New Dawn

Chapters

1 - Wake
2 - Contact
3 - Statue
4 - Grimoire

1 - Wake

Radiant Dawn knew that she was dying from the moment she gained consciousness. It wasn't the languishing kind that haunted every waking hour, reminding her that she was living against the clock.

No, this was a different form of dying altogether. It was as if there was an angry colony of ants gnawing away at her organs, crawling through her insides and trying to burst out through her skin. She groaned in pain, her breath forming clouds of condensation in the frigid air

Radiant pressed the rusty button that was supposed to open the hatch. The metal crunched loudly in protest, refusing to budge having fused itself together with age. The mare hissed in frustration and punched it with a hoof instead.

The device slid home and to her relief, the tinted window began to crack as designed. She fidgeted in her bed, watching impatiently as spiderwebs creeped through the enchanted quartz glass at an agonizingly sluggish rate.

Her throat tickled. Radiant coughed into her hooves, hacking up something wet and sticky. Blood. Radiant cringed, fur standing up on the back of her neck. Hoffmare's Syndrome wasn’t supposed to make her cough up blood.

Radiant swallowed the rest of the unpleasant gunk back down, cringing at the unpleasant metallic aftertaste in her mouth as she wiped her hoof on the threadbare cushions of her pod. She paused, like she was trained to and took a moment to assess the situation.

The only logical explanation was that the process meant to revive her had gone wrong, and she was down with some novel affliction. Radiant shivered at the thought, silently cursing at herself for finding a way to make her eventual death even more painful. Not being able to breathe was unpleasant enough, but coughing up blood was a whole new level of inconvenience.

In all fairness though, the scientists that devised this insane plan back in Equestria had tried to dissuade her. Radiant vaguely remembered combing through a thick stack of reports, complete with pictures of previous experiments that didn't come back quite the way they should in their attempt to dissuade her: dogs with stone limbs, a cat with a head of polished rock and other horrors best left unremembered.

The petrification matrix R&D had hacked together was a relatively new way of keeping living beings in stasis over long periods of time. Funnily enough, they had no qualms accepting a perfectly healthy changeling into the program. But her? Even the most ethically questionable scientists in Equestria grew squeamish when involving terminally ill patients.

Her parents didn’t approve when she announced her intentions to them. They wanted their daughter to stay at home with them “where she belonged”, which was an absurd notion since she was the best candidate for the job. Why condemn somepony perfectly healthy, with a full life ahead of them on a one way trip when they could fulfill the fillyhood dreams of somepony else with nothing to lose? She was meant to explore, not languishing herself away at home.

That was why she signed up with the Startrotter Association after all. She had hoped her contributions would help ponies explore the stars, until they found the Arion probe from a system thousands of light years away.

The body object had prompted the association to embark on the most ambitious mission of discovery in Equestrian history. The plan was to launch a vessel to make the trek to the probe's home system. When Equestrian space-travel had advanced sufficiently enough, they would send a ship to pick them up, if they hadn't arrived at the system.

From what Radiant understood, it was a long shot and more of a publicity stunt to get ponies interested in space. An endeavor like this traditionally called for an expeditionary scribe to log things down for the royal archives, and that was where Radiant came in.

Since the trip had a chance of ending up as a one way journey, her condition would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience at worst. She could do a lot in the ten years that she had, and if something happened to her on the way there, then she wouldn't even feel a thing while she was petrified.

The pain in her chest was growing worse now, and it felt like her lungs were starting to burn away. Radiant frowned, giving the hatch a cursory tap. The glass was supposed to shatter by now, and she wasn't sure if the air in here was still good for breathing after Celestia-knows-how-many years of marination with the elements. If the airtight seals were still, then she was was also looking at the very real risk of suffocating herself to death.

Radiant grimaced at the thought. She braced herself against her bed and bucked at the tinted glass, yelping as her hooves harmlessly bounced off the enchanted quartz and leaving her with nothing but a dull throbbing pain in her legs for the effort. She pressed the button again, panic welling up in her chest as nothing happened.

Her ears perked up at the sound of a muffled voice drifting from outside the pod, recalling that she wasn't supposed to be alone. Startrotter had sent two ponies on the trip, with the other being a changeling named Seefi. Stay with your buddy, and you'll never worry, went the mantra. "Hey! Seefi! Get your flank over here! I can't get out!" She croaked, tapping at the glass to get her companion's attention.

Seefi heard her alright, because the next thing Radiant knew was having her eardrums nearly destroyed with whatever spell the changeling was using to blast the pod. It was loud, grating and Radiant shoved her hooves into her ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound, watching in awe as an angry, glowing disc sliced through the hardened iron as if it was nothing more than butter.

She flinched as the spell sent sparks bouncing carelessly around her pod, lighting up the interior with a brightness that rivaled Celestia's sun. The bone-shattering buzzing seemed to go on forever until the dreaded hatch finally fell away with a triumphant clang, bathing Radiant with cool, fresh air from the outside.

Radiant gasped, taking in a lungful of the sweet air. "God dammit Seefi, that took you long enough. Turn the lights down will you? It's way too bright." She grumbled and promptly crumpled over, hacking up more blood and mucus all over the inside of her pod.

Guess I'm not using that as a bed anymore. Radiant clambered out of her resting place. She tried to stand with legs that didn't work right, managing to stumble around like some newborn foal before falling into an undignified heap on the cold floor. The earth pony blinked, noticing just how smooth the surface was. This wasn't the mesh panels of their ship. No, it smelled clean, if the faint smell of antiseptic was to be trusted.

Radiant looked up, finding a massive ceiling looming over her head. It was high enough to rival Princess Celestia's throne room but it was also sparsely decorated. Even the evenly spaced lighting crystals set in the gray masonry looked bland, a stark contrast to the tasteful filigree that adorned the chambers of the royal palace.

To her left was what seemed like a pedestal of sorts, propping up an oversized fish tank that was filled with an evil looking fluid which bubbled lazily ever so often. Combined with the strange metal machines connected to and the forest of tubes snaking around it, the device wouldn't have looked out of place in some mad scientist's basement.

Conclusion? This was not her ship or some residence for the planet's rulers - experience had taught Radiant that even the most thrifty of creatures couldn't give in to temptation and display at least some of their wealth. No, this place looked like a laboratory, probably one with a very specific purpose in mind. Whoever wanted to drag her stasis pod out of her ship all the way here probably had a very compelling reason to do so. But what?

A shape moved in her peripheral vision. Radiant Dawn turned her head, and that was when she saw them.

She gasped, clambering back to the pod. It was a wonder that she didn't wet herself. Aliens! No amount of preparation from could have prepared herself for this. Their mission was supposed to find the planet of the ape-like creatures that referred to themselves as the people of the earth. She knew that much from the Arion probe they found. Radiant had seen the pictures it carried, fully expecting to meet this race of "people", but the… things that greeted her seemed nothing like the ones the artifact carried.

The creatures, there were five of them, resembled the misshapen monkey things only in stature. Their bloated skin was a sickly shade of green that certainly didn't look like the chitin, fur or the ‘gelatinous membrane’ theorized by the scientists who briefed her. Radiant winced as their flesh crinkled, watching in morbid fascination as they lumbered towards her.

What was most unnerving was the smooth, featureless faces they had, making them look like golems. Radiant cringed internally as she stared at her reflection, suddenly wishing that she was back in the pod again. Wait a minute, where is Seefi?

She could search for her missing comrade later, but she needed to act now. The golem things looked impatient. Radiant gulped, putting on the biggest smile she could muster. As cheesy as the alien invasion Applewood films were, the fate of Equestria could very well depend on this moment. She wasn't about to let her fear get in the way of this, lest she be responsible for accidentally declaring war with them because she looked at them the wrong way.

Radiant gritted her teeth, forcing herself to ignore the fire slowly burning her lungs away. Hopefully, she would live long enough to relay something meaningful to them.

Radiant was no linguist, but that was why they had brought Equish reference guides along in the archives of their ship. Hopefully, there was somepony on the alien's side that had a special talent in language and had already deciphered enough to gain a basic comprehension of her language. Otherwise, it would be a terrible waste of time just to teach them enough Equish to ask if they had already eaten dinner.

In the end though, she didn’t get to say anything at all. Maybe it was the way she looked at them, or they didn't appreciate her dirtying up their clean floors. One of the golems with yellow stripes running down its body stuck out a limb in her direction, bellowing what sounded like a war cry. “stɑp ˈstændɪŋ əˈraʊnd! wi doʊnt hæv mʌʧ taɪm! ˈhɜri!”

Radiant froze as its unnaturally hollow sounding voice echoed across the room. The sound struck something in her, and despite all the conditioning that the Association had drilled into her for first contact, Radiant Dawn couldn't help but scream as the monsters started to run towards her.

She turned tail and ran, giving in to instincts that had kept her kind safe over the eons when chased by something. “stɑp ˈrʌnɪŋ gɑd ˈdæmɪt, wir ˈtraɪɪŋ tu hɛlp!” One of the golem-creatures swiped at her. Radiant barely managed to dodge in time, almost tripping over her legs.

“Yeah, screw you too!” Radiant shot back. Even with the magic of the earth flowing through her veins, the golems easily covered twice the distance she took with every step. Worse still, there was nothing that looked like an exit in the massive cavern. She couldn't keep running forever.

Her hooves felt numb and it was starting to get increasingly difficult for her to keep her balance. Still, Radiant pressed on, mustering every ounce of energy she could to dodge their swipes and flee.

“Buck!” Her legs gave up on her. Radiant yelped, skidding helplessly into the jumble of tubing beside the oversized tank. She tried to free herself, kicking and struggling against the inanimate tendrils. In her desperation, she only managed to trap herself deeper inside the tangle of rubber.

“aɪv gɑt ɪt!” Thundered a voice from behind shouted from behind, scooping her up with sinewy claws that easily wrapped around her chest. Radiant Dawn growled, kicking and nipping uselessly at the thing’s bitter tasting flesh. The golem didn't even flinch as it held her up, thudding noisily to the massive tank.

“Woah, h-hey! I can't breathe water!” Radiant squirmed as it lowered her inside the tank, her hooves touching the fluid. Whatever was inside wasn’t water. It was viscous and gooey and the liquid felt… alive.

She didn't know how to describe it, but the sensation wasn't so different as having thousands of little bugs crawl through her skin. Radiant struggled, trying to distance herself from the evil looking goo as the being hesitated and held her there. “ju ʃʊr ju wɑnt tu du ðɪs waɪl ʃiz əˈweɪk? jʊr ˈgoʊɪŋ tu draʊn hɜr əˈlaɪv ju noʊ?”

“wir ˈteɪkɪŋ ə bɪg ɪˈnʌf rɪsk æz ɪt ɪz. wi doʊnt noʊ ɪf ðɛr ˈbɑdiz kæn ˈhændəl ˈaʊər ˈmɛdəsən” Came the reply from behind her.

Radiant tensed up, unable to shake the feeling that this felt like the beginning of some bucked up sacrifice ritual. “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!” Radiant hammered her hooves against its claws as it thrust her into the liquid. She gasped for air, swallowing mouthfuls of the foul tasting liquid and coughed violently as her lungs tried to expel the fluid, barely noticing the clouds of crimson that came back out.

It didn’t take long until she could swallow no more of the gunk, or put up any form of meaningful resistance as her cells ran out of oxygen to work with. The golem finally let her go, but Radiant was too weak to swim. She watched helplessly as she sank to the bottom of the tank, her vision fading to black as her brain shut down. She couldn't go out like this. She couldn't have. It just wasn't right for somepony to travel thousands of light years just to die like….

this….

Radiant Dawn's hooves twitched one last time and she slipped into the clutches of the gray mare.

Author's Note

As you can probably tell, this is in fact, not the original contest entry.

I wanted to rewrite the entire story into something more substantial, since I felt that my original attempt didn't really do Radiant Dawn's journey justice, but if you're into all that jazz then you can check out the original entry here!

2 - Contact

Radiant was floating in a silent lake as smooth as glass, with just her thoughts for company. She drifted under the moonless sky, the polished surface of water flawlessly reflecting the streaks of the galaxy, Ifing and its stars hanging over her head.

The water was warm and comforting, not unlike a favourite quilt one would snuggle under on a cold day. Radiant purred in content, drifting aimlessly under the backdrop of the night sky. She felt like a filly again, counting the stars in Luna's sky and trying to puzzle out the size of the infinite universe by herself.

Of course, being a full grown mare meant that she now possessed the mental faculties to understand the definition of infinity. That didn't stop her from humouring her foalhood memories and wondering just how many planets were out there in the lonely void harbouring life just waiting to be discovered.

Radiant stretched lazily, watching in fascination as the movement distorted the copy of the galaxy in the water. Ripples bounced into each other and grew in intensity until they formed into waves.

Beep.

She gasped as the water turned into an icy, oily sludge, growing thicker in consistency and chilled her to her core. It was harder for her to float now. Radiant tried to tread water, managing only a few feeble kicks before her limbs started to become weighed down by the slime.

Beep.

The waves crashed into her body and dragged her under the waterline. She coughed, her lungs hungrily sucking in air that was no longer there and gulped down more of the goop in her panic. Radiant struggled against the liquid, kicking and paddling in vain in a desperate attempt to make for the waterline.

Beep.

But the forces at play were too strong and not even a seapony could fight against conditions like this. Without her connection to the earth, a frail earth pony like herself was quickly wearing out. Panic flashed across her eyes as she sunk to the bottom of the riverbed, mercilessly raked across its coarse surface by the currents.

Beep.

A bright light engulfed her and she screamed in silence as it burnt away at her very essence, stopping only when nothing but pure consciousness remained. She drifted in agony, her bodiless form drifting in a bright void of jabbering voices that she didn’t understand.

And then the world went black again.

Beep. Beep.

Radiant stirred in her bed, feeling her senses return sluggishly to her brain as whatever sedatives in her body wore off. She knew that much, having become familiar with the loopy sensation more than she world have liked over the years.

The loud beeping noise beside her bed made her wince, but her limbs were still too heavy for her to move. She groaned at the thought of being made to listen to the shrill noise coming from the devilish device.

Other than that stupid device cheerfully reporting that yes, she was very much still alive, the room was oddly silent. Radiant couldn't hear any of the hustle and bustle that was a staple of the busier hospitals she had been admitted to. Too bad that didn't result in somepony coming to switch the irritating thing off.

The mare blinked, slowly taking in her surroundings. It looked strangely utilitarian, lacking the overly cheerful decor that had been plastered in so many of the wardrooms she had been in. The only hint of any attempt at decorating the drab environment were the walls, painted in a shade of inoffensive green.

Whatever empty space in the room was taken up by various carts that surrounded her bed, crammed with medical odds and ends that were probably related to whatever procedure the doctors used to revive her from her stasis. She didnt recognize much, except that they all seemed to be made of a matte white material.

Stasis. The mental fog in Radiant's head slowly cleared, returning a steady trickle of memories to her mind. She remembered volunteering to be turned into stone for the voyage to the Arion probe's origin system.

She also remembered that realistically speaking, Startrotter hadn’t expected for them to make the trip. The speed of the Trailblazer, combined with the vast distances involved meant that it would have taken close to four million years to make the trip.

The official plan was to send a craft to haul them home when ponykind had mastered space travel. How so was unclear to Radiant - the specifics were lost on her, except that there was a rather wealthy benefactor sponsoring the whole endeavour.

Personally, Radiant felt that the entire endeavour was rather hare-brained. Why waste their resources on something that amounted to a very expensive publicity campaign instead of actual research? After the hype of the moon landing, shouldn't they have focused on something more attainable like getting ponies in orbit around the gas giant Jotun or landing on Vanir?

She squirmed in her bed, shifting the weight on her spine to a more comfortable position. To be honest, all she wanted was a way to go to space. She couldn't have cared less about the theory, and the prospect of actually making the trip was miniscule.

Radiant shivered, casting a glance at the rather impressive window beside her bed. What if she had actually made the trip?

She shuddered involuntarily, the fever dream of being chased by oversized apes surfacing from the depths of her groggy mind. It had felt real enough, the very real sensation of fear and choking on some kind of foul tasting goop forming a pit in her stomach.

On the other hoof, she did have her fair share of sedative induced delirium over the years. She once saw shapes in the shadows for nearly a week before the doctors figured that she was allergic to whatever herbal treatment they tried on her. It wasn't a fun experience.

A soft knock at the door snapped the mare out of her reverie. “Please, enter!” Radiant croaked with vocal chords that didn’t work quite right, waiting impatiently for the attendant to step through the door. “Miss, could you be so kind as to turn th-”

She didn't quite manage to finish the sentence as she found herself face to face with the creature from the images carried by the Arion probe. It stood in the room, silently staring at her with beady eyes that looked way too small for it, no, her - Radiant glanced at its chest. She was sure of that at least - to see with.

The being was clutching a plane of glass with her claw like digits. Radiant watched in fascination as she brushed the flowy, auburn mane that ended at her shoulders with the other appendage. Radiant thought that it complimented her coat, no, skin? Rather nicely.

For what it's worth, knowing that the smartest ponies in Equestria were wrong brought some comfort to Radiant. She has suspected that it was rather far fetched when the scientists told her about the gelatinous membrane theory during the briefing, but she kept her trap shut on the off case that they used her objections as an excuse to have her booted off the program.

Either way, she was at a loss for what to do. Her heartbeat was starting to drown out the silence in the room. She gulped. Do I introduce myself? Offer peace? Where was that changeling when you needed him?

“Good afternoon, I’m Doctor Moriah.” The alien mare spoke. It sounded foreign, and there was no way that Radiant should have been able to understand what she was saying. But the universe seemed fully intent on screwing with her today, and she was able to comprehend every syllable flawlessly. It was disorientating to say the least, and she was starting to find it getting harder to breathe. Don’tpanicdon’tpanicdon’tpanic.

“Do you understand me?” Doctor Moriah asked in a tone that vaguely reminded Radiant of an adult patiently trying to get a newborn foal to speak. It would have been hilarious if the situation wasn’t so different.

“I... I… yes.” She replied, her eyes widening at the realization that she was replying in the same language that the doctor was using.

The feeling was akin to somepony dumping an entire library's worth of knowledge into her mind, kept that information hidden deep inside her brain under lock and key and only revealed it to her just now.

Radiant was no linguist, but it sounded like she was speaking the language just as fluently. “I-I’m R-radiant Dawn.”

“That’s good, Miss Radiant. I see that the sedatives are wearing off nicely. How are you feeling today?”

“U-uncomfortable. My skin’s itching all over a-and my entire body feels sore.” Radiant stammered, taken aback by the casualness of it all. “W-where am I?”

“Well miss, I can assure you that those are simply a normal side effect of the procedures we did." The doctor said, tapping at the glass. To Radiant’s surprise, the object lit up with the ghostly outlines of a document of some kind. She couldn’t make heads or tails out of what was written on it though.

"Do you remember anything from before you were in here?”

“I don’t... T-there was a nightmare… I was… dying? That isn’t terribly helpful, sorry. I’m always dying. And there were… monsters, golems trying to...” Radiant blinked, faintly aware that the beeping in the background was increasing in tempo. "Drown me. I think they managed to."

"That was the Biofabricator. Normally, you'd be unconscious for the procedure but we couldn't risk it with your… physique." Doctor Moriah pulled up a chair and sat down on it beside her bed. “and those were our people in hazard suits. I’m sorry if they scared you, but it was a necessary precaution. We needed to keep the Biofab room clean from any pathogens they might have been carrying.”

Radiant blinked. Hazard suits were mostly antiquated on Equus now, having been replaced by thaumic harnesses that did the same. The rest of what Moriah said was lost on her - she could understand what was being said, but the words were meaningless to her. “Biofab? People? What are those?”

Even if she did understand what a biofabricator was, she wasn’t prepared for any of this. She wasn’t trained for first contact and she was a cripple at best, Celestia be damned!

They had said that Project Trailblazer was supposed to be a PR stunt to garner support for the space program! The trip to the Arion homeworld alone would have taken all eternity.
Did that mean ponykind was no more?

The mere thought of it made her sick.

The doctor didn’t answer her questions straight away. Instead, she seemed perfectly content with reading whatever was on that slab of enchanted glass.

“Well, people are how we humans refer to ourselves.” She finally said, placing that strange claw like appendage on her chest - it reminded Radiant of a monkey’s hand, albeit less hairy.

“Humans? Is that what you call yourselves?” The mare croaked. “That’s… good to know. We were never quite able to translate what you were saying in the disc the Arion probe carried.”

“Ah… Right. Well, Miss Radiant, if you don’t mind me asking, how did your people discover Voyager 2? It wasn’t supposed to cross the nearest star in over two hundred thousand years.” More tapping on that piece of glass.

“The Arion probe?” Radiant frowned. The ‘human’ still scared her, but the interesting tidbit Moriah had thrown piqued her interest. “You mean it’s not even two hundred thousand years old?! We thought that it was ancient!” There was no way in Equestria that they could have just teleported over here - not even the princesses had that much energy to send them across thousands of light years!

“Wait.” Radiant’s mind ground to a screeching halt. This conversation was getting increasingly one sided, with Moriah doing the same roundabout questioning the physicians back home liked to do whenever they had bad news to deliver.

This was going to end now. “Doctor, you still haven't explained to me why I can understand you. What exactly is a "Biofab"? We didn't have anything like that back home.”

“Well uh…” The doctor shifted in her coat, looking almost evasive as she turned her attention to that stupid sheet of enchanted glass.

Just what was she tapping at? Radiant couldn't see any buttons on the artifact. Some kind of mind magic perhaps?

She waited and waited until an uneasy silence hung over them, broken only by the infernal beeping of the heartbeat monitor. Radiant steamed in her bed as she waited for her reply, mustering every ounce of patience in her body to wait.

She couldnt. It didn't help just how itchy and irritated her body felt. Was her fur supposed to feel this rough? She dragged her hooves under the covers, having half a mind to smack the strange device out of Moriah's grip.

“I don’t mean to be rude, doctor, but hello?” Radiant pried, hauling her way too heavy hooves out of the blanket and waved at the human.

She blinked.

Her hooves.

A perfect replica of the human's claws greeted her from under the sheets, finally understanding why her body felt so strange.

“OH CELESTIA WHAT THE BUCK!” Radiant screamed, throwing off the covers with newfound strength. She screamed as it unveiled a body that was most definitely not hers. She didn’t stop screaming as the claw-like-finger-things twitched, sending a torrent of sensation that her brain didn’t know how to process.

Her body might have been hidden underneath a hospital gown but it was clear through the openings that her once bright yellow coat was replaced by furless skin that was a gut wrenching shade of pink.

There was no sight of her two tone tail anywhere between her abnormally long hind legs that now ended in stumpy little knobs of flesh. Worst still were her forelegs. They didn't look as bad on Moriah, but things were different when it was her hooves being replaced with the sniewy things. It looked like somepony had decided to graft spider legs onto her hooves.

How she didn’t notice the changes until now eluded her.

She felt sick.

She didn't fight as Moriah eased her shivering form back onto the mattress, unable to break her gaze from her new body. It felt so unreal, but the sensations coming from them kept her painfully aware of the truth. "What the hell did you do?! T-they look like spiders!" She wailed, holding up the disgusting looking things in the air.

Moriah flinched. "We’re… I'm sorry. We would have asked, but given the circumstances we had to act quickly." Moriah said, her voice soft and gentle. "The electronics in your ship were badly damaged when we recovered it from orbit. It took us longer than expected just to get it working and our previous… tests showed that your cells would have started to degenerate as soon as the reverse process took effect. You would have died, Radiant."

"So you just decided to turn me into some freak without asking?! Just how stupid are you people?" Radiant snapped, slamming her… hand against the railing. It hurt, but it felt good. “Have you ever considered what the ponies back home would think of me when I go back looking like this?”

"Miss, please! You were dying! We took a big enough risk with the Biofab and Neuroflash just to save you! There was no knowing what side effects your body might have experienced with the nanites!" Moriah raised her hands in a gesture that was lost on Radiant. "We tried to salvage what we could of your body, but we didn't have enough data to work with!"

Radiant growled at the blurry figure in her vision. Nanites? What the hell were those? "Don’t you go hiding behind your mumbo crap and expect me to understand! I don't care if I died! You could have tried to tell me before you started chasing me down!” The mare yelled, hot trails of tears running down her cheeks. Part of her wished that she could strangle the doctor here and now, peaceful contact be damned. They could have at least tried.

“I’m sorry miss! We tried to save your original body, but your cells were dying off too quickly. We would have fabricated one that was your species but we lacked the data needed! The nanites can’t ” Doctor Moriah’s calm demeanor was a stark contrast to the teary eyed human’s whimpers.

Part of it irked Radiant. She wanted the doctor to yell at her and call her an idiot, that she could have been left to die just so she had a reason to scream back at Moriah. It was terribly frustrating for her to be given none of that.

“You can get through this Radiant.” She felt the doctor’s hand rest on her shoulder. Moriah had probably wanted to comfort her with the gesture, but all it did was make her feel cold and distant. “We already have the best therapists on standby for you. When you’re feeling up for it, maybe I can introduce you to some of my friends. You’l-”

Radiant had enough. Therapy? They crammed me into this stupid body and they expect me to get past this with theraphy?!

“GET OUT!” Radiant slapped her hand away. She hadn’t managed to figure out how this stupid body worked, but at least her forelegs still felt like forelegs.

“Miss!”

“OUT!” Radiant shouted until she saw stars. She had enough of the doctor and her myriad of excuses. All she wanted right now was to be left alone.

"At least let me sho-"

"OUT!" Radiant smacked the railings again, fresh trails of tears flowing down her face. It was foalish of her to be behaving like this, but Radiant didn't care. If they crammed her into this hell of a body without asking, then they would have to deal with the consequences. Whoever they were.

Moriah sighed in defeat, finally putting that glass of hers away. At least the doctors on this world knew when to drop their case. "Please, let the nurses know if you ever decide to change your mind."

Radiant turned away, not wanting to look at the human in the eye. She sniffled, letting the tears flow down her cheeks as the door shut behind her with a resounding click.

Author's Note

Holy crap, I didn't expect this to stay in the feature box for four days!

I can't believe that so many of you were willing to give my attempt at expanding the short into something bigger a chance. I am by no means an experienced author, so your words of encouragement mean a lot to me!

Thank you all for joining me on this ride (and giving me pointers on where to work on)! I'll do my best to improve as this goes along, so please, bear with me if I make literary mistakes in the meantime >.>

3 - Statue

Being stuck in a hospital ward had given Radiant Dawn plenty of time for self reflection.

Perhaps, when she finally met her lonely demise, the ones back home would remember as a foolish little filly who sweet talked her way into space, never to be heard from again.

Or maybe they wouldn't, and the most recognition she'd get would be in the form of a passing remark at the bottom of a history book.

Maybe that would have been for the best, given the circumstances.

To be honest, most ponies in her circle had tried to persuade her into withdrawing from the program. Petramgenics was still in its infancy, and as novel as the thought was, Radiant did not want to come back as a pile of marble chips.

The irony was not lost on her: years of living at the brink of death should have made shelving those thoughts easier for her. That was the whole reason why she was picked in the first place.

Of course, nopony had said that to her face, but she suspected as much. For lack of a better term, she was disposable.

Radiant had never given serious thought about how she would go, but as the days drew closer, she was unable to shake off the dread that something might go wrong during the launch.

Of course, she didn't actuay tell anypony that she was afraid though. Given the right evidence, even the princesses could be swayed. Radiant wasn't going to let somepony finding out that she had the jitters rob her of her spot.

So, she turned to the one thing that wouldn't betray her for comfort: the dusty history books that nopony bothered to read. If the great adventurers of old had no qualms about venturing into the unknown with nothing but a map and compass, then why was she fretting about the outcome?

Nopony would have discovered Griffonstone by being intimidated by the featureless Luna sea, and Startrotter wouldn’t have been the first to put a mare on the moon if they had played it safe.

The stories had help inspire a truism that generations of adventurers swore by: Fortuna audaces iuvat, or so it went.

That quelled the butterflies in her stomach. It gave her the courage to face her parents once last time before the launch.

It was too bad that fate cared little about one liners.

If fortune had truly favored the bold, then Radiant wouldn’t have ended up stuck here after Celestia knows how many years as a statue. Granted, ending up on Earth was an achievement in itself. She would have thrown herself into the mission if she could, but there wasn't much for her to learn by languishing in a ward. All she had managed to do so far was to trade a slow painful death as a pony for a slower, more miserable death as a human instead, confined to a bed while dozens of humans hovered around her and fretted over things too complicated for her to understand.

Frankly, she wanted nothing more than to run away from this place. Being at the receiving end of all this attention was suffocating - Radiant had never liked being mollycoddled as a foal. Hoffmare's syndrome sucked, but she had made it clear to everypony around her that she wasn't going to shatter if she fell. The humans were treating her as if she was some kind of porcelain doll was the kind of attitude that she had wanted to avoid.

Voicing her concerns to the people tending to her had done little in easing her worries; they had dismissed her concerns as nothing more than an expected side effect. Then again, even if they did, the effort would have been wasted on her anyway.

One of them, with an outrageously bushy beard that rivaled Starswirl's, had tried to explain her situation. He was patient, but it was too bad that half of what he said was too technical for her to understand - maybe a grand mage would be able to discern whatever kind of magic 'nano' fell under.

What she did understand however, was that it would take weeks, maybe even months before she regained the same level of dexterity with five digits instead of one. In his words, she “just had to be patient.”

What did they know about patience? It was easy to dispense advice like this they weren’t the ones who had to rely on a nurse just to use the bathroom. Having to depend on somepo- somebody else was embarrassing and humiliating. Radiant had tried, but her patience was starting to wear thin.

Not being able to hold anything with her stupidly flexible fingers infuriated her. She had tried to imitate the motions the nurses had demonstrated to feed herself, but the most progress she had managed so far was to clumsily prod the spoon off the serving tray after an entire week of effort.

True, it was an improvement over sending the tray, priceless titanium cutlery and all flying across the room days before, but it wasn't what Radiant would have considered progress. What use was there in being a scribe when she couldn't even put quill to paper?

The cynical part of her couldn’t help but wonder if they were deliberately trying to keep her helpless. It didn’t make much sense to her how a race so powerful could have changed her into one of them, implanted their language into her brain, somehow lack the means to stop her from flopping around like a helpless foal. Unless, she mused darkly, it was to keep her dependent on them.

Radiant shook her head. That didn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of things, except for the plot of some motion picture maybe.

Why would anypony in their right minds go through the trouble of creating this charade if they wanted to keep her dependent on them? It would be far easier to overpower a pony as frail as her. From there, they could have just forced whatever knowledge they wanted out of her. Instead, they had shown her nothing but concern and understanding. Maybe they feel guilty for what they’ve done?

In any case, she didn’t really know.

A knock on the door snapped Radiant out of her musings, bringing her back to the real world with a jolt.

Her body went slack as the one named Moriah stepped into the room, shutting the wooden door behind her with a soft click. Moriah smiled, pawing at the wrinkles in the doctor’s coat that she was wearing. It hung loosely over the grey shirt that she was wearing, its inoffensive shade blending in with the room rather nicely.

Even as a pony, Radiant never quite understood the obsession that some of her species had over clothing. The thought of being wrapped in layers upon layers of fabrics felt uncomfortably claustrophobic to her, and she didn’t see much point in baking the heat of Celestia's sun just to look pretty.

That was evidently not the case with humans, especially with how their concept of modesty seeming to depend entirely on clothes. Radiant had given up on trying to rid herself of the scratchy paper gown that they had provided her with. To them, seeing someone else naked was a source of great embarrassment, and they were very insistent that she kept it on at all times each time she asked about taking it off.

Perhaps it was because they lacked fur to cover up their… parts. In any case, it was an interesting quirk in their culture. A quirk that she couldn’t pen down for the record, all thanks to her new body.

She realized that she was scowling, and she quickly changed her expression to something more neutral. Thankfully, Moriah paid no heed to her looks and had eased herself into a nearby chair instead.

"Good afternoon Radiant.” She said, crossing her legs as she sat down. The motion was fluid, a far cry from anything that Radiant could have managed. "How was your day?"

Radiant allowed herself to smile. "Hello Moriah! It's nice to see you again" And she had meant every word of it. Moriah was nice - she no longer had that nervous stutter from their first meeting. Her voice was smooth, almost like chocolate to her ears and hearing her speak made all of Radiant's worries melt away into nothingness. “I've been better I guess… but that's to be expected, isn't it?"

Moriah raised an eyebrow, tilting her head questioningly.“How so? Did you try to walk again today?"

"No!" Radiant yelped, shelving that idea before Moriah could stir up more memories of that particular attempt from her mind. "You're... close though. I can't help but keep thinking about it, since I’m like, this now." She said, stealing a glance at the shape underneath the covers.

"Oh?"

"Well, remember when I told you that I wanted to get to work as soon as possible?" Radiant sighed, willing her arms to move from their resting place. She strained from the effort, her limbs trembling pathetically in the air as she ignored the burning sensation in her arms.

Moriah nodded. Her task to document everything was general knowledge by now, and the humans were more than happy to answer her questions. Except for the ones related to her recovery, or her friend. All that they had said about Seefi was that she shouldn't worry too much about him.

“Well, I can't do my work in this body. Not like this. No matter how hard I try-” Her muscles couldn’t take any more of this, and they flopped uselessly back onto the mattress like a puppet with its strings severed. “It’s been an entire week and I still can’t even eat without somepony helping me! I’m useless!"

“No,” Moriah's voice cut through her loathing. “you’re not.

Radiant sniffled, blinking away the blurriness in her vision. "I'm not?"

Moriah shook her head. “No. It’s normal to be angry and upset that your new body isn’t working out like your old one, especially considering the circumstances." She said, her voice quavering slightly. "But you have to understand that biofabrication is no panacea. Even humans have trouble regaining control over their bodies after the procedure. What you need to do right now is to try and relax, Radiant. Stressing yourself out is only going to slow things down, not speed them up.”

She should have shrugged it off, but what Moriah said kept echoing through her head. Stress? Stress?! What the buck does she know about stress? “Trust me, Moriah. I’m trying really hard right now. And if I could stop being stressed right now, I would.”

She let out a cold laugh, glaring at the human with a gaze that could have frozen water. “But I guess it’s too bad that I don’t appreciate you people robbing me of my body huh!? If only your people had asked me first before turning me into some magic experiment! You think that it’s better to save me when you turned me into one of you?!” She hissed, tensing up.

“ Well, guess what? It’s easy for you to tell me to be patient when you’re not the one who has to deal with the bucking problem!” Radiant shouted until stars crept into her vision. She had slipped back into her native language, her tongue flexing and straining to form syllables unsuited for human mouths.

Radiant glared at the human, waiting for a reply that never came. If Moriah had any objections to what Radiant just said, she didn’t show it. The human looked unfazed as she sat stoically in her chair, her arms crossed. Minutes ticked by without anything happening and an uncomfortable silence simmered in the room, broken only by the periodic hum of something in the background.

Moriah sighed, leaning forwards in the dinky looking chair.“You know what?”

Radiant gulped, her heart pounding against her chest. Is this the part where she tells me to buck off for being ungrateful?

“You’re right."

The mare blinked. Wait, what?

“I can’t begin to imagine how you must feel right now, Radiant.” Moriah said, planting her feet on the ground. The chair creaked in relief as she made her way to the window, the forest of golden yellow still as impressive as ever. “I’m sorry that we didn’t seek your consent for the procedure. But I need you to pull through this Radiant, because right now, nothing is more important than you getting through this.”

"You’re stronger than you think, Radiant. I don’t know about your world, but it takes more than bravery to compel take the first step into that ship. You knew the risks, and here you are.” She tapped on the glass, turning to face Radiant. “Alive. Now, you’re at the doorstep of something greater than the two of us. Are you going to give up now? Because that's going to leave a lot of disappointed humans and ponies alike."

Radiant didn’t meet her gaze. Truthfully, she didn't know what compelled her to step into the pod. Foalish naivety perhaps, or a fear of meeting the grey mare before her parents did. But Moriah had a point. Breaking down in the face of calamity never got anything done.

She had never expected to find herself on Earth. But discovery was the reason why Startrotter was formed in the first place, and creatures from all over Equus had banded together in the hope of finding somepony else out there in the inky darkness of space.

The discovery of the Arion probe had given them that hope. Changelings, Griffons, Hippogriffs had all come together with the hope of sharing friendship with its creators. Could she live with knowledge that she had squandered the efforts of the creatures that had gotten her here?

It wasn't like anypony would know of her failures anyway; she could still bail out on them, and nobody would be any the wiser. She could still run away from all this, but where would she even go to hide on an alien planet?

The princesses knew everything that went on within Equestria's borders, and if this world was anything like hers, she wasn't particularly keen on incurring the wrath of their Princesses. Radiant wasn’t particularly eager in exploring just how powerful human magic was. If they could change her into one of them, what else could they do?

Her new body sucked, but it was free of the flaws that had once tied her down. She had promised herself a long time ago that if a second chance ever came her way, she wasn't going to waste it.

And now, by some miracle of Celestia, that chance was staring at her right in her face.

No. Moriah was right.

“You know what Moriah?” Radiant said, sitting up straighter in her bed. She sucked in a shaky breath, looking at Moriah with the same confidence that had compelled her to volunteer for the trip. "No. I'm not going to give up just yet."

Author's Note

Well, that took long enough, didn't it?

I know that I've said this before, but I can't say that I'm a good writer. Frankly, I didn't even try writing seriously until Unwitting Pioneer. Honestly? I had planned for this to be a neat way of smoothing out the original contest entry until it well... blew up.

Cue countless revisions of this chapter, and me sitting on it because I couldn't find a way to continue it in a way that could maintain the standard of the first two chapters until I'm roughly 50 days behind schedule.

In any case, don't be afraid to tell me if the story has any flaws. It'll only help me to improve in the areas that I lack.

I'm rambling on here, so I guess I'll stop by saying thanks for sticking along so far!

4 - Grimoire

Living with an invisible countdown timer looming over her shoulders didn’t exactly give Radiant the luxury of time to mess around with her life. So instead of wasting her time chasing colts and worrying about what her special talent was supposed to be, she spent the majority of her fillyhood studying.

Not just anything though; Equestria had just landed a mare on the moon, and the field of astrology was starting to flourish as a result, so that was the field she delved into. Being able to discover without having to leave the comforts of home appealed to her, and the best part of that particular decision was that she was good at it. Good enough that Startrotter offered her a position after her internship, with no strings attached whatsoever.

The rest of her life was a blur until the moment that she volunteered to be crammed inside of that pod, so for somepony who had been living on a carefully planned schedule for the better part of her life, being suddenly faced with nothing to do was like having to bear with an insatiable itch at the back of her mind.

Or to put it more simply, Radiant was bored. She had tried spending the first few weeks on Earth keeping herself busy by getting used to her new body and the needs that came along with it.

That didn’t keep her occupied for too long. It might have been a byproduct of whatever magic the humans used, but getting used to the concept of hands took considerably less time than she had expected. There wasn’t any magical “aha!” moment like when somepony got their cutie mark -the pieces of the puzzle just clicked together in her brain one day, and she was feeding herself like a normal pony. No, person.

The use of her legs took longer, but even balancing turned out to be less daunting than she had expected. Both legs on the ground, stand up, and let your body do the work. All that remained was making sure she got enough exercise so that her new leg muscles got used to the load.

And now, she was rotting away in this room doing nothing else. For all the differences between Earth and Equestria she had seen so far, the architects on both worlds seemed to have shared the goal of designing hospital wards to be as inoffensive as possible.

If anything, it would seem that the humans on Earth took to even greater pains than the designers back home. The adult wards might have been bland, but the humans had somehow managed to take things one step further and make the room look more spartan than anything she had ever seen.

To call her room lacking in decor was an understatement. There were no cheery recovery posters or artwork found in the wards back home plastered over the muted yellow walls. In fact, the only thing that could pass for decor in her room was the Astronomical Research Agency’s logo painted on the wall.

The picture her hosts chose to represent themselves seemed comically oversized, with its bold streaks of white and blue making the wall seem meek in comparison. It wasn’t until Radiant lamented about the lack of things to do that they finally got some unlucky person to haul in the few pieces of tired looking furniture that now populated her room.

So maybe she had exaggerated her situation by a little. She wasn’t exactly left to rot in this room by herself, since a few days after she finally managed to eat without the help of a nurse, Radiant was formally introduced to the liaison team.

Radiant wasn’t exactly surprised when she found Moriah to be part of that team. It was a welcome change of pace from having pads and needles stuck in her every single day, even if the majority of her “work” consisted of reading random pages of books from the Trailblazer’s library, and explaining how Equish worked. It was dull work, but they let her keep the books to read.

She needed a distraction. Burying herself in her work wasn’t an option, not with how her meaty hands tore apart the paper pad the liaison team had provided to shreds whenever she tried to get a fresh sheet.

It had come in a little bag that included an enchanted quill that looked nothing like anything Radiant had used before. The instrument itself was an unassuming yellow rod, made of the same plastic material that was nearly everywhere in her room. Pushing the button on the back of it to summon the nib made a rather satisfying click sound, and it somehow never ran out of ink despite the pages upon pages of illegible squiggles that Radiant had churned out so far.

Never having to fumble for the ink pot would have made her work way easier, were it not for the fact that all she could do was draw pathetic looking circles no matter how hard she tried. Radiant would have recorded her notes into audio diaries instead, but as advanced as human magic was, nopony seemed to know what a recording crystal was since everybody that she had asked was either completely clueless about what magic was, or asked if she had read about someone named Harry Potter.

She didn’t know who that was, but he must have been a very powerful mage from the sounds of it.

Her usual session with Moriah was scheduled for after lunch today - they were usually private affairs for her to get whatever issues off her chest, so Radiant was surprised to see that she was accompanied by another human this time. A male, if the scraggly beard on his face was an accurate indicator. She sat up straighter, letting her legs dangle from the edge of the bed as she tried to put a name to his face before giving up altogether.

Interesting. Radiant frowned, pulling up the sleeves of her cotton shirt into something more presentable as she examined the guest. Being out of that stupid, itchy hospital gown had certainly made her feel better, even if her clothes grabbed at all the wrong spots on her body. “Good aftern-”

“Yes, hello, Radiant Dawn. Moriah already told me who you are." The human gestured, fiddling with the frameless glasses on his face. "I’m Crawford. Well, technically, that’s Mr Jonathan Crawford to you, but you can call me by whatever you like. Even dude, since I know this whole human thing is still relatively new to you.” He said, not giving her a chance to butt in.

“I’m not really here on behalf of anything official, but Moriah here told me the other day that you were looking for a way to take down notes for your work, yes?” He asked, holding up a and shaking a white box in the air like a parent presenting their foal with a birthday gift.

She nodded slowly, giving the box a cursory glance. It was plain, save for a wall of squiggles and symbols that were printed on the sides. "And I assume that whatever is in the box is supposed to help me with that?"

The human licked his lips, eagerly nudging the bedside table over with a foot. “Of course! Even if you didn't need it, I think it’s time we introduced you to this!” Crawford plonked the box onto the flimsy surface, making the table rattle angrily in response. “This baby here will solve all your problems, even those that you never knew you had. Never will you run out of paper when taking notes again, or miss out on another episode of the latest brain rot that normal people indulge in.”

Radiant blinked. Nothing Crawford said made any sense, and even stranger was Moriah taking a backseat in how things went today. Her closest confidant was slouched in one of the roller chairs, a bemused look on her face. Radiant turned her attention back to Crawford as he slid the top out of the way, revealing a glossy black object nested in the confines within.

“And here it is. Only the best on the market right now, with a few extras that ASTRA had installed just for you. Why don’t you give it a try?” The human suggested, offering the thing to Radiant.

Radiant looked at the object clasped between his finger and thumb with skepticism - declining it would have probably been seen as rude, and it felt impossibly smooth and heavy in her grip.

“Soo… what is this thing?” She frowned, staring into the featureless, unnatural blackness, suddenly very aware of her heart beating against her chest. “Some kind of magical relic?”

Crawford scrunched at the suggestion. “What? No!” The human groaned, burying his face into his hands. “It’s a Dataslate! Not some magic thing!”

He exhaled dramatically, pushing his frameless spectacles higher up his nose with a finger. “Think of it as a computer. You have those right? Only smaller and sturdier. You need to power it up first though.” He taped a finger at the knurled button on the edges.

Radiant raised an eyebrow. “A computer? Really?” She pressed down on the protrusion, sending it home with a soft click.

Nothing. There was no flash of arcane light, or the eldritch howling of some spirit.

“Is that it?” Radiant cocked her head in the same way the humans did whenever they were confused by something. Not that she was actually disappointed. Radiant knew how a computer looked like - Startrotter had a comparatively compact array for number crunching, and even that required its own dedicated room. There was no way on Equestria that they could have crammed a computer of all things into something that could sit in her hands.

Ding!

Radiant almost dropped it as the tablet squirmed angrily in her hands, disbelief giving way to confusion as the inky darkness of the thing melted away into a brilliant white. It faded away, replaced by a single, spinning circle. She stared numbly at the device, not believing for a second at what she was seeing in her hands. “A-A screen? How’d you get it to fit into… this?!”

It simply wasn’t possible. Televisions back home were the size of bookcases, here she was, looking at one encased in an impossibly thin device sitting in her hands.

“Science, my dear!” Crawford beamed. “Think of it as a gift from the Astronomical Research Branch. It took Rosetta forever to translate the GUI from English to Equish. I suspect she was putting it off to get back at me for messing with her precious processors the other day, but she’s pretty confident that there shouldn’t be any errors with her handiwork.“

The circle had vanished, replaced by pictures with captions that made no sense to Radiant even though they were in Equish. Spells, Files, System and Inter-net? What’s an Inter-net? She flipped the tablet to the back, expecting to be greeted with the familiar glow of runes. Instead, there was nothing but smooth, unbroken glass.

“Wait. It says here that there's spells?” Radiant Dawn blinked. “This thing can cast spells?”

“Well, that’s one way to put it. They’re technically applications, but I’m sure Moriah would be more than happy to explain to you the technicalities during your private girl hours later.” Crawford shrugged, flicking his eyes to Moriah. “Point is, we’ve managed to upload the entire library you had on your ship into the reader, so you won’t have to lug an entire bookshelf around with you. And if that bores you, there’s also the global book depository. Rosetta should be able to translate most of the text on the fly, so you won’t have to worry about them being written in alien. Any questions?”

Radiant blinked. The entire Trailblazer archives? First, transformation magic, and now this? What else can they do? Whatever they were able to do was centuries ahead of anything that ponykind could even hope to achieve, and they didn’t even bat an eye at the power they had.

She had to know how it worked. “Just what kind of magic is this, exactly?”

“Miss Radiant, what you’re seeing is not magic!” Crawford laughed, bending over as if what she said was one big joke.

“It’s nothing but science and logic! Frankly, I’m surprised that your world hasn’t discovered semiconductors yet. I couldn’t believe what Rosetta sent me when I first read it, but it seems like the AI was serious after all! I guess it’s a miracle that your people even managed to get that ship thing working in the first place, with magic no less.”

“What do you mean with magic no less? The Trailblazer was the result of years of research!” Radiant frowned, folding her arms across her chest. She didn’t know why she did that, but the gesture felt right.

“Crawford, please. Rosetta had specifically crafted that document just for you. ” Moriah groaned, straightening up from her spot against the mural. “Is it that hard to believe that Radiant’s world works differently from ours? Did you even read what they could do with that magic of theirs? Here’s one: organic computing. Maybe you should actually start reading and stop blabbering all the time.”

“Well, in that case, you better start giving her a crash course on how our world works, because the last thing you’d want is her running back here screaming about dark magic or whatever when you finally decide to stop keeping her locked away from the real world.” Crawford snorted. "I mean, I don't think she's going to be all 'Moriah, I don't wanna go' like the last one anytime soon."

"Shut your mouth! The only reason I allowed you to come is because that you wanted to give her the, and I quote, ‘proper introduction to technology’, and nothing else!" The temperature in the room seemed to turn chilly as her friend stormed over to Crawford, towering over the human male. "When Radiant should know about that, is up to me, and me alone. Do you understand?!" Moriah growled.

Seeing her friend this angry made Radiant's heart drop in her chest. She gulped, inching herself further away from the duo.

“Psh. So what if my tongue slipped? But I, Jonathan Crawford, am but humble and willing to repent, so I shall take it upon myself to stick to the schedule.” Crawford bowed, shrugging off the woman's glare. He turned to Radiant, practically beaming as he took over the now vacant roller chair.

“So, Miss Radiant, how about I show you that audio recorder you’ve been requesting for so long, before I formally introduce you to how our world works?”