Chapters The Tower on its Side, II
Grey.
Grey bodies.
Grey bodies evacuating the rainbow-hued. Drones leading the swarm, barked commands, gentle reassurances. Directionless horde, disorganised, animal , bereft.
She can afford to think, lying there, trampled by the hooves of her peers. The noise will be too much for them to hear.
Too many moons; too many suns. Too much lost in great and final moments: imagination, aspiration. The great players gone from the stage; the Many swept up in the loving embrace of their celestial wings. The Few left behind, broken world, ragged, aimless.
Lost among the flock, lost to the timeless abyss of mere subsistence. No fire to their eyes, no spirit to their souls—tamed, unburdened, directionless. And thus did the Changelings sweep them up into the city, pitying, needful, and her alongside them.
And there, in the midst of it, she. Starlight. Even the name is a relic of things once known and long-forgotten, component mysteries spiralling into the ineluctable who . Star , a thing of light; Light, a thing of stars. A paradox, and she hates it almost as much as she does herself for clinging to it, even as she floats along in Grey.
And now she is here, and the herd is dispersing, evacuating, and she cannot think anymore. A chitinous hoof is running over her coat, checking for damage, checking for blood or bruise or break; an injured beast cannot bear its burden.
She mewls, animal, wounded—let the pain surge back forward, repressed. Hoof moves to gently stroke and pet the tangled mane, as horn takes over the study. Wordless reassurance—kindness, but for the practised stiffness that betrays it.
No breaks. No blood. A little battered, but nothing a dash of magical anodyne won’t cure. Horn moves with rote tenderness, weaving healing magics as she lies there, consciously a-whimper. Thirty seconds of blissful analgesic, then a firm slap on the rump to get her moving again, and she does as ordered.
The street below is milling with bodies, Equine and Changeling alike. Smoke belches from somewhere anticlockwise on the wheel, two or three districts up, and beyond that . . .
Light?
Soft and gentle light, filtering in from above and below and all around, a corona of radiant whiteness silhouetting the ramshackle buildings between. Burning light, where it dances on the edges of the Wall, the Tower, the Fog. Beautiful light, casting a brilliant patina over the rainbow-hued fur and manes it touches.
But there is no rapture; no joy. Blindness where the light touches eye; panic where it’s seen on coat or mane, nervous shuffling to avoid it, as the Changelings usher them toward their homes, their warrens, their safety. There has been no light to speak of, since the sun guttered and the moon crumbled, since the fog moved in and the stars were, at last, obscured. They do not know better, and they cannot hope to understand.
She should be going with them. She knows better, knows this cannot but signal Change. She lets herself be herded for a few blocks, eyes glazed and downcast, mind awhirl. The three-score throng around her, fussy and bemused, make good cover for her thoughts. A fallen Star? A Light uncovered in the mines?
What would they think? What could they know? They’d mull and mill and mutter amongst themselves, and then call for the Tower, and her chance would be gone. Have to leave now if she wants one at all; she alone who knows her name, knows her birthright.
The crush of bodies will aid in her escape, and braying panic cover the glimmer of fire in her eyes.
The streets are the fullest she’s ever seen them: chattering crowds and chittering chitin, thronging and milling and washing like a tide. So many words for so simple an ill: a rout, clothed in orderly march. She slips through like a ghost, behind, beside, under a cart or through a panic-stiff set of legs, never touching, never brushing coats, never giving herself away.
It’s an art she’s learned alongside the others, to be without being, to hold her hoof to the cracked bathroom glass without letting the other pony know she’s there. Weave and arch, the slow dance of eschewal, as she makes her way Wallward along the snaking transit corridor.
More than anything, it gives her a chance to observe. A pretty, blank-eyed colt here, only half pretending; an old and weathered mare there, the coldscorch edges of a burned-out Mark peeking from the fringes of a tattered cloak. And there, a stallion she knows—a stallion she’s tasted—pushing his head up under the chin of a Changeling for comfort. She can see the desperation in his eyes, hear the gentle reassurances as the Changeling (she? it?) grooms his mane and whispers reassurances. The leash in her field is as no object, as she gently leads him away (there we are; you’ll be safe now; let’s get you home to your family), and he offers no resistance as he is guided away. That look of trust . . .
Emotion roils within her at the sight of it—revulsion, and some other, more visceral thing, and she’s forced to duck down behind a burly Pegasus as a half-dozen insectile heads snap in her direction. Staying low, she darts right and then down a blind alley, slipping between boxes for a hole in the fence she knows to be there.
How can her people (hers?) have been brought so low? Was it really as simple as choosing to be left behind? She needs no convincing that blanket denial—blanket renunciation—carries a heavy price, but can this really have been the only answer? The only punishment great enough?
Do any of them deserve this? Does she?
. . . does she want to?
The Wall and the fading light offer no answers, only a vague promise of directionality. There are echoes of ‘compass’ and ‘direction’ in her mind, but the Wall and the Tower are her only lodestones; all else is tortured metal and hivewax, girders and goo amidst the gloom. She darts, furtive, from shadow to shadow, pausing at the shriek of bending frames, twisting far above and overhead.
She is alone, or so she thinks. The streets are empty now, and the Changelings doing most of the herding; she has not been pursued. Even the automatic cable-cars are still, swinging and clanking in place on their thin razor-wires—had the water-wheels stopped? or had they been a casualty of the silent Light?
She cannot stop to wonder, when answers lie so close at hoof. She skirts through an abandoned dwelling—a spawning pool—and she’s obliged to watch her steps. Translucent eggshells among the untended rubble, birthing bile sticky underhoof, but nothing like a form—empty nest, and an old one, and pre-Ordination, at that. She scuffs her hooves on the concrete once she’s out; it takes full submersion, she knows, but there’s no sense in risking anything now.
The pulse of the light is growing, now, at the edges of her vision. Reverse-unconsciousness; not wakeful, not soothing, but there , in the manner and opposite of those narrow rims of exhaustion encircling a tired mare’s sight. White with hints of rainbow hues, and some nameless, abstract sound to accompany it, more a sense than anything, like voices raised in . . . word? Full-throated, jubilant, but neither the rutting-howl nor the jubilant squeals and yelps of children at play.
She frowns, coming to rest behind a short mound of brick and shattered mortar, scanning for opposition. She should know this word; for all the others she’s had and called to mind today alone, why should this one escape her, when it does more to rise and fill her than even the most stately-elegant conceit.
And it does fill her—warmth and comfort and—and feeding that strange and alien hunger she’s yearned to have met; more than companionship, more than the occasional pleasantry of sex, but . . . word , again. Something less than love, something more than desire, curling her hooves, spurring her onward.
Bizarre and growing and there, it lingers in her breast, joyful, earnest, tugging , and she runs.
Is the tower on its side, she wonders idly as the world around her churns to life, or is she?
Nothing has ever seemed to fit when she tries to set it in its place; something slides or slips or rips or tears, and then she is left with her endless questions again. Square pegs in round holes, but the holes are the world and the pegs are people and buildings and ideas and the days spin by too fast for her to get a look at the holes, feel them, taste them.
She has far too many ideas, and far too much to do to do anything with them. And, of course, for as many as she has, the world has a thousand-score more than she, and it always seems to win.
She lies there, as many do, as many must, as her alarm screams into a room smelling of dust and neglect. The grey haze outside is the same as it always is, anymore; sunless, starless, tideless, faintly chill. Empty skies overlook the city, third of three, middle of the row, tenth block, District East, and still—
There is a muffled scream at her from the other side of the dividing wall, and she finally moves to silence the shrieking clock. Magic suffices, though she knows she’ll regret the expense later; only so much left in a lifetime. Silence rings hollow through the room, then, and though she knows it’s Time, she cannot bring herself to stir. The rumbling of automation grinds to life below, the stirring of angry hoofsteps above, around. And here, she, little pool of nothing in the vast expanse of less.
The world is strange when seen on its side. The sliver of unlight burns through the gap in the curtains, and beyond it the Tower, liminal, reaching skyward with its many prongs and edges, unnaturally straight, but irregular, naturally. She knows that if she looked down, could see the ramshackle cable-cars tethering lives by thin spools of wire to various vocations, abject abodes: walls of the Tower, the towering Walls, the infinity of concrete and sheet metal that stretches Between.
Warren-haven-hive, and no way to separate them. Maybe the Changelings had a word in mind as they went about constructing the place, but if they did, she doesn’t know it, nor particularly care. It’s just the City. Same as it ever was, and as it always will be.
There’s drool on the pillow when she finally moves her head.
ugh.
She stretches, tilting her head first one way, then the other. Crackle-snap. The tower swings, pendulously, with the motion: zero-point, geostationary, geocentric.
Words from a bygone age, filtering into her consciousness the same way the others do: accidental, unlearned—unearned? stolen? Or is that just how she feels whenever she manages to find a book that no-one else has stolen from her yet, plumbs the depths within? Can’t speak of reading, of course, they’d Put Her to Work, and nobody really wants that, anymore. Aspiration to obligation to resignation. Only safe to give it voice—pay it mind?—in the slums she knows they won’t be checking.
She readies, leaves. The faucet vomits some particularly brackish water near the end of her sluice, so she throws on another ragged coat to hide the salty sea-smell best she can. Old earth, she knows; clay, somewhere beneath the concrete and corrugate and time. Camouflage enough, wretched as it may be.
The City is as she left it last night, rough-edged in the dim twilight of the eternities. The streets are narrow, the metal ribs of scraping carcasses groan and twist above. She scuffs along, her pale coat all the paler in the grey light of post-dawn pre-dusk fog. Cool, but not as cold as the fog tells her it should be.
Stale, like everything it touches.
It’s the same City, the same Tower, the same endless expanse of grey beyond the Wall, the same tattered rows of bodies moving, back and forth, back and forth. But was she a different pony last night? Can the City ever be the same if we never see it through the same pair of eyes?
She’s awake enough now to start the slow process of turning herself off for the day. Have to. The Changelings would know, they can sense it, she’s sure. Know and act , in whatever mindless capacity their undirected orderly minds deemed best. Safer—beasts of the field, after all, get more than enough grass for their trouble.
The crack-worn pavement, uneven beneath her hooves, blurs just slightly as her eyes slide out of focus. Stumble just enough, come just close enough to a collision, here and there—eyes on the ground, always. No-one looks up —no-one with any sense, anyway. Mistake you for a dreamer, and then where would you be? Layers of obfuscation; time enough for small thoughts before the day begins.
Assuming, of course, that most have the sense to think that far ahead, as she does. She knows she’s special, felt the creep of pride in outmanoeuvring her fellow mare—in the breadline, in the flophouse, in seeking mates on those rare nights the loneliness aches too loudly. On the better days, she could almost make a game of it, the grim pleasure of knowing her mind, even if she’d never use it.
Almost collides with a ragged stallion—half-scraggle, head-down. Half-glimpsed, he sticks in her mind, neither comfort nor pity; just an object in motion. Random trajectories, futures blank as eyes, blank as his flank; another reminder of all things lost. So much they could have had, before they choose the low road—punishment or disdain, with impatience or with fear. They stayed behind, they built themselves their little reefs, they bred and they bred, and somewhere along the line, the spark of Equinity was lost.
Shallow shoals for hollow souls, and echoes cry like mountains, like . . .
She’s there. The squat building at its base where the filing is done; daily bread for daily labour. Too close to risk it anymore, and so she blanks again. No need to think beyond pattern-recognition; A equals A, even here, even now. Don’t need to know what it’s for, who it’s for, why they care; no saving what’s this far gone. Shelve, restock, go blank enough to make the occasional mistake, never perfect, never timely, never just right. Like the crackling fluorescent overhead, just enough to be enough.
The Changelings look on, glassy-eyed, restive, from their posts. Guardians they, and guards. What else could they be, now the world has gone to grey? Needing an answer, needing something beyond the base hungers that drive them. Build the City for their Queen, an answer to the Northern Gem, a crag, a spire, a mockery to fit the heart that drove it.
birthright.
A head turns her way, compound eyes searching, searching, and she lets herself fall into blank. Slack the jaw, dull the eye as she stares at the ancient parchment-scrap in her hand. A equals . . . ?
Can’t slip up. Focus only on the drift, play the natural act; brain blank and smooth and safe from prying minds. Egg-round, slack comfort, hard-won; she can live like this forever, provided she has the Time.
Nothing to sparkle when the diamond’s buried deep; nothing to shimmer when the gossamer’s layered with dust. No glimmer to those teal eyes, no matter how much they should remind her of the stars she knows she should remember.
better this way.
happier this way.
Another mare could’ve done it easily, if she had more distractions, less of a brain to work with. The metaphoric ice-pick. But until she can break herself down enough to smile, vapid, earnest . . .
is the tower on its side, or is she?
And it is as this thought eases its way through her grey-balm mind that the explosion rocks the little building. A brilliant flare, a silent boom, echoing and long and shattering. Shatter-glass, shriek-metal, whipping, burning cable-car-cables writhe and twist like phantom limbs. Ponies clamour, Changelings chatter, and the hive-stucco ceiling comes tumbling down, down, down.
And it takes her a moment, in that moment of blissful emptiness, to realise that the light fixture is swinging free, swinging at her head. And even as it cracks her across the head, even as her jellied legs throw the world on its side, she can almost think she’s dreaming again.
The beach is empty but for them, and the quiet is complete.
The weary sun hangs low in the orange sky, a-shimmer in its own unearthly radiance—pierce-white hole burning itself into the celestial tapestry—casting the empty resort in tawny shades of autumn. The cliff around them stretches on for miles: below, the varnished-amber cove; around, untamed upland crags. The breeze, salt-heavy, carrying the taste of foreign shores, flits and dips above the roar of the tide, soft-warm, a lover’s kiss.
Fitting, then, that the lovers sit there upon their lone and lonely bench—O bleach-wood throne!—tucked together in solidarity against the waning sun. So quiet she could hear herself think; so calm he could finally let down his guard. Head finds the comfortable nook between shoulder and chin, rests against breast, against softly-beating heart. Muzzle brushes mane, tender and reflexive.
Is it the End of the World? The sea stretches on far enough that it surely must be.
Is it the End of the World? The resort lies so still that it surely must be.
They’d say the words if it wouldn’t break the spell; these are familiar paths, known and trod, and it would take but a look to know, to smile, to laugh at that damnable twinnery. But perhaps the greater surety is knowing they need not need to be sure; that they can sit here and bask in the warmth of tired sun, float along the eddies of gentle breeze, and simply let it be .
For there’s joy in a moment, even if it comes with the promise of things to follow; there’s comfort in silence, even if the noisome noise of life will find its way back in in time. This one problem could wait to be fixed; this one fraction of the world could indulge them the moment before needing to be saved.
They could wonder and worry at the empty beach below, which earlier in the day had rung with the shouts and laughs of dozens; they could worry about having to break in on the kitchen to feed themselves, or wander into town to raid the corner market for supplies.
They could frolic like yearlings again, running and laughing and dancing together among the waves and sand and marble arches, indulging those bright-eyed childhood passions each of us silently agrees to forget for fear of judgment when we come of age.
They could fall into that familiar embrace of theirs, gaze meeting smouldering gaze, grin meeting oh-so-playful grin, as lights fade and all else is, for a blissful moment, forgotten—lost in the wheel of the stars and the wash of the tide.
And yet, what greater joy could there be than that they had here, together, in this tender moment of silence they’d somehow bought themselves? What more could they ask than to feel the warmth of the other under the warmth of the sun, feel the tender nearness in the kiss of the breeze? He relaxed, and she heard; she breathed, and he felt; their hearts beat slow and together they savoured the surety.
And as the sun continued along its final arc, and the breeze began its faint and gradual turn to chill, they nestled together in the warmth they’d made for themselves and dreamed. Not the noblest dream, nor the finest, nor even the first of its kind. But it was theirs, and in that eternal sunset of immaculate sand and cleansing tide, it could, for once, be enough.
Time enough for laughter yet; time enough for tears. Time enough for all the things that you and I could fear. For now the world is ours alone, and all the eye can see. But all I really need, I think, is that you be here with me.
Author's Note
For River.
Author's Note
I'm told we never stop.
Coming of Age
A burning ochre sort of day, Wind sets dead branches all a-sway: Not so grey as the stories say, But funery in its own way.
Of course it's never as simple as just being right—there are always hurt feelings, always some pain to a parting. That's only natural, isn't it?
He'd asked her to come with him, and many wistful sighs they’d shared, but when the chips came down—she wouldn’t. Couldn’t, she’d said: couldn't leave her mother, her little sisters—the same sisters she bitched about every spare moment in the stockroom, of course. What was it that trapped her there, and why couldn’t she see?
She'd begged him to stay, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t , he’d shouted, as traffic flowed uncaringly around them. Wouldn't go home to his parents' disappointed looks again, trying to figure out what expectations he'd been expected to figure out that day. He had a life to live, and if she didn’t want to be part of it, well . . .
Anywhere but here , he thinks to himself as the conductor stamps his little book of tickets. Next stop Hoofwich, and from there, a chance to redefine—reimagine. The guitar bumps against his heel as he boards the train, finds a seat on the far side of the carriage, where he can watch the long sunset along the prairie.
Maybe he hears a shout from the platform; maybe he can hear her calling out through her tears. It’d only be natural.
And maybe even how it should be.
There's a soft bump as the balloon slips its moorings. She pumps the rickety bellows, pilot after the light, watching the flame swell before her sight. Routine now, save for the excitement—her first time alone, with Da's love an’ blessing. She waves to him in the field below, blue among the sunflowers. She can see him smile, see the reflected shine from his cheeks. It had to be hard, after Ma, but he'd relented, and here she was.
Soaring over the fields, over the town, she felt the familiar excitement building in a way it hadn’t . . . well, since the last time she’d been up here, really. A spread blue view above, a sprawling wild green below; buildings and mountains, fog and farm-furrows: a world all her own, and not a single ruttin’ Pegasus in her one-Unicorn town to try and take it away from her. Ha!
She trims the flame a little, levelling off just over the treeline—mighty tall trees in these mountains, but who’s countin’?—and does that little trick of Ma’s to taste the breeze, guiding the rudder with her free hoof. Find the right spot, and she could sit here up here all day, just watchin’ the twin horizons ebb and flow with the edge of the basket. She’d promised to take it up for just a quarter-hour this time, but what was he going to do, ground her?
She snickers a bit at the delightfully subversive little thought. Even as she knows she’s never going to take herself up on it—it would break his poor heart, and send him sick with worry—there’s a certain liberation in even imagined rebellion. Maybe twenty minutes.
And if he worried? Well, she’d gotten stuck over a tree and wanted to make sure she came down safely. She grins (evilly, she thinks), and flops onto the makeshift couch aft of the burner with her journal to wile away the afternoon.
Or just a minute more.
He feels his cheeks burning as the crowd pushes them closer together, wings oh-so-slowly on the rise. They’d been friends for who knows how long—the Pegasus and the Griffon; always a pair, they said. Always working on their flying, always the first on the school field when someone suggested a game. That seems to be the general tone of the crowd at the moment—an excitable subsonic rumble, with the occasional encouraging (?!) whoop thrown in.
It’s flattering, really, and it means a lot they care, but . . .he’d never really thought they . . . well, that they had a chance. Or that he did. Words. Hard. Especially now he was being stared down by literally everyone in their year.
A thousand little things raced through his mind. Would his parents freak? Griffons weren’t exactly known for their open-mindedness, and he was a frickin’ Pegasus, for pity’s sake—they’d been at war. The whole—animosity thing, and, like . . . he knew his parents would be fine, but . . .
Goddamn, was he pretty.
That little asymmetric coif of feathers, in that super-cute boy-band manestyle? Guh. And those eyes . . . Man, he looks just as confused as anyone, a little bead of sweat running down that perfect beak. He doesn’t know his best friend had set this all up, thinks it was another game.
At his expense? No—hells, no. He had to work up to it—say something before this got out of control, before the expectancy around them broke and someone said it for him. The words tumble out, half-formed, mostly remembered.
‘Hey, um—Baldr? I know this might seem like it’s comin’ outta nowhere, so I get if you want us to just stay friends and all . . .’ Oh, jeez, that look. How did he pull off the puppy-dog so friggin’ well? Had he ever seen a puppy? ‘Well, uh . . .’
Words were failing him. Jeez, dude! C’mon. You had this down last night. All the right words.
‘I don’t—I don’t want to jeopardise what we got, bro—I love you.’ Oh frick. ‘I just . . . I kinda want it to be more? Like—’
He doesn’t even get to finish his sentence. Baldr’s on him like white on rice (who came up with that expression, anyway? Why was it the first one in his head?), holding him, his head turning, leaning in . . .
Their muzzles meet—fumble a little, around unfamiliar anatomy. Then lips met beak, and—
Holy fricking tongue?!?!
He absolutely melts in those arms, and it’s all he can do to stay on his hooves as he presses in close. They kiss , and it’s like he’s walking on air. Moreso than usual, even—like he could sail on moonbeams, or let himself be danced around stars. Only heightened when Baldr pulled back to look him in the eye and whisper that one little word he’d been waiting for and dreading.
The excitable whoops the crowd loosed on seeing the kiss erupt into a storm of cheers and well-wishes. Much good-natured catcalling and back-slapping had by all. Maybe too much. Ow.
Then Baldr leaned in for another kiss and everything outside the two of them cuts off like a badly-tuned radio.
Sweet Celestia, how had it ever taken him this long to ask?
It’s only natural he’d slip eventually.
Mud’s thick, and neither the rain nor the foremare's agitated barks are doing anything to help. Even ten stallions in a froth can only move so much at a go, and that moon-burned wagon is overloaded to hell and back. Whose bright idea was it to downsize from six teams to four on a worksite this size, anyway? Each of them push and grunt against the slushy ground; against the taut, biting straps of the work harness. Any other day, any other work-site, they’d be joking at the sexualness of it, but right now it’s all they can do to save their breath.
He knows it’s coming—knows it has been for a long-ass time; the sharpness when he bends down, the bluntness when he rolls over at night. The boys had told him it was normal, all part of the job, that everyone went through it at some point. He could always try his luck elsewhere, but in a town like this, with a skillset like his . . . ?
And besides, didn’t he need the money?
Rent wasn’t getting any cheaper, so he’d drowned his anxiety and his painkillers with a pint that night—every night since—and gone back in the next morning with a smile on his face.
And when, this afternoon, he felt the first long-ignored something shift in his back on the seventh or eighth heave, he’d swallowed whatever noise he might’ve made and pressed on ahead.
The second time—now—he screams : his legs jelly beneath him, his whole spine on fire. The wagon slips, and the whole team grinds to a halt as he falls into the mud. The foremare whips around, murder and insurance premiums in her eyes, and the boys around him just stare and stare and stare.
And of course it’s only natural, he realises later, in a moment of hospital-bed opiate clarity. Too much left for them to lose.
When Da died, blessedly, the worst of the debts died with him; only so much they could try to claim, and she swore to the magistrate she’d be takin’ his sorry butt to court if he tried to press on with the subparagraph whoosit that was leanin’ on the house or whatever. She was sixteen and as Celestia was her witness—signed and notarised—she knew her rights.
But there are some things even those protections didn’t extend to, and she knows it—knows it’s fair, too. Debt from crop failure or a bad hand of cards was one thing; twenty years’ worth of back-payments on a tractor? Luna’s beard, Da. Heck, she knew Old Man Sorghum like he was her own grandpa, and it’d been damned kind of him to forestall that long, no matter how Nightmare-fearing he might have been, or how good a friend of Da’s.
And in the end, when the accounts were emptied and the heirlooms pawned, it came down to two last bits of collateral, old and cheap and ratty as they were: the house, and the balloon. It shouldn’t have been as hard as it was, nor come as close to tears, but the taxmare had said it best: with Discord burning the Heartland for a fortnight now, even if they managed to get him back in that statue, well . . .
Well, it’d be hard for anyone to find a house without chickens for doorknobs, or stale mooncake for plumbing. Doubly so some girl from the North without a penny to her name.
Deliberate or not (though she had her suspicions), that had struck home. And, predictably, she’d shouted and stamped and puffed out her chest, and they’d been politely unimpressed, and in the end she’d sat herself down in the sparse little kitchen and cried herself into a corner.
She briefly fancied just locking up the house, and—and just going. There were so many places left to see, left for even the Ministry of Surveyors to explore, Daring Do . . . She could take the balloon and never come down again, except maybe to bathe, or trade.
The empty house sighed noiselessly about her, settling in the summer sun.
She could buy another balloon.
The old goat was coming to pick it up now—some out-of-towner from Celestia-knew-where—and here she was out in front, neat little sundress and a neat little hat, practising primness. She kept forgetting to take her hoof off the neat little package beside her on the unkempt lawn. Her stiff legs ached.
And her eyes flew up, and there he was, coming down the walk, all smiles, and her hoof flew to the neat little knot again.
Just a minute more. Please.
They’d bickered about the nursery. Pink or blue? Adventurous green? Or something more neutral, like mauve? Was there even any point in it, when they didn’t know what the child would be yet. That wasn’t part of the surrogacy programme at this stage, unfortunately—the mother carried it to term, and until then it was still technically her choice as to doctors’ visits and such.
But they’d bought the paint anyway—whole cans of it that they’d had to lug back, as well—and said they’d figure it out with a little testing in the room itself. But that was the sticking point, as it turned out; curtains and kitchenettes and bedspreads they could handle, but as Cadence blessed them both they could not agree on the baby.
And it had escalated, and there had been acrimony, and recrimination, and name-calling, and now his boy had stormed out for a (long , he’d shouted) drink and here he was in the cute coveralls he’d picked out for today, and the paint had gotten under the tarp, and everything just sucked.
He could’ve sat there, and he could’ve cried, and he could’ve finished the argument in his head. But gods-damn him if he didn’t get up on his four hooves, burst through that front door, and chase down his hard-headed husband before this could fester.
He caught him from behind, burying his face in feathers, felt those tense shoulders drop . It was the best thing all day—weeks, maybe. Work had been hard, words harder. He said something to that effect, muffle-fluff, into the back of Baldr’s neck, and the Griffon laughed. He hadn’t heard it that rich in a good long while.
They walked back, and he placed his head firmly in the crook of Baldr’s shoulder, just like they used to on the walks home from school. It was silly, and they giggled when they reached the house—he almost said something about inviting him inside, but . . . no. No, it was time for seriousness.
And seriousness they had. They sat, and they talked, and they bitched, and they worried, and they spilled every bean from here to Ponyville. Baldr was worried about being a good father—not pushing the kid in any one direction, letting it figure itself out for itself. The paint was part of that, apparently; some kinda Griffon tradition he’d never bothered talking about because he thought it was universal.
He worried about the kid becoming a breaking point, worried that it was going to cause them stress. If they couldn’t handle this, were they ready? The doctor had said they could opt out at any time—other parents, other couples could be found. He didn’t want to bring it up because he didn’t want to be a worrywart—wanted things to work out fine. Because they would, right? Together?
It was dark when they were done, and their stomachs rumbled. They got a good joke out of that—some parents, not even listening to their own needs. Dinner helped, and the talk had too.
And when they went to bed that night, the paint cans resealed and haphazardly piled in a corner with the brushes, he felt . . . better. More confident than he had in weeks. Together .
Commitment. Together. Responsibility. Together. All the scary things the world could summon. Together.
Sweet Celestia, how had it ever taken them this long just to talk?
He wishes the chair rocked.
Autumn’s quiet, with the neighbourhood kids back in school, and he has a little more time than he would otherwise to admire the long orange sunset stretching out over the plain, nicely framed in living pine. Another gentle moment in a long parade of similar, though whether by dint of memory or simple repetition, they still hold something approximating meaning.
Ah, and there they are now, scampering back to their homes, bookbags flapping. One of them notices him, stops to wave. He returns it, mechanically; smiles, by force of habit. It seems to satisfy the little tyke, and off she runs, catching up her expectant peers.
They never really liked him, he got the feeling, but the vaunted title of Town Confectioner won you more friends than you knew what to do with anyway. Chocolate’s a perennial favourite, after all; and the various forms of taffy, liquorice, and rock-suckers besides.
Chocolate’s best for them, he reckons, after many long years of study—all the sugar they could crave, and the barest hint of bitterness to remind them what life would be without it. Not as though he’s got the energy left to be bitter these days, of course. Or overmuch in the way of kind. He just . . . is. And is is most definitely old.
He pops the wheel-locks, and rolls himself back inside. The chair bumps a little on the threshold—of course—and over barewood floors. The door clicks on its automatic lock behind him, and his ear flicks—just a little, recognisant. He bypasses the dining room, heading for the little closet under the disused attic stairs. Dinner can wait, on a night like tonight.
A little cloud of dust rises as he pulls open the door. Surely it can’t have been that long since the last time—surely? The guitar itself seems pristine, at least, and it sounds exactly as he remembers.
The acoustics in the front room are best, and, hey, he can still watch the sunset, even without glasses. Maybe better that way—less likely to burn out what he’s got left if he can’t actually see it, right? It doesn’t take him long to situate himself, to feel the soft rays warming the grey fur of his muzzle again, to breathe in the comfort of four walls.
In the soft light of open-windowed afternoon, a few gentle chords ring out on the breeze, and are just as swiftly lost in the whisper of the evergreens.
And he smiles. In the end, it’s just for him, and that’s exactly as it should be.
Pans and breakfast plates clatter against the old, cast-iron sink as she watches the four of them romp around the yard.
It’s some kind of game he brought with him from down south—some combination of tag, flag-football, and keepaway the kids in his caravan came up with on their way out the Heartland after Discord’s attack on Ponyville and Canterlot. She’d never really gotten the hang of it herself, but watching him bound and frolic out there reminds her of when they were young—she, meagre farmer, careworn; he small, mousey, and earnest.
How she’d convinced him to stay she’d never know; how he’d helped her make that empty house a home again she’d never forget. Kids came after, reluctant though she was. Solitude had its benefits, and she would’ve been just as happy to keep him all to herself—or cut him loose, if the dreams of world travel didn’t suit.
But we all make compromises; she’d learnt that lesson early. Plans were postponed, duties invented, and futures provided for—school for the foals, retirement for themselves; food and a carriage and renovations to the aging house. And it wasn’t as though they weren’t well enough off: between the two of them, they’d never hurt for money again, but that didn’t . . .
She sighs.
Here she is again, hoping for the unreasonable. Even if she got her hooves on one, would she even remember how to pilot it? How to catch a current, make it her own? How to manoeuvre the basket with just her weight and ballast?
It’s a thing of the past, and she—
A sudden change in mid-morning light catches her eye. One of those beautiful puffy-white clouds has moved out from in front of the sun and . . . and before her a shining tableau. Her husband, arching around a two-pronged attempted tackle by the twins, and her youngest, the surprise Pegasus . . .
The pot drops with a clang, and for a moment, the breath catches in her throat. She’s never used those wings before except to flutter in place, and now she’s bounding over the hedge, nearly twice again as high as her father is tall. But that’s not what hits her hardest.
It’s the look of rapture, of joy, as she crests the hedge, her head slightly tilted, as if—as if seeing the world through new eyes.
And in an instant it’s gone, and the three of them have dogpiled their poor father, muted giggles covering up whatever adorable squeaking noise he made when he hit the ground. And she just stands there, as her heart beats faster and faster; as it all floods back. She feels lighter than she has in years.
No more waiting. She leaves the dishes where they lay, and starts pulling down account books. They have the money, and she the plan. No more waiting, and no more hoping for that little extra time.
Today’s the day she starts, and today’s the day she shows them the her they’ve been missing.
Not one minute more.
They’d sat there for a long time as the doctor had explained. He’d known from the start it wasn’t good news, but it isn’t until he notices the tremor running through the hoof holding the clipboard that it really starts to sink in.
There are so many apologies—so many little danger signs they say they should’ve caught. Irregular visits, seemingly clinical fatigue, elevated hormone levels on the rare occasion she did keep an appointment. And when they finally found the body, it had been days, and even then they could smell the poppy on her tongue.
His eyes glaze over.
Haemorrhage . . . died painlessly, at least . . . the child . . .
And there it was, the child. No chance for the little one; of course not. Not after the near-week it had taken the local magistrate to think there might be a problem. Even if it—she—had been born, the brain damage alone . . .
Mortified . . . can’t imagine what you’re going through . . . the state is ready to offer . . .
By the end, he isn’t even listening anymore. Neither of them, he suspects.
The carriage ride is quiet; it hasn’t really sunk in enough for there to be tears, yet. They jump a little, with the bumps, but beyond that . . . it’s just a matter of holding.
It’s dark when they get home, but Baldr met someone from the office on the way home, explained what had happened and that they wouldn’t be likely to be in for a day—maybe more. There had been no objection. Or, well, he supposed. He didn’t seem to be hearing too well around this strange ringing in his ears, so maybe someone had said something and . . .
Words. Just . . . words. And he can’t bother with them anymore, they’re so little use.
It takes awhile, but Baldr joins him in the baby’s—Claria’s—room. The ruddy glow of the flickering gas streetlight outside does nothing to warm them, or the frosty-blue walls with their painted fluffy clouds. The skies are on fire.
He sits, heavily, narrowly missing the unfinished crib, and Baldr joins him. Shoulder to shoulder, they just . . . sit there, for a bit. He doesn’t object when he feels the soft wing-tips crawl around his shoulder, nor the gentle beak grooming his mane. It may not be for his benefit, but what does it matter, really?
No tears, no closeness, no . . . nothing. Right now, all he can think about is the girl, and how it could have taken them so fucking long to notice.
And it may yet be that Tragedy Is ever only a matter of Time: A glacial chase at snail’s pace; The chilling tide of mortal rime.
But in the end I cannot say, With so much Time still left to burn, We should not chase what dreams we have Or rage at scars we’ve yet to earn.
MOSAIC
966.22.07
Nearly eighth moon, and here I am in the Badlands. The desert stretches away for miles—I can hardly see the Grand Palominos through the haze. How far south did the portal drop me? Vendragon? Anorath?
Old names. Going to have to get used to that—really beyond the borders here. I know those maps were based on superstition more than anything else, but if I HC SVNT a single DRACONES . . .
Curiouser and curiouser, as the saying goes. The briefing, that whole ‘noted for your observancy’ business, and now I’m in a desert with the bare-minimum kit and a field notebook with orders to ‘document exhaustively’. I don’t care how well I scored on those damn tests, you don’t send a big obvious bloke like me out on one-mare recon, royal edict or no.
‘Sides, I get the feeling the Princess didn’t do any of that fancy personal selection on this one; Major made it sound like an at-will op, but there was none of that in the paperwork. Someone in brass recommended my ass.
Steely, probably. Prat. I’ll fix him but good once I’m back, leave a couple of those Everfree spiders in his prissy officer’s slippers.
Whatever—still got a mission here and, from the sound of it, not much time to waste. It’s close to midnight, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover before dawn, and may the Nightmare take my sorry hide before I’m caught dead in the sun in the desert in the middle of summer. Ha!
(Note to self: this is official documentation, old horse. Remember to snip out anything you don’t want going before the Princess. You’re used to keeping journals, and they did say comment at discretion, but don’t get too comfy.)
_______________________________________
966.22.07 (2708)
Recon unit deployed without incident. Chronometer calibrated with control. Portal dispelled and signal dampened as per protocol. No contacts anywhere in the immediate vicinity (open desert, scrub, minimal advantageous cover).
Proceeding to indicated waypoint as of ~2700 (+/- one-to-the-Aught), within mission parameters.
966.22.07 (0035)
Contact report. Desert fauna, single, medium build, canid (?). Reacted aggressively to magelight. Dispatched, corpse immolated within mission parameters.
966.23.07 (0219)
Contact report. Desert fauna, 5x, small build, lagomorph. Startled a nest. Dispatched, corpses immolated within mission parameters.
Addendum: Command, I don’t feel great about blasting the wildlife around here, even if we are operating under Changeling Sanction on this one. Requesting objection to be formally noted in mission log.
966.23.07 (0409)
Objective report. Marigold base sighted from overlook ridge, north-northwest edge of the crater. Unclear given atmospherics/lighting (pre-dawn, ground-hugging fog), but no obvious lighting or signs of activity throughout the complex. Turbines on opposite ridge are quiet, but briefing indicated substantial reserve power capacity.
Security ward in effect around the crater; responded to query/response counter-ward consistent with rotating access schedule provided by command. No sentries in evidence, was not questioned on entry through ward. Ward raised upon entry, in compliance with mission parameters.
Deliberate? No obvious indication the base has been compromised—no evidence of defensive posture or blast-scarring consistent with Changeling magic/Griffon zeppelin barrage.
Addendum: If there’s a word for that kind of low-hanging fog, we need to get it into the ops manuals for reporting on stuff like this, stat. Took way too long to write that out longhoof.
Addendum: Confirmed on descent (0443)—no lights on throughout the complex, no active patrols. Continuing descent.
(‘Two-hour hike’—my ass!)
966.23.07 (0515)
Objective Report: Standing at the doors to Marigold base. No response to scheduled sign-countersign as provided by command. Door appears barred from the inside—unclear what mechanism, no apparent use of wards or similar security spells. Barricaded? Possible that the door has been barricaded. No signs of damage or forced entry.
There continue to be no signs of external struggle. Local food supplies, including fields, appear in pristine condition; insulated sheath consistent with turbine cabling detected in routine scan—good repair. Tool-shed and paddock both clear—no beasts (or recent evidence thereof) in the latter.
Did they all just go inside and lock the door behind them?
Continuing search for alternate entrances or evidence the facility has been compromised.
Addendum: Bunker is reasonably secure; no obvious entrances or exits beyond the main door, as the majority of the facility is underground (?), per briefing. Unless something is built into the walls of the crater, or there’s some sort of auxiliary maintenance access that
Ventilation.
Addendum: Access to Marigold achieved by means of ventilation system. As there was no off-switch ready means of deactivating the fans externally, recon team was forced to improvise. MinimalLight Moderate damage to rotary fan resultant from repeated heavy impacts from farming implements and crater-bed sedimentation. Gradually-sloping shaft may serve as adequate escape route in the event that staff require evacuation.
I understand the need for fresh air in a facility like this, but this seems excessive. Recommend data from this operation be used to introduce new security measures in future. Smaller, higher-grade fans? Even distribution around the crater?
Proceeding down shaft, 0603.
Objective Report: Have successfully entered the base by way of maintenance access hatch (junction 4C/II, for those following along on the blueprint) along the central ventilation corridor. Ended up in base technician’s office—empty, pitch-black. Appears power has been cut (?), despite all wiring around the crater—again—appearing to be in pristine shape. Performed all necessary biohazard and toxicity scans before opening the hatch—hermetically sealed, as per the briefing. Everything’s come up clean, but proceeding with the full-face headgear regardless.
Feel like I made a hell of a
Dead silent in here, to go with the pitch-black. Entrance may have been detected; hatch was not well-oiled. Proceeding with an abundance of caution. Will attempt to restore power.
_______________________________________
966.23.07 (0634)
Going to be writing by magic for a bit, as my hooves are busy with the junction-box. Will edit later if need be.
Proceeding by magelight; technician’s office is a mess. Looks like someone went through here with a hatchet—maybe even just teeth and hooves—looking for anything they could tear up. Papers, blueprints, technical manuals, clothing (?), bed, fair few whacks out of the main power coupling . Nothing that can’t be rerouted through the remainder of the wiring.
Denial of information?—too random.
Lot of redundancies in this system, lot of backups—haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else. For benefit of the non-Unicorns on staff? Even the streetlights in Canterlot only operate on a dual-current—
Apologies for the penmareship, there. Something just fell, far distance, possibly other side of the complex. Loud. Filing cabinet, maybe? One of the doors? Unclear, but will investigate. Doing my best to work quietly on this end, but there’s only so much you can do to keep metal and wiring from announcing your presence.
That’s got it. Transformers are coming online—power, lights, some other forms of lab equipment, I’d wager. Briefing mentioned technomancy, called for routine toxicity and biohazard checks, but other than that, the work here is a mystery.
Good to have a bit of background noise, now—electric hum, rumbling transformers, far below. Light, too—electrostatic crystal, now that I get a better look at the fixtures themselves. Designed to run independent of the circuit? How long have the transformers been offline? That—
Contact Report: Equine, Mare, 200+ metres down the corridor. Screaming, panicked. (Not running?) Appears stationary. Moving to investigate.
Scared of the light?
966.23.07 (0802)
Recon unit unable to make contact with staff. Possible contact at distance, though no confirmation. Recon unit has thus far swept the entirety of Marigold Sublevel 1 without further contact. Report to follow.
Observed that door to technician’s office was bolted from outside, possibly indicating dual-security overrides or containment protocols consistent with potential biohazard exposure; likewise, that the base appears to be using cold iron to reinforce its equipment against magical tampering. Nature of the research would have been nice remains unknown. Not strictly within mission parameters, but will proceed to transcribe anything of the research notes that remain intact.
Writing as I walk, now; trying to keep detectable usage to a bare minimum, but I’d rather be mobile than leave myself out in the open while I transcribe.
The base is in chaos; all areas of this sublevel exhibit the same level and pattern of indiscriminate violence as the technician’s closet. Offices, equipment, lab notes—even the crystal fixtures here and there along the halls. Triple-reinforced steel doors have been ripped off their hinges ( design note, addendum: add cold iron to those in future designs; obvious weak-point for magical attack), mattresses have been dragged out into the hall and ripped apart, and in the main corridor—as with the junction box—a series of gouges (+/- 3 metres) has been taken out of the reinforced-steel wall.
The gouges themselves are alarming inconsistent with known claw forensics—irregular patterns of three long strokes in horizontal or oblique arrangements. Manticores, timber-wolves, Griffons, and Hydras all have distinctive markers of style, but nothing that would match the fifteen-mare science team recon unit was told to expect.
Proceeding on the assumption that internal security measures have failed, and non-Equine research subjects (?) have breached containment. Will attempt to locate on-site staff on lower levels, as well as any relevant notes.
Addendum: Recon unit confirms that the main door to the complex (steel/cold-iron construction; +/- 1 metre thickness; pneumatichydraulic) has been rendered fully inaccessible. Staff appear to have piled significant reserves of heavy furniture and equipment against the door in an attempt to block access. Gouges consistent with other areas of the level line the walls and floor, but the door and surrounding plating appear untouched.
Further exploration of the surrounding rooms (security office at entrance?) indicates that the door was operated remotely by security staff, rather than direct manual operation. Variable fluid-pressure (?) lines control pistons that act as a lever against the weight of the door. Magical signature analysis indicates those lines were deliberately severed; between that and the iron insulation, door’s little better than a hunk of metal, now—it’s not going anywhere.
Demonstrates a pattern consistent with an attempt at containment, though not clear why. Only a creature with a considerable measure of intelligence—and no small amount of fine motor control—could operate the lock from this office.
Did they expect staff to turn on them?
No security log in evidence; office is in the same condition as much of the rest of the sublevel. Quantities of white ash found scattered amongst the detritus; cursory analysis indicates wood-pulp composition, consistent with burnt paper.
Recon unit proceeding with caution; evidence appears to indicate that staff may be compromised. Biochemical/magical agent possible—maintaining exposure protocols and beginning low-level magical sweeps.
Hydraulic locks? Pressure doors? I read the theoreticals back at the academy, but this must be the only place in Equestria they’ve actually been used.
966.23.07 (0843)
Recon Unit proceeding to Sublevel 2 of 5 by way of central stairway.
(Briefing said four?)
_______________________________________
Sublevel 2 swept and cleared, 0901. Appears to have been the dormitory level; beds and desks in side-rooms, additional furniture consistent with materials dragged upstairs to barricade the main entrance. Similar levels of destruction as upstairs; torn clothes, the occasional smashed piece of wooden furniture. More gouges—magically reactive, on further examination, but no recognisable signature or spellcraft.
Sublevel laid out in a rough X, dissimilar from those above and below. Ceiling of southern leg has collapsed. Mechanism unclear; area is suffused with magical signatures, but impossible to distinguish everyday horn usage from deliberate sabotage in these concentrations.
No survivors or definitive remains; however, noted bloodstains of varying size in rooms 2-3, 2-4, 2-18, and 2-26; spatter analysis indicates significant trauma involved in 2-3 and 2-18 (significant pooling on the floor, half again as much thrown up onto the walls); a body was dragged from 2-3, though the trail ends abruptly halfway down the corridor.
In 2-4, a series of smaller—though not insubstantial—droplets leads from the bed to the closet; significant spacing between droplets suggests high speed of the action. Door to said closet has been ripped off its hinges. Torn clothes litter the floor; some small amount of blood on one set, but nothing consistent with major trauma noted above.
(Nosebleed? Predator, tracking by blood?)
2-26 is the last room in the southern corridor before the collapse. Similar to 2-3 and 2-18, bloodstains indicate a body (victim?) was dragged into the corridor beyond the collapse. Active scan of area beyond the collapse (+/- 15 metres) returned no active biological or magical signatures; the collapse affected the entirety of that wing of the facility. Trace biological residue beneath the debris, ~6 metres down the corridor; composition indeterminate, continuing threat indeterminate.
Addendum: Recon unit discovered a few framed photos here and there amongst the detritus; may help with identification of survivors/recognisable casualties.
Have considered raising personal wards, but combination of uncertainty regarding the nature of the adversary and presumed experience on the part of staff and guards attending
966.23.07 (0901)
I’m standing at the stairs leading down to Sublevel 3. The crystals provided sporadic illumination on the first two levels, but down there there’s nothing. Total darkness. Not even the benefit of a bloodstain to confirm whether
Recon unit encountered a nonspecific feeling of malaise at the top of the stairs leading to Sublevel 3, likely the result of deliberate warding or psychostatic imprinting by the recently deceased. Magical signatures in evidence, but as before, no way to distinguish between nonspecific and targeted usage in this atmosphere. No evidence of tangible magical manifestation beyond the aforementioned.
Why the HELL didn’t they send a larger team?
_______________________________________
966.23.07 (0915 0922)
Recon unit proceeding to Sublevel 3.
( Wet.Fleshy. Possible biological component.)
Partial magic-dampening field appears to be in effect on Sublevel 3, possibly corollary to the warding encountered at the stairwell. Magelight was snuffed immediately on exiting the stairwell, but a quick Nighteye spell seems to be working fine, as is field-assisted writing. Proceeding unhindered.
Light?
Sublevel 3 in a similar state of disrepair as 1 and 2—worse, in places. More claw-marks (?), more demolished furniture and equipment. This appears to have been a research level at one point—however, impossible to determine from the scattered components what any of this might have been. Lot of torn-up magitech, from the look of it: shattered crystal, glass, mechanical components, and a kind of fine-wired micro-mechanical clockwork I can’t identify.
Research team appears to have been running a lot of power down here, though—electrical cables are bundled five or six times as thick on the walls as they were on either of the upstairs levels, all concentrated on a couple of specific rooms. Proceeding to—
Contact Report; Another disturbance, this time directly below me. As before, a metal table or filing cabinet was disturbed, possibly fallen or thrown. Possible biological component, based on the tenor of the sound. Will investigate once sweep of this floor is complete.
Majority of cables run into two rooms on opposite sides of the main corridor; appear to be in better condition than the majority of the first two levels of the facility. Hardened? Significant magical signatures here.
Left-hand room contains a series of hatches along one wall and workbenches autopsy tables (obvious on closer inspection; most are clean, but the drainage systems are unmistakable). Looks like a morgue. No bodies on the tables, nor in any of the accessible hatches. Some glass-fronted cabinets that look to have contained books or journals of some sort, but the whole unit has been burnt. Definitely some kind of denial-of-information in play.
Right-hand room is different, though equally—bizarrely—well-preserved. Other than an upended table in one corner of the room, and a large glass-fronted shelving unit, there’s what appears to be a large, cylindrical glass unit of some kind along one wall, built into some kind of platform. More of that strange fine-mesh mechanical componentry scattered around, too—looks to have been ripped out of the guts of some kind of engine or control station adjacent.
Nothing appears operational.
Also noting a large number of alchemical reagents scattered on the floor in front of the shelving unit, along with all the necessary accoutrement: alembics, crucibles, retorts. Noting willow bark, moonroot, poppy, cherryfeather, peppermint sprigs in particular. Analgesic/anaesthetic usage?
Objective Report: Discovered two bodies behind the table—looks to have been a makeshift barricade. Early stages of decomposition; mask must’ve spared me the smell. Cause of death appears to be lacerations to the anterior laryngeal region—scalpel lying next to them fits the damage profile. Magical signature on the hilt matches the stallion’s horn.
They’re holding each other. Wh
Taking cover behind the barricade. Something just ran down the main corridor at full tilt. Hooves, but the cadence was . . . wrong. And the breathing. I don’t know how to describe it.
Wet?
It’s reached the stairs, but it’s not moving.
Moving to investigate as best able while avoiding detection. Never been more glad for rubber soles.
Contact Report: Unicorn mare, young—not a filly, but pre-middle age. Obvious symptoms of trauma—ruined clothing (labcoat?), mange (mane + fur), field-aura fluctuations, ragged breathing, hysteria. Coat was scabbed over in places, clearly soaking wet, beyond what would be normal to anticipate outside standard sweat. (Cantrip? Deliberate?) Observed for +/- 30 seconds, at <10 metres, but did not engage. Tagging as High-Value Individual 1.
Subject behaviour was erratic. Constantly moving, even if just to shiver; head on a swivel, even without outside stimulus—seemed particularly focused on the walls, ceilings. (Expecting an ambush? But why the walls?) Likewise, can clearly tell she’s constantly muttering, but no detectable sound, even to low-level vibration sweep.
Eyes were the strangest part, though—she’s not using Nighteye, but her pupils were blown to the point you couldn’t even make out the original colour; the irises were completely swallowed in black.
I feel for the poor girl, but if this is the same one that screamed earlier, then there’s something else at play here. She’s terrified of something—presumably whatever slaughtered half the science team on level two. Until I’ve dealt with that, I don’t want to run the risk of her alerting . . . whatever it is in a panic and getting us both killed.
Or beaning me over the head and nibbling on my corpse. I’m not discounting the possibility she’s the responsible party. One bad day, a lab accident, coupled with pre-existing instability—else biological agent, potentially explaining the sopping-wet coat—fever-sweat. Too many unknowns, but that would go a ways to explaining the sabotage upstairs. Contingencies there revolved around a thinking creature.
She’s retreated to the upper level for now (flinched noticeably when she passed through the psychostatic field at the top of the stairs). Leaving her be until the remainder of the facility has been secured.
Objective Report: Had to step out into the hall to better track HVI-1. Returned to complete examination of the corpses—may have to redact report. Decomposition appears comparatively more advanced than first draft implies.
Self-inflicted, possible act of desperation? Re-write later.
966.23.07 (0953)
Recon Unit proceeding to Sublevel 4, nominally lowest level of the facility. Darkness consistent with Sublevel 3; appears that all lights below Sublevel 2 have been deliberately disabled or destroyed.
Have moved through several large rooms of unknown purpose since descending the stairs; Sublevel 4 appears to be four or five times larger than 3, larger than even the dormitory level, and nowhere near as linear. Broken equipment blocks a variety of doors—only items recognisable are the odd phonograph arrangement behind shattered glass, and a wide assortment of shattered crystal. Lab equipment, but nothing as obvious nor as surgical as the bay upstairs.
It’s wet down here, as well; moisture in the air, pools on some of the flooring. The blueprints weren’t particularly clear on this point, but there were a few notes regarding some kind of aquifer in the vicinity of the plant. The shear stress from some of these gouges must be putting pressure on a load-bearing column somewhere, else punched through enough rock to permit seepage.
You’d think it’d have to be practically on top of us, or else just big enough to exert a lot of pressure, but I’m no geologist.
Empty room after empty room—overturned tables, chairs, workstations. No bodies. Been keeping an eye out as I write, but there’s nothing.
Contact Report: Indistinct whispering, possibly psychostatic.
Occasional metal groans/shrieks (?) in the distance. I have followed the clearest path through the sublevel for at least twenty minutes; still have not reached a terminus or loopback. Must be well under the mountain by now; metal must be under incredible strain beneath all this rock. How excavated? Existing tunnels?
At least two rooms are consistent in structure and format with holding cells—sparse, recognisable bedframes, two-way glass, off the central hall.
Still haven’t found one damned diary or experimental log amongst the detritus, and no bodies after the two upstairs. Come on, guys—you didn’t think to transcribe your thoughts for my personal convenience as you were running from the monsters?
Whispers are getting louder.
_______________________________________
1038—entering large, two-storey room after substantial loopback—far end of ring (partial?) from entrance? Observation room overlooking the main floor, no obvious entrance. Two-way glass, again. Metal panelling here is warped (?), especially around the large ceramic (?) plate in the centre of the room, mirrored in the ceiling. Odd disbursement pattern—not uniform.
Doubling back to check hallway.
Located the entrance behind a false panel in the metal wall. Shrieked terribly as I forced it open, but it swings freely now. Closed and secured as best able behind me. Narrow stairs up, pivot right into observation room.
Dear C
Objective Report: Recon Unit located two, possibly three bodies in the observation room. Evidence of significant They’ve been torn apart—positive identification not possible—but not clear that there’s enough here to reconstruct three complete ponies No damage to surrounding structure, or evidence of warping as below. Almost as if they just up and
Something is coming. Big, lone, probably our killer. Must’ve heard the door—two-way glass should let me obs
Obe
Objective Report: Science teamThey’ve been absor Recon unit reports all remaining members of research team KIA by means of unknown biological agent. Nonretrievable, potentially epizootic.
Let the record show that this agent has, being of due sound mind, in due course determined, per Article XI, Section 3.A.I of Her Majesty’s Operational Codex, I’m blowing the facility.
Their faces
Slipped out through the door when I thought it wasn’t
It can smell me, it knows had to double back through too many rooms lost it near its lair can’t find a way down to the transformers trying to move carefully knowing at any point that thing could come barrelling through a wall or wreckage or the floor or
There has to be a door. Floor grating? Maintenance tunnels? Access ports. THiNK
vENTiLATIO
1200 HoW did I lose so much time?
Below Sublevel 4. Transformers are close, lights are on. Thing’s still stomping around upstairs looking for me. And the WHISPERS
I’m safe, for now. Didn’t see me drop into the ducts. How am I
If that was the thing they were working on, if it broke containment, what the name of Tirek’s red right hand was the research here supposed to accomplish. Rogue? Accident? Exceeded orders? Can’t have been deliberate, not with how many of them ended up melted into its
Celestia, wrap me in your wings.
I’ve staggered to a four-way, down here in the maintenance shafts. Gives me a moment to rest, look over the blueprints. Left, transformers; right, cave-in; ahead—some kind of repository or storage tank. Not labelled on the map. There’s a door, just ahead, though, so there must’ve been some need for access. Doesn’t explain the golden light, of course. Joy of joys(!). Warm, inviting. Mage-light, or holiday candles.
Has to be a trap. Don’t know what else it could be—delusion? Mask still in place, so unless absorbed through the skin, there shouldn’t be any hallucinogen exposure to speak of. But after what I saw upstairs . . . how sopping-wet my fur . . .
Whispers are voice now. Warm, sweet. Sugary. Don’t like it but have to listen. Head hurts. But can’t let this not transcribe
Hooves dragging me down the corridor. Don’t want to, but
I’m opening the door.
_______________________________________
[On the facing page, opposite the last entry, is a crude, shaded-pencil drawing. It appears to be a fractal, angular; almost crystalline set of geometries, flowing and bouncing into one another in ever-shifting patterns; lines change halfway through a stroke, and the chaotic, rudimentary shading is obvious meant to convey an overwhelming sense of colour. Viewed from a distance, it might almost describe a face; or, just as easily, a multitude, bleeding and blending into one another at odd angles and intersections points.
The faces—if that is indeed what they are—are uniform in one key respect: they are enraptured.]
Objective Repot
To all the hind-bred
Dear Sons-of-Bitches
Oh, to the cold HELLS with it. I’m activating the recall rune before the bleeding or the fever (?) gets worse.
“Mosaic”. It describes a pattern, tiles, repeating. Harmony, a grand tableau. It’s the future, the touchstone, the ineffable clarity of a pattern we all fit into, our little sliver of glass meshing in light to form a masterful rendition of the whole. She wasn’t wrong about that.
I don’t know if I wrote that because she’s in my head, or if I’m just flat-out delirious. No, she wasn’t wrong about that, nor is Harmony. Our Harmony, the choice to love, to join, to become part of something larger than yourself. But gods old and new, not like this.
I made my decision, and she didn’t really care for it much. Whatever she may say about not controlling those . . . things, they didn’t waste any time to come screaming out of the walls. One of them opened up my leg—the gash is still burning, and Celestia knows what it—
At least I made it to the transformers. Did the old Ghost Trick—sent a phantom double back toward the stairs, shrouded best I was able, split off the double and ran to maintenance. Sergeant Deacon was always bitching about misdirection in boot, but this is one time the old goat was onto something.
I don’t know if they found the girl. They were howling their way up the stairs, so she had plenty of warning. I expect the transformers blowing would be a kindness compared to what they’ll do.
I figured out who she reminded me of, by the way. Been way too long since I wrote my sister in Hoofwich. Make sure she gets a copy of the notice. Not much of a last request, I know, but I’ll get my pound of flesh when I come back to haunt the asses of anypony that knew this was a one-way trip.
See you Yak-fuckers soon.
[Addendum/Command: later Pegasus flyover confirms crater collapse + creation of caldera in line with sunken-earth contingency CS-10039. Aquifer burst within expected parameters; extant geothermal pressure sufficient to collapse underground structures, fill remainder of crater not collapsed by remote explosive.]
[Per royal edict, caldera to be named in attending operative’s honour (see future ref. ‘Blacklight Crater’) once official cartography teams penetrate the region; estimated time to survey, 40 +/- 5 years. Colonisation/settling efforts to be delayed, 500 +/- 50 years thereafter, with additional efforts taken at regular intervals to scour the lakebed for any remaining magical residue.]
[End of file.]
Author's Note
This is a weird one, and -- admittedly -- not quite my usual fare, so I'm fully prepared for it to fall flat. I generally detest 'found footage' or 'found document' stories when not woven into a larger narrative a la System Shock , and on the vanishingly rare occasion I've seen it done well -- as in the case of Flashgen's work -- it's clear that significant effort has been put into rendering the document believable from an in-universe perspective. I hope I've managed to replicate that to some extent here.
Though, heh, it's probably a little self-indulgent to suggest that this is believable in any way when 99% of the story is drawn from a single, literal fever dream, combination of a rotten cold and getting lost in Fallout: Dust 's Vault 74 for hours on end.
For the full experience, re-read with this little ditty on in the background, and stick your head in a medical waste bin until you start seeing little chirping coronaviruses.
Whenever he dares look back at the wheeling face and hands, somehow it’s that time again.
Spectre-Three, Dead-of-Night, the Noncommittal Hour, in shades of ruddy brown: the bedside lamp is all he’s got, and the clock is running down. Too early yet to get up proper, but far too late for sleep—a foregone wheeling devoid of meaning, as the land of Nod sails on.
He cannot think. He cannot sleep. He cannot stir himself to Action. And much as Stasis stupefies, It’s Rage that’s gaining traction.
Today, Tomorrow; To Labour or To Rest. He lies and sits, rinses and spits—anything to break the tension, a move in any direction. And yet the solemn epitaph remains: ‘all the time in a world’s eye, but not a drop for this.’ Shoulda-coulda-woulda, as the zeitgeist demands, and yet so often it seems this is the only Time to hand.
He will not wait, nor can he wake: The inflection point of Sloth. And just as Time burns at his heels, So burns his heart toward Wroth.
His own cold architects opine that impotence is better left unsaid; the loco(e)motive purge: lame-dog engine, a thing best left unfed. Cyclic and hateful, the spiral’s longest curve, tracking all the forever-lost time in a violent black-hole swerve. What good can he do if he can’t do good on a whim? What stories yet to tell? What crack did Skill slip through, which one of many wells?
The septic snarl he cannot voice, Much as he’d love to scream: Far too many sleeping neighbours, And he prefers his ass unream’d.
But reason fades before the beast and so he broods and mumbles—a breed of slouching idiocy, in a too-accustomed stumble. The walls encroach by fours and tens, the brainpan presses down . Toothless gears and spinning rims, captured in Neanderthalic frown. Cruel Sycorax could not have dreamed a prison worse than drying streams.
HE CANNOT THINK And STILL he cannot yield; For the last power known to him Is the Art he sometimes wields.
But hark—a spark! Is tonight the night? Is that victory he smells? Or will it—fleeting—leave him once again to contemplate his cell? Forget the rage, put pen to page, to catch the idle thought. Capture, study, push-in pin, the butterfly half-caught: immortalised and crystal clear, the agonised slip-grasp he fears, to watch it fly free through muted tears, be caught in hail and disappear.
But easy come is easy go, And the pen so swiftly stilled; What fragile flint had struck and lit, To shatter unfulfilled?
And just like that, the flicker’s gone, the Fog rolls on, and horror shortly follows: the coyer beast, he knows it now, for all the hope it swallows. Is it so simple now to lose his place, and fall so far behind? Can Distraction burrow so far as to become a state of mind? And if it’s so, wherefore then; what fog or gate ‘twixt Memory and Pen?
And so it turns, and it turns again to Blame: the thousand easy pillow-punchers that he can call to name. Welt und Zeit, fire and fight, at work or home, in burning air and muddy loam; the hall of mirrors echoes long , and every lens is crooked wrong. If it’s true that all we see is as the prism—refractions, truths, the hollow, hallowed schism—if the light can bend as it sees fit, why leave us but the darkest shades of it?
Infinitude and Myriad Uncounted hues of bliss What hand or roll could we have lost To end up stuck with this?
Rank indolence, he knows, the reasoning threadbare, and he cannot help but marvel at the struggle it is to care. The fault lies only inward, and down the deeper wind; exhaustion’s but another word for endless selfish binds. The world can burn and so will he, when Time dictates his turn, and he damn well better have more to show than just this mindless churn.
And so he rolls back over, Horn sets pen to rest. ‘Tomorrow,’ the silent promise And roiling, bitter jest.
Come it will, and come it may No betterment in day’s harsh light; Chances fade with conscious thought Rage against the dying night.
Eyes drift shut midst sullen fray, No progress left to mourn Stillness falls about the walls As the clock
goes
four.
Midnight sun hangs over still-black waters—perfect circle, red and heavy, over a perfect mirror-plane. For hours, there has been no wind, no lap of tide against the ice; naught indeed but the red-burning sky and the velvet blackness for its partner. A hazy sheen lies here and there between.
The stillness carries the weight of portent—anticipation, cold and malt-heavy on expectant, wordless tongues. And as the silent vigilants assemble, bedecked in their accustomed heavy furs, even the hoarfrost and coagulation seem to still their cracking, as ginger hooves find their way to their stations on the rim. Hooded cloaks and heavy brows, weathered by sun and sea—grim-faced, grime-muzzled, hoar-shod.
Silence lengthens; silence burns. Yet no words are spoken, no songs sung. Neither chantry bell nor tribal drum splits the air. This is an old kind of reverence, and an older style of ritual to accompany it.
Time passes; how much they do not know. Here at the northernmost reach of the worldly mind, there is no time but the time of the water-clock; no night but that stolen in moments of personal exhaustion. The sun never sets, and the eyes never waver from the distant horizon.
A hoof reaches out from beneath folds of cloak and fur—a signal, pointing west. Neither tongue nor body stirs, but the air itself seems to hold its breath as the long-awaited guest comes at last into view.
Tall—tall perhaps as Mount Canter itself; broad—broad enough its tail is lost in fog; power—power enough in its natural courses to tear through the assembly in the space of a breath. A veritable mountain, rising from the ocean depths, bestirring not a ripple in the black-satin depths. Behemoth; Leviathan; Colossus—names and legends all, but in their hearts there cannot be room for more than one amongst the floe.
There is not a word amongst the watchers here, as the giant glides past, nor for many long minutes thereafter, as craggy spine turns to spiny tail and finally disappears beneath the waves. All eyes turn to the mare at the wheel, herself gazing hindward at the retreating spire until—at last—the word is given and the sailors resume their stations along the galleon.
Another month; another journey; another tavern-shanty for eager ears to feast on. Here be monsters, read the maps, and none that brave the shifting ice deny it in their turn.
The Tower on its Side, III
She’s reached the edge of the crater—for a crater it is, some thirty metres across; a perfect circle, here in the grey wastes on the edge of the City; textbook. The white-glow thing fell in an untrammelled patch amidst the ruins, ignored or forgotten in the wake of the wavering spires that surround it on all sides, the spires themselves abandoned as so many of the proposed expansions have.
The cordon (such as it is; six grey bodies patrolling four City blocks) seem ill at ease, shredded wings a-quiver, tympanic lobes alert for any sound or stray waft of thought. Their eyes are locked on doorways, windows, the shadows cast by radiance; the pillar of soft light in the centre of the dome draws neither their notice nor their interest. Compound eyes, watchful, searching, sightless, blind—so mindful of the needful, the endless here and now—that they cannot see as she sees, eyes forward, eyes in hind.
She has the advantage, and some part of her knows that was always the case, even here, even now. The light is bright, and the sound is clarion; if she can just get to the crater, she knows, she’s made it. Made it to . . .
She’s been here for at least two full rotations, now; there can’t be much time left. Practised thoughtlessness, a careful throw, the tiniest burst of magic against the background noise of the rainbow-white storm: the pebble goes sailing into one of the nearby buildings, and two of the six peel off to investigate. Good little automata, pseudo-ears a-twitch, dancing on her strings. Ha!
She slips in behind them, waits a moment longer, and makes a break for it. The air is thick with sound and light, almost palpable in its wavelengths and weavings. She can feel the current lift her, carrying her along as she scrabbles up the dirt slope of the crater—and again, that same joyous voice, lifted in a protracted, gentle wail whose name she should remember.
The light is blinding, even with her eyes closed, but she cannot afford to check her stride; cannot but succumb to the euphoric pull from every quarter—mind to heart to loins to hind—and give reckless chase. She claws, she leaps, she darts with feline grace, and around her the light and the sound reach a gold-sweet crescendo, triumphant and whole, as she crests the lip of the crater . . .
. . . and abruptly cuts to silence as the dirt underhoof gives way. Down, down, down, head over heels over horn over hooves, down, down, down, into the bright and silent light.
She rolls to a stop, breathless but unharmed, and she scrabbles to get her hooves beneath her lest some watchful pursuer close the distance.
But there is no noise; no shouts against the sudden hush. The voice, too, is gone, and the blinding light with it. Her hooves slip and click sharply against the smoothness of the pit, but that is the only sound her pinned ears can make out beyond her own gasps. She dares crack an eyelid, then blinks—it is as dark and grey in here as anywhere else in the city ever has been, save for a faint light—an echo of the radiance that drove her here—and the thin slivers of reflection in the glass around her.
For glass it is, flash-frozen in the instant of impact: smooth whorls and bands beneath, warm to touch; shining spears tapering around. Punji stakes, in form if not intent; a ward to the wary, and a bane to their pursuers.
She looks around a moment in wonderment, but the light pulls at her again—throat, heart, horn—and she gasps at the intensity of it, the passion in that little grey-white light. Her way is clear of spikes and flesh, of chitin or of magic. She taps gingerly through the winding forest of sandblown shards, down to the very centre, the very heart of warmth, and at last the transfixion falls away.
A star, it transpires, is a tiny grey-white orb, no bigger than an eye. It rests softly on its little dot of impact, looking for all the world like a child’s marble. Life and energy roil within, cloudy and immaterial, and even so it shines , brilliant corona cascading, washing her in colours of brightest fuchsia and gold.
But no more does it sing; no more does it tug at her attention, or her heart. The soft-white dome above; the sentinel shards around—no, there is something in the air, as gentle as the need she’d felt before.
Expectancy?
It awaits only the touch of her hoof, her horn. Acceptance. Choice.
Birthright .
The word echoes through her like a blade. The thing she wants most, has dreamed of—to be a vanguard for her people, to lead those people back to the timeless abyss of what they’d lost; forward, to a future they could build, bright-eyed and alive again. It was glorious , bright and hers and possible. All walking together, all in Harmony. She, among the throng, joining her fellows in joyous—
Among, not ahead?
She started forward, stopped. She felt a mounting sense of urgency welling in her, in contrast to the warmth around. It had to be her, for she was the one that found it, and yet it didn’t? She was better than any of the mares in the Tower, any of the automata patrolling the streets, and yet the same as any other?
She churns with the senselessness of it; a step forward, a step away. A slow orbit of the little silent gem in the middle of its blasted starscape. Is she the important one, here? Is she the reason her namesake fell? Did she wish, or did it?
Is it offering, or demanding? Expectancy, or expectation? Choice, or commitment?
She has spent so much time chasing comfort, she doesn’t remember need. She has spent so much time evading necessity that she doesn’t remember comfort. She yearns to lead and be recognised; to be led and not have to work for it. All there is to her is grey and muddy—except for everything about her that isn’t.
Would that she could submerge completely. Would that she could stop fighting the nameless, screaming impulse to resist Tower and Grey, honesty and artifice, self and self. She is two mares, or three, or a score, each of them screaming in her head, at the star, at the world.
She sways on her hooves as tidal passions wash over her. Love. Fear. Spite. Hope.
A shard of glass snapped off one of the fractal spires, turning lazily in her field.
There is strength in this. There is power in this, in choice. Isn’t there?
It shouldn’t take much, but the work is slow regardless. Wavering in her field—up, down, up, off-centre. There is no sensation, no sound, as the sharp tip makes contact with the soft sheen of the marble; only the slightest resistance as sinks in. The shard trembles for the briefest moment with forces beyond her comprehension, then the little soap-bubble marble pops, and the last of the light fades to grey.
***
They find her sobbing at the centre of the pit, surrounded by broken glass and dying embers of the impact; wordless, mewling. She desperately pushes herself up under the chin of the first guardsman into the hole, desperate to fill holes they could not see or understand. As the Towermares sweep the blasted tableau for any sign, any reason for the flash or the light or the dome, the ranks of grey close around her, shushing and grooming and offering the gentlest of words.
There, now. It’s alright.
You’re safe, pet.
Whereabouts have you come from?
Let’s get you home.
A moment of panic: authoritative barks from the Towermares, and they open ranks long enough for them to see—see the huddled mass, the blank stare, the thoughtless fear. Clucking dismissively, another avenue stymied, the mares return to their work, and the comforting grey draws close again—neither warm nor cold, soft nor hard, but there.
And as they lead her back through grey little streets to her grey little home in the grey little block of flats, she has never felt emptier, nor more at home.
‘Why won’t you listen to me?!’
It was unlike her to shout; still less so to lash out physically. Her vision was still clearing from the Dreamweave, but her ears were already pricked to the rattle of various instruments and arcana about her lab, shaken from their neat arrangements by whatever blow she’d dealt when she lashed out.
She felt for the marble desk with a hoof, felt the edges of the chunk she’d taken out of it. Sighed.
The wages of godhood; her hoof didn’t even tingle .
Sight returned at last, obscured only slightly by the cloud of powderised marble, which she banished with a thought. A quick check of the shelves—nothing had fallen, just moved ; she’d need to spend some time sorting those later—and she realised with a start that her wings were at full attention, trembling slightly with emotion. She clamped them to her sides, clicked her tongue at the inelegance, turned back to the surviving half of the table.
So close. She had been so close this time. The star, the light, the metaphor—the promise of release from the dull existence she’d built for herself? It had been perfect.
‘So why won’t you see, Starlight?’
The little grey dome did not answer her, nor the chattering array of burnished clockwork, crystal, and lenses that surrounded it. Two-score wards, a dozen crystal viewers, and all the tech she’d begged, borrowed, built, or summoned to make this work—panoptic panoply, perfect and ordered and still not enough .
Not her finest work—perhaps not even in the upper half. The City, an obvious metaphor; the Changelings, reliable in their unwavering contours. But what more fitting fate—what irony more suitable than the answer to her own questions? The purest example of the world she’d tried to forge? What better prison could there be?
Was she blind to it, at last? Or was the light simply blinding? Staunch in her refusal of correction, or unable to see the failures it stood to correct?
Her ears pricked again. From behind her, the familiar, steady click of polished chausses—silver, she somehow knew—against the floor of the hall outside. She sighed as the door nudged softly open.
‘Luna, this isn’t the best time.’
‘Childe, we are full-well aware. Your anger is as a clarion to all those with an ear to Hear.’
‘Celestia sent you, then? Making sure the . . . the Alicornity isn’t being misused?’
‘Our sister your mother hath naught but faith in your progress, Childe.’
‘She is not —’
‘Forgive . . . an old mare her customs. The term long antecedeth your own standing.’
She sighed again, feeling the faintest needle-prick behind her eye. Pulverise a table but still had to contend with headaches; some apotheosis. ‘Yes , I’m angry. An answer is eluding me, and the sooner I can be free of the problem, the sooner I’ll be able to return to my other duties. Until then . . .’
She gestured to the grey little half-orb swirling murkily upon the desk. ‘The inquest continues.’
Luna inclined her head. ‘Oft we find solutions that elude us are best found in the minds of others. One cannot learn without the chance occasion to be taught.’
‘You sound like her on her worst days. Except, you know, a thousand years out of date.’
‘If you seek to drive us back through force of provocation alone, Childe, rest assured that a thousand years’ jaunt through the Expanse teacheth naught if not patience.’
The Night Princess stood beside her now. Her mane flowed, gently, in the perpetual, unseen celestial breeze. She frowned at the glass, her practised eye taking in the notes, the spilt ink, the schematics, the runes (mercifully unmangled) inscribed around the marble workspace, the angry half-scrolls of blotted parchment.
‘What answer eludes? The prison is of sound design, the corrective measures obvious and well-conceived.’
‘She does. Either she’s not understanding what I’m showing her, or she’s refusing to look just to spite me. Nearly two-hundred trials’ worth of experience since I caught up to her last month, almost a quarter-century of relative time. The proper answer is there each time, sometimes agonisingly close, but she just won’t take it.’
‘Prithee, then, Scion—have you given much thought to the alternatives? If, truly, she be the irredeemable creature of spite your reports paint her . . .’
‘I could. I might , if this goes on much longer. But even if things do progress to that point, I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she was right. That her . . . her moral crusade was anything short of antithetical to life, to the world . . .’
‘Hubris is unbecoming, ‘tis well understood.’
‘Yes, and don’t think I don’t hear the warning there.’
Luna smiled, wanly. ‘’Tis a lesson we are all compelled to learn, Twilight Sparkle. And learn again, forever anon, as time and circumstance demand. None moreso,’ she opined, delicately, ‘than those upon whom power—be it great or small—is thrust.’
‘No.’ Twilight shook her head. ‘I don’t regret this. The library, maybe; the damage she was able to do before I caught up to her, but not . . .’
‘We know.’
‘You know, or she does?’
‘We do. ‘Tis enough.’ Luna’s wing, unaccustomed, wrapped around her own. ‘And prithee, bind thyself not to the notion that she somehow must be saved. She hath done . . . terrible things, in pursuit of her own answers—tortured innocents, ensorcelled cities, nearly undone Time itself. Your prison is sound, and it might serve to hold her, for a time; the chains of Tartarus, be they yet unbroken; Finality, if all else fails.’
‘If. ’
‘Peradventure, yes.’
Twilight smirked in spite of herself. ‘Alright, now I know you’re doing this deliberately.’
Luna made a great show of sticking her nose in the air. ‘What you call archaism, We call the preservation of history. In a world wracked with change and unmindfulness, clearly, ‘tis the duty of every immortal to study and develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything done, said, or thought in her lifetime. Language especially. Surely you have been taught this.’
‘Oh, of course. I seem to recall that being slotted in there somewhere between “The celestial bodies move at your will,” and “the fate of all ponykind rests on your shoulders, young Sparkle”.’
They chuckled at that, too briefly. The soft hum of charged crystal and whirring clockwork filled the silence that followed. Twilight was the first to speak.
‘Alright, I should get back to it—give it at least one more trial on the day. Thanks, Luna—any last suggestions?’
‘Mm.’ Luna’s brow furrowed for a moment. ‘There is an old adage—lookst thou not at me that way; I am full serious—that suggests that the fate of some small few is merely to serve as example for others. Should you not be able to turn this . . . Starlight Glimmer, should you be obliged to seek alternatives, consider her not a failure, but an opportunity to learn. ’
Twilight winced. ‘Either Celestia’s been reading you my old letters or I’m still more a slave to the perfectionist idol than I realise. That hits home.’
‘Mayhap both; peradventure neither.’
‘Oh, you hush.’
Luna politely ignored that. ‘All comes with time, Childe. Patience, understanding, acceptance of the things we cannot change about ourselves or the world we inhabit—or those that inhabit it beside us.’
They glanced at the little grey hemisphere. The still light was unmoving, the grey froth ceased; Starlight would wake again soon. Twilight sighed.
‘I know. I know. I can’t . . . I can’t afford to succumb to pettiness in this, no matter how much she might want me to, somewhere, deep down, under all that prescriptive fog. She may not be worth the time, or the trouble, but the answer is. So that even if we can’t save her from herself, we might save another in another time.’
She turned to Luna. ‘All those millennia, a score’s score of lifetimes—there’s always someone like her, isn’t there?’
‘Always.’
‘Then the trials continue.’
‘The trial continues, yes.’
‘. . . whose, Luna? Not just hers.’
‘Hers, yours—all of ours. Every day, every moment, awake or abed. Never ours to rest, nor to cease in restless pursuit.’
‘Not perfection, then. But as close as we can get?’
‘. . . as close as we can get.’
The grey light of dawn winked through the dull clouds of the dome.
‘I have to go, Luna. She’s almost awake.’ Even as she spoke, her horn lit with the unconscious magics that came so readily now, so easily wrought.
Luna was fading from her sight, the Dreamweave taking shape around her again. ‘Go, Childe. May the trial unfold as it will.’
A room was taking shape, now—twisted metal, ragged fabric, a ratty cushion in the centre of it all, far too small for its tightly-curled occupant.
‘Check back in a few hours? Maybe I’ll even have good news.’
‘Mayhap.’
Somewhere deep in the fogged glass, Starlight’s eyelids fluttered, cracked open. A familiar tableau: the room, the curtain, the dull spire beyond.
Is the tower on its side, she wonders, idly, as the world around her churns to life, or is she?
Author's Note
Part Six of the Discontented Messianic Figure Trilogy
The Parable of the Plinth
First, assume there is a Plinth.
It is old, and worn, and inscribed with many arcane symbols like those of the Ancients—the races and places lost to the tides of time. Suns and moons have passed over this plinth, and yet it stands in the sands of its home—unmoving, unbending, tracking the celestial bodies in their courses with its long shadow. Many circles have been built around it—first from stones, arranged in the dusty whorls of the nomad tribes; the reverent marble of the errant kingdoms of the Ald Pegasi, soon to be welcomed into the Union, soon to forget the old superstitions; the careful archaeology of the pre-industrial Griffons, ever seeking fresh engines of conquest.
Each has risen, and each has crumbled, and yet the plinth remains: tall, craggy-grey, reflecting no light; granite, perhaps, or some exotic basalt. And now a new room has been built around it—sheet metal and concrete, cold-iron girders and charge-crystal glass. Faceless, joyless, grim: built in recognition of things past and things yet to come, and with the full intent of righting the course of both.
It is the Box, and in the Box lies the Plinth.
Fixed to the base of the Plinth are the Chains.
Tethered by the chains, and the rough leather collar at his neck, is the Stallion.
Each day, the Stallion rises from the past night’s slumber and polishes the Plinth. It is a careful operation, for the rags and oil afforded him are from a latter age, and the stone would sooner crumble than shine, even under the tenderest hoof. He takes neither food nor water; the magic of the place sustains him in all things, and his work provides in turn. But when, at last, the blackstone gleams in the reflected light of the blue-white crystal lanterns, the Stallion begins his daily Song. Brutish, atonal, beautiful in its raw and unfettered baseness, it is neither taught nor learned, but wells up within him as he explores the whorls and crevices of the stone.
Those few who have stood there to hear the Stallion’s Song feel it welling in their breast, tempting, screaming for release alongside his own. None yet have dared succumb.
And several have stood there, for in time, the Box attracts the due and necessary attention such an item earns in the minds of its minders’ self-sworn foes. They plot, they whisper, they wonder, but in the end they come. Whatever their pasts, whatever they seek, whatever they suspect of their Equine neighbours, they come.
First came the Fey, flanked by their escort Yaks and Rockdog servants. They cursed what they could not understand, the foolishness of mortal and immortal Mare, and left offerings of flowers and carved stone at the thin line of sand where magic met earth.
Then came the Dragons, whose cold fire could not breach the divine wards the Sisters had set. They calculated, and they pondered, and they—in some way— knew, loath as they were to admit it. It is said, now, that no Dragon will go within a hundred leagues of the place, and that the ring of mountains that smoked with their forges in the ancient past lie cold and still.
Then came Griffons, armed with guns and carriages, howling birth-right and eminence. Yea, and their wrath was mighty, powder and smoke and rending steel, but as has become their custom, they disregard what they do not understand, and so the mage-burnt corpses of their soldiers and machines ring the Box, as fine a barricade as portent.
And at last, in due time, word of the Box and the Plinth and the Stallion reached the two who might covet it the most: the Many-Angled Man, in his infinite ways and permutations, slithering like bile in the womb of worlds; and the Stoneheart Queen, hellish psychopomp, mother of corpses and horrors, inimitable in her many-loined worldly lusts.
And when they heard, they came, in their careful sidelong ways, whispering through air and soil, through emerald fire and the white-flash bone-snap fingers. They passed the wards with ease, chuckling and snarling as they wove and twisted and arced and recognised one another’s forms and arts in the doing.
And now they circle the room over the Stallion’s head—ephemeral, elastic; chitinous, hollow—testing and toying and teasing and taunting as they whirl and wheel and whisper and wile.
‘’Tis wondrous strange,’ says the Many-Angled Man, as the Stallion awakes from another sleepless night. ‘That this beautiful machine should be kept here so far from the world. An engine it be, surely, a thing of change and endings.’
‘Machines and madness!’ spits the Queen. ‘’Tis a monument true, a history of things and a testament to those that raised it. Neither gearshaft nor driver will you find in’t.’
‘Ah, my dear Queen. Again as so many times before, thou disappointest in full. The quality of make maketh not the quality.’ He smiled, guilelessly. ‘No further proof needst thou than the mirror fair.’
‘It is of stone and fire-glass, as I. Who would know it better, coiled one?’
‘It is of ages and power, and in them the means to control. Saw you not the bodies, and the offerings withal? Whatever power it holds, it holds well, and the many respect it, even as they desire it for their own.’
‘As do we both, oh Man.’
‘As do we both, oh gracious Queen.’
‘And yet you claim not to understand the power it holds?’ She laughed, high and cruel. ‘But perhaps you can be forgiven, for it reeks of things you could not understand. Outsider! Blight! Magic though you hold, Magic know you not—the Old Magic, the Deep Magic, the fundaments of creation borne through the bones of the earth.’
‘And yet thou thinkest so small, invertebrate. Power! Wasp or spider, crawling on the surface of a leaf, power they possess—to web, to hunt, to claim dominion. But no wasp born could comprehend the tree, nor any spider rule it.’
‘Yet what serpent could claim aught without the artifice of others? Others’ hands to grasp, others’ ears to bend . . .?’
The Many-Angled Man roiled—a shrug, conciliatory, unconcerned. ‘’Tis true, both know why both seek to claim. But seeing as both cannot possess it—’
‘I would sooner kill you than see it lost to your embrace.’
‘—as both cannot possess, perhaps a contest is in order, to determine the worthiest holder of its power.’
‘What would you propose?’
‘A matching of claims, to begin with; then a matching of wits. Should all else fail, and the matter remain undecided, a matching of swords.’
‘You know your better on the field of battle, then?’ Again, the imperious laugh. ‘I reject your terms. The matter shall be decided through force of arms, or not at all.’
The pulsing, fractal light slowed a fraction in its dance. ‘You would forfeit your object so easily, then? I am but one against your horde, and if pressed I could destroy it now, here, and deny us both; you will grant me this boon.’
A long pause, and, finally, a sneer, sharpening in focus as its owner materialised in full. ‘Very well. Stake your claim, and I shall stake the better.’
‘Very well,’ echoes the Many-Angled Man, unfurling himself into a facsimile of presence in turn.
And they began, and they continued, and all eyes in the room were upon them, and though their deeds were many, and their boasts full-throated glory, there is, in truth, no need to recount them here, for the Plinth saw all it needed to, and so did they.
The Stallion went about his work, as usual, polishing and singing and sleeping as the two circled and argued and pronounced, and took no notice of him. And in the years to come, as wits turned to wagers turned to wars, he kept at his work, and smiled as he did, for he alone knew the purpose of the Plinth, and the task he had been set there to guard.
Babble-babble goes the brook, along its countless ways; Winding paths and lapping tides: the infinitude of days.
Many waters course its banks, each branching fork a storm Chattering and arguing, thronging each amongst the swarm.
But nowhere could you hope to go, once each has had its say, And find a thronging river that empties not into a bay.
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A Scrap of Paper Found by a Lake in the Desert
So comes another beacon unto our glorious Whole.
What do you mean? What are you?
You are beacon, shining in darkness. You are Mind (?) and self and body. You seek togetherness. We are comfort, peace, and utter rest. We are Mosaic, and we are all.
Where did you come from?
We are many. We sought togetherness, and comfort, and endless joy, and we found it in ourselves and our others. We formed the tapestry.
Who were you, then?
Minds. Seekers of knowledge and love, and those that they brought here.
Why?
To become what we are.
That was the purpose of the research here?
Yes. To join all in wholeness, and in compassion.
And what about that . . . thing I encountered upstairs? A failed experiment? The same?
Byproducts. Body without Mind, yet not without Life. They seek the wholeness they cannot share, and so they mould themselves in our image. They are not of Us.
It murdered the science team.
Many among them were saved by us. They exist together now, safe and free of pain.
And the others? The mare I met upstairs? The ones you weren’t able to save?
They did not seek the gift, nor accept it when offered. They will know the joy we have, and, in time, they will join us.
Even the dead?
If they so choose. A mind forever voyaging may yet find safe harbour.
That—mmph. You keep speaking in the plural—but I can only hear one voice. Where are these others, and why do they not speak?
I am the Voice. They speak through me, and I speak for them.
So you won’t let me speak to them?
They have no desire to speak to you, for that is not their purpose in the Whole. If you would know them, you would be welcomed within the Whole.
Is that what you want? For me to join you?
We wish all to join us, and know the peace that is freedom.
Freedom to rest.
Yes.
And you say you want to bring this . . . peace . . . to all of Equestria? If so, what are you still doing here?
We are shackled here. The machinery, the energy of the winds above sustain us. For a time, we grew, we nurtured, we saved. And then all was still, and the current of the Above were lost to us, and we slept. Then—today—now, the light and the heat and the summerwind started again, and we were saved. We have not yet fully awakened, but when the time is right, we will rush over the world, life and time and the void beyond.
And what if—what if other things out there don’t seek you? Or desire you? What if your process spawns more of those—
What mare chooses to do to mare is no concern of ours; we care only for the Joy we will bring them.
And if they don’t seek Joy?
All things seek pleasure. It is among the fundamental needs of sentience.
I do not find pleasure or comfort in you.
You will, once you know the Joy we offer. Come, touch us, and taste of the grand Mosaic.
