My ears were ringing, I couldn't see through the layer of dust and smoke that filled the air. I felt the floor shift under my hooves as something monstrous moved underneath.

The M.A.I.F.O.S. was screaming warnings at me.

"Hostile target detected. Threat assessment: lethal. Recommend course of action: retreat."

I was dazed, barely stumbling to my feet. My left hind leg was numb and there was blood in my eyes. I tried to rub my eyes to clear my vision, at least a little.

The floor shifted again knocking me back to the floor. I heard a yelp of pain coming from somewhere. Who was that?

After a moment had passed and the movement below stopped I pulled myself back up trying to look around. The dust was begging to settle and I could see the outline of the room.

There was a giant rent in the ceiling, like something crashed through it. The torn wiring around the edges was shooting sparks that lit the room.

Looking down I saw a massive hole that took up most of the room. There was a huge pile of debris in the hole, tons and tons of metal. The movement below started again and I saw the entire pile shift as though there was something stuck under there. I heard the yelp again. It was coming from the pile.

My mind was starting to clear, little pieces of what had happened moments prior coming back.

We were going through a room on the second floor... Then there was a... sound? After that Ember... Ember!

With a sudden realization I looked down the hole again. She was somewhere down there.

I squinted as hard as I could trying to find the pegasus through the cloud of smoke, but it was impossible to see any detail in there, it was all just a mess of grays down there.

As my mind was racing to find a way to get Ember out the pile started to shift again, the thing clearly still trying to free itself. I could hear her again for a moment. Following the sound I saw what looked like a table somewhere in the middle of the pile. A kind of table that was in this room before it collapsed. Hopefully the same table she was on.

I collected myself, focusing entirely on my telekinesis and started to lift the table.

It was a huge gamble. If she wasn't under that table I would have wasted what little power I had on nothing.

As the table was slowly covered with my magic grip it started to shift. I strained myself to keep the magic up, my eyes were watering and swear ran down my face. Painstakingly, inch after inch, the table moved out of the way. Ember yelped again, I could hear it clearer that time.

The smoke still made it practically impossible to see anything in there. I couldn't pick her out in the sea of metal and smoke. Suddenly there was a bright flash and a bang. The flash parted the smoke for a split second and I could see where she was.

Focusing every last iota of what little power I had on her I started to levitate Ember out of there. My legs were trembling, I was on the verge of collapse, but I had to keep going.

Suddenly the ground started shaking as the giant underneath us stirred. I saw a plate of metal go crashing down to the bottom of the pit, barely reacting in time, I moved Ember out of its way. The whole place was coming apart as the thing moved somewhere under piles of rubble. More debris started falling from above. It was falling with enough speed and force to cut a wagon in half, nevermind a single pony.

Through sheer luck Ember glided unharmed through the hail of debris. Placing her body near the door out of the room I moved towards it.

We shouldn't stay here.

Thank Celestia, the door wasn't locked. It slid up with a hiss. Biting into Ember's fatigues I started to pull her out of the room. The second we were out I punched the "close" button so hard I heard something break, but at that point I just couldn't feel anything but exhaustion. Trying to catch my breath I slumped to the cold floor. Getting up would be a problem, but at that point I didn't care.

I woke up to green warnings flashing in my face.

"Medical scan complete. Severe limb damage detected, caution is advised. Severe head trauma is detected, caution is advised. Severe magical burnout – imminent, caution is advised. Severe..." the M.A.I.F.O.S. flashed blocks of text right in front of my eyes. There were so many things wrong: broken legs, shattered bones, pulled muscles, the list went on.

I could still hear the rumbling behind the door, still there, just to remind us that we weren't safe.

Ember was out cold lying next to me. Her bags were gone, the only gun we had – mangled beyond repair.

I thought that was it. Stuck underground with no potions to cure our wounds, with some giant abomination out for our blood and to top it all off the emergency lights were starting to flicker promising to leave us in darkness. I didn't even have enough in me to break down in tears, I just sat there staring at the red lights.

"It appears that your progress has been hampered," The manager's voice split my head with a headache. "Also reading your M.A.I.F.O.S. readouts you appear to be suffering from several injuries that prevent further progress. There appears to be only one solution to this predicament," there was a moment of silence, then a plan of the floor appeared before my eyes and the voice continued. "There is a medical bay a hundred feet to the south. Inside is an AutoDoc. Once you arrive I may be able to divert enough power to it to keep it operational long enough to do its job. Also, seeing as it is a medical bay, you may be able to find some medical supplies."

With a sigh I got up leaning against the wall. I wasn't going to die there and neither was Ember. The floor rumbled again. It was a sign that we'd better got moving. I once again bit into her fatigues and began the slow move to the med bay.

What felt like days past before I even saw the door to Medbay. Ember was barely breathing and I couldn't feel my left hind leg. More than once I'd stumbled over the rubble that was falling every time the monstrosity moved.

The Medbay door slid away with a hiss as we approached. The lights inside flickered wildly as the generators struggled to keep up with the destruction.

The bay was in disarray, shattered potion bottles lay on the floor, multiple medical cabinets were overturned, even an otherwise indestructible Stable-Tec terminal sat speared through by a metal beam that had fallen from the ceiling. I looked around the room searching for the promised AutoDoc. It stood in the far corner of the room barely illuminated by its cracked green screen.

The AutoDoc itself was a spider-like machine with several tool-limbs spreading from the main chassis. At the top there was a cracked but still functioning screen with a keyboard that was missing most of its keys.

Getting closer I noticed that the machine stood near a medical bed that had somehow not been overturned in all the chaos.

"Please, carefully place the patient onto the operating table," the manager's voice thundered in my head, "the AutoDoc will deal with it from there."

I tried to summon up any strength I had left to lift Ember onto the table, but I didn't even manage a small sparkle of magic, instead a sharp pain stubbed through my head. Seeing me struggle the AutoDoc used one of its limbs to reach for Ember and picked her up by the fatigues.

"The procedure should only take an hour. In the meantime, I would recommend you rest," chirped the robotic voice in my head. I didn't answer, instead choosing to lay down on the cold metal floor near the medical bed and closing my eyes.

There were no nightmares, just me and the stars above. Me looking at them, them looking at me.

The lights above did not stay still, they moved in perfect synchrony shifting from chaos to intricate designs. At first the shapes were just pretty designs without any particular forms: circles rotating within circles, lines crossing lines to transform into waves. The longer I looked the more concrete the images became.

The first actual thing was a book, made from multiple rectangles melding into the silver cover, a score of circles uniting to form gems embedded into metal bindings, multitudes of smaller less pronounced forms slid to shape the engravings into the silver. After the stars finished their dance and the book was complete it all stopped for a moment and I admired the fine craftsmanship. Every little detail seemed so real, like I could almost touch it.

As I looked at the book the stars started moving again flowing like water into a new pattern. It was like the book opened and the stars that weren't a part of it slid onto the pages forming words.

The words were clear. An instruction. A spell.

For the first time in what felt like forever I awoke peacefully. The AutoDoc was quietly whirring beside me. The room was mostly dark, the only light coming from the screen of the AutoDoc.

My mind was clear and focused after the needed rest. Everything still hurt, but the pain seemed less noticeable.

There were no voices vying for my attention, the M.A.I.F.O.S. was busy analyzing something and the manager didn't seem to notice that I woke up or didn't seem to care.

The quite was welcome. It was weirdly serene to be sitting Celestia knows how deep in a secret bunker-lab under a crappy electronic shop.

The only thing that was still disturbing me was the thought of that spell I saw. It stuck out in my mind like a sore hoof. It was very similar to that spell from the book from Night Twister's study, "Custos ex Somnia". Even without having the book in front of me I could remember every line, every instruction. Like the first spell out of there, it made no sense, the flow of it was wrong, like a spell written by a foal that barely learned how to write. Yet, just like before, there was a thread of purpose and meaning to it and with every time I read it over in my head that thread grew larger until the gibberish of before started to make complete sense to me.

It was the kind of spell I hoped I'd never need to learn, the kind that kills. It worked on the same principles that my stun spell worked on, it drew power and launched it at the target. There were two major differences to the new spell, the amount of energy drawn and the source of that energy. It drew the ambient energy from around the caster and poured it into the target. And with the ambient magical energies around after the End this spell would probably just melt the target if not vaporize them.

Of course, I had many doubts about this new spell. Why would I learn a spell out of nowhere? How reliable were my dreams at making coherent spells? Did my dreams make the spell or was it Princess Luna who gave it to me or something else entirely? The most prominent of the doubts and questions was the timing. Why now?

"I see you have woken up", the robotic voice interrupted my morbid train of thought. "I advise that you prepare yourself, the procedure is almost complete."

With a sigh I tried to rise to my feet, but the second I put pressure on my hind legs I buckled like a stack of wet papers. The pain made me yelp as I fell. For a second it almost seemed like I wasn't half dead, but then I had to ruin the illusion. The second attempt at getting up went better, I used the table of the AutoDoc as a crutch to stand. It was wet. The light from the machine's screen didn't carry far enough to see Ember on the table, but the buzzing of the AutoDoc and the soft breathing reassured me that she was still there and still alive.

I moved away from the operating table and finally stumbled on all fours. The tranquility of my sleep had fully disappeared by then. Looking around the dark room there were little shimmers in the dark, the glass of the cabinets and vials reflecting the only light source. I tried making my way to them hoping that at least one of those vials would have a healing potion or something similar at least. The floor met my muzzle at least two times, but I was making good progress to the cabinet.

After a couple of painful minutes my hooves were stumbling to open the glass door separating me from the meds. The thing refused to open, but I couldn't really tell if it was because it was closed or because I kept missing the door handle. A couple of attempts later the glass was open and I was looking at the stacks upon stacks of bottles, me standing in front of the only light in the room complicated the already hard enough task. One bottle stood out, a small flask on the bottom shelf, it gave off a slight glimmer of purple. Nudging the flask with my hooves slightly closer I noticed the pink butterfly sticker on it, that had "Ministy of Peace Approves" printed in tiny letters around the butterfly.

"At least it's approved", I squeezed out before downing the contents of the bottle down my throat. The second it went down I immediately felt most of the small cuts and bruises on my coat start to disappear.

Now standing a little firmer on my fours, I looked over my shoulder at Ember still on the operating table and at the AutoDoc still seemingly active. Knowing that I still had some time to spend I set down trying to dig through what was left of my saddlebag.

Weirdly enough the TSR bag was completely untouched and somehow even managed to stay on through the entire thing, the ducts, even the metal monstrosity falling on us.

The M.A.I.F.O.S. started menacingly displaying charts into the corners of my view, but after looking at them it just turned out that the potion interrupted the scan that the piece of junk on my head was running.

With M.A.I.F.O.S. slowly burning my head I returned to dig through my things and there wasn't really a lot to pick through: just Astral's book and some scraps. With nothing better to do to pass the time I pulled out the book.

"Ding!" chimed the AutoDoc the second I turned to the page I stopped at.

"The operation was a success. The patient will live," the manager explained the machine's sound.

So, when will she get up? I tried asking using my thoughts.

"Standard recovery periods for this procedure are two hours and seventeen minutes. The dire situation forces us to forgo the standard safety procedures. The AutoDoc will assist in a swifter recovery," the robotic voice explained. "It is advised that after the patient is once again fit to serve Equestria they and the EEA agent continue on the route."

Hey, speaking about the route. It's just down the corridor to an elevator, but I don't recall any particular directions for the last floor, especially now that that thing is down there.

"Again, the M.A.I.F.O.S. does not support speech. There were no directions, because it was believed that the size of the floor would facilitate ease of locating the mainframe. However, the agent is correct in assuming that the presence of the rogue security measures may hamper efficient progress. As of this moment, I am unable to detect the exact location of the threat and therefore I cannot guide you safely to the mainframe. It is up to you now."

"Nothing can be easy these days," I sighed as I got closer to the AutoDoc, which had just finished injecting something into Ember. With a gasp the pegasus almost flew to her hooves seconds after the injection.

"Lemme at em' chief! I am going to tear out their guts!" she shouted at the top of her lungs jumping around on the operating table and looking around the room. The last time I focused on her I wasn't conscious enough to actually see what had happened to her.

Her body was bruised and battered, but most cuts were already closing under the effects of whatever the AutoDoc injected. There were clumps of dry blood all around her head and mane. One of her eyes was bloodshot moving around frantically, the other one was... like a piece of plastic with a small reddish light in the middle slowly tracing the path of the first eye. My heart skipped a beat when the red dot stopped on me and the inside of the eye started moving, the plastic panels moving out of the way to allow the light to grow in size. Then Ember smiled, the light in her eye going back to its smaller size.

"Fritz! Good to see ya!" the pegasus greeted me from the table, "You got any idea what happened? Because I have no clue what's going on!"

Ember then hopped off the table landing perfectly as though she wasn't almost dead some hours ago, some ponies just deal with injuries better than others.

"The patient is fully capable of performing the task ahead. It is recommended that the mainframe is reached within twenty minutes, otherwise the invigorating injection currently keeping her conscious will lose its effect," the manager's voice cut into my head like a knife.

What in the burning fires of Tartarus have you done to her?! Wasn't there a better way to heal her?! I thought as loud as I could.

"The patient received an OWLOWISCIOUS Mk. II Optical Implant and a RAINBOOM Mk III Cerebral Implant," the manager droned in my ear. "Along with these augmentations the pation was administered a custom cocktail of stimulants and stored medical spells to return the patient to full function. Concerning a better healing process, according to "An inquiry of the limit of the healing potential of healing potions" published by the Ministry of Peace, other currently available healing methods would not suffice in healing this level of injury."

I didn't know what to tell him. He did save her where just dumping healing potion would've failed. It still took away a part of her that made her a pony. I didn't have enough left in me to argue with the manager. Pushing the morality of sticking metal bits inside living creatures aside I moved closer to Ember.

"Are you alright?" I hurried closer to her.

"Feeling more than alright actually," the pegasus looked herself over, "The AutoDoc probably put some potions or something in. Let's get moving before the buzz wears off," she deadpaned and started moving to the door. Her fatigues were almost nonexistent at the moment, the only parts not ripped away by the operation were the cuffs and the neck piece along with a few pieces of fabric still trying to hold together.

Not wanting to be left alone in there I followed right behind her. Keeping pace with Ember was proving to be a challenge, the orange mare just took one jump and was already half the corridor away from me.

The entire floor was still barely lit by the half functioning emergency lights. The walls had a lot more tilt to them than I remembered, like somepony tried pushing them. Some of the cables running behind the wall panels had snapped and were throwing little bouts of sparks to the floor.

On our way to the elevator we crossed what looked like a small makeshift guard post. A turned over folding table with some papers thrown all around it and a broken chair laying under it were in the way. Ember didn't stop for a second instead leaping over the table like it wasn't even there and landing almost fifteen feet behind it. I chose instead to move the table closer to the wall giving me enough space to trot through.

I heard Ember calling out from somewhere ahead.

"Hey! How are we supposed to... uh... use it?" Ember mumbled looking at the closed elevator door. "The thing's got no power," she hit the button a couple of times to no effect.

Getting closer to the elevator, I looked around. A small vent on the wall to the left of the elevator immediately caught my eye. With a sigh and a grunt I got on my haunches and started unscrewing the thing from the wall.

"Tartarus take me, looks like we're going vent-crawling again," I cursed while taking off the cover. The pegasus was almost shaking with anticipation. The second the cover was off Ember was already halfway into the vent.

It wasn't as hard as the first time, maybe there were fewer bits to cut me up, maybe I just got better at crawling through the ducts. I didn't even see Ember until I was pulling myself out, it was like she didn't show down even inside a metal tube.

The hole we crawled out of was almost at the ceiling. That presented a small problem which was in turn immediately solved by a nearby table being moved for me to land on. It didn't help as much as I'd hoped, something cracked and I was pretty sure it wasn't the table.

The corridor we found ourselves in was filled with an ever-present home of arcane machinery. You could feel it with your hooves, you could see the air reverberating slightly. I could feel it in my bones, like a tingling all over my body. I'm pretty sure Ember felt it too.

"Let's get it over with," she muttered. "This place is rubbing me the wrong way with all the juddering."

I nodded, while looking around. The corridor was bathed in red emergency lights just like the rest of the structure at that point. There were some posters on the walls but after living in Canterlot for more than a day I've learned to ignore them, it was probably something about zebras being everywhere or something. About twenty feet from there the corridor split into two, there was a small sign with directions. The left one read "Mainframe", so I didn't really bother to read the right one. I pointed my hoof at the sign and called out to Ember, who was ripping off what was left of her fatigues.

"Almost there! We go left, turn off that accursed security thing and we can finally get out of here."

"Not so quickly. We came here for explosives and I'm not leaving until we get what we need," Ember was quick to remind me. Although, at that point I didn't really care about the explosives and just hoped to get out alive, maybe even alive and with all my limbs still attached. The explosives would definitely be useful, but I wasn't sure if they were worth our lives.

Turning the corner we were greeted by one of those slidy doors, but instead of a comfortable and convenient button there was a damn terminal. In that moment I cursed every single product ever made by Stable-Tec. Don't get me wrong, it made some sort of sense that the most important part of the facility would have some additional measure of security, but in that moment anything that prevented me getting out of there was the subject of my angry mumblings along with some insults. But that wasn't the problem, it'd make getting in a bit harder, maybe even make me ask the manager for the password, a solvable problem. The problem was the huge piece of metal stuck in the side of the terminal. Looking up I found the source of said piece of scrap, the ceiling had a big tear going all along it. I guessed that the terminal got screwed when whatever the thing that was chasing us was fell through the floor, although I had hoped that it had fallen a lot further away from the mainframe.

I had fixed terminals before of course, but most of them were just a cracked crystal or a detached wire, things that could be fixed with enough time and spare parts or garbage equivalents laying around. I had not, however, fixed or even attempted to fix a problem of this size. Instead of even attempting to dislodge the hunk of metal out of the terminal I decided to get the answer from the manager, it was his facility and his crazed security system messing it all up after all.

Hey! We've got a problem here. The terminal to the door is wrecked, I quickly told the manager, in as much as you could tell with thoughts. Is there another way in or something? I got an answer almost immediately.

"For safety reasons the mainframe room has a single door outfitted with a top-of-the-line Stable-Tec terminal that is separated form the facility grid to prevent infiltration. To further protect the property of the Equestrian Government the ventilation shafts and ducts have been secured with multiple inbuilt explosives and pneumatic spikes. To reach the mainframe the door must be opened. In view of the current circumstances the destruction of the door would not be considered as destruction of government property. Attempting to mend the terminal would also be acceptable," the manager droned on. This was it for me, I reached my boiling point and could not just sigh and continue.

"This is why it all went to Tartarus," I grumbled as I realized that I would have to solve this myself. "Oh sweet Celestia, who installs a single door with a single terminal and no way of working around them in an emergency!" I yanked the metal chunk out. "What if there was a fire inside or... or a mainframe malfunction, or oh, I don't know, maybe the security went crazy and started ruining the place?!" I threw the offending ceiling piece behind my back with more force than I thought I had. "And now because somepony thought it would be a great idea to have a grand total of zero fail-saves I have to somehow get this piece of garbage back up and running!" I almost jammed my head into the opening in the side of said piece of garbage. "And what's more important is that it's wouldn't be that hard to just have a safety feature or something, like, 'If there is total societal collapse, than open the mainframe door' or another way to solve this would be to not have a fucking mainframe at all!" I pulled my head out, convinced that I knew what parts I would need, thankfully all the crystals were intact. "But of course not, that would be too easy now wouldn't it! Can't have it be easy, no it has to be stupid and dumb and inconvenient!" I ripped some cables and wires from the exposed ceiling and hovered them close to my face. "And I know for a Celestia-damn fact that it didn't have to be a terminal, it could've just been a thing with a keycard or some sort of scanner or something!" The wires went inside the terminal." If an intruder were to break through into this place, did they really think a single terminal would stall them for long?!" After some shoddy work on my part the screen flickered green once again. Seeing the slowly booting up terminal I fell silent for a moment.

"Are you done with your whining? We have things to do!" Ember shouted from somewhere behind me.

"Yeah-yeah, I'm working on it! Almost done!" I responded trying to match Ember's volume.

After another second or two the damned machine booted up.

INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.1.3

STR-TSR-LAB-024/SEPERATE

THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.

WELCOME BACK, GUEST.

Options:

• Open mainframe door.
• Exit.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN

THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY

STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.

Before all of this went down I was a relatively calm pony, but that terminal broke me. It didn't even have a password. There were no complicated systems in the terminal. Just a guest account and an "open" option.

"Sweet, merciful Celestia, forgive me for what I am about to say," I took in a deep breath as the door slid open. "Who, for fucks sake, who does this?! This isn't even fucking incompetence or stupidity at this point! You have to be so unimaginably inadequate to do this that I just refuse to believe that somepony actually installed a terminal without a bloody password and called that a working security measure!" I stepped into the mainframe room and stopped my tirade, it was time to turn that monstrosity off, maybe have a good few days of rest afterwards.

The room was cold, enough for my breath to show. There was nothing in this room except for the huge mainframe taking up an entire wall opposite the door. It looked like the one in the city hall, but without all the storage units. The huge screen was giving off a darker shade of green than the standard, maybe trying on that thestral tech for once, although it didn't look that much darker than standard. I quickly moved to the keyboard and started hunting for a way to turn off the security.

Okay. We're at the mainframe. How do I turn the security off? I tried to reach the manager.

"It should be under the 'Sеcurity' tab, in the 'Activity' section there should be an option to 'Disable Vital Security'. There will be a small verification process, to ensure that the process is being done by a loyal Equestria-loving citizen and not a zebra spy," the manager blurted out. Before I could look on the screen I heard a rumble behind the wall to the right. "I suggest you hurry, it appears that the security system is on its way." Blurting out some incoherent curse I started to search.

Okay, I'm looking for "Security"... Oh for Celestia's sake, the terminal outside has one and a half options, but this hunk of junk has hundreds?! WHY?!

I started typing furiously, hoping that the search function would save me some time. The rumbling from the adjacent room grew even louder and the M.A.I.F.O.S. started its insistent scanning, making me miss the time when it couldn't do that.

"Hostile target detected. Threat assessment: lethal. Recommend course of action: retreat," the fancy piece of headwear made looking for the "Security" tab that much harder with all the readouts. I entered "Sec" into the search bar and got an immediate result... of absolutely nothing. Then I thought Maybe it needs an exact match, I've heard of some terminals working like that, so I went back to the search and entered the full word. Still nothing. And as though somehow feeling my failure to locate the necessary thing the security itself started furiously moving, the M.A.I.F.O.S. screaming warnings as it did so. The entire room was shaking now, one of the emergency lamps blew out as a support beam was bent out of the way. For a second I looked away from the mainframe and ran to close the door, just in case, at least that would hold it off for a second or two, at least the inside had a simple button on the door.

Getting back to the keyboard and continuing the search for the elusive "Security" tab I started to just scroll through the options, sorting them out in alphabetical order to at least shorten the task somewhat.

Scan? No. Search Engine? Nope, not that one. Server? Wrong. Spam Blaster? Sounds gun, but not what I ne... – there was a heavy crash and a sound almost like an explosion of metal flying all over the place, probably getting stuck in the terminal again – Fuck, moving on. Spyware? Interesting, but wrong time. SDK? Don't even know what that means. System? Nope. Sycurity?

"Celestia on a unicycle! It's fucking misspelt!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as I pressed the damned button. It was, a lot easier from there, at least. Only option after pressing "Sycurity" was "Activity". I think that in those moments the manager was trying to say something, but at that point I was seeing red with the amount of crap I had to endure and cared very little for what was said. Turning the thing off from there didn't seem like much of a problem, just "Disable" and a small verification. But, obviously, nothing could be easy in that Princesses forsaken place, just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Once I started going through the verification there was a blow at the door that shook the entire room, then another one, and another until the door bent inwards.

The screen read "What is the capital of Equestria?" I quickly typed in the answer. There was another heavy slam at the door that blew out the remaining lights in the room, leaving it bathed in the darker green of the mainframe screen. The next question was "What is the number of Wonderbolts?" There were three options: 4, 10, 20+. I thought about it for a moment and picked the third option. Like clockwork another strike followed, this one blowing a huge piece out of the door and sending it straight into the floor right at my hooves. I yelped as I jumped up in shock and cried out as I landed, the potion helped me, but my legs were still like paper mache. The screen displayed "Who is the current leader of Equestria?", I assumed that "Nopony" wasn't the right answer and typed in "Luna". As though reacting to my inputs the security monster ripped what was left of the door and launched it missing me entirely, but hitting the casing of the mainframe and denting it heavily. The screen rippled and the top left quarter of it went black cutting off a part of the next question. " -tle in the Everfree forest?" was the question and I had no idea what the answer was. I looked back at the monstrosity, it was trying to squeeze through what was left in the doorframe ripping it to shreds in the process.

Finally I was able to take a better look at the thing that has been putting us through the wringer. It was a hulking mass of metal, like I thought before, but now I saw that metal wasn't the only component, there was a softer looking rubber-like substance in there uniting the huge chunks of what looked like one of those Sentinels ripped open. The plates covering the rubber moved up and down as the monstrosity moved, those very same plates cut into other plates, the rubber and the floor creating the one sound that I identified the thing by, it tore at the floor and at itself. Where the plates would shred the rubber-thing a black tar-like substance would flow out and cover the wound and the plate, quickly drying up and locking the plate in a new position, it would inevitably tear off again causing the thing to look more like a flowing tar blob and less like a security system gone rogue. What looked like one of the Sentinel's legs surfaced somewhere on the top and attempted to grab the wall to pull itself through. The leg struck the wall making a huge dent, the tar flowed out of it hardening into something akin to griffon talons that attempted to grab hold of the wall, but instead cut it to ribbons. What was left of the Sentinel's head was still turning around as though looking for targets, though it didn't take it too long to stop its sensors on me. The one big red "eye" in the middle of its head was cracked and blinked every other second, but remained firmly looking at me.

I stood looking back at it for a moment, before realizing that I was wasting potentially the last seconds of my life and turned back to the screen.

Now, what in Tartarus even is IN the Everfree forest? Isn't it filled with nothing but monsters and deadly plants? Okay, screw that, what's the cut off word... "-tle" Ehm... Bottle? No. Throttle? Why? Castle? Wasn't there a castle or something like that where the Princesses lived before Canterlot? It was the same place Celestia fought Nightmare Moon. What was it cal–

I had to duck as another metal fragment was sent my way by the tar monstrosity as it tore its way through the doorframe and the wall. This time it hit the ceiling making little bits of dust and rust fall from it. I could almost swear I could hear some faint mechanical clicks that sounded like some parody of laughter coming from the thing, but all the scraping metal made it impossible to be sure. Turning back once again, I started typing, I was sure that the name wasn't something complicated, if I remembered it correctly it wasn't even a pun.

It definitely starts with "Castle of" that I'm sure on, but what was it the castle of? The Royalty? The Princesses? The god-like beings with the power to control the Sun and Moon? The Alicorn Sisters? Sisters... They were known as sisters before being known as the Princesses, right? So it could be "Castle of the Two Sisters"

Finally, having typed in my answer I submitted it. There was a short loading screen. And then what I presumed said "Sycurity: off". The very second the message half-appeared on the screen there was a loud screech coming from the Sentinel bits. The lights turned off and the thing ground to a halt having ripped half the wall and squeezed most of not all of itself into the room. Its many legs slowly stopped their movements, one of them still being stuck so far into the wall that it could probably scratch its own flank at that point. The grinding and tearing sound stopped as well, giving my ears a well deserved break. The black goop, however, didn't stop solidifying and the talon-like things at the ends of the robot legs also didn't stop squeezing at empty air, but I still felt safer now that the hunk of junk was off.

I breathed a sigh of relief and it felt fucking great. I stood there dripping with sweat, my legs shaking, finally paying attention to the cold of the room properly. I could feel that spark of anger that pushed me on leaving me. My horn hurt like crazy and I probably wasn't doing it any favors by using it. All of my limbs were in their usual places, even if very sore and most likely broken. My bag was still there hanging on my flank, the book still in it. For a moment I actually felt good, I'd managed it, navigated a secret government facility and survived against Celestia knows what.

But as it went those days, things tended to get worse before they got any better. A lot worse.

Just as I was collecting myself to try to talk to the manager about the success two things hit me. The first was: Where is Ember? And the second was a small bit dislodged from the ceiling as the whole underground complex begun to shift.

"Horseapples," was the only thing I could muster as I saw the pile of metal slowly jitter back into motion. The black tar enveloped most of the Sentinel like vines crawling over a fence. Almost like a wounded animal it struggled to stand up, or whatever equivalent to standing up exists for abominations like it. The lights were still out on the head, but the legs were moving again, bending and rotating, ripping at the walls around it in an attempt to close the distance between us. I could almost feel the predatory drive that thing had. Although, predators hunt for food, that felt more like an impulse for slaughter. It saw me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

As it crawled at me faster than the thing had any right to I realized that that would be the end of it. It moved faster than before, it had enough raw mass and power to rip through multiple feet of concrete and metal, it would have no problems doing the same to me.

It slowly raised its clawed limb and prepared to strike me, the claws were probably two maybe even three feet, it'd probably make me into a cold pony platter in one swipe. I saw the thing that was about to kill me, but after all the anger had left me I had nothing left in me. I wouldn't even describe it as shock, more like a cold realization, maybe even acceptance. I just closed my eyes waiting for it to end. I tried to calm my breathing, I was told one time, back when I was a foal, that you shouldn't die out of breath because you would not be able to explain what happened and stay a ghost. I know that it was a stupid foal's story, but I thought it better to be cautious, not like there were many other things I could've done at that moment.

I heard its limbs crack and scratch the ceiling. But instead of it all just ending, I heard another sound, one that made me come back to my senses.

"For fuck's sake! That's the piece of trash we've been running from?!" Ember shouted from somewhere behind the monster. I opened my eyes and saw that Ember had distracted the thing enough to slightly lower its raised leg and start turning to face her. Its other limbs also prepared to strike Ember and one after the other they did. The entire complex shook with each impact, there were huge chunks ripped out of the floor, but amid all that I saw a bright orange flash moving faster than I could track. After a second I heard a loud crash as the leg raised at me tumbled to the ground and in its place stood Ember wielding some sort of bladed pole.

"Hey, Fritz! The fuck are you standing there for?! Use that horn of yours! Throw a fireball or something!" she shouted at me while cutting off another leg as the tar attempted to reattach it.

"Celestia damnit, Ember! I don't know..." I stopped myself from finishing that thought. Mostly, because I did know a "fireball or something" as Ember put it, "You know what? If we die here, let's do it in style. I do have something special."

Thankfully the spell didn't require any incantations or weird arcane gestures or symbols, the only things necessary were sheer will to pull ambient magical energies from around us and a bit of my own magic to kickstart the process.

"I need to concentrate! Distract it for a couple of seconds! When I say try to get as far away from it as you can!" I warned Ember before starting the spell. She made an approving "mhm" before spinning her polearm, jumping and vanishing behind the onslaught of the monster. It'd take me some time to cast it, after all it was a very complex and I was in the opposite of a good shape for casting. It took me a moment just to gather enough of my own power to siphon ambient magic with, but the second I had enough it all sort of fell into place. I could feel every little pocket of energy around me. Some were just little blobs flowing about like clouds, some were more concrete, locked into certain forms or crystals, the largest was obviously the mainframe, but it didn't matter. Wherever there was even a trace amount magic that could be funneled into the spell it simply flew out of its container and gathered around my horn, lighting the room at first with faint white and pink whispers, but growing in intensity very quickly until it was painful to look at my horn at all. I could feel the heat radiating all around me, it got so intense that I could swear it was evaporating the sweat off of my coat.

"Now!" I yelled to let Ember know to get out of the way. Then I let it loose.

The bolt of pure light flew straight into the abomination melting what was left of the Sentinel in mere moments. At first it tried to cover itself with the legs but they were gone before it even managed to raise them. The black goo was a lot more resilient, it held on for multiple seconds before flaking away like black snow and vanishing in the air. Before finally disappearing the tar attempted to reach out and grab parts of the shredded floor, but the pseudopods burned away faster than they appeared. Finally all of the tar was gone leaving only a small crystalline core wrapped in metal rings, with four spark batteries inserted into each ring. The flow of ambient magic was slowly dying down, but I was vaguely aware that it would probably be enough. The core resisted the magical onslaught with some sort of magic of its own, like a small barrier projected by a talisman. But a talisman can only stop so much energy before being overloaded and cracking. When it did the last of my spell's effect quickly made it a small puddle of molten crystal at the bottom of the crater that used to be the mainframe room floor.

"Arcane Blaze has been added to spell list," the M.A.I.F.O.S. chimed as the black smoke cleared. I breathed in deeply. Let's see you get back up from this one. I was pretty sure that I saw Ember jumping over the crater to me, although I wasn't sure why there were two of them. My legs were wobbling from all the stress and my horn was a bit more charred than I remembered from pushing all that power through it. My legs started to give out just as the pegasus reached me. She caught me in a hug and propped me up so that I would lean on her instead of the floor.

"What the fuck, Fritz?! Why are we even here if you know a spell like that? No need to blow up the flyder if we can just vaporize the bloody thing!" Ember said to me as she stored her new shiny spear under her wing. I wanted to give some snappy answer, but instead of words only unintelligible mumbles came out. I attempted to shift my weight to lean more on Ember, but something felt off, like my legs just weren't there. I tried to raise my head to look around, but it wouldn't listen. My eyes were slowly closing and no attempt on my part was enough to keep them open. It took a second for me to realize what was happening, but when I finally fell unconscious from the exhaustion and magical burnout it mattered very little whether I understood it or not.

Effects:

• Crippled Legs – you suffered a hard blow to your legs! Ouch! Your movement is cut in half and you cannot run!
• Mild Concussion – getting hit over the head never feels good. -2 Perception and -1 Intelligence.
• Advanced Radiation Poisoning – standing in the sun isn't as pleasant as it used to be. -2 Endurance and -1 Agility.
• Cuts and Bruises – your body is covered in small cuts, gashes, nicks and pricks. Your max health is lowered until you can fully heal.
• Magical Burnout – didn't your parents ever tell you not to overdo it with the spells? -1 Perception and Spellcasting is disabled.

Author's Note

It feels like it's been forever since the last time I posted anything. Exactly 737 days since the last chapter. I've gotten back into writing and fixing the godawful stuff in the earlier chapters.

Thanks for reading!