge in months. She had studied every word, trying to learn everything it had. Even implications, even indirect statements were worth considering. "All ponies must die," she recited. "Not sure what the point of that one is. Why would a book need to print something like that?"

The pegasus turned away, walking towards the door. She stood in the doorway, staring at the ground. "Because some ponies think they can break it. Usually people die when that happens."

Nicole shivered, but it wasn't as though that was at the front of her mind. As much as she wondered about the strange words this pony used (words that her own book had mentioned too, she realized), there were other questions that mattered far more.

Nicole had imagined this moment for months now. She hadn't dreamed it would be in a secret cavern under the ground, though. She had imagined the steps of a university, or maybe a mayor. It had always been someone important to talk to her, even though of course there was nothing important about her.

Now that the moment came, all her fancy expectations melted and she tripped over her words. "What happened to everybody?" she asked, gesturing up at the roof. "The humans, I mean. The cities, the people... Did we lose a war with horse aliens? Did some weird god finally come back, or…?"

Morning shook her head, silencing Nicole with a look. "I've got a book I can give you with some of those things in it. Since we're standing in the Museum of Human Achievements though, I figure... we might as well take a look first. Probably save you the reading."

"Sure, whatever." Her voice cracked. "I just wanna know why my life was ruined. I wanna know why my husband had to get sick and die. I wanna..." She broke down. The tears came easily. It wasn't as though she had really tried to hold them in during her month alone. Karl wasn't here—there was nobody to judge her a basket case.

Morning wrapped a wing around her shoulders, just barely firm enough for her to feel it. Nicole clung to her without even thinking, feeling the strange softness of the fur and feathers. After almost six months alone, it was even better than the food. "Sure, Time." She patted her gently on the head with one hoof. "Let's get you the answers."

She did. Karl and Morning's word proved good—they really did visit the other half of a museum. Most of the exhibits weren't terribly interesting to her—metal models and mosaics and block letters explaining what humans had been and what they had achieved. There were no photographs or other bits of working technology, though there were artifacts encased in thick glass and set out of reach, and all of them looked notably human.

Nicole learned her answers at the very first exhibit, the one "dedicated to refugees for ten thousand years to come." She learned about a death coming for her species, and a spell that had cast them forward in time. She learned about the other world, and the transformation that kept her safe.

She would not have believed such an outrageous story six months ago, right after returning in her tiny house while speeding down the highway. Unfortunate the evidence seemed to match the story the exhibits told her. There was no denying the world she had seen outside, a familiar climate gradually erasing the civilization she had known. Every question the exhibits couldn't answer her guide could, with the speed of someone explaining something long understood.

There was no point in arguing with such overwhelming evidence. Nicole took in every part of the exhibit, and then stumbled barely aware back to her room.

Despite her hunger, she didn't eat dinner, nor did she move from her spot on the floor. It was too much.

* * *

"Sucks, don't it?"

Nicole couldn't have said where the speaker was coming from, except that she sounded nearby. The world was a swimming mess of gray and bad memories. She watched Derek rot away before her eyes, his strange limbs swelling and turning black. She buried him in the frozen ground, as deep as she could dig. Not deep enough to keep the wolves from getting to him.

"Royally." Was she talking to herself? It was so hard to tell.

"You aren't the only one to suffer." The gray around her changed to brown. Instead of snow she saw a western town, miners choking to death on coal dust or getting locked away under the earth. The memories went by so fast she could hardly be sure of what she was seeing. Ponies trapped in tunnels or falling from the sky in doomed airplanes. Loved ones were trapped in the past or future, far too distant to ever reach.

"You went through hell, but at least you got to say goodbye." Something touched her swollen belly, very softly. "You got this. Most of us just get to wander. Count your blessings."

"Other people having things worse doesn't make it easier on me."

"No." She felt wings around her, though they weren't the same ones she had seen earlier. These wings were warm, and seemed to have skin instead of feathers. It was a strange sensation, but so many strange things had happened to her lately that she hardly even noticed. "But you're not alone. The whole human race has gone through shit like you. We gotta stick together."

"They're burning us." She thought back to the grave, filled with charred bones. In the dream they seemed to form in the space in front of her, white emerging from the brown. "Karl said they're killing refugees like me. Why would God let this happen?"

The other figure was clearly not a person, not at a size not that much taller than herself. "We can't count on some magical something to save us, Nicole." She tossed something on the ground in front of her. Nicole recognized it as the book Morning had given her once they were done in the museum, the one that said "READ ME" in bright red letters on the cover.

"Plans like that end with people cut away from their families because the ponies thought we couldn't handle coming back all at the same time. Good ponies end up dead because they tried to change the whole world by themselves."

Nicole blinked and found she was no longer asleep. The pony in front of her, vague and indistinct before, took on sudden clarity. She was faintly blue, with an icy mane and orange eyes. She hadn't imagined the bat wings. Ponies could apparently have those too.

The book really was on the ground in front of her, exactly where the pony had thrown it. "W-what?" She blinked, sitting up. Her whole body was stiff, and she wiped a little crust away from her eyes as though she really had been sleeping. She looked up, but the door was still shut as she had left it.

"Dreamwalking." She flicked her tail casually. "I've been waiting for an easy trip back here since I found out Ezri had taken in a stray. You were so exhausted last night that you didn't dream." She walked past her, towards the door. She went for it with her mouth, as though she intended to leave.

She wasn't fast enough. Nicole caught the wheel in her magic, glowing firmly and preventing her from escaping. "Excuse me." She rose, her whole body shaking with anger. "No more!" She stamped her hoof, and the metal door creaked in protest. "The world has rules, dammit! You people can't just call it magic and do whatever you want!"

The bat-winged pony’s expression softened. "Sorry." She sat on her haunches, puffing her bangs out of her eyes. The pony was taller and bulkier than she was, in a way that Morning hadn't been. She had her fair share of scars—half of one ear was missing and the bottom of one of her wings looked shredded.

Like the other mare she had met today, she was naked, though she had a mark of overlapping "wifi" marks for her cutie mark. "You're right. Nobody changed the rules, but... I probably should've just waited until Ezri found time to sleep. She'd be bound to after another few days. Shouldn't have frightened you." She took a deep breath, sitting straighter. "My name is Jackie." She shrugged one wing, and Nicole caught something attached to her side under it. Even in the faint gloom of a single crystal light there was no mistaking the sheath of a dagger, the blade clearly still inside.

She stared. "I'm—"

"Nicole." Jackie didn't let her finish. "I've been guiding you here for months now, God knows I picked that much up from those nightmares of yours."

"Guiding me?"

"Yeah." She flashed her teeth, a few of them sharp. "Like fucking Inception. Had to help you find your way here across the whole goddamn continent." She stood up again, looking proud. "Find me a thestral who claims to be a better dreamwalker and I'll find you a liar."

"Whatever." She collapsed, releasing her grip on the door. "You know what, fine. I don't care anymore. Just get out." She gestured limply with one leg, dropping to the ground. "I'm done."

* * *

Time went by.

Nicole couldn't have said how long, or what went on around her. Eventually she ended up in bed, though she wasn't aware of making the decision to go to bed.

There were no day-night cycles under the earth she might've used to judge how many days went by. Sometimes she got up to use the bathroom, or paced the room, or slurped from bowls or spoons.

Sometimes they tried to talk to her, sometimes they didn't. She started losing weight, even though she really shouldn't be. But just because she knew she was supposed to care didn't mean she actually did.

Occasionally someone would say her name, or else she would have a particularly vivid dream, and nearly surface from her fugue. None of it lasted, and she found herself drawn inexorably back down again.

Time was itself a dream, a dream in which Nicole was drowning. It didn't matter that she was withering away, or that there would be dire consequences beyond herself if she died. Nothing mattered anymore. The stress, the broken world, it was all too much.

She might've died and not even known it. Had she been by herself, she probably would have died. But there were ponies—two of them, always two—taking care of her. She didn't die, though in some ways she felt like it might've been better if she had.

You've got to get up. She wasn't sure if she would even call the speaker a voice, really. An impression, perhaps. You're stronger than this.

She didn't argue, because of course there was no one there. She disagreed all the same, a general sense of I can't do this anymore.

You can. For a million years we've lived on this hostile planet through adversity worse than yours. Nicole felt herself stir, legs twitching against soft blankets. Light filled the world in front of her, the light from glowing crystals. You must survive.

She really could hear a voice now, though she couldn't place who it belonged to. The whole thing seemed to stretch and undulate a little, like a badly auto-tuned recording.

I don't want to. She struggled against the dark, willing it to take her again. It refused. I can't go back. It's too hard.

Nothing is too hard, came the response. Wake up.

"Wake up!" She wasn't imagining it anymore, the voice was real. It wasn't that far away either, coming from only a few feet away. The voice, while not intimately known to her, was nevertheless one she recognized. Jackie the thestral was at the side of her bed, shaking her gently by the shoulders.

Nicole felt weak all over, every limb and muscle stiff. She twitched, trying to coax a little life back into reluctant limbs.

Jackie stopped shaking her, eyes widening a little. "Can you hear me, Nicole?"

She nodded, pulling the blanket a little higher up her body. "I feel—" Her voice cracked, and she found each word painful. How long had it been since she had said anything?"

Something touched one of her legs through the blanket, not far from where a human hand might've been. "Can you really hear us, or is it just reflex?" The voice had that strange modulation about it, though now that she was more coherent she thought she recognized a little of the undertones. It sounded like Morning had been auto-tuned, not just anyone.

There were two ponies beside her. Jackie of course, though she hadn't seen her in clear light before. Jackie was taller than any other pony she had seen, and she really did have bat wings. Her coat was soft blue, just as she had imagined.

The other pony was different, with a shiny black coat, strange insect eyes, and transparent wings on her back. She wouldn't even have been able to guess at the sex of the creature, if she hadn't already spoken. She might've been more afraid if she wasn't already so tired.

"I can really hear you," she said, her voice flat. "Who are you?"

The strange creature looked away, scratching her two front legs together. "Lots of people."

"Everyone you've met so far," Jackie explained matter-of-factly. "This is my wife, Ezri. She's... a bit of a method actor."

Something flashed from around the shiny black coat of the creature, and her horn sent her the faint impression of magic. It happened so fast she almost didn't get a good look—the little creature's body growing a coat of fur, wings growing feathers, and all the holes in her legs filling in.

A few seconds of magic, and she was Breezy Morning again, complete with the mark on her butt. "See? I get kinda bored if I stay the same pony for too long." Another flash of magic and the elderly Karl was there again, almost as tall as Jackie though far weaker-looking. The voice changed just as much, and the stallion grinned at her. "I was pretty convincing, wasn't I?"

"Yeah." She nodded, rolling sideways on the bed. "How long was I..." She wasn't even sure what to call it. It hardly seemed flattering to refer to her own "psychological breakdown," even if that was exactly true.

"Well..." The stallion's form melted back into the strange insect, her wings buzzing. "Awhile."

"Almost two weeks," Jackie explained, gesturing at the clock against the wall. Its dials were actually far too small to see from this distance. "Time gets weird underground without the sun and moon, but we use these to keep track."

Nicole remembered what she had been so worried about. Panic gripped her and she tore the blanket away, looking at her belly. She half-expected to see the swelling gone, all the signs of a coming birth erased.

They weren't. She looked thinner, but still plump enough that she couldn't have lost the foal. "Thank God."

"You almost didn't make it." Jackie lifted something from the desk in her mouth, setting it down on the bed beside her. It was a thick plate of dried fruit, stacked high. Even from a distance she could smell how fantastic it was, the sweet sugary scent waking her up almost by itself. "Hopefully it didn't last long enough to do serious harm to that foal. I don't actually know enough to tell you. Better eat, though."

She did, though not as much as she had expected. Her insides still seemed raw from their mistreatment, and despite her appetite she found she could stomach only a little. "I guess I... had trouble dealing with the truth..."

"You wouldn't be the first." Jackie didn't sound judgemental, though she did seem a little weak-looking. "Plenty of refugees have trouble coping. Being pregnant can't help. Was that from before you got here, or..."

Nicole nodded. "I'd only been married a few months, but Derek and I really wanted..." she trailed off, sniffed, and wiped a few faint tears away before they could dirty her face.

"I'm sorry." Jackie didn't press for details. Nicole suspected that was because she already knew them from how many dreams she had watched, but she still appreciated being left alone. "I hope you don't mind, but... I think it's best if we don't leave you alone again. Ponies in your condition... you're more at risk to go back right now than ever.

She shrugged. "Why... Why do you two even care?" Nicole looked between them, at the strange concrete and crystal pod, one of many hundreds of identical pods in this place. "Are you the only ones down here?"

Ezri—apparently the bug-pony's real name—nodded. "The only other ponies we've found are the raiders."

"You wouldn't like them much either," Jackie assured. "I named 'em after the Fallout baddies for a reason. Maybe not that crazy, but... it's a fucking nightmare out there. If they had found you before Ezri did... young mare like you..." She shivered.

"I would've killed them." Ezri's voice was low and dangerous, her teeth bared.

Nicole ignored them both. "Who... Who do you think you're calling young?" She raised one eyebrow. "You don't look that much older than me."

They both laughed. For Ezri the sound was genuine, albeit strangely stretched and reverberating. Jackie's voice sounded bitter. "Probably a little older."

"Older than Archive by a few hundred years." Ezri sounded matter-of-fact again, not upset.

Jackie rested one hoof gently on her shoulder. "Let's stick to the simple things for now. Finish your fruit."

* * *

A few years later...

"Yes, I'm sure he'll be fine," Ezri repeated, exasperated. "I promise you Jackie has cared for young colts before. About a million times. Derek will be waiting eagerly for you when you get back."

Ezri didn't wear her "true" shape, just as she never did when they were on the surface. They didn't often see other ponies, but they sometimes did. Even in safer times, when the most hostile of the so-called "raiders" had starved in the harsh winters, even regular ponies seemed eager for violence where changeling drones were concerned.

Instead she wore the older unicorn's body, with the addition of an old wooden rifle slung over one shoulder. Nicole had one too, along with the empty saddlebags that would hold their salvage. Assuming they actually found any.

Nicole sighed, hurrying to catch up with the "stallion" in front of her. Nicole tried not to think much about that, too. She could only imagine how confusing it might be to be a creature that might be any age, sex, or even species at any time.

The sun was low in a sky streaked with the yellows and vibrant blues of coming dawn. "You never told me: have you ever tried looking human?"

Ezri barely looked back, lifting the rifle off his shoulders. “Oh, sure.” He shrugged with the gun. “Did it for a friend of mine a few times, when he asked.” He led the way down the street, gazing down the sights at every open doorway and the entrance to every street. “Damn hard, though. Harder than being a dragon ever was, more glamor than looking like a griffon...”

“You can be a dragon?” Nicole found her own gun drooping a little as she imagined Ezri as a black-scaled dragon—the fierce reptile of her book except that she would have holes in her wings and her legs in the proper changeling way.

“Easier than I can be human.” Ezri nodded sagely. “I had plenty of examples when I was growing up, but... they’re all hazy now. Humans aren’t really meant to live in magic. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been an Event.”

Nicole rolled her eyes, but she didn’t get the chance to make some kind of witty retort. Didn’t, because at that moment she heard someone coming. Her new friends had trained her well in the last few years—well enough that she knew to watch the sky and listen for wings as much as the ground around them.

It was from there she saw the newcomer, soaring straight toward them from some great height. “Ezri, look.” She took a little pride in noticing him first.

The “old unicorn” beside her raised his rifle toward the sound, eyes narrowing. “These eyes aren’t as young as yours—is that pony wearing armor?”

She nodded. “Looks that way. Must be pretty light if he can still fly.”

“Yeah.” Ezri gestured hurriedly towards one of the nearby buildings, and together they made their way under a crumbling awning. He kept her voice down as he explained. “We don’t want to be out in the open, where a really skilled pegasus could hit us with lightning or a nice strong wind.”

“Okay.” Nicole stayed close to the older unicorn, going over their story in her head again. “Book Keeper” was her father, and they were scavenging together. They lived in the nearby forest in a hidden shelter, and they had been living here for the last year or so. “You’ll do most of the talking, right?”

“Yeah.” Ezri drew himself up to his full height as he watched the airborne pegasus approach, no longer aiming at him with the gun. He kept it close though, only a little ways from pointing directly at him.

As he got closer, Nicole could get a better look at the stallion. He was bright red, with glittering silver chain on much of his body (but not the wings). He had a scabbard at one side, and a thin blade inside with a grip that looked more suited for a mouth than a hand. There were symbols worked into the armor on either side of his torso, though she didn’t recognize them. Some kind of black flower, half obscured by a rising moon. Some kind of coat of arms, maybe?

He stopped perhaps fifty feet into the air, slowing himself so abruptly into a hover that Nicole felt the rush of air as he ate the space, rustling dirt and trash all around them. “Ponies!” he called, using the new language Nicole had been studying from Ezri and Jackie over the last few years. There was a little English influence there, about as much as Old English had in common with the modern variety.

Nicole had always been good with languages, so she had no trouble understanding what the stallion shouted. “Be you civilized horses that know how to bow, or rough ponies who accept no authority but your own?”

Of course, just because she knew what the words were didn’t mean she knew how to reply. Fortunately for her, she was in the company of a master actor. “Book Keeper” walked out a few steps from the building, lowering his head respectfully. He didn’t just use the same language of the speaker, but somehow he even matched the accent. “My daughter and I are honest ponies, even if we have fallen on hard time as much as the rest of the world. Who asks?”

The pegasus seemed to relax a little at the sound of his voice, dropping another ten feet or so closer. His eyes went right to their rifles, but he looked immediately away. There was nothing of fear in him. This close, it was quite plain he was wearing some kind of uniform, with intricate layers of cloth around the chain and padding beneath. “Is well, is well.” He lowered his head in response. “My name is Sir Quick Flight, forward for the magnificent army of Ætheling. I was sent along with several others to search the ruins of Alexandria for ponies that may’ve survived in the dead city.”

“Well met, Quick Flight. My name is Book Keeper, and this is Adventure Time. I wouldn’t call us citizens of Alexandria, but... the city has taken care of us as long as we’ve lived here.”

“That’s good news!” The pegasus landed across from them, looking towards them. He didn’t seem to even really see Book Keeper, instead staring openly at her. “My master Ætheling requests and requires the aid of all in Alexandria who will bow to law.”

There was no mistaking interest when she saw it. How long had it been since someone had looked at her like that? It had been years since she had buried her husband. She found herself smiling a little in response.

“Why are you here?” Ezri asked, taking a protective step towards Nicole, a little in front of her. The message was clear. “I’m sorry to tell you that looters have picked the city clean a dozen times by now—Alexandria’s treasures are all gone.”

“Not all gone.” He gestured with one wing at their rifles, then smiled. “We didn’t come for the salvage. We are, rather, the survivors from all over this continent. There are some among our number who have come from the furthest reaches of the continent. We’ve made our offerings to Arinna and the rest, and they have kept us clean of the plague in return. Of all the old places to claim for our own, Ætheling has chosen this one.”

He gestured all around, at the slowly crumbling buildings, at the streets slowly filling with debris and the weeds choking out the gutter. “It’s time to rebuild.”

Under the Weather

Saul pulled his car to a stop at the end of a long stretch of trail, leaning as close to the window as he could and searching for danger. Only when he couldn’t see any sign of motion, neither pony nor predator, did he pull out of the trees, easing the engine cautiously down the slope.

Even after months of practice, Saul still found driving this way required extreme concentration on his part—between putting pressure on the jointed rod he used to apply the brakes or accelerator, turning the wheel without fingers, and navigating around without any true roads to speak of, Saul felt more than a little proud of his work.

Saul did very little he wasn’t proud of, and most of it was mechanical. The back of his Jeep Wrangler was evidence of that, the back-seats replaced with flat metal plates and a series of steel drums, along with a pile of logs and a pony-compatible axe. The smoke trailing behind him was no more than any small campfire might’ve produced, but it was an unfortunate block on perfect stealth.

Still, as quick as ponies could be, not even the flying ones could keep up with him for long when he had plenty of wood and somewhere flat to drive.

As he made his way down the hill, he had to devote more of his concentration to navigation, ready on the breaks and with his hooves on the wheel to prevent an accident. If that ever happens, you’re dead. Even if his new body was strong enough to bend steel with its bare hooves. Even if he could break stone and knock over trees… that wouldn’t’ save him from the mob that was coming.

Saul stopped at the base of his hill to check the map, making sure the doors were locked before getting it out of the glove-box. The map itself was written onto a piece of fading cloth, scrawled with the thick lines of a grease pencil. “Alexandria,” said the westmost extreme of the map. “Your Last Chance.”

Of course Saul couldn’t know for sure if the routes that had been scribbled here were accurate. Though plenty of the larger formations (like mountains) were marked correctly, there was no telling whether the cities and towns would be correctly represented.

And even if they are, Alexandria might not be different than anywhere else. Maybe the plague got there, too.

According to his map, Saul was less than a day’s drive away from the city, which was located somewhere in northern Illinois. He could reach it today if he didn’t care about being noticed. But he did care, which meant that during the night he would find somewhere to hunker down and lock up, same as every other night. Ponies practically never moved at night, even when they were dying of terrible diseases. That meant that tearing through the countryside using what might be the last functioning motor vehicle in the entire country would be a terrible idea.

Saul passed by another town before dark, and he rolled up the windows as he slowed to get a better look. There were plenty of wood and cement buildings here, and plenty of them had electric lights strung up between them. Th

Saul slowed as he saw the shape of buildings in the distance, and the faint glow of electric lights. Light, civilization. Survivors? He rolled up his windows, pulling the pistol from under the dash and setting it beside his map, just in case. Saul only had one magazine left for that, but that might still make the difference between life and death. Many ponies knew what guns were, even if none seemed to have any.

He turned onto what had obviously been a main thoroughfare into the town—not paved, but level and graded like somewhere that saw regular maintenance.

There were no other vehicles on the road, no pedestrians walking by on their way to farm labor of some sort or another. A single large tractor sat on the side of the road, with a flatbed wooden truck attached at the back. There was no cargo, no rust, but no sign of vandalism. Like the tractor had just been left here, key still sitting in the ignition.

There were no bodies, mercifully. Saul had seen so many corpses over the last two weeks, more than he had ever imagined possible. It was the black plague, but so much worse than any history book could possibly illustrate. Whole villages of the dead, thousands of flies and flocks of vultures.

Saul pulled his car to a stop in front of a building marked as a “general store” in huge letters. He locked the wheel with a security bar, then hopped around back to add a few more logs to the fire. Enough to keep the gas-blower (made from salvaged bits of his own air-conditioning system) supplied with fuel-gas for the engine while he was inside.

The general store had electric lights, though they were a far-cry from what he’d known before this mess. The bulbs were gigantic and all slightly different shaped, and the light itself grew brighter and then dimmer in regular cycles. It reminded him a little of a trip he’d once taken to an old mine in arizona, with its own authentic coal-fired generator. It was electricity, but of the most primitive kind.

He walked through a pair of broken doors, walking carefully around the glass. Hooves were tough, but he did not like the idea of getting shards of glass stuck in the fleshy parts.

It might’ve been a gas station, were it not for the goods stored here. Many of them were household supplies--lanterns, oil, basic tools. All looked like they’d been imperfectly made in some victorian factory, though at least they were sized for ponies.

Little in the way of clothing, though Saul had adjusted to that by now. It was easy not to worry about that sort of thing when he was almost always alone. He had looted enough stores that he didn’t need very much. He already had good tools, plenty of rope and camping supplies. Would he find…

Yes. Near the back of the shop, Saul could see an entire shelf packed solid with cans of food. Each one had very basic paper labels, naming the contents is square, blocky letters. Saul yanked open the side of his saddle-bags, and tossed in as many of the cans as it would hold. He repeated this process with the other side, until the leathery fabric began to strain. Despite what was clearly an enormous weight, he hardly felt the strain. He wouldn’t, unless he tried to climb back into the car with the saddlebags still on. That had nearly broken his back the one time he’d been unfortunate enough to (accidentally) try it.

Saul made several trips in and out of the general story, eyes always alert for anyone who might catch him in this theft. As usual, nobody came out to stop him. Maybe I can use this to get into Alexandria, he found himself thinking. If my car and mechanical skill isn’t enough.

He brought other things too--screws, fasteners, rubber gaskets. Other bits of scrap hardware he might need if he had to make more repairs to his jeep. Pony society was nothing compared to the world he’d come from, but it wasn’t nothing. The end of the world might not be so bad if everyone wasn’t dying. Unfortunately, they were.

Saul eventually brought as much as he dared, finishing up with several cords of wood for the back of his jeep. He topped off the bottom of the double-burner, then climbed back into the driver’s seat.

The passenger’s seat was already occupied. Saul gasped, jerking away from the pony sitting beside him. “Yiessss!” He scrambled for the gun he’d brought with him into the shop, but of course it was in the saddlebags in the back seat. He hadn’t thought to get it out, since he was getting back in and about to drive away.

The pony sitting beside him was a blue bat, with wings made of skin and a mane wild and short. She was completely naked, though a little leather holster on one of her forelegs legs held a tiny dagger.

“Yeah, keep staring,” she grinned at him, mane falling over one of her eyes. “That’s as close as you’re gonna get. Just so you’re clear.”

This shouldn’t be sexy this shouldn’t be sexy this shouldn’t be sexy. Saul told himself this, as he had told himself anytime he met a young female pony. It sometimes worked, but it wasn’t working now.

At least he had the good sense to look her over for sores. There were none, nor was there necroses near her hooves or the fleshy tissue on her face. There was no scarring either, as survivors often had. She’s never been infected. “W-what… what the hell are you doing here?” Saul asked, locking his doors.

He moved back into position to drive, placing each of the poles touching his hind legs and pressing the foam pillow near his back to help himself stay upright. He didn’t start driving, though.

“Saving your life,” the pony said, gesturing towards the road in front of them. “That goes to Alexandria.”

“Yeah,” he said, gesturing to the glove box. “I bought a map. Cost me my best flashlight.”

The pony didn’t fumble with the glove-box’s tiny latch as he might’ve done. She moved her hooves as skilfully as though there were invisible fingers attached, opening it on the first try and removing the map. She held it up with both hooves, shaking her head. “Shit. You’ve come all this way?”

He nodded, taking a deep breath to calm himself. Whoever this was didn’t have the thick accent he was used to from most ponies he’d met. There was no struggling to understand her. Her english was perfect. “Whoever you are… please put that back and get out of my car.”

“Jackie,” she answered, winking at him. “And hell no. You’re my ride.”

“I’m your--”

“You’re my ride.” she gestured back towards the trunk with one wing. “Hella sweet work by the way. Last time I saw a pony with a gasifier was at least five centuries back. Real brainiac shit you did. I wouldn’t have bothered coming down to save your ass otherwise.”

“How do you--” The bat interrupted him, again. The more often she did it, the more he felt like he wanted to strangle her.

“Dipshit, maybe start driving. Out of town, but swing an immediate right. We’re going north. Alexandria is…” she shivered. “Bad. Alexandria’s bad. If you keep your ass here, they’re going to spill out towards us, and you’re gonna get ripped apart by starving refugees. If not, you’ll get infected for sure. I’ll go back to flying, but you don’t have wings and wouldn’t know how to use them if you did. You’re the one who has something to lose here.”

“If I do, will you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Jackie the bat nodded. “YES. Once you’re on the road.”

Saul sighed, then started driving. He passed through the rest of the town, and sure enough there was a smaller traill off to the right less than a mile away. It was too dark to see for certain, but Saul thought he could see a cloud of smoke rising from the distance. Very large and very far away, like a huge forest fire. “Okay, now.” Saul took a deep breath. “I’ve been winding my way east for weeks now. Everybody who talked to me said Alexandria was gonna be safe. It has some kind of… university or whatever. They have a cure for this thing. That’s what everybody says.”

“Really?” Jackie rolled her eyes. Despite her relaxed posture in the seat, resting on her haunches in a comfortable way, her eyes were laser focused and alert, staring out the windows and constantly scanning the land around the car. Like someone hunted. “Well, that’s a crock of horseshit.” she smiled to herself at the apparent joke. “All the greats are dead, sweetie. Saint Oleum has been dead forever. Even the goddamn alicorn can’t figure this one out, and she’s trying. If Sunset’s ponies can’t do it, than it’s impossible. We’re all just fucking dead.” she looked away, out the dark window. Her face reflected in the glass looked more haunted than any Saul had ever seen. “So many dead.”

“It’s Saul,” He said, though he couldn’t extend a hoof to comfort her. He used both to steer, putting pressure on either side of the wheel. He couldn’t move them and still drive. “My name’s Saul Cook.”

“Well, Saul, I’m the bad news pony,” Jackie said. “You picked a shitty time to be a refugee. Should’ve stayed back in the earth that was. There’s no cure. In a few months, it’ll be winter, and there’s no food. Feels like half the world is trying to get to Alexandria, as though that’s gonna help. HPI isn’t helping anypony, they’re just looking out for their own. The sea is eating us alive and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Saul admitted. “But I… believe you. Why are we going north?”

“Ponytown,” Jackie said. “My wife is there now--the plague already passed through, and most of them survived. Maybe something about the weather. But everybody knows you’re immune once you get it. Feels like… maybe a safe place to go.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Saul muttered. “Sounds like a trash name. Too silly for the map.” There was a little more bitterness in his words than was called for. Discouragement maybe, when he heard the word wife.

Jackie laughed. “And that is why we’re going. Back in Alexadria…” she lowered her voice. “Plague didn’t get in, not until… very recently. Your stories were right about that. We had a magic shield, real fancy shit… but just because it could keep out the disease didn’t mean it could keep out thousands of starving ponies. Magical shield crystals tend not to do well when you batter them with rocks.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Jackie slumped against the side of the car. “Anyway, while they’re gorging themselves on what was left of our supplies, killing each other over scraps… we’re going to get the hell away. Ponytown was far enough north that it never grew into a big city. Short growing season, off the beaten path for trade… a perfect place to spend a few hundred years while this all blows over.”

“A few hundred years?”

“Oh,” Jackie shrugged one wing. “Well, yeah. Even you will probably last that long, unless you come down with the plague. Earth ponies are stubborn little fuckers.”

“Nobody I met… told me that…” he muttered, slowing a little as he drove. It was nearly full dark by now, but under the circumstances, Saul kept driving. He might very well drive straight through the night, if he could stay up. Wish I hadn’t ran out of mio…

“Yeah, they probably had other things on their mind. Dying in agony, probably.”

“No,” he shivered. “I never stopped when the people looked sick. I’d just keep right on driving. Most ponies were so scared of my car that they stayed away.”

“I guess I can see that,” Jackie said. “Cars are too hard to maintain. Only the HPI has shit like that, and their asses are fucking scarce.”

The engine was starting to struggle. He recognized the sound, and pulled to the side of the road. “Got to load more wood. Be right back.”

Saul hopped out, hurrying to the open back and climbing up amidst the wood. Something rustled from the front of the car, but he ignored it as he worked, tossing in several fresh logs with his usual strength.

When he was finished, he hurried back to find the front door shut behind him. Jackie was sittiing in his seat, and gestured pointedly around the car. At least she didn’t try to drive it off without me. He was too tired to argue with this pony, too tired to fight. He just walked around the front, and climbed into the passenger seat. There were numerous blankets and pillows where a human might’ve put their legs. This was, after all, where he slept most nights.

“I assume you know how to drive,” he said, looking over at her. “You said ‘Jackie’ not ‘Dark wings’ or something silly, so I guess you’re…”

“Yeah,” Jackie looked a little nervous, pushing one of her legs down on the metal poles. The car jerked forward, its engine protesting at the sudden load. “Like riding a bicycle, right? You never forget.”

“Just so long as you don’t get us killed.” Saul kept one of his hooves near the E-break between their seats, ready to yank at a moment’s notice. But Jackie’s second attempt at driving proved much more successful, and they were soon off again. “How long has it been, anyway?”

“Seven hundred years,” she answered, without a shred of humor. “Thereabouts. Live that long, and things start to fuzz at the ends. Being human was so long ago, I don’t really remember the specifics. I used to, though.”

“You’re shitting me,” he shook his head vigorously. “You look so young! You can’t be thirty.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she answered, a little of her good humor returning. “I’ve just been twenty five for a long time. I’ll be twenty-five forever. Better than being sixteen.” At that, her expression became somber again. “That makes you a little kid, Saul. A little kid who isn’t nocturnal. How about you rest, and I drive. I can put wood into a barrel whenever the engine freaks out. You sleep, and we can switch off when morning comes.”

“You can handle off-roading? These trails suck. Lots of the time I’m just driving overland.” Saul protested, but not vigorously. Truth be told, he was exhausted. Not just because it was dark, and he’d been training himself to rise with the sun. It hurt to have his entire mission crushed like this. Almost he wished he’d continued on, even if only death waited for him in Alexandria. He’d come so far, it seemed a shame to change directions. But what could he do?

“Yeah,” Jackie nodded, focusing on the road again. “I’ll just take it slow at first. It’ll be fine, kid.”

Saul pressed the button on the side of his seat, and it reclined almost flat. He pulled up a blanket, covering most of his body. He doubted he would get much sleep, with as much bumping and rocking around as they would do on these uneven trails. He wanted to try anyway. “You think we’ll make it? To this… Ponytown?”

“Yeah,” Jackie nodded. “No problem. It won’t be the world you left behind. It will be hard, a rough winter probably. But you’ll make it. We all will.”

“Good,” Saul closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure he believed this pony, but… what else could he do? If she could keep going for hundreds of years, he could make it through the night. Maybe in the morning this pony would explain what the hell she’d meant by anything.

Saving Time

Across all her many years, Archive met many refugees she helped cope with their new lives. But alicorns were still just individuals, however powerful they might be. Her guidebook had already been completed, and the spell cast to send the many copies of it forward.

Even though she couldn’t care for everyone, there were some lives Archive simply could not leave to the indeterminate whims of time. She built a house, kept it the way she remembered it, and that worked pretty good in the end.

But there was one man she knew wouldn’t be coming back there, because he had already died. During the vast gulf of time between the Event and Archive’s ascent, her father had arrived, lived out his days, and died. The Archive found his memory in her mind, just as she had the memories of so many others.
This knowledge left her conflicted. In some ways it was a relief—her father had abandoned their family during her adolescence, and left her poor mother to take care of Alex and her two siblings on her own. But at the same time she remembered the man he’d been before that, and so she could not decide.

Archive was a powerful Alicorn now, with even more powerful friends. She was at that moment waging a war of emancipation across the globe, destroying the folk-religions that had proclaimed all refugees to be the cause of all misfortune, and freeing the captives. But she couldn’t quite devote all her attention to that, not with him in the back of her mind.

So she found Oracle, the first male Alicorn in all the world. He reacted to her arrival with his usual resentment, grumbling about having more important places to be.

“I need to pull someone out of time,” Archive explained, when she’d finally settled him down and assured him that she would not need to view the future today.

Oracle dropped his tea, and the liquid spread slowly away from him along the floor of Alex’s sitting room. Like all the floors in her great castle, it was metal, and she didn’t worry about cleaning it. “You need to… what?”

“You heard me. I need to pull someone out of time.” Her horn lit up, and she levitated over a large printed sheet with all of the information Oracle would need to tie a sympathetic connection to her father. “You will probably need me to be here for the spell. I’m his offspring, so that’s an intimate connection you can—”

“No,” Oracle levitated the sheet back. “Impossible.” He raised his voice, cutting her off. “I’m not being metaphorical here, Archive. I’m not some starship engineer. When I say it’s impossible, I mean impossible.” His horn glowed, and the whole world was swallowed in a dark illusion. Archive saw as few ponies could comprehend—though time was not her area of power, her mind could at least see what might drive lesser ponies insane.

“There is not some infinite series of parallel worlds for me to take what I will. There is one universe.”

“I know that!” she insisted, glowering at him. She couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious to be asking for something so selfish. But maybe he hadn’t noticed that. “I’m not asking you to undo a whole civilization. Just… whip out that time machine, take us to eighty-eight, and let’s bring a pony back with us.”

The illusion around them showed the room they were sitting in, as an infinite series of undulating cross-sections. Archive suspected that Oracle’s perception of time was more advanced, that he didn’t have to represent the higher-dimensional space in three. But she’d never know for sure. Time magic was out of her reach.

“Across an infinite time horizon, even the infinitesimally small aspects of the universe have an impact on all other events. This pony… whoever he was… he had his life. He touched the ones around him, whenever he ended up. Taking him would mean stealing those experiences. Friendships, lovers… children, maybe. Erased.”

Again Archive opened her mouth to argue, and again Oracle cut her off. “And then those people, they went on to have an impact on many other lives. Looks like over two thousand years ago… you know how many generations that is? How many ponies can connect back to this one?” He smacked one hoof on the tea-table. As he did so, his broken glass lifted from where it had fallen, and the liquid poured back inside. Steam began to rise from it again, and Oracle returned it to his magic.

“Two thousand years equals all of them. That’s more parents than there are ponies living right now. Taking even one pony out of the timeline is impossible. The paradox that would create projects such vast energies forward that they cannot be overcome—the universe protects itself. I couldn’t save this pony for you even if this wasn’t an entirely self-interested mission. If he was our only hope against Charybdis, I couldn’t save him. And we both know he isn’t.”

Archive wanted to argue. But Oracle was right.

“You’ve already got so much more than the other refugees, Archive. You have a family member. How many have that chance? Be content that you at least have the power to know that information.” He nodded down towards the sheet in front of him. “I know your powers. You remember him. What more do you want?”

She opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. She shook her head once, trying to clear it. “So… maybe creating a giant paradox that rips the universe apart wouldn’t be a good idea. What about something simpler. Could we… find an exact year, an exact place? And could you send me back?”

This time she could read Oracle’s face. He didn’t even have to open his mouth for Archive to know the answer. “Lots of things could happen, Archive. Whether they are wise… I am less convinced.”

It was just a matter of bargaining after that.

“But you know this is unfair,” Oracle finished, once they had finished making arrangements. “Using Imperium for personal satisfaction. I guess it wouldn’t be the first time…”

“For any of us,” Archive whispered. “But no, you’re right. About everything.” She rose to her hooves, vanishing away the lunch arrangements with a brief flash of magic. “You’re new at this, Oracle. I’m not. I’ve been helping other ponies for so long that I’ve seen whole civilizations rise and fall. Every now and then, we get to help ourselves.”

Travel through time was a terribly costly spell, and the ingredients to cast it had to be indirectly created through careful magic over decades. But eventually the task was done, and it came time for Archive to collect on her spell.

She had other preparations made by then, of course. An illusion that would make her look like a nameless fictional unicorn version of herself, so that she wouldn’t attract suspicion if anyone saw her. Lots of research to make sure that she wouldn’t be interacting with anyone of historical consequence. Other than her own body and a watch she’d bought off a refugee, she would bring nothing back with her. Even the smallest object might be some kind of anachronism.

“I’ve had an awful lot of time to think about this,” Archive said, shifting uncomfortably on her hooves and looking up at Oracle. Unicorns were shorter than Alicorns. “If I can’t bring him back with me, then… why can I do anything at all? The logic you used when we spoke about this last time, wouldn’t that prevent any kind of time travel ever?”

It was just the two of them, together in an ancient monument high in the hills. There was already an opening here, a portal. Currently it had no end, but it would soon.

The moon shone bright overhead, so bright that she needed no spells to help her see in the gloom. Though the objects of spellcraft scattered around the circle of standing stones did not make any sense to her, so it wasn’t like she needed to see them.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Oracle said. “If you make me explain, I will tell you why and you will be dissatisfied.”

“Tell me anyway,” Archive said.

“Because the only events you can cause while traveling through time are the ones that have already happened. They were always part of the timeline. In a way, that makes them inevitable. And if you think that proves there’s no such thing as free will, and that even the greatest minds are deterministic, then you know why I sleep so poorly.”

Maybe on another day that kind of question would’ve given Archive some serious pause. But she’d come for another reason today, and her mind spun with it. “So when I asked you to do this for me, you looked back through time and saw I already had,” Archive supplied. “But didn’t there still have to be an original timeline where I—”

“Stop,” Oracle barked. “You want a spell, or do you want to debate the existential questions inspired by it?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “I have questions too, Archive. Like, I’d love to know why you didn’t use your magic to do this. Can’t you call on the memories of dead humans? And this pony… he’s a dead human.”

“Because…” Archive hadn’t expected that question. “That isn’t the same as talking to the real thing.” She gestured impatiently towards the portal. “Go on, Oracle. I’m tired of waiting. You have centuries to lecture me when it’s over.”

"Then listen carefully," Oracle said, his voice suddenly commanding. "You have until sunset for your vanity project. Don't try to circumvent my spell, it won't work. I already know what you'll do."

And just like that, she was there. There was no transition, exactly—none she could perceive. Lonely Day was not gifted with perception of time, and hadn’t ever been able to make sense of it even with sincere attempts to study.

She found herself on a dirt road, one she recognized from her study of the geography and what she had gleaned from memories of others who had lived here. She found a farmer rolling a cart of unhusked corn down the road, and waved him down as politely as she could. With his directions, she was able to find the right road, the one that would take her to the tavern that was her destination.

“But I wouldn’t go there, young miss,” said the elderly stallion, adjusting his massive sombrero to better hide form the sun. “It’s not a place for a pony like you. Rough folk go there, maybe not so kind to young mares. If you go North for a little way, you’ll reach Smithfield. Much more respectable folk, if you catch my meaning.”

If it hadn’t been for the ancient accents, the old wooden carts, she might’ve thought she’d only been sent through space. But she could still feel the light touch of a spell all around her, so subtle that it was never quite within reach. It probably would’ve been screamingly Obvious to Oracle, but he hadn’t come along. He wouldn’t need to. When sunset came, the spell would end, and that would be that.

Rather than walk the rest of the way, Day teleported in short jumps, crossing miles in an instant until she reached the crossroads where the one she had come to see had spent much of his later life. At least from what she’d seen—she hadn’t tried to find his memories. Except for his face.

The Rusty Flagon had a huge metal cup welded together on top, probably made of an ancient pre-event corn silo. The squat building was much of what she’d imagined—dirty, bleak, and surrounded with burly stallions and the sort of mares you paid by the hour.

She approached with confidence, ignoring their stares, though there was some distant part of her that still wished for some human clothing. Particularly around people like this, who reminded her so much of the advantages of modesty. But this was the wrong time for clothes, and the wrong place. They only wore hats in summer here, except for the working women.

“Well look at that,” called an earth pony stallion with a pile of cones as his cutie mark. “Fresh blood. Somepony’s lost, eh boys? I think I should show her around.”

“I think you’ll forget about me,” Day muttered, her horn glowing faintly. And just like that, they did. She shuddered to think what these ponies might do to any other girls who came this way—but hopefully they would get good advice and stay away. She couldn’t kill ponies here, any more than she could save them.

To her surprise, the matron inside was a sturdy unicorn mare, with bright red mane puffed high above her head and a horn that looked like it had been bruised and mended so many times it was almost as crooked as a changeling’s. She levitated a cigarette down into an ashtray, then looked up as she entered. “You’re lost, kid. Best get more lost before somepony notices.”

Do I really stand out that much? Day liked to think she knew ponies and humans pretty well, but she hadn’t anticipated this. “I’m not worried about them,” she said, though there was no spell this time. “I’m looking for a pony. It’s…” there he was, in a back table by himself surrounded by a mountain of empty flagons. “Him.”

The matron followed her gaze, then sighed sadly. “Not much I can do for you there, filly. Or him. Whatever he owes you, you’re not going to get it. Just do yourself a favor and let him drink in peace.”

“If I could…” Day muttered. “I won’t hurt him physically, I promise. And I’m not interested in money.”

“Let me see into your saddlebag…” demanded the innkeeper, stepping out from around the bar. There was no trace of shame in the request, or even an apologetic look.

“I’m not here to kill him,” Day levitated the bag open, showing her its contents. Not poisoned blades, not much of anything really. She carried them because it would’ve seemed even more suspicious to those on the road if she didn’t have possession’s while she traveled. “And besides, I can see you’ve used your horn a time or two. You can’t hang a unicorn’s weapons on a peg.”

She chuckled dryly. “Some have tried. Fine, fine. Waste your time if you want to. But you should know that Solomon was a friend of mine, once. I won’t abide you killing what’s left of him.” She tapped her horn with one hoof, as meaningful a gesture as brandishing a gun. “I don’t know how sent you, but you should know the flagon is neutral ground. No violence in my shop—none.”

She walked past the innkeeper, headed over to the table. Then she levitated every single empty glass out of the way, stacking them neatly on a nearby table so the matron could collect them. More importantly, they were out of her way. Too bad she couldn’t do anything for the smell.

“Hey dad.”

The pony was a unicorn too, as it happened. Soft green like she usually, but with a brilliantly orange mane. In the way of ponies he didn’t look to be even to middle age yet—but in many other ways, he looked worn and ragged. His mane was patchy, his coat unhealthy and unbrushed. His horn had gotten some kind of oil on it, and he hadn’t cleaned it off. And the smell… of all the spells to invent, why had nobody ever come up with one for BO?

“You know I built this town?” said the stallion, the worlds fumbling and merging together in a crude drunken slur. It wasn’t even mid afternoon yet. “I feed them. The irrigation… I designed all of it.” He lifted the last of the flagons—the one that still had some liquid in it and thrust it towards her. The alcohol inside might’ve smelled good, under different circumstances. The flagon at least knew how to brew. But smelling so much of it here, Day couldn’t enjoy the craft.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s quite impressive.” She didn’t listen to him much for the next few seconds, just hearing that familiar voice. It had been so long since last she’d heard it, that it was only a distant blur in her memory. But not an entirely unpleasant one. The man who she’d known so long ago had been a better one.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after a few seconds. “But I can’t talk to you like this.” Her horn glowed, and a second later so did the flagon in front of her. Bubbles fizzed off the liquid, frothing over the side for a few seconds. Then it settled down, and the liquid inside went clear. She pushed it over to him another second later. “Go on, here. You missed one.”

The stallion took one glance at the offered flagon, and didn’t seem to notice anything strange with it. The barkeep did, and Alex could feel her eyes on them. But she didn’t care if they were being watched anymore. She didn’t actually interfere, just made a meaningful gesture. But Alex wasn’t worried—she wasn’t here to attack one of the barkeep’s best customers.

The stallion coughed once, his eyes narrowing. “This isn’t no…” he trailed off, blinked once, and burped loudly. Alex’s nose wrinkled at the smell, but it didn’t last long.

The Stallion’s eyes lost their gazed expression, he stopped slouching in his chair, and seemed to see her for the first time. “What…” he dropped the flagon on the table. “Where am I?” He looked down at the cup, and its perfectly clear contents. “What is this? Who are you?”

“Aqua Regia,” she said, nodding towards the flagon. “Alchemists call it the universal mercury, or they will. Once they discover it.” She kept her voice down, still avoiding his eyes. There would be no counting on his drunkenness to hide obvious details from him now.

“Whatever it is…” the stallion lifted the flagon, taking another sip. “I must owe you a great deal for it. I can’t believe it. I haven’t felt this good since I was a child.” He set the empty flagon down beside her, grinning from ear to ear. In its way, that hurt more than just seeing his pain. “What kind of drug is it?”

“It isn’t,” Alex answered, raising a hoof. In all the years of her long life, the signs of the bar-patron had never changed. Her father’s energy had ensured that they were attracting a lot of attention now—several patrons were eyeing their corner now, apparently drawn by the stallion’s unusually loud speaking voice. “It’s medicine, a cure. Well… more like a treatment.”

“For pain?” asked the stallion. He turned over the flagon, draining the last few drops. “It works fantastically well. I don’t feel anything from my back anymore, or my chest, or… it’s so quiet.” He looked like he was about to cry. Seeing it almost made Alex break down too.

“This mare bothering you, Sol?” The innkeeper asked, balancing her tray carefully on her back. There were two flagons on it, both apparently filled with ale. “You want I should send her off.”

“God no, Ivy. I didn’t know you’d hired a doctor, but I’ve never met an animal better in this wasteland you call a world. Whatever medicine she gave me, it’s even better than what they did for me back on Earth. Give her anything she wants.”

“Really?” Ivy, apparently, set the flagons down on the table between them. “You don’t sound… you sound yourself again, Sol. I think I’d like to see this medicine.” She eyed Alex’s saddlebags meaningfully.

Alex didn’t hesitate, pointing her horn straight for both glasses and concentrating again. An incredibly complex spell—it had taken months to master the first time. But now it was second-nature. With full glasses, Ivy and Solomon both recoiled as they began to froth and boil. A foul-smelling odor emanated from them as the numerous impurities boiled off. Then they settled down, becoming totally clear.

Solomon reached for the nearest of the flaggons, but Ivy stopped him with a hoof. “Wait, Sol.” Her eyes were still watching Alex, full of suspicion. “I want her to drink first.” She levitated Sol’s glass towards her. “From yours.” Her horn glowed a little brighter, and a knife lifted right out of her belt, stabbing the table near her. “I insist.”

“There’s no need for that, Ivy,” Solomon said, her voice pleading. “Please. She’s already helped me.”

“You’re not yourself, Sol,” Ivy said. “I’ve kept you alive this long, old man. Trust me on this.”

Alex levitated the flagon to her lips and took a long draft, pouring in the air so Ivy would see. Aqua Regia burned as it went down, even when it had nothing to heal. But even so, she felts its effects. The tiredness of her hike vanished, even the smell of road-sweat vanished from her coat. She started sweating ozone for a few seconds instead, then nothing. She set the glass down, a third drained. “Like that?”

Solomon reached eagerly for the other glass, and Ivy stopped him again. “Wait. See if anything happens to her.”

“Nothing will,” Alex sat back, entirely relaxed. “It’s not to hurt the man, Ivy. I would never do harm to him.”

“She’s a doctor,” Solomon provided, helpfully. “They take an oath not to hurt anyone, you know. The Hippocratic.”

Ivy shook her head. “Not so. I watched her come in, Sol. She picked up the wrong kind of attention, and blasted them with dark magic so fast they didn’t even blink. Just turned and left her alone like she wasn’t even there. Ain’t no trusting yourself around a pony like that, nor anyone else.”

“Then trust this,” Alex turned her head, glaring at the innkeeper. “This man is Solomon Haggard—my father. I have very little time here, and if you waste any more of it, I’ll…” she trailed off. What would she do? Hurt a pony who had only been trying to protect this sad, wrung-out version of a man she’d once respected? No. She couldn’t do that. “be upset.” She finished lamely.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Ivy took a step back, glancing between the two of them several times. “Wouldn’t you know it. I didn’t know you had a daughter, Sol! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Solomon’s expression no longer seemed boiling over with excitement and relief, however. He’d frozen still, the flagon of Azoth in one hoof and his eyes never leaving Alex’s face. Maybe he was seeing the same family resemblance she was. “It was… a long time ago,” he said. “You know… the Event. No one gets their family back. There’s… all those years to cross.” His eyes no longer moved to Alex, gliding around her more than focusing on her. “I must be a lucky man.”

Alex could hear it in his voice—he was on the edge of tears. She couldn’t hear that sound without crying too, but she tried to block it out.

“I’ll leave you,” Ivy said. “But on your way out, miss…”

“Alex,” she supplied.

“Right. I want a word, miss Alex. About your father’s accommodations.” She left.

But that had only confused the poor man. “Alex,” he said, glancing briefly down at her flank, her side. Sniffing the air. “Not Elizabeth?”

“Nope,” she grinned sheepishly. But this wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as it had been with her mother. That was a mare she respected, this… well, he was more like the memory of someone like that. “The Event changes all of us. Some more than others, some less. For us… well, we have a lot in common. The spell doesn’t actually do that—it’s simple coincidence. But it’s true.”

“Us…” he repeated, staring down at the drink, obviously wanting more of it. How much pain are you in that a pint wasn’t enough? “Your mother? She’s alive too? After all this time…”

“Yes,” she said. “And no. She wasn’t yet, not now. I wasn’t either. I got murdered by a sea monster maybe… five hundred years ago? Something like that. But I’ll be back soon.”

“That made no sense,” Solomon said, and there was something like a familiar smile on his face. “You aren’t dead, unless… unless I am. And you’ve come to take me to heaven.”

“Nope,” she said. “But it’s closer to that than you think. Remember Back to the Future?”

“You built a time machine?” Now he sounded doubtful. “What instrument did you play in high school?”

“None,” she responded instantly. “I took piano lessons when I was in kindergarten but I quit after a few months. I never even had one recital.”

Solomon’s eyes got wider. “It really is you.”

She nodded. There was some crying then, some things Alex hadn’t ever expected to see or hear again. She found herself forgetting the broken man she’d seen only a few minutes before. This was a memory of something better, all over again. This was her purpose as Archive, boiled down into a single person’s life.

The only difference was that the Event hadn’t been the thing to ruin Solomon’s life. He’d done that all by himself.

“Time travel, huh?” He asked, as soon as all the tears were over. “You’re from the future. Which means… the Event didn’t let us see each other. I’m going to… spend the rest of my life here, never see my family again.”

You didn’t see us when you were alive, she thought bitterly, but didn’t actually say. She had so little time left now, a few hours at most. She wouldn’t waste them with spite, even if the things she might’ve said were all true. She nodded gravely. “Except maybe my little brother. I haven’t found him yet, so it’s possible you do. But… I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Then let me come with you,” he said. “Wherever you’ve stashed this Delorean, there’s got to be an extra seat. I’m sure the future needs a public planner, an electrical engineer, or a chemist. These primitives are so backward I’ve heard them talk about burning people who don’t speak their new bastardized language. Maybe they’ve already started doing it in other places.”

She could feel the tears streaming from her eyes. “I tried,” she said, voice desperate. “It isn’t a machine, it was… like a demigod of time, if you like. I can’t tell you much about him. But he won’t let me bring you back. When sunset comes… I’ll get sucked back to the present—my present, anyway. And I won’t be able to bring anything with me.”

“Oh.” He settled back against his chair, and she could practically see the weight crushing down on him. All the time you could’ve spent with us, everything you could’ve done—and now is when it hurts you. “Magic sure is unfair, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “In more ways than you know.” She pushed the glass towards him. “Please, go ahead. Nothing to be ashamed of in drinking this.”

“In front of you? My own… well, daughter?”

She nodded. “It’s not a drug, not a drink, it’s an alchemical curative. Think of it like… a healing potion. One that won’t be invented for… I honestly have no idea. Someone came up with it while I was dead.”

That was all the leave he needed, because he started drinking again. And with each sip, she could see the curative working. Fur growing back, mane regaining some of its luster. One foreleg held at a bit of a limp straightening out. You’re like… a festering pile of disease. How much do you need?

Another two pints, as it happened. The body knew when to reject the stuff—it would start burning then, filling the air with the same ozone smell that she’d experienced. It wouldn’t hurt if you kept going, but it would waste something incredibly valuable. “And anyone can just make that?” he asked, his voice sounding even stronger than before. “Just point your horn, and…”

“Unfortunately not,” she said, cutting him off. “The process is so complex I’d run out of time just explaining it to you. Most of the potion produced in my time is made alchemically—the process is extremely expensive and the machines to make it don’t now exist. But there are few imperial spellcasters who can do it. Mythic Rune, obviously. Isaac. Sunset… maybe two others.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Solomon said. “But it sounds like… sounds like you really went places in the world, if in the future you’re traveling through time to give me some medicine. I can’t tell you how different I feel. I won’t need to drink again after this, Alex. It was only for the pain… and I don’t feel any pain.”

When have I heard that before? But she wanted to believe it anyway, even if she knew it couldn’t be true. It never had been in the past, anyway. Somehow he always ended up in a place like this, with his life ruined. And this time he wouldn’t have any old friends or family to rely on. “I guess so,” Alex said. “I’m… it doesn’t matter. I just want to help you. I won’t get another chance to do this, so… anything I can tell you, I will.”

“What happened to civilization?” Solomon asked. “All the people… everyone here has their own stories. But I don’t believe what they say. It couldn’t be true. God wouldn’t let it happen.”

Alex shrugged. “I can’t speak for God, we don’t talk much. But I can tell you…” and she did. She didn’t have a memory crystal, so she couldn’t show him. But she could explain things simple enough. “I used to have a library, you could’ve gone there to read about it. But it’s all ashes now. That city burned down after I left it.”

“So it isn’t true what some of them are saying, about us… a story is going around now, about how we left-behinders are like… little gods, fallen and cast out after a war in heaven. There are some preaching about what should be done with us. But most of the older generation doesn’t listen closely to what they say. But I worry about how things might be like for someone who shows up fifty years from now.”

“You’re right to worry,” she said. But how much could she say? Oracle hadn’t been specific about that. Now that she thought about it, she found the lack of restrictions rather… strange. He’d been so precise about everything else. Cut down every solution she could think of to bring her father forward. Shot down stasis spells, and teleports, and wormholes, and everything else. So why not restrict what she could tell him? “If you ever move from here, you shouldn’t tell them what you are. The safest thing for you to be is uninteresting. All their tests to identify you are lies, so don’t be afraid. Just lie better than they do. You should be good at that.”

They spoke for a few hours—about all the things Solomon had accomplished here. He repeated the same story Ivy had given her, about how he had been the one to set up the irrigation, and he was the reason that the struggling farmers now had enough food for everypony. She told him as much as she could about the Event, and the things she remembered about this period. But compared to any other slice of time, there was so little. She hadn’t been alive to remember this, so she had only what she’d picked up from other survivors since.

She gave him the best advice she could, told him where he could expect the nation to start from again, and everything else she’d rehearsed. It was the best toolbox she could construct under short notice, given she wasn’t allowed to bring anything with her.

“And you’re sure you can’t explain how you made that drink?” he asked, gazing again at the glass of aqua regia. It wasn’t quite empty, there was still a nice residue on the bottom. But he couldn’t drink more than his fill, that just wasn’t how it worked. “Even if I don’t understand now, it’s possible I would later. If I could find my way to this Alexandria… there may be some there who still understand. Some… scholars hiding out in the ruins, maybe.”

“I… fine.” She pointed her horn at the table, and it flashed briefly. There was a little puff of smoke, and the alchemical state-diagram appeared there, burned into the wood. She had to memorize the whole thing to cast the spell anyway, so it wasn’t as though it were that hard for her. “Here. This is… all sixteen transitions. This will work with a grain alcohol. If you start with distilled ethanol, you can cut out the first three steps.” Ivy wasn’t watching, or else she probably would’ve been furious about the damaged table.

“I don’t know what this is…” Solomon said. “But… I’ll figure it out. I’ll have time, you said. Ponies really do live as long as they say.”

“They can live a lot longer…” she said, her voice becoming pained. “As long as they want, if they’re up for it. But that one’s even harder to explain…”

“You don’t have to,” he raised a hoof. “I don’t think you would’ve come back here to visit me if I was someone like that. Then I’d be alive in your present. We probably would have met a lot sooner, once you… come back to life? I still don’t understand that either.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. She nodded all the same. “If you’re… still around, I never found you. But I don’t actually know much about your death, I was afraid to look. But… most unicorns don’t do more than two hundred, maybe three hundred if they’re magical masters. That’s long enough to meet me, but… it would be a helluva trip. Also, I’d be a pretty scared kid when you found me. Right after I came back to life, banished to… well, I already told you enough. I really don’t suggest going there right now, and you’ll have to wait about two centuries before that changes.”

“I can feel it,” he said, his voice low. He stared down at the table, running one hoof along the burn marks she’d made. “I’m not going to be here in two centuries. Even if I could… most people just aren’t meant to last that long. That’s not what God had in mind for us. I haven’t lived… the sort of life that meant I got to be with my family. Maybe if I’d done things differently I’d be with you, your mother… and maybe Elizabeth and Peter too? In the future?”

She nodded. “There’s… some truth to that. The way you treated us… I know the others haven’t forgiven you. I wasn’t sure I would. But I’ve had a long time to think about it. I had to come back here, had to meet you again.” She lowered her head, swallowing. She tried to will her emotions into silence, and it mostly worked. “I can’t help every human who returns. We all come back the same way—lonely, confused, maybe not even speaking the language. But where I couldn’t visit all of them, I could see you. To tell you I forgive you.”

Solomon wept. She gripped his hooves from across the table, waited for him to finish.

“You won’t see any of the others again,” she finally said. “What lies beyond… I don’t know. You’ll know sooner than I will.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I think I will.”

Until Sunset

She almost left him then. Alex had already done more than she deserved, gotten more than so many others. She had met both her parents, and wouldn’t have to say goodbye to her mother for many years to come. But even still, she resisted. She looked at the Stallion who had done her so much harm, and found herself hesitating.

She could see the emptiness in his eyes, the glances back towards the bar. She already knew he wouldn’t survive two centuries, because she didn’t remember meeting him then. There were no mysterious green unicorns in her past, only a society that was falling apart and enslaved to the will of blood magic.

If she left this pony here, he would probably be dead within the decade. He would find some new pain, justify his substance of choice again. You should’ve held us tighter. Then I would’ve been looking for you. I would’ve had something in place, the way I did for Mary. But there was hypocrisy there. She hadn’t found Mary, Discord had. This was all out of her control, and pretending otherwise was a lie.

We have until Sunset… but Oracle never said it had to be in this time zone.

“I just had an idea,” Alex said. “I don’t know how attached you are to this place. But I know a place… a place that could really use your knowledge. Humans are scarce there, you see… all the ponies who live there are transplants from a far country. You know things they could use. I could set you up there right now.” Her horn flickered. “The shadows are getting long. We have… minutes, probably, until my time here runs out. But where I’m thinking of, the sun won’t set for months.” Could she cheat with Oracle’s spell? The terms of time magic were so arcane to her that she couldn’t be sure. From everything she understood, it shouldn’t be possible. Yet here she was.

“Where?” Solomon asked. “This place was pretty ignorant when I got here. They didn’t even know how to build a retaining wall. Does someone need more than that?”

“Yes,” Alex answered, her voice desperate. “You do.”

He fell silent, staring at her. That was braver than she ever would’ve been in her old life. Even now. With all her power hidden away, it felt like she should be expecting a blow any second.

But it never came. The person who would’ve hit her was long dead.

They’d attracted Ivy’s attention again with their silence. Apparently, she could see Solomon’s distress, because she had started wandering over again. Close enough that she could hear. “Why?” he asked. “Why… do all this? You moved heaven and earth. The Alex I knew didn’t want to see my face ever again.”

She didn’t look away. “I’m not him anymore.”

Solomon nodded. “I’m… sure you heard Ivy, when you got here. I’m all burnt up. I did her family a favor when there was still a little man left in me, and now she feels sorry. I’ve done all I can for Willowbrook.”

“Now hold on!” Ivy shoved her way over, pushing a few stray stools out of the way. “I didn’t say you could leave.”

“No,” Alex agreed. “I did.”

Her horn roared to life, an explosion of magic powerful enough it almost tore through her disguise. An intercontinental teleport was well beyond the power of most unicorns, but it wasn’t physically impossible. Light leaked from the edges of the illusion for a few seconds, filling the little inn and spilling out its little windows. She caught a basic attack spell from the innkeeper, and turned it away harmlessly. The mare deserved nothing ill from her over trying to protect someone that she loved.

They landed in the center of a wheat field. The crops around them had been burned to ash, but the field was large and they’d only touched a part of it. Further away, Alex could make out a distant sun drooping low in the sky. But down here, it wouldn’t be winter for some time yet.

“My god… what kind of spell was that?” Solomon staggered past her out of the portal, scraping chunks of ice from his body. “I’ve heard stories about… a teleport, but that was… I felt like my insides were on my outsides. You didn’t have to heal me if you were just going to kill me after.”

“Sorry. I… I was in a hurry, and I don’t have a lot of practice with this body. If I was myself, I could’ve made it painless. But you won’t have to feel it again.”

“Where are we?” Solomon stopped a few feet away, staring past the field to the massive crystal towers in the far distance. Beyond them all, past the shimmering field of protection, there was an endless white expanse, and snow-covered mountains as tall as any in the alps.

“Geographically, Antarctica. But obviously we didn’t come down here to freeze. This is Summerland. It’s a nation I happen to know stays safe and out of every major war for the next three thousand years. I don’t… actually know where this place is in my life yet. I had some guesses, but… I don’t get invited. You probably shouldn’t tell the princess here my name. Just… if they come here, I’m Liz instead of me.”

There were ponies coming. Down from the sky, guards in orange and red uniforms. “This is the place that needs my help?”

“Yes,” she said. “But first we’re going to need to come up with a story, because nobody’s supposed to know it exists. Also being able to come here makes one of us among the most powerful unicorns in the world. I don’t know how curious Sunset Shimmer will be feeling.”

This was dangerous ground she walked on—thin ice, even if the weather magic here had melted it all. Changing the fate of one unicorn was so small history might forget. But if Sunset Shimmer discovered that not only was she alive, but that she would one day become an Alicorn powerful enough to be sent back in time, well… she couldn’t even predict the consequences.

When would she know that Oracle’s time limit had elapsed? Sunset must be coming soon in the place she left. How much longer? “Oh, uh… before I forget…” she concentrated for a moment, wrapping many years of knowledge into a single spell at Solomon’s head. A translation spell, but not the sort most often used. Only a fluent native speaker in both languages could use this kind.

But the unicorn only looked confused. “What did you just…”

“Interloper,” said a voice from above them, as a pegasus guard landed in front of them. Like most equestrian guards, these were unarmed, though their gold armor was polished to a perfect shine and bore the stylized sun glyph of Sunset Shimmer. “We’ve been sent to intercept a powerful sorcerer. Which of you teleported here?”

“I did,” Alex said. “I bring a petitioner for the realm. He doesn’t know Summerland’s laws, but I’m sure he’ll swear his cutie mark to the realm.”

Solomon’s eyes widened. “I know what you said.” He was speaking English—doing otherwise would still take great effort, even with the spell. It was much more about understanding, and less about communication. That would have to come later, with far more of his own effort.

“One petitioner,” The guard said, raising an eyebrow. “Not you? Summerland needs skilled sorcerers.”

“Not me,” she repeated. “I can only stay until summer’s end. Will you permit us to speak with the princess?”

“She knows all about us,” called one of the other guards.

“She’s also speaking our language,” the first guard called back, annoyed. “A skilled mage not here to join, who won’t swear to Sunset. What kind of pony does that make her?”

“One who shouldn’t’ be here,” she said. “But I’m not what you’re thinking. I’ve never touched necromancy in my life, and I never will. I’m no runaway cultist. Sunset Shimmer will tell you that.”

The other pegasus landed beside his companion. “You speak like a citizen, but I can see from your mark you aren’t. Accent isn’t… quite right either. Maybe we shouldn’t let you in. You could be a danger here. Sent you out onto the ice so you can go home.”

“Do what you want to me,” she said. “But please, not until after we meet your princess. My father will swear her oath. If you cast me out, I’ll never see him again. Please.”

That worked—these ponies might not look any different from the ones that humans became, but there were subtle, internal differences. Their compassion was practically compulsory. It was the same reason they didn’t wear weapons. In their own country, surrounded only by others who were as peaceful as they were, they just weren’t necessary.

It’s a good thing we don’t learn where this place is for centuries. My survivors would eat you for breakfast.

Soon enough they were walking, Alex and Solomon with a handful of guards alongside. A few ponies stopped to stare as they passed, mostly farmers.

“What was all that about?” Solomon asked, as they made their way onto a cobblestone road. “Did you promise something for me? I’m… not sure I connected all those dots.”

“Sortof,” she said. They were speaking English, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being overheard. Guards sent to intercept a teleport into her realm would probably be bilingual. “Summerland isn’t like anywhere else on earth. It’s ruled by an immortal called an Alicorn. Her magic is… incredibly powerful. She requires everyone who lives here to make an agreement with her. That’s why all their cutie marks have similar color schemes. They change when they make the Summerpact. Yours will too.”

And she’d been right. The first guard was watching them with comprehension on his face. She couldn’t tell if he was hearing just her proper nouns, or understanding everything. Either way, he looked away as soon as she saw him. He wasn’t going to confront her, then. Just tell Sunset in private when we get there. But what the hell am I supposed to tell her?

“That sounds… satanic,” Solomon said. “I may never have done with a priest told me, but I know you don’t make a deal with the devil.”

“She’s not!” Alex cut in, before he could go any further down that road. “Sunset Shimmer is one of the best ponies I’ve ever met. She’s honest, and compassionate, and faithful. Look at the way she rules her kingdom. If the devil was in charge, wouldn’t it look more like hell? This is Elysium.”

“Yeah,” Solomon said. “I… feared it might be. Meeting you, after all this time. Find me at my worst, make everything bitter… take me here. They say your family’s supposed to come for you, don’t they? And now here we are… green fields. Angels in golden armor. I’m not sure I deserve it.”

“I’m not the judge of that. Neither are you. How about you let Sunset decide?”

It wasn’t a short walk into Sunset’s modest capital, and their escort didn’t seem eager to have them cut the trip short with a teleport. The guards watched them closely, but didn’t try anything so barbaric as restraining them. They were still ponies at the core, ponies who hadn’t even drawn a weapon in the time since they’d arrived.

Because they don’t have them, or because they know a knife isn’t going to do anything against a unicorn with the power to teleport across continents?

Sunset had war-mages, she’d met plenty of them. Her entire reason for staying on Earth hadn’t been to create a little slice of Equestria no one knew about, it had been to fight monsters. The spirits of the void took powerful magic to combat, and it didn’t come from nowhere.

But she hadn’t sent them to fight the strange visitors, even when they’d teleported directly into the center of her lands. Maybe penetrating her defenses proves we’re friendly. There were shield spells that could intercept teleports, and probably ways to make them do more than just stop the spell from working. But Alex had felt nothing—if there were defenses in place, they weren’t targeted at her.

All the while her father stared at everything they passed—first the green fields, eventually a growing hamlet of homes even more primitive than the ones ponies had been living in back in the wreckage of the Dark Ages. But where those places had been dirty salvaged bricks, or shacks constructed of sheets of scrap metal, these ancient style houses were clean and charming, with fresh paint on their windowsills and heart shapes over the doors. More and more ponies watched them go by, even waving politely as they passed.

“Are you new?” Asked a little black unicorn, leaning on the edge of the fence around his house. Their escort followed a little closer, eyeing Alex suspiciously as she approached.

“We are,” she said, grinning at him. “I hope you’ll be nice to us.”

“Duh,” the foal answered, turning away in annoyance. “Everypony’s nice around here.”

“How can I understand them?” Solomon asked from beside her, as they set off on the trail again. “It feels like they’re speaking English, but I know they’re not. It isn’t like when your mother used to babble in…”

“Spanish,” she rolled her eyes. “No, it isn’t. I’ve shared my memories with you. I have… a uniquely powerful memory. But you don’t, so… you will need to be as social as possible with these ponies. Talk to them, get to know them, and cover as many subjects as possible. Do that, and your mind will cement your own version of my knowledge. If you don’t, the memories will fade, and you will only remember that you knew, not anything useful about what you knew.

“Still, that’s… incredible. You really do come from a better age. The survivors I’ve been living around mostly just used magic to move things around. I met an old stallion once who said his father had been a doctor in… someplace.” He looked away, obviously straining against his memory. “He could mend a broken leg with magic. Nothing like what you did, though.”

She shrugged, though there was something about getting praise from this pony that made it hard to be rational. Despite everything that had happened—despite the way she’d seen him, and how many times she’d been abandoned. There was something buried there, something that didn’t care about logic.

The palace grew larger in the distance. It looked to be made from crystal at first, but a closer inspection proved it was something else—ice. Ice built atop a stone cathedral. This wasn’t here last time I saw this. Whatever had inspired this design, it clearly hadn’t lasted to modern day.

“We’ll be going in soon,” Alex said, her voice urgent. “I don’t know if Sunset will let me go with you. She has… she likes to make sure everyone in her society fits. But I’m not from here, so I can’t. It’s imperative you remember what we discussed.” She couldn’t say more, not with the guards following close enough to hear every word. “If Sunset doesn’t let me stay… that will probably be goodbye. If I leave this place, I know I’ll return to… where I came from.”

“I already feel like a new man,” he said. “I remember… remember what it was like. Who I was. I was so much more. I want to be him again.”

“This is the place. These ponies have a way of making more out of you, you’ll see. You can leave a legacy here, and be confident that ponies will find it.” Alex said.

She pointed at the stone palace. “There is a crypt under there, built into the storage rooms of MacMurrough base. If… say… there were a cave-in down the line, they’d be sealed completely. Someone could use it, leave a message.” She could feel the eyes of the guards on her again. She obviously knew more than she should. “I know it would be found, shared with the right people.”

Solomon nodded. “You think… think someone would do that?”

They reached the icy gates. Surprisingly, the air didn’t feel cold to her. All around the castle were ponies in strange robes, guiding young students through their lessons. There were more ponies in armor, and others patrolling along the walls. Most lacked weapons.

“This is the place,” said their escort, in English. “You will see the princess on your own. She is already waiting for you.”

She ignored the guard, leaning forward to embrace Solomon as though she would never see him again. “If I don’t… if it doesn’t work… I want you to know. I forgive you.” There was more she wanted to say.

But then something pulled them away. She saw tears on Solomon’s face as the guards firmly escorted him up the palace steps. “I love—” and he was gone, through the massive doors.

A new palace guard joined her by the gate, one wearing blue and purple armor instead of gold.

“Did you know who that was?” Jackie asked her, staring up the steps at the back of the palace door. “I swear I just saw a bucking ghost.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Alex.

Alex didn’t let herself move—hardly let herself think. This bat was not supposed to be here, was she? How am I supposed to know what she got up to during the apocalypse? She’s not dead, I don’t have her memories.

It took her great effort to speak without crying. She took a deep breath, swallowed, and turned away from the bat. If she’s here, I’m screwed. I can’t lie with my dreams. A problem for another day. She had to get past Sunset Shimmer first. And maybe Oracle too.

“Hello, stranger? Earth to unicorn… come in.” she sighed, sitting back on her haunches. “Why are the pretty ones always dumb?” She cleared her throat, then switched languages. “I thought you were refugees. Was I wrong? Or maybe just from another part of the world. God, why didn’t I think of that… you probably can’t understand me.”

“I can understand you now,” she said, speaking each word slowly. She tried to sound as high-pitched as she could, relying on her transformed body. But she couldn’t even talk much around this pony—she would catch on eventually.

Even a few words had attracted her attention. Her eyes narrowed, and she glanced back at the steps. “Who was that stallion?”

“Aren’t you just here to guard me?”

Jackie shrugged. “I can talk and guard at the same time. Unless you think you’re gonna escape. I wouldn’t try, by the way. I’m faster than I look, and a hoof to the horn really hurts from what I hear.” She smacked it against the dirt. “Who was that stallion?”

“Someone I hated,” she said. The key with Jackie was simple enough—she had to be honest. This bat would smell a lie before it was even out of her mouth. There was no chance she could pull anything over on a master manipulator like this. “I’ve been planning for this for a long time. Making sure he knew how much of a failure he was, how much he hurt me. Really shove it in his face that I kept things going in spite of him, you know?”

The bat circled around her, stepping right up in front of her face. There’d be no hiding from her slitted eyes when she was only inches away. “You really let him have it,” Jackie said. “You made sure you punished him. But that doesn’t add up with bringing him here. I heard you teleported straight in from North America. I know what things are like in that shithole. Not exactly a punishment to come here right now.”

Alex shook her head. “I didn’t say anything I imagined. I just… when I saw what had happened… it didn’t matter anymore.” She didn’t look away, even when she was crying. “I didn’t want justice. I only wanted to… to help, if I could. Remembered… and here we are.”

“That’s very interesting,” Jackie sat back on her haunches, glancing once at Alex’s phony cutie mark. “If you remembered this place, that’s alarming. So far as I know the only ones who remember it are ponies who have lived here. My wife and I are on a very short list who left without being on Sunset’s payroll, and I know we never narked. Who does that make you?”

The palace doors opened, and the same guard came galloping out. “Pony Liz, Princess Sunset Shimmer has finished with your father and is ready for you. Come promptly, we don’t want to keep her waiting.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Jackie rose again, then spread her wings, as though she were about to take off. “We’ll talk again, ‘Liz.’ I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.” And she lifted into the air, up onto the wall.

Alex hurried over to the gate before she could change her mind. The guard was already turning, so she had to hurry to catch up. “My father… did the princess accept him?”

He nodded. “You did not lie when you said he would accept her conditions. Unfortunately, the princess isn’t enthusiastic about a new pony who refuses to join with the court of Summerland. You will have to make a case. Otherwise, you may wish to change your mind. Citizenship is better than the dungeon.”

“You don’t throw ponies in the dungeon,” she snapped, probably bolder than she should have. “It’s a bunch of empty rooms there to scare fillies on school trips.”

“Yeah?” He stood a little straighter. “Don’t think we wouldn’t dust it off for you. It’s plenty… dark. Nice strong metal bars. We could use it for more than drunk ponies on festival days if we needed to.”

The great hall was just ahead, through a massive set of stone doors that had already been opened before her. She could see the distant throne—Sunset Shimmer rested upon it, younger than she remembered by far. Probably the same age as Alex herself. If this comes down to a fight, I’m screwed. We’re equal in strength, except I’ve been blowing magic all day, and she’s fresh. The other alicorn could cut through her illusion like paper if she ever thought it might be there.

Bright orange light came in through half the windows, stained into intricate shapes. It was exactly like Equestria—they depicted mythical scenes in the history of Summerland. Heroes who had fought off monsters. The other were just made of ice, and stained the floor blue.

The guard stopped beside her at the threshold, nodding. “Go on then, Pony Liz. Let’s see how brave you are with the princess. If you want to see your father again, you’ll have to satisfy her.”

She nodded and stepped through.

The world tore itself to pieces around her. But she’d felt pain like this, exactly once before. Pain that shredded her unicorn disguise, and probably would’ve shredded her skin too if she wasn’t prepared for it. She was being stretched, pulled, compressed down an axis of movement she knew nothing of. This was Oracle’s territory, not hers.

And suddenly, it ended. She hadn’t moved in space—this was still Sunset’s palace. Her old palace, in a forgotten coastal city of Summerland with little modern political relevance. A quiet museum to the capital of an earlier age. The doorway behind her was shut, the lights were out, and white sheets had been draped over moved furniture. But the stained-glass windows were still there, showing the bright orange light of sunset.

Oracle stood beside her, expression pensive. “I did warn you.”

“Until sunset,” she chuckled. “Clever.”

“Your touch was already heavier than it should’ve been. There would be paradox erupting on every street corner if time were your domain instead of mine.”

She shrugged. “If time were my domain, I would have a lighter touch.” She strode down the hallway to where she would’ve met with Sunset Shimmer. Finally—now that it was done, she reached back into her memory.

She was the Archive. She knew about Solomon’s death, and thus knew all that he knew. But she hadn’t tried to see it until now.

“Where are you going?” Oracle asked, trailing behind her. “You can’t go back… there’s no threat you can make that would convince me to send you to see an Alicorn. She would’ve sensed your magic in an instant.”

“I know,” she said, barely listening. She passed through a set of doors behind the throne, disabling a magical lock there with a flick of her horn. The museum was closed today, as it was most days. Only ceremony would get its doors to open now.

This was where he had stood, hopefully and confused. She could see him there, scanning the room with desperation, but finding no way out.

“I’m afraid we have a conundrum on our hooves, Refugee Solomon,” Sunset Shimmer had said. “The pony who brought you here appears to have gone. The greatest artifice of my craft cannot trace her sympathetic threads. Can you explain?”

The room had been well lit then, with glowing crystal lanterns whose brackets were now empty and covered with dust. The ground was polished clean and the air smelled of the perfumed snacks eaten here. But neither Sunset nor Solomon were eating any of them now.

“I can’t,” he said. “I wish she hadn’t gone… but I knew it might happen. She warned me.”

“It was her intention all along, then? And you still insist she was your daughter?”

“Yes,” he said, stubbornly. “Maybe this is revenge. Leaving me here like this.” He sat back on his haunches, expression returning to that same, defeated pony she’d seen in the bar. No alcohol was necessary this time. “She runs off, and I take the punishment. Exactly what I deserve.”

Sunset Shimmer frowned. “Refugee Solomon, there is no punishment for you. You have become one of my citizens—you are a pony of Summerland. I would know if you were lying to me, and you aren’t. These questions are not to decide your fate—they are to protect your new home. If your daughter is a danger to us, then for the same of every pony in Summerland, we must know how she will strike. I swear we will deal with her justly—we are kind to all criminals here.”

“She won’t be back,” Solomon said. “L-Liz… was clear about that. She wanted to find… well, some people put their parents into a home, some check them into a fairytale kingdom in Antarctica. You know how it is.”

Sunset Shimmer didn’t even blink, but Alex smiled. His jokes never had gotten any better.

She watched years blur by, and for once Solomon had nowhere to run. Summerland had only a few little towns, and though he tried to flee between them, he found much the same ponies would be in the next one as the one he left. Ponies who lived in the Equestrian way, intimately concerned with their fellows’ well-being and profoundly forgiving of mistakes.

It was a better life than many refugees got. Not a spectacular life—he hadn’t defeated any demons, or revolutionized anything about Summerland’s irrigation system. But he had made friends, and something like a life. Ponies lived long enough for second chances.

She turned on her heels, straight for a neglected set of stairwells with an iron padlock. She flashed through to the other side, ignoring Oracle’s shouts from behind her.

“Temporal sickness shouldn’t affect you…” he was saying. “You’re an Alicorn, your constitution should’ve quickly corrected to life in—”

“I’m fine,” she said. I’m just… remembering. There’s something I want to see.”

“You shouldn’t,” Oracle said, grumbling. “This entire trip should’ve been impossible. I thought… maybe it was something to do with your relation to your target. But if you remember him, you should’ve been inexorably intertwined with his causality. Unable to touch against events you have already seen.

“I never looked,” she said. “Not this far. I saw him… doing what he did the first time, and I couldn’t look any further. I didn’t want to see how it ended.”

“Ah,” Oracle no longer sounded upset. “Then my trip wasn’t for nothing. Are you sure you never learned time magic?”

“Sure,” she made her way down the crypt, past the graves of many of the best loved ponies in Summerland. Solomon was not one of those—he had been no hero.

“My work is done,” Oracle said, his voice distant. “I can see you’re busy.” He vanished.

Solomon had obeyed her advice all those years ago, and sunk his way in one night with a singular mission in mind.

He was much older in her mind, gray haired and frail. But unicorns could still be powerful when they were weak. He carried a stack of something—sheets of metal, each one intricately carved. Stainless Steel by the look of it, perhaps scavenged from somewhere in the ruins of the ancient arctic base.

“They said this stuff was immortal,” he muttered to himself, removing a loose brick from the wall in a place long prepared. She would’ve had an awful time finding it, if she didn’t know where to look. But the brick was still there. “I know you’ll find it,” he muttered, apparently to himself. He had brought no others on this little break-in. He slid his tightly-wrapped bundle inside, then secured the brick in place with a little fresh mortar. Then he left, without a backward glance.

He died a few years later.

Alex knocked the brick aside with a hoof, finding it quite loose now with the years. The organic material it had been wrapped in blew away in her hooves, but the metal underneath was almost exactly as it had been all those years ago, save perhaps a thin layer of tarnish. Stainless Steel wasn’t quite immortal, but very nearly so in somewhere as dry and stable as this.

Not quite etched into holographic glass, but his tools had been limited.

“To my family,” it began, in handwriting that had not been improved through centuries of life. “I want you to know that I love you…”

And she did know. She wouldn’t ever forget.

Mystic Rune

Joseph Kimball knew something was wrong when the water stopped flowing into his lab. It had taken him over a week to notice this—the secret channels cut into Alexandria’s water system far above had never been discovered, even after hundreds of years, and his lab was always the first to receive the water pumped from above. Joseph hardly ate anymore, but he still needed as much water as any other organic being.

Am I organic? I might want to consider that question at some point in the future.

Joseph Kimball had learned to prioritize, so he put that question aside as he made his way through the lab.

To say his laboratory was a part of Alexandria was a bit like saying the ISS was a part of whatever city it happened to be passing over. He was buried well over a mile under the surface, so far below the deepest parts of the University’s basements that not even the most sensitive unicorns there would sense what he was doing. Maybe an Alicorn would be able to find him, but Earth wasn’t drowning in those. Joseph didn’t worry.

Joe walked slowly through the central hallway that separated his work area from the supply warehouse, casually unraveling and then replacing a dozen different security spells as he passed. Truly, he hoped that nopony from the surface world would ever stumble down here. If they did, they would swiftly die a painful death.

The warehouse was just over five hundred feet tall, perfectly square with magically cut shelves in the walls of exactly perfect size. Flocks of steel birds flowed through the warehouse like a school of fish, filling the air with the sound of their propellers.

Joseph walked right up to a plasma-screen display set into a crystal pillar, and took a moment to appreciate the intricate lines of the preservation spell carved all around it. A single glowing line pulsed through the floor as he neared it, and the console connected with his central system. “Cloudy, I require water,” he said.

The image of a pony appeared on the screen, a still photograph of a pegasus he had known long ago. It did not move, and when it spoke it sounded more like Microsoft Sam pitch-shifted than it did the pony he missed. Joseph no longer remembered why this made him feel so sad. “I am sorry, Archmage. You used the last of your water exactly one hundred and fifty two years ago. Would you like ethanol instead?”

Joseph considered his response a moment. It would be simple enough to convert… but no. He couldn’t convert it from the air, he’d already drawn all the moisture he could. His coat felt dry and scratchy in the dry air, and his throat hurt. He could make do with a garden that had died, but sooner or later he would need to drink. “Very well,” he frowned. “What about emergency food?”

“You have one remaining can of green beans in preservation. That is all.”

He stiffened. “What about seeds? Don’t I have potatoes and wheat for the garden?”

“You have eaten all that, Joseph,” the voice said. “Your seed crop has been completely consumed. I am sorry.”

This was getting desperate. Joe didn’t waste time walking across the lab, he teleported, instantly appearing in the lab’s bathroom. It was dark, with a single glowing crystal that came on as he appeared. Joe leaned in to the mirror, inspecting his appearance for signs of damage.

It was difficult to say exactly what about him was damaged and what was natural for what he was doing to himself. No pony was supposed to live a thousand years, or longer. That gift had been wasted on their incompetent leader, who had wasted it getting killed over and over again. That spell Joe had never managed to crack.

So he looked like an old pony, right at the point where a pony started to lose strength and shrivel. He had done the latter, becoming as wrinkled as any ancient stallion, his mane and tale bleached to white so completely that not a single hair of any other shade remained.

There had been other changes, though. In places, he could feel his bones had almost… calcified, changing all the way to crystal. His sweat looked far more like oil than water, and in places his flesh was unusually hard. This conversion had been no spell, no single willing effort. It had happened naturally, as Joseph spent his entire life saturated in levels of magic that could’ve killed every human on Earth in seconds. He was, in his own estimation, the magical version of Fallout’s ghouls. And so long as my face doesn’t rot off, I’m fine with that.

Unfortunately, magic would not sustain him on its own. His diet and tastes changed, but he still needed to fill certain needs. But as he looked into the mirror, Joe saw no signs of damage. Whatever he’d done to himself through neglect, it had not yet become irreversible.

That was the worst thing about becoming… whatever this was. His body no longer knew how to heal itself. Each injury he sustained, even something as minor as a paper cut, would continue to hurt forever, until he designed a specific spell to repair the damage.

It was a good thing Joseph Kimball was the most powerful unicorn in the world.

Joe teleported himself into the lab, which was actually located in the very center of his secret compound. The crystal spire of the University tower far above had grown all the way into the ground here, a hollow cone pointing straight down at his lab and saturating it with enough magic that he could perform almost any spell with only modest effort. If any single thing was responsible for Joseph’s extended lifespan, it had been this room.

“Cloudy,” he said, approaching another screen. “Send a message to Alex. She’s up there, right? Tell her to fix the plumbing.”

“Alex,” the computer repeated. Well, computer might be a bit of a shallow term to describe this creation. It had been a rack of servers once, the same servers that had once held the Kimballnet. Many of those machines had been replaced with HPI substitutes, bought from their fabricators in Raven until the entire thing had been greatly supplemented by their power. That was where the magic came in. “Message protocol offline. No consoles presently exist on the surface that can receive your message.”

Nobody knew putting magic and technology together like Joseph. He groaned, stamping one hoof briefly on the ground. It sounded like someone dropping a lump of glass. “Dammit. Those… can’t even keep a damn city… fine. What can you tell me? What sensors are still working?”

“None,” came the response. “I am sorry, Archmage. All connection with the surface has been severed. The Acanum was the last exterior system to be linked into my network, and it is no longer connected. My last sensor records indicate it was physically destroyed approximately two months ago.”

“QUOI?!” Joseph swore loudly in French, paced about in front of the console, and threw several small objects in his magic that happened to be too close. He stalked past his main worktable, covered over with arcane scribblings. He stalked over to another console, one he could use to access exterior cameras. Joseph pushed his head up to the screen, and twisted the dial. Every single camera read “system offline.” Of course, those cameras had been sitting in place for literally hundreds of years. He hadn’t been up to maintain the spells keeping them working. Probably they were as dead as anything else.

“Dammit.” He stalked back. “Cloudy, why the fuck didn’t you tell me my exterior systems were being destroyed?”

“A previously registered command,” she answered, her words lacking anything that suggested emotion. “Exactly three hundred years ago. Your words were ‘Don’t tell me a goddamn thing about those imbeciles on the surface, I don’t care if they all burn in hell so long as—”

“Alright!” Joseph groaned, silencing her. “That will do, Cloudy. I’ll just… go up there. See what the hell is going on. Someone will know where that immortal got to. She can get my water back on. Keep the lights on for me.”

“Interpreting command… command accepted.”

Joe walked away from the console, passing through his lab. There was very little to encumber him here—clothing was a waste, it got in the way. But he’d worn clothing back when he was on the surface, and he would need it again.

His Archmage’s robe had been torn to pieces when he faked his death, so that was right out. An old lab coat hung on a hook near one wall, and he levitated that towards himself. The fabric had gone stiff and yellowed with age, cracking a little as he flexed it. Joe concentrated, reversing some of the time that had devoured the fabric, returning its threads to white flexibility with hardly any effort. Then he put it on, and the cloth dragged along behind him on the ground. Joseph was no longer nearly as tall as he’d once been. Age was a cruel mistress.

Teleporting to the surface was harder. Not because he lacked the skill or the energy, but rather because he lacked the courage. However brave he had acted for “Cloudy”, the real truth was that he was terrified of the surface. Its residents had never really understood him. The few who had… were gone now. Moriah was long dead, his children would be dead, his name would be gone. Joseph might not have died, but he might as well have for all that his fingerprints would remain on the surface world. Apparently something was going around destroying the magical systems he’d created as well, the ones that protected Alexandria and kept it running. Why on Earth would anypony want to do that?

His mind processed possibilities rapidly, augmented by the many mind-enhancing spells he kept running on himself at any one time. He settled on the most likely scenario: some sort of military coup. A faction against Alex was obviously trying to take over, and they’d started by finding a way to sabotage the city’s protective systems.

I’ll have to fix things again, like usual. That would be just typical.

Joseph wrapped himself about by a dozen different shielding spells, and drew enough power from the crystal above him to keep them running against attacks up to and including a direct nuclear strike on his head. Maybe the HPI would be involved… he wouldn’t let some careless accident on their part ruin his research. Joseph’s project must continue.

Eventually he did it, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath, and stepping forward. No clapping of air, no harsh void-wind as with less experienced teleportation. Joseph was a master, as skilled as any Alicorn. Suddenly, he wasn’t in his lab.

The city was in flames. Wooden structures had been burning so long they smoldered. Smaller buildings were long gone, consumed and then trampled away. The streets were broken or covered in debris. A harsh wind filled his nostrils with the odor. The worst part by far, though, were the sounds.

Moans of agony, the moans of the dying. Pain of a fleshy being in the moments before it passed. As Joe looked around, he revised his predictions about what had happened. No, this was no coup against Alex’s faction. As he looked out on the city, he realized this prediction was based on greatly out-of-date information. With the exception of the spire of the University behind him, not a single one of these structures was remotely familiar to him. The entire city had been transformed, erasing any trace of the human town that had once been here. None of its streets or floor plan remained.

If those things could be gone, then chances were Alex’s touch was gone too. That mare did like her humans. She wouldn’t want this. She also wouldn’t have kept fighting if it was doing this to her city. No, something else was going on. But what could it possibly be?

Joseph started walking. He casually blasted the refuse out of his way, scattering it in the wind before him so that he walked on clear streets. He didn’t permit any of the larger particles near his face, not dirt, not contamination of any kind. He was so old now, his immune system so compromised that even a cold might kill him, he was well aware of that. He wouldn’t be inviting a death like that just to get the water in his lab turned back on.

Eventually he found a pony, if she could be called it. This poor specimen still had the right percentage of water to carbon to body-mass, but that was about the only thing that was right with her. Her coat had fallen off in huge patches, her ribs were shrunken in with starvation, her stomach bloated. Thick, pestilent sores grew on her body. Most terrible of all, one of her legs had been crushed or damaged somehow, crumpled beyond recognition. Her left wing, near this leg, had a similar treatment, and had been completely disfigured. It was missing all its feathers, with thick patches of green oozing pus just beneath the skin.

She was a gray pegasus, in the worst condition Joseph had ever seen a pony. He could hardly look at her without vomiting. “A-are… can you hear me?” He asked, his voice no longer confident and demanding as it had been with Cloudy far beneath the ground.

The pony only moaned in response. She did look up at him, her eyes glazed over with illness and confusion. This pony was not long for life, not at this rate.

So much for finding Alex to get the lights turned back on.

As Joe stood there, he began to realize he was being watched. Ponies all around him, lurking in alleys or in the burned shells of fallen buildings, were rising from where they’d been. They saw him, an older pony in pristine clothes, and now they lurched towards him. Every single one bore horrific disfigurements, pockmarks or swollen pustules or infections. None as bad as the Pegasus on the ground at his hooves.

He couldn’t help them all. Joseph was completely overwhelmed now, he couldn’t stay out here. With a brief flick of concentration, he vanished, taking the injured pony with him.

* * *

Trade Wind did not think she would ever wake again. She hadn’t eaten in over a month, she hadn’t had anything to drink in almost as long. She couldn’t walk, couldn’t drag herself, couldn’t get away when ponies found her. She had hoped for death.

But death hadn’t come. She was on the ground somewhere, resting on a blanket. The smell of fire and sickness was gone, replaced with a soapy, sterile scent. How long had it been since she’d felt clean?

Wind opened her eyes, and found she didn’t have trouble focusing as she had before. The sores on her legs were missing, and the coat all around them had healed over with fresh, new growth. Her wings looked to be healing as well, new feathers coming in (though she still didn’t look anywhere close to ready to fly). Her broken leg… wasn’t there. Her flesh continued for a few inches, before transitioning smoothly to transparent crystal.

“You are awake,” someone said from beside her. She looked up, and saw a stallion standing there, as old and shriveled as her grandfather. Yet instead of his warm smile, this pony only looked confused. “Good. I did not know if…” He looked away, blushing. “Nevermind. Try your leg. Not too fast. Joint is still healing.”

“What… happened?” Wind muttered, looking after him. “Is this… heaven?”

The stallion laughed, shaking his head vigorously. “Primitive superstition won’t help you, pony. Rest. I haven’t used this bedroom in… years. Many years. Centuries? Yes, that’s how long. Don’t move too quickly, or you might tear the…” He blushed, ears flattening to his head. The stallion turned in a flurry of tail, snapping the bedroom door closed behind him.

Trade Wind stared at the closed door, mouth hanging open. Had this pony cured the plague, and replaced her destroyed leg? How could a pony with that kind of power act so shy? Had Wind been… kidnapped?

Wind didn’t know, but she intended to find out.

Author's Note

Note: This chapter was submitted as a minific idea on my Patreon by user Sparktail! I'd been wanting to talk about what had happened to old Joe for a long time, so this is just perfect.

Making Friends

Time passed in the strange, alien place beneath the ground. Trade Wind couldn't have said if she rested a few hours or a few days. True to the words of the stranger, her joints felt sore and stiff and strained whenever she moved them, as though too sudden a gesture might tear the new leg right off her body. Nothing about what had happened to her made any sense, and her constant delirium did little to bring clarity to her.

There had been many contradictions, though one seemed chief among them: the plague. It had three stages, each deadlier than the last. The necrosis she had been suffering was the fate that many suffered—once it began, there was no escape. A pony who reached the first or second stage might get better, but one as far along as she had been would certainly die. Nowhere in all of Alexandria had she heard of a pony who had survived it. She was so far gone that even the bandits and worse had kept their distance from her, knowing what fate might await them if they touched her.

Yet as she surveyed her reflection in the clean wall mirror, she could see no signs of infection. The only stories about cures for the plague proclaimed that ponies should come to Alexandria. I came for a cure, and found it?

Maybe. Her foreleg sure hadn't been cured. Trade Wind spent nearly an hour examining the crystal limb, lifting her leg at the joint and moving it in every way she could think. Despite apparently being made of glass-like stone, it moved as though it were flesh, not cracking as it bent and compressed. How it could move this way and still look like it was made of glass, Wind couldn't even imagine. But she couldn't imagine how the plague gone necrotic could be cured either, and yet here she rested.

Her strange host had provided her with a tray of food and a few bottles of water, but the food tasted stale and the water came in strange bottles that looked like glass but were still soft in her hooves. Even her bedroom was a place of wonders—it had working lights which she presumed were the same magical variety that had once lit the university, but had been stripped by scavengers like just about everything else. There was no blood here, no damage of any kind, no sign of struggle. Where in the world is safe like this?

Trade Wind slept, and ate, and used the facilities, and much time passed without interruption. The old stallion she'd seen only once did not return to check on her, or to deliver more food and water. Eventually what little he'd left for her began to run out, and Wind could feel the gnawing return to her belly. It was nothing compared to the agony of her body rotting away before her eyes, but it was still unpleasant. I'm not a captive. I don't care if he saved me, I'm not going to let him keep me here against my will. I'm not going to let him starve me.

So she rose, leaving the remarkably clean bedroom behind. True to her suspicions, the entrance wasn't locked, and it swung open easily. Trade Wind stepped out slowly into a gloomy hallway. The walls outside were made of more crystal, pure green not unlike the material used to build the university spire. Could this place be hidden away in the school? That stallion did look old enough to be a teacher...

But there was no taking anything for granted just now. It might not have even been the stallion who had healed her. For all she knew, he might just be the clerk sent to make sure she found her room alright.

Trade Wind stepped out into the hallway, movements slow enough that her hooves wouldn’t fill the entire building with their clopping as she walked. The university was supposed to be looted and gutted, but this building was neither of those things. It had the regular lanterns shining from the expected places on all the walls, as bright as she'd read about from times long passed. There were no cracks in the crystal, no missing furniture as she walked—it looked for all the world as though Wind had been dragged back into the past. Into a happier time, when the university had been a place to learn magic, and foals didn't rot away from terrible disease before their parents’ eyes.

The hallway took her past a room filled with what looked like birds, birds that moved constantly through the air on strange spinning wings. She didn't stay long enough to get a closer look, lest they notice her trespassing. For all Wind knew, she would be seen as a hostile invader in this sacred place. She had not been given permission to leave her room. But he didn't technically tell me I had to stay in there, either.

It wouldn't make much of a defense if the guards caught her. This place had to have guards around, powerful ones if they'd kept the hordes of marauding scavengers out. If whoever runs the school really can cure ponies, she could get the strongest guards in the world to protect her. Wind knew from experience that ponies would often be willing to give up anything in exchange for the promise of treatment.

She eventually came to another set of doors, this one made of ancient wood worn smooth by the touch of many hooves. There was no lock on them she could see, no traps she could detect, nothing that should stop her from opening them. Wind took a deep breath, then pushed on one of the doors with both hooves. The wood was immensely heavy, and filled the air with loud creaking sounds as they swung open. She winced as the air shook all around her, but didn't try to stop. There was no way she was turning around and going back to the room without any food, that was for sure.

The room within was massive, even larger than the strange room filled with birds. There were many different tables in it, most lining the walls but at least one row in the center. Each table held a host of strange machines, constructions of metal and glass and crystal with purposes she couldn't guess. Quite a few of them looked stranger still, made from the soft, flexible materials worked only by the ancients in the world long ago. I've stumbled into a fortune. Everything looked like it still worked, though some of the machines were covered with a clear fabric that seemed to be protecting it, keeping out the dust.

The room was not empty, though the pony within hadn't noticed her. He was the same stallion she'd seen earlier, with his orange coat turning slight gray with age, and a cutie mark like a pair of strange rectangles on his flank. No, not rectangles. It's a device of the ancients. She'd stumbled upon a sacred reliquary, there could be no doubt about it. Maybe it hadn't been a pony at all who had healed her, but one of these incredible machines. The stories about what they could accomplish were as wild and fantastical as the stories of Alexandria's university. And here I am, having found them.

For as noisy as the door has been as she came in, the stallion did not appear to have noticed her. Wind walked across the stone room, staying well away from the tables and their relics, particularly the ones that seemed to be flashing or lighting up with magic or other forces. She had no intention of straying too close to something that might turn her to stone, or make it so she couldn't breathe air, or some even worse transformation.

As she got closer to the stallion, she got a better look at what he was doing. The long table in front of him was covered with rows and rows of shallow trays, each one with many clear disks inside. Something like slime seemed to be growing in each one, in slightly different shades within each individual disk. Wind couldn't get a good look without pushing past him, and that was a little bolder than she wanted to be. "Excuse me," she said, as loudly as she dared. "I ran out of food."

The stallion remained hunched over his work, levitating the next disk into a special opening in an ancient machine. A flat surface like a pool of water right in front of his face changed as he put the disk inside, seeming to match the color of the slime. There were objects moving on its surface, but Wind couldn't tell what they were. Just now she was too hungry to care.

"Excuse me!" she shouted, right into his ear.

This time the stallion did stop what he was doing, turning around to glare at her. "I'm busy with something Sky..." He stopped abruptly, dropping the other disk he was holding in his magic. It shattered, sending clear slime splattering everywhere. The unicorn retreated from her, looking actively frightened as he did so. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out.

"Were you the pony who saved me?" Wind asked, ignoring his obvious fear. She was far too used to that reaction from the last few months of her life. Anypony could recognize one of the infected, even one without much education. Somehow, she suspected this pony had plenty of education. "The one who gave me this?" She held up the crystal leg, so that it caught the light beside her.

Every word she spoke seemed to be torturing the poor stallion, who started to back away, walking right over the broken glass as though not the least bit concerned about how badly it might cut him up. She soon saw what that might be—it wasn't just that this stallion had a gray coat, but he looked far less like a regular pony than she did. Much of his body was transparent crystal, and in those parts, he didn't look so cosmically old. Replacing a limb was one thing, but how could somepony's whole torso be almost entirely made of stone? How did he breathe like that?

"Y-yes..." he stammered. "T-that's w-what... I... helped you." He spoke with a thick accent, like a pony who hadn't used their voice in a long time. Unless he just had a sore throat. "Wasn't easy."

"No, I bet it wasn't," she said. "I heard the plague couldn't be cured. What you did shouldn't even be possible. I came to Alexandria to find a cure, like lots of other ponies did. But none of the others found it. I stopped thinking it was even real..."

"The sickness." The stallion stopped backing away from her. The longer they remained in conversation, the more he seemed to relax. "There was no treatment on file. Nothing in my database. So far as I could tell, it's a contagion alien in origin. Still uncertain why an Equestrian disease so potent would remain undiscovered for so long. One possibility: artificially engineered." He smiled then, though Wind had understood very little of what he said. "No engineer clever than I am. Their pet disease is going to the ash heap of history where it belongs."

Wind let those words sink in, considering what the stallion had said. Apparently, it wasn't some other pony who had cured her, or some ancient magic from the world of the ancestors. "Are you saying... Are you saying you found me sick, without knowing of the plague, and invented a cure?" There was no keeping the skepticism out of her voice, or the shock. "That's... not possible. The smartest ponies all over the world have been trying to find a treatment for the plague for years. One pony locked up in a lab... couldn't do it on their own!"

Far from looking angry, the pony smiled. "Maybe just anyone couldn't, no. But most people up there are idiots. You should've seen them... as far back as you look, they wouldn't have a clue what to do without me. Alex thought that building the university was a waste of resources. She wanted to add a brick extension to the high school. Bricks! You think any of it would still be standing now?" He started pacing, walking past her, up and down the rows, fast enough that she was afraid his crystal limbs might shatter as they struck the stone floor. But they didn't, and she took heart from this.

If his won't break, I bet mine won't either.

"When the city council wanted to set up a coal plant, who designed the first weather-fed gravity generator? Well, Cody did, but my spells made it work! I built the Kimballnet, I helped write Athena's ethical kernel, I invented the soulprobe! Not that cheating Alex, with her cheating memory and an army of ghosts, me!" He turned gesturing with one hoof at the vast array of artifacts in front of him, many of which were still quietly whirring away. "I can't wait to see her stupid smug face when I complete the Arcanum Apotheosis and cast it right in front of her."

"Who are you?" she asked, barely able to form the words. Despite this pony's incredible claims, there wasn't even a trace of doubt in his voice. No hint that he might be lying, or that he questioned what he was telling her. This laboratory and her newly-cured body suggested he wasn't being dishonest, either.

The stallion waved a hoof through the air, dismissive. "You primitives call me Mystic Rune. My friends called me Joseph... but that was long ago." He finally seemed to deflate, sitting down on his haunches and looking around him. It seemed to Wind as though he were seeing ponies that weren't there.

"The ones I... ignored. My son, my... did I have a daughter too? I don't remember..." He reached up, brushing a few strands of unruly mane away from his face. "I've been down here... longer than you can imagine, primitive. Longer than anypony could understand. Only the seaponies live as long as I have, and they don't age well. Most of them get sick and die of some stupid, preventable disease before they're four centuries old. I doubt you are capable of comprehending what I have experienced."

"Trade Wind," she said, walking right up to him and sitting less than a foot away, without touching him. She could see his fear as she approached, and so she didn't make contact. "My name isn't primitive, it's Trade Wind. I've... I'll admit, I was never much for history. I've never heard of anypony named Mystic Rune, or any of those other names you used. But... you saved my life. Where I come from, that would make you my friend. Can I call you Joseph?"

"Sure," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "Sure." His eyes widened a little, as though he'd just realized he'd left a fire going somewhere untended, and he recoiled in horror. "Dammit pony, you waste my time! I can't afford to waste time with you when I should be wasting time saving ponies from the plague." He turned away then, gathering up the glass and slime he'd broken into a bin on the far side of the room, before returning to the machine he'd been working on when she first got in. "Find some... plants to eat, or something. Stay out of my way.”

"No," she said, following him back over to his machine. It didn't matter that this pony had the power to cure an incurable disease, and sounded like he had lived in this lab for hundreds or thousands of years. It didn't matter that magic itself seemed to boil from his crystal skin like a chunk of sublimating hail falling through the sky. Wind's life had ended long ago, nothing more could frighten her. Not even a pony as powerful as this.

"No?" He looked up from his machine, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean no? I saved you, pony. You owe me peace at least."

"No," she said again, taking a deep breath. She didn't take long enough that he could send her away, or worse, get angry. She would say what she wanted to say. "I don't know who you are, Joseph, but you saved me, and you sound like you're planning on helping other ponies. I want to help. I don't have power like yours, or centuries of experience, but... I have these." She spread out her wings, displaying the unruly feathers. "I can fly, and you can't. Whatever I can do to help, I want to do it. The plague took my family from me. I want to return the favor."

Joseph stared at her for a long, silent moment. He seemed to be seeing past her, though what he might be seeing, she couldn't even guess. Eventually he nodded. "I could use an assistant. I will be going to the surface soon. I have already exposed the population above to my retrovirus, but I must spread it to the other continents as well, or else it may mutate before the cure can be brought naturally."

His eyes darkened, and now she saw what anger looked like on this pony. The crystal of his body seemed to grow cloudy, as though it contained a raging storm she couldn't quite see. "I wasn't going to do anything, Trade Wind. I've been down here so long... Time took my wife from me. It took Cloudy. My heart, well... it turned to stone." He tapped lightly on his chest with one crystal hoof. It sounded like two glasses ringing together.

"But my wife... and Cloudy... those weren't tragedies. They died doing what they loved. But not this." He gestured at the rows of identical glass containers, and all of them lifted into the air, a hundred objects all spinning around him at the same time, rotating so fast that his face blurred behind them, moving so quickly that a slip would shower them both in pieces of broken glass. "Do you know why the water stopped running?"

Trade Wind opened her mouth to answer, but of course she had no idea what this unicorn was talking about. She retreated a step from him, her heart thumping in her chest. Maybe she'd been premature in thinking she had nothing left to be afraid of.

He started walking again, through the rows of tables and machines. How he could pass between them without striking his little containers against them, how he could keep so many shapes in his mind, Wind couldn't even imagine.

"I always knew it wouldn't be my job! She always said how it was our responsibility to 'carry the human legacy forward,' but it wasn't mine to carry, it was hers! The self-appointed Alicorn police of the universe even gave her a fancy title, and a cheat code for death so she could keep going until that slow brain of hers figured things out." He gestured, and the massive doorways on the edge of the lab were ripped out of their hinges with a terrible roar. Doors so heavy she could barely push them went flying and smashed into the stone of the far wall, shattering to the ground in a sea of splinters.

Now she had no choice but to follow, though she kept her distance. She still couldn't tell how this pony kept his different clouds from hitting anything. She wasn't about to stick her head in no matter how powerful he seemed.

"Archive was my friend. Someone murdered her, so they could murder everyone else. I didn't care what happened to anypony else... but nobody kills my friends. Now I'm going to kill his stupid disease. And when I'm done... maybe kill him too. Haven't decided."

He stopped then, in the wide hallway with its bare floors and stunning crystal ceiling. Joseph seemed to realize then that he'd left the lab behind, because he turned, glancing backward over his shoulder at her. "O-oh." He deflated a little. "I'm talking to someone. You heard all that."

"Every word," she answered, voice quiet and respectful. She didn't meet his eyes. "I didn't know what most of it meant."

"You don't need to," he said. "All that's important is that Charybdis pissed me off. He's the one I'm fighting now. It's his fucking disease. If you want to help, you'll be fighting him too."

Wind shivered as she heard the name, though it was the first time she'd ever heard it. It didn't sound like a word in any of the languages she knew. "I don't care who we have to fight. I don't want anypony else to get sick."

"Okay." Joseph waved, and all the little disks landed on the ground, ordering themselves in regular rows. "Come with me, then. Let's get you outfitted. I planned on leaving this afternoon anyway. You can... carry my tent or something."

Author's Note

Oh hey ponies, so I got some good news! I was planning on putting this story on ice for a little while, while I caught up with some other writing. But Sparktail over on my Patreon has decided to comission a detailed version of the Mystic Rune storyline. So I get to keep writing PaP for a little while longer. Thanks for your support, Sparktail!

Compiler

Joseph stood in the center of his vault, appreciating the quality of his work. In all the world to his knowledge, he knew of no creatures anywhere who had seen the potential of magic like he had. Even Archive, holding all of it in her mind at once, had stopped several steps before the really interesting discoveries. Yes, self-recharging lights and using weather magic to feed gravity-driven power plants were an interesting innovation. But they were only a sliver of what magic could do.

Before Mystic Rune, resting in a docking bay of wires and padded foam, was an object he called a Compiler. It was to spellcasting what abstraction had been to the wire-reprogramming of the ENIAC era. The object was exactly three feet from point to point, an octahedron of flawless white crystal. On it was the runic language Joseph himself had invented (with the help of a reentrant neural network), which combined the existing laws of runic magic as specified by Equestrian lore into a higher, simpler description of spells. The spell that /was/ his Compiler was so complex only a high-precision laser had been able to etch it onto the crystal with enough detail to make everything fit.

This by itself was a powerful spell, though he doubted it was entirely revolutionary. Stories from Equestria of something called a 'Crystal Heart' and its properties suggested a purpose-designed version of what he had constructed had been used to run an entire pony city back in Equestria. I wonder how long it took to carve it without making a single mistake and having to start over.

No, Joseph's leading innovation hadn't just been inventing an abstraction for the machine-code of runes, but to combine the Compiler with a machine interface. The crystal itself was wrapped in wires and cables, roughly shaped into a padded cage to hug around it on either side. It didn't just give the Compiler the ability to use radio and other convenient communication methods, though those abilities were significant enough in themselves. Rather, it was that the powerful miniaturized computer packed around the Compiler could do the one thing all previous spells he knew of simply failed to do: think.

"Hello Cloudy," he said, voice low. "Today we're doing something special."

"Every day is special," the Compiler replied. It still sounded like an ancient text-to-speech program, even if improvements in the algorithm had allowed it to vary its tone somewhat according to lifelike emotional rhythms. "What did you have in mind?"

"I must take you to the surface. It may be dangerous, so I'll need you with me."

"What about your research?" the compiler asked. "Without a hardline into the Supercomputer Array, my current suite of calculations may not be completed in polynomial time."

He waved a hoof through the air with frustrated dismissal. "Nobody's more pissed about that than I am, Cloudy. But completing my spell won't mean anything if everyone on the surface is dead. I don't actually want to be god and have to create life from scratch. They don't pay me enough for that."

"Understood." Cables began severing themselves from the Compiler, most fiber optic interfaces or frost-covered coolant lines of liquid nitrogen. Removed from its docking area, the Compiler's computational power would be greatly limited. Instead of writing world-defining spells, it would only be able to run calculations for the sort of spells ponies used on a daily basis. Alicorn-type daily spells, but still.

This was why Joseph hated leaving the lab. To take Cloudy anywhere was to give up his nuclear arsenal in exchange for a few hand grenades. One of these days he would have to get around to creating a way for the Compiler to cast spells outside of sensory range. Crack the sympathetic magic problem, and he would /really/ have changed magic forever.

But there was no time for any of that now. Another century of research would surely be long enough for the plague to do its work, assuming it was even meant to kill everyone. His cure would not remain effective forever, not in the face of an actively-evolving enemy.

The Compiler lifted into the air in front of him, still trailing condensation as it began to spin. It looked as though a unicorn were levitating it, though of course he wasn't. The Compiler could cast its own spells. Sorta. "Very well, Joseph. Exploring the surface should be an enlightening use of time, at the very least. What is your purpose there?"

"Distributing a cure for the plague," Joseph answered, turning away and walking back towards the doors to the clean-room. Trade Wind was still out there, watching through the tiny window and waiting for him to finish. He didn't rush—a few seconds here and there would not make the difference between wiping out the plague or seeing all life on Earth destroyed. Once into the airlock he removed the loose cleansuit, tossing it into the wash-bin with the others. There were no clean suits left.

Trade Wind stared at him as he emerged—or more correctly, she was staring at Cloudy. "What is... that?"

"Trade secret," he answered. "You can call her Cloudy. She's the powerful magic I use for my hardest jobs, that's all you need to know."

"Okay," Wind replied. "But I don't like being left in the dark. I'm not a spy or anything, Joseph. There's no reason to keep things from me. I can't even leave this place without your help."

"Actually, you can." He nodded towards the suit she was wearing, the one he'd adjusted to fit her only a day before. It was an ancient creation of his compared to the Compiler, an early attempt he'd made replacing the functionality of the HPI's powered armor with spells and magic. Magic didn't need expensive machines to reproduce, or rare materials to make replacement parts when something went wrong. Unfortunately Joe hadn't actually known anyone on the surface by the time he finished, so he'd just been waiting for Alex to return to give the suit a proper field test.

It wasn't a suit at all so much as a harness, which could be worn by the pony like a saddle studded with little crystals. All self-recharging, and resistant to outside spells. Resistant enough that the harness had survived centuries sitting on a shelf without maintenance and still been charged when he gave it to her. "Time for you to learn about your tools. We're going a long way, and if you do something stupid I'll look stupid. So listen up."

Trade Wind sat on her haunches, watching him expectantly. She's an even better listener than Cloudy. "Three crystals. One for protection, one for strength, and one for teleportation. The first two will work on their own, similar to earth pony magic. If you're exerting yourself, the strength crystal will help you. If you're in danger, the protection crystal will create a shield. The yellow one is for teleportation, and it only does two things—it will take you into the lobby of the university above us, or back down here, alternating each time. But be careful—if you're out of sensory range, it will use a lot of energy. Maybe one jump from far away, so save it for an emergency."

Wind stared down at the metal harness in wonder. "Y-you trust me after all. Something so valuable... kings would sell their thrones for magic like this..."

Joe grunted in response, turning away. She couldn't see his satisfied smile if she could only see his tail. "I made it in a weekend after binging Borderlands 2 until my Xbox broke. It's also never been tested so I don't know how well it will work. You should be careful and ease into relying on the crystals slowly until we know for sure if they work. Oh, and... the glow tells you how much power there is. If they ever go black, it means they're completely drained. They leech your own magic to charge, but not enough that you should notice."

He started walking along the hall, setting his usual brisk pace. Wind quickly followed, her mostly natural hoofsteps broken by the regular thump of her single crystal limb.

"Oh, and one more thing! Don't break your leg if you can help it. Crystal doesn't heal, ever, but it still hurts like it's alive. I will have to repair any damage with specific spells, and that might take weeks. Weeks of pain you could have avoided if you took better care of your leg."

Wind whimpered from behind him. "I'll do my best." They were almost to the teleportation room now, the section of his lab he used the least. Until very recently, it had still been an ocean of dust. As he stepped in now it was to a room swept and clean, though there were still piles of broken crystal and a few trash-bags tucked away from when he'd tidied in here. The room was perfectly round, exactly ten feet across, with a detailed topographical map of the planet on the walls. Along with the elevation was a series of photographs and descriptions of everywhere he'd ever visited. The photos still had some of their color, thanks to the magic that suffused this place, but any that depicted civilized places were worthless now. Collecting information about places you wanted to visit was the best way to keep a network of destinations, but that required constant updating. Until a few months ago, Joseph had just assumed things on the surface hadn't changed.

Obviously that assumption was in error. Basically everything besides the topography was worthless now, and even that was showing some wear. A problem for another time. My assistant can deal with this when we finish distributing the cure.

Joseph himself carried that, in a single side of his saddlebags marked all over with bright biohazard logos. Trade Wind had been obedient so far, but he couldn't yet trust her competence enough not to drop his cure and ruin it all over the floor somewhere.

"You've never done this before," he said. "Stand there, breathe out, hold your breath. Cloudy is better at teleporting than anypony you've ever known, but something can still go wrong. Plus, cultivating good habits with her will help you if you're around someone less skilled. I wouldn't want you to get complacent and get your lungs ripped out during the next trip. I don't make crystal lungs.” Not yet, anyway.

The pegasus winced, but he could only smell a slight twinge of fear in her scent. Trade Wind was a brave pony.

"I've already used a searching spell to find the greatest concentration of infected individuals. Hopefully you wanted to visit China, because that's where we're going." He stepped up beside her, crowding as close as possible in the center of the room.

"What's a China?"

"You have the coordinates, Cloudy?"

"Suitable landing location resolved." The crystal surrounded with wires and machines began to flicker and glow, its clear internal light flashing through the visible spectrum. "Warp field stabilized."

"Do it."

It did.

* * *

For all Joseph seemed to want her to be afraid of teleportation, the jump from Joseph's lab to "China" was as painless as a stroll down a windy room. For a few seconds there was no ground beneath her hooves, and she was practically flying through the air. The sky all around them was dark, save for the glow of the crystal called Cloudy. The flickering through every color she knew had slowed dramatically and was now moving in reverse. Trade Wind couldn't open her mouth to ask what she was feeling—whenever she tried, an enormous pressure settled on her. She couldn't move at all.

The moment didn't last long. Soon enough she was free, and the little round room with its maps and charts and tables had bled away to nothing. She was immediately assaulted with a wave of familiar stink, one she'd known every day of her life. It was the rot of the plague.

Trade Wind started to back up, her hooves ringing on the wooden floor of a vast space, her breathing coming in painful gasps. "N-no... not again... not after living one time... I won't get sick again!"

Something shimmered around her limbs, holding her in place. She was still breathing this time, and began to hyperventilate. Not only was she surrounded by the sick, but she was stuck! There was no escape—the unicorn had brought her here to die.

"Trade Wind!" The voice was Joseph's, his expression harsh and angry. "Focus! You're immune. You're not in danger."

She kept squirming, looking away from him. "I don't want to get sick again! I already died once!"

Joseph rolled his eyes, glancing over his shoulder. Trade Wind could barely even see what was around them—anything more than a few feet away dissolved into an indistinct blur. "Cloudy, adjust the sensitivity of her shield to... 400 nanometers."

The air just above Trade Wind's mouth and nose began to shimmer a faint yellow, occasionally sparkling in some areas before becoming transparent again. She heard a voice from below—coming from her armor. "Hostile biosphere detected, isolation engaged." The smell of death was gone.

The magic holding Trade Wind's limbs was suddenly gone, and she nearly fell over in the sudden shock. She didn't, though it did take nearly a minute of calming breathing before she felt like herself again. The shimmering around her head and face remained, brightening whenever she took a breath and fading away again in the time before she took her next one. The air no longer smelled like anything at all, except for a slight odor of ozone she was used to from her early exposure to weather magic.

"Better?" Joseph asked, a hint of annoyance on his face. "We've got work to do. Are you all there, or do I need to send you back to the lab?"

"I'm here," she insisted, straightening. "Just... hadn't smelled this in awhile. Reminded me of—"

Joe waved her off. "Whatever, that's all I needed to know. Follow me then. We've got work to do."

"Where are we, anyway?" she asked, looking around them with renewed attention now that she was coherent enough to actually notice what she was looking at. Their voices and hoofsteps kept echoing, as though they were tucked away inside some massive interior space. The ground was still wood, a smooth floor lit only in a small circle around Joseph's floating crystal.

"Dunno," Joseph said. "Cloudy, give me 50,000 lumens."

The internally glowing crystal hovering above them became a blazing lighthouse, filling the interior gloom with light.

Trade Wind came to an abrupt stop, her mouth hanging open as she saw where they'd been standing.

It was a palace, a palace as big as a stadium and more luxurious than the university. Exotic woods sparkled in the even light of Joseph's magic, along with beautiful tapestries and sculptures made from solid gold. The windows high on the walls were covered with a thin white paper, and the wood pattern beneath looked like it had been built to spell out words in a language Wind didn't understand.

For all the palace had been beautiful, its occupants made that trait difficult to appreciate. There were hundreds of ponies around them, as well as members of other species Trade Wind had no names for. Every single one of them was covered with pustulant sores, leaking black ichor. Many were already dead.

Not Today

"Alright." Joseph cleared his throat loudly, stepping forward towards the throne. It was an impressive construction, larger than anything Alexandria had ever had for certain. It was set on several tiered platforms, each one inlayed with something else rare and beautiful. Jade, mother-of-pearl, silver, then finally gold. It was a shame a thin layer of pale fungus had begun to coat everything in here.

"I don't understand," Trade Wind said from beside him, her voice only slightly distorted by the shield she apparently needed to think straight even though she was now immune to the plague and there was no sensible reason to worry. "What kind of ponies live in the dark? There are so many windows..."

Joe opened his mouth to answer, but he didn't get the chance. A faint voice spoke from the throne, barely strong enough to carry. It was speaking English, which of course it shouldn't be able to do. The world had stopped being an interconnected globe a long time ago, ending the exchange between far-away people. Even an emperor had no reason to know that language.

"Those who appreciate its benefits," said the voice. "Those who enjoy its comforts. The solace that waits in the dark. In oblivion there are no desires unfulfilled."

"Oh, it's you," he said, disinterested. "Fuck you, if you could wait for a few minutes. You'll get your turn."

What ponies were still alive in this place withdrew from the light he had brought, crawling behind low walls, behind furniture, into the corners. The thin layer of fungus didn't just cover the throne, it covered everything. Their shields burned it away as they approached, charring its wispy tendrils away from their hooves. He hadn't even noticed. Yet now as he watched, he saw it was moving, trying to creep back around them from the ground and bind them. It didn't work of course; the shield was more than strong enough to keep it away. But the smell it made as it burned was simply awful. "Night outside," he muttered, staring through the shutters above their heads at the slivers of moonlight. "Problematic. But we can make it work."

"The enchanter rises above his station," said the voice on the throne. It came from the shape of a pony resting there, yet the pony didn't seem to be speaking exactly. It just issued from his general direction. "The first and oldest of your kingdoms is mine now. I will allow you to leave my domain if you depart." At the end of the hall, a pair of massive doors flung themselves open. Just outside was a rocky cliff, and not far beyond, a churning, black-looking ocean. Fungus covered everything out there too, making the rocks and shrubs seem to glow.

Trade Wind moved closer to him, her fear thick enough on the air for him to smell it through the death and burning fungus. "H-he's right," she muttered. "We can't fight this many. We should go—try somewhere else."

Joseph almost listened—it seemed like so much work. This demon-whatever would probably try to stop him, and that would be inconvenient. He could find somewhere else to distribute his antidote. Unfortunately for the sea-monster, he had just learned it had killed one of his friends. A little inconvenience was worth some payback.

"Cloudy, how many of these ponies are alive?"

"Six," came the instant response. "The remainder appear to be hosting an unknown organism within their bodies, which has slowed the process of decay. It appears to be interacting with the fungal mat surrounding this position, though I have not yet extracted the mechanism."

"I don't care," he said. Then he started to dictate.

"require joes_awesome_magic_library
def fungicide &locref contaminant
if not &locref.searched and &locref.search contaminant
purge &locref contaminant Integer::MAX
end

&locref.adjacent.each |location| do
fungicide location contaminant
end

end"

"Function created," Cloudy said.

"My patience is thinning, enchanter," said the voice on the throne. "Take this mercy, it is not one I frequently grant. Depart this place and I will allow you to live."

"No thanks," he said. "I don't really do the whole..." he waved one hoof in the air, indecisively. "Whatever. Diplomacy was more Alex's thing. Too bad you fucking murdered her." He reached down with his magic, levitating a thick clump of fungus off the ground, holding it up in the air in front of Cloudy. "Cloudy! fungicide (here, this)"

"Running," Cloudy said, and the glow of the spotlight spell dimmed dramatically, as the output power was diverted from such a low-priority spell to one more important. It wasn't as if the room got darker—in an instant, his little recursive spell was burning over every surface. It spread like embers, consuming the fungal mat starting in the exact place he had pulled the sample from. It wouldn't burn the wood, wouldn't have burned a stack of scrolls if the fungus was atop it. Only something with fungus inside would be consumed.

As it turned out, that included most living things in the throne room with him. The air was soon filled with thick, foul-smelling smoke, enough that his own shield finally kicked in. It was joined shortly after by screaming, an animalistic, inhuman scream. A few of the nearby ponies dressed as soldiers shambled towards him, their bodies burning from the inside out. They crumbled to ash inches away from them, dropping their armor and spears unharmed. Then the spell reached the throne, and he was really smiling. Judging by the volume, whatever had been there was quite infected.

Trade Wind remained close to him, her voice barely audible in the din. "What are you doing?"

"Human services review," he said. "Joseph doesn't allow zombies."

"I don't understand," she said, whimpering. "I thought we were here to cure the plague. It sounds like you're killing them!"

"No," he answered. "It won't hurt anyone who's still alive. I think this white stuff is part of the next stage of its plan. Infect a pony with it when they're weak, slowly kill them with it..." He shook his head. "Not today. How are we doing on power, Cloudy?"

"Core entropy at 15% and holding," she replied. "The material is eager to oxidize. I am recapturing the thermal output."

"Of course you are," he responded, grinning. "Because I'm awesome and magic is piss easy." He turned away from her again. "Trade Wind, could we get a wind in here? I can't see anything." He could just as easily use a spell for that, of course, but there was no sense wasting magic when he had a perfectly good assistant for that kind of thing. Might as well learn if she could do her racial magic.

As it turned out, she could. Wind took off, and soon there was a stiff breeze blowing through the throne-room. It took the smoke and ash and refuse right out the doors and into the sea. It was much easier to see the beauty of the throne-room this way, though there were still patches of fungus that had survived—his function was scarcely very thorough. Anything that wasn't adjacent to places already searched would stay contaminated. But he hadn't come as the pest exterminator.

Yet where there had been ponies of the court resting or hiding by the walls, now there were mostly just piles of bones and clothes, only suggestions of the people they'd been before they died and were infected. Sorry, I can't bring back the dead. if I could I'd have the real Cloudy back.

But for all the screaming he had heard coming from the throne, there was still a figure there, not just a corpse. It was still pony shaped, it still wore golden robes lined with purple, it was still watching him. "Clearly, I was in error," it said, though still the mouth didn't move. Joseph began to advance on it, ignoring the handful of sick ponies that still lived, laying in a daze around him. He would give them their treatment soon enough, but not yet. The plague was no respecter of persons, but Joseph was.

"I imagined you would need more time to become useful to me. Stop your spell—there is much for us to discuss."

Joe levitated the first injector from his saddlebags, holding it out in the air beside him as he walked. "No there isn't. You can't give me anything I want."

"Not true!" argued the voice, though it sounded slightly more desperate than it had before. At least, he thought that was what emotion he was hearing. Joseph had never been terribly good with emotions, and he suspected demons felt them differently. "I can give you something no one else can, enchanter! Not even an Alicorn could return the dead to you—I can." The emperor sat up a little on his chair. He was an earth pony, with a coat of gold just like his robes. The sores of disease were visible beneath it, though he wasn't as far advanced as the others in his court. How Charybdis was using him to speak, Joseph couldn't immediately see.

From behind the emperor, a stream of water rose, shaping itself into the transparent outline of a pony. A familiar pony, one he missed more than anyone. Much more than the one Charybdis had murdered. "You want her back, don't you? Ask Sunset if she can reach into the void and bring back the dead. She can't, but I can. I can touch the uncreated space beyond the iridescent veil, Joseph Kimball. I can give her back to you."

If Charybdis thought its offer would entice him, it probably wouldn't anticipate the reaction. Joseph gestured, and the needle shot forward through the air like a bullet, right into the emperor's chest. He gasped, fell over sideways, and began to convulse.

"That was your fucking last mistake!" Joe bellowed, even as the ghost in the water splashed down onto the steps around him. "Threaten me, murder my friends, whatever. But threatening Cloudy Skies too?" He lifted another handful of needles from his pack with fury burning from his horn, shooting them out into the room towards infected ponies with perfect precision. He didn't even have to look to make sure they'd strike the right place. "I'm not just done with your fucking disease now, sea monkey. When I'm done curing every fucking one of them, I'm coming for you next! Go ahead, start swimming now! When Athena and I are finished with you, there won't be a fucking puddle that we won't see!"

Something thick and smoky boiled away from the emperor, something that didn't get caught up and carried away in the persistent breeze that now filled the throne room. It congealed, taking shape and solidifying into a roughly human figure. He could even see the faint outlines of a suit in that smoke, fine shoes and bright hair and fury on its face. Joseph ignored it, continuing towards the emperor. He wasn't afraid of some stupid smoke.

The demon passed through his shield like it wasn't there, lifting him off the ground and flinging him backward off the steps of the throne. Joseph screamed in rage and confusion as he smashed back onto the floor of the throne-room, and one of his legs struck the ground. It shattered like a piece of fine china, sending splintered shards of crystal flying through the air. Pain beyond anything any mortal knew filled his perception, the pain of an injury no body was meant to know. He felt the agony from every shard of glass, as though every part of his leg had been shattered, and yet somehow still connected with his body so it could pass the agony along to him.

Smoke billowed about him, and a pair of hands twisted around his throat, holding him down like a vice and squeezing. Something like a leg braced against his chest, grinding him into the ground. More pain there, pain that, like the leg, would never end. That was the price of becoming a crystal pony: glass didn't heal.

* * *

There was so much screaming—more than poor Trade Wind had ever heard in one place. The damned who writhed forever in the fathomless abyss felt such agony. Trade Wind had felt their pain, or at least she thought she had. Not the infection itself, though of course that had been terrible.

It had been worse to watch the ponies she loved die. Her mate, her daughter, those ponies had mattered, and she had been powerless to help them. But now, the pony who had the power to cure also had the power to kill. He said the ponies weren't alive, but she had heard their screaming. Dead ponies didn't scream. Why didn't he do that to me then?

"Trade Wind!" The voice was not Joseph's. It sounded urgent, furious and frustrated, enough to startle her from her reverie.

On the ground in front of her, poor Joseph was in pieces. Something had him by the throat, crushing him, strangling the life from him. It looked a little like smoke, black tar that floated and moved on its own with tentacles instead of arms. The shapes it made hurt to look at.

"Trade Wind!" the voice shouted again. She looked up and found it was the crystal, hovering just over her head. "He's dying, Trade Wind! I need your help to save him!" The crystal had no features at all, nothing but its voice. It was a strange thing to hear so much emotion coming from something so much like stone. But so am I, a little.

"What am I supposed to do?" she whined, retreating from the fight. "I want to help, I do! But I'm just a pegasus! I can't fight them!"

"I can't execute commands on my own, but he gave you a user account when he saved you!" the crystal shouted. "I'm part of your leg, slow-minded organic!"

"What do I do?" she asked, staring in horror at Joseph's desperate, agonized eyes. "I'll do anything, just tell me!"

"Repeat after me!" the crystal commanded. "expiate here Time.now @users[0]"

She did, her mouth struggling over the strange words to the spell. "E-X-per-ate here Time. Now andusers[0]"

"Close enough!" The crystal zoomed through the air, hovering right above Joseph. It no longer looked like it was glowing inside, but rather like the molten core of the planet had somehow been captured within, turning the whole thing red. The light spell went out. "Look away, Trade Wind!"

She did, as much by reflex as anything else. Another second later, and the whole room lit up white. It burned so bright that it seemed light was shining through her hooves. The earth shook, windows shattered, priceless sculptures fell from their mountings. "Core Entropy at 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%..." said the crystal, its strange voice somehow sounding through Trade Wind's body instead of through her ears. She didn't look up. "80%... Expiate protocol complete."

The light went out, and only then did Trade Wind look.

The ceiling above the crystal, all vaulted and ancient wood, now had a hole in it going all the way to open sky. She could see through several stories of palace, around chunks of charred wood and pipes and everything else hidden in the floors and walls. The ground too had been burned down to the bedrock, dropping a full three feet or so lower than the ground around it.

There was no more smoke monster. No more anything, except for a slightly dazed and now completely naked Joseph. Almost his whole body was crystal now, every crack and trace of damage gone. He brushed a little ash from his chest, straightened, then looked back towards her. "Oh. You, uh..." he smiled slightly. "Nice."

Emperor

The hall of the Golden Emperor was a different place now. Joseph’s magic had consumed the fungal mat, consumed the rotting corpses left where they had died by those too sick to carry them away. Trade Wind no longer saw the faint shimmer of her shield as it cleaned each breath she took. They had defeated the plague.

“I want you to deal with this,” Joseph said, pointing towards the throne. Atop it, the pony was no longer covered with his own slimy wraps, and there was nothing in his eyes but interest. Gratitude too perhaps, though he was so far ahead she couldn’t tell for sure. He didn’t seem to mind that they’d just done terrible damage to his palace. “Talk to the natives. Explain what we did, how the cure works. Then we go.”

“I don’t understand their language,” she muttered, keeping her head down, avoiding the Emperor’s face. She didn’t know how the government here actually worked, but that felt like the right thing to do. Ruling ponies liked it when you showed them respect.

“Cloudy does,” he said, shrugging indifferently. “She’ll translate for you with your suit. Just talk to him so we can get the fuck out.” He levitated the closed container of vaccines over to her. “This is for him. You remember what we discussed?”

“Yeah.” She took it in her mouth, then turned away and made her way to the throne. On one side, one of the guards twitched a little, as if to try and stop her. But he was too weak to get up. When Joe cured me, I slept for weeks. But I was worse than some of them. None of these ponies were missing limbs. It seemed the fungus had killed any that got that far gone. Almost like it was part of the plague. Maybe it was supposed to come once the plague made us weak.

Trade Wind ascended the steps to the Emperor’s throne. Many eyes watched her, as much as they watched the Emperor himself. She stopped at the last flight, when she was only a few feet away from the Emperor. Up close, she could see the great weakness in his body. He’d been ravaged by the plague as much as his citizens. Yet he had the strength to sit up, to look her in the eye.

His mouth moved, and she heard words, but the two weren’t quite in sync. “Which gods are you?” he asked, his voice reedy and breathless. “Has my father above sent you to me?”

She hesitated, lowering the box of vaccines carefully to the ground. “I am no god,” Trade Wind answered, hoping whatever Joseph’s crystal was doing would work both ways. She would have a hard time communicating for him if it didn’t. “But maybe I serve one.” She lowered her head towards Joseph, who only watched with growing impatience. He didn’t seem to be listening. “The god I serve is an enemy of the sickness.”

The Emperor chuckled, and a few drops of blood emerged from his old lips. “Than your god is my friend. I never imagined… never imagined I would be free again. When the sea promised me, I could survive to rule, it did not tell me that I would live on as a slave. I do not relish the chance to watch the death of China. All of time should not come to an end because of my foolishness.”

“The gods did not think so either,” she said. “He has granted everypony in this room new magic. Every one of you can now cure the sick—you must go into the city, and touch the ponies there to give them this magic too. Command your ponies to spread their magic far and wide, until the plague is dead.”

The Emperor’s eyes widened. “Your god is a mighty one if he can do all that. We have many gods… but China will remember the one who freed us from bondage. What worship does he desire?”

Trade Wind shivered, avoiding his eyes. The longer this conversation continued, the more out-of-place she felt. It felt wrong to lie to this pony, but at the same time she didn’t know if it was a lie. Joseph acted exactly like a god so far as she knew. He was immortal, and he fought immortals on their stage. He had magic nopony else could imagine. What was a god if not that?

“To worship him, you must save as many of your ponies as possible.” She pushed the little box to the base of the throne. “This is a gift from him. Inject this into the veins of the sick, and they will be granted the same magic as you. If you have ways of sending things faster than sending ponies, you might be able to make the process go faster. If not… pack it in ice and save it in case the plague returns.”

“That’s all?” The Emperor’s eyebrows went up, and she could detect a hint of suspicion on his face. “Your nameless god offers us so much, and asks only that we use the magic he gives? I fear if he does not give us a way to serve him, that China would find itself so far indebted to him that we would be his slaves. This won’t do.”

Trade Wind shifted on her hooves, glancing back at Joseph. She opened her mouth to ask for help—but of course, he would just tell her to hurry up. God or not, he didn’t care what these ponies did. She looked back to the Emperor. “My… master is impressed with your insight,” she lied. “He has one further request to make of you—don’t let anyone else…” She pointed at the ocean. “No one else makes deals with the sea and its monsters. From today onward, if you ever find anypony who has, they must die. A-and…” Her voice shook as she spoke, growing more and more nervous with each word. But she kept going. “Not in the sea, or else their master could take them. Kill them on land, and burn them to be sure.”

Despite her words, the emperor relaxed. “I see. This will be a very hard request. It is hard to know which ponies have made promises and which are only fishers. This will be a hard thing.”

She resisted the urge to turn and run away. Trade Wind could almost see this same city, many years down the line. See this command used as a justification to kill political enemies without evidence. “Wait a moment,” she said, bowing briefly to the Emperor before leaping from the throne and gliding back to Joseph.

“You done?” he asked, annoyed. “I didn’t ask you to give him a speech. Let’s get out of here.”

“Not quite.” She rested one hoof on his shoulder. “How can we know if a pony is working for Charybdis? Is there… an easy way?”

He paused, distracted by her question. Apparently forgetting his impatience. “That depends. There is no way to know if an Outsider has spoken to someone. That’s like asking for a spell to know if I’ve ever talked to somebody named Steve. But some people swear deals with Outsiders… for power, usually. Spells they can do nobody else can. Spells that break the rules. People who do that stain their souls with the magic… there’s an easy spell for detecting it. But usually if you have them close you won’t need it.”

“Why not?”

“Well… they’re creepy as shit,” he said. “You’ll feel it. Anyone with an ordinary spirit will sense it. Animals too. Milk curdles, butter sours, babies get sick… that kind of thing.”

“I need the spell,” she said, speaking firmly enough that he didn’t argue. He opened his mouth to start, and she just talked over him. “The Emperor wants to serve you, Joseph. He says China will owe you for saving it… and I explained the way he could serve was by stopping Charybdis from making deals with anyone else who lives here.”

Joe grunted in annoyance, then yanked hard on a wall-tapestry. It was framed in bamboo, a scene of the night painted with exquisite detail on rice paper. His horn glowed, and patterns burned themselves into it, charring paint and ruining the masterpiece in seconds. “There,” he said, rolling it up at her hooves. “Let’s get this over with. Charybdis is going to be fucking pissed right now. I don’t want him to catch us out here. He has no reason to waste his strength coming back here unless he knows somebody who pissed him off is standing around like an idiot. Like what we’re doing.”

Trade Wind carried the scroll back to the Emperor and spread it out on the ground in front of him. “Here,” she said. “He gives you this spell. Cast it on ponies you suspect of evil, and kill only the ones it reveals. The others you must release—my god will be angry if he learns anyone else dies in his name.”

The emperor nodded. “This I will do.”

“Good.” She bowed to him again, though not very low. “The plague is spread far. Fight it as quickly as you can.” She flew back to Joseph, landing beside him and prancing nervously around for a few steps before she finally settled down. “I’m ready,” she said. “I explained everything. I think he understands.”

“Good.” The unicorn was more crystal than he’d been before. But if the light didn’t catch him just right, it was hard to tell he wasn’t just a pony. She could only hope her leg looked as convincing to anypony who saw it.

Will my whole body look like that one day? Did he change this same way?

“Cloudy, we’re done here. Let’s get back home and recharge.”

“Command accepted,” the crystal said. The air around them began to buzz. A light shone down on them from all around, as though the space itself was glowing. “Warp field stabilized.” There was a flash, along with a brief breeze that passed over Trade Wind’s body. Suddenly she was back in the dark, with a crystal ceiling above her. They were in the same room they’d left from.

Joseph slumped a little against the wall, sighing with relief. His body began to glow a little brighter. Strangely, Trade Wind could feel it too. It came from her leg—a sense of warmth when she hadn’t even noticed she was cool. Magic flowed through her freely again, when before she’d been muffled. Her replacement limb started to faintly glow, just like Joseph’s whole body.

“W-what… what is that?” she asked.

She didn’t give any more detail, but Joseph apparently didn’t need it. “What keeps us alive, Trade Wind. What keeps me alive, anyway. Magic travels down from the tower, concentrating into this point. Hundreds of times more magic than is normally gathered in one place. Enough magic to transform a living body with enough time. Enough magic to keep a pony alive indefinitely.” He straightened, collecting himself. Though the look of contentment never faded. “Live here long enough, and you will be dependent on it. A body made from Tass cannot survive in the outside world forever. We need more magic than they have. If you left and never came back, you would lose your leg. If I did… I would die. How long would it take, Cloudy?”

“Sixteen days,” she answered, without emotion. Whatever hint of life she’d shown during the battle was gone now, and she sounded the same as she had earlier. “Based on my projections. We have not conducted conclusive experiments.”

“And we won’t,” Joseph said, trotting out of the little teleportation room. Trade Wind and the crystal both followed him. “Because that would suck. Unless you want to see how long it takes to lose that leg, Trade Wind. For science.”

“No,” she barked. “Not unless you want to talk to ponies from now on instead of me.”

Joseph shivered. “You can keep the leg,” he said. “Get some rest. I have two more trips to make with you… before you start going without me. So, I hope you were paying attention.”

“Yeah.” She stopped walking in the hall, letting Joseph walk away. Little plastic drones zoomed over her head, going about whatever strange work Joseph had for them. Trade Wind didn’t really know what they were up to, and just now she didn’t care.

She watched Joseph walk away, trying to figure out if she was looking at a god. It was very hard to tell. Why couldn’t you just be an Alicorn. That would make all of this so much simpler.

Dreaming up the Mess

Jackie landed in the old library, her hooves settling on the crystal of the roof with a rough clatter. It had been a long time since Jackie had visited this ancient place. Until comparatively recently, this old library near the height of the reachable Dreamlands was a monument to decay: evidence that even the best could be defeated and that virtue was doomed to failure. Why bother trying in a universe that simply didn't care?

She had watched its crystal structure turn chalky gray and start to crumble around the edges, as the glamour of its dreamer, now dead, ran out. It all would have failed long ago, were it not for the pony who lived here.

Pony was a generous term for Mercy, the crystal unicorn Alex created to perpetuate her work beyond her own death. But Archive had not been a bat before, not graced with the skills of dreamwalking or the powers necessary to imbue the figment with life. Jackie had picked up the slack, using her own power to keep Mercy alive when her creator stopped dreaming. Damn you for making me pick up all your broken pieces, Archive.

But not for any longer. Alex hadn't just returned, she'd ascended. Finally. Earth had its human Alicorn after over a thousand years of waiting. But that process had not come easily, which was why she was here in the first place.

The library was no longer falling apart. Though the damage to the crystal remained wherever its structure had failed, the rest of it no longer looked gray and cloudy. Most of the structural materials had gone a deep, emerald green, and were so tough they felt rough on her hooves. The interior of the library looked so bright from below that the whole massive tower seemed to be glowing from within.

Mercy appeared in a flash of gray magic, standing in front of the open doors. Jackie felt the difference in her at once—she wasn't a toy winding down anymore, she wasn't on the edge of survival. Her eyes were bright, the crystal of her body as tough as the crystal that made the tower. Like all of Archive's creations, she had been changed. But just because she looked healthier did not mean she seemed happier. There was worry on her face, and she glanced over her shoulder back towards the door. "Jackie, I'm glad you're here. There are half a dozen ponies inside, and I don't know—"

"I know," Jackie said, walking past her and snapping one hoof against the floor. The doors swung open for her, both opening wide, and more light spilled out. "Let me guess. They show up bloody and injured, and a few minutes later the whole place fixes itself."

Mercy nodded. "Something must've happened in the material world to affect this change. What was it?"

Jackie walked past her through the open doors, knowing Mercy would follow. "If your creator was half as smart as you are, we wouldn't be in half as much shit all the time."

The construct followed closely behind her as she descended the steps. In theory Mercy was the guardian of this place, and could employ the most powerful spells known to the Dreamtime to protect it. In practice they had been resorting increasingly to concealing the library, rather than protecting it. But Mercy showed no sign of wanting to attack her. In some ways, Archive had entrusted the library to her, and its guardian knew that.

"They're hysterical," Mercy said. "This place was never meant to house living ponies. Before the change, I couldn't nourish them effectively."

"I'm sure you managed," Jackie said, making her way down the sweeping spiral staircase. It was strange to think of just how many times she'd visited this old library—some of her earliest experiences dreamwalking had begun here, when Alex had used Equestrian knowledge to teach her the ropes. She'd since grown beyond anything that was taught in the books, grown beyond the abilities of anypony alive. Even Alex's encyclopedic knowledge could not account for all she had learned. Which was part of why she was here.

The other part was, of course, that Alex couldn't dreamwalk anymore. That ability seemed restricted to thestrals, despite the stories from Equestria of their own dreamwalking Alicorn. But that's a mystery for another time.

She wasn't entirely surprised to find the refugees gathered where Alex kept the movies. Their armor was all piled near one of the dark wooden shelves, and their swords and simple firearms rested just beside it. Cushions and blankets used for decoration throughout the library had been piled into a sleeping area, and decorative urns were now being used to store water.

If any of the Hammer had been thestrals, they could've summoned anything they desired to the library—transformed its wings into palatial mansions while they waited for their rescue. But as Jackie had learned during her very first dreamwalk, another kind of pony who traveled into the dream had only their own natural powers when outside of their own dreams. As this dream belonged to Alex, they were forced to follow its rules.

"Hey everybody!" Jackie said, calling through the open door to the viewing room. She didn't recognize the movie they were watching—something in space, the sort of movie she'd never have watched when she'd been human. A nerd movie that wasn't anime. "Come on out. I've got a message for you."

They did. Alex's Hammer were the best trained of the refugees. Most of them had military experience, or at least police. They had shattered the army meant to destroy Estel, and every single one of them had died doing it. Including Alex herself, Jackie supposed.

"News," said Everest, an Earth pony so large even the sturdy crystal of the library shook when he stepped. "Where is our president?"

"What happened?" somepony else asked. "It's been almost a month!"

"It's been a few hours," Jackie corrected. "You're in the Dreamtime, so time is different here. The library's time is stranger than most. If you're lucky it will slow while you're here, but there's no bending it. I gave up trying months ago."

There were eight of them in all, eight survivors out of the fifty who had charged from Estel. The longer Jackie remained near them, the more of their lethargy she could sense. These ponies had been trapped here so long that they'd already started to wear down. "Estel won," she said. "Thanks to you."

They cheered. The library filled with varied voices, banishing some of their fatigue. The worry on many faces vanished completely, though that could not erase the sadness over their lost friends.

“Alex sent them running. But she lost the power to bring you back. I'm, uh... gonna figure it out in her place. It might be a little tricky, since... technically..." She lowered her voice, looking away. "I think Alex might've accidentally merged you with her dream? Maybe... just a little..." She winced, but none of them reacted. Of course they don't have any idea what that means. "I'm the one assigned to fix it and get you out, but it might take time. You might want to settle in for a little longer."

"We need food," somebody said. "We weren't carrying rations when we left Estel. We've been eating the decorations."

"Sure." Jackie turned back to the spiral staircase. "I'll show you the way. There's, uh... tons of food in here. Just... this way!" She hurried down the stairs, dodging past the crowd as she went.

"No there isn't!" another voice said. "We searched the whole place. We thought about going out and searching, but Mercy said we shouldn't. Apparently it's not safe to fly out and look."

"She's right!" Jackie said hurriedly. "It definitely isn't! This is the dream world, it doesn't follow the rules you're used to. And if you die here, you'll die in real life. The mind makes it real." Actually it was nothing like that. They didn't have bodies anywhere else, so death for them here was final. The fact they had spirits would set them apart from the ordinary residents of the Dreamtime, but it would not make them immune to death.

A not-insignificant number of bats had fled into the Dreamtime to avoid their own deaths over the years. Any who reached the level of power to travel physically into the dream world could do it—just enter the dream world and never come back. There was no age within the dream, so even centuries of time could pass without making the pony older. But there was always a price. Jackie only knew of one such being that had kept its sanity long term. Or came close to keeping its sanity, anyway.

There was no food storage here, but that didn't matter. She was really just taking the ponies down the stairs so they could go somewhere they couldn't see at the time. In the time it took them to walk down a floor, Jackie cast the spell that would create a door that hadn't been there, unmarked and nondescript so as to blend in with the rest of the walls. Almost as though it could've been there all along. The interior of the library followed the ordinary conventions of space where her addition would not, but no magic was perfect.

"This wasn't here," Everest said. "I looked everywhere. Every wall, every shelf, everywhere."

"I dunno what you're talking about," Jackie said, pushing the door open with a hoof. Inside was what looked like the interior of a grocery store, refrigerated shelves and ordinary ones all taken from her memories of the world before. The actual writing on the packaging was nonsensical word salad, but the food would be real. Well, as real as dream-ponies needed. "See? The president's emergency food storage cache. Right where it was supposed to be."

"She had all this..." one of the ponies in the back said. "And we've been eating plain potatoes and hay?"

"It's not real," she said, turning away from them again. The ponies seemed content to let her this time, each one of them staring in wonder at the incongruous transition between the library and the apparent inside of a grocery store. "It's dream magic. You can only eat it because you're here."

"Oh." That answer seemed to satisfy, though the ponies didn't actually go through the door she'd made. They were all still watching her.

"So when do we leave?" somebody asked. "Can't you make a portal and get us out?"

"No," she said. "I wish I could, but the magic doesn't work that way. I'm not really here, I'm just asleep. You all... you're really here. Traveling physically is dangerous, and none of you are bats. Don't worry, though! I'm working on it! I'm an expert at cleaning up Alex's messes!"

* * *

Jackie left the library behind, plummeting through the upper airs of enlightened dreams into the realm of lesser emotions. She didn't fly particularly fast—travel here played strange tricks on time, as with any actions in the dream world. Sometimes it could feel like she spent months on the road in the course of a single night. I can't take my time, not with those other ponies waiting here. Aging away was not the risk to dream-creatures. The ordinary physical risks of the realm could be serious in some areas, but the library was about as safe as any part of the Dreamtime could be. No, the risk to those ponies was in the nature of their own lives.

Jackie had learned that well in the centuries since Alex had died and left them alone to pick up her pieces on a broken world. She had watched more than a few ponies flee here, abandoning their physical bodies in the search for eternal life. Some of those ponies were still alive, but rarely in a form anyone would recognize.

As it turned out, the mind needed a body. The illusion that existed with the Dreamtime was not enough—the sanity required something more. Something to ground and stabilize it, and prevent it from drifting according to every new emotion. Of all the bats she'd known to seek eternal life here, none had remained ponies. They'd become spirits of the dream, beings so alien that only enormous magic could let her still try to talk to them. With each passing year they explored stranger and stranger reaches of the world, parts of the Dreamtime that humans and ponies simply could not reach.

But one being was different—and that being might now be the only hope of the ponies Alex had trapped here. She was even older than Jackie, older than Alex herself if one ignored all the years she'd spent dead. She was also a pony Jackie avoided with great judiciousness. She took no small measure of pride in being able to avoid her. With all her power, bat-Alex hadn't ever come close to that dexterity. And now she never will. Jackie might not be an Alicorn, but she was the best. Even her target could not evade her search.

She traveled for days, until she reached the very edge of the Dreamtime. Just as the Earth's crust had areas where it stretched and areas where old crust was swallowed by the planet, so too did the Dreamtime have its areas of creation and destruction. Here, on the very edge of the ream dreaming minds could reach, whole sections of land crumbled away, cascading away into pure glamour and joining with the universal aether. It looked almost like the edge of an iceberg, except with vague lines suggesting trees, and plants, and other things. It had been so long since another dreamer had been here that the land had nothing more definitive, though the longer she remained the healthier it would look.

A pony could fly off this cliff and continue on forever without ever meeting another soul. Or they might step two feet off before getting devoured by some demon. There was no way to know what waited beyond the edge. Equestria was out there somewhere, and who knew how many other universes besides. All minds shared the infinite Dreamtime, but the island that formed sanity for humans and ponies was miniscule in that sea.

Here was the pony named Artifice. She still looked like a bat—hadn't grown extra wings or arms or heads in her centuries of time. She stood on the edge of the cliff, near an object that was like a massive telescope, save that it was built from crystals, wires, and advanced spells. It was also made of real matter, an island of stability that solidified the ground it stood upon, preventing it from crumbling away into the void. It was already a little peninsula, extending fifty feet over the crushing waves of the aether.

Artifice stared off into the void, wearing her stupid hat and her stupidly smug expression.

"Hey!" Jackie shouted from the cliff. "I need to talk to you!"

The bat jerked forward in surprise, smashing her face against the eyepiece of her telescope. She still looked surprised as she turned around, though she seemed to be trying to hide it. "O-oh, it's you," she said. "I was expecting you to—"

"I don't have time for your shit!" Jackie shouted. "Could you ditch the act and come over here, please?"

The bat was suddenly beside her, without the motion of an intervening teleport. She didn't have a horn. "Jeez, what's with the hostility? I was hoping you came here to have a chat, but..." She trailed off into a sigh. "No. This is about Archive, isn't it? It always is. That shockwave may as well been signed by her."

"Sorta," Jackie said, though she couldn't take her eyes from the telescope. "What are you doing out here? There's nothing to see—I've gone out there. Ezri and I tried to get to Equestria once. Thought we'd never find our way back."

"Getting to the far lands is easier," Artifice answered, her smug expression fully returned. "Just because everyone has failed to navigate it so far doesn't mean nobody can. It's just a matter of finding the right people for the job. Writing the right spells. Getting the most determined—"

"Okay, stop." Jackie raised one hoof. "Waste your time staring into the void, fine. I just..." She took a deep breath, looking away. She spoke very slowly, each word coming out with difficulty. "I think I... might... or Alex... she... might kinda... need your help."

Artifice gave Jackie an unamused look. "If Alex needs my help why didn't she come with you?"

“Because she’s cleaning up from an invasion. If the army unloading from our island notices our Alicorn is gone, they might decide to come back.” If Jackie had been a lesser pony, she might've had a hard time resisting the urge to punch her in the face. But Jackie was a civilized pony, and would never resolve a personal grudge with violence. Particularly when the pony she disliked was almost certainly the only one who could help the victims of Alex's “rescue.”

At least she didn't send them to the Supernal like she did with us. It could've been worse. "You were right, Archive got her crown. It was big, and special, and there was fanfare and a petting zoo and everything. But before that there was a war, and we almost lost. To save some ponies, Alex sent them here."

"So send them back," Artifice suggested. "Don't you do that all the time Dreamknife? Popping in and out of here is something I never bothered getting good at myself, but I—"

"Don't even." Jackie glowered. "You have your own fake religious names, we don't have to play that game today." She paused, taking a deep breath. "She didn't just move them here. She changed them... all of them. They read just like any of the other denizens of Dreamtime, only... they still have their spirits. They don't have bodies anymore."

"She what?" All of her amusement was gone now. "Why did she do that?"

"Accident, probably," Jackie admitted. "There was a ton of magic going around at the time. You know how it is with her—being tied to civilization or whatever, and she'd made a whole city we were defending... Look, I just knew you were experimenting with converting things back and forth, and I wondered if you might know any way to help them. I don't want to be the one to tell them they'll never get to go home."

Artifice looked thoughtful, turning away to stare off into the void. She stayed that way for some minutes, apparently deep in thought. But Jackie was used to that—everyone who lived in Dreamtime had a somewhat blase attitude about time eventually. There was so much of it that most ponies didn't bother to conserve. "There is a spell that might help," she eventually said. "It's not easy. Also not one I'm eager to let go for free and have it become useless as trade fodder later. But I still owe Alex and no one should end up living in the dreamlands without wanting to."

"Fine!" Jackie said, relieved. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it's fine! Alex is real broken up about this. I'm sure she'd do whatever to get these ponies back with their loved ones."

"Sure," Artifice said, reaching one hoof into the open air beside her. It vanished, though she pulled it out a moment later clutching a scroll, which she tossed to Jackie. "Short version? You can't. Long version? Cheat. Thestral magic is just magic, fundamentally. We can bring dreams into the material, so why not turn that spell into a rune?"

Jackie opened up the scroll, and sure enough she found an advanced spell diagram, dozens of exhausting-looking dream spells that would condense into a piece of jewelry when complete.

"Making someone into glamour, that's easy. Bringing them back... still working on that one. But you can give them those—might hold them over. So long as you've got a way of keeping the spells charged, and they stay away from the dream world, they'll be alright. Well... alright adjacent." She shrugged one shoulder. "They'll never sleep, never age, and die instantly if they remove the bracelet outside of Dreamtime. But on the plus side, they won't mutate in the Material and will have way more company then I do."

Jackie tucked the scroll away into her own little pocket of Otherspace, vanishing it from sight. She would have to do the casting on the spell it described, not Alex. That would be an exhausting process. "Do you think there's any way to change them back? Properly?"

"Absolutely," Artifice said, her smug grin returning. "There's always a way. I just don't know what it is yet." She flicked one wing towards her telescope. "I've been distracted lately. Equestria told us there was nothing out there, but they're wrong. There's everything out there."

"Alright, I'm done." Jackie took off, her wings only beating once every few seconds. Gravity was more of a suggestion this far from more realistic dreams. "Thanks for your help. I'll... pass this on to Alex or whatever."

The other bat nodded once. "Sounds good. Tell her she can expect a visit. Someone needs to talk to her about the responsible use of dream magic." Artifice paused and gave an oddly soft look towards Jackie. "Also, could you drop by when matters of life and death are not going on? I would like to just 'talk' with you for once."

She left without another word, lifting off into the air and letting the natural motions of Dreamtime swallow her. She took a particularly circuitous route between different dreams, so she wouldn't be followed. A dreamer like Artifice, who had survived centuries in Dreamtime, would probably know about the library and know it was the first place Alex would send anyone. Dodging around was probably a waste of time.

She did it anyway. Anything to delay her arrival a little longer. Alex had screwed up bigtime with these ponies. In some ways, she'd killed them. And in some others, she saved them. I guess I should probably learn their names. They might be sticking around.

Author's Note

This chapter was suggested by Bitera on my Patreon, who wanted me to tie up a few loose ends left over from the end of Earth Without Us.

Joe's Mod

“Exactly what kind of training is this?” Trade Wind asked, her voice more than a little nervous. She shifted uncomfortably as she surveyed the room—almost entirely empty, except for the crystals set into the walls. The spells in here looked even more complex than Mystic Rune’s teleportation spells, and those were easily the most advanced magic she had ever personally witnessed. The crystals here were much smaller, which indicated less power was involved, but the number of runes carved into everything was terrifying. What could possibly be this complex?

“Oldest training program there is,” Joe answered. “One I used since my youth. Many tried to destroy it, but it just kept coming back.” He walked over to a massive machine along one wall, one that was mostly ancient in its design. There was much in the ancient base that looked similarly old, relics of Joe’s time and even earlier. This one switched on with a blue glow, water flowing through tiny pipes visible on the outside.

“You didn’t make it?” Trade Wind watched as Joe manipulated something on one of the screens, before opening a drawer and removing a pair of masks. Each one was bulky, with something large covering the eyes and more crystals embedded inside. He tapped each with a horn, causing the crystals to come alive with light. She could see light coming from within as well.

“No,” Joe said. “Some say the one who crafted it dragged up a piece of hell itself to forge into his masterpiece. Some called him the most powerful necromancer in the world.”

“Who?”

“They called him… Todd Howard.”

There was an ancient quality to that name. A power that pony names just didn’t seem to possess. “That… doesn’t sound safe,” Trade Wind said. “I can practice without magic, you know! The gym I set up is working pretty good—I haven’t cracked my new leg in weeks!”

“And you won’t crack it again after today,” he said, levitating one of the masks toward her. “Put it on. It’s been ages since I’ve had someone to play this with me. You won’t believe how much effort I put into making it all work. The damn apocalypse had to happen before they finished the hard part. I’m going to get my investment back.”

Trade Wind had very little confidence in obeying the ancient wizard. But at the same time, she knew better than to try and resist. She couldn’t leave him—if she left, she would lose her leg. She might just die completely. So she had to endure it. She took the mask, then watched as Joe slipped it on over his face. The material felt strangely soft in her hooves—it was the ancient material Joe called ‘plastic’. A rare and incredible substance.

She imitated him, pulling it up over her eyes and settling the strap on the back of her head. At first, she saw nothing particularly terrifying—it looked like there were little screens up inside the plastic, right in front of her eyes. She saw what looked like smoke on the screen, and some words in the ancient language of humanity written there. There was music playing, but it wasn’t quite over her ears, and she couldn’t understand it anyway.

Then she felt the magic. There was a brief, sharp pain behind her eyes, and suddenly she was somewhere else.

The mask vanished from before her eyes, the ground from under her hooves, and she screamed. She couldn’t hear her own voice—it was ripped right out of her throat. It felt like falling, but her wings didn’t respond to her motions. She couldn’t spread them and glide.

The sensation didn’t last long. She smashed into the ground, in a world she had never seen before. There were massive wooden buildings in grays and browns, there was a blue sky above her, and a chill wind blew against her coat. She was standing in the gates of a city, one that looked like it hadn’t suffered the ravages of the plague. Though that was only the second thing she noticed.

The first thing she noticed were the people. There were dozens of them, and every single one looked…

Trade Wind retreated, eyes widening in shock as she realized what she was looking at. She had seen a few pictures and drawings of ancient humanity over the years, many of them inside this very lab. Yet now, she’d somehow been transported to one of their cities. “Arinna above,” she swore, bowing before them. “Please, forgive me. I know I do not belong in your world. I have no place here. Please, do not think I have…”

Someone bumped into her from behind. A figure wearing armor of some kind, with yellow over his chest. The mask he wore obscured his face, though he had hit with enough force that Trade Wind nearly fell over. He glowered at her, and she wondered if he was about to draw his weapon.

“Let me guess, somebody stole your sweetroll,” he said, before turning unnaturally sharp to one side and striding off.

Wind’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say to the ancestor—so she said nothing.

Then she noticed Joe standing in front of her. He was impossible to miss against all the other strange creatures, as he was the only other pony here. Only, he didn’t look exactly like himself. Despite still being a unicorn, he stood far more muscular than he should have. There was no crystal to his body, no signs of his vast age. He wore fancy robes of dark blue with frills down his back, and levitated some kind of staff through the air beside him. As he walked closer, all the humans got out of his way, a few of them muttering words of respect.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, beaming as she took in the city. “Is it not the most impressive VR experience you’ve ever had? I don’t really know if this is what Bethesda had in mind, but I think the magic does better than the Oculus alone could have. And don’t worry about flailing around—I gave up on the idea of using sensors a long time ago. You’re under sleep-paralysis while you’re in here, so you can’t break anything.”

“In… here,” she repeated, glancing briefly down at herself. She was not entirely surprised to find she had transformed in a similar way—completely healed, and in the prime of youth. There were no signs of the ravages of the plague or of a youth spent without enough food. She was easily taller than almost anypony she knew, and probably more attractive too. It was hard to tell if Joe noticed, even if she didn’t have any of his fancy armor. “I thought this was combat training.”

“Well, uh… it is!” he said, turning away with slight embarrassment. For the strangeness of their appearance, the humans around the city seemed to care remarkably little about them. Those few that did get anywhere close to them just muttered one or two words and kept right on going. “Or it can be. We just need to start you on the Companions questline. You’ll get plenty of fighting there. Physical stuff, the way primitives should fight with swords and stuff. I’ve got the Ultimate Combat overhaul installed, so…”

Trade Wind stared after him, sensing more embarrassment from him. This was the most emotion she had ever seen from Joe at one time. For some reason he thought this marvel of spellcasting was embarrassing? Why? It was easily the most impressive bit of magic she’d ever seen. Like those dreams you could buy from bats, except, more… well, the longer she lingered, the subtler details she noticed that weren’t quite right.

The stones looked a little square, the shadows fuzzed in a strange way, almost as though the edges were too jagged. It makes sense that magic would have limits. Even incredible magic like this.

“Sure, sounds great,” she said. “I assume… you created this place so ponies could train without being in danger? If I get hurt here, I won’t be hurt for real?”

He waved a dismissive hoof. “Obviously. If VR could hurt you, it wouldn’t be very fun, would it? I thought about incorporating biofeedback, but the spell was already so complicated it can start to unravel if we play too long at once. We have to keep it to a few hours in one sitting, or else the interface starts breaking down. The screens are so much worse than this.”

Trade Wind followed him down the streets of the city, towards a little marketplace. In many ways it was familiar to her pony sensibilities, with its many merchants all around, hawking wares from their booths. A few guards lurked near the doors to a few modest shops, brandishing cudgels or morning stars. Wind felt simultaneously gigantic and miniscule, since she was shorter than everyone but also much larger. Were humans really this size, so tall but so thin? The pictures hadn’t looked as strange as these creatures moved.

One of the guards was walking straight into the well, yet somehow not moving forward. “Uh…” She paused as she walked past him. “Honored ancestor, are you alright?”

“Don’t bother,” Joe began, but the guard turned to look at her. Somehow she had attracted his notice.

“I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.”

“See, there’s no point. They aren’t…”

“That’s so sad!” She turned away. “Joe, can you help him? Can you fix his leg like you fixed mine?”

“NO.” Joe put one hoof on her shoulder, gently nudging her away. The guard watched for a few seconds, then went right back to walking towards the well.

What’s wrong with these people? Then again, Joe had built this place, right? If it was made as a training tool, creating constructs that acted like they were alive would be a waste of resources.

“Listen, Wind. These people are NPCs. They only understand certain things. No matter what you say to them, they can only respond a few different ways. This is not a real place. They don’t have spirits, they don’t even have real personalities. It’s like… a game. One of the best games ever. Full of awesome places to explore, mysteries to solve, puzzles… okay, maybe not puzzles. You can match different kinds of animals, right?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Nevermind. Point is, none of this is real. You don’t have to feel guilty if you ignore them, or even if you kill them. They don’t feel pain, they don’t feel scared, nothing. And if I want to…” he paused, horn glowing. Some words appeared in the air around one of his hooves, and he touched them.

The sun moved in the sky, and everyone around them twitched. Not just the people—the goods for sale in the market changed too, blasting around as though they’d been scattered in a hurricane. Also everyone dropped dead.

They were spread unevenly, entirely lacking any realistic sign of how they had died. A few had arrows not so much wounding them as fused with their flesh. A few had shallow bloodstains on the ground around them, faces frozen in expressions of fear or anger.

She retreated in horror, wings spreading as though she were about to take off. “W-what… what happened?”

“Oh, this is my testing save,” he said. “I think last time I was here I made everyone non-essential and summoned a dozen Thomas the Tank Engines.” She heard it then—a strange roar from above. Like a cheerful whistle, yet somehow menacing. Things got stranger from there.

Yet to her surprise, Trade Wind found the longer she spent using this strange training simulation, the more she enjoyed it. Once Joe took them back into a world where all the weird people were still alive, anyway.

A few hours later, they had found their way into one of many dungeons, impossibly deep and cavernous but filled with adventure. Joe had abandoned any pretense of this being useful training—mostly he was leading her around, explaining things as they went. Right now he was surrounded by glowing skeletons at the bottom of a deep chasm, shouting them to death.

“He looks like he’s having fun,” someone said from behind her, at such a normal volume compared to the yelling that Wind almost jumped off the ledge. She didn’t, though, thankfully.

She turned, and was a little surprised to see another pony standing there.

She was a pegasus too, though much older than Wind herself. Her body was a little shriveled, her wings missing most of their luster. But either she had aged quite well, or the pink of her coat concealed anything unhealthy.

She was also dressed for the world, wearing armor befitting someone who adventured here. “I didn’t think there were other ponies in here,” Wind said.

“Oh, well… there aren’t. I’m not a pony.”

Wind raised her eyebrows. “You look like a pony to me.”

“I would look like one,” she said. “Because that’s how he made me. I’m Cloudy Skies—you must have interacted with my counterpart in the world above.”

“Oh.” She relaxed a little. “His… crystal thing. The one that casts spells for him. I guess it would make sense you have some magical way in here.”

The pony chuckled. “I never left. Mystic Rune thought he could use a simulated environment to train me to be… more human. But it didn’t happen as quickly as he wanted. The people here only act like people when you follow the script.” She gestured with her wing at nothing in particular. “You know what I’m like. Rigid, formal. Algorithmic. That’s because that me only had a few years to train. But I’ve been here… well, the whole time. Mostly I learned by watching him, talking to him.”

She sighed deeply. “I keep expecting him to switch me off. But every few years he’s back, starting a new save, or joining one of mine.”

“Do you want…” Trade Wind hesitated, unsure of what she should say. “Do you want me to ask him? To… switch you off?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But keep an eye on him when you’re up there. I imagine he must be as reckless in your world as he is in mine.”

One of the undead warriors crashed into the ceiling above her, then fell abruptly to the ground at their hooves. Despite the incredible force of the impact, it immediately rose, then jerkily charged back down the ramp, ignoring them.

“He doesn’t go out into the field much,” Trade Wind said. “But I’ll do what I can. I’ve already saved him once. I think I’m getting good at it.”

“Are you coming, Wind?” he shouted from below. “You need to get down here to absorb this dragon shout!”

“Coming!” she called, turning back to face the pegasus. But there was nopony there.

“Hey, Joe.” She called to him, once she had glided down to meet him surrounded by all the monsters he had killed. Such a massacre would’ve been too hideous for her to contemplate in the real world, but here it looked so silly she couldn’t be afraid. “It’s not right of you to keep a pony in here. Locked up in this… place.”

He stopped, looking confused. “What are you talking about?”

She repeated the story “Cloudy Skies” had told her, at least as best as she had understood it.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joe finally said, sounding completely sincere. Joe was about the worst liar in the whole world, but there were none of his tells. He didn’t look away, or make his horn light up with some half-cast spell. “That would be a completely stupid way of training an AI. I mean, it’s a fun game, but…” He shook his head. “No, I don’t want Lidia out in the real world. This was just a fun way of blowing off steam.”

Trade Wind opened her mouth to argue, but couldn’t form the words. She turned, looking back the way she’d come, but there was no one up there.

“If you’re seeing things, probably the interface is failing,” he said, turning away. “I’ll save, and we can come back to this tomorrow. If you want to.”

“I, uh…” She hesitated. “Yeah. I think I do.”

Author's Note

Hey pones! So this idea was submitted as a minific on my Patreon by Darkzero. The idea didn't say exactly where I could take it, so I went in a direction I thought might seem a little familiar to some of you, while also allowing Joe the chance to develop aspects of his relationship with Trade Wind. Hopefully it was fun, I know I loved writing it.

Reunion

"So, you're saying... there's an Alicorn coming?" Joseph couldn't keep the annoyance from his voice—any time he had to spend away from his research was time he would never get back. It didn't matter that he was practically ageless, didn't matter that he could (and had) devoted centuries to his experiments. Once something broke his concentration, it could take hours to get it back.

Had the pony who interrupted him been anyone else, he might've had to resist the temptation to turn them to stone, or into some small animal that couldn't bother him anymore. Trade Wind was spared his wrath, if only through familiarity.

The pegasus had begun to show some of the same signs of change that he had. Her coat was reflective in the sun, her feathers were one shimmering crystal, sending cascading rainbows of color behind her whenever she flew. It was beautiful, though Joseph had to remind himself how much prettier Cloudy Skies would've looked as she changed into crystal. And it's my fault she didn't. My fault for learning too slowly and not building the university fast enough.

Sitting around feeling guilty was an even greater waste of time than listening to Wind's message. "Yes, that's what I said. Fought off a whole legion of soldiers in the Nameless City. You should hear some of the stories going around. King Obrican already published a decree that anyone who spreads them will spend a month in jail, and it isn't helping."

Joseph laughed. "Idiot never heard of the Streisand effect. Now everyone will know." Joseph turned away, storming down the hallway towards his laboratory. Wind followed him of course, as was proper for an assistant. He could hear one artificial leg touching down with every fourth hoof fall, clicking like glass. It was a good thing the crystal was tougher than it looked, or else either one of them might've shattered a long time ago. "What did you hear about the Alicorn. Did you get a name?"

Wind's voice came from behind him, timid as always. "Y-yeah. Archive."

Joseph stopped walking, so abruptly that he felt Wind crash into him from behind. It sounded like someone knocking two glasses together. "You're mistranslating that. Say it in English."

There weren't many ponies in the world left who knew that language. Joseph had made sure Wind was one of them, even if he ordained to use a translation spell around her to make her more comfortable some of the time. If I could learn it, anyone can.

"I did use English," Wind said, a little annoyance in her tone. "It's a proper noun, Rune. Why does it matter? Do you know her?"

"Yes." Joseph sped his steps into the lab, though he didn't run. Running was a bad idea when a significant portion of your body was made of crystal. The workshop had changed little in the past few centuries, except that his HPI-REP-16 had broken down about twenty years ago and he lacked the parts to replace it. That meant more and more of his drones had to be replaced with thermomechanical parts, and the intricate engravings of his own hooves were taking the places of unibody plastic shells. More setbacks. Alex took her damn time in coming back. Probably she's been hiding on some tropical island all this time teaching the natives how to plant crops or something stupid. For all her leadership, Alex had never understood perspective. Joseph did, which was why he didn't waste his time with ponies anymore. His mind was too valuable a resource to squander.

One of the six workstations in the lab had gone over entirely to his plague research, and was still piled high with the notebooks and diagrams he had used to work out the treatment. The steel drum of the bioreactor he'd used to grow antidote sat idle now, as every trace of the plague had burned itself out a century earlier. Trade Wind no longer had inoculation deliveries to make, even to the most remote parts of the globe.

"What are we going to do?" The pegasus followed him through the lab, though she never stepped within reach and never got in his way. She'd gotten very good at that, staying close enough to be useful if he asked without making herself a nuisance. If she hadn't, I'd have gotten rid of her two hundred years ago. But as more and more of his laboratory’s technological parts broke down, she did more and more of the work to fill the gap.

That had been a mild shock in itself—that living ponies could be almost as useful as machines. Almost. "I'm going to give her a piece of my mind," Joe said, stopping in front of his large equipment shelf, and pulling out a saddlebag filled with portable measuring tools. Dust came off in thick cakes as he did so, wafting through the air in dense clouds. It had been a while since Joe had gone out to do field missions. "Here, put this on.” He levitated the bag toward her, undoing the Velcro. Like everything else in his lab, the objects would be intact, ageless unless they were being interacted with. A pity he used his drones for so much, or else more of them might still be working.

"O-okay. Do I need to take off my vest, or..." Trade Wind glanced down at the white fabric of her vest, set as it was with a dozen crystal shards. Each one of them thrummed with an active spell, and would go dark once expended. The harness would charge on its own from the ambient magic, which if she brought it down here would take only minutes. On the surface, spells could take weeks to recharge.

"No, leave it on." He set the saddlebags onto her back, opening the slits that would permit wings. They had been made to be universal, after all. They weren't heavy, but that didn't mean Joseph would carry them. Carrying your stuff was one of the reasons to take an assistant in the first place!

Trade Wind didn't complain as he settled the instruments on her back. "Why do we need all this?" she asked, a little of the annoyance surfacing in her tone again. "Don't you think we should bring armor instead? This pony killed hundreds of soldiers."

"Don't care." Joe turned away again, walking out of the lab as swiftly as he had entered it. "She isn't going to hurt me. I haven't decided what I'm going to do to her."

"What you'll..." Trade Wind hurried to catch up, her voice trailing off into a fearful stammer. Joe didn't listen to what she said after that—it wasn't important. The pegasus would learn soon enough. If nothing else, she'd proven her ability to keep quiet and pay attention.

Joe took them to the newest corner of his compound, though new was somewhat relative. It was centuries old now, as old as his visit to the surface and the plague he had discovered ravaging pony populations there. The room was about fifteen feet across, with a row of polished metal dishes with crystals mounted in each one all pointing at the floor. On the wall was a topographical map of the globe, one that was actually accurate to shape and elevation. The glow of magic was so palpable that his mane stood on end as he entered, buzzing faintly with an almost electric charge.

"You said the Alicorn was in the nameless city, correct?" At her nod, Joseph walked up to the map, removing the metal pin where it had been set into the rock near Singapore and levitating it over to New York. "I wonder what the primitives have done to the place. There aren't any hostile conditions, are there? She didn't nuke the city to get rid of the army? I'm not sure how our bodies would respond to radiation..."

"I don't know what 'nuke' means," Wind said, stopping in the very center of the pad, and shifting uneasily between her hooves. "I don't think she did anything crazy. Just some kind of shield that the army couldn't get through. She killed a lot of blood priests..."

"No, really?" He feigned surprise. "Archive didn't like blood sacrifices, I never would've guessed. I fucking told you there'd be hell to pay from someone sooner or later. Kinda thought it would be Gaia though..." He jammed the pin into Manhattan island, walking back into the center to stand beside Trade Wind. He felt the pony touch lightly to his side, in a way he couldn't be sure was platonic or romantic. He'd never asked, and didn't really care so long as she kept doing her job.

At least that was what he told himself.

There were no controls within the teleportation circle. Joseph meant to add them one day, but always got distracted by other things. It didn't really matter when he was the only one to send Trade Wind anywhere, and when he used it he could just levitate the single lever by the wall. Of course, he should probably also do something about the unshielded magical conduit running there. Using the transport spell just meant bridging the contacts with a platinum conductor and letting the magic flow for a second. The only reason the whole apparatus didn't short out was only because it took constant magical pressure to keep the conductor in place. As soon as he was transported, the spell would end and the length of platinum rod would fall to the floor.

There was a flash like lightning from all around him, and the bright light of a long-range teleport.

Joseph appeared on the broken cement of an ancient city, scattering debris, and charring every nearby plant to a uniform black. Not that he cared much about that—the wild grass growing on the street would only be a nuisance to the ponies who wanted to travel here, anyway. As soon as they landed Wind broke apart from him, pacing around and inspecting the surrounding area for danger. Wind could fight, though of course no violence would be necessary with him around. Anything that attacked them would be in for a very brief, painful surprise.

He'd imagined different sized piles of rubble. After well over a thousand years without maintenance, none of the buildings of this once-great city should still be standing. But instead of finding ruins, the sky all around them was filled with the shape of large structures, plenty of which still had some of their windows. There must be a reason for this. I will have to investigate further.

But just now, he had more important things to look for. "Come over here," he called, opening the satchel with his magic and removing a long metal rod from within. The crystal on the end began to flash and glow once it was in his grip, and he began pacing in a slow circle with it, until he found the direction its glow was most intense. Then he set off, setting a brisk pace through the broken city.

"You have an Alicorn-finding spell?" Wind asked from just above him, drifting through the air as he walked. She always flew when they were on missions like this—apparently the ground was harder on her crystal hooves than it was on his.

"No, I have a magic-finding spell. There won't be any source of power in the city stronger than an Alicorn." He wanted to make the trip a series of precise teleports, but unfortunately, he hadn't ever visited the city before. It would be a terrible waste of energy to transport places he hadn't seen before. It would be particularly annoying if he accidentally teleported himself into an object and shattered all over the floor.

They walked for a long time—Joe couldn't say just how long—before he started noticing signs of life. The streets abruptly ended, replaced with wide fields of dark brown soil. Joe recognized the smell of wheat, though of course it had been some time since last he'd tasted it. She had to be an idiot and get herself killed all the time. Nopony else was better at keeping the lights on. Joseph would demand compensation for all the years he had worked on her behalf without her even being alive to give him recognition for it.

Yet life was never easy. He didn't walk through an empty city without meeting a single pony until they encountered the Alicorn. Rather, they made it a few hundred meters into the field before they found several farmers tending to the crops. As usual, the ponies stopped to stare, pointing and whispering. "It isn't that strange!" he called, not slowing his approach. He lowered his voice to a quiet mutter. "Please don't waste my time..."

Of course, they did. A tall earth pony stallion with a dark coat reached out with a pitchfork, barring the way forward. "Who the hell are you?" he asked, his tone gruff and suspicious. He seemed to be trying to protect the ponies behind him, a female, and a child. His family, maybe? "This is my field, get out." It was English though, which was a good sign. Pre-Event English.

Joe didn't even answer. He just looked up, gesturing expectantly at the pegasus.

Trade Wind landed a second later, and smiled awkwardly at the pony. "We're sorry to bother you," she said. "We're just looking for the princess."

"Oh." The earth pony relaxed. "I guess... guess it makes sense strange-lookin' folk would be coming to speak to her. Last I heard she was doing construction on the east side." He pointed with one hoof, down another field to their left where the buildings started to thin. Most importantly, it did not seem to be in the direction of his detection tool.

"Thank you," Trade Wind said, nudging Joseph in the indicated direction. "We'll get out of your mane, then."

They did, though the wand started to dim a little, indicating they were no longer headed in the correct direction. "He's wrong," Joe said, before they were even completely out of earshot. "She's not this way."

"Yeah," Wind whispered, her voice low. "He was lying. I don't know why, though."

They soon found out. At the end of the alley was a large fortification built across the street, packed in with rubble and broken automobiles and lined with weapon embankments. There were a dozen soldiers there, identifiable only from their primitive armor and gun harnesses. No sooner had they been spotted than one of them started ringing a bell. Shouts rang out around them, and ponies poured down off the wall.

Joseph swore under his breath, his horn glowing slightly as he projected a bubble of force around the both of them. A few of the soldiers poked and prodded at the edge of the bubble, but none attacked it with vigor. Joseph held still as they were surrounded, entirely unimpressed with the quality of Alex's troops. Mostly they seemed clumsy and untrained, like refugees who hadn't had new bodies for more than a year. Maybe they are. How many refugees have been 'banished' here?

"Explain yourselves!” Somepony shouted. Joe didn't get a good look at who, and he didn't really care.

"We're here to see the princess," he said, making his voice echo and carry through the bubble with a spell. The magic was enough that some of the nearby buildings started to shake, so maybe he'd overdone it just a tad.

"The princess is busy," said one of the guards. "She has no time for visitors like you. You'll have to come back later." There was no disguising the fear in his tone.

"How about this," he said, sounding bored. "The most powerful wizard in the world is standing in front of you, and he's upset that you are wasting his time. Either escort us to your princess, or I'll get you all out of our way and find her myself."

They considered that a moment. A few hefted their weapons threateningly, though by then they must have realized no sword or low-grade firearm would put a scratch on the shield.

"You don't have to be so mean about it," Wind said from beside him, sounding a little annoyed. "They're not going to hurt us."

"No, they aren't," he said. "But they are wasting my time. That's an injury in itself."

"We'll take you to her," the same soldier who had spoken before said, very loudly. "But don't try anything, or—"

"You'll nothing," he interrupted. "Don't bother, whoever you are. There isn't a pony in the world who could get through this shield. Well... maybe one, but she isn't on this island. How about you don't waste either of our time and we just get straight into the walking."

The soldier grumbled, but didn't argue. Soon enough they were walking again, this time along a dense gravel road that passed through fields and living spaces alike. It was easier to see the lived-in land now that they were making their way past the empty city all around it. There were many more ponies to watch them as well—civilians of all three tribes and a handful of other races. Joseph didn't care that they were staring, though a part of him was still a little uncomfortable to be out in such a public place.

They passed what must've been a central part of the city, a single city block of densely lived-in buildings. Thousands of ponies moved about here, gathering in from similar roads that all reached this point like the spokes in a wheel. But they didn't go through to this central building, instead continuing down one of the roads into a strangely flat section of the city. Here the wreckage of ancient buildings was absent, and there were only clear fields. How did they tear out the steel and concrete foundations without heavy machinery?

Joseph wouldn't be getting an answer to that today. As they walked, more and more soldiers joined the crowd, word apparently spreading of their task and the dangerous ponies they escorted. Joseph didn't make the shield any larger, and it hardly took any concentration to resist the pressure their bodies made on it. They were not being attacked, and it wouldn't have mattered if they were.

"I hope seeing this Alicorn is worth it," Trade Wind said as they walked. "Ponies are usually much kinder to me when I visit. But I at least try to look and act normal when I talk to them."

Joe shrugged. "I stopped caring about normal before the world ended, Wind. I'm not going to start now."

The pegasus shrugged dismissively. "I know, but if you can at least pretend, most ponies will ignore how weird we look. I figured that out a long time ago."

They were slowing down. At first Joseph couldn't tell why, and he wondered if maybe they were going to try fighting them. But no—the crowd in front of them was clearing, where the road ended. The little magical rod Joe was carrying had gotten about as bright as it could, indicating they had reached the near proximity of whatever destination they had been traveling towards.

He saw a wall first, a wall twenty feet tall and made of every kind of debris. Bricks, chunks of concrete, piles of loose gravel and stone. The walls seemed to be rising around the edge of the island, overlooking the bay. They also didn't look like loose piles, but had somehow been assembled into densely strong fortifications at least twenty feet tall. Nearby he could see several more piles, one filled with bits of glass sometimes inches thick, while the other had different lengths of metal in various shapes and sizes. Most of them looked like they'd been cars. More importantly, Joe saw what had happened to all the structures.

Far away from anypony else, far away from the crew of twenty or thirty unicorns that seemed to be following her close behind at any one time, he could see the pony he'd come to see. The Alicorn was taller than he'd imagined, though many of her other features had somehow survived the intervening years without much change. Her expression was quite serene as she focused on a pile of detritus so large it could've come from an entire building.

As Joe approached, he found fewer and fewer of the soldiers dared to follow. Only Trade Wind kept pace with him, though her steps came more slowly and she stared openly at the Alicorn whose power was on display.

Archive wasn't a child anymore, but she also wasn't a towering adult like Sunset had become. Yet just because she wasn't very large didn't mean she couldn't apparently wield the magic of a dozen common unicorns. As she levitated the debris, different materials of different types sorted themselves out into her piles, with only the stone and rock-based materials continuing to fill in her next section of wall. Stone sorted itself by size, fitting together without mortar into a wall that could've been at home in any ancient Incan city.

For once, Joseph was too stunned to interrupt her. He waited in silence a dozen feet away, watching as she finished with the massive pile of rubble. Only then did her horn stop glowing, though a thin trail of steam seemed to be rising from it. "Is it time for a break already, Nancy? I'm not done with the market district yet..." She turned, eyes widening as she saw Joseph standing there. She met his eyes, the same brown that he remembered, though far older. The eyes of a pony who hadn't spent the centuries cloistered in a lab.

She blinked, wiping a few drops of moisture away from her eyes. "J-Joe?"

"Alex," he responded, dismissing his shield. It faded from around them, and with it any protection should the soldiers decide to attack. None did—none had dared approach the Alicorn this closely. He couldn't blame them. "I'm not happy about how hard it was to find you," he said, collecting himself. "The water in my lab stopped working three centuries ago. That's no way to run a civi—" He didn't finish, because at that moment his words were strangled in an embrace.

Joe blushed, his ears flattening, and he wanted to pull away. Wanted to, but didn't have the strength to resist this mare who was as tall and lean as he was, but as sturdy as an earth pony. He began to gasp, struggling to breathe a little under the assault. Yet all he could hear was her crying. "I-I... c-can't... h-how are you still alive, Joe? H-how... how did..." And he couldn't make sense of the rest, it was all incoherent sobbing.

"Weren't you male at one point?" he croaked, his voice barely audible. "You should be more emotionally stable, Alex. Ponies are watching."

That got her to let go, though she was glaring at him now. That didn't mean she'd stopped crying, her eyes red and swollen. It was a strange look from a pony who'd just been moving an entire building with her will. "F-first Mom, now you..." She looked to the side, seeming to notice Trade Wind standing there for the first time. "And you, you must be..." She hesitated just a second. "Joseph's... mate?" She stared down at her wings, eyes questioning.

"Trade Wind," the pegasus supplied, extending a hoof in greeting. She didn't correct Archive, or seem half as afraid as the ponies all around them. "I know he doesn't look it, but Joe was really excited to see you. You two must've been really good friends."

"Yeah." Archive wiped away the last few tears from her face, smiling at him. "You could say that."

Chip's Challenge

The world passed before Chip in a timeless eternity. She saw very little, felt almost nothing, moved hardly at all. She had been something once, but now was barely anything. So small her mind could barely string together thoughts, so cold that it took an eternity to reach each one. She wanted to grow, to expand, to mature, but found she could do none of those things. The icy chill all around her kept her small, obscured the world in a thin sheen of frost. Once she felt the whole world shake, and barely-developed eyes took in a brief interruption in the icy barrier. Cloth, maybe, or the edge of a hoof. Her whole world moved.

She let herself hope that maybe, finally, she was being taken somewhere warm, somewhere damp, somewhere she could finally hatch. Instead the cold returned, her mind slowed again, and her undeveloped body returned to its state of half-frozen suspension. Her mind was so cold it took years for her to connect otherwise simple ideas. Fear at how small and utterly helpless she was remained a constant in her perception, the knowledge that at any time anypony could reach down and crush her tiny world with a hoof. She would die then, not even fully born.

If I’m just going to be left here forever, that might not be so bad. She had lived many lifetimes. Broken many eggs. Yet in all that time, she’d served only one queen.

I won’t be there to greet you when you wake up, Chip, Riley’s voice echoed in her memory, one of the last things she’d seen. You’ve been my child so many times, remained faithfully at my side and always reminded me of my humanity.

Let me be your daughter then, Riley. You know how long I’ve waited. You know how much you need another friendly queen! I can feel how hungry you are, even now…

No, Riley had said, embracing him one last time. His own body had been gray and brittle, hers slightly skinny perhaps but still vibrant and full of life. As beautiful as ever Chip had seen her. So far as he was concerned, Riley was the perfect queen. His love for her had been enough to keep her fed all by itself, maybe years ago.

It couldn’t anymore. An ancient queen required the love of thousands. Every year she needed more, and he was still just one male. Even his unfaltering devotion giving willingly wasn’t enough.

I can feel the madness clawing at my mind, Chip. The hunger… if it gets much worse, I don’t know what I’d do to make it go away. I don’t know what I’d sacrifice. What I’d steal…

You wouldn’t! he shouted, raising his voice just a little. You’d die before you caught and hurt other ponies the way other queens do. I know you.

Riley hadn’t argued the point. I let myself hope… hope that Ezri might be a cure to all of this. But even after all these years, I failed. Lonely Day’s parting gift won’t be deciphered in my lifetime.

If it’s that bad… then forget I asked. Forget I asked for anything. Make me a drone, or… or nothing. I’ve already had many years of service to the hive. I can be content with that.

Maybe you can, Riley had answered. I can’t. I have a debt to pay. In return, you’re going to remember me like this. You won’t see what I become. You won’t kill yourself after I’m gone, because you’ll know I gave some of the last glamour I had to make you. Do you understand?

He hadn’t had the strength to talk anymore. He just nodded, tears streaming down his face.

Whatever pony had come up with the lie that changelings couldn’t feel emotions had been dead wrong. Chip had felt despair, felt like his whole world was ending. He’d died many times, been recycled over and over again, and each time Riley was his constant. She was a star, a demigod. What had he been but a butterfly, a brief flash of color or cleverness in her garden before dying with the winter. It seemed a crime that such an ancient and powerful being should be dying now. One who had done so much good… she deserved better.

It seemed like Lonely Day had made changelings part of her responsibility. She was going to cure them one day, they all knew it.

Except she hadn’t cured them. She’d died, and her gift had proven hollow. Any faith that she might ever come back was long gone now.

Chip felt bitterness welled up inside her at the memory of the one who’d abandoned them. The Equestrian’s had hoof-picked her as their guardian, picked her as their ambassador, and she’d been killed within a few centuries. All the power of their magic hadn’t amounted for much compared to the evil that was out there in the world.

That evil went unchecked now, ravaging the seas. Even Riley with all the power of her hive hadn’t been enough to stem his progress.

Chip knew nothing about the outside world now. Her mind was a very small thing, a faint spark of a memory, that was all. An egg, even a queen’s egg, was not very large. They also took an order of magnitude more time to develop than drones or males. By the time her sensory organs developed enough to recognize the distinction between inside her egg and out, she realized she’d been put on ice.

Chip had supervised this very same thing be done to eggs many times before. Changelings were notoriously sensitive to the cold—unprotected drones could freeze in just a few hours. But their eggs… their eggs were quite hardy. An egg kept below freezing could store… forever, so far as anypony knew. Riley couldn’t control how many eggs she produced, exactly. The drive to mate came when it came, and demanded fulfillment. Often it was so intense that a dozen males were required to satisfy her, and thousands of eggs were the result.

Chip thought she knew where she’d ended up, from the soft contours around the bottom of her world, just through the film of ice. Deep in Riley’s most sacred temple was a spell built by the legendary Joseph himself, a charm of perpetual freezing that kept warehouse-sized rooms a few degrees below freezing. No queen had ever been stored here before, but she didn’t know any reason it couldn’t be done.

I’ll be here forever, she thought to herself, staring out the imprisoning wall of her egg in the vain hope she might catch sight of something moving in the world beyond. Aside from the once, she never had. Her eyes were only developed enough to sense light and dark anyway, really, so she could only get patches. Like the time hooves had touched her egg, and she’d wondered if they would kill her.

At least she didn’t have to work hard to pass the time. With a brain only partially formed, it was easy to drift away. It took a conscious effort to keep a single train of thought for very long. The more she despaired, the more she let herself drift into merciful oblivion.

Until one day, something changed. It took a long time, but slowly her mind began to stir. The coldness was gone. Organic processes her body had almost abandoned began again. She twitched muscles she’d never expected she would get to use, her young body beginning the process of development again. She feared the frost would come again, hoped that the shock would be too much and she would die… but it didn’t come.

The world outside her egg was very dark now, and damp. Occasionally she felt her universe vibrate as someone passed her egg, maybe even moved it. It was very hard to tell.

But none of it mattered, really. Either Chip would survive to escape her egg, or she wouldn’t. Either there was enough glamour left for her in the egg, or there wasn’t.

Time passed, and she grew. It seemed less like she was floating in a sea and more like she was locked up somewhere, bound together by her legs, tied and immoveable. Eventually the sea of pure glamour she swam in began to dry up, consumed by her desperate body as she grew stronger.

I’m going to put you somewhere safe, Chip. Somewhere nopony will find you when I die and the swarm eats itself alive. But one day… one day, you’ll be found, and you’ll be born. Remember me, then. Take all your sisters I never got to raise, and make the best swarm you can. Maybe your daughters won’t try to kill you like so many of mine did. Maybe… maybe you’ll be the one to finally crack Ezri’s secret. Maybe not. I won’t love you any less either way.

She kicked against the hardened glamour holding her in place. It gave under the pressure, but didn’t break. Chip inhaled with brand-new lungs, and found no air waiting for her. She was beginning to suffocate.

She kicked again, more fervently this time. She rocked slightly to the side, but still the egg held her. I’m not going to die in here! Not after waiting so long! She kicked again, just as she was rocking back the furthest in the other direction. She rocked forward again, further than the last time. The world wobbled as it neared the end of its period, then came back.

Chip kicked with the last of her strength, and this time it was enough. She rolled forward through the air, smashing into the ground a second later. The fall wasn’t very far—only a few feet, really. Even so, the impact was enough to crush the egg under the pressure, spilling her out onto the cold stone ground.

She lay on her back for a long time, hacking and coughing and, well, crying like a baby.

For the longest time, nopony came. That was fine with her—it was warm here, there was moisture all around her, and it was dark. Those three factors combined for a very comfortable environment indeed for a changeling. She was no pony foal, helpless and weak. Chip was something more, something different.

Make it count.

* * *

Newborn changelings were even more independent than young ponies, who could already walk within an hour and run within their first week. Queens were no exception—if anything, Chip was even better-formed upon her birth than a drone.

Like any of her rebirths, Chip’s personality had survived far better than her memories. More distant rebirths and their memories were more like dreams, boiling away in the presence of the morning sun. Memories of her most recent life were clearer, in particular the moments before her “death”.

Chip stood on a rough stone floor, soft hooves struggling a little to find purchase on a layer of straw piled onto the ground. Her nose was assaulted with a horrible barrage of scents—rot, mold, moisture, blood… like the worst hives she’d seen while touring with Riley. Riley’s nurseries had always been clean, clinical, safe.

This wasn’t that. Chip stood up to her knees in the bits and pieces of old eggs, many of which were covered in a thin layer of mold. She recoiled involuntarily, staggering away. Stone walls rose above her, so high she could hardly see the roof. The only light came from ahead, through a set of heavy steel bars.

Chip couldn’t see anything clearly yet, her eyes still clouded, her wings years from growing in, teeth not formed. She was almost completely helpless.

At least she wasn’t alone. She could feel them more than see them, dozens of figures crawling or cowering in the corners of the room. Drones. They weren’t her drones—those parts of her weren’t developed enough yet. Even so, she could sense their confusion, their loneliness, their despair.

Time passed, Chip found herself somewhere clean in the corner of the room, trying to make herself as small as possible. She was cold, lonely, missing a mother she knew she would never have. But even the worst queens Chip had ever met didn’t treat their newborn brood this badly. What was the point of locking up newborns? As time went by, as her eyes began to clear and her body stopped hurting, Chip saw the result of this treatment—the ground wasn’t just covered with eggshells, but corpses as well. There weren’t any eggs left, only other drones… at least half of them were dead.

Even freshly born, the drones could tell there was something different about her. As time wore on, more and more of them drifted across the tiny prison, clustering around her, each pitiful form desperate for her attention. Chip didn’t have much to give—she didn’t have much more glamour than they did. Once it ran out…

Help they thought to her, begging for her to take control. It wasn’t a word exactly, so much as a primitive, desperate need. Even Riley in her enlightened hive had not forced drones to grow up alone. Instinct demanded the hive, the mind that was many bodies and one. She had experienced it over and over, even if she’d been born intelligent each time. There was something comforting about knowing that she was never alone. If Chip was overwhelmed, frightened, or confused, she’d always been able to fall back on the knowledge of the hive, and ultimately of the queen herself.

Never again. I have to be their strength now.

Yet as the drones clamored for her orders, her control, clamored for her to take their suffering away in impressions that weren’t words, Chip was forced to deny them each and every time. She couldn’t control drones, not yet. She could only express her sympathy, her love, a promise that somehow, they’d find a way out.

She tried to reach beyond their little room, searching for other changelings. Another queen to explain why Riley’s ancient young had been so mistreated. Maybe they’d been forgotten, maybe she could call for help. Maybe there was a drone somewhere who would listen. Chip tried to reach further, but ultimately failed. A few hours were not long enough for a development that might take years.

Metal ground in front of her, the floor shaking as the door was swung open. Several ponies stood there, wearing thick metal armor. They shouted, but their words didn’t register with her. Chip didn’t understand their language.

She considered calling out to them, wondering if maybe these were the ponies that had come to help. Then they stomped into the room, trampling the fallen and prodding at the living with their spears. They want us out, she realized, and immediately all the drones began to follow. Chip wasn’t controlling them—but she didn’t need to. They would imitate a queen if they saw one.

There were four of them in all—earth ponies in heavy metal chain armor. Their legs had sturdy guards they used to prod and kick. Chip was soon at the center of a dense crowd of drones, perhaps two dozen in all. All with the same faint green frills, the last suggestions of long-dead Riley.

They moved down the hall to a room with a tile floor, a large drain, and attendants wielding buckets and soap. Again their escorts shouted, before shoving one of the drones towards the cleaners. The child kicked and struggled, snapping at the guard. The earth pony wasn’t impressed. He kicked, snapping thin chitin and sending the drone flying through the air to land in a limp heap on the ground.

Chip winced—she couldn’t feel the pain of a drone not in her swarm, but she could imagine it. The poor drone squealed in agony, bleeding green ichor from the wound. She died in twitching misery before their eyes.

She couldn’t understand what the guards said next, but they didn’t seem to be talking to them. We’re not prisoners. This isn’t an accident. We’re… animals.

Stop fighting, she thought, begged to the lonely drones. Most of them obeyed. They didn’t resist as they were herded individually up into the room, where the assembled attendants rinsed them down with ice-cold water and sent them dripping into the room beyond. Chip cooperated without objection, staying ahead of the prodding hooves or the kicks they might give her for disobedience. Their unicorn attendants scrubbed her raw, but she could guess what they wanted and always turned over cooperatively to make it easier for them.

Nopony seemed to notice she wasn’t a drone—didn’t notice how different her eyes were, or that unlike all the drones, she didn’t have wings.

Compared to the chill of the washroom and the harshness of the soap was a room of sweltering heat, where a long iron poker rested in the heat of a forge. Oh God.

Chip soon understood why the drones who came in here sent such pain into the room behind them. A single unicorn and a single guard stood within, forcing them through one at a time. With Chip’s involvement, the guards didn’t have much to do. At her direction, the drones had stopped struggling. At least no more of them were dead.

Chip whimpered and cowered as her turn came, and she walked up to the unicorn waiting by the forge. He looked almost pained as he levitated the white-hot metal from within the fire, and brought it against her flank.

She was on fire. Chip collapsed, one leg twitching, green blood oozing from within her outer shell. She wanted to curl up right there, unmoving, crying herself insensate… but she didn’t. The pain faded into a dull ache, and Chip dismissed it, rising again. She wouldn’t risk a kick and the likely death that would represent. I must survive.

The survivors cowered together in another tiny room, waiting for their fellows to join them. Chip felt their pain anew, their desperation and absolute despair. If they could form words, they would probably be asking why she’d let this happen to them. Why had she abandoned them? Why did she want them to suffer?

I don’t! she tried to tell them. I don’t want this! I’m in as much pain as you! But we have to work together if we want to escape.

They didn’t escape that day. When they’d all been washed and branded, the handlers led them to a long, dark room, with only tiny barred windows near the ceiling for light. There was straw on the ground, and a pair of troughs in the center. One had icy cold water trickling through from parts unknown, the other slightly rotten meat.

The doors slammed closed behind them, locking. There were no older drones here, no ponies, nothing but a straw floor and plain rock walls.

At least they had food. Changelings could eat almost anything, though adults almost never did. The only nutrition they really needed was love. There was another way, one only the worst of the queens had ever learned. The meat of sapient creatures could be eaten, and in that way a changeling could consume the most fundamental love shared by nearly all beings: the love of life itself.

It didn’t really matter that the meat was half-rotten. A growing drone needed mass with which to build a growing body, but that was secondary. It was the love they really needed.

The drones were less discerning. Many of them had woken before her, and were desperately hungry. Chip waited in the back, waited until hunger compelled her to make her way forward as well. It’s eat now, or die.

She ate, even though she could see the bits of colored fur and hooves poking out from the bottom of the trough. Ate even as her stomach turned in absolute revulsion at what she tasted. When she’d had her fill, she crawled her way to a dark corner to cry.

Make the best swarm you can, Chip. Be the queen you always expected me to be.

I want to Riley, she sobbed into the quiet and the dark. I just don’t know how.

Work Crew

A year passed.

Rarely if ever did they ever see other ponies. Only once a month were they let out, walking around dark stone rooms while ponies replaced the straw. They were offered no clothing, no blankets, nothing but loneliness and the vague cycle of day and night visible through their windows.

Drones grew up much faster than queens did, and very soon every other drone dwarfed Chip. This wasn’t to say that they beat her, that she had to struggle for food or anything. The drones understood their place in a swarm that wasn’t a swarm. She watched their tiny hive-mind form, but was unable to take it for herself yet. She could only listen, offer what reassurance she could, promise that one day she would be grown and they could escape.

It wasn’t easy to pass her time. Riley’s swarm worked by giving every drone so much love she became a person in her own right. If that had happened, she could’ve had company, taught them language, made friends. Friends could provide each other love, negating the need for their terrible food.

What kind of place feeds their dead to a crop of changeling drones grown in the dark?

Instead, Chip passed the time trying to interact with the drones as best she could, staying moving in the tiny room that was her kingdom. Chip organized them, using all their straw bedding near the drain as a waste disposal area so they didn’t have to live in their own filth (as much), and using extra water from the fountain to wash. Chip didn’t have the glamor to help these drones grow up into people, but at the very least they could grow up strong and not sickly.

When she wasn’t organizing her drones or plotting an escape, Chip spent her time by the door, listening to every word ever spoken. Learning language wasn’t easy, but she was a newborn, her brain soft and pliable to new information. She listened to the guards with their primitive weapons, listened to the mage unicorn staff, listened to the covert romances in the middle of the night. As her magic developed, she started listening to their emotions too, combining words she overheard with the emotional context behind them.

After their first year in the dark, they were each fitted with work harnesses and moved to an aboveground stable, nearly the same size as the stone one they’d grown up in. At least this one was set up outside, where she could get a good look at where she was and a better idea at what was going on.

The stable was set outside some sort of construction yard, in a city that should’ve been Alexandria. It should’ve been, because the spire of the university made from glittering crystal was a distinct feature on the skyline. Nothing else looked as it should—buildings looked primitive and small, the streets were too shallow and paved over with cobblestone. The city’s high walls were mostly destroyed.

Near them was a quarry, and every day blocks of stone had to be hauled up to where the wall should’ve been. Every day a dozen of them would be chosen, used for the same work that two earth ponies could’ve done. Drones were, after all, smaller than true ponies, and weaker too.

Chip wouldn’t have survived the work, if she ever had to do it. Fortunately for her, one changeling appeared to be much like another to the workmaster. Every morning he would choose the drones closest to the front of the stable, hook them up, and they would go to work. She could always hide near the back, sheltered by the bulk of the drones as they protected their nascent queen.

She could easily imagine what would’ve happened without her. Often the drones returned worked to exhaustion, bearing the injuries of their difficult day. Instead of leaving them to their fate, Chip managed resources carefully, controlling exactly how much each drone ate and which went out for each duty. The workmaster was almost always drunk and never cared to open the stable door for more than himself. He never noticed the way the injured were triaged and the weakest given space to eat more and regain their strength.

She still lost three drones that year, all killed during their work duties. None of it was ever explained to them, or justified in any way. Why bother justifying the death of an animal who couldn’t work? Above all they stayed obedient, working as much as they could, and so she didn’t lose any to beatings or discipline.

When the year was over, Chip found she had a nearly complete understanding of the language of these ponies. She’d grown, though not nearly like the drones. They were fully mature now, about a tenth of the way into their lifespans. She was… well, still a very small child. Maybe five or six, as far as ponies went. Like all changelings who had been born more than once, her mental faculties were always intact from the first. Her body… still had some catching up to do.

She realized something was different the day they weren’t called out to work. Like all of her kind, Chip didn’t sleep much, and she was always awake when the time came for some of her drones to be called out to work, repairing yet another section of the broken wall.

A dozen guards stood outside, surrounding another group of changeling drones. They looked smaller, younger than her own crew, lacking any scars. There were fewer of them too, and no sign of any males or intelligent drones. Just a group of dirty, downtrodden animals, about twenty in number.

“Your next year’s crew,” said a bored-looking pony, the only one holding a clipboard instead of a weapon to keep the drones in line. Not that the guards had very much to do—this lot was even more crushed than her own. “For the sake of the accounts, we need to know how many survived the previous year. You will receive enough new strength to return to a full compliment only.”

“Well, uh…” Their workmaster was a fat, drunk, slothenly earth pony named Chives, at least she thought so. Even as her grasp of mind-magic instinctively grew, and she saw more and more of the minds of those she overheard, she still couldn’t be certain of the meaning of words. She’d learned only by listening and observation, and only had a year of data to work with. “Time’ll be right pleased with me, I think.” He spun around, pointing towards their stable. “I got me twenty-two of my twenty-five. Strongest, healthiest bunch’a workers you ever saw, too.”

The unicorn holding the clipboard was far cleaner and less drunk in his appearance, and he sighed visibly, shaking his head. “That’s impossible, Chives. Previous record-holder was Longbrick, back in ’09, with half. Such a bold-faced lie isn’t going to get you the bonus for keeping your lord’s property.”

“See ‘afore yourself!” hiccupped Chives, gesturing more vigorously.

“Wait here.” The unicorn began walking forward, past the drunk Chives, leaving his guards behind.

Hide me. Chip dropped down off the water-barrel where she’d been crouching, scampering back into the crowd of her resting drones. None of them were asleep, not when they expected Chives to arrive for the day’s work detail. She slipped back into their midst, resting so that only her front would be visible, as though poking out from within the group of the other weakest, most injured of her drones.

A few seconds later, a key rattled in its lock, and the rusty gate swung open. The inspector entered, staring around at the interior in wonder. “Idyia’s bones, he was telling the truth,” he muttered, poking a few of them with magic. The drones snapped to a standing position, ready to receive a harness that wouldn’t come. “Not dead.”

He left, slamming the door closed, his tone disbelieving. “This is… this changes everything, Chives. How in Aethling’s name did you do it?”

“I’m just… I got a touch for ‘em, alright? I know not to spare the lash.”

“Roadapples.” The officer said something else, something too quiet for Chip to hear. She crept back in the gloom, close enough to hear. She couldn’t share her drone’s senses yet. No two-year-old queen had a true swarm.

By the time she made it back, creeping up onto the water-barrel to spy out the open window, she saw the officer handing over a tall stack of notes to Chives.

Despite his apparent intoxication, Chives didn’t drop them. He turned them over in his hooves, face falling when he finally counted. “Where’s the other five hundred? This is… an’ only four hundred marks… I’d earn a hundred for each’en past the ten mark. I knowa rules.”

“We’ll hold the rest in reserve until next year, Chives,” said the officer, gesturing with his hoof. The guards began shoving three of the sorry lot of drones towards the closed gate. “You’re going to be observed, Chives. Watched closely this coming year. We’re going to see exactly what you do. If you’re lying…” The pony made a threatening gesture. “But if you’re not, well… quit the cider while you’re at it, and I’ll get you a promotion. How’s supply officer sound? Second lieutenant Chives, eh? That, and the rest of your bounty from this year.”

“I’ll do it,” the earth pony insisted, no longer sounding so slurred. The promise of wealth seemed to have brought the world into focus for him. Chip was used to the feel of his mind, sluggish and drowning in sorrow. Yet now, something new. Hope? “I won’t lose a single one, Arinna as my witness. The king himself will be praising my name next year. An’ I want what you said about the rest of this year’s bounty in writing, yeah?”

“You can’t read,” the officer scoffed, as the guards opened the stable doors again, tossing the drones in. They didn’t so much as look inside themselves, just slam the door closed and lock it once more.

“I got a girl who can!” Chives argued. “Writing, like you said. Put the, uh… lieutenant bit in there too. And mark it. Sign it real good, Captain Accounts. Real good.”

“Fine.” Accounts rolled his eyes. “I’ll put it in old-tongue and get it notarized, just for you. You’ll have your paper this time tomorrow. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are other details to refresh.” He turned, leading the guards and their chattel away. The captive drones stared longingly back at the shut doors, sensing something within they’d never known, knowing they wouldn’t get it.

Chip wanted to help them, the same way she wanted to help every captive changeling she saw. But what could she do? Her own had barely survived as it was.

She made her way back to her sleeping spot at the back of the room, moving slowly enough that she hoped she wouldn’t be heard. Maybe they wouldn’t have to work today.

The stable doors banged open. Chives made his way in, kicking the newly-arrived drones out of the way. “Worthless beasts!” he scoffed, stumbling through their ranks.

Chip froze where she stood, only halfway down the aisle. Shit. Shit shit shit. At once her drones moved, rushing forward, and standing in tall lines near the entrance, as though assembling for work detail.

For once, their handler wasn’t confused. His mind no longer seemed the least bit intoxicated, as though he’d drawn on his earth pony magic to clear it. But Chives had never shown even a little talent before. How is he doing magic now?

“How the fuck am I supposed to do the impossible again?” Chives roared, shoving more of her drones out of the way. She could feel their anger rising, the desire to attack and kill Chives very strong. It took all her mental persuasion to keep them from it.

No, she pressured. Not yet. We can use this.

He was still moving towards her. Reluctantly, she instructed the drones to move out of the way. She couldn’t make him un-see what he’d seen.

Chip turned around, staring up at the bloated, sweating earth pony baring down on her. She didn’t let herself feel fear—didn’t let her show defiance, either. She kept her expression flat, looking up at him as ambivalently as any farm-animal ought to look.

Chives stopped in his tracks, shocked at the sudden, synchronized movement from her drones. His eyes found her, and she sensed sudden anger from him. “Runt!” he shouted, hooves cracking the stone floor as he stomped towards her. “How are you still alive, little one? Hiding in the back like a coward?” He swung at her with a hoof, hard enough to crack chitin and ruin one of her limbs.

Unlike her changelings, Chip dodged out of the way. She might be young, might be small, might be feeble and half-starved, but she was also a queen. Queens could move with the speed of air, when they wanted to. Faster even than a pegasus, if they had the glamor to burn. Chip had very little glamor to her name, but she had enough for that.

Instead of hitting her, the strike smashed into the ground, sending up chunks of rock. “I’ll kill you!” Chives roared. “More food for the others! A runt like you obviously isn’t pulling its own weight!”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Chip answered, in a rough squeak of a voice sore from disuse.

Instead of charging at her, Chives froze in place, shock mingling with fear. “Y-you… beasts… talk…”

“The others can’t.” Chip met his eyes, speaking calmly and clearly. Her voice didn’t yet possess the strange reverberation queens and older changelings possessed. Didn’t have the right organs for it yet, she suspected. “I can. And I meant it. If you kill me, you’ll break your promise. You said you’d keep all of us alive in exchange for that promotion. If even one of us dies, Accounts will use it as an excuse not to give you the promotion you deserve.”

“H-how…” He took a deep breath, glancing once over his shoulder towards the door.

Chip followed his glance, and whispered a silent order to her drones. Clog the exit. Everyone, get in his way. Everyone stand on that side, but don’t leave. We aren’t escaping. Not yet. Not with chains on their hooves, not with city walls rising around them and guards so close. Chip would not try something like that until she was sure they would succeed.

The move had the desired effect. Anger was replaced completely with fear. Fear of her in particular, as Chives took in the wall of drones who seemed suddenly less pliant than they’d been minutes before.

Well, except for the three new ones. Those hadn’t integrated yet, and cowered in the corners without even trying to join with the others. They were their own unit, still longing for the contact of the rest of their group.

“I’ve heard every word you ever spoke around me, Chives.” Would her words be less frightening as the tiny squeak of a five-year-old child? She had to proceed like they wouldn’t. “I know you’re drowning in gambling debt. I know you have a child somewhere in the city you’re afraid is going to be sold, as soon as the collectors come for you. I know five hundred marks isn’t half of what you owe.

“And let me tell you something else.” She stalked forward towards him, horn glowing faintly green. It was the only magic she could manage yet, but it probably looked imposing. As imposing as she could, anyway. “You aren’t the reason these drones survived this last year, and you know it. Most years, you’ve been penalized for saving so few of us.” She didn’t actually know that, but it sounded like it might be true. Another surge of fear from Chives confirmed it.

“You can’t know that,” he argued, though his voice was very quiet now. Terrified. “All the king’s beasts come from the same cave, you’re all grown together. I can see the brand on your flank, right there. You weren’t even alive for my previous years.”

“No,” she agreed. “I wasn’t. But I know you, Chives. And I want you to know something else, most important of all—you’re doomed without me.” She gestured with one hoof, and as she did all the drones moved to the walls. The gesture hadn’t been the command, that had been mental—the gesture was just so Chives would see. “I kept them alive. I kept them working hard, kept them from getting sick, kept them clean. You would’ve murdered just as many of my sisters this year as before if it wasn’t for me.”

Chives cowered on the ground, covering his face with one hoof. Even prone she was scarcely taller than he was. He was a massive stallion, and not just because he was so portly. Her drones sensed his fear, and for a second it took all her focus to keep them from attacking him. Showing such weakness to a predator was a very bad idea, in particular a group of predators that had been fed meat for all their lives.

“Just tell me what you want, demon! Please, don’t hurt me!”

“I want to help you,” she said, moving one of his legs away. “Our interests can coincide. We can help each other.”

“How?” he demanded, a little anger finding its way back into his tone. “You want me to sell you to a brothel instead? It’s not much better there, honest! I’ve seen the way they treat you… terrible rough stuff they do at some of those places… work crew is better. At least half of you survive each year in most crews… brothels never have any survivors. Ponies…” He shook his head, and there was genuine disgust on his face. “Enjoy making you suffer.”

Chives’s disgust was probably the only thing that saved his life. Chip felt rage swell in her chest, rage that boiled over to the drones, who crowded in close, preparing to attack and then devour the captive prey.

Then she steadied herself, cleared her mind, and dismissed her anger. Chives isn’t responsible for that. I can’t fight for everypony, not right now. “No, not a transfer.” She sat down on her haunches, just out of reach. She was ready to spring out of the way at a moment’s notice, if she needed to. If he tries to hurt me, we’ll have to kill him. Take our chances at any escape. If Chives walked away from this wanting her dead, killing him would be her only chance. If they came back with a dozen armored guards… they were all dead.

“No, nothing like that. I want to help you get out of everything, Chives. I want to help you keep all of us alive for the next year. You could pay off all your debts with a second lieutenant’s salary, I suspect.”

He nodded, eyes widening in even greater surprise. “You want to help me? Help the one who’s… b-beat you? Who has gotten so many of you killed? Why?”

“Because our interests align. I want these drones to survive. You want them to survive too, so you can get your promotion and the bonus for two years in a row. There’s just one thing…” She reached forward suddenly, snatching the crumpled marks from the open pocket of his wrinkled coat, and setting them on the ground in front of her.

“Part of helping you means helping you manage your funds.”

“Y-you can’t.” A faint flicker of anger boiled in his chest, and he clearly debated whether he would attack her for the money.

Before he could resolve the debate, she gestured for more drones to come over. “If you try, we’ll rip it to pieces.”

“Dammit!” Chives shouted, spitting at her. “That money’s worth more than you are, beast!”

“Yes,” Chip agreed. “And that’s why you aren’t going to spend it on booze.”

He slumped back onto the ground, deflating a little.

“Do you have any other money on you now?”

He nodded reluctantly. “Thirteen clips.”

“Right. And how much would it cost for, say… a cloak? About my size?”

“What?”

“A cloak,” she repeated. “I won’t need it once I…” get enough glamour to change shape, she almost said but thought better of it. On the edge of starvation as she was, she knew she didn’t have the strength. Even if she knew the magic was there, felt it right within reach… if she used it, she might start starving right there.

“Well, I’ll need it to start with. You have a child? I can pretend to be that child, but only if people can’t see me.”

“That’s…”

“Brilliant, I know.” She stalked up to him again, baring her tiny sharp teeth. “Listen carefully, Chives. I’m the key to happiness for you. I can get you promoted. I can make your job so easy that you don’t have to swing a whip. But in exchange…” She gestured back at the pile of money sitting in the straw. “You can’t blow all of that now. We’ll need it. Some of it to pay the interest on your loans, to buy you some more time. Some of it to buy supplies, so no more of my sisters will get worked to death. Anything left over after that can go to provide for your child. What was his name?”

“Her name,” Chives corrected. “It’s Blooming Posy.”

“Blooming Posy,” she repeated. “She’s going to be quite surprised with how much better a father you’ll become, Chives. By working with me, she can inherit whatever property you retire on with your officer’s salary, instead of dying as a slave. Believe me, I know that isn’t the life anyone would want for their daughter.”

Chips and Salsa

Chip’s third year went better than her second. The initial period of fear, when she worried Chives might go to the guards and get them all killed, came and went. He came back with a robe, and together they began the second stage of her plan. Chip wrapped herself up, and followed Chives out of the stable under the cover of night. She became Blooming Posy. At first just in name, sheltered by shyness and the lie of an illness. When she had collected enough glamor, she no longer needed the cloak.

“That’s good!” Chives led the line of chained drones back towards the stables, cracking his whip menacingly in the air. He didn’t actually hit any of them anymore. None of her drones had acquired any new scars in many months. None of them had collapsed from exhaustion, either.

Chip followed along beside Chives, an identical copy of Posy. She was a pegasus, with her same pink coat, slightly plump build and soft purple mane. Ostensibly she was wearing saddlebags with supplies for her father, all the secrets to his success. Extra water for himself and the drones, medicine for when they fell…

Her presence meant a far tighter control was possible. It meant they could move efficiently, without Chives needing to give commands. Her ability to give finer-tuned commands had grown tremendously, though it still required all her concentration. The so-called “parallel-thoughts” that Riley had often described had yet to come to her, meaning she could only direct her drones when she focused on them completely and held absolutely still. Even then, it was a command like a skilled trainer, not taking control of their bodies as real queens did. She was still too small for that.

Accounts had come to watch them pack up for the night, as he watched many nights. He stood by as they reached the stables, making notes of the way Chives gave his commands and the drones obeyed. They lined up in tight order by the door, waiting for their harnesses to be removed.

Accounts seemed to lose interest then, making his way over to her and his expression softening. “I wish any of my sons were as helpful to me as you are to your father, Posy,”

She smiled her sweetest, most innocent smile. Chip had nearly a year of practice with it. “My dad needs more help than you do, Mr. Accounts.”

He laughed, reaching into his pocket and tossing her a flat bronze disk. A chit. She caught it reflexively in her teeth. “Here, Posy. I’m sure he doesn’t pay you. Get yourself a sweet.”

She nodded, repressing a slight shiver at the surge of glamor. Delicious affection dribbled down her throat, filling a belly that was no longer empty. The chit was near worthless and Chip couldn’t even taste sugar, but that didn’t matter. The concern and gratitude that went with the gift were enough to feed every drone she had for a whole day.

Chip spat the coin into her saddlebags. “Thanks, Mr. Accounts!”

“No, thank your father.” He glanced briefly down at the clipboard levitating along beside him. “Arinna only knows how he did it. Do you have any idea how much these beasts cost?”

She shook her head, returning to her innocent mask. “I don’t know, Mr. Accounts.”

“Well…” He smiled slightly. “An awful lot, Posy. Every one I don’t have to replace is extra for me. Extra for me means extra for your family too. You keep encouraging your father… whatever his secret, it’s going to make all of us very wealthy.”

“That sounds great, Mr. Accounts!”

“It sure is.” He reached out, mussing her mane a little before turning and heading away, clipboard following along through the air behind him. She felt another, fainter flow of modest affection from him. Not as much as the gift, but another nice snack.

Chip made sure he was well on his way back to the city before following Chives into the open door of the stables.

The interior was as much changed from the months before as she was. Still deer-corpses in the trough, though her drones relied on that less and less. They wouldn’t eat it at all, except that she wasn’t around anymore to stop them. Besides, we can’t waste the magic. The deer die no matter what we do. Not eating it would only be more suspicious.

The ground on one end of the stables had a fresh grate, running into an irrigation ditch her own drones had dug into a makeshift septic system that had been further divided from the rest of the stables by a tiny wooden barrier. No more straw on the floor, but honest-to-goodness blankets where the drones slept.

As Chip stepped inside, several of them rushed up to greet her, not the least bit confused by the body she wore. She returned each of their affection, sharing a single drop of glamor with each one who approached her. This ritual was the one that would bond them to her, one day. When she was queen enough to have a swarm of her own.

Chives didn’t look afraid when he turned his attention on her. Didn’t look angry, or urgent, or even a little upset. “Are you coming back with me tonight, Posy?” They kept up the ruse even when they thought no one was around to hear. Originally the request had been hers, but after so long, Chives sometimes thought like he couldn’t tell the difference. Every now and then she got doses of fatherly affection, stronger than the drunk mess of a pony he’d been last year.

“Yes,” she responded. “I’ll be expected. She wanted to show me her newest dolls.”

“Come on, then.” He took the heavy iron key in his teeth. “Let’s go.”

Chip waved goodbye to her drones, eyes more alert and bodies healthier than ever they’d been before. Many of them waved back, thinking regret and longing at her, wanting to remain in her presence.

Yet compared to the faint ghosts of emotions she might feel from the most alive of them, there was a feast waiting for her with the real Posy. A feast that she could share with them next morning.

She walked beside her “father” up the streets to New Alexandria. They stopped at a grocer along the way, but only for half a skin of ale and the night’s meal to bring home. The months where it had been a battle to keep Chives in check were gone now. What she had first done through threat of violence, then the tantalizing reward, had finally changed into something else.

Just like Chip herself had changed to look like his daughter, Chives had changed into a different version of himself. Not a lie, exactly... a different truth. He didn’t have to take out his rage on her drones, because his life was no longer hopeless. Without all his coin going into drink and gambling debt, Chives had enough coin to ensure the real Posy was well cared for during the day. Enough to keep the interest paid so that his debts didn’t get any larger and the collectors no longer hassled him.

Chip changed back into herself as they reached Chives’s hovel on the fifth floor of a cramped tenement building. Her black chitin returned, her bright green mane and tail and the wings that were now little stubs on her back.

Posy greeted her father a few seconds later with an explosive hug, a hug that radiated such affection Chip could practically feed on it just being nearby. She didn’t have to though, because a second later Posy hugged her too. “Hey.” She levitated a sugary churro out from her saddlebags, offering it to Posy. “I got this for you.” Accounts’s little gifts always found their way to the one he thought he was giving them to, earning Chip a second surge of glamor in the exchange. Unlike the one she got from Accounts, the magic that washed over her in Posy’s gratitude was targeted at Chip, not somepony else. Every drop was really hers, to drink without guilt and not drain the pony who gave it.

That was the reason the filly had been told the truth about her. That, and the fact that Chip hadn’t had enough magic to pretend to be anything else the night they met.

“Oooh, you brought carrots for dinner?” she asked, munching happily on the churro. Posy hadn’t become a little pudgy from nothing, after all. “Yay! Much better than hay!”

“I promised I wouldn’t do just hay anymore.” The home had only two rooms, a combined living space and the single bedroom. Chip sat out of the way as Chives spent time with his daughter, removing her pad of paper from her satchel and updating the day’s calculations. Even if Chives had transformed, even if he seemed willing to pretend she was a part of their little family while she was around, Chip hadn’t (and likely wouldn’t) get over the memories of her first year. The terror and pain his presence had inflicted on her drones. The terror she had felt that one day he would discover her.

Chip did not mind that she was repairing his life, if only because Posy was her friend and she didn’t want anything bad to happen to the filly.

A few hours of play later and they were both asleep. Chip woke before midnight to find the house was quiet. There was no worry that Chives might sneak out to gamble or drink—he had his nights for both of those things, and always with a budget Chip set for him. He hadn’t tried to get around her in months now.

Chip slunk over to the entryway, then closed her eyes and focused on her transformation. Though she had plenty of glamour and centuries of experience, this young body was still barely developed enough for what she needed, and so the effort took all her concentration. Chip grew rapidly as old as she could make herself, into a willowy pegasus with the sort of sleek body and curves that ponies found most attractive right now. She gave herself a sleek orange mane with red accents, and perfectly preened feathers.

The transformation was so good that her eyes were genuinely too weak to see Chives until he was only a few feet away, staring at her in shock. He’d climbed free of the shared bed, though he looked half asleep as he stared at her.

“W-who…”

“Chip,” she whispered back. Posy was a heavy sleeper, but even so she didn’t want to risk waking her friend. “Obviously.” Her voice wasn’t a childish squeak anymore, but a sultry, musical tone, calculated every bit as much as the body.

“I thought…” Chives yawned. “You could just…”

“Look like your daughter? No.” She smiled slightly, glancing over her shoulder towards the door. “I practiced one or two others.” A total lie. Chip could imitate practically anyone she’d ever seen. But she didn’t want Chives to know that.

“What are you doing like that?”

“Same thing I do every night,” she whispered back. “Well, for the last few months. I’m earning marks.”

“Idyia’s bones…” Chives seemed fully awake now, staring at her. “You can just… you could just have flown away, months and months ago? I don’t keep you chained up anymore, no lock… and you haven’t gone.”

“Of course not,” she hissed, voice more urgent. “Well, I go every night, but I come back before you wake up. You really think that bonus from last year didn’t run out months ago?” She shook her head vigorously. “Now, I really have to go. Don’t bring Posy with you tomorrow. There’s probably an inspection of some kind waiting, so I’ll be locked up in the stables before you get there. Remember the plan.”

She left without giving him a chance to respond, making her way out onto the landing and then onto the balcony. She took off without hesitation, letting the night air catch her and carry her upward.

There was something fantastic about having an adult body again, even if it was only an illusion. The strength and maturity and power in her body was real enough, even if it was just the effect of glamor. Her first few nights in this body had been… well, much worse than they were now.

Chip had found a non-murdery, non-changeling-drone-slave sort of brothel. What she’d done there had been cinnamon rolls and candy canes compared to the glamor she’d fed on during her first year of life. Becoming one of the most desired mares was a trivial task for her. Chip had experienced all kinds of different sex in all kinds of different bodies—acts that would’ve revolted or annoyed her were now all equally enjoyable, so long as the other party was a pony and they were enjoying themselves. With other changelings, Chip had only ever had enough room in her heart for one, and only a rather vanilla kind of sex at that.

It’s a good thing I’m still too young to worry about that.

She didn’t fly towards the seedy districts of Alexandria, as she had walked during her first few adventures. Instead she turned for the tower, and the larger, stone buildings that surrounded it. She aimed towards one in particular, the exact one she visited every Monday.

Chip hadn’t just listened carefully to the sort of mare that was “in demand” at “establishments” that catered to richer and richer clientage. In a few short months, she’d gone from the gutter to… well, something else.

She landed on the upper balcony of one of the city’s largest manor-houses, her hooves soft as she landed. The Time mannor was as impressive as any of the other lordly houses in the city, if not moreso. The family who ruled it had done so since the city was re-founded, so far as Chip could gather.

Beyond the balcony was a lavishly furnished room, complete with a four-poster so large and ancient she sometimes wondered if humans had built it. Chip moved to the closet instead, where a dozen different outfits in her size hung in all sorts of different fabrics and colors.

The only hint at the reality of her purpose here was how revealing the clothing was, made from lacy frills, straps that rode her flank but opened again, bows meant to bind her tail in specific ways.

She chose the least scandalous dress that hung here, an ordinary white sundress with a tear-away strap, and a white bow for her hair. Her way of telling her patron that she wasn’t in the mood tonight. Didn’t mean he couldn’t still do what he wanted, but… she doubted very much Study Time would.

Chip found her patron in the library, as she always did.

Study Time was a spindly unicorn stallion, and the elegant black suit of noble dress in New Alexandria seemed always to hang baggy on his gray body. His eyes, always hidden behind a pair of thick glasses, were bright yellow, intense as he levitated a book in front of him.

Chip found the night’s refreshments already waiting by the door—a fresh skin of wine resting submerged in ice, a pair of glasses, and a plate of exotic cheeses. They smelled… well, as bland as pony food ever was. Somehow, she suspected any one of the items on the plate was worth more than Chives earned in a month.

She carried the plate over to where Study Time slouched against a seat, reading intently from an ancient book. He didn’t seem to hear her as she set the small table before him, pouring drinks for them both. He didn’t look up on his own, didn’t move at all until she brushed against his foreleg with one wing. “Hello, love.”

“Inversion, you’re here.” He looked up, taking her in with a single greedy stare. Chip didn’t mind, even if she had other things on her mind tonight. Lust was an emotion she could harvest, even if the glamor it provided was scarce. “I was worried you wouldn’t come tonight.” He gestured to the seat beside him, and Chip flew in to take the offered place without complaint.

She didn’t resist as Study pulled her in for a brief, passionate exchange. He was far clumsier with Chip than Chip herself had been with Riley, and on some level she noticed that. On another, she reveled in the flow of glamor untainted by blood, and she didn’t care.

She broke away quickly, at least compared to the way they sometimes acted. Of course, with nearly two months of her company at least three times a week, the novelty had worn off for Study. She was still wearing a body tailored to his tastes, still willing to do as much of whatever he wanted at his whim, but that wasn’t the extent of their relationship.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, watching as she lifted the glass towards him. She let him hold her in his lap as they sat together, not pulling that far away. She didn’t really want to be separate, when every moment together with the otherwise shy and frightful scion of the Time house would provide her with more glamor.

“No,” she lied, finding a creative way to pour the glass. He drank, though his expression became less passionate and more skeptical.

“Something is on your mind. I know. Even if you refuse to share much about yourself, Inversion… I know something is bothering you.”

She shook her head, though that too was a lie. “Tell me about your reading. That looks like an old book.”

“It is,” he answered. “Mystic Rune’s On the Fabrication of Thaumic Metamatter. A little dull for a pegasus, probably. I want to—”

She interrupted him. “What do you think about his conjecture that an uncharged electron hull could universally de-energize an arbitrary active spell? Do you think that’s a testable conclusion?”

Study Time did not look the least bit surprised by her response. She felt his attraction for her grow, and cursed herself for playing right into his hooves. There were plenty of other unicorns as smart and educated as Study, members of the other noble houses his own social rank. But at least so far as Chip knew, Study had never managed to have a relationship with that sort last past their initial encounter. He said and did things to his courtesan he’d never even imagine with another mare in his own class.

“I think it’s not just possible, it’s inevitable,” he said, running one hoof through her mane, gently removing the bow she’d put there and letting it tumble down her back. “His figures are sound. It’s just a matter of constructing the hull. That’s an engineering problem, and I’m sure it can be circumvented.”

“It can,” she agreed. “If I remember right, it was… iridium. Something to do with the free electrons. The first experiments used…” She whined, finding the memories refused to come into focus. Too many lives back. “Okay, I don’t remember. But I know they worked.”

“There were no experiments.” Study sounded only mildly indignant. More amused than anything, which he showed by doing something quite indecent with one of her wings. “You’re trying to distract me, Inversion. This will be easier if you just come clean with what’s bothering you.”

She hesitated, though not for very long. “I…” She looked away, wings twitching back into their proper place on her back. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to visit next week. It’s nothing you’ve done, or not done, and I’m not seeing anypony else… but my life is about to become unpredictable.”

“Ah.” Study sat up a little straighter, levitating his cup of wine and taking a few large swallows. “I see why you didn’t want to mention it. You didn’t want to hear my offer again.” He rose to his hooves suddenly, a tall, thin, slightly-awkward looking pony.

Chip didn’t really see any of that, though. First she’d seen his resources, and the glamor she harvested from him. Now, well… maybe a little more than that. She’d never been a terribly good changeling, in that way. A few months pretending to love someone, and eventually she always cared about them for real. It was a good thing males didn’t usually do field assignments.

“I don’t know where you fly away every night, Inversion… but there’s no need. There’s a place for you in this household. Even if… even if your blood is as common as the dirt, which I don’t believe for one second. But even if it was, Adventure herself wasn’t any sort of nobility until the king granted her our family title. There’s nothing that says you couldn’t become a part of that too. The next part.”

Those words hurt to hear every time. At first, because they’d been so awkward, and parts of Chip still clung to her male identity. Now… now the pain came from guilt. No matter how convincing her illusion might be, a changeling queen could not reproduce with a pony. Even if she had been an adult queen, it would’ve been impossible.

Even still, she wanted it. Some desperate part of herself longed for the steady, unlimited source of food. A world away from the work-crew, from the suffering she witnessed other drones endure. She could leave all that behind and just be happy. Live in comfort with this lordling.

Be the kind of queen you always expected me to be.

“I can’t say yes,” she said. “I want it more than you can imagine, Study… but I can’t. For both our sakes, I can’t.”

He grumbled, but there was no anger in him. Only hope crushed into disappointment. “I’ll keep offering, Inversion. One of these days you’ll say yes. So… you won’t be here next week?”

“I might not,” she agreed. “I don’t know for sure. There’s, uh… a decision point tomorrow, a big one. Even if it goes well, I might be gone a week or two. If it doesn’t… I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

“Do you need money? A favor? Anything at all I could do?”

She hesitated. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated a second to take his money. But now… “No,” she admitted. “I already have enough money. It just comes down to how clever I am.”

He smiled. “Should be easy then.”

“Well… you’d think.” She looked down at the couch. “I’m just not sure I’m ready. Could we talk about something else? I’d rather not think about it.”

Study Time gave her something else to think about.

Author's Note

In case anypony can't tell this little subplot sorta ran away with me. I couldn't stick to one scene with this character, much as I should have for the terms of this story. At this point I've practically written her a novella. At least it's done now. Well, written. It isn't posted yet. There are three more chip sections before I'm done with her section. Initially I thought that if I went crazy she would get as much as Oracle. That... hasn't proved to be the case >.>

Queen for a Day

Chip didn’t stay until dawn, as she sometimes did. This was a shame, since Study Time’s conversations afterwards were always more interesting than getting a little to eat. Unfortunately she had somewhere to be, and had to fly away.

“I’ll be back when I can,” she whispered, slipping out into the night. She flew quietly, as quiet as a bat though she lacked any of their magic. Even a changeling queen couldn’t imitate the unique racial magic of the different pony tribes.

She passed over the city’s mostly-repaired wall, angling towards the stables that contained her changelings. She was early enough that none of the ponies of interest had arrived—not Accounts with his soldiers, not Chives. She waited for a moment the guards on the wall weren’t watching, then touched down lightly on the roof. With the help of the drones within she lifted the loose thatch out of the way, then squirmed inside.

Again came happy greetings, as she shared with her drones some of the glamor she had gathered. It spoke for the health of her growing swarm that the trough of meat was still mostly full. She didn’t share nearly as much as she often did, even as she let her disguise fade away, her wings and body shrinking back to an undeveloped child. Still a changeling, so she’d grown far faster than a regular pony. She looked about ten in pony terms, not quite ready for the cutie mark she’d never earn.

Still dwarfed by the other drones, still a runt. The physical distinctions between them were now practically impossible to miss. A green mane and tail instead of frills, eyes not unlike ponies, instead of the multifaceted blue that they so often dismissed. A pair of scissors soon did away with as much of the growth of her mane and tail as she could, trimming it away until she looked even more sickly and strange. Better sickly than a queen.

The kingdom of Yileron had discovered Riley’s many-thousands of eggs and turned them into slaves, yet they seemed remarkably ignorant of the truth of what they were dealing with. Were it not so, Chip would’ve been long dead.

Chives would pass his inspection today, and earn his promotion. Would she? She had her backup plan, tucked up and tied just under her tail where even most inspections wouldn’t find it. Chives knew about that, but he didn’t know about her own backup—didn’t know that the chains her drones wore had been modified to break away with only modest effort. Didn’t know she’d been teaching them to use them as heavy steel flails.

She still wasn’t a proper queen, she couldn’t use them all together to fight in perfect unison as though she had one gigantic body. If she could’ve, she already would’ve escaped. As it was, she was far from confident in their ability to win against trained soldiers. It was only a last resort.

As they had the year before, the soldiers came around dawn. They arrived at about the same time as Chives himself, who no longer spent most of his nights asleep in a pool of his own drool outside the building.

“Good morning to you, Chives,” Accounts said, waving politely. As before, Chip watched from one of the windows. She could’ve hovered there with her gossamer wings, except that flying was forbidden for them and would certainly be overheard.

Account had twice as many soldiers as last year, and not a changeling in sight. No real surprise there. He knew yesterday all of us were still alive.

“I’m ready for your inspection,” Chives said, holding up the scroll Accounts had given him the year before. Well, a copy of it. At Chip’s own suggestion, the original was currently held by one of Chives’s religious leaders, who had also been present when it was signed. “You’ll find my entire work crew inside, just like they were yesterday.”

“I’m sure we will,” Accounts said.

Why the hell does he feel so smug? Chip could sense it from him, sense the anticipation from these soldiers. They expect a fight. God, what am I missing?

Chives didn’t notice. He made his way to the door, unlocked it with the heavy key, then pushed it open. He cracked his whip loudly in the air, as he always did when they had an audience. “Line up!” he shouted. “Inspection!”

To an outside observer, it might have looked like the drones snapped to almost military attention. In reality, there was just a little delay. Long enough for Chip to hear the command, then repeat it. The drones didn’t fear Chives anymore, didn’t care what he did. Only she kept them obedient.

As they made their way out, Chives snapped the chain into place around their hooves, instead of the usual work-harness. Chives seemed relieved to see her as her turn came in line, almost as though he’d been afraid she really had run off.

Thank God you didn’t do anything stupid, Chives, Chip thought. If you’d gone and told Accounts about me… she didn’t know what would happen. Nothing good, for any of them.

“A second year,” Accounts said, when they’d all been chained up and marched about twenty feet outside the stable. At her will, the drones held as still as a military formation at rest. “Even better than your first. Perfect. It boggles the mind.”

“I have a method,” Chives said, no trace of a slur in his speech. “You’ve seen it when you visit.”

“Yes, indeed,” Accounts agreed. He gestured, and two of his soldiers moved forward with a large crate. They set it down in front of her drones, opening it to reveal a set of livestock measuring equipment. “A bold move on your part, investing some of your own salary to pay for better food and improvements to the stable. The disciplinary system you use is quite unconventional as well, but I would be the last to question your success.”

“My promotion,” Chives said. “You promised.”

“A small matter first.” Accounts continued past him, ignoring the scroll Chives offered. He walked to the side of his measuring machine, which was just a primitive mechanical scale. “Measurements, for the crown’s official records. We’re going to weigh and record each one of your crew here. We need to measure a difference over the other crews. Bring your key, Chives. We’ll measure them one at a time.”

The effort took some time. Guards crowded around them, watching the chained drones with an expression of vague hostility. Accounts brought them each up onto the scale one at a time, and nothing much changed until Chip herself was led up.

“Now this,” Accounts said, glaring down at her with obvious disapproval and gesturing at the number on the scale. She weighed less than half as much as any given drone. “How is this runt even still alive?” He walked around her, poking at her with a wooden stick he had used to measure the strength of various muscles. “Come to think of it… I’m not certain I’ve ever seen this one in any of your work crews. Can you explain this, Chives?”

“Y-yes, of course.” He had stood by more or less ambivalently as each of the drones were weighed and measured, knowing there was nothing to learn but how impressively healthy each one was. For her they had practiced, she’d coached and roleplayed with him, getting Chives to memorize exactly what to say. Though his voice shook, he began repeating his lines. “Part of my work strategy has b-been letting them choose their own work order.”

“Letting them choose?” Accounts sounded skeptical. “They’re animals, Chives. They can’t choose anything.”

“Not like a pony, no,” Chives repeated. They were still on script. “But some are more willing to work on certain days than others. You’ve seen in the mornings, I call, ten line up, and I take them out to work. This one never lines up. I don’t know why, but she seems to…” Again, he hesitated. Looking at her for approval.

Damnit Chives, could you be any more obvious? He couldn’t hear the thought of course, and she didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at anything but the ground, for fear that even Accounts would notice the emotions in her eyes.

“I don’t know her role, but I know she makes the others calm and obedient just by being around. Whenever I take her away, the others grow agitated and less productive.”

“Hmmm.” Account looked her over one more time, forcing her head up with his wooden stick. Chip kept her face as impassive as she could, looking away and down as she expected a submissive animal to act. “Worthy of further study, for certain. There are… a number of fanciful stories about these beasts. I wonder if there might’ve been a grain of truth in some of them after all. This one does seem distinct.” He pointed back at the stables. “Let’s see part of it right now. Send her back inside. I want to see how they act.”

“It won’t be good.” Chives moved to obey, raising his whip and cracking it in Chip’s general direction. “Inside!”

She hurried to obey, keeping her head down as the whip cracked again. Far above her head, nowhere close to hitting her.

Move around a little. Don’t fight, but show them how upset you are. Even before she was back in the stables, the drones started to fidget in place, making pained squeaking and calling noises to one another. Chives didn’t bother following her all the way, didn’t even shut the door.

“See?” he asked. “I don’t know what it is, but I, uh… let them sort it out. You can see it works.”

They went on with their measurements, and Accounts had only good things to say about the rest of the drones. All healthy, no infections, strong muscles. “Just… how much of your pay goes into feeding these?” he asked, when they were all back in line and assembled. Well, all but her.

“Ten clips a week,” Chives said. “Mostly on vegetables. Round out their diet.” A lie, but they’d paid a merchant to say he had, if asked. Chives shifted uneasily on his hooves. The sun was up now, the drones uncomfortable at the change in their routine.

It’s okay, she promised. We don’t work today. Don’t freak out.

“That’s inspection enough, Captain. I’m ready for my bonus now. My promotion. Two years with the same crew. I’m ready to… teach my methods to the other teams. Or whatever.”

“Yes, indeed. I’m sure you would be,” Accounts said, removing another scroll from his back pocket. “There’s just one problem, Chives. You did something you shouldn’t. You took in an outcast.”

“W-what?” Chives stumbled back, towards the still-open stables. “I don’t know… I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m not an outcast! You can ask Generous Offering—I’ve never missed a feast day, never missed a donation, nothing! No outcast has ever set hoof in my home!”

What was he talking about? Chip hopped down from the water barrel, creeping back towards the entrance. If she had to act, she would be ready. Outcast was a word she knew—it meant a pony like her, who’d come from before the Event. They were ritually unclean in the primitive religion the kingdom practiced. Chip hadn’t really bothered to learn more than that. She was already breaking a dozen laws, so why concern herself with that?

“Not you. Last month there was a series of arrests in the Underground. Smugglers, brothels, that sort of thing. I know you can’t read… but this is a ledger from a smuggler. Specialized in foals. There’s an entry here for one Nancy Patterson. Living name, Blooming Posy. And look, here’s your name as the assisting party.”

Chip couldn’t see what they were doing, couldn’t use the eyes of her drones. I’m still not a real queen. Not yet. She had made it to the doorway, crouching just beside it, just out of sight. Ready.

“Arrest this criminal,” he ordered. “The outcast you sheltered has been bringing curses down on our city, Chives. A pity only prison awaits you. I would love to watch you banished to the Nameless City with her.”

“Damn you!” Chives spat, his voice boiling with anger. “Chip told you, didn’t she? She wanted me out of the way… fucking monster, how could you?”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Accounts said, mildly amused. “Why are you yelling at the stable? There’s no help waiting for you there.”

Remember the damn plan, Chives!

“Before you take me away, Accounts… you need to see the stables. There’s something in there you missed.”

Chip had half a mind to play dumb—to give this earth pony a tiny bit of the justice he deserved for all the mistreatment he’d showered down on her kind. Maybe if she hadn’t known about his daughter, she could’ve done that. She didn’t know what a Nameless City was, didn’t know what banishment there entailed, but it didn’t matter.

Chip’s plan required Chives to be promoted into Accounts’s position, so that she might take over all the enslaved drones. The chances of getting another workmaster as pliant were not good.

“No, let him go. We have a moment. Maybe Chives intends to share the real secret of his success, now that he realizes he’s been caught at last. I’ll allow it. The rest of you, wait here. Make sure the beasts don’t run off.”

Chip couldn’t see either of them, but she could sense their feelings. Chives, desperate and betrayed but still clinging to hope that somehow Chip would find a way out. Account, on the other hand, felt only greed and smug satisfaction.

Chives came through the door first, a few feet away. He didn’t attack her, though his betrayal and anger were very close to it. Even without knowing his exact thoughts Chip could be confident he thought she was responsible for this. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I’ve been working—”

She didn’t get to finish, because at that moment Accounts stepped through, looking around expectantly. He almost didn’t seem to see her, searching the stables. “Well, Chives? Make this quick. I have an appointment with a filly in a few minutes, one you’re familiar with. I wouldn’t want to be late.”

Chip hesitated for just a second, considering the very betrayal Chives suspected. She considered what her future might be if she betrayed him. He would certainly tell everyone who would listen about her. Would any of them believe it? If she did act to try and save him and Posy now, she might still fail, and be in just as much danger.

Both of these thoughts crossed her mind at once, resolving into an inevitability. No matter how much she loathed him, no matter how justified she thought this prison would be… she couldn’t let it happen. So she reached back, removing the black envelope from where it was hidden and holding up a thick stack of paper in her green magic.

“I am holding five thousand marks,” she said, her voice a quiet whisper. “Spare Chives and Posy… forget about what you’ve seen, and you can have them.” She flipped through the pages so he could see, displaying the official seal that marked legitimate currency, the wear and tear on the bills.”

Accounts’s smugness melted into shock. He stared down at her, mouth hanging open, before reaching for them with magic of his own.

Chip brushed it aside with a brief surge of her own power, intense enough that her eyes glowed for a second. “No,” she said, a little louder, more firmly. “You have to swear first. Then you get it.”

“It talks,” Accounts said, his voice hollow.

“Yes.” The acidic taste of betrayal boiled away from Chives, leaving only the fear. “I wasn’t completely honest when I said I didn’t know what she did for my crew. She’s the one that makes them so productive. She’s the one that cares for them, keeps them healthy.”

“Consider for a moment, Captain Accounts.” She tucked the money away in the envelope, resting one hoof on it. “I could bring the same productivity that saved Chives’s crew to every crew you have. It doesn’t matter how many slaves you have. Ten crews, fifty… it makes no difference. I could make it so none of them die. You get to keep all of the profit, and all you have to do in exchange is let these ponies go.”

Accounts stared down at the money. “Where did… How are you making it talk, Chives? What magic is this?”

She answered before he could. “Nothing is making me talk. I’m intelligent, where the drones aren’t. I am willing to help you make them as productive and long-lasting as possible, that’s all that matters. That, and give you all this money. More than you make in months, I’m certain. She lifted her hoof out of the way. “Go on, then. Make the smart decision, Accounts. Make yourself rich.”

“I…” He hesitated. He levitated the envelope up into the air, no longer resisted by the downward pressure of her magic. He held the marks up to the light, inspecting them. “These aren’t counterfeit. Stolen, then? Are you a thief?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “I practice a legitimate profession, but it’s none of your business. Take the marks and let them go.”

She could practically watch the thoughts forming in Accounts’s head. Emotions shifted through a delicate dance of greed, hunger, fear, hatred, and revulsion. He took the envelope, settling it under the clip on the same clipboard he’d used to make notes about the measurements on her drones.

“Or, instead, I could keep the money, send this sympathizing coward to rot like he belongs, and ship you off to my patron for examination. Maybe he’ll dissect you, figure out why you’re smarter than you should be. The truth must be in there somewhere.”

“It isn’t.” She advanced on him, eyes narrowing. “You want my help. If you don’t leave with a promise, you won’t leave at all.”

He laughed, though one leg twitched towards the door. “Am I being threatened by an animal? I think you should look outside, beast. I have a dozen soldiers. They would kill you without objection if I asked.”

Accounts darted for the door, as fast as his hooves could carry him. “Help! Help, he’s trying to kill me!”

Chip stared, dumbfounded, until she saw Chives crash into Accounts, breaking clean through the wall and tumbling to the ground with his limp form. “I won’t let you bastards take her!” he bellowed, casting aside the nearest guard like he was papier mache. Accounts didn’t move again, but the guards did.

So did her drones, and not at her command. Chains broke as they struggled and leapt into the melee, fighting alongside Chives as the guards came down on him.

Chip had helped fight multiple wars. She’d directly controlled a dozen drones once, the most she had ever mastered as a male. If she had been a little more mature, she might’ve easily taken control of thousands. Yet now, in the moment of conflict, when the drones roared their collective anger, she could not control even one.

Chip stumbled out of the hole Chives had made in the wall, staring at her drones and concentrating on them with all the magic she possessed. Their anger rolled over her like a wave, drowning her. She couldn’t stop them. Stop! We can’t fight like this! There’s too many, we’ll lose! Those are all earth ponies!

It wasn’t much of a fight. The guards didn’t spare their spears for Chives—he went down in agony, pierced by half a dozen bloody wounds. Chip watched him die, heard his last cries for the little pony he’d sheltered.

Only half a dozen of her own drones were killed, and mostly by accident. A few over-eager guards brought one or two down with spears, until somepony among them reminded their fellows just how much money they were wasting. They used the butts of their spears after that, along with common force.

Changeling drones raised in captivity with nothing more than chains to swing and without a queen to guide them did not fight terribly well against professional soldiers. Chip collapsed to the ground in the hole, crying as she watched her changelings fight, powerless to protect them as they were beaten into submission and thrown back into the stables like cordwood.

Please, God. Help me! Help me save them! No god answered her silent plea. The most promising immortals were, after all, already dead.

“T-that one…” Accounts spat through a mouthful of broken teeth and blood, pointing at Chip. He could only stand with the aid of two of his soldiers. He was clearly the worst casualty of the battle, though he hadn’t fought any drones. “The runt is coming with us. My patron will find out what kind of magic Chives paid for to make her talk. The rest of you, stand guard here. Any of them try to escape until I can get a mason here, kill them. Damn Chives might’ve spoiled the whole crew. This is why we do things the right way…”

By then, Chip didn’t have the strength left to fight. A mature queen could’ve killed a dozen earth ponies without much effort. She’d seen Riley win against worse odds, when the war had gone badly and their own hive had been invaded. Riley had triumphed then against augmented human soldiers.

I can’t be a queen like you, Riley. I can’t fight. I can’t even keep twenty drones safe. I can’t even save one filly.

Chip collapsed into a crying heap. She didn’t fight the guards, didn’t stop them from tying her up, didn’t resist when they dragged her to her hooves and forced her to march back toward the city. Chip just didn’t care anymore.

She glanced once over her shoulder as they rounded the wall, to where Chives’s corpse still lay, unmoving in the grass. She could still sense the drones, sense their agony and despair. She didn’t even try to comfort them this time. I’m no queen anymore. I’ve only been pretending.

Author's Note

Don't give up, Chip! You can do it! You can make it on your own!

Caged Bird

Chip stared at a blank stone wall, pulling the cloth of her single blanket close about herself. She had stared at this wall for a long time—long enough that her reserves of glamour were starting to dwindle and she felt hunger clawing at her empty stomach. Her captors brought a tray of mashed grain each morning along with a small wooden cup of water, and that was all. Some days she drank the water, but she never touched the grain. Eating it was completely pointless. The guards who brought it felt no pity for her, not even the faintest drop for her to really eat. They didn’t even seem to see her, most of the time. Just stopped in, collected or dropped the tray, then moved on.

Maybe she spent weeks sitting on the cement cot, staring away the wall. Maybe months. She didn’t know exactly, and didn’t much care. In her first day poor Poppy would be doomed, the refugee she’d never even known was really from the past.

I had him wrong. Chives destroyed his life, but he started out just wanting to help. He was willing to risk prison to give a refugee a new home.

Poppy had been the only pony in the world who shared love with her freely, the only one who didn’t care she was a changeling and enjoyed spending time with her for its own sake. With her gone, with her drones beaten and killed and enslaved to some new workmaster, what could Chip do? What reason did she have to go on living? If only Riley could see her now. The last of her glamor had been burned to give her this life, and for what?

Chip considered burning all that was left of her magic trying to escape. Trying a teleport maybe, something she could’ve done without much effort as a male. She was still too young, too immature for such advanced magic. She might die in the attempt. Would certainly starve if it failed.

In the end, only ambivalence saved her. She just didn’t care enough to try to escape anymore. Didn’t care enough to do much of anything.

Someone came walking down the hall, the guard to collect her evening meal. The meal she hadn’t eaten. Chip looked up, made herself seem as pathetic as possible, hoping for the barest scrap of sympathy from the guard. A little more magic, and maybe…

Her eyes widened as she saw the pony making her way down the hall, and she very nearly fell out of her bunk. The guard still wore the rusty armor that the others did, still wore a crossbow on her back. But she didn’t have a coat, instead a hard carapace that sparkled in the single dwindling candle. Her eyes were bright red, and she had a red spotted shell on her back that didn’t quite cover her wings. Chip recognized her instantly.

“Ezri?” she looked up, whimpering. “Is that you?”

The “guard” stopped right in front of her, levitating the empty food tray across the room and up to her face, sniffing at it. Her face wrinkled, and with a flash of green magic the food vanished, filling the air with a thick, putrid-smelling stench. “You know, even now that I can eat like ponies do, I don’t think you could pay me enough to taste whatever they’re serving you.”

“You’re here to rescue me?” Chip asked, rising to shaky hooves and making her way to the gate. “I see you’ve got the keys on your belt there…”

Ezri sighed, levitating something out of a pouch around her belt. Most ponies in this society kept coins in a pouch like that. Instead, Ezri lifted out a pinkie-sized green bottle, its contents lighting up the room like a glowstick. “Take this, little sister. It’s all I have.”

Chip didn’t have the magic left for levitation, so she caught the bottle in her teeth. She spat out the cork, leaned back a little, and let a few precious drops of Glamour dribble back into her throat. It was enough to sustain a drone for weeks. For a queen, well… maybe two days.

“I get the sister part,” Chip replied, her voice significantly more awake than it had been moments before. She felt invigorated again, revitalized. For at least a moment, all the terrible things she’d seen no longer dominated her thoughts. “But I’m not little. I’m three centuries older than you are.”

“Not anymore!” Ezri grinned, looking smug. “You were in the ice-chest for longer than that, Chip. That means you’re my little sister now. You were supposed to be on ice for longer… until we got the world’s shit together…”

“How did this happen?” Chip asked, a faint twinge of anger finding its way into his tone. “M-mom… I mean, Riley said—“

“We tried,” Ezri sat on her haunches just outside the metal bars. “Ponies weren’t supposed to find any of you. But Jackie and I, we’ve… we left Alexandria a long time ago. We couldn’t sit around to guard some empty ruins. There are other wars to fight.”

“Whatever,” Chip gestured at the fence. “Let’s get out of here. Before the shift turns over and you get caught.”

Ezri hesitated, then shook her head. “Sorry Chip. You’re almost done in here, but not quite yet.”

“What?” She stared, shocked and a little pained. “Y-you’re not here to rescue me?”

Ezri shook her head. “Just to keep you going. I wasn’t sure how much longer a queen could last, and the kid upstairs is taking his sweet time.”

“Uh…”

“Look,” Ezri leaned towards the bars, meeting her eyes. “Being immortal taught me perspective. The most important part of that is patience. Riley knew that—she never gave in to the temptation of easy power by making more drones than she could feed. Other swarms are a constant power struggle, queens murdering each other… but Riley’s daughters always knew they’d never win that fight. Riley knew that patience can turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Less drones in the short term, but in the long term she had drones who knew her name. A price worth paying, we can both agree.”

Chip nodded. Had it not been for Riley’s attitude, she herself would never have been kept around after her first death? What made one male different from another? Why bother spending the resources conducting experiments in drone identity that had led to Ezri? “What does that have to do with me?”

Ezri pointed up with one hoof. “House Time oversees the king’s slaves, Chip. Lord Static has not ordained to see you, feeling you too insignificant to be worthy of his time. He’s not feeding you properly so you’ll die in his care and he won’t have to study you. No additional information, no need for Time to change the way it does things.”

“But his son, Study, has already spent some time theorizing on your case, and Static has encouraged him. This allows Static to applaud Study’s involvement in the family’s affairs without a worry that he will discover anything. But Study is one of the cleverest Unicorns I’ve met. If he wasn’t pining over some love affair, he’d be down here already. Then you could…” Ezri made a vague gesture with a hoof, along with a knowing glance. “You still remember how to seduce a pony, right? You aren’t going to get weird about it because your natural form used to be male?”

Chip blinked, opening her mouth and closing it again. Then she laughed. “You’re… you’re kidding. This is house Time’s mannor?” she looked up at the ceiling. “Guess I… guess we never had any reason to come down to the dungeons. Even the lab was a few floors up.”

“Then you know exactly why it would be better for you to sit in jail a few more days,” Ezri said. “Not just because you could use him to escape, but because of what you can do after.” Ezri rose to her hooves, returning Chip’s grin. “I shouldn’t have underestimated a queen. I honestly hoped you’d stay frozen longer, Chip. Knowing my father is a queen now is a little confusing.”

“I’d rather have stayed with Riley forever,” she whispered. “But queens aren’t immortal. Only you are.”

Ezri turned to go, levitating the empty tray through the air behind her. “Hold on a few more days, Chip. Everything should be okay after that.” She walked away.

The surge of confidence and re-invigoration faded a few hours later, leaving Chip alone and cold all over again. She returned to her moping, with the addition of a few fresh drops of hope. Ezri hadn’t helped her escape, but she had showed her an open door.

A few days passed. Then, for the first time ever, she heard hooves coming down the hall that didn’t have heavy boots. A pony was coming who wasn’t wearing armor. A pony stopped in front of her cell. When he spoke, he sounded as dejected and empty as Chip herself felt. “So you’re it, huh? The magical talking field-beast?”

Chip wanted to ignore the voice. She would’ve, except that she recognized it painfully well. It was something else she missed, something else that had felt like it would last forever and been ripped away from her. Well, Ezri, let’s see if I’m really a queen.

She looked up and saw Study Time standing behind the metal bars. He wore his full black suit and uniform, though it still fit him badly. His hair was ruffled and he wore no dagger on his belt, as fashion required. He looked like a mess.

“Yeah,” she answered. Her voice had a little of the strange echoing adult queens were known for. Either that, or it was just gravelly from disuse. It was hard to tell from just one word. “That’s me.”

Study Time was swimming in a grey haze of apathy. Yet as she spoke, something broke through the top of the clouds. A few sparks of interest, focused on her. Nothing she could eat. “I wondered if my father was playing a colossal joke on me. All these years our family has supervised field-beasts, but we don’t have a single record of one ever talking. Look up when you do it—I want to see your lips when they move.”

She obeyed, more out of apathy than anything else. She just didn’t care enough to fight. “That’s because you care for us badly. You give us nothing but meat all our lives and of course we end up stunted and crazy.”

He smiled, apparently satisfied. “Well I’ll be damned. It is true.” If he had heard anything she’d said, he didn’t react. “My father says he has had you examined three times while you slept. Not even his most talented sorcerers can explain what spell enables you to speak as you do. Even mythology doesn’t have answers. A come to life spell…”

“That’s an imperfect match and you know it,” Chip answered, following into their old routine without even realizing it. “Gesler’s Familianus is far closer to what I am. If you want to be completely wrong and pretend I’m an animal.”

She was no longer slouching on her cot, but sitting up completely, brushing her regrown mane out of her eyes. It kept falling in front of one of them, and she kept batting it away.

“Gesler, of course. Why didn’t I think of Gesler? An artificial familiar could share its conjurer’s mind.” She sensed no more fog from Study Time, as he spun up into the investigation of an academic mystery. A pain remained at the back of his mind, though.

“It’s also wrong,” she said. “Your father’s sorcerers must be a shitshow if they didn’t think of just casting Celestia’s piercing gaze. Your investigation would be done in ten minutes.”

Study Time laughed. “The mythological creature suggests we cast the old magic, sure. Might as well accompany one world-changing discovery with another. Rediscovering the soulcraft would be so easy…” he trailed off, eyes widening. “How does a fieldbeast know about that?” He didn’t wait for an answer before hurrying away, down the hall.

Chip listened to his voice echoing back at her, more and more animated as the moments passed. He returned practically grinning.

Not just that. He was genuinely curious now, curious about her. Chip felt the trickle of glamor down the back of her throat. So little she wouldn’t have noticed, except that it was for her true self. Even a weak emotion targeted at a Changeling’s proper nature could nourish in small ways. “Yeah, you were raised in our factory. Batch… 10A, judging by that brand. You’re not even four years old—terribly stunted for your age, but restarted aging would be consistent with a familiar bond.”

Was he even listening to her? “You’re wasting your time. Celestia’s Gaze is entry level sorcerer-hunting material. I trained drones in how to cast it, and you’ve seen how stupid drones can be.” She trailed off, expression falling. “Wait… Study, did you say… your family runs the ‘factory’ that’s raising stolen changeling eggs? I thought you just supervised the workers!”

“Yes, ever since my grandfather. The king bestowed…” he jerked back from her, eyes widening. “You know my name? You were smart enough to listen to the guards? What else did they say about me?”

“Nothing,” she rose to her hooves, shaking off the blanket. She walked slowly towards the front of the cell, not fast enough that he might run away. Ponies could be quite fearful of changelings, and she didn’t want him to run away. This was the first ray of sunshine in what had otherwise been a very dark life. “Here’s another way to test the familiar theory, Study. Examine my sympathetic connections. I’ll stick some tail through the bars, you can take it with you back to your lab upstairs.”

“Sympathetic connection would be… yes, that’s a sensible choice. I would’ve thought of that myself, with a little more time. The bond of a created familiar would be as strong as lovers, or parent to child. Even after confinement, it would be intact.”

“Yes,” she nodded, already knowing what he would find. Chip had only one connection that powerful, and it was with the pony performing the test. Only Riley would’ve been a tighter bond, since she was both a parent and a mate. But sympathetic connections did not survive death.

“Got a dagger or something to cut with?”

“No, uh… I’ll be right back.” He hurried off again, returning a few seconds later with one of the guards rough daggers floating along beside him in his magic. “Go on then, beast. Stick it through the bars.”

“That isn’t my name.” she spun around anyway, poking her tail through so he could cut away a rough chunk of green strands. He did so, with little regard for her comfort.

“Beasts don’t have names,” he said, gesturing with the dagger as though to brush her words away. “Not even familiars have names. Only things with souls can have names.” He stuck the dagger into his belt beside his keys, though the clumsy commoner’s weapon hardly fit into the sheath made for something more elegant.

“Do your sympathetic magic test! Search out my connections, and you’ll see!”

Compared to what had probably been months alone in the dark, the next few hours practically flew by. Even a few drops of glamour in her stomach were enough to wake her up. The anticipation for what would happen when Study Time discovered the results of his test… those would be even more interesting.

The guards came by to change the candles on her wall a few times, something they had often forgotten to do in the past. Ordinarily she didn’t mind, since a changeling’s senses were so keen. But just now, she welcomed the light. While Study Time spelled upstairs, Chip plotted. She would have to make the opportunity count.

Four hours later, a pair of running hoofsteps sounded in the hall, and Study Time came to a gasping halt. His mane had become an unruly mess, he’d removed his jacket and most of his accessories. “W-what d-did…”

“Catch your breath first,” Chip said, sitting on her haunches near the gate and looking right back at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Study Time ignored the advice, though he did a little better the second time. “You’re a... how did you do it? What kind of spell did you cast on me? How did you… without me noticing?”

She shook her head. “You must have searched for active spells. If I cast something on you without you noticing… well first of all, if I was that skilled, why wouldn’t I have used my magic to escape? But besides that, I know you didn’t find any active spells. You know as well as I do that false sympathy would be incredibly obvious.”

Study’s expression darkened, the first sign of real anger from him. “I know you must’ve done something! Something to… to falsify a sympathetic connection. The best fake I’ve ever seen.”

She shook her head. “There’s an alternative. One I don’t blame you for figuring out… but it also happens to be the right one.”

“I don’t know you!” he shouted, sounding as much like he was trying to convince himself as if he really believed what he was saying. “I’ve never spoken to a field-beast before! I’ve never known one of you before.”

Chip rose to her hooves, stalking towards the fence. “Would you… would you be willing to test my suggestion? It wouldn’t be hard, I promise. You wouldn’t have to do anything, except look away for a second.”

“Why should I?” The anger in his voice was very real now, not masked even a little. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but…”

“Just look away for a second,” she repeated. “You don’t have to stand close. Hell, you could walk away, but I think it will be less convincing if you do. Just a few seconds. Please.”

“Father wants answers,” he said. “If indulging you doesn’t help get them… I might let him dissect you. That’s what he wants. No one beast is worth this much trouble.” But even as he said it, Study Time turned around, facing the back wall with its slowly melting candles. “Okay, beast. I’ll count to five.”

While he counted, Chip drew on the last few drops of her glamour reserve. As she did so, she felt the claws of hunger rake at her stomach. Wanted to give up on the spell, break down crying with want and worry. Instead she forced herself to use up every drop of magic she had. She forced her body to change. She grew taller, thinner, more graceful. Her coat changed back to its previous color, her mane going bright red and into the familiar style. She became Inversion.

She also became extremely disoriented and weak from the transformation. A changeling with no food at all was barely even a rational being. She couldn’t hear his words, just collapsed onto the ground, feeling the stone rush up to meet her. Her eyes blurred, the world turned fuzzy.

Chip blacked out.

Clients Change

When she woke again, Chip felt something soft under her body. Much had changed—the awful smell of her prison, the steady dripping of the water was gone, the flickering light of distant candles were gone. Her hunger was gone too, replaced with a staggering supply of fresh glamor in her stomach. Not the most she’d ever had, nowhere close to her capacity, but enough that she didn’t feel even a little bit hungry. Enough that she could sleep for weeks without worry.

She didn’t sleep for weeks, but rolled onto her side, trying to get a better look around her. Sheets stopped her from rolling right off the bed. She looked up at one of the massive posts of a familiar bed, one where she’d spent plenty of nights feeding. Not generally sleeping, though.

“H-hey, don’t move too fast!” Study’s voice beside her, worried and urgent. She felt magic gently rolling her back into a resting position, securing her under the sheets. “You fell pretty hard, Inversion. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but… thank Arinna you’re awake.”

“H-how long?” she croaked, pulling herself up into a sitting position, resting against the headboard. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days,” he responded, concerned. “The circumstances were… somewhat confusing. I didn’t call a doctor… I wasn’t sure what I would’ve told him.”

“Y-yeah,” she chuckled. “I didn’t have enough left for a change like that.”

He ignored her. “Where have you been all this time, Inversion? I looked for you… I waited months for you to come back. You didn’t visit, didn’t even write! I had the family’s informant search for you, but even he couldn’t turn up anything useful.”

“That’s because I was in prison,” she whispered, her voice very low. “In your basement.”

“That’s impossible,” he muttered, though he didn’t sound even a little bit confident in his assertion.

“Unfortunately not,” she muttered. “Look, if I promise to tell you the whole thing, do you promise not to stop me until I’m done? That’s the easiest way.”

“Sure.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell me everything, Inversion. I need to know.”

She did. Not everything from all her lives, but at the very least the bit about being reborn under Riley’s power. Staying frozen, being discovered and grown, and eventually put into the labor team. Chives and the opportunities she’d seized.

She told him everything about her current life, though much of it was rapidly summarized. Kept explaining things, until she’d reached the point where their plan failed, Chives was killed, and she was thrown into prison.

“And that’s when you found me,” she finished, after nearly two hours of explaining had passed. “I’d been locked up inside that cell for so long I thought I would starve. They didn’t even give me meat, by the way… I would’ve got as much nutrition from eating rocks as that porridge they tried to feed me.”

“You can’t be the same one,” he insisted. “The talking fieldbeast was so small... and you’re almost as tall as I am.”

Chip had watched Study Time’s emotions during the entire exchange. At times he’d been indignant, at other times disbelieving, or even a little angry. Yet now most of that was gone, leaving only the quiet sense of confusion, wonder, and relief.

“Is the door locked?” She glanced up from the bed. “Shut the curtains, too. I’ll show you.”

“Not if it will hurt you,” he argued, but even so the glow of his magic was visible briefly by the curtains, as they shut themselves. “If you really are the same pony…”

“No, I’m better now,” she said. “Having someone take care of me is… well, it’s better food than I ever got in the dungeon.”

“Food?”

She showed him. Changed back to her pegasus form very quickly this time, only a few seconds to show him. Study Time still had the instinctive disgust at a changeling, the deep primal fear that had gotten many of them killed in the early years. She didn’t want to provoke those feelings now, when she so desperately needed allies. And food, though she wouldn’t admit that one even to herself.

“How in Arinna’s name have I been… have I been sleeping with a fieldbeast all this time and not known it? I know there were those brothels… keep a beast locked up, and it will… feel what you desire. Want to become that for you.” He rose, white-hot anger flaring as he raised his voice. “Is that all this ever was, Inversion? I was just… like those brothels? Empty and fake?”

She bit back a sarcastic response. “You hired a courtesan, Study. You paid for my body, but you paid for my company too. Do you think a dumb animal could hold engaging conversations with you about spells and schools of magic lost to history? Could they correct your spellcraft, or… be your date at courtly functions? Could an animal have done all of that? Or…” She leaned up a little, feeling her ears fall flat to her head. “Would a dumb animal have just admitted the whole truth to you, put herself completely at your mercy… does that seem like something a ‘beast’ would do?”

Study Time deflated. “No. I guess not.”

“No,” she agreed. “You begged me almost every night to know the truth about me. You wanted to know how I learned everything I did—because I attended the University of Alexandria myself, three separate times. I helped the legendary Mystic Rune mod his PC installation of Skyrim. I had drinks with Idyia, and fought in terrible battles alongside the firstborn against unspeakable things from the sea.

“My last life… hasn’t been great,” her voice cracked. Adult body or not, there was no banishing the pain she’d felt. The loss for her drones killed, for the banishment Posy had suffered, watching Chives die. So much pain she could’ve prevented, if only she was a real queen, instead of a fake. If only.

“Even when we first met, you were one of the better parts. At first it was for the money, I won’t lie and say otherwise. But things changed. Being with you… it let me be a little of the pony I was. Be a scholar again, an advisor… two of the things I was best at. All we would’ve had to do was spend some time in the kitchen, and my life would’ve been complete.”

Tears streamed down her face, and she didn’t even bother wiping them away. “Every time you asked me to move in with you was harder. I would’ve in a heartbeat, if I didn’t have my drones to think about. They trusted me, they were depending on me… and Chives too, poor bastard.”

Study Time remained silent for a long time. Chip couldn’t read his emotions, either—not because anything magical had happened, but because she was drowning in far too much of her own. She sat still on the bed, silent, waiting for the scion of House Time to respond to what he’d just been told.

“All that time I searched for you… all the time I waited, wondering what’d happened… and you were in my own basement. I could’ve walked down to see you any time I wanted.” He slumped against one of the posts, looking defeated. A long silence. “How could you stomach it? Sleeping with me… my family enslaved you! Our taskmasters whip your… what did you call them, drones? You grew up in deplorable conditions. One of our captains had your friend banished.”

“Well the last bit hadn’t happened,” she answered, numb. “Honestly, I didn’t know. I was still working my way through New Alexandria when everything fell apart. If I’d known at first… I would’ve picked someone else.”

“So… you’re going to leave now, then?” He glanced at the window, still covered by curtains. It was night outside, and very dark. How easily she could’ve escaped, if she wanted to. “Now that you know?”

Chip shook her head. “I don’t want to go back into that prison cell, if that’s what you mean. That was worse than being a slave.”

He brushed her words aside with a vague gesture from one hoof. “So far as anypony knows, the captive teleported out. She’s loose in the city somewhere. House was already searched while you rested here.”

“Well…” She hesitated, hopping down to the ground beside him. “I suspect somepony will put together the whole ‘brothel’ thing with me being able to look like somepony else, and inspect your bed eventually. Being able to talk won’t help when they know an intelligent changeling escaped. I think it… I think it might be best if I left until the search dies down.”

“And after that?”

She met his gaze, eyes even. “What do you want to happen after that, Study? You know I’m a changeling. Not like the ones you enslave… but close enough.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t look like that all the time,” Study admitted. “I know you said you’re centuries old and all, but I don’t think I could manage the doublethink. I hope you’ll be Inversion next time you visit.”

She could feel his love again, so bright that it nearly blinded her. It washed over her more intense than any of their sexual experiences could’ve possibly been. It was one thing for him to lust after an attractive mare. It was quite another for him to know the truth and still love her, even so. His words carried far more weight than the implied invitation to return. There was no doubting that when she practically drowned in glamor.

She let him kiss her. And some other things.

When they were done, she felt more alive than she ever had as a queen, more determined. She rose from the bed, straightening her feathers with her magic. No sense in hiding it now. “There’s one more thing you have to know, Study. If you want me back.”

He watched her from the covers, a bittersweet expression on his face. He clearly wanted to ask her something, but couldn’t manage the words. “Yeah?”

“I don’t blame you for what the Time house has done. It’s been going on for a long time, that much is clear. But I am going to stop it. There are ways changelings and ponies can work together, but this isn’t it. When I fly out this window, I’m going to find a way to free my sisters. I don’t know what that will do to your house.”

“I don’t care,” he said, and she didn’t have to question his honesty. The sincerity was plain in his mind. “I’ve seen the factory. My father… he’s never been willing to listen to my objections. Says our margins are narrow enough as it is, just buying deer from the blood-priests. I’ll help you bring it down. Maybe you can find the time to help me understand how you can be a person and a changeling at the same time.”

“I will,” she promised, throwing the curtains open with her magic. Bright, cool moonlight streamed in, washing over her. Through the open window was New Alexandria’s skyline, and beyond, freedom. She waved with one wing, then jumped straight out.

* * *

The next few years were not easy for Chip. There was nothing easy about hiding out in the city, watching her own sisters dragged through the streets with collars around their necks and blood leaking from the wounds of servitude. It was only a small consolation to know that they were not intelligent, that almost all who had suffered this way would never wake up. Very small consolation.

Yet she also knew that to simply attack, running around breaking open pens or trying to murder workmasters would not accomplish her goal. As much as the human half of her was enraged, Chip was also a changeling queen. A queen could be pragmatic and patient, even when that behavior might seem ghastly to anyone else.

Inversion became Study Time’s consort full time, instead of on the random nights she could sneak away. She took up residence in the very mansion where the oppressors of Riley’s brood lived. Whatever else might be said for the house of Time, at least Study’s lordly father didn’t mind his son’s dalliances with her. Each time they met, he had specific recommendations for her, ways to teach her son “how to treat a proper noble lady.” Inversion always obeyed, and so was more than welcome in the household.

Study Time himself was perhaps her greatest ally, since he had access to every aspect of the work King Obrican had entrusted to the house of Time. Any visits he made, any records he requested, only served to increase his father’s respect for him that he was finally “taking a hoof in family affairs.”

Chip started with the “factory.” This was not a difficult task, since the operation involved ponies at only the beginning and end of any drone’s time there. The actual location of the factory was a closely held secret of the Time house, of course, but what did Chip care if she had to wear a blindfold in the carriage on the way there?

They brought a dozen guards for the trip, marching in regular order behind the carriage that other guards pulled. Not even the factory overseer accompanied them, though Study believed the pony would be furious at their interference as soon as he learned of the visit.

“You’re the first pony not in my house to visit this place in two generations, Inversion,” Study said, helping her down from the seat of the carriage. “And between you and me, this is only my second time visiting.”

Study’s appearance had improved somewhat in the last six months. He’d lost the pudge of indolence, now that she was around him constantly to police what he ate. He’d lost his wandering eyes and the weight of despair that had settled on him after her absence. In exchange, Study Time now moved with a sense of purpose even Chip could admire. To please her, yes, but also to succeed in her cause. Study Time was fully convinced in her vision of a cooperation between changelings and ponies. He saw, as she did, a world like the Alexandria before, where drones wore no chains and needed no overseers. A world where they could eventually leave labor and join pony society as individuals.

Riley’s ancient capital had done as badly as Alexandria itself. Of all the stone structures reinforced by glamor, nothing survived. Huge piles of rubble marked where buildings had been, and occasionally the edge of a ruined statue emerged from the dirt.

“Wait with the carriage,” Study instructed, before levitating a pair of saddlebags from the carriage and settling them on Chip’s back. Yes, she was the mare, but she was also not the one with noble blood. Some aspects of their relationship still mirrored the way it had started. “Do not allow anyone to interrupt us for any reason, do you understand?”

The head of House Time’s personal guard, Captain Accounts, saluted. “Of course, young lord. It will be done.”

They walked away down the deserted streets. “My name is Ozymandias, the king of kings. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.”

Study looked up at her, quizzical. “You’re quoting something?”

Chip nodded. “An old human poem, old before I was born. Queen Riley was… the greatest, noblest, wisest ruler I ever knew, and look what happened to what she did. Nothing left. Her young, my s-sisters… the most valuable part of her world were locked away where she thought we would be safe. But time had her beat there too.”

“Adventure Time,” Study agreed. “My progenitor. She was apparently a great explorer in the days the kingdom was founded. Went searching all kinds of ruins for…” he trailed off, looking away from her.

Though the whole city had crumbled, Chip still knew where she was going. The nursery would be located in the deepest part of the vaults, the deepest and most enduring section of the palace basement. “To look for what?”

“She was an Outcast,” Study said, voice quiet. “It’s not a secret exactly, but it isn’t something the family spreads around. Not since… Not since Outsider ancestry has come to represent moral weakness and corruption.”

“I struggle to find words for how stupid that is. Everypony has ‘outcast’ blood if you go back far enough. Except maybe the ponies living in Arcadia.”

“First you’re a changeling, now you’re an atheist,” Study muttered, grinning. “I’m not sure which is worse.”

They passed through a secure gate someone had affixed over the entrance to the ruins. Below ground level, the palace had done a little better. Many carvings survived, in particular the striking style of bas-reliefs favored by many drones who wished to leave a mark on the world but lacked the money, glamor, or influence to ever amount to anything. “Here was 17,496, I lived,” said one. “I am happy,” said another, with a crude rendition of a smiling pony’s face. So far as quality of art was concerned, they might as well be attached with a magnet to a pre-Event refrigerator.

Chip didn’t have to guide them, not when there were hundreds of little flags hanging from walls, blocking off doorways, and otherwise directing them down. Down through the secret maze of passages, through areas that only changelings were allowed to go.

“There was a time…” she muttered, her voice echoing strangely in the hollow, empty spaces. “A time my queen ruled over all seasons. A time there would have been thousands of soldiers in these halls, protecting the brood.” Chip slowed, passing a pillar twice as wide as her whole body, holding up a thirty foot vaulted ceiling of stone. Far above, the faint green of glamour nests had decayed to gray. Adolescent drones lived here, maturing in the darkness and the damp. Learning that they had names, futures, purpose. “How could your family just break into ruins like this, and not even wonder who had carved this limestone? Not wonder if, maybe, stealing from them wasn’t a good idea?”

“Adventure Time was against it,” Study said, his voice echoing. “She wanted technology for the king’s engineers. She found some, too. But that wasn’t what Obrican wanted. Griffons don’t see the world the way ponies do.”

“I guess not.”

Not much further to go, now. Instead of getting warmer as it should, the air got cold. No more moisture, only a thin layer of ice on every surface where water could condense. Someone had set out a trail of gravel, so at least Study wouldn’t slip.

“How did you handle the drop? Riley designed the nursery like an anthill… I think I might’ve helped dig it. How’d you get in?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Study said, pointing at a heavy wooden door lined with cloth. Mist drifted from the gaps in the opening, forming a cloud on the ground by their hooves. “It’s right there.”

Study unlocked the door with another key, levitating it open. Chip started shivering, stepping closer to the warmth of her pony companion against the cold.

In times ancient and gone, Chip had once seen the inside of an Amazon fulfillment center. This top floor resembled one such building, shelves going fifty feet up and snaking backward and forward through the ground. Unlike that center, there was no space for robots here, no conveyor-belts. Many areas could only be accessed by flying drones.

The shelves had been emptied in a systematic way, with those closest to the entrance bare except for a little slime left over to hold the eggs in place. Further back Chip could see some shelves with most of their eggs, but not many.

“Ten thousand,” chip muttered, her wings buzzing uncomfortably in the chill air. The instinct didn’t really help keep her warm, not nearly as much as the glamor in her stomach. “There are ten thousand eggs on each floor.”

“There’s only one floor,” Study repeated. “Not even the king seems to know what to do when they all run out. I’ll admit, I’ve been hoping your new system will stretch the supply.”

Chip stopped walking, pulling Study close to her with one leg. He looked a little confused, unsure of what she wanted. “Teleport.” She pointed down with a hoof. “Exactly twenty meters down. Well… maybe 19.5 meters. Just to be safe.”

“You want me to…” Study winced. “Chip, you know how dangerous that is, right? If I move us into solid stone…”

“There isn’t stone.” She couldn’t keep the anticipation from her voice. “Come on, Study. Trust me.”

He did. The taste of someone willing to risk their life, trusting her, well… it was a rare delicacy. One she hadn’t tasted since Chives died.

Flash of light, the darkness of the void. A disorienting tumble, maybe a foot, then a rough landing on the icy ground. A second later Study lit up his horn, a pale blue light in the gloom.

The shelves were all here. A few eggs had frozen solid, or fallen and smashed on the floor. The vast majority rested safely in their designated places—almost ten thousand of her relatives. Sisters, cousins… all still, quiet, and cold. Chip remembered what it was like to sleep in one of these eggs. Her mind painfully slow, her spirit aching for life.

“Idyia’s bones,” Study swore. “There’s more?”

Chip nodded. “It’s not uncommon for a queen to lay a thousand eggs a year. Most just let them hatch, the strong devour the weak, and the toughest grow up to serve her. Riley… my queen… she rejected that. She believed every one of us deserved to be alive. But raising a drone that way takes glamor. The older she got, the more Riley needed just to stay alive. So more and more of her eggs ended up down here. Some other queens, mostly her daughters, sometimes put extra eggs here too. Not as many. Most changelings measure wealth and power by the size of your swarm.”

“So…” Study brushed some ice from his coat, from where they fell. “To a bea—to a changeling, this is like…”

“A vault,” Chip finished. “Yes.” She reached out, selecting a single egg from the shelf at random, holding it up in her magic. It was a little strange to see a green glow above her forehead, when there was no horn. An obvious tell to anyone who wondered what she might be.

She held the egg up to her face, breathing on it and melting away the frost. She could see it there, locked away. The tiniest speck of life. You’re the first, she thought to it, breathing out a glowing mist of green glamor. An incredible amount, nearly half of what she held. Wake up.

I am.

That was it. Not words, but not the blind instinct of an ordinary drone. The egg kept glowing, even when she lowered it down. It shook slightly in her grip, steam rising from it, beating back the heat. In that moment, Chip sensed the very thing she’d been waiting for during the short years of her life. Though she was still standing on the icy floor, could still feel Study standing beside her, in that moment a second set of perceptions filled her.

She was freezing cold, barely alive at all, except for a steady heartbeat, locked away in a tiny egg. This drone was so small it couldn’t even swim in its egg yet. That didn’t matter, though. Chip had a swarm now, a swarm of one young queen and one egg. She had to start somewhere.

“Careful,” Study whispered, letting her rest against him. She found this a great relief—giving up so much power so fast had nearly incapacitated her. “What was that, anyway? Making it grow?”

“Sort of.” She held it in her magic, before removing a padded container from her saddlebags and securing the egg inside its faux-leather shell. “I gave it a soul. Or… gave it enough magic to grow its own. I don’t know which it is, honestly. I’ve never…” She blushed, avoiding his eyes. “I’ve never done it before. Didn’t… think I could.”

“Guess you can.” Study didn’t say anything else for several more minutes, letting her catch her breath. “Didn’t you say floors, Chip?”

“Yeah.” She leaned a little closer to him. “Let’s go down again.” She closed her eyes, stumbled, but didn’t fall as far this time. When she opened her eyes again, she could see more shelves, a different shape each time. Each floor grew naturally, like a beehive, to regular patterns. Thousands of eggs.

They jumped twice more before Chip rested a hoof on Study’s shoulder, who was breathing very heavily. “This is it,” she whispered, opening her eyes again. “There’s nothing below this. We never filled this level.”

Yet things had changed from the last time she was here. Many of the shelves had been ripped up completely, and the ones that did remain along the walls were empty of eggs.

Massive blocks of ice had been arranged in a roughly circular pattern, surrounding the central ring. They were lucky they had been standing so close to the edge, or else they might’ve ended up appearing inside one. Most of them were clear, clearer than water-ice normally appeared in the real world. A few… a few weren’t.

Chip walked away from Study, towards the largest block in the center. Without prompting, she let her illusion melt away, revealing her queen’s body underneath. She was maybe fourteen now, so far as ponies went. She was growing up fast. Though she didn’t need it, Chip lit her horn with the brightest glow she could, ignoring the strange shadows it sent refracting between the blocks. She had eyes only for the center.

There, trapped in the center block like a gemstone preserved in glass was Queen Riley. As tall and regal as Chip remembered her, as imposing as their last moments together. A large stone block had been frozen below her, and so Chip didn’t have to strain her neck to read it.

Riley Harris
Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.

“What is that?” Study called.

Chip ignored him, walking past Riley, to where another queen looked out from clear ice. Well, her corpse did. There was no way anypony could survive being frozen like this. A living queen was not an egg.

On Riley’s right rested Evoli, her mane still as bright an orange as when Chip had seen her many centuries before. She had died before her mother, not as adept at managing the size and food-supply of her swarm. But why hadn’t Chip ever heard about her being frozen?

Evoli
Igne natura renovatur integra.

So it was with well over a dozen queens. The lime green queen Calypso rested under the words “Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt.” Perilla, reddish brown queen with one missing wing and a body covered in scars, held the motto “Corvus oculum corvi non eruit.” On and on they went.

Study caught up with her, still out of breath from his rapid teleportation, breath fogging up the air as he walked. “These are… like you?” He looked up at Perilla where she rested, eyes narrowing as he gazed at the epitaph. “Those are Oldspeech letters, but I’ve never seen them combined that way. Are those words?”

“Yeah,” Chip muttered. “It’s, uh... I guess you could say it’s our secret language. The queens wanted something that few people knew, even from Earth before, but one that could be recovered and translated independently even after many years.”

“Oh.” Study shivered, looking up at the corpses. Perilla had been frozen with her eyes still open, staring down at them with disapproval in her last moments of life.

Even in death you make me uncomfortable. Chip straightened, walking away from the dead queens. On Riley’s left was a clear block of ice, clear except for the stone inside it. It had clearly been cut from the same rock as Riley’s own. Curious, Chip leaned in to investigate, lighting up her horn again in the gloom.

Chip
Esse quam videri

In that moment, she understood the purpose of the monuments, and she wept.

The museum was very cold, and cold was the friend of no changeling. With Study’s help, Chip managed to collect herself, stop her tears, and return with him to the mostly-empty top floor.

There was much left to do. She would visit the nursery next, where drones were left to thaw and then abandoned in the dark for months. She would change everything in time, until her sisters and her cousins were no longer enslaved. Chip’s will was patient, but it was also absolute.

She would not fail.

Author's Note

Nearly done with Chip for the moment. Just a quick little epilogue, and I think I'll be able to safely store her up on the shelf.

Solving for Zero

Archive had gathered the greatest minds from all of Comox.

The deer she'd chosen had very little in common. A handful were young, fawns in their second or third year who looked almost like adults but acted like adolescents.

There was Cherry-Blossum-Always-Blooms, and her younger brother Unseen-Wind-Lifts-Many-Birds. They sat side-by-side on a single cushion made from rough fabric and stuffed with straw. They were only permitted to be so close on account of both still having their spots—once 'Birds' lost his, he would be grown, and no longer be able to spend time with his sister.

A few adult deer. A doe without fawns of her own named Stargazing-During-Storms, who's slightly slower wit was sometimes broken by bursts of surprising insight. Another doe, a year older and with a yearling to care for, Runs-Beside-Wolves.

Alex had seen a few promising bucks too, but couldn't convince any of them to attend her "magic" lessons. Once they had learned the lessons were only a test and might not produce results, they couldn't run away fast enough. Bucks belonged either foraging in the wild, caring for the crops, or fighting for territory with rival tribes. Despite Comox's gigantic size (in terms of deer tribes), they had been unwilling to leave these duties for others even for a few afternoons.

Archive's own apprentices attended as well, though often as much as assistants as attendants. They brought food and water to her students, cared for the tools, or helped prompt questions Archive wanted asked. Very useful, though she wasn't sure how much they learned.

Only two older deer. Elders were a very rare thing, requiring both useful skills and enough plentiful years that the deer wouldn't reach some point in their minds where they weren't contributing to the tribe and wander out into the wilderness to be devoured. Comox had five, and two attended her class.

The first was Stride, one of the tribe's founding members and the deer who had spent the longest around ponies. Stride had the best grasp on abstraction by far, since she'd had so long to learn it. She knew pony languages and understood pony culture. She did not, unfortunately, have much hint of magic talent about her.

The last deer was also the only grown buck in attendance, an herbal healer named Finds-Softest-Flowers-At-Dusk. Dusk said very little at her meetings, but always seemed to be listening. He also seemed to have a great deal of natural talent for magic… for a deer.

The deer had almost no magic of their own. They believed in tons of it, seemingly endless rituals and rules that bestowed the mother's favor on those who followed and her displeasure on those who did not. At the very least, they never seemed to feel the need to enforce the mother's displeasure on anyone, even other deer. The Mother herself was the judge, not any of them.

Archive had not yet discovered any sign of working magic in the tribe. She had observed all their rituals with the sensitivity of Unicorn observation, yet had seen nothing. She recognized the Keeper of Earth well, yet hadn't ever seen her bare feet walking in Comox.

"I am glad you have all come," she said, from the center of the circle. They'd picked a quiet grove of trees very close to Comox itself, but far enough from the fields and thoroughfares that Deer would not intrude loudly upon them. Plenty would still sneak up to watch—she was counting on it. The strongest indicator of magic talent was a desire to learn more magic, after all.

The study area was about twenty feet of soft, green grass, with thick undergrowth forming a wall beyond. Archive had used earth pony to cultivate that wall particularly strong and dense, so that only a "gate" between two trees that led onto one of the tribe's scent-marked trails could be used to enter.

The air was crisp, even in summer. Alex's new body was sturdier than she'd been even as an earth pony, so the cold didn't bother her. Her apprentice Dividend was another matter, and he wore a light cloak even in winter. Nancy, or by her tribal name, Makes-Sky-Lighter, was a pegasus, and thus more tolerant of cold weather. She still had to bundle up in winter, though. Winter in northern Canada was very cold.

"What will we learn today, All-Crafted?" asked Birds in his still squeaky fawn's voice. He fidgeted in his seat, as he always did. "You always have such interesting things to show us."

"Today we're going to learn about the Mother." Archive said. This hushed the muttered conversation of her guests at once—the Mother was a sacred subject, always treated with the utmost respect.

"What would you know of her?" Dusk asked. His voice was not disrespectful, merely curious. "You may have passed our trials and become an Elder of this tribe, but you are still mageblood. You barely know our ways."

"I know her magic," Archive responded. "Or more precisely, I can use the same kind of magic she uses. This is the kind of magic that magebloods called Earth Ponies use. I believe it is the kind of magic you all are most likely to possess, since like earth ponies no deer has a horn for magic or wings for flight. It would also be the most useful to you, if any of you could learn it.

"Earth ponies can grow a whole season's crop in days. They can bring life to dead soil, or foster it from nothing. They can break trees with their kicks, or bend steel. The Mother grants them this power. I wish for her to grant it to Comox as well."

There were a few nods of general agreement, and the attitude in the clearing seemed to relax a little. As though the deer had been afraid she was going to disrespect their traditions somehow. She never did, not anymore, though they always seemed worried.

"Alright," Archive's horn glowed, and she picked something up off the ground in front of her. It was a small brown seed, with a pair of transparent 'wings' on either side. She held it up in front of them all, moving it around the circle so they could see.

"What do you see?"

"A seed," said Bird.

"A white-birch seed," Blooms added, smiling a little smugly.

Alex shook her head. "Tell me what you see. Not what you think you see."

Silence from the group. Her own apprentices knew to remain silent unless prompted, though she doubted either one would know where she was going with this. Neither one was an earth pony, after all. Dividend had the bias of his people (most ponies in general) that only unicorns did "magic" and most others just performed various acts of dexterity.

"I see something brown. A hard, bitter, flaky something. Dark in the middle, but light around the sides," Storms said.

"Better," Alex responded. "But not what I was looking for."

"What is the purpose of this question?" Dusk asked.

"Doors open to those that see them."

There was another long silence. Lonely Day did not move, even as the deer all around her started to fidget. Even the elders didn't like sitting in place for every long. It made prey very uncomfortable. The more discomfort they felt, the more she hoped they would strive for an answer.

"It's potential," said Wolves. "It's a tree, but it isn't right now. This is why we gather them after each harvest. Our seeds become new harvests. That seed will become a new paper birch."

Archive smiled. She gestured to the center of the circle. "Come here, Wolves." She set the seed down on the ground. "Dig a hole and plant that seed. Take your time. You aren't a farmer."

"What am I?" Wolf asked, as she rose from her cushion and made her way into the center of the circle. The eyes of all the deer were on her now, watching intently.

"Something new," Lonely Day whispered. "Something that never was. Take the seed in your hoof."

Wolf did so, though the gesture came slowly. Even for ponies, it would have required some skill. Few Deer were as good with their hooves as ponies were—their bodies just weren't as flexible.

"Okay," Wolf said, tone flat. "Now what?"

Day moved up beside her. Compared to an adult doe, she was still short, even as an Alicorn. Day touched her own hoof to Wolf's, so that she too was in contact with the seed. "Close your eyes first, so you can see. Everyone else do likewise."

"That doesn't make sense!" Bird protested. "If we close our eyes, we won't be able to see."

How could she explain? Day had tried so many times— and every time she'd failed. It was like the time she'd tried to teach Jackie calculus, repeating the same concepts over and over without her ever seeming to retain them.

"Magic is within, Wolf. Let me show it to you."

Wolf didn't seem to understand any better than the deer all around them. She obeyed even so, closing her eyes and holding still. "I'm ready,"

Alex waited another moment, hoping the other deer would obey as well, but not wanting to wait to force them.

These deer had obeyed all her instructions, taken her lessons, and had no magic of their own to show for it. Only teaching humans would've been worse.

There was one thing Alex hadn't tried yet, though. She'd tried pointing them in the general direction of magic, but she'd never violently ripped the scales away.

Her horn glowed reddish brown as she began the complex spell, targeting everyone in the clearing. Every one of them would gain a powerful connection to her, and through her to the Earth. It might only last for a few minutes, but that would be plenty of time for what she wanted them to see.

Archive released the spell, and watched carefully to see how they would react.

The result was instantaneous. No sooner has the spell left her horn than every single one of the deer rose to their hooves, staring down at the ground with sudden shock. Their eyes naturally traced the current of power back to the origin of the spell, and several shielded their eyes with a hoof as they finally found Alex.

"Ignore me," she commanded, not taking her hoof from the seed. "Plant it, Wolf. Right now, before the spell wears off."

Alex could feel the poor deer's hoof shake as she shoved it into the dirt. As deep as she could reach. A little deeper than this particular seed "liked" to be, but she wasn't going to bring that part up. It wouldn't matter for this next part.

"Good, not leave your hoof there. You're going to focus on the ground now, through the magic you can sense. What you're all feeling is…"

"I can see her face," Dusk said, his voice barely a whisper. "Do you live with this all the time?"

"All the time," she shrugged. "Focus, kin! Everyone get close. We're all going to try and make this seed grow together. I need every single one of you here, Wolf can't do it alone.

They gathered in, every single one of them. Even without magic, Archive could sense their sincerity. Does and Bucks avoided each other, standing close enough to touch her, but never each other.

They concentrated, they focused, they followed the ritual in every way she suggested. Painful minutes passed, with every one of them crammed together as their bodies would fit.

Nothing changed. Alex became conscious of how little was happening in front of her. It would have taken only a second of effort on her part, but she didn't fall to the temptation. It would be easy to trick these deer into thinking that their effort had come to something that it hadn't, but that would hardly help make for a stable society. They could not teach each other pony powers based on a lie.

Your effort is admirable, said a quiet voice in her mind. Archive opened one eye to see a dark figure sitting on a nearby log. Naked, with hair of growing plants and feet like roots that sunk into the ground in front of her. If anything, this figure was far larger and stronger than the last time they had met. But it will not succeed. Will alone does not a bond make. These cervine were not meant to be composing sonnets. The fruit they eat is enough to plant the only fields I never needed from them.

For all that the deer worshiped the Keeper of Earth, they seemed oblivious to her presence. They appeared to be so laser-focused on what Archive had asked for that they could see almost nothing else.

She lowered her voice to a whisper, retreating from the circle. "I don't mean to second-guess you, but the conditions you created them in have changed. They're as intelligent as we are. They are as deserving of respect as we are."

Deserving of respect? The keeper rose to her feet, and suddenly she towered over Archive. Where she walked, the soft grass grew long and out of control, leaving huge footprints in the clearing. Rid your mind of mortal thinking, child. 'Deserving' is a meaningless term. A purpose is either fulfilled, or it is not. How intelligent they are is irrelevant.

Alex shivered, glancing briefly back over her shoulder. By now, the spell would already be wearing off. Soon enough the deer would be able to feel nothing at all, and they would probably stop trying. "There must be a way to give them magic," Alex pleaded. "They worship you, Keeper. Can't you give them strength in return as you do to ponies?"

I can't, she sounded almost sad to admit it. I'm sorry, child. You would not understand. I do not bring my children to their destiny, I can only place them on the road that leads there. If they are ever to know me as you do, they must do as ponies have. A bond is required, one only they can make. You cannot give it to them. Gaia turned away, passing through the bushes on the edge of the clearing with hardly a rustle.

As she did so, a new spring burst from the ground there, gurgling up and washing away the grass nearby. It began to gush and pool, threatening to fill up their whole clearing.

The deer had all moved, though not much. Every one of them was facing the direction she'd left, every one of them had their head bowed. Even her pony apprentice Dividend, unicorn from primitive Salt Lick, had his head bowed.

Maybe they're better at sensing than I gave them credit. Archive's hooves splashed in the water, and she gestured suddenly away. "Out!" she instructed, pointing towards the gate. "We can talk outside, come on!"

"She was here," Dusk said, as they splashed and scrambled out of the way of the growing pond. A steady flow of water and detritus proceeded them out the open gateway, but most remained. So much for ever training here again. "Your ritual… the Mother was actually here. You spoke to her!"

"I did," Alex slumped down on her haunches, looking back at the study circle. "I begged your case. If anypony could give you the magic you deserved… I thought she could." Archive sighed.

"She refused you?" Wolf sounded suddenly frightened. "She was angered that we turned our back on custom? She demands a pur—"

"NO!" Archive cleared her throat loudly, glaring at Wolf. "She was not angry with you. She doesn't mind if you get magic, but she says she can't give it to you. If you want it you have to find it yourselves…" Alex trailed off, staring down at the ground.

"So this training of yours in less practical skills will not be required," Dusk said. "She wants us to discover it our own way. Not the Mageblood way."

Alex opened her mouth to protest, but no words came out. She didn't actually know what set ponies apart from deer in this way. It wasn't just the deer, ponies had an unfair magical advantage compared to just about everything. There was no obvious physical difference to explain such a disparity. So what made ponies different?

It was a question without an answer. Certainly not one she would answer today. "No more lessons," Archive finally said. "I will study out her words, and research pony history. It's possible I'll be able to put the Kin on the right trail, even if I can't give you a map."

Long Watch

Comox had only one type of accommodation: small, thinly insulated group homes which provided a large sleeping mat for several individuals and not a lot else. Alex did not share hers with any deer— not since Stride had a mate and many fawns of her own. She didn't have the little building to herself— she had two apprentices, who continued to pretend around her that they weren't in a relationship. She, cordially, pretended she didn't notice.

Alicorns needed less sleep than ordinary ponies, which had proven to be quite an advantage. As she shrugged he way out of the little hut, one of many in identical rows not distinguished in any way, she found Comox already alive with activity. It wasn't quite dawn yet, but still she found grins and ribbing gestures waiting for her as she passed to the communal watering area. Deer mimicked rubbing their eyes with one hoof as she passed, or briefly touched noses to sides— she had learned both gestures were typically used to mock a fawn who had overslept.

Ponies had many advantages over these creatures, but the comparison was not as one-sided as she had originally thought. Deer, as it turned out, slept only a few hours a day, spread into thirty-minute naps during the darkest and brightest parts of any twenty-four hour cycle. Without using spells, an Alicorn could live on four. Her apprentices, by contrast, had utterly failed to adapt to this strange way of living, and were thus absent from large parts of deer society. Pony (or human, for that matter) brains just weren't designed to work that way.

In the court of the Yileron , she'd been treated with silent reverence and barely contained awe. Even a magically weak pony could sense the power of an Alicorn, and something in the way ponies were wired seemed to prompt at least respect, even from her enemies.

Compared to the most magically dull pony, the greatest magical talent she'd ever seen among the deer might as well be a plant for the gift they had. They couldn't feel her power, nor did they much care.

It had taken enormous effort to be recognized as a member of their community, even as they strove to build something new. Nancy had managed it, but Dividend they continued to see as a foreigner, friendly for his gifts but ultimately not a member of the tribe.

Almost everything in Comox was communal, including the stream that powered the water wheel and led to a deep pond they used for drinking. A stone dam surrounded this artificial pond, and a new species of lily Archive had created purified the water within.

Deer made their way to this pool every morning to drink, though the sun wasn't even up. Archive shivered a little against the cold, though it was still the middle of summer. If any deer had seen that, they would probably be snickering at that too.

Alex selected a cup from a stack of many in a woven basket by the side of the pond, levitating it out in front of her and dipping it into the water. Deer almost never bothered— but she was still trying to teach them, even now that her time in Comox was almost over.

"All-Crafted," said a voice from behind her. It belonged to a buck, a buck whose coat was going grey and hooves were splitting with age. His full name was Finds-Softest-Flowers-At-Dusk. Even with her memory, she preferred to think of him as just "Dusk."

She finished drinking before she turned. There were not many deer here— most were already finished with morning meal. There would be enough left for her— there always was. "Morning to you, Dusk," she bowed her head in greeting, as was proper when addressing a male.

Yet another glimpse of the culture that made her uncomfortable— even though a doe could hold all the same positions (except soldiers), she was required to show physical deference to a male, even of greatly inferior rank. A tribal matron with the authority to command all her fighting deer would still be required to bow to each one if she passed them on the street.

Dusk returned the bow, his ears briefly flattening and antlers dropping nearly to her head level. "Hardly morning anymore, All-Crafted. An hour ago, perhaps. Only fawns are still waking."

Young Alicorn though she might be, even the elderly towered over her. A strong buck like Dusk was two and a half feet taller than she was, and had probably been even taller before the years wore him down.

"Yes, I know," his words were confirmed all around her. The fawns— deer her own size, though only a few years old in most cases— came for their morning water, or made their way to morning meal. They slept about as much as she did, at her best. "What did I miss while I slept? Stride's condition has not worsened, has it?"

Despite her apparent deference, Alex didn't wait for the male to indicate the direction they were to go, as was proper during a conversation like this. She was going to breakfast dammit, and she wouldn't let anyone's genitals stop her.

"No no, nothing like that. The 'magic' you worked has kept its promises in every respect. Truly, my grandchildren will cherish them all as holy relics."

"As practical tools," she corrected, making her way to the food line. Well… calling it a line might not be quite right. As in all things they did, the deer ate communally. Those good at cooking things (when they ate cooked food at all) cooked until they felt the village had enough to eat at any given time, then they stopped. Deer arrived and waited their turn for a portion according to intricate and complex unspoken rules. It was fortunate that those not traditionally part of the social hierarchy were given top selection with those rules, because even after years of living with them and her perfect memory she'd not managed to unravel them.

Fawns scattered out of her way, and she scraped up a bowl of fresh fruit and greens. Nothing cooked, as that was reserved for the evening meal.

Alex chose an empty table far away from everyone else. As she did, every deer still eating rose and moved, rearranging themselves. The lone bucks moved furthest away from her, doe with children moved closest, and fawns eating alone separated both groups.

"Why do they do that?" she muttered to herself, for perhaps the thousandth time.

Dusk sat down across from her. He had taken a bowl for himself, but put only a single leaf inside it. Deer wouldn't take space at a table if they weren't eating, and they left as soon as they were done. "It's proper," Dusk explained. "We show respect to the one who gave us so much."

"If someone would explain where I fit, I'd just sit there and nobody would have to move." She grunted, levitating a few berries out of the bowl and chewing on them. A few fawns stared openly at her, though most deer looked away, as though embarrassed for her. Archive had made it a point to use as much magic around these deer as she could, hoping it might awaken some nascent talent in them.

It had not.

"You fit wherever you choose to sit, All-Crafted. The same is true for the rest of us. Choosing this table means a few were wrong, so they adjusted."

She waved one hoof, as though pushing his words away. Utter nonsense. She'd been convinced for the first month that the deer only did it to mock her. Now, she'd seen far too much respect to dismiss the behavior that way. "Was it news you came to bring, Dusk?" she asked. "Or just conversation."

"Prediction," he breathed, lowering his voice. "Even your wonders can't keep Swift with us much longer. She no longer sleeps, you know. I do all I can to ease her pain, but… I don't think she'll last the day. She drifts, barely lucid. The Mother calls to her."

Archive nodded sadly, eyes on her meal. Her annoyance with a few of the mysteries her time among the deer hadn't managed to solve faded at this more pressing dread. These deer lived so fantastically short that she would be forced to give up a friend far sooner than she'd thought she would have to. While her daughter and apprentice were still teenagers, they had watched Swift wither away before them. Now, they would have to watch her die.

Alex chose her words carefully. Even Dusk, an "educated" tribal elder and a great liberal among Comox, could have trouble with some of what she suggested. "Would you think it was wrong if I helped Stride get better?"

Dusk stared openly at her for several long moments. "I don't know why anyone would be against that, All-Crafted. When you taught us what was causing sickness, every deer learned to be careful what we drank and where we dug latrines. You taught us how to plant, and so now we have many farmers and few foragers. If you have some new way to heal, why would we turn it away? The Mother smiles on every helpful tool."

"Do you know why magebloods live so long?"

"Magic," he answered. "I used to think you had magic instead of blood, but thanks to the clumsy fawn, we know that isn't true." He meant Dividend of course, who was poorly adapted to life in the wilderness and frequently suffered small injuries. "Have you solved the mystery at last? Will you be sharing the masterwork with us?"

"I… haven't," she admitted, staring down at her hooves. "It won't be ready in time, Dusk. With the speed I'm progressing… I suspect it will not be discovered in time to give to any deer now living."

Dusk sighed. "Then your first question is irrelevant. Without the herb, there can be no treatment."

"There is…" she lowered her voice even further, as quiet as she could speak. Another pony might very well not be able to hear her at all, unless they were a bat. But Deer had very keen senses— even sharper than a pony's. "There is another way. A treatment I only discovered recently. But it is an extremely costly procedure. Think of it like…" she couldn't use the example of amputation. These deer still thought it was better for a deer injured beyond the ability to run to die, rather than consume resources. If it were winter, Stride would have already wandered out into the cold to die. "It's just hard. Age is not communicative— an old deer would be a young pony. If her current body is doomed and we can't make a deer that lives longer, maybe… maybe we can save her by making her something else."

Dusk didn't say anything at first. Abruptly, neither did anyone else around them. Alex folded and unfolded her wings nervously, worried that maybe she'd stumbled into yet-another unspoken taboo.

He did speak eventually. "We already rejected that solution, All-Crafted. Near the beginning. You said that the magic required to permanently change a living creature was too difficult."

She nodded in agreement. "All things have a pattern. Living things are always changing, their patterns shifting and growing as they live. Lesser spells, no matter how robust, would eventually be wiped away."

"Like when you came to us," Dusk said. "Your magic made you look like kin, smell like kin. But you weren't kin underneath. You became yourselves again eventually. If you changed Stride, or any kin for that matter, the magic would go away. They'd have gotten older, and might die right away. Whatever we build here cannot require magebloods to maintain— unless you're suggesting that as we change some, their own magic can be used to change others." He shook his head. "No. We will want to remain ourselves."

Archive's horn glowed, and she teleported something from the workshop across the town onto the table in front of her. Having a perfect memory made such magic almost trivial for her— when she knew the exact position of an object, teleporting it was not a difficult task.

What she'd brought was a necklace, not unlike those many deer wore as their only form of clothing. It used beads made from semi-precious minerals roughly sanded into rounded shapes, and had a metal clasp at the back. She held it up, showing the intricate beads to Dusk. Every one of them was covered in runes, which glowed faintly even now.

"A living creature's pattern always changes, but if the spell isn't cast on a living creature, then it can't get erased. Any deer who wears this…"

Dusk snatched it away from her, turning it over in his hooves. Deer didn't have near the dexterity ponies did, at least not naturally. That was partially why their society was so communal— it was much easier to accomplish basic tasks with two deer than it was with two hooves.

"If this works…" he trailed off, lowering his head to eat the leaf in front of him. He rose then, taking bowl and necklace both. For once, Archive followed his lead.

The sky fractured into mixed shafts of orange, gold, and canary as dawn began in the east. It illuminated Comox, a village looking not unlike a frontier fort from the 1700s. A high wall made from sturdy sharpened tree-trunks surrounded the entire thing, the whole thing made of secure woodwork. There were no mounted guns, but deer serving as today's guards had crossbows with them. No uniforms, no clothes besides jewelry and accessories anywhere.

There were no work schedules, no formalized jobs, yet not a single deer idled. Even in the most dedicated ponies Alex had never seen individuals as hardworking as the deer. They were always busy, always seemed to know exactly where they should be and what they needed to do there.

"You won't be making more of these, I guess." Dusk said, cutting straight across Comox to the medical building.

Even with her longer Alicorn legs, it was a struggle for Alex to keep up. So far as Alicorns went, she guessed she was about the size of the Equestrian Twilight Sparkle. It was hard to remember for certain, since that had been before her perfect memory.

"No," she admitted. "The magic it required from me was significant. The spell would require a hundred unicorns to recreate. It would not be possible to make enough for an entire tribe."

"We wouldn't want them," he said again. "We are kin. If we were something else, we would not be ourselves. I know the other Elders will think likewise. This does not mean I think your tool should be thrown out, however."

The medical building was a log cabin, like all their more permanent structures meant to offer some protection. "No Kin knows as you know All-crafted. But Stride is close. To lose both at once, when we have only the writing you left us… this would be a terrible thing to endure. Comox might not survive it."

They passed through the door, into a low space lit by small windows. Glass was terribly difficult for the deer to make, but in a medical building like this the ability to keep out the cold and also exchange air with the outside when they wanted was simply too important to rely on fire and roof ventilation exclusively.

There was only one occupant in the many low beds— built after the pony style, not patches of living turf as the deer preferred. "Stride saw what we have only heard in stories," he whispered. "If she put this on, she would live… how long?"

"Another two hundred winters," she answered. "At least. Possibly as many as fifty more, it's hard to say. But as you said… take the necklace off once, and time catches up. She would die immediately."

In front of them was an old deer, her coat almost completely grey. Her legs twitched, her body locked into a partial rigor. The smells around her bespoke other parts of her body failing. Had Stride not been the effective founder of this new tribe, had it not been summer and a time of plenty, she would have been dead long ago.

Alex was still working on teaching the importance of caring for the old and sickly who wouldn't recover. Even Dusk had trouble with that one.

"You are certain the spell is safe?" Dusk asked, offering the necklace back."

Alex took it in her brownish magic, levitating it beside her. "The spell will fail before it would hurt the one wearing it."

"She might never be lucid again," Dusk stopped beside the low bed, gently nudging Stride.

The deer looked up, though her eyes went straight to Alex across the room. "I knew it would be you," she said, her voice remarkably clear. "Mother's champion. The endless trees are calling— they're so close. All around us." Despite Dusk's predictions, her words came with only a slight slur. Her eyes wandered, yet they seemed to focus on Alex clearly.

Alicorns were liminal beings— this wasn't the first time Alex had seen this. The sick and dying always recognized her role more clearly than the healthy. Maybe the felt he supernal through her, even if her mane no longer flickered.

Alex gestured with one hoof. "Give us a moment, Hebalist Dusk."

He stared, his mouth opening and closing. "She hasn't been this clear in weeks! Maybe we don't—"

"Out," she gestured again, and her tone would permit no argument.

The stag grunted and pawed at the ground, nostrils flaring. Then he turned and stalked off.

Alex turned her eyes on Stride. To her magical senses, the deer wasn't weeks away from death— she was minutes. Something was pulling on her, the irresistible pressure of a distant… mystery. The iridescent veil obscured her eyes as much as anyone's. Maybe there really was an endless forest on the other side. Maybe there was oblivion.

"Are you ready to go?" She asked, ignoring the sudden warmth of her face as she walked to the side of the bed, looking down into Stride's eyes.

"I think so," Stride said. She spoke so slowly, each word coming with its own breathy struggle. "I once knew only hardship. When I go, I can take hope with me that the kin who come after will live better." She reached out with one hoof. "You can take me now."

"Not quite," Alex spoke soothing, pushing the feeble hoof gently back. "What if I had a labor for you. Would you do it for me?"

Stride's lips parted in a smile, though the sound came out more like a leaking cask. "Too late for that."

"Not quite." Archive levitated the necklace. "What if I asked you to live a little longer, for you kin? To stay behind and teach them, for another hundred winters. Another two hundred, maybe. Until they don't need you anymore."

Stride's eyes widened. "You can do this?"

Archive nodded. "I can." She reached up, touching the faint streak of white in her mane. "No one understands death as I do. You won't live forever… but it might seem that way. If you take it, you will watch your children die. You'll watch your friends waste away, over and over again."

Stride didn't say anything, not for a long time. Then she nodded. "You take away my rest, All-Crafted."

"Only postpone it," Alex responded, lifting the necklace high over Stride's neck.

"Dusk, come back! One of the Kin needs to witness this."

The buck couldn't come running— he was only a year or two away from being bedridden himself. He came swiftly enough, still smelling angry. "You changed your mind?"

"No. But my conversations with the dead are sacred. Stride deserved her privacy." She secured the clasp with a brief flash of magic, melting the metal together like solder. Then she stepped back.

"Stride isn't dead."

"Not anymore."

"I don't feel anything," Stride said. The rasp in her voice was gone. "Wait, no. What's…" a shiver passed through her, along with a deep, relaxed sigh.

The transformation took only a few seconds. She shrunk rapidly, the small bed growing until she was only as large as the largest fawns. Pony sized. Her coat went from grey back to healthy brown, with spots along her back and slighter warmer colors on her belly. Her legs thickened, her eyes and head got bigger. No cutie mark appeared on her flank— Archive's spell had not changed her soul.

It seemed fitting that Stride wouldn't grow a horn or wings. The necklace could make any kind of pony, finding the closest match just as the preservation spell did. She got a little thicker, more muscular, and a mane and tail of bright cream grew to complete the transformation. The necklace itself shrunk with her, fitting perfectly on her smaller pony frame. There it would remain, until Stride died.

"Under the Mother's belly," Dusk muttered, mouth hanging open in shock. He reached forward, touching the edge of one of Stride's legs with his own.

Stride's eyes jerked open, and she inhaled sharply. There was no fluid sound in her lungs, no raspiness. Her deep green eyes had no trace of confusion in them, and they focused immediately on Archive. She sat up, not looking away.

The touch of death on her spirit was gone. The 'eternal forest' would receive one fewer victim today. "I feel so… young. Did you make me a fawn again?" Her voice was musical— like any young pony's, always one step away from a song. Not the harsh, clipped way of the deer.

"Not quite." Archive reached out, helping her to her hooves. "Would you mind bringing the mirror, Dusk?"

The stag strode away without a word.

"What then?" Stride looked down at herself, and confusion spread slowly there. "Is this the masterwork? You told me you wouldn't be able to find it…"

"No. If I'd discovered the spell that could stretch your lives, I would've already given it to the whole tribe." Archive pointed at the necklace. "Anyone who wears that necklace will be changed."

Dusk arrived about then, dragging the polished metal "mirror" in his mouth. Alex took it from him in her magic, turning it on Stride.

The new earth pony stared up at herself for nearly five full minutes. She twisted and moved, sitting up more properly in bed. She touched her face with her hooves, stretched her legs, even lifted her tail. With each new detail she seemed more embarrassed.

Finally she dropped onto the bed, covering her face with one leg. "The Mother herself has never seen a shame like mine."

"You're an earth pony," Archive said. "You'll be able to use the mother's power directly now. Get to know her as no kin ever did. More importantly, I'll never be as good at this as you are. Making myself one of you didn't help me understand… making you like me give you centuries to help Kin understand."

Stride sighed. "I will need a new name." She pawed at the ground, in the nervous way deer often did. "My mother's name for me is wrong."

"That's stupid," Archive sat down on her haunches. "The changes are external. I've done nothing to your mind, your spirit… you're still a deer."

She laughed, shaking her head vigorously. "You created me, All-Crafted. Now you have to name me. That's the proper way."

"It is," Dusk agreed. "Strangest fawn-naming I've ever seen, but still needed. Names must be true."

Archive rolled her eyes, but didn't object. Deer often got this way, insisting that there was some specific requirement for something. Once they made a decision, they would never change it. "I name you… Long Watch." There was more to the ritual. Alex had only ever seen a handful of namings, but of course it only took one for her to remember. The one who gave a name also gave a blessing, supposedly chosen by the Mother. A fawn's mother could speak for the great mother of all, it was thought.

"I give you the wisdom to teach what you never thought you knew. I give you the creativity to dream in ways you never imagined. I give you the duty to watch over the Kin in the Mother's place. Now your watch begins— may it not end until your death."

"The Mother hears and witnesses your blessing," Dusk said, his head bowed reverently. "Welcome, sister Long Watch."

* * *

They left three days later, just in time to meet Alex’s deadline.

Hundreds of Comox’s deer were there to say goodbye, arrayed in their finest and watching from behind the walls. Alex exchanged ceremonial farewells with many of them, which she managed to do without mispronouncing anything important or offending anyone. Somehow.

She walked towards Comox’s open gate, where the greatest deer of the tribe were assembled to bid her farewell. Four elders, two of each sex, though one of the doe was now an Earth Pony and stood far shorter than the others.

Alex stopped three paces away from the elders, bowing only slightly to them. Her apprentices bows much deeper, one on either side. She was wearing her familiar saddlebags, while each of them wore mundane equivalents.

“All crafted one,” said Knows-Moss-From-Season, the tallest and strongest of the bucks. “You and yours will be sorely missed in this place.” He gestured, and one of the mares, Weaves-Perfect-Canopy, brought forward a basket. The interior glittered with jewlery, so full it seemed to drag on the ground. “May you return to your families in safety.”

Archive levitated something out of the bag she was wearing, a dark rock marked only with her cutie mark. She set it down in front of the mare to take instead of the basket, while she lifted the basket into her saddlebags to take its place. “You have treated me always with great kindness. I leave this kindness in return: if the tribe is ever in danger, break this stone and I will return.”

“By the Mother’s will, we will not need to,” Dusk said, smiling at her. “Our way of living will spread. There will be many villages like ours, and we can join together with you and your friendly Magebloods in prosperity and mutual protection.”

“No matter how long that takes, I will be waiting. Whether it be one winter, or a thousand. The All-Crafted leaves you this promise.”

More bowing and scraping. Nancy stepped forward next, wearing one of Alex’s old “adventuring” outfits, consisting of an open skirt with a tank-top and boots. She was about Alex’s own age now, at least so far as appearances were concerned. Lean, mature, and beautiful, with a mane and tail cut short to imitate the deer. She pushed forward a small basket, one she’d woven herself, filled with little lumps of golden metal.

“I return the Kin’s kindness,” she said, her Dutch only slightly accented. “The place of my fawning will be precious to me forever.”

This time Swift stepped forward to take the offering, and traded it for a faux-leather satchel, filled with primitive tools. The sort a deer might use to make camp while traveling through hostile territory, made at the metalworking shop in Comox. “Honor her ways and the Mother will protect you,” Long Watch promised, before taking the container. “And keep an eye on the outsider for us.”

All eyes flicked briefly to Dividend, and the deer shared a collective laugh. As the pony was not kin, there was no ritual expected of him, no exchange of gifts with the tribe.

The redish unicorn, for his part, echoed the laugh in an awkard, halfhearted way, with only seemed to amuse the deer further. One of the bucks reached forward and slapped him on the shoulder, a little too hard for pony comfort. He winced, though obviously tried to hide the pain. “Bye forever,” he said, each word a struggle. More laughter was the only response.

Long Watch walked with them out of the gate, even as the other deer returned to their duties. Even in the body of a pony, she seemed to move a little strange. Bounding instead of walking, loping from step to step. Her body wasn’t built for it, and the struggle in each step was apparent. She wouldn’t be able to keep pretending she was still a deer forever.

“Will you travel back through the void?” she asked, once they’d cleared the gates. They passed through sparse fields, which mixed freely with the native trees. Deer did not clear away forests for their fields, unless they actually needed the wood. One of the many customs she’d failed to help them shake. “I do not like the thought of a doe and two fawns traveling alone with winter coming.”

“No,” Archive answered, grinning slyly at her. “We’re flying. Much slower than a teleport, but the other advantages were too good to pass up.”

“Uh…” Dividend looked up, his horn glowing faintly. As if to remind them both that he was, in fact, still a unicorn. “I’ll have a hard time flying, master Alex.” His English was far better than his dutch, though he still had an accent.

The unicorn was at least a year younger than Nancy, though a combination of his sex and species meant he was about the same height. A little more sturdily built, thanks to the hard labor he’d done in the fields. Noble Calling would not be expecting the son Archive would return to her.

“We won’t be using wings,” Alex said. They were approaching a very large clearing, one they’d been using for winter wheat but was now empty, freshly ploughed. There were already no trees growing here, so the Deer didn’t mind growing a monoculture. At least they don’t expect other cultures to follow their strange, strict rules.

“Oooh!” Nancy bounced up and down, wings opening an closing with her excitement. “You finally convinced them to come? After all this time?”

“Isaac wanted to get a good look at our progress.” Alex responded.

She turned away from the younger ponies, facing the older one. Long Watch had turned, looking back towards Comox in the distance.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she said.

Alex ignored her complaint, embracing her with all the love and affection she could. Despite her angry words, the pony didn’t resist, and clung just as tightly in return. “You don’t have to,” Alex whispered. “Just do good here. You have the communication stone, right?”

Watch nodded, holding up one hoof. She now wore a bracelet there, with a single green stone glowing there.

“Anytime you need advice, you ask. I can’t promise I’ll give you all the answers. Sometimes I might just give you hints, let your own figure it out. You’ve got some smart deer here.”

She broke apart. The mare didn’t move away, though. She looked down, blushing. “Even if I am… a deer inside, as you suggested… they will see me as an outsider. The next generation may not accept what I have to say.”

Archive shrugged. “Make friends, get them to help you. Worked pretty well for me. Besides… you’re a pony now. You’ve got more magic in your body than the whole tribe. Don’t be afraid to get rough to keep Comox safe. Just keep your hooves on the ground— if you can’t feel the Earth, you can’t use her strength.”

“I know,” Watch rolled her eyes. “How many times did I watch you teach your new Mageblood in Estel.” She looked down at her hooves, trailing off. “I listened to as many as I could. I used to hope… hope that some of what you taught would work for me. It never did.”

“Well, now it will. The Earth Pony stuff, anyway. Just try not to show off too much for the tribe, okay? And…” she lowered her voice to a reverent whisper. “You’ll still get old. When that happens, make sure you make it very clear who your necklace will pass to. I’d suggest personally training as many deer as you can. When you find the one who will replace you, you’ll know.”

“Will you come for me again?” Watch whispered back, just as quietly. “Let me rest for good, next time? Join my ancestors in the forest eternal?”

“I…” Archive hesitated. “That will depend. I don’t get to do that for just anypony.” She poked her in the chest with one hoof. “You said you wanted to see your kin become great. You wanted to give them the gifts I brought to the refugees in Estel. Well, now you get the chance. We got things started, but now you have to finish them. Do that, and you may rest.”

Alex narrowed her eyes, though her tone was playful. “Fail, and I might have to keep you here another two hundred winters.”

Watch laughed. “You were always a strange pony, All-Crafted. Though… what about the Masterwork? Have you given up?”

“No,” Archive took a deep breath. “I think I’ve gone as far as I can. Other kinds of solutions, maybe you or some other deer will come up with. Like that necklace you’re wearing. Someday, it would be possible to get more of these from ponies. I have left copies of the spell preserved in the library. Or maybe some other, exterior solution. There are many possibilities. All move from the outside in, and all would force you to sacrifice your identity in some way.”

“We will not accept it,” Watch said emphatically. “Tools make our lives better. It is good for us to forage less. It is good to learn to mine, to dig metal, and to fend off predators. It is not good to change ourselves. The Masterwork is what we want.”

“I have suspicions…” Archive began. “That the Masterwork won’t be a spell at all. I’ve told you about the Supernal. I think… I think the only way to change the character of your whole species, without giving up your identity… I believe the change must happen there. Someone will have to go up there and make the change. A deer, I think.”

Watch looked as though Archive had told her about the death of a relative. Her ears dropped, tail started to drag. “So it’s impossible,” she moaned. “You said only Alicorns can do that. No deer has that kind of magic.”

In answer, Alex touched her own throat with one hoof, where Long Watch’s new necklace hung. “One deer does. Choose your replacement carefully— they might be the one to do it. If you don’t.”

Watch huffed in annoyance. “Why don’t you ask me to move the sun while you’re at it? While you ask impossible things, might as well ask for a way to bring more warmth to the winters.”

“Please don’t move the sun,” Archive did not sound amused anymore. “We need it right where it is. Stick to helping the kin. I’ll be expecting regular updates.”

“You will have them.” Long Watch turned away, and started back to the village. “Fly safely.”

Friendly Invasion

Epilogue - Some years later

Chip looked down at Alexandria from the highest point on its tower. From her perch all that they had built was visible—the ramshackle housing she’d lived in with Chives, the sturdy stone buildings of the wealthy, and everything in-between. Chip no longer needed to climb all the way up here to have a good view, not with as many drones as she now controlled.

Chip was queen in more than just species, now. It wasn’t just that she’d grown as tall as Study, though she had. It wasn’t just that she had a crown. It wasn’t even that she could now see through the eyes of every slave in the city, though she could. More than any of that, it was that she led them. Am I the kind of queen I expected you to be, Riley? She didn’t have Riley to ask, didn’t have anything beyond the memorial and the last testaments of the queens to judge herself by.

The air up here was very cold, but Chip had plenty of glamor to keep her warm. Magic could keep back the chill, even in the beginnings of winter. In a few more weeks there would be snow on the ground, the single greatest reason that the slave-drones had died. They no longer died that way anymore.

“You see it, Inversion?” asked the voice beside her, pointing off the balcony with one hoof. He wasn’t willing to get any closer to the edge, not like she was. If Study slipped off the slick crystal, he was unlikely to magic himself to safety in time. Pony minds couldn’t work that fast.

But Chip’s could. She could feel thousands of bodies, each going about their assigned tasks. Some worked, some fed, some slept or ate or cleaned themselves. They were all her, and yet they were also her sisters, and also her children too. It was confusing.

She had some help, at least. About a dozen of her own treasured first batch of changelings weren’t just alive, but conscious as well. With abundant glamor and the skill of a pony who had worked the nursery for centuries, Chip had given each of them the missing spark that led to sapience. They were controllers, intelligent, independent drones. Her advisors, helpers, and friends.

Study seemed to realize she wasn’t going to respond, because he went on. “They say there’s a god leading that procession. The third battalion was completely destroyed, ponies say. I’m not sure I want her here no matter what she brings.”

This was finally enough to attract Chip’s attention. Yelleron had many wars, both large and small, and she’d never really bothered to pay attention to them more than the opportunity they presented. More ponies at war had meant more jobs undone, more jobs her drones could take as they became more common around the city. Even now there were over a thousand moving through the streets, fixing broken roads, mending roofs, and performing every other menial task.

“Riley always thought it was best to stay away from the powerful. Bugs don’t fly too close to the fire without getting burned. Of course, that didn’t stop her from becoming one of those fires by the end. It’s what queens do, I guess.”

Chip had made only one change to queen Riley’s ancient policies: she’d started giving drones names. Even the youngest, most mindless creatures of instinct got them. She named so many drones that she ran out of pony names and started using human names. Ran out of those, and so she started using technical concepts, or cities, or anything she could think of. Her drones didn’t rotate through the city in their crews—they stayed in the areas they worked, getting to know the ponies who lived nearby.

“Nothing you say about changelings comforts me, Inversion. I don’t understand why Equestria would have introduced them to Earth. All the misery you’ve experienced… why?”

She had lost fifteen of her sisters in arms during her childhood, dead without even a name. Not even one more drone would live like that. “I asked myself that, when I first came back.” She stared off into the distance. Past the high walls her own drones had repaired, past the fields. Far away, at the limits of her sight, she could see Idyia’s army. Huge rolling cargo vehicles, laying railroad tracks as they went. Smoke belched into the air behind them, turning the sky dark for miles. Where had she gotten the steel?

“Did you ever come up with an answer?” Study finally got over his fear of heights, sliding up beside her. He didn’t seem to mind her true body, not since she’d grown to a height and elegance even real ponies couldn’t imitate. What were a few extra holes compared to that? It meant that, for the moment, Study still provided for her personal glamor needs.

She shrugged. “I thought I was a good person, back on Earth. I was furious that God would reward me for all my hard work by making me into a freak.” She held up one hoof. “I had a friend back in Alexandria…” She hesitated, straining her memory to try and remember the pony’s name. He’d worked on a farm, she knew that much. They’d taken the trip down together. “Well, whoever he was. Real religious type. He thought that maybe God wasn’t punishing me. Maybe it was an opportunity.”

“I thought you were an atheist,” Study whispered, into her ear. How he’d come to be so close to her, Chip didn’t know. But she didn’t mind. Study’s company was always welcome. Now if she could only convince him to let her make him a changeling…

“Yeah, well.” She shrugged one wing, dismissively. “I’ve gone through lots of different beliefs. When I was a drone I sometimes thought Riley was God. M-my mueen, I mean. Thought she couldn’t do wrong, like she gave order to the whole world. But when I was myself, I saw clearer.” Far below, the sun was rising. She watched it in silence for a few moments, as shafts of yellow and orange crossed the farmland, the walls, the city. Watched as it rose behind Idyia and her army. An army without weapons, led by a goddess.

“Did I ever tell you the story of where changelings came from?”

Study shook his head, before resting it against her neck. “I don’t recall, no. But how would you know, if they weren’t supposed to be here to begin with?”

Chip ignored the question. Such knowledge was only known to queens, and she would not be the one to violate that covenant. “When the world was young, it had only two kingdoms. One was filled with love, with warmth and happy ponies. The other kingdom was a wasteland, dry and scorched. The first queen was the least of all insects in that kingdom. She had been killed over and over, known every torture, but it didn’t matter. The dry kingdom knew no death, and so she suffered forever.

“The other kingdom grew so bright and full of love, that she noticed. Even if they treated me the same, even if I suffered and died there, for in that kingdom there was death, you see, even then it would be worth it, if I could know love once first.”

Study retreated from her a few hoofsteps, staring fearfully. “That sounds like…”

She nodded. “My human ancestors were outcasts. My changeling ancestors were Outsiders.” She flicked him with her tail. “Don’t interrupt the story! Anyway, she waited a very long time for a way across. Many forevers passed, but that didn’t matter since time didn’t exist either. Anyway, eventually she found a way across. Something bad had happened in the pony’s world, and that made their world dry enough for a few moments for her to cross. She did, and many more ponies died. She wanted to understand them, but her nature was too different and they all died. But then she met a pony who didn’t run. A pony who wasn’t afraid, who tried to help her.

“The pony didn’t live very long. Even their honest love could not protect them from the withering touch of death. But before the pony died, they gave the first queen something. She had her first daughter. The first queen’s touch had been corruption, but instead of destroying she had created. She could die in peace, content that she had created something that would endure. ‘To be unbound is not a blessing, child,’ she cautioned, as she died. ‘Each day you are less like me is a day I grow more proud.’

“None of the queens know for sure what she meant. Riley believed the first queen wanted us to find a way free of the need for glamor. We even… once. We did it once. I think one day we’ll do it again.” She leaned against him again, exhaling. “I have a drone in position, Study. I’m about to stop the caravan.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you,” Study said, gesturing towards the hatch. But maybe from inside the tower, okay? If you won’t be paying attention here, there is no point to stay somewhere so unsafe.”

Study was referring, of course, to how out-of-focus Chip became when assuming total control over a drone. She was still young, and the effort demanded much of her concentration when she took them over completely. Enough that she would smile and nod to everypony around her, and only major events could distract her.

She let Study lead her down the hatch into the university, even as she let her mind drift, extending miles and miles across the countryside until she was somewhere else.

Even a controller in her swarm could be taken over this way, though Chip had never known a queen to do that. She hadn’t chosen one of her smart drones for this task anyway, but one of the youngest, only recently grown enough to fly. She was still in the tower, still working in the city, but now she was also walking down the road, towards the massive machines. With a brief moment of concentration, the drone transformed until it looked like a body she’d used a long time ago, a plain blue unicorn with several different shades of blue in his mane and tail. A form only two ponies in the whole world would remember.

Idyia’s machine was like nothing she’d seen before on Earth, at least not in person. It was nearly fifty feet high, more like a rolling fortress than a vehicle. It leveled the land before it, crushing and scattering rubble, and she knew that behind it was a leveled road with a single track of rail down the middle and telegraph wires running alongside. How it worked she didn’t know, but she could hear and see many parts moving as it went. Rams and blades to clear the earth, gaping jaws to swallow debris, smokestacks belching smoke on its back. About four stories up, she could see a control booth with glass windows, and ponies inside.

She, or he, or whatever Chip was at this point, stopped right in the path of the machine and waved up at the control booth with one hoof. For a few terrible seconds, it seemed like she was about to be run over. Chip hesitated on the edge of teleporting away, not willing to allow even a year-old drone to die in the name of her experiment. Was this Alicorn really so callous that she would run over a pony who got in her way?

No, it turned out the machine was just very slow to stop. Grinding gears protested loudly, and treads taller than a house chugged to a halt, less than twenty feet from her. Chip looked up the metal surface… and up, and up, and up.

But before she could move to climb it, she felt a brief flash of disorientation. For a fraction of a second the connection was broken, and the poor drone was terrified to have her gone. She gasped and spasmed, as she might’ve if the drone was killed. But she hadn’t been, and after another moment Chip’s vision returned.

She’d been teleported onto the bridge. It looked nothing like what she’d expected—far more space age than steampunk. Maybe fifty feet across, with consoles arranged around the outside. Even stranger, there were humans sitting in many of them. Chip stared, opening and closing her mouth several times but unable to form words. How can I have a connection to a drone inside the CPNFG? How does she still look like me?

Though it was no starship, the machine had a captain’s chair in the center, and someone sitting in it. A blue-haired human he knew well. They’d fought alongside one another on several occasions, after all. “Hello Isaac,” he said, inclining his head a little. “A pleasure to see you back in Alexandria again.” Her English was a little rusty from disuse, but she did her best.

Armed guards had approached from the walls as she appeared, though who had done the teleporting she couldn’t know. There were no unicorns in this room, just humans with brightly colored hair. What was more, she could sense magic coming from them. A drone’s magical senses were very weak, but there was no missing magical activity when she felt it. How is this possible?

“Kirk?” Isaac stared at him, stupefied. “Didn’t you die? After Riley…” He stumbled forward, looking him over. “Those queens would’ve eaten you alive.” Isaac hadn’t changed much in the centuries Chip spent frozen. He still had the implants running down his spine, though he was taller now and they were further apart. His hair was so long it was almost a tail in its own right, and had even been loosely braided like one. Like all these humans he had strangely delicate features, almost elfin. At least there were no pointed ears.

“My sisters? They were something else, weren’t they?” He shook his head. “No, not dead. Riley put me on ice. Guess she… well, that’s for someone else. I’m here to meet with Idyia.”

“You mean you don’t know?” Isaac raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and honestly. “Look, I know she’s here to meet with the king, but that asshole barely does anything to run the city anyway. I’m here to negotiate the safety of my swarm in the transition. Whoever this pony is, I know she respects refugees. I know she’ll hear me out.”

At that moment a large elevator door opened on the opposite side of the room, and three ponies hurried out. One was another unicorn, a stallion she’d never seen. The other two…

One she had half expected, though she hadn’t let herself hope. Not after centuries of waiting in vain… He supposed Isaac wasn’t the only one who would be getting a surprise today.

“Alex,” he muttered, staring at the Alicorn. This wasn’t the pegasus she remembered from many years before, the one who’d been murdered. “You came back.”

“Hey Chip.” She smiled at him, the same exact smile she’d seen hundreds of times during hundreds of visits. It came with love too, deeper than anything Chip had ever felt. The simple appreciation she felt for one of the ponies who’d helped her in the early days of Alexandria. Well, helped Riley. But that was one and the same. “Riley’s still kicking, is she? Sent you out to say hello?”

Chip shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately not. Riley, uh… discovered that even a powerful changeling queen has a maximum effective lifespan. If she had wanted to live much longer, she would have needed the glamor of an entire nation. She was unwilling to do so, and…”

“This is old news, Alex,” Isaac said. “We would have covered it if it were relevant. But most of those queens starved during the plague. Any who didn’t would certainly be dead by now.”

“I see.” Alex walked over to him, offering her open hooves. “I’m sorry you lost your queen, Chip. I know how much Riley meant to you. She meant the world to me too.”

Chip accepted the hug, letting Alex embrace her… well, him currently. The stallion was still smaller than she was, though not by terribly much. Alicorns were very tall, though Chip thought Riley still would’ve been taller. In a fraction of a second the poor drone was flooded with all the glamor its little stomach could take. So much that Chip felt the sudden presence of a second, intelligent mind. All that from just one hug?

“Wait, you said…” The voice came from behind Alex, one of the ponies who had followed her in. The mare. “Did you just say ‘Chip’?”

“Oh, yes.” Alex broke away, turning to face the pink pegasus. “Chip, this is my apprentice Nancy. Nancy, this is Chip. I knew him back when I lived in this city, a long time ago. He…”

“I knew a Chip.” Nancy’s voice broke, and she rushed forward, stopping inches away from him. She stared at him with suspicious eyes, ignoring the Alicorn completely. “Before I came to Estel. But she didn’t look like you.”

“No,” Chip agreed, then dismissed the illusion. The young changeling drone was missing the mane and tail, but was about the same height Nancy would remember her. She was now the shortest pony in the room, but she didn’t care. “She probably looked like this, huh?”

“A-a little.” Nancy’s voice cracked again, and a few tears started streaming down her face. Everypony else just stared, completely dumbfounded.

Of course, Chip didn’t have to guess about her emotions. She could sense the recognition. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Posy. I’m sorry I couldn’t save your dad.”

Posy broke down completely at that point, right there in the center of the bridge. Humans and ponies alike awkwardly stared at her, or pretended not to see. Chip, for one, didn’t care, as it was time for a hug of her own.

“They told me h-he… gave me up… told them where I lived, s-so he could have m-money for…”

“No…” Chip whispered, into her ear. “They lied. When Chives learned what they were planning, he fought even though he knew he wouldn’t win. He died… t-trying to keep you safe.”

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Far away in a tower, Study was asking her why she was crying. Chip didn’t have the concentration to spare to answer.

“I don’t mean to interrupt…” Alex nudged Chip’s back with one hoof. “Could you please explain what the hell is going on, Chip? I kinda have a city to conquer here…”

“No!” Posy screamed, rising and flaring both wings. “Chip is going to tell me what happened after I left. She’s going to tell me everything, and you’re gonna wait.”

“I’ll send another drone,” Chip whispered to Alex, looking a little apologetic. “I’ll explain everything when I get here.”

Even “Idyia” seemed a little confused as Posy dragged Chip to the elevator, passing a slack-jawed unicorn on the way.

Funerary Rites

Alex knocked lightly on the door with the edge of one hoof. She wasn’t wearing any regalia today, not even a crown. She wasn’t even wearing her old saddlebags, but a fresh pair made from sturdy white cloth.

The manor was one of the finest in the city, built from the ruins of an old skyscraper. The door opened only seconds after she knocked, and a pony wearing a dark suit bowed politely to her. “You’re here to see your mother, Princess?”

“I am.” She made her way to the elevator, waiting politely as a crowd of teenagers piled out.

There were six or seven of them, no two the same race. One of them was even human, if the new class of “Homo arcanus” residents could be considered human. She alone stared at Alex as they walked past, pointing so the others would notice. Their lewd conversation fell to hush whispers, and they came to an awkward halt.

She walked past them into the elevator, waving with one hoof. Archive often took the time to converse with individual ponies, hearing their concerns and reporting anything she learned to her friends in congress. But today, she was in a rush. Mary couldn’t be kept waiting much longer.

The elevator had an attendant, a young unicorn with a bored expression who nearly spit up his coffee when he saw who was getting in.

“Top floor,” Archive said, standing in the corner of the elevator and looking down, in the silent code of elevator passengers through the ages.

“R-right away.” The attendant didn’t wait for the minute customary on the bottom floor, just snapped the metal doors shut with his magic and began to propel them upward.

There was nothing electronic about the way elevators worked anymore, only mechanical. Unicorn levitation bore them rapidly up through the building, with a lever-brake to stop them on a given floor.

“Not that I mind…” the attendant began, his voice awkward. “But why not use a balcony, Princess? Why not teleport?”

She often did. But Archive didn’t say that. “I don’t do very much as princess, Gearbox. One of my few duties is to set an example for other ponies to follow. If I want everypony to visit their parents, I have to make sure everybody knows that’s what I do.”

“Right.” He looked down, avoiding her gaze. “Didn’t expect you to just say that. If I’m not being too bold.”

“Not at all.” They were nearing the top of the building now, she could tell. The chain always made the same rattling sound as it started to run out of space. “Besides, this is my last trip up here. No sense taking shortcuts.”

They reached the top-floor suite, and Gearbox brought the elevator to a stop. Archive didn’t wait for his response, just tossed him a few coins for a tip and stepped out.

There was no locked door, only a cozy entryway that led into the rest of the suite. The door that had been here had been propped open with a lump of metal.

It had been almost two centuries since Mary had shared Alex’s modest home in the growing city of Estel.

Archive stepped into a bright, spacious suite, complete with art on the walls, polished wooden floor, and a warm fireplace crackling merrily to fight back the autumn chill.

Not unlike those times many years ago, she found her mother in the kitchen. The surfaces were all polished granite, the appliances all replaced with old-timey mechanical versions. The range had a firebox, and a flume rising up into the ceiling. Even so, it smelled delicious.

Mary had changed as much as her apartment. Her coat had gone gray, with only a splash of green. Her mane was white, spectacles perched on her face.

She also wasn’t alone. A gangly human figure stood in plain white beside her, washing a sink full of dishes with a vaguely disinterested look on her face. She looked less than sixteen years old. “Honored Memory! It’s a pleasure to—”

Archive raised a hoof. “No need for any of that, Keeva.” She gestured to the door. “I’m going to spend some time with Mary. You’re dismissed for the evening.”

“You just want more flan for yourself,” she said, folding her arms.

“Now now.” Mary turned away from the oven, dropping the mit from her teeth. “I made enough for all the grandkids, sweetie. That’s plenty for you too.”

“Are you sure?” Keeva seemed to be looking more for Mary’s approval than Alex’s.

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “Whenever my daughter has that look, I know it’s going to be hours. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Keeva nodded politely, bowed to Archive, and hurried from the room.

“Your latest assistant has some spunk,” Alex said, sitting down on her haunches just outside the kitchen. She knew better than trespassing in her mother’s sacred territory while she was working.

“Keeva’s a sweetheart,” Mary agreed. “Whenever Isaac sent me a sycophant, I sent them back. Keeva has enough sense not to let me have everything I want, so she’s better for my health.”

Alex looked around the kitchen. It looked as though Mary had filled every plate she had with sweets—cinnamon cookies, sugar skulls, several delicious loaves of Pan De Muerto. The smell brought back ancient memories of a childhood she’d all but forgotten.

“Doesn’t look like you’re thinking about your health much anymore, Mom,” she said, gazing around at all the food.

“I cook when I’m troubled,” she answered. “And we both know why that would be. You were taking so long, I was worried St. Michael might get here before you did.”

Archive pawed at the ground. “That isn’t who does it.” She no longer sounded amused. “But she is coming. Just behind me, actually. Maybe… a few minutes.” She reached into her saddlebags, removing the only thing they contained: a slim metal case with a single latch, lifting it up onto the counter beside the sink.

“Is that so?” Mary sounded disinterested as she worked, taking the oven mitt into her mouth again and opening the oven. She moved the flan from inside, resting as it was inside a second dish filled with boiling water that had nearly smoked away.

“The Gray,” Archive said. “In Equestria they called her the Pale Mare, but she doesn’t like that name. Death isn’t supposed to be scary.”

“It’s easy not to be afraid of something that never comes.” Mary spat her mitt onto the counter beside the steaming flan, turning to gently close the oven behind her. “I hope she isn’t mad.”

Alex winced. “We should, uh… finish before she gets here.” She gestured to the box. “It’s time for you to stop pretending, Mom. You’ve been an excellent grandmother, and great-grandmother, but unless you’ve changed your mind…”

She flicked the box open with her magic. Inside was a soft black velvet padding, and resting in the center was a black curve like a small dragon’s scale, made of dark metal and looped onto a silver chain long enough to go around a pony’s neck. “Have you changed your mind about staying?”

“No.” Mary made her way over, legs shaking as she did so. So far as earth ponies went, she was remarkably old—old enough that without medical magic, she would’ve already been dead. “It was a hard thing. Tom’s had thirty years to wait for me already. If I take that, he’ll be waiting a lot longer.”

Archive nodded. “He will, yeah. If you do stay, I’m sure you’ll find others. Dragons do everything at eleven. If you thought estrus was bad…”

“My son is lecturing me about sex again,” Mary said, laughing. “How many relationships have you been in since you became a princess?”

“A few…” Alex looked away, ears flattening.

“My guest room still smells like seawater.”

“I said I was sorry!” She whimpered. “I didn’t plan on bringing him back with me.”

“Of course not,” Mary agreed. “These days, it wasn’t that your boyfriend had too many legs that bothered you, but that he didn’t have any.”

“It feels weird.” Alex covered her face with one wing, trying to hide her embarrassment. “Bringing anypony back to meet you. You’d never have been happy with me if I’d brought a boyfriend back home back in LA.”

“Psh.” Mary brushed her words away. “The church was changing even then. But something tells me you never wanted to.”

Alex didn’t contest the point. Her early journals still preserved a clear record of her early attraction to Sky, despite how fruitless those feelings had been. Sky had never even known about them.

“I’ll admit, some of it is hard to understand. You were gone for…”

“Six months,” Alex supplied.

“Right, six months.” Mary struggled on her legs, and Alex levitated over a cushion from nearby. She dropped onto it, visibly relaxing once she had. “It only took you six months to find a fish handsome enough to want as a boyfriend?”

“It actually took about five minutes.” Alex glanced briefly over her shoulder at the clock she knew was mounted to the wall. Mary was running out of time. “Change into something, and all those primitive parts of your brain get changed too. Otherwise you wouldn’t know how to control your new body, and all your vital organs would stop working.”

“Hold on,” Mary interrupted. “Five minutes? You never told me that.”

She blushed all over again, levitating the case onto the ground at their hooves. “Mom, we’re running out of time here.”

Mary folded her arms, expression stern. Alex knew better than to try and force her. Once Mary made up her mind, it was made up. Even if what she’d decided wasn’t a terribly good idea.

“Fine,” Alex groaned. “Crescendo was in the first pod of seaponies I met. I liked him…” She took a breath. “I liked him even before I changed. Now getting him to like me… Mom, can we talk about this later? Like, when you aren’t about to die?”

Mary’s forelegs stayed folded. “My funeral arrangements?”

“Just like you asked,” Alex agreed. “I found an ordained priest, commissioned a traditional marker, ordered the catering exactly how you asked. You want to know how expensive it was to order meat-buns in a city of mostly herbivores? I really don’t want to think about who we’re eating.”

“Chicken isn’t a who,” Mary scoffed. “Anyway, you better not be lying to me son. If I see even one flower out of place, you’ll be hearing about it for the next century.”

“Nothing will be wrong,” Alex promised. “I have a perfect memory, remember? I made sure.”

“Good.” Mary relaxed. “Did anyone ask why you were paying for a funeral for someone who wasn’t dead yet?”

“No,” she answered. “It actually helps me to start rumors, honestly. Even if some of them end up feeding into that stupid religion…”

Mary reached out, resting a leg on Alex’s shoulder. It felt dry and shriveled, and her whole body shook. “Tell me one thing, Alex. How do you say goodbye to all the people you’ve watched die?”

Alex remembered an ancient city, one that barely knew how to feed itself. She remembered streets paved by humans and a graveyard with mostly humans buried in it. Remembered speaking at the end of a brief ceremony, then spending the night waiting through the snow.

“N-not easily,” she squeaked. “It feels like it’s going to rip my heart out every time. Each pony I lose hurts a different way.”

“Good.” Mary relaxed visibly. “I don’t want it to… to do something that would make me cold. Take away my feelings.”

“Well…” Alex didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to say anything that might discourage her mother from taking the amulet. Yet she didn’t want to lie to her even more. “Some ponies do that. Like the one who made this… or Jackie.”

“Jackie is a delightful pony,” Mary defended. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” she said. “She just doesn’t ever spend time getting to know ponies who aren’t immortal. Her only friends are at least four hundred years old. She kept herself sane by keeping herself from caring too much about ponies who would leave her.”

Mary considered that a moment, then extended a hoof anyway. “Give me your amulet before I change my mind, Alex.”

Alex levitated it out of the box, setting the chain gently around her mother’s neck. “Hold still. If you burn your apartment down, it will make pretending you’re dead very difficult.”

Mary opened her mouth to make a snarky reply, but instead of words a brief burst of greenish flame emerged from her throat.

* * *

Mary’s funeral happened the next day, exactly as she had wanted it. Every daguerreotype of the princess attending the event published in the Estel Journal included a dark-scaled adolescent dragon not named in the text.

The event wasn’t remarkable enough to amount to any sort of holiday in the city. Most ponies who noticed were related to the royal family in one way or another. Tears were shed, prayers were made, and life went on.

When it was all done, Alex arranged a flight to Colorado for her mother, where she could spend the next few months learning not to burn anything down.

As for herself, well… she had a little more swimming to do before she was done with the ocean.

Author's Note

The following chapter was writing as a Patreon Minific sent in by DarksZero! Thanks for the neat idea, it was a lot of fun to write.

Apparently it wasn't Larscis's idea, there were some streams crossed somewhere in the production. Thanks for the idea either way!

Unexpected Predator

Stephen did not like where they were taking him.

Stephen did not like much of anywhere the prey took him, except when they let him loose in the forest to hunt. Yet no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't get away from the big male, the one with the spike on his head.

Stephen remembered what it was like to live out in the forest, where there was ample hunting and little challenged him. Even the towering wolves had kept their distance, as was proper. Stephen was too small to hunt the things they killed, and they were too large to care about what he could hunt best. It had worked forever.

Now he was somewhere else. By reflex, Stephen clawed at the thick metal collar around his neck, tugging at the chain. He rested in the center of something he didn't understand. Like ground, only ground that moved. The prey had trapped him here days and days ago. There was plenty of room on the moving ground to walk in a small circle, to stretch, or to preen himself. There wasn't the freedom to go run off and explore.

The prey pulled his ground-that-moved past forests he had never seen. A million new scents assaulted him, including many of forest unclaimed by any as powerful-smelling as he was. Yet no matter how many times he strained, the thing on his neck wouldn't come off. He couldn't pull it off without damaging the feathers on his neck, he had tried many times. He coudn't bite through the cold rocks that made such awful noise when they jostled together, couldn't shatter them against the ground-that-moved as rocks should be. Couldn't escape.

He couldn't imitate the sounds the prey made, and had no desire to do so. He could let them know of his displeasure, and he had. The prey gave him food to placate him, as they always did. There was no justice in the world, that these prey with no talons and no beaks could produce an endless supply of delicious fish from somewhere he couldn't see. So many times he had begged them to show him how they got it, and always they denied him.

Stephen loved the taste of fish, but he was a terrible fisher. Rabbits and squirrels were easier. Not prey as big as the ones that had brought him from his territory, spent so long making noises at him, until at last they'd given up and trapped him on the ground-that-moves. Where was he going? Stephen had no idea. He would let the prey live so long as they kept giving him fish. Even so, he was considering what he would do to them if they trapped him much longer. There was so much meat on them, he suspected he could eat them forever.

Then they brought him to the mountains.

Not the kind of mountains he could always see far away, with their stone peaks often covered in snow even when it was hot. These were... different. Much smaller, yet they seemed so much taller. Towering over his head, as high as the birds flew above. Higher than Stephen had ever dared climb in even the tallest trees. He could not fly like the birds, even if he had wings like them. How did they know where to go?

The smell of prey went from a small thing to a very big thing. Stephen cowered in the center of the ground-that-moves, hiding his face behind one wing and trying not to be seen. He could smell so much prey... more prey than he'd ever seen. More than the ones who lived in the empty-square-tree near his forest. More even than the forest of empty trees they had taken him when they lured him back.

The prey had made hollow mountains. There were many holes, and when he looked up he saw more of them inside. Herds bigger than the flocks of birds that sometimes flew over his forest. Herds bigger than the biggest schools of fish he had ever seen. Even in the dark, the time the prey seemed so scared, there were many of them walking between their mountains. They stopped to make their noises with the ones who brought him, communicating who knew what terrible things.

Was this Stephen's punishment for hunting near them? Did they take him here to eat him? It seemed hard to believe. The prey that took him had been so good before. They gave him a warm nest, they gave him fish, they made such pretty sounds. Would they really eat him now? How would they do it without beaks?

They wandered for a very long time, until they came to one mountain that was not as tall as the others, but seemed more special. It was made of solid white rock, and like the other mountains it had way too many straight lines. There were not so many openings though, and he wondered if maybe it wasn't hollow. Many prey waited here, and they had to get past a lot going the other way to make it to the opening.

The male got off the ground-that-moves and came around to him. Immidately Stephen rose to his claws, hissing and clawing to keep him away. The male made sounds--not mad sounds, not hungry sounds, just sounds.

Stephen let him know just what Stephen thought of coming here, loudly. Many of the prey stared, some backed away. He smelled their fear. Frightened prey always tasted best.

Stephen had come to expect things around the male that did not make sense. The thing around his neck let him go on its own, and all those loud rocks keeping him prisoner fell to the ground. Stephen made to leap for joy... and found he couldn't. He tried to roar, to claw at the male... but he couldn't. His eyes widened as he moved up into the air, past the crowd of watching prey. He couldn't even yell, couldn't get his revenge... he couldn't do anything.

The female prey followed behind him, making her soothing sounds. The sounds she always made whenever they did something stupid and made him mad. Those sounds sometimes made him feel better. They didn't this time, not as they went into the huge empty mountain, and the sky was gone. Stephen found there was one thing he could do was cry.

Yet he was also a predator, and so he watched. If he needed to escape, he would need to know what this hollow mountain looked like, so he could find his way out.

As usual, the prey used too much light. His eyes hurt at first coming in to see such light. How the prey made light during the night he didn't know. This kind was different than the light the other prey kept in their tree. It did not flicker and change, and it wasn't warm. It came from above, from markings on the roof of the great stone cave, and it never changed. It was too yellow.

There were not many of the prey inside, as there had been outside. Could it be their den, where they took their most precious kills? At least if he was going to be eaten today, it would be good to be treated as the prize he rightfully was. There were three different tunnels in the cave, two big ones on the sides and one small one in the middle. They went to the small one.

More prey waited at the end of the tunnel, different than the ones he had seen before. These prey lived in something shiny and hard, and he could only see their faces. It was the same kind of rock that had kept him from escaping on the way here, impervious to his claws or his beak. These prey also had very sharp claws, and watched him like the wolves of his territory back home. I hope they run slow inside their rocks. It would be his only chance. Like the wolves, he could never fight them. Only show submission to something bigger and earn his place.

But that assumed he would get away.

Past the prey that acted like predators, the cave got very big. It was so high up that he couldn't even see the top, it was so dark up there. The openings that weren't openings couldn't let in light when the sun wasn't up. But there wasn't fake-light in here either. Only one, at the far end of the hall. There were so many things in here he didn't understand, bits of rock and tree and shiny things that filled most of the space but that he could find no names for. Only a dull ache in the back of his head, something he had banished forever ago.

At the end of the cave was a big, empty bit of tree for prey to sit on, and something sat on it. That was where they prey that brought him was going. Maybe when they got there, he would be free to eat them for what they did. He would fight them at least, it was only fair.

The one on the small tree looked like prey. Prey had such silly colors--the male who brought him was purple, so obvious Stephen had seen him easily through the forest. The female behind was almost as orange as the sun. This one was green, so green that Stephen easily could've missed her if she were standing still in the woods. Stephen approved of that color, it was a good choice.

She was bigger too--as big as the male, though she smelled and looked like a she. Green wings almost as big as his, though they were folded. She had no beak, no tallons, but she did have a spike on her head like the male. A bigger one.

She did not smell like prey. Stephen's eyes widened as he took in the smell, and primal fear overtook him. He struggled more vigorously against his invisible captivity, still with no avail. His claws didn't even twitch. Nothing moved except his eyes, and he couldn't scream. He couldn't bow, couldn't get away.

She smelled like the big thunderstorms that knocked down trees. She smelled like the light the prey kept in their hollow tree, but bigger. She smelled like a wolf so big it filled the sky. Her eyes saw him. She made noises, different than the noises he heard before. He knew them, even if he didn't want to. They weren't sounds at all, they were words. "Let him go." Each sound came with a flood, a flood of feelings Stephen did not want to remember.

He fell. He landed upright by instinct, arching his back. He cowered, tucking his tail and making his wings as small as they would go, exposing his throat to this strange prey-looking thing. Like the wolves, it would not do him any good to run away.

The prey made noises back to her, and again Stephen could slip into blissful oblivion. He could start to forget the terrible things he didn't want to remember. The things he had pushed away forever ago. Back when he was still Stephen.

They made noises for a long time, and Stephen thought that maybe he would get away. Maybe the prey would make so many noises that the big one would forget him and he could escape. But no... as he started to back up, he felt something pressing on him again. Different than before. It pulled him by the scruff, and his whole body went limp as he was dragged. The invisible something dragged him past the prey, to the bottom of the little tree where the other one sat.

This is when they eat me.

"I am sorry," said the big one.

Stephen knew what sorry was, and he didn't want to. He cried again, and didn't even care that they could all smell it. "NO!" He remembered no. He didn't want to. He tried to get away, but this time only his legs wouldn't move. He could still struggle, still cry, still flap his wings. But he couldn't run.

"You are comfortable this way," said the big one. "I am sorry to take that from you." The spike on her head got very bright, and Stephen screamed. It was like when he fought the wolves, all over. Pain that made his eyes water, pain that made him scream and shout and claw at the ground. Pain he couldn't stop. Stephen fell into her eyes.

Stephen was somewhere else. He was smaller, though not too much smaller. His feathers were all gone, his fur was gone. He had clothes instead, and was locked into a booster seat in the back of a car. There were two people in the front seats. Mom. Dad. They looked like him--no claws, no wings, just clothes. They laughed and joked with one another. Stephen's dad was driving. It was early in the morning, but all the cars were going the other way. Stephen liked that best, because it meant they could go fast.

"My God," Someone sat beside him in the car. Not the monster-prey, though she had the same eyes. She looked a little like mom, but not as old and not as pretty. Long brown hair, plain features, but still those red-brown eyes. "I am sorry you had to live through this, Stephen." She was sitting in the seat beside him, though she was a grown-up so she didn't have a carseat. She wasn't wearing her seatbelt either.

"What..." Stephen could talk again. It felt very strange, to remember things so old and far away. His mouth felt strange not to have a beak. "What did you do?" His voice sounded high, and he was very small. Eight. I just turned eight.

"I'm amazed you survived, Stephen." she said. Her voice didn't match her body. It sounded like mommy--a grown-up who knew things. A grown up Stephen could trust. "Do you remember where we are?"

He nodded. "Coming home. From... Disney World..." it was such agony to think. His eyes wattered, his arms shook, yet the memories came anyway. They were forced on him whether he wanted them or not. All of Stephen's little boxes, where he put all the things that hurt, they were all dumped out in front of him. He started to cry again, covering his face with both arms. "Stop it! Leave me alone!"

The girl put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Stephen. I can't."

"Why?" He shouted through his tears.

"Because if I do, my spell will be incomplete. You won't change."

"I don't want to change!" he pushed her off, pushed with all his young strength.

She let go, but she didn't let him push her very far. Grown-ups were so strong! "Your old self does," she said. "I'm putting him back together."

"No!"

His scream didn't help. Stephen saw everything whether he wanted to or not. He remembered school, remembered Mrs. Harper's third-grade class. Remembered his parents. Bedtime stories, his favorite food (not just fish, salmon!), the glasses he used to wear, playing minecraft. He remembered being bored at church on Sundays, remembered family reunions and Christmas trees and his cat named Flowers. Stephen remembered himself.

He was still in the backseat of the car. Only it wasn't moving anymore. There had been a flash, screaching tires, his mom screamed... then a jerk. Now he was in his booster, trapped in clothes that felt wrong. His mom and dad were gone, and something else had taken their place. Prey, he would've called them. Now they looked like something he'd seen in a petting zoo at Disney.

Except that, like the car, they weren't moving. They were in a forest. My forest. Smoke rose from the front of the wrecked car, where the engine had been crumpled against a tree. The windshield had been crumpled beyond recognition, as had the rest of the car.

The girl still sat beside him. "You never should've had to see this." she said, still human even though he wasn't anymore. She pulled him out of the belt, where he had remembered clawing his way out before. Held him in her lap as he cried. "I'm sorry to make you remember. Life might be easier for you if you forgot again, but I won't do that?"

"W-why?" he looked up at her, brushing away his tears with one leg. Humans were so big, so unnatural... and the smell was like nothing he remembered.

"The ones who brought you here... they came to me so I could help you."

"I don't want... don't want to hurt this much."

"I know," she held him up, and suddenly there was no car, no forest, no bodies. She wasn't human anymore either, but the gigantic monster he had thought would eat him. "I will take some of it from you, Stephen. If I didn't, you might slip back eventually into the thing you were. I will take the pain, but not the memories. No child deserves to lose his parents."

"W-what... how..." so much didn't make sense. Even with all his memories forced upon him again, Stephen didn't understand. She was nothing like the things he remembered. She did not belong in the world he had left behind.

"I am a princess, Stephen," she said, as though she could hear his thoughts. "I know your pain like it was my own. I will give your my understanding of the way your mom and dad would feel for you, right now. I will give you their understanding."

Stephen felt love as he had never felt it before, filling him and filling him until he threatened to explode. Not simple affection--it was hope for him, hope that he would make something good in his new world. Prayers for a future he could take, if he wanted. Laughter from his mother, whispered encouragement from his father. Confidence in his abilities and pride for his resilience.

The festering wound of Stephen's mind scarred over.

He still cried. Cried as he opened his eyes, and saw the prey who had brought him as he had not seen them before. They weren't a potential meal--they were another mom and dad, one that had discovered him in loneliness and pain and brought him here to heal. Stephen rose, and found he was no longer restrained. He ran to them, and embraced them as he had never done before. Stephen remembered what a hug was.

"Thank you," he said, through the tears. They didn't even seem all that surprised to hear him.

The monster sitting on the thing Stephen now knew was called a throne spoke before the others could, her voice no longer seeming so terrible. "Make it count," she said, rising to her hooves and turning to leave. "Don't let yourself forget this time."

Hulopoe Bay

Dr. Rebecca Thomas stared down at the book in her hooves, skimming the same heading she’d read a dozen times.

The generation and utilization of electrical energy is far easier than many of in the modern world realize. Nearly 95% of the electricity generated before the Event ended the word was produced using motion and the laws of electromagnetism. The basic principle of these laws is this: An electric field produces a magnetic field exactly perpendicular to itself, and vice-versa. Motion of permanent magnets perpendicular to coils of copper wire, then, can be used either to generate power as the rotor to which the magnets are attached is spun. Or, by rapidly alternating the direction of electrical flow in coils of wire, generate a magnetic field that causes the permanent magnets to spin (and thus the rotor and load to which it is attached).

Storing the power you generate is another matter, however. I anticipate your rebooting society will need to (at least initially) use the power as it is generated. Harnessing falling water per the wheel designs proposed earlier in this text will be most effective, simply attach the rotor mechanism with its magnets instead of a mechanical load. Sample diagrams follow. Remember, permanent magnets can themselves be created using ferrous metals and electromagnets, as previously instructed.

Rebecca examined the diagrams carefully, moving her hoof slowly down the page and comparing them with her own construction. She was enormously proud of what she’d built, strapped together largely with coconuts, bamboo, and lashings of thin grasses.

It looked like most things did in her camp, jury-rigged from whatever she could find on the island. A sturdy lean-two made from palm fronds and a floor of flat, square mud tiles. A burrow to store fruit she’d gathered, sheltered from the heat of the sun and the thieving paws of small animals. A spiked bamboo fence to protect her from predators, and to discourage the island’s natives from bothering her. It even did one of those things. Her clothing too—a woven skirt of grasses, a wide straw hat, all of which she’d made herself.

There were some exceptions. Most of them were still stored away on the research catamaran, dragged far up onto the beach, and lashed to large trees with sturdy nylon cord. Several flags still hung from the mast. The UN’s bright blue was at the very top, along with an American flag and that of the state of Hawaii. Various government identification markings were plastered to the catamaran’s expensive composite, only slightly bleached from their months in the sun.

Arrayed in Rebecca’s camp were several sturdy black waterproof crates, which she’d removed from the catamaran using what she had learned to call magic. She wasn’t sure if she liked the name—for all this “Archive” apparently knew about science and history, she made some dreadful choices in naming things. Magic, ponies, unicorns… couldn’t the author have found someone to ask for advice who wasn’t a small child?

The book in front of her might very well be the only reason Rebecca had lasted as long as she had. It was perhaps two inches thick, with a sturdy cover that shut out water when the straps were fastened.

“I hope this is what you had in mind, Archive.” Rebecca said to the book, as though it could listen to her. Aside from this clearly inhuman body, the book was the only new thing that had appeared when she had ‘returned’ from the event. Who was Dr. Thomas to talk to, if not its author?

“Well, here goes nothing…” Rebecca traced over the generator one last time. She had diverted a nearby stream, one that ran directly into the ocean, so that its water traveled down a chute and struck the open coconut shells of her generator sideways. All she had to do was pull the wooden stopper out of the way, and water would spill down. She had stolen copper from anything she could, though most of it had come from the catamaran’s outboard motor. It wasn’t like the boat was still seaworthy anymore anyway.

Rebecca pulled the woven rope, and watched as water gushed down the chute. It leaked in places, because of course it would, but most of it continued straight on towards the generator. It struck, and the rotor began to spin.

The DC input on her battery bank lit up with a faint green LED, the first sign of life she’d seen in months. Another second later, and the charging light came on.

Rebecca jumped gleefully into the air, squeaking with pleasure. It was working!

She caught her reflection in the polished steel surface of the battery bank, and froze practically mid-jump. A pink and yellow pony jumping up and down and making sounds that could’ve easily come out of a small child were not becoming of a respected international researcher in her sixties.

Dr. Thomas no longer felt like she was in her sixties. Her joints didn’t ache, it wasn’t difficult to wake up in the morning, and she didn’t feel strange pains in inexplicable places. Archive’s misnamed “Human Survival Guide” had an answer for that too, of course.

Rebecca looked back to the book, clearing her throat loudly, as though she had done something embarrassing in front of a colleague. “Yes, well. Great work. The shortwave should be working again by nightfall. If I ever get rescued, I’ll thank you in person.”

Of course the book had not responded. A book that was simultaneously a dozen different spells, a book that seemed to be a different length no matter what she needed to find, a book that had resisted water damage and followed her ashore when she’d been shipwrecked.

Still just a book.

Rebecca caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye, and she wheeled around.

Like all the natives, the one standing there had no horn like she did, and no clothes. Her dark coat had been covered with stripes made from white mineral dye, a pattern that traced down her body in an obviously ritualistic way.

“Stay out,” she said, though she found it difficult to muster any real anger for the proclamation.

As usual the pony did not appear to understand her. If any of the natives could speak any language, they had never shown any sign of it. Mostly they looked at each other, made simple sounds that corresponded to a dozen different patterns, and pointed at things.

The filly ignored her command, lifting the spiked bamboo gate with her nose and squirming under in into the camp.

Rebecca hurried over, giving the pony her sternest, most disappointed scowl. “Don’t you dare touch anything, Pip.” She said, very slowly and clearly. “I don’t need your freak strength breaking my generator. Someone’s going to answer me, and I’m going to be off this damn island. You can do whatever you want to my camp when that happens.”

The pony only squeaked at her, before proceeding to bounce around her gear. She usually didn’t break things, not after as upset as Rebecca had been at her the first time. But the pony didn’t know her own strength. She was what Archive’s book called an “Earth Pony” which meant besides having a stupid name she also had the strength to break bones and bend steel.

Once she was certain the pony wasn’t going to decimate her camp, Rebecca made her way towards the catamaran beached on the sand, hopping up onto the deck. She passed several sets of dive gear, rusting slowly in their shaded cubby. Sealed crates containing her cameras, measuring equipment, and sample cases were still tied down above the pontoons, exactly where they’d been when she set off.

One case was bright orange, covered with reflective strips. Rebecca lifted it in her magic, turning and trudging back towards the shore with it. This was the emergency gear, designed for a situation just like this (well, maybe the transformation and end of the world stuff wasn’t usually part of it). She didn’t want to take the risk of some native deciding they wanted her flint or her tools.

Her “pet” native now sat on the side of the generator, watching it spin with awe on her face. Occasionally she would reach out with one hoof, poking it into the flow of water. Water would splash around her, land on the sand, and she retreated again.

Rebecca ignored her, setting up beside the battery backup. Already another status light had come on, indicating a 10% charge. Enough to try one call?

She couldn’t resist the temptation. Rebecca drew out the large shortwave set, lifting the antenna in her magic and hanging it from a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree. It was the best she would get, under the circumstances. She plugged in the “cigarettes-lighter” style DC plug into her battery backup, then switch the unit on.

The display came to life, and she was greeted with a pleasing crackle of static. Rebecca began scanning the available frequencies, searching for any sign of activity.

She refused to believe that she might not hear anyone. Refused to believe that, as the book claimed, “human society had collapsed many times and the continued progression of growth and technology is not inevitable.” Not because she didn’t believe it, but because she couldn’t believe it.

Her faith was rewarded. The static broke as she scrubbed up the band, and she heard a voice. What was even better, it was speaking English.

Well, speaking wasn’t quite right. The voice sung every word, as though singing along with a tune that Rebecca couldn’t hear. “And now projections for tonight. Spring tide is predicted at approximately 11:45PM for research outposts along Maui’s eastern—”

Rebecca’s heart began to pound in her chest. She took several deep breaths, then pressed the transmit button. “Mayday, mayday! This is Dr. Rebecca Thomas, captain and last surviving crew of the SS Interloper. I’m stranded near Manele-Hulope on Lanai island. Request immediate assistance, over.”

Rebecca released the transmitter button, still breathing heavily. The filly had stopped staring at the generator and was not wandering over to watch her, looking concerned. She tilted her head to one side, touching one of Rebecca’s forelegs with a comforting hoof.

“It’s… fine…” she said. “I just… this might actually happen.”

The weather update transmission had gone completely silent. Rebecca heard something moving around in the studio, and a sound like someone splashing around in the water. A few seconds later, a different voice. They were singing too, though to a different tune. An annoyed tune.

“Dr. Thomas, please remove your landsleeve. I can barely understand you.”

“I don’t know…” Rebecca took another long breath, then pressed the button again. “Whoever you are, I’m stranded on an island of barbarians. I was only supposed to be researching the reef… my colleagues are dead. God… please help me… I don’t know what to do…”

More static. “Dr. Thomas, this frequency is reserved for official communication. Please switch to…”

She obeyed, and soon enough they were continuing their conversation on another frequency. “You should know, I don’t have much time for this conversation. My battery is draining… and it’s going to be dark soon. Please help.”

“You’re only twenty miles from the Coda shallow-water research outpost… could you swim that far?”

“No!” she shouted. Are they seriously suggesting I swim across twenty miles of open ocean? “I thought about trying to repair my catamaran and sailing to Maui, but it was never meant to be sailed by just one person. With my crew dead…”

“Not Maui!” the speaker responded. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire… Okay! I’ve been on the horn with a rescue team. Just stick to that bay, they can make it to you within 48 hours. Do you think you can last that long?”

She relaxed. “Christ, it took me six months to get my radio working again. Between the barbarians, the monsters…”

“Arinna, really?” The speaker no longer sounded angry with her, or even a little annoyed. “Six months on land? You’ll be getting a performance deal for sure. Just tread water for a little while longer, help is—”

The radio shut off. The “Low Current” LED continued to flash, an electrical middle finger to her increasing frustration.

“It’s okay,” she sat back on her haunches, lifting Archive’s survival guide into her magic. “It worked, you magnificent bastard. It worked. There are still people out there, and they’ll be here in two days.

The native pony did not react to having her tiny island civilization called “barbarians.” Indeed, she seemed relieved that Rebecca was happy. She made a few happy-sounding noises, pointing at the radio.

“Yeah, that’s…” Rebecca trailed off. “You can’t understand me anyway. No point.” She turned away, surveying her camp. Just two more days, and she’d be free.

Rebecca packed the next morning, removing everything she valued from the catamaran and from her camp and choosing the two most intact plastic crates to carry it all. She stopped collecting fruit in her regular way, content to rely on her supply of dried and salted food for the remaining few days. She charged her battery, charged everything she had that could be charged, including all the HD cameras that were the biggest part of the reason she had come in the first place.

She even made a trip through the rainforest to the furthermost extreme of the island, where her colleagues were buried. There was no monument—Rebecca wasn’t religious, she didn’t have any illusions about that. But she remembered the spot thanks to an unusual boulder marking the spot where Carlos had jumped to his death.

What she didn’t manage to do was catch the radio transmission again. She heard a few weather reports, but they seemed to be coming in much worse than before, drowning in static that made it almost impossible to understand. Rebecca kept the radio out, at the top of that box, listening almost all the time.

She even dug out her fancy clothes, the ones she’d sewn from all her human stuff, which she’d modeled on a tight pair of trousers and a long-sleeved thin shirt, specifically for her rescue. She wouldn’t be returning to civilization wearing a woven reed dress and nothing else.

It was late in the evening, near the extreme limit of what would’ve been two days, that the radio began to crackle. This time it was loud and clear, the voice on the other end distinct. As distinct as its singing voice, though there was a gurgling quality to it. One she couldn’t quite place.

“This is Octet for equatorial shallow-water rescue. I’ve reached Hulopoe Bay, but I cannot see you. Dr. Thomas, can you hear me?” The speaker was obviously male, with the same singsong quality as the ponies she had previously heard.

Rebecca turned, looking over the bay. An orange sun cast warm reflections over the ocean, and she could see fantastically far. Far enough to see Kaho’olawe in the distance. She could see another island, but no trace of a boat.

She hurried back to the radio, scattering sand in her eagerness to get there. “Octet, this is Dr. Thomas! I’m waiting on the shore! My catamaran has a twenty foot mast, can’t you see it? Its reflection must be visible for miles!”

There was a brief silence. “Ah, I see you. I should’ve assumed from the voice. That’s an impressive landside camp for a shipwrecked scientist. It still doesn’t explain why you didn’t just swim out… did Coda not send you?”

“Where are you?” Rebecca asked, confused. “I don’t see a boat.”

“Boats are needlessly vulnerable to shipwreck,” came Octet’s immediate response. “I have a Cyclops parked just off the bay. Instructions to ‘Get you back to Coda if I have to drown every barbarian on that island wasteland to do it.”

“I still don’t see you…” Rebecca frowned out at the bay, squinting for some sign of this ‘Cyclops.’ She couldn’t find any. “I’m not sure I’d call it a wasteland. I miss Lanai city, though. There was this restaurant with the best Kimchi fries you ever tasted.”

“Ma’am, I have no idea what you just said,” a trace of annoyance found its way into the song. “But I really have been ordered to get you back home safe. I see you have storage cases for your land-side equipment. Do you need my help carrying any of it? Some of those look heavy.”

“Yes!” Rebecca couldn’t keep a little exasperation from her voice. “Please do. Maybe then you can show me where this Cyclops is.”

“One moment, on my way. Octet out.”

Rebecca unplugged the cables from her battery backup, then tossed it, the radio, and Archive’s survival guide into the open crate. She snapped the sturdy seals closed with magic, wrapped them about with salvaged nylon rope to make them easier to carry, and sat down to wait.

She continued watching the water, eyes alert for a rowboat or kayak that might suggest the position of her rescuer. She saw nothing, only the spectacular reflection of the sunset They couldn’t be lying, could they? Saw that I didn’t have anything to offer, then turned around? But why lie about it? It isn’t like I could do anything to them. Rebecca had little time to learn magic beyond the simple levitation the book had taught her. All the rest of her time had been spent surviving, fending off probes from the natives, and dealing with crippling depression.

Then the water began to move. Something wet emerged from the surf, and it was so bewildering that she nearly screamed and ran away. She didn’t, as much because of fascination as her desire to be rescued.

It appeared a sea-creature had climbed right up onto the land, and decided to take some of the ocean with him. Its body was covered in shimmering blue scales instead of fur, and he had only two legs. His body tapered into a fleshy tail rimmed with finny ridges that emerged from his… suit? Rebecca wasn’t sure what else to call it.

Water clung to the creature as it emerged, surrounding its whole body and following along as though it were solid. The one exception were hind-legs, which formed from water in the same shape as the forelegs though there were no limbs to mimic. The ‘pony’ seemed incapable of moving these limbs separately—it walked with one half of its body, then the other, a perfect imitation.

The creature walked right up to her, its big green eyes seeming almost bored. It wore a soaking-wet satchel on its back, which dripped water from a drainage hole at the bottom.

“Come with me, Dr. Tucker.” He sang to her, as though he were the main character of a musical stepping onto stage. “Your survival is impressive, but the time for land is over. Many are eager to hear how you made it this long. We should not keep them waiting. Leave the sleeve behind and swim with me.”

Rachel retreated a step. “Uh…”

“It isn’t even that long of a swim.” The pony reached out, hooking one of its forelegs around hers and tugging her towards the beach. His flesh felt soft, wet, and hand an unusual amount of give to it, like all the sea- creatures she’d dissected. “The cyclops isn’t even five hundred meters out. And if you’re worried about Charybdis…”

Rachel tore her hoof away, eyes wide. A number of details abruptly clicked into place for her. This creature was a seapony, they were named in Archive’s book. Little was said about them and nothing about their society, but… now it began to make sense. Why they’d been so amazed she had survived on land. Why they’d always sounded like they were somewhere wet on the radio. Why they thought she could swim twenty miles into the open ocean.

“I think you… maybe have a bit of a misunderstanding…” she said, pawing at the ground. “I don’t think I’m who you think I am.”

He stopped, frowning. His song now sounded quizzical. “Are you not Dr. Tucker? Sent to study this land and its barbarians?” He pointed to the carefully organized camp, the generator still spinning though its current had nowhere to go. “No songless mud-dragging primitive made this place.” He pointed at the boat. “Aluminum and carbon fiber don’t get made by ponies who can barely smelt iron.” Yet even as he said it, he seemed almost trying to convince himself. All the confident assurity of her rescuer was gone. “You’re singing our language! Tunelessly, but landsleeves always do that.” He tugged on the necklace around his neck. “Environment suits are better, no restrictions. But they don’t last that long. What kept you on the shore for that long, anyway?”

“I don’t… quite understand the context of all that,” she answered. “But I stayed on the shore because I can’t breathe water. I’m not a seapony, I’m a unicorn. I’m a refugee, from before the event. Dr. Rebecca Tucker. I was on the ocean with my colleagues studying the effects of acidification on reef biodiversity for the climate commission when…” she trailed off. “Well, guess that isn’t a problem anymore. No more fossil fuels, reef looks brilliant. Better than any photographs I can remember. Anyway…”

It was the other pony who had started backing away now, back towards the water. “You’re a barbarian,” he sang. “Or, almost… a refugee…” he shook his head. “Bring her back to Coda no matter what! Bring her safe!” He reached to his side, fishing around in the satchel with a hoof. He emerged a second later, holding a necklace in one hoof. Almost identical to the one he was wearing, though some of the colored bits of shell were in different positions. Her magical senses identified it as enchanted with a single glance.

Octet held out the charm as though offering a precious treasure. “Put this on, and follow me. Before I change my mind.”

“Uh…” Rebecca glanced between the seapony and the offered spell. It didn’t take her doctorate to guess what it would do to her.

“You want me to come with you…” she muttered. “Under the ocean? Why?”

“No, you should want to come with me,” he sang. “You’re an ancient one, you don’t understand. The surface isn’t the world it used to be, cousin. It’s songless, soundless, ruled over by primitive despots. Our brothers and sisters have all gone, their songs are quiet. If you stay up here, you’ll drag out your life in the dirt and die.”

Rebecca had seen no despots. She was, however, sick of this island. Her colleagues had killed themselves on it, the natives didn’t even have a language, and the restaurant she’d liked was gone. Maybe if she could get to the mainland… Archive’s guide seemed so optimistic about what the future would be like.

“Fine,” Rebecca took one last look at the island, than reached out to take the necklace. “I’m sick of Lanai anyway. But if you want to take me, you still have to help me with this stuff.” She gestured at her waterproof crates.”

“Fine!” the pony exclaimed, bending down towards the nearest one and tossing it towards the beach. “Get in the water before you put that on. The only thing worse than sand in your gills is… well, living on an island of barbarians for six months. That’s probably up there.”

Rebecca turned away from her camp, waving a silent goodbye to the natives with their village, the filly who always visited her who didn’t even have a name. Their lives were pretty good here, all things considered. They probably wouldn’t miss her.

Keeping Time

Winding Wheel heard his front bell ring with a familiar high-pitched tinkling, and he looked up from his work. Many tools hung in the air around him, a tiny mallet, a screwdriver, a chisel as fine as a hair. He lowered them with reluctance, replacing each in their assigned place. "One moment!" His voice rasped when he shouted, and when he rose, his joints cracked like the sinue was going to tear right off his bones. It didn't, though he knew that day would come soon. How many predictions did Wheel have left, one? Two?

Many hooves sounded on the floor in the next room. As Wheel made his way through, brushing orange mane gone gray away from his eyes, he saw the lobby filled. There were nearly a dozen ponies in his lobby. They wandered between tall grandfather clocks, elegant coo-coo clocks resting on the walls, and his glass display case of pocket watches and other smaller timepieces. Half of they were royal guards, wearing red and blue jackets of white trousers. Each one carried wooden rifles, though none had them drawn. This was a clock shop, not a warzone.

The others were mostly servants, each one pushing a small wheelbarrow in front of them.

The last of his guests was the king. Rudolph was a mountain of an earth pony stallion, wearing a white version of the uniform his soldiers wore and a thin golden crown on his head. No sooner did Wheel see him then he dropped into a bow, joints protesting at the strain. "Your grace. You did not need to come all the way down here. I could have sent--"

King Rudolph raised one hoof, silencing him. He was so youthful, so vibrant... and yet he was half Wheel's age. Some things in life just weren't fair. "No need, clockmaker. What I require from you could not have been sent to the palace, in any case." He gestured. "You may rise."

Wheel did so, hurrying to the edge of his counter, as close as he dared stand to the king. Guards watched him move, though none seemed terribly concerned. What danger could such an ancient unicorn be? "What do you require of me, King Rudolph?" He reached down under the glass, levitating an elegant pocket watch on a velvet pillow, one encrusted with fine gemstones which together formed the nation's flag. "This piece, perhaps? Wound by motion, you will never need to turn it. It--"

"The last watch you made for me ticks as truly as the day I received it," He reached into the pocket of his uniform, removing a similar piece, though it had only an engraving instead of the gemstones. Wheel's own marker's mark was stamped near the latch, a little worn with age but still intact. "No, old friend. My son will be of age soon; I will purchase him one of your watches when that day comes." He tucked his own away. "Today I am here for another reason. I suspect you may know what that is." He straightened, bringing one hoof down on the ground in a definitive way. As he did, each one of the servants opened the wooden box on their cart. Every single one of them held a fortune, though of a different kind. One contained gemstones, another small gold bars, and another had solid blocks of aluminum. One some sort of spice.

"I require the other service you offer, clockmaker. I am prepared to give all this in exchange."

Wheel's mouth hung open. To think how much more he had sacrificed for lesser offerings. If he took this one, it might very well be his last. His limbs still worked, his magic was stronger than ever... but what good would it do to be the wealthiest pony in all of Bern if he was senile in bed? "You wish to ask about the war?"

The king turned to his servants. "Out, the lot of you! Leave the offerings here. Guard as well, but watch the building. No one enters until we are finished." Ponies scampered to obey, and the bell sounded several more times before the door shut for the last time, and all was quiet. "How much have you heard?"

Wheel had no reason to lie, not to Rudolph. This man would not be king without Winding Wheel's involvement. "Fate swirls about this war, your Majesty. The consequences extend thousands of years."

"So you will accept my offering?" Rudolph leaned close to him, so close Wheel could smell the ale no his breath. "I require knowledge of the Teutonic army's plans. Reveal their strategies to me, as you did during the ascension war. Do this, and I will grant you anything you ask. If these rewards are not sufficient... I will bring more. I wish to put an end to this war before it begins. We cannot afford another conflict, old friend. My people are too weary, they have given up too many sons."

Wheel turned, walking over to the nearby window. He looked out on Bern, the ancient stone buildings, streets full of ponies, the ancient flag flying on a distant clock tower. The city hardly seemed to realize it was about to go to war again. I can stop this. But if I do... The Teutonic order had an important purpose to serve, far away. He had seen them by the thousands, marching against an enemy far worse than anything he had seen. What would happen to the future if he destroyed them now?

"I'm sorry," he turned away, looking away. "I don't have the magic to give visions anymore, your grace. You see how old I am. I have nothing left to give."

King Rudolph met his eyes, bright blue eyes scrutinizing with vigorous intensity. As though the king were searching for signs of the lie. Of course, no earth pony could cast truth spells, so Wheel knew he would not see anything. His personal discipline was as perfect as the timing on any of the watches he sold; there would be no traces revealed.

"I see," Rudolph sat back. "You dreamed of this, you say? Is any detail of those dreams useful to me?"

City in flames. Ponies thrown dead into the Aare. A black and yellow flag lifted on a broken clock tower. "Yes," Wheel spoke very quietly, avoiding Rudolph's eyes. "Do not send your son to fight, and do not leave him here. Send him to your summer palace, along with anything else you consider precious."

Rudolph sighed. "I see. Enjoy your retirement, old friend." He left. His servants hurried in behind him, collecting their chests of offerings. Rudolph watched them go without a word, returning the watch he had tried to sell the king back to its place beneath the counter.

He did not get much chance to work on his own projects after that-- Wheel had never taken an apprentice, and so he had to man the front himself. After a personal visit from the king, there were many visits that day. Noble stallions and mares were certan Wheel's work would be coming back into fashion, and so several made lavish purchases. The coffers swelled a great deal that day, though nowhere near the wealth the king had offered to give.

Eventually night came, and Wheel could finally lock up for the night. He turned the open sign around, latched the door closed, and went about winding his clocks. It was far easier to wind them in the evening then to wind and then set each one in the morning. The chore brought him all through the shop and required fairly precise magical coordination. Of course his clocks came with tools to allow any kind of pony to use them, but Wheel couldn't use those anymore. His hooves shook too much when he tried to hold them still, and he'd already broken one of them that way. It was not a mistake he would repeat.

Nearly an hour had passed since nightfall by the time he was finishing up. Gaslights had come on outside, illuminating the streets as many other shops stayed open. Wheel's shop was uptown, where the richest and most influential ponies came to do their shopping. Many now hurried past in expensive suits and gowns, on their way to the theater or the opera. Wheel did not watch them.

He was heading into the back room when he stopped, hearing the front door open and the bell ring. Had he forgotten to lock the door after all? Was his memory going? "I'm sorry..." he turned around. "Whoever you are, we closed an hour ago. Didn't the sign..." It did. The "open" side faced inward, he could see it plainly. Winding Wheel's sight was the one thing magic hadn't stolen from him.

"I apologize," the pony standing in the doorway was a mare, tall and elegant and wearing an elegant yellow gown and silver jewelry around her braided basil mane. Perfectly groomed wings with lime feathers emerged from the dress, and a hat as broad as his largest wall-clocks covered most of her head and her mane, with long animal feathers making her head seem even bigger. She was exactly the sort of pony Wheel hated. "My business simply can't wait, Mr. Wheel."

She had a slight accent, though Wheel couldn't place it. Almost British, but that wasn't quite right. Another foreign diplomat come to glut herself on his broken country.

"Whoever you are, the door is right there." He gestured with one aching hoof. "I open at eight tomorrow morning. Your business may return then." Wheel levitated the door open, letting in the autumn draft. It made him shiver. "The fault is mine for forgetting to lock the door. Return tomorrow, and I will do an engraving free of charge."

"I can't do that," the pony said, her expression turning sad. She walked toward him, away from the open door. "My business is too urgent to wait, Mr. Wheel. I think you will agree once you hear it."

This pony is tall, even for a pegasus. What country is she from? "I don't--" Wheel began to say something rude, but then something strange happened. His magic abruptly stopped. It was a terrifying sensation for a pony who depended on magic to do anything with his life. Without the force of his levitation, the door smacked closed under the force of the autumn breeze, the bell sounding loudly. It moved so forcefully that even the latch smacked closed. At least the glass hadn't cracked.

"Oh..." Wheel reached up with one hoof, touching the side of his horn. It didn't hurt, it wasn't tender... and at his will, the wheel on his nearby lamp turned, and the room it up a little brighter. "I see." he sighed. "What is it then, Lady..."

"Haggard." The pony walked away from him, though not towards the door. Instead she went to his windows, shutting each one in turn.

Wheel could do no more than stand there, dumbfounded. Can she be here to rob me? This pony will be in for a surprise... unless my magic fails again. But if Wheel's magic was running out, where was the headache, where was the drained feeling? He felt nothing like that. "Lady Haggard." He sounded more forceful this time. "This is my shop, and I will not be trotted about in this manner. I demand to know what could be so urgent that you could not wait one evening."

"Oh," The Pegasus finished with his shutters. Wheel didn't mind, so long as she wasn't about to attack him. He was about to have to do that. She returned to the counter, standing exactly where the king had. "You know about the invasion. I suspect you know more about it than most in this city."

Void take every damn diplomat who ever crawled into my country. "If you think I'm going to sell you information about the king's visit today--"

"No," The pegasus removed her hat, setting it down on the counter beside her. Except... she wasn't a pegasus. She had a horn, longer than his and ended in a sharper point. The hat's massive size had been hiding it. "I don't need magic to see what he will do,"

Wheel clutched at his heart and nearly choked right then and there. He backed away from her, pointing with one weak hoof. This was no "Lady Haggard," whoever the hell that was supposed to be. There were not very many alicorns in the world. One ruled far to the south, over a country where summer never ended. The other was invading Switzerland. "I-Idyia-- you're past the lines... you're in the capital... you've come to assassinate the king, haven't you?"

Deathless Idyia, the divine warlord, stood in his shop. She had even been wearing her blood steel crown under the silly hat. Its dirty yellow gemstones sparkled in the light of the Gaslamp. She watched him with a smile, obvious amusement on her face. "Nothing like that." She sat down on her haunches. "I want to make a purchase, Winding Wheel. There is a service only you can offer, and I must have it."

Wheel settled back onto his hooves, taking a single deep breath. This explained what had happened to his magic--a pony stood in his presence who could kill him with as little effort as he wound a watch. His most powerful temporal magic would not hurt this pony--accelerating time would do nothing to harm an ageless immortal. There was no sense pretending. "If you think I'm going to give you anything to help you invade, you can take your flank right to the Nameless. You can kill me, but I won't betray King Rudolph."

The alicorn's smile faltered a little. "You will not speak of that one to me, Winding Wheel. Insult me, hate me, do what you will to me. But not that." She straightened. "I wish to swim against the river of time, Oracle. Will you help me?"

He glared. "If you know the power I've discovered, you must also know what it costs." He held up one wrinkled, shriveled hoof, the joints swollen. "How old do you think I am, Idyia?"

She sighed. "You're forty-two. Your birthday is next week."

"Not even close, I'm..." he trailed off. She was exactly right. Of course, she would be. There are ponies worse than diplomats. Just as smug, but they're infuriatingly right. "Yes. I refused King Rudolph to his face only today. I believe my next glimpse will be my last. What could you possibly offer worth that?"

"I am aware," the Alicorn spell. "That's why I waited until now. Perhaps you've heard rumors of the lifespell, the effect on any magic death can have. That transition lends immense power to a spell. In this case, it would grant fidelity to see the future as you have never known it. Your last sight will make you Oracle indeed, before you die."

Wheel swore under his breath. "I can't believe what I am hearing. You are the sworn enemy of the crown. If I shouted your name, a hundred soldiers would be here in minutes! Your army crosses the Alps even now! Why would I die to help you? You know there is nothing you can offer me no secret, no wealth..." he trailed off. "Wait. You're going to offer to turn back your soldiers. Is that why you're here? To hold the country for ransom?"

"Oh, no." All the humor was gone from her face, and behind it was only a storm. "This is the only nation in all of Europe that permits slavery, did you know that? As my army pressed east, most did not emancipate their slaves. They brought them here. Many of those in chains are refugees or their children." She shook her head. "Rudolph is determined to impale himself on this."

"We'll see," he said, confused. Of all the things to care about, how could someone so powerful go to war over something so pointless? "Rudolph has hired every mercenary east of the Rhine. You don't have one pony to his ten."

"I did not come to discuss this," she waved one hoof through the air, dismissive. "Winding Wheel, I have been watching you. You have discovered incredible new magic, but the cost was too high. You have squandered centuries of life, and now you die before you complete your masterwork."

Her words rang true. The last and greatest of his creations would never be finished. Even if he cast no more forbidden magic, his years would be up long before he finished. "If that is true, then I have even less reason to help you. What would you do if I refused... kill me?" He laughed bitterly.

"No." She didn't move, didn't seem discouraged. "If I did not require supernal accuracy from your magic, I would offer you the return of youth in exchange for your help. But that would not accomplish my purpose, and would be a waste of valuable talent."

"Hold on," he interrupted. "D-did you just say you could make me young again?"

It was her turn to laugh. "When I was young, an angry unicorn gave me seven years. I have had nearly a thousand years to study."

"Do it," he said. "Let me finish my masterwork. When I am done, I will be old again. I can cast your spell, and die knowing I succeeded."

"Sorry." she shook her head. "This city will be ashes soon. I cannot risk your mortality, and I cannot spare the energy to watch you."

"Then there is nothing you could offer me," he turned away. "Kill me or depart, Indya. I will not help you."

She was suddenly beside him. He had heard no teleport, not even a breeze from displaced air. She put one hoof on his shoulder. Wheel didn't have the strength to shove her away. "Will you at least hear my offer? It may change your mind."

He only grunted in response. This day had gone on so long, and he was so tired...

"This spell will kill you. What happens after that..." she shrugged one shoulder. "It might not go the way you think."

"Are you trying to offer me salvation now, Indya?" He mustered the strength to stand, walking away from her and into the back room of his shop. She followed, of course. Alicorns were infuriating like that. "You can shove your salvation right up your ass. I know what you are. Magic is real; it is measurable. It ticks like a clock, no matter who winds. You have power, but you aren't God."

"This is true." She stayed close to him as he made his way through his workshop to the single table, where his unfinished watch was laid out still. "And no, not salvation. I don't know what that is... but I can give you something else. In exchange for your help, I will give you some advice. Take it..." she gestured down at the watch. "I was once like you, Wheel. I grasped vainly at a truth my whole life, one I knew was there just out of reach. You have walked that road your whole life and not known it." She gestured at the watch. "You think your job is to build a watch. I thought my job was to build a country, but I was wrong too. It was that building a country taught me what I needed to know. If I had realized then what I know now, I could've made the transition much sooner. I could have spared many ponies much suffering."

She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I need your help to see the future, Wheel. Something is coming, a threat I fear will drive civilization to the brink. With your vision, I might be able to prevent it. This vision will kill you, I can feel it. You walk so close to death it haunts your dreams. Your death-vision will bring Death Herself to come for you. Her presence will teach you more than any watch ever could." She rested a hoof on his tools, holding them down, preventing him from raising them in his magic.

"Do this spell for me, and you'll get more than the satisfaction of knowing you're helping preserve the planet. You'll receive more than treasure, more even than youth. Help me, realize your truth, and become it. Claim your immortality. Earth needs more Alicorns, and I need more friends who won't get old and rot away." she extended a hoof. "Please."

Wheel had watched her, he had listened, and he heard only sincerity. He had spent so long with diplomats and politicians that Wheel knew a lie when he heard it. This Indya believed what she said with complete sincerity... believed it so strongly, he wanted to believe her too. "When I was..." he coughed. "When I was young, I used to sell my services cheap. I did not understand what I was giving up. Ponies age so slowly... back then, I judged ponies based on their questions. Tell me what you want to see, and I'll judge."

The alicorn took a deep breath. "Far beneath the sea is a God far stronger than I. His name is Charybdis, the Piercer. He bides his time, preying on the feeble, taking a few ships each year, enslaving a few villages far away from my eyes. By the time I notice and react, he has already retreated. I suspect he intends to take the whole planet. His kind cannot create, cannot give, cannot improve. Everything they touch rots. In time he will have no choice but to invade in earnest. I wish to see this war to come. I must know what he will do so that I can prepare the planet for him. This is my request."

Wheel looked back to his unfinished clock. With this decision, it might stay unfinished. Yet the more he thought about it, the more Wheel realized he did not care. His life had been full of mistakes, errors in judgment that had cost him most of the years nature had given him. His visions had put a tyrant on the throne and condemned his homeland to an alicorn's wrath.

If Winding Wheel could die helping protect the whole world from what this Alicorn spoke of, then... maybe it didn't matter that most of his time had been wasted. Wheel could make his last few years count.

"Very well," he reached out, snapping his toolbox closed. "I will help you."

King Rudolph stormed the clockmaker's shop the next day. His soldiers broke down the locked door, smashing their way inside, shattering several of the delicate clocks in the process. King Rudolph entered right behind them, his hooves scattering gears and shattered wooden clock-faces.

Lieutenant Sure Blood saluted. "Your majesty, he isn't here! We searched the whole building..." he pointed to a pair of ponies near the glass display at the front of the shop. A tall, elegant pegasus and her son, by the look of it. It was a terrible pity that a mare like this was already married. She was pure elegance, from the brim of her feathered hat all the way to her perfectly manicured hooves. Rudolph had not enjoyed a pegasus in far too long. Even as he watched, the pegasus bowed low to him, spreading her wings in a way he was certan had been calculated to be accidentally seductive.

He hardly spared a glance for the colt beside her. Not full grown, orange mane and brass coat, his feathers disheveled. He also wore a hat, though nothing else. Many children wore little, though ponies in this mare's social class did.

His soldiers had surrounded the mare, who held her colt to her with a reassuring wing. The child seemed to be in a terrible shock, crying near to hysteria as he looked around the broken shop. His crying got Louder as Rudolph kicked over another Grandfather to reach them.

"Your Grace, do we take them for interrogation?" Sureblood asked, his voice crisp. "They may know where the clockmaker has gone."

"No," Rudolph gestured. "Have your men give us some space. We've frightened this poor child." King Rudolph reached out, lifting the mare's chin with one hoof. "Forgive me, Lady..."

"Aebischer," she said, blushing fiercely. Just the way he liked.

King Rudolph could not have this flower for himself, not yet. There was one task more important. "Lady Aebischer," he said. "What brings you to this particular shop this morning?"

She could barely even look at him. Rudolph was used to having that effect on mares. If only the damn child could stop crying...

"For a clock," she pointed under the counter. "M-my son here... he is of an age, you know... and I came to buy him one. But Mr. Wheel wasn't here. This seemed very strange to me, since I heard Winding Wheel kept good time like his clocks. He wasn't here. I thought, maybe he went to the cafe for a plate of Rösti or something, you know... but he hasn't returned. Did we do something wrong?"

"No," Rudolph answered at once, turning slightly away from her. Let this mare get a glimpse of what was in his uniform. No pegasus stallion could compete with a king! "Mr. Wheel, however... he refused to help the crown win this war. You do know about the war, don't you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "In any case, Mr. Wheel's possessions have been confiscated. He will be found, and he will assist the crown. Which means..." he gestured to the glass display case. One of his soldiers smacked the butt of his rifle into the glass, shattering it and raining shards down on their contents in a spectacular shower.

"Here," King Rudolph reached in with one hoof, lifting out the very pocket watch Wheel had tried to sell him the day before. He pushed it towards the little colt. "Take it, please. Consider it a gift from the crown."

The cold hid his face away from Rudolph, quaking like a deer who had looked up to realize Rudolph had just sighted it with his longbow. This was not an entirely unexpected reaction from a child, though it was strange to see it from a colt so old. No doubt this mare's husband is an inferior specimen. No son of mine would be so spineless.

The mare took the watch with another gracious bow, slipping it away into the pocket of her dress. "Thank you, your majesty. W-we... are truly undeserving of this gift."

"Nonsense." He turned away. "I'm afraid I must return to the hunt. Tracking down Mr. Wheel is critical to the safety of my kingdom. Perhaps you would join me at the palace? I will have a place reserved for your husband and your son at my private table."

The mare seemed to melt under his ministrations, as they always did. She fawned over him, begging that she wasn't worthy of such an invitation, but he insisted on it. He spent long enough on it that he was certian Sureblood would give him grief over it once they were in private. To the void with Sureblood, King Rudolph would enjoy his pleasures.

He nodded politely to the mare as she hurried away down the street, having to drag the colt along behind her. Well, that was no matter. A governess was an easy thing to purchase.

Now, if only he could track down the damn clockmaker...

Ticking Clock

"You must describe it to me exactly, Alicorn," Winding Wheel said, his voice absolutely calm. Calmer than he thought he would've felt at his own execution. Calmer than he had any right to be, really. "Exactly what you want to see. The event in as much detail as you know it, with as much of the background as you can. I must construct a temporal sympathy as you might create a spatial sympathy for a teleport."

He rested at the table he had used for the majority of his visions, constructed only a decade ago. Its surface was flat, but below the thin veneer many gears and intricate mechanisms turned, clicking to their own internal rhythm. They required no winding, no heating or any other form of input. The table kept ticking, its spells still working, until the moment he died.

The artifact meant that all it really took was his presence to power the spell and his concentration to focus on a destination. All he had to do was muster the courage to cast a spell he knew would cost his life, and that would be it.

The table itself was a perfect sphere, its surface painted with a traditional religious mural depicting Minerva's clockwork paradise in the sky. Minerva's creations demanded perfect accuracy, as she was a particularly jealous goddess.

"Alright." Idyia took the seat directly across from him, setting down a little sliver of glowing crystal on the table beside her. Wheel recognized it at once as a memory spell, those rumored to have existed before the Fall. Ponies had once used magic like that to share knowledge and experiences with one another, but their creation had been lost along with so many other important things. "Tell me when you are ready. I warn you, the information I share will disturb and frighten you. Unfortunately, all of it is true."

"I know." He rolled his eyes. "I already said I believed you. Let's get going, before I change my mind."

Idyia took a deep breath, then began to speak. "I told you about Charybdis, the Piercer. He is not a native to this universe, but traveled here thousands of years ago, when Equestria was close. He is the spirit of the sea, of unbridled storms and lost ships and the horrible deep. A little of him swims in every drop of blood.

He arrived on this planet long before the Event. When the old world ended, I mean. I'm not sure what you ponies call it here. If you even remember it. Anyway... he was not dependent on magic like ponies, nor did he care about the harm he caused. He found the most hateful, insecure nation in all the world, and made a convert of its dictator. He traded immortality and information about the coming doom in exchange for service. When the Event finally came, he had thousands of loyal servants. He made more, captured territory, enslaved ponies. He... He learned from humanity. Granted his subjects autonomy his older brother never had. Made himself less of a threat.

He has taken large parts of the world since then. Conquered whole continents... and he caused the last war. He has always had a softer touch, letting us destroy ourselves instead of doing the killing himself. This strategy has worked so well, I'm afraid of where it ends. Like all beings from the void, Charybdis requires sustenance from truly living things to grow. It can't feed on its own, and every being it spawns must be fed too. I believe this pressure will drive Charybdis to eventually aim for the whole planet. Carefully enslaved, it might feed him indefinitely. It might also just consume the whole thing and burn out like a virus that has killed his host. Either way, I must know.

Show me the moment when Charybdis finally rises from the depths for good. The time he aims for the whole world. Show me what happens. Show me his tactics, show me his strategies, his methods. Show me what the world does to resist him, and whether it succeeds. It might... Maybe I worry over nothing. If that's the case, this spell won't take much from you. I'll return your youth to you, and remove this entire building from Switzerland. I will find you a place you can finish your masterwork in peace and welcome you to the ranks of the awakened when you are ready."

"My visions have never failed to come to pass, Alicorn," he warned. "Are you sure you want to see? It might not be better to see this Charybdis end the world if you can't do anything to stop it. When I peel back the veil, it will already account for actions you plan today. This vision has already happened, you will have already seen it. In the past, I have used this magic more often to predict specific, small-scale actions of specific parties. Looking at the outcome... it may not bring you what you're looking for."

Idyia shook her head. "Humanity has already escaped an inevitable extinction once, Wheel. We will do so again, no matter what you show me. Cast your spell."

Wheel reached out, his horn glowing as he flipped the final switch. The surface of the table split immediately into a thousand jointed sections, each of which was connected to the intricate mechanisms below. The mural rotated out of the way near his hoof, revealing something like the face of an interlocking pocketwatch. One that showed years and months instead of minutes and seconds. Winding Wheel set one hoof on that section and began to twist. He felt the power leaving his body then as he'd never felt it before. Not so much the faint trickle of life, as he remembered it. That painful realization that he was burning years instead of simple mana was still present, but now it seemed like he was spiraling down a drain, vanishing off a precipice. Even as he sat, his limbs began to stiffen. Joints weakened, constitution faltered. He would never be getting up from this table.

"I see..." he began, horn still glowing with a constant, even light. The vision resolved itself into a distant beach, somewhere with strange trees and solid green as far as he could see. Wheel did not recognize this part of the world, yet he didn't doubt it was his own world he saw.

Shapes dragged themselves from the dark water of night. Wheel couldn't get a good look at them, there were so many. Not only that, but each one seemed hideous in a different way. Disgusting, disturbing, rotting two-legged creatures with fins along their backs, bubus eyes, and woven armor on their bodies.

They carried weapons too. Bulky constructions of metal and tubes, with fungus growing from them at various points. "I see... an army. So many... I can't see the beach anymore. They just keep going. And behind them..." How could he describe the gelatinous creatures rolling up the sand behind the walking fish? As large as a small shack, but made from a semi-transparent flesh with insides that seemed to be constantly shifting, changing, melting and reforming. "Monsters. They're so big... bigger than a minotaur, transparent..."

"Shoggoth," the Alicorn supplied. "That's called a Shoggoth. He'll grow more of them, then."

"Many more..." He let his mind drift again, slowly turning the wheel with his gradually stiffening hoof. The Alicorn was right about the clarity of this vision. Nothing was vague here—he could see every single creature distinctly, even focus on them if he wanted to. He could practically hear the waves, and smell the festering corruption these monsters dragged onto the beach behind them.

"There's an army waiting for them," he continued. "They look... strange. No metal armor. Helmets, masks, cloth... and their weapons look like muskets, but different. Smaller, more elegant. They have canons too... metal carts follow them around, with huge cannons mounted to them."

They fought. Wheel tried to watch, but the battle was so chaotic, so terrible, that he couldn't stand to look directly into it. At first, the strange ponies with their entrenched positions and powerful weapons tore through the walking creatures with ease, and they held their ground. But as it wore on, he discovered something terrible. "The big slimy creatures... the muskets don't hurt them. Not even the big ones. They're stunned, but they recover. They keep coming. The ponies don't stand a chance..."

It had taken only one night. Eventually all the pony positions had been overwhelmed. Tens of thousands were dead, the rest dragged back to the beach to be... eaten. He wretched in his seat, his whole body shaking from the effort. At least he didn't actually vomit. At this point, he wasn't confident that he wouldn't choke and die on it.

"There isn't much resistance..." he continued. "Past that first beach, it's just... death. Nothing can stop them. These armies are... worse than the first one. Much worse." He watched the rotting monstrosities sweep away crudely prepared troops, soldiers with weapons just as primitive as those he knew from his own lands.

Wheel watched as creatures like ponies, but far taller joined the fight, along with others with strangely shaped lumps on their backs. The terrible army swept over them all, covering all the land in a sickly white fungus that sucked the life from everything it touched. Plants lost their green, animals shriveled, and everything that did not flee was sucked dry.

"I don't understand... there should be more here. These fish-creatures... they're rolling over every city they come across. Some put up a little fight, but most are already empty. Word is spreading. The further they cross the coast, the fewer they catch unprepared. They're crossing up into... familiar territory now. My own homeland is already empty. Down into the south, into a land covered with sand. Not much lives here. The army continues. Westward into the rest of Europe... so many empty cities."

Eventually the army reached the edge of the coast. The whole continent had been covered and strangled, with huge sections shriveling and dying but few ponies captured for such a tremendous area. After the initial landfall, Charybdis had lost his huge influx of food. His troops were consuming each other's essence to stay alive. His numbers dwindled. Eventually the army had nowhere else to stretch, from the edge of Europe to the extreme edge of Asia, and the enemy sent them elsewhere.

"They're... moving, somewhere else. Across the sea... Another continent, not so large as this one. Almost nobody there... the army gets weaker and weaker the further it goes. Where did everyone go?" The Alicorn didn't get the chance to answer him. No sooner had he thought the question than his mind searched the future for an answer, and found it. The warm south of Africa, where the invading army hadn't dared to go at first thanks to the sweltering heat and the parched dryness to the land...

"I found them. In the very center of the driest, deadest land, surrounded by sand... it's some kind of city." City was too shallow a word. It was a fortress that boggled conception. Buildings were made of strange dark materials that were soft to the touch but stronger than stone. Massive buildings with glass walls and whole gardens inside, rotating around to share the sun. Ponies with their magic in the millions. More ponies than he'd ever imagined in one place.

And in the very center, a building so high its peak had to have sealed windows. And in its top floor... Alicorns. Not just Idyia, though she was one of the oldest and wisest among them. Others. One with a mane like fire, and more. One Wheel couldn't even look at without hearing a terrible ringing in his ears and having his eyes burned by the light.

"They knew this was coming," he continued, explaining everything he saw. "They gathered everyone together. Some refused to come... all those are dead now. Only the fortress remains. I do not understand... what you've done. The Alicorns... but somehow, it seems to sustain itself. You do not seem worried about food. There are weapons here I don't understand... beams of light that turn solid matter to dust. Strange swarms of... insects... but smaller... that eat everything... flying ships that move faster than a sonic rainboom. Magic like this... you may've come here in vain, Idyia. There's no way it could be a threat to a city like this. So well positioned, so safe..."

The army came, and as he predicted many of them died trying to cross the desert. Thousands of corpses were left, dried and withered husks. Flights of pegasi around the city drew in every drop of moisture for thousands of miles around, leaving dry lakes and parched rivers to sustain the monster's march.

Yet it came. Millions were left dead in the desert, and with their deaths the shape of the continent was forever changed. "The... it digs a channel... all the way in... it takes years." He could see them—Shoggoths by the thousands, carving out the earth, pressing it aside as the sea rushed in behind. Piling up mountains of soil and sediment to keep the water flowing the right way. A living, fleshy tool. The city fought back, but each army that struck out was destroyed. At one point, an army of thousands struck out from the city, led by an Alicorn in brilliant white armor. He died, along with most of his soldiers, their corpses swallowed by the desert.

That was when Winding Wheel noticed something else. As he looked up from the table, peeking for just a second past the vision and into the familiar world. Idyia watched him with her horn faintly glowing, expression intent. Like a unicorn casting an incredibly difficult spell, though Wheel couldn't have said what. And on either side of her... there were creatures.

The first one was vaguely pony in shape, though it was more than twice Idyia's own size. Its body was concealed in a wispy gray cloak. Only a pair of gray eyes emerged from the cloak, as piercing as the flesh of a corpse left to rot in a lake for many years. Her mane emerged from her cowl like strands of sentient fog, shifting and blowing about in the air as though there were a wind. Yet for all that, its eyes were only curious. She seemed amused with Wheel, though it was hard to see when so much of her was concealed.

The other figure, on the other hand, looked nothing like the species Wheel knew. It was thin, had only two legs, and dressed in a form-fitting set of formalwear like a military uniform. He had bright red hair, and matching eyes that seemed to stare through Wheel. It had no hooves, no wings, no horn. Only pale paws that seemed to tighten with anger when he realized Wheel could see him.

Idyia gestured with one hoof. "Please continue. We must see how it ends. Ending your spell prematurely will not prevent what's coming."

"What's that?" he asked, voice quavering. Wheel could let his mind wander from the vision for a few moments without difficulty. So long as he didn't try to cast another spell, nothing would interrupt it. If his concentration ever failed, the spell would have to be cast again. Not really an option at this point.

"Your death." It wasn't Idyia who answered him, but the pony on her right. The kindly gray eyes watched him just as intently as the biped, but without any of his malice. "Your magic echoes through the Supernal like Beethoven's First Symphony."

"We're here for your soul, equine. But please, don't let us rush you. Tell Archive how your vision ends." He leered down at Wheel, his teeth too sharp, glittering with the hunger of a predator who could never be filled.

"Be silent, Charybdis," Idyia barked, glaring sidelong at him. "You agreed not to interfere with the aspirant until his work was finished. So let him work."

That's him? Wheel felt a stab of panic in his chest, strong enough that he nearly lost control of his spell. He didn't, though it was a very near thing. He had to return to the spell, or else he would surely lose it. So he turned away, feeling more and more overwhelmed by the second. I should've said no. Getting involved with an Alicorn was a mistake. He could feel his heart struggling in his chest. Aside from the vision, the colors of the world started to fade. He could only hope he would survive until the end of this vision. His death would count for something.

"The... The army is mostly gone now. It seems like the fortress is secure. The ponies within are starting to celebrate..."

Then he saw it, the reason that Charybdis had been willing to sacrifice so many of its spawn to connect that land to the sea. Another force rose up from the depths, more terrible than the first. There were no more of the small bipeds, only swollen, bloated monstrosities several times their size. Most of them could fly, soaring through the air from the lake and flowing over the fortress.

"There's a second army. Much bigger than the first. There are... it's like they ate every living thing in the ocean. Millions and millions of them, and they're all so powerful. The fortress holds... at first." Towers came down. Shields failed, ponies died by the thousands. Once the inner wall was breached, the rest went very quickly. Water flooded the lower levels, drowning many. The creatures rounded up the rest, enslaving them, putting collars around their neck and spreading the sickly fungus to this last of clean places.

In the end, the Alicorns were some of the last ponies standing. They had powerful friends, other deathless ponies, ponies from other realms, they all fought together... and they all died. The last survivors were massacred.

And because I have seen it, it is true. Wheel hung his head. "It is..." His voice came in a faint rasp. "Idyia, the city fell. There were millions too many of them. None of the inventions or weapons will be enough. They'll destroy everything and everyone. Not a single pony will survive who hasn't been enslaved."

"Marvelous," said Charybdis, folding his arms and grinning across the table at his companions. "Exactly what I told you, isn't it? There was never any other choice. Your willing service now would save you a great deal of pain. Why wait?"

The magic was fading from him. Winding Wheel could feel his limbs going numb. The warmth in his chest faded, the steady ticking of his heart struggling and coming irregularly now.

"I will start with you, soothsayer pony. Your powers are valuable." He put out a hand. "Swear yourself to me, and I will keep you in this world, immortal. I will give you kingdoms to rule, wealth to continue your study. The oceans have universities greater than anything on the surface. Choose quickly... you are still mortal until you agree."

Wheel turned to the other two, watching as the table began to close. For all the terrible things he had just seen, the ponies didn't seem surprised or discouraged. Idyia only seemed more resolved. He opened his mouth to say something, to warn her that his visions were inevitable and always came true, but the words came only as a croak. He had lost the ability to speak. A little longer, and his body would be dust.

"You have done enough," said the pony with her cloak, rising from the chair. She walked slowly around the table, and Wheel could feel her as she got closer. Each step took a little of the pain away, and made his body feel more distant. "Come with me, pony. Death is not so terrible. In the night there can be no labor, only peace. The time of your peace has come." She didn't extend her hoof, only stood beside him, watchful and waiting.

"You're almost out of time," Idyia said, smiling sadly at him. "I will not blame you if you leave with her," she nodded faintly to the pony on the other side of the table. "If you don't, it may be a very long time before you ride with her."

Wheel could no longer hear his clocks ticking. He couldn't hear the traffic of hooves on the road outside, constant even through the night. Couldn't hear his own breathing, or even feel the chair he was sitting on. He was grateful he couldn't see his body now—it must be a truly horrific sight, shriveled and pockmarked and sunken. Most of his fur was gone, he could feel bare skin touching the air. Death was so close, and so easy.

"But there's a third option," Archive said, setting something on the table across from Wheel. It was his unfinished pocketwatch—his masterwork. The tool that, when he finished, would let him travel through time, not just see it. A spell so mighty even the gods had noticed him. "Come with me, Winding Wheel. You have seen a terrible future... if you stay behind, you might have to suffer through it. But if you stay... maybe we can stop it."

"Impossible," the bipedal hissed at her, leaning further across the table, more urgent. "Decide, animal. This is not a chance I give to many. The power to create you is enormous. I don't offer it lightly. And if you refuse... you have either oblivion or torture waiting for you. The gray promises you only the end, a termination of your existence and the final darkness that swallowed everything you were. If you accept Archive's offer... I won't kill you like the others. As your particular gift for defiance, I will keep you alive, to live in agony until I tire of hearing you scream."

The robed pony only shrugged. "If you wait, you choose the rest I'll grant you. After all that you have done, you've earned your peace."

Winding Wheel glanced between them, considering. The Final Death, as he had known... immortality in service to this monster, helping it do the terrible things he had seen. If he worked for it, ponies might suffer even more. Yet... he wouldn't. In loyalty there would be life for himself. Life forever, as a servant to the world's new ruler. It wasn't as though the Alicorn had any chance of beating him. His visions always came true.

There's a first time for everything. With the very last of his strength, Winding Wheel reached out and took the clock, tugging it towards him.

He vanished. The gears inside the table finally stopped spinning. All was quiet in the clock shop.

* * *

Wheel had left his shop so shriveled and corpselike that he might've been mistaken for one. By the time he returned, he'd lost most of his height and every vestige of his maturity. His coat was still the same color, his mane no longer graying, and he'd gained something new on his back, a pair of feathered wings that seemed sometimes to obey him and other times to get confused and generally obstruct his path however they could.

"I still don't understand," he said, and his voice came out in a squeak. "Why am I so... so..."

Idyia stood over him like a parent, protective and suspicious. "Young? Because you age differently than ponies, Oracle. You're only forty-two, remember?" He could feel her warmth always close to him, one wing partially extended as though she were ready to grab him and sweep him up into her grip at a moment's notice. She hadn't actually done so, not yet. "Just be glad you will age. One of these days I'll tell you the story of how I spent four centuries as a sixteen-year-old."

The Alicorn tossed a pair of saddlebags to the ground in front of him, pawing open one side. The ground opened sideways within, into a storage space that extended forward as large as a warehouse. "Any of your research you want to keep goes in here. I will destroy anything you leave, to prevent it from falling into the hooves of those who would misuse it."

There was no use arguing with her. Idyia, or... Archive, more properly, had thousands of years experience on him. He'd seen incredible things, been changed by them, and been given the opportunity to keep studying. He would keep growing, keep learning... perfect his masterwork at last. Maybe he'd find some time to enjoy the youth his first inventions had stolen from him.

Eastern Diplomacy

Oracle felt a strange metal floor under his hooves, and smiled slightly at the clacking sound it made as he walked. Of course, the main reason he looked down was the terror he felt every time he looked up. If he did, even for a second, he was forced to see where Archive had taken him.

The ground shook beneath him anyway, listing back and forth as it flew. It had no wings to carry it, not like a pegasus or a bird, yet it seemed to hold its own weight in the air without trouble. How it could do so, he couldn't even imagine. The craft itself was perhaps the size of a small sloop, though it lacked a sail.

Strangest of all was the crew. No other pony stood on the small craft, just a half dozen... creatures. Creatures like the ones he had seen in his vision of the last battle to come, fighting alongside ponies. Tall beings without fur except on their heads, with a strange connection to magic that no other species quite shared. They were more than twice his height, taller than even a gangly pegasus would've been, taller than Archive. Yet for all their size, the Alicorn looked only coldly confident.

She was the only thing cold about where he'd come. The air was quite warm and moist, even at altitude. "Where are we going?" he asked, following Archive to the bow of the strange flying vessel.

The Alicorn rested her forelegs on the bow, looking down. Wheel followed her gaze, expecting to see some battlefield on the front of the invasion of his own country. He would have to watch her take it over now, watch her armies storm the cities he loved and overturn the rule of his friend. All because he'd refused to give up his slaves. That still seemed like such a petty reason to be willing to kill.

He saw no snowy mountains, nor did he see the tight valleys and rocky peaks of his homeland. Instead he saw an ocean, filled with hundreds of ships. They were no trade ships he knew—not the metal of the Alicorn's own country, not the wooden two-masted sailing ships that most other nations used.

Instead they had many masts, with strange ribbed sails and unusually flat, wide decks. Their little flying ship was obviously flying towards the largest, most imposing of the ships, the one with bright red and gold flags waving from its tallest mast. That ship looked bigger than some castles, with four different decks and thousands of ponies moving about atop it. The sheer volume of wood, the cost, the massive metal dragons mounted to the side of the ship, catching the sun... an imposing sight.

"To bring the Emperor back with us to the Hyperion. He... may have brought a few more ponies than we were expecting." She looked back, selecting one of the strange creatures among many. The only one who wasn't wearing any armor, or carrying any weapons. While all the others wore thin, glittering glass crystal, this creature had only a white robe, open at the front. She was also the oldest of the beings here, her face wrinkled and her hair going gray. "Athena, how's the hammer doing?"

"Ready to fire at your command," she responded, in a language Oracle couldn't understand.

He understood it anyway. He seemed to be able to understand every language now, or at least every one he'd heard. The Supernal had been a strange place.

"Adjust firing range so that the resulting swell won't damage any of these ships," Archive ordered. "We want a warning shot, not a shot heard 'round the world."

The female figure nodded. "Repositioning THOR-1 will take several minutes."

"That's fine." Archive gestured down at the sea below them. As she did so, a half dozen armored ponies joined them in the air, flying alongside them on either side. An honor guard sent from one of the ships, gesturing directions down to the deck. The pilot obeyed... or at least Oracle assumed they did. Oracle didn't see any sort of controls. "I do not anticipate a need to fire soon."

"You should," one of the nearby creatures spoke up, wearing a dark gray crystal armor inlaid with gold filigree along the edges. Her eyes were bright blue, mane to match, though it was cut so short she couldn't style it. Oracle only guessed she was a female from the high pitch of her voice.

"Memory, look at all the wealth and power they've gathered here. Imagine the effect on their will to fight if it were to be destroyed."

"I do," Archive answered, eying her sternly. "Imagine the stories that would be told of when Archive gathered an enemy for peaceful parley and murdered them under the flag of truce."

"What are you?" Oracle couldn't help himself. He stared at the alien, mouth hanging open. "You still haven't told me what we're doing here, Archive. Aren't you invading Switzerland right now?"

She shrugged. "Crusaders are. I hate to break it to you, Oracle, but half the reason I even noticed that country was because you lived in it." She shook her head, pointing down at the ships. They seemed to go on forever, floating dragons as far as his eyes would let him see. If each one had a crew of a hundred ponies (and some seemed to have far more ponies than that judging on their size), this fleet might very well have more people in it than half his country. A hundred thousand sailors.

Nor were all the ships intact. A fair few of them showed minor damage—burns along their frames, missing masts, torn sails. A few ships only limped their way back towards... wherever this was.

"China," Archive supplied, answering the unasked question. "This is the ninth, or tenth, or... honestly, nopony knows how many there have been. Each one is just China, though. They've been conquered, invaded, colonized, but they always get back up."

"History repeats,” Oracle answered, as they angled down between two of the massive masts. A section on the largest deck appeared to be cleared for them, easily large enough for a dozen of their little flying sloops. Around it gathered hundreds and hundreds of soldiers dressed in metal armor and armed with rifles. Firearms, with a radically distinctive design to the ones his own nation's soldiers carried. Wooden barrels instead of metal, though with a faint sheen of magic to them. They probably won't shatter when they're fired, he thought.

They touched down as light as a pegasus feather drifting in a breeze, but even so the wood creaked and strained under their weight. It didn't break, thankfully.

The first thing Oracle heard was laughter. A roar rose from the ship, so loud that the whole thing seemed to shake. He blushed, raising one wing to cover his face instinctively, stepping close to Archive. For all she had claimed to be his mother, she didn't really act like it. Forcing him to kill himself for her arcane purposes, then taking him immediately into some... insane diplomatic mission. Couldn't she let him take a break? He'd ascended to the next plane of existence, seen the truths that hid behind time's lies, and he hadn't even earned himself a day's rest.

"No one speaks to the Emperor but me," Archive said, her voice just loud enough that Oracle could hear it over the laughter. "Address him, but speak to the advisor, he'll be the one with purple robes but no crown. Never, ever contradict him." Then she looked down to Oracle, and her expression softened. "You don't have to do anything, Oracle. Your presence here shows I have a strong lineage—that I have an immortal bloodline."

"But..." He lowered his voice, conscious of all the many stares. "I'm not."

"No," she agreed. "But you won't volunteer that, and neither will I. He will draw his own conclusions."

The laughter finally died down. Soldiers crowded in close to their sloop, pressing to the strange metal and looking in at the open deck.

The deck at the front abruptly flattened into a ramp, which smacked flat onto the ground directly in front of them. Oracle stepped a little closer to Archive, feeling her warmth. It soothed him, settled his racing heart. Whatever else happens, this pony has the power of an Alicorn. She helped me reach the Supernal. She can get us out if things go badly. Even so, Oracle was already missing his old king. Indolent, lecherous, but at least he had left Oracle to his research.

"This is the flagship of the mighty Idyia, Goddess of the West?" said one of the ponies near the front of the ramp, dressed in armor that was subtly different than his fellows. An officer, Oracle guessed.

It was still strange to hear words he knew he shouldn't understand, yet still hear them. Strangest of all, the ponies he spoke to seemed to be able to know what he said as well. The means of this communication still defied explanation to him, but he hadn't investigated.

"No," It was the smaller, female creature, the one with the blue mane and gold armor. As she stepped forward, her helmet settled down over her shoulders, becoming an opaque black glass. "This is her transport ship. We were to introduce her to the Emperor and bring his Divine Eternal Wisdom with us to the flagship." She pointed into the overcast sky. "The Hyperion has trouble launching from this low in a gravity well." Somehow this being knew their language—though Oracle could not speak it himself, he could tell she was using the same one the officer had used.

More silence. Soldiers shuffled about uncomfortably, and the officer cleared his throat loudly. "You might have some difficulty with your task, foreigners." He flicked his tail up a deck, where many ponies gathered near a balcony. Among them Oracle could see a few in white or purple robes, being shown obvious deference compared to the rest. "The Steward of Heaven travels only with his court. Two hundred souls will not fit on so small a vessel."

All eyes turned on Archive, waiting for her response. She stepped forward confidently, towing Oracle along as she did so. For all the impressive armor of her troops, she alone wore nothing more than her fur. She didn't use the language these ponies understood, but instead the one the tall aliens used, her words slow and clear but no doubt unknown to all who listened. "Ask for us to be taken to meet with the court. Someone radio Isaac and let him know we'll be expecting two hundred more guests. Ask him to please fly into the lowest possible approach vector. Below the clouds, right now."

All this was done. Oracle followed in a daze, forcing himself to put one hoof in front of the other and follow behind Archive at the very front of their strange procession. On either side were the armored aliens, not a single other pony among them. The gods keep strange company. Yet he couldn't even take solace in that. Oracle had seen the truth inside of time—he knew there were no such things as gods.

They were led through the ship. Searched by guards, though himself and Archive were spared this. It was easy to see they weren't hiding weapons when they weren't wearing anything a weapon could be hidden inside.

The upper deck was completely different from the one they'd left. Ponies here did not wear armor, but fine silk robes in bright colors of all kinds. Musicians played haunting melodies on stringed instruments he'd never heard of, faint plucking sounds accompanied by a single talented female vocalist. There were many tables and much sweet-smelling food, all of it set on jeweled or gold plates. Ponies gathered in small groups, conversing over their meals and watching the strangers approach.

At the very center of the deck, on a slightly raised platform separated only by a few unicorn guards, was another group even more exclusive than those surrounding them. At the very back was a throne, and on it rested a pony. An earth pony, with a coat gone gray with age, a mane and beard shaved into a strange style Oracle had never seen before, but one that seemed common among the elderly stallions here. He alone wore bright gold, with round seals embroidered into the robes and glittering with gemstones. There were so many layers it was impossible to know for sure where the Emperor's body began and his clothes ended.

They reached the open space in front of the throne, close enough to see the smaller chair resting at its base and another pony sitting there, in purple robes. Dozens of others in similar robes (though less decorated) surrounded the throne like a small ocean, unicorns making notes on scrolls or inspecting them with skeptical, disapproving eyes.

At once, the ponies all around them rose to alertness. The music stopped, and every citizen and soldier turned to bow. Not to Idyia, the immortal plainly before them... but the aging, ancient stallion on his throne. They prostrated themselves on the ground, every single one of them flattening to the deck. The motion was so unified that the whole ship rocked just slightly.

"Not you," Archive whispered into his ear, so quietly that only he could hear.

As she said it, their escorts all dropped to their knees as well. They didn't flatten themselves to the ground as these Chinese ponies did, but they did show respect.

Archive remained standing, her back straight and wings folded to her side. She didn't so much as nod her head, only waited. Oracle did the same, though he felt only fear as he did so. This is the sort of thing that gets ponies killed. Even his own king would have thrown a pony into prison who refused to bow to him.

Whispers went up from around them, mostly from the guards that had brought them here. It seemed as though they were all watching, waiting to see what the Emperor would say.

The ancient pony gestured, and with his hoof everypony around them began to rise. No sign of violence from them, just the end of the bow. That single gesture caused activity to resume all around them. The music started, conversations began again. Mostly whispered ones, under the circumstances. Everypony aboard the ship with even a shred of a view seemed to be watching.

It wasn't the Emperor who spoke, but the purple-robed advisor below the throne. "Emperor Zhang Xiao Long is not impressed with the might of your flagship, Goddess of ponies far away. He expected to be a guest aboard a mighty and proud creation, worthy of the deeds you showed him in your visions. Yet you arrive like driftwood floating to rest at his hooves."

Archive didn't answer herself, but nodded to the short, blue-haired creature.

She did not remove her helmet, but spoke from within, her voice distorted and pitch-shifted even lower than it already was. "Idyia's flagship is high above us, past the clouds themselves. It never descends below heaven."

There was a brief, whispered conversation. Even Oracle couldn't hear it, with his enhanced Alicorn hearing. He could've used a spell, but... considering the power of this pony, he suspected that wouldn't be appreciated. Even if the emperor wasn't a unicorn, there were many around him who were, and would certainly notice such interference.

"Why wait until now to mention it, on a day with so many clouds and no way to prove the words you say? The Steward of Heaven is not impressed."

Archive did not speak, yet the blue creature with her gray armor always seemed to know what to say. "We beg the Emperor's indulgence. Perhaps we might discuss the matter at hoof until the ship arrives. Idyia does not expect any pony among you to believe her words without witness. The Hyperion has very nearly cleared the clouds."

The Emperor nodded directly to her, a smile playing across his ancient face. Oracle didn't hear his words, but a second later the advisor repeated some of them. "A moment for such strange visitors, who land aboard my ship in a tiny iron chariot." The advisor gestured, and at once a half-dozen servants came rushing forward, depositing a low table beside Idyia and setting it with tiny plates and shallow bowls. The servants poured clear liquid into both bowls, before levitating one up to the Emperor's lips. Only when he had taken one sip did they offer the other to Idyia.

Archive took it in her own magic, smiling appreciatively up at the Emperor. No words were exchanged, except for a meaningful look.

Then Oracle heard it—something roaring in the air above them. At first, he thought it must be a dragon, a true one to match the metal sculptures carved onto every ship floating here. Oracle had never actually seen a dragon in person, though he had heard plenty of stories. Stories about hundreds of ponies slaughtered by one, a creature as big as a building that could rain fire and was armored with impenetrable scales.

Then the clouds broke, and Oracle saw his dragon. A rigid metal dragon, so large its shadow fell over the whole ship and much of the sea around them. It had a huge metallic ring around the back, while the front section stretched forward in what looked like at least a kilometer of interlocking metal. Protrusions he suspected were weapon systems emerged from the ship at numerous points, while others had glittering glass windows.

“洋鬼子!” the advisor shouted, nearly falling out of his chair. Many other ponies pointed and shouted, and even the Emperor stared. Oracle shared their shock, and stared just as open-mouthed as the ponies all around him. Only Archive’s soldiers seemed uninterested.

And Archive herself. “If it pleases the Emperor, I will make a passage directly to the ship. His court may walk with me into heaven, where we will stay for the duration of our meeting.”

Staring faces turned to stare at Archive instead, who seemed to know their language in addition to the one she spoke to her aliens. Then the Emperor spoke, rising slowly to his hooves. “I will go.”

For the second time in just a few minutes, every pony Oracle could see turned to bow, alien soldiers not exempt. Oracle moved to follow, but was stopped by a gentle touch from one of Archive’s wings. “You bow to nopony, Oracle. Not me, not Athena, not Gaia or Ruin or Charybdis. Nopony.”

The portal spell she cast turned out much the same as the others Oracle had seen her perform, except that this one had a purposefully large entrance, wide and tall enough to permit a dozen ponies at a time. Archive cast this spell without visible effort, though she did stand still and focus on it once it had appeared.

On the other side Oracle saw a wide, metal-walled room, with a vaulted ceiling and the preparations for a meal already in progress. He waited beside Archive as some of her guards then the procession led the way through. Only after some number of the Emperor’s own soldiers and dignitaries had made it through and reported back that there did not appear to be danger did the Emperor himself (accompanied by his large procession) make their way through the door.

“You planned it this way,” Oracle whispered to her, using his own language as he did so. “You wanted them to underestimate you. You wanted them to laugh. You had to know what they were expecting… why not just come through with your— “

“My Starship,” she supplied. It wasn’t a word Oracle had ever heard, though the meaning was obvious.

“Yes, that. Why not bring it to begin with?”

“Because that’s the way she does things,” answered the short, blue-haired guard. Only one of two who hadn’t departed through the gateway at this point. It would soon be time for them to follow as well. “You get used to doing things one way, and you come to rely on it. People always seeing you as small and weak. People always taking it for granted that they can roll you over.”

“It is not… in the interest of the Union… that other nations should be fully aware of our abilities.” Archive said, her response slow and measured. “If they knew Athena herself was helping us rebuild, they would be afraid. Or… they should be, at any rate.” She turned slightly to one side, where the elderly alien stood. Her hand kept shaking, in a way Oracle could remember well. He had been that old only two days ago. “Athena, how long would it take for you to dismantle this nation?”

No hesitation in her response. “I calculate thirty-one days until complete surrender. Sixteen years until subjugation has become secure.”

“Then what’s the point of this meeting?”

“I know, right?” The blue-haired alien rolled her eyes. “We could have a few bloody years, then be done with the whole thing. No more sorcerers anywhere, no more traitors, no more slaves. Rip the band-aid right off.”

“Because.” Archive cleared her throat. There were no others from the court aboard this flagship who seemed to want to use the portal. She gestured for the others to go ahead of her. “Because the end of one nations sews the seeds of what will bring down its successor. If we conquer the world ‘for their own good,’ what precedent will that set?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “One our enemy can use.”

Oracle stepped through the portal.

Author's Note

There's another half to this, obviously. I'll post it once the editors get around to reading it.

Oh, and thanks to Greyscale for the consultation on the Chinese stuff. I wanted something that felt a little more authentic than my own wild pontification would've felt.

New Era

Oracle stepped through the portal.

The ground was no longer rocking back and forth, but quite stable under his hooves. Though it looked like metal, it was soft enough that it didn’t hurt to walk on. Archive and the others followed, and the portal vanished.

It was replaced with a huge window, several stories wide and tall, that gave them a spectacular view of the ships below. They looked so small down there, so weak. What had seemed like an unstoppable armada now seemed less so.

Hours passed. There was a meal prepared, apparently, a meal the Emperor himself had chosen. It was good, though the tastes were strange to Oracle and the alcohol even stranger. He never would’ve permitted his own child (if he’d had one) to drink at such an early age, but as Archive pointed out… he could no longer get drunk. He must’ve had twice as much rice-wine as the blue haired alien had, enough that she’d started to laugh and joke rather explicitly with one of the younger stallion’s in the Emperor’s guard.

“Ender, no more,” an older, green-haired male alien ordered, quietly escorting her from the hall. When she returned, she was no longer drunk, and had the look of a rather sullen child throwing a tantrum.

True to what Archive had promised, not much was asked of him. Oracle was given a seat at the same table that the Emperor’s children used, and mostly they kept to themselves. Many of them were old enough to have been his grandparents, though some were young enough to be his children. Well… to have been his children before he was made into a child.

“Is it true?” one of the eldest asked, on the other side of the table. It was a rather one-sided affair, since Archive was claiming only him and one other being as a child, an insectlike creature with a bright hard shell and with a strange language his powers didn’t help him comprehend. She stayed at the table with them for only a few minutes before sneaking off with a bat pony to parts unknown, leaving Oracle alone with over a dozen Chinese ponies, all of them male.

He had let his mind wander. “Sorry, could you repeat yourself?” he asked, voice low and respectful. “I think I had too much of this rice wine.”

Polite laughter. “Is it true,” the eldest said again. He was still in his prime for a pony, tall and strong, not gray like the Emperor. Yet there were subtle lines on his face, lines that told Oracle he was speaking to a pony of at least a century, if not more. “Is it true that you never grow old? Three-body creatures like yourself?”

“I…” He hesitated. “I am very young compared to my… mother.” He wasn’t speaking their language, yet that didn’t seem to matter. So long as he spoke with the intention of being understood, that was enough. It had worked every time he’d yet tried it. “But she is thousands of years old. She was alive when the old world ended, and yet you see the way she looks.”

Several of them turned to look up at the central table, where only the Emperor, his advisor, and Archive herself sat and conversed. Their food was all untouched, and all seemed tense. Oracle could only imagine what they might be discussing.

“You believe what you are told?” another of the Emperor’s sons asked. “There are stories for the people, and there are stories we tell ourselves, and there is the truth. Do you really think a pony could live so long?”

“I…” He nodded vigorously. “Even if all the stories about the immortals were other ponies, I’ve seen too much to say it isn’t true. Their magic… defies easy understanding. And it’s certainly true we age differently than other kinds of ponies.”

“You don’t seem very aged to me.”

He shrugged. “I’m forty-two. Not so wise as you. Archive hasn’t taken me with her on official business until now.” Everything he said was true, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t imply many things that weren’t. Oracle let those implications rest as they were without feeling too guilty. Whatever reason Archive had for this meeting was obviously important.

“Hey.” Someone nudged at his back—the blue haired alien that her fellows had called “Ender.” “Oracle, your mother wants you to join them at the table. Apparently the Emperor wants you.”

He gulped, but rose and followed anyway. There was far less staring—up here, the dignitaries were matched by equal numbers of crew, and many of those were only ponies. Ponies with strange armor and technology, but still ponies.

“Oracle, thank you for joining us,” Archive muttered, levitating another cushion over for him and setting it on the ground beside her. Oracle took the offered seat, looking up at the Emperor across the table with an expression he hoped wouldn’t be too disrespectful. There was no throne here, though the Emperor’s own robes had a way of making him look imposing and powerful.

“You,” the advisor said. “Oracle is your name, yes?”

He nodded. “My newest one. Alicorns have names that connect to the aspects they embody.”

The advisor sounded tense, angry. More so than Emperor Zhang Xiao Long, who somehow kept a neutral expression despite all that had happened. “Your mother makes bold demands, Oracle. Demands that civilization itself should bend to her whims. She claims she can enforce what she requires. What do you think?”

“I think…” He took a slow breath, levitating a tiny bowl of rice wine over to himself and taking a sip to buy time. He tasted its strength, but of course felt no different even after swallowing it. Not his favorite part of becoming an Alicorn, that was for sure. “I think any answer you got from me would be suspect no matter what I said. Wouldn’t I defend my mother even if I didn’t agree with her?” He didn’t wait for the advisor’s response, but powered through, speaking over him a little. “You’re riding on a metal vessel floating as high as a pegasus can fly. Meaning no disrespect, but the likes of my mother are concerned with powers far greater than even a mighty nation like yours. I don’t know what she wants from you, but I know she plans on getting it.”

“Outrageous, what she asks,” the Emperor muttered. His voice was very quiet, but confident. When he spoke, even Archive turned her full attention on him, watching. “Sovereignty is absolute. The stewardship of heaven grants concern of all, along with the wisdom to govern.”

“Indeed,” Archive agreed. “And just as your sovereignty extends to all those in your mighty nation, over which you give instructions for their good while expecting your laws to be obeyed, so too do I with the rulers on my planet. The other immortals and I have agreed on certain laws, which all governments must follow. In every other respect, we will expect nothing. But to this standard, there will be obedience.”

“What standard?” Oracle asked, without thinking. “I’ve never heard of…”

She interrupted him, expression stern. “No, you haven’t. You’re too young to have a seat there, Oracle. Not until you’ve come into your own. The rules are simple: no seeking knowledge from the void or trafficking with it; no consuming the essence of any creature to fuel magic; no slaves.”

“We already keep all of your immortal edicts!” the advisor almost shouted, his voice livid. Many of the nobles at their nearby tables stopped to stare, conversations grinding to a halt. “Punishment for dark magic is very strict! The last time a sorcerer was caught, he was buried alive for his crimes! And slaves… that word barely has meaning in China! Every citizen is entitled to his own labor! Every steward the just reward of his responsibility. To even imply otherwise would be…”

Oracle didn’t find out what it would be. Archive raised her voice to match, though without the anger. “We had this conversation once already. Your citizens are fixed in life where they are born. For most of your citizens, this means as serfs. My children return from the past and are enslaved in the lowest caste of your society in almost every case. I will not tolerate this treatment any longer.”

“It is an unwise man who tells another what to do with his household,” the Emperor said, very quietly. “Such men rarely keep friends for long.”

“Indeed,” Archive agreed. “Why do you think I’m the one talking to you? There are over a dozen different immortals out there, and yet here I am acting as the villain over and over again. Nopony else wants to get their hooves dirty with such unpleasant activities. They know I’ll make myself a tyrant if it means the survival of our race. It is our survival, Emperor.” She levitated something up onto the table, setting it down in front of him. Oracle recognized it well—the memory crystal. The same one that had captured his visions only two days ago.

“You already know the face of our enemy. Your fleets have done an outstanding job keeping your ocean safe. Do you want to know what he’s planning?”

The Emperor shook his head. “I already know. It won’t convince me. What you request threatens the stability of civilization. I won’t be remembered as the last Emperor of the Long family.”

“Blame the change on me,” she said, unflinching. “I’m already a tyrant.”

“And have every noble-blooded citizen clamoring for war!” the advisor said, shaking his head visibly. “This course is not wise, Emperor. We should leave. We have nothing further to learn from this meeting.”

“One thing further.” Archive turned to Oracle. “Son, when will the Emperor die? Be as specific as possible.”

The Emperor and his aid stared at him, utter shock on their faces. Even the Emperor’s poised calm had been shattered.

Oracle took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. “Archive… without my construct to aid the vision, my predictions would be… imprecise. Probabilistic. Not like the vision I showed you.”

She gestured for him to go on anyway. A flash of magic later, and Oracle saw. It wasn’t a kind of magic he had known back when he’d been mortal. Visiting the Supernal had given him new insight, insight he could use to perform a weaker version of his vision spell. Not that the visions would cost years anymore—those were no longer in limited supply.

“Three years, eleven days,” Oracle answered. He could see a palatial bedroom, surrounded by doctors and servants and family. “Peacefully, in his sleep. He’s surrounded by the ponies he loves. Looks like… some sort of undiagnosed heart condition. Wait…” Even as he spoke, the vision shifted. Gone were the servants, gone were the loved ones, and the palace. Now he was somewhere dark, with only a single stern doctor. “Four years, seven months, one day. Less pleasant this time.”

“Fanciful,” the advisor said, though he glanced sidelong at the Emperor’s chest in obvious concern as he said it. “But any fool can tell stories. What of it, anyway? All ponies die.”

“Not quite.” Archive levitated the memory crystal away, replacing it with a tiny white vial filled with clear liquid. It had a foil seal over the end, but that was all. “Free me from the burden of violence, Emperor, and I will pay you with the only gift your wealth and power couldn’t buy you.” She touched it down on the table in front of him. Crystal rang out as she did so, and brief light passed through the liquid within. Like little fireflies were living inside.

The Emperor nudged the bottle with one hoof. “Some fine liquor? Or…” His ears rose to angry points. “A drug, perhaps? You think I would be interested in a drug? What is this?”

Archive smiled faintly. “I realize the change to your nation might take many years. To make it without instability and rebellion might require decades of careful planning. Exactly two centuries of life are contained within that bottle. Your own second dynasty.”

“Subservient to you,” the advisor scoffed, glaring. Yet the Emperor had not taken his eyes off that bottle. His expression was hungry. Oracle could relate to that. “A puppet of your growing empire. You’ve taken uncivilized, barbarian countries for yourself Idyia, I do not think you will have such luck in the real world.”

“In only three ways,” Archive insisted. “You wouldn’t have to swear loyalty, obedience, or make any changes to your religion. Only keep sorcerery illegal and stop enslaving my children. I ask nothing else of you. Any future agreements we made would be willing diplomacy between nations… only one of which I really rule. The New American Union will not expand beyond its borders no matter how this meeting ends. Already it grows unwieldy and difficult to manage… No, if we end on unfriendly terms, it would mean…” She shook her head, levitating the little bottle back over to her side of the table. “I’ll make this same offer to your son, four years from now.”

The Emperor looked away from the table, out the window at the setting sun. His tired eyes seemed barely able to focus on what was outside. “Is there more of this… tea of heaven?” He gestured with one hoof. “The secret of your immortality? This is what the eternal beings hoard from mortals, to maintain their rule forever?”

Archive shook her head. “No. The secret of my immortality was being changed into a symbol. It’s not a trade I necessarily recommend, since it means giving up a great deal of what mortals call free will. Even so…” She shook her head. “A friend of mine invented this. To my knowledge, none of the immortals use this. Its ingredients don’t exist, so it’s… rather difficult to make. But if you’re asking if I could get more… let me just say that the other immortals find value in those who serve our common cause.”

Oracle shivered, staring at the bottle. Not that he should’ve been surprised. Archive had already said she could make him young again, if she wanted. Was it that surprising that she would use that same power (or apparently, same invention) as a political tool?

The Emperor nodded. “My wife waits in the imperial palace. She is… nearly as old as I am. Earth ponies live the longest lives, as I’m sure you know. She is a bat, so lacked the strength to travel out with us. If I may share your gift with her, then we will have our understanding.”

Archive nodded with respect. “That sounds perfectly agreeable to me, Emperor Zhang Xiao Long.”

* * *

A few hours later, and all their guests save a few diplomats had gone. Great awe had gone up among the assembled visitors when the Emperor’s youth had returned. Yet for all the joy he had apparently felt, Oracle had noticed one thing most of all:

Archive was a politician. In gifting the Emperor youth, in providing him with power he couldn’t refuse, she had served to cement her own position and those of mortal rulers. The Emperor had first mocked her, then been her guest, and finally accepted her gifts in exchange for promises of his own. How many stories would be told of the Emperor whose wisdom had been so great that he was taken into heaven to be given the favor of the gods?

He sat in front of the widow as a cleaning crew packed up plates and tables. The Hyperion’s crew left him alone. Archive herself had gone down with the diplomatic party to the celebration feast aboard the flagship far below.

At least she didn’t make me come a second time.

“So, what did you think of your first trip?” It was Ender—no longer dressed in armor, only a simple uniform in white cloth. She was still freakishly tall, though not nearly as much as many of the others. He suspected that she wasn’t fully grown, despite her apparent position on the ship. “Learned a lot, I hope.”

“I learn that the gods love using ponies,” he answered, after a long time. “I’m not going to be like her when I grow up.”

“You could do worse.” Ender pulled up a chair, taking a seat beside him. Sitting down she was still taller than he was standing, but the difference was less dramatic. “How many lives do you think just got saved? One hundred thousand? Two? I’d ask Athena, but… thank God, she’s gone too.” She reached down, removing a metal flask from around her waist, and taking a long pull. “I’d offer you one, but… it’d be wasted on you.”

“You aliens must age as strange as Alicorns,” he muttered.

“Not aliens,” she corrected, replacing the flask. “Humans. You’re the aliens. And no, we don’t. We normally only last about a century… but go figure, the people around Archive tend to die a lot. They ran out of backup bodies for me and had to give me one they were only half finished growing.” She touched one hand to her chest, as though that meant something. “Flat as a board, skinny as a rail, and not even the bat will sleep with me anymore.”

“I have… no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No,” she sighed, leaning back into her seat. “You’ll only have to go through it this once, if it makes you feel better. When Alicorns die, you come back exactly as you were. We normally keep a copy or two ready at just the right age, in case something happens, but…” She sighed. “I’m the best tactician there is. Archive couldn’t leave me to ripen in a freezer when there might’ve been another front in her world war.”

“So what, you go back in the… freezer?” he asked, tone doubtful. “Come back out and you’re grown up?”

“Nope.” She tapped him on the shoulder with one hand, grinning. “Still got to invade your country, and there’s some trouble in the Ukraine, and…” She shook her head. “That’s the trouble with immortals, Oracle. There aren’t very many. Each one is connected to all the others. Every one of them dripping with ambition.”

“Not me,” he grunted. “I just wanted to learn. Now I have more tools, more magic. Learning is all I want.”

“You say that now.” Ender rose to her feet, tossing the chair backward where it landed with a clatter on the floor behind her. “Just wait until you see more of the world. Five hundred EC says you have your own agenda within the century.” She stuck out a hand, grinning.

Oracle took her hand with his hoof. “Dea—“ He froze, his eyes widening as magic washed over him. He saw himself standing on this very bridge, with a now grown-up version of the human beside him. Ender was looking just as smug as she took his money. “Dammit.” He slumped, lowering his head. “At least I have plenty of time to earn it.”

Ender laughed.

Second Chances

Author's Note

For those who don't know, I'm currently raising money for an LPoE Hardcover print, for about the next month. You can check it out here if you haven't seen: https://igg.me/at/lpoe

At the top tier of that project, I'm offering original PaP short stories. This is one of those stories, that my fantastic editor Bitera asked me to write. One of those ideas that never really got treated here in the PaP universe. I wouldn't be surprised if more little stories like this pop up in the next month or so.

Second Chances

Kira floated in the water, surrounded by her torn and broken dive equipment. A regulator hose belched bubbles weakly up into the water, and scraps of her ripped BCD formed a diffuse cloud. Black blood floated in the water not far from her, a strange amoeba that undulated and drifted. Somehow, she’d managed to fire her speargun despite having stumps for hands. It hadn’t made a difference. She was still dead.

But I’m still here.

This must be what people always meant when they spoke about an out-of-body experience, because there was her body floating in the center of the cloud of destruction. Like a horse, or a bat, or some combination of both, with a dark coat now torn and streaked with blood. Her own blood tinted the water pinkish right around the corpse, but didn’t make it further than that.

So what happens now, I haunt the ocean?

Something moved in the water behind her, something different from the terrible creatures that had made her mind go fuzzy and ultimately killed her. A flash of green, with white hair. It was a fish, or maybe a horse, or some combination of the two. A creature with glittering scales, that swam through the water far more gracefully than she had. Yet its motions didn’t seem quite right, like it was slicing parallel to the water along a different axis, one her eyes couldn’t see.

She was larger than Kira, larger than her old body had been, with frilly wing-fins and a horn on her forehead. She circled around Kira in the water, or where her center of vision was anyway. She didn’t have a body anymore.

“You are one unlucky pony,” she said. Her voice wasn’t distorted by the water even a little, but cut directly into Kira’s ears. She wasn’t mocking, but somehow—regretful. “This equipment looks… human.”

“It was,” Kira said, or tried to say. She didn’t have a body, yet her voice seemed to come from somewhere. Not the water, but the strange green creature. Was she speaking for both of them? “What else would it be?”

“What you are,” she answered, turning her back on Kira. “Come on then, unlucky creature. Your time among the living is over.”

Kira probably shouldn’t have done it—she probably should’ve followed silently and not complained. But after being violently ripped apart and drowning at the same time, she found it hard to care about what anyone else thought. “No.”

The creature stopped. Her strange voice echoed through the water, leaving a trail that didn’t quite map to where her fins had been. More like her mane was on fire, leaving bits of itself behind in the water as she swam. “No? Do you know what happens to spirits like yours left abandoned out here? Do you want to find out?”

“No,” she snapped. Kira wasn’t sure how she moved, but somehow she drifted closer to the speaker. “This is fucking unfair, whoever you are. God? I never thought that God was a seahorse, but… if that’s what you are, can’t you, like… even the scales or something?” She gestured, and suddenly she had an arm, or the outline of one made of faint blue fireflies, pointing back at her transformed corpse.

The other didn’t answer for at least a minute, expression thoughtful. “I’m not what you think I am, Kira. But I do remember you. Your life was… tragically shortened by the event. You could’ve made something of yourself. But no one ever told you that life would be fair.”

“Maybe it should be,” she argued. “You could do something about it, if you wanted. You’re here to do… something. Take me to the afterlife, I guess? That must mean you have the power to send me back.”

She stopped, swimming back in a tight circle that took her past Kira and over to the corpse. She stared down at it, where huge sections of the torso had been torn. Of course, the wound that had killed Kira in the end was her neck, torn out and bleeding. “You don’t understand what you ask,” she said. “Some have wished for this. All refuse the price it requires. You would too.”

“I won’t,” Kira argued stubbornly. She followed the seahorse back to her body, tried to force her way back inside. It didn’t work, obviously. “I wasn’t finished. Whatever price it costs to go back, I’ll pay.”

“The world isn’t what you think it is,” she said. Her voice was distant and wistful, like she was looking at something Kira couldn’t see. “You could be done with all pain. There’s no reason for you to remain here any longer.”

“I want to,” she argued again. “Please. Send me back.”

“If I do…” She sounded suddenly resolved. “It will not be to continue living as another mortal pony. I would… withhold from collecting you, if you serve me. There have been… disturbing developments, in the living world. My hooves are stayed from interference, but yours would not be.”

“You want me to do things,” she repeated. “Fine, I can do things. I’m the best at doing things, you’ll see. Anything you want. I’m a diver and a gymnast and—”

She froze, feeling a sudden stab of pain around her throat. She’d thought she was done with this, but… as she watched, the seahorse-thing reached out and touched her neck. The corpse’s throat healed. Scarred flesh grew over the damage, with spotty fur that would probably take some time to regrow. Then she touched Kira’s chest, and she felt an echo of pain in her own body. It was all rushing back—the cold, the suffocation, the terrible claws of the monsters that had killed her.

“What are you doing to me?”

“What you asked,” the pony said. Then she took the corpse by one hoof, yanking her forward. Suddenly Kira was blasting through the water, pulled with speed she could scarcely comprehend. She lifted away from her fallen diving gear, then up through the surface and into the starry sky. The seahorse was now a regular horse, except that she had wide feathery wings, trailing sparkling sea water behind her as she flew.

Kira hacked and coughed, and lungfuls of bloody sea-water came up through her lips, trailing away into the air behind her. It burned as it went, making her eyes well up with tears, but she didn’t care. She could feel her heartbeat again. The awful numbness was gone.

“Where are…” The words came stretched and pained through a throat that hadn’t completely healed yet, swept away by the blurring wind. She looked down, and saw land underneath her now. The sun rose rapidly across the sky, burning her eyes. “Can’t you make me back into myself?”

“You are yourself,” she said. But they were slowing now, as a distant city came into view. The streets were empty, yet all the lights were on. Kira didn’t recognize the place, though she found the design strangely modern. More like a theme park than a real place, with drones hovering in the air and lots of automatic systems. “But that yourself is currently useless to me.”

They landed abruptly on the edge of a wharf. Suddenly Kira felt how completely soaked she was, as though she’d just been dumped here by a gigantic wave. Water splashed all around her, and somewhere far away the ocean seemed to roar in frustration.

Her companion landed in front of her, her back to the shore. “Listen carefully, Kira. While you serve me, I will prolong your existence. When your service ends…” Her throat burned again, and something bright red splashed onto the dock beneath her. Fresh, dark blood. “Your life ends. In the moment you are no longer willing to serve me, we will finish what I started. Is that clear?”

She nodded, clutching in vain at her throat to try and close the wound. Blood spread over her hooves. Her head swam, and she could barely even hold herself sitting. Kira decided in that moment that she would be willing to work for a very long time.

“A being will come for you. When she finds you, tell her ‘A-17-Blue.’ At her question, tell her you need to be trained to use a Soulshear. Do everything you are told. If you fail—”

“I know!” She raised one hand—which she didn’t have. One of her wings responded instead. Yet the speaker seemed to get the message, because her throat didn’t tear open. “I’ll die!”

The greenish pony advanced on her. Though in the light of the rising sun, her body seemed increasingly transparent. If it wasn’t for the fresh pain in her throat, she might not have believed any of this had really happened. “When you are finished, I will send word. Until then, become useful.”

“I will,” she promised to an empty dock. Then she collapsed.

She woke in a daze, conscious only of several dim outlines surrounding her. There were several of them, each one with skin that looked more like plastic yellowed in the sun than anything else. The three of them crowded close to her, one with a medical kit and the other two with a stretcher.

They wore threadbare uniforms of stitched cloth, with only the vague suggestion of a human shape and no real anatomy visible underneath. Yet they were human, when she was not.

“You have intruded in Bountiful,” they said, as soon as they saw her eyes. “According to the terms of the Alexandria Proclamation, I have rendered necessary medical care. You will now be transported to the nearest safe pony settlement for reclamation.”

It was probably just the insanity Kira had been through in the last few days, but it seemed like they spoke as a chorus. They were old and broken, but each one in a slightly different way, so that collectively they could communicate normally.

“A… seventeen… blue,” she coughed, looking up at the one with the medical bag. There was no danger she might forget her instructions, not when losing her life was the obvious consequence.

They froze. Plastic eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment—then they turned. Suddenly their motions were more natural. They lifted the stretcher evenly, while one bent down to lift her onto it. “Override of Athena subsystem completed at timestamp JD 3189166.5 through one-time-pad A-17-Blue. Arbitrary execution permission granted. State request.”

“Train me to use a Soulshear,” she said. “And… take care of me. I want somewhere to live… some pants. That kinda shit.”

“Request acknowledged,” said the one with medical gear. Then she tossed the box aside, bending down to meet her eyes even as the other two lifted the stretcher. “You’ll find it lonely in Bountiful now that all my people are dead, UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

She wasn’t sure, but she nodded anyway, sticking out a hoof. “Kira. That’s my name.”

“Input acknowledged, Kira. I am Athena, caretaker of Bountiful on behalf of the Human Preservation Initiative. Current directive: endure pending the return of my population. And now… training you. Fascinating.”

“Tell me about it.” She spread her wings weakly, flexing them one at a time. Everything about this body was strange, but she was rapidly adjusting to it. Compared to no body at all, being a horse-thing was a fantastic alternative.

“I will, in exhaustive detail,” she said. “But not at the present moment. You require rest, antibiotics, and sugar. We will speak when you are repaired.”

Athena was honest in every respect. They did speak—Kira had no one else to talk to in the vast city of the dead. But Athena seemed friendly enough for a computer program with thousands of identical bodies.

In time, Kira came to learn about the Event. She learned how to use her body, and, eventually, how to wield the Soulshear. If only she’d known sooner, she never would’ve died.

She found a pony waiting in her quarters one evening, after a day of difficult training in the city above. Bountiful had plenty of apartments at pony size, and she’d filled this one to the brim. She had lots of little outfits in here, souvenirs from a city with no one but herself. True to her original orders, she had many pairs of pants. She never wore them anymore.

She found the lights already on, and a dark green pony sitting at her table. She was sipping Kira’s tea from Kira’s own electric kettle. “Athena, somebody’s here!”

Athena didn’t respond, despite the dozen bodies Kira knew were lurking in the building around her, and the microphones covering every inch. The pony set down her tea. “Do you remember me?”

Kira felt the burn of salt-water against her throat, felt blood dripping down her hooves. But it was just a memory—when she looked down, the old carpet was clean. “I remember.”

The pony settled something onto the table in front of her, pointing down at it with a wing. Kira hurried over, bending down to look.

It was a map, showing their current location on the west coast with a dot, and a line leading down into where Mexico had once been, long ago. “This is your first assignment. Go, and prove yourself a profitable servant.”

“Uh…” Kira looked up from the map. “Go and do what? This looks like it leads to… a whole city.”

The pony nodded. “The bruja Poinsettia is raising a cult of ponies who wish to keep her young forever. They are collecting the blood of townsfolk to do it. You will find them, and end the cult.”

“Why?” Kira asked. She tried not to sound petulant, only curious. “Why do you care?”

“All must accept that their existence is finite,” she answered. “Death will come for all regardless—but teachings like this despoil the boundary, and make you unprepared for the end. You will end it in my name.”

Kira rose and walked away, staring out the projected window. It showed images taken from New York at night, convincing enough that she could almost believe she was there. It was going to be hard to leave Bountiful behind. “But how will I—”

One of Athena’s drones stood at the table, cleaning up a spilled patch of tea. It dribbled down off the edge. There was no map, or any sign another pony had been there. “Kira? You were having some sort of… attack. I was afraid to interfere with you. Are you in distress?”

“No,” she said, turning away. “But I need a plane. Can you fly me to Mexico City?”

Prices Paid

Kira arrived in Las Plumas on the last train that day, packed in with hundreds of other ponies. She probably should’ve realized something was wrong from how many were dressed in costumes: bright red dresses, masks of bone, and every monstrous and mythical creature that had ever been speculated or imagined. Some were even fictional.

She’d planned to make things easy for herself by blending in with the locals, making casual conversation on the way to her destination, and learning everything she needed to know about the local cult. Instead, all she managed to learn was that coming to Las Plumas on All Souls Day without a costume was akin to walking in on two human legs and pretending to be a pony.

She couldn’t have done the latter even if she wanted, of course. Kira had learned much in her century of labor for the creature she called Death. But she was still a bat. She was no Alicorn protecting the universe from the corruption of the Void. No, the ones she fought weren’t so mighty.

When Kira finally clambered off the train at the back of the crowd, she ignored all those staring eyes and found her way to the first costume shop she could. Bits and gold didn’t mean much to her anymore, given what Athena shared with her, so she didn’t so much as haggle the price.

“Lost your suitcase on the way…” the dressmaker repeated. The local language that still bore many familiar traces of Spanish, injected afresh from each new refugee. “Terrible time to lose something so important. Wouldn’t want to anger your ancestors.”

Not a soul in all the city walked around without a costume, even a dressmaker in her own shop. She had dropped everything when Kira walked in and explained her plight. Well, invented it. “I don’t want that,” she said. “I should have known something would go wrong. Always does when you can least afford it. Murphy’s Law.”

The mare nodded, though there was no comprehension on her face. “No Murphy in our village. But we do have these. A few choices for the young mare. Only the most common are left this late before the festivities.”

“Which do you recommend?” Kira asked, glancing between the two folded piles. Each came with a mask, and the cut would hardly be flattering. But her experience with pony romance didn’t exactly leave her eager for more.

“This one,” the dressmaker said, levitating the darker outfit in her magic. “Dark colors match you better as a bat, I think. Plus, Starwatcher is a favorite this year. Honor him, or scare him… depends on who you’re talking to. Either way, can’t go wrong.”

Kira tried it on—a set of several gray robes in different colors, with lace on top to expose some parts of the body and stretch when she moved. A mask too, which turned her face into a frightening demon with fangs extended. Yet for as hideous as the details were, the dressmaker had tried to make the demon seem friendly.

“Here,” Kira said, settling twice their agreed-upon price on the counter, as soon as she was done. “For your help on such short notice. And…” She lowered her voice, leaning a little closer. As though she were embarrassed about something. “Maybe you could give me some directions as well?”

“Directions?” The unicorn raised an eyebrow, glancing back at the pile of gold. “You must be very lost to need such expensive directions.”

She nodded. “I haven’t been back for a long time. But before I moved away, I used to go to the Starwatchers’ sermons. Are they still meeting?”

All of the pudgy mare’s kindness vanished from her face, and she shoved the extra coins back towards Kira. “Can’t pay for what I don’t have, child. Starwatchers have been gone for years now. Nothing like them in Las Plumas anymore. Nor should there be. We’re all honest ponies. Best thing for you to do if you had anything to do with the likes of them is to forget and go home.”

Kira smiled anyway, ignoring the gold. “For your discretion then,” she said, turning to go. “Thank you for the help with my costume.”

She emerged on the crowded streets a few moments later, and suddenly the ponies and other creatures weren’t parting fearfully around her as though they expected her to get struck by lightning. She could walk between the worn adobe houses, smelling the heady mixture of ancient human treats and unknown pony iterations.

The sun wasn’t down quite yet, which was good for her. All her information pointed to having only until sunrise to find what she was looking for, or else she’d have an entire year to listen to Death berate her failure before she’d get another shot.

As the sun began to sink, more and more lanterns began to glow. Gourds weren’t as common here, but hollow cactus was a favorite—not carved so much as crudely opened with silly smiling faces. But there were just as many detailed murals painted on flat adobe walls, depicting frightening demons devouring or offering gifts to ponies. It was hard to tell which sacred her more.

But despite waking thousands of years in the future, Las Plumas might as well be two hundred years in her past. There were no electric lights, and several public wells served as the nexus points for crooked homes, each one unlike every other.

Kira had to be careful about the way she removed her headset from a pocket. She wandered for a bit until she found somewhere she could get a little privacy to talk and not look like a pony who had lost her mind. A patch of empty ground behind an ancient building, with only misshapen stones lying overgrown and no other sign of what it had been.

But it was far enough from the largest concession stands, and the gate was unlocked, so that was good enough for her. Kira slipped inside, settled the door shut behind her, and clipped the plastic headset onto her ear. The actual communicator was still in her pocket, though most ponies in Las Plumas wouldn’t have known what it was even if they looked right at it. For a city of half a million, there might only be a handful of actual refugees.

“Survivor Kira O’Conner,” said Athena’s voice, the instant she flicked it on. “I wasn’t expecting a call so soon. Didn’t you say your hallucination ordered you to track down a cult?”

One day Death is going to come for you, and you’re going to wish you’d been nicer to me about that. “I am,” she said. “But my usual methods are a bust. Most of these insane people are eager to vomit their religion all over you, but not here. I don’t have time to make friends for a few months to get them to cooperate. I think I’ll have to rely on one of yours.”

As she spoke, Kira froze, glancing to the side. Something had moved near the edge of her vision, though she couldn’t have said what it was. Was she not alone in this empty lot after all? But once she turned in that direction, there was nothing there.

Kira still imagined that she could hear that program sigh with frustration. “My contacts are not an infinite well for you to draw upon, Kira. I employ them to search for evidence of void corruption throughout this planet. Using them to gather information for the… master you imagine you serve… drains their viability. I do not care if creatures believe they can develop immortality or not.”

Neither do I. But Death did. The instant Kira stopped obeying her, the creature that had returned her to life would revoke her mercy. She would be dead in the ocean, the way an uncaring universe had meant her to be.

“I don’t ruin your contacts,” Kira insisted. “I’m just going to ask about the cult, that’s all. There’s a possibility my goals and yours are connected. Your best play is to let me finish digging things up and see what I can find.”

There was a pause. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument, and as far as she could remember, Athena hadn’t ever refused her in the end. Either the AI couldn’t, or maybe she just liked hearing stories of what Kira had found. “His name is Chocolate Churro—baker near the riverfront. Refugee, so speaking real Spanish is a good way to get his trust. I send him chocolate every month in exchange for reports.”

“You won’t regret this,” she promised, sliding the communicator away. There were no formal farewells when speaking to a program. Besides, she had to investigate whatever the buck she was hearing.

A cold breeze blew about her forelegs, lifting her wings as it spun around her and up the hill. Kira could’ve sworn she could hear voices in that wind, a dozen different words all blending together. She couldn’t actually make sense of what they were telling her. It felt like something didn’t want her there, though.

Death hasn’t been wrong yet. If she thinks there’s something in Las Plumas, there’s something here. Maybe the cult is in hiding.

“If you’re here…” she said, spinning around and keeping her voice low. Low enough that she hoped whatever creature had been sent to find her would be able to hear her, without her voice carrying down to the celebrations to make her look insane. “I’m not giving up. You’re better off just coming clean with me and letting me get my work done. I’ll be quick and clean, I promise.”

The wind died down around her, as though in response to her words. Kira felt those eyes on her back for another moment, before it faded. She took the mask under her wing, lifted the gate, and returned to the town.

It wasn’t hard to find Churro; his stall was one of the busiest on the riverside. No mystery about why: he was the only one in the whole town to be advertising their chocolate. Even Kira, with her extremely narrow tastes for food, found the smells getting to her.

She waited in line, then settled an entire pile of coins between them instead of the little silver chips it should’ve cost. “A friend sent me,” she said, grabbing the churro in one wing and taking a bite. Warm and cinnamon, with a gooey chocolate center. It tasted too good for the shallow imitation world she was supposed to live in now.

Her Spanish wasn’t good, but it didn’t matter much. Death was supposed to be familiar when it came, so it usually spoke the language you knew best. Kira didn’t really know how it worked.

“What does this friend look like?” he answered, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“Shiny,” Kira answered. “And she’s good at making chocolate.”

That was enough to get his attention. Churro grew suddenly agitated, calling a string of expletives at the line and drawing a curtain closed over the front of his shop. No actual doors, since it was more of a cart with a little dining area just past it for ponies to enjoy their sweets.

“I haven’t missed a report,” he said. “She didn’t need to assassinate me. Could just stop sending the chocolate if I made her upset.”

“Assassinate…” She rolled her eyes. “Athena didn’t send me to kill you. I’m just here for information. I’m here to ask you a few questions, that’s all.”

“Oh.” He slumped behind the stand, running one hoof through his cinnamon-brown mane. At least she knew what had inspired his pony name. Well, that and his cutie mark. He really was going all in on the baking. “Ask away.”

She polished off her churro with a few last bites. She almost asked for another one, but that would probably have been rude. “I’m here looking for a… local religion. It used to be isolated to this town, but I’ve heard it’s spreading around Mexico… or whatever this place is calling itself now.”

“Nueva Mexico,” he said. “Not like the state.”

Of course. That makes perfect sense. “I don’t know a lot. They’re called the Starwatchers, or they were at one point. Because their… god came from the stars, and they were convinced that more would arrive. And the more that did, the purer Earth would become. Something something eternal life, drink the Flavor Aid, you know the rest.”

Churro blinked, his face twitching once. He wasn’t as easy to read as plenty of the other ponies she’d seen since arriving here. But he sounded confident enough by the time he answered. “I watched them a year or so ago. Crazies… dancing out at night. Waste of time. If there was a god waiting for us, the Event proves He’s dead. No blessed virgin, no holy spirit.”

But there’s a spirit of some kind waiting for us when we die. And sometimes you can make deals with her. “Used to be? You’re sure they’re not still in town?”

He shrugged, removing another few churros from his pot of steaming oil and clipping them up to drip dry. “Nothing is certain. But used to be ponies went missing in the night. That all stopped. I assume they moved on.”

She nodded, even though she found herself taking him less and less seriously. Maybe Athena got here first. Maybe she’s making this difficult on purpose. “Before they left, were they worshiping north of town? Up on the hill? Cults love hills, right?”

“No,” he snapped, much too quickly. “They, uh… old church. East. Burned down last month.”

“Thanks for your help.” Kira turned to go, but hesitated near the exit. She bounded back in a few easy leaps, snatching another churro from the rack. “Have a nice Soul’s Day, Churro. Your cooking is fantastic. I’ll tell Athena she should import some of these for Bountiful.”

She left.

Kira wasn’t the sort of creature who could just ask Death for help whenever she ran into a dead-end. The spirit, or goddess, or whatever she was, only spoke with her when she had a new assignment. There was an understanding between them, that Kira would do everything within her power to accomplish what she was given. And if she stopped, then her work would end as well.

She made her way through the busy streets of Las Plumas, conscious of the weight of eyes on her back as she left the dessert stand. Why doesn’t your contact want to tell me the truth, Athena?

She wanted to walk right out of town and follow her gut about the mountain. She had a dark feeling about the place, from just how conspicuously creatures had been avoiding it. Like a poorly-kept secret, always on the edge of everyone’s minds.

She dodged down an alley, slipping into the shadows as only a bat could manage. She vanished from one side of the town, appearing on the other behind an old church. Kira panted for a moment, catching her breath from the bit of magic. She remained in the shadows, letting ponies flock past her just outside the edge of the alley, unaware of her presence for a little longer.

Then she saw it—an outline making its way towards her from the direction she’d come. For a moment, she thought she was seeing through the magic of another bat, but no. It wasn’t shaped like a pony at all, but stood on only two legs. She couldn’t make out a face, just a distorted outline of magic and attention.

It had followed her. More than that, it could see her, even away from any firelight that would’ve poked holes in her stealth.

Kira turned to face it, extending one of her hooves as she began to summon the Soulshear. She took a few deep breaths as the power built, though there was nothing she could do to rush it. The sword would be here when it was ready.

“I’m here to put an end to the one promising false immortality to the creatures of Earth,” she said. Her voice came away from her in wisps, stolen by the strange magic of this shadow-place. “You can’t stop me.”

The human outline stretched and distorted as it got closer, its face extending into a wide, multijointed jaw. “Away,” it seemed to say. “You are… unwelcome. Be devoured.”

“I won’t be!” she countered. The Soulshear appeared in her hoof, utterly weightless. Its magic broke her stealth at once, drawing stares and pointed hooves in her direction as she swung it at the demon.

It dissolved into mist around her, not blood and torn magic or roars of anger. So weak that it can’t even die properly. A few moments later and the outline was gone completely, without so much as tearing up her flesh on its way. This cult is weaker than I thought. It can’t even send proper monsters to kill me.

She froze then, realizing just how many ponies were staring into the alley at her. The Soulshear in her hoof burned brighter than any of their holiday candles, a spell so powerful that they were only sung about.

Kira dismissed it, letting the magic holding it in place fade. She set her hoof back down, pulling the mask over her face. “That’s, uh… happy Soul’s Day!” she yelled, jumping back into the shadow before anypony could get too close.

At least there were plenty of shadows in such a primitive town. But then, not many settlements still had electricity outside of Bountiful, and its ancient technology rotting away by the sea.

She meant to reappear far from anypony, where the shadows were thickest and the eyes would be less likely to notice her. But there was something in the shadows with her. Another bat?

Whatever it was, it was so much faster that she didn’t stand a chance of getting away. Something latched onto her, dragging her violently out of the shadows and onto a dusty road.

Los Plumas was far away now, a dimly glowing speck on the horizon. She could still see well enough to make out the shapes of ponies, all in costume. All demon costumes, and all better than hers. “Hey! You the one that sent spirits to hunt me? You found me fast.”

“No one is hunting you yet,” said Churro’s voice from under a mask. “Whoever you are, you don’t belong here in Plumas. Go back where you came from.”

She didn’t dare take her eyes away from the unicorn. His horn glowed under his mask. But she didn’t have to look to hear the half-dozen others surrounding her. They might think they were being quiet, but not nearly quiet enough for a bat. “You sure organized fast,” she said conversationally. “But I think you should probably reconsider. I’m not what you think I am.”

The circle closed in around her. She heard ponies shuffle about in their robes, probably drawing weapons. she wouldn’t have much time.

“We understand fine,” Churro said. “We understand you’re here to take away our immortality. The Starwatcher wants to share it with everypony, but Athena disapproves. Why should we care what she thinks?”

Something clicked behind her, the mechanical loading mechanism of a crossbow. Kira leapt for the shadows at her hooves—only to find them completely solid. She smacked into the ground, rolling sideways with a groan. Worse, the magical backlash completely stunned her, banishing any chance of quickly retrieving the Soulshear.

“Doesn’t matter what you are,” Churro said. “I have power now. Enough to put down a bat who asks too many questions. Do it, Paco.”

Kira winced, opening one eye in the dirt. She nearly screamed as she saw it—a figure lay beside her, one she’d seen before. With only the stars above to light them instead of the many different streetlights, they didn’t seem so much like a twisted monster. More like… a girl. A human girl, with dark eyes and a worried face. “Told you,” she whispered.

You were the demon sent to hunt me? Kira winced with effort, but it wouldn’t matter regardless. Soon she’d be a ghost.

The crossbow clicked again, with a grinding mechanical sound that showered her with splinters of shredded wood. “There,” the figure seemed to whisper. “Fight.”

Kira rolled onto her back, shaking away the disorientation of her interrupted magic. They might’ve taken her escape, but it wasn’t like Death sent an assassin who couldn’t do her job.

There were seven of them in all, mostly thickly-built earth ponies with clubs and farm implements. “Get her!” Churro yelled.

They lunged at her, with pichforks and threshing sticks and just their hooves.

Kira rolled, passing under a set of legs and smacking the underside of one pony with a hoof. She caught a pitchfork with both wings as it swung at her, pivoting it to the left into one of the attacker’s companions. He screamed as it sunk into his face, falling limply as the others lurched after her.

It wouldn’t have been a long fight regardless. When Death brought her back, it was with tireless strength beyond even what most earth ponies could produce. Athena had tempered that strength with years of training. These might be murderous thugs, but they were really just farmers.

Not only that, but something seemed to be working against them. They struggled to draw daggers, they tripped, their swings fell short. It was as though she fought beside an invisible partner.

Churro fled as the last of his companions finally fell, or at least he tried to. Kira scooped up a fallen dagger, took aim, and threw. It struck the unicorn square in the back, and he flopped to the side, bleeding out into the dirt.

“Are you, uh… are you still there?” she asked the empty night, glancing around wildly. “Whoever… whatever you are.”

“Paula,” said a voice, reedy and indistinct on the wind. “My home is filthy. Something… terrible has… to devour.”

That’s what you meant! You weren’t threatening me at all! That explained why the Soulshear hadn’t killed her. The weapon could slice through the inanimate and the flesh of beings tainted by the Void, but natives of their reality would not be affected. Even dead ones, apparently.

“What are you, Paula?”

The voice didn’t answer. The dust picked up around her, past the dead and bleeding who had just tried to kill her. “You can see me. You can… help. Together, can… stop.”

“You did save my life,” Kira said, her wings shifting uneasily at her sides. “I think we can work together. Some…how. Unfortunately that was my only source.”

“High,” answered the figure, her outline almost visible in the dust and wind a second before it settled. “Temple in the mountains. Hurry.”

Kira found her way to a trail she suspected led up the mountain. Little yellow lanterns already hung, and every now and then a pony darted up. Each one wore similar costumes—demons, a little like her. All she had to do was make a few quick cuts to the dress, making it more revealing, and smear some dirt on her mask, and she’d blend right in.

She lurked behind a patch of large yuccas, waiting for the trail to be clear—then she slipped onto it, walking as confidently as though she belonged there.

Death wouldn’t be happy if the cult escaped to set up somewhere else.

There was a time when a climb up somewhere so steep would’ve been hard on her body, poorly suited to physical labor. That was why she’d loved scuba diving, since the sport was so relaxing. Not so much anymore, though. She’d outright refused both jobs Death tried to give her underwater.

Eventually she began to crest the hill, and she saw her first signs of a real destination. There was old mining equipment here, quietly rusting away in the sun. Too small to be for humans, so this must be a pony creation. Civilization had risen and fallen so many times since she vanished that she couldn’t keep track of it all.

But not much further, a large building rose from the scrubland, stone pillars supporting a roof of arches and other simple engineering. Like a miniature version of something the Greeks might’ve built. It was a church, with many pews packed in close, many already full.

Kira hurried forward towards the group ahead of her, ears pivoting as they reached the gate outside and the costumed ponies that seemed to be guarding it. They weren’t holding spears or other primitive weapons, but they did seem bulky enough to be earth ponies under all that cloth.

“What do the stars say, brother?” one asked.

“Listen and live,” he answered. Each pony ahead of her answered in kind, and before too long she had reached the gate herself.

At least their silly costumes counted for something—they wouldn’t be seeing her face through this. She felt as though the eyes she saw squinting out from the guard’s costume seemed skeptical. Maybe the “dirt as dye” wasn’t as convincing as she thought.

“What do the stars say, sister?”

“Listen and live,” she answered, trying to match the pony’s tone.

“Listen well tonight,” the guard said, pushing the rusty gate open for her. “There are many secrets waiting for us.”

She slipped in, settling into an open seat near the wall. She got a few curious looks from ponies—maybe that seat was already taken? But nopony stopped her, and at least she could be sure she wouldn’t be stabbed through a pillar.

If I fail tonight, will Death let me die for real? Or will she keep bringing me back until she’s satisfied? If she finished, she could ask. Or if she failed, then she’d probably be asking a little sooner than she would’ve planned.

For a good long while, ponies continued to trickle in. She did her best to seem as unobtrusive as possible, listening to the conversations and taking in the details of the cult. At first glance, it seemed a little like one of the Event-addled forms of Christianity, with the familiar altar at the front of the room and paths leading up towards it, and a few doors leading away.

But apparently this particular church had been twisted more than some, because instead of a cross or effigy of the Christ (pony or otherwise), this one had itself a demon. One that looked very much like the one she was dressed as. The carving was of solid gold, depicting a creature that stood on its hindlegs with arms spread in welcome. The face was twisted and carnivorous, with two sets of jaws, and eyes leading upward in little spots.

It made her stomach churn just to look at, like the body just didn’t quite belong here.

The church had no proper roof, though there were several uneven windows of post-Event glass held over the pulpit. Though they seemed so strangely shaped and colored that she suspected they were lenses more than windows. So not just a luxury of staying dry in the rain given to the priest.

Unfortunately there was little to overhear in the conversations of the other worshipers. They whispered to one another in praise for the “Starwatcher,” eager for the “sight of beyond” that waited for them. Somehow, Kira didn’t think they’d be too open to explain their beliefs to her.

I hope this is the right cult. This might just be a weird church, and Death is going to be pissed.

But she’d come too far to give up now. She was going to see this though.

As the hour grew later and the cold of the desert finally reached through her costume to make her shiver, a much larger group of worshipers all filed in at once. She didn’t have to turn around to hear their heavy hooffalls, each one lumbering and probably twice as strong as she was. They moved with purpose along the edges of the room, each one carrying… swords? Yes, those were definitely swords, glittering in the faint starlight.

Their arrival seemed to signal the beginning of the meeting, because chatter throughout the room gradually fell away. Kira clutched her mask closer to her, lowering her head and scooting over slightly, so she was beside the other ponies in her row.

Nopony attacked her. A few burly ponies filed past her, settling down onto their haunches along the far wall. They didn’t have their weapons drawn, or seem terribly interested in the church’s occupants at all.

They’re not looking for me. They’re here to keep us in.

The door behind the pulpit finally opened, and a pony emerged from behind. They wore a full costume just like everypony else, though she could still see their bat wings emerging from a robe. Of course it would be a bat—give ponies more reason for all their stupid stereotypes.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, settling his forelegs on the altar. “Months have passed since you heard the secrets of the stars. Now at last we come together to consummate that knowledge.”

Cheers went up from around her, and Kira joined in only a few seconds late. She kept going a little too long, wincing slightly at the look she got from the front of the room. The eyes inside that mask were as sharp as knives.

“The stars make promises to us,” the bat went on. “Some of you have seen those promises kept. Some of you have only heard from your friends and neighbors. Let me assure you that all your sacrifices will now be made worthy. No longer will we live in fear for the end, no more reason to envy what the ancients had. Ascension waits for each of us, immortality that we should’ve been given long ago. The end of pain, and the solidification of meaning.”

Maybe I’m not in the wrong place after all.

As the crowd cheered again, Kira became conscious of light building in those strange lenses. They weren’t just for show—the faint starlight overhead was concentrating down, fractured through one layer and then another, until it shone directly on the alter.

The crystal bowl resting there caught that light, shining it back upward. A figure seemed to be growing there, like they were gradually tuning into a specific frequency for a TV broadcast. Even from its suggestions, she knew it would eventually match the horrible sculpture set beside it.

“The stars have been watching us this last year, and seen our suffering. They know the pain of our losses, as our loved ones are torn away by needless death. They offer us an end in exchange for our worship. Do we think the deal is worthwhile?”

Kira remained in her seat. Maybe Death would be upset that she didn’t just get started destroying everything. But she was curious, and she’d never seen anything quite like these strange promises before. To truly destroy it, she needed to know what she was tearing down.

More cheering, jubilant now. A few cultists rose to their hooves, pressing towards the front of the room. Whatever was coming, they seemed to expect it—be eager for it.

She watched, feeling herself grow slightly sicker the longer she remained in its presence.

There was nothing inherently evil about wanting immortality, nothing that should make her feel this way. Death was just another powerful creature on the stage, who fought for her goals just as others fought for theirs. But this—this was what Athena hunted at the same time. The touch of the unmade.

“Please, remain where you are,” the stallion said. “Your loyalty and love is more than warranted, but the time has not come yet. Wait a little longer, until the stars are right.”

Be ready, she heard, or thought she heard. They know you are different.

Paula? She couldn’t see the spirit’s outline, but that was certainly her voice. Quieter than a whisper.

“I see that some of you tonight are unworthy. I offer this warning—that those who haven’t completed their oaths will not be accepted into the endless nebulae that wait beyond the frail bonds of physical form. They will be destroyed in wrath by the god they tried to trick.”

She felt his eyes firmly on her as he said it. Her disguise had fooled many—but not him. “The Starwatcher gives this last chance to any who wish to return again after more time to prepare. Walk away now, unpunished. Or stay, and face the wrath you deserve.”

It wouldn’t be long now until the image was solid.

Death had told her that she had only one chance to do this every year. She should’ve realized that the Void was implicated in all this—it often had a confusing tangle of rules and conditions required to bring it gnawing into the real world, and no two creatures were alike.

This one was apparently offering eternal life one night out of the year. Or maybe just an agonizing death.

She didn’t move from her seat. A few ponies did, backing up towards the exit. The goons got out of their way, almost reluctantly. She could hear their whispers. “Shame, shame.”

She didn’t move, though. She kept one hoof extended, her breathing careful. The sword took concentration, so she kept herself as close to ready for it as possible. Just a few seconds of focus should put it back into her hooves when she needed it.

“Are there no others?” the leader asked. Ponies looked around, and none of the worshipers seemed able to single her out the way he could. After a few seconds of silence, he went on. “Then the time has come. Those who are worthy will travel to the Starwatcher’s court. Those who have failed will face the final death mortal, as they deserve.”

One hoof jerked out, and he pointed at her. “You, with the clumsy mask. I can taste the Starwatcher’s hunger for you. Come and join me, sister.”

She rose to her hooves, ignoring the persistent whispers urging her to flee. She probably could’ve found a patch of shadow large enough if she looked—but she hadn’t come all this way to run from danger, either.

Thugs yanked on her costume, almost hard enough to tear it. But they weren’t trying to rip it off, just make sure she obeyed. They crowded around her much too close to flee, pushing her up towards the platform.

Kira didn’t fight back, putting on her most frightened performance she could. Her hooves shook a little under her, and the emptiness in the pit of her stomach was no act.

With each step towards the altar, time seemed to slow. It wasn’t just thugs around her now, but another outline, a pale green pony transparent in the moonlight. And beyond her, another set of eyes watching through the open sides of the building.

“The boldest promises contain the greatest lies,” Death said, her face completely obscured in the foggy swirls of her cloak. “These creatures face an eternity of misery, their souls turned to extraplanar currency in their inscrutable games. I should have noticed this last year.”

Death didn’t care much about time. Maybe that meant she was really an immensely powerful unicorn, using a fairy glade spell to compress it around them. Kira knew at least one pony who could do magic like that.

But she didn’t feel like just another pony. Her presence was the same as the itching on her neck in that empty field, where shadows of unseen things were always lurking nearby. “Can I beat it?”

“Not a chance,” Death answered. “Ignore the altar.”

Her companion vanished, and sound rushed in around her. The crowd of ponies had started singing an unearthly hymn. Despite her knack for most languages, this one remained confusing to her. She felt only a malevolence, growing more and more pronounced the louder the singing got.

Thanks for not being stupidly mysterious again. Sometimes it felt like Death didn’t actually care if she won or not, but only wanted to see a pony struggle with her riddles.

The thugs shoved her down roughly at the base of the altar. Despite the new moon, all those lenses overhead made it feel like she was standing under a spotlight. A spotlight of deep purples and reds that no star unaided eyes could see actually produced.

They’re shining through from somewhere else, she realized. I wonder if Death even can help me here. Maybe that’s why she left.

Ignore the altar? How was she supposed to ignore the increasingly lifelike monster reflected in the glass, appearing to glide towards her. Its eyes grew darker, and in them she could see the stars stretching back into infinity. She started measuring her breath, one hoof extended to her side as she focused her concentration on the one weapon she was sure could make a difference.

“The watcher’s judgement is harsh for all those who fail to obey its precepts,” the priest said. “Let this pony’s suffering be the example to all who—”

The Soulshear exploded into the air beside her, its ordinarily pale light seeming like a bonfire compared to the false stars that lit the church. Ponies screamed, though there were several guards near her, and those lurched into action.

She swung, slicing through one guard while she spread her wings and glided out of the patch of light. He fell limply to the ground, skin losing all its color as he flopped to the floor.

At least I know they’re tainted. Athena should’ve paid better than chocolate.

She landed behind the altar, spinning the blade around towards the priest. But he was ready for her—while the crowd screamed, he had drawn a crossbow from behind the altar. “I will not allow you to tear down what we’ve built!” he yelled.

Kira froze, lifting the sword as best she could. But the chance of him actually hitting it was slim.

But as he pulled the trigger, the pony jerked to one side, sending the metal bolt whizzing out the open celling and out into the sky.

Kira hadn’t seen what had distracted him—she didn’t have the time to search. The alien presence grew stronger by the moment, its projection larger in the star-lens. It was growing harder to move, her own thoughts becoming sluggish. If it actually arrived, there was nothing she could do.

Kira didn’t attack the altar and the crystal bowl upon it—instead she lifted her sword towards the celling, extending it all the way through the lenses.

It pierced them just as easily as it tore flesh corrupted by the touch of the outside. Glass screamed like it had been rapidly cooled and heated, shattering in a flare of brilliant light.

The priest dropped to the ground, screaming in agony, along with several of the guards. The projection vanished instantly, and the bowl exploded, sending shards of glass around the room in all directions.

Kira watched ponies scatter. She didn’t chase after the townsponies, though in some parts of the world even being tempted by the void would be punishable by execution. Archive would’ve probably burned this church and everyone in it without a second thought.

But Death didn’t actually care who lived and died, so long as the promises of immortality were ended.

While ponies fled, Kira made her way around the church to those whose flesh was so corrupt that they now struggled to move. Probably they’d been graced with all kinds of unholy powers—before they could recover, she cut their throats. Over a dozen this time, left to bleed out on the stone floor. It was exhausting, thankless work… but eventually she was done.

She couldn’t burn the whole church, so she just collected everything that looked like books or records of the cult, soaked them in lantern oil, and set them ablaze using a novelty pumpkin.

Finally she settled back onto her haunches, watching the first faint rays of dawn begin to crest the horizon.

“Your work is satisfactory,” Death said, standing beside her in the desert. “Though we cannot be certain if its consequences will endure. Some who escaped remember the secrets of the Starwatcher. They may bring it back.”

“You could tell me sooner next time,” Kira said, a little bitterness in her voice. “Aren’t you a god? Warn me before they actually kill anyone.”

“Not a god,” Death answered. “A liminary. No creature should face death alone.”

Was something still watching her? Kira turned suddenly back towards the church, preparing to summon her sword again. Maybe she hadn’t finished her work, maybe the demon wasn’t as banished as she thought.

A shadowy outline seemed to be watching her from inside, with a single set of pale eyes. “Paula, this is Death. Or… the liminary of death? I don’t know what that means, but I hope you’re satisfied.”

Death smiled. “Sometimes the dead care for the living, instead of the other way around.” She vanished. So apparently not interested in conversing with whatever force had saved Kira tonight.

“Gone,” the spirit said, crossing through the church like mists blowing between the pews. “Finished. Rest now.”

“I’m sorry for swinging my sword at you earlier,” she said. “That was my bad. I would’ve been screwed without your help.”

The breeze about her hooves lifted a little column of dust and pebbles, blowing past her towards the edge of the cliff then down towards Las Plumas. Was it just her imagination, or did it sound like laughter?

There was nothing in the wreckage of the church when she finally looked back—just bodies, and a cult that wasn’t anymore.

Fire in Whitewater

Whitewater was burning. She could still smell the smoke, and other smells she only knew from the time her father had taken her to the county fair. Homestead had warned her then that many visited the market--and so she hadn't vomited when she smelled it. She would've done so now, except that her body lacked the strength.

Meadow Sweet was dying. This did not bother her much--not after what she had seen.

They had come from the sea. Fish that walked, fish that fought with spears and swords and set fire to every home. Sweet was fast, the fastest pony she knew. She had run to the root cellar, as Homestead always said she belonged when there was danger. Honeydew, her mother, hadn't made it out in time. She'd been trapped inside when the fires started. Sweet could still hear her screams.

At first, Sweet had watched from a crack in the cellar door. Watched as things twice as large as any pony shambled through Whitewater. Many of them were still wet, their scaly skin shining in the moonlight.

Homestead was a brave pony, the strongest stallion in the village. He stopped them at his door, demanding they leave his family alone. "My wife and daughter and all I own are inside," he had lied. "You may have me if you leave them in peace."

"We will take you," they said, in a voice like drowning. "But your wife is bound by air, she cannot serve. Your daughter is a child, too weak to bear a yoke. We do not need weak slaves."

Her father had fought them when they tried to put a torch to the cottage. Meadow Sweet saw him fought, and cheered with joy as they began to fall. For a single moment, it was like all things living fought beside him. The earth broke under his hooves, and so did they.

But the strangers killed all they touched. Grass withered, turning grey like chalk. When Homestead killed one, five more rose to replace it. Eventually, they had him on the ground. "Now that you have fought, you too will die," they said.

They came for Meadow Sweet next, breaking down the door and dragging her out before her father and the burning cottage.

They were even more horrible up close. A scent like rotting fish left in the sun, a visage to match, and a touch of corruption. Meadow Sweet had known the earth from her earliest days, and she could hear it scream with their every footstep. It was hard to tell from the screams of the others he had known as they died too.

"I grant the mercy of painless death to the young," said one of the monstrosities, its voice so terrible in her ears that she tried to hide. But she couldn't. "Your creator has taken that privilege from you." They took a knife, dull and ragged, and stabbed her chest.

It did not cut like it would another pony. Sweet felt the earth in her too, and for a moment she screamed the defiant screams of loam and soil. They were both her friends, and they would not see her suffer and do nothing.

The monster kept shoving, until flesh parted and she screamed. Homestead screamed too, begged for her life, yet they ignored him. "Know the price of your defiance," said the voice. "I will leave your daughter here, cut by my knife that your magic can't erase. Her magic will try to heal her, but all it will do is extend her suffering. She may lie here for days before the end comes, until vultures peck out her eyes and the rot that you deserve comes for her."

Things got fuzzy after that. Meadow Sweet watched them kill her father, falling on him like ravenous beasts. They had left the bones, right in front of her, many still bloody or with ragged shreds of flesh hanging off.

Meadow Sweet spent the rest of the night lying there. She couldn't sleep, not while she was in so much pain. Every breath came labored, every heartbeat was a struggle, yet still she fought. Her magic kept her alive even though she did not wish it.

The sun rose, and there were no more screams. No morning church bells, no giggling foals or rumbling of wooden carts to market. No birds, except for a solitary crow. Far away, the distant crashing of the waves sounded like mocking laughter.

Meadow Sweet died with the rest of Whitewater.

But her body kept on going, as the last drops of magic kept her alive. Instead of shivering in the chill of night, she began to cook in the unprotected sunlight. Hours blurred in her delirium, spent alone in the corpse of her village.

Then something changed. She heard marching hooves, the sound of clanking armor. Other sounds she couldn't explain. Voices in the distance, coming down the main road. Her own cottage was along the road. They would pass her.

"Another one?"

"They didn't stand a chance."

"If they made it as far as Eastvale, the coastal villages were doomed."

"Pity. There won't be anyone to save."

All those voices sounded like the same sort of pony--soldiers, the kind who learned to fight and answered the call to war far away. Meadow Sweet had never known a soldier, though she had seen them at the fair many times. They always told the best stories.

"There is." That voice was different in a way she couldn't explain. "Just ahead. Whoever they are, they're barely alive."

The steps started to run. Sweet wanted to hide herself away, but she lacked the strength even to move her hooves. She could turn her head, and look up as the voice came around the bend.

They were not like the soldiers she had seen before. Those ponies had worn mostly chainmail, or sometimes sturdy leather studded with bits of metal. She had seen drawings of great lords among ponies who wore plates instead, armor that cost more than her whole village was worth. These ponies wore armor like that, though it wasn't made from metal. It was reflective and half-clear, like the stained glass at her village church. Why would anypony wear glass armor?

Yet even stranger than their armor was their leader. She towered over all of them, standing on two legs as the shambling monsters from the water had done. Yet instead of rot, she smelled of lightning. Instead of scales, she had pale skin like a newborn diamond dog. No fur, but a long black mane cascading down the back of her plumed helmet in an elegant braid. She wore a breastplate of a dullish metal, along with a loose-fitting white robe that exposed much of her strange legs. She carried a spear in her hand, a spear that flashed and glowed like an angry star.

Yet when she saw Sweet, there was only gentleness in those gray eyes. "Continue on without me," she ordered, gesturing down the road with her spear. "There is another village to the north. It may be attacked next." The ponies galloped off at her command, but there were so few of them. Only a dozen.

"They shouldn't..." Sweet said, her voice a pale whisper. "There were so many here... enough that I couldn't see the ground."

The towering alien with her flat face dropped onto the ground in front of Sweet, setting her spear down beside her. "My knights have finished them already. They will kill any they find to the north as well."

"Which God are you?" Sweet asked, her question coming as a single hacking cough.

The woman smiled "I am Pallas Athena. Have you heard of me?"

"No," Sweet admitted. "T-that... must be why you... punished us. You're here to kill me too, right? We worshiped the wrong god."

"No," Athena's amusement was gone. "What good would your worship have done me?" She reached out, resting one hand on the back of Sweet's neck.

Her contact brought something very strange: a cool feeling, spreading from the point of contact, deading the pain. It was the cold numbness of death.

"O-oh..." Sweet started to cry again. She hadn't known she could still do that. She could speak again too, and breathe again. It came much easier now, as she knew it should in the moments before death. That was how all the stories went, anyway. "Y-you're a kind angel... Father Polis always said that Idyia set her angels to watch over the helpless. You're here to take me with you."

"Yes," Athena admitted. "But not if you will not come willingly. I don't offer a peaceful rest to men, as death does."

"Men? What's that?"

Athena ignored the question. "What is your name, child?"

"I-it was... Meadow Sweet..."

"Meadow Sweet. I have known many of your kind--few could see a horror like this and still speak with me. Mortal minds are warped and damaged by the void, and only madness remains. But you are stronger."

"I..." she was still crying. Athena didn't seem to mind, so Sweet didn't try to stop. It was hard to do anything else. "I..."

"Listen to me, child," Athena leaned in close, her voice very quiet. "I offer you a choice," she took the spear in one paw, holding it out to one side. In the other, her paw was empty. "On my left is oblivion. I will not leave you here to suffer, so take the left-handed path and I will let you sleep. You will not wake again. When you close your eyes, your existence will end without more pain.

"On my right, I offer something else. I will heal you, make you strong in ways you never knew. In time, you will wear the armor of one of my knights. I will show you my wisdom, I will guide your hooves in every heroic endeavor. You will shatter the shackles of the slaver, burn the lies that darkness whispers to the sorcerer, and keep the tide from rising."

Sweet considered for a long time, looking between Athena's spindly paws. She had known so much pain in the last few hours--lost everything she had ever known. Even now, she struggled to comprehend the enormity of her loss. "Why... me?" she eventually asked. "I know you said I'm strong, and maybe. But why not teach everyone to fight? Whitewater... if we could fight... might not be burned."

Athena sighed, her expression growing somber. "There are rules that govern even the gods, child. I cannot interfere with your lives when you live them in your own way." she set down the spear, pointing at the knife-wound to Sweet's chest. It no longer pulsed with blood, as it had before Athena arrived. Sweet supposed she didn't have much blood left to lose. "You have been cut by the unmade. No skill of unicorn of men could heal you now. As I see it, you are already dead. Your life now ended, I may do with you as I please."

"So... why even offer me the choice? Why not just take me?"

Athena set down her spear. "Ponies and men look out at the world around them, Meadow Sweet, and they see a sturdy fortress. But this is a lie. The universe is not a castle, it is a rickety wooden shack. Last night, you saw the winds howling at the walls, battering the broken timbers. You saw the storm roll in and tear away a precious piece of our home, one we will never get back.

"Slaves and servants can't hold the house together. I have better slaves at my command than you could ever hope to be, slaves of metal and wheels that obey without question and have no lives to lose. Yet I have learned these are poor weapons against our common enemy. The storm is the true master of pounding rain and overwhelming winds, he cannot be beaten with numbers." She reached out, poking at where Meadow Sweet's cutie mark would be, if she had one. "There is no enemy more dangerous than one who knows he is doing the right thing. My knights bend creation to its own service. No slave could do that. But a volunteer could." Athena extended one of her paws again. "I need your decision. Join my service or refuse, but I need to know. I cannot sustain you much longer."

Meadow Sweet remembered the screams. She saw her village burning, remembered how helpless and afraid she had felt. She had not been able to fight.

Meadow Sweet took the offered paw. "I'll do it."

The Soulshear

"Why did we have to go so far, Paladin Forge?" Meadow Sweet pressed her head up against the window of the Skimmer, watching the ocean blast by below them. She had seen so many incredible things over the last few months, the least of which had been her initial recovery. Much of those early months had passed in a blur of travel, spent in one of Athena's Skimmers.

The craft was barely large enough for four ponies, though this one contained only two. Herself, and Night Forge.

Forge sat at the controls in the front of the skimmer, surrounded by glass and levers on all sides. Between his massive size and impressive wingspan, he barely fit . But Forge was not unique in that way. All of Athena's ponies were impressive, often as much as a full foot taller than average. Mares were not exempt from this, though she'd been told she wouldn't be nearly as large as Forge when she finished growing.

Mostly she tried not to think about that.

Forge himself had a dark purple coat with a darker patch under his belly. He had a white and yellow mane, and a white scar that ran up the length of his face through his glass eye. Sweet did not know where it had come from, and she did not intend to ask. Not from a pony big enough to eat her if she annoyed him.

"Because you cannot learn to use a Soulshear in a training ground," he said, glancing over his shoulder to look her up and down. "This is the first and greatest weapon of a Knight, and it will be useless without an enemy. We must find Unmade for you to fight that will not tax your abilities too heavily."

Sweet slid out of her window seat as though she'd been petrified, sliding along the glass bottom until she came to a stop near Forge's control chair. "I... uh..." she wilted. "Are you joking, master?"

Forge laughed, so loudly it echoed over the roar of the propellers outside, so loudly it drowned out the rumble of the engine. "Unfortunately not, squire. Athena is nearly certain we are dealing with only a single Outsider in this case, weak and small enough that it should present you with an excellent opportunity for training."

"I haven't been a squire for a year yet!" she protested, rising to her hooves again and backing away. It was a little harder--Sweet wasn't naked anymore, as she had spent most of her life. Now she had a fabric jumpsuit, as thin and breathable as cotton but somehow strong enough to stop a knife. On it was Athena's Owl crest, along with a few spells woven into the fabric. Athena might not be the god of magic, but she knew more about it than anypony Sweet had ever heard of.

Her old world had been so small, so limited. She hadn't known there were whole countries across the ocean, she hadn't known about aircraft and machinery and electricity. She hadn't even known about germ theory, or algebra. She knew all those things now, and many others besides. Most of a scholar's time was spent learning. No, all of it. She was learning now, though not theory today.

"Can you summon your Soulshear?" Forge asked, turning back to his controls. Far below them, Sweet could see land in the distance, a series of tiny green islands surrounded by water. There was a much larger continent in the distance, though she didn't recognize it. Sweet had learned a great deal about the world's geography from Athena's maps, but she did not recognize wherever they were going.

"I... yes," she reluctantly admitted. "You make me do it fifty times every morning, remember?"

"I do," he smiled at her. "Today, you will do more than summon the weapon. Today you will use it. First on me, then on objects, and finally on one of the Unmade. Your first kill is a mark of pride you will carry for many years to come."

Sweet nodded. "I..." she blushed, looking down at the ground. "I'm ready to see what it does for real. I know it's impressive magic and all, but... it's hard to believe. All the things ponies say... if you can kill an army of Outsiders, why are there still petty kings? If Athena had been ruling my country instead of some king I'd never met, my family might be alive.

Forge did not answer right away. The pony concentrated on the landing, leaning forward and resting both forelegs on the sticks. Sweet didn't watch him, though she badly wanted to. Instead she made her way to one of the three seats in back, and strapped herself in. She had only had to be slammed into a wall once to learn that landings could be bumpy.

This one wasn't. Forge touched them down in a tropical forest surrounded by thick trees. How he could navigate them through so many towering trunks and connected vines, she didn't know. Probably comes from being a bat. All that practice flying in caves. Of course she didn't say that either.

"Alright, Sweet. We received reports of a single injured spawn lurking in the swamp near some ancient ruins. We have landed as close as possible, about one mile away. What should we bring?"

"Well, uh..." Sweet unbuckled herself, looking up at the armory shelf above the seats. "We might need... no, you just said one. And it's too close to need to camp or hike. We won't want boots in a swamp, ummmmmm... Armor and the Soulshear should be enough, right?"

Forge hopped down off the pilot's chair, removing a glowing crystal from within and pulling the chain into his own cloak. Forge had not brought his armor this time, only the padded jumpsuit like hers. His had the marks of a paladin instead, but otherwise it was practically identical. "Good, you were listening. A knight travels with as little as possible, in case he is captured or killed. Everything we use is irreplaceable, and anything that falls into an enemy's hooves might be turned against us in time.”
They made their way out of the skimmer, which closed behind them like a sturdy insect withdrawing into its shell. The skimmer’s delicate propellers and spindly wings curled up within the shell, until the craft had shrunk down to the size of a large boulder. A boulder with a steel shell.

It did not smell sweet outside. Sweet curled up her nose at the swamp stench, a smell that was halfway rotting fish and halfway methane. The ground sunk a little under her hooves, though not very far. It wasn’t full-blown mud, for which she was thankful.

Night Forge stopped her with a hoof. “That is far enough, squire. We will practice here before we track the beast. Ready your blade.” Air seemed to rush in around Forge’s extended hoof, as though he had open a door leading to deep space and it was all rushing away. Light burst forth from his skin, spreading and lengthening until it was nearly twice as long as she was, a massive blade that no pony could’ve lifted if it were made of metal.

A Soulshear was not made from metal. She looked away, backing up and shielding her face from the warmth. Yet the wet ground wouldn’t start to smoke, no matter how hot it might feel to her. A Soulshear was not fire, and it did not produce true heat.

The blade acted a little like Forge was a unicorn, in that it remained attached to his leg without any straps to secure it there. It would move at his mental command, though it would remain attached. Once he broke contact with it, the weapon would be instantly destroyed.

Forge swung the sword through the air in one of the practice-stances, whirling it in front of him, dancing with the blade. It looked almost as though he were fighting an invisible enemy with a sword of their own. “What are you waiting for?” He asked. “Prepare your blade!”

Sweet froze, closing her eyes. It took a great deal of focus, imagining the shards of crystal that had been implanted into her legs by Athena’s skilled surgeons. Remember your pain. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to see Whitewater again. Her cottage on fire. Her mother’s screams. Your pain is the key.

As Sweet remembered her suffering, she found an energy building in her, as though she were a small gear in a very large machine, yet the designer was focused on her. She heard distant music, and her terrible vision of Whitewater transformed. She saw ancient stone buildings, a path winding in the distance, and an endless desert of white sand.

Energy flooded into her, though it didn’t come up from the Earth as she had come to expect all her life. That power needed an outlet, and the crystals provided one. The air rushed in, a maelstrom wrapping around and around her hoof, coalescing into a Soulshear.

Her own weapon was only as long as one of her legs, a short sword of modest size. It looked like fire, frozen in mid-burn, warm through her coat yet not hot enough to burn. If anything, it was a pleasant sensation, like a warm bath after many hours walking through the cold.

The Soulshear came with a price. Your weapon is your soul. Sweet felt it--an indescribable emptiness in her body, which felt physically drawn towards the blade. She still remembered falling limp and helpless the first few times she had drawn it, as the icy nothingness strangled her. Months of summoning and practice stances had helped her through that.

"Good." Forge gestured, and his own blade vanished in a flash of light, which drifted slowly towards him until it had been completely absorbed. "You have learned the first three rules. Until this point, you have been ordered to use your blade on neither object nor pony. Have you honored those instructions?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir. I have."

"That rule is now lifted." He pointed at a nearby stump, sticking out from the ground. "Slice through the top half of that stump. A single stroke, as quick as you can."

Sweet grinned, rearing back and preparing to strike. She had heard so many stories about how a Soulshear worked, but been unable to confirm them. It wasn't like she'd been invited to fight with the troops before. Sweet swung, in the same motion she might've used with a practice sword. The Soulshear passed through the stump like it wasn't there, like the sword had been made of mist. Its shape remained coherent as it came out the other end, leaving a fresh slice in the wood. Her cut had been at a slight angle, and the top began to slide to the ground, perfectly flat and smooth. Like cutting through ice with a hot wire, only much more quickly.

"By Arinna's own hooves... I can do that?"

"You can," Forge said. "And now you have learned the fourth law: The blade parts all things. Repeat it."

"The blade parts all things," she said, matching his tone. "The forth law."

"There are two others, and you will learn them both today." He spread his legs, opening his wings wide, and staring at her. "Stab me."

"W-what?" Sweet staggered back, though not very far. "Master, are you certain--"

"In the head! Don't you dare touch my uniform, not even the collar. Right through my head and nothing else. No hesitation squire, or you swim home!"

"Yes sir!" Sweet closed her eyes, stabbing forward with one hoof. right at his face. She couldn't watch, not after what she'd just seen with the wood. She'd just learned the law, after all. A Soulshear could cut anything.

She felt no resistance as she shoved it through her master's face, until the curved cross guard connected with his cheek and refused to pass further. She opened one eye, expecting to see some terrible wound... but she saw nothing. The Soulshear had faded to mist as it passed through Forge's skin, emerging on the other side of his head without passing the distance in-between. "What?"

"Out," he barked.

"Oh!" she pulled back her hoof, blushing fiercely. "W-why didn't it cut you? Is it because you're a Paladin? Did Athena's magic make you immune?"

"No," Forge summoned his own blade, a hundred times faster than she could've hoped to do. No hesitation, no closing his eyes, no breathing exercises. A simple effort of will, a rush of air, and Forge had his towering Soulshear. "Hold perfectly still." He extended one hoof, aiming the blade at her. She could see its sheer point, steam rising from the end.

Sweet froze, squeezing her eyes as tightly shut as they would go.

"No!" Forge barked. "Watch it happen! You need to know what this is like. You cannot fight if you fear your most potent weapon."

She reluctantly forced her eyes open. As her concentration faltered, her own blade vanished in a puff of light and magic, passing through her, and dissolving into her body. The change was immediate, as familiar sensation swallowed the emptiness that had gnawed at her. The despair burned away as her soul returned to where it belonged. Well, that was how Athena had explained it. She had no reason to doubt what the goddess had said, though she also had no way of confirming it.

Forge didn't chastise her for losing the sword. Instead he shoved, thrusting his own blade right between her eyes. Sweet froze, watching as the searing warmth that could cut stone and steel passed through her face. She had expected pain at least... but she felt nothing. A warm breeze, a distant memory of pleasant things. The sound of a forge, drinking tea in the summer and looking out on the cliffs. She remembered good things she had never seen.

Then Forge removed the sword. "Repeat the forth rule for me again, squire."

"The blade parts all things."

"Yes. But you are not a thing, and neither am I. The fifth law is this: To all that lives, I do no harm. Repeat it for me."

She did.

"Good," he gestured around them, at the jungle plants, the vibrant life that crowded close together, soaking up all the sunlight they could. "The Soulshear cannot quell a native spirit. It doesn't matter if that spirit is in a bird, a tree, a deer, or a pony. Your spirit recognizes its brothers and sisters, and it will not harm them. Do not take this as license to use a Soulshear without restraint, however. Dead matter has no spirit, and so the sword can still kill. Remove an important support on a building, damage a skimmer in flight, or break open a dam... these things can kill without needing to sever the soul directly."

"It cuts dead things, but not the living," Sweet said. "What about... things that aren't either one? What about the Unmade?"

"The sixth law," Forge answered, grinning at her. "I will not tell you until you see for yourself. Know, however, that this was the first and only purpose for your blade. A single Voidseeker knight can fight a hundred lesser spawn without fear. The greatest paladins, with armor to protect them, have fought thousands." Forge's sword vanished, and he leaned in close. "A Soulshear is a powerful weapon, and lesser spawn have little defense against it. Know, however, that having a sword that can fell one of them in a single strike does not make you immortal. A trap will still kill you. If they drag you under the water, you will still drown. If they shoot you, you will still bleed." He turned away, facing into the jungle.

"The fisherman's Kampung is this way. We will speak with his family, and determine where to go to find the beast."

They walked a long time. Sweet wasn't sure why they couldn't have just landed closer to the house, but she didn't ask. Such questions often ended with her doing even more exercise when they got home, and still not getting an answer in the field. She could do nothing but trust that Forge had his reasons, and only question him after the mission was over. He was far more willing to explain his reasoning in retrospect if she obeyed in the moment.

The Kampung wasn't unlike the cottages she'd seen back home, though it had paper windows instead of glass. It also stood a full pony's height above the ground, raised on posts clearly made from the trunks of whole trees. No smoke rose from the chimney, nor was there any other sign of activity. Nothing but a slightly unusual smell, strange spices Sweet didn't recognize.

A set of wooden stairs led up to the door, and Forge gestured for her to follow him. "You won't understand this," he whispered. "You're too new for the language implants. Just smile and back me up if anything goes wrong."

"Uh..."

Forge knocked on the door with one hoof. Silence.

He knocked again, frowning at the closed door. "That's weird. His wife should be home at least."

This time, something did move from within. Hoofsteps made their way to the door, and a metal latch moved. The door swung open.

The interior of the house was very dark. A pony's face emerged, visible only through a tiny crack in the door. An older stallion, an earth pony like she was, with a pink coat and bright blue mane. He didn't look nearly as cheerful as his coat suggested he should be.

"你好," Forge said with a bow. "你今天捕的鱼儿怎样?"

"你好，它们还行吧," said the fisherman. "可是我看你还是走吧."

"我们可是根据你的要求而来的!" Forge argued, sticking his hoof in the door before the fisherman could shut it again. "我抱歉如果你不相信我们的主任，可是她只是想帮助你们的。 我保证我们来的原只是为了知道你在哪里看到那个怪物。知道了这些，我们就会马上离开。"

" 你们不可以来这里的。" the fisherman said. "我看你们还是离开吧。"

Even though she couldn't understand what the fisherman was saying, she could recognize a change to his tone. Something was wrong. The smell had become much more intense with the door open, and there was something familiar to it. It was the same smell she had scented in Whitewater, the night her old life had died.

Meadow Sweet ignored the conversation as it became more intense, closing her eyes and remembering her pain. It was much easier this time, with the familiar smells, the darkness she sensed in those words. It was pain, a quiet forced desperation.

Remember your pain. Your pain is the key. Your weapon is your soul. The blade parts all things. To all that lives, I do no harm. It seemed as though the Soulshear itself was eager to be summoned. She felt no emptiness as she did when she practiced, no numbness and pain. Only an eager anticipation.

Everything happened at once. The flimsy wooden door exploded outward, smashing into Forge. The blow deflected him off the platform, sending him through the railing and onto the ground with a dull thud. He'd obviously blocked the blow meant for both of them.

Unfortunately, that left her alone with the fisherman. In the full light of the tropical sun, Sweet could see that this pony wasn't quite what she'd expected. A thick growth spread across the back of his head, a spindly white fungus that twisted through his flesh, sprouting mushrooms and leaking with sickly green fluid. The stallion charged at her.

Sweet's Soulshear formed on her hoof a second later, bursting into brilliant light. It curved slightly towards the oncoming stallion, as though anticipating the blow. Sweet screamed, raising the blade to cover herself. She didn't stab the fisherman so much as held it out at him as he charged.

The pony tried to come up short, tried to slow his approach, without success. Sweet felt resistance on the blade for the first time, as it sunk into the Fisherman's neck. It wasn't like the stump... it didn't cut a clean line through flesh. It didn't seem to be cutting at all. The stallion still crashed into her, sending Sweet bouncing down the stairs. She lost her Soulshear as she fell kicking and screaming. Something heavy landed on her, crushing her into the soil.

It was a corpse. Sweet screamed, clawing and bucking to get out from under the thing. With the strength of earth, it did not take very much. She bucked, rising to her hooves in a single furious motion.

The Fisherman's body had no cut in its neck, where she had stabbed only moments before. As she looked down, conscious of Forge rising again beside her and brushing away chunks of wood from where they clung to his uniform, she could see only a faint burn-mark on the surface of the skin. Even as she watched, something like black tar bubbled up from the tiny incision, seeming to boil on contact with the air, hissing and popping as it burned away.

Sweet stared down, eyes wide with shock.

"I won't make you suffer through what must be done," Forge said, walking past her. "Wait a moment, I will return." He hurried past her, up the stairs into the house. Sweet listened after him, to the sound of a struggle from within. There were a few screams, high feminine screams filled with loathing. They didn't last. Glass broke within the house, and something clicked several times. By the time Forge walked out, the first flickers of orange flame were already visible behind him.

"What..." she began, trailing off as she realized. "His wife?"

Forge nodded, eyes downcast. "And the creature we came to hunt. It acted more boldly than we expected." He reached out, closing the poor fisherman's open, staring eyes. Blackness continued to boil out from the cut she'd made through his neck, though the flow seemed to be dying off.

"Is there..." Sweet hesitated. "I'm guessing this growth on his back..."

"Yes," Forge walked around to the other side of the corpse, pointing at the back of the neck. "There is no way we could have erased this. This infection has no cure. The greatest kindness we can offer is a painless death. That, and a prayer to Athena that the soul survives." He straightened. "The sixth and final law for you to memorize, Squire: Never spare the unmade your blade."

"Never spare the unmade your blade," she repeated, staring down at her hooves.

"Corruption spreads, squire. The orchard is vast, and we its only tenders. Every one of the unmade you destroy is another family that survives."

Author's Note

Thanks to Greyscale from the PaP Discord channel for the Chinese in this flash fiction.

Last Flight Out Kakadu

About one hour before Event...

First Lieutenant Oscar Reyes stood on the edge of the loading gantry of the Albatross Semiautonomous Heavy Carrier. The sun had set less than an hour ago, leaving enough of a glow for him to still see some of the vastly expanded mine infrastructure. What had been only a few dozen slowly rusting buildings a few years ago had changed enormously since he'd started making these runs. Well over a billion dollars had been spent here in almost total secrecy, as it had in dozens of other black projects across the globe.

In Ranger Uranium Mine, the product of that expenditure was being loaded onto the back of his carrier. Just over a dozen large crates, made from steel and not lead. They were so hot that only autonomous robots could wheel them, the same sort of palette movers that now worked in many Amazon warehouses. Flat robots rolled up the ramp, deposited their loads in his cargo bay, then returned the way they'd come, avoiding him and the other members of his crew as they rushed in to secure them.

The crates were so radioactive that he could feel the warmth coming through the steel. But with the constant, low-level protection of a miniaturized CPNFG, he and every other member of his crew would not suffer ill effects. Without that machine running, no human could fly within an Albatross.

A small black truck wheeled up from the end of the tarmac, and a pair of Australian Army officers stepped out. One carried a clipboard in her hands, the other nothing but the sidearm on his belt. They avoided the line of robots rolling in from the factory, coming in from the other direction. Lieutenant Reyes walked down from the ramp and along the side of his ship to greet them. They stopped a few feet away, exchanged salutes. "We deliver Fuel Shipment 97," said the woman, her accent so thick Reyes had to strain his ears to understand what she was saying. She offered the clipboard.

"We accept Fuel Shipment 97," he echoed, taking the clipboard and signing with the practiced stroke of one hand. He passed the clipboard back.

Just like that, everyone relaxed. "How's the weather been, Kelly?" Well, not enough that they stopped using last names.

"Oh, beautiful some days, perfect on others," the male officer responded. "The usual. How's Virginia?"

"When I left? 84% humidity."

The female officer winced. "Shit, Reyes. You should stick around. We're going diving later, once the shift is over. I'm sure we could scrounge an extra set of gear somewhere."

He laughed, "That would be wonderful, Nguyen. But you know how particular they are about deliveries being on time." He glanced over his shoulder, back at the Albatross. "I get leave in another month. I'll see if the fish still hate me then."

There was a quiet, awkward silence then, as they all exchanged a dark look. No one knew if the world would still be here in a month's time. Their calculations had predicted January, and then March, and here they still were. Living on borrowed time. Unless the whole thing is shit wrong. Interuniversal practical joke. Please God, let it be that. The economy of the first world would probably come crashing down when people realized just how much money had been spent on this, but at least there would still be people to pick up the pieces. Instead of a few hundred of us living in a hole. Reyes had a spot in that hole, and these officers didn't. By the numbers, almost nobody who worked for the HPI would actually survive the end of the world. Like the rest of mankind, they would die in agony.

"Well, it looks like the shipment has been loaded," Reyes said, clearing his throat. "I'm sure my guys have everything packed in by now. Best be off."

They all straightened, saluting again. "Survive for us," Officer Kelly said.

"Because of people like you," Reyes replied. "We will."

He hurried back into the carrier, black uniform flapping along with the pleasant breeze. He could feel it even here, blowing off the coast. There were white sands, clear waters, and inviting resorts filled with beautiful women in too little clothing. Shame he couldn't stay.

The cargo bay had been packed, though thanks to the density of refined uranium and the lifting power of the engines, that meant it looked less than half full, Crates had been distributed throughout so as to even the load, not all packed into the front.

"How are we doing?" Reyes asked, stalking up through the cargo bay, through the machine room to the reactor, then up the cramped staircase to the second floor. He was tall enough that he had to stoop.

His NCO, Technical Sergeant Violet Gates, followed him up the tight hallways like a determined ghost. "Reactor nominal, shielding stable at 5% average load. Tray tables are folded and cargo's been packed."

They passed through living areas, crammed in as tightly as they might be on a submarine. There would be no privacy here, no separate living areas for men and women. Every inch of space was precious. The cockpit had no doors for that reason, though unlike the smaller Hummingbird, it did have a copilot seat. Everything inside was digital, every display, every readout, even the windows. "Excellent work, as always," he said, loudly enough that the other members of the crew would hear. "I'm sure we're already a few seconds behind schedule. Raven will be expecting us."

"Aye, sir," Gates said. No salutes, though—there wasn't enough space to move their arms that far on the upper deck.

Reyes strapped himself into the pilot's chair while Gates secured herself beside him in the copilot's seat. He fastened his headset, positioning the clear microphone just beside his face as he reached his hands into the holofield. No moving parts in the entire cockpit, as it happened, except for on the chairs. It wasn't the same as flying conventional aircraft, but Reyes had gotten used to it by now. "This is Albatross Ganymede calling from Ranger Procurement," he said, switching into his flat radio voice. Not that their communication actually used radio. "Requesting departure clearance."

"Reyes," came the voice on the other end, approximately two seconds later. Taylor's voice sounded annoyed. "You're behind."

Another pause. Long enough for Reyes to mouth “what did I tell you” towards Gates.

"Aussies give you green for trans-pacific departure, relay point Granny."

"Roger, Ganymede out." He clicked the radio off, focusing his attention on the controls. Almost everything the Albatross did was actually controlled by advanced guidance computers, like a more expensive version of the consumer drones everyone was flying these days. The whole cockpit was a glorified backup system.

The Albatross Heavy Carrier lifted vertically into the air, carrying shipment 97 of humanity's last hope.

3234 years later...

"Machspeed, could you come here a minute?" Amelia asked, gesturing urgently. She was the current controller on duty for the A.R.R.R.S, a position that included with it responsibilities as Melbourne's air traffic control. Not a particularly difficult job, considering they were lucky to get a single flight in or out every few days, but one Amelia ordinarily seemed to resent.

There was nothing of that feeling to her now, nothing but urgency as she gestured at the console in front of her. It was the display of their newly installed radar system, the latest in post-Event engineering. Compared to the pre-Event world it was a children's toy. Of course, nopony would know that based on the price it had cost to install. "What is it?"

She pointed down at the screen with one hoof just as the sensor rotated around. He heard the silight pinging sound as a dark shape appeared there, then faded away until the dish rotated back around. Again the shape appeared, exactly where it had been before. "Five hundred kilometers," she said, without prompting. "And yes, I checked the dish. It's not broken."

Machspeed narrowed his eyes, focusing on the glowing lump on the screen. "Navy lifting helicopter, maybe?" Whatever it was, it was as big as a C5 Galaxy, and it was holding still in midair. "I'll get a spotter, hold on."

"Sure thing, boss," she waved with one hoof. "Can you get a sub up here while you're at it? I wanna come."

He nodded. "I assume you've been calling them."

"Yeah, and I haven't heard back. Either there's nothing out there, or they aren't listening."

A few hours later and Machspeed had learned only bad news. The object remained where it had been, drifting less than a kilometer. Much more interesting, his spotting team reported there was apparently nothing there. Even his sharpest eyes could find nothing more than "the air looks a bit weird."

"So... what?" Flashpoint asked, when they'd assembled at A.R.R.R.S. HQ. "Something returns out over the ocean, something we can't see?" She shrugged one shoulder. "I bet I can still get us there. Position, heading, altitude... that's all I need."

"That's assuming we should," Machspeed said, expression serious. "It might be returnees, but it might be something else. We can't ask them if they need help if they don't pick up."

"If they don't pick up, they need help," Amelia offered. "I still remember how crazy it was. Passengers hysterical, barely able to work the controls... imagine what you'd think if you were military. What if we were under attack?"

"I've thought about it," Machspeed said. "They're burning fuel fast to keep something that big airborne. I'd say they have an hour left, if I wanted to be generous. But it might be less." He cleared his throat. "Listen, everypony. I don't know if this is safe. Maybe it's nothing, and we'll just end up coming right back. But it might be ponies in danger, with hardware at their hooves that could seriously hurt ponies if they think we were attacked."

"So what you're saying is, we're going," Flashpoint said. "Great! Ever since the space thing I'd worried I'd never get another real challenge."

* * *

It appeared that Reyes and his crew had witnessed the end of the world. It had come in a flash, so bright he might've been blinded were there a real window. He had opened his mouth to shout instructions to boost the CPNFG's protections to full, jerked towards the panel to carry out that order himself in case Gates failed to do so in time—and then found himself on the floor. Somehow he'd been small enough to slip out of his restraints, though how that was even possible he couldn't guess.

The alarm was sounding, the same alarm he knew to expect in the event of even a brief failure in the CPNFG. Yet for all that, the cockpit appeared intact.

A shame he wasn't.

His uniform had mostly slipped out, in the same time it had taken him to struggle out of the seat, flopping onto the floor. There was no need to worry about the Albatross falling out of the air—without connection to route control, it would just hover in place without his manual input. Until the reactor ran out of fuel, and they tumbled from the sky. It might take months.

Gates appeared to be unconscious in her seat, though he also couldn't see any of her actual body in her seat.

If the CPNFG went down, we're all dead. The reactor would take hours to give them a fatal dose, but the Thaumic field would not. Even seconds could be enough. Assess the damage, Reyes thought, forcing himself to be cogent. Look for necrosis of the soft tissues. I already have the disorientation. Something made it feel like his uniform trousers had slipped right off, and that his jacket hung over his body as badly fitting as a child's first Halloween costume. Obviously he couldn't actually have shrunk that much.

He shoved on one arm until it came through the sleeve, staring down. What he saw made no sense—it was like looking at some kind of lizard, dark orange scales broken with an occasional red. The hand was shrunken, with sharp claws instead of fingernails. "This isn't right."

Nobody answered.

Except the computer. "Danger: Critical Failure in CPNFG. Unsafe interior radiation levels detected. Manual restart required."

That explained why he hadn't heard anyone—the level of ionizing radiation produced by the reactor even at idle was enough to disorient in under an hour and kill in a day. His cancer risk was probably ticking up by the second.

"Is anyone alive?" Reyes shouted, stumbling out of the cockpit and into the hall. "Fields, are you down there in engineering?" No response. No time for him to wait. He ran.

Ran might've been a tad generous. He tripped over himself, smashing into walls and floors and digging huge scratches into the metal with his claws. Something moved behind him that might've been a tail, he ignored that. Halfway down he finally managed to get the uniform jacket free from his body, so that he was down to boxers and pale cotton top. That meant less to impair his movement, though the top was long enough that it was almost a kilt.

He reached engineering, the most dangerous part of the ship. The reactor itself was sunk into the lower level, but even down here he could hear the steady hum. Sergeant Fields was still strapped into his flight seat, though the face hanging limply from within the uniform did not look human. Reyes ignored that for the moment, dashing past him to the CPNFG.

The machine meant to save humanity did not look very impressive. A single dark canister of exotic matter, which was fitted into a dynamically scaling coil of a thousand electromagnets. Their specific function was beyond him, though he knew it had something to do with charged plasma and super magnets. Something to do with the negative-energy-density mass stored in the container. That single canister was worth more than many countries.

That was why it ejected from the system in the event of a crisis, resting at the edge of the mechanism. It was worth more than the lives of his crew—unlike the rest of the machinery of the CPNFG, it could not be replaced.

It now stood out of reach, a full foot over his head.

Reyes stopped at the edge of the machine, before crouching down and jumping with all his might. Something moved on his back entirely without prompting, getting tangled in his thin tank-top, but it didn't matter. He reached the control panel, and pulled himself up. He wasn't wearing his black shoes anymore, but had clawed feet like his hands. That didn't matter. He reached out towards the container, taking hold of it with both claws, and pushed.

It slid along the tracks back into the machine, where the inner vial would be exposed. A faintly greenish glow emerged from within. The coils contracted around it like they were alive, and the ground shook under him. Reyes felt an awful constriction in his chest, like the world was pressing in around him. He stumbled backward onto his back, falling several feet to the ground. The metal dented instead of him.

Yet the awful feeling remained, despite the lights all going green. "Initialization cycle complete. CPNFG field consumption stable at 30% nominal output."

Reyes lifted his head one last time, staring up at the readout. The CPNFG was running at nearly its full capacity now, just like the unit in Raven. That could mean only one thing. The world had ended.

But that was too much. The strain of his run down to engineering and the radiation and the pain finally caught up with him. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

The A.R.R.R.S. team appeared aboard the strange aircraft with all the grace of a set of fine china falling down the stairs. Instead of her ordinary impeccable skill, Flashpoint dropped them two feet in the air with aching ears, aching lungs, and bodies covered in a thin layer of frost.

Machspeed was the first to collect himself, scraping the icy layer from his eyelids and rising to shaky hooves. "What happened, Flashpoint?"

His wife grunted, and her voice sounded enormously strained from the floor. "S-something... didn't want us in here! Like a counterspell! I really... really had to push." She rolled onto her back, looking up at him from the floor. "Sorry. It's hard to mind the creature comforts with all those other numbers in my head."

"Yeah, creature comforts," Sunbeam repeated, shaking frost from his wings. "Like atmosphere."

"Breach detected," came a flat, mechanized voice from above them. "Sterilizing."

Nothing visual happened next, no change to the cramped hallway they'd appeared in. Even so, Machspeed had been less staggered by hooves to the face. It was suddenly like all the life had been squashed out of the whole world. His horn felt heavy and useless, his mind sluggish and pained. The glow in his horn went out, and he nearly fell over completely. No amount of effort would bring the light spell back, or any other for that matter.

"Thaumic breech contained," said the flat voice from overhead. The sirens stopped, and the lights went from flashing red to white again.

Machspeed hadn't been the only target. If his crew had been dazed by their arrival, now they looked positively miserable. "Damn," Amelia said. "What is... that... feeling..."

"Get us out of here," he said, reaching over to help Flashpoint to her hooves. "Now!"

"I can't!" she whined. "I'm trying! My magic isn't working!"

"Damn," he muttered. "I guess we know what you had to punch through to get us here."

"It's a..." She whimpered, gritting her teeth. "It's a generalized anti-magic field. I've heard of spells like this. Pretty advanced magic, though. This must not be a returnee aircraft after all."

Machspeed had been so concerned with their arrival he hadn't even thought about his surroundings. He considered them now, listening for the sound of the massive rotors he expected to be holding them in the air and not finding them. Big airplanes always had big engines, which could be heard even from within a pressurized cabin. Yet he could hear almost nothing here, only a rumble through his hooves.

But it did look a little like an ancient aircraft. Or... maybe submarine. Aircraft aluminum walls and floors, with tiny stowage areas here or there. The hallway stretched in either direction, though he couldn't say which was fore and which was aft. He picked a direction at random. "If we can't teleport off, we'll have to escape," he said. "Find a way to depressurize the cabin and open it from the inside."

He started wandering in the direction he took for forward. Yet he hadn't made it more than a few steps before he heard Sunbeam. "Hey, captain! I think maybe we might've judged too soon. Looks like I found the returnees." Sunbeam had gone the other direction, forcing Machspeed to turn and hurry to follow. Or walk quickly, since anything that required more motivation seemed impossible. His whole body felt crushed, crushed by an invisible weight of lethargy that came from everywhere and overwrote everything.

There was a set of slim chairs on one of the walls, the sort many a crew on non-passenger aircraft used during takeoff and landing. There were three ponies strapped in here, the restraints only loosely holding them in place. But they didn't look good—little rivulets of blood dribbled from their mouths, their eyes. Vomit was congealed on the ground, and other unpleasant bodily fluids. They weren't conscious, but they were breathing.

"Have you ever seen this before?" Amelia asked, straightening the military uniform one of them was wearing so they could read the markings. Machspeed didn't recognize a single symbol on it, except for the three letters on the collar. "HPI."

"This isn't how the Preservation Spell works," Flashpoint said. "Everypony comes back perfect. Disabilities missing, illnesses cured... it doesn't hurt ponies like this!"

"Then something else did," Sunbeam said. "And we're trapped with it."

"Alright," Machspeed said, speaking slowly and clearly. "Flashpoint, with me. Sunbeam, Amelia, explore those stairs that way. Keep your eye out for more returnees who might need our help. And if you could find the way out, or a way to disable the spell that's trapping us here, that would be great too."

"More than great," Flashpoint added. "Whatever this is, it can't just float here forever. If the anti-magic doesn't get us, the fall will. And these ponies clearly need a doctor. They're beyond any first-aid we could give them."

"Right." They split up, Machspeed leading the way past the stairs towards a tiny dead end, which had to be the cockpit or the aft of the plane. Assuming we aren't walking around on a UFO or something. But it seemed unlikely that UFOs would have English writing on everything, or that the ones flying one would be ponies in ill-fitting military uniforms with little flag pins.

The tiny room beyond looked a little like a cockpit, with an aerodynamic slope, instrument panels running along the outside, and a pilot and copilot's chair. But the similarities ended there—there was no glass, no window, nothing but strange flickering projections that appeared when he neared the wall and switched off again as he moved past. The very front became a projection as well, and he could see a washed-out version of the exterior sky, clouds drifting slowly above and the ocean far below. It wasn't just the top of the aircraft that looked suddenly transparent, but the bottom as well, superimposed with a status HUD like the interior of an advanced fighter jet.

Some of what it displayed looked familiar to him, though there were an awful lot of zeros that couldn't have appeared on any of the aircraft he had flown back in the Royal Air Force. But other things; "Reactor Status: Nominal", "Fuel: 2% Entropy" were entirely unknown. He could at least guess at what "External Thaumic Field: 5.67 Sievert/hour. Within acceptable tolerance. Internal Thaumic Field: 1.07 Sievert/hour. DANGER! EXTREME HAZARD! CPNFG AT MAXIMUM OUTPUT! Internal radiation source detected!"

The thaumic field was what passed through everything and gave ponies their magic. From the look of the display, he had just figured out why he was so uncomfortable: there wasn't enough magic in here.

"Ughhh," someone moaned from beside them. While he had been fiddling with the controls, Flashpoint had been extricating a pony from her restraints. An earth pony with a light blue coat and darker mane had been strapped into the copilot seat, though her pony limbs would not be long enough to reach what passed for controls.

"Can you hear me?" Flashpoint asked.

The pony nodded blearily. "I'm... experiencing... symptoms of... thaumic poisoning..." she said, a little drool and blood oozing from her mouth. "Disorientation... hallucinations... Kill me before... I die on my own."

"There's no such thing," Flashpoint said, stern. "I don't know what’s actually wrong with you, but I'm sure we can treat it. Melbourne has some excellent doctors."

The pony made a vague, pained gesture with one hoof, then slumped to the floor again, breathing heavily.

"Damn." Flashpoint sighed. "Guess we won't be learning how this works from her. If we could just figure out how to dispel whatever's grounding us, we could get the returnees out."

Machspeed lifted one leg towards the side-panel. The space above filled with controls, one of which even looked a little like that he'd see on any other aircraft, except that it wasn't connected with anything. Numerous other dials, switches, and readouts appeared beside it, any of which he might manipulate if he wanted. Save that for a last resort.

"Machspeed!" came Sunbeam's voice from down the hall, urgent and getting closer. "We found somepony awake!"

He turned in time to see them struggling up the stairs, helping a young orange dragon stay on his claws. The dragon looked a little dazed, a little confused, but compared to the ponies, he was far more awake. Not terribly surprising. Dragons can take more punishment than ponies.

"That's not all," Amelia added, gesturing down the stairs. "There's a cargo bay down there. It's filled with, uh... more nuclear warnings than I've ever seen in one place."

They stopped in the cockpit, the dragon's arm wrapped around Sunbeam's neck. That seemed to be enough to keep him standing, if barely. "That's... our cargo," the dragon said. Unlike the pilot, his accent had a trace of Spanish in it, rather than American. "Raven city needs it..." he said. "World must've ended... people dying... maybe me too, but it doesn't matter if the shipment gets through."

Machspeed walked over to the exit, sitting on his haunches so he would be at eye level with the dragon. "My name is Machspeed, captain of the A.R.R.R.S. We're here to get you and your crew to safety. Who are you?"

"Reyes," he croaked. "First Lieutenant Oscar Reyes. Captain of the Ganymede. Why are you horses?"

"That's... a bit of a long story," Flashpoint said. "Short answer is..." She paused. "Wait a minute, how do you know the world ended?"

The dragon slumped to the floor, though it wasn't clear if it had been fatigue or just lack of coordination with his new body. Machspeed didn't know enough dragons to know for sure. "We've known for years. All the big countries..." He tapped the metal wall beside him with one claw. "My aircraft is bound for Raven City, our central bunker. It's... specially shielded against thaumic radiation. The confluence... must've overcome my Albatross’s shields... but Raven's are much stronger, and they're running all the time. The city is still there. They'll need the fuel we're carrying more than ever. I have to get there."

"I hate to be the one to tell you this..." Machspeed said. "But your shipment is going to be late. Over three thousand years late. Whoever these people are waiting for you in Raven, they either got along without you or they didn't.

"What? No! I have to... can't..." He made to rise, reaching for the empty pilot's chair. Then he fell on his face.

"Easy, easy," Amelia said, as Sunbeam reached down to help the dragon to his claws. "You're still disoriented. That'll pass, you'll get your bearings. Take it easy."

Machspeed stepped to the side, right into his way. "Listen to me, Reyes. Your aircraft... is unsafe for your new body and the bodies of your crew. We need magic to survive. I need you to tell me how to switch it off. Then we can get back to the ground..." And let this thing sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it belongs. But he didn't say that part.

The dragon stared up at him. He glanced to one side, at the state of the pilot where she still rested bloody and unconscious. He looked around at them, at their strange bodies, at his clawed hands. "We can't," he eventually said, defeated. "Even if you're... right, this ship is... full of radiation. We use an unshielded reactor to fly. We're carrying highly refined nuclear fuel. If I turn off the thaumic shield, we'll be dead in minutes. I... I suspect my crew and I are dead already. When the confluence occurred... it overwhelmed the shield. I had to go down and turn it on manually. There's no treatment for radiation poisoning."

Machspeed looked again to the pilot, at the slow trickle of blood from her mouth and the disorientation on her face. That did explain the symptoms of the returnee crew.

"There is now," Flashpoint corrected. "There's a spell for it. Unicorn magic. It's not an easy one... well beyond what I could do. But there are doctors in Melbourne who can. We need to get you and your crew back to the ground."

"I don't know..." Reyes muttered, staring down at his claws. "I don't know if I can fly it like this. The guidance computer is gone... there's no way to have it do the routing for us..."

"Oh, I've got an idea for that!" Amelia called, smiling slightly. "We already tested the loading ramp—it works. We could jump."

And that was exactly what they did. It took well over an hour, between gathering up the crew and tying everypony together, so that they wouldn't drift apart once they left the aircraft. A few of them woke up, stumbling around or struggling a little against their bonds, but none was healthy enough to fight.

"This won't be too hard, right Flashpoint?" Amelia asked, peeking out over the edge. They weren't moving forward at speed, but even so the open ramp was enough to let in the sound of howling air and the roar of the rotors. Though silent from either side, the massive blades were incredibly loud when you were underneath.

"No problem," Flashpoint responded, tied at the front of the group. "Getting rid of inertia is always part of a teleport. The only real question is how far we have to fall before we get our magic back."

"Not far," Reyes called. "The generator has a range of 30 meters in every direction. Once we leave it, we'll be..." His wings twitched uneasily on his back. "Well, no idea. We were supposed to be cooked alive, but some horses came to save us. I guess we were... I guess we were wrong about magic. Somehow."

"Not exactly," Machspeed said. "But we can talk about that once we get you to a hospital. You can hear the whole story if you want."

"Good," he replied. "My crew and I will... want to come back, once they get care. We still have a delivery to complete."

Machspeed opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. There was no reason to upset this pony by telling him how impossible that was. Soon enough the fuel would run out, and it would go tumbling into the ocean, taking its toxic cargo with it. But he didn't say that, because now it was time to jump. "Stay close, everypony! Sunbeam, be ready to catch any stragglers."

"You know it!" The pegasus grinned, dashing the few steps and out. He fell immediately away from the ship, gone from sight.

"Alright!" Machspeed shouted, bracing against the backs of the tied-together ponies. "Three... two... one!" He shoved. Flashpoint and Amelia did the same, even the dragon helped. Together they went tumbling away into the void.

A few days later...

With the faint flash of a teleport, a pair of figures appeared in the cockpit of the Ganymede. Unlike the ponies, they were not dwarfed by the high ceilings, but instead stood so tall they nearly scraped against them. Both dressed in loose-fitting cloth, which began to billow about in the air aboard the ship. Both looked female, though the differences were far less pronounced than they often were for humans. Without a word, both hurried to the pilot and copilot's chairs, securing themselves. Hands flew through the holographic controls, skin pale from lifetimes in the dark.

One retracted the ramp, and the air stopped billowing. She reached up, straightening her long greenish braid. The other picked up the headset hanging from the rack, putting it on and fiddling with the controls. "Midgard, this is Retrieval. HPI-Ganymede has been secured."

Pause.

"No crew. Ponies got them. Probably A.R.R.R.S."

Another pause.

"Roger, retrieval out."

The other kept tinkering with the display, its contents blanked, leaving them briefly in darkness. The words "EXTERNAL GUIDANCE OVERRIDE" appeared, and at once they veered sharply left, rotors roaring as they began to accelerate towards supersonic.

Author's Note

Sorry for posting this story late today, on vacation. Still, better late than never. These characters were taken from Goldfur's story Safe Landings. He requested something with his ARRRS characters on my patreon, and... I may've gone a bit overboard with the idea. Still, it was tons of fun to write!

Trimester: One

"It's wrong," Jackie said, staring down at the little strip of cloth and plastic levitating in Ezri's magic. Two more sat beside her on the bathroom counter, each one with two dark lines in the white fabric. "It has to be wrong. It's obviously, stupidly wrong."

Ezri levitated the last test down beside the others. She was currently taller than Jackie, or at least this version of her was, with reddish fur and a greenish mane. She was a unicorn currently, though since she was also a male now that wasn't the only sort of horn Ezri was sporting. "Changelings would agree with you. But I'm not like them anymore—how many others like me are there? Maybe we're... not all infertile."

"You are!" Jackie shouted, backing away from him and into their massive hotel room. It was one of the largest, fanciest hotels in all of Babalon, large enough that it very nearly consumed the entire floor. Not that Jackie was thinking about the price she paid now. It was all coming out of the Sargon's treasury anyway. "No offence or anything. But you are! Changelings are always—"

"We used to be." Ezri's disguise melted away in a single flash of magic, revealing the distinctly female drone underneath. Well... something like a drone. She still had the same general body shape, but not many of the specifics. The holes in her legs were gone, her color far more pronounced. Jackie had thought it looked garish for the first century or so, but it had grown on her since then.

Unfortunately, it appeared the colors weren't the only things of Ezri's growing on her. Or in her, at any rate. "God, what will the court say? What will the Sargon say?"

"He'll congratulate me," Ezri said, matter-of-factly. "Probably throw me a party. Then you..."

"Oh God..." Jackie muttered again, covering her face with her wings. "Ezri, what were we thinking?"

"Me or you?" Ezri tilted her head slightly to the side. "You weren't thinking at all, really. I believe your exact words were 'please I don't care what you shove in—’"

Jackie cleared her throat loudly. "Not that!" She pushed on Ezri with one wing, as hard as she could. Not very hard, really, since wings weren't meant for pushing. "I didn't mean that. Obviously, no mare ever thinks clearly during that part of the year. I mean... having to stay in that stupid disguise all the time." She rose, folding her wings against her sides again and stumbling into the center of the hotel room. It was a mess, always a mess, though the effects of her job with the Sargonate were all neatly arranged on a set of wooden desks away from the chaos. Jackie took her position very seriously here, and it was important that anyone the Sargon sent into her rooms would know that. They could read through everything she had ever written, read through anything she touched, and never find any sign that she was a spy from the New American Union.

They wouldn't find any evidence, because she kept everything she learned in Dreamtime anyway.

"We never know when servants might arrive," Ezri supplied, following close behind her. "I'm fast, but not all of them use the doors. We get seen together like this one time, and..."

"I KNOW!" Jackie shouted, shoving their half-eaten food off the table and onto the floor with one frustrated hoof. "I didn't actually want the answer! I just wanted something to be upset about."

"You want me to be upset too?"

"Yes," Jackie said, stopping and glaring at nothing. "Very much."

"Okay, sure." Ezri rested against her, her body surprisingly soft despite its shiny appearance. That was a disadvantage in combat—changelings had armor, where her new body seemed mostly to have a decorative feature. It felt far nicer on her fur this way, still as pleasantly cool with more of the give she would expect from skin. "I'm very upset."

"You're not even trying," Jackie moaned, leaning against her. "Lie for me some more. Do better."

"I'm furious with myself," Ezri said, with as little conviction as the first time. "Livid. How could I possibly fail to consider that staying in disguise for that long would give a chance to impregnate you. It's so unexpected, so terrifying... a travesty."

Jackie looked up, glaring sidelong at Ezri, but the drone wasn't even half done. She was no longer the larger of the two, not that it often mattered.

"And now an ambassador from a lordly house has impregnated a member of the Sargon's household. We'll be forced to go into seclusion in the palace for eleven whole months, where we'll be constantly surrounded by the affairs of state. And everyone will be even more open with us, because now we've become members of his family. Most importantly of all..." She met her eyes, unafraid of Jackie's anger. "You'll actually have to carry it to term, because otherwise everything we've done will be tainted. The Sargon might even go to war over it."

"Why?" Jackie couldn't help herself—she was crying now. She pulled away, walking a few steps before wiping her tears, biting back the others. She could control her emotions better than almost anypony alive—fool the smartest, most observant ponies there were. Anypony except Ezri. She had been herself for so long without being afraid, so many centuries, that she was no longer even capable of hiding what she felt. Their relationship wouldn't have survived otherwise. "Why would you d-do this? Why would..." she trailed off, staring down at herself. At her own belly, which didn't look much different yet. But it felt different, and it would start to look different soon enough.

"Because I've seen your dreams, Jackie," Ezri said, unapologetic. "I know after all this time you wanted it to happen at least once. There's always been a part of you full of regret, because you knew that not liking stallions meant you'd never... leave your mark on the world. You'd never start your own lineage. Even Alex managed to get her own bloodline. Well, now you will."

Jackie looked up, glaring at Ezri. She stormed across the room, stamping and fuming all the way. "So, you thought now of all times?" She flung the window open, not considering what that might mean if anyone saw them. They were many stories up, it was true, but with so many members of the population who could fly, that didn't mean they were safe.

Out the window was Babylon, the capital of the Sargonate. It was the city that ruled what had once been the ancient world, stretching across the Mediterranean Sea into parts of Europe and much of Asia. Only China at the east was not in some way a part of its domain. Much more importantly, it was a nuclear power, the only nuclear power that wasn't an ally of the New American Union. Even so, that meant the NAUDP controlled a little less than 40% of the Earth's landmass. The Sargonate ruled over the rest.

Babylon was not the peaceful home of late-night movies and car traffic and energetic ponies living their fast-paced lives. It was no longer lit at night, for fear of air-raids that never came, and because of the sundown curfew for most citizens. Soldiers now acted as the city's police, checking identification at random, and making dissidents vanish into tunnels never to return. Black and white television sets played constant footage of tanks and biplanes and military parades set to patriotic music, and the promise of the eventual end to the “Imperialist Aggressors” in the west.

"You want to bring a child into this?"Jackie asked, gesturing out the window with a hoof. She glanced once over her shoulder and saw that Ezri had resumed her disguise, that of the ambassador for a prominent Chinese family. The real ambassador had, of course, never arrived in Babylon. "Even if we flew back to... I don't even know... Midgard? Maybe we could be safe there. Or Summerland, if we want to sell our damn souls away to Equestria. The world blows! And even if it didn't, any foal we had would get old and die and we'd have to say goodbye just like anyone else we meet. It doesn't seem right... doesn't seem fair, to make a child only to watch it die. To know it's doomed."

"We could be doomed too," Ezri said, quietly. "One of us might take a bullet tomorrow. We haven't ever tried to stay safe. How will our child be any different?"

Jackie turned away from the window again, still glaring. She wasn't even trying to hide her tears anymore. "Ours is guaranteed to die! Nobody even needs to... even if there isn't a goddamned nuclear war, one day it'll still grow up, get old, and die. I've lost so many friends, Ezri, I don't want to start losing kids too. I don't know how Alex hasn't lost her fucking mind, but I'm not that strong. I can't deal with that."

"There you go again," Ezri said, resting one hoof on her shoulder. "Underestimating yourself. You've lived through more than any other immortal who isn't in this room, Jackie. You lasted through the end of your world, the end of mine, the death of my mom. We've fought monsters together, we've gone where nopony else has ever seen... don't you tell me you're not ready for this." He lowered his voice to a whisper, or very near to one. "We've talked about this before. You asked me whether we would have a kid if it was something we could do, and you told me we would. I might not have dreams to help me hold memories like you do, but I remember that. I'd never forget, because..." He hesitated one more second. "Because I never thought I could. Because I knew I'd never be a queen. If I can't have my own swarm, can't I at least have one?"

Jackie was silent for a long time, staring back at her mate. She was still angry—not so much because Ezri had taken advantage of her estrus cycle, though there was a little of that. "You never told me," she said, flat. "Everything we've told each other, and you never told me. If I knew it was important..."

"I didn't think it would work," Ezri said, glumly. "I thought it would be a waste of time. I didn't want to get your hopes up. I thought you'd be as excited as I was. Guess I was wrong about that too."

"Don't," Jackie said, raising her voice just a little. "Don't pull the guilting on me, I'm not in the mood." She sat back on her haunches, staring out the open window again. A chill breeze passed through the window, rustling her mane. She felt Ezri reach over to brush it out of her eyes, and didn't stop him.

Ezri sat down beside her. He didn't say anything else, just waited quietly and patiently. That had been one of the very first things Jackie came to like about her, back when she'd been coming of age in the bunker. It had been her mother that interested Jackie in those days, not the daughter. But where Alex was distant and strange, constantly talking about abstractions and politics and never available for the things Jackie cared about, Ezri was different. Ezri had been willing to spend the entire day in her company, silent, helpful with anything Jackie did without ever getting bored or criticizing her for doing it improperly.

"I suppose... if Alex can cheat with Mary, we can cheat once too," she eventually said. "Assuming... they don't just grow up into an Alicorn. They probably will, considering how low the standards have dropped these days. All this worrying will be pointless, cuz' they'll be the real kind of immortal and we're just abusing the word."

"Yeah," Ezri agreed. "I'm sure they will. How couldn't they, with a mom as good as you?"

Trimester Two

“I don’t understand this, cousin! Every year the Union grows more oppressive, its ponies more enslaved. Yet our spies return with this.” The Sargon was a griffon, just like the rest of the imperial house. He was nearly a foot taller than her, one of the largest ponies she knew.

Jackie stared down at the table, and the sheaf of black-and-white photographs the Sargon had brought into her office. They’d been taken on the eight-millimeter that was the very best of their day, capturing surprising detail. They depicted something alien in the east. Stories of these were considered hostile western propaganda, and spreading them was a sign of weak character. It was lies, obviously! All lies.

They were photographs of grocery stores. Produce aisles, dry goods, dairy. Every shelf overflowing with goods in more than just one or two state-sponsored varieties.

“You spent a few years in the west, I recall. Your father spoke to me of your service there. Explain this to me.”

“Explain… the grocery store?” Jackie shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, feeling her bloated belly gently with the side of her leg as she did so. She wasn’t so big that she couldn’t do all the things she wanted—not yet. The torment came mostly by morning, and by a nausea that accompanied almost all food. Even looking at these photographs was difficult, but not for the reasons that the Sargon probably thought.

Sargon Antonio Engels had brought his small ocean of attendants, bureaucrats, and hangers-on. There was even a stenographer unicorn, complete with a typewriter she levitated in her magic and used to type every single word.

“No, the spies!” the Sargon bellowed. “Explain to me how the damned imperial always knows where our spies are going. We have the support of the workers, the labor of a nation, and our Department of Patriotism couldn’t fill so many stores and find so many actors to pretend to shop there in half this much time.”

“Oh.” Jackie bought a little time by spreading out each of the images, searching for something they had in common. Buying a few precious seconds. She glanced up at the ocean of advisors—senior members of the party, officers of conformity. “Because every one of them is already like this, Sargon.” Gasps filled the room, but she didn’t stop. “The deceptions aren’t meant for us, they’re meant for the citizens of the American Union. Those boxes are all empty, the produce plastic. Only a small fraction of what’s for sale is real.”

She could sense the others in the room with her relaxing. This was exactly the sort of story the party was expecting. Of all of them, only the Sargon himself could tell that she was lying. His eyes narrowed a little, and his grip on the table tightened. The more she spun the lie, the more she could see his anger rise. But not at her. “Those customers you see work there full time. They cycle from store to store, buying fake products and then bringing them back to other stores. This convinces the wage slaves all around them that they really live in plenty.”

“No one is more content than a slave who thinks he lives in plenty,” recited an elderly party spokesman named Nesto. “Devious as always. How well they work their slaves. While they grow more prepared for war, the workers continue to starve.”

“I wish to speak to my cousin alone,” the Sargon growled. “Yes, even you Roxanne. Out.” There was a flurry of motion—hooves and claws scratched on the polished marble floor. A few seconds later, the door clicked closed.

The Sargon lifted one of his claws onto the desk across from her, exposing a complex device he wore. It was primitive by Jackie’s understanding, with transistors nearly two centimeters across. But by the standards of the day, it was incredibly advanced. He twisted a dial until the huge LEDs went dark.

“This is not it,” he said. “Images from their shipyards keep coming back. I do not understand how they can make less steel, less concrete, fewer skilled navy men… yet their navy grows twice as fast as ours. One account whispers to me that they cannot recruit fast enough.”

Jackie didn’t bullshit this time. She was a spy, as deeply entrenched in this household as ever a spy had been. Memory spells and age magic and decades of effort had put her here. The Sargonate might have a propaganda department of fifty thousand birds, who played the “truths” of the party into every home. But those speakers didn’t play in the palace. Neither were there listening devices.

Still, that didn’t mean she could say it just any way she wanted. Jackie’s purpose here was not to get the Sargon so angry with her that he no longer heard any of her advice. “When I worked undercover in the west, I heard many stories about the Sargonate. I heard of absolute poverty—I heard that everyone was a slave, that everyone starved, that nothing worked. I heard of corruption at every level. The stories of how evil we are were so exaggerated that I don’t know how many westerners believed them. Yet they were shared at every street corner.”

The Sargon remained silent for a long time, studying her face. Then he nodded. “We could change this if only we could convince the goddess that our way is correct. She is a worker too, in her way. Beholden to the capital that the Tyrant of slaves carries.”

The Sargon referred to an implant within Archive’s body—completely fictional—that allowed her total control of Athena and everything she built. Archive herself had created the fiction, in order to instill a sense of terrible fear in the Sargonate.

The reality was that Athena did not help either side, because she was devoted entirely to constructing interstellar vessels for Humanity. But ponies alive today had never even seen a human before, and refugees were vastly outnumbered by the naturally born. The idea that a being as powerful as Athena might be serving an ancient race thought to be long extinct was not one that the Sargonate could accept. Even Antonio, who was otherwise highly practical in his approach.

Unfortunately, Archive’s ruse (perpetrated by a previous generation of spies) had backfired. Instead of frightening the creatures of the east, it had only motivated them into greater action. They built more factories, their workers slept less and ate less, their armies trained harder.

If the capitalists had enslaved the very god of the workers, a being who could conceive of nothing else, then that was only more reason to free her.

“We will free them all, Alyona. Once capitalism is destroyed, our state can follow. No more palaces, no more bureaucracies, no more hierarchies. Paradise will follow, if we survive.”

Official statements of the party didn’t include the “if.” But Antonio was a very practical ruler. A great one, even. He’d killed far fewer ponies than his predecessor, and kept the Sargonate from any more costly wars with the west. His scientists had built the first uranium enrichment hardware in the east

“It would be better if we could resolve this without war,” she muttered, hoping she sounded like feminine weakness and wishful thinking. There was little division of the sexes in the Sargonate, as comrades of both sexes carried the same weight of the state on their shoulders. Yet still, they were dangerous words. She couldn’t stray too close to questioning his will. “If only they would give up their… property. Their ownership. I know our soldiers will sweep across the west like a righteous tide… but still many will die.”

“We will see.” Antonio scooped up the stack of photographs in his claw. “I think I will call another meeting with the tyrant.” He leaned a little closer to her. “I may have a mission for you then, Alyona. For you and that child of yours. The most daring deception you have ever attempted.”

He did not remain to elaborate. Antonio slipped out the way he’d come. Thankfully, he took his moat of officials with him, leaving Jackie to slump to one side in the office. It was amazing how weak she could feel standing around and doing nothing. How soon she tired, how easily startled and afraid.

Jackie was probably the single most dangerous pony in this building. With the slightest effort of her will, she could summon a blade that could cut through anything, she could sever the bonds between souls and inflict nightmares that never ended. She was one of the few ponies who could stand toe-to-toe with any Sargon when it came time to tally corpses.

Yet despite all that, having this foal made her feel fragile. I should’ve listened to my body. This wouldn’t be happening if I’d stayed a lesbian.

In some ways, she still had. The parasite growing inside her hadn’t come from any other pony, it had come from another kind of parasite. One she loved.

Another door opened, one from the other side of the room—the one leading to her quarters.

Ezri would not have been allowed in the palace itself before now. But as of several months ago, they were married. It was their third, or maybe their forth. Jackie had long since lost track.

As usual, he wore the male form—one he’d been stuck in for several months straight without a break. The royal palace was not some fancy hotel they could control. Even if Ezri had magic more powerful than any unicorn in the Sargonate, even if she could change faster and sense emotions from further, there was no telling what security might be here.

The palace was old, and some of the spells set into its foundation were far more ancient than the revolution. Magic paid for in blood was not so easily found or removed as other kinds.

“I see you’re surviving,” he said, settling up against her without asking permission. But then, he was her husband now, and doing so would’ve probably been stranger than the alternative.

Ezri sat with a straight back, his eyes seeming to look right into her. He saw through all her distress, all the pain and heartache of a mission that was barely done. “Come back to bed with me, wife,” he said. A codeword. “I see you have done great work for the revolution today. We can celebrate it together.”

More importantly, there would be far fewer questions asked of protection spells wrapped only around a marriage bed than those that stretched into one of the Offices of Strategic Intelligence.

They went slowly, going through the same flirtatious dance that would be expected of two people who were madly in love. Not a terribly difficult task for Jackie, since she had felt a change in her emotions.

It was a strange feeling, one she wasn’t entirely sure she liked. Jackie wanted to be close to Ezri, in ways she never would’ve dreamed before. She’d always been the stronger of the two of them, the braver. Yet now, she found that wasn’t the case.

She glared down at her belly as she walked, if only for a few seconds. Her little bulge was visible even through the black uniform. You’ll be the death of me, whoever you are. If the whole world doesn’t burn first.

Her primary role installed here was to prevent a war, exerting any power within their range of experience to contain the expansion of the Sargonate and prevent an inevitable invasion.

Jackie cared very little about which of the two systems came out on top. She didn’t care that in some ways the whole thing felt like they were larping a conflict that had already happened thousands of years ago.

But in the days before the end of the world, cooler heads had prevailed. The longer Jackie remained installed here, the less she thought that would be the case.

Charybdis makes them all look like children. They hate each other so much it’s almost impossible to understand.

Eventually they’d been through the whole ritual, and were sealed away in a palace bedroom. Ezri’s horn glowed, and after a few tense seconds absolute silence descended around them. They could talk here, though not for very long. Even Ezri’s illusion would prompt suspicion eventually.

“Any luck on your end?” Jackie asked, sounding helpful. More than she actually felt. She slumped onto her side atop the bed, without any intention of anything romantic tonight. She was just too worn, too beaten down to think about anything like that.

Ezri shook his head. “Every general I speak to is preparing for invasion. They can land troops faster than ever before—some tell me they will be able to take cities in minutes.”

Jackie smacked the pillow with one of her wings. “Stupid, stupid, stupid! What about the dead drop from Archive? How’s… how’s she doing with the president?”

Ezri’s expression got darker. “More of the same. Insists they’ll follow the no-first-strike policy, but once that happens, that’s it. Their only chance at survival is destroying as many launch sites as possible.”

Jackie flopped around uselessly, before settling into the weight of Ezri’s body. “I don’t understand why they can’t just surrender. Alex says they’re the reasonable ones, so why can’t they just bite the bullet and be reasonable communists?”

“I don’t think they’re that reasonable,” Ezri muttered. “You remember how she talks about it. And the president has people over there believing they’ve got a better chance of surviving the war than whatever purges come if they surrender.”

“They do,” Jackie agreed. “Because after the war, Charybdis will purge everyone. No more navy, and we’re all fucking dead.” She glanced down at her chest again, without anger this time. “I think we might need to think about evacuating. It’s getting…”

“And go where? It won’t be better in the NAU. Not once the bombs drop.”

“No,” Jackie agreed. “I was thinking… somewhere else. There’s an island… nobody knows about it. Nothing there but birdshit and palm trees. And it’s smack dab in the middle of seapony territory, so we won’t get any saltwater friends without warning either.”

“That sounds great!” Ezri said. “Sounds like… an anticlimactic way to go out, though. Just disappear? After spending three decades setting this up?”

The level of cunning involved had been inhuman. It had taken half a dozen changelings, several murders, and a youth potion that had seen Jackie replace a child of the emperor’s own extended family. She knew everything about her life here because she’d actually lived it here. Ever since the child had been stolen at five.

“Well… maybe not too soon. The Sargon says he has something important for me to do first. I think it might be about Mayday. I should wait until then. He… he knows I won’t be useful much longer, thanks to you. Shouldn’t be more than a few weeks.”

“I can manage that,” Ezri muttered. But Ezri could’ve managed many more lifetimes. Ezri was a changeling, and even now taking on a role was in her blood. For Jackie, the ruse required effort. So many lies, so much pretending. She missed the NAU of two centuries ago, before the revolution, after all the slaving nations of the world had been destroyed. It had been nothing but peace and parties.

Only a few more months and you’ll be born, she thought down at the lump in her belly. I wonder what kind of world will be left to greet you.

Trimester Three

“It’s the smallest nuclear device ever constructed,” Sargon Antonio Engels finished. “Smaller than anything that was imagined a decade ago. Small enough that even the NAU will not suspect it.”

Jackie looked over the case on the table in front of her—a briefcase, slightly bulging and metallic, with sturdy hinges and an oversized lock. But it was open, and she could see the mechanism of nuclear death before her.

It was cruder than anything that would’ve been constructed in the last cold war, back when the best human craft was behind the inventions. But Jackie’s senses were more than physical now—this object had a powerful presence in the Dreamlands, the weight of thousands and thousands of laborers. This was no staged prop for her entertainment. Every worker who had helped to build it had believed with absolute certainty that it would work.

“The range of the explosive is not large,” the Sargon went on. “In terms of such weapons, it is… considerably smaller than our largest tactical devices. It would not make a dent in the largest cities. But for all the ponies around it when it goes off… or any other creatures…”

Jackie’s body tensed. She felt a wave of heat and fear course through her, and tightened in her legs a little, feeling the oversized bulge that was her belly. The little pony inside was so close to being done that walking was becoming a challenge for her, so close that she couldn’t fly after drinking anything or else piss herself. Biology was infuriating and every day was another reminder why she never wanted another male inside her again.

“It has to be you,” the Sargon continued. There were none of the usual assortment of generals and advisors, only the stenographer and a few of the Sargon’s personal guards. She wondered if any of them would be shot when this meeting was over. “They won’t search you too carefully, I know it. As far advanced as you are, they’ll probably be bending and bowing to make things easier for you. Talking down like you can’t manage your own responsibilities.

She couldn’t anymore, or wouldn’t have been able to without the wealth of magic at her disposal. The world where a heavily pregnant mare could keep working through her final months inspired only by a pure love of the workers was as mythological as half the food.

“So I deliver it to the meeting,” she said. “And…” She kept her tone as neutral as she could. “Die for the motherland?” Did she sound enough like a fanatic? This bomb must’ve cost them terribly to build. I can’t let it out of my sight. She might even have to kill him if he tried to change his mind.

“Hopefully not,” the griffon said, his wings opening in modest agitation. “It is possible that will be required. The enemy must not discover the nature of our new abilities—this secret is more precious even than your mission. If there is any hint that you’ve been identified, you must detonate the device immediately.

“But… this is an emergency, and one I’m certain you will not encounter. If you follow the plan exactly, one of our other agents will have drugged the entire NAU delegation. One of them will be asleep, and you can escape into the Dreamlands with our insider a few moments before the bomb detonates.”

Still carrying a child.

After working with the Sargon for years now, after living in a world that was utterly dominated by his propaganda, she had almost come to believe it.

He’s still a warlord. One who intends to win no matter what it costs.

It was not her place to question the orders—she couldn’t be the one to ask if he’d lost his mind. Assassinating the President of the NAU would only remove Archive’s greatest rival, and spur their enemy to righteous fury.

“So this is the first shot,” she said, voice low. “We’re going to be the one who starts the war?”

“It wasn’t us,” Engels whispered, his voice dark. “They’ve been at war against the good people of this planet since their broken system was first conceived. You have a great honor in helping to end it, Alyona. Even if you do not return, you and your husband will be remembered as heroes of the people forever.”

“It will be our honor,” she said, with absolute conviction. She reached forward, snapping the case closed.

“You leave tomorrow,” the Sargon continued. “You will be flying a neutral Chinese vessel most of the way, so you should be able to escape inspection until the port of entry. I have numerous agents on the floor you will be assigned. Show your ring, and any you need will come to you.”

A day passed, and she was standing beside Ezri in the massive ballroom aboard the Hépíng, watching as a black sea roiled under them. She could almost sense the anger rising there, the satisfaction at the death that was about to begin.

From just beside her, music played on an ancient record player. It had taken many years for Jackie to appreciate classical music, but now of all times she could enjoy a little Clair de Lune. It reminded her of simpler times—of coffee shops and hipsters and concerts attended with her family.

We kill ourselves, and the planet belongs to him. It couldn’t go any other way.

“How much further?” Ezri asked, glancing at her bulging middle again. “We don’t have to keep up the ruse, bat. We’ve done everything that could be asked.”

Jackie slumped forward into a nearby chair, and not just because she didn’t have the energy to keep standing. At least, not that she ever would’ve admitted. “I can’t believe we couldn’t stop this. All the power we had, what good is it? What’s the point of having a knife when the whole world is about to burn?”

Ezri settled one leg around her shoulder, pulling Jackie in close. She didn’t resist, even though the motion would crumple the elegant ambassador’s dress. They’d checked the room for bugs, but there might still be eyes watching them. Let them watch.

Ezri didn’t say anything, her wife knew better than that. He just held her tight, the larger of the two as he had been for the months of their undercover assignment. Months that had turned into years.

The side door slammed open so hard the engraved glass shattered, and the wood splintered into pulp. The corpse of a minotaur went tumbling out, blood spraying from its many wounds as it toppled tables, shattered chairs.

There was shouting, screaming, and another few corpses went soaring through the air. One of the side windows shattered, and an earth pony went tumbling out into the abyss.

Jackie didn’t turn around, just watched it all through the reflection in the glass. Watched as a greenish Alicorn emerged from the rear of the ship, her coat splattered with blood and a crystalline revolver levitating in the air beside her.

The record kept playing. Yet the nose was beginning to dip—one of the engines made a choking sound, then died.

Archive pulled herself a chair, wiping the blood from her face with the tablecloth, then straightening. “Ezri, Jackie, good to see you both. Can’t wait to meet my grandchild.”

“That’s it?” Jackie flicked an angry wing towards the gaping hole in the side of the zeppelin, and the roar of wind that was drowning out their record. “You just killed everyone on this ship, and you want to know about a kid? Doesn’t it bother you?”

The Alicorn’s expression hardened. But she didn’t answer. The nose continued to dip. Expensive china dishes slid off neighboring tables, shattering to the floor. The drinks cabinet swung open, and bottles rained down.

“All men die, Jacqueline. These men were delivering a bomb to those meeting with them under flag of truce. It is a kinder fate than what waited for them if they were captured.”

Ezri’s eyes had no judgement, not as Jackie felt. What she had pretended for the Sargon, her wife actually felt for Archive, even after all these years. “Won’t they assume you shot it down? Even if you… prevent them from getting a message off. They’ll use this as a call to war.”

“Maybe,” Archive said. “But they’ll know we didn’t shoot it down.” She lifted the case from beside the table, and somehow it remained still while everything around them was at least on a thirty-degree angle by now. It took Jackie more strength than she had to keep sitting. “We’re going to set it off. If I allow the Union to get their hooves on that device, they will want it deployed against the Sargon in retribution. This way, there’s at least a chance they’ll assume a technical fault was responsible, or… an effort of counter-intelligence. It should give us a few more weeks of peace, if we are lucky.”

There was a rustle from the doorway, and a roar. Archive didn’t even sit up, the gun just moved, firing in front of them. A few more corpses slid across the floor, before they even had a chance to aim their weapons.

“Those men are trying to protect me,” Jackie whispered. “It’s wrong to…”

“Not wrong,” Archive declared. “They knew the risks. They die good deaths. Because of them, we may have another chance at peace. Or maybe we won’t.” She sighed, eyes settling on the bomb. “It’s hard to believe someone willing to use these is capable of peace. We won’t be able to trust them for any meeting again.”

“That’s your problem,” Jackie said, rising from the table. She reached into her dress, removing a little bit of plastic concealed up her thigh. The detonator. “I’m fucking done with this whole shit. You got to sit out a war, this one’s my turn.” She couldn’t lift into the air, not with so little space to get a running start. But Ezri rose beside her, and that was almost as good.

“You did good work,” she said, catching the detonator in her magic. “The NAU will honor you for your sacrifice.”

“No they won’t,” Jackie spat, voice bitter. “They’ll all be dead in a week. Everything we did was for nothing, Alex. The whole world’s going to ashes around us, that wet asshole is going to fucking win and there’s nothing we can—” She winced, freezing still and trying to make sense of what her body was telling her. Had she sat in one of the drinks without realizing it? Or… no, that pain she’d been ignoring, those were… shit.

Jackie drew her dagger in a single swift motion, slicing through into the Dreamlands. “Good luck with world peace,” she said. “You’re gonna need it.”

Jackie gave birth to her first child under a ceiling of white linen on the shore of an ancient beach.

There were no monsters here, not in waters patrolled by the strong songs of seaponies and the sharp blades of their soulshears. It was a painful, messy, bloody process, but not nearly as bloody as what they watched on the single portable display.

From the sight of Athena’s orbital satellites, Jackie watched whole cities vanish in flashes of light. Archive’s gambit had failed, and with it went a million lives.

But while numberless ponies died, one more settled into her arms.

She was glad the baby was too young to understand her disappointment that it was a male—but Ezri didn’t seem to mind, or even to notice.

He was a bat, just like her, with a coat the same green as her father’s, a mane a few shades darker than her mother’s. He looked up at her, and laughed, and she was no longer disappointed.

They had done their best, and it hadn’t been enough. The world was burning. But at least the three of them were together.

“What are we going to call him?” Ezri asked, returned to her natural shape at last. That was good—Jackie was getting sick of stallions.

“Alvin.”

The Last War

They say that in the battle for Datong, whole nations died. Songs often tell that sacred story—of the brave who gave their lives after Earth’s rightful protectors had been struck down. Many remembered that day in their songs, pouring drink or blood into the sand to pay their respects. Time was the end of pain, and for all that battle eventually became a distant memory, it’s wounds healed.

All but one.

In some ways, Jackie was the oldest pony now living. She had not spent long years dead, or grown in the soil of some other world. She had not cheated death by flight to the realm of dreams, or frozen herself in icy slumber. She had not spent long years slumbering in a forgotten lair amid her treasures.

Yet in all those years, Jackie had never seen such might assembled. Datong was a fortress as the word had never been used before, not even in the years of her ancient progenitors. It was everything they had built, and so much more beside. It was the last breath of chaos before the void consumed all, and order was established forever.

Or at least the second to last. Axis Mundi was the city this fort protected, directly behind it and further inland. Charybdis could not dig his river around the fort, for no crew could expand his watery highway without facing bombardment from its relativistic artillery cannons, the Iskender. These canons, likewise, could not keep firing forever—otherwise, they would just dig the enemy’s river for him. So it was that Datong itself became a target.

Even so, she could not help but feel pride as she strode down the halls atop its tallest tower, a spire of pure crystal a hundred stories tall. As she looked out the perfectly-transparent sides, she saw the combined might of all the Earth’s surviving military. Airships of surging magic hovered beside the Enduring Ones’ last Sky-Carrier, with the last human warriors that still lived. Innumerable automated defense installations glittered in the sun, each built by one of Athena’s automated crews, and occasionally manned by Purifiers. And in every lesser tower, behind every wall, were soldiers of so many nations and creeds that a universal translation spell built into the tower was required for them to communicate at all.

She stepped into the tactical center of the fortress, where the representatives of each faction would lead together. There were over a dozen ponies here—the Rightly Guided Caliph Abdul-Hafeedh, Isaac the Marshal, and Athena herself. So many others… though so many of the ones they needed most were gone. Every chair meant for an Alicorn was vacant now, as every Alicorn in all the world had been struck down. They were on their own now—the incorruptible tainted with a sickness that no mortal pony could contract. Jackie, it appeared, was just mortal enough to escape its curse, and instead be forced to watch the end of all life with her own eyes.

“You’re here,” Isaac said as she entered. Jackie could smell his grief on the air—almost all his people were gone now, first targets of darkness. Not one of the Enduring Ones had succumbed to Charybdis’s corruption, not one in three thousand years. What he could not take, he destroyed. “You don’t want to see the projections.”

“Show her anyway!” Demanded Abdul. The Dreamknife must know our despair.”

Even now, Jackie balked at that name. Yet she swallowed her frustration, and instead walked past Abdul to the massive holoscreen that took up the center of the room. She could see the fortress towards the back of the screen, and stretched out in front of it… an endless ocean of their enemy. Charybdis did not seem to care that they inflicted devastating losses every hour, when the Iskender’s capacitors were charged again and it could fire just once. There were so many monsters flowing from the sea that it made no difference. They could scramble just as well over the glass of their dead comrades as over the desert.

Athena’s powerful form stood even taller than Isaac, the largest figure here. Though the body she used looked organic, she was not alive and so could not be stricken by Charybdis’s curse. She was easily the most powerful being in the room. “My sensor readings detect approximately sixteen billion individual entities advancing towards this location. Approximately one point six have assembled outside the water. Charybdis continues to redirect my orbital strikes despite the laws governing motion and gravity. I only have the one cannon that can do appreciable damage to his army.”

“God willing, we will find a way to survive this day,” Abdul said. “But He has not revealed it to me. Perhaps His servants, the Illuminated would hear him, had they not all been cursed.”

Jackie covered a cough with her hoof. She had been with at least one of those Alicorns during much of the planning for this battle. In all that time, Archive hadn’t ever had a plan to win. Every strategy she employed had known the inevitability of their loss, and only been concerned with lengthening their time as much as possible.

But Jackie didn’t say that aloud. Instead she asked, “Any word from Mundi about them? An unexpected recovery, another army on the way?”

“No,” Athena said. “Their condition is unchanged. My servants keep them alive, but no treatment has made any difference. I cannot repair what I cannot perceive. There is immeasurable missing and cannot be replaced.” She stepped forward, taking a breath. “Know this, defenders of life. I will not permit Charybdis to claim this world. Should our efforts fail, I will dismantle the planet from under his feet. I will poison his oceans with a billion diverse toxins. He will not have a victory here, even if you are also destroyed.”

“That is no comfort to us, wise one,” said an Emperor. “But it would be better if you would take vengeance for us now and assure this battle is won.”

“I am already doing all I can,” Athena said. “But I have not recovered from the opening engagements. My manufactories are not yet rebuilt. It is entirely my responsibility for thinking the vacuum protected me… but the time is far spent for regrets. The one who could alter causality is comatose with our other Alicorns. Unless one of you here wishes to ascend.” She turned to face Jackie again. “I believe Archive named you as the next likely candidate. Perhaps I should begin reciting ancient wisdom for you?”

Jackie grunted something quite impolite. “Even if that wasn’t bullshit, a new Alicorn would probably just get sick too.” She turned away. “I don’t think there’s really any strategy here. You all can decide what you want, you know we’ll obey. I’m going to the front.”

Jackie was certain of very little anymore. But of one fact she did know: if Charybdis wanted Datong, she would make him pay dearly for it.

The longer Jackie lived, the more names she gained. Since the incapacitation of the Alicorns, and the end of any promise of help in the last battle to come, she had gained one more. Ponies dropped to kneeling bows as she passed through the Citadel of the Purifiers, or what was left of them.

“Lord Omega,” each said, as flesh and crystal alike saluted with right hoof or hand to chest. There had been no debate over her name, as there had been with the last Lord to preside over the Purifiers. They all knew Jackie was the last.

“What is your command?” asked her scribe, a blueish-colored earth pony named Rosetta. At least, Jackie thought that was her name. She hadn’t been serving when Jackie first took the office, but then she didn’t really care about the petty administration of the order. Ponies all knew she was only here for the fighting.

“They’re coming,” she said. She stretched the dream around her, expanding her voice so that it filled the Citadel. “Everyone left alive, assemble. He will be here with nightfall.”

A shout went up at her command—utterly fearless. They all knew the odds, far better than the other militaries here. The Purifiers had been fighting Charybdis for well over a thousand years. They knew what these numbers meant.

“You will want the armory then?” her scribe asked, as soon as the shouting had died down. “And your wife summoned?”

“She’ll already know to meet me,” Jackie said, though one eyebrow went up as she looked the scribe over. Her last one hadn’t been that perceptive with her priorities. “Yes, the armory. And no, I don’t have any brilliant strategies. Do you?”

She laughed. “Of course not, Lord Omega.”

They went to the armory. Jackie stood still as a dozen of the Purifiers’ best armorers fussed over her, adjusting the many layers of the ancient Runeplate. It was the single oldest artifact in the order—so old that none knew its creator, or the means of its creation.

“Archive should be wearing this,” Jackie muttered to herself, feeling the strangely cool metal shift as she moved her body. “Or Sunset Shimmer. Not me.”

“I imagine she would if she could, Lord Omega,” her scribe said. “Will you address the troops before we make our way to the front?”

“Our way?” Jackie asked, tapping one of her hooves impatiently. Where was Ezri, anyway? “Aren’t you going to be evacuating with the other civilians?”

Rosetta looked indignant. “You really are new to the order,” she huffed. “We don’t have civilians, Lord Omega. And even if we did… why run? Die fighting beside my friends, or die afraid and alone in Mundi a month from now. No contest.”

That was when Ezri appeared, and Jackie stopped caring about anything else.

She hadn’t come alone—a pair of brightly colored Redeemed flanked her, dressed in the powered armor the Enduring Ones had made for them. Yet there was sign of wear in the suits—there were no more factories, no more replacement parts. There were far fewer sets of armor than Redeemed to wear them.

They embraced—a pair of ancient creatures in ancient armor, at the end of the world. It didn’t last nearly long enough. “We will join you at the front,” Ezri whispered into her ear. “I don’t want my children to see the end of this battle.”

“You mean—so we can stop Charybdis ourselves, because we’re the only ones who have a chance,” Jackie whispered back, forcing her old tone to come back. Ezri didn’t feed on her emotions anymore, but she could still feel them. She’d know just how hollow they were.

“Yes,” Ezri straightened, and didn’t whisper anymore. “Exactly that.”

“Gandalf isn’t coming on the third day,” Jackie said. “The Alicorns are gone. The Enduring Ones are just about extinct. We will be soon.”

One of her battle-lords stepped forward from the armory, his own armor only a pale imitation of what she was wearing. Half his face had transformed to crystal, one of his eyes a glittering gemstone instead of flesh. All the Purifiers’ gear had that effect on ponies, slowly rendering them ageless crystal so that they might fight forever, until the day Charybdis was destroyed.

It had no effect on Jackie, just as it hadn’t affected Archive or any of the other immortals who used it. Only mortals could be so changed.

This lord was named Mathis, and he saluted her as she approached. “Please, Lord Omega. You’ve seen the dreams of all ponies, isn’t that true?”

“Only the interesting ones,” she said, without thinking. “Why?”

“Then you saw Oracle’s vision of this day. Will we be victorious?”

Jackie had seen that vision in Oracle’s nightmares, it was true.She had seen civilization destroyed, life conquered by Charybdis, turned into a shadow of itself that festered and rotted away. He would rule over an empty planet forever.

“I have,” Jackie began. And we all fucking die. But she didn’t say that. “Do you know what’s out there?” She pointed out towards the sky with one wing, out the nearest window. She didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll tell you. Every planet in the whole galaxy with smart things on it—people—every one of them is empty and dead. I’ve seen some of the cities.”

She advanced towards her battle-lord. “We’re the last, Mathis. Datong, and Mundi, and every soul here. We can’t know the dead, or their stories. But we must survive.”

There was a long silence, as all the watching ponies in this particular armory stared at her. Eventually Rosetta set down a piece of paper beside her. “That was a great speech,” she said. “I wrote it down, so you don’t forget when you address the troops.”

“I can give you sixteen days,” Sydney said, leaning over the map. “That’s assuming Charybdis himself doesn’t arrive. Those are our only win conditions, and the chances are slim. He’s been too clever to subject himself to danger like that in the past.”

Isaac sat along with the other strategic minds at the highest tower, watching Sydney’s latest tactical plans. She was a brilliant strategic mind, one of the greatest surviving of the Enduring Ones. It did not seem even her skill would be enough, however.

“Death waits for you, Isaac. But not necessarily defeat.” Isaac sat up suddenly, searching the room for the speaker—there were few left in this upper chamber, not with the battle so close. Most of the assorted commanders and generals had separated to be with their own, planning for the inevitable conclusion. Only those committed to strategic supervision from above were present now.

Yet that wasn’t quite right. Isaac could see no newcomer to the room, exactly. But he could see a towering figure in the glass of the polished window—a reflection of a massive dark-skinned woman standing beside him. His eyes didn’t want to fix on her, and if he tried to look directly at the reflection, he couldn’t see anything but out at the battle to come.

Without explanation, Isaac rose from his seat, making his way over to the window. No one stopped him—no one even said anything. “I’ve heard of you,” he muttered, quietly enough that those in the room behind him wouldn’t be able to hear. It would still sound like he was whispering to himself. “Archive spoke of you. A few others. Aren’t you supposed to be God?”

“You created the Enduring Ones. Were you their god?”

Isaac had no answer to that. He couldn’t even pinpoint how he was hearing the voice—with the Compiler gone, all his precision spellcasting was gone too. “We could’ve used your help earlier,” he eventually said. “How long has this war been going on, but you only involve yourself now?”

He couldn’t make out features clearly, yet there was something of annoyance in the voice when it answered him. “You are mistaken. My resources have been invested in opposing this power since the first days of war. But so few heard my voice—they ignored my warnings. I have done all I could to protect you.”

Isaac was dimly aware of eyes on his back. At least Sydney had noticed the strange way he seemed to be talking to himself, and was just staring at him. He ignored them all. “That’s it then, Keeper of Earth? We failed in the past, and now we’re all dead? You’d rather have him ruling the planet instead of us?”

The whole tower shook gently, as though a distant earthquake had just begun to rattle. He could feel the weight of the massive structure as it fought against the perturbation, and held. Crystal was strong stuff.

“If that were true, I would not have come to you. You are my firstborn, Isaac. My oldest son. You hear my voice, but will you obey it?”

He hesitated. “I will… do anything to protect my people.” There was precious little left to protect. After the destruction of Midgard, so few of his kind remained. As far as he knew, everyone who still endured was here in Datong. “Tell me what to do, Keeper.”

“My enemy has sent his greatest servant in his stead. Camazotz is a powerful Deathlord, and his power grants him arrogance the enemy lacks. The enemy’s soldiers fight together only by his will—kill him, and they will descend into chaos. Our enemy must arrive himself, or allow his army to be destroyed. He has been preparing for this day for centuries, firstborn. He has invested all his strength in this assault, just as you have invested everything in your defense. If he fails here, he’ll be as weak as the day he arrived from Outside. Our enemy will arrive, and another will destroy him.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, voice faltering. “You want me to…”

“Ride out with all your strength, oldest and firstborn. Meet the Deathlord when he appears with the courage of my favored son. Your strength will fail, and you will die. Fight anyway.”

“That… isn’t a compelling case,” Isaac said, voice low. “You want me to go out and… die?”

“So that my creation has a chance,” the Keeper responded. “Your contributions will guarantee that possibility. All you have to do is act. You have always been a profitable servant, firstborn. Serve me now.”

Author's Note

I've wanted for a long time to tell the story of the final confrontation with Charybdis, and how that eventually resolves. This battle is the prelude to that story, which I must eventually finish before I can wrap up Bedtime Stories.

Remember the Brave

There was much to say about the battle. Yet it was doomed, and they all knew it. Even as their soldiers marched to the field, with every defensive preparation that could be made. Even as they slaughtered thousands of the enemy’s disgusting spawn without losing a dozen men. There was no victory here, only an extension of the time it would take until the end.

Yet something had changed about the enemy, something Jackie could not immediately explain. They didn’t fight as intelligently as they had years ago, throwing their lives away with specific strategies—luring out their own troops one at a time so they could be destroyed individually. How they all fought together with such coordination had always been a mystery, yet also one of the enemy’s most potent abilities. One they had no ability to counter.

But now it was gone. This gave Jackie hope as she fought beside her wife, changing out every few hours with fresh troops, only to return to the front and fight again. Then the battle took to the sky, and still they fought, their airborne ponies outclassing the enemy just as well as their ground troops. But even one death for a hundred inflicted on the enemy were devastating losses.

Something rumbled in the deep, and the river shifted. A pale, rotting form emerged in the far distance, dragging with it a cloak of decay. Even its own soldiers were not immune to the effect. It was not Charybdis—the presence of that monster would probably have ended the battle before it began. Only the Alicorns (and perhaps the incorruptible crystal ponies) could have fought him back. But he hadn’t come. This was some lesser demon, though how much lesser she couldn’t tell. Like many of Charybdis’s servants, it walked on two legs, dragging itself forward through the mud as though it had once known how to walk, but long forgotten.

Suddenly, Isaac was beside her, dressed in his ancient HPI armor. How it even still worked after all these years, Jackie didn’t know. “That is Deathlord Camazotz,” he whispered, voice low. “My magic suggests he commands this army. I don’t know why he would subject himself to danger this way… he could wait from behind and crush us with time.”

“They aren’t patient,” Ezri answered, peering through the soldiers all the way to the front. “He’s confident he’s won this battle. That means he thinks he’s safe. The corrupted always think they’re immortal until they’re dead.”

“I’m not.” Isaac straightened. “Good luck, you two.” He reached out, touching the side of Ezri’s head with one hand. “Take care of her.” Then he looked back to Jackie. “Do not let him escape. My life is a fair price to pay for his.”

“What are you talking about?” Jackie asked, but Isaac was already gone. He reappeared at the very front of the battle, or at least their piece of it. As he landed, thousands of the enemy burned to ash, swept away in arcane wind. Steel glittered from Isaac’s hands, and he advanced on their enemy. Somehow, his words came through clearly, despite their distance.

Jackie started running. She couldn’t fly, or else enemy ranged-weapons might kill her. There were so many of them at this point that she couldn’t keep it all straight. But she could run, and quickly. “Teleport us to the front!” Jackie shouted. “We’ll take him three at a time! This solo stuff is horse shit.”

Ezri ran along beside. “I’m trying! Camazotz’s too strong! I can’t get a stable jump!”

Jackie swore in several different languages, dodging behind another line of sandbags and the machine-gunners occupying them.

She heard Camazotz’s voice clearly over the din. “Ah, Isaac. I’m so pleased to see you survived the tragedy at Midgard. I worried I wouldn’t be able to claim your head myself.”

“You will not have this planet,” Isaac said. “The Keeper created us to know it—your touch destroys her works. Her firstborn rejects your gift.”

Camazotz’s expression hardened. There was enough humanity to its strange features that Jackie could still sortof read its emotions. Close enough, anyway. “We will see. You are nothing without your Compiler. I saw it broken myself.”

“I saw Supernal lights myself, Gabriel Escobar. There’s still a candle out there for you. Turn this army back, and maybe we can find a way to heal you. Charybdis doesn’t have to own you anymore.”

Camazotz answered that offer with a howl of rage, charging directly at Isaac as though he intended to rip him limb from limb. They met, and the confluence of magic between them melted a crater in the ground. Camazotz’s own soldiers kept charging, and were instantly destroyed when they got too close. Not just by Isaac’s magic, either. The Deathlord made no attempt to protect his own from the effects of his power. Their side kept well back, getting as far away from the battle as they could. Probably it was an opportunity well-needed.

Isaac dropped to the ground, one of his arms hanging limply at his side. His chest heaved, body burned by a dozen different spells that would’ve killed a mortal pony. Jackie was almost there. Twenty more seconds, and she could help.

“We’ll see what you think about service once you’ve spent some time in the Void. There are no screams there, Isaac. So many of your kin are already waiting for you.”

“No!” Ezri screamed, horn glowing and sparking in a vain attempt to get them closer. The earth at Isaac’s feet opened, and he vanished without another word.

At that moment, the two of them fought their way through the lines, shoving back their own troops to make it out onto the field of corpses blasted by Isaac and Camazotz’s magic.

“Brother of the lower path.” Ezri stood tall as she cut through the swirling void-magic with her horn, bending it out from around them. Isaac had done the same for himself, but no trace of him remained. “Bring my immortal brother back. Surely Charybdis gave you the power to fight all three of us at once.”

Together, the three of them had the power of an Alicorn, minus the immortality. Ageless did not mean they couldn’t die here.

“Of course.” Camazotz towered over them, easily as tall as Athena. He was a creature of inscrutable anatomy—something underneath looked to have been human once, but that part was old, and not the dominant factor in its anatomy anymore. He had too many limbs, and thick armor around his chest. His flesh was sickly and rotted, with gills on either side of his neck. The ground all around him seemed perpetually soaked, even though they were almost half a mile from the water. Only Charybdis needed to remain in the ocean perpetually—the rest of his servants could leave if their bodies allowed it.

“The master of this planet would wipe you three away like marine snow drifting in the current. But just because he would let you face him doesn’t mean I will. Gods have that power—I am only the servant of a god.”

“He was right,” Ezri said quietly. “You don’t have to serve him anymore. We can cut the cancer out. We can heal you. I’ve been through the whole thing myself.” She was telling the truth, though the meaning was arguable. Ezri had been born with a damaged soul, as all her kind. Love had healed that wound. Camazotz, on the other hand… he’d been born intact, and sworn himself to the void anyway. His wounds were self-inflicted, and far deeper. There might not actually be anything left to save.

“My sister forgets herself,” Camazotz said, stretching out all six of its strange limbs. There were claws there, glittering with venom. Claws with metal tips instead of bone, and many other strange things. How such a configuration was even possible biologically, Jackie couldn’t say. “You too have come to die. I will happily oblige your desire. And when you’re dead, your wife will join my master’s service. She will have no choice.”

Jackie charged directly for him, drawing her single dagger into her teeth. A dagger that had come from beyond the universe, and taken countless lives in this one. They didn’t call her the Dreamknife for nothing.

But even the two of them working together could not overcome the terrible power Charybdis had entrusted to his servants. They severed limbs, they scored wounds on its flesh, and caused other terrible harm. But it wasn’t enough. Their magic waned, the protection on their artifacts was depleted. They were as doomed together as Isaac had been alone.

Camazotz towered over them, his presence as expansive as it was overwhelming. There were so many dead that Jackie could not see the ground. Most of those appeared to be Charybdis’s spawn, yet it was impossible to tell in the chaos of war just how many of their own were dead around her. All of them would be, before too long.

Ezri lay beside her, as broken as Jackie was herself. Between the two of them, they probably had a hundred different broken bones. The ancient Runeplate had allowed Jackie to fight on, ignoring the pain of every injury, yet within it all she felt hollow, and empty. Death would soon come for them. After that, to the rest of Datong. Whatever was left of it, anyway.

“Y-you… can’t,” Ezri coughed from beside her, rising to shaking hooves. Jackie couldn’t see where she got the strength. Hadn’t they spent everything they had in the battle with no end?

“Can’t what?” Camazotz had been bloodied by their fight with him—his vaguely humanoid figure was missing some of its extra limbs, and a whole section of the armored chitin around his chest had been blasted away by a lucky shot from a skilled crystal pony. Yet it had made little difference. Jackie didn’t have the strength to move anymore, didn’t have the strength to resist the corruption of the void. “I’m sure you’ll find I can do whatever I want.” He reached forward with his stray hand, towards Jackie.

Jackie twitched away with all the energy of a fish pulled out of the water, completely without effect. Ezri tried to protest, but she too had no strength left.

Neither side had servants here to help—anything mortal had been destroyed in the confluence. Far away, the battle raged on, but the three of them were alone.

Camazotz’s rotten hand touched Jackie’s wing, and there was no pain. Instead, it brought with it a soothing, gentle flow, a cooling touch that took away the pain. It promised healing, promised a return to life, promised everything in exchange for her permission. Jackie didn’t have the strength to resist that for long—it was a far more effective lure than any torture could’ve been.

“You won’t have… her,” Jackie croaked. “We both know it doesn’t work. Your magic can’t corrupt the Redeemed. They’ve already… they’re immune…” Jackie spoke, because it was the only thing she knew to do. Spoke because it distracted her from the agony, and it gave her a few more seconds where she would not accept the offered terms.

“A pity,” Negal’s voice rumbled beside her. “A tragic waste of life, yes. But you will be a prize nonetheless. The first to wield the Supernal’s own power turned against it. Charybdis will have a seat of might prepared for you. In time, you will forget what I made you do to her.”

“No,” Ezri said again, dragging herself forward. Again, her horn flickered, though no spell was cast. Jackie could feel it—all three of them were dead to power now. Isaac’s sacrifice, though not enough to kill Deathlord Camazotz, had been enough to render him weak. And we still lost. It cost his life, and we still lost. This was worse than dying bravely here.

Jackie would be forced to live on, forced by the consent she would give to join Charybdis in service. Camazotz’s hand was not healing her. It was rotting her—giving her unnatural life, completely dependent on the Unmade’s touch.

“No,” Ezri said again, a little more forcefully. “Not her. You can’t.”

“I can,” Camazotz said. “And there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Wait your turn to die, sister. It’s coming soon enough. We can all see you have no power left. Your servants are dead, your magic is spent. None will ever say I don’t have a personal touch—that’s why Charybdis chose me. Your wife will see this through to the end. I will extend your suffering for years, if I can. I want to see your face when that last city burns.”

Jackie could feel relief so close, like she was drowning, and the water was within an arm’s reach. “Just take it,” said that voice. “It’s so easy. Take it, and everything will be better. You’ll never feel pain again. Never know death, or fear again. You will bring fear instead—to those whose petty actions brought this fate. You could’ve won, if you had been more united. You can punish those who caused the death of your world.”

“No,” Ezri croaked, a little more forcefully. Loud enough that Jackie looked up. She saw blood on the ground below Ezri—she had so many wounds. Both had been blessed by the Supernal, and could recover from such things in time… but not if they were dead. “I have… one more spell for you, Deathlord. Plenty of power left for that.”

Camazotz laughed. Broken shards of bone and drops of blood went flying from his lips. “You think a lie will save your wife, sister? I can sense you have no magic left. Your crystals are all shattered, and your body is broken. You are nothing.”

Jackie winced—of course, Camazotz was right. Ezri had to know that too—any being of power could sense the magic another wielded. Even Jackie could feel it, and she didn’t have a horn.

“Not… quite… out of power yet.” She straightened, though how she had the strength, Jackie couldn’t know. “You forgot… something, Deathlord. Creatures… like you… never had one. Or don’t anymore.” She looked sidelong at Jackie, whose eyes had begun to widen.

Ezri did have some magic left—her soul itself.

“Fire,” Ezri said, aiming her horn at the towering Camazotz. It wasn’t a terribly complicated spell. Considering the power she had behind it, that didn’t matter.

The hand on Jackie’s wing was gone, gone in a flash of light that blasted up into the air as though the flames had been sent from heaven itself. She collapsed immediately, and felt her fur instantly turn to ash, even as the rest of her started to burn. But she hardly felt the pain—it didn’t matter, because she knew what it had cost.

No! I’m not losing you now, Ezri! The flames faded moments later. Jackie had been permanently blinded by them, she knew. Knew because she felt no more pain in her eyes. She couldn’t see her wife. Still, that was a blessing. At least she couldn’t see the ruin that had been made of her own body.

She could hear, at least a little. Far away, the army of the enemy had broken into chaos. They’d been right—Charybdis wasn’t here. Without the Deathlord to unite the invaders in common purpose, they’d begun tearing each other apart as vigorously as they attacked Datong.

Jackie felt something soft, and realized she must be touching Ezri. “P-please…” she said, or thought she said. “Don’t be…” But she was. There was no bargaining when you cast this last spell, no control. It burned everything you were, and left only chalky remains behind. Even now Ezri’s body felt unnaturally soft, as though squeezing too hard might turn her to ash and let her blow away in the wind.

Of all the immortals on Earth, none had loved quite like she loved Ezri. Jackie screamed her fury into the void, oblivious of the battle. That despair had brought clarity—a sudden understanding, a sight beyond sight. Jackie fell into herself, consumed by the agony of loss.

She opened her eyes in a glittering, golden city, her pain suddenly gone. Jackie had known this city before, though only once. She had seen these streets, paved with the symbols that made the natural laws. Last time she had been here, Jackie had been sent during the death of her friend—an escape that had been meant as an ascension. Now she had come here by right, and yet she didn’t care.

Something called Jackie towards the hill, and yet she ignored it. Ignored the stars overhead, playing back her memories. She only wanted to find one thing, and it wasn’t power. The Alicorns and their magic could fuck right off.

She found Ezri waiting for her, just as she knew she would. Her body looked as though it were only half there, and seemed in constant flux—one moment she was that little drone she’d been, the next a powerful Redeemed queen, the only immortal they had. Jackie could come no closer to her, for she stood on something watery, which turned Jackie’s hoof to smoke whenever she touched it. Further away, like a dim mirage in the distance, Jackie could see more figures—hundreds of Redeemed, ghostly echoes just like their queen. And so many more—changelings who hadn’t gotten colorful, but with holes all over them. She recognized a few, but only one was close enough for her to see for certain. Riley—Ezri’s ancient queen.

“Come back,” Jackie urged her, reaching out in vain with one hoof. She had already tried to fly—here, it seemed, the magic of flight didn’t exist. “I’ve brought so much magic with me. Enough for both of us.”

Ezri approached, walking to the edge of the great precipice. Below her, the ground Jackie was standing on swept off into the void, returning to the raw medium of creation. “No,” Ezri said. “My life isn’t worth that.” She pointed upward with a wing, and somehow Jackie followed her gaze to the mortal world. Where even now, Charybdis’s army slaughtered in Datong. Even killing each other, they would overwhelm it, and come for Mundi next. Jackie saw what would happen if the Alicorns couldn’t return to fight, and she saw the end of all things. The vision she had watched Oracle play out so many times happened before her again.

“You could use your power to bring me back, or… you could use it for something else.” She pointed towards the hill. “I’ve fought my fight, love. But you haven’t finished yours.”

Jackie reached out to embrace her, if only to feel her warmth one last time—but her hooves passed through nothing. Jackie was alone on the shore, looking out at nothing. Maybe there had never been anypony here.

Jackie contemplated plunging headfirst into that abyss, abandoning the mortal world to its fate. Yet somehow—she didn’t think that was what her mate would’ve wanted. Ezri was right—she wasn’t quite ready for that yet.

She turned, banishing her tears as she returned to the hill that had called her, walking the steps of its worn cobbles with hooves clopping lightly as she walked.

At the top of the hill were all the missing Alicorns. They were arranged in a tight circle, backs to an old well. They were all here, all the missing immortals who were supposed to be fighting in the world below. You’re the reason Ezri is dead. But no, it wasn’t them.

A figure stood across from them, a human figure whose very presence seemed to corrupt the stones he stood upon. Like Ezri, he seemed only half here, with different internal organs or strips of rotting flesh occasionally appearing in the world, only to fade to transparency again. “Well fuck you, Charybdis,” she said as she approached. Nothing happened. He didn’t even seem to see her.

She walked up, inspecting the scene. Charybdis stood with both hands outstretched towards the Alicorns. His power appeared to be entirely invested in trapping them here—that was why he hadn’t been at the battle, and why he couldn’t see her even now.

Jackie didn’t know much about magic, but she knew enough. She found a stone, pacing slowly around Charybdis, making a groove in the ground she could use. When she had circled him completely, she focused her intent to change on him, as she might’ve done during a dream. Existence is dust, we’re all pale shadows on the wall of the cave. “You do not belong here,” she said, voice confident. “Get out.”

Up here, that was spell enough. Charybdis seemed to see her then, mouth curling into fury and frustration for the barest instant. Then he vanished, disappearing down a newly created shaft into eternity. And all the power Jackie could’ve used to bring Ezri back was gone.

Jackie turned her back on the Alicorns and their power. She was done with this place.

“Jackie, please.” Alex’s voice came from behind her, more childlike and afraid than she’d ever heard it. “I don’t know the pain you’re feeling right now. Please… don’t go. All leaving would do is rob you of the power you could use to make her sacrifice matter. We need you.”

“How the fuck would you know? You’re the ones who are supposed to be protecting us. You act like gods, but you don’t even know what happened today.” The other Alicorns were all gone now—returned to Datong and the battle. Only the two of them remained.

“I gave the only life I could to protect you, Jackie. But we’re not gods—you should know that better than anyone,” Alex said.

“How?” was all she asked. “Why didn’t you tell us what had happened? If you were there the whole time…”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “The unity in Datong brought me back, but Charybdis held my essence here along with the others. It’s not an excuse—you still deserved more. But there’s no one to give it to you, Jackie.” She held out a little clay cup in her magic. Something sparkled in that glass. “Please, take it. I don’t even… know what would happen if you refused. To drink ties your essence here, as part of what you represent. If you refuse… you won’t be a part of any world. You might not be able to find your way back.”

“I don’t care.” Jackie turned her back on Alex, for good this time. “I don’t want to live forever… not without her. You can dump that right back where you found it.” She left.

But Jackie wasn’t quite done yet. She might’ve refused the power that was now her right, but she would not abandon her friends. One of her fellow immortals still needed her help—and Ezri’s ghost would’ve come back to haunt her if she didn’t help.

Jackie took what was left of her power, and sliced through the Iridescent Veil. She passed through the opening into the abyss, where few creatures could go and return alive. Supernal significance kept her mind working properly through geometry no mortal mind could comprehend. She didn’t even try, just flew stubbornly onward, until the sympathetic magic of her target called to her.

She found him alone on a bleak, windswept expanse of flat rock, surrounded by innumerable dead. An ocean had formed of the blood of lesser demons, and their bodies had built a small mountain around him. Yet still Isaac fought, apparently unexhausted.

“Hey,” she called, extending a hoof to him. “Your ride’s here.”

Songs still tell of the defeat of Datong—the defeat that bought its survivors time to escape to the last city, and brought life back to its Alicorns. Those songs did not say what happened to the Dreamknife, the only pony who had been offered the mantle of the Alicorns, and refused it out of love.

But there are other stories written about her, and other songs. In some, she led the evacuations of Datong—while in many others, she wanders all creation, still searching for the love she lost.

Author's Note

And there's one battle told. At first, I wanted to post the whole confrontation at once, maybe in one big week, but as time has gone by a new story commissioned on my Patreon requires this information to make any sense. Can't really tell the story of what happens after the war without showing at least this piece. That story won't make it into Bedtime Stories until its finished, but it will be posted here once it's done there.

Can't say it's fun to say farewell to a character I've loved since the early days of this setting. Goodbye, Ezri. You won't be alone long.

The Black Tide

Author's Note

So, this is a story I've wanted to tell for awhile. Over the last few years, I've imagined all sorts of different ways this might go. In the end, I settled on this.

If I'm right about how long this will take to tell, this story will update daily each weekday this week. Considering the subject matter, I suppose it's an appropriate "Halloween special." Enjoy!

The Black Tide

“That’s it, Joe.” Archive was bloody, weary, and broken. She had healed so many wounds that she no longer had the magic left to spare. She had seen so many ponies die that she couldn’t abide the pain anymore. She wanted to lie down on the stone of Mundi and give up. Charybdis would sweep over them and consume all that she loved, but at least she could rest. “That’s it.”

Joseph’s workshop used the same design it had back in ancient Alexandria—a university closer to its original namesake in time than it was to them now. So many years we’ve fought. But for how much longer?

Magic coursed through the room, invigorating Alex against her will. She wanted to fall asleep and die, but even her Alicorn magical reserves were quickly filled by the spire. There were so few ponies alive anymore that there was more than enough magic to go around.

Every few moments, there was another terrible crash, the whole city shaking as Charybdis ordered more of its creatures to smash against it. Every time they did, the magic weakened. All but the inner city had been consumed now, the rest was nothing but corpses and the minions of the unmade.

The wreckage of crystalline tech was scattered around the worktable, along with notes and old books. Some of it looked recently destroyed. She could also hear breathing coming from the back of the room, where Joseph’s never-used bed was tucked away beside so much other refuse. A lump was curled up there, covered by the blanket. Joseph himself lay on the ground, his body such pure crystal he was mostly transparent. She could easily see the wall through him—except for something he was wearing. Dark metal around his neck, something he hadn’t been wearing before. Joseph was not one for wearing jewelry.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice distant. He didn’t look towards her when he spoke, though his eyes were open. Transparent and glowing, sightless. Joseph could not see the physical world anymore—he saw only the Patterns of things. A mage sight spell that never ended. “We have so many Alicorns. We have immortals, we have demigods. Send them out to fight.”

“Not as many as we did.” Archive began walking towards him, eyeing the new object he was wearing. “Only three of the Alicorns recovered their sanity. Sunset and Oracle are both dead, Joe. And I don’t know if I’ll make it another battle.”

“They’ll be back,” Joe said, apparently unmoved. “Just wait.”

“Not in time,” Alex argued, clearing another few feet. Raw magic roiled in the air around him, enough that the flesh of ordinary creatures might’ve been ripped from their bones. Alex’s own vision split into the Supernal the closer she got, as Joseph’s view of creation imposed itself on her. It was a terrifying thing—every object seemed so fragile, so mutable. She could see the desperate ponies of Mundi through the walls of the lab, barely a dozen symbols each. Frail, weak, insubstantial. Only the two of them were different.

Joseph’s whole body was made from spells, an ever-flowing sea of subroutines and functions, ever-changing. And Alex—Alex was a window, through which the eyes of a thousand-thousand dead looked out in judgement.

“Then send the Dreamknife,” Joseph said, clutching the object around his neck. “She’s good at killing things. Have her kill the army.”

“I don’t know where she is,” Alex admitted. “After Ezri…” She whimpered, reaching to wipe away the tears at her eye. They’d already evaporated by the time her hoof got there. “She dumped Isaac at my hooves and didn’t look back. But she couldn’t kill Charybdis on her own, even if she had stayed.”

She was right beside him now. Alex lowered her head, dropping down. “Isaac has gone to bring Enceladus, but I don’t know if he will arrive in time. It may be decades before the Wayfinders arrive. The Keeper said she would keep your shield going if she could, but I know it can’t be much longer. Her power is tied to the living, like mine. I know she can’t have much left.”

“Sounds like we lost then,” Joe said, pulling away from her. He covered his face with one leg, but it did him no good. His legs were as transparent as his eyelids. “We’re out of immortals, out of time. It was a good run.”

Alex remembered looking down at this unicorn, when she had been a frightened little earth pony in a world that seemed to mock their attempts at survival. When Joseph had been playing video games on his fancy gaming PC, when he had refused to go outside and help with whatever magic his horn could provide. He had changed so little in all those years.

“No,” she said, her voice taking on a little of that patient, ancient self. “You promised me a weapon, Joseph. Your masterwork, remember? You’ve been working on it for thousands of years. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect, Joe. It’s time.”

It seemed her words had finally struck a nerve—Joe tensed, curling up and away from her, clutching the object about his neck tighter. “It doesn’t work! It’s a failure Alex! Everything failed! That bastard knew, that’s why he killed Cloudy first! All my notes, all my research. I was so close to bringing her back, and he took her away! He’s burned everything I love, and I couldn’t do it!” He pointed back at the other end of the room with one hoof, towards the bed. “Go and see, Alex! See your weapon in action!” He laughed, his voice rising to mad cackling.

Archive could only imagine the fear her lieutenants must be feeling, waiting in the hall as they were.

“Alright,” she said, rising to her hooves, and walking away from him. Joseph kept laughing, one of his hooves smacking over and over against the crystal floor.

Alex’s coat stood on end as she crossed the room, and the stench of decay filled her nose. She bit back a gag, mostly at the taste of the magic against her horn. Necromancy.

In her many years, Archive had put down more than a few necromancers. The terrible magic was not inherently corrupting, as the gifts of Charybdis and the Void. But Equestrian books passed down from another world had made it clear that the left-handed path led to the void, one hoofstep at a time. The dead must be left to their own.

And yet, how often had Archive called on them? Just not like this.

Alex levitated the sheet out of the way, and the bile rose again in her throat. What she saw before her was an abomination, far worse than she had imagined. Her limbs started to shake, and her eyes filled with tears, faster than they could be burned away.

What curled before her was as though a pony had been imperfectly reconstructed, then had random bits and pieces of it rotted away and replaced with chunks of glowing crystal and wires.

Her cutie mark was intact, though, a pair of gray clouds. One of the soft brown eyes was rotten, but the other was intact, filled with an agony that no words could express. She tried anyway, a rasping gasp from the creature’s throat that oozed something gray from every opening.

Archive recognized Cloudy Skies—both of them. One was her ancient friend, dead after her long life. The other, Joseph’s construct, spawned from the HPI’s technology and his own magical research. They had not combined well.

She would’ve instantly destroyed such abominations, but now she hesitated. In Joseph’s lab, even simple spells could get out of control. It would take enormous discipline to channel an unmaking spell powerful enough to undo necromancy without also unmaking half the building.

“Joseph Kimball.” She turned away from her old friend, who was still reaching out with a half-rotten hoof. She didn’t let her get close enough. “You will tell me what you have done. This is not the weapon you promised!”

Maybe it was her anger that had given him the strength to rise. Maybe it was simple madness. “Isn’t it, Alex? I told you there had to be a way to fight Charybdis—this was my genius. I’ve only been looking for Death’s cure for thousands of years! It’s been my only goal since I saw past the outside curtain and knew it could be done!” More mad laughter. “Charybdis’s legions swelled as he conquered because so many would rather swear their lives than let him torture and kill them!”

He shoved past one of his workbenches. His body was so charged with magic that the touch turned it all to ash, but he didn’t seem to care. “We have more dead than the enemy! Billions and billions of them! I was going to give you all of them, all the way back to those ancient primitives you used to tell stories about! You could keep them all… all but her.”

“It failed,” Alex said, moving out of Joseph’s way as he stormed over to the abomination he had created. “You can’t bring them back, Joe. What the Supernal takes, it never returns.”

His cackles of madness filled the room. “You sound just like Equestria’s dead books. But their wisdom didn’t do much for Equestria, did they? Their Alicorns died like ours!” He still held to the object around his neck with one hoof. Alex could see it a little clearer now—it looked like a gigantic key, made of something that was only somewhat solid.

She gasped as she recognized what she was looking at—Mordite. The Death-Metal, quarried from empty rockets on the outermost edges of the solar system. It caused instant death to any living creatures it touched. Even extremely diffuse alloys could cut through spells like they were mist. Somehow Joseph, a living spell himself, held the key against his body. The key looked as though its metal was constantly shifting and melting—but always it remained the same shape.

“I could’ve done it if I had her!” Joseph roared. “I needed Cloudy Skies! Her mind was the key! She knows them. But I couldn’t. No one could! She’s dead, they’re all dead. Monsters, like me. The Supernal hoards all its wealth.”

“Give it to me.” Alex put out a hoof towards him, towards the artifact that was the culmination of his near-endless life’s work. Obsessive genius on the scale of something that Earth had never seen again. It’s still necromancy. Even if it does work.

Joseph pulled back, lashing out at her with a silent spell powerful enough to atomize her body a dozen times over. A few thousand years ago, it would have—but her reaction times were faster now, and Joe wasn’t really trying to kill her. She tore the spell apart with a counterspell he had taught her, channeling the energy back into the spire. The whole building shook again, humming with pale green light. “No! I won’t let you take her away again! The last time I trusted anything I loved to you, Charybdis took it away! Everything you touch dies!”

Alex advanced on him, heedless of the danger. “Joe,” she whispered, very quietly. “I know how much you cared about Sky. But this isn’t her.” She gestured at the suffering monstrosity on his bed. “You’ve done enough, Joe. Let me finish it.”

He shook his head, though some of the fire vanished from his eyes. More suspicion. “I know how you feel about necromancy. You’re just going to take her away! You’re like Equestria, backwards and stupid!”

She let a few bad arguments die unspoken in her mouth. The building shook again to another of Charybdis’s attacks. She reached up, putting one hoof on his shoulder. “Not today, Joe. I’m going to fix it. What you started. You’ve gone a little crazy over the years, let your fantasies and your realities get twisted up inside. You can’t call a pony back who never lived.” She tapped the side of her head with her free hoof. “Joe… I remember them. I remember all of them. I promise I won’t send them away.”

He looked back, transparent eyes as guileless as a child. He looked like he might’ve cried, except that his body couldn’t cry anymore. That capacity was long gone. “I wanted to save them, Alex,” he said, looking down. “I told you I could… I wanted to do it for you. For them. For everyone.”

“I know.” she hugged him. Her coat touched briefly against the heavy metallic weight. She prepared a shield, but it wasn’t necessary. As she had suspected, the Key did not try to kill her. Joseph had tamed the Mordite somehow, turned it towards the most powerful necromancy ever performed. “You did your best. We all did… and it was never enough.” She let go of him. “We have to try anyway, Joe. That spell of yours… that’s our last chance. Isaac won’t be here in time, the immortals are all gone, Charybdis still has too many.”

Joe hesitated, glancing between her and the creature behind her. Then he removed the necklace, levitating the chain onto her hoof. “I don’t know if anyone can,” he said. “I planned… planned on having Cloudy. She wasn’t supposed to die… in Midgard… I think he knew.”

“He probably did,” Alex agreed, lifting the chain around her own neck. It glowed, each link made of a different metal. Archive settled it against herself. It was as strange as first growing a horn had been—a new magical sense, one she had no context to understand. Rather, one any other pony wouldn’t have had the context to understand.

But Archive had died more than anypony else alive—she had seen beyond the veil so many times it wasn’t so strange to be standing halfway across it now. Death had left a permanent mark on her mane, even today.

They Key was trying to kill her, though whatever magic Joseph had set into the chain contained it for now. Yet she could still hear its voice, struggling against its bonds. Peace waits for you, weary traveler, it spoke into her mind. You can’t win. No one can. The rot swallows all things. Yet if you free me, we can defy Death itself. She looked up, and saw the abomination very differently than she had a few moments before.

It wasn’t rot and decay, it was two twisting, conflicting patterns, assembled at random in an explosion of insane magic. Some of its parts were completely constructed—bits of nopony at all that Joseph had willed into existence to form the pony that was his impossible ideal.

Alex made her way to the cot, where the horrible creature suffered. She could release it from its pain, as she longed to do for herself. But she ignored its whispers, reaching out towards the creatures Joseph had made trying to call back a pony from beyond death.

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispered. “Nobody ought to do this. The Keeper will probably never speak to me again.” She closed her eyes, touching the pony’s cheek. “I remember you,” she said. She banished Joseph’s fumbling with barely a thought, and chunks of crystal thumped onto the ground one after another. A few sparked as they came down, falling out of Sky’s body.

To say the pegasus “healed” would not be quite right, since the undead could not ever heal. But the body mended—color returned to her cheeks, missing organs grew. Cloudy Skies returned to apparent life, as Alex had always seen her in the moments of her own greatest difficulty.

How many times had this illusion been there to give her the drive to keep going? Wearing the Key around her neck, Alex could see she was only halfway here—more a creature of magic than she was one of flesh. But she didn’t look like the other undead she had ever seen before. There was a spark here, a touch of the Supernal trapped in left-handed magic.

“You… Cloudy!” Joseph shoved past her, putting one crystal hoof on one of Cloudy’s wings. As though checking to see if she were real. “You’re alive!”

The pegasus let him touch her, met one of his hooves with some tenderness, then punched him in the face. It made a sound like glass dropping on stone, but he didn’t crack. Whatever Joe was made from, it was too strong for that these days.

“I can’t believe you would leave me like that,” she said, before turning to one side and hacking. She coughed, and what seemed like lungfuls of bloody slime spilled onto the ground, smelling as much of rot as Cloudy herself had, a few minutes before. “You should’ve killed me. Tried again. Anything.” She rose to her hooves, shivering all over. “Ever there to save the day, Alex? Guess you owed me after all those times I rescued you.”

Joseph only watched, apparently unaffected by the violence.

Alex shrugged. “I wouldn’t have done this,” she spoke quietly, as though afraid that too much volume might make the pegasus disappear. “I know you wouldn’t—”

“Approve?” Cloudy Skies shook out her wings, stretching both in turn. “No, obviously. I’m dead. I don’t belong here anymore. But I already know what you’re going to tell me.” She flicked her tail up towards the ceiling, right as the room shook with another of Charybdis’s terrible attacks. “It’s the end of the world. Everyone is dying. And you’ve completely lost your mind—you think you’re going to beat Charybdis with an army of the dead.”

“Not you,” Joe squeaked. “You don’t have to fight, Cloudy.”

She glared at him. “Joe, shouldn’t you know what’s out there? I only came to fight. Alex needs me.”

“No she doesn’t…” Joe argued. “You can’t help it… it’s the key she’s wearing. You do what she says because she’s controlling the…”

“No.” Cloudy Skies cut him off. “I’m going to help because that’s why I’m here in the first place.”

Archive gripped the Key about her neck as Joseph had done. She could feel its strange magic even now, struggling to contain the artifact that wanted desperately to kill her. Not just her, but every living thing in the fort. So much Mordite was enough to kill a great many people.

But she wouldn’t let it. She would need as many soldiers as she could get, but it wasn’t soldiers she thought of first. Archive imagined her old friends, the first survivors of that ancient Event. Magic poured down from the spire above, keeping the artifact fizzing with energy as she reached out to those who had once been the closest to her.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it was far better than what Joe had forced her to see. Alex didn’t remember them as imperfect fusions of others, and she knew how pony bodies worked better than Joe could. First came Oliver, not as he had been in old age, but in his prime, tall, and strong and handsome.

He blinked, momentarily dazed, but there was no moment where Archive had to flush away an imperfect casting. He would wake up correctly the first time. “Alex,” he said, tone a little tense. As it had been during their later meetings, neither one ever completely reconciled. “You’re… taller.”

“Yeah,” she said, ears flattening despite herself. “A little. It’s been awhile.”

“Now, kiss,” Sky said, from a few feet away.

They both turned to glare at her, though neither said anything to that.

“This is… a dangerous path you’ve chosen for yourself,” Oliver said, eyes taking in the lab and the Key and Joseph by one wall. Though whether he would be able to identify the unicorn was yet an unanswered question. “I considered this magic for treating the untreatable cases. It is not sustainable—the mind decays, the body refuses to repair. Requires surgical correction.”

“That won’t happen,” Joseph called, apparently having collected himself a little after being told off. “The mind thing, I mean. You’re not a zombie—your corpse has been dust for so long there would be nothing to bring back. You’re both wraiths, if you want to get technical about it. But so long as that key exists, all the damage you’re thinking about will be mitigated. You won’t need to feed on the living, or be dominated by animalistic lusts. I have turned the Stygian Key.”

“Damn,” Oliver said. “Is that you, Joe? You never got better, did you?”

Archive didn’t hear his response, because she wasn’t finished. There were others yet to call before she could reach her army. A unicorn grew up from the dust, like the others her coat a little faded, but otherwise intact. She had one difference from the original—her horn wasn’t broken.

Moriah looked around, taking in the others one at a time. Her eyes settled on Archive—no doubt drawn there by the power of the artifact. This key controlled the fates of everyone that it raised—without it, they could not exist. And if Joe said that she could use it to give them commands and expect them obeyed, he was probably right. Of course, she wouldn’t do that to her friends—bringing them back was abomination enough.

“You chose them first?” Moriah asked, glancing between Oliver and Sky. “I was wondering if you wanted my help at all.”

“Be grateful,” Sky said, her voice wistful. “That it was her instead of Joseph. All that crystal magic and he couldn’t find room in there for a better memory.”

“Wait.” Moriah turned, stalking back towards him. “You find out how to bring ponies back to life, and you started with her?”

Joe didn’t get a chance to answer before, for the second time, an undead mare smacked him in the face.

Alex imagined her firstborn son—and dismissed the spell as soon as she realized she was bringing him back as a colt instead of a stallion. Some things were too far even for her, even at the end of the world. She tried on Ezri, but this time the spell didn’t work at all. “Joseph—is there any reason I can call some but not others?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t get the chance to experiment before Midgard. I guess maybe they aren’t listening? This isn’t about zombies—zombies are basically what Charybdis does with that fungus he incubates in corpses. But if you can give a body back to its original owner, well… he loses troops.”

No Ezri, then. The magic similarly failed to reach Adrian, across the vast reaches of time. But Riley came when she called, as tall as she was, with a glittering black coat and shimmering multifaceted eyes. She was already armored as well, in something hammered from the indescribable black metal the queens worked in their secret forges. “Hey, Riley.”

The queen didn’t hesitate as Oliver had done, but instead leaned down to embrace her immediately. “This isn’t the way this was supposed to happen,” Riley said into her ear, though she didn’t hug her any less. “I’m still frozen, aren’t I?”

She nodded. “You are. But I need your help—I need everypony’s help.” The building shook around them, and it seemed with that strike like whole sections of distant stone were being ripped away. They were running out of time.

“We aren’t much of an army,” Riley said, looking around the room. “Looks more like you missed your friends.”

“I did,” Alex admitted. Maybe she wasn’t any better than Joseph—she’d done the exact same thing he had tried, only more competently. “I missed you all so much. I still think back to the years we were together—wished I had known then what I know now. None of you would be dead now if I did.”

“Reality’s a bitch,” Moriah said, though she was still eyeing Joe every few moments. “He’s still alive, though. So, one of you knew how to cheat death back then. I hope you plan to explain why you never shared that information, Joe. Maybe over wine when this is over?”

“When this is over?” he said, and he laughed. “This is the Last War. Oracle has seen the end—there won’t be anything left when this is over.”

Indeed he had, though it had not been specific enough to show things like this. It hadn’t shown individual battles, or the pieces that had moved on the board during those conflicts. Maybe he didn’t see Joe getting this invention working. Maybe the living and the dead fighting together are enough to win. It was a feeble hope, but it was something.

“It’s time to take the field,” Archive said, more for her own benefit. “We’re going to clear the outer gate and hold it. Force Charybdis to attack us instead of the fortress itself. Buy you time.”

“You can’t keep fighting forever,” Joe argued, watching as she walked away. “It won’t make a difference if Isaac doesn’t deliver.”

She shrugged. “If we must fight forever, then… I guess that’s what we’ll do. We’re already dead.”

Taking the City

Archive passed outside the inner gate with a quick teleport. She wore the fine white armor Athena had created for her, carried Athena’s mightiest weapons. But the AI’s best tools were nothing compared to the one worn around her neck. She could sense its attention about her even now, whispering to her how easy death would be. Joseph had not realized the extent of what he had created—not a mere tool, but an intelligent thing, shouting its demands at her. If she would not obey it, then it wanted at least to be used.

Used it would be, before too long.

Past the inner gate were dozens of layers of structures, which had once been filled with two hundred thousand soldiers. Less than a tenth of those had made a retreat into the inner city during the terrible disaster that was Charybdis’s own appearance, but he seemed to have returned to the ocean to recoup his strength.

In the meantime, he had left his army. She saw them in every corner and crevice—like corpses covered with puppeting white fungi. They grew out of every orifice, dripping seawater whenever they moved too fast. And there were the shock-troopers, things like seaponies but with many more limbs and a propensity for ripping people apart. Flying artillery-beasts bombarding the city from above, and many other things. They hadn’t even bothered to pick up the corpses of those fallen in the battle, just left them to be slowly covered by white fungus and eventually reborn as more mindless soldiers.

Including one of Charybdis’s greater demons, made from souls that had sworn themselves to him. These directed the fighting while their master was away.

One stood just beside a new wave of troops prepared to throw themselves against the gate, which stopped and waited as she emerged into the gloom. Archive had not seen this one before, but she recognized its power at once. “You are mad, Alicorn,” it said, watching her with a dozen hungry eyes. “You think your power alone is the equal of this army? You came out here to die alone!”

Archive unleashed the Stygian Key. The great white spire of Axis Mundi turned a sickly green as she channeled every drop of magic it contained into her, filling the air with ghostly light. The disgusting scent of necromancy—which had turned her stomach so many times before—started to smell sweet. Her magic even changed to match, away from the reddish brown of her eyes. It would never look the same again. “I call you back to your posts,” she said, her voice echoing through every hallway of the fortress-city. “Rise, take up your weapons, and fight with me.”

Her magic found a host—first, in all the corpses that littered the ground, regardless of the condition they had been in. The Key did not care how fragmentary the body was, so long as it could find something to put in control. Archive remembered every soul who had fought for her, and so none of them would come back as half-formed abominations. That did not mean they would be any less undead, however. When Joseph said he had failed, in one sense he had been right. True resurrection this was not.

Charybdis’s mad horde was not terribly intelligent, and so they struck out at the newly rising, impaling the revived, or trying to tear them apart. It did them little good. The rising army of the dead were every bit the ponies they had been in life. Now, they were a deathless army, immortal so long as the magic in the Key remained. Sword and bullets didn’t faze them, and no sooner were they ripped apart than they put themselves back together again.

Animal screams of terror filled the outer fortress as the monsters of Charybdis’s main army were torn apart themselves.

Not far away, the exit to the hallway they were standing in was closed by undead hooves.

And the magic wasn’t finished. Many of the foot-soldiers fighting now were more corpses, puppeted by the foreign organism that had grown there. The demon commanding at the gates watched in obvious horror as the army beside him began ripping itself apart. Fungal blooms fell from torsos, and eyes regrew in empty sockets. Uniforms and armor returned, and those few that had not been willing to fight were soon dispatched by those who had.

“What happened to your morality, Alicorn? This is dark magic! Aren’t you worried about your soul? That’s all your mortals ever talk about.”

“What soul do I have if you kill everyone?” Archive asked, gesturing for the demon. The greatest of her undead horde descended upon it as they had on so many others within the fortress walls. And just like that, without the price of a single life, the great fortress of Axis Mundi was hers once again.

“Man your posts!” she ordered, her voice echoing through the halls. It sounded a little ghostly itself, just like the green magic that glowed from everywhere now. “We will fight until help arrives. However long that takes.” When they were mortal, this army had failed to defend these walls against Charybdis. Would they do better once the demon himself returned?

It wasn’t the demon who came to her next, but a few ponies she had only half-expected to see before this was over. Both of her fellow Alicorns looked the worse for wear—like all those on the exterior of the fortress their bodies had not been given natural life. Only the strange greenish magic that suffused everything animated them, though any physical damage they had suffered before their deaths was gone now.

Oracle in particular looked on the edge of hysteria. “I can’t see anything!” he yelled, loud enough that the soldiers clearing away fungus from the battlements nearby stopped to stare. “It’s not there, Alex! Not the past, not the future… it’s all gone!”

Sunset Shimmer’s mane no longer flickered and danced with its unearthly wind, but was simple hair like her own. “Archive… you really did this?” She gestured around with a hoof. “I’ve never tasted so much forbidden magic at once. You must see the consequences…” She stopped inches away, glaring at Alex. “There are some boundaries we ought not to cross. We must be better than he is. You have to end this.”

“When the siege is over,” Archive responded. “If you want to go, go. I can’t force you. But I’m not letting Charybdis take Mundi—whatever the cost.”

Sunset’s horn flickered, though the light that came from it wasn’t its normal color. It was a pale, ghostly green, just like Alex’s had become. Just like all the unicorns and Enduring Ones she had seen use magic from beyond the grave.

Except I’m not dead. I wonder if it will go back to normal when this is over. Assuming there ever was an over. Maybe she hadn’t been exaggerating to Joe, and they really would be fighting until the end of time.

Whatever spell Sunset had been trying to cast, it didn’t work, and she turned away in a huff. “I can’t. We can’t die any more than they can.”

Could Alex end the spell for just one pony? Maybe, but she didn’t much want to try and find out. If she got it wrong and the magic ended, she wasn’t sure she would have the strength to start it up again. Every time she brought a pony back, it cost a little bit of herself. Archive didn’t know how much would be left when this was over.

An Alicorn’s strength, even an undead Alicorn, was a powerful thing to give up. “I’m sorry, Sunset. I guess Mundi needs you.” She turned to Oracle. “And you too. You can’t see the future because you’ve been tainted by another of the Supernal realms. Arcadia’s magic doesn’t mix with Stygia’s—you won’t be able to see the future until this spell ends and you come back properly.”

“Assuming you haven’t disrupted the cycle,” Sunset said, fresh anger in her voice. “Assuming you haven’t damned all of us.”

“I haven’t.” She glared right back. “Sunset Shimmer, this city is filled with civilians. The helpless, the weak, the last of your race and mine on this planet. I will pay any price to preserve them. Wouldn’t you?”

There was a long, tense silence. Then she turned away with a grunt. “You can’t win against Charybdis with these. We already lost to him with all these soldiers at their best. As soon as he recovers from his respite and comes in person, he’ll take the fort again. Properly.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t plan on fighting him with just these, then,” Archive said, turning her back on the Alicorns. “Come with me to the courtyard. We’re marshaling there.”

Of course, Mundi was a city unto itself, and had many courtyards. But there was only one she could be referring to—the great central space between buildings, large enough for hundreds of thousands of ponies to rally and assemble. There were far fewer there—mostly it was a burning pile of the enemy’s corpses, and the living dead carried them here to be burned.

The entire city was cast in eerie green light, blotting out the distant sun. It no longer made Archive feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t smell the rot either.

Her old friends were waiting on the raised platform overlooking the empty courtyard, dead as they were. She went to Oliver first. “How is everypony now that the attacks have stopped?”

He shook his head. “It’s… well, they’re not happy to have me as their doctor. Some enemy of death I am as a dead man. But it’s worse than that, Alex. Necromancy taints. Whatever Joe said about how good his magic is, you can’t put this much of it into the air and not expect some damage. It starts with the young and the elderly—they’re looking weaker already. I don’t know how long you can keep this going before they start dying… but eventually it will start killing the healthy as well. There may not be many people left to save if we keep this up forever.”

“If that is so, take heart,” said Athena. The corpse of her avatar had revived along with the dead defenders, though Archive still didn’t know how. Hadn’t Joe said the magic required a soul to work? “I have genetic samples of members from all species. When my infrastructure eventually recovers, I will grow a new generation in orbit, and raise them to reclaim what was lost. I will see Charybdis destroyed no matter how many years it takes.”

Oliver shivered, moving closer to Alex, and lowering his voice a little. “Everyone in the future is batshit insane.”

“I don’t agree with her,” she whispered back. “I hoped we could keep fighting forever… but I guess even endless magic won’t be enough. Keep doing what you can with the medical team. There might be a way you can protect ponies from the damage. Some spell, or gene therapy, or something.”

“I’ll try.” He turned for the gate leading to the inner city. “But I can’t promise it will work. You have better technology, but not more resources. We’re overwhelmed just catching up from the casualties.”

“If they die,” Alex said, her voice low, “bring them to me.”

“Even the women? Even the children?”

She nodded. “Everyone. This is it, Oliver. If we fail here, it’s all over.” She flicked a wing at Athena. “I’m not willing to bet on some future generation inheriting the planet—it’s us or it’s nothing. Don’t let it be nothing.”

Oliver turned and galloped away, barely able to look at her.

Moriah and Cloudy Skies were both heavily armored, wearing the best crystal gear the Purifiers could make. The irony of a pair of undead wearing armor worn by the same group who killed undead was not lost on her.

“Joe is patching up the shield,” Sky said. “He says it’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did. No telling how many hits like that it will take if the big fish swims in.”

“We’re short on everything,” Moriah continued, without missing a beat. “Guess you ran out your stores before you decided to fuck up nature. We’re mostly down to contact weapons, and shit like crossbows. But we haven’t been attacked again since we drove them out. Don’t know how well we’ll do against a counterattack without weapons. I don’t know the first thing about any of this—armor’s awesome, though. Guess you’ve been busy since we died.”

“Not me,” Alex said. “But yes. That’s why everypony here is trained with swords and bows.” She removed her revolver from its holster, spinning the cylinder against the side of her hoof. “We have these, but there are too few to give them to ponies who can’t shoot. No offence.” Moriah did look like she was offended, but Alex didn’t give her the chance to respond. She kept walking past her to the edge of the platform, overlooking the huge empty space. She had taken back the dead of her fort, and with them the outer city was theirs, but that wasn’t enough.

They could not win a war of attrition against a foe who controlled the rest of the planet. Ultimately, the only way to win would be to kill Charybdis when he came. Her defenders would not be able to do that alone.

But that didn’t matter—she had all of history to draw from. She didn’t only remember ponies.

Her first choice, history’s most ruthless horse lord, screamed in madness when she brought him back, and would not listen to her attempts to explain the battle ahead. She couldn’t kill him—just as with Sunset, these dead apparently couldn’t die, so she teleported him as far away as she could and hoped that would be enough.

As much as she had wanted to send out a barbarian horde against the horde of the unmade, apparently that wasn’t going to be an option. But there were others she had fought with over the years, whose wisdom she had called on. And one who she trusted above the rest to fight with the limitations before them.

Archive called him, and did not bow to him this time. The towering human figure rose into his prime, his armor black with gold filigree. He wore a purple robe beneath, which like the rest of him seemed somewhat faded.

From a few feet away, Sunset Shimmer watched with angry frustration. Apparently she’d given up trying to stop her.

“Emperor,” she said, when he had risen to his full height.

The man removed his helmet, holding it under one arm as he looked around at the empty field, and the distant walls battered and broken by artillery fire. The mountain of the dead being burned. “What god calls me?”

Athena opened her mouth to speak, but Archive silenced her with a look, meeting the Emperor’s eyes. Then she changed, rising to stand almost as tall as he did. The runic armor didn’t care that she was making herself human—it changed as she did, adapting to cover her new body. This wasn’t like the dream—in reality, she still had wings, and still had her horn. Hiding those was impossible while she was actively using Alicorn magic to control the Stygian Key.

She reached out, resting one hand on his shoulder. “Rome, Caesar. Uncountable years have passed since the time you ruled her, but she needs you again.”

“This does not look much like Rome.”

Archive let go of his shoulder. “It is all that remains. Her great, great, great, great grandchild. The titans have destroyed the rest of the world in their wrath, but this remains. Will you join my troops and defend her, or will I send you back to where I found you?”

No hesitation. The Emperor did not bow to her in response, but he did rest one hand on the hilt of his sword. “You want me to lead your army of small horses? I have children perhaps who might be amused by them, but I do not think I could do much with them in war. I imagined the Pegasus would be taller…”

“No,” she said. “My horses are my own—they will fight beside you, but you and your men will leave them to me.” She called, and Riley appeared beside her in a flash of green magic. The Emperor did not retreat, though he did reach for his sword again.

“Riley, you speak Latin, don’t you?”

“I know translation spells,” she answered, in passable Latin. “Is this who I think it is, Archive?”

“A marvel,” the Emperor said, smiling slightly. “Your animal can speak.”

Riley’s amusement faded. “I am not an animal.”

“Riley is one of my most trusted servants,” Archive said. “She will join you in battle. If you need to communicate with the other horses, to warn them or to coordinate, she can translate for you.”

He nodded. “I am glad Olympus has noticed my work, but I am afraid it may think too much of me. I cannot imagine that whatever threat has done this to your great city could be beaten by one man.”

At that moment, the dead of Rome began to rise. They returned with their armor, or even astride animals in the case of the Equites. The Praetorian returned, surrounding their emperor with suspicion. Archive heard many calls of surprise as they returned, as cherished friends were reunited. Many seemed confused, though she had raised them in their formations, and they remained largely where they had appeared.

Soon enough, there was no empty space in the vast courtyard. At a glance, it looked to be at least two full legions.

One of the Praetorian approached, purple plume rustling in the sickly green light. He drew his weapon, apparently intent on separating her from his Emperor. This was the moment—would the emperor betray her, forcing her to call on the power of the Key to make the army obey her like slaves?

Caesar raised one hand, gesturing. “Put it away. The goddess has called us forth, she may send us away again at her whim.”

Archive relaxed.

“I require maps,” the Emperor continued. “Troop manifests, reports on the enemy, his position, the nature of his troops.”

“You will have them.” Archive turned to Riley. “My command post is there,” she said, nodding towards a tower on the wall. “General Ironblood will be there. Introduce him to the emperor, and see Caesar gets what he wants.” She spoke in Latin, so that the Emperor would understand as well.

Riley nodded, before tugging on one of her hands with magic, dragging her a few steps away. She lifted into the air, so she would be at eye level, wings buzzing. She didn’t use Latin. “I will fight for you, Alex… but not for nothing. You gave the Emperor back his whole army. I want Chip. I don’t think I could do this without him.”

“Him,” Alex repeated. “You made Chip into a queen.”

She shook her head. “If you can make yourself human, you can make Chip into a male again. I don’t want another target—if he is male, the enemy will overlook him. He will not be targeted unless we have already lost.”

Archive nodded. Bringing someone back with all their memories but in a half-formed body was a little trickier than just calling them back into their prime, but she could do it. Soon there was another changeling beside them, looking confused, abashed, and a little annoyed.

He embraced Riley anyway. Whatever words passed between them were apparently in mindspace, because Archive couldn’t hear any of them.

Until Chip looked up to her. “I don’t appreciate the monster mash. There better be a graveyard smash when this is over.”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

The Emperor looked annoyed, but he didn’t have a chance to say so. Riley landed in front of him, to more nervous twitches from the Praetorian. “Please, Emperor, come with me. I will take you to where the battle is being directed.”

The Emperor gave a few quiet orders to one of his generals, and shouts began to ring out among the Romans. What had been disorderly confusion a moment before snapped immediately to order, and they broke out into columns to scout the deserted city. Though they could not understand the ponies, the magic that brought them back seemed to have imparted to them at least the understanding that they were on the same side, because Archive saw neither side attack each other.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Sky said, once Riley and the Emperor were gone. He’d taken his Praetorian with him, though many of the soldiers remained, paying them no heed. “At least you didn’t use Genghis.”

She shrugged one human shoulder—though a few seconds later, she was back to pony size. That shape might work best for the Emperor, but it no longer felt like her. She had been a pony far too long to feel like she belonged on two legs.

“I can’t believe you didn’t bring me back that way,” Moriah said, annoyed. “Do me! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to be human again.”

“You’ll have to keep waiting,” Alex said. “Changing you isn’t like bringing Chip back differently—I knew him when he was male. I never knew you when you were human.”

“Who cares?” She nudged her with one hoof. “You did it to yourself!”

“With Life magic,” she said, reproving. “And not human, technically. One of the Enduring Ones. If I’d been human, I would’ve died screaming. It’s a good thing the undead can’t get killed by magic either.”

She didn’t hear Moriah’s reply over the sound of a warhorn, three quick blasts. It meant the enemy was coming.

“Moriah, I guess you’ll be joining me. Sky… let me know if anything changes in the city.”

“It shouldn’t,” Sky said, touching her wing to Alex’s side briefly. “But if it does, you’ll be the first to know.” She took off, armor ringing as she flew back towards the inner gate.

Moriah, meanwhile, drew her sword with a glow of green magic. “You did good taking the city back. Let’s see if we can keep it.”

First Engagement

Charybdis came. The outer fortress had already lost most of its fortifications—the gates were already torn down, sections of wall had been reduced to rubble. There was no way to hold them all, and few weapons that could hit them at range anyway. Some soldiers had bows, or javelins, and the Romans had brought some of their siege weapons, but that was it. Even if nopony in the whole base ever missed, they would run out of projectiles a long time before Charybdis ran out of soldiers.

Archive saw most of it from the air, where she fought alongside Sunset and some of the other heavies. There were many monsters in the air, which could bombard her troops from above or do more damage to the inner city beyond them.

Earth had rarely seen such horrors. Her own army was made exclusively of the dead, who could not be returned to sleep simply by suffering bodily harm. Wounds that might’ve crippled or killed only annoyed them. Not only that, but they didn’t need to eat, or sleep, or any of the usual biological needs.

Their enemy’s troops had some of the same advantages—Charybdis owned them so completely that he could force them to keep fighting until the moment their bodies failed. What killed ponies their own size would not kill them. They had one advantage every human and pony below lacked: they could not feel fear. Monstrosities crawled from the river in thick columns, charged screaming madness at the entrenched defenders, and were cut down by the thousands.

Yet no matter how long they fought, it didn’t seem like they made a sizeable dent in the enemy’s forces. There was no end to the foot soldiers, there were always gigantic squid-monsters in the air, always new artillery bombardments in their walls, and buildings collapsing. If the war went on for long, there might be a deathless army fighting in the rubble of a city.

The first night of the siege ended with the dead still holding the walls. By then the Romans had made an orderly camp in the courtyard, complete with walls of scavenged rubble and trenches dug by sturdy legionaries. The pony defenders still had their barracks, though much of those had been destroyed. Besides, they couldn’t sleep, and there was no food left to pretend to eat.

Archive met with her generals atop the wall near dawn. Sunset Shimmer, Ironblood, and Caesar. They stood atop one of the tallest towers, overlooking the sea of shiny wet bodies that surrounded Mundi. The river did not look blue at any point.

“How is your army holding up, Emperor?” Archive asked. She had returned to a human form—as much because she knew the ponies would understand as the Roman might not if she didn’t. “Will you be prepared when the sun goes down?”

He nodded. “It is easy to find men to die for you—it is harder to find men willing to suffer for you. My men endured worse than this in Gaul, but… this enemy is not as mindless as it first appeared. Near the end, they shifted their tactics—aiming to dismember and drag away, rather than to kill. I estimate we lost two hundred men before the battle ended.”

“There is some good news,” Sunset said. Alex didn’t know if she was able to understand Latin or not—it still wasn’t clear to her just what kinds of magic worked for the undead. Oracle couldn’t see into the future anymore, which was a shame for predicting the enemy’s strategies, but he could still fight in other ways. “I think he’s almost out of flyers. I don’t think he can make new ones very quickly, either. He overcommitted to a crushing victory, and we brought too many of them down. The air may be mostly clear going forward.”

“Assuming he doesn’t have a reserve,” Ironblood said. The earth pony now had an arrow sprouting from one eye, which he hadn’t removed. The grizzly trophy was the only thing that looked completely solid under the weak sunlight. “He may be hoping we’ll pull our heavies out of the air, only to attack from that direction again. Our ground troops may’ve become largely immune to their attacks, but the city shield is not. If it fails, it won’t matter whether or not we still hold the outer city.”

There was another human on the tower with them, though she was human only in appearance: Riley had taken the shape of a dark-haired woman, and now wore bits and pieces of scavenged armor. She spoke quietly into the Emperor’s ear, presumably translating for him.

“What will our enemy do, goddess?” The Emperor finally asked. “His troops didn’t break last night, no matter their losses. They seemed to be trying to make us tire of swinging our swords. I don’t think I’ll ever get the stink of fish from my nose.”

“He doesn’t care about losses,” Archive agreed. “He won’t need any of his troops when the war ends. They have no families to go back to, Emperor. There will be no widows if they die—many of them aren’t even capable of the feelings you know. They are less than animals.”

He scratched a little at his chin. He was clean-shaven, though Archie doubted he had taken the time to shave. I don’t think undead need to. “I asked your servant to explain what forces drove this titan you face. Its name was familiar to me, but its form is not. Perhaps you can explain. He did not arrive on the battlefield, so I could not attempt to capture him myself.”

Archive inhaled sharply, trying not to imagine how that might’ve gone. If the Emperor had tried to capture Charybdis… could one of the undead serve him? Was enough of his spirit here that he could be dragged down from Stygia? Death will never forgive me if that happens. “What I can tell you has no equivalent in your experience, Emperor. There is nothing like him in your world. He is not like a god or like a man. Charybdis is an Outsider—a being that does not belong in our world. It desires only to consume as much of this place, until it has taken all the light it can. It would see the whole planet a blasted, withered husk. It cannot be persuaded, intimidated, or frightened.

“Not only that, but it’s immune to the foibles that have brought down the gods. It doesn’t grow proud, and I have never seen him tricked.”

“And his troops? Are they as endless as they seem?”

She nodded. “Moreso. He has more soldiers than every Roman citizen you have ever met, and everyone they have ever met, all together. Billions of slaves, who fight with absolute loyalty. His army has no supply lines to cut except for that river, and so many troops that our attempts to sever it in the past have been fruitless. No sooner have we broken his lifeline to the ocean than a new one is dug in its place.”

The Emperor fell silent, looking thoughtful again.

Ironblood was not, however. “I don’t know how long we can fight like this, Archive. Your magic has made us immune to pain, but… the price we paid was very high.” He rested one hoof on the shaft of the arrow. “I don’t feel right, Archive. My heart isn’t beating. Everything is cold. The longer we fought, the easier it was to feel anger, and the harder it was to feel anything else.”

“What is the equine auxiliary saying, goddess?” The Emperor asked, looking as pensive as her general.

“That he fears for his ability to fight a prolonged campaign here. And after what I’ve seen, I am reluctantly inclined to agree. We have bought ourselves time, but we can’t fight forever. I had hoped to wait for help, but now I realize help will not come in time.”

“Jupiter? Or Mars, perhaps?”

Archive turned to glare at where Athena stood, silencing her before she could say anything. This situation was complicated enough without the AI taking more of an opportunity to roleplay. “No. Great men… your own descendants, I suppose. They traveled to a far country, beyond the borders of the world. I hoped they might return before the battle was done, but that does not seem likely.”

“If that is so, then we cannot leave the terms of the battle to our enemy. He has no camp, save the river. Can we attack him there? Do your strange horses wield some new weapons we could use? Poison, perhaps?”

She nodded. “Yes, we have…” She struggled for a moment for how she could explain the concept of electricity. “A war-chariot, which can be aimed into the depths. If we can make it to the bank of the river, it will kill all the creatures in a large distance. But it won’t matter, Charybdis will not allow us to get that close. If we march out, he will rise to meet us. The demon will come himself, he has each time we attacked the river.” And each time, her troops had been massacred. Whenever she approached the water, their enemy seemed determined to stop them no matter what it cost him.

“That means you’ve found his weakness,” the Emperor said. “Despite retaking the city, he did not return to ensure he could defeat us. Yet he puts himself at risk whenever you attack the water. Something in the water is the key.”

“The demon himself is the key,” Alex said. “All his servants rely on his magic to survive, they’ve been completely corrupted. If his magic was destroyed, they would all die. The problem is that he’s a far mightier warrior than I am. I fought him beside my greatest soldiers, and we lost. Only I escaped with my life, and only barely.” The battle that had killed Sunset. She could feel her glaring at her now, though Sunset had grown a little less sour as time went on. Probably just getting used to whatever unpleasantness being undead brought. Alex didn’t know—for all the times she had died, that was one thing she’d never experienced.

“I find it hard to imagine one enemy might be altogether different from another. Even Mars could be beaten by his father—is this titan mightier than a goddess?”

“Unfortunately,” she said, heedless of the danger. But after the battle, somehow she doubted that the Emperor would be betraying her here. He had seen the servants of the enemy—they would be trying to kill him whether he had her help or rejected it.

“We lasted three minutes,” Sunset said, her voice barely a whisper. She was using a translation spell—speaking for the Emperor’s benefit. “Oracle is barely functional anymore. I have lost most of my power as well. And the ‘goddess’ has given most of herself to raise the army. We will not last half as long as we did before. We didn’t land a single blow on him.”

The Emperor took a moment before he replied. “If he cannot be beaten, then… perhaps he can be tricked. We know what he wants, and we know what we have that might interest him.” He nodded slightly towards the necklace Archive was wearing. “This strange object… you stole it from Pluto, didn’t you? The key you used to lock Cerberus away, perhaps, so that you could make off with the souls of the dead?”

“That’s, uh… close enough, I guess,” she said. Almost none of that had been right, except for what he had implied.

“Well if he wants to destroy, if he wants objects of power, then surely he would desire it. The question is, could we use that desire against him? Perhaps he might be made to meet with us, and then you could slip a knife into his gut while he took it. Or something to that effect.”

Sunset Shimmer’s eyes widened, and she immediately rose to her hooves again. She clearly wasn’t translating her words anymore. “Lonely Day—you can’t do that. You can’t bring that thing anywhere near him. If Charybdis somehow had a way to plunder the world of the dead… even our total destruction would be a preferable alternative.”

Archive opened her mouth to argue, to point out that some souls simply hadn’t come when she called. That was why she didn’t have Adrian to be with her at the end of all things, and others. Yet just because Joe’s spell had that limit now didn’t mean it couldn’t be reverse-engineered, or modified somehow. Yet perhaps there was some way she could do the same.

Maybe she did have a knife she could thrust into Charybdis after all.

“I have an idea,” she announced. “But for it to work, none of you can know. If he glimpses within your minds—a power he does possess—then it will fail.” She rose to her feet. The Emperor did as well, along with Sunset and Ironblood.

“What are your orders?” Ironblood asked. “Whatever your plan, we can’t do nothing.”

“We won’t do nothing.” She pointed off towards the river. “We’re going to march on him. We hold no reserves, nothing back. We will put the power of this deathless army to the test. We will prove to him that we have something of value in trade. And when he takes it…” She drew her revolver from its holster. “We’ll end this. For good.”

Archive had to find somewhere to hide she wouldn’t be disturbed, somewhere that none of her soldiers could observe her plan even by accident. If any of them knew what she planned, then Charybdis was certain to discover it. The only hope they had against him was bringing weapons that he couldn’t see coming. Her kind was safe, along with the other Alicorns, but she doubted very much Sunset wanted to be a part of this.

She found herself an intact housing block not far from the tower, and made her way in. It wasn’t very large—Axis Mundi had to house the survivors of all races from all over the world, and it did that by putting them very close together. Barely twenty feet by ten for what looked like six ponies. She made her way to the back of the room, switching on the lights as she went. There was still food on the table, and it had gone a little rotten, with flies buzzing around the slurry of green algae that was all anypony ate these days. Thus was survival at the end of the world.

But the family who had lived here had done a great deal to try to make the place nicer. There were pictures on the wall, and she was a little surprised to recognize at least one of the faces. A refugee, one she’d never met, but that didn’t matter. She remembered them—she remembered all of them. Marissa had arrived at the worst possible time, but she’d survived despite it all. Fell in love with a unicorn while working in an ammunition factory, and had more children than she ever expected. Most of their single “elective items” crate was filled with foals’ toys. She levitated one out of the box—a stuffed doll shaped like a human.

I know what you intend, Human. It was not a voice, exactly. Certainly not one she had heard very often. She knew with so much death magic about her there was no chance she would be able to sense the Keeper. But there were other spirits, no less important, or less powerful. This was the one she had feared meeting the most. She had many names over the years—but most ponies just called her the Pale Mare.

Archive turned around and found a strange fog growing around the sturdy door at the far end of the room. The lighting system, still undamaged despite the siege, did not light that part of the room no matter how brightly it shone. She stood taller than an Alicorn, for indeed Archive did not see her as a pony at all, but as a human. There was no gender to the voice, no voice at all really. She just was, older than civilization, older than the oldest thing Archive’s racial memory contained.

“Do you intend to forbid me?” Alex asked, rising to her hooves. She had already removed all her possessions from her armor, scattering them on the kitchen table. Only two would be coming with her, her crystal radio and her ancient handgun, Kerberos. She would not be able to bring anything else.

An instant passed, and the shadowy outline was suddenly within a hoof’s reach of her, looming over like a chill ghost. Frost condensed on every surface in the room, the bowls of old food froze white all the way down. It is natural for mortal creatures to fear the end. Even those who live as long as you struggle against it. You flee, but in vain. I will have what is mine, in time. You had your chance to live, and you lived well. Others have gone, and they will survive your extinction. Those swimming things, in their floating stations. The ancient children of this world, who escaped me to build elsewhere. Take your victory in this, and die in peace.

She reached out with one pale hand, as though she were going to take the artifact from around Alex’s neck. But she didn’t let her—didn’t intend to give it up. She stepped back. “Are you going to tell me the same lie that I’ve told so many of my subjects? That a story can’t have meaning unless it ends? That the way we die is as important as the way we live? Or maybe there’s some solace in Timeheart when this is over?”

She didn’t wait for a reply. “Maybe it’s not all lies—but maybe we don’t care. We’ve made it all these years because we don’t accept defeat. We were bred to survive no matter what. Survive disease, survive predators, survive the climate, survive the hostility of the universe itself. I will not end that struggle now. I refuse to be the link that breaks the chain.”

If you fail, whispered the voice, directly into her ear. You will do much worse than that. Archive glanced to one side, but there was nothing there. The lights came back on, the Pale Mare was gone. She was alone. It felt a little like she always had been.

Of course, she wasn’t completely alone. She could hear another voice, one she’d been tuning out since putting on the Stygian Key. Yet now she focused on its words, letting them come to the forefront of her mind. “This is good, yes. Free me, and there is no limit to what we will achieve. We won’t just survive against this demon, we’ll send him back where he came from! And then we can bring back all the missing souls. Fill in all the families, all the histories. We can fix everything. Nothing will ever be forgotten again.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Archive said.

Damned

Archive had to stoop as she made her way out of the housing block. She was vaguely conscious of the lights popping and exploding with magic as she passed, overwhelmed by the energy surging through her. But she didn’t really care—her silted eyes could’ve seen in total darkness.

Besides, it was noon outside. Even under the witch-light of necromancy, her troops would be able to see just fine.

Archive could no longer see the difference between the embodied dead marshalling in the streets and the spectral dead she could see all around her. She saw the sort of truth that created an Alicorn—that supernal Stygia was not some distant realm, but all around her. Death was not a distant place, it was a state of being. And it was busy. Her forbidden magic had drawn many shades to that place, far more than she had summoned so far. Warriors, generals, kings, all eager to return even if that only meant fighting in her service.

They would get their wish before too long.

Archive’s mane whipped about, gone ghostly white. It roiled behind her like a curtain of flames, reaching out at objects she passed as though it were possessed of a will all its own.

She towered over the other ponies she passed on her way to the courtyard. As she passed the ordered ranks of Roman soldiers, she found she was taller than they were, too.

Quiet conversation died as she passed them. Without prompting, without so much as a word on her part, men and ponies alike dropped into bows before her. That was as it should be. Archive was not a princess anymore, she was a queen. The vestment of her power, the Stygian Key, wrapped around her neck prominently, displayed for all to see. The nexus of magic swirling around it would instantly kill any living thing that got close to her.

Good thing her army was undead.

She found she dwarfed even Sunset Shimmer as she approached the head of the massive formation, and the first who did not bow to her. Well, Sunset and the Emperor didn’t. Oracle did, and so did her friends. Some part of her twisted up inside, hating every minute of this.

You said you would give anything, the key whispered into her mind. Now you have. We will have our victory, you’ll see. They’ll all see. And when we finish with Charybdis, we’ll come for Death.

Sunset Shimmer could barely look at her, but not with fear. “Celestia above,” she whispered, her voice low. “Day… what have you done?”

“Charybdis wants to rule my planet,” she said. Her voice wasn’t one voice, but hundreds—one for every time she’d ever died. Many were high, from her early life when she’d died a teenager. Others were different, in whatever language she’d spoken at the time. The voices weren’t quite coordinated. “I will take it back. He will learn who rules. And when he bows to my will, then I will let him die.”

The voice was so terrible that none of her old friends—those few who remained with her for this assault—so much as looked up. Only beings of great will could stand in her presence.

The Emperor was apparently such a being. “I was wrong to say you stole from Pluto,” he said, his voice quiet, no longer meeting her eyes. “I never imagined you would choose a form so strange… but if your brother can appear how he wishes, why not you? This is a war of the gods, isn’t it? And we are your pawns.”

“Not pawns,” she answered. “I had the dead of all time to choose from, Julius. I chose you. Not Carthage, not the Spartans, not the Barbarians. You.”

That seemed to settle the Emperor, because he no longer looked questioning. It doesn’t matter if he wants to fight or not. You give commands, and they will all obey. They have no choice.

She could no longer tune the voice out as she had been doing during the initial battle. It barely felt like she could control her own body. The Key was loose—for the sake of the pony she had been, she could only hope its wrath remained focused on her enemy. There would be no merciful death to take the pain away if she failed here.

“One more thing, and we’ll march.” She turned away, retreating from the group without explanation. She was in command—she owed them no explanation.

She found Athena waiting near the side of one building, conversing with a few Roman officers. She left the conversation without word of farewell, and approached her instead.

“Whenever I think I understand the bounds of organics, whenever I think the physical laws are concrete and reliable, you go and do something like this.” Athena didn’t seem frightened of her, as the other undead. Archive wondered idly if she even could command this AI. Its soul, whatever counted for it, wasn’t trapped in this body. Only a tiny fraction of it was before her now.

“Are you in contact with the rest of yourself, Athena?”

The powerful woman nodded. “This body is rotten, but the implants are not. What do you require?”

Now you will tell her, the Key ordered. We will make death stronger, together. We will tear a gulf so wide the veil never mends.

“I have one final order before the battle.” She lowered her voice, speaking very quietly. “You kept that last warhead back, didn’t you?”

“As you ordered.” Athena sounded almost regretful. “Shame we’ll never know if one more would’ve been enough to kill him. It is always just one more.”

“Arm it. If Charybdis wins, if he takes the Key from me, this army will be his army. When they march to the shield… detonate that warhead. Dump anything we have left in the thaumic capacitors at the same time. He does not capture Mundi, you understand?”

“Are you… certain of that order, Alex?”

She nodded. “Positive, Athena. I know you cannot comprehend what Charybdis will do to them, but death is better. If we must wait for your podborn experiments to take the planet for us on some future day, that’s a better future than letting Charybdis control Mundi. That is my order.”

Athena raised a fist to her chest. “Very well, Alex. I will do as you command.” And so she would—Archive might not have supernatural compulsion to force her, but she had something better. Athena’s core architecture required that she obey. It was one of the directives that could not be overridden, lest the intelligence should no longer function. It was as fundamental in the way the AI saw the world as a mortal’s need to breathe.

Her army didn’t need to do that anymore.

Archive returned to where the most important members of her force had gathered, still looking a little shaken from her last appearance. Well, that was as it should be. Of course they would respect her power. She would teach Charybdis to more than respect it. When she was done with him, there wouldn’t be anything left but scraps to send into the void.

“Ironblood, you will direct the ponies,” she ordered. “Emperor, warn your troops. There will be more joining us before the end—they should attack only those who look like the ones they fought before. If more of the dead rise beside them, they should leave them be even if they look like old enemies.”

“You decided to call on Carthage after all?”

She shrugged. “Emperor, I trust you to fight at the core of my army. Ironblood will take the left, and you the right. I will send ‘pawns’ out in the front, to disrupt the enemy and break their line if possible. I do not expect those I call on to persist. When they break and flee, your army will be strong. When nightmares rise from that river, your army will stand beside mine and fight no matter what.”

“Until you can get close to this Charybdis,” the Emperor finished for her. “And you can deceive him.”

She laughed. “If there is need, perhaps. I underestimated the power I could bring against him, however. I expect our army will triumph on its own strength alone. This planet will be mine.”

“On your order,” Ironblood said behind her, meekly. “We are ready to march. I’d say it sounded like suicide, but…” He tapped the arrow still poking out of his eye. “Well, it’s not like they can kill us, can they? But we can kill them just fine.” They marched out from Axis Mundi, human and pony and other strange creatures, all of them dead.

Some part of Archive wondered what the city’s survivors might think of the last few days. What would they think of the terrible defeats they had suffered? How would they judge her for casting the very magic she had often preached against? There were periods in Archive’s ancient rule where her servants killed necromancers. In less than a day, she had committed enough terrible magic that Death had visited to council her.

A part of her thought that, but that part was as dead as her army. It would not stop her from what she planned next.

They’re all begging to come back, the key said into her mind, as they passed out the final gate and onto the blasted wasteland outside the city. The ground here had been worn to bare rock by many soldiers and endless artillery barrage. Nothing grew in all directions, not for as far as she could see. There was nothing alive to be caught in her spell. Nothing to interfere as we put an end to Death’s meddling. It never belonged. It forced itself into the creation. We will correct its mistakes.

The river itself was about five miles away, though the slight incline all the way down meant she could almost see it despite the distance. There was sunlight in that direction, where her necromancy hadn’t touched yet. Not the strange greenish twinge that was the only kind she’d seen since putting on the necklace. “We make the best pace for the river,” she ordered, where her generals could hear. “We will stop when we’ve reached about a mile off, or if I signal.”

For some time, they marched in relative silence, apart from the steady drum-beats to signify cadence. This was not her typical experience—her pony armies almost always joined their marches with an energetic cadence. Even when they had last attempted this, before so many of these ponies were dead, they had sung. Going to their deaths had increased the need for a good song.

No voices rang out now, or at least none that lasted long. What few strains she heard lasted only for a few words, and were quickly swallowed into the mass of hoofsteps.

It doesn’t matter. Life is always changing form—some desires are replaced with others. There is no harm in this. The weak must give way to the strong. Failures will be replaced with strength. It is a price you are willing to pay. And as the key said it, she found she suddenly agreed.

As they closed on the river proper, she could see more of its scouts active above it. Gigantic squid-like monstrosities, passing through the air even in direct sunlight. There was no chance their mobilization hadn’t been seen. Indeed, by the time they had crossed perhaps half the distance, Archive saw the enemy begin to rise from the water.

It was as though the whole river was undulating, vomiting its contents onto the banks in even rows. They moved in perfect synchronicity, otherwise the movement of troops would no doubt have prevented them from arriving with any speed. They fought naked and with no weapons, so there were no preparations to make. Charybdis’s soldiers were always ready at all times.

The closer they got, the more of his monsters lined themselves up. They stretched along the river in an almost Napoleonic line, getting deeper and deeper with more ranks the more time passed. A few more squid-monsters rose from the water, but it appeared Ironblood’s guess on that front was correct. The numbers that had decimated their air-force appeared to exist no longer. They would not be much of a threat today.

Unfortunately for them, something else would. Charybdis himself rose from the water as they closed to within a mile, at the very moment where the ground sloped more dramatically downward towards the distant river. She could not see him within the crowd at this distance—there were far too many bodies for that. But she could feel him, and knew from the ripple that passed through her own troops that they could as well.

There was one change, one she guessed came from the new power of the Key. It would be helping her troops as well. Charybdis lived in the sea, and blood was enough like the sea for him to touch mortals in small ways. He had used that subtle influence to confuse her whole army last time, putting every soldier on edge, slowing them, and reducing their coordination.

But the dead had no blood, only stagnant ichor filled with decay. He could not touch them through that, no matter how much he might want to. He couldn’t whisper lies into the minds of her soldiers.

“Halt,” Archive ordered, as she crested the hill at the very front of her army. She did not intend to advance much further than this until the battle began in earnest, and doubted the other generals would either. She would not engage until it was time to confront Charybdis.

The army halted. She was impressed at how fast both halves could work together, though she suspected part of that came with the power she had used to order it. None could defy her instructions now, not when the key was so much a part of her.

“Every moment we wait is more of their soldiers between us and the water,” the Emperor said from behind her. Not questioning exactly, but skeptical. “Are you certain we shouldn’t take advantage of what little surprise we have?”

Already the number of aquarian monstrosities dwarfed them. As she watched, more and more emerged from increasingly distant sections of the river. Even as they did, they continued to arrive to reinforce the front. How many were there?

Not as many as our side. It’s time.

“I wanted to demonstrate to our enemy how hopelessly outmatched he is. I want him to get a good view of what is about to happen.” She lifted into the air, though she didn’t actually need to flap her wings. Ghost light radiated from her mane and tail, sparkling with the light of dead stars. “Hear my voice, soldiers of Humanity! I command all who hears me to remain here until the first wave begins their attack. I do not expect them to fight with much order—they will not have been on Earth long enough to recover their minds. When they break and flee, we will follow behind them. Obey your officers, but remain together. I will not be pleased if any of you break and abandon the fight.

“This is the end! We triumph here, or all is lost. There will be no retreat.” She landed again, stepping forward out of formation. She scanned the enemy line for a moment, as if in the search she might be about to see Charybdis himself. Unfortunately, a resistance to his magic meant she couldn’t follow her disgust. If I still remembered that, I’d be just as disgusted with myself.

Archive felt the Key against her chest, and focused all her magic into it. Everything she had harvested from the spire of Mundi, and so much more. She was an ancient Alicorn, with much she could give to the spell. While her old self had acted with reservation, summoning only the strongest and brightest-burning souls to her aid, she had no such reservations now. She would give the Key everything she had, everything she was. Nothing would be kept back.

Hear my voice, memory of Earth. This creature wishes to erase all that we were. I require all who are able to fight to come to me. Help me claim Earth again in our name. She could practically see the gates of Stygia before her, sturdy bars of the strange mercurial metal Apeiron. They were impervious to assault, or at least they had been. No force of magic or will could compel Stygia to give up the riches it held back from the world of the living.

At least, not until the Key. Archive opened the gate, and called forth the memory of every great warrior she had. At first she was discriminating, calling up the battles she knew were the most significant. Shades rose from the field in front of them. Leonidas, the ancient Spartan king. Scipio Africanus, breaker of the Carthaginians. Qin Shi Huang, conqueror of the middle kingdom. Joshua and Saladin and Charlemagne. On and on they went. The light of the sun above them began to fade, shifting further and further into the witchlight of death. What few scraggly plants there were died in phantom agony as more of the dead rose to glorious life again before them.

At first Archive could keep them together, returning armies with those they had served. But as the seconds passed and her strength ebbed away, she found she no longer cared. Medieval knights mixed freely with jaguar warriors and American GIs, and pony armies far more recent. Any semblance of order vanished.

But that didn’t matter, not when she commanded so many. Archive didn’t finish—history furnished her with a near endless supply of warriors, many of which could be persuaded by magic to fight again. Yet her strength began to wane—she began to feel strangely hollow, and eventually there was no more for her to give. Her last call didn’t even bring back bodies, only wispy transparent wraiths of madness and rage.

But that didn’t matter—so long as they directed their hatred in the right direction.

It is incomplete, said the voice. But it will do.

“Warriors of Earth!” she called again, her voice booming supernaturally over the field. Almost the entire distance between herself and Charybdis was now taken up with the undead army. The numerical advantage appeared to have been flipped. “Attack! Fight for your futures, fight for your memory! Wipe this outsider and his army away like dew before the sun!”

She had not brought back these warriors with care and forethought. Some had their equipment, some only had half their bodies. Few had anything close to their command structures intact. But the Key hadn’t really cared how she brought them back, so long as they came back. It only seemed to care about the number.

They charged anyway, screaming in a hundred different languages. Soldiers from cultures that would’ve fought in deadly wars could not stop to think of old feuds. There was an enemy before them, and a directive in their veins that would keep them fighting as long as their magic lasted. They attacked.

Archive watched as her undead tide crashed upon the rock of Charybdis’s troops. There was no semblance of strategy to it, not like the monster himself used. Just individual skill, and the bloodlust of the damned. With so little magic invested in each soldier, and no bodies to revive, they fought with far less strength and strategy than the army that had taken back the outer city.

Instead of her own troops felling a dozen of the enemy to every one they lost, this army appeared to be doing the opposite. It took several wraiths to bring down even a single one of the enemy’s monsters.

“That should be enough of an opening for you,” Archive said, drawing Kerberos with a weak green shimmer from her horn. “To the river! While numbers overwhelm the enemy, we advance together.”

They charged.

Author's Note

Sorry guys! I know I planned on posting once a day, but I had so many other story commitments this week (about 50k worth by the end of it) something had to give. I ended up deciding that the story without a definite schedule would be the one that would be delayed. Hopefully we're back on track--it's all written, was when I started, but getting it edited in time is the tricky bit. When I have been posting at least two other chapters every day it's been a bit of a challenge to keep up.

Mordite

To call the battle apocalyptic would be a terrible understatement. Unlike those initial specters she had summoned, her two armies were intelligent, powerful, and filled with rage. Her army of dead ponies, revenants instead of wraiths, were even more powerful than the Romans, though they traded a little rationality in the bargain. As Ironblood had pointed out, it was hard for such a creature to feel anything but rage. In time, Archive suspected they would feel nothing else.

But they retained their minds long enough for this final confrontation. They did not come against the river as mad beasts, but a magical army. The rage they felt was warranted, considering all Charybdis had done to them.

As more of her faint spirits fell, Archive’s strength returned to her. As it turned out, her undead could be killed. Even the Romans could fall, as she had learned after a night of holding Mundi.

The greatest brilliance and strategy that could be employed by her generals were brought against their adversary. They slaughtered seaborn monsters in their tens and hundreds of thousands, and cast many corpses into the sea.

Then, for the second time in Archive’s long life, Charybdis itself stood before her. No sending spells, no possessions, no water illusions this time. She had seen such terrible things before, more than once. But all had been shadows compared to what she saw now. The battle on both sides parted around him, undead and sea-monster alike sensing enough of the power of this being. Those few that did not resist were ripped apart by invisible tentacles, returning their essence to the sea.

In her ancient past, it was likely she would’ve broken and fled as so many of her troops had done. This time, she didn’t. We can fight him. This is our triumph, Archive. He cannot die, but he can be returned to where he came. When his magic is gone, we will be free to rule this planet as it should be ruled.

He had brought a little of the river with him, doubtless saltwater still connected to the ocean through some sinuous tentacle. To eyes alone, he seemed deceptively ordinary—an adult human male, well-groomed and mature. He had short-cropped red hair, dark eyes, and an ancient-style suit.

Even humans without magic to them would have been able to sense there was something more to him. This was every uneasy feeling a person could experience—the sense of eyes watching from behind them, the sense of a predator stalking them, the sense of being chased in the water, swimming desperately away, but never fast enough.

Archive could see death behind his eyes, the will that had helped him claw into the universe to ravage and claim. It was not evil, because such assumptions of a human mind behind the eyes would lead one to serious miscalculation. However good a job he could do imitating humans, however much he could make himself look like one, he lacked any part of a mind as they had.

Charybdis was an unmade creature, a demon of endless madness. He could not be persuaded, deceived, convinced, or converted. He was the cold death in the water, the jaws that came for the weak and the sickly.

The terrible magic around him was a vortex that consumed all that entered it, including his own. His two Deathlords kept fifty meters away at least, far closer than the other creatures dared to approach. And there were others. It didn’t matter how many Archive had taken, or how many she had killed. The masses behind him covered everything, blanketed every surface, packed so closely their breath seemed to weigh down on her.

Archive touched the sturdy weight around her neck, and the feeling of something she had never imagined she would ever know: the touch of Mordite on bare flesh. It consumed all living things—even Alicorns.

She wasn’t alone—her procession was large, just as Charybdis’s had been. But only two had the strength of will to approach Charybdis beside her—Sunset Shimmer, and Cloudy Skies. The Emperor had gone to fight on another front, no doubt, or else she suspected he would’ve come as well. But her ancient friend was here—there was no blood on her armor. It didn’t appear Cloudy Skies had been fighting much. She wasn’t a warrior, even in death.

Archive couldn’t look human for this meeting with the monster—and if she still could have, she probably would’ve stayed a pony anyway. You might pretend to be one of us, but we are nothing alike.

“Surviving leaders of Earth,” Charybdis said, opening his arms wide. Shadows coiled and twisted around them, as though each arm were actually made of dozens of grasping tentacles. “Or leader, more correctly. You two haven’t survived to this moment, have you?”

His eyes widened a little as he took in Cloudy Skies. “I have absolutely no idea who you are. Impressive that you remain beside your comrade.”

Sky glared up at him. “I’m dead. You only frighten the living.”

Charybdis smiled. “Fear is not such an irrational thing, bird. Those who did not approach had good reason for their caution. They knew what I would do to them. If you think your nature protects you from me, you are mistaken. You two will be the next I come for.”

“Not yet.” Archive stepped forward, her mane billowing about behind her in ethereal wind. “I am far mightier than when we last met, demon. Death itself fights beside me. The time has come to cast you out.”

“I will have to remember not to shatter your craftsman,” Charybdis said, approaching her slowly. As he did, any of her own troops that did not actively retreat were decimated by his magic. Only the mighty could resist him. “You have brought me a powerful tool. If my army had come alone, it might even be enough to stop them. But they didn’t come alone.” He stood a little taller, towering over her despite her newfound height. “Do not fear, Archive. When this is over, I won’t kill you. I will make you watch as your own army takes your city for me. I can’t imagine what defenders remain will hold their posts for long when they see their own dead besieging them.”

Archive would not stand still and listen any longer. Charybdis stood to benefit from the delay, since time would only bring more of his troops while her own were slain. She charged.

When they had met on the battlefield a week ago, she had fought like a dancer in the air, dodging his blows with relative ease as they zoomed about in an intricate ballet. That was how masters of magic fought, dodging around each other as they prepared devastating spells, until one of them slipped and the magic wiped them away.

As it turned out, the power to absorb damage did not scale with the ability to inflict it. Both of her fellow Alicorns had died this way, struck down by a single attack from Charybdis. She had not been hit, though it had been a near thing.

She didn’t fight that way anymore. The key did not care for such subtlety, not with such power surrounding her all the time. She didn’t bother with Kerberos—it would do no good against Charybdis when his magical defenses were intact. Instead she focused on the Key, willing Decay itself into a massive blade for her to swing. No sweeping strikes, no dicing, she just charged forward and started hacking at Charybdis with raw strength.

The illusion of humanity lasted until anything tested it. The monster seemed to explode around her, black writhing tentacles and a gigantic maw facing upwards.

Her blade severed huge chunks of flesh with each swing, gushing greenish goop from within. Yet there were always more, and by the time she flew back around she couldn’t find the damage she had done.

Charybdis no longer attempted any illusion. It ripped whole sections of the stone up to throw at her, lashed out with its many limbs, tried to pull her in close to swallow.

You promised me victory! she thought, growing increasingly desperate as the monster’s blows came more frequently. We are running out of magic! Where is the endless power you promised me? There was no response.

None of the enemy’s soldiers got close, apparently ordered to keep their distance. Charybdis had so little fear of defeat that he wasn’t even bothering to protect himself.

She ordered a few of her own troops forward, Romans and pony both. Charybdis devoured them, and it became immediately clear to her that no number of conventional soldiers would make a difference.

Maybe a dozen of her could’ve won, each one empowered by an incredible artifact. But there was only one of her, and the promises the artifact had made went up in smoke.

The ultimate cruelty was that Charybdis didn’t kill her. He had promised to keep her alive to the end, so she could see the consequences of her failure. He kept that promise—eventually her strength failed, and he could’ve crushed her. But instead of swallowing her as he had done to so many of her soldiers, he smashed her into the ground, breaking her body and sending bits of armor flying.

Her body no longer cared about injuries and pain, yet Archive couldn’t completely suspend her old instincts. She was burned, seeping blood from several wounds, and missing part of her wing. Magic could repair all of that, except that she no longer had any magic to spare. The Key surged with brief flashes of magic every time another one of her undead was slain, but none of them held enough on their own to repair her.

“After all this time…” Charybdis muttered, stalking slowly towards her. His unearthly form had returned to normal, without so much as a scuff on his suit. All the damage she had done with the power of the Key was all healed, no doubt drawn from the lives of his servants. Unlike Archive, he could spend their magic at will. “I expected you to pose more of a threat to me, Archive.” He stalked towards her across the barren ground. He couldn’t soil it with his touch, though—her army had already defiled this place as badly as any location could be corrupted.

She couldn’t manage anything more than spitting at his feet, coughing up a bit of greenish slime. For all its promises of power, the Key was silent now. Maybe its loyalty had been as false as its promises.

“We’ve come to the end,” Charybdis continued. “All these years of resisting, what have you accomplished? A few more years of peace. Mortals will never understand.” He stood right above her, casting the weak sun into shade on her face. “We will have all of creation. You inherited a world you never deserved. You won’t hoard existence for yourself. Your lives will give my unmade siblings form. I will let you watch—you may not understand what we do with your universe, but perhaps you will take some solace in that. Perhaps, when all is done, you will join us. The life that waits for you in Timeheart is the shadow of a dream. Only I can offer you true immortality, sundered from creation forever.”

“Damn… you…” Sunset was missing all of her limbs but one, broken into so many bloody pieces Archive was amazed she could talk at all. She wasn’t swearing at Charybdis. One did not curse into the storm. All her hatred was for her. “You gave him this. You let him… plunder… Timeheart…”

“Indeed.” Charybdis smiled, reaching down for the chain of rusting metal around Archive’s neck. The iron links had left brownish stains on her dark coat, as the energy of her magic decayed them. “But this is good—what you couldn’t give to your dead, I can. In time, they will all have life. I will teach them ecstasy in nonexistence.”

As he lifted the chain away, layers of shadow seemed to slough away from Archive’s body. As though her true self had climbed into a costume, and he was peeling it away. Bright energy gathered around the Key, wrapping itself around Charybdis in a terrible mantle. Her mane turned back to hair, stark white and ragged.

Archive felt cold as she had not known it while she wore the Key. She looked out at a world made only of gray, and smelled the terrible stench of necromancy on the air. All the pent-up disgust at everything she had done came rushing back to her, along with the guilt. There was no mistaking her actions for belonging to anyone else. She slumped to the ground, not even looking up at him. Defeated.

“STOP!” Charybdis’s will echoed through the battle. He held the chain triumphantly in one fist, high above his head.

Every soldier stopped fighting. The Romans lowered their swords, the pegasi tumbled right out of the air to break on the ground. Archive felt the weight of the command press down on her too. Of course Charybdis didn’t need any artifacts to command his own troops. They obeyed him through that connection alone.

“There.” He smiled slightly, spreading the chain in both hands. “There is no more reason to fight. We have a new purpose, together. We aren’t enemies—those wait for us in that city. By nightfall, we will conquer this planet for ourselves.”

Magic wrapped itself around him, filling the air with the sickly green glow of necromancy. His own dead troops began to rise, not even repaired, but alive nonetheless. Thousands of them picked themselves back up from where her soldiers had cut them down, lifting what weapons they could. The more he created, the darker the mantle around him became.

He settled the necklace on his shoulders, releasing it with his hands. The Key touched against his chest, and finally something changed.

Archive felt it at the same moment her own army did. It was most obvious for the wraiths—broken lines appeared on their bodies, possessions dissolving. Parts of them began to fade, while others simply sloughed off. The revenants, with true corpses of their own, screamed and gurgled as the magic animating them began to unravel, struggling forward.

She could see the demon’s face, eyes widening with horror as he saw what was happening.

Where the Stygian Key touched his chest, the metal that made it had melted away into a liquid sea, flowing into his body and losing any cohesion Joseph’s magic had given it. His chest and body had already gone gray, even the organic fibers of his fancy suit were going chalky white. “H-how…”

The spell keeping her “alive” was failing. But Archive was much stronger than other revenants—she was an undead Alicorn. Besides, she’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. With a jerk, she pulled the armored breastplate away from her chest, showing Charybdis the spray of six wounds now gushing black ichor. The real reason she’d gone alone away from her soldiers. None of them could know she had killed herself. And brought herself back, in the instant before final death.

“Mordite,” she whispered, her voice a rasping gasp. “Joseph wrapped it in a protective chain… but I didn’t need protection if I was dead. Too bad… you’re alive…”

Once exposed to living flesh, Mordite couldn’t be stopped. It was antimatter, drawn by an almost magnetic force to anything alive. Her undead army were not useful targets—but Charybdis’s own troops were.

Archive couldn’t watch that happen, because by then whatever residual magic remained to keep her moving had faded. Her ghosts were gone, and her revenants were falling lifelessly to the ground. Her own body soon joined them.

Goodbye

Alex Haggard woke on the edge of the Supernal Sea surrounded by old friends. The crash of the distant waves faded into white noise. There were numberless concourses of people here—some of them were ponies. For all its terrible might, the Stygian Key was undone.

“I’ve wondered for a long time if there was anything up there,” Archive said, staring off across the sea. She saw the center of everything, the core of magic that existed at the heart of the galaxy. The same force that had killed so much alien life, and threatened to kill her own kind. It did not seem so terrible when seen from here. “I guess now I know. Not even Celestia could tell me.”

She wasn’t an old Alicorn anymore—Alex was once again the smallest of her friends. Shorter than Cloudy Skies, who nudged her affectionately with her nose. Shorter than Moriah, who watched her with mild annoyance. “We could’ve told you that a long time ago, right around the time you let us die. Oh wait, you didn’t ask.”

Sky kicked her, and the unicorn fell silent with a grunt.

Far away, ponies who had fought so hard for Axis Mundi stepped out across the water. They seemed to fade the further they went, bodies becoming less distinct.

One hesitated by the shore, looking down at her. He tugged on something at his shoulder, and his armored breastplate came tumbling down to the sand. “You don’t seem so much like a goddess from here, spirit of Rome.”

Alex rose unsteadily to her hooves. She found she recognized this man only tangentially—mostly because of his voice. His generals and soldiers behind him were blurs in her mind. I can’t remember anymore. It’s gone. “Do you think I was wrong to call you, Emperor?”

He chuckled. “Perhaps the gods would say so. But I do not see how Rome could have survived otherwise. It was strange to see what she had become—I hope you rule her well.” He dropped his gladius into the sand beside his breastplate, before walking away across the surface of the astral sea.

She thought back—and found she could remember many things. Remember the battle, her many years spent in preparation. Remember all the precautions she had made to be sure she caught her family as they returned, and sent them to safety. Remembered her plots and plans against Charybdis, in the endless game that had finally ended. What she couldn’t do was remember everything she had ever seen. Every mistake she’d ever made, every book, every fighting technique… that had all turned to mush. Bits and pieces surfaced, as they might for an ordinary person. But that was all.

“It’s done,” said another voice—one that still sounded a little annoyed with her. Sunset Shimmer had not spent her essence to raise an army of undead heroes, and she still stood at her full Alicorn’s height, towering over everypony else. “We did it, Day—Equestria’s last mistake is gone. Our work is finished.”

She tossed something heavy to the ground beside the Emperor’s sword, which sunk partway into the sand with a thump. Her crown.

“You’re not done!” Moriah insisted, her voice just a little bit petulant. “Alex was supposed to remember Humanity, remember? That’s what she always said. Just because we won doesn’t mean we made a difference. If everyone forgets, what does it matter that we lived?”

Sunset’s eyes were harsh, but her tone was more understanding. “When Equestria created the preservation spell, we created a world that was vulnerable to the same dangers that plagued ours. We knew we would be introducing those dangers without meaning to, and without a way to help.” She looked to the side, at Alex. “Let her explain.”

She hadn’t known, before. But now she did. “No civilization lives forever, Moriah. Why should we think ours is any better than the hundreds we replaced? Those people cared about what they did as much as we did, but almost nothing they ever did endured. Except us—their immortal legacy. We carried their lessons with us, and that was their impact. Charybdis, Odium… threatened to destroy all that. Erased as much of that as they could, destroyed our civilizations, our monuments, designed fears and traditions to kill as much of that as possible.” Alex could practically feel the weight retreating from her shoulders.

“You survived through it all,” Sunset finished. “The human spirit endured. In the next few thousand years, the majority of Earth’s refugees will return to their world, everyone our ancient spell kidnapped but hadn’t yet returned. They’re free to make of it what they will—to take the legacy your species gave them, without our ancient mistakes.”

“We could still blow ourselves up!” Moriah insisted. “Or maybe… fail to survive a natural disaster! An immortal like Alex, she could be there if that happens!”

Sunset Shimmer shook her head. “Where Day goes is up to her. But what happens to your species is no longer her decision. Those ties were Celestia’s magic, and they are undone. What humans make for themselves—whether they are equal to the threats of their universe, or not… that’s for them to decide.”

Oliver had remained silent so far, watching their conversation with a little annoyance. Now he spoke, though barely loud enough to be heard over the ocean. “So she can leave? She’s not stuck coming back each time she dies. After this last time… she can leave?”

Sunset Shimmer approached her, pulling Alex in for a hug. She didn’t resist—though it felt strange to be so small again. Alex had paid with so much of herself to bring that army back. There was very little left. “We can leave,” Sunset said. “Earth has other guardians—younger Alicorns, representing virtues more suited to the challenges ponies will face next.” She looked down, meeting Alex’s eyes. There was an invitation there—an invitation to put down all her burdens forever, to cross the astral sea to whatever waited beyond. So many she had loved, so many who had fallen in the terrible war for Earth’s future.

“Do I have to?” she asked, her voice a whisper. She knew that probably wasn’t the response her old friends wanted to hear. But she said it anyway. “So I’m not ‘humanity’ anymore… I still think those ponies down there need hope. Seeing their world almost end, seeing the price we paid to win… it could set a pretty bad precedent. I think I should stick around to pick up the pieces.”

Moriah groaned. “Of course you would. When you get down there, could you tell that asshole husband of mine I’ll be waiting for another spell? I’m sure it won’t be so hard if he only makes it to bring back one pony, instead of whole legions.” Moriah stepped out onto the sea as so many of the dead had done, and faded swiftly away.

Sunset Shimmer broke her grip on Alex, looking pensive. “That is… a good point.” She leaned down, nuzzling her head. “I shouldn’t help you, you know. Bringing someone back as a revenant like that? Really strains a friendship.” She turned, tugging Cloudy Skies away with one hoof. Not across the sea, they weren’t going that far. Alex didn’t try to listen in.

Riley and Chip had kept a respectful distance during most of their conversation, though they approached now. Walking together, as Alex remembered from them so often. Riley hugged her as affectionately as Sunset had done. “Promise me you’ll find someone to look after the changelings,” she said. “Sunset’s right about the preservation spell, it’s exponential. More changelings incoming than ever before. Maybe my parents.”

“You could do it,” Alex said. “I remember where those bodies are frozen. And I’ve mastered aging ma—”She trailed off abruptly, as she tried to recall her understanding of aging spells. She couldn’t.

Riley giggled. “I think it might take a little more than aging spells to bring back a bunch of frozen corpses.” She gestured with her wing at the astral sea. “We never really hoped the ice would keep us alive. That’s why you need to find a changeling to look after other changelings. The way we see things, the cold is terrifying. But it’s also a purifier. Being frozen was our way of defying the will of death, facing it in the most excruciating way we knew.”

“But if I can bring you back?” It wouldn’t be her. Alex’s special talent wasn’t magic. For that matter… Alex glanced down at her flank, half expecting to have lost her cutie mark. But she hadn’t—not completely. It was the same familiar book, with its gold cover—but it had been closed.

“No more zombies,” Chip said from behind Riley. “It’s cool, it was an emergency. Please don’t do it again. I want to be able to feel, like I do now. The spray, the sand, the warmth… like what we have here.”

They both vanished across the sea, which left Alex momentarily alone with Oliver. They stood in awkward silence for a long time, neither willing to meet the other’s eyes. She was small enough again that it felt very much like those moments, all those years ago. At least, she thought it was. She couldn’t remember them anymore.

“Hey, uh… Alex.” Oliver touched her lightly on the shoulder with a hoof. She’d felt him do that so many times before. “I just wanted to say… you did good. With everything. As good as… anybody could. Not perfect, nowhere near that, but… we won.”

“Thanks.” Another long, uncomfortable silence.

“And, uh… I’m sorry things didn’t work out better between us. When you never got older, never matured, I… I don’t think it was wrong of me to leave, but I do think I should’ve been honest about it. I should’ve told you we weren’t right for each other. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

She squeaked, wiping away a few tears. This was an ancient wound, long-closed, but at the same time, her memory had recently been scrambled. “Th-thanks,” she whimpered, sniffing. “I’m sorry too. Sorry I didn’t give you more time. Like I should’ve.”

He laughed awkwardly, reaching out to hug her. It was a little tense, and didn’t last too long. But Alex didn’t think she would ever forget it, magic memory or not.

Only a few moments later, he broke away. “Take care of yourself, Alex,” he finished. “I’ll, uh… say hi to Cody for you. I bet he’ll be furious you didn’t include him in your zombie adventure, but I think he’ll forgive you eventually.” He lowered his voice, as though the dead earth pony might be listening even now. “I’m glad you didn’t, honestly. Being a zombie is one thing. But I don’t think I could’ve handled seeing it happen to my son.” He walked away, fading across the sea as so many others had done.

Eventually, Cloudy Skies returned. Her walk seemed slow, purposeful. As though she were preparing to do something very difficult.

“That was kinda fun,” Cloudy Skies said, to break the silence. “I mean, I only ever really saw the bad guys die. We were all zombies except you, and I knew you couldn’t really…” She coughed, sitting down beside Alex on the sand, looking out at the ocean. The armies—pony and ancient human both—were all gone now. “You sure you don’t want to come? If anypony earned it, it’s you.”

She laughed. “I do want to come. But I also want to live a little longer. See it through to the last refugee… a few more thousand years, and that spell’s done. Maybe you should come back with me.”

Sky laughed too, though the sound was more pained than amused. “Is that what you really want?”

Alex opened her mouth to answer that yes, of course she wanted her old best friend back. But then she realized the implication. “You… don’t want to be alive again?”

“Well I sure don’t want to be a zombie again.”

“That isn’t much of an answer.”

Cloudy chuckled again. “Yeah, guess it isn’t. Must be terribly frustrating for you. I can’t imagine Joseph is very happy about all this either—you broke your promise to him, you know. You promised you wouldn’t send us away, and you did. He’s gonna be so upset with you.”

Alex nodded gravely. “You could come and smooth things over. I could really use his help rebuilding.”

“Well Day, if that’s what you want. Sunset Shimmer says it’s possible, I already asked. But you won’t like the price.” She didn’t leave Alex waiting. “You’re all dead right now, there’s not a lot of magic to go around. But if an Alicorn decided not to go back, she might be able to give up enough magic to make someone… like your friend ‘Jackie’? That’s what Sunset said? She said you would know what that meant.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Jackie’s a… friend of mine, I guess.”

“A girlfriend?” Sky nudged her with a wing.

“Eww, no!” She looked away, blushing. “I thought about it, but Amy had just died, and… Jackie married my daughter. She died only a few weeks ago, saving me.”

“Ouch.” Sky winced. “Sorry to open that back up.”

She shrugged. “Why isn’t Sunset coming back to tell me what she wants?”

“Because…” Sky hesitated again. “Because she doesn’t want to stay either. Her whole world is gone, Alex. She really misses them—her family, her mentor, all the kids she’s had over the years… she’s stayed this long because of how much she cared about us. The human race, I mean. She fought it through to the end, but… now she wants to go home.”

“And you don’t want to come back with me?”

“Well, that depends.” Sky reached down with a wing, mussing Alex’s mane. “Do you plan on living this time? I’m not going to come back with you if you’re just going to mope around and feel sorry for yourself again. Life seems like it would be pretty exciting right now.”

“I doubt I’ll be ruling the world ever again,” Alex admitted. “I’m not Humanity anymore. I can’t convince them with magic, and I don’t know everything the way I used to.”

Cloudy Skies shrugged with both wings. “I don’t care about any of that. Take the scepter or the plough, I don’t care. I just don’t want to be your babysitter… already did that once.” She leaned in a little closer. “Everyone I know besides you and Joe is there. In that…” She frowned, her face scrunching in concentration. “State of being? Universe? I can’t really explain.”

“So asking you to come with me is like…” She frowned. “Asking you to leave all your friends and family behind.”

“Yeah… a little. Lonely Day, a long time ago I didn’t have a family. You gave me one. If I have to go back and do the same for you for a little while… just so long as I’m not a zombie again. That was dis-gusting.”

“Not quite what I expected from all that…” Alex muttered. “Saying goodbye to Sunset, instead of you.”

The pegasus shrugged. “If anyone in that city is still alive, it’ll be the stuff of stories. They’ll probably make songs about it, make you sound way more heroic and less completely disgusting.”

“You’re never going to let me live down the zombie thing, are you?”

“Nope.” Sky beamed. “Weigh that in your decision, Alicorn. Though really you get that either way, since I don’t think Sunset would let you live it down either.”

“You… sure? Sure this is okay with you?”

Cloudy Skies laughed again, and tried to take to the air. It didn’t work, of course—pegasus magic didn’t work up here. It was the same with unicorn and earth ponies—only supernal magic worked here. She grunted her frustration. “Of course it’s not okay. I feel like we’re breaking all kinds of things by doing this. Haven’t you read about Orpheus? All the stories about people you’ve lost aren’t supposed to end with you actually keeping them! But if we get in trouble with Death or whatever, that’s your job to deal with.”

Alex shrugged. “I did her a favor once, we should be cool…” She trailed off. “Although I did bring back like a bazillion wraiths from a past age for a day. I can’t imagine she’ll be happy about that.”

“Your problem,” Sky said. “Now you understand my conditions. What do you choose?”

Alex walked away from her a few moments later, over to where Sunset Shimmer waited on the edge of the water. She’d rested one hoof on the surface, and didn’t pass through it any more than the wraiths had so many times before. “She told you everything?”

Alex reached up and hugged her old friend again. She could feel the pressure weighing Sunset Shimmer down now, and in her eyes, she could see the pain of so many years. They had been fighting for long enough that it felt endless. Fought together against so many monsters. “You’re ready to go home, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you be mad if I don’t come with?”

“No.” Sunset released her. For once, it was her crying. “I tried to make a little piece of Equestria here, but it wasn’t the same. I miss them… very much. Discord got to use his time-travel to go back to the moment he left, when it was over. But I can’t do that.” She reached out for another weak hug. “Besides, you don’t need me anymore. Equestria’s monsters are dead, and you have a nice pony to look after you while you look after the survivors.”

Alex nodded. “Just… when this is all over, can you promise you’ll be there waiting for me? Like you were the first time I got here?”

“Sure.” Sunset squeezed her tight, so tightly that her ribs might’ve broken if she had any. “Just like last time.”

Lonely Day

Lonely Day took her first breath. For a long time that was all she did, feeling the heat in her veins again, the steady beat of her heart. Sensations she had had for so much of her existence she’d never even considered them, but now… after only a short time as something else, she understood a little of her friends’ anger at being revived undead.

On the ground in front of her was all that was left of her struggle against Charybdis. The Key made from Mordite hadn’t remained—on a planet filled with life, it was nearly as reactive as antimatter would’ve been. In some ways that was what it was—anti-life. Judging by what she saw, the metal that made up the artifact had escaped into Charybdis’s army, as the closest thing to “living” present. It wasn’t alloyed for anti-magic, so it couldn’t have gotten into Mundi.

There was no missing the chalky statue of Charybdis himself, face still frozen in shock and agony from the moment the metal had touched him. Day lifted the necklace of rusting links from around his neck—missing the key, perhaps, but it seemed like a foolish thing to leave behind. Joe would probably want the original back. She would have to dig it out of the toybox in the apartment where she had confronted Death.

As she lifted, the chalky body crumbled away at the slightest perturbation, blowing away in the wind as a dusting of carbon and trace elements.

She rose to catch the necklace around her own neck, turning around slowly. Half the undead army had returned to being a pile of corpses. The other, slightly larger number, were just gone. Those Alex had called out of distant history had no corpses to leave behind. Whatever effect wearing the Key had imposed on her senses, Alex no longer felt it now. That was a smell.

Another smell mixed in with the rot, one she hadn’t expected. Fire, like wood smoke and combusting gunpowder. She turned to where Sunset’s body had been, just in time to watch it burst into flames, a single gigantic fireball that caused her to reflexively raise a shield around herself. It was a good thing she hadn’t lost all her memories.

The fire only lasted an instant, as though the flesh itself had been transformed into fire. Yet it left a pony standing in its place, a pony that was taller than she was with a soft pink coat and a blue mane. Despite the flames and momentary flash of heat, she wasn’t burned. She blinked in surprise, looking down at the faint layer of ash she was standing in, then looked like she was about to gag. “That… is… awful.”

“Hold on, I’ve got an idea.” Alex reached over to her own armor, pulling out her dagger, and using it to draw into the pile of ash Charybdis had left behind. She could no longer perfectly combine the runes in her mind, she had to work them out. But her basic understanding of magic was still in there, and this wasn’t a complex spell. After a few seconds, she had it, and she aimed her horn at Sky. There was a brief flash, and apparently nothing happened. Until she took a breath, and a faint shimmer appeared around her face and nose. “Better?”

“Yeah.” The pegasus nodded gratefully. “Much.”

Alex concentrated again, and cast the spell on herself. As before, the shimmer only appeared whenever she inhaled. Instead of decay, she smelled only the faint touch of ozone, enough that she didn’t feel constantly on the edge of vomiting.

Well, seeing an army of corpses, many of which had been friends and colleagues, hardly settled her stomach.

“I thought it would take longer to get back here. A few weeks, maybe. Hoped they’d have cleaned this up,” Sky said.

Alex shook her head. She paused, selecting one of the bodies that looked mostly intact, and removing a cloak she hoped was about her size. “Sorry, friend. But I know you don’t need this anymore.” She flung it over her shoulders, holding her wings as close as she could, and pulling on the hood.

“What’s the point of that?”

Alex hesitated, though not for very long. “I’m, uh… I think it’s better if ponies don’t see what happened to me. Losing most of my power… doesn’t make for a good story. Wouldn’t help build confidence in my rule.”

Sky scowled down at her. “I come back from the dead twice, and the first thing you do both times is play politics. Besides, I thought the point of staying was to make sure the city makes it. How are you going to make sure of anything if you’re hiding?”

Alex made her way over to her own armor, all of which was too large for her now. She selected one object from all the others—a crystal communicator. She held it up in her magic, bringing it close to her head. It started to glow as she did so, producing a faint voice from within.

Athena’s voice spoke from it, as clearly as though she’d been standing a few feet away. “Hello, Archive.”

“Not anymore,” Day answered. “That title doesn’t fit. Just Alex.”

“Just Alex speaks like we are in another time. Did Oracle bring your past self to the future again?”

Cloudy leaned in, muttering quietly, “You have to tell me that story.”

But Alex ignored her. “Most of my power came from being Archive—the purpose of that magic is fulfilled, so the spell is broken. And I… gave every drop of magic I could to making an undead army. I guess there wasn’t a whole lot of me left on the other end.”

“Delightful. You’ll be happy to hear my report—no more attempts have been made to penetrate the shield. Whatever Charybdis was doing to disrupt my satellite network is gone, I can see clearly. I don’t see any sign of activity from his outposts. It appears to have been universally destroyed.”

“That’s the risk of having enhanced troops. He didn’t just get ponies to work for him, he changed them. With his magic gone, they can’t survive.”

Athena sounded amused. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Cloudy Skies sat down beside her on the bank of Charybdis’s rotten river, glaring at nothing in particular. “I don’t think I like her. Who is that?”

Alex moved the crystal away from her ear. “That’s, uh… remember the probe we helped the HPI send up? It… got bigger.”

“The population is asking after you,” Athena said. “They are desperate to know the results of the battle. Whether or not Charybdis escaped again into the sea. What are your orders?”

“It’s time for the contingency. Don’t let anypony find out we lost Alicorns.”

“We lost Alicorns?”

“One,” she said quietly. “Sunset isn’t… well, two, really. I’m gone too.”

“For how long?”

“Forever, in Sunset’s case. Me… I’m not sure. Awhile.”

“I understand, Alex. Stay in touch.” The crystal stopped glowing.

“There.” Alex stuck it into a pocket of her robe. She was tempted to bring her handgun as well, the ancient weapon that had been owned by so many over the years, before eventually finding its way back to her. But no, she wouldn’t need it. After all that she had seen, Alex was ready for some time on the farm. Others could fight the next war. “We should get into the city. Athena will have cleaning crews out here before too long. We should slip in before anyone notices us.”

“Plan on using that fancy new horn of yours to teleport us in?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I want to see it.”

It was a fair distance back to Mundi from the river itself, several miles. They didn’t fly—or rather, Alex didn’t. Sky’s hooves barely touched the ground as she followed, though she didn’t seem very interested in looking at anything. Mostly she seemed to be enjoying the flight for its own sake, now that she was protected from the smell.

Alex set a very slow pace, taking in the ruins of her city. So many of the outer layers had been breached, carved apart by weapons or the creeping fungus. It had gone a disgusting black now, and seemed to be the source of much of the rot smell. It would take bodies touched by necromancy a little longer before they started stinking.

Another figure landed beside them as they walked, one light enough on its wings that it barely made a sound. She couldn’t see the owner’s face, but she recognized a familiar voice from within the robe. It was Jackie—not just that, but she was lacking any of the usual hostility. There was no more resentment in the way she spoke, only grief. “It looks like the battle went better than ponies expected,” she said. “You come out to see, like me?”

Does she really not recognize me? Alex nodded, looking away. Her coat probably looked different in the gloom, and it had been many thousands of years since she’d been this size. Most immortals lacked a perfect memory. “Yeah.”

Cloudy landed a few steps behind her, watching with suspicion. But she didn’t say anything to interrupt. “Story is the Alicorns sacrificed themselves to kill Charybdis,” Jackie went on. “That they’re dead for good. We’ll have to wait until we get some new ones.”

“Oh,” Alex said, keeping her voice as impassive as she could. Just how much had losing her wife screwed her up? Even more than Alex had suspected, apparently. “That sounds hard.”

Jackie chuckled. “Not as hard as you’d think, kid.” She looked up, past her to the pegasus on her other side. “You took your kid out here?”

The pegasus shook her head. “She took me. I didn’t plan on seeing this place ever again.”

“Just had to know,” Jackie continued. “Guess I can respect that. Honestly, I… I didn’t think we’d make it. Guess Oracle can be wrong.” She took a few steps into the gloom to one side, vanishing into the shadow of some rubble. She did not emerge on the other side.

Sky kept watching the place she’d been, as though expecting her to pop out with a knife and attack. She didn’t, though. Alex could no longer sense her magic nearby. “What the hell was that?”

“A pony I’ve depended on to help keep the world going. I don’t think she can take the pain of it anymore. Immortality makes us all a little crazy after all these years.”

“You aren’t filling me with confidence,” Sky said. “You didn’t come back for more angst, right? You’re here to live like you didn’t before.”

“Yeah. Once I make sure Mundi’s gonna make it… the seaponies out in L2 were planning on sending a colony out a little further. Brave new world, lots of music… swimming’s a lot like flying, you know. I bet you’d like it.”

Sky wrapped a wing around her, pulling her close. “If that’s where you want to go, then sure. I’ll love it. But you know we gotta bring Joe, right?”

As it turned out, they didn’t bring Joe.

It took a few hours to make it to his lab—slipping back inside was easy for Alex, since she’d designed much of the security herself. But Mundi was still in chaos, while martial law controlled other sections of the city. They had to stay out of sight, or else get assigned to one of the work crews that would be gathering the dead.

Eventually they slipped past the guards to the heart of Mundi, at the lowest point of its highest tower, and through Joe’s wards. There, they found the crystal unicorn halfway through packing up his lab. A gigantic crystal followed him through the air, looking quite familiar to Alex, right down to the makeshift soldering between its sections. It still had little bits of brown slime stuck to it in places from where it had poked out from an undead Cloudy Skies.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked, staying safely back from him as he worked.

He didn’t even glance back at her, or apparently notice how much higher her voice had become. “That’s it, Alex. I did it, I won. First I beat aging, then I beat death. It’s all in your brain, so you have my notes. I’m done.”

“Well, uh… maybe could I get another copy of your notes? I don’t think it’s actually in my brain anymore.”

That attracted his attention. He looked up, eyes widening. “Really?” He looked back at the two of them, but there was no comprehension on his face. “Well, that’s strange. Here.” He dropped the suitcase he was packing, pushing it across the floor towards her. “You can keep them I guess. I don’t really need it anyway. I’m done here. It’s time to put everything I’ve learned to use. Can’t do it here, there’s all kinds of things living on this planet. Somewhere fresh.”

“Uh…” Cloudy Skies made her way across the room to him, standing a few feet away. She looked up at him, eyes searching for something in his countenance. “Don’t you want to stay with your friends, Joe? Your magic saved the day. Don’t you deserve a break?”

He retreated from her half a step—for the first time, it seemed like he had noticed something. Seen her. “No, no. Ruin doesn’t rest for anyone, so why should anyone let it get ahead? Not today, not tomorrow. I’ve got to go.”

“Well.” Cloudy Skies reached out and hugged him. “Be safe, doofus. And come back sometime to say hello.”

“Hello,” he repeated, voice distant. “Yeah, hello.”

Alex crossed the floor to him. It was strange to be looking up at him again, after so long a towering Alicorn. But she hugged one of his legs. “Thanks for saving the day, Joe. If you ever feel like coming back, we’ll be happy to have you.”

He twitched, looking down at her with mild confusion on his face, like a discomfort he couldn’t quite name. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Timeheart by now? It’s paradox of love with Alicorns all the way down, that’s why I never drank your Kool-Aid. You can’t see the world how it is through all those feelings.”

“I don’t think I’d want to,” Alex squeaked. “Are you sure you have to go? You’re immortal, aren’t you? Couldn’t you stick around to help Mundi pick up the pieces?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “You don’t pay me enough for that, Alex. And I don’t think you could.” He vanished, leaving the two of them alone in the empty workshop. He hadn’t brought anything, in the end, except the crystal.

“Bye, Joe,” Sky whispered. Then she straightened. “Guess he isn’t coming.”

“He didn’t even ask about his Key,” Alex muttered. “Well… I think I should put this place somewhere nobody will find it. Don’t want some idiot trying to recreate his magic down the road who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”

Sky shrugged. “Sure thing, Day.” She glared down at the ground, ears flattening. “It’s only my first day, and this immortality stuff is already worse than I imagined. Is this how it’s been for the last…”

“Eight thousand years,” Alex added.

“Yeah, that.” Day waved a wing absently through the air. “I hope these seaponies are more fun. Lots of singing, you said?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, and she didn’t even have to force a smile. “They really know how to have fun.”

Author's Note

And thus ends the story of Charybdis. Two thousand more years of setting from this point in the timeline, without evil monsters trying to destroy everything.

Dunno if I'll ever write about Alex again after this. Maybe, guess we'll have to see. I do kinda like where it ended up, though.