Pegasus Device: Reckoning

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Two

Prologue

Author's Note

This prologue was originally uploaded as 'Bonus Chapter' in Pegasus Device.

There have been some minor editing changes, but if you have already read it, nothing significant has been altered.

Prologue

Contrail wandered slowly down the winding corridor, taking in his surroundings. The ancient walkway creaked and groaned as he stepped, its complaints left on deaf ears. He wasn't worried about it. He wouldn't have been even before the deep clean of the facility, but he especially didn't worry about it now all the fasteners and security wires had been replaced.

It was hard to worry about anything in the old factory anymore. Most of it had been cleaned, replaced, and reinforced after the Royal Inspection. Contrail's eyes followed a series of bright, coloured plastic pipes as they hugged the wall. Clean, parallel, clearly marked with their contents. Always overrated for their transported materials and pressures. He stopped walking, soaking in the view in front of him.

Some things were familiar. The walkway, save for the new safety rails. The cramped walls, save for the bright, organized plumbing. The endless void beneath him, save for the change from pitch black to pure white. The whole thing was just so damn clean. It was a nice environment to work in, but part of him hated it. He had liked the old chaos; the webway of pipes and wires, tubing and venting, the darkness. These new lights always gave him a headache.

He rubbed a hoof on his eyes before carrying on, his mind absent save for a simple feeling of nostalgia. He kept his eyes closed while he walked, staving off the inevitable pain behind his temples for a while longer. Despite all the changes, he knew his way. He had walked these hallways for decades and a little bit of safety tape wasn't about to throw him for a loop.

A communicator clipped to a toolbelt around his shoulders crackled and he stopped, listening as Gentle's voice spoke to him.

"Where are you headed, Contrail? Maintenance isn't due in this corridor for..." there was a pause, and Contrail could imagine the green mare leaning over from the computer console to a heavy binder, full of charts and numbers. "Tartarus, a few months. If you're done, you can check out for the night."

Contrail cocked his head sideways and activated his communicator. "I am checked out. Dash asked for a personal favor. Something broken that needs fixing."

There was no reply. He didn't expect one for about a minute, as Gentle dealt with what he just said. That's an awful shame, he thought, An engineer as good as her who can't handle the words 'broken' or 'fix'. Well, maybe with a bit more time. He thought back to the mandated therapy for all CWC staff. It had helped them deal with a lot of things; their actions of the past; their years of overworking and not enough sleep; their years of holding back a terrible secret. Gentle was saved the pleasure of dealing with actually processing a failure before the whole system was stopped. But, her mind hadn’t been strong enough to deal with the nightmare she was thrust into. Three days in the Upper Factory, and she snapped like a twig.

"Something missed in the cleanup? I didn't think there were any rooms left that haven't been overhauled. Hold on, they're purging a liquid thunder line on the second floor, I need to check this-" She trailed off.

At least they were able to save her mind. She can't physically do the work but she coordinates the whole factory as if she had built it. A smile touched the pastel-blue pegasus' lips. He glanced again at all the new plumbing on the walls. The safety changes had been mandated by the Royal Inspection, but it was Gentle's head that had planned it all out. His disgust at the shiny plastic dimmed a little. She basically did build it.

"I'm back. What room was missed?"

"Well, the room was cleaned up. There's just a bit of tarped machinery that was ignored." He said it casually, but there was a heaviness in his voice he hoped carried over the radio. Stop asking, he pleaded to himself. For the love of Luna, stop. Asking.

"Oh, yes, right, the uh. The old transfer piping, right? Those lines are dead now," the reply came back, unconvincing to Contrail but good enough for the chat logs that would be printed. "I think I remember her discussing a repurposing project about those. Just be careful in the MTR, would you? The cameras never work no matter how often we replace them."

"Just listen for my voice and I'll be fine, got it?"

"Understood Contrail. I'll leave you to it."

The communication device gave one last crackle, and silence rushed back around Contrail. He breathed deeply, glad Gentle had understood his message. He carried on, letting his hoofsteps echo around him. Here and there as he walked he spotted more familiar signs. A rusted and unreadable sign left up where pipes no longer ran. Cloud walls stained with years of age and dirt hidden just out of reach. A dark stain that wouldn't come out of the old grating, no matter how much they scrubbed. And of course, there was the hum. The ever present thrum of the factory, a symphony of resonating pipes and machines, of workers on assembly lines, of chemists in labs, of refrigerators and condensers, of two thousand years of constant operation. Of a million souls trapped in the crypt of clouds and channels.

He stopped again and opened his eyes. Before him was a large, nondescript door sealed not with a lock but with a strip of warning tape. A clear message was displayed on the neon tape: 'This room not to be maintained'. Contrail peeled the tape off and dropped it into the bright abyss below him, and then waited, and took a deep breath.

I hate this part, he thought with a cringe, before reaching out to the handle and resting his hoof on it.

The howl of a hundred, a thousand, a million dying foals filled the hallway--or appeared to, at least. Contrail stood steadfast as his very being was assaulted by the wailing. It went on for a minute with clear voices appearing out of the muddy sound of pain and anguish. Young voices, of colts, of fillies. Of failures, Contrail affirmed. He recognized some of those screams, picturing the faces of the ponies as they made them. Eventually the hellish chorus died out, leaving Contrail with only his budding headache and a single tear running down his muzzle.

"Whatever," he snapped, shaking his head and walking fully into the Main Theatre Room. "I didn't throw any of you in this damned Device. Don't yell at me," he went on, dropping his voice to a disdainful mutter. "I'm just the stallion they hired to keep it running."

It had been a long time since Contrail had been in the Theatre Room. He had shut the original Pegasus Device down after the failure's rebellion on Dash's orders. He never saw the weird mangy thing that Dash had kept chained up in here for 20 years, only knowing of it through whispers and breakroom rumors. Dead workers and failures alike had been left to rot in this jail along with the prisoner. It must have driven her insane, he thought, to be left abandoned amongst all that death.

He mused for a moment.

Good. He spat on the floor in the center of the room. Looking around, he wondered how Dash had managed to keep the Pegasus Device hidden despite the cleanup. This room wasn't spared the assault of bleaches, plastics, and scrubs. Even the catwalks above, useless now for almost twenty-five years, had been replaced with brand new safety-compliant versions. One would never know the carnage that had occurred in this room in such a small time. He settled his vision on the large tarped mass at the back wall. The faded, oil-stained fabric stood out amongst the bright cloud floor and brilliant lighting, and if he hadn't known the purpose of the blocky edges showing through the tarp, he would say it was all perfectly ominous to him.

Well, maybe it is all perfectly ominous to me. His whole life was spent as part of a conspiracy, a cog in the machine of misery and death and rainbows, yet even now he felt a shiver run down his back and to his flanks. He had been delirious for most of that life. Maybe his clarity now let it finally get to him.

"Now, now, Contrail," he sighed, "Now is not the time to contemplate the purity of your soul. Now is the time for work." He grabbed a corner of the tarp with his mouth and walked back, slowly revealing the monster beneath. It wasn't anything pretty, he admitted to himself, staring at the boring design before him. It was mostly cubic, with a huge hopper on top, and four massive clear tubes extending from each side like some sort of mechanical spider designed by a filly with a crayon. The tubes were speckled with black splotches; aged and dried spectra from a generation ago. The hopper was also speckled with black splotches; this Contrail knew was not spectra. Not yet, anyways. It would have been after going through the device. Now it was just a reminder of the old way.

A reminder of purity, he figured. He walked up to the base and kicked open a panel and thought of how this glorious machine gave Cloudsdale rainbows. It could take a mass of flesh and blood and bone and squeeze out every ounce of gorgeous rainbow that could be mustered. At the same time, it would take the chaff of the city and remove them from sight and mind forever. For the sake of Cloudsdale, and the sake of their image, and the sake of the parents of failures. For the Flock.

Sentiment hadn't changed in Cloudsdale. Earth ponies and Unicorns were horrified and had protested and petitioned and complained and then forgot the next time some world-ending event was narrowly averted by some saccharine act of friendship. But Pegasi, they didn't care. There was talk and play of change, of improving society. At the end of the day though, the flight tests still went on. Those who failed their tests were disowned by their parents, refused every job, ignored by guards and civilians alike. As part of the reparations, Dash and the Corporation had founded a foster system and orphanage for failures. There were no foster homes, though, despite them desperately advertising for volunteers. There were, however, orphanages--filling up fast, beyond their limit of capacity--of the barest minimum quality of life. Well, Dash had a plan, and the best part of it was that the orphanages were not regulated like the factory was. The quality of life was ensured in random inspections.

But population counts were never taken.

Contrail walked around behind the Device, skimming it with his eyes. He calculated, noted, planned. Those casters are seized, I'll need to replace those. The blades'll need to be sharpened, though just enough that they're effective again. That cable has been completely eaten away... by what? Pigeons, probably. Sky rats, he thought, sighing. And those leads will need to be replaced, of course, and... Is the motherboard...

He stuck his head straight into the guts of the machine, looking up towards where the hopper connected to the main body. Finding his mark, he swore. There was a flat, gold module about a foot square next to a large duct past the blades, with a dozen tubes and wires running out of it. Or rather, there was most of it - It had clearly become unattached from the duct and was somehow bent. It would need to be replaced, and the only way to do it was through the hopper.

He swore again and backed out. "First thing's first," he said aloud to himself, keeping him on track, "Is to make sure the whole thing is off."

He reached the wall where a massive cable ran into a fuse box and nudged it open to reveal where the cable ran into the power supply and a dozen fuses. Carefully, he pulled each fuse out and placed it on the ground in the same order he removed them. When he finished he pressed the release latch for the cable and watched the power cord drop heavily to the floor. Not taking any chances, he kicked it over back to the machine, away from the plug. He took off then, flapping his wings with a weariness that came with his age and landed near the control panel. After a brief moment of consideration he pulled the large power switch down onto the on position. He struggled as the corroded lever resisted being moved from its slumber but with a snap, it latched into place, and he turned to the beast behind him.

The Pegasus Device lay dark and silent.

"Good." He flipped the lever back to the Off position with just as much effort as before and moved an 'off' catch over it, keeping it from moving. He pulled out two more fuses next to the lever and set them down as before, then hovered back down to the open machine. "No danger to me now." He looked down to his right to see a small filly, yellow with a dark green mane. Her eyes were wide and wet, with tears running down her cheeks, and oozing stumps where wings should have been. Contrail made eye contact with her and then looked back to the machine nonchalantly. He started to get to work, pulling various bits and pieces and tools out of the pockets on his belt. He picked up a screwdriver with his mouth and glanced down to his right briefly. Reassured that there was no filly there, he got to work twisting his head and opening up various modules within the Device.

The room was quiet as he worked and it took Contrail about an hour before he froze, his body twisted deep in the internal wiring, and he listened intently. It was not a sound that had caught his attention but a lack of one. The deep hum that ran through the whole facility was absent here. He felt a brief moment of panic. Had the whole thing shut down? This room was no more soundproof than any other, and even if the factory operations had ended suddenly there would have been intense pandemonium. He shifted and jerked his way out and onto the floor, his ears perked. Still nothing. He flew to the door and opened it. Still, nothing. He stepped out of the Theatre Room as his heart pounded and then he stopped. The hum had returned the moment he crossed the threshold.

"What in..." He trailed off as he stepped back into the room. The hum was immediately gone, despite the door still being open. He tried a couple more times, listening to the comfortable resonance appear and vanish with his movements, before shrugging his shoulders. He wrote it off as another mystery of the old factory and closed the door. Turning around he gasped and backed up, his haunches pressing against the door.

The room was dirty, dark, and destroyed. Scaffolding hung precariously in some places and collapsed in others. All along the floor were half-decomposed piles of bone and colourful fur, dark spatters of blood, and tools. Hanging in the middle of the room by two chains, wrapped in twine and upside down, was what Contrail thought might be a mare. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again and found the same scene before him.

He tilted his head, annoyed. "Shoo," he admonished, and the room was clean and new again.

"I'm gonna have to tell Dash to demand a refund from that therapist she got me," he sighed as he walked back to his mess before the Pegasus Device.

His work had progressed slowly but one by one his remaining tasks dwindled. He had replaced all the fasteners that had worn out, all the moving parts that didn't move anymore, most of the wires that had frayed or been eaten, and even cleared out a pigeon nest with much cursing and pain. He was down to two modules that had to be replaced and the sharpening of the blades. The shortened list had given Contrail renewed vigor but his eyes grew tired as his day went long. He had worked for multiple days at a time-- his record was a week, as far as he could tell-- but the change in schedule to a legally mandated 12 hour shift before 12 hours off had, by his accounts, wrecked him. His therapist was happy that Contrail was back to a normal sleep schedule but on the rare emergencies or seasonal swap-outs, he found it difficult to stay up like he used to. He tapped his communicator with his chin as he tried to maneuver a heavy gearbox into place.

"Gentle?"

"You're still up? By Luna, Contrail, you've been at that as long as you'd been on shift."

"Well then why are you still on Control?"

"The- well, never mind why." There was a hint of embarrassment in her voice. Contrail smirked as he entertained the thought that she had worked late to make sure he was okay. "My shift switch is here and taking care of most things. I was just wasting time thinking of the best layout for the cyclone pipe expansion."

"Gentle, that expansion is still in committee. Overachiever much?" He grunted and shifted the weight of the gearbox around. "I'm glad you're still on though."

"Thanks. What's wrong?" The voice came back to Contrail's receiver tinted with worry. Contrail looked up and out of the mess of wires around him. There was a stallion standing there, upside down to Contrail's twisted position. His coat was battleship grey and scarred in multiple places. His muzzle was lumpy and unaligned as if it had been broken and never set. He stared at Contrail. Or, he appeared to. One eye was focused directly on the light blue stallion's. The other was hanging out, pressed out of its cavity by a wrinkly pink mass that poured blood.

"Hand me that screwdriver, Pipe," Contrail said to the apparition. It leaned down silently and came back up with the tool before reaching its head forward to him. Contrail grabbed the screwdriver with his mouth, ignoring the sharp iron taste that overwhelmed his tastebuds, and uttered a muffled "phnks" before returning to the gearbox. Fixing it in place he looked up again and spat the screwdriver out onto the vacant cloud floor. He lay there in the wiring and practiced his breathing.

"Contrail?"

"I'm just getting tired, I think, but I'm almost done. It's quiet in here."

Gentle's relieved voice came back and echoed in the box Contrail lay in. "It's quiet here too. Let's talk, buddy."

"I like that idea. About what?"

"The challenges of cyclone piping and air-fluid dynamics?"

"Tartarus, no, Gentle, I'm trying to stay awake." He looked at where his old friend had stood moments ago, still seeing nothing. "Hey, uh... you ever see things down here?"

"Things?" The voice came across confused. "There's a lot of things in Old Factory, Contrail. And if you mean in the MTR, I've never been in."

"How'd you redirect the pipes here?"

"We didn't, those are all just one-for-one replacements. The whole room is basically bypassed by anything built after the Incident, and the few divisions of Lower Factory that are still using those lines are all non-essential."

"Ah." He gulped. "I mean uh, things. Weird things. Maybe anywhere. Or heard things?"

"I've heard talk of things. Some of the workers from there mentioned stuff when we did the debrief group therapy sessions. Things like timberwolves baying, bloody walls. Some kind of screaming by a door. Did something happen to you?"

"No, not particularly. I've been hallucinating, I think. Seeing old friends and enemies. Hearing uh. Screams. By the door. But that's always happened, really..." He trailed off.

"What?"

"Whenever I... or Pipe Wrench or Gauge or anyone who worked in Old Factory... touched the door handle here, there was screaming. Like lots of screaming. I could write it off as PTSD if it was just myself, but we all talked about it. It was only who was opening the door. Sounds like it's coming from every pipe, every vent, every crack in the clouds, but you'd only hear it if you were touching or about to head into the MTR. I wrote it off a long time ago in my fog. Just another part of this divine comedy we lived in, eh?" He chuckled into the receiver. Elsewhere, far above him, Gentle's feathers horripilated at the distantly familiar laugh. "We used to think it was some security thing Dash put in place to keep us out, but it happened again, today."

"I've... read of stuff like mass hallucinations. Ponies under great stress that share the same fantasy or fear. It's probably something like that."

Contrail shuffled out of his mess of wires and boxes and stood up on the clean floor. He started bolting the panels back onto the Pegasus Device while he spoke. "Sure, that makes sense. I think I've heard of it too," he lied, "but maybe say it's not? You think this place is haunted?"

As he asked the question, he felt a tug on his fetlocks of his hindleg. He turned, looking down. Another foal had appeared and was pulling gently on his leg. It was a colt--not one that Contrail recognized--with seemingly nothing wrong with him. He had a pastel blue coat and a navy mane not unlike Contrail's own. It spoke to him, its mouth forming soundless words. It was not pleading, or crying, or screaming. It was calm, and continued repeating its movements. Contrail strained, listening, and finally thought he could make it out.

"Why did I become this?"

In an instant he realized who this little colt was, one he had not seen in decades, one he last saw before he even knew he would be good at engineering. With eyes wide he kicked hard and the colt vanished. "At least I know that you're just psychiatric issues," he muttered before realizing Gentle was talking.

"...Through vibrations of old transfer systems, it triggers your pineal gland and makes you feel dread and fear. So that's what I think is happening. Just some weird biological stuff combined with years of psychological trauma and lack of sleep. Honestly, how did anyone survive this place before?"

"I think most did what I did, but in different ways. We just kind of shut our rational selves off and locked them in a corner and let some sort of primitive consciousness rule the show. Something that couldn't comprehend the weight of what was going on. You know the saying about this place right?"

"There's a lot of sayings about this place. Do you mean one that the citizens say? Not to be rude but how would you know what's current in the Flock's lexicon?"

"Ouch, thanks. Ponies like you that got promoted over the years brought outside information in. We still get newspapers, you know," he added, hurt.

"Sorry. But which one?"

Contrail hummed a little tune, harking back to days he and his friends would play hopscotch on the streets of Cloudsdale, singing old nursery rhymes that were cute sounding yet held a darker meaning. "In the Rainbow Factory, where not a single soul gets through... You know that one?"

A laugh came over the comms. "That old tune we used to skip rope to as foals? Yeah, I know it. Not much of a saying, though. What about it?"

"I think there's some truth to that, Gentle. I think souls don't make it through this factory. I think something about it traps them here, or steals them away. I said that we hid those rational parts of our minds. I think our souls were stolen by the energy of this place. Think about it. Every pony who still works here after the Inspection has their wits about them now, mostly, right?"

"Sure, I'll entertain you. Most of my coworkers aren't nut-jobs anymore." Her voice was teasing and playful.

Contrail rolled his eyes. "I should actually say, think about those who left. Those who didn't volunteer to continue working, who retired or quit when they were able to. Think about them. How many of them do you remember that were right in the head, even after all the help and all the therapy and all the medication? Even partially?"

There was no immediate response. He moved on, throwing the replacement motherboard module and a couple tools into his belt before equipping it and flying up to the catwalk over the hopper. Gentle's response came as he double checked the disconnected power lines and locked switch.

"Alright, so, none that I can think of. So fair enough, something about working for a corrupt corporate executive in hellish conditions for years under secrecy doing an evil deed addles the mind when you're relieved of the pressure of it. I'm not going to be too quick to say that that's some sort of soul being sucked out of you."

"This place sucked a lot of things from a lot of ponies, so who's to say a soul isn't part of it? That there isn't some sort of machine left plugged in and buzzing away, turning spirits into snowfall?"

"Since when have you been so philosophical?"

He stopped and drooped his head. "Since a failure cracked my friend's head in with a pipe wrench. I just don't let it out that much. But you're dodging the question," he teased as he moved to hover over the hopper. In its inactive state, the blades were back in guards and away from the complex machinery that processed spectra. Contrail laid a plastic board over the inner intake and landed on it. He groaned as he knelt down to his side and craned his neck through an access panel. Before him lay the damaged module.

"Right. I don't know if I can get behind a soul being some physical entity which can be removed, or even contained, though. So I don't really believe that one could exist, much less confine itself to a replicant image of its former host in a single location, or be confined."

Contrail replied while disconnecting all the old lines from the module. "Alright, well, I won't try to convince you. But something is seriously messed up here anyways. I thought I was making great progress and now a bunch of images have been plaguing me all day. Say," he interjected, "Humour me one more thing."

"Shoot."

"Could you try to reconnect the cameras in this room? They've never been physically damaged right? Just weird electrical glitches. Could be worth a shot. Maybe we'll capture a ghost on film," he added.

"Sure, whatever. Give me five minutes." The radio fell silent again.

He tapped his communicator again, turning off his mic. Glancing up from his makeshift workstation he could see a distant security camera trained towards him. A red light had been blinking fast on it but it turned off as he looked. Murphy's Mercy, he thought. Tell someone something is broken and it fixes itself before you can prove it. He finished with the old module and tossed it over the edge of the hopper. After hearing it clatter on the cloud below he fished out the new module and inspected it. It was soaked in blood. He swore and wiped it off on his hide before making sure there wasn't any fluid in the connections. Satisfied, he started meticulously reattaching the module to the Pegasus Device.

He would be glad to get out of here and to get some sleep. In the morning, or whenever it was when he woke up, he would contact management to arrange a new psychiatrist appointment. He was tired. Tired of working ridiculous hours. Tired of these dreadful visions and sounds. Tired of old aches and new ones that were settling in to stay. Maybe he could get out, he thought. Maybe he could retire. There was a great pension set up for him, some Employee Victim Union fund he qualified for. Even with the new freedom allowed to him, he hadn't left his dormitory room in the New Factory. Perhaps it was time to actually venture forth into the city of Cloudsdale, that metropolis he had spent his whole life fighting for without ever enjoying. As he worked, the decision set itself harder and harder in his head. He would retire, and be the first Pegasus to get through the factory with his soul--fractured though it may be.

With his decision made, he tightened the last lug nut on the module and returned the wrench to his belt. Before he could get up however, a sudden lurch rolled him on to his back.

Of course, he thought. That was a mistake to think.

Violent rumblings below him shook him to the bone. Lights dimmed as a great noise emanated from the Pegasus Device. Contrail couldn't remember the last time he had heard it: a deep klaxon that quivered his insides. More noise followed after, evolving quickly as various machinations and systems whirred to life, adding their haunting instrument to the symphony around him. He heard the revving of a dozen motors as they turned newly oiled gears. He heard hollow pulses as the spectra pumps warmed up to speed. Pistons gave a time signature to it all: a cold and metal heartbeat that immediately began to race. Or was that his heartbeat?

With a burst of energy he had not felt since he was much, much younger, he leapt to his hooves and bent his legs, ready to take off. He had a good fifteen seconds to escape, yet at the same time he planned to get out he was silently accepting what he knew to be his fate. As he kicked off, he didn't lift. The plastic board beneath him vanished entirely, and Contrail dropped instead, his flanks jamming in the intake. He started flapping his wings furiously, but all he could do was laugh. Around him on the catwalk were a hundred, a thousand, a million, he couldn't tell, colts and fillies. They stared at him-- some bloody, some mangled, some sunken, some bloated, all deformed in their own way-- and he laughed. He let himself laugh just like he did when his mind was shattered.

"Oh, you bastards," he choked between guffaws.

"Contrail, the camera actually turned on! I hope that relieves you. Wait, where are..."

Look away, Gentle, and maybe you can get out. But for the love of Luna, don't tell them. Don't let them know. Maybe you'll be spared.

The camera light turned a bright green as the blades extended from their guards, dull and rusted, and they descended into Contrail. He felt his body wracked with pain as the slabs of metal half cut into him, half pummeled him. Over and over the myriad of blades fell into him, eventually dragging him up out of the intake and fully enveloping him. He felt a leg rip from its socket and the Device started vibrating, humming that same tune that had brought him so much comfort, as his flesh and blood funneled into the labyrinth of machine below. Still he laughed. He laughed as his body was twisted and cracked like dough in a mixer. He laughed as corroded metal ripped away his stomach and intestines. He laughed as his ragdoll head finally fell between two dull blades and was crushed. With that--finally--there were no more laughs. Only a single, tinny scream, coming from a radio, lost somewhere in the last Pegasus Device.

Chapter One

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter Three

Cloud Cover roused groggily, her sight and hearing an oily blotch. A distant memory of haunted hallways and calamitous caterwauling drained from her mind, and she weakly shook her head to clear it completely. She ached from every joint and every organ. Her vision slowly came to focus, and she found herself strapped down onto a bit of a makeshift table. It was a stretcher, propped up onto a counter, and her legs were splayed out and strapped to it with the leather scraps of what she figured was her saddlebag. She tested her right foreleg and found that, though there was some give, it was holding on to her pretty tightly.

Damnit, not again, she thought, and as her hearing returned she took in her surroundings. She was in a smaller sort of medical room that reeked of sterility. There were some counters at the front of the room with various laboratory equipment and vials of chemicals, and then some simple office desks against the right wall. To her left was a series of lockers and a chemical shower, and past that was a stallion in a black armoured vest emblazoned with the Corporation’s logo. He sat steadfast in front of the only door Cloud Cover could see.

Her head pounded, though she would have been shocked if it didn’t. They hadn’t knocked her out until after they had performed a various number of tests on her. She felt as if somehow they had managed to extract her dignity along with every other form of biological fluid in her body. Her legs stung in the soft parts under the joints where blood had been drawn. Her mouth had an awful taste from the variety of swabs put in and around it. There was a lingering trace of violation below her waist, and the returning memory of it infused her with anger.

She looked at the guard at the door, and softly tested her straps again. He was staring straight ahead at the right wall, seemingly alert but not responding to her stirring.

“H-hey, buddy,” she said, her voice catching on her dry tongue before dipping into her favorite honeyed speech she used when she wanted information. “What are you doing here, uh? You didn’t sign up for this, right? You wanted to make clouds, spread the rain, be the hero cleaning up fog and bringing in the sun, right? None of this super-sketchy ‘make sure a helpless mare can’t escape torture at the hooves of your boss’ bullshit, right?” She smiled sweetly at him.

“Shut up, failure,” he said, and continued staring ahead.

“Uh. Okay, gotcha,” she continued, dropping the sweet talk. “Don’t consider me a pony, I can work with that. No worries.” She was silent for a moment as she looked the stallion over. “You into warm holes then? I mean, they already did a lot of weird stuff to me, I’m on a bit of a roll right now I think. You take these straps off, I suck your cock, you blast rope in or on me and I sneak out of here and never come back. Sounds fair?”

“I’d rather fuck a leaf-shredder. Eat shit.”

Fuck, she thought. She twisted around a bit, testing the straps again. They were tight, but the leather on her fur didn’t hold well. If she could squirm around enough, she figured, she could slip out. It wouldn’t help if the guard was paying attention to her while she did it, though, and it would be obvious. Unless…

“Alright, one more try. Can you blame me?” She asked him with a tired chuckle, and he turned and sneered at her. “Legitimately this time,” she continued. “I’ve got an itch on my back, middle of my wings. Driving me crazy. I think it’s from where they did a spinal tap. Please?” she pleaded.

“Listen, failure,” the stallion sighed, “They pay me to stand here, an’ not to interact with you, save for making sure you shut up an’ wait for the surgery team to clock in. I’ve been through all the training, a’ight? Stand still, look ahead, no sexual favors, no favors of any kind, especially not the ol’ ‘lean in and scratch the itch because you’re still a decent sorta stallion and get knocked out cold by a headbutt’ trick. An’,” he said, pawing the floor once, “I ain’t about to give up a lifelong career for some sens’a morals or ethics or whatever. Corporation’s got good benefits.”

Cloud Cover nodded eagerly as he spoke, muttering “mmhmms” and “ahas” while she twisted and writhed in place. Slowly, she could feel her hoofs inch out of the straps. “That’s fair, but, like, really, it’s really itchy,” she said.

“Give’r up, failure.” The stallion returned to looking at the desks ahead.

Cloud Cover felt a sense of excitement as he ignored her, but tried not to move any quicker. She slid back and forth, pressing out with her wings to gain a bit more leverage. A rear leg was almost out, and sweat was starting to form on her body from the effort- a factor that she was grateful for, as it helped her other hooves shimmy up the leather.

“Hey! What did I say? Knock it off!” The stallion shouted, pointing at Cloud Cover.

“It’s just… so… damn… itchy!” On her final word, all four legs popped out of their prisons, and with reflexes honed through a lifetime of dancing through crowds and chasing celebrities, she flipped forward onto her hooves and launched off the stretcher. The guard had turned and was starting to lift off to move towards her, but Cloud Cover made it to him before he could gain any ground. She rocketed at him, forelegs outstretched like Supermare, and his neck rotated into her hoof.

She carried through, bringing the guard’s head right to the cloud wall. The wall did not give as she expected though, and there was a sickening crack as she slammed the guard’s skull against the unrelenting cloud. He shuddered once, and then fell, silent.

Cloud Cover landed and stepped back, raising a hoof in concern. She just wanted to disorientate him. She didn’t realize the walls were reinforced; it was just going to be a bit of a discombobulation, that’s all. She looked at the limp pegasus on the floor before her. She tapped him gingerly once, and then a second time with more effort. He did not move, and a small stream of blood started to pour from his nose.

Cloud Cover sighed. It was hard to maintain the moral high ground when she kept accidentally killing Corporation workers every time she was in their headquarters. She did not grieve, however; there was no time, and she knew that soon enough she would have been dead herself.

“Should have taken the blowjob, huh?” she said, nudging the limp body back against the wall.

She checked--and double checked--that the door was fastened tight before getting to work, looking around for anything that might help her escape. She knew where the elevator was, but getting there without anypony catching her was her worry. She checked the desks and swore when she found them all locked. She moved over to the lockers and tried them, finding the middle one to be unlocked, with a solid white, full-body covering inside it. She pulled it out and inspected it; it was a hazmat suit, with a dark tinted visor in the hood. Perfect, she thought, dropping the bundle to the floor and sidling over it.

In the midst of stepping into the suit, she paused. Why would a worker be walking through mainly office hallways in full protective gear? She shook her head in frustration-- she’d be caught immediately. She scanned the room quickly and her eyes locked on the chemicals on the workbench across the room. Smiling, she finished zipping up the suit, and tucked her mane into the hood. She went to the chemicals and inspected the labels.

Most of them were marked with various large combinations of letters and numbers she figured might have been names, but couldn’t recognize any of them. She never finished high school, of course, having been expelled from the system after failing the flight test. However, the other stickers on the jars gave her more than enough information. She quickly slung the straps of a carrying tray over her withers and gently placed her selection upon it; three erlenmeyer flasks of different coloured liquids. One had a diagram of bone showing through hoof in a diamond frame. Another had the pleasant image of eyes with a large red line through it, and the last one had the simple depiction of an arrow moving through a pony’s mouth and into its lungs, with another red cross. Cloud Cover did not need a high school education to know each one of these alone would justify the gear.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm her pounding heart. She just needed to make it to the elevator, and she would be able to get out. She would have to leave Cloudsdale unfortunately, but she knew she had pressed her luck too far with this. The thought of never seeing her colleagues from Cloudsdale at Seven, or her few friends from around the western neighbourhood where she lived, or the little cafe she liked to visit on Sunday mornings stung deeply. There was something deeply ingrained in her, just as it was for most pegasi, that made the city call to her. Something that always felt like comfort and warmth in the depths of her heart. It felt almost genetic, and it wouldn’t surprise her if she found that it was. Alas, despite all that, she would need to leave. She would rather live somewhere safe, like Canterlot, than constantly be looking over her shoulder here, waiting for the day a stranger threw a mask over her head and hauled her away to face the factory once again.

Ever since what happened with Corona, she had feared being labelled as cowardly or meek. She shook her head, deciding not to give any thought to the colt who had run away; the one who had succumbed to his own fears and left her to fend for herself. She used to think herself brave for staying in Cloudsdale, for fighting to survive and for making it so far in her career and life. And here she was now, plotting her final retreat from her home.

She unlocked the door and opened it, stepping out slowly with her tray of hazardous chemicals. In the tinted hood, the white walls looked grey and imposing. She breathed in and out again, saw no workers in the hall, and continued on.

It was a small distance away, with two corners to turn, and she prayed there would be nobody in what she assumed was now the night. No windows, she thought, I wonder why I didn’t notice that before.

She turned her first corner and almost completely froze. There was a mare at the end of the hallway, flying casually down towards her. She had the same black, logoed vest on, and was humming along to a tune only she could hear whilst reading something on a clipboard. Cloud Cover swallowed hard and walked forward slowly, keeping her head down and looking at the chemicals. Her mind was racing, thinking about what she could do if the mare questioned her, and she jumped when the worker spoke.

“Hey, watch out there, that’s dangerous stuff.”

Cloud Cover looked up at the mare, who was looking down at her annoyed. She spoke again.

“I almost kicked you. We’re all busy here, heads up alright?”

“Uh, yes, of course, sorry,” Cloud Cover said, trying to shift the pitch of her voice. “I was just a little worried about these spilling.”

“Well, they’re corked, so worry about not getting knocked over a bit more.” With that, the mare continued on down the hallway past Cloud Cover, back to her humming.

Maybe you should look up so you don’t knock over a pony in a hazmat suit, she thought, rolling her eyes. She heeded the mare’s warning as she continued though, splitting her attention between the tray and the hallway.

The next corner held no surprises, and it took all of Cloud Cover’s concentration not to burst into a gallop towards the elevator. It was still unguarded, and she allowed herself a small “yes!” as she approached it. She pressed the call button, and a display appeared just above it in the cloud.

“Please present retina or employee ID pass to continue,” it displayed, with a small laser beaming out from the display.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Cloud Cover hissed. “Am I really stuck in this goddamn factory again? For Flock’s sake, why me?” As she cursed beneath her breath, she heard a door open and close somewhere behind her. She risked a glance and found it was not in this hallway, but started walking forward again to not raise suspicion if anypony came.

Think, Cloud. What now? How do I get out? Her mind jumped from imagined scenario to imagined scenario. Maybe there’s a pass in another locker somewhere. I don’t think I can risk heading back to the medical office, they’ll probably be expecting me around there if they know I’m gone. I guess I could try and find out more of what they’re doing? She tilted her head, consulting with herself. On the one hoof, it would mean spending more time and risking being caught, but on the other, she was already currently stuck on this floor, and if she could find out what the Corporation was doing, or how they planned to do… whatever it was they were going to do, if she did get out, she could put a stop to it. And if they catch me, she reasoned, at least I’ll die with the satisfaction of knowing what the Tartarus is going on.

She stopped her absentminded pace forward, and looked around her. There were various offices with different labels-- ones she remembered from when she first headed to Gentle’s office. She turned to the Climate Studies room, gently opening the door and slipping inside quietly.

“Hey,” came a voice from the back of the room, and again Cloud Cover gave every inch of her strength to hold herself back from jumping. She looked over and saw a stallion in a lab coat at the back of the room who had glanced up from a pile of papers when she entered.

“Hey,” she said, walking forward into the room as casually as she could force herself. She took in her surroundings and noted various objects in the room- a workbench similar to the one in the medical office, three long counters which divided the centre of the room, and the desk the stallion sat at. It was a mess of papers and folders, with a filing cabinet next to it that was stuffed so full with documents that none of the drawers looked like they could be closed. She moved forward to the workbench and turned her back to the scientist in the room, racking her brain for some way to deal with him.

She struggled to think of what to do, and started absentmindedly fiddling with some of the equipment on the bench. She looked at one device, a weird thing with dozens of pipettes arranged in a circle, and pretended to work with it while she thought.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

She stiffened. Shit, she thought, but she said “Oh, uhm, well, I was just uh…”

“Just what?” The voice was getting closer, and she didn’t look. If thoughts had been racing through her head before, now they were rocketing through as if they were headed to the moon. “Are you, uh, new here? They didn’t say anything about a new employee.”

“Well, you see, no, I’ve just been uh, transferred from, medical, and,” she stuttered, keeping her voice low and muffled through the hood.

“I don’t think you should be here.” His voice was right next to her. “Hey! Who are you?” He started to shout. “Guar-” it started, and Cloud Cover felt a hoof on her back.

She bucked and whipped around, launching the tray of flasks at the questioning stallion. She felt her hindhooves connect, and when she completed her turn she saw her kick had buckled one of his legs and brought his head down.

Straight down in fact, into the path of the flasks now projectiled into the air by her violent movement. One of them, the one with the label showing bone through flesh, shattered on the worker’s muzzle. The liquid evaporated almost instantly, but in a shock of pain from her kick, he had gasped- breathing it in as a yellow-brown haze quickly appeared and then disapparated around his face. He went to scream, but almost immediately it became a muted gurgle, and he collapsed.

Cloud Cover backed up in terror, safe from the shattering vials in her suit, and she watched horrified as the stallion’s eyes and skin melted before her. He was still alive- unable to scream, he was flailing on the ground, rolling and pawing at his face, bringing away melted flesh from skull. Soon his violent shaking stopped, and he lay on the floor, dry heaving. A blast of blood vomited from the remains of his mouth, and he became still.

Cloud Cover had run to the back of the room where the worker had come from and tore off her hood, just in time for herself to vomit into a wire trash can below the desk. She coughed as the bile stung in her throat, and spat after another wave erupted from her. She stood there for several minutes, spitting into the mess on the floor, before finally stepping back and coughing once.

There, on the floor by the bench, lay the remains of most of a pony. There was a small dip in the cloud floor where the acid had etched away at it, and the spray of fluids that had come from the worker had pooled there and started to coagulate. If it weren’t for the stinging, lingering scent of Cloud Cover’s last meal, she suspected the smell of death would be overpowering her by now.

She looked down and spit one more time before sitting and holding herself. She had been okay with the likely death of the guard--she could justify that, after all, right? He was paid to make sure she would suffer. But the scientist… The spinning flurry of thoughts she had been dealing with the last half hour had vanished. Her mind was blank, wondering what to do and finding no answer. He was going to report her, right? She would have been caught and tortured and killed, right?

She couldn’t just have explained her plight and asked him to let her go, right?

A final wave of sick smashed into her like a monsoon, and she puked one more time into the already-leaking can.

Well, her voice seemed to croak even in her head, I suppose it’s already done. She pushed down the other voice shrieking at her yet somehow even quieter than her normal internal monologue, screaming about what she had done and why, and silenced it. No time for that now.

She sighed, and--clenching her teeth--moved up past the corpse and locked the door. She turned the lights off and waited for her eyes to adjust to the faint glow provided by the numerous laboratory machines in the room. When she was satisfied she could see well enough, she began to investigate the room.

She started by opening the various cupboards and drawers in the three middle counters, finding mainly supplies she would have expected - pipettes, cylinders, pencils, and burners. In one cupboard she found what appeared to be some sort of table cloth, stained with the history of dozens of experiments, which she unfolded and draped over the melted carcass. Moving on to the desk, she found amongst the stacks of documents a crisp, clean, dark red folio that had stood out amongst the manilla and white disaster. She flipped it open, and the cover page had big capital letters that caught her attention and even made her forget, for just a moment, about the pony she had just killed. It read, “RECKONING: UPDATED PREDICTIONS AND CONTINGENCIES”.

She flipped through the documents, finding most of them to be complicated graphs and printouts with hundreds of coded numbers and scrawled, shorthoof notes that she couldn’t understand. At the end, though, there was a summary, and she sat down at the desk to read.

“It has long been known,”the page started, “that a severe and extended overcorrection of weather systems would occur due to widespread, long-term manipulation of said systems. Little was known of this event, which in the literature has come to be known as the ‘Reckoning’, when manipulation was isolated to small pockets of civilization within the country of Equestria alone. It is even suspected that such a Reckoning would not occur if the small scale of manipulation was maintained.

“However, it was not, and it is not up to this author to weigh in on the benefits and drawbacks of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation’s--hereby referred to as ‘the Corporation’--activities. The last major study on the Reckoning was held about fifty years before the commissioning of this paper, and at that time it was found that with current projections of company activity and weather statistics, the event would occur sometime in about two to three thousand years, be of typically experienced severity of weather, and last for a decade or two.

“New modelling was performed over the last four years, and these projections were found to be severely outdated. As has been presented in sections one through fifteen…”

The paper continued on, referencing the various science-y pages Cloud Cover had flipped past, and she moved down the page hoping to find another section she could understand. Two pages later, it seemed to reach a conclusion, and she focused on it again.

“...Of figure 16.24b. In all, there is much that can be garnered, and much to sum up, but in the interest of brevity the author will now explain the consequences of such data as understood.

“The Reckoning is here already--in a sense. In about a hundred year’s time, the Corporation, and in fact any assemblage of labour and equipment from any organization, will be unable to maintain current weather patterns. At that time, atmospheric conditions will form that cannot be controlled, that cannot be predicted, and cannot be survived by any means save for the two Contingencies outlined in Appendix B of this document. Some areas of the atmosphere, likely in the southern hemisphere, will have such a drastic change in air pressure that the ozone layer itself will be obliterated. That air must move to other locations, and it can be expected that the usual effects of low pressure systems meeting high pressure systems will occur, only on a factor of about a hundred thousand times as violent.

“There is more than this simple inevitability. If, within the required time limit, either of the Contingencies are pursued, the Reckoning can be made survivable. There will still be planet-wide destruction, but for less time, and at the end there will still be ponies, and still be livable land. Action must be taken within the next decade, however, or else this window of opportunity will be lost forever.”

Cloud Cover turned the page and found the end of the folio, and she swore. Where are the appendices? She set the folder aside and rifled through the piles of papers and reports in as calm a manner as the frantic mare could do. She found nothing that stood out, and swore again.

Okay, so, where would those be? Gentle’s office? For something this important she would have to have a copy. She nodded, resolute. She began to move towards the door and then stopped. First off, she had forgotten about the body on the floor, and gagged at the sight of the covered lump. But seeing it, she also realized that the chemicals she had used as an excuse to wear the suit were now seeping into the clouds around her.

She looked back to the desk and saw a black leather saddle bag emblazoned with the old logo of the Corporation. She would be less disguised as before, but with luck she wouldn’t need a disguise, and with misfortune she would be faster without the suit. She muttered a quiet “Okay” and then stepped out of the suit, tucking it under the desk next to the half-digested remains of her breakfast. She grabbed the saddle bag, put the red Reckoning folder into it, and buckled it tightly closed. She made for the door once again and stopped once again.

Hesitantly, she turned to the mound of covered sin behind her. She gulped and inched towards it before grabbing the edge of the cloth. She steeled herself, and then lifted it up and checked the neck of the pony.

There was an identification tag there, but the acid had clearly splashed and eaten away through the barcode under the picture. Cloud Cover gently replaced the covering and looked down to the floor. That could have been done a lot… cleaner, she thought, and a tear from her tired eyes trailed down her cheek. Done with her distractions, she moved to the door and unlocked it, pressed an ear against it, and listened.

She didn’t hear anything.

She breathed slowly, counting down, three, two, one-- She opened the door and stepped out casually, looking each way down the hallway and seeing no one. She lifted off, flying as relaxed as she could, and started flapping her way towards Gentle’s office.

What if she’s in there? Well, I guess I just turn around and find a different office. One of them will probably have a card I can use for the elevator, anyways. Just find one with all the lights off. That will do. She felt her nerves settle as she talked her way through what she could do. She was running out of options, but it brought her calm instead of worry. If she only had one way to go, she figured, it wouldn’t be an issue to have to decide to go that way. She passed by another one of the vents blasting cold air and paused.

Down the hall, she heard voices come around from one of the corners. She looked around her quickly, and saw one door that was dark. She flew to it and tried the handle. It was unlocked. She opened it and slinked inside, closing it gently just as she heard the voices round the corner.

She ducked down by the door, holding a hoof over her mouth and keeping her breathing slow and steady. She could not make out the conversation, or what the voices sounded like, but waited until the rising volume turned course and began to decrease as the conversants moved beyond the door.

She exhaled in relief and stood up, locking the door and looking around the dark room. She hadn’t read the logo on the glass, and a quick check revealed it to apparently be the Office of the Head of Logistics. Cloud Cover tilted her head with a ‘hmm’, figuring her split second decision may have been one that worked in her favor.

All along every wall there were dim screens, providing a small amount of greenish light to the room for her to see by. They appeared to be the same wireframe map of the whole factory, repeated over and over with different aspects highlighted. She looked at one with the title ‘Water Transportation Systems’ and marvelled at the spiderweb of blue lines that traced their way throughout the complex. She tried to follow one line for a moment and a new headache began to bud in her skull, and she abandoned the effort.

Where there wasn’t a screen, there were old fashioned maps, faded and curled at the corners and pocked with the history of a million pins and scuffed, overwritten and oft-erased notes. She couldn’t tell what most of--or any of it, really--meant, or how any pony could constantly consider such information. Cloud Cover figured it would have taken over a dozen pegasi, twenty-four seven, monitoring the numbers of inputs and outputs and flows and timings that were assaulting her from every angle in the room; yet in the centre of it all there was a single desk. It was large, yes, and appeared to be the sturdiest piece of furniture Cloud Cover had seen in her entire time at the Rainbow Factory, yet again there was only one chair behind it. Stacks of folders and papers framed the sides of it, but the middle was clean and organized. There was only a notepad, a pencil, and a rotary phone in front of the chair.

Cloud Cover moved around the desk in silent marvel, still glancing at all the screens. She noticed that each one, with its specialized display of some individual factory system, had numbers that were changing every few seconds; percentages of pipe utilization here, current amperage of lightning reserves there, how many litres of clouds left until the next shipment was ready--Every screen was constantly blinking with its updates, and Cloud Cover felt dizzy.

Why is there only one desk? Who could do this job?

She moved to the desk and tried the drawers. They were all locked tight. She flew up quickly and examined the tops of the paper stacks and found nothing of importance to her investigation, just production quotas and ETA’s on shipments of raw resources. She landed again and tried the topmost drawer. The others had a little bit of give, but this one was absolutely solid, and had two keyholes in it.

Cloud Cover smiled and stepped back. “Time to show off the ol’ Cloudsdale at Seven lockpicking trick,” she muttered, and put her hindquarters to the desk. She leaned down, shook her shoulders, and bucked as hard as she could.

Old wood splintered and snapped, and she froze, scolding herself for doing something so stupidly loud. She waited, and listened, and after a minute figured nopony had heard--or if they did, they didn’t care. She returned to the desk and saw the top of it peaked up with a neat crack down the middle, and the drawer’s two lock plates no longer had anything to catch. Satisfied, she sat down in the chair and pulled the drawer open.

There were a number of items in the drawer, though no ID tag like she had been hoping to find. She wasn’t disappointed, however, because underneath the pencils and pins was a dark red folder, exactly the same shade as the first one she had found, and she giddily pulled it from the desk. She placed it down on the broken desk and opened it slowly; whether through reverence or fear, as if a viper may leap out of it and bite her, she didn’t know.

She read the title of the folder, ‘Appendix B’, and felt giddy.

She read the heading of the first page , ‘Contingency B’, and almost started dancing in her seat.

She continued reading down the page, and stopped her giddy movements. With each sentence, her sudden rush of good feelings drained from her; with each page, something dark and awful took their place. She couldn’t tell if it was despair, or terror, or disgust, but nevertheless it was something vile that seeped into her heart during every paragraph. She finished the report, closed the folder, and shook.

Chapter Four

The ponies of Shade’s End, a small farming village within sight of the Cloudsdale Meganimbus, were confused. Throughout the day and into the night, they had seen in the distance very peculiar clouds arrive at precise intervals around the city’s enormous perimeter. They were all the same size, and each carried what appeared to be a skyscraper. The clouds themselves weren’t the oddest, either. They had seen black specks erupt from the buildings and swarm like locusts, bringing slightly larger shadows down from their cloud and descending on the land beneath them. The ponies knew most of those areas were wilderness or farmland, though to the northwest, their neighboring village of Stratusedge had been directly under one of these mysterious clouds.

It was a Pegasus thing, they quickly realized, though this didn’t provide them with many answers. There was much hushed gossip and discussion amongst the simple folk of Shade’s End about what those pesky winged ponies were up to now. It was always something new with the aloof citizens of Cloudsdale, and though there was a small blanket of worry that seeped through the earth ponies and unicorns below the Meganimbus, most of them figured whatever was happening would clear itself up in a day or two.

They had hoped, that is, that that would be the case- though when a new cloud bearing its own building appeared on the east horizon and sped towards them, the evening sun’s reflection on it blinding their eyes while they stared, their worry turned to anxiety, which turned to fear. By an hour before sunset, it had arrived directly over top of the town, and stopped.

Oaktree, an old earth pony with a coat like his namesake and a mane grey like dying lumber, had been watching this strange cloud from his farm as it hung ominously above him. He recognized it as one of the Auxiliary Factories that had been sent out- this was the one that went to Trotland, he reckoned, given where it came from. But why was it back? And why were the pegasi moving it flying so… militantly? His head swivelled as he tracked two flocks of workers--their individual colours muted by black vests and barely visible from this distance--circling around the factory like arrowheads.

More ponies joined them, and Oaktree felt a sickness in his stomach he could not place as six separate groups of pegasi formed up into very distinct patterns that were remnant of old history books he had been taught from many decades ago; books on the race wars before the founding of Equestria, and specifically on the old spartan culture the city of Cloudsdale had been founded on.

“Move inside,” he called, following his gut. “Everypony, inside!” He started to trot towards his small home, calling out frantically. Some of the ponies around him started to move, but he feared his words were not convincing others stronger than their own curiosity was. “For the love of Celestia, go inside!” he shouted.

Above him, the squadrons broke, and the pegasi came down upon the village from six different directions. In what felt like an instant, it was as if Discord had returned. There were shouts and screams, shattering glass and splintering wood, and in general, complete chaos.

He almost made it to his house when a soldier landed hard in front of him. He was charcoal grey with a merlot mohawk mane, and though his face was stern, Oaktree could tell from his years that his eyes were sorrowful.

“To your town square, NOW!” the stallion shouted, pointing a hoof towards the market area of Shade’s End. “Do not enter your homes! Do not grab any belongings! Comply and you will be safe!” he continued to shout. Oaktree hesitated, and raised a hoof as he stepped back once. The stallion stepped forward and blazed his wings out, pawing the ground. Behind him, another two pegasi landed just as violently as before and kicked the door of Oaktree’s house in before flying in.

“Wh- what’s…?” the old earth pony stammered, and Stormy Night reared.

“You WILL move to the town square, or you WILL be considered an obstruction and removed! MOVE OUT, DIRTHOOVES!”

Oaktree’s brain welcomed the clear direction, and before he could even think about what was happening, he had turned and was galloping as fast as his ancient legs could carry him towards the market. He entered the town proper, finding only more bedlam around him. He joined a river of his neighbours, earth ponies and unicorns, being funnelled by shouted orders from above. More ponies joined the stream as pegasi launched into houses- some through windows or doors, and others plunging straight through the roofs of barricaded domiciles. There were calls and yelps coming from every direction, and Oaktree could not differentiate between friend or foe.

He rounded a turn in the street and saw the market before him--or what used to be the market. Already stalls and displays had been torn down and destroyed, piled up in the middle of the square and burning. There was a colossal whumph and Oaktree jumped aside as a massive metal barricade was dropped in front of the stores next to him.

He heard a commotion stand out as he entered the market, and turned around to see from one of the last houses two mares fighting. One was a unicorn with a whisk cutie mark, trying desperately to hold on to a jar of flour, while the other--a pegasus--kicked her precisely in her joints. The unicorn fell, and the pegasus leapt into the air and dove back down, landing both rear hooves on the fallen pony’s face.

Oaktree stumbled backwards and another vested pegasus appeared, shouting the same orders to him: do not look back, do not grab items, stay in the square. He complied, praying to the alicorns above that his friend Pastry Keen would be okay.

He finally made it to the centre of the market, and joined the crowd of frightened ponies huddling together next to the burning wreckage of their livelihoods. To the south end of town, he saw blasts of unicorn magic shoot into the air three times, and then a group of pegasi launch towards the source. After a moment, there were no more rays of light, and he shuddered and turned around.

He looked up at the factory that had brought such pain to his small town and saw now that great bay doors had opened at its base. Dozens of ponies were hauling massive shipping containers out of them, bringing them down to where Oaktree’s farm had been. When the containers were placed and unlatched from the ropes they were carried by, another dozen or so pegasi started flying towards his farm, hauling baskets of apples and grains, cases of milk, and satchels of what he assumed were bits judging by the flashes and sparkles as a few fell from the Corporation employee’s grips.

They’re taking all our food? The thought registered sideways in Oaktree’s mind. Why would they take all our food? We’ve supplied them with more than enough this year…

His train of thought was derailed as Mayor Eloquent and Shade’s End's entire detachment of Royal Guards burst out of the town hall on the other side of the square. The guards--all unicorns--immediately started launching shots of bright magic at the pegasi. One of the beams connected with the jaw of a mare, and she tailspun down from the sky straight into the bonfire in the square.

“What is this madness? This treachery? This is unheard of in Equestria! We have already sent word to the capitol, stop this at once or face the Princesses’ wrath!” the Mayor shouted, the earth pony jumping and stomping in place. “I demand parlay with whomever is commanding you to do this!”

A pegasus dove down from above--from where Oaktree did not see--dodging the Royal Guard’s missiles with deft maneuvering, and opened a container of bright, baby-blue liquid over them. It splashed onto them like paint and then evaporated into little rumbling clouds a second later, but the damage was done. The contingent of authority for Shade’s End collapsed, twitching violently, and when the bits of billowing thunder disappeared, a gang of pegasi scooped up the shaking ponies and hauled them away to the camp being built on the hill where Oaktree called home.

Oaktree saw more containers and other bulky objects pulled from the flying fortress and carried to the east of town. He saw Pastry Keen, still, on the dirt road. He smelled smoke and blood and gasoline. He heard a yearling crying, calling for its parents, somewhere in the square. He wished he could cry too, but he frowned only instead. There would be time for tears later. He had to be a beacon of stability for his friends, and he tore his eyes from the myriad of Corporation activity and walked amongst the survivors grouped around him, checking with each if they were okay.

Oaktree found himself hanging from two pegasi in now-familiar black vests. They brought him in through the front flaps of the large, olive-green tent that appeared to be the Corporation’s base of operations, and placed him gently in a cheap folding chair set before a wooden folding table. Across from him, a mustard coloured stallion in aviator sunglasses sat, not looking up from his clipboard.

Oaktree did not move nor make a sound. The employees who had grabbed him, wordlessly, from the town square had now since vanished into the rush of activity around him. Dozens of ponies flew in and out of the front entrance and hole in the centre of the tent ceiling constantly. To Oaktree’s left, there were a row of a dozen switchboard-looking machines, each with an operator in a vest and a headset. He strained his ears and tried to make out what they were saying.

“Copy that Squadron Three, we register your objective captured...”

“...Southeast food stores have been secured, proceed to eastern block Squadron Six, and…”

“...Five, proceed to terminal boundary and assist Squadron One with trenching. Further orders upon completion…”

Oaktree returned his gaze to the stallion in front of him, his mouth opening slowly in awe and confusion at the operation. He was still ignored, and so he craned his neck and looked behind the mysterious pony. Behind him were four large, rectangular… things. They spanned almost the whole width of the tent but were strangely ambiguous in their design- it was as if some pony had formed a solid brick of white plastic and called it a machine. Asides from the new Corporation logo--still familiar with its three towers on a winged thundercloud--a dark opening on one side, and two spigots over glass containers on the other, they were featureless. Something tugged at the back of Oaktree’s mind, a recognition that he could not remember or place, but it came with an ominous anxiety.

“Mr. Oaktree,” the mustard-yellow pegasus said, startling the old earth pony. “Welcome to the base of the Thirteenth Primary of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. I trust you are comfortable? Luxurious seating, I know,” he trailed off, still not looking up from his clipboard. He reached a hoof out and grabbed--with perfect timing from a passing flying worker--a second clipboard, reading from it while handing the first one off to another. None of the three ponies broke stride in this action, and Oaktree felt he had witnessed some dance that had been practiced a million times before.

“Uh, no, uhm, Sir?” he said, not sure what he had just been asked.

“Hah!” the stallion laughed, and he set his new clipboard down on the flimsy table. “Excellent. We must be uncomfortable in the name of efficiency.” He chuckled and smiled warmly at Oaktree. “Forgive me, all this rigidness makes me yearn for some humor, though I’ll admit I’m poor at it. My name is Colonel Sundown, and I am the commander of the Thirteenth Primary Regiment. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Oaktree.”

Oaktree looked warily at Sundown’s outstretched hoof, before extending his own and shaking cautiously.

“Ah, well,” Sundown said in response to the weak hoofshake. “I don’t blame you, really. I get it. A lot of confusion and chaos in your life suddenly, right?” His voice was gruff and barky, though expressive and cheerful. Oaktree was reminded of the Spider-Mare movies he had watched as a child, and the grumpy editor from them. “Listen, Mr. Oaktree, you and I, we’re not so different. We’re both old stallions in a new and rapidly changing world.” He lowered his sunglasses, allowing Oaktree to see a pair of crow’s feet that looked much like his own, and then put them back up.

Oaktree noticed then that Sundown was indeed an old pony- a few stray hairs in his mustard coat were much brighter than the rest, hinting at a more vibrant tone from a former time. His crew cut mane was plain grey- likely from time now, and not from birth. Somehow, this connection reassured him.

“But, it is partly up to me to help bring about this change, and I hope you will be able to assist myself in this endeavour,” Sundown said. “Now, Mr. Oaktree, I’m not an unreasonable stallion. I’ve had you dragged into my ‘house’, placed you in the middle of strange circumstances, and now I mention I need your help. You must have questions, and I shall oblige you a few before we begin discussions proper.” He turned a hoof towards Oaktree, offering him the chance to speak.

“Well, uh, thank you I suppose, mist- Colonel. Colonel Sundown. Are we, are we at war?”

Sundown burst into laughter, but quickly calmed himself down. “No, no, Tartarus no!” Oaktree started to relax further, but Sundown continued. “No, you need to have two belligerant sides to have a war.”

“I… see.”

“Go on,” Sundown said.

“Well, uh, what are those machines at the back of the room?” He offered, testing to see the limits of what information Sundown would offer him.

“Pegasus Devices,” Sundown said, matter of factly. His posture stiffed, turning more professional than the previously-chill aura he had exuded.

Oaktree felt his stomach turn upside down and practice ballet. He remembered that phrase. He remembered the grainy photographs he had seen in the newspapers. He remembered the outrage and fear after the Royal Inspection and the announcement that had caused it.

“...But they…?”

“Were decommissioned and destroyed, with all patents and plans incinerated, eighteen years ago, yes. But they missed one, and well, our engineers are quite good at reverse engineering. Quite good, yes. In fact, these new ones, Class III, Fourth Editions, they don’t just create spectra. It’s really quite fascinating what you can, well, extract from various ponies.”

Oaktree felt dizzy. He felt like he was breathing at a forty-five degree angle. A serious question came to him, and he did his best to straighten up and look Colonel Sundown in his eyes.

“Where is our Mayor? And the royal guards? Some of your workers took them, I saw them brought over here.”

“Well,” Sundown said, leaning back in his chair. The rickety frame creaked. “We brought them here to make the same offer we’re about to make to you, honestly. However, they were more determined to let their pride get in the way of their community's safety.” He looked casually over his shoulder at the Pegasus Devices.

The ballerina in Oaktree’s belly did a pirouette, and he lurched to his side and vomited. A worker was there next to him, holding a paper bag precisely in front of his mouth, and the earth pony heaved. A minute passed as Oaktree hiccoughed sick from his throat, and as soon as he groaned back into his chair the pegasus was gone, sealing the bag and heading out the roof. Another cog in the machine, turning exactly as planned, he realized, and he returned his shameful gaze to Sundown while wiping his mouth.

“You… monsters…” he said, voice hoarse. “Why?”

Colonel Sundown was reading the clipboard before him again and ignored Oaktree’s question. “Now, Mr. Oaktree, you’re a family stallion. You know what it’s like to personally care for friends and loved ones, as compared to running a town efficiently--if detached. I believe you and your late wife--may she rest in peace, I am sorry--” Sundown looked up above his sunglasses at Oaktree with actual empathy in his eyes, for just a moment, before continuing. “You and she had two sets of…” He flipped a page. “...Triplets, each of which have grown up and married and had their own foals, and two even with foals of their own.” Sundown stared at the shaking Oaktree through the impenetrable darkness of his glasses.

“...How do you know all of this?”

“Point is, Mr. Oaktree, you are a great-grandfather. There are ponies in this town who look up to you and respect you as an elder, as a seat of wisdom. Now, Logistics wants me to just find whoever I can get to order these fair folk around from within, but as I said, you and I are cut from a different cloth. I’d rather some pony who, while respected and listened to, is wise enough to advocate for their kind, their home. I am willing to work with you on that.”

Oaktree frowned. “Just what are you asking me to do, Colonel?”

Sundown stood up from his chair and flew over to a window in the tent that faced east.

“There’s a storm coming, Oaktree.” He drawled ‘storm’, putting emphasis on the word. “One the Flock can’t stop. One we can’t predict, really.” He took his sunglasses off and clipped them to his vest before continuing. “One we cannot survive alone. ‘The Reckoning’, head office calls it. A consequence of all the changes and controlling we have done of our weather systems over the last two thousand years.

“Some oceans will boil, and others will freeze. In some parts of the globe, there won’t be any air to breathe. In others, the pressure would crush a dragon to the size of a popcan in seconds. Mountains will fall to unrelenting ice and snow, ground down in the course of months alone.

“We can’t stop it, no,” Sundown continued, returning to his seat. “But we can create a refuge, a bastion of safety, that we might maintain the Equine races until the storm finally passes half a millenia from now. We want your village in that bastion, Oaktree. But there is a catch, as I’m sure you’re aware.

“Your village will farm and work like never before to provide for all of us in the bastion. Cloudsdale cannot survive on wind and water alone. However, Logistics would like me to make it abundantly clear to you; we can survive without you. Could the Flock farm these lands? Of course! What we lack in earth pony magic we have replaced with technology. But we don’t want to, you see.”

Oaktree closed his eyes, comprehending Sundown’s point. “Live as slaves or die free, then?”

“If you’d like to get poetic about it, sure. You can even tell them that, if you’d like. I want you to be our liaison with Shade’s End. No keeping secrets, no forcing you to lie about it. If you get your town to play along, I can help. Pull strings, make life easier, compromise, you get how it goes.”

A pegasus stopped by Sundown and saluted with a wing before handing off a note from the radio team, and then took off elsewhere, again all within the span of a second. Sundown read the note, and then rubbed his eyes, and replaced his sunglasses.

“Listen, we are running short on time Oaktree. I’ll repeat the terms, make sure we’re on the same page here, okay? Great. You will be the messenger between the Flock and Shade’s End. You will tell your people that, in exchange for a semblance of normal life, they will work to provide food and resources for all in the Safe Zone. All, I said, no pony will starve under the Flock’s watch.

“If you so refuse, I will have to have two of my soldiers drag you, an old and respected pony, kicking and screaming into a Pegasus Device, where you will be converted into fertilizer and battery acid, and then we will find the weakest-willed authority figure left in the town and make the same offer to them. Then they’ll either agree, and Shade’s End interests will be far less protected, or they will disagree, and we will throw every citizen outside of the Safe Zone, where they will drown in fog and mummify in sun.”

Oaktree lowered his head. Time had taught him much. He knew, for instance, that the right thing to do would be to stand up for his town. He knew the right thing to do would be to refuse, and die, and force the Pegasi to take care of their own without the subjugation of his friends and family.

He also knew he loved his foals, and his grandfoals, and his great-grandfoals, and how he could never commit them to death for his own morals.

“Fine. I will speak to them, Colonel. Please, just don’t hurt any more of my friends.”

The commander flew up from his chair slowly and made his way over the table, resting a forehoof on Oaktree’s shoulders. “It ain’t easy, I understand. You’ve made a good decision today, Oaktree. For the Flock, and for your town.”

Stormy Night wiped the sweat from his brow and inadvertently replaced it with dirt. He sighed, and used a wing to wipe the dirt off his brow, replacing it with sweat again.

“Whatever,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. His radio was going crazy next to him, with all six squadron’s orders being relayed and replied to by every pony at the same time. So long as he didn’t hear the word ‘Five’ again, he didn’t need to pay attention to it.

He was mostly caked in mud and perspiration from assisting Squadron One with digging the trench for the air cyclers. A massive operation in its own right, even he was surprised when his squadron had met up with the Twelth Primary’s trench team and completed the circle around the Meganimbus. He counted himself lucky- he had heard that Primaries Two through Four had solid rock they had to blast through to make the template. A little dirt and grass and a sore back for the next week was a good trade-off in his mind.

Now, he was on his back in said trench, with wrench in mouth and dust in eye. Above him, two sections of a black metal tube hung precariously above his face, and he motioned with a hoof for the right side to come in closer. The pegasi lifting the tubes complained yet complied, and with precision the two pipes fit together like childhood building blocks.

“Okay!” Stormy shouted. “Hold ‘er there for me!”

He spit the wrench out of his mouth, grabbed it with a hoof, and got to work fastening a series of bolts on each side of the pipe. He worked fast, twisting his body to help him torque the nuts enough they wouldn’t budge--not in his lifetime, anyways-- and then quickly scrambled out from under the tube.

Seeing him free, the ponies in the air collectively sighed and released their payload. Stormy Night coughed as a blast of dust and dirt shot out from the trench when it landed, and he instinctively wiped his eyes again, spreading more mud on them. He swore and flew out, blind.

“Somepony get me a damn towel already!”

In response to his demand he felt something smack him in the face and wrap around his neck, and he laughed while he furiously rubbed the ick off his head.

“Wise asses,” he chuckled, and then moved to the end of the newly attached section. “Alright, team. Just eight more of these and then we’re on to the command modules. Don’t give me that look, guys,” he cautioned, pointing at the three pegasi holding the carrying straps, “At least you don’t have to worry about being crushed when one of you loses your grip.”

One of them rubbed his neck and gave a nervous laugh, but no one else did. Stormy Night gave his eyes one last rub with the towel and then looked around with clear vision. To the east, he could see strange and unnatural movements of clouds, and he swallowed hard. They were on pace, but he worried it may not be soon enough. He landed in the trench and stood by while the lifting team reassembled with a new section of wind generator.

With his back to the east, Shade’s End was in his sight now, and he frowned while catching his breath. There was a large plume of smoke coming from the center of the town, and even now the occasional shout and yell could be heard. Squadron Two was currently taking a registry of every pony in the town and their addresses, but he imagined keeping a town’s worth of ponies in a small market square would cause more than enough chaos than was necessary. He grimaced, and thought of all that the Flock was doing, and how they were doing it. Was this guilt he was feeling? But they were saving this town, right?

He followed the black, acrid plume of smog up until he caught sight of the Cloudsdale Meganimbus. Determination pulled his guilt away, and he nodded so slightly that only he could notice it.

“Alright, let’s move it,” he yelled, circling a hoof in the air. “Let’s beat Logistics’ expectations, shall we? Double time!” he called out, sliding beneath the next two sections of pipe.

Chapter Five

Despite the eerie green glow that suffused the room, Cloud Cover sensed a great darkness around her.

She opened the ‘Appendix B’ folder again and tested the edge of the papers, checking to see if any were stuck together. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. She reread the title of the first page; ‘Contingency B’.

“B,” she said aloud, as if it would bring understanding to her like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle fitting into place. It did not. “Why does it start with ‘B’? Hold on…”

She rifled through the stolen saddle bag and pulled out the other red folder she had pulled from Climate Sciences, and read the line again. It very clearly stated that there were two contingencies. Yet, here, in the Director of Logistics’ office, where all of the Corporation’s activities are coordinated and directed, there was only the second one.

She put the Reckoning folder back and read the appendix again. She held a hoof to her muzzle and frowned. This wasn’t complete. Not that she particularly wanted to read any more of it; the plan outlined before her filled her with disgust. For a moment, Cloud Cover felt ashamed to have wings.

The contingency she had found was nothing short of high treason to the Crown. There was lots of jargon and militant terms in it that she had to guess at, but the general outline was there. It was a four step program, and the step’s names were haunting to Cloud Cover, harkening back to the last minutes of her life as a free Pegasus.

Clear. Withdraw weather support from major authoritative locations, and let them fall to immediate and violent weather changes. Pack up all Auxiliary Factories for transport.

Fly. Transport all Auxiliaries, having them return to the Meganimbus, spaced equally out around the city.

Fall. Descend on highlighted objectives--towns and resources, mainly, with some targeted locations that were of no other significance--and secure them for the Flock.

Complete. Something about a ‘Safety Zone’ here, though Cloud Cover didn’t understand most of the terms. It seemed to be describing some type of protective dome, powered by the Auxiliary Factories with the Corporation’s headquarters as an anchor.

There were then some sentences describing post-Reckoning management decisions, and words like subjugation and separation leapt out of the page at the mare. But it wasn’t enough. There was clearly more direction that needed to be explained, and even she could figure that out. You don’t just make an isolated pocket of civilization and expect it to work like society always has. So now, not only was Cloud Cover missing the first Contingency, but she didn’t even have the follow up to the second.

She dropped her head into her hooves, whimpering. It was not a cry from sadness, nor of fear, but of exhaustion. She had made so much progress but felt like she was getting nowhere. None of the documents had any official signatures or other damnifying marks save for the letterhead. If Cloud Cover was going to be trying to tell this story through a storm of disreputation from the Corporation, she needed it to be concrete.

She heard laughter come from outside the door and reflexively skirked down under the desk.

She also needed to be alive, and she chastised herself for not really prioritizing that. She dropped her head back and let it rest against the solid leg of the desk, and brushed her greasy mane from her eyes. She had been away from home for a long time. She had slept for an indeterminate amount of time, though she didn’t really count the drugging as restful sleep. And now, she had been moving swiftly and sneakily through her personal halls of hell, driven forward by an eighty-twenty split of curiosity and anxiety. She wasn’t sure which one was the majority, though from how she felt now, she had a good guess.

How did I get into this? The thought cut at her. She had arranged the interview, after all. She had figured that she was safe, and that the Corporation had forgotten about her; a broken filly who could not find anyone to believe her save for a friend, a colt, who had suffered just as much. And then, after a year, a filly without even a friend.

“Oh, Corona,” she said, the word sliding out of her mouth drenched in pity. She had the luxury of time’s passage now, and hardly ever remembered the day she came home from begging and found him cold on his mattress. He had asked her just a week before if she thought suicide was courageous or cowardly.

She didn’t remember what she had said to him then, but after that day, she had considered him a coward. Losing her only friend had hurt so much that she thought she would have keeled over and died then too, and she had blamed him, blamed him until she didn’t miss him, blamed him until she didn’t think about him, blamed him until she had forgotten him.

But now, after the way her ‘day’ had been going, she started to think that maybe he wasn’t a coward. That Corona had stepped across a threshold into a world unknowable, of his own volition, was perhaps a courageous thing to do. Whether it be Tartarus, or some world in the heavens, or just nothing, the uncertainty of it all had always terrified Cloud Cover, which was why she carried on. But wasn’t that what courage was? Doing what needed to be done in spite of the fear you felt?

So am I brave or a coward?

She didn’t know.

She realized she was having this internal conversation while hiding under a desk in the dark, because she chose to stay in a city that hated her, because she was afraid of an afterlife, and thought she was probably a coward.

She then realized she was under this desk because she had walked back in the very same building that had been the source of all her problems. She had looked the owner of the whole place in the eyes, accused them of wrong-doing, and then had continued to look for proof of said wrong-doing while they were actively trying to kill her, and thought perhaps she was courageous.

She listened, and heard no conversation outside the door, and stood up, and began to look around the room.

There had to be something else--especially in a room as important as this--that could help her or help her case. She checked the time on one of the many screens and found that it was about half past four in the morning. Hopefully, she thought, that would mean less workers around on this floor. Maybe Gentle had even gone home for the day?

“Does Gentle even have a home?” Cloud Cover wondered aloud, rummaging through the desk’s drawers. There was nothing except for more pencils and notepads. She ignored them; she had one on her flank and that was enough for her. Smiling at her little joke, she checked the back of the room, where she seemed to always have the most luck.

Below the screens there were some filing cabinets and a low cupboard. She made for the cupboard, tired of flipping through papers no matter how incriminating they might be. She swung the first panel open and saw a number of strange gadgets. Most of them looked dusty and broken, or had a sticky note on them with phrases like ‘useless’ or ‘DNU’. The shelf below them had more of the same, with some old clip-on radios mixed in for variety. She closed the panel and opened the next one, and gasped.

There was an amulet on the top shelf, by itself, resting on a single manilla folder. It was some bastardly mashup between magic and technology; a hard metal frame around a chipped and uneven gemstone that pulsated slowly with a light pink light. It wasn’t large, though, only about the diameter of a bit. Cloud Cover picked it up and looked closer. The gemstone was hollow, she saw, and the glow infused it. It was the same texture of the magical aura that illuminated a unicorn’s horn when they cast a spell, and it swirled lazily within its crystalline prison. The necklace was a series of burnished aluminium clasps locked together.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, pulling it over her head and pushing her short mane up through the chain, and she let the pendant rest against her breast.

She did not feel anything save for a slight puff of disappointment, though secretly she was thankful that nothing crazy had happened. She opened the envelope and read it.

“Oh, cool,” she said. It was, indeed, a unicorn spell; a teleportation one, at that. By crushing the gemstone against her body, the spell would be released and she would be teleported… where?

She read the document again, and shifted nervously. It was apparently a prototype. The idea was she could just think of where she wanted to go, but hadn’t been tested. There was more jargon, but she was tired of trying to interpret it. She decided she would keep it regardless; she had an escape route now, regardless of where it actually put her.

She sat down and thought. She could, right now, use this weird little device and be free. She could maybe think really hard about Canterlot, the Princess’s Throne Room, the head of the Royal Guard, and be right there. She did have some information, after all, and she expected the Crown to be fairly wary of the Corporation ever since the Inspection. Gentle’s influence did not likely reach all the way to the sun and the moon.

She held the pendant to her chest, pressing it. She felt the sharp metal edges irritate her coat. She just needed to smash it, and her nightmare would be over.

She thought maybe that would make her a coward, and let go of the pendant. It dangled loosely beneath her neck.

It also meant that she had an out if she did get caught. So she could be courageous, and find the smoking gun; a page with Gentle’s seal, a set of orders from the Directors, something. And if she got caught on the way there, she had a way to get free.

She had a way to get through the Rainbow Factory.

Cloud Cover walked through the hallway quickly, but with purpose. She did not need a disguise now, and from her years as a reporter she knew that often looking like you belonged was the best way to be accepted without question. With the pendant bouncing lightly against her as she trotted down the white halls, she figured it was worth a shot trying that theory out here. Gentle had been working in her office during normal hours when Cloud Cover first got here. For her to be up now would be ridiculous, especially since so far Cloud had not heard any alarms or racing ponies frantically searching for her.

An employee rounded the corner, walking silently, and Cloud Cover realized she would now have to test her theory.

They looked at her, and they smiled politely.

Cloud Cover smiled politely back, and briefly wondered what her heart was doing, pounding away in her throat.

They approached closer, and the other worker--a mare, Cloud Cover saw, with dark blue fur--squinted at her.

Cloud Cover looked ahead down the hall, still smiling. Strangely, her heart appeared to be beating in her head now.

“I like your necklace!” the worker said. She sounded tired.

“Oh, thank you, it’s just something I found at a market sale,” Cloud Cover lied. She sounded tired too.

The other worker resumed her quiet walk and Cloud Cover continued smiling to no one, until she rounded a corner and realized she was not paying attention to where she was going and wasn’t sure where in the office she was.

She stopped, and looked at one of the doors. It was not one she recognized, and she turned around and hopped up into the air, flying to give her legs a break. It wasn’t a huge issue; she could just go backwards until she found the hallway she remembered.

Right before getting to the intersection where she had turned, she heard voices. There was a voice that appeared to be reasoning with the other, and there was a voice that was quiet, cold, and lifeless.

Gentle’s voice, Cloud Cover realized. She looked left and right, finding one door with a dark window. She zipped over to it and tried the handle--locked. She looked up and saw another one of those cold-blasting vents. The voices were getting louder. Her face twisted as she considered the option. It was incredulous. It only worked in stupid action movies. It would never hide her. The voices were right near the corner now. It was her only option.

She shot up to the vent and tugged it, finding the covering to be fit snugly but with no fasteners. She pulled it off and looked. The size of the exchange was just large enough to possibly fit her before it narrowed into smaller, more reasonable ducts. She flipped upside down and backed upwards, holding on to the vent cover for dear life. She wouldn’t be able to affix it from the inside, so she held it up to the exchange as hard as she could. One of her hind legs had slipped inside a duct and immediately it began to hurt from the freezing air blowing against it. The rest of her was twisted and one foreleg was bent such that she was pretty sure it might break if she thought about moving the wrong way, but she was hidden. She thought. Hopefully.

The voices rounded the corner and walked down towards where she had been not moments before, and she listened. It was definitely Gentle’s voice, but she didn’t recognize the other.

“...Primaries One through Thirteen have arrived at their locations and have begun operations. Their regiment commanders have all stated no issues with departure, and arrival is going smoothly. We expect the rest to be in position in about an hour.” The voice was subdued, but had emotion. Cloud Cover saw them as they came into view beneath the grating. It was coming from a brilliantly-white stallion with a long cobalt mane that was messed up and greasy. He had a pair of broken glasses, but didn’t seem to mind. “I hope this report is satisfactory to you, Ms. Butterwing.”

“Yes, Foresight, it’s excellent. I would expect nothing less from you,” she said, and Cloud Cover suppressed a gasp of surprise. It sounded like Gentle was actually proud. “All precisely on schedule. Tell your team that I said their work has been competent.”

“Gentle! Gentle, we have an issue!” A different voice, a mare’s, came from further up the hall.

“I appreciate the report, Foresight. I believe at this point your team no longer requires your guidance?”

“You are correct, Ms. Butterwing.”

“Great. Go rest, there will be much more I need you to do later.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Ms. Butterwing.” Foresight’s voice was grateful, not as if he were relieved, but as if he had been given a great gift. “I shall await your call when we can begin next phase.” This last sentence sounded sad, almost sorrowful.

Cloud Cover watched as the white pony turned around and walked off, and his spot was replaced by the pegasus mare she had heard a moment before.

“Yes, doctor? What is it?” Gentle’s voice lost all trace of the emotion it had a moment ago. “You’re dancing like you’re about to wet yourself. It’s important, then?”

“Yes, Gentle! I had returned to the medical suite to prepare it for the surgical team.” At this, Cloud Cover’s heart stopped, and she closed her eyes. Please, for the love of Luna, don’t hear me, she thought. The doctor continued, though she had calmed down and forced a more professional speech. “When I opened the door I found the failure had escaped from its bindings, and Chaser was dead.”

“Hmm. I see. Was there any lipstick on his cock?”

Hey, Cloud Cover thought, insulted. That’s your first reaction?

“No ma’am. Fractured skull and brain hemorrhage. The bindings weren’t undone, either. It must have slipped out and surprised him.”

“Sounds like he should have taken the blowjob, I suppose. Honestly I can’t blame him for it getting out. I wonder why it is that every twenty years, a failure manages to escape captivity and wreak havoc in this building.” Gentle sighed.

“Sorry ma’am?”

“It’s nothing. Go to security and find out where it went. Get a team--not an individual, a team, tell them I said team--and capture it again. I will go wait in the medical suite myself. If they haven’t brought it there in 30 minutes, I want you to come back to fill in for it. Understood?”

“Y-uh, yes ma’am. On it. Bye.” The doctor leapt into the air and soared off quickly. Cloud Cover didn’t blame her.

“This place has some weird fucking curses to it,” Gentle mused, walking slowly down the hall.

Cloud Cover waited inside the air exchange for far longer than she needed to, but she wanted to be absolutely sure that Gentle had gone. By the time she finally shimmied down, her forelegs were cramping painfully and she had lost all feeling in the rear leg that had been jammed down the freezing duct. However, she was indeed alone, and she knew her potential frostbite was worth every extra second spent hiding. She fit the cover back on and took off down the hallway, flying hard and fast. If there was going to be a time that Gentle’s office was empty, it was going to be now, and she didn’t want to waste a moment getting there.

After another few minutes, and two haphazard corners that she had to backtrack through, she finally found herself facing the grey door. It was eerie to her, its plainness contrasted by the evil she perceived to be behind it. The words “Head of Rainbow Production” stared her in the face, and the voice of a little filly in the back of her head screamed at her to stop, run, flee, anything but open the door.

She tested the handle, and it turned freely.

She pressed open the door, and it swung open easily.

She stood tall in the doorframe, looked inside, and found the office empty.

“Thank fucking Luna,” she said, and she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, locking it.

She took her time to float around the office, allowing herself a moment to check for anything that stood out to her. The cupboard at the back of the room was large, and didn’t appear to have a lock. She supposed she could hide in it if she needed to, and tucked that idea away for later. The desk was almost identical to the one in the Logistic Director’s office, though absent the massive stacks of papers and folders. It was neat, with a phone, a stand for business cards, and an ink fountain for an expensive looking quill.

Cloud Cover was in the middle of considering ‘picking’ the locks on the desk drawer when something in the corner of her eye distracted her. She rotated and found that the flash in her peripheral vision had come from the jar of Spectra on the shelf. The rainbow liquid was swirling slightly, warping reflections from the ceiling lights as its scintillating fluid danced in its jar. Cloud Cover looked around, wondering what had agitated it. She hadn’t touched anything yet, and though the Rainbow Factory tower was built of clouds, they were not just the average everyday cloud that would be affected by a breeze. And yet the rainbow twisted along, unaware and uncaring that it had no right nor reason to do so.

She moved closer to it, wary of the jar. Was it a trap? Some trinket designed to captivate a foolish mare and lead her to her doom? She reached for it, and set a hoof on the jar lid.

The colors slowed and stopped.

“What the fuuuuuucccckkkk,” Cloud Cover said under her breath. It was then that she noticed that below the jar, under a thin layer of dust, there was another one of the red Reckoning folios, and her eyes widened in surprise. She gingerly lifted the jar up and, when no alarms had gone off that she could hear, slid the folder out and replaced the jar. She looked at it when she placed it down. The colors didn’t move.

She shook her head and shrugged it off as another one of the oddities of this clearly-damned building. She moved over to the desk and set the folder down, open, and began to read.

“Contingency A,” it started, and she felt that was rather reassuring. She continued reading.

“Having outlined the reasonings and rationale behind the need for these Contingencies, the author of the paper feels the urge to state the importance of them. These are the only two options for survival of the Reckoning by any species on the planet. With so far as models are accurate and predictions correct, these two scenarios will be not only possible, but work as intended for their duration.

“The first scenario presented, titled ‘Contingency A’, was designed around a moral standpoint. It is far more expensive in terms of labour, cost, raw resources, legality concerns, diplomatic relations- but will result in the least death.

“The second scenario presented, titled ‘Contingency B’, was designed around the most efficient use of currently available resources, and can be implemented relatively quickly with proper investment in equipment and training. However, it is more of a ‘bare minimum’ in terms of its protective capabilities. The City can be saved at the cost of the planet. Ethical liabilities require the author to state this scenario should only be enacted if for some reason the first fails or becomes impossible for alternative reasons.

“In the first scenario, there are many objectives to be completed. First would be the coordination of talent and expertise from various organizations and cities. Second would be diplomatic missions to non-Equestrian locations to express the importance of the Contingency and the danger of the Reckoning. Third would be the mass movement of life from spread out locations to what we shall term ‘Refuge Cities’, where they can be made safe.

“Then, once all the pieces are in place, the Meganimbus should be split, fracturing Cloudsdale between each Sunspout. Each piece, which we term a ‘division’, would be equipped with the technology outlined in pages 16 and 17, and then delivered to the Refuge Cities listed at the end of this appendix. The disruption of the Meganimbus should alone buy the world about a decade’s worth of time.

“At the Refuge Cities, the wind shields can be deployed on small scales, covering their locations from inclement weather. The spaced out nature of the cities, and the shields, and their conversion of energy from Reckoning systems to power their shields, should diminish the Reckoning and result in less severe systems across the globe overall. Decreased atmospheric energy would, as well, reduce the time span of uncontrollable weather to only a century. There may not be any ponies left who remember the world as it was, but of the survivors, their parents or grandparents would have. This scenario also lends itself to easier societal reconstruction post-Reckoning.”

Cloud Cover wasn’t sure how she should feel. On the one hoof, she had found her smoking gun: at the bottom of the page, a large red ‘REJECTED’ was stamped, with a signature that very clearly--though flourished--read ‘Gentle Butterwing’. But on the other hoof, she had found that the Corporation had discovered a way to save most of the world--or at least, most of the creatures that lived on it. Further paragraphs described how the weather would be survivable in certain alternative conditions, too; there would be no mountains laid low by ice, no oceans obliterated by sun, no canyons filled with rain.

Why had she rejected it? Cloud Cover couldn’t figure it out. The Corporation could have redeemed itself from any history it had of wrong-doings with this. It would be a hero, having figured out the hulking giant of the Reckoning and fell it by organizing and orchestrating the Contingency.

Was it to keep Cloudsdale together? Was that it? She could see it, but it didn’t quite feel right. Even Gentle would know that her business couldn’t sell weather to a dead world, and at the end of the day, the business was more important to her than the city. It had to be; Cloud Cover had come across far too many instances in her career of CWC activities done to the detriment of someone or something on the Meganimbus. Smog runoff dumped under hospitals. Unmaintained liquid thunder pipes routed through schools.

Orphan rainbowification, she thought, remembering why she was even here in the first place.

It didn’t matter why, she supposed. She had her proof, and now she needed someone to prove it to. She put a hoof out to gather up the folder, when she heard a click. She froze, and looked up.

The door had just been unlocked.

Chapter Six

Sleet battered the two stallions as they walked down the old farm road towards Shade’s End. The wet and heavy snow clung to Oaktree’s fur, and he shivered. Any doubt he had in Colonel Sundown’s word about the Reckoning was gone now, as the weather from the depths of winter blasted him on what would have otherwise been an early autumn day.

Colonel Sundown extended a wing and covered the old earth pony’s back, shielding him from the snow and urging him along just a little quicker. The sunglass-wearing veteran gave Oaktree a friendly smile and continued on.

Oaktree didn’t like considering Sundown friendly. There was something that sickened him about the genuine compassion he felt coming from him, somepony who was so comfortable with herding his neighbours up like cattle and raiding their homes like vikings from the ancient pegasus tales. Here was a stallion, Oaktree figured, who had climbed the ranks of this organization, to be chosen for not only his loyalty and his intelligence in regards to coordinating a mass, institutional destruction of every facet of a normal daily life, who was currently covering his exposed back with the warmth of his downy feathers. It wasn’t right- how could anyone be so dichotomous in their nature? To care for an individual and an organization, but not for the wellbeing of the public as a whole. His head hurt, thinking about it.

“Now you remember what I told you? This is a very important first step for our cooperation, Oaktree,” Sundown shouted over the now-constant gust of wind. “We absolutely need every single unicorn who can cast those spells. This whole operation fails if we can’t get them, you understand?”

Oaktree shouted a hoarse “Yes, sir” back to Sundown, before something to the southwest caught his eye. He paused, and Sundown let him, as far off in the distance a great flash shone from the nearest Auxiliary Factory. A sheet of air from the ground below it and all the way to the troposphere seemed to shimmer. A distant hum met Oaktree’s ears and he realized it must have been deafening on site. As he watched, the top of the factory let off another blinding flash, and a beam of rainbow exploded from it. It rocketed towards the Meganimbus, disappearing somewhere over the gargantuan cloud.

Sundown’s radio crackled and a feminine voice made it to Oaktree’s ears over the wind.

“Logistics to Primaries. Primary Fourteen online. Primaries Thirteen and Twelve, progress report required.”

Sundown tapped the radio and replied, his words mostly lost in a new blast of freezing air, and then pressed forward with his wing on Oaktree’s back, and they continued forward.

“What was that?” Oaktree shouted into the sunglasses next to his face. “Is that what you’re doing here?”

Sundown looked at him and nodded. “It’s the outer boundary of the safe zone, and what most of this equipment is for.” He shook his head and knocked some of the snow that was accumulating on his nose off. “A series of wind generators that have been repurposed into forming an air shield. It’s some interesting stuff; it allows for gas exchange inside and outside the bubble, but blocks the inclement weather. It will allow us to control the weather like we normally do inside the zone.” He paused as another blast of wind made hearing impossible. When it subsided, he continued shouting. “There’s some proprietary equipment in the Auxiliaries that adds magical reinforcement to the shield, keeps it from bending or breaking from even the strongest of hurricanes.

Oaktree looked up, the ice stinging his eyes, and back towards the new shield. The storm from the east had not quite met it yet, but already he could see the column of air disrupting the edge of the dark clouds that inched towards it. He had a moment of solace watching this, before his next worry came to him.

“What do you need the unicorns for? For that?” He pointed an accusatory hoof at the rainbow laser that was pulsating randomly above the floating tower. He didn’t need to explain his reasoning. The Pegasus Devices in the base were reason enough for him to worry.

Sundown laughed, an uproarious bark that was loud even over the gale. “Haha! No, Oaktree, they’re not going to be turned into rainbows. That’s actually not even Spectra! It’s artificial magic from our machines in the Auxiliary. Pegasus technology is state of the art, my friend! With mechanical energy we can replace even the most specialized of spells.”

Something about his explanation did not reassure Oaktree, though it seemed genuine enough. Probably hearing the word ‘friend’ come out of that mustard coloured muzzle was what unsettled him, he figured.

They reached the gates of the town--now splintered and broken--and passed by. Some of the quickly-abandoned houses’ doors were slamming in the wind, and others were filling up with snow where the attacking workers had punched holes in their roofs. Oaktree felt pain in his heart for the sorry image of the town he had grown up and grown old in. There had been hard times in the past, but never anything like this.

“Colonel, will we be able to return to our homes? In this weather…” He didn’t complete his question, instead opting to simply look around at the icicles already forming on some gutters.

“In due time, Oaktree. Very soon now, once we have the unicorns separated and the wall up, you will all be able to return to your own houses. We knew there’d be a storm shortly after we started setting up the zone, but it was impossible to predict how shortly after. We thought we’d be finished before the first flakes had fallen.”

“Logistics to Primaries,” said the voice on the radio. “Primary Twelve on schedule, ETA thirty minutes to activation. Primary Thirteen ETA one hour. No further updates until Primary Twelve is online. Advise if any changes.” The radio crackled, its speaker easier to hear now with the buildings acting as windbreaks. Nineteen different voices replied “copy” in turn, with Sundown jumping in slightly half pastway. The two stallions carried on, rounding the bend towards the town market.

Two pegasi stood in between the huge barriers that had been dropped, one facing in towards the square and the other out. The one facing them saluted Colonel Sundown with a sharp wing movement.

“At ease,” Sundown said, all friendliness gone from his rough voice now. “Status report?”

“All currently around the fire sir. No further casualties since Phase Three. No unrest or unruliness.”

“Excellent work, Hawk.”

“Casualties?” Oaktree asked, feeling awkward stepping in. The guard flicked his head to look at him. “There was a friend of mine in that bakery… She was arguing with one of… you, over a jar of flour. There was a fight and she…” He trailed, looking back to where she had laid in the road.

“Was her name Pastry Keen?” The guard asked. Colonel Sundown watched this exchange silently.

“Yes! That’s her! Was she a… a casualty?” He choked on the word as it came out.

“She was indeed a casualty--hold on, now,” the pegasi said, putting a stiff hoof out and steadying the shaking earth pony. “As in injury. She has a concussion, and has been taken to our medical tent near the base of operations. She will be fine in a day or two, sir.”

“Oh, oh thank Luna…” Oaktree’s shoulders dropped, releasing the tension he must have been holding on to since the invasion first started. Sundown saluted the guard and pushed Oaktree forward again with a bit more urgency than before.

“Close friend of yours?” he asked.

Oaktree looked at Colonel Sundown directly in the centre of his sunglasses, right where he hoped his pupils were, trying to stare even further in than that. “All of these ponies are close friends of mine, Colonel.”

“Hmph,” he replied.

They reached the huddled mass of tired and poor ponies, and Sundown gave a nod to Oaktree. They were the same height, but Oaktree could have sworn that the colonel was looking down on him then. That same convergence of hearty and heartless hit him, and he swayed slightly in place before stepping forward and clearing his throat. Most of the gathered crowd glanced up at their old friend with curious looks as they examined his newfound company.

“Uh, hello all. I know it’s been… rough, these last few hours or so. Uh…”

“What’er you doin’ with that there pegasus, Oak?” The voice came from another of the farmers in town.

“They asked me, to uh, kind of be the representative for our town for them. The mayor--” He stopped, this throat drying up. He looked to Colonel Sundown, his face griefstriken. Sundown tilted his head in a “go on” sort of manner, with no other expression. “Well… They killed the mayor.” Tears came up in his eyes and he again reaffirmed his need to be strong for his friends. For his family. He swallowed hard as the amassed ponies started shouting out in fright and complaints. Colonel Sundown stood still, unmoving, and though they were upset, none of the others moved either.

“They… killed him?” the farmer from before asked, his voice distinct to Oaktree from the crowd. Oaktree nodded, grimacing, and the crowd’s shouts died down as they waited for him to continue.

“Y-yes. So, they asked me to represent Shade’s End. I… I won’t do so if any of you object, of course.” He paused and a murmur spread amongst the townsponies. After a moment the babble seemed to coalesce into a mixture of “yeah”s and “go ahead”s. “Uh, thank you. So, uhm. I should start with what’s going on.

“This here next to me is Colonel Sundown, with the Weather Corporation. He’s in charge of the Pegasi around us. He’ll be working with us and we’ll be working with him--and them.” There was silence as a hundred ponies locked eyes on the rigid stallion next to Oaktree. Sundown nodded once in recognition, still quiet. “We uh, we’re being saved,” Oaktree continued.

At this, a chuckle ran throughout the crowd, and the farmer yelled again. “From what, ourselves?”

“From the Reckoning,” Sundown said, his deep voice and matter-of-fact tone silencing the group again. “From hailstones the size of apples, ice colder than the top of Mount Canterlot, sun harsher than a mother-in-law’s tone.” Nopony laughed at his joke. “Look around you, folks. Feel the wind, and see the snow? You’re smart folk. It isn’t the right time of year for this, is it?”

A smattering of ‘no’s came back to him.

“Now do you see any Pegasi doing this? Do you see us dragging in the clouds, and filling them with ice? Do you see a hundred of us blowing with frozen breath?”

Silence.

“We can’t stop the storms, not these ones, but we can keep you safe from them. Look to the north and south, see the ‘walls’? This is what we’re doing. We’ve asked Oaktree to be our point of contact for you all. I think it would be better if you listened to him about it.” He turned around and walked a few feet back, standing at attention behind Oaktree. “Luna knows you’ll trust him more than me,” he said with a smirk.

The eyes focused on Sundown turned in unison--as if practiced--back on Oaktree, and he continued on.

“So, uh… Yeah. There’s some sort of air wall they’re going to put up. We’re going to be in a safe kind of bubble thing that goes all the way around Cloudsdale.”

“If we’re gonna be saved by them, why’d they go and kill Mayor Eloquent?” interrupted a colt, a yearling from what Oaktree could see.

“He said they refused to let the Pegasi help the town. I’m not… I’m not happy about this either. But I think he’s told me the truth so far, about a lot of things… And I don’t reckon we’ll survive this… event without what they have planned. But there’s a catch, I’m sure you all figured…” he scuffed the ground with his forehoof, kicking up a bit of mud in the freshly fallen snow. He waited for another outburst, but one didn’t show. “I won’t sugar coat it. You all deserve so much more than this but…”

After a moment, somepony else spoke up. “Well, what is it?”

“In exchange for keeping us in this ‘Safe Zone’ they’re calling it, we’ll be working to support every pony in with us. We’ll still get to eat, and we’ll get to keep our homes, but supplies will be rationed out, and a lot of it will go to the City. Colonel Sundown says that so long as we work well with them, he can pull favors to help make life a little better for us every once in a while.”

“And if we don’t?” It was the farmer friend again.

“You’ll be evicted,” Sundown said, and the implication was immediately realized by all.

Another murmur rose up now, louder than before, as the townsponies spoke amongst themselves. As if on queue, the snow that had been harrowing them consistently throughout the conversation stopped, along with the wind, only to be replaced with thick and heavy drops of freezing rain. Conversation petered out as the rain pattered on, and again all eyes locked on Oaktree.

“We’ll do it,” some pony up front said. “So long as we get to sleep in our own beds, and nopony else dies, we’ll do it.”

Oaktree hung his head low, still at odds with his morals. His friends had chosen the same as him, to exchange dignity for safety, and freedom for another day of life. He couldn’t blame them, but deep in his heart, he felt he should have fought back. But where would they go? Already, they would not do well to stay outside for much longer in this weather.

The guard facing the town square absentmindedly flicked the subzero water from its wings, but all others were still.

“Colonel,” Oaktree said, raising his head high again. “Please, let them inside. They’ll get sick out here.”

“Soon, Oaktree. The unicorns.”

Right, he realized. The stress of the conversation had made him forget. He addressed his neighbours again.

“Oh, yes, uhm. The Colonel says they need any and every unicorn who knows a Flight or a Cloudwalk spell, to come with him back to the base.”

A small group of unicorns walked forward from the crowd, but stopped when one yelled from near the back.

“Why?” they shouted. The others that had moved forward sat down, and questioned him as well.

“Why?” came a chorus of unicorns and earth ponies.

“Why?” the one at the back said again. “What do you want to do to us? You already killed our Mayor because they were in your way! Why are we being singled out?” He was yelling at Sundown, not Oaktree.

Oaktree started. He looked to Sundown. “Why?”

Sundown stepped forward again and spoke, infusing his voice with that same friendliness he had been using with Oaktree earlier.

“Cloudsdale is, obviously, a city in the sky, made of clouds. Clouds that Pegasi can stand on, but Earth ponies and Unicorns can’t. Unicorns who know how to cast Fly and Cloudwalk will be absolutely crucial to any and all equal movement between the satellite towns like Shade’s End, and Cloudsdale. If any of you--” he swept his foreleg, indicating the whole town, “--are to make it there, it’ll be from the help of those Unicorns. We need you, all of you who can, to come with us for preparations for that. Once you come forward, the rest of you can return to your homes. Any abodes that have been damaged by our earlier operations can rest assured that a Squadron will be out to patch them post-haste, with full repairs beginning tomorrow.”

The pony from the back came forward then; a yearling unicorn, just about to graduate from the small school in Shade’s End. “So we’ll be helping you?”

“Precisely so,” Sundown said, giving a curt nod to the young unicorn.

“Alright then.”

He walked up to Sundown then, and the other unicorns that had begun to leave the crowd continued to gather around the pegasus. Sundown took a quick count of the six ponies who came forward, and made one final call for any and all unicorns that knew either of the spells. There was a brief moment of silence, before one final, older unicorn pushed her way to the front and stood next to her neighbours.

“Very good then. Follow me, now. Oaktree, you and the rest of your town may return to your homes. I will call on you when I need further assistance.”

He turned and started walking away, giving a quick shouted order to the two guards to let the rest of them go. The ice-cold rain was battering them now, and he picked his pace up and urged the rest of the unicorns to jog behind him.

“So how come you aren’t flying?” It was the yearling again, quickly catching up to the trotting stallion. “I thought all you folk in the Corporation were really big on always using their wings.”

Sundown winked, though the child didn’t see it behind his shades. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Colton.”

“Good observation, Colton. It’s a whole trust building exercise, you see? Sure, I have wings, and I could fly quickly to the base and leave the rest of you to crawl in the rain. But we’re going to need to be friends, all of us. So I will be walking on my hooves so long as I’m addressing any of you and yours in Shade’s End.”

Colton was quiet, thinking Sundown’s words over. He felt it made sense, after all. There was a lot of trust breaking that just occurred over the last evening. He looked around at the sky, marvelling at the darkness of it all, with the rainbow shimmer of the air walls contrasted against the billowing pillows of thundering storms behind them.

Sunrise should be soon, he thought. It’s been a long night, but there should be some light for us eventually. Celestia would never let any of us ponies down. ...Celestia… ...Celestia?

“Where’s Celestia?” His voice came out sharp and accusatory. If this whole operation was to save a last bastion of pony-kind, the Sisters should be involved. Even a foal could figure that out.

Sundown didn’t skip a beat. “They’re assisting in their own way. We’re down here on the ground, getting everything set up. They’re somewhere up there,” he said, giving a general throw of his head towards Cloudsdale and the open sky above it. He ruffled the unicorn’s mane and chuckled. “You’re a really smart kid, you know? You’re exactly the kind of pony we need.”

Colton felt a little proud at that, and felt a bit ashamed of his tone. He cast it from his mind though, as they had just arrived at the main base. The tent’s former access points were now all covered, with tarps and awnings wrapped over the windows and exits. Sundown detached a clasp and pulled the tarp to the side.

“In there, please, all of you. Once inside, hang a right and gather in the corner there. There should be a heater running there, that should warm your hooves up perfectly, thank you, very good, go ahead…” He continued his platitudes as the unicorns filed inside, single file. The yearling waited for all the adults to go first and then followed them in.

There was indeed a heater in the corner, and the dim, electric blue light from it--though strange to him--radiated a comforting warmth that called to him. He wandered over to it and nestled down on his haunches, grateful for some relief from the aching cold. Once all seven of them were huddled around the heater, Sundown walked in and refastened the tent door, and then made a clicking noise with his tongue.

The heater exploded- or, something exploded out of it. Colton didn’t get a chance to see anything except for a bright flash. He wasn’t sure if he had seen the neon baby blue liquid that had splashed him, or if it was just a side effect of the searing pain that ripped through his nervous system. He collapsed on his side, unable to control any of his seizing limbs, and simply convulsed spasmodically on the cold ground. He could not lift his head, but from where it fell he could see the other unicorns around him had also been affected by whatever broke.

He saw a dim magenta glow start to form--or rather the reflection of one off the drab tent wall--before a pegasus worker flew over him. The light was replaced by a scream, which was muffled almost as quickly as the magic was snuffed out.

“What’s-” Colton managed to croak through clenched teeth before a different pegasus walked up to him and, without a shred of hesitation, stomped on his horn with force enough to break bone. His horn broke off at the base of his skull and shattered instantly, and were his nervous system not overloaded with more pain than he had ever felt through his entire life combined already, he suspected he would have screamed. As it was, his jaw was wired shut by the liquid thunder coursing through his body, and he made no noise.

He lay there for a minute--though for him it could have been a year--before he heard a dragging noise move from behind him to in front. He opened his eyes again, vision blurred in agony, but clear enough for him to make out one of the adults being loaded onto a small conveyor belt that extended from a strangely plain, white, rectangular machine. He closed his eyes, his lids shut tighter than his mouth, as he saw the shape of his neighbour move unnaturally while the Device pulled them in. He did not open them again until the new round of screaming--which had quickly turned to wet garbling--subsided.

Turning his gaze to the floor, he saw a mustard-yellow leg move next to him. Rage filled the yearling. Hatred like he did not know could exist seeped into his every pore. It crept into his bones and his blood, and with all the anger within him he was able to turn his head--ever so slightly--to look in the eyes of the now sunglasses-free Colonel Sundown.

“W… Why…” he seethed. He glared at Sundown, hoping his detestation could manifest itself and drop the pegasus dead where he lay. His horn sparked once, and a new round of pain coursed through his body. “You said… useful…”

“I didn’t lie,” Sundown said, looking down without dropping his head. He silently pointed at another unicorn behind Colton and then pointed to the Device. “Unicorns who can cast Flight or Cloudwalk are absolutely, positively essential to free movement to and from Cloudsdale for non-Pegasus ponies.”

He turned his head down now, smiling slyly at the catatonic yearling.

“And we just can’t have that happening at all, now, can we?”

Colton closed his eyes at the reply. A tear formed and ran down over his cheek to the frozen dirt below him. He started to shake, not from the liquid thunder, not from pain from his obliterated horn, but from sobs.

He continued to sob as a rough hoof grabbed his leg and pulled him up into the air. He continued to sob as his limp body was dropped onto cold steel. He sobbed, still, as rollers ferried him within that huge white box. He sobbed, still, as laser guided blades hammered through his joints so fast he couldn’t even feel the pain from them. He even sobbed as his mane was sucked into a hammermill, dragging him further inside.

And then he did not sob.

Colonel Sundown walked over to the backside of the Pegasus Device, and watched with satisfaction as three separate outputs shook and sputtered out their produce. From one, Spectra poured out, its brilliant colours lighting up the boring-looking tent. From another, a brown, fibrous mush was extruded. Fertilizer for the fields. The last one was not a simple spigot, though. The colonel watched, pleased, as a battery showed an increase in charge.

It really was fascinating to him, what you could extract from ponies.

“Squadron Four we register your tower online, please proceed to base for…”

“Squadron Six to Command, tower online, orders required-”

“Squadron Six reconvene with Squadron Four and proceed to base for debrief. Squadron Five, ETA required on tower.”

Stormy Night shivered in the rain. It had warmed up, thankfully, and he was no longer struggling to hold frozen tools with numb hooves and lips, but the wet still soaked his coat entirely. It wasn’t enough that this work was tough, but now he had to be carrying what felt like at least twenty pounds of water in his hair. He spat out the wrench he had been holding and tapped his radio.

“Squadron Five to Command, ETA on power-on five minutes.”

There was some standard reply but Stormy Night wasn’t listening to it, having already replaced the wrench back in his teeth. Giving status updates wasn’t going to get this command module tower operating, and the cracks and snaps menacing from the blackness a thousand feet up were more than enough motivation.

He finished with the wrench, and spat it out again. At the same moment a jagged bolt of lightning erupted from the cloud above and exploded a tree just a few hundred metres away from him, and he thought the wrench had broken something before he realized it was just the storm.

He looked at the smoldering remains of the tree behind him and hastily tucked the rest of his metal tools back into his saddle bag. The rain had gotten warmer, and with this unnatural heat the sky too had started boiling, the inky masses roiling with convection and friction, building up more charge than any cloud Stormy Night had ever seen. He was pretty sure there were legal limits on safe energy capacity, but then again, Mother Nature didn’t care for a bureaucrat's rules. He did find it curious how she seemed to be ignoring her own rules, however; by all accounts, and though he was a mechanic by trade and not an electrician, that much static charge should not be able to fit in the sky at one location.

Another blast of lightning ricocheted down, its path-of-least-resistance seeming to bounce off of nothing but air alone, and struck the same exploded tree. He closed his eyes to the blinding light and the explosive noise knocked him onto his side.

“You’re not supposed to do that, either!” he shouted at no one in particular while scrambling up. He was getting distracted, and he shook his head and turned back to the module. All that really remained since assembling it was to plug the windblade generator and chaos converter lines in, and throw the switch. The rest of his squadron, having brought the pieces together for him to affix with bolts and screws, had been recalled to assist Squadron Two with their tower, and it was up to him alone to get his operational.

He looked down at the first cable, coming from the south section of windblades. It was massive; a good foot in diameter, with a thousand little gold pins of varying sizes sticking out of the end. He straddled it and hugged it with all his hooves, and then lifted himself and the cable off the ground with his wings.

The weight of the cable did nothing to help how his feathered limbs felt. First, he had flown for half a day straight while pushing a building. Then he spent another three hours directing civilians and flying from the village to the storage location they had set up behind the base, and that precision flying had given each of the muscles in his wings their own opportunity to complain of overuse. Now, he was flying with what felt like another two pony’s worth of weight in his hooves.

They ached, but yet another empyrean discharge set his ears ringing, and he decided it was prudent to ignore how he felt and finish setting up the damn shield. He flapped hard yet decisively, and connected the cable in the perfect orientation, before dropping to his hooves and spinning the twist-on connector until the cable locked.

He moved quickly now, with the rain picking up veracity again, to the cable for the north windblades. With another complaint from his back, he hefted it into the air and slapped it into place. He spun it closed and moved on to the chaos converter power lines. There were three of them, but they were much smaller, and he could hold each in one hoof and walk up to the tower.

He stood in front of the rocket-shaped module and wiped the rain from his eyes. The wind was starting to pick up again, and it brought with it a coolness that Stormy Night knew from his years as a weather pony was going to mix poorly with the warm front he was currently in. He shuddered and climbed up the tower to the next tier, where it sunk in a bit, and fumbled to open the protective cover over the inline port.

“Squadron Five, you have exceeded your ETA.” It was a stallion now at command, but the voice was just as emotionless and steady as the mare’s from earlier. Stormy Night swore. “You must activate the windblades before the air fronts fully reach the Auxiliary. Do you copy?”

“Copy, Command, chaos converters being connected now. Two minutes to activation.” He jammed the power line in, thankful that these connections were universal and didn’t need orientation.

“Squadron Five, you have one minute to activation.”

He sighed and flew over to the last two lines, picking each up in a forehoof and leaping back to the tower. He took out his frustration with the radio on the cables, smashing them into place. He tested the magnetic fasteners with a gentle tug and then landed on the back side of the tower where a small panel was. It was raining so hard now he was starting to have trouble seeing the words on the panel, but he had been trained enough that he didn’t need them. He reached forward and pulled down a bright red flip switch, and then stepped back to watch the magic happen.

Lightning struck a different nearby tree.

“Squadron Five, you have exceeded ETA. That module needs to come online now. If the storm blocks the Auxiliary, the shield cannot be maintained.”

Stormy Night tried the flip switch again, staring in disbelief at the dead machine before him. He had assembled these a thousand times in practice. He could do it in his sleep if he needed to. What had he missed?

“Uh, Command, Squadron Five… The module’s dead in the water.”

“Squadron Five, there is no time for excuses. Power the module on or you’ll face disciplinary action-”

The radio operator cut short for a moment while Stormy Night flew hectically over every part of the tower, checking to make sure it was plugged in and fastened correctly.

“-Disciplinary action provided you don’t kill every one of us first, as per the Colonel. No more extensions, Squadron Five. That tower must be turned on.”

“It’s not flockin’ powering on!” he shouted back. He considered himself a pretty well trained pony, but his exhaustion and now a growing fear had weakened his nerves and he felt himself starting to break down. The operating panel wasn’t showing any faults being thrown. It wasn’t throwing anything at all, actually, which made the whole thing worse for Stormy Night because he had no idea what was wrong. “The whole thing is dark!” He flicked the switch three more times, desperate.

“No more games, Squadron F-” The radio cracked and cut out, and a new voice replaced the harsh one from before.

“Logistics to Stormy Night.”

He froze.

L… Logistics? Directly to me? Oh Luna, please, no, what’s-

“Logistics to Stormy Night, do you copy?” It was another one of those pleasant, perfectly calm, absolutely professional, pristinely clear flight controller voices; a mare’s, and Stormy’s head began to clear from his panic.

“I copy, Logistics,” he replied, smacking the side of the tower in one last bid of desperation.

“Stormy Night, we have traced the source of the error. The third chaos conversion generator will not come online. All digital attempts at ignition have failed, and it must be manually started for the command module to function. You are the closest employee to this generator, do you understand?”

He did. He twisted around and looked behind himself. The forest outside of the town was patchy, and in a large clearing about three hundred feet away--down a small hill, out of site--lay the chaos converter.

Another blinding flash of electricity and shockwave erupted in front of Stormy Night, right next to the path he would need to take. He swallowed hard.

“On it, Logistics.”

He took off flying, staying low to the ground to avoid spontaneous combustion at the hands of the thunderclouds above, following the cable.

“We’ll stay with you while you fix it. Respond if you require any assistance.”

It was strange to Stormy Night to be speaking directly to Logistics department. All communication with them was only ever with the commanders of the Primaries. He realized as he raced forward, passing smoldering, ice-covered trunks and full, aged oaks, that the chatter from the 13th Command had stopped. Logistics seemed to have overridden his channel, he supposed. He wondered what they were currently thinking about him now, with him having suddenly gone offline after being chastised. Did they think him a coward? His eyes were locked on to the cable, following the twisting black serpent in the pitch black of a night obscured by thunderheads. Lightning flashed more frequently now, and with the afterimage of the cable in his retina and the faint glow from burning wood giving enough contrast to see the coil on the ground, he reached the clearing, and stopped.

The temperature continued to drop, and as it did the torrent of rain that had mostly blinded Stormy Night lessened as it congealed into wet almost-hail. The converter in the centre of the clearing was a fantastic piece of equipment that Stormy Night had looked on with awe during assembly practice. It was huge; about five metres by ten metres long at its base, and reaching another 20 metres high--though that was just the lightning rod poking out from the centre. It was pyramidal, with smooth solid steel panelling coming up to meet a layer of caged turbines that surrounded the bottom half of the lightning rod. The two short ends of the converter housed large water wheels that were currently not moving despite being full on one side with ice and water.

It was designed for taking the brunt of the Reckoning, the chaos, and converting it to power the shields protecting Cloudsdale from that chaos. He had marvelled at how it all worked, the water mills, the wind turbines, the lightning conductors, but now he only felt frustration. The damn thing should have started hours ago, with the first hail storm. What had happened?

“Logistics, I am at the converter now,” he said, frowning as the slush solidified further into hail and bounced off his back. “Is there anything I should focus on?”

“Diagnostics are incomplete but there is a code being thrown from the turbines. If any components are seized, the others will not unlock in case the issue is from the internal coils. Try inspecting the turbines first; there should be an access panel on the top of the lattice.”

Why would one component lock the whole thing up? That’s ridiculous, our engineers are better than that. He didn’t say what he was thinking though, opting instead to zip over to the top of the converter. Looking down through the grating he stood on, he immediately recognized the issue.

“Logistics, it appears the hail from the first storm was small enough to fit through the cage. It’s piled up in the back three turbines, jamming their blades. Is there a function to clear it?” He turned around to face the center pillar, looking for any sort of control panel, and jumped backwards as the rod fulfilled its purpose at that moment. The light blinded him. He didn’t even hear the crash of thunder, only a sudden muted deafness that filled his ears. Somewhere inside his brain, it felt like there was a pony playing a violin poorly, and he jammed his hooves to his ears to try to stop the overstimulated ache. Seconds later, the chill of his frozen wings brought him back to reality.

Words were coming to him from his radio, he could tell, but he could not make them out. It was like trying to read a newspaper, underwater, from a field away. He shook his head and pressed his ear right up to his radio.

“...Night? Do you copy?” The words were distant, but now distinct.

“I can confirm the conductor works perfectly, Logistics. Please repeat your instructions,” he yelled, still dizzy.

“No time for jokes, Stormy,” came the reply. Stormy felt he could get used to the kind, personal sort of communication coming from Logistics. The normal radio chatter made him feel like he was simply a cog, a gear, some tiny part of a machine. “There are no fan clear functions- those things should be spinning fast enough in this wind that nothing can get caught in them. You will have to do it manually.”

Flock.

“Copy, Logistics.” He looked back at the grating over the three troubled turbines, and quickly found the latches. He opened the first one, which had the least amount of ice built up on it, and dropped to his side to reach in.

It was just out of hoof’s reach, and he swore again. He pulled himself up and inspected the clearing for any sign of something he could use. A branch would knock the ice around, he figured, but he needed to clear it out entirely. He sighed, and glanced at his back. His poor wings would need to do some extra work one more time.

He dropped prone and spread his wings wide, and then crawled forward until they covered the access. Resting his body weight on them, he reached down with both hooves and scooped all the ice up in one go. He groaned as he flapped down, pulling himself out of his strange angle on mostly his secondaries. There was a sudden stabbing pain in the sides of his chest, and he quickly maneuvered a knee up onto the grating to assist his wings. Once up, he dumped the ice to the side, and checked the large blades.

It wobbled free, but only moved about a centimetre before locking again. He figured it must be tied in to the same system and wouldn’t budge until the other two were free. He knocked the access panel closed and moved over to the next turbine.

The deafness in his ears persisted, and he felt mildly concerned over this. It was, however, probably a saving grace for him. The discharging thunderhead above him was growing more and more violent, and as the clearing strobed in the night quicker and quicker he felt grateful that he could no longer hear that awful crackle of burning air. The light show was enough to give him a headache, and the acrid stench of ozone that filled the clearing was enough to make it worse. If he had to hear the storm, he figured, he might just pass out and die in the cold.

And kill everypony left on the planet, he thought, despite his best efforts.

He repeated his process again, crawling forwards on his belly and supporting himself with his wings. The middle turbine was crammed with hail, and he chucked some hooffulls of it over his shoulder before grabbing the rest and pulling himself back up against his pectoral muscles’ desperate pleading. He slammed that one shut, not even bothering with the latch, and opened the last one.

There was a vibration on his shoulder, and he pressed his ear against the radio again.

“...Approaching the Auxiliary. You have approximately two minutes to restore the converter before we will be unable to connect Primary 13 to the central beam. No pressure, Stormy Night, but if the shield cannot be closed, the other Auxiliaries will get blocked by the hurricane and be forced to power down. Do not reply, just get it done. Please.”

Hearing the quietest break in professionalism, that little tremor of fear in ‘please’, would have been enough to stop Stormy in his tracks if he had the time. As it was, he was already on his belly, holding himself up by his pinions, over the last turbine. It had the most ice, and after tossing most of it out over his back, he realized a portion of it had frozen together between the base and the fan. He started beating on it with his hoof, reaching back as far as he could in the cramped space and banging the fan awkwardly.

There was a crack, and the fan started to shift, breaking the ice further. He sighed in relief, knowing that the last turbine was finally free and the whole converter could now start supplying power to the command module.

The fan shifted an inch again, with harrowing winds urging them all to spin at their maximum velocity yet all held back by the slight lip of ice. It was at this moment that Stormy Night realized he was still in the module, with the soon-to-be-free, massive solid steel blade. The ice cracked one more time, and shattered.

He beat down his wings with no regard to pain. Time seemed to slow as his head lifted out of the enclosure away from the encroaching slab of metal. The top of the turbine skimmed his nose, taking the outer layer of skin away, while he continued to fling his body free from the machine. His temporal perception corrected itself and he found himself laying on his back in a muddy puddle, ten feet away from the converter.

It was moving now, each part of the machine finally free to let loose in the calamity that surrounded it and Stormy Night. He dropped his head into the puddle and laughed in relief. He had done it-- he had cleared the converter, he had powered the command module, and he had lived. In just thirty seconds now, the wind generators would come online, completing the shield.

The shield that he was outside of.

He scrambled out of his dirty pool in panic and bent down to take off. He leapt, and collapsed again with a shout. Agony ripped throughout his chest, and his wings did not respond-- he had torn his flight muscles freeing himself from the turbine. He got up again and started running, galloping harder than he ever had before in his life, jumping over the burnt remains of fallen trees, smashing his hooves through patches of frozen dirt, straight ahead through the patchy forest, uncaring of where lightning was next going to strike. He had to make it back. When the wind blades came online, he would be stuck out in the Reckoning. The air was already colder now than most winter days he had experienced in Trotland, and he expected by sunrise it would be unlivable in just his standard Corporation vest.

He cleared the last of the trees and could see the trench now, and the village just beyond it. The thrumming of his hooves were the only noise he could hear, and he focused on each thump as his legs struck the ground to help him ignore the screaming nerves in his chest. Had the thunder not deleted his perception of sound, he knew he would be able to hear the whine of the wind generators as they geared up to speed. He knew he would be able to tell how close they were to firing based on their pitch. But he could not hear it, and he did not know, and he pushed himself to run just a little bit harder, a little bit faster, a little bit closer.

He looked up from the trench as he approached. He saw Shade’s End and a smattering of pegasi in the air that were watching him with concern. He looked higher, and saw his Auxiliary, with tumultuous fog reaching towards it as if the sky itself had been possessed. Beyond that, he saw Cloudsdale. He saw the seemingly-endless Meganimbus pass over the horizon. He saw the 19 other rainbow-beams piercing the heart of his city. He saw his home, and he closed his eyes, and jumped.

He felt like he was in the air for too long, but did not open his eyes. If he didn’t make it, or if the blades came on while he was over them, he wanted his last sight to be of Cloudsdale. An eternity passed, and he started to suspect he was dead. Finally, he felt his barrel slam into jagged ground, and his body slide and roll over the rocky terrain. He opened his eyes then, looking down.

The first thing he noticed was the blood pouring from his ankle, which seemed to be missing about an inch from what he felt it normally was. Beyond that, he saw the wind blade, almost at the troposphere, closing off the bubble and severing the storm. His radio shook again with orders for the squadrons. He couldn’t tell what it was saying, but watching hundreds of Pegasi rush up to the billowing cloud before the Auxiliary and starting to beat it, he could guess what he missed.

He dropped his head to the ground and watched, upside down, as the Thirteenth Primary Auxiliary Factory lit up on its highest point. Energy wrapped around an antenna at the very peak and then flared, and the last laser of magic raced towards the centre of Cloudsdale. There was a change then, a subtle one, as if somepony had turned all the lights in the Safe Zone up just a little bit brighter, and a massive rainbow pillar raced to the troposphere from the heart of his home. It struck the atmospheric boundary and then spread out, a razor-thin sheet of pearlescent light expanding in all directions towards the air walls. The shimmer turned harshly where it met the air walls, chasing them down to the wind generators. When it reached the bottom, the entire bubble pulsed once, fluttering Stormy Night’s already racing heart, and then there was silence.

There was no more rain. No more thunder. Lightning struck the air wall near him still, like a manic ex trying to break inside, to no avail. There was no more freezing wind cutting through his flesh to his bones, no more hail taking chunks of his hide out, no more snow freezing his eyes shut. There was silence, too, but he attributed that to his blown out ears. He rolled his head over to his radio, listening as his relief gave his exhaustion an in to overtake him. He slipped into darkness, smiling, hearing one last call from the communicator.

“Good job, Stormy. You’ve saved us all. Logistics out.”

Chapter Seven

Cloud Cover hovered still in the middle of Gentle’s office, feeling a bit like an old cartoon character. When the door had unlocked, she had leapt up into the air with hindlegs dangling and her forelegs up in shock. Now, she figured, she needed a skinny lamppost she could hide behind, some access to hammerspace to disappear into.

The door opened sharply, but only moved an inch before suddenly halting. She could hear a murmured argument outside, and prayed for time to stop while she frantically looked around the room. A microsecond later she remembered the wooden cabinet to her left, and she jumped into it and closed the door so quickly that she could feel it rocking in place. It was a tight fit, with various jackets and professional-style clothing accessories bunched up behind her. If she breathed too deeply, her belly might push open the door, and so she subconsciously decided that she would just stop breathing entirely to avoid the chance.

There was a faint beam of light coming through the gap between the two doors, and she cursed her curiosity. She craned her neck painfully, just enough to get the slightest sliver of vision into the office outside.

The door swung fully open now, and she recognized the strange stallion named Foresight from earlier holding it open for Gentle to walk in. Despite her concrete expression, Cloud Cover felt she looked tired, exhausted even. Her squinted eyes were dark and her gait was ever so slightly jittery. Foresight followed Gentle into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Last I have been informed is that the Thirteenth Auxiliary was having difficulties with their generators, a malfunctioning chaos converter keeping a generator module offline.”

“So is it still on schedule,” Gentle asked. She spoke softly to Foresight, and it sounded to Cloud Cover as if she had been speaking for a full day straight. The harsh tones she had used in their interview were gone now.

Cloud Cover wondered about this sudden change. Half an hour ago, or less than that from how she felt, Gentle had sounded no different from the same cold, heartless bitch that Cloud Cover had interviewed the day before. What had caused her to lose all that energy, to seemingly shrivel up like a mushroom left in the sun? Or maybe… She focused on Gentle as she spoke and moved, and gaped. Maybe this was how Gentle always was; an old mare, broken from the weight of the world and a million personal sins, exhausted but refusing--or unable--to quit.

“Yes, Ms. Butterwing. They haven’t told me yet but, the central techmag shield came online five minutes ago. So really…” He trailed off, sounding sad.

Gentle didn’t reply. She walked around her desk, within a foot of Cloud Cover’s hiding spot, and then to the picture window. She slid one of the curtains to the side, looked out into the night sky, and frowned.

“You won’t be able to see it from here,” Foresight said, answering her question before she asked it. “If you’d like, I would love to escort you to the foyer, where the central beam can be seen.” He smiled awkwardly behind his broken glasses.

Gentle turned and smiled meekly at Foresight. “No, thank you. I believe you. How soon can we conve-” She froze, staring at her desk and the bright red folder open on it.

Oh, Luna, I forgot the flocking report, she’ll know I’m here, I’m dead, I’m dead, Cloud Cover’s thoughts raced. She shifted a knee as quietly and slowly as she could, poised to shatter the amulet on her chest, and tried not to let her panic change her controlled, sedate breathing.

Gentle walked up to the folder silently while Foresight looked at her with a quizzical expression. She quickly read the open page, and then tenderly closed the folder. Cloud Cover could not see Gentle’s face from her vantage point, and wondered what she was thinking.

“Sorry, Ms. Butterwing, you were pondering…?” Foresight asked, his tone matching his curious face.

“...Sorry. I was asking how soon the Board can be convened. I want to make absolutely sure everypony is on the same page before we move forward with this project.” She spoke slowly and half-heartedly, twisting her head around as she looked around the small office.

“All the Directors are on stand-by, as per the guidelines. We can have them together in the meeting room in about ten minutes, at your call.”

Gentle moved back to her desk and put her hoof on the folder, still searching the room with the least bit of subtlety. Foresight didn’t say anything about it, opting instead to wait for his boss to reply. Gentle fixed her sight on the cabinet, and moved towards it before she paused midstep. She changed her gaze--much to Cloud Cover’s relief--onto the jar of Spectra, which was just as still as it had been after Cloud Cover had replaced it.

“...No,” Gentle said, drawing the word out, distracted from her conversation with the stallion. “No, I’m sorry Foresight,” she said walking up to him and bringing a hoof to his cheek.

Foresight frowned. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“I know.”

“I won’t do it until you tell me to.”

“I know.”

They stared at each other then, and Cloud Cover prayed one of them would break the silence that had persisted for a minute after Gentle had spoken so she could exhale and get a new breath.

Gentle grimaced, and put her hoof to the floor. “Foresight, assemble the Directors in the Main Theatre Room. It is, unfortunately, time for the next step. I know, I’m sorry, I know. Don’t worry. You’ll do fine, I know it. It needs to be done.”

“Ms. Butterwing. No, Gentle.”

The old mare stepped back in shock. “What?” she whispered.

“Gentle… it doesn’t need to be.” Foresight sniffed, and a tear ran down his face and dripped to the floor. “I’ve gone through so many possibilities, so many alternatives. This isn’t efficient, this isn’t right. We don’t need to do this.”

“You’re right, Foresight,” Gentle said, her hard professional voice coming back. Cloud Cover was not sure if it was to intimidate her co-worker or cover up her own emotions. “We don’t need to do this. But I do. I do, Foresight, and I know that you know that. It’ll be fine. Come here,” she said, embracing Foresight. The dichotomy of tone and action confused Cloud Cover.

What in the world… is going on? Are they a couple? Is she dumping him? Transferring him? Retiring, hopefully? This is so weird. Oh, Luna, my back is starting to cramp… Please leave, please leave, please leave…

“Assemble them in the Main Theatre Room, Foresight, that is an order. Fifteen minutes from now, as planned.” She gave another weak smile, pushed his sliding glasses back up to his eyes and went to go out the door.

“Ms. Butterwing, do you mean the MTR?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, outside already. Foresight followed her, closing the door behind him.

“Then why did you say the whole name…” Cloud Cover heard before the latched door cut her off from the conversation.

She waited then, in her cramped little closet, taking only the risk to breathe a little bit deeper and faster. After what she felt was five minutes had passed and nopony returned to the office, she pushed it open and fell out of it, gasping for real gulps of air. She lay there on the cold floor, coughing lightly, shaking, confused.

What had she just overheard? Nothing they were speaking about sounded like any aspect of the Contingencies she had heard of, but Foresight seemed extremely worried about it, so it must have been serious. And what was all that nonsense with Gentle Butterwing, steel eyed and keen minded dictator of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation, breaking down emotionally with her underling?

Cloud Cover pulled out the lush chair at the desk and flopped onto it. She felt as if she kept getting caught up in strange management scuffles with this damn factory. Eighteen years ago, she was used as a tool for Hide Atmosphere to wrench control--if not in name but in practicality--from Rainbow Dash. Now, she had shown up again, and the current boss of the place was having some sort of relationship issue with the Head of Logistics.

She glanced down at the desk, and started. The Contingency A folder. It was gone-- Gentle had picked it up and tucked it under her foreleg. Cloud Cover’s only definitive proof that the Corporation was aware of the Reckoning and was refusing to provide the only way of saving most of Equestria was now gone. She dropped her head into her hooves and groaned. She could have grabbed it before she jumped in the closet, she should have grabbed it, because now Gentle knew she was in the office--

With a blank face she jerked up. Gentle had known Cloud Cover was in the office. She had to have--why else would the folder, kept under a special memento, be moved but not taken? So why didn’t she search harder for her? Why did she continue to talk about her plans, and let herself be so emotionally open, especially if she considered Cloud Cover to be a ‘failure’?

She looked at the desk and realized then that there was an ID card there that had not been there before. She pawed it closer to her and stared, dumbfounded.

It was Gentle’s ID tag for the elevator.

She had left it there when she grabbed the folder, and she had clearly announced where she was planning to go; the Main Theatre Room, the heart of all evil in Cloud Cover’s life. When she was last there, she had seen a ghost-- the emaciated shell of an old… ‘friend’ of Rainbow Dash’s. Absentia, that was her name. She remembered when the atrophied mare saved her from Rainbow Dash. She remembered breaking the chains that suspended Absentia above a room of rust and corpses. She remembered the massive Pegasus Device at the back of the room, that arachnoid monster of blood-spattered metal and hollow glass tubes.

She remembered the screams of a hundred, a thousand, a million foals that assailed her like so many banshees when she first touched that plain grey door.

It was a trap, obviously. Cloud Cover briefly wondered if Gentle had thought her so stupid a failure that she would fall for it blindly, but threw that idea out after a moment’s consideration. She might not be a pegasus to Gentle, but she was still a living breathing adult pony, and the Executive Director of the Corporation was not a position known for underestimating others. So it was blatantly a trap, but also one that Gentle expected Cloud Cover to fall for despite knowing that.

She tapped her chin. She tapped her amulet. She tapped her chin again. She thought of Corona, realizing that she had done so more in the last day or so than she had in the last decade. What would he have done? She tapped her amulet again. He would have run, as fast as he could, away from the danger. Is it cowardly to be realistic? She shook her head; there was no time left for philosophical questions.

What would Cloud Cover do? she thought, changing tracks.

She looked at her cutie mark.

I would investigate, no matter the risk.

Was it courageous to run forward to certain death?

She spread her wings wide and brought them down hard, taking off. She snatched the ID card from the desk and threw it on, adjusted her saddlebag, and aimed at the door.

“Suppose I’ll have to find out,” she said, blasting off.

About halfway between where she had launched off the glass at the back of the room and the door, she remembered that it had opened inwards. Beating her wings hard, she shifted in the air and collided with the glass pane with her shoulder. The door’s hinges were not made of any security material, and the whole frame exploded as Cloud Cover’s momentum carried her forward. The flying door whipped outwards and knocked over two large stallions in vests who had been reaching to open it.

Cloud Cover carried through and shoulder-checked the wall across from Gentle’s office. She looked down to see the two surprised stallions shout at her while they tried to untangle themselves from each other and the remains of the door. She dropped and springboarded off the panel, rocketing herself forward while knocking the two guards back, and flew haphazardly down the hallway.

She rounded the corner, skidding in the air as she did so, and locked eyes on the panel for the elevator. Between her and it were a small group of employees; some ponies in lab coats and one in the armoured vest. She shot down the hallway shouting, bowling over the employees. The guard made a move to reach for her, but she dived instead of trying to go over her and caught her hindlegs, tumbling the mare face first onto the floor. The elevator access rushed to meet her and she grabbed onto the middle and closed her wings, dropping fast in front of it. She scrambled to her hooves and lept to the security panel, smashing the ID card against it over and over.

She looked down the hallway as the other two guards rounded the corner, pointing at Cloud Cover and yelling for the employees to stop her. She turned back to the panel and realized she was holding the card backwards. She flipped it and the reader instantly accepted it, and the doors wooshed open in a split second. She jumped inside and rapidly smacked the close door button, right as a confused scientist stopped in front and reached for her.

She smacked his hooves away and growled, and he recoiled. A tiny voice in the back of her subconscious wondered what it must have looked like for him. Here she was, ragged, sweaty, mane unkempt and full of grease, baring teeth and feral eyes, ready to snap his forelegs up if he had gotten any closer. She stood there, shaking and hackles raised like a cornered wolf, daring the scientist to try again.

He looked at her, wide-eyed, and hit a button on the exterior panel, closing the doors with that same whoosh as a moment ago.

Cloud Cover sat down, surprised at this turn of events, and then hit the button for the main floor so the guards couldn’t just reopen the doors. The small room shuddered, and then Cloud Cover felt the familiar sensation of movement while staying still. She looked at the numbers available to her and thought for a moment.

When she had been there before, the Main Theatre Room was on the lowest floor of the Upper Factory. She tried to remember, twenty years ago, what floor she had been on when she had taken her elevator to freedom. It must have been one or two lower than the offices. The central control room had been there--

She blinked. The eighth floor button, which had been dim when she first arrived, was now lit up just like the rest. She looked again at the ID tag which had gotten her access to the elevator, and realized that it was not that the light had been broken, but that it had been unavailable for her to choose. But now that she had scanned in as Gentle, it was open. She hit the button and the elevator lurched in its descent and then stopped. There was a quiet ding, and the whoosh, and Cloud Cover stepped out before the door closed.

She felt weird. Nothing on the floor seemed familiar to her, yet at the same time she remembered every intricate detail as if she had seen it a thousand times, or had dreamed of it every night without remembering. The walls were brilliantly white, a far departure from the rust and grime of two decades ago. She walked cautiously along the metal grating suspended above a bottomless pit, leaning against sturdy guardrails as her eyes followed some of the more massive pipes down into a radiant fog below.

Nausea and dizziness swept over Cloud Cover, and she dropped to her haunches to catch her breath. There were no spiderwebs of hoses and tubes, no low hanging wires with occasional sparks, no cracked vents leaking clouds into the work space. Everything was clean, orderly, and in perfect repair, and yet there was a stench of oil and blood that seemed to emanate from the walls and leak from the pipes. It was not a scent that was actually there though, merely one brought forth by her memory, triggered by ghosts of familiarity; a yellowed sign there, a door over here, a turn in the hall just up ahead.

She did not know where she was, but she knew where she was going. Her legs started to carry her down halls they had run almost every night in her sleep, and she let them lead. She passed by a clean yet ancient looking vent, and it became apparent to her that part of her confusion was the difference in size. She had been nay higher than her own knees when she was last here.

She turned a corner and froze. This hallway she did remember. All of the pressure washing and shiny new plastic and bright reflective warning tape did nothing to stop her from recognizing the large and flat grey-coloured door halfway down the aisle. She looked around and, seeing nobody, sat for a moment to catch her breath.

Beyond that door was Gentle, and the other Directors of the Corporation. The five most powerful Pegasi alive, at least that Cloud had ever heard of. She thought of Foresight and his broken glasses, and figured that perhaps it was the four most powerful Pegasi alive, and him. They could all be old and miserable ponies by now. Just because they held sway over hundreds of thousands of her kind didn’t mean that they would be trained professional fighters. She might not be able to intimidate them, no, but perhaps she could make a case to their Equinity. Maybe they didn’t know that Gentle had an alternative solution?

Well, worst case scenario, I tackle the bitch, grab the folder in the confusion, and magic myself to freedom, Cloud Cover thought, stepping up. She walked quietly up to the door. It seemed just as large to her now as it did when she was a filly. She took one more deep breath, steeled herself, and rushed the door, putting all her weight into it as she pulled the handle.

Thankfully, there were no screams this time. Less fortunately, the instant Cloud Cover breached the Main Theatre Room, a searing pain ripped through her body, as if every nerve had been set on fire.

“Gent-ack…” Cloud Cover managed to get out, collapsing to the floor and rolling limply to the centre of the room. She blinked her eyes through the stinging pain and saw, by the door, two guardsponies flying. They were holding strange little devices with an electric-blue glow at the end, and were looking down at her disdainfully.

Shit.

She moved to smash the amulet on her chest, or would have, if her leg had responded. She rolled her eyes down as her head would not turn for her, and found her forelegs to be just as limp as the rest of her, and sunken slightly into the cloud.

Shiiit.

“Get her up and looking at me, and then get out.” It was Gentle’s voice, back to it’s dead professional tone.

Shiiiiiiiiii-

A numb tug at the back of her neck by one of the guards cut off her line of thinking, and she hung like a kitten carried by its mother. A stepladder was dragged over from a corner of the room, and Cloud Cover was dropped onto it. The top of the ladder held her flimsy head up, letting her get a good view of the room for the first time.

To say what Cloud Cover saw was ominous would be an understatement. The room was just as luminous as the rest of the Rainbow Factory she had seen, with perfectly clean cloud walls and neatly organized pipes and wires. Four ponies, three of them dressed neatly in suits and the other just Foresight, stood across the room from each other underneath the hanging scaffolding. They were glaring at her with all the intensity one would expect after making a loud noise in a library. They didn’t seem malicious, rather, they looked annoyed.

In the middle of the room, at the back wall, was what really filled Cloud Cover with dread. There, amidst all the splendid spotlessness, was a huge machine. Its steel shell was oxidized and dented, and at the top of the thing where an upside-down pyramid-shaped hopper stood, there was a line of rust that circumnavigated the opening. At the bottom, four huge glass tubes extended from the left and right sides, each stained lightly with each shade of the rainbow, and curved sharply into the floor to sights unknown.

Cloud Cover had seen this before. She had seen it only as a backdrop to a timid and broken mare lifted by chains, covered in dust and blood, surrounded by pigeon-chewed corpses. She didn’t know what it was, but from all she had read and all she had watched when the Royal Inspection had concluded, she knew it had to be a Pegasus Device.

Gentle Butterwing was standing in front of it with her back to Cloud Cover and the other Directors, and was fiddling with some small controls on a panel set in the Device. Cloud Cover heard the door click closed to her left, and Gentle turned around.

“You are a colossal pain in the ass, do you know that?” she said.

“Why, Gentle?” Cloud Cover shouted, refusing to play games or pretend to be nice. She expected she would die soon, and needed to know. “Why are you letting everyone die?”

“Because they’re supposed to,” Gentle said absentmindedly, flying up to the left side scaffolding. She started pulling small levers and turning large wheels, and said no more.

Cloud Cover’s eye twitched. What sort of answer was that? Some sort of freshman-psychology-major bullshit about the inevitability of death? She screamed out again.

“That’s not a reason! Just because we’ll pass eventually doesn’t mean you get to decide for every pony and creature when and where that’ll happen!”

“The reckoning cannot be stopped, Cloud,” Gentle replied, almost bored, flicking some switches.

“It can and you know it! I saw your report, Gentle, the one you had stashed in your office. Contingency A!” Some minor movement had come back to Cloud Cover and she put all her effort into turning her head to look each Director in the eye. “So many could be saved! Think of the legacy of the Corporation, of the Pegasi race, how we could all have been heroes! Did she tell you?” she asked, catching Foresight’s eye. The stallion looked down and away from her. “Did she tell you that we could save most of the world?”

Gentle flew up from the scaffolding and hovered down in front of Cloud Cover. She wound back and then brought her hoof forward, punching the paralyzed mare so hard the ladder rocked.

“You do not get to use the word we.”

Cloud Cover brought her dropped head back up to stare her adversary in the face, shaking through the effort. “Is it about the city? About keeping Cloudsdale whole? It’s just a fucking cloud, Gentle. Is that why you rejected it, huh?” She shouted to the room, trying to find a Director to listen to her. “You’re all really going to let millions die to keep the Meganimbus intact? Is that it?”

Gentle punched her again and then flew back up to the scaffolding.

“Were you even listening, failure?” She did not look at Cloud Cover when she spoke. “I already told you. Their reckoning cannot be stopped.” She turned around then and stood tall, looking down on her captive. “This factory is cursed, do you know? Children sing about it, like it’s a joke. In the Rainbow Factory,” she sang in a childish mocking tone, “where not a single soul gets through… But it’s not. I have seen it for myself, watched the curse in action. Any pony who interacts with the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation is doomed to die at it’s hooves. Or go insane, or just be…” She paused, taking a breath. “Or be broken.” There was another pause while she settled an onset of rapid breathing.

“So what does that have to do with everypony else?”

“Have you ever looked around you, Cloud? Ever woken up and inhaled the revitalizing scent of a sunny day after a rainy night? Ever sat in a park and smiled at a rainbow? Well, maybe not you, I suppose. But have you ever warmed your wings in the sunlight? Eaten food that had been watered by rain? Fallen asleep to the rhythmic rumbles of thunder? Everyone has interacted with the Corporation, Cloud. Everyone. This is the reckoning I speak of.”

She pulled a huge flip switch down, grunting as she fought against the stiff pivot point. It slammed down and sparked once, and the quiet in the large, empty room was shattered by deep, gut-rumbling klaxon. The Pegasus Device hummed to life as motors and pistons and pumps within the large box started up. There was a minute of cacophony, and then the klaxon went quiet, leaving the vibrating machine to fill the room with noise.

Cloud Cover stared at the hopper, seeing the tips of scythe-like blades alternate back and forth over the rusted edge.

Not rust, she realized. She turned her head, mouth gaping, to the mad mare up on the catwalk.

“You’re insane,” Cloud Cover said. “She’s insane,” she said to the Directors. “She wants everyone to die because they’ve lived in weather? Are any of you listening to this? You don’t have to follow through with this bullshit! The first Contingency...!”

“There’s no use, Cloud.” Gentle flew over and landed in front of her. Cloud Cover cringed in preparation for a punch that did not come, and opened an eye to see Gentle run a hoof down her cheek softly. She reviled her touch, but could hardly pull her head away. “This corporation was built on Loyalty. Unless I tell them otherwise, they will not change course.” She turned and walked towards the Device again, and the Directors’ gazes followed her movement silently. “It’s too late, anyways. The Reckoning has already begun.”

“Wh… what? You’re lying. You have decades.”

Gentle laughed softly. “You know, Cloud Cover, Rainbow Dash’s plans were always liable to be ruined. She always moved too fast, went too early, never planning, never thinking, just rushing in.” She turned and, confusingly, smiled at Cloud Cover. “You did a great job screwing things up for her back then, just completely uncounted for in her plans. It played right into Hide’s own goals. But I’m not Rainbow Dash, Cloud.”

She reached the Device and pressed her chest against it, running her forehoof down it slowly as if in the embrace of an old lover. She rested her head against the machine and smiled sweetly, and then released it and spun back to face Cloud Cover.

“You have always been a part of my plans. Ever since I took control of the Corporation, I knew you would show up one day and try to destroy everything I had worked for. To break my Corporation.” Her words started to shake, her anger boiling to the surface. “It’s why we purchased Cloudsdale at Seven. It’s why I accepted your interview. It’s why I’ve kept you alive, all this time, when with a clap of my hooves I could have had you disappear overnight.”

“Why would you keep me alive if I was going to be a problem?” She let indignation fill her voice. Every moment Gentle spoke, a bit more feeling would return to her limbs, a bit more muscle control.

“So I could break you. So I could watch as you learn that you have already failed, before you even started. There’s no getting through the Rainbow Factory, Cloud.” She started to fly now, rising up directly in front of the Pegasus Device. “Silver Linings, Blue Note,” she said, pointing to the two pegasi on the left side of the room. “You make sure those air walls stay online, no matter what. Keep Cloudsdale safe.”

They nodded, staring emotionless at their flying leader.

“Sapphire.”

The mare next to Foresight looked up with a look that was hauntingly familiar to Gentle’s typical demeanor.

“Make sure there is order amongst the Safe Zone. You know the plans for city hall. Keep Cloudsdale in line.”

Sapphire nodded once, a devilish grin forming on her muzzle.

“Foresight.” Gentle moved down towards the stallion and embraced him. After a long moment that would have been quiet save for the roaring elephant in the room, she released him, and hovered back. “It is up to you to guide Cloudsdale into its new era. The others already know their allegiance falls to you after me. Hey, stop that. It will be okay. I will see you soon enough. Be strong for Cloudsdale, Foresight. You are the only pony who could organize and direct this new world.”

Foresight nodded rapidly, grimacing. He affixed his glasses--a move Cloud Cover suspected was to cover up the wiping of tears--and stood tall, appearing for once to be firm and resolute.

“Cloud Cover.” Gentle said this softly as well, flying over in front of her. She leaned in close to the paralyzed pony, whispering so softly that only Cloud Cover could hear. “You escaping was a great insult to the Factory. You cannot escape your reckoning, as I cannot.”

Cloud Cover’s mind was racing. She didn’t know what was going on; what the orders were about, why Gentle had said them, what the purpose of this strange meeting in this damned cavernous room was even about. Gentle must have been lying about triggering the Reckoning. It was a jab, insult to injury, designed to break her soul before tossing her in the Device. Gentle was right there, next to her. She tried to lift her leg, and though her hoof twitched no other muscles responded. She glared at Gentle, hoping and praying that perhaps if she had hated her enough, despised her enough, the mare would collapse dead. She would not give Gentle the satisfaction of her being afraid.

She just needed Gentle to rescind her orders. There had to be something, anything she could use as leverage. Some sort of philosophical or moral argument, some paradoxical thinking that made her realize she was wrong.

Gentle pulled back, running another hoof lovingly across Cloud Cover’s face, before grabbing her chin and wrenching her to the floor. Cloud Cover crumpled, rolling on to her back. From where her head lay, she could see just the Pegasus Device, looming ten metres away, upside down but grinding and shaking and begging for its meal all the same.

And then she saw Gentle, positioning herself directly above the hopper. She hovered, her limbs hanging limply, and looked to each of the four Directors in turn, saluting each one with a dip of her head. Then she looked down at Cloud Cover, and smiled.

“There is no way to fix this, Cloud. We all must accept the curse. I have delayed my reckoning for too long. It calls to me. I hear the loving whispers at night, see its beckoning avatars in the day, feel the warm embrace when I am near, smell its blood and spectra when I am far. You and I have both delayed this for far too long.”

“...What are you…?”

“But I’ll be damned if I let a failure have the honor of going first.”

She looped grandiously in the air, spiralling with her wings splayed out fully in one final stretch, and dove headfirst into the scissoring blades of the Pegasus Device. There was no noise from her, though various internal modules hummed to life at the detection of fluids. Her light green coat vanished to be replaced by a boiling heap of gore and blood that churned and bubbled in the rapid blender. Cloud Cover had closed her eyes as tight as she could once she realized what Gentle had done, but she had been a split second too late; the afterimage of bits of wing and leg tossed comically in the air was burned onto the inside of her eyelids.

Cloud Cover yelled out, an extended ‘no’ that rang over the gurgling sputters of Gentle’s remains. She had wanted Gentle to die, yes, and perhaps even at the hand of her own machine, but not yet. Not until she had issued the order to follow Contingency A. Not until her malevolent plans had been unveiled to the world, and she had been caught, and tried, and punished. Not until Cloud Cover had escaped.

The final bits of Gentle finished falling into the machine, and a brilliant glow filled the room as fresh spectra ejected from the Device, filling the large glass tubes and radiating shimmering shades of green and red. Cloud Cover did not open her eyes.

The machine finished its deed and there was a whine as gears slowed down until it idled, waiting patiently for its next meal, forever unsatiated. The Directors walked out slowly from the room as the last of the spectra drained into the lower floors, paying no heed to Cloud as she lay still on the floor. She kept her eyes closed, hoping that perhaps she was simply still in another one of her nightmares, and hoping that perhaps at any moment Luna would come along and blast the dream apart and comfort her, and hoping perhaps that at any moment she would wake up and be at home, in her bed, covered in chill sweat but very much alive and safe.

She heard the door open and shut as the Directors filed out. She heard it open and shut again with what she supposed was the two guards that had paralyzed her. She felt her forelegs get grabbed, noticed a strange sensation of television static where she was held, and tried to kick one of her free hindlegs. It jumped an inch, but she gave up hope. It was progress, but not enough.

Cloud Cover did not open her eyes as she felt herself slowly drug forward. The pegasi guards were walking, one on either side of her, hauling her up towards the Device. She did not consider herself religious despite her frequent praying as of late, but she called out with her mind, begging somepony, some god or goddess, anything, to show up and rescue her.

She thought of Corona, and admired his bravery in not only facing, but summoning death. She still feared the unknown that lay beyond.

She felt a tug on her forelegs, and then a second stronger tug, but did not open her eyes. The guards tugged hard one more time, aching her sockets, and she realized that she was no longer moving. There was a weight on her breast, circular and centred directly over her heart, pinning her down to the floor so hard that she could feel the cloud starting to bunch up by her withers.

Cloud Cover opened her eyes and immediately regretted it.

Standing between her hindlegs, with a solitary hoof stepping down hard on her ribcage, was a stallion. Or rather, it was most of a stallion. He had had a pastel blue coat and a deep navy blue mane, though it was hard to see the colours amongst the bone-deep gashes that lined his body. It was as if he was a zebra, except with lacerations instead of stripes. Ropes of intestines and glistening organs had slipped out of his carcass and were resting slimily on Cloud Cover’s barrel.

His face, however, was pristine. It was old, and tired green eyes locked on her own golden irises. There were scars, absolutely minor marks compared to the evisceration around them. Cloud Cover recognized the face, but she could not remember who it was or how she had ever known them. She looked up at her captors, curious to see how they felt about this new development.

The guards were frozen in fear, staring with horror and incredulous expressions. Cloud Cover attempted to pull her legs free, and though still weak and movement limited, they were easily released from the guard’s grip.

Cloud Cover heard a sudden rush of silence and dropped her head to look back at the Pegasus Device. The change in noise level in the room had obviously distracted the guards from the corpse standing on Cloud Cover the same as it had her, because she saw them turn their heads towards the machine as well.

All three of them immediately regretted it.

Surrounding them were a hundred, a thousand, a million foals, all in various forms of decay or damnation. They all leered at the guards, unblinking and otherwise unmoving. Cloud Cover, and the guards, turned back to Contrail, who was now joining the hoard of colts and fillies in scowling at them.

The guards shrieked and rocketed towards the door, colliding with it together and exploding the steel panel off its hinges. It clattered against the railing in the hallway beyond, coming to a rest long after the two ponies had vacated the area.

Cloud Cover had not watched them leave, however; she focused on Contrail, feeling just as scared as the guards must have. She envied them for their capacity to flee, and took no solace that her only recourse to this terror was apparently the act of wetting herself. She blinked, and all the foals were gone, but Contrail remained.

“...Who…?” She said, not breaking eye contact.

Contrail did not reply, instead lifting his hoof off of Cloud Cover’s chest and moving it forward to rest on the amulet around her neck. She glanced down and then back up at him.

“Wait, no, no no no, not yet, who are-” she said, getting just that far before the light blue hoof stomped down and shattered her amulet, and she was gone.

For a brief moment, Contrail stood in the centre of the Main Theatre Room, moving only his head as he surveyed his environment, and then he too was gone.

Chapter Eight

It was a strange feeling. She had felt the effects of unicorn magic before, but this wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t some tingly pressure or strange buzz of the air around an object like she remembered. It was as if it was her own magic, flavoured differently from all others. She felt like her flesh had been replaced with carbonated water.

When Contrail had activated her amulet, she experienced teleportation for the first time in her life. There was a certain ‘freeness’ about it all, being thrust out of the three physical dimensions she was so used to living in. It wasn’t as if she had been ripped out of the world, but more of a sliding, like when you are about to fall asleep after an incredibly tough day and feel as if your bed has become void. And just as if that was what she was experiencing, she jolted at the disorientation, and found herself back in the comfortable embrace of the x-y-z axes.

Cloud Cover had been far too distracted to remember how the amulet was supposed to be used. Right before the gemstone cracked and spilled its mystical contents into her heart, all her mental faculties had been taken up by trying to figure out who--and what--had saved her in the first place. She missed out on high school biology as well, but she was pretty certain a pony sliced up like an accordion would not be capable of standing up, nevermind holding her steady against the efforts of two stallions with a single hoof. Why had that… thing bothered to intervene in the first place? And what was with the sea of children that surrounded them?

No, there was far too much that she had been thinking of, so she did not consciously provide a destination for the magic when she slipped out of existence. But then--in what must have been a millionth of a second--when she found herself in a universe devoid of stars and depth, a small, lilac filly deep within the corridors of her psyche called out, wanting to go home.

And now she was home.

She landed--or appeared--on her bed, still on her back, still filthy and twitchy and shocked. She blinked, and found a familiar ceiling returning her gaze. The window blinds were open, yet it was dark in her apartment. She tested a leg and found she could move it fairly normally, though it was still weak. She repeated it for the other three, and then risked rolling over on to her side to check the alarm clock.

It was five-thirty in the morning. In about half an hour, Celestia’s burden would lift past the edge of the Meganimbus, basking the city in its majestic light. Cloud Cover squinted. The sun had not yet risen above Cloudsdale, but it would have crossed the true horizon by now and started to brighten the sky. Yet, her room was just as dark as midnight.

She rolled out of her bed, silently hoping that she had simply had one hell of a nightmare, while knowing otherwise. She pulled Gentle’s ID tag and the steel necklace that remained from the amulet off her neck, set them on her dresser, and felt them with a hoof.

Solid. Real.

She walked forward down the hall, legs shaking yet functional now, and slipped into her bathroom to inspect herself in the mirror. If she hadn’t felt so awful, she would have laughed at just how terrible she looked. She could hardly recognize herself with her mane matted and flat, her coat glistening with sweat and oil, her eyes red and sunken into blackened sockets. A particular darkness on her coat that did not reflect in the bathroom light caught her eye, and she reared up onto her hindlegs, and then retched.

Her entire belly, from her stomach to her groin, was stained with dried, blackened blood. She grimaced and quickly patted herself down, trying to find any sort of gash or misteleported chunk, and realized it had not come from her. She dropped from the air onto her flank and held her head in her hooves.

They would notice she was missing soon. The guards would calm down or be found and the Corporation would know she hadn’t died yet, and they would be coming for her. For sure they would check her home, likely before anyplace else. She knew she had very little time to figure out a plan and leave, and that it must be her first priority to do so.

Instead, she stood up and turned the shower handle to the hottest it would go, dropped the CWC saddlebag onto the floor, and sat down in the quickly-heating rain.

Cloud Cover made no noise and no movement, simply letting the steaming water drench her fully, cutting through the buildup of grease on her body. She let the heat singe her skin, let it radiate deep within her, let it warm her to her bones.

After ten minutes, she stood up and grabbed her shampoo and started lathering it into her short mane, working it down to her scalp, pressing harder than she needed to with her hooves. She could feel the dirt start to lift off of her, and continued massaging the shampoo for far longer than was necessary, rhythmically rubbing her head and neck with it. After another ten minutes, she dropped her hooves and leaned forward into the scalding shower and rinsed.

Her skin burned again, but as the ick was carried away from her with the shampoo, she felt a weight far greater than the dirt that had been in her mane lift away. She ran her hooves through her hair once, getting every last ounce of the now-gray shampoo out, before sitting back out of the spray of water.

She grabbed her bottle of oat-infused coat wash next and squirted almost half the container into her hoof. She smashed the glob of soap against her chest and started her same methodical massaging movements as before, then reached lower down her body after a full minute of scrubbing, and repeated this ritual until she was standing, holding herself up by the shower curtain bar, rubbing one rear hoof on the other hindleg. Still she did not speak, or make any noise at all, or even really blink. Her face was neutral, giving only a thousand-yard stare off into the small bathroom fan as she worked.

With her whole body sudsy and bubbly, she dropped back to all fours and moved again into the water, turning her dead eyes towards the drain. She watched as the water turned white with foam, and then grey, and then red, and then black. She turned around, leaning against the surround to let the water get at her undercarriage, looking away from the seemingly endless amount of blood as it slowly drained from her fur.

It was only when the water started to change from radioactive to merely hot that she finally looked back and inspected herself fully. Her coat shone beautifully, with the dusty-lilac colour almost glowing in its wet splendor. She turned the rapidly-cooling shower off and stood still while the excess moisture in her fur started to drain.

She listened to herself drip, and did nothing else.

When the tiny ‘plink’s of water on the shower floor slowed enough to her satisfaction, she bent down, spread her wings, and shook, flinging even more water against the shower. She flicked her feathers rapidly, almost subconsciously, fluffing them out and stretching the muscles.

Finally, she stepped out of the shower, towelled off her mane, and checked herself in the mirror.

She looked much more now like she remembered herself normally looking like, but at the same time she didn’t seem to recognize the eyes staring back at her from the mirror. She tried on a smile, and took it off in disgust.

“Right,” she said, breaking the silence, “I suppose I should go.” She wasn’t sure who she was speaking to, or if she was simply trying to convince herself. She hadn’t wanted to leave her world behind when the guards were dragging her to the Pegasus Device. She didn’t want to leave her world behind now, either. She knew though that she had to choose between the two options, and the one which didn’t involve her body being finely diced was by far the more tempting choice.

Listening to the silence of her apartment one more time, she stepped out of the bathroom and looked around, paranoid.

There was no pony there, and she sighed happily.

Cloud Cover grabbed a few things; her second-favorite notepad and pencil, every bit of non-perishable or long-lasting food she could get to fit, and an old hoodie from Cloudsdale at Seven, and tucked them all into the stolen saddlebag alongside the Reckoning files. She headed for the door and then stopped, stepped quickly into the bathroom, and came out with her favorite brush; a gift from Pop Screen from when she first went on camera. She tucked this into the bag as well and made for the door again before she froze in place.

She looked back to the window, and saw it was still dark outside.

She looked to the alarm clock, and found it was now six-thirty.

Cloudsdale did not get storms, nor dim foggy days.

Where is the sun?

She raced outside now, not even bothering to close her door behind her. She skidded down the hallway to the apartment exit and slammed it open, tumbling outside. She made ten steps out into the plaza outside her home and suddenly lost all the recently-regained control in her legs. She dropped to her haunches and looked slackjaw out to the west, as Gentle’s words rang softly through the back of her mind.

...So I could break you.

Her eye twitched ever so slightly.

Off in the distance, straight west from Cloud Cover, past the edge of the Meganimbus, was a strange shimmering rainbow, like an oil slick in the air. Behind it, massive, tumultuous thunderclouds--larger than the Meganimbus--reached halfway from the troposphere to the ground. They battered this strange pearlescent shimmer, with lightning clearly striking it a dozen times a minute for as far as Cloud Cover could see from her vantage point.

...So I could break you.

Her legs, though seated, started to shake.

She followed the gleaming wall southwards and caught the peculiar sight of a solitary cloud with an industrial tower upon it. She recognized it as one of the many Auxiliary Factories that had been shipped off to every corner of the world while she had grown up. At its top, a ray of rotating rainbow beamed up, over her, and behind. She twisted around slowly as her face followed the beam to its destination; the peak of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation.

….So I could break you.

Tears started to form in her eyes.

The rainbow did not stop there, however. The dark shadow of the Rainbow Factory was made even more noticeable in the skyline by the connection of 19 other beams, and where they all met at the roof was so bright it scarred Cloud Cover’s retina when she looked at it directly. From there, a massive pillar of multiplicitous colours reached to the sky right above, where it collided with some arbitrary atmospheric border and spread out around it, turning the entire sky into that same oil-slick sheen, all the way to the mirage-like barriers so many miles away.

...So I could break you.

Her mind raced. Gentle had told the truth. She was too late. She didn’t save anyone. The world was being destroyed. There was no one to stop it. There was no way to stop it. She had been a pawn all along. All her friends and contacts from other towns, other cities, other countries, would be consumed by the Reckoning. Cloudsdale was all that remained of the world, and she had been exiled.

As the sun finally broke above the sieging storms, so too did Cloud Cover.

It was night now, and Stormy Night was enjoying the strange peacefulness of the Safe Zone. Perfectly mild, early autumn weather, he thought as he paced in the darkness, as it should be.

He ached slightly less now. It had been about twenty-four hours since he had blacked out, broken but alive, on the dry side of the wall. Pegasi medical technology was--like most other forms of Pegasi technology--very advanced, but it was the two Unicorns who had raced from the town to his side that had done the most work in patching him up. They were not the town’s best healers; that distinction had gone, unfortunately, to one who also knew a flight spell. He breathed deeply, enjoying the scent of the still-damp grass beneath his hooves, and enjoyed the fact that he could breath too.

The medics of the Thirteenth Primary had confirmed that his chest and back muscles were mended, and the Unicorns had been promised extra rations for a month for their efforts. Stormy Night smiled, thinking of his colonel. Those Unicorns had broken past the demarcation line set up and ran right next to the equipment keeping the air wall online. Two guards from a different squadron had tried to stop them, but when they saw the unicorn’s magic working on the lump of recoiled muscle that had been his left pectoral, let them be.

Had it been any other Primary, their commander would have thanked them and then had them incinerated for insubordination. But not Colonel Sundown. He had always been fine with his squadrons breaking the rules, disobeying the orders, so long as they ended up being right.

I wonder who determines what ‘right’ is, though, he mused, turning the corner of the fence he had been patrolling.

He found that the smallest, tiniest part of him was upset that he had been healed and sent back to work so soon. Sure, he couldn’t fly right now, especially not with his wings wrapped tightly in binding gauze, but he wasn’t really in any pain. A week of physiotherapy and they would be strong enough for him to get back to--

--To what? There wasn’t really a need for all the squadrons of all the Primaries to maintain the Safe Zone’s weather. Tartarus, Stormy thought, Cloudsdale already had its own dispatch of weather ponies for this entire area. He did remember some talk of the Primaries being absorbed into the Department of Lightning Production, though what Director Sapphire needed them for he had no idea. There must have been some sort of plan. It wasn’t in the Corporation’s modus operandi to not have a plan for any and every possible outcome. Whatever it was, he knew somewhere it was in writing.

He continued on walking, returning to his earlier musing about the healing. He had temporarily lost his ability to fly, but by all other accounts he was strong and healthy. Colonel Sundown, ever the pragmatist, had found him capable of working, but tried to offset Stormy’s disappointment by promising him some shiny medal and a lovely ceremony with Executive Director Foresight.

There were a lot of things that had happened in a very short amount of time, but that was the one that confused Stormy Night the most. Where was Director Gentle? Now, by far, did not seem the time for a management change. But he was a mechanic and they were the leaders, and he did not question it beyond confirming he had heard right. There must have been a reason, it must have been planned, and she must have known of it. He looked up at the rainbow ray where it met the sky, knowing that at its base was Headquarters, and within it were all the answers.

All would be explained tomorrow, he was told. Currently the colonels were all in a meeting, preparing the debrief for all the workers and the bulletin for all the citizens. Stormy smiled at the orderliness of Pegasi. In the course of thirty-six hours, the entire planet had completely changed, yet he had not heard of a single incident in the City proper. They just accepted that what was done must have been done. Good little Pegasi, he thought, chuckling aloud. It hadn’t taken much to train him to take orders. Maybe it’s a genetic thing?

He reached the gate of the fence and unlocked the latch, stepping in through the only portal past stakes and barbed wire. An electrified barrier would be installed soon, but for now the old fashioned defensive measures would have to do. He cocked his head to his left and turned on the flashlight attached to his vest.

Yes, he had been broken, and only partly fixed, but even a broken Pegasus can patrol the stockpiles, Sundown had figured. It was busy-work; an unneeded public-relations sort of job for him to be able to say that not only had he saved everyone’s lives, but he had been right back to work the next day, and all without actually overextending himself or contributing. He could heal, and no pony would be upset that he got to relax in a stiff hospital bed.

And I still don’t need to do anything except work the night shift. He smiled.

In the darkness, behind a long and tarped bundle of all the non-perishable foods they had looted, there was a scuffle, and Stormy Night internally swore.

Well, maybe I have to do something. I hope this is a pigeon or something.

He walked quietly now, trying his best to not make any noise with his hooves on the packed farmland the depot had been set upon. He rounded the corner casually, figuring none of the earth ponies or unicorns could have gotten past the barriers, crude as they may be. They had no reason to, either. The Corporation had provided generous rations for the night to the town, easing them into the idea of limited food intake. Nothing personal had been taken from any of the houses, save for a few spell books with the banned flight and cloudwalk instructions, anyways.

He stopped, seeing in the dark, in the beam of his weak flashlight, the silhouette of a cloaked pony with their head tucked under the tarp, with some loose satchels of oats by its hooves.

“Halt!” He called, and then tapped his radio. He wouldn’t be able to chase after them if they fled, but so long as he kept his light on them, other guards on the night shift could grab them. “Patrol to Command,” he started.

The pony jumped back, and wings spread out from its back in shock. Their hood fell back, revealing lilac fur and a cool teal mane.

A Pegasus…? Stormy Night tilted his head and his left eye twitched once in confusion. Overtop the hooded cloak was also an old Corporation Saddlebag. What was a pegasus from the city, an old employee perhaps, doing all the way out here, rummaging through the stockpiles? It wasn’t like access to food had changed in the City.

“Command to Patrol, something wrong?”

“Please, no, no no no, for the love of Luna, I’m sorry, I’ll leave, don’t tell them,” the mare whispered desperately, grovelling and inching backwards from Stormy.

“...No Command, just looking for a time update.”

The mare stared at him incredulously, but he whispered back at her sharply, “Don’t you dare move.”

“Quarter past midnight, Patrol. Three hours left on your shift. And get a watch.”

“Yes Command,” he replied, and then tapped the radio off. “Come here, right now.” He glared at the Pegasus in front of him. What in Luna’s name was she doing, stealing Corporation goods?

The mare looked around cautiously before standing up to a slight cower and approaching Stormy Night. She sat down where he had pointed, and stared at the ground. Despite the layers she had on, she was shaking, and Stormy Night glanced over his back before placing a forehoof on her shoulder. She jumped, but then settled, and after a minute, the shaking stopped.

“Who are you?” He spoke less forcefully now. Something felt entirely wrong about this whole exchange, and from his best guess the mare needed compassion more than anything. Addressing her transgression could wait another minute.

Cloud Cover sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes, and then looked up to meet Stormy Night’s own. Stormy was shocked; her eyes were bloodshot and bruised, and her expression was one of grief and devastation.

“What happened to you?” he asked, even softer.

New tears spilled from her eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak only for the noises to catch in her throat, and she quietly wept instead. Stormy Night let her cry for a minute, before tapping his hoof on her shoulder.

“Listen, I need you to answer me, or I need to report this, because I can’t stand here all night, and I can’t let you go until I know what’s going on.”

“I couldn’t save them.”

What? Stormy thought. “Save who?” he said.

“Everyone. I tried, tried to find out about… what Gentle was doing… and why, and… I tried to help, and I failed, and now they’re all dead.”

Stormy didn’t need to know who she was talking about. He glanced over his shoulder at the gleaming rainbow, clearly visible against the dark of night now. Beyond it, the intensity of the storm had subsided with the cooling night, but that meant nothing. In a minute it could change to hellfire. He looked back at the mare.

“I’ve lost some friends too,” he said sincerely. “Why don’t you come with me, I’ll get you some hot tea, the Corporation has some great therapists-”

“NO!” The interjection spooked him backwards, and Cloud Cover shook her head violently. “No. They hate me. I need to leave, I need to… I can’t let her be right.” She raised her head and locked eyes with the stallion, and beyond all the fear and grief Stormy Night could see a rigid determination. He blinked.

“Hey, haven’t I seen you on T.V?”

“I can’t let her be right. I can’t have been too late. I have to save them. There must be… there must be some ponies still out there. I have to check.”

“Out, what, out there?” Stormy Night gestured to the rainfall beyond the wind generators. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll die in a day, at most. It can’t be survived.”

“Then I’ll die knowing I tried to help.” She said this, and Stormy Night could not be sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. Regardless of the intended target, though, it had worked.

He looked up, behind her, to the blackness in the sky that was Cloudsdale. And then he returned his gaze to Cloud Cover. He had had many moral fights over the last few days, and each time he had looked to his home to reassure himself that what he did was right. He abandoned his old friends and left them for dead for the Flock. He rounded up his fellow ponies and helped force them into slavery for the Flock. And now, he was supposed to report this crazed mare for reconditioning for the Flock.

But what is the Flock if not for its ponies? It’s not some coliseum in the sky, not some expanse of clouds that hung above a prairie, never moving. It was the Pegasi who lived within it.

He thought of what he had been a part of, and what he was going to continue to be a part of. He was home, now, but what is home if there is nowhere else? And why was it always for the Flock? Were they not all Equine creatures?

He stared into her gold eyes still. The resolute pony, hidden somewhere behind the sobs, was becoming more apparent.

“...Two miles to the north, there is a metal tube cocked out of the ground about two hundred metres back from the wall. It’s an access tunnel to some chaos generators, and will get you past the wall without you being sandblasted to death.” Why am I telling her this? Who is this mare? “Take no more than you can carry in your saddle bag, and never stop for too long.” She’s just going to die of exposure in a couple hours. “If I see you again, I will report you immediately. Go.”

Cloud Cover nodded, her muzzle stiffening and brows firming at Stormy Night’s orders. She quickly grabbed the few bags of oats she had left on the floor, and then in the darkness of night took off noiselessly. Stormy Night watched her reach the air walls and then dive low to the ground, bobbing and weaving over various massive cables and parts. With her dark cloak, and in the limited light, he quickly lost sight of her.

He left the compound and double checked the lock, continuing on his patrol. His mind was not with him, wondering instead only about what had happened. His heart was pounding hard in his chest, a constant reminder that he had gone against training and orders and expectations. He looked up again to Cloudsdale, and then back down again. It didn’t quite feel like home.

It could be described as nothing short of a miracle how the structure had survived.

Picked up by a tornado, flung a hundred miles from its foundation through falling bricks of ice and spiderwebs of lightning strikes, only to be placed down somewhat gently--if upside down--in the middle of a small clearing in the woods.

It wasn’t necessarily clear if the gap in the trees had existed before the house had been placed there, or if it was just one more symptom of the hurricanes that had ripped through the valley over the past two weeks, but regardless, there it rested, mostly intact save for a small amount of missing straw roof and some window panes.

Cloud Cover smiled when she reached the edge of the forest and spotted the house. The shade of the canopy had helped protect her somewhat from the intense sun that beat down relentlessly over her, and the building would provide adequate safety from the burning rays.

She wasn’t sure if she disliked the hot days less than the cold ones, but she always appreciated a dry road instead of a muddy slog, and so had either resigned to or accepted the sweltering heat as her new level of ‘alright’ weather. It didn’t matter so much, anyways; come nightfall, the dip in temperature would stir up some new form of hell for her to somehow navigate through to her next checkpoint. She didn’t worry about where she was going though, only how she would get there; so far, her guide had been correct every time.

She whispered a soft thank you to the sky, as she had done each time the location in her dreams had turned out to be real. An abandoned caravan near the gorge. A tucked-away cave in the foothills. A fox den, large enough to crawl into for the night. An upside down house, hidden in the trees.

She risked a glance skyward to check for any possible clouds or dust storms that might lessen the sun’s energy, but knew before she had checked that there wouldn’t be any. She lifted her hood over her ears and aimed at the house, and then flew as fast as she could.

It felt like stepping into an oven, and the exertion of beating her wings in the stifling heat only made things worse. It wasn’t far, though, and she dived and slid under the straw roof, and then climbed through the broken part to the still-hot but much more livable shade within.

Her first night after leaving Cloudsdale had been the worst night. She had left in a rainstorm, which quickly became a snowstorm, which then became a blizzard. Going was slow as she had tucked her wings into her cloak to keep them from leaking body heat. She had picked the general direction of the nearest town she could remember that wasn’t in the ‘Safe Zone’, but in the white-out that fast came upon her she knew she was likely headed nowhere near it. When the snow finally settled and the clouds finally parted, and with nothing but moonlight to guide her way through an ocean of ice, she realized she could go no further. She was quite proud of how she had survived that sub-zero night, digging a tunnel into a packed snow drift, deep enough that the air could not steal away her body heat, and small enough it would reflect said warmth. As comfortable as she could be, and as exhausted as she was, she closed her eyes and hoped it would not be for the last time.

And she dreamed.

She did not dream her usual nightmare of fleeing through twisting corridors of metal and rust, but of a quiet, hilled field at night, with a full moon lighting all the posies and daisies and grass in wonderful silver shades. Within that field a village shimmered into existence, and she was picked up gently and brought forward through the village to a single house. She was placed down, and the door was opened, and she walked forward to find a trapdoor open in the centre of the room. She looked down the trapdoor, and found there was another moon within, and then woke.

Most nights of Cloud Cover’s life, her dreams did not stay with her. She hardly even remembered the nightmares any more, knowing she had dreamt them only because she woke up with damp fur and aching heart. And so, it had surprised her when she remembered this one particularly well--so well, in fact, that she knew exactly where the village was, and where the house would be.

She crawled out of her hole and found the world to be just as uniformly caked in snow as it was when she had slept. There was a cloudless sky that seemed to have let all the warmth from the world escape into space overnight, but the sun had risen and its heat on Cloud Cover’s face was enough for her to keep hope. In the distance, she could see thick, anvil-shaped clouds forming, but they were behind her, away from where she needed to go.

Wasting no time, she had left, flying over depths of snow she would have drowned in, crawling under fallen trees, always moving in a straight line no matter what she had to do to keep it that way. She feared if she turned for even a moment, the surety of her oneiric directions would leave her and she would be lost again, and so even if she had to take her wings out of her cloak to flutter above an outcrop of rocks, she had done so.

And when the sun had set and the moon had started to rise, and the rain had almost caught up with her, she found herself at the edge of a town she had never seen before yet recognized all the same. She did not look for survivors; she knew there was none. She did not look to see how they died or vanished; she would join them if she did. She simply ran down the roads until she stopped in front of the house she had seen last night. Within it, there was the trapdoor; and within that, shelter.

She dropped down and did not find a moon as she had in her dream, but found instead jars of applesauce, bags of expensive oats, matches, candles, and a small hearth with dry tinder already set up within. She lit the matches and started the fire, and once she was satisfied the smoke was indeed being taken up and out by the chimney, she ate some of her prize and swapped out her cheap goods for the luxury brand ones.

She slept well that night by the fire, grateful for the gift and towards whomever had shown it to her. She did not question why, nor who had bestowed it upon her; she was too cold and tired. Curiosity could come tomorrow.

And she had dreamed.

Every night, a new location. Not always as comfortable or supportive as the last, not always as easily accessible or clearly found, but always shelter from whatever calamity the night’s cooling air had brought. She had wondered for the first week if she was being directed anywhere in particular, or just to whatever place would be safe for the night, but by the eighth night she needed wonder no more.

There, just before the end of the earth on the first night of her second week, peeking up over some foothills, was the silhouette of Mount Canterlot. It was not quite right, with the castle’s shape clearly missing from the western face, but it was immediately recognizable all the same. With every dream, and every day’s journey, Cloud Cover found it grew larger and more distinct.

She had an idea as to who was summoning her there, but still did not know why. So far, she had found no other living pony. Plenty of frozen corpses, or charred skeletons, or wet and rotting carcasses, but nothing warm, dry, and breathing. Perhaps her saviour was doing the same for others as it was for her; bringing those who lived to a place of more permanent safety, to protect them, to comfort them, to at least give them hope.

She checked the food stores here and found nothing worth replacing her current inventory with, but at the back of the house, on top of an unfortunate and unnamed jumble of limbs, there was a broken-open cupboard with dozens of blankets and towels. Cloud Cover glanced out one of the less-shattered windows and saw snowflakes starting to descend, their flighty dances concealing the menace they hinted at; when they landed on the ground which just thirty minutes ago had scorched her hooves, they did not melt.

Cloud Cover apologized to the former owner before taking all the blankets to a different room, one with the fewest windows. She wrapped herself in them and then settled down, saying a small prayer to the night, and then gently dozing off as hoarfrost crept up the outside of the building.

And with hope, and a grin, she dreamed.

Chapter Two

“Hey, hey, hey! Come on buddy, watch your flockin’ step!” The deep voice boomed, stressing ‘buddy’ like buh-dee. Stormy Night was shouting too, but his voice had been drowned out by the burly stallion next to him.

“Oh, uh, sorry!” A smaller stallion pleaded, flitting out of the way. “I just had to lock the converters in place so I was-”

“Nobody cares, featherbrain. Out of the way, this is heavy!”

Stormy Night and his coworker glared at the other worker until he had moved out of the way, then continued to lug the huge contraption in their hooves towards the wall. They set it down as gently as one can set a five-hundred pound mass of machinery, and then he got to work pulling straps out of the cloud wall and ratcheting them down to the floor, securing the device. “That ain’t going nowhere,” he said proudly.

His deep-voiced coworker had gone off somewhere else, and Stormy flew over to the checklist on a nearby desk. He muttered as he read each one in line, following each task with a soft “check”. He got to the last item, and then nodded and set the clipboard down. “Computers stowed and desks locked. Nice.”

A mare’s voice crackled through his communicator. “Command to Squadron Five, sitrep.”

He tapped his radio with his chin and responded curtly. “Squadron Five to Command, final task in progress. ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Colonel says make it ten.”

“Understood.” He chuckled after turning his radio off. He would do it in five, but had to play these games with his crew. Too loose with your replies, and you’d find yourself on smog-clearing duty. Too rigid, and no pony would want to play with you. Stormy Night busied himself, powering off and unplugging loose computer peripherals before stowing them away in pre-formed cloud compartments. Once everything was safely in its home, he closed the cupboards and desk drawers, secured each one with a strip of grey sticky tape, and shook it hard for a minute to make sure nothing was loose. Satisfied, he tapped his radio again.

“Squadron Five to Command. All tasks completed. Requesting further directions.”

“Understood Squadron Five. Stand by.” There was a pause and Stormy Night waited expectantly, looking around the warehouse.

He was in one of the CWC Auxiliary Factories; specifically the headquarters for Trotland activities. The warehouse he was in opened to the sky outside, and was normally filled to the brim with various utilities used by the Corporation for weather manipulation. He looked at the Cloud Condensers, large boiler-like things with rows of recursively looping pipes, now bolted down in series on the floor. A vat of liquid thunder towered over them, with more safety straps and cushions around it than Stormy had ever seen. In the centre of the room was a series of three tarped, mastaba shaped devices, with a cylindrical bulge off to the side of each. These were the Chaos Conversion Generators, and their presence here reminded him of what was to come.

He stopped for a moment and thought about how quickly life had changed for him. Just over an hour or so ago, he was laying in bed, his next shift still a good four hours off from starting, before every internal alarm in the Auxiliary went off at once. The cacophony had ended shortly after every pegasus in the building was roused, but he could swear it was still repeating itself in the back of his mind.

“Contingency B is now in effect. Clear. Clear. Clear. Contingency B is now in effect. Clear. Clear. Clear…” it had gone, over and over, with shrieking whistles and strobing lights to highlight the importance. He had heard it before, plenty of times, in practices and drills, but he never really believed it would occur during his lifetime. The Reckoning was serious, he knew- but they had a hundred years to deal with it, didn’t they?

Apparently not, he thought, floating slowly around his workplace while he waited for instructions. He ducked through an opening in the floor above him, double checking the other squadrons’ work for any clear mistakes. He felt strange. He would be leaving the communities he had gotten used to, the few friends on the ground that he had made during his shore leave, the special cuisine he had come to love. He ran a hoof gently across the wall while he wandered, grateful at least that he didn’t need to leave his home. No, that would be coming with them. Or rather, they with it. His radio squeaked, and he stopped.

“Squadron Five leader, we have a report from Squadron Two that one of the relocation engines did not pass pre-inspection. Are you able to assist?”

Stormy Night looked back at his flank and the wrench and ruler displayed proudly on his side. “On my way, Control,” he said, before flipping in the air and diving through the cloud floor. He made his way down to the first floor of the factory and sailed out through the open bay door before circling around to the bottom of the cloud the whole facility rested on. There were three cylindrical objects here, dwarfing the pegasus with their massive size. He flew over and met up with the squadron leader who was in the middle of barking orders at various ponies.

“Which one, and what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Speak up, inky,” The leader yelled to Stormy Night, referencing the mechanic’s charcoal hide. They were under the building, after all, and a rush of wind and the roar of the two functional engines had eliminated every trace of Stormy’s quiet voice.

“Which engine, sir!” he shouted back, “And what step of inspection failed?”

The mare pointed at the engine affixed at the four o’clock position above them. “No ignition, obviously. We think it’s the spark plugs, but it’s only a guess.”

Stormy nodded and grabbed a tool bag from one of the other squadron’s ponies before heading to the engine in question. The massive barrel was affixed to a circular base coming out of the bottom of the factory, which could pivot and spin the engine for steering. The cool grey metal shone in their work-lights, and he slid a hoof along the steel with the same longing he had with the factory walls above. These had been his babies, his main responsibility after basic weather duties, maintaining the relocation engines for this very moment. He opened up a large panel and double checked all of the settings. Satisfied, he slid the choke down and, pressing his ear to the cylinder, held in a large red button and listened.

Tic tic tic tic tic came the reply, and he nodded. There was a fuel delivery failure. He slid the choke back up and closed the panel, and then clambered up the engine to where it met the mount it was affixed to. Squeezing in, he popped a lock on another panel and shoved it back. Before him was a mess of wires and tubes, carefully guided around and away from a huge driveshaft. He dug through the cables and found a large, clear hose. It was stained slightly yellow, and he moved along towards the exhaust of the engine while carefully examining the hose inch by inch. When the extent of his reach ran out, he set everything back carefully and replaced the panel, and then slid open the next one. He pulled the hose out again and noted it was free of discolouration. He went backwards now, tracing it towards the fuel tank, when he finally pulled a section out that had a jagged tear.

“Flockin’ pigeons,” he sighed. He reached into the bag and pulled out a set of shears. Moving quickly he cut out the chewed portion of vinyl and pressed the two new ends together. Doing his best to hold the ends together with one hoof, he pulled out a roll of bright yellow tape and then wrapped the ends together. He tore the strip off the roll, smiled once at his work, and then closed the engine up and slid down into the air.

“Try her again, sir,” he shouted at the waiting pegasi around him. One of them, a stallion with a cartoon explosion on his flank, moved forward and performed the same actions at the ignition as Stormy Night had.

There was relative silence for a moment, but then a deep ‘whoom’pushed all the floating ponies back an inch and a flow of yellow--and then blue--plasma blasted out of the exhaust. It dimmed down and light whoops could be heard from the pegasi.

The voice of the squadron leader who had shouted at him came over his radio. “Command, this is Squadron Two. We have all three engines idling now. Requesting further instructions.”

“Understood Squadron Two,” Command responded. “Stand by.”

Stormy Night hovered in the dimming light of the setting sun. He looked to the east and saw, just past the horizon from his high perspective, thunderheads beginning to form. He frowned, and a pang of guilt twisted his stomach. He shook his head and turned to the west, admiring the sunset.

“Squadrons One through Six, all preparations have been completed. Prepare for departure sequence at twenty-hundred hours. Squadrons One and Two, first shift is on leads. Squadrons Three and Four, first shift on side patrol, and Squadrons Five and Six, first shift on rudder. Shift change at oh-two-hundred hours.”

All six squadron leaders squawked their acknowledgements in order, and Stormy Night headed up to the east side of the factory’s foundation, sighing. Six hours of pushing this brick, he thought. And then we get to pull it. Great. He smiled though, despite his complaints. He had been away from Cloudsdale for ten years now, and longed to see his home again. Letters to his parents had never been enough, and though there was a lot of work before him, seeing them again would be worth it all.

He settled in between the deep voiced stallion and the smaller one that had got in their way earlier, resting his forehooves on the edge of the cloud with the others. There was a tense silence in the air now, the roar of the engines--designed to make moving the massive factory possible in the first place--blocked from their senses by the building between them. They waited, hovering in place, for the order to come through.

As Stormy Night waited, he glanced down, far down below him, to the tilled fields and small houses now glowing in the night. He could see--just barely--some of the villagers had come out and were watching the swarm of pegasi as they had buzzed around their hive.

“Squadrons of the Thirteenth Primary, move out!” It was a stallion’s voice coming through the radio now, a wolfish baritone that always gave Stormy Night a smile when he heard it. It was the commander of their regiment, Colonel Sundown, and his voice somehow matched exactly what Stormy Night knew he looked like. There was something about the Colonel, and his ‘old-school cool’ style that Stormy had always appreciated. On his order, he kicked off, pressing the cloud with his squad mates, and slowly it began to move to the west.

Stormy Night looked to the large stallion next to him, and tapped him with a hindleg to catch his attention. “You think we should like, at least let them know?” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the village below.

The stallion looked down and then back at Stormy, shaking his head. “It’s better for all a’ us if they’re confused,” the deep reply came. “Might mess us up if they’re angry.”

Stormy Night nodded softly, not sure if he believed it, but continued beating his wings and pressing their load away. There wasn’t much they could do to help the earth and unicorn ponies below anyways, he figured. He turned his eyes away from the village and stared ahead, thinking of Cloudsdale.

Farmer Shetland stood in the middle of his field, rubbing his tam o’shanter on his chest as the last rays of sun disappeared behind the hills to the west. His neck was craned up to where the Weather Factory had been for the last ten years, and watched as scores of pegasi, in various rigid formations, started to move their base. His right ear twitched, and he frowned.

The Auxiliary Factory had only been around their area of Trotland for about a decade. He remembered clearly the struggles of farming in rural isolation; prone to the whims of Nature for most days--save for the rare special occasion where a contingency of the weather ponies from Edinbreigh would come out to ensure celebrations were held in ideal conditions. And then, the Cloudsdale company had come over from far-away Equestria, promising hoof-crafted weather, twenty-four seven, all on a rigid schedule, for a modest trade of bits and food for their employees. It was a big occasion for him and his farm. His little village had been selected to supply the Corporation’s workers, and they would base themselves near his land.

Perfect growing conditions, for a tithe. He argued against it back when he was younger, but couldn’t disagree that it had helped his family and neighbours prosper. Sure, they had to give away a lot of their profit and crops, but they were able to grow and sell so much more with the ideal weather that they had still gained wealth. And yet, the pegasi seemed to be pulling away now with nary a notice. He snorted, and pawed at the ground in much the same way his Pappy had. Did some blasted mail-pony from the city forget to deliver a notice? Was there some issue with the payment this month? He did his dues, and now they were abandoning theirs.

Or perhaps, the idea creeped through his mind, perhaps something is terribly wrong. It had been ten years since Nature was given--mostly--free reign over this land. If the weather manipulators were to just up and quit…

A tug on his fetlocks broke his train of thought, and he looked down to see who it was. It was his youngest child, a yearling named Celtic. Celtic had never been alive to see this world without the Factory hanging silently in the air, a thousand metres above them, ever present.

“Pappy?” The colt said, his voice still a weak squeak. “Where’n they taken the fact’ry? How’re we gonna keep the early snow from taking our crops next month?”

Shetland stared into his child’s eyes, hoping to alicorns above that his own eyes didn’t show the concern he was feeling. He blinked, and forced a smile. The wrinkled eyes comforted the colt, and Celtic looked away from his father and up to the factory.

“Well, m’boy, kin’t says I know wheres it’s goin’ ta. But dontcha worry none, boy. We plowed these fields in rain afore and’ll do it again.” Shetland looked up at the distant pegasi, now black specks no larger than the stars behind them. “And we’ll getta keep all the bits we earn, too. Off ta bed wicha, now. We kin figure things out in th’ morn.”

Celtic nodded happily and pranced back to their farm house, relieved. But Shetland didn’t share his son’s relief. A gust of wind, far too cold for the early autumn evening, rustled his fetlocks. He stared unblinkingly at the weather factory until it finally dimmed from sight, standing alone in his field save for the scraping sound of dead leaves on dry dirt.

Behind him, to the east, thunder rumbled.

Luna meandered through the dark halls of Canterlot Castle, her mind elsewhere. Each hoofstep echoed off the marble floor, calling out and receiving its own, lonely reply. The sun had just set, and the tumultuous black clouds that had been rolling towards the mountain all day had finally arrived. A hailstorm, the weather ponies had reported, would need to occur to set some other regions to the north back on track. It was not the type of night that Luna enjoyed, but she had her duty, and didn’t complain. Elsewhere, her sister slept solidly, in a dreamless sleep after a long day of paperwork, diplomacy, and crisis management. It was a gift from Luna to Celestia, a comfortable rest; a sleep so deep she would be free from the disruption of thunder and hail, set to a timer so she would wake only as early as she absolutely needed to.

A soft rumble met Luna’s ears, but she didn’t hear it. She was away; her thoughts open to the world around her, though focused mainly on the castle village on the mountain plateau. Dark and stormy nights brought dark and stormy dreams, and she was slowly working through a dreamscape of scared fillies and colts, reassuring each that her moon still shone behind the clouds, and her sister’s sun would be there to light the morning.

Her muzzle twitched, and her consciousness sharpened over a particular child; a unicorn trapped by barking dogs of shadow. She hastened towards this mind and entered it as the first spatterings of rain fell on the balcony nearest her.

Manifesting her form, she came down to the colt and found him cowering. Eight hounds of void growled around him, their barks coinciding with crashes of thunder.

“Be not afraid,” she announced her presence. “Thunder is naught but noise, and cannot harm you.” She reared, and brought her hooves down on the creature in front of the colt, and it vanished into nothing. She whipped around then, blasting the remaining dogs with bolts of moonlight, and they too puffed away as if they had never been. Luna reached down towards the colt, offering a hoof up.

“P-p-princess Luna?” he asked, still trembling. “Is it really you?”

“Perhaps,” she replied, hiding a sly smirk. “Or perhaps it is simply the courage you have within you. Rest now, little one. Tomorrow will be bright and warm.”

The world around her wavered and twisted before breaking down, and Luna found herself fully in the castle. The storm was louder now, and she felt as though there were a circle of her own beasts shouting at her from outside. Shaking her head from the last vestiges of half-sleep, she noticed she was near the Throne Room, and entered it to peak outside one of the alcoves.

The storm was directly over the castle now, and the racing wind howled through the room like a dying hare. She made it to the balcony and stepped back in concern. The hail was coming down hard, like grapeshot from above. The large spheres of ice were bombarding the battlements so hard that the marble was chipping. Luna creased her brows. The forecast we were given said this would be routine, she thought. I will have Sister look into this tomorrow. Inadequate reports could hurt somepony.

She walked slowly through the room and drew the heavy curtains over the windows, quieting the clamor outside. Satisfied with the peace and quiet, she made her way to her throne and dropped to her haunches, resting regally. She surveyed the empty room, lit only now by her scintillating mane, and rested her eyes.

Her mind drifted again, and found that many more foals were seized by nightmares now. A pang of frustration shivered through her detached soul. There would be harsh words for the Weather Corporation detachment in Canterlot tomorrow.

A particular fit of terror caught her attention and she darted to it, getting there in time to see an adult, a fully grown mare, wrapped in fear. She did not recognize this pegasus, but she did recognize the environment around her. It was dark, with no windows, a maze of metal and rubber and plastic and cloud, lit only by a deep red glow as if Tartarus itself had infused itself into the core of this place. It had been a long time since Luna had seen the rainbow factory in this state, almost two decades, and she was curious as to who it was that would be dreaming of such an evil place that had been hidden to most minds. A worker, perhaps? An old employee?

Luna hovered just outside the bubble of dreamspace, watching curiously. The mare had a lilac coat and a short, glacial blue mane, and was running fast down the non-existent hallways of the old factory. Her hooves clanged on the metal grating, echoing around her. Her eyes were closed and head was down, racing forward, ducking and sidestepping and jumping around obstacles that were not there. Luna watched as the mare risked a glance behind herself and shrieked, pushing herself faster, but from what Luna could not see.

The mare seemed to be lost, or the world she had put herself in was purposely locking her in. She would spin around corners and come face to face with a bare wall, and then turn around and run the other direction just as aimlessly. Finally, a massive, nondescript grey door appeared and the mare stopped, skidding forward without moving at all. Luna moved forward to touch the mare, to find what troubled her so, when the mare reached out to the door and grabbed the handle.

Screams and anguish filled the dream, and filled Luna’s essence, and even she found herself shocked at this development. It was not just the mare’s scream, not just any pony’s scream, but the wails of a hundred, of a thousand, of a million ponies. She lept towards the bubble, her horn blazing white and ready to eviscerate the entire dream. It was not a healthy nightmare, and not one she could simply reassure one against, or fit some aimless aesop into. Right as she reached it, however, it wavered, twisted, and broke down. The mare had awoken.

Luna wasted no time in her brief respite of the dream world, sinking back into it. For a moment, she could hear the rain and hail fall through the thick curtains, but the sound faded away as she faded in. She waited for a moment, looking around for any sign of the strange pegasus, hoping that if perhaps she had gone back to sleep she could be consoled or gifted a pleasant scenario to rest the remainder of the night too. They didn’t appear, and so she cast her mind back out to carry on her work.

She focused on one of the more violent dreams and flitted into it. The foal here, an earth pony filly, was trapped in a vortex of clouds so dark they may have been smoke, thrown around aimlessly with water and lightning. The filly’s high-pitched shrieking was loud enough to pierce through the thunder and roaring wind surrounding her, and again the goddess of night felt unnatural concern. Luna’s manifestation dove into the globate maelstrom and grabbed the filly, holding her tight to her chest. The foal looked up at Luna in awe, and the clouds released from their sphere and dispersed just as violently as they had been spinning. In a setting of a rolling field at night--one of Luna’s favorite’s for calming nerves--she set the filly down.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I… think so… Are you Princess Luna? Did you save me?”

“Yes, child, and I have indeed helped you.” Not every dream needed to be a lesson. “Do not share your gratitude with me, however.” She looked to the moon above the two of them and smiled. “But on calmer nights, take but a moment to appreciate the world around you.”

“Thank you, Princ-erk!” The filly shot to one side as if pulled by a great force and then vanished, and the dream-world around Luna imploded in an instant, sucking down on itself like a pop-can being crushed. Luna’s mind was dumped back into the aether, confused and shaken. What had woken that foal so suddenly? As the thought completed itself, a wave of nauseous worry and fear washed over her like a migraine. The town beneath the castle was radiating terror, and Luna’s empathetic consciousness vibrated in the pain of it all.

A sudden jerk brought herself out of the dream, and she found herself on the cold floor beside her throne. The small moment of confusion between sleep and awake felt like forever to her as she struggled to make sense of what was happening. It waned, and she pulled herself to her hooves, looking around confused. And then-- another shake. It was small, but it came along with a noise that filled Luna with more fear than of the Tantabus escaping. It was not so much a noise, though; she couldn’t hear it. It was too low a pitch, too loud a volume. She felt it through her hooves, and her legs, and her spine, and her mane. It was an awful sense of solid bedrock cracking in two.

The castle lurched, and Luna barely caught herself. With a sinking feeling she noticed she was no longer standing on a flat angle, and she realized that the foundation of her home had started to separate from the mountain. Lightning then struck one of the alcoves, destroying the balcony outside, and with it came that shrieking banshee of wind and rain. The massive curtains were sucked from the Throne Room, and outside Luna could see most of the decoratives of the castle had been obliterated by apple-sized hailstones. The castle shook again, but did not stop, and Luna took off racing down the twisted, vibrating hall as raw mountain let go of hewn stone.

There were no longer echoes as her hooves pounded on slanted marble. Pillars in the halls and roofing over exterior additions had already given way to the storm, and Luna ran and jumped and dived and slid around the obstacles before her like some sort of sick video game brought to life. She might have enjoyed it, if her life and the life of her sister’s had not been in jeopardy.

By the time she made it to her sister’s room and blasted open the door, she was hovering in place over a forty-five degree angle of a floor. The duties of daylight were difficult and exhausting, and Celestia’s gifted sleep would have been enough for her to rest through Tartarus itself, so it did not surprise Luna when the still-laying alicorn, her fear dulled by the lens of drowsiness, looked up confused at her terrified sister.

“What’s going o-” She said, before the castle rocked like a ship at sea, pressing Celestia onto her bed. There was another awful, hideous thock of splitting stone, and the battered roof slammed down on to the room as if driven by magnets.

Luna stumbled in the air, but not from the moving castle. She reached a weak hoof forward, feeling as though everything had stopped around her. She could feel, in her soul, a sudden loss of light and warmth, and she screamed.

“Celestiiiiaaaaaa!!”

Grief had not yet completely set in when the building issued one final complaint and gave up to gravity. Luna could not tell if the noise around her was hailstones or the shredding of rock. She shook her head. She could only mourn if she got out alive. She looked around now, seeing the rotated hallway sliding slowly down around her. A collapsed section of wall just a few metres away shone with the wet reflection of a hundred lightning strikes a minute, and she cast a quick spell covering herself in a magical shield.

She took off and shot out through the hole, the missiles of ice bouncing harmlessly off her shield. She rocked in the air, jostled by indecisive winds and blasts of thunder. She moved to clear away from the castle, and briefly lost consciousness as the air seemed to disappear beneath her.

The fog in her eyes cleared and she found herself being spun helplessly in some sort of mega wind spout. Her shield held though, saving her from the mass of ice that would have crushed an unprotected pony. In the moments her body wasn’t whipped back and forth, she could see the mountain her home used to occupy, and though she was determined and strong, she could not stop tears from falling as she saw a dozen tornadoes climbing up its face, lifting whole houses from the village and obliterating them against the rock. No matter how Luna tried, she could not gain purchase with her wings, and her stomach felt like it had been lassoed and yanked ever downwards.

She slammed against something hard, and her shield exploded into a billion shards of magic, but she found herself solid and still. She rolled over onto her back, groaning. She savoured the moment of peace, but then a creeping thought entered her beleaguered mind.

Why am I not being hailed on?

She opened her eyes, and saw above her most of the castle she had just escaped. The jagged remains of towers and walls and a million pounds of stone and glass seemed to hover above her, rotating slowly in the air as if weightless. It appeared to remain in place, though as it gained in size in her perspective, she knew it was not truly motionless.

She sobbed once, and closed her eyes, calling forth a dream.