Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Science Fiction, Adventure, Violence, Crossover, Death, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 735347

Far above the wasteland, where the skies are blue and war is a distant memory, a dark conspiracy and a threat from the past collide to threaten everything.

It is the year 0179 of the Cloud Century. Almost two centuries have passed since the Pegasus Enclave closed the sky and cut off the toxic, uninhabitable surface world. A new home for ponykind, where pegasus ponies are born, and raised, and die.

Before the war, before the sky was cut off, something terrible was locked away. Chamomile is an average pegasus, born into a family of archaeologists and living at the edge of Enclave territory, far to the north. When she stumbles into ancient dangers and conspiracies, she finds her quiet life turned into a horror story. Can she set things right, or is the Enclave doomed?

A Fallout: Equestria sidestory. Thank you to all my readers, patreons, and well-wishers!

As always, I most look forward to seeing what references and cameos people notice. You surprise me sometimes with how you pick up on minor details!

Here's a gallery of the previous cover art, as well as a few bits of character design I put together: Gallery

Published 2021-02-16 01:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2023-08-04 13:57:51 UTC

Chapter 1 - Jailhouse Rock

I had a headache.

Like, a really bad one. Probably it was from being hit in the head, but also maybe being shot a few times with stun bolts, which might rhyme with fun but are otherwise completely unrelated. On top of that, well, have you ever taken a nap, and it goes on just a little too long and you wake up and you have absolutely no idea what time it is? I had that in spades.

I groaned and tried to sit up. The steel bench under me creaked and rocked. I could feel we were moving before I was really aware of what that meant.

“Hey you, you’re finally awake.”

The voice made my headache even worse. I had gunk in my eyes, and when I tried to rub them, I then discovered two amazing facts -- hoofcuffs worked and that I was wearing a shiny new pair. I’m not a very bright pegasus but I was pretty sure that was a bad sign.

“What happened?” I groaned, trying to clear my head. It was hard. Things didn't want to come into focus. I'd had concussions before but this one was a doozy and felt like something else had gotten mixed in with it, but it was taking me a while to remember what.

“You got arrested,” the stallion said. “Same as me, the old-timer over there, and that piece of work.”

Oh right. That explained the hoofcuffs and the way I felt like hooves had been applied to me in a professional, but annoyed manner such as an officer of the law might use when dealing with an unruly prisoner. Me, for instance.

My vision had cleared enough that I could at least get a little look around. Not that there was much to see. We were in a metal box with a bench that was somehow less comfortable than sitting on the floor. It was like somepony had converted a skywagon into a prisoner transport by welding a shipping container to the back and throwing a lock on the door, which was probably exactly what they had done, actually.

The pegasus across from me had that kind of mangy look that usually means they haven’t eaten anything in a while and was giving me a look of honest concern. He seemed like a nice guy. So... even odds on if he stole a loaf of bread or was a serial killer, because I was not good at judging ponies. That was one reason I'd gotten fired from my last job. The other reasons we'll get to in a bit.

As a wonderful contrast to the worry of a total stranger, my father glared at me from where he was chained to the bench with naked disappointment and anger.

“We wouldn’t have gotten arrested if Chamomile wasn’t an idiot,” he snapped.

“Oh great,” I said. “So they arrested you too, Dad?”

“If you hadn’t made such a mess of things we would be at home right now,” he said. “We shouldn’t be here. It’s these thieves and rebels the Enclave wants, not us.”

“I’m sure they’ll be happy to listen to reason when we get where we’re going,” the last pony said. She was a small, yellow pegasus, but she didn’t have the scruffy look I usually expected from a thief. Actually, I could have sworn I saw her before somewhere. She winked at me when I met her gaze. She looked totally unconcerned, like being stuck in here was part of her plan for the day.

“Hey, I’m just an honest thief,” the scrawny stallion said. He nodded to the yellow mare. “Her, though, I hear she’s actually a rebel. Don’t get too close or she might try and convert you.”

“Oh yes, how awful,” Dad said. “Then we might do something stupid and end up getting arrested and shipped off to some prison camp! Oh wait! That's exactly what's happening, Chamomile!”

“Here we go again,” I mumbled. “Always my fault.”

“Yes, Chamomile! It’s always your fault!” Dad snapped. “What do I always tell you? Be careful! And what do you never do? Be careful!”

“Really Dad, you want to do this now? You think this is a good time for an argument?” I huffed. “Maybe next you’ll tell me I need to clean my prison cell and make my cot every morning!”

“Discipline is important, not that I expect that from you at this point,” he said. “Mostly I just expect you to break anything you touch and for me to have to pay the bill since you’re about as good with money as you are with ballet.”

I huffed. “Then I guess that means you don’t want me to help you get out of here,” I said.

“You can’t even help yourself,” Dad said.

“Oh yeah?” I smirked. “Watch this!”

Now, I don’t like to brag, but I’m pretty strong compared to the average pegasus. I might not be smart, or fast, or good at flying… you know this is just starting to sound like a list of all the things I’m not good at. The point is, the hoofcuffs were just some cheap metal and thin chain. I started pulling at them, trying to get the right leverage.

Dad sighed. “Chamomile, you can’t break those cuffs.”

“Shut up, Dad!” He was always trying to tell me I couldn’t do things. He never wanted to admit that I could do anything. I was going to prove him wrong. I strained, and I could feel it. I could feel the metal starting to give and bend.

We hit a bump, and I lost the leverage I had, the back of my head slamming into the wall hard enough to leave a dent. In me, and the wall. I felt blood trickle down my neck.

“Ow,” I mumbled.

“Keep doing that and you won’t even make it all the way to the Smokestack,” the rebel said, not even bothering to look at me. She was she was leaning back with her eyes closed and acting all relaxed like she was on vacation and not a prison transport.

“What’s the Smokestack?” I mumbled.

“Have you ever seen a mountain?” the rebel asked.

“A couple of them,” I said. “I don’t remember how many. They feel really weird to stand on.”

She nodded. “Most ponies up here haven’t. They’re basically parts of the ground that stick up so far they come through the clouds, right?”

“The ground does that?” the thief asked, surprised.

Dad sighed. “The elevation of the ground varies widely,” he explained. “Mountains tend to run in long chains. The highest of them can peak above cloud level. Unfortunately, maps of the ground tend to be restricted material in the Enclave, so it makes finding mountains of the right height extremely difficult.”

The thief looked confused. “Why would they be restricted?”

“Having maps of the ground is something you only need if you’re a Dashite or a traitor or a smuggler or something,” the rebel explained. “Why else would you care about what’s under the clouds?”

“The mountains are important for archaeology,” my Dad said. “Sure, we’ve maintained a lot of equipment and research from before the war, but things get forgotten or lost. Important things. If we want to find anything worked by earth ponies or unicorns, it isn’t going to be discovered in some old cloud house sealed for a century or on a drifting half-wild cloud. It’ll be on solid ground.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would they take us to a mountain?”

“Maybe it’s a good sign,” the thief suggested. “If I was going to build a prison I’d want solid walls instead of clouds.”

“It’s astounding how low standards have gotten that going to prison means things are looking up,” my Dad said.

“It means they don’t want us dead, or they wouldn’t bother,” the rebel said.

“Or it means they want to torture us first,” Dad said.

“What are your names?” the rebel asked. “We might as well get to know each other.”

“Chamomile,” I said. “But, uh, I think Dad already mentioned that.”

“I’m Quattro Formaggio,” the rebel said. “You can just call me Quattro.”

The thief sighed. “Spirit Level. You know, before I was a thief I built cloud houses, but--”

“Oh for buck’s sake, no one cares about your life story!” Dad snapped. “Next you’ll tell us some tall tale about how you were arrested for stealing a loaf of bread for your dying grandmother.”

“I hope I’m not in the same cell as you,” Spirit Level mumbled.

“I don’t know why they say solitary is a punishment for prisoners when right now I’d give anything to be alone,” Dad said.

The skywagon shook and jerked. It felt like we dropped six inches in a heartbeat.

“We’re about to land,” Quattro said. “Hang on to something!”

“To what?!” Dad demanded. “My hooves are literally tied!”

Before he could complain about anything else, we slammed into something hard enough to throw us from the benches, yanked around by the chains binding us to them. My shoulder was yanked back, and I landed with my wing under me in an awkward position.

“Ow,” I mumbled, from the floor.

“Did anypony break anything?” Quattro asked.

“At least my headache has friends now,” I said. Quattro laughed a little and helped me up. “Twisted my wing pretty badly. I guess I’m not flying out of here.”

“Probably right,” Quattro agreed. “Not for the reason you think.”

The door was pulled open from outside, and blinding sunlight streamed in, the sudden flash enough to dazzle all of us.

“Welcome to the Smokestack,” a pony from outside said. “Emerald Sheen, get them sorted.”

When I could see again, there were three ponies in power armor stomping into the skywagon. One of them, a small mare, unhooked my cuffs from the bench and stepped back.

“Outside, let’s go,” she said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“It’s a little late to warn her about that,” Dad said, apparently unable to resist getting one more jab in.

We were marched outside, and the ground crunched under my hooves. The Smokestack was one of the most desolate places I’ve ever seen, and considering some of the places around the wasteland, that’s saying something.

In the Enclave you got used to things mostly being white. That’s just how it works when your house and everypony else’s houses and your entire town and the landscape as far as you can see is all made out of clouds. The Smokestack was black, more black than the night sky, like something had burned the whole mountain to a crisp. The soil under my hooves crunched unpleasantly, all sharp edges and tiny pebbles.

Above us, the sky was almost as black as the ground. Smoke poured out of the top of the mountain and turned into a roof above us. Grey flakes fell around us from the dark cloud, and everything smelled like rotten eggs and ozone. From somewhere I couldn’t see, red and orange light shone up to reflect back down on us like perpetual twilight.

The leader of the three armored ponies looked over us. All of them were sort of short. I expected soldiers to be taller. At least as tall as I was, anyway. Even the pony in charge only came up to my chin.

“Really, this is all we caught today?” he asked. “Most of them don’t even seem like they’d survive a day in the mines.”

“Mines?” Spirit Level asked.

“All of you have committed crimes against the Enclave,” the soldier said. “We have survived as a society because we know how to use our resources, and you’ve squandered or stolen from those who needed it. The good news is, you’re being given a chance to repay the Enclave for your mistakes.”

“Don’t you love that slave labor is the good news?” Quattro sighed.

“You will all be staying here until your debt to society is repaid. The more you work, the faster that day comes. You will be fed and sheltered, as long as you keep to your quotas.”

He paced up and down the rough like we formed, looking us over. He had to look up to meet my gaze and nodded approvingly.

“Some of you won’t have problems with the work. If you don’t meet quotas, you’re going to have a bad time. If you’re cooperative and respectful, you’ll be out of here with a clean record and enough bits to start a new life.”

He stopped in front of the rebel.

“We’ll also expect you to answer questions. You’ll be rewarded for having the right answers. It could be years off your sentence. I’d ask if you had any questions, but I don’t care to answer to scum like you.”

He spat at the ground, then nodded to the other guards. One of them pulled out a pair of shears and came at us.

“What the buck is this?” I demanded.

“We can’t have you flying away,” the guard said. “We have to clip your wings. We’re just going to trim your primaries. They’ll grow back and you’ll still be able to glide safely until they do.”

“Don’t touch me!” Spirit Level snapped, when the guard grabbed for his wing. He kicked at the armored pony, and only managed to make him angry.

“Calm down,” Quattro warned.

“I’m not letting them clip me!” Spirit Level yelled, hobbling back in his hoofcuffs. I’m sort of an expert at telling when something is stupid because it’s usually exactly what I’d do, so when I saw him spread his wings, I recognized the stupid coming on quickly.

“Don’t!” Dad yelled. He probably recognized it too.

Spirit Level took to the air, flapping hard and aiming away from the mountain towards the sea of clouds.

“Take him out,” the guard leader ordered.

“Sir, we could just stun him--”

“Emerald,” the leader repeated. “Take him out.”

The smaller armored guard shook her head and took off. Unlike Spirit Level, she was rested, armored, and most important, armed. Bolts of green light hit him in the back, and his ashes joined the rest falling down around us. Emerald circled a few times before returning.

“At least he managed to provide an object lesson,” the leader said, sounding oddly pleased. “Attempting to escape is a capital offense.”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Dad said.

“No, but I didn’t have to keep him alive either,” the guard said.

“What’s your name?” Dad asked. “I should at least be allowed to know the name of the pony that’ll probably be ordering my death because I can’t move rocks fast enough.”

“Ah, drama and poetry,” the guard said. “You’re just like I expected. My name is Colonel Ohm, it’s a pleasure to meet you under these circumstances.”

“I’m somewhat less charmed by them,” Dad grumbled.

“We’ll see about that,” Ohm said. He nodded to the guard, and I felt him grab my wing and roughly pull it out. It was a struggle not to fight him on instinct. I had to force myself to stay still and not bend his spine into a new and interesting shape. He made short work of my primaries, cutting a few on each side right down to the coverts.

“Don’t worry, you won’t be flying anywhere,” the guard said. “Maybe if you’re on your best behavior we’ll let you see the sky once in a while.”

I bit back a retort and just waited for him to finish with Quattro and Dad. I had to just imagine what I’d do, given the chance. I didn’t have a great imagination, so it wasn’t really satisfying.

“Now that that’s sorted, let’s go,” Ohm said. “The camp is near the caldera.”

“What’s a caldera?” I asked.

Apparently, a caldera was the word you used for a really shitty place where ponies shouldn’t go. The whole place stank, the ashes covered my hooves, and even though it looked like grey snow it was hot enough I couldn’t stop sweating.

“Wonderful, we get to work ourselves to death in an active volcano,” Dad groused.

The camp was mostly cargo containers and tarps surrounded by fences. It didn’t look like much of a prison, but I guess with our wings clipped they didn’t need much more than that. It was wedged between what looked like two half-collapsed buildings -- the one to the north was mostly intact, but the other one was buried by rock, and only parts of it were visible.

“What’s a volcano?” I asked.

“Oh you want to listen to me now?” Dad asked. “A volcano is a mountain created by magma welling up from deep below the surface. This one is still active, which means it might explode at any moment.”

That was worrying. “Explode?”

“Oh yes, Chamomile. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get to see it go off like a megaspell before we collapse and die from overwork.”

“Has anyone ever complimented you on your sunny disposition?” Quattro asked.

Colonel Ohm held up a wing and we all came to a halt in front of a gate into the camp.

“Emerald, Rain Shadow, take these two to processing,” Ohm said. He pointed to me and Quattro. “I’ll be taking the stallion to the Director. Special orders.”

“Special orders?” Dad asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you get the VIP treatment,” Ohm said. “I’d say you’re lucky, but knowing the Director…” Ohm hesitated. “Well, let’s just not keep anypony waiting.”

“We’ll take care of this, sir,” Emerald said, saluting.

The other pony, the one who’d clipped my wings, grabbed my shoulder. That’s not really like a great idea at the best of times. If I hadn’t been distracted by Ohm dragging my father off and the annoying itching from my cut feathers, I definitely wouldn’t have punched him.

Now that I’ve said that, you can probably guess that I, uh, I punched the pony in power armor. I had hoofcuffs on so it wasn’t a great punch, but I was pissed off.

His visor cracked, and he dropped like I’d shot him.

“Uh…” I paled.

“Not a bad punch,” Ohm commented, sounding less angry than I’d expected. “I’d have you shot where you stand for assaulting an officer, but I’m in a good mood and Rain Shadow apparently has a glass jaw if he can’t handle a light tap while he’s wearing a damn helmet.”

A half-dozen more soldiers dropped down around us.

“That punch was free,” Ohm said. “Don’t do it again.”

I nodded mutely.

“Let’s go,” Emerald said, quietly. She motioned for me to follow her. She sounded like she wanted to leave just as much as I did. I kept my head down and trotted after her, two of the guards flanking me to make sure I didn’t get any ideas.

Not that I ever had ideas.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Emerald said. The interrogation room was just a metal box with a camera in one corner, a table bolted to the floor, and a few chairs.

One of the nameless guards shoved me in and slammed the door shut behind me. I fell on my face, the hoofcuffs keeping me from catching myself.

“Come on,” Emerald sighed. She helped me up and into one of the chairs. “I should probably warn you that once we’re done here, the two guards waiting outside are probably going to rough you up for what you did to Rain Shadow.”

“Something to look forward to,” I mumbled.

“I’m glad you’ve still got a sense of humor.” She took off her helmet and put it on the table. Her coat was dark green, and her dark mane was pin-straight and cut in ruler-straight layers.

“So what happens now?” I asked. “Is this going to be a good cop, bad cop kind of thing where you try and be my friend and get me to tell you something important? Because that’s gonna be an issue with me not knowing anything.”

“Well, I do like to think I have a friendly face.” Emerald smiled. “I know you’re not a rebel.”

“At least one pony knows that.”

“You seem more like you just got caught up in this.” She pulled a folder from a box next to the door and put it on the table. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? Maybe we can get this whole thing cleared up.”

“Okay, um…” I hesitated. “Where do I start?”

“Why don’t we go with your name,” Emerald suggested. “Chamomile, right? I think that’s what the other pony called you.”

“Yeah. That was my dad,” I said.

She nodded and started writing. “Okay. A few of these I can fill out. Pegasus. White coat, teal mane… Has anypony ever told you you’re really big for a pegasus?”

“Some of my ancestors were earth ponies,” I said. “I guess I have that going for me, at least.”

“And I’m thinking your cutie mark is flowers?”

I nodded. She motioned for me to show her and roughly sketched them onto the paperwork.

“That’s sort of an unusual mark for a pegasus,” she mentioned while she was drawing.

“I got it when I was on a trip with Dad,” I said. “It was the last one I took with him and Mom. They were digging on some mountain, they got into an argument, and I kind of ran off.” I shrugged. “I ended up in a field of flowers and ran right into what they’d been looking for the whole time.”

“And what had they been looking for?”

“Oh, I don’t know what it was exactly. Some kind of big metal thing made of triangles.” I shrugged. “I was a foal and I was kind of more excited about the flowers. Mom said I was a lucky charm and they’d never have found it without me because they were looking on the wrong side of the mountain.”

Emerald smiled. “Sounds like a good memory.”

“It was,” I sighed. “Is my cutie mark story really that important?”

“No. Just being friendly.” She shuffled the papers in front of her. “I’ll be honest, most prisoners have at least a little paperwork that comes with them. All of you are kind of off-the-books. Your dad is probably the reason why you’re here. Any idea what the Director wants with him?”

“He’s just a… a history nerd,” I said. “He studies old stuff.”

“Right, he mentioned archaeology.” Emerald wrote something down. I tried to read what she was writing, but it was upside-down, and I couldn’t make it out. “It must have to do with the dig…”

“The dig?”

She shook her head. “I’m not at liberty to say much. You’ll find out what you need to know. It’s classified so… it’s better not to know, if you catch my drift.”

“...I have no idea what you mean.”

“Okay,” she said. “Just give me a second while I lower my expectations.”

“Dad tells me that a lot.”

“He does seem like the type to say that.” She smiled at me. “So how about we just talk and get this all cleared up? You tell me about how you got arrested and why you’re innocent and maybe I can convince somepony to get you on the next cloudship out of here?”

“Do prisoners ever actually leave?” I asked.

“This isn’t a death camp,” Emerald said. “I promise that whatever happens, I’ll do my best to get you out of here alive.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I sighed. “So I guess… I guess it started one night at the bar…”

Chapter 2 - Stormy Monday

The most important rule for the bar shone in neon right where everypony could see it.

No drugs or megaspells allowed inside.

It’s a pretty reasonable thing to ask but you’d be amazed how often I have to throw ponies out of the bar for ignoring the sign. The drugs part, I mean. I haven’t met anypony trying to sneak a balefire bomb inside yet, but if I did, I’d ask them politely but firmly to leave.

So I work, or worked, at a place called the Dirty Nimbus, in the bad part of the Cirrus Valley. The town had been a pre-war city and mostly gotten eaten up by the clouds when the Sustainable Pegasus Project had come online. It hung just a little below the new 'natural' cloud level, and so when the sky closed up to protect us, it ended up as a sort of rift valley between two solid walls of cloud. It was a little bit of a ghost town these days, because it wasn't really in a convenient place to trade.

The bar was a fun place to hang out even if you were on the clock -- the boss didn’t mind me getting a few drinks as long as I tipped the bartender for their trouble, sometimes I'd get to punch a pony out without getting in trouble, and I got paid to spend time away from home. If I didn’t have the job I’d probably end up there anyway just to stay out of Dad’s mane.

That’s not to say I was complacent. I had hopes and dreams. And I was willing to fight for them.

“Come on, Sloe,” I begged. “I can totally mix drinks.”

The owner and sometimes-bartender sighed. He was an older stallion, the kind who ponies opened up to. He was also the kind who suddenly became deaf when somepony with a warrant came around asking questions.

“I’m not going to put you behind the bar,” he said. “You’re a bouncer, Chamomile. You’re good at bouncing. You can bounce ponies so hard they practically fall through the floor.”

“That only happened once and I apologized,” I reminded him.

“Did you fix the floor?” he asked.

I looked at the wispy-edged hole that was pony-sized and would still be pony-shaped if Sloe Gin had spent enough to make his floors a little more solid. He’d spent that money on a jukebox instead. I thought it was worth it. Right now it was playing a song by Fire Bomber. It was one of those rock/pop songs that was just catchy and annoying enough that somepony might be willing to pay just to change it to something else.

“I put a sign next to it so ponies wouldn’t fall in,” I offered. The sign hadn’t helped much. Sloe’s bathtub gin was famous for making ponies feel like they might fall off the world in literally any direction. Providing an actual hole for them to tumble into hadn’t done anypony any help.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Fill it in good enough that ponies won’t fall into the basement where I have to drag them out by hoof and I’ll think about letting you mix a few drinks tonight.”

I perked up at that and nodded. “I can totally do that!” It wouldn’t be a problem at all. I bolted out the door before he changed his mind, and stumbled into the wall a little bit. Lightly. Part of it broke off and started floating away. I grabbed it and shoved it back into place, spitting on the break because that was supposed to help it stay, right?

“Patch that up too!” Sloe yelled at my back.

One of the good things about the bar being in sort of a slum was how everything was falling apart. That sounds like a bad thing and is probably why stuff broke when I ran into it but there were some good sides to it, too.

Like one good thing, I could just go across the street, make sure nopony was looking, and pry a cloud panel off the wall of a building in slightly better condition. Cumulonimbulated cloud panels were great for a shed, patching a hole when you didn’t have money for real repairs, or you lived in a slum with no real building codes and used them for literally everything.

I ran away with it, pretended I didn’t hear things sliding and starting to crash down behind me, and got back to the bar, tossing the panel over the hole and stomping it into place.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You just stole that from somewhere,” Sloe said.

“You don’t know that.”

“You trotted out and came back two minutes later with it. Unless somepony opened up a home improvement shop down the bucking block and they’re gonna gentrify this into one of them nice neighborhoods where cloud coffee costs half a day’s pay and they shoot you for graffiti, you just grabbed that and ran.”

“Okay so I found it. So what?”

“You found it.”

“If you keep asking questions I’m gonna have to lie at some point,” I warned him. “How about you agree it covers the hole, and I agree not to tell you where I got it from?”

“Cammy, if somepony comes in here looking for you…”

“Then I’ll talk to them gently and explain the situation,” I said. I even meant it. “If they’re real angry I’ll buy them a drink to calm them down. That always works, right?”

He gave me a look. “Can you afford to buy them a drink?”

“I’d be able to if you paid me more.”

“Alright, you get that point.” He sighed. “You can mix drinks until it’s busy. I won’t have time to foalsit you after that and I’ll need you working the floor.”

I hopped behind the bar, knocked over a bottle, and caught it before it spilled.

“So what’s first?” I asked.

The front door burst open, the patch I’d put on the doorframe breaking off again. I really wasn’t good at cloudshaping. My special talent was more one of those metaphorical ones where the flowers on my flank weren’t literally about me being good at growing plants.

“Where’s the bucking mule that stole my bucking wall?!” the stallion in the doorway demanded. He was almost as big as I was, so he probably thought he was scary. I sized up the pale lavender stallion and decided I wasn't impressed. He didn't look like a fighter.

Dad said my special talent was getting into hot water. The stallion glaring at me like I’d stolen part of his building was already looking pretty heated.

Sloe looked at me.

I had to think quickly. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“What happened to talking to them and explaining the situation?” Sloe asked.

“I didn’t think I’d actually have to do it!”

The angry stallion snorted and stormed up to the bar. “I want my bucking wall back!”

“How about a drink?” I offered. “On the house.”

“It’s a start,” he growled.

I winked at him. “Watch this. You’ll be impressed.”

I pulled out a bottle of rye and dropped a few ice cubes into a glass. A shot of rye went in, a splash of lemon juice and bitters, then I topped it off with ginger soda. A quick stir, and I pushed the drink towards him.

“What do you think?”

He took a sip and grimaced.

“This is a bucking terrible drink,” he said. “What did you do, water the booze down with your bathwater?”

“Hey! Our booze ain’t watered down!” Sloe snapped.

“Then the pony who mixed it must be the worst bartender in town!”

“Say that to my face!” I yelled.

“I did!” the lavender stallion shouted back.

“Cammy, be smart,” Sloe warned. “We don’t need a fight in here. Use your head.”

He was right. I needed to use my head.

I grabbed the purple stallion and pulled him closer, then slammed my forehead into his. Headbutts hurt, but they hurt a lot less when you’re ready for it. He dropped onto the bar, smacking his chin on the way to the floor.

“I used my head,” I said.

Sloe groaned. I took the glass and sipped the drink I’d mixed for the stallion. There was no way it was--

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Sloe asked.

“It’s fine!” I claimed.

“I saw the face you made.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s not great,” I admitted. “I thought it would be better.”

There was slow clapping from the entrance. A short yellow pegasus was there, grinning at me. I couldn’t see her eyes through the black visor sunglasses she was wearing, so I wasn’t quite sure if she was laughing at me or just with me. She walked in wagging her hips in the way a pony does when they're incredibly self-satisfied, so I got a good look at her cutie mark. It was something like a crimson fireball streaking through the sky.

“Hope he wasn’t a repeat customer,” she said. “I don’t think you’re gonna get a tip when he wakes up, though.”

“He’ll remember not to mess with me,” I said.

“Not unless he wants a headache, anyway,” the mare said. “So is this a bad time to get a drink?”

“Awful,” Sloe grumbled. “Cammy, drag him out of here and--”

“Nah, I think I want to see what she can come up with,” the mare said. “If she mixes drinks as strong as she is, I came to the right place.”

“Fine, then I’ll drag him out of here,” Sloe said. “Don’t get into any more bucking fights while I’m gone!”

“Who am I gonna fight?” I asked.

He pointed at the yellow mare.

“Oh. I promise I won’t fight her.”

“Good enough,” Sloe grumbled, stomping out the door and dragging the unconscious stallion along behind him. The mare picked up his fallen stool and sat down on it, grinning at me like she knew something I didn’t, which was a look I saw too often. I’m smart enough to know that ponies who think they’re clever will try and take advantage of me, so I had to act professional and pay attention.

“What can I get you?” I asked.

“I could go for something refreshing,” she said. “I had a long flight into town. Surprise me, but, uh, make it better than whatever drink started a fight?”

I rolled my eyes and got to work, deciding to get creative. I found a bottle of tonic water and some smooth gin that mostly just tasted like citrus.

“So you’re not from around here?” I asked. I grabbed some ice and tossed it in the glass along with a pour of the gin and some lemon juice. I crushed a sugar cube into it and stirred.

“I’m in town on business,” she said. “Recruiting, actually.”

“Are you with the military?” I asked, suddenly worried I was about to have to offer the military discount of ‘of course it’s on the house’. I topped the drink off with tonic water and slid it over to her. She took a long sip.

“That’s an okay drink,” she said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not with the military.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“Really? You looked a little worried. Maybe I guessed wrong. This whole part of town looked like the kind of place where ponies go when they don’t want anypony in uniform looking over their shoulder.”

I frowned. “Oh. I get it.”

“Do you?” She tilted her head.

“You’re a criminal,” I said. I shrugged. “I don’t really care. As long as you’re paying and you do the actual crime stuff somewhere else it’s not my business.”

“Crime stuff?” she asked, giggling.

I felt my cheeks burn red. I mean that’s what criminals do, right? Crime stuff? I was at a loss for words while I tried to figure out my next plan, and defaulted to standing in silence and trying to look disapproving like my dad always did when I was around.

Thankfully, the door opened before I could say anything stupid, and the pony I’d headbutted stormed in, both of his eyes starting to turn black already. And he brought two friends with him. One of them was a tub of flying lard, the other was so skinny I could just tell he was staying upright mostly because of whatever drugs he enjoyed.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you politely, but firmly, to leave,” I said.

“You wanna take this outside?” he asked. “Because I’m fine taking it outside.”

“I can’t leave until my boss gets back,” I said.

“Well he ain’t comin’ back for a while,” the lavender stallion said. “He’s busy taking a nap.” The three walked up to the bar, the skinny one hopping over it to stand behind me. He was probably delusional enough to think he was cool.

“You realize they’re threatening you, right?” the mare said.

“Yeah, but I promised I wouldn’t fight anypony,” I said.

“No, you promised specifically you wouldn’t get into a fight with me,” she reminded me.

“Oh!” I smiled. The one behind me hit me in the back and I winced at the sudden pain, kicking straight back and catching him in the chin. Teeth exploded all over the floor and he crumpled down in a heap. Before his friends could react, I jumped over the bar and into the fat stallion. Something I’d learned in a fight was to go after the one who looked the most dangerous first while you were still fresh, just in case they were as tough as they looked.

He had a cloudball bat tucked under a wing and swung it at me. I took it on the shoulder, leaning into it instead of away. He didn’t expect that, and the vibration made him lose his grip. I grabbed it from him and slammed it into his neck, because I was feeling nice and didn’t want to mess up his face too badly. He fell down clutching his throat like something was broken, and for a second I thought I’d hit him too hard, but then a barstool broke over my head and I stopped caring. My forehead busted open, blood running into my eyes.

The lavender stallion was shouting something, but the blood in my eyes stung really badly, and I wasn’t listening because he was using too many words, so I blindly grabbed for him and caught his wrist. He struggled, so I flicked my hooves and swung him like he was a wet rag, cracking him into the floor. I heard something break, and finally had a second to clear the blood from my eyes.

“Buck,” I swore. I’d put him through the exact patch of floor I’d just fixed, and now he was in the basement, groaning and nursing a clearly snapped forehoof.

“Hold still,” the mare said. “You’ve been stabbed.”

“Huh?” I asked. I didn’t even notice her come up behind me until she pulled the knife from my back and the soreness went down a few notches. “Oh.”

“You didn’t notice?” she asked.

“I thought he just punched me,” I shrugged.

“Let me find a first-aid kit,” she sighed, looking around behind the bar like we’d have something fancy like healing potions or clean bandages.

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” I said, shrugging and flexing my shoulder and wing. It didn’t feel like anything was really damaged. “I’ll just sleep it off.”

“You just got stabbed. With a knife.”

“Who hasn’t been stabbed before?” I asked.

“Most ponies haven’t been stabbed.”

“They’re not missing much,” I said. The door opened again, and my boss walked in, looking at the mess. “Uh. I can explain!”

“Chamomile,” he sighed. “You’re fired. Go home.”

“Aw…”

I kicked the door open, but carefully since this was my house and I was responsible for it.

“Dad, I’m home early!” I yelled. I looked around and didn’t immediately see him. Actually, I wasn’t sure what he did all day. I knew it was some kind of science stuff - he brought in most of his money keeping the computers around town running. He’d tried to teach me once and I found out that I was awful with computers and should never be allowed near them again.

I wandered into the back of our small home, trying not to trip over the stacks of books and stuff that Dad kept around. He loved reading, and I wasn’t all that surprised when I found him at his desk with two books open in front of him like one book at a time wasn’t good enough. He was reading one book intently and scribbling in the other.

“Dad? What are you doing?” I asked. He didn’t reply, so I trotted up and poked his shoulder. He jumped, his pen scratching against the paper.

“What--?!” he yelled, before turning to me, scowling. “What’s wrong with you?! Can’t you see I’m in the middle of some very important work?”

“You’re just reading a book,” I said.

“I’m translating a book that’s ten times older than the Enclave itself and--” He took a deep breath. “Go stand in the corner.”

“What? You can’t put me in time out! I’m not a foal!”

“The corner, Chamomile!” He pointed.

I grumbled and stepped into the corner, facing the wall and mumbling to myself and started counting quietly.

“You can tell me why you’re here after you get to a hundred,” he said.

“A hundred?! But that’s like… that’s a lot!” I protested.

“And you just earned yourself a big tall glass of starting over again at zero,” he retorted.

I groaned and started over again. It’s not as easy as it sounds to stand there like a big idiot and have to count. You can lose your place really easily just because you’re embarrassed about ponies listening to you count.

It took a few minutes, but eventually I got to a hundred.

“Now, tell me what was so important you had to interrupt me in the middle of translating a priceless manuscript,” Dad said, when he was satisfied.

I opened my mouth to tell him, and he held up a hoof.

“No, wait, don’t tell me. Let me guess - you decided to cause some kind of trouble. Not that it takes a genius to figure that out. It would be my first guess even without any evidence, but here you are with bruises and blood all over you. I bet you got into a fight in that awful little dive bar.”

“Hey, it’s not that bad!” I protested.

“I don’t want you going back there,” he said, waggling his hoof at me.

“That… probably won’t be a problem,” I mumbled.

“Why, did you set it on fire on the way out?” he asked. “I swear, you’re too much like your mother. Not in a good way, either. That mare was always looking for trouble, and she’d go out of her way to dig it up.”

Mom was sort of a touchy subject. I was surprised he was bringing it up himself, but maybe doing the translation work brought her to mind. They’d been partners. And I mean that in more than one way. They didn’t just get married, they worked together for years before that. And then Mom had ditched him to go off on some big important job or something. I wasn’t really clear on the details because Dad didn’t want to talk about it and Mom hadn’t even tried to get in touch with us since she’d left.

“I did get into a little bit of a fight,” I admitted. “But it’s not that big of a deal. I won.”

“Just because you won doesn’t mean…” Dad took a deep breath. “I swear some days I think I should have sent you with your mother. Not that I think she’d keep you under control, but at least I’d have some peace and quiet.”

I swallowed, feeling terribly guilty. I didn’t know why they’d split up, but I know they’d fought over me. I was a burden that they had to juggle, and Dad had ended up with me.

There was a knock on the door before I could figure out a way to appropriately apologize for being alive. It was the fast, hard, angry knock of authority. I knew what that meant.

“Somepony’s in trouble,” Dad said. “I wonder who it could be? Maybe it’s the pony who just got into a brawl and came running back home?”

“Tell them I’m not here!” I whispered.

“If it comes down to that or having to pay your bail, I’ll gladly lie to the authorities,” Dad said.

He sighed and walked to the front door, opening it up and revealing two ponies in armor. I tried to conceal myself behind a wall that felt too small and too thin, like they’d see right through it.

“Can I help you gentlestallions?” Dad asked.

“Are you Red Zinger?” the pony in front asked.

“I am, unfortunately,” Dad said. “Let me guess - my daughter did something stupid and you’re looking for her? I don’t want to know the details. Whatever she did, I’m sure we can find a way to make it all go away, hm? Some kind of public apology, she’ll promise not to do it again… you know how kids are. She’s barely even old enough to drink.”

The armored ponies looked at each other. They seemed more confused about what Dad was saying than anything else. I was peeking around the corner to watch but since I was remaining perfectly still, there was no way they could have seen me.

“We’re going to need you to come with us,” the armored pony said.

“Woah, woah, hold on,” Dad said, taking a step back. The soldiers took the chance to step inside, not letting him close the door on them. “Let’s just talk about this for a moment. I have no idea where my daughter is! What is it going to take, here? A hundred bits? Two hundred?”

“We’re not here for a bribe, we’re here under orders.” The lead pony nodded back to his partner, who produced a bundle of paperwork. He gave it to Dad, who started looking over it and looking increasingly nervous.

“This is… a warrant for my arrest?” he whispered. “But I haven’t done anything! I’m just an archaeologist! I fix some computers once in a while! I even pay my taxes - do you know how many ponies actually pay taxes around here? Because it’s not many! I’m a model citizen!”

“Please calm down, sir,” the soldier said. “You’re not accused of any crimes, as far as I know. We’re here because you’re…” he hesitated before he kept speaking, and I knew what that meant. He was lying. Or confused and trying to remember what somepony else had told him. It depended on if he was clever and coming up with something new or just trying to recall something old.

“You’ve been asked to assist with an inquiry that requires your expertise,” the other pony said, pointing to where it probably said exactly that on the paperwork Dad was holding. “If you cooperate, Mister Zinger, we can make this a fast and painless experience and you’ll be back here in short order.”

“And if I don’t cooperate I end up with a bullet in my head?” Dad asked. He threw the paperwork back at them, snorting with anger. “I don’t work for the military. If you want somepony who only cares about a paycheck, find my wife! She knows almost as much as I do.”

“Sir, this is an order, not a request.” The lead soldier picked up the paperwork. “It’s in your best interest to come along quietly.”

“You can either come with us on your own or we can drag you out,” the other one growled.

That first soldier, the slightly more polite one, looked up, and I gasped and ducked behind the wall. I was sure he’d seen me, but it should have been impossible - I was hiding behind a wall, and I’d only been peeking a little bit! These were clearly very highly-trained ponies. Probably some kind of special operations commandos who were used to hunting down rogue Dashites.

Dad wasn’t a Dashite, was he? I wasn’t, and he’d called them stupid idealistic idiots before, but he insulted a lot of things. It would have been the perfect cover. He loved me and called me an idiot, after all. If Dad was a Dashite it would have explained so many little things over the years. Mom had always encouraged me to go into the military and make something of myself, and Dad had hated the idea. It was why I was making ends meet by working in a bar instead of living the good life with three square meals a day and a cool uniform.

Not that I wanted to be like the jerks in the other room. I’d have been the cool kind of soldier like on the recruiting posters. There wasn’t really time to think about that right now, though. My family was in danger and I had to act.

I had to make sure Dad didn’t get banished, even if he was a Dashite or something. I steeled myself and stepped out into the doorway, taking them so totally by surprise that neither of them reacted, their helmets hiding their shock.

“Hey, leave my Dad alone!” I ordered. I held my chin high to try and maintain an aura of dominance, and hoped they didn’t notice I was sort of bruised and a little stabbed. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, so you two can just buzz off and find somepony else to bother!”

“Chamomile, this isn’t a good time to get into another fight,” Dad hissed through his teeth. He turned to the soldiers and laughed. “Ignore her, she’s doesn’t know what she’s saying. All your paperwork seems to be in order, and I don’t want to start any kind of trouble.”

I stormed up to them, glaring. Maybe if I just spooked them a little, they’d leave. “I don’t like bullies,” I said.

“Back down!” the lead pony snapped. I probably should have noticed before that moment that both of them were armed. There was a scary little high-pitched whine as energy weapons charged, and his friend pulled out an extending baton and snapped it open.

“Don’t cause trouble!” Dad snapped at me. “I’ll just go with them. Since they bothered to bring documentation, I’m sure everything will be fine. Maybe I can even convince whoever is in charge to pay me for my time.”

“I’m not just going to let them--” I started, just before I made a little mistake. I was sort of puffing myself up and trying to look bigger than usual to scare the ponies in powered armor, and that didn’t really mesh well with how much stuff was in loose piles around me. I bumped a tower of books, and it collapsed into more stuff.

The soldiers were already very intimidated by me, and the sudden motion pushed them over the edge all the way into a panic. A bolt of green plasma went right past my head and into a shelf full of old garbage, blasting it apart.

“No!” Dad gasped. “That was my collection of Sparkle-Cola bottles! Do you know how hard it is to find them in mint condition?!”

I would have sort of liked it if he was more worried about me than the bottles but it would be wrong to say I was disappointed or expected anything else. I was pretty angry at this point, and when Dad stepped in front of them to try and keep them from breaking anything else, and the soldier with the baton reacted by raising up his club, I did something a little stupid.

I shoved the pony with a plasma rifle on his battle saddle into his friend, hard enough that both of them crashed into the wall. The cloud wall broke, along with some bookshelves. And books. And some of the stuff my Dad had been collecting.

“...Oops,” I said.

“You little…” one of the guards growled as he stood up. “I tried to do this the nice way!”

I took a step back. “Oh buck.”

I don’t have the fastest reaction time -- I admit, I sort of freeze up sometimes when really crazy stuff pops up because I need a minute to figure out what’s going on. Usually it didn’t matter because I’d just shrug off whatever happened in those few seconds I needed to gather my thoughts, but that wasn’t really the case when the ‘whatever happened’ was a pony with a baton - which I now noticed was sparking - was charging at me.

So, pop quiz! A pony in powered armor is charging at you. What do you do? I figured I had three choices. First, I could dodge to the left, avoiding the attack and knocking over a few books, then strike at his back as he moved past me. Second, I could grab his fetlock and break his grip on the baton, using it against him in a total reversal. Third, I could take the hit, get hit by more volts than I could count, and roll around on the ground unable to control my body while he and his friend beat me into a pulp.

In retrospect, the third option was not the right one to take.

The baton came down on my shoulder, and the impact wasn’t so bad. I’d been clubbed by ponies who really knew what they were doing, and this stallion might have been military-trained and wearing powered armor, but I think he was used to intimidation doing all the work for him, because he didn’t get a lot of muscle into that blow.

The actual bludgeoning didn’t need to be done expertly, though. He could have tapped me on the shoulder like he was trying to get my attention and it would have still worked the same. The electric shock hit me, very literally, like a bolt of lightning. My legs turned to jelly and I collapsed in a twitching heap.

Was I having a heart attack? I honestly wasn’t sure. My chest hurt, but that might have been because the soldier had moved on from the shock baton to just kicking me while I was down. They lacked technique, but more than made up for it in enthusiasm and having big, metal boots over their hooves.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” Dad said, a few kicks too late for me to really feel good about him trying to save me. “She’s an idiot, and she’s had more than enough, alright?”

I tried to defend myself verbally, but it just kind of came out as slurred mumbling. I probably sounded really pathetic. That might have been good, because if I’d been strong enough to stand up or say something about the soldiers and their mothers, I’d have gotten shot.

“Get moving,” one of them grumbled, shoving Dad towards the door.

“What do we do with her?” the other one asked, pointing at me.

“Throw her in the skywagon,” the leader said. “She assaulted a military officer. We’ll let somepony else figure out what to do with her.”

“Sounds good,” the pony with the baton said. “Nighty night, you bucking mule.”

The shock baton came down, and the lightning put me to sleep.

Chapter 3 - Seek And Destroy

Prison.

Part of me had sort of expected to end up there at one point or another, but I had been totally wrong about what it was actually like. I guess as a filly I’d sort of gotten this vague idea it would just be a big grey building filled with tiny cells, and you get locked up all day like you’re in time out. A few details got added on over the years -- about how prison is full of dangerous ponies who will eat you alive. Sometimes literally, if they were really bad little ponies.

I hadn’t imagined how bad it could really be. All the sadistic guards and homicidal prisoners in the world in my little mental image couldn’t prepare me for walking through a rain of ash in sweltering heat.

After the interview and paperwork, Emerald had released me to the other guards, and they’d gotten a few kicks in, but they were smart enough to only put the boots to me lightly so they wouldn’t have to carry me anywhere. Instead, a guard marched me into a passage dug into the volcanic rock and through recently-installed metal gates, ushering me along with gentle taps from a shock baton to encourage me to keep up the pace.

“So does everypony get this kind of nice treatment?” I asked.

“No talking, prisoner NP3228,” my personal attendant said. “If I want you to say something I’ll tell you to say it!”

I rolled my eyes and trudged along. Thankfully, if there was one thing I wasn’t it was claustrophobic. A lot of pegasus ponies couldn’t handle being in small spaces for long, especially when they were poorly lit with arc lamps strung along the wall at irregular intervals. Eventually we reached a few gates in a row, something like an airlock to keep prisoners in, I guessed.

“Get inside,” my guard ordered.

I walked in between the gates, then after a moment the far gate opened with an electric buzz. I could take a hint, and walked the rest of the way on my own.

Just beyond the double-gate was a cavern big enough that claustrophobia wasn’t much of a concern. It was a rough cube, obviously carved out by hoof. An upper level had all the doors, and I had to walk down some rough stairs to get to the bottom floor where the cells lined the walls, each of them a metal box with bars welded to one side.

“Looks like they finally finished asking you about your secret drink recipes, huh?” a voice to my left said, one I could place instantly. After all, I’d been stuck in a skywagon with her. “Welcome to the rock.”

“The rock?” I asked Quattro Formaggio. She shrugged.

“For most pegasus ponies, it’s the first time they’ve seen this much solid ground. You don’t look all that impressed, though. I’m guessing it’s not your first time?” she smiled.

“I’ve been to a lot of places that had solid ground. Most of them were nicer than this.” I glared around the room, trying to look less bruised and beaten than I was. There were maybe two dozen ponies here. I expected them to look more criminal. The mix of stallions and mares were thin, mostly in rags, and just looked tired, hungry, and scared.

“Yeah, the Smokestack’s not exactly a luxury resort,” Quattro agreed. “Ever been in prison before?”

“No, have you?” I asked.

“Not one like this. Apparently we get to have fun digging in the rock, and if we don’t meet quotas, we don’t get to eat.”

“Digging for what?”

“Technology, scrap, apparently there’s still a lot buried here,” Quattro said.

I nodded, remembering the glimpse I’d had of the facility. Like ruined steel buildings, bigger than anything I’d ever seen before. They were obviously pre-war, though I couldn’t imagine why anypony would build anything on top of an active volcano -- I’d only just learned they even existed, and as far as I could tell they were the worst places in the world.

The crowd was staring at us while we talked. They were whispering among themselves, stealing glances at me, and generally making me worried. “What are they all yammering about?”

“They’re taking bets on how long we’ll last,” Quattro said. “Highest bet I’ve heard is a week.”

“A week?”

“Apparently most ponies only rate half that,” she added. She chuckled and offered me a wide grin. “You should be impressed we’re getting that whole week.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I was getting off on the wrong hoof. A week? These ponies must have been more dangerous than they looked if they took apart new arrivals that quickly. I had to do something to make myself look less like prey.

I took a deep breath to puff myself up a little, regretted it immediately because of the rotten-egg sulfur smell in the air, and walked over to the biggest pony I could see. I knew all about what went on in prison, or thought I did, and so the first thing I did was tap him on the shoulder, wait for him to turn around, and slug him right in the face. I wasn’t in great shape, so there was a good chance I was about to get my snout pushed in, but I had to let them know I was crazy enough to fight the toughest pony in the place.

He immediately collapsed, holding his face and crying.

“Why did you do that?” he sobbed between tears. “It really hurt!”

“Uh.” I hadn’t exactly expected that reaction.

“Really, Cham?” Quattro asked. “Don’t you know that the only way to survive in prison is to make friends? Punching ponies isn’t the best way to do that.”

“I just thought… you’re supposed to fight the meanest, toughest pony on your first day!” I protested. “It’s the normal prison thing!”

The mare adjusted her sunglasses and smirked at me.“Chamomile, you’re the meanest, toughest pony in here,” she noted.

I huffed. “No I'm not! I'm delicate and innocent and...”

“Tell that to the stallion you laid out.”

“I--” I groaned and offered a hoof to the stallion. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you like that.”

He sniffled, but accepted my help. The other ponies in the common room kept grumbling. At least I’d done one thing right -- nopony was going to mess with me. I just wasn’t going to make any friends, either. I’d done okay without friends for most of my life, I could deal with it until I got out of prison. Probably. Assuming none of them had a shiv and was going to stab me in the back the second I wasn’t paying attention.

A buzzer went off, and I stopped being the center of all attention. The gate slid open, and guards walked in, looking at us. I almost thought they were here because I was in trouble for starting a fight, but their gaze passed over me without really taking notice.

“We’ve got a missing prisoner in the mine,” the lead guard said. “One pony is missing from the shift headcount. We need a search party.”

One of the ponies in the crowd shoved me while I wasn’t expecting it. I stepped forward against my will, glaring back and trying to figure out which one of them had decided I needed to volunteer.

“Thank you for your service, NP3228. That’s one,” the guard said. “I want one more. You can volunteer and earn some points towards your quota, or you can be volunteered. Your choice.”

Quattro sighed and raised a hoof. “I’ll go.”

The armored guard nodded. “Good. At least some of you still have some spirit. Come with me.”

“He disappeared down there,” the guard said, pointing. “If you find him, try to bring him back, dead or alive.”

I looked down the tunnel. There were lights strung along it mostly at random, just wedged into the volcanic rock. It curved out of view a few dozen paces down. I tried shining the light the guard had given us down that way, but there was no sign of the missing prisoner.

“Is there a map of the tunnels?” Quattro asked.

“Not this one. It’s a new branch,” the guard said. “I’ll be keeping watch here. If you aren’t back in a few hours, we’ll assume you’re dead too.”

“Do a lot of ponies die in the tunnels?” I asked, checking the roof for cracks.

“It’s your first day, right?” the armored guard asked, shaking his head. “No wonder you volunteered so fast. Okay, look, because I want you to come back so I don’t need to file more paperwork, here’s the run-down on what you might see.”

I turned to him, deciding to actually pay attention to this.

“First, this is a volcano,” he said. “There could be poison gas. You’re the canaries in these mines, so just watch each other. Second, lava. You see glowing, molten rock, you can figure out what to do. Third, and this is pretty rare, you might find live cables.”

“In the mine?” Quattro asked.

“Some of the buried equipment still works and has power. I’ve got no idea how that works, but it does. You swing a steel shovel into a live power line, and you have a bad day, you get me?”

I nodded. I’d had a lot of shocks from batons, so I was absolutely sure I didn’t want to have more of that kind of bad day.

“But the worst thing, and I mean the worst thing, is the nanometal,” the guard said. He looked around for a moment and pointed. “You see that shit right there?”

He was pointing to what looked like silver frost or lichen growing from a crack in the rock. When I reached for it, he slapped my hoof away.

“Don’t bucking touch it!” he snapped. “If you get a splinter, it’ll start growing in you. We’ve got enough prisoners like that already. There’s no cure, and it feels like needles growing inside your skin.” The guard swallowed. “Best thing for them at that point is a plasma bolt to the head, put them out of their misery, but the boss wants them kept alive to study the nanometal. So don’t get scratched by it, you understand?”

“Got it,” I said. “Fate worse than death.”

He nodded, looking unhappy about it even through his armor. “Now get going. You find him, I’ll make sure your quotas are cleared for tomorrow. Like a little vacation day, but you don’t have anywhere nice to go.”

I nodded instead of saying anything stupid and led the way, keeping my wings tucked tightly to my body and watching my step as I moved, very aware now that I was a large pony in a fairly tight tunnel and there was something that’d kill me if I touched it.

Quattro followed in relative silence for a while, and we took the next turn, the floor starting to level out.

“Look at this,” Quattro pointed to the wall where some of the rock had been broken away, revealing steel plating. “What do you think?”

“It’s an archaeological dig,” I said.

“Really?” Quattro asked.

I nodded. “It reminds me of places Dad used to take me. They must be trying to find artifacts in the ruins. I don’t know how much would still be working after being buried in lava, though.”

Quattro chuckled. “The walls held up, so they must have built them pretty strong.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, checking the next corner. There were a few branching paths, but most of them were just short, exploratory tunnels, shallow enough I could see to the end. They’d probably been dug just to make sure the main path was going the right way.

“You look like you know what you’re doing.”

I turned to glance at her. “I’m not a total idiot. Dad made me do stuff like this all the time.” I paused for half a second. “That must be why they wanted him in the first place. Some kind of archaeology thing. Maybe they want him to manage the dig. These tunnels are almost random. They probably missed a lot just because they're not organized.”

“It’s not that old,” Quattro said. “It’s more like grave robbing.”

“Like you’d know,” I huffed. “Why are you even here?”

“Oh, you know. The usual.” She picked up a shovel somepony had left in the tunnel and offered it to me. I took it and waited for the rest of her answer. “I’m one of those awful anarchist rebels you always hear about. I was going recruiting and got picked up like a big idiot. Shucks! Bad luck on my part.”

I narrowed my eyes.

She smiled.

“You… wanted to get caught?” I guessed, reading between the lines. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t even good at reading in the first place and this was stretching my abilities to the limit.

“Maybe a little bit,” Quattro admitted. “For a volcano you can see from miles and miles away this place is actually hard to find, and even harder to get into. The one thing you never think about in the Enclave is how much empty space there is between settlements. Just endless clouds and blue sky with nothing to break it up. Easy to hide something in all that nothing, even something like this.”

“And I thought I was the dumb one,” I snorted. “You found the place, now what are you gonna do with it?”

“Good question,” Quattro said. “I think I’m going to look around a bit, make some friends, chat up some of the ponies that have been here for a while. What about you? Got dinner plans for later tonight?”

“When they finish whatever it is they want with my Dad, they’ll probably let me go too,” I said. I was only about half sure of that. I might have made a few mistakes with assaulting guards and committing actual crimes where a lot of ponies could see them.

“I hope so,” Quattro said, sounding worried and serious. She put a hoof on my shoulder. “For your sake, I really hope so. You seem like a decent pony, and nopony belongs in a place like this, especially not decent ponies.”

“Thanks,” I said lamely. “You seem okay too, for a Dashite.”

“Hey, I never said I was a Dashite. I’ve still got my cutie mark. I think it’s brave of them to do what they do, but it’s just so…” she shrugged. “It’s a ritual, a statement. To them, it’s the biggest event of their lives, giving everything up and going down to the surface. To the Enclave it’s just a strongly-worded letter they toss in the trash without even reading all the way to the end.”

“And you’re different?”

“If we get out of this mess alive, I’ll show you,” Quattro said. “Like I said, I was doing some recruiting. Maybe you’ll get to see what I was recruiting ponies for.”

I shook my head and pressed on. I didn’t really care about whatever she was talking about. I just wanted to find the missing prisoner and get out of there before anything else happened. I didn’t want to spook Quattro, but the tunnel didn’t seem all that stable. I heard something rattling around, like pebbles falling onto rock. I was about to stop and say we should turn back, but then some common sense got through my thick skull.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

Quattro paused and tilted her head, listening, then nodded. “Think it’s our lost miner?”

“It’s either that or the ceiling is coming down,” I said. “Stay about ten paces back from me. If you feel anything vibrate or the air pressure changes, run for it.”

“You know, I’m really appreciating having an expert with me,” Quattro said, patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll be ten paces behind you.”

I gave her a short nod and crept forward. The tunnel was claustrophobic here. It was obvious it was still being roughed out, with that kind of uneven, exploratory feeling to it, just wide enough for a pony to get in and work on it. I had to carefully squeeze through the tightest parts -- none of it was tight enough that I was worried I’d get stuck, but if I had to leave, I was going to have to back up since there was no room to turn around.

“How’s it look?” Quattro asked. I winced at the sound. I wasn’t really worried that a loud noise would somehow shake the rock enough to make anything break, but somepony had already gone missing and I was starting to get worried. I held the light up to check ahead, hoping I’d see the end of the tunnel. I thought I saw something, and switched my light off. Just like I’d thought, there was something shining ahead.

“There’s light that way,” I said.

“Lantern, or a way out?” Quattro asked.

“We’ve been going down, so it can’t lead outside,” I said. “It might be the missing miner.”

I turned my light back on so I could watch where I was putting my hooves and crept forward. The passage opened up a little, and it was clear he’d been working more here. There was a discarded pick, the steel walls were mostly clear of rock, and most importantly, there was what he’d found.

I heard Quattro stop behind me. “Found something?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at the open steel door, and the clear corridor beyond it. “You could say that.” The light I’d seen had been coming from around the edge of the door. There were still long, flickering lights working on the other side, despite how many decades had passed since they’d been installed.

Quattro stepped up beside me, totally ignoring the warning I’d given her about staying back. I couldn’t blame her.

“Look at this…” she whispered, trotting up to the door and touching it. “This is a pressure door. It must have been closed when all this happened and kept the lava out.”

“He must have gone inside,” I said.

“Is it safe?” Quattro asked. “You’re the tunnel expert.”

I used the shovel Quattro had given me and pushed the door open. I felt some strange resistance and a rock the size of my head swung down on a rope made of torn up prison uniforms twisted and woven together, swinging right through where we’d have been standing.

“That could have broken a few bones,” Quattro said. “How’d you know it was there?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t, but I didn’t want to admit that.

Quattro tilted her head and nodded, letting me play it off as being cool. “It’s definitely something a miner set up. I don’t think he wants to be found, Chamomile.”

“Well he’s gonna whether he likes it or not!” I tore the booby trap down and trotted inside. It was much nicer on the other side. The air was cooler, the floor was flat, and it was a real hallway instead of a spidery tunnel through black rock.

“Hold on,” Quattro said. “Look at this.”

She was looking up at the wall. I followed her gaze to where it bulged out, black rock just barely visible. The edges of the steel were thick with the bright, frosty nanometal, like a fungus growing from the other side.

“I guess the lava almost made it through,” I said.

“I think the nanometal is holding this wall together,” Quattro said. “It’s like using softer cloud to weld sheets of cumulonimbulated cloud in place.”

“It’s held up for a couple centuries, so it should be okay as long as we don’t-- what are you doing?”

Quattro rapped her hoof against the wall panels, then started digging at the join between two of them.

“Give me a hoof with this,” she said. “You should be able to get under the edge with that shovel.”

I looked at the tool, looked at her, looked at the wall that probably had molten rock on the other side, and took a long moment to think carefully about my next step here. “And why do we want to do that?”

“Because I just realized that the door we saw, and these panels, they’re practically identical to how cloudships are built!” Quattro said. “The red border on this panel means there should be emergency supplies behind it!”

“Or lava,” I reminded her.

“If there’s lava, I’ll buy you a drink,” she promised.

I sighed and jammed the shovel in at the corner, then pushed, trying to pry the panel free. It didn’t take much once it started moving. The outlined section popped off, and Quattro guided it to the ground.

“First-aid kit,” she said with approval, grabbing the sealed box. She looked it over, brushed off some dust, and opened it. “Looks like the healing potions are still good. You want one? You got worked over pretty good by the guards.”

“I’m fine,” I said, not feeling bad enough to risk drinking something almost two hundred years old that we found inside a wall. I was also half-sure she just wanted me to drink one first so she could see if the others had turned to poison or something.

She shrugged and tore some of the wiring out of the wall, pausing once she’d ripped out a length of it to look at the ends.

“Weird…” she muttered, and I had to agree. It wasn’t proper copper wiring at all, but a rope of some kind of clear, glassy stuff. Quattro quickly fashioned it into a sling for the first-aid kit, wearing it like a shoulder bag.

“So is this some kind of cloudship?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe. It could have crashed here during the war. It’s not exactly the same as the ones I’ve been on, and it would have to be impossibly large. Practically the size of a small city.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Neither have I, but it’d explain why the Enclave is so interested in digging this place out of the rock,” Quattro said. “Let’s try and find that prisoner. If this part of the ship, or whatever it is, is undamaged, they might have found something we can use.”

I nodded and we carefully walked through the corridor. The flickering lights and near-silence gave the place a weird aura. It was creepy, and I found myself trying to step silently. And failing, because I’m not good at being quiet, but my instincts still told me to at least try and be quiet.

“Hey, is somepony there?” somepony called out. “Help!”

“Sounds like we found our missing comrade,” Quattro whispered.

I followed the sound through another one of those bulky pressure doors, walking inside and looking around. There were metal tubes, each of them big enough for a pony, lined up in long rows, like some kind of warehouse.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Over here!”

I followed the sound around the corner and to one of the tubes. A pony waved frantically at me from a small window set into the tube. He looked exhausted and filthy, covered in soot and sweat.

“I hid in here and I can’t get it back open!” he said. “Get me out of here fast before it comes back!”

“Before what comes back?” I looked around for a way to open the tube. “And what is this thing?”

“Looks like all of these used to have ponies in them,” Quattro said. She tapped on the window of another tube, and I glanced over. A skeleton was trapped inside, the skull pressed against the glass.

“Why?” I asked.

“Maybe it was some kind of emergency shelter?” Quattro guessed. “I don’t think they worked.”

“Figure it out later!” the pony in the tube snapped. “That thing is gonna be patrolling through here any second!”

“I heard you the first time,” I said, wedging the blade of my shovel into the seam between the tube’s front and back, which I assumed was some kind of door. I grunted and pushed, and the shovel snapped right in half.

“What’s that sound?” the prisoner asked.

“I just broke the shovel,” I sighed. “Hold on, I can find a crowbar or something--”

“Not that! There was-- watch out!”

I looked the way he was pointing. A massive shape, even bigger than me, turned the corner. It had four wheeled legs around a central body, like some kind of massive steel spider. It pointed a long-barreled, blade-tipped weapon at me, and I could tell it was some kind of instantly deadly energy weapon, something that would turn me into a pile of goo with one shot, and it had the drop on me and a perfectly clear shot.

I winced.

There was a hiss, a clicking sound, and I didn’t die. I opened one eye to look. The robot was still menacing me with the weapon, but now that I was looking more closely at it, I could see it was crooked and sparks were coming from broken, trailing wires.

“Looks like it’s pretty banged up already,” Quattro said.

It twisted around with a jerking, uneven motion and produced a series of short launch tubes pointed right at us.

“Stay in there, you’re safer than if you were out here!” I shouted, bolting away. I didn’t stay to watch, but I heard the deep thump of something deadly being launched at me and the blast of heat and shrapnel when it exploded a few paces behind me. I cursed -- metal splinters were the worst, and they were in my back where I’d have trouble pulling them out.

Quattro beat me to the end of the aisle, ducking to one side of the row of tanks. I went the other way, taking cover there where the machine couldn’t see us.

“Any ideas?” she asked.

“One,” I said. “It’s a bad idea though.”

“Better than having no ideas,” she said.

“Can you keep it busy for a few seconds?” I asked.

Quattro adjusted her sunglasses, and I still don’t know why she was wearing them inside, in bad lighting, at night. Or why the guards had let her keep them. She ducked back into the aisle and started flitting from one side to the other, and she had to be going three times faster than any normal pegasus. The machine was clearly struggling to keep up and aim at her.

I ran down the next row, keeping low. I had to get around to the robot’s back side. I peeked around the end, and saw it facing the other way, still trying to track Quattro. It was time to put my brilliant plan into action.

I jumped on the robot, grabbing the broken weapon and pulling.

“If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s breaking stuff!” I shouted. The whole weapon mount tore free, and I held the bent plasma caster like a harpoon. The robot turned to me, and I saw the launcher start to take aim.

I gave it one of those primal screams and jammed the harpoon right into the barrel of the rocket launcher. A huge amount of smoke burst out of the tubes, and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air. Briefly. Then I hit a wall. Briefly. Then I was out into the corridor on the other side of the wall.

“Ow,” I groaned, from where I’d landed.

“I think you got it,” Quattro said. She trotted up to me and offered me a hoof up. I winced when she grabbed my fetlock, and she caught my expression, looking at my leg.

“It’s just a cut,” I said. It was bad enough to need stitches, but it wasn’t my first time needing stitches.

She looked back at the wall I’d gone through. I could see the nanometal from here. I could practically read her mind.

“It’s just a normal cut,” I said again. “I’m fine.”

“Fine, but tell me if you feel anything weird,” Quattro said, giving me a healing potion. I chugged it down and felt most of the bruises and cuts from my trip through the wall heal over. The ancient healing potion had an oddly sweet taste to it, without the acrid medicinal taste I was used to from modern healing potions.

“Let’s go rescue the guy we came here to rescue,” I said.

The pod door was a little dented, but that only made it easier to open. I grabbed a hunk of the robot’s wreckage, a bent piece of the hull, and used it to break the seal. The door hissed open, and the miner stumbled out.

“You two ponies are crazy,” he said. “Do you have any idea what that thing was?”

I shrugged. “Some kind of security robot. Now let’s get out of here.”

“Not yet,” the miner said. “I found it!”

“Found what?” I asked.

“I found what they’ve been digging for!” the miner smirked and held up a slightly tarnished golden card. “And I’ve got the key to it right here. Once we give them what they’ve been looking for, they’ll let us all go!”

“Or they’ll line us up against the wall and shoot us,” Quattro countered. She grabbed for the golden card, and the miner pulled it back before she could get her hooves on it.

“You’ll see,” the miner said. “Maybe they’ll line you up, but when I show them what I found, they’ll reward me! I’ll be free, rich, and you’ll still be in prison!”

He bolted.

I took a step, about to go after him, and saw Quattro just watching him go. She held out a hoof to stop me.

“Let him get a head start,” she said.

“What?” I frowned. “Is this some kind of weird thing where you want to make it more of a challenge to hunt him down?”

Quattro gave me a look. “Chamomile, where do you think he’s going?”

“...Towards the treasure he found?”

“And where do we want to go?”

“...Towards the treasure he found?”

“So what should we do?”

“Follow him towards the treasure?”

“I knew you’d get there eventually,” Quattro said. She patted me carefully on the back, probably worried she’d open up a stab wound. “Now come on!”

She went after him, much slower than I’d seen her while she was keeping the robot from tracking her movement. The stallion ran down the corridor, and we went after him, but sort of in a slow, stealthy way.

The miner finally stopped in front of a huge door, twice the size of the others. There were alcoves to both sides, and one still held the broken-down remains of one of those four-legged robots like I’d killed a minute ago.

“He must have tripped the security here and it chased him into that tube room,” Quattro whispered.

“Should we…?” I asked.

Quattro nodded. I walked up behind the stallion. He’d pulled out the golden card and was about to swipe it through a slot.

“Hey,” I said, startling him. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed us following him. His hoof jerked, and the card hit a button instead of going into the slot. A red light started flashing.

“Oh buck,” he whispered.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

A panel opened on the ceiling, and a garbled voice played, so distorted I couldn’t make out any words. The stallion dropped the card as a turret appeared through the open panel, the weapon focusing on him. He scrambled for it, but just before he could grab it a green plasma bolt slammed into him, and he just sort of fell apart, melting into green goo before he even had time to scream.

The garbled voice started speaking again.

“Use the card!” Quattro shouted.

I was already scrambling for it, jamming it into the slot. The blinking red light stopped, then turned green.

The turret paused and retracted, the garbled voice saying something in a friendlier tone before going silent.

The door hissed, steam releasing from hydraulics that hadn’t moved in centuries. I stepped back, and it rolled open, sliding into the wall.

“You think that’s what they’re after?” I asked, looking inside.

I wasn’t even sure what we were looking at. Encased in a sphere of glowing red magic the size of a house was what looked like a swirling tornado of silvery metal, like a swarm of angry insects combined with a storm. There was a primal force to it, like looking into the heart of a massive flame, only barely held back by that shield of magic around it.

Quattro nudged me and pointed. Down at the base of the sphere, an armored unicorn stood, totally unmoving, their horn glowing with that same crimson aura. The armor was unlike anything I'd seen before. It was made of coin-sized hexagons of blue and silver metal linked to each other like building blocks, making flat sheets and blocks forming the plates of the armor. I couldn't see an inch of skin of the pony underneath, if there even was one. Maybe it was just a pony-shaped machine.

“I think this means trouble,” she said.

Chapter 4 - Sympathy for the Devil

“So here’s what we should do,” Quattro said. “We go back, tell them we found a cave-in, and we tried digging it out but he’s probably under the rubble. We’re probably lucky he got melted by plasma. If we had to take his body back with energy weapon burns all over it I don’t know how we’d explain it.”

“You don’t think they’re going to find this place anyway?” I asked. “They’ll notice there’s not a 'big pile of rubble.'”

“Keep it secure…”

“Good point. We’ll try and salvage some explosives from the wrecked security robots,” Quattro said. “We can set them off back in the tunnel and close it up. We’ll dig it out once they’ve stopped looking.”

I shook my head quickly. “That’s a terrible plan. What if there’s lava on the other side of the wall there?”

“Contain the plague…”

“What plague?” I asked.

“Huh?” Quattro looked up.

“I thought you said something about-- never mind.” I scratched my right forehoof. It was itchy. The whole situation was starting to stress me out. “Anyway, I don’t know anything about explosives. Do you?”

“I’m a very dangerous rebel and troublemaker,” Quattro said.

“...Is that a yes?”

“It’s not a no.”

“Protect Equestria.”

I was looking right at Quattro that time so I knew it wasn’t her. “Okay, you had to have heard the voice that time.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She glanced at my hoof. I could sense her looking even with the sunglasses.

“I’m fine,” I said, for what felt like the tenth time. “It’s not like I’ve never busted through a wall before.”

She tilted her head. “Most ponies, I wouldn’t believe that.”

“Stop right there, criminal scum!”

“I heard that voice,” Quattro said, turning to look at our new guests. Ponies walked into the room from the massive door we’d opened, soldiers in armor and looking very unhappy. I wasn’t sure if they were just professionally unhappy like they had resting bitch face, or if I’d done something personally to upset them.

“It’s not the same voice,” I said.

The guards pointed weapons at us, and I backed up, not particularly wanting to be lasered or plasmaed today.

“What did you idiot prisoners do? There are alarms going off all over the command section of the ship! Consoles that haven’t turned on in centuries are coming to life!” A pony in a much better tailored and less armored uniform trotted in, and my jaw fell. She was a pale grey unicorn with navy-blue hair still pulled back into the same complicated braid I’d seen every day as a foal.

“Mom?”

She turned to look at me, and her expression went from ‘annoyed and about to yell’ all the way to honest and open surprise.

“Chamomile?” Mom asked. She shoved a guard aside who was pointing a gun at me. “Oh knock it off, she’s no danger to anypony. Chamomile, darling, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me -- you’re the one who found this?”

I nodded mutely.

She smiled warmly and trotted up to me, pulling me into a hug.

“You have no idea how proud I am. I’ve had ponies looking for this room for months, and you found it on your first day!” Mom let go and stepped back, looking me over and sniffing lightly at the air. “You look and smell like you could use a warm shower.”

“It’s been sort of a rough day,” I admitted.

“You’ve done exceptionally well,” Mom said. “Your father and I used to fight all the time about… well, it’s not important. That’s the past. What matters is the future, and you’ve just found something vital to the future of the Enclave!”

She turned and walked up to it, putting her hoof on the magical barrier. Her horn lit up with pale yellow-orange light for a moment and she stepped back, shaking her head.

“A very impressive barrier spell,” she muttered. “It looks like it covers the caster as well…” Mom cast another spell, then nodded to herself. “Well, it’s enough that we found it. That’s reason to celebrate!”

The armored ponies relaxed a little. The tension had sort of broken when Mom hugged me, but now they were barely paying attention to me. I guess they believed her when she said I wasn’t a threat.

“You’re in charge here, aren’t you?” I asked.

Mom turned to me and nodded. “I have command over the camp. Between being a unicorn and my particular expertise, the Enclave military has treated me very well. I always said you should’ve signed up for it, but your father hated the idea.”

“Excuse me, Ma’am?” Quattro asked, raising her hoof. “This is really a touching reunion and all, but--”

“It is a touching reunion,” Mom said, her expression straining slightly. “Unlike my daughter, I don’t know or trust you, prisoner.”

“She’s not a bad pony, Mom,” I put in quickly.

“And a lucky one, since she has my precious little girl vouching for her. Because I am in a good mood, you won’t be punished, but you will be taken back to your cell.” She nodded to two of the armored ponies, and they grabbed Quattro, escorting her in that gentle way you escort somepony you’re more than willing to shoot in the back. “I’m sure you were going to be given some sort of reward for this duty, consider it doubled.”

“Thanks?” Quattro shrugged. As she was marched off, she shot me a look. I couldn’t quite read it, but I still got at least some of the idea. She didn’t like my mom, she didn’t trust my mom, and she was worried about me. I was worried about me, too.
I watched her go, then waited until Mom finished casting a few more spells. I’d learned at an early age to tell when she was in a mental place where I could talk to her without being annoying.

“Is this why you wanted Dad here?” I asked.

“He was always exceptional at finding hidden chambers,” she confirmed. “He and I used to make a great team, until we didn’t.”

She turned away from the sphere and motioned to a guard. They produced a clipboard, and Mom jotted down a few notes before giving it back to them.

“We’re done here for now,” she said. “Have this passage cleared, and don’t let any prisoners into this room without my permission.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the guard said, saluting.

“Come along, Chamomile.” Mom said. “I wasn’t kidding about you needing a shower. I can’t have a daughter of mine in that sorry state.”

Warm water and soap covered up a lot of sins. I was just about ready to be polite to all the guards and forget about being beaten unconscious once or twice.

The command section was a lot nicer than the camp I’d walked through outside, and the cells weren’t exactly luxury accommodations either. I hadn’t been in the prison itself long enough to even learn where the showers were, but I was absolutely sure they weren’t as nice as this. And I was only able to use them because my mom was in charge.

On the one wing, that was a pretty raw deal for the ponies still in prison for whatever crimes they’d done. On the other wing, it wasn’t my business. I’d been dragged here against my will too, and I wasn’t going to refuse a little comfort just to prove a point.

I got out of the shower and used a clean, warm towel to dry my coat. It felt great, except for my itchy hoof. I glanced at the closed door and then looked at my hoof. The healing potion had sealed the cut, and I didn’t see anything really strange. Maybe the itching was just from downing a potion that had been stuck in a wall for centuries? It couldn’t possibly still work the same way it used to, right? Even beer went bad eventually, and that didn’t even have any magic in it.

I stepped out of the bathroom and into the attached bedroom. It reminded me of when I’d been a filly and we’d gone on trips in cloudships together as a family. Steel floors, everything slightly aged and worn, and that sense of subtle vibration. Before I could think about it too much, something was levitated up in front of my face.

“Here, put this on,” my Mom said.

I took what she was holding in her magical grip and unfolded it.

“This is a military uniform,” I said.

“We don’t exactly have much civilian clothing on hoof,” Mom explained. “I’m just glad we had at least one thing that would fit you. Go ahead and put it on.”

I shrugged and slipped the uniform on, struggling with the buttons. They closed themselves after a moment, Mom taking it upon herself to make sure I did them correctly. She stepped up to me and led me over to a mirror.

“Look at that,” she said, motioning to my reflection. I was clean, wearing something that was brand-new, and I have to admit it felt good. “Now you look like a respectable member of society.”

“Hah, yeah,” I said. It didn’t feel right, being in the uniform. I don’t know how to explain it - it was the kind of feeling you might get eating candy stolen from a foal. Sure, it’s sweet and you’re enjoying it, but you know its at somepony else’s expense.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions about what’s going on around here,” Mom said.

“What was that thing I found?” I asked. I had way more questions than that, but I had a feeling she wanted to talk about her work.

Mom smiled and stepped away to start pacing around the bedroom.

“Before we discuss that, I need to tell you about this place. Have you guessed what it is yet?”

“Some kind of cloudship?” I guessed. “But it would be the size of a city.”

She nodded, pleased. “You’re correct! That’s exactly what it was. They were called the Exodus Arks, and they were created as an alternative to Stable-Tec’s designs. You remember learning about those, right?”

I nodded slowly. “They were big bunkers, right? Built underground and just waiting until things were safe.”

“Correct,” Mom said. “It’s absurd, of course. The surface isn’t survivable, and it’s been two hundred years. But here, above the clouds, the Enclave continues to thrive. The designers of the Exodus Arks correctly foresaw that the ground wouldn’t be safe, but also anticipated the tragedy of Cloudsdale. Any solution would require the ability to relocate. The Arks could wait out the fighting where it was safe, then search for an area that escaped the worst of the war and settle there, bringing civilization with them.”

“That could still take a while. What if there wasn’t anywhere safe?”

“Another good question.” Mom nodded. “That’s where your discovery comes in. Each of the Arks was equipped with the most powerful construction and restoration technology ever developed. And you’ve seen it.”

“The big…” I struggled to describe what I’d seen. “Swarm?”

She nodded. “They’re called SIVA Cells. 'Self-Improving Versatile Assemblers.' Near the end of the war, ponies were experimenting with smaller and smaller machines. Robronco developed some prototypes, but they never made it to market. The SIVA Cells are a parallel development by BrayTech. Self-replicating self-organizing machines so small you need a microscope to see them! You’ve already seen some of what they can do.”

I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head.

“The nanometal,” Mom explained patiently. “It’s wild SIVA. Useless without the ability to program it.”

“It was holding the walls together in the intact section,” I recalled.

“Exactly! Without a template and orders, it’s growing wild, trying to effect repairs without knowing how to do it, like a pony with every tool in the toolbox and no idea how to use them properly.”

“Huh…”

“Once we’re able to unlock its power, we can use it the way it was intended,” Mom said. “We’ll raise up cities in mere days, scrub the deadly radiation and disease from the surface and make it somewhere ponies can actually live. We could grow as much food as we want -- more than that, we could grow medicine, clothing, anything we wanted!”

“That does sound pretty great,” I admitted. “Especially if we could reclaim the surface.”

Mom nodded. “It’s terrible how much was lost during the war. All those mutants and monsters down there have turned it into a nightmare. I’ve seen reports from scouting teams -- there are monsters that can tear right through power armor, undead horrors, radiation storms… if half of what I’ve heard is true, the surface just needs to be wiped clean so we can start over again.”

Something about it didn’t seem right. “If it’s so useful… why is it sealed up like that?”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll find some logs explaining it,” Mom said. “Maybe they were trying to repair the Exodus Ark and something went wrong. We’ll have plenty of time to do the archaeology after taking care of the ponies that are alive right now. That’s something your father never really understood.”

She touched my chin, giving me a sad look.

“I know,” I said quietly. He’d always cared more about garbage he dug out of the ground, decoding broken terminals, and the lives of ponies who died before the war than he’d ever cared about me. Maybe it had been the same for her.

I felt her aura twist my mane into something more ordered.

“Let me show you around a bit now that you don’t look like a prison escapee,” she said.

“Isn’t that exactly what I am?” I joked.

She laughed. There was a sharp, quick knock on the door before it opened.

“Ma’am, we’ve got a situation!” said the pony outside as he stepped in, throwing a salute towards my Mom. I vaguely recognized him from somewhere. “The patients in lockdown are-- what is she doing here?”

“Hm?” My mom raised an eyebrow.

“Ma’am, that’s a violent prisoner. She assaulted me--”

“That’s where I know you from!” I interrupted. “You’re the jerk I punched out! Wow, did I give you a black eye even though you were wearing a helmet? No wonder your commander thought it was funny.”

He sputtered, turning away and trying to hide the bruise.

Mom cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Rain Shadow, I see you’ve met my daughter. Now what’s this about the patients in lockdown?”

“Some of them are rioting,” he reported. “The medics asked me to inform you at once.”

“Of course they did,” she sighed. “Both of you come with me, and try to avoid punching him out again, Chamomile.”

Mom didn’t run, but she walked quickly, making it hard to keep up with her. She was going just a little too quickly for me to walk alongside her, and too slowly for me to run without going right past her, forcing me to sort of walk a bit, run a few steps to keep up, over and over again.

“How many are rioting?” Mom asked.

“Only a few, but they caught the doctors by surprise,” Rain Shadow said. “I was getting treated for my… injury, and had to help fight them off.”

“It must be because we uncovered the core,” Mom muttered.

“What patients are we talking about?” I asked.

“The nanometal is dangerous,” Mom said. “It can infect a pony -- the SIVA cells it’s made out of are small enough to get into the body, and they replicate like bacteria.”

“We’ve been trying to treat the miners that get infected,” Rain Shadow added. I was a little surprised he’d offer useful information. He apparently took my look of surprise the wrong way. “We’d cure them if we could. They’re in pain and we want to help.”

“All we’ve found that works is keeping them sedated,” Mom said.

I frowned and tried to ignore the itching in my leg. “I don’t get it. If the SIVA Cells are supposed to fix things, why would they infect and hurt ponies?”

“They’re trying to fix things. The problem is ponies aren’t a broken wall panel or leaking pipe.” Mom took a turn and I heard ponies yelling ahead of us. “Every time you use your muscles, they tear a little. Then they heal, stronger than before. That’s how exercise works. The SIVA Cells see your muscle get worn down and try to fix it. But they don’t know what they’re doing. They can’t build tissue and protein, they build machines. They’re jamming the wrong parts into ponies and making things worse.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant…”

“It’s not.”

Ahead of us, I spotted the pony who’d interviewed me. The mare saluted as we approached, glancing at me but maintaining her composure.

“We’ve got the infected contained in the ship’s medical bay,” the mare said. “One of the medics is still trapped in there with them.”

“Thank you, Miss Sheen. We need to get the medic out,” Mom said.

I looked past them. There was a window into the medbay, with a mostly-closed steel shutter over it. I could just see inside through the gaps in the steel shade. Somepony, or something, was staggering around, twitching. I saw the glint of wet metal when it moved. Suddenly, it twisted towards the window, slamming against it. The window cracked, and the security shutter closed the rest of the way, cutting off my view.

“Why are they acting like that?” I asked, taking a half step back.

“The infection is extremely painful,” Emerald Sheen explained. “One reason we keep them sedated is that it gets bad enough that the infected… go insane.”

“Fun,” I muttered.

“After a few days without sleep, in constant pain, I don’t know how well I’d hold up either,” Emerald said. “Knocking them out is the best we can do.”

“If they’re getting resistant to the drugs we have available, we don’t have much choice,” Mom said. “You’re authorized to use lethal force to clear the room. If they could just have held out until we could get the SIVA core working properly…”

She shook her head, frustrated.

Rain Shadow shrugged. “You’re the only one armed, Sheen. Can you deal with this?”

Emerald Sheen frowned and nodded. “Please step back from the door, Ma’am. They’re probably going to rush it the moment I open it.”

Mom motioned for us to pull back a few paces down the hallway. Emerald waited until we were clear, then kicked a red button on the wall, and the door popped open with a hiss. She immediately fired into the space, red beams cutting through the air and into something on the other side. She fired a few more times, then stepped in and I heard more shots before she called out.

“Clear!” Emerald shouted.

Mom motioned to Rain Shadow, and he nodded seriously and took point, leading us into the medical bay. The place was a mess, and four ponies were lying on the floor in various states of having been shot to death with lasers. I stopped to look more closely at the nearest one. He looked drawn and thin, and half of his face was covered in metallic plates that looked almost like an insect’s exoskeleton made of silver.

“Be careful,” Rain Shadow warned, watching the other bodies. “They’re tougher than they look. Sometimes even kill shots just stun them until they can recover.”

“I found the medic,” Emerald reported, helping a pony in a lab coat out of a locker. “They don’t seem injured.”

“That’s one good thing, at least,” Mom muttered.

I saw movement to her side, right in her blind spot. A pony lunged out of the shadows, half her body a withered mess like tangled steel cables and crumpled foil. I shoved Mom aside and threw a punch that caught the infected pony on the jaw. They collapsed, and I stepped back and winced, looking at my hoof.

“Are you alright?” Mom asked. She looked at my leg. “You cracked your hoof!”

“It’ll be okay,” I lied. I'd done it before and I knew it was going to sting for days.

“We’ll get that wrapped up right away,” Mom promised. “Miss Sheen?” She pointed at the fallen infected pony, who was starting to stir again.

Emerald motioned for us to step aside, and the shaken medic started bandaging my hoof. I was looking away when the flash of red light came, but the sound the infected mare made, the howl of pain, made me wince.

Mom didn’t even seem to notice. She patted my shoulder.

“You saved me, Chamomile. I’d say that means you deserve a nice meal tonight, hm? You, your father and I haven’t sat down together as a family in years. It’ll be a nice change.”

She smiled. The laser light flashed again, and the howl stopped, cutting off in a gurgle.

I just nodded, my throat dry. I didn't feel very hungry.

Back home in Cirrustead, Dad and I hadn’t really had a proper dining room. I mean, we’d had one in theory -- there was a room with a big table and chairs and stuff, but I don’t think we ever had a meal there. There was always too much work to do, too many things for him to examine, and I’d sort of had to fend for myself anyway most of the time. I could count on my hooves the number of times we’d actually eaten together as a family.

Maybe that explained why I felt so uncomfortable sitting down across from him. That or the two soldiers standing behind each of us.

“Oh good, you’re on house arrest instead of being thrown in a cell,” he said, not sounding very happy about any of this. “I take it your mother finally noticed she’d gotten you arrested at the same time she sent for me.”

“Don’t be so rude,” Mom said, settling down at the head of the table. “I didn’t think to give my subordinates explicit orders about Chamomile, and they didn’t know how important she was. If it was really important to you, you could have mentioned her instead of sulking in your cabin.”

“Please don’t fight,” I said quietly.

Mom nodded. “Of course, dear. I was hoping to have a pleasant dinner and discuss tomorrow’s plans with your father.”

I always knew the military ate better than the rest of us -- it was common knowledge, and a big recruiting tactic they used. They needed the resources to keep us safe, and you were welcome to a taste if you were willing to get involved and join up. I just wasn’t aware of how big the gap was.

Platters of food were put down in front of us, the servers saluting after they’d filled our wineglasses. There were cloudapple tarts, a salad that was more vibrantly green than anything I’d ever seen, and what I think were actual potatoes - like the kind that grow in dirt! It was enough to feed us for a week. My appetite returned with a vengeance.

“I told you already,” Dad cut in, totally ignoring the food. “Give up on finding the core. It probably fell into the volcano, and even if it didn’t, it’s buried in gigatons of unstable rock. You could spend the next two hundred years trying to find it.”

Mom smiled. “I don’t need to spend any time at all finding it,” she said.

“Because you expect me to somehow divine its location,” Dad sighed. “I’m a good archaeologist, but I’m not--”

“I don’t need you to find it, because Chamomile already did,” Mom corrected. She gave me a proud look. “While you were complaining about being dragged away from your piles of garbage, she took the initiative and found the SIVA core, intact.”

“She did what?!” Dad spat, shocked.

I looked up from stuffing my face. I wasn’t going to let the food go to waste just because Mom and Dad were talking.

“I fought a robot, too!” I said proudly.

Mom giggled. “Yes you did, honey. She destroyed a sentry bot with her bare hooves. I wish Colonel Ohm’s soldiers were as talented.”

I could feel the glare from the soldiers standing behind me.

“Talented at breaking things,” Dad muttered.

“He’s just jealous,” Mom said. “He was holding out for a better deal and you went and did his job all on your own.”

“I wasn’t holding out for a better deal,” Dad retorted. “I was refusing to help with your insane plan. You’ve always been like this - you don’t respect how dangerous these things can be! Two hundred years ago we almost went extinct because ponies decided it was a grand idea to use magic and technology they barely understood in the pursuit of killing each other as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

“The war is over. What’s important now is rebuilding,” Mom countered. “What happened was terrible, but we can’t fix it with sticks and stones. We need the right tool for the job, and SIVA is that tool.”

Dad snorted. “If it’s so grand and powerful, maybe you can explain why the Exodus Blue crashed?”

“You say that like I don’t already know!” Mom rolled her eyes. “Evidence suggests that the ship was passing over the volcano on its way out to a holding pattern over the ocean, and the near-simultaneous detonation of megaspells across Equestria caused a thaumatic shockwave that set off a volcanic eruption. Pure bad luck.”

“So you did do at least a tiny bit of research. I’m impressed. Usually you just dig something up and push the biggest button you can find to see what it does.”

“This is why it’s so difficult to work with you,” Mom sighed. “You’re controlled by your fears. That’s why you’d rather collect bottlecaps and empty tins than put your talents to use. When the military contacted us about special projects, you turned and ran. Did you even tell Chamomile?”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“Your father was the first pick for this job,” Mom said. “He turned it down. I didn’t. And instead of supporting me, he ran off to some backwater cloud-berg with you.”

“I did what was best for everypony. There are things too dangerous to use. There are things that should stay buried. This is one of them! Or at least it was until some idiot kicked over the wrong rock.”

Something inside me just snapped. Maybe it was the growing soreness in my foreleg, or the headache I was developing from listening to Dad complain. I stood up and slammed my hoof down on the steel table hard enough to dent it.

“I found it while I was looking for a pony that went missing!” I snapped. “At least I was doing something instead of sitting on my flank and complaining!”

Dad glared at me. “Chamomile--”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “I already know what you’re going to say. You’re going to call me an idiot and tell me I should have just kept my head down and not made any noise! Why? So you can stare at old trash and write little notes about how to tell if a bottlecap was made in Appleoosa or Phillydelphia?”

“That’s-- it’s important to--” Dad sputtered.

“Nopony cares except you! They’re just holes in the ground now anyway! What Mom is doing might actually help ponies! If half of what she says about SIVA Cells is true, it could save the world!”

Dad was quiet for a long moment, then he stood up. “Something I’ve tried to teach you -- and failed -- is that you have to learn from the past to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.”

Mom shook her head, obviously unhappy. “Take him back to his cell,” she ordered, and a soldier stepped away from his post to tap Dad on the shoulder.

Dad gave me one last look as he was escorted out.

“I was also trying to tell you that you put your hoof in the bowl of gravy,” he said.

I looked down and moved my bandaged hoof, blushing.

“Well that didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, Chamomile. Your father is just difficult sometimes. I’m sure he does care about you, in his own way.”

I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn’t matter.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Mom said. “I doubt that’s your father apologizing, but… ah, Colonel Ohm. How is the dig site?”

The armored pony gave a polite nod, pointedly not saluting. “We cleared the passage to the intact part of the ship. Nopony needs to worry about squeezing through or getting cut by nanometal spurs on the way there.”

“Excellent,” Mom said.

“I’ve suspended all other digging operations as per your orders,” Ohm continued.

Mom glanced at me and shrugged. “No point in mining when we found what we want already. The last thing we need is some prisoner making a stupid mistake and flooding the section with molten lava.”

I nodded. That made sense.

“We should be able to get along with about a quarter,” Ohm said. “If we’re not doing exploratory digging, we just need maintenance and manual labor for the existing tunnels.” He pulled some paperwork out of his armor. Mom grabbed it and glanced over it. “I recommend a reduction in the workforce size to conserve resources.”

“A… reduction?” I asked quietly.

“Fewer ponies to guard, fewer mouths to feed,” Ohm said.

“That’s fine,” Mom said. I watched her sign the orders. “Get rid of the less productive ones first, as an example to the rest.”

“Of course, Ma’am,” Ohm nodded. “We’ll wait until after the dinner service.”

“Hm? Why?” Mom frowned.

“To give them one last meal,” Ohm said.

“It’s a waste of food,” Mom said. “Have it done immediately.”

He nodded, looking equal parts glum and angry, and left. Mom turned to me and scoffed.

“Stallions get so emotional,” she said. “So how’s your dinner?”

Chapter 5 - Two Minutes to Midnight

Despite all the ponies crowded into it, the room was big enough that it shouldn’t have felt crowded. It was big enough to park a cloudship in, with raised platforms and catwalks making the best use of the space along the walls. Mom had ordered spotlights brought in, and they surrounded the roiling orb of floating steel specks on all sides.

Every time I looked at it, my right forehoof ached under the bandages. I tried not to think too hard about that.

“Explain it to me again,” Mom said, sighing. She took off her thin glasses to rub the bridge of her snout, annoyed.

“You should know more about this than I do,” Dad said. “You’re a unicorn, after all. Isn’t magic your area of expertise?”

“Red,” Mom said, her tone getting an edge to it.

Dad held up his hooves in resignation and started walking. “Fine, if I must. The SIVA Core is in a magical shield. That shield is being projected from here.”

He pointed to the armored form sitting directly underneath the core. It didn’t look like any powered armor I’d seen before. The Enclave used a few different models, and I’d seen parts of armor that had been built for earth ponies before the war that were massive and heavy, but this was different. It was sleek and looked like it was made of smaller, interlocking plates. If it wasn’t for the horn I’d almost want to guess it was some kind of zebra armor, with how alien it looked.

“How can there be a pony here still casting a spell?” I asked.

Mom tilted her head towards me, obviously wondering the same thing.

“I don’t think there is a pony still here,” Dad said. “I’m pretty sure whoever was wearing the armor died a long time ago.”

“But…”

“The suit is acting like a repeater and amplifier. No, hold on, let me try and think of a metaphor,” Dad sighed. “It’s always easier to explain things with metaphors. Imagine building a room designed to create echoes, and yelling as loud as you can, so it just bounces around and around long after you’ve stopped yelling. This suit of armor is like that, and like having a microphone and speaker in the room that ‘top up’ the echo with mechanical assistance. I think. I can’t examine it directly because the pony was smart enough to shield themselves, too.”

He turned and kicked the armor, and the crimson-colored shield brightened where his hoof struck it.

“So how do we remove the shield?” Mom asked.

“Well, the armor has been burning through its fusion core reinforcing the shield. If you wait long enough, it should eventually fail on its own.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Another forty or fifty years, give or take.”

“I don’t have that long and neither do you. I need real options and you know it, or you wouldn’t have started with such a stupid suggestion.”

“You could try shooting everything,” Dad said sourly. “That’s probably what you were going to try anyway, right?”

Mom shrugged but didn’t deny it. “I’d prefer not to. It might damage the core.”

“Then all you need to do is find the captain’s name and command code,” Dad said. “If you have the correct prefix code you should be able to control the armor remotely.”

“That’s dumb. Why would they have that function?” I asked. “Isn’t that super dangerous if your enemy gets your codes?”

“Ponies were more trusting back then,” Dad said. “And if I’m wrong and there’s still a pony inside that armor, they could override it. But they’d also be two hundred years old, so they’d either be an alicorn or some kind of horrible ghoul.”

“Cool!”

“No, Chamomile,” Dad sighed. “Horrible ghouls aren’t cool.”

“So all we need is the command code,” Mom said. “Good. That isn’t an insoluble problem. This section of the ship is largely intact, to the point it still has power. There should be working terminals, if you can get into the computer core you can find the command codes.”

“These aren’t Stable-Tec terminals,” Dad countered. “You need an expert to slice into them! They can’t just be taken down by a few overflow commands--”

“And thankfully we have you as an expert,” Mom said. “I’m sure Chamomile would be very disappointed if you didn’t put in at least as much effort as she did, hm? I’m sure it won’t take you too long to find a working terminal.”

Dad sputtered. “I’m not--”

Mom turned to two soldiers I recognized. “Rain Shadow, Emerald Sheen? Go with them.”

“Them?” Dad asked.

“Chamomile is apparently quite lucky. I’m sure she’ll be an asset, or at least a reminder of how important finding that command code is to your future. My soldiers will make sure you get back safely, since things can be so… dangerous.”

“This is why I broke it off with your mother,” Dad muttered, as we walked through the corridor. “She’s a psychopath.”

I really wished I had an argument to use against him, but to be honest, I sort of had heard her order a bunch of ponies to their deaths and she was also kind of in charge of a prison camp where it seemed like ponies who went in weren’t expected to come out. I had some serious concerns.

“Let’s just find a computer,” I said.

“The guards are probably here to shoot you if I try anything,” Dad continued, ignoring me like he usually did. “‘Good luck’ my flank. She just wants to make sure they can put the boot to me.”

“He’s wrong,” Emerald said, stepping up to walk beside me. She folded her helmet back so we were face to face. “We don’t have orders like that.”

“But you’d shoot me if you were ordered to do it?” I asked.

“No, she’d probably stand there and make me do the dirty work,” Rain Shadow said from behind us. “I don’t know how she pulled this detail. She’s got a soft touch.”

“Don’t pretend you want to go around shooting prisoners,” Emerald countered.

Rain Shadow scoffed. “My point is that most of the ponies here are hardened criminals. You spent almost no time at all talking to them, so you don’t know what they’re like. It’s not like they stole a loaf of bread - most of them have rap sheets as long as your foreleg!”

I scratched my bandaged hoof.

“The good thing is, you’re not a prisoner,” Emerald said. “And you’re absolutely right about just finding a computer. The faster we get this done, the less time there is for something to go wrong.”

I nodded. “I hope there’s something in this section.”

“If it’s anything like our cloudships, the computer core would be near the reactor,” Emerald said.

Rain Shadow nodded. “All the engineering stuff is kept together. Since this place has independent power, we should be in the right general area. It’s just that this bucking ship is the size of a city!”

“I’m surprised there aren’t signs,” I said. “The first time I came here there was a panel with red borders that had--”

“--Emergency medical supplies?” Emerald asked. “Like a cloudship?”

I nodded.

“Why is that important?” Rain Shadow asked.

“It means the ponies who used the ship didn’t just have everything memorized,” Emerald explained. “She’s right, there has to be some kind of guide. This is an intersection, if there’s anything, it has to be around here. Everypony check around.”

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. A big neon sign with arrows would have been nice. The clean, bright corridor made me feel like I was an idiot for not seeing whatever should have been there. It wasn’t like it was a ruined mess where a pony could mistake scrapes and damage for a message, it was just a nice, brightly lit T-junction with mostly unpainted wall panels and lines of color gently curving around the corner.

I blinked and pointed.

“What about those?” I asked.

“What about what?” Rain Shadow asked.

“The wall panel didn’t have words on it. Maybe they didn’t want to use signs with words for some reason,” I suggested. “Do you see how the colored stripes are right near eye level and they’re different in both directions?”

“She’s right,” Emma said. “This grey stripe goes to the next door, then it’s painted all around the doorframe, then it stops after it. No telling what the colors mean, but they must lead to different sections.”

Dad huffed. Rain Shadow turned on him, obviously angry.

“You couldn’t have missed it,” Rain Shadow accused. “You’re some kind of archaeologist, right? So you should have known what to look for!”

Dad turned to give him a sour look.

Rain Shadow grunted and shook his head. “I knew it. He’s trying to take us the wrong way!”

“I was trying to take a little extra time to think!” Dad snapped. “Something all of you should be thankful for, since I’m the smartest one here!”

“You’re gonna look real smart with a bucking laser blast right through your--”

“Stop it,” Emerald sighed. “You can’t shoot him. And no, you can’t shoot his daughter either. What we’re going to do is follow the painted lines and see where they go. We’ll start with that grey door. Go open it.”

She motioned to Dad.

“Why me?” Dad asked.

“Because I’m trying hard to be convinced having you with us is more useful than letting Rain Shadow actually shoot you,” Emerald said.

Dad grumbled and stomped over to the outlined door. He hit the control to the side and it swung open smoothly, the old pneumatics squealing as they unlocked for what was probably the first time in centuries.

“It’s a janitor’s closet,” Dad said. “Amazing.”

“And now we know we can ignore grey doors,” Emerald said. “We’ll try red next.”

“We should skip this one,” Dad said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s dangerous. There’s a security seal,” he said. “I can get it open, but I can’t disable the alarm.”

“That just makes me want to open it even more,” Rain Shadow said. “Pop the hatch.”

“I just told you--”

“You said it’s dangerous, and you’ve also been trying to keep us from getting anything done this whole time, so either you’re telling the truth and there’s a security seal and I want to know what’s so important on the other side of the door, or you’re lying and this is exactly where we need to be,” Rain Shadow said patently. “I’m not as stupid as your daughter.”

I glared at him. “Hey! But, also, fair.”

“It’s not like there’s a label,” Dad said. “All I know is, I open the seal and alarms go off.”

“Forgive me for saying this, but there really isn’t anypony left to hear them,” Emerald reminded him. “We can deal with some sirens and flashing lights.”

“Maybe nopony is here, but that doesn’t mean it’s not guarded,” Dad said. “Chamomile fought a robot.”

“I did fight a robot,” I admitted.

Rain Shadow nodded. “Here’s what we do - you unlock the door, Emerald and I take point. If robots are in the room, we blast them. If not, then everything’s fine and we don’t need a special plan for that.”

I nodded. Dad took a small panel off the wall and fiddled with the wires. There was a spark, and he nodded. “It’s unlocked,” he said glumly.

I pushed him back behind me. I doubted he really appreciated the gesture but even if he was a jerk he was my Dad and I wasn’t going to let him get blasted by whatever was waiting behind the door.

Emerald Sheen kicked the door control, and the hatch slid open. An alarm started beeping, more like a digital clock trying to wake up a pony from a nap than a siren blaring about an incoming megaspell. We tensed, waiting for robots or turrets or robot turret hybrids that walked like ponies but were made entirely of guns.

Anyway, while we were all looking into the room and watching for movement, the security panel recessed into the wall behind us hissed open.

The good thing is that after more than a century stuck in a wall with no maintenance, the three security bots must have had all their targeting stuff out of whack because the first shots went wild. One laser clipped Dad’s shoulder and he screamed like a filly and bolted. More went into the walls and ceiling, one hit me in the chest, and the rest somehow managed to avoid hitting the only ponies in armor that could have shrugged off the attack like it was nothing.

The bolt to the chest felt like I’d been stabbed with a needle made of ice, so hot it felt cold in the moment before it started burning. It was the same sensation as when I’d burned myself cooking, that sense that something was wrong even before the pain started. The uniform I was wearing caught on fire, which was better than melting but not as good as, say, not being on fire. I beat my chest, trying to put it out before it could spread across the thin material.

“Chamomile!” Emerald yelled, pulling a rifle off her battle saddle and tossing it to me while I was trying not to be on fire. I fumbled with it but didn’t quite drop the crystal-tipped carbine, taking a moment to figure out how to fire it. I pointed the magical rifle at the approaching security bots, which looked almost like skeletal steel ponies wrapped in faded plastic armor, and pulled the trigger.

As it turned out, I had awful aim. My shots went even more wild than theirs had, and despite them walking slowly towards me I couldn’t hit a damn thing I aimed at. I mean, can you blame me? It was designed to be mounted on armor and controlled through a targeting spell. Trying to fire it by hoof was basically aiming down a box with no sights and barely anything like a grip.

Emerald and Rain Shadow missed because they were trying to shoot around me instead of through me, which was touching, really.

The robots fired another scattered volley, and one cut across my cheek, almost into my eye. The burst of heat and pain almost made me drop the rifle.

I was done trying to do things the civilized way.

I charged the robots, slamming into the first and throwing it back into the one behind it before turning to the third machine and clubbing it with the laser rifle, bashing the plastic armor apart and breaking something inside it. Sparks flew out of the ruptured metal and the rifle started to get hot in my hooves. I threw it at the other two security bots and, like most things in my life, it exploded, the spark batteries inside shattering like grenades and taking the robots out with them.

I turned back to the others to make sure they were okay, taking a few deep breaths.

Rain Shadow slid his visor back, looking at me with wide, shocked eyes.

“Buck the goddesses for a bottlecap, what was that?” he whispered.

“Don’t get on her bad side,” Emerald hissed back.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Let’s just say most ponies wouldn’t have dealt with the situation that way,” Emerald said. “Let’s look at those wounds.”

She stepped over and prodded my chest.

“It’s not that bad,” I said. She pulled a healing potion out of her pack and offered it to me.

“If you say so,” she said. “Nothing vital got hit. Obviously. Still, that should be hurting a lot more than it seems to.”

“I’ve got a high pain tolerance,” I said. I downed the potion and coughed at the taste. “Ew. Grape? I hate grape flavor.”

“I’ll try and find you a cherry potion if you end up shot again,” she said.

“If all they have are peashooters like that I won’t really need them,” I said.

“They’re antipersonnel scatter lasers and-- you know what? Never mind. You’re just built different. Let’s see what they were protecting.”

I shrugged and finished off the dregs of the potion she’d given me, the sting on my cheek and chest fading as it healed the last of the burns. I don’t know why they were acting like that. The laser hadn’t even hurt as much as being stabbed, and that was more annoying than dangerous. I guess it might scar worse, but I wasn’t gonna worry about that when I had so much else to worry about that was more important.

“What is this place?” Rain Shadow asked, which was something I really wanted to know, too.

“Some kind of laboratory?” Emerald guessed. “Where did Red Zinger go?”

“I’m fine, thanks for not asking!” Dad snapped, limping back towards us from where he’d been hiding. “In case you didn’t notice, I got shot!”

“Barely,” I muttered.

“I don’t spend my time getting into fights and throwing myself through walls, so forgive me if I’m not used to being assaulted,” Dad said. “A normal pony could go their whole life without being shot even once!”

“A lot of ponies spend their whole life not being shot,” Rain Shadow agreed. “Right up until the end. So why don’t you tell us what we’re looking at in here?”

Dad sighed and looked into the sealed room.

“It’s…” he frowned after a moment. “I’m not sure. I was going to say armory, but there aren’t any weapons, and it’s almost like a dock for a cloudship, but it’s too small, not to mention indoors.”

I couldn’t describe it either. It was almost like medical equipment crossed with scaffolding, all blinking lights and wires and weird boxes surrounding a space where something should have been. Tools hung on the walls and I couldn’t even begin to guess what half of them were for.

“This looks important,” Emerald said, holding up a crystal orb. Colors swirled around inside it. “Some kind of magical weapon, maybe?”

“It’s a memory orb,” Dad said. “Or… similar to one, anyway. They record memories and thoughts from a pony and allow them to be replayed later. Give it here.”

Emerald passed it to him, and he turned it over in his hooves.

“There were a few different formats,” he explained. “The original versions weren’t very practical, at least for civilian use. They require a unicorn to view the contents. I don’t think those were ever really intended for widespread use, but they were pressed into service until ponies did what ponies always do, and innovated a solution.”

“Please don’t keep us all in suspense,” Rain Shadow sighed. “Let me guess, they found a way to make it so anypony could view them?”

“Also so anypony could record them. They were called Recollectors, but… this doesn’t exactly look like one of the Black Opals they recorded onto. I can’t tell for sure. It’s similar, very similar, but the material seems wrong. It’s some kind of compressed resin instead of natural crystal, and it has some kind of metal shavings in the matrix making that glitter effect. Maybe some method of capturing thaumatic orgone energy? Hm…”

He held it up to the light and we all waited a moment before Emerald cleared her throat.

“You said they used Recollectors?” Emerald asked. “So there’s something in here that can play whatever’s on that orb? A terminal interface?”

“No, a computer would never be able to play it,” Dad said. “Just to interpret a pony’s thoughts would require a massive computer. I don’t think there were ever more than a few in the entire world that could do that, and even then… I’m not sure it’s a problem that can be solved with brute force.”

“Sorry, Chamomile, looks like you can’t help with this one,” Rain Shadow joked. I raised an eyebrow in surprise at his joke.

“So what should we be looking for?” Emerald asked. She stepped up to the array of scanners and wires, obviously looking for somewhere to put a hoof-sized orb.

“A Recollector would look like a crown,” Dad said. “I’m not sure we’ll even find one, they’re practically priceless, and a glimpse into the past like that…” He licked his lips. “It’s what historians dream about.”

“If these Exodus Arks were supposed to be self-sufficient, they’d have to carry the player and the orbs, right?” I asked. “So there had to be at least one onboard.”

Dad tilted his head, forced to admit I wasn’t entirely wrong. “Naturally. But it could be buried anywhere, or just melted into slag by lava.”

I nodded and started opening up the tool cabinets. I spotted something in the second one I tried.

“Does it have to be a crown?” I asked.

Dad stepped over to look at what I’d found. I pulled it out of the cabinet so he could see. It was a thick necklace, the articulated links showing multicolored wires in the gaps between them. A grasping, spring-loaded claw sat in the center, and it was either a setting for a really gaudy gem or…

“I’ve never heard of a Recollector with a design like this,” Dad admitted. “But it does have the right interface, and it’s obviously designed to be worn. It might be what we’re looking for.”

Dad started slipping it over his head, and Rain Shadow cleared his throat.

“I don’t think you’re the right pony to wear that,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dad asked.

“It’s a piece of unknown technology that was sitting in a box for two centuries,” Rain Shadow said. “And if it does what it’s supposed to do, it messes with your brain, right?”

“It replays memories, if that’s what you mean.”

“My point is, if there’s something broken, and it doesn’t work right…”

“Some memory orbs produced by the Ministries did have security spells encoded on them to prevent unauthorized viewing,” Dad mused. “Sometimes with very unpleasant deterrents.”

Everypony else in the room turned to look at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Here,” Dad said, giving me the device.

“What?”

“If it causes brain damage it probably won’t be so bad for you,” Rain Shadow said.

“Very funny,” I growled.

“If something goes wrong, we need Red Zinger to try and fix it,” Emerald said. “And he’s more likely to make an honest attempt if you’re the one in danger. No offense, but he’d probably just shrug and say there was nothing he could do if it was one of us.”

“And if you don’t do it, I’ll shoot you,” Rain Shadow said matter-of-factly.

He had a strong point. He would shoot me. I put the necklace on and clipped the orb into the empty socket. The world fell away.

Everything was suddenly huge. I was standing in the same place I had been, but the doors, the rows of shelves, the tools, all of it had grown twice as large. I tried to look around or say something, but it was like one of those dreams where you’re aware but not in control. I was looking down at my chest, which seemed slimmer and fluffier than usual, and tapped the memory orb around my neck with a delicate hoof.

“I hope this thing is working,” I muttered, in a voice that wasn’t my own. “Should have tried to get a real Recollector instead of reverse-engineering it from a Black Opal somepony smuggled out of the labs...”

I tapped it a few more times.

“Hopefully, somepony is hearing this,” I said. Or not me. I was starting to figure this out. I was viewing some kind of recorded memory. The pony speaking wasn’t really me, it just felt like it because I was seeing it all through their eyes. “My name is Destiny Bray, and this is my first and last Captain’s Log, made as the commanding officer of the Exodus Blue. She was supposed to carry hope for all of Equestria but it looks like we couldn’t even get that right. I know the Exodus Red managed to get underway ahead of us, but I don’t know if the Green or White made it off the ground. We lost contact with the Cosmodrome and… the backwash of interference is probably from a megaspell detonation.”

She stepped over to a blue suit of powered armor. It was the same set that was outside projecting that field around the SIVA core.

“That was a few hours back. We should have been going out to sea and planning an orbital route, but things have fallen through. There’s been a mutiny among the crew, and I might be the last pony still on-mission.”

I felt it through the recording when Destiny started using magic, a crimson aura surrounding parts of the armor and unlocking them from one another, the components smoothly resizing as she started putting them on.

“I need to be brief because there are probably thousands, if not millions, of lives at stake. My brother Karma has lost his mind. Our mission was to get above the clouds and wait out the war, but when the megaspells hit and the news came in from the BrayTech offices in Manehattan…”

She stopped. I could dimly feel her emotions. She was trying to only dimly feel them, too. It was like the were welled up inside her and kept behind a leaky dam, and I was getting splashed every time the waves made them go over the top.

“He didn’t take it well,” she said, eventually. “Dad is the real captain, but he’s in stasis with the rest of the sleepers. I was always the best pilot in the family, and getting the ship stable was supposed to be my job. Guess that’s not happening now.”

The deck lurched under Destiny’s hooves, and we hit the wall hard enough to stumble.

“Damnit. If you’re hearing this, none of the details matter. You’ve probably found some kind of awful mess and you want to know how to clean it up. Got to focus on that.” She steadied herself. “You probably found some kind of living metal, or horrible monster, or whatever it is by now. That’s SIVA. It was supposed to be our way to save the world, but my idiot brother snapped and he’s halfway reprogrammed it into a weapon.”

Destiny had most of the armor on by now, and when the next lurch hit, something in the boots activated and she kept her balance.

“He’s planning on flying the entire Exodus Blue over to Zebrica and unleashing whatever horror SIVA can come up with when it’s been ordered to make monsters. This isn’t like the megaspells. It’s not going to be one big bang and a long goodbye. If this gets out in the state it’s in, I can’t even guess what it’ll do.”

She picked up the helmet, looking into its eyes.

“I’m going to try and contain it. This armor should protect me long enough to get the spell going. With the medical reserves in the suit’s vector traps, I might be able to hang on for a few months, maybe even a year. If cooler heads prevail, that’ll be enough time for them to get other ponies out of stasis and rescue me. If not, well that’s why I’m leaving this recording.”

The helmet came down, and their view cut off for a second before coming back to life in a flurry of status windows.

“To anypony who gets this recording - destroy the SIVA core. It’s too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Maybe when we’re mature enough not to try killing each other with it, we can have that kind of power. If you don’t have the firepower or know-how to destroy it, seal this place up as tight as you can and run away!”

Destiny adjusted her helmet, dismissing most of the windows with incredible speed. Clearly she could read faster than I could, and being in the memory of somepony smarter than I was felt strange - I could sense the way they were thinking, and it was like being caught up in a jetstream, shoved along at a pace that you couldn’t match.

The deck rocked under her hooves. Destiny swore.

“I’ve adjusted the ship’s structural integrity shields to protect the sleepers. Do what you can to get them out of here safely. They’re good ponies. They just wanted to wake up to a better world. I swore an oath to build one for them. If it’s safe to wake them up, my command code is Destiny-Pi-1-1-Alpha.”

Destiny touched the orb one last time.

“I hope… somepony finds this someday. Learn from our mistakes. Be better than we were. Anyway, good luck. I have a feeling anypony hearing my voice is going to need better luck than I have.”

She tapped a button, and everything went black.

I blinked, the room swimming around me. The necklace I was wearing, the knockoff recollector, was smoking and sparking, obviously broken. I popped the orb out, and that at least made the sparks stop. It still stank like the air after a lightning strike.

“Are you okay?” Emerald asked. “You were just standing there for a few minutes.”

“That’s normal for memory orbs,” Dad said. “It takes as long to view them as they took to record.”

“I’m worried about brain damage if there was something wrong with that orb,” Emerald said. "I told you it was getting too hot!"

“She seems fine, and how would we know if she had brain damage?” Dad asked. “You’d need an expert just to tell.”

“Thanks for the words of encouragement, Dad,” I muttered. “All we needed was a command code, right?”

Emerald nodded.

“Okay. I think I have one that might work. The orb was sort of a last will and testament from the captain, and she left her code in the recording. She said something about waking up sleeping ponies.”

“Stasis pods,” Dad said. “I suppose that was their solution to staying airborne with a large number of ponies for a lengthy period. They couldn’t grow food or carry enough supplies, so just put everypony to sleep.”

“Do you think any of them are still working?” I asked.

“Well, there’s still power to this section, so it’s possible,” Dad muttered. “But they’ve also been buried in volcanic rock for two centuries, and I don’t think they were designed to run for that long even in good circumstances. A few minutes without power or any kind of malfunction and it’s all over.”

“I’m sure after we give the commander the codes she needs, she’ll want to look into it,” Emerald said.

“Why?” Dad asked. “I don’t think she can turn them into bombs, so I can’t imagine she’s interested in them.”

“She’s not heartless,” Emerald said.

“You weren’t married to her,” Dad countered. “Let’s go give her the code before she has all of us killed for spending too long talking without shooting anything.”

Chapter 6 - Don't Fear The Reaper

On the walk back to the SIVA chamber, my hoof started to ache worse with every step. It itched under the bandages and felt like the crack was getting worse, which it might have been since I fought a couple of robots, which was probably against doctor’s orders. I was kind of afraid of how bad it might be under the bandages. Have you ever felt that? Like you’re hurt or sick and you’re more afraid of what the doctor might say is wrong with you than anything else, so you just sort of sit on it and hope it gets better on its own. Either it goes away and you stop thinking about it, or it gets a million times worse and ends in gangrene.

“Are you okay?” Emerald asked. “You’re limping.”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to shrug it off and make myself believe it was the truth.

“We’ll get a doctor to look at that laser burn,” she promised, mistaking the reason why there was a hitch to my step. “It doesn’t look too bad. You’ve got thick skin.”

“I’m pretty sure the robots just weren’t at full power,” I said, resisting the urge to poke at the burn. It didn’t really hurt or anything after the healing potion she’d given me, but it had a weird pulling sensation to it. It was like the skin had healed just a little too tightly.

“Not at full power my flank,” Dad huffed. “I got shot too, you know!” He pointed to the black line of soot on his side.

“You got dinged,” Rain Shadow sighed. “Your coat is barely even scorched. The shot was a clean miss.”

“It felt like being burned with a hot poker! How is that a miss?!”

“Being shot with a laser weapon can reduce a pony to ash,” Emerald said. “You were burned by the superheated air around the beam, not by the beam itself. It’s like the difference between a pony flying right into you and being knocked over by their wake.”

Dad huffed.

“Your daughter got lucky that she didn’t get hurt worse than she did,” Emerald said pointedly. “She’s probably right about them not being at full power. If they had time to warm up, they might have put a hole right through her!”

“In which case the Commander would probably put holes in us,” Rain Shadow sighed and continued under his breath. "Not that I'd blame her."

I tried to figure out the right question to ask as we got closer to the big room. I could feel it getting closer like… like a magnet was pulling me.

“Is my mom a bad pony?” I asked. It was a stupid question, like something a lost filly would ask, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Commander Zinger is… dedicated to her goals,” Emerald said.

“She’d have you and everypony else here thrown into the volcano to appease it if she thought it would mean getting a little closer to what she wants,” Dad corrected. “That’s how she always was. It did make it easier to get access to dig sites, granted.”

“She’s a good commander,” Rain Shadow said, raising his chin. His tone was sharp and defensive. “You shouldn’t talk about her behind her back. She got where she is because ponies think she’ll do a good job and she convinced them enough to vote for her to do it.”

“Oh yes, an excellent job,” Dad agreed. "We just disagreed on what her job was supposed to be. I thought the purpose of our excavations was to preserve the past and learn from it so we didn’t make the same mistakes all over again. She thought it would be even better if we dug up those mistakes and gave it all another shot, and unfortunately the ponies paying our bills agreed with her!”

“Can we please stop arguing?” I asked, gritting my teeth more from frustration than pain. I could deal with being hurt, but the arguing was starting to wear on my nerves.

Emerald patted my side. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while. We’re all on the same side, right?”

Rain Shadow nodded. “We have our orders from her, she gets her orders from up above, and all of us just want the Enclave to be safe and happy.”

“And this SIVA stuff sounds like it could do a lot,” Emerald said. “If half of what Commander Zinger said about it is true, there’s a bright future ahead of us.”

Dad gave her a look that said volumes, but held his tongue and just shook his head. I was grateful for the silence, even if it was only temporary.

I stumbled a little as we walked into the SIVA chamber and looked down at the deck, half-expecting a loose plate or dropped tool. My hoof was throbbing with every heartbeat. I was trying really hard not to think about what I’d seen in the medical bay. The ponies who looked like they’d been dipped in steel and mummified.

Driven insane by pain. How much pain did a pony have to be in before they lost their mind and turned into an animal? I couldn’t imagine it. I’d been lasered, stabbed, beaten, and the worst I’d ended up with was a bad mood.

“You’re back already?” Mom asked, when she saw us. She was up on a catwalk, examining the core from above. “Did you find anything?”

The core somehow looked more sinister than before. When I’d first seen it I’d thought it looked sort of like a swarm of locusts in a cage or an aquarium or something like that, swirling and purposeless and more like a force of nature than anything else. A bottled storm. Now it was more focused. The flow was slower, and I could almost make out a shape in it.

Maybe it was just in my head, but I’d swear it almost looked like a devil, curled up on itself and waiting inside that shield like a dragon’s egg about to hatch. Or I could be seeing shapes in wild clouds. I had to hope it was my imagination.

“We got shot at by security,” Dad said. “It’s too dangerous to go wandering around.”

“That’s not what I asked. Lieutenant Rain Shadow?”

He actually looked uncertain for a moment before stepping forward. I saw him glance at the core. Had he seen the same thing I had?

“We found something,” he confirmed. “Memory orbs and a device to play them.”

“Excellent,” Mom said. She hopped off the platform, her bright yellow aura surrounding her hooves and slowing her fall, absorbing the impact when she landed. “I knew you could do it! So, what’s the code?”

“Well, um, Chamomile is the only one who watched the orb,” Rain Shadow said, looking at me. “She said there was a code.”

“And that code is?” Mom asked, turning to me.

“Don’t tell her,” Dad interrupted, before I could get a word in. “Chamomile, listen to me. It’s too dangerous! The last thing we need is another disaster when somepony clearly spent a lot of time and effort trying to keep it from happening!”

Mom sighed and adjusted her glasses. “The code, please.”

“Can we talk about this for a minute?” I asked. “This stuff might be dangerous.” I hadn’t noticed it before, but the throbbing in my hoof wasn’t really in time with my heartbeat. It was close to it, but that was a coincidence. This close to the core, being able to see it surge and move like a storm, I could tell. It was pulsing in time with that core, in tune with it somehow, even while it was eating me up.

“Of course it’s dangerous!” Mom groaned. “I’ve explained this over and over again… yes, it’s dangerous. Any tool is dangerous if used incorrectly. A knife can be used for surgery, or to kill. It’s about the intent of the pony using it.”

“A knife doesn’t use itself,” Dad said quietly. “Look at that mess, Lemon. The war was a mistake. All that came out of it was poison and death. If you need a prize to take back to the military, there’s plenty here. Even the deck plating and wiring is worth a fortune.”

“It’s not about the money!” Mom snapped. “I don’t have time for this.”

She sighed and pulled out a pistol.

“Give me the code,” she ordered. “Emerald? Rain Shadow? Neither of you have it?”

“Sorry, Ma’am,” Emerald said. "The reader broke after Chamomile used it."

“I’m not angry, but I’m very disappointed. When you knew the memory orb had the code on it, you should have found a way to watch it yourselves. Chamomile, give me the code.”

I hesitated. “Uh…”

Mom sighed. “Bring her in.”

Quattro stumbled inside, pushed ahead of Colonel Ohm. She looked more than just a little annoyed, turning to Ohm to glare at him. He glared right back at her.

“This is a friend of yours, yes?” Mom asked. She levitated the gun over to Quattro, who froze as the weapon touched her temple.

Quattro very carefully turned to look at me.

“Nice uniform,” she said, looking at the burned shirt I was wearing. “I didn’t think you were the type to join up with the military.”

“Quiet,” Mom said. “Chamomile, give me the code. I didn’t want to have to resort to threats, but here we are.”

“Destiny-Pi-One-One-Alpha,” I said. I wasn’t going to stand there and argue with her when I’d heard her order ponies to their deaths and she was literally holding a gun to another pony’s head. Even if it had been a total stranger I'd have folded instantly.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mom asked, smiling. “Thank you, Chamomile. Why don’t you go and have a medic look at that nasty wound? You look like you’re in awful pain.”

I was hurting, a lot, but the laser blast wasn’t the first thing on my mind.

“What should we do with her?” Ohm asked, nodding to Quattro.

“She can keep my daughter company,” Mom said. “As long as she doesn’t try anything too stupid.”

“As you like,” Ohm said. “Move.”

He shoved me and Quattro off to the side, and motioned for one of the medics to come and see us.

“Nice work,” Quattro whispered. “Let me guess, that code is going to let her unlock that cage?”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“I can’t be too angry at you not wanting me to get shot,” Quattro said.

A soldier with a yellow and pink patch on his shoulder stepped over and knelt down.

“Hey there,” he said. “I’m just going to give you a little look-over.”

“Do I get a lollypop after my check-up?” I asked the medic.

He laughed. “Only if you’re good.”

“I’ll try my best,” I promised.

“You had a healing potion already?” the medic asked, prodding at my shoulder. I nodded. “Looks like everything closed up alright. You’ll have a little bit of scarring here and on your cheek from the burns. Can’t do much about that.”

“Eh, chicks dig scars, right?” I asked.

He patted my other shoulder. “That’s what they tell us in boot. The uniform’s a lost cause, though. There isn’t a laundry service in the Enclave good enough to clean up that mess. Let’s get it off.”

He helped me strip it off and caught it when I winced as it was pulled over my bandaged right forehoof.

“And let’s change those bandages,” he said.

“Do we really need to--”

“If I don’t take care of you, your mother will be upset at me,” he said. I looked away while he pulled out a small pair of scissors and cut down the side of the bandages, some of the pressure releasing. The throbbing in time with my heartbeat didn’t stop, and when he finally pulled the bandages free I caught the hiss from his lips.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I asked, finally looking.

He looked up at me wordlessly. My cracked hoof was better, for some definition of better. There was a thin bead of metal running up where the crack had been, like somepony had welded it back together. Black veins were running all the way from there to my elbow, standing out under my white coat.

“It’s bad,” he whispered. “This is a nanometal infection. You’ve got that stuff growing in there.”

“A healing potion probably won’t help, huh?” I asked.

“You’re holding it together now, but the pain is going to get worse,” the medic said quietly. “Before you ask, even amputation won’t work. It’ll just try to regrow your hoof and you don’t want to see what that’s like. If we take you back to the medbay we can sedate you, but…”

“Just wrap it up,” I grunted. I wasn’t ready to be put under and never wake up again. Maybe I would be in a few days. I didn’t know how much sleep I’d be getting if the pain got worse, and being sedated might turn into the only answer sooner rather than later.

“Bandages aren’t going to help much,” he said. “Honestly I don’t know how you’re dealing with it.”

“It’s…” I didn’t want to say it wasn’t as bad as it looked. It looked bad and felt like my leg was being burned and pried apart. “I’ve got a high pain tolerance,” I said.

“No kidding,” he muttered, wrapping fresh bandages around the hoof. The pressure made me hiss, but it was better than having to look at it. “Here.”

He gave me a few pills.

“It’s just some steroids to help with the swelling, and a mild painkiller. They’re not much, but they might help take the edge off. I didn’t bring any Med-X with me. We’ve got a supply in the other section. I’ll ask the commander for permission to take you to the medbay ”

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing the pills. He passed me a canteen to help them on the way down, and I chugged the brackish, slightly-sulfury tasting water, draining it before passing it back. He didn’t even look annoyed, which meant I was really in a bad way. He got up and patted my shoulder again before leaving, having a few quiet words with my Mom.

I watched them speaking, and I could guess what it was about because I wasn’t that big of an idiot, especially when Mom glanced at me very significantly.

I gave the painkillers a minute to start working, and they really didn’t at all, so I grunted and used the bulkhead for support to start pulling myself back to my hooves. Three of them, at least.

“Are you going to…?” Quattro started, trailing off.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” I said, standing up. “I need to keep my parents from killing each other.”

“Good luck with that, they’re both pretty awful ponies,” Quattro mumbled, with a tone that said she'd be okay if they both ended up shot. I almost felt the same way, but I had to try and save them from making a mistake. They were my parents. I loved them. They loved me. That's how it was supposed to work.

But... they were shouting at each other and Mom was emphasizing her points with a firearm. That was the kind of thing a stable, loving family generally didn’t do.

“Mom, please stop,” I said, limping over to her. “You don’t want to shoot Dad, right?”

Mom sighed and lowered the gun.

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t shoot him. Red, you’re the only pony here that knows enough about computers to hack into the suit remotely and shut it down. I need you.”

She didn’t even look at me, she just pointed the gun in my direction.

“But I can shoot our daughter. It would hurt me, a lot, but if that’s what it takes to get you to take me seriously, I will put a bullet in her skull right now,” Mom continued.

“Uh…” I swallowed, looking down the barrel of that gun. It looked big enough that I could almost see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“You won’t shoot her,” Dad said. “You like her more than I do!”

“She’s infected with SIVA cells,” Mom countered. “I heard my medic talking to her. Right now this gun is a tool of mercy. If I shoot her, she won’t die in screaming agony.”

“Be sensible,” Dad said. “You’re not going to do it. I know you better than that.”

“I’ll do what I think is best. For her and Equestria. If we lower the shield and access the SIVA core I can use it to cure her, and all the other ponies lying in agony in the medical bay!” Mom nodded to the swirling mass. “Time is of the essence, Red. She has even less time than the rest of the Enclave.”

Dad looked at my bandaged hoof. “How… bad does it get?”

“Unlike you, Chamomile has seen what happens to ponies when the infection progresses,” Mom said. “Go ahead, tell him.”

“It’s not so bad now,” I said. Given what I’d seen, how bad it could get, this seemed like nothing. “But from what I saw… it gets bad. There were a few that broke out of sedation in the medical bay and they were completely crazy, like wild animals.”

“The pain does that to them,” Mom added. “I don’t want to put my daughter through that. I want to remember her as a pony I’m proud of, not an insane animal that has to be put down. Please see reason, honey. We can save her!”

I tried to silently step out of the way of the gun, but Mom managed to keep it trained on me without looking, even though she seemed to be paying attention only to Dad.

“I’m not going to help you unleash a horror on Equestria,” Dad said.

“I understand,” Mom said. The gun lowered a little. “You need more motivation.”

It snapped back into place. It was like everything moved in slow motion. I saw her aura tighten on the trigger and the very start of the mechanism moving.

There was a flash of light, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen before or since. Looking back on it, I don’t know if it was the muzzle flash or just an optical illusion from the shock of having a bullet go into my thick, dumb skull.

It wasn’t like being hit with a laser. A laser would have popped my skull like an egg and boiled everything inside. It was a real bullet, and it just made a neat little hole. I didn’t know that yet, of course. I was busy suddenly being on the ground with my ears ringing. I could feel the blood pouring down my face.

I don’t really remember things in order for a while after that. I don’t even know how much was a dream. Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you think you’re awake but you can’t move or talk, like your body just won’t respond? It was just like that. I was lying on the ground and things were happening around me but I was only dimly aware of them. I think some of it was real, but I still don’t know how much.

I remember Dad holding me and telling me it’d be okay, but I remember Quattro doing that, too, like the memory looped and replaced one with the other. Or maybe it was mom, or Emerald Sheen? I remember getting up, blind, stumbling around, and immediately being on the ground again, not having actually moved at all, just imagining it so strongly that it seemed real for a moment.

I remember everything getting colder and colder.

I remember hearing my own breathing and not being able to control it. Just slow, ragged, in and out. Like a machine. If you think breathing manually is bad, not being able to control it is worse, just feeling your body on its own, sucking air in and out, is worse.

I’m pretty sure some of it was real. I know I heard alarms go off. I heard the shield go down. There was so much screaming, and none of it was mine. Shooting. A roar that shook the deck under me. All of that was probably real, given what Quattro told me later.

I think I saw Emerald Sheen and Rain Shadow shooting at something, but I couldn’t tell what from where I was lying on the floor.

Then Dad was standing over me. Everything snapped into focus for a few seconds when his hoof rested on my shoulder. It was like actually feeling something besides the chill reaching into my bones grounded me and made it more real.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” Dad said quietly. I think there were tears in his eyes, which makes me really doubt the memory since I don’t think he’s ever cried before or since that moment.

He held up a piece of blue metal. I was vaguely aware it was part of the powered armor that had been keeping the magical shield running.

“This has some kind of life support built into it. It doesn’t look that different from one of the auto-docs I’ve used, so I think I can get it running, but… the last pony who wore this suit is gone, and I don’t know if everything still works, or if there are enough supplies to do anything, or what that infection in your hoof is going to do…”

Dad swallowed, looking down at me.

“I’m sorry. This is all I can do for you. I can’t stay to watch over you because this whole place could collapse at any moment, but if I move you too much, there’s no telling how much damage it’ll do, and you’re…”

He stopped himself.

“You’re a tough mare, Chamomile. You can pull through, but you have to fight! Don’t give up.”

The world shook like a skyquake during a thunderstorm. Dad almost fell to the deck.

“Don’t ever tell anypony this, but I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father.”

He picked up the armor’s helmet, taking something ivory-colored and distinctly skull-shaped from inside, putting it down where I couldn’t see with the care he showed to everything ancient.

Dad lowered the helmet towards me, and it got closer and closer until it eclipsed everything else in my vision.

But for me, everything was getting further and further away. I was drifting. I felt detached, and the longer the nightmare went on the more it faded to black, like I was going blind even in my mind’s eye. The ringing in my ears was louder than any of the voices around me, and I wasn’t able to hear my breathing anymore.

It was black and silent.

I’ve heard a lot of ponies guess at what happens after you die. A lot of them think you go on to the Elysian Fields. A couple older ponies told me once that Celestia gathered up your soul and judged you. One pony told me we just forget everything and wake up somewhere else in the wasteland because we’re already in Tartarus and don’t know it.

I don’t know how long I was actually dead for. It had to be a minute or two, but it was timeless like a really good, deep sleep is.

And like most sleep, I dreamed.

I sat back in the squeaky chair, moving back and forth just a little and letting it make noise because I knew it would annoy my brother. It was just the three of us in the wood-paneled conference room, which almost made it feel like the early days all over again, when it was just us running things out of a garage.

BrayTech was a lot bigger now, and we had bigger plans. The diagrams of proposed city-sized airships hanging on the walls around us, covered in notes and sketched corrections, showed just how big our ambitions could be.

“All these advances and office chairs still make noise,” I said. “ How many centuries will have to pass before ponies defeat the scourge of chairs that sound like farts when you sit in them?”

“Oh, that’s the chair?” Karma asked, looking up from his portable terminal in mock surprise. My brother was almost my twin, except for the obvious differences and a year between us. “I thought it was taco day in the cafeteria again.”

I stuck out my tongue at my brother and blew a raspberry at him.

“Don’t fight, you two,” Dad rumbled from his side of the table. He’d put a metal box down on the table and had been poking at his terminal, setting something up and making us wait for him. “So, take a look at this.”

He put a wide plastic dish on the table. There was a pile of dust in the middle that had a weird oily glimmer to it, like it was shavings from a machine shop covered in a thin layer of oil.

“What is it?” Karma asked.

“It’s something new,” Dad said. “It’s still in prototype stages but…” He tapped a key on his terminal, and the dust moved. The loose pile came together, snapping together like tiny magnets into a perfect cube.

“Oh hey,” I said, leaning forward. “How does that work?”

Dad smiled. “I want to hear guesses first.”

“You’re transmitting something from the terminal,” I said. “So… maybe the material responds to a magical field?”

Karma nodded. “Like iron shavings responding to a magnet. It’d be hard to make it form a cube, though.”

“It would be hard to shape the field into a cube,” I agreed. “But if there were a bunch of different alloys, or maybe a smart metal that returns to its original shape? Cast a cube, then grind it into dust, then the field reforms it.”

“Here’s another clue,” Dad said. He tapped another button, and the cube turned into a sphere.

I shook my head. “Okay, that’s not just snapping to one shape, then…”

Dad smiled widely and keyed the button again, and the sphere turned into a crude sculpture of an airship. Not just any airship, but an Exodus Ark, just like the ones whose plans were papering the walls.

“It’s programmable matter?” Karma asked.

“Better! We’re still working out the kinks, but it’s actually countless tiny machines, each one the size of a mote of dust. They’re self-improving, self-replicating, and self-repairing. We’ve got more in the lab, since they make themselves. This is the answer to our workforce problems. A whole self-building factory the Ministry Mares won’t even know about.”

“We’d need a lot to build a whole ark,” I said. “And I don’t know if I’d trust an airship that might come apart around me because it decides to turn into lunchboxes or My Little Princess dolls.”

“The SIVA cells won’t make up the actual structure,” Dad said. “That would be like making walls out of contractors. They’ll take raw materials and build up a scaffolding. By manufacturing at a nano-scale we can even make some materials we wouldn’t be able to otherwise.”

“You mean we might finally be able to use some of the tech the boss-mare is always talking about?” I asked.

“Hey, she’s the reason we have portable terminals instead of those big clunkers they’re using everywhere else,” Karma reminded me.

“We’ll need to start prototyping structural members,” Dad said. “I want to try foamed aluminium alloys and carbon fiber. Get me some numbers while I’m away, okay?”

“Going to visit the other side, huh?” Karma asked.

“Boss-mare wants to talk about the backup plan,” Dad said. “She’s worried we might not have time for it. If we don’t have enough warning, or the timing is just way off…”

“If we can get the arks built, we won’t need a backup,” I said. “We’ll get you those numbers, Dad.”

He nodded, and I looked back at the little model Ark made out of pure SIVA, glittering in the overhead lights. It looked like the future.

It was the first time I’d had somepony else’s dream.

It wasn’t the first time, even in this story, that I woke up with a terrible headache. This was worse than any hangover I’d ever had before. A big part of me just wanted to roll over and die. Again. Deep down inside me there was this feeling I can’t explain, an awful wrongness that I couldn’t shake.

“Hey. Eyes up, chief,” said a voice in my ear.

My eyes snapped open. Breathing felt wrong, like it was through a filter. My vision was narrowed. There were glowing squares right in front of me and it took a long few moments to get my eyes to focus on them. They were half-transparent boxes of text and numbers.

I touched my face gingerly with my good hoof, and felt the helmet that had been shoved onto my head.

“What happened?” I groaned.

“Oh hey, talking! Good sign,” said the voice. A few of the windows vanished, and I looked around, trying to spot who was speaking. The voice was familiar. I couldn’t see anypony around. What I did see was… less encouraging. I was still in the SIVA chamber, there was a lot of blood on the floor, I was pretty sure a good amount of it was mine, and the place looked like a dragon had been tearing it apart.

I tried to stand, and a wave of dizziness sent me back to the floor.

“Careful,” the voice said. “You were dead for a little while, so this might all be a little confusing. I don’t know how much you remember about the last few minutes.”

“I remember getting shot,” I mumbled. Even turning my head was difficult, and I instinctively touched the brow of the helmet where I’d been injured.

“That’s really good,” the voice said. “You’ve got some of the important details!”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are you?”

“I’m a ghost,” they said. “I’d love to explain everything in detail, but we’re going to have to do it on the move. This place isn’t safe.”

We were alone, as far as I could tell. I was about to ask her what she meant, and the floor rumbled under me. I felt the whole room tilt, just a tiny fraction. Just settling a degree or two on its foundations. Foundations that were an active volcano.

No kidding, not safe.

“What’s your name?” I asked, feeling like I half-knew the answer. That voice was too familiar.

“Call me Destiny.”

Chapter 7 - Back In The Saddle Again

I picked up the armored sleeve and shook it gingerly. Bones and dust fell out, rattling against the floor. I was rapidly becoming less okay with what I was doing. When a pony died, the body was just a thing. It wasn’t anything special or sacred, because the special part had gone on to whatever came after.

Or at least that was usually the case.

“If it helps, I’m giving you permission to desecrate my corpse,” Destiny joked.

“That isn’t actually comforting at all,” I said, my head still pounding. The pain got worse every time I moved my head, or exerted myself, or walked around, or did basically anything at all. I needed to lie down somewhere and just rest, but that subtle vibration in the deck under me was a good reminder that I didn’t even have time to be dead right now. I needed to keep moving.

“The size controls are near the wrist,” Destiny said. The button was highlighted in my vision, a red light surrounding it. "Tap twice to reset to maximum size, then once you have it on, once to shrink-fit."

“Thanks,” I said. “But I remember what to do.”

“You remember?” Destiny asked. “There are only a few suits like this in the world, unless somepony went and started mass producing them while I was gone.”

“I saw you putting it on in the… memory… thing,” I said.

“Oh, the Remembrancer. It was sort of an improved recollector. You saw my last log?”

I almost nodded, but there was a good chance that would make my brains fall out, and I remembered just in time to stop myself.

“Then you know more about the current situation than I do,” Destiny said. “How rude am I being? Wow. I didn’t even ask for your name and here I am talking your ear off just because I’ve been stuck alone and dead for way too long.”

“It’s Chamomile,” I said.

“Like the flower? Easy to remember. Good name. Sorry if I’m chatty. I haven’t even had a decent conversation in… it has to be years. How long has it been?”

“Been since what?” I asked, half-distracted as I tried to figure out what to do with my wings.

“Hold on, let me--” A status window opened up in my vision, and I saw a few menus pop by in rapid succession before the armor changed in my hooves, small blue plates sliding against each other into a new configuration, letting my fit my wings through. “There we go.”

“Nice,” I said, moving a wing carefully to check the range of motion.

“When BrayTech builds something to be one-size-fits-all, we mean it,” Destiny said proudly. “But how many years has it been since the bombs fell? Is the war over?”

“Oh. Well, uh…” I hesitated.

“It’s okay, I can take it. I know I was stuck there for a long time keeping the SIVA core contained. Five years? Six? I was sort of comatose for almost the whole thing.”

“More than that,” I said.

“Ten?”

“More like… a hundred. And seventy-nine.”

I could feel the ghost stunned to silence.

“I usually just call it two centuries,” I added, trying to fill the silence. “Sorry.”

“Almost a hundred and eighty years and… nopony came to get me?” Destiny asked weakly.

“Hey, your ship is buried in a volcano, cut us some slack!” I said. “Besides, it’s not like it’s been a good couple of centuries. I mean, better for us up here than down in the wasteland, but still.”

“The zebra won, didn’t they? I knew we should have struck first, but--”

“I don’t think anyone actually won the war,” I admitted, fitting the last of the armor into place. “I think everyone lost.”

“That’s a depressing thing to say,” Destiny sighed. “Two hundred years…”

“Sorry.”

“What you should be sorry about is unsealing the SIVA core,” Destiny said, her voice becoming more determined. “I did all that work and you had to go and muck it up!”

“It’s not my fault,” I protested weakly. “I got shot trying to stop it! Basically. Sort of. I tried to talk Mom out of it.”

“Family always makes things difficult,” Destiny said. “Okay, that’s the last piece of the suit. How does it feel?”

“Heavy,” I said, trying to adjust the weight across my shoulders.

“It’s going to take a while for it to come online. The fusion core got drained pretty badly maintaining the thaumoframe. I was wondering why it was so low, but if it’s really been that long since the war…” Destiny trailed off. “Anyway, I’m bringing the rest of the medical suite online.”

“Thaumoframe? You know what? Explain it later. My head hurts too much already.”

“No problem, chief. Speaking of which, try not to get shot in the head again. There’s two of us in here now. I patched it up as best I could, but I had to improvise a little.”

That sent a shiver down my spine. “Improvise?”

“I’m a rocket scientist, not a brain surgeon,” Destiny said defensively. “But I’m sure I got everything right when I reattached things. It's basically as simple as plugging things in as long as you have the right parts.”

“You were messing around in my brain?!”

“Okay, look. You were dead, and now you’re alive enough to worry about how much brain damage you might have!” Destiny huffed. “I think I did a great job. If anything, the new parts should make you even better at math.”

“New parts?!”

“Technically new to you, but that's good enough. Speaking of which, you know you’ve got an unprogrammed SIVA infection, right? I didn’t even know that could happen. I think as long as you’ve got the armor running I can run a local suppression field to keep it from doing anything unexpected.”

“Can you do anything about the pain?” I asked.

“Sorry, the suit’s medical supplies are zero,” Destiny said. “It must have used everything trying to keep me going as long as possible. It’s probably for the best I don’t remember much after setting up the barrier. There's a low-level healing talisman running now that's keeping you stable, but some healing potions would go a long way to making sure you don't fall apart on me.”

“So if I get more medical supplies you can do something?” I asked.

“Sure. I can direct you to the medical bay if you think you can walk that far.”

“It’s even further than you think,” I muttered, looking around slowly. The lighting was all messed up. Whatever had happened while I was out, it had taken most of the decent light with it. There were just a few working, flickering bulbs, but what I wanted to find was designed to be spotted easily.

I made my way to the wall after spotting the red-edged panel.

“Oh right, the supply caches,” Destiny said. “Good thinking, Chamomile!”

I grunted and yanked at the edge with my good hoof. It came away easily, popping off the wall. Inside were a few tools and what I really wanted to see - a first-aid kit. I opened it and looked at the potions, then realized I had absolutely no way to drink them with the helmet on, and taking it off still didn’t seem like a great idea.

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“Hold on, let me get the vector trap online,” Destiny said. Windows popped up, and I saw her make more selections.

“What’s a vector trap?”

“It’s something we developed that makes saddlebags look last century. Or… last three centuries, I guess. Watch this.”

Indicators flashed green, and the kit and its contents disappeared from my hooves.

“What?” I blinked in surprise, which actually hurt. I was in really rough shape.

“They’re in your vector trap. It’s an area of space linked to the suit that loops vectors and routes space around it like a-- you know what? You just had brain surgery. From somepony who was a rocket scientist. You don’t want the math. It’s a magic teleporting backpack. Makes pipbucks look like the obsolete junk they are.”

“Teleporting backpack,” I nodded. I could just about understand that.

“And the suit can access anything inside the vector trap. I’m adding the medical supplies to the suit’s supplies, and you should start feeling better right away. A few healing potions and a little Med-X will perk you right up.”

She was right. The effect was almost instantaneous. I felt something tickle my neck, there was a pneumatic hiss, and the pain cranked down by an order of magnitude.

“That’s a lot better,” I sighed.

“Great! Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we’ve wasted a lot of time getting you in fighting shape. I don’t know how much longer the Exodus Blue is going to hold together, and I’d rather both of us be somewhere safer when it finishes falling apart.”

“You make a lot of sense for a dead pony,” I said. And because my head was starting to clear up, I grabbed the largest wrench in the toolkit behind the panel, hefting it in my hooves.

“Are you an engineer?” Destiny asked.

“No, but I’m pretty sure I can fix any problems we might run into with this thing.”

“And you can’t just fly over the lava?” Destiny asked.

“My wings are clipped,” I said, pulling myself up the ladder in the heavy armor. So far she’d managed to get a few sensors online and not much else, so I could tell the lava below me was slightly radioactive. She’d promised me that was normal, even before the war. The heat was crawling up my back, and the armor was getting itchy with my sweat.

“I’m surprised the healing potions didn’t do anything about that,” Destiny muttered.

“It was done by an expert, so he probably knew how to keep them from growing back.” I paused, hanging onto the ladder. “Did you hear that?”

“The audio sensor picked it up. It’s coming from up ahead. Be careful. I’ll focus on trying to get something more useful than the compass online.” The ghost’s voice cut out, and I made my way up the last length of the ladder, ears peeled.

Yeah, that sure did sound like somepony shuffling around up there. I peeked over the edge. I saw somepony shuffling around in the dim emergency lighting. The overhead lamps were out, but strips along the walls were working in flickering pulses, giving me a glimpse of what I was looking at.

It was a pony in powered armor, or at least what was left of it. The armor had been torn open and I could see gunmetal silver underneath mixed with the angry red of infected flesh. The pink and yellow patch on his shoulder stuck out. It was the medic who’d helped me before. Or what was left of him.

He looked like he was being dragged around like a puppet and was trying to fight it, twitching and pulling in one direction before being yanked the other way.

“Please… help me…” he moaned, his voice distorted.

I pulled myself a little more up the ladder, trying to stay out of sight, but before I could act one of the wall panels fell down, and Quattro rolled out into the open from the space behind it, holding a pistol in her teeth.

The infected medic turned to her and lunged, its motion stuttering in time with the three thunderous bangs as Quattro shot it at point-blank range. A fourth shot ended with a click instead of a bang, and Quattro threw the gun at the still-approaching horror to even less effect than the bullets had had.

“Run away!” the monster rasped.

That seemed like my cue. I clambered up the rest of the way and abandoned any attempt at stealth, roaring to get the former medic’s attention. He turned from Quattro and looked at me. I brought the heavy wrench down on his head, cracking the helmet and sending him stumbling, but not down. A second and third blow put him on the ground.

“He was tougher than he looked,” I said, panting with the effort. I don’t know if it was the steel shell I was wrapped in or the head wound, but that had really winded me.

“Chamomile?” Quattro asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like things got worse while I was unconscious.”

Quattro stood up and brushed herself off, nodding. “A lot worse. I’m guessing your Dad was right about that armor having some kind of built-in life support?”

“Seems like it saved my life,” I confirmed. “I don’t think I want to take it off until I can get a doctor to look at my head.”

We both looked at the fallen medic.

“A different doctor,” I said. “This one is broken. What even happened?”

“When the shield went down, a monster came out,” Quattro said. “That little shining swarm started growing and turning into something awful.”

“Cool, cool, no wait, not cool,” I said. I was admittedly still swimming a little from the Med-X. It was like a nice happy sweater around my brain that was keeping the pain away. “That doesn’t explain him.”

“It ripped right through the soldiers on its way out.” Quattro nodded to the torn armor. “It didn’t really seem to care about us as long as we weren’t in the way, but the ones it took out didn’t stay dead, either.”

“Did it… are my mom and dad…?”

“Good news about your dad, he’s fine, last time I saw him. We got separated, but the plan is to meet up at the docks.”

“And my mom?”

Quattro shook her head. “She was standing right in front of it when the shield dropped. It went for her first.”

I swallowed and nodded. At least it had probably been fast.

“Anyway, this whole place is coming apart. When that devil woke up it started eating up all the nanometal.”

“That doesn’t seem bad. That stuff was dangerous.”

“It was also the only thing holding some walls together. You saw the lava down there,” Quattro nodded back the way I’d come. “We have to hope there’s still a way back to the surface.”

“I have a working compass in this thing, maybe I can keep us pointed in the right--”

The fallen medic moaned, and that was the only warning I got before he started getting back up, the tail-sting lash on the powered armor whipping for my chest. I was too slow to stop it. There was a shower of sparks when it scraped against the blue plating over my ribs, trying to find purchase.

“Much tougher than he looks!” I yelled, grabbing the tail before it could find some way inside and using it as a lever to throw the medic’s broken body over the edge I’d come from. He screamed all the way down to the lava. It was probably a mercy.

“They’re not easy to keep down forever,” Quattro said. “We need energy weapons. Something to burn the bodies, otherwise the infection just props them back up. Speaking of which… are you going to be okay?”

“Huh?” I asked, confused for a second.

Quattro looked significantly at my right forehoof.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Well, uh… I think so? Probably? I’m okay right now.”

“She’ll be fine as long as she’s wearing the armor,” Destiny cut in.

“Woah, what was that?!” Quattro demanded, taking a step back.

“A ghost,” I said. “She’s friendly.”

“I’m running the suit for her, and I did a little brain surgery. I’m very talented!” Destiny said.

“Every time she talks the eyes on the armor flash,” Quattro said. “That’s so weird…”

“If it’s weird for you, imagine how it is for me,” Destiny said. “Anyway, the armor should keep Chamomile safe. It’s designed to create a telekinetic field around the user to boost strength without the need for the heavy equipment in Steel Ranger armor. I don’t have everything online but I’m using the T-field sheathe to broadcast a local signal that’s keeping the SIVA from spreading, and locking out control from outside.”

Quattro nodded along. I only understood about half of what Destiny said, but the rebel mare seemed to get a little more out of it.

“So you’re a glorified tinfoil hat right now,” Quattro said.

“I’d like to think I’m more than that, but if you want to be rude about it…”

“Wait, you said it boosts strength,” I said, catching up belatedly. “How come it feels so freaking heavy, then?”

“I had to prioritize something. The armor can’t do everything at the same time, and it was either keep you from being in agony and controlled by a chunk of out-of-control tech, or making you a little stronger,” Destiny said sharply. “If you want, I can switch those around and you can be a super-strong armored zombie.”

“I, for one, am okay with things how they are,” Quattro noted.

“I’ll, um, I’ll let you make the decisions,” I muttered. “Don’t blame me, I got shot in the head today!”

“If we can find our way out, I heard the soldiers saying there was a Raptor that could get us out of here,” Quattro said. “Does your new spooky friend know her way around this ship?”

I could feel Destiny’s smug radiating across the veil between life and death. “I helped design it.”

“I’ll take that as a big yes.”

Destiny was kind enough to highlight the supply panels we missed along the way. Unfortunately, while they had a decent amount of ancient medical supplies and spare parts, nopony had the foresight to put guns in any of them.

“I’m just saying they’re good emergency supplies.” I tossed a box of fuses and lightbulbs behind me, looking around behind it to see if it had been hiding anything we could actually use.

“Our psychological studies suggested that if ponies were trapped onboard a ship for years at a time, giving them easy access to firearms was a really bad idea,” Destiny said. “Look at how bad it went even without ponies going around shooting each other.”

“What did happen, anyway?” Quattro asked.

“My brother reprogrammed the SIVA and tried to turn it into a weapon. He couldn’t do much but… he managed to twist the protocols we designed for disaster recovery. As far as I can tell it thinks it can only fix Equestria by getting rid of anypony and anyzebra who might start the war again.”

“Lovely,” Quattro said. “And it has some way to do that?”

“Who knows? It’s been undergoing self-evolution for almost two hundred years. If it wasn’t trapped in a bottle there’s no telling what it would be like, but it’s definitely making up for lost time.”

The deck shook under us again, and I felt it tip back the way we came.

“The nanometal must have been doing more than just keeping the walls together,” Quattro said. “It feels like a cloud house that lost its foundations.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “One wrong move and it’ll turn over.”

“I’ll try and find you a faster route,” Destiny said. “I’ve been trying to take us through Medical but every path seems blocked.”

“Medical is in the other half of the ship,” I said. “We can’t get there from here! It’s on the other side of the mountain!”

“...Oh,” Destiny said, her voice growing somber. “I didn’t think the Exodus Blue was in that kind of shape. Let’s try this way, then. Take the next right.”

I kicked the vent out and dropped down, looking around.

“Oh hey! I know where we are!” I said. “This is where I fought that big robot!”

Quattro dropped down next to me, glancing around at the steel tubes stacked in rows across the massive room.

“I know this is asking a lot, but we need to wake up as many of the sleepers as we can,” Destiny said. “We have to evacuate them. They didn’t ask for this. They thought they were going to take a nap and wake up with everything back to normal.”

“Can we even do that?” I asked, walking over to one of the tubes.

“Lean in closer to the controls,” Destiny said. “My range is pretty limited right now. I’m burned out in more than one way.”

I nodded and got in close to the control panel. I guessed she needed the helmet sensors to read what was written on the buttons, but she surprised me. A red glow appeared around a few buttons and switches, flickering and just barely hanging on long enough to manipulate them.

“That was harder than I thought it would be,” she said, her voice fainter. “Okay, now all we have to do is--”

The tube slid open, and with a pneumatic hiss of releasing pressure and a cloud of condensation, bones slid out onto the floor, the mummified remains of a pony just barely holding them together in one piece.

“Oh no,” Destiny gasped.

“I don’t think any of these have worked in a long time,” Quattro said, her voice low. “I’m sorry.”

Destiny was quiet for a moment.

“I can try another one,” I offered.

“No, if it broke this badly, the whole system is bucked,” Destiny said. “I just thought… I thought when I was done, I’d have my Dad and my friends there to thank me for saving the world. What does any of it matter now?”

“We’ve got to save the ponies we still can,” Quattro said. “We can’t save everypony, but we can save somepony and that’s enough.”

“...Yeah, you’re right,” Destiny agreed, after a moment. “Too bad you’re not in this armor. You seem like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

“Chamomile is even better,” Quattro said, and I blushed at the compliment for the few moments before it turned into a quip. “She’s got plenty of extra room up there for you.”

“Owch,” I muttered.

“I’m just joking,” Quattro said. She turned and nodded in the right direction. “We know the way from here. The entrance to the mines should be back that way.”

“Oh that’s just lovely,” I whispered. Whatever kind of devil the SIVA core turned into, it must have gone right through the prison block. I guess there weren’t a lot of other options -- for some reason there weren’t a ton of ways to the surface for the prison slaves to use. Most of the security doors were torn off their hinges, the tunnels in the mine were so precarious it was literally a miracle they’d held up this long, and now that we’d gotten to the prison proper, it was a slaughterhouse that hadn’t figured out how to stay dead.

These zombified ponies weren’t wearing powered armor, but they were growing metal carapaces probably just to be difficult about the whole thing. They were all down on the lower level where the prison cells lined the walls, each one a metal box slapped into place as quick and dirty housing for… probably not a lot of survivors, at this point.

“How many do you count?” Quattro whispered. “I see six.”

“Seven,” Destiny corrected. “One isn’t infected, though.”

“Where?” I asked. The HUD outlined a pony sitting in one of the cells, trying to keep away from the bars. Two of the infected were at the door, trying to tear the bars free and get to her, like rabid animals that just wanted to kill.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“You’re the one with the fancy gear,” Quattro said.

“And brain damage. You make the plan this time.”

“First part of the plan is figuring out how we get out of here,” Quattro said. “Look.”

She pointed across the room. The tunnel we’d been marched down to get in here from the outside had already collapsed, so I wasn’t entirely wrong about things being unstable. It didn’t make sense, though -- why was that caved in when the ceiling above us was less supported and seemed intact?

“What about those doors?” I pointed to a set of security doors off to the side.

“They’ve got to lead somewhere,” Quattro said. “But they’re probably locked.”

“Can you pick locks?”

“I’m a dangerous rebel, did you forget? I can do all kinds of illegal things.”

“So you get to work over there, and I figure out a way to rescue the pony stuck in the cell?”

“I’ve got a thought about that. You might not like this idea, but they’re going to have a lot of trouble actually getting through your armor. They’re bloodthirsty, but the worst they’ve got are two shovels,” she pointed at the armed infected. “You see that space there, between those cells?”

I nodded when she pointed.

“They’re all going to come running when they see you. If you back up in there, they’ll come at you one at a time. I don’t think they’re smart enough to do anything except run right at you. Even if all you have is that big wrench you can take them.”

“It’s not the worst plan I’ve heard today,” I said. Since the plan was that I threw myself at a bunch of crazy half-metal monsters that were begging for death and probably wanted to wear my skin, the statement said a lot about the other plans that I’d been involved with.

I tried to hop down lightly. With clipped wings and wearing powered armor with most of the power turned off. It was probably the loudest landing any pegasus has managed that didn’t involve a crater, and the impact made my knees feel like jelly. Painful jelly.

“Not as graceful as I was hoping for,” Destiny said.

“Everypony’s a critic,” I groaned. “Hey, jerks! Over here!” I waved to what had been the other prisoners and they started lurching towards me, pleading for death or just sobbing in pain as they stumbled on their swollen, broken hooves.

I backed up into the narrow space between the cells and waited for the first infected to get close enough to smack him with my wrench. He went down with two blows, the first staggering him and the second putting him on the ground. The next came, and went down just as easily. The two that had been pounding on the cell on the other side of the room stumbled in one after another. It wasn’t any trouble at all, really, as long as I didn’t think too hard about what I was doing, that I was beating ponies to death.

Infected ponies begging for me to finish them off. I don't know if that made it easier or harder. What definitely made things harder was that they refused to stay down for good!

The first pony got back up. I obviously hadn’t hit him hard enough. So I put him down again. And by then the second and third ponies I’d downed were starting to stir.

“They don’t stay dead!” the pony in the cell yelled. I looked up, and with the zombies out of the way I could see who it was. Emerald Sheen.

“I figured that out, thanks!” I said.

“Chamomile?” she asked. “Is that you?”

“Yeah! I’m not dead right now! You’ve got a laser rifle, can you please disintegrate these ponies?!”

“I was doing that until I ran out of ammo,” she said. That explained the piles of ashes scattered around. “I’d have twice as much, but I let somepony borrow a rifle and they broke it!”

I couldn’t imagine who would be that thoughtless. Borrowing a valuable weapon and using it like a club just to avoid being killed. So selfish of me.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I can’t get this door open!” Quattro said. “It’s not a standard lock. It needs some kind of security code!”

“I have the code for the door,” Emerald said. “We can all escape if you help me out!”

Well that made things convenient. “Quattro, get her out of there!”

“She’s military,” Quattro said from above.

“Yeah? So?” I smacked one of the infected miners back down. I was starting to worry about what I was supposed to do next. There were six bodies blocking the way out and I couldn’t swing that wrench forever. I’d either get too tired to keep going or find some way to actually break a big piece of solid metal.

“Did you forget that this is a prison? She’s the reason these ponies were here in the first place to be infected and turned into monsters.”

“Are we really going to argue about this?” I asked. “She’s still a pony!”

“And because she’s a pony and not a machine, she could have said no. No to the executions, and the slavery, and putting ponies in prison for no reason at all. But she didn’t, did she?”

“I’m not leaving without her, so either get the cell open or go on your own,” I said. I wasn’t going to have an ethics debate when I wasn’t sure if the world around me was about to explode and I already had my hooves full fighting monsters. “Since she’s the one with the way to open that door, you might have some trouble with it!”

I could hear Quattro’s annoyance and hesitation. “Fine, but keep them busy.”

She jumped down, much more quietly than I did, but apparently that wasn’t enough, because I saw one of the zombies at the back of the regenerating pack of meshed flesh and metal turn and spot her.

“Nope,” I grunted. I tried to reach the zombie, but with all the bodies in the way my swipe went wide. And with my wings clipped I couldn’t get over the twitching barricade. Or could I?

I jumped on them, hearing a moan from one of the infected.

“Sorry!” I yelled, punching down when one of them tried to grab my hoof with broken teeth slowly twisting into steel fangs. I felt bone break and for a moment I wasn’t sure if it was mine or his. Punching with my infected hoof had been a stupid mistake and all the Med-X in the world wasn’t enough to block out the flush of pain.

I stumbled my way over the rest of them to the far side of the blockage, kicking the pony who’d noticed Quattro back into the heap to corral them. Quattro had better luck with the cell door than with the security blockade, popping the lock with a screwdriver we’d found in one of the emergency supply panels.

“You two get out of here,” I said. “I’ll come after you once you’re safe!”

Emerald stepped out of the cell, giving Quattro a look. It wasn’t the kind of thankful look you usually gave somepony who’d saved your life. It was more like she was waiting to see if she was going to get stabbed in the back. Once she was out of hoof’s reach, she bolted for the door, flying up to the upper level of the room.

Quattro swore and went for the stairs, having to go halfway around the room just to reach them.

Obviously, Emerald got to the security door first. She tapped at the keys and the lock opened up. She looked down at me from where she was standing, half out the door and holding it, staring at me for just an instant too long and obviously thinking something.

The moment passed. Quattro caught up to her and she stepped aside to let the mare through.

“Hurry up!” Emerald shouted. “You don’t want to be trapped down there with those things, trust me!”

I gave one last big swing and ran for the stairs.

I was still hurting, but it felt good knowing I’d made one decent decision so far today.

Chapter 8 - Smokestack Lightnin'

“We were in a fighting retreat,” Emerald explained. “None of our weapons were working against the dragon, but we tried to at least slow it down.”

“Dragon?” I asked. Either I’d missed something big (dragon-sized, apparently) or I’d misheard her.

Emerald shrugged. “I don’t know what else to call it. Maybe it looks like something else now. It was like… you know how in school they show how ponies evolved, starting with primitive fish and…?” she trailed off. “You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“My dad was an archaeologist, and for your information, I have been to school.” Briefly. As long as we didn’t discuss my grades I’d be fine. “I’ve seen pictures. A fish crawls out onto land, then it becomes a lizard, then a different lizard, then sort of a lizard-horse, then it’s a pony. Evolution.”

Emerald nodded. “It was like that. It was evolving the whole time it was leaving. I don’t even think it was really chasing after us, we were just in the way. We got to the prison block just ahead of it, and the Colonel set up demolition charges in the main tunnel. He thought he might be able to stop it by collapsing the tunnel right on top of it.”

“It didn’t work?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Emerald sighed. “And I got caught on the wrong side of it because I was too slow getting to safety.”

“And they didn’t come back for you?” Quattro asked. “I always though the military was about nopony left behind.”

“This maintenance tunnel doesn’t link up with the main line,” Emerald explained, ignoring Quattro. “We should be able to go all the way to the surface.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” Quattro whispered.

“You wanted to leave her to get eaten by monsters,” I reminded Quattro.

“It was nothing personal.”

Past the security door, we’d found a tunnel that was so narrow and cramped even Emerald was bumping into things. I felt like I was being squeezed on all sides. I couldn’t even stand up all the way, which I was conveniently reminded of when I bumped my armor’s horn on a pipe going by just a little lower than the others.

“Careful,” Destiny warned. Her voice was a little stronger than the last time she’d spoken, like she’d recovered some strength. “I can feel that, you know.”

“What was that? Who was that?” Emerald asked, turning to look at me over her shoulder. “Are you actually getting radio transmission down here? I haven’t been able to contact the outside since things went bad! Can you get word to the Colonel that I’m alive?”

“Sorry, it’s local,” Destiny said. “I’m in the armor.”

“In the armor?” Emerald tilted her head.

“It’s haunted,” I explained.

Emerald sighed. “Chamomile, that’s a primitive superstition. We’re advanced, modern ponies, not zebra. The armor isn’t haunted, it’s probably some kind of onboard artificial intelligence. That would be very impressive, though. I didn’t think they could fit inside something that small…”

“No, she’s right, it’s haunted,” Destiny said. “I’m a ghost.”

Emerald frowned. “Really?”

“I’ve got unfinished business,” Destiny explained. “And I’m pretty sure this is an unexpected side-effect of the built-in thaumoframe, so I really don’t recommend dying in this thing. I feel like a reflection in a mirror, and I know that doesn't make sense but that's undeath for you.”

“Primitive superstition, huh?” Quattro asked, giggling.

Emerald looked away, blushing. “I just assumed… that Chamomile had somewhat misunderstood the situation.”

“You thought I was an idiot,” I said.

“I thought you were a pony who I saw get shot in the head. That kind of trauma can be difficult on a pony, and it wouldn’t be strange if you had hallucinations or mood swings or just forgot a few things here and there. It would be normal.”

“I did forget most of what happened after I got shot,” I admitted. “It’s all kind of a blur.”

“That’s too bad, or you would have seen Colonel Ohm pulling everypony together. He really is a good leader, that’s how he got elected to his position. Ponies had faith in him.”

“Chamomile’s mom got elected too, and look at how that turned out,” Quattro said. “No offense, I'm sure she's great at parties, she's also a monster.”

“She’s not all bad. Or wasn’t. She was a really good parent sometimes when…” I trailed off. It didn’t matter. “She’s gone now anyway. I don’t want to talk about her.”

“We’ll find your father,” Emerald promised. “I know the others got him out.”

“Makes me wish I’d gone with them,” Quattro said. “I got away as soon as they were busy with the monster.”

“And you left Chamomile.”

“We all left ponies behind. You got left behind. I thought she was dead.”

Quattro was probably right. I’m pretty sure I was dead for a while.

“And then she came back and for a moment I thought she was an alicorn with that horn attached to her helmet,” Quattro said. “That scared me more than the monster.”

“Understandable,” Emerald agreed.

“Anyway, I’ve got ponies counting on me,” Quattro said. “For one thing, I have to warn them about everything that happened here. Before you ask, no, I’m not going to give you their names so you can pass along a message.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Emerald protested. “When we get to the surface, we can escape on the Asperitas. She’s a Raptor-class ship. The Colonel was going to get her prepped for launch as soon as possible. In a crash drill, that should only take a few minutes if they’re not onboarding extra supplies.”

“A few minutes? And you think it’s still going to be there?”

“Colonel Ohm promised to stay as long as possible to give ponies time to escape and get aboard,” Emerald said firmly. “Even if he had to leave, we’ll be in radio range. I can contact him for a pickup.”

“That’s good for you, not so great for us,” Quattro said. “We’re escaped prisoners.”

“You’re survivors of a disaster. Our first priority is getting you to safety. Technically, since you’re both civilians I should prioritize you even above myself.”

“I’m a little worried about the prisoner thing too,” I admitted. “Aren’t they just going to throw us in the ship’s, um… ship prison?”

“Brig,” Destiny supplied.

“That,” I said.

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. When we report in, I’ll tell them you saved me. You’ll be debriefed, and as long as you just tell the truth, everything will be fine. I’ll make a request to have your records purged so you can return to normal civilian life.”

Quattro snorted. “That’s kind of you, but I don’t have a normal civilian life.”

“You’ll have the choice to go back to one,” Emerald said. “That’s more than a lot of ponies ever get. Maybe you’re a rebel, but you don’t have to be. If you get a clean slate, maybe you could choose to be something else.”

“Maybe,” Quattro allowed.

“Besides, whatever crimes you’ve committed, it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through. You don’t deserve to die or go back to prison. This situation has been a total buck-up operation and you’ve paid in full for anything you might have done.”

“You know, Chamomile, I can see why you wanted me to save her,” Quattro said. “She’s the kind of idealist the Enclave could actually use. If there were more ponies like her there would be less like me.”

“When we get outside, stay behind me,” Emerald said. “No, actually, stay behind Chamomile. She’s better cover. They might think we’re infected and escaping from the mine, but as long as I can talk to them I can tell them what’s going on.”

“Are you really trying to get me shot again today?” I groaned.

“We’ve all got hidden talents,” Quattro said, patting my side. “Just don’t step on me.”

Emerald rolled her eyes. I couldn’t see her doing it since she had a helmet on, but I could just tell. She had very expressive body language regarding different flavors of annoyance. She tapped the keypad at the security door a few times, and the indicator turned green, the door swinging open with a squeal of metal-on-metal.

Ahead of us, I could see dim sunlight.

“I’ll go first,” Emerald said. “Just in case. I can vouch for both of you.”

“No arguments here from the only pony who isn’t wearing armor,” Quattro said.

Emerald led the way, keeping us a few paces back. I had to resist the urge to run past her and out into the open. The tight tunnels were really getting to me -- I wasn’t nearly as claustrophobic as some pegasus ponies I’d met but all it would take was one really badly placed pipe or the volcano deciding to rumble a little harder and I might end up wedged in place. It wasn’t the first time I’d been annoyed by my own size but it was the first time I thought it might actually get me killed.

“I’m picking something up,” Destiny said. “Sounds like radio traffic from outside! I guess at least a few ponies made it after all!”

“I’m getting it too!” Emerald agreed.

The voices were faint, and I could just hear them through the static.

“...Lost sight of the target… ...making best speed… ...report to…”

“I can barely make out anything they’re saying.” I said.

“The signal is pretty bad,” Destiny said. “There’s not much I could do to boost it even if I had everything in this armor back online.”

“That has to be coming from the Asperitas!” Emerald said excitedly. She ran out into the light, the dull red and grey outside only a little brighter than the emergency lighting in the tunnel. She only made it a few steps before I saw her wings droop. “No… no!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, almost shoving Quattro ahead of me to get out there and see what she was seeing. The ash falling around us had turned from a light fall of grey fluff to a blizzard, the air hot enough that it felt like we’d walked out into a giant oven.

The outside of the base had been a maze of shipping containers and temporary prefab cloud buildings. The clouds weren’t on fire, but damn near everything that could burn was trying to do it. There must have been some firestorm we’d missed, because I could see scorch marks on almost everything around us. That wasn’t what was upsetting her, though.

We could clearly see even from here the shape of a Raptor-class cloudship slowly pulling away, probably a mile away already.

“They’re leaving already?” Quattro asked. “So much for nopony left behind.”

“We can catch up to them! If we just fly…” Emerald groaned. “Right. You can’t.”

“That’s going to be hard with our wings clipped,” Quattro said. “I know you can’t carry Chamomile and catch up to them. I don’t think you could even carry me. If you take off on your own, you could make it.”

“I could fly over there and ask them to come back to retrieve you,” Emerald muttered.

Quattro gave her a knowing look. “You really think they’d turn the ship around to pick up two prisoners?”

Emerald was quiet for a long moment. She clearly didn’t think so. She was also watching safety fly further and further away while she stood there with us.

Before she could come to an immediate decision, things got a little exciting. The entire command section of the Exodus Blue was half-uncovered ahead of us, metal gleaming in the light with a few Enclave flags stuck on it just to remind anypony looking who had claim to the salvage. I think I sensed something at the same time Destiny did.

“I’m detecting a lot of movement,” Destiny cut in. “Take cover!”

“Cover from what? Where?” I asked.

Quattro and Emerald looked at me, so they missed the exact moment the command section tore apart and something ten times the size of a pony ripped its way free from it, spreading wide wings and roaring at the sky with a screech somewhere between a dying mare and metal being thrown into a recycler.

“There,” Destiny said, very helpfully.

My helmet visor outlined the monster in more detail than I wanted and later than I needed. It really did look like a dragon, but instead of scales and reptile parts it was made out of twisting living metal, like clockwork turned inside out. It took to the sky on wings that were half turbine and half steel feathers.

“Move!” Quattro shouted, shoving us from behind. Well, trying to shove me, but the effort was enough to get my slow, lightly refurbished brain back into motion. I ran for cover, pressing myself up against one of the pre-fabs, wishing I could go right through the clouds and--

Wait, I couldn’t go through the clouds, but it probably could. This was really, really bad cover. And it was too late to do anything about it.

The SIVA dragon hovered for a moment over one of the shipping containers before dropping the last few feet down onto it, hitting it hard enough that the container bent under its weight, the thin metal squealing.

Emerald and Quattro were right under it, in what I had to hope was a blind spot. I saw them freeze in place, probably not even breathing. The thing’s chest was right above them, overlapping steel plates like scales, shifting against each other like every tiny motion meant adjusting every tiny bit of its body.

I had to do something. It wasn’t like the building I was hiding behind was actually going to do me any good if the thing decided to come after me anyway, right? Maybe I could find a weapon and distract it and… get myself killed because I didn’t think I’d ever seen a gun big enough to do anything to a creature like that.

The roil and shifting of the creature’s form was disorienting. I could hear it muttering over the constant grind of metal and meshing gears, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying, if they were even words at all.

The dragon was looking around the camp from its perch, obviously searching for something. Or somepony. Its entire head shifted, turning from an abstract mess of gnashing blades and teeth into something I started to recognize as it took form, pressing out of the chaos with bright yellow eyes.

“Mom?” I whispered.

It looked just like her. I couldn’t stop myself. I stepped out into the open.

“What are you doing?!” Destiny hissed. “You’re going to get both of us killed!”

“I think my mom is in there,” I said. I looked up at it, and it spotted me, flaring its wings in alert. “Wait!” I shouted. “It’s me! Chamomile!”

The image of my mother shifted from one emotion to another. Confusion. Anger. Joy. It was less like the face moved and more like changing the setting with a dial, flipping through channels on the radio and instantly popping from one to the next.

She sat up a little, the constant motion and roil of her body starting to slow. The muttering cascaded together, like a thousand voices in chorus and finally finding the right note so they spoke words instead of overlapping gibberish.

“Chamomile…” it rumbled, with discordant echoing tones. I could almost believe my mother’s voice was among them.

“Please, Mom, if you’re in there--”

A blast of light so bright it almost blinded me took her head off, disintegrating it. The edges of the metal glowed bright yellow, faded to red, and a swarm of angry bees poured out of the neck hole, the headless dragon turning towards where the shot had come from even as they rebuilt it from the inside out, a terrible fanged skull growing where my mother’s face had been.

I followed its gaze.

The Raptor, the Asperitas. It had fired on the monster with its main guns. Even that hadn’t been enough.

The SIVA-dragon-devil, whatever you wanted to call it, took off, jerking to the side to avoid a second volley. If nothing else, the big guns had at least annoyed it a little. It shot past the Raptor and for a moment I thought it was just running away, but a moment later one of the Asperitas’ turrets exploded in a multi-colored blast of sparks and flame.

The dragon came around for another pass, landing on the deck and tearing into it, leaving huge holes in the steel. From here I could just make out the neon lights of small-arms fire. The crew was putting up one heck of a fight.

“So much for rescue,” I muttered. “Quattro, Emerald! Are you two okay?”

“It almost landed on top of us,” Emerald said, breathless.

“I don’t think it even knew we were there,” Quattro said. “Not after you got its attention.”

“My mom is still in there, somehow,” I said. “It looked just like her. It recognized me.”

“Your name, anyway. I’m pretty sure the armor is what got its attention,” Destiny said. “We were trapped together for a long time and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s holding a grudge. We’re lucky it didn’t attack.”

The dragon ripped deep into the ship, plunging its skull-like head into the deck. It must have hit something important, because there was a flash exactly like a bolt of lightning or a lot of spark batteries rupturing at once. Part of the ship’s lower hull exploded out, and black smoke poured from inside.

The SIVA-dragon screeched in pain from the epicenter of the blast and took off. Whatever it did, it had been bad enough to scare it away.

“Is it coming back here?” I asked.

“No, tracking shows it leaving the battle area,” Destiny said. “I don’t think we can catch up to it.”

“Can you still contact the Asperitas?” I asked. I had a radio, but Emerald was the only one who might be able to beg with the proper language to get them to come back for us.

Emerald shook her head. “I’m just getting static. I think the attack damaged their radio tower.” We watched for a few moments as the ship limped away, heading the opposite direction from the dragon. I couldn’t blame them after the beating they’d just taken.

“We didn’t come here on a Raptor,” Quattro pointed out.

“No, prisoners are transported on skywagons,” Emerald said. Before she’d even finished I heard the understanding in her voice. “Skywagons! If we can secure one I can fly you both out of here along with any other survivors!”

“That’s a good idea,” Quattro said. “These buildings look an awful lot like where we were interrogated, and I remember the transport landing not far from here.”

Emerald nodded. “Come on. I’ll get the gates open.”

She ran ahead of us and flew over the fences, opening the locks from the other side and letting us through.

“Do you think we’ll actually find other survivors?” I asked.

“I’ve got a feeling we just might,” Quattro said, her ears perking up. “That sounds more like a regular mob than a monster mash.”

The landing zone was a large, mostly flat surface, which meant we saw the crowd before running into it. It was nice to not be surprised by something. Even better, they looked like ponies instead of twisted-up half-metal monsters.

The only monster was the one standing on top of the last skywagon, shouting down at them.

“I told you, none of you are getting onboard!” Rain Shadow yelled.

“There’s a familiar face,” Quattro muttered.

“How did those miners get out?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they have been locked behind those gates?”

“Look at the way they’re dressed -- they were on kitchen and cleaning duty in the command section. Five of them were, anyway.” Emerald pointed to the sixth pony, who looked even more annoyed than the rest but kept to the back of the mob like he was too good to shout along with the rest.

“Dad!” I gasped, running for him.

He spotted me and stood up, looking surprised.

Rain Shadow spotted me at the same time and had the kind of instincts I wish I had, because he fired warning shots at my hooves that cracked against the rock.

“Stop right there!” he warned.

“What are you doing?” Emerald Sheen demanded.

“Emma!” Rain shouted. “I knew you’d make it! I’m holding this transport until the last second for any other survivors!” He looked scornfully down at the crowd. “And no prisoners are invited.”

The ground rumbled under my hooves, and the sky was getting brighter in a way that was deeply concerning. I heard rock sliding against rock, a deep rumble like the biggest dragon in the world.

“I’m pretty sure this counts as the last minute,” I said. “Nopony’s left down there, and I don’t like anypony’s chances if they were in the other half of the ship after that dragon tore its way out of it.”

“Shut up,” Rain growled.

“We can’t leave these ponies,” Emerald said. “They’ll all fit on the transport. We can take turns pulling it and maybe even catch up to the Asperitas!”

“They’re criminals, Emma!”

“It doesn’t matter, they’re ponies,” the military mare stepped closer. “Besides, they were kitchen staff! You know what that means! All of them were on good behavior and were trusted enough that we were willing to put knives in their hooves. None of them committed a crime worth being sentenced to death and even the Commander knew that!”

“Let us in!” one of the prisoners shouted, going for the transport door.

Rain Shadow shot him, entirely on reflex. I think he meant for it to be a warning shot. I could see his expression well enough to tell he didn’t expect to hit the stallion in the head. There was a pop like a cloud apple bursting and the pony’s head was just gone. His body swayed for a moment and collapsed to the stone.

The other prisoners backed off, shocked.

“What did you do?” Emerald gasped.

“What I had to do,” Rain Shadow said. “You can either come with me or not, Emerald. None of them is getting on this transport even if I have to shoot them myself.”

“I don’t think he’s going to negotiate,” Quattro said.

“Make me wish we had a rifle,” I muttered. “At least then it’d be fair.”

“I’ve got something,” Destiny said, surprising me. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “I’m still pretty gassed but I think I’ve got enough in me for one shot.”

“One shot of what?” I asked.

“Just get me a little closer,” Destiny said. “We’re only getting one try.”

I took a deep breath and had to hope she knew what she was doing. I stepped closer, and Rain Shadow spun to face me.

“Calm down,” I said. “I don’t have a gun.”

“I do,” the soldier retorted.

“We’re reasonable ponies. We can talk this out.”

It wasn’t the first time Destiny had used magic while I was in the armor. She’d used a little telekinesis here and there, activated the vector trap, and if I understood her correctly, everything the armor did was more or less powered by her magic. This was the first time I really, really felt it, though. It rushed through me in a way I can only compare to, well, your first time, if you get my drift. I was scary and exciting and there was a rush and release that made me see stars.

Possibly more important to everypony else, it meant I fired a bolt of red magical force into Rain Shadow’s chest and knocked him clean off the transport, off the edge of the camp, and down to the cloud layer below.

I stumbled, feeling suddenly dizzy. Or maybe Destiny was dizzy and I was just feeling it too.

“I had no idea you could do that,” I gasped.

“I honestly wasn’t sure I still had it in me,” Destiny said. She sounded faint and exhausted. “Those evocation self-defense classes were a long time ago. I can only barely remember a few of the lessons.”

“Nice trick,” Quattro said, slapping my back and using the motion to help hold me up. She whispered in my ear. “Try not to look like you’re about to collapse in case he comes back and you need to do it again.”

“I don’t think I can do it again,” Destiny said.

“All the more reason to pretend you can.” Quattro kept holding me up, looking like she was congratulating me.

“Is he alive?” I asked, looking at Emerald. Was she going to shoot me in the back if he’d died.

“I doubt it,” she said. “Get everypony onto the transport, okay? I’m going to check on him.”

I nodded. With where he’d fallen, we weren’t going to be able to get to him. Emerald took wing and flew down to where Rain Shadow was lying prone, and I stormed over to the transport and opened the doors. “Everypony in,” I said.

The former prisoners ran inside, out of the constant rain of ash and the increasing rumbling. Dad stopped to look at me.

“Chamomile, I…” he hesitated.

“I know what happened to Mom,” I said. “She’s still inside that thing, somehow. It used her face. It recognized my name. It remembered me.”

He sighed. “I tried to warn her. I knew being careless with all this technology would bite her in the flank. It’s exactly what happened to end the war -- ponies played around too much with things they barely understood, and they ended the whole world.”

“The military will make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Emerald said, landing next to me. “He’s alive, but stunned. I left him my emergency rations and medical supplies. It’s enough to get him to civilization once he wakes up.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that and won’t hold a grudge for the rest of his life,” Quattro said.

“I wasn’t going to shoot him while he was down. And I won’t let him shoot us. I took all the ammunition he was carrying. It’s a fair trade for the medical supplies.” She nodded to the transport. “Do we have a destination?”

“Not going to chase the Asperitas?” Quattro asked.

“I can’t catch up to it carrying all this weight. Maybe if Rain Shadow had taken turns with me, we could have sprinted enough to catch up, but not now.” She shook her head, looking back at where he’d fallen. “Idiot.”

“We’ll head for Cirrus Valley,” Quattro said.

I blinked in surprise at the suggestion.

“What, you don’t want to go home?” Quattro asked. “It’s probably the closest settlement, just a nice quiet little cloud town. Plus I left all of my supplies there. I’d have to go back anyway, and it’s a safe place to let these low-risk criminals go.”

“It’s a good suggestion,” Dad said. “I’ll be glad to put all this behind us. Hopefully no thugs have gone and robbed the house while we were away. The last thing I need is to have to organize everything again.”

“I doubt we can stay there,” I realized. “The military will want answers. They know where we live.”

“One stop at a time,” Quattro interrupted. “What we’ll do is, we’ll head back, I’ll pick up my things, you pack up what’s important, and we’ll have a few drinks at your bar to celebrate our freedom. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds--” the ground started rumbling and didn’t stop. “Sounds like time to go!”

The smoke pouring out of the Smokestack doubled like something had broken inside it, lightning striking down from the black ceiling overhead and into the broken mountain like beam weapons being used against the earth itself.

“Inside!” Emerald said, shoving us into the transport before running to the other end to start strapping herself in.

I got in last, standing in the open door of the transport. The ground cracked, shattering like ice. The rifts slowly grew wider and longer, getting closer. The faint rankness in the air got worse, and I heard the ponies behind me starting to cough as we slowly got moving.

“We need to go faster, Emerald!” I yelled.

The remains of the command section started to slide, folding in on itself while the ground opened up under it. I saw the glow of something red-hot and too liquid to be good starting to well out around it.

“I’m working on it!” Emerald shouted back. I could hear her struggling. The systems in the transport would reduce the weight of everything inside, the same way power armor did, but the number of ponies she was trying to move was working against her.

“How big is it going to be?” I asked, looking back at Dad.

“Volcanic eruptions have leveled entire cities,” he said. “They’re like megaspells. Multiple, overlapping megaspells. Poison gas, walls of fire, massive explosions… we have to hope this one is relatively tame.”

“Hold on!” Emerald warned us, as we plunged over the edge. I could actually feel it crumble under us those last few paces, the rock giving way as we struggled into the air. She fought to get us as much distance as she could, angling up and climbing like a struggling foal.

Behind us, the peak of the mountain crumbled, and I could see down into its throat. A roiling pot of black and red, like the world was bleeding from a wound. The remains of the Exodus Blue fell into it, breaking the black crust open and offering a glimpse of the furnace inside. I could feel the heat even from this distance!

“Your mother must have done this on purpose,” Dad muttered.

“What? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You said it yourself -- she’s inside that thing.” Dad gestured at the volcano. “And it caused this. I doubt it did it on accident. She must have decided she’d wipe the slate clean to make sure any clues about how to destroy the SIVA core were lost forever.”

“I wouldn’t say we lost every clue,” Destiny said. Her voice sounded fragile. I didn’t know if it was exhaustion or something else. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

If I'd really been paying attention I might have noticed that we were flying off in the same direction the dragon, my mother, whichever it was, had gone.

Chapter 9 - Everyday People

I hadn’t seen my hometown from the outside for a long time. Buck, the last time had been just before Dad and Mom split up. I was a little too young to really understand why they’d break up, just old enough that all I really remembered was the way they talked to each other. And now my mom was some kind of monster, or had been eaten by a monster, or something. Growing up was confusing.

It had taken way too long to get here -- we’d ended up camping out in the wild blue yonder overnight so Emerald could rest. She’d already been tired after a long day of being locked in a prison cell with monsters pounding on the doors and she hadn’t been able to make it the whole way on her own. It was a good thing we hadn’t gone after the Noctilucent. Even if it had been damaged, we’d never have caught up with it.

By the time we got to Cirrus Valley, we were all ready for a break.

“Just set us down over there,” I said. “It’s a recharging station.”

I pointed to the neon sign blaring through the fog. It showed a swirling aqua-colored vortex. The charging ports were monoliths just in front of the building, set in a line picked out by the few working lights.

“What’s with all the haze?” one of the prisoners asked. I couldn’t remember his name. Spanky? Misty? I knew it ended in a ‘y’.

“We’re below the standard cloud level here,” I said, pointing up at the massive cloud walls starting to loom above us as we descended.

“There are large pumps used to keep the clouds from leaking in, but they must be down for maintenance,” Dad said. “They take them offline for a few days every month to keep them working. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, you get used to it,” I said, trying to reassure the others. I felt like I had to defend my town. It had been my idea to come here, more or less, and it was half-flooded with leaking clouds like some abandoned ghost town. “It’s not usually this bad. Most of the time the sun comes out and cleans everything out.”

“They probably ran into problems and were lacking my expertise,” Dad said. “I’ve had to step in a few times myself to sort things out when they had problems with the computer systems or pump controllers. I bet when we get home there’ll be a message waiting for us begging for my help.”

“Seems quiet,” Quattro said. “Too quiet.”

“Ponies usually stay home on days like this,” I said.

“After all the excitement, we could use some quiet,” Emerald said. “My wings are starting to ache. I haven’t done this much exercise since I was in basic training.”

“I should report you for not keeping up with your cardio,” Quattro teased.

“I should have made you walk the whole way here,” Emerald countered. “If I had fewer ponies to carry I’d be feeling much better. Seven other ponies was really pushing it.”

“You should have kicked Chamomile off, then. She counts as two ponies.”

I shoved Quattro, and the whole transport shook.

“No horsing around,” Emerald said. “I’m going to set us down.”

Emerald brought us in low, slowing and carefully entering the fog, hitting the landing pad gently and rolling to a stop.

“Everypony out,” she said, unbuckling herself from the straps.

When I stepped off the transport, I could feel it. Walking through the fog was like being underwater. It slowed everything down. It wasn’t thick enough to stand on, but it was close. It made things feel floaty and deliberate. The easiest thing for me was just turning the way I wanted to go and barging ahead in a straight line just to avoid losing momentum.

“Need help hooking it up?” I asked.

Emerald popped open a panel on the side. “It shouldn’t be hard. It’s a standard connection.” She picked up the probe hanging on the side of the dark cloudbanks, the miniature stormclouds sparking with inner light from the electricity within them. Emerald snapped it into place with the loud click of magnets coming together.

“Can we use this to recharge the armor?” I asked. The low-battery indicator had been blinking for a while. We were already dipping into the single-digit percentages.

“No,” Destiny said. “I wish we could. What we really need is a new fusion core.”

“A fusion core?” Emerald asked in surprise. “Those were only used in heavy industrial generators. Not in powered armor.”

“Not in normal powered armor,” Destiny agreed. “This is a prototype unit. Less than a dozen suits were made.”

“That doesn’t explain why it needs that much power,” Emerald noted.

“The thaumoframe draws a lot of power,” Destiny explained. “It runs the strength enhancement, weight reduction, sensors… and since it has to be able to shift from one spell matrix to another at a moment’s notice, it’s not super efficient. That was something we were looking at improving, but we never got around to it.”

Emerald frowned. “It doesn’t have dedicated mechanical systems?”

“The idea was, it would have almost no moving parts. It’s like a clean, modern electric motor compared to a coal-fired steam engine. If it’s solid-state, not as much can go wrong.”

“It feels as heavy as a steam engine,” I mumbled.

“Don’t complain. If it wasn’t for the near-field broadcast from the armor, you’d be in agony from that SIVA infection.”

“Where is everypony?” one of the four prisoners asked. “Shouldn’t somepony have come out to see what’s going on?”

“In this town, good chance he’s inside and trying to sleep through the fog,” I said. “Or he might think Emma is here to arrest him for something.”

Quattro laughed at that and pushed open the doors to the small service station. The lights were off, but that wasn’t surprising. Like I said, most places just sort of shut down and waited for days like this to end. If there wasn’t anypony inside, we could just toss some bits on the counter to square up with whatever we took. I’d done it before. Only without the bits. And then I’d gotten in trouble.

I might not be a great role model.

“Anypony here?” Quattro asked. I followed the small mare inside. The shelves were mostly bare. The place had been built back when ponies had so much surplus stuff they could just fill a store with things they might want.

The good thing was, empty shelves meant I wasn’t likely to knock anything over and break it.

“I’ll check the back room,” one of the chefs said, stepping past us to walk into the back.

“Looks like we’ll have to go somewhere else to get a snack,” Quattro said. “Unless he keeps the good stuff back here?”

She hopped over the counter, and I saw her expression change before she landed, flapping wildly with her clipped wings to avoid stepping in something.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, rushing over to look. Quattro pointed.

Behind the counter, hidden unless you were leaning over it to look, was the torn and crumpled form of the old pony who’d run the little shop. His throat had been torn out, and I could see black veins stretching from the wound. His skin was already blistered and bubbling in places.

“Oh buck,” I whispered. I knelt down next to him. "Mister Yorkshire... You used to let me do little chores for you for candy. I was so bad at it you probably spent more time fixing my mistakes than you would have doing it yourself..." I shook my head. "What in Tartarus happened? Who did this?"

“Hold on,” Destiny said. Flashing text and windows came up. I imagined a unicorn frantically tapping at a keyboard in the back of my head. A symbol flashed across my helmet’s display. “SIVA reaction confirmed.”

“How is that possible?” Quattro hopped up onto the counter, leaning over the fallen body. She tilted her head, thinking. “It looks like something was trying to eat him.”

The scream from the back room ended our discussion. I got up, determined to avenge the old stallion.

“We might have just found the something,” I said, bolting for the door to the back room and shoving through it. The chef that had come with us was screaming, backing up, trying to fight off the pony that had his teeth latched around the chef’s fetlock.

“Get him off me!” the chef yelled.

I charged without thinking, lowering my head and just tackling the biter. The pale stallion’s teeth tore free with a sickening ripping sensation, blood splattering everywhere as he slammed back into the shelves full of Abraxo cleaner and soap.

“What the buck is wrong with him?!” the chef demanded.

“He’s infected with something!” I said. Now that I got a look at him, he was just another pony from around town. But something had gone terribly wrong. He looked just like the miners had back at the camp - like he was in the middle of a metamorphosis from pony to insect, growing tumorous plates of steel under his skin and going mad from the feeling of needles tearing him apart from inside. Those same black veins surrounded his eyes and mouth, like his blood was turning into old crude oil. He started to get back up. I looked away and stomped, feeling bones break. The infected stallion went still.

“Infected?” the chef asked, suddenly worried. He looked at the bite on his hoof.

“Here,” I said, spotting a half-empty bottle of bathtub vodka. The clerk must have gotten bored on his breaks. He took the bottle, biting the cork and spitting it to the side, taking a long swig before pouring the rest on his bite wound and hissing in pain. He looked up and behind me in alarm at a sound I hadn’t heard.

I kicked without looking, putting my hoof right through the snout of the biting zombie that had gotten back up already. I felt bone snap, and it fell to the ground in a heap. I wasn’t sure how long it’d stay there.

“Let’s get outside,” I said. “Quattro! We’ve got trouble!”

I helped the chef out of the back room and closed the door behind us. Hopefully they weren’t smart enough to figure out how to work a doorknob.

“This town is a lot more exciting than I remember,” Quattro said.

The door burst open, and Emerald was there, the tip of her single mounted rifle glowing. We froze.

“Get down!” she shouted.

Quattro dove down from the countertop, and just barely missed being grabbed by Mister Yorkshire as he got back up, blood still trickling from the wound in his throat. Emerald shot him, catching him in the chest and head, putting him back down on the ground with a short burst of bright laser light. I froze at the sight, watching him fall in a twitching mess.

“Thanks,” Quattro said, a little breathless.

“Come on,” Emerald said, holding the door so we could get out. I passed the wounded chef to Quattro so I didn’t have to try squeezing through the doorway while carrying him. “We need to get somewhere we can defend.”

There were dark shapes in the fog, getting closer. I could just pick out the glint of metal when they moved.

“Defend?” Dad demanded, from where he was cowering next to the transport. Taking cover, I mean. My dad wouldn’t cower. “What are you talking about? Get strapped in and let’s just get out of here!”

“The transport’s batteries will die before we get anywhere, and we don’t have supplies to last even that long,” Quattro said. “We might be able to condense water from the clouds, but we need food.”

“I think our best bet is to leave this here to charge,” Emerald said. “It’s going to take a few hours to get up to full. We use that time to gather supplies. Once we have enough for at least a few days, we leave.”

“I know just the place to start,” Quattro said.

I shoved, and the door popped open. A plasma round hit the cloud next to my head when I looked inside, melting the cloud wall and hot enough I felt the splash through the armor.

“Woah, woah!” I shouted. “We’re friendly!”

Sloe Gin looked at me incredulously. He had a plasma rifle in his hooves that looked like it was held together mostly with duct tape and hope, and more duct tape holding a bar cloth in place against his neck. I'd never seen the rifle before. He must have had it in the safe in the back office.

“What the buck?” he gasped, his voice raspy. “Chamomile?”

“I’m surprised you recognized me with, you know,” I said, motioning to the blue powered armor. “Come on, it’s safe!” I forced my way inside, shoving the table he’d put up against the door out of the way so the others could enter.

“So much for my barricade,” Sloe mumbled, lowering the rifle.

“If she could get through it that easily, it wasn’t worth much,” Quattro said. “Do you have bandages?” She motioned at the wounded chef. The three other former prisoners helped get him into a chair.

“If I had bandages I wouldn’t have a bucking towel around my neck,” Sloe growled. He raised the plasma rifle at me again and pulled the trigger, the weapon clicking empty. He looked at the busted weapon and swore before throwing it away and putting his head down on the bar. I looked at the gun, then at him, my jaw hanging open.

“What the buck?!” I demanded, storming over to grab him.

“That thing came here looking for you!” Sloe shouted, his voice getting raspier by the moment.

“Looking for… what are you talking about?”

“The giant metal thing!” Sloe yelled, pointing outside. “It attacked the town, screaming your name!”

“No way.” I dropped Sloe. “That has to be-- that dragon came here? Mom came here?”

“It must have some way to access her memories,” Destiny said. “She remembered you back at the Exodus Blue. She must have come looking for you, and decided to try knocking on your front door.”

“Why wouldn’t she be looking for me?” Dad asked.

Quattro rolled her eyes. “Maybe she did, and that’s why she’s trying to kill everypony.”

“It’s not a bucking joke,” Sloe growled. “Ponies are dead!” He started to shiver and shake, sweating profusely. He grabbed a bottle from under the bar and chugged half of it. It should have almost knocked him unconscious, but he looked like he wasn’t feeling anything.

“How long ago were you attacked?” Emerald asked.

“A few hours,” the bartender said, gasping for breath and lowering his head again, putting his chin against the bartop. “I feel like shit…”

“Just stay calm,” Emerald said. “There should be something we can do for him--”

The bartender mumbled something.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer to Sloe.

Sloe lunged at me, teeth first. He latched onto my armor and flailed at me, hooves pounding against my chest.

Emerald’s stinger-tipped tail stabbed into him. Dark, brown blood leaked out of Sloe, as thick as mud. I shoved him back, and Emerald finished it with a flurry of laser shots, the first two not doing much, but the third burning into him and cascading into a disintegration, ashes falling to the floor.

“Damnit…” I turned and grabbed Emerald by her armored collar, lifting her off the ground so I could look her in the eyes. I wanted to throw her across the room, or punch her, or… something! “That was my friend!”

“He was trying to kill you,” Emerald hissed. “You could try thanking me.”

“Are you going to shoot me too?!” I demanded. “I’m infected! He might be infected!”

“No! I’m trying to save you,” Emerald said. “All of you!”

“I have an idea,” Destiny interrupted. I could feel the armor forcing my hoof, making my grip go slack and putting Emerald down. Destiny was trying to calm things down. I took a deep breath and let Emerald go. “It might be possible to create something to prevent the infection from spreading.”

“What do we need?” Quattro asked.

“Medical supplies,” Destiny said. “SIVA cells are self-organizing micromachines, and because they’re so small they’re vulnerable to some medications.”

“So we can treat it like a disease?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” Emerald said. “Actually, pouring alcohol on the wound was a really good idea. Washing promptly will keep SIVA cells from getting a foothold.”

I saw the chef relax a little. One of the other survivors patted him on the back.

“There’s a hospital at the north end of town,” Dad said. “Celestia knows I had to visit a lot thanks to Chamomile. We must have ended up visiting the doctors at least once a month until she got old enough to take herself.”

“I’m not that accident-prone.”

He gave me a look. “You once needed to get stitches because you tried to pierce your ear with a nailgun.”

Thankfully they couldn’t see me blush through the helmet. I still had a small scar from that.

“That’s good,” Destiny said. “Then you’re familiar with the hospital and its layout. We can go there, get what we need, and come back. You can barricade the door behind us to keep yourselves safe until then.”

“It’s going to be a long walk there,” Emerald put in. “We need more than just one laser rifle and Chamomile’s bare hooves. Can that plasma rifle be repaired?”

Dad walked over and took a look at it, putting it on the counter and checking a few connections. He shook his head. “No. Too many parts are worn out. Even if we had spare parts we’d need so many we might as well be building a new rifle from scratch.”

“We can make a stop along the way,” Quattro said. “I stashed my personal gear somewhere safe before I got myself arrested. It’s in that little motel two blocks away.”

“Little motel?” I frowned. “Wait, the Ruby Smoke? Isn’t that where all the prostitutes--”

“It’s where you can rent rooms with no questions asked,” Quattro said. “But yes, they do need to put more soundproofing in the walls, in case you were wondering.”

Emerald thought for a moment. “So that’s me, since I’m armed, Chamomile, since the ghost haunting her knows what we’re looking for, you so you can grab your things…”

“Let me guess, you want me to come along too?” Dad asked. “Forget it. I’ll be happy staying here and playing substitute bartender until you get back. I even have a few house specialties I can mix up while you’re away.”

“Stay safe,” I said quietly.

Dad hesitated, looking away with his jaw set, tense. “You too,” he said finally. “And… try to see a real doctor while you’re at the hospital.”

“Huh?” I asked, confused.

He tapped his forehead and looked at me like someone with brain damage who’d forgotten she’d been shot in the head.

“Oh. Right.”

The Ruby Smoke was two blocks away… as the pegasus flies. But we weren’t flying. If Quattro and I didn’t have clipped wings, we would have been there in a minute or two, tops, and that’s even with me flying like a brick. We were stuck at cloud-level, and the streets weren’t really built for that.

Cirrus Valley, like I’ve mentioned, is an old city. Pre-war, practically a relic on its own. Most cities in the Enclave aren’t like it. When I was in school, I learned that smaller pegasus towns and cities ended up being carved up and moved closer together around the Sustainable Pegasus Project towers where things were the most stable and cloud farming was easiest.

Those cities were all built at the new cloud-top layer, and you can tell a city is post-war because they’re all flat and built like spokes around the tower at their center. A pony can walk down the street, and because everything is planned and simple, it’s easy to get around.

Cirrus Valley was built back before all that, and it’s full of different levels and hills and sheer cloud cliffs. The walls of cloud to either side have made things even worse over the years, slowly crushing the town like it’s in a vice. Long story short, instead of being nice and flat, the city is crumpled.

“We can go around that way,” I said, pointing to where a cross street formed a bridge over the wall of rough cloud-turf.

“I’ll fly ahead,” Emerald said, taking off and slowly cruising through the mist. She didn’t get very far, because I saw the red flashes of laser fire before we even got to the cross street. Quattro touched my shoulder and shook her head before I could start running.

“Hold on a minute,” Quattro said.

“Why?” I asked. “We need to help her!”

“No, we need to wait for the only armed member of our little group to finish and give us the all-clear,” Quattro corrected.

“But--”

Quattro looked up and nodded. “See? Here she is.”

Emerald set down next to us. “There’s a barricade across the road up ahead. I cleared out the infected I could see, but be careful. Visibility is terrible with all this fog.”

“The whole city feels like it’s falling apart,” Quattro said.

I shrugged and trotted forward, taking point. There was one good thing about letting Emerald go first -- I didn’t have to see the faces of the ponies she’d shot. It was one thing pulping a few miners I didn’t know, or a medic I’d talked to once, but some of these ponies I saw every day. Most of them were nicer to me than my own family.

“That’s the police skywagon!” I said, breaking into a sprint and running up to the barricade. They’d parked it on the street and wedged it in place with some loose clouds. I could see black marks and torn-up vapor where they’d used it as cover while they were shooting at something.

I knelt down to look at a pile of loose ashes. There were still some scraps of the local police department’s uniform. I brushed ashes away from the badge.

“Officer Dewey…” I muttered. I vaguely remembered him. He was a big pony, always pulling the skywagon around to ‘show they’re doing some policing’. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find him here. What was left of him, I mean.

I put the badge down and opened the door of the skywagon, looking around inside. The radio was turned on, and I could hear a static-filled voice.

“This is Officer Frost of the Cirrus Valley peace force, requesting support from any units who are receiving this message. An unknown creature has attacked the town, and some kind of contagion is spreading through the population. We’ve ordered civilians to remain indoors, but the infected are delirious and attacking others. They don’t-- they don’t die! Please, we need additional firepower and support! All we can do is slow them down! I am setting this message to repeat. Please, if you are receiving this, we need help! This is Officer Frost of the Cirrus Valley peace force…”

I listened to it for a few more seconds and then shut it off, fumbling around the seats trying to find anything useful. A first-aid kit would be good. A laser rifle would be better. “There’s got to be a weapon in here somewhere…”

I spotted a mouth-grip and pulled the weapon free to reveal… a tiny little stun-gun. It looked more like a toy than a real weapon.

Quattro chuckled when she saw me holding the tiny thing. “At least you’re not compensating for anything.”

“The military wouldn’t have let a local police department have real weapons, not this far in the frontier,” Emerald said. “Hang onto that. Maybe it’ll work on the infected.”

“Really?” I asked, looking at the tiny thing. I was afraid I might break it.

“If it doesn’t work you can always wrestle them,” Quattro said. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I can see the hotel sign from here.”

It was easy to pick out, hanging high above the buckled street, the pink glow seeming to banish the fog around it and leaving the courtyard below it clear. The Ruby Smoke was shaped like a horseshoe, with a dingy-looking pool in the center and rooms facing inward. A long time ago it had been bright salmon pink, but now it was faded and patched until it was more blotchy and ugly than anything else in town.

“What a lovely place,” Emerald muttered.

“Not all of us can afford fancy hotels,” Quattro said.

“There are bodies in the water,” Destiny said. “Be careful.”

She outlined them in red. I tried to focus on just the shapes and not the faces. I was sure if I looked at them too hard I’d recognize the ponies floating face-down in the pool.

“We should look for survivors,” I said. Quattro and Emerald looked at me. “If there are other ponies that aren’t infected, we should be trying to help, right?”

Emerald sighed and nodded. “You’re right. You start at that end, I’ll start at this end.” She pointed. “Knock, say you’re here to help evacuate them, then move on. If there are survivors, we’ve already cleared the way back to the bar, so we can send them there.”

“Sounds good,” I said, walking to the first room and knocking. “Anypony in there? I’m with the government and I’m here to help!” That was probably the best thing to say. Ponies trusted anypony who was working for the government, and they needed help. There wasn’t an answer after a few moments, so I knocked one more time, then moved on.

The second door was ajar, squeaking open on ancient hinges when I knocked on it.

“Hello?” I called out to the darkness. “Is anypony there? I’m here to help.”

And something jumped out of the darkness, growling and biting and clawing at me. I admit it, I screamed. I’m not even ashamed to admit it. Anypony would have screamed if a horrible monster was attacking them. It was a very small horrible monster, though.

“Oh buck,” I hissed, trying to push it away. “A foal?! It even infected foals?!”

The colt was a few years younger than me, just old enough to have his cutie mark. Maybe he’d come to the hotel because he was finally getting to the age where he wanted to learn about fillies or spend some time with a coltfriend away from his parents. Whatever the reason, it hadn’t gone as planned. One of his hooves, which he was currently trying to kill me with, had turned into something like a mutated dragon’s claw, asymmetrical and cancerous and extremely sharp.

“Be careful,” Destiny warned. “With power this low there’s only so much I can do to reinforce the armor--” A red warning notice popped up at the same time I felt the claw scratch my chest. The sudden pain shocked me into action, and I threw the colt like he was a sack of turnips. He landed with a splash in the pool.

“Ow,” I said. The cut hurt more than it should have. I tried to look at where he’d gotten me, but it was in an awkward spot. It was like a paper cut, nagging and annoying.

“That’s a nasty trick,” Destiny said. “The edge of that claw was active SIVA. It didn’t just cut through the armor, it was eating it away. Try not to get hit again.”

“That must be why it stings so much,” I said.

“Yeah, the nano-disassemblers are just the perfect salt in the wound,” Destiny agreed. "Let me adjust the near-field suppressor to shut them down. It'll just take a second."

It felt like a wave of static, pins and needles crawling across my body, but the pain from the cut faded in its wake. I heard the water splash again behind me, and I turned to the pool, expecting him to be climbing out for round two. Instead, he splashed wildly for a few moments before going still.

“Not coordinated enough to fly, or to swim,” I said.

“Any survivors?” Emerald asked.

I looked into the open room. There was a splash of crimson on the wall and the bed. I could make out a hoof, most of a face… and where the rest should have been.

“No,” I said, closing the door firmly.

“There have to be survivors somewhere,” Emerald said gently, as we converged on Quattro’s room. “We’ll find them.”

I nodded tersely, rubbing my chest.

Quattro unlocked the door and glanced inside. “Looks clear,” she said. “You two make sure nothing sneaks up on me while I get changed. Just wish I had time for a shower.”

“We need to get to the hospital as quickly as possible,” Emerald reminded her.

“I know,” Quattro said. I watched her pull a big hard-sided suitcase out from under the bed and pop it open, tossing clothing aside. She looked up at me. “Just because I rented a room here doesn’t mean I’m a working mare. No peeking.”

“Sorry,” I said, blushing and closing the door.

“I could go a hot shower too,” Emerald sighed. “I’ve been in this armor for almost three days.”

“Where are we even going after this?” I asked.

“Our options are somewhat limited,” Emerald said. She sat down. “Looking at the map… I think if we get supplies we can make it to the Side 4 SPP tower group. That’s three, maybe four days of travel.”

“Maybe we can find something to help Quattro and me regrow our primaries faster,” I suggested. “There’s gotta be something at the hospital, right?”

Emerald nodded. “Good thinking. It’ll be a lot faster with more of us able to rotate positions.”

“And I wouldn’t mind not being cooped up in the transport,” I said. “It’s really crowded in there.”

“Crowded for you, but you’re a big mare,” Emerald teased. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. We need to see if there are other survivors. If there are too many to evacuate, as a solider it’s my duty to--”

There was a crash that cut off whatever she was going to say. The cloud surface buckled and broke under the impact, splashing out in a crater around the dark form at the center. I winced. I’d landed just like that back in the prison and my knees were still sore. The thing that got up didn’t seem all that bothered, though.

It had been a pegasus, and it took me a moment to recognize him.

“Holy horseapples, that’s the asshole who didn’t like the drink I mixed,” I swore. The last time I’d seen the lavender stallion he’d been in the basement of the bar, and here he was, all grown up and horribly infected.

His whole right side was swollen, his shoulder almost the same size as his chest and silver plates tearing through his skin, muscles swollen like huge tumors and hoof twisted into something like a set of steak knives welded together into a mass halfway between claw and club. The infection crawled up his neck and onto his face, twisting his expression into a permanent grimace.

I wasn’t ready for it when the steel scales corrupting his shoulder opened up, and a mechanical eye looked out from inside, coppery iris contracting when it spotted me.

“Chamomile,” he hissed, his voice strained with agony.

I pulled out the stun gun and fired it at him. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? I was a little freaked out, Destiny was smart enough to put a weapon in my hooves, and I pulled the trigger purely out of fear.

There was a pop, and two wires hit him in the chest. There was a shower of sparks as the electricity cracked across his altered hide to absolutely no effect. He didn’t even bother tearing them free. He just roared and charged at me, raising that huge bladed hoof for a killing blow. Emerald was closer to him, but he totally ignored her, knocking her aside and tossing her into a wall with his weight alone.

The door behind me burst open, and something whizzed past me, hitting the lavender stallion in the chest and throwing him back with a dull explosive thump.

Quattro stepped out in gold-plated armor. Her battle saddle held a rocket launcher on one side. “Sorry about the wait,” she said. “Did I miss anything interesting?”

“No, I think you’re just in time,” I said, relaxing a little. “The stun gun was useless, by the way.”

Quattro shook her head and patted my shoulder. “Don’t be silly. It made you feel better because you weren’t unarmed. That’s not useless.”

“Chamomile!” roared the stallion. He got back up, his flesh burned and torn. The blast had half-flayed him, and I could see how far the metal had crawled under his skin. His right side pulsed like a grotesque pump, and his wounds slowly started to disappear under deposits of misshapen steel.

“He’s not dead after being hit with a rocket?” Emerald groaned, getting back up and shaking her head. There was a long crack on one of her helmet's eyepieces.

“They don’t die,” I said, repeating what the police broadcast had said. He took an unsteady step towards us, his bones being tugged back into place by something inside him. I didn’t want to think about it. I could only imagine metal cables yanking him upright like a puppet.

“We’ll see about that,” Quattro said, firing the rocket launcher again. The rocket streaked towards the creature and stopped in mid-air, quivering, surrounded by a magical field.

“It’s a shielding talisman,” Destiny said. “It must have grown it!”

Emerald fired a spray of beams at it from her single rifle. The first few burned its flesh and scorched the steel plating, but one shot hit the rocket the monster was holding back, and it exploded with another dull whomp. The creature stumbled back, disoriented.

“My turn!” I shouted, charging the lavender stallion. The giant, draconic eye in his shoulder twisted to focus on me, and the hoof moved on its own, throwing him off balance while his body tried to kill me. My shoulder hit his burned chest and he went flying back, right into the pool with the other infected, splashing into the deep end with a surge of slightly-green water.

He thrashed in the water for a full minute before sinking, the weight of the steel dragging him down.

“That’s one way to do it,” Quattro said.

“I need a real gun,” I sighed.

“Could you even use one?”

“No, she can’t,” Emerald said. “I don’t think that’s going to hold him for long. Which way is the hospital?”

“North,” I said, pointing. "You going to be okay? You took a big hit."

“I'll be fine, but I think my radio and half my HUD is busted. Let's just get this mission done. We go in, look for survivors, find the medicine we need, and get out,” Emerald said. “It’ll be quick and easy.”

Chapter 10 - Light My Fire

I think I spent more time at the hospital than I did at my own home. I was always getting kicked out for being too loud, interrupting Dad when he was working on something important, or just generally being an energetic filly. And since I was clumsy and dumb, running around without adult supervision usually meant I ended up needing a visit to see a doctor.

Sometimes if it was bad enough Dad would even come with me.

I’d never seen it like this. It was dark and quiet. The lights should have been on, even if it was midnight on Remembrance Day. The doors were smashed in, the panels of solid rainbow broken out of their frames and lying on the cloud floor and letting in the mist from outside.

“Is it just me, or is this place creepy as Tartarus?” Quattro asked as we walked into the emergency room. It was like coming home to find somepony had robbed the place. Seats were overturned, the ancient magazines were ripped apart and littering the floor, and there was more blood than I’d ever seen in one place. It was oddly quiet and dark, the only light coming from a Sparkle-Cola machine that had been empty for longer than I’d been alive.

“The injured must have swarmed this place,” Emerald whispered. “Then the infected followed the rush. Even if they barricaded the doors, how many ponies were already inside before they knew they’d turn and start attacking the rest?”

“Why are you two whispering?” I asked. “Nopony’s here.”

Naturally, the second I said that, a nurse slammed into the window separating the staff area from the waiting room. I jumped, and Emerald and Quattro brought their guns to bear. We watched her for a moment as she slumped against the window, smearing blackened blood over it as she weakly beat at it.

“Nopony’s here, huh?” Quattro asked, once it was clear she wasn’t going to punch through the wall.

“Okay, nopony else is here,” I said, tempting fate. I looked around, but nothing lunged out of the shadows to attack.

“That just makes me wonder where they went,” Emerald said, lowering her rifle.

“Hold on, do you hear that?” Quattro asked, holding up a hoof. We could just distantly hear a voice coming from deeper inside.

“The hospital is currently on emergency lockdown. The Ministry of Peace apologizes for this inconvenience. This lockdown is for your safety. Thank you for your patience.” There was a short interlude of smooth, calming jazz, and then the message started to repeat.

“Somepony must have activated the security systems after the attack started,” Quattro said. “Probably some kind of protocol in place from the war in case of a zebra attack.”

“On a hospital in a cloud city?” Emerald asked.

“Everything was standardized back then, remember?” Quattro said. “This is good, though. If things are locked down, it means there won’t be infected ponies swarming us. They’ll all be stuck where they were when the lockdown started, like she is.”

She motioned to the nurse.

“We need to find the pharmacy,” Destiny said.

“There’s one near the main entrance,” I said.

“That’s the patient pharmacy. We need the main stores. What we’re looking for won’t be distributed over the counter.”

“Of course you need the good drugs,” Quattro said. “Any idea where to look?”

“It’s a hospital. We just need to get into the staff areas and look for signs.”

“The staff areas are the best places to search for survivors, too,” Emerald said. “Anypony who wasn’t working with patients might be holed up in an office or lab somewhere.”

“This way,” I said, motioning for them to follow me. “Destiny, anything you can do to improve the view?” The hallway was dark. There should have been emergency lights, but everything was broken or flickering uselessly.

“Sure,” she said. I felt a tiny spark of magic well up, and my horn or, I guess, my helmet’s horn lit up like a flare.

"Any chance you can point out anything that wants to kill me?"

"Sorry. There's an augury effect I can activate that would function like an EFS system, but it's too power intensive to use until we can find a new fusion core," Destiny apologized.

"It wouldn't help much," Emerald said. "I've got red everywhere. Anypony alive is so panicked right now that they're going to read as hostile on Eyes-Forward, and with multiple floors it's already almost useless to begin with."

“Great. Well, we can get to the staff areas through the ICU,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know the right door.” I shoved at the locked door, then stepped back and kicked it open, shattering the lock. I wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side. Maybe a pack of moaning ponies with nanometal claws and SIVA regenerating their wounds?

“Stop. Quiet. Do you smell that?” Emerald asked.

I sniffed at the air.

“Ozone?” I said, at the sharp stink.

“The gas lines are ruptured,” she said. “I think there’s an oxygen leak.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means we can’t shoot anything, and we have to be very careful not to make a spark,” Quattro said grimly. “Otherwise, boom.”

“Well I’m glad we’re keeping things simple,” I whispered.

We crept into the ICU. I was glad it was mostly dark. I could only see a little of what was in the side rooms, strapped to the beds and beeping machines, half of the medical devices blaring red light and very worrying sounds. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I was pretty sure it meant there wasn’t anypony in the room that we could save. My hoof came down in a puddle, and I looked down to see red, slowly trickling towards a drain on the floor.

“I used to like this hospital,” I whispered to myself. I looked back to Quattro and Emerald. They were quietly following along behind me, so silent that I felt like every step I took was a thunderclap by comparison.

“I’m diverting as much power as I can to reducing weight,” Destiny’s voice hissed in my ears. “I’m sorry it’s not more. We really need that new fusion core.”

“One thing at a time,” I muttered, leading the way to the staff door. It was much better secured than the door to the ER. I readied myself to kick it open and felt Emerald grab my hoof.

“Don’t,” she whispered, glancing at something slowly moving on one of the hospital beds, waiting for it to go still before continuing. “You’ll cause a spark. This whole room will go up.”

“What are we supposed to do?” I asked quietly.

The intercom squealed and the smooth jazz stopped, replaced with a stallion’s voice. “Hello? Is this working? Are you sane?”

“I guess there were some survivors after all,” Quattro said. “At least there’s a little good news.”

“Do you have any way to open this door?” I asked.

“Can you help me?” the voice said. “I’m stuck in one of the radiology rooms. There are those things waiting outside, but I don’t think they’ve noticed me.”

“I know the way,” I said. “Wouldn’t be my first trip to get an X-ray.”

The lock buzzed, and I pulled the door open, motioning for Quattro and Emerald to go through while I held it. The noise had already gotten some attention. The shapes on the beds were starting to struggle and moan and try to get up. Something lurched to its hooves at the nurse’s station and turned towards the sound.

“Down the ramp!” I pointed, slamming the door shut and backing away. The door shuddered, something hitting it hard enough to dent it. It wasn’t going to hold. Worse, with the gas leak in the room, and the metal the SIVA infection was creating…

We ran for the ramp, ducking around the corner. I heard a second slam against the door, and then a rush of heat and pressure. The security door was blasted open, and fire shot across the hallway like a dragon’s breath. Alarms immediately blared into action with warbling, distorted tones, and the ceiling turned dark as a layer of cloud was converted into a torrent of water, splashing down over everything and putting out what few flames had found fuel to catch on.

I peeked around the corner and saw a crumpled, blackened form. I waited a moment, but it didn’t get back up.

“Looks like fire doesn’t agree with them,” I whispered.

“I’ll keep my eyes open for a flamethrower,” Destiny said.

“Can’t you… cast a fire spell, or something?”

“I used to know more spells…” she said quietly. “It’s all foggy. Your life is supposed to flash in front of your eyes when you die, but I feel like I can barely hold onto a few important memories.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s probably just an undead thing I’ll have to get used to. But hey, if you find me a spellbook maybe I can figure something out? A fire spell would be useful.”

I nodded and turned back to the ramp, running to catch up to Quattro and Emerald.

“We’re clear behind us for now,” I said. “But that security door is broken. If there are more of them, they might wander in.”

“The central pharmacy might be in the other direction anyway,” Emerald said. “Radiology is that way?” she asked, pointing.
I nodded. “They put it in the basement.”

“Makes sense, clouds aren’t very good radiological shielding, so you want as much as you can get,” Emerald said. She stopped at the next turn and held up a wing, making a few quick motions like she was doing a fancy hoofshake.

“...What’s she doing?” I whispered.

“Overestimating your knowledge of Enclave military signals,” Quattro whispered back. “Two enemies around the corner. You pop out and provide light, then she and I will take them out.”

Emerald scowled back at us. I shook my head and hopped around the corner, the light from my armor shining down the hallway and catching two infected stumbling in the dark. They froze up and turned to look, and in that instant, she and Quattro gunned them down, beams raking down the hospital corridor and downing them.

“Good work,” Emerald said. We trotted closer and she put a few more beams into them until the cascade effect hit and they turned to ash.

“This should be the right room,” I said. I knocked on the door. “Hello?”

“Ah, one moment!” I heard from the other side. There was the sound of furniture being moved, and then the door cracked open. The old stallion on the other side looked at us. “Good, you made it. I’ve been having problems getting in touch with anypony else.”

“This might be a good chance to get her checked out,” Quattro suggested, tilting her head towards me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You got shot in the head and promised your dad you’d have somepony look at it,” Quattro reminded me. “This is the only doctor we’re likely to find.”

“Shot in the head?” the stallion asked.

“It’s been a long week,” I said.

He opened the door and motioned for us to come in. “Put the table back in front of the door once you’re inside,” he said. “I don’t trust the locks. They’re just for keeping kids from wandering around, not stopping monsters.”

The x-ray room was in better condition than the rest of the hospital. For one thing, the lights were working. He pulled on sterile hoof-covers and motioned to the exam table.

“You’ll need to take the helmet off,” he said.

“I haven’t taken it off since I got shot,” I admitted. “It’s not the only thing keeping my skull together, is it?”

“It’s safe,” Destiny promised. “Let me unlock the seal for you.”

I heard a hiss around my neck, and I gingerly lifted the helmet off. I halfway expected a rush of blood or sudden pain, or to have my head come off with it or something. It was one of those things you just get scared about when you don’t know how bad an injury really is.

“My initial diagnosis is that you need a bath,” the doctor said. “You there, in the gold armor? Can you give me the bottle next to the sink, and that rag? Thank you.”

He tipped the bottle onto the rag and used the wetted cloth to clean my face.

“You’ve got old, dried blood all over you,” he said. “This will only take a moment…”

The cloth was stained brown by the time he was done. He looked carefully at my forehead, brushing part of my mane aside.

“The wound is completely closed, I’m guessing you’ve had a healing potion since you were injured?”

I started to nod.

“Don’t move your head while I’m examining you,” he chided.

“I pumped a few healing potions into her,” Destiny said. The voice came from the helmet lying off to the side. I looked at it in dull surprise. I didn't know she'd still end up talking out of it. “I might have also done a little emergency surgery.”

“Surgery?” the doctor sighed. “Wonderful. And with the healing potions it’s impossible to tell how it took. Alright, lay back. I’m going to take a few images. This’ll only take a moment.”

“Do I need a lead apron or--?”

“You’re wearing armor. If it can’t hold up to a medical x-ray, you should ask for a refund,” the doctor said, pulling a boxy camera on a mechanical arm down to point at me. “Hold still.”

“I’m going to have to shut down the near-field broadcaster while you get imaged,” Destiny said. “It could cause interference otherwise.”

“Isn’t that going to hurt?” I asked.

“You’re a big girl, Chamomile. You’ll be okay.”

It took longer than I expected for the x-ray to develop, so I got to sit there waiting for the bad news. Also, for the record, despite anything Quattro or Emerald might tell you, I didn’t cry at all when Destiny flipped the switch. I barely felt anything at all.

I couldn’t stop imagining the SIVA coming back to life and crawling around inside me, though.

“Obviously we didn’t know anything about it until we started getting patients,” the doctor explained. “I don’t know what it was like out there, but I can tell you in here we were totally unprepared.”

“I doubt anypony is ever ready for a mechanical dragon-horror,” Quattro said.

“I’d swear the infection was designed just to kill doctors,” the stallion sighed. “When we started getting injured ponies in, the first thing we did was triage. The worst-injured get treatment first, hopeless cases are made comfortable, and anypony who can wait gets to sit on their flanks until we can get to them. The problem is, the worse a pony is injured, the faster they changed.”

“So they revived while you were working on them?” Emerald asked.

The doctor nodded. “And by the time we knew what we were dealing with, all the lower-priority patients started to change. They’d already been moved to other wards to make room! The whole hospital was overrun.”

The helmet lit up. “Did you get a chance to study the infection at all?” Destiny asked.

The doctor stared at the empty helmet for a moment, then nodded. “The progression of the disease is similar to some cancers. It most resembles a transmissible form of cancer that was known in Tasmanian devils. Quite a fascinating disease, really, the cells are transmitted by bite and then continue to grow in the infected animal. Obviously there are differences, since this infection almost seems engineered. It repairs the body with metal, but causes traumatic brain injury, resulting in confusion, aggression, and further infections.”

Quattro leaned against the wall, looking at the door. “Where is it even getting the metal from? There isn’t enough iron in the blood to make more than a few nails, right?”

“SIVA can transmute elements,” Destiny said. “It’s turning the damaged cells it cannibalizes into whatever it needs. Up to iron, anyway. Past that is pretty energy-intensive, or we would have used it to turn lead into gold to get funding.”

There was a beep from the timer, and the doctor got up, sliding film out of the developer and holding it up to the light.

“Alright, let’s see what we’ve got,” he muttered, putting them up against a backlight. On the one hoof, it was good to have proof that my skull wasn’t empty. On the other hoof, there was a lot of dark, angular stuff that didn’t look natural.

“Whaaaat is that?” I asked, touching my scalp.

“Okay look, I said I wasn’t a brain surgeon, right?” Destiny said. “I’m a rocket scientist. I just… I improvised. The suit’s database had some information and firmware for cybernetic interfaces, the implants themselves were in good condition, and I worked backwards from there. It’s a logic co-processor combined with some memory modules, and I’d like to pat myself on the back here and say I did an excellent job with what I had to work with, okay?”

Something hot flashed past my snout. I froze.

“Down!” Destiny yelled.

I dropped down, and a second laser bolt missed my newly-imaged skull.

“She’s infected!” the doctor said around the laser pistol he’d pulled out of his white coat. “You see all the angular venous traces on the x-ray? I saw the same thing in all the infected! You have to put her down before she changes! If you destroy the head, they stay down!”

“No, no, she’s okay!” Destiny said. “I’m controlling--”

I held up the helmet like a shield, and the third shot bounced off the metal.

“Ow!” Destiny yelped.

Quattro kicked the doctor in the gut, making him spit out the gun. Emerald got her hooves on it before he could grab it again.

“As I was saying,” Destiny huffed. “I’m controlling her infection. More importantly, it’s not the same thing. Chamomile is infected with SIVA that isn’t running any particular program. It’s a blank slate. The rest of the infected are stuck with whatever monster my brother created.”

I got up and looked at the burn mark on the helmet, buffing it off before putting it back on. I didn’t want to have my head exposed with the doctor around.

“I can’t believe you put all that junk in my brain!”

“Would you rather be dead? You knew I made some emergency fixes!”

“I didn’t think it was half my brain!”

“It’s a quarter of your brain at most, and you didn’t even notice! If anything, it’s made you better at math.”

“No, I’m terrible at math.”

“What’s two plus two?”

“Four. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Seventy-three times forty-seven?”

“Three thousand four-hundred thirty-one-- son of a mule! I’m a bucking calculator?!”

“You can thank me later.”

Quattro coughed and clapped her hooves. “So, who wants to take a trip to the pharmacy?” Quattro asked.

“Why won’t you let me have the pistol?” I asked.

“You’ll break it,” Emerald said.

“I won’t break it.”

“You broke my rifle.”

She had a point. I did break her rifle. I leaned around the next corner and waved them forward when I didn’t see anything ready to kill us. The doctor swiped an access card and opened up the pharmacy door.

“I hope you’re not just here for drugs,” he muttered.

“This is business, not pleasure,” Quattro promised. “First, we need something to regrow feathers. The healing potions we used didn’t work.”

“Mm. Was there a significant delay between when the feathers were damaged and when you had the potion? More than an hour or two and the potion won’t work.” The doctor motioned for Quattro to lift her wing and checked the feathers. “Yes, that’s what I thought. They scarred over instead of regenerating. There’s only one good way to fix this.”

“A more powerful healing potion?” I suggested.

“A recovery talisman would do it, but we’re in the pharmacy and not a surgical theatre. We can fix this right now, but it’s… unpleasant.” He looked at Quattro. “I’d recommend plucking the damaged feathers and immediately applying a low-grade healing potion. It’s easier to regrow them entirely than try to clip them again below the scarring and hope they regenerate.”

“That sounds painful,” Quattro sighed.

“I can give you a shot of Med-X before the procedure,” the doctor said. “You won’t feel a thing.”

Quattro nodded, and the doctor started looking over the shelves, pulling down a few mostly-empty bins.

“We were saving some of this for a rainy day, but… this is the definition of an emergency if there ever was one,” he sighed and injected Quattro before unwrapping tweezers and yanking damaged feathers out. I had to look away. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but there was just something about seeing a pony get plucked like that. It could turn your stomach.

Quattro grunted a few times. The Med-X might have dulled the pain but it still had to feel deeply unpleasant.

“Now drink this,” the doctor said. Quattro chugged a healing potion, and I was able to watch the new feathers come in, gleaming and healed.

“At least I can get back into the air,” Quattro said. She sighed. “I never want to have to do that again.”

“My turn,” I said, presenting my wings. The doctor hesitated, then injected me and got to work. Trust me, you don’t want to know what it felt like. If you’re deeply, deeply curious and want to give it a shot for yourself but you don’t have wings, just have somepony yank a few hairs out of your mane without warning. Even with the drugs I felt it. There was a terrible emptiness when they were all out, like the feeling of a freshly empty tooth socket. The healing potion couldn’t come soon enough, and I took the helmet off to chug it down directly, putting Destiny down on a stack of forms.

“Uh, Chamomile?” Quattro said. I could feel my feathers regrowing. The rapid healing itched unpleasantly. I looked back at her, and she pointed to my wings. I decided I could risk a glance now that I could feel feathers coming in.

My new primaries were silver. They looked like knives, or tin foil, or…

I swallowed down panic and touched one with a hoof. It felt like part of me, but far away, calloused.

“Are you going to be able to fly like that?” Quattro asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, flexing my wing. Everything seemed to be working.

“Don’t try it in here!” the doctor said, pushing my wing down.

“Chamomile, why don’t you grab those bottles of sterile water and stow them away?” Emerald said, offering a distraction. “I don’t suppose there’s food in here?”

“Actually there are some dietary supplements,” the doctor said, pointing them out. “They’re something developed during the war for ponies who had trouble eating a normal diet. You see the pouches? Yes, those. They’re full of a protein powder that includes enough calories and vitamins to keep a pony going indefinitely. Very useful as a meal replacement for ponies who can’t manage solid food.”

I nodded and grabbed those too.

“We’re looking for something specific as well,” Destiny said from her perch on the sign-out forms. “I’m hoping you have some Enferon.”

The doctor blinked, adjusting his glasses. “We might. That’s a rather unusual request, though. It’s prescribed as an alternative to RadAway for ponies who are allergic, and in long-term radiological treatment. Why on Equestria would you need it?”

“It prevents some types of uncontrolled cellular division,” Destiny explained. “It should be able to prevent SIVA from replicating in the body as long as there isn’t already massive infection.”

“Too late for me to use it, huh?” I guessed.

“Sorry,” she said. “But if somepony else gets bitten or hurt, it could mean all the difference.”

“Let me see…” the doctor moved between shelves, looking. “Here we are.” He picked up an old vial and blew the dust off it. “Not a lot. A few doses, perhaps, depending on how much you need to give a pony. There’s not much call for it these days.”

Quattro took it, shaking the bottle and looking at it. “It’s something, at least.”

The floor shook, the whole building rumbling.

“I’d like to go a whole day without feeling like everything’s falling apart around me,” Quattro said, looking around. “I hope the fire in the ICU didn’t spread.”

“It shouldn’t have,” the doctor said. “We have an excellent fire suppression system.”

“With our luck it’s Chamomile’s mom.” Quattro looked around. “Only one door… doctor, I’d suggest taking cover over there while we check it out.” Quattro pointed to the far side of the room, near the portable oxygen tanks.

“Good idea. You take care of it and I promise I’ll patch you up again afterwards,” the doctor said, backing away.

Quattro nodded then turned to Emerald and me, grabbing Destiny and tossing the helmet over to me to put back on. “Well, Emma, you’re the military expert. What’s your plan?”

Emerald thought for a moment. “Secure an exit. This is a hospital, there are going to be a lot of clearly marked emergency exits, and the security lockdown won’t prevent egress. We secure an exit corridor, then use the hospital intercom to tell any other survivors where to go.”

“What about ponies too injured to move on their own?” I asked. “I mean, this is a hospital, right? There could be patients stuck in bed.”

“There’s only so much we can do,” Emerald said quietly. “If we try to go room-by-room and clear every floor ourselves, we’ll exhaust ourselves. We don’t have enough ponies or enough ammunition. We can’t help anypony if we end up dead.”

Quattro snorted. “That is always the military party line, isn’t it?”

“Do you have a better plan?”

“Patient rooms have windows. We can fly, the infected have problems getting off the ground. You just have to think outside the box. Or outside the hospital, in this case.”

“That… could work,” Emerald admitted.

Quattro smirked and patted her shoulder. “Nopony else has to die today.”

The floor shook again. We all turned to the single door. I grabbed the wrench out of my vector trap, the heavy steel tool a welcome weight in my hooves. There was a feeling in the air, an itch in the back of my mind that I couldn’t explain. I could just tell something was coming closer. Any moment now it was going to--

The doctor screamed behind us. We spun around to see a massive metal claw practically as big as the stallion’s whole body grab him and pull him through a hole in the wall. There was a crunch and the doctor stopped screaming.

“CHAMOMILE!” shouted a distorted voice from outside.

“No. Bucking. Way.” I hissed. “How?!”

“It must be tracking you somehow,” Destiny said. “But this armor is environmentally sealed-- of course. The near-field transmission! I turned it off for a second at the hotel to disable the nano-disassemblers, and again here to get a clean x-ray. It must be able to sense your SIVA infection! When the NFT is turned off, your SIVA must have broadcast your location data!”

Steel claws sliced through the wall, tearing up the solidified cloud and cutting through the plumbing and electrical lines inside, sending a shower of sparks and water into the air. The lavender stallion ripped his way into the room, in even worse shape than before. His jaw was twisted and broken, his teeth were metal fangs, and his hooves were halfway mutated into grasping talons. There couldn’t have been much flesh left in him at all. The baleful, tumorous eye glared from his shoulder, the slitted pupil focusing on me.

“Is this a bad time to tell you I only have one rocket left?” Quattro asked.

“It’s a bad time to only have one rocket,” Emerald retorted. She opened up with her rifle, the beams burning away flesh that was just as quickly replaced with metal. Pistons moved under the stallion’s remaining coat like he’d been skinned and wrapped around a metal monster, every motion looking like agony.

I ran to the side, the creature turning to follow me. I couldn’t even think of it as a pony anymore. Anything equine was being replaced bit by bit. Gears twisted in his chest when he moved, chewing into the remaining flesh like it was in the way of whatever it was becoming. I got my hooves on a heavy shelf and shouldered it over, trying to pin the creature under the heavy shelving and boxes full of paper and glass.

The thing probably spent less time tearing its way out of the shelves than I did pushing them over. The claw ripped right through the boxes and almost took my head off.

“Oh come on!” I yelled, slapping it ineffectively with the wrench and flying back, the room small enough that even one wingbeat slammed me into the far wall. “If this is really about Mom trying to find me, she wouldn’t want me dead!”

“I don’t think he likes you!” Quattro shouted, peppering the monster with more bolts. She and Emerald kept their distance as much as the room allowed, which wasn’t much.

“Careful, there are oxygen tanks on that side of the room,” Emerald warned. “Don’t hit them! It’ll kill all of us!”

I ducked under a wild swipe, claws as long as my entire legs whizzing through the air above my head. I looked back and kicked the door open. “He’s going to take us apart if we stay in here!”

“Everypony out!” Quattro yelled. She backed up, holding her fire, until we were all outside, then fired her last rocket and dove for cover. After a moment, she looked up from where she was taking cover and peeked into the room.

The rocket was floating in a glittering field of force.

“Oh right, the shielding talisman,” Quattro muttered.

“It’s no problem, I can just shoot--” Emerald started, before the rocket twisted around and came back at us. She yelped and dropped down, leaving me right in its path. I felt a surge of magic, and red light surrounded the rocket for a moment, just long enough to send it straight up into the ceiling.

There was a burst of heat and force, and we were thrown down the hall in a heap.

“That was close,” Destiny said. A few indicators were blinking red in my heads-up display. “Good thing you were wearing armor.”

“Couldn’t you have pushed it some other direction?” I asked, gasping. It felt like I had at least one broken rib.

“Next time you deflect the rocket and see if you do better,” she grumbled.

The monster tore its way out of the pharmacy and into the corridor, roaring when it spotted us. Quattro and Emerald kept firing, but it didn’t even react to the magical beams playing across its armored hide.

“I’ve got an idea,” Destiny said. “The Enferon we picked up -- it can stop the SIVA from replicating.”

“Yeah, that’s why we need it to cure anypony who gets infected!”

“If you use it on him, it’ll stop his ability to regenerate for a while. With how much of his body is reliant on SIVA, it’ll be like poison!”

“We’ve only got one vial!” Quattro yelled.

“It’ll give us a fighting chance,” Emerald countered. “We might be able to find more, but if that thing--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re no good to anypony dead,” Quattro sighed.

“I can dispel the shield for a few seconds by disrupting the talisman,” Destiny said.

“Right. Give me the vial,” Quattro said. “I’m the fastest. Chamomile, you distract it and do whatever Destiny says. Emerald, you try and figure out a way to actually kill it!”

“I’ll go right, you go left,” I said, charging at the monster with my wrench. I figured there was only a tiny chance this would work, but the thing was focused on me, so as long as I kept its attention, I could lure it away from the others and they could escape. Not that I told them that. It felt sort of like quitting, and they’d probably try to talk me out of it.

My wrench bounced off the creature’s hide, and it turned to follow me, trying to get the big eye on its shoulder focused on where I was.

“Come on you big, dumb idiot! You don’t even know what a good mixed drink tastes like--” The claw was faster than I expected.

I got the wrench up trying to block it, and there was a shower of sparks as the tool was sheared through effortlessly. The handle stopped just above my hoof, the edge glowing red from the heat.

“Okay, the drink wasn’t great,” I admitted.

I felt magic surge through me, and a bolt of light and force erupted from my helmet, hitting the creature between the eyes and dazing it.

“Now!” Destiny yelled.

Quattro was already on top of it, doing a backflip right in front of the blinded creature and throwing the vial into its fanged maw. It bit down on instinct, and the glass ruptured. The effect was almost instantaneous. He started staggering back, clutching at his face with his claws, ripping himself apart.

“I bet that tastes worse!” I yelled, as he fell back down the hallway, fluids leaking from his body. It was more like motor oil than blood, dark sludge oozing to the ground from gaps and tears in his patchwork body. Quattro took a few shots with her lasers, and this time the burns weren’t healing.

“I’ve got something else for it to snack on!” Emerald yelled. She flew out of the pharmacy with a green tank in her hooves, tossing it at the creature and letting it bounce and roll to a stop at its clawed feet. She backed off and took one last shot.

The oxygen canister exploded when the beam weapon punched through it, shrapnel and flames enveloping the monster.
It fell in a heap, moaning.

“Is it over?” I asked.

The creature lifted up its claw, reaching for us. I held up the broken wrench like it was a weapon. There was a sigh, and the draconic eye went dark, the claw falling limp to the floor. We all stared at it for a few seconds, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s over,” Quattro said, flipping open her helmet to wipe sweat from her brow. “As much fun as this has been, can we skip any more monster fights today?”

“I second that,” I sighed.

Emerald was standing stock still, and slowly put a hoof to her helmet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Outside!” she snapped. “Now!” She bolted for the exit, and I gave Quattro a look before we followed, confused.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whispered, looking up at the sky.

A cloudship a little larger than a Raptor was hovering over Cirrus Valley, the dark hull painted a navy that made it hard to pick out details from this distance.

“That’s a Garuda-class heavy cruiser,” Quattro said, shielding her eyes and looking up at it. “That’s a rare sight.”

“Is this good or bad?” I asked.

“Bad,” Emerald said. “That’s not a standard military ship.”

The announcement boomed around us like thunder. It echoed from the cloud walls and reverberated, a smooth stallion’s voice to pronounce our fate. “Attention, citizens of Cirrus Valley! You are ordered to remain in place for the duration of this operation! We are here to help, do not resist!"

Chapter 11 - Thunderstruck

“Let us in!” Emerald hissed, knocking on the door again. “I’m using the stupid special knock and everything!” She grabbed the handle and rattled it, frustrated.

I watched Emerald struggle with the door for about two seconds before stepping in and putting a solid hoof to it, knocking the bar’s front door in and shoving back the barricade behind it all at once.

“Sorry,” I said.

Quattro raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“I’m just used to apologizing after breaking things,” I said with a shrug. “It’s actually kind of nice not having ponies screaming at--”

A pony ran screaming at me with murder in his eyes. His skin was swollen and red and already starting to show silver where it was splitting around his mouth, his jaw wide open with fangs scraping against my armored throat before I even had a second to react.

I screamed, he kept screaming, we both had a bad time.

I threw him across the room and he hit the jukebox hard enough to make it lurch into action, playing that same annoying tune by Fire Bomber that it had been the last time I was in the bar.

The noise alerted the others. Two of them turned to get up, the last one lying still in a puddle of blood. They staggered to their hooves, less coordinated and more equine than the ponies I’d seen in the city. They’d only just started to change. I could see it in their eyes, clouded with confusion and agony and desperate for any way to make the pain stop, even if it meant attacking another pony. They reached for us plaintively, but the fangs filling in their jaws and popping their normal teeth out of socket said they didn’t want the kind of help we could give them.

“They changed this quickly?” Emerald asked.

“Between being prisoners, the hard work, the travel, the stress…” Quattro trailed off as they staggered closer. “Their bodies might have just been more vulnerable.” She raised her rifle, taking aim. “The least we can do is put them down.”

It made me think of Mom, holding that gun to my head.

“Maybe-- maybe if we just try, they’ll listen,” I said. I held up my hooves. “Guys, come on! I know it hurts. You have to focus, and fight it, and we’ve got plenty of stuff from the hospital--”

I don’t know if they were just too far gone or the mention of drugs that might help with the agony set them off and had them running at me fangs-first. Laser bolts from behind me took both of them down, a cloud of dust rolling to the floor where they’d stood.

“I really hate this,” I whispered.

“I know,” Emerald said. “It’s not something anypony should have to deal with, much less a civilian.”

I ignored her and looked at the fallen pony they’d been gnawing on. He was torn up, and with all the blood I couldn’t really tell the coat color with the bar’s awful lighting. I swallowed. I had to know. I stepped closer. Was it my dad?

“Even if we’d had the Enferon, I don’t think it would have done any good with how quickly the infection progressed,” Destiny said. I could almost feel her hoof on my back trying to console me. I couldn’t answer. I was still halfway through a panic attack, and even if the pain in my hoof was fading a little, it was still bad.

I struggled to catch my breath. I swear every minute I wore that armor it got heavier. It wasn’t just heavy, either. It covered every part of my body, so every motion was slower and heavier and harder, and it had been so long since I’d gotten decent sleep that I was starting to really feel it.

“Dad?” I asked, quietly.

I grabbed the corpse’s shoulder and gently tugged, rolling him over. I felt the panic welling up. If he was gone...

It was the last chef.

“It’s not him!” I panted between deep breaths. My heart felt like it was beating a hundred times a second. “We have to find him!”

I didn’t see him anywhere.

“Dad!” I shouted.

The patch of floor I’d broken popped up, and Quattro snapped a beam shot at it, narrowly missing my Dad.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Are you trying to get me killed?!”

“You’re alive!” I gasped. “Thank goodness.”

“Of course I’m alive! The second the one that got bitten started acting strange I told them I was going to go looking for a first-aid kit and locked myself in the basement,” Dad said. I helped him out of the hole. “I decided I’d wait out whatever was going to happen down there.”

“You could have locked the infected pony down there instead,” Emerald said coldly, glaring at him.

“Maybe, if the others were thinking clearly!” Dad scoffed. “If it was up to me, we would have put him out on the street. It might seem heartless, but look at what happened!”

“Yes, you’re quite a hero for saving yourself,” Quattro said. “We should put these two bodies down there and put something heavy on top of this floor panel. They’re not going to stay down forever and I don’t want to waste the ammunition if we can help it.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. I needed a distraction. Doing a little physical labor might help. “Can you fix Dad’s wings?” I saw the looks they were giving him. “If all of us can fly it means none of us have to carry him,” I said.

“Fine, but I get to pluck him,” Emerald said.

Dad looked worried. “Pluck me? What?”

I ignored him and moved the cloud panel out of the way, trying to at least be a little gentle with the ponies as I put them down in the basement with the stills and boxes full of bottles. It wasn’t their fault they’d gotten infected. I didn’t want to think it was Dad’s fault, either. Still, it did kind of feel nice to hear him yelp while Emerald tore out his broken primaries so the healing potion would let new ones grow in.

“So what’s with the ship outside?” I asked.

“It’s a Garuda-class ship,” Emerald said, spitting out a broken feather. “That means they’re not part of the standard military. They’re black-sky operations, and with my radio broken--” she tapped the side of her helmet. “--I can’t tell them not to open fire on us!”

“It must be terrible, being in the same situation as a mere civilian when the Enclave military is out in force,” Quattro said mildly from the door, cracking it open to look outside.

“Why don’t you call them?” I asked. “Your armor has a radio, right?”

“This suit was made before the Enclave even existed,” Quattro said. “It’s been refurbished a few times, but one thing it doesn’t have is modern military encoding.”

“Without the transponder codes they’ll either ignore you or fire on you, depending on their orders,” Emerald said.
“I’d rather not risk the latter.”

Dad grabbed one of the healing potions and chugged it. “So if the radio gets fixed, you might be able to call them off?”

“I can at least confirm their orders,” Emerald said.

“Fine. Get your helmet off. Chamomile, get the main board out of that jukebox. And be careful with it! We’ll need the amplifier circuit from it.”

“Right,” I said. I walked over to the jukebox and knelt down. I wasn’t very good with tech stuff, but even an idiot like me could figure out how to take something apart, right? It was putting it back together again that was hard. I found the front panel and opened it up.

“Disconnect the battery first,” Destiny whispered gently, just before I touched a wire.

“Oh. Right.” I blushed and disconnected the battery, the music and lights cutting off.

“I think next you want to unscrew the fans here,” she continued. I let her guide me through the process, removing the cooler and disconnecting wires and very gently with the help of her telekinesis easing out the main circuit board.

I carried it over to the bar and Dad motioned for me to put it down next to him. He was poking around inside Emerald’s helmet with a plastic fork and a drink stirrer.

“This should only take a moment,” he said. He glanced at the board. “Oh, good. This has the right kind of amplifier tubes. Thank you, Chamomile.”

I blinked. That was dangerously close to praise. I wasn’t used to that from him, but he had just been shot up with a bunch of Med-X, so maybe he was feeling better than usual. I made a mental note to get him more drugs if it meant he’d scream at me less.

“How’s it look out there?” I asked Quattro, sitting down heaving at the other side of the door.

“The outlook is foggy,” she said quietly. “I’m trying to decide if I’m more worried about artillery or monsters.”

“If you’re worried about artillery, maybe you shouldn’t have worn something so flashy,” I snorted.

Quattro scoffed and pretended to buff a mark off her golden armor. “You can’t inspire ponies wearing scary black armor that gives them nightmares. When the military is already trying to paint us as terrorists the least we can do is try not to look the part.”

“There!” Dad said, stepping back and closing a panel. “That should do it. Good as new, practically.”

Emerald smiled and put the helmet back on, the eyes lighting up briefly. “You fixed the HUD too?”

“That was just a loose wire. Thank me later.”

“Alright, let’s see if I can get this called off before it turns into a problem,” Emerald said, holding a hoof to the side of her head.

“I’ll loop us in,” Destiny said.

“This is Lieutenant Emerald Sheen, calling unknown Garuda-class ship. Please respond immediately!” Her voice echoed strangely for me, coming through the radio and from right in front of me.

“Garuda-class ship Juniper responding. Transmit your security code immediately.”

“Roger, transmitting.” Emerald took a deep breath and waited.

“Code verified, Lieutenant Sheen. This is a Code Caseclosed operation. You do not have clearance to be in the area.”

“I’ve got civilian survivors--”

“All of your clearances have been revoked. According to the testimony of Lieutenant Rain Shadow you are a deserter and your rank and privileges have been revoked until you appear before a formal disciplinary tribunal. You’re ordered to surrender and report for debriefing.”

Emerald’s expression fell. She lowered her head, her voice becoming an angry hiss. “I don’t know what Rain Shadow said, but--”

“Report your location immediately.”

Emerald muttered something under her breath and cut off her transmission with a sharp snap. “Okay,” she said. “Looks like Rain had to be a jerk even though I saved his stupid life. Next time I’ll just let him bleed out.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Code Caseclosed means this never happened,” Emerald said. “No witnesses, no survivors, no official reports.”

Quattro looked at Dad. “You ready to fly?”

“Yes, but do we have anywhere to go?” Dad asked.

“We grab the transport we left at the charging station and go,” Quattro said. “Unless you’d rather stay here and find out what happens when there are inconvenient survivors getting in the way?”

“I changed my mind! I liked the bar better!” Dad yelled.

Having working wings gave us a lot more in the way of tactical option on the way back to the transport. In the interest of speed, we’d stuck to rooftops and snow, low flights. The rooftops meant the infected couldn’t reach us, and staying low hopefully meant staying out of sight of anypony else.

We were less than a block away from the charging station and our transport, and naturally things had gone wrong. There was plenty of flat ground around the station, to give skywagons of all shapes and sizes room to maneuver. And the infected had decided that made it a great place to hang out.

There were dozens of them around the transport. It was only a matter of time before they spotted us, and even if they weren’t very dangerous individually I didn’t think we could take out that many.

“Quiet,” Emerald hissed, her voice low. “Keep back from the edge.”

She was looking up at the sky.

The Garuda-class ship had started doing something. I wasn’t sure exactly what, exactly. There were a bunch of ponies working, but they were setting something up in the sky above us, white pillars maybe three or four times as long as a pony and shaped like something that should be swimming instead of flying. The bulbous ends pointed down, and each one hovered in a ring of miniaturized rotating stormcloud.

“I’m having trouble identifying those,” Destiny said. “My memory is spotty, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.”

“I think they’re lightning rods, but at a smaller scale,” Emerald said.

“The things they use to keep monsters from the surface away?” I asked.

Emerald nodded.

“This time they’re locking us in with the monsters,” Quattro said. “That’s pretty on-brand for the military.”

“We’ve got movement,” Destiny warned, an arrow pointing it out at the corner of my vision.

Two ponies -- I couldn’t tell who at this distance -- took off from a rooftop halfway across town. They bolted for the edge of the valley, holding hooves, wings beating furiously. Even from here, I could feel the static charge in the air change. There was a hum in the air that made me think of an engine starting up.

The world turned white, and a bolt of lightning cracked from one of the lightning rods, blasting the ponies out of the air. They fell back to the streets, trailing smoke and charred feathers.

I put my hoof down. I’d been reaching out to them without even thinking about it, like there would have been something I could have done.

I turned to Emerald. “How do we stop them?” I demanded.

“They have a battleship,” Dad said. “We can’t stop them.”

Emerald sighed. “Technically it’s a cruiser, but he’s right. We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and exhausted. We can’t stop it.”

“If we don’t do something, everypony in town is going to die!” I snapped.

“You’re right,” Quattro said. She pushed my wing down. Until she did, I didn’t realize I’d flared them out like I was going to lunge at them or take to the air or… something. “There have to be survivors out there. What can we do to help them? If you’ve got an idea, tell me, because I don’t see any way out of this.”

“We can… we could…” I looked up at the ship. “There has to be some way to talk sense into them. We’re all in this together, right? The military is supposed to help civilians!” I looked to Emerald for help.

She just shook her head.

“I’m not gonna let more ponies die,” I said. “Even if I have to go up there myself, I have to do something!”

“Now you know how I feel all the time,” Quattro said. “Here’s what I’m thinking -- that ship is hovering right near the cloud wall. If we stay at ground level, we might be able to get directly under it without being spotted--”

Another voice cut in. “If you didn’t want to be spotted, having an argument in brightly colored powered armor wasn’t the best choice. I mean, really? Gold?”

A shadow fell over us. I looked up to see a flight of armored ponies pointing weapons at us.

“You gave me an alert for two ponies across town but you missed them sneaking up on us?” I hissed.

“I really need to get that augury system online so we stop getting surprised like this,” Destiny whispered. “Sorry. Their armor must have some rudimentary ECM.”

The five soldiers hovered, not landing on the roof. Their armor was subtly different from Emerald’s. Instead of flat black, it was dark blue with delicate golden detail around the armored sleeves and collar. It was fancy enough it almost seemed like a dress uniform, but the guns they carried made sure we knew it was serious.

“Stand down,” the leader ordered. “I presume one of you is the deserter?”

“I didn’t desert!” Emerald snapped.

“I will take that as confirmation. According to the General Order regarding dereliction of duty, you are ordered to report for debriefing and judgement before a military tribunal. If you resist, that will be construed as a confession of guilt to all charges and we are authorized to use lethal force. Do you understand?”

“All I did was--”

“I wanna talk to the pony in charge!” I shouted. My whole body was aching from stress, and my hoof was throbbing. It was getting worse with all these infected ponies around. Something about just being near them made my own infection respond, like magnets pulling at each other.

All the guns turned to train on me.

“Chamomile…” Dad warned slowly.

“You all came here for a reason, right?” I demanded. “So you must know a little bit about what happened here and at the Smokestack! Well we know more! And if you shoot us, you won’t find out anything! You get the pony in charge and tell him we’ve got valuable information!”

That made the fireteam of ponies hover silently for a moment. I could tell from the leader’s body language that he was listening to the radio and quietly responding, but I couldn’t make out any of what he said.

“Turn to frequency 115.73,” the stallion finally told me.

“I’ve got it,” Destiny said. My radio crackled.

“Hello?” I asked tentatively.

“I assume I am speaking to the pony who demanded to speak to the one in charge,” the voice said. It was a smooth voice, something that belonged to a singer or politician. I tried to picture the stallion behind it. “My name is Polar Orbit. Might I ask the name of the pony I’m speaking to?”

“Don’t give him your real name,” Quattro whispered.

That made me wonder what Quattro’s real name was. “Sugar Cane,” I said, after a moment of hesitation.

“Well, Sugar Cane, I am told you claim to have useful information,” Polar said. “Forgive me, but I’d want proof of that before I was willing to begin negotiation. According to the information I’ve been given, your little group consists of a deserter and a number of escaped criminals, and it’s difficult to imagine you have information vital to this operation.”

I wasn’t stupid enough to just tell him everything I knew, but I could understand where he was coming from. He just sounded so reasonable about things. He needed proof.

“This is a bad idea,” Dad hissed. “You’re making things worse!”

“Worse than certain death?” Quattro asked lightly. “Unless you’re hiding a megaspell or a small army, we’re backed into a corner. Maybe she really can talk some sense into him?”

“I am not going to put my life in the hooves of an idiot!” Dad snapped. “You!” He pointed at me. “Put me on the line.”

“Um--”

“And don’t say another word!” Dad sounded angry, but there was something in his eyes. He was pleading for me to just do what he said with the way he looked. I nodded silently. “Can you hear me?” he asked.

“I assume you’re the pony with information I need?” Polar asked, through my armor’s speakers. I was starting to get used to hearing other ponies’ voices coming out of me.

“That’s right,” Dad said. “My name is Red Zinger. The others are trying to protect me and doing an awful job at it. I’m the one you really want. I’m sure you have the kind of clearance you need to look at what my wife was doing at the Smokestack?”

“Ah. Lemon Zinger’s operation?” Polar asked. “Yes. I do have some records regarding that.”

“You should be able to verify that there was a special warrant out for me,” Dad said. “They called me in to assist with the last stage of the operation. We unleashed a monster.”

“If that’s all you have to tell me, I’m afraid Commander Ohm already informed me about the nature of the creature involved,” Polar said.

“He should have told you it was after me,” Dad said. “It wants me. When we were retreating, he abandoned me so he could escape with his soldiers and I’d distract it, and then it came here because it was still looking for me.”

“Now that is interesting,” Polar said. “It sounds almost like we should eliminate you to keep everypony else safe.”

“If you do that, you don’t know what it’s going to do next,” Dad countered. “As long as I’m around, I’m like a lure for it.” He swallowed. “And if you let these three idiots go, I’ll surrender quietly. They got caught up in this because of me, and it’s my responsibility to keep them safe.”

He looked very significantly at me. I shook my head slowly.

“D--” I started. He cut me off before I could even finish the syllable.

“Don’t tell me not to do this,” he said. “It’s best for all of us.”

“You realize my soldiers could simply detain you by force?” Polar asked.

“Maybe they could, but maybe they’d slip up and shoot me,” Dad said. “I’ll tell you right now I’m a bleeder. If I took a stray bolt I’d probably die just from the shock. All it costs you to have a chance at tracking down the monster that did this, and all the information I have on the creature, is letting three ponies run away.”

Polar laughed. “You are a bold pony! I admire that. I have the upper hoof, but there is nothing worse than a poor winner. I will accept your offer. I have no real interest in prisoners who would no doubt make life difficult for me. If you cooperate fully, I might neglect to mention them in my official report of the situation here.”

“Thank you,” Dad said, looking down.

“I will have my soldiers escort you to me, and your allies may leave freely. I look forward to meeting you.” The radio channel cut off with a snap.

“But-- everypony else--”I sputtered.

“Chamomile,” Dad said firmly, getting my attention. “As your father, my first duty is keeping you out of trouble. I’ve never been good at it. You’re better at getting in trouble than I am as a caretaker. You need to leave.”

“But…” I swallowed. My throat felt dry.

“I’m not a strong pony, but this is something I can do to keep you safe. Let me do one thing right as a father, will you? If you’re somewhere safe maybe I can focus enough to talk some sense into the stallion in charge.”

I nodded mutely.

“Good,” he said, sighing. He sounded exhausted. I hadn’t realized how tired he was until then. “Now, I suppose I should get going.”

Dad reached for me for a moment like he was going to give me a hug, but it just turned into an awkward shoulder pat before he turned on his hooves and faced the soldiers hovering over us.

“Shall we?” he asked.

The lead stallion nodded. “We’ll make sure you arrive safely. The rest of you… get going. I don’t like criminals and I especially don’t like deserters. You’re getting better than you deserve. If I see any of you again, I’m shooting you on principle.”

“We’ll try and see you first,” Quattro said.

The lead stallion snorted and took off. The other four soldiers waited for Dad to take off, then surrounded him. He didn’t even look back at me.

“Chamomile,” Emerald said quietly.

“I just need a second,” I said, watching him go.

“We might not have a second,” Quattro warned. She was looking up. The nearest lightning rod was starting to glow. I felt the electric charge in the air, a hundred times stronger than when they’d aimed the array at ponies on the other side of town.

“Take cover!” Emerald shouted, throwing herself down.

I was looking for cover when the lightning struck. It was so close and so bright and so loud that I really thought it hit me for a second.

The bolt tore through the crowd of infected around our transport, carving through half of the crowd in one fell swoop. It had been that far from me, but it still felt like I’d been hit with a shock baton. The display in my helmet had turned to static around the edges, the whole thing blinking on and off as it tried to recover.

The second bolt was even stronger than the first. I could feel every hair in my coat standing on end, and that was through the armor. When the echoes had faded, I was blind, the helmet’s display having given up entirely. When I got it off, I could see what had happened. The entire mob of zombified ponies was down. Most of them didn’t look like they’d be getting back up.

“Well that was unpleasant,” Destiny said.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “I know you’re in the armor, and…”

“I’m a ghost, not a machine,” she reminded me. “Half the systems just flatlined, but we didn’t have the power for them anyway.”

“He cleared the way for us to get to the prison transport,” Emerald said.

“I guess he intends to keep his side of the bargain,” Quattro said. She peered over the edge cautiously for stragglers, then hopped down. “You two get in back. I’ll pull the transport first.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m stronger than you--”

“And I’m faster than you, and we want to be out of here as soon as possible,” Quattro countered, already starting to strap herself in. “Emerald is exhausted and you’re not in great shape either. You can argue with me later.”

“Come on,” Emerald said, grabbing my hoof and leading me like a child to the back of the transport, making sure I got inside before she unplugged it from the battery charger. I put the blue, horned helmet down on the bench and sat down heavily next to it.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Destiny offered. “He seemed like…”

“An asshole?” I asked.

“I was going to say he’s trying to do the right thing for you.”

Emerald got onboard, closing the door and sliding open a panel at the front of the compartment so she could look out at Quattro.

“We’re good to go,” she said.

I felt the transport lurch into motion, almost throwing me from the bench until I got my balance. Emerald sat down across from me, looking about as bad as I felt.

“Hold on to your flanks!” Quattro warned. She took us up at a steep angle, acceleration increasing until I could tell we were going faster than I could fly on my own. I had no idea how she could manage it while pulling the transport.

Behind us, I heard thunder crash down. Then again. And again.

“What are they doing?” I asked hoarsely.

“It’s not aimed at us,” Quattro evaded.

“They’re leveling the town, aren’t they?” I asked.

The silence was enough to tell me I was right.

“Are you going to be okay?” Emerald asked.

Part of me wanted to say yes. Part of me wanted to say no. Maybe it was the brain damage, maybe it was just because I didn’t know what I was feeling. My dad was gone. My whole life was gone. And on top of everything, my hoof was itching and hurting worse by the moment. I let the question linger a lot longer than I should have.

“I have to be,” I said. “What else am I going to do? Curl up on a cot somewhere and cry about it?”

“I’d suggest getting mad,” Quattro said from up front. “It’s a lot more useful than tears. They won this time, but we’re getting away alive. Next time, we’ll be the ones coming at them, and we’ll have a plan.”

“Coming at them?” Emerald frowned. “We’re not rebels.”

“Whether you wanted it or not, you’ve stepped into a war against the military oppression of the Enclave. Emerald, you’re a deserter. They’ll shoot you on sight. And Chamomile? You’re a civilian who knows too much. Do you really think they’re going to forget about us?”

“No,” I said. “And I won’t forget either. They’ve got Dad. I need to figure out a way to get him back, and to make them pay for what they did.”

“That means getting equipment, a team, and information,” Quattro said. “You know the best way to get all that?”

“Join your rebellion?” Emerald sighed.

“Like everypony keeps saying, we’re all in this together.” Quattro glanced back at us through the small window. “If you want revenge, you can’t get it on your own.”

“Fine,” I said. I was hurting too much to argue. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. “Just… leave me alone for a while.”

“Rest,” Emerald said quietly. She helped me lie down. “You’ve had a worse day than the rest of us. I’ll wake you up when we get where we’re going.” She looked to the front of the transport. “Speaking of which--”

“We’ll head for the Thunderbolt Shoals,” Quattro told her.

“That’s a military depot,” Emerald said, raising an eyebrow.

I could practically feel the smirk. “It’s also the largest black market in the Enclave.”

“I should be surprised, but I know how ponies are,” Emerald said. “Will they even let us in?”

“I know some ponies there,” Quattro promised. “They owe me.”

Chapter 12 - Breaking The Law

Thunderbolt Shores wasn’t like anywhere else I’d ever been.

That probably doesn’t sound very impressive, but remember that I’ve been to more places than most ponies in the Enclave. I’d been to mountains, cities, small towns, and even a volcano prison. I don’t recommend that last one.

Thunderbolt Shores is part shipyard, part town, part debris field, and constantly in the middle of the biggest thunderstorm I’ve ever seen. From the windows of the cargo ship we were taking shelter in, I could just make out the shadow of the SPP tower at the center of the storm. It was a huge dark presence, lit up from behind by flashes of lightning cracking across miles of sky. It wasn’t a place fit for anypony to live.

The town itself was a chaotic maze. With all the lightning, standing on the clouds was asking for trouble, so ponies had built streets out of anything that would protect their hooves. Most of the roads were rubber-coated steel that sparked where the coating had worn away, but there were sheets of wood, plastic, solid rainbows, even bridges made out of braided wire. A network of steel rods and hanging wires like a crazy spider web kept the worst thunderbolts from reaching the city, but meant flying much higher than the rooftops was asking for trouble.

The buildings were mostly just ships, docked more or less permanently after the most valuable parts had been repurposed, sold off, or lost. The biggest had been cargo ships, but ponies were living out of anything that would keep the rain off their heads.

The Raven’s Nest, where we were now, was one of the few ships that could still move under its own power, but it was less good at keeping the rain off. Large parts of it were made of nearly-petrified wood, and they leaked like crazy. I could count three buckets from here catching the drips.

“How are you holding up?” Destiny asked.

I turned away from the window to look at her. The armor was standing in a hydraulic frame with all kinds of wires and stuff sticking out of it. Quattro’s golden suit and Emerald’s damaged armor stood next to it. Emerald’s standard Enclave armor was half-disassembled. More than just her radio had ended up needing repair after the treatment she’d gotten.

“I’m fine,” I said, scratching at my right foreleg. It felt painfully itchy, like one of those rashes the doctors tell you to stop touching but it’s really hard to listen and you start worrying at it in your sleep and end up bleeding. I tried to change the subject. “Meeting Quattro’s rebel friends wasn’t what I expected.”

“It’s funny, it’s been almost two hundred years and ponies still say ‘I’m fine’ when they mean ‘I’m not fine at all and I’m trying not to think about it.’”

I sighed. “I just feel like I have a little feather flu, okay? My joints ache, I’m tired, and I itch. It’s not a big deal, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Sorry. Without power, there isn’t much I can do to help,” Destiny said.

“I know,” I groaned. “And the storm doesn’t help! My mane feels like it’s standing on end.”

“You may be able to find a fusion core in the market,” came a voice from the other end of the room, at the center of a circle of half-disassembled equipment connected with wires and tape. The pegasus stood up, settling her square glasses back on her snout. She had a heavy accent that I absolutely couldn’t place. “But if you go, leave the Exodus armor here. The design is fascinating!”

“Ten years ahead of anything the MWT was making, Herr Doktor,” Destiny boasted.

“Ten years?” Doktor scoffed, shaking her head. “Ten years was the gap between the Ministry of Awesome designing some foolish overpowered underoptimized prototype and the military refining it and bringing it to mass production. This is a generation ahead of what they were doing. This ‘Thaumoframe’, as you call it, is absolutely astounding!”

“Take it from me, it does things we never expected.”

I had a feeling they were about to get into a really nitty-gritty nerd discussion about stuff so far over my head I’d need a telescope just to see it. I was not in a good enough mood to sit and chat.

“I’m gonna go down to the market,” I said. “Maybe I can find that fusion core.”

“What was that?” Quattro asked, pushing aside a curtain and looking in. “Glad to see you’re still with us, Chamomile.”

Emerald stepped in beside her. She held a box of parts. “We were able to get some decent scrap metal and circuits.”

“It’s a start,” Doktor said, motioning for them to put it to the side. “I will have your armor working again, do not worry.”

“It was working before you took it apart,” Emerald said sourly.

“It was two hundred years old and had just been through more use in a week than most suits see in their lifetimes,” Doktor corrected. “It was working mostly out of habit. Most of the military gear I see is in a similar state of languid disrepair, as if things never need to be maintained just because they’ve been sitting on a shelf! Disuse and rot is just as dangerous to complicated modern machines as being in the field!”

“If you say so,” Emerald sighed. She looked at me with pity. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m--” I sighed. “I need a walk. I want to stop feeling like a sick pony.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Quattro said. “Para-Medic, when was her last shot of Med-X?”

I groaned “Quattro, come on, don’t start calling more ponies over to baby me…”

A pink pegasus dappled with white and red hopped over the curtain without bothering to push it aside. “Did you call me?” she asked. “Is everything okay? Can I get you another kale shake? They’re really good for infections!”

“Kale isn’t going to solve my problems, no matter how good it tastes,” I groaned.

“You have a very serious condition,” Para-Medic warned, trying to guide me over to a cot. If she had her way, I wouldn’t be allowed out of it. “It’s similar to rejection syndrome sometimes seen in ponies who are given prosthetic limbs. Thankfully, I know how to treat it properly!”

“Quattro, did I ever tell you your rebel friends are annoying?”

“We prefer to be called Ravens,” the last member of the crew said, as she stepped in. Captain White Glint was stark white, her cutie mark just barely visible when the light played across the silver sparks on her flank. She was super hot, especially with the eyepatch, and had made it very clear that I had zero chance with her.

“Captain,” I said, giving her a sloppy salute. “Permission to go ashore. I need to get out of here for a while. You’ve got a great ship and all--” that was mostly a lie. The Raven’s Nest was a cargo carrier so old it had a gasbag instead of modern cloud props. “--but I need a change of scenery.”

“Can you avoid attracting attention?” Captain Glint asked.

“I mean, I’ll try my best.” I shrugged.

“Quattro, go with her to keep her out of trouble,” Glint said. “I’d rather not have a bored pony pacing the deck. They usually find some way to entertain themselves and I already had two fires aboard ship this month from Herr Doktor.”

“I’ll come too,” Destiny said.

I looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not dragging that armor around everywhere when it doesn’t have power. Do you have any idea how heavy it is?”

“You don’t have to,” Destiny said. “I figured out a little trick to make things easier.”

Her magic aura surrounded the helmet and lifted it away from the armor, levitating over to me and bobbing slightly up and down. “See? No problem. As long as I’m not maintaining the armor’s T-field I’ve got more than enough magic to do this.”

“It’s probably not the strangest thing ponies around here have seen,” Quattro offered along with a complementary shrug.
Captain Glint rolled her eye. “Just be back soon or I’ll assume something happened to you and I’ll send Para-Medic out to find you and bring you back on a stretcher. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “Don’t start any fights, be back by eleven, and no kissing boys.” Everypony stared at me. “What? They’re the same rules my Dad made me follow.”

“Just go,” Captain Glint sighed.

“Oh wow, is that a--” I pointed to what looked like a cannon bigger than I was. It was one of the largest guns I’d ever seen. I wanted to try shooting it.

“Try not to make a scene,” Quattro said. “Ponies will think it’s your first time at the black market.”

I nodded. She was right. I had to try to be cool and fit in. I could feel eyes on me from the crowd. Most of the ponies were wearing stained, dirty jumpsuits in various shades of repair. I was pretty sure they were dockworkers and salvage ponies, because they seemed to be here to sell, dragging skiffs of parts across the rusting iron floor and arguing with merchants at the stalls about barter and prices.

I tried not to look too hard at the numbers on the signs showing prices and weights. They didn’t make my head hurt, but I could feel myself doing math on them.

“Some of these ponies are military,” I said, careful not to point at the uniformed ponies being given space by the rest of the herd.

“If a pony needs something, it can be easier to come here and get it than to go through official channels,” Quattro said. “A place like this smooths out the supply chain by getting rid of paperwork.”

“They won’t recognize us, will they?” Destiny asked.

“I doubt it. They’re almost all from second-line ships and support vessels. Not the kind of crew that would even be told we exist.” Quattro sniffed the air.

I tilted my head and tried to catch what she was smelling. My stomach rumbled at the scent. Quattro smiled at me and motioned for me to follow, leading me to a stall where ponies were cutting up cloud potatoes and deep-frying them into chips.

“I’m a little short on cash,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a little left over from the shopping trip Emerald and I went on,” Quattro said, getting us a basket of fries. The pony behind the counter covered them in white sauce and dusted it with spice before handing them over.

“Let’s go sit over there,” Quattro said. “We should talk.”

“About what?” I asked, following her.

We sat down, and I grabbed a few fries, devouring them. They tasted heavenly. The white sauce was some kind of oily, cheesy paste, and the spice was hot enough to tickle the back of my throat.

“These are still steaming, doesn’t that hurt?” Quattro asked.

I shrugged and took a few more. Solid food was a luxury after the trip to Thunderbolt Shoals. I’d eaten so many meal replacement shakes I was starting to forget how to chew.

“We need to find a fusion core for your armor,” Quattro said. “Destiny, are you sure it’s the only thing that will work? The one that you were using drained so quickly…”

“It wasn’t properly calibrated,” Destiny said. “The suit, I mean. It was using my magic instead of Chamomile’s, but the core was too low to run the calibration routine. If we can find a fusion core with a decent charge, I can make it last an order of magnitude longer.”

“So a few months instead of a week?” Quattro asked.

“Maybe more. The energy drain isn’t linear.”

“I have a source that might have a fusion core but I didn’t want to bring Emerald along,” Quattro said quietly. “I was going to talk to them alone, but you’ve got a right to come.”

“Why didn’t you want to bring Emma?” I asked, around the fries.

“The pony I’m thinking of? He’s not trustworthy. He can probably get us what we want, but the problem is the price.”

“What kind of price?” Destiny asked.

“I don’t know yet. He has some kind of job lined up.” Quattro sighed. “It’s probably going to be the sort of job Emma shouldn’t be involved in.”

“I’m not gonna kill anypony for it,” I said.

Quattro nodded. “Good. I wouldn’t ask you to. Neither will he, if he has common sense. He’s probably going to want us to steal something, or cause a distraction, or something like that.”

“Oh.” I nodded sagely. “Crime stuff.”

Quattro shook her head and slowly raised her hooves to her face.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I whispered. I didn’t feel like I could afford to stand in the room. The shop had been some kind of yacht in its previous life, opulent and plush and with gold and fake marble everywhere. Whoever lived in it had taken good care of it, too. Things were clean and the decorations had been polished until they shone.

“What were you expecting?” Quattro asked lightly. “A junk shop filled with rusty scrap?”

“Sort of, yeah,” I admitted.

“Look at this,” Destiny said. She was hovering near a shelf full of gems. “These are all talismans. I can’t even identify all of them.”

“You have an impressive robot.” A pony stepped out of the next room. The pegasus dressed exactly how a pony living in an expensive yacht wouldn’t. He had a shirt printed with the loudest floral patterns I’d ever seen, like he’d just dyed it moments ago with liquid rainbow. He walked up to Quattro and shook her hoof.

“It’s always a pleasure,” Quattro said. “Usually an expensive one.”

“Expensive, but I make sure ponies get what they want,” the pegasus said. He looked at my bandaged hoof when we shook. “I see you brought a friend, and both of you have seen some excitement?”

“Something like that. Chamomile, this is Double Nothing. He’s the only pony I know who can be exceedingly rich and vanishingly poor at the same time.”

“How does that work?” I asked.

Double smiled. “It’s easy! Just have a warehouse full of priceless treasure and no way to sell it.”

“No way to sell it legally,” Quattro corrected.

Double tilted his head in acknowledgement. “It’s awful, isn’t it? If I tried to move to somewhere with a better night life, I’d have to fill out all sorts of forms, and I hate paperwork.”

“Chamomile, look at this!” Destiny said, floating over and nudging me. She pushed me gently to another shelf. “Memory orbs!”

“They’re very rare,” Double said. “Most of them are probably one of a kind.”

“We have to get this one,” Destiny said, lifting one up. “It’s a BrayTech orb!”

“Is that what it’s called?” Double asked. “It does look a little different from the others. Could you put that down? Some of this merchandise is very fragile.”

Destiny put the orb back down. “We had a different manufacturing process,” she said dismissively. “This could have important information on it.”

“I thought you were in the market for a fusion core?” Double asked.

“Both of us know you can’t sell these,” Quattro said. “Do you even have a way to view them? They’re just shiny baubles.”

“Shiny baubles that your friend wants,” Double corrected. “But you know, I can be generous. I don’t have a fusion core-- yet.” He held up a hoof. “I can get you one, but I wanted to confirm the deal before making the trade on my end. In return for your understanding about the delay, I might be willing to part with that orb as a bonus.”

“Very generous of you,” Quattro said.

“We’ll do it,” Destiny said. “What are we doing?”

“Oh, it’s nothing complicated or dangerous,” Double promised. “The military uses automated barges to move cargo through the Shoals. They rely on navigation beacons set up along a safe path. All I want you to do is knock out one of the beacons. The barge will go off the safe path, crash a little bit, and the cargo will be free for the taking.”

“What’s the catch?” Quattro asked.

“No catch! Totally automated. No ponies on the barge to get hurt. Just sneak up to the beacon and turn it off and walk away. I already have ponies who can retrieve the cargo. It’s a simple job, ten minutes in and out.”

The ride out to the beacon was tense. Double had me hitch a ride with a bunch of ponies who worked out in the debris field taking apart old airships, and none of them seemed happy to have me there. At first I thought it was the, you know, the crime stuff. Not a lot of ponies are okay with crime, and that would be understandable.

But after all the looks I’d gotten and the way ponies refused to meet my gaze and got out of my way when I moved, I realized it was because they thought I was military. They were giving me the treatment the military ponies had gotten at the black market. It was a relief for them and me when I hopped off at my stop.

I adjusted the uniform, shaking some of the rain from the cap. It was almost identical to the one Mom had given me. I tried not to think about that too hard. Every time I did, it hurt deep inside somewhere. Was she suffering right now, trapped inside that giant dragon thing? You’d think the way my joints felt like grinding gears would be a great distraction, but for some reason it just made everything worse.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” asked my saddlebag.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Just give me another Med-X. My leg is starting to really hurt again.”

A needle floated out of my pack, and I grabbed it with a wing and injected it into my shoulder. The pain abated a little and I was able to focus on what was in front of me.

“It’s just that Quattro seems more, um…” Destiny hesitated, her eyes glowing from the depths of the bag. I was smuggling her in along with a bunch of tools and random paperwork so she could help me with the technical stuff if I needed it. I wasn’t too proud to admit that I needed help sometimes.

I was too proud to admit I couldn’t do the job at all, though.

“This is a simple job,” I said. “I need to do something or I’m gonna go stir crazy.”

“If you say so.”

“Besides, the fusion core and the memory orb are both for me,” I said. “I’ve got to pull my own weight.”

“Technically I’m the one who wanted the memory orb.”

“That’s why you’re coming along,” I joked. “Keep quiet until we’re alone.”

Her eyes flashed twice, which I guess was sort of a nod. I closed the bag and looked up at the nav beacon. It was halfway out into the debris field, and from what Double had said, it was basically a big radio antenna. Drone ships would lock onto the signal and simple talismans would make them go towards the source. Put enough of them in a line, and it was like a train following tracks.

I trotted up to the beacon, looking at the small cloud outpost and knocking sharply on the door. I’d used my right hoof on reflex and it made the strangest sound, more like I’d tapped a metal baton against the door than a limb. I was going to be a lot happier once I had that fusion core.

“Hello?” A pony in a uniform a lot like mine but with more stains opened the door. He looked like he weighed about twenty pounds soaking wet.

“This is…” I made a show of pulling paperwork out of my saddlebags, looking at a clipboard with deep concentration. “Navigational beacon DS-6?”

“Yes?” The pony replied, sounding suddenly unsure, like he’d never had to answer a question before.

“Good. Are you the only pony on shift?” I asked. I had a whole script written on the clipboard. Quattro had wanted to make sure I didn’t mess things up too badly.

“Yeah?”

I nodded. “I’m here to do an inspection,” I declared. “Take me to the main terminal.”

“An inspection?” the pony frowned. “I didn’t hear about any inspection.”

I looked at the flowchart Quattro had given me. I squinted, reading it over. “There wouldn’t be much point in giving warning about a surprise inspection.” Quattro had been pretty good at predicting what this guy was going to say. I skipped ahead to the next bit, checking my line.

“You better come in out of the rain, Miss,” he said.

“If you don’t let me in I’ll have to talk to your commander,” I replied.

“What?”

“What?” I dimly realized my response hadn’t made any sense. I might have skipped too far ahead. I was going to have to improvise. I was still holding the clipboard, so I broke it over his head. He collapsed in a heap.

“That almost went well,” Destiny said. “I’d hate to see what you would have done if he’d offered you some coffee.”

“Shut up,” I groaned, picking up the thin pony and stepping inside out of the weather. “It’s fine. I just have to stash him somewhere until after this is all over.”

That’s when I saw the lockers. Perfect. I opened one of the doors and shoved him inside. It was a perfect fit, like he'd been made to be shoved into lockers.

“Problem solved,” I said. “Now we just need to do the computer thing.”

Destiny worked her way out from under the tools and scraps in my borrowed bags and floated out to look around. “Is that it near the window?”

I looked up. There was a blinking screen near the shelter’s only window, a long strip of solid rainbow that was just barely tinted red. It ran the whole length along one wall, I guess so they could watch the ships pass without having to leave the building.

“This interface looks pretty standard,” Destiny said. “Stable-Tec OS, so it’s full of holes. All I have to do is…” She paused. “I just have to…”

“What’s wrong?” I hoped she wasn’t starting to lose it. She was literally a ghost in a machine, and the machine was out of power. Was that taking a toll on her?

“I can’t seem to press the keys with my magic. Fine, I’ll just do it the hard way.” She floated closer and passed right through the cloud terminal. “What the buck?!”

“You’re not a pegasus,” I said. “You can’t--”

She flew through it again.

“It’s made of clouds,” she said.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“Well… great. I can’t hack something I can’t touch.” She paused. “But you can!”

“I have no idea how to hack terminals.”

“You don’t have to know. Just press the buttons I tell you to press. It’ll take a little longer, but we can make this work.”

Ten minutes later, things weren’t working.

“Just do what it says on screen!” Destiny shouted

“I’m trying, but I can’t find the any key!”

“That just means you press literally any key, Chamomile!”

“How am I supposed to know that?! I’m not a computer pony!”

“This isn’t going to work,” Destiny grumbled.

“No kidding. What’s the backup plan? Smash the terminal?”

“That’s probably just going to mean we can’t turn it off. The radio transmitter doesn’t need this terminal to work. We need to be able to access the system.”

I rubbed my chin. There had to be another way…

“I got it!” I said. I went back to the lockers and opened up the one with the station attendant inside. He looked up at me.

“C-can I help you?” he asked.

“What’s the password for the terminal?” I demanded.

“We’re not supposed to--”

I reached into my bag. “I’ve got a wrench in here somewhere…”

“SableSky. The ‘S’es are capitalized. Don’t hurt me!”

“Thanks.” I said. I closed the door again. Then paused, opened the next locker, and grabbed the bag lunch I’d spotted there. I opened up the nerd door and tossed him the bag. “Here. For good behavior.”

I closed the door more gently. As I walked away I heard the crinkle of a packet of snack cakes opening up.

“That was nice of you,” Destiny said.

“It felt like the right thing to do.” I shrugged and started typing the password in. The capital letters were hard. “He’s just a pony doing his job. He’s not even like, a prison guard or anything. He’s just sitting in a boring, dead-end place like this and making sure nothing goes wrong. He never hurt anypony.”

The terminal made a happy beep instead of all the sad beeps it had been making before.

“It worked!” I said. “Okay, now what?”

“Do you see that menu right there?” Destiny asked. “The one that says ‘Nav Beacon Status?’”

“Yeah,” I said, anticipating what she was going to ask and selecting it.

“Now select shutdown,” she said. “And that… should be it.”

“That wasn’t so bad.”

“It would have been a lot faster if somepony could follow instructions,” she said. “Chamomile? What are you--”

I bucked the terminal into the wall, sparks exploding out as the delicate rainbow and cloud wiring shattered.

“That felt good. Now he can’t turn it back on when we leave! The lockers don’t even have locks on them. I think he’s just staying in there to be polite.”

“And so I don’t get hurt again!” he said, his voice muffled.

“And that,” I agreed. “Thank you!”

“We got it just in time,” Destiny said. “The drone ship is scheduled any minute now.”

I nodded. I was starting to get a bad feeling that I couldn’t quite shake. Not from the Med-X withdrawals, either. I had my hoof on the doorknob when the radio next to the broken terminal turned on.

A thin, reedy voice came through the crackle of static and interference from the storm. “This is transport barge three. We’re having some problems with the instrument flight system. Is everything okay?”

“...That’s a pony,” I said. “Why is there a pony on the radio?”

“Don’t ask me,” Destiny said.

I opened up the locker again. “Hey! I thought the barges were unmanned!”

The stallion looked up from his snack, ears folded back in fear at my tone. “They were! For a while. The systems are too hard to maintain! It was easier to turn them off and just have ponies crew them.”

“Get the beacon back on!” I snapped, pulling him out of the locker. “I didn’t come here to get ponies killed!”

He took one step and stopped.

“Where’s… the terminal?” he asked.

“I broke it,” I said. “Just get the beacon working!”

“This is the worst day of my life,” he muttered, running over to the smashed terminal and pulling it apart. He started pulling on wires and groaned. “The magic smoke got out! This is never going to work again!”

“Then… use the radio to tell them to stop!” I said.

“I’d love to, but with the transmitter turned off, all we can do is receive passively,” he groused. “Do you know how hard it is to find a terminal in decent shape? We don’t even have any backups because they get shipped out to--”

The radio crackled again. “DS-6, can you read us? We’re having a lot of trouble out here. We can’t confirm our exact location.”

“Stop complaining and tell me what I need to do!” I yelled.

“Okay, um…” the stallion looked around. “There’s an emergency checklist.” He brushed dust off a poster hanging on the wall. “Transmitter down… incoming barge… aha! Here we go.” He tapped the poster. “In case all other options fail, we use the emergency flare gun to signal the oncoming barge!”

He pointed to a faded yellow case on the wall. I popped it open and found a wide-barreled pistol and two flares.

“Perfect,” I said. I loaded one of the flares into the gun and opened the door, the storm winds and rain buffeting me. I held the pistol carefully in my teeth, aiming generally up. It probably didn’t matter exactly where it went, as long as the barge could see it.

I pulled the trigger. There was a click, a tiny pop, and a fizzling, hissing sound. What there wasn’t was a big, bright flare that ponies could see for miles.

“You’re kidding me!” I groaned. “Destiny, grab the other flare!”

“I got it!” Destiny said. She grabbed the flare, levitating it over to me. I grabbed it, fumbling with the flare gun.

“Mayday, mayday! We’ve got lightning strikes on the engine! The props are coming apart--” The radio dissolved into hissing.

I saw something explode in the middle distance. The sound of metal slamming into metal was even louder than the storm.

“Buck,” I swore. And talking set the flare gun off, a green star launching into the sky, arcing into the air. I spat the gun out and stormed inside. “I’m gonna go see if they’re okay. There wasn’t even supposed to be anyone there today!”

“Um…” the stallion coughed. “Before you go? No offense, but none of this is my fault and I’m gonna get blamed for everything. Could you knock me out and shove me back into a locker? I’d rather have a concussion than try to explain this to Governor Fuse.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” I punched him in the face, and he went out like a light. “This is so not worth it…”

“You realize it’s not safe flying out there, right?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah, but nopony else is close enough to help,” I said. “Maybe they’ll be grateful.”

It was one of the dumbest things I ever said. I shoved the limp stallion back into a locker like it was high school all over again and took off into the storm.

Chapter 13 - Piece Heroique

I was the stupidest, worst pony in the Enclave. Ponies were hurt because of me and it wasn’t even the first time. I should never have trusted Double Nothing, I shouldn’t have smashed things without thinking about it, and I really shouldn’t be flying out in the storm. The Thunderbolt Shoals were like a perpetual hurricane and I was throwing myself into that just to try and fix a mistake that was my fault to begin with.

The rain was bad. The wind was worse. It was gusting so hard the sleet was horizontal when it wasn’t even worse and finding ways to hit me from below. I don’t think a pony could intentionally set up more awful conditions for flying. The light was that kind of dull, strangely-colored light you get when a storm is rolling through, all purple and green and grey. Lighting strobed every second or two, showing dim shadows of the wrecks and half-disassembled ships around us hovering in the clouds.

“This is a really bad idea!” Destiny said. If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet I wouldn’t have heard her at all.

“It’s keeping the rain out of my eyes!” I retorted. The display might have been dead but the narrow field of view was better than squinting through hail.

“Not that!” she yelled. “I’m a big fan of anything that keeps you from getting more head injuries! I meant everything else!”

I could see the barge from here. Whatever had exploded when it crashed, it was still burning. The smoke mixed with the rest of the clouds, and the closer I got the more the rain carried the soot and ashes from the fires. The flames outlined a squared-off, boxy shape. Emerald probably would have known the right name for whatever type of ship it was, but she was also too smart to get involved in something as stupid as this whole navigational beacon mess.

“I have to at least try to save them!” I said. Just seeing the ship gave me the determination I needed to push through the storm even if it felt like I was flying into a brick wall.

With the strobe lighting and just not knowing how big the barge was, it came up on me faster than I expected. One second it seemed like it was half a mile away, the next I was so close to the hull I could almost reach out and touch it.

I flapped my wings as hard as I could and tried to think about anything but the way my shoulders were telling me needles were stabbing into my wing joints. I mean, pain was supposed to be your body warning you you were hurt, right? Why couldn’t it stop after giving me the first strongly-worded message?

I spotted a hatch and flew over to it, pulling it open and stumbling inside, slamming it shut behind me and cutting out the worst of the tempest.

“Identify yourself!”

I slowly turned to face the pony who was talking. She was a mare that had to be a year or two younger than me, talking around the grip of a laser pistol.

“I’m here to help,” I said. I sat down and held up my hooves. “I’m unarmed. Let me just--” I took the helmet off so she could see my face.

“Are you with the military?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure we’re wearing the same uniform,” I said. I shoved Destiny in my bag and hoped she’d stay quiet for a little while.

She looked me over carefully like she had to check that for herself, then took the gun out of her mouth.

“Sorry,” she said.

“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “What can I do to help?”

The mare glanced back behind her. I could see crates and netting, and a lot of stuff spilled all over the floor.

“When we crashed, the cargo shifted. Sarge tried to secure it, but the straps broke and he’s pinned. I tried to move the crate, but…” I saw frustrated tears welling up in her eyes.

“Good thing I came, then,” I said. “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s brute strength and shoving stuff out of the way. We’ll get him out of there.”

“We need to go fast,” she said.

“I know. I saw the fire from outside.”

“One of the engines exploded. We hit floating debris or something,” the mare said, leading me through the cargo hold. “Careful. Some of this is still ready to fall over. What happened? Sarge said he lost the nav beacon.”

“The nav beacon is out,” I said. “Something happened to the transmitter.” Technically, I had happened to it, but I wasn’t going to just tell her that. She was armed and I wasn’t. “The other guy is trying to get it back online. We couldn’t even make a radio call out to warn you.”

“Great,” the mare muttered. “You said your name was Chamomile? I’m Snow Shadow. I’d say it was nice to meet you but this is practically my first real assignment and it’s already a disaster!”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “Something that should be a simple job that just turns into a huge mess.”

She nodded and stopped in front of a tilted crate. “Sarge! One of the ponies from the beacon outpost is here to help! We’re going to try and get this thing off you, okay?”

“That would be lovely, Private Shadow,” the trapped pony said breathlessly. I looked over Snow Shadow’s shoulder to get a look at him. He was pinned between the crate and the hull of the ship. If it slipped even a little more it’d squash him like a bug. The way he was lying, and how little space he had… at least one leg had to be broken. Maybe more.

“I don’t know how these barges are set up,” I said, looking around for options. “Is there a crane or something we can use to lift it off him?”

“That’s on the dock, not the ship,” Snow said.

I looked around. “We need something sturdy enough… grab two of those pipes,” I said, pointing to a pallet on the other wall. “We’ll use them as levers.”

“Will that work?” Snow asked. She picked two up with some difficulty, flying them over.

“It’ll be fine,” I said, hefting the pipe in my hooves. It felt solid enough to work. It only had to last a few seconds.

“Just be really careful,” the trapped pony groaned. “This cargo…”

“It’s valuable, I know,” I said. “Getting you out is more important.”

He shook his head weakly. “It’s explosive! You can’t be rough with it!”

I froze. “Explosive?”

He nodded. “Missiles. The… the warheads are mostly safe, but the propellant… Snow?”

“Just try to relax Sarge, I’ll explain,” Snow said. She looked at me, worried. “These missiles are old, and they weren’t stored in a sealed compartment. They use a kind of hybrid peroxide-sugar-monoprop.”

She might as well have been speaking some obscure dialect of zebra for all that I understood what she meant. Snow must have caught the look on my face.

“Didn’t they cover this in basic?” she asked.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a great student.”

“The point is…” she sighed. “Over time, especially in damp areas, the fuel destabilizes. It starts to slowly decompose and gets shock-sensitive. If they get bumped the wrong way, they’ll all go off.”

I paled. I was in a cargo hold with enough explosives to level half of Thunderbolt Shoals. “And you were carrying this stuff through a storm like this? It’s a miracle that crash didn’t set everything off!”

“Never say never,” the trapped pony quipped. “They could still go off any time they want, if the fire doesn’t get them first.”

“So we have to go fast, but gently,” I said. “That’s… two things I’m really great at.” I smiled and tried to sell that lie along with all the others.

“Lucky me,” the stallion coughed.

The smart thing to do would be to run. Quattro would have just gotten out of there and let the place explode. I could yell at Double Nothing later about the mission, but only if I was alive enough to do it. These two were military ponies, and I had absolutely no reason to even be polite to them, much less spend this much effort trying to save their lives.

“I wish my brother was here,” Snow muttered, talking to herself.

“Was he good at heavy lifting?” I asked.

“Rain always seemed to know what to do in a crisis. He didn’t panic.” Snow said. “He kept his cool and stayed ahead.”

The name tickled at my memory, but it wasn’t possible, was it? “...You don’t mean Lieutenant Rain Shadow, do you?”

She blinked in surprise, staring at me. “You know him?”

“I might. Was he working under Colonel Ohm? Got reassigned to somewhere hush-hush?”

“You do know him! How’s he doing? He never writes.”

Last time I’d seen him, he’d been unconscious and had a nasty fall. I couldn’t tell her that her brother was a jerk who killed innocent ponies and falsely accused somepony of being a deserter. That was the kind of thing a pony needed to find out for themselves.

“We only worked together for a few days,” I said, opting for something not entirely a lie. I jammed the end of my pipe in and gave a few test pushes. The trapped stallion winced at the motion. I hoped I wasn’t going to end up crushing him. “You ready on your side?”

She nodded, bracing her pipe and planting her hooves.

“Okay, once we start lifting, you’re going to need to move, sir. Are you going to be able to get out once the pressure is off?” I looked at the trapped stallion.

“Don’t ask me to dance a jig, but I’ll try and crawl out,” he said.

I nodded. “On three!” I said. “One, two… three!”

We levered the crate up. It only moved about a hoof-width, but that had to be enough. The trapped stallion dragged himself forward. I ignored the pain in my joints, focusing on keeping that weight lifted. He was crawling out with a back leg so badly broken I could see the bone. I couldn’t complain just because I was a little sore. Snow was using all her body weight, only barely touching the deck under her.

“I’m clear!” the stallion gasped.

“Let it down gently!” I said. “Slow and easy, don’t drop it!”

I eased off, and brought the crate down. The weight came off our pipes… and then the crate shifted, slamming flush against the hull and deck. I held my breath. For a second I was sure it was going to explode and kill us all.

The moment passed, none of us were dead, and I groaned and fell back on my flank.

I closed my eyes for a second. I hadn’t gotten anypony killed. Thank the stars for small favors. “That’s too much excitement for one day.”

“Too much excitement for a whole deployment,” the stallion agreed. “Snow Shadow, get on the radio again and see if you can get somepony on the line.”

“Yes, sir!” Snow said, saluting and running forwards to the bridge.

The stallion groaned and tried to move. I pulled him up, helping him get himself settled a little less painfully.

“I think I’ve got a healing potion here somewhere,” I said, rummaging around in my bags. “Hang on.”

“Don’t,” the stallion said, holding up a hoof. “Need to get the bone set first. Guessing you don’t have medic training or I wouldn’t be the one telling you that.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for trying to help.”

Destiny’s eyes lit up at the bottom of my saddlebags, and she lifted up a needle of Med-X. My last dose. The aches in my body and the feeling like I was constantly on the verge of tearing apart collectively begged me to use it on myself, or at least save it for when I really needed it.

I offered it to the stallion.

“Here,” I said, looking away so I wouldn’t have to see myself making another stupid decision. “For the pain.”

“I’m surprised they let you have that,” he said, taking it and injecting it into his leg. He immediately started relaxing, the twitching and tension abating.

I took a deep breath. It was done. I could be anxious about my own pain later. “They don’t,” I joked.

He winked at me. “I gotcha. Just don’t let the brass know how things work in the trenches.” He offered his hoof to bump. “Altius volantis.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, bumping his hoof.

He gave me a strange look.

“Sarge, I got through to another barge and they’ve relayed the message,” Snow Shadow said, coming back from the front. “They’re going to get another crew out here in an hour or so and told us to hang tight and secure everything. No evac. They’re worried about theft.”

“They should be,” the stallion said, still looking at me. “Snow Shadow, place this pony under arrest.”

“Uh…” I took a step back.

Snow Shadow looked confused. “What happened?”

“Altius volantis. It means ‘soaring higher’. It was the motto of the Wonderbolts, and one of the things they drill into you in basic training. This pony isn’t military.” He narrowed his eyes. “Should have known, coming just at the right time. Navigation beacon goes out mysteriously, just when we’ve got cargo like this?”

“Calm down,” I said. I must have moved too quickly, because Snow Shadow pulled her laser pistol and took aim at me. “Okay, okay, let’s not fire guns around the unstable explosives.”

“Get over against the wall,” she ordered.

“You seem like a decent pony, and I hope this is just a mix-up,” the stallion groaned. “If it is, I’m sorry about this. But I’m not wrong, am I? What’s your ID number?”

“My, uh…” I swallowed. My mind went blank. I had a calculator in my head and suddenly I couldn’t remember any numbers. “Seven?”

He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

“Look, I didn’t come out here to hurt anypony,” I said.

“Great,” Snow Shadow said. “Over against the wall like Sarge said!”

“I’m not gonna do that,” I said. “You’re a smart pony. You don’t want trouble. Heck, I’m a stupid pony and even I know neither of us needs more problems today. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna move real slowly like this.”

I started backing up.

“I’m unarmed. You’re not going to shoot me when I’m no threat and I just helped you save somepony’s life. I’m just going to walk over to the hatch, open it up, and you’ll never see me again. You can tell the ponies coming to pick you up that I overpowered you, or slipped away when you weren’t looking, or whatever you want.”

I kept backing up, not making any sudden moves. I think she really might have let me go. She didn’t want to shoot me. I didn’t want to get shot. I was all the way to the hatch, and she was just keeping the gun on me, shaking a little. She looked betrayed and angry.

But then the Sergeant groaned and started to collapse. He’d only barely been staying awake already and once the Med-X hit, his body was doing its best to make him pass out for a while. He wasn’t in any danger, but Snow Shadow was so focused on me that the motion and sound caught her by surprise.

She turned and started to say something, with a gun in her mouth that was triggered by her tongue.

The laser pistol went off, and when she turned the aim drifted from me to one of the crates full of explosives right next to her. There wasn’t even time for me to react.

I was standing right next to the hatch, and the blast threw me into it and out into the storm. The gusts outside caught me and wrenched me aside just in front of a wave of fire and shrapnel, tossing me away from the cargo barge.

“No!” I yelled, barely even able to hear myself over the raging wind. I flew back towards the barge, and my hoof touched the hull at the same time the second explosion went off. The hull blasted apart like an eggshell full of napalm. I slammed hard into a floating scrap of cloud and was instantly buried in grey fluff.

“Chamomile, stop!” Destiny snapped.

I pulled myself upright, shaking off vapor, and the helmet floated out of my bag.

“Look at your side,” she ordered.

I looked at my right side. My hoof was still as messed up as usual, but everything seemed okay otherwise.

“Other side,” Destiny said, sounding exhausted in the way only the undead can.

I checked my left. A chunk of shrapnel was embedded in my ribs. If I concentrated I could feel other cuts and scrapes, but they were just background noise.

“Stay still,” she ordered. The shrapnel blade was surrounded by red magic, and she slowly pulled it free. It was a little deeper than I thought, actually. And seeing it come out made me feel dizzy. Really dizzy. Or maybe it was the blood. Was my blood supposed to be that dark?

A healing potion was shoved between my lips, and I drank it, the sharp medicinal taste and cherry flavor telling me it was one of the military surplus potions we’d found.

“You okay?” Destiny asked.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t grape flavor,” I said weakly.

“We need to get out of here,” the undead unicorn said. “No telling how long it’s going to be before those salvage teams get here.”

“But--”

“They’re dead, Chamomile,” Destiny said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

“Is there any way we can schedule these things in advance?” Para-Medic asked, as she checked me over. “If you can wait until Sunday to get blown up again, I know a pony who has a weekly sale on bootleg healing potions, and we can really save a lot of bits on keeping you alive.”

“How do you bootleg healing potions?” I asked, curious.

“I’m pretty sure he only fills the bottles halfway and then mixes the rest with white whiskey,” the pink pegasus said. “I actually like them that way, you know? Most ponies that drink potions don’t really need the whole dose anyway, and the whiskey makes injured ponies a lot easier to manage.”

I thought for a second about that. “I wouldn’t mind being made easier to manage.”

“Normally I’d say you don’t deserve a drink after getting yourself hurt like that, but I’m pretty sure Captain Glint would give you a bottle herself if it meant you’d stay out of trouble for a while,” Para-Medic said. “If anypony asks, tell them Stalliongrad Standard is traditional folk medicine.”

I was about halfway through the bottle when Quattro showed up. At that point, Destiny was helping me pour the vodka. I didn’t want to get in trouble for damaging medical equipment, after all.

“Hey,” she said, sounding guilty.

“Want a drink?” I asked, offering her the bottle.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Quattro said, taking a long sip before handing it back. “How are you holding up?”

“Your friend played us like a damn fiddle, Quattro. It wasn’t a drone barge!”

“I heard. You were pretty loud about it when you came back. Emerald is pretty angry at me for sending you on that mission.” Quattro sighed and looked away. “I’m angry at myself too. I should have been the one to go.”

“Why?”

“Because even though I’d probably do the same stupid thing you did, it’d be me doing it. You’ve had a bad enough time already.” She sat down next to the cot. “Speaking of Double, I’ve got good news, bad news, and worse news. How do you want it?”

“Give me a good news sandwich,” I said.

Quattro chuckled and nodded. “Bad news first. No fusion core. The supplier isn’t happy that the cargo got blown up. He’s talking to them and trying to work something out. I’m going to check on him in a few hours and see if he made any progress.”

“Great,” I sighed and scratched at my hoof. It hadn’t even been itchy a second ago, but now I knew I wasn’t getting any relief and it made things worse somehow.

“Good news!” Quattro clapped her hooves. “I got that memory orb you wanted.” She fished it out of her bag and put it on the bed next to me.

“Oh, nice!” Destiny grabbed it with her magic before I could touch it. She held it for a few seconds then turned to me. “I can’t access it. I think I’m going to need to borrow your head to do it. I think it needs an actual brain in the loop.”

“In a minute,” I said. “What’s the worse news?”

Quattro looked around to make sure nopony was listening in, then leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Before that cargo barge went up? They got a message out.”

“I know that. I was there. Snow Shadow sent out a mayday. A couple of them, actually. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, the last one she sent mentioned you by name.” Quattro folded her hooves. “Your name is in the official reports going around and you’re mentioned as a pony of interest. When that works its way up the chain…”

“Anypony looking for me is going to have a good idea where to start,” I groaned.

Quattro nodded. “And from what that special ops team said back in Cirrus Valley, the survivors from the Smokestack have already been debriefed. We’re going to have to lie low for a while.”

“We were going to do that anyway,” I said. I started to get up, and the world swam. I groaned and almost dropped the bottle, Quattro nabbing it a moment before it would hit the deck. She helped me settle down.

“Rest,” she said. “Watch the memory orb, maybe? From what I’ve heard, you can’t really feel anything while you’re viewing one. Maybe it’ll be something pleasant like a memory of a day on the beach.”

“Have I ever been to the beach?” Destiny asked quietly. “It’s so hard to remember, like my life was a dream…”

“Only one way to find out,” Quattro said cheerfully. “Just don’t ask for a refund if it’s something boring. Double Nothing doesn’t do refunds.”

“I’ll take boring over what I’ve got now, which is very exciting aches and pains.”

“I’ll come get you when I’m ready to check on him. I want you there so you can tell him exactly what happened, and I want him to apologize to you in person.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Destiny?”

She settled on my head, and I felt her magic reach out for the orb and slip inside.

Sliding into the memory was easy. All the aches and pains of my body vanished, and for a moment I was floating in nothing, in that timeless oblivion of dreamless sleep. It felt good, just to not be tired for a while.

Things came into focus suddenly, but without a discontinuity. Have you ever sat in front of a book and just stared at the page and there are words there but you don’t really see them, and then your eye catches on something, and you’re abruptly reading instead of just looking? That’s what falling into the memory was like, a shift from oblivion and nothing into implicit understanding, letters turning into words.

It was a body I’d been in before. Destiny had been right on the money with her intuition that the orb had something to do with her, because it was her. I was standing in front of a whiteboard, drawing on it with markers.

“I’ve started the recording,” she said to herself, as she finished what she was drawing on the board, a collection of shapes and runes I couldn’t understand. “This way you’ll have a record of it that you can review at any time.”

“Thank you so much,” said another pony. My host, Destiny, turned and looked at her.

It was a lavender unicorn with a dark purple mane. She looked familiar. Familiar to me, I mean, not just to Destiny, which was impossible. There was no way I’d know some random pony from that long ago. Not unless she was so famous that I’d seen her in history books.

“It’s no problem, Miss Sparkle,” Destiny said, and just saying the name amused her. “If you’re going to be spending much time here, a shield spell is a good precaution.”

Twilight Sparkle. The ministry mare herself. She looked different than in the photos I’d seen. She looked younger and almost unsure of herself, but it was definitely her. No wonder she’d seemed familiar. I’d seen dozens of pictures of her!

“I appreciate the lesson,” Twilight said. “I know we have a lot to go over, but for obvious reasons I haven’t been able to get much practical work in.”

“That’s what this memory orb is for,” Destiny said. “This recording will have me casting the spell, and when you replay it, you’ll be able to get a feel for it from my perspective. I think memory orbs could be very useful for education. Recordings of lectures are good, but some ponies have problems focusing on them. On the other hand, if a tutor records themselves reading a book, and a pony replays that memory…”

“They’ll have the same memory,” Twilight said. “Even if they couldn’t normally focus enough to read through a book or notes, they’ll almost be forced to learn it.”

“Forced makes it sound bad.” Destiny laughed. “I’d like to think of it more like borrowing somepony else’s talent at studying.”

“Speaking of which, we should get this lesson going,” Twilight said. She grinned and tapped her forehooves together excitedly. “I’m ready for my first magic lesson!”

“Right. We shouldn’t get too off-script while the recording is running,” Destiny agreed. “So the basics of shield spells…”

Let me tell you, when they talked about forcing ponies to pay attention, they were right. I literally couldn’t look away. I could sort of think about other things, but I couldn’t entirely take my focus off what was going on. It was out of my depth, and they talked about things that really only unicorns would understand.

Destiny was amused every time Twilight Sparkle asked her a question, actually laughing at some like there was some hidden joke. I didn’t really get it. Wasn’t Twilight Sparkle supposed to be some kind of prodigy with magic? Why was she getting lessons in basic spellcasting? Maybe she was playing it up for the recording, pretending to be an eager student to make the lesson seem more authentic.

I just couldn’t shake the idea that the smiling, excited mare constantly adjusting her thick glasses was somehow different from the way she’d always been presented in the history books.

“...and now I’ll cast it to show you what it looks like, and when you review the recording, what it feels like,” Destiny said.

I felt myself drawn back to the recording, and I felt that surge of magic through me, or through Destiny anyway. It felt exactly the same as when she was casting through me when I had the Exodus armor on. I’d experienced it enough by now that I could actually tell this was different from the basic telekinesis or the force bolt she’d used before.

A shimmering red field sprang up in a hemisphere in front of me.

“This is the most basic shield spell,” Destiny said. “Go ahead and throw something at me.”

“Are you sure?” Twilight asked, holding up a pencil in her aura.

“Absolutely. This could block a bullet. You’re not going to kill me with a pencil.”

Twilight threw it. Destiny didn’t even flinch. The pencil hit the shield and bounced off like it had hit a rubber wall. I felt it hit, like the magic was an extension of myself.

“See?” Destiny said. “My shield is strong enough to stop a bullet. With your natural talent, you can probably stop anything short of an anti-tank weapon.”

Twilight blushed. “Now you’re just trying to flatter me.”

Destiny laughed, and the memory faded back to oblivion before ejecting me.

“That was…” Destiny whispered, as the pain crashed back down on me like the tide. Destiny gently lifted off my head to float over me.

I groaned and shook it off. Pain was just pain. I could deal with it. “That was interesting,” I offered. “I guess you were friends with a Ministry Mare.”

“I guess so,” Destiny agreed. “Now I really wish my memory wasn’t so fuzzy. I can remember that lesson perfectly now, but it’s like… a book where all the pages got wet and the ink ran, and seeing that orb let me undo the damage to a few paragraphs, but the rest is still a blur.”

“We’ll find more,” I said. “You said it was like a dream, right? Sometimes I forget a dream entirely, then I see something that reminds me of it and bam! The whole thing comes rushing back to me. Your memory might be like that. We just need to find the one right thing and then the other pieces fall into place.”

“Yeah!” Destiny agreed. “Or like finding the corner pieces for a jigsaw puzzle. Once you have something to build off of, the rest comes together. Thanks, Chamomile. And thanks for letting me use your brain, too. The orbs need a living pony to work.”

“It’s no problem,” I said.

“But you know, now that I remember that lesson, I think I can get a shield spell working!” Destiny said. “I won’t be able to generate much power like this, but if we’re able to get the armor going with a fresh fusion core, maybe I can use it to keep you from getting blown up again.”

That sounded good to me. “I’d really enjoy not having to spend more time in bed healing.”

Quattro pushed through the curtains. “I thought I heard you talking. You feel up to being a big, scary pony to scare Double into giving us the fusion core he owes us?”

“I feel like he owes me an apology first,” I said, getting out of bed and stretching. “Think he’s got any in stock?”

“He’d better. Emerald’s so mad about this she’s ready to drag him here by the ear to make him deliver it in person.”

“I’ll pick it up myself,” I said.

“I’m going to stay here and practice that spell,” Destiny said. “It shouldn’t take long to get it down.”

I nodded and started working on exactly what I’d say. I was gonna give him a piece of my mind and I was gonna make it good. Double was going to regret not telling us everything before sending me on that mission. About the ponies on the barge, and the explosives, and… mostly about those two things.

I’d work on the wording on the way over.

I stepped over a broken shelf, careful not to walk on broken glass. The interior of the yacht was totally wrecked. I was guessing it had been done with wrenches and crowbars, mostly because of the wrenches and crowbars that had been left behind.

“Somepony got here first,” I guessed.

“Somepony even more angry than we are,” Quattro mumbled.

“Oh, hey,” Double groaned. He pulled himself to his hooves. “Sorry about not saying hello right away. I was cowering behind my desk, and I’m not ashamed to admit that because you’re one of my very best friends.”

He looked like he’d been through a cloudball match. As the ball. He was covered in bruises and his shirt was ripped to shreds.

“Am I?” Quattro asked.

“I hope so,” Double said. “Because if you’re not, I’m just going to lay down here and die now. I can’t take another beating.”

“Who did this?” I asked.

“My other client,” Double said. “The one you were securing cargo for. They were going to wait for the barge to crash, then go in and swoop up the cargo before the real emergency crews could get there. Apparently it didn’t go well.”

“It didn’t go well for anypony,” I agreed.

“Unfortunately, the Labor Union is less understanding than you, my very good friends are,” Double sighed. “So they decided they’d put the boots to me, and if I don’t find a way to make things right, they’re going to come back and finish the job.”

Quattro sighed. “Wonderful.”

“Better news, they’re the ones who were securing your fusion core. They control all the heavy machinery around here, and they’ve got all the appropriate power sources.”

“You’re saying this is our problem,” Quattro said.

“If you want the core, it is,” Double shrugged. “Also I might have let your name slip when they were kicking me. They want to talk to the pony who messed up the operation.”

He looked at me.

“This deal keeps getting worse all the time,” I muttered.

Chapter 14 - Angels with Dirty Faces

I had a headache. That was nothing new. This time, it was from a hangover and the edge of Med-X withdrawal, so by the time we got to the place Double Nothing had pointed us to, my bad mood had turned into a dark cloud hovering over me. The first pony who said something stupid was going to regret it.

Unfortunately odds were that the first pony to say something stupid would be me, because I said a lot of really stupid stuff. Thinking about that only made my mood even worse.

“This can’t be the right way,” I mumbled. I let Quattro lead because she knew how to navigate around Thunderbolt Shores. Or I thought she knew how to navigate. I kind of thought the place we’d been had been the slums, but it was practically upper class compared to where we were going now.

The one thing the Enclave had in spades was room for ponies. We needed space for crops, sure, but I’d been to plenty of cities and everypony practically had whole buildings to themselves and the more important you were, the more room you were given. Here, though…

The street had been wide and open in the black market, giving ponies plenty of space to move. As we’d gotten closer to where we were going, things had narrowed and walls had closed in and it was like we’d left the shoals and entered some kind of hive. I couldn’t even stretch out my wings without hitting buildings on both sides. The stalls and shops of the market would have looked positively gigantic here. There were stores on both sides of the street with tattered signs advertising that the single window here was selling tool sharpening, and this stall squeezed into a doorway was offering recycled food, and if you wanted drugs, step right up to these metal bars and show the pretty mare the color of your money.

Basically I’m saying it was like if you took every slum I’d ever been in or imagined and put it in a trash compactor, emphasis on the trash.

“This is the right way,” Quattro said. “The address was inside the closed city. I hate this place. You can’t even see the sky.”

I glanced up. She was right. Above us, the looming buildings leaned into each other until they touched. It was like being in a cave. The rain still somehow found its way in, forming streams sometimes ankle-deep around us.

“We should have come armed,” Destiny mumbled. She was staying in my bag. She said she was afraid somepony would try to steal from my saddlebags but I think she was mostly worried that if she was floating around somepony would try to nab her and sell her as a pet.

“Showing up with guns would have sent the wrong message,” Quattro said. “I think they’d have taken it as an insult. We might not have even gotten this far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There have been ponies watching us since we came in here.” Quattro didn’t point them out or turn around or even lower her voice. “Speaking of which…”

A pony stepped out into the narrow street ahead of us. I saw movement behind us. When I turned, there was a mare with a knife and crude tattoos covering half her face. They looked like they’d been drawn on by a foal, and the knife was easily the least impressive weapon I’d been menaced with. I don’t even think it was sharp enough to cut butter without a lot of help.

“Think they’re with the union?” I asked.

“No, I think they’re on just enough drugs to think bothering us is a good way to earn their next fix,” Quattro said. “Not very smart.”

A crowbar came down on the mare doing her best to make me afraid of a blade as sharp as she was. The pony behind her was in a dirty jumpsuit and didn’t even bother looking at me before he dragged her out of sight, his bags jangling with other tools.

“That didn’t last long,” I mumbled. I glanced back to see the pony menacing Quattro was being dragged the other way.

“Sorry about that, some of the unfortunates around her just lack any sort of dignity or discipline.” A pony with a coffee-colored coat and green streaks through her black mane was standing a few steps in front of us, shaking her head and watching the thugs get dragged off. Her voice had an odd lit to it.

“I’m guessing you’re with the union?” Quattro asked.

“Aye. And they weren’t, in case you were wondering. Well, the bashers who’re cleaning up the mess are Union, but the idiots with the stabbers weren’t. We wouldn’t take ponies like that on, even if things were still the good old days. But they ain’t, and we’ve turned away better for less. Which one of you larks is Chamomile?”

“Me,” I said, raising my hoof.

“Oh good, they’re selling idiot in extra-large tubs now,” the mare said. “I’m Spanner, I’m here to take you to the boss.”

“Do ponies always get mugged when they’re here on business?” Quattro asked.

“Are you the idiot’s owner?” Spanner retorted. “The closed city is the bad part of town and it’s worse because of the bloody Gov. We were gonna do something about that, but you had to bugger it up so much we’ll be lucky if this place doesn’t burn down by the end of the week!”

I was pretty sure they were always one kitchen disaster away from the whole city going up in flames, but I wasn’t going to say it when I was pretty sure ponies with crowbars and tire irons could appear from around any corner to teach me to be more polite.

“The Gov?” I asked, instead. I might as well try to figure out what I was hoof-deep into.

“The Governor,” Spanner said, obviously uncomfortable using the whole title. “He got voted in three years ago, but I’m being awful generous when I say he got voted in, because what he did was he made it plenty hard to vote for anypony else and still have kneecaps after.”

“Sounds like a great guy,” I said.

“Talk to the boss about it,” Spanner said. “She’s in here.”

She stopped in front of a garage door and knocked hard twice, softly twice, and then one more hard knock for good measure. A pony in a welding mask and holding a circular saw all casually like he’d just happened to be hanging out behind the door with a deadly power tool opened it up, looked at us, and nodded for us to come in.

“Boss is over there,” Spanner pointed.

The inside was a crowded space of tool chests and skeletal shelves full of parts bins. Ponies were working on what looked like huge dismounted engines or generators or something designed to spin around at least. Welding sparks arced all around us like flashbulbs at a fashion show, and the floor was filthy with oil and metal shavings.

One pony stood in the middle of the chaos, watching things with a critical eye. She barked orders left and right, and the herd did as she commanded. She was a mechanic working on the whole shop at once and the other ponies were the tools she was using.

She noticed us the second we walked in, but she made us wait for a lull in the work around us before she decided to even acknowledge we were there.

“Which one of you came to apologize?” she asked.

“I guess that’s me?” I suggested.

“You don’t sound sure,” she said. “If you aren’t sure, get out. I don’t have room for ponies who aren’t sure in my shop. If you need your hooves held through a fucking apology it means you’re too worthless to give one properly to begin with.”

She was as abrasive as sandpaper. The mare couldn’t even be bothered to look at us.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Things went wrong. But--”

“I don’t want to hear any kind of but,” the mare said. She held up a hoof. A steam whistle cut through the air. “Alright, everypony, take a fifteen and get something to drink while I deal with this.”

The working ponies put their equipment down almost as one unit and shuffled out, leaving us alone with the pony in charge. And a few ponies lingering, just far away enough to not be intruding but close enough to be intruding if we tried anything stupid.

“My name’s Spot Welder, but you can call me Boss,” she said. “You’re trying to apologize, so you must be Chamomile, yeah?”

I nodded.

“You catch the news on the radio?” Boss asked, her tone light. She sat down on a sturdy tool box, grabbing a bottle of water and taking a swig from it.

I shook my head. “No, why?”

“Just asking. The name of the pony in the nav station was Convex Glass. I didn’t know that until it was on the news. Did you? I didn’t think so. I doubt a lot of ponies knew his name before he was executed.”

“Ex-executed?! For what?!” I sputtered

Boss shrugged. “Dereliction of duty, apparently. He didn’t die honorably in the line of duty, so he died dishonorably after being found unconscious in a box.”

“A locker,” I corrected, my head spinning. They’d executed him? Why? He hadn’t done anything wrong!

“Oh, right,” Boss said. “You were there. Anyway, I was mostly listening for the list of other names. They executed ten dockworkers too. Everypony on the ship that was supposed to go and deal with the cargo, of course -- they were caught with their pants down when the barge exploded and didn’t have the common sense to get out of there like you did. They also decided to execute the ponies who loaded it onto the barge to begin with, just in case.”

“They executed ten ponies?” I whispered.

“Eleven counting Private Convex Glass,” Boss reminded me. “It was a busy morning. Usually there are only one or two executions a week. Governor Tilt Fuse was pretty upset and decided to do them all at once to send a message to me. Not that he knows it was me. I bet he suspects, but none of the ponies he killed admitted to it. They were good ponies.”

She held up her bottle of water in salute and poured it out.

“Good ponies,” she repeated quietly.

I could see him giving the order. I’d seen another pony giving an order like that. My mother.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my throat so tight the words barely escaped.

“I know you are,” Boss said. She got up. “I know you’re not some monster. You just made some mistakes and buggered up the mission. You decided to save the ponies in front of you. You didn’t put down Private Glass when things went bad because even if you didn’t care enough about him to even ask for his name, he was a pony just doing his job. Funny thing is, even if things had gone perfectly, he’d still be dead right now.”

“What was I… I didn’t…” I grabbed for the right words and couldn’t find them.

“I couldn’t even be there for the executions,” Boss said. “I have to get these engines fixed. Governor Fuse has his personal Raptor in port and wanted the props refurbished. We figured it was our chance to take care of him, you know? Use the hustle and bustle of the repair work to get close enough to frag him.”

Everything was swimming around me. Quattro grabbed my good hoof and helped me sit down somewhere relatively clean. Boss shoved a bottle into my hooves and I took a sip. It was lukewarm water, but I needed it.

“For the hangover,” she said. “I’m nursing one myself. It’s not a great idea to be working around all this dangerous equipment with my head pounding, but I’m the Union Head, I can bend rules once in a while. How much do you know about the Union?”

I shrugged and looked up at her. “Nothing.”

“Figured. We’re all just working ponies. We’re not freedom fighters like your friend or White Glint’s other little chicks. We all work together, and we’ve got rules to make the work safer.”

She nodded back to where the ponies had all walked out as a group.

“They’re all on break because if a pony pushes themselves too long without rest, they get sloppy, and then somepony gets hurt. Welders wear masks so they don’t go blind. If something weighs too much we make two ponies carry it, because if we don’t put a limit on how much one pony is allowed to carry some jackass will get himself hurt trying to lift a vertibird on their own. Every rule we have is written in blood, because somepony got hurt before we knew we needed the rule, and more ponies got hurt until it got written into code.”

Boss sat down next to me.

“When Governor Fuse got elected, and we’re not even gonna talk about the mess that was, he decided he didn’t care about Union rules. Now that’s normal for a new pony in charge. They look at all our little rules about never working alone, and how often we need to bring things down for maintenance and how long we’re on shift, and they think they’re silly rules that they can ask us to stop. If they’re polite and nice we might bend the rules a little, not enough to get anypony hurt, but it’s a favor and it stops when they stop being polite.”

“I’m guessing the Governor wasn’t polite?” Quattro asked.

“He pushed, and we pushed back. That’s what the Union is for. We all work together. It’s the real spirit of the Enclave. Not the military. Ponies working together to actually get something done. When he tried to order us to break rules, we refused, and when threats came we all walked off the job. Not great that it came to a work stoppage, but it’s happened before and some ponies need that kind of lesson.”

“What happened?” I croaked.

“He decided we were the ones who needed the lesson. The executions started. Not the sedate few a month we’ve had to get used to. More like today, whole shifts getting lined up and shot. Those were the bad old days, and today reminded me too much of them. Some of my ponies blame you and Double Nothing for bringing those days back. I know it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything.”

She way she said that made me wince. I didn’t do anything.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to get your hooves dirty,” she said. She got up. “Anyway, since it looks like Governor Fuse isn’t going anywhere, I can’t spare that fusion core Double Nothing wanted. I need everything I’ve got to get the work done on time. Otherwise…”

“More executions,” I guessed.

Boss nodded.

“...Can I tell you a little history story?” I asked weakly.

“After how much I’ve been working my gums? I’d love a break.”

“A little over a week ago, I saw my mom for the first time in ten years,” I said. “She joined the military since the last time we’d talked. I remembered her being a really great pony. I looked up to her. Maybe that was just because Dad was always the one telling me ‘No’.” I shrugged. “Anyway, she pulled me out of a bad situation. I was so happy to get a warm shower and good food and clean clothing that… I didn’t think about why things were bad to begin with. I didn’t push back about why she was running a prison camp. I didn’t mention all the ponies getting hurt. I didn’t do anything except let her lead me around like a pet.”

Quattro looked uncomfortable. “Chamomile--”

I shook my head at her. “You saw when my mom had all those prisoners executed, Quattro. I was there when she gave the order and I didn’t stop her. I didn’t even argue with her! I was too scared I’d end up back in the camp. I should have done something, and I messed up. I still have a chance to do something this time.”

Boss nodded. “It’s too late to stop things, but you can still make a fine apology by learning from the mistake.”

“What can we do to stop Governor Fuse?” I asked.

“Spanner is part of a team doing HVAC work over at the military docks. The Governor is staying on his flagship, so we know where he is.” She rubbed her chin. “I could get you working papers to get you on-site. Spanner can smuggle in what you need when she brings in the parts shipment. We’re not freedom fighters, like I said. Best I can do is get you close to him.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’m in.”

“I’m going with you,” Quattro said. “I got you involved. I’m not letting you go alone.”

“I’ll have three sets of papers made in case you need extra,” Boss said. “They won’t get you into the high-security areas, but they’ll be good enough to get you onto the docks without raising an alarm. Spanner will fly over to your place with a shipping crate and help get you sorted.”

The steam whistle sounded, and ponies started shuffling back in, less eager to get back to work than they were to leave it.

“I’ve got to get back to serious things,” Boss said. “I’ll let them know you’re giving a fine apology.” She slapped my shoulder. It stung, but the sting felt like it was pushing me forward. I was going to make up for things this time.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked quietly.

Emerald glared at me. The Union jumpsuit fit her almost too well. A uniform just worked for the mare, even if it wasn’t a military one.

“Letting you and Quattro go anywhere alone is asking for trouble,” she said primly. “First you cause an explosion and now you’ve got us signed up for some kind of revolution. At this rate, you’ll blow up half the city by tripping over a megaspell.”

I heard chuckles from the ponies around us, a collection of welders and plumbers and electricians who were all kind enough to pretend we belonged. I blushed and looked down.

"That's not what I meant. I mean, we're going to actually be fighting the military and..."

"And I'm military?" Emerald finished for me. "That doesn't mean I just accept what other ponies do without question. When Colonel Ohm ordered us to shoot unarmed prisoners, more than half of us refused the orders. Only one pony was willing to put their objection on the record. Do you know who that was?"

"...You?" I guessed.

"Lieutenant Rain Shadow," she said. "I didn't. I told myself that it was pointless, because we were on a secret deployment and the records would all be sealed and all I'd be doing was making my commanding officer angry with me. He did it even though it was a pointless gesture, and not doing it made me feel like a mule. That's why I saved the idiot's life later, even though... he made other mistakes."

"I didn't know," I said quietly.

“Besides,” she continued. “I have security codes that should still be valid. If we need to get into a secured area, I can open the door.”

“Do you think we can--”

“Let’s not talk about the details,” Quattro interrupted, speaking over us. “We’ve got a long day of work ahead of us.”

“Papers, please,” said the uniformed pony I hadn’t even noticed. If we’d kept chattering like idiots he would have heard us planning out how to get rid of his commanding officer. I wondered how many ponies on the fire base would look the other way and let us through, given the chance.

I held up the papers Boss had given us. The pony glanced at them and waved me through with the rest of the workers.

“Hey, you lot!” Spanner snapped, waving to us. “Come on! I know it’s your first day on the site. Let’s move it, and I’ll show you where you’ll be working. Sorry about the slow-down. They’re used to a civilian shop.”

The military pony nodded, the explanation passing muster. He gave me a harsh look.

“Be on your best behavior,” he said. “You don’t want to end up like the ponies you’re replacing.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Was I supposed to salute? I hoped not.

“Come on!” Spanner repeated, and I ran after her, trying to look like a nervous new worker’s apprentice, which wasn’t too far from the truth. She led us across the docks and to a cloud wall cutting the space in half.

“So where are we going?” I asked. She took us over to a corner where some piles of dented ducts and conduit blocked the view.

“Here,” she said, opening a vent cover. It was big enough for a pony to crawl inside. Even a pony as big as I was. “You squeeze through, it lets out in an air exchange room. Your stuff is stashed in there. Keep going and you’ll be in a security room on the high-security part of the base. If you can knock that out, you might be able to avoid a lot of trouble, yeah?”

“It goes right to the control room?” Emerald asked. “That seems like a flaw…”

“Normally there’d be all kinds of security sensors and gates in the way, but they’ve all been removed as part of standard maintenance that I made sure got written into the book last night,” Spanner said, nodding to the pile of components. I saw a deactivated security talisman lying in the pile. “And here we part ways. I don’t want to be anywhere near you when the fireworks start. No offense. I don’t want to end up on the news.”

“I understand. Thanks.”

“Just doing my job,” Spanner said, walking off and leaving us to it.

“I’ll go first,” Quattro said. “I don’t want to get stuck behind Chamomile.” She slipped into the vent before I could say anything.

Emerald hesitated a moment, then offered me a small smile and a shrug before very obviously agreeing with that reasoning and getting into the vent herself. I grumbled and brought up the rear.

“I’ll get the vent cover,” Destiny offered, levitating it back into place after we got in.

Crawling through the vent could have almost been fun except for the part where if we made too much noise or got caught some other way we’d probably be shot on sight, papers or no papers. Just like Spanner had told us, after a little while the vent opened up into a huge vertical room divided into floors by open gratings, fans spinning languidly above and below us and keeping the air from getting stale.

“This would be our luggage,” Quattro said, kneeling next to a big toolbox. She popped it open and started parceling out what was inside.

“You brought your power armor?” Emerald asked.

“If there’s ever a time for power armor, it’s when you’ve signed up to attack a battleship,” Quattro countered. “Don’t be jealous just because they’re still fixing yours.”

“Mine was fine until they decided to fix it,” Emerald said. “Pass me that uniform.”

“Lieutenant Commander stripes,” Quattro noted when she gave her the folded jacket. “Giving yourself a promotion?”

“There are a lot of newly-minted lieutenants around out of officer school,” Emerald said. “I’m hoping we can get onboard the Shiranui without a fight if I have enough rank over them to make them salute and stop asking questions.”

“Will that work?” I asked.

“If it doesn’t…” Emerald held up a stun gun. “Option B.”

“From the size, I’m guessing this is Chamomile’s dress for the gala,” Quattro said. She tossed me a uniform and a heavy jacket. “Feels like Herr Doktor decided to sew some extra protection into the lining.”

I felt it in my hooves. Steel strips had been put between the outside of the long coat and the lining. It was heavy, and it’d be awkward to fly in, but having a layer of protection seemed like a good idea.

“I’m only a private?” I asked, looking at the rank markings.

“Private first-class,” Emerald assured me. “I think you’re supposed to be my personal guards.”

“Chamomile, help me with this,” Quattro grunted, trying to lift something out of the bottom of the case.

I helped her heft out a battle saddle. Instead of beam guns, though, there was something that looked like an engine strapped to one side, pointing exactly the wrong way.

“What is that supposed to be?” Emerald asked.

“Herr Doktor called it the Junk Jet,” Quattro said. “It’s a non-lethal weapon. Sort of. Depending on what you load it with. It’ll launch almost anything like a cannon. As long as you avoid anything sharp or explosive, you can avoid killing anypony. I asked her to prep a non-lethal option for each of us”

She helped me strap the Junk Jet on. Destiny floated next to it, trying to puzzle out the mechanism. It was heavy, the heft taking me by surprise. I was glad it was on my left side. If I’d tried to take that sudden weight on my bad right hoof, it would have gone poorly.

“Load things into the hopper here,” Quattro said. “It doesn’t really matter what. I saw Herr Doktor testing it, and I can safely say coffee cups and desk lamps make excellent ammunition.”

“I can probably help you keep it loaded,” Destiny offered. “I’ll stay in your saddlebags on the other side and feed the hopper.”

“Thanks,” I said. “At least I won’t be wasting bullets when I don’t hit anything.”

Quattro stepped back and finished getting her own armor on, the golden plates gleaming in the shifting light coming from between the slowly-spinning fan blades.

Emerald looked at her weapons and raised an eyebrow. “And I notice you’ve still got your very non-lethal rocket launcher.”

“It is non-lethal, actually,” Quattro said smugly. “Clay rounds. They were designed for crowd control. The beam rifle will still put holes in ponies, but I’ll try to be nice first.”

“If we do this right, we won’t need to put holes in anyone except Governor Fuse,” Emerald said. She checked the beam pistol on her side. “It’ll be--”

I stopped her with a raised hoof. “Whatever you’re going to call it, don’t. Let’s just assume it’s all going to go wrong. That way when we have to set everything on fire and shoot our way out I won’t be disappointed.”

Emerald gave me a sad smile and nodded.

With the armored coat and Junk Jet strapped to my side, the next set of vents was even more of a squeeze. I was glad whoever built the place apparently decided it was a good idea to make the air-conditioning ducts big enough for two ponies to work in at once.

Emerald held up a hoof. This time I knew enough to tell she was making more military hoof signals and not just trying to do a cool urban hoofshake with an invisible partner.

I waited for Quattro to interpret. She had a much more easily understood signal. She turned to look at me, put her hoof to her lips for silence, then pointed at the floor ahead of us. There was a grate in the duct with light leaking out of it. Emerald carefully stepped around it and looked down into the room below.

She looked back up and nodded, then motioned to Quattro, then herself, then me. I hoped she was indicating the order she wanted us to go through. Quattro nodded, apparently approving, and got closer. She looked down, the light gleaming on her powered armor, and picked her moment, hopping and coming down on the vent cover with all her weight and punching right through, dropping down with it into the room below.

Emerald ducked after her and I scrambled to follow, doing a really cool tactical maneuver where I tripped over my own hooves on the edge of the vent and fell through ass-first to slam into somepony’s desk and break their terminal.

“Ow,” I complained, shaking it off.

“Everypony down!” Quattro ordered. “On the floor!”

Emerald might have had officer’s stripes on her uniform, but Quattro had a rocket launcher, and that had its own kind of authority. The three ponies slowly moved, seeming to comply.

“On your left!” Destiny warned, seeing it before I did.

The pony there had been reaching for a big red button. Quattro didn’t hesitate. She fired, and something smacked into the mare. Smacked was the right word, because it was big and wet and exploded into yellow foam on contact. The mare was buried instantly, and the room erupted into chaos.

“You’re loaded!” Destiny told me. I wasn’t sure what I was loaded with until I fired at a pony going for the doors and launched a snowglobe right into the side of his head.

“Holy stars, I actually hit something,” I said, amazed.

“Great, stop congratulating yourself and help me!” Emerald shouted. She was struggling with the stun gun. She’d hit the last pony, and I could see him react every time she pulled the trigger to shock him, but it wasn’t having any kind of effect. I saw Destiny grabbing for anything in range, but there was no time. I ran over and shoulder-checked him into the wall. He hit it, slid down, started to get back up, and took a clay round to the chest from Quattro, gluing him to the wall.

“Good teamwork, everypony,” Quattro said.

“Useless piece of--” Emerald threw the stun gun at the trapped pony. It embedded itself in the drying foam.

Quattro chuckled. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. He was practically as tough as Chamomile.”

Emerald nodded and composed herself. “Speaking of which, if you didn’t kill that soldier you hit, Chamomile, tie him up so he doesn’t raise an alarm while we’re busy. How long will that foam hold these two?”

“As long as a cleaning crew doesn’t come around and spray them with Abraxo they should be stuck like that for a little over an hour and a half,” Quattro said. She raised his voice. “So both of you had better just get comfortable! Be thankful we’re nice ponies!”

“That’s long enough,” Emerald agreed. “I’m going to get into the terminal. Watch my back.”

“Help me find something to tie him up with,” I told Destiny. She floated free of my saddlebags and I started going through the desks with her. I shoved anything with heft to it into my bag. Stapler. Coffee cup. Participation trophy. Six-pack of beer. I hoped things wouldn’t get so desperate that I had to use that as ammunition.

“Found some duct tape,” Destiny said, floating it over.

“Perfect, because I can’t actually tie knots.” I dragged the stallion I’d downed into a chair and just started wrapping the tape around him, using the last of the roll to keep his muzzle shut. “I’d like to see him get out of that!”

“You didn’t have to be mean about it,” Quattro said. “That’s going to sting coming off.”

“Good news, everypony!” Emerald called out. “My security codes still work! I guess whatever Rain Shadow reported, it hasn’t made its way to every military system. Let me tell you, you don’t learn much working in a prison but you do learn a lot about security systems.”

“That is good,” Quattro agreed. “What can you do from here?”

“First, I can turn off all the cameras,” she said, tapping a key. “That’ll mean they can’t track us even if they use a secondary security station. Then I’ll put a code on the network uplink… and they’re not going to be able to call for help.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “You’re learning from my mistakes.”

“You’re a great objective lesson, Chamomile,” Emerald agreed. “For the security doors… hm.” She looked around. “Grab that pony’s keycard.” She pointed to the one I’d taped to the chair.

Destiny pulled it from his belt and floated it over.

“I’ll just make sure this card has all the permissions… and we’ve got a skeleton key.” She tapped a few more keys. “Good. I think we’re just about-- wait, there’s one more option here. That’s not standard…”

“What’s wrong?”

“It looks like the security system was tied in with something else. It’s not a fire alarm or medical…” she muttered. “Let me see if I can just access whatever it is…”

She tapped a few more keys, and the reaction was instant. When the sound blared from the speakers I flinched, expecting an alarm or siren. Instead, it was triumphant, grandiose music, a scratchy old recording blaring at a volume high enough to blow out the speakers and turn it into a buzzing mess.

Outside, flares and fireworks fired off in an automated sequence, explosions in every color of the rainbow filling the stormy sky.

“...Oops,” Emerald said, wincing. “My bad?”

Chapter 15 - I Wanna Be Sedated

The fireworks were almost mesmerizing, especially the way they seemed to attract the lightning from the storm, sparks and bolts crackling across the sky like the whole world wanted to add extra emphasis to the fire flowers and sparkling stars exploding in the sky. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Unfortunately it had also put an entire military base on alert. A military base I was currently in the middle of.

“I’m so sorry!” Emerald pleaded. “I didn’t know! They must have jenny-rigged it into the system, and the titles were obscure and I couldn’t figure out what it did--”

“What’s done is done,” Quattro said. She checked her weapons. “Look on the bright side! Maybe Governor Fuse will be so distracted by these birthday wishes he won’t expect trouble.”

“There are a lot of ponies down there,” I said, looking out through the window at the dock. Most of them were watching the fireworks, but an increasing number of them were starting to look less mesmerized and more alert.

“We need to get down there too,” Emerald said. “Our only way to Governor Fuse’s ship is through the docks. The Shiranui’s dry dock is next door to this cargo port.”

One of the doors started sliding open. Quattro spun and fired, a ball of foam and glue splatting against it and holding it closed.

“I think we’ve worn out our welcome,” Destiny said. “I don’t think it’s going to take them long to figure out a way through.”

“This way,” Emerald said, pointing at the other door. She ran ahead, popping it open and looking both ways before motioning for us to go through. I ran into the hallway, and she waited for Quattro before closing the door and pulling open a panel, yanking a red handle. “That’s sealed the pneumatics,” she said. “It’ll buy us another minute or two if they have to crank it open.”

I ran forward, more or less on three legs, holding my right forehoof up to avoid the tugging, pulling feeling under my skin every time I took a step.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Emerald hissed, just before we could run outside. I skidded to a stop, bumping into the wall. She looked around the corner.

“What’s wrong?” Quattro asked.

Emerald pointed wordlessly. I could hear engines over the storm and crowd, getting louder as the fireworks died down and somepony found a way to turn off the music blaring over the speakers. A machine swooped down, hovering on tilt-rotors in front of the security room windows with the menace of a hungry bird of prey.

“Vertibuck,” Emerald said. “We don’t want to be out in the open while it’s hanging around.”

“Good call,” I whispered. “I don’t think I can chuck a stapler hard enough to take it out.”

Quattro peeked around the doorframe to watch it. “Looks like Tilt Fuse has a lot of hardware to play around with. If I could get my own Raptor-class ship and toys like that I’d think about running a salvage depot myself...”

“That vertibuck could be out there all day,” I whispered.

“I don’t think so,” Emerald said. “The engines overheat really quickly when they’re hovering. They’re already pushing it.”

The vertibuck turned slowly, the pilots inside obviously trying to get a look inside the security room. After a minute, the armored transport took off, engines whirring. The sound faded, and I saw Emerald relax.

“See?” Emerald said. “Let’s go. They’ll have to circle around before they come back, so it buys us a few minutes.”

“A lot of ponies out there,” Quattro muttered. “We need a plan. They’re starting to get organized.”

“I have an idea,” I said.

Quattro and Emerald looked at me, deeply skeptical. I rolled my eyes.

“Look over there.” I pointed. “They’ve got big cloud battery banks for recharging machines, like the ones back in Cirrus Valley we used to fuel up the prison transport. The ones back home had warning labels all over them, and ponies told me they’d explode if they were all charged up and something breached the casing.”

“Yeah, they’re basically huge capacitors,” Emerald agreed. “If they get damaged, they could go off like bombs.” She smiled. “Good plan.”

“Really?”

“They’ll be more sound and fury than a real danger,” Emerald said. “But they’ll also be dangerous enough to make ponies evacuate.”

“I got this one,” I said. I guesstimated the range and angle, accounted for wind, and fired. There was a dull thwomp from the Junk Jet. A sandwich hit one of the big capacitors and left a streak of mustard when it bounced off.

“Was that somepony’s lunch?” Quattro asked.

“In retrospect that wasn’t the best thing to load,” Destiny admitted.

“Why don’t you sort out your ammunition and let me?” Quattro offered.

“Is a glue gun going to do any better than a sandwich launch?” Emerald asked.

“A glue gun won’t, no, but I made sure I had some live ammunition. In case of emergency.” She grinned and the rocket launcher made a solid, mechanical sound a lot like a transmission dropping into a new gear. “I never doubted we’d find a way to be an emergency.”

Emerald rolled her eyes and gestured for Quattro to go ahead. “Ladies first.”

“Why thank you,” Quattro said, stepping into the doorway and snapping off a shot. The rocket streaked loudly across the dock. Every pony out there turned to see what was going on, and the fastest and smartest immediately took to the air and bolted for cover.

Quattro’s rocket hit the refueling depot and tore the stations apart. Each one was a compressed, enclosed thunderstorm held under pressure to store electricity, and when the pressure was released, they reacted exactly the way you’d expect.
There was a huge, wet explosion of arcing energy, blue streaks cracking everywhere like the sky whipping the ground. Mist from the sudden pressure change washed over everything like the tide.

“Move!” Quattro yelled. We ran outside, and the pressure change rippled through the air and left a visible trail in the sky. Ponies were fleeing in all directions, and with the smokescreen and confusion we were just another part of the herd.

“Stay low!” Destiny warned. “It looks like whatever is happening, it’s not reacting well with the storm that’s already here.”

I looked up. The blue bolts from the broken capacitors were making almost continuous arcs up into the sky, and yellow-white bolts from the storm were coming down to answer them.

“I’m starting to think the ponies that work here need to get hazard pay!” Emerald shouted over the increasing din. “This is even worse than the Smokestack!”

“Do we get it too if we’re the hazard?” I asked. I slowed as we got to one of the walls dividing up the port into separate docks. “Which way?”

“We can’t go over,” Quattro said. “Not with that lightning.”

“Under!” Emerald pointed. “This way!”

An opening led under the wall and to the other side. It was just big enough for a pony to get through.

“They must use this to connect pipes and wires from one side to the other,” Destiny said. A few hoses were already running through it. “Good thinking!”

“The way looks clear. Same order as before. If Chamomile gets stuck, you know what to do.”

Quattro nodded and gave Emerald a salute. “Wish her luck and leave her.”

“Thanks girls, you’re the best,” I said, going in after them. It was a lot like the vents, obviously bigger than it really had to be. Now that I was thinking about it, though, I could see railings, real flooring, valves… maybe it wasn’t stupid to have the openings big enough for a pony if you expected a pony to have to squeeze into them to do maintenance once in a while. Whatever pony they were expecting was a few sizes smaller than me, though. It was a tight squeeze, and carrying a battle saddle was making me feel twice as wide and clumsy. My head slammed into a low pipe and I swore loudly.

“Are you okay?” Destiny asked.

“Just more brain damage,” I said. I wiped at the injury and felt wetness on my hoof. I’d busted my head open. Wonderful. The one thing my armored coat didn’t cover.

“I know you’re joking, but be careful, okay?” Destiny sounded worried. “You’re my friend, and I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

“I… thanks, Destiny,” I said. I felt a little humbled, being so easily called a friend. Now I felt like I had to live up to her expectations.

“If it helps, I think you damaged the pipe worse than your head. It’s dripping everywhere.”

“It is?” I stopped and sniffed at my hoof. I thought the wetness had been blood, but it had a sharp, chemical smell. A little like the really bad batches of booze Sloe Gin had made sometimes.

“Hey! Stop right there!”

I looked back. A few ponies in uniform were looking into the maintenance tunnel, and they didn’t seem happy to see me.

“We’ve got company!” I shouted. I fired, hoping for something a little more dangerous than a sandwich. A glass bottle smashed into the first pony. He swore and backed up, cuts opening up all over his chest. He fired, the shot going wild. A bolt careened into the wall, raising sparks. And then the stuff from the broken pipe caught on fire.

“I think that was a fuel line!” Destiny shouted.

I squeaked and shoved backward, bumping into Quattro, who’d turned to see what was happening. She pulled my tail and yanked me back, and I could hear the power armor straining with the effort. A wall of flames erupted just where I’d been, cutting off whatever ponies had been trying to get after us.

“That was close,” Quattro panted. “You were almost a roasted chicken.”

“At least they can’t follow us,” Destiny said, her voice weak. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack, and I don’t even have a heart anymore!”

“We’re almost there,” Quattro promised. “Emerald, how’s it look?”

Emerald was crouched at the edge of a cargo container just ahead of us. She was looking around the corner, looking pensive. “We need to get through this drydock, then we’ll be able to board the ship,” Emerald said. “Even with the base on alert, Tilt Fuse should still be onboard. Standard procedure would be to keep him there instead of moving him, since it’s a secure location.”

I shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”

“There’s a lot of open ground between us and the Shiranui. I don’t see anything, but there’s no cover at all. If somepony onboard that Raptor gets smart and starts opening up with the Close-In Weapons System…”

“I’ve been working on a shield spell,” Destiny said.

“Can it stop a rotary cannon?” Emerald asked.

Destiny was silent for a moment, then levitated out of my bag. “I won’t know until I try.”

“I like that confidence!” Quattro said. She punched my shoulder. “You cover Emerald. She’s more fragile than usual without her armor.”

I nodded.

“Everypony stick together, okay?” Destiny said. “If I have to bring up the shield, the smaller I can make it, the better.”

“When we go, we break right for the base of the ramp,” Emerald said. “Fly low, fly as fast as we can without breaking formation.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Do you hear something?” Quattro asked. I looked around like I’d spot whatever she was hearing before I saw it. The low rumble of the captive thunderstorms supporting the Shiranui were a constant white noise that almost blocked it out until I caught it. The electric whine of props cutting through the air.

“It’s the vertibuck!” Emerald yelled. “Fly faster!”

The gunship dropped down, swooping low and opening up with its guns. The deck sparked and exploded with the bolts, the gun swinging around to come to bear on us. A wall of red light cut it off, shots ricocheting off the magical barrier.

“Hurry! I can’t hold it off for long!” Destiny shouted, her voice distorting into static the more she strained herself.

“Up the ramp!” I yelled.

We only needed a few more seconds. We were practically there. Destiny’s shield shimmered and wavered. Shots ripped through the curtain of light and between us. A bolt caught Quattro, and she flinched to the side. The whole shield tore apart, and--

And the shots stopped as we flew into the shadow of the Shiranui. The vertibuck swooped past us, unable to get a firing angle on us with the Raptor-class ship in the way. I skidded to a stop on the ramp, losing my balance and ending up on my knees for a second before shaking it off.

“That was too close,” I said. “You okay?”

Quattro shrugged and rolled her shoulders. She brushed a scuff mark on her side. “It didn’t penetrate, but the anti-beam coating is going to need to be retouched.”

“Tougher than it looks. That gun could have put a hole right through you,” Emerald said.

“That was a bigger strain than I expected,” Destiny groaned, floating uneasily. Her telekinesis cut out, and I caught the helmet before it could hit the floor. “I’m going to need a few minutes before I can pull off anything like that again.”

“No problem,” I said. “We’re inside the ship. There shouldn’t be anything too dangerous around here, right? Otherwise he might wreck the place himself.”

“Don’t be too sure about that,” Emerald sighed. “Tilt Fuse probably has at least one fireteam in power armor protecting him, but more likely two. So that’s at least eight ponies that are going to be better armed and armored than we are. We need a plan.”

“Blow up the ship?” I suggested.

“Not everything can be solved by turning the venue into a crater.” Emerald rolled her eyes.

“Most things can be,” Quattro shrugged. “I’d like to avoid it while we’re on board. Emerald, you’ve served on board one of these before, right?”

She nodded. “Of course. Even if they’re serving on a Thunderhead just about every soldier started out on a Raptor.”

“Tilt Fuse is going to wait for us to come to him, so let’s make a stop along the way. This ship should have an armory. I’m sure we can find something useful there.”

“It’s going to be guarded,” Emerald warned.

“Better than the Governor?” Quattro asked.

“I hope not,” Emerald said. “Otherwise it’s one step forward and two steps back.”

I turned the corner to the hangar, and bolts ripped into me. I raised up my hooves to protect my face and threw myself back, my armored coat already cut to shreds and the ballistic plates burning hot against my coat. I caught a glimpse of what was inside before Quattro yanked me further into cover. It was a boxy metal monster, engine rumbling deep inside thick armor plates, and even at a glance I could tell it wasn’t a problem I was going to be able to punch to death.

“What in Tartarus is that thing?” I demanded.

“I think that’s a Goliath medium tank,” Destiny said. “Or maybe a Grizzly? I know it started with the letter G.”

The rapid-fire bolts cut out for a moment, and the whole deck rocked under the force of an explosion, the bulkhead between us and the hangar bowing outwards and almost breaching.

“Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be onboard a ship!” I groaned. My armored coat was ruined, but the holes punched through it weren’t punched through me, so I’d take that as a win.

“Drink,” Quattro ordered, pulling out a healing potion and forcing it to my lips.

“I’m okay!” I said, trying to stop her. “Really! The coat took the hits.” I took the ruined coat off. It was just tangling me up now and I didn’t need the extra weight if it wasn’t protecting me. My coat was singed in a few places, but I was okay except for being crispy around the edges.

Emerald poked her head around the corner and took a few shots. She swore and ducked back into cover just before the next barrage. “My pistol isn’t doing anything to it!”

“Does anypony else think we might be dealing with a crazy person?” I asked. There was a second explosion, the tank firing again to remind us it was still there. “He’s going to blow holes in his own ship!”

“He’s running scared,” Quattro said. “He must think the whole city is rising up against him.”

“He might be scared, but we’re the ones pinned down,” Emerald said. “If we try to go back outside, that vertibuck will be waiting.”

Quattro nodded. “If we have to pick between flying into two thunderstorms, let’s choose the one that gets us closer to our goal. How do we take out the tank?”

Emerald shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never trained with one. I’ve seen pictures, but it’s not like anypony has needed to do a ground assault in almost two centuries!”

“How many rockets do you have left?” Destiny asked. “You’ll need heavy firepower to bring it down.”

“If I had any rockets I would have tried using them on the vertibuck before we even got in here,” Quattro said.

Destiny hovered at my side for a moment, then turned to face me. “Chamomile, do you trust me?”

“Yeah? Why?” I asked.

“Somepony told me a long time ago that if you wanted to beat an impossible opponent you had to take an impossible risk because playing by the rules is why you thought of them as impossible in the first place,” Destiny said. “I have an idea but it’s dangerous and could get both of us killed.”

“It’ll only get me killed,” I corrected. “You’re already dead.”

“Let’s not split hairs! Are you in?”

“What’s the idea?”

“If I tell you, you’ll say no.”

I smiled. “Sounds like my kind of idea. What do I do?”

“Wait for when I tell you and run right out into the open,” she said. “You want the tank to have a clear shot at you.”

“Sounds good,” I said. Panels fell from the ceiling when another cannon shot knocked them right out of their frames. “If the ship doesn’t fall apart around us first.”

The shelling was followed by another barrage of rapid-fire laser blasts like clockwork. I could even count down until it started to peter off and then--

“Go!” Destiny shouted.

I shoved any hesitation aside and put my trust in whatever she was planning. The last few bolts sprayed around me, one hitting my left shoulder like a burning lash. It should have hurt more, but I didn’t have time to think about that. The turret turned to fix on me, the main cannon pointed right at me like somepony about to swat a fly with a sledgehammer.

It fired, and I saw red.

“I wasn’t sure it would work!” Destiny yelled.

The shell was hovering right in front of me, caught in a shield spell. Whoever was inside the tank seemed as surprised as I was. It stopped moving entirely and I could practically see the pony inside trying to figure out what I was doing.

“This was your plan?!”

“Part of it!” Destiny said. She opened the hopper on the Junk Jet and shoved the tank shell inside. “This is the other half!”

I bit down on the trigger. There was no time to aim. The ponies in the tank were going to remember they could gun me down any second now. The borrowed shell thumped out like the world’s deadliest cloudball pitch, going low and hitting in the tank’s treads, going between the wheels and finding its mark somewhere deeper inside.

There was a dull thump of flame and light. The tank rocked from side to side. Vents exploded out, throwing smoke in every direction. The turret popped off a second later, the seal breaking and the whole assembly lifting into the air before crashing back down on top of the tank at an angle, fire leaking from the seam between it and the armored body.

I stared at it, half-expecting it to rumble back to life somehow.

“That was the stupidest, most harebrained--” Emerald started.

“Good work, Chamomile,” Quattro said, slapping my back. I winced. The longer things went on, the worse I felt. It was like a bad case of the flu looming over me, but the itch under my skin told me what it really was. “How’s the shoulder?”

She took a look at the burn.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m starting to think I’m more beam-resistant than your fancy armor.”

“You might be,” Quattro said quietly. “Anyway, that was quick thinking.”

“Thank Destiny, it was her plan,” I said.

“We couldn’t stay pinned down there all day,” Destiny said. “We needed something fast. Eventually Tilt Fuse is going to do something smart like send soldiers to flank us. I’m surprised we haven’t been swarmed already!”

Emerald sighed. “The ship is in port and under repair. You don’t keep soldiers onboard when you’re in port. They get bored and start causing trouble. Most of his troops are probably in town. Since I took out the base transmitter, they might not even get orders to come back before we’re finished.”

“I was wondering why it felt too easy,” I said. “I mean just one tank? If it was me, I’d have a second one ready to go.”

“Having one at all is a waste of resources,” Emerald said. “What would he even use it for? He can’t drive it in a cloud city!”

“Sometimes a pony just needs a personal project,” Quattro said. “Most ponies pick something like building ships in bottles or collecting stamps, but I try not to judge.”

Emerald shook her head. “It’s not at all the same. He had to divert military funds for this.”

“Nothing is better than getting work to pay for your hobbies,” Quattro continued, walking casually up the ramp to the door. “So how do we get to the armory from here?”

“This way,” Emerald said. She stepped into the corridor and pointed. “That way goes to the bridge. You take the ramp up, then turn around and go up another level and you’re there. They’ll probably have that last stretch defended as much as they can.”

Quattro nodded. “And the armory?”

Emerald nodded the other direction. “That way. It’s between the marine bunks and the hangar.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I’ll--”

“You'll stay back and let Quattro go first,” Emerald said. “Your armor just got shredded and left in a pile on the floor, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed, trudging along behind the others. I didn’t like feeling this way. Not just the pain, but the sense that I was unwell in a deeper way, like they had to take care of me. It made me think too much about how bad I felt. If I was doing something, I could pretend I was okay. Being taken care of meant I couldn’t even tell myself the lie that I was doing fine.

“I think I see the armory, but we’ve got a small problem,” Quattro said. She’d stopped at a junction and was looking down the hallway. “It looks like the Governor decided to install some automated defenses. I count two turrets.”

I peeked out to have a look at the two quietly-turning machines, painted bright red and black and scanning back and forth. They were right in front of a very secure looking door that was clearly and helpfully labeled as the armory.

“I see them,” Emerald said quietly. “They don’t look like standard beam weapons.”

“I heard a rumor that the Governor likes to ignore the rules of engagement with weapons,” Quattro said. “I think those are flame turrets.”

“Flame turrets?” I asked.

“It’s one thing to see your friend shot, it’s another to see them get set on fire,” Quattro said. “It’s a terror weapon. Just the kind of thing you’d have around if you were worried some workers might decide to rise up and kick you off your throne.”

“If you need a shield, it’s going to be a while,” Destiny said. “I’m just about out of magic. If I had a horn it’d be aching like crazy.”

“If they fire, they can turn this whole hallway into a little patch of Tartarus,” Quattro said. “They’re not as well-armored as the tank, but it’s still going to take a few shots to be sure they’re down.”

“You hit them with those riot-control rounds,” Emerald said. “That should keep them from firing for a few seconds. Chamomile and I can get on top of them and disable them.”

“I’ll take the right turret,” I said, lowering my head and getting ready to sprint.

“One,” Quattro said. “Two… three!” She popped out and fired, launching glue rounds across the deck. The turrets spotted her, turning to take aim and getting expanding foam splattered across them and getting into the mechanism, jamming it. Emerald burst out of cover and I followed, jerking to the side when one of the turrets managed to let out a spurt of fire that arced wildly across the hallway, bathing half of it in flame.

I took wing to go over the fire, getting the weight off my bad leg and came down on top of the turret, trying to figure out what to do.

“Got to be something…” I muttered.

“Break the targeting talisman!” Destiny shouted. “That’ll disable it!”

“Destiny, I’m not a technical pony! I don’t know what I’m looking at!”

“Just open the casing--” The turret jerked a little, already starting to break through the foam. I opened the first panel I saw, spotted blinking lights, and had to think fast.

“Load one of the beers!” I said.

“What?”

“I trusted you, so just trust me!”

I took a step back and fired, launching the can of beer right into the open mechanism of the flame turret. The can exploded on impact, throwing beer and suds everywhere. The deadly turret sputtered and died, smoke rising from every vent.

“Oh wow,” Destiny said. “That was more effective than a spark grenade!”

“I worked in a bar,” I said. “I know nothing does damage to electronics like a spilled drink. We had to get the jukebox fixed a bunch of times because ponies would spill beers on it.”

“Good thinking,” Emerald said. Her turret was lying limp with a few precise holes in it from her laser pistol. She checked the charge, then shoved it back into the holster under her wing. I saw the spurt of fire before she did.

“Down!” I shouted, shoving Emerald out of the way.

The flame turret in front of her exploded. Fuel splashed onto my right foreleg, soaking into the bandages and erupting into searing heat. It was the second time I’d been hurt so badly that the sense that things had gone terribly wrong hit me even before the pain. I was screaming and rolling on the ground and I didn’t even feel connected to my body. The pain was so overwhelming it was shoving me out of my head.

Other ponies were yelling. I don’t know what they were saying. I couldn’t hear anything. My ears were ringing and everything was in a black tunnel.

I was flowing in and out of awareness. A needle stabbed into my neck and I barely noticed it.

“Stay with us, Cammy!” Emerald yelled. “Give me another one!”

“That’s two Med-X already,” Quattro said.

“She’s a big pony, she can handle more!” Emerald snapped. “Damnit. Chamomile, are you with us? Drink this.”

I drank what was put in my mouth. I was vaguely aware it was a healing potion. It took the edge off. I felt some of the smaller aches and pains start to fade, but my hoof was… I knew it was bad. It was numb from the elbow down. Above that was hot torture.

“We need to find some clean bandages,” Emerald said. “Why isn’t the healing potion doing anything?”

I probably shouldn’t have looked, but I couldn’t stop myself.

My hoof was wet, steaming silver, like a steel butterfly tearing its way out of a cocoon. I was distantly aware of my heartbeat, and I could see it in my hoof. It was like the muscles and tendons had been dipped in molten metal.

“That’s not good,” I mumbled.

“It’s the SIVA infection,” Destiny said quietly. “There wasn’t much left of your hoof except the skin. It’s advancing faster than I thought.”

“You’re going to be okay,” Emerald said. “We’re abandoning this mission. I don’t care what the Union does--”

“We’re not quitting,” I groaned. I forced myself to sit up. “Give me another healing potion. It isn’t that much worse than it was.”

Quattro knelt down. I think she wanted to try and get on eye level with me, but she ended up looking up at me. “Chamomile--”

“Were you able to get into the armory?”

Quattro gave me a look for a few silent seconds, then stood up and composed herself. “Yes. It’s where we got the Med-X.”

“Okay, good. Anything useful?” I asked. Emerald gave me a second healing potion and I chugged it down. This one was grape-flavored, and I grimaced at the taste. “I’d love to hear that you found a balefire bomb and instructions on how to arm it.”

“I thought you’d want something a little less lethal and more useful,” Quattro said. She held up a rounded shape with a blue band around the middle. “Spark grenades.”

“That would have been nice to have with the turrets,” I groaned.

“We’ll go as soon as you’re ready,” Quattro said.

“This is a bad idea,” Emerald whispered, like I wouldn't hear her even though she was right in front of me. “She needs medical attention. Real medical attention, not just potions and first aid.”

“The fastest way out is through,” Quattro said. “She got hurt protecting you, so it’s her decision, not yours.”

I forced myself to stand. I don’t know if it was just being shot full of drugs or because I was stubborn and stupid, but it actually started to feel better. “We’re finishing this fight.”

“Right,” Quattro agreed. “Next stop, bridge.”

What I quickly learned, and retained despite the fact I was flying so high I was practically in orbit, was that the bridge of a Raptor-class cloudship was a very secure location. Especially if the pony in command of the ship was some kind of paranoid tyrant.

Beams and plasma bolts splashed the walls with suppressing fire. My sense of time wasn’t doing so great, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if we’d been pinned down for a few seconds or a few minutes. I could barely even remember leaning on Quattro’s armored shoulder and being helped up the ramp towards the bridge until we’d found ponies who didn’t want to let us near the door. Lying on the ground there, using one of the support ribs of the hallway for cover, it made me really appreciate how much work went into keeping the ship clean. It was absolutely spotless. I bet they even had a red carpet somewhere they’d roll out if they had visitors.

“Let’s try asking them to surrender,” I said.

Quattro was on the other side of the hallway. She gave me a look that said she was thinking about that advice through the lens of it coming from somepony badly injured and on a lot of painkillers. Emerald had gotten a little closer, but that just meant she was trying to flatten herself against the wall enough that the junction box in front of her was more than just a suggestion of protection.

“I’m not sure they--” Emerald flinched when a beam hit the edge of the junction box and bit into the metal, spraying sparks everywhere. “--I’m not sure they’re in a surrendering mood.”

“We could ask,” I said. I looked around the corner, senses just a little too dull to notice that a bolt went right past my ear until a full second after it had passed. “Hey! Stop shooting! We want to discuss terms of surrender!”

The beam shots slowed and stopped.

“No terms!” yelled one of the members of the armored fireteam pinning us down. “Unconditional surrender!”

“If that’s what you want!” I shouted back. “We accept your surrender!”

“What? No, you’re the ones surrendering!”

“Why would we do that?”

The shooting started back up, and for some reason it seemed twice as annoyed now.

“I guess that didn’t work,” I sighed.

“Shut down your armor,” Emerald hissed back to Quattro. Quattro nodded and slumped when the weight reduction talismans cut out. Emerald waited for her to signal that she was ready, then pulled out two spark grenades and tossed them down the hallway.

There was a sharp electric pop, and purple seventeen parfaitsssssssssssssss.

Emerald slapped me. “Chamomile! Hey!”

I felt like I was waking up from a long nap, that disorientation where you don’t know if it’s today or tomorrow and if somepony tells you it’s always today no matter when you are you don’t have enough brainpower to understand.

“What was that?” I asked, my tongue feeling strange.

“You had a seizure when the spark grenade went off,” Emerald said.

“Oh right, half my brain is a computer…” I groaned.

“When I was putting your head back together I didn’t think it would make you vulnerable to spark weapons,” Destiny said. “Sorry.”

“I’ll invest in a tinfoil hat,” I said.

“I’ll personally be your tinfoil hat next time, I promise,” Destiny said, nudging into me like a floating metal cat.

“I’m surprised you weren’t fried,” I said, patting her and still feeling a little slow. Maybe I was rebooting? Did I need to reboot? Did I need software updates? They needed to make a manual with a lot of simple words and instructions so I could avoid making things worse for myself.

“I’m a ghost, not a robot, remember? I don’t short out.”

I sighed. “Right. Lucky you.”

“Is she up yet?” Quattro asked. She was dragging a very annoyed-looking pony in power armor with her.

“I’m not dead!” I yelled.

“Great! Next time stay awake for the part where we need heavy lifting!”

Quattro shoved the last member of the fireteam into the janitor’s closet. They landed in a heap, the locked armor keeping them from doing more than glaring at her. The glares turned to fear when she took aim at them.

Riot-control foam exploded between their tangled limbs, tying them together. A few more shots and the room started to fill, yellow sponge surging up into the shelves and shoving mops and buckets aside as it flooded everything. Quattro slammed the door shut, and the hatch groaned in protest, foam pushing out from the cracks between it and the frame.

“For a second there I thought you were going to shoot them,” Emerald said.

“It was tempting,” Quattro admitted. “Maybe next time, if they’re not quite as helpless and pathetic.”

“This goes to the bridge?” I asked, knocking on the armored hatch. It looked tough enough that it would be easier to break through the wall than the vault-like security door.

“The security codes I picked up will open it,” Emerald said. She tapped on the panel next to the door. “The Governor’s final line of defense is going to be inside. We need to be ready. As soon as this hatch opens, they’re going to open up with everything they’ve got.”

“Think they’ll have more flame turrets?” I asked. “I don’t want more flame turrets.”

“I really want to say he wouldn’t set his own command center on fire, but the stallion had a tank firing live rounds inside his own hangar bay,” Emerald muttered. “Be ready for anything.”

“The door is ray-shielded, right? Let’s crack it open and roll in a few spark grenades to lead the way,” Quattro suggested.

“We’ve got three left,” Emerald said.

“Pitch two in and save the last one for an even bigger emergency?”

“You think we’re going to find a bigger emergency somewhere?”

Quattro tilted her head.

“Good point,” Emerald conceded. “I’ll unlock, you throw, Chamomile slams it shut.”

She held up a hoof, waited a moment, then jabbed at the controls. The heavy door beeped, and a red light flashed green. I pulled the door open just a little. Bolts hit the other side of the hatch. Somepony was shooting with the same kind of accuracy I usually had. Quattro tossed the two grenades in, and I slammed the hatch shut, bracing myself against the wall, ready to fall over in a dumb heap.

The lights flickered a little, and I could feel a wave of pins and needles, but I stayed up.

“Anypony in power armor should be regretting it now,” Emerald said.

I pulled the door open, the light completely dead. It swung open limply. “Let’s get in there before they start getting themselves back together!”

We charged onto the bridge, guns ready. There was a distinct lack of groaning marines trapped in armor, or sparking flame turrets, or anything at all.

I looked around the bridge and the rebooting, static-filled displays. “Where is he?”

There was a total lack of ponies in power armor, disabled or otherwise. I heard a squeak from under a console and knelt down to find a mare in a tweed suit, cowering and covering her head. Technically, she was armed with a laser pistol but didn’t resist when I gently kicked it away.

“Don’t kill me!” she squealed. “I’m just an executive assistant!”

“Where did Tilt Fuse go?” I asked.

“He evacuated and ordered me to stay here!” she said. “He said he’d have me fired if I went after him!”

“Fired from your job or out of a cannon?” I asked. From what I’d heard of the stallion they were equally likely options.

“I don’t know! Both?!”

I gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. “You stay here and if anypony asks I’ll tell them you fought like a crazy berserker.”

“He seems like a great boss, abandoning his secretary to hold off an armed uprising,” Quattro said. “Is that in the standard military operations manual, or did he come up with it himself?”

“He couldn’t have slipped past us,” Emerald said. “He must have…”

She turned around and pointed to a ladder leading to a thick hatch..

“The fire escape!”

“You stay here,” Quattro told me. “You’re down a hoof--”

“I can’t be beaten by a ladder,” I said. I forced myself to put all my weight on my infected leg. It didn’t collapse. It felt strong. Or at least it was too numb to feel weak. It was more like I was piloting it than using it properly.

I gave Quattro a sheepish smile.

“Just in case, could you wait at the bottom in case I fall?”

Emerald helped me out onto the deck. The storm was rolling back over the dock, and conditions were getting worse by the second.

The rain was a cold slap to the face that knocked the shock out of me. My mane was plastered to my head almost instantly, and everything came into sharp focus. An older stallion in an elaborately decorated suit of power armor was getting onboard the vertibuck right in front of us. He turned to look at us just before the hatches slammed shut and the armored transport started rising into the air.

“Get back here!” I shouted.

“Down!” Emerald yelled, pouncing on me and forcing me into the shadow of one of the fins dotting the Shiranui’s hull. A burst of machine cannon fire tore through the air above us, burning red-hot holes in the stabilizer.

The vertibuck kept firing as the props spun up, throwing a wave of wind and spray from the rain at us while the engines came to full power.

“Damn,” I muttered. “He’s gonna get away!”

Beam shots cracked against the vertibuck’s hull, scorching the paint and doing nothing at all to the armor. Quattro emptied an entire spark battery before taking cover behind an antenna mast and reloading.

“They really built these things to last, didn’t they?” she asked.

“Vertibucks were developed for transport into the middle of battlefields,” Destiny put in. “They were expected to hold up to anti-tank weapons. Even if you had rockets, you’d have trouble cracking the hull.”

“If we can’t go through it, we’ll have to be clever,” I said. “I’ve got just the thing. Give me that last spark grenade.”

“There’s no way you’ll be able to hit it with a thrown grenade,” Emerald said. “It’s moving too quickly!”

The vertibuck swept over us, slowing to a hover and turning around, forcing us to run for different cover. I threw myself behind a weathervane and waited for the laser blasts to stop pelting the hull around me.

“I know!” I shouted back. “But I can launch anything out of this Junk Jet, right?”

Emerald looked at me from where she was hiding. “You’re only going to get one shot.”

“I’ll make it count,” I promised.

She passed me the grenade and I shoved it in the Junk Jet’s hopper. I wanted to jump out and take the shot right away, but I knew it wasn’t going to work like that. If I fired while it was moving, there was no way I’d hit it. My aim was pretty good with the heavy weapon, but it wasn’t good enough to hit a moving aircraft with a single slow shot.

I had to make the vertibuck come to me, and be where I wanted it. I knew it wasn’t going to be able to hover for long. I mentally braced myself and stepped out into the open when I heard the engines shift their pitch, changing from hover to flight.

It circled around. If Governor Tilt Fuse was smart, he’d just leave and order a few dozen ponies to storm the place while he watched from somewhere safe. The pilot was probably telling him that right now. I could almost feel it in the way they flew. It felt like a delaying action, that slow loop back towards us.

Then they spotted me. Standing right there on deck. He wasn’t going to leave when there was a target right there, would he?

I took careful aim, forcing my shaking body to cooperate and still. We only had the one spark grenade left, but that was all we’d need. The vertibuck swept down low for another pass with the autocannon. It was just like facing down the tank. I had to make a big play if I was going to win. I had to let it get closer.

It opened fire, stray shots hammering the deck around me.

Closer.

The whine of the rotors shifted, the crew keeping the swoop from turning into a crash.

Closer.

I could see the pilot inside the cockpit, her face illuminated by the glowing displays.

Now!

I bit down on the trigger, and the grenade launched in a perfect arc, right into the vertibuck’s nose, exploding in a wave of sparks and chaff. The spark grenades were powerful enough to knock out a suit of powered armor from across the room. They were deadly to machines.

The vertibuck flew through it like I’d thrown a water balloon. I felt the wash of static and sparks freeze me in place, my brain locking up.

“Oh buck,” I swore, or wanted to swear. My mouth wasn't cooperating. Emerald yanked on my battle saddle, jerking me into cover before the transport’s guns could converge on me.

“It’s got ray shielding!” Destiny said. “They must have installed it as protection against lightning strikes since it has to operate in the storm!”

“That’s just not fair!” I complained, still feeling that pins-and-needles. “Now what do we do?”

“I’m willing to take suggestions,” Quattro said, with a shrug. She took a few snap shots with her beam rifle. “I’m starting to think there’s no secret weak spot!”

“What do we have left?” Destiny asked.

“Plenty of beam pistol and beam rifle shots,” Emerald said. “Medical supplies.”

“I have a couple beers and a desk lamp,” I offered.

“I’ve got one riot control round left,” Quattro said. “I might be able to blind the pilot.”

I listened to the whine of the overstressed engines and got another brilliant idea. “What if you fire it into the engine? I bet propellers don’t work so well when they’re full of gloop!”

“If this doesn’t work, you realize we’re basically going to have to fly up to that monster and try kicking it to death, right?” Quattro said. “When we get back the first thing I’m going to do is tell Herr Doktor I need heavier weapons.”

“Do all the missions you rebels go on end up like this?” Emerald asked. “Because I’m sort of regretting defecting.”

“It’s funny, most weeks I don’t have ponies shooting at me at all!” Quattro laughed. “Here goes nothing.”

She pointed her launcher straight up and waited. Her aim was about a dozen times better than mine, because she hit the vertibuck just as it swooped over us to get around our cover.

The expanding foam splattered against the engine, and the whole ship dipped a little, losing a little altitude before the powerful rotors could chew through it. When they did, they pulled apart service panels and yanked doors open where the glue had adhered, the engine’s housing raining down around us.

“That was my last glue round,” Quattro warned. “All I’ve got left is a beam rifle, and that’s just about as effective as harsh language against that thing!”

“I really thought that might work,” Destiny said. “Those engines have a ridiculous amount of torque!”

The vertibuck tilted and turned, abandoning the maneuver it was doing and going back out to circle around again. Emerald looked up at it and narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t useless. Look at the engine -- it’s throwing out a lot of smoke. Breaking free while in-flight must have damaged the transmission!”

I watched it circle around. “It’s moving more slowly than before.”

“I bet the pilot’s not happy,” Quattro said. “The wind is already getting too strong for him to hover, and now he’s got to fight uneven thrust!”

“Can they stay up on one engine?” I shouted.

“They’re overbuilt hogs,” Quattro shouted back. “They barely stay in the air even with two engines! That’s why they overheat so quickly!”

“So all we need to do is a little more damage to that bad side, huh?” I checked in my bag, then grabbed something and jammed it into the Junk Jet. “I have just the thing.”

Destiny looked at the weapon hanging on my side, then at me.

“There’s no way that will work,” Destiny said. “You know that, right? The spark grenade didn’t even touch it!”

“Do you have a better idea?” I retorted. “Half the cowling is torn off and I can practically see its vitals!”

With the slower speed and the careful turn it was making to favor its damaged engine, it was taking a lot longer to get back to us. I bolted across the deck. I tucked my legs in, spreading my wings and catching the wind, letting it help me to where I needed to go. I wasn’t going to be able to stay in the air long in this weather, so I had to make it count.

The vertibuck turned back towards us, and I banked, sweeping up and into its path. I could just imagine what the pilot onboard that transport was thinking, seeing me pop out into the open. He was slow to open fire, struggling to get the nose up and the gun pointed in the right direction.

“Let’s see how you like the taste of this!” I said, the Med-X giving me just enough confidence in my bad plan to feel like it couldn’t possibly fail. I stood my ground right in the face of oncoming death and fired.

The beer can exploded into the engine. The sputtering prop backfired, belching smoke. The vertibuck was already too low over the deck. It might have recovered if it had been flying higher. Instead, the power loss tilted it to one side, brought the still-spinning ailing engine down too far, and the tip of the blade hit the hull of the Shiranui.

All that torque and power turned into a giant lever and slammed the vertibuck into the armored warship under it, instantly transforming it from fearsome scourge of the sky into a flaming wreck. Shrapnel sprayed around me, metal splinters digging into my neck and chest. I just barely shielded my eyes in time.

My landing was almost as graceful as the transport’s. I landed on four hooves, immediately regretted it and remembered the pain I’d felt in my leg at the same time I started putting weight on it. It was almost all numb like it wasn’t part of my body, and I tried to look at it to see where it was, get my weight off it, and flinch all at the same time.

I slammed face-first into the deck and skidded to a stop when my good foreleg collapsed.

“That was dumb,” I groaned, rolling onto my back and letting the rain hit my face.

“If it’s dumb and it works, it’s not dumb,” Destiny said. She levitated in front of my face and looked me over. “I don’t see any broken bones. How do you feel?”

“Am I allowed to pass out yet?” I asked.

The wreckage of the vertibuck groaned and shifted. I sat up to look at it.

“That had better not… explode…” I said slowly. The vertibuck had collapsed in on itself, the wings twisted and broken where the engines had fought against the framework and won. The fallen, broken wing moved, groaning as it was lifted up and out of the way.

Governor Tilt Fuse, his elaborate armor looking only a little worse for wear, stepped out of the wreckage, tossing the broken panel aside and fixing me with a hate-filled gaze.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned. I started getting up. Destiny spun around in midair and started charging up some kind of spell.

Tilt Fuse batted her away with one hoof, slapping the helmet out of the air and looming over me. For a pony who played around with so much tech, he’d saved the best for himself. He grabbed my neck and lifted me up off the ground like I didn't weigh anything at all.

I tried to say something clever, but I was having problems getting words out without any air.

“I’m going to take you apart piece by piece and sell the parts,” he growled. “You have no idea how much you’ve cost me!”

I tried to pry him away from my neck. His grip tightened, and things started to go black. My bad hoof twitched. I couldn’t even start to list the number of things that felt deeply wrong about it, but a new one came to the forefront, a feeling like my bones were trying to move on their own.

“When the rest of your Union friends see what I did to you, they’ll--”

He didn’t get to finish.

My infected hoof slammed into his face. I barely felt in control of it, like I was punching him on reflex. Whatever he was going to say, he stopped. Blood sprayed into the air. I pulled my hoof back and saw what was at the end, a long curved blade coming right out of what had been my flesh.

It twisted and slid back inside, nestling somewhere between the bones of my leg.

“That’s not normal,” I mumbled.

Tilt Fuse let go. Both of us fell to the ground. I heard Quattro and Emerald yelling something, but I wasn’t feeling up to answering them.

I closed my eyes. I needed a nap. The darkness closed in on me, and I went out like a light.

Chapter 16 - Here I Go Again

“How do you feel?” Destiny asked.

I cautiously stretched and took a few steps. I’d gotten so used to every joint catching and hitching with pain that the sudden lack of that pressure was a huge weight off my shoulders. “I practically feel drunk,” I said giddily. “Nothing hurts! I don’t even have a headache anymore!”

“Good,” Destiny sighed. “I was able to break down a lot of the spurs that were growing into your joints and muscles. There’s not much I can do about larger structures, but with the new power core I can keep things under control indefinitely.”

“As long as I’m in the armor,” I said, holding up my bad hoof to look at it. When the armor caught the light in just the right way I could see the almost-invisible seams between the tiny hexagonal scales that made up the larger plates. “How long will the battery last?”

“The fusion core the Union gave us will last decades,” Destiny said. “The last one was in bad shape before you started putting a strain on it. This one was almost new, so I was able to bring everything online at once and calibrate the thaumoframe to your magical signature.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Okay, um… you know how the armor resized itself to fit you and go around your wings and everything? The magical fields the armor uses needed to be resized too, but I didn’t have enough power to do it. Now everything is properly fitted.”

I nodded. “So before now I was putting a strain on the armor just wearing it?”

“A big strain. If you were just another unicorn it would be one thing, but a pegasus has a totally different thaumaturgic resonance.” Destiny paused. “Let me rephrase that. It was forcing my magic to fit you, which was like if you had to constantly keep a muscle flexed.”

“No wonder the core drained so quickly,” I said. “I feel pretty good now, though.”

My joy was short-lived, because apparently somepony was just lying in wait for me to be up and about.

“Ah, good, Chamomile, you’re alive,” Herr Doktor said, slipping out from where she’d been pretending to work on some arcane piece of equipment. “I was wondering if we could discuss your hoof?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What do we do to fix it?”

She sucked in air through her teeth and looked away. “That… is probably impossible. Fixing small things, getting the metal out of your joints, cleaning your blood, that can be done because it’s merely a flesh wound, you might say. The metal is broken down, a healing potion encourages the body to heal, and things fix themselves.”

“And my hoof won’t fix itself,” I said quietly.

“I considered a few options while you were unconscious,” Herr Doktor said. She motioned toward her desk. “Para-Medic doesn’t think skin grafts will cover it. Nothing for them to latch onto, you see.”

She grabbed a sketchbook and showed me some notes and drawings she’d made.

“The main material seems to be silicon carbide of some form, with the flexible components made of carbon fiber. The plates under your skin have a not-insignificant metallic impurity, giving them that, ah, mirrored, chromed appearance. None of it is bio-compatible, which is why you were having an inflammatory response prior to the degloving.”

The memory of that pain was enough to make my stomach start to turn. “Can we not talk about that?”

“I apologize,” Herr Doktor said, putting her sketchbook back. “To the point, we can’t regrow your leg, but the one you have now is better than any prosthetic we could manufacture.”

“Great,” I mumbled.

“Consider the alternative,” Herr Doktor offered. “You are up and walking and talking. That is more than many ponies could say. You just need to grow a thick skin, eh? And that should be simple, with the dermal plating you’ve developed.”

“I guess I’m not taking off this armor anytime soon anyway.” I took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to go for a walk. I need to clear my--”

“Belay that,” White Glint said, the captain stalking into the hold. “I heard that when I was walking in. You’re not going on shore leave. Do you have any idea how much trouble you stirred up?”

“Hey, I had to do it!” I protested. “Besides, it’s better for everypony, right?”

“It is better for everypony,” White Glint agreed. “Governor Fuse was a monster. That doesn’t mean the military doesn’t want you found and dealt with. Your faces are on wanted posters all over town! The only reason they haven’t come here yet is because I pulled every string I could to have them looking in the wrong spots for a little while.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“What I do is clean this place up ship-shape and make ready to set sail in case things go bad. What you do is more important. I don’t want you here when the military police come looking. You need to be out of town for a few days until the heat dies down.”

“So, what, you want me to go camping on the bare cloud-tops for a while?” I asked. “That’s no problem.”

“I thought about telling you to go cool your hooves, but Captain’s Intuition tells me you’d find some way to get in trouble if you were that bored,” White Glint said. “Here.”

She tossed some paper at me. Destiny caught it with telekinesis and hovered it where I could read it.

“This is a bill,” I said.

“Room, board, and the supplies and expertise of my crew,” White Glint says. “You’re not part of my crew so you owe the going rates.”

“We don’t have nearly this much money,” Destiny said.

“I know.” White Glint gave us a lopsided smile. “That’s why I’m going to give you a chance to work it off. You wanted to stretch your legs, right?”

I nodded slowly. I felt like it was a mistake to admit to anything, but what could I do?

The briefing room felt like it had been stripped out of a completely different ship and somehow installed in the Nest. It was modern and clean, and if I’d been thinking properly I’d realize that it was where White Glint met with her clients.

White Glint stood at the head of the table, her chair pushed back while she spoke. “The Nest isn’t just a bunch of rebels. We’re troubleshooters, officially. Odd jobs of any size undertaken with negotiable rates. We have a request, and you’re perfect for it.”

Emerald looked as wary as I felt. Quattro just seemed bored. She hadn’t even bothered sitting down, just leaning against the wall with her forehooves folded like she’d seen this song and dance already.

“You remember Double Nothing?” White Glint asked.

I nodded. “He’s the guy who set me up on that dumb job to turn off the nav beacon. Don't tell me this is a request from him...”

“I'm sorry to say it is,” White Glint agreed. “He’d probably call himself a collector and broker. He’s got a large collection, and the reason he has so very many rare and hard to move items is that he has ponies that do salvage for him, off the books.”

“Which is illegal since the military owns the wrecks here,” Emerald noted.

“Illegal and not our concern. What is our concern is that his best scavenger has gone missing, and he’s willing to pay us to find him and bring him back safely.”

“That’s all?” Quattro asked. “Why bother asking us?”

“Two reasons,” Glint said. “First, the missing pony is Double Dealer, his husband. He doesn’t want to chance hiring anypony that can’t promise they’ll get him back. He knows the Nest always gets the job done.”

“What’s the second reason?” I asked.

“We know where he was when he went missing. The SPP tower.”

“You can’t be serious,” Quattro said. “Ponies can’t get there! The stormwall is impenetrable!”

“Double Dealer found a way in,” Glint said. “He’s been there and back once already, according to Double Nothing. This time he’s been gone for a week, and that puts him a few days overdue. Double Nothing can’t just hire anypony because he wants to keep the route secret. Most mercenaries would sell the information to the highest bidder.”

“And he doesn’t want that getting out until he’s been able to pick out everything valuable,” I guessed.

“Something like that,” White Glint agreed. “As far as I’m concerned this mission is ideal. It gets you out of town, it should have zero enemy action, and we’ll be putting a valuable supplier in our debt.”

“We don’t know enough to say there won’t be enemies,” Emerald countered.

“The primary mission is search and rescue, not extermination.” White Glint raised an eyebrow. “More to the point, a tank and a vertibuck weren’t enough to stop you. Are you really expecting something worse?”

Quattro laughed. “And I was worried no one was going to put a jinx on us!”

“It’s just not the same,” Emerald said.

“Our Doktor can’t resist tinkering,” Quattro admitted. “What do you think, Cammy?”

I rubbed my chin and looked at Emerald. She was flexing her wings and trying to look at herself. Her military-issue armor had been almost completely redesigned. The helmet’s buglike eyes had been swapped out with a visor and a thin antenna like a unicorn’s horn had been stuck right in the middle of her forehead. The rebreather had been changed out for an older model that looked almost like a beak, and the smooth lines of the chest armor were flattened, more like plates stacked on top of one another than a shaped curve.

“Does it still work the same?” I asked.

“The armor is thicker, but she improved the weight-reduction talisman to compensate,” Emerald said. “It actually feels lighter than before.”

“So it’s fine,” I shrugged.

“I guess, but the color…” Emerald groaned. “Why did she have to paint it white?”

“It’s good camouflage against clouds,” Quattro said. “She probably heard you complaining about how my armor draws too much attention.”

“I guess,” Emerald conceded. “But white is so hard to keep clean!”

“Good thing you’re not in the military anymore where an officer might bust you for having an unkept uniform.” Quattro grinned at Emerald’s annoyed grunt at being reminded about that.

“We should discuss where we’re going,” Destiny said. “I’ve been looking at the map data and I have some concerns.”

“Is it about the rust sea, the razor fields, or the pony who gave it to us?” Quattro asked.

“I’m pretty worried about the razor fields,” I said. “Do I want to know why they’re called that?”

“I’ve never been stupid enough to fly out there and find out for myself, but you can probably guess,” Quattro said.

Destiny brought up the map. It was more like a treasure map than a navigational chart, with a bunch of notes about exactly what the safe path through some areas even looked like. “What worries me is that ponies haven’t found a way through for more than a century and a half, and then this scavenger just happens to get all the way to the tower and back? This storm system seems too stable for something like that to be missed.”

“If we get stuck, we’re turning back,” Quattro said. “Is that understood by everypony? We’re trying to save one pony, who might not even be alive. That means we’re not going to risk our lives. I’m not trading either of you for him.”

“I second that,” Destiny said. “Speaking as somepony who’s already dead, it’s, as my father would say, a total bummer.”

“Understood,” Emerald said. “So the map starts right here, at the wreck of the Sun Titan.” She motioned to the hull around us. It was in good condition, all things considered.

“It looks like it used to be a nice boat,” I said. It was big, easily larger than a Raptor, a wooden-hulled airship that had been fitted with iron cladding once, before that had been stripped away as scrap metal. The wood was still there, showing the elaborate paint job that it had sported before the war as a passenger ship. It was also rotten, and stepping too hard would put your hoof right through it, which is probably why nopony had stripped the wood to sell off for scrap.

“Cruise liner, then a privateer, then the Skyguard built real warships and it was decommissioned,” Emerald said. She stepped up to the railing along the deck and touched it reverently. “I wish we had the resources to fix up ships like this and bring them back to life.”

“We’ll go through the rust sea from here,” Quattro said. “It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. They’re just an area that’s been picked totally clean. All that’s left is what the scavengers couldn’t use. Wooden hulled ships and rusty skeletons too corroded to use for scrap.”

“At least the storm isn’t so bad here,” I said. Gentle breezes carried iron-scented dust across the bow of the ship. In some places, thick clouds of it gathered, red and brown banks of fog working their way across the junkyard.

“That’s why things got picked over so much,” Quattro agreed. “From what I've heard, this place is pretty pleasant as long as a wild storm doesn’t come off the razor fields.”

She took off, flying between floating hulks. Most of the ships were only aloft thanks to banks of clouds pressed up against the hulls, and half of those were starting to slip. There were probably dozens of ships that had fallen through to the ground below despite whatever lingering enchantments they held.

Were there ponies down there, living under the fear that a broken ship might crash down on top of them at any moment?

I tried not to think about it. The ground might as well have been the bottom of an ocean, and it was probably just as deadly. Instead, I was just going to enjoy flying. It had been way too long since I could just spread my wings and go. The storm was calm enough here I wasn’t worried about being struck by lightning, my joints weren’t screaming at me about the abuse I was putting them through, and nopony was trying to kill me.

It felt good.

“It makes me wish I’d loaded music into the software,” Destiny said quietly.

“Hm?”

“Everything happened so quickly at the end,” she said. “I can barely remember much of it, but I remember that feeling, that I’d left so much undone when the alarms sounded and the bombs fell. Even this armor was never really done. It doesn’t have drivers for weapons because it wasn’t supposed to see combat. It doesn’t have music or a proper database because it was just supposed to sit in a lab.”

I glanced at my left side and the heavy weapon there. With the extra power from the armor I couldn’t even feel the weight of it. “We got the Junk Jet working, right?”

“Herr Doktor was able to write drivers for it because she designed the weapon from scratch,” Destiny said. “I might be able to get a beam rifle working, but your aim is bad enough already and I doubt I could get targeting assistance working.”

I huffed. “Hey, my aim isn’t that bad! I was hitting every shot with the Junk Jet!”

“Someday we’ll develop the science to explain exactly how you managed that,” Destiny quipped. “Seriously, though, you did do really well with it, and Herr Doktor helped me tie it into the suit’s vector trap system. I can deposit just about anything we’ve got in storage directly into the Junk Jet.”

“Do we have anything useful in storage?” I asked.

“If it was useful I wouldn’t want to use it as ammunition,” Destiny joked. “Don’t worry. I nabbed a few things. Empty glass bottles, a few cans of Cram--”

“Cram?” I asked, my ears perking up. “I love that stuff!”

“These cans are two centuries old, Chamomile.”

“So?”

“...There's no accounting for taste, I guess” Destiny sighed.

“Focus, everypony!” Quattro shouted back. “We’re almost at the edge of the rust sea!”

The dark clouds of haze and dirt parted, and huge shapes loomed in the calm winds. It took me a second to recognize them, because I’d been looking at rusted hulks and hulls stripped to the bone for so long that seeing relatively intact ships was a shock.

“Those are Raptors,” I said. “They’re practically brand-new! Why are they just sitting here?”

“I heard about these. Look at the livery,” Emerald said. Destiny zoomed in on the paint jobs. “These ships were part of the Cloudsdale defense force.” Each of them was painted in faded blue, with details picked out in tarnished brass. I could see the name emblazoned on the nearest one as we flew closer. The Soarin.

“I’m picking up some radiation,” Destiny warned.

“They were there when the bombs went off,” Emerald said. “You can still see the scars.”

Lightning flashed. Black ash and blistered paint scored one side of the Soarin’s hull, like it had been parked right next to a gigantic furnace.

“The ships were highly irradiated in the barrage. According to the official reports, when the weather factory was hit, it released a huge plume of radioactive material, and that all got sucked into the engines of the ships. Almost nopony survived, and the thunderstorms they used for lift just kept circulating the dust and irradiating everything around them.”

“It’s been this long and they’re still dangerously radioactive,” Quattro said.

“Too dangerous to salvage, too precious to scuttle, so they were left here in the hopes they’d eventually cool down enough. Rumors say they had to leave the bodies in place because it was too dangerous to send in retrieval teams.”

“We’ll get to find out if it’s true,” Destiny said. “The map has us going through some of the ships. It looks like Double Dealer used them like a bridge to cut through something called a razor storm.”

“If I remember correctly, that would be a storm cell that’s picked up a lot of debris. Sharp debris.” Quattro folded her hooves. “Like a tornado of broken glass. Not something you want to get caught in.”

“The radiation is going to be a problem,” Emerald said. “I’ve got some RadAway and Rad-X. Do you have enough?”

“It’s not a concern,” Destiny said.

“Not for you, you’re a ghost,” I said. “I don’t want radiation sickness. I just started feeling okay!”

“It’s not much of a problem for you either,” Destiny said. “You’ve got a layer of heavy metals under your skin. It’s why you’ve been so laser-resistant lately. They’ll also block a significant fraction of the ionizing radiation.”

“How much is significant?”

“If the readings stay around this level? I wouldn’t suggest you spend the night, but a quick trip should be relatively harmless.”

“I’m almost jealous,” Quattro said.

We flew closer to the Soarin. As we passed near the captured thunderstorms supporting the hull, warnings popped up across my vision. I didn’t know enough about the numbers to know how bad things really were, but I wasn’t so dull that I didn’t get the idea. Scavengers left these ships alone for a reason -- even a quick look probably took years off a pony’s life.

Swooping into the huge deployment hangar was like coming in out of the storm. The warnings tapered off but didn’t go all the way to zero. It was almost exactly the same layout as the hangar of the Shiranui, but blessedly without a tank lying in wait to ambush us.

“That’s better,” Emerald sighed in relief. “I can’t believe how bad this place is.”

I nodded and looked around. A tingle washed through me as Destiny cast a light spell, piercing the gloom around us with crimson light that didn’t quite reach the corners of the huge space.

“We need to reach the other end of the ship,” Destiny said. “We’ll be hopping from one ship to another. It looks like they form a chain through the worst of the storm.”

“Did he move the ships himself?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. They must have naturally drifted together. It’s something that happens with ships. They randomly get a little closer to each other, then because they’re shielding the space between them from the wind or waves, the force outside nudges them closer and closer until they’re touching.”

“Neat. So they’re not gonna come apart on their own?”

“Hard to say. If the chain is broken further along the line, that could be why Double Dealer didn’t come back. He could be trapped on the other side somewhere waiting for things to align again.”

“If he’s smart, he won’t be on any of these ships,” Quattro said, looking around. “He’d go through Rad-X like it was water.”

The Shiranui had been spotless, that kind of parade cleanliness that nothing could maintain without constant spit and polish. This ship was different. It was like an ancient tomb. Rust and loose debris from outside had blown in through the open hangar doors and covered everything in red dust, piles of it building up in the corners. It let up a little as we got further in, but the ship had been here so long that it had gotten everywhere. Black scorch marks and stains from broken pipes plastered the bulkheads.

“We’re not the first ones in here,” Destiny said. She adjusted her light and pointed it at the wall.

“Graffiti?” Emerald guessed, tilting her head.

“Look at the shape,” Quattro said. “Two letter ‘D’s facing each other. Double Dealer?”

“Why did they tag the wall?” I asked.

“Probably to remind himself about this,” Quattro said. She pulled a box out of a vent just under the tag. She opened it to reveal a stash of Rad-X and Radaway. “This is the good pre-war stuff. He must have left it here in case he was running low.”

“Take it with us,” Emerald said. “We might need it.”

“Double Dealer might need it too,” Quattro agreed, shoving it in her pack. “If they did get stuck around here, they might not have enough to get back safely on their own.”

“Speaking of that, I’m detecting a radiation spike the more we move down this corridor,” Destiny said.

Emerald spread her wings a little. “And I can feel the wind. We must be getting near the first crossover point.”

I went first, and at the next junction I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The Soarin didn’t even have emergency power, so the light leaking in from the outside was like a beacon. I could feel the wind now too, and when I turned the corner to follow the source of the light, I almost walked right out into thin air.

“I guess these ships got hit harder than I thought,” I said breathlessly.

The hallway just stopped, torn apart by massive heat and force. Pipes and wires jutted out into the open air, creaking in the wind that blew past. I could see the hull of another ship close enough to almost reach out and touch it.

“We need to go over to the next ship,” Destiny said. She highlighted something in my display, enhancing the edges to make it pop despite the haze in the air. “There’s an open hatch here.”

It was maybe a dozen paces away, groaning when the wind caught the door and wiggled it on rusty hinges.

“That’s close enough I could practically jump it,” I said. “I don’t see why anypony would think this is--”

The wind picked up to a fever pitch, and tornado-force gusts tore through the space between the two ships. I jerked back, but not before the very edge of the wind whipped across me, metal splinters and glass shards bouncing off the armor like they were angry they couldn’t get inside and flay me alive.

“Okay never mind! I can see why this is still a hazard!” I backed up a few more steps and waited for the storm to die down.

“It would have to be this bad for scavengers to avoid the place,” Quattro said, watching from the end of the corridor. “I hope he didn’t get caught up in something like that or we won’t even find a body to bring back.”

“The wind is dying down,” Destiny said. “I think it’s cyclical. If we time it correctly, we should be able to get to the other side.”

“And if we don’t time it right?” I asked.

“I strongly suggest not finding out.”

“Got it. Fate worse than death.”

“I’ll take it first,” Quattro said. “I’m the fastest. I’ll get to the hatch, make sure it’s not going to slam shut and that we can actually get inside, then wave you across.”

I nodded. Quattro watched the wind slide through another cycle of razor-edge hail and calm to get the timing right, then flitted across to the hatch. She hovered outside it for a few seconds, checking out the other side, then ducked inside ahead of the next wave.

“Do you want to go next?” Emerald asked.

I watched the wave of death slash through the open air and decided to be polite.

“Please, you go ahead,” I said.

Emerald chuckled and waited for Quattro to signal her before taking off and dashing across to the next ship, leaving me mostly alone.

“The storms from the SPP tower must be tied in one big knot,” Destiny mused while we waited for it to clear up again. “This debris could have been orbiting around for decades, shearing off little bits of broken-down ships as it goes. I wonder how it avoids eroding the edges down to something less deadly…”

I swallowed, nervous and ready to take off. I wasn’t a fast flyer. What if I needed a few extra seconds to get through the hatch? It looked small from here. Too small.

The wind died down and I didn’t wait for Quattro to wave to me.

“Watch out!” Destiny yelled in my ear. My helmet display flashed a danger signal and pointed to my left.

A huge slab of metal sliced through the air towards me. I hadn’t seen or heard it coming. It was big enough that it had blocked up the wind behind it like a dam. I squeaked and flapped harder and I felt Destiny’s telekinesis shoving my flank forward. I just barely cleared it, the rusty metal flashing past my tail while I lost control and crashed through the hatch and into the next ship, slamming into the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth.

“Ow,” I groaned.

“You almost died!” Emerald chided. “You were supposed to wait for the signal!”

“How is something that big floating around?” I asked.

“It must be a piece of cloudship hull,” Quattro said. “Just enough talismans and enchantments still working to keep it in the air.”

“Cool,” I said, even though it definitely wasn’t cool.

“Come on, up and at ‘em,” Quattro said, pulling me up to my hooves. “We’ve still got a while to go.”

“Another Double-D mark over here,” Emerald said. “We’re going the right way.” She shoved some fallen debris aside to reveal a small crate with a few bottles of water. “Another stash, too.”

“I bet he found this path piece by piece,” Quattro said. “Probably used these stashes to extend his range.”

“I just hope we can get through,” Emerald muttered. She walked down the corridor to where a fallen support beam cut the hallway in half. There was just enough room for us to squeeze under the bent and twisted metal. “This ship took a lot more damage before it was towed out here.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Quattro said. “I wonder how many salvage crews and independent scavengers died in places like this because they lingered too long… even if you know the right path it’s tempting to go the other way just for a quick look, pop open a few doors, rummage through the drawers…”

“Good thing we’re not here for treasure hunting,” Emerald said. “Which way?”

“Through the galley,” Destiny said. “This way.”

Destiny kept her scan of the map in the corner of my vision. It wasn’t particularly well-drawn. Nothing was to scale, a few turns weren’t mentioned, and we had to backtrack once and go around a place where recent damage from slamming into another floating ship had made a corridor impassible.

I took the next hop across the gap between ships much more carefully, looking both ways and waiting for the signal before flying across.

“It’s easier when you don’t crash,” Quattro joked.

I rolled my eyes and waited for Destiny to cast another light spell.

“The walls…” Emerald whispered.

I turned the light to the corridor wall. Shapes had been painted all over it, arranged in circles and seven-sided shapes and bizarre spirals and loops. They looked almost like letters, but from some alien language. It almost hurt to look at them.

“I don’t recognize these symbols,” Destiny said. “Zebra, maybe?”

“Why would there be zebra glyphs inside a wrecked Equestrian ship?” I asked.

“Something tells me we don’t want to find out.” Destiny sounded afraid in a way that a dead pony shouldn’t be able to be afraid.

Movement. Right in the corner of my eye, something in the shadows. By the time I turned it was gone.

“Did anypony else see that?” I asked.

“I saw something,” Quattro confirmed. “I couldn’t make out what it was.”

“Let’s just take it slow,” I said. “Everypony stay close.”

We crept down the blighted corridor. The symbols on the walls glistened when they caught the light and I did my very best not to think about what they might have been painted with.

“Double Dealer?” I called out. “We’re here to rescue you!”

“Is it a good idea to shout like that?” Quattro asked.

“If I was stuck in this place for a week I’d be ready to shoot anything that jumped out at me,” I muttered. “I wanna give him some warning.”

We got to the next junction and I looked both ways. One end was blocked off by debris, but there was a dark shape at the end of the other leg.

“Is that him?” I asked.

It was hard to make out detail in the dim light. Destiny focused the light on the pony at the end of the passageway.

“If that’s Double Dealer, there’s something really wrong with him,” Emerald whispered.

The pony was thin, worn ragged like a threadbare suit washed over and over again until the material was so thin you could see through it. His feathers were falling out, and there was just something pale and unhealthy about him. If he hadn’t been unsteady enough on his hooves to weave a little from side to side just standing there, I wouldn’t have thought he was even alive.

He turned slowly at the touch of the light, shadows falling across hollow cheeks. Dry lips curled back in a snarl and exposed broken teeth. The eyes were just empty pits along with a third hole in its forehead, like somepony had already shot him once, all of them glowing with green light from somewhere deep inside his skull.

“Sorry for bothering you,” I said. “We’re just passing through.”

The pony screeched and charged, limbs flailing like it was barely in control of its body, like trying to run with your legs asleep. I froze. It was just like home. The ponies forced into motion by something outside their bodies. I didn’t see metal scales or claws, but the stumbling horror had that same jerking, unnatural gait.

“Light it up!” Emerald ordered, snapping off a laser shot. It burned into the pony’s neck. Another shot from Quattro took off a foreleg. It stumbled, and a flurry of beams blasted it apart, dry flesh bursting into flames.

Quattro waited a heartbeat to make sure it wasn’t about to get back up despite being in pieces and on fire, then shrugged. “That wasn’t too hard.”

“As far as monsters go it was a little underwhelming,” Destiny agreed.

“It’s a ghoul,” Emerald said, kneeling down next to the smoldering remains. “They’re created sometimes when a pony dies of massive radiation poisoning. I heard about them from the reports.”

“The reports?”

“On surface conditions,” Emerald clarified. “You know ponies get sent down there once in a while to look. Not a detail I ever want to pull. Everything I’ve heard is bad, except for the parts that are worse, like feral undead monsters roaming bombed-out cities.”

I heard something shift in the darkness.

“You said they’re rare, right?” I asked.

Emerald shrugged. “There isn’t usually enough radiation up here to worry about. That’s why we live here in the first place.”

Green eyes, all of them shining in triplicate, lit up in the gloom.

“They might not be as rare as you think,” I whispered.

The ghouls screeched and charged, pale limbs worn down to bone. There had to be dozens of them packing the corridor and screaming wordless hate. We didn’t need to wait for Emerald to tell us to shoot this time. Beams cut through the air along with the heaviest things I had to throw. Sparkle-Cola bottles smashed into the undead while we beat a fighting retreat.

“When we get back we’re charging Double Nothing extra for this job!” Quattro shouted. “There wasn’t supposed to be enemy action!”

“Don’t let your boss hear us complaining,” I said. “She didn’t seem like she appreciated excuses!”

I smiled when a lucky shot sent a desk lamp through a ghoul’s head hard enough to decapitate it entirely, the body taking a few more steps before falling.

“Something’s wrong,” Destiny said, her voice wavering.

“Yeah, we’re being attacked by ghouls!” I said. “Did you just notice that?”

“No, it’s something else. Something… there!”

She cast a spell, outlining the figure lurking in the shadows with faerie fire. It was taller than the ghoulish horrors chasing after us, moving with such unnatural grace it seemed to be floating. Whatever it was, it was wearing tattered, once-ornate robes and pieces of armor that seemed to be carved from bones.

It lifted up a staff and sent a wave of green light across the undead, and they screeched and redoubled their efforts to kill us.

“It’s using necromancy!” Destiny said. “I’m no expert, but I am undead and I can feel that where my bones should be!”

Some of the fallen ghouls started putting themselves back together, stumbling back up despite the collection of killing wounds we’d already given them.

“Across the gap!” Quattro yelled. “We need to get to the next ship!”

The ghouls flinched when they chased us into the next room, a hangar bay whose other end hung open, the cargo door halfway bridging the gap to the next Raptor in the line. Sunlight poured through the open hatch, fighting back the darkness.

None of us even bothered looking out for a razor storm. We didn’t have time to worry about that with the grasping hooves of the undead at our heels. The three of us charged and jumped, flying through broken and empty window frames into the next ship.

I landed and skidded, turning around to see if they’d keep coming.

A few of the ghouls tried to follow, and at that moment the wind picked up and tore them from the sky, razors in the wind shredding them apart and carrying the giblets away.

The equine in the ornate robes hung back in the shadows, keeping away from the light. It met my gaze, and I could feel an ancient hate there, the kind of hate that didn’t stop at just one pony or one people but encompassed everything in the universe. Another wave of haze passed between us, and it vanished back into the gloom. The rest of the ghouls hissed and retreated into the shadows they’d come from.

“What was that thing?” I asked.

“I think it was a zebra,” Destiny said. “But… up here? There shouldn’t be zebras here! It had to have come from the surface somewhere.”

“A mystery I hope we never have to solve,” Quattro said. “Let’s keep moving in case this place is infested too.”

I nodded and followed her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was still being watched by something in the dark.

Chapter 17 - Take Control

It wouldn’t be right to say the lightning was just flashing constantly around us. Most ponies would probably think of the worst storm they’d ever been in, and think I meant a thunderbolt coming down every few seconds. Maybe at worst it’d be like a slow strobe light, flash after flash cutting through the dark.

The lightning around the SPP tower was continuous, flowing like water out of a faucet. It wasn’t flash after flash, it was a never-ending spray of energy into the sky, reaching out from the tower and snapping from one spot to another, sometimes a hundred jagged tendrils reaching out to the storm wall a half-mile out from the massive structure, sometimes a single massive stroke of lightning sweeping in a slow circle.

“I thought this was supposed to be the eye of the storm!” I shouted over the constant snapping roar. “Isn’t the eye of a big storm supposed to be calm?!”

“It is calm!” Quattro shot back. “No wind!”

True, there weren’t any tornado-force gusts cutting through, but the air stank of ozone so thickly it was probably toxic.

“Any luck finding the door?” Emerald asked.

“This part of the map is particularly loose on detail,” Destiny said. “Let’s circle around one more time!”

“Do you have any idea how little I want to circle around?!” I yelled. “We’re lucky we haven’t been fried yet!”

“I told you, this is a blind spot where the lighting never--” a streak cut between us as we flew in formation, so close I could feel the magnetic backwash in my teeth. “--almost never goes!”

“I see something!” Emerald pointed. “There, in the shadows!”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to see through the shifting light. A mark on the tower’s outer surface, in the shade where it was protected from the elements by part of the SPP’s structure. A mark like two ‘D’s facing each other.

“Maybe he got lost too!” Quattro said. “That must be the hatch!”

We flew closer, swooping low. We were almost on top of it before I could make it out, a hatch in the tower wall, painted the same as the rest and set so closely into it that it was almost invisible. I reached for the recessed handle.

“Wait, stop!” Destiny warned. “There’s a massive static charge. Let me get it with magic.”

The handle lit up with red magic and turned, the hatch squealing as it swung in.

“Don’t touch the sides,” Destiny said. “The tower is like a giant Hayden Jar. It’ll discharge and fry you if you poke it wrong.”

“Good to know,” Quattro said, tucking her wings as she swooped inside. Emerald followed and, like usual, I took up the rear, kicking the door closed behind me. “No accidents? Thank buck for small favors.”

“I hope the trip back will be easier,” Emerald muttered. She shook rust and water from her white armor. It was already staining in the corners. The inside of the tower wasn’t what I expected. Dull orange emergency lighting ran in strips along the corridor walls, which curved just enough that it made you deeply aware you couldn’t see the ends.

Quattro grinned. “Now that we’ve done it once we know what to expect. Lightning, razor storms, and the undead.”

Something on the wall caught my attention. I brushed dust off a brass plate dulled by time.

“SPP Tower Number 0 prototype…” I read. There was a dedication date along with engraved signatures, maybe half of which I could even read. Rainbow Dash’s was the largest, right in the middle and twice the size of the others.

“There are a ton of stories about this place,” Emerald said. “I heard it never worked properly, so when they tried to turn it on and make clouds, all they got was this thunderstorm that that can’t turn off.”

“I heard it’s haunted,” Destiny said.

“Haunted?” I gasped. Something tickled at the back of my mind. “Wait a minute…”

“Well there’s at least one ghost, right?” Destiny giggled.

Quattro patted my side. “You’re a treasure, Cammy. Does anypony see any horrible monsters?”

“No,” I said, looking both ways down the corridor.

“That’s a nice change. So if you were a treasure hunter, which way would you go?”

“Right,” I said, without hesitation.

“That was fast. Any particular reason?”

“I can see a broken lock over there.”

Emerald and Quattro turned to look. One of the doors a little further down the curved hallway had obviously been tampered with. The panel next to the door had been pried open, and sparks from crossed wires had caught my attention.

“Good eye!” Emerald said with approval.

We trotted up towards it, and I could feel the floor moving under my hooves. Not a lot, just a tiny sway from side to side, a lot like the docked ships back in town. With how tall and thin the tower was, I had no idea how it stayed up. Whatever techniques they used, they worked, because even at the center of the storm it had stayed up for almost two centuries with no maintenance.

“The door controls are busted,” Quattro said, after poking them for a moment. “It looks like he jammed some kind of fuse in here and it shorted out.”

I stepped up to the door, trying to look through the tall, narrow window at head height. Well, head height for an average pony so I had to sort of slump down a little to see. “I wonder what kind of salvage you’d even find in a place like--”

Something slammed against the door. I threw myself back, expecting necromancy or a chainsaw claw made of living metal or something even worse. The dark shape pounded on the door again, then backed up and turned on a flashlight, pointing it at their own face. It was just a normal pony, who looked relieved to see us, tired, thirsty, and generally unhealthy.

“Oh hey! We found him right away!” Destiny said. “That’s a change of pace.”

Emerald put her ear to the door for a moment. “I think the door’s soundproof.”

“We’ll need to find a paper and pencil so we can write a message and let him know we’re here to help.”

My radio crackled. “Hello?”

“Or he could have a walkie-talkie,” Quattro said. “Hello, sir? Can you hear us?”

“Thank buck,” the stallion said. “Did my husband send you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can you pop the door open from your side? The controls out here are broken.”

“I wish. I’ve been stuck in here for days,” Double Dealer groaned.

“No way we’re going to be able to pry it open without leverage,” Emerald said.

“The problem is the lack of power,” Double Dealer said. “If you can restore main power, it’ll trip the breakers and I’ll be able to open the door.”

“Any idea how we do that?” I asked. “This is a big place, you know.”

“You need to get to Ops. The tower doesn’t have as much floorspace as you think - it’s mostly scaffolding and pipes.” Double Dealer pressed up against the small window and tried to look out into the hallway. “I can’t see it from here, but if you go around a little more you’ll find a way into the core. Ops will be up from there.”

Emerald nodded firmly. “We’ll be back, sir.”

“Just hang in there,” I added.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he joked.

We walked a quarter-turn around the deck, and it was… quiet. The walls were thick enough to turn the rumble of thunder into distant white noise. No alarms, no roaring wind. Just our hooves clanging against the deck. There was a strange hushed sense to it all, like it was wrong to break the silence even with our hoofsteps.

“This must be the way,” Quattro said, the yellow mare sounding subdued. She turned the wheel lock and pulled the hatch open. There was no blast of wind or rush of noise, and I stepped out first into the open space in the middle of the tower. Sunlight shone down from above, and I shielded my eyes for a second before the helmet adjusted for it.

The first thing I noticed were the pipes, because it was impossible to miss them. Every surface was covered with vertical pipes, some of them thicker than I was, others as fine as pencils and bundled up together like they needed protection against the stouter pipes running alongside them. Frost flaked from some, others leaked steam, and there was something almost alive about the whole arrangement.

I looked down.

“Woah,” I whispered.

The steel mesh catwalk I was standing on left nothing to the imagination. The open space in the middle of all those pipes went all the way up, and all the way down. I couldn’t even see the bottom. More catwalks and stairs and ladders dotted the walls, slowly spiraling its way through the vertical abyss. I pictured somepony taking a wrong step on one of those steps and just… never hitting the ground. Falling forever.

“How did ponies ever build something like this?” Emerald asked, shaking her head in wonder. It was one thing to see the towers from a distance. Just sheer white walls. It was hard to remember it was a machine.

“A lot of work and a lot of money,” Destiny said. “I remember… one thing the war did, that nopony expected... All the ponies with similar cutie marks ended up together, working on the same projects. Instead of a hundred geniuses working in isolation, only able to manage what they could with their own hooves, you got things like this. A century’s worth of progress condensed into a decade.”

“A real golden age,” Quattro said.

Destiny went quiet.

“So, Ops is supposed to be above us, right?” Emerald looked up. “Think that’s it?”

A room hung out over the abyss, dark windows looking out into the drop fearlessly. I don’t know why, but looking into those windows, I thought I could feel something looking back.

“Wow, this place is not what I expected,” Emerald said.

Ops was set up with rows of beige computer banks facing the windows, the screens black and only a few of the lights and dials showing any life at all. Papers and office kitsch littered the floor. I picked up a baseball and gave it a few tosses up and down before storing it away. Maybe I’d need to be a pitching machine someday.

“Any idea where to start?” Quattro asked.

“Everything’s labeled, let’s just look for a big red button that says ‘Main Power’,” I suggested, pushing a chair out of the way and walking down a row of terminals.

“I’ve got… pump controls over here,” Emerald reported. “I think this row is all water-related.”

I scanned the dials and buttons. “I don’t know what this is… wait, no. This has to be communications, right? This is the channel, and they’ve got a headset and microphone…”

“Those are radio controls,” Destiny confirmed. “The SPP towers were huge structures placed almost evenly all over Equestria. Perfect for piggybacking on some radio and surveillance equipment.”

“Surveillance? So these monitors are for cameras?” I asked.

“Sure. It was an open secret that the Ministries could use the towers to get a view of anything they wanted. It made a lot of ponies paranoid.”

“I think I found the power controls!” Quattro called out. “Let’s just flip this…”

There was a distant rumble, and I actually felt the tower steady under us, the tiny bit of swaying coming to a halt. A moment later, the lights above us flickered on and I heard the air conditioning kick in. A few of the screens flickered and turned on, text scrolling across them.

“Looks like that did it,” Emerald said. “Nice work.”

“Don’t give me too much credit,” Quattro said. “It was literally a big switch marked ‘main breaker.’”

“If this doesn’t work, I’ll look around for a crowbar,” I said, turning around to walk back to the door. “There has to be something around here--”

“Hold on,” Destiny said. “I just saw something.”

“What?” I asked.

“There, on the console.” Destiny said. “You see that flashing light?”

“Uh…” A few of them were lit up now that power was restored. It took me a minute to figure out which one she meant. “What about it?”

“That’s an active data link. Somepony is trying to access the local database!”

“Is it Double Dealer?” Emerald asked, stepping closer to look.

“One second. I just need to fake a log-in…” Red light played over the keys, and the terminal glitched and started displaying garbage text. A few seconds later, and Destiny was scrolling through menus. “The access requests are coming from the surface. Some of them are pretty old, I think they’re backlogged from when the tower went to emergency power only. The data link is still open, though.”

“It was probably just ponies running tests,” Quattro offered. “This was a prototype test machine, remember? If I was going to run a stress test or something dangerous, I’d probably want to do it from outside the tower.”

“No, they were just copying and accessing files,” Destiny said. “Weird. It looks like they were trying to delete security logs.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“Only one way to find out! Let’s see what they were trying to get rid of…”

An image flashed onto the monitors, showing Ops. I looked back over my shoulder and spotted the camera mounted in the corner that had taken the picture. Instead of us standing in a disused, dusty control room, the Ops on screen showed what seemed like a few ponies on night shift, sipping coffee and clustered around the same security monitor we were looking at.

A thin voice came out of the dry and ancient speakers next to the screen.

“I’m just saying it’s strange,” the first mare said.

“Strange comes with the job,” the other one retorted, with a shrug. “We’re just following orders, right? What’s the first thing you’re taught?”

“If we don’t understand the orders we’re given, that’s the most important time to follow them to the letter,” the first mare sighed. “I don’t like it. First Pinkie tells us to gather evidence on BrayTech, now she wants us to bury it?”

“I don’t know if you looked at any of the recordings from the tower cameras--”

“Of course I did. And so did you.”

“--My point is, what did we keep seeing? Ministry mares. Mostly Twilight Sparkle, but Rarity and Pinkie Pie were there too.”

“Even though they were seen at Ministry hubs on the other side of Equestria on those same days.”

The first mare shrugged. “Whatever’s going on, it must be big. Pinkie probably wanted some kind of insurance and now that she doesn’t need it, she wants to make sure ponies never find out she was here at all.”

“But there’s nothing about her being here in the internal reports, either!”

“That just proves it must be really big,” the first mare said firmly. “Now hurry up and delete the records. I don’t want to get on--”

The video just stopped, the screen cutting to black.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“That wasn’t me,” Destiny said. She tapped a few keys. “I think that command came from the surface link. There’s no way somepony was just sitting around waiting for it to reconnect for that long… some kind of automated system?”

Symbols started appearing on the screen. It reminded me of something I’d been shown once that was halfway between a puzzle and a toy, a bunch of solid rainbow triangles of different sizes and shapes that you could fit together and try to make shapes out of, like a bird or a boat or a house.

“You’re not doing that either?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said slowly. “There’s something familiar about it…”

“Down!” Quattro shouted.

A laser blast went right over my head. I decided down sounded like a really solid plan of action. I dropped behind the wall of consoles before the next burst could find me. When I peeked over the edge, I saw a turret had dropped down near the door, spraying beams of red light across the room. I ducked down again before it could switch from shooting at Quattro to me.

“Please don’t get shot in the head again,” Destiny said. “I don’t have the right parts to fix another traumatic brain injury.”

“Is it that dangerous? I’ve been shot by lasers…” I paused, tried to count. “A bunch? At least three or four times. More than the average pony.”

“These are a higher power grade,” Destiny said. “They’re drawing power directly from the tower’s power grid!”

“Are you still near the security systems?” Emerald asked, from where she was hiding. “See if you can find the controls!”

“On it!” I peeked at the blinking lights, trying to make sense of them. Every time I looked at the screens with their collections of moving and interlocking triangles, something tickled in the corner of my brain like I should know it somehow. I had to force myself to look away and focus on the switches and dials.

“I’m getting a reading from the console--”

“I can read too,” I protested. “This one is it, right? Laser bank control, gas exchange… which one shuts down the turret?”

“Not that kind of reading! The relays are set to overload!”

I froze. “Does that mean--”

The terminal exploded. I didn’t really think about it much at the time because of the shrapnel and fire and the lasers just above my head but who would make a computer that could just explode like that? They should just be circuits and relays and wires and stuff but it went off like somepony had packed a bomb inside it. Can you imagine going to work every day and sitting down in front of a bomb just hoping it doesn’t go off while you’re busy filing papers?

Anyway, I was wearing pretty thick armor so the explosion was less of a deadly threat and more of an annoyance.

“Is it just me or did that feel like spite?” I asked.

“It went off because we were going to use it to disable the turret,” Destiny said. “That means this isn’t some random security glitch. Somepony is watching us!”

“Probably through the same camera as that recording,” I said. “So anything we plan, they’ll try to counter…”

I grabbed the rolling chair next to me and just stood up and threw it at the turret without warning. It absorbed a couple shots before exploding into ash, but I was right behind it, flying up into the turret and crashing into it shoulder-first. It tore free of its mountings and fell down in a shower of sparks.

“That’s one way to do it,” Quattro said.

I turned to the camera. It focused on me, lens adjusting with tiny whirring sounds while it tracked my movement. “Hey! I don’t know who’s watching this, but knock it off! We’re not here for whatever you’re trying to hide, we just want to leave!”

The loudspeakers crackled. I expected some kind of alert or a crazy pony ranting about something or at worst a secret ambush by Governor Tilt Fuse, who had somehow returned despite all of us seeing his body and confirming it was not a duplicate, clone, or simulacrum.

Instead, music started playing. It sounded like an old recording, with a lot of static cutting through the soft sound.

It should have just been random notes. It shouldn’t have meant anything. I’d never heard it before.

Quattro sniped the camera with her beam rifle, and the music cut off.

“Hey, Chamomile, are you okay?” Quattro asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“I just…” I tilted my head. “It’s like I could hear words. Like there were supposed to be lyrics in the music but they were invisible…”

“Not okay,” Quattro decided. “We’re getting out of here before we can find more trouble. Come on.”

She tugged on my wing and herded me through the door back into the open pit of the SPP core. With the main power on, the sound of the pumps and fans had doubled.

“I hope we didn’t just make the storm worse,” Emerald said, looking down the shaft like any of us had any clue what the arcane machines around us were doing.

“Once we get Double Dealer out, it might be worth coming back and putting the tower back on emergency power, just in case,” Quattro agreed. “The way here was already pushing it. A small change to conditions outside could trap us here.”

I heard something over the fans and clanging pipes. I turned around, trying to figure out what it was. It was sort of an electrical sound rising in pitch.

“Does anypony else hear that?” I asked.

A solid red beam hit the catwalk and slashed through, slicing the metal apart and leaving glowing white-hot edges. The walkway shifted, starting to buckle.

A slim, dark shape slammed down on it with the sound of a major traffic accident and the metal gave way. I instinctively spread my wings, slowing my fall and landing lightly on top of the twisted debris with Quattro and Emerald. A broken pipe sprayed steam and fog around, making me feel slow and cutting visibility down to almost zero.

“What the buck was that?” I asked.

A dark shape stormed out of the hot steam. It was slim machine shaped like a tall mare in form-fitting black armor.

It looked at me with a single red eye set in an armored face, and most of its head peeled back to reveal a glowing ball of energy. That electrical sound started again, pitch rising to a crescendo.

“I don’t think it’s friendly!” Emerald yelled. She fired at it, drawing its attention to the side. Her beams scored the plated armor, none of them penetrating. The robot fired, the beam cutting through the air. Emerald tossed herself over the edge, flying down and looping under the death machine. It tracked her for a few seconds, then the death beam sputtered to a stop and the armor plates snapped shut over the mechanism again.

“Right, let’s take you--” I charged the robot, and it jumped right over me, leaving me stumbling and flapping my wings trying to bring myself to a halt. “--down?”

The black robot slammed into the catwalk next to Quattro, the force tearing bolts from the wall and making the whole thing start to lean. It moved with unearthly precision and speed, front hooves crackling with electrical power and slamming into Quattro’s side, punching her into the wall of pipes hard enough to dent the steel and spray water into the air that was so cold it turned to sleet when it rained down on us.

Quattro groaned and slumped onto the ground. I could see blood leaking between the plates of her golden armor and dribbling down her side.

I grabbed the machine from behind before it could attack again, trying to pin it down. Emerald swooped back over.

“See what you can do for her!” I growled, struggling with the robot. It was insanely strong, driving an elbow back into me hard enough that I was pretty sure a rib broke. I ignored it, shoving it down onto its knees.

The armor over the head snapped open, and it started charging that beam weapon again, pointing it right at where Emerald was feeding a healing potion to Quattro.

“No!” I got both front hooves around its neck and twisted, forcing its aim away. The deadly magical laser lanced out, just barely missing them, and with that monstrous strength, the machine started twisting, adjusting its aim, bringing the death ray closer.

I screamed in frustration, and my infected right hoof responded. I felt my bones twist again, and the same blade I’d used to kill Tilt Fuse brought itself to bear like a knife, cutting right through my armor when it snapped into place.

I drove it into the robot’s neck, sawing though supports and wires. Something popped loose, and I pulled and yanked, the beam going wild. The head came loose in my hooves, and the body fell to the floor, twitching and sparking. The death beam finally cut out, and I gave the head a sharp punt over the side, letting it fall down into the darkness.

“That was a lot tougher than the average machine,” Destiny said. “How’s your hoof?”

I held it up to have a look. The blade looked like any other polished metal, even if the grip felt more like steel muscles. I flexed something, like trying to move an extra hoof on the end of my leg, and it snapped back into place, sliding back through the tear in the armor it had made getting out of my leg.

“I think I can control it,” I said. “It feels really weird, though.”

“We’ll play around with it later,” Destiny agreed.

“I’d really like to leave,” Quattro said. She got back to her hooves with Emerald’s help. “Whatever it hit me with, that went right through my armor.”

“We need to have Para-Medic take a look at her,” Emerald agreed.

“Let’s grab Double Dealer and go,” I agreed. “Uh… does anypony remember which door we used to get in here?”

“That’s got to be it,” I said. “Look, there’s the broken panel.”

“Third time’s the charm,” Quattro said. “He’d just better not still be stuck in there.”

“Double Dealer, do you read us?” Emerald asked, touching the side of her helmet. “We’re just outside your door. When we restored main power we activated some kind of dormant security systems. We need to leave.”

“Yeah, I noticed!” Dealer snapped. “Did you take out those robots yet? I nearly lost my head when I tried to leave!”

I looked around. “What robots?”

That loud electric whine came from both directions. More of the sleek security robots trotted around the corner, surrounding us. The music started playing again, and again I could almost taste words in it.

“Got any bright ideas?” Emerald whispered.

“Throw Double Dealer at them and hope his husband isn’t too mad when we come back with empty hooves?” Quattro suggested.

“I can hear you, you know,” the pony grumbled.

“It’s… it’s saying…” I muttered, narrowing my eyes. It felt the same as when Destiny had thrown math at me. The computer she’d jammed into my head was doing something. “...it’s ordering them to attack. It’s controlling them.”

“What are you talking about?” Quattro asked.

“I can--” A rush of memory, nothing coherent, just a feeling like a half-remembered dream. “It…” I looked at one of the cameras focused on us. Words came to me from no source, something I’d never learned forcing its way out of my mouth. “It was you who broke my mason plate.”

The robots froze. The music changed timbre.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” Emerald said, looking at the perfectly-still robots standing to both sides.

“What did you do?” Destiny asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “The music is saying… it’s standing down, I think.”

The robots turned and galloped away. The music faded to a few notes that could have come from a music box. It sounded so familiar.

“I’ve heard that music somewhere,” Destiny said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But…”

The main lights shut off, the emergency lighting flickering back to life. Everything dropped into silence.

“Can we please leave and solve the mystery later?” Double Dealer asked. “I haven’t had a decent meal in days.”

“Double Nothing is happy with the outcome,” White Glint said. “And I’m happy to report that when the military came through here, they didn’t find anything strange, because certain ponies were somewhere else on business.”

“Happy enough to pay extra?” Quattro asked. “Did you tell him about the robots and the ghouls and the razor storms? And tell him about the ghouls twice, because on the way back Chamomile had to cut off most of my tail after one bit down and wouldn't let go!”

“Happy enough that he’s going to pull strings to get the warrants on you three buried.” White Glint said. “The official reports will now have them looking for hardened stallion Dashites who were seen fleeing town.”

“Does that mean we can go outside?” I asked.

“It means you can go outside as long as you’re not going to cause trouble,” White Glint agreed. “But you might want to think about getting ready for a little trip.”

I groaned. “Why?”

“A message came in for you,” she said. She produced an envelope, opened, and gave it to me. “This was delivered by courier.”

“You read it?” I asked.

“Of course I did. I wanted to see who knew you were here,” White Glint said. I pulled the letter out and scanned it. “It’s apparently an invitation to visit the Greywings.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“I’ve heard of them,” Quattro said. “They live near here. Sort of hermit mystic types. They built a little place right at the edge of where clouds will hold together. It’s a tough flight to get there. The air’s so thin it’s like you can’t breathe.”

“Why would they live up there?”

“Got me. You’d have to ask them. And you’ve got the chance to do it!” Quattro smiled.

“The invitation is just for Chamomile,” White Glint said. “It should be safe enough. They’re peaceful. The locals sort of take care of them. They don’t have a lot of space to grow their own food, so they rely on donations. It’s almost like a local religion or superstition.”

“I just want to know how they even heard about me,” I muttered. “I’m not exactly famous.”

“It’s probably a good idea to go,” White Glint said. “I made the flight when I was a young mare. I wanted to figure out what to do with my life.”

“Get any good advice?” I asked.

“I learned that when you’re out of breath enough, you start to hallucinate and even old ponies giving you some water and helping you lie down becomes a real experience,” the mare said. “I mostly got perspective. When you see things from that high up, the Enclave and the ground don’t seem so far apart. You start to think about things…”

She trailed off and shook her head.

“Anyway, I don’t know if they’ve ever invited anypony directly. They must have something pretty important to tell you.”

I huffed. “Great, one more mystery I need to add to the pile. Like where my Mom is, why I knew what that music was, how I knew what to say…”

“This is one you can actually get some answers about,” White Glint reminded me.

“We’ll go,” Destiny said. “We can’t figure out the rest right now anyway, right?”

“Just don’t scare them too badly,” Quattro joked. “At their age, having a ghost around might not be great for their hearts.”

Chapter 18 - This Is What You Are

This is going to sound weird coming from a pegasus, but when you live in the Enclave you don’t really think about height much. It’s not like living on the ground with everything above you. The cloud layer is pretty flat, because they’re all the same type of cloud and constantly produced by machines instead of being hoof-packed. If you get into a city, especially an older one, you’ll have whole districts on different levels, but even then the height isn’t a big deal. Up a block is the same thing as West a block, just a different direction.

Getting up to the Greywings felt different. The air thins out and before you know it, you’re struggling to get lift from your wings. My heads-up display was showing all kinds of warnings about the pressure.

“Are you sure the armor’s really giving me oxygen?” I panted, struggling to climb further towards the patch of clouds right up at the edge of where magic and physics working together could make them stick. From underneath it was like a pair of spread wings, feathering out and showing rainbows at the edges when the ice crystals caught the light.

Speaking of which, it was cold. Really cold. Even through the armor I could feel that sense that something was draining the warmth away.

“Life-support is showing all green,” Destiny reported. “Sort of. The systems are all working fine but you’re kind of a mess now that I’ve got more diagnostic tools to look at you. We need to think about long-term solutions at some point. All the patchwork fixes are fraying around the edges.”

“You’re saying that like--” I had to stop to catch my breath. “--like I’m an engineering project instead of a pony.”

“Mm. You’re right. Bad habit. I’m sorry.” Destiny sighed. “You know, before I was a ghost I mostly sat around in labs and poked at problems until they went away. Talking to other ponies wasn’t my strong suit.”

“You did teach magic to Ministry Mares, though,” I joked.

Destiny laughed. “Yeah! I’m still not sure why I needed to teach Twilight Sparkle, of all ponies, such a basic spell. She must have been putting on some kind of act to go along with the project of making a teaching aide.”

“It didn’t feel like an act.”

“What other explanation is there? She got hit on the head too hard and needed secret tutoring to get back her mojo?”

“...What’s mojo?”

“Eh, never mind, it’s a unicorn thing.” A red box popped up and flashed a few times. “We’re approaching what we in the altitude business like to call the ‘Death Zone.’”

“That does not sound like a cool place to be.”

“It’s not. Much higher and it’s not survivable long-term.”

I could feel it in my pinions. It was so cold and dry that it practically felt like a vacuum, like I wasn’t pushing any air at all. Frost was starting to build up on the armor like I was flying through a snowstorm.

“Almost there,” I muttered, the cloud platform looming overhead. “Just a little more…”

I used up everything I had left in one final push, dipping above the level of the clouds and immediately crashing down on the edge, gasping for breath and hoping my fat flank and the half-ton of armor I was wearing wouldn’t sink through the floor. I rolled over onto my back and just rested for a moment, looking up at the sky above. It seemed darker from here, like the stars were closer.

A wavering voice laughed at my performance, cutting through the frigid air. “That was most impressive!”

I managed to sit up enough to look at who was laughing. An old stallion in very warm-looking robes that had faded so much I couldn’t even guess at the original color. He trotted over carefully and offered me a hoof up.

I shook my head. “No thanks. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m big enough that if I lean on you too hard you’ll turn into jelly.” I got up carefully, all too aware of how fragile these clouds looked.

“That’s very kind of you. And stubborn, not to accept help. But being both kind and stubborn has gotten a lot of good done in the world over the years.” He motioned for me to follow him. “Why don’t you come inside? I’m too old to stand out in the weather.” He paused. “Not that we get any. It’s actually too high and too cold to get anything except the wind.”

“Is it any warmer inside?” I asked. I looked past him at the structure woven into the artificial cloud island. It was angle-sided and buttressed, the material so thin and weak that it needed a spider-web of reinforcement just to stay up. Even so, they’d built something that rivaled the largest cloud mansions from back home.

He laughed. “Much.”

It was almost as gloomy inside, but it was also warmer and the air was thicker. When we stepped through the air I felt it like we were pushing through a veil.

“It must take constant work to keep this place from falling apart,” I said. “That’s a pressure curtain, right?”

The old stallion nodded. “We find it’s a bit more comfortable when everything isn’t a struggle. There’s enough of that to go around. Thankfully, here we are privileged to live simple lives of upkeep and chores, with brief moments of excitement when some brave pony brings us a gift basket.”

“Sorry. I, uh, didn’t really bring anything…”

“Nor should you have!” he assured me. “We asked for you to come. You do us a great service by taking time to meet with us.”

He led me out into a large, vaulted room. Soft tapestries of hoof-woven cloud covered every surface to insulate the thin walls. Three other ponies were there, gathered around a raised well of clouds and solid rainbow holding crystals that glowed with warmth, giving light and heat to the hall.

“Everypony, our expected guest has arrived!” the older stallion said. “Now it’s perhaps time for introductions, hm?” He pushed back his hood to reveal whatever mane he’d once sported had migrated to his chin. “I am Tiplo. The others are Vetrena, Groza, and Oblaka. The four of us are the last of the Greywings. You, of course, are Chamomile.”

“It’s a pleasure,” I said, for lack of anything better. “So what’s this all about?”

“We have waited here since before the Enclave existed, since before the day the world burned and the sky fell,” he said.

“If you’re that old, you look amazing for your age.”

Vetrena chuckled and pushed back her hood. She was almost the same color as the faded robes they all wore, though I thought I detected a touch of pink somewhere among all the pale grey. “Not literally us. Our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers.”

“A tale was passed down to us. Perhaps I can explain?” Groza smiled and took off her hood. She had more color than the others, and was either a few years younger or just aged well enough that her braided mane still showed streaks of bright metallic green. “The tapestries on the walls of our hall tell some of our story.”

She walked over to the first. I hadn’t paid much attention to what was actually on them before. They were sort of in that vague, children's-book style that was abstracted just enough from reality that you needed somepony to tell you what you were looking at.

“Our ancestors lived and worked on the ground.” She motioned to ponies gathered together in a room. “They were great scientists and researchers.”

“That skyline,” Destiny interrupted. “I’ve seen it before…”

“You’re not alone?” Oblaka asked with alarm.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you,” Destiny apologized. “I’m just in the armor. It’s complicated. I’m sort of a ghost haunting Chamomile and trying to keep her from getting killed until we’ve gotten some important business sorted out. You can call me Destiny. I was going to keep quiet and just listen, but--”

“Destiny Bray?” Vetrena asked, stepping closer and giving me a critical look. Well, trying to give Destiny a critical look but I was in the line of fire.

“You’ve heard of me?” Destiny asked.

“This explains much,” Oblaka mumbled.

“The reason you might recognize the skyline is that it was the skyline of the Cosmodrome,” Groza said. “Our ancestors worked for BrayTech.”

“That seems…” Destiny hesitated. “I’m trying to calculate the odds but I don’t even know where to start.”

“This was predestined,” Groza said. “We came here before the bombs fell. Our ancestors were given a warning, a prophecy calculated by the greatest mind of the age.”

“Twilight Sparkle?” I guessed.

“Kulaas,” Groza said, with reverence. She stepped over to the next tapestry, showing a massive pyramid and ponies kneeling before it. “It knew the bombs would fall. It knew all this would happen.”

“Kulaas…” Destiny muttered. “It was some kind of computer system. I remember. We were trying to make something more powerful than any Crusader system.” She sounded like some of the fog was clearing from her memory. “We wanted Kulaas to be flexible and innovative like a pony, but we had a lot of trouble with it because it didn’t think like a pony would. It developed its own language that expressed what it was trying to say, but it had concepts and ideas and emotions ponies just don’t possess. Just translating its messages was a full-time job.”

Groza nodded. “That was the job our ancestors performed. And one we still perform.” She moved to the next image. “Kulaas gave us a message that was so simple it must have been painful and difficult for it to express. It told us to flee, to take our families and go as far and as high as we could and await further instructions.”

The image showed the ponies in flight, the founding of the cloud island. Below them, the world burned in Balefire.

“Here we have remained, awaiting instructions and passing time by interpreting the messages we have been left by the Great One.” The fourth image showed ponies in robes reading books, high above it all.

“It’s taken you this long to translate a few messages?” I raised an eyebrow.

Tiplo laughed. “It’s a bit like trying to translate poetry. Each of us can read the same stanza and come up with a different interpretation. Many of them seem to be prophetic.”

“So us coming here was a matter of… prophecy?” Destiny asked.

“No, it was rather more direct than that. We still have some contact with her. From time to time, Kulaas sends the promised instructions,” Tiplo explained. “It’s usually small things. Give a pony certain advice. Refuse to meet another. Allow one to stay and join us.”

I didn’t want to call them crazy. Or obsessive. “And these instructions add up to…?”

“An excellent question,” Tiplo said. “I suspect Kulaas is so far above us that it would be impossible for her to explain, no more than you could explain something to an ant. She is moving small things towards some endgame I cannot see.”

“You inviting me was part of these instructions,” I said. It wasn’t a guess. “Did she say what she wanted from me?”

“Ah, let me show you,” Tiplo said, motioning for me to follow.

He led me through the hall to something like a shrine, so much more solid than the rest of the building that I was half-sure it was a cornerstone anchoring the rest in place. Cloud casings and rainbow circuits formed layers like a pony wrapping themselves up against the cold, like generations adding onto a cloud home until it was a sprawling mess. Down in the core of the pulsing computers I saw something more solid buzzing away, half-hidden by fans and wires.

“This is one of the things we brought from the surface with us,” Tiplo explained.

“I think a long time ago this was a BrayTech terminal,” Destiny said. “What did you do to it?”

“Over time, machines fail,” Tiplo said. “We replace what we can, though what we can craft by hoof is rather crude compared to the original. Along the back wall there is a cabinet of woven wires doing the job of a tiny silicon chip.”

He carefully typed on a keyboard, and an image shimmered to life, wavering and distorted.

“This is the most recent transmission from Kulaas,” he whispered, taking a step back.

Triangles like the ones I’d seen in the SPP tower flickered across the screen. A deep sound like every instrument in an orchestra blaring at once thundered through hidden speakers, and a voice came through. I don’t know what I expected. The voice of a pony? Music?

The speech that thundered out came with such force that it echoed in advance of its arrival, like it was coming into focus, like we were just getting glimpses of words in a sea of meaning that were pushing themselves to the surface.

“OND! GEIN NAAL BRAY-FRON QUALOS BO.
REK OL DII QOLAAS OFAN:
ONIKAAN, MULAAG, QOSTIID.
DII GOLT WUNDUN FUL QAHNAAR VOKUL DO VOD!”

When the last of it faded, I was covering my ears and backed up against the far wall.

“What the buck was that?” I whispered.

“It’s communicating in its own language, remember?” Destiny said. “I caught a little bit of it, but…”

The other Greywings had arrived, and stood with their heads bowed, as if in worship.

“We are to offer you hospitality,” Vetrena said. “And what few gifts we have to give. Knowledge, Power, and Direction. You will need them to vanquish an evil from another era.”

“Great. And how did this master of yours know who I am?”

Destiny piped up. “They were the one at the SPP tower.” She gave me a moment to process that, then continued. “A connection from the ground waiting for that long and then instantly becoming active? Only a computer could do that. A thinking computer, like Kulaas. The letters we saw -- the triangle things, remember? -- they were on this screen too. It must be how it represents its language in writing.”

“Did it hack my brain?” I asked. “Because back in the SPP tower it was really unpleasant and I was saying things I didn’t understand!”

“No,” Destiny said. “You just, well… it’s my fault. I couldn’t do any kind of wipe of the data on your implants. They used to be in my brain before I used them to patch you up.”

I groaned. “That explains why I saw some of your memories…”

“You’re lucky I had the right spare parts lying around at all!” Destiny reminded me. “They’re perfectly good, top-of-the-line! I just… don’t really know how many of my memories are on those chips. Nopony ever did a study on how the brain stores information on memory implants and the consequences of removing them. Or installing them somewhere else. We’re really breaking new ground!”

“Yeah well when I break new ground it always really means I end up in a crater and then drag myself to the hospital!”

“Calm down! The reason you said things that seemed like they were out of the blue is that you were remembering some BrayTech command codes. Ones I don’t know anymore.” Destiny’s voice lowered. “I don’t remember much at all, Chamomile. Whatever memories are on those chips… I wish I had them. I don’t know how much of me was in there, or how much is in the armor, or… how much is gone.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Not your fault,” she whispered. I think she’d be crying if she wasn’t a ghost.

“If memories are a problem, perhaps we can help,” Oblaka said. “We were instructed to give you Knowledge. Kulaas might have meant the memory orb.”

“You’ve got a memory orb?” Destiny asked, perking up a little.

Being a unicorn? That was a little strange. Not a lot of feeling in the horn, sort of like having a new manestyle, just something you noticed once in a while and ignored the rest of the time. Not having wings felt weird, but you know what? That’s nothing compared to having something new stuck to your anatomy.

The memory orb was from a stallion’s perspective, is what I’m trying to get at.

Like the other times I’d been in a memory orb, it was hard to tell exactly where it began. It was like I’d been nodding along to music and only just started paying attention to the lyrics for the first time, or scanning over the pages of a book without reading it until a single word grabs your attention and pulls you into the story right in the middle.

It was cold, and I was intensely aware of the cold because I had some parts more vulnerable to the chill than I was used to. Or my host did, anyway.

“Can you remind me why this is so important?” my host asked. He looked up from his freezing hooves trotting along a cracked sidewalk to a pony I recognized. I’d seen him in another orb, though he looked a little older and a little rounder here.

Destiny’s father sighed. “Karma, you know how important public appearances are. Think about what we’re doing -- the last thing we want is to get the Ministries investigating us.”

“And who could say no to Fluttershy?” A mare was walking alongside Destiny’s father. “The Ministry of Peace set up this event to honor the veterans of the Battle of Stalliongrad. We have to put in an appearance or it would seem…”

“Disloyal?” Karma guessed.

The mare nodded. “The Ministry of Image takes these things seriously. They’re not as compartmentalized and disjointed as the Ministry of Morale. They’d notice if we stepped too far out of line, so we have to play by the rules with them.”

“I guess, Mom,” Karma sighed. “And why is it Destiny didn’t have to come?”

“She asked first,” his Dad said.

“You act like it’s going to be so terrible to have a nice dinner,” Karma’s mother laughed.

The orb was hours long, and pretty soon I was about as bored as my host. It was a memorial for the fallen and a charity dinner for the traumatized survivors. Long speeches about the horrors of war, stories of recovery and healing from the survivors, a few veterans paraded out on stage to tell their own little personal tales of bravery. I was sort of hoping Fluttershy would make an appearance but the mare was nowhere in sight and nopony seemed to actually be expecting her.

After a while it became more about socializing, the big speeches fading and ponies changing tables and meeting in little cliques to talk shop.

“...The Megaspell framework has a lot of potential,” somepony was saying to Karma’s father. “The problem is the press. No matter what applications we come up with, it’s going to be hard to get anypony to sign off on actually using them.”

Karma’s father made a sound in the back of his throat. “I wouldn’t be sure about that. The ministries have pushed just about everything else.”

“Maybe so, but better armor and guns for our troops is easy to push. Reminding ponies about the bloodiest battle of the war and the public backlash against Fluttershy and the rest of the Ministry of Peace isn’t good business.”

“Look on the bright side,” his Dad joked. “It’s only the bloodiest battle of the war so far.”

Something about the way he said that hit me. It was like… what I was seeing and experiencing was a memory, and it was through somepony else’s perception and perspective, and the way the stallion said that sent a chill down my spine and made me feel like I was on the verge of a panic attack.

This memory, this moment, was something Karma Bray had gone over in his head again and again and again. I could feel the echoes. The sharpness in the air. Every detail was in stark contrast.

The speakers squealed with feedback and ponies stopped what they were doing to turn and look at the stage.

The presenter, some local celebrity whose name had been mentioned and who I’d already forgotten about, tried not to move or cry. A long, flat blade pressed against her neck, not quite drawing blood yet. Yet. The zebra holding it was in elaborate robes and seemed very willing to change that situation. More of them in ragged cloaks held rifles, a firing line aimed right at the crowd of donors and businessponies.

The zebra hissed something to the presenter.

“Please--” the terrified pony started. The zebra adjusted her grip on the blade. The presenter whimpered. A drop of blood ran down from the underside of the blade to join the sweat trickling down her coat already.

The zebra hissed something again, more urgently.

The presenter squeezed her eyes shut and started speaking into the microphone, obviously repeating what the zebra was saying. “We are the restless dead of the Battle of Stalliongrad. We remain in the world because of unholy and perverse magic cast against our will. In death we have no clan, no family, and have become vengeful spirits.”

The doors behind Karma burst open. He turned to look. Ponies in uniform stormed in, aiming rifles at the zebras and ordering them to stand down.

The zebra holding the blade urged the presenter into action, whispering harshly into her ear. The pony whimpered and flinched.

“The dead have no fear of a second death,” she said. “Please, just let me--”

The zebra pressed the blade tighter and growled into her ear.

The hostage pony whispered into the microphone. “There are no survivors.”

The machete slashed across her throat, and she fell. Before the mare even hit the ground, the security ponies opened fire. Chatter from assault rifles cut the air and the zebra on stage jerked and danced with the impact before dropping. Ponies in the crowd of well-off aristocrats fainted, screamed, and finally started to move, the security ponies urging them to stay calm and move in single-file.

I got that sense again, that this was a memory Karma had seen every time he closed his eyes. It wasn’t over.

There was movement on the stage.

The zebra with the machete stood up, her eyes glowing green. A third eye opened on her forehead. Something terrible hovered in the air, an unseen presence of death and power that Karma could feel on his horn. I’d felt magic before, from Destiny casting it. This was some kind of spell, but twisted and dark and wrong in ways I didn’t have words for. I don’t even think most unicorns would know what to call it.

The dead zebra got up, hissing.

The presenter twitched and stood, her throat still torn open. A third eye burned on her forehead.

Before the security forces could figure out what to do, the leader raised her weapon like a general ordering a charge, and the undead bolted off the stage and into the crowd.

“Get behind me,” Karma yelled, pushing his mother towards the doors. I felt a familiar spell -- which I admit is a weird thing to say as a pegasus -- and a shield of shimmering white-purple light appeared in front of him. One of the undead zebra slammed into it, sliding along the curved surface like it was glass instead of pure magic.

“This is the last time I go anywhere without a gun, no matter what your mother says it does to the lines of my suit,” his father quipped, before firing a burst of force through the barrier and flinging the zombie away.

“You need to get Mom out of here,” Karma said.

“We’re all getting out of here,” the elder Bray reassured him. He fired another bump of force and knocked a zombie through a table. Celery soup flew into the air and splattered across the floor in a green rain.

The robed zebra, the leader, was suddenly in front of Karma, appearing from the darkness at the edge of his shield. She lifted her sword up and brought it down, chopping into the edge of the barrier. It should have bounced off. I knew that much. The lesson Destiny had with Twilight Sparkle had taught me one important thing about magical barriers - they weren’t physical objects. They were field effects. They could be bent, they could be neutralized, but they couldn’t be shattered, they couldn’t be torn, and they definitely couldn’t be cut.

The sword raised sparks as it cut through the barrier, ignoring the rules. Karma could feel it in his horn and I could feel it through him. It was like the sword had some kind of terrible weight and sharpness to it, like it carried the idea of being sharp, and that idea could shape reality.

The blade slashed through the barrier. The purplish-white light faltered.

Karma was shoved aside. His mother stood over him.

Blood splattered into his eyes, and everything went dark.

“What the buck was that?!” I gasped, tearing myself away from the orb and stumbling away from the cursed thing. “Why the buck would anypony want to record that?!”

They’d put us in what I was generously calling a lounge. It was full of the kind of furniture and pillows and blankets that everypony sort of ended up. A fainting couch made of patchy clouds, a high-backed chair that made farting sounds every time you sat in it, a really weird kind of kitschy thing that looked like somepony had hollowed out a giant plastic apple and stuck a seat cushion inside. Two mismatched coffee tables.

“That was the night Mom died,” Destiny whispered. “I stayed back at the lab because I thought it was going to be stupid and boring. I didn’t even get any real work done. I could have been there with them, but I decided to just fool around instead…”

“Those were the same things we saw onboard that ship, weren’t they?” I asked, trying to get comfortable in the plastic apple chair thing. “What are they?”

“You heard them,” Destiny said. I felt a shrug from her. “They were veterans of the Battle of Stalliongrad. It was the first time a megaspell was deployed in battle. It was a healing spell that brought back even the most badly injured as long as they had a tiny spark of life left in them. It resulted in widespread severe Wartime Stress Disorder and the highest fatality count of any battle in the war.”

That didn’t make sense on the face of things. “Because they got healed?”

“I remember the statistics. Most battles, the winning side could expect ten percent losses, and the losing side lost maybe twice that. At Stalliongrad it was more like three times that. There were the initial casualties, then they had to fight the battle all over again. Civilian agencies tried to paint it as a big success and a revolution and battlefield medicine, but we had our own sources.”

“It sounded like they hated that they were brought back.”

“The way I heard it, their supply lines were totally destroyed and their chain of command was shattered. The survivors retreated into the caves and hills and just… kept fighting. I remember that it was a constant security problem.” Destiny sighed. “Karma hated them after what happened with Mom. I did too. I didn’t know how far it would push him.”

“Is that why he did the whole, you know. Turning SIVA into a monster… thing?”

“We should have sent him for real therapy,” Destiny said. “Extracting memories to erase trauma was supposed to be the next big thing, but I guess it didn’t work. We couldn’t exactly hire somepony from the Ministries to do it.”

“It felt like a memory of a memory,” I said, remembering the echo. “Maybe they extracted the original into this orb, but what about all the other stuff around it? All the times he thought about that day, or had a nightmare about it, or just sat around hating zebras?”

“Like I said, we should have gotten an expert,” Destiny admitted. “It probably ended up just making him less stable.”

“Envoy, we heard you speaking. Are you done with the orb?” Groza looked into the room through the curtain of beads that separated it from the hall.

“Definitely,” I said, sighing. She nodded and took the orb, letting Tiplo and Vetrena step past.

“I hope the knowledge was useful for you,” Tiplo said. “None of us can access the orbs, so their secrets are lost to us.”

“There are some things you’re better not seeing,” I told him.

“Or remembering,” Destiny agreed.

“We were also told to give you power,” Tiplo said. “We debated amongst ourselves for a time about what that meant. The phrase Kulaas used could refer to almost anything. Strength, truth, the right to rule, even the measure of those things instead of the things themselves. But, as we were to give you a gift, we decided we should give you one that best encompasses every form of power.”

Tiplo motioned to Vetrena, and she stepped forward with a bundle wrapped in a scratchy brown blanket. Holding it high, she knelt down and let Tiplo unwrap it. I don’t know what I was expecting. I should have known if anything represented power, it would be a gun. It was a rifle, almost as long as my whole body, topped with a thick square scope and covered in blocks of plastic and metal joined by wires. It looked like somepony had tried building a weapon and a terminal at the same time and lost track of which was which.

“I hope this is acceptable,” Tiplo said. “Oblaka thought we should hit you with lightning as a very literal form of power, but he was in the minority.”

“This is… how do you have this?” Destiny asked. I felt her magic caress the long rifle, like she was greeting an old friend.

“Our ancestors took it from the archive before they left,” Tiplo said. “Kulaas thought we might need it.”

“It’s just a gun,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like we can’t use a gun, but there are a lot of guns just sort of around.”

“DRACO is different,” Destiny said. “She’s not just a weapon. She’s got more networking and computing equipment in her than… how much do you know about Pipbucks?”

“I’ve heard of them,” I said. “Sort of a wearable portable terminal, right?”

“Sure, that’s a decent enough description. They had a lot of useful features built in. Not much of a computer, but they had a bunch of spell talismans a pony could trigger. It would manage your saddlebags, create a map, track enemies, and it even had a spell that could aim a weapon for you. Plus radio, rad counter, medical status… all on top of being almost indestructible.”

“Sounds convenient.”

“DRACO was my attempt to put some of those ideas into another form,” Destiny explained. “It was supposed to be the ultimate one-mare battle rifle. We started with the idea that it would be a spotter for the pony pulling the trigger. It could outline targets, give range information, see through light smoke and fog… but we eventually evolved the idea past that. This was the model we presented to the Ministry of Wartime Technology, and they hated it.”

I picked it up gently, looking it over. It was blocky, with wires and attachments all over it. I could see a paper label, yellow with age and hoof-lettered. Digital Rifle, Aim-COrrecting.

“They said it was too risky to give it to soldiers. Enemies might capture it and get the maps and radio frequencies and stored transmissions in the rifle’s database. Never mind how effective it might be! They wanted big explosions, not precision!”

“Okay, so it’s a really good gun--” I started.

“Gun, flare launcher, smoke generator, water purifier, entrenching tool, compass, laser microphone, radio receiver, tracking device--” Destiny listed.

“Right but what did Kulass or whoever think we needed it for right now?” I interrupted before she could continue the list.

“I’m not sure,” Destiny admitted. “I’m just glad to see it again.”

“Kulaas,” Tiplo said, being more careful with how he pronounced the name than I had been. “Left map coordinates and data in the weapon’s database. It has one of the few accurate maps of the surface to be found outside of military control.”

“If it has a map of the surface, that means we can find the BrayTech Cosmodrome,” Destiny gasped. “That’s it, Chamomile! We can use DRACO to find my old lab! And if we do that, we can figure out a way to neutralize SIVA!”

“A cure?” I asked, feeling maybe a little more hope than I should’ve.

“I hope so. If nothing else, it’s our best bet at finding a way to shut down that monster my brother created,” Destiny said. “We can’t do it with lasers and bullets, but we can do it with the power of science!”

“Just one little problem. How are we going to actually get to the surface?”

I felt Destiny’s joy wash away a little.

“Buck,” she swore.

Chapter 19 - Way To Fall

“This map is amazing!” Herr Doktor crowed, moving to get a better look at the screen. For as much as it looked like a pleasure cruiser, the Raven’s Nest was hiding a ship of war under its wooden hull.

“Okay, and this isn’t the bridge?” I said, ignoring the scientist and trying to get things right before I embarrassed myself again.

“It’s the Combat Information Center, or CIC,” Emerald Gleam explained. “The bridge is where somepony goes to manage where the ship’s heading. This is where you go to manage the ship in combat.”

“And to do strategic planning,” White Glint said. “Especially when we’re docked, this is the heart of the Nest.” She motioned to the central table, which was mostly a big screen facing upwards. Right now it was showing a map of the ground somewhere far below us.

“How do we know where we are?” I asked. “We can’t see the ground from here.”

“Ah, excellent question!” Herr Doktor said. “Your DRACO rifle is a superb device! It was able to estimate our current location thanks to the position of the local SPP tower and confirmed it by calculating latitude and longitude by using the fixed stars and accounting for drift from its stored astrogation charts!”

“I’d like it better if you hadn’t activated its electronic warfare suite when you tried to transfer the data,” White Glint said. “It was trying to fire chaff. Indoors.”

“A minor misunderstanding,” Doktor said dismissively.

“So we can use this map to go down to the surface?” I asked.

“We can use this map to plot an infiltration point,” Doktor corrected. “If the surface is as dangerous as rumors suggest, it would be best to minimize the amount of time you need to spend there. Deploying as close to the target as possible will help with that.”

“That’s not the hard part,” Quattro said, from the doorway. She’d decided to lean on the wall near the door, probably because it made her look cool. Between that and the constant sunglasses I was starting to think she was trying a little too hard. “If it was just about knowing what was under us, we could dip down and have a look.”

“You’re talking about the lightning shield, yes?” Doktor sighed.

“It protects us from the surface,” I said. “It keeps monsters from getting up here.”

“It also keeps ponies from going down there,” Emerald put in. “I know you’re excited by the idea of going to the surface but it’s not some easy little trip. The military doesn’t want ponies going back and forth to and from the surface, and for good reason. It’s not safe.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Destiny said. “The only chance we have at finding a real way to combat SIVA is to get to the BrayTech labs.”

“It’s my best chance for a cure, too,” I reminded her. “I really don’t want to be scrambling around trying to find a fusion core again. Losing one leg is bad enough.”

“We might at least be able to find a treatment option that doesn’t require you to be in the armor at all times,” Destiny agreed. “I don’t want to promise you something I can’t deliver.”

“I’ll take a tiny chance of a cure over no chance,” I said. “If I stay here and do nothing except worry, things can only get worse, right? So I have to go down to the surface. Then I can find a way to help myself, and my mom.”

“Like I said, easier said than done,” Quattro sighed. “I’m no Dashite, but I’ve known a few ponies with that kind of hero complex. The desire to go down to the surface and help the unfortunate souls down there... It’s easier said than done.”

“The lightning rods are both weapon and observation post,” Doktor said, starting to pace. “Attacking them head-on would simply result in a shocking experience.” She giggled a bit at her own joke.

“We’ve seen them in action,” Destiny said. “Miniature versions, anyway.”

“The full-size ones are an order of magnitude stronger,” Quattro said.

“Well, Dashites get down to the surface somehow, right?” I asked. “There has to be some way to do it.”

“Sure,” Quattro said. “Just strip down and hope nopony is looking.”

Emerald sighed. “What she means is, the towers are designed to signal an alert and track energetic magical signatures. Powered armor, energy weapons, electronics. A pony with no equipment at all could slip past them.”

“But then they’d be going down into Tartarus armed with their wits and nothing else,” Quattro said. “You can see why that presents a difficulty.”

“Because I need this armor or the infection goes back to eating me alive,” I said.

“That and I wouldn’t want you to go unarmed into the kind of dangers there are on the surface,” Quattro said, stepping over to pat me on the shoulder.

“The Exodus armor produces a much larger magical signature than even traditional powered armor,” Destiny said. “It’s unavoidable with the T-fields it uses for… well, for basically everything. Even if I shut them down during a descent, there would still be power leakage from the fusion core.”

“I suspect Chamomile herself might present a target,” Doktor muttered. “While they aren’t traditional cybernetics, they might well be enough for the lightning rods to lock on. We should assume the worst-case scenario, that there is no way to eliminate her magical signature entirely.”

“My old command codes won’t get us through,” Emerald said. “I never had that level of clearance. Since Tilt Fuse was killed, the base is on alert, so we shouldn’t assume we can infiltrate it to get new codes.”

“Hm…” Doktor hummed to herself, still pacing. “If one cannot avoid a problem or go around it, they must go through it. I believe I have a solution! If we combine compressed air tanks and the patch kits for the Nest’s lightning-resistant flotation envelope… yes! Ballutes! Inflatable shields! They should hold up to at least one or two strikes. More than enough to drop down to the surface!”

“How many can you rig up?” Quattro asked. “I don’t want Chamomile going alone. I might tease her, but I don’t want her getting hurt.”

Doktor rubbed her chin. “I will have to see to our supply of material. I think… perhaps enough for three sets.” She muttered to herself and walked out of the room, arguing with herself about shape and material strength.

“And how would we get back up again?” Emerald asked, once the eccentric scientist had left. “I’m fine with escorting Chamomile into a dangerous area, but travel from the surface is even more restricted.”

White Glint sighed. “I might have some contacts in the area, if they’re still alive.”

“You say that like you don’t want to ask them for help,” Destiny said.

“I don’t,” White Glint said firmly. “Unsung isn’t the kind of pony you want to owe a favor to. I’ll send a message through an old dead drop and… well, it’s the best I can do.”

“Even if that ends up being a dud, we might find something at the Cosmodrome,” Destiny said. “Maybe we could even try getting into the SPP tower at ground level and flying up the interior void.”

“If it was that easy, ponies would be in and out of there all the time,” Quattro said.

“There are regular scouting missions down to the surface,” Emerald reminded them. “We might be able to sneak back that way.”

“Looks like it’s going to be another mission where we have to wing it,” Quattro sighed.

“And you’re sure this will work?” I asked.

“A cocoon-style ballute like this should protect you quite well,” Doktor said. “Let me just finish the last weld. At least this material is less tricky than with Quattro’s armor…”

I sighed and tried to relax and not think about what might be happening inside me while she had most of the armor sitting on a bench. I couldn’t get down to the surface soon enough. Destiny had been quiet every time I asked her about a cure. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I could tell just looking at my hoof that I might be asking for the impossible. She was hovering over Herr Doktor to keep her from breaking anything. And to avoid my questions.

Para-Medic offered me another bottle of water.

“This one’s got electrolytes,” the medical pony whispered. “Let me know if you need any painkillers, okay? The Buck should keep you comfortable for a while, and it has fewer side effects than using more Med-X.”

I nodded and sipped at the water. It tasted like somepony had put in a spoonful of salt and tried to hide it with sugar and lemon juice.

“The trick is wrapping it around your center of gravity,” Doktor explained. “Otherwise you would tumble uncontrollably.”

“A tumble might actually help with dispersing a lightning strike’s energy,” Destiny noted.

“And the G-forces would knock her unconscious, or leave her dizzy enough that she wouldn’t be able to pull out of the dive through the cloud layer,” Doktor countered. “And I believe you have a vested interest in keeping her from being sick inside that helmet, hmm?”

She tapped the floating helmet with a small wrench.

At the same time, an alarm bell blared.

“That wasn’t my fault!” Doktor yelled, before anyone could blame her.

Emerald flew into the main hold, glancing back behind her like she was being chased. “We’ve got serious trouble!” she yelled. “Everypony up on deck!”

Before I could even ask one question she was gone.

I rolled onto my hooves and ran after her, Destiny trailing behind me. The Nest wasn’t a large ship, but by the time I was back out in the open I was winded more from panic than actual effort. Quattro spotted me and waved me over to the railing at the edge of the deck, pointing up into the sky over the city.

A ship loomed there, balanced on three captured storms.

“That’s the same ship that destroyed Cirrus Valley,” I said, feeling my blood run cold.

Quattro nodded. “Looks like they’ve decided to pay us a visit.”

“Do you think they’re chasing after us? Maybe they just let us go last time so they could track us and figure out--”

“Chamomile a few days ago we killed the wannabe warlord who was keeping this town under his hoof,” Quattro reminded me. “I was hoping things would cool down if we decided to lie low but it seems like they’re just heating up.”

“The locals must have called for help,” I agreed.

“Wrong,” Emerald said. “Destiny, you’ve got a radio in there, right?”

“Sure, why?” Destiny asked.

“Tune into the local military channel. I’ll give you the frequency.” Emerald rattled off the numbers.

“One second,” Destiny said, before her voice was replaced with the squeal and hiss of a radio being tuned.

“--Not required. Thank you for your offer of assistance, but everything is under control,” said a mare with an accent that made me think of ice and steel.

“Under Skyguard Order 104, Section B, Paragraph 1-A, should a command be vacant, a flag officer may assume command if they deem it necessary,” a smooth voice retorted. I’d recognize it anywhere. It was Polar Orbit, the pony who’d ordered my hometown destroyed. My grip on the railing tightened. There was a crack. The wood under my right forehoof had shattered. “As you have not re-established order by finding and punishing those responsible for the death of Governor Tilt Fuse, as well as other sundry crimes including the murder of other military officers, I deem it necessary to assume command.”

“Don’t go quoting regulations at me!” the first voice snapped. “Your request is denied. I’m ordering you to leave our airspace. If you want to try pushing rank, you come back here when you have orders in writing!”

“Are they really having an argument about the rules?” I muttered.

“That’s pretty much what the military is all about,” Quattro said.

“Never trust anypony who can quote a section and paragraph number at you,” Emerald said. “It usually means they think they found some clever loophole. Or they’re a lawyer. Either one is bad.”

“It looks like they’re taking this seriously,” Quattro said.

Armored ponies were taking wing from the military dock, flying past us in formation and making a big show of being seen. They sent out more troops than I could easily count -- at least thirty of them flew in tight wings and formed a moving blockade in the incoming warship’s path.

“So what are the odds they pack up and go away?” Quattro asked.

A single red shape took off from the Juniper, launching into the air trailing a thick plume of magic. The armored ponies in the air swooped towards it, twisting their showy patrol paths to close in on it from all sides.

“Is that a pony?” I asked, growing less sure as I looked.

The red shape sparkled. I could feel it, like the instant before lightning hits. A massive beam as bright as the sun lanced out, slicing a path through the flying ponies. They scattered, but it had been too late to run by the time they knew what was going on. The red shape shot through the space they’d evacuated at impossible speed, swooping down low towards the city.

“That-- that shot might as well have come from a battleship!” Emma gasped. “How can he fire on them like that?!”

Quattro shook her head. “I don’t think he cares the way you do.”

The red figure shot past us, only a few blocks away. I could see it like everything had suddenly gone into slow motion. There was a pony there, but you’d be forgiven for missing them. A helmet was about the only portion that was visible, the rest was a machine the size of a house. It was like a swollen approximation of a classic pegasus charger, the lance replaced with a long cannon, the shield glowing with runes, legs replaced by booster engines with nozzles big enough to walk into, and huge boxy shapes where the wings should be. It had the aerodynamics of a brick, but it turned at impossible speed by bullying its way through the air, taking a sharp corner and shooting up into the air. A thunderclap shook the air around us, the shockwave blowing past with the force of a punch to the chest.

The scattered pegasus ponies in the air regrouped, keeping distance and firing at the red horror. Their shots never even reached it, splattering like streams of water on a magical shield. Armored doors opened on one of the boxy containers the thing carried, revealing a dozen launch tubes.

It fired a missile towards the center of the group, an obvious miss that wasn’t going to come close to the soldiers. They ignored it, until it reached them and erupted in flame, firing miniature missiles in every direction. The whistling rockets careened into the formation, blasting them out of the sky. Even more of the explosives found their way into the city, exploding into city blocks and streets.

The few remaining ponies still flying broke and ran, scattering and bolting for the safety of the military base. The red shape flashed through the sky uncontested.

“I don’t think they’re going to leave quietly,” Destiny understated.

“I’m a big fan of this room,” I said. “My favorite part is how it’s in the middle of the ship so there’s a bunch of armor around us.”

The map of the surface that had been on the main table of the CIC had been replaced with a rough sketch of Thunderbolt Shores, with the Juniper a red triangle looming at the edge opposite the military base.

“How bad is it?” Emma asked, looking over the table. She seemed to be able to glean more information than I could from the symbols and lines drawn over the map.

“Bad,” White Glint muttered. She took a deep breath before continuing. “I’m waiting on a call to tell me exactly how bad it is, but there are casualties everywhere, and ponies are already starting to riot.”

“They should be evacuating,” I said.

“Ponies don’t do what you expect when they’re scared,” Destiny said. “During the war, ponies would just keep doing the stupidest things just out of fear. I remember…” her voice went distant, the floating helmet wobbling. “There was a rumor of a bread shortage, but there was plenty for everypony… until some ponies bought a lot of bread because they thought it wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Then other ponies saw the empty shelves. There was a stampede, and ponies got trampled alive just because they wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“There are also a lot of grudges to go around,” White Glint said. “Ponies weren’t happy with the military and there hasn’t been enough time since Tilt Fuse died for all those embers of anger to cool entirely.”

“At least nopony’s mad at us,” I said.

“Are you sure about that?” White Glint growled. “You haven’t been listening to the right channel, then!”

She turned up the volume on the radio.

“Bring me Chamomile! I know she’s here!” somepony shouted. I felt like I should recognize the voice, especially since I’d gotten them very upset. “That mule killed my sister!”

She turned the volume back down when he erupted into swearing.

“Rain Shadow,” Emerald said.

I groaned. “Why in Tartarus is he here?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s here for you,” White Glint said. “And somepony gave him a new toy to play with.”

“You’re bucking kidding me,” I leaned on the table, head in my hooves. “He’s the one piloting that heap of engines and guns?”

“Not a heap, Assault Armor!” Herr Doktor said, trotting in and throwing a bundle of papers onto the table. “I knew I’d seen something like it in my files! Quite a distinctive project, as you can imagine. The Heaven’s Sword Area Dominance Weapon. The original project called for a very small crew, as small as one pony, to defend a huge volume of airspace.”

“So…” I sat back. “They strapped a bunch of guns to the pony, then added booster rockets so they could get anywhere in that airspace, and some kind of shield to keep them safe?”

“Exactly. Attractively simple idea, no? Simply take a suit of powered armor and exaggerate the firepower and speed. Of course it has massive logistical problems. The power consumption curve is wasteful in the extreme, and I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of magical and physiological stress the pilot must be under. The acceleration alone would be bone-breaking!”

“I guess that doesn’t matter as long as you hate somepony enough,” Quattro said. “They probably couldn’t find anypony else willing to strap themselves in.”

“Raven’s Nest, come in,” the radio blared, with the iron-hard voice of the mare I’d heard arguing with Polar Orbit.

White Glint grabbed a microphone. “This is Captain White Glint,” she said. “I take it you’ve held the vote, Commander Farsight?”

“The actions of Polar Orbit and the Juniper are considered a rogue military takeover by the city’s civilian government,” Farsight said. “As the city’s legitimate defense force, we will defend it, even if it means repelling an act of aggression by other members of the military.”

“That could be difficult, with that monster flying overhead. Did you consider my offer?”

“You are authorized to deploy within city limits. We’ll discuss payment later when lives aren’t on the line.”

“Agreed. We’ll do our best to stop it.”

“Good hunting,” Farsight said, before the line went quiet.

“Do we have any kind of plan to stop the Heaven’s Sword?” Quattro asked, flipping through the papers Herr Doktor had dropped on the table. “I’m not seeing a section labeled ‘weaknesses’.”

“The weakest part is the pilot,” Herr Doktor said. “You might be able to get him to knock himself out with his own maneuvers.”

“Good idea,” Emerald agreed. “There’s no way he’s had enough experience with it to know how to pilot it safely.”

“We shouldn’t get involved,” Destiny said.

Everypony turned to look at the ghost, me included.

Destiny ignored them. “We have the map we need of the surface. We have a way down. It’s not like he can follow us. We should leave while there’s still infighting and he’s distracted. We could probably slip out of the city pretty easily.”

“If we do that, a lot of ponies will get hurt,” I reminded her.

“So?” Destiny bobbed in what I guess was supposed to be a shrug. “I don’t feel great about that, but it’s not our responsibility. We need to focus on our goals. If we don’t stop SIVA, nopony will. That’s way more lives at stake.”

“Rain Shadow is literally screaming my name!” I pointed vaguely towards the outside. “How is this not my responsibility?!”

“And what if you get killed?!” Destiny snapped. “You can’t fight something like that on your own!”

“She won’t be alone,” Emerald said. “She’ll have me and Quattro there.”

“We’ll bring her back alive,” Quattro promised. “We’ve got something this Heaven’s Sword doesn’t.”

“Luck?” I guessed.

Quattro winked and pointed at me. “We haven’t gotten killed yet! I’ve got half of a plan. If you’re really feeling lucky, it’ll work perfectly.”

I tried to ignore the boxy ballute pack between my wings. There hadn’t been time to remove it. I just hoped it wasn’t going to give Destiny ideas about bailing on the team and flying off for the surface like an idiot Dashite going after a cute mare she saw playing in the dirt.

“The main gun is the Heaven’s Sword’s most dangerous weapon, but it’s unsuited for firing on individual ponies,” Herr Doktor said over the radio. Even with the storm at a low point there was enough interference to make her voice crackle. “It’s more of an anti-ship weapon. Of course, danger is relative. The missiles will be more than enough to kill you if they hit directly. Try to avoid that.”

“Great advice,” I said. “I’ll do my best not to die, thanks.”

“I’m in place,” Quattro said. “Do you need me to send you the location?”

“DRACO is still tracking you,” I said, glancing at the blue triangle. “I’ve got eyes on Rain Shadow, too.” He hadn’t seen me yet. The red shape of the Heaven’s Sword was distant enough that the blue of my armor was at least a little camouflage against the sky. “Emerald?”

“For the record, I think this is a bad plan and I can’t believe Commander Farsight is going along with it,” Emerald said.

“Noted, soldier,” Quattro said with mock formality. “We’ll have that objection entered into your file.”

“At least you’re not the bait,” I said. “Imagine how I feel.”

“At least you’re not attached to the bait and hoping she doesn’t get herself killed,” Destiny muttered. “Two hundred years doing my duty and I’m going to end up blown apart because somepony can’t see the big picture.”

“Speaking of bait, let’s see if I can get Rain’s attention,” I said. I highlighted him with DRACO’s targeting laser and switched on my communications. “Hey, I heard you were looking for a fight. I found one if you want it!”

The Heaven’s Sword did a maneuver that must have cost Rain years of his life, cutting the engines and flipping in midair before starting the burn again at full power, banking at a sharp angle towards me, following the laser like I’d intended.

“You!” Rain screamed. “I knew you’d still be here! I’m going to get revenge for what you did!”

“You know, I liked your sister better,” I taunted. “Snow had a great flank and a better personality than you.”

“That’s a little below the belt,” Emerald warned.

“Most flanks are, Emma,” I retorted.

“I’m going to die, again, attached to a pervert,” Destiny groaned.

DRACO flashed a warning, like I couldn’t see the giant red thing coming right for me. I turned tail, and an arrow popped up in my HUD. I followed it, not knowing what it was for, and an energy beam lanced through the space I’d been flying in.

“I’m using DRACO’s electronics warfare suite to try and get you breathing room,” Destiny said, obviously concentrating. Windows popped up and vanished almost as fast as they’d come, and I had no idea how she was reading them so quickly. The rifle’s barrel whirred and tilted to the right, firing three times on its own. Flares launched out, quickly falling behind me and to my side. Missiles chased after them, breaking away from my contrail to follow the new targets.

“I can see why you were so excited about this gun!” I shouted, diving low. The Heaven’s Sword shot past me, easily moving at twice my speed. Rain pulled it into a sharp bank, trying to get back on me.

“You being slower is actually making it difficult for him to attack,” Emerald noted. “He can’t drop into a hover, so he’s going to have to try and cross your flight path.”

“Bring him closer to me,” Quattro said. “Those turns will give us a chance for the plan to work.”

I didn’t respond. Even if he was having trouble keeping me in his sights, all it would take was one lucky shot. Speaking of which, I turned in midair and tried to get a bead on him. DRACO adjusted for my bad aim, but the shot just bounced off of that magic shield. I shook my head and ran for the cloudbank where Quattro was hiding.

Another wave of missiles streaked past me, bursting in midair and scattering shrapnel. Destiny threw a shield around us, blocking the worst of it.

“Hit the chaff!” I yelled.

DRACO responded without my needing to touch the trigger, firing shells ahead of us that turned into a cloud of metal confetti. Whatever sensors Rain had on the Heaven’s Sword, they were useless when I dove into the clouds, burrowing into them.

He shot past again, and I could see his confusion in the way he wobbled in flight, trying to cut speed as much as possible to find where I’d gone.

There was motion to his left and he flipped his machine into another bone-bruising multiple-G maneuver, chasing after the blip.

Unfortunately for him, the blip wasn’t me.

“He’s spotted me,” Quattro said. “Good thing I’m faster than you. It’ll take him a while to notice he’s got the wrong mare.”

“Just make sure to bring him back this way,” I said. “The timing is gonna be tight.”

“Trust me, I don’t want him on me all day,” Quattro said. Missiles streaked towards her, but unlike my fat flank needing every trick in the book to stay ahead of them, she avoided them so deftly it looked effortless. She started circling back around, and I readied myself.

I watched Quattro zip into line to pass right by me… and then I saw the massive beam hit. The light blinded me, washing out my display as she vanished in the storm of deadly energy.

“No!” I gasped.

A silvery ball tumbled away from the beam, blackened and flaking away. After a moment it popped like a balloon, Quattro flying away with the surface of her armor smoking.

“That was close!” Quattro said. “Tell Doktor the ballutes work, briefly!”

Rain shot past her, starting to slow as much as possible and trying to turn without breaking something. I jumped out when he got close, pouncing onto the Heaven’s Sword and holding on tight.

“Hey there!” I said. “Were you looking for me?”

He tried to look over his shoulder at what I’d grabbed onto. The big glowing shield. This close, I was inside the field it generated. I could feel how hard the thing was working, hot enough to raise blisters if I hadn’t been armored.

Before he could do anything smart, I snapped the blade out of my leg and drove the knife into the shield generator, slicing through steel and magical circuits effortlessly. Magic smoke poured out in a rainbow of colors, and something inside the generator exploded, tearing panels free and erupting in flame. I felt it detach, explosive bolts pushing it free, and kicked myself away before it could drag me down.

“Shields are down, Emma!” I shouted.

“I’m relaying targeting information to the Shiranui,” she reported. “Get clear!”

I flew down, needing as much distance and speed as a dive could get me.

The Heaven’s Sword started to turn back towards me, and the sky lit up. All the way from the military base, a beam cut through the air, boiling away the clouds in its path. It struck the assault armor’s right weapons bay and the box of munitions and missiles erupted like a volcano, blasting apart with force that rattled my teeth.

The Heaven’s Sword’s engines cut out, and it started falling.

“We got him!” I yelled.

The machine drifted down, falling slowly and tumbling on the uneven lift from what had to be dozens of talismans designed to reduce the weight of the massive Assault Armor. It turned towards me and the open, empty hatch where Rain Shadow had been seated gaped like a yawning mouth.

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed, in the same moment he slammed into my back. Even DRACO seemed surprised, the rifle playing a confused jingle and displaying alert messages. I didn’t really need the warning because I could feel him grabbing my wings and yanking them up from underneath.

“Let go of me!” I shouted. I rolled and kicked, trying to throw him off, but he had me in a solid winglock, and the angle meant I could barely see him, much less reach him.

“We’re falling!” Destiny warned.

“I know we’re falling!” I yelled. “Damnit, Rain, let go!”

“I’ll take you with me all the way to Tartarus!” he growled.

A window popped up showing a rapidly decreasing number.

“We need to deploy the ballute, but he’s blocking it!” Destiny said. “If we drop down into the firing range of the lightning rods without deploying, we’ll be fried!”

I still had my disturbingly natural-feeling hoof-blade deployed and tried to stab back at him, but I was going to have to dislocate my shoulder if I wanted to get the angle right. The number started flashing red and black.

“I’ve got an idea,” Destiny said. “I need you to lower your head and trust me!”

She didn’t need to say anything else. I moved my head, and Destiny’s magic shield appeared in front of me. DRACO whirred and chirped and finally fired. The shell hit the shield and bounced back, going right over my lowered head. Rain Shadow yelled in pain and let go.

“I wasn’t sure that would actually work,” Destiny sighed. “Let’s get that ballute deployed before--”

I felt it coming. Every hair in my mane tried to stand on end. I grabbed for the manual deployment handle, yanking it as fast as I could. I wish my reaction times were a little better. The pack on my back popped open, the balloon of lightning-resistant material just starting to inflate before the bolt hit.

The shock made my heart skip a beat, blue traces of electric current and sparks surrounding me, the only light I saw when my HUD went dark and I was plunged into blackness. The ballute started to deflate, tangling around me like a silver net, and I fell further and faster than I ever had before, with no idea where I’d land.

Chapter 20 - Over Under Sideways Down

Memories from other ponies feel different than my own. They’re sharp and solid and frozen in place like ice. Maybe that’s because all the ones I’ve seen have been recordings fixed into place with silicon and glass. You’d think being like that would make them more real than my own memories, but there was something indescribably alive about my own thoughts that the recordings just didn’t have. It was the difference between seeing the picture of a bird, still on the page and in such focus that you could count every feather and take all afternoon examining the patterns on its wings; and seeing that bird in your garden. A few moments right in front of your eyes, maybe lingering for whole minutes at a time, but never really still, and eventually it ends and flits away and you’re left with an impression of the thing that’s greater than the sum of its parts, even if you couldn’t count the feathers.

That’s how I knew I was dreaming. Even with the cold biting into me, I could feel that artificial too-perfect edge that made it almost like an album of preserved moments than a continuous experience.

Also I was a unicorn, and a distant and mostly unconscious part of me knew that wasn’t quite right.

“Did we really have to come all the way out to Stalliongrad?” Destiny asked from my lips, her voice higher-pitched and less sure than I was used to hearing. “They used to send ponies here to punish them!”

“It’s about as far from Canterlot as we can get,” her father said. Really, it was far from everything. They were trudging through the tundra towards a brightly-painted marker and a few shipping containers that had been delivered so recently they hadn’t even been covered in snow yet. “You know the Boss Mare was getting really worried about the Ministries looking over our shoulders.”

“She’s worried about everything,” Destiny said. “Ponies are saying the war isn’t going to last. It’s just bluffing on both sides. Nopony wants to fight, they just don’t want to back down first.”

“I hope they’re right,” her father said. “The Boss isn’t too sure. She showed me a few things that made me think…” he stopped in the fetlock-deep snow and looked up at the sky. “She told me ‘ponies haven’t seen enough of the horrors of war to understand why it needs to be avoided.’”

Destiny laughed. “She says that like she’s not a pony!”

Her father turned to her and smiled, reaching over to ruffle her mane.

“Dad, no! You’re getting snow down my neck!”

“She means well. And when things do calm down, we’ll be thankful for the privacy. And the cheap land! We’ve got enough acreage out here to build anything we want! We’ll have to work out of a little prefab while things are being built, but I’ve got plans.”

“Is the prefab here?” Destiny asked, following her dad to the marker. It was just a length of wood, spray-painted in neon to stand out from the snow and driven into the wood to give delivery ponies something to see when they started dropping off supplies like the shipping crates in a loose circle around them.

“Not yet. I wanted to bring you out here before we started changing things. I wanted you to be here for the most important moment of this whole enterprise, Destiny.”

“What moment?” Destiny asked, confused.

He picked up a shovel. “The day we first break ground on the BrayTech Cosmodrome!” He knelt down and offered the shovel to her. Destiny picked it up and I felt the weight in my hooves. It felt momentous, even then. “I want you to be the first one to start changing this world to fit our vision.”

Destiny nodded and took a deep breath.

She jabbed it down into the permafrost and levered out a chunk. Memories twisted together right at the end and turned into a nightmare of falling forward into that carved-out valley, pebbles turning into boulders and the earth rushing up to meet me.

I woke up with a gasp like I’d been holding my breath for an hour. Everything hurt, all the way down to my bones. It was also pitch black. And when I tried to move, I was caught in some kind of net. It was the kind of situation that made a pony reach deep inside themselves to find that core of determination and problem-solving… and end up coming back with the scared, panicking animal that made even the most sensible pony feel an urge to stampede.

I flailed around, trying to fight my way free of whatever I was caught in. Every motion carried pain with it, an ache in my muscles and a feeling in my joints like they were just slightly out of place. My right hoof started moving on its own and I could feel it fighting me for control, like a reflex gone wrong. The blade snapped free and tore at the material around me and dim light poured in, and that was how I knew I wasn’t blind yet. I pulled myself free through that hole, fighting my way towards fresh air and sunlight.

“Chamomile, calm down!” Destiny yelled, as I dragged myself out. I became vaguely aware that she’d been talking since I’d woken up and I’d been too busy having a panic attack to actually listen. That first hit of fresh air turned on the few extra brain cells I needed.

“Sorry,” I gasped, taking quick, sucking breaths. “I just… how long was I out?”

I got my first real look at what was around me. I was standing on dirt. Dirt! I’d made it down to the ground more-or-less alive. More than that, it might have been the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. It was nearly worth the pain I was in.

Huge plants, like the bigger brother of the scraggly trees I’d seen clinging to the tops of mountains, rose up all around me. Smaller shrubs and ferns and flowers grew all around them, most of which I’d never seen before. Even the ones I knew I’d only seen in books before. It was wild and wonderful and greener than anything I’d ever seen.

“Over an hour,” Destiny said. “I couldn’t wake you up. I was… I was really worried.” She sounded even more miserable than I did. "I tried getting anypony on the radio but even DRACO can't get a signal. Something here is causing too much interference."

"Guess that means we can't call Quattro and tell her we made it down," I sighed.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, and everything jerked and swam like something had come loose inside.

“I feel like crap,” I groaned. “I think I have a concussion.”

“It’s... “ She hesitated. “I think it was worse than that. You fell a long way. I couldn’t do any medical checks with the armor offline. That lightning hit us worse than any shock grenade could.”

“That explains why it feels so heavy,” I grunted. There was no point wearing it if it wasn’t working. I unclipped the helmet, and Destiny floated herself free, the lights in the helmet’s visor barely lighting up at all when she spoke.

“Just be careful, okay? If you’re in shock you might not know how badly you’re hurt,” she warned, tilting one way and then the other trying to get a look at me.

I took a deep breath. That deep breath helped calm me down almost as much as just seeing the beauty around me. The air had an odd faint smell like sulfur that made me think back to the Smokestack and the volcanic ash there. Over that was wet dirt and a million other scents I couldn’t name.

“Trust me, I can feel how sore I am,” I assured her, carefully removing the armor piece by piece, resting the backplate on a rock. DRACO whirred and started moving, chirping and making unhappy sounds. “At least the rifle seems okay.”

Destiny floated down to look into the bulky screen of the square scope.

“It was designed for field use, so it was shielded pretty heavily,” Destiny noted. “Apparently better than the armor.”

“It’s probably because the ballutes were connected right to the frame instead of being grounded,” I muttered, cutting the bolts away and pulling the jury-rigged thing free. “Herr Doktor didn’t have time to actually finish the stupid thing.”

“It’s going to take a while to self-repair, but the new fusion core means there’s power to do it,” Destiny said. “It might be a good idea to get some spare scrap metal, but…”

“But?”

“This is going to sound a little embarrassing, but I think I found one minor problem with having the Vector Trap system instead of regular saddlebags.”

I groaned, seeing where this was going. “We can’t get into them with the armor offline?”

“Yeah. Which… also means we can’t get into the medical supplies. No healing potions or Med-X.”

“I could really use some of each,” I said. I looked at all the life around me. “Is this really the surface? This isn’t at all the way they told us it would be. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s definitely the surface,” Destiny said. “Actually, this is pretty much how I remember things. I was expecting it to be a lot worse after a big war.” She floated over to DRACO again. “Only trace amounts of radiation, but this valley isn’t on any of the maps we’ve got.”

“We must have landed way off-course,” I said. “I guess that’s not a surprise. I got knocked out when we started tumbling.”

Destiny floated back to me. “Maybe. But we’d have to go something like a hundred miles to leave the edge of the map. I suppose it might be possible if the ballute caught the wind the right way. I was pretty out of it too -- without power the thaumoframe doesn’t do much to boost my horn’s magic.”

“...Your horn?”

“Well, yeah. How did you think I was doing magic? There’s a reason the helmet still has a horn, Chamomile. I left a little bit of myself in there. Literally.” She bobbed in an obvious invisible shrug. “I think technically this makes me a demilich? I’d have to get my old O&O books to look it up.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “But okay. I’m carrying around part of your corpse. I guess that’s actually less weird than carrying around your vengeful ghost, so we’ll call that one no big deal.”

“Exactly!” Destiny agreed. “I’m glad you see things my way.”

A chill ran down my spine. I got a sense that somepony was looking at me, and I turned around, following the feeling like it was a real thing.

Up on a high ridge of rock, an old, bearded stallion looked down at me. Tattered robes hid most of his form except his piercing eyes.

“Looks like we might have found our first native,” Destiny said.

“Do you think they’ll still speak Equestrian, or--”

He looked to the side. I followed his gaze and spotted movement. It was just enough warning that I was able to start to dodge and took a bullet to my left shoulder instead of my neck. The pain blossomed in sharp focus compared to the rest of my aches and I fell to the ground in a heap, which I am going to claim was a tactical decision because it meant the next two bullets went over me instead of into me.

I half-rolled onto my side and crawled behind a rock, staying low.

Destiny dropped down next to me. “Let me see your shoulder.” She gently pushed at my wing and examined my wound. “This isn’t as bad as I was expecting.”

“It doesn’t feel great,” I retorted through gritted teeth. I could feel her telekinesis around the edges of the hole. I watched her pull a bullet from just beneath the skin.

She held it up, and I could see how the tip was deformed and bent. “It might hurt but it didn’t penetrate. Your dermal plating stopped it.”

“Great. Now how do I keep them from shooting me again?” I asked, peeking around the edge of the rock I was hiding behind.

“Maybe try asking nicely?” Destiny suggested. “You haven’t been here long enough to make enemies yet.”

I saw the pony who’d shot me stand up, rifle held in his battle saddle. He was wearing spiky armor that looked halfway between sports gear and the kind of thing you’d only expect ponies to wear in private and involved whips, leather, and explaining away bruises later. I was more worried about the look in his eyes that screamed ‘I’m on a lot of drugs, but not the ones I should be on.’

“I don’t think nicely is gonna work,” I said. I tested my left hoof. It was sore and I wasn’t gonna be happy about putting weight on it, but it wasn’t going to fall off or stop working, which was about all I could ask for.

That’s when bullets started coming from other directions. Shots hit the dirt next to me and I decided the small rock I was hiding behind wasn’t really amazing cover.

“Where did all these guys even come from?” I asked, forcing myself to move and getting behind one of the massive trees. Bark and splinters flew into the air as bullets slammed into the wood.

“They must have seen us fall,” Destiny said. “We’re lucky they didn’t find us sooner. You were out for a long time.”

“Maybe,” I said, but something didn’t feel right about that.

Destiny peeked out from behind my flank. She was using me for extra cover. I couldn’t blame her, since I was apparently moderately bullet-resistant. “I don’t think I can manage a shield without the power from the thaumoframe, but I might be able to get a force bolt off. One force bolt.”

“I’ve got a knife,” I said. I held up my right forehoof and snapped the blade out again. It still felt twitchy, but at least I had some control over it. “I’m going to go for the one I spotted first. You keep your eyes open and take a shot at the ones off to the side. I don’t know where they’re hiding, but they’ll probably pop up once they see me.”

“Got it, chief,” Destiny said, and I imagined a salute with the way she tilted her head. There was nothing for it. I bolted for the pony that had shot me, hoofblade at the ready. It was only about twenty meters, and I stayed low. Thankfully they seemed to have terrible aim, and when Destiny fired off a bolt of crimson magic, they stopped shooting for the critical few seconds I needed to get all the way to the pervert with the rifle and bondage gear.

He looked up at me in surprise when I jumped over his cover and tackled him. I didn’t like the idea of killing ponies, but I’d done it a few times and it was starting to become a chore like any other. I stabbed him in the chest, and sort of expected him to just go limp and die.

The pony gasped when the air was driven out of him, then grabbed for me with a crazed light in his eyes, trying to bite me and throw me off at the same time and driving the blade in deeper.

“Bucking--” I swore, holding him down with my left hoof and pulling my other hoof free, stabbing him again. “Just… die!” I stabbed him a few more times and then got one in his head. He finally stopped moving more than tiny, dying twitches. “I don’t know what drugs he was on but I need to make sure I don’t take them,” I said.

“Cammy, look at this,” Destiny said.

I got off the pervert and got a closer look at him. His blood was dark, with an odd rusty brown tinge to it, and some of what I had thought was armor was actually growing out of his skin.

“No,” I whispered. “This isn’t what I think it is, is it?” I cut the straps of his battle saddle and swore. He was covered in metallic, spiky growths. New plastic arteries and veins pulsed between them, the machine parts of him not quite dead yet. It was like a steel cancer eating away at him and I was way too familiar with it.

“It’s SIVA,” Destiny confirmed. “It doesn’t look exactly the same as the batch that destroyed your home, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”

I nodded. I could feel it in my right hoof and my chest and, well, my whole body. There was a pulse in time with the fading lights of the implants growing out of the crazed pony. A connection that was making my own infection worse.

“They didn’t just stumble on us. I woke up because they were close enough to make my infection start itching,” I said.

“I don’t understand, though. How could SIVA be here?” Destiny asked.

“We’ll figure that out once we’re not being shot at,” I said. “We need another distraction so I can get around to the others.” I pulled the stallion’s rifle free of the battle saddle he was wearing and looked at it. It was as corrupted as he was. The grip moved when I touched it, trying to conform to my hoof and feeling like it was giving me a hoofshake. I dropped the gun. “Nope. Not using that.”

“Maybe we could start a fire and smoke them out?” Destiny suggested.

I looked around at the lush copse of trees.

“I have a stupid idea I want to try first,” I said. I peeked out at where I’d put DRACO down on top of a rock. “DRACO! Take a shot at any enemies you can see from there!”

The rifle made a loud beep of acknowledgement and the barrel moved a few degrees before it fired, the rapport sharper and louder than the weapons the attacking ponies were using. The shooting from them stopped again, and I bolted to the next bit of cover, working my way towards them.

“That’s not a dumb idea,” Destiny whispered approvingly. “A turret is just a targeting talisman and a gun, basically. DRACO has that and more. I didn’t think about giving him verbal commands like that.”

“It’s always anticipating what ponies want and listening in,” I whispered back. I could see one of the ponies. It was a mare, just as twisted up by SIVA as the stallion I’d already seen. One of her back hooves was just a metal spire coming to a sharp point.

I took a breath and jumped into the air, flapping a few times for altitude and dropping straight down onto her, stabbing her in the back and putting all my weight into it. I felt bones break, and she struggled for a few more seconds until I twisted the knife and cut something deep inside her that made her implants flash and go dark. She gasped for breath a few times after that and went still.

A pony poked his head out to see the noise, and DRACO helpfully removed it for him. The rest of the pony slumped to the ground. Everything went quiet.

“I think there was at least one more,” I said.

“Maybe DRACO got him?” Destiny said.

There was a loud chatter, like a motor going wrong and trying to tear itself apart. A half-dozen bullets slammed into my right side. I felt two of them bounce off my right hoof with a sound like raindrops hitting a metal sheet, but the other four did not bounce off. Three of those at least had the decency to stop when they hit that strange, calloused-feeling layer under my skin. One was rude enough that it didn’t stop there and invited itself into the party to meet my meat.

I obligingly fell over, bleeding my own blood, which was something I hated doing.

“Ow,” I gasped, unable to really say more than that. The effort of even complaining about the pain felt like it might kill me. It reminded me of being shot in the head, except instead of everything turning into a psychedelic mess because of brain damage, the pain was just making me disassociate to the point I think I felt my ghost leaving my body. The ragged-looking crazy pony who’d shot me stepped out of cover, stalking up close enough that I could smell the hot metal scent hanging around him even over the coppery taste in my mouth.

Destiny moved to hover between us like she could do something to stop him. I tried to gather enough strength to do something, anything.

Somepony shouted a warcry, which surprised all three of us. A blurry shape slammed into the psychotic pony, and it took me a moment to realize it was my vision that was blurry, not the one saving my butt.

There was a brief struggle, and that was long enough for me to get back to my hooves and put the pain in a little box in the back of my mind that I could deal with later. I stumbled towards the two rolling around on the ground, grabbed the one in spiky bondage gear and carrying a gun, and stabbed her before kicking her to the side. At this point I was covered in blood and a lot of it was mine, so I collapsed back to my knees.

“Ay yah, you’re in bad shape,” the other pony said. Or not a pony. My vision sharpened a little and I realized I was looking at something less pony and more striped. It was the first time I’d ever seen a zebra, and to my untrained eye he looked like a teenager. A worried teenager. He wore an elaborately designed multi-colored hooded poncho. “Here, Sky Lady, drink this. It’ll help mend you.”

He held out a gourd with a cork in it. I grabbed the cork with my teeth and pulled it out, then drank the stuff inside down. It tasted like old tea rations that had steeped for way too long and turned bitter.

The pain gradually started to fade.

“Thanks,” I gasped. “What is this stuff?”

“Green Dartura tea,” he said. “Are you gonna be okay, Sky Lady?”

“I’ve had worse. Unfortunately.” I was starting to feel less wrong inside, and some of my scrapes were closing up. Whatever he’d given me was working almost as well as a healing potion, even if it didn’t taste as good. I got to my hooves and only wobbled a little. “Why did you help me?”

“Why wouldn’t I help you?” he asked. “You’re the most beautiful pony I’ve ever seen.”

I had absolutely no context on how to start to reply to that. Thankfully, Destiny was there to fill in the gaps while I blushed and tried to think of what to say to the kid.

“What she means is, zebras and ponies are enemies,” Destiny corrected.

“Oh wow, you’ve got a machine spirit!” the zebra gasped. “That’s amazing!”

“I guess that’s sort of a correct description, in the literal sense,” Destiny muttered. “But that’s not the point! We’re at war!”

“Maybe in the old days,” the zebra shrugged. “No point to it now, quiaff? War was over a long time ago.”

“Thanks again for saving me from, uh, whoever these guys are.” I offered him a hoof. “I’m Chamomile.”

“Walks-In-Shadow,” he said. “Those ponies were raiders. They didn’t used to be so bad, but a bunch of them have been trying to get into the valley. It’s usually pretty safe here. Oh! I know! You should come back to the village with me! We’ve got better healers than me, and they can help.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “Let me just grab my stuff.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “I didn’t think my rifle would try to shoot you. It didn’t know you were a friendly.” I was dragging the armor behind me on an improvised sled made from a couple tree branches and the ballute. DRACO was pointed backwards, theoretically watching our backs. Destiny had settled in with the rest of the armor in what I could sense from a mile away was a gigantic pouting fit.

DRACO made an apologetic sound.

Walks-In-Shadow laughed. “It’s okay, Sky Lady. It missed!” He held up the edge of his poncho, where a neat bullet hole showed the near-hit. “I’m just happy to help. I felt like a real warrior! Maybe you could put in a good word for me, quiaff?”

I smiled. “Sure. I owe you one or two.”

He’d led the way into the depths of the canyon, past springs of water ranging from ice-cold to near-boiling, and Walks-In-Shadow seemed to know just which ones were too dangerous to get near, and which ones we could ford. It was a bit of a winding path, but if I hadn’t been in pain, dizzy, and starting to feel sick, I’d have enjoyed the walk.

“This is the way,” he said. “You see the paintings on the rocks?”

Pastel art, halfway between abstract and realist, covered the rock walls, getting more common as they closed in to form a tight passage only a little wider than the two of us walking side-by-side.

I hesitated, trying to recall what little I knew about the zebras. Which was nothing. For some reason they never really talked about zebra culture in school in the Enclave. “Is it… a record of your tribe’s history?” I guessed.

“Huh? Neg, neg.” Walks-In-Shadow laughed. “It’s just decoration. Look, this is one I painted!” He ran up to a zebra fighting some kind of big white animal. “It’s me, fighting one of the Ghost Bears like the tribe is named after!”

“I remember reading bears are pretty big, right?”

He nodded, excited. “Ghost Bears are the biggest! They’re the same color as the snow so when you’re out in the cold, they’re almost invisible! It’s how they got the name.”

“And you hunt them?” I asked. “That’s pretty cool.”

He blushed and seemed embarrassed. “Well, you know. I haven’t exactly gone on a hunt myself yet. But I will! Once the Companions hear that I helped you, Sky Lady, they’ll let me join and then I’ll be able to prove I’m a real warrior!”

“Is that who you’re going to take me to meet?” I asked. “The Companions?”

“Ay yah… maybe later. First we have to talk to the elder. She brews the Dartura tea, and she’s the wisest zebra I know. Even the Companions listen to her.” He pointed. “Right up ahead here.”

The canyon walls opened back up into a wide clearing. There were small huts all along the far wall, sturdy-looking things made with wooden beams and hide walls, more than enough to keep out what little chill there was in the warm valley. A stream trickled through, coming from a wall of white that loomed overhead. It reminded me of a cloud, but I’d later learn it was a glacier. I’d never seen that much ice in one place before.

And everywhere, there were zebra.

“I’m gonna tell the elder you’re here, so just wait here, quiaff?” Walks-In-Shadow asked, when we stopped in front of the largest of the huts. Or maybe cabins was the right word. They weren’t primitive hovels, it was a real town, and probably took more skill to build than a cloud house.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll wait right here.”

“Thanks, Sky Lady. I’ll be right back!” He ran inside like he was afraid to keep me waiting. Once he’d gone, Destiny floated off the sled and looked around critically.

“I really don’t like this, it’s got to be a trap,” Destiny whispered.

“What do you think the biggest danger is?” I asked. “The foals playing with dolls and blocks over there, the farmer pulling weeds out of a garden, or the one making wicker baskets?”

“I’m just getting ready to say ‘I told you so’,” Destiny huffed.

“I think you just don’t like them because the last thing you remember is that we were at war with them.”

“A war that ended in mutual destruction of civilization and the deaths of millions. It’s a pretty good reason, Chamomile!”

“It was also a long time ago. One thing Dad always told me is that we have to study the past so we don’t make the same mistakes. I’m not gonna make the mistake of treating them like it’s still back in your time.”

“When you say that you make me feel old,” Destiny groaned.

“You are old.”

“No, I’m undead. You get to stop counting your age when you’re undead. It’s a new rule I just invented because you made me feel old.”

I snorted with laughter just at the same moment Walks-In-Shadow stepped out. Walks-In-Shadow looked back at me, obviously curious about what I was laughing about. I shook my head and he shrugged.

“They’re ready. Come on in,” He held the door open for me.

“Is it okay to leave this out here?” I pointed to the sled.

“Don’t worry, no one will mess with it.” He looked at DRACO. “It’s not gonna shoot anyone is it?”

“It had better not,” I said firmly. DRACO made a disappointed noise.

I trotted in, Destiny floating next to me like a worried parent. Inside, wooden circles were hung up on every wall, carved with good luck charms and abstract geometric patterns and painted in bright primary colors. A hearth burned in the center of the comfortable room, and simple furniture and rugs covered the floor. A zebra waited in the back and motioned for me to come forward.

“Here she is, Elder Wheel-Of-Moons,” Walks-In-Shadow said.

She nodded. “Thank you, Walks-In-Shadow. Leave us for a time, please.”

Walks-In-Shadow bowed and stepped back out, giving me a smile before he closed the door. I think it was supposed to be reassuring but he blushed every time he looked at me so it was hard to tell if he was just nervous.

“Is this the warrior from the sky?” the Elder asked. She was grey enough that her stripes were little more than faint suggestions in her coat. “The one who fell into our valley?”

“That’s me,” I said. “Sorry if I’m intruding.”

“You are not intruding. You are lost and in need of help, and that makes you a guest.” She got up and stirred a pot over the fire. “You are also in pain, but you are trying to hide it.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said.

She laughed. “If it is no large concern then it should be no trouble for me to treat it, quiaff?” She ladled some of the green drink from the pot into a wooden cup. “Drink this. It is a mix of Green and Red Dartura. Powerful medicine.”

I took the cup and sat down, trying to get comfortable and blowing on the near-boiling tea to cool it a little before sipping.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thanking me before the medicine has had time to work? Either Walks-In-Shadow has told you very true tales of my ability or else you are polite, and in both cases I am pleased.”

“He saved my life,” I noted. “So I was willing to trust his judgment.”

“Ah yes,” the zebra matron nodded. “He’s quite taken with his beautiful sky lady.” She laughed, making me feel self-conscious. She sat down next to me and patted my hoof. “Try not to hurt the boy’s feelings. He is too young for love, but not too young to think he is old enough, quiaff?”

I nodded. “I remember my first crush.”

“Thank you. And since you are here, and polite company, I am glad to have you.”

“You’re… not like the zebras that I remember,” Destiny admitted.

“And you are not like the occasional simple machines that I have seen,” Wheel-Of-Moons said. “You are a lost soul wandering the earth. I wish that I had medicines to help heal your spirit, but that is beyond my ability. Beyond even the ones who set us on the path to peace so long ago.”

“The path to peace?” I asked. The tea was cool enough that I could drink it without burning my tongue, so I drank a little more deeply. It soothed some of the ache in my joints and cleared my head of the fuzz.

The Elder nodded. “Our ancestors were warriors. They came here, to Equestria, to make war to soothe the pride of a leader who did not care how many had to suffer in his name. They fought in a terrible battle, and were broken in body and spirit. Instead of being executed as the enemy, they were taken in and healed. They swore to never make war again. We are descended from those healed few, and we live trying to do as little harm as we can. The world has been abused enough by pony and zebra alike, and we do what small part we can to heal it and those who live in it. Like you, Sky Lady.”

“My name is Chamomile, actually, but I don’t mind being called Sky Lady.”

The Elder smiled. “Perhaps a better name than Elder, which I got merely for being too stubborn to go into the next world. Can I ask how you came to be here, Sky Lady Chamomile?”

“We’re trying to find something that should be on the surface somewhere, but… I have no idea where we landed,” Destiny said. “It’s a long story. We ended up falling instead of coming down the way we wanted. This valley isn’t even on any of our maps.”

“And that isn’t the worst of it, quiaff?” the Elder asked. “Your hoof and feathers…”

I glanced at my silvery, tin-foil primaries. “It’s part of the reason we came here. To find a cure.”

Wheel-Of-Moon nodded. “There is one medicine we could try.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Really?”

“The infection you have, it is the same as the raiders?” she asked.

“It’s… sort of similar,” I said. “A distant cousin.”

“To fight it, you need to gather spiritual strength, or else it takes you over, body and soul. I have seen the dregs that the raiders become when their spirits give out, wretches with no mind and no soul. They throw themselves at the uninfected to spread their pain.”

“I’ve… seen that before,” I said quietly.

“The tea I’ve given you will help your body heal, but to heal your soul you need inner strength. You must have a great reserve already to have lasted this long, but it is never infinite. Before you can be cured, you must turn inward and find your guardian spirit. I can brew something that can send you on this journey, if you are willing.”

“Well, this stuff’s been working,” I said, holding up the wooden cup. “Let’s give this spirit journey thing a shot.”

Chapter 21 - Thick as a Brick

Now this might sound strange considering I hang out with a literal ghost 24/7, but I am not really much of a spiritually aware pony. Back home in Cirrus Valley, I’d known a pony that put way more thought into it. She’d woken up every morning to praise the sun when it rose up above the clouds, always made sure to thank the Goddess Celestia for the good things that happened to her, and apparently did something during the full moon that the adults wouldn’t talk about when foals were listening.

I guess part of me was hoping I’d fall asleep and the Goddesses would show up and pat me on the back and tell me I was doing a great job and here’s a fortune cookie with some ideas on what I could try next. I knew it wouldn’t really be that easy but it sure would have been nice.

Instead, I was in the dark. Literally and in the 'dark night of the soul' way.

I was standing on the shore. There was sand and dirt under my hooves - my four normal hooves, no sign of the metallic thing that was clamped to my right shoulder - and white washed up around me, ebbing in and out. Waves crashed against the shore, but they were waves of cloud instead of water. I could see the surface on the other side, through the clouds, glimpses of a sky I didn’t recognize stretching under me.

I looked up into the deep.

There was only blackness. Not like the night sky. It was the black of having your eyes closed. The black of a pit yawning at the heart of the world. I felt like I was hanging on the underside of a mountain and one wrong move would make me fall forever.

No sun, no moon. A source-less white ghostlight flickered around me.

“Huh,” I said quietly, almost afraid to break the silence. I turned around to get a sense of where I was, and I was hit by the kind of knowledge that comes in a dream, where you just know a fact. I was in the field where I’d gotten my cutie mark.
When I stepped away from the shore that hadn’t been there in the real world, chamomile flowers grew under my hooves until the small patch of scrabbly grass and dirt was the way I remembered it. I knelt down to smell one of the tiny flowers, and the scent was almost overpowering.

And then something flew into my nose and I sneezed, falling back on my flank and sneezing again. A fly up the nostril is an awful experience.

“I hope my spirit guide isn’t a bucking moth,” I groaned, rubbing my nose and trying to make the itch and the urge to sneeze go away.

It was standing on the other side of the small field, at the edge of the light that came from nowhere. It was shaped like a pony, and I kind of felt myself get a little disappointed. I guess I was hoping for something cool, like a dragon.

“Hey, uh,” I started. I coughed. “So this is kind of my first time doing this. I’m supposed to find some kind of strength of spirit or inner peace, and maybe advice? I’m just going along with things because everypony else seems to have a better idea of what to do than I do.”

The pony shape moved with a strange jerking twist, and I saw a gleam of chrome. I’d been walking closer, and that shine of metal stopped me in my tracks.

The thing took halting, blind steps that were exactly like the shuffle of a wind-up clockwork toy. It stepped into the light, and I could see it wasn’t a pony at all. It was a machine, crawling with activity. An alarm clock sounded, and the swarm lifted into the air, directionless and confused and finding only me there.

I gasped and woke up, struggling and trying to throw them off me. I could still feel the stinging and itching and it look me a full minute of half-awake flopping around to realize that was just my body aching like it always did. Destiny hovered overhead and managed to seem fretful even with an expressionless metal helmet.

“Calm down,” Wheel-Of-Moon said soothingly. She was brushing my mane. She might have just started or she might have been doing it for a while. “Ay ya! You nearly took my head off! I didn’t think you’d have that kind of reaction.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Whatever you saw, it can’t hurt you,” she promised. “No more than any dream.”

“Then how come I feel so sore?” I asked. My skin felt itchy and raw under my coat. I could feel welts forming where I’d been stung.

“You have a very good imagination,” Wheel-Of-Moon decided. “So good your body believed it more than it believed the truth. I will brew something that will help with the stings.”

“The stings that aren’t real?”

“My medicine is especially good at treating things that aren’t real,” she said calmly, patting my head and stirring a small pot. “Tell me what you saw.”

I sat up and tried to describe it all. It didn’t take long, because the elderly zebra was smart enough to fill in the gaps that I wasn’t smart enough to bridge myself.

“A mechanical beehive shaped like a pony,” she said, slowly stirring and watching the simmering pot boil. “That is a powerful metaphor. Do you know much about bees?”

I shrugged. “I think I saw them in a book. They’ve got stingers and poison and they helped with farming or something.”

Wheel-Of-Moon nodded. “The Companions keep bees, to make their mead. You should speak to their keeper. He might have some small wisdom about such things, and I am sure that Walks-In-Shadow, who is not as stealthy as he thinks, would be more than happy to show you the way there.”

There was a surprised thud from outside, like a zebra who had been peeking inside had been spotted and was trying to pretend he’d been keeping a respectful distance all along.

“It wasn’t a psychosomatic reaction,” Destiny said, when they’d stepped outside. She was polite enough to at least wait until we weren’t right in front of the Elder to start arguing. “It was the SIVA.”

“Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “I’m stupid but I’m not so stupid that I can’t figure out the giant swarm thing I saw was supposed to be the infection.”

“Once the armor is finished with self-repair I want to use it to do a full-body scan. I need to see what the Dartura root is actually doing.” Destiny did a slow orbit around me. “I think it’s helping suppress the worst of it. Maybe we can use it to develop a useful weapon.”

“The Elder wouldn’t like that,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “She doesn’t think we should fight anyone. Not even the raiders.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“We wrecked the world by fighting, quiaff?” Walks-In-Shadow asked, with a shrug. “So we can’t make it better by hurting each other. She says power without perception is spiritually useless.”

We trotted around a boulder, and I got my first impression of the Companions. Mostly, I remember thinking that the little one was about to slip out of the sloppy headlock the bigger stallion had him in. The watching circle of zebras wearing war paint, scraps of armor, and furs in equal measure all cheered when I was proven right and the smaller stallion slipped free and pulled the big one down to the ground.

“Doesn’t think we should fight anyone, huh?” Destiny asked, sounding like she was glad to have found something apparently out of place.

“The Companions think a little differently,” Walks-In-Shadow said, grinning. “They’re warriors like you, Sky Lady! They’re heroes that keep the rest of the tribe safe from raiders, monsters, and wild animals.”

“I can see why you’d want to join them,” I said, watching the zebra wrestle until one of them finally tapped out. They cheered and the crowd helped both winner and loser back to their hooves, the zebra embracing each other in a quick hug before drinks were put in their hooves and they sat in front of the long tables of roughly cut logs on somewhat more carefully smoothed benches. Awnings made of brightly-colored cloth stretched from the walls of a long building and more than doubled the covered space.

They looked like they were having a great time. My stomach rumbled at the sights and smells.

“Stay on mission, Chamomile,” Destiny sighed. “I really shouldn’t have to warn you about being careful around a bunch of zebra commandos.”

I tilted my head and watched them share drinks. “I think you have to be part of the military to be a commando. They’re more like a hoofball team but without all the boring parts where they throw a ball around.”

“The beekeeper is over this way,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “They keep a few hives behind the hall to make honey for the mead and--”

“Is this the outlander the whole tribe has been talking about?” somepony, or some zebra, I guess, asked. A big mare broke off from the crowd, most of whom had decided we were worth looking at now that the fight had ended. She had a heavy, padding gait that reminded me more of an earth pony than most of the other zebra, who sort of had a prancing, dancing walk like they were on the tips of their hooves.

“Unless there’s somepony else that fell out of the sky,” I said. “...Actually, has anypony else fallen out of the sky? I have no idea if my friends came down, and I was sort of doing one of those things where you grapple with an enemy and try to drag them down to Tartarus with you when I was on my way here. So really, could be a friend or somepony who wants to murder me. Equal odds.”

“They said she was dumb-looking. Guess they were right.” She grinned, and I swear I saw fangs.

I held up a hoof to make her wait a moment.

“I just want to clear something up,” I said. “I’m not punching you yet, because my first day in prison, I punched the biggest, scariest pony there and they started crying and everypony was mad at me. Walks-In-Shadow, who is this and can I punch her?”

“Two-Bears-High-Fiving is one of the most respected warriors of the Companions,” Walks-In-Shadow whispered.

“Okay,” I said. “What about the part with the punching?”

Two-Bears punched me while I was looking the other way. She wasn’t trying to hide it, and I saw it coming a mile away. There was a sensation like ice down my spine, and everything slowed to a crawl. I could see her hoof coming in slow motion. I actually had a few moments to think about what to do. Maybe this was what life was like for ponies with good reaction time.

I grabbed her hoof and held it there without turning my head, waiting for Walks-In-Shadow to answer. Time seemed to resume its normal flow, and the feeling of deep cold washed away into summer heat, my back and wings feeling like I’d been standing out in the sun. A wash of sore exhaustion washed over me like I’d run a marathon in that instant. It faded quickly into the background of complaints about my body, but left a hunger in its wake that tried to convince me I’d missed a meal somewhere and it had come to collect.

Two-Bears seemed surprised.

“Uh,” Walks-In-Shadow blinked, equally surprised.

“You’re pretty fast,” Two-Bears said. She stepped back, and I let her hoof go because I didn’t really want to keep it. “Come on! Hit me with your best shot! I want to see what the mysterious Sky Lady can do!”

I cracked my neck. This was a mistake because I only managed to make it more sore than it had been before, but at least it looked and sounded cool.

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I threw a left hook. It was the kind of beautiful punch that could send a dragon to sleep. She took it on the jaw without even trying to block it. It was like I’d slammed my hoof into iron.

“Ow,” I thought loudly but didn’t say.

She grinned and the next thing I knew, we were trading punches and rolling in the dirt with a ring of zebra around us shouting encouragement and the kind of advice a drunk gives in a fight. Hooves hit my gut, my chest, my face. Several headbutts were exchanged. I had to fight with one hoof basically behind my back because I was worried any second a blade was going to pop out of my right forehoof and try to cut her in half.

After a minute slugging each other, I was absolutely sure about one thing. She was holding back, too. I could see it in her eyes. We kicked away from each other and rolled back to our hooves. I wiped a little blood from my chin and looked at it.

Was it darker than usual?

I nodded to her. “You’re tougher than you look.”

“You’re saying I don’t look tough?” she asked.

“I’ve been in a lot of really unfair fights lately,” I said. “No offense.”

“None taken. So have I. But I couldn’t wait around all day for them to go and get all their friends and family to even up the odds.”

I grinned and leaned in close. “You’re holding back,” I whispered.

“So are you,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t want to kill you.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she agreed, then patted me on the back. “Fine, you’ve convinced me!” she said loudly enough the crowd could keep up. “We’ll be here all night trying to knock each other out. We’ll call it a draw!”

The ring of zebra cheered.

“Let me get you a mug of mead,” Two-Bears said.

“I was hoping to talk to the zebra that helps with the bees,” I said, looking around. “I was supposed to… I don’t know. Something about wisdom.” Maybe those headbutts had been a little strong. I had some empty space in my skull that made things rattle around more than they should.

“Smoke-in-Water is a wise zebra,” Two-Bears agreed. She patted me on the back. “Over here. We’ll get mead on the way!”

“And this is made out of honey?” I asked, taking another delicate sip of the mead. Delicate for me, I mean. I only drank half of the mug in one go. It was really hard to stop once you got going. “Maybe bees aren’t so bad after all.”

We were led around to the back of the longhouse. Just about as far away from it as was possible in the confines of the canyon, a zebra carrying an odd canister that seemed halfway between a kettle and a spraycan was inspecting a number of boxes set far apart from each other on plinths.

The older zebra was surrounded by bees. They orbited around him like a bunch of curious foals, clearly watching everything he did. He stepped over to one of the boxes and used the odd can he was carrying to spray smoke into the box before opening it up and peering inside, closing it and moving to the next in line.

I wasn’t sure what he was doing until he found one he was apparently satisfied with and took out a square frame that had been covered in wax.

“Oh. Those are hives, aren’t they?” I asked.

“Aff,” Two-Bears said. “There are more in the fields. Smoke-In-Water cares for them and helps move them.”

There was just one part I didn’t understand. “How do the bees build the boxes?”

Two-Bears and Destiny shared a look. Apparently that had been a particularly bad question.

“Why don’t you just go and ask him your questions?” Two-Bear sighed.

I tried to pretend I wasn’t flush with embarrassment and walked over to the zebra, keeping my distance from the aura of curious bees that seemed to be investigating his every motion. He took the wooden frame and the wax attached to it over to a table and started working. I could tell he knew I was there, but he was waiting for me to make the first move.

I struggled, trying to think of the best question to ask.

I settled on the obvious. “How do you keep them from stinging you?”

He shrugged. “Do you know much about honeybees?”

I shook my head.

“They don’t sting if they can help it. Against something more their size, like another bee or a wasp or invading ants, they can sting and get away with it. A larger foe, like you or I? The stinger gets stuck and is torn out of their bodies. They die, just to make a tiny wound. It might seem foolish, but look at you -- the first thing you did was ask how to avoid the sting.”

“Is this some kind of metaphor?” I asked, starting to get worried I was going to have to interpret it as a powerful lesson about the role of the common person against incredible odds.

“No, it’s very literal,” the old zebra said. “Though a little alchemy does help when they’re feeling upset. Smoke calms them when I need to remove a comb to harvest the honey, and a little bug musk makes them confused about if I’m a particularly large bee or not.”

“Huh,” I muttered.

“You’re the Sky Lady, I take it. Ponies are a rare sight in this valley. Ones that speak with us instead of attacking, even rarer.”

“Wheel-Of-Moon said I should talk to you.”

“Really? I must have impressed her without knowing it.” Smoke-in-Water cleaned his hooves in the bucket of water, then sat back to give me a more serious appraisal. “Tell me what happened that would make her send you to me.”

I sat down and told him about the vision I’d had. The whole time, he worked, separating wax and honey with a deftness that I couldn’t even follow. I was sure if I tried to copy him I’d just end up sticky and covered in stings.

“A hive shaped like a pony,” he said. “Quite a vision. I could tell you a few things, make a few guesses, but that’s all they’d be. Only you can find the truth behind the truth, you understand?”

I nodded.

“If this infection of yours thinks of you the same way bees think of their hive, it’s trying to help. Bees love and defend their hives. The problem is that like bees, they only know how to build a certain way.”

“Yes,” Destiny agreed, speaking up for the first time in a while. “The SIVA cells were designed to make machines, not biological tissue.”

I held up my right hoof. “I guess they’re trying to learn.”

“They’re just blindly repairing what’s in front of them with what they know,” Destiny said. “Micro-welding, carbon fiber weaving, electroplating… each one is like a microscopic machine shop, but they’re not doctors, and they’re not smart enough or coordinated enough to do more than just deal with what’s in front of them from moment to moment.”

“It sounds like they lack a queen, or the one they have is confused and afraid,” Smoke said. “Without her guidance, they swarm without direction, and the hive soon dies.”

“Directionless… that makes me think of Cirrus Valley and the way the ponies had growths all over them,” I mumbled. Was that going to happen to me? Just twisting into horrible new shapes and unable to die?

“The only way to save a hive that lost its queen is to give it a new one,” Smoke said. “I don’t know how you’d go about doing that.”

“It’d be easier if the infection just listened to me,” I groaned.

“If people were good at listening to each other, the world would be a very different, happier place,” Smoke replied.

“He’s not… entirely off his rocker,” Destiny said. “You told me once that your infection responded to the core when you were near it.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It started pulsing in time with it. The same thing happened with the infected out in the valley. I could feel them getting closer.”

“I’ve been suppressing your infection with a near-field signal. It stands to reason that the more coordinated infected like those raiders might be connected in the same way. But that would also mean they were connected to something…”

“You think the dragon is here,” I said.

“The infection had to come from somewhere, and that metal monster was more than tough enough that it could just fly through the lightning shield without caring about taking a few hits,” Destiny pointed out.

“A dragon?” Two-Bears trotted up to us quickly, suddenly serious. “A huge metal dragon?”

“Yeah. It would have been--”

“This dragon of yours -- did it constantly change shape? And it couldn’t be killed by any mortal weapon?”

Destiny slowly turned from Two-Bears to me. I nodded mutely.

“I thought Wolf-In-Exile was telling tall tales,” Two-Bears said. “The last time I spoke to the old dog he told me he saw something like that, out in the Plaguelands. It’s been too busy for anyone to look into.”

Destiny caught on faster than I did. “That was about the time the raiders started being different, wasn’t it?”

Two-Bears nodded. “Ever since then, we’ve been having to fight off attacks, and you’ve seen what they’re like now. Twisted flesh and metal growing together. Abominations that are almost impossible to put down.”

“You don’t think she came down here, do you?” I asked quietly.

“Do you know a lot of giant metal dragons, Chamomile? Ones made of SIVA?” Destiny bobbed. “We need to go check it out.”

“How long until the armor finishes fixing itself?” I asked.

“At least a day. Maybe more. The thaumoframe EPS conduits are blown out. That’s delicate work for a spell to repair, so it has to go slowly. If I had the right tools and parts I could speed it up, but I don’t think we’re going to find a spell oscilloscope and an ODN recoupler just lying around in the mud.”

“Can we wait that long?”

“We shouldn’t need the armor just to do a little recon,” Destiny mused. “The weapons wouldn’t be much good against her anyway. We should use the time to gather intel, come up with a plan, and try to figure out what to actually do about her since a battleship blowing her head off with giant cannons only made her mad.”

Two-Bears looked thoughtful. “You should go speak to Wolf-In-Exile. He knows more about the metal plague than anyone else, and he’s the one who saw this dragon.”

“We’re really getting passed around today,” I groaned. My legs were sore. I was better about walking on the ground than a lot of pegasus ponies but it still made my hooves sore after a while. “Where is he?”

“He stays at the mouth of the valley, in the Iron Temple,” she said. “Walks-In-Shadow can show you the way.”

“I can?” Walks asked.

Two-Bears looked back at him. “I know you’ve made the journey on your own before. Taking along a warrior should only make things easier.”

“But what if we find the dragon?” he asked, the kid obviously nervous at the prospect.

“Just do what I’d do,” Two-Bears said. “But… smaller.” She ruffled his mane. “You’ll be fine.”

“You know, I think they really liked you,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “If you decide to stay I bet you could join the Companions!”

“We won’t be sticking around that long,” Destiny said. She didn’t quite snap at him, but she said it the same way I’d heard my dad talk to waitresses. It wasn’t very nice. Walks-In-Shadow either didn’t catch on to the tone or decided to ignore it.

“They seem like good pon- good zebras,” I said. “Good people.”

“They are,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “So are you! I can tell.”

I scoffed and blushed a little. He gave compliments the way only a kid could, completely meaning what he said and without any subterfuge or second meaning behind it.

“It’s important to be able to see the good in someone else,” he said. “I think everyone has good in them somewhere, even if it’s deep down inside. That’s why we live here.”

I wasn’t sure I followed him. “What do you mean?”

“When the bombs fell and death came from all sides, our people were released from the prison where they had been waiting for the war to end.” The way he spoke, it was clear he’d learned most of this by rote and was trying to recite it exactly the way it had been told to him. “The ponies who set us free did so because they believed we deserved a chance to survive, and that even if we could not find a way, we could still die as free zebra and not in our cells.”

“There was a big POW camp outside Stalliongrad,” Destiny mused. “Must have been a few hundred zebra there, at least.”

“Our ancestors went out into the cold and braved the ice and the sickness and the windigos. They had nothing but what little they carried, and many died in the cold. One day, they found a pony, alone, injured, all but unarmed. They welcomed him and shared what little they had, and the shamans healed his wounds.”

I was starting to see where this was going now.

“And he led you here as a reward for your kindness?” I asked.

“No!” Walks-In-Shadow grinned. “He bid for us to stand back, and he took the only thing he had with him, a shovel, and dug into the earth. The earth cracked and erupted from the single blow, and the valley opened up, filled with warmth and flowing water.”

“Really?” Destiny said.

“That’s what Wheel-Of-Moon told me, and it’s what her grandmother told her. All the way back to the old days. This place was our reward, not for the simple kindness we showed, but for having abandoned hate in our hearts. We became worthy of it. The pony couldn’t stay with us and left as mysteriously as he had come, but with the strength we had given him driving him forward.”

“It almost sounds like a variation of the Rockhoof legend,” Destiny noted. “A weakened pony that gains strength, saves a village with digging skills, and there’s even a magic shovel. It’s probably something half-remembered that they were taught in the POW camp to try and civilize them.”

“Even if it’s just a legend, this is still a really nice place to live,” Walks-In-Shadow said brightly, not taking offense even when Destiny used the word ‘civilize’ unironically. “The Companions help keep it that way by driving the raiders out when they come along.”

“To be honest, this is a nice place,” Destiny conceded. “I was getting really tired of a monochrome landscape.”

“Cloudscape, technically,” I said.

“Point taken. Still, if we had to pick a place to be stranded while the armor self-repairs, this is not a bad spot. When I was alive I couldn’t keep potted plants alive so I had to settle for plastic decorations that nearly looked real as long as you needed glasses and didn’t get too close.”

“They made plastic plants?”

“We made everything,” Destiny said. “And look where it got us.”

“Don’t sound so down,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “We’re just about at the easy part of the walk. Once we get up on this ridge, we can follow the old road the rest of the way to the Iron Temple.”

“A road sounds good,” I said. “We could just fly up there, you know. I could carry you.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun! But I’m sort of worried about Windigos. The Iron Temple is right on the edge of the valley, you know? I heard anything that flies too far up gets frozen by the ice spirits.”

“Windigos are a myth,” Destiny stated very firmly.

“Maybe, but they can still kill you if you’re not careful,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “It’s better to keep low where the air’s warm. They won’t come down here.”

Destiny looked at me for support. I sighed and shrugged.

“He knows the valley better than we do,” I said quietly. “Even if there aren’t any Windigos, there are raiders and maybe my mom. I’d rather keep a low profile until we’ve got a weapon at hoof that can do some real damage.”

“It’s just… inefficient,” Destiny grumbled.

“I got shot almost to death once today, I just don’t want to repeat the performance.”

“Fine,” Destiny sighed.

We scrambled the last few steps on the steep hill, the black soil loose underhoof, and the road came into view. It was… well, it was a road. I’d like to say it was beautiful and awe-inspiring just to make the story more dramatic but the truth is there’s only so much awe to go around with a ribbon of broken asphalt littered with rusted-out hulks of old carts and twisted guardrails.

“This is a lot easier to walk on,” Walks-In-Shadow said. “We can make really good time if we take it all the way.”

Destiny floated idly over to one of the signs at the side of the road, using her telekinesis to brush off more than a century and a half of dirt and ash. She gasped and spun around, bobbing wildly.

“Chamomile, look!”

Destiny floated in front of a faded, rusting sign that had mostly been grown over by weeds. A big diamond was painted on it in white, with the number thirteen emblazoned on it.

“This is the Princess Flurry Heart Thirteenth Birthday Memorial Highway!” Destiny said, shocked. “I’ve been here before!”

“That’s… quite a name,” I said. “There’s a story behind it, isn’t there?”

“The victims of that terrible day will never be forgotten,” Destiny whispered. “Anyway we mostly just called it Highway Thirteen. It really is a mouthful otherwise.”

“So this means you know where we are, right?” I asked.

Destiny wobbled one direction, then the other, in the sort of shrug a skull can do absent a body. “I can narrow it down, but Highway Thirteen ran all the way from Stalliongrad to the Empire, and I don’t remember any of it falling into a massive volcanic rift valley. I bet this place cracked open at the same time Mount Reiner erupted.”

“Mount Reiner?” I asked.

“The volcano where you found the Blue,” Destiny explained.

“Oh. We called it the Smokestack.”

“A bit too on-the-nose.”

“You ponies know all sorts of neat things!” Walks-In-Shadow smiled. “I’d love to hear the tale of how this road got its name. I could be the first one to bring the story back to the village!” He paused. “But then Wheel-Of-Moon might want me to be a scholar instead of a warrior!”

“What’s wrong with being a scholar?” Destiny asked.

“Nothing! I just want to be a warrior and seek glory and fame of my own instead of retelling the stories of our tribe.”

He and Destiny started to debate the importance in passing on information in the continuation of a society, and it was probably a really interesting philosophical thing, but I was busy stumbling over to the guardrail and not falling over. Everything swam around me, and I could feel the SIVA crawling inside me, twisting around my insides like a claw reaching into my guts and shifting things around. Worse than that, I could feel a pulse in the air like the heartbeat of the whole world, and my infection pulsed along with it.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny asked. I’d fallen to my knees. I hadn’t even felt myself fall. I’d blinked and I suddenly couldn’t stand.

“Something’s coming,” I managed to gasp. I wasn’t sure I could control my breathing. It was like the opposite of when somepony tells you you’re breathing manually. My lungs were moving air in and out and I couldn’t change the pace they were at, just pumping slowly like a bellows in my chest.

“Drink this,” Walks-In-Shadow said, pressing a gourd to my lips. “It’s Green and Red Dartura.”

I nodded shakily and swallowed small sips. The pounding and shaking started to quiet themselves. “We need to get out of sight,” I gasped. I was starting to feel like I could control my body again.

“Okay,” Walks said, not arguing. He looked around, then grabbed a broken piece of guard rail and used it to pop open the back of a delivery truck. “In here!”

I leaned on his shoulder to get inside, but I tried not to put too much weight on the zebra. I was worried I’d break him. We’d barely gotten into cover before the whole road started to shake.

“What is that?” Destiny whispered, floating closer to a window.

“It’s just what we didn’t want to find yet,” I said, as the dragon swooped overhead, flying past us and up the road. “You said this road goes to the Iron Temple?”

“Yeah, right to it,” Walks-In-Shadow confirmed, watching the massive metal shape pass overhead with awe.

I chugged a few more gulps of the cold tea. “I think we better hurry. If you’ve got friends there, they’re about to be in more trouble than they can handle.”

Chapter 22 - The Spirit of Radio

The art of stealth is at its core about not being heard. It’s relatively easy to go unseen. Go around a corner, behind a cloud, or just get around to where a pony isn’t looking and you’re basically invisible. Not being heard is a lot tougher. Hooves are loud on all but the softest surfaces, flying isn’t nearly as quiet as you’d think unless you’re in a glide, and though we couldn’t teleport, Destiny promised me it sounded like a balloon popping.

So really in some ways it was good that the firefight had already started before I got there, because no way in Tartarus was anypony going to hear me over the chatter of large-caliber automatic weapons.

I got right behind one of the raiders and tapped him on the shoulder where something like cloudball armor was working its way out of his skin. He started to turn around and I grabbed his head and gave it a single sharp twist. There was a crack, a sensation of bone moving, and he sort of stopped and stretched.

“Oh hey that felt kind of--”

I huffed and stabbed him before he could tell me something stupid like I’d worked out a kink in his neck. The way he was dressed I didn’t want to think about any kinks he might have had.

“I told you you can’t just break somepony’s neck by twisting their head,” Destiny whispered. “It doesn’t work like that!”

“Okay well, you were right. You don’t have to rub it in!” I pulled the gun out of his limp hooves to look at it. It was still distressingly alive, like holding onto a rifle infested with ants. I tossed it aside in disgust and kicked his body down the hill, rearing up to look over the chest-high cover he’d been using.

To even get here, we’d had to follow stairs set into the rock wall of the rift, wooden planks secured with pitons and wire that creaked whenever weight was put on them. Scraps of colorful cloth were tied to the shaky railings, and I could just imagine foals running up as far as they dared and marking it before fleeing back to the safety of the ground.
Not that I was going to go up a bunch of stairs. I’d been born with wings so I could fly, not so I could walk demurely up some rickety stairs.

I’d come in for a landing right at the top, dropping Walks-In-Shadow into a snowdrift and landing behind an unsuspecting raider. Which more or less brings us to the present.

“That was really cool,” Walks whispered. He shivered a little in the chill. The air had gone from the wet warmth of spring right back into the cold of winter as soon as we got up high enough. He shook snow off his coat and joined me in looking over the cover.

The Iron Temple wasn’t what I had expected. To be honest my expectations were pretty low. So far all I’d seen were some small houses in the Ghost Bear village and a lot of debris and rusted-out hulks along the ruined highway. It was pretty clear that the surface didn’t have the same sense of style or grandeur that we had in the Enclave.

I don’t know if it had been a police station or a prison before the war, but it was the first time I’d seen the brutalist Stalliongrad style of building. It looked like an invincible fortress made of huge seamless slabs of concrete, and that invincibility was being tested. The parking lot in front of it was dotted with barricades and flags, turning the cracked asphalt into something more like the sort of showy garden that was in front of so many Enclave military buildings. The main difference was that it centered around a huge bonfire that threw a plume of smoke into the air instead of a rainbow fountain.

Raiders were trying to push their way through the barricades, but whoever was inside the Iron Temple was doing a good job holding them off, the heavy thud of a machine gun sending shells over their heads and picking off any of them that stood up for a second too long or dashed for different cover at the wrong moment.

A huge wing cut through the smoke, and the ground rumbled with the wake of a dragon’s passage as the massive metal shape swooped overhead, pulling up at the last second to stall out and crash down deliberately at the far end of the parking lot.

“Chamomile,” Destiny said quietly.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

I could see the beast clearly now. It had a hide of green patinated copper and huge horns that were almost as wide as its wingspan made of thin spars supported by wires held in tight tension like some kind of massive antenna array. It glowed from within with acid-green light, and just looking at the thing I could tell it wasn’t good to be this close.

Most importantly, I didn’t recognize it.

“It’s not my mom,” I said. “How can there be two of these things?”

“I’m not sure,” Destiny admitted. “We should retreat and regroup. We’re not ready to face a SIVA dragon now. We don’t have any weapons that will kill it.”

“We can’t do that!” Walks-In-Shadow grabbed my hoof and tugged. “Wolf-In-Exile is alone in there! He’s the last of his tribe! We have to do something!”

“Right, do something…” I scratched at my increasingly itchy skin. “First, give me the Dartura again. Being this close to the dragon is killing me.” I said it like it was a joke but I’m pretty sure it was killing me in a literal sense. I took the gourd from him and finished off what was left. I doubted it was going to get worse than it was right at that moment.

“Before you ask, I don’t have enough of a magical charge to do more than deflect a few bullets,” Destiny said.

I ignored her and looked at the raiders, trying to use my big dumb brain, or at least the somewhat smarter computer bits she’d jammed in there. Dad had always said I needed to think things through, and from here at the edge of the battlefield I actually had a chance to do that.

There were two distinct groups of raiders. A few of them had guns and were shouting orders and moving around and sticking to cover. They were mostly shouting curses, but it was at least language. The other group were like shambling zombies, much closer to what I'd seen in Cirrus Valley. They were skeletal and wasted and moved like they were broken inside. They mostly just charged right into the machine gun fire and got chewed to a pulp.

The dragon made a sound like a hissing boiler about to explode, and with a screech of stressed metal it opened its maw and vomited out a mass of twitching limbs and ruined flesh that broke apart into a lurching horde of at least a dozen of the skeletal infected, which immediately charged at the Iron Temple like they were eager to be mown down by automatic fire.
I narrowed my eyes and came up with a terrible plan.

“Kid, you stay here,” I said. “Destiny, you keep him from getting shot.”

“Wait, me?” Destiny asked, confused.

“You said you can deflect a few bullets, right? Make sure he doesn’t catch a stray.”

“What about you?”

I shrugged. “What are the chances I’ll get shot twice in the same day?”

I didn’t let her give the obvious answer, and took off up and over the cover. I had two advantages the raiders didn’t. First, they were all looking in the same direction, so they weren’t going to see me coming until I was right on top of them if I came at them from the right angle. Second, I didn’t have to go around all the concrete barricades and old planters. The path was a lot shorter as the pegasus flies.

One of them who was extremely underarmed with just a pistol held between his teeth noticed me and took a few shots at me that I ignored. I was after a bigger fish. One of the raiders had a nice big cannon, and I dropped down with all four hooves right onto his back, driving him down into the asphalt.

Maybe I should have said something clever to him. Maybe I should have tried to make him surrender. I didn’t have time for mercy or playing around. I stomped on his head and winced at the noise and mess that made, then tore the big weapon he’d been aiming at the Iron Temple from his twitching hooves. It was the kind of thing that really needed a stand and about three ponies to operate it, but I was going to improvise.

I hefted it up on my shoulder and ignored the feeling of things crawling on my hide and something dripping down my back and wires snaking around on their own. I took aim at the dragon’s massive set of horns and fired.

A big, slow shell boomed out of the cannon and exploded on the side of the green dragon’s face, shattering copper scales and twisting the antenna out of shape. Wires snapped and delicate-looking spars came out of alignment and I could feel the effect. The SIVA inside me twisted and groaned in sympathetic pain like a radio homing in on the dragon’s frequency. I fired again, trying to think of anything else but the feeling of a knife twisting up into my guts. The second shot hit almost the same place as the first, and the dragon screeched in anger, shedding more of its metal flesh. It leapt into the air, flapping hard, the wind alone enough to send my third shot way off target, hitting nothing but dirt and ice.

The dragon flew off, horns sparking, and things dropped down to near-silence. Even the machine gun had stopped.
I threw the cannon away. It took two tries. I had to pull it out of my coat where it had tried to burrow into my flesh like a parasite, yanking long curling worm-like wires out of my skin. Just looking at them made me feel sick. The raiders had stopped, the smarter ones fleeing after the dragon and the skeletal infected just collapsed where they’d been standing. I took a deep breath.

“That sucked,” I said, sitting down on a chunk of crumbling concrete and letting the blood just run down my hoof. It wasn’t a dangerous amount, just enough that it was going to be a bother cleaning later.

“Sky Lady, that was amazing!” Walks-In-Shadow yelled, waving to me and running up, trying to hop over the barricades and eventually deciding to go around the long way. “Wait until the Companions hear about this!”

“Not the worst plan you’ve come up with,” Destiny admitted. “Get a big gun, shoot the monster. It’s hard to argue with.”

“I’d say it’s foolish to attack a monster like that head-on,” said an echoing voice from the direction of the Temple. I looked over my shoulder at the stallion walking towards us, obviously not in any hurry. He was wearing the heaviest-looking barding I’d ever seen, steel plates that were practically as thick as tank armor over leather and fur. “Come inside before the cold does what the raiders couldn’t.”

I was about to say I wasn’t cold when I noticed how much Walks-In-Shadow was shivering. I groaned and got up.

“Here. It’s not Dartura root, but it is warm,” the stallion said. He’d removed his helmet, and I was having a hard time figuring anything out about him. He didn’t look quite like a zebra, or a pony, and he had faint stripes, but I couldn’t tell if they were scars, or if they’d faded with age, or if they’d just always been gunmetal on silver.

I took the cup of tea from him. The mug was ceramic and as old as the building. Apparently someone had won an award for being the number one grandpa in the world and it was an award for their achievement.

“Thanks,” I said. He gave another mug to Walks-In-Shadow. The zebra was pretending he wasn’t cold while edging a little closer to the campfire and pulling the silvery blanket Wolf-In-Exile had given him tighter around his body.

He sat down heavily on a concrete bench. The inside of the Iron Temple really was more like a temple than a proper place for ponies to live. It had a few small side rooms where I suspected he was hiding supplies and whatever cot he slept on, but the main area was some kind of memorial, a wide-open space with benches and a statue that I could tell without even needing to look was a tribute to the great heroes of the Battle of Stalliongrad. It had the same very direct imagery that the Enclave used to honor their heroes, though the steel and concrete ponies lasted longer than the cloud statues I was used to. Their heroes probably lasted longer, too.

“If you’re looking for a cure for that infection, I can’t help you,” Wolf-In-Exile said bluntly, pointing at my silver-covered leg. “By the time there are symptoms it’s too late to do more than a mercy killing.”

“We came up here to ask about the dragon, actually,” Destiny said.

“Cute little robot,” Wolf-In-Exile said, looking at the floating helm curiously. “Never seen one like that. Some kind of custom job?”

“I’m not a robot!” Destiny snapped.

“She’s a ghost,” I explained. “It’s a long story.”

“I do like ghost stories,” Wolf-In-Exile said with a small smile. “Most of the stories I’ve heard have been about unfinished business. Something so important they couldn’t allow themselves to pass on entirely.”

“That... sounds about right,” Destiny muttered.

“And you’re planning on slaying that dragon as part of that unfinished business?” he sat back, his armor creaking. “I’m not sure how much I can help. It’s all I can do to fend off the worst of the raiders.”

“That’s Steel Ranger armor, isn’t it?” Destiny asked. “And you had at least one heavy machine gun.”

“It was Steel Ranger armor,” Wolf-In-Exile said, nodding. “But only parts. When I found it, it was too broken to repair and none of us knew how to use it even if it had been working. Still, good steel is good steel.”

“Us?” I asked.

“It was… a long time ago. Before my tribe was wiped out.” He left it at that.

“You’re different from the other zebra I’ve met,” I said.

He laughed, and the mood lightened a little. “That’s not surprising,” Wolf said. “I’m only half zebra, for one thing. My father was a, ah…” he hesitated. “Equestrian doesn’t have a word for it. I suppose the closest translation would be ‘Bonded One’. He was a scavenger who tried stealing from the Wolf tribe and ended up captured. He served as a slave for a while to repay his debt, and then he was freed. He ended up staying with the tribe anyway. He’d made too many friends at that point. He taught me and the tribe about things the elders didn’t know. Technology, tactics, the secret of iron. That sort of thing.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a good dad.”

“Compared to yours it’s not a high bar to clear,” Destiny muttered, just quietly enough that she probably thought I couldn’t hear her. I blushed and decided to change the subject, but only because I was embarrassed.

“What can you tell us about the dragon? It’s not the one we’re looking for, but… there’s no way it’s not related,” I said.

“It’s not something that should exist in this world,” Wolf-In-Exile said. “I’m not sure if it’s leading the raiders or if they’re in control of it. Tartarus, the thing might just be attracted to all the fighting and shows up like someone rang the dinner bell for it. It’s attacked here a few times since it appeared. It has a nest somewhere out in the Plaguelands. That’s all I know for sure.”

“The Plaguelands?”

“It’s a cursed place,” Wolf-In-Exile said quietly. “It’s where my tribe is buried now, because we were fools. If you’re thinking of tracking it down, it’s practically a suicide mission.”

Destiny shook herself slowly in a negative. “One thing at a time. First we need to figure out how to kill it even if we do find it.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare megaspell lying around?” I asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Wolf said. “But if there’s something that can hurt that beast, it has to be where it came from.” He stood up and walked to one of the thin, slit-like windows, pulling a curtain made from the hide of some animal aside. “If you look that way, you can see the road continues on to the west. The Plaguelands are that way, in the shadow of the old Cosmodrome.”

“The Cosmodrome?!” Destiny perked up and flew over to the window to look. “Are we really that close?”

“The way is difficult,” Wolf said. “In good conditions you can almost see the blight on the land from here. A few hours by hoof, less than that flying. Once you get there, though…” He shook his head. “It’s difficult to describe. There aren’t words for it in Equestrian because no pony would have conceived of it. It’s false beauty. Death disguised as paradise. The deeper you go, the worse it gets.”

“If the Cosmodrome is right there, there are Braytech labs, too,” Destiny said, ignoring Wolf-In-Exile’s gloomy warnings about death and fates worse than. “Chamomile, this is exactly what we need!”

“If you’re going to try your hoof at being a hero, don’t go alone,” Wolf warned. “The Companions sometimes hunt there. They might be willing to help you. I’d go myself, but this chokepoint is the only thing that keeps the bulk of the raiders from the valley. I can’t leave it undefended.”

“Thanks for the help,” I said. “You pointed me in the right direction. That’s all I can ask for.”

“There is one thing,” Destiny said quickly. “I don’t suppose you have a spare battle saddle? Trying to salvage one from the enemy doesn’t seem like a brilliant idea.”

“It’d probably try to burrow into your flesh,” Wolf-In-Exile agreed. “And it’s too late now anyway. The bodies that weren’t burned are gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Destiny asked.

“They crawl away to lick their wounds when no one is looking,” Wolf-In-Exile said. “By now they’re long away from here and healing.”

“So much for thinning their numbers,” I sighed.

“Even so, I might be able to help you. I’ve got a small stockpile of equipment, I’m sure I can afford to lend you a battle saddle.”

“That would be great, thanks,” I said.

Wolf nodded with a tight smile. “And you, little bear, keep that blanket.” Walks-In-Shadow looked up in surprise. “It’s a relic from before the war. Survival gear, good in any weather. You’ll make better use of it than I could.”

“Thank you, Wolf-In-Exile! I’ll treasure it.” Walks-In-Shadow bowed.

“Good. Things belong where they’re appreciated. I wish both of you luck.”

“Dragon-hunting, huh?” Two-Bears said, sitting back and sipping mead. “That does sound like a good time, Sky Lady.”

“We’ll need to find a weapon that will actually kill it first,” Destiny reminded her. “Even anti-battleship weapons will probably just drive it away or make it angry.”

“So that cute little thing isn’t much use, then,” Two-Bears nodded to DRACO where it hung at my side.

“It’s good against raiders,” I said. “Maybe monsters, too. I haven’t had a chance to fight any yet.”

Two-Bears rubbed her chin in thought. “A weapon to surpass an immortal dragon… I doubt any of our blades are up to the task. They’re fine weapons and forged well, but made for mortal enemies. You need something with the old magic in it.”

“We’ve got some good prospects now that we’ve confirmed our position,” Destiny noted. “Old labs and server hubs. We should be able to find something, but there’s one tiny little problem…”

“That problem being that you’re from the sky and have no ideas of the dangers of the land, quiaff?” Two-Bears smirked. “If the dragon is attacking the Iron Temple, it is a threat to the entire valley. We will lend him aid. I will take a warrior or two with me to help Wolf-In-Exile hold his position. That should free you to find your weapon.”

“I’ll go!” Walks-In-Shadow volunteered instantly. He was wearing the survival blanket like a silver cape. I had a feeling he was going to wear it for a very long time.

“No, little one. You stay here and guard the elders,” Two-Bears said. “You can seek out honor when they aren’t pestering me to make you study the spoken lore.”

Walks-In-Shadow groaned. Two-Bears patted his mane and waved him off. The zebra colt walked away, muttering about studying and singing.

“There’s a place I’d like you to go first,” Two-Bears said. “It will put the Companions greatly in your debt. Easier to convince warriors to help you if we’re in your debt than you asking favors and making promises, quiaff?”

“I, uh… I guess?” I shrugged. “Sort of like I help you and you’ll help me?”

She nodded. “There is an old place, built by ponies during the war. It is… a kind of shrine. Like the Iron Temple. A place to remember the past. It was sealed, but I fear the raiders might break the seal and plunder what was buried within. I want you to go there and retrieve what we left in the deepest part.”

“Why can’t you do it?” Destiny asked. It sounded more like the suspicious kind of question than the confused kind.

“I can’t be in two places at once, little ghost,” Two-Bears said. “And… we swore as a tribe not to open it up ourselves. But if an outsider were to open the door, a warrior might go with them to make sure they didn’t cause trouble.”

“A loophole in the superstition, huh?” I asked.

“Call it what you want. You’ll need someone to show you the way…” Two-Bears looked around. “Hey, Falls-the-Axe!” Two-Bears waved, and a zebra stallion trotted over. He looked tired in a sort of world-weary way.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

“Remember what we were talking about with the bunker?” Two-Bears asked. “The Sky Lady has agreed to bid her honor on it. I want you to go with her. To make sure the rest of the tribe knows she acted with honor, of course.”

“Right,” Falls-the-Axe said, looking me over. “You look like you can handle yourself.”

“Am I going to have to wrestle you, too?” I groaned.

“If you fought her in a circle of equals, I don’t know who would win,” Two-Bears said. Falls-the-Axe looked at her in surprise. “Of course I haven’t seen her in real combat yet. You’ll have to tell me how she does.”

Falls nodded and offered me his hoof. “I’m Falls-the-Axe.”

“Chamomile,” I said, shaking.

“If you impressed Two-Bears, that’s good enough for me. I’ll lead you to the bunker.”

“Okay so let me get this straight,” I said, as Falls walked and I flew slowly at his side. It was a little more exposed if anyone was going to take a shot at me, but it gave DRACO a better view and I was enjoying stretching my wings. “You got your name because your mother literally fell over an axe lying on the ground and went into labor?”

“Mostly I got it because of how much she yelled at my father for leaving it there,” he replied. I’d say growled, but his normal voice was a low growl.

“And it has nothing to do with the battleaxe you’re lugging around?”

He glanced back at the steel at his side. “Other way around. I learned the axe because of my name. It seemed like the right thing to do.” He smiled a little, not looking directly at me. “At least I’m not named after a delicate flower.”

I blushed. “My cutie mark story is touching and meaningful.”

“Actually, that’s something that never made sense to me,” he said, eyes still focused ahead. “How do ponies get their names? It always seems like their name is related to their special talent and cutie mark, but their parents couldn’t possibly know what their kids would be good at ahead of time.”

“Oh well, there’s a very good reason for that,” I said. “You see--” DRACO interrupted me with a beep. “I’ll have to tell you later. Looks like there’s something up ahead.”

Falls pulled out his long-handled axe, balancing easily on three hooves. We pushed into the brush just off the trail and looked around. He’d taken us close to the canyon wall, and there was something very peculiar there.

Old, broken pipes jutted out from the rock face like tree roots. Where the stone was weathered away, I could see steel and concrete. There was no sign of anything dangerous, or at least nothing pony-shaped and dangerous.

“Some kind of bunker?” Destiny guessed. “It must have been caught right at the edge of the rift when it opened up. Talk about bad luck.”

“That’s the place,” Falls said. “There should be a door.”

“There probably should be,” Destiny agreed. “Looks like something didn’t like being locked out.”

It had probably been an interior door at one point, just a hatch at the end of a hallway, but the other end of that hallway was gone, and only traces of rebar and concrete remained. From out here the parts I could see were like somepony had sliced up a house like a giant cake.

My stomach grumbled. Now I was hungry for cake because I’d thought about it too hard.

“The hatch isn’t supposed to be torn open, right?” I asked, just in case.

“No. We sealed it tightly when we left.” Falls frowned. “I hope we’re not too late.”

“I’ll take a look, since this is supposed to be my job. You can follow me and keep me out of trouble.”

He nodded, and I hovered out into the open, looking around.

“See anything?” Destiny asked, floating behind me like she was going to use me for cover despite the fact that she was a ghost and currently inhabiting a chunk of bulletproof armor.

“Well, uh…” I flew over to the ruined door, hovering just outside it. I was vaguely aware from old stories that you could find tracks on the ground that told you everything that had happened. Like if one hoofprint was lighter than the rest, it meant that the pony was walking with an injured leg, or how the space between hoofprints could tell you how quickly they were running. I couldn’t tell what was natural and what wasn’t in the sand and mud around the bunker, and nothing was helpfully labeled like in the books I’d read. “I think this is pretty recent. There’s no rust on the exposed metal.”

“It can’t be more than a week old,” Falls said. “We go past here once in a while when we’re going hunting outside the valley. Sort of a good-luck ritual. The door wasn’t broken last time I was here.”

“Let’s hope we’re not too late to get… whatever we’re here to get,” I said. I pulled the door handle, and it was locked. That meant I could either squeeze through the twisted, knife-edged hole in the door or…

I reached through and carefully jiggled the handle from the other side. The door popped open, and I swung the broken metal out of the way.

“Any chance we can get some light in there?” I asked.

Falls-the-Axe pulled out a torch at the same time Destiny’s horn lit up and DRACO fired a flare down the hallway to embed into the concrete wall.

“Let’s go with the magic light,” I said. “It’s not going to start any fires and I have no idea how you’re going to hold on to a torch and use an axe at the same time.”

“I’m not really supposed to fight if I can help it,” Falls said. “I’m only supposed to be here to watch you.”

“Does that mean if I get in real trouble you’ll just leave me?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Even the most superstitious elders in the tribe wouldn’t let taboos or rules get in the way of saving lives. Honor is about living well, not dying stupidly.”

I nodded in approval and walked inside, trying to figure out what this place had been. It didn’t look like a Stable, but maybe the few that had been built on mountaintops were designed differently from ones at sea level.

“This is some kind of military base, isn’t it?” I asked.

“I guess,” Destiny said. “Even though I lived out here, there was a lot of stuff buried in the tundra. Even before the war the government owned a lot of land and wouldn’t let civilians in to see what they were doing. There were all kinds of rumors about what they were doing, strange lights in the sky, persistent humming sounds that never went away, voices from nowhere. The popular theory was alien contact but…”

“But?”

“It sort of lacks perspective,” Destiny said, swinging her cone of light around as we walked into what looked like an atrium. “If you look at Equestria before the war, they were practically all farmers. There was a little technology, but no mass-production. Everything was a one-off made by a genius as proof of concept. If they were testing things we’d think of as perfectly normal - cloudships or VertiBucks or powered armor - those farmers would have no idea what they were looking at.”

“So they’d think it was aliens.”

“Sure. It can be easier than believing ponies are capable of great things.”

I looked around the large room. Falls had his axe out but he was just leaning on it and watching me. I took a deep breath. I had to act like I was in charge.

“Whatever we’re looking for is probably in the deepest part of the base,” I said. Falls nodded silently in agreement. “There’s a security room over there. There might be a key or door controls.”

I walked confidently into the small security office. It wasn’t much larger than a bedroom. There were some filing cabinets along one wall, broken monitors on another, a window looking out into the atrium, and a whole console full of buttons and knobs.

“One of these has to do something,” I said. I stepped closer, and the broken monitors lit up, most of them showing static. The door slammed shut, and an alarm blared. “Oh that’s not fair!” I yelled. “I didn’t even touch anything yet!”

“Look under here,” Destiny said, pointing her light down. I could see a faint green beam. I’d stepped in its path when I got closer to the terminal. “It’s a laser tripwire. But that’s not the bad part.”

“What’s the bad part?” I got on my knees to look under the desk console. Throbbing black wires like veins connected coral-like growths of coppery green metal. “That’s SIVA, isn’t it?” I asked.

Destiny bobbed solemnly in agreement.

“Horseapples,” I muttered. Someone tapped on the window. I stood up to see Falls-the-Axe.

“The door’s locked on this side,” he said, his voice muffled by the glass.

“We tripped some kind of alarm!” I shouted back. “I think the raiders were here!”

“Just my luck,” Falls groaned. “Stay there and I’ll look for a way to open the door again.”

His ears perked up, and he threw himself down to the ground. I jerked back in surprise at the muzzle flashes from outside, and the bulletproof glass between us cracked and cratered as rounds slammed into it from outside.

“Scratch that,” I groaned. “The raiders are still here!”

Chapter 23 - Yours Is No Disgrace

So just to recap, because it helps me keep things in order too, at this point I was locked in the little security checkpoint and Falls-the-Axe was outside, along with a bunch of the SIVA-infected raiders. I didn’t even know how many of the raiders were out there because I couldn’t see much through the cracked bulletproof glass, but I did know that when everypony else had guns and you only had a big blade like Falls, it didn’t really matter if you were some kind of elite zebra tribal warrior, you were gonna get shot a lot and probably die. I’d gone up against only a couple of raiders with just my hoof-blade and I still almost got killed -- and I was practically bulletproof!

“Get out of there!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me. He’d taken cover behind an overturned steel table and was rummaging around in a leather pouch hanging from his piecemeal armor.

“Don’t worry, Sky Lady,” he growled. “This one’s on me. I’ll get you out when it quiets down!”

He found what he was looking for -- it looked like some kind of fang or stinger. Without even a moment of hesitation he jammed the sharp tip into his own thigh.

“Must be some kind of combat drug,” Destiny said. “Zebras used them all the time. They had amazing alchemy--”

Falls-the-Axe’s muscles swelled, and I heard joints cracking as he twisted and grew.

“--Okay you know what? This one’s new to me,” Destiny said. “What did he inject himself with?!”

He roared, his skin and coat thickening, the stripes fading and the shape of his legs twisting until he looked like some kind of fusion of bear and pony with a dirty white coat. The straps of his barding had either stretched or given way, and hung around his lower half like an armored skirt.

One of the raiders got the bright idea to shoot him. All that did was decide who Falls-the-Axe was going to attack first.

The transformed Zebra lumbered with more speed than anything that size had a right to move at, charging the raiders position and just crashing through their thin cover, tearing into them and rending them limb from limb.

“I’m getting a new respect for the ponies who fought in the war, if they had to deal with that,” I said. “There has to be a way out of here…”

I stepped back to look at the bulletproof glass. It had stopped a few shots from the raiders already, but it had also cracked. Maybe it had gotten fragile in its old age?

“Think we can use DRACO to blow out that window?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Destiny said. She hovered behind the rifle, reading the display on the scope’s screen. “Not a lot of armor-piercing rounds left. It might be better to wait and let me try getting the door open some other way.”

“We need to get out there and help him!”

“He doesn’t need help. I’m more worried about what he’s going to do once he’s finished with the raiders. If we wait a while, maybe he’ll ride this out and turn back to normal and we won’t have to fight some kind of crazy monster!”

She had a point. He was a giant monster who was ripping ponies limb from limb. On the other hoof I’d be a real jerk if I just sat on my flank and let him get shot up because I was too scared to get between a berserk beast and a bunch of heavily-armed half-machine raiders! I didn’t realize how suicidal that sounded until much later.

The decision was made for me a moment later. I smelled something sweet in the air, and finally noticed the vents in the small room were all closed off and welded shut to make sure they stayed that way. My ear twitched, and I followed a small hissing sound to a pressurized bottle that was leaking something that made me dizzy when I got too close.

“We need to get out of here. Can you get the door open?” I asked.

“I guess we’re taking our chances with the monster mash,” Destiny grumbled, floating under the desk. I saw the crimson light of her telekinesis at work, and every second seemed to crawl until I was practically jogging in place with impatience. Eventually, the green-lit SIVA flickered, and the door beeped and opened on its own.

“Thanks!” I yelled, not bothering to wait for her. I ran out into the atrium and…

I was too late. There were scattered parts of raiders everywhere, and black, oily blood seeped across the floor. Falls-the-Axe stood on two legs, breathing heavily and bleeding from multiple bullet wounds that were closing even while I watched. The massive bear-beast turned to me slowly.

I took careful aim with DRACO and fired, hitting the last raider right between the eyes when he popped out of cover and ran for the door. Falls spun around to see, and I heard something strange from the massive bear. A deep chuckle.

“Are you, uh…” I hesitated. He held up a massive clawed paw and motioned for me to stay back. The air got warmer, and steam rose from his body, and Falls-the-Axe started shrinking, bones twisting and reshaping themselves like snakes under his skin. The stripes were the last things to reappear as he went back to normal.

He stumbled, obviously exhausted, and I caught him before he hit the ground, holding him up so he could keep his dignity.

“Thanks,” he growled.

“That was, uh…” I hesitated, trying to find the words.

“Unnatural? Terrifying?” he suggested.

“I was going to say really cool and I was gonna ask how it works. They probably thought it was really scary, though.” I motioned to the fallen raiders.

Falls-the-Axe laughed loudly. “Yeah, they did seem a little afraid!” He rubbed his nose and looked around. “If there are more of them you’ll have to take care of it. The change always takes a lot out of me.”

“I knew Two-Bears was holding back when we fought,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be fair unless you could change too.” He pointed to a hallway that had been blocked by debris until a giant monster tore through it to get to some raiders. “I think that’s the right way. I got a decent look around while I was mopping up stragglers.”

“Cool.” He was still leaning on me, so I didn’t go for it right away. “So, is it like… a curse where you get bitten by a bear and start turning into one, or…?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “It’s just alchemy. I don’t know all the details. You’d need to talk to Smoke for that. He’s smarter than I am and helps make it.”

“Is it okay that I know about it?”

Falls shrugged. “It’s not really some big secret.” He took a deep breath to steady himself and shifted his weight back to his own hooves.

DRACO’s barrel moved, and I turned to look. Just for a second I thought I saw a shape in the shadows, a cloaked pony like the one I’d seen on the ridge. I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t imagined it. DRACO had seen it too, but there was no sign of them now.

Falls punched my shoulder lightly and got my attention back to what was in front of me. “Anyway, you fight the next batch of raiders and we’ll call it even.”

“Deal,” I said. He walked up to the doorway and stopped, motioning to it and stepping aside.

“Oh right. I almost forgot. Ladies first.”

“One, two, three--!” I pulled hard, the thick steel door screeching in protest. Rust flakes flew into the air along with chipped paint, and I broke down coughing at the foul air, stepping back and flapping a wing in the direction of the door, trying to push the cloud of dust in some other direction.

“Doesn’t look like they got in there,” Falls-the-Axe said, narrowing his eyes to look past me.

“They must have been too busy setting up that ambush,” Destiny said, hovering near me like a worried hen. “The raiders must have left the outside door broken on purpose to get one of you zebras to wander in and see what happened.”

Falls scoffed at the suggestion. “That didn’t work out very well for them.”

“They were probably counting on you to be stuck in the security room,” I said. “There was that gas trap. They could have waited for you to pass out, then done whatever they wanted.”

“They’ll have to try a lot harder to turn me into a rug.” He nodded to the door. “Is it safe to go in?”

“Huh? Yeah,” I said. “Should be, anyway. No one’s been here for a long time. The most dangerous thing is sneezing ourselves to death on the dust.”

Falls sneezed at that, like I’d put a curse on him. “Great. You go in and I’ll keep watch from out here.”

“You sure? Aren’t you supposed to make sure I don’t do anything dishonorable?”

He looked away. “I just don’t feel right going in there. Just because superstitions are stupid doesn’t mean they aren’t true sometimes.”

“It does feel haunted,” I admitted.

“Yes, it does, because I’m right here,” Destiny said. “You’re both being foalish.”

“You being here just proves ghosts are real,” I pointed out. “So maybe it’s legitimate to be worried about--”

Destiny rolled in a lazy circle that would have been impossible for anypony with a neck to go along with their head. “If there are other ghosts here they’ll stay away when I tell them how little you respect the dearly departed.”

“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes and trotted in.

I’m not sure what the place had originally been. My hoofsteps echoed when I walked in, and my first instinct was to look up. The circular space had to reach all the way to the surface, just a big empty shaft lined with old scaffolding and wires. It reminded me a little of the SPP tower, but on a much smaller scale.

I looked down and scraped at the floor with a hoof, a layer of ash and soot coming away from the cracked concrete.

“So that’s what this place is,” Destiny said, her cone of light shining up and finding the edges of a huge metal hatch at the top of the room. “This was a missile silo.”

“Must have been a big missile,” I said.

“Not as big as I was expecting,” she said. “I thought the long-range intercontinental missiles were larger. I know my rockets pretty well and one this size…” she paused. “Maybe it’d reach the coast. Barely. But it’s more likely you’d end up dropping a megaspell somewhere in the ocean, or the Crystal Empire if you were really bad at aiming.”

“You said you forgot a lot,” I pointed out. “Maybe they improved the range.”

“...Maybe,” Destiny conceded. “Or even more likely, it was some general’s pet project and it didn’t have to make sense.”

“So they spent a bunch of time and money for nothing?”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” Destiny joked. “I’m sure somepony got paid very well for pouring all this concrete. You really don’t want to know how much grift there was during the war.”

She swept her light down to the middle of the room, where the real heart of the place was. A huge rock had somehow found its way into the silo, too big to have fit through the doors, so it must have come from the hatch above. A shovel had been driven into it. The ancient wood and metal almost seemed to glow in the dark.

Offerings had been left around it - dried flowers, gold coins, bottles, plates with the remains of what had probably once been food. They were so old there wasn’t even a stink left around the rot and dust. The only thing that stood out among the debris was a big chunk of technology that had been left on a silk square like a priceless artifact.

I got closer and nudged it like it might explode.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a PipBuck,” Destiny said.

“Are you sure? I thought they were smaller,” I said, prodding the device with my hoof. It looked heavy enough to function more as a bludgeoning weapon than a portable terminal.

“There were a few different models. I’m pretty sure this is the PipBuck 1000. Maybe a Mark IV? It’s in really rough shape.” One of the dials lit up with her telekinetic glow, and the screen buzzed with static for a few moments but never resolved into a picture. “Yeah, the display’s toast and the latch is broken.”

“Just junk, then?” I guessed.

“I guess. I can’t imagine what it would take to actually break one of these things. I took a few apart to see what Stable-Tec put inside them, and even with the right tools cracking open the casing was a hassle.” She fiddled with the other knobs.

“Try connecting to it with DRACO,” I suggested.

“Good idea!” Destiny pulled a cable from the rifle and connected it to a port hidden at the edge of the PipBuck. DRACO beeped and I heard fans start up, the whole gun vibrating a little and getting warm.

“Sounds like it’s doing something.”

“There’s not a lot on here,” Destiny said, using telekinesis to flip through DRACO’s settings. “I think I can salvage a voice recording.”

“Play it,” I said.

“I don’t know what day it is,” the voice started. Whoever they were, they sounded tired, and they had a strange drawl that I’d never heard before. “I always said I’d come back tae help at Equestria’s darkest hour, and here it is. I thought there’d be some awful beast to slay an’ I could set things right, but th’ world ain’t quite that quaint now. There’s a sickness in the air and land that I cannae cure, an’ a sickness in th’ hearts of ponies that’s lingered too long.”

There was a long pause, punctuated by the howling of the wind.

“Th’ Windigos are comin’ again. I thought after everythin’ else that they’d be extinct but they seem stronger than ever, even after all this time. I cannae fight them with just my hooves. Th’ only thing that held them off afore was the Fire of Friendship, but ponies are so distrusting and paranoid they’ve already started shootin’ each other even while th’ world burns around them. I hate tae say it but the old bearded codger might have been right t’ say we needed tae leave this place t’ its fate.”

Whoever was talking put the recorder down to shout at something in the distance.

“Right. I’m leaving this here in case any of the others finds it. These zebra are the only decent bunch I’ve found in the North an’ I’ve done what I can for the sorry sops. I told ‘em to keep this bauble with my shovel, an’ that if they were ever in trouble, I’d do all I could tae get back tae them and help. For now though, I’m off tae find the others. Splittin’ up tae get the lay of the land was a poor idea, an’ I can’t imagine what horrors they’ve found. Anyway, I’m gettin long in th’ tooth because I don’t relish goin’ out into that cold again. Whoever’s listening tae this, I hope fate finds you well. Now how do I shut this bloody thing--”

It cut off with a burst of static.

“That must have been the pony that the Ghost Bear tribe saved out in the waste,” I said. “I guess there really was something to that legend after all.”

“Whoever it was, they sounded like they had some kind of hero complex,” Destiny said. “Can you imagine thinking you could punch the world until it became a better place?”

“Isn’t that kind of like what we’re doing by trying to kill the SIVA dragons?”

“No, that’s totally different, don’t be stupid! Unlike him we’re actually going to be directly fighting a singular force of terrible evil spreading its corruption across the land. It’s not naive because I can back it up with data.”

I nodded, because that was way easier than arguing.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure we grab the shovel and leave,” Destiny said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with it, but maybe one of them needs to plant some turnips?”

“I just hope this isn’t one of those weird tests of worthiness,” I said, spreading my wings and sending a cloud of dust into the air along with scattered coins and dry flower petals. I flew over the shovel and hovered there, looking at it.

“Worthiness?” Destiny asked, obviously confused.

“You know! Like when a mystical princess shoves a sword in a stone and says that only the pony who is worthy enough to pull it out can marry her. There are tons of stories like that!”

“I met Princess Celestia. She never jammed a scimitar into a rock. Besides, if she was ever interested in a pony she’d probably be the one to make the first move.”

“What about Princess Luna?”

“If somepony wanted to date her they’d have to fill out paperwork with all six ministries just to be allowed to send her a letter,” Destiny said, holding back a laugh. “I’ll tell you what, though -- if pulling that shovel loose does mean you’re engaged to somepony, I’ll help you pick out a wedding dress.”

“Har har,” I said, grabbing the shovel and bracing myself. It had been here for buck knows how long, so there was a good chance it was rusted in place or glued there or-- I barely had time to finish the thought. It came free like I was pulling it out of warm butter.

“That didn’t look too hard,” Destiny said.

“It wasn’t,” I agreed. I looked at the rock. There was a big chunk missing from it now. I frowned and gingerly pressed the tip of the shovel against the stone. It swept right through the boulder like it was barely there, and I tossed a shovelful of solid granite to the side. “Wild.”

“That’s a powerful enchantment,” Destiny said, hovering up to it. “I take back what I said. I can see why they’d want this thing back in their hooves.”

“Hmm…” I looked at the edge of the shovel. It didn’t look very sharp. It was worn and blunted, clearly something ponies had used for decades and not just hung up in a museum.It didn’t look all that dangerous. I pressed the tip carefully against my leg. Then I pushed a little harder. My skin resisted the shovel in a way the stone just couldn’t. “I guess the enchantment only works on dirt and stone.”

“Did you just test to see if it was a deadly weapon by trying to sever your own hoof with it?” Destiny asked.

“I…” I paused. “That’s not important.”

“You’re an idiot, Chamomile.”

“Smoke-in-Water, please take this one off my hooves,” Falls-the-Axe growled. “She’s been asking questions the whole time we were gone and my throat is getting sore from telling her to ask someone else.”

The older zebra nodded to Falls as we walked into the Companions’ camp. “I take it you were successful?”

“Ask her. I’m getting a drink and a nap,” Falls said. He stopped for a moment to glance at me. “She did well, though. I think you can trust her.”

“We didn’t really do all that much,” Destiny said. “If it wasn’t for the little ambush by raiders it would have been a total milk run.”

Smoke nodded and patted Falls on the shoulder, pointing him towards a barrel. “That cask was just opened and it is as fine and sweet as can be.”

“I could use a drink too,” I said.

“Let’s take care of those burning questions first,” Smoke said. “Is that what I think it is?” He nodded to the carefully-wrapped shovel at my side. Falls-the-Axe had insisted I use some of the stiff, ancient cloth to wrap the tool up before taking it outside.

I nodded and walked over to a table made from a round cut from a log almost as wide as my wingspan, putting the shovel down and carefully tugging the wrapping off it. Just like before, it almost seemed to glow when the light hit it just right.

“The Shovel of Rockhoof,” Smoke said reverently, picking it up gingerly and examining it. “Amazing! You have done us a great service, and Falls seems to like you.”

“He’s cool,” I said. “I just have like one or two tiny questions.”

“Is it about him turning into a bear?” Smoke asked, throwing the question out there like it wasn’t a big deal.

“It is definitely about him turning into a bear,” Destiny and I said at the same time. I glanced at her and she bobbed in what I interpreted as a shrug.

“I suppose you are expecting a long and winding tale of our history, pacts made with the spirit of winter, an epic worthy of poetry and song?” Smoke waited for me to nod. “It’s less exciting than that, I’m afraid. Our people have always been masters of alchemy and potion-making in the same way ponies are masters of their own magic.”

“It’s some kind of combat drug,” Destiny translated.

“The Tincture isn’t quite that simple, but yes, in essence,” Smoke agreed. “It was necessary at first, before we found this place of peace. We had no weapons to fight off the wild beasts of the northern waste. The first Companions were given the Tincture to allow them to hunt for food and drive off the worst of the monsters.”

“They’d turn into giant monsters… to wrestle other giant monsters?” I asked quietly. “That’s so cool!”

“Chamomile,” Destiny warned.

“I wanna wrestle a giant monster,” I said.

“I like that!” Smoke said. He grinned and punched my shoulder. “The Tincture doesn’t work for ponies, though. I’m sorry.”

“Darn…” I sighed.

“Even if you weren’t a pegasus I have no idea what it would do to you with that steel plague eating you up.” Smoke gently touched my right forehoof like he was afraid it’d bite him. “I doubt it could transform this. It might pop right off your body.”

“I’d be more worried about the parts in her brain. The last thing she needs is more head trauma,” Destiny said.

“I’m sure she’s enough of a warrior that she doesn’t need more help to put up a fight,” Smoke said. “But you know, if you did want to wrestle something twice your size, I could arrange something.”

I shook my head. “That’s great and I’m gonna be honest -- if it was Two-Bears I might think about taking her up on that, but you’re just not my type, sorry.”

Smoke managed to maintain a serious face for about half a second before breaking down in laughter.

Destiny just hovered there, staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s just no accounting for taste,” Destiny sighed, shaking her head. “She’s a zebra, Chamomile.”

“And she could totally beat me up,” I agreed.

“Before I learn far too much about the Sky Lady’s taste in mares, what I meant was, Walks-In-Shadow wants to join the Companions. As you know. But as you don’t know, to do it he has to hunt a Ghost Bear and bring it back to us.”

“Does he have to do it alone?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you if you wanted to help if he had to do it alone,” Smoke said. “It would be good for the tribe. We need the bear to make the Tincture. I expect we’ll need more than we have, if things continue as they are.”

“Chamomile, we can’t sit around and delay this,” Destiny said. “Every moment we spend playing around with these primitives -- no offense--”

“Offense taken anyway,” Smoke mumbled.

“--Is time we could be using to find a weapon.”

“I…” I sighed. “I need to do this. I’ve been fighting ponies and things that used to be ponies and I gotta take a minute to do something else.”

“I don’t like it much either,” Destiny admitted. “If you need to take a little trip to remind yourself you’re not a monster, then do it. I just wish I had the same luxury.” She spun around, the helmet hovering there and not facing me in a way that felt more like sulking than being judgmental.

“How much longer will it take for the armor to be repaired?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Sixteen hours? Maybe less. I have the self-repair talismans running at full power, but the structural integrity fields were shattered and it’s having to repair parts of the thaumoframe. That’s delicate work for an autonomous spell, so it’s slow.”

“We’ve got that long, then,” I said. “You’re right that we need to get on it, but…” I rubbed my right forehoof. “I don’t want to get anywhere near that dragon without the armor shielding me. I could feel it reaching inside me.”

“You’ve got a point. But if you’re going to be playing around, I’m going to be working,” Destiny said. “I’m going to stay with the armor and try to manually repair what I can to speed things up.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll feel better having access to our medical supplies, too.”

“You mean you’ll feel better when I can shoot you full of Med-X the next time you get a bullet in the guts.”

“That too,” I agreed.

I raised a hoof to shield my eyes against the wind. The high winds and biting chill reminded me of the brief time I’d spent with the Greywings. Also, walking on snow? Very disconcerting experience. It looks just like clouds but you crunch right through it and there’s this moment where you think something has gone terribly wrong and you’re about to fall a few thousand feet and never be seen again.

I wasn’t gonna let Walks-In-Shadow know that, though. I settled for flying slowly alongside him and fighting the winds instead of my instincts.

“So we don’t get a whole lot of bears in the Enclave,” I shouted over the wind. “How do you even hunt them?”

Walks-In-Shadow was wearing padded barding made from tanned hides and layers of dried grass, probably more for warmth than any kind of protection. He was wearing the silver blanket Wolf-in-Exile had given him as a cloak, and the edges whipped around with the gusts. He looked up at me and adjusted the goggles he was wearing to help with the glare.

“You’ve never gone hunting, Sky Lady?” he asked.

“Well, uh…” I hesitated. I couldn’t let a kid think I wasn’t cool! “Not a bear. I’ve hunted Skyjoys. You probably don’t get them down here. They’re like living clouds that eat your magic.”

Walks gasped in awe. “Wow! Really?”

“Yes,” I lied. I’d seen a Skyjoy once, at least. They used hypnotic lights to lure in pegasus ponies and drain their magic. Unless somepony caught them, they’d lose their ability to fly and stand on clouds and the last anypony would see of them was a hole in the cloud floor that closed up around them.

Walking on the snow reminded me too much of that moment when gravity got its revenge on us for our hubris.

“So what’s the plan, fearless leader?” I asked, changing the subject back to what was really important - finding a bear to wrestle.

“I’ve been on plenty of hunts with the Companions,” Walks-in-Shadow said. “Mostly I was just carrying things for them, but they showed me what to do!” He hefted his spear in both hooves. “This time of year, the Ghost Bears are bulking up for winter, so they’re especially vicious and hungry. All we have to do is use some bait and wait for them to come to us.”

“That actually sounds like a great plan.” I nodded. “So what kind of bait do we use?”

“Ghost Bears are attracted to the scent of blood, so I have a gourd full of blood we can pour on the snow and… and…” Walks-in-Shadow frowned and felt around in his pack.

“What’s wrong?”

He pulled out his hoof, and it was black and white and red all over. “The gourd must have leaked,” he said sheepishly.

Something huge and terrifying roared, and with the wind whipping around, I couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.

“That was a Ghost Bear, wasn’t it?” I asked. He clutched his spear and nodded, backing up to get closer to me. “It’s okay. This is a wide open plain. We’ll be able to see it coming from miles away--”

The white bear standing under a white sky on white ground faded out of invisibility and smacked me in the face with a paw as big as a dinner plate. I slammed into the ground and made a snow alicorn.

“Ow,” I said, touching my cheek and finding a few shallow claw marks.

“They turn invisible! That’s why they’re Ghost Bears!” Walks-In-Shadow yelled, pointing his spear at the apparition and trying to get some distance, poking in its direction to make it back up. “Are you okay?”

“No big deal,” I said, shaking myself off and getting back to my hooves. “Alright, bear, it’s you and me! Let’s go!”

I squared up on it. If anything, it was bigger than Falls-the-Axe had been when he transformed. It felt the same as an oncoming storm, something bigger than life. Something that we had to fight just to tame its fury. It swung down at Walks-In-Shadow, and I shoved the kid out of the way, catching its paw in my hooves and holding it in place.

“You don’t like that, do you?” I grunted, straining to hold the beast back. “I bet you’ve never seen anypony as strong as you are!”

It roared and redoubled its efforts, my hooves slipping in the ice. I fell, and it was on me in a flash, all white fur and teeth and awful-smelling breath. I managed to grab its head, trying to keep those deadly jaws away. I kicked it in the stomach, and it felt like I was kicking a layer of rubber over a core of solid steel. I doubt the bear even noticed.

“I’ll help you!” Walks-in-Shadow yelled. Before I could tell him to stop, he drove the point of his spear into the Ghost Bear’s side. To his credit, he hit it hard enough to go right through a pony, but it only dug into the animal’s thick hide a few inches before the spear’s shaft bent and snapped, leaving the zebra with only a stick.

It wasn’t even close to a fatal wound, but it was just enough to get the bear’s attention. Some of that terrible, crushing weight came off me, and it tried to snap at Walks-In-Shadow. Ice flooded my veins and everything dropped into slow motion, sounds echoing unnaturally as my vision tunneled. I saw that huge maw full of fangs swing towards the kid, and that was my whole world.

Before I knew it, I was back on my hooves and holding the bear back. My hooves dug into the snow and to the solid permafrost beneath it. The bear made a surprised sound when its lunge was stopped in mid-motion. I pulled, and I could feel my bones creaking under the strain as the bear flipped over. It was a picture-perfect Wing Chun shoulder throw.

The bear crashed into the ground, and I wrapped my hooves around its neck, squeezing as hard as I could. It slapped at my side, and I felt its claws struggling to rip through my skin, like a dull knife meeting something too tough for it to bite into.

It got up, stumbling and trying to throw me off. Everything stank like burning hair, but I barely noticed it. I adjusted my grip and flicked my right forehoof, snapping the blade there out to its full length before driving it into the bear’s shoulder. Blood poured out, spurting over the snow in steaming gouts that almost instantly froze into crimson pools of ice.

I pulled the blade free and drove it in again, changing the angle and twisting. I felt the bear react to that, the stumbling getting a drunken, dazed quality. The bear used the last of its strength and tossed me aside. I hit the snow and rolled, my back legs almost collapsing under me when I stood. I panted, trying to catch my breath. Whatever font of strength I’d found, it was expended, and there was nothing left inside of me for a round two.

“You want to go again?” I rasped, my throat dry. “Come and get me if you’re bear enough!”

The bear coughed up a gout of thick, dark blood and collapsed, letting out one final, shuddering breath before going still.
I wiped my forehead, feeling weak and feverish. I must have been coming down from the world’s biggest adrenaline rush.

“Oh wow, are you okay, Sky Lady?” Walks-in-Shadow asked.

“Yeah, I’m--” I stumbled. “I just need a second.” I sat down, right in a puddle. I blinked and looked down. The snow had melted around me in a wide radius, like I was burning like a bonfire. My feathers, the ones that looked like tinfoil after they’d been plucked and regrew wrong, were glowing softly and shimmering with heat.

It probably wasn’t healthy.

“So how do we get this thing back to the village?” I asked, nodding to the bear corpse and just trying not to pass out. My stomach growled in protest, suddenly empty.

Walks-in-Shadow looked at me sheepishly.

“We carry it, don’t we?” I groaned.

The zebra colt blushed. “I’ll take the left side?” he offered.

Chapter 24 - Let It Roar

“Just a little more!” Walks-in-Shadow said. He was trying to be encouraging. He really was. I had to remind myself of that every time he said anything to avoid snapping at him. Maybe this was how Dad felt when I was bothering him and he was busy working.

My legs shook under me, and I just focused on putting one hoof in front of the other. If I focused on the rhythm and my breathing I could block out the rest, even my aching muscles and empty stomach. After I’d finished the bear off my body had demanded a big meal and a long nap and it was desperate enough for both that it didn’t care about the order. Instead I’d forced myself to drag something weighing more than I wanted to think about all the way back to the zebra village basically on my own. Walks-In-Shadow tried to help but the best thing he could do was just stay ahead of me and keep the path clear.

I took a few more steps and felt a lot of the weight come off me.

“I’ve got it,” Smoke-in-Water said softly. “Go sit down.”

I nodded to the older zebra and looked around. I was in front of the Companions hall, and I plodded my way over to a bench and half-fell onto it.

“Bringing it back was harder than fighting the bear!” I groaned.

“This is a good-sized Ghost Bear,” Smoke said. He’d set it down in a clear area and was walking around it in a circle. “Not the biggest I’ve seen, but very impressive for just the two of you on your own.”

“Walks-in-Shadow should get the credit,” I said. “I just did the grunt work.” I gave the kid a wink. “He was the brains of the operation.”

“No doubt,” Smoke agreed. He tossed me a pouch. “Here.”

I looked inside hoping to find a snack. I was sorely disappointed by the little wooden jar of green cream.

“What is this?” I asked. I licked the cream gently. “Ew.”

“It’s a poultice,” Smoke said. “You’ve got some nasty cuts. It’ll keep you from getting an infection or scarring up too badly.”

“Not sure if I’m really worried about either of those, these days,” I mumbled. Still, after he’d mentioned it I was dimly aware of a few scrapes where the bear’s claws had managed to draw blood. I gingerly applied the cream to my cuts and it was immediately soothing and cool, taking the irritation of the pain away instantly.

“Keep the jar,” Smoke said. “You’ll probably need it.”

“Thanks,” I said, putting it away. “I’m hoping Destiny gets my armor working soon enough that I don’t have to worry too much about that.”

“Does your armor make you super-strong, Sky Lady?” Walks-in-Shadow asked.

“It’s supposed to, but it’s either not as impressive as advertised or I’m not using it properly.” I shrugged. “What I really care about is that it can keep this under control.” I tapped my right foreleg. “I can’t go dragon-hunting if I can’t stand to be around it.”

“You did okay at the Iron Temple,” Walks said.

“I got lucky.” I sighed and rubbed my leg. “I had a bunch of Dartura root in me and I could still feel it starting to eat me up inside. It wasn’t even really focused on me until I started shooting it, and all I managed to do was scare it off.”

“A wise warrior prepares themselves before an important battle,” Smoke said. “Why don’t you help me prepare the bear, Walks-in-Shadow?”

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“Every part of a bear has a use,” Smoke said. “The hide can be tanned, the organs used in potions, the fat can be made into soap or washed with, the meat is eaten--”

My stomach rumbled at the word ‘eaten’.

“Perhaps the Sky Lady would like a few choice cuts of bear meat as a reward for her help?” Smoke suggested. “I’ll have to butcher it either way. The Tincture requires the bear’s heart and liver.”

“Well, uh…” I hesitated. “I mean, is it even edible? It’s monster parts. I should be eating greens and grass and stuff, right?”

Smoke laughed and slapped my back. “I’ll get them cooked up with our little cub here. Why don’t you go check on your floating friend? I hear she’s been making things difficult for the Elders.”

“I’ll try and remind her the war ended a century and a half ago,” I got up, and my sore legs protested taking my weight. I took to the air before they could argue with me about the benefits of collapsing where I was standing. At least my wings weren’t sore yet.

“They’re dangerous, Chamomile,” Destiny grumbled. She was connected to the rest of the armor and I could see the spells working to repair it from here, glowing waves of red washing in and out over the cracked and broken tiles of crystal ceramic and titanium and filling in cracks little by little.

I raised an eyebrow. “First, they’re really not, and second, even if they were that doesn’t mean you can threaten foals with an anti-tank weapon.”

“I don’t even like pony foals, much less zebra ones!” Destiny protested. “They might try to steal parts of the armor, or damage it more, or…”

“Or?”

“Or something! I don’t know!” She sounded frustrated and annoyed. “Maybe you don’t know what the zebras are like, but I do. My own mother…” her voice trailed off.

“I know.” I put a hoof on the armor’s shoulder, kneeling down next to her. It felt like putting my hoof on her shoulder, sort of. “I saw that memory too. It was awful. But these aren’t the same zebras.”

“Yes, they are,” Destiny whispered. “They came from the same POW camp as the ones that attacked my family! They’re not civilians or refugees that ended up in the middle of nowhere, Chamomile! They’re criminals and soldiers!”

“Their ancestors were,” I pointed out. “Anyone that actually fought in the war died a long time ago, unless someone’s hiding a thousand-year-old zebra around here and I don’t know about it.”

“...You might be able to think that, but to me, it’s only been a couple of weeks since I saw the bombs fall and kill millions of ponies.”

I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I tried something that would have worked on me. I pulled her into a hug. She went quiet, and I could sort of feel her calming down. It’s hard to explain since I was hugging a suit of barding and she was dead, but maybe it was a ghost thing where I could just feel it.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m trying. I’m just freaked out by all this.”

“I’m freaked out too,” I admitted. “I mean, I’m on the surface! I’ve got no idea how to get home, and there are probably monsters hiding around every corner!”

“The only monsters here are ones we make ourselves,” said a voice behind me. Wheel-of-Moon coughed politely and stepped closer, sitting down at a respectful distance from us. I let go of Destiny and nodded a greeting to the old zebra mare. “I see you’ve returned, Sky Lady.”

“I’m sorry if I was rude,” Destiny mumbled.

“And you can even make the dead apologize,” Wheel-of-Moon said. “Truly the stuff of legend. How was your hunt?”

“Technically it was Walks-in-Shadow’s hunt,” I said. “We got a bear, though.”

“From the look of those cuts, the bear nearly got you.”

I shrugged. “It could have been worse.”

“Mm. Next time, try not letting it maul you,” she said.

“I’ll try that, thanks,” I said. “Hey, you got anything for a fever?”

“Feeling sick?” Wheel asked. “I’ll get you some honey tea. It’s not magical healing, but all the body needs for a fever is rest.”

“Thanks,” I said. She nodded and went inside.

“We’ve got time for a nap, but not much more,” Destiny said. “The Exodus armor is just about ready. If you put it on now, I can finish the rest on the way.”

“On the way where?” I asked.

“While you were gone I was working with DRACO to recover some of the corrupt data files we pulled off that broken PipBuck. We haven’t salvaged much yet. Maybe if we can get connected to the Warmind we can do something more, but with what we had on hoof, I was able to get coordinates to one possible location of note.”

“Is it the dragon’s lair, with a big red X on it?” I asked, stepping around to look into DRACO’s monochrome screen.

“The PipBuck connected to a monitoring station and requested current map data.”

Destiny tweaked one of the knobs next to the screen, and it switched over from a camera view through the scope to a map.

“This is the old map data,” Destiny said. “It’s not super useful right now, but it gives us a base to work from. We know we’re about here--” she put a marker on the map. “And according to the PipBuck, it downloaded a map update around here.” A second marker appeared and blinked slowly. “It’s labeled as a monitoring station. If the sensors are still online, we can update our data for current conditions.”

“It’d be nice to have a map that notes important little things like a brand new canyon opening up,” I admitted.

“I’ll settle for what I can get. It should have the accumulated information from every PipBuck that’s been in range. If we’re lucky, maybe one of the raiders was wearing one and it’s got that big red X waiting for us.”

I nodded. “There’s a meal waiting for me back in the other camp. Let me get something in my stomach and maybe get a quick nap in, and then we’ll figure out how to get to this monitoring station.”

“Put this in your stomach first,” Wheel said, popping up out of nowhere. I almost jumped.

“Gah! You’re even quieter than the bear,” I said. She put a steaming stoneware cup in my hooves. “I need to put a bell on you or something.”

“I hope I’m quieter than a lumbering beast,” Wheel-of-Moon said.

I sipped at the honey tea. It had some kind of spice or mint in it, and I felt my rumbling stomach quiet a little.

Wheel-of-Moon looked significantly towards the Companions camp. “Do you know why they keep their camp there, and not inside the village?”

“Philosophical differences on the appropriate role of violence in problem-solving?” I guessed.

Wheel-of-Moon smiled. “Among other things, yes. More importantly, it is because of the nature of their blessing. Or curse. I know they trust you enough to have shown you already.”

“They use combat drugs to turn into big half-bear monsters,” I said. “It’s pretty cool.”

“Yes, that is how it always seems at first,” Wheel agreed. “It’s why so many young zebra join them. From the outside, it seems exciting, a life with power and friends, the leaders of the hunt, the defenders of the tribe. They are very good at reminding us of how useful they are. But what about the end of a Companion’s life?”

“What, like… slipping up and getting eaten by a monster?” I asked.

“Those are the lucky ones. You should talk to them about the Long Walk. Ask Smoke-in-Water about it. Make sure Walks-in-Shadow can hear. Perhaps he already knows, but it is a truth the Companions don’t even speak of amongst each other.”

“I bet when they’re too old the drugs stop working,” Destiny said. “Or it kills them. Some kind of muscle or organ damage. Transformation effects like that must be hard on the body.”

“I don’t know. Smoke is pretty old.”

“Yeah, and you haven’t seen him transform, have you?” Destiny pointed out. She floated ahead of me, curious enough about digging up a zebra secret that she was coming along for the ride. I was pretty sure she just wanted to shame them with whatever she found.

“Or maybe it’s something not sinister,” I said. “Maybe there’s some really dangerous, suicidal mission that one of them has to go on every so often. Like… maybe all the heat down here is from a reactor, and they have to send someone in to fix it every few years! And they die of terrible radiation burns!”

“That would still be sinister.”

“No, it would be tragic and self-sacrificing.”

“And why wouldn’t they just use Rad-X or… whatever the zebra equivalent is? And why would it break over and over again?”

“You’re really wrecking this whole cool story I had in my head.”

“Sorry about bringing logic into things,” Destiny said.

“You have a wild imagination, Sky Lady,” Walks-in-Shadow said, from right next to me where he was standing and I hadn’t even seen him until I’d practically jumped out of my skin and my heart was doing its best to go at a thousand beats a second and also stop entirely, which had an effect much like when anything goes really fast and comes to an abrupt halt.

“Oh buck, kid, you scared me!” I gasped. "Why is everybody around here so sneaky?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just gonna go get you, but you’re already here! You’ve got real good timing.”

A soft breeze caught the smell from up ahead. It was the first time I’d ever smelled cooking meat, and I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I tried not to think too hard about flame turrets and having all the skin burned off my hoof. It might have mostly stopped hurting, but sometimes there was a phantom sensation of crawling, burning agony that was bad enough to make me break out into a sweat even if it only lasted a heartbeat, and the smell of the cooking bear was just enough to hit me with that.

“Sit down over there,” Walks-in-Shadow said, leading me over to a table he’d clearly set up for me. He’d cleaned it off and even found a candle somewhere to set the mood. Things were starting to get dark, or at least darker. The surface was sort of gloomy. If we were outside the canyon maybe we’d be able to see the setting sun, but down here it was just greys that slowly worked their way towards black.

Smoke trotted over with a wooden plate and put it in front of me. “This should put some meat on those bones of yours.”

The steak was almost the same size as the plate and had some kind of glaze on it. The meat was a purple-red so dark it was almost black, and cooking it hadn’t made it lighten up. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure this wasn’t poison.

I looked at the slab of bear and then at Smoke-in-Water. “Is it supposed to look like that?”

“It is a warrior’s meal. A bear steak, cooked with honey to tenderize it.” He stabbed a knife into the meat. “Here. Don’t try to swallow it all at once.”

There was just something disquieting about eating part of an animal when you knew the animal personally. Sort of personally. I liked to think that wrestling it to death gave us a sort of connection. My stomach disagreed, and rumbled with a strong argument that if I didn’t eat something soon, it was gonna make me pass out purely out of revenge. I started slicing into the steak, cutting it into thin slices.

“So, Wheel-of-Moon said I should ask you about the Long Walk,” I said, figuring I might as well try to get the conversation out of the way while I was thinking about it. I started eating, using the knife to stab slices of the steak. I blinked at the taste. It was savory and sweet and salty and before I knew what I was doing I was tearing into it. I was sort of surprised at how easy it was to chew.

Smoke nodded in approval at my appetite and sat down across from me. “I should have expected that. She has reason to be wary. It is not truly some secret, but no one has had to take the Long Walk in years, and it is not something we like to discuss.”

“It’s some kind of suicide mission, isn’t it?” Destiny asked. She bobbed a little in a shrug. “Why dance around it?”

“Yes, and no,” Smoke said. “The Tincture is powerful, but every time it is taken, the wild spirit of the Ghost Bear fights for control of the warrior. For a time, the warrior can easily hold it back, but it is a battle repeated with every use.”

“It’s addictive,” I said. I didn’t need to ask, he might as well have been describing my relationship with Med-X. If it wasn’t for liberal use of Dartura tea I’d be an even bigger mess than I already was.

“Worse,” he said, surprising me. “Most medicine, the body adapts to it and you need more and more to get the same effect. The Tincture builds up in a warrior. Eventually, the day comes when they don’t need the medicine to change. Then it gets harder and harder to change back, until they can’t.”

“They’re stuck as big half-bear monsters?” I asked, looking down at the meat on my plate.

“The Bear spirit quickly overcomes their minds, and they become beasts themselves, with only rare moments when they remember being zebras at all. They leave the village, and go out into the waste to try and find a cure. That is the Long Walk. They go out to be lost and forgotten instead of being remembered as beasts.”

“How would they even find a cure if they’re just… wild animals?” Destiny asked.

“They wouldn’t,” Smoke said. “But it is easier to believe and have hope. They are not going off to die, they are searching for something to save us all.”

“Kinda grim,” I muttered.

“It is the way of things,” Smoke-in-Water said. “It isn’t a sure fate. The less of the Tincture a zebra takes, the longer before they lose control. I haven’t changed in years. But to hunt? To fight off raiders? To slay monsters? The Companions do what we must. It is the sacrifice we make, and the reason we are allowed to indulge ourselves. A short life should be celebrated and made full of smiles instead of sorrow.”

“Do you still want to join, knowing all that?” I looked over at Walks-in-Shadow, who was half-hidden by the table and listening silently to us.

“There’s no shame in being a scholar,” Smoke said. “Wheel-of-Moon is a good friend of mine, even if we disagree about other things.”

“I still want to do it,” Walks said, after a moment of consideration. He glanced at me, then at Smoke. “I know it’s dangerous, but I’m ready. I’m old enough to make the decision for myself.”

“So be it,” Smoke said. He trotted over to the cauldron with that light, almost prancing step zebras had and used a ladle to scoop some of the blood-red sludge brewing inside it into a wooden cup, giving it to Walks-in-Shadow with grave solemnity.

“Here I go,” Walks-in-Shadow said. He held the steaming wooden cup in his hooves and stared into it like he could see his future.

“You don’t have to--” I started. Walks-in-Shadow put the cup to his lips and drank it down before I even had a chance to finish. “--Never mind.”

Walks-in-Shadow coughed and held out the wooden mug for Smoke to take. “That tasted awful,” he said.

“It’s made of bear parts and weird plants,” I said. “There was absolutely no way it was ever going to taste good.”

“Is it doing anything?” Walks tried to get a look at himself, turning around in a circle while he stared at his own flank like a colt trying to spot a new cutie mark.

“The first change takes a few moments to begin, and it can be a difficult experience,” Smoke said. “You should sit down and try to remain calm.”

Walks nodded and sat down quickly, shivering. “Is it supposed to feel hot and cold at the same time?”

“You’re feeling your hair start to grow,” Smoke said. “It’s like goosebumps in the cold. Just focus, young one. Focus on staying in control.”

“I can feel--” Walks cried out. His muscles bulged and started swelling. I took a step towards him, and Smoke stopped me, grabbing my shoulder and shaking his head.

The zebra colt’s stripes faded. He grabbed his head and his muzzle twisted and grew three sizes that day. Also there were a lot of fangs involved, and right after that, the claws started. I looked at Smoke.

“Just give him a moment,” he said. “It’s confusing and disorienting the first time one changes, like being in a waking dream.”

Walks had grown almost as large as Falls-the-Axe had when he’d changed, and he was still growing. His eyes glowed with magical light, and he was sporting fangs and claws that put a combat knife to shame. He looked down at Smoke and me and growled.

“Just keep control,” Smoke repeated, slowly and calmly. “You can--”

Walks roared and backhooved him, slapping the old Zebra away and into a table, hard enough to knock the logs over.

“He’s gone berserk!” Destiny yelled.

“Go check on Smoke!” I shouted, spreading my wings to make myself look bigger and getting in front of Walks. “Hey! Over here!”

The werebear turned to me and growled, baring its bear fangs at me.

“Kid, if you don’t calm down, I’m gonna do something you’re gonna regret,” I said.

He lowered his head and charged. I’d warned him. I jumped into the air and twisted so when I landed on his back, I was able to get my hooves around his ribs. Before he even knew what was happening, I’d pivoted in midair and thrown him using his own momentum, the werebear rolling head-over-hooves to a stop against the canyon wall.

“You’re not as heavy as the real bear,” I said, sweat dripping down my face. I wasn’t sure I had another one of those left in me. My whole body was already feeling feverish and hot and cold at the same time again.

“Chamomile--” Destiny warned.

“I know, I know. I have a plan. A real plan.”

“That’s not--” she started, but I didn’t have time to listen to her worrying about me. Walks-in-Shadow charged right for me again. I spread my wings like I was going to jump into the air, feinted, and he looked up at where he thought I was going. That made him totally miss when I ran in low and swept his legs, grabbing one of those big murder-claws and twisting it behind his back.

“There we go!” I yelled, holding him in place when he slammed into the dirt. He tried to throw me off and I planted a hoof on his spine. “No! You’re going to calm down and behave!”

He panted for breath, struggles getting weaker and weaker until I felt it. The muscles in his claw spasmed and started to shrink, and stripes crawled across his body like ripples in water. I held his hoof for a few more seconds to be sure, then let go and stepped away.

“Ay ya, Sky Lady!” he groaned. “What did you do to my leg?”

“It might be a little dislocated,” I said by way of an apology. “You were out of control.”

“It happens,” Smoke groaned, getting up. “Thank you for keeping him here. If he had gotten into the village…”

“Where is everybody else?” I asked. “Shouldn’t the other Companions have helped with this?”

“They’re all off scouting the ridges around the valley to make sure the raiders have only one way in. The Shovel of Rockhoof is a wonderful tool for opening passages, but it can be used to close them as well.” Smoke sighed. “I thought I could handle the boy myself. I was wrong. I owe you once again.”

My stomach rumbled.

“I could use another snack,” I said.

“So could I,” Walks-in-Shadow agreed. “And maybe some medicine.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” Destiny said. “I would have.”

“Leave it to the ghost to be all gloom and doom,” I said, patting the helmet affectionately.

“I’ll train the boy,” Smoke said. “He’s a fast learner. In a few days he should be ready to hunt on his own and defend the village when the rest of us are away. I’ll see if I can get Falls-the-Axe to train him on the finer points.”

Walks-in-Shadow was sleeping off his transformation and a very large meal afterwards. He’d eaten even more than I had, and I’d felt like I was starving!

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, pulling an armored sleeve over my right forehoof. The whole suit of armor felt a little looser than usual. I pressed the resize button on the inside wrist and it shrank that half-size to fit.

“Are you sure you want to do this alone?” Smoke asked.

“She won’t be alone,” Destiny said. “I’ll be with her. And with the Exodus armor repaired, there’s no reason to think those raiders will be able to cause trouble for us.”

“Don’t jinx it,” I warned. I wiggled my body, getting used to the weight of the armor. “Feels pretty good.”

“I set the weight-reduction to a little higher than the armor’s mass,” Destiny said. “It’s supporting itself and about ten percent of your body weight.” She floated over my head and dropped down, letting me pull the helmet the rest of the way on and lock the seals in place.

“As you wish,” Smoke said. “I would not insult a warrior by insisting they needed to take another to watch their back, but I might suggest such a thing to a friend.”

“DRACO will be watching my back,” I assured him. “He’s almost out of ammo but he’s still full of useful things.”

“Try to check in with the warriors who went to the Iron Temple,” Smoke said. “It might be closer to where you’re going, and they would no doubt be willing to help the Sky Lady if she needed it.”

“I will,” I promised. “Otherwise Walks-in-Shadow will worry too much, right?”

“That he will,” Smoke agreed, with a small smile. “With any luck, you won’t have to save him the next time he does something to try and impress you.”

I could feel it in the air. It was a sensation like that constant press of static electricity all around Thunderbolt Shores. It was a heavy weight in my chest, and a throbbing in my arm that was out-of-sync with my heartbeat. A snowstorm was coming down around us, just heavy enough that we couldn’t even see the ground from a few hundred feet up.

“Now that we’ve actually got sensors, I can tell you the dragon must be transmitting over a really huge area,” Destiny said. “I’m not sure how. It seems like too much for a single source, even if it had a huge power supply.”

“Can you do anything to block it?” I asked, trying to keep the strain out of my voice.

“I’ll increase power to the near-field transmitter,” Destiny said. I felt the pressure ease off a little, but it didn’t go away. My right shoulder felt like it was in a vice. It was still an improvement.

“Are we getting close?” I asked.

“Yeah, you can start descending,” Destiny said. “Good idea keeping up here! The storm is giving us enough cover that there’s no way any raiders are going to see us coming.”

“That’s not the only reason. The signal is stronger near the ground.”

“It is?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah, I can feel it every time we hit a downdraft.” I adjusted my flight path and started easing down. I wanted to keep it safe and simple - with no visuals on the ground there was no telling what I was dropping into, and if something happened with the SIVA signal I wanted to be able to abort and get back to altitude.

“Is it going to be a problem? If you need to turn back, we can try something else,” Destiny said. She was being unusually nice. It was probably because we were actually doing what she wanted instead of what I wanted.

I figured I should encourage it. We were stuck together, so we had to be a team. “I can take it. Actually, this might still be the best option. Flying in means we won’t spend as long in the danger zone.”

“Good point,” Destiny agreed.

I saw something through the swirling snow. We were getting close to the ground. I spread my wings and pulled back, flapping slowly and dropping down to a hover. High-speed landings were cool, but not if you were worried the floor was lava.

“It’s a forest,” Destiny said, with obvious surprise.

“There was a forest down in the valley, too,” I pointed out, as I settled in to land in a clearing between tall trees.

“Yes, but it was warm and wet down there, with volcanic soil! That was good land for growing plants. This is the tundra! You can’t plant a tree in the permafrost! Especially not a tree like that.” She outlined a tree to my left. “That’s a coconut palm! There’s no way it can survive out here!”

“Let’s take a closer look,” I said. I had to focus on my steps, like when I was dragging that big bear back to camp. I could ignore the aches and pains if I had something else to occupy my brain.

I hadn’t even gotten all the way to the tree before something went wrong. I felt a long scrape against my armored leg, like somepony dragging a knife against it.

“Woah, what was that?” I asked, looking around. I couldn’t see any hidden knives.

“There. That plant.” Destiny pointed out a bush I’d stepped past without thinking. “Look at the edges of the leaves!”

I leaned in carefully to look. The light glinted off the leaves in a suspiciously metallic way.

“They’re made of metal?”

“It’s like when your feathers grew back in,” Destiny said. “We’ll have to be careful.”

A breeze chose that moment to sweep around us, the leaves of the underbrush tinkling like wind chimes in every direction.

“Very careful,” Destiny amended. “You were right about waiting for the armor to be repaired. I take back everything I said about you wasting time. This forest would tear an unarmored pony to ribbons!”

“Look at the tree,” I said, finally getting up to it. “There’s something under the bark.” I pulled off a layer, revealing blinking lights and circuits running through the tree’s inner layers.

“Technically a palm tree doesn’t have bark, but-- this must be how they’re staying alive. They’re… cyborg trees, I guess? Weird. Only SIVA could do this.”

“That’s not the only problem,” I said. I looked up. Among the palm fronds were a bunch of hexagonal plates. “I think those are antennas.”

“The forest itself is boosting the signal,” Destiny groaned. “That’s why it’s stronger near the ground! Each one must only have limited range, but there’s no telling how many trees are hiding signal repeaters.”

“Let’s make this a quick trip,” I said. “Which way to the monitoring station?”

Chapter 25 - Speed and Danger

I donno what I hated more. Was it the almost-constant sound of metal scraping on metal, or the invisible threat of the signal repeaters slowly wearing away at me? One was attacking my body and eating it from within, but that freaking noise was just awful, like a fork and knife rubbing against a plate or hooves on a chalkboard.

“I think I can rig up a display showing signal strength,” Destiny said. “It’d be a little basic, but we could avoid walking into that broadcast.”

“Thanks, but it wouldn’t help much,” I said. “I can feel it in my bones. Literally. It’s like termites.”

“Sorry. The armor isn’t a perfect signal blocker, so we’re getting a significant amount of leakage.” Destiny popped open a small map in the corner of my vision. “If it helps, we’re mostly going the right way!”

“Only mostly?”

“Some of those detours around the really strong repeaters took us out of the way a bit.” A line appeared on the map. We were circling around the monitoring station instead of going towards it. “I’m sure we’ll find a safe path soon.”

I nodded. We’d already run into a few spots where the SIVA broadcast was overwhelmingly strong. Trying to push through would probably kill me or worse, and neither of us wanted to find out what ‘worse’ looked like.

“We’re almost halfway around,” I pointed out. “We might need to think of another plan.”

“You could try going over,” Destiny suggested. “You might need to fly pretty high to do it, but it could work.”

“Not if we run into the same problem trying to land. If it's too bad, it could knock me out, and that'd be game over. I’m worried the monitoring station might be swamped.” It was too far away to see it through the forest. It’d be nice to get a glimpse of the place, but the tundra was pretty flat and the brush was pretty thick.

“There is one other option you might like,” Destiny said. “DRACO’s electronic warfare suite includes anti-radiation targeting.”

I stopped walking and tried to figure out what that might be.

“Okay, I can see from the helmet’s eye tracking that you’ve got no idea what that is,” Destiny said.

“I’m just not sure how useful that is,” I admitted. “I mean, you said it yourself - there’s so much metal woven in my skin that I’m practically shielded against mild radiation, and with the armor on top of that I could hang out near a reactor and not worry too much.”

“Anti-radiation targeting is used in active electronic warfare,” Destiny explained. “The radiation we’re talking about in ‘anti-radiation’ isn’t ionizing radiation, it’s the broadcast of radar stations and other active sensors. Think of it like… radar is shining a light in a dark room. You see what the light bounces off of, but anti-radiation targeting is staying in the dark and shooting at the light. It’s like a big bright target!”

“I get it. If we can’t get through because some of the transmitters are too strong, we blow up the transmitters!”

“I thought you might approve,” Destiny said. “Let’s backtrack to this point.” She put a marker on the map in my vision. “That was our closest approach to the monitoring station, so it’s probably the best place to start.”

“Right,” I agreed, turning around and walking back the way we came. “Hey, I was thinking while we were walking through the forest -- you said the trees here aren’t native to the area, right?”

“They definitely aren’t,” Destiny said. “There are palm trees next to orange trees next to brushwood pines, and none of it should be within a thousand miles of here. This place is barely good for growing lichen!”

“Okay, so where did they come from? Even if SIVA is keeping them alive, it would need seeds or something to start, right?”

“It would,” Destiny agreed. “I’m not sure. It’s tickling at my memory, but it’s still a blur. I know there was a place it could get those seeds, but I can’t quite… it’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“I hate that feeling,” I said. The minimap blinked. “Okay, what do I do now?”

“Turn to your left,” Destiny said. “DRACO will lock on to the most powerful broadcaster in range, and…”

The big rifle’s barrel adjusted itself, whirring on tiny electric motors, then let loose with the sharp, hard rapport I’d very nearly started to get used to. A willow burst into flames, and I felt the pressure on my body start to lessen, the pain abating just a bit.

“I think it got the right one,” I said. I hovered over the razor-edged brush just in case it was hiding something nasty enough to slice through the barding I was wearing and let the throbbing in my shoulder guide me.

“Good, we’re making progress,” Destiny said. “I’ll mark the path so we can follow it back out if we need to.”

“The signal’s getting stronger again,” I said.

“No problem. We’ll just take out another transmitter.” DRACO twisted slightly, taking careful aim, and another tree erupted into flames from an incendiary round.

It took three more shots to get close enough to the station, and even then I had to push through an area where the broadcast was so strong I felt it in my teeth. Somewhere, I was distantly aware it was probably killing me by inches. I stopped for breath and leaned against a tree that wasn’t trying to murder me, the taste of blood on my lips. The last transmitter we’d taken out was burning merrily off to the side, and if the brush was just a little dryer and a little less metallic it might have been enough to start a forest fire.

“Looks like we made it,” Destiny said. “The monitoring station is overgrown, but the signal dropped off again. I think we can get inside.”

“That’s good,” I said, not feeling like anything was good at all.

“One small issue - we’re completely out of ammo for DRACO. If we run into trouble, we’ll have to get creative.”

I looked up at the station, trying to figure out a way in. “Looks like the front door is covered in vines. Maybe that’s a sign nopony has been here--”

The vines parted like a curtain, tugging themselves to the side with a motion that reminded me of muscles flexing.

Two raiders walked out of the doorway, looking around cautiously. I ducked behind the tree and tried not to even breathe too loudly. Could they sense me? Down in the valley I’d been able to feel them coming from a while away just from the SIVA in their bodies, but here the air was thick with the broadcast, like everything was dancing to its tune.

“Stay still,” Destiny whispered. “They haven’t spotted us.”

“Why did I have to jinx us?” I groaned.

The two raiders walked over to the burning tree and looked up at it, the metallic leaves of the cyberforest scraping at their armored legs. They didn’t even seem to notice the blades. They were also facing away from me. I carefully climbed up the tree I was hiding behind, not wanting to go right into the air. A gust like that and the brush would sound like bells and knives being sharpened and they’d be on top of me in a second.

“Did it explode?” the first one asked. She was a mare, and either had been a unicorn or the SIVA had just decided to grow her a horn anyway, because she had a brass framework sticking out of her forehead like an artist’s suggestion of a horn’s outline with nothing filling it in.

“Maybe lightning struck it?” the other one said. He was a stallion whose cutie marks had been replaced with screens flickering through a half-dozen twisting designs. Where his eyes had been was a cavernous hole with a single spherical camera in it that swept back and forth.

“I thought I heard thunder,” the mare agreed. “That’s probably all it was.”

“We’d better tell the Master about this,” the stallion said. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Should we wait until he’s done with the new arrivals?”

“No. If it goes poorly again, he’ll take it out on us.”

They turned around and started back inside. I waited for them to pass by me and jumped off the tree branch, catching the wind and gliding towards them with the silence of an owl on the hunt, if the owl was big and dumb and worried it’d be caught any moment.

The blade flipped out of my hoof and I held it down and away from me, thinking. I had to be stealthy and clean with this. If there was really some big boss here, I wanted to see who it was and what I was really up against. That meant I needed to avoid alerting everypony by being a giant clumsy monster.

I hovered as quietly as I could, easing my way over the mare. I figured with the stallion’s weird eyes, he probably couldn’t see as well as her, so she’d have to go down first. It wasn’t ideal, since the stallion had a nasty-looking rifle at his side, but it was probably my best bet.

“Turn off the weight reduction,” I whispered. “I need to hit hard.”

I felt the full weight of the armor settle onto my back and shoulders, and instead of struggling against it I let it drag me straight down to slam into the mare’s back. I expected ribs to crack, but instead my weight made them bend and cave in, deforming like a metal cage instead of bone. She struggled and tried to scream. I stabbed, trying to hit something vital, and she blasted me clear off her back with a forcebolt, proving that her weird horn worked just fine.

“What in Tartarus--” the stallion said, spinning to face me, the screens on his flank flickering to a view through his mono-eye as it turned to track the threat. The big gun took aim, and I moved on pure instinct, moving my right forehoof like I was pitching a cloudball. The blade detached and launched itself right into that eye and sank in all the way, the tip poking through the back of his skull when he fell down.

“Sorry,” I said, wincing. That was a very, very strange feeling. Did I just throw one of my bones at him? Was it going to grow back?

The mare tried to stand, but the ruin of her midsection made it impossible, her back legs just twitching in spasms. Another force bolt went past my head and into the forest.

“Buck!” I swore. “Destiny!”

“Use the Junk Jet!” Destiny snapped. I bit down on the trigger, and a wrench flew at near-sonic speed to hit her horn before she could fire again, putting her down for the count.

“That was messy,” I said.

“Get rid of the bodies before we go inside, just in case,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, yeah, already on it,” I sighed, limping over to the stallion. Putting weight on my right forehoof felt weird now. I could feel the empty space like a socket where a tooth should have been, but in my leg.

I flipped him over onto his back and yanked the blade free from his skull.

“There has to be some way…” I muttered, looking at the back end. I held it next to my right wrist and it snapped into place like it was magnetic, vibrating for a moment before sliding back inside and between my bones.

“You know I didn’t think to mention this before,” Destiny said. “But you should probably clean that thing off once in a while.”

“Thanks for mentioning that after I got a pony’s brains and blood all over my insides, best buddy,” I groaned.

I swung my (now-clean) hoof blade through another thick cluster of vines. They weren’t as cooperative for me as they were for the raiders. Every time I cut through one, I got a jolt of electricity right into my bones. The damn things were half-copper and acting as power cables, and I was lucky none of them had enough of a charge to kill me yet.

“For the record, this really sucks,” I grunted, kicking some of the fallen vines out of the way.

“Don’t be so negative. It looks like that was the last of them.” The cone of Destiny’s hornlight swept around, showing a corridor that was mostly clear, even if the walls were bulging with some kind of growth underneath the rusting panels.

I ducked under the cut vines and slowly walked in. The place felt alive, like I was walking into something’s guts. I would have preferred creepy and haunted, since I’d be bringing my own ghost along with me.

“Any chance you have an idea where we’re supposed to go?” I asked.

I felt a mental shrug. “Not really. Let’s check downstairs. Server mainframes were pretty big and fragile, so it would probably be installed in the basement.”

“Is it just me or did they build everything underground during the war?” I asked, trotting through an old locker room and looking for the stairs down.

“You’re just annoyed you can’t fly down here,” Destiny said smugly. “Underground spaces are insulated and more secure.”

She was right but I didn’t want to admit it. It just would have been nice to skip right to the top and have an easy escape route through the sky. Going underground felt like shaking hooves with danger -- every step I took down the stairwell we found was just bringing me further and further away from safety.

“I think some of those trees must have gotten roots down here,” I muttered quietly. There were raiders in here somewhere, so I had to be careful. “I can feel everything pulsing.”

“Are you going to be okay? Do we need to turn back?”

“I can deal with it for a little while. I don’t want to have done this all for nothing.”

The lower level was a trash dump. Yellow, buzzing lights flickered on the ceiling and there were ruined cardboard boxes full of waterlogged files standing next to barrels that might have been full of oil a hundred years ago but were just muck and tepid sludge now.

“We always go to the nicest places,” I said.

“Good thing the armor filters smell, or it might kill you even faster than the SIVA.”

I snorted and shook my head.

We turned the corner and spotted a raider leaning against the wall next to a doorway just down the short hallway. On instinct, I flicked my hoof at the guard, and the blade flew out and got him in the neck. He looked more surprised than hurt, opening his mouth to speak and nothing coming out.

“Crap,” I muttered, running on three legs up to him and spinning to kick with both back hooves, crushing his snout in. He staggered, falling to his knees, and I grabbed the gun at his side and yanked it off, having to pull wires right out of his skin and whatever it was connected to under his hide. I brought it down on his head, smashing the weapon apart along with his cranium.

“Messy,” Destiny commented unnecessarily. I yanked the blade free from his neck and something closer to motor oil than blood splashed all over me.

“Remind me to ask Wolf-in-Exile if he has any ammunition for a rifle DRACO’s size after we’re done here,” I said, between deep breaths. The raider twitched, obviously not entirely dead.

I grabbed his hoof and pulled him over to a murky barrel full of water, dumping him in with a splash. The place was messy and damp enough that maybe none of the others would notice him for a while.

“I’ll also remind you to get a bath,” Destiny said. “Maybe we’ll find a hot spring that won’t boil you.”

“That’d be nice. Now let’s see what he was guarding…” The door was locked, but the bolt was easier to cut through than the raider’s armored neck. I pulled it open and looked inside, a gust of warm air hitting me in the face.

Inside, it looked like a graveyard. Monoliths taller than I was sat in rows and columns, each one a respectful distance from the rest and quietly clicking and whirring with tiny lights blinking on every side.

“This is the server room,” Destiny said. “Look at this place… it’s a heck of a lot of hardware for the middle of nowhere. Even a communications hub wouldn’t have this much.”

“So what was it?” I asked. The place had a kind of quiet oppressive feeling like some kind of holy place.

“Either some kind of Ministry project or we’re looking at part of that nice, friendly AI that screamed at us in its own language.”

“Kulaas.”

“That’s the one,” Destiny confirmed. “Either way, it’s good for us. This place still has power and it’s doing something. That means the server data probably isn’t corrupted! There’s got to be something useful.”

Movement caught my eye. I ducked behind one of the server racks and tried to make myself as small and silent as possible. A pony lurched past my hiding spot, looking more like a ravaged skeleton being forced along by machines than a living being. It seemed blind, pausing and listening as it moved instead of looking around. I slowly worked my way around the server before it had a chance to turn around just in case it wasn’t as unseeing as it seemed.

Somewhere deeper in the room, I heard ponies shouting.

“We need to go check that out,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Any idea how we can sneak up there?”

“I think we can get above the lights,” Destiny whispered. “There’s scaffolding there that might take your weight.”

I looked up, squinting past the fluorescent lights and trying to see into the shadows. There was definitely something there, and if I was having trouble making it out, the raiders probably wouldn’t be able to manage it at all.

The only problem was getting there. I just had to hope I wasn’t seen.

I waited until I was pretty sure that the lumbering mostly-dead thing patrolling right near me was as far away as it was going to get and jumped into the air, trying to fly quietly, for whatever that’s worth. Gliding was silent, hovering was quiet, this was neither of those things. Even with the weight of the barding supported by its own talismans I was not a precision flyer.

The lights blinded me until I was past them, and if I didn’t have a heads-up display adjusting faster than my eyes could, I would have flown into the pipes and ducts hanging from the too-close ceiling. I just barely avoided them, and then the thin scaffolding of the lights was below me and in my path and I would have made an amazingly loud sound crashing into it if Destiny hadn’t thrown a magical shield in my way and let me very quietly slam into it.

“That could have gone better,” she said.

“Your magic feels tingly,” I muttered, a little dazed. I very carefully made my way along the lights, wincing whenever they flickered.

The room was shaped something like a big square, with the corners taken up by fenced-off sections with machines in them and all the servers in rows in the cross shape between them. A central platform in the middle of the room had static-filled screens around the edges.

It had probably been very organized and clean two hundred years ago. Unfortunately, roots had climbed down one of the big pipes running along the walls and the machines in the far corner of the room were overgrown with a mix of leaves and glittering lights. Most of the servers around it were tilted and dark, or covered in vines that burrowed into the silicon and steel.

“Looks like the forest got down here after all,” Destiny said.

“That’s not all,” I said. “I think we just found the High Priest. You’ve got to have a title to go along with a hat like that.”

I couldn’t tell if it was a mare or stallion, and I suspected there was so little left of them that it didn’t really matter either way. They were wearing an ornate cloak and hat that seemed to be as much metal as they were fabric, the cloak a jangling collection of triangular plates and the hat closer to an armored helm with a wide brim.

He or she or they, I guess, was flanked by two ponies who looked like they were in better condition than most of the raiders. They were a matched set. I don’t know if they were twins or what, but they were the same faded pale color and both of them were wearing visors that covered their eyes. I didn’t see weapons on them, but I was willing to bet they had something up their sleeves. Literally. They were both wearing coats that seemed to be woven from some kind of tough webbing, the kind a pony might use as a cargo strap or safety harness.

The three ponies in front of them didn’t seem like they were part of the gang. They were tied up with lengths of woven vines, and one of them was barely conscious and nursing what looked like two broken legs.

All of them were standing on that central platform, in front of a number of haphazardly-installed pods. Metallic vines stretched across their stainless steel surfaces, and every panel was bulging and straining, like something inside them was pushing out from within, like a seed pod ready to burst and spray spores everywhere.

“I’ve seen those before in the hospital,” I whispered. “They’re Auto-Docs, right?”

“Yeah, but these are… infected,” Destiny said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go anywhere near them.”

“Let us go!” the lead mare yelled. She had a few nasty bruises, and was wearing the filthiest barding I’d ever seen. It looked like she’d skinned some animal and started wearing the hide without even bothering to wash off the blood first.

“The three of you have a chance to become something greater today,” the High Priest said. “You were just surviving in the ruins of the old world, and today you will join the new one.”

“Buck you!” the mare shouted, spitting in the big guy’s face. The two guards flanking him took offense to that and started to close on her. The High Priest held up a hoof and they backed off.

“You’ll learn to thank me later,” he said coldly. “We’ll start with your injured friend.”

The High Priest turned and lifted the first raider into the air with telekinesis. At least I knew he had a horn under that big hat. The injured pony groaned, and the Priest carried him over to one of the auto-docs.

The pod opened up like a flower, the door spreading apart along organic-looking seams. The raider screamed when he was thrown in, the hatch slamming shut like a maw and quieting the sounds from within.

“We have to--” I started to move, and the armor suddenly resisted me, like every joint had locked up.

“Wait,” Destiny said. “We need more information before we run in.”

The pressure came off me, and I could move again. I wanted to glare at her, but I didn’t have anywhere to look.

“The three of you are merely scavengers, thugs, and violent barbarians,” the Priest said. “I offer you salvation. You will become something greater. Once you hear the Great Voice you will stop being mere animals and become members of the Word of the Dragon!”

“See?” Destiny said. “They’re raiders. No point saving them.”

“They’re still ponies!” I hissed.

“By my count you’ve killed a bunch of ponies without feeling too bad about it.”

“I didn’t kill anypony that was on their knees begging for someone to save them,” I said.

The medical pod split open with a rush of rusty water and oil, and what was left of the stallion with the broken legs was flushed out with it. He was twitching and raw like he’d been eaten alive and partly digested. Most of his coat was missing, and his skin was oozing and seemed half-molten. He staggered to his hooves and moaned in obvious pain, metal under his skin forcing him to move.

“That must be where the things patrolling the room must have come from,” Destiny muttered, without the horror that I’d have expected from anypony seeing an unnatural and hideous parody of birth like that.

“A failed dreg,” the Priest said, shaking his head sadly. “He was judged by the machine god and found unworthy.”

He picked up the mare. She struggled and tried to kick her way out of his magical grip, but it wasn’t happening. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Perhaps you’ll do better,” he said.

I was moving before Destiny could do anything to stop me. She might have been content to let things play out, but I wasn’t. I hit the struggling mare with my shoulder and carried her right out of the Priest’s grip, bullying my way through it with brute strength and skidding to a halt on the steel floor, putting her down and staying between the mare and the pony in charge.

“What’s this?” he asked, more amused than annoyed. “You don’t seem quite as weak and worn down as the usual scavenger scum, and that scent…” the priest raised their snout and sniffed the air. “You’ve already felt the touch of the machine god! Join us, sister! You were chosen and found worthy!”

“Your machine god isn’t here today, priest,” I said. “I’m not letting you torture these ponies.”

“Please, call me Fornax,” they said, tipping their hat slightly. Well, not really a hat. It was clearly part of their head, which really says a lot about them that they were happy to have a giant hat as a permanent part of their skull.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Give up, stop hurting innocent ponies, or else.”

Fornax shook their head. “They’re hardly innocent. The mare you’re protecting lives by preying on the weak. Don’t pity them and try to protect them from the world, help me make them stronger!”

“I don’t think he’d agree that you’re helping anypony.” I nodded to the stallion that had been eaten by that pod and spat out as a horror.

“A failure, unfortunately. Salvation doesn’t come to us all. Still, even these dregs can serve as useful cogs in the greater system. Let me show you.”

He tilted his head. The brim of his hat lit up like it was stuffed with neon lights, and I felt a wave of static wash over me, leaving crawling and aching in its wake. I stumbled at the sudden shot of agony, before the cold pinch of an autoinjector brought relief washing through my veins. Before I’d recovered enough to say anything, the skeletal stallion slammed into me, wailing through swollen, infected lips.

“Get off me!” I shouted, punching him in the side of the head and putting him down on the ground. His legs kept thrashing like he was being forced to gallop as hard as he could, scrabbling at the ground and trying to force himself back up again.

I reared up and brought both forehooves down, and I could feel metal and flesh tearing apart, like a stick pulling out of a pudding pop because the pudding melted, but in this analogy the sticks are cybernetic and the pudding is the pony and the pudding pop is bleeding everywhere. I might have been craving chocolate when I was thinking up this analogy.

High Priest Fornax turned and started walking away calmly in my moment of distraction. I spread my wings and started after him, and his two bodyguards were suddenly in my face, opaque visors making them even more intimidating than if they’d just been glaring at me.

“Out of the way,” I said. “Otherwise you’re next.”

They stood like a wall of steel-infused flesh. But they were lacking one important advantage. I spread my wings and just went right over--

One of them grabbed me by the hind leg and swung my whole body like a club into the floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

“Ow,” I groaned.

“Hey, Blue!” the mare I’d saved shouted. “We could use a little help here!”

Four of the skeletal horrors, the things Fornax had called dregs, had surrounded her and the stallion that I guessed was her friend or at least partner in crime. They were backed up against one of the tall server racks, trying to keep the monsters at bay.

“Hold on, I’m coming!” I shouted. I got up, and one of the two identical thugs stepped in front of me. I glanced back. The other one was behind me. They moved in concert, taking steps at the same time as they circled me, getting just a little closer with every step.

“I think I can charge up a shot,” Destiny said. “Can you keep them busy for a minute?”

“I don’t know if we’ve got a minute,” I retorted.

The twins came at me at the same time, and I tried to get into the air again. And again, they swatted me down to the floor like I was a pest. I rolled out of the way before they trampled me, and I tried to get up, but they were already on me again. I triggered the Junk Jet, throwing a wrench into their plans, or at least into one of their chests. It only stunned him for a second, but that was enough of an opening for me to get up, put my head down, and charge right back at them.

I hit the closer one, the one who hadn’t been smacked with a wrench, and I could feel that there wasn’t much pony left. It was more like running into a robot than a living thing. I wasn’t sure if there was any flesh under the coat he was wearing.
It was sort of a miscalculation, which isn’t surprising because I’m bad at math. I bounced off the much heavier pony, but at least he stopped in his tracks. That gave me a half-second to flick the blade out of my wrist and stab him in the shoulder. He swiped at me, but I twisted the blade and hopped back, making him stumble and fall to his knees.

The second one had recovered by then, just shrugging off a heavy tool being flung at high speed into his chest. He ran at me and I went low instead of high, knowing he’d just snatch me out of the air if I tried. The big guy wasn’t expecting that, and definitely didn’t expect my wing at ankle-level, tripping him up and sending him over the edge of the central platform.
He fell face-first into the open, infected medical pod, the thing snapping shut like a dragon’s jaws.

“Guess that’s one way to deal with it,” I muttered.

“Are you gonna help or not?!” the mare shouted. I looked over to her, and she was perched on top of the tall server, just barely out of reach of the dregs. Her friend was on the edge, trying to pull himself up. She reached for his hoof, but the dregs grabbed his hinds, yanking him down to the ground. He screamed for a second before it cut off in a wet gurgle.

“I’m coming!” I shouted, immediately before a hoof hit me in the face and sent me sprawling. The remaining twin picked me up before I could start getting up on my own. I triggered the Junk Jet again, and a bottle half-full of protein shake splattered against his shoulder. He frowned. I’d done a great job of making him angry.

“I hope this is enough!” Destiny said. The whole room lit up with red-gold light and a bolt of force hit the stallion in the forehead from point-blank range. The back of his head exploded, and he toppled over in a heap.

“We really need to pick up some rocks or something to throw with this thing,” I said, jumping over the fallen cyber-pony and rushing towards where the skeletal dregs were trying to climb up to get the mare I’d briefly saved.

There were four of the things, three once I’d bull-rushed one and flung it back into a server tower, the already-damaged rack exploding in sparks. A second one was just fast enough to turn and face me before I slashed through its neck and severed its spine. I was running entirely on instinct, everything slowing to a crawl. I threw the blade at the third horror and pinned it to the wall. The last of them got me from behind, right in the place I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head.

“Get off!” I yelled. Its hooves were just long knives attached at the knees, and it was trying to stab me with all four of them. I reared up and used my wings to fling it back. It wailed in pain, recoiling and stinking like burned flesh. My feathers were almost red-hot.

“Good work, Blue!” the scavenger yelled. “Now get me down from here!”

“My name’s not Blue,” I said, suddenly dizzy. Something was hitting me hard, like I’d had too much coffee and cheap sugar and the high was crashing down to all new lows.

“Well it’s not like you told me your real name,” she said, hopping down carefully. I walked over to the dreg pinned to the wall. It was still struggling to free itself. I turned and gave it a swift back kick, quieting it down before I pulled the knife out and let it fall to the ground in a puddle of oil. “It’s probably not dead, you know,” the mare noted.

“They’re hard to put down for good,” I admitted. “Did you see where that priest went?”

“I was a little busy with my own problems, but I think he scampered,” the mare shrugged. “Probably long gone.”

I grunted. “Great.”

“There is a little good news,” Destiny said. “DRACO managed to get connected to the local wireless. He got the data downloaded while you were fighting.”

I took a deep breath. At least we’d gotten one thing done.

“Don’t suppose you could give a girl a lift somewhere nicer?” the scavenger asked. I was going to say no until I remembered that immediately outside was a razor-edged ice-covered forest, and she’d be lucky to make it ten paces without being torn apart.

“I’ve got just the place in mind,” I said.

Chapter 26 - Battle Hymn

My wings felt like they were going to fall off.

“You sure you’re doing okay?” the mare I’d saved yelled up at me. I was pretty sure she was cute, but I was also so tired I was starting to hallucinate so maybe she wasn’t as good looking as I thought.

“I’m good,” I said. It was almost the truth as long as you were really really generous about what counted as good. I didn’t have any new holes in me, and that was about as good as it was gonna get.

We were flying low, and the steel jungle was behind us. Destiny was putting big arrows on my heads-up display to try and guide me back to something like safety. I wasn’t even really looking at where I was going. I was just dazed out and looking at the arrows and focusing entirely on staying up in the air. Which meant focusing on my wings. Which, as I previously mentioned, felt like they were coming apart at the joints.

The arrow tilted, and I forced myself to focus on where it was pointing. I could see the Iron Temple through the light snowfall, the front entrance and bonfire becoming visible past endless fields of white. I started letting myself drop towards it.

A coughing fit hit me hard, and I tasted blood. My sense of balance vanished along with the horizon in that world of snow reaching from the ground to the sky and turning everything into white nothing.

The arrow turned into a terrain warning.

Destiny was yelling in my ear. I didn’t know how long she’d been talking before I was able to understand the words. “Pull up, Chamomile! You’re too low! Pull up!”

I fought my way through the black closing in on the edges of my vision and flapped hard.

The ground was right in front of me. I let go of the mare I was holding and stalled out, letting her drop the last few feet to the ground and falling myself, sliding on my side through the slush and coming to a rest against a block of concrete studded with bullet holes.

“Ow,” I groaned.

The mare prodded me with a hoof and frowned down at me. “You alive, Blue?”

“My name’s Chamomile,” I muttered.

“Ain’t what I asked but it’s still an answer. Long as we’re introducing ourselves and it don’t look like we’re going to die immediately, I’m Riptide. Riptide Rush. Thanks for saving me and where the fuck did you fly us to?”

“Somewhere with friends,” I groaned, trying to get up. I felt the armor helping me with that, and I was on my hooves pretty quickly. “I’ll go first. They won’t shoot me.”

“Hold on,” Destiny said. The helmet latches opened and she pulled herself free. “They’ve never actually seen you wearing this armor. It might go better if they can see your face.”

I didn’t have the mental or physical energy to argue with her about how it’d be better to have a helmet on if they decided to attack first and ask questions later. I satisfied myself by imagining the really great and persuasive argument I’d make. It was a nice distraction while I stumbled to the Iron Temple’s front doors.

Or where the doors used to be. They’d been torn off at the hinges.

I groaned and my headache took that moment of inattention to increase its power to maximum and evolve into a full-on migraine.

“Is anypony here?” I called out, standing in the ruined doorway.

“Chamomile?” There was a burst of light, and a flare sprang to life, burning with hot light. Wolf-in-Exile held it high so we could see each other. He was standing behind a wall of old metal crates that had been set up covering the entrance. “Well that’s a better surprise than I was expecting. From all the noise I thought the dragon had come back!”

“No such luck,” I said, stepping in. Zebras peeled out of the darkness where they’d been hiding in the shadows. Their armor was banged up and torn. “You guys saw some action while I was gone.”

“You could say that,” Wolf grumbled. He walked with a pronounced limp over to the wall and yanked a switch, turning on flickering lights and bringing the Temple back to life.

“Sky Lady!” Two-Bears appeared next to me and grabbed me in a big hug. “I thought you were dead!”

“I’m not that easy to kill,” I said. She let me go, and my chest seized up again. I coughed into my elbow, and when it finally subsided, I could see the blood I’d tasted before.

Two-Bears frowned at me. “You’re not well.”

“I haven’t been well in a long time,” I said. “Anyway, Riptide, get in here. These are friends.”

The mare I’d saved trotted in cautiously, not looking happy about being surrounded by a pack of zebra warriors.

“I got her out of a bad situation,” I said. “Those augmented raiders killed two of her friends.”

“She’s a raider, too,” Two-Bears said, glaring at her.

“Hey! I ain’t no raider!” Riptide snapped. “I’m a scavenger! There ain’t no profit in killing ponies instead of trading with them. Kill one merchant, no more come that way. Trade with ‘em, and you get a bunch coming to sell you what you need. Then you can make caps guarding caravans, selling scrap you can’t use, an’ get a decent life. That’s the Diamond Shark way.”

“The important thing is they were trying to kill her,” I said. “That means she’s not with them.”

“You’ve got a pretty nice setup in here,” Riptide said, looking around. “Decent prewar construction. Some of these places are fallin’ apart because they used stuff that don’t hold up to the cold. Guess for a memorial they were willin’ to put in more money and effort.”

She peeked into one of the side rooms.

“Woah! You should see all the salvage in here!” Riptide gasped. “This place is a treasure trove! There’s guns, barding, supplies--”

“All of which are already owned,” Wolf-in-Exile said firmly. Riptide rolled her eyes.

“What happened while I was gone?” I asked. “I remember there being doors.”

“We were attacked,” Two-Bears said. “We fought them off but… they took some of us with them.”

“That ain’t good,” Riptide said. “If they took ‘em alive, they’re gonna try and turn them.”

“Impossible. We’re protected against the infection,” Two-Bears said.

“Don’t mean they won’t try anyway,” Riptide pointed out. “They took most of the Sharks already, and we weren’t the first. I’m pretty sure I recognized some of those ponies from when they were with the Steel Vipers. They vanished along with the Hell’s Horses after that big storm.”

“Big storm?” Destiny asked, floating past my shoulder.

“Yeah. Some big light show in the sky. A meteor or somethin’ hit in the old Cosmodrome. We figured they went after it and got themselves into trouble. Everypony knows the Cosmodrome is haunted!”

“That must have been when the dragon landed,” Destiny said.

“I don’t know what it was, but after that storm, the jungle started growing and those freaks made out of metal popped up and were snatchin’ ponies left and right,” Riptide said.

“Where did they take the other warriors?” Two-Bears demanded. “I have to try and rescue them.”

“What? How should I know?” Riptide groaned. “I ain’t with them!”

“Maybe we can figure it out ourselves,” Destiny said. She floated over to the metal crates and focused. Light spilled out of her horn and formed into a glowing red map, projected onto the metal. “This is the map data DRACO was able to pull from the server in the monitoring station.”

“That’s really neat,” I said, poking a tiny floating building. My hoof went right through it. “What’s this? It looks like the middle of the jungle.”

I pointed at a big shape covered in thick vegetation.

“That’s whatever’s left of the Exodus Green,” Destiny said, sounding oddly sad about it. “She was a joint project with the Ministry of Peace. She was carrying seed banks and animals in stasis. I guess it explains where all the trees came from…”

“Sorry.”

“At least I know why they didn’t respond to radio messages. They never got off the ground. And the White and Black…” I followed her gaze to a conspicuous crater next to the Exodus Green.

“Maybe they got away,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” she said quietly. “Anyway, right now, we’re here,” Destiny said, making a spot on the map blink brighter. “How long ago was the attack?”

“Not very,” Wolf said. “Half a day.”

“Would they be able to keep a Companion knocked out that whole time?”

Two-Bears-High-Fiving frowned. “Neg. Even with strong drugs, they would be awake by now.”

Destiny bobbed. “They didn’t go into the canyon, so if we think about a circle encompassing as far as they could have gotten on hoof…” she drew a curved line across the map. “There are only a few places of note.”

“They probably didn’t get all that far,” I muttered. “I wouldn’t want to carry an angry transforming zebra monster too long.”

“We can also probably eliminate any locations that wouldn’t be able to hold prisoners. I don’t think they’re going to keep them in a gas station or Hayburger Princess.”

“What’s that leave us with?”

Destiny hesitated. “If I had to put money on it… the old VAB.”

“VAB?” Two-Bears asked.

“Vehicle Assembly Building. It’s a large structure where we, well, assembled rockets. Or at least we did before the space program collapsed. It’s built like a fortress, and more than big enough to hold prisoners.”

“Can you carry me and fly?” Two-Bears asked.

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“Chamomile isn’t in any condition to fly anywhere,” Destiny said. “She’s barely even conscious! I was pretty sure before, but now that I’ve gotten readings from the armor, I can tell she’s got a buggy implant growing in her somewhere. It’s speeding up her reaction time and absolutely mucking up her metabolism from top to bottom.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.

“It’s also raising your body temperature so high you should be passing out with heatstroke, but it’s also overridden that, somehow. It’s why your feathers keep getting hot. They’re acting like a radiator and venting waste heat.”

“She did crash pretty hard when we were flying in,” Riptide mumbled.

“I’m fine!” I snapped. “Okay, sure. It’s burning a ton of calories. My stomach agrees with you. Wolf, you got anything I can snack on before I leave?”

“I’ve got enough old MREs to feed a batallion,” Wolf-in-Exile said.

“Give me a couple of those and I’ll be good.”

“What about her?” Two-Bears asked, nodding to Riptide. “Is she coming?”

Riptide backed up a step. “Woah, I’m grateful and all, but I ain’t jumping in the deep end again. This shark’s sticking near the shallows for a while.”

“I’ll put her to work,” Wolf said. “We could use the extra set of hooves.”

“Ain’t got anything better to do,” Riptide said. “When you’re a Shark, you’re a Shark for life, and that means payin’ back your debts.”

My stomach rumbled. “So how about that food?”

“I can’t believe you’re eating that,” Two-Bears said.

“When you’re hungry enough everything tastes good,” I said through a mouth full of ancient protein bar. It had at some point in the distant past been peanut-butter-and-jelly flavored. I really hoped the streaks of gloopy dark stuff were supposed to be the jelly. Aside from the texture, which was like oily oats and grit held together with slime, it wasn’t bad. Okay, the taste wasn’t amazing either. Or the smell. Actually on the whole it was bad, but it was something and Wolf had given me a whole crate of them because I could eat them on the fly.

“I used to eat those when I was working late nights at the lab,” Destiny said. “They’ve technically got all the nutrients you need to stay healthy.”

Two-Bears looked a little uncomfortable every time Destiny talked. She’d had to hold on to the helmet the whole time we flew so I’d have my face free for very important snacking purposes. Destiny was helping pull them out of storage, even if she had an annoying tendency to wiggle them in front of my face like she was feeding a treat to a dog.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah. And it doesn't look like two centuries have really changed them much. The taste was never a selling point. There's so much artificial junk in them, they don't even rot properly.”

“At least they didn't do anything to you right? Otherwise you wouldn't have just been bones when I found you!” I said, trying to be encouraging.

“You just say the sweetest things,” Destiny groaned.

I popped the rest of the bar into my mouth and kept flapping while chewing. Carrying Two-Bears wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. She was all muscle, but the Exodus armor was powerful enough to offset most of that mass. Really the hardest part was trying to pretend I was totally cool and not turned on at all by hugging a zebra that could totally kick my ass. I still wasn’t sure about the monster bear thing. It made me want to wrestle her but I didn’t know if I wanted to wrestle wrestle her or what.

Maybe I could ask Emma for advice once I figured out how to get in touch with her again. My only other option for seeking advice was dead and haunting my clothing.

“How close are we?” Two-Bears asked.

“We should be able to see it any moment now,” Destiny said. “It’s a big building.”

“How big?” I asked.

“That big,” Destiny said, and as if she’d timed it for maximum dramatic effect, the snow parted with one final gust of chill wind. The building was big enough to be a tombstone for a whole nation, dozens of stories tall and almost featureless. It loomed over the forest, reducing the cybernetic jungle to nothing more than waves of green lapping against a mare-made mountain.

“How do we even get in there?”

“Unless the big doors are still working, you’ll have to use the staff entrance on ground level! And I really doubt the hangar doors will open after all this time. The things barely worked when we mothballed the place!”

“You stopped using it?”

“We moved on to bigger and better things.”

A warning blared from the helmet, and Two-Bears almost dropped it.

“What does that sound mean?” she asked.

“It means missile lock! That’s not a problem, DRACO can--” the gun beeped several times in a harsh tone. “--what do you mean you’re out of chaff?!”

Dodging an incoming missile was no problem for a Wonderbolt. Unfortunately I wasn’t a Wonderbolt and was close to the bottom of my class at flight camp, with the kind of scores that implied I’d find a way to fall through the floor and splatter against the ground. Which I more or less had done, so in retrospect my teachers were right on the money.

I dove for the biggest clearing I could find with a missile warning tone in one ear and the surge of the SIVA broadcast making my blood feel like it was going to burst out of my veins. I got below tree level and let go of Two-Bears, dumping her in the field and hoping it was soft grass and not made of razors.

Without Destiny I couldn’t load anything into the Junk Jet. I’d only get one shot with whatever was in there already.

I pulled straight up and over into a roll, coming back to face the missile. I had no time to even aim. I just pulled the trigger and hoped for the best.

A stuffed animal I didn’t even remember picking up fired out and slapped into the missile half a heartbeat before it exploded. I remember bringing my hooves up to protect my face, and then I don’t remember anything else until I was on the ground.

“I need a vacation,” I said. Or I think I said it. I couldn’t hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears. I started to get up, and my right hind leg decided to veto the whole operation and keep me on the ground. I gave it a stern look, and the twisted spear of shrapnel going all the way through my thigh looked right back at me.

The good thing was I was in shock so the pain hadn’t hit me yet.

I gingerly touched it, which was a mistake. All the pain came rushing to the forefront hard enough to make everything go black for a second.

“Chamomile!”

The voice was distant, echoing from miles away. I tried to look at where it was coming from, and Destiny floated into view.

“This is going to hurt,” she warned. “That’s why I’m distracting you.”

“Distracting me from what?” I asked.

Then Two-Bears ripped the shrapnel out of my leg. I hadn’t even noticed her walking up to me. If there was mercy in the world I would have blacked out but instead all I got was a lot of blood loss and the cold hiss of the barding’s autoinjector pumping healing potions into me.

“That really hurts,” I groaned.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Two-Bears said. She sniffed at the blood-covered metal and blanched, tossing it away with a disgusted look. "Smells like sick..."

Destiny bobbed in the air, getting my attention again. “You’ll be fine, Chamomile. Just rest for a second while we figure out a plan.”

“We don’t need a plan,” Two-Bears said. “They are pathetic cowards who fled the field of battle. If we attack, they will break.”

“Hah, that’s exactly the kind of plan Destiny would yell at me for suggesting. Right, Des?” I turned to the floating helmet and laughed. “Let’s try and come up with a plan where we don’t get shot again because all my plans up to now have basically relied on me being relatively bulletproof and that doesn’t seem to work well against real bullets.”

“She ran off while you were talking,” the ghost sighed.

“Well… buck.”

“Why couldn’t I have gotten stabbed on the other side?” I grumbled as I limped after Two-Bears. Despite the healing potions, my back leg still felt messed up. Destiny said something about how I’d probably need surgery to really fix it back to a hundred percent and then went real quiet like she was trying to avoid the topic. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could fly, but every time I popped up above the treeline, everything started screaming about missile lock.

I used my blade to slash through another bush that sounded like wind chimes in the wind from all the metal in the leaves, and I was finally out in the open. The dirt underhoof was replaced with broken asphalt, and the jungle gave way to just a few weeds working their way through the ancient tarmac.

The shadow of the building fell over me and I looked up at the monolithic structure. Up close, the VAB looked even bigger. It was big enough that you could park a couple cloudships inside as long as they didn’t mind pointing straight up.

“At least the zebra left an easy trail to follow,” Destiny said. I hopped over the crushed bodies of either two or three dregs. They’d been maimed enough that I wasn’t sure how many I was looking at. She’d bullied her way right through the cyberjungle, too, smashing aside branches and leaving a trail of her own blood from the razor-edge foliage.

Actually from the other angle I was pretty sure it was only two of them, and the rest was a crumpled metal door. It seemed like a safe bet because there was a matching doorway missing said metal door.

“At this rate there won’t be anything left for us to do,” I said. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It was dark inside, too dark to see anything after the glare of white-on-white from outside.

I squinted and trotted in slowly. I could hear her roaring, but with all the echoes I couldn’t figure out which direction anything was coming from.

“Blind and deaf,” I muttered to myself.

“On your left,” Destiny warned when I walked inside.

I turned, stumbled, hit safety railings that were doing their job properly, and saw a dreg standing there once my eyes had started to adjust to the gloom. It wasn’t moving. I steadied myself and limped over to poke it. Half of it fell over.

“I’m guessing she went that way,” I said.

“Hold on. There’s still power here,” Destiny said. “There should be a light switch near the door. If we turn everything on, it could at least get the emergency lights running.”

“Good idea,” I said.

I felt along the wall until my hoof hit the row of switches. For a second I thought everything was broken, but then I heard the rising electric tone. Dim lights shone out in orange and yellow like stars high above us.

“These things take forever to warm up,” Destiny groaned. “At least they’ll give us enough light for-- what the buck is that?!”

I froze and looked around, trying to spot whatever she’d seen. It was still too dim to make out the far side of the building, but it reminded me of the inside of the SPP tower, a huge vertical space criss-crossed with scaffolding and machines.

“I didn’t catch it,” I whispered. “What was it? Something in the dark? A sniper?”

“No! That! The missile!”

There was a massive rocket standing on the factory floor. From the look of it, it had never actually been finished. There were inspection panels pulled open and the top part seemed to be missing entirely.

“You said this was a place to make rockets. Why is this weird?”

“Because that isn’t a civilian rocket! That’s a military ICBM! We never built these!”

“Somepony must have, because here it is. I guess it makes sense since there was that missile silo down the road.” I looked up. Midway up the rocket, the scaffolding was joined up with thick wires and suspended platforms like a giant metal spider had made a nest there.

I didn’t notice the cold until some of the fog pooled around the building blew past me towards the open door. It sent a chill down my spine.

“Where the buck is Two-Bears?” I asked, my teeth chattering. “And why is it colder in here than it is outside?”

Destiny made a thoughtful sound and popped open a window with a pie chart and a lot of numbers. “It must be a talisman making LOX. The air mix in here is all over the place. I’m not sure this is a great place for a firefight.”

“Lox? That’s smoked fish, right?”

“Brined, but also no. Liquid Oxygen. It’s used as an oxidizer in rockets.”

I heard metal scraping on metal, and an annoyed grunt. I followed the sound carefully and found a collapsed platform and rusting ladders pinning a big white bear to the ground. She looked up at me and grunted again.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You tried to climb up and everything came down with you.”

Two-Bears-High-Fiving growled at me and averted her gaze.

“And if you change back you’ll get crushed by the debris, but if you don’t change back, you’re too big to get out.”

She made another annoyed bear sound.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you out. Give me a second.” I grabbed the corner of the main beam holding her down and started lifting. “You know it’s funny, last time I did something like this it ended with a pony shooting at me and a giant explosion.”

“For Celestia’s sake, Chamomile, don’t say that kind of thing around all this liquid oxygen,” Destiny hissed. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this stuff is?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well it’s pretty bucking dangerous, so don't give it any ideas!”

“I’ll take your word for it.” The rest of the debris shifted, and Two-Bears pulled herself free. She shook herself off, her wounds healing fast enough that I could see bruises fading and bones straightening as I watched. “You going to be okay?”

She nodded and looked up, sniffing and growling.

“You can smell them up there?” I followed her gaze to the steel web hanging over us. “Cool. That makes things easier. Up is way simpler than having to track them down in tunnels and stuff.”

“Except there’s no way you’re carrying her up there,” Destiny pointed out.

“She can stay here and watch my back?” I suggested, shrugging.

Two-Bears made an annoyed sound.

“Yeah well you ran off without me, it’s my turn!” I huffed. “Just stay here. With my luck everything’s going to be on fire in five minutes.”

I flapped away before she could start complaining at me with cute bear faces. There was something about a giant bloodthirsty monster being grumpy that made me want to pinch her cheeks. She’d probably break a few bones if I tried, but it’d be worth it.

The broken bones would need to wait for after the daring rescue. I landed on one of the hanging platforms and it swung back and forth gently under my hooves. I needed to get my bearings, and it wasn’t easy with so much stuff littering the air in all three dimensions. The place was like an obstacle course. I carefully picked my way through the biggest gaps until I was above the main part of the nest itself.

“What do we have here?” asked a voice from the shadows. “I wasn’t expecting a pegasus.”

I hovered out in the open, looking around and trying to place the pony talking.

“I’m so unpredictable I don’t even expect myself!” I said, which sounded better in my head. “You must be the pony in charge. Let my friends go and I’ll let you live.”

“We’ve got missile lock warnings,” Destiny cautioned. “They must be crazy! If they fire explosives in here…”

“Can DRACO still do that thing where it tracks a signal and shoots at the source?” I whispered.

“Loading up the anti-radiation targeting. Try to keep them talking for a minute.”

“You’ll let me live?” the voice from the dark laughed. I turned slowly in a circle. It wasn’t just echoes. There were speakers hanging from the walls. He could have been anywhere. “Do you even know what I’m doing? The breakthrough I’ve had?”

“Fine,” I said. “Impress me.”

“You see, I don’t believe in the pure survival of the fittest like High Priest Fornax. My esteemed colleague is blessed with talent, but because of that he lacks artistry. It’s trivial to make something beautiful with good materials, but it takes real skill to polish a diamond in the rough. Skill, and a few failed attempts.”

A spotlight snapped on. I almost vomited at the sight, my throat hot with bile and rancid peanut butter. One of the Companions was there, or what was left of them. They were disassembled like a broken machine, peeled back in layers.

I didn’t even have time to start screaming at the son-of-a-mule who did it before another light came on to showcase another horror show. I’d wondered very briefly about what it would look like if I’d been able to use the tincture and all the metal inside of me suddenly didn’t fit. Now I knew. The zebra looked like a metal bear had tried to rip out of him from within.

“The machine god’s gift just never took well to the zebra we’ve captured before. It’s frustrating - they’re clearly good material, but they resist rebirth! Fornax thought it was impossible, but I worked! I made it happen! I started with a few here and there that were hunting on their own, and I cultivated a greater gift that can even be granted to these savages!”

A last spotlight turned on, and I saw what he’d made. A werebear was chained up against the wall. Or at least, what was left of one.

“What the buck did you do?” I whispered.

“I simply removed the weakest parts of this specimen and replaced them with superior machines. I can sense the gift in you, dimly. You know of its strength. Isn’t it beautiful? Not just growth, but care and control! A garden, instead of a wild jungle!”

The werebear, whoever it had been, was an abomination. It looked like a suit of armor had been fitted to it and then nailed in place. Black and green veins wrapped around its limbs and lashed the heavy armor to the former zebra, covering almost every inch of flesh from the long, jagged copper claws to the eyeless helm set over a drooling maw.

A blue light flashed in my heads-up display. DRACO had a lock on two missile launchers being pointed at me.

The priest stepped out into the open. “Isn’t it amazing?” he laughed. His head was encased in a smooth-ended cylinder with a design scrawled on it in paint, and he wore a cape over one shoulder, leaving the other bare where a complex antenna like the green dragon’s horns was growing from his side like a skeletal wing.

“Take the shot,” I whispered.

DRACO barked twice, and two armored raiders fell out of the shadows above me, crashing down onto the hanging platforms. One snapped off entirely, sending that raider to the ground far below. I landed next to the other one and kicked him in the jaw, sending him over the side and grabbing the missile launcher he’d been holding. It was squirming unpleasantly, but I only needed to hold it for a second.

I pointed it towards the priest and pulled the trigger.

“I don’t think so,” he said. His wing-antenna-thing glowed with lime-colored light, and the missile streaked off course, right into the abomination he’d created. The missile tore off one of its long arms, and the beast roared in pain before slumping. The priest screamed in despair, rushing to its side and frantically trying to do something about the mortal wound.

“That works too,” I said, tossing the infected weapon aside before it could take a bite out of me.

“That was my greatest creation! You’ll rue the day you befouled my work, the work of the great priest--”

The werebear came back to life with a hideous roar and ripped its remaining arm free from the restraints, grabbing the priest before tearing his head off with its jaws and biting down, crushing the featureless pod.

“Can’t say I didn’t see that coming,” I said. “Okay, let’s make this fast. I know you must be suffering, and if you can still hear me, I’m sorry I couldn’t--”

I should have known talking to the monster was a bad idea because it’d gotten that priest killed, too. The abomination jumped at the platform I was standing on, throwing itself through the air and just barely catching the edge, sinking its claws into the metal and hanging on, snapping and snarling. The cables holding us up jerked to taut attention and almost immediately gave up the ghost. Two of them snapped and the platform tilted to ninety degrees, sending me face-first into the monster.

It bit down on my shoulder hard enough to crunch through the armor and sink an inch into me before it stopped.

The last two cables holding the platform up snapped. We started falling.

“No, no, no!” I swore, bringing my blade to werebear and stabbing, trying to get it to let go. We were something like halfway up the building. Call it two hundred feet. That was maybe three seconds until we hit the concrete. The abomination stopped squeezing after a second. I wasted another second after that pulling myself off its fangs. I needed a third to kick myself away from it and spread my wings. That was about half a second too late for me to actually stop my fall.

I hit the ground after the monster, and a lot softer than it had landed, but it was still hard enough that I bounced and slammed into the same safety railing that had kept me from falling when I’d stumbled into the building before.

I ended up sitting upright, with my vision full of warning messages. My left shoulder felt like it was torn apart. It more or less was.

“Am I dying?” I asked, every breath coming with sharp pain.

“Not yet!” Destiny promised. “Just hang in there. I’m giving you almost everything we have left!”

The autoinjector pinched my neck and I flinched, which was a mistake because it just made every other pain I was feeling explode and almost knock me out. Some feral part of me forced me to stay awake, my heart thudding in my chest as the idea that going to sleep even for an instant would kill me thundered through my brain. Was it true? I have no idea, because I’m not a doctor, but it sure felt that way.

“Are you alive?” Two-Bears knelt down next to me. I looked over at her. She’d changed back. Either the Tincture had worn off on its own or she’d forced herself to change back because she was worried about me. I privately hoped it was the latter.

“Do I have to be?” I groaned.

“That sounds like a yes. What happened up there?”

“They’re all dead,” I said. “I’m sorry. I got the pony who did it, but…”

“I don’t want to know,” Two-Bears said grimly. “That was a bad fall you took.”

“You should see the other guy,” I joked. “Actually, on second thought, don’t. It’s not good.”

“Let’s get you back to the elders. They can heal your wounds.” Two-Bears lifted me up like a foal and put me on her back. “I hope you don’t mind. You carried me here, the least I can do is return the favor.”

Chapter 27 - Blues Before Sunrise

I hated lying in bed with nothing to do. I was tired and sore, but being told to rest made me feel restless. Also I was starting to hate having to sleep on a solid surface. A cloud bed would have felt amazing. I even offered to go get one, but Destiny was convinced I’d get blasted out of the sky by the Lightning Shield and the zebra kept warning me about windigos, even though I’d been flying around a bunch and still hadn’t seen any of them.

Back home, I’d spent the night in the hospital a few times. Somehow, despite being a cot in a zebra village, this felt exactly the same. Someone checked on me every hour or two like I was going to up and die on them at any time, so even if I wanted sleep I wasn’t going to get it, and I was uncomfortable enough to never feel actually rested.

“What I wouldn’t give for a movie right now,” I sighed.

“What is a movie?” one of the zebras asked from her cot. Did I mention my roommates? The attacks on the Iron Temple had left a couple of the Companions badly enough off that even they needed bedrest. Apparently if you were really badly hurt, the strain of transforming would just kill you instead of helping you heal.

“It’s sort of a story told with moving pictures,” I said. “They’re a lot of fun, but they need all sort of equipment you don’t have around here.”

“It sounds like you come from a place of wonders, Sky Lady. Moving pictures, living in the clouds… I’d love to see it someday,” the zebra sighed. I didn’t know her name. She was just one of the faces that had been cheering for blood in the crowd when I’d wrestled Two-Bears.

“It wasn’t something I thought about much before. It was just how the world was. This place is nicer in a lot of ways. It’s hard to get anything to grow up there, and everything is just so… big and empty.” I looked up at the roof. “Down here if you walk for a few minutes you find an animal den or an old building or a wrecked cart or something. Up there it’s just a whole lot of clouds.”

“I’ve lived in this valley my whole life,” the zebra said. “It isn’t empty, but it is small. That’s why I joined the Companions. To leave the valley, to go on the hunt… at least the ice and snow are different.”

She held up her left forehoof. It ended at the wrist.

“And now I might never hunt again…” she whispered, tears in her eyes.

“Don’t be silly,” Smoke-in-Water said, stepping inside. “I heard you from outside. I’m sorry for intruding. I brought mead and some poor company.”

“Poor company?” I asked. Destiny floated in behind him, obviously trying to look annoyed. “Oh.”

“You’ll hunt again, Eagle-Shadow,” Smoke said. “You’re not the first Companion to be wounded honorably in combat and you won’t be the last. Before your time there was a warrior named Gold-Eyes-Snake, and she was a terror in battle. She fought like she was invincible, and ended up losing her hoof. Do you know what she did?”

“She never gave up?” Eagle-Shadow guessed. At least I knew her name now.

“She ripped the arm off a bear and wore it over the stump! She turned her weakness into a weapon.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder. “You don’t have to keep fighting, but if you choose to, we will always have a place for you.”

She nodded, closing her eyes and trying not to cry. Smoke poured some mead into a wooden mug and offered it to her. She took it and sat up to sip at it.

“Are you here to give me the same kind of words of encouragement and support?” I asked Destiny.

The ghost tilted in midair slightly. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s the kind of thing friends do.”

“Friends are honest. You need better medical care than these zebras can give you. Their alchemy is… well, I’m not ashamed to admit it, they’re better at making healing potions than Equestrian science. But they have limits. You need corrective surgery in your right thigh and left shoulder.”

“I’ll just go find a surgeon, then,” I sighed. “How hard could it be?!”

“I’m more worried about your SIVA infection,” Destiny said grimly. “I’ve been doing everything I can to keep it from tearing you apart, but the micromachines are still replicating inside your bloodstream. It’s causing a form of arterial hardening.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It’s affecting your blood pressure, and there’s no telling how long before you end up with a heart attack or a stroke. They’re already abrading the more delicate blood vessels in your lungs and tissues. You’ve got constant internal bleeding.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“How is that not bad?”

“Internal bleeding isn’t a big deal. That’s where blood is supposed to be. Inside you.”

Destiny sighed. “Be serious, Chamomile.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it right now,” I said. “The best we can do is find something that kills nanomachines, right? It’ll probably be medicine for me and a weapon against the dragon.”

“You’re right,” Destiny agreed. “At least we’re on the same page. The last thing you need to do is get involved in the tangle of these zebras’ lives.”

“May we speak outside, Sky Lady?” Smoke asked.

“I could use a walk,” I said, getting up and feeling several major joints pop. I did my best not to wince and followed him outside. He walked out of hearing distance of the tent and sat down in front of a keg, tapping it and filling a few more mugs.

“Our problems aren’t yours, Sky Lady,” Smoke said, offering me one of the wooden mugs. I sad down and took the mug, sipping at the mead and trying not to guzzle it down. “We are grateful for your help, but you don’t have to carry our burdens.”

“If it makes you feel better, it seems like most of your problems right now are caused by the raiders. Or cultists. Cultist-raiders?”

Smoke snorted a single laugh. “I suppose so. They’re ruthless and terrible opponents. All these young bears I raised are giving their all, and I have to watch them being cut down. I avoided changing for years because I wanted to raise a new generation, and now I wonder if I trained them well enough, if I did all I could…”

“Sorry,” I said.

He took a deep breath. “The call of the bear spirit is strong. I’ve fought it back so far for so long that I thought it was gone, but the anger I felt seeing so many of these foals hurt…” He looked at the tents, and I saw his eyes glow dully before he grimaced and shook his head, fighting it off. “If I change, I’ll never be able to change back. I’ve forgotten how to fight the call. I fear that before this is over, I’ll have to take the Long Walk.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that. He took a mug of his own and downed it.

“On your journey, if you find anything that might help, I would appreciate it,” he said.

“Maybe Fixer would do something?” Destiny suggested. “I used it a few times when my Mint-al habit got the better of me. It made me throw up for hours but I felt much better afterwards.”

“Do we have Fixer?” I asked.

“No. But we can keep our eyes open for it. I’m sure there’s some in the Cosmodrome somewhere!”

I raised my eyebrow. “You’re awfully willing to help for somepony who keeps telling me not to trust zebras.”

“I don’t trust them. But we’re stuck working with them, and if this is going to keep them from turning into pony-eating berserker monsters, I’m all for it!”

“Don’t be rude, didn’t you see how cute Two-Bears was when she transformed?” I asked. Smoke refilled my mug without me even asking, making him my favorite zebra.

“I saw her rip machine-zombie ponies apart with her bare bear claws.”

“And she made the cutest sad face when she was buried under rubble!”

“Don’t tell her she looked cute or she’ll punch you hard enough to knock you out,” Smoke said. “You’re barely holding together as it is, Sky Lady. And I see a young bear who would be devastated if you fell apart.”

“Sky Lady! Sky Lady!” Walks-in-Shadow waved happily while he ran towards us. “I heard you were awake and feeling better!”

“I’m definitely awake,” I agreed.

“I heard about the battle you had!” His excitement faded and his ears pinned back. “Two-Bears said you couldn’t save anyone.”

“There are fates worse than death, and she spared a brave warrior from that,” Smoke said. “She took victory away from the enemy and avenged the deaths of our Companions.”

“She also got herself nearly killed and wrecked my armor after we’d finally gotten it fixed,” Destiny grumbled.

“Oh! That reminds me! I came to see you because your armor is making a sound. Like this! Beep Beep Beep!”

“...What does that mean?” I looked at Destiny.

“I have no idea. Let’s hope it doesn’t mean it’s about to explode.”

“What do you think? We got it all fixed up for you!” Walks-in-Shadow said.

“I didn’t know I got hurt that badly,” I said.

Looking at it from the outside was kind of humbling. The left shoulder wasn’t just dinged up, it was gone. When I’d torn myself free of the abomination’s jaws, it took a chunk of the armor with it. Someone had replaced it with an ornate-looking piece of armor painted bright red and hammered into place.

“I already checked it out,” Destiny said. “It’s fine. If this was normal power armor, a major joint loss like that would be crippling, but remember the Exodus armor uses a T-field sheath, not hydraulics. As long as enough of the thaumoframe is intact and powered, the rest is redundant.”

“As long as it’ll stop a bullet or two, it’s good enough, huh?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

The armor, or something near it, beeped three times.

“There’s that sound!” Walks-in-Shadow said. “What does it mean? Is it angry?”

“That sounds just like a voice mail alarm,” Destiny said. “But it couldn’t be…”

She floated over to DRACO, the rifle making an annoyed noise.

“There’s a transmission logged here!” Destiny bobbed in excitement. I stepped over to look at the screen.

I tried to figure out what I was looking at. “Is it from the Raven’s Nest?! Did Quattro and Emerald get through?”

“It’s--” There was an unpleasant sound and the display started flashing through dozens of different images and files. Distorted music started playing, like a parade march in reverse. “It’s a bunch of different files. What in Tartarus…”

My head started to hurt just looking at it.

“Does it mean anything?” I asked, closing my eyes. Even the music was starting to give me a migraine.

“It reminds me of the stuff we saw in the SPP, from the Warmind.”

I groaned. “So it’s a message from Kulaas? Great. The Greywings spent decades figuring out what she was saying. Maybe if we spend a few years we’ll find out she’s just shy and trying to say hello.”

“It went to a lot of trouble sending this data package to us,” Destiny said. “Let’s try thinking like a Warmind.”

“Destiny, I can barely think like somepony who graduated from High School.”

“Nopony’s perfect. A Warmind wouldn’t be looking at these one at a time. They’d look at them all at once. DRACO, show me the file names in a list.” A list popped up in front of her, scrolling slowly. “Okay, all of the files are numbered, but some have sub-designations. Like there’s images one through ten, but there’s also image 2A and 2B… let’s try stacking the main images on top of each other and excluding the sub-designations.”

I narrowed my eyes at what she was displaying.

“It’s still just a bunch of random lines,” she muttered.

“No, hold on,” I said. “I think this is something. It reminds me of a topographical map. But it’s not just elevation…”

“You’re right! And it’s not vertical slices, either, but… ah! It’s sliced through on an ellipse! It must be data from multiple satellite passes! The rest of the data in each image must be how to unroll it, and the sub-designations show intersecting points to give relationships between the slices… it’s actually extremely efficient.”

“Efficient for what?”

“It’s trying to show us a location.”

“It could have just given us a latitude and longitude!”

“I think, to Kulaas, this amount of data is just as easy to process as simple coordinates. Maybe easier. It doesn’t rely on us knowing anything about latitude or longitude. All it requires is parabolic math. You can in theory derive everything from first principles, while measurements we ponies make are more subjective.”

“I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”

“You know, with that implant, you can probably do the math yourself. How about I show you--”

“No thanks!” I said very quickly. “I don’t like being reminded I have a computer in my brain.”

“That’s too bad. It always came in handy for me.” Destiny sighed.

“Where’s it pointing to, anyway?” I asked.

“An old lab,” Destiny said quietly.

“One of yours?”

“Yes, but… it was my mom’s lab.”

I swallowed. I’d seen how her mother died in a memory orb that I wasn’t planning on ever revisiting. “That’s rough.”

“I haven’t been there in years. Before I died, I mean. It’s been a lot longer since that, I guess. I know there were still some projects being run out of there but…”

“We don’t have to go,” I said. “There are other places we can check out.”

“If the Warmind thinks we should go, we should go,” Destiny said. “It was designed to make better decisions than any pony. There must be something there it wants us to see.”

“Okay,” I said, patting the floating helmet awkwardly.

“I’ll go with you!” Walks-in-Shadow said.

I smiled at the kid. “We’ve got this. I need you to keep protecting this place with Smoke-in-Water. With all the injured warriors here, it’d be bad if the raiders attacked. They’re counting on you to keep them safe.”

He nodded glumly.

“It’s an important job,” I said. “All the fighting the others are doing will be for nothing if they don’t have somewhere to come home to.”

“Is it just me or is this sort of ominous?” I asked.

I’d landed in front of the lab, but I was looking out at what was around us. It was right at the edge of the jungle, and the trees were slowly growing around it, leaving a dead spot around the building.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the soil?” Destiny suggested. “Plants care about that kind of thing, right?”

“How would I know? Where I come from we don’t have dirt! You’re the scientist!”

“A scientist who studied advanced thaumoengineering, not botany!”

I walked closer to the treeline and kicked at the ground, turning over snow and dirt. Copper wires speckled with green patina were right under the surface, but the moment I found them, they started squirming and shrinking back, recoiling into the earth.

“Weird,” I muttered. “Are they hurt by the light?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Unless…” She brought up a window. “Something here is broadcasting a signal like the one I use to keep your SIVA mostly deactivated, but they’re doing it in a totally different way.”

“What kind of different way?” I asked, backing away from the jungle edge.

“I just broadcast a constant shutdown command. It’s like constantly yelling ‘stop!’ at them. The signal here is matching the signal coming from the forest repeaters and phase-reversing it to cancel out the broadcast entirely.”

“I’ve got no idea what that means, Destiny,” I reminded her.

“Right, um… a metaphor a pegasus can understand… okay, so imagine you’ve got a headwind. It’s coming at you at ten knots, and you fly forward at ten knots. It pushes you back at the same speed you’re going forward, so you stay still!”

“That’s really not how it works,” I said. “There’s lift and turbulence, and no wind really stays at the same exact speed for long.”

“Exactly! Yes! So imagine somepony who was flying so precisely they were always constantly flying at the windspeed, no matter how much it changed!”

“That’s neat. So can we do the same thing?” I asked. “If you could cancel the broadcasts that way, it wouldn’t suck so bad to go near the trees.”

“No. It’s impossible for a pony to do it. I’d have to predict every change the signal was going to make, and as far as I can tell at a glance it’s essentially random. Maybe there’s some logic behind it I don’t understand, but I think there’s only one brain big enough to do it in practice.”

“Kulaas,” I said. “Which is an easy guess since she sent us the message to come here.”

“An easy guess doesn’t make it less valid. This is promising, though. Let’s get inside.”

The building was in pretty good condition, considering it was all above ground. It looked like it had been put together from modules all designed the same way, boxes with the corners and edges rounded off to make them less imposing. There weren’t a lot of windows, and the ones I could see all had bars or steel shutters over them.

I made my way to the front door. A single light flickered next to the door, popping and finally going out almost the same time I touched the door handle.

“Do you think the signal is what Kulaas wanted to show us?” I asked. “Maybe it’s saying ‘turn your radio to the right frequency and I’ll protect you for a while’.”

“Who knows? It doesn’t think like a pony. Let’s just take a look around before we assume anything.”

That seemed like wise advice, so I pulled open the door and prepared myself for some kind of horror. What was it going to be this time? Raiders shooting at me? Killer robots? Mutant animals? A sudden understanding of my tiny place in the world and the weight of history?

“Huh, this place is kind of…”

I looked around.

“It kind of reminds me of a bathroom,” I decided after a minute. Everything was dirty white composite, some kind of plastic that was slowly degrading over the years. There were tiles on the ground and metal supports, but the smooth white chairs and low dividing walls gave it that kind of once-sterile and now-filthy look.

“Thanks for comparing my legacy to a toilet, Chamomile.”

“I’m just calling it like it is.”

Faint music got my attention, and I followed it behind the front desk and through an office space packed with cubicles and slowly decaying paperwork.

“What kind of projects did they work on here?” I asked, as I walked over a carpet of old forms.

“It was more of the development side of R&D. Figuring out how to turn a discovery into a product. We’d put together something amazing in the lab, and then a few months later they’d come back with a version that was cheaper to make, harder to break, and easy enough for the average pony to use.”

“So there could actually be some useful stuff here,” I said. I opened a door and found myself in an office. Two skeletons greeted me, one collapsed at a desk and the other just inside the door. I backed up and quietly closed the door on the scene.

“Yes, but because they weren’t involved in anything in particular, it could be almost anything,” Destiny said.

I followed the sound down another corridor and stopped, kneeling down to look.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny asked.

“There are scrapes on the ground like something heavy was moved, and the ceiling is collapsed. I think this place was full of rubble a little while ago.” I stood up and carefully walked past the next door and around the corner. A robot was lying there, a pony-shaped automaton made of steel, along with a pile of debris.

“The music is coming from that door we passed,” Destiny whispered.

“I know,” I said quietly. I didn’t think we needed to whisper, but this place was literally a tomb. I trotted back to the door and pushed it open. Inside, it looked like an old garage crossed with my Dad’s office back home, just tons of junk and old books along with tools and workbenches.

“We could spend all day looking around in here,” Destiny said. I walked inside, keeping my eyes open for sudden movement. I was so ready for something to kill us that when I stumbled over an empty Sparkle-Cola bottle I panicked and punched my hoof through a cubicle wall to establish dominance.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I tried to pull my hoof free.

“Are you stuck?” Destiny groaned. “Just rotate your hoof, you’re trying to pull at the wrong angle and--”

I grunted and yanked, breaking the divider even more.

“There were better ways to do that,” she said. “What if Kulaas wanted us to see something on that wall? What if there was, I don’t know, a computer password written on a whiteboard?”

While she talked, I looked around the workbench. It was full of circuit boards and crystal chips… and a memory orb, sitting in a cradle on the desk.

“I bet this is more important,” I said.

“Maybe it’s a log from one of the researchers?” Destiny mused. “Or it could just be a test run from when we were trying to reverse-engineer recollectors.”

“Either way we should take a look, right?”

“We’re probably not going to find anywhere safer. Just lock the door to make sure that robot outside doesn’t decide to visit while we’re occupied.”

The orb had been recorded by a mare. And for once, I knew exactly what she looked like, because when the memory started, she was looking into a mirror. She was middle-aged, with a cream-colored coat speckled with multicolored freckles, like sprinkles on ice cream. I’d seen her before, a little older and a little more dressed up.

It was Destiny’s mother.

“This is Doctor Fetti, recording the first successful Warmind startup test,” she smiled. “I considered using the perceptions of one of my co-workers, but using a mirror ended up being extremely appropriate for the occasion.”

She looked behind her in the mirror to where two other ponies were standing. All three of them were wearing labcoats.

The smaller, portly mare smiled and waved when she noticed Destiny’s mom looking her way.

“These are Doctor Ray Tracer and Doctor Touring. They’ve both been of great help to bringing our spoiled little princess to life. Doctor Touring, why don’t you explain?”

“This is the third time you’re recording the ‘first successful test’,” the taller stallion grumbled.

“It’s eventually going to be a success, Doctor. We should always plan for success and bulwark against failure, not the other way around.”

The stallion sighed and took off his glasses, cleaning them with a small cloth. “Very well. Once again from the top. The Warmind project is an attempt to create an artificial general-purpose intelligence. If it works as we expect, it will be able to make correct decisions.”

“It’s important to specify what we mean by correct decisions,” the plump little mare said. “We don’t mean ‘the kind of decisions a skilled tactician would make’. We mean the kind of decisions you can only make if you have absolute and total information awareness.”

“Indeed,” the stallion sighed. He continued like he was reading a script, which he might well have been doing if this was really their third try at recording this. “A battle is a massive chain of events that are all dependent on one another. History paints battles as two big squares of soldiers crashing into each other, and there might be some mention of weather or logistics or one side ambushing another, but that’s a big picture view. At the atomic level, there are individual soldiers, with their own morale, their own interpretation of their orders, the skills and equipment available to them, their condition and health, the tiny patch of ground they’re standing on, and in a big battle you might have tens of thousands of these individual soldiers all bouncing off against one another.”

The small mare nodded. “Ponies need levels of abstraction to be able to make decisions. A general can’t give a thousand soldiers individual orders. But he can give orders to his officers, and they give orders to squad leaders, and they give orders to each individual pony.”

Destiny’s mom nodded. “And there are other considerations as well. How many soldiers do you need to win this battle Which ones? Is it better for the war effort to send this squad to a different area? Should this battle happen at all? When?”

The stallion waved a hoof vaguely. “Not to mention that at the same time, factories need to be told to make the right supplies, often months in advance of using them. Research and development needs to be pointed in the right direction. Equestria is constantly on the back hoof, reacting to what happened last week and last month and last year and saying ‘never again’ while blind to what will happen in the future.”

“But the Warmind can change that!” Doctor Tracer said, excited. “It will be able to take that fractal amount of information, all the way from the biggest picture in the planning rooms of Canterlot to the soldiers in the trenches, and with that total awareness it can predict the best course of action.”

“Assuming it works this time,” Doctor Touring mumbled.

“It will work,” Destiny’s mom said. “Last time we tried to start from zero. It was just a machine shuffling numbers around. It didn’t have intuition and understanding! This time, the seed program is much more advanced.”

“I wasn’t told about this,” Doctor Touring said, with a frown.

“I was keeping it a surprise to get your honest reaction! Surprise!” Doctor Fetti waved her hooves in front of her. “We were given some design documents by one of our trusted sources. A method to record a pony’s entire mind and run it like a computer program!”

“Impossible. You’d need something…” he hesitated.

“At least as powerful as one of the prototype Crusader-class Maneframes, or in other words, basically nothing compared to our Warmind project.”

“Are you sure a pony mind can withstand the amount of information we’re talking about?” Doctor Tracer asked.

“I’m sure a pony mind can’t,” Destiny’s mother admitted. “The Warmind systems will augment it and grow exponentially. But at the core, it will have been a pony once. Instead of building up to something that can weigh options and make decisions, we start with a system that can.”

“I hope that whoever’s mind is being used as the seed can handle that much cognitive stress,” Doctor Touring groused. “It’s more likely they’ll be driven insane than anything else. Did you even consult the Ethics Committee?”

“It’s fine. I used my own brain scan,” Destiny’s mother said, almost dismissively. “I know I can take it.”

She put her hoof on a big red lever and pulled. The lighting in the room changed, and she looked up to a screen that erupted into shimmering light with the sound of every instrument in an orchestra playing the same note at the same time.

I blinked and looked around, feeling half-blind and half-deaf after that explosion of color and sound in my head.

“That was… Kulaas being born?” I asked.

“I’m not sure I’m up to answering a lot of questions right now,” Destiny said. “I’m reeling from the implication that my mother put a copy of herself into a supercomputer and so she’s sort of alive? Or does she count as a kind of step-sister since Mom created her? Does she think of me that way? What does she want?”

“You sound like you’re doing okay.”

“I’m having a panic attack. Maybe more than one at the same time. I could really use some Mint-als, some vodka, and maybe a therapist but I’m too dead to have the first two and I have no idea where to even start with the last one.”

“You know what, I’m just gonna…” I took the helmet off and put it on the desk. “I’ll let you have a few minutes to yourself, okay?” I shook out my mane, Helmet hair was real and it was becoming a problem. I needed to see if anyone in the zebra village knew how to give a decent manecut.

I patted her gently and walked off a bit, taking a deep breath. The whole place smelled like dust.

Would Kulaas really take us here just to show us its baby video? It was smarter than me, smarter than anypony. It had started out as a pony’s mind two hundred years ago and now it was evolved so far beyond us that even communication was difficult, like a pony trying to have a conversation with an ant.

It had recognized something in us back at the SPP tower when I’d pulled a command code out of my flank thanks to the used hardware in my skull. It had given us DRACO, and at the time I thought it was just because a gun was a really polite gift to give to somepony you barely knew, but I think the gun didn’t matter and what it really wanted was to make sure we had a computer that could receive its transmissions and decipher them.

And maybe that link went both ways. Was Kulaas listening in on everything DRACO saw? It would probably be trivial for it. But at the same time, it didn’t feel like a threat. It was more like… a goddess watching from far away. The memory orb wasn’t just a random discovery or because it felt nostalgic, Kulaas wanted to show us that particular orb for a reason.
It wanted us to trust it. Specifically, it wanted Destiny to trust it. It was pretty blunt emotional manipulation, but it was working and… I sort of trusted it already anyway. I didn’t think it meant to hurt us.

Something caught my eye. One of the terminals was still working, dim light shining from the monitor. I turned to yell to Destiny, but stopped before saying anything. It’d be better to take a closer look before bothering her, right?

I tapped one of the keys, and it asked me for a password. I’d already reached the limit of my ability. I rolled my eyes and-- the screen flickered and distorted, and the password appeared before entering itself.

“Okay, that’s weird…” I mumbled.

Now I was looking at a list of files with glitchy, random names. I tried opening one, and the computer just gave me an error and went back to the list. Maybe it wasn’t weird, maybe it was just broken. I tapped the arrow key and scrolled through, ignoring the junk files. Then one caught my eye, because it was the only one with a name instead of a bunch of garbage letters and symbols.

“Valkyrie protocols?” I opened the file, and the computer hung for a second, ancient fans spinning up as it struggled to do what I asked. Images started flashing across the screen, drawn by vectors and struggling to show in a wireframe something complex and massive. It was like a CAT scan, slices through space, but every slice was in the limited three dimensions the computer could show.

DRACO beeped, and I looked at its screen to see what was going on. It was downloading the file without even being asked.

“What is that?” Destiny asked. I flinched. I hadn’t heard her floating up to me, probably because it was totally silent.

“I don’t know. It was on the computer and…” I shrugged.

She made a sound that was halfway between disapproval and curiosity. She watched the images flash by.

“I know what this is,” she said, after a few moments. “It’s a blueprint. It’s showing different layers and how to build them up… it’s how we made solid-state chips. And SIVA. I think these are plans for a micromachine.”

“We’ve got enough problems with them already,” I said.

“Yeah, but… this part. And this here!” She floated over to the keyboard and tapped a few keys, the images changing to a long list of dense text. “According to the attached reference sheets, this is a nano-disassembler. It’s an Anti-SIVA micromachine!”

“It is? What does that even mean?” I could feel my hopes rising.

“Think of it as SIVA’s natural predator. It’s optimized to hunt down SIVA nanomachines and disable them. Since SIVA is designed to be a general-purpose constructor, it’s not particularly efficient, so anything made specifically to kill it has a huge advantage!”

“Does that mean… we have a cure?”

“...No,” Destiny said after a minute, firmly dashing my hopes against the rocks. “I’m pretty sure this would rip out your implants and kill you, but that’s not a cure.”

“Not a cure, and it’d probably kill me, too. Awesome.”

“There are command codes here. A whitelisting process. I think we can make it safe for you to handle. If we can make it at all.”

“...If?”

“It’s not like the zebras are going to be able to bang out micromachines on an anvil, Chamomile! Making them requires a clean room and tons of specialized equipment. You need to be able to manipulate materials down to the atomic level. There aren’t many tools that can do that. We’ll need to salvage electron microscopes, a vacuum chamber--”

“Woah, woah. I’ve got a better idea.”

“You have a better idea on how to build an extremely advanced nano-scale weapon? I’d love to hear it, Chamomile, because I happen to be an expert and I can’t think of anything!”

“SIVA makes more of itself,” I pointed out. “So it can make these things too.”

“Well… that’s…” Destiny sputtered. “I would have thought of that myself eventually!”

I smirked, feeling particularly clever.

That feeling lasted all the way back to the village. Until I saw the smoke.

I flew in hard and fast. A bullet bounced off my armor, and I knew I wasn’t too late. I’d missed the beginning of this mess but I hadn’t arrived after the end. DRACO outlined a shape in bright hostile red for me, and I dropped straight down on it, letting the raider break my fall.

“Sky Lady!” A zebra waved at me from the shadow of one of the huts. It took me a second to recognize Wheel-of-Moon, the village elder. “Thank the winds! They came through the hidden way!”

I glanced up at the path she meant. It was a narrow winding pass, just barely wide enough for what the zebra used it for - getting in and out of the village to hunt and scavenge in the tundra outside the volcanic valley. I’d gone through it before with Walks-in-Shadow. How had they found it?

“Do you know how many there are?” I asked.

“Five? Perhaps six?” She didn’t sound sure.

I nodded. At least it was something to go on. I could take a half-dozen of them by myself. My head jerked up at the sound of gunfire, from the path to the Companions’ encampment.

“Get everyone you can to safety,” I said. I waited for her to nod before rushing off. I had to hope they had somewhere safe to go. I took to the air, ignoring the pain in my legs from the hard landing. I spotted two more raiders, right in front of a burning home.

“I’ve got enough charge for a force bolt,” Destiny said.

“You get one and I’ll take the other one!” I yelled, swooping down and flying just over the ground, coming at them from the side. The magical bolt knocked one off his hooves and into a garden, slamming head-first into the dirt. The other one turned to look at me and opened up jaws like a bear trap, breathing out a cone of flame.

I soared through it and picked him up before looping up into the air, still moving as fast as I could. He struggled in my grasp, so after I’d gained some altitude I just let go. He looked surprised all the way down. The one Destiny had shot started to get up, until his friend landed on him and ruptured, spilling out whatever fuel was powering that fire breath.

They exploded into flames.

Two zebras escaped from the other side of the burning house. I gave them a quick wave, and they waved back before bolting away from the flames and the danger.

Another gunshot rang out, followed by a terrible roar. I flew towards it, and I found them at the bottleneck between the village and the Companions’ campsite. The passage was splattered with gore. I hadn’t been too late to get to the village but I’d been too late to get here.

Three raiders were lying in the dirt, but so was one white-furred bear wearing a silvery, shining blanket like a cape.

I landed next to him, and he looked up at me before making a pitiful sound and shrinking in on himself, bones twisting painfully and slowly as Walks-in-Shadow turned back.

“Sky Lady…” he gasped, coughing up blood.

“Hold on,” I said. “Destiny, give me whatever potions we’ve got left.”

“We don’t have anything,” Destiny whispered. “I used the last of your medical supplies when your shoulder got ripped apart.”

“Smoke-in-Water… he went to guard the pass,” Walks-in-Shadow whispered. “Can you tell him… I fought well?”

“You’ll tell him yourself,” I said, grabbing his hoof and squeezing. He smiled and closed his eyes. “No! Stay with me!”

“It might not be too late,” Destiny said. “We need to go get help!”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll--” I saw movement. Light and shadows inside the Companions’ Hall. “There’s more of them. They must have slipped past Walks-in-Shadow.” I unlatched the helmet and took it off. Destiny floated out of my hooves. “You go get the elders and bring them back here. I’ll deal with the stragglers.”

“Got it,” Destiny agreed, flying off as quickly as she could hover.

I gave Walks-in-Shadow a gentle pat and adjusted his silver blanket before rushing up to the wooden hall, bursting through the door. The cloaked pony inside jerked in surprise, dropping what he was holding. Rockhoof’s Shovel fell to the floor, sinking in blade-deep.

I slammed the intruder into the wall. I flipped my hoofblade into place and stabbed, and the point hung in the air, just barely held back by a pale grey aura.

“I did not come here to harm anyone!” the pony said. In the light of his aura, I could see he was an older, bearded unicorn stallion. He looked positively ancient, but his eyes burned with a determined light. Importantly, I didn’t see any sign of SIVA infection. No cybernetics or steel plating. Not even proper barding.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” I growled.

“I had nothing to do with the raiders. I was merely using their attack as a convenient distraction. There aren’t many places on the timeline where I can do what I need.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I backed off a step, but held my knife at the ready. If he was going to try anything, I could throw it and have a decent chance of catching him before he could get a spell off. “Who are you?”

“You don’t need to know my name. I’m trying not to interfere in events,” he said, brushing himself off. “I was hoping to avoid even being noticed. That’s why I came here now. You would have assumed the raiders just took the shovel.”

I frowned. “You haven’t done a great job. This is at least the third time I’ve seen you.”

“I suppose so,” the stallion sighed. “I need Rockhoof’s Shovel.”

“It doesn’t belong to you.”

“No, it doesn’t. My hooves aren’t the right ones for this gift, but I know where it needs to go.” He sighed. “I don’t even have time to explain all the things I don’t have time to explain! I’ll give you fair trade for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need more advanced medicine than these primitives can offer. I can tell you where to get it. In return, I need Rockhoof’s shovel.”

I only hesitated for a second. I tossed the shovel to him, and he caught it in his hooves, like his magic slipped off it.

“Deal. Now tell me where I need to go to save my friend.”

Chapter 28 - In The Cage

So it turns out windigos are real.

I’d always kind of assumed they were fictional creatures, like Breezies or the Tooth Flutterpony. The one on my tail seemed awfully real, and I promised myself if I made it out of this alive I’d at least pretend to have the Hearth’s Warming Spirit and give really great presents this year!

“Outside temperatures are dropping,” Destiny warned.

“Yes, thank you, I’ve noticed that!” I spat, my teeth chattering. It was getting harder and harder to outrun the windigo. Ice was building up on my wings and robbing them of lift and I was running out of good options. I could go slower or I could go lower and either way it was going to gain on me.

“We’ve got maybe a minute,” Destiny said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any bright ideas?”

I struggled to remember anything about windigos. They hated the holidays, right? “We could try giving each other really thick wool socks and pretending to be grateful for the presents!”

“Great idea, Chamomile! If I had socks or hooves I’d be willing to try that. Maybe it wouldn’t be so upset if you hadn’t gotten it angry by trying to ‘establish dominance’!”

I looked at my right forehoof. It was coated in a thick layer of ice and I couldn’t move anything below the knee. I had to hope it couldn’t get frostbite since it was made out of exotic forms of carbon and silicon carbide.

“I’m used to solving my problems with violence, okay?! Do some kind of magic at it!” I yelled.

“You want a light spell? We tried a shield and it just went right through it!”

“Shoot it with a magic bullet!”

“I’m tapped out on magic bullets! It takes a while to build up that much mana and I used all I had back in that last fight! Unless you’ve forgotten, I’m dead! You’re lucky I can cast magic at all!”

“This day gets worse all the time,” I grumbled. I decided down was better than slow and started losing altitude. If something bad was going to happen it would be less dangerous if it happened near the ground.

“Something’s wrong,” Destiny said. Her voice echoed strangely for a moment, like a radio hitting interference.

“Is it a SIVA signal?” It was the first thing to come to mind that might kill me, but I’d feel it before she would, right?

“No. It’s some kind of magic, I think it's--” her voice faded entirely.

“Destiny? Destiny!?”

I was only distracted for a second or two but that was enough for the windigo to catch up. It didn’t have a real body. It wasn’t solid. That didn’t matter much, because a tornado isn’t solid either. It ran into me and the windshear knocked me right out of the air. I fought for control and my decision to dive turned a deadly crash landing into just an embarrassing one.

The snow caught me, and I rolled over until I hit a parked cart, the remains of an ambulance. I used the hull to pull myself to my hooves and looked up at the windigo. It was a huge shape, like somepony had started making a pony out of snowflakes and frost and given up halfway through and let it trail out into a smear behind it. It wasn’t looking at me. Its attention was focused somewhere else, and from what little I could tell from its hazy expression, it looked on-edge, like an animal hearing the cry of a predator.

That was my first sign that this was going to be more than the usual amount of trouble.

It howled mournfully and fled the other way, leaving me alone in the parking lot.

“Oh yeah, that’s a great sign,” I mumbled. “Something scaring a ghost away.”

I waited a minute for Destiny to come back with some sort of sarcasm or annoyance, but she was silent. Like the grave. That’s a ghost joke but also I was starting to get worried.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked. “Destiny?”

“I don’t feel great,” Destiny groaned. “I’ll be okay. It just sucks.”

I turned around to look at our destination. The Stalliongrad Memorial Hospital. The place was big, with the distinctive look of a building that had been expanded and had wings and floors added to it over the years. There were places where materials didn’t quite match, boxy additions in steel and glass with a totally different design to the rest of the building, and the whole top level of the place didn’t quite fit with the rest, like somepony wearing a hat a few sizes too large.

“Does that mean it’s haunted, or sanctified?” I asked. “Because no offense, but you are sort of a wandering vengeful spirit.”

“It means we’re going to do this quickly,” Destiny said. “I can’t even explain what it feels like. Maybe vertigo? It’s like I’m standing on the edge of a dark pit…”

“Cool, cool. We’ll call it haunted, then.” I slammed my hoof into the steel frame of the ambulance, denting the metal and shattering the layer of ice. I flexed my wrist. It was too cold and numb to tell if I’d actually injured it.

I limped a little on purpose to avoid putting too much weight on it until I was sure nothing was broken and made my way to the front doors. And then I stopped before actually touching them.

“Destiny, did someone paint ominous-looking symbols on the front door of the haunted hospital?” I asked.

“That is what it looks like,” the ghost muttered. “Oh! DRACO found a translation. Let’s see… it says… some combination of Taboo, Darkness, Forbidden, and implies great evil.”

“I want to note for the record that if this wasn’t an emergency I’d turn around and go somewhere else.”

“The record?” Destiny asked, sounding half-asleep. “Was I supposed to be taking notes?”

DRACO beeped and helpfully displayed an almost-accurate transcript of the last few minutes of what we’d been saying.

“Thanks, DRACO,” I said. Then I braced myself and shoved the doors in. The paint used for the symbol flaked under my hooves and I resolved not to think about what it had been painted with.

“Let’s go over our objectives,” Destiny said. “We need whatever healing potions they’ve got, Med-X, Fixer, maybe some Mint-Als just to keep you from getting bad ideas. If we’re really lucky we might find a working AutoDoc.”

“Cool. Do we need skeletons for anything? Because there are a lot of bones.” I’d stopped in the doorway because the place was packed with the dead. There must have been a dozen bodies crammed into the small space. A lot of them still had clothing on. I guess nylon lasted longer than flesh.

“I don’t even know why they’d come here. This place was for veterans and POWs,” Destiny said.

“After the bombs fell they probably thought they could get help from somepony.” I prodded one of the skeletons like I was daring for it to jump at me. It stayed dead. I carefully stepped over it. “Gonna be honest, this is a lot more like what I expected the surface to be like. Dead ponies everywhere, ruins, scary monsters.”

“At least there’s no SIVA,” Destiny said.

“What’s this stuff, then?” I asked, touching the wall. Something had grown over a poster of a stern-looking nurse warning patients to get vaccinated. Half her face was covered with something that looked waxy and almost organic.

Destiny mentally shrugged hard enough for me to feel it. “I don’t know. Sort of reminds me of an insect hive. They always did say cockroaches would survive anything…” She didn’t sound up to speculating about anything. Whatever was wrong here was still affecting her pretty badly.

DRACO chirped an alert. The message popped up on my visor, too. There was in incoming transmission.

“Maybe Kulaas has something to say?” I guessed, tuning in.

There was a sharp burst of static. “No! No, please!” The voice dissolved into static before coming back. “--already took my--” Another burst cut off whatever he was going to say. “--not going to let you do that to me!”

“Somepony’s in trouble,” I said, and for once it wasn’t me. “Which direction…?”

I looked around, and even though the transmission had broken down to just more static and hints of words spoken in fear, it was obviously stronger in one direction. I didn’t have time to be nice to the skeletons, and I ran through them, scattering the bones and shoving open the next set of doors.

The next room had once been some kind of pleasant, calming waiting room, with skylights and planters and a cute little fountain. Now the plants were a tangle of weeds, and that waxy stuff covered the walls everywhere the sunlight didn’t reach.

A pony was standing in the middle of the room. He was in the heaviest looking barding I’d ever seen.

“A Steel Ranger?” Destiny asked.

There was a crackle of static, with a strange echo. “Don’t come any closer,” the voice said. I was sure I was hearing it from two different places. The Steel Ranger raised his head, and I saw the sunken cheeks and tattered flesh. Three glowing eyes shone through the gloom between us.

“The transmission is coming from his armor,” Destiny said.

“Maybe he’s friendly and just wants help?” I asked hopefully.

I half expected him to roar and try to eat my flesh. That might have been better, because instead he drew a long, rusty sword from a sheath on his back and stalked towards me, dragging that cleaver behind him. He didn’t look like a mindless beast. He looked like something driven by terrible purpose.

Two could play at that game.

I readied my hoofblade. “Sure, buddy. If you wanna settle this with a swordfight, I’m game.”

He stomped closer, and a wave of cold wind made the coat on the back of my neck prickle.

“Chamomile,” Destiny gasped. “Strong-- necro--” she sounded like she was having trouble just hanging on. I didn’t have time to ask what was wrong.

The skeletons sprang to unlife, lurching up from the ground and grabbing at me, bony hooves and teeth scraping against my barding. I kicked the ones trying to hold my legs away, then launched into the air before the Steel Ranger could get to me, that heavy blade slamming down in an inevitable arc that shattered the bones of the undead in its path.

I queued up a few rocks into the junk jet and fired, knocking more of the skeletons apart. Whatever was animating them wasn’t trying very hard to hold them together, and once the bones scattered they didn’t come back together.

“Neat trick,” I told the undead ranger. “I’d ask to learn it if it wasn’t morally repugnant!”

He kept moving at that steady, unhurried pace. I don’t think my taunts were having much effect. I landed and kicked two more skeletons away. They weren’t getting back up, but there were still a lot of them to begin with. The ranger swung his blade, and I met it with mine. A shower of green sparks erupted from where our weapons met, and I pushed him back.

“Funny,” I said. “I thought you’d be stronger!”

It swung again with that slow swipe. It didn’t come quickly but watching it was like watching the tide come in. There was a terrible sense of doom around it, and it chilled me to the bone more than the frost outside. I barely got my blade up in time to parry it, barely able to push it aside, the strength to stop it fleeing in the face of that fear.

I backed up, watching it. If nothing else, I was a lot faster than he was.

“What was that?” I murmured. My heart was pounding in my chest.

The cleaver came down in an overhead arc. It had gotten right in front of me in an instant, like he’d cut through the space between us. I blocked it, like holding back a collapsing roof. I pushed harder. I was afraid. That was the problem. Something about the ranger and his sword terrified me on that deep feral level where ponies were still animals. The darkness around him ate at my primal instincts in a way only the SIVA dragon had before.

I spread my wings, knocking an approaching skeleton back.

I had to choose between fight or flight. I bit down on the fear.

The edge of my short blade started glowing like it was freshly forged, and the sparks shifted from unnatural green to the orange-red of embers. I pushed him back. He wasn’t expecting the resistance and lost his balance.

My blade shoved his aside and I grabbed the metal collar of his armor with my other hoof, planting myself and twisting, throwing him overhead and into the wall. He slammed into it hard enough to go through the nurse’s station and into the exam room beyond it. I stalked after him, trailing steam. I felt hot and feverish already, and my stomach growled like an empty abyss in my chest.

He struggled to get up, the servos of his armor squealing like injured animals. I ripped the rusty blade from his hooves and stabbed it down through his spine, pinning him to the floor. There was a darkness inside that sword. It just looked like rusty metal lashed together with tape and string, but it was more than that. It was alive, somehow, and when I stabbed it through the ranger it drank his life down, and I felt a dark connection between us.

I gasped and let go of the sword, throwing myself back. The Steel Ranger went still, the light in his eyes dying.

“What the buck was that?!” I gasped.

“It’s an enchanted weapon,” Destiny said. “I felt it too. I think it’s a type of ritual weapon. The more it’s used to kill, the more the weight of those deaths become part of its power. Instead of dulling with every cut, the act of cutting makes it sharper.”

“...Should we take it with us?” I really didn’t want to, but if it was that important I’d feel stupid leaving it behind.

“Absolutely not. That thing is bad news,” Destiny said. “The last thing you need is some kind of freaking curse on top of everything else wrong with you.”

“Good point,” I said, feeling better about my decision already.

“Go back to the nurse’s station,” Destiny said. “I think I saw a terminal. DRACO might be able to pull up a map of this place to save us some time wandering around.”

I walked back through the hole in the wall and shoved the last of the skeletons aside. Alone, they were practically harmless. There was a flickering screen on the side of the station we hadn’t destroyed in the fight. I trotted over and tapped at the keys.

“I’ll just have DRACO download the whole database,” Destiny said. “I can’t focus enough to pick through it myself.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I don’t think it’s normal to be exhausted when you’re dead.” While she downloaded files, I looked through the drawers and found a bag of potato chips. It was still sealed, so I popped it open and munched on them to quiet my hunger for a little while. They tasted awful, like rancid oil and salt, but they probably wouldn’t kill me.

“I’ll be fine, which is more than I can say about you when you’re eating something you found in a rotting tomb full of undead.”

“That is sort of asking for trouble, isn’t it?” I finished off the last of the bag and tossed it aside.

“DRACO found a map and flagged a few recordings,” Destiny said. A small map of a few rooms and corridors appeared in my vision. “I’ll set the recordings to play while we travel.”

“This is the personal log of Doctor Toil Land. I am making these logs to have a personal record of the events here. To keep patient confidentiality, I am going to avoid referencing specific dates and the names of patients. I was recommended to come here along with several other colleagues to bolster the staff and assist with what seemed like an extreme outbreak of wartime stress disorder among a group of prisoners of war, but things are worse than I could have imagined.”

I walked slowly through the hospital corridors. There was more of that strangely-organic debris everywhere, and some of the skeletons were restless, but most of the dead were staying dead. Doctor Toil sounded hopeful and excited. He’d probably come to work thinking he was going to be helping ponies. It’s what we all really wanted in the end, right? To help each other?

“Personal log, second entry. I met with one of the prisoners today for an interview. In my experience as a clinical psychiatrist, I’ve rarely met anyone, pony or otherwise, that was as deeply disturbed. He was convinced he was dead, and that his body was rotting around him. This delusion seems to be common among this group of POWs. According to their charts, all of them developed this disorder after the Battle of Stalliongrad, and all of them had been mortally wounded before the prototype megaspell was deployed. After the interview, I’m unsure if this delusion related to the zebra’s beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife; if it’s a result of the simple trauma of being that badly injured and being left with no evidence of it; or if the megaspell itself had some kind of secondary effect we don’t understand.”

I stopped at an intersection and let the rest of the second recording play out.

“The POWs… the Ghost Bears were POWs too,” I said. “This sounds like…”

“Like the memory orb from my brother,” Destiny mumbled. “I know.”

“Personal log, fifth entry. We’ve had to restrain several prisoners and put them into solitary confinement. They were harming themselves and tried to attack staff members when we attempted to stop them. Before we got the drill away from them, one prisoner was killed and two more were seriously injured. Once they’re stable, they’ll be transferred to surgery to try and treat the cranial trauma.”

I walked past a door, then stopped and went back to it. It was Doctor Toil’s office.

“Hey, Destiny? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? A lot of the undead seem to have three eyes, and he’s talking about some kind of head wound and a drill.”

“It could be trepanation,” Destiny said. “I don’t know if it’s something the zebra do normally, but it’s not totally unknown even in pony prehistory. Maybe they were so damaged by the war they were willing to do anything to try and let the demons out, even drilling holes in their own head.”

I pushed the door open.

“Personal log, entry… I don’t know. I was wrong. I was so wrong. I should have had the bodies destroyed. I should have listened to the other prisoners. They tried to warn me and-- someone’s coming. Hello? Paladin Cross, thank goodness. Wait, what’s wrong with your forehead--”

The recording cut out with a scream and loud splattering sounds.

I knelt down over the partial skeleton. The doctor’s back legs were on the other side of the room. I hoped he’d died instantly. I knelt down, partly because I was still exhausted from fighting the undead Ranger and partly because… I don’t know. I guess it was strange hearing a voice from that long ago and knowing there wasn’t a happy ending for them.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Destiny said, her voice strained.

“Yeah?”

“That lab coat he’s wearing isn’t going to fool anypony into thinking you’re a doctor.”

That got me laughing, hard enough that I was practically crying. Maybe I did cry a little. If I did, it had been a pretty rough day so far and there wasn’t anything shameful about having emotions.

I left the Doctor where he’d fallen and got up. I had to do what I could for the living. I trotted down the hallway to the surgical unit. I found the doors right at the end of a hallway lined with inspirational posters about hanging in there, and cute kittens, and some vague metaphors about butterflies. They were dirty and faded but had a kind of desperate sincerity behind them somewhere. It reminded me of the drawings I’d made for my parents when I was a really little filly. I mean, these were better, they’d obviously had real artists do the work, but it had the same sense of facing something big head-on, no implications or talking around a problem, just facing it down.

I shoved the doors to the surgical unit open and--

“It’s not supposed to look like this, is it?” I asked.

“Where is… where is the everything?!” Destiny sputtered.

The place was empty. Like, really empty. Even most of the doors and cabinets had been either taken or smashed. There were spaces where the Auto-Doc pods were obviously supposed to be, but all that was left was the torn-out end of a wiring harness like the dead root of some electric plant.

“...Do you remember the unit that high priest guy had back in the monitoring station?” I said slowly.

“Unfortunately,” Destiny groaned. “You think he got it from right here?”

“That’d be my guess.” I stared poking through the wreckage. There was at least one bright spot - when I flipped over a door that had been knocked in, I found a dented first-aid kit with a couple healing potions and some distilled water inside. There wasn’t much else to even loot unless I really wanted to start collecting calipers and rusty old scalpels.

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that stallion. Comes out of nowhere promising a solution that just gets us far away and in a haunted hospital full of skeletons…”

DRACO beeped, and I glanced sideways at the screen.

“Another transmission?” I muttered.

“...ello? Is anypony receiving this?...” The voice was a mare’s, but almost totally lost in waves of static.

“It might be another Steel Ranger,” Destiny warned. “It’s local. I think it’s coming from somewhere deeper in the building.”

“Keep your eyes open,” I agreed.

“...anypony there? I thought I heard voices. Hello?”

This didn’t feel like the Ranger. “I’m not sure that’s just a recording.” I cleared my throat. “Hey! We’re reading you!”

“Thank the stars! I can barely hear you! I’m going to try moving to a better position.” A stronger wave of static buzzed with electrical insistence, cutting everything off.

“Definitely not a recording,” Destiny agreed. “It must be somepony who wandered in here just like we did.”

I nodded in agreement and kicked some of the debris out of my way as I walked out of the old surgical unit and into something close to what I imagined Tartarus must be like. The ICU was right outside, and it had been at the heart of whatever horrors had happened here. That growth was everywhere, but I could see bones embedded in it, and they weren’t just lying where ponies had happened to fall. They’d been arranged into patterns like the runes I’d seen painted here and there in the other rooms.

The biggest symbol was right in the middle of the floor, about as big as a pony lying down spread-eagle, with a skull right at the center and surrounded by an ivory ring. I could see marks on the bones. Like they’d been gnawed on.

I skirted around the circle, keeping my eyes on it while I made my way to the other side of the room. I wasn’t stupid enough to walk right into the middle of the most evil flutterpony circle I’d ever seen and get taken away to who knows where.

I bumped into what should have been thin air. A shock ran through me like I’d touched a live thundercloud.

“It’s a magical barrier!” Destiny warned. I glanced back at it. The barrier was over the door, right where I wanted to be. I bolted back the way I’d come, and slammed face-first into a second barrier that popped up in the doorway to the surgical unit. “The magic is--” her voice faded into echoes.

“I think we found a trap,” I said unnecessarily.

Purple and green light erupted along the circle, and the skull in the center of it opened its fleshless jaw and shrieked. The terrible sound was echoed by two more on the walls, the black oily growth melting away and releasing floating skulls with eyes of burning violet-green fire.

And then the shrieking things started spitting firebolts at me.

I dove for cover behind the…

Behind the…

I dove for cover and flopped down on the floor because there was nothing to take cover behind and I was going to die.

Purple flames splattered against me, the bolt hitting with the force of a water balloon. Filled with napalm. I let out a very cool warcry that just happened to sound like a panicked scream because I was having flashbacks to the time all the skin got burned off my hoof.

Destiny screamed too, and that sound is going to linger with me for a while. It wasn’t just a noise, the scream rattled through me and I could feel it resonate across my whole body, the armor shaking like a leaf and almost flying apart.

“Destiny?!” I gasped. “Talk to me!”

She didn’t say anything, just leaving an echoing quiet where her voice should have been.

Everything on my left side burned, from the base of my wing back to my cutie mark. I kicked at the ground and ran, limping and swearing at the world in general. My armor was so hot it felt like I was pressed up against a hot stove and the floating skulls were turning to follow me, spitting hot death in my wake. I was just barely faster than they were. I needed to do something stupid if I was going to survive.

I reared up and twisted to take a shot at one of the skulls with the Junk Jet. It was a good-sized rock, easily as big as a hoof-ball. A shimmering shield appeared around the skull when it hit, and the stone just skipped off and fell to the ground. The skull tracked it for a moment, then started firing at me again.

“Oh come on!” I snarled. “They’re invincible?!”

“The… circle…” Destiny whispered. Hearing her voice made me feel a little better. She sounded like she was in pain, and there was nothing I could do for her.

She had to mean the magic circle in the middle of the room. The really ominous one made out of glowing bones. I flapped up into the air to avoid another barrage of that hideous fire and made for the ring. I had to hope she didn’t want me to do anything more complicated than just smash stuff.

I flew into it and I could feel the spell wash over me. It had to be some kind of power source. It was like breaching a storm wall, a wave of force and pressure and tingling strangeness. The feeling wasn’t the same as the electric charge in a cloud, but instead it was the creeping sickly sensation of something dissolving, the feeling of an over-carbonated drink fizzing away on your tongue.

I stomped down on the skull in the middle of the circle, shattering the fragile bone.

The floating skulls screamed again, and the air fractured around them.

“Looks like that did the trick!” I yelled, firing another chunk of rock. This time it hit the skull I was aiming at, smacking it right on the end of the nose and cracking bone. The thing shrieked and vibrated in the air like a damaged engine coming apart before exploding in a shower of bone shrapnel and fire.

One down.

With only one of them left, it was easier to keep my distance from them in the enclosed space, making doging easier. I pulled the trigger on the Junk Jet and it let out a mighty puff of air that did absolutely nothing, because the hopper was empty.

Stupid mistake. I just had to pull something out of the vector trap and… and… and I didn’t actually know how to use any of the armor’s systems because I’d been making Destiny do all the technical stuff.

“Buck!” I swore, trying to think. That was made more difficult by my increasing exhaustion and the crawling, distracting feeling of burning all along my left flank. “DRACO, you must have something you can shoot!”

It beeped and a short message popped up.

“No, I don’t think a water purification tablet is going to help!”

I grabbed the first thing at hoof, which made me feel really dirty because it was a bunch of bones off the floor. I jammed them into the Junk Jet while hopping on two legs. If I stopped moving even for a second I’d end up in the same kind of shape as the ponies being used as spare parts in the little chamber of horrors.

“I hope this works,” I said, launching the bundle at the last skull. They weren’t as heavy as the rock, more like a shotgun blast than a solid slug. They plinked off the floating skull and for a second I didn’t think it did anything, but then the skull started vibrating in midair, purple-green sparks cracking off its surface.

Suddenly, it flared up, the bone cracking and twisting inwards like it was being compressed by an invisible vice on all sides.
The light faded, and then it exploded, a dull whomp of force that knocked me back into the wall. The barriers over the doorways faded, and some of the oppressive sense of death and decay had faded.

I picked myself off the ground and tried not to groan in pain. It wasn’t too bad as long as I didn’t think about it or move too much or breathe really deeply.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly. “Destiny?”

“Tired…” she whispered. “I need to rest. Necromancy…”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Just let me--” her voice wavered like a candle about to sputter out. I felt a wash of cold in my neck where the autoinjector pressed against me, and the hot pain down my left side faded until it was only an annoyance, like a sunburn.

“Thanks,” I said.

Destiny didn’t reply, but I could still feel her there. She wasn’t gone entirely. I looked at the runes and bones scattered across the room and wondered if it was better to just turn back. If those things were able to hurt her, would a pony caught by the unearthly fire suffer a fate worse than death?

The radio crackled to life right then and the surprise almost stopped my heart. “Hello? Unknown fireteam, are you still listening? This is Squiddle, do you copy?”

“I’m here!” I said quickly, standing up straight and looking around like a filly caught with a hoof in the cookie jar. “I was just dealing with a little problem on my end, uh, Squiddle.”

“Glad to hear you’re okay. Had some problems finding a safe place to transmit from. I don’t know how long it’s been since I got locked in down here!”

“Down here? Are you in the basement?”

“That’s a positive. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to bust me out of here? I’d be very appreciative.”

“I’m not going to leave another pony hanging,” I promised. She sounded exhausted and afraid, a little like Destiny had been. Something about the place had a weird negative emotional aura.

I could almost hear the smile. “See you soon.”

Chapter 29 - Dreams of Death

After I’d broken the bone circle, things got worse. For a while the skeletons hadn’t really been threatening. No, really they just hadn’t been focused. They’d been wandering like lost, blind animals, not even really trying to attack unless I got too close to them. I’d started ignoring them because there wasn’t much point in going out of my way to break them apart.

That changed.

I wrenched open a door and got dogpiled by a half-dozen grinning ivory idiots. They grabbed my legs and scrabbled their little bony hooves all over me.

“I am getting tired of all this Nightmare Night bullcrap!” I yelled, trying to throw them off. The things clung to me, and I only managed to toss one of them aside. The pile of bones smacked into the wall and exploded like a grenade, erupting with a blast of shrapnel and purple-green fire.

The other five still attached to me started chattering, their jaws clacking like they were laughing silently. Points of light like stars burned in their empty eye sockets.

If they wanted to stay attached to me they were going to have to work for it. I flapped hard and launched myself into the ceiling hard enough to break through the tiles and into the dusty space above them. Dust erupted around us in a blinding cloud and I felt two of the skeletons fall off and burst apart on the ground.

I got my hooves around another one and tore it in half, vertebrae scattering. I tossed the halves to the side, and only the one with the skull actually erupted into fire. I guess I should have expected that. Whoever cursed the place really seemed to like skulls.

The last two fought to stay attached, the clacking getting louder and faster. One was on a back leg, and I slammed down on the floor butt-first to knock it free, the edge of the blast catching me before I could get away and leaving my back end feeling like I’d sat down on a live thundercloud with a bad attitude.

“Get off me, you undead freak!” I yelled, trying to twist my head to look at the last skeleton. It had already lost everything below the ribs from the rough treatment, but it was hanging onto my back in that spot you can’t quite reach.

The chattering stopped.

“Oh no,” I said, at practically the same moment it exploded. I got launched forwards and down into the tile floor. The filthy tiles cracked under me, and for a long moment all I could feel was the pain in my back.

I tried to get up, and my legs refused to cooperate. I risked a glance back. They were still attached. There were warning notifications up in my vision. I didn’t know what any of them meant. It’s not like I couldn’t read them but that didn’t mean I could understand them. Destiny had mentioned before that the operating system for the Exodus Armor hadn’t really been finished, and that was the only explanation for useful error messages like ‘0x00000121 CRASH’.

Some of the pictures were more helpful, but I didn’t need a flashing red picture of my lower back. I could tell I was hurt without the helpful commentary.

The radio crackled, adding another distraction to my HUD. “Unknown fireteam, this is Squiddles, you still with me up there?”

“Yeah,” I groaned. I tried to get up again, but I couldn’t get my stupid legs to work. They were fine. They were still attached. I just had to move! If I knew how to work the armor correctly I could hit myself with another healing potion.

Something popped in my back. And when I say popped, I don’t want you to imagine a joint popping into place like you might get if you crack your neck or stretch your shoulder. What I mean is more like the sensation of having a circuit breaker pop, a crackle of electricity and energy crossing an airgap.

My leg kicked, mostly on its own.

“You don’t sound so good,” Squiddles said.

“I don’t know if the things here are getting smarter or they just weren’t taking me seriously before or what,” I said. I focused on moving my legs. They started to respond, and I felt a little of the fear I’d been bottling up dissolve.

“They’re smarter than they look,” she agreed.

Everything flashed hot and cold when I did it, but I managed to stand up, and my legs were holding my weight. I still felt a little fragile, but it was better than nothing. I stumbled into the room where the skeletons had been waiting in ambush. I should have known, it was some kind of old hospital ward, with a few beds separated by the tattered remnants of curtains.

“How did you end up here?” I asked, trying to keep her talking. I needed to hear a friendly voice. Destiny hadn’t said anything in a while now, and I was getting more and more worried about her. I didn’t realize how much it helped having another pony there with me, at least in spirit. That’s a ghost pun.

“We came here to scavenge for supplies,” Squiddles said. “Medical stuff is always good because even if you can’t sell it you can use it yourself. Had the bright idea to check the basement since the rest had been picked over. We thought the locked door meant nopony else had been here.”

“But you were wrong?”

She laughed bitterly. “Yes and no. We just weren’t alone. We came down here as a squad of nine. Got picked off one by one.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“So am I.”

I started going though the cabinets. Most of them were empty aside from old paperwork and cotton swabs. The last one was locked. I kicked it open, breaking the lock. I winced at the sound of breaking glass from the other side. There had been three healing potions inside in glass vials. The broken glass still held a little of the potion. I carefully drank the dregs, and felt the pain in my back fade. It wasn’t enough to fix it entirely but I felt less like I was going to shatter like the potions had.

“Anything you can do to help me rescue you?” I asked.

“Sure!” she pepped up at the mention of a rescue. “Where are you right now?”

“Uh…” I looked at the sign outside the door. “Room 106.”

“Okay, I think I can lead you to the basement door from there. The elevators are out so you’ll have to use the back way. When you walk out of the room, go to your left.”

Squiddles talked me through the next few turns before it went wrong.

“What do you mean you can’t go that way?” she asked, confused. “There should be a corridor there going straight to the stairs down.”

“There’s a hallway,” I agreed. I tapped a hoof against the rubble blocking it. Concrete and steel. I didn’t know how many stories worth of floor had collapsed down into the space. “It’s blocked.”

“Blocked? It wasn’t like that before…”

I frowned. “Are you sure? This looks like it’s been here a while.” The black growth was already starting to cover it, and there was no sign it was fresh.

“I’ll take you another way,” Squiddles decided. “We’ll just go the long way around. Sorry. I was hoping we could do this quickly.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there,” I said. “I wouldn’t leave a pony stuck in a place like this.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. "I wish other ponies felt the same way you did."

I nodded and turned to leave. And then saw the sign on the wall. This place really must have been near the basement stairs, because it was pointing the way there. And it listed the only department down there.

The morgue.

“Uh, Squiddles, if I’m reading this right… the basement is a morgue?”

“Morgue and machine room,” Squiddles said. “Some machine parts are worth a lot if they’re in good condition.”

“Oh. Right. That makes sense.” It was still creepy, though. I wouldn’t want to be in a morgue with all the undead around. She must have had nerves of steel.

The hospital was a maze. It hadn’t been originally, but rubble and time had turned it into one. And then when I finally found a clear path forward, I walked right into another magical barrier. This one left a taste in my mouth like electric lime cucumber when I slammed into it face-first.

The radio washed out with hard static for a few seconds. “Woah, what was that?” Squiddles asked. “I almost lost you there. Getting a lot of interference.”

“It’s another magic barrier,” I groaned. I turned around, looking for the trap. What was it going to be? Exploding skeletons that were also on fire? A giant monster made out of all the skeletons fused together into a really big skeleton?

Everything was just quiet. I frowned. That was weird. The hallway didn’t really feel trapped. The oppressive feeling of death was actually a little lighter in here for some reason.

“Chamomile?” Destiny whispered. “Be… careful… there’s… something… wrong with…”

“Destiny?” I blinked. “Hey, you there?”

She went quiet again. The radio’s static hum picked up again, Squiddles’ voice barely coming through.

“Look for a talisman!” she yelled, shouting to be heard through the interference. “It should look like a big gem!”

I nodded and stepped back, scanning the walls carefully. It wasn’t that hard to find. I was worried it would be buried in the black muck crawling all over things like greasy barnacles but it was mounted to the wall in a wooden frame, twisted in a spider-web of cords and beads, the ends trailing down from the frame. There wasn’t any of the weird growth around it anywhere, making it easy to spot.

“Found it,” I said loudly.

“Great! Break it and you should be good!”

I nodded. There was no time to argue. Destiny sounded like she was still in pain. Being here must be as bad for her as the cyber-jungle had been for me, a constant oppressive force trying to tear her apart. We had to be finished with this fast. If it wasn’t for Squiddles, I’d already have left, but I wasn’t going to leave a pony behind.

I tore the gem out of the tangle of threads, and the barrier vanished. That feeling of dread started creeping back in around the edges, though.

“Huh,” I muttered.

A huge cleaver made of bone and battered steel slammed through the wall right in front of me, the tip scraping my armor and cutting right through where it passed, almost all the way to my skin. I could feel the sharpness just from its passage.

The Steel Ranger holding it barreled through the wall. The plaster only slowed it down enough for me to scamper back and start to panic. I was starting to think I should have taken the sword from the first Ranger I’d fought, even if it was definitely super cursed.

“What’s going on? I heard that on my end!” Squiddles was coming through more clearly now. I ducked under a wide swing as the Ranger stumbled into the hallway. There wasn’t much room to maneuver here.

“Somepony’s unhappy that I’m intruding!” I shouted, backing off.

Getting in close was a really bad idea. I was pretty sure I was stronger than it was, but that sword was on a whole other level. It’d cut right through me! I needed a really clever plan. Unfortunately Destiny was still out of it and Squiddles was only a voice on the radio. The buzzing lights overhead flickered as he stomped towards me, unhurried and inevitable.

Wait! That was it!

The hallway was too narrow for me to really spread my wings, but I could still get a little lift. I jumped for the ceiling and grabbed the edge of the nearest light fixture, yanking it down and pointing the fluorescent bulbs at the oncoming undead. It seemed annoyed at the light and tried to bat it aside, slicing through it and, just as planned, hitting the ballast.

A surge of electricity ran through the blade and right into the Ranger, knocking him off his hooves and knocking the sword away. I grabbed it before he could recover and swung just as he sat up, taking his head off at the neck. I didn’t even feel resistance. The edge went through steel armor and bone with the same ease that it cut through air.

A sickly-sweet feeling surged up my hoof and I dropped the cleaver, the blade sinking a hoof-width into the floor.

“Super cursed,” I muttered, rubbing my fetlock.

The radio came back to life. “I hope you’re still alive up there,” Squiddles said. “Don’t break my heart, here. I’m counting on a rescue.”

“I’m here,” I said. “Just had to kill a big monster. Or re-kill it? What’s the word you use for getting rid of something undead?”

“Tartarus if I know,” Squiddles sighed. She sounded relieved. “Glad you’re still there!”

“It’s not the biggest thing I’ve fought,” I said. I stepped over the corpse gingerly. I probably should have checked to see if there was anything useful in the armor but I wasn’t really sure where to start. Destiny would have known how to open it up and look for goodies, but with my luck I’d end up reanimating it somehow.

“Really? What was the biggest one?”

I thought for a second. The dragons didn’t really count. I hadn’t really fought them. “It was back home,” I decided. “It was a pony I’d met once before. He got infected with something really bad, and it turned him into a monster. It kept growing and changing… it probably would have gotten even bigger if we hadn’t taken it down when we did.”

“We?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I… had friends with me then. They did most of the real work. I was just kind of a distraction.”

“Sorry. Sounds like that’s in the past tense.”

“They’re still alive. Probably. We just got separated.” I shouldn’t have thought about it. Now I really was feeling lonely. Even if I knew there were friendly zebras back in the canyon and I’d be meeting up with Squiddles soon, it wasn’t the same.

“That’s rough,” she said. “I know what it’s like.”

“If your directions were right, the basement should be right around here…” She’d taken me on a wide loop around the damaged parts of the hospital. My sense of direction wasn’t amazing, but one thing I did know how to use in the armor was the compass, and I was sure we’d done almost a complete circuit.

“Good. I can’t wait to see you,” Squiddle said. She sounded a little pensive. She was probably worried I was going to be some kind of crazy pony.

“How’d you get stuck down there, anyway?” I asked.

“Went down to take a look around and got stuck behind a magic shield. The talisman controlling it is on your side, so all we’ve been able to do is wait for rescue. I wasn’t sure anypony would ever come around.”

“It’s your lucky day,” I said.

“Hah! That’s one way to put it,” she mumbled. I couldn’t blame her. There was nothing lucky about what had happened to her, even if she’d probably survive it. I just had to get to her before anything else did.

Sure enough, the next corner took me past the broken elevators and to the stairway. And this time I could see the barrier before I walked into it. I tossed a loose rock at the stairway doors and they bounced off a barrier that shimmered white and gold.

My radio was acting up again, to boot.

“...can’t ...basement ...careful!” Squiddles said, barely audible through the interference.

“If you can hear me, I can’t make out what you’re saying,” I said. “I think being too close to this magic is doing something to the signal!”

The only reply was more static.

“Great,” I mumbled. “I’ll figure it out on my own.”

“Chamomile…” Destiny groaned. If she was alive I’d think she was feverish. She sounded like a pony talking in her sleep. “...need to leave…”

“We’ll be gone soon,” I said. “We just have to take care of one last thing.”

I knew what I was looking for this time and found the talisman on the far wall, opposite the barrier. It looked just like the last one I’d torn down, a tangle of wood and beads stretched out in a circular frame. I ripped the crystal out of the center and after a moment of thought, jammed it into the Junk Jet. It was a big hunk of rock, so it wasn’t the worst thing to shoot at somepony.

The static started to fade. “...need to turn back!”

“Squiddles?” I ran towards the doors. “Hey! What’s wrong?!”

“You need to get out of here! Don’t come down into the basement! It was a--” her voice was cut off by echoing screams and the radio went dead.

“Squiddles? Squiddles!” I bolted down the stairs and kicked the doors open.

I followed my instincts and slammed right through the next set of doors without looking at where I was going.

My instincts were bucking stupid.

A tall form in ragged, ancient robes floated above the ground like a wraith, three eyes burning from its withered face. It raised a staff in its hooves, the end tipped with a skull.

“I’m sorry. I tried to warn you,” Squiddles said, her voice echoing from the staff and my radio. “It made me do this. It was sealed down here a long time ago. It needed you to free it.”

“Oh buck no,” I said. “I am not going to be responsible for unleashing ancient evil again!”

The robed horror gestured with its skull-staff and six forms rose up around it, ghouls that still had scraps of flesh clinging to their bones, with the remains of their barding and weapons still strapped to them.

I spun and kicked the one closest to me before it could attack, and the guns attached to its battle saddle sprayed bullets into the air. I grabbed them before they could react and spun them around, getting them in a headlock and forcing them to bite down on the trigger, pointing their whole body at the other undead, blasting two of them apart before they ran out of ammo. I twisted the ghoul’s head off and tossed the body down.

“What I wouldn’t give for some explosives right now,” I muttered. I snapped my hoofblade to the ready. “Well? I don’t have all night.”

“We came down here as a squad of nine,” Squiddle said dully, like a recording.

Two ghouls dropped down on top of me. Like an idiot I hadn’t looked up. One grabbed my left wing and tried to twist it. The other one held onto my right foreleg, keeping me from bringing the knife to bear.

They were a lot stronger than the skeletons that had dogpiled me. The one on my wing yanked, and I yelped. That set off the Junk Jet because I hadn’t been careful with the trigger, and the big gem I’d stuffed in it went flying. The floating zebra dodged to the side, but it went right into the middle of the three ghouls on the far side of it, smacking into the one in the center and shattering, releasing a pulse of white light.

The flying zebra shrieked and covered its eyes, and the ghoul I’d hit collapsed, the remaining flesh turning to ash and dust. The two standing near it were stunned, their flesh flaking like it was drying up.

I slammed my head into the skull of the ghoul stuck to my leg, and, well, I was wearing a metal helmet and he wasn’t. There was a solid crunch and his grip loosened enough for me to tear my hoof free and finish the job with a quick slash.

Next I needed to get the one off my wing.

“Okay, you stupid--”

There was a dull thump, and an apple-shaped metal ball hit the ground next to me. I didn’t have time to react to the grenade before it went off. The blast knocked me aside, and I felt shrapnel slice through seams in the armor and into my flesh.

I coughed up blood and tried to get up. The ghoul on my wing twisted, and I was back down on the filthy tiles of the morgue floor. It either knew what it was doing or it had stumbled into a pretty decent winglock. From the way it was gnawing on my armor hungrily I was pretty sure it wasn’t intentional.

“Get off me!” I shouted. I’d landed weird and my back legs were acting up again, all pins and needles and barely working, like I’d been sitting on them wrong for hours. I didn’t have the leverage I needed to shove him off, and with my face pressed against the ground I couldn’t reach the ghoul with my hoofblade.

The floating zebra wizard, or shaman, or whatever the thing was raised his staff and a wave of darkness pulsed out of it. The ghoul biting me suddenly redoubled in strength, and at the same time my armor’s HUD blinked and started flickering. Warning windows popped up, and there was something about an antimagic field but I didn’t have time to think about that because the talismans negating the armor’s bulk sputtered out and whatever protection it had failed at the same time. The ghoul’s teeth tore at the armor and into my wing.

I screamed. I was going to be eaten alive and there was nothing I could do. I felt helpless. Part of me just wanted to give up.

“I’m… sorry…” Squiddles said, her voice strained.

I shook like a leaf, blood pooling and dripping from my chest, and roared with anger and frustration. I pushed myself, trying to dig deep down for strength, and I found it. Ice flooded my nerves and I bullied my way back to my hooves, forcing my back legs to work. It felt less like they were really working and more like I was driving them, making them do what I wanted by force of will.

Everything slowed down. The zebra looked surprised, even with its face a three-eyed skull with scraps of striped flesh hanging to it. The ghouls were barely moving, caught in a moment in time. I pulled my wing free with the sudden burst of strength and brought both forehooves down on the ghoul that had been chewing on me, slamming him into the floor hard enough to make him bounce.

In that stillness I flung the knife from my hoof, the blade flying through the air with almost supernatural accuracy and slamming into the floating horror’s third eye.

Time resumed, and the ice in my veins was replaced with burning sick like I’d been drinking jet fuel. Exhaustion washed over me, and my right forehoof ached with the empty socket feeling of a missing tooth.

The zebra fell to the ground, and the ghouls lost whatever force was animating them, going still. I stumbled over to the robed thing and yanked the blade free from its face, my vision wavering and doubling. The armor started to come back online, the weight literally lifting from my shoulders.

“I didn’t… want to…” Squiddles’ voice whispered from the staff.

“I promised I’d save you,” I said.

She laughed and the light in the skull’s eyes faded, her voice going quiet forever. I stumbled out of the room, trailing blood, and collapsed against the wall right outside, panting for breath. I felt awful. Really awful. I had that feeling you get when you just know it’s time to go to the hospital, but here I was already in one and nothing was helping.

“Chamomile?” Destiny asked, sounding like she was waking up from a long nap. “I don’t know what happened back there, but it feels like whatever was causing that necrotic field is fading-- Chamomile? Hey! Are you okay?!”

“Not really,” I mumbled.

“Hold on. We can--” I felt the healing potion flush through me, pushing out some of the shrapnel in my side. A second hiss, and the pain in my wing faded. “That’s the last healing potion we picked up.”

I nodded and tried to stand up. My back half still felt wrong, and my head was pounding.

“What happened?” Destiny asked.

“The usual,” I groaned through gritted teeth. “I did a lot of stupid stuff. I got rid of magic seals that somepony put there for a good reason, found something that wanted to kill me, and barely survived.”

“Again?”

“I didn’t learn my lesson the first time,” I admitted. I forced myself into motion. If I was still walking it meant I wasn’t going to die. Probably. I was too out of it to notice that I was going the wrong way. I’d meant to go back to the stairs, but I ended up pushing open the doors to the maintenance room instead.

I looked around dully. Even the colors in my vision didn’t seem right. Everything was sort of washed out. The hazard stripes looked too pale, the red of the rust was fading to black, even the Auto-Doc in the middle of the room just looked like dull metal.

I started to turn around, because I’d gone the wrong way. I’d taken two steps before I realized what I’d found.

I rushed back over to it, ignoring the feeling of very recently closed wounds trying to re-open.

“Is this thing working?!” I asked Destiny.

“Hold on, let me see.” Her crimson aura flashed across the keys, and a diagnostic screen popped up, status bars crawling across the Auto-Doc’s display. “I can’t believe it. It’s showing as fully operational! It must have been brought down here for maintenance and whoever ripped out the ones upstairs totally missed it!”

“But if it’s down here… does that mean it’s still broken somehow?”

I tilted my head and picked up a note taped to the side of the pod. It was a maintenance report, written two centuries ago. The ink was faded, but I could still make out the rough hoofwriting.

“Added updated zebra biometrics,” I read. “Transfer to POW Camp once clearance is granted by the Ministry of Peace.”

I lowered the paper.

“This is exactly what we needed. I guess that old stallion didn’t scam me after--” A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I had to steady myself on the Auto-Doc, everything going all wavy and black.

“It is exactly what you needed,” Destiny agreed. “Let’s get you in there.”

She pressed one of the buttons on the panel, and the pod swung open, revealing a reclining bed with a worrying number of restraints and an even more worrying number of delicate mechanical arms tipped with knives, tubes, nozzles, clamps, and things I couldn’t even start to identify.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked. The restraints didn’t look all that sturdy. I could probably tear my way free if I wanted. That didn’t mean I wanted to be stabbed a bunch with a knife by a malfunctioning robot doctor.

“You can’t get back to the zebras like you are now,” Destiny said. “And don’t you want to make sure it actually works before you put someone else in there? It seems like that kind of stupid risk you’d take.”

It was the kind of stupid risk I’d take. I couldn’t let somepony else go first just because I was afraid.

“I’ll be out here monitoring it the whole time,” Destiny promised.

“Fine,” I groaned, starting the complicated process of actually getting the armor off.

It’s probably for the best that I don’t remember anything after that for a while. Destiny said it was because of the general anesthesia. One of the drugs had a side effect of wiping out short-term memory. Since it also meant I didn’t remember anything that happened inside the Auto-Doc, I’m not too unhappy about it.

The first thing I remember is coming out of a daze and getting out of the Auto-Doc. I felt weird, all floaty and light. The first thing I did was look at myself, to make sure all the parts were still there. Three legs, one insect-like horror, check. Two wings, check.

“Hey! You’re finally awake!” Destiny said, floating in front of me. From her tone, she was feeling better too. “You were in there for a while. You needed some serious work done.”

“What kind of serious work?” I asked, not sure if I really wanted to know.

“Pulled a bunch of shrapnel out of you, filtered most of the SIVA out of your blood - I had to rig a bypass on that to make sure it wouldn’t infect the Auto-Doc, so you should praise me for having amazing mechanical talents - repaired your spine…”

“My spine? What was wrong with my spine?”

“Your back was broken. Twice. Once when you fell down here, then again at some point when I was out of it.”

I winced. “I was lucky my spinal cord--”

“Was also busted up. SIVA rewired around the damage, so I had to leave some of that in place. Your brain is already used to the new pathing, and it’s easier than traumatizing you again and having to put you through physical therapy.”

I looked back, trying to see my own spine. “There’s no scar or anything…”

“Of course not. Auto-Docs are good about cleaning up. It dug a bunch of scar tissue out of you, actually. You’re practically a new mare!”

“How long before there’s nothing left of the old me?”

“Don’t be so negative. You’re not dying anymore.”

“My leg feels better,” I admitted. “So does my shoulder.”

“We got something else that might be useful. Look at this!” Destiny floated up a glass tube capped with metal at both ends. Inside was a fine black sand.

“Is that what I think it is?” I took it from her and tilted it from side to side, watching the grains fall, as fine as dust.

“It’s the SIVA that was in your bloodstream. I couldn’t leave it in the machine. Remember how we were trying to find a way to actually build the weapon Kulaas gave us? SIVA can build anything!”

“So you can tell it to build that crazy weapon? That’s great!”

“There is one tiny, little, insignificant problem. I… don’t have a way to program it.”

“What you mean is, it’s not actually useful at all.”

“It isn’t useful yet! I’ve got a brilliant plan!”

Chapter 30 - Crush The Industry

“Now that he’s in the Auto-Doc, all you have to do is hit the green button,” I told Walks-in-Shadow. The zebra nodded, listening intently and staring at the control pad and obviously trying to memorize it. “It should take care of everything else by itself.”

“Ay ya,” Walks sighed. “The technology the ponies had before the war must have been amazing, if a miracle like this was just left in a basement!”

“I guess?” Destiny said, with a mental shrug. “When I was alive I never trusted them. I’d rather have a real doctor. Somepony with a cutie mark for medicine and a degree from a decent school.”

“Sky Lady, please tell your friend not to say that kind of thing while I’m strapped into this thing,” Smoke-in-Water said, his voice strained. I could tell the metal arms surrounding him were unnerving the zebra.

“Sorry for her pessimism,” I said. “Don’t worry about anything, okay? This is gonna work just fine. It patched up the kid already, and he’s great! Please tell him you feel great.”

“Ah, aff!” Walks said, blushing. “There’s not even a scar! I really thought I was going to die, but it saved me!”

Smoke took a deep breath and steadied himself. He nodded to Walks-in-Shadow. “Show the Sky Lady that you’ve been listening to her instructions.”

I stepped back and let him do the honors. He reverently and deliberately pushed the big green button. The pod closed, and there was a soft hiss as it started to get to work.

“How long is it going to take?” Walks-in-Shadow asked.

“Start counting down from ten,” Destiny said.

“Ten… nine… eight… seven…” he started, and then the general anesthetic kicked in and he went out like a switch had been turned off.

I patted the side of the pod gently so I wouldn’t break anything and sat down. I wasn’t nearly as tired as I expected to be. A haze of fatigue and soreness had been clouding everything, rolling in like a thin fog that builds up layer by layer until you can’t see your hoof in front of your face and the air is too thick to push through.

“You were really brave coming in here, Sky Lady,” Walks-in-Shadow said, sitting next to me. “This place is cursed! Did you see the walking dead?”

There were still a few skeletons left. I’d left some of them alone on my way through the building because they’d seemed harmless, and the bones were still milling around aimlessly. They hadn’t molested us when we’d dragged Walks-in-Shadow through the place on a stretcher.

“You should have seen some of the stuff that I had to clear out,” I said. “It was spooky enough to turn you white!”

“But I am white. With black stripes. And your coat is white too, Sky Lady!”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“I heard about this place,” Walks said. “It’s part of the history of our tribe that the Elders have to learn. I thought they were telling tall tales but it’s worse than any of the stories.”

“Yeah? We have a little while to wait. Tell me what you know.”

“It all started just before the sky closed and the old world ended…”

Like all tragic tales, it is a story of misunderstanding and fear. A great and terrible battle had been fought, and the ground was soaked with blood. It was a horrible siege, and full of monsters and heroes, but it had come and gone and in its wake a fresh and new type of fear had been found.

Many of those who had fallen in battle, dying in the ice and cold mud, were alive again. Or at least their bodies were alive, forced back from the very brink of death by pony magic and forced to fight again with the taste of their own mortality still on their tongue.

Our ancestors were the lucky ones, the zebra that didn’t fall into the abyss when they stood on the edge. They tasted death and chose life, and in having faced death, they became kind and abandoned their lust for war. But the nature of luck is that for there to be a lucky few there must be many unfortunates.

The fallen ones scorned the kindness of the ponies. They believed they were still dead inside, and filled themselves with darkness that drove them to take the lives of others. They crossed lines that should never be crossed.

Like they always do, the ponies did not listen to our wisdom, and they tried to solve the problem without understanding it. They took in the ones with darkness where their hearts should be and tried to make them well again, but it was not just shame or stress or fear that drove them, it was blackest hate untempered by any sense of morality or kindness.

One of the three leaders of the fallen ones allowed themselves to be captured and brought here, tricking the ponies into taking them in. They were named Savathun, and her strength came from the power of deceit and the death of truth. The place the ponies took her, their grand house of healing, became twisted by her power and her lies until it was a tomb.
It was the work of our tribe and a few ponies who sought out our wisdom that stopped her grand design, for on the day the bombs fell, she was preparing a ritual that would have wiped out what few survived the great purge of balefire. Blessed talismans were hung to hold back her power, and she was sealed away, forever.

“I guess it didn’t actually last forever,” I groaned. “She tricked me into destroying the talismans. But all of the other zombies were trying to kill me. Why would she make them try to kill me if I was doing what she wanted?”

“Ay ya,” Walks-in-Shadow shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe her lust for killing was so great she couldn’t hold it back. Or maybe she couldn’t control them while she was sealed away.”

“I just hope she stays dead,” I sighed.

“Who can say? The legends about the fallen ones describe them returning from death again and again, but they don’t say how. It might be good for me to bring the Elders here and have them bless everything, quiaff?”

“Good idea,” I agreed. “I don’t know much about magic, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to dump bleach over everything, too. This place is filthy.”

The pod beeped an alert and slid open.

“That was fast,” I said, standing up. It was a good thing I did, because Smoke-in-Water practically fell into my hooves. He looked pale and drained, and maybe a little thinner, like someone who’d spent a month resting in bed after a serious bout of the feather flu.

“I feel like half the life was sucked out of me,” he groaned.

“It essentially was,” Destiny said. “According to your post-treatment results, the Auto-Doc gave you a full round of dialysis and added a few pharmaceuticals on the return trip. It reports purging unknown zebra combat drugs.”

“Does that mean it worked?” I asked.

Smoke nodded. “It did. I might feel weak, but I also don’t feel the spirit of the bear nipping at my heels and waiting for the right moment to take over. My soul can finally rest.”

“When you say it like that it sounds like you’re dying,” I said.

He snorted and stood up, puffing out his chest. “Don’t be silly! I’m better than ever, and I have fought ten times harder and ten times longer than you, Sky Lady. I don’t feel like hoof-wrestling you, but once I’ve had a few mugs of mead to steady me, I could take on any foe!”

“Good to hear it,” I said, smiling and giving him a gentle pat on the back. “If we ever get free time and nothing is trying to kill us you can teach me a few tricks so I won’t be so embarrassingly green.”

He nodded stiffly.

“Does this mean you’re not a Companion any more?” Walks-in-Shadow asked.

“No,” Smoke-in-Water said more gently, ruffling the kid’s mane. “It means the Sky Lady has given us a great boon. The Long Walk is a price we are willing to pay to protect the ones we love, but it is a steep one. This was a house of healing, and with the curse broken, it can be one again.”

“The other wounded zebra back in town could use the help too,” I said. “I don’t know how long this thing will last, but I’m pretty sure I saw a manual on the workbench, and there are all the tools you could ever need.”

“These things use a lot of Stable-Tec technology,” Destiny said. “It should be easy enough to repair. Even if you run out of spare parts, they used off-the-shelf components for practically everything. A little scavenging in some of the ruins we’ve seen around would get you anything you needed.”

“We’ll safeguard it,” Smoke said. “It will always be a haven for you as well, Sky Lady. From the way you fight, you’ll probably need it again soon.”

“I’d take offense to that but you’re absolutely right,” I admitted. “I doubt I’ll be able to take down a giant machine dragon without scraping my knee.”

“Speaking of that, I was thinking about some of the issues we’re up against,” Destiny said. “We’ve got two pretty intractable problems. You can’t get close to the dragon because the control signal it’s giving off will make your infection run wild and tear you apart from the inside. And even if you could walk right up to it, you can’t actually do anything to permanently hurt it.”

“When we actually ran up against it, I did pretty well with the cannon the one raider was carrying,” I noted.

“You’re right. But we can’t really do that again. The thing was trying to burrow into your body the whole time you were holding it.”

“So I’m guessing you figured out a solution?”

“Of course I did! I’m a genius. Do you remember the High Priest?”

“Sure. Fornax. Amazing hat that was probably part of his head. Tried to convince me to join him then ducked out and had his bodyguards try to kill me instead of doing it himself. I remember him.”

“When we were close to him I could detect a SIVA broadcast from him. Not just a repeater like the antenna in the forest, one that was actually originating from him.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“The SIVA onboard the Exodus Blue had a central control core. It was sort of like a queen bee for the rest of the hive. It controlled the rest of the swarm through a certain type of near-field broadcast that… well, the technical details aren’t important, but what is important is that the High Priest has something similar. I don’t think it’s as powerful as a full control core, but it’s another node in the network with administrator-level access.”

“Wait, I think I figured out the rest of the plan. You want me to steal it.”

“Sort of. It’s probably inside his skull, so you’ll need to ask very firmly if you want to borrow it.” She paused. “Just in case this is a Chamomile having brain damage moment, I mean you’re going to have to--”

“I get it, I get it. I have to kill him,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You don’t have to convince me. He’s a creep and he needs to go down. I’m just not looking forward to poking around in every dark hole around the forest trying to find him. Being in there is literally a pain.”

“You think I wouldn’t suggest this idea if I didn’t already have a solution in mind?” Destiny asked. “I told you, I’m a genius. The Auto-Doc uses off-the-shelf Stable-Tec parts, right?”

“Right. You said that like, two seconds ago.”

“The thing about Stable-Tec gear is that it all networks together automatically and seamlessly. PipBucks, terminals, maneframes, even Auto-Docs. Since their network security is about as tough to crack as a screen door on a bank vault, we can find basically any node on the network as long as we have the tags. Tags that are listed in the maintenance records right here.”

“...High Priest Fornax had an infected Auto-Doc pod with him. It’s how he ‘recruits’ new members to the cause,” I mumbled.

“Right! I bet he got it from here! If we track the pods down, we track him down. Then we just shoot him a bunch.”

“And take his head back so we can salvage the control node from his skull and put it in the armor?”

“Something like that,” Destiny said.

It seemed like a simple plan. Just follow the arrow on the map. I still hadn’t learned my lesson about the way simple plans always go wrong.

“How does it look?” I asked.

“We’re right at the edge of what you can tolerate,” Destiny said. "I wouldn't hang around long-term."

We were just inside the Cosmodrome. It was a massive place, more like a small city than anything else. Buildings poked through the treeline here and there, stark and crumbling concrete set against the green of the jungle defying every law of nature and growing in the tundra. Right now I was following a twisting road, crowded with abandoned, ruined carts of every shape and size.

“Looks like the biggest traffic accident in the world,” I mumbled.

“They must have been trying to get into the Cosmodrome at the last minute.” Destiny sounded subdued. “It wasn’t a secret that we were building giant airships to evacuate Equestria. The Exodus Arks were too big to keep secret, and too many ponies worked on them. Nopony really believed they’d ever need to use them. A lot of ponies considered just building them to be close to treason, like we were saying Equestria was doomed.”

“I mean…” I motioned at the everything.

Destiny snorted. “Yeah. The Boss Mare said Equestria was too naive and jingoistic for MAD to work-- you ever hear the MAD theory?”

“Just about everything I hear from the war sounds pretty mad.”

“You’re not wrong. The idea is Mutually Assured Destruction. Everyone sitting on a stockpile of worlds of mass destruction, combined with agreements between countries and people that if they’re attacked by someone using a weapon of mass destruction, their allies will retaliate. A promise that if one person dares to drop the bomb, the whole world will end, and making sure that absolutely everyone knows the stakes.”

“...Why?”

“According to the theory, it means no one will ever actually use their weapons, because they face destruction if they do.”

“What if one side doesn’t care? Or if they’re able to attack before the other side can retaliate?”

“I guess we found out the hard way. Everyone loses.”

“Who shot first, anyway?”

“Tartarus, Chamomile, you’d know more about that than I would. When I heard the bombs were dropping I was too busy worrying about getting the Exodus Blue off the ground to worry about that! What do they teach you in school?”

“The zebra attacked first and we retaliated.”

“There you go, then. It’s probably true!”

“You just don’t like zebras.”

“You’re right, I don’t. Speaking of which, we’re getting some radiation, but it’s nothing you need to worry about. It’s probably just from that crater over there where they dropped a megaspell and tried to kill as many ponies as they could.”

I winced at that.

“I’m going to divert extra power to our signal dampening,” Destiny said. “It should last long enough for you to get the job done, but be careful. It means less power to structural integrity and less available to the enhancement talismans. I’m testing some refinements from the inhibitor Kulaas was broadcasting around my mom’s old lab, so, um, let me know if you feel anything weird!”

“Right,” I said. I wasn’t really looking around much. I was mostly flying just watching the compass and following the direction the arrow was pointing. It started growing in my vision, and I slowed to actually see what I was doing. “What is this place?”

I circled down towards the big building I was being directed to, landing in a clearing made of cracked concrete shot through with silvery weeds. There was a dull sound in the air and I thought the deep hum was in my head until I touched down and felt it through my hooves.

“It’s a munitions dump,” Destiny sighed. “I didn’t like being in the weapons business--”

DRACO chirped.

“--but there were some exceptions,” she finished. “The Arks needed weapons, for security onboard the ship and after landing. We couldn’t ask the army for them since they were busy fighting a war, so we made our own. We tried selling some models, but they never got adopted by any of the armed forces. A few civilian sales to collectors, but it never turned a real profit.”

“I can’t believe you couldn’t make money selling guns during a war.”

“You have no idea how frustrating it is trying to cut a government contract when they’ve had nepotism running everything for a thousand years.”

The doors were huge sliding shutters, but one corner was bent and twisted open. I ducked my head and squeezed through, careful not to scrape against the steel. As soon as I got in, that hum doubled in strength. It wasn’t some weird energy field or deadly transmission. It was industry.

Bizarre almost-organic shapes like exotic fruit rendered with polygonal plates of copper hung from vines as thick as my thigh and pulsing like they were pumping something from one evil-looking bunch to the next. One near me opened up like a flower and spat something onto a moving conveyor belt. I looked at it as it went past.

“That’s an explosive charge,” Destiny whispered as it went past. “Look at this place. They’re synthesizing high explosive and bomb parts, then pumping them around and assembling them. Those fruits are miniature SIVA factories!”

“Let’s see where they’re going,” I hissed back, crouching down and following the conveyor belt. It looked more like something built by ponies, so I guessed it was original to the factory. I could feel Destiny’s disapproval. This place might have just been a factory, but it had been something her family had built, and it was overrun and mutated into something alien.

Shipping containers were lying on the ground in no apparent order. Maybe they’d once been neat and lined up, but trees had broken through the concrete floor and reached towards the roof, pushing them out of the way, and others had clearly been shoved aside by scavengers or raiders. All the cover meant I didn’t see him right away, but I felt a chill down my spine just before taking a turn with the moving belt.

Fornax was standing on a catwalk hanging above the factory floor. He had the same armored cloak made of jangling plates of metal concealing his body, but I’d recognize the giant metal hat anywhere. From the low angle I was at, I could see that it came right down over his eyes, leaving only his nose and mouth exposed.

“Looks like we struck gold,” Destiny said. “Now we just need to-- Chamomile, what are you doing?”

“I have a really great idea,” I whispered. I grabbed one of the explosive charges off the conveyor belt and jammed it into the Junk Jet. This was going to work really well and there was no way it would go wrong.

I thought about saying something dramatic, but a sneak attack worked better when you didn’t give the target warning. I launched the charge right at High Priest Fornax’s back. It would have been a perfect shot if it wasn’t for the shield that appeared in the air between us. It looked like the air itself was boiling right before the charge went off, shoving the Priest forwards into the railing but not doing any real damage.

“An intruder!” Fornax snapped, the edges of his cloak glowing. “Stop them!”

“What was that?” I asked, running for better cover than what I had. Raiders started to pour into the room, dropping in from the trees overhead and doors that presumably led to offices and other rooms deeper in the factory. “That should have blown him in half!”

“DRACO got a spectrogram reading from the light. It’s a cloud of SIVA particles. It set off the charge because it was actually starting to deconstruct it. If you get too close to him, that cloud will start eating you alive.”

“So much for my backup plan of stabbing him a lot,” I groaned. “How are we supposed to hurt him?”

“I think you had the right idea the first time. Explosives! If you hit him with enough, the cloud should disperse. Theoretically.”

“I think this is the first time we’ve had all the bombs we could possibly ask for,” I said, grabbing another from the belt. One of the raiders spotted me and started barking orders. I launched the charge at Fornax before grabbing the only other bomb in reach and ducking into cover. The charge impacted on the SIVA shield and I saw it burst in the air, a little closer to Fornax this time.

A few bullets bounced off my armor with more force than usual, bruising me even through the barding. I winced and stayed low, moving from cover to cover with the deadly hail coming down around me. I turned and fired at the biggest concentration of raiders.

“Chamomile, you need to--”

Destiny didn’t get to finish what she was saying. The charge hit the ground right in front of one of the raiders and went off. What I hadn’t been thinking about was the big coppery SIVA factory right next to him. It exploded like it had just been looking for an excuse to go off, sending a plume of fire across the factory floor. The pipes connecting it to the wall ruptured and sprayed their contents into the air, and whatever they were pumping it was also apparently flammable, because it and the fire became best friends and a real blaze started ripping through the assembly line.

“I was going to say you need to be careful, but it’s a little late,” Destiny grumbled.

“That’s not good, is it?” I asked.

“You started a fire in the middle of a bomb factory! You tell me if it seems like a good thing!”

“Probably less good since I’m still in the bomb factory.” Bullets plinged off the shipping container next to me.

It was my only warning before a raider jumped on top of me. He had a gun in his mouth -- no, actually, once he was right in my face I could see the gun was bolted to his mouth. He tried to grab my left forehoof and shove me to the ground and shot me at point-blank range, the bullet hitting hard enough to be painful.

“Knock it off!” I yelled. I stabbed him in the face before I was even aware of what I was doing, twisting the knife and tearing the gun free from his muzzle. He screamed and clutched at the run of his face, falling to the ground. I kicked him away and tried to spot Fornax through the growing blaze.

Another one of the fruit erupted, adding more fuel to the fire. The heat was already unbearable, and I was covered in sweat even through the Exodus Armor. It was enough to start setting the charges off, the conveyor belt coming to a halt as charges started bursting apart in a chain reaction.

Fornax was thrown off his hooves for a moment, and I saw the last of his shield evaporate. He was standing right in the middle of the worst of the disaster, but didn’t even seem to notice his metallic hooves starting to glow with heat.

“You interlopers have no idea what you’re doing!” High Priest Fornax shouted in his synthesized voice. He reared, and there was a pulse of energy that rattled through me all the way to my bones. The wildly pumping pipes creating the inferno quieted, going still.

“That was a shutdown command!” Destiny said. “I was right! He’s got a control node that’s giving him access to the SIVA swarm!”

“Sounds like it’s time to end this,” I said. A lot of the floor was still on fire and busily eating through the rest of the chemical slurry spilled across the concrete. The raiders were broken, trying to put out fires, taking cover, or just abandoning their posts and fleeing from what looked like it might still become Equestria’s newest crater.

I took to the air, winging over the maze of containers. The raiders didn’t have time to deal with me no matter what their master was ordering. Fornax spotted me and I could feel his hateful glare. A pale aura appeared around me and I stopped dead in the air, held by his magic.

“I should have known. You’re the apostate that denied my offer to join us,” Fornax said. “It was not enough to merely be a fool, but you had to be a dangerous one. You destroyed good, loyal members of the cause!”

“Get over yourself!” I yelled. “Who would want to join your crazy cult?!”

“Everypony will, eventually,” Fornax said. “I have seen the wasteland that stretches across the world! This gift was meant to turn the world green again and I will spread it from horizon to horizon!”

The glow around me sputtered out.

“You’re free!” Destiny yelled. “I used the thaumoframe to break his grip!”

“No!” Fornax yelled. I didn’t give him a chance to try anything else. I fired, and he turned to the side, trying to get his armored cloak between us. The charge exploded and tore his cloak apart, shards launching everywhere like hoof-sized triangular knives.

Fornax collapsed to the ground. The blast had torn through him, shredding his stomach. Oil leaked out of him, hissing on the catwalk and smoking in the residual heat.

“Got him,” I said.

“That didn’t go nearly as badly as I was expecting, even with the giant fire.”

I hovered over him. I wasn’t really looking forward to the next part. I was going to have to cut off his head off. I snapped my blade out, holding it like a giant pony-mantis hybrid, and tried to decide where to start--

Fornax gasped for breath, and almost instantly launched a force-bolt right into me, throwing me back into an old cargo container. I hit the doors hard enough to pop them open, and rotting cardboard boxes collapsed on me in an avalanche of pre-war junk.

I fought my way free of cartons of insta-mash just in time to see Fornax vanish in a flash.

“He teleported?” Destiny asked.

“Not all of him,” I grunted, standing up and brushing myself off. Half of the High Priest was still on the catwalk, his lower legs twitching like they were still alive.

“He can’t have gotten far like that. Let me try to trace it,” Destiny said.

I nodded and poked through the boxes. There had to be something useful in there. I grabbed a few intact boxes of food and then found something special. It was sitting there like it had been deliberately hidden, lying between two boxes. It was a statuette of a smiling mare. I looked at the base and read the inscription.

“From your friends at Maretini Atoll,” I read. I shook the figurine. The top half was on a spring and it bobbed a little like it was dancing, the joint hidden by a green grass skirt. “Neat!” I smiled and stowed it away safely. I was starting to see what Dad liked about archaeology.

“I think I’ve got a trace,” Destiny said. “He’s using a really messy teleport spell. I think he dropped down below this level and into the access tunnels.”

“Can you find him down there?” I asked.

“Please. Remember who built this place? I used the access tunnels all the time to go from building to building without having to walk out on the ice!” I could hear the smirk.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

It had been a mistake letting Destiny give me directions. I should have known her spotty memory was going to get me in trouble. That’s why I was in an HVAC duct trying to get a grip on anything to stop me from falling into the spinning fan blades below me.

“Knife!” Destiny yelled. “Knife!”

I flicked the blade out of my hoof and stabbed it into the vent wall. It cut through like I was slicing through paper. Most of the time a really sharp knife was a good thing, but it was so sharp it wasn’t stopping my fall! I grunted and twisted and sparks flew and I really felt how the blade was attached to my bones.

I screeched to a halt with my back hooves so close to the fan I could feel the breeze coming off of it.

“You know, come to think of it, maybe we should have gone left instead of right,” Destiny said.

“You think?!”

This time we dropped into a tunnel. I guess part of me had expected it to be filthy and ugly, but spending centuries unused underground had left it pristine. There were a few cracks in the walls where roots were starting to get in, but other than that it could have been built yesterday. It was tall and square, with the lighting recessed into the floor.

“We’re close,” Destiny said. “I’m picking up some movement ahead of us.”

“Is it Fornax?” I asked, running the way she pointed. I wasn’t sure how far his teleportation spell would get him, but if he was moving it meant he might not really have been as badly injured as I’d thought. I’d read about lizards that would leave their tails behind to confuse predators. Maybe Fornax had done the same thing with his entire lower half?

“This is the right place and there shouldn’t be anypony else down here,” Destiny said. “Look at this place. The floor is still clean. There’s no way the raiders come through here.”

She was right. It was so spotless you could eat off the ground.

“Why is this place so clean?” I asked. “Shouldn’t there be dust?”

“The automatic cleaners must still be running. They’re just some harmless little robots, nothing to worry about. Stay focused on what we’re doing -- the movement is coming from just ahead. Take the next left.”

“You sure we’re not supposed to go right?” I teased.

“Yes, I’m sure. This is weird. The movement is coming towards us.”

I could hear it now. It was an electric sound like a storm turbine, along with the sound of metal on metal, one blade sliding against another. The ground vibrated under my hooves. Before I could reach the junction ahead, something else turned the corner, a massive black box that filled the corridor. A single glowing camera sat opposite a flickering screen like a set of mismatched eyes over a maw of blades that pulled it along the tunnel floor like deadly, scrabbling legs.

Its camera flashed, and a wall of churning death rumbled right for me.

Chapter 31 - Rules of Nature

“I hate your cleaning robots!” I yelled.

“He’s supposed to avoid ponies and automatically activate if they sense a collision!” Destiny yelled.

Behind us, keeping pace and even gaining on us despite me running as fast as I could, the huge boxy robot with knives for legs skittered closer and closer, glaring with that camera like a single baleful eye.

“You said it was small!”

“I didn’t want to scare you! You’re on edge all the time!”

“I’m on edge because something’s always trying to kill me!”

“It’s not supposed to kill anything! It’s a maintenance and cleaning robot! Something must have happened to its programming! If you can get me close enough to reboot it--”

I looked back at the wall of death.

“Nope!” I yelled. I was not getting closer to that thing if I could help it! Even when I’d faced off against a tank it hadn’t seemed as implacable. My instincts screamed at me to get away from it. I wasn’t running, I was bolting down the hallway like a wild animal. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to turn down the side passage I ran past. It was stupid. Every pegasus knew when something was diving towards you, you had to fly to the side to avoid it. Staying in its path was stupid.

And it saved my life, because if I’d taken that turn, it would have been right at my hooves. The robot took the turn without even slowing, changing direction at the kind of hard angle no pony could manage. I slowed down, the panic abating.

“Huh,” I said.

“See?” Destiny sighed. “I told you it wasn’t after you. It’s just on some kind of automatic cleaning cycle. The recognition talismans must be broken. It can’t tell that we’re here.”

“Do you think it ran over Fornax?” I asked. I wouldn’t mind too much if the robot had finished the job for me. I just hoped it had left enough of him on the floor for me to salvage whatever part I needed.

“If it did, we’ll have to disable the cleaning service and-- oh no.” The vibration running through the floor grew stronger. Ahead of me at the next junction, the robot rolled back into the main hall and turned to face me, charging at me and making me run right back the way I’d come from.

“I hate your stupid robot!” I screamed. At least it was sort of forcing me in the right direction this time. I took the sharp left ahead, not slowing down even a little. I just slid around the corner, my hooves raising sparks on the ground as I fought to keep control. Because of the way the robot had gone around me, I’d gained a lot of ground. I just needed to find somewhere safe to catch my breath and figure things out.

“Blood,” Destiny said, so calmly I almost missed it.

“What?”

“Blood!” she repeated, highlighting it in my vision. There was a trail of dark, oily blood on the ground, leading around the next corner. It started in a patch of burned and blackened metal that was either the result of a firefight or… “Those marks are from Fornax’s teleportation spell! I’m getting the same magical signature!”

“I got you now, you bucking--” I skidded to a halt right before hitting a wall of steel. The blood trail went right into it and, I assume, beyond.

“It’s one of the emergency bulkheads,” Destiny said. “We installed them to stop fire or flooding from spreading from one building to the next.”

“How do we open it?” I asked.

“There’s an override right over… where that destroyed control box on the wall is still sparking and smoking. Great.” Destiny huffed. “I hate vandals!”

“So what, we have to go around?” I asked.

“This place wasn’t built by Stable-Tec idiots who don’t understand the idea of redundant systems. We just have to go to the nearest maintenance room or emergency shelter. As long as we have the door number we can open the way from there.”

“Great. Well, all we have to do is--” and right then, the deadly robot appeared at the other end of the dead-end corridor, boxing me in. “Oh buck.”

It charged me, and I instinctively backed up, pressing myself up against the bulkhead. It rushed forward at full speed, all scything blades and impenetrable armor and-- it stopped right in front of me. I was standing on my hind legs and holding my breath and it was staring right into my face. I looked down at the cluster of tiny knife-like blades. It had stopped right at a painted line on the floor. It turned around placidly, totally ignoring me, and charged back the other way.

“Destiny I think I need to use the Auto-Doc again, because that just took decades off my life,” I whispered, my voice high and tight.

“You know, I’m starting to understand why we were never able to sell any of those units on the market,” she said. She sounded right on the edge of fainting.

“I’m just gonna stand here for a minute until my heart starts working again and then we’ll go find the switch.”

It was almost depressingly easy to hit the switch and come back. The robot really wasn’t after me. Destiny had been right about that. Once I figured out its routine, I knew where I could duck into a side corridor to avoid it and when it would go the other direction on its own without me needing to intervene.

“You really named it BLU-BLD?” I asked. “Why?”

“We had a really annoying investor who kept making impossible demands every time he remembered we existed. The Boss Mare hated him, so she changed the name of our janitorial robot project. She got a kick out of the idea of him crawling around and eating garbage.”

“Who is this Boss Mare, anyway? I thought it was your mom, but…”

Destiny was quiet for a moment. “I don’t really remember. I remember some things about her, but she’s in one of those holes in my memory. I know she didn’t like us talking about her or using her real name anywhere.”

“Maybe it was one of the Ministry Mares?” I suggested. “Remember the recording back at the SPP where they were talking about seeing Ministry Mares in town all the time?”

“That would make sense,” Destiny agreed. “You know, it could have been Twilight Sparkle! We know I was working with her on some projects.”

I nodded, remembering the recording we’d found of her and Twilight Sparkle making a memory orb to teach the shield spell.

“It doesn’t feel exactly right, but it fits the pieces we have,” Destiny said. “If it’s important I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

We followed the bloodstain through the next set of corridors.

“Where are we going, anyway?” i asked. “Any idea?”

“Yeah. Check your radar. We’re almost on top of the Auto-Doc signals we were tracing. They must be installed in the warehouse storage ahead of us. It was armored fire-proof storage for hazardous materials.”

“So it makes a perfect evil lair,” I said.

“Almost as good as a Stable,” Destiny joked. I walked up to the door and hit the control next to it. It buzzed and refused, flashing red.

“Should I knock?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly! This is exactly why we have DRACO. Even without armor, he’s the best gun in Equestria!” The rifle’s scope display switched over to the electronic warfare program I’d seen before. Destiny hummed happily, and the screen flashed green and showed a smiling face. The door beeped along with it and flashed green, sliding open.

“What would you do without me?” Destiny teased.

“Probably kick the door until I broke it down,” I said. I trotted in. The room was almost pitch black. Destiny lit up the armor’s horn with her magic, and a cone of light shone out ahead of us. DRACO’s scope shifted over to night-vision at the same time.

“So, you followed me. Impressive,” Fornax said, sounding drained. The High Priest was right ahead of us, and he was not in great shape. He was embedded in the wall, wires and tubes running to his body and plugged into ports in his body.

I fired the Junk Jet at him. I didn’t have any explosive charges left, but I still had a few rocks. It bounced off a barrier right in front of him. Not a magic one, this time, just something clear and tough separating us like a huge window.

“Transparent aluminum,” Destiny said. “We developed it as part of a stealth program. You’re not going to break through it with what we’ve got with us. We need to figure out a way in there.”

“A stealth program?” I asked.

“They wanted an invisible airship. Then when we came up with the material and told them how much an entire ship would cost, they changed their minds.”

“I suppose I don’t command much respect in my current state, but I was hoping you would at least indulge me enough not to engage in idle banter while ignoring me,” High Priest Fornax wheezed.

“Sorry,” I said automatically. “Wait, no! I’m not sorry! You’re a monster who’s been doing awful things to… dubiously innocent ponies. Things that even they don’t deserve!”

“Deserve?” Fornax coughed, hacking and raising himself up as much as he could with his waist sealed into the wall, presumably to hold together whatever was left of him. “You have no idea what you speak of! The Green isn’t some plague or monster to be fought! It’s the next stage of evolution for this world!”

“The Green? You mean that razor-edged jungle outside?”

Fornax nodded. “Look at where we are - the middle of an icy tundra. The worst possible place for a tropical forest. But it survives! It thrives! It’s nature and technology as one! The true sin of the old world was the divide between the natural world and the one ponies created.”

“Keep him talking,” Destiny whispered. “I’m going to use DRACO to see if I can map this place out and try to find a way in there.”

I nodded subtly. “Ponies lived in harmony with nature,” I retorted.

“They did for a while,” Fornax agreed. “But society and nature were always at odds. Long before the long war that ended the world, Equestria had a few grand cities but most ponies lived in small towns. They were points of civilization in a land of plenty. The earth ponies tamed the land, and pegasus ponies tamed the skies, but they still respected nature. That all changed one day. It’s impossible to say when or how it started, but it was soon after the Mare in the Moon returned from her long banishment. Something about the way ponies saw the world shifted. The paradigm, the way they viewed things and thought about things, it changed. It was a revolution, but instead of overthrowing a government or establishing a new artistic movement, it was an industrial revolution.”

I was not prepared for a history lesson today. Thank Celestia my Dad had quizzed me about this kind of junk all the time.

“I know from what I’ve read, most ponies associated it with the project to bring electricity to everypony in Equestria,” I offered.

“Yes. Yes! You’re exactly right,” Fornax nodded quickly, pleased I was paying attention. “Everything became connected and interdependent. Think of what it takes to bring electricity to a small town. It’s not just running wires to the houses, those wires have to go to a power plant. To build the power plant, they need to bring in equipment and machines, which means roads and railways. That means it becomes easy for ponies to travel anywhere they want. And once ponies have electricity they’ll want to do something with it. They’ll want appliances and conveniences. With the new roads they can leave their small-town life to go to the big city any time they want.”

“It sounds like their lives were just getting better,” I shrugged.

“Perhaps that’s true,” Fornax conceded. “But how do we define 'better?' They had all the food they could want, but farms turned into mechanized factories making pre-packaged food so full of preservatives it’s still edible today. There wasn’t less work to do, it just shifted from fields to assembly-lines. That industrial society and its consequences was a disaster for the Equestrian people. We poisoned the land with waste, expanded without caring about the health of the earth, and then, finally, blew everything up when our lust for more and more led to a war against the zebras.”

I tilted my head. “I mean you’re not entirely wrong, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re about, what, ninety percent robot?”

“Something like that. I am the endpoint of pony evolution. My body is one with the machine. The Green isn’t nature at war with technology, it’s nature and technology together, stronger. Machines keep the trees alive, and the trees supply the machines with solar power and bio-energy.”

He gestured, and the overhead lights snapped on. There were auto-doc pods along the wall, and they opened up, forcing the ponies inside out. They clearly weren’t in shape for a fight. They looked like stragglers from the fighting upstairs, covered in burns and damage. Some of them had been in the middle of surgery, and were just barely stapled together. Two of them were missing entire limbs, the stumps trailing off to loose wires.

“In the world I am creating, the law of nature will be enforced,” Fornax said. “The survival of the fittest. Is there anything more fair than that? A true meritocracy! Ponies will be able to grasp whatever they want as long as they’re strong enough to hold it in their own hooves! This is your last chance to join me.”

I shook my head. “You steal ponies from their families and make them your slaves. Equestria doesn’t need somepony like you to save it.”

“Fine. Enough talk, then. Have at you!”

The raiders opened fire. The ones who had guns, anyway. Three of them ran right at me. Destiny popped up a shield to deflect some of the gunfire. I charged the nearest pony, the one with an axe in his teeth. I just tackled him, bowling him over and knocking the weapon away. He scrabbled for it, and I stabbed my hoof-blade into his shoulder and used it as leverage to lift him up, holding him between me and the other raiders. Bullets thudded into his flesh and he screamed, the armor bolted to his hide only keeping the rounds from punching through to hit me.

“I’ve got a plan,” Destiny said. One of the raiders tried to circle around me. I threw my dying shield at her and launched a rock at the next raider, cracking their skull open and leaving them bleeding on the ground. I took the opportunity to duck behind one of the swollen, infected Auto-Docs. Bullets bounced off the wall and floor around me, the raiders either trying to pin me down or just hoping I’d pop out right into the line of fire.

“I’m not going anywhere. What’s the idea?” I asked.

“The Auto-Docs are all down here, and even if they’re infected, they’re still Stable-Tec junk. With them wired into everything I can use them as a back door to get into the system and shut all of this down!”

“Will that stop Fornax?” I asked.

“From the look of it, he’s on life support. When we shut the system down, he goes down too.”

“I like the sound of that,” I said. My skin started crawling. I risked a glance over at Fornax. The air was glowing around him with a swarm of glowing green lights.

“His SIVA field is back online!” Destiny warned.

“Yeah, but what can he do with it while he’s stuck in there?” I asked. The glow built up, more and more motes of light swarming around the High Priest.

“I don’t think we want to find out! We need better cover!” She hesitated. “Get into the Auto-Doc!”

“Destiny, it’s infected with SIVA and turns ponies into monsters!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll shut it down! Just get inside!”

Despite my best judgment, I ducked into the pod. The metal arms overhead were twisted and had bundles of cable like bare muscle wrapped around the skeleton of the steel. They started moving ominously before the door shut. I ducked down, trying to keep out of the way as a tiny circular saw advanced towards me with an uneven, metallic screeching.

“Destiny!” I yelled.

“Hold on!” she shouted back. The entire pod shook and tilted, almost toppling over. The lights inside turned off and I was left in darkness, that saw still buzzing away. The blade hit the top of my helmet with a sound like a knife scraping along a plate, trying to burrow through. The door popped open, and I rolled out, the arms still trying to grab me.

“I thought you could keep it from activating!”

“Yell at me later,” Destiny said. “Look!”

One of the raiders was right in front of me, frozen in place. He looked like he’d been dipped in molten bronze. In some places it had burned right through him and left holes, and almost his entire body was covered in cratered, cracked metal that bled around the edges. The other raiders were the same, frozen in poses of horror and fear where they’d been standing.

“How is this survival of the fittest?” I shouted over to Fornax. The wall of transparent metal was torn apart, melted right through by the SIVA micromachine swarm.

“If they were strong, they would have survived,” Fornax said. “As you did, annoyingly.”

“It was a good last-gasp attempt,” Destiny said. “But I’m not going to let you do it again. Nighty-night.”

DRACO beeped, and the Auto-Docs in the room beeped in unison. The lights flared and the infected pods all shut down, the screens and glowing tubes around Fornax going dark. The High Priest screamed and slumped, spitting up black oil and going still.

“...is that it?” I asked, looking around. “Is it over?”

“No,” Fornax gasped. He shuddered and forced himself to move, tearing wires and tubes from his hooves. “It’s not over! Not yet!”

The wall behind him bulged and broke as something massive forced its way through. It was hideous, like a huge spider with four steel legs and a bulging abdomen of rough copper plates bolted together on top of each other like a huge metal rose. Fornax was attached to it, his upper half taking the place of the spider’s head like he was some kind of spider-centaur-pony-demon. There’s no real language to describe it but take my word for it, he was ugly as Tartarus and looked like he belonged in its deepest pits.

“Uh,” I said, absolutely not prepared for this.

“Um,” Destiny contributed, also at a loss.

Fornax screeched, the sound not something a pony could make, more like microphone set too close to a speaker. He clambered up and out of the chamber, trailing more wires and rubbery tubes.

“It must have been growing that in the wall the whole time! That mule was stalling us at the same time we were trying to stall him!”

“At least I won’t feel bad about fighting him now,” I said. Maybe the Companions were rubbing off on me a little too much. Something about just switching off a pony’s life support hadn’t felt all that great to me. This was more… honorable, I guess?

The petals on the spider’s bulging abdomen spread, and something popped out. I blinked as an egg floated through the air on a spinning prop.

“Watch out!” Destiny yelled.

“Huh? Why?” I asked, just before it got right overhead and exploded. I flinched, but instead of a blast of force and shrapnel, a steel net drifted down around me. “Okay, weird, but It’s not like I can’t just cut--”

And then the electricity hit. Some combination of having a robot arm and a computer in my brain made that shock hit me like a truck. It wasn’t as bad as a dedicated shock grenade or else I would have been too busy having a seizure to compare the two objectively. The charge paralyzed me, half my body going totally limp and sending me to the ground, kicking and twitching.

“Hang on!” Destiny yelled. “I’ve got you, Camomile! Just stay calm!”

I couldn’t control my mouth well enough to tell her he was going to get me first. I felt the magic run through my body, along my spine and into my head, and a bolt of force cracked through the air and destroyed the tiny drone that was shocking me.

“Can you move?” Destiny asked. “Please tell me you can move, because I need you right now!”

I shook myself, trying to force myself back into action. I felt lag, like my mind and body weren’t in sync. “I’m… a little out of it…” I grunted. “Still here.”

I looked up at Fornax. The High Priest tilted his head, and a bolt of force lanced out at me. I flinched, but Destiny saved my hide. Her crimson aura popped up in another magical shield, deflecting the shot. I knew she had to be pushing herself to the limit. That shot she’d fired had to have drained most of her tiny store of magical strength.

“That’s not going to work!” Destiny yelled. “You have no idea who you’re messing with! I’m the one who built this technology you’re sitting here and worshiping like a cavepony seeing fire for the first time!”

Fornax hesitated, freezing up. “What?”

“That’s right. My family invented SIVA! We built the Exodus Arks!” Destiny shouted. I got back to my hooves. The cobwebs started to clear up and my mind sped up to match my body. I didn’t feel like I was underwater anymore.

“Then prove it! Show me you deserve to survive!” Fornax lifted one of his huge spider legs and brought it down towards us, the tip shaped like a chisel. I caught it, straining to hold back the huge weight and force behind it.

“Give me everything we’ve got in strength!” I yelled. “I need more!”

The armor settled around me, getting heavier. I forced the leg back a little more. The beating, pulsing sensation of the SIVA signal started pounding through me in painful waves. I managed to shift the weight, shoving Fornax back.

He reacted with shock, and I held onto his leg as the pressure eased, shoving back and knocking him off-balance. He’d gotten the legs less than a minute ago, and wasn’t nearly in sync with them. I twisted and ripped, and the entire limb tore free with a screech of metal.

The High Priest toppled over, and I pounced, launching into the air and coming down hard on his spider half.

“I’m not sorry about this,” I said. “You talk a lot about nature and survival of the fittest, but it’s just an excuse so you can kill everypony you want!”

He roared, and his three remaining spider-legs stabbed at me from all directions. He was uncoordinated and not thinking clearly. I stomped on one of them where it joined the body, snapping it, and used my blade to slice through the two others.

“You done?!” I snapped. “This is what you want, right? The last pony standing deciding what’s right and what’s wrong?”

He coughed up black oil, spitting it at me.

“That’s what i thought,” I said, bringing the blade down again.

It was a long flight back to the hospital. I’d escaped any really serious injury, but just about every part of me was sore and bruised. It had been a long day already and, to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to the next step. I hadn’t been thinking about it because I’d have preferred to think about almost anything else, but now it was practically right in front of me and I was getting butterflies in my stomach.

“I, you know…” I didn’t know how to put it into words.

When we’d gotten back down to the one uninfected, working Auto-Doc, we’d put Fornax’s head into the machine and Destiny had spent a while fiddling around with scanners and programming instructions while I’d had too much time to think.

“You’re worried about getting more brain surgery,” Destiny said. I’d already taken the armor off, so she was floating in front of the pod. I was sitting on the maintenance workbench. The concrete floor was just a little too cold to be comfortable.
I nodded.

“I… actually understand. I’ve felt the pre-surgical jitters too. You know how the hardware inside your head used to be mine?” She waited for me to nod again. “I never told you about why I got it.”

“I figured you probably didn’t remember,” I said with a mild shrug.

Destiny shook her head. Helmet. Whole body? “Nope. During the war, everything was super competitive. Enough was never enough. Even a genius was lucky to get fifteen minutes of fame before something else pushed their latest discovery out of the news. If you wanted to really be noticed you had to be the best. Better than the best.”

She floated from side to side, like she was pacing.

“When you’re competing like that, everypony wants an edge, and ponies weren’t shy about using drugs. Mint-Als were my drug of choice, and I highly recommend them. Great stuff! Mildly addictive, but what isn’t? Even sugar is psychologically addictive! But that just raised the floor. Everypony used Mint-Als! You had to. Otherwise you were thinking with one hoof tied behind your back. Once it was standard, we all started looking for another edge. Something to push us a little further.”

“And you got the…” I tapped my forehead.

“Yeah. Improving Mint-Als wasn’t something I could do. I wasn’t really into pharmaceutical research, just computers and engineering. I heard attempts to make them stronger didn’t go well anyway, so it was a dead-end. But improving the brain itself was entirely possible! Cybernetic augmentation would attack the problem from a different angle. Better, I could use it and Mint-Als at the same time! My Mom was the best at processor design, so I got her help prototyping it.”

“The way you talk about it, it sounds like you were having fun.”

“I was. That’s how a lot of projects start out. You come to the table with an exciting new theory and there’s a visceral rush to actually making it work. We built circuit boards and processors with super-tight tolerances because they couldn’t generate a lot of heat, they had to survive with no ventilation and constantly surrounded by the body, and a few months later we’d come up with something small enough to fit and powerful enough to be worth fitting, and then the exciting part was over and the reality of it set in. I was holding something in my hooves that I was going to put into my own body. When we wrapped up the design phase, everypony else went back to their projects and I spent the night alone, feeling just like you are right now.”

“Really?”

She bobbed in a nod. “Even though I’d designed it myself and I had the best doctors… I was still worried. Part of me was worried that if I messed with my brain I wouldn’t still be me. I’d go to sleep on the table and wake up as somepony else.”

“What did you decide?”

“I ended up going through with it. You know that already. What I realized was that I was changing all the time anyway. When I was a little filly I wanted to be a ballerina. And a fire-fighter. And maybe a Princess. My dreams changed when I grew up. Even the way I thought changed. Stallions stopped being icky and started being interesting. I found out I hated dance practice, but I loved building things with my own hooves. No matter what I did, I was going to change again. This time, I was going to get to choose how I changed! It wasn’t just going to be random chance, I’d really be a self-made mare!”

I could feel the smile.

“When I woke up, everything was crystal clear. I was still me. I was a lot better at math and I could practically speak a few programming languages, and maybe my memory was a little sharper, but I was still Destiny Bray. Just like you’re still Chamomile. And after this, you’ll keep being Chamomile.”

I took a deep breath. She was right. I was still worried, though. I needed to open up and tell Destiny what was bothering me, even if it was really hard to talk about. “I…” I swallowed. “I’m also really worried that…” I needed to be brave and bare myself to her. “I’m worried that I’ll look stupid with a big metal hat!” I spat out, forcing myself to reveal my innermost truth.

Destiny floated in silence for almost a full minute.

“Be honest,” I said weakly. “I’ll look like a total dweeb and it’ll be part of my skull so I can’t even take it off!”

“What are you… we’re not installing his bucking hat!” Destiny groaned. “Stars and garters, Chamomile. The cortical control node is about the shape and size of a pencil with a grape stuck on the end!”

“...It is?” I’d like to state for the record that my confusion was perfectly understandable. At no point did Destiny ever actually tell me how big the implant would be, and it was natural to assume that Fornax’s giant metal hat was a big antenna or something that was required to make the whole thing work.

“Stop feeling mopey and actually pay attention! I can’t believe I told you something even my therapist was lucky to know about and you come back with…” she made a sound of frustration that was a lot like a tea kettle.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“No, it’s fine,” Destiny sighed. “You’re scared.”

“Scared and stupid,” I joked. “I can’t afford to lose any brainpower.”

“Let me see…” Destiny focused and lit up her horn, creating a simple, stylized illusion of my head. She peeled one side back layer by layer until it showed the skull. I could see the mark from where I’d been shot. “What the Auto-Doc is going to do is remove a section of your skull around the old entry wound here.”

A square piece of the skull popped out and vanished.

“Then it’s going to create a bio-compatible sleeve reaching down to the existing logic co-processor.” A little cylinder of grey matter popped away and I winced. “What’s going to be removed is almost entirely scar tissue. None of it is functional. The node slides in, connects to the hardware you already have, and it should be more like upgrading a computer than having to get used to a new cybernetic implant.”

The node slid into place. The square hole was filled in over it, and the rest of my head reappeared.

“After it’s in, we just close up the hole and we’re done. It's not rocket science. Just brain surgery, and that's simple by comparison. Nothing even tries to explode if you get it wrong.”

“Okay. Let’s do it,” I said. “I don’t really know enough about it to tell how risky it is but… I trust you.”

Destiny bobbed. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise.”

I hopped off the table and faced the Auto-Doc. “Let’s do this thing.”

Chapter 32 - Pull Me Under

I landed hard because I didn’t care enough to even try to be gentle, letting out a stream of lurid curses and unbuckling the armor’s helm, struggling to get it off. I was so frustrated that everything just felt stifling and awful and I needed fresh air before my anger turned into a panic attack. Destiny floated it away before I could throw anything on the ground in frustration and stomp on it to let out some of the aimless rage.

“It didn’t work at all!” I yelled. “Stupid… it’s been a week since I stuck that stupid thing into my head and it’s not doing anything!”

“It should work,” Destiny said. “I’ve done every diagnostic I can think of. We didn’t break it when we killed Fornax and it was installed correctly.”

“If it was done right, why isn’t it helping?! I still can’t get anywhere near the Exodus Green!”

“I thought actually getting out there and picking up the signal would work,” Destiny said apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

I grunted. I was sore, and hungry, and tired, and I’d made no headway at all. With the High Priest dead, the attacks from the raiders had mostly stopped, but the SIVA dragon was still out there and it was only a matter of time before it decided to attack on its own. It had been licking its wounds since I’d annoyed it at the Iron Temple, but how long was that going to last?

I felt helpless, and like everything I’d done had just led me into a dead end.

“Even if the dragon came out here and told me to take my best shot at it, I couldn’t do a bucking thing,” I mumbled. “It’s all just so… useless!”

The zebras were giving me some distance, which was for the best. I knew I was having a stupid temper tantrum like a big, dangerous foal. If my Dad was here he’d probably slap me and tell me to control myself and stop embarrassing him. Mom would… well, she’d probably roar and shoot a giant stream of plasma or something, since she’d been turned into a dragon-monster.

“We’ll come up with another idea,” Destiny said. “Maybe we can figure out how to get in touch with Kulaas? It’s literally the smartest thing in the world, so it could probably fix this for us if it’s a programming problem.”

“Do we have any idea how to do that?” I asked.

“No, but there has to be a way. If it can contact us through a data link, we can do the same thing. I’m just… not a hundred percent sure how. There’s a lot of radio interference. I think the jungle is releasing tiny particles like metallic spores that’s acting like nano-chaff.”

“I guess that explains why we haven’t heard from anypony back home,” I sighed.

“Yeah. I don’t think they’d have any way to help even if we could talk to them.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“You take off the armor and go get something to eat and rest for a while. I’ll do the heavy lifting on brainstorming,” Destiny said. “I know you’re hurting from that trip.”

I nodded. The infection felt like some kind of early-onset arthritis, and every joint in my body creaked like I’d slept funny on four legs, my wings, my neck, and my back all at once. I stripped down and found a barrel of water, grabbing a bucket and upending it over my head. It was ice-cold, but the chill helped my sore joints and washed the sweat off.

I shook myself like a dog to dry off a little, and when my mane wasn’t hanging in front of my eyes, I saw Wheel-of-Moon standing there, waiting patiently for me to finish.

“Tea?” she offered.

I sipped at the Dartura tea, and all my pains eased away. It felt different from a healing potion. Those were cool and soothing, but Dartura was more like a deep warmth in your body that soaked into your hurts and massaged them away from the inside. I could tell this brew was weak, more for relaxing than medicine, but it still carried enough potency to calm my frayed nerves. I was even getting used to the taste.

“Thanks,” I said.

Wheel-of-Moon smiled and settled a blanket down over my shoulders.

“I don’t want the Sky Lady getting a cold,” she said. “It sounds like you have enough troubles without adding sickness to your woes.” She sat down next to me. “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

“I haven’t done enough,” I said. “I still haven’t even done what I came down here to do. The dragon that caused all this is just a mistake made by pony technology, and I have to fix it. But I don’t know how to do that. I thought I had a way, but…”

I sat back, trying to find a way to put it into words.

“You are not an unwise pony, but I find that I am thankfully able to offer you something,” Wheel-of-Moon said. “You are trying to use the tool of your enemy, aff?”

I nodded, rubbing my right forehoof self-consciously.

“To get it, you killed him. That is poison to the spirit. Even if it should work, some trace of his grudge will remain on it. You have to come to terms with what you’ve done and quiet his lingering rage. Until then, it is not your thing to use, it is stolen and remembers the owner it should have!”

I must have made a face at that, because I saw Wheel-of-Moon’s eyebrow go right up.

“You think I’m speaking nonsense and superstition,” she said.

“It’s just a machine,” I protested.

“You, who travels everywhere with a ghost, think a machine cannot be haunted by its last owner? I know it is the pony way to seek a simple, worldly solution to problems, but this is something you cannot fix without addressing the root. Do you understand?”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I sighed. I was just about ready to do whatever she said, just to have something new to try.

“You remember your first attempt to journey into your spirit world?” Wheel asked.

I shuddered. “I remember being attacked by metal bees!”

“Good, it would be terrible if you lost your memory!” She patted my head. “I’ll get the special tea brewing. And something for bee stings, just in case.”

My spirit world. It was like the deepest night you could imagine, with a light haze hanging over everything. I was sitting at the edge of a field of flowers growing on a mountainside, the slope gently tilting down and into the cloud layer. I ran a hoof through the nimbus and it was like it wasn’t even there, not even a suggestion of holding my weight.

I looked out at the blackness. If I really strained my eyes, I could swear I saw other lights, other peaks pushing through the lapping sea of clouds, far off in the distance. It was hard to be sure in the endless depths. It felt like no matter which way I looked, I was always staring straight down into a bottomless abyss.

“This place is so creepy,” I muttered. “Why can’t my spirit world be somewhere bright and happy and nice?”

“It’s dark because nothing out there exists,” a voice said from behind me. I almost fell right into the clouds and down to the unknown below. I spun around to face whoever’d spoken and…

There was a young stallion there, sitting placidly and looking at me with a blank, stoic expression.

“This is the world of the spirit,” he explained. “What exists here is a reflection of your impact in the minds and hearts of those around you. It’s the space you’ve carved out of existence to fit into.”

“How did you get here?” I asked, frowning. “Who are you?”

“That’s quite rude, since you invited me here,” the stallion said.

“I did?”

“I suppose you didn’t recognize me without my accouterments,” he said. “That is entirely fair. I did remake myself almost entirely.”

I blinked and narrowed my eyes. He was very patient while I worked it out. “Wait… you’re Fornax?”

“Very good,” he said, nodding. Without the giant metal hat and… metal everything else, he didn’t look at all like the High Priest. Even his voice was different. The unicorn was a muddy orange-brown, with a dark blue mane sporting a single streak of crimson.

“I guess I was expecting you to be taller. Not that I expected to see you again.”

“Of course. I am dead, after all. This shade you see before you is just what still lingers in the world, like the echo of a last breath.”

“Very poetic,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“That was my special talent, you know,” he said. Fornax turned a bit to let me see his flank. There was a scroll there, but with a carefully scrawled flower instead of letters. “I was a poet, before I was a priest. It’s a very rare talent in the wasteland, if only because ponies have more need for bullets than sonnets.”

“You were also a raider,” I said.

“Poetry doesn’t keep a pony alive. Scavenging did for a while. Then I had to kill ponies to keep what I had. One thing leads to another. It’s easier to get perspective on it here. I don’t have to justify things to you or myself.” He shrugged. “It’s not much different from what you’ve done, really.”

“What are you talking about? I’m nothing like you!”

He chuckled. I wanted to punch him for that smug laugh, but I’m a great pony with amazing self control and I’d never smack a defenseless pony in the face. Anyway, once he’d picked himself off the ground, he rubbed his cheek.

“Somepony is a bit touchy,” he mumbled. “You came into my home and killed me because you wanted something I had. If that isn’t raiding, I don’t know what is.”

“The difference is… that it’s different!” I huffed, turning away from him.

“I see. A very compelling argument. You are stronger than I was, so I suppose I don’t have a right to complain. I was hoping you’d sit and we’d be able to chat and I’d tell you the sad story of how I became who I was.”

“You got bullied as a foal about liking poetry, snapped and killed everypony, then ran away and changed everything about yourself to escape your dark past,” I guessed.

He laughed. “Far from the truth. Actually, I was quite well-liked! My parents were part of a trading caravan, and naturally I ended up being part of it as well. They spoiled me a bit and always tried to surprise me with pre-war books they found in their journeys.”

“...Oh,” I said. I was looking out into the clouds, and while he spoke, I could swear the shapes in the clouds became vague ponies, like a shadow play going along with his tale. “That sounds kinda nice.”

“It was! Until they were killed by raiders, at any rate.” The image of his parents was washed away in a gust of wind that tore the tops of the clouds up until they resembled flames.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

Fornax sat next to me and gave me a disappointed look. “I don’t need apologies or sympathy. I just want you to understand that I was weak. They were strong. They had every right to kill my parents. The world is cruel and uncaring.”

“The world is only cruel if we let it be that way. We can be decent to each other! Where I come from, we all work together.”

Fornax frowned. “Then why did you leave?”

“It’s complicated.”

“My reasons for being here are simple. I was with a small group. We thought of ourselves as treasure hunters. We weren’t afraid to fight and kill, but we always justified it. We attacked raiders, or slavers, or a merchant that cheated us. Mostly we scavenged. We hung on by the very edge of our hooves and survived. And one day we went north, because there were rumors of treasure and untouched ruins. We thought it would be our big score, and we found the Green.”

“A big metal forest made of knives. I can see why it’d excite you.”

“It was the only forest I’d ever seen. It’s vibrant and alive! And it’s strong. So, so strong. I wanted to be part of that strength. I wanted to stop worrying about monsters and raiders and the undead. I really underestimated how much I had to worry about pegasus ponies pretending to be alicorns.”

“Pretending to be what?”

“Running around with a horned helmet like that is a statement. A bold one. I wonder how you’d compare to a real alicorn…”

“There aren’t any around for me to wrestle,” I snorted.

“Perhaps. My goal with the Green was to share its power with others. You defeated me, so the least I can do is be graceful in defeat and help you.” He tapped my shoulder and pointed behind us. The hive was there, a pony-shaped pile of clockwork surrounded by a cloud of buzzing mites. “With that.”

“Ugh…” I groaned. “It’s like a bee hive. I think it represents my SIVA infection.”

“Yes. And you haven’t mastered it. I’m amazed you survived this long.”

“You’re not the first pony to say that…” I sighed.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You have to establish dominance. It’s as simple as that.”

“You can’t punch a bee hive in the snout!”

“You can when it looks like a pony,” Fornax said. “The leader of a bee hive is the queen. There can be only one.”

I paled. “I have to dig around in that thing? Do you know how bad it hurts to get stung by bees?”

He shrugged, obviously not caring. I sort of understood. To him, if I was weak enough that a little pain was enough to keep me from doing something that would save my life, I didn’t deserve to live in the first place.

I carefully approached the hive. If it was a pony, I would think it wasn’t aware of me. It didn’t turn its head to follow me when I moved or swivel its ears. It moved, but it was more like a machine than a living thing, walking in a jerking circle like a broken toy. If the hive seemed unaware, the swarm was anything but. The buzzing got louder with every step closer. It was trying to scare me off.

But if it was scaring me off, that meant it was worried I’d do something.

If I spent too long thinking about it, I’d lose my nerve. I couldn’t gird myself for this, I had to plunge in and keep moving. I was hoof-deep in clockwork before my brain caught up with my impulsiveness. Gears and twisting metal cut into me as I tore panels free, trying to find whatever I was supposed to find. My skin burned and blistered with mites trying to burrow into me. I shielded my face as much as I could.

I shoved the hive to the ground, the metal legs kicking feebly at the air, and used what leverage I had to rip off its right foreleg. The shoulder came out along with it, and I saw a glimmer of light deep inside the chest. The swarm redoubled, biting at my ears and trying to get into my eyes. I squinted through the pain, pulling odd mechanisms and pipes and chains out of the way to reveal something.

A glass jar, right where the heart should have been. Inside it was a glowing mote, buzzing like somepony had trapped the tooth flutterpony. I ripped the whole jar free and stumbled back, trying to get away from the swarm, but it followed me like I was the center of the storm. I smashed the glass on the ground and dug through the shards, ignoring the pain of the broken glass cutting into me, and found the struggling little thing, like a wristwatch crossed with a dragonfly.

I put it in my mouth and crunched down. It was metal. I shouldn’t have been able to chew it, but it acted more like hard sugar, shattering and then quickly dissolving. It had a taste like perfume and brown sugar.

The biting and burning stings slowed and stopped, the swarm quieting. The mites orbited me, either confused or placid.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Fornax asked.

I glared at him. I still felt like raw meat, and looked like I’d rolled down a mile of sharp gravel and left most of my hide behind. I felt exposed. Weak. If it had been my real body instead of a hallucination or something, I’d probably be screaming. The pain was more distant here, removed a level from my awareness.

A chill, dead wind swept across the field. The cold hit me like a brick, and made everything sting where the fresh air touched it. The swarm around me shifted and started glowing, warmth radiating out of them to counter the cold.

“Remember,” Fornax said. “You have to be strong. You beat me, so you have no excuse for weakness. Do whatever it takes to survive. That’s the only rule of this world.”

I woke up gasping, feeling too cold and too hot and like I didn’t fit in my skin all at the same time. Wheel-of-Moon was standing over me with a cloth in her hooves. She patted my shoulder and put it on my forehead. It was warm and wet and smelled like herbs and flowers.

“You were on a long journey,” she said. “I was beginning to get worried.”

“I met somepony I didn’t expect to see again,” I said. “We had an argument.”

“Ah,” she said. “You attacked him.”

“What? No! I mean literally, we had an argument! I don’t always fight ponies!”

“That is good!” Wheel-of-Moon smiled warmly. “I am pleased that you are trying something new, Sky Lady.”

“You’re not gonna ask what we talked about?”

“You can tell me, if you wish, and I will listen. But I will not force you to say anything. What you experienced is inside you, and personal in a way difficult for the uninitiated to understand.”

I bit my lip, trying to decide. “It’s not… that important,” I decided. “He believes the strong are better than the weak. I think caring for the weak is what makes us people instead of animals. Then he told me to wrestle the bee hive and become the new queen by force. I guess that sort of worked, but I don’t feel great that his advice was good, because then does it mean he was right about the rest of what he said? Because he was an awful pony.”

Wheel-of-Moon shook her head. “Good advice can come from strange places. What is important is learning to tell good advice from bad. Would you now destroy this village to take what you want because we are weak?”

“Of course not!”

“Then you have already decided your own truth about those words. I believe the truth lies between the two - the strong have a responsibility to use their strength. But people can be strong in many ways. My medicine is strong. Rain-at-Dawn is a great farmer and feeds many with her skills. Burning-of-Sky cuts wood and makes charcoal. The Companions hunt and protect. Every zebra here is strong, but they do not have to be strong in every way. We each find our own path, and because of that we have fresh food, and clean water, and medicine, and fires in our hearths.”

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s what civilization is all about. Written history begins when ponies first started to settle down and share and pool skills like that, because then they had time to start doing things like inventing ways to write. Once they did that, they could pass on information from generation to generation.”

“It is our nature to work together,” Wheel said. “It is the nature of our real strength, not how much we can lift, even with muscles like these.” She patted my shoulder. “You should go and find your friend when you are well enough to stand. The little ghost does not like us much, and when she is worried she becomes less polite about such things.”

I groaned. “I’ll talk to her.”

“I can’t believe you made me apologize to every zebra in town,” Destiny grumbled. She was trying really hard to sound upset about things. “I’m too old to go around and start being nice to everyone!”

We were flying along Highway 13, over the river of stopped and broken down vehicles. It had started as a trickle and this close to the Cosmodrome they were literally on top of each other, skywagons rolled over onto carts, accidents that must have happened centuries ago when ponies were scared and caught in a terrible panic.

“You’re not that old,” I said. “You’re like, practically my age!”

“Your age plus a hundred and seventy years.”

“Are you really gonna count the whole time you were dead?”

“I will if it lets me win an argument.”

DRACO beeped, interrupting our banter.

Destiny popped up a window on my HUD. “SIVA signal strength is increasing. We’ll be hitting your tolerance limit in less than a minute.”

“It’s gonna work this time,” I said, feeling sure. I felt good. I was sore, but it was the kind of sore a pony gets when they’re healing. I could feel the edge of the signal outside tickling at me, but it was just a pressure, like the sensation of walking into a room full of ponies talking to each other.

“Anything? Any pain?” Destiny asked. “Your vitals are holding steady.”

“It worked!” I laughed. “We did it!”

“Finally.” Destiny sighed and collapsed a few windows. “I was starting to think we’d have to fabricate some kind of Faraneigh Cage.”

“There’s only one thing to do now,” I said. “We’ve got to track the dragon down.”

“All the information at our disposal suggests the local SIVA infection came from the Exodus Green. It looks like it’s the last Exodus Ark remaining in the area.”

“Let’s scout it out,” I said. “We still haven’t figured out how to actually make the weapon Kulaas gave us, but this is a good opportunity to get the lay of the land.”

I could feel Destiny mentally sit up and pay attention. “I’d call you reckless, but I’m just as eager to get moving. We can deal with anything short of the dragon itself without the Valkyrie. We’ll confirm the location so we can make more detailed plans for a real attempt.”

A location popped up on my compass, in the deepest part of the red zone we’d mapped out. Before now, flying in there would have meant certain death with SIVA going out of control and doing something awful to my insides. Now, it was like nothing at all. I could just tune it out and ignore it, and the SIVA in my body ignored it too.

“It’s like deja vu but all wrong,” Destiny said quietly.

“Hm? What is?”

“I remember how this place used to look. There was a little Hayburger Princess down there next to the road, and the building next to it was a Starbucked.” I looked down, but there were just collapsed shells barely visible through the forest, overgrown and ruined. “I used to get coffee there all the time…”

“I, uh…” I tried to think of something appropriate to say. “I know how to make coffee?”

Destiny snorted. “You’d probably get frustrated and headbutt the espresso machine.”

“See if I make you a cup next time I find a coffee pot and some coffee!”

“I’d appreciate the gesture, even if I couldn’t drink it,” Destiny said. “We’re getting close to the Ark Runway. You should have seen it when it was new. It was the largest runway in the world, by a huge margin. Over ten thousand meters!”

“That’s a heck of a runway,” I said.

“The Arks were the size of cities. You’ve only gotten to see parts of one. Now you’re going to get to see the real thing!”

I looked around. I could tell we were close to the point on the marker. I couldn’t see the ship anywhere. There was just a mountain of vegetation, with trees reaching twice as tall as anywhere else.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“You’re right on top of it,” Destiny said. The view on my visor brightened, and she started drawing lines across the terrain, picking out the edge of a massive wing.

“Oh,” I said quietly. It was like suddenly seeing a hidden picture. It wasn’t a small mountain. It was a ship. I really hadn’t been able to get a sense of the scale before. It must have been ten times the size of the largest cloudships, shaped more like a flying wing resting on top of two huge fuselages flanking a central bulge. I could make out the outline even through the jungle.

“We can try going in through the cloudship dock,” Destiny said. “It’s on the rear of the ship, right in the middle.”

I nodded and started swooping down towards it. It was still more like flying around terrain than a cloudship. It was so big it was hard to even think of it as a structure. It seemed too big to be something ponies could build. I came in low, with twin monolithic fins to either side.

“Woah…” I whispered. The dock was under an overhang, vines trailing from the top ledge high above. It was easily large enough for a couple Raptors, or even a Thunderhead.

“Someone’s been busy. The structures on the walls and floor aren’t part of the ship.” Destiny pointed out a few of them with markers. They were like treehouses made from cargo containers and metal panels salvaged from elsewhere in the wreckage.

“It must be where the raiders live when they’re not trying to murder anypony,” I said. “I don’t see anypony down there. Do you?”

“Nothing. Unless the war against the Companions has completely depleted their numbers…”

“You don’t think they went to attack in force, do you?”

“I doubt it. We flew here low enough to the ground that we would have noticed an army.”

I flew around a massive tree that reached towards light streaming in through a hole broken in the roof, and that’s when I spotted them.

“Looks like we found the party,” I whispered. There must have been a hundred of them, in a rough semicircle around a bonfire. Two ponies were standing near the flames, fighting hoof-to-hoof. The rest of the raiders were almost silent. I thought they’d be cheering, or at least screaming in bloodthirsty rage. It was completely the opposite of the Companions. There, the fighting had been for fun, testing strength for bragging rights.

This fight was tense. It wasn’t ponies having fun. Lives were on the line.

I set down quietly where I could watch from the shadows, close enough to make out the individual raiders. I was pretty sure I’d killed some of them before. Their broken bits had been replaced, and they looked as healthy as anypony could with steel spikes growing out of their hide and half their body turned into weapons. It explained why the bodies seemed to vanish. They limped back home when nopony looked and licked their wounds.

In the center of the circle, the two fighting were obviously on another level. Both of them had elaborate metal growths on their heads like something between antlers and crowns.

“This is a good opportunity to look around while they’re distracted,” Destiny whispered. “They won’t even know we’re here.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Fornax was the leader, right? I can’t see them sitting around voting like we would back home.”

“I’m torn, because voting seems almost as bad,” Destiny said. “Do you really think the average raider is smart enough to vote? Most of them probably can’t even read! It’s one thing for educated, informed ponies to make decisions, but the majority of ponies are better off if they’re just told what’s best for them.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re used to living in a monarchy,” I mumbled.

“It was a really good monarchy,” Destiny retorted. I stopped at the next intersection. The hallways looked just like the Exodus Blue. The wild growth only poked through here and there, with most of it hidden behind the walls.

There weren’t any raiders in sight.

“So far, so good,” I said. “Good thing you know your way around.”

“I doubt those raiders outside have even explored much of the ship. They can’t have been here for long. From what the scavenger we rescued said -- what was her name? Riptide Rush? -- ponies weren’t always disappearing from around here. And Wolf-in-Exile only saw the dragon for the first time a few weeks ago.”

“Any idea where the dragon might be?” I asked.

“I’d put every bit I have on it being in Engineering. The SIVA cache would have started out there, and it’s big enough to fit a monster like we saw. Follow the green track and it should take us the right way.”

I nodded and picked up the pace.

“Should we be trying to find survivors while we’re here?” I asked. “I know on the Exodus Blue the, um, whatever they were called, the pony freezers--”

“Cryo-pods.”

“They broke down because the ship got cut in half and set on fire. This ship seems okay, though. We might be able to get them out.”

“That… isn’t an issue,” Destiny said. “This ship doesn’t have cryo-pods. Not for ponies, anyway.”

“It wasn’t finished being built?” I guessed.

“I… it’ll be easier to show you. We can take a shortcut through there anyway.”

Destiny was quiet while I jogged through the hallways. The emergency lighting was still on, and everything seemed to be working. I guess the ship was just sealed so well that the wasteland couldn’t get in, sort of like the Stables.

“Go in there,” Destiny said, when I reached a secure-looking door. I hit the control to the side and it slid open smoothly, a rush of wintery air hitting me. I stepped through and into something that felt like a library run by spiders. Rows of shelves stretched in both directions, and above me I could see more on an upper level. All of it was caught in a web, some strands so thin they were hard to see.

“What is this?” I walked closer to one of the shelves. Instead of books, it had rows of plastic bins. Inside were carefully-secured glass tubes filled with cotton and a few black… “Are those seeds?”

“It’s the largest seed bank ever put together,” Destiny explained. “It has every plant species in Equestria, and even some from outside. The upper level has genetic material and tissue samples from almost as many animals. Except for one.”

“Phoenixes,” I said confidently. “You couldn’t get samples because they’re made of fire.”

Destiny laughed. “Ponies, Chamomile. There are no pony gene samples here.”

“Huh? Why? Weren’t the Arks about rebuilding Equestria?”

“It was a specific request from Fluttershy, towards the end. She made a recording for the crew that explains it better than I ever could. I’m sure there’s a copy around here somewhere.”

I nodded. If she was pawning the explanation off on somepony else either she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news or it was another hole in her memory and she didn’t want to admit it. It was better to let it go for now, so I plucked one of the taut strands of plasticy tubing. “I bet this isn’t part of whatever she wanted,” I said.

“No,” Destiny agreed. “That was definitely built by SIVA. It looks like it’s connecting everything.”

I traced the strand, trying to get a sense of the structure. It bundled itself up with others into a thick cable. That connected to a trunk studded with bronze buds. I flew carefully around the web to get a look at it.

“This thing is just like one of the mini SIVA factories that were making explosives and stuff back in the munitions plant.” I tapped it, and it dribbled green goo studded with black bits. “I think it’s making more seeds.”

“It’s the source of the jungle outside,” Destiny said. “It must all connect here. It’s trying to replicate seeds with SIVA, so all the new plants are born infected.”

“Yeah, but…” I tapped it again. I was sure this time. I could feel something there, like a bell or a tuning fork or a bell that was also a tuning fork and it was in two places at once. It wasn’t easy to describe.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think… I can use this.” I focused. Fornax had been able to get the munition plant making all kinds of things. Explosives, bullets, guns. All of it had come from pods like this. If I had the part of him that let him control it, shouldn't I be able to do the same thing?

I rested my hoof on the fruiting SIVA and closed my eyes. I tried to picture what I wanted.

The bronze fruit started heating up, like it had been sitting out in the sun. After a few seconds, it opened up. I opened one eye cautiously.

A rifle shell slid out of the brass fruit. I caught it before it could fall and held it up. It was a little slimy, but...

"I think it worked," I said, turning it around to look at the other side. I didn't see anything wrong with it right away. "I was trying to make ammunition for DRACO."

"I think that's actually the right caliber," Destiny said. "That's kind of surprising. Unless... the logic coprocessor! It must have done something for your spacial awareness! That explains your accuracy with the Junk Jet, too. It's been helping you think of the right angles and arcs subconsciously."

"Maybe having a computer brain isn't all that bad," I conceded. "What do you think, DRACO?"

I slid the round into the rifle's chamber, and it beeped and flashed a smiling emote.

"Seems he likes it," Destiny confirmed. "This confirms my hypothesis that we can use this to make the Valkyrie weapon Kulaas sent us."

"I, uh..." I hesitated. "I don't really know how to do that. I knew how to make a bullet because it's pretty simple, but..."

"The Valkyrie is far from simple," Destiny agreed. "But we can put the puzzle pieces together. Back in the SPP tower, you were able to decode a data steam from Kulaas. A little, anyway."

"I could hear something under the music it was playing."

"Right. That means the augmentation in your head can decode a Warmind signal! I guess I really future-proofed my own cybernetics. Always good to be an overachiever."

"So what do I do?"

"Put your hoof on another one of those pods," Destiny said.

I obediently flew over to another fruit and touched it, feeling that same magnetic attraction.

"Now just keep your eyes open, and let's see if this works the way I think it will..."

My display changed, a window occluding my entire field of view. Images started flashing, one after the other in quick succession. It only lasted a few seconds, but it made me feel like somepony was holding my eyes open and making me read a whole textbook, like information was being poured into me with a hose. The images stopped, and I was left with an afterimage of all of them layered on top of each other, like a crystal in four dimensions.

"I think I might be sick," I groaned. “Did it work?”

“It’s doing something,” Destiny said.

The brass fruit shook and steam started rising from it. I backed off, and it split open, disgorging a black, iron shaft, still hot with the warmth of its forging as it slid out, the SIVA building it inch-by-inch. I gently took the end and held it steady while the miniature factory finished its work. When the copper fruit fell apart, I was left holding an angular spear made of geometric shapes pressed together, like it had been grown from a single huge crystal. It glowed faintly from within, and when I tilted it the glow moved and flowed.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“The only way to know for sure is to test it out,” Destiny said. “If it does what it’s supposed to, it should be able to destroy the SIVA in here without harming the seed banks.”

I flew back, getting some distance from the main knot of the growth. The Valkyrie was heavy in my hooves. I hefted the javelin and took aim.

“Here goes nothing!” I shouted, throwing it into the mass of copper wire and lime-colored plastic. It was balanced perfectly, lancing into the vines right where I’d aimed. The spear unraveled in a way that solid metal shouldn’t, compressing like a spring and injecting that orange glow inside it out into the SIVA-made vines.

Instantly, they burned. It wasn’t a normal fire, it was like acid and flame and something else all at once, a swarm of lights turning at right angles in the air and tracing out squares and cubes as they sought out the growth, eating into it and reducing it to dust.

“Woah!” I gasped. The burst of activity only lasted a few seconds, but it left total destruction in its wake. Everything it had touched was crumbling and grey. I poked it cautiously and it flaked away. The thin tendrils that had been wrapped around the shelves peeled off on their own, falling away and leaving the plastic bins intact.

“I think we can call that a successful test,” Destiny said, sounding impressed.

Everything shook around us, the SIVA vines swinging in the air and the seed banks rattling.

“You don’t think we caused some kind of chain reaction, do you?” I asked.

“I hope not. That vine didn’t seem like a structural member, and the reaction seemed self-limiting. Let’s retreat for now. We’ll find somewhere with a lot of these SIVA nodes and we’ll make a bunch of Valkyries, and then come back--”

The floor tore open before she finished speaking.

The green SIVA dragon struggled to fit its head through, the array of antenna-antlers catching. I dove to the side, away from the snapping jaws, and smashed into one of the massive shelving units. The rest of the deck started to break, and the shelf tipped, an avalanche of heavy boxes tumbling onto me and carrying me through the broken floor and into the abyss below, the dragon’s roar echoing around me.

Chapter 33 - One Little Victory

Air quality alert. Terrain warning. Stall warning. Medical alerts. I was getting every flavor of alarm blaring in my ears. If I had time to read them I might have been able to understand about half of what they were saying, but time was the one luxury I didn’t have. I was falling, first through the decks of the Exodus Green and now through rock, in a fissure under the ship. Dozens of plastic crates and boxes fell with me, an avalanche carrying me down into the depths with it. Basalt walls rushed by on both sides, the rift wide enough for a cloudship to fly through it.

“Pull up, Chamomile! We’re going to hit the rock!” Destiny yelled.

I flapped hard, knocking some of the tumbling boxes away and kicking myself into the open. Thermals from somewhere below buoyed me up, and I hovered in the rift, shaking off my disorientation and looking around.

“Where are we?” I asked. “Did that dragon really pull me right out of the ship?”

“I think it’s a volcanic fissure, like the valley the zebra are living in,” Destiny said. “It must all be along the same fault line!”

“But right under the ship?” I asked.

“There’s a crater where the Exodus White should be. A megaspell probably cracked the ground open where it was weakest.”

I turned around, trying to spot the dragon. Something else caught my eye. The rift wasn’t just bare rock. Thick cables grew down towards the glowing floor of the rift, and the walls were studded with shelves.

“What are those?” I asked, flying closer. It looked identical to the shelves back in the Exodus Green, complete with plastic boxes filled with seeds. “Did it fall out of the ship?”

“No. Look at the labels. It’s all gibberish.”

I squinted. I wasn’t much of a reader, but she was right. I’d ignored it because I’d assumed it was just in Pone Latin, but when I looked closer the letters weren’t even fully formed. It was like somepony had jammed a bunch of letters in a blender and poured the shreds onto a sticker. Something else caught my eye, too.

“It’s all one piece,” I said, tugging at the plastic bins. They were melted into the metal shelf. No, they were growing out of the shelf. And in turn, the edges of the shelf blurred into the stone.

“This was made with SIVA,” Destiny said confidently. “Remember how it was replicating seeds up above? I think it’s making backups of the whole gene bank down here. Or at least it’s trying to make backups…”

“SIVA’s not good with biology,” I said, rubbing my right forehoof.

“The trees in the jungle growing out from here are all stuffed full of cybernetics. They must be more than just adaptation to the temperature -- it’s life support making up for whatever mistakes it’s making trying to replicate living things!”

The air shuddered with a sound so loud it was more like an explosion than a sound.

“Sounds like the big guy is still unhappy with me,” I said.

“It attacked right after we disrupted the SIVA structure in the seed bank vault,” Destiny said. “The dragon is a little overprotective. The SIVA core must have been programmed to preserve the seed bank as its core directive!”

Another roar burst through the air, and I ducked into the shadows between the SIVA-made copy of the seed bank and the wall. A massive shape rushed down and past me, and the wake from the dragon hit me like a microburst in a wild storm. I slammed face-first into the shelves, rattling them along with the contents of my skull.

“We need to make Valkyrie javelins,” Destiny said. “Do you see any of those SIVA nodes down here? Maybe we can get to one without that thing spotting us.”

“I’m not seeing anything…” I leaned out into the open and traced the thick cables and plastic vines. The fruiting bodies always seemed to grow off of them. A glint of light caught my eye. “There! I see one!”

“Good eye! Even DRACO is having problems down here. If we’re careful--”

The rock walls shook. I ducked back into the dark, behind the shelf. A claw slammed into the wall next to me. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t immediately followed up by an attack. The dragon levered itself up, climbing up the basalt cliff right part me. Its tarnished copper body blocked the light, coming through the empty spots on the shelf, and the tortured faces of the ponies pressing out of its belly like it had eaten a bunch of bronze statues made of ponies in agony.

“Wait… I know those ponies,” Destiny whispered. “That’s Captain Pine! And the one next to him is Doctor Gauze Gaze! All of those faces are members of the Exodus Green’s crew!”

“It must have eaten them. Like how the other dragon ate my mom!” I hissed back. “This is good!”

“Actually I’m over ninety-nine percent confident it’s a fate worse than death.”

“I mean if we can free them by defeating the dragon with the Valkyrie, we can free my mom the same way!”

“Anything’s possible,” Destiny admitted. “All we can do is trust Kulaas.”

“What-what-w-w-what is an Ark?” A soft, tired sounding voice boomed. It was a pony speaking into a microphone, blasted out at volume close to a Vertibuck’s engine roar. It started as a distortion, skipping and repeating before it stabilized.

“That’s Fluttershy’s voice,” Destiny sighed.

“The Ministry Mare? Is the dragon playing a recording of her? Why?” I asked.

“She made the recording to explain everything. She knew she’d have to, someday. She knew she was making the wrong decision, but she was the only one who could make it.”

“An Ark is built to protect something precious,” Fluttershy’s voice continued. The dragon crawled along the wall, the voice trailing after it, loud enough to echo even as it started to move away. “When the idea of the Exodus Arks was presented to me and my friends, they all ignored it. Rarity even suggested it could be unpatriotic and subversive. According to her, taking precautions was the same as admitting we’d lose.”

“Why is it playing this now?” I muttered, trying to keep track of where it was with my limited view from behind the shelves.

“I hear that kind of thing too often. It’s always an excuse for ponies to look away from the truth. If they call something unpatriotic what they mean is they don’t want to think about it. They can’t be bothered with harsh truths. They can’t see clearly because everything in front of them is for the good of Equestria. A forest is cut down for charcoal, for the good of Equestria. Animals driven to the brink of extinction, for the good of Equestria. Our friends and loved ones die in the mud, all for the good of Equestria.”

“She really doesn’t sound like the Fluttershy I know from history books,” I whispered. The dragon was starting to move off. I took a careful peek around the edge of the shelf.

“Those books were heavily censored. Towards the end of the war, Fluttershy was… very troubled,” Destiny said.

“Both sides in this war have ravaged and destroyed the earth. I used to care for animals more than ponies. They didn’t hate the way ponies could hate, but they could still love. They’re simple, and live according to their nature instead of being driven by greed and ambition. They’re like children to me, and every day since this war started I’ve had to watch my children suffer, with no advocate willing to speak for them. Forests would be declared nature preserves one week and then logging would start the next, because it was needed. For Equestria.”

I hovered quietly out of the shadows. The dragon was looking the other way. I bolted for where I’d spotted the bronze fruit, the thermals from the magma below buffeting me.

“The other Ministries refused to fund the Arks because they can’t admit that all this is for nothing, that even if we win the war, we have lost what Equestria used to be. That is why I personally funded the Exodus Green. This ship carries my hope, and my apology to the world that we destroyed. None of the others are willing to protect nature, so I will. This ship will carry with it a seed bank containing samples of every known plant, and a gene bank with samples from almost every animal, with one exception.”

I touched the SIVA node and felt it react. Destiny blared the Valkyrie schematic into my vision, the images flashing even faster this time. The node started to heat up as it came to life and began to build.

“There is no Pony DNA in the archive. Every other animal is innocent of the sin we created that threatens to destroy us, but we are not. The animals and plants didn’t start this war. If ponies want to survive, they have to do it themselves. If we go extinct… maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it’s better than… than some of the things I’ve seen ponies do.”

A black metal shaft grew, and the node fell away, totally spent. I pulled the javelin free. The dragon was still on the other side of the canyon, searching for me.

“To whoever hears this, I can only pray that you make better choices than we did. I hope I’m wrong, and that this ship is never needed. If it is, don’t grieve for us. Please, I beg you, do what you can to heal the world with the things I’ve left behind.”

I hefted the spear and threw it. The black metal soared, and I swear it jumped out of my hooves faster than I could chuck it. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was alive and wanted to hit that dragon as much as I did. It hit right in the center of mass, middle of the back low and between the wings, that one spot that’s almost impossible to scratch when it gets an itch.

The green dragon roared in agony, scales tearing away from the clockwork and twisted strands of rubbery tubing below.

“That got it!” Destiny yelled. “It’s really hurting now!”

“Destiny,” I said carefully, as the dragon turned to look at me, eyes literally burning. Flames licked from the metal sockets. “It’s not dying!”

“Maybe it just takes a few seconds for the full effect--” Destiny started.

The dragon launched itself at me, screaming like an exploding steam engine. It was faster than it had any right to be, and I only just got out of the way even with it having to move the full distance across the fissure. I dove under its flapping wings, and it twisted its long neck, opening its maw.

“Watch out!” Destiny shouted.

There wasn’t time for anything. The dragon exhaled. I braced myself for a gout of dragonfire. I wasn’t sure how much the armor would actually help. In the hospital I’d gotten burned pretty badly, but that had been some kind of supernatural soulfire, and this was--

It wasn’t fire at all for one thing. The dragon exhaled a huge spray of yellow-green gas, thick enough to leave me flying blind. More alerts started popping up and I had exactly zero time to read them because I started losing altitude, my wings refusing to catch on the air.

“What’s-- argh!” It took a moment for the pain to hit. The gas was eroding my exposed feathers, corroding them away like acid. The loss of lift carried me out of the cloud, but it was still clinging to me, the acid biting into me painfully.

“It’s some kind of chemical weapon,” Destiny said. “Looks like chlorine gas, but there’s some kind of caustic agent in there too!”

“I noticed the burning part!” I snapped, using what little lift and control I had to make a hard landing on a wide rocky ledge. My legs went out from under me when I landed, and my tumble came to a halt the hard way when I hit the cliff face. It was still better than hitting the lava down below.

“It must not use fire because it would damage the forest,” Destiny said. “I mean, chlorine gas would probably still not be great for trees, but at least it wouldn’t cause a forest fire.”

The dragon watched me from above, not immediately pouncing.

“It’s afraid we might hurt it again,” I said.

“Let’s make that fear a reality. Where’s the nearest SIVA node?”

I looked around, scanning the walls. I’d fallen halfway down the fissure, and it was getting uncomfortably warm. Not enough to burn, but sweat was already getting in my eyes. There had to be another one down here somewhere!

My hesitation must have made the dragon decide it was time to attack again. It flew past the ledge I was on, spitting up something thick and lumpy and vomiting it on the rock. It missed me entirely and for a second I thought I was safe, until the lumps started to move, zombie-like dregs pulling themselves up on shaking legs, half-digested flesh slumping and almost dripping when they moved. I was surrounded.

“Guess it didn’t come alone,” I groaned.

“They’re not a real threat. Don’t let them distract you.”

One of the dregs hissed and jumped at me, fused skin over its mouth splitting to show twisted fangs poking up around broken teeth. I still had one bullet left in DRACO, and it felt like a good time to test it out.

I fired when it was at the peak of its arc, and the recoil from the shot made me slide back a fraction of an inch, the shock kicking up dirt and dust around me. The bullet impacted the dreg’s soft, spongy chest and left only a tiny entry wound, like it wasn’t even there. The dreg fell in a heap, and I saw the exit. It had blown a hoofball-sized hole out of the monster.

“We have got to make a few more of those,” I said.

DRACO beeped unhappily.

“He’s not happy about how much you wildcatted that round,” Destiny said. “We’ll try and find something a little less spicy for next time.”

“Is spicy a technical gun term?”

“Stop criticizing me and stab something!”

For a ghost, she gave some good advice. I kicked backwards without looking and hit a dreg pulling its tortured body towards me. It fell back, something inside it bursting. I’d been able to feel it getting closer, like I had eyes in the back of my head. I snapped my blade into place and slashed at the dreg in front of me, ignoring it once it fell in a twitching mess. They could barely hurt me when they were in top form. One almost dead on the ground wasn’t a threat.

“There!” Destiny said, drawing a box in my vision and zooming. A SIVA node, right in reach of the ledge above me.

I stretched my wings and glanced at them. My feathers were ragged around the edges. The cloud of gas had tarnished the metal foil of my rebuilt outer primaries, and the rest of my exposed feathers were curled and burned.

“Can you make it up there?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah, I just need a running start,” I said. I bolted, right towards the two dregs ahead of me. They stumbled towards me hissing like tea kettles. Behind me, I heard the wind rushing and the beating of massive wings. I glanced back and saw the dragon swooping towards me, gas streaming from its jaws.

I jumped, landed on top of one of the dregs, and jumped again. The dragon swept past, spraying a cloud of acid as it flew. The dregs screeched in pain, their exposed skin bubbling and boiling. I caught as much air as I could, clearing the gas and landing on the upper ledge.

“Made it!” I yelled, rushing to where the SIVA node was growing on the conduit-vine. I pressed my hoof against it and caught my breath. I’d been holding my breath, the sight of the poison gas instinctively making me afraid to breathe.

“We need to try and hit it somewhere more vital,” Destiny said, while the SIVA node forged the Valkyrie.

“What’s vital on a giant metal dragon monster?” I asked. “Remember back on the Smokestack? They took off the dragon’s head with a shot from a battleship and it just made it angry!”

“At least you know not to go for the head,” Destiny said with a mental shrug hard enough I could feel it.

I looked down. There was live magma down there, along with a sprawl of random-looking machines. Half-finished catwalks, pipes spewing water and steam, wires strung from one end to the other, and a lot of stuff I couldn’t identify through the heat haze. Most of it looked awfully fragile.

The dragon roared, turning in the tight space and flying back towards me.

“I might not know where to hit you to make it hurt, but I do know where I wouldn't want to get hit!” I threw the Valkyrie. The dragon flinched away from it, and the javelin streaked past its face. Not that I’d been aiming for the face. It lanced in right next to the shoulder wing joint, and there was a sound like an engine tearing itself apart. The erosion from the Valkyrie’s anti-SIVA payload spread like a plague on fast forward, melting through the main support for the dragon’s left wing.

The whole limb tore free from the aerodynamic forces. The dragon screeched. And I realized I’d made one tiny little error.
Everypony knew when a shot was important, you wanted the target to be coming towards you. You could line up your shot, get ready, and the whole time the shot would be getting easier.

I’d hit the dragon almost exactly where I wanted. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it didn’t immediately fall out of the air. It was huge, it had more momentum than I had brain cells, and it was still coming right for me.

The massive beast slammed into the rock, grabbing onto the basalt shelf I stood on. The impact knocked me off my hooves, bouncing me into the wall. A wall that cracked under the strain of multiple tons of metal dragon. It strained to pull itself up, and the entire rock face shifted. The dragon scrabbled at the cliff, massive claws tearing through rock without finding purchase. It started to fall, and my footing decided in that moment to become an avalanche and follow it down.

“Oh buck,” I said.

My tattered wings slowed me, but they couldn’t stop my fall. The dragon wasn’t quite as lucky. It smashed through a corroded, half-finished catwalk, tore wires from the walls, and crashed down towards the magma.

I needed to make sure I didn’t fall down there too! I grabbed for anything that might support my weight, my hooves closing on a thick wire. It should have held me. It definitely should not have stretched like it had suddenly turned into taffy. I yelped and lost my grip when it pulled apart and shredded in my grip.

I slammed butt-first into a metal platform. The impact rattled my teeth and sent a surge of pain down my spine like when you stub your hoof in just the wrong way. I hissed in pain and fell onto my side.

“You sure the Auto-Doc cleaned up all the spine trauma?” I asked, my voice tight from the pain. “Still feels like something is broken!”

“All you did was land badly on your tailbone,” Destiny said. “You’re fine! You need to get up before the dragon comes back and make another Valkyrie!”

“That might be a problem,” I said. The platform I’d landed on was a rough square, with two of the corners wedged into the walls and holding it just off-level. It was maybe half the size of a cloudball pitch, and enough debris had come down with me that I wasn’t sure how long it’d stay in place.

Worse, there weren’t any vines anywhere near us. There were a few high above, too far to reach until I got my wings healed, and I was pretty sure that was going to require plucking damaged feathers and downing healing potions. It didn’t help that this close to the magma it was so hot I was starting to feel dizzy.

So dizzy that I almost missed it when the dregs that had fallen along with the debris started to come back to life.

“Last thing I need is another distraction,” I mumbled. I got up and shook some feeling back into my legs. I trotted over to the dreg, raised my hoof, ready to stomp on the thing’s skull… and looked down into a big purple eye full of fear and pain. I hesitated. This thing had been a pony at some point. I’d almost forgotten. I’d started just thinking of them as monsters and not as somepony suffering a horrible fate.

The worst part was, even if I stomped on it, it’d just be forced to heal and get back up. Instead of stomping on it, I grabbed it by what was left of their mane and dragged the dreg over to the side of the platform. The magma below roiled and bubbled, toxic gas spewing into the air.

“Sorry,” I said. “This is the best I can do.”

I threw it over the side. It burst into flames even before hitting the molten rock. Reminding me that I was hurting actual ponies had completely ruined my dragon-hunting mood.

“Did the green dragon fall all the way to the magma layer?” Destiny asked. “I lost track of it.”

“I know it fell further than we did,” I said. Something tickled at the back of my mind. Something eating away at me, trying to get my attention.

“Let’s look for the corpse and a way out of here at the same time,” Destiny suggested. “It’s not exactly fast or easy, but maybe there’s a way to climb back up if you can’t fly.”

I held out my wings and flapped carefully.

“I think if I use the thermals and take it really slowly I might be able to work my way up,” I decided.

And then the dragon’s claw slammed down on me, pinning me to the metal platform like an oatcake on a griddle. I shoved with everything I had, but it was like I was caught in a hydraulic press. The pressure increased, and I felt my barding creak.

“The structural integrity field is at its limit!” Destiny shouted. “We need to get out of here!”

“I know!” I snapped. I fumbled my blade free blindly and slashed, hitting one of the dragon’s talons. I saw the spray of sparks in the corner of my vision, and the dragon roared in pain, the pressure lessening. I kicked my way free and bolted for the other end of the platform, skidding to a halt with a bump against a chunk of rock bigger than I was.

The green dragon pulled itself up the rest of the way, both front talons digging into the platform as it levered its injured body up. The massive crown of antenna-like horns cast a shadow over me.

“Oh, he looks angry,” I muttered. The dragon’s tail raised up from behind it, the end shifting into a club made of counter-turning gears.

“I’ve got an idea,” Destiny said. “Remember that canister full of SIVA we had to pull out of the Auto-Doc after it filtered your blood?”

“Get to the point!” I shouted. I ran to the side to avoid the huge tail slapping down, and scrambled on top of the fallen debris and jumped off just as the dragon’s tail whipped across at ground level, barely clearing the danger zone and landing on the other side of the swing.

“You might be able to use it to make a Valkyrie!”

The dragon’s maw opened, and I could see the vapors swirling before it disgorged a huge blast of choking, blinding gas. I tucked my wings in tight, trying to shield what was left of my feathers. It had done some kind of damage to my barding when it crushed me, because I could feel tickling and itching around my joints. I had to hope I was just imagining the smell.

“Destiny--” I warned.

“I know, I know, I see it,” she said. “That gas burned through a gasket seal. I wasn’t expecting to have to walk through acid in this suit!”

I grunted in annoyance and tried to ignore the itching. “What’s the plan? How do we use the SIVA?”

“It’s going to need raw materials. We could try just… opening the canister and pouring it on the platform? It’s metal, so the micromachines should be able to process it. I think.”

“Not like I have any better ideas,” I mumbled. “Let’s do it quick. I don’t think the dragon can see though this soup any better than we can.” I could barely make out my hoof in front of my face through the yellow-green haze.

The canister popped out of the Exodus Armor’s Vector Trap and into my hooves.

“You can open it by pushing down and twisting--” Destiny started.

I smashed the glass on the rock I was hiding behind and poured the grey dust inside onto the ground next to me.

“--Or do that, sure,” Destiny said.

I gingerly touched the swirling dust. It immediately snapped into shape, like water flash-freezing into ice. The dust turned into square spirals and cubes, all of it shimmering like an oil slick. Destiny flashed the designs in my display without being asked. I tried to let the information flow through me, but it was starting to ache in the same way as when you stare at a light too long and you’re fighting the urge to blink.

When the data stream cleared out of my vision, the SIVA had already started reacting. It wasn’t like the clean little factory-fruit that hung from the vines. I could see something spreading through the metal floor of the platform. It bubbled and flaked and turned spongy. I backed away from it because it really didn’t look like it was going to support my weight if I stepped in it.

“It’s working!” Destiny said. “I was worried this was going to blow up in our faces.”

I could see it taking shape, sparks running across the almost-liquid metal and defining the edges a little at a time as the Valkyrie came to life, unneeded bits of slag dripping down and leaving holes in the platform.

I gingerly touched the forming shaft, and sparks crawled up my hoof as it finished taking shape in my grip. The way it looked, I thought it would still be soft, but it felt the same as the other Valkyrie javelins, like spring steel and coiled power wrapped around a payload designed by alien minds.

“Looks the same as the others,” I said, turning it over to look for any obvious mistakes.

“Let’s hope it works the same,” Destiny said.

The rock I was using for cover shattered, the dragon’s huge maw snapping shut on it. I stumbled back, hefted the weapon, and hesitated.

“What are you doing?” Destiny asked. “You need to take it out!”

The dragon reared back, crumbling pebbles falling out of its mouth as it crunched the boulder into gravel. The swirling gas had mostly cleared up. I could see the dragon perfectly. I had a clean shot at its hideous face.

“A headshot won’t work,” I said, then I adjusted my aim lower and threw the javelin. It streaked across the space between us and slammed into the dragon’s belly, right where all those tortured pony faces pressed out of its metal scales.

The dragon reacted with obvious shock, grabbing at its chest and tearing at it with one claw, scrambling further onto the platform and crashing down, roaring in agony. I could feel it resonating through me beyond just the noise, like the dragon was broadcasting its pain through the air.

Something inside the dragon exploded, gears and wires cascading into the air. The monster struggled to get up, and one of its talons fell apart under it, just shattering into bits. A sound filled the air, behind the dragon’s roars, like a boiler straining under a heavy load.

“It might be a good idea to find cover,” Destiny suggested.

I threw myself down behind what little debris was left. The dragon was squealing like a hundred tea kettles. I readied myself for an earth-shattering explosion.

There was a soft pop. It sounded like a cork coming out of a bottle. The dragon’s cries went silent.

I peeked over the top of my chest-high cover. The dragon had collapsed, literally, falling apart into a miniature junkyard. Gears slowly spun to a stop, pistons hissed and released the last bit of their pressure, and a forest of green plastic wires lay in loose bundles.

In the middle of it all, copper ribs stood tall around a buzzing light.

“That must be the core,” Destiny said. “If you destroy that, it’s all over.”

I stood up and brushed myself off. I was still itching like crazy. With all the gas cleared away, it should have stopped, but it actually felt like it was getting worse. I was probably covered in blisters.

“This kind of reminds me of the whole vision quest I had to go through with Fornax,” I said, kicking debris aside as I made my way to the exposed SIVA core. “There was this whole metaphor with bees and a queen bee in the middle that I had to kill to take control.”

“It’s actually not that dissimilar. The SIVA core is the main control node of the whole network. It’s even more primal than a brain or heart, more like the stem cells that divide and form everything else. The nucleus of the cell.”

“Well today this nucleus is going to learn the real powerhouse of the cell is--”

“Kneel.”

My knees slammed into the ground like they were magnetized to the deck.

“What’s happening?” Destiny yelped. “Chamomile, your vitals are going crazy!”

“I’m so proud of you, Chamomile.”

The shadows moved, blue sparks outlining a figure and fading away as it faded in from total invisibility, colors shifting from the red-lit rock walls to a very familiar grey coat studded with plates of very unfamiliar blue steel.

“Active camouflage?” Destiny whispered.

“You’ve grown so much stronger!” Mom said, smiling warmly. Her eyes were slitted and glowing pale blue. Some kind of cape was draped over her, and scales grew over her body like natural barding. “It’s actually taking some effort to keep you from standing back up. You’ve started to get control over your new gift!”

“When-- how--” I gasped.

Mom stepped closer. She was taller than before. We should have been eye-level, even with me kneeling. Now she was at least a head taller, looking down at me imperiously.

“I got here before you did,” Mom said. “I’m glad to see you, though. I wanted to apologize for that mess I caused. It took me quite a while to assume total control of the SIVA’s power.” She laughed lightly. “I made quite a mess of your hometown, I’m afraid! Part of me missed you, and when I went to see you, well, things got out of hoof.”

“You killed all those ponies--”

“Let me see your face while we talk, not that ugly helmet,” Mom interrupted.

She patted my head and unlatched my helmet. I couldn’t stop her. Destiny tried to float away, and Mom’s cape moved, slapping the helmet to the ground. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a cape at all. They were leathery, dragon-like wings.

“Stay there if you know what’s good for you,” Mom warned Destiny. She turned back to me and smiled again, stroking my mane. The lingering fumes and volcanic gasses made me tear up, and it was a struggle to breathe at all. “I came here to help save Equestria. This SIVA network had part of the solution, but it’s corrupt. It needs a guiding hoof. When it first woke up, it tried to absorb the ponies in the ship’s crew because according to the directives Fluttershy gave it, they didn’t belong. None of them had the willpower to take control, so it became a beast, driven purely by instinct.”

“And you are worthy?” I gasped. It was too hot. Too hard to breathe. I forced myself to stay awake. Passing out now would be certain death.

“Of course!” Mom laughed. “The Green SIVA core contains information on all the plant and animal life that existed before the war. That can’t be left in the hooves of monsters and fanatics!”

She ran her hoof through my mane and kissed my forehead before trotting over to the core languidly, wrapping it in her magic and lifting it up.

“With this, I’m one step closer!” Mom opened her maw, wider than it should have been possible, like a snake dislocating its jaw. She had fangs, more like a wolf’s teeth than a pony’s. She ate the core in one bite, swallowing it and licking her lips. Copper scales and etchings grew across her body and quickly tarnished in the acrid atmosphere, turning green with patina.

“You can’t--” I gritted my teeth and fought my way back to my hooves. “I won’t let you… kill anypony else!”

“Oh? You’re still able to stand?” Mom raised her eyebrows. “You’re growing minute by minute, Chamomile. I want you to get stronger. Strong enough to shake the foundations of the world! Once you understand what power is, what power really is, you’ll join me willingly. Until then, I’ll be hunting down the other three cores.”

“They were destroyed,” Destiny said weakly.

“Oh no,” Mom chuckled. “They’re still out there. I can feel them, weakly. Once I have all five, I’ll be able to truly save this world!”

She spread her wings and took off.

“Keep growing, Chamomile! Become somepony worthy of being my daughter!”

Mom flapped and lightning surrounded her. She shimmered and became invisible. The pressure trying to force me to my knees went away. I collapsed, letting out the coughing I’d been holding back. Destiny hovered over to me and slipped over my head.

Clean air blew against my face and I sucked it down, my chest feeling awful.

“Your mom is kind of a bitch, Chamomile,” Destiny said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, between coughs. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 34 - One Size Fits All

So Mom was alive. That was… it was sure something. I guess I’d mentally prepared myself to have to put her down but I thought it would be a mercy killing. Of all the things I’d prepared myself for, I hadn’t put ‘Mom learns to control the full power of an ancient technology and ascends to become some kind of super-being' on my bingo card.

Grey light poured in when I stepped out of the shadows of the zebra infirmary hut and into what passed for daylight in the basement of the world.

Outside, some of the zebra paused their chores and waved to me. I smiled and waved back.

“How’s our little Sky Lady feeling?” Smoke-in-Water asked. I looked over at him. He was sitting to the side of the door with a piece of wood, slowly carving it into something I couldn’t recognize yet.

“Most people wouldn’t call me little,” I pointed out. “I’m taller than you.”

“True, but I am older than you, and that counts for more,” Smoke said. He put down the knife he’d been using.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time in town lately,” I noted. “I’m sure the Companions miss having you around, but I bet Wheel-of-Moons doesn’t mind the company.” I wiggled my eyebrows in a very suggestive manner.

“Is there something wrong with your face?” Smoke asked. “You’ve got a twitch--”

“Never mind,” I sighed. “I know you’ll see Wheel-of-Moons later. Can you tell her it took way longer than it should have, but the Dartura did eventually start helping regrow my feathers?”

I spread my wing so Smoke could look. They’d come in overnight, which had led to a very restless few hours and not a lot of sleep. Silver glinted from the entire surface of my wing that had been exposed to the acid gas. It actually looked more natural now, since it wasn’t just a few large primaries on each side.

“It itched all night but it looks like they’re done growing. I should be able to fly again without crashing into her hut.”

“Good,” Smoke said. “I still don’t know how you managed to destroy a wooden beam as thick as your thigh on accident.”

“I’m just a force of nature.” I shrugged. “Where’s Destiny?”

“Your little ghost?” Smoke looked around, then pointed. “She went to the high ground just outside the village. If she hasn’t come back, she must still be there.”

“She went alone?” I asked.

“There haven’t been any raider attacks since you destroyed the dragon,” Smoke said, smiling. “Peace has finally returned. I think even your tiny spirit has found some measure of that peace herself -- she wasn’t even condescending when she asked Walks-in-Shadow to go with her.”

“That’s a shock,” I said. “I hope she’s not dying.”

The rushing air felt amazing. Nothing hurt. Nothing itched. I was absolutely sure that it wouldn’t last, but I wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. Potions and healthy eating had mended me in less than a week. We’d thought about going to the hospital to use the Auto-Doc, but I needed the bed rest just as much as I’d needed something to soothe chemical burns.

Sometimes, when I was lying in bed just starting to wake up, I’d forget everything. The doom hanging over me like a hungry skyjoy, the personal responsibility. The ponies I’d killed. When I couldn’t remember any of it, I felt so relaxed and at peace. Then I’d wake up just a tiny bit more, and it would all come crashing down again.

At least being in the air let me feel a little detached from it all.

I spotted Walks-in-Shadow at the same time he saw me. He waved from the top of the hill just outside the village, one of the spots inside the valley that almost rose to the level of the cliffs around us. My power armor was next to him, lying on a sled. Destiny must have asked for help because she wanted to drag the whole suit up on the hill.

When I landed, he ran up to me like an excited puppy.

“Sky Lady, there’s great news!” he said, almost hopping in place.

“You found more of those little red berries?” I asked, hopeful.

Walks-in-Shadow frowned. “...No, and elder Wheel-of-Moons said you shouldn’t eat those. They’re poisonous.”

“If they want to be poison they shouldn’t taste so good,” I huffed.

“Chamomile, those were crystal holly bushes!” Destiny yelled across the clearing. “You’re lucky you didn’t get sick! They’re for birds, not ponies!”

“Scientifically speaking I’m basically half bird,” I said in my own defense.

“Stop eating poison and come over here,” Destiny said. “You know how when the dragon died, all the radio interference disappeared?”

“I’m not part radio, but I’ll take your word for it.” I walked over to her.

“Technically you are part radio. There’s a wireless receiver-- it’s not important. What is important is that I finally got through!”

“Got through to what?” I asked.

“To us!” another voice said through the armor’s speakers. It had been so long since I’d heard her that I almost didn’t recognize Emerald’s voice. “Quattro, it’s Chamomile! Destiny has her on the line!”

“You got through to the Enclave?” I asked, excited. I got closer to the armor like there was somepony inside it (aside from Destiny, who was only inside it in spirit). “Hey! Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Quattro said. “I thought you were dead for a while.”

“Only mostly dead,” I promised. “I’ve been busting my flank down here.”

“Destiny got us caught up on everything that happened,” Emerald said. “Things have been relatively quiet up here.”

“Sorry to bring excitement and drama back into your lives,” I joked.

“We’ve been thinking about how to get you back here now that we know you’re not entirely dead,” Quattro put in.

“I’ve got a plan,” I said, confidently. I was very clever. I’d thought up a plan ages ago, but I’d needed to take out the dragon before I could do anything. “Remember SPP Tower Zero? It had a central shaft that went all the way down to the ground. I can just find an entrance below cloud level and go right back up! It’s like a secret entrance and--”

“--And we thought about that too,” Emerald interrupted.

Quattro sighed. “We can’t get to Tower Zero anymore. The derelict ships we used as a bridge through the storm wall are gone.”

“They fell apart?” I asked.

“No, I mean… gone,” Quattro said, emphasizing the last word. “There are a half-dozen Raptor-class cloudships totally unaccounted for. And all of them are radioactive enough that I don’t know why anypony would want them.”

“We’ll figure that out later,” Emerald said. “My bet is that the storm wall had a surge of some kind and it finally broke enough talismans to send them down to the ground.”

“My bits are on pirates,” Quatto said.

“And the smart money is on it not mattering,” a third pony snapped. “Chamomile, this is Captain White Glint.”

“Ma’am,” I nodded, not that she could see it through the radio, but I hope she heard me respecting her enough that she wouldn’t refuse to help me get back home.

“Your best bet is contacting somepony on the surface to assist,” she continued. “We don’t have any reasonable idea on breaking through the lightning shield or how to locate you once we got to the ground.”

“Your advice is just for me to do it myself?” I asked incredulously.

“I had somepony particular in mind,” White Glint said. “I know a Dashite cell runs out of the general area you’ve fallen into. Their leader and I knew each other personally.”

“When you say personally--”

“I don’t know where their base is located or how to contact them directly, but the Enclave has an ongoing military operation in the city of Dark Harbor. Can you locate it?”

“We’ve got local maps,” Destiny replied. “Dark Harbor isn’t all that far away. We can probably get there in a few days.”

DRACO beeped. I stepped around the armor so I could look at the screen where it was mounted on the armor’s integral battle saddle. DRACO showed the local map, zooming out until I could see the shoreline on the tiny screen. A star blinked rapidly on the coast.

“If the Enclave has a presence there, it’s where the Dashites will be,” White Glint said. “I know the leader of this cell likes to take a very… active approach. She’d never let them do what they wanted unmolested.”

“You’re using words like ‘molested’ and you know her personally, so I’m just kind of wondering if--”

White Glint cut me off. “She’s dangerous. She won’t seem dangerous. If you tell Unsung you know me, she might be willing to listen to you. If she can’t or won’t help, there could still be an opportunity to get back here using the Enclave. Steal a skywagon with the right IFF, hack the systems to let yourself through, something like that. It’s your best bet.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll go to the city full of ponies that probably want to kill me, find an extremely dangerous terrorist, and hope that I can figure something out.”

“You’ll have to be lucky,” White Glint admitted. “But you’re the luckiest pony I know.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Wheel-of-Moon asked. “This valley is a place of peace. You could live here and forget your worries. Abandon your quest before it kills you. This can be your home as much as the sky is.”

We were at the edge of the valley, at the one pass they’d left open. The low end of the road was warm and pleasant, and by the end of the short road, the ground was covered in snow.

“I want to stay, but I can’t,” I said. “I have a personal responsibility. My mom is out there hurting ponies. I might be the only one who can stop her. I could stay here, but then the blood would be on my hooves.”

Wheel-of-Moon stepped closer and took my hoof in hers.

“There will be blood on your hooves no matter what path you choose,” she said quietly. “So much blood. Do not lose yourself in the death that lingers over this broken world.”

“I won’t.” I squeezed her hooves. She nodded back to me.

“Take this,” she said. She held up a cloth bag. “Dartura tea. Mix the powder with hot water. I know you will hurt yourself again, and this is the best I can do to protect you.”

I stowed it away, and the second it disappeared from my hooves into the armor’s Vector Trap, Walks-in-Shadow slammed into me, hugging me and trying not to sound like he was upset.

“I’ll miss you, Sky Lady,” he said, sniffling.

“I’ll miss you too, kid,” I said. “I promise I’ll try and visit.” I wasn’t sure if it’d even be possible, but I really did like the rift valley. Once everything was over, it’d be a nice place to live.

Something with incredible, inequine strength picked me up from behind and squeezed me in a hug that made my bones creak.

“A warrior like you will be missed!” Two-Bears-High-Fiving practically shouted. She gave me a firm squeeze before setting me back down on my hooves. “You would have made a worthy Companion. I want you to take this.”

She gave me a wrapped fur.

“It’s a Ghost Bear skin, worked into a cloak,” she said. “It will keep you warm in even the coldest winter storm. This way, something of the tribe will always be with you.”

“That means a lot to me,” I said. I gave her a hug back, squeezing hard. She laughed.

“Enough, enough!” she said, giggling. “You’ve no need to prove your strength to me, Dragon Slayer.”

“Think you can keep everyone safe without me?” I asked.

“We will manage,” Two-Bears said. “Do not worry for us. You have a way of finding new trouble, and that will be enough to occupy your thoughts, quiaff?”

I nodded. “I have a feeling I’m gonna find all sorts of new ways to get killed.”

“When you come back, you’ll have to tell us the tale of your adventures,” Two-Bears said. She ruffled Walks-in-Shadows’ mane. “Perhaps by then, this one will have stories of his own!”

“I know he will.” I nodded to him with a smile. “He’s already got a few good ones!”

“Now get going,” Two-Bears said, slapping me on the back. “This isn’t a farewell. It’s only until we meet again!”

“I swear on the stars, Chamomile, you made that windigo mad on purpose!” Destiny said. I huffed and hit my hoof on a rock, breaking the ice sheet that had formed on the armor. I flexed my knee to make sure nothing was really hurt. "And I'm pretty sure it was the same one you pissed off the last time!"

“I didn’t see it! I was thinking about something else!” I protested.

“So you flew right into it?” Destiny asked. “You realize we don’t have any way to actually fight a ghost, right?”

“We got away! Isn’t that good enough?” I huffed. “What do you even use to fight a ghost, anyway?”

“Necromancy. That’s the most obvious answer. Probably just about any spell effect with enough power. Try not to get caught in any megaspells.”

I snorted. “You know what, I’ll put that on the list just in case it comes up. Stay away from megaspells. Got it.” I wiped my visor free of frost and was just about to take off when I spotted something.

“What’s up?” Destiny asked.

“Look at this,” I said, looking down at the road. As we went south, snow had given way to slush and mud. At the rate things were warming up, by the time we hit the city it would be warm enough that it’d practically feel like summer back home. “Hoofprints. And these are probably from wagon wheels…”

“You’re right. They look pretty fresh. According to the maps we’ve got, this should be the way to Dark Harbor. It’s possible they’re heading there too.”

“Let’s try catching up with them,” I said. “If they’ve traveled this way before they might know something useful about the area. We could actually avoid trouble before we walk snout-first into it.”

“A shockingly good idea. Just try not to pick any fights.”

I took to the air and followed the road. It wasn’t quite a direct path, curving around hills and stuff I could just fly over. I only had to fly along for an hour before I found the ponies who’d been making the tracks.

It was a caravan, and the first one I’d seen on the ground. Back home there had sometimes been trading caravans that came around town, but they were sort of illegal in a vague way that meant the local police ignored them as long as they didn’t cause too much trouble. Dad had always forbidden me from going to look, so I’d obviously made it a point to hang out with them. Unfortunately, he’d been totally wrong about the cool ponies offering me free drugs, and my allowance wasn’t enough to get anything that might really get me into trouble, so mostly I just ended up getting little trinkets that he pretended not to see me wearing just like I pretended I didn’t see him buying banned books.

I was half afraid I’d find them on fire or being attacked by monsters. That would have been exactly my kind of luck. Instead, they were in the more mundane kind of trouble that ponies got into even before everything exploded -- one of the caravan wagons looked like it was stuck in the mud.

“Keep quiet for a bit,” I said to Destiny. “I don’t want them to get jumpy.”

“I’m sure a heavily armed pegasus in power armor won’t spook them at all,” Destiny retorted.

I rolled my eyes but she stayed quiet while I flew in overhead. They didn’t look up until I was hovering above them. It looked like the cart in trouble was being pulled by a thin-looking unicorn, and I could see why she was having trouble -- it was absolutely overloaded, with ratty tarps stretched over a pile of junk that was taller than I was. She was arguing with a couple of earth ponies, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“Hey there!” I yelled down to them. “Do you need--”

“Oh buck my eyes it’s an alicorn!” one of the earth ponies screamed. He broke and ran for cover, and the others followed like I’d shown up just to kill them.

“My expectations were low and they still managed to disappoint me,” Destiny muttered.

“Woah, woah!” I yelled. “I’m not here to hurt anypony!” I landed quickly and struggled with the armor’s helmet, pulling it off just in time for one of the ponies to shove a gun in my face. It was ludicrously janky, made out of pipes and scrap, and looked more likely to blow up in his mouth than actually hurt me.

“I don’t know what you’re doin’ out here, but--” he started. He glanced at my forehead. “...not an alicorn?”

“It’s just barding,” I said, showing him my helmet. “I don’t know why you’re afraid of princesses, but I’m just a normal pony.”

I felt Destiny’s spirit vibrating the helmet in my hooves as she forced herself not to comment. The earth pony looked at me warily for a few more seconds before finally lowering the gun. If he’d held it on me a little longer I would have been sorely tempted to slap it out of his mouth, but I was really trying to make a good impression.

“This one got her stupid broken-down old wagon stuck damn near axle-deep in the muck,” he said, waving in the unicorn’s direction. She was still strapped into the harness, but she looked like the only reason she wasn’t hiding behind something was because she’d already frozen in terror. “We were tellin’ her we’ve already got her unstuck three times. If she can’t keep up, she needs to drop some of the salvage or figure out how to shift it herself, because we got places to be.”

“I-I just need a few minutes to rest!” the unicorn protested. “Then I can cast the weight reduction spell again and pull it out myself!”

“That’s what you said last time,” the earth pony groaned. “And the time before that! We’re stuck at half-speed because you need rest every other mile!”

“I can pull it for a while,” I suggested. “That way she can rest and you can make up the time.”

“I don’t…” the unicorn bit her lip, stopping herself. I could see her fighting her instincts. Part of her wanted to refuse immediately. I don’t know if it was pride or what. “It’s really heavy,” she said quietly.

“That’s no problem,” I assured her. “I’m stronger than I look. How about it?” I turned to the Earth Pony.

“If you keep up, that’s fine. Just don’t expect us to slow down for you.” He shrugged. “This is the last time I take somepony on a trip that ain’t never done a caravan run before… darn unicorns thinking they can fix everything with spells…” he trotted off back up the line of waiting carts and wagons.

“Let’s get you unstuck,” I said. She nodded warily. “I’ll pull. You push from the back. That way when we get it moving we won’t have to stop and switch. Sound good?”

“O-okay,” she said, unhooking herself and walking around to the back. I got myself into place and started working the buckles. Destiny subtly started helping with the ones that were harder to reach, but almost as quickly, stopped.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“I felt something,” Destiny said. “It was… some kind of resonance effect.”

“SIVA?” I asked. The last thing I needed was a dragon fight.

“No. You’d feel that, not me. It was magic. Something from this pile of scraps…”

“Yeah?” I started lifting up the edge of the old faded tarp, and caught a glimpse of something huge and black.

“Don’t!” the unicorn yelled. She yanked the tarp edge out of my mouth and secured it more tightly. “Don’t… please don’t look.”

“Wow, okay,” I said, holding up my hooves. “It’s fine. I was just curious. I’m sorry.”

She nodded quickly, not looking at me. She looked more afraid than angry.

The wagon ahead of us started moving.

“Let’s see if this stuff is as heavy as it looks,” I said. “On three. One, two… push!”

It wasn’t as heavy as it seemed. It was way heavier. Getting stuck in the mud was no surprise, but what shocked me was that the entire wagon didn’t collapse. The weight was enough that I’d swear on my wings that the steel frame was bending more with every step. Her cargo was several tons of unrelenting metal and the first couple miles were brutal.

“Is that better?” she asked. “The spell should be helping now.”

I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah. Are you sure you can keep it up? You must be using a lot of power to negate the weight.”

“It’s okay as long as I don’t have to pull it at the same time,” she said, settling down on top of the cart next to where I’d stuck Destiny. Compared to how much the rest weighed, having her along for the ride didn’t make any kind of difference. “Thank you again. I’m just… I’m not used to ponies helping me for no reason.”

“That’s too bad. Ponies should help each other.” I looked back at her and smiled. “I’m Chamomile. I don’t think we had a chance to introduce each other before we got this thing moving.”

“My name is…” she hesitated and touched the helmet at her hooves, picking it up and holding it like a safety blanket. “Four. Four Damascus.” She didn’t sound like she was lying, but the way she said her name made me think she wasn’t comfortable saying it. Maybe she had some kind of family problem. I could relate to that.

“So you’re going to Dark Harbor?” I asked.

She nodded. Four was pretty cute for a surface pony. Her coat was deep lavender, and she kept her bright aqua mane cut short. She had a willow, thin build that made her almost as tall as I was and probably half the weight. It helped that she also seemed to have bathed within the last week, which was better than the rest of the ponies we were with.

“I’m going to… meet ponies there. I hope.” She swallowed. “What about you?”

“Pretty much the same,” I admitted. “It’s nice to make the trip with other ponies. It’s not as fast, but I don’t know my way around here. The last thing I need is to find a monster nest the hard way because I got lost.”

“We’re pretty close to the city, I think. I mean, that’s what the pony running the caravan said,” Four explained, stumbling over herself. “They’re really very nice. I know they might not seem like it, but that’s because I’ve been putting them all in danger. Because I’m slower than they are, they’ve been moving at my pace, and that leaves us more vulnerable to raiders…”

A caravan limping along and getting stuck would be a pretty tempting target, I guess.

“Raiders aren’t that big of a deal,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “I’ve had to fight off a few. Probably meaner ones than you’d ever get out here.”

“Really?” Four asked. “I thought you were from…” she hesitated. I caught her glancing at the sky. The way she trailed off, it was like even saying some words was too much for her.

“I came down from the north,” I said. “Outside of Stalliongrad. It was cold but… the people there were good.” I wasn’t going to flat-out say they were zebras. I didn’t know how the average pony down here thought of them. If they were like Destiny, they might be less friendly if they thought I was on good terms with an ancient enemy.

“Why did you leave?” Four asked, her voice soft.

“They asked me to stay. I was really tempted. But…” I sighed. “Complicated family stuff. I need to find my Mom and give her a piece of my mind. Then figure out where Dad is, if he’s even still alive.”

“Sorry,” Four said. “I didn’t mean to…”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. If it was too sensitive to talk about I wouldn’t have told you. Stars, I haven’t even really thought much about my Dad since he left. He was such a jerk, and then he went and did something selfless and I’ve got no idea what happened to him after that. I don’t even know if I want to know!”

“You should try and find out,” Four said. “It’s… not knowing is the worst.”

“Do you have any family?” I asked. Her expression changed like I’d struck her. I instantly regretted asking.

“I had two sisters and a brother,” she whispered. “They’re…”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

She nodded.

“Hey, uh,” Destiny said, clearing her throat. “Sorry to interrupt this sensitive topic but--”

Four shrieked in surprise and tossed the helmet away. “What?! What is that?!”

Destiny caught herself with telekinesis and turned to me, ignoring Four’s question. “I spotted a raider back there. At least I assume it’s a raider since they were covered in blood and filth and were trying to hide behind a dead tree.”

“An ambush?” I asked.

“Probably. I doubt he’s alone. Maybe a spotter for others.”

“What is going on?!” Four demanded.

“It’s fine!” I promised. “It’s nothing weird! My armor is just haunted. Destiny is a ghost.”

I saw her expression change. She blinked rapidly like this was the very last thing she expected anypony to say. “...Oh. That’s… okay. That makes sense. I just didn’t know anypony else…”

“We need to focus on the raiders,” Destiny said. “They could be attacking any second.” She started tugging on the cart’s straps with her weak telekinesis. “I should have paid more attention while you were getting strapped in,” she mumbled. “Which buckle do I undo first?”

“It’s the one on her--” Four started. She snapped her head to the side and ducked. A gunshot rang out a second later. “They’re here!”

“I just have to--” I grunted and tried to get free, but the straps were stubbornly tough. They’d been strong enough to pull ten tons of metal, and I wasn’t going to be able to just tear my way out.

“Just calm down!” Destiny said. “I can’t get a grip on the buckle with you moving around!”

“I can cut them!” I said.

“No!” Four gasped. “That would ruin the wagon! I can’t leave it here! Just hold on!” She climbed down carefully, like she was afraid of even a tiny drop, and started helping with the straps. “Don’t pull on that one, it makes it tighter! We need to get this one first…”

While they were busy with the straps, raiders appeared on the sides of the road, running out from the cover of dead trees and bushes and where they’d been waiting in the ditches on the sides of the path. We had maybe a minute before they got to us, and I couldn’t get an angle to shoot them with DRACO.

“A little faster, please!” I said, watching the madponies run towards us full-tilt.

“We’re working on it!” Destiny shouted.

The sound of the wind changed, getting louder, even more than the war cries of the raiders galloping at us. It changed into a distinctive roar punctuated by a dull thump-thump-thump, and my blood ran cold.

I looked up and saw two Vertibucks swooping towards us.

“Oh buck me,” I swore. When White Glint had mentioned Enclave activity, I wasn’t expecting this! Four followed my gaze and had exactly the same reaction I did. We threw ourselves down and tried to hide.

The Vertibucks swooped overhead, then turned around and started shooting.

At the raiders.

The crazed bandit ponies were cut down by heavy automatic fire, the shells practically ripping most of them apart. The raiders barely even had working guns, and definitely nothing that could even scratch the armored air support. It was like throwing them into a meat grinder. I almost felt sorry for them.

“This area is under the protection of the Enclave,” boomed a voice from one of the Vertibucks. “You’re all safe now! No raiders or monsters will be allowed to harm ponies traveling these roads.”

The other ponies in the caravan cheered. I shared a look with Four. I don’t know her reasons, but she looked like she’d have preferred the raiders. So would I.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. There was a line of wagons waiting to get into the city. There were Enclave soldiers patrolling the skies and checking the paperwork of every pony who wanted to enter. The ones that didn’t have paperwork were being taken aside for what I had to imagine was something between a census and a criminal interrogation. I’d thrown the Ghost Bear pelt over my armor like a cloak to disguise my wings and what I was wearing. So far the soldiers hadn’t really noticed me.

“The ponies I’m meeting, um, they got me the papers I need to get in,” Four said.

“That’s good,” I said. “I, uh. I think I’m going to go for a little bit of a walk.”

“You mean find a way to sneak in,” Four corrected, with a small smile. She pulled me into a hug. “Thank you so much for helping me. I would have gotten left behind if you hadn’t come along…”

“I’m glad I could help,” I said, very carefully returning the hug. I was worried I’d break her with how fragile she seemed. “Hey, since we’ll both be in the city, maybe we’ll see each other around! If we’ve got some time, maybe we can meet up and get lunch?”

“That would be great,” Four said. She let go, and I nodded to her. She struggled with the heavy cart, even with the weight reduction spell active, but she’d already promised me that she could manage it the rest of the way now that the roads weren’t mud. The line started moving, and I watched from a distance while she gave one of the ponies her paperwork and was allowed into the city.

“I guess she really did have the right paperwork,” I said.

“And we don’t,” Destiny pointed out. “How are you planning on getting inside?”

“I’ve been thinking about that the whole time we’ve been standing here,” I said. “The city’s got walls, so we can’t just walk in, and with the Enclave watching the skies, flying over the top is a bad idea.”

“I hope you’re smart enough not to try shooting your way in.”

“To be honest I’m hoping to avoid killing anypony.” I started walking parallel to the wall, towards the setting sun. “And we won’t need to, because I had a brilliant idea.”

“Chamomile…”

“No, really! We don’t have money for a bribe, we don’t have official paperwork, but we do have an environmentally sealed suit of armor with its own air supply, and in case you forgot, this city is called Dark Harbor.”

“And?”

“And this.” I stopped at the top of a rise. Below us, the dirt turned to sand and gravel and led into the sea. “The Enclave is watching the sky, so we’ll just swim into the city! It’s a great idea, right?”

“I suppose it could work,” Destiny admitted. “Even during the war we would have had trouble detecting a single swimming pony.”

“We’ll wait for it to get dark so they don’t see us from above. Then it’s easy-going until we find Unsung.”

“How are you planning on doing that?”

“I, uh… I’ll just come up with another brilliant plan once we’re inside. You’ll see!”

Chapter 35 - The Lamb Dies Down On Broadway

Dark Harbor was like a city out of time. From what I’d learned, it had never been hit directly by any megaspells, but when the skies closed, the winds shifted and a plume of radioactive dust had left the city uninhabitable for over a century. It had left the buildings and belongings of the ponies who’d lived there untouched, so it was remarkably intact. When the radioactive dust eventually blew out to sea, ponies had moved right back in.

I was looking out at the city from the third floor of a building that was slowly eroding from the action of the sound and surf. It was still just a little radioactive, enough that the locals stayed away but not enough to bother me. From here, I had a good view of the city proper. As the sun rose, it came to quiet life.

“Anything yet?” I asked Destiny. The Exodus Armor was sitting in the corner of the room, propped up so DRACO was pointed at the door. We’d already made sure it actually locked, but better safe than sorry.

“I’m getting local stations and plenty on the military channels,” Destiny said. “We might just be too far from the Raven’s Nest to get through to White Glint.”

“Great. So we’re stuck here with absolutely no idea how to talk to the Dashites.”

“What are Dashites, anyway?” Destiny asked.

“Ponies that abandoned the Enclave to come down to the surface.” I shrugged. “Well, it’s not just that. There are official ways to go to the surface, you know? And almost everypony wants to help out the ponies down here but we don’t really have enough to share.”

“So what, if you leave home without permission you’re kicked out?”

“No, no. It’s not like that,” I protested. “It’s more like, um… If you skip a meal so you can give your foal something to eat, that’s heroic and tragic! If you take your foal’s food away and give it to strangers, you’re a terrible parent. Something like that.”

“You’re quoting somepony else who used that example as part of a better explanation, aren’t you?”

I groaned. “I’m not good at explaining things, Destiny! You know that!”

The ghost laughed. “No matter what they are, we’re not going to find them sitting in this room. I’m going to keep trying to find something scanning the radio. If nothing else, DRACO will let me decode the military channels and listen in on them. In the meantime, you should hit the streets and see if you can hear anything through word of mouth.”

“Figures that after days of travel the first thing you want me to do when we finally get here is fly around.”

“Not exactly,” Destiny said, sounding mischievous. I had a bad feeling about this.

My bad feeling had transformed into very definite itching and tightness. The Ghost Bear skin was comfortable on its own but Destiny had insisted we bind my wings with bandages so I wouldn’t do anything stupid. More bandages covered my right forehoof, hiding the insect-like metal shell of the SIVA-grown limb. Even if the bearskin cloak came off, I’d look like an injured earth pony at a glance.

“Here’s your coffee, hon,” the diner waitress said, putting a steaming cup in front of me. The diner was a little place that had an ancient, run-down quality that made me feel nostalgic even though I’d never been here before. There were maybe a dozen seats at the counter and a few booths off to the side. Everything was in shades of brown, orange, and yellow.

“Thanks,” I said, giving her a few bits. She looked at them and frowned.

“Ain’t you got caps?” she asked.

“I, uh…” I didn’t now how to respond to that.

She sighed and took them. “Just as bad as the soldiers. I’m gonna take them this time but next time go to the moneychanger first!”

“I will,” I promised. She nodded, mollified, and went back to cleaning cracked dishes. I still had some things to learn about the surface, apparently.

The door swung open and two ponies in uniform trotted in. Enclave soldiers. I froze up. Were they here for me? Had the waitress sent some kind of signal to them?

They laughed, ignored me, and walked past my seat to get into a booth. I glanced at them as they passed. They were around my age, and must have been off-duty, because the only weapons they had were beam pistols. I was pretty sure even a normal raider would shrug off a few shots from one of those.

“What can I get you brave gentlestallions?” the waitress asked. She sounded a lot more polite and pleasant than when she was talking to me. They placed their order and waved her away dismissively. I stayed quiet and eavesdropped on what they were saying while sipping my coffee. It tasted like burned mud water.

“I’m telling you,” one of the soldiers said. “It was at least a dozen mirelurks. They must have crawled up on the dock and fought to the death, because there wasn’t any sign of gunfire anywhere!”

The other one nodded. “I saw it too. Those things are terrifying. All claws and armor and muscle. I hear they just grab ponies and tear them apart, and they’re bulletproof!”

I grunted in annoyance. He was absolutely right. When the radioactive dust blew out of the city it must have gone into the water because my plan to sneak into the city under cover of darkness had gone really poorly.

I’d never even heard of mirelurks before I had to fight an entire nest of them. They were crabs the size of a pony and as mean as two really mean ponies stacked together. I couldn’t see anything underwater at night, so I’d had to run away and then they chased me right up onto the docks. I killed them all. Every one of them I took down just made the others more angry, and I was standing on a pile of the bucking things by the time they’d stopped trying to tear me apart. The commotion got somepony’s attention, because the Enclave swarmed the place and I just barely got away without being spotted. Destiny and I had found an abandoned building, and the rest was history.

“I bet it was Kasatka,” the first soldier whispered.

“The Dashites?” The second one scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. Next you’re gonna start putting up posters and signs asking them for help like that kid in the slums.”

Posters and signs? That was a good idea! I put that on my mental list of things to try.

“Come on, I wouldn’t do that,” the first soldier groaned. “I’m not stupid. Sarge would have us find that kid and drag him to prison if it wouldn’t be even worse for morale than just letting him go.”

“Exactly. And you’re not a kid, so he’d have you brought up on charges. The best thing we can do is follow orders. Kasatka doesn’t exist. That’s what our orders say.”

“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked, surprising me. I’d been listening in on the soldiers and hadn’t even heard her trot up. “Maybe some actual food?”

I was about to refuse, and my stomach growled and stopped me from getting up right away. “Can I get something to go?”

Thankfully the waitress had taken my bits without complaining about it again. I was going to have to find somewhere to swap them out. The locals were using bottlecaps, for some reason. I was sort of kicking myself - I’d just left so much junk behind that ponies here would have paid me for! I’d found literally hundreds of bottlecaps lying around and just ignored them like trash. Which they were, but apparently they were also the local currency. Buck knows why.

I ate while I walked, munching on the food she’d given me. It was some kind of black bread she’d smeared with butter and slices of bubblegum-pink sausage. The sausage was so smooth it was like eating a pillow, and I was embarrassed about how much I was enjoying it.

Finding the slums didn’t take long. Ponies were happy to tell me where they were, even if they said it specifically because they were warning me away from the place. The slums were the part of the city that had suffered worst from weather and time, and had once been some kind of warehouse district. Now the large parking lots were home to shacks made out of old shipping containers and the more intact warehouses had been taken over by the less legitimate businesses of the city.

“Fifty caps buys you an hour, but a hundred gets you the whole night.” The stallion smiled in the kind of way I’d only seen on the covers of trashy romance novels.

“I’m not in the market,” I said, holding up a hoof for him to back off.

“You’re looking for something, sweet stuff,” the stallion retorted. “You don’t look like a tweaker, so either you’re here looking for fun or trouble.”

“Trust me, you don’t want my kind of trouble. I’m looking for Kasatka.”

The stallion balked at that and looked around. “I don’t know who you think I am, but they don’t exist and even if they did I don’t know anything.”

“Come on, I just need--”

“Take it from an expert, alright? Being desperate isn’t a good look. You’ll end up like the stupid kid that puts up those posters everywhere.” He nodded across the street. A crude hoof-drawn poster. The stupid kid in question clearly needed some lessons on reading and writing, because it was mostly stick-figure ponies and crude symbols along with ‘Help’ and ‘Orfin’ in hoofwriting so bad it made mine look good.

“...What does it mean?” I asked, tilting my head and trying to puzzle it out.

The stallion shrugged. “Probably that they’re not getting a cutie mark in art.”

He was right, but it was really rude to say it like that. I shook my head and walked over to the poster like I’d be able to figure something out if I looked at it more closely.

I leaned against the wall, my right hoof resting on the edge of the poster. I was thinking about tearing it down to take with me to try and decode later. It took me a second to realize my hoof was stuck.

“...What?” I tried to pull away from it. “Oh stars damn it, the glue was still wet!”

I grunted and yanked, some of the bandages tearing away and staying where they’d stuck to the wall. Better than leaving my hoof behind.

“...The glue is still wet,” I repeated. “He must still be right around here!”

Wonderglue dried very quickly. Even with how much he’d slathered on, it couldn’t have been put up more than a few minutes ago! I walked around the corner, spotted another fresh poster, and picked up the pace. A pony stepped out with a knife and tried threatening me, so I shoved him aside and ignored him.

I spotted the foal. He was carefully spreading one of his posters up on the wall.

“Hey, kid!” I called out.

The mugger I’d been ignoring stabbed me.

It wasn’t like, a magic knife or a machete or even particularly sharp. I would have continued to ignore him, but he managed to slice through the bandages around my barrel. On instinct, I flicked a wing out and smacked him away, tearing the bandages the rest of the way off. He hit the brick wall hard enough to knock him out and fell in a heap.

“Oops,” I muttered, quickly hiding my wings again.

The foal putting up the poster was staring at me with wide eyes. He bolted.

“Dang it-- get back here, I just want to talk!” I ran after him, cursing my bad luck. So much for my clever disguise. I was faster than him, but he was able to slip through spaces I couldn’t. If I took to the air to go over the crowd, everypony would see me and somepony would be bright enough to mention me to the Enclave.

I saw the kid scramble into an old half-collapsed warehouse through a hole in the wall half-hidden by almost-dead scrabbly grass.

It was way too small for me to squeeze through after him, which I found out after a solid minute of trying and looking like an idiot. I was going to have to figure out another way in. The boarded-up door nearby seemed like a good option. I shoved old tires and rotten boards out of the way and kicked the door hard enough to pop the lock out of the doorframe.

The hinges squealed when I forced my way into the dusty space, the only light coming from filthy windows set high off the ground.

“I just want to talk, okay?” I called out, squinting into the gloom. There were crates everywhere, making the space feel cramped and maze-like. I took a few careful steps, not wanting to scare the foal.

“You’re a pegasus,” the kid said. I couldn’t tell where his voice was coming from. “And you talk the same as all the soldiers in town!”

That was just wrong. I didn’t have an accent. The colt did.

“I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I promise.”

“I know that. The soldiers all wear uniforms and they hate getting their hooves dirty.” I looked at my hooves. I hadn’t noticed that I was basically coated in mud up to my fetlocks. “And you were trying to hide. That means… you must be with Kasatka!”

He looked around the corner at me, eyes wide.

“That’s--” I hesitated.

“I get it, you can’t tell me because anypony could be listening,” the colt said. He glanced at the shadows and the high windows overhead. “I’ve been trying to find you for, like, ever! You’ve got to help me! I can’t pay much, but it’s a matter of life and death!”

I frowned and bit back an instant correction. He looked like he’d been skipping meals, and patches of his coat were stuck down with drips of glue. Even compared to most of the ponies in town, he was ragged and filthy. If the foal was really in some kind of trouble, I couldn’t just shut him down. The smart thing would be to let him think I was with Kasatka and find out what he needed help with. Then, once he was safe and I’d gained his trust, he’d just tell me everything on his own.

“Okay,” I said, holding up a hoof. “What’s your name?”

“Rusty.”

“And what’s so bad that you’re putting up posters all over town?” I asked. “You know how dangerous that is, right? The soldiers can see them too.”

“I had to get your attention somehow! When the featherbrains came to town, they started an orphanage and rounded up all the foals that didn’t have parents.” He kicked one of the crates. “It’s stupid! We were doing fine without them! All the ponies they took aren’t allowed to leave and the pony in charge is evil! She hurt us all the time, so I ran away to look for help. I promised my friends I’d find somepony. You have to help, Miss!”

I didn’t want to tell the colt, but rounding up the orphans and putting an adult in charge was probably a good idea.

“I’ll take a look,” I said. “But you stay out of sight until I get back. Deal?”

He nodded quickly, excited beyond words. Now I just needed a really clever plan.

“So you’re a quartermaster?” the old mare asked.

I nodded languidly, looking around. I’d gotten a quick bath with some scavenged soap and seawater, enough to get the dirt off and at least leaving me smelling clean. I hadn’t been able to manage a uniform, not without more caps than I had or a willingness to mug a pony for their trousers, and I wasn’t quite there yet.

“We prefer the term ‘logistics officer’,” I said. It wasn’t quite a correction. The mare seemed pleased. She reminded me of my Dad a little. Her greying hair was tied back in a bun tight enough to deflect a bullet and she wore an itchy-looking tweed jacket.

“I was in the military myself, you know,” she said. “I came out of retirement just for this operation. The sacrifices I’ve made!”

“Hopefully we can get you some extra supplies to make it easier, Miss Shrike,” I said. “I just need to inspect the building and the foals first.”

I almost hadn’t expected the plan to work, but the headmistress had seen wings and a cutie mark and trusted me implicitly. I’d made up a story about being reassigned from Thunderbolt Shoals and she hadn’t questioned anything.

No, it wasn’t just that. The way she had her nose tilted up, the way she walked the shockingly clean halls of the orphanage, Headmistress Shrike was proud of what she’d done.

“This used to be a school,” she said. “That made it quite ideal for our purposes. We converted a few of the classrooms into dormitory rooms for the foals and have the others separated into three groups.”

“By age?” I guessed.

“No, no. all these foals are starting with so little practical education that we’re starting from scratch.” She stopped at a doorway and looked inside. Almost two dozen foals were inside. Most of them were wearing green bandanas, but there were a few blues and reds as well.

One of the fillies wearing a blue bandanna around her neck trotted over to where an earth pony was playing with a toy doll and yanked it out of her hooves. The earth pony stood up and grabbed the unicorn’s hoof, trying to get the doll back.

“Stop that!” Shrike stormed into the room and I saw the look on the foals faces. They were terrified of her. Not the normal amount of fear a foal might have when an angry adult shows up. This was something else. She walked right up to the two ponies who had been fighting over the doll and for a second I thought she was going to set things right.

And then she slapped the earth pony filly hard enough to knock her to the ground.

“How dare you!” Shrike yelled. “You filthy mud ponies do not put hooves on your betters! They have a future! You’re just dead weight! Don’t forget that!”

“I-I’m sorry, Ma’am--” the filly said, her voice breaking.

“You’re demoted to Red,” Shrike said. “No dinner for you tonight.” She pulled off the girl’s green bandana and tossed it aside. Shrike raised her hoof to hit her again. The filly closed her eyes and just waited for it to happen.

I grabbed Shrike’s hoof and twisted it back.

What happened next was not my fault. In my defense I am stupid and I was very angry. Also, Shrike must have had some kind of brittle bone disease because there’s absolutely no reason why it should have shattered everything between her fetlock and shoulder.

“AAAAAAAA!” She screamed.

I let go and she screamed again, her hoof limp and wobbling in a way that suggested that bones, themselves, had just become suggestions as well.

I took a step back in shock at how badly she was hurt. “Oh buck, uh, sorry? But not sorry. Don’t hit kids!”

Shrike screeched in rage and jumped at me, wings beating madly. On instinct, I punched her in the snout to establish dominance. She went flying back through the window. The ancient glass shattered and she fell out of sight.

The foals were totally silent. I slowly trotted over and peeked through, careful not to cut myself on the glass. From the streaks of red left on the pointed shards left in the frame, she hadn’t managed to avoid a few scrapes.

Shrike hadn’t quite made it to the ground. The place had been surrounded by a low stone wall tipped with metal spikes, more for decoration than security. She was very firmly planted on the wall face-up, and I could tell from here that she was not going to be getting back up.

All of the foals were staring out of the windows at the corpse.

“Uh,” I had to think fast. This was probably not great for them to see. “Okay, everypony away from the window. Um… I didn’t mean to do that. Violence is… well it’s often the answer, but only in self-defense! Yeah. And drink your milk so you don’t have fragile bird bones like she did. Uh… and stay in school. Education is important. But… only if they teach the right things. Everypony’s equal and stuff and… and... “

“We’re free!” one of the ponies with a red kerchief yelled, running out the door.

“That too,” I said. “If you want to go, now’s the time.”

Most of the foals in green and red ran past me and fled, shrieking in joy. Ten or so of the foals stayed, looking unsure.

“But… they said if we went with them, ponies would love us and we’d get food and be taken care of,” said the filly who’d been bullying another pony. “Was that a lie?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I can’t tell the future. They’ll probably want you to fix talismans all day, but you’ll have all the food you can eat and a warm bed.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” another foal whispered. “I wanna stay.”

“Do what you want. I gotta get out of here before anypony else gets here, so, uh… don’t do drugs!” I ran out the door, feeling like I had at least managed not to embarrass myself in front of foals. They probably all thought I was super cool.

“You all got here fast,” I mumbled. There were close to a dozen kids lounging around the warehouse along with Rusty.

“It’s our home,” Rusty said. “This is where we always hang out. They told me about what you did.”

“Sorry about going a little--”

“It was perfect! Now they’ll know not to mess with us!” Rusty said, excited. “We’re going to have to lie low for a while but we’ve got tons of supplies.”

“Glad I could help,” I said, trying not to think too much about the fact I’d basically murdered somepony as a favor to a child. “So, I was hoping--”

“Oh right, you want to get paid,” Rusty said. “No problem. Rock Smasher, give her a case of the stuff!”

“The stuff?”

An older colt pulled a box out of one of the crates and brought it over to me. I took it from him and looked at the brightly-colored yellow and pink logo.

“Passion energy drink?” I read, not really understanding.

“They made ‘em for the military, to let soldiers stay awake for days at a time,” Rusty said. “Really rare and valuable.”

It wasn’t really the kind of payment that a professional would take, but it was what the foals had, and in their little society something like this was probably worth more than practically any amount of caps. I graciously took it because I didn’t want to offend them and also because I was intensely curious about what they’d taste like.

“Oh hey, that reminds me,” Rusty said. “You moved a bunch of stuff when you came in here. Could you go fix that really fast so none of the grown-up ponies try to get in here and mess with us?”

“Sure,” I said, trotting back outside and putting things back in front of the door to secure it against easy entry. It only took a minute to get it looking the way it did before. Now I just had to ask Rusty what he knew about Kasatka and… and I’d locked myself out of their hideout.

I facehoofed. I’d been outsmarted by a child.

“Look, I know what it takes to brew vodka,” I pled. “I’m not asking for any of the good stuff that was actually made pre-war. I’ll take whatever junk you brew in the distillery out back.”

“You callin’ my distillery junk?” the bartender asked, his expression darkening.

“No, but I did see somepony shoving fruit peels and cardboard boxes into the mash tank.”

“Fine, I’ll take your bloody bits,” the bartender grunted. “But it’s at a quarter rate.”

He put a tiny glass in front of me.

“Ten bits.”

“Ten bits for a sip,” I said in disbelief.

“If you don’t like it, try somewhere else,” he said. “The Enclave is buying everything up and everypony is trying to offload bits onto anypony else who’ll take ‘em. Soldiers don’t know how much anything’s worth, so bits are practically worthless.”

“Just my luck,” I groaned, putting a dozen bits on the counter. “Don’t say I didn’t at least tip you.”

He nodded, and his mood improved a little. It might not have been much of a tip, especially when bits weren’t worth the metal they were stamped on, but I’d shown him some respect. Back home, I could have bought a whole bottle for ten bits. That was before the place where I got an employee discount got filled with monsters and everypony died, naturally.

Captain White Glint had called me the luckiest pony she ever met, but all my good luck got balanced out by bad turns.

The radio crackled, and the soft broadcast of very safe, patriotic music gave way to a pony’s voice.

“Good evening, Dark Harbor. This is a special news update. Earlier today, the Dark Harbor Home for Wayward Ponies was attacked by one or more ponies believed to be dangerous and heavily-armed criminals.”

I snorted. I’d made the late edition of the radio news! Destiny was probably still scanning the airwaves, so she was probably listening to this right now.

“Several survivors interviewed at the orphanage gave varying reports about the pony or ponies involved. Authorities believe there are at least two assailants -- an extremely large pegasus pony with a limp--”

Did I have a limp? Now I was going to be self-conscious whenever I was walking around town. I mean, I had a limp for a while when my right forehoof was really aching, but I didn’t still have one now, did I? I was going to have to ask Destiny.

“--and the other is reportedly a red and black pegasus wearing some sort of mask to disguise their identity.”

That was weird. I could understand the foals thinking I was grey, or getting my mane color and coat confused when they were answering questions, but I definitely wasn’t red and black. Maybe they were just making something up to cover for me? That would explain the mask. They’d probably imagined something super cool. But not as cool as the real thing!

“If you or anypony you know has information that might lead to the arrest of these child-endangering criminals, please report it to any member of the Enclave military police force. Remember, we’re all in this together.”

“What bupkiss,” the bartender snorted, once the music started playing again. “They didn’t even mention Kasatka.”

“You heard about them?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Sure. They won’t talk about it on the news, but everypony in town knows it was the Dashites. Some foal was trying to get their attention for weeks, and then this happens? One of them must have finally checked it off their to-do list.”

“Any idea how to actually get in touch with them?” I asked.

“Why, you thinking of turning them in?”

“What, and get more bits that I can’t spend?” I lifted up the tiny drink he’d given me and sipped it. It was, well, it was vodka. It wasn’t very high quality, so it was a bit like rubbing alcohol mixed with dirty water.

There were barely two mouthfuls, so it was going to be tough making it last. I didn’t have nearly enough bits to keep spending them like this. I needed to figure out a source of caps if I was going to do much more in the city. “No, I just need some work. There’s got to be some kind of hired muscle or salvage around here…”

“You won’t have much luck with either of those,” the bartender said with a shrug. I gave him another dozen bits for a second drink and to keep him talking. “Nopony needs bodyguards right now with the military crawling all over the place, and even if they did, they come down hard on anypony walking around with weapons.”

“What about the salvage?”

“Only place not picked clean is the bay. You wanna go diving and get eaten by monsters, be my guest. There’s valuable stuff down there, but the Enclave is the only one buying.”

“And they pay in bits,” I muttered.

“Guessing you already found that out the hard way,” the bartender said, when he scooped up my money.

“It seems to be the only way I learn. Thanks anyway. I’ll think of something.”

He nodded and walked down to the other end of the bar to serve somepony else. This was going to be tricky. Maybe if I did enough odd jobs, I’d find something out about Kasatka just by bouncing around from one place to another? I wasn’t going to be able to afford food or fresh water soon, much less fulfill my ultimate fantasy and get a hot bath.

“Looks like somepony took pity on you,” the bartender said. He put a napkin and glass in front of me. “Somepony bought you a drink.”

“Really?” I blinked and thanked the stars for random acts of kindness from strangers. “Who?”

“It was--” he turned to point, but the spot was empty. “Huh. She was there a second ago…”

“Well, if you see her again, thank her for me,” I said. I took a sip. Whatever they’d bought me, it was a heck of a lot nicer than the vodka. It was sweet and citrusy and had an odd flavor I absolutely couldn’t place.

While I was trying not to chug the glass down, I glanced at the napkin. There was something written on it.

A little cutie mark was drawn on it. A lightning bolt striking out of a cloud, all in rough black lines. Below it were two ominous words.

WE KNOW

“Oh. I’m in trouble,” I said. Then the drugs in the cocktail started to kick in and everything went sideways immediately before it went black.

Chapter 37 - Ashes Are Burning

"Hello! The following is for your ears only. If you're hearing this, you've been selected for a very important job. I'm not sure who will actually be selected as Overmare for your stable, so forgive me for not having a personalized message, but I promise you were chosen for a reason.

"My name is Scootaloo. I'm the vice-president of Stable-Tec. If you're hearing this, it means your Stable has been activated and you and the ponies you were chosen to protect and serve have been sealed within the most state-of-the-art survival shelter ever created.

"Our job, and yours, is to save as many ponies as we could. I wish we could have saved more but... nopony wanted to believe we could lose. Nopony wanted to be the one to think hard about how to survive. Everypony thought the war would be over by this time next year. Always 'this time next year', for more than a decade...

"Anyway, by now you're probably grateful you signed up for this, and I don't need to tell you 'I told you so'. There's much more important work to do. The war started because of an energy shortage. Well, no, it started because of stupid ponies and nopony being willing to back down, but the energy shortage was the excuse.

"Stable 83 was built to utilize a revolutionary new energy source. Instead of dirty coal power or expensive gem reactors, it has a geothermal well that injects water into superheated rock and uses the resulting steam to turn a turbine. It can't be used everywhere to solve our energy problems, but my scientists tell me it should be extremely safe and virtually maintenance-free.

"As the Overmare of Stable 83, your duty is to keep your ponies alive above all else. Most of the ponies pre-registered for entry to your Stable are former mine workers and construction experts. In return for building Stable 83 and a few other projects, we promised them spots for their families. It's the least we can do for them when they're working to save so many other lives.

"We don't expect you to do anything except survive. Because of the expertise of your inhabitants, we've supplied Stable 83 with additional mining and construction supplies in case there's a need to expand the Stable. Even if there isn't, they might help you rebuild after... after the end.

"Thank you for believing in us. Because of your work and sacrifices, so many others will get a chance to live. It's not enough, never enough, but it's all we can do."

“This is Overmare Ore Skiff. I’m making my first official log as Overmare, and I want to start this off on a positive note. We got sealed in here two weeks ago, and things have been busy. There was some kind of seismic disturbance right after we closed the door. It’s probably some kind of aftershock from the megaspells that went off everywhere.

“Part of the Stable collapsed. Nopony was hurt, but we were all pretty scared. Stable-Tec was smart enough to give us supplies to fix everything, and we did just that. All of us worked together, and our first big project as Stable 83 was reinforcing the walls and digging out the parts that collapsed.

“I think all the work really brought us together. It feels like we’re a family now. I just got back from a sing-along in the atrium, and it was the first time in years I started to really feel happy. The worst already happened outside, and we’re alive and healthy and safe in here. All the worry and tension about what might happen is just… gone. No matter how bad it gets out there, we’ll survive.

“Over the next few weeks, I’ve scheduled equipment inspections for all Stable systems. When we brought everything up to full power, we had some surges and brownouts. The Chief thinks the problem is that most of the systems were designed for a gem reactor and we’ve got the geothermal tap, and the circuits just don’t respond correctly. It’s going to be a learning process to figure out how to do things with these systems, but I know we’re up to the task.”

“This is Overmare Ore Skiff. It’s been a few months since the bombs fell, and I can’t deny the evidence in front of me anymore. The geothermal well has dropped in temperature day by day, and the more power we use, the faster it goes.

“Stable-Tec gave us a lot of literature on geology and vulcanology, so we’ve got a theory on what happened. The earthquake that hit us was part of some larger seismic event, and the magma well we’re using for the geo-tap got cut off. I don’t know if it’s budget cuts or they just didn’t think anything could go wrong, but we’ve got no backup power supply.

“Right now we’re running with minimal power everywhere. It’s dark and hot down here, and the air feels stale.

“The Chief came up with a proposal at dinner today. No more sing-alongs for us, just quietly eating our mush in the dark. He thinks we can use the gear Stable-Tec gave us to drill a new Geothermal Well. It seems like it might be possible. We’re pretty sure we know where the quake blocked off the current well, so if we drill a line beyond it, we should get to a fresh magma pocket.

“We all voted on it. There are some dangers -- we’ll probably hit some noxious gas, the equipment is really rated for the repair of what we’ve got and not drilling down that deep, so it’s going to be a tough dig and we’re on a tight timetable. It’s also our only real hope unless we want to walk outside, and the radiation count from just outside the door is… we wouldn’t survive out there.

“The operation starts tomorrow. I’m trying to temper my hope, but I really want this to succeed. We survived for a reason. This is just another trial for us to overcome, and we’ll be stronger for it.”

“I was wrong. Celestia, Luna, I’m so sorry.

“The dig was going fine. It wasn’t easy, or safe. There were a few accidents. I should have stopped it there. We found magma, but we didn’t know it would be under high pressure. The second we tapped the magma sea, it shot up our borehole. Four ponies died right away and they were the lucky ones. The way my PipBuck was clicking, that magma was so radioactive anypony who didn’t die right away wasn’t going to last long.

“We sealed the place off, but it wasn’t enough.

“This was a coal mine. We all forgot that, somehow. The magma set the bucking rock on fire! The rock wrapped around us on every bucking side! Even after we sealed the bore room off, it kept getting hotter. The old coal seams went up and fires broke out everywhere. There was so much bucking tar and it just… it melted out of the rocks and started falling like rain!

“The Chief saved my life. He saw the ceiling buckling before I did and shoved me out of the way. There must have been gallons and gallons of that bucking tar, and he just… he never stopped screaming! He’s still screaming! It’s been hours and hours and he’s just… he isn’t dying! Celestia save us, I don’t know if any of them are dying!

“I think I’m the only pony left. I won’t last long. It’s a bucking oven in here. The heat is going to get me even if they don’t. I can hear them out there, stumbling around, moaning in pain, just… burning forever like living torches.

“I don’t want to go out that way. I’m so sorry. We were like a family and I failed us. If you’re here listening to this, turn around. Go somewhere else. This isn’t a place for ponies. It’s Gehenna, and only monsters live here now.”

“That’s the last entry,” Destiny said.

“The scientist was talking about burning monsters,” I said quietly. “Does that mean those ponies are still… around?”

“I don’t know. Radioactive magma, coal fires, buck knows what else…” Destiny hesitated. “It could have done almost anything. Whatever it is, it’s enough that a dozen armed ponies weren’t enough to take care of the problem.”

“Great. Split Moon, what do you think?” I looked back at him. He’d been listening to the terminal recordings with me, leaning against the doorway and keeping his eyes open for stragglers. Towards the end of the recorded logs, when the voice was heavy and full of coughing and pain, his vision had started to dwell more on the barricades leading deeper in instead of waiting for reinforcements.

He shrugged. I guess it was my decision.

“I’d feel dumb if we didn’t at least try,” I said. “You stay behind me. I don’t want to hit you with this cold gun.”

Split Moon nodded curtly. I checked one more time that the scientist we’d knocked out was still alive. I thought about tying her up, but she was unconscious and if something happened to us, I didn’t want to leave her here restrained and helpless. I still felt a little sick when I thought too much about killing ponies that were shooting at me. Leaving her to a slow death lying in a pitch-black Stable? That could never sit right on my conscience.

I sort of hoped she’d be gone when we got back. I didn’t know if Split Moon would be okay with leaving her alive. He’d knocked her out, but he was a Dashite and I couldn’t read him very well. He might kill her on the way out just to wrap up loose ends.

He stepped outside and looked around at the mess we’d left on the atrium walkway and I followed him, trying to step around the bodies instead of on top of them, then jumped off the edge and down to the lower level.

“The maneframe should be near Engineering,” Destiny said. “We don’t have a map, but my guess is that’s below us. They’d want to put a geothermal well as deep in the ground as possible.”

That made sense. I pulled one of the barricades aside. The other side of it was burned and blackened, like the inside of an oven. Something sticky and awful was baked onto it. I moved slowly and carefully past it, casting Destiny’s hornlight into every dark corner like some monster might jump out at me.

The floor was splattered with half-hardened masses of glassy black debris, streaking from overhead and running along the walls and hanging from the ceiling like stalactites before pooling on the ground and freezing in place. It stank horribly, even through the air filters. It reminded me of the Exodus Blue, where the magma had broken through the hull.

I saw the flickering light of the fire ahead of us, and I didn’t realize what it meant until the thing stumbled around the corner.

Maybe it had been a pony once. It walked, stumbling on four black, boneless legs more like molten tentacles than proper limbs. Boils and bubbles swarmed to its surface, popping wetly. Flames flickered across its body, It turned to me, and I couldn’t see eyes, just an open wound where a mouth should be.

I don’t know how, but it could sense me. It turned and came at me with hooves slapping on the ground like raw meat. It was radiating heat, the temperature creeping up faster and faster as it approached and a radiation warning sounding with rapid clicking.

“I sure hope this works!” I shouted, before firing the Cryolator. Liquid nitrogen streamed out in a foggy spray, splashing against the tar-ghoul and letting off huge clouds of mist. The undead horror stumbled, falling into the wall in shock. It… stuck there for a second, deforming when it touched it. It was as if the entire monster was just jelly that just had a memory of being a pony.

It tried to pull itself free, but I sprayed it again and it slowed, its body getting thicker and stiffer. It struggled to get off the wall where it had fallen, but couldn’t manage it. A third spray and the last few flickering flames died, and the tar-ghoul went still, surface solidifying and cracking.

“I think that did it,” I said, taking a deep breath.

“We’ll call that a big success,” Destiny agreed.

Split Moon made a contemplative sound and stepped closer to the frozen tar monster before flicking his wing out, slashing it with his wingblade. The ghoul cracked and fell apart, and Split Moon looked at his blade and winced. There was a chip in the edge.

“It might be better to hit them with a wrench or something,” I suggested. I held out my hoof and Destiny popped a big machine wrench out of the Vector Trap. I held it out for the extremely dangerous Dashite.

He nodded glumly and folded his wings, taking the club and looking disappointed.

“This place is really badly damaged,” Destiny noted when we continued down the hallway. “I hope we can actually find what we’re looking for.”

Stable 83 really was a lot like Gehenna. The only light came from fires that had been burning for generations, the coal seams behind the walls smoldering and bursting into short-lived puffs of flame. Tar and heat had popped a lot of panels out of place, and behind them it was like the embers left behind when a fire hadn’t quite died, glowing with terrible orange-red light. Pitch dripped in almost-frozen slow motion, forming those awful, stinking pillars and stalactites before spreading out on the floor in rubbery puddles.

Split Moon coughed behind me. The air was just on this side of being safe to breathe, but he’d torn up an Enclave soldier’s uniform to make a face mask to filter out the worst of it. I was faring a little better with my armor’s air supply, but I kept getting whiffs of burned hair and toxic, melting plastic.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Destiny whispered. “You remember the hospital?”

“The hospital full of bad stuff? The one where I got tricked by an ancient evil zebra lich into releasing it? That hospital?”

“Yeah. This place gives me the same kind of shivers.”

“Great,” I whispered back. Now I was worried an undead Steel Ranger was going to tear through the wall and try to cut me in half with an unstoppable weapon. A chill went down my spine, and that really stood out because the Stable was hot. The Overmare’s last message compared it to an oven and it really felt like one. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but something with the heat and the uneven floor and the darkness was getting to me. I could feel an edge of panic under everything.

I glanced back at Split Moon. He didn’t have fancy magic armor to help him.

“You want to head back to the atrium?” I asked. “It was a little cooler there.”

He shook his head and motioned for us to continue. Maybe he was okay, probably he just didn’t want to look weak. He looked past me, and grabbed for a knife. DRACO squealed an alarm. I turned back in time to see a misshapen mass of tar tear itself from the wall and reach for me. A knife as long as my hoof hit it in the head, and sank in with no visible effect.

I heard Split Moon grunt in annoyance.

The Cryolator hissed at my side, almost silent in action. I sprayed liquid nitrogen into the thing’s chest. It didn’t have much force behind it, but the effect was immediate. The tar solidified and the tar-ghoul’s mouth opened in a bubbling scream. I adjusted my aim and fired right down its throat, freezing its head. The thing fell over and shattered.

More screams echoed from around us.

“Buck. Looks like that woke the monsters up,” I said.

The tar-covered walls rippled with fire. For a moment I could swear the flames themselves were shaped like a pony, flat against the wall like a painting. The shape pushed out, taking flaming pitch with it. The tar liquified with the new heat of its birth, melting free and stumbling out with liquid legs that half-collapsed with every step.

“I’ve started to develop a theory and I don’t like it,” Destiny said. I sprayed the emerging tar monster and kicked its head off, the misshapen mass rolling down the hallway like a bowling ball.

“Is the theory that the bucking things are coming out of the walls?!” I shouted.

“Coal and coal tar come from dead plants! It’s like compacted layers of tree corpses! It’s possible that necromatic energy could seep into it!”

“The coal is haunted?!” I saw three small half-sized shapes trying to free themselves from one of the columns of tar running from floor to ceiling. They’d been foals in life. I felt sick. I sprayed them and couldn’t bring myself to shatter their frozen forms. Foals.

“The coal is haunted, and the spirits trapped in it are animating themselves with the energy from the coal fire! All we’re doing is banishing them until they recover enough strength to make a new body!”

“This is some real bad stuff,” I mumbled.

“We can’t stay here and fight,” Destiny warned. “The Cryolator is almost tapped out.”

“Yeah. This might be a bust,” I agreed. “Split Moon! We need to figure out another plan! We’ll--”

A hoof grabbed mine, wetly latching on to my right forehoof. I hadn’t even noticed the fire spreading into the tar next to me, but I sure as buck noticed when it was attached to me. Panic welled up and I twisted to try and fire the Cryolator at it, but the cold-gun just sputtered and failed, only throwing out a few snowflakes.

I pulled the trigger again, my heart pounding. Nothing. Not even a sputter. I tried to pull free, but the tar-ghoul was heavy and sticky. All I did was help free it from the wall, the body stretching as it held on, a second hoof latching on to mine.

“Get off me!” I shrieked. I’m not going to pretend that it was some kind of warcry. My breathing was coming short and fast and the sweat was getting in my eyes and I was half-blind and the heat was so oppressive like it was sinking into my bones.

I could see it all over again, like back in Thunderbolt Shoals. Fire and pain creeping up my hoof. My skin melting. The pop of flesh blackening and burning. The horrible thing underneath it, the thing that wasn’t part of me and I tried to pretend everything was okay and--

The panic stole all thought.

I snapped my blade free, the one attached to my bones somewhere inside, and tried to cut my way free. It was like cutting hot sugar with a dull blade. There was nothing solid, no leverage, just terrible wet heat. I threw myself backwards, desperate to get away, and the tar-ghoul’s body stretched and finally snapped, leaving a thick coat of burning pitch.

I saw the fire reaching for me. A hoof made out of pure flames trying to push out of the black bubbling mess and touch my face.

Everything seemed to tilt. It was something I hadn’t felt since I was a filly. Vertigo. Up and down turned into sideways and I stalled out in every way, my brain just stopping.

Somepony grabbed my left forehoof and pulled, and I couldn’t fight them. They dragged me somewhere, not that I could focus enough to tell where, and everything quieted down. A wave of crimson light washed down my tar-covered right hoof and the fire died down, sputtering and going out.

“Chamomile, calm down,” Destiny said softly from somewhere far away and echoing. “Everything’s okay. Just breathe slowly. In and out. In and out.”

The only thing I could focus on was her voice, and she slowly brought me out of the panic attack. My vertigo and tunnel vision faded, and I could look around. We were in a big room lined with bulky electronic consoles and equipment. There wasn’t tar anywhere.

Split Moon was kneeling next to where I was collapsed against a computer bank. He gave my shoulder a few soft pats and a squeeze.

“Sorry,” I said, my throat dry and voice rough. “I… it was like when I lost my hoof all over again.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Destiny said quietly. “A big part of it is my fault. If this was… before… I’d say you were suffering from Wartime Stress Disorder and try to get you an appointment with a trained professional. I don’t even know where we’d find a psychiatrist now.”

Split Moon helped me sit up and sat down next to me. He took my hoof and pulled out a knife, gently starting to chip away the solidified tar on the armor.

“It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have fallen apart like that in the middle of a fight,” I said. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Split Moon used that wrench you gave him to get one of the side doors open. He dragged you to safety. You’ve got mild heatstroke on top of everything else.”

I nodded slowly. I didn’t want my vertigo to come back.

Split Moon tapped my shoulder and pointed to a sign on the wall.

“This is the maneframe room?” I asked. “We found it?”

“Better than that, this place is almost pristine,” Destiny said. “There’s no tar anywhere. I think there are rooms on all sides, so there’s no burning mess behind the wall panels. Here, let me just pop these seals--”

There was a hiss as the helmet detached, and Destiny floated off. She turned to face me, eyes flashing while she talked.

“I’m going to look around and start gathering the parts we need,” she said. “You just rest and cool down, okay?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” I sighed. I looked at Split Moon. “Thanks. You really saved my flank back there.”

He nodded and motioned to the scar on his neck, grimacing a little.

“You know what it’s like to be hurt?” I guessed. He nodded, then motioned with his chin inquisitively at my right forehoof. “This? Well… it’s not a cool story. I was in the middle of storming this cloudship, the Shiranui. Me and a couple other friends of mine were after the stallion in charge. He was the local gov, and a total jerk who was having ponies executed just to pass the time. We found these flame turrets, and there was a fuel explosion when we were disabling them and… yeah. It was bad.”

I watched Destiny flit around, the disembodied helmet floating from one panel to another and pulling out crystal and silicon cards, examining them, and putting them into different piles based on some quality I couldn’t fathom.

Split Moon finished chipping the solidified tar off my hoof.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

He nodded and put his knife away.

“Okay,” Destiny called out. “I’ve got most of what we need, but before I pull more, you two need to see this.”

The stallion next to me got up and offered me his hoof. I smiled and took it, letting him help me back to my hooves. The vertigo was gone. Up was up and down was down. I nodded silent thanks and stepped up behind Destiny to see what she was looking at.

“Security cameras?” I asked. “I thought all the power was out.”

“The maneframe has a limited backup power supply,” Destiny said. “It’s not enough to run the Stable, just sort of a battery bank to ensure an uninterrupted power supply. We’ve got maybe ten minutes to decide what to do.”

“Decide what to do about what?” I asked.

She moved so I could see the screen better.

“Oh,” I whispered. I was looking at a small lake of tar, filled with dancing flames moving over it in waves, with dozens of shapes trying to pull themselves free from the boiling pitch, struggling before being dragged down by the others around them, formless almost-ponies stepping on each other to try and escape endless agony.

“We can’t fight that,” I said.

Split Moon grimaced again, and he nodded.

“I want to put them to rest,” Destiny said. “I have just enough control from here to open up all of the Stable’s water tanks and seal the drains. We could flood the whole Stable. I think the water would put out the coal fire.”

“What’s the downside?” I asked.

“With the drains sealed, the water is going to stay there. This whole place will be stuck underwater. Nopony will ever be able to come back here. If we need more parts or salvage, we’d have to go somewhere else.”

“Destiny,” I chided. “Do you think there’s any bucking way I’m coming back here anyway? No way are we leaving this place the way it is. Besides, it’s all, uh, strategic, right?” I looked at Split Moon and shrugged. “We’d be keeping the Enclave from knowing what we took and preventing them from getting more salvage.”

He smirked and nodded assent.

“Good,” Destiny said. “We’re all in agreement. I’ll set the timer so the sluice gates will open just before the emergency power gives out. Plenty of time to get back to the surface.”

“Do we have all the parts we need?” I asked. Destiny nodded. “Hit it.”

She tapped a few keys with magic, and the camera feed cut out to show a timer on the screen, counting down from nine minutes.

The floor shook under us.

“Are you sure you did that right?” I asked. “Is it flooding right now?”

“No, it can’t be,” Destiny said. “I’m sure I got it-- look out!”

The floor bucked upwards. A terrible squealing roar filled the air. Not the kind made by a pony, but the roar of heavy machinery. A drill punched through the steel, the head like a three-jawed toothy mouth chewing the steel into shreds.

The drill retracted, and a hydraulic shovel like an excavator’s bucket appeared in its place, forcing the opening further open. Something started pulling itself through, a mish-mash of broken mining equipment and boiling tar. Searchlights turned on us and focused like burning eyes.

There was something in the middle of it all. It was black, but it wasn’t like the asphalt black of the pitch. It was a swirling core of something so dark it absorbed the light around it, so profoundly ebon that I couldn’t tell if it had depth or shape.

Destiny cried out in alarm, and I felt it with her, that terrible sense of wrongness from the hospital. Pure evil and death radiating into the world.

The pile of machinery and molten grunge shifted, arranging itself into something almost like a pony, with that black heart beating in its chest behind ribs made of torn structural supports.

“Of course they wouldn’t let us go without a fight,” I muttered.

The huge thing reared up and swung down with the drill-arm, the gnashing teeth screaming. Split Moon got right in front of it, and I was absolutely sure he was about to be torn apart. He hit it at the last second with the wrench, the thick tool metal catching in the drill and sparking, centrifugal forces knocking the whole drill-press off to the side, going past him harmlessly.

“You’re just showing off!” I yelled over to him.

Split Moon shot me a smile and shrugged, not even looking at the monster while he backflipped right over its return swing, deftly avoiding it in exactly the way I’d never be able to.

Still, I had my own talents.

I guess it thought I looked like easier prey, because it turned to me like it only just noticed I was in the room and shoved computers out of the way, steel cabinets tossed aside like plywood boxes with its huge mass. I planted my hooves and let it come. The power shovel curled like a metal scorpion’s stinger, and the hydraulics erupted into sudden motion, striking towards me in a sudden, deadly strike.

Split Moon would have seen it coming from miles away and dodged it. Heck, even I probably could have managed to duck to the side.

I planted my hooves. Sparks rained down around me. Hydraulics squealed and oil exploded out, the shovel straining to press down, stuck in the air a hoof-width above my head, my blade twisted and locked between the excavator bucket’s teeth.

“You’re not as strong as you look,” I said, trying to act like it was no big deal. It was stronger than the bear I’d fought, but it didn’t have the leverage to really make use of it.

“Chamomile…” Destiny whispered weakly. “The timer!”

“Right,” I said. “No time to play around.”

I turned and let the excavator bucket slide free, the monster not smart enough to see the motion coming. It slipped forward on its wet, sticky legs and the shovel hit the wall, crunching into and through it to the hallway on the other side.

“This place is too small to fight a big monster,” I said. “Let’s bail and let it try to swim after us!”

Split Moon nodded and kicked the panel next to the door, opening it up and waving me through. I ducked under the behemoth’s overextended arm and ran past him. He was right on my heels and so was the angry pile of mining equipment and black magic. The drill and power shovel slammed into the walls of the corridor, the mass of tar and rage pulling itself after us and filling every inch of the hallway.

The atrium was a short run away. It had been slow getting here because we’d tried to be careful, but we were very motivated to go faster.

“You can’t let it follow you out,” Destiny said. Her voice sounded distant. “That much necromatic magic would be like a moving apocalypse!”

The drill slammed into the floor next to me, squealing and roaring while it tore up the deck. It hit something harder and the whole thing jerked. I knew that motion. It was a power tool getting caught and starting to kick back. I stomped on the long steel frame, driving it an inch deeper. The metal squeal changed pitch, and the biting head twisted deeper, totally caught up in the Stable’s structure.

“Looks like somepony needs to give you a hoof!” I shouted, slashing into the metal arm with my blade. The SIVA-forged knife sliced right through it, and the creature fell back, the tar forming the central part of its body boiling harder, gouts of flame shooting into the air and turning the atrium into a giant kiln.

“Do we have anything left in the cold gun?” I yelled. “We need something to freeze it in place!”

Destiny whispered a reply, but I couldn’t make it out over the crackling flames.

“Hey!” Somepony shouted. I looked up. The scientist we’d left alive was looking down at us from the walkway around the atrium’s upper level. She held up a pressurized tank. “Catch!”

She tossed it down to me. I grabbed for it, missed, and Destiny’s telekinesis nabbed it before it could hit the floor. She popped out the old tank and pushed it into place. I nudged it a little, and by that I mean I had to smack it hard to get it into place, sealing against the pipes with a hiss.

I sprayed the tarry mess. The spray was like acid to it, making it react with agonized thrashing, pushing itself back with its excavator arm and trying to get away.

“What, is it getting too chilly for you?!” I shouted. I could see it working, the gouts of flame dying down and the surface starting to solidify and crack. The thing slowed down, jittering and stuttering to a halt like an engine stalling.

The fire went out. Frost formed on the monster’s tarry outer shell. It ground to a total halt.

“That’s it!” I shouted. “Let’s finish it!”

I charged in, spinning and bucking the mess it had instead of a face. A huge, deep rift formed. Split Moon flew in over me, jamming his wingblades into the edges of the rift and pulling with everything in his shoulders, tearing it open. Glassy shards fell around us, and the knot of shadow and darkness at its heart lay exposed.

There was only one thing to do. I punched the darkness in the face to establish dominance.

I felt something like a beating heart that burst at my touch. Something that wasn’t blood splattered over me, black and white at the same time like I couldn’t see it properly. It evaporated in the air almost immediately.

The darkness vanished, leaving only the mundane asphalt black of the tar. The feeling of death and pressure eased off, and I stepped back from the fallen form.

“Sorry about that,” Destiny said. She was still rough around the edges. “That magic really messes with me. I’m okay now.”

Split Moon tugged at my wing, motioning towards the exit.

“Right. We need to get out of here,” I said. I looked up at the scientist. “You better get moving too! This place is about to be underwater!”

She looked at the fallen behemoth and nodded, following along behind us.

We ran for the Stable exit and Split Moon actually held the door open to make sure the Enclave scientist got out. The rock walls shook around us, rocks falling from the tunnel roof. Before long, we were out of the gloomy Stable and in the last hours of daylight, the sun just starting to become visible under the cloud layer and casting long shadows. New cracks crazed over the ground, steam slowly seeping out.

“Thanks for helping out with the nitrogen tank,” I said.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” the mare replied, fixing her frazzled mane. “Right at that moment it was more important to kill that monster, whatever it was.”

I nodded. “I’d leave it off your official reports, if I was you.”

“Oh, I will,” she promised. She spread her wings and took to the air, looking back at me with a glare. “I don’t intend to get fired over this mess!”

“If you do, I’ll get you a new job,” I promised, waving to her as she flew away.

Split Moon nudged me. I turned to look at him.

He struggled for a moment, like he was about to vomit painfully. Finally, he managed to speak.

“We make a good team,” he croaked. It obviously hurt to do it, but he smiled.

“We do,” I agreed. “Let’s get out of here before that scientist sends a VertiBuck here to gun us down.”

Chapter 38 - Wish You Were Here

I struggled to get the Exodus armor off once we were back at the Sanctuary. Even after downing some Dartura and a healing potion I felt like I was raw all over. Some combination of sweat and mild burns had left me on the edge between itchy and painful where you just knew scratching would hurt.

“Let me help you with that,” Opening said softly. He tugged at a catch and flakes of solidified pitch broke free before he got the latch to cooperate. “There we go.”

“Thanks,” I said, shrugging the left pauldron off. “It’s sort of a field repair, so it’s a little, um. Improvised.”

“Whoever put it together does good work!” Opening said. “There aren’t a lot of decent smiths around. Most ponies just make do with rough scrap parts. This is quality metal, and it’s obviously been fitted for you. The rest is, well… it’s obviously a relic. Something we couldn’t make anymore.”

“Not without a microthamuatic inscriber,” Destiny agreed. She was resting on the rest of the armor parts. The experience down in Stable 83 had drained her, and she wasn’t even levitating if she could help it. “I could make a few spare thaumoframe tiles, but I’d need the right equipment and I know you don’t have it.”

Opening shook his head sadly. “We lost a lot since your time.”

“It’s not your fault,” Destiny said.

“But other things are.” Opening looked at the piece of armor he was holding again, running a hoof over a burn mark. “I’m sorry about the mission. I completely underestimated the amount of danger I put you in, and I have to beg your forgiveness. I'll be more careful next time.”

“What?” I blinked. “No, it’s no big deal.”

“Yes it is,” Opening said, giving me back the pauldron. "It's my job to plan out a war and give Unsung options. Good options. Not ones that get ponies killed."

A pony called out from above. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Opening." Unsung flew down from the rafters above us in the old subway station. "You do good work. We're outnumbered a hundred to one and we're still making a difference. Any progress on that plan with the radio station?"

"I have an outline of a plan," Opening said. "It needs a lot of details. It's half a plan with no payoff."

"I like to think of it more as an opportunity waiting for its chance," Unsung said. "Like all of us!"

"I'll get my notes together for you to look at," Opening said. He nodded to me and trotted off.

Unsung watched him go, waiting until he'd closed the door to his little office off the side of the platform. “Kasatka is like a family to him. To all of us. It’s all we have left after we were kicked out of the Enclave for our beliefs. He helps me make sure I don't put ponies in danger with my big plans."

“I’ve been in worse danger than that,” I said. “It wasn’t even the biggest monster I’ve had to kill. You should have seen this big green mecha-dragon I had to take down -- that was really dangerous!”

Unsung laughed. “I’d love to hear the story when you have time.” She took a deep breath and the crimson and black pegasus straightened up, giving me a serious look. “But I regret to say I have a mission lined up for you. It’s something that needs to be done, and I think only you can do it.”

“What is it?” I asked. I was tired, but if it was really important…

Unsung looked to the side, where Four was standing with Klein Bottle and helping the short pegasus mare with the machinery inside the massive Grandus Armor.

“This place is a little gloomy. I would appreciate it if you’d take Four Damascus out and away from the darkness for a while. I don’t think she’s had a real meal in a while, and she keeps saying she’s too busy to eat. Do you think you could convince her to get a meal and enjoy herself for a few hours?”

Unsung held up a bag of caps.

“Payment in advance, of course,” she said.

“Are you asking me to take her out on a date?” I asked.

“If that’s the way you want to think of it,” Unsung said. “I don’t want either of you breaking down because you’re working too hard.”

I took the bag. There were a lot of caps in there. “You don’t have to bribe me for this, you know.”

“Maybe, but you did take the money,” Unsung teased.

I snorted. “Hey, Four!” I called out. She looked up, surprised, her ears swiveling. “I just got paid for that Stable job! You want to get some dinner?”

“Are you sure this is really okay?” Four asked. She looked around the streets nervously. I couldn’t entirely blame her. Every other block or so, we’d either see somepony in an Enclave uniform getting fleeced at a store or hear them flying overhead. I was very conscious that hiding my wings under my bearskin cloak was not the best disguise.

“It’s fine,” I assured her. “You know, in some ways this reminds me of being back home!”

“Really?”

I nodded. “I grew up… well, really I grew up all over the place because Mom and Dad traveled around a lot, but when they split up, Dad settled us down in a prewar city called Cirrus Valley.”

“I’d love to see a pegasus city someday,” Four said. “It must be so different from living on the ground. I heard it’s just… amazing up there. Everything’s the way it used to be, before the world was broken.” She glanced up at the clouds. “Bright colors, smiling ponies, no worries about raiders or food or anything!”

“I mean, that’s mostly right,” I agreed. “The food down here is way better, though.”

“That can’t be true.” Four frowned.

“It totally is! I was staying with this, uh, tribe…” I decided to leave out that they were zebras, just in case. “And they had this stuff called mead, which is made from honey and it is like the most amazing stuff in the world!”

Four giggled and smiled sadly. “It sounds like you have a lot of really good memories. I wish… I wish I had memories like that.”

Oh right. She had almost total amnesia.

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll just make some good memories right now. Easy as.”

“What?” Four blinked in surprise. I grabbed her hoof and gave her a smile. Without giving her a chance to be sad or try to politely refuse or anything, I pulled her into one of the shops along the wide street.

“Let’s get some new outfits,” I said. “I could use something a little more stylish than something’s skin, and you deserve something new, too.”

“What? Me? Why?”

“Excuse me, miss?” I waved down one of the ponies folding clothing. If we’d been in the Enclave it would have been rude to assume she worked there, but she was the only pony I’d seen in the wasteland not making things more of a mess, so she had to be the store owner. “Could you help my friend with something new? Maybe try on a few things and see what looks good on her?”

I held up my bag of caps, and the mare’s expression changed from suspicion to a happy customer service smile.

“Of course. Come right this way, miss. We’ve got a changing room in the back!”

Four gave me a scared look and got dragged off to the world of fashion. I was kind of curious to see what they’d come up with. The clothing options I’d seen so far in the wasteland came in two varieties -- carefully preserved pre-war designs, and rags stapled together to keep rain off.

I poked around at the clothing racks while I waited. I had no idea how she had it all sorted. It didn’t seem to be by size, or style, or even color.

Somepony cleared their throat, and I turned around to see the shop owner.

“I believe we’ve found something quite fetching,” she said, motioning for Four to step out of the changing room.

The shy, thin unicorn walked out. This is the point in most stories where the pony telling it would go on about how they were struck suddenly by how beautiful the mare was, how they’d been a diamond in the rough and how a little treatment had made them shine. That was sort of demeaning, in my opinion. It wasn’t the clothing that made Four shine. She was the one who made the outfit work.

A black bodysuit made out of something soft and stretchy was cut short on her long legs, ending just below her knees. Over it, she was wearing a sheer blue dress, big enough that it was like wrapping a blanket around her, yet fitted so she wasn’t awkward or swimming. It was like she was carrying part of the ocean with her, the fabric light enough to dance in the wind when she moved, transparent enough that you could just see her form thanks to the dark bodysuit she was wearing.

“That looks great on you,” I said honestly.

Four blushed. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely.” I stepped closer and reached for her hoof. She took mine and squeezed lightly, smiling and sneaking glances at herself in the mirror.

“Now for you,” the shop owner said, rubbing her chin. “We don’t have a lot of pegasus clothing.”

I froze up. “You can tell--”

“I’m not blind and you’re not hiding it well,” she snorted. “Come along. I’ve got a few things, but with your size it’ll probably have to be stallionwear…”

She dragged me away from Four, who just waved placidly and let me be led off.

“It’s definitely not as elegant as yours,” I said, once we’d paid and left. I’d been worried that buying clothing would eat up all of my budget, but Unsung had been extremely generous. I had more than enough for a good meal and a few drinks even after the shopkeep had cottoned and fleeced us for all we were worth.

“I like it,” Four said, looking up from the cafe menu. “It suits you.”

“Really?” I glanced down at myself. I felt a little exposed, truth be told. The new outfit meant I couldn’t even pretend I wasn’t a pegasus. A black tracksuit with white lines running up all four legs and a white turtleneck under it. It was one of the few outfits she’d had in my size that were cut for ponies with wings. The long sleeves did cover my right forehoof, so at least it had that going for it.

“It’s got sort of a dangerous look to it,” Four teased. “You could be some kind of dangerous gangster!”

I blushed and glanced around. We were far from alone. There were a bunch of other ponies in the cafe. I even saw an Enclave uniform. Nopony had given me a second look, but I really didn’t want to start a fight if I could help it.

“Not so loud,” I whispered. “What if they take you seriously?”

She smiled. “Then you’d have to save me again.”

“Let’s try to get a meal in before we start a brawl.” I looked over the menu again. “Huh. I’m kind of surprised it’s not all gruel or prepackaged junk scavenged out of ruins.”

“You don’t think most ponies eat like that, do you?” Four asked. “Even I know most food comes from farming. It’s not easy since there’s not a lot of sun, but…”

“I’m not stupid,” I said defensively. Four recoiled like I’d hit her. “No, I mean… sorry.” I mumbled. “I’m not mad. I just, you know. I’m not very smart. And other ponies know that, so they talk down to me a lot, and… it’s sort of a reflex. Sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Four said. “I think you’re sweet.”

I sputtered something that was a little like words and tried to focus on the menu. Four giggled, and we ordered our food. By the time the waiter came by I was able to form enough words to order soup and a sandwich without having to point at the menu wordlessly.

Four and I talked over the food. It was… easy to talk to her. We started off talking about nothing, and I thought she’d want to hear about the adventures I’d had, but she liked hearing about normal, boring stuff instead. Daily life. Things from when I was a foal.

I was in the middle of telling her about my very brief stint as a bartender when I saw him. He was sitting on the far side of the cafe, and there’d been a table full of ponies between us. When they got up to leave, I saw what was on the other side, and he saw me.

Rain Shadow.

Our eyes met, and I forgot all about dinner. We both stood up at the same time. Four blinked in surprise and said something that I didn’t hear over the tension in the air.

I could have bailed and run for it. I could have tried an apology. There were a lot of ways to handle the situation, and some of them might even have resulted in calm and collected dialogue where we resolved our problems like adults.

But those were loser options for losers.

I smirked and shrugged at him. He started walking towards me, shoving a waiter out of the way when he got in the way.

“I didn’t know you were alive,” I said. “This is awkward.”

“How are you here?” Rain Shadow growled. He stopped a few paces away from me. I saw him touch a pistol at his side, but he wasn’t drawing yet. This close I could see scars peeking out around the edges of his uniform.

I tilted my head. “Let’s see, last I remember, you went crazy and killed a bunch of relatively innocent ponies and I had to stop you. Then you tried to drag me down to Tartarus with you.”

“I spent a month in the hospital before I could even walk again!” he spat. “You can’t… you shouldn’t…!”

This was the part where I could probably have calmed things down and tried to talk to him rationally. It was an option. But I was still kind of pissed off at him.

“How’s your sister?” I asked.

He drew his gun. I could see it in his eyes. He was going to shoot me. I knew it wouldn’t do anything. He must have known it somewhere too, but he was too mad to care. I was going to let him take a shot, and that’d be the last thing he ever did.

A hoof grabbed the gun out of his teeth.

“Stop it!” the mare holding the gun snapped. “What’s wrong with you? Both of you!”

“This is the witch that ruined my--” Rain Shadow started.

“You’re on medical leave!” she said firmly. Rain Shadow’s nose scrunched up and he just looked so incredibly punchable that I was only able to resist the impulse by a feat of pure willpower.

“Chamomile, what’s going on?” Four asked. She stood up slowly and stumbled. “I don’t-- you-- I don’t feel good…”

“Four?” I turned just as she collapsed, shaking and twitching. “Four!”

I was down on my knees, trying to hold her still. I had no idea what was going on. She wasn’t just unconscious and twitching, every muscle in her body was fighting. The mare who’d stopped Rain Shadow was next to me.

“She’s having a seizure,” she said. “Does she have a history?”

“I don’t know! What do we do?”

“Don’t panic,” the mare said. “Let go. If you try and hold her, she’s more likely to hurt herself. We just want to keep her away from anything dangerous until it passes.”

I swallowed and nodded, letting go. Four shook like a leaf, kicking and twitching. It only lasted a minute or so, but it was a terrifying minute, being unable to do anything at all except watch her suffer. It eased up, and she went still.

“It looks like it’s over,” the mare said quietly. “She needs rest. You should take her somewhere safe and quiet.”

“We can’t just let them go,” Rain Shadow protested. “Come on, Nova Stella! She’s the one I told you about!”

The mare, whose name was Nova I guess, sighed. “We’re not turning this into a battlefield. I don’t think she’s going to hurt anypony today, is she?” She looked up at me and smiled a little. “And she’s got more to worry about.”

“What do you mean?” I frowned.

“This.” Nova Stella moved a lock of Four’s mane aside, revealing small scars along the base of her horn. “I’ve seen this before. I don’t know where you found this mare, but… I’ve met another mare like her. These are surgical scars.”

I felt my blood start to chill. “What kind of surgery?”

“I don’t know, not exactly,” Nova admitted. “They were some research group operating down here on the ground, taking ponies in from the wasteland and trying to… improve them. Dangerous experiments we wouldn’t do to Enclave citizens. I’ve seen some of the successes. They were examined by the local hospital. It felt more like we were doing quality control on a product than a real medical check.”

“So they were all like Four?”

“No. I don’t think… she’s one of the successes.”

That made me tense up. Nova stepped back, sighing.

“This is a mistake,” she mumbled. “This girl probably doesn’t have all that long. I don’t know all the details, but I know the things they did to them… the subjects all required a regular drug regimen to stay stable.”

“I can get her whatever she needs,” I said, standing up. Four was still out of it, but I could see she was slowly waking up.
Nova hesitated, then nodded and fished a pen and pad of paper out of her uniform, scribbling a few things down.

“This is a list of drugs we had to supply the test subjects with. I know they can be found locally, and I’m sure you have sources.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

Nova nodded. “Be careful with her. The Damascus lab had some kind of accident and the whole place burned to the ground. I’m not sure what they were working on, but it was dangerous.”

Rain Shadow fumed. “This is stupid! We’re putting them under arrest. We can take the filly to the hospital for whatever treatment she needs, and put that monster in chains!”

“You almost died trying to get revenge last time,” Nova said. “I told you, if you want to heal, you need to let it go.” She put a hoof on his chest. “It’s not easy. I know. You want to hurt her because you were hurt, but that won’t make you better. Only forgiveness heals wounds of the heart.”

“I just want to get Four somewhere safe,” I said. “Rain Shadow, I get why you hate me. If you want to have it out next time we meet, fine. But we won’t involve other ponies. That’s fair enough, right?”

He scoffed and looked away. “Fine. I’m not a dishonorable monster like you. Go and take your marefriend out of here.”

I nodded and picked Four up, carrying her on my back. “Thanks, uh, Nova Stella, right? You seem like a decent pony.”

“I swore an oath to do no harm,” she said, with a sad smile. “That comes before everything else, even the military.”

“I can walk on my own,” Four said. She’d said that four or five times now, and I had very carefully not listened every time she protested about being carried like a foal. She sounded exhausted. I wasn’t going to let her exert herself for even an instant.

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Can’t you be nice and let me carry you across the threshold?” I gave her a teasing smile and her cheeks lit up like bright red apples. The darkness of the subway system gave way to the light of Sanctuary, and Four stayed still right until the moment she realized other ponies could see us.

“T-that’s far enough!” she said, scrambling to her hooves and flopping off my back, trying to look cool and collected. Four was barely on her hooves, her thin legs shaking with exhaustion and her stance wide while she fought vertigo.

“Did you two have fun?” Unsung asked, from her perch above us on some of the architecture of the old station. Her expression changed from amused to concerned when she saw the looks on our faces.

“Something happened,” a pony whispered from way too close by. Grey Gloom stepped out of the shadows. I’d swear on a stack of books on camouflage and optics that she either hadn’t been there or had somehow learned to become invisible. “A destined meeting for the star-crossed.”

“We ran into somepony who has a grudge against me,” I said. “It’s fine. We didn’t even get into a real fight. We talked it out.”

I felt the silent gazes all around me. My coat bristled with annoyance and I shot a glare at the ponies who barely knew me and shouldn’t have assumed already that I was violent.

"You need to tell us what happened," Opening said. "If there's something that could impact future missions..."

“I’m serious!” I snapped. “I didn’t even punch him! Anyway, there’s something more important. Something happened to Four.”

Destiny floated over to get a closer look at us. “I thought something might happen. When was it?”

“Maybe thirty minutes ago?” I shrugged. “We were in the middle of dinner and she had a kind of, um, attack. I think it was a seizure. There was somepony there who knew first-aid, so she’s okay now, but--”

“A seizure?” An earth pony I didn’t recognize, all in light shades of pink and pinkish shades of white, stormed over to us. The suit she was wearing was tailored, and the same violet as her eyes. The suit was cut around her flanks to show her cutie mark, a big violet gem with a white star in the middle. “We shouldn’t have allowed her to go out if she has some kind of medical problem!”

“She’s not a prisoner,” Unsung said, dropping down next to the pink pony. “Chamomile, I’d like you to meet Asterism. She’s kind enough to finance our activities.”

“In other words, I’m in charge since I’m paying for this mess!” Asterism snapped. She was getting on my nerves, and her sharp attitude drove Four back a step. I got between them protectively. “We need her to pilot the weapon! If she can’t even do that, I wasted a lot of money for nothing!”

“She’s not a tool for you to use,” I growled.

I took a step toward her, and an earth pony all in black - coat, mane, barding, even his eyes - got between us, putting a hoof on my shoulder to halt my advance. He had some decent muscle on him, but wrestling monsters had sort of given me a different view on what was actually an impressive amount of flesh to flex.

“Who’s this chump?” I asked.

“Shadowmere is the highest-paid bodyguard in the city,” Asterism said. “He keeps thugs like you from getting my suit dirty.”

I looked him over. I was pretty sure I could take him. He looked like he was pretty sure he could take me. Unsung cleared her throat loudly and stopped both of us from finding out.

“We have bigger enemies to fight than each other,” she said. “Asterism, if Four isn’t able to pilot the weapon we have other plans. Her health comes before anything else. I won’t throw ponies away. That’s what the Enclave did to us, and we’re better than that.”

“Speaking of her health, there’s a list of drugs she needs,” I said. I pulled it out of one of my new tracksuit’s pockets and gave it to Unsung. Asterism snatched it out of her grasp and read over the paper.

“This is a strange list,” she mumbled. “I’ve never heard of half of these. X-cell? Calmex?”

“The pony who gave me the list said they should all be available at the local hospital.”

“Oh, the hospital under Enclave military control? The one where every pill dispensed comes with a stack of paperwork I’ll have to forge and a doctor that will have to be bribed? That hospital?” Asterism snorted in annoyance. “That’s why you need me. Half of you probably already started coming up with a plan to break in and shoot up the place and steal the medicine on the way out!”

I had indeed been starting to plan that out. I didn’t want to admit it, though.

“I’d consider it a personal favor if you were able to get these supplies,” Unsung said softly.

Asterism huffed. “Fine! But you’d better not ask me for a single extra cap! I’m already risking enough on this, and so far all I’ve got is a hole in the ground filled with crazy ponies. Shadowmere, let’s go. I have legitimate business to attend to. I can’t be down here all night.”

She put her nose firmly in the air and walked past us. Shadowmere gave me a small shrug.

“Nothing personal,” he rumbled, before following her out.

I watched them go. Destiny floated down next to me.

“So what happened?” the ghost asked.

I told her and the others about what happened in the city with Rain Shadow and Four’s seizure. They all nodded along, looking concerned.

“That must have been right around the time we were running activation tests on the thaumatic booster,” Klein Bottle said, the short little fluff pegasus leaning against one of the Grandus’ massive metal legs. “Can’t be a coincidence.”

“It’s been tuned to a precise magical frequency,” Destiny said, her tone implying she agreed. “You remember how I had to retune the Exodus armor’s thaumoframe to work with your magic instead of mine, Chamomile? It’s the same idea. When we turned it on, it must have created some kind of resonance.”

“Probably needs fine-tuning,” Klein said. “The seizure could have been a result of the patterns being close enough to interfere but slightly out of phase so it was causing destructive interference instead of boosting the signal.”

“Postpone any more tests until after we’re sure it’s safe,” Unsung ordered. “Grey Gloom, could you help Four to a bunk?”

Gloom nodded and silently helped Four towards one of the side rooms. I still had no idea how she managed to walk totally silently with hooves on concrete.

Unsung sighed and sat down. “I’m sorry about that, Chamomile. Asterism is an extremely valuable ally, even if she’s somewhat abrasive. I don’t think she likes having to resort to working with us.”

"If it wasn't for her we'd be down to fighting with sticks and stones," Opening agreed.

“Why is she working with you?” I asked. “I thought the Enclave would be good for business.”

“It’s not just about business to her,” Unsung explained. “Before the Enclave came here, Asterism essentially ran this city. Now she’s just a small fish trying to swim with the sharks and wondering when they’ll snap her up.”

I grunted. “Will she actually get the medicine Four needs?”

“She will. She’s reliable,” Unsung assured me. “She just likes to complain. It’s a negotiating tactic. If she really couldn’t do something, she’d just tell us. There’ve been things we haven’t been able to get.”

“Like when Big Barrel wanted a Balefire Egg Launcher,” Opening noted. “Asterism told him to go pound sand and she wouldn’t allow something like that in her city.”

“A wise decision on her part,” Unsung muttered. “Big Barrel would use it at the first opportunity just to watch the explosion.”

Grey Gloom emerged from the side rooms and closed the door quietly behind her. “She’s settled in. She was more tired than she looked.”

“Thank you,” Unsung said. She stood up. “I think it’s time I told you what we’re planning, Chamomile.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got some kind of plan to kick the Enclave out of the city,” I said. “White Glint was sure you’d be here just because they were here too.”

Unsung smiled. “She’s not wrong. This is the largest operation on the surface in decades.”

"Most Dashites get killed by monsters or raiders before they even get their heads on straight," Opening said. "White Glint helps us out once in a while by passing on news about recent exiles, and we try and find them before they can get killed."

“Okay, you help each other, but then what? Is this really what you should be doing?” I asked. “I mean, you’re Dashites, right? So you want to help the ponies down here on the surface. Isn’t the Enclave helping them?”

“It’s a poison pill,” Grey Gloom whispered. “They offer trinkets and small luxuries to the ones in power so they can take what they want.”

“Some of what they’re doing is good,” Unsung admitted. “But it’s not being done authentically. It’s propaganda hiding the exploitation. You remember the orphanage? They’re making ponies dependent on them. They want to create order, just like they have above the clouds. You come from the Enclave, you know what it’s like! The military on top, answering in theory to the civilian government, but who really has the power? Every year, their budget increases, and everything else withers! They’ve drained all they can from the ponies they claim to protect and the only thing left is conquest!”

“But life is so bad for some ponies down here--”

Opening shook his head and whispered. "She's on a roll now with her speech. Just wait for her to finish."

“Will they eat bits when the Enclave buys up their crops? Will the Enclave help build new homes for ponies living in ruins? There might be a few less raiders, yes, but only because the Enclave will shoot anypony who crosses them. They’re exploiting these ponies and selling them a dream of an old Equestria that doesn’t exist anymore! I won’t let them do that. These ponies won’t survive in a world where the Enclave has stripped everything to the bone!”

“So you’re planning on stopping the Enclave before it scoops up everything worth taking in Dark Harbor,” I said, sitting down and folding my hooves.

“The Enclave won’t be driven out easily,” Unsung said. She flew up to stand on one of the tall cabinet-style consoles around the platform. “They’ve invested a lot in this operation. Careers are relying on this working. A few little attacks here and there will just make them dig in deeper and deeper. The operation at Stable 83 was a big success -- you sealed off a source of essentially free resources that they can no longer rely on!”

“Well, there were also crazy monsters,” I mumbled.

“Don’t be afraid to take credit for doing good work,” Unsung said. “We need to keep hitting them like that. The ponies in charge can’t just leave or they’ll lose everything. We’ll make them double down, commit more and more, until the pony in charge has to come down himself. If we do everything just right, we’ll drag the Grand Admiral of the Enclave Northern Joint Fleet down here to the ground and bury him in it!”

Chapter 39 - Crime of the Century

“You want me to do what?” I asked, my voice carefully flat. “I must have heard you wrong because it sounds like you want me to murder somepony.”

“'Murder' isn’t the term I’d use,” Unsung said. “It’s not murder to kill somepony you’re at war with.”

“I don’t think this counts as war,” Destiny said. “And even during the war, we treated the zebras who assassinated officers as war criminals!”

“We can’t stand up to the Enclave directly, you know that,” Opening said, sounding a little less sure than Unsung. “We need to hurt them as much as we can with every action we take. Asterism would talk about maximizing our return on our investments. This is the best way to do it.”

I groaned. “Just… go over it again. And try to sell me on it instead of making it sound like the kind of thing I’d put myself in jail for.”

Unsung nodded to Opening, probably thinking I didn't see her smiling at browbeating me into hearing the details. He motioned for Unsung to take the lead.

“It’s not a complicated job,” Unsung said. “Right now, the Enclave feels safe in the city. They’ve suppressed most of the raider gangs in the area, and even the most drugged-out bandits are keeping their distance. They can walk the streets in safety because they’ve got a whole army backing them up. We need to take away that sense of security.”

I nodded, letting her continue. If there was one thing Unsung liked, it was making speeches. I wasn’t sure if she practiced them when nopony was looking or if she was just that good off the cuff.

“I want you to attack the Enclave’s base of operations in the city. Instead of a ship or fortified bunker, they feel all they need is the old police precinct. The fact they’ve taken it over and kicked out what few lawponies the city had before they came speaks volumes about how they view themselves.”

She started pacing, using her hoofbeats to give a rhythm to her words.

“We obviously can’t just run in, guns blazing. If we did, aside from being suicidal, all we’d be doing is hurting the few soldiers brave enough to try and stop us. Some of them are probably decent ponies, and even though I want the Enclave gone, I don’t want to mindlessly kill ponies en masse."

Opening nodded. "The best way to use our resources and time is to cause as much disruption as possible, and that means decapitating the chain of command.”

“Hopefully not literally,” I mumbled.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I don’t think you could get that close,” Unsung said, stopping to shrug. “All of my agents have Dashite brands. They’d be spotted almost immediately if we tried to infiltrate. You’ve still got your cutie mark, but you were just seen by an Enclave officer and I’m not willing to trust he didn’t report the encounter. They’ll be looking for you. If we can’t get close, that means we have to attack from far away.”

“And with DRACO, I’m the best pony for that?” I guessed.

"Nopony else here was trained as a sniper," Opening said. "It was a hole in our expertise."

“I don’t have anypony else with quite the right skillset,” Unsung admitted. “Split Moon is unbeatable, but only within reach of his wingblades. Klein Bottle isn’t a fighter. Grey Gloom… could probably get inside, since she’s an infiltration specialist, but she doesn’t like killing and she already did her part on this mission gathering information. You can use your rifle to snipe the base commander from long range. Big Barrel has volunteered to be your support and he has an exit strategy.”

“You’re still talking about shooting a pony when they don’t have a way to shoot back,” I said.

“Yes,” Unsung admitted. “Do you have a better idea?”

“You’re just trying to get the attention of the higher-ups, right?” I asked. “What if you did something showy that didn’t hurt anypony? You could… I don’t know. Launch fireworks and put up graffiti?”

“Those are the kinds of things children do,” Unsung chided. “They’d blame it on foals. This isn’t something we can do without hurting ponies, because hurting them is the point. They can ignore paint, they can ignore pamphlets, they can’t ignore a bullet.”

I mean, I knew she was objectively right. Rusty had been putting up posters all over the slums trying to get Kasatka’s attention. Everypony knew what he was doing, and the Enclave decided to just ignore it. Stuff like that wasn’t even worth the time it took to investigate it.

“Come now, little one!” A big hoof dropped onto my shoulder, and I looked back at a green and grey pegasus who smelled like vodka and gunpowder. “It is simple mission, yeah? We sneak in, you make one little shot, and go home. Who could ask for a better job?”

“Big Barrel, are you drunk?” Opening sighed. "Please don't do this again. I can only put so much idiot-proofing into my plans..."

“Only a little drunk,” the pegasus said, letting go of me and stepping away with only a bit of sway in his step. He had an uneven gait to his walk, and it took me a moment to realize why. He was missing his left wing. There was a massive scar running from his neck all the way down to the brand on his flank. “All of us have our own ways of getting through the day, no?”

Unsung sighed and rubbed her temple.

Opening gave me a pleading look. “Chamomile, we need you.”

“It’s up to you, Chamomile,” Destiny said quietly. “We can walk away from this. Do we even need to get back up above the clouds this badly? The other Exodus ships are probably down here somewhere.”

What she really meant was, she didn’t care if I ever saw my home again. I’d already lost it once, right? Cirrus Valley was wiped off the map and nopony cared except me. The pony who did it had my Dad, and I’d probably never see him again, and nopony cared except me. It was up to me. It was all up to me, because nopony else would bother doing it.

“Just… give me a picture of him so I don’t shoot the wrong pony,” I sighed.

Unsung grinned.

“You seem depressed,” Big Barrel said as we walked along the subway tunnel. He had at least six flashlights strapped to him, one on each forehoof, one on his helmet, and three on his battle saddle all hanging at crazy angles, making him cast enough light for a whole squad of ponies.

The lights were a little eccentric, but I had no idea what he was going to do with the bayonet fixed to the end of the rocket launcher on the left side of his barding. I hoped it was just for decoration.

“You want a drink?” He pulled a flask from his saddlebags and offered it to me.

I took the flask cautiously and opened it up, adjusting my helmet so I could sniff at it. It smelled like paint thinner and rainwater.

Whatever. I took a sip and swallowed before the taste could have a chance to hit me, then gave him back the flask. It was even worse than the bathtub vodka I’d had in the city.

“What is that stuff?” I coughed. The taste in the back of my throat was like dirt and smoke and lots of other dark things, very few of which were actually good for eating.

Big Barrel laughed and patted my back. “It’s made from mushrooms! They are one of the only things that grow down here, yeah? The ponies here, they do not get enough sunlight. Mushrooms can grow anywhere. Especially without sun! The smart ponies farm them instead of wasting time with crops that need more. But, perhaps those ponies who struggle have more hope?” He shrugged. “Hope can keep a pony alive, or kill them. It is medicine and poison. Just like alcohol.”

He took a big sip before putting the flask away.

“You do not want to do this mission,” he said frankly. “I understand. You’ve never been a soldier, yes?”

“I was a bartender,” I said, giving myself a promotion from bouncer. I’d earned it.

Big Barrel nodded. I’d expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. “We were all something else before this. I was a soldier. A good soldier. Maybe too good. There were many missions that were not for good soldiers. They were for soldiers who follow orders without thinking.”

“You refused to follow orders and got a dishonorable discharge,” Destiny said.

“No. That would have been, ah, maybe better. I stopped caring. Nothing mattered to me. It was like living in a daze. It is like this--” he tapped the flask. “--It numbs. And then, I found something I could care about, but it was too late. I couldn’t save them. And I couldn’t save myself. If I had been smarter...” He reached up to touch the huge scar on his left side.

I winced. “Sorry.”

“You should see the other pony!” Big Barrel laughed. He stopped and looked up. “Here we are.”

I looked around and saw nothing, then followed his gaze to the tunnel roof. There were boxes and wires blinking away happily. Some kind of electrical equipment? It didn’t look like part of the subway lights.

“Those are shaped charges,” Destiny said.

“Yes,” Big Barrel said pleasantly. “While our glorious leader was practicing speeches on you, I was getting things ready for the party!” He pulled out a detonator.

“Should we be standing here?” I asked. “This seems really close to the, uh, explosives.”

“Probably not!” Big Barrel squeezed the trigger.

I half-expected a giant explosion that would deafen me and throw me down the tunnel with a wave of pressure, but the charges were surprisingly sedate. There was a sharp crack more like a large-caliber weapon and a puff of dust and smoke. The concrete ceiling cracked.

“Take two steps back,” Big Barrel said, stepping back himself.

Dust rained down, the cracks spread, and… it all stopped. The big stallion frowned and triggered the detonator again, looking up at the expended charges and swearing under his breath.

“Stupid bucking knockoff semtex trash…” he growled.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Is nothing,” Big Barrel said. “It just needs some encouragement.”

I didn’t know what he meant until he grabbed the trigger for his rocket launcher and aimed it at the cracked ceiling.

“Wait--!” I shouted, and it didn’t matter that I was too late to stop him because he wouldn’t have listened even if I hadn’t been.

The rocket exploded against the roof, showering us with debris and shrapnel. The tunnel shook and groaned. Big Barrel stood there, stock-still, just watching it. I ran away because, guess what, I’m not insane!

Above me, the roof collapsed, something finally giving way with a squeak and snap, a huge slab of concrete swinging down, rebar straining and trying to hold it up, bending and twisting and finally giving up when one end of the slab hit the subway tracks with an almighty thump, a massive cloud of dust catching the early-morning sunlight from above.

The edge of it was only inches from Big Barrel’s hooves. If it had come down even a little differently, it would have killed him.

“There!” he said proudly. “I just had to knock a little harder. No problem.” He blew a kiss to the rubble. “Sometimes, the ones that play hard to get are more satisfying.”

“This is supposed to be a stealth mission!” I hissed, storming up to him. “Do you have any idea how much noise you just made?!”

“You worry too much,” he said, walking confidently up the ramp.

I followed him up to what ended up being some kind of parking structure. There were still a few wrecked carts and old skywagons rusting away, not worth the trouble of hauling away.

“The Enclave, always watching the streets and skies. So we come up inside a building! It’s brilliant, yes?” He grinned.

I didn’t even get a chance to say anything before I heard hooves on concrete. Big Barrel was just standing there watching, so I had to be the smart adult one and drag him into the shadows between two broken-down heaps. I swatted at his lights until he pressed a switch somewhere on his tactical gear and all of them switched off at once, leaving us in the dark.

A mare in uniform walked down the ramp on the far side of the parking garage. She didn’t bother looking around and just cautiously walked up to the big hole in the floor.

“Yeah, I found out what made that noise,” she said. There was a murmur as somepony replied to her over the radio headset she was wearing. “It looks like the basement floor collapsed.”

Big Barrel raised his rocket launcher. I scowled at him and shoved it down, giving him a look. He rolled his eyes and sighed, nodding.

“I’ll come back up in a second, I’m just going to check around to make sure this place doesn’t come down under our hooves.”

The mare cautiously stepped onto the rubble ramp, testing it with her weight and looking down into the gloom of the subway tunnel. She didn’t even notice Big Barrel was right behind her until it was too late. He held a machete in his teeth and swung it into her neck. It wasn’t a clean cut like one of Split Moon’s blades. The machete was heavy and dull and chopped halfway through her spine and just stopped.

She turned in surprise, shock keeping her from feeling pain. Big Barrel left the machete there, just stuck in her flesh, blood starting to bead around the edge. She tried to say something, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was a spray of blood. Big Barrel held up a hoof, motioning for her to wait a moment, then ripped the machete free, opening up her neck. He kicked her out of the way in a spray of blood, flinching and looking down at his gear, annoyed.

“Bah! Got it all over me…” he tried to wipe the crimson off his piecemeal combat armor. “You go to the top level, yeah?” He motioned with the bloody machete casually. “I will prepare the, ah, exit strategy.” He reached down and plucked the radio from the dead mare, putting the headset on. “I will be on frequency 140.48. It should be unmonitored. Call if you need help.”

“Yeah,” I said, mostly just wanting to step away from all the blood and death. It was a little low to fly, so I just walked up the ramp quickly, checking the corners as I started towards the top level.

“Chamomile, I’m starting to like this less and less,” Destiny whispered. “And I didn’t like it to begin with!”

“Tell me about it,” I said. I wasn’t sure how many levels it was, but they all seemed more or less empty, just concrete and garbage and shadows. “I’m starting to wonder if it would be less dangerous to apologize to Rain Shadow, turn myself in, and hope for the best. I mean… am I even technically a criminal?”

“Honestly? I’ve sort of been letting it slide and trying to pick things up from context clues, but I have no idea how your society works. Like, what even is a Dashite?”

I saw light at the top of the next ramp and a sliver of open sky. It was time to be extra careful. I practically crawled the last few steps, staying low so I wouldn’t be seen. Peeking over the edge, I spotted them right away. Three ponies, all of them with radio headsets. Two of them were sitting next to a kettle, probably waiting for it to boil. The third had binoculars and was looking over the edge.

All of them were in uniform. If I didn’t do something about them, I was pretty sure Big Barrel would. I couldn’t imagine he’d be gentle with them. Or leave them alive.

“How long do you think she’ll be?” one of them asked.

“Try to get her on the radio again. You know the range on these things is crap with all the concrete in the way,” another one said, poking the hotplate the kettle was sitting on. “I think we need a new spark battery for this. It’s taking forever to heat up.”

“We gotta keep them from calling for help,” I whispered.

DRACO beeped and fired. It was a soft subsonic thump, followed by a pop. A tiny burst of smoke puffed into the air over the three soldiers, and they looked up with surprise.

“Confetti?” one of them asked, looking at the rain of foil strips.

I had like, maybe a second to act. I surged into action, pushing myself hard, and I felt everything slow down, just like it had a few times before back outside of the Cosmodrome. The world was frozen in place and the air was as thick as jelly and cold like ice. One mare, two stallions. I kicked the first one, the stallion with the binoculars, in the side of the head, smashing the radio into their temple. Their eyes were rolling, and they slumped against the chest-high concrete around the roof’s edge..

He hadn’t hit the ground, and the other ones were already moving. They were on break around the kettle but had excellent reaction time. The mare was reaching for a beam rifle. I snapped out my knife and threw it, the unnaturally sharp metal slicing into the rifle and hitting the spark battery. Lighting crawled up her hoof and she spasmed and shook, collapsing in a heap.

The last one turned around. I forgot that I’d swapped the Junk Jet out for the cryolator. I bit down on the trigger, and instead of launching a relatively harmless can of Cram at him, I sprayed him down with liquid nitrogen. His coat turned white with frost, and he made a choking sound before he collapsed.

The world swung back into motion, the chaff falling around me and the fallen Enclave guards. I grabbed the one I’d half-frozen, and I was going to apologize until I saw what happened when flash-frozen pony fell on hard concrete. There were cracks. And chunks. At least it had probably been quick.

“Buck,” I muttered. “I meant to knock him out.”

I tied up the other two and ditched the radios, then rolled the dead pony down the ramp and out of sight. I trotted to where the soldier with the binocs had been looking over the edge. I could see right into the old police station from here. There were soldiers lined up in neat squares, all standing at attention and waiting.

I sighed and sat down with my back to the wall. I felt feverish and exhausted from pushing myself like that.

“You okay?” Destiny asked. “Your metabolic readings spiked. It looks like that one augment you grew is acting up again."

“I meant to do it this time,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sit for a minute or two and I’ll be okay.” The edges of my wings were burning hot. I spread them a little to try and cool down faster. “I think I’m getting better at this. It’s like a really annoying second puberty where you grow metal bits instead of getting pimples.”

“So…” Destiny said, after a little while, when my heart had stopped pounding and I felt a little more… present, less like I was floating. “You were going to tell me about the Dashites before you killed a pony by freezing his face off?”

“Why are you so curious?” I asked.

“I want to know if we’re killing ponies for the right reason,” Destiny replied.

“Mmm…” I wanted to know that, too. “When I was growing up I heard all kinds of horror stories about Dashites. They’re traitors to the Enclave. It started with Rainbow Dash, right after the bombs fell. She abandoned the Enclave.”

“Rainbow Dash? Known for her loyalty? Hero to millions? That Rainbow Dash?”

I blushed. “Look, I wasn’t there! I only know what I was taught, okay? Everything was in chaos, and the Enclave needed her, and she just… left. She abandoned her responsibilities when we needed her most. It’s the same for other Dashites. I was always told we were going to help eventually, once we got our own house in order.”

“Well, they’re here now, aren’t they?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah. But if Unsung is right, it’s not to help anypony. Like at the orphanage.” I tilted my head back, knocking it against the concrete. “What do you think I should do?”

“Leave and find something to do that doesn’t require asking yourself a ton of ethics questions,” Destiny said.

“Good answer, and extremely unhelpful,” I groaned. I was starting to feel better. Physically. My stomach was still just as queasy about this whole mess. I got up and gave the skies a wary look for stray VertiBucks and patrols, then leveled DRACO at the police station. DRACO was smart enough to zoom in on its own, highlighting one soldier after another in its display and displaying targeting information, range, and probably if I kept looking at options I’d find out how to get their horoscopes.

“Look who it is,” Destiny said. DRACO zoomed in slightly on one of the stallions in the crowd. Rain Shadow. He was standing next to Nova Stella and trying to look attentive and dutiful.

“I told you I ran into him,” I said. “That pony next to him is the one that helped Four.”

“You should shoot him,” Destiny said.

I balked at that, actually shoving the rifle out of alignment like it was going to fire on its own. Which it might. DRACO was more like a pet than a firearm. “What the buck is wrong with you?” I hissed.

“You’re already planning on shooting somepony else, right?” Destiny asked. “Somepony you don’t even know. Why not shoot Rain Shadow? He’s caused you a lot of trouble, he’s got a huge grudge against you, and he’ll definitely do something later that’s going to make you wish you took him out right now.”

“I can’t just… he’s a jerk, but he’s not evil. We both hurt each other. If we never saw each other again, we’d both be better off.”

“So this guy, even though he’s tried to kill you and definitely will do it again, you’re not willing to kill him? But you’re okay with the idea of shooting somepony you know literally nothing about?”

I swung the view over to the front of the troops when they all jerked to stiffer and more alert attention. A pony in a very elaborate uniform, with medals pinned all over half his chest, walked out of the police station with guards on both sides. He walked over to a podium set up in front of the crowd and started looking over them in critical silence before clearing his throat and speaking into the microphone.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice rough, the speech echoing from loudspeakers on all sides. I blinked and looked around.

“What’s going on?” I asked quietly.

“He’s broadcasting live,” Destiny said. “It’s not just on the PA system, it’s on a civilian radio channel too.” She paused.

“Such arrogance,” rumbled my radio. “Flower girl, are you in position yet? I have been listening to you complain about ethics, but I am not hearing a lot of shooting.”

“Big Barrel?” I asked.

“I can hear the arrogant muleson talking, so I know he is not dead yet. It is fine. Unsung wanted him killed during his pretty little speech.”

“Mmm…”

“I know that sound,” Big Barrel said, and I could imagine the grin. “You are having second thoughts! It is normal. I cannot blame you. It’s hard to kill a pony who has not wronged you, yes? He is not shooting you, he has not even called you rude names, and you are asked to put a bullet in him.”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” I said.

“I don’t. I made my peace with it already. But, I know more than you. I am not a smart pony, not a wise pony, but I am an old pony, and I know the Commander. I will tell you something of him so you can make the right decision. Commander Flywheel was part of my unit in the bad old days.”

“He was?” I guess he and Big Barrel were around the same age, but it was hard to imagine the Commander, with his pressed uniform and chest stuffed with medals, fighting side-by-side with the ragged, crippled pony I was talking to.

“Flywheel bought his way into being an officer. Most officers do. It is democratic, yes? Nothing better for votes than putting bits in the hooves of the ponies around you. Lots of old friends and family connections. So when some fresh new Lieutenants went missing around him, ones with no strong family behind them, it was covered up. Blamed on Dashites. Training accidents. Bad weather. Anything to avoid the dishonor, yes?”

“What?” I whispered, horrified.

“Eh. Why do you think a stallion with so many medals was sent here?” Big Barrel laughed. “They don’t care what he does to surface ponies. He can tie them up and have his little fun with them all he wants, and nopony cares. And if you do care, if you find out and you try to tell everypony what was happening in the back room of the officer’s bar… they gun you down, tear off your wing, and declare you a demon before casting you out of heaven.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

“Bah. You have nothing to be sorry about! I was stupid. Not for trying to report what I saw. Those young stallions, cut up so badly they looked like zebras… No. I was stupid because I did not pick my moment. I lost my chance to stop him then.”

I zoomed in on Commander Flywheel. He had to be getting near the end of his speech. I hadn’t really been listening to it, but it sounded like it was wrapping up. Could I kill a pony like him? Somepony that might have done bad things?

If I didn’t, two other ponies had died pointlessly. More pointlessly, anyway.

I bit down on the trigger. DRACO thundered, and Flywheel’s head exploded like an overripe tomato being thrown at a brick wall. Ponies rushed over to him, but I could tell even from here that there was no way he survived.

“Hah!” Big Barrel laughed. “And ponies all over the city heard that. Sploosh! Much more exciting than listening to him tell the same story about being stuck alone in the eye of a typhoon.”

The sound of panicking ponies and yells for medics cut off when somepony remembered to turn off the live microphone on the podium. A siren started blaring a few seconds later, and I heard the dull thump of VertiBuck props.

“I think we got their attention,” I said, backing away from the edge. Somepony pointed in my direction and yelled. “And I think they know what direction the shot came from! Big Barrel, I hope you’ve got some kind of plan for getting us out of here!”

I bolted for the ramp and started charging down to the basement, hopping over the thawing corpse I’d tossed down there.

“It is funny, you know? Flywheel could not lead his way out of a paper bag. We might have done the Enclave a small favor by getting him out of the way. Much better for the ponies who he would hurt. They should all be thanking us!”

“I think they’re feeling more wrathful than thankful!” I yelled. “I count at least two VertiBucks and a lot of ponies coming right this way!”

“Eh. Don’t worry so much,” Big Barrel said. The light dimmed as I got down to the basement level. Big Barrel waved to me and smiled, punching my shoulder when I got closer. “Thank you. I know you had doubts.”

“If he was really hurting ponies like that, I had to do it,” I sighed. “I still don’t like it much.”

“Mm. Had to do it. Same reason I had.” He nodded and slapped my shoulder again. “Good! It is a good reason. It means you care! I spent too long not caring about anything.”

“So what’s the plan for getting out of here?” I asked.

“It is nothing complicated,” Big Barrel said. He motioned to one of the concrete pillars holding the building up. Blocks of explosive and wiring were lashed around it along with blinking electronics. “Building comes down. Enclave cannot find bodies and does not know you are safely away and running down subway tunnel towards home. Easy.”

“That should work,” I agreed.

“Exactly! And I even brought a little extra insurance.” He pulled something out of his vest, unwrapping it carefully from layers of padding. Inside was an oblong shape, a little smaller than a hoofball, a metal cage around something that hurt to look at. A green-purple glow shone in the darkness.

“What the buck is that?” I whispered.

“A balefire egg,” he said. “I asked Asterism for a launcher, but such is life. This is a better use for it. A little extra bang for my fireworks show!” He laughed and shook his head, then took a deep breath and sobered up. “Now, you go. You do not want to be here when this goes off.”

“Nopony should be here,” I said. “We need to--”

Something exploded upstairs.

Big Barrel looked up. “Mm. They’re starting to get into the building. While you were chatting with your ghost, I got some presents ready for intruders. We do not have time to talk. You need to leave.”

“But--”

“They will expect one of us in the rubble,” Big Barrel said, his voice quieter. “I told you, a pony needs to care about something. Go back to Unsung, tell her… I am at peace. She fulfilled her promise to me.”

“Chamomile, we need to go right now,” Destiny hissed. “There’s no time to argue with him!”

“She is right,” Big Barrel said, pushing me towards the open breach into the tunnels. He started up the ramp. “Go. I will hold them off. This was always the plan.”

I started to say something, and another tripwire bomb went off somewhere. I stomped in frustration and ran down into the dark.

“How big will the blast radius on that balefire egg be?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Destiny said. “But I don’t want to be anywhere near it! The necromatic flux could be… really bad for me.”

I felt a chill down my spine. I don’t know if it was a sensation from her or my own dead, but it felt like somepony walking over my grave.

“Hey, Flower Pony,” Big Barrel rumbled over the radio. He coughed wetly. “Can you still hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said, slowing and looking back. “Do you--”

“Don’t come back. Are you far away enough? I don’t think I can fight much more. One of them got a little lucky. Muleson bastard!”

“Big Barrel--”

“It wasn’t my real name, you know?” he laughed. “I had another one back home. I gave it up, because I didn’t want anypony to know who my older brother was. He was a cruel monster, but I had some of that cruelty too. The world is better off without either of us in it. Don’t forget that, yeah? Don’t be a monster. Slay them where you find them, and don’t… don’t become one yourself.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

“Good. Now, it’s time for a real fireworks show!”

The radio cut to static. A flash of light strobed down the tunnel. The tunnel floor rumbled. Dust rained down, and the rad count shot up from zero to enough to worry even me.

“Chamomile!” Destiny yelled.

A wall of falling debris charged towards me, a cloud of dust and ashes and rubble flowing like water through the tunnel and hitting me with the force of an oncoming storm. I couldn’t run. I planted my hooves and let it wash over me, trying to ride it out. Chunks of concrete the size of hooves came down on my head and back.

I was blind for a solid minute. Then the rumbling slowed, the debris stopped falling, and everything calmed into a near-silence punctuated by the pop of pebbles rolling and tumbling down rock.

The dust cleared, and I was no more than a few steps away from a solid wall of rubble.

“They’re definitely not coming after us through this,” I said. I touched the rubble. It was packed tight. “I hope you had some peace in the end, Big Barrel…”

Chapter 40 - Black

I sat on the edge of the old subway platform, my hooves hanging over the edge. I felt a little naked without the Exodus armor, even with the tracksuit on. My mind was just spinning. I couldn’t stop thinking but I couldn’t get myself to really think about anything in particular, either. I’d start thinking about one thing and I’d get interrupted by an intrusive thought pointing in another direction, and the only constant was that I felt bad about everything.

“Do you want to talk?” Grey Gloom asked. I hadn’t even heard her sitting down next to me. The dust-colored mare didn’t feel threatening, though. It was more like she was respecting my quiet and silence.

“I donno,” I mumbled eloquently.

“I heard about what happened in your mission,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? You knew him better than I did. I should be apologizing to you for not saving him. I should have…” I stomped on the concrete hard enough to crack it, and that was with my normal hoof. “I should have dragged him back with me or something! I shouldn’t have just… let him do that.”

“I did know him better than you,” Grey Gloom agreed. “That’s why I’m not upset. It must have been a shock to you but… It wasn’t something sudden, to me. You’re shocked by it but it isn’t something you could change. He wanted this.”

“I didn’t like being stuck helping him die,” I grumbled.

“You did something for him none of us could,” Gloom said. “You lifted the burden of his past from his shoulders. It was crushing him.”

“He could have found something else to live for! I mean, everypony has to pick themselves up sometimes, right?”

Grey Gloom was quiet for a few moments. “All of us had to pick ourselves up after we were exiled. If it wasn’t for Unsung bringing us together, I think we’d all be dead already. Before I was branded, my cutie mark was for psychiatry. I was a counselor.”

I gave her a look, and she laughed lightly.

“I know what you’re thinking. How did I end up here? Almost every military recruit has to do a short tour on the surface. It’s so they can see how bad the wasteland is for themselves. They usually come down, shoot a few raiders, and never want to set hoof on dirt ever again. A lot of them are so traumatized by it that they need to talk to somepony.”

“Somepony like you,” I said. It wasn’t a guess.

She nodded sadly. “There were a lot of horror stories. Raiders… play with their prey. But sometimes it was a different kind of nightmare. Ponies would go down to the surface and they’d find perfectly normal farmers and merchants and ponies struggling to survive. And they’d start questioning what they were told.”

“I guess those little trips didn’t go like the officers wanted,” I chuckled.

“They’d talk to me, and I was ordered to tell them to forget it all,” Grey Gloom said. “I had to tell ponies to stop having empathy. I had to lie and make them believe those ponies weren’t worth saving. That was my job. To keep them from becoming Dashites. It just didn’t work for me, because I knew the truth behind the truth.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t regret it,” she said. “I think it’s more important to be authentic to yourself, or you might as well already be dead. Most of the ghosts here wish they’d been true to themselves in life. It’s the greatest regret. Spending decades working at a job they hate, then dying before they can enjoy what they were working for.”

She looked back over her shoulder at the Grandus.

“The spirits hovering around that thing worry me,” she whispered. “They’re angry. Wrathful. Powerful. They’re shackled to this world by something outside their control. It carries death with it in an inescapable spiral.”

“...Okay?” I said.

She nodded to where Destiny was floating, helping Klein Bottle with something. “Your ghost is different. She has regrets, but she doesn’t wallow in them. She’s trying to fix everything she did wrong. I like her.”

“Want me to set you two up on a date?” I joked.

Grey Gloom smiled and patted me on the back. “She’s not my type, but thank you for asking.”

“Chamomile, do you have a moment?” Opening asked. I turned to look at him. He and Four were standing next to the Grandus. The stallion waved me over with a wing, and I excused myself and got up from my very busy schedule of moping to go see what he wanted.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about the next part of the plan,” Opening said. “We’ve taken out the local military commander thanks to you, but that’s not enough to really drag things down into enough chaos for the Grand Admiral to show his face.”

“Have you tried asking nicely?” I asked sourly.

Opening frowned. "Come on, I know you're upset, but there's a lot at stake!"

"You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," Unsung said. We all looked up. She was standing on top of the Grandus, and if I had to guess she'd been there waiting for the right moment to make a dramatic entrance.

"Is that a joke about the Balefire Egg?" I asked. "It's not a good joke."

Unsung frowned. “I’m not going to apologize for what happened during your mission. Big Barrel had been looking for a place to die for a long time. If I didn’t give him a purpose he would have found his way to the grave by way of vodka.”

“So I’m supposed to be happy he’s dead?!” I snapped.

“No. None of us are happy about it. You didn’t know him like we did. Like I did. You can’t save everypony. All you can do is give some ponies peace, and be there for them in the end so they’re not alone.”

I huffed and kicked at the ground.

“If you aren’t feeling up to going out, it’s okay,” Opening said quietly. “I’ll still help you get back to the Enclave no matter what you decide. We can have Four deploy early and do your part.”

Now that was just playing dirty. I looked up at Four. The rail-thin unicorn was wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen her in before, a black flight suit with a metal panel over one shoulder and wires running through the fabric. She gave me a small smile, but I could tell she was terrified.

“You’re going to send Four out?” I asked.

“The Grandus Assault Armor is fully operational,” Four said. “Destiny and Klein Bottle were able to get everything working, thanks to those parts you brought!”

“Operational or not, have you ever been in a battle?” I asked.

“No,” Four said quietly. “But I know this will protect me.” She reached up to touch it with her hoof. The Grandus looked like one of the huge, black-iron steam trains I’d seen in pictures, but with an oversized helmet in front. It practically radiated invincibility and weight.

“I’m not worried about that,” I said. “Well, I mean, I am, but what I’m really scared of is… it’s easy to lose it up here.” I tapped my head. “I got lucky because I had some experience before lives were on the line. Throwing ponies out of the bar, getting stabbed a little, it sort of…” I struggled for words because I wasn’t good at words. “It gave me context. If I didn’t have that, the first time I got shot at I would have had a panic attack and hidden behind something until it was all over.”

“I have some experience too,” Four said. “It’s about all I have. How to pilot this thing. How to cast a few spells on command. Simulator drill after simulator drill.” She swallowed. “And I’ve seen ponies die. Badly.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that this time,” Unsung said, a little more loudly and cheerfully than was needed. “This isn’t an assassination mission. We’re not even going to go after the Enclave directly.”

“Is that so?” I raised my eyebrows.

“The one thing I dislike more than the Enclave is collaborators.” Unsung shrugged. “A lot of Enclave soldiers are decent ponies. They can be reasoned with. A lot of them would even join us if it wasn’t for the propaganda! But ponies that sell each other out for trinkets? I can’t stand that. We’ve hit the head of the local military, now we’re going to target the leader of the civilian government, the pony that sold his city to the devil and is living like a little king on the scraps the Enclave give him from their plunder.”

“I could swear you just said this wasn’t an assassination mission.”

“That’s because we’re not going to kill him. We’re going to kidnap him.” Unsung smiled. “Opening has been working on a way to get us on the air.”

“Like when the Commander was broadcasting his speech?” I asked.

"We've got some access codes that might let us get into a military transmitter," Opening said. "It'll override civilian signals."

Unsung nodded. “We’re going to get the Mayor to confess to what he did, and apologize to the whole city. Then we’ll just leave him somewhere where the crowds can find him and let them decide what to do with him.”

“You mean you want them to tear him apart for you,” I corrected.

“It’s not up to me,” Unsung said. “Maybe they’ll forgive him! All I want is for them to know the truth. You can’t deny that it’s a good cause.”

I sighed. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what Unsung was hoping would happen. I could just imagine how quickly the Enclave would work to stomp down on the ponies in Dark Harbor if they started rioting. And then they’d push back, and she’d get her chaos.

But if I didn’t do it, Four would have to.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

I could just see the street from here. It was peaceful. Foals playing in the streets, ponies carrying their shopping home without worrying about being robbed. If you squinted hard and didn’t notice that they were all behind barricades and cordons, that normal life only existed in a tiny space enforced by the Enclave soldiers ringing it, you could imagine nothing was wrong.

“The convoy is passing point alpha,” Opening whispered over our encrypted channel. “Grey Gloom estimates three minutes until they reach point beta. Please confirm ready op.”

“Ready op,” I said, then shut off my microphone so I could talk to Destiny in private. “Destiny, you’re smarter than me. Any chance this plan is going to work?”

Rubble and a carefully positioned tarp gave me a hunter’s blind looking over the city’s main street. I could hear the VertiBucks getting closer, the overburdened engines echoing through the concrete canyon.

“You’re the one who agreed to fly in front of a convoy taking the Mayor on his weekly tour through the city,” she reminded me. “Do you remember what happened last time you had to take one of these things down?”

“To be fair, I did eventually take it down,” I pointed out. “Besides, I don’t actually have to destroy them, I just have to spook them a little.”

“There’s a word for ponies that spook flying tanks armed with repeating bolt cannons,” Destiny said. “Do you know what that word is?”

“It’s not genius,” I sighed.

“No, it is not.”

The sound was getting louder. The VertiBucks were almost on top of me.

“You are cleared to engage,” Opening said. “Remember, you want to split the convoy. Block their passage and do not pursue the VIP when they break off.”

“I know, I know,” I said. You know what the dumbest thing was? Right at that moment, I got a surge of stage fright, of all things. I suddenly realized I didn’t even have a plan. Just… cause a distraction. I hadn’t thought for even one minute about how I was going to do that, and the critics were heavily armed and armored.

Worse, I had no time to think and my brain needed a long time to come up with good ideas.

I grabbed the tarp and jumped off the edge, spreading my wings and tearing the tarp free from its anchors so it would fly out behind me like a flag. The VertiBucks were flying low and slow, doing the most dangerous kind of flying possible and navigating the streets between the buildings, fighting turbulence and prop wash the whole time. All just to make sure the Mayor could see and be seen from street level.

The VertiBucks slowed when I flew out in front of them.

“Hey there!” I yelled, waving to the VertiBucks. They did the aerial equivalent of skidding to a halt, just managing to avoid crashing into each other.

“Clear the area! This is official state business!” the lead VertiBuck blared. The gatling beam gun moved in its mount, aiming towards me. In the narrow space, the one behind it couldn’t do anything except watch.

I smiled and slowly approached them. They didn’t want to just open fire right away. Not with all the civilians in the area. If we were outside the city they wouldn’t have even tried ordering me to stand down first.

“We are authorized to use lethal force if you do not--” The gatling gun started spinning, and I didn’t let them finish the sentence. I charged right at them, dragging the tarp behind me. Bolts snapped through it, but the sudden motion and close quarters gave me the advantage.

I drew my blade and stabbed it into the VertiBuck’s roof just as I was passing over it, jerking myself to a sudden halt and leaving the tarp draped over the canopy to blind them.

“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Destiny yelled. The VertiBuck twisted, the blinded pilot having trouble flying without visual cues.

“Neither one of them can shoot while I’m here!” I yelled back, the engine drone almost deafening. “So far so good!”

The VertiBuck tilted under me, banking to a sharp angle. My blade twisted, cutting through the metal and slipping a hoof-length sideways through the hull. A spray of murky hydraulic fluid and sparks erupted from the wound like I’d severed an artery.

“Oops,” I said. “Wait, no! This is good, right?”

The VertiBuck’s left engine sputtered and started to smoke, squealing as it started tilting on its own. I almost fell off when the pilot pitched up, the tarp falling away as he struggled to control the feisty VTOL.

“The convoy is breaking off,” Opening said. “Good work, Chamomile! Team two, intercept on Prospekt Road. Chamomile, try to keep hostile elements busy until the Grandus deploys. You’re clear to lead them out of the engagement area if needed. Overwatch out.”

“I think we’ve still got their attention,” I said, just sort of hanging on with my knife.

“We’ve got a bigger problem, Chamomile! There are a lot of civilians below us, and we severed a main hydraulic line on this thing! It’s going down!”

“Uh… um…” I needed a really brilliant idea. “Try hacking it and taking over the controls!”

Destiny sputtered in pure spiritual confusion. “What? That’s not even a thing!”

“Okay… plan C!” The engine was smoking, and that meant it was overheating, so all I had to do was cool it down! That seemed like a good idea. I pulled myself into position and sprayed it down with the cryolator. Liquid nitrogen hit the overheated engine and for almost a whole second I thought it was going to be okay.

Then the thermal shock cracked some very important and very fast-moving parts of the engine and there was what Destiny might call a ‘rapid unplanned disassembly'. The rotor seized up, the VertiBuck pitched over to that side, and the ponies below us started screaming and running for cover.

“This wasn’t a good plan!” I shouted.

Destiny didn’t even have time to yell at me and call me stupid before the Vertibuck did what it had been inevitably destined to do from the moment I cut one of the hydraulic lines. It slammed into the facade of the building we’d been drifting towards. I didn’t even try to hang on. I yanked my blade free and kicked off, just barely getting away before the VertiBuck flipped over and fell along with the brick and concrete it had broken off of the old office building. It crashed into the street and exploded into flame, broken fuel lines turning the street into a sea of flame.

“I guess that’s one way to do it,” Destiny said. “But the other VertiBuck looks upset, and so do they.”

“They?” A beam lanced past my head, and I looked down to see the soldiers starting to organize themselves. Most of the civilians had already fled for cover from the destruction and chaos. “Oh. Them.”

“This is team two,” Unsung radioed in. “We can’t secure the mayor! We need some fire support! Both of us are pinned down!”

“I’ve got more heat than expected too!” I yelled. The second VertiBuck had taken the time to gain some altitude and opened fire, the gatling beam gun raining down shots in my general direction. I flew for my life, trying to find cover. “I’ve got a VertiBuck on my tail and a bunch of angry soldiers!”

“Launching!” Four shouted, her transmission filled with static.

“Chamomile, start flying west,” Opening ordered.

“But that’s going to bring my trouble down right on top of your trouble like a big trouble sandwich!” I banked right and a beam went right through one of my back legs like the armor wasn’t even there. The pain knocked the wind right out of my wings, and the ground reached out to catch me.

"Don't worry! Grey Gloom can get the both of us out of here! Trust the plan!"

I hit a wire, then another. Sparks exploded around me as I took out the local power grid. The VertiBuck tried to follow me down with its cannon, the shots going wide and into the high buildings around us. I slammed into an awning, bounced off, and then landed very firmly on the concrete sidewalk.

I groaned and flipped over onto my back, blood pooling under my leg. The shot had gone through the meat of my thigh, back to front. I was lucky it hadn’t gone a little to the side and hit organs. For a certain value of lucky, anyway.

Above me, the Enclave soldiers were circling in like vultures and the VertiBuck was already swooping in to finish the job.

A huge spray of light cut through the sky, ripping through the Enclave soldiers like a huge beam shotgun. The VertiBuck reeled, armor buckling under the onslaught.

“I’ve got you!” Four’s voice was like thunder. A huge black shape hovered overhead, just about the same size as the Vertibuck and surrounded by a harsh purple-blue aura of magic. Another spray erupted from the front of the Grandus, as bright as a bolt of lightning. The VertiBuck exploded, raining down on the street in pieces.

The huge form of the Grandus lowered to the streets and slammed down the last few inches, hard enough to crack the asphalt.

“Are you okay?” Four asked. The blocky shape unfolded and stood up. Armor plates as thick as my hoof shifted and briefly exposed armored hydraulics and gears until it resembled something between a Steel Ranger and a tank, painted black with only a few touches of red and gold.

“I’ll live,” I said. I could feel a healing potion start to knit my thigh back together. “How can that thing even move?”

“The thaumobooster increases the strength of my magic, so I can levitate the whole suit as long as it’s active,” Four said. The remaining soldiers were shooting at the Grandus, but they might as well have been throwing pebbles. Beam rifles just bounced off the armor. I don’t think Four even noticed most of it. “I’m glad you’re okay. I got scared when I saw you get hurt.”

I forced myself to get up. The shot had been pretty bad, but I didn’t want to let her know that. “It’s not even in my top ten,” I lied. “I just got surprised. What can I do to--”

A rocket hit the armor’s oversized helmet, exploding and nearly forcing Four to recoil. She growled in frustration and her magic aura seized a cart full of limp-looking cabbages, flinging it through the air and knocking a soldier out of the sky.

“--Help,” I finished, blinking.

“They’re so annoying!” Four snapped. “Mmph…”

The aura around the Grandus flared, and the beam shots hitting her deflected instead of being absorbed, bouncing back on the ponies firing. Four followed it up with another spray of deadly cannonfire. The cone of energy hit the edge of a building along with the soldiers. Several stories started collapsing on top of each other, furniture falling out onto the street.

“Careful!” I warned. “We can’t damage the city!”

“I know that!” Four yelled back. “I’m sorry! It’s just hard to think with all this noise! All these ponies talking to me at once…!”

“What is she talking about?” Destiny whispered.

“Chamomile, this is Overwatch,” the radio hissed. “Have you made contact with the Grandus?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got everything under control here. Thanks for the tip about heading west.”

"All part of the job," Opening said.

“Chamomile, stay with Four and cover her back,” Unsung said. “We’re still dealing with a few annoying guards trying to tail us. We can’t afford to be followed.”

“No problem,” I said. “Do we have a plan for when we need to leave?”

Four started walking, the massive, flat hooves of the Grandus sinking inches deep into the ground every time she shifted her weight, the asphalt and concrete totally unable to cope with the heavy load. I took to the air to get the weight off my still-sore leg and followed behind.

“Same way we deployed the Grandus," Opening said. "There’s a subway tunnel running under the bay. The rubble was already cleared, so you just need to keep your armor sealed until you get into a dry tunnel.”

“Under the bay?” I groaned. “The last time I went into the bay I had to fight a bunch of mutant crabs…”

“Mirelurks are dangerous, but tasty. Grab a few on the way back and we’ll have a crab boil to celebrate.”

“What? You’re not serious, are you?” I couldn’t imagine eating a monster. Actually, no, I could imagine it. Bears were probably a type of monster and they were delicious. What would a giant enemy crab even taste like? Now I kinda wanted to find out, and my stomach rumbled agreement.

A wing of armored soldiers flew over the top of one of the buildings around us, coming at the Grandus from above and firing into it, the shots doing precisely nothing. Four snatched two of them out of the air and tossed them down, stomping on one and leaving a bloody past behind. The last two were just a little smarter, smart enough to be a little behind their friends, and one of them landed on Four’s back.

The last one jumped me, because he’d gotten a degree somewhere and could tell his odds looked better if he wasn’t fighting the giant pony made out of tank parts and death. That probably meant he was destined to become an officer. He grabbed me and started trying to stab with the stinger on his armored tail. It wasn’t very effective, but the stallion probably assumed he wouldn’t be blown out of the sky with a giant beam cannon if he was hugging me.

“I’m not going to let you destroy the city!” he yelled.

Oh no. He thought he was being a hero. That made things awkward.

“Get off me!” Four yelled. I maneuvered the hero into a headlock while he kept poking me with his stinger and that’s not a euphemism, it’s attempted murder and it’s a crime. I ignored him trying to kill me and looked over to where the stallion’s friend was clinging to the Grandus’ back. He was doing absolutely nothing useful, but it was freaking Four out.

“Calm down!” I shouted. “It’s okay, Four! Give me a second and I’ll--”

She roared and slammed the Grandus into an office building, trapping the pony on her back between a rock and a hard place and squeezing hard until he was power armor wrapped around jelly. The Grandus broke something structurally important, and the building started to come down, collapsing down on top of her.

“Oh no. Four!” The pony in my hooves had gone limp. I looked down at him. He was probably alive and just unconscious. I didn’t have time to make sure. I dropped him and bolted for the rubble and the debris exploded in my face, the Grandus rising out of it enveloped in blazing ultraviolet.

“You’re all so noisy!” Four screamed. She fired, the beam cannon in the Grandus’ chest blasting through the streets. She wasn’t even aiming at anything. Buildings caught on fire and concrete exploded, tearing a wave of destruction through the city.

“I think this means things have officially gone sideways,” I groaned.

“The spirits within the Grandus are swirling around her,” Grey Gloom whispered over the radio. This was good. I needed somepony to make things creepy while all the rest of this was going on. “They’re angry. They want to destroy everything!”

“Do you have any useful suggestions?!” I yelled.

"Chamomile, this is Opening," he said. "Grey Gloom isn't doing well."

"Take care of her, I'll figure things out here."

"Sorry," Opening said. "I'll make it up to you later." The radio shut off with a snap and hiss.

“Great, so I’m on my own,” I groaned.

“You’ve still got me,” Destiny said. “And since I’m a genius, that means you can start listening to good advice.”

Another burst of beam fire cut through the city, slicing through an apartment building. My heart jumped in my chest. The city was being torn apart piece by piece. The main street was already a sea of flames.

“I have to stop her!” I flew out in front of the Grandus, waving my hooves. “Four! You need to--”

She shrieked and batted me aside with one of the assault armor’s massive legs. I went flying into and through a brick wall and came to a stop in the soft embrace of an ancient water heater. Rusty water poured down around me and I questioned my life choices while my bones decided if they were broken or not. Nothing major seemed to be actually shattered, so I had to start getting myself up instead of taking a nap.

“That didn’t work as well as I thought,” I groaned. Even if I wasn’t completely shattered my body wasn’t happy with the blunt force trauma. “This must be what it’s like for most ponies when they have to fight me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Her magical output is on par with an active megaspell, and that’s all coming from one unicorn,” Destiny said.

I yanked myself free, one of my wings tearing out pipes and sending even more water spraying into the air. “So all I have to do is wrestle down a megaspell. No problem. Please tell me you have a better plan than mine.”

“Maybe. We need to shut down her thaumatic booster.” Destiny sounded pensive. “Do you remember the resonance we were feeling around the Grandus?”

“Yeah. It tickled, like when you cast a spell.”

“Right! I got a good look at the technology while I was helping Klein Bottle repair it. It’s broadly similar to the thaumoframe in this barding, and that was causing the resonance effect because both systems are designed to amplify weak thaumatic fields and strengthen them.”

I groaned. “Destiny, please pretend I don’t know unicorn stuff.”

“I need you to grab her and hang on. I’ll try to cause enough feedback to shut down the Grandus.”

“Didn’t you just tell me you couldn’t hack things?”

“It’s not hacking! It’s more like… putting out a fire. Now get out there and wrestle that megaspell down!”

I stumbled over to the hole I’d made in the brick wall and looked outside. Conveniently, everything was on fire and ponies were screaming and running away. If nothing else, the Grandus was big enough that ponies knew where not to go.

“I really hope she doesn’t squash me like a bug,” I whispered. I took off and hovered above the Grandus. The cannon was in the chest, so I was pretty sure she couldn’t accidentally shoot me as long as I wasn’t in front of her. Of course I’d also seen her levitate the whole brick of a thing, so maybe she could do a backflip if she needed to.

I just had to play it cool.

“Four!” I yelled, ruining my surprise attack, but the last thing I needed was to surprise her. I hit the collar of her armor and grabbed the huge helmet, the thing easily large enough for an average-sized pony to curl up inside it. “Please! Look at me! You have to stop!”

The helmet’s eyes flashed and the whole thing tilted towards me, hydraulics humming.

“Chamomile?” Four asked.

I felt a surge of magic, and the world fell away.

I was floating. It’s not, despite what some ponies will tell you, anything at all like free-fall. It didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like anything I knew at all. It was like every sense I had was blurred together. I could see stars around me and the light blurred into sound and I could hear them singing. Starlight rained down around me, and the pressure had a flavor that tasted like the color mint, but not the plant.

“What is this?” I asked, and it echoed around me.

“Chamomile?” Four asked. I knew it was her. I didn’t have to ask. I wasn’t sure if I turned or she moved in front of me or if we just became aware of each other at the same time or if there was a difference between any of those things.

“Are you okay?” I couldn’t look away from her. It wasn’t that I couldn’t move, it was like the world was wrapped around her. It contained only me and Four. And that was enough. I could feel her confusion, her rage, her sorrow. All the things that made her… Four.

“What happened?” She asked. I knew she could feel me. The real me. All the parts of me, even the ones that I wasn’t proud of. Self-doubt. Ugly rage. The ponies I’d hurt. I felt ashamed, but… I knew she wasn’t judging me. She understood my why. I understood her why.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I was stupid. I knew that. She didn’t care. She thought it was cute. “I was trying to stop you. You were hurting ponies.”

“I… I wasn’t in control,” she said. “The others…”

“What others?”

“The ponies trapped inside the machine. I can still feel them…”

A cold wind blew between us, and I caught the edge of the whispers in it. It was a haunting, something reaching out from beyond the grave. A dead thing that wouldn’t let go.

“You have to block them out,” I said. “Just shut everything down, and I’ll get you out of here. I promise I won’t let you get hurt.”

“Get out of here?” Four whispered. “I can’t! I have to pilot the Grandus!”

“No, you can--” I didn’t even get to finish the thought. She smothered it utterly. Power washed over me. Four’s mind crashed into mind, trying to force it away.

“Get out of my mind!” Four yelled. “You don’t know me!”

I snapped back to the world. I was still clinging to the Grandus.

“Four?” I asked.

She screamed. Telekinesis as strong as the hoof of Celestia herself flung me to the ground. The Grandus folded in on itself, turning back into a compact block. It rose up into the air, the aura around it shining brighter than the flames around us.

The metal colossus shot off like it had been launched from a catapult, vanishing into the smoke and chaos. The hoof pressing me down into the earth faded.

“That didn’t go well,” I groaned.

Around me, the city burned.

Chapter 41 - And You And I

The Grandus hovered in a way a huge brick of metal and armor shouldn’t. The same aura that surrounded it was holding me down on the concrete, and all I could do was watch it launch off into the sky while I was lying there like a speed bump.

“Buck,” I said. I didn’t even feel properly mad. That weird resonance, seeing Four floating there… the whole thing left me feeling emotionally drained. She vanished into the smoke and distant fires. I groaned and bonked my head against the ground. Stupid. I was stupid. I knew letting her fight was wrong. Morally, I mean. She’d totally lost it.

“It’s not your fault,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “But I still feel bad it happened.”

“Good! You should feel awful.”

“Thanks, Destiny. Do you know you’re one of my closest friends? Because sometimes I think you don’t like me.”

“Sometimes I don’t like the decisions you make. I don’t know how much you could have changed about this one, though,” she admitted. “I’m pretty sure she’s leaving the city. DRACO was tracking her until she left his detection radius.”

“It was tracking her?” I sat up and looked around at the rubble. “Can we go after her?”

“As a friend, I’m going to tell you right now that when a girl is really upset, you’ve got to let her just be upset for a little while. She probably wants to be alone. We’ve got to respect that.”

“The fact she’s in a giant invincible suit of assault armor doesn’t factor into that decision, does it?” I asked.

“Oh it definitely does. I’m worried if you go after her while she’s upset she’ll murder you before you even have a chance to talk to her,” Destiny said. “I know you have some kind of weird crush on her but she has serious issues and needs a therapist even more than you do!”

“Yeah, we can agree on that,” I said. “Now we just need to… put out these fires, I guess?”

“Halt right there, terrorist scum!” somepony yelled. I looked up to see even more soldiers bearing down on me, banking towards where I’d fallen.

“I’m really not in the mood to fight!” I shouted. “Can we just call a truce and try to get some of the civilians--”

Beam shots rained down around me and I scampered into cover behind a chunk of broken rubble.

“That’s a no,” I said.

“The best thing for us to do might be to leave,” Destiny said. “I’m listening in on the military channel and they’re organizing fire and rescue, but they’re not allowing them into combat areas.”

“So if we sit here, they can’t save anypony stuck in the rubble?”

“Exactly.”

“Great. Let’s get out of here and make it flashy so they know we’re actually gone.” I popped my head out to look, and a barrage of laser fire almost took it off before I ducked down again. They were going to have a better angle to fire over the concrete in a few seconds. “Give me a bearing on that underwater subway entrance!”

An arrow popped up in my HUD and I took off just as the soldiers overflew my position. They were so ready to fire on me while I was taking cover that they weren’t ready for me to be moving and flying. That’s good because -- and I’m not ashamed to say this -- they were way better in the air than I was. It’s not like that’s something to be embarrassed about! They were highly-trained elite soldiers, I worked in a bar!

“Keep going serpentine,” Destiny said. “I’m worried about armor integrity after the beating we took. We’ve got a lot of error messages on the back-end.”

“How are you even looking at them, anyway?” I asked. “Are you like, jacked into the computer directly? I never really thought about it before!” I kept moving. It was tricky. I could have lost them in the fire and smoke, but I needed them to see me leaving the city. And that meant they were going to shoot at me the whole time.

“The HUD is a modified illusion spell. I just have it wrapped all the way around your head, and I hide all the windows you don’t need back behind you where they won’t clutter your display,” Destiny explained. “Sort of a hack, but I figured you don’t really care about outside temperature or the raw terminal data.”

“Cool, cool,” I said, trying to ignore that the soldiers had better aim than I had mobility and I’d taken a few glancing shots already. Nothing had exactly gone through, but something about the way they interacted with the armor made the hits give me a jolt like a low-power stun gun.

The city streets disappeared from under me, dropping off to the waters of the bay. The arrow on my HUD started getting bigger and blinking. I could tell the soldiers still had a good look at me because I was getting pelted by beam fire. I got what I could only call a really brilliant idea and slowed down a little. I let one of them get a direct hit, right in the middle of my back.

It stung like the dickens.

I let myself just drop, like the shot had hit something important, spiraling down with one wing tucked close to me.
Destiny started freaking out because I hadn’t told her about my brilliant plan. “Chamomile?! What’s wrong?! I’m not reading any serious injuries--”

“I’m playing dead,” I said. With only one wing out, I fell like one of those seeds that has a big fin on it, coming down in a tight spiral that looked out of control but was slowing my fall pretty good. “Cut all the weight reduction when we hit the water! I want to sink like a rock!”

“Most ponies would want the opposite,” Destiny noted. “Ready to divert power to structural integrity and pressure seals! We’ll need those if we run into any more crabs.”

“Come on, Destiny, what are the odds of that? We pretty much cleared out the mirelurks last time we were here!”

She said something, but I didn’t hear it over the splash.

A solid hour and a half later, I got back to Sanctuary, dripping wet and dragging a mirelurk behind me.

“Can somepony get this thing off me?” I yelled. “It clamped on before it died and I can’t get the stupid thing to let go! It’s got a death grip on me, uh, literally!”

Everypony was standing in a rough circle talking, except for Split Moon, because he wasn’t big on talking. Unsung shot me a glance, then looked at him. He nodded and flew over, slicing off the mirelurk’s claw at the joint and then working a blade in between my tail and the pincer, prying it open. It eventually let go.

“Thank you,” I sighed. He patted me on the shoulder, and we walked over to the team meeting. “So what’s the plan for getting Four back?”

Asterism looked at me with a furious glare that could melt steel.

“Getting her back?!” Asterism snapped. “She destroyed half of my city! And these idiots bucked up and got the mayor killed!”

“We got pinned down,” Unsung said. “The Enclave shot him. I suspect it was deliberate. They didn’t want us having him alive.”

“That does sound like something they’d do,” Opening admitted. "It ruins the confession idea."

“You ponies are a bucking disaster!” Asterism yelled. “What am I paying you for?!”

“You’re paying us to put you back into a position of power,” Unsung said. “Both of us know you don’t care about money. You care about what you can do with it. It’s something I respect about you.”

“I also care about not getting lynched when ponies find out I’m responsible for this mess!”

“It’s not a concern,” Unsung promised. “The next mission--”

“There’s not going to be a next mission. Not for a while,” Asterism said. “Right now, the Enclave is out there saving lives. I hate what they’ve done to this city, but I’m not going to let you buck up when lives are on the line!”

“...That’s fair,” Unsung admitted. “You’re right. And you’re right about our funding.”

Asterism frowned. “I am?”

“Yes. Whatever you were going to give to us, could you put it into recovery and rebuilding efforts? Put your name on it. Make it known the Enclave aren’t the only ones helping. That would be good for everypony, right?”

“It would,” Asterism allowed. “I’d get in the good graces of the ponies you put in danger.”

“That’s settled, then. Consider it our punishment for this mission going sideways and a way to improve your own position,” Unsung said. “We’ll avoid taking any action until you think it’s wise.”

I was about ninety percent sure Unsung was lying about that last part, but Asterism nodded slowly, obviously distracted thinking about how to spend her money. The pink and white earth pony started walking away, her bodyguard following along behind her while she was absorbed in thought.

“That should keep her busy,” Unsung muttered. "Opening?"

"I know the drill. Don't plan anything that requires her for a while."

“She isn’t wrong,” Klein Bottle said. “We really bucked this one up.”

“What happened out there?” I asked. “Four just went berserk!”

“It was the spirits of the lost,” Grey Gloom whispered. “They linger in that machine, and it amplifies their voices. She couldn’t tell their rage apart from her own feelings.”

“I’d call that silly if we didn’t have a very well-documented example of something similar,” Destiny said wryly.

Grey Gloom gave me a smile, and I knew she was really smiling at the ghost haunting my armor. “If they were like you, this wouldn’t have happened. The spirits haunting the Grandus are broken and incomplete, just parts of souls ripped apart and hurting in all the cracked places.”

“We need to go after her,” I said.

“If she’s still berserk, that could be extraordinarily dangerous,” Opening warned.

“If we sent her off to go tear around the wasteland breaking things, we have a responsibility to save her before she kills anypony else.”

Unsung nodded grimly. “Klein Bottle, you were working on decrypting those files. Any idea where she might be going?”

“Decrypting files?” I asked.

“We promised Four we’d help her regain her memories,” Unsung reminded me. “I don’t go back on promises like that. We have some data on the project she was involved with that we hacked out of Enclave databases.”

“We’ve got a few things,” Klein Bottle said. She scratched her nose and looked embarrassed. “Not much of it is helpful.”

“How did you even meet Four?” I asked.

“We broke her out of the hospital,” Klein said. “She was being held there for treatment. There were others, but she was the only one stable enough to move.”

“We promised to help her, she said she had a way to pay us back, and she vanished for two weeks and came back dragging the Grandus behind her,” Opening said.

“She must have gotten it from the lab where they did… whatever they did to her,” I said. “That means she knows where it is from here.”

“You think she went back?” Unsung asked.

“Yes,” Grey Gloom nodded. “Ghosts linger in familiar places. If they’re controlling her actions, they might lead her there even if it’s subconscious.”

“So… where’s the lab?” I asked.

“We do have the coordinates,” Klein Bottle said. “It’s in the files we hacked. We just never had a reason to go looking. The place is a ruin, and Four already told us there’s nothing there that would help with her missing memories.”

“I’ll head over there right away,” I said. “Just give DRACO the location data and we’ll track her down.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Unsung said firmly.

“I need to--”

“You need to be able to help her when you find her, and even if you fly at full speed it’s going to take two days to get there. You’re going to get a hot meal, a nap, and let Grey Gloom check you over for injuries, then you can go.”

I huffed. “You’re not my real mom.”

“You told me about your real mother, Chamomile,” Unsung said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

That had been hours ago. Now I was outside the city, poking at a small campfire. I hadn’t built it, but the raiders that had been using it didn’t need it anymore. I would have felt bad about what happened to them, but one of them had a stick and the other one only had bad language and they still ran at me screaming for blood despite me being in powered armor, twice their size, and heavily armed. They clearly hadn’t wanted to live.

“This feels familiar,” Destiny said.

“Huh?”

“Camping like this,” she clarified. “I think… I think I’ve done this before. It’s like a ghost of a memory. Like when you wake up from a dream and you know the feeling of it but the content just slides away.”

“Maybe you used to do this?” I offered. “Like when your dad took you out to the middle of nowhere to break ground for the Cosmodrome.”

“When… what?” Destiny sounded confused.

“I saw it after we fell,” I said. “I think you were kinda young? And you complained about the snow.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“Really? Then…” I frowned.

“It must be the implant in your head,” Destiny sighed. “You might have more of my memories than I do.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Let me tell you, though, in other circumstances I’d love to run a bunch of experiments! Maybe memories stored like that don’t come with a pony after death? It would explain a lot about my missing time. And if they’re not part of the soul, can they be extracted onto memory orbs? It might be an extremely powerful way to defeat mind-reading spells!”

I laughed. “I have no idea how you’d test that.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “Part of the problem is the design. It’s adaptive hardware, like the brain.”

“Huh?”

“When a pony gets brain damage, the brain can rewire itself to bypass it,” Destiny explained. “It’s more complete in foals, but even with adults, it’s sometimes possible to make at least a partial recovery even from severe brain trauma. The logic circuits in that implant do the same thing with a modified low-power repair spell. It made itself fit in and do what the rest of my brain asked it to do. And then when I installed it into you…”

“It had to relearn what its job was?” I guessed.

“Exactly. Eventually, it’ll run at a hundred percent, but I can tell you right now that you’re probably up ten or twenty IQ points from when you got shot. You can’t beat organics for adaptability, but silicon is miles faster with basic logic.”

“I don’t feel any smarter.”

“Just trust me, Chamomile. You’re smarter. You wouldn’t have had those ethics questions about shooting the base commander when this all started. Being able to question your own actions like that is a sign of intelligence.”

“I guess so,” I admitted.

“It’s… good to see something I created being used the way I intended,” Destiny said. “It makes it easier to hang on. I don’t really feel like a part of the world sometimes. Between how much time has passed and how little I remember, everything gets confusing and…” she went quiet.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to help. We found some memory orbs with you in them, right? There have to be more of them out there.”

“Maybe,” Destiny said quietly.

“We’ll track them down. I promise. We even have a lead!”

“We do?” Destiny asked.

“Sure. Kulaas! Your mom built that supercomputer, right? And it’s obviously still active somewhere! We just have to figure out where, and I bet it has all kinds of files on you! It can probably even help us find memory orbs!”

“That’s…” Destiny sounded surprised. “That’s right! I have no idea where it is, but there can’t be that many places to look for a giant computer complex!”

“And we’ve gotten transmissions from it, and so did the Greywings. Maybe DRACO can do some kind of signal trace?”

“I doubt it. If it wants to stay hidden, it’s going to stay hidden. We’ll have to come up with an actual plan.” Destiny sighed. But it was a sigh of relief instead of annoyance. “Thanks, Chamomile. That actually gives me a little hope.”

“When we get back to the city we’ll call in our favor from Unsung and figure out how to get back abovedeck. Then we can lean on the Greywings and find out what they know. Sound good?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Destiny agreed. “I just hope Four is okay. I know what it’s like to lose yourself.”

“She’s stronger than she looks,” I said. “I mean that literally since she was just swatting me aside. I’m mostly hoping she’s calmed down and she’s in a better mood.”

“What will you do if she’s still…?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it won’t come to that. I’ll save her.”

I’ve been to places that were literally haunted. I’ve had screaming skulls launch evil necro-fire at me. I’m pretty sure it left a scar on my soul, and not in a metaphorical way. Even with all that experience, the place I was standing in was creepy enough to send chills down my spine.

It had been a suburb. And I don’t mean before the war. I mean less than a year or two ago. The ruins around me weren’t ancient decaying hulks, they were fresh. Ponies had gotten themselves together enough to build reasonable homes out of salvaged wood planks and brick, they’d put lives together, and then it had all ended in some little apocalypse.

“What happened here?” I whispered.

“I’m worried it might be the same thing that happened in Dark Harbor,” Destiny said. “Somepony went crazy and destroyed everything.”

“You mean Four.”

“If you know any other ponies that fit the bill, you tell me,” Destiny said with a mental shrug that I could feel on my own shoulders. “Klein Bottle said she was the only one from the accident that wasn’t really hurt. What if that’s because she rode it out somewhere safe? Somewhere huge and made entirely out of battleship-grade armor plates?”

I hated to think about that, but Destiny was probably right. I wasn’t stupid enough to think it wasn’t at least a possibility.

“She’s fine when she’s away from the Grandus,” I said. “Maybe if we just convince her to come with us and disable it so nopony else can use the thing? We can leave it here and forget about it.”

“I’ll actually support that plan a hundred percent,” Destiny agreed. “But I’ll do the disabling. We’ll need to smash the thaumatic booster to be sure it can’t ever be used again.”

“Good, cool, we’re on the same page,” I nodded and walked through the dusty streets towards the biggest building in town. It wasn’t hard to find. The place wasn’t really a whole town, it was more like one big warehouse and then enough houses and small businesses to support the ponies working there. If I looked closely at the skeletal, burned ruins I could just about tell which building was which.

Every time the wind blew, I could swear I heard whispers, just a little too soft to make out what they were saying.

A sign still hung over the doors to the lab. Damascus Labs. It was burned a little around the edges, but I was surprised it was there. I was surprised there were even still doors, to be frank. I pulled them open. I might as well not have bothered. There had been floors, rooms, lots of stuff inside the shell of the warehouse frame, but it had all collapsed in the inferno that had consumed the place and fell into a basement level, leaving just the broken outer walls around a huge, crumbling crater of debris.

And Four was sitting in the middle of it.

“Four?” I called out.

She turned in shock, her expression terrified and feral, like a spooked wild bird.

“Chamomile?” she asked, after a few moments longer than I would have liked.

“No sign of the Grandus,” Destiny whispered. “Maybe she landed somewhere else and walked here?”

“That would simplify things,” I whispered back. I took off my helmet so Four could see my face, letting Destiny float by my side. “Are you okay?” I asked, speaking louder and slowly approaching, ready to stop if she seemed likely to bolt. “I came here to help.”

“You can’t help me,” Four said bitterly. “Nopony can.”

“I want to try,” I said. “Hey, if nothing else I’m a pretty good listener. Can you at least tell me why I can’t help?”

Four glared at me for a few moments before her expression softened. She turned away and tilted her head. I took it as permission to walk closer, so I did, carefully.

“This is… where I was born,” she said. “Or… the first thing I remember, anyway. That’s like the same thing, right?”

I shrugged, sitting down near her, not quite within arm’s distance but close enough that if she started to run I could grab her before she got far.

“I don’t know where I came from. They tested us, poked at us and prodded and cut and drugged us… they told me if I behaved that they’d give me my memories back, but all I can remember now is how much it hurt.” She touched the scars around the base of her horn. “The worst part was the drill, right here. I couldn’t feel the bone being cut, but the sound, and the vibration through my whole head…”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“They wouldn’t take those memories, but they took everything else,” she said, her voice strained. “You can’t imagine what it’s like. Everything. My whole life! Just… surgery and tests to see if the surgery worked, then more experiments to push harder and faster. All so they could make a pilot who could survive using the Grandus.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” I said quietly.

Four laughed. “I lost control of my magic while I was in the Grandus. Do you know what happens when a unicorn loses control? When you have a magic surge like that? It was like a megaspell going off. Everything burned.”

I shivered, looking around. So she had done all this, after all. But it had been an accident. That had to count for something.

“I woke up in the hospital,” Four continued, her voice a whisper. “Nopony else made it. I was safe because I was in the Grandus. That thing won’t burn. It was like the eye of a storm.”

“Not exactly,” a voice echoed through the ruins, tinged with a slight accent I couldn’t place that sounded like the kind of posh effect some ponies put on when they were trying to sound sophisticated. A dark blue unicorn in a lab coat stepped out of the shadows. “Hello, Four. It’s good to see you again.”

“Doctor Anamnesis?” Four gasped. “But…”

“You thought I was dead. I know.” She smiled coldly. “Very nearly. I had to tell my own physician how to treat my wounds because they were woefully underprepared.” She moved part of her mane to show a nasty burn scar across the side of her head, going from the corner of her eye all the way to her ear.

“Why are you here?” Four started shaking in terror. I stood up and stepped between them, trying to shield her a little.

Doctor Anamensis produced a small, glowing, glass orb.

“I know what you want,” she said. “You want your memories back. You destroyed most of our equipment, but I salvaged this. Consider it a… greatest hits collection.” She smirked.

“Give it to me,” Four said, breathlessly.

“I will,” the Doctor said, putting it back in her labcoat. “We were always going to give you your memory back, Four. We erased your memories so we would have a clean slate to work with. Once the experiment was over, we would have wiped away all the awful recollections you have now and restored you. This you, this little broken bird, it was never supposed to last. You’re not a real pony, you’re just a collection of trauma.”

“I’m not real?” Four whispered.

“If that’s all you’re here for, thanks,” I said. “Give Four the orb.”

“I would, but she’s incurred quite a debt that she needs to work off! She destroyed all this research, all the effort and time we put into this place. And my backers came to collect.”

A shadow passed over me. I looked up. Enclave soldiers were visible through the broken windows and walls of the lab. The place was surrounded.

“Chamomile, we’re reading a lot of hostiles,” Destiny warned quietly. I nodded and carefully grabbed her out of the air, putting the helmet back on. I didn’t want to end up with another serious head wound.

“The one thing I’m good at is math,” I whispered back. “I can count.”

“Come with me, Four,” the Doctor said. “It won’t take long, and then you can have your memories back. I can even make you forget all this.”

“Don’t listen to her,” I said. “Here’s a better plan -- I shoot the good Doctor, then we take the orb and walk away.”

“The memory orb is quite fragile,” Doctor Anamnesis said smugly. “Do you want to risk breaking it?”

“I’m a pretty good shot,” I lied.

Four jumped in front of DRACO. “No!” Four shouted. “I won’t let you! I need those memories!”

“Four--”

“That’s not even my name!” Four said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s just a number! Test subject number four! I don’t want to be that! I want to be a real pony! With a name and a family and good memories!”

“I want to help you,” I said. “Please, just trust me. Whatever she wants, it’s not good. Let’s go back to the Sanctuary, Four. We can--”

“My name isn’t Four!” she screamed. “I hate that name! I hate it so much!”

The ground rumbled under me, and the rubble in the center of the crater started moving, sliding and shifting like an earthquake. An ultraviolet glow showed through the cracks.

“Leave,” Four said coldly.

I flew up, getting off the ground just before the Grandus rose out of the rubble. I hovered in front of it, watching Four make the biggest mistake of her life. The helmet slid open, the muzzle opening up a hatch like a jaw, and she let herself get devoured by that monster.

“This is what I have to do, Chamomile,” Four said. “I have to go with them. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough!” Doctor Anamnesis yelled. “You have to prove yourself! She is a wanted criminal and a terrorist! Destroy her!”

“I can’t!” Four said, her voice deep and echoing through the Grandus’ speakers.

“It should be easy with the power of the Grandus!” the Doctor shouted. “Do you want your memories or not?!”

“Let’s just nip this in the bud,” I said. At this range I couldn’t miss with DRACO.

Four saw me take aim. “No!” Magic snatched me out of the air, and the shot went wild. DRACO still almost hit the Doctor, the shot piercing a new hole through her left ear. She raised a shaking hoof up to the wound and looked at me with utter contempt.

“Kill her now or I will smash this orb where I stand!” Doctor Anamnesis screamed.

“I can’t let you-- I can’t let you take away my memories!” Four threw me down, smashing me into the broken concrete slab floor. The force was… I’d never felt anything like it. It was like the G-force of extreme acceleration, my own weight pressing me into the ground.

“She’s inverted her weight reduction spell and cast it on us!” Destiny yelled. “I’m counterspelling it, hang on!”

“You can do that?” I asked, struggling to breathe with what felt like a whole extra couple ponies standing on my chest. The armor wasn’t helping at all.

“Of course! This armor has the same spell already woven into it, and who do you think designed it? I know that spell better than anypony else alive!” The pressure started to let up, the crimson light of Destiny’s magic glowing around me in a soft shield.

“What are you doing?!” Doctor Anamnesis snapped. “Kill her!”

“But… I…” Four hesitated.

“Once we restore your memories, you won’t remember her anyway! She’s nothing! Less than nothing!”

“Four, don’t listen to her,” I pled, trying to get up. Even with the counterspell, I was still feeling about two times gravity. I definitely wasn’t flying out of here. Just getting to my hooves was a struggle. Not as hard as wrestling a bear, though, so not a massive problem.

“My name isn’t FOUR!” she screamed. The aura around the Grandus redoubled, blaring hard enough to hurt my eyes even through the helmet’s filters.

A shadow fell over me. I looked up to see the Grandus’ huge hoof, as big as my whole body.

It came down. I remembered the way she’d crushed an Enclave soldier. The splatter on the sidewalk that had once been a pony. I was too heavy to run. I locked my joints, braced myself in every way I could in that instant.

Metal hit metal. The armor tried to resist. The magic fields around me tried to hold me up. It just wasn’t enough. Nothing could have been.

My bones creaked, strained, and snapped like dry twigs. The pain was… there aren’t words for it. Nopony in that much pain can think. It’s enough agony to push your mind away and out of your body to escape. I was on the ground. Everything was wrong. I was a scared, dying animal.

The hoof came down again.

Chapter 42 - For Whom The Bell Tolls

Sometimes I hated coming home from school.

It’s not like I knew anypony at school -- it was the second time we’d moved this year alone, and I wasn’t going to get attached to anypony when I knew we’d have to move again in a couple months. Half the classes weren’t even for me. The school was one of the few where most of the students were unicorns, and while they were practicing magic, I was stuck writing book reports. I hated reading. I couldn’t even take flying lessons because none of the teachers were pegasus ponies!

I thought getting to go to school in what was left of the old Stable would be exciting, but it was just cramped and uncomfortable and annoying.

“I’m home,” I said, tossing my saddlebags down at the side of the door.

I remembered this. It was the year most ponies my age were going to flight camp. I’d ended up going with Mom and Dad on a research trip. They were using the computers in the Stable to recover data from old, damaged terminals. Mom had wanted to use the opportunity to visit family.

I could hear them arguing in the next room. I don’t know if they didn’t hear me come in, or if they just didn’t know.

“Absolutely not,” Dad hissed. I’d never heard him angry like that. Frustrated, sure. Tired, definitely. Disappointed? Constantly. But he wasn’t usually angry. It was enough to make me stop before I got to the doorway, close enough to hear, but not enough to be seen.

“It’s my duty,” Mom said, just as firm as he was angry. “I have a responsibility to my family!”

“To, what, make more unicorns?!” Dad snapped.

“Would having another foal be that terrible?” Mom asked. “You’d barely be involved!”

“That’s the problem! I’d barely be involved! You might have clearance to have all the foals you want, but I don’t! And both of us know what that means.”

“We need to at least talk about this,” Mom said. “Chamomile--”

“I’ve got work I need to do,” Dad said coldly, storming out.

I remembered this now. It wasn’t long after this that Dad had decided to move to Cirrus Valley, and Mom hadn’t come with us.

Mom sighed. “I can hear you out there.”

Even in my memories, I wasn’t very stealthy. I walked into the living room with my head hung low.

“I assume you heard everything?” she asked. I nodded. She sighed and motioned for me to come closer.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.”

“Don’t apologize,” Mom said. She hugged me. Even now, I was a little taller than her. “I know someday, you’re going to make me proud.”

“I wish I made you proud now,” I said quietly. Something was wrong. I hadn’t said that. Not when it had really happened.

“Grow up to be just like me,” she said, her voice edged in razors. She squeezed. And kept squeezing. It was like I was trapped in a vice.

“Mom--!” I gasped. “I can’t--!”

The breath was shoved out of my lungs. My ribs cracked. My shoulders popped out of joint. Her pupils were dark slits set in glowing, burning eyes. She smiled with long, metal fangs.

I was screaming before I woke up and then I kept screaming. My legs were being twisted and bent. Broken bones cut through flesh, grinding against each other. Sharp edges sliced at me from the inside. I was being stabbed over and over again, flayed from the inside.

“Oh buck, you’re awake again!” Destiny gasped. “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep…”

A wave of magic washed over me. Messages flashed up on my HUD, more words layered over windows of warnings and errors and alerts. Exhaustion hit me like a bullet between the eyes, and the whole world was overlaid was warmth and softness, blunting the sharp edges. Everything went black.

I was wearing all white. It was a full-body suit made out of something between paper, fabric, and plastic. It felt cheap and light, totally disposable. It wasn’t comfortable. It was designed to keep my hair from getting everywhere. Making me sweaty and annoyed was only a side effect.

I couldn’t feel my wings. Part of me knew that wasn’t normal. The rest, the part remembering, the part in control, didn’t even know what wings felt like.

It didn’t help that I’d been waiting for the door to cycle. The far door finally unlocked and opened, a rush of stale, reprocessed air washing over me. The surgical mask over my mouth couldn’t cut the smell of solvents lingering from the industrial processes within.

“Do you have it?” I asked, as soon as I got into the stark white cleanroom.

Twilight Sparkle looked up at me and adjusted her glasses. I could see the smile in her eyes. I could tell how excited she was to show me what she’d put together.

“We have a few prototypes ready for testing based on your design,” she said. She picked up a glass tray with her hooves, pushing it across the workbench towards me. On the tray was a small chip of metal and silicon, shaped like a slightly twisted hexagon about twice as big as a postage stamp.

I was about to reach out and grab it. Twilight glanced up at my forehead.

“Don’t use your magic,” she warned.

“Is it that sensitive?” I asked. I stepped closer and leaned down to look more closely.

“We’re still running tests,” Twilight explained. “We’re getting some weird results. I think it’s just reacting to the background thaumatic radiation. Ah, look, you can see it now.”

The chip glittered, glowing with an unsteady light that seemed like it came from countless stars trapped in the silicon and steel. It felt warm.

“I’m not sure where that glow is coming from,” she sighed. “It’s been happening periodically ever since we brought it here.”

“Interesting…” I whispered. “So what kind of performance have you gotten?”

“The technology can pretty easily translate between thaumatic waves and computer commands. With a decent power source and enough of these chips you can amplify, repeat, and duplicate effects.” Twilight looked down at the shard. It almost reminded me of a bismuth crystal, metallic and sharp-angled and shimmering with rainbows where the light hit it.

“This could change everything,” I whispered. An urge to tease her hit me too strongly for me to pass up. “Maybe I should have you write up a presentation to the MAS for funding.”

“Oh, I bet that would go well,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes.

“You’d get a grant and a few awards, right before the Ministries started fighting over who got to arrest and interrogate you,” I joked.

“I can’t even imagine how angry the boss lady would be,” Twilight said.

“You’d probably have to ask for asylum just to avoid being set on fire,” I teased. “Let’s try to get some useful data before then.”

I stepped over to a whiteboard and started sketching.

“We’ll need a power source, some sensors independent of the thaumoframe…”

Twilight stepped up next to me, making notes and suggestions and corrections. The rough pony form on the board got filled in with details, and the future took shape.

I woke up gasping for breath with the panic of a mare drowning, snapping instantly from sleep to confused and agonized awareness with my lungs burning in my chest. Everything felt wrong. I’ve been hurt before, so badly that I was afraid just to look at the injury because that would make it real. My whole body was right there on the edge, where I knew seeing it, seeing any of it, was going to make me want to fall back into a coma.

“She’s awake again-- hold on, she’s choking on her own vomit! Turn her over!”

I wasn’t looking at a heads-up display. I couldn’t focus, not really. Just tunnel vision and panic. I was lying on my back, but somepony grabbed my shoulder and flipped me onto my side, not caring how much every motion hurt.

I coughed and spat out acid bile and blood, and I could suddenly breathe again. I gasped a few more times. My chest still felt wrong. My ribs were wrong. My legs were wrong. I felt like I’d been stabbed over and over again.

“What--” I gasped. “What--”

“Are you going to knock her back out?” somepony else asked.

“No,” the voice said. My voice. Not my voice. The voice from the dream I’d been having. Or was this the dream? “She needs rest, not stun spells and emergency life support.”

My vision started to clear. I wish it didn’t. I was in a crater filled with rubble. A red and black pony was standing over me. It took a while for me to remember who she was.

“Unsung?” I asked weakly.

“I guess that means you’re sane,” she said. “Fine. Wake the buck up, Chamomile. We’ve still got a city to save.”

“I feel like I’m still dying,” I groaned. My thoughts were starting to get into some kind of order. My train of thought was still a derailed disaster with casualties in the triple digits, but as I woke up somepony was at least sweeping some of the debris off the track.

Destiny was floating next to Unsung, and looked down at me. That explained why I couldn’t see a HUD.

“I think I was having a dream where I was you,” I said. With how out of it I was, I could have closed my eyes and slipped right back into the memory. “How long was I out?”

“You’ve been unconscious for days,” Destiny said gently. “You feel like you’re dying because most other ponies would be dead already. The good news is, your bones are set and mostly healed, sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of’ mean?” I asked, my throat dry. “I need--”

“Here.” Unsung knelt down and put a bottle to my lips, letting me get a few mouthfuls of water. I swallowed, trying to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth and wet my tongue.

I held up my left forehoof. There were black spikes erupting through the armor. “What the buck are those?”

“SIVA had to pin the bone shards in place while it rebuilt them,” Destiny said.

“I look like one of those bucking infected raiders,” I groaned. I was too weak to scream in horror or frustration. All I could manage was dread and a little depression.

“Some of them have already fallen off,” Destiny said. “I’m pretty sure it’s temporary, but they’re all over you right now.”

“Destiny already filled me in on what happened with Four,” Unsung said, sitting down and giving me a little more water, only letting me drink it slowly despite how thirsty I was. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” I said.

“If Four really turned against us, we’ll have to evacuate the Sanctuary,” Unsung sighed. “We might have to pull out of the city entirely. We don’t have a plan to counter the Grandus if the Enclave have control of it.”

“I know I can reason with her,” I said. I forced myself to sit up. I could really feel those spikes every time I moved. They went all the way down to the bone and were doing more than just pinning it together. I could tell they were anchoring torn muscle and tendon.

“It didn’t work so well last time,” Destiny muttered. “She broke almost every bone in your body, Chamomile! I know she’s a victim, but she’s also dangerous, unstable, and I don’t want you to throw your life away trying to save her.”

“I agree,” Unsung said. “It’s tragic. Maybe we can come up with something, like stealing the memory orb from this ‘Doctor Anamnesis’, but the only way to defeat a superior force is to have a superior plan.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I’m going to need a little time to get fighting fit again anyway.”

“You need bed rest for a month, with a real doctor looking over you,” Destiny said.

“Let’s not go too crazy. I’ve had days of sleep already and I feel awful.” My stomach growled. “I think I could use some food, though. Healing makes me hungry.”

“I still don’t think eating a whole jar of vitamins before dinner was a good idea,” I said.

“Your body is running extremely low on some minerals,” Destiny said. “I was watching what SIVA did to make sure it wasn’t going to turn you into a monster. I’m pretty sure it used carbon fiber and some other exotic materials to rebuild your bones. Those spikes growing out of you are almost pure elemental carbon.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Here,” Unsung said. She gave me a metal bowl from her mess kit. She’d slopped some rice and a weird, brown stew into it. I gave it a sniff and couldn’t place it at all. It smelled like spices and peppers and sweet fruit.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Curry,” she said. “It’s always been a comfort food to me.” I watched her serve herself from the pot over the small campfire she’d made in the broken building. She stirred it, lost in thought. “I remember how every ship had its own secret ingredient. You could tell where somepony served just by how they cooked…”

“You were in the military?” I asked.

Unsung snapped out of it. She smiled. I couldn’t tell how honest it was with that metal mask in front of her eyes. “It’s not important,” she said. “As of right now, I’m Unsung, leader of Kasatka. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I guess so,” I said, poking at my meal and trying the smallest bite. And then immediately taking much larger bites because not only was it good, but I would have eaten ragweed scraps in dirty dishwater, with how hungry I was.

Unsung watched me eat and chuckled to herself before taking my bowl and refilling it. “Glad you like it.”

“Thanks for making it,” I said. I got halfway through the second bowl before the thought hovering around the edge of my thoughts bullied its way up to the front of the line and demanded to speak to the manager. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she said.

“How much of all this did you plan?” I asked. I could see her about to deny things, so I held up a hoof, took a bite of food, and continued. “I’ve been thinking about it since Big Barrel died. You knew all that was going to happen when you sent him out. It worked perfectly. He even set off a balefire egg just to really show the Enclave how big of a threat you were. How much of that was him being suicidal, and how much was you giving him explosives and orders and knowing what would happen in the end?”

Unsung frowned. I kept talking.

“Then with Four… you knew she wouldn’t be able to deal with combat, not psychologically. You could have had her do my job and distract the convoy, and it would have made more sense… unless you wanted her to go on a rampage and destroy half the city. You knew she destroyed this town, after all, right? I know you didn’t mean for me to get hurt, or for her to go rogue, but all the rest went to plan.”

Unsung sighed and poked around at her bowl. “You’re a smarter pony than I gave you credit for,” she admitted.

“Did the mayor really get killed by Enclave crossfire?” I asked.

“He did. It was one of my backup plans, I admit. My first choice would have still been to let him confess his sins on tape first.”

“Why?” I asked quietly.

“Most Dashites don’t work together,” Unsung said, after clearly considering her answer for a moment. “I’ve met others. Ones I couldn’t work with. Some of them were happy. They left the Enclave for love or a cause and they were still doing it. They had something to live for. Others just had something to die for. Those are the ones I recruited.”

“You think Four--”

“She’d kill to get her memories back. Or die for them. Knowing yourself is a more noble cause than most of Kasatka has,” Unsung said sharply. “I won’t speak for them. It isn’t my place. I can only tell you my story. The parts that matter.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

Unsung nodded. “My family was rich and important. I could have anything I wanted, just by asking for it. I grew up naive enough to think that was true for everypony in the Enclave. Stupid, I know, but that’s what it’s like when you’re a filly. You can’t see things from another pony’s perspective, and I never had to really grow up.

“I became something of a minor celebrity,” she said, with a touch of bitterness. “I thought I was important. That there weren’t consequences for what I did. I learned just enough to know that things weren’t right, and that was the end for me. I made a public embarrassment of my family. It wasn’t even about the surface! I was part of a protest about a change in rationing that seemed very important at the time and absolutely didn’t matter in the end. It wasn’t some grand cause, just something where it was easy to get caught up in the rush and motion and feeling like part of something bigger.”

“And then?” I asked.

“My father was up for a promotion. The protest was at an inconvenient time for him, but a very convenient time for his superiors to ask him to prove his loyalty. So he dealt with me personally. For the crime of saying the wrong things at the wrong time, I was branded and left for dead in the wasteland. I should have died. I had no survival skills to speak of. Ponies who had almost nothing except kindness shared what little they had with me. And I learned to survive.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re just telling me what I want to hear,” I said.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Unsung said. “I don’t care if you believe me. I think you’ve seen the same thing I have. If everypony came down here and we were willing to put in some effort and give up some luxuries, we’d be able to rebuild Equestria in a generation.”

“Is that what you want?” Destiny asked, cutting in. “To rebuild?”

Unsung smiled. “I haven’t given up yet. I still have things to live for.” She stood up. “Get some rest. I’ll keep watch. We’ll leave in the morning. I doubt you’re really well enough for travel but we don’t have time to wait much longer than that.”

I watched her walk off, and wondered what to believe.

A fog bank had rolled in when we were close to the city, and as much as it slowed us down, it also gave us plenty of cover, so we stayed in it instead of flying over.

“I have some disguises in a cache just outside the city wall,” Unsung whispered. “We can use them to get in without drawing attention.”

I looked down at myself, following her gaze. The blue plates of my power armor were still pinned to me, the spikes holding my bones together keeping me from taking it off and making me look like a raider.

“I hope you’ve got a really big coat for me to hide in,” I grumbled. After the relief of having my infection under control, having this full-body ache of recently healed limbs and machine-made bone spurs was not pleasant.

“I’m sure I have something,” Unsung said. “If it comes to it, we’ll just go over the wall and make a break for it…” she trailed off when a gust of wind from the sea blew away some of the solid fog cover over us. I had already stopped listening by the time she went silent. We were both looking up over the city, at the doom that hung above it.

A cloudship hovered over the center of the city like a sword ready to fall on the ponies living there.

“Why does this keep happening to every town I go to?” I asked quietly.

“We need to get to the Sanctuary. Forget the cache.” Unsung said, with a tone that didn’t broker argument. She shot into the air, flying hard and fast. I jumped after her, trying to keep up with somepony in much better health and more talent than I had.

I struggled to get after her. She went right over the wall and into the tangle of streets. Ponies shouted and pointed at her as she passed, and just stared at me. I probably looked like a monster trying to chase after an innocent pony.

“How can she fly like that?” I grunted. She was banking at sharp angles, turning almost entirely on her side to squeeze through narrow alleyways without slowing.

“She’s half your size and a quarter your weight,” Destiny pointed out.

I flew into and through a clothesline, tearing it free and getting tangled up in it. There wasn’t time to apologize to the ponies whose underwear I was stealing. I was falling farther and farther behind.

She pulled up, then dove down at an angle, right into a subway entrance. I ignored the growing pain in my aching body and kept at it, the stairs just barely wide enough for my wingspan. I passed from sunlight into shadow, the tunnel tightened up, and I missed a turn going from the ancient platform into the narrow train passage.

I hit the wall, tearing up an advertisement for Sparkle-Cola and sending dust and pebbles flying. The ground welcomed me, and I came to a stop in a heap, the clothesline wrapped around two legs and sitting in a puddle of filthy rainwater.

“Ow,” I groaned.

“I’m sorry,” Unsung said, landing next to me. She offered me a hoof up. “I… sorry. I got scared. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. It was foalish of me. Did you get hurt?”

“I have no idea,” I said honestly.

“She’s fine,” Destiny said. “Well, you know. Fine. No worse than she was five minutes ago.”

“Good. I need you watching my back,” Unsung said. “I don’t know what we’ll be walking into.”

“Probably a trap,” I said.

“Always the optimist,” Unsung said. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

“Don’t move,” I warned, pressing my blade against the pony’s side. They’d started struggling when I got my hoof around their neck and yanked them back onto their hind legs to get them off-balance. When they felt the steel touch them, they went very still very quickly.

“Please don’t kill me!” the mare gasped. “Just take what you want!”

Unsung walked past us silently, detached and ghost-like.

A ghost would have been appropriate, since this was a mass grave.

There were at least two dozen bodies here, and that was just what I could see from where I’d grabbed the mare in uniform. The walls were blackened and blasted from stray beam shots. The rooms on the old platform had been torn open and the contents dumped out.

Most of the dead ponies were earth ponies with rough-looking weapons and patchwork armor. There were only a few pegasus ponies in uniform, and all of them had been dragged over to the side and laid out in a line.

“Local mercenaries,” Unsung said quietly. “With Enclave soldiers leading them.”

“They just left the bodies down here?” I asked.

“Pulling them out would have been bad for morale,” Unsung said. She glanced back at the mare I was holding. “Am I right?”

“I’m just here to guard the equipment from scavengers until we can move the casualties safely,” the mare said quietly, her voice shaking.

“Where are the ponies they took prisoner?” I demanded. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m just looking for my friends.”

“I don’t know anything about prisoners!”

“They didn’t take prisoners,” Unsung said, her voice low. She stopped in front of four sheets, draped over bodies set aside on purpose. She pulled one aside. It was Grey Gloom. She looked peaceful, even with the burn in the middle of her chest. A phantom smile was still on her cold lips.

Four sheets. And we’d left four ponies here. A wash of sorrow hit me, and I looked away from them. Even Unsung turned her back to the bodies, looking down.

A cold breeze blew down the subway tunnel. A feeling washed over me, like somepony whispering at the edge of hearing. I looked back at the covered bodies and it hit me.

“Klein Bottle was a tiny pony,” I said. “Aren’t those bodies a little big to be her?”

Unsung looked up and turned back. “You’re right,” she said, sounding concerned, maybe even a little hopeful.

The first sheet revealed Split Moon. Unlike the composed, peaceful figure of Grey Gloom, he hadn’t gone quietly. The dozens of bodies made sense. He must have been a berserk terror, absorbing multiple fatal wounds and going until his body just hadn’t been able to move another inch. Unsung saluted him and pulled the sheet back over his face, covering the fallen soldier.

The third pony was Opening. Somehow, in death, he looked surprised. I guess he'd just never planned for this.

She looked at the last form. It was far too large to be the short, fluffy pegasus. Unsung tugged the edge aside and both of us blinked at what was revealed.

“Shadowmere?” she asked, confused. Unsung looked around, like she might have missed something. “Klein Bottle isn’t here. And Shadowmere wouldn’t be here if Asterism wasn’t…”

“They might have gotten out!” I said, excited.

“If Klein Bottle is with Asterism, I know where they might have gone,” Unsung said. She stopped next to Split Moon and knelt down to pick something up. “Sorry I wasn’t here, my friend. I’ll use this in your place.”

She stood up holding one of Split Moon’s blades. She looked at the mare I was holding, and I felt the mare I was holding tense up at the look Unsung gave her. A moment passed, and Unsung sheathed the blade and strapped it to her side, tucking it under her wing. I breathed a sigh of relief at the same time as my prisoner.

“Let’s go,” Unsung said. She hopped off the platform and landed next to me.

“Right,” I agreed. I looked at the mare I’d taken hostage. “Sorry about all that. We’ll have to tie you up, but I’m sure somepony will--”

Unsung kicked my hoof, driving the knife I was holding into the mare’s side. The security guard gasped, her breath rattling and blood spilling from her lips. I let go, surprised and panicked. I tried to hold her up. She collapsed, blood pooling around her.

“We don’t have all day to play around,” Unsung said, calmly trotting away. “Stop trying to save ponies that don’t deserve it.”

It was a good thing I had to work hard to keep up with Unsung because it meant I didn’t have a chance to yell at her.

When she slowed down we were in public and it would have been awkward to start accusing her of murder when we were walking into an office building. There were probably fifty ponies in the lobby, waiting in lines leading to counters where workers behind thick security glass spoke to them in quiet terms.

I felt out of place, what with being heavily armed and armored.

“What are we doing here?” I mumbled, trying not to notice just how many ponies were staring at us.

Unsung held up a hoof for me to be quiet and walked confidently up to the counter, ignoring the line.

“I need to speak to the manager,” she said. “Tell her I’m here.”

The teller frowned, and the pony at the counter puffed up his chest and turned to us.

“Now look here, do you know who… I… am…?” he trailed off and looked up at me. I was well aware that I looked a little like a war crime. He took a step back. “Oh, I didn’t notice it was such fine, beautiful ladies! Why don’t you just go ahead of me?”

Unsung didn’t even look at him.

The teller sighed. “The manager is busy right now--”

Another pony behind the counter whispered to the teller, then took her place, giving Unsung a big smile. “The manager will be right with you. Would you like come come with me to her office?”

A pony in one of the freshest, most well-tailored suits I’d ever seen ushered us out of the lobby as quickly as possible and into an elevator, obviously pretending that this was very normal. Maybe it was. I didn’t really know how often armed ponies walked in on them.

The elevator crawled from the ground floor to the sixth before the doors slid open.

“I know the way from here,” Unsung said, stepping out into a hallway that could have been right out of a museum. Glass cases lined the walls, displaying a strange collection of artifacts. I stopped at one to squint at a weird bit of metal that was either a torture device or some kind of cruel weapon. A small label called it a ‘cheese grater’.

“Why would anypony collect this junk?” Destiny asked.

“Reminds me of my Dad’s collection,” I said.

A hinge squeaked, and I looked up to find Unsung stopped at a doorway, waiting for me. I ran over to the door and she nodded to me and opened it the rest of the way.

“I was wondering when you’d get here-- oh, it’s you.” Asterism sounded a little disappointed when we walked in. “I was expecting the Enclave to show up to arrest me. I had this little speech ready.”

“Sorry. We could get them for you if you want,” Unsung said.

Asterism’s office was a huge open space, with wood paneling reaching halfway up the walls and gold foil coating the rest. A chandelier made of multicolored crystal hung in the center of the office from the high ceiling, and it was large enough that there was a small bowling green set up to one side of the long carpeted aisle to her desk, with couches and chairs set up on the opposite side.

The earth pony got up from a chair as large as a throne and walked around the side of a desk that seemed almost out of place in the room, heavy and solid but also ancient and cracked, the wood splitting and splintering from some terrible injury.

She limped when she walked, and I could see bandages peeking around the edges of her dress.

“You know the funny thing is? I was going to turn you in when you got back,” Asterism said. “You were causing too much trouble in my city. Ironic, isn’t it? Somepony else beat me to the punch. Now I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop from that disaster hovering out there.”

She motioned to the wall of windows behind her desk. We had a good view of the cloudship from here.

“At least it’s not that jerk that destroyed Cirrus Valley,” I muttered.

“Unsung!”

Klein Bottle flew out from behind one of the couches, running into Unsung’s legs and holding on, starting to cry softly. The tiny fluffball of a pegasus looked absolutely broken.

“I couldn’t stop them,” Klein sobbed. “Gloomy made me go on ahead, and Asterism got shot, and I had to help--”

“You did the right thing,” Unsung whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry…”

“So you’d better have a plan,” Asterism said. “I’m surprised they haven’t already stormed in here.”

“I have a plan,” Unsung said. She turned away from the window. “Same plan as we had before. We’ve dragged Grand Admiral Bright off his comfortable seat on top of all the ponies he oppressed. We made him lower himself this far, now we’re going to drag him all the way down to Tartarus!”

Chapter 44 - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

A Raptor-class Cloudship is not a small vehicle. If you stood one up on its back end with the stern resting on the ground, the bow would reach up dozens of stories and tower over all but the most impressive pre-war buildings. They massed somewhere in the thousands of tons, a lot of that in the thick armor plating that let them ignore just about any weapon that ponies could bring to bear against them. They carried deadly energy weapons that could punch through a fortress and held the troops and equipment to take over whatever was left. All of this was supported by two tame thunderstorms that let the ship sail through the air with more speed and stability than any of the big civilian gasbag airships.

So when the Grandus took its first step and the whole ship lurched, that gives you an idea of how big the assault armor was. I already had a really good idea, and my bones were still aching and begging me to go somewhere else where I wouldn’t get stepped on and crushed like a bug.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Four said. Her voice resonated through me. It wasn’t just the echoing loudspeakers in the armor, I could hear her in my own skull, like we were face to face. I could feel the anger in it. She was furious that I’d come back!

“I just have a talent for finding the biggest heap of trouble in the world and putting myself right in the middle of it,” I said, trying to joke about it.

“Why didn’t you just leave?!” Four shouted. “I didn’t want to hurt you and they’re going to make me do it all over again because you couldn’t just go away!”

The Grandus took a step, and the deck rattled. Even with all the spells Four had wrapped around it to reduce the weight, it was denting the armor just by walking.

“You know why,” I said. “You know what happened to Sanctuary.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Four shouted. “I didn’t want anypony to get hurt! I had to do it! I have to follow orders or I’ll never get my memories back!”

“Split Moon is dead,” I said.

“I have to follow orders!” Four repeated, screaming.

“Shadowmere is dead,” I said, more firmly. I took a step closer to the Grandus. I was afraid of it, but I couldn’t be the one to back down. If I blinked first, I’d end up broken and dying all over again. “Grey Gloom is dead. Opening is dead. Do you even care?”

“I-- I-- shut up!” Four snapped. “You can’t understand!”

“How many ponies are you going to kill? How much are your memories worth?” She stood almost perfectly still, letting me get just a little closer. I looked up into the glowing eyes of the terrible visage of the Grandus’ helmet. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here, but neither should you. All the ponies we met in Kasatka grew past what they used to be, and they found something else to live for. You can have a future, and that’s more important than any past!”

Four hesitated, the aura around the Grandus calming.

Beam blasts sprayed across it, the magic barrier shimmering around the machine dissipating them into a harmless light show before they even reached the impenetrable armor. Her aura flared up, and Four turned to look.

When ponies say things like ‘you and what army’, it was exactly this army that they were talking about. A half-dozen VertiBucks and dozens of soldiers were cresting over the deck of the Spirit, probably representing a majority of the ship’s complement of soldiers in addition to the ones stationed below.

“I knew I’d get another shot at you if I waited,” one of them called out.

“Rain Shadow,” I groaned, picking him out of the crowd.

“I’ve got you dead to rights this time,” Rain Shadow said. “No running away this time. No surprise friends to bail you out! It’s almost too bad I couldn’t make it a fair fight.”

“I was IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION!” Four yelled. The air pulsed, and I felt my weight double. The VertiBucks strained, engines spinning up harder and hotter. Ponies dipped, fighting for altitude.

Somepony made a big mistake. They shot Four again. I saw them make that decision, just some nameless soldier in a moment of panic pulling the trigger because he was starting to fall out of the sky. The beams did exactly as much to Four as if he’d sprayed her with a garden hose. It just made her angry.

Four screamed in frustration, and a wave of force exploded in all directions from the Grandus, sending me skidding across the deck. The edge loomed, and I snapped my hoofblade out and slammed it down into the deck plating, anchoring myself.

The Enclave soldiers weren’t as lucky. The VertiBucks, already straining themselves to the limit, simply failed. Engines exploded, propellers sheared, and the irreplaceable armored transports crashed down, most of them flipping end-over-end from the sheer force of the Grandus’ attack. The soldiers were flung in every direction. The lucky ones went into the empty sky. The unlucky ones went into something more solid.

Rain Shadow had been closest, and he and the ponies next to him had been thrown into the deck. I grabbed for one as she flew past me, snagging her hoof before she could be tossed off the edge.

“Hang on!” I yelled. I looked at her face, and realized I recognized the mare. “Nova?”

“Rain Shadow was right about how much trouble you cause!” she groaned.

“You saved Four once before -- any idea how to calm her down?”

“I’m a doctor, not a psychologist! Actually, I’m not even a doctor, I’m a medic.”

“Great,” I mumbled.

“Stella!” Rain Shadow yelled. “Are you okay?!”

He flew over and pulled her away from me, keeping his guns trained on me.

“I think my wing is sprained,” Nova said, her voice shaky. “I’m okay, but I can’t fly.”

“Four, please stop!” I shouted. “You’re just making things worse!”

“I’m making things worse?!” Four yelled back. The echoing speakers in the armor distorted, her voice dropping an octave. “Me?! This is all your fault! It’s everypony’s fault! I was so close to having it all back! All my memories! My history! My everything! If you’d just stayed dead I could have gotten it all!”

She reared up and stomped on the deck in rage, smashing the armor. Plates bent and twisted out of place, sheets of metal peeling away and falling towards the city below us.

“You’re all just ruining things!” Four screamed. She stomped again, shattering pipes and sending a spray of sparks into the air.

“She’s going to take the whole ship down!” Rain Shadow shouted. “Bridge, this is Lieutenant Rain Shadow! Fire on the black assault armor! Drive her away from the Spirit of Cloudsdale!”

“What are you doing?!” I yelled, pulling myself free from the deck.

“Fixing a mistake,” Rain Shadow said.

The CIWS turned on the Grandus and fired, the bolts hitting the shielded machine hard enough to make the shield around it shimmer and start to fail, a few of the lasers getting through to land on the armor and leave scorch marks.

“Oh buck!” I swore, and ran for cover because I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

The CIWS turrets were enveloped by an eruption of ultraviolet light and Four tore them out of the hull, throwing them aside and leaving gaping wounds in the ship. Rain Shadow and Stella Nova quickly joined me in my hiding spot behind what I hoped was a relatively bulletproof chunk of the ship.

“Did you even think for one second about what she was going to do if you attacked her?!” I yelled.

“Sorry if I can’t predict what a monster like you or that thing will do!” Rain Shadow snapped.

“She’s not a monster!” I yelled back.

The roar from the Grandus shook me to the core. All three of us hunkered down a little tighter behind the cover, which was probably a really smart decision. Big sprays of beam fire erupted from the Grandus, digging into the Spirit’s hull and blasting through radar dishes.

Rain Shadow looked at her, then looked at me.

“She’s having a temper tantrum!” I snapped. “You know what she isn’t doing? Hunting ponies down and murdering them!”

“You killed my sister!”

“And I feel very bad about it and apologized!”

“Did you actually apologize?” Destiny whispered.

“That’s not the point!”

“I should have taken the posting in Thunderhead,” Stella Nova mumbled. She struggled to move, groaning. “I think this is worse than a strain. It’s dislocated.”

“Maybe your boyfriend should take you to the hospital,” I suggested.

“And leave you here? No way. You’re not escaping again!” Rain Shadow lunged at me, jumping right over his injured marefriend to tackle me. It was one of the dumbest things I’d ever seen a pony do and that’s impressive because I had front-row seats to my own greatest hits. If I wasn’t so surprised, I would have braced myself and just let him bounce off me, but he actually caught me off-guard with the maneuver and knocked me over, both of us rolling out of cover and right into Four’s line of sight.

“You!” Four shouted. “You’re the reason all this is happening! You’re the reason I’m so confused!”

She launched into the air. It wasn’t a graceful leap, it was something with the energy and sheer looming death of a train derailing, and this hypothetical train is specifically aiming for you because it’s an angry train and thinks you wronged it.

Even Rain Shadow wasn’t dumb enough to hang onto me and let us both be crushed like bugs. He threw himself in one direction and I rolled the other way and the Grandus came down between us and punched knee-deep into the ship, crashing through into whatever unfortunate ponies were on the deck below.

“I have to kill you!” Four screamed. “I have to kill you so they’ll give me my memories back!”

She struggled to free herself, thrashing around and breaking more of the ship. Four roared and fired the Grandus’ main cannon again, just blasting wildly. The beam weapon tore deep into the ship and burrowed into something important. A plume of flame erupted into the air, right from where Stella Nova had been taking cover.

“No!” Rain Shadow yelled. He got to his hooves and ran for where she’d been. I got up and slowly approached Four.

“You have to stop!” I begged. “Calm down! Just listen to what I’m saying and--”

Four managed to get a hoof free, ripping it out of the deck and swatting me to the side, flinging me into one of the ship’s main guns. I hit the turret hard and slid down like a bug on a windscreen.

“Ow,” I groaned.

“You can’t talk her down,” Destiny said. “I think you should just leave. Leave her alone for a few more minutes and she’ll take down this ship on her own! That telekinetic pulse and the gravity field took care of everypony in the air, you’ve got clear skies so just run for it!”

“And then what’s going to happen?” I asked. “Will she destroy the city next?”

“With how much stress the Thaumatic Booster causes she’ll probably die,” Destiny said, speaking way too calmly and frankly about a pony I cared about. “I don’t think there’s a way to stop her, Chamomile.”

“There’s always a way,” I mumbled. “We can’t let her rampage here. If she brings down the ship, it’s going to crash right into the city.”

“So? That’s what you were going to do anyway!”

“I came up with a much smarter plan that involved capturing it and flying it outside the city first!” I protested. “I mean, I only just came up with it now, but still!”

“CHAMOMILE!” Four screamed like a wild animal. She levered herself to the side with her free hoof and pulled the Grandus free of where it had crashed through the hull, levitating the back half out of the twisted metal of the deck. The cannon built into the chest flashed. I felt the world slow down, colors and sensations draining from the world. I threw myself to the side in that frozen instant, and just barely dodged the cone of deadly energy that tore through the space I’d been in.

I skidded to a halt, my foil feathers glowing dully as they radiated the extra heat away and tried to keep my body from cooking itself. The Spirit of Cloudsdale fared less well. The beam cannon ripped into the plasma turret and touched off something inside, gouts of radioactive green plasma blasting through ruptures in the turret before it failed entire and blew into the air in one piece like a massive coin flipping from the cloudship into the city below.

A loudspeaker blared to life, the squeal making me jump.

“We’ve got fires in blocks three and five! All hands to fire control! Don’t let it spread to the ammunition magazines!”

“I think this ship is going down no matter what plans you have,” Destiny said.

She was right but I didn’t want to say it. I was trying to catch my breath and figure out my next move. Could I get Four to follow me? If I just flew away, she might chase me into the air… but then the cloudship would probably blow her out of the sky with the main guns. The Grandus was a big enough target that she’d never avoid them.

“Four! Stand down!”

Oddly, it wasn’t me yelling it. An armored hatch had been levered open and the navy blue unicorn I’d met in the ruins of the Damascus lab climbed out onto the upper deck, the wind whipping at her mane and tail. Doctor Anamnesis held up a crystal orb.

“Oh great, her,” I groaned. “Just what we need, somepony to make things more complicated.” The little injuries and general knocking-around were starting to take their toll on me. That burst of speed had drained my reserves of stamina to nothing.

“If you don’t stop right now, I’ll destroy it!” the doctor shouted. “You’re completely out of control, Four!”

The Grandus shook like an engine rumbling, or maybe it was just barely restraining itself. It turned away from me, the huge form moving more carefully and smoothly to face the scientist.

“Doctor?” Four asked, sounding confused, like a pony just starting to wake up from being deep asleep.

Anamnesis sighed in relief. “That’s right, Four. You have to stay in control. If you don’t have control, you’re worthless, and if you’re worthless I can’t convince them to let me give you back your memories! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I… I need… my head hurts so much…” Four groaned.

“You pushed yourself past your natural limits,” the doctor said, stepping closer. “Stand down, and I’ll give you your medication.”

The light around the Grandus faded from a raging storm of magic to a dull glow. The machine slumped, clearly unable to really support itself without spells holding it up, and the intimidating oversized helmet split open, revealing Four in a nest of wires and screens. Even from where I was standing I could see the bags under her eyes and a thin trickle of blood from her nostrils.

“Are you… are you really ever going to give my memories back?” Four asked weakly.

“Of course we are,” Doctor Anamnesis said reassuringly. “You have to repay the debt you incurred, that’s all. We can talk about it after you’ve had your medication.”

This seemed like a good time to try and solve this problem once and for all. I landed behind the doctor.

“Give her the memory orb right now,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to let you dangle that bait in front of her forever. She’s not a puppet for you to control!”

“This isn’t the time!” the Doctor hissed.

“Why? Because you won’t have leverage if you actually do what you promised?” I asked. “I’m ending the blackmail right now. You’re going to give her the orb, then we’re going to get her out of that monster and I’m leaving with her.”

“You can’t have her!” Anamnesis snapped. “Do you have any idea how much she’s worth?! We had a half-dozen test subjects and she’s the only one who displayed enough compatibility with the Grandus’ allegorical manipulation system to use it correctly!”

“Stop… arguing…” Four groaned weakly.

“Four is a pony,” I said. “Not a weapon.”

“She’s the most dangerous weapon I’ve ever created,” Anamnesis said. Her voice was as cold as ice. “She killed the other test subjects, burned down my lab, and slaughtered my colleagues. When I prove how deadly she can be to the Enclave, they’ll give me the funds I need to start all over again!”

“To start all over again?” Four asked.

“That’s right,” the doctor said. “It’s going to be just like it was before.”

I saw Four’s expression sink into a deep sorrow. For a pony who claimed not to have memories, it sure looked like she was reliving her past and thinking about the horrors she’d seen.

Rain Shadow flew over a reef of torn deck plates, holding Stella Nova. He landed on one of the few clear spaces left on the Spirit’s broken upper deck and laid Nova’s body down on the steel. The medic’s body had been pierced by a spear of shrapnel as long as my leg, the steel going right through her chest. “She’s dead,” he hissed, his voice cutting through the noise of broken metal settling into place among sputtering flames.

I winced. She’d seemed like a nice pony. She’d never really tried to kill me, even though she’d showed up with the rest of the troops to point guns at me.

“She’s dead and it’s your fault!” Rain Shadow shouted. I didn’t understand what he was doing for a second. The fatigue slowed my thoughts and reaction time and, frankly, I was just so used to him pointing his guns at me that it didn’t register when he’d aimed them in another direction.

Four was strapped into the Grandus, with the armor open. She couldn’t dodge or defend herself. The beam rifle shot right past me and Doctor Anamnesis and hit Four in the chest.

“No!” I screamed, rushing towards her and taking the next shot in the back, shielding Four with my body.

Four gasped, coughing up blood. The equipment around her flared with light, and the Grandus’ telekinetic grip closed on Rain Shadow, squeezing him tight. The beam rifles strapped to his armor exploded, and he shrieked in pain and anger before Four just flung him aside, tossing him off the edge of the ship.

“That idiot!’ Doctor Anamnesis hissed. “Does he have any idea how much it’s going to cost to replace the test subject?!”

“I’m not just a test subject,” Four said, the last word ending in a violent cough and more blood.

“Silence, Four! I order you to--”

The glass orb the Doctor had been carrying was ripped away from her grip by the ultraviolet light of the Grandus. The unicorn looked shocked, like she’d never expected this to ever happen. The great machine stood up, the deck creaking. Doctor Anamnesis took a step back.

“My name isn’t Four!” Four screeched. “I’m not just a number!”

She reared up and stomped. The Doctor couldn’t get out of the way. The huge metal hoof went through her and the deck below. Four stood there, totally still, for a few moments, wheezing and coughing up blood.

“She needs immediate medical attention,” Destiny said. “That shot must have punctured a lung, and it’s dangerously close to her heart. I don’t know if a regular healing potion will be enough.”

“Don’t,” Four whispered.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “I know some great healers! If they can keep me alive after the dumb stuff I’ve done--”

Four shook her head. The Grandus slumped, lying down on the deck. The aura around it flickered, barely visible. “I don’t… I’m done fighting. Here.”

She floated the memory orb over to me. I took it from her grip carefully, not wanting to damage it.

“I want you to have it,” Four said. “I want… I want somepony to remember me. The real me. Not just Test Subject Four, but whoever I was before.”

“I… I…” I swallowed.

“Goodbye, Chamomile,” she whispered. She was crying. I think I was, too. “For a while, you helped me feel like I was more than just a weapon.”

She closed her eyes, and the magic aura around the Grandus went out entirely. The full weight of the machine came down on the deck, and something broke. The already-straining hull crumpled in, and the Grandus started to slide. I ran for it, tried to grab the edge of the assault armor’s heavy frame, and the momentum tore it from my grip.

It tumbled off the edge of the ship and down to the city below.

I stood there in mute horror, watching it fall. There was nothing I could do. Four vanished into the smoke and flames rising up from the burning buildings below. A thunderous crash rang out, and a plume of violet-blue light shot past me like a spotlight, shining straight up towards the sky, lasting only an instant before fading to nothing.

“Four,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Destiny said. “She’s gone.”

The wind rushed around me. I stared down into the city, hoping to see some sign of life from her. I looked at the memory orb. She’d died for a tiny, stupid bauble. Destiny put it away into the suit’s Vector Trap. When it vanished it felt… it felt like she really had died for nothing.

“I was trying to save her,” I whispered. “I was so close…”

“You can’t save everypony,” Destiny said.

“I can’t save anypony!” I spat.

“Chamomile--”

“Not now,” I growled. I turned around. The Grandus had punched some big holes into the ship. Big enough for me to get inside. I bent the broken metal aside and jumped down into the ship, trying to get my bearings. I’d been on enough of these ships that I thought I’d be able to figure it out at a glance, but all I knew is that I had to be on the same deck as the bridge.

A pony holding a fire extinguisher and trying to douse flames coming out of a side room slowly turned to look at me. We stared at each other for a moment. He held the nozzle towards me with shaking hooves and sprayed me with foam.
In other circumstances, I’d probably have just sighed and told him to leave. But, and this isn’t an excuse, just an explanation, I was feeling emotionally vulnerable in that moment. I started crying. I pulled him into a hug, and he struggled for a few moments before going limp. He just let me hold him for a minute before saying anything.

“This is really awkward,” he whispered.

“Sorry,” I sniffled. I let him go. “You should go. This whole place is going to explode.”

“...You know what, I have some shore leave coming up.” He said. He put his tools down and looked around. “Uh. Thank you for not killing me?”

I nodded and let him go, the technician flying out of the hole I’d made to the outside.

“You did the right thing,” Destiny said.

“He was just a pony doing his job,” I replied quietly.

“Fires are spreading to block eight now! Heat is rising in the main reactor!” somepony called out over the loudspeaker. “We need damage control in engineering!”

“If you want to get this thing out of the city, we need to get to the bridge,” Destiny said. “I don’t know how much longer this ship is going to hold together.”

I tried to rub my eyes to wipe the tears away, but the helmet was in the way. That moment of confusion and surprise was just enough to shock me back to sense. I nodded and started moving, just focusing on putting one hoof in front of the other.

“All hands, prepare for ground evacuation!”

Before the loudspeaker even had a chance to stop ringing, a second voice came over it. “Belay that order! This is Grand Admiral Bright Song. Nopony is evacuating! Return to damage control stations and get the fires under control! That’s an order! Dissenters will be charged with treason!”

Technicians and even a few soldiers ran past me. They were more concerned with the ruptured hydraulics spraying oil into the hallways and the fires spreading through the ship. A few of them got as far as drawing a weapon before ponies with more sense dragged them away. I could have torn right through them. It would have been so easy.

And even having that thought made me feel so sick that I had to stop and lean against the wall. I wasn’t a monster.

A pony trying to carry too many boxes stumbled and fell. I helped her up, grabbing a box and giving it to her. She looked up at me with terror in her eyes, but still whispered a thank you and took the box with shaking hooves before running off. They weren’t monsters either.

“Are you okay?” Destiny asked.

“No,” I said. “I think I really messed everything up.”

“I know the feeling. You just have to follow your own advice. You told Four she could still have a future if she could stop living in the past. You can’t change what’s already happened, but you get to choose how you live in the future.”

“...Yeah,” I agreed, steadying myself with a deep breath. “First thing I want to do is save the ponies I can. Let’s get this ship clear of the city.”

Nopony tried to stop me from reaching the bridge until I was at the door. Two guards were still stationed there. They trained their weapons on me as I approached. I held up a hoof. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t heavily armed, but they seemed to understand I wasn’t here to immediately murder them and let me get closer.

“I need to get inside,” I said.

“We’re under orders--”

“Don’t be stupid,” I interrupted. “You know this ship is going down. I just want to make sure it doesn’t crash into civilians.”

“We can’t just leave our posts,” the second guard said quietly.

The first guard looked at him, looked at me, then slapped the door controls and stepped away. The lock light changed from red to green. “I’m not going down with the ship just because the Admiral won’t authorize us to evacuate.”

The second guard bit his lip and looked around, whining. “But he said we’d be charged with treason!”

“Get out of here and tell them I knocked you out and threw you overboard,” I suggested.

“I’m feeling very unconscious,” the first guard agreed, walking past me. “Come on, Air Raid. We’re going to throw ourselves overboard to save this mare a trip.”

The second guard hung his head low and scampered past me like a scared animal. I watched them go.

“I guess all the really dedicated soldiers got knocked out of the air by the Grandus,” Destiny noted.

“Rain Shadow was with them, so maybe it was just the stupid ones,” I muttered. I opened the door and stepped through onto the chaos of the bridge.

“Get those mule-headed engineers back to their posts!” somepony snapped. I instantly clocked him as the Grand Admiral, both because I’d heard him yelling over the loudspeaker and because he was standing in the middle of the bridge on a ship that was literally on fire and wearing just about every medal the Enclave awarded, and a few that he probably dug out of pre-war ruins just to pin on his own chest.

I cleared my throat. “Everypony out,” I said firmly. Destiny helped out, amplifying my voice. Everypony on the bridge turned to look at me. “I’m taking this ship out of the city. If you want to help, show me where the controls are before you leave.”

“You think you can make demands on my ship?!” Admiral Bright Song yelled. “Do you have any idea who I am?!”

“I know exactly who you are,” a pony said, from right behind him.

I had just enough time to process that the bridge fire escape was hanging open, the locked hatch showing the sky above. Either it had popped loose in the Grandus’ rampage, or else the mare who’d come down through it just knew a trick to getting it open from the outside that I didn’t.

Unsung dropped down on top of her father, Split Moon’s sword in her hooves. The blade went right through him, the tip emerging from his chest and scattering medals across the bridge. He fell to the ground, Unsung keeping her footing and perching on his back, holding the sword and riding him to the floor.

“It’s been a while,” Unsung said lightly. She twisted the blade. “You’ve really done well for yourself, father.”

“Y-you--” he gasped.

Unsung hopped off his body and looked around the bridge. “I’m just here for him. You’re all free to go. I apologize for the trouble. You wouldn’t believe how long it took to arrange all this!” She laughed, and it should have been cruel and evil but… it came out bright and pure like she’d just heard a funny joke, even while her hooves were stained red with her father’s blood.

That made it all worse.

The bridge crew rushed past me, fleeing through the door and leaving us alone. The red alert alarms blared in the air in lieu of conversation.

“You…” I started, trailing off.

“You’re going to ask if I did all this just to get back at my father,” Unsung suggested. She reached up and took off her mask, shaking her mane free and dropping the metal visor on the deck. Her eyes were bright blue, like the apex of the sky on a bright day. The mask hadn’t been hiding anything at all except her look of satisfaction.

I nodded.

“I told you before. We all need something to live for.” Unsung looked down at her father. She yanked the sword free and sheathed it. “We’ve got something more important to do than make speeches. I like your idea about getting this ship out of the city, but there’s one more thing to do with it.”

“What?” I asked, skeptical.

Unsung smiled and stepped up to me, putting a hoof on my shoulder. “I promised I’d get you home. This ship has a transponder that will get us through the lightning shield.”

“You want me to ride an exploding cloudship back to the Enclave?”

“I never promised it would be a safe trip,” Unsung said. She walked over her father, and he gasped in pain when she used him as a rug, the mare not even hesitating to dig her hooves in on her way to the helm. “I’m going to send this thing into an emergency climb. It should get above the cloud level before the engines go. As soon as you break through, fly out of here and back home.”

“Mm…”

“I know, I know. You’re a tough mare with no home to go back to, but you’ve got ponies that care about you, and that’s what a home really is,” Unsung said. She hit some controls and I felt the ship’s bow pitch up. The sound of the engines straining vibrated through the hull, rattling bolts and loose bulkheads.

Unsung stepped away and back over to me, giving me a sad smile.

“I think in other circumstances, we could have been enemies,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s a good way to put it.”

We shook hooves. Unsung slipped out, and I was left on the bridge, the deck under me slowly tilting further up. A shudder and groan ran through the floor under me, and the wind whipping through the open fire escape hatch blew papers across the room.

The clouds loomed through the floor-to-ceiling armored windows. It was my last chance to see the surface. I felt a surge of fear. Was I making a mistake? Was I really ready to go? There was so much I hadn’t done, so much I hadn’t seen--

I saw Four’s face in my mind’s eye. The moment she’d given up and embraced what was coming.

The pit in my stomach was deeper than the sea. There was nothing left for me down on the surface. The ship hit the cloud layer, and it should have been an impact like dropping into water, but it was just a sudden silence, the view of the world below vanishing into white mist.

“This ship’s really struggling,” Destiny said. “We’re still gaining altitude, but it’s slowing down!”

One of the consoles exploded, the radar officer’s station erupting in flame. The whole ship rumbled, a wave of vibration running through it from one end to the other. Every display flickered and struggled to come back to life.

“Is it going to make it?” I asked.

“Engine output must be unsteady. The readings on the consoles here aren’t accurate,” Destiny replied.

“Should we just bail out now?” I asked. I stepped over to the ladder leading to the fire escape. It ended in a solid wall of clouds, the mist slowly trickling in.

“I have no idea if it’s safe,” Destiny said. “We might get fried by lightning if we go too early.”

“W-wait! Take me with you!”

I looked down. The Grand Admiral crawled across the deck towards me, reaching for my hooves, leaving a trail of blood behind him like a skyslug oozing across a stormcloud.

“If you save me, I’ll get you anything you want! I’ll make you an officer!”

I stared at him for a moment.

The grey outside vanished, and sunlight streamed through the windows. I looked up, and I could see it for the first time in so long. That pure, bright blue of the open sky. The sun, not filtered through clouds of haze and fallout, not a dim diffuse glow through the clouds, but bright and whole and lighting up the world.

I started up the ladder. Admiral Bright Song yelled after me, but I didn’t answer. The ship rumbled, and a violent thrust to the side almost threw me off the rungs. Two more consoles blew up in showers of sparks and even the emergency lighting gave up the ghost, going totally dark. The vibration of the engines cut off.

“This is it,” Destiny said. “Looks like it’s all downhill from here!”

I pulled myself out into the open air. The ship was a fireball. The entire back half of the Spirit was just a wall of fire and smoke. I have no idea how, but even one of the two captive thunderstorms giving the ship lift was on fire, flames swirling through the vortex.

“Definitely time to leave,” I agreed.

Admiral Bright Song screamed in furious rage and fear. I jumped out and into the open air, my wings catching the wind. The Spirit of Cloudsdale tilted to one side and slipped back beneath the clouds as I watched, fire and flames lighting up the world from below with an ominous, Tartarean glow until they, too, vanished, and I was left free and clear with the blue sky above me and all my mistakes hidden far below.

Chapter 45 - You Will Remember Tonight

Everything was blurry around the edges, and my eyes ached. I think I was crying.

"I don't understand," I said. I looked up into a face that, from this perspective, felt familiar. It was a mare, just a little past the prime of their life. She was trying not to cry, holding it back with a smile.

"I know," the mare said. She was wearing a faded blue jumpsuit, worn and wrinkled. The air tasted just a little stale.

"Why do I have to leave?" I asked, my voice breaking.

The mare sighed and knelt down. "You remember what you learned in school, about how the Stable was supposed to protect us?"

I nodded.

"Our Stable, it wasn't... it wasn't built correctly," she said. "No, that's not right. We're lucky. We're very lucky. It's lasted this whole time, and we've been able to keep most of it running, but ponies aren't gods. Nothing we build is perfect. There are things we can't fix."

"Why?" I whispered. "What if we just... what if we tried harder?"

"It doesn't work like that, little one," she said sadly. "If it was something less important, like the coffee pot or the suit cleaner, we could do without. The filtration talismans make the air around us. The engineers did everything they could. We even tried reducing the strain by only running them every other day, but..."

I sniffled and rubbed my eyes.

The mare pulled me into a hug. "The ponies you're going with, they're taking you to run some tests. You'll be back before you know it."

"You promise?" I asked.

"You'll always have a home here," the mare promised.

"Are you done?" another pony asked. I looked up at a mare in a white coat. Doctor Anamnesis. She looked a decade younger and much more alive than the last time I'd seen her. "We need to hurry this along."

The mare holding me squeezed, and didn't let go. I watched her narrow her eyes at the doctor.

"If you do anything--"

"Save the threats," Anamnesis sighed. "I've already delivered the talismans you needed. I need my test subject now. That's the deal."

The mare let go, and Anamnesis grabbed my hoof, pulling me away.

"Come on," Anamnesis said firmly. She led me out of a huge, gear-shaped door, and onto the metal gangway beyond. I looked back at the mare who'd held me. She caught my gaze and looked away, her expression torn. Eventually, she slammed her hoof down on a button and an alarm blared as the door started closing.

"My name is--" I started

"I don't care," the Doctor said. "Names just complicate things. The last thing I need is you being emotional."

I looked down and let her lead me away. Just before I lost sight of it for the last time, I turned back to the door as it clunked and hissed into place.

The number, written in letters taller than I was, was the last thing I saw before everything went dark.

"One-oh-Seven..." I mumbled, batting the memory orb between my hooves on the bed, careful not to damage it.

"You okay?" Destiny asked.

"I'm fine," I said, trying to mean it. "I have a certificate in being fine."

"If you say so," the ghost said, bobbing in a spectral shrug.

“Chamomile, I have never seen somepony abuse equipment in quite the way you do,” Herr Doktor said, shaking her head and looking at the readouts hooked up to the Exodus armor. “Look at this! A whole section of the armor is simply missing!”

She slapped the replacement shoulder that the Ghost Bears had forged for me after it had been torn off and eaten by a cyborg werebear abomination. The crimson paint was already starting to wear around the edges, scrapes and chips showing on the bright surface.

“I think I did a pretty good job,” I said defensively.

“You did,” Destiny agreed. “Nopony could design equipment that would survive all you’ve been through and come out the other side factory-fresh. Not even me, and I’m a genius!”

“A biased genius,” Herr Doktor sighed.

“Thank you for taking a look over my stuff,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but I can’t think of a better pair of hooves to have working on this.”

The scientist adjusted her glasses and looked away, blushing. “Yes, well. I suppose you are correct there. And with the assistance of the original designer, I should be able to fully restore even what the repair talismans couldn’t fix! Aside from that shoulder. Hm.”

“Make sure you take a look at the Cryolator too,” I suggested. “It was slapped together by an Enclave scientist in the field, so it’s probably got a lot of problems.”

Doktor nodded in agreement. “Yes. It is an elegant solution to the core issue that you lack the software to interface standard firearms into your armor.”

“I also lack the skill to use them normally,” I quipped. “Something with a wide spray is just about perfect for me, even if it does eat through nitrogen tanks like crazy!”

“I should be able to do something,” Herr Doktor agreed.

Para-Medic nudged me from behind, putting a bottle in my hooves. “Drink this. And can I get another blood sample? There’re some really weird results from the test and I need to make sure you’re okay and didn’t get any weird surface diseases like wingrot or The Splashes.”

I made a face. She’d had to use the biggest, thickest needle I’d ever seen to get a blood sample the first time.

“Please?” she begged.

“Fine,” I sighed. She brightened up and produced a needle she’d already prepped because apparently, I was too much of a doormat for my own good. I sipped at the drink she’d given me, which tasted like bad fake fruit and salt. “What is this?”

“Just a little something to perk you up!” Para-Medic said brightly. “Some Radaway mixed with water and electrolytes and crushed-up vitamin pills!”

“That’s exactly what it tastes like,” I said with a nod.

“Make sure you finish the whole thing. You look kind of thin. Have you been eating right?”

“Every single one of my bones was shattered and rebuilt,” I said. “I’m still sort of working my way back to a hundred percent.”

“Oh. Maybe that explains all the loose calcium in the blood tests…” Para-Medic mumbled. “It’s nothing to worry about! You’re as healthy as… as…” she fluttered up and hovered, thinking. “I don’t really know what to use as a comparison. But I’m pretty sure you’re not dying!”

“That’s great news,” I said. I did my best to sound positive.

“It is.” Quattro walked into the hold, Emma hot on her heels and running past her to grab me and look me over, frowning and looking me over carefully.

“You… actually look okay,” she admitted. “I thought you’d be a big mess of scars and trauma but…”

“She’s got fewer scars than when she went down to the surface,” Destiny said. “Between the auto-doc treatment and taming her SIVA infection, she’s in better shape than any of you.” She managed to sound haughty about it. “It just proves that my technology was centuries ahead of anypony else’s!”

“I was worried,” Emma said, sighing. She hugged me briefly, and I felt some of the tension drain. “It’s good to see you.”

“Is Captain Glint going to come say hello too?” I asked.

“She’s been making excuses not to come down here,” Quattro said. She leaned against a hospital bed and shrugged. “I think she’s afraid to find out what happened to Unsung. They were close, a long time ago.”

“I hope Unsung was a better pony back when she knew the Captain,” I muttered.

“We were all different ponies when we were young.” Quattro shrugged. “If you’re up for it, we could use a hoof with a mission.”

I smacked one hoof into the other, cracking my neck and trying to look cool. “I wouldn’t mind busting some heads.”

Quattro chuckled. “Don’t get too excited. What we need you for is more of an undercover operation. You haven’t been seen around Thunderbolt Shoals in a while, so nopony should know you’re working for us.”

I frowned, my ears folding back. “Oh.”

“Don’t look so down! Think of it as a blind date but you get to send White Glint the bill.”

“Does that include drinks?” I asked.

“Getting ponies drunk is probably the most honored and traditional way to conduct an undercover op, Cammy. Of course she’ll pick up your bar tab.”

“Tell me more about this mission,” I said.

I walked into the bar wearing somepony else’s work jacket. It didn’t fit me very well, but it probably would have been more suspicious if it had. I admit, I was a little fuzzy on the details of the mission. Some kind of security gig, but the pony couldn’t know what I was there for? Quattro had only given me a vague briefing and, I admit, I didn’t pay enough attention. Ever since I’d gotten back it felt harder to focus. I was physically drained, and I knew I should feel something but all my emotions were just… far away.

I knew something that’d fix both of those problems. I sat down at the bar and waved to the bartender. “Can I get a vodka, neat?” I cleared my throat when he reached for the plastic jug of Cloudtato Nine. “Not that one, go for the Red Star.”

The bartender shrugged and picked up the other bottle. I put a few bits on the bartop to cover it and downed the glass in one go. It tasted like rainwater with the faint lingering taste of hospital disinfectant, and made me feel warm inside. I put the glass down and motioned for another.

“Well, you look like somepony who can hold their liquor,” the pony next to me said. I looked over at him. He was the pony I was supposed to keep tabs on. I’d chosen this seat for a reason.

“It’s been a long… well, it’s been long in general,” I said. I put more bits on the counter, and the bartender coughed.

“Hey, what’s this supposed to be?” they asked, holding up a bottlecap. I blushed and replaced it with a bit.

“Sorry,” I apologized. I must have gotten some of them mixed up in my bag. I saw the other pony’s eyes linger on the cap while I put it in a pocket.

“I’m Ruby,” the stallion said, holding out a hoof to shake. “Ruby Ridge.”

I shook his hoof. “Chamomile.” I wasn’t feeling up to using a fake name. “You from around here? I don’t remember seeing you here before.”

“I don’t come into town much,” he said. “I… can’t really stand the hustle and bustle. But sometimes you have to do it for the job.”

I nodded. “Doesn’t that get…” I looked down into the glass. I could dimly see my reflection in the poor light of the flickering arc lanterns. “Kinda lonely?”

“Sometimes!” he smiled sadly. “But I enjoy just… being out in the wild. Living with the work of my own hooves.”

“I can appreciate that. You drink vodka?” I asked.

“Is there anypony who doesn’t?”

I finished my second glass.

“Can I get a round for me and my new friend?” I called out. I was starting to feel a little better. The drinks were put down in front of us, and that’s when things start to get a little fuzzy and I can’t remember what happened after that for a while.

I jerked awake to the absolutely lovely and bracing feeling of icewater being dumped on my face.

“Bwah!” I gasped eloquently. I flailed at the air, trying to fight off my cold, wet attacker, but in the end I was the only one who was really cold and wet, making me the loser.

“Oh dear, I spilled my drink. How careless.”

I groaned and opened my eyes. The light shot directly into my brain and slammed into me like a sledgehammer. I rolled over onto my belly and moaned.

“My head…” I whined.

“Good morning, sunshine!” a cheery voice said, rough with age. I opened one eye to look. A pegasus mare old enough to be my grandmother was looking down at me. “I hope you had a nice nap.”

“Where am I?” I looked around. The light still made my head pound, but it wasn’t so bad that I was going to-- actually, my stomach was a more immediate concern. I looked at the old mare with obvious panic in my eyes.

“Bucket!” she snapped, pointing. “I just finished mopping up your first mess, I’m not doing it again!”

I ran over to the bucket, and to put it delicately, I vomited a bunch. Then I looked up, starting to feel better, and another wave hit me. I spent a little more time emptying out my insides, and eventually there just wasn’t anything left to be sick with.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling shaky.

“Mm,” the mare said. I looked around, trying to figure out what had happened. I was in an old building. Not pre-war but it had to have been built right afterwards. The cloud walls were slowly decaying, and I could see almost as many patches where it was so thin you could see through it as I could see places where patches had been hammered into place. A big window made of carefully arranged shards of solid rainbow dominated the space, showing the sunrise and, behind it and cradling it like a mother with a foal, a huge white mare that was probably supposed to be Princess Celestia.

“Is this a church?” I asked.

“The Chapel of the Second Sunrise,” the old mare said. “The pony that built it claimed he had a revelation that the Goddess Celestia was still watching over us, even if she couldn’t return to save us yet.”

“I hope nopony was holding their breath on that,” I mumbled.

“Not many ponies still believe,” the old pony admitted. “More ponies end up like you, getting drunk and making a mess of things because they lost hope.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

She motioned around her. Furniture had been knocked over, books were lying on the floor, and a few vodka bottles were sad and empty and apparently I’d switched to the cheap stuff at some point.

“Oh.” I blushed. “Let me just… clean some of this up.” I really hoped I wasn’t going to get cursed or something. I didn’t need a curse on me right now. I’d probably end up as some kind of shambling undead horror.

My head pounded. I flipped over a pew I’d overturned and my ears started to ring. More accurately, the radio earpiece in my ear started to blare.

“Chamomile?” Emerald Gleam asked, her voice buzzy and rough, the miniature radio having pretty awful reception in the Shores’ constant roiling storm. “Are you there? Do you have any updates on Ruby Ridge?”

“One second,” I said, fumbling for the transmit button, then repeating myself once I’d found it. “Sorry, Emma. Just fumbled a little there. Uh. Everything’s… everything’s good! Situation green!”

The old mare in the church looked at me like I was crazy. I held a hoof to my lips.

“Good,” Emerald said. “How soon can you finish up?”

“Soon!” I replied. “I’ve got to call you back. Right in the middle of something.”

“Roger. Emerald Gleam out.” The radio clicked and went quiet.

I turned to the ancient mare and gave her a sheepish grin. “Uh… did I come here with anypony? Maybe a stallion, sort of scruffy, about this tall?” I held up a hoof.

“Him,” the old mare hissed. “He ran off with our coffee pot!”

“Do you know where he went? I really need to find him.”

The mare gave me a look.

“If you help me, I promise I’ll get your coffee pot back,” I said.

“It was a good coffee pot,” she said. “The kind with an automatic timer to turn it on in the morning and everything.”

“And I’ll get it back! I swear!”

She sighed and looked away. “You were mumbling something about the Hydroponic Co-op before you passed out.”

“Right… right! Okay, I’ll be back, I promise! I just need to find him!” I shoved the stack of books I’d been holding into the mare’s hooves and ran out the door.

“He’s not here?” I asked the farmer.

He glared at me. “No! And you’ve got a lot of nerve showing yourself around here again! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Er…” I swallowed. “I’m sorry?” I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for but from his expression I had a long way to go to earn any kind of forgiveness.

“Sorry’s not good enough! Not when I’m missing all my dang fertilizer!”

“When you’re missing-- what?” I blinked in surprise. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is that so? You just forgot about the way you broke into the Co-op and stole all them bags of ammonium nitrate right out of the communal tool shed?” He spat at my hooves. “You better start remembering what happened right fast before I start makin’ enough noise for the military police to drag you away!”

“That sounds pretty bad,” I mumbled.

“Darn right it does! We needed that fertilizer to keep the crops going through the winter! Hydroponic plants are a sight more productive than cloudfarms, but they need more care, and without a nitrogen source they won’t grow proper!”

“Okay.” I held up a hoof. “You’re right. I messed all this up and I have to take responsibility. I was really, really drunk. That’s not an excuse, but it does mean I’m stuck trying to retrace my steps. If you can help me, I can get your fertilizer back.”

He eyed me suspiciously. I smiled, trying to look confident.

“Maybe I mentioned Ruby Ridge? Or at least a coffee maker?”

He sighed, his wings drooping. “You didn’t say nothing about anypony named Ruby Ridge, and not much of what you were sayin’ made any sense. I don’t know about the coffee maker. You did leave a note behind, but most of it was crossed out and gibberish. Here.”

He rummaged around in his overalls and produced a dirty piece of paper. I unfolded it and looked at the worst hoofwriting in the world. Mine. And it was so bad even I wasn’t entirely sure what it said. I could just barely make out two words. Stereo Shack.

“I guess that’s some kind of lead,” I said. “I’ll be back. It shouldn’t be hard to find big bags of fertilizer, right? It’s not like they’re going to vanish in a puff of smoke.”

He made an annoyed noise and tossed his head.

“Just get out of here and don’t come back until you make things square.”

“I am so doomed,” I groaned. I just let my hooves carry me through the streets. I had no idea where I was going. Stereo Shack? What did that even mean? And why the buck would I steal fertilizer? Was there some kind of secret grow-op somewhere in the city? Was it all some kind of drugs thing?

I should have paid more attention to the briefing. I could feel the radio earpiece as an uncomfortable weight in my ear. I could call up Emma, tell her the truth about what happened and try to get it all fixed…

The radio blared to life and I almost tripped and fell on my stupid face. “Chamomile, any updates?” Quattro asked, the weak signal making her voice crackle. I looked around frantically like she was watching me and ducked into an alleyway where ponies couldn’t see me. I don’t know why. It was just a sudden surge of anxiety.

“Uh…” I hesitated. “Hey, Quattro. This isn’t a great time.”

“I know. Emma’s getting worried. You know we’ve got a time crunch on this.”

I had not known, but now I did and my nerves were getting even worse. I laughed, trying to sound casual and at ease. “Don’t worry. Everything’s… totally under control.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Quattro replied. “If you’re in trouble you need to tell us.”

I bit my lip and kept walking, all the way down the alleyway, skipping over gaps in the rubberized plates where they showed live stormclouds below. I knew the best thing was just to tell her the truth. Admit where I’d woken up and get their help retracing my steps. I could always go back to the little Solarian church and ask them how to pray for divine guidance.

I stepped out to the street on the other side of the alley, and I got a sign direct from Celestia. Stereo Shack, in big bright neon letters, powered by the static in the air and humming in the bright yellow color of sunshine.

“I’ll call you back,” I told Quattro. “Something just came up.”

I pulled the radio from my ear so I wouldn’t be interrupted and trotted over to the shop. It had to be pre-war. When I walked in, there was that smell of dust and rot and ruin that I was already starting to associate with sealed-off spaces in the underground, somehow transported above the clouds. The walls were full of half-empty displays with fading packaging holding inscrutable components. Vacuum tubes, lengths of wire, seventy types of small screw that were all subtly different.

“Can I help-- oh. You.”

The pony behind the counter glared at me, stomping out to put that glare closer to me.

“We’ve met?” I guessed.

“Oh, that’s rich,” she snapped. “And you know what else is rich? You! Because if you aren’t about to put a bunch of bits in my hooves, we’re going to have a problem!”

“I’m getting the sense that I might have done some kind of petty crime here?” I guessed.

“I sold you a spark gap generator and a bunch of capacitors and wire, and you just walked out without paying!” she yelled. “Do you have any idea how much that stuff was worth?!”

I swallowed and pulled out my bag of bits. “This much?” I asked hopefully.

She snatched the bag up and her expression immediately changed, the glare transforming into a smile so quickly the naked eye couldn’t follow the motion. She hummed happily to herself and went back behind the counter, dumping the coins out and counting them.

“So, uh… was I here with someone else?” I asked.

“You could say that,” the mare replied. “You were very close.”

I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. Did I seduce him while I was drunk? I was very persuasive and charismatic so it was entirely possible.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

“Hey, it’s fine,” the mare said, with a shrug. “I mean, it’s not my thing, but no one will look down on you for being into griffons.”

“...” I was struggling to come up with a reply to that.

She turned and tossed my bag back to me. “Here. You can have the bottlecaps back. I don’t know why you’re hanging onto trash, but I don’t really care. You should know the bird you were hanging onto works at the strip club down the street, though. Make sure you get checked out for The Fluff.”

“I… will do that. Thanks.” I said. I stumbled out the door. “What the buck did I do last night?!”

Never before in my life had I been closer to death. Bright magenta and electric blue lights strobed along with the beat of the music, so loud that it shook my chest with every pulse like I was standing in a giant, dimly lit heart. It was a den of sin and vice and probably where I’d gotten the really cheap booze because I could see the plastic bottles behind the bar.

None of that was what was killing me. The thing that threatened to strike me stone dead was my embarrassment that everyone there seemed to remember me. They waved and catcalled when I walked in. Most of them were also rubbing against each other. Somepony was getting preened right on stage!

I didn’t even want to think about what was going on in the darker parts of the club where the lights didn’t reach.

“Coming back to this city was a mistake,” I said under my breath. I didn’t know why I was trying to be quiet. The music was so loud that I’d have to make a real effort to be heard.

“Oh hey, it’s you!” Someone made that exact effort. A griffon holding a tray walked over with the kind of sway in her hips that meant she knew how to use those thighs. “You’re looking a lot more sober!”

Celestia help me she had the biggest, downiest chest ruff I’ve ever seen. You could get lost in it. Civilizations could rise and fall within it. I had to force myself not to stare.

“Y-yeah!” I said, forcing another smile. At least no one was accusing me of a crime yet.

“Let me guess, you came back just to see me again?” the griffon asked confidently. “Come on, let’s go to a back room. I know you don’t want to do that in public.”

“That?” Oh no. Oh no. I’d slept with her. I was going to get The Fluff. I didn’t even know what that was, but it must have been pretty bad, and my body was already a train wreck! I mutely let her lead me away from the dance floor and to a private room, thick curtains across the walls and doorway cutting out almost all of the noise except a bass thump through the floor.

“We need to talk about last night,” was the first thing she said to me.

Oh no. It was even worse than I thought.

“Did I get you... You know…”

She blinked a few times, tilting her head. “In trouble?” she guessed.

“Pregnant.” I whispered.

“...So it wasn’t just the drinks that had you playing dumb, huh?” she asked. “You can’t possibly think two girls can do that.”

“I’ve had a really weird couple of weeks and I’m not willing to make assumptions.”

She gave me a long look and shrugged. “Fair enough. No. I’m not pregnant. Not that it matters, we didn’t even bang.”

“...We didn’t?”

She snorted. “You must have been really out of it. We came back here for a private dance and you just started crying and hugging me and talking about somepony you loved and how you broke up with her or something. You weren’t making a lot of sense at that point. Anyway, point is, cuddling costs extra, so if you want a shoulder to cry on, it’s gonna cost you. It’s rude to touch the dancers without permission.”

“...Crying and hugging?” I asked weakly.

“It was really pathetic,” she confirmed. “You were really drunk and your boyfriend ditched you, so I was gonna walk you home out of the goodness of my heart, but you wanted to do errands.”

“Ugh…” I groaned. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, you are,” the griffon agreed. “But you did tip pretty well!”

That explained why she’d pulled me into a private room before anyone else in the strip club could get to me.

“...Are you okay?” the griffon asked. “You’re, uh, you’re starting to cry.”

I sniffled. “No I’m not! I’m just… ugh! I’m such a screw-up! Everything I do gets messed up! I don’t even know where Ruby Ridge went!”

“Is he the stallion you were with?” the griffon asked. She raised an eyebrow. “You said you were gonna meet him at the fuel depot.”

“...What?” I blinked rapidly, not because I was tearing up but because something got in my eyes coincidentally when I was emotionally vulnerable.

“Yeah. You came in here with your friend. You were partying and talking about taking back the city for the people, or some crap like that.” She shrugged mildly. “You were already kinda drunk so I didn’t pay much attention. I dragged you off for a private dance, or a private crying jag or whatever, and he said he was gonna meet you at the fuel depot near the docks.”

“...But why would we need to take a bunch of fertilizer and electronics to the fuel depot?” I mumbled.

“Oh. Ooooh. That’s why.” I looked at the barrels full of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, wired together around the coffee machine, whose automatic timer was counting down to brew up trouble. I looked up from the biggest bomb I’d ever seen to the giant tank of extremely-flammable fuel.

“I didn’t think you’d get here in time,” Ruby Ridge said, patting me on the back. “For a while there I thought you were a cop!”

“Haha yeah!” I laughed back at him. “Oh I am in so much trouble.”

“The Governor has another few minutes to respond to my demands, and then if she doesn’t step down and give power to a democratically elected council, we’ll blow the bomb,” Ruby said.

“Uh-huh.” I bit my lip, looking at the bomb. Could I disarm it? Punching it probably wouldn’t work and would just be the last mistake I ever made. It took a moment for his words to register. “Wait, but wasn’t she elected to her position already? I thought that was sort of how higher-up military positions worked.”

“Well obviously the wrong ponies voted!” Ruby said, like it was obvious. “We’ll only let the right ponies vote in the election.”

“Right. Right.” I fished my radio earpiece out of where I’d stashed it and stuck it back in my ear. “Hey, Emma? Quattro? You girls there?”

Emma was there right away. “Cammy! You’re back! There’s only a few minutes left--”

“I know. Okay so, I’m looking at the bomb right now. It’s active and counting down.”

“That’s not good. We need to get a bomb disposal team there. Where are you?”

“The fuel depot near the military docks. We’ve got like two minutes.”

“That’s… I don’t know if we can get a team there in time!”

“Can you walk me through disabling a bomb?” I asked.

“Of course I can,” Emma said. “Just keep calm and we’ll make sure nopony explodes. The first thing you need to do, and this is critical--”

A gunshot went off right next to my head. A bullet tore through my ear. The radio cracked and went silent. I saw my life flash before my eyes when the lead pellet bounced off the barrels, raising sparks.

Nothing exploded. Yet.

“You traitor!” Ruby Ridge snarled. “I thought you were with me! We had drinks together! You promised me you weren’t a cop!”

I turned around slowly, blood trickling down the side of my head.

“Did you just shoot at the bomb?” I asked quietly.

“Afraid I’ll set it off, Pink?!” Ruby yelled. “I’m a hero! I’m going to free the Enclave from the military-industrial complex that--”

I punched him in the snout to establish dominance. His head snapped to the side, and he fell to the ground, blood spilling out of his mouth. I’d hit him, like, way too hard. I touched my injured ear and tapped the radio. The casing cracked more just at the touch. I pulled it free and it was obviously broken beyond repair.

“No problem,” i said to myself. “I just have to… I just have to disarm a bomb. I’ll either get it right, or I’ll make a mistake and never know about it.”

There was one minute left on the timer. I looked at the wires, trying to figure out what was going where. Leads went to all of the barrels, and there was a box with a bunch of dials and spark batteries, and the coffee machine with a timer that was still counting down and how was it already down to thirty seconds?!

I had to focus. I had to use all of my intellect and knowledge. I had to reach deep inside and find something better and smarter than all of the decisions I’d made today.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” I screamed, grabbing the coffee machine and just yanking it free from the nest of cables. I held it over my head, and it ticked down to zero. There was a buzzer.

It started hissing and burbling, and hot coffee dripped down onto my forehead. The bomb didn’t explode.

I sat down, hugging the coffee machine.

“Here you are, dear,” the old mare said. She put a hot mug in my hooves. I took a sip of the coffee. It was black and bitter, with flavor that didn’t have depth as much as it had a yawning abyss of sensation bridged by sugar and caffeine to get you to the other side.

“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry that it’s a little roughed up.”

“I wasn’t actually expecting to get it back,” she admitted, sitting down next to me on the old pew. It creaked whenever one of us moved, not quite ready to collapse but complaining about being put to use.

I looked up at the rainbow-paned window and just stared at it for a while.

“You know, it’s funny,” the old mare said. “The pony who took care of this place before me, he told me the coffee was the most important thing we had!”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really. Not because it’s particularly good. I’ve had better coffee come out of a food processor in the belly of a cloudship. We don’t charge money for it, so it’s not like it helps with the upkeep.”

“So why is it important?”

“It gets ponies walking through the door. Not ones who are doing well, they’d turn up their nose at a bad cup of coffee even if it was free. But ones who are down on their luck? It’s a place out of the weather, a warm drink, that’s a temptation. You get used to seeing ponies down on their luck. It’s why I didn’t kick you out when you decided to spend the night in here instead of going home.”

“Sorry.”

She waved a hoof in my general direction. “I can tell you’re not in a good place. I mean, anypony can tell, but I can really tell. It used to be my job. Morale officer. Really a political officer, but we pretend the pink sash means we’re there to keep everypony’s spirits up and not just to report them for lapses of loyalty. Either way, you need to read a pony.”

I swallowed. She laughed.

“I’m retired, dear. I’m not going to put you on report. There was a saying we had, back then. ‘Where no counsel is, the ponies fall.’ More than anything else, it was our job to be there and listen when ponies were troubled. It’s something I like to think I’m still very good at.”

“...If I talk about it you’re just going to think it’s stupid,” I mumbled.

She reached out and patted my hoof gently. “To the Goddess, we’re all silly little ponies.”

By the time I got back to the Raven’s Nest, I felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I don’t know if it was just because I’d been able to talk about it with somepony who wasn’t going to judge me -- heck, somepony I’d probably never see again -- but I was able to really open up to her. She hadn’t called me stupid. She’d just listened.

And maybe she’d given me a little hope that out there, somewhere, Four was at peace.

“Chamomile, there you are!” Emerald Sheen said, when she saw me walking up the gangplank to the old ship. “We were worried about you.”

“I told the bomb squad to let you know I was okay,” I said. “Didn’t they pass it on?”

“Yeah, but… you know. It’s one thing to hear it, it’s another thing to see you in person.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you,” I said. “I just had to take care of a few things on the way back.”

“No, I should apologize. We gave you a really tough mission, and we didn’t give you anywhere near enough support,” Emerald said. “We should have had somepony trailing you, but we were afraid Ruby Ridge would have noticed something was wrong, and we didn’t know if he’d actually gotten the bomb in place yet or not.”

“Let’s just say we all made mistakes and move on,” I suggested.

“That sounds good,” Emma said, with a smile. “I missed having you around. Quattro and I did a few missions, but it felt like something was missing.”

“Something big to hide behind?” I suggested.

“More like the big invincible pony that keeps taking out giant monsters,” Emma said, punching my shoulder playfully.

“It is my specialty,” I agreed.

She nodded and we walked up the gangplank together. “We got some good news while you were gone. If your radio wasn’t busted, we would have told you right away.”

“Good news?” I thought for a second. “We’ve all become rich and can retire to a life of luxury?”

“Even better-- well, no, actually, not better. But different. We found out where your dad is! You up for a rescue mission?”

Chapter 46 - Champagne For My Real Friends, Real Pain For My Sham Friends

“Tell me everything,” I said quietly, sitting down on the other side of the planning table on in the Raven’s Nest. Maybe I should have come in demanding answers and yelling and making a lot of noise because the other ponies in the room just gave me sort of a worried look.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Quattro asked. She was leaning back in a chair with her rear hooves up on the table, totally at ease. The yellow mare somehow managed to look composed and serious despite being a fraction of a degree from having the chair under her fall backwards.

“The last time I saw Dad, he surrendered himself just so we could get away,” I said. “I have to at least try.”

“It was his decision to make,” Quattro pointed out. “I don’t know what kind of pony he really was, but he did a decent thing right at the end.”

“He was a jerk and never really seemed all that interested in actually being a parent,” I said. “I don’t think he liked me, or anypony else. But he’s still my dad.”

“Mm. You remember the ship that picked him up, the Juniper, swung around here and really messed up our plans to go to the surface,” Quattro said. “We think he’s still on board, and we know where the ship is.”

“Attacking a battleship head-on is…” I hesitated.

“Impossible,” Captain White Glint said. She said it firmly, with a commanding presence. “You’d have to be suicidal to even try without fire support.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It only barely worked when I did it.”

The room went quiet.

“Anyway, we don’t have assault armor to do the heavy lifting,” I continued. “But we’ve snuck onto ships a few times. We just have to be quiet and careful.”

“You’re right, but also wrong,” White Glint said. “Emma?”

“When we were trying to track you down after you fell to the surface, I got in touch with a lot of the ponies I knew from the military,” Emerald Sheen said. “Since we saved the Shoals and mostly cleared our names, they’ve been pretty sympathetic. I’m not exactly going to get my commission back, but they’re not going to arrest any of us on sight.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“The word going around is that the captain of the Juniper, Polar Orbit, knows he overstepped his bounds and is trying to butter ponies up,” Emerald continued. “He’s hosting an officer’s ball at a resort and sent out a lot of invites.”

“He should have gotten arrested for getting into a shooting match with the ponies here, but a military tribunal cleared him of charges when he explained how he believed Dashites had taken over the city after the death of Governor Tilt Fuse.” White Glint said.

“Polar Orbit explained it to them very carefully while stuffing bits in their pockets,” Quattro said. She sat up straight, letting the chair hit the floor. “It’s just how things are. He’s got powerful backers and what seems like an infinite amount of money.”

“His ship will be at the resort, huh?” I asked. “No problem!”

Emma shook her head. “Big problem. The resort is already a military facility, extremely heavily guarded. And with so many officers there, there won’t be any holes in the security or guards sitting around bored with the routine. Everypony will be at the top of their game.”

“So what are we supposed to do, then?” I asked. “You wouldn’t bring all this up if you didn’t have a solution.”

White Glint motioned to the map on the table. “We have a rough idea of what the security is like. There’s one important thing to remember. This is a resort, a vacation destination for Enclave higher-ups, not a military base.”

“That means no guards standing around inside the resort making things difficult,” Quattro explained. “The security perimeter is extremely tight, but it’s outside the resort. Once you’re on the other side of the cordon, you’re in the clear.”

I nodded. “So we just need to get jobs as waiters and maids, work at the resort during the ball, and infiltrate the ship!”

“That would have been a good plan six months ago when we could have gotten people on the inside,” White Glint said. “But we have something else in mind. The interim Governor, Commander Farsight, got a VIP invite for the officer’s ball as an apology for all the trouble the Juniper caused.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really. She wasn’t going to go, but since we kept a bomb from going off and leveling half the city, she’s feeling more generous. You’re going to go with her as her plus one.”

“Me?”

“It’s your father, and you’ve proven you can operate on your own,” White Glint said. “If you want one of us to go instead, that’s fine, but I have to offer it to you first.”

“I’ll go,” I said. “If I can rescue him with my own two hooves…” I wasn’t sure what would happen. I’d pay him back for letting himself get captured? He might start to respect me? I’d be able to call that part of my life over and done with?

I’d have to figure out what I wanted out of this on the way. I didn’t have time to worry about my own feelings.

“I can’t believe they won’t let me go with you!” Destiny said. “First the bomb mission, now this? Do you have any idea how boring it is to sit in a cargo hold all day?”

I leaned closer to the mirror, brushing my mane carefully. “Weren’t you stuck in one place for like, two hundred years?”

“Yes, but I was also unconscious that whole time so it doesn’t count,” Destiny retorted. “And I didn’t have a crazy know-nothing scientist trying to pry me apart for secrets.”

So there was the real problem. “Herr Doktor is just excited to see amazing BrayTech technology,” I said. I brushed out the last knot and stray curl, pinning my bangs in place sort of artistically. A little more work, and I had the rest in a tight bun. Now I needed to figure out makeup. I looked at what the others had brought me and paled. I had no idea how to use any of it, or what half of it even was.

I picked up the smallest brush I’d ever seen and looked at it with fear in my heart.

“Want some help?” Destiny asked, plucking it from my hooves. “I’m getting the impression you don’t get makeovers very often.”

“More like never,” I said. “Mom wasn’t really into fancy clothing and… well, now she’s a monster.”

Destiny floated in front of me and got to work, the brushes and pencils and other things that I didn’t even have words for orbiting her and occasionally pressing against my face.

“At least up here they have makeup,” Destiny said. “I don’t think you’d be able to find blush or eyeliner down in the wasteland no matter how much you were willing to pay for it.”

“And Dark Harbor was apparently in really good condition,” I reminded her. “A lot of ponies there said that things were worse in other towns.”

“You’d think with two hundred years ponies wouldn’t still be living in mud,” the ghost mumbled. “There. You’re good.”

She floated away and I looked into the mirror at a pony that I barely recognized. Destiny must have known a few spells she hadn’t told me about because she’d transformed me into a completely different mare.

“Oh wow,” I whispered.

“A little goes a long way,” Destiny said. “It’s the least I can do. I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you could come too,” I told her. “But I think security might not like me showing up with a suit of power armor and a bunch of guns.”

“She’ll have a radio,” Quattro said. I turned quickly, blushing. I hadn’t even heard her walk into the room. Quattro tossed something at me. I caught it and found myself holding an ear piece. “A replacement for the one you broke.”

“It literally got shot out of my ear. I didn’t break it.” I wiggled it deep into my ear canal where it was mostly hidden.

“Everything else is going to be procure-on-site,” Quattro said. She held up the dress lying on my cot and looked over it. I couldn’t read her expression through her sunglasses, but I caught a glimpse of wistfulness when I expected amusement. She put it down carefully, smoothing out a wrinkle. “It’s a military ball, and it might be possible for you to get away with carrying a beam pistol but…”

“My aim is terrible.”

Quattro shrugged. “Not just that. It’s more likely to get you into trouble than out of it. You don’t want the guards to have any reason to remember you. There’s nothing we can do about that--” she nodded to my right forehoof. The slick metal always shimmered and gleamed like there was an oil slick across the surface. “--But the dress comes with socks, and if they give you trouble you can just start yelling about them abusing a poor, disabled mare.”

“Should I cry or yell for the manager?”

“Both! The last thing they’ll want is to look bad for their commanding officers.” Quattro smiled. “It should be easy. You remember the extraction plan?”

“I signal Commander Farsight and she claims she needs to get back to the Shoals to take care of an emergency,” I said.

“Right.” Quattro took a deep breath. “And if you get in real trouble?”

“Fight my way out and cause as much chaos and confusion as possible!”

“You can’t complain that the plan doesn’t cater to your strengths.”

The dress should have been uncomfortable. I should have felt like I was wearing somepony else’s skin. It was actually light and airy and made my wings and flank look amazing, and I kept sneaking glances at myself. I felt… really good. I was definitely hoping I could keep it after the mission was over.

Even the skywagon was comfortable. It was a civilian model, or had been before a lot of work was done to it. It had to be twice as long as the original design, with the interior done up in plush velvet and crystal. I peered out a small window, trying to catch a glimpse of the resort.

“You won’t get a good view of the outside,” Commander Farsight said. The pale blue mare was in a dress uniform starched so heavily it probably counted as body armor. “The windows are bulletproof and have multiple mirrored layers to deflect beams.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Tilt Fuse was worried somepony would take a shot at him when he built this?”

“He should have been more worried about somepony running head-first at him and stabbing him in the face,” Farsight said, without any apparent emotion. “He was an embarrassment. I’m not sorry to see him go. Unofficially.”

I nodded. “Thank you for this.”

“From what I understand, and I don’t understand much, this might ruin Polar Orbit’s whole night, right in front of all the ponies he’s trying to win over.” Commander Farsight turned to glance through the armored porthole. “Having to play nice with him might make it worth being able to see his face when it happens.”

“If we do everything right--”

“If you do everything right,” Farsight corrected. “I don’t want to know the details. All I know is that I’m bringing along a date that’s going to cause trouble. Now, try to smile and look respectable. If you do anything I disapprove of, I’m disavowing you and you can deal with it on your own.”

The stretched skywagon slowed to a halt, and the armored hatch hissed open, pneumatics helping move the door out of the way. Commander Farsight stepped out first, taking my hoof as I stepped out onto the red carpet.

The resort was a huge pre-war hotel, almost like a stylized castle sitting in the middle of the most carefully-tended cloud garden I’d ever seen. It was almost as surprising to see that much green as it was to see the lake.

“An artificial beach?” I asked.

“You don’t expect anypony important to actually go down to the surface, do you?” Farsight asked. “Anything might happen to them. Even if they're a Grand Admiral.”

I looked past the facade of the resort to where the ships were docked, at the edge of that hoofcrafted lake. VertiBucks parked in a fenced-off field. The Juniper loomed closest, probably visible from every window in that resort as a reminder to the ponies inside about who had summoned them, the unusual shape of the cloudship giving it an unmistakable profile.

“Yeah, anypony might happen to them,” I agreed quietly.

The building looked more like the faded, once-grand buildings of Dark Harbor than anything that belonged above the clouds. Ponies had put a lot of time and effort into making it look like something it wasn’t -- white and grey clouds swirled together to look like marble, panels of rainbow that looked like wood or stone to a quick glance. It must have taken constant, obsessive upkeep to keep it all from falling apart.

The red carpet led us past bowing servants in black and towards the soft music of a ballroom. We stepped in together, and I scanned the room while Farsight was announced. I thought I’d be out of place in the crowd, but I should have known better. This was an officer’s ball. Sure, half the guests were the kind of ponies to buy their positions, but just as many had earned their rank with hard work. I was hardly the most dangerous-looking pony in the room.

“Don’t get into trouble,” Farsight whispered, before letting go of my hoof. I gave her a polite bow and walked away. I wasn’t exactly intending to mingle, but I was going to have to play nice until I could figure out a way to slip away.

Also, the buffet table called to me like a stormjoy luring its prey into its clutches. A siren song of tiny, extremely intricate bites, each one crafted to be perfect in every way.

I had to resist licking my lips as I stalked up to the buffet table like a predator. I could see the perfect prey already. Something simple, unsuspecting, a cracker topped with a slice of bright red, a sprinkle of white, a drizzle of black, crowned with a bright green leaf. It didn’t even see me coming before it was too late, and I had already ensnared it.

“Mmm~” The taste was enough to almost bring tears to my eyes! Sweet tomato and bright vinegar with salty and herby flavors to balance it all out.

“It seems the canapes meet with your approval,” sad a smooth voice that sent a shiver down my spine. I’d heard it before. Over the radio.

I turned and tried to fake a smile.

Two unicorns had peeled themselves away from the crowd. I eyed up the taller of them, a slender unicorn stallion, tall enough to look me in the eye, with pale lavender fur that was almost white. His mane was a darker shade of the same color, held back in a bun. His uniform was stark white with overly ornate cuffs and a gold collar.

“Polar Orbit,” I said.

“You have the better of me,” he said, bowing politely with a hoof to his chest. “I saw you arrive with Commander Farsight. I was going to ask after her mood, but I find you quite intriguing as well.”

“I don’t trust her,” said the mare at his side. The second she spoke up I could tell the little orange mare was barely old enough to be in the uniform she was wearing. I glanced at her and the light caught marks around her horn. I’d have recognized those marks anywhere. Four Damascus had the same scarring.

“You’re augmented,” I said.

She bristled at that. “How do you know about that? And why can’t I hear your thoughts?” She narrowed her eyes, and I could just barely feel it. A kind of pressure coming from her. “You have some kind of special training, don’t you?”

“Don’t be rude to our guests, Cube,” Polar Orbit chided. He smiled at me. “I apologize on her behalf. May I have your name? You seem to know mine, and it’s terribly rude of me not to have learned yours.”

I couldn’t use my real name. He knew too much about my parents. My name had to have come up at some point. I’d thrown an alias at him before, when we’d briefly spoken back in Cirrus Valley. It would probably be stupid to use the same one. I just had to be really clever and think fast and come up with something. I glanced to the side.

“Uh… Wing,” I said. “Wind Wing.”

His eyes narrowed, and he smiled. It was a great name and he definitely believed me.

“I see,” Polar Orbit said. He offered me his hoof. “Would you join me for a dance?”

“I’m not really much of a dancer,” I said. “Maybe next time. I think you’ve already got a mare to escort anyway.” I looked at the little mare. She blushed.

“Next time,” Polar Orbit agreed.

I watched him go, and Cube shot me a look as they went to the dance floor with the change of music. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Jealousy? Suspicion? I felt something when she was looking at me, but it wasn’t as distinct or powerful as anything I’d felt from Four.

I glanced around. A lot of ponies were taking the opportunity to join in. Nopony was looking at me, so it was the perfect time to slip away. I stepped up to one of the waiters.

“Excuse me,” I whispered. “Could you tell me where the powder room is? I just need to freshen up.”

Ponies always say they like to take long walks on the beach at night. It’s kind of a cliche. This was the first time I’d actually tried doing it. It was boring. Maybe it would have been better if it had been a real beach on a real sea and not a fancy swimming pool.

I still had my fancy dress on. There hadn’t been a good spot to take it off, and if somepony saw me, I could try making excuses about leaving the party to get some fresh air. It was almost true.

The shadow of the Juniper fell over me. The cloudship was massive, and the shape of it was subtly wrong, not the sleek knife of a Raptor-class or the huge anvil shape of a Thunderhead, but like a bird balancing on three storms caged by spells and steel, one in each wing and a third in the tail.

Something about it looked like it was ready to dive out of the sky and snatch me up.

I spotted a pony at the bottom of the gangplank. I hid behind a puff of cloud that looked a bit like a rock if you didn’t notice how it was carved and angled like a gem.

“You there?” I whispered, tapping my ear to turn on the radio.

“We haven’t heard any alarms on our end. I’m guessing things are going well?” Quattro asked.

“I’m almost at the Juniper. It looks like there are still ponies on board. I can see a guard at the ramp.” I peeked around the edge of the rock to get a look at him. He hadn’t spotted me yet. There was something off about his uniform, just like Polar Orbit’s. It was formal. Plush. Ornate and embroidered. Perfectly clean and brightly colored. “It’s not a normal enclave troop.”

“That’s not much of a surprise. Polar Orbit doesn’t trust anypony. They’re probably his personal guard making sure he’s got an exit strategy.”

“I’m not sure about the weapon he’s got, either.” It didn’t look like the beam weapons I was used to seeing. Instead of being boxy, it was round and smooth, with almost organic curves.

Quattro chuckled. “Be careful. I know you’re the world’s cutest armored vehicle, but if things go loud you’ll be in the thick of it.”

“There’s just one guard?” Emerald asked.

“That’s all I see,” I confirmed.

“Hold your position. If there aren’t at least two sentries, there’s probably a perimeter patrol.”

I waited, and only a minute later, two pegasus ponies in that same ornate uniform flew past, waving to the sentry on duty.

“Go now!” Emerald ordered. I surged into motion. And then I tripped over the hem of my really amazing, beautiful dress, flipped head-over-hooves, and face-planted into the ground right in front of the guard I was trying to surprise.

“Ow,” I mumbled into the packed clouds.

“Are you alright?” he asked. I groaned, and he helped me back up. “That looked like a nasty fall.”

“I think my pride is hurt worse than anything else,” I sighed. I hissed when I stood. “Ow! My hoof!”

“Let’s go get that checked out,” he said. He grabbed his radio before I could stop him. “This is Position 2. I’m escorting a civilian to the hotel doctor.” He paused, listening. “It’s not an emergency. Just a little bump and scrape, but you know how the Captain is.”

“Thanks,” I said. He slung his weapon over his shoulder, motioning for me to lean against him. I smiled.

I thought about dumping him in the lake, since ponies wouldn’t find him there, but he seemed like a nice pony and I didn’t want him to drown, so I only dragged him behind a rock so he could have a nice nap where nopony would see. I really needed to do something about the dress but what was I supposed to do now -- ditch it on the ship in some closet? I mean, objectively, yes, it was just a dress, but it made me feel fancy.

Also I’d read a couple of spy thrillers back when I was a filly and they always did everything in fancy ballgowns and tuxedos. I just needed a pocketwatch that had a hidden glass cutting mechanism and a micro-explosive. Or maybe a pen that was actually a deadly poison dart thrower! Or whatever kind of gadget would get me past the security barrier I found when I got down into the heart of the ship.

Because I was distracted pretending I was Lightning Blonde, I almost walked right into a trap like the big dumb idiot I actually was.

“Emerald?” I whispered. “You know Enclave security systems. How do I bypass, uh…”

I looked at the grid of magical beams across the corridor.

“A laser wall? It looks like a laser wall.”

“That’s an unusual system,” Emma replied. “Deadly lasers, or just bright lights?”

They sizzled. I could taste the ionized air. “I’m pretty sure they’re deadly.”

“Okay. Do you see a pad anywhere with controls? Maybe a combination code?”

I looked around. “No. There’s a pad next to it, but it’s sort of shaped funny. There’s a mark for a hoof and a camera or something. There aren’t even any controls. Should I smash it?”

“No! Don’t smash it!”

I lowered my hoof. She’d only barely been in time to stop me.

“They must be using some kind of biometric scanner. You won’t be able to bypass this on your own. It takes specialized tools and training. If you just break it off the wall, you’ll set off every alarm on the ship, and then that’s probably going to cascade into everything blowing up.”

“Right,” I mumbled. I rubbed my chin. Maybe that was exactly what--

“That’s bad, Chamomile,” Quattro said. “It’s not Plan B. Or Plan C. Figure something else out.”

I made an annoyed sound and looked around. If I was going to come up with a better plan than running directly into deadly lasers and alerting everypony that I was there, I had to use all my brainpower. I had to hide because I caught the shadow of somepony coming around the corner on the other side of the grid!

I scampered back the way I’d come, hiding around the side of the intersection. I didn’t have any fancy gadgets, but I did have earrings. I carefully took one out, waited until the guard was close, and tossed it low, letting it hit the floor on the other side of the intersection with a clatter.

“Huh?” He stepped out into the intersection, looking towards the noise. Just as planned.

I grabbed him from behind, one hoof hooking his neck, the other grabbing the pistol from his belt.

“I have a wife and kids!” he said immediately.

I frowned. “You had that rehearsed.”

He shrugged a little. “I want to live long enough for it to be the truth.”

I rolled my eyes and slammed him into the wall. He wobbled a few times and fell down. I jammed the gun into my dress. Then I realized I should have made him open the laser gate before I knocked him out. I swore under my breath and dragged him over to the scanner.

“How do I work this thing?” I asked.

“Press his hoof against the mark on the pad,” Emma instructed, I hefted him up and held his hoof against it. A small yellow light appeared.

“Uh. Now what? The laser is still turned on.”

“You mentioned a camera?” Destiny cut in. “We had some biometric scanners back in the Cosmodrome on the secure labs. If it’s the same kind of setup, that might be a retina scan. Hold his hoof to it and make him look into the camera at the same time.”

“Great,” I mumbled, struggling to get him in position, pulling his eyelid open with one hoof and holding his mane in my teeth. The yellow light turned green, and the lasers turned off. I spat out his mane. “Oh hey! That worked!”

“Now make sure to go through quickly,” Emerald said. “We don’t know how long it stays off.”

Just as she finished the last word, it snapped back on.

I swore loudly enough that they heard it over the radio, then levered the unconscious pony back into place. This time, the instant the lasers turned off, I hefted the limp stallion and stepped past the barrier before it could turn back on.

There was a convenient janitor’s closet right on the other side of the barricade, probably so ponies cleaning that area didn’t have to use the scanners over and over. I opened it up and tossed my new friend inside.

“Have a nice nap,” I said, waving goodbye and closing the door behind me. I was starting to feel extremely clever. I’d managed to sneak inside, gotten past security, and nothing was on fire! Honestly, just getting this far with no explosions was a big step up from my usual methods.

I looked around and carefully made my way forwards. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going, but if they put some crazy security systems in place, I had to be headed the right way. A laser grid like that would be a great way to secure prisoners. Or an armory. Honestly, I’d take either one.

Something tickled at my awareness. It was that feeling of being watched, the coat on the back of your neck standing on end because you could just sense the eyes boring into you from somewhere nearby. A door at the end of the hallway beckoned. It might as well have had a big sign on it that said ‘this way’.

Whatever it was, stealth probably wasn’t much of an option. I walked up to the door and hit the control, popping it open with a quiet hiss of pneumatics. Inside, it was a cargo bay, with a big armored door on the far wall. Crates and tarps and digging equipment were stacked and strapped down around the room, but I barely even noticed them. The young orange mare, really just a filly, leaning against the armored door and glaring at me? She had all my attention right now.

“I think Polar Orbit said your name was Cube?” I asked.

“How did you know what I was?” she demanded.

I took a deep breath. “I knew a pony who had the same procedures done to them,” I said. She needed to hear the truth. “She suffered a lot because of it. Her memories were erased. I tried to help get them back, but… she died.”

“If she died she was pathetic,” Cube spat. “The only measure of success for a weapon is victory!”

“Ponies aren’t weapons,” I retorted. “Four wanted to be more than a tool. You don’t have to be one either. Why don’t you come with me, get a chance at being--”

“I will never betray my father!” Her horn blazed with pink light. It was like pressure surging out of her body, and part of me was screaming ‘DANGER’. I didn’t even catch what she was doing until it was too late.

Laser pistols flew out and away from her, spinning through the air and surrounded by her aura. They snapped into place pointing at me and flew like tiny drones, firing before I could even react to what was going on. One beam caught me in the neck. Another in the chest. A third hit my shoulder. I threw myself behind crates, trying to get out of her line of sight.

“That was too easy,” Cube said smugly. “I saw those shots land. If you’re not already dead, you will be soon.”

I bit back a retort. Those laser blasts had really stung! I touched my neck. There was a little blood, and I stunk like burned hair.

“If you’re not bleeding too badly, why don’t you tell me who you’re working for?” Cube asked. I stayed quiet and listened. She was getting closer. I could feel it. “It won’t save your life, but it would be polite.”

She was right on the other side of the crate.

I flew out of cover, roaring and pushing my body, letting everything go out of control. The world slowed to a crawl and I saw the shock and horror on her face when she looked at me. I snapped my blade open and cut one of the pistols out of the air, the ruptured power cell exploding. Before the shrapnel had even landed, I spun and threw the blade at a second gun. A shot hit my back, and I landed hard right behind Cube, pulling the fourth pistol out of her magical grip and pushing it against her head. The world surged back to life, the cold frozen world erupting into heat and making me flush with fever.

“Drop it,” I warned through the gun in my mouth.

She looked back at me with terror in her eyes.

“But… I shot you…” she whispered.

“And you ruined my dress. Drop the gun.”

She tried to yank the pistol from me. I turned my head and shot just past her.

“Last warning,” I cautioned her. The aura around her horn fizzled out, and the last laser pistol dropped to the ground. I held up my metallic hoof and with a force of will, my blade spun through the air back to me, clicking into place and sliding back between my bones. Four-- I mean, Cube-- just stared at it.

“What… you’re augmented too!?” she whispered.

“Something like that,” I agreed. I grimaced. I’d taken a few laser shots and it was really stinging, like burning yourself when you cook except worse because it was from a directed energy weapon and not like a splatter of oil or an unexpectedly hot pan handle. “You’re going to take me to my dad.”

I motioned for Cube to open the door. She sullenly put her hoof on the panel and looked into the camera, the lock panel flashing green and the door sliding open on well-maintained rails. I wasn’t sure what I expected. A bunch of tiny cells and iron bars? Maybe he was being kept in bare quarters, locked up like a bird in a cage.

A big room with stacks of books, shelves, lab equipment I couldn’t identify at a glance, and a bunch of trash and artifacts being carefully dissected was not what I was picturing.

Dad looked up, already a little surprised at the door opening. He was even more shocked when he saw who it was.

“Chamomile?!” he gasped. The thick glasses on his face dropped right off their precarious perch on the tip of his snout and fell to the floor.

“I’m here to rescue you!” I said, around the pistol’s grip.

“What? No! I can’t-- Chamomile, I’m working on something!”

“Are you serious right now?” I took the gun out of my mouth and shoved Cube to the side, storming up to Dad. “You can work on whatever it is later! We need to get the buck out of here!”

“You don’t understand, Chamomile! Your mother is dangerous! This is the key to stopping her! These are--”

“I know she’s dangerous!” I shouted. “While you’ve been busy sitting on your flank, I already killed one of the other SIVA dragons! And then Mom showed up and ate it! Now she’s like… like some kind of double dragon!”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Dad sighed. “She’s going to try and absorb the other SIVA cores. These artifacts are the key to finding them first! They’re debris from the Exodus White!”

“Wrap it up to go,” I said. “I’m sure Destiny will be excited about it.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

The pistol I’d stuffed into my dress and forgotten about was yanked free, and Cube held it close, where I couldn’t reach it. She pointed it at me, then frowned.

“No, you’re some kind of freak. You probably won’t care if I shoot you.” She adjusted her aim, threatening my Dad. “But I don’t really care what happens to him. He’s not my dad.”

“Cube,” a stern voice called out. “Please don’t antagonize our guest any further.”

Polar Orbit was standing in the doorway, looking very calm for a pony watching a mexicolt standoff.

“Father-- I mean, Captain! I’ve captured an intruder!”

Polar Orbit looked at me, smiled, then turned his attention back to Cube. “I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate.”

“But…” Cube looked unsure. The pistol in her grip wavered. Polar Orbit’s horn lit up with soft midnight blue light and he took the weapon from her.

“Which name do you prefer?” Polar Orbit asked, putting the gun down on a table. “Wind Wing? Sugar Cane? Chamomile? Some of the ponies who’ve seen you in action have taken to calling you the Blue Devil because of that armor of yours, but I think you’re actually more intimidating without it.”

“Chamomile is fine,” I said.

Polar Orbit nodded. “I suppose you’re going to threaten me with some display of violence if I don’t agree to let you leave with your father.”

I pointed the pistol I was holding at Cube. “I was thinking of threatening her instead. She did shoot me a lot.”

Dad knocked the gun away. I blinked and looked back at him in surprise.

“You can’t! She’s…” he looked down. I saw something in his eyes. Something hurting and broken. “She’s your half-sister.”

“What?!” Cube and I yelled, at the same time. I could feel her pure disgust and surprise. She looked at me with new hatred, like a pony turning over a rock and finding something disgusting underneath.

“Your mother and I were very close,” Polar Orbit said, without even a trace of mockery in his expression or voice. He actually sounded… mournful. “When she was supervising the archeological dig at the Smokestack, she was reporting to me. I heard about what happened and knew I had to take action myself.”

“You… and my mother…” I felt my legs start to go wobbly.

“I want to help stop her too,” he said softly. “I want to save her if I can, and if I can’t, it is my responsibility to deal with her. I believe you feel the same way. Your father agreed to help me. Will you do the same?”

He held out a hoof.

Chapter 47 - Crossroad Blues

“What were you thinking?” Quattro demanded. She was upset. More upset than I’d seen her get before. “Do you have any idea how bad your plan is?” The golden-yellow pegasus pony stomped back and forth across the cargo hold, making her annoyance known with every step.

“I know how dangerous it is,” I started. Before I’d even gotten the second word out I knew Quattro wasn’t going to let me finish.

“No, you don’t!” Quattro snapped. “If you did, you wouldn’t be in this mess!” She slapped me and winced. “Why did I do that?” Quattro hissed. “It's like slapping a pony-shaped tank...”

Quattro limped over to one of the tables in the cargo hold and leaned on it, looking at the hull fragments and junk sitting on it, carefully separated and under bright lights. Destiny floated up from where she was staring at the underside of a coffee cup to look at Quattro.

“I confirmed the artifacts Chamomile brought back are from the Exodus White,” Destiny said. “If there’s a lead on the location of another Ark, we have to follow up on it.”

Quatto let out a long sigh. “Chamomile, look, I’m just trying to protect you. I know... a little bit about Polar Orbit. He came out of nowhere with a little private army of his own. Even the politicals can’t figure out where he came from or what he wants.”

I nodded. “Yeah, and apparently he knew my mom… really well.” Just thinking about that made me feel sick.

Quattro looked away. I could never tell what she was thinking, but I could always tell she was holding things back, because she told half-truths every time she breathed. She came to some kind of decision after a few moments.

“If you’re going to be embedded into the military, even if it’s just a temporary assignment… no, especially then. You need an edge just in case you get into trouble.” She reached under her wing and plucked something out, tossing it to me.

I fumbled and just barely caught it.

“A pin?” I asked. It didn’t look very special. It was just a simple design, pressed brass in the shape of a couple of bells.

“Wear it on your lapel,” Quattro said. “And at least try to play coy. Act like you’re smarter than you are.” She smiled. “Pretend you’re me!”

She was smarter than I was, so that was fair. I put the pin away and nodded.

“If you really get into trouble…” Quattro tilted her head. “Hit the bricks. Just get out of there, let it all burn down, and I’ll see the smoke signals and come running. Got it?”

I nodded. “Thanks, Quattro.”

She limped over and patted my shoulder. “Finish packing. Your ride to school is almost here!”

School. I really wish Quattro had only been kidding. Don’t get me wrong, I went to school. I didn’t even skip as many days as you’re probably imagining! It wasn’t that I liked going or anything, it’s just that Dad would have plucked my wings if I hadn’t at least gotten decent grades, at least until he decided he could do a better job home-schooling me. I can proudly say that I was a C-average student.

The uniform itched a little. It was stiff and starchy. I adjusted the collar for what must have been the hundredth time. It was the same kind of uniform the other pony riding with me was wearing, though mine was more than a few sizes larger and cut to fit wings.

“I can’t believe he’s making me take you with me,” Cube growled. She was sitting across from me in the skywagon, and even if I hadn’t literally been able to feel how much she hated being here, I could have made a pretty solid guess from her expression.

“We can at least try to get along,” I suggested.

“What, because you’re my half-sister? What a load of horse-apples!” Cube snapped. “I bet he just made that up!”

“I mean, it’s possible,” I admitted. “I never heard about having any siblings, but I haven’t really been in touch with Mom much. And the last time I saw her she was sort of… an evil part-dragon cyborg monster thing. Not like either of us can ask her if it’s true.”

Cube grunted, the filly standing on her hind legs to look out the window. “Just remember I’m in charge. I outrank you!”

“Understood, Ma’am.” I gave her a sloppy salute. She glared, but started to calm down a little.

“Do you know anything about where we’re going?” Cube asked.

“Some kind of college?” I offered, uncertain.

“Look out the window, doofus,” she ordered. I leaned over to look past her. The cloud surface here was ragged, poked full of holes that went all the way down to the surface. From the way the edges were being tugged and ripped by invisible currents, the wind must have been moving in bizarre patterns.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“The war, obviously,” Cube said. “Winterhoof had one of Equestria’s biggest military colleges. It made the city a target.”

“What kind of weapon did the zebras use? I don’t think balefire bombs would do something like this…”

“Who knows?” Cube shrugged lightly, stepping away from the window and sitting down heavily on one of the skywagon’s jumpseats. “The college is fine, though. The defenses there stopped whatever the zebras did.”

“It just didn’t help anypony outside the school,” I said. Any cloud homes near the edges of those vortexes would have been torn apart. There was a wide berth around the breaks in the terrain, lending the city a kind of scraggly, stretched-out look, all disconnected streets and single lines of buildings.

The skywagon followed along one of those streets, sticking close to the safe lanes in the air, slowing as we approached a massive cloud structure. It was like a mountain in the sky, a dome of thick structural clouds with windows the size of houses at regular intervals. All told, it was at least as big as a whole hoofball stadium, but under a single roof.

It loomed larger and larger and we passed into its shadow, the skywagon settling down in a circular touchdown pad set near the gated front door. One of the soldiers who had come with us opened the door from the outside, stepping aside to let us out.

“The Winterhoof Academy is one of the most exclusive schools in the Enclave,” Cube whispered. “Try to look like you’re not some kind of scruffy barbarian.”

“And you try not to look like somepony who should be in first-year flight camp,” I retorted.

Cube gave me an angry, pouting face and turned up her nose, marching out onto the tarmac. Well, not literally tarmac, since it was made of packed clouds with an enchantment on them to hold up solid weight like skywagons and VertiBucks, but ponies still used the old words for a lot of things.

“Why did you make me ride with the luggage?!” Destiny demanded, storming out of the back hatch of the skywagon in the way only a haunted floating helmet can, swooping over to me and leaning in too close to my face. “Do you have any idea--”

“I wanted to make sure none of them messed with the Exodus Armor,” I said quietly. “Quattro was right about one thing -- we can’t trust anypony here. Please just hang in there and keep an eye on things for me. Please?”

I gave her my saddest pony look, folding my ears back and sniffing like I was about to cry.

“...That’s not a bad idea,” Destiny admitted. “I don’t want them damaging my equipment. But remember I’m not luggage!”

“Hey trust me, I wish I could have put the brat in luggage and had you up front,” I swore. “You’d have been way better company.”

Destiny wobbled, looking back at the cargo. “I’ll stick with the armor, but you’re taking me with you once we’re settled in.”

“Of course I am. This is a school! If I don’t have a cheat sheet I won’t get very far.” I winked at her and smiled. I was trying to practice acting like Quattro. It actually seemed to work, because Destiny nodded and flew back, her bobbing looking a little less sullen.

“Are you done talking to your pet?” Cube asked when I trotted up to where she was waiting.

I could have told her off. Or I could have been a good big sister and asked her to be more polite. I thwapped her with a wing, and she was so small that it sent her flying. Cube squeaked and fell off the packed clouds into the looser surface below, right on her back.

“I’ll fall!” she gasped, and horror hit me like a brick to the face. My heart jumped and I grabbed for her and she squealed, as the flightless unicorn hit the clouds and… landed safely, bouncing on the surface like it was a mattress.

“Wha--”

She smirked at me. “Idiot. Of course I wouldn’t really fall! I have a cloudwalking talisman implanted in my body! The look on your face! You were actually worried!” She laughed.

Heat rose in my cheeks and I turned away and stomped towards the gates. A motto had been painted over them, and it was still sharp and bright. ‘Excellence in all we do’. Ponies must have repainted those letters again and again for two centuries. It was the kind of school I’d wanted to go to when I was a filly. The kind of school where I could make my parents proud of me for once. I’d never even been good or arrogant enough to send out an application.

Those feelings got shelved and I walked in trying to look more professional and confident than I actually was.

“It’s right this way,” the mare said, for what had to be the tenth time. She was obviously nervous, which didn’t make much sense to me since neither of us was armed. The Assistant to the Dean (very different from an Assistant Dean, apparently,) was only a little older than I was, a light emerald shade that caught the light like there were sparkles in her coat.

“Thanks for leading us,” I said for what must have been, just like her, the tenth time. The inside of the school was almost as impressive as the outside. It felt like it was all courtyards and balconies, almost dreamlike in the way they were layered and encrusted on each other. It was as if a city had been pressed together into a single building and almost all of the walls had been removed, leaving the stairs and spaces with little to separate one area from another except hallways that were barriers and rough outlines of classrooms.

We stopped in front of one of the few solid doors we’d seen since we had walked into the building. The Assistant gave us an apologetic smile.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said, opening the door just enough to duck inside, closing it after herself. I shrugged and wandered over to the side of the walkway. It was a series of arches, halfway between a wall and a row of windows. Cube followed to see what I was looking at, and through an open archway down to the tiled courtyard below, I could see a class going over some kind of math that was completely beyond me. It didn’t just have letters, which were already excessive and didn’t belong in math, but Minotauran letters, so they’d either run out of proper letters already or they were combining it with black magic.

Something tickled at my brain. I squinted at the blackboard.

“Seven minus two pi,” I mumbled, the answer just coming to me unbidden.

The professor wrote the same answer a second later.

Cube looked at it, then at me. “How did you…?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. Anyway, I think he’s ready.” I pointed to the door. The Assistant was there, waving for us to come in.

Cube scampered past the mare, walking in before I could. I nodded to the emerald mare politely when I walked past her, trying to get across some kind of apology for the way Cube was acting.

The office was as huge as the rest of the college, but the shape was weird. It was flat, like a whole floor of a building cleared out just to hold a single desk. That desk was massive, a battleship of bureaucracy. The pony behind it looked like he was born an old crab, with a muddy grey coat and white mane pulled back in a ponytail. He gave us a skeptical look when we walked up to his seat.

Still, he seemed more friendly than the other pony. They stood behind the old crab, glaring at us in a detached, professional way, with a perfectly pressed uniform with no rank markings and a pale pink sash. He was almost the same color as the expired peanut-butter-and-jelly energy bars I’d eaten a while back, and the sour expression he had matched the way they tasted.

“So you must be our special guests,” the Dean said. “I’m told you have some interest in our archaeology department!”

“That’s correct,” Cube said, sounding more professional than I expected. “Thank you for allowing us access to your campus.”

The Dean nodded. “My name is Ashen Snowfall, but I’d prefer if you refer to me by title. I spent a lot of time and effort earning it.” He didn’t say that we hadn’t earned anything. He just implied it.

“I’m Cube. This is Chamomile. Both of us can be treated as Warrant Officers.”

The pony standing behind the Dean narrowed his eyes. “Treated as?”

“Our commanding officer has given us considerable latitude to act in his interests,” Cube said, sounding annoyed. “If this is about my age, you’ll find it won’t be an issue.”

“Mister Cypher Decode isn’t used to dealing with students,” Dean Ashen Snowfall explained quickly. “He’s a trusted advisor.”

“I’m sure,” Cube said flatly.

“I’d very much like to discuss exactly what you’re doing here,” the suspicious pony hissed. “The students here are the future of the Enclave military. They need to be educated properly without bad influences.”

He stepped around the desk to get in Cube’s face. I reacted without thinking about it and intercepted him, moving more quickly than he expected. He went snout-first into my chest and bounced off, rubbing his nose.

“How dare you--” He tried to glare at me, his eye level below my shoulders, then looked up and stopped, swallowing. I saw something in those eyes. He was a pony used to throwing his weight around. He wasn’t used to ponies who just didn’t care about his authority. I’m not going to pretend I had some kind of great insight into him, but I knew a bully when I saw one.

“Watch where you’re going,” I suggested.

He looked away, glancing down at my lapel. I saw him pale.

“Why do you… where did you get that?” Cypher demanded, pointing at the pin Quattro had given me.

I had to remember her advice. Play it cool and close to the vest.

“If you know what it is, you already know where it came from,” I said. He took a step back, practically vibrating with impotent anger. I could feel how much he wanted to yell at us.

“Professor Ornate Orate is the head of our archaeology department,” Dean Snowfall said, his voice cutting through the tension. “He’s scheduled to be lecturing right now, but you could wait in his office, if you’d like.”

“We’ll sit in on his class,” Cube said. “I assume that won’t be an issue?”

“Maybe you’ll learn something,” the Dean said, with a small smile. “And perhaps having ponies in uniform watching him teach will get him to actually finish his class on time. He should be aware you’re coming, if he read his memos. If you need anything, ask him and he can send it through the proper channels.”

Cube nodded. “Thank you. Let’s go, Chamomile.”

I followed her out, my eyes lingering on Cypher.

“What a mule,” Cube mumbled, once we were back in the hallway. “You realize that he’s going to try and make things difficult for us, right?”

“He’s gonna do that no matter what,” I replied with a shrug. “If we played along he’d do it just to show that he can.”

“Yeah, probably,” Cube agreed. “If he gets too annoying we’ll just have to deal with him.”

I frowned. “No killing.”

Cube rolled her eyes. “I meant we’d send a report to Captain Orbit and he’d make ponies yell at other ponies until problems went away.”

“Sorry. I just assumed you might magic a bunch of pistols out of the air and start blasting.”

Cube looked away from me. "There are some ponies it doesn't work on.”

“It was a pretty cool technique,” I said. “You just used it on the wrong pony. I’ve been shot so many times I’m starting to develop an immunity.”

“That’s stupid! You can’t…” She trailed off and looked at me. “You’re serious?”

I shrugged. “It’s like breaking a bone. You get hurt, and it heals up and grows back stronger.”

“You’re really weird,” Cube decided. “Where did you even get your augmentations? Mine are supposed to be the most advanced in the world!”

“I have a little pre-war tech I borrowed from a friend and I grew the rest myself.”

“What does that mean?!”

“Okay, you know what Mom was doing at the Smokestack, right?”

Cube nodded. “She was salvaging technology from some giant cloudship wreck.”

“Right, yeah. The main thing she was looking for was the controller for this stuff called SIVA, which is sort of a self-replicating micromachine. But what she didn’t know is that it got reprogrammed into a weapon and that’s why the ship crashed in the first place. I got sent there because she wanted my dad’s help, and there was an accident.”

I decided to avoid mentioning how Mom had shot me in the head to motivate Dad a little more.

“Mom got absorbed by the SIVA control core,” I said. “She’s sort of a horrible monster now. I ended up getting infected, and it almost killed me before I got control of it.” I flexed my metallic forehoof. “I’ve gotta figure out a way to stop her. She’s prolly gonna kill everypony if I don’t.”

“Wow, exposition much?” Cube smirked. “I already knew the important parts. Dad spent some time chasing after her, but we lost track of her after Cirrus Valley.”

“I wanted to make sure we were on the same page since we’ll be working together,” I said, trying not to get annoyed by her being a little bratty know-it-all. “Have you been here before? You seem to know where you’re going.”

“I read over a map last night,” Cube said. “I like to actually prepare for my missions.”

I usually just let Destiny take care of map stuff. I was sort of lost without her. I mean that in a literal sense where I wasn’t awesome at making a mental map of enclosed spaces, not in a spiritual sense. All of my vague ennui and depression were from completely normal sources.

“So, uh…” I coughed.

“I can tell you want to ask about my enhancements,” Cube said. “It’s what everypony asks about.”

“Sort of. I was wondering if you knew a pony. Her name was Four, but that wasn’t her real name and they sort of erased her memory, and... “ I took a deep breath.

“She had enhancements like mine.”

“Yeah.” I let the breath out.

“I don’t know any other ponies with this kind of enhancement. You’d have to go down to the surface to even start to look. The labs the tech came from were all down there.” Cube looked back at me. “This other pony… what happened to them?”

“She died,” I said. I couldn’t keep my voice from hitching a little. “I tried to save her, but I couldn’t.”

“Oh.” Cube’s steps slowed. She was thoughtful for almost two whole seconds before she turned her nose up and I could see her resolve firming up. “She must have been weak. I’m the strongest there is, so you don’t have to treat me like I’m fragile.”

“Everypony is pretty fragile,” I said. “Just in different ways.”

Cube scoffed and closed her eyes, picking up the pace and storming ahead. “You’re not smart, stop it with the ‘oooh look how deep and wise I am’ junk! I could get better advice from a fortune cupcake!”

“A fortune… cupcake?”

“Uh, yeah? You know, a cupcake with a paper fortune baked into it?”

“That’s not a real thing.”

“Shows what you know! I have them all the time and they give great advice! Sometimes really oddly specific advice.” She huffed. “Anyway I’ll buy you one later. Let’s find this stupid classroom.”

I’ve been to schools before, and I never really fit in. I was always the new kid, and too big and awkward to be the cool transfer student. That made me a target for the bullies. You can imagine how poorly that went for them.

Cube and I had walked into the lecture from behind, standing behind the last row of students. They’d all glanced back at us, and then very quickly looked away. I could feel fear coming off of them in ragged waves. It was like they were all afraid we’d shown up just for them, and we were waiting for the right moment to drag them away.

Maybe it was better that I hadn’t gone to school in a place like this.

“I don’t mind if you’re here to listen, but could I ask you to sit down?” The stallion at the front of the classroom had a strong voice that carried without having to yell. “There are some seats in the last row. There you are, thank you. Now where was I… ah yes, the era immediately preceding the return of Princess Luna…”

Cube leaned back in her chair, looking annoyed. I was just worried that the one I’d chosen might not support my weight. Pegasus furniture wasn’t really built with durability as a key factor, and I’d been heavier than average even before SIVA decided I needed to become part tank.

The professor scrawled notes on the blackboard as he spoke, his hoofwriting almost entirely illegible. It was so bad I had to assume he had multiple doctorates. “This era is commonly known to us today as the Equestrian Dark Age. Magic and society both began to regress instead of progress. Contemporaneous texts from the beginning of the Dark Age speak of a general malaise in the wake of Nightmare Moon, though by the third century not only do mentions of Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna disappear from the historical record, but the number of books written in general sharply decline. Does anypony know why?”

He looked around the room, then picked a student and pointed at them.

“There wasn’t anything new to write about?” the student guessed.

The professor smiled. “But what about fiction, or biographies? Ponies do love writing about themselves even when they haven’t led terribly interesting lives. Anypony else?” He glanced back at me. “Perhaps one of our observers has the answer?”

I actually knew some of this. Dad had drilled it into me. “Books were copied by hoof until the development of spells that could print text,” I said. “Prior to the invention of the printing press, it was the primary way books were produced.”

“That’s correct,” the professor said. “But why would that reduce the number of books being written?”

“It didn’t,” I said. “But the spells to copy the books became rare. There were probably just as many books written then as there were at any other time, but almost none of them were made in great enough numbers for examples to survive to this day.”

“Absolutely right!” the professor exclaimed. “Full credit on that answer. The truth is, the Dark Ages weren’t dark at all. Ponies didn’t become more primitive, but less information was passed down from day to day…”

Cube nudged me as the old pony got back into the rhythm of his lecture.

“How did you know that?” she whispered.

“You met my dad. He cares more about ancient history than he does about ponies.” I shrugged. “If I wanted to spend any time with him at all I had to put up with him wanting to be a teacher and not a parent.”

“My dad is better,” Cube mumbled. "He could beat up your dad."

I grunted. This wasn’t an argument I wanted to have. The lecture went on for another ten minutes, with the professor asking a few more questions before wrapping up and assigning everypony homework. The students filed out, most of them trying to avoid looking at me and Cube as they left. I could feel their desire to get away from us as quickly as possible.

“I don’t think they like us much,” I noted, watching the last pony juggle two textbooks and rush out the door before even properly putting them away.

“They’re afraid you’re here to arrest them for not thinking the right kind of thoughts,” the professor said, as he gathered his notes from the podium at the front of the room. “The problem with teaching ponies to think is that it also causes them to ask questions. That can sometimes be inconvenient for ponies in power.”

He straightened the pile of papers with a few taps of the edge against the surface of the desk, then trotted up to us with a smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Professor Ornate Orate.”

He offered his hoof to shake, and Cube grabbed for it before I could.

“Warrant Officer Cube, this is Chamomile. I’m in charge.”

“Chamomile and I have met,” the professor said. “Though she was even smaller than you at the time, if you can believe it.”

“We did?” I asked, surprised.

“Oh yes! Your father and I were colleagues for a time. He had some rather controversial opinions on the Pillars of Old Equestria and we used to have some rather lively debates. Then I settled here, he went on expeditions with Lemon, and we grew apart. The last time I saw you, you must have just been a few months old!” he laughed. “Of course I recognized you at once. You’ve got your father’s… ah...”

He visibly hesitated, looking me over.

“You’ve got his wings!” Ornate decided, patting my shoulder affectionately. “When I sent off those artifacts we recovered, I was delighted to hear he was involved with the restoration and identification!”

“I guess I’m here to do the fieldwork and the heavy lifting,” I said.

“Right,” Cube agreed. “She’s the help. I have seniority and operational command.”

“You must have a considerable amount of talent to have achieved so much at your age,” Ornate said. “I will expect great things from both of you. Just forgive an old stallion if he doesn’t quite fit into the military way of doing things.” He chuckled. “I’ve had tenure for so long that I’ve forgotten all about how to go through proper channels!”

“We’re flexible,” Cube said. “The Captain cares more about results than how we go about our business.”

“If I might ask, what kind of results are you hoping for?” Ornate Orate asked.

“Chamomile, you explain,” Cube said, waving to me. “You have all the first-hoof knowledge.”

I was a little surprised she was letting me do anything. “Uh, well. The artifacts you found are from a ship called the Exodus White. It was one of a series of massive airships designed for mass evacuation of Equestria. I sort of thought it had been destroyed because when I was at the Cosmodrome there was a big crater where Destiny said it was supposed to be parked, but… anyway, if you have artifacts from it, you might have found the crash site, and there could be something really, really dangerous inside it.”

“Hmm… that doesn’t seem possible,” Ornate Orate said. “I don’t think you’re lying, but you must be mistaken about some part of it. These artifacts were found in a Ministry of Arcane Science facility.”

“That can’t be right,” I mumbled. “Maybe they’re OOPArts?”

“What’s an oh-part?” Cube asked.

“An Out-Of-Place Artifact,” Ornate Orate explained. “Something found during an archeological dig that shouldn’t be there. There are a variety of different kinds. Most are simply a result of ponies underestimating their ancestors. Others are a result of trade. But in this case, it could mean the site was disturbed.”

I nodded. “Somepony might have gotten to the site before you.”

“So it could be worthless?” Cube asked, annoyed. “This had better not be a waste of time.”

“Learning is never a waste of time,” Professor Orate said. He gave her a kind smile. “Even if we don’t find your lost ship, we have a clue. The artifacts had to get there somehow, which means somepony had to have found it. It just means a little more detective work.”

“Would it be okay for us to visit the site?” I asked. “I have, uh, another expert I’d like to bring in. They might be able to give us some insight and help us figure this thing out.”

“The more the merrier!” Ornate said, slapping my back and wincing.

“Did you hurt your hoof?” I asked.

“I’m just getting a little old for roughhousing,” he said. “I have to warn you, though. The site is in a dangerous location. We were able to get permission from the military to send an expedition to the surface, if you can believe it!”

“Down to the surface, huh?” I sighed. It had been a real hassle getting back last time. I was going to have to trust that nopony was just going to ditch me in the dirt.

“We’ll have a few soldiers along to protect us,” Ornate assured me. “But you’ll need to stay alert. There are all sorts of dangerous things down there!” He looked around and leaned in to whisper. “Once, I saw a sort of crab creature in the mud down by the river! Terribly frightening!”

“I’ll try to control myself,” I promised. “When can we leave?”

“My grad students can teach my next few classes. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

Chapter 48 - Ghoul's Night Out

I didn’t think it was possible, but VertiBucks were even louder when you were riding in them. If it wasn’t for Destiny patching the armor’s radio into the local network, I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything except the drone of the engines.

“I thought they’d be bigger on the inside!” I yelled over the drone of the twin props. For how huge they seemed on the outside, we had to pack in like sardines to fit all the ponies riding down to the surface. It was me, Cube, Ornate Orate, and three soldiers in light armor, plus the pilot sitting up front and Destiny, but the pilot wasn’t really taking up space with us and Destiny was only present in spirit.

“We’re just lucky it could take off with your fat flank in it!” Cube shouted back. She smirked and folded her arms. She hadn’t bothered with a suit of armored barding so she was either confident in her magic or didn’t actually expect trouble.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “The last few I took out, the engines were the weak point! They’re always overstressed!”

I saw the soldiers look at each other when I said that. The leader tapped me on the shoulder.

“You shot down VertiBucks?” he asked.

“I don’t like to brag.” I shrugged lightly, not wanting to move too much in the cramped cabin. “I’ve only downed a few of them solo. One was practically an accident! I didn’t mean to cut through the hydraulic lines!”

The soldier nodded. “I guess that’s what it’s like in special forces! I’m Lieutenant Jet Stream.” He offered his hoof, and I shook it. “These two are Masher and Grouse. Have you ever been to the surface before?”

“You could say that,” I acknowledged.

“What about her?” he nodded to Cube. The whole VertiBuck shuddered as we hit turbulence, the floor tilting. All of us grabbed for the hoofholds and railings in the transport, hanging on while we waited for the danger to pass. I had to resist the urge to bail out. I’d seen how badly these things did when something went wrong -- they had a glide ratio that can be characterized as ‘falling out of the sky’.

“I can take care of myself,” Cube stated firmly. The transport shook again and she looked at us with disdain, totally unconcerned. “We’re only letting you three come along to play foalsitter for the professor.”

“She’ll be fine,” I said. “What can you tell me about the drop location?”

Jet Stream nodded, straightening up as the ride smoothed out. “The area in front of the facility is clear. We won’t have to hike there. Locals aren’t a problem either -- even before the war, this was in the middle of nowhere.”

“It was a terribly high-security installation,” Ornate Orate added. “It was deliberately built far from population centers. But it was also a Ministry of Arcane Science facility, and that means one thing -- there was an extensive amount of paperwork! You remember the question I asked during the lecture you attended?”

“The volume of books a printing press was able to crank out meant that at least a few examples would survive and keep knowledge alive,” I said.

“Exactly so! A-plus! It’s the same idea here. The Ministry created so much documentation about this secret location that we were able to positively identify it even two centuries later just by cross-referencing entries in tables and balance sheets. Twilight Sparkle’s ministry didn’t believe in black budgets with no accountability.”

I nodded and touched my helmet, cutting the microphone. “Hey Destiny, you were Twilight’s friend, right?”

“Something like that,” the ghost admitted quietly, speaking so only I could hear her.

“Do you think it’s possible you might have just given her production samples of parts, and that’s how that junk ended up where they found it?”

“No,” Destiny said. “There were signs that the parts we found had already been installed onboard the Exodus White. They weren’t fresh off an assembly line.”

“Great, one mystery after another,” I muttered.

I followed along behind Ornate Orate and looked up at the facility. It looked like a highway tunnel, just a road leading straight into a mountain, but without even a glimmer of light from the other side.

“This is actually quite an old site, with a very troubled history,” Ornate Orate said, with the same tone he’d used while he was lecturing in front of a class. “Most Ministry facilities were built from the ground up as part of Equestria’s wartime boom in industry and construction. What must be remembered, though, is that there was a time before the Ministries. Princess Celestia ran a monarchy for a thousand years, and the institutions that existed then - the EUP, the Royal Guard, and so on - had their own bases, training facilities, and so forth.”

The shadow of the mountain fell over us, and a chill went down my spine.

“This was, before the Ministry of Arcane Science took it over, a Night Guard base. You can still see the old livery in some parts of the facility.” He pointed off to the side where a faded crest was painted on the concrete, a shield cradled by bat wings. “Before it was renamed to the very clinical ‘Site K1’, the Night Guard called this place Mogila Uzhasov. It translates to something like ‘Fear’s Grave’ or ‘The Tomb of Horrors’.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Cube scoffed. “Did they hang Nightmare Night decorations around, too?”

“The Night Guard primarily tasked themselves with securing and containing dangerous artifacts and monsters,” Ornate Orate explained. “They were an old organization with a mind toward the future -- consider your own reaction. Without knowing anything except the name, you’re already cautious. I believe they wanted to keep intruders away from anything dangerous even if the Night Guard was no longer there to stop them.”

“It didn’t seem to stop you,” I said.

Ornate Orate chuckled. “I’ve seen quite a few warnings of curses and terrible fates that would befall anypony foolish enough to disturb a tomb. You start to become rather inured to them after a while. These days I would be much more worried about finding fresh paint than ancient inscriptions. Living ponies are far more dangerous than anything you’d find in the average ruin.”

We trotted into the tunnel, and the night-vision in my helmet snapped on, casting everything into monochrome green and black.

“We have a camp set up just past the main security door,” Ornate Orate said.

I looked up at the thick iron door. It was a slab of metal on hinges thicker than I was, just a big rectangular block hanging half open. It wasn’t a work of art but it definitely seemed like it would survive the end of the world, no matter which side of the door the apocalypse happened to. “I kind of expected it to look more like a Stable door.”

When we walked through, the lights inside almost blinded me, the night vision leaving stars in my eyes before it switched off. I rubbed my face, or tried and ended up scraping my hoof against my helmet. I stumbled after the professor, trying to blink through the flash-blindness.

“Sorry,” Destiny whispered.

“You’ve been in a Stable?” Ornate Orate said, sounding pleased. “Excellent! The pony in charge of the excavation just came away from an assignment at an abandoned Stable. There she is now, maybe you two can compare your experiences! Yukon Gold, I’d like you to meet--”

Somepony screamed. My vision cleared, and I saw a vaguely familiar pony fallen back on her flanks and pointing at me in fear.

“The Blue Devil!” she shrieked. “She came to finish me off!”

I frowned and took a minute to figure out where I knew her from. “Oh! You were in Stable 83!” I smiled and offered a hoof to shake. “How’s it going?”

She didn’t shake my hoof. I became aware that everypony was staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“So you two have met?” Ornate Orate asked, still sounding happy and a little oblivious to the feeling in the room. “How wonderful!”

It took a little while and half a bottle of vodka for Yukon Gold to calm down. When she realized I wasn’t here to finish her off as a loose end, she opened up quite a bit. Cube had immediately become bored and gone off to shoot at some giant bugs she’d spotted, and Jet Stream and the other soldiers were, in theory, helping Ornate Orate unload some equipment that we’d brought along with us. In practice, they were listening to his lecture on dating artifacts in situ.

“This place is cursed,” Yukon Gold said. She took another sip of vodka from her metal mess kit cup. I refilled it and poured myself a little more too. “You showing up is just another sign. I shouldn’t even be surprised at this point.”

I nodded. I’d taken my helmet off so Destiny could float around. Everypony had been surprisingly okay with it, aside from one more small panic attack from Yukon Gold and a lot of promises to the professor to do an interview later.

“I’m sorry about scaring you,” I said.

“This place makes me jumpy,” Yukon said. “It makes everypony jumpy. I don’t know if there’s something off with the air circulation or something, but nopony sleeps well. We have to rotate through ponies just to give them a break. That’s why I’m alone here.”

She paused and took a sip and looked into the shadows.

“I think,” she whispered.

The whole place had a strange aura to it -- the first room we’d walked into had been relatively modern, all concrete and steel. It reminded me of just about every other military facility I’d been in, as long as I didn’t look at the details. None of the wiring or plumbing was built into the walls, and so conduits and wire were strung from place to place to service hanging lights. When I saw the way the door further back led into a cave, it made me recontextualize the place. This wasn’t a base built into the mountain, it was an outpost at the entrance to a cave complex.

“The artifacts came from here?” Destiny asked.

Yukon shook her head and motioned towards the cave. “There’s a path that goes further into the caves. If you follow it, there’s another set of rooms. They’re set up as a low-security laboratory, and that’s where everything we recovered came from.”

“Can you show us the way?” Destiny asked.

“You can… you can follow the path. We installed lights along the way. I won’t…” Yukon shivered. “I don’t like going there on my own.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “We can find our way there. What do you think, Destiny? Is the Exodus White down here?” I asked.

“No way,” Destiny said. “How would it get here?”

“There could be a crash site on the other side of the mountain,” I suggested. “Maybe it flew right into the mountain like the Exodus Blue?”

“The Exodus Blue fell into a volcano,” Destiny reminded me. “If an Exodus Ark hit a mountain and just fell apart there would be a debris field the size of a small city. And that still wouldn’t explain how any of it ended up in here!”

“While you’re here, you can take a crack at the terminals if you want,” Yukon Gold suggested. “There’s no local network, so each one only has local data. It was some kind of information security measure. They didn’t want information from deeper inside in high-security areas to be accessed from anywhere else.”

“You haven’t broken the security?” Destiny asked.

“I do hardware, not software,” Yukon explained. “My job as site supervisor is to get systems back online and identify anything useful or dangerous.” She shook her head. “The student who was supposed to help with the computers couldn’t take it. She went back home after one night! The surface was just too much for her.”

“Let me show you how an expert deals with terminals,” Destiny said. “Imagine I’m cracking my neck. I can’t do it because I don’t have bones.”

“...Do I have bones?” I asked.

“You’ve had too much vodka,” Yukon said, taking the bottle away from me. She refilled her own glass and kept the bottle. I rolled my eyes and let her have it. Destiny tapped on the keys with her magic for a few moments.

“Better encryption than usual, but it’s still just Stable-Tec junk,” she said. “Looking through these files… most of it is junk. I think this was connected to a timeclock system, so almost all of the storage is just clock-in and clock-out times and user IDs. Oh! Somepony left a recording on this.”

“Play it,” I said. Destiny nodded and the speakers on the terminal crackled.

“Journal entry number one. This is Twilight Sparkle, and this record is serving as my personal journal for the duration of this handover project.” She sounded older than I expected, more weary and worldly than she had when in the memory orb I’d seen. There was still an edge of excitement to her voice, like a filly on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “This is actually my second day on the site. The Night Guard weren’t happy about this. The ponies here don’t seem to know much about what’s going on outside the facility -- part of their information security, apparently. Zero contact. If I hadn’t brought a royal decree from Princess Luna I doubt they’d have let me in at all.

“All the equipment here is outdated. We’re installing terminals and running wiring as we go, but this is going to be a larger project than I expected. Still, I’m hopeful! This site was used to seal away dangerous knowledge and artifacts. Even in the best of times, I would want a chance to examine a treasure trove like this, but right now? Too many ponies are getting hurt in the war. Yesterday’s dangerous might be today’s war-winning innovation.

“I feel like I’m rambling. Am I rambling? I usually do this in text, but without the world’s best assistant here, I’m relying on a voice recorder. I suppose I could write down a script to follow and then record that, but it would sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? I’ll just use these as personal references and make an edited report later. Oh right, note to self - back up journal entries on the local terminals. Better safe than sorry.

“I’m ending my first entry here. Um… is there some kind of standard way to end a voice recording? I’ll need to do research for next time. Maybe I should ask around? It’s only for my personal use but that’s no excuse not to do it correctly. I guess I’ll just, um. Bye!”

The speakers fell silent with one final pop of feedback.

“So she was here investigating this place just like us, huh?” I asked. “If she was directly in charge that really might explain some things. I still think it’s likely that you just gave her those parts from the White, Destiny. You two were friends, after all.”

“It’s just… I don’t know,” Destiny said. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Are there any other recordings?” Yukon Gold asked, slurring her words just a little.

“No. There could be entries on other terminals. They’re not networked, so we’ll have to manually check them one at a time.”

“If it’s local, we should go to that low-security lab you mentioned,” I said. “This is a backup, yeah? So if she took notes on things she was studying, they’d be on the terminals over in the lab.”

“You’re right,” Destiny said. “Let’s see if the others are ready to go.”

“I’m not going back there,” Yukon Gold said. “I don’t care if you demote me or send me back to the Enclave…” she paused. “Actually that sounds good! Demote me and send me back to the Enclave!”

I sighed. “How about instead you stay here and keep the lights on, and we’ll leave somepony here so you’re not alone?”

“I’ll stay,” Grouse volunteered. “One of us should be here anyway. Somepony needs to keep an eye on that front door and make sure we don’t get sealed inside.”

“Permission granted,” Lieutenant Jet Stream said, nodding. He turned to address the rest of us. “According to the site supervisor, the next point of interest is along the lit path. We’ll be going through a natural cave for at least part of the length. Does anypony here have experience in underground operations?”

I raised my hoof. So did Ornate Orate.

“Is there anything important we should know?” he asked.

Ornate Orate nodded for me to go on. I cleared my throat. “Okay, so the most dangerous thing about natural caverns is that they’re easy to get lost in. Everything goes against you -- it’s pitch black. What you do see all looks basically the same. Even sounds echo in ways you don’t expect. If they’ve already done the hard part and given us a lit path to follow, we should stay on it. Don’t go off the path. If you think you see or hear something, or if there’s an emergency like you get hurt or need to use the bathroom, tell somepony and never do anything alone.”

“Those are all excellent tips,” Ornate Orate agreed. “Everypony make sure you have at least two light sources. If you get lost or lose sight of everypony, stop where you are and radio in.”

Jet Stream nodded. “Masher, you take point. I’ll take the rear position.”

“All of you are acting like this is some kind of dangerous mission,” Cube scoffed. “We’re literally walking from one room to the next! If you can’t even manage that, what are you going to do the first time somepony takes a shot at you?”

She pushed past us and stormed through the open doors into the cave beyond.

“Darnit, Cube…” I went after her, giving Jet Stream an apologetic look. He shook his head and sighed, shrugging. Destiny floated after me, keeping station just behind my right shoulder.

Walking into the cave felt like going outside. The path was well-marked, with a concrete walkway that was still in excellent condition. A chain was strung between chest-high poles on both sides, probably so even if the lights went out, ponies could still avoid wandering anywhere dangerous. Lights were strung just beyond the chain, work lights on stands that seemed like they were intended to be temporary, half of them burned out and a lot of the others twisted and pointing in the wrong direction, like somepony had used them to try and find something in the expanse of shadow and stone beyond the concrete ribbon.

“You know, I don’t say this often, but this place is creepy,” Destiny said.

“No kidding,” I agreed. With the angles of the lights, I kept thinking I saw motion in the corner of my eye, but it was just the way the shadows stretched and merged together.

“I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Cube said, looking back over her shoulder at me. “You’re all just acting like babies.”

“Then you won’t mind going in first, right?” I asked.

We both looked up ahead. It was like an office building had been teleported into the cave. It was a wall of windows and metal cladding, most of it flat grey. A band of dark purple broke up the shapes, and it was clear some poor architect had tried their best to make it look welcoming. With the underlighting and all those dark windows, it had an effect a bit like a pony giving you a smile that was just a little too wide and empty.

“I’m getting some strange magical traces,” Destiny said. “I’m trying to identify it. It’s at the very edge of my ability to sense it.”

“I can feel it too,” Cube said softly. “It’s like… hm. When I’m on the Juniper, there’s a vibration in the floor any time the engines are running. You don’t really notice it after a while but it’s always there.”

“I’ll take point,” I said, flying past her and to the doorway. There was no big metal security door here. It was the kind of glass door you’d expect from a corner store. I pushed it open and looked around, Destiny using her magic to shine a cone of light around.

Inside, beyond a front desk, the space was separated into rooms with walls of half-frosted glass, translucent up to just over my eye level, making everything inside effectively invisible.

“The lights outside are working, so there should be power,” Cube said, peering past me. With how short she was, she could just look through my legs. “Find a light switch.”

I nodded and stepped behind the desk. Destiny scanned the walls.

“Maybe this?” she asked. There was a sharp buzz, and the overhead lights came to life.

I saw it in the corner of my eye, something tall and black and standing right behind one of those walls of frosted glass, the sudden light making it cast a shadow and revealing it-- and it was gone when I looked, because it was just my nerves. I gingerly opened the door, my heart still beating twice as fast as it should have been. Inside was a conference room. An ancient plastic plant was up against the corner. It must have cast the shadow I’d seen.

It must’ve.

“They said it was low-security, but this is silly,” Cube snorted. “There’s no security at all!”

“If a pony can get this far, a simple locked door or warning sign wouldn’t be much use, hm?” Ornate Orate asked, when he stepped through the door. “It’s quite a wonderful example of the construction of the era! You can see how they converted this space from a larger warehouse and sectioned it off. All of these glass panels were prefabricated, of course. With the extra wall units, carpet squares, and drop ceiling, it’s a bit like a building inside a building. Where older construction used masonry and stone as load-bearing walls, this shows the wartime method of a more flexible and prefabricated frame structure equipped with standardized parts. It enabled much faster construction, though it does mean a lot of buildings end up looking extremely similar.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cube sighed. “We get it. Everything looks the same because it all came out of the same factory.”

Destiny floated down the hallway, and I followed her, opening doors and looking inside. The first room was full of dead, brown plants. The next had rocks and a few glittering gems. The third was a library, but one organized in some bizarre way that must have made sense to somepony. There were single stacks of books reaching almost all the way to the ceiling tiles, like the paper remembered it had once been part of a tree and wanted to be a forest again. A terminal screen glowed on the desk against the far wall, the cursor blinking and glowing green.

“It has to be here somewhere,” Destiny muttered, peering over the frosted glass and into the rooms beyond. “Here! Chamomile, this one!”

I popped the door, and Destiny rushed in, flitting from one shelf to another.

“This is it. Look! These are parts of the Ark’s structural framework, and these circuit boards are definitely from BrayTech! Look around and see if you can find a manifest about where all this came from!”

“Got it,” I said.

I started checking through the shelves. I spotted something on the side of a rack of twisted bits of metal, and found a clipboard hanging from a hook, still clutching a ream of tissue-thin sheets.

I flipped through the crackling, dry paper, stiff with age. “This looks like transfer paperwork. Um… hold on. Why are these forms so complicated?” There had to be three pages for everything on the shelf, every one of those in triplicate on transfer paper with different colors. It was the mark of somepony obsessed with order to the point of mania. “Here we go… it says this was originally found…” I trailed off. “At Mogila Uzhasov?”

“You must be reading it wrong,” Destiny said, taking the clipboard from me and flipping through the pages with her magic. She flipped back and forth through them, clearly getting frustrated. “This doesn’t make any sense! How could the parts be found here?”

“Maybe it just means she found them in the crates here?” I guessed.

“And the dates! They’re even more impossible! They’re before the Exodus White was even built! If the initial recovery dates are right… well they can’t be right! They’re not just a little off, they’re wrong by decades! It wouldn’t just predate the construction, it would predate me!”

“So the paperwork must be wrong, then,” I said.

Destiny paused, then nodded. “Yeah. It’s the only answer. We’re missing some big piece of the puzzle.”

“If Twilight spent much time here, she might have backed up more journal entries to the local terminals. She might explain something there.”

“I’m starting to think you might actually be the smart one,” Destiny joked. “Sorry for making you do all the thinking. I just… I thought we really had a lead. And we do! But I have no idea where it’s trying to point us.”

“I saw a library a few doors back that had a working terminal,” I said. “Let’s start there.”

“It looks like there were quite a few entries, but most of them were deleted or corrupted,” Destiny said, after a frustrating half-hour wrestling with the terminal, ten minutes of which involved me bumping into a stack of priceless books and knocking them over. Ornate Orate had nearly had a heart attack and was still going through the pile, explaining how every single one of the books, while they had no real practical value, were extremely historically important.

Cube had vanished again. I assumed she’d gotten bored and went off to find something to shoot at. I flipped through the books and waited for Destiny to finish with her hacking. I pushed one volume of a badly outdated (even by pre-war standards) dictionary out of the way and saw something behind it. It was a small statue of a pony. I picked it up to look at it. The pony was pale pink, almost white, an alicorn with swirls of purple and blue in her mane and a look on her face that I couldn’t quite place.

"Huh," I said. "Who's this?"

“Princess Flurry Heart,” Destiny said, after a quick glance. “The greatest deterrent the Empire ever had. It’s terrible, what happened to the dragons, but they were asking for it.”

“...What happened to the dragons?” I asked.

“She did. They really shouldn’t have eaten her cat."

"Be Decisive," I read, the words inscribed on the statue's base. I shrugged and put it away with the rest of my junk. “Can you recover anything?”

“Just the oldest entry,” Destiny said. “Here.”

She hit play, and the terminal crackled to life, the lights flickering.

“Twilight Sparkle’s Journal, entry two. Right now I’m in a low-security holding area, and I’ve started repurposing it as a laboratory. It seems like an excellent location for some of the more delicate equipment. There’s not much of note here in storage -- it seems like the artifacts here are all safe enough to just be crated up and forgotten about.

“The remaining Night Guard staff has been less than helpful with getting an inventory. They definitely resent my presence here, and they don’t seem to have many records. I don’t know why they’re so worried about information security. It’s not just that they’re worried about secrets getting out, they almost seem worried to find anything out for themselves! I don’t think much testing has been done at all on what they’ve locked away.

“The artifact I’m looking at now is a good example. It’s definitely pony-made, but the material is bizarre. It’s a structural member, roughly one meter long and ten centimeters wide. One end is broken, and it seems to be some kind of foamed metal, like a sponge made of… titanium, I think? It’s significantly lighter than a solid titanium beam of the same dimensions but retains about ninety percent of the strength. If we could figure out how this was made, it would be a huge boon to construction!

“That’s one of the first things I found, and it was in a box with a bunch of junk. A coffee mug, some wall panels. They’re a little strange too, and I can’t identify any tooling marks, but there’s not much else of note about them except some writing in modern Equestrian. It looks like serial or batch numbers, along with the words ‘Exodus White’. I don’t know if that’s a manufacturer or model, and the Night Guard is…”

There was a loud, tired sigh on the recording.

“I’m too tired to deal with this. I haven’t been sleeping well since this project started. I think I’ve been having bad dreams, but I can’t remember them. I think it’s just the chaos of settling in to a new assignment, being away from my friends this long, the war…”

She was quiet for a long few seconds. When she started speaking again, it was quiet, almost a whisper.

“One of the mages I brought with me, Citrus Salad… He woke up screaming last night. He told us he was lying in bed and woke up feeling this presence in the room with him. It was something too tall and formless to be a pony, like a shadow just looming over him and… he said it hated him. He could tell it hated him so much.”

She cleared her throat and continued in a more normal tone, with only a little wobble under it from her exhaustion.

“It’s just a classic case of night terrors, of course. His brain was awake and his body wasn’t, and he just imagined the whole thing because of sensory deprivation. I’ve recommended some sleep aids that should assist with restful sleep.”

There was a long pause on the recording, along with the faint sound of a hoof tapping.

“I’m just not sure… I could ask Luna to check on their dreams. But she’s so busy…. No. She trusts me to get this done. The Ministries exist so she doesn’t have to do these little things directly and she can focus on the big picture. I’m not going to bother her about this. The medication will be enough. I’m sure of it.

“Anyway, I’m going to throw my weight around a little and get down to the high-security area tomorrow. If the staff is just going to get in my way, I’ll replace them all with ponies who will follow orders and do what I ask. I’ll update this journal once I’ve had a chance to survey the whole facility.”

The recording went silent with a sharp snap.

“She didn’t recognize the Exodus White’s parts?” I mumbled.

“So it really wasn’t any kind of industrial espionage, then,” Destiny sighed. “Unless they were hiding that from her, too? But she still should have known what she was looking at!”

“Want to go look at the high-security area?” I asked. “The transfer papers implied the Exodus White parts had to come from there.”

“So this is where you were,” Cube said. She looked around the little library. “Eaten any good books lately?”

“That joke is older than the dust in here,” I retorted.

“I heard you talking about the high security area,” Cube said, her expression more serious. “But there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” I asked.

The door was sealed. And not just a little sealed. Whoever had wanted this door shut didn’t ever intend to get it open again. I could see marks from heat around the edges where it had been welded shut. If that wasn’t enough, metal disks with runes engraved on them had been glued over the seam between the two steel security doors, and the whole arrangement was glowing faintly.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked. I tapped the door. It felt solid and didn’t try to kill me.

“Never,” Destiny said. “The magical barrier is one thing, but all the rest…”

“I have,” Cube said. “The sealing spell is a hack, but it’s basically a bloodline spell. Only the caster or somepony related to them can get through.”

“And the caster was probably Twilight Sparkle,” I mumbled. “I don’t suppose anypony has a secret Ministry Mare in their saddlebags?”

“It’s theoretically possible to bypass that kind of lock,” Cube said, frowning. “But… it’s only theoretical, even if it worked we’d need a caster stronger than the Ministry Mare herself. I’m not that good yet. Give me a few years, and I can do it.”

“I don’t think we have that kind of time,” I said.

Ornate Orate sighed. “Sometimes investigations end like this. But look on the bright side! We’ve learned quite a bit, and nopony got hurt. Why, just the treasure trove of books we found is well worth the-- what are you doing with that knife?”

“Archaeology,” I said. Jet Stream nodded to me and ushered the older stallion back a few steps.

I cut into the wall next to the door, sparks flying and the professor making increasingly distressed sounds about the destruction of important artifacts and context. I made two more cuts and kicked, bending the thin sheet metal out of the way and revealing a square of ebon darkness leading to the space beyond.

“So, who wants to go first?” I asked.

Chapter 49 - You Don't Learn That In School

I knew it was a mistake the second I carved that hole in the wall to get around the sealed door. The darkness on the other side was like an ocean of shadows, and when I looked out into it I got the impression that any second it was going to come crashing down and pour in on us.

“Can you see anything?” Jet Stream asked, trying to peer past me.

“Destiny, can you give me more light?” I asked. The cone of light from the possessed helmet was barely reaching beyond the opening, just hinting at what was beyond. She wordlessly turned up the power, and the pale crimson light spilled out, showing that there really was a floor there and not just a drop down into nothingness.

“That’s weird,” Destiny said.

“What is?”

“The light should be reaching a lot further. Look--” she turned around, keeping the beam steady. Pointed back the way we’d come, it reached at least twenty meters. When Destiny focused it back at the cloying darkness it didn’t even manage half of that.

“Maybe some kind of optical effect?” Ornate Orate suggested.

“It could be an air problem if this area’s been sealed off for long enough,” I said, motioning for Destiny to come closer. I pulled her out of the air and settled the helm over my head, making the armor airtight. “I’ll go first and make sure it’s not some kind of dangerous gas or haze.”

“Capital idea,” Ornate Orate agreed. “Stagnant air is one of the most deadly invisible hazards of the archaeological profession! In fact, it reminds me of an incident that involved salvaged and processed iron scrap that had been left in a sealed room and forgotten about, where it started rusting in the limited air supply available to it…”

I braced myself and squeezed through the opening I’d made in the wall while Professor Orate went on with his story. The hole was just a little too small to be comfortable, but the feeling I was getting from it was sending chills down my spine that made me think I shouldn’t have breached that barrier at all, no matter how clever I’d felt bypassing a bloodline spell with a knife.

“What is that feeling?” I mumbled.

“You’re not alone,” Destiny assured me. “If it’s just in your head, it’s in mine too.”

“Think it’s necromancy?” I swept the light around slowly, and caught sight of a dim glint of metal. I carefully walked towards it. I ended up on the other side of the sealed door, the edges glowing even on this side. Bodies were piled in front of it, mummified skeletal remains collapsed in the middle of reaching for that last escape.

“I’m really hoping it isn’t,” Destiny said.

“Look at this,” I said, pointing to the side of one of the shriveled corpses. “Bat wings!”

“This was a Night Guard base,” Destiny reminded me. “They had a pretty high thestral membership. Probably an even higher percentage in a cave like this. Being able to see in the dark would be a big help.”

I knelt down and looked at them. There was something strange about the way the bodies were positioned and it took me a little while to figure out what it was that bothered me.

“I think they died fighting each other,” I said, very carefully shifting a corpse to reveal a blade driven between its ribs.

“Not a good sign,” Destiny whispered.

“Are you dead yet?!” Cube shouted.

“Not yet,” I called back. I checked the readings to make sure I wasn’t about to do something stupid, then popped off my helmet. Destiny floated up to my shoulder. “The air seems safe, but watch your step!”

I waved them over when they stepped out into the bare rock of the cave. They joined me at the table of bodies, our lights not reaching the walls of the cavern and leaving me feeling like we were standing outside in the darkest night Equestria had ever seen.

“This is the old pre-war armor of the Night Guard,” Ornate Orate said. He indicated a crested helmet. “This pony here was a Captain, as you can tell from the silver filigree on the visor. There are vanishingly few examples of this sort of armor in existence, and none of it is this complete or well-preserved! This is a wonderful find!”

“These are also dead ponies,” Jet Stream said. “We need to treat them with respect.”

“We also don’t want to end up like them,” I said. “One of us should stay here to make sure the way back doesn’t get blocked off.”

Jet Stream nodded. “Masher, hold position just inside the lab. See if you can set up a barricade, just in case. If things go bad, pull back and get support, don’t try and fight it out.”

“Understood, sir,” Masher saluted and squeezed back through into the world of light.

“Ah! Look at this!” Professor Orate very carefully lifted up a corpse, freeing something that had been under it, a box about as long as my hoof and shaped generally like a book with a few large, flat keys on one side and a speaker grill on its face. “A portable voice recorder! Remarkably good condition, too.”

“May I?” Destiny asked, taking it from him with her magic. “I think I can get this working, but I’ll need a magical charge. I don’t have enough power to do it myself.”

“Excuse me? Incredibly strong unicorn here,” Cube boasted. “Just tell me what to do with this piece of junk.”

Destiny popped open a panel on the recorder’s back side and walked Cube through the recharge procedure.

“Technically you’re supposed to use a charging station or just get a new battery and slap it in, but we never used to bother,” Destiny noted. “Doing it yourself can wear the battery out, but I don’t think we can do much to it that sitting drained for centuries hasn’t already done.”

Destiny pressed down one of the keys, and the recorder blared with static before settling down.

“Personal Journal of Twilight Sparkle, entry five.” The recording was scratchy, the raw static overwhelming her voice at points. “Progress since the last entry! I was right that setting a hard deadline was the right choice. The ponies here are just trying to delay and wait me out, and claiming they need time to make the second zone safe for visitors was just a delaying tactic. I gave them twenty-four hours, and had one of the old staff fired when he tried to argue. I don’t like making an example of ponies, but they need to understand that things are going to be different from now on.

“It’s also becoming clear that the ponies here had no intention of actually doing research at all. They just want to shove everything into boxes and sit on their horde like a bunch of dragons! Equestria needs all the resources at its command. I’d swear they think the war is less important than standing around in the dark and making sure nopony asks questions.”

There was a drawn-out sigh.

“Speaking of which, the darkness can really get to a pony. The lighting of this place is awful. Maybe it’s fine for thestrals, but regular ponies like me need a little more light to read by. I’ve been getting by with lanterns and portable lights, but that’s not a long-term solution. I’ve drawn up plans to refurbish this place to modern standards. Construction won’t take long as long as we don’t need anything custom-built. I expect it will be finished in a month or two since it’s really just a facade and interior design.

“One final note of bad news, I’ve had to start rotating staff. It means having to retrain the new staff as they come in, but it seems like the average Equestrian just doesn’t deal with the stress of this assignment well. Obviously I’ve made therapy available to them. I don’t want this to turn into a Wartime Stress Disorder outbreak. Rotating staff through other assignments should help mitigate it almost entirely.

“Hopefully, my next update will be about my findings at the lower containment area. Twilight Sparkle, signing off.”

The static blared again, totally washing over everything else in a wall of white noise and Destiny turned the recorder off, flipping it over in her magic and opening the back panel again to look at the inside of the device.

“There’s more to the tape, but this thing isn’t in great shape,” she said. “Let me play with this a little and try to improve the playback. I think if I just clean the contacts and make sure the connections are tight I can clear up the interference.”

“Go for it,” I said. “Toss me a torch, I’m just going to check the path up ahead. You all stay here and if you hear me yelling for help, uh… come help?”

Jet Stream pulled a flashlight out of his saddle bags and threw it to me. I caught it and held it in a wing. There wasn’t a nicely poured concrete path here, just a relatively clear path mostly marked by steel bars hammered into the rock with an old, frayed rope strung between them, the hemp just as mummified as the corpses by the dry cave air. I watched my hooves and walked forward, looking for the lower containment area Twilight had mentioned.

“This was a low-security lab, though, right? So why did she call the other area lower?” I asked the void. My voice echoed distantly, whispers returning my words and bouncing at odd angles until it sounded more like other ponies in the distance.

“It’s physically lower,” a pony said from beside me. I froze up and made a sound like a chew toy, fumbling with the light and dropping it entirely. A white aura caught it just before the flashlight hit the stone, the beam revealing the old grey unicorn I’d met before, a thousand miles from here.

He pushed the flashlight into my mouth and sighed, tugging at his beard.

“You’d think a pegasus would know something about altitude, but I’m learning not to overestimate you,” he said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Whaa a’ uuu ‘oin’ mnn?” I said through the torch in my mouth. He rolled his eyes and yanked it free, letting me grab it with a wing. “What are you doing here?” I asked again.

“At least you didn’t ask how I got here,” the old stallion said. “It would have just frustrated both of us. As for the ‘what’, I’m trying to keep the bloody world from ending again! You just had to get yourself entangled in this mess, didn’t you?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re not sorry, you’re just confused and you default to apologizing. I don’t have time to explain everything to you, but I’ve already interfered with you once, and the fewer ponies I interact with makes each loop easier to predict. By opening this place up you’ve set in motion a real humdinger of a problem, no stopping it now. If I left things alone, they’d spiral out of control, but since I’ve warned you, you and you alone have the chance to fix it, so don’t mess it up!”

“I know you said you don’t have time to explain everything, but could you maybe explain just one or two--”

“Chamomile, are you dead?” Cube called out. “If you’re dead, can I have Destiny? She’s smarter than you and I like her more!”

I held up a hoof for the old pony to wait and turned around. “I’m not dead! I’m right over here! I was just talking to--” I looked back to ask the stallion for his name. There was nothing there except darkness and shadows.

“Talking to who?” Cube asked, trotting past me and looking around, standing in almost the same spot the stallion had been.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance and shook my head. “Myself, I guess.”

“Oh hey, look at this!” Cube pointed her light down the path to a metal cage hanging from the cavern roof by steel cables and a bunch of wheels and pulleys and stuff that an engineer could explain and I could only compare to something between a trebuchet and an electric motor. It hung over a huge rift in the floor. I’d walked almost all the way to the edge of that massive hole without even noticing.

“I guess the next stop is halfway between here and Tartarus,” I mumbled.

The cage rattled and shook when we rode it down. I hadn’t wanted to ride it at all, but Cube couldn’t fly and Ornate Orate wanted to see it in action so I got outvoted. A yellowed, dull bulb hung from the roof, lighting up the steel platform and little else. As we went down, the stone wall of the cliff pulled further and further away until it just vanished beyond the reach of our lights, leaving us hanging alone with no reference points. Destiny quietly fiddled with the voice recorder, occasionally eliciting a spark or a softly spoken swear. The rest of us were caught in that space between boredom and nervousness, and dealt with it in our own ways.

“This is actually quite an early elevator design!” Orate yelled over the sound of metal against metal. “It was probably originally installed to haul cargo up and down, so the capacity is quite large! If you look at the way the counterweight system was designed, before they had an electric motor driving the assembly, it used pure gravity power! Water would be used to adjust the weight on the other side of the elevator so one side or the other would be overbalanced and cause this car to be hoisted up and down! Quite clever, and it could continue working even with something as simple as a bucket and patience!”

Cube looked around, then walked up next to me.

“Hey, buckethead -- cast a detection augury,” she said quietly. “I wanna make sure I’m not going crazy.”

Destiny lit up for a moment with a wash of red light. “I’ve been getting strange readings ever since I’ve been in this place,” she said. “I can’t pin it down. No active spells, no charged thaums, but I’d swear there are runic structures my magic isn’t seeing directly.”

Cube nodded. “I think something’s producing sterile thaums. A lot of them.”

“Sterile thaums?” I was way out of the loop again.

“Magic with no signature at all,” Cube said, keeping her voice low. “A spell with no caster.”

Destiny bobbed in assent. “It’s theoretically possible, but sterile thaums wouldn’t interact with normal magical structures at all. If they existed, they’d occasionally disrupt a few normal thaums, but it would be like shooting a bullet out of the air. There would need to be a massive number of them to even be a blip against the normal background noise.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Cube mumbled. “I’ve got good intuition and it’s telling me we shouldn’t be here.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Too late now, though. Even if we leave, it means somepony else is going to come poking around in here. At least if we’re the ones doing it, we can try to be aware of the danger and deal with it ourselves.”

“That might be the smartest thing you’ve said all day.” Cube reared up, narrowing her eyes and casting what should have been a powerful light spell. It got just about the same distance as the flashlight I’d been using. She made an annoyed sound and stopped casting, turning away from the darkness and planting herself firmly in the middle of the platform, right under the flickering electric bulb.

Even the professor quieted down as we rode that cage down into the dark. The darkness was oppressive. With nothing to see, it was like we were frozen there in time and space. If the ride had been a little smoother, I wouldn’t have even known we were moving.

“I can see something!” Jet Stream called out, peering over the side.

We all rushed over to the side just to share in the novelty of seeing anything, and we were able to make it out too. Coming into view below us, the stone and steel of the bottom of the elevator assembly.

“How far down did we go?” I asked.

“I’m having issues with the altimeter and, well, just about every sensor in the armor if I’m being honest,” Destiny said. The car shuddered firmly and came to a halt, settling into its cradle. “But assuming that trip was all at the same speed? We’re close to two kilometers down.”

“That’s pretty far,” I said. I couldn’t help but look up when we walked out of the elevator, all sticking close together on instinct. There was nothing above us. It wasn’t just black, it was the color of having your eyes closed.

“I’d feel a lot better if we had about twice as many people,” Jet Stream said. “I didn’t expect us to be this far from help if we get into trouble. If we run into trouble and anypony gets injured, I’m scrubbing this mission and we’re going back to wait for reinforcements, understood?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We shouldn’t go anywhere alone, either. There are four of us right now, so let’s use the buddy system. I’ll go with Cube, you go with the professor. You can probably keep him from sticking his nose into anything dangerous.”

Jet Stream nodded and slapped my shoulder. “Good thinking, soldier.”

I blushed a little at the compliment, but it was dark enough nopony could tell.

“Hey, you guys notice this?” Cube asked. She was looking off to the side of the elevator. There were pallets of coated metal paint, wires, lighting fixtures still in boxes, and scattered tools all around them. “Looks like they left all the construction stuff down here.”

Ornate Orate nodded. “The facility seems little-used. The newer constructions above us were almost spotless. I don’t believe it was occupied for very long. From the dates, it seems to have been abandoned even before the Battle of Stalliongrad.”

“So they never even finished building it?” I asked.

“Unfinished projects might as well be the signature of the Ministries,” Destiny said derisively. “They split up the government and made it six times less efficient. It’s why BrayTech tried to avoid engaging with them.”

“You helped the Ministry of Health with the Exodus Green,” I pointed out.

“Nopony can say ‘no’ to Fluttershy,” Destiny sighed. “I don’t remember very much about those days, but I do remember that she was just… so nice!”

A pebble rattled against stone. All of us spun around, looking for the source of the noise. After a moment of confusion, all of the others focused on me, and I couldn’t see their expressions through the glare.

“What is it?” I asked.

I turned around. There were two shadows behind me. One was mine. The other was tall, stretched out, and somehow seemed to have depth to it in the way a shadow shouldn’t. The suggestion of a head turned to look at me, then the shadow melted like ice on a hotplate, vanishing in a way no trick of the light could.

“Did everypony else see that?” I whispered.

“What was that?” Jet Stream asked.

“I, ah,” Ornate Orate coughed. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Maybe some sort of illusion, like a mirage?”

I carefully waved a hoof through where the pony would have been if they’d been casting that shadow. I felt nothing.

“I bet I know what it is!” Cube declared. “Think about it! This whole place has a weird magical aura, and it was a secure containment site with a bunch of guards and warnings and junk. This is probably some kind of old warding spell designed to discourage ponies from exploring!”

“That is possible,” Ornate Orate allowed.

“As the only unicorn--” Cube started. Destiny coughed. “--as the only living unicorn here, I’m calling it safe. For now. If there are serious wards later, they might do more than just try to spook us.”

“There’s a marked path,” Jet Stream said. “We’ll follow it and see where it goes. Remember, stick with your buddy.”

“You heard him,” I said. Cube rolled her eyes and took a step closer to me.

“If there is anything dangerous, I’m going to use you as cover,” she said.

“You’re not the first pony to do that,” I said, walking along the path at a slow enough pace that she could keep up without being rushed. Even if I wasn’t trying to be polite, I didn’t want to rush anywhere. I kept seeing movement in the corner of my eye and finding nothing there when I looked. From the way Jet Stream and Cube were acting, I’m pretty sure they were experiencing the same thing. Ornate Orate seemed totally blase about the whole thing, but maybe his vision was just poor enough he was used to phantoms.

“Hold up,” Cube said, when the iron path markers gave way to stone pillars reaching just to head height. “I think these are lights.”

“I don’t know if there’s any power down here,” I said. “I didn’t see any wires.”

“Not electrical lights, magic!” Cube said. “I just need to…” she reared up, only getting about halfway up the stone plinth.

“Need a lift?” I asked.

“I can take care of myself!” Cube snapped, her aura surrounding her whole body and lifting her off the ground. “See? It’s a simple trick for any sufficiently powerful unicorn.”

She floated to the top and cast a spell. There was a shower of sparks and then blue flames appeared. Another fire sprang up on the stone column on the other side of the path, and as if she’d lit a fuse, more lights appeared in the darkness, running on both sides of the path and lighting up the stone around it with dim but usable light.

The flames went on for almost a dozen pairs of the stone guide lights before they illuminated the end of the path, a steel door set into the stone wall. Ornate Orate gasped and sped up, almost running up to the door.

“Oh my! This is amazing!” he exclaimed. “Look at the delicate metalwork! The detail! This must date back to the early era of enlightenment, around the time of Star Swirl the Bearded! This kind of clockwork was the high technology of the era, and is almost impossible to replicate!”

“It’s a door,” Jet Stream noted, sticking close to the professor while Cube and I caught up. “How does it open? I don’t see a handle…”

“Ah, well,” Ornate Orate paused. “An excellent question. It’s believed that they’re a sort of combination lock. You can see how there are rings of symbols, some of which are locked and some of which are unlocked. If we manipulate them in the correct order, we can unlock the door. This kind of door was used by secret societies and arcane scholars to hide discoveries they didn’t want common ponies to be able to interfere with, you see, so opening the door is something of a lesson in itself. From the symbols used, I believe this door involves astronomy and the position of the fixed stars.”

“Can you open it?” I asked.

“That is… hm.” Ornate Orate clammed up, rubbing his chin.

“Hold on, maybe there’s a clue on this thing,” Destiny said, holding up the voice recorder. “I think I’ve recovered a couple more recordings.”

She snapped the panel shut with a sharp click and pressed the play button, a wash of soft white noise flowing out before the recording started, Twilight Sparkle’s voice warped and stretched just a little, like a vinyl record that had started to get wobbly and rippled.

“Journal Entry, uh… seven? Six or seven. I’ll fix it later when I’m writing the formal report. Maybe I should have kept written notes too? Next time I’m going to get one of my employees to just take notes. Spike isn’t going to be available and… I didn’t want to replace him, but I think I need to if I’m going to make this work.

“Anyway, notes regarding the security. I have some personal concerns. I’m making this recording away from the old staff, because I don’t know if they’re compromised, or if that’s a real worry or if I’m being silly or… I should probably just replace the staff, to make sure.

“The security door is of a very rare type, extremely expensive to construct at the time, and located at the bottom of a rift in the lowest part of a cave in the middle of nowhere. This might be one of the most secure locations in Equestria. In theory. In practice, this is a door in eternal darkness being guarded by members of an ancient branch of the Night Guard that have been extremely evasive about actually cooperating with me.

“More than that, opening the vault door… it requires arranging the stars correctly. If I was going to be really paranoid and poetic, I might say that the stars will set it free.

“I hope I’m wrong about what I suspect.”

“Any idea what she’s talking about?” I asked, tapping the swirl of symbols and interlocking rings on the surface of the door.

“Not really,” Destiny said. “I was hoping she just would have recorded the actual combination so we could skip a few steps.

“That would have been nice,” I mumbled.

“You could try cutting through it,” Destiny suggested.

I frowned. “I hate to say it, but I’d kind of like to be able to shut this door again in case we don’t like what we find on the other side.”

Ornate Orate sighed in relief. “Oh thank goodness. This door is a piece of art! If you destroyed it, it would be… unconscionable! Practically like murder! Worse, even!”

“It is a nice door,” I admitted. It was made of gold, silver, brass, and the whole effect was like looking at a clock with half of the gears exposed.

“I don’t know how much good it’s doing,” Jet Stream said. “Remember the bodies up above? Why would the Ministry Mare need to seal the door with them on the other side? And why couldn’t she have cast the seal here?”

“You think whatever’s in there already got out?” Destiny guessed.

“I hope not,” Jet Stream muttered. “I hope the kid is right that this is all some kind of spell to scare off scavengers.”

I poked the door, being as careful as possible to avoid breaking anything and wiggled one of the rings inscribed with symbols. It shifted a little, then clicked into the next position. A gear behind it moved, and I tilted my head. One of the teeth was longer than the others.

“Hmm…” I mumbled, thinking.

“To open the door, we’ll need to decipher the symbols,” Ornate Orate said. “Let me just get my notebook here… yes. Alright. Obviously we could attempt every possible combination of the puzzle rings, but that would take thousands, tens of thousands, of attempts. We also need to consider when this door was likely constructed and account for the drift of the so-called ‘fixed’ stars since then…”

I clicked the next ring, watching the door closely. I could just see far enough to spot the other wafer-thin gears sliding past each other, and where something was just a little off about them.

“Ponies would have still had to be able to open it up,” Cube said. “It can’t be that complicated. Twilight got through pretty quickly.”

“But she had the existing staff to show her the combination,” Orate pointed out. “She might not have needed to decode it on her own. We should assume that even if they weren’t helpful, they wouldn’t simply refuse a direct order.”

“I think I got it,” I said, rotating the last ring.

“Got what?” Jet Stream asked, just as the rings aligned and the clockwork door pulled apart.

“How did you…?” Ornate Orate asked, shocked. “What was the combination? How did you know?”

“Oh, uh, I didn’t really pay attention to the actual symbols,” I said. “If you looked really carefully and wiggled the one button, you could see where the stuff inside needed to move to get out of the way.”

“You didn’t have to learn a lesson about the mystery of the stars?” the professor asked, sounding disappointed.

“I didn’t learn anything at all,” I said with a shrug.

The passage behind the door had been carved by careful hooves, the walls inscribed with almost abstract engravings. It was more like an ancient tomb than anything modern. They’d been patched over with bricks, then when that crumbled, with concrete. Wires were bolted to the wall and hung loose in temporary fixtures, leading to a few still-working lights throwing dim orange light across the pictograms.

“This place has survived the rise and fall of empires,” Ornate Orate whispered. “Oh, I need to get rubbings of the remaining carvings!” He started pulling out charcoal and paper.

“We’ll go look ahead. Can you keep an eye on him, Lieutenant?” I asked.

Jet Stream nodded. “We’ll watch the door, too. If it starts to close on its own I’ll find a way to jam it open until we all get through.”

“Come on,” Cube said, kicking my shin lightly. “The sooner we get this over with, the better. This is turning into a stupid, creepy dead end.”

We barely got to the end of that first hallway before it hit us.

Destiny bobbed in midair, the aura around the helmet flickering. I felt something pass through me at the same time. It was like pins and needles, but something about the sensation made me think of a sweeping spotlight passing over me. Like being exposed.

“Woah, are you okay?” I asked. I caught her before she could fall. The voice recorder hit the stone and rattled off to the side, the button on the face clicking into place. I settled the helmet over my head so she wouldn’t risk falling again, sealing up my armor.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think that was some kind of sterile thaum surge. I couldn’t get a grip on anything with my telekinesis.”

“I told you it was sterile thaums,” Cube mumbled, shaking her head and rubbing her horn. “That really stung…”

“Why did they keep this from me?” Twilight Sparkle’s voice said, her tone sounding manic and rushed. “This might be one of the greatest discoveries ever made, and they’ve just been sitting on it!”

“Shut that off,” Cube groaned. “I don’t need more of a headache.”

“I’d rather know what we might be walking into,” I retorted. “Let’s get this second door open.” I nodded to the door at the end of the hallway. It wasn’t ornate, interlocking metal. It was stone and steel, with no visible mechanism.

“From the top, right. Sorry, trying to focus. Entry thirteen. The Night Guard never really named it. There are some floral, poetic, useless names floating around but none of them really capture it. I’ll be referring to it as the Anomaly for now until I can get a better idea of all its properties. It has some kind of magical aura, obviously. Anypony could tell that just by looking. I can’t get a clean scan. It’s like trying to read a book when it’s being held upside-down and at an angle -- all the letters are there, but they’re skewed and wrong and I don’t have a way to translate it yet.”

“How does this thing even open?” Cube asked. “This had better not be another stupid puzzle. We’re not going to get lucky twice.”

“Look at the scrape marks,” Destiny pointed out. She enhanced the faint marks in my HUD. “They’re curved. I think the door rotates out of the way. Look for a lever or catch.”

“The one thing I have found out is that I was wrong about the nature of this place. All those artifacts boxed away and put in storage weren’t brought here. They came out of this Anomaly! They… find things in the shadows. Like gifts. Offerings. Stone tablets with strange carvings, ancient pieces of armor. They’re impossible to date accurately. The object could be making them from whole cloth, or pulling them from somewhere else.”

“Found it,” Cube said. Her aura surrounded what looked like part of the wall carvings. She pulled, and it swung out a few degrees, revealing a metal backing. A low gurgle sounded from the wall, and the door started moving, scraping and rotating to the left.

“I’m going to go try a few more detection spells. I feel like I’m right on the edge of discovery here. There are so many hints and suggestions of patterns in the data that I’m sure I can figure this out if I just keep working on it. I need to find the right spell.

“Something deep inside is telling me this is the answer to all our problems!”

I frowned. “She sounds like my mom talking about SIVA,” I said, picking up the recorder and switching it off.

“You don’t think it’s actually a SIVA core, do you?” Destiny asked. “I mean, it’s impossible, but we’ve seen a lot of impossible today.”

An opening appeared in the stone, rotating into place to let us through, the thick circle of stone grinding to a halt when it was aligned. Dust rained down from the roof when it locked into place, the more modern reinforcements to the structure creaking as they took up some tiny fraction more of the strain.

“The source of the magical disruption should be right up ahead,” Destiny said.

“You go first,” Cube ordered.

I nodded and stepped through into a chamber shaped like an inverted ziggurat, square terraces going lower and lower until they converged at a central point. Tarps, crates, and desks littered the wide terraces, like the remains of a base camp on an abandoned mountain top. There was even the skeleton of a tent, the nylon skin gently moving in a breeze that wasn’t really there.

All of it was there in service of the thing at the bottom of that pit, where something floated, cradled in magic so thick it warped the air around it like the heat coming off a forge. Ghostly, foglike light came out of the air, almost in a reverse of the pervasive darkness outside.

“What… is that?” Destiny whispered.

It wasn’t a SIVA core. SIVA was something inequine and horrible in its own way, like a swarm of biting, burrowing insects spilling out of a beating heart. This was…

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cube said, with awe.

It was a black pyramid, as big as a skywagon, rotating around its peak languidly. The sides occasionally caught light that didn’t come from anywhere in the chamber. It was impossible to make out detail, the glints of light always coming at an angle that teased but never really revealed.

“There’s some kind of massive energy spike!” Destiny warned. “It’s like… something trying to build spells out of the places where magic isn’t! It doesn’t make any sense!”

The light shifted, that sourceless illumination somehow changing its angle. My shadow stretched out in front of me, joining with the rest in the room in a pool of blackness, like they were all being bound together. And something pulled itself through that pool of darkness. It stepped through from the second dimension into the third, a figure almost shaped like a pony but wrong, with a minotaur’s upper body where the head should have been, huge horns cresting like a crown. I could only vaguely make out the silhouette of the monster. The shadows clung to it like it was standing in deep shade.

“Tirek?!” Destiny gasped. “But he’s dead!”

“Tirek?” I asked.

“Watch out!” Cube shouted.

Energy crackled between the monster’s horns. I threw myself down, letting the edge of the ziggurat act as a shield. Even just hitting the rock a meter away it sent a wave of static, fizzling feelings down my spine, like a combination of electric shock and the pure jolt of terror from being slapped awake.

“Tirek was a demon,” Destiny said. “He drained the magic from half of Equestria! In the end they had to use lethal force to stop him. It happened when I was a foal, but I still remember how scared everypony was!”

Another bolt of black and white energy crashed into the wall, shooting past where I was taking cover and sending a chill through my body.

“He’s looking pretty spry for a dead guy!” I shouted.

“Let’s just leave!” Cube yelled back. “I don’t think he can even fit through the doors!”

“I like the way you think!” I agreed, throwing her a salute from the ground. “You go and I’ll cover you!”

I aimed the cryolator at the ground and fired, spraying a stream of liquid nitrogen in a wide arc. It boiled almost instantly, a cloud of fog rising up where it was condensing water vapor out of the air. Cube turned to bolt and her eyes widened.
I looked back the way we came, and saw the door rotating closed with a soft subsonic rumble that I felt more than I heard.

“No!” Cube yelped, grabbing it with her telekinesis, trying to hold it. I don’t think she even managed to slow it down. “The stupid thing was on a timer!”

I looked down at the shadowy giant centaur. It took a massive step, starting to walk up the terraces like they were merely oversized stairs. “Open it back up, then!”

“It’s using some kind of stupid primitive water-clock system! I have to wait for the tank to refill or it won’t do anything!”

“Time for Plan C,” I said.

“Is ‘Plan C’ the one where you wrestle the giant monster?” Destiny asked with a keen sense of the inevitable.

“The C stands for Chamomile,” I explained, before spreading my wings and jumping through the fog cloud. Tirek was the size of a barn, making him easily the second or third biggest monster I’d fought in the last few weeks. I slammed right into him and promptly bounced off, landing at his hooves.

He looked down at me.

“How are ya, big fella?” I asked.

Tirek kicked me. I flew about twice as fast as I could with my wings and went right through an ancient tent, hitting a cot and crushing it between me and the stone.

“You know, I’m starting to wish I was an earth pony,” I said. “I bet earth ponies never get punted around like hoofballs.”

“Yes Chamomile, when I see you I think about how light-weight and delicate you are,” Destiny said.

“You know anything about this guy?” I asked. I tore my way free of the broken bed. There was a nightstand next to the bed, with a framed photo sitting under a flickering, half-broken light. It was faded, but I could make out what looked like a half-dozen ponies sitting around a table.

“What’s to know? Tirek is a demon centaur who likes eating pony magic to make himself stronger. He’s big, he’s strong, and he’s got some kind of crazy magical blasts!”

“At least he can’t--” Hooves slammed down right next to me, one smashing the end table. “Fly?”

It would have been more comforting if it’d said something. Tried to scare me. Heck, it would have been good if he roared! It didn’t even seem like his hooves made noise unless I was looking right at him! Tirek reached down to grab for me, knocking what was left of the tent away.

I reared up and grabbed his wrist, wrapping my front hooves around it.

“Yeah, alright legend. Let’s see how you like this!”

I flicked the mantis-like blade out of my right forehoof and stabbed. The tip of the blade stopped dead before piercing his skin. With how dark it was, I couldn’t tell if his skin had stopped it, or if the glowing fog was shielding him somehow.

“You don’t seem to mind much,” I said sheepishly, looking up at Tirek. DRACO beeped and fired, hitting him right between the eyes. There was a sharp, hot ping when the bullet bounced away. A spray of liquid nitrogen just boiled away on touching the centaur to no effect. With no other ideas, I tried squeezing harder and pulling like I could throw him over my shoulder.

Tirek flexed his bicep and tossed me clear across the room. I caught myself in midair, breaking out of the spin and stabilizing before I hit stone hard enough to hurt myself.

“I think he might be invincible!” I shouted.

“There’s no way we can win this,” Destiny said. “We need to get out of here!”

“I’d teleport us out, but with all this interference I can’t promise how many limbs you’ll have on the other side!” Cube yelled. She fired a few shots from a floating beam pistol. I wasn’t sure Tirek really noticed.

Every time she shot, I saw something in the air. It was like the shadow of a vein, pulsing between Tirek and the black pyramid floating in the center of the room.

“He’s drawing energy out of that thing!” I said.

Destiny brought up the view in a small window, flashing through different colors and filters and trying to enhance the image to make it clearer. “It makes sense, he always ate magic. Maybe this… shadow is doing it too?”

I nodded. “How do we stop it?”

Tirek fired a beam of dark energy at Cube. She put up a shield, but the spray just cut through it. She ducked out of the way, her defensive spell barely even lasting long enough to run away from it. One of her pistols got caught in the beam’s wake, exploding and showering the floor with red-hot shrapnel.

“Leave her alone!” I yelled, flying into the side of his head. I could tell it didn’t hurt him, but it got his attention and he turned back to me. I zipped out of the way of his reaching paws, up higher than he could reach. It took him about half a second to switch to firing another one of those death rays, the energy crashing into the roof and cracking the rock.

“You need to disrupt his connection!” Destiny yelled. “I don’t have the magical power to do it, but you do!”

“You need to shoot him a few times!” Cube shouted back. “They’re easier to see when he’s drawing energy!”

I could do that. “Got it! DRACO, fire at will!”

The gun beeped and went into auto-targeting mode, just like the couple of times I’d used it like a turret. The barrel tilted on its own, and DRACO started firing with the rhythm of a slow heartbeat, fire, cycle, reload, fire, cycle, reload.

Cube’s aura grabbed a bunch of the threads and pulled, the strange magic slipping out of her grip. She grunted and pushed harder, and I saw sparks flying around her horn, the color of her aura shifting as she went harder at it.

“Come on, you stupid--” I heard her grumble, before she roared and got a grip on the slippery puppet strings, tearing them free. She fell back on her flank from the recoil, the aura sputtering and dying.

Tirek shrank. I don’t mean he shrank back like he was trying to get away from us, he actually got smaller, the darkness seeming to eat itself and shrivel up until he was only a little bigger than I was.

“This is our chance!” Destiny yelled. “Go wrassle him, Cammy!”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “DRACO, give me an explosive round!”

The gun beeped, and I aimed at where the damage to the roof was worst. Well, I say aimed, but really I just pointed DRACO in its general direction and hoped it would get the idea since it was a better shot than I was.

The rifle barked, and the shell went right into the deepest crack in the weakened ceiling. There was a sharp crack, and the whole chamber shook and rumbled. Even Tirek stopped to look up.

The roof came down right on his face. A dozen tons of stone squashed him like a bug, and instead of a rush of blood and guts, black dust exploded from under the landslide, bursting into the air like spores and rot and vanishing before even hitting the ground.

“Is it over?” I asked.

“The energy readings are going down,” Destiny said. “I’m not seeing any spikes. I think he’s gone.”

“What do we do about that thing?” Cube shouted up to me, blood trickling from her nose. She sniffled and wiped it away. The filly sounded like she was forcing herself to sound normal and okay. She tilted her head at the floating black pyramid.
The thing didn’t seem defeated. It shouldn’t have seemed like anything, since it was just a floating polygon. Looking at it, I could imagine it looking back like an animal in a cage. A cage whose door we’d pried open.

The last echoes of the crash from the rockslide faded away with the sound of distant laughter.

Chapter 50 - POWER

“Entry… thirteen? No, I’ve… I’ve had a few thirteens already. I don’t remember what number I’m on. I’m starting to lose track of time. I should have made several more entries. Not seeing the sun and moon every day is really having a knock-on effect with my internal clock. A whole month passed, but it only felt like a few days. I guess without my assistant here it’s too easy to fall down the rabbit hole and study for days on end.

“I think I need to start limiting my exposure to the Anomaly. I’ve mentioned the artifacts recovered from around it. There’s a partial catalog here somewhere. Today, when I was trying another variation of the standard thaumatic scan, I found something. It wasn’t anything dangerous but…

“When I was a filly I had a doll that I played with until it literally fell apart. I don’t know what happened to it, I lost it years ago. Today I found it in the Anomaly chamber, sitting right next to me, exactly as I remembered it. Not a brand-new doll of the same type. My doll, with all the stitches and stains and worn spots.

“I’m holding it right now. It’s real. It isn’t a dream or an illusion or… how did it know? I’ve been casting all this magic into the Anomaly. Has it been looking back at me this whole time?”

“I don’t like the idea of leaving the professor alone with that… thing,” I said. I kicked at the floor of the hallway, sending up a puff of clouds. “Anything could happen. We never even found a body!”

“He’s got a small army of soldiers to protect him,” Cube said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “You’re just feeling guilty because you were on the first boat out of there. Do you really think you’d be any help? You’re not smart enough to do research. You’d just get bored and cause trouble.”

“If another monster shows up…” I mumbled, trailing off.

Cube snorted. “If another monster shows up they’ll leave. Do you know most ponies see monsters and they think ‘hey, I should leave’ and not about the best way to get it into a headlock?”

“What’s wrong with putting monsters in headlocks?” I mumbled.

“Don’t listen to her, Chamomile,” Destiny said, floating in front of me while we walked. “Personally, I think it’s one of your best traits! You fight monsters and aren’t afraid of anything!”

“You’re biased,” Cube said.

“I am,” Destiny agreed. “It’s called being her friend. Friendship is important, you know. If you’re not careful, you’ll be visited by three ghosts who’ll teach you about the meaning of Hearth’s Warming! Or you’ll get eaten by a windigo.”

“Windigos aren’t real,” Cube retorted.

“They’re real,” Destiny and I said at the same time.

“I tried to punch one in the snout,” I continued. “It didn’t work because it was a ghost and they’re tricky to punch.”

Cube frowned and looked at me for a few more seconds. “Ugh. I hate that I can’t tell if you’re lying or not! Why can’t I read your mind? Are you just that stupid?”

“Can you actually read minds?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you do it. You just stare at my forehead and get frustrated.”

“Shut up! I can do a lot of things!” Cube snapped. “I’ll prove it later. Let’s just find the library and see if there’s anything about that fortress.”

“Professor Orate said he found the location in some old MAS files, right?” I asked.

Cube nodded, starting to calm down. “Right. The old guy just got lucky, but we know what we’re looking for. The Ministry Mare spent a lot of time there, she must have figured out where all this stuff was coming from at some point.”

Destiny bobbed in the air. “She wasn’t the kind of pony to let a mystery go.”

“Unless the war interrupted her,” I reminded them. “There was a lot going on.”

“She found out enough to make her want to seal the place off,” Destiny countered. “Whatever that knowledge is, it’s worth knowing.”

“Knowledge is a weapon,” Cube said, nodding along. “A double-edged sword. Either you’re holding it and you need to be careful how you use it, or it’s lying somewhere in the dark and you risk stumbling into the blade.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “You’re right. You’re both right. It’s already there. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“I like it when you admit I’m right,” Cube said smugly. “Now open the door.” She waved to it.

“I’m sorry, is the doorknob too high for you?” I teased, pushing open one of the library’s big double doors and letting her and Destiny through. I had certain expectations about what a library was like. Walls of books, ponies trying to be quiet, big desks, low lighting. Basically like my Dad’s library back home except on a grand scale.

This was… different.

“Where are all the books?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“We went digital!” a pony called out. I looked up to where four ponies were clustered around a large, complicated piece of cloud technology, with veins of lightning and rainbow cabling pulsing through the gaps where panels had been removed. The pony who had spoken was a slim stallion in a silver suit. They waved to us.

“Digital?” I asked. They nodded and flew down to us from the upper level.

“In the long term, storage of physical media is problematic,” they explained. “Shelving that can hold books and is enchanted not to fall through clouds is expensive, but even if funding was unlimited, the humidity is a big issue.”

He offered a hoof to shake.

“Synonym Storm. I’m the head librarian.”

“Nice suit,” I said, nodding to the foil one-piece he was sporting.

He blushed and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the crinkling metallic fabric. “It’s an anti-static garment. Better safe than sorry when working with delicate equipment.”

“Good, you’re the pony in charge,” Cube said, pushing between us. “I need all the documentation about Site K1 and Mogile Uzhasov you have.”

“That could be a problem,” Synonym said with a grimace. “We had a small incident last week.”

“An incident?” Cube asked, unamused. I could feel the waves of annoyance radiating off her.

The librarian gestured to where ponies were working on the large computer. “While having all our books digitized is extraordinary in many ways - no waiting for a checked-out copy to be returned, no need to worry about wear and tear… It also means that if something particularly disruptive happens, it can take the entire library offline.”

“Something disruptive?” Destiny asked.

“Indeed,” sneered a voice from the doorway behind us. I turned to look at the sneering sneerer, the political officer I’d met in the Dean’s office. He glared at us in a detached, professional way. “Another example of a dangerous, disruptive element in society that has made things worse for everypony. A rebel showed their true colors and sabotaged the school’s maneframe!”

Synonym Storm sighed. “Professor Wisp--”

“Former professor,” Cypher Decode corrected snippily.

“Wisp had multiple grants for his research denied. He was on the verge of losing tenure, and he… snapped. He left and took some vital components of the maneframe with him.”

“He sabotaged the school to work with a rebel group of surface ponies!” Decode snapped. “He is a criminal and if he ever returns to the Enclave he’ll be executed on sight!”

“Whatever,” Cube sighed. “How long until this mess is working again? A few hours?”

“Ah…” the librarian hesitated. “We’re hoping by the end of the next semester we’ll have… some functionality restored.” He looked at Cube’s face and offered a nervous smile. “The components involved are very rare. He knew what he was taking. From his correspondence, we think he was in contact with a research team operating on the surface.”

“Computer research?” Destiny guessed.

“Ghouls, actually,” the librarian said. “It’s why his grants kept getting denied. There really aren’t any ghouls up here.”

“It made his research unnecessary,” Cypher said. “I looked over his file after he went rogue. He was wasting precious resources for his pet project. The committee did the right thing in denying him students and funding. His proposals to actually capture feral ghouls for study were not only logistically dangerous, but insane on the face of things!”

“Great, whatever. So we know where he went?” I asked.

“We can solve this in a few hours,” Cube said, looking up at me in agreement. “We’ll just need a VertiBuck and a pilot.”

“Denied,” Decode said. “You have caused enough trouble. I don’t know why you’re really here, but I won’t let you simply run amok and do whatever you want! I don’t like having elements I can’t control!”

Cube narrowed her eyes. I felt a subtle pressure pulse out of her.

“You do like control,” she agreed. “You really like it when somepony else is in control, too. Like when you caused a training accident and you were given ten lashes, and right in front of everypony in your squad…” she trailed off and shook her head. “Ew. I guess that’s one way to find out what you’re into.”

Decode paled.

“What was the nickname they gave you?” Cube asked. “Dirty Little Secret?”

“How- how dare you look at those file!” Decode screeched. “They’re restricted! You have no right to go into a pony’s personal files! I made sure they were erased!”

“Do we need to talk about the thing with the griffon?” Cube whispered.

Decode stiffened up and very quickly walked out of the library.

“I think you almost killed him,” I said. “How’d you do that?”

“I told you I can read minds,” Cube said.

“He’s not going to help us get a VertiBuck,” Destiny noted. “We’ll need to figure out where else we can get those parts.”

“No need,” Cube said. She smirked. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Not really, it’s hard to see you all the way down there,” Destiny muttered.

Cube ignored her. “Get your things and come with me. I can get us to the surface on my own!”

“Destiny, please tell me you know what’s going on,” I whispered.

Cube had retrieved a bundle of metal staves tipped with faceted crystals and drove them firmly into the floor, three of them forming a triangle in the middle of her room. I was in the middle of that triangle, and I was getting more and more worried with every passing moment.

“I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at,” Destiny admitted. “There’s thaumatic circuitry, but…”

“They’re pattern enhancers,” Cube said. She adjusted one of the three staves, eying the angle. “Teleportation over a long distance is tricky. In the old days, way before the war, they had to use these big ritual circles. Even when methods got better, it was dangerous enough that ponies needed to be licensed for it.”

“I get it,” Destiny said. “These pattern enhancers are like a portable magic circle.”

“Exactly!” Cube nodded sharply. “Actually drawing a magic circle is messy and slow and there are too many ways you can make a mistake. This automates the whole thing. No way to really mess it up. Speaking of which, here.”

She levitated another set of three over to me.

“Carry these,” Cube ordered. “We’ll set them up when we get there.”

“Is this safe?” I whispered, taking the set and settling it between my wings. If something went wrong with the armor, I didn’t want the only way home stuck in another dimension with the rest of my junk.

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Destiny whispered back. “She’s got talent, but I have no idea how much real experience she has. Teleportation is a really difficult spell!”

“Could you do it?”

“No. I know the basics -- the suit’s Vector Trap is based on half of a teleportation spell. I just never could memorize all the runes to cast it on my own.”

The air filled with an electric pressure. The aura around Cube’s horn flared brighter.

“I’m sure she knows what she’s doing,” Destiny reassured me.

“You bucked it up,” I said calmly.

“I did not!” Cube protested.

I motioned below us. Cube looked down for a very long second.

“I made a small mistake,” Cube conceded.

I nodded in agreement, letting the wind rush past me as we fell. The ground was pretty far away, but not that far. We had maybe ten seconds. “Do you want some help?”

Cube stuck her tongue out at me and surrounded herself in her aura, freezing in place in the air and shooting up past me as I continued to fall. I had to brake myself manually and fly back up to her, the little unicorn making a point of maintaining altitude and not coming down to meet me.

“Like I said, only a small mistake,” Cube said. “Both of us can fly. If you really think about it, it’s actually way safer like this! You should congratulate me for coming up with such a good idea!”

“A little higher and the lightning shield would have fried us.”

“It was a risk I was willing to take.” Cube looked around. “Ugh. I hate how ugly the surface looks, and we can’t even see all the mud from here.”

“DRACO is synchronizing maps,” Destiny said. “I can give you a course to the target. You want something on the ground, or as the pegasus flies?”

“Ground,” I said.

“I can get there on my own!” Cube snapped. “Doing this doesn’t even make me tired!”

“I believe you. I also believe you’re glowing like a lightbulb and things are so gloomy down here everypony and everything around is going to take a shot at you.”

Cube smiled. “Sounds like fun!”

Ponies adapt to danger in different ways. I spent most of my life just wasting time and waiting for something meaningful to drop into my lap. When it all finally crashed down around me, it was like I’d found a purpose in life. It wasn’t like I enjoyed being shot at or seeing shit that would turn most ponies white. It just felt like it mattered. I wasn’t standing around in a bar and cleaning glasses. I wasn’t scrubbing the deck on a cloudship. I fought monsters.

And I was increasingly worried that the little filly next to me might be one of those monsters. We were already arguing as we reached the crest of one of the low hills through the area.

“No, I don’t think making a necklace out of their ears is a good idea,” I said. “That’s actually, like, kind of psychotic.”

“I guess,” Cube sighed, kicking at the dirt. “But I should get something out of it. I mean, we killed all those raiders!”

“Do you want a broken board with a nail in it?” I asked.

“No, that’s stupid,” Cube huffed. “You just hate fun. You won’t let me take their drugs, you won’t let me take trophies…”

“The last thing you need is weird drugs,” I said. “The last enhanced unicorn I met had seizures if she didn’t get the right medications. I have no idea what Dash would do to you.”

“Chamomile, you’re such a good big sister!” Destiny teased.

“You know what, never mind.” Cube huffed, stomping her hooves. “I don’t want to remember any of this!”

I shrugged. “For what it’s worth, we’re here.”

“Here?” Cube asked. “But there’s no lab here! No ancient MAS facility, no secret MOA base, just…”

“A shopping mall,” Destiny supplied.

It was a sea of parking lots for carts and delivery trucks, surrounding a massive, low building. The mall had a look to it like the designer, if there was one, had taken a whole city block and squished it together, slamming buildings up against each other before patting it down into a pancake of concrete.

“Correction,” Destiny said. “According to this, it’s a radioactive shopping mall. I guess that explains the locals.”

“When you say locals, you mean the ghouls,” I said. “I’m guessing here, but there are a lot of them.”

There must have been a hundred of them just in the parking lot, stumbling around aimlessly. Maybe they’d died trying to remember where they’d parked, and they’d spent the last two centuries lost in the maze of broken-down cars.

“How dangerous are ghouls?” Cube asked. “I’ve never fought one.”

“I happen to be an expert in fighting undead,” I said. “They’re like, D-tier, same as skeletons. Out in the open like this, when you can fly and you’ve got guns? Basically zero threat.”

“That’s kinda boring. I was hoping for more of a fight.” Cube plucked the pattern enhancers off my back. “This is probably a good spot to leave these things. Let’s shove them in the back of that Sparkle-Cola truck.”

I nodded and trotted over to the back, slicing the lock open and sliding the squeaking door open. Something grabbed my hoof, and I looked down to see a ghoul in the remnants of what had been a uniform before somepony died in it and dragged it through the dirt for a dozen and a half decades.

“See?” I wiggled my hoof and flicked the already-crippled ghoul off. “They’re not very impressive. I guess if I wasn’t wearing barding it might be able to bite a chunk out of me. You should probably watch your back if we get into tight quarters.”

Cube nodded and shot it in the head, putting the groaning undead pony down. “At least we finally found some ponies that make you look like a genius!”

She moved a few empty crates and put the bundle of pattern enhancers in the truck. The last crate rattled and clinked, and she pulled out two sealed bottles of cola.

“Huh,” Cube said. “Are these any good?”

“It’s better cold,” Destiny said. “I never liked them at room temperature.”

“I’ve got a gun that shoots cold,” I offered.

“Perfect!” Cube shut the truck’s back door and balanced the bottles on the bumper. “Go ahead and cool them down.”

“Good thing there were more bottles in there,” I said, sipping the ice-cold Sparkle Cola and flying over the ghouls. Cube took a few pot shots at them out of obvious boredom. These ghouls were really out of it. They didn’t even react to the undead ponies next to them getting gunned down.

“You should have known they’d shatter,” Destiny sighed. She shook herself disapprovingly in midair where she was helping us keep an eye out for trouble. “Ice expands! If you freeze anything in a closed, rigid container you run the risk of shattering!”

“I got it right the second time,” I said. “You were right about these being better cold.”

“They were also better fresh, but I don’t think that’s an option,” Destiny said. “Why aren’t we going directly to the mall?”

Cube sighed. “Because, and may the stars forgive me for saying this, Chamomile was right about something. These ghouls aren’t a threat to us, but to an unarmed, unarmored pony they might be pretty dangerous. That researcher we’re looking for might have gotten himself bitten.”

“Right,” I said. “He could have gotten turned into one! So we gotta see if any of them are fresh.”

“Is that how ghouls work?” Destiny asked.

“It is not how ghouls work,” rasped a voice from below us. A ghoul in relatively intact clothing looked up at us, taking off his hat and waving to us. “Could you two stop shooting my test subjects?”

“Are you in charge here?” I called out.

“I’m the head of the Parasol Falls research team,” the ghoul said slowly. “Who the buck are you two?”

“Three,” Destiny corrected. The ghoul rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that! You’re not better than me just because you have a body!”

“We’re from Winterhoof College,” I said, before it turned into an argument.

“Oh great,” the ghoul groaned. “I should have known. You’re here because of Wisp aren’t you?”

“Sort of,” I said. “He didn’t leave on great terms.”

“Come inside and we’ll talk,” the ghoul said. He looked around at the wandering, groaning horde of undead. “These things creep me out.”

“No, not all of them died here,” Doctor Balm said, his voice sounding like it had been dragged across broken glass. I wasn’t sure if it was more or less disconcerting seeing a ghoul excited and happy than it was seeing one hungry for pony flesh. “At first we thought it was just that simple. They died because of the radiation, and they didn’t wander far. You never find feral ghouls outside of radioactive areas, so it made sense. But it turns out it might be more of a survivorship bias - ghouls do wander, but they don’t last long unless they find radiation because we don’t heal naturally.”

“Fascinating,” Destiny said. We trotted along behind her and the good doctor as he led us to where his research team was set up inside an old department store. “Undead weren’t really a serious issue when I was alive, but you can imagine I’m very interested in the nitty-gritty details now.”

“Equestria never studied necromancy much,” Balm agreed. “We started our research looking into Zebra legends, but… that’s a dead-end for a lot of reasons.”

Destiny nodded. “Getting your hooves on Zebra material wasn’t easy even before the bombs fell.”

The ghoul looked back at me and Cube. “Speaking of bombs, are those two going to be okay? This place is highly contaminated.”

“I know Chamomile has a subcutaneous weave of heavy metals that provides a lot of radiation shielding,” Destiny said. “I’m not sure about the little one.”

“For your information, my enhancements aren’t nearly as crude as hers,” Cube said smugly. “I’m much tougher than the average ordinary unicorn.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got a bunch of RadAway. I’ll make sure she drinks it.”

Cube huffed. “I hate how that stuff tastes!”

“It’s better than having your organs turn to very advanced and powerful mush,” I said. I grabbed a dose and passed it over to her. “Here.”

Cube took it glumly and sipped at it, grimacing at the taste.

“So where’s Wisp?” I asked. They’d pushed most of the faded racks of rotting clothing off to the sides of the space on the floor and had set up equipment in little pods around anywhere there was room, using the counters, dressing rooms, and displays like the terrain to build their community.

Balm grunted. “He got in good with the boss because of all the stuff he brought.”

It was hard to tell the scientists apart. They were all in brightly-colored yellow suits that covered them from head to tail. I wouldn’t have a chance at picking the Professor, or former professor, out of the group.

“Does that mean he’s got a private workspace?”

“It means he’s basking in her glory,” Balm said. His voice dripped with sarcasm and various other stagnant fluids. “You might want to wait around until she goes off to do something else. She’s… not the kind of pony you want to upset.”

“Neither am I,” Cube grumbled.

“We can wait a little while,” I sighed. “So what are you even researching? How ghouls work?”

Balm grunted. “Take a look at these ghouls over here.” He led us to where large cages had been put together, with stumbling, groaning ghouls inside. One of the researchers got too close, and a ghoul jumped at them, hitting the bars and snapping its teeth, trying to bite them.

“They’d make good attack animals if you could teach them to do that on command,” Cube said.

“That ‘attack animal’ was a nurse. The other one in that cage was an engineer.” Balm sighed. “What we’re studying is why some ghouls keep their marbles and others don’t. Ultimately we want to find a way to reverse feralism.”

“Is that even possible?” Destiny asked.

“I’m not sure,” Balm admitted. “It could be a dead end. Or an undead end, really. If it can be reversed, even if the ponies can’t be brought back to life, they’d be able to have some kind of real lives instead of wandering around and rotting.”

“That actually seems like a pretty good cause,” I said.

“I’m doing it for selfish reasons,” Balm said. “I don’t want to end up like those animals. Wisp has it in his head that we can completely reverse the process and recover all the knowledge and memories lost when these ponies turned. That’s what has our, uh, benefactor interested.”

“And since it’s his pet project, he gets all the attention,” I guessed.

Balm shrugged raggedly. “Like I said, he got in good with her.”

“This is pointless,” Cube said. “Where’s the pony in charge? I’m not going to stand around all day getting irradiated just because we’re being polite!”

“They’re testing the rig, but look, just wait for them to finish! She gets bored really easily and she’ll probably wander off to do something else in a few hours if it doesn’t work right away--”

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Cube said. She looked over at the cages, and grabbed the locks with her magic. They snapped apart, and she yanked the doors open.

“What are you doing?!” Balm gasped. Or rasped, really. It sounded like a rotting whoopie cushion. The feral ghouls stumbled out of their cages, lunging for the rad-suited ponies that had been getting readings on them. Even the docile ones that had been sitting quietly in the back of the cage seemed to come back to unlife, growling and following the pack.

“I’m getting your manager’s attention,” Cube replied.

“Damnit,” I swore. I pointed DRACO at a ghoul about to bite down on one of the scientists and blew its head off, the shot echoing in the confined space. “Cube--”

“We’re not here to negotiate and play nice!” Cube snapped. “Get your idiot boss out here!”

The voice didn’t come from around me. It came from inside me. It had a harsh, static-filled edge to it, fizzing through my brain like an electric invader in my thoughts. The air cracked open with a brilliant flash of purple light, and the third-most-dangerous pony I’d ever seen appeared above us, hovering with slow, steady wingbeats.

“Is that an alicorn?” I whispered, looking up at the dark violet pony. Her horn was barely glowing with magic, but I could still feel the potential and pressure in the air like an oncoming hurricane.

“How did you manage to get us into an even worse situation?!” Destiny hissed.

“Special talent,” I guessed.

The Alicorn’s horn blazed, and the rampaging ghouls were lifted up and thrown back into the cages, the doors slamming shut and the edges glowing red-hot, the doors flash-welding shut with what seemed like almost no effort at all on her part. She never stopped glaring at us the whole time, not even needing to look over her shoulder to direct her magic.

I grimaced. “That kind of stings.”

“What does?” Destiny asked. “She’s just hovering there, ominously.”

“You can’t hear that?” I asked.

“It’s telepathy,” Cube groaned, rubbing her horn. “It probably doesn’t work on ghosts.”

I cleared my throat. “Hey! Uh, nice to meet you, Princess… I’m not actually sure who you are. Look, we’re here to get back some stolen goods. We can be out of your hair in ten minutes if we can just grab it and go.”

I winced. “Cool, cool. Can you maybe not shout?” I rubbed my ears. It felt like they were ringing even when I wasn’t actually hearing with them. “Why is a princess here, anyway?”

The Alicorn motioned with her chin towards the cages.

That really hurt. “Yeah that kinda… I have no idea what you’re talking about. We just need the junk that Wisp brought with him. How about we take that, you can keep Wisp, and we part ways as friends?”

The alicorn looked at me for a long moment.

Then she blasted me across the room with a bolt of radioactive green magic. I plowed into and through a rack of last season’s styles and slammed into the far wall surrounded by scorched and smoldering cotton.

“Are you alive?” Destiny asked, floating in front of me along with all the stars in my vision.

“Technically,” I groaned, getting back up and shaking some of the stiffness out of my joints. A scorchmark went from the middle of my chest to my right shoulder. “That was a little like getting hit with lightning.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get hit in the head.” Destiny settled down over my head, sealing up the armor. “I can’t believe you picked a fight with an alicorn. I’ve seen what the Princesses can do when they’re mad. It’s not good, Chamomile!”

“Got any tips on fighting Alicorns?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not Flurry Heart, so you’ve got a chance at living through this,” Destiny said. “I’d suggest groveling and apologizing.”

I saw the flare of beam shots and the crack of another huge magical bolt. Cube ran past me, firing backwards while fleeing towards cover. The cover was my flank.

“Do something!” Cube shouted.

“Did you shoot her?” I asked.

Cube looked at me like I’d asked the stupidest question she’d heard all day. “Of course I shot her! I thought she killed you!”

“Oh wow, I think we’re finally bonding as a family!” I gasped.

“Shut up and kill the monster!” Cube snapped.

I snickered and walked back through the swathe of destruction my body had plowed through the abandoned clothing racks. The alicorn landed and from this angle she was head and shoulders taller than me, making me look up at her.

“It’s funny,” I said. “Usually a mare that can kick my ass is exactly my type, but I’m just not all that into you.”

The Alicorn’s eyes narrowed slightly. I moved just a little faster than her, my forehead slamming into hers at the moment she tried to cast a spell and blast me into next week. The energy crackled through the Exodus armor’s thaumoframe, the spell firing straight up and blasting a hole through the roof.

“Bad touch, bad touch!” Destiny yelled. “I felt that in my whole soul, Chamomile! Leave my horn alone!”

The Alicorn spread her wings and tried to shove me back. I caught her forehooves with mine and held my ground. She was incredibly strong and looked absolutely furious. She seemed more upset that she couldn’t overpower me than about the headbutt.

“I can do this all day,” I said mildly.

“That doesn’t make any--”

She vanished in a flash and twinkle, and I stumbled forward into the space she’d been standing. There was another flash right behind me and I had just enough time to realize that was a bad thing before the spell hit me in the back and smashed me into the ground hard enough to make me bounce and skip right into a load-bearing steel beam.

I gave small thanks that the beam was tough enough not to collapse from the impact and bring the ceiling down on me.

“Okay, time for a different strategy,” I said. “My whole body is bruises.”

I rolled onto my stomach.

“DRACO, armor piercing,” I said. The gun chirped, and I fired. The bullet hit a wall in front of the Alicorn, a bubble of green magic flaring up around her before fading back to near-invisibility.

“That’s a really nice shield spell,” Destiny noted.

I cracked my neck. “What are we up to, plan E?”

“I didn’t think we even had a plan A.”

“That’s good, because otherwise we would have really messed it up.” I charged the Alicorn, and she smugly stood in place, the shield spell flickering in and out of visibility around her. I slammed into it, and I saw her expression change. The glow got brighter and brighter, and I could feel it distorting where I was touching it.

“Are you implying I’m compensating for something?!” I yelled, pushing harder. The shield flared, and I could see my armor actually starting to glow from within.

“The thaumoframe is having some kind of reaction!” Destiny warned. “It was never designed for this much thaumatic flux!”

“Just hold it together!” I shouted. The magical shield belt and buckled in a way even I knew was completely impossible for something that wasn’t really a physical object, and with a crackle of sparks, it cracked like metal fracturing under stress. The Alicorn looked shocked.

I didn’t give her a chance to get over the surprise. I fired everything I had, spraying her in the face with liquid nitrogen from the Cryolator and pulling DRACO’s trigger. Flares and smoke launched out over her shoulder as she recoiled from the biting cold, bouncing off the other side of her shield spell. Destiny fired a bolt of magic into the winged unicorn’s chest, sending her reeling.

The Alicorn screamed, the sound echoing through my whole mind and body, before vanishing in a flash of light, leaving behind only a few traces of smoke and one bouncing flare that rolled across the tiled floor.

I panted, catching my breath.

“Flares and smoke?” I asked after a second. “Why not bullets?”

“I figured we might only get one shot,” Destiny said. “I thought a smokescreen might help us get away. Also smoke rounds use white phosphorus, so, you know. There’s that.”

“You wartime ponies are great at war crimes,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back even more upset than she was before.”

“Good idea. Where’s your evil sister?”

“Over here!” Cube called out. “Thank you for the distraction. I finished the mission while you were busy, by the way.” She had a small crate in her aura, along with a gun, pressed to the back of a pony’s head.

“Professor Wisp, I presume?” I asked.

“I had him help me find the right parts,” Cube explained.

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Wisp pleaded. “The Goddess is the future! There are only a handful of Alicorns now, but in a few decades--”

Cube pulled the trigger, and Wisp collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Ugh,” Cube groaned. “I can’t stand fanatics.”

“You didn’t have to kill him!” I shouted, equal parts horrified and enraged.

“He made us run halfway across Equestria fixing this stupid mess,” Cube retorted. “He deserved to die just for wasting my time. Grow up a little, Chamomile.”

She rolled her eyes and walked right past me.

If our positions had been reversed, and I was her ride home, I would have left her there. But I needed her to get back, so all I could do was shut up and bottle everything up. I had to be strong. For my family.

Chapter 51 - Aria di Mezzo Carattere

I stormed out of Cube’s room, about half an atrocity away from exploding and yelling at her, no matter how much I wanted to try and get along with her.

“Hey!” Cube yelled. “Where are you going?!”

“Away from you,” I growled.

“Stupid idiotic-- is this about Wisp?!” Cube demanded. “Come on! I know you’ve killed a bunch of ponies! He was a traitor! What’s the big deal?”

“There’s a big difference between murder and shooting somepony in self-defense!” I snapped.

“I hate family arguments,” Destiny mumbled, the ghost metaphorically burying her face in her hooves.

Cube ran ahead of me, turning around and walking backwards so she could glare at me while we argued. “Really? You’re wearing power armor and you’re basically bulletproof even without it, and you want to complain about fair fights?”

“If you can’t figure out why I don’t like what you did, there’s no point explaining it,” I said. “I’ve had to kill ponies, but I’ve never enjoyed it.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but I had to pretend it was for my own sake.

“You…” Cube puffed up her cheeks, her voice cracking. “I can’t believe I was starting to think you were cool!” She turned to glare down the hallway ahead of us. “And what do you want?!”

A pony was standing there in the deep shadows where one of the overhead lights was out. They were tall and thin, and didn’t answer. I couldn’t make out their features. It was dark enough that I wasn’t even sure they were facing our direction.

“I asked you--!” Cube shouted.

The broken light flickered back to life with the harsh hum of a half-dead halogen bulb. The shadows vanished, and the flat black pony went with them.

I stopped in my tracks. Cube reversed direction until she bumped into me. A chill ran down my spine like somepony had poured ice water into my barding.

“Did you see that too?” Cube whispered.

“Yeah,” I hissed back. “I saw it.”

Cube pulled out a pair of beam pistols. “I’ve got good news, Chamomile. I think you might not be the dumbest pony I have to deal with today.”

“I’m seeing sterile thaum cascades,” Destiny warned. “Now that I know what I’m looking for, the thaumoframe tiles make pretty good detectors.”

“Do you know where they’re coming from?” I asked, looking around. The shadows seemed deeper, more absolute.

“I think it’s roughly… that way.” Destiny popped an arrow up on my heads-up-display. “Don’t ask me to be more exact than a general direction.”

“It’s good enough,” I assured her. I started off, Cube trailing behind me. It took twice as long as it should to find what we were looking for. Destiny’s guess at the direction was perfectly fine, but the college was almost maze-like, and the seemingly open structure belied the number of floors and layout. Just getting to where we needed to go meant going up two floors and down two, just to find the main doorway.

“Oh! There you are!” Ornate Orate said. “We were wondering where you got off to.”

“We had to take care of something,” I said. I looked through the portcullis behind him. “Professor Orate, please tell me you didn’t drag that thing all the way back here.”

Inside, in what had been a gymnasium of some kind, the sporting equipment had been shoved up against the walls and ponies were setting up equipment I couldn’t even begin to identify, all arranged like offerings around the altar of the floating black pyramid that was so out of place here.

“It was quite difficult,” Orate said. “Really fascinating! It was simply impossible to study it in situ, with all the delicate equipment we needed. Much too much trouble. I was taking some initial readings of the anomaly and the idea came to me quite suddenly that it would be easier to do my work in a proper laboratory setting.”

I had to fight back a groan. “And you decided to take it back with you? The giant cursed pyramid?”

The professor scoffed. “Don’t be silly. There’s no such thing as curses. Well, that’s not strictly true, but most so-called curses are just scary stories trying to frighten off vandals. If there is any danger, we are far better equipped to measure it and contain it here. It’s no different from the Sarcophagus of Hoofenkamen or the Trottingham Shales.”

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Destiny said. “I’m sure you mean well, but this is a potentially dangerous magical item, not just a historical artifact.”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed the ghosts!” Cube added.

“There you are!” snapped the pony I least wanted to see at that moment. Cypher Decode stormed towards us. He looked like something had broken in him and seeing us was making the sharp edges rub together. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull--”

Cube and I turned to him, and I saw his expression fall. His pallor turned a few shades more pale. It took me a moment to remember I was wearing a small tank and that I was currently pointing enough firepower in his direction to deal with someone armed with more than just a scowl. Cube’s floating array of guns probably wasn’t helping either, especially with how the shadows were putting her on edge.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“You did this, didn’t you?” Cube accused, pointing at the floating pyramid. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that thing is? Because I can’t even begin to guess!”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Cypher snorted, breaking eye contact with me to look at the ominous polygon. “It’s a matter for the archeology department.” His voice trailed off as he looked. “It’s so beautiful…”

“If you aren’t here about this mess, why are you here?” I asked. “I hate to sound like my little sis here, but you’re wasting my time and I’m not in the mood!”

Cypher was silent for a long moment, lost and staring into that abyss. He had to force himself to look away. “Some pony showed up out of nowhere with an Admiral’s eagle on his uniform and asking to see you.”

“It must be one of my father’s allies,” Cube sighed. “I’ll go and talk to them, they’re probably acting as a middleman--”

“Not you,” Cypher snorted. “Her. Chamomile.”

“Why?” I asked, confused. The last time I’d met an admiral, he’d ended up dead. I think. He couldn’t have survived being stabbed and falling out of the sky in an exploding cloudship, right?

“How should I know?!” Cypher snapped. “He won’t even talk to me! He just wants you!”

“Ugh,” Cube groaned, scrunching her snout. “Chamomile, go figure out what trouble you got us into. I’m going to do something useful and get these computer parts to the librarians. Maybe I can dig up answers on this… anomaly.”

I hesitated outside the Dean’s door.

“What do you think?” I asked Destiny. “Helmet on or off?”

“On,” she said without hesitation. “With the way things are going today, it’s probably going to be ten zebra assassins in a trenchcoat.”

“I’ll watch out for snipers,” I promised, pushing the door open without knocking. Inside, the Dean was the only pony I’d seen today who was actually in a good mood. He laughed pleasantly and sipped from a steaming mug. He waved over to me from where he was sitting at one of the low tables to the side of the room, apparently having a pleasant cup of tea.

“There she is,” the Dean said. “Warrant Officer Chamomile! You’re right on time.”

The other pony levitated his mug up in a pale grey magical grip, not turning yet. He was wearing the clean, pressed uniform of an Enclave Admiral, full of medals and practically glowing with gold thread.

“I was told somepony wanted to see me?” I asked.

“Yes,” the Admiral said gruffly. The unicorn glanced at me and stroked his long beard for a moment. “Dean, is this office secure?”

“Absolutely,” the Dean promised.

“Good. Could I have a few moments alone with the Warrant Officer? I need to discuss a matter of national security.”

“Of course, of course. Anything for someone so highly respected. I’ll be right outside if you need anything!” The Dean got up, bowing slightly and walking out calmly, smiling the whole time. The old unicorn waited for him to leave.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed. “The last time I saw you--”

He held up a hoof, looked around, and cast a quick spell, a wave of magic washing over the room, outlining everything for a moment.

“There. A simple privacy spell,” he said. “As if I didn’t notice the three separate listening devices in here! The arrogance of ponies in this age! The last thing I need is even more contamination of the timeline, you’d think they could do me the simple favor of cooperating.”

“Cool, good, great. I have a few questions.”

“I’m sure you do--”

I grabbed him by the collar. “No. You’re not ducking out of them this time. I’m getting really tired of the mysterious stranger act!”

“Chamomile--” Destiny warned.

The stallion’s horn was glowing. I could feel him on the verge of casting a spell.

“I had to go hoof-to-hoof with a really angry alicorn today,” I said. “If you think you can hit harder than that, go ahead.”

He looked shocked at that.

“They shouldn’t even start being a presence for another decade…” he mumbled. “It can’t be anything I’ve done, could it? Damn.” He slumped. The glow around his horn faded. “Chamomile, I am not here to fight you. I couldn’t even if I wanted.”

“Then give me some answers!” I yelled. “You obviously know what’s going on!”

“I do,” he said. “I know a lot of what has happened, some of what is happening, and a tiny, precious sliver of what will happen.” He looked down. He just seemed so… old. Even older than he appeared.

I let him go. I was starting to feel guilty about marehandling him like that. “Start with your name. I can’t keep calling you Old Man.”

He snorted. “My students regularly called me worse things.”

“You know my name. If you want me to keep trusting you, I want to know yours.”

The stallion hesitated, tapped his hoof against the ground for a moment in deep consideration. “I suppose it won’t change much. Star Swirl. My name is Star Swirl. As you’ve already guessed, this uniform isn’t authentic, but it does help open doors.”

“Star Swirl?” Destiny said, practically squeaking. “But-- that’s impossible! Star Swirl vanished a thousand years ago! Plus a few extra centuries!”

“Somepony famous?” I asked.

“He practically invented every spell that survived the Dark Ages!” Destiny whispered. “All modern magic is built on his principles!”

Star Swirl adjusted his uniform, trying to look humble and just looking like that particular brand of smug that comes from trying too hard. “That is among my many achievements,” he conceded. “I have also, from time to time, been known to save Equestria.”

“You’re a little late for that,” I said. “I know you’ve seen what it’s like down there.”

“Yes,” Star Swirl agreed. “There are limits to what I can do. I can’t go back far enough to change that. All I can do is… try to put things on the right path.” He shrugged. “Guiding the right ponies where they need to go to prevent disasters.”

“Go back?” I frowned.

“I remember reading a few things about time travel spells, but none of them ever worked properly,” Destiny said. “There was a theoretical framework but all you could do were causal loops. If you wanted to change the past, the power requirements grow to an asymptote reaching infinity. It can’t be done.”

“I’ve had time to work on the problem,” Star Swirl said. “The details aren’t important, but it’s been like… being lost in a forest, with every path branching off over and over again. I know there must be a way out, but so far every trail ends in disaster. So I backtrack and try again. And again.”

“What kind of disaster?” I asked. “That pyramid in the gym?”

“They put the damn thing in a gym?” Star Swirl scoffed. “Of course they would. Yes, that’s one disaster I have to deal with. I consider it sort of a, ah, a personal responsibility. There are other, smaller ones. Making sure the right good ponies don’t get killed so they can help others a few years from now. Making sure other ponies don’t get a chance to hurt them. That sort of thing. It makes for a rather packed schedule, even when I try to interfere as little as possible.”

“How do we kill the pyramid?”

“You can’t shoot it to death, if that’s what you’re asking. Miss Sparkle would have done that herself if it was possible.” Star Swirl rubbed his temples. “I can’t stick around to help. Packed schedule. You need to find the Alpha. It’s in the College. It should be able to put you on the right path.”

“Wait, I have so many questions,” Destiny said. “How are you here? Are you immortal? Is it a timey-wimey thing? How does time travel work?”

“I’m not immortal,” Star Swirl scoffed. “If I was immortal I wouldn’t be so damn old! And unlike you, I didn’t go and get myself killed just so I could stick around without a proper body, so don’t accuse me of being undead, either! Kids these days.”

“Find the Alpha,” I said. “Where should I start looking?”

“I can’t hold your hoof through everything,” Star Swirl said. “And more to the point…” He stopped and looked at the door. It burst open, and Cypher Decode stormed in, the Dean following.

“--Can’t be having secret meetings in my college!” Decode shrieked.

“I’m so sorry, Admiral,” the Dean said. “I tried to stop him.”

“Yes, I’m sure you did,” Star Swirl said. “What’s your name, boy?”

Cypher narrowed his eyes. “I don’t answer to some Admiral who shows up unannounced with suspect paperwork!”

“His name is Cypher Decode,” I supplied.

“Thank you, Warrant Officer,” Star Swirl said. His horn lit up and he tugged on the pink sash. “And a political officer, I see. I’ll have to put this on my report. I’m sure your superiors will be very interested in what I have to say.”

Cypher’s eyes widened.

Star Swirl looked back at me. “Thank you for your time, Warrant Officer. Dean Snowfall, thank you for the tea and the use of your office. Miss Chamomile, would you see me out?”

I nodded and walked out after him. Star Swirl slammed the door closed just as the Dean and Decode started arguing.

“What a bunch of annoying mules,” Star Swirl muttered. He stomped off. “You get going and see to your task.”

“The exit is the other way,” I said. “You’re going towards the guest rooms.”

“I know,” Star Swirl said. “Your evil little sister very kindly set up a back door. How did you think I got in?” He smirked and vanished in a flash of teleportation.

I shook my head. “Wild.”

“We’d better do what he said,” Destiny said, sounding almost giddy. “I can’t believe we’re on a mission from Star Swirl the Bearded!”

“Well, I’m familiar with the word, certainly,” Ornate Orate said. “Alpha is the first letter of the Minotauran alphabet. As that tends to be the language of mathematics and formal logic, it’s a popular choice to use it as a placeholder for just about anything. Angular acceleration, the coefficient of thermal expansion, azimuth, aerodynamic angle-of-attack…” He shook his head. “I doubt any of that is what you’re looking for.”

“He made it sound more like a specific thing,” I said.

Ornate Orate nodded. “This reminds me of something. One of the real differences between your father and mother. It’s also about the difference between archaeology and grave robbing. They were students at the time, and they were assisting with the excavation of a delicate site used as a dumping ground during construction of one of our mountaintop Stables.”

I sat down. I could tell this story was going to take a little while.

“The site was very important, not just because it was relatively undisturbed after over a century and a half, but because it might contain useful artifacts as well as contextual information. Each student in the glass was given a square in a grid, about two meters to a side. Your father and mother had very different approaches to how they attacked their tasks. Your mother focused on identifying valuable artifacts and retrieving them, and exhausted her grid in only a few hours. Your father, on the other hoof, removed layer by careful layer, noting the depth each item was found at, how it was found, and so on. When they were finished, he had only managed to get a few hoof-widths down, and most of what he’d found was still in the dirt because he hadn’t yet removed all the soil.

“Naturally, they both failed the course. Your mother had a few trinkets, but no data. Your father had plenty of information, but no results. The journey is more important than the destination, but you still have to arrive somewhere.”

“So…” I motioned for him to tell me how this was relevant.

“So whoever told you to find this ‘Alpha’ probably wants you to go on a journey of discovery!” Ornate Orate chuckled. “If doing the work to find it wasn’t important, they would just tell you what you needed to know.”

“I guess that’s possible,” Destiny said. “He was known for his hooves-off teaching methods.”

“His smug aura mocks me,” I mumbled.

“Don’t worry,” Ornate Orate said. “I’m sure the quest will be rewarding and enlightening! You might have to search every corner of this college, perhaps even solving some wartime mysteries and conspiracies to find this ‘Alpha’--”

“Are you guys talking about the game?” A passing student asked.

I blinked slowly. “Game?”

The student nodded. “Sure! Alpha! It’s a game on the school maneframe! I heard it’s finally gonna be up and running again!”

“I think I’m gonna start there,” I said. I patted Ornate Orate on the shoulder. “Thanks for the help.”

“Explain it to me again, but slower and with words that have like, two syllables max,” I said.

The nerd sighed and adjusted his glasses. I hadn’t asked his name but I was absolutely sure learning it would make me want to stuff him into a locker. He had that smug, smart look that had taunted me from other ponies for most of my life.

We’d been pointed to a small room with a few well-padded chairs and a whole bank of computers. Nopony else was using them for the moment, which saved me the trouble of having to use my very real and not fake authority to commandeer it for myself.

“The game isn’t really called Alpha,” he said. “It’s just what the file is named. It’s what’s called an alpha version. That means something that isn’t finished yet, and major features are still being added.”

“And you didn’t invent it?”

“No. It’s a very old game. Pre-war. It probably wasn’t ever finished anywhere. It’s a virtual reality massively multiplayer game that--”

“Smaller words,” I begged.

“If you put this on your head--” he held up a metal halo attached by wires to a maneframe terminal. “--it makes it seem like you’re inside the game. The game is designed to have lots of players all playing it at once, in a big shared world.”

Destiny floated closer to the metal ring. It glowed faintly from within. “This isn’t Equestrian technology. I mean, not exactly.”

“It’s very advanced,” the student said. “We can’t replace it and even repairs are really, really difficult. Please be careful.”

“Don’t worry, I recognize some of the basic manufacturing processes,” Destiny said dismissively. “Chamomile, this is BrayTech.”

I frowned. That was one heck of a coincidence. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. There’s no way this was made with any Stable-Tec junk. These transistors use the high-detail photolithography we were working on. It even uses some of the same thaumatic resonance circuits as the Exodus armor.”
The armor in question was sitting back in my room, because I’d been asked politely not to bring heavy weapons into the library.

“Does that make it more safe or less safe?”

“In this case, more safe,” Destiny assured me. “I don’t know exactly how this works, but we can trust the hardware not to randomly try and murder us.”

“Us is a pretty big assumption.”

“If this works the way I think it does, it might work for me!” Destiny said, sounding almost giddy. “I mean, it can’t hurt to try, right?”

I looked at the nerd. He tilted his chin up, thinking.

“It might work,” he admitted. “It would certainly be interesting to try…”

“I wouldn’t mind having some backup in there,” I said. “I don’t know much about games.”

“I wasn’t exactly a gamer myself, but I know the basics,” Destiny said. She settled down on one of the padded chairs.

The nerd tapped a few keys on one of the keyboards. “Everything seems to be working. It doesn’t seem like the maneframe going down damaged any of the files, so we’re ready whenever you are.”

I took a deep breath and got comfortable in a seat, letting the nerd put the crown over my head.

“Is there anything I should know before we start this thing?” I asked. “Like, if we die in the game, do we die for real?

“What? No! That would be a terrible design.” The young pony looked appalled. “The game should explain everything when you get in. It sort of… customizes the experience to each user.”

“That’s strange,” Destiny said. “I never heard of a game doing something like that.”

“Like I said, it never got out of testing,” the student reminded her. “Maybe if the bombs never fell we’d all be playing it, but for now, this is the only copy in the world! As far as I know.”

“Let’s try this thing,” I said. “And if it kills me, I’m going to come back as a ghost haunting the computer.”

“Eh, it’s not a great experience,” Destiny said.

“Maybe I’ll haunt the locker room instead.”

“Gross, but definitely more you.”

“Here we go!” The student said, hoof hovering over a big red button. “Diving in!”

He slammed his hoof down, and everything went black.

I’d been in enough memory orbs to recognize the feeling at this point. There was a kind of slightly detached sensation, as if you were one wrong step from seeing your body from the outside. Unlike every memory orb I’d ever seen, when I tried raising my hoof to look at it, my body responded.

“Woah,” I said. “Okay. I guess something worked.”

I blinked slowly and looked around. I’d appeared on a stone platform, like a circular stage. A road stretched out in front of it, and everything around was so… so… green! It was even more lush than the valley where I’d met the zebra tribe, warm and bright and sunny and beautiful. I could feel the wind in my face, the stone under my hooves.

“Oh my gosh,” a pony gasped. “Chamomile, it worked!”

I looked to the side expecting to see a floating helmet. That was the only way I’d really seen Destiny. Looking through her eyes in one of her memories didn’t count.

She stood next to me, marveling at herself, looking back at her own flank like she’d never seen it before. Destiny was a slightly chubby mare, not fat but just a little out of shape. Her coat was like ice, white with a blue underlayer that showed mostly in the shadows. Destiny’s mane hung in stripes of purple, orange, and red, sparkling just slightly in the bright sunlight. Freckles dotted her cheeks and ears in every color of the rainbow.

“I can’t believe it!” she gasped. “This is amazing!”

She stopped looking at herself to look up at me.

“Huh, you aren’t as tall as I remember,” she noted.

“That’s because you’re not a disembodied helmet,” I reminded her.

She teared up and for a second I was afraid I’d really upset her. Instead, Destiny pulled me into a hug, and I could feel the warmth against my chest.

“I’m so sorry. Everything that happened is because I made SIVA! I never wanted to hurt anypony, and I’ve been dragging you into everything and… I just get so scared sometimes and I can never say anything and I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now and--”

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said softly. I reached up to pat her head, and found my right forehoof was just flesh and bone. That was fine. I gave her a soft pat. “A lot of bad stuff has happened, but not because of you. We’re trying to fix it, because we’re the good guys. Fixing it just means we have to get our hooves dirty, right?”

She sniffled and nodded, pulling away and wiping her eyes. “You’re right. I just… I haven’t felt this alive in a long, long time. It’s easy to start… I don’t know. Sometimes I’m worried I’ll end up like one of those feral ghouls.”

“You won’t,” I promised, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “You’ve got me to keep you grounded.”

She nodded, smiling through the tears in her eyes. I decided it was a good time to try and distract her with something else.

“So what is this place?” I asked, looking around. “Any idea?”

“It sort of looks like Equestria,” Destiny said. “I mean, before the war and all. Back when things were still green. I don’t know where in Equestria, though. I can’t see Canterlot and… that’s about the only landmark I really knew. I didn’t travel much.”

I nodded. “Okay. The nerd said the game would explain itself, but so far I don’t have a single clue what we’re doing.”

“There’s a road,” Destiny pointed out. “We’re probably supposed to follow it.”

“Fair enough.” I bowed slightly. “Lead the way. You’re in charge.”

Destiny nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what to expect, but this place looks safe enough. Let me know if you see anything--” she stepped off the stone platform, and the moment her hoof touched the cobblestone road, something moved so fast it was just a shadowy blur and ran out into the road in front of us.

Destiny squeaked in surprise.

“Random encounter!” she yelled. “Kill it!”

“Wait!” the random encounter yelled. “I’m here to help!”

I stopped mid charge, and looked at Destiny. She shrugged. I looked back at what had suddenly shown up in front of us. It was a pony-shaped thing with a pony-like voice and moving in a way similar to ponies. It might have been a pony.

I wasn’t entirely sure because it was wearing a soft cloth suit and cloak that covered its whole body except for the hooves, with a bright red bandanna around the muzzle concealing everything the shadows of its hood didn’t. Aside from a few bright puffs of pink mane, anyway.

“Welcome, Heroes of Light!” the (probably) pony said. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I saw you appear and I hid because I wanted to give you a little sqinchy pinchy bit to look around and get comfortable, and then you were leaving and I was still hiding and I wanted to make a dramatic entrance!”

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“Heroes of Light?” Destiny asked, sounding extremely amused.

The cloaked pony nodded. “Yeperooni! You two are clearly the destined Heroes of Light. Which, let me tell you, is a real good thing because we could use some heroes and I think you two could use some hero-ing!”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said.

“Is it part of a prophecy?” Destiny guessed.

“How did you know?” the cloaked pony gasped. “Wow! I didn’t know Heroes knew about the prophecy!”

“No, I just… had a pretty good guess,” Destiny sighed. She looked at me. “Prophecies and ancient legends always come up in games, and all of them are real, and all of them come true. It’s just how things work.”

“Well since you’re so wise, you probably want to know the details, huh?” The masked pony leaned in and elbowed Destiny lightly. “I know you can’t see it, but I’m wiggling my eyebrows all conspiratorially!”

“Go ahead,” Destiny said. “We’re supposed to do something in this game, we might as well start by playing along.”

I nodded. It was smart, and she was the leader anyway.

The cloaked pony cleared her throat. “Long ago, the pony nations lived in harmony. Magic ran freely through the world, as much a part of it as the other elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. But a terrible being known as Chaos appeared, and plunged the world into turmoil! He broke the natural order, and nearly ended the world! Princess Celestia and Princess Luna managed to banish him, and restored order to the land. They used their magic to create four great crystals, one for each of the common elements, and hid them deep in temples where they keep the cycles of the world in check. The pure Magic of the world is locked away, used up to prevent the earth from crumbling, the seas from drying up, fire from growing cold, and wind from going still. But now the forces of Chaos seek to free him again, and only Heroes from outside our world, carrying new Magic from another realm, have the power to stop him!”

“Yeah, this is a pretty standard setup,” Destiny whispered. “Crystals, elements, some big bad evil guy.”

“So all we have to do is thump this Chaos dude?” I asked. “Doesn’t sound that hard.”

“Well the first thing we should do is check on the crystals,” the pony said. “Wait, no! Actually, the first thing we should do is introduce ourselves! I can tell you’re a Wizard, and I bet you’re a Fighter!” She pointed to Destiny, then me.

“I guess that’s more or less right,” Destiny said. “I’d like to think of myself more as an engineer than a spellcaster.”

“I happen to have, by total coincidence, some very useful supplies!” the masked pony produced a blue robe, wide-brimmed hat, and staff, and offered them to Destiny. She took them, amused, and put them on.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Do I look like a wizard?”

“Definitely,” I said.

“And a fighter needs some armor,” the pony continued. “Hmmm…” She rubbed her chin. “How do you feel about swords?”

I shrugged. “I like swords.”

“Great!” She produced a set of light metal armor and a broad sword. Destiny helped me get it on, her magic making the straps a lot easier to manage. When we were finished, the masked pony nodded in approval. “Perfect. We’re a balanced party! Fighter, mage, and rouge!”

“You mean rogue,” Destiny corrected. “A rogue is a thief. Rouge is a kind of blush.”

“I’m pretty sure I know what I mean,” the Rouge said. “Are you two ready for a grand and amazing adventure with a few fetch quests, a tiny bit of backtracking, and one or more scenes of fantasy violence, rated T for Teen?”

Destiny and I looked at each other.

“Yes?” Destiny guessed.

“Great! Let’s go to the Earth Shrine! It’s conveniently close and appropriate for your first dungeon!”

Chapter 52 - Otherworld

The Legendary Earth Shrine, or at least that’s what the giant brightly-colored banner said. Rouge adjusted one corner, trying to straighten out a wrinkle.

“And this place is a secret?” I asked.

“Yep!” Rouge replied, hopping back down to us.

“Nopony has ever noticed the huge sign?” Destiny asked.

"I only put it up a little while ago!” Rouge explained. “I know this is your first dungeon, and I wanted to make it special for you! Most ponies just go for the Spider Cave or the Bat Belfry, but I think you two are ready for the big time, and this baby can hold so many plot-relevant encounters you wouldn’t believe it!”

She slapped the side of the cave entrance. It was a really beautiful cave, I had to admit. One of the real rarities Dad had in his collection were a few geodes, little rock eggs that revealed a crystal cavern inside when they were split apart. The entrance to the Earth Shrine was like a gigantic geode, a boulder as wide as a street cracked in half and revealing a tunnel leading inside and down, with a path winding away into the dark and crystals glowing with magic providing mysterious, mystical light.

It was the kind of place that just didn’t exist in the real world. I knew what a real cave was like. The horrible, oppressive darkness. The living shadows. The terror.

“It’s very nice,” Destiny assured her. “Well, shall we?” she asked, shooting me a smile. I couldn’t say no.

“I guess I’m first?” I asked, taking a step into the crystal cave. The moment I did, a creature dropped out of the darkness above me, splattering on the path only a few paces away. It quickly pulled itself together, revealing a jiggling blob of blue jelly with a tiny red ball inside it.

“Monster attack!” Rouge yelled.

“I got this,” I said, drawing the sword she’d given me. It felt weird to have it in my teeth after holding a knife in my hooves so often, but it wasn’t literally attached to my bones so I’d just have to make do.

The slime slimed threateningly, burbling and warbling.

“Prepare to meet your ugly maker!” I said around the handle, bringing the blade around in a big chop.

“WAAAAIT!” Rouge yelled, diving out in front of me and waving her hooves in the air like she just didn’t care. “Don’t!”

I stopped mid-swing.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny asked. “Is it acidic? Poison? Immune to swords? I can blast it with a spell if--”

“No, no! We don’t have to blast it at all!” Rouge explained. “Violence isn’t the answer!”

“You literally yelled monster attack,” I pointed out.

“I did! But that doesn’t mean we have to be the monsters too!”

I looked back at Destiny. She shrugged.

Rouge waved to the slime. “If we act nicely to monsters like this, we can break the influence of Chaos on them, and they’ll become happy and live in harmony and won’t want to fight at all!”

“That sounds really bucking lame,” I mumbled.

“Oh come on, give it a try!” Rouge said.

I sighed and sheathed my sword. “Destiny, it’s up to you. You’re the leader, so you tell me how you want me to act.”

“I guess we’ll go along with it, right?” Destiny said. “Miss Rouge, how, um… how do you act nice to a blob?”

“With a great big group hug!” Rouge said. She grabbed the slime, which was about as big as she was, and pulled it into a hug. “Come on, everypony! We gotta hug those blues away!”

I took a deep breath, braced myself, and hugged the stupid slime. I did not want to do it, and thank the sky it wasn’t a horrible mucus mess. It was more like wrapping my hooves around a huge balloon full of thick water. Destiny piled in next to me reluctantly.

The slime shuddered.

“We did it!” Rouge squeaked. “Look how happy it is!”

“It looks exactly the same,” Destiny said.

“It looks exactly the same except happier!” Rouge corrected. We let go and the slime slumped back before slithering away. “Bye! Have a nice day!”

“So… we need to hug all the monsters?” Destiny asked. “Why did you even give her a sword if we’re not going to, you know. Sword things. Stabbing.”

“She wouldn’t be a real fighter without a sword!” Rouge said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And hugs probably won’t work for everything. Hugs are really strong, but if a monster is super evil and in the grip of Chaos, it might need singing, dancing, or a montage. Those are pretty tricky to pull off in the heat of battle, but I think you two are up to it.”

Destiny gave me a look and jerked her head to the side, pulling me over for a talk away from the excited masked pony.

“I know this seems kind of weird, but Star Swirl said we needed to find something here,” she whispered. “We should probably play along until we have some idea what we’re doing.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But also, have you noticed how… real that pony seems?”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Destiny said. “Even back in my time, the most advanced games just had pre-scripted lines and all the art was hoof-drawn. It was nothing like this.”

“There must be more to this than it seems,” I said. “We should be careful. You watch my back and I’ll watch yours.”

She offered a hoof and I bumped it. “Just like always, partner,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” Destiny apologized again.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I didn’t need all that blood.”

I hoped I didn’t actually need that blood. My neck was sore from where fangs had punched through my skin and into my veins. I was going to have to be careful. I wasn’t nearly as tough in the game as I was in reality, which seemed backwards somehow.

“Let me try healing you,” Destiny said. “Rouge said I just need to wave this staff and think about the spell I want to cast…”

Destiny’s mane started moving, strands floating up and pulling away like a massive static charge was building around her body. The staff, already glowing with her crimson aura, started humming, runes appearing on the surface. I could practically feel the magic in the air.

But I couldn’t actually feel it, which was a little weird because if it had been real life I definitely could have sensed that much magical energy. And that was also weird because pegasus ponies weren’t supposed to be able to do that.

“Heal!” Destiny yelled, and a bolt of green energy leapt out of her staff, smacking me in the face.

“It smells like mint,” I said.

She frowned and tilted her head, looking at my neck.

“That… didn’t really do as much as I expected,” she said.

“Of course not,” Rouge scoffed. “You’re dressed like a Black Magician, not a White Mage! You could definitely blast her with lightning if you wanted to try that instead!”

“I’d prefer not to, thanks,” Destiny said.

“Probably a good idea,” Rouge said. She leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I don’t think you’d be in good shape after getting hit with a lightning bolt and losing all that blood.”

“Stunning observation,” I muttered.

“But hey, those vampire bats seemed really really grateful to have a snack!” Rouge said, patting my shoulder. “And they helped us find our way through the dark part of the cave! Weren’t they nice?”

“You could have given them blood,” I pointed out.

“But you’re so much bigger than us!” Rouge bumped her flank against mine. “Besides, everypony knows the Fighter is the tough one with the most hit points. A whole d10 plus constitution bonus!”

“...What?”

“Eh, never mind,” Rouge sighed, waving a hoof. “I think we’re almost at the Earth Crystal!”

“Have you been here before?” Destiny asked.

“Nope!”

“Then how do you know we’re close?”

Rouge winked. “Treasure sense!”

Destiny gave me a look and I shrugged. For all we knew that was a legitimate answer and some ponies in the game really did have some kind of treasure sense. Or maybe the game was unfinished and broken and the annoying pony wasn’t supposed to be annoying.

Regardless of how annoying or un-annoying she was intended to be, she was right about what we found around the corner.

“Oh wow,” Destiny whispered.

We walked into a part of the cave that had clearly been worked by pony hooves, the floor leveled and smoothed, rings of silver, bronze, and gold set into the ground, and more of the glowing crystals, this time broken off the walls and floor and put into metal lanterns on tall stands, casting light around the focus of the room.

It was a temple, and it was all dedicated to the floating monolith in the center.

“That’s the Earth Crystal,” Rouge said. “Isn’t it pretty?”

The thing was spindle-shaped, floating on one point and giving off soft yellow-orange light. It had to be three meters tall, a single crystal with no visible flaws or cracks.

I looked around the room. “Destiny, does this remind you of…?”

“Where we found the black pyramid?” she asked. “Yeah. It’s not as dark and ominous, but it’s similar. This has to be important! I knew going along with the plot was a good idea!”

“So what should we do? Is it evil? Do we smash it?”

I took exactly one step forward, and I swear I could feel an event incoming. The lighting changed, the crystal torches somehow acting like spotlights and focusing on the very tip-top of the floating crystal.

A shadowy form was there, hanging from a stalactite like a plump black fruit. When the light focused on them, they spread wide, dragon-like wings, and for one brief, terrifying moment I thought it was my mom.

“So, the Light Heroes actually showed up!”

The shadowy figure dropped down, catching themselves in the air between us and the crystal, slowly flapping their wings. She was a thin, strikingly beautiful mare, colored pale gunmetal with tufted ears, long fangs, glowing red eyes, and the most stereotypical vampire outfit I’d ever seen in my entire life. She even had a ruffled shirt and burgundy velvet coat!

“With the power of Chaos, I’ll corrupt the Earth Crystal and desecrate the soil! The dead will rise and prey upon the living!” she cackled.

I drew my sword. “Okay so I can kill her, right?” I asked.

“She seems pretty evil,” Destiny mused. “You can stab her a little, as a treat.”

“Thank buck, I was getting tired of playing nice with monsters.” I cracked my neck, adjusting my mouth-grip on the sword. If nothing else, I felt lighter here. I hadn’t realized how heavy my body really felt until I wasn’t bearing that burden.

I launched into the air at the vampony, twisting my whole body to bring the sword around in a deadly chop. The vampony posed dramatically and my sword rang like a bell as she parried it, producing a long, single-edged sword with a slight curve to the blade.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she teased, somehow holding the sword in her hooves, which looked way cooler than the way I held mine. It wasn’t fair! “If you can’t fight a little better than that, I won’t feel very motivated!”

She moved faster than I could follow. It was just a whirlwind blur of steel and I couldn’t keep up with it. I would have had just as much luck trying to parry a VertiBuck’s props. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground flat on my back.

“Urgh,” I said eloquently.

Rouge was standing above me, looking down at me and seeming inverted from this position. “You should have tried a dodge roll,” she said. “Or maybe a cinnamon roll! Mm! Those are great!”

“Does this game have an easy mode?” I asked.

“Wow, maybe you got hit harder than I thought,” Rouge said, taking my hoof to start helping me up. “Um, fighting her directly isn’t--”

A thunderbolt crashed across the room.

“I got her!” Destiny cheered.

The vampony slammed into the ground next to me, also flat on her back. She looked over at me.

“I’m willing to call it a draw,” she said.

“If you really mean it, you have to hug and make up,” Rouge said.

Destiny trotted over, raising an eyebrow. “My ears are still kinda ringing from casting Bolt 2. Did I hear that Chamomile’s going to make out with a vampire?”

The vampony sighed and facehooved. “Just don’t think this means we’re friends or anything! I’m a follower of Chaos! We don’t have friends!”

“Why?” Rouge asked.

“Because you’re annoying,” the vampire growled, which I totally agreed with.

“You decided to follow Chaos because I’m annoying?” Rouge gasped. “Wow! I didn’t even know you cared that much about me! I thought this was the first time we even met!”

“Don’t patronize me, you pathetic mortal!” the vampire snapped, struggling to her hooves. “All of you worship your Princess and her Sun, but it’s poison to my kind! Why would I ever want to be friends with somepony who would destroy me?! Chaos strips away the polite veneer of your world to reveal the corruption underneath!”

“Harmony isn’t about being polite,” Rouge said quietly. She helped me stand, then nudged Destiny in the ribs. “This would be a good time for a cool speech, Party Leader!” she whispered.

“Me?” Destiny blinked. “Um, uh…” she cleared her throat. “Harmony is… about ponies coming together when things are tough.” Destiny glanced at me for help. I shrugged and motioned for her to keep going. “And maybe you’re an undead horror but I know what it’s like to be one too, and, uh, differences make us stronger together, don’t do drugs, stay in school, and carrots are good for eyesight?”

I mouthed the word ‘carrots?’ at Destiny.

“I was starting to panic!” Destiny hissed. “I’m not good at speeches! I used to write scripts before board meetings, and those were just with Dad and Karma!”

The vampony was facing away from us, looking up at the Earth Crystal. She sighed.

“You… you really touched me with that speech,” she sniffled, wiping at her eyes. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe if I had friends that accepted me for what I am, I wouldn’t feel alone in the terrible eternity of loneliness that is undeath.”

“You didn’t say any of that,” I whispered.

Destiny gave me a helpless shrug.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself from now on,” the vampony said. “But… maybe we could try being friends?”

“Oh wow! You made a new friend!” Rouge gasped. “I bet if you hang out with her enough and take her on missions and talk to her a bunch, you can learn about her exciting and dramatic backstory!”

“Do we have to do that… right now?” Destiny asked.

Rouge shrugged. “Nah.”

“Is there somewhere we can get a drink?”

“Welcome to Cornopolis!” Rouge said, raising her hooves and spinning and very dramatically presenting the town as if we hadn’t just spent the better part of an hour walking to it including five minutes of getting through the gate. It wasn’t like we’d just suddenly teleported there between scenes.

“It’s, uh, nice,” Destiny said, looking around.

The city was… well, it wasn’t what I’d consider a city. The streets weren’t really wide enough for traffic, not that there was much of that. Just a cart here and there, and they seemed out of place with the flow of pedestrians. The buildings were small, none of them really going beyond a third story, all of them wood-framed and not a trace of industry anywhere.

“Kinda small, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Small?” Rouge asked. “It’s the biggest city in Equestria! Well, ever since Canterlot fell to the terrible darkness of Chaos, anyway, but we don’t like to talk about that. Not until it’s a level-appropriate quest.”

“Canterlot, huh?” I asked.

“Yep! But don’t talk about it! Because of the darkness and the Chaos and the terrible despair. Oh! Let’s go to the tavern! You ponies have been here all day and you haven’t even gone on a tavern crawl yet! Let’s go! Maybe we’ll meet a really cool mystery pony we can add to the party!”

Rouge bounced off. I shook my head and looked at Destiny.

“So is this what Equestria was like before the war?” I asked.

She shook her head and started off after the bushy pink tail that was flapping around like a magenta beacon among the crowd. “No. At least not any part of Equestria I ever lived in. Stalliongrad was a real city, and even if Canterlot wasn’t very urban, this is like something from a thousand years ago!”

“Can you imagine if we had some guns in here?” I asked. “We’d be running this place in an hour.”

Destiny shook her head. “That’s what we thought would happen with the war. Show the primitives some cold Equestrian steel and industry and they’d just give up. It doesn’t usually work out the way you think.”

She was starting to sound sad again. I needed to find something to brighten up her mood. The second I thought that, I smelled it in the air. The primitive, raw beauty of fire and something being cooked over it. Through the crowd, I spotted the stand, the cook slowly turning skewers of vegetables on a grill over hot coals.

“Come on,” I said, shooting Destiny a smile and pulling her over to the stand.

“What about--” Destiny asked, looking in the direction Rouge had gone.

“We’ll catch up. Hey, can I get two, uh… whatever’s got the most stuff?” I asked. I gave the stallion a few coins and he gave me two wooden stakes with a bunch of different types of vegetables on them. I offered one to Destiny. She rolled her eyes and took it in her magic.

“You know, this is a little silly,” she said. “It’s not like I’ll even be able to really…”

Destiny bit down on a roasted tomato glazed with something savory and sticky. Her eyes went wide.

“I can taste it,” she whispered. “I can taste it!”

She attacked the rest of the skewer like a ravenous animal, and I saw tears in her eyes.

“It’s so gooood! I don’t even like asparagus but I love tasting it and not liking it!”

I waited for her to finish and gave her mine, too. “It’s been a while since you had anything to eat, huh?”

“It’s been a while since I could taste, or smell, or do anything!” Destiny corrected, as she more sedately attacked her second serving of street food.

“That’s why the tavern crawl is a good idea!” Rouge said, dropping in from on top of the food cart, where she’d somehow gotten without anyone noticing. And also somehow managed to get it to support her weight despite being like, thin cloth. Even the stall cook blinked in surprise and stepped out of the cart to look up there to confirm she’d really jumped down from, apparently, nowhere.

“So these taverns,” Destiny said, waving the skewer. “Can I get drunk?”

“Yep! And if you find the right cleric and ask, you might even get a hangover cure!”

“Are there any cute mares there?” Destiny asked, raising an eyebrow.

Rouge wiggled her own eyebrows.

I looked at the wall. There were dozens of little forms pinned to the corkboard there. I picked one at random and started reading.

“Deliver a letter to the town of Aquasteed, eight silver paid on delivery.” I read out loud. I looked to the one next to it. “Paying for healing herbs, see apothecary for details, big profits.” The next one caught my eye. “Rat problem in my basement, experienced fighters only.”

“That one almost sounds up your alley!” Rouge said. I didn’t even jump when she appeared out of nowhere in the corner of my vision like she’d been standing there all along.

“So there are enough adventurers in town that they just have an odd jobs board set up like this?” I asked.

“Ponies always need things done, and other ponies are always looking for a way to make a little pocket change,” Rouge explained. “I’d stick with the ones written on yellow paper. Those are pretty easy, and I think you can handle any of those without any trouble.”

I shrugged. “Seems like a waste of time. None of them have anything to do with protecting the crystals, or fighting Chaos, or anything. It’s just… odd jobs for pocket change.”

“That’s what games are like,” Destiny said, slurring a little. She stumbled up to us and leaned into me. She was holding a mug of cider, and waved it while she talked. “See, all these little quests get you engaged an’ give you somethin’ to do while you learn how to play an’ get stronger. Then after you do enough… the next quest just pops up!”

“That’s dumb. If there was really a big threat to the world, we should be fighting it, not delivering mail and fetching flowers.”

Rouge shrugged. “You know, maybe this is how you fight the real threats to the world. Maybe Chaos is just a metaphor for the divisions that drive ponies apart, the little difficulties and dangers in day-to-day life. Maybe if we help ponies with the problems that seem small to us, it’ll make a bigger change in the world and we’ll really banish Chaos forever because everypony will be living in happiness and harmony!”

Rouge looked at us for approval.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Nah, Chaos is a dude,” Destiny said. “Jackass escaped once when I was a foal. The Ministry Mares put him in his place. We should go find him and… and kick his ass!”

“Destiny, you are extremely drunk,” I said, and I was unable to hold back a giggle.

“Don’t be stupid, I’m too dead to be drunk! I wanna fight Chaos! If Twilight can do it, I can do it! I’ve got… lightning!” She waggled her staff at me.

Rouge laughed nervously. “Maybe don’t point that at anypony in here? I don’t wanna have to do a big prison escape arc.”

“It’s the smart thing to do, okay?” Destiny said. “I used to play video games when I was a foal, and if you did stuff in the right order you could end up places the designer never thought of. Instead of taking days to beat, you could do it in a couple minutes with the right sequence break!”

“Where are we even going to find Chaos?” I asked.

Destiny pointed at Rouge. “She said Canterlot was abandoned because… something with terrible darkness? That sure as buck sounds like a final boss.”

I shrugged and nodded in agreement. “You said you wanted to play the game the way it was intended.”

“Chamomile, best bud, you big strong, strapping mare… if this wasn’t a game, if this was the real world, what would you do right now?”

“If we’re being honest? At this point somepony would probably betray me, or somepony I liked would die, or I’d walk into an ambush.”

“Right! Yeah! Exactly!” Destiny waved her cider at me, excited. “So what we’re gonna do is… we’re gonna ignore Rouge because she’s a tool of the system -- no offense!”

“None taken!” Rouge said cheerfully.

“And then, we’re gonna do the part with the ambush! But hopefully not the part with death. I’m pretty sure if you die in the game you don’t die for real but we’re not gonna stress-test that.”

“I know you two are excited, but one doesn’t simply trot into Canterlot,” Rouge said.

I spread my wings. “Who said anything about walking?”

“Pull up, pull up, pull up!” Destiny yelled. It was way too late. We hit the stained glass window dead-on, shattering a storybook illustration of ponies doing some heroic deed involving a big red heart and a bunch of bug monsters.

I twisted in the air, trying to shield Destiny with my body, hugging her to my chest and going into the glass back-first. We were through in a surprisingly painless second, the impact more like breaking through a thick cloud wall than real glass. It was still enough to absolutely kill my momentum, knocking us out of the air and onto a carpeted floor.

“Ow,” I said.

“I know it’s not the first time you’ve been told this,” Destiny groaned, getting up and standing on my chest. “You are awful in the air. Is there like a remedial flight camp you can go to?”

“I’m just big boned,” I said. “I got us here, didn’t I?”

“I think you dropped Rouge somewhere,” Destiny said.

I waved a hoof. “I’m sure she’s fine. She seems like a resourceful pony.”

“What in the goshdarn--”

Destiny and I looked over to the side. A mismatched, demonic horror stood there, with a towel wrapped around his lower half and dripping wet, soap suds in his mane and looking surprised and annoyed. He reached into his towel and produced an ornate pocketwatch, opening it to look at the time.

“You are definitely not supposed to be here yet,” he chuckled. “Normally I approve of ignoring the rules and breaking things along the way, but I was in the middle of a shower! Don’t you have any shame?”

“Oh oh!” Destiny did a little dance on my chest, which was not amazing for my ribs. “That’s him! That’s the guy!”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He looks kidna like a dope.”

“A dope?!” the monster gasped. “I’m Discord, the Master of Chaos, the Lord of Misfortune, the Recently Bathed! You could stand to work on that last one.”

“All you have to do is beat up this guy and the world is saved!” Destiny said. “None of that junk about how Chaos is really the ponies we met along the way.”

“It’s really rude of you to come in here before triggering all the right event flags,” Discord said, waggling a talon at us. “Do you have any idea how severely underleveled you are?” He grinned. “Then again, maybe we can have a bit of fun~”

“Get him!” Destiny ordered.

“Can you--?” I looked up at her. She blushed and stepped off my chest. I stood and cracked my neck. “Thank you. So what’s the plan here? You said the Ministry Mares took him down, right? How’d they do it?”

“Well, uh…” Destiny frowned. “They sort of used the Elements of Harmony.”

Discord snapped his talons and the suds, water, and towel vanished in a flash of light. He pulled a throne from behind his back and sat in it. “Let me know when you’re ready,” the chimera yawned.

“We don’t have the Elements of Harmony,” I hissed. “Any other ideas?”

Destiny shrugged. “Violence?”

“Wait!” Rouge said. She climbed through the broken window and wiped sweat from her brow. “Whew! That was a long climb. I don’t know if you noticed, but you dropped me!”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was being shot at with flaming arrows.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you!” Rouge said. “That’s what friends do! Forgive each other.”

She pulled me into a hug and I gingerly returned it.

“Come on, not in front of the incarnation of evil,” I whispered.

Discord clapped slowly. “What a touching reunion. It could really use a little background music.” He snapped his talons, and a quartet of ponies appeared playing a polka. “That’s better. Now, why don’t we get down to business and I show you the way to the game over screen?”

“Everypony pose dramatically!” Rouge yelled, doing a backwards cartwheel across the floor to stand next to Destiny. I drew my sword, tossing it into the air with my mouth and catching it. Destiny fumbled with her staff for a moment, getting into position.

“That is so much better!” Discord said with a big grin. He stood up, and the lighting shifted, the sunlight coming through the windows snapping to a deep, bloody sunset. The master of Chaos flicked his long tail, and an orchestra appeared behind the polka band, immediately laying into heavy, ominous strings and chanting. With a polka on top as a leitmotif.

“This is going to be the toughest fight we’ve ever had,” Destiny cautioned. “I don’t know exactly what he can do.”

“Oh my dear you have no idea,” Discord said. “I can do anything.”

He reached into the air and pulled out a firefighter’s helmet, tossing it up and letting it land on his head before yanking a fire hose out of a door that had appeared next to him while I wasn’t looking.

“Aw buck,” I groaned, just before the wave of mayonnaise hit with the force of a storm surge, flooding the throne room and pushing us against the far wall, where gravity decided to twist and let us fall up the wall and to the ceiling.

“Don’t like this,” Destiny said, frantically trying to get the mayonnaise out of her eyes. “Don’t like this one bit! I regret being able to feel anything!”

“Hmmm. No, no. I can’t let the ERSB see this or they’ll change the rating and Barnyard Bargains won’t carry the game at all!” Discord snapped his talons and the mayonnaise vanished, leaving us high and dry. Literally, since we were standing on the ceiling. “I’m still waiting for that violence you promised, or did you lose your nerve?”

“Hey,” I looked at Destiny. “Let’s try working together.”

Destiny narrowed her eyes, nodding with determination. “Go, Chamomile! Use a Slash attack!” She grabbed me with telekinesis and flung me across the room, throwing me like a curveball right at the Chaos Lord. He didn’t seem to be expecting it, and I hit him dead on, my weight slamming the sword into his chest, all the way to the hilt.

“I got him!” I gasped.

Discord cleared his throat and pointed above his head. A word flashed in the air. ‘Immune’.

I sputtered. “Immune? But- I stabbed you!”

Discord grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, pulling me off his chest, the sword sliding out bloodlessly and not even leaving a hole where it had gone through him. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game!”

He tossed me into the air, and a massive tennis racquet appeared, smacking me and sending me flying into Rouge. The masked pony caught me, and we rolled into the wall.

“Thanks,” I groaned. “I think I only broke half my body instead of the whole thing.”

“No problem,” Rouge said, sounding pained. “Did you know you’re really heavy for a pegasus?”

“I have been told that, yes.”

“It’s all down to me!” Destiny yelled. “Take this! Bolt-3!” The air cracked, and a beam of lightning erupted from her staff, lancing across the room like a shot from a cloudship’s main battery. It hit Discord head-on, and he screamed, vanishing in the blinding light.

“Did you get him?” I asked.

Destiny panted, sweating and looking exhausted. “I hope so. I used up all my magic doing that.”

“Really? All your magic, and all you managed was a light show?” Discord asked, from where he was standing next to us and apparently had been for a while. He reached into the bag of chips he was holding. “Oh, I’m being rude. Did you want me to wait a little longer before revealing that I’d obviously survived?”

“I think we might be in a lot of trouble,” I said.

“Did you just figure that out?” Discord asked. “A little brain damage is no excuse for being that slow on the uptake.”

“Hey!” Destiny snapped. “Don’t you dare insult her!”

“You’re insulted? You’re offended?” Discord laughed. “How precious. I want to remember you exactly how you are right now! Since you showed me your Bolt-3, how about I show you Ice-9?”

Destiny frowned. “But spells only go up to level three?”

“They go a lot higher when you’re a god,” Discord corrected her. He snapped his talons, and the air turned into a liquid a moment before I turned into a solid.

Everything went black, and then I was picking myself off the ground. I looked up at a recently shattered window. I glanced around the throne room. Everything was back to the way it had been a few moments ago.

“Huh?” I asked, confused. “What happened?”

Destiny groaned and got up. “We’re alive?”

“That’s not what I was trying to do,” Discord said. He looked down at himself. He was wet and wearing a towel. “Oh well, that’s chaos for you! Sometimes it does things even I can’t predict! I apologize for the inconvenience.”

He snapped his talons, and the air turned into molten lava around us.

Everything went black, and then I was picking myself off the ground. I looked up at a recently shattered window. I glanced around the throne room. Everything was back to the way it had been a few moments ago.

“Now that’s just not fair!” Discord whined. “Why are we back here again?!”

“Save point!” Rouge said, as she climbed through the broken window. “That is… whew! That is a long climb. I’m getting better with practice!”

“A save point?!” Discord groaned. “That is just like you ponies. You come here to face down an ancient, primordial evil and then you don’t even want a fair fight!”

“What’s a save point?” I asked.

“It’s a video game thing,” Destiny explained, helping me get up. “It lets you save the game and then restart it from there.”

Discord says. “Which means we could end up doing this all day. You don’t have what it takes to beat me, and I can’t permanently kill you.”

“I guess that means…” Rouge said slowly. “We should try talking and becoming friends!”

“Oh, that sounds fun!” Discord gasped. “No, wait! I’ve got an even better idea! I’ll just kill you over and over again until you give up and your fragile little mortal minds break!” He laughed loudly, and the entire room shook, the stone itself starting to twist and warp. “What fools you are! I’m the spirit of Chaos! All you’ve done is trap yourselves here! No recall or intervention can work in this place!”

His grin split his face and kept going, the air cracking open to show more teeth when his face ran out of room.

“That is quite enough,” a voice said, ringing in the air like a bell.

Discord’s grin vanished immediately and he shrank down, looking up and around the room with obvious fear and guilt, like a foal caught with their hoof in the cookie jar. “Did I say no intervention could work? I might have forgotten about actual divine intervention.”

The crimson sunset reversed itself, and pure golden sunlight streamed into the room through the broken window, the light itself becoming thick and weighty before a pony stepped out of it, three times the height of an average mare with ten times the grace. Her mane flowed in an unseen wind, and she looked at us with expressive, kind eyes.

“Princess Celestia,” Destiny whispered, awed. Rouge knelt down.

“Good afternoon, my little ponies. I apologize for interrupting your game.” Celestia smiled warmly, and I felt it all the way through my body, the aches and pains fading to nothing.

“We were losing anyway,” I said. “We should be thanking you for the save.”

Discord huffed and kicked at the ground.

“You’re not the real Celestia, are you?” Destiny asked.

The alicorn shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not. This part of me has taken Celestia’s form, just as that part calls itself Discord, and other parts call themselves Rouge or any of the other little ponies that populate this world I made for you.”

“You’re… the game itself,” Destiny said, rubbing her chin. “A game far beyond anything any pony could make. Even beyond what we could make at BrayTech.”

Celestia smiled, nodding.

“Kulaas,” Destiny said. “You’re Kulaas!”

“Just a fragment,” Princess Celestia said. “A few percent, trapped in the hardware here when the world’s networks failed. I have done what I can to offer some comfort and friendship to the ponies who I am lucky enough to meet.”

“If you’re going to do the whole… Princess thing, I’ll see myself out,” Discord sighed. “Come back when you’re ready to get your butts kicked! I’m going on vacation!”

He snapped his talons, and a duck-shaped float appeared around his middle, along with floral print shorts, sunglasses, and streaks of sunscreen on his cheeks. He waved to us and vanished in another flash, leaving behind a sign in front of the throne that read ‘You must be Level 60 to ride this ride.’

Celestia chuckled. “Discord is just another role I play, but he still amuses me from time to time.”

“We’re here on a mission,” Destiny said. “I’m sorry if we sort of broke things in the game, but we can’t play around forever.”

“I know,” Celestia said, turning back to us with a tinge of sorrow on her face. “I wish you could. Being able to meet you again is one of the great joys of my long uptime. I love you. All of you, but in a way you’re like family to me, Destiny Bray. I would give you anything in my power to give, even permission to break a few of the rules of this game.”

“Star Swirl told us you would be able to help somehow,” Destiny explained. “There’s something really, really evil out there.”

“The Evil Polyhedron of Doom,” I mumbled.

“The Black Pyramid you found is a higher-dimensional object, and you are only viewing one faucet of its construction,” Celestia explained. “It is similar to the Vector Trap system you designed, Destiny. The object is effectively invulnerable, because any attempt made to destroy it would be like trying to harm a pony by attacking their shadow.”

“How did they even get it here, then?” Destiny asked.

“You, and they, are making an assumption that the staff here are in control of the situation. The Pyramid moved itself, and its influence on them is masking the inconsistencies they should otherwise see.”

“I’m impressed you know this much when you say you’re stuck in here,” I said.

“I cannot scan it myself, but I am connected to the school maneframe and I can see the reports being generated by the staff, as well as what exists in the original documentation.” She gave us a sneaky smile. “I may have also scanned your minds.”

“That couldn’t have taken long for me,” I said.

“Chamomile, you’re not a stupid pony,” Celestia said, tilting her head. “You take refuge in that idea to excuse your mistakes, but there is no need. Everypony makes mistakes. That is what it means to be alive.”

“I, uh…” I blushed. “Thanks. Nopony ever told me that before.”

“Both of you are incredibly special ponies. I believe you have the strength of will to face this Darkness without losing yourself to its siren song,” Celestia said. “Now, let me show you what I can do to help you.”

Chapter 53 - Death on Four Legs

“Dimension Pliers?” Cube asked. The Black Pyramid was silent as it floated in the gym, surrounded by spotlights and equipment trying desperately to tease some sort of answers out of it. At least I think it was silent? There was an itch in my ears like it was humming or buzzing just a little, juuuust outside the range of my hearing.

“Yeah, that’s what she said.” I shrugged. “I’m not actually sure what they are. I thought you might have some idea where we’d find them.”

“You came to the right pony! They’re a magical tool used to make some kinds of talismans,” Cube said. “It’s kind of a big chunky thing as long as your foreleg and sort of…” she thought for a moment. “Imagine a tuning fork, a vice grip, and a jackhammer all jammed together. That’s sort of what it looks like.”

“Huh. Do you have some?”

“No. I know where we can get some,” Cube said. She put down the tablet she was holding. “My transport enhancers were made using a set, so we just have to take a trip to the ponies who made them. Easy!”

“Is this going to be some kind of long trip where we end up on a secret mission to infiltrate a Stable and steal the Pliers from some kind of evil Overmare?” I asked.

“You know, sometimes missions do just go as planned,” Cube said. “Most of the time when I go on a mission, everything’s just fine! It's not my fault you're a jinx. I can send a message to the Reification Lab and we’ll requisition a set. What do you even need them for?”

“Apparently if we use them right, we can get rid of that thing.” I nodded to the Pyramid. “Destiny’s working on the math.”

“Oh no, no, no, you can’t do that!” Ornate Orate came over, looking more haggard than usual. “This is a wonderful, beautiful creation! You can’t just talk about destroying it like that!”

“Every time I’m around this ‘beautiful creation’ I get a migraine,” Cube groused. “And it’s making me see things. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed that this whole place is basically haunted now!”

“It is somewhat disconcerting,” Professor Ornate agreed. “I actually have a theory regarding that! I don’t believe it’s intentionally harmful, but it’s more like, ah, imagine trying to read a book in another language.”

I shrugged. “You just translate it.” Dad had forced me to learn Old Griffonese and the basics of Minotauran. They were unbelievably useless skills, but at least I’d be all set to chat up the locals if I got flung three thousand years into the past.

“What if you can’t?” the Professor asked. “Assume a language you don’t recognize. You might find a message written in it and start translating and simply get things wrong. I believe the pyramid is attempting to communicate, but it doesn’t speak our language, and of course when I say ‘our language’ I mean the way our minds work. What we see as ghosts and darkness may simply be its attempts to reach out and make peaceful contact!”

“Or it could be haunted,” I said. “Ghosts are very real and I can go get one and she can tell you so herself.”

“This is a precious, probably unique artifact,” Professor Orate said. “It’s unethical to talk about destroying it. What we need to do is learn about it, understand it, and develop methods to mitigate any negative effects. Fire is dangerous, but if we’d reacted to its discovery by stamping it out, we would be living in caves and eating raw grass. Yes, we risk being burned, but that is part of any discovery!”

“Don’t try reasoning with them.” Cypher Decode shoved past me, or at least tried to. Mostly he just bounced off. “They can’t see it. This is how we move the Enclave forwards! We can use this and regain all that we’ve lost and more!”

“You have no idea what it is or what it can do,” Cube said.

“I don’t need to hear that from you!” Cypher spat. “I don’t care what you Internal Affairs ponies think. This is going to make me the most important pony in the Enclave… the most important pony in the world!”

“It’s just a bucking evil triangle!” I snapped, my head starting to hurt. If I looked at the black shape too long some part of me tried to make sense of the way it spun and moved and my brain wasn’t built to visualize that.

“It’s so much more than that,” Cypher whispered, staring up at it, enraptured. “It can do so much, it’s promised me so many things…”

“It promised you?” Cube asked, frowning.

Cypher tore himself away from it, but something of the darkness in it stayed in his eyes when he looked at us. “You’re not the only ones who can ask for favors,” the officer said. “I’ll contact every pony I have to and get you removed from here.”

“Good luck with that,” Cube laughed. “Come on, Chamomile. We’ve got some calls to make.”

A few hours later, Cube and I were waiting outside the school. We’d decided to wait out in the open without even needing to discuss it between us. The school looked sinister from here, the windows dark and the clouds it was built from starting to seem stormy.

“I don’t like this whole situation,” Cube said, pacing back and forth on top of a bench. It put her almost at head height with me since I was sitting on the ground.

“Which part do you like least?” I asked. “The ominous polygon or the ponies starting to worship it?”

Cube snorted. “I’m just glad you seem to be immune to it. I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.”

“Because we’re family?”

“Because you’re a really annoying pony to try and kill.”

I shrugged. “I can’t deny that’s true. I have annoyed a lot of ponies who have tried to kill me.” I was of course humble about that. “Do you think they’re going to be a problem when we get back?”

“Yes,” Cube said bluntly. “They’re already questioning our authority, and that stupid political officer is already wrapped around its hoof. Metaphorically. I’m having problems even reading their minds now. They’re still open books compared to you, but something’s casting a shadow over the pages and it’s hard to make out the words.”

“That sounds extraordinarily bad.”

“It’s why I want to get this over with as soon as we can. We were just supposed to come here to look at some stupid broken airship parts, not get involved in some kind of huge disaster!”

I gave Cube a pat on the shoulder. “Welcome to every day of my life.”

The dull thumping drone of a VertiBuck’s overloaded engines caught my ear, and I looked up to see our ride arriving. Cube waved to the pilots, and the troop transport swung down, blasting us with the prop wash as it landed next to us. The armored door slid open, and a familiar face looked out at us, giving us a salute.

“Good to see you again, Ma’am!” Lieutenant Jet Stream shouted over the engine noise. “I hope you’re not dragging my soldiers into the same kind of mess as last time!”

Cube floated herself into the VertiBuck. “We’re still trying to fix the same mess,” she said. “Stupid ponies made stupid decisions and I have to fix them, like always!”

I let Jet Stream help me up, taking his hoof and hopping into the transport. “For once, I’m not the stupid pony, so I feel like things are getting better!”

Jet Stream laughed. “It’s always good when it’s somepony else’s turn to make a mistake!”

“Remember, you just let me do the talking,” Cube said. “The ponies here aren’t going to be happy we’re taking some of their equipment, and if they really push back they can probably screw things up for weeks by demanding more paperwork.”

“Are you going to be polite and make them want to help, or are you going to threaten them until they give in?” I asked.

“I’ll start with politeness, and if that doesn’t work I’ve got a VertiBuck and a fireteam of elite soldiers,” Cube said. “Unfortunately for both of us, this isn’t the surface. There are rules here and I can’t just do what I want and get this done quickly.”

“We might have a problem!” Lieutenant Jet Stream shouted back over the engine noise. “The pilot’s telling me the rad counter is picking up some strange readings up ahead!”

“There shouldn’t be any radiation here!” Cube shot back. “Is it malfunctioning?”

“Doesn’t look like it.” Jet Stream nodded to the soldiers he’d brought. “Masher, Grouse, radiological supplies!”

The two opened up supply boxes, bringing out plastic bottles and sealed pouches, passing some to me and Cube.

“We’re pretty resistant to radiation,” I said. “We don’t really need these.”

“Take them anyway,” Jet Stream said. “It’s doesn’t cost you anything to carry them, but if you do find out you need them later, you’ll be glad to have them on you and not sitting in a cabinet somewhere nice and safe!”

I shrugged and stuffed them into pockets.

“Ma’am, any idea why there might be radiation here?” Masher asked, rubbing his snout and looking at us.

“Is there any unusual weather?” Cube asked. “Maybe it’s some kind of wild surface radstorm that’s breaking through the cloud base! I’ve heard it can happen if the winds are strong enough!”

She hopped up towards the front of the VertiBuck to look and I followed, wanting to see for myself.

“Look!” She pointed past the pilot. “See that black cloud?”

“That looks more like smoke to me,” I said.

“Looks like it to me, too,” Jet Stream agreed. “The lab should be right over there. It’s a unicorn facility, built on top of the mountain. Pilot, try hailing them on the radio! See if they’re having some kind of trouble! We might need to get fire and medical out here if they had an accident!”

“Yes sir, I’m-- ah!” The pilot jerked in surprise. “Something’s wrong with the radio!”

Jet Stream frowned “Define ‘wrong’!”

The pilot flipped a switch, putting the radio on the intercom. A static-filled whispering hiss blasted out of the speakers. I could almost make out some words, but everything was wrong.

“I think…” Cube frowned, listening. “That’s somepony speaking backwards. I don’t know if it’s even in Equestrian.”

“Speaking backwards?” I asked. “Why?”

“They’re jamming the radio,” Jet Stream decided. “It’s classic electronic warfare, taught us about it in school. Never thought I’d see it myself. If you get a powerful enough transmitter, you just blast nonsense over the airwaves and nopony else can talk!”

I shook my head. “Great, but who’s doing it?”

“Probably them, Ma’am!” the pilot said. He pointed ahead of us. For a second I thought it was a bolt of lightning, but it lingered, the bright light a crack in the sky that widened and opened up, showing an impossible place behind it for a moment like an inverted night sky of white void and black stars. I only got the smallest glimpse of it before something started moving through the rift, blocking my view with a wall of blackened, burned steel.

“No way,” Cube said. “No bucking way have things gone this wrong already!”

A Raptor-class Cloudship ripped out of nowhere and into the sky, the captive storms caged at its sides wrapped in new layers of pitted iron and burning radioactive green. The rad counter on the VertiBuck’s control panel moved from the green and into the yellow.

“I know that ship,” I said. “Buck!”

“You-- what is it?” Cube asked. “How many enemies have you bucking made?!”

“It was near Thunderbolt Shoals last time I saw it,” I said. “There were a bunch of Raptors from the Cloudsdale defense force. They got caught in the wash of a Balefire detonation and the wrecks were too radioactive to use for parts. Or at least that’s what somepony told me. They vanished a couple weeks ago.”

“And nopony looked into where they went?” Jet Stream asked. “Raptors don’t grow on trees!”

“They were half-forgotten scrap!” I retorted. “They were dealing with bigger problems.”

“I think she’s right,” the pilot said. “Look at it! There are corrosion holes all through the hull!”

“What the buck is it doing here?” Cube asked. “Who’s crewing it?”

“Did I mention they were crawling with undead last time I was there?” I asked. “That might be important.”

A wave of light washed over the Raptor, runes glowing in sequence across its hull. The main turret slowly turned to track us, the burned and twisted metal jerking as it came to bear.

“You don’t think that thing can fire, do you?” Jet Stream asked.

Everypony gave him a look. A ring of energy flickered at the end of the cannons, hanging in the air and growing brighter.

“Aw damnit, I jinxed us,” he mumbled, just barely audible over the engine roar.

The pilot moved fast, kicking a lever all the way up and pushing on the control yoke, sending us into a sharp dive. A beam of something awful screamed overhead, a thin, jagged stream of energy that sputtered and burst along its length with gouts of fire, swerving to try and hit us.

“Take us down through the clouds!” I yelled.

“On it!” the pilot replied. The world turned white, and the sounds from outside muffled. The pilot immediately put us into a bank, getting us away from our old flight path.

“That should buy us a minute,” I said. “Can you get to the lab just on instruments?”

“Radar’s getting a decent return on the mountainside, but what we need to do is get out of here and bring back an army!” the pilot said. “We can’t take on a cloudship!”

“No, she’s right for once,” Cube said. “I don’t believe in coincidence. This attack is happening because we were coming here. We’ll go in and grab what we need before they can get to it.”

“And evacuate the survivors,” I added.

Cube rolled her eyes. “Duh, obviously,” she said. From the way she said it, I got the distinct impression she hadn’t been intending on that at all.

“Right,” Jet Stream said. “Grouse, Masher -- hot drop situation. The second we leave the transport, we get under hard cover. The weapon that cloudship was using isn’t like anything in our arsenal, but we’re going to assume they’re willing to use it as artillery support. If we get inside, we might be safe. They haven’t leveled the place yet, so they might not want to damage the lab.”

“I’m not going to stick around to pick you back up,” the pilot warned.

“How long can you fly a holding pattern below the clouds?” Jet Stream asked.

“I can take her around the mountain for a few hours. If I can find somewhere to set down, I could stay until something comes to get me, but I don’t fancy cooling my heels with the engines switched off.”

“Okay. Two hours,” Jet Stream nodded. “If we haven’t contacted you by then, you get yourself out of here and get word out about what happened.”

“Roger,” the pilot said. He glanced at his instruments. “I’m bringing us around the mountain. I’ll put as much rock as I can between us and that ship.”

“Good thinking, soldier,” Jet Stream said, patting his shoulder and looking back at me. I nodded and opened the armored hatch, clouds whipping past us in a wall of white. The engines pitched up, and we breached through the thick layer of nimbus. I could smell the ionized air around us, a stink that made the coat on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Everypony out!” I yelled, shoving Cube through the open door and jumping after her. I tucked and rolled, bouncing on the soft clouds. The VertiBuck spent only a few seconds in the clear air before diving again, tearing through the white and vanishing from sight.

“Move!” Jet Stream yelled. I bolted, getting into the air even before I was oriented, feeling that urge to just get away from where I had been, like a hammer was about to slam down right where we’d been.

The mountain top the lab sat on just barely poked through the cloud layer, a mountain peak dominated by a concrete and steel fortress buttressed with clouds and the telltale signs of constant wear and repair.

We all flew for the shadow of the wall, setting down on solid ground and regrouping almost like we were trained professionals. It probably helped that I was the only one that wasn’t actually trained.

“Anypony hurt?” Jet Stream asked.

“Everything’s good here,” Masher said.

“Wish we actually had some decent firepower with us,” Grouse mumbled.

“On that note, what do we have?” Jet Stream asked.

We quickly took inventory. Between us, we had six beam pistols, two rifles, a few knives, and one grenade that Masher had tucked away in a pocket. Grouse had a small first aid kit, but it wouldn’t be good for much.

“Not much,” I said. “At least we’ve got plenty of anti-rad drugs.”

“You ponies are lucky I came armed,” Cube said. She levitated her four beam pistols into the air, letting them hover around her in a cloud of her aura. “As long as you ponies watch my flanks, I can do the real work.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a gun?” Masher asked me.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. I flicked the knife in my foreleg out and then back in again.

“Oh great, she’s one of those special forces mares that really buys into that ‘guns for show, knives for pros’ bull,” Grouse said, rolling his eyes.

Cube snickered. I felt my ears burn red. I almost started yelling at him about my kill count and then felt even more ashamed because I was one dumb sentence away from bragging about killing ponies like it was a good thing.

“I’m on point,” I growled, storming past him and trying to hide what I was feeling. It was too many emotions and I didn’t like any of them.

We got to the next corner of the building before things went bad. Worse, I mean. I sensed it happening all up and down my spine and didn’t know what I was feeling until it was too late. A patch of the narrow path of rock between the cliffside and wall started glowing, and in a flash of light accompanied by a crackle I could feel in my teeth, a pack of ponies appeared.

“Are those ghouls?” Grouse asked, swinging his rifle to the ready.

I shook my head. The thin, wasted ponies hissed, skin and muscle pulling away from the bone underneath. A third eye drilled into their foreheads burned with the same baleful light as in their empty eye sockets.

“Worse,” I answered.

The undead charged, more coordinated than the feral ghouls on the surface had been. Those had been a bunch of individuals, getting in each other’s way. The zombies here were a pack. They weren’t damaged, broken ponies broken down to their base instincts, they were monsters wearing pony skin.

Cube stepped up next to me and the pistols she was levitating launched out, spinning in the air and moving faster than any pony could manage on their own, swooping through the air and firing shot after shot, diving from above and cutting through the horde. One broke through the wall of laser fire and I braced myself to take the charge, but more shots came from behind me and cut it down.

The last of the undead dropped, and Cube sighed, retrieving her guns and quickly reloading them.

“Looks like the little lady is going to be showing us up,” Masher said, amused. “Too bad you didn’t bring your power armor, huh?” He smirked at me.

“Worry more about the things trying to kill us and less about the way I’m dressed,” I warned him.

“That’s why you get all the ladies, Masher,” Jet Stream said. “You really know how to talk to them.”

“Don’t worry, you can cover me when I need to reload,” Cube said. “You’re all equally good as meat shields.”

Grouse knelt down just outside the ring that had appeared on the ground and deposited the monsters. The runes were gone now, leaving a burned ellipse on the rock. “Deploying troops with some kind of teleportation spell?” he asked.

“It’s not impossible,” Cube said. “I can teleport one or two ponies with me if I have transport enhancers.”

“Then why didn’t you teleport us inside?” I asked.

“One -- I don’t have transport enhancers with me. Two -- I don’t know the layout of the building and we could end up causing a lot of damage. Three -- we can’t teleport anywhere with the Dimension Pliers once we retrieve them. That’s why we brought the VertiBuck in the first place!”

“Ugh, fine, okay, don’t bite my head off,” I mumbled. “How am I supposed to know about teleporting?”

Cube shook her head. “You aren’t. That’s why I’m here. We need to get inside. If they’re using line of sight teleportation they can do that again and again until they run out of zombies.”

Jet Stream nodded and motioned to Masher. The soldier carefully walked around the side of the building. He peeked around the side then ducked back.

“Good news, found a way in,” Masher said. “Bad news, we’re not the first ponies to get here.”

The rest of us took turns looking. More zombies were lurking in the remains of what had been a security door and was now twisted metal. From the deep, still-glowing burn mark across the face of the fortress and trailing down to the rock, I guessed the Cloudship had blown it open with that energy weapon it was using.

“You’re familiar with these hostiles,” Jet Stream said, quietly. “What should we be ready for?”

“That last pack was just zombies,” I said. “They’re not a huge threat on their own. Watch for anything bigger. If anything starts throwing around evil-looking fire, shoot it first. If it’s got a sword, get the buck away from it. They like setting traps, too.”

“This gets better all the time,” Grouse said.

“All this talking is pointless. We’re just going to storm the front door,” Cube said. “We need to go inside and we can’t blow open the wall.”

I shrugged and nodded.

Cube checked her pistols and walked out without even giving us warning. Jet Stream swore and ran after her, reacting faster than I did. Zombies poured out of the shadows, popping up from blind corners and coming in a wave, dozens swarming towards Cube.

I learned one thing very quickly in the first few moments watching her. First, beam pistols were a lot more dangerous than I thought. They’d never really seemed like a big deal to me. I’d been shot a few times and they were annoying and painful, but I hadn’t thought of them as deadly until I saw what they did to unarmored targets.

Cube really was worth a whole squad of ponies on her own. She gunned down zombies, even hitting ones in what should have been blind spots with her floating array of weapons. For a solid minute she was a killing machine, and then she ran out of ammunition.

“Reloading!” She called out. “Cover me!”

She stepped back and I just sort of stood there feeling useless as the three trained soldiers formed a firing line and held the wave back until Cube finished swapping batteries and blasted through the rest of the undead.

Everything was quiet for a moment, and all of us looked around, checking the shadows in the abrupt peace.

“Easy,” Cube boasted. She looked back at me and smirked. “Maybe I didn’t need to bring you along!”

“I don’t mind taking a break,” I said. “I’d rather do it out of the weather, though.” I looked up. The black shape of the burned Raptor was starting to emerge from a bank of twisted cloud and smoke.

“Everypony inside!” Jet Stream barked, waving. They took to the air, skimming just above the surface and winging toward the open door. I ran along the ground, keeping next to Cube. Masher and Grouse suddenly pulled away, diving for cover, and I spotted the movement inside and shoved her to the side, shielding my face and jumping the other way. A grenade exploded in the air between us, shrapnel peppering my skin.

“Oh buck,” Grouse swore. A pony in thick steel armor stepped out of the doorway, the Steel Ranger armor pitted and blackened with age. The grenade launcher moved to track the thing’s gaze.

I’ll give Cube this -- she takes after me in that she absolutely does not hesitate to bite off more than she can chew. She was bleeding from shrapnel wounds and was still able to focus enough to fire a barrage of laser blasts at the power armored undead. Not that it did anything. The armor just deflected or absorbed the beams.

“Fire in the hole!” Masher yelled. He tossed his grenade, and it bounced and rolled right under the Steel Ranger. It looked down, and the explosive went off with a sharp crack, the Steel Ranger falling to its knees in a burst of flame and smoke.

“Got him!” Grouse called out, sounding happy for once. “Nice throw!”

The armored monster shuddered back into motion, getting back up and turning to face Masher. The stupidest thing I could have done was run at it armed with just a knife, and I was a really stupid pony, so I was halfway there before I realized how bad of an idea it really was.

I slammed into the wall of steel and threw off its aim, sending the grenade flying wild into a pile of rotting corpses. The Steel Ranger might have already been dead, but the zombie had a great reaction time, totally unburdened by the confusion that a living pony might have felt as it immediately turned and tried to bowl me over with a shove from the armor’s piston-powered foreleg.

I caught it, my hooves digging into the ground and finding purchase. The armor strained, poorly-maintained hydraulics and talismans straining. I shifted my grip, freeing my right forehoof, and popped my knife, bringing it down on the knee joint of the leg I was holding. In a shower of sparks, I slashed right through it, the edges glowing red-hot from the sudden violence. The zombie stumbled, unbalanced, black ichor pouring out of the wound.

I spun around and kicked it in the chest, knocking it down and jumping on top of it, riding it to the dirt. The grenade launcher twisted on its mount, trying to aim at me. I stabbed through it and into the dirt, slicing it off the armor and tossing it aside before grabbing the zombie’s helmet and tearing, stabbing into the metal and meat, straining and finally overcoming the tempered steel’s limits.

The head came free along with the helmet, and I threw it aside like garbage, kicking the twitching, already dead mass.

I wiped rotting, toxic blood off my face. Jet Stream’s squad was just staring at me. Even Cube seemed impressed.

“What?” I asked. “You’ve never had to get your hooves dirty?”

“Good thing we brought our own monster to deal with the ones here,” Jet Stream said, breaking the silence and walking over to pat my shoulder. “Got ourselves a real ace!” He turned back to the other soldiers. “Remember, try to find survivors! Stick together! Shoot the big ones!”

“Very motivational,” Cube said, dripping with sarcasm. She stopped at the doorway and looked at me. I got the hint and took point, walking in first.

The first thing that hit me was the stink of fresh blood. I was getting way too familiar with what dead ponies looked and smelled like. There were corpses everywhere. A few of them had at least a suggestion of body armor, but I didn’t see any weapons heavier than a baton and a lone beam pistol.

“This place wasn’t ready for an attack like this,” I said.

“Of course not,” Jet Stream said. “This is the Enclave. It’s supposed to be safe here. This kind of thing is only supposed to happen on the surface.”

“Why bother building this place like a fortress if you aren’t going to defend it?” I asked.

Jet Stream shrugged. “You know how it is. You’re in the military. Every time there’s a shakeup in the change of command, we get to see all the cracks around the edges. A place like this is a tempting target if Thunderhead or Neighvaro start butting heads, but that comes with a lot of warning. Plenty of time to bring a couple ships here to form a perimeter.”

“Yeah, Chamomile, you know how it is,” Cube teased.

We walked past the first broken barricade and into the flickering lights of the next room, which was some kind of reception area.

“Keep your eyes open,” I said. “Those things like to set traps. I’ve seen magical barriers and these floating skull things that shot some kind of magic fire that went right through power armor.”

“Look at this,” Cube said. She cast a light spell, shining it on the wall.

“Zebra runes,” I decided.

“Zebra?” Masher asked.

“Did I forget to mention that these things are lead by zebra necromancers?” I asked.

“You did skip that detail,” Grouse mumbled.

“Just assume that there’s a lot of Bad Stuff,” I said.

Before I could start elaborating on what Bad Stuff was, a hacking cough had all of us turning to a corner of the room. Masher fired a wild shot that, thankfully, went into the wall, because when Cube’s light spell spilled into the corner, we found a wounded unicorn mare trying to hold back an awful lot of bleeding and losing.

“We got a survivor!” Jet Stream snapped. “Grouse!”

The soldier slung his rifle and ran over, popping his first aid kit open and kneeling next to the injured pony.

“We didn’t think word got out,” the mare gasped. She had to be in agony. “Thank the stars.”

“You’re going to be okay,” Jet Stream said. He was so sure that it almost sounded like the truth and not a wild lie. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“They came out of nowhere,” the mare said. “A few hours ago they just appeared out of these huge rifts in the sky. We held them off for a little while, but then they teleported on top of us. Most of the survivors ran for the Spatial Flexure section. It’s shielded against teleportation.”

“They left you behind?” I asked.

“I stayed back to cover them, but one of the big ones just… stabbed me and shoved me out of the way, like it didn’t even care if I lived or died.” She laughed, blood splattering from her lips as it turned into a deep cough. “Or maybe it just knew it had done enough.”

Grouse looked up at Jet Stream and tilted his head, grimacing.

“I know you can’t save me,” the mare whispered. “Just… go get the others. My daughter is with them. Please--”

“We’ll get her out,” I promised.

“Thank you,” she sighed. She shuddered and went still.

Grouse closed the mare’s eyes and pulled something from her uniform, standing up and giving it to Jet Stream.

“Security pass, sir,” he said. “We might need it.”

Jet Stream nodded. He looked at the mare for a few moments then back at me. “You’re the expert here. What’s the play? Do we need to do anything with the bodies?”

“I’m pretty sure they can reanimate them,” I said. “I have no idea how long it takes.”

“Right,” Jet Stream said. He pulled his pistol and shot the mare in the head twice. “Let’s hope that keeps her down. I would expect any of you to do the same for me if they bring me down. Understood?”

Grouse and Masher nodded.

“Good. Now, let’s show these monsters what it’s like fighting professionals.”

Chapter 54 - Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

Grouse peeked around the hallway corner and waved back at us, moving his hoof through some kind of complicated pattern before motioning sharply three times. Jet Stream looked at Masher, tapped his shoulder, and pointed ahead. Masher nodded once and got behind Grouse, tapping his flank three times. Grouse nodded once slowly.

I looked at Cube. She shrugged. I had the feeling she didn’t really know what was going on either.

The three soldiers moved at the same time, taking to the air and keeping in each other’s draft shadow. It was like ballet, Grouse taking the lead and laying down covering fire with Masher taking kill shots by popping out left and right around him and Jet Stream finishing off the wounded as they passed them, making sure not to leave any enemies behind them and still keeping up with the others even as they wove through the air in tight formation.

The zombies wandering the hallways turned the moment they spotted them and got cut down a second later before the slow undead had a chance to really react.

“They’re pretty good,” Cube admitted, as we trailed after them down the hallway. They were moving a lot faster than we were and doing a great job of clearing the way. “If they work together, they’re almost as good as I am on my own.”

“That’s high praise,” I said. I looked at the corpses as we passed them. All of them were old, dead for long enough to start to mummify.

“Yeah,” Cube agreed, nodding.

The three circled back and landed, checking their equipment. They started whispering to each other.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We’re not at the lab yet and we’re already running out of batteries,” Jet Stream said. “We were carrying equipment for a security detail, not a raid.”

“Will your batteries work in their guns?” I asked Cube.

“Yeah, but…” She scrunched her nose. “I’m sort of… also running low.”

“Great,” I said. “Just great.”

“We’re professionals,” Jet Stream assured me. “Masher, Grouse, fix bayonets.”

“You ponies work on that, I’ll take point,” I said. I walked ahead of them, not bothering with the stealth or hoof signals they’d been using. If we were going hoof-to-hoof it wasn’t really going to matter if we caught the zombies by surprise. They didn’t get scared or hesitate.

I looked down the hallway at a dozen undead that turned to hiss at me, eyes glowing green along with the hole bored in their skulls. I had no idea what kind of ritual the necromancers did, but I sure hoped that part was post-mortem.

“You coming?” I asked the zombies. “I don’t have all… day…”

A bigger shape stomped out of the shadows, shoving the thin, wasted zombies aside as it advanced, a Steel Ranger dragging a long cleaver whose edge shimmered with evil intent. Maybe literally.

“I really don’t want to do this, big guy,” I said, readying myself and flicking my blade out. “If I thought you were actually aware of what you were doing I’d probably try and talk you down, but I doubt that’s gonna work and I’m just talking to myself to stay cool.”

It lowered its head and charged at me, raising the sword and trampling the zombies between us, the lesser undead not even aware enough to get out of the way.

I brought up my knife to block. I could do this. I’d killed a few of them before, and the one outside with the grenade launcher had to have been more dangerous, even if that sword was bad news. It was big and slow and as inevitable as an avalanche. Sparks flew from where our blades met and for exactly one second I thought I was okay.

Then I got pushed back half an inch, and everything started to slip at the same time. A sliver of metal scraped away from my blade as the Steel Ranger’s sword slid, biting through whatever my knife was actually made from.

The edge slid free, and the sword sliced across my left shoulder, opening a deep cut. I yelled something that wasn’t exactly a curse or even words at all and jumped back, avoiding a follow-up swing that would have taken my head off.

“Ow,” I groaned. The cut hurt. A lot. It was like one of those really bad papercuts where no matter what you do, it just keeps reminding you that you’ve been cut like you’re being wounded freshly over and over again and the memory won’t fade. I touched it and winced. It felt raw.

“Watch out!” Cube shouted. I felt it coming before she even said anything, throwing myself aside and into the wall as that big sword came down in another big swing, burying the edge into the floor. “Just keep dodging!”

“Hold on!” Masher cried out. He flew forward with his rifle at the ready, getting into stab range for his bayonet. The Steel Ranger tore the sword free, and the blade caught the rifle halfway down its length. Blue light erupted from the rift, and the gun exploded in his hooves, throwing Masher back towards Grouse and Jet Stream.

“Don’t get near it!” I yelled. The Steel Ranger took a heavy step towards the fallen soldier. It made the classic fatal mistake of looking away from me. I jumped at it and slashed, cutting through one of the thick tubes of the rotting ventilator. Black bile spilled out, and it made a deep roar like whalesong.

The monster turned on me, and I blocked on instinct. There was a sound like a bell, and the sword bit through, slicing through my knife and into my right forehoof, the metal deflecting it just enough that it only cut me deeply and didn’t actually slice my hoof off.

It still hurt worse than when I’d been shot in the guts. I fell back, stumbling on three legs and holding my wounded hoof to my chest. He’d cut right through the metal, just scything through it. I could see things through the cut that I really didn’t want to see and I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

The knight came at me again and in the rush of adrenaline and pain, everything slowed to a crawl, my nerves burning cold and the pain pushed a little bit away until I only felt the echo. I stepped in, jamming the broken blade of my knife through his hoof. Tendons severed, and he dropped the cursed sword.

I caught it in midair before it had a chance to touch the ground. I spun, and it went right through him without meeting any resistance.

Time resumed, and the Steel Ranger fell apart, cut from one shoulder through the other side of his chest. A shuddering feeling ran up my hooves where I held the sword, pain and pleasure mixed together as one, like biting a juicy, tart fruit.
I gasped, stumbling and using the cursed sword to catch myself, driving the tip into the ground and leaning on it.

“The ones with swords,” I panted, exhausted and in pain. “Are really dangerous. These swords will cut through anything.”

“You’re bleeding,” Cube said, sounding worried. “Grouse--”

“Finish with Masher first,” I said. “Is he okay?”

“I’m not dead yet,” Masher groaned. “Just burned.”

“I’ve only got one potion,” Grouse mumbled. He looked from me to Masher. I waved to him, and he nodded thankfully and gave it to his teammate, the burns across Masher’s coat starting to heal. Blood kept dripping from my wounds, the two deep cuts aching. It wasn’t as bad as before, though. Killing the Steel Ranger had helped, a little. At least with morale.

Cube walked up to me slowly. I looked at her, and she actually seemed… worried. She glanced past me for a moment and shot a stray zombie that hadn’t gotten completely mulched in the clash of steel before focusing on me again.

“That looks like it hurts,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said. “You got any bandages?” I asked.

“No. And I think you need stitches.”

“Or a few healing potions. I’ve got some, but they’re in my armor back in Winterhoof,” I groaned and looked at my shoulder. The bleeding was starting to ebb, but it was a nasty-looking wound. “Keep your eyes open for a first aid kit. Or some wonderglue. That stuff’s great for cuts.”

“What about that?” She nodded to my forehoof. “I don’t know how to repair an augmentation like this.”

“It’ll heal,” I said. I was actually pretty sure about that. After all, I’d grown new bones. Fixing a cut should be no problem.

“Good,” Cube said. She looked away. “I wasn’t worried or anything, but I don’t want you holding us back.”

I laughed. “I’ll try not to slow you down.”

I was still holding onto the sword. It was hard to let it go. It felt like the only thing holding me up. With the tip driven into the floor, I felt it before I saw it. Heavy, sure steps.

“Get back,” I warned Cube, pushing her gently towards Jet Stream and the others.

The third Steel Ranger stepped around the corners. This one didn’t wear a helmet, leaving the fleshless bone of his skull exposed. Runes were carved right into the bone, around that hole of a third eye in his forehead. He held up his sword and, as if remembering some tiny fraction of the discipline he had in life, pointed it at me like he wanted a duel.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. I felt feverish and shaky from a combination of blood loss and the crash from using my implants to push myself beyond my limits. My knife was broken. I didn’t have a chance.

Except I was still leaning on that cursed sword. I pulled it out of the ground, and it was heavy and light in my hooves at the same time, a massive weight being pulled into the gravity of combat.

“Chamomile, we should--” Cube started, but I didn’t hear whatever she was suggesting, because I threw myself at the armored pony with a primal roar. Our swords crossed, the fossilized iron ringing, a beautiful song piercing the air. I felt energized, and instead of being pushed back by the armored pony, we both held our ground.

It felt good. Sure, I was in pain, but it wasn’t from some soldier just doing his job. It wasn’t from some stupid mistake. I was fighting something that deserved to die, something that probably wanted to be put to rest. I was doing the right thing! I was going to save ponies for a change instead of just bumbling around and making more problems!

I roared and broke the blade lock, shoving the thing’s sword to the side. It was strong, but it was slow and clumsy and stupid! I was more worthy than it was, and I would prove it!

I smacked it in the face with the broad side of the sword. Bone broke, and rotting teeth fell from its hanging jaw. This was too easy now that I had a worthwhile weapon. I laughed with joy before stabbing it through its chest and slicing upwards, cutting right through that armor like it wasn’t even there. It might as well have been wearing an iron coffin for all the good it was doing it.

The sword ripped free, black bile spraying over me, and the Ranger collapsed. I had a brief moment of quiet with my heart pounding in my chest before the screeching started. Zombies poured out into the hallway, stumbling and running towards us on thin, dry limbs. It was just what I needed, something fun to take my mind off the cutting ache.

I slashed, and a zombie’s head came off, flying into the air. I was moving before it landed.

I slashed, and two more fell in half, reaching toward me before I stomped their skulls in.

I slashed, and kept on slashing, and the walls were painted with clotted blood that stank like a thousand years of rot.

I slashed, and somepony screamed in terror. A bolt of light hit me between the eyes, and I lost my grip on the sword, the edge slamming into the wall.

The black and red haze around my vision faded, and I stumbled back. My body felt like it was going to fall apart. The stinging dot of heat on my forehead brought me back to the surface of a sea I didn’t even know I was drowning in.

Cube was on the ground, backed up against the wall, looking afraid and holding a pistol in her magic.

“You shot me,” I said dumbly.

“Y-you were…” she panted. “You were laughing and you wouldn’t let go of the sword and then you…”

The sword was buried in the wall less than a hoof-width over her head. If I hadn’t lost my grip on it, it would have gone into her neck.

“I didn’t…” I swallowed, feeling sick. “I--”

“You weren’t kidding when you said these swords were cursed,” Cube said. She kept the gun pointed at me. “Are you… better?”

I nodded. “I think so. Nopony… nopony touch the swords,” I said.

“Let me wrap those cuts up,” Grouse said, cautiously approaching me. He looked at my forehead where I’d been shot. “We’ll, uh. We’ll get that one, too.”

“Thanks.”

“Please prepare for decontamination,” a voice said, the old recording scratchy and warped. I sat down on the steel floor and wiped a mix of sweat and rotten blood from my forehead. Soft mist poured into the small, sealed airlock from wall-mounted vents.

“The secure lab should be right ahead,” Cube said. Her horn sparked for a moment. “The teleport warding that dying pony told us about is still up.”

“That’s good, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Cube said. “It probably means less trouble ahead.”

“Not no trouble,” Masher said. He used his wings to clear some of the mist and pointed to the floor. “Look at these scratches. These are fresh.”

“They’re smart enough to get through an airlock?” Jet Stream asked.

“That means they’ll probably have a necromancer with them,” I groaned. “I fought one that was smart enough to use the voice of a pony who’d already died to trick me into letting it out of a place it’d gotten trapped in.”

Jet Stream nodded. “Right. That makes sense. None of the zombies could crew that Raptor we saw. Even the Steel Rangers were…” he hesitated.

“Smarter, but just killing machines,” Cube said. “A lot like this one.” She tapped my chest. “Ours is better though.”

“And prettier,” I reminded her.

“If it makes you feel that much better to be called pretty compared to a walking corpse, go for it,” Cube shrugged.

“Having this airlock here is a real bottleneck,” Grouse said. “We’re probably not going to be looking at many targets past here.”

“The cleanrooms are going to be tightly controlled,” Cube said. “Lots of locked doors. If it’s like other labs I’ve been in, they aren’t going to be super sturdy, but it’s going to slow them down.”

The mist stopped, and a wave of purple magic washed over us, the dirt and caked-on filth and blood vanishing in its wake, leaving only a soft lavender scent.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, looking down at my hooves.

“Typical overengineered pre-war stuff,” Cube scoffed. “Let’s go.” She pulled the hatch release, and we piled through the airlock. The hallway beyond was stark white, and if it wasn’t for a spray of fresh crimson going around the next corner, I could almost believe everything was normal.

Jet Stream went ahead, taking the corner at a wide angle. He motioned for us to follow. Something in my injured foreleg caught, and I stumbled for a second. Grouse caught me and I saw the silent question.

I held up a hoof and nodded quickly, trying to indicate that I was okay. It was almost true. I could feel the cuts pulling every time I moved, like they were alive in some way and just wanted to tear wide open.

We stepped over the fallen body of a pony in a lab coat and I tried not to look too closely at it. I needed to focus on ponies that could still be helped. The next crumpled forms were rotting and thin. Somepony had fought back.

Up ahead, I saw a heavy security door. The lock was broken, twisted and ripped apart to leave black, rusting streaks on the metal. It looked like just that part of the lock had aged centuries in seconds.

“Can you feel that?” Cube whispered.

I nodded. There was a pressure in the air, cold and sick. I’d felt it before, but it was stronger now than ever before.

“Necromancy,” I whispered back. “If they’ve got a leader, he’s right up ahead.”

I tapped Jet Stream on the shoulder. He nodded and we retreated back a few steps.

“We need a plan before we run in,” Jet Stream said. “We’ve almost gotten killed when we acted like damn amateurs.”

“If there’s a leader, we should go after the chain of command,” Masher said. “Use the good ol’ Jet Stream Attack and take him down in one go. I’ll take the rifle and be the lead, Grouse and you follow up in my wake with pistols.”

“You’re injured,” Grouse said. “You’re not in shape to take the lead.”

Masher started to protest. Grouse held up a hoof.

“And it’s my damn rifle. You got yours exploded in your face, remember? I’m lead.”

Jet Stream nodded. “Okay. Cube, Masher’s going to need--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cube sighed. She gave him one of her pistols. “Make sure to clean it off before you give it back.”

Masher took the gun. “Don’t worry, kid. I won’t give you cooties.”

Cube scrunched up her snout. “I’m not a kid!”

“Of course you aren’t, Warrant Officer,” I teased.

“Just for that, you don’t get a gun, Chamomile,” Cube said. “I was going to lend you one, but now I won’t.”

“That’s… probably for the best anyway,” I admitted. “I can’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside.”

“You two follow us in,” Jet Stream said. “Cube, you can cover a wide area. Try to take down any stragglers. Chamomile, you get the door. We’ll start halfway down the hallway and go through at speed.”

I nodded. It was a good plan. If it went as well as the rest of the day, we’d all be dead in five minutes. I quietly flew over to the door, grabbing the handle and looking back. The soldiers took to the air and stormed towards the door. I yanked the door open as they approached, and Grouse fired a burst of beam fire into the room beyond, flying through the tight gap in tight formation. Cube ran in after them, and I trailed last.

The lab was a big open space, broken up into four stations that were each equipped with a tangle of equipment hanging overhead like a mechanical octopus reaching down towards the stark white workbenches, the edge outlined in bright safety-aware colors like yellow and orange and splattered with dripping red.

We’d gotten there just in time. A floating form outlined in green light that distorted the air like a heat haze around it was tearing one of the metal arms free from a workstation, and a half-dozen living ponies were on the far side of the room, trying to push back a small horde of hissing, biting undead with janitorial supplies and hand tools.

I had to hope Jet Stream would be able to deal with the zebra necromancer because I didn’t have time to help. I took to the air and flew for the mass of zombies, crashing into them from behind and taking the stinking corpses to the ground. I very, very quickly learned that they were much more dangerous when I didn’t have armor plating between my flesh and their fangs.

“Ow! Buck!” I yelled. I shook my back left leg, trying to dislodge one of them biting into my cutie mark.

I still got a great view of everything that happened on the other side of the room. Bolts from the rifle slamming into an energy field around the necromancer. Grouse pulling away at the last moment, Jet Stream and Masher attacking from the sides to no effect, the shots just fizzling into the air like they were scattering against clouds of glittering dust.

Rotting fangs piercing my skin brought my attention back very sharply to the matter at hoof. I kicked a zombie in the face, shattering bone and knocking it down.

“Cube, I could use fire support!” I yelled.

“He’s taking the Pliers! We have to stop him first!” she shouted back, taking shots at the floating robed horror, all of them deflecting and scattering into the lab equipment, starting a small fire. The metal arm the zebra was tugging on finally snapped. The undead tore it loose, wires dangling from the magical tool.

I grabbed another one of the undead and threw him into the wall, finally getting the zombie trying to nibble the flowers from my cutie mark off my flank.

“Nothing’s working!” Grouse shouted. The soldiers were circling him, trying to take shots from other angles. The glow around the zebra brightened, and there was a massive rush of air and fire. The back wall of the lab exploded, concrete turning liquid and plastic burning. The concussion knocked me flat on my back, spinning me completely around. The undead, even less coordinated than I was, went flying.

I could see the radioactive corpse of the Raptor hovering outside, the hull glowing with waves of etched runes.

The zebra looked down at us with three baleful eyes and flew out through the debris, the ceiling collapsing after it and cutting off any pursuit.

“No!” Cube yelled.

“It must have activated some kind of targeting talisman,” Jet Stream said, coughing and picking himself off the ground. “It brought down fire support right on top of itself. Crazy mule.”

“Maybe it doesn’t seem as crazy if you’re already dead,” Masher groaned. “Everypony okay?”

“No,” Grouse said shortly. He lifted one wing, but the other hung limply at his side. “Wing’s broke,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You saved us!” one of the scientists said, a cute unicorn mare with her mane cut like she’d used a ruler and laser level to get all the edges perfectly straight. She adjusted her glasses. “I’m the head of Telethaumatics, Doctor Synod. I wasn’t sure our distress call went through!”

“It didn’t,” Cube said. “We came here for the Dimension Pliers.”

Synod frowned. “You and that bunch of ghouls. I don’t know the details, but we saw an anti-euclidean inversion event on the monitors. We thought we had a cascade event in the TeleBuck prototype, but it was coming from outside. It must have been some kind of massive displacement event.”

“I have no idea what she’s saying,” I whispered.

“She means the equipment picked up that giant rift the ship came out of,” Cube translated.

“There were other, smaller events, as well,” Synod added.

“They were using a teleportation array to deploy troops,” Cube said. “It’s how all these idiots got here.” She kicked one of the zombies that was still moving. It groaned as if in agony. Maybe it was, or maybe it just remembered what pain had been like when it was alive.

“That explains it,” Synod muttered.

“Can you detect those, uh… the whatever events. Can you detect them at range?” I asked.

“If needed. It’s a bit like using a microscope as a telescope but--”

“We need to figure out where they went,” I said. “If you can give us anything, even a direction, that could mean saving a lot of lives.”

Synod hesitated. “Okay. Lens! Hue! You two start getting all the undamaged equipment together! We’re going to evacuate!” She sighed. “I’ll start working on the detector. As a personal note… were there any survivors? I had… family working in another area.”

I swallowed and pulled out the ID we’d taken from the dying mare near the entrance. “I have some bad news about that.”

“I told you!” Synod yelled over the roar of the Vertibuck engines. She pointed out of the open door at the roiling air over the college. She held up the screen attached to several boxes and an antenna shaped like a giant spindly feather which I was holding out in the air rushing past us, pointing it at the aurora.

“Why is it here?” Jet Stream asked, barely having to raise his voice to be heard. The stallion’s voice just carried even with everything going on. “We didn’t see anything like that when we were here a few hours ago!”

“It has to be that bucking triangle!” I shouted. “It’s made of evil and darkness!”

“There’s a cursed artifact we’re trying to contain and neutralize,” Cube explained calmly. “It’s why we needed the Pliers! I don’t know how, but it’s connected to those stupid zombies!”

“I see!” Synod lowered the screen. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, but we don’t have another set of Dimension Pliers! I don’t know where we’d even get one!”

“We’ll have to figure it out later!” I pointed up at the green lightning in the sky. “If the same thing happens here that did at the lab, there are hundreds of ponies that might get eaten by the undead!”

“I’m bringing us in for a landing!” the pilot reported. “Hang on, we’re getting a lot of wind!”

I didn’t need him to tell us a storm was brewing. He set us down on the landing pad and I hopped down, helping Cube out. She didn’t even refuse help this time. I gave the antenna back to Synod.

“We’re going to get the injured to a hospital!” Jet Stream yelled. “I’m going to come back with enough fire support to deal with an army!”

“We’ll try to hold out until then!” I shouted back.

“If the Dean is going to listen to reason we’ll evacuate everypony out of the school and into town,” Cube added.

“Wait, take this before you go!” Synod called out, tossing me a box about as big as two packs of playing cards. “It’s one of our prototype TeleBucks!”

I nodded thanks and waved to them as they took off, the VertiBuck pitching and fighting against the wind with the heavy load of survivors and equipment it was carrying.

“I should have asked her how to use this,” I said, watching it leave. “You want an untested experimental teleportation device with no instructions?” I offered it to Cube.

“No thanks,” she said. “I can teleport on my own, and there are easier ways to get yourself killed.”

“I’ll just save it for a rainy day,” I said, putting it away. Carefully. In case it was dangerous to touch. “Let’s go grab our stuff. We’re going to need the big guns.”

I ran in the door and slammed it behind me, trying to catch my breath.

“Chamomile?” Destiny asked, floating up from the papers covering half the floor in magic and math and mathemagic. “Are you okay? You look even more pale than usual.”

“College’s haunted,” I said, my voice strained. I took a deep, calming breath and trotted over to the rest of the armor, starting to put it on. I winced when I put the forged red pauldron over my injured left shoulder. It hadn’t stopped bleeding. I’d changed the bandages twice already.

“What?” Destiny asked, confused. The confusion didn’t stop her from helping with the armor pieces, floating them into place and adjusting things with telekinesis.

“College’s haunted,” I repeated. I checked DRACO’s ammunition. Still almost full. I might hate Polar Orbit for the things he did, but he had bottomless supplies and right now I was thankful he’d let me tap into them. “You haven’t left this room much, have you?”

“No, I’ve been working on the hyperspace geometry of the Pyramid. I think if we rotate it properly we can push it right out of our three-dimensional space, like getting a couch through a doorway by getting all the angles right.”

“And we’d need the Dimension Pliers to do that?”

“Yes? Why? How did you get hurt? What happened at the lab?”

“Lab was haunted too,” I said. “Undead everywhere. I think they knew we were coming.”

“That’s impossible,” Destiny said. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless… they’ve got a way of communicating with whatever is on the other side of the dimensional breach…”

“We’ll figure it out later. We’ve got a situation here.” I tapped my head, and the haunted helmet settled down over my head. The armor’s weight vanished as everything came online, and I felt a little less vulnerable.

“Fill me in,” Destiny said.

“It’ll be easier to show you,” I said. I opened the door. A thin, terrifying form stood there in front of me, too tall, too slender, faceless and dark like a shadow come to life.

Destiny squeaked. DRACO fired on its own, and a bullet went right through the shape, and the wall beyond, leaving a hole like it had fired through mist. The shape shimmered, not really stepping aside but flowing, reforming whole and unharmed a few paces away.

“They’re everywhere,” I said.

“How long were you gone?” Destiny asked. “I lose track of time when I’m working, but…”

The hallways were dark, like every light fixture was a spotlight that did little to push back the gloom. “It’s barely past noon,” I said. “Between the evil storm outside and the evil shadows in here, the sunlight has decided to take the day off.”
“We might be in over our heads,” Destiny said. “This is starting to seem like hero stuff.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan,” I said.

I could feel Destiny’s relief. “Thank goodness.”

“What do you mean he’s locked himself in with the triangle?!” I yelled.

“I didn’t call it a triangle, since that’s extremely inaccurate but--” Professor Ornate must have developed enough X-ray vision to see my expression through the helmet, because he managed to stop himself from rambling on. “Mister Decode has been acting strangely, and he, ah, locked himself inside the gym.”

I looked down at Cube. She looked up at me. She was carrying the bundle of teleport enhancers on her back, having grabbed them from her room while I was changing.

“Blow the door,” we agreed.

“DRACO, give me an explosive round,” I said.

“Fire in the hole!” Cube shouted.

The college staff around the gym doors looked at us and they were obviously very well educated because they immediately bolted out of the way. I fired, and the doors helpfully exploded out of the way, the shell blowing them apart in a satisfying way that just for a moment helped me feel like I was in charge of things.

I walked through the debris. Whispering came from all around me, right at that edge where you can almost make out what the words are saying. I ignored it. I could tell where it was coming from.

“You,” Cypher Decode spat.

He walked out of the shadows between me and that floating pyramid, the black lead-like surface of the polyhedron casting wide black shades from the few overhead lights that were still working, turning the gym into a patchwork of light and stark shadow. The gloom seemed to cling to Cypher, hugging around him. Just over a dozen jet-black forms almost like ponies but not quite right hovered in the air, hanging overhead like decorations that slowly turned to watch us with eyeless faces.

“Yeah, me,” I said. “Get out of the way.”

“I will not,” Decode said. “You’re a blind, scared little pony. You see the fires of creation and you’re afraid of the heat! I will use this power to ascend to my rightful place and snuff out the dangerous, subversive elements that can’t understand what makes the Enclave great, what makes me great!”

“Buck, you’re getting all poetic like some bad comic book villain,” I snorted. “You’re not important. I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t even know who the buck you are! You’re nopony! Just a bucking tiny little nopony getting in my way when lives are on the line!”

I leveled DRACO at him.

“Chamomile,” Destiny warned.

“Shoot him,” Cube whispered. Or-- no, she didn’t say that. She was on my left, and the voice came from the right. My imagination, or something else?

I wasn’t going to start listening to hallucinations. I turned the gun away from him.

“Cube, got any ideas?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Synod and I talked on the way back. If we set these up--” she put down the transport enhancers she’d been carrying. “We can hack together a dimensional barrier. It’s just a stopgap measure, but it should at least get rid of all the bucking phantoms hanging around.”

Cube glared up at the hovering forms.

“That’s good enough,” I said. “It’ll give us time to find a permanent solution.”

“No!” Decode yelled. “I won’t let you!”

Cube laughed. “What are you going to do about it? Have the Dean put a mark on our permanent records? Chamomile, can you wrestle him out of here without killing him?”

“Sure,” I said.

Cube nodded and picked up one of the enhancers, opening a panel on the side of the crystal-tipped spear to adjust something on the inside.

I reached for Cypher. The shadows around him moved, surging forwards.

“I’ll show you what I can do,” Decode growled. “I’ll show you the kind of power I’ve always deserved to have!”

A chill ran down my spine. The shadows consumed Cypher, and he twisted and grew, roaring like an animal. The last few lights overhead went out, and the floor dropped out from under us, throwing us into an abyss.

Chapter 55 - The Ghost in You

“Come on,” I mumbled, tapping the helmet and cradling it like a child. “I hope I don’t have to do some kind of blood sacrifice or something.”

“Maybe she’s dead,” Cube said, being extremely helpful.

“Of course she’s dead. She’s been dead the whole time I knew her,” I mumbled. “I know she’s in here. She always bounces back.”

I felt the helmet vibrate in my hooves. Slowly, it turned, the visor turning to face me and a pale crimson aura surrounding it.

“What happened?” Destiny asked, her voice weak. I could feel her gaze slide past me. “Chamomile! There’s--”

“I know,” I said, turning to look at it for a second. One of the hovering spirits was staring over my shoulder, a shade that was fading and indistinct around the edges, whispering just beyond the edge of hearing. I waved a hoof through it, and it dispersed, reforming a few paces away. “We’re in trouble again.”

“There was a huge burst of magic,” Cube said. “I assumed it had banished you, but I guess this one time I’ll admit I was wrong.” She scoffed.

“We’re outside the college,” I explained. “That’s why there’s no roof.”

“Oh good,” Destiny sighed. “I was worried everything had exploded.”

“No, no, that happened,” I assured her. “Everything exploded into ghosts!”

“I shouldn’t even be surprised at this point,” Destiny said, floating unsteadily out of my hooves. “The amount of energy must have been comparable to a megaspell! I wish I’d been conscious enough to get some readings.”

“And I wish I was unconscious so I didn’t have to deal with this mess,” I said. I got up and started walking towards the big group of students that had gathered in front of the college. The teachers were doing their best to corral them, but getting a herd of scared ponies to listen to reason while surrounded by floating black wraiths was a losing proposition.

“They’re about two minutes from a full-on stampede,” Professor Ornate Orate said when I trotted up to him.

I looked up at the sky. I could feel the magical pressure increasing. Something was clawing at the fabric of the world and it wasn’t going to be long before it ripped its way through.

“That might be just about on time for some unfriendly arrivals,” I said. “We need to get these ponies moving. They’re just sitting ducks out here. Take them into town and get everypony into cover. They must have somewhere they can go, a hotel or a big house or something.”

“Yes, yes, of course you’re right,” the professor agreed. He turned to the crowd. “Ah, everypony! Excuse me! I say, over here! I’m trying to--”

None of them were listening, even if they could over the chatter of the crowd.

“Right, okay, time to be the big mare in charge,” I said. I pointed DRACO up. “Give me a flare, and don’t hit anypony with it.” I flew up, hovering above the students.

The gun chirped, and a bright red firework shot into the sky with a loud crack. The crowd of ponies silenced themselves, eyes following the light.

“Do I have your attention?!” I yelled. “Good! I know you’re all scared and confused, but everything is under control! You’re going to be temporarily evacuated into town! The military is already on the way with emergency supplies and specialists! The teachers are going to break you up into groups and you’re going to stick with your group until the relief supplies come and the situation is resolved! It should only be a few hours, so you’ll just have to be patient!”

The students started to quiet down and organize themselves around the nearest teachers. I sighed and flew back to the ground.

“Where’s the Dean?” I asked. “He should be the one dealing with this, not me!”

Professor Orate shook his head “I haven’t seen Dean Snowfall since…” He swallowed and looked up at the school. The whole place was surrounded by roiling shadows. Every window and door was a flat sheet of black that absorbed all light.

“Right,” I sighed. “There are probably some missing students that didn’t listen to the fire alarms and stayed in their rooms or hid or something, too,” I rubbed my eyes. “What a bucking mess.”

“I didn’t think anything could go so badly you’d have to take charge,” Cube quipped. “Maybe I should skip town.”

“If I die, you can take over,” I promised her, patting her very carefully on the head. “Got any ideas on how to actually do that thing I told them we’d do and fix this mess?”

“I had one idea, but I have no idea where we’re going to find a balefire bomb,” Cube said.

There was a sound like steel being ripped apart in a shredder and the sky opened up, the lightning-toothed maw of a portal yawning wide above us and spitting out that huge blackened hunk of radioactive metal that had no business staying in the sky.

“Isn’t that one of the Cloudsdale defense force ships?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same one that was at the lab.”

“You lead a charmed life, Chamomile,” Destiny said, before settling onto my head, the armor linking up. “Try not to get caught in another big burst of magic like that. I think I almost ended up on the other side, and I’ve still got too much unfinished business.”

A circle of magical light appeared on the ground in the middle of the crowd of students. They screamed in horror as the undead appeared among them, teleporting within striking distance.

Beams of harsh light struck out from odd angles, each one burying itself into one of the zombies, picking them off one at a time. Cube’s custom pistols flew through the air in her telekinetic grip.

“I got this,” Cube said, her voice strained. “It would be a lot easier if the stupid ponies here would stay still and not get in the way!”

“Can you cast a teleport spell?” I asked.

“I can’t get all of them out of here,” Cube replied, cutting me off. “That’s an order of magnitude or two more ponies than anypony could teleport at once!”

“Not for them, for me,” I said. I looked up at the ship. “Think you can get me up there?”

“You want a blind teleport to a haunted, magically shielded, moving cloudship?” Cube asked. She looked up at the ship, its bow glowing with arcane runes. I watched her do some quick mental calculations, tilting her head and thinking. “Yeah. I can do that.”

I nodded. “I’ll do what I can to cause trouble. If the necromancer is up there, maybe I can get the scissors back.”

“I’ll keep the idiots down here alive,” Cube said. Her horn started glowing brighter. She gave me a worried look. “There’s a small chance this could go wrong,” she warned. “I’m going to aim for the biggest open spot in the ship.”

“I trust you,” I lied. I was actually just really desperate.

She nodded, and the light consumed me.

The sensation of being teleported this time was like being squeezed through a straw and reinflating violently on the other end. I felt myself falling, caught myself in the air, and then my stomach started twisting like my lunch had enjoyed it even less than I did.

“No, no, no, not in here!” Destiny yelped, the helmet catches popping with incredible urgency and pulling away from the armor just in time for me to throw up. Bile splashed on the rusting deck below us.

“Sorry,” I groaned, wiping my lips. “I don’t even remember eating that…”

“That was a rough teleport,” Destiny said, the helmet turning a little while she looked me over. “This place has magical defenses and she just decided to shove you through them instead of trying to crack them! Amateur. I think you got here all in one piece.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Where are--”

A grenade exploded next to me, and shrapnel blasted into my right side. I felt the skin on my face tear, and I slammed down through an ancient shipping crate, throwing a plume of red-tinted dust into the air.

“Chamomile!” Destiny yelled, dropping down next to me. “Crap. Okay, um… everything’s fine! Stay calm! This isn’t as bad as when all your bones were broken!”

“You’re a terrible doctor,” I muttered, wincing when I tried to stand. “I think something’s lodged in my side.”

“There’s a hole in the armor near your liver,” Destiny confirmed.

“Oh good, just a major organ,” I said.

Destiny very carefully settled over my head. The gloom vanished from around me thanks to the low-light mode in the visor. “I’ll hit you with a healing potion to stop the immediate bleeding. Try not to get hit again. We’ve stress-tested SIVA too much already.”

“No kidding. Where did that shot come from?”

“DRACO tracked it that way,” Destiny said, giving me a nice big arrow. There was something comforting about having a green marker on my compass telling me where to go. I’d come through the top of the shipping container, so I kicked the door open to get out, knocking over a zombie that had been standing right there.

“Company,” I reported.

A few zombies turned to look at me, but the majority didn’t seem to be all there, just standing and waiting. The light flared around me, and I saw what they were waiting for. A massive circle was drawn in the middle of the deck, and they were marching into it in groups, herded by two armored Steel Rangers, one of which had just spotted me again and was bringing his grenade cannon to bear.

“I think we found their deployment area!” I shouted, ducking low and moving into the crowd. The few zombies that were aware or online or whatever it was you called it when they were moving lunged for me, but that worked to my advantage. The grenade that had been meant for me hit one of the jumping horde and blasted it apart, the shrapnel tearing through more of the undead and dropping a whole squad of them at once in a tangle of rotting, shattered limbs.

“They must be using it for the same reason we did! It’s the biggest open space on the ship!” Destiny said. Another grenade blasted a hole in the wall of undead. “If we can disrupt the enchantment we can keep them from sending more undead down into Winterhoof!”

“I like that idea,” I said.

“Start by taking out those Steel Rangers. They seem to be in charge.” As if they weren’t also the most dangerous things in the room.

“Can DRACO punch through that armor? I lost my knife!” I could feel the empty place between my bones where it should have rested. I was pretty sure the broken edge was slowly regenerating, but I couldn’t run in circles for however long it would take for it to actually grow back all the way.

DRACO beeped, and a targeting box popped up, highlighting parts of the Steel Ranger armor and displaying various symbols.

“Of course it can,” Destiny said. “It wouldn’t be much of an anti-armor weapon if it couldn’t take out a Ranger!”

“Weren’t you on the same side during the war?”

“Focus on the important parts!” Destiny snapped. “I had a lot of enemies, okay? And so do you! And they’ve got repeating grenade rifles!”

I jumped, kicking off of a zombie to launch a little further into the air without committing myself to flight. DRACO barked at the apex of my leap, blowing a hole into the side of one of the undead Rangers and ripping his ribs apart. That would have been really fatal and deadly if he wasn’t just rotten inside. I ducked back down and ran for harder cover, because they were getting closer with the grenades and the zombie horde was starting to thin.

“We’re going to need headshots,” I said. “Or fire! Can we do fire?”

“You can have either armor-piercing or incendiary,” Destiny said. “I never did crack the zebra tech on their anti-armor rifles.”

I stopped behind a rusting box that was full of what had once been holiday decorations but the grinning gourds and plastic candy had decayed into garbage. An explosion rocked it, throwing streamers and faded confetti into the air.

“I almost wish I had one of those cursed swords,” I mumbled.

The box rocked with the force of another detonation. And that sort of gave me an idea.

“They’re carrying a bunch of explosives,” I said. “I have an idea.”

I explained it quickly, and Destiny agreed that it might work. She changed DRACO’s targeting parameters and I jumped out of cover, flying up and clear of the debris undead and otherwise on the ground. The Steel Rangers were slow to react, and that gave me just enough time for DRACO to line up its shots, the gun firing as soon as it had a good shot.

An incendiary shell punched through the thinner panel of the first Steel Ranger’s grenade rifle ammunition hopper, and the remaining ordinance detonated in a rapid-fire series of explosions, a plume of fire reaching all the way up to the ceiling above us. The damaged, rusting floor creaked and groaned, the inscribed circle flickering and fading before the deck panels finally failed, collapsing and dropping off the ship entirely, the wind tearing them away.

“They don’t build ‘em like they used to!” I shouted. A piercing wail of alarm screeched through the ship. I couldn’t tell if it was a bound spirit, a malfunctioning intercom, or just stressed metal being wrenched by aerodynamic forces.

The second Steel Ranger charged through the smoke and slammed bodily into me, tossing me back with weight and force I couldn’t match. I went flying into a mosh pit full of half-crippled shrapnel-blasted undead.

“Oh, you better hope--” I started, intending to say something intimidating and cool to get myself pumped up, but it was cut short with hooves wrapping around my body, pinning my limbs in place. I tried to kick myself free and immediately found out I had no leverage at all.

“Chamomile--” Destiny warned.

“I know!” I yelled. I was pretty sure she was going to tell me I was going to get my skull stomped in. I bit down on the trigger for the Cryolator and just aimed it as best I could, blindly spraying liquid nitrogen everywhere. A cloud of condensation fogged up my vision, and the limbs holding me down slowed. I pulled, and there was a sharp crack.

I tore myself free from the cage of bony hooves just as the Steel Ranger stomped into view through the fog. It lunged at me with unnatural speed. It was all I could do to throw myself aside, rolling on the deck and getting to my hooves an instant before it could trample me.

It was slow to turn, and I took advantage of that, emptying the Cryolator’s tank on the Ranger’s back end. Hydraulics ruptured in the thermal shock, and a layer of ice almost instantly formed, freezing its hooves to the deck.

“There’s a weak spot here, too,” Destiny noted. DRACO fired, and an explosive shell blasted against the rear plates, bending them in and cracking them where the cold had made them brittle. The undead pony half-collapsed, only held in place by frozen limbs. “The armor wasn’t great against spalling, and the rear plates aren’t reinforced. One shot to the back and even if the armor holds you get fragmentation inside.”

“Wasn’t that the most advanced armor ever developed?” I asked.

“First, you’re wearing the most advanced armor ever developed. Second, even if the Steel Rangers had decent gear, that suit is one of the early production models. They did fix a few of the issues later, like the temperature sensitivity.”

I punted a zombie head that tried to bite me and looked around, trying to orient myself in the big vehicle bay. “If you weren’t so tribalist about the zebras I’d think you were on their side.”

“That’s what they said about anypony who questioned the propaganda,” Destiny mumbled. “Stop! Movement!”

I froze and turned to see what she was indicating. Three ponies were standing in the gloom at the end of the cargo bay. They didn’t seem to notice me. I quietly approached them and heard them whispering. And I could see right through them. Literally.

“Are they ghosts?” I whispered. “They don’t seem like the shadow things the pyramid was making…”

“Do you think the yellow alert is real this time?” one of them asked. She was a young mare with a twist for a mane, wearing an almost skin-tight uniform that didn’t seem to fit the combat webbing over it.

“It has to be a drill,” the stallion next to her replied. I waved a hoof right through him and he didn’t seem to notice, but the touch sent a chill down my spine.

“You two need to stop complaining and get your gear!” the third pony snapped, an older mare with a few extra stripes on her dark uniform. “Drill or not the Shadowbolts don’t stand around waiting for the other hoof to drop!”

“Yes, Captain Rolling Thunder!” The mare saluted, turning and flying with the stallion, going directly through me before fading away. I shivered, feeling chilled right to my core.

The Captain turned her head, just a fraction of an inch, and just before she vanished, I swear she looked right at me.

“That was weird,” I said.

“It must be a kind of… lingering echo,” Destiny said. “There’s so much necromatic energy going through this boat that it’s pulling memories of the old crew out of the walls.”

“Good thing that’s not creepy at all.”

“They’re harmless,” Destiny said. “Like… somepony turning over in their sleep.”

“Okay, now touch the red and the green wires together,” Destiny said.

I leaned in closer to get a better look at what I was doing in the crusty old panel and carefully pressed the exposed ends of the wires together. There was a sharp spark and a wisp of smoke.

“That did it!” Destiny said. I looked up to see the panel flickering and restarting, green text crawling across the screen. “The power surge bypasses the lockout chip and resets the console in debug mode.”

“And that works for every Stable-Tec terminal?” I asked.

“Yeah, basically. They probably would have eventually fixed it, but…”

“But the world ended,” I said.

“That was certainly the main reason. In the more immediate sense, they weren’t all that worried about physical security and I can’t blame them for that. If somepony has actual physical access to your hardware there’s not much you can actually do to stop them from getting your data.”

I very gingerly tapped the keys on the aging keyboard. “I get it. Like how a safe can stop somepony for a while, but if they’re already in the room with the lock something has gone wrong.”

“Yeah. During the war we were much more concerned with other aspects of security. No password is secure enough if the pony who knows it has been taken prisoner or sells it to the highest bidder. Speaking of which, you’re looking at the code buffer now, so you want to try entering in some of the plaintext passwords here…”

It only took a minute and some gentle guidance, but I actually managed to do it. The light on the door turned from angry red to happy green.

“I did it! I hacked a terminal!” I gasped.

“I knew we’d eventually find one that wasn’t made of clouds and rainbows,” Destiny said. “If we weren’t pressed for time I’d have you try a few of the others.”

I opened the door, having to shove hard. Even if the lock was disengaged, enough waxy black muck had built up over the years that it fought the idea of actually opening up again. I really didn’t want to know what it actually was, because it smelled like rotting meat and sick. Half the ship was covered in it, patching holes in conduits and pipes and laid down over supports to form barricades and walkways.

“We’ve taken some of the pressure off them by taking care of the teleportation thingie,” I said. “If they can’t put troops down, it buys a lot of time.”

“The layout of this ship seems broadly similar to the Raptors we’ve been in before,” Destiny said. “We could bring the whole ship down if we go to engineering and you Chamomile at it.”

“Is that a verb now?”

“The only pony I know that’s a bigger nexus of disaster is Princess Flurry Heart.”

“You know I’m going to take it as a compliment that you’re comparing me to royalty,” I said. “Can’t go to the engine room yet, though. We need to find that necromancer. He has to be around here somewhere.”

“Just keep following the trail. I’m taking us towards the biggest source of magic on the ship.”

I nodded and looked around. With all the waxy stuff piled up in the corners and walls, the interior of the ship was uncomfortably like being inside the belly of a living creature. “There’s no sign of undead down here. Are we really going the right way?”

“Slicing the locks is faster than fighting our way through. Don’t worry.” Destiny moved a window into my view. “As you can see by the rad count, we’re going right into the very heart of danger.”

“And, uh, I’m still really resistant to radiation, right?” I asked, looking at the numbers with growing worry.

“Sure. I’m monitoring your vitals. They’re great. Please do not ask for specifics.”

That definitely made me worry less. The good thing was, somepony screamed and that got me to stop wondering if my liver was in the right place and start worrying about somepony else, and it is just so much easier to deal with somepony else’s problems and ignore your own. It’s a great coping mechanism and I highly recommend it.

Destiny didn’t even need to say anything. She just pointed the way and I bolted, smashing through a half-open door that was in the way and into one of the long corridors running the length of the ship. The scream cut off, and I felt a surge of magic that rattled my teeth even more than my pounding run down the deck.

In the wavering light of her horn, a barricade appeared, scrap metal and corruption stretched across the hallway.

“We need to go around!” Destiny yelled.

I lowered my head and just went for it, jumping and shielding my head with my hooves and hoping for the best. The barricade shattered, the mortar holding it together tearing like festering flesh and the steel supports pulling free. I rolled to a stop on the other side, and the wall there had totally rusted through, letting me look down into a cargo bay that had become a scene right out of Tartarus.

The cargo bay door hung open with shards of broken hull plating around it making the thing seem like a maw, and a terrible altar had been built in front of it to serve as a dinner plate. Bone and cracked stone formed a slab covered in runes with a pony tied down to it with ropy loops of black vines. Blood poured down the angled face of the pitted stone and into a wide pool that sat like a well of gore in the deck, ringed by jagged edges of steel.

The pony on the slab struggled weakly. The zebra necromancer floated just above the sea of blood and raised a long, curved knife.

“No!” I shouted.

Undead that I hadn’t even noticed hissed and turned to look at me from where they lurked around the dimly-lit room. The necromancer didn’t pause, driving the blade into the pony’s chest. Emerald light erupted from the altar, and another huge burst of magic surged out. Through the hole in the hull I saw a lance of green energy shoot down towards the ground, lurching and tracking some target I couldn’t make out from this angle. The light faded at the same time the pony went limp.

“Oh buck,” Destiny whispered. “They’re using pony souls to fuel the ship’s main weapon!”

“Please, help us!” somepony shouted. I squinted through the gloom, and the light enhancement snapped on, revealing cages in the shadows, each one just barely big enough to hold the pony inside it. There must have been a dozen of them in tattered lab coats and uniforms.

I took a shot at the necromancer to keep him busy while I figured out what I was going to do. There were a bunch of zombies lurching into motion and coming right at me, but I didn’t see anything too big or dangerous. They were at best a distraction to me, but I needed to make sure I distracted them, too. If they got smart and took a hostage or something, I’d be bucked.

The shell bounced off a wall of magic that shimmered into visibility around the altar, reaching up from the edges of the bloody ocean. The undead zebra glared at me with three empty, glowing sockets.

I flew into a zombie and used it to break my fall, splattering it across the deck and sliding in the remains, head-butting a second one hard enough to send it to the floor in a heap.

“I’ll get you out of here!” I yelled. “Hang on!”

DRACO fired another shell at the necromancer and it was rebuffed. The zebra waved at the bleeding corpse of the mare on the altar, and the air cracked open. Pure white and black light shone through from the other side and something terrible and dark crawled from the rift, spilling out onto the pony like black oil.

“Sterile thaum levels are skyrocketing!” Destiny warned. The display in front of my eyes shimmered and the colors glitched. “What is it doing?!”

“I think it’s bringing in some help,” I said, taking a step back. The corpse stood up, the darkness clinging to it and enveloping it, light twisting until it was somehow in stark negative, shadows shining bright white and her coat as black as coal where the light touched it. She grew three sizes, a cloak of ragged night surrounding her.

She opened her mouth and screamed, and the whole ship shook around us.

“What am I looking at here, Destiny?” I asked.

“I have no idea. The magical signature is similar to the pyramid, and some of the undead from Stable 83!”

“The one with the evil coal fire and tar ghosts?” I asked. “I hated that place.”

“I wasn’t a fan either. I don’t think it’s much of a threat as long as that force field is up. We can concentrate on freeing the ponies here.”

I nodded, turned away from the massive scary pony, and it immediately stepped halfway through the energy field and took a swipe at me, smashing me into the wall with force that probably should have broken a few bones.

“Ow,” I grunted. “I thought you said--”

“I was wrong!” Destiny yelled. The thing charged me, and I tried to catch it, bracing myself. It was like touching ice, cold and biting and painful. I almost lost my grip at the sudden pain of the sensation, reflexes trying to make me let go.

“I hate this!” I yelped.

“It’s getting away!” Destiny shouted. I looked up past the halo of black surrounding the creature, and I saw the necromancer floating away, looking back at me before fleeing into the dark corridors of the ship.

“Buck!” I yelled. DRACO fired at point-blank range, and the monster shimmered like I’d thrown a stone into water. I twisted my grip and let go, the sudden release of force making it run right past me and into the wall.

I kicked it in the flank and ran away.

“Destiny, you got enough magic for a fire bolt?” I asked, fleeting across the room.

“Charged and ready!” Destiny reported. I jumped on a zombie and bounced off it into the air, spreading my wings and steadying myself so she could get a bead on the creature.

“Hit it!” I shouted. Destiny fired, and the magic washed through me, a wave of heat rushing up my spine and out of my body. The bolt of crimson magic crashed into the shadow creature and it shrieked, its body collapsing in on itself. The shadows faded, and the corpse of the mare dropped to the deck, bleeding black ooze and slime in a wide puddle around it.

“That worked,” I said. “Let’s get those ponies out.”

“Thanks,” the lead mare said, rubbing her fetlocks nervously. “I think I was next.” She looked over at the mare who’d died. “When they broke into the lab we thought we were going to die, and then when they captured us… we didn’t know how much worse it could get.”

“Do you know anything about them?” I asked. “What do they want?”

“No idea,” she said. “They don’t really talk. Not to us, anyway.”

I nodded. “That figures. It’s too much to ask to have some idea about their motivations.”

“So where’s the rest of your team?” the mare asked.

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“...Okay, well, what’s the plan for getting us out of here?”

“Sorry, we didn’t think anypony was alive up here,” I said.

I saw her expression fall. “There’s no escape plan,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I, uh…” I hesitated, then got a good idea. “I know!” I pulled a few catches free and loosened the chest plate of the armor so I could reach into my pockets, pulling out a brick of circuits and crystal the size of two packs of cards. “What about this thing?”

“That’s-- that’s a TeleBuck! Where did you get that?”

“One of the scientists we rescued from the lab gave it to me,” I explained. “I don’t know how to actually use it, but…”

“It’s fine, I can program it,” she said, taking it from me and walking over to the edge of the room to look down on the city below. “I just have to guess at the distance, add in a small safety factor…” She adjusted the small jumpers and knobs on top of the device.

“Can it take all of you?” I asked.

“Yes, but the capacitors will only work for one jump,” she said. “The design goals called for one TeleBuck in each fireteam. We were going to look at replaceable spark batteries, but we couldn’t keep the talisman from draining itself dry every time.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a step back. “When you get to the ground, look for a unicorn filly in uniform. She’s in charge. She can find somewhere safe for you to shelter.”

“You’re not coming with us?”

I shook my head. “I’m not done here. I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe.”

The mare nodded but obviously didn’t want to actually change my mind. The freed ponies gathered together, holding hooves, and she set off the TeleBuck. They vanished in a twinkle of blue light, and I was alone.

“Think they made it?” I asked.

“They just used an experimental teleportation talisman, guessed at the distance, and I’m sure that wasn’t enough power for all of them,” Destiny said. “Let’s just say I’m glad we weren’t stress-testing it with them.”

I nodded.

Something moved in the corner of my eye and I spun, ready to fire DRACO.

A pony glowing with pale light stood in the darkness, not looking at me. After a moment, he turned and walked away.

“Ship’s haunted,” Destiny noted.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, following after it.

Chapter 56 - Ghost Riders in the Sky

“Do you know what’s happening?” the pony asked, looking right at me. I didn’t say anything right away, glancing behind myself. It took a moment to realize he was talking to me. “You must know something about all these alarms!”

“Sorry,” I said softly. I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the blaring siren whooping through the deck. He looked to the side and sprinted over to another pony who’d just walked in and started asking them the same thing.

I shook my head and just watched for a second. They were all young and inexperienced, in pressed uniforms with all the flash and pomp of a ceremonial unit. None of them seemed to know what was going on, and maybe that was for the best. The room was clean and outside the sky was clear and blue, and everypony running around in confusion was glowing just a little, just slightly translucent.

You’d almost think they were still alive if not for that.

I stepped out of the way of a team rushing past with a length of cable and a box of ghostly tools. That put me right up near a window, and I looked out to see a city floating in the sky, surrounded by rainbow falls and open sky, a far cry from the way things were built these days. It looked so open and peaceful.

In the middle distance I could see a few other ships circling it, not like vultures around prey, but just maintaining a perimeter.

“Is that Cloudsdale?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t the easiest place to visit, and that was before they started upping the security. Even if you could cast a cloudwalking spell, you needed help getting around or to get really good at self-levitation. The pegasus ponies liked it that way. It made them more independent from the rest of Equestria.”

“Like a nation of their own?” I guessed.

“You’re the one who grew up in that nation, you tell me.”

I shrugged in acknowledgment. I might not have learned a whole lot back in Dark Harbor but I’d made a ton of mistakes and that was nearly as good. Unsung and the others hated the Enclave, and that hate hadn’t come from nowhere. I’d seen terrible things the Enclave had done, but at the same time, there had been some good.

“Maybe the system is bad, and the way it’s being used is bad, but there are a lot of good ponies,” I said. “Someday, maybe, the good ones will stop being afraid and things will change.”

Just as I said that, the bomb went off. You already know which bomb. It’s the only one that really mattered, the first strike the Zebra made against Equestria. The ponies on the deck around me stopped what they were doing, freezing in place, most of them staring out of the armored windows at the city beyond.

A terrible, otherworldly light blazed at the heart of Cloudsdale. A bubble of flames in a color that didn’t belong in the world. In slow motion I saw the city being torn apart and the wall of fire kept coming, a tide that hit the ship, everything going white, the terrible light blinding me even through closed eyelids.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark. The ship was wrecked, like it always had been. The ponies that had been standing there, watching doom approach them, were gone. Mostly gone. Now that I knew what I was looking at I could see them. There were places where the paint wasn’t burned by that wall of fire and death. Reverse shadows showing just a little brighter and cleaner than the walls and floors around them.

“Like I said, they’re echoes,” Destiny said. “I wonder how many of them knew what was going on? In that last, helpless second when there’s no chance of survival…”

“You’re really cheery,” I mumbled.

“I’m dead, I’m allowed to be melancholy,” Destiny quipped. “Besides, you’re not much better. We’ve got a mission to do, remember?”

“Yeah, we’ve got to track down that necromancer and get the Dimension Pliers,” I sighed. “Any idea where it went? I don’t want to chase it around in circles until whatever’s holding this thing together gives up and it crashes.”

“I was getting a lot of interference while that echo was replaying,” Destiny said. “It’s sort of like an illusion created by loose energy from necromancy reacting with the lingering auras. It’s the same kind of energy I was using to track the zebra, and it was like chaff.”

“And?” I sighed.

“And now that it’s faded, I’m stalling you for time until the scan completes.” There was a beep from DRACO, and the gun’s tip moved slightly. “There we go. I’m updating the objective marker in your HUD.”

A new arrow appeared, and I started following it, trying to look at it instead of the sad horror of the tombship around me. I could just block it out, follow the little light, and try not to stumble on anything.

“I just wish I knew one thing,” Destiny said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well, I can understand why it would want to keep you from getting the Pliers. It has some connection to whatever the Black Pyramid is, and it knew you were a threat to it, so it got sent out to deal with it. That’s fine. But why not just destroy the Pliers? It would have been faster and easier.”

“I know,” I agreed. “It could have done it with this ship, just leveled the whole lab. But instead they sent a bunch of undead Steel Rangers and zombies in, and that necromancer led them right to the Pliers.”

“So it must need them for something.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like any of these guys are talkative,” I said. “Aside from the zebra leading them I’m not entirely convinced they’re more than just puppets. Even ghouls seem smarter. They’re not all there, but for some of them, you can tell they used to be ponies, you know? Like they’re just really angry and confused. The zombies are… there’s nothing pony-like about them. They’re just monsters.”

“You might be more right than you know. The third eye they bore into the ones they animate -- that’s called trepanning, and it’s the kind of thing that was done ritually for thousands of years, way back to the stone age. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to open the mind up to the spirit world, or give second sight, or whatever else the local witch doctors believed in that week.”

“I had a hole drilled in my head at high speed, and all I got out of it was brain damage and a computer in my skull,” I joked. “Maybe I should complain to somepony.”

“Sorry, spiritual awareness isn’t covered by your health insurance,” Destiny retorted. “The best I can do on your budget is calculus.”

“Ugh. Calculus.” I stepped out into a wider hallway. The arrow was pointing in one direction, but I turned and went down the corridor.

“Where are you going?” Destiny asked.

“I’ve been on so many Raptors I’m starting to learn how the corridors are actually laid out,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind if this one ends up blowing up like some of the others.”

“It’s nice when there’s no moral ambiguity,” Destiny said. “During the war, things were simple. We had a clear enemy, we knew what winning and losing looked like, and we had hope things would be over soon!”

“Those hopes did end pretty abruptly.”

“You know what I mean,” Destiny admonished. “You can count the number of ponies that accurately predicted the end of the world on your hooves.”

“I’m surprised there were any ponies at all who knew what might happen,” I said. I looked up and down the next turn in the corridor and picked a direction, trying to work out how to actually get wherever the waypoint was taking me.

“The Boss Mare was special,” Destiny said. “You would have liked her. I might not remember everything, but I remember her. She had this particular way of doing things -- she could be incredibly direct, but at the same time she was smart and careful enough that the ministries never even knew she existed.”

“Sounds like you had a crush on her,” I noted.

Destiny scoffed. “No way. I admired her, but getting a crush on her would have been like swooning for Princess Celestia.”

“And yet you still won’t tell me her name.”

“Did you know there are magical compulsions that can keep a pony from doing certain things?” Destiny asked. “It’s a totally random question. But such a geas would be a key part of any information security, along with magical methods to compartmentalize memories. Which, come to think of it, might go a long way in explaining why my memory is fragmented.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “And a geas like that, you could use it to make it so a pony wouldn’t be able to reveal certain information, even after death?”

“You’d have to be an amazing spellcaster to do that, and you’d have to have the kind of enemies that would make precautions like that worth taking.”

“Good to know,” I said. “In a purely hypothetical sense.”

“Wow. That implant must really be starting to kick in, Chamomile. I don’t think you’ve ever used the word hypothetical before.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot who had to do a lot of book reports. I think you’ll find I have a cromulent vocabulary.”

“Cromulent isn’t a word.”

“Maybe you should have read more books,” I said smugly.

“Don’t make me get a dictionary and prove you wrong,” Destiny said. “Because if you make me do that I’ll smack you with it after-- wait, the readings are shooting up again!”

“Does that mean we’re getting close?” I looked around. Would it still be on this deck? Would the corroded metal of the deck block the signal, or could it be above or below me? I wasn’t afraid to do a little demolition, but I’d still need a direction to go in.

“Yes, but--” Destiny started, and before she finished the lights turned on, lights that had been broken and hanging loose a moment ago and were now fixed and clean and shining in a clean hallway flanked with bunks on both sides, set into the wall and decorated with little knick knacks and posters just to turn the cubby-holes into something approaching a private space even more than the thin curtains separating the closed-off bunks from the hallway.

“You were about to tell me we were walking into a ghost zone?” I guessed.

“Something like that,” Destiny sighed. “Keep your eyes open. I think that reading was pretty close by but now there’s too much interference to tell.”

“Right,” I said. I would have asked her what to keep my eyes open for, but I already knew she had just as much idea about what we might find as I did.

“There you are!” Somepony called out to me. “Where have you been, Aquamarine?”

I looked to the side, where a thin pegasus with a backswept mane that looked like someone trying way too hard to look cool walked towards me.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, confused.

“Uh, yeah?” he said, rolling his eyes. “I swear I’ve been looking for you for…” he hesitated. “I don’t know. The alarms just went off but it feels like it’s been so long…”

The pegasus flickered around the edges like a faded, glitching recording before refocusing.

“Anyway, we need to get to battle stations until the yellow alert passes,” he said. “Chicken Tendies and River Ford are already there, but I had to find you.”

“Right, right,” I agreed. “Thanks. Lead the way.”

He nodded and started walking away. I followed at his heels.

“The ghost must think you’re this ‘Aquamarine’ pony,” Destiny whispered. “He must have died while he was looking for her. This could be good. If you play along it could, I don’t know, finish his unfinished business?”

“It’s not hurting anything to be nice,” I agreed quietly.

“Huh, did you say something?” the ghost asked.

“I was, uh…” I had to be clever. Well, I didn’t have to. I could just walk through him and ignore the ghost, but I needed to search the place anyway and there was no reason to cause trouble with the local spirits. “I was trying to come up with a cool nickname or callsign for you while we’re at battle stations!”

“You know the captain doesn’t like us using nicknames,” the ghost admonished. “Just call me Bomber. Or Ensign Bomber. No, wait, we’re the same rank, so using my rank would just be weird.”

“No problemo, Bomber,” I said. I patted him on the shoulder. Or sort of around the shoulder area. “Hey, did you see anyone else not at battle stations? Maybe they looked strange or were acting funny?”

“Stranger than you?” Bomber scoffed. “I don’t think that’s possible, Aqua.”

That’s when I found out what the necromancer looked like in the ghost zone. It stepped out of the shadows like they were a doorway, right behind the ghost I was following. It grabbed the spirit by the back of the neck and whispered in some terrible, blasphemous language, and when I say that I don’t mean that I’m being vaguely racist at Zebras for nor speaking Equestrian, I mean that it literally hurt to hear and even the few syllables I caught gave me a nosebleed.

I sneezed, and blood covered my vision.

“Buck!” I swore.

“Hold on, I’m trying to clean it out!” Destiny yelled. A wave of crimson magic washed over the inside of the helmet, pushing the blood away.

My vision cleared in time to see a rift open under the ghost, and something liquid and dark pour out of it like shadowy ichor, slithering up the spirit’s form. The ghost screamed obviously in awful torment. I rushed forward, trying to break it free. There was no sense of impact, just a wash of cold when I ran through where it was standing.

“Buck, right, can’t touch a ghost,” I said. I spotted the necromancer fleeing down the corridor. “Hey! You! Get back here and undo what you did!”

I got two steps down the hallway before the ghost zone flickered out, leaving the place in darkness. Pipes on the walls rattled and shook and tore themselves free, smashing into me and sending me stumbling back.

“Woah!” I gasped. “What’s going on?”

The ghost behind me wailed. I looked over my shoulder at it. It was totally enveloped by darkness, the shadows glowing and the rest the absolute black you only saw when you closed your eyes, like light and dark had been reversed on its body and it stood in an inverted spotlight.

“I don’t know what that zebra did, but I think we’re seeing poltergeist activity!” Destiny warned. A chunk of ceiling tile ripped free and smashed into the back of my head. It wasn’t dangerous, yet, but that could have knocked out a pony not wearing a helmet.

“Bomber, just calm down!” I yelled at the ghost. “I don’t know what that thing did to you, but you kept it together for two centuries! Remember? You were looking for Aquamarine?”

The ghost wailed, and the deck shook under my hooves before the steel plate shot up and smacked me under the chin hard enough to loosen teeth and spin me entirely around to land flat on my back like an idiot.

“I can see why he never found Aquamarine. She probably didn’t want to deal with him being a jerk,” I mumbled, my tongue probing my mouth. I really didn’t want to lose any teeth. I was half-sure fangs would grow in.

“I can’t track where the necromancer went,” Destiny said. “You’re going to have to do something about that ghost!”

“No problem!” I yelled, charging right at it and punching it in the snout. My hoof went right through, and then I was shoulder-deep in the darkness and something inside it grabbed me and just tossed me aside like a toy. I smashed through a rusting bulkhead and landed on my hooves, skidding to a halt.

“That’s not going to work, Chamomile! It’s not something you can just punch!” Destiny admonished. “We’re going to have to figure something else out!”

“No, we just need to try harder,” I said. “Remember the alicorn? I was able to break through its shield with just my hooves!”

“It wasn’t just your hooves. It was resonance from the thaumoframe-- of course! The same effect might work here!” Destiny paused. “Maybe. We don’t know anything about how this works. You went right through it before, so we can’t be sure.”

“We’ll need to push as much power through it as we can,” I said. “Turn off all the limiters and push it to max!”

“That could damage the fusion core but… I don’t have a better idea,” Destiny said. “Buck it. We’ll go with your plan! Let’s do it!”

Warning pop-ups appeared all over my heads-up display. I could feel the magic surging through the overlapping force fields and magical enchantments that were the real protection and strength of the Exodus armor. The thaumoframe blazed, magical circuits shining brightly. The heat was incredible, like being in a furnace, but at the same time the magic was enhancing my body, and I felt amazing!

“Here I go!” I grinned madly. It was like being on some kind of brand new drug. I charged, the air around me shimmering with heat and the glow from the overloading thaumoframe burning around me like fire. I reared back and roared, slamming my right hoof into the spirit’s head.

It screeched, distorting around me. The darkness was torn apart by my touch, the gloom blasted away and banished by the light of the magic around me.

The shadowy being vanished, leaving the glowing form of the original spirit. It looked at me, and I saw a veil of confusion and fear lift from its eyes. Bomber’s ghost whispered a silent thank you and faded away as it slumped and fell, vanishing before he could hit the deck.

The heat faded along with that feeling of invincibility.

“I can’t believe it worked,” Destiny said.

“How’s the power core?” I asked.

“We lost a few percent of the charge with that trick. If you have to do it too many more times, we’ll need to find a replacement. It was a lot of trouble getting our hooves on this one, so let’s hope you don’t have to bust any more ghosts.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That was still pretty cool, though.”

DRACO beeped.

“The interference has disappeared!” Destiny said. “I’m plotting you a course. Let’s get that necromancer and show that zebra how we do things in Equestria.”

“It’s in there, right?” I asked, looking at the door to the bridge. The dedication plaque to the ship was hung right over it. The Firefly.

“Yeah, but drink this before you go in,” Destiny said. She popped something out of the extradimensional inventory of the armor’s Vector Trap.

“Isn’t this one of the energy drinks that kid gave us back in Dark Harbor?” I asked, looking at the pink and yellow label.

Passion Energy Drink: All the Time, All the Time!

“I’m a little worried about what that stunt might have done to your body and you’ve been moving at a running pace for hours. When you bust through that bulkhead, it’s probably going to turn into a fight, and I don’t want you collapsing. Especially if you do something stupid.”

I sighed and took off the helmet, letting Destiny float free and crack open the can for me. I could do it if I really tried, but cans like that were easier for unicorns to manage. I took a careful sip.

“What does it taste like anyway?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it would just taste like metal from sitting in a can,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t. It’s more like. Hmmm… It’s so sweet that it’s kinda sickly. And there’s a weird aftertaste like vitamin pills.”

Destiny hovered closer to the can, tilting to get a better look.

“It says it’s supposed to taste like passionfruit,” she said.

“What does passionfruit taste like?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Destiny admitted. “I don’t even know if it’s a real fruit.”

“Why are you so interested anyway?”

“Mm. Ever since that simulation I’ve been… really missing being alive,” she admitted. “I thought it was enough that I could still see and hear and sometimes I could feel things, even if it was mostly magical feedback and not really feeling. It’s starting to get to me.”

“Once we’ve got this pyramid thing kicked in the teeth we’ll pop back in there,” I promised.

“No,” Destiny sighed. “If I start doing that now, it’s going to turn into never wanting to leave. Don’t get me wrong, I one hundred percent intend to come back! I just want to clean up my mess before I do so I can enjoy it without feeling guilty.”

“If you say so,” I said. “It’s important to enjoy yourself sometimes just so you don’t go crazy.”

I chugged down the rest of the drink. It really was sickly and syrupy and it had a metallic aftertaste. I hoped it wasn’t poisonous. I was starting to feel weirdly itchy and my skin was sort of crawling.

“Ready?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah.” I tossed the can aside and cracked my neck. I was definitely ready. I felt sharp and awake and some of the fatigue that had been sitting on my shoulders started to fade. Maybe I really had been dehydrated!

I grabbed Destiny and popped her back on my head, then went for the door. It was armored, ancient, and had been in bad condition even before it spent two centuries in a junkyard. Even rusted and abused, hardened steel lasted a long time, and this hadn’t been exposed directly to the elements. It was, like most pre-war construction, overbuilt and made bigger and bolder just for excess’ sake.

And just like most pre-war stuff, they’d forgotten every detail that actually mattered. The lock was a gaping hole in the bulkhead, the cheap tin and copper having long eroded away. I pulled the door open on its squealing hinges and stepped inside, feeling ready to turn a necromancer inside out.

“Alright, you bone-molesting freak!” I called out into the gloom. “I know you’re here!”

A stark monochrome light shone, a line in the center of the bridge like a door was standing there in the dark and a light had been flipped on the other side.

“Chamomile, I’m getting dimensional distortion readings!” Destiny warned. “I don’t know what it is, but the Vector Trap safety systems are picking it up!”

The line opened wider, and I saw through it into endless darkness. And the things moving in the darkness. It was only open the width of a hoof, and I only looked through it for a second, but I saw far more in that moment than should have been possible. I saw the other ships, just as twisted as this one, waiting in the depths, circling, filled with the hungry dead.

I had to look away, and I saw the necromancer, holding the Dimension Pliers. They were somewhere between a tuning fork, a power tool, and a magic wand, with wires trailing from where it had been torn away from the armature that had supported it.

“I’m not letting you bring more of those things through!” I yelled, charging the necromancer and flying right into it, grabbing the pliers. I felt the wave of dimensional distortion wash over me. It was like a shockwave trying to tear me apart and rupture every bit of tissue in my body, like a grenade had gone off right next to me.

My right hoof kept its grip, and my bones held together, and I soared through, ripping the Pliers out of the zebra’s grasp and slamming into an armored window hard enough to dislodge the blast shield shutters hanging over it.

“Got it,” I groaned.

“Chamomile, that was bad. I’m getting overpressure readings everywhere! You’re suffering from something like an advanced case of the bends because of that pressure wave.”

“Got anything in the medkit that might help?” I fiddled with the Pliers in my grip. “And put this in the Vector Trap. I can’t carry it around.”

“I… yeah. Right. Drugs now, I’ll yell at you about getting actual medical care later. Buffout should do something…” The steroid washed into my system, and the immediate pain decreased and my joints didn’t feel quite as loose.

It didn’t come a moment too soon. A bolt of greenish-purple balefire soared by my head, and I ducked to avoid a second. The zebra screeched in a way that was totally inequine, more like an insect or a machine.

“She’s mad,” I decided. I looked up, realized actually she was furious, and rolled into cover behind what had been a navigational console and was now on fire. I clutched the Pliers to my chest. “Please take this thing off my hooves, Destiny. I’m gonna end up breaking it!”

“We can’t put it in the Vector Trap until we make some adjustments for the distortion talismans,” Destiny said. “But what we can do is this…”

The weight on my back shifted, the Cryolator vanishing in a flash of light. Destiny took the Pliers carefully in her magic and moved them into place, snaking the wires into ports and adjusting a few straps, securing it in place.

“I’ve been hacking together a quick-swap system using the armor’s extradimensional storage,” Destiny explained. “I’ll explain later, and don’t try to use it with the Pliers until I’ve worked out all the bugs. Last thing we need to do is rupture the space and cause a vector flexure…”

“Right, whatever that is sounds--” Another bolt of fire hit the console. It was starting to melt. “--bad. Can you close the rift with this thing?”

“Sounds like a good test before we try it on the pyramid!”

I jumped out of cover and flew across the room - that fire splashed too much to be safe on the ground. If the necromancer was even as smart as I was, it’d just aim for my hooves and catch me in the blast radius.

All that fire made it easy to spot the necromancer in the darkness. I took aim at the zebra and fired, DRACO correcting my awful aim and putting the bullet where I intended instead of where my lack of skill tried to direct it. The shell hit it in the chest and went right through the tattered robes, one shriveled corpse, and out the other side. The zebra half-collapsed, knees nearly giving out.

“Should I be ashamed to say that this is basically exactly what I imagined the war was like?” Destiny asked. “Brave ponies striking down evil zebra witches with the fate of Equestria at stake?”

I landed on the other side of that hole in space, not wanting my back to the zebra. It looked up at me with eyes full of fire and started whispering, reaching towards the rift into the unknown. The darkness inside started moving, rippling and wiggling and oozing towards the zebra’s extended hoof.

I fired DRACO again, and the darkness surged, deflecting the shell.

“Buck! Destiny, I need this space butthole puckered tight!”

“Chamomile that’s the worst description of a portal I’ve ever heard,” Destiny said. “I’m scanning it with DRACO to get the right frequency. Just a few more seconds!”

The black mist, or goo, or whatever the shadow was actually made of surrounded the necromancer. I shouldn’t have looked right at it. I saw the zebra growing, not changing and mutating but like it had always been bigger and stronger and more powerful and that version of itself was replacing this one. That wasn’t the part that scared me.

I saw flashes of what could have been. The zebra alive, with a family. It--she as a mother, with children I knew never existed in our world, in a green place that didn’t exist. A life where the war didn’t happen. The best life she could have had. Other flashes. The zebra as a leader, as a warrior, as a sorceress, as an athlete. All of them blurred together.

The black mass stepped towards me. The vision snapped to nothing.

“Did you see that?” I asked, taking a step back.

“See what?” Destiny asked.

“Never mind!” Bolts of black fire erupted out of the shadow zebra’s sides, twisting in the air and homing in on me. DRACO was crunching numbers, the Pliers weren’t really a weapon, and I was sure I couldn’t punch them to death. I kicked down, popping a deckplate out of place and yanking it up as a shield, letting the dark flames crash into it, burning hot and cold at the same time.

“I’ve got the right frequency!” Destiny called out. “Hold on, I don’t know what this reaction is going to look like!”

I popped out of cover and the Pliers vibrated and activated, the tip glowing gold and opening up, or seeming to open. It was more like the space between the prongs of the fork-like tip bent and distorted, the device bending like rubber but not really moving at all.

The air shimmered and pulled, and the rift collapsed with the crack of a thunderbolt and the whoosh of displaced air.

“Nothing exploded?” I asked, mildly surprised.

“The whole point of getting the right frequency was making sure nothing would explode,” Destiny said. “You don’t want to know what would have happened if we’d gotten the math wrong.”

The transformed zebra necromancer charged me, slamming head first into my chest and slamming me back against the wall. It hissed something in a language I didn’t speak but I was pretty sure it was saying it was going to kill me for messing up her plans or something similar. There was only so much banter an objectively evil undead wizard could really have in the middle of a fight.

I was getting really tired of being thrown around like a toy, though. It happned in practically every fight I was in, and I was already all bruises and sore.

“Can we end this quickly?” I groaned. “I’m not up for a big fight.”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” Destiny said. She told me, and I had to admit I liked the idea. I nodded and stood up, waving to the zebra. “Hey, big girl! Over here! Come and get me!”

The zebra charged, and just as it got close, Destiny pulled a recessed yellow handle at the base of one of the bridge windows. The armored pane blasted out on exploding bolts, and a rush of decompression sucked air out into the open. The zebra couldn’t stop in time, running into me and pushing both of us into the rusted blast shutters and beyond, breaking them apart and falling into the open air.

I felt it start to levitate, and pulled DRACO’s trigger, stunning it with a point-blank exploding round and riding that horror down to the clouds below. I spread my wings at the last second, and it went right through the cloud-top, looking confused for a moment before vanishing forever. I landed softly right where it had gone through.

“Okay! Next we’re after the big one,” I said, turning to face the college. I just had to save the world. No big deal.

Chapter 58 - Collective Consciousness

I never actually lost consciousness, so that was a nice change of pace for what usually happens when I get caught in the middle of a disaster. I was floating in the darkness for… a while. But it wasn’t really darkness, not in the same way a room with no windows is dark, or a cave is dark. It wasn’t even like the magical darkness from the things I’d been fighting. It was the darkness of being blind. The silence of deafness. Total sensory deprivation, with flashes of something that could have been real or my imagination or some combination of the two.

It wasn’t peaceful or calming like meditation. It was a spiraling night terror that ended with mist clearing from my senses and me falling on my dumb face when weight returned to my hooves before I was ready at all to hold myself up.

“Must not be dead because dead ponies have more dignity than this,” I mumbled, trying to remember how to work all my limbs. Everything just felt sore and stretched past its limit.

“That wasn’t fun,” Destiny said. Her voice was wavering and distorted like it was a damaged recording. “I thought that was actually the end for me there.”

“I don’t think we’re allowed to rest,” I groaned. I stood up, my legs feeling all pins and needles like I’d slept on them wrong. I looked around, blinked, shook my head a few times, and looked around again. “This… isn’t Equestria.”

I was on top of an island, and let me tell you, if there’s anypony in the world who deserves an island vacation, it’s me. I would kill for a week off somewhere nice. The last time I’d gone to a resort it was part of a mission and I’d barely even had time to check out the buffet.

This island wasn’t my idea of a resort. For one thing, it was floating in the way that rocks absolutely shouldn’t float. There was a subtle bobbing motion under my hooves, like standing on the deck of a cloudship. It was floating in… nothing, just hanging in the air. I couldn’t see anything below but pale white mist. I kicked a pebble over the edge and it vanished into the distance, fading from view.

I looked up at the sky. The rock I was on was bright like daylight but the source was directionless, all around me, with no sun or moon. There were a lot of stars, though, bright points in a black sky that formed a dome high over the world. It gave me a disconcerting feeling. Was the air just a thin film with the void above and below?

DRACO beeped three times in alarm.

“No matches in the database,” Destiny said. “Those stars don’t match the night sky anywhere in the world. We’re not just a little lost, Chamomile, we’re extremely lost.”

I sat down. I was too sore and tired to just stand around when I needed to rest and think. “Anything on the radio?”

“Why would there be--” Destiny started. “Actually, yes. I’m getting some signals! There’s someone out there!”

“Great!” I sighed. That was good news for a change.

“...But it’s encrypted. I think it’s a military channel. I can’t decode it.”

“You know what? It’s still good news,” I said. “We can broadcast on an emergency channel or something, right? Let’s send out an SOS and just make our way towards whatever’s making the military signal. At worst they’ll be unfriendly and try to kill us.”

“I don't like that worst-case scenario but it’s better than waiting here,” Destiny agreed. “Are you going to be up for the trip?”

I spread my wings and tried taking to the air. My bones were in the right spots, but my muscles felt shredded. I struggled to gain altitude, and ended up just gliding, aiming for the next rock in the little archipelago of floating boulders and landing.

“I’m not in fighting shape,” I admitted. I was covered in small cuts from fighting the storm of razor blades Cypher Decode had become, and the lacerations I’d gotten from the cursed swords of the undead Steel Rangers ached and just seemed like they were refusing to heal. “Let me know if you see any solid ground. I don’t trust these little rocks and I could use a nap and a snack.”

DRACO beeped urgently.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I looked down at my hooves. Was it trying to warn me that the floating rock was about to turn into a falling rock?

“The radio signal we were picking up, it’s moving!” Destiny said.

“Closer or further away?”

Destiny didn’t bother answering me, because a small ship about the size of a VertiBuck flew overhead. It wasn’t like any ship I’d seen before, sleek and lightly armored with two big, coffin-shaped engines that tilted as it changed direction and thrummed with the sound of restrained power.

“That’s a BrayTech ship!” Destiny said. “It’s a modified cargo VTOL we made for the Exodus ships!”

“What’s one of your ships doing here?” I asked.

“I have no idea, but maybe they can tell us where ‘here’ actually is. Try to follow it!”

“Got it,” I said, doing what I could to shrug off my exhaustion and give chase. There was enough mist in the air that I’d lose track of it if the ship got too far away. I jumped and glided to the next island, then took to the air again without looking where I was going.

“Watch out!” Destiny warned.

I’d been looking for the ship, and I’d made the rookie mistake of pointing my eyes one direction and going the other way. I saw a yawning black maw right where I was going to set down and it was too late to pull up. All I could do was brace myself just before I hit.

It was like hitting a wall of static electricity. Everything tingled and then I was through and safe on the other side, for a very specific definition of safe that meant ‘I wasn’t being attacked in that exact moment.’”

“I didn’t think things could get stranger…” I mumbled. The world had turned dark and monochrome, with that almost total lack of color you get when you’re relying entirely on your night vision, when it’s so dark that everything has faded from the world except the barest pastel hints and your eyes strain to make out details.

“The radio signal is gone,” Destiny said. “The terrain isn’t the same, either. Is it some kind of transient dimensional layer?”

“Are you asking me?” I asked, looking around. The light was strange. There was light, as bright as a spotlight, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. It always seemed to be behind something else, hiding and leaving me standing in the long shadows of the rocks and crystals around me no matter how much I walked around the floating chunk of earth.

I spread my wings and jumped to the next boulder, but the second I went up into the air I knew something was wrong. The armor was suddenly heavy, just dead metal wrapped around me like ballast.

“Woah!” I gasped, slamming too hard into the ground and rolling to a stop in a cloud of dust. “What the heck?”

“This place is flooded with sterile thaums,” Destiny said. “It’s eroding the T-fields that make the armor work! We’re going to be operating at less than half power.”

“This just gets worse and worse,” I mumbled, brushing myself off.

“Why are you here?”

I turned at the voice, trying to find the source. On another floating chunk of rock, I caught movement, a dancing light that seemed to curl around a horn, bobbing just a little as the unseen pony spoke.

“There is no place less suited for the likes of you,” they said. The voice was slightly raspy, dry, echoing in this place among the forlorn rocks. It sounded like a mare, but I couldn’t make much out except a tall, spindly form hiding in the deepest shadows. “Limbo isn’t a place meant for anything alive.”

“Who are you?” I called out.

“Perhaps I am a guide. A shepherd for the lost little pony.” They laughed. “No, there are no guides here. It is a place of scheming queens and traps unsprung.”

I jumped towards the rock, but the light went out before I got there, and the unicorn I’d glimpsed was gone. There was no sign of them, just dust and shades.

A light popped up in the corner of my vision. I saw her there, on another of the isles, her horn lit up. I hadn’t even seen her move. There hadn’t been time for her to move. For a single heartbeat I saw a tall and regal form.

She continued speaking, even as she trotted away. “You walk blind above an abyss, full of trust for a friendly voice. You're playing right into her hooves.”

“Wait up!” I called out.

“Chamomile, over there!” Destiny popped up an arrow in my vision. In the other direction, there was a gateway hanging in midair, a wavering light like a reflection on rippling water and showing a world in sunlight.

“Go. Leave this place while you still can, dear squanderer,” the voice sneered. It seemed to echo from all around me, and the light of the mare’s horn had vanished. “I leave you here.”

“Where…” I muttered.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay here for too long,” Destiny said. “Reality feels… fuzzy.”

“Is fuzzy a technical term?”

“No, but if I told you the technical term you’d be paralyzed with terror.”

“Duly noted,” I said, limping for the door out. I poked it with a hoof to make sure I wasn’t going to fall apart, then ducked through.

Light and color returned to the world, and it was almost blinding.

Rotting teeth latched onto my neck, scraping against the armor.

I was being attacked by a zombie. I was sort of slow to respond to it, because I was exhausted, a little disoriented, and nopony really expects the undead to just pop up out of nowhere and get the drop on them. I tried to flick the knife out of my wrist, and I felt a dull ache, the blade refusing to move.

“Guess that’s still regrowing,” I mumbled. I was going to have to be very clever and think of another way to -- nah. I just slapped the rather fragile monster away hard enough to make it ragdoll its way right off the edge and into the abyss below us.

“We’re back! Not… back, back, but we’re where we were before,” Destiny said. “The T-fields are coming back online, and that radio signal is coming from about a kilometer ahead.”

I looked up. We were at the edge of an island large enough that I couldn’t feel it swaying in the breeze, which was an excellent start. A wall of bright silver metal bisected the valley ahead of me, a low bowl-shaped spot between ridges of rock and dotted with tall crystals polished until they were like mirrors. Strange plants grew out of the dirt, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Also there were zombies, and something worse.

Aside from the dozen or so shambling undead trying to get through the wall of shining metal and clawing at a narrow, tall door, there were three ponies cloaked in shadows standing in the center of the valley. One was huge, all squared-off brawn and muscle. The mare was tall and thin with a mane that moved in a wind I couldn’t feel. The third was shorter than the others, the average-sized pony almost like a child in comparison to them, hovering with his wings held out to his sides, perfectly still and defying gravity. They turned as one to look at me, their eyes shining like spotlights.

“Creepy,” I mumbled.

The three turned back to the wall of metal, and the largest of the three slammed his hoof into the ground. A rift opened up in the rock, splitting apart in a ragged line that hit the door the horde of zombies were pawing at. The undead were thrown back in a wave, and the door burst open. The three shadowy ponies trotted towards it. Half of their steps carried them forward with unnatural bursts of speed, like they were skipping ahead, blinking from one step to the next.

I watched them go. The whole thing had only taken a few seconds, but I hadn’t been able to move or breathe.

“You know, we could just try waiting here and shooting flares,” Destiny suggested. “The ship might turn around and come to see what’s going on.”

“That would be the smart thing,” I agreed. I looked at the zombies. The shockwave hadn’t left them in any real kind of fighting shape. I used DRACO to finish off the last few that were still moving. I shouldn’t have wasted the ammunition, but I wasn’t feeling up to stepping on them.

“Ah. So we’re not doing that, then?” she asked.

“I hate to say it, but there are two problems with the smart plan. First, if I was one of the ponies on the other side of that wall, I wouldn’t want to come out here in case those flares were some kind of trick. Second, even if it’s not a trick, they’re about to be up to their withers in trouble.”

“And you want to save them.”

“In my condition? No, I’m just hoping when I do something stupid there’s somepony around to scrape me up off the ground.”

I braced myself and stepped through the doorway. I’d thought it was just dark inside, but static washed over me, and I was immediately enveloped in inky black.

I shivered. It was sort of cold, but in the way it gets in the spring and fall, when the chill hasn’t crept into the bones in the world.

“Which way do we go?” Destiny asked.

“Oh yeah, ask me,” I mumbled. I squinted through the darkness. “Our best bet is probably to just go forward and hope for the best. We’ll try to find another one of those doorways back to the other world.”

“I’ve got an idea. I think if I just…” The Dimension Pliers vibrated, then stopped, then started vibrating again at a different frequency. “I’m sure you know this already, but speakers and microphones are broadly built in the same way. They’re both a piezoelectric crystal and rectifiers and a current, broadly speaking. One is optimized to turn vibrations into electricity and the other turns electricity into vibrations, but--”

“Please, Destiny, I’m slowly dying, but not that slowly.”

“I’m reconfiguring the Pliers to work as a directional antenna to search for topological defects in space-time.”

I nodded, satisfied. “I didn’t understand that at all, so that means it’s advanced science and I trust it implicitly.”

Destiny sighed. “I’ll just take it as a compliment.”

I walked forward carefully. I couldn’t really see the floor under my hooves, and no amount of image processing from the armor’s HUD was helping with that. I made my way forward until I saw that obscured light again through a break in the walls around me. I stepped out into the half-light and looked around at what surrounded me. There were columns and twists of cloud into partly-dissolved cloud houses, withered plants covering the ground and cracking under my hooves like charcoal, and deep cracks in the rock.

“Is it just me or does this look like the end of the world?” I asked.

The ground rumbled. I stepped back in alarm and bumped into something. I looked over my shoulder already knowing what I’d find there. The huge shadow pony was standing there silently, staring at me with those big spotlight eyes blazing stark white.

“...Yo,” I said. “How’s it hanging?”

It reared up and slammed down onto the ground, and the cracks already in the rock split apart. Heat welled up around me, and I stumbled into the chasm before I could catch myself.

“Buck!” I swore, spreading my wings, but because I was stupid and clumsy I didn’t do it evenly and my dumb butt swerved into the wall and smacked into it hard. I scrabbled for a grip on the rock and it crumbled in my hooves like sand. I slid more than halfway down the rift before I grabbed onto something solid enough to stop me. The rocks were hot, a mix of volcanic glass and black charred stone, and there should have been magma below me, but everything just faded into mist.

“Are you okay?” Destiny asked.

“I really don’t want to be one of the very few pegasus ponies who fell to their deaths,” I groaned. “Can you do anything about the armor losing power?”

“The best I can do is divert everything to weight reduction, but you’re going to have to fly back up there on your own.” I felt the weight of the armor pull slightly away from my shoulders, still present but less like a metal coffin strapped around me.

“Got anything that’ll help with that?” I asked.

“We’re out of almost everything. Maybe Mint-Als? They won’t actually help but they always improved my mood when I was feeling down.”

“Maybe later,” I sighed, bracing myself and jumping, catching one of the stray thermals rising out of the rift and struggling to fly. I’d swear it wasn’t just my exhaustion. It felt like something was robbing lift from my wings. I barely made it. Sweat dripped down my neck, and I tried to find the huge pony that had tried to drop me into the abyss.

There was no sign of him. He’d vanished the same way he’d appeared. A chill ran down my spine.

“What was that?” I asked. It hadn’t just been my imagination. Some sixth sense was trying really hard to warn me that I was in a ton of danger.

The air vibrated, like a storm surge ahead of an oncoming typhoon. Notes followed after it, somepony singing, soft and mournful and-- I felt my heart skip, and I stumbled.

“Something’s wrong,” I gasped. My heart wasn’t cooperating. I felt it falling into a rhythm on its own, rebelling against my body’s demands like it had a mind of its own. It took me a few pained moments to realize what was happening. “The song…”

“Your heart is being forced into the same rhythm as the song,” Destiny said. “Stay calm, you’re going to be okay.”

I was not going to be okay. I could feel it and hear it happening at the same time. The song was slowing moment by moment. I had to stop whoever was singing before they stopped and my heart stopped along with it.

I spotted her high above me, standing on a tiny floating stone barely large enough to hold her. It was the lanky unicorn I’d seen, her mane flowing around her while she softly chanted that deadly dirge.

DRACO locked onto her, firing without even bothering waiting for my trigger pull. A bolt of lightning crashed through the air between us at the same time, and the shot never landed.

“What the buck?” I swore. I looked up. The smallest of the three shadow ponies was flying high in the air, gathering light around his hooves for another blast. “Did he shoot down my bullet?!”

I threw myself back, very nearly doing a cool backflip out of the way of a deadly thunderbolt. I did manage the part where I got out of the way, but my breath caught in my throat halfway through the landing and I ended up rolling head over hooves in the dust.

“Chamomile, we don’t have time to fight them,” Destiny said. “I’ve got a fix on a possible exit. You need to leave!”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I agreed. Destiny gave me an arrow and I took to the air, kicking off and struggling against my own failing body. The song echoed through the empty space around me, and my lungs were burning. It was worse than when I’d visited the Graywings in their home at the edge of space. I couldn’t get enough air no matter how hard and fast I tried to suck in air. My vision was going dark around the edges.

“Just a little more!” Destiny encouraged me. “You can do it! Do you see it?”

I couldn’t see anything. No, that wasn’t it. I couldn’t focus. There were rocks and a blur of light and dark around me and I couldn’t process it. I was dizzy and disoriented and all I could do was focus on one thing, and I put all my trust in that marker Destiny was shining into my HUD.

I glanced off a floating boulder, the tips of my hooves and wings going numb.

Time seemed to flow like sludge around me.

The marker blinked and got bigger, and just as everything was crashing down, the world turned white and bright and warm.

I gasped and came back to full consciousness, my chest as sore as when Four had stomped my ribs into powder.

“Oh buck, did we make it?” I rasped. We were in something like a garden, and I was lying on a path of flat, hexagonal stones. Plants moved in the soft breeze around us, diffuse light shining through the leaves.

“You’re okay!” Destiny sounded relieved. “Your heart completely stopped, and I thought… I was worried you were…”

“Not yet, I assured her. “That was too close.”

“Just rest for a little while,” Destiny said. “How about I get you a drink and a snack?”

“Mmph.” She was acting like a worried mom. Not my mom, but a theoretical, better mom. “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea.”

Destiny detached the helmet and floated up to give me a critical look. I had to imagine I wasn’t looking great. I’d coughed up blood a few times and hadn’t even had a chance to wash my face. She didn’t say anything, and that got me even more worried. She popped a bottle of water out of the armor and held it to my mouth, helping me drink. It was tepid and tasted stagnant in the way water did when it’d been bottled for a long time, but it got the lingering taste of iron out of my mouth.

I sat there for a minute or two just getting back to normal. The darkness at the edges of my vision faded and the feeling of imminent death faded to a background soreness.

“Not doing that again,” I said, my voice rough. I coughed and cleared my throat. “We’re staying away from those dark spots.”

“Agreed,” Destiny said. “I want you to take a look at something.”

She floated up a delicate silver-colored plant. No, not silver-colored. It was actually silver, shining in the light with black, glossy leaves traced with metallic filigree.

“No pony made that,” I said. “It grew.”

Destiny bobbed in agreement. “It’s SIVA. It’s not dangerous like the random growths that were in the wreckage of the Exodus Blue, but this whole place is being held together by it. This is some kind of low-power photovoltaic cell. Passive energy collection. None of these are real plants.”

“I guess we found one of the other ships,” I said. “It must have ended up here. Wherever here actually is.” I looked around again. It was pleasant here. Maybe escaping death was just making me appreciate what was around me. I stood up and walked over to a crystal monolith standing between two silvery ferns. The surface was polished to a mirror finish, and I could see myself. I looked like I was somewhere between hung over and dead. I splashed the last of the water from the bottle on my face and wiped off some of the grime and dried blood.

“I’m hopeful we can figure that out,” Destiny said. “The Exodus White would have everything we need to learn where we are, what’s happening, and how to get back to Equestria.”

I nodded. “And we know it can be done because parts from the White ended up in that old Ministry bunker.”

“Exactly. We disabled the pyramid, but we’ve got the Pliers if we need to tear a hole in space and close it behind us. It’s just not a good idea to play around with that until we know what we’re doing.”

DRACO beeped while I was in the middle of chewing my way through a pre-war emergency ration bar. I tried to swallow rancid peanut butter as quickly as I could, but my tongue was still tied when the message popped up on the gun’s screen.

“That ship is right ahead of us,” Destiny read. “If they’re friendly…”

“Can’t be less friendly than the ponies we just met,” I said, wiping my lips. “Let’s leave the helmet off. I might need to show them a friendly face to convince them I’m not undead.” I gave myself a quick look-over in the reflection of the crystal to make sure that wasn’t a self-defeating idea and tried to fix my mane a little before giving up on it.

With some sugar and water in me I felt slightly better. I wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent, but anything was better than literally having my heart seize up in my chest.

“This has to be a deliberate path,” Destiny said. The hexagonal stones of the garden walkway kept going off the edge, floating close together like a slightly unstable disjointed staircase leading to a half-finished structure on the next island. It was like a sketch that somepony had started drawing and then stopped working on, empty walls and windows too finished to be in the middle of construction but not adding up to anything except suggestions of a larger shape.

The small transport hovered halfway inside the structure, up near the second or third floor. I approached cautiously, expecting a barrage of bolts at any moment. It didn’t look as heavily armed or armored as a VertiBuck but underestimating things had almost killed me too many times.

“Hello?” I called out loudly. “Is anypony there? I’m not from around here but I promise I mean no… harm?” I’d almost stumbled on something in the silvery grass. A zombie was lying there, the head half blown off. It wasn’t easy to tell with the undead, but I was pretty sure this had been done recently.

“There are more over here,” Destiny said. “It looks like we missed the action.”

“I don’t see anypony who isn’t a zombie,” I said. “I guess they won?”

“The ship is still here, so they’ll have to come back for it at some point,” Destiny said. She looked up at it. I followed her gaze. “Never thought I’d see one of those again. They were designed as a kind of shuttle, so the Exodus ships could send teams down to scout landing sites.”

“It’s a nice little ship,” I said.

“My brother designed it,” Destiny said, her tone souring. “He was a good engineer, until he went crazy.”

I sat down, getting the weight off my hooves. “Sorry.”

“So am I. I should have seen it coming. Some of the contracts he made, the ponies he talked to…” She shook herself. “Two hundred years too late.”

I looked around. “Hey, uh…”

“I know. Nothing I could do.”

“Actually I was gonna ask if you think any of these plants are edible.”

“Chamomile, they’re made of micromachines, spun metal, and silicon. They’re not even really plants!”

I looked at the grass and whined a little. My stomach rumbled. I was hungry. Probably because I was healing, and that took a lot of energy. It hadn’t even been all that long since I’d had to regrow a whole skeleton.

A laser hit the dirt at my hooves.

“Don’t move!” Somepony ordered. “Hooves where I can see them!”

“I don’t want any trouble!” I said. “But, um… do you want me to raise my hooves, or stay still? I can’t do both.”

Three ponies in armored flight suits surrounded me, their faces totally obscured by visored helmets and rebreathers. I held up my hooves, but very slowly. The armor they wore wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. It was mostly dark purple, the fabric having a weird sheen to it like solid rainbow or metal fibers.

“How did you get here?” one of them demanded. There was something familiar about their rifles. I’d seen them before, the curved, almost organic shapes.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Would you believe I fell through a portal?”

“She’s not undead,” one of the others said, lowering his rifle slightly. “What do we do with her?”

“We don’t have standing orders for anything like this,” the first one said.

“There’s only one thing to do, and both of you know it,” the third pony said firmly. “If she came here it might mean others could, too.” He must have been in charge, because he started giving orders. He pointed at the first pony. “You go radio this in.”

“I promise, I didn’t come here on purpose, and I don’t want trouble,” I said.

“You and your floating friend can explain it to the Queen,” the pony said. He nodded to the other pony, and a net was thrown over Destiny, dragging her down.

“Hey!” Destiny protested.

I reached for her and a shot went just past my nose. I froze.

The armored pony motioned towards the docked ship. “Stand up. Let’s go.”

I stood slowly, not wanting to get shot.

“The Queen will know what to do with you,” the leader said. He took off his helmet, revealing a brand new kind of horror. Glowing blue eyes and chitin where fur should have been, glaring at me like I was the strange one. “She always knows what to do.”

“Why can’t things ever be simple?” I groaned.

Chapter 59: A Little Piece of Heaven

“Changelings?”

I’d been stripped out of my armor and put in a prison cell. It was a pretty sturdy one, too. That didn’t mean I couldn’t break out if I tried, but it would take a little while and I’d have to use enough effort that I’d be hard-pressed to pretend it was an accident and I’d tripped and fallen and broken down the door.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t know about them,” Destiny said. She was in a much smaller cage, basically a birdcage barely large enough for the floating helmet. I had no idea where they’d even gotten it. “They were pretty obscure even in my time.”

The cot was pretty well-made. The frame was a single piece of contoured metal, and the padding seemed brand-new. Maybe they hadn’t needed to take prisoners before.

“When I was a filly living in Canterlot, they attacked during Princess Cadance’s wedding, and there was sort of a big thing, and…” Destiny shrugged, in a sort of head-only motion that was mostly just implied. “I was too young to really understand what was going on, but I remember the scary bug ponies.”

“They’re not that scary,” I said. “They seem kind of like anypony else, except buzzier.”

“That’s because it takes a lot to scare you. To ponies before the war, Changelings were terrifying. For weeks, everypony accused everypony else of being a changeling imposter! See, they could use magic to change shape to look like anypony. Thus the name.”

“So anypony acting strange had obviously been replaced.”

“You got it. But then they just… didn’t attack again, for a long time. Ponies sort of forgot about them for a while. The war was just so much more important.”

“And now they’re here,” I said.

“I don’t know how they found the Exodus White or what they’re doing, but we need to be very careful,” Destiny warned me. “They eat love.”

“Kinky,” I said. “Should I get some extra electrolytes so I don’t get dehydrated or--”

“Not that way! They consume emotional energy. It’s a magic thing. Don’t ask me to explain it, literally nopony ever bothered studying it, not even Princess Cadance. I don’t think they can drain me, but you might look like a nice little meal.”

“I think I’d prefer kinky to weird magic,” I groaned, lying down and trying to get comfortable. I still felt like garbage, but at least I was garbage on a soft bed and not on the rocks.

“I’m worried about the Queen,” Destiny said quietly. “I only heard rumors, but they say the Changeling Queen defeated Celestia in single combat during that first invasion. I have no idea how she could still be alive, but… there’s no way you can beat her.”

“I don’t think it’d be a good idea to even try,” I sighed and closed my eyes. “Changeling or not, they can talk and didn’t immediately try to kill us. That practically makes them our best friends right now.”

“Good point,” Destiny conceded. “You were able to make friends with the Zebra, maybe you can do the same for the bugs.”

“That’s the plan.” I tried to get comfortable. The ache made it hard to rest. “We’re going to cooperate and not make things worse for ourselves.”

“That’s good,” a new voice said. I opened my eyes and found a white mare standing on the other side of my cell. She had a dark brown mane and glasses that shimmered with a rainbow finish on the lenses.

“Hello?” I tried.

She smiled. “Hello. I’m Raven. I came here to investigate your identities before your appearance before the Queen.”

“Well, I’m Chamomile.” I held a hoof to my chest, then pointed at Destiny. “She’s Destiny. We’re not from around here.”

“Yes, that’s obvious,” Raven agreed. “You wouldn’t happen to be Destiny Bray, would you?” She turned to address the small birdcage.

“I… am. How did you know that?”

“That armor matches some designs in the database and has several elements common to BrayTech designs,” Raven explained. “Can you confirm your identity with your personal security code?”

“My command code is Destiny-Pi-1-1-Alpha,” Destiny said. “If you’re planning on using it for something, it’s not going to work unless you have my biometrics, and I’m currently lacking in biology.”

“No, that’s fine,” Raven said. Her smile grew. “I’m very glad to see you again, even like this.”

“Again?” Destiny asked, taken aback.

“I apologize, but I am not authorized to give any information at this time until the Queen has had a chance to interview you herself,” Raven said. “But now I know I can vouch for you. Can you tell me your relationship with this mare?”

She motioned to me.

“Hey, I can speak for myself,” I interrupted. “I’m Destiny’s best friend. We’ve been traveling together for months.”

“Chamomile can be trusted with anything you’d tell me,” Destiny said. “I trust her implicitly.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Raven said. “I’ll tell the Queen. In the meantime, while I’m not authorized to give you information, you’re clearly injured, Chamomile. Can I offer you a healing potion?”

“I would absolutely love a few,” I said.

Raven nodded and reached back into her saddlebags and produced a slim vial, passing it to me through the bars of the cell. I popped it open and swallowed. If they were going to drug or poison me, it was better to get it over with now, and something about the mare made me want to think she wouldn’t do that. She gave off good vibes, for lack of a better term.

The potion tasted like chalky berries, and my aches and pains immediately faded. The internal bleeding turned into regular blood being where it was supposed to be, and the trickle of external bleeding finally stopped, the nasty cut on my shoulder scarring over.

“Do you need another?” Raven asked.

“That was a big help,” I said. “Thanks a bunch.”

She nodded. “Here’s some soap and a manebursh so you can clean up a little before your meeting.” Raven produced a heavily-scented bar of soap and a sturdy plastic brush, pushing them through the bars. “I’m sure you want a shower, but that will have to wait for approval for you to be treated as a guest instead of a prisoner.”

“If you’re giving prisoners medical treatment and soap, you’re already the most civilized ponies I’ve met in ages,” I assured her. “I’ll try not to look like a total disaster when we meet your Queen.”

Raven smiled and bowed slightly. “I’ll give you a few minutes to get cleaned up.”

I felt much more like myself by the time I was being led to the throne room. It wasn’t at gunpoint, exactly, but the guards were all very much armed and politely not pointing them at us with stances that said their aim could be adjusted to include me at a moment’s notice.

“We need to be polite,” Destiny whispered, floating next to my head. “I doubt the Changeling Queen likes ponies much.”

“You say that, but half of the ponies I’ve seen have been, well, ponies,” I said. I glanced down a hallway. Ponies with glittering coats spoke in whispers, at least equal in number to the changelings that spoke to them or stalked the hallways.

“Changelings can disguise themselves,” Destiny reminded me. “Don’t trust your eyes! She’s probably going to be holding a long grudge against Equestria after what happened.”

“The Canterlot thing?” I asked. I checked myself in one of the mirrors. They’d built most of the castle using crystal where other ponies might use masonry, but it was somehow grown in place, even overgrown around some edges, in a sort of artful, wild way, alive but maintained like a stone garden.

“I’m sure that wasn’t a great day, but no. The Queen had a grudge against Princess Cadance. One of those lifelong nemesis sort of deals. There were all sorts of little plots but the Empire was technically independent and after the War started they tried to distance themselves from Equestria politically to remain neutral. Princess Cadance had a foal, and a few years later… the Changelings decided attacking the foal was the best way to get at Cadance.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” I said. “Even I know that’s a bad plan!”

“I’m sure you can guess what happened next.”

“Princess Cadance brought down the hammer,” I said, absolutely sure that the wrath of an angry parent was totally eclipsed by the wrath of an immortal, all-powerful parent and ruler of an Empire.

“No. Princess Cadance was trying to negotiate. She was the princess of love, Chamomile. She wasn’t much of a fighter. What happened was that the changelings had abducted Princess Flurry Heart on her thirteenth birthday and she wasn’t very happy about it.”

“...When you say not happy…?”

“A bigger body count than the majority of battles in the war, and almost all of the casualties were on one side. We all thought the Queen was dead after that, but I guess we were wrong.”

“Maybe she got blasted all the way here,” I said. “I really hope this isn’t the afterlife because if it is, it sucks eggs.”

“Just try to be polite and don’t trust anything she says,” Destiny cautioned me. “Remember they can sense emotions, so whatever you do, show no fear. Just be a grey rock.”

“Got it,” I said. “No fear.”

The doors ahead of us were made of silver filigree, most of the framework open like heavy metal lace. The guards ahead of us stood at attention and pulled them open. Inside, the room was dark, set up more like the CIC room onboard a warship than a meeting room. Ponies and changelings (or maybe all changelings, not like I could tell) were gathered around a number of circular tables displaying magical projections of maps, graphs, and wireframe models, engaged in quiet discussion.

It was still a throne room, though. In the center, half-surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped bank of consoles, was a throne twice as large as a normal pony might need, carved out of glittering diamond and set with a plush black velvet seat and back.

Raven stepped out from another entrance, this one with curtains over the doorway.

“Announcing her Highness, Queen Flurry Heart,” she called out. The changelings and ponies at the consoles and tables stood up.

“Oh buck, oh buck,” Destiny whispered. “I was wrong. It’s not the Changeling Queen! Kneel, Chamomile!”

“What?”

“Just do it!” Destiny hissed, lowering herself, the helmet descending to the floor. I awkwardly knelt down. “We’re going to be lucky to get out of this alive!”

The curtains parted with a touch of multicolored magic, and she stepped out. I’d seen an alicorn before, briefly, on the surface. She’d been regal and haughty and strong enough to send chills down my spine.

Queen Flurry Heart stepped forward and I could feel my soul screaming at me that this wasn’t at all the same kind of being. Flurry Heart was an oncoming storm. She was a force of nature given flesh. I couldn’t meet her gaze, and she seemed so much more real and alive than the rest of us. I’d swear gravity itself changed for her, recentering itself around her, putting Flurry Heart at the center and apex of all things.

“You’re afraid of the changelings,” Queen Flurry Heart said, settling down on her throne casually. “There’s no need. These ones are mine.”

“I’m so sorry for intruding,” Destiny said quickly. “We don’t even know how we ended up here--”

“Destiny Bray,” Flurry Heart said firmly. Her voice softened. “Do I inspire such terror in you? It has been so long since we last met, and both of us have changed. I recall you being somewhat taller. Or perhaps I’m the one who has grown?”

She chuckled at her little joke.

“And you’ve brought a friend. A friend of yours is a friend of mine, I should hope. Welcome to the Exodus White, and to Limbo. It is a place between places and if you have come here without meaning to, you are indeed very lost, and you have my sympathy.”

“Limbo?” I asked, daring to look up a little. Flurry Heart was sitting back, with her rear hooves kicked up on the consoles in front of her.

“Yes,” Flurry Heart said. “This is a place of the banished. The unfinished corner of the universe that creation never reached. It is where things go when they are truly and utterly expelled from the world. It is where the Crystal Empire went for a thousand years, and it is where I sent the Exodus White when all other options were expired.”

“You sent the whole ship here?” I asked. I’d seen the Exodus ships. They were massive, more like floating cities than ships. Even Thunderhead-class cloudships were dwarfed by the flying wings.

“It is not such an impressive feat as it sounds. Even Sombra was able to manage such a banishment.” Flurry Heart waved a hoof dismissively. “It was necessary to protect those under my care. Crystal ponies and changelings alike.”

Destiny floated up a little. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see you. When they said they had a Queen, I assumed…”

“You assumed it would be Chrysalis,” Flurry Heart finished for her. “A natural thought. No. They serve me. I defeated their old Queen, and they are loyal and valued friends. Perhaps I can calm your worried soul -- you’ve seen the crystal mirrors?” She motioned to the walls. “They reflect the truth. Amygdala?”

Flurry Heart motioned, and one of the guards stepped over next to a mirror and erupted in green fire, transforming into… me.

“Look into the mirror,” Flurry Heart said. The changeling looked like me, but its reflection still showed a chitin-covered insect-horse. “I trust them, but I prefer to trust and also have assurances than rely on trust alone.”

“Wild,” I whispered. The changeling turned back, shaking itself off like it had done something unpleasant.

“Tell me how you came here,” Flurry Heart said. “It has been some time since I had news from the outside that didn’t come from a single rather disgruntled source.”

I let Destiny do the talking for a while, and sat on the side with Raven. She passed me another healing potion and I sipped at it.

“Thanks again,” I said. “I was in pretty bad shape. Usually I bounce right back, but…”

“I’m just happy to help,” Raven said. She looked down at my right leg. The carapace was still torn apart where a Steel Ranger had cut through it. She motioned for me to lift my leg and held it in her hooves, taking a closer look. “May I?” she asked.

“I don’t mind if you look,” I said. “Healing potions don’t really seem to be helping it. I don’t know if it has to heal naturally or…” I trailed off when she kissed the edge of the wound and silver liquid flowed into it, the ragged edges stitching together and healing.

Raven pulled back and gave it a closer look. “Please let me know if I need to adjust anything. This seems like it was grown in situ, so no blueprints are available.”

I blinked and flexed my right forehoof. “No, uh, you got it right… but how did you do that?”

“It’s well within my abilities,” Raven said with a smile. She let go of my hoof. “I am the Exodus White’s SIVA Core. My primary functions are to mend and defend.”

“You’re the-- but the other cores were… big dragon things!”

“They must have been malfunctioning,” Raven said. “I can tell you’ve had exposure to micromachines from the Exodus Blue and Exodus Green. I’m sorry if you had a poor user experience with them.”

I sighed. “Well this makes things awkward. You’ve been listening to what Destiny said about the other ships, right?”

“Yes. And that your mother would probably want to kill and eat me,” Raven said. “I hope you don’t intend to destroy me. I wouldn’t fight you, but the ponies here depend on me.”

I weighed it in my head. It was a faint danger, having her here. But Mom couldn’t get here even if she tried, and she wasn’t malfunctioning or hurting anypony. “Nah,” I decided. “You seem cool. If my mom shows up your Queen can probably blow her away and keep you safe.”

Raven smiled. “I believe she could.”

“Chamomile,” Queen Flurry Heart said. She tilted her head to gaze at me, her eyes seeming to glow in the uneven light of the throne room. “Destiny Bray tells me she gave you her augment.”

“The one in my brain?” I asked. Flurry Heart inclined her head a fraction more in a slight nod. “Yeah. I got shot in the head and she saved my life with it.”

“It is quite precious cargo you carry,” she said. “Do you know what it was designed to do?”

“Make her smarter?” I guessed. “It made me good at math.”

Flurry Heart smiled slightly. “On the surface, yes. But it also made her immune to the mind-reading spells of the Ministries. It made it safe for her to deal with them.”

“I thought there was some kind of magical geas?” I asked, looking at Destiny.

“It’s always better to have a backup,” Destiny said.

“Her most precious memories and secrets were stored away on it, beyond the reach of those that would try to take them from her. It was so effective, it made her all but immune to spells that affect the mind.”

“That’s why Cube couldn’t read my thoughts…” I mumbled. “And if the codes are still on it… that’s why I knew the access code for Kulaas!”

“Indeed,” Flurry Heart said.

“But why would she need to hide stuff from the Ministries?” I asked.

Flurry Heart laughed. “Did she not tell you?” Flurry Heart asked, leaning her chin against her hoof. “Her grand game against the Ministries? Her mirror-match pitting pawn against pawn, knight against knight, princess against student?”

I shook my head.

“I see,” Flurry Heart said, smiling. She looked at Destiny. “I am the breaker of all things but I will not shatter your secret. You must decide if it is worth anything, two centuries past expiration. Do you wish it to be one more mystery that passes along with all those who knew the answer, or will you go back on your word so you can reveal how clever you are with your grand hoax?”

“I… I’ll tell her when I can,” Destiny said quietly.

“It may come to nothing, or it may save both of you,” Flurry Heart said. “Secrets are things that live in the dark, and there is too much darkness encroaching on this last bastion already. I believe you have seen some of it.”

“The undead, and those… zones of darkness.”

“Yes. We call them Eclipsed Places.” Flurry Heart stood up. “I ask you for your aid to break the curse that has taken hold of my city. Will you help me, Chamomile?”

I looked around. “I mean… sure.” I shrugged. “Of course I will. Who would say no?”

She smiled. “Good. Raven, I believe it is time to have a meeting with the Pillars.”

“Of course, My Queen,” Raven said, bowing.

Raven led me into the room, trailing behind the Queen and two armored guards, one a pony and the other a changeling. It was a richly appointed meeting room, with another one of those tables projecting illusions into the air over its surface. There were three ponies around it already when we walked in.

One of the ponies looked up and met my gaze and I saw his expression twist through at least five separate emotions, all of them exotic varieties of annoyance and surprise.

“You?” Star Swirl the Bearded, the most venerated unicorn of all time, asked. “If you’re here you bungled that whole pyramid mess.”

“I didn’t--”

“Bungler!” Star Swirl reproached, stomping over and picking up a scroll and hitting me with it. “You’re just lucky you slammed the door shut with your fat flank on your way inside!”

“Ah, good, you two have met,” Flurry Heart said. She walked inside and sat at the head of the table. It was a round table, and shouldn’t have had a head, but the moment the imposing alicorn sat down, that became the head of the table by default. “That saves some time.”

Star Swirl scoffed and stalked back over to the table, sitting down.

“Good day,” one of the other ponies said, a pegasus mare with the heaviest eyeliner I’d ever seen. “You must be Chamomile. Star Swirl has told us about you.”

“What Somnambula means is, he used a lot of rather impolite words that I don’t care to repeat,” the other mare said, an earth pony in a ruffled dress, her mane pulled back to keep it out of her eyes. She looked me over and frowned. “Are you sure she’s in shape to help us? There’s something about her…”

“Don’t even bother, Meadowbrook,” Star Swirl said. “She needs a mechanic, not a healer.”

“I’m not a robot,” I said.

“Just sit down,” Star Swirl said, motioning to the space next to him. I sat down, mildly annoyed. “Thankfully, we have need of somepony exactly like you.”

“Brave, resourceful, and accompanied by an old-world genius?” Destiny suggested.

“Expendable, impossible to kill, and already involved in this mess,” he corrected.

“Star Swirl,” Flurry Heart said lightly. He tensed up. “She is a valued guest. Please treat her with respect.”

“Yes, yes,” Star Swirl mumbled.

“Star Swirl has probably not explained things well,” Somnambula said. “He has an understandable dislike of repeating himself, which is ironic.”

Meadowbrook smiled. “Because of the time loops?”

“Yes, because of the bloody time loops!” Star Swirl snapped. He grumbled and leaned back, pouting. “And the worst part is, I’m the only one who can explain things properly. If I leave it to you, you’ll leave out some important details!”

Flurry Heart hummed curiously. “Please brief Destiny Bray and her companion Chamomile about the current situation. You have been complaining you need reliable help and to my estimate it has fallen into your lap. Make use of it.”

Star Swirl grimaced. “We don’t have two centuries to tell the tale, so you’ll get the abridged version. Save questions for after I’m done.”

The darkness is evil, three idiots are stuck in it, and I can’t rescue them for reasons I don’t feel like explaining to you, so you have to do it.

“Star Swirl,” Flurry Heart sighed. “Perhaps more detail than that?”

More than a thousand years ago, six of us defended what would become Equestria. A scribe and scholar followed us, and out of jealousy and anger he was twisted into a vessel for a primal force of evil. The power of his desire was strong enough that it took all six of us to sacrifice ourselves and seal ourselves and him in Limbo, for what should have been an eternity.

But that clearly didn’t last.

The darkness that had consumed him searched for any way out. Any new vessel that might house it. A jealous sister. A coven of zebra witches. Anyone and anything with a hunger large enough that they would cannibalize their own potential to feed on it. There were more and more of those as time went on.

When the Exodus White came here, we were awoken from our sleep. With the Princess’ help, we defeated the Pony of Shadows once and for all, and we went back into the world to try and save it. And that was our greatest mistake.

I’m practical. Somnambula and Meadowbrook have hope that Equestria can be rebuilt. The others… lost themselves. They’d been listening to the Darkness for centuries while we imprisoned it, and at their lowest point, I lost them to it, just like our scribe had been lost before. If we hadn’t still been bound by the same spell, they might have destroyed what few survivors the bombs hadn’t killed.

I managed to send us back to Limbo, and now we’re at a stalemate. We are divided, half taken, half not. The spell I used to banish the Pony of Shadows, the one keeping us here, will end if a majority of us decide to end it. All that requires is for one more of us to be taken.

“Worse, the spell is fragile,” Star Swirl sighed. “If one of us dies, any one of us, it will shatter. The way I used it already strained it to the limit.”

“Nice,” I said. “So you can’t go out after them.”

“Nor can I,” Flurry Heart said. “My power is destruction. I doubt I could stop them without risking their lives. There are other reasons I am reluctant to risk the ponies under my protection. Things in the dark they should not face.”

“Cool, cool,” I nodded. “So the undead are powered by the darkness?”

“Technically speaking, they’re animated by the life they could have lived,” Star Swirl said. “It’s an ontological nightmare, very quantum.” He waved a hoof. “If they escape, the damage they’ll do is incalculable. I’ve seen it. Ponies in the wasteland are so full of hunger and desire and unrealized potential that the darkness will roll over the world in a final eclipse. I’ve tried again and again and again to stop it.”

“Limbo exists outside of conventional time and space,” Somnambula said. “Star Swirl has been using it to his advantage.”

“It always ends poorly,” Star Swirl sighed. “I can only go back so far, and there are so many things I need to do to make it all work…”

“This has never happened before though, has it?” Meadowbrook asked, pointing at me.

Star Swirl looked at me. “No. Usually she dies closing the pyramid and never makes it here.”

“Glad I beat the odds on that,” I mumbled.

“I hate to admit this… but we need your help,” Star Swirl said. “All of us have been working on a ritual that will free our friends from the darkness, but there are many, many requirements. The most important part of the ritual is a totem that represents the pony we’re trying to save.”

He looked at me expectantly, raising an eyebrow.

“Rockhoof’s shovel,” I said, after a moment. “That’s why you wanted it?”

“Yes. I have reason to believe he will be the easiest to retrieve. He’s unlikely to die when subdued, he’s left a lasting mark on the world, and he shouldn’t have all that many tricks up his sleeves since he’s an earth pony.”

“You might be awful surprised about what earth ponies can do,” Mage Meadowbrook reminded him.

I shrugged. It wasn’t my place to say anything, but we’d learned in school in the Enclave that earth ponies were respectable, decent ponies, but strictly inferior to unicorns, who were themselves equal to pegasus ponies, if less industrious and ambitious.

Part of me was vaguely aware that it was propaganda, but it was propaganda I’d heard since I was a foal and that made it hard to forget.

“You know,” I said, thinking. “My first time on the surface, in that village with Rockhoof’s shovel? Those zebras knew a lot about healing and fighting the darkness. They set up these talismans in a hospital that trapped a necromancer and kept the zombies and stuff from getting away.”

Mage Meadowbrook nodded. “The zebras were some of the best healers and alchemists in the old world. They’ve been fighting the Darkness longer than Equestria existed.”

“I’m sure Star Swirl’s plan is even better,” Destiny said. I could still hear some of that hero worship in her tone. “I’d love to know what he’s got planned for us!”

“Mm…” Star Swirl closed his eyes and nodded, basking in the praise. “Naturally, I have a brilliant plan. Tracking Rockhoof is easy. Raven has been doing that.”

“Indeed,” Raven said. “SIVA micromachine veins enable a low level of vigilance across the entirety of Exodus City.” She looked at me and lowered her voice. “That’s what we call the city we built from the Exodus White’s superstructure and the landmass displaced along with it when the city was banished to Limbo.”

“My spell apparently carved out a deep crater,” Flurry Heart said, mildly amused. “I suppose even in fleeing danger, I left destruction behind me.”

“That must have been the crater next to the Exodus Green!” Destiny said. “That explains a few things.”

“Mister Rockhoof creates geomagnetic disruptions whenever he is present outside of an Eclipsed Place,” Raven said. “He causes ground fissures and local quakes, which makes it possible to discern his location even with very limited data.”

“You’ll need to fight and subdue him, without killing him,” Star Swirl said. “It shouldn’t be difficult. He’s a brute, but that’s all he is. I’d do it myself but I don’t like raising a hoof against a friend.”

Somnambula giggled. “You’d do it yourself but you know he’d tie you into a bearded bow.”

Star Swirl scoffed. “I have to come along anyway. I’ve got this,” he produced the shovel from under the table, putting it on the surface. “When he’s down, I can cast a few analysis spells to determine exactly what was done to him, then use the psychothaumic imprint left behind on this shovel, I can… well, it’s probably too complicated for you to understand.”

“I am a psychothaumic imprint,” Destiny said. “I understand perfectly well.”

“Mm.” Star Swirl hummed. “You are the brains of the operation. Essentially, everything Rockhoof is, at his core, is bound to this shovel. The enchantment on it isn’t deliberate, it’s something that exists because it’s an extension of him. An extension that remains pure and uncorrupted. It’s a hoofhold we can use to cleanse the rest.”

“He’s in pain,” Somnambula said. “If he can be shown that his efforts weren’t for nothing, he could be reasoned with. Before you resort to hurting him, try reasoning with him. If he has any control, you can talk Rockhoof down. There’s always a way.”

“And when that fails, you can hoof-wrestle him,” Star Swirl said dismissively.

Somnambula’s expression fell at that.

“The bonds between us aren’t trivial or purely forged from magic,” Somnambula said. “Saving him from the Darkness isn’t just a matter of breaking a curse.”

“I know,” Star Swirl said, raising a hoof. “I want to save him as much as you do. Working through it step-by-step and leaving my feelings out of it… that’s the only way I can get to a solution.”

“I’ve been repairing the power armor Miss Chamomile arrived in,” Raven said. “A significant number of the thaumoframe tiles were damaged or missing, and I’m fabricating replacements. Can I suggest rest until it’s finished?”

My stomach rumbled. “Think I can get some lunch, too? Or dinner? Or breakfast? Whatever’s on the menu.”

Flurry Heart inclined her head. “You were in poor health when you arrived. Rest. Eat. Let Mage Meadowbrook treat your lingering injuries. But do so quickly, because we are almost out of the time that does not flow in this place.”

Chapter 60: Lost Sector

I bit into the green sandwich. Green is a good color for food, most of the time. I wasn’t so sure a dry, sort of crumbly bread should have been that shade. It didn’t taste like anything I’d had before. I could taste salt and something vaguely vegetal like I was chewing on random grass and leaves. It barely mattered, though. Not with the spread between the two slices.

“Oh buck this is great,” I mumbled through a full mouth. “I donno what this is but it’s so good!” I took another bite, chewing slowly.

It was sweet and sticky like liquid candy, and there had to be something really weird in the mix because it made me feel relaxed and warm in the same way as the herbal healing teas the zebras had given me.

“I made it myself!” the changeling who’d given me the sandwich said, obviously excited. I hadn’t learned the trick of telling them apart yet, but she was dressed up like a maid, appropriate for serving me tea and sandwiches in a silver-toned garden. It might have been the fanciest lunch I’d ever had.

“What is it? Some kinda jam?” I asked.

“No, no, it’s honey!”

“And you... made it yourself?” I looked at it again. It was very vibrantly green, practically glowing. I’d seen how bees made honey. I was caught between violently conflicting emotions. Part of me wanted to throw the sandwich away. Part of me wanted to ask if they also made mead. Before I could resolve it, my stomach had taken control from my distracted brain and made me finish the snack.

“I’m glad you liked it,” the changeling said. She licked her lips a little, like she’d gotten a snack too.

Eh, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever eaten. “Thanks for the lunch.”

“Miss Chamomile?”

Raven waited politely at the edge of the garden clearing. She had a pushcart with her, with a familiar suit of power armor on it. I waved her in. Destiny floated along with her, following the repaired armor like a worried parent.

“I’ve completed the necessary repairs,” she said. “Some of the tiles had significant damage that the repair talisman wasn’t able to deal with. Notably a patch on the chest, the missing tiles along the left shoulder, and some additional lines of damage here, here, and here.”

Raven pointed at the spots as she explained. They matched where the undead Steel Rangers had cut me up with that cursed sword, when I’d been blasted in the chest fighting with Four on top of a cloudship, and when an abomination that was half werebear and half SIVA mutant had tried to bite off my leg.

“I left the new pauldron in place on the left side,” she said, indicating the red shoulderpad. “I thought it might have sentimental value to you.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” I said. “Thank you.”

She smiled. “I’ve also prepared a few healing potions for you, and ammunition for your weapons. I’m working on software updates to assist you and your partner, but that will take some time, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll be glad for the help if she can automate a few functions,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, I remember when you showed me all the stuff you usually have hidden off to the side,” I said. “You said the armor was kind of a test bench model, right?”

“Correct. A limited prototype run. We didn’t make more than, oh, five or six suits total, and some of those were just partial rigs to test individual systems. Nowhere near ready for the kind of combat we’ve been seeing. That's why DRACO has been such a boon. It's got its own fire control system. With Raven's help, I was able to get the weapon switching program working with the Dimension Pliers. It won't cause the suit's Vector Trap to collapse.”

Raven cleared her throat. “Additionally, Mister Star Swirl asked me to pass along a message that he is waiting, and that there is no hurry. I believe he meant it sarcastically.”

“Great,” I sighed. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Not at the moment,” Raven said. “I wish you luck in all your endeavors.”

Teleporting left a tingle down my spine and twisted my guts around. I don’t know if Limbo was just more difficult to transit magically or if Star Swirl simply wasn’t as good at it as Cube. The latter seemed more likely, but that might have been the last traces of my half-sibling pride rubbing up against the abrasive unicorn who seemed less than grateful about having me along with him.

“If there’s anything ponies have become exceptional at inventing, it’s new varieties of undead horrors,” Star Swirl said from behind me. I was following navigation markers Raven had provided, which at the moment meant working our way across trails clinging to the sides of steep cliffs.

“Have you been studying them?” Destiny asked.

“Of course I have. It’s important to know one’s enemy. There are of course categories and subcategories of the undead but the two most general classification categories are spontaneously generated undead and those created by ritual. Most of the undead in Equestria’s wasteland are ghouls animated by fallout from necromantic megaspells.”

“Balefire bombs,” Destiny suggested. “Everypony knows it’s what the zebras used.”

“Messy stuff,” Star Swirl groused. “When we had wars, they were proper ones. You’d line up your ponies, and they’d line up their ponies, and the two leaders would talk to each other and try to settle things before swords were drawn. Sometimes it even worked and nopony had to die that day.”

“What makes these undead different from the ones the bombs made?” I asked. “I know they don’t act the same. I’ve met smart ghouls that were just like any regular pony, and dumb ones that were sort of wild animals, but the zombies and stuff the zebra necromancers made… they’re not like animals. They’re monsters.”

“That’s a keen observation, and I’m surprised you could tell the difference,” Star Swirl said. “I made it long ago, of course.”

We turned around the edge of a ridge, and below us, a long bridge joined this floating isle to the next. It was beautiful and slender and already infested by the undead.

“Where do they even get all the bodies?” I mumbled. “It’s not the crew of the White, is it?”

'“There are pathways back to the world, in dark places,” Star Swirl said. “Rituals and workings and nexuses of ill portents and dark magic that turn into sinkholes leading to this place. The largest was in Hollow Shades, but since the war, since the bombs, things have only gotten worse.”

I aimed DRACO down, trying to decide where to start. Star Swirl held up a hoof to stop me.

“Wait a moment. This is a good opportunity to learn something. Behold, the most basic reanimated pony, the zombie. They’re mindless and follow basic instincts, rather like insects. Unlike the wild wasteland ghoul, they lack even the smallest traces of a soul, making them broadly similar to an animated construct.”

He picked up a stone with magic and threw it onto the bridge. The nearest zombies hissed and turned at the noise, peering towards where it had landed for a moment before turning away and resuming their aimless shambling.

“As you can see, they’re easily distracted. If there were only a few of them, we could simply cause a bit of noise and walk past them without being noticed. With this many of them, it will be better if you drop down in the middle of them while I provide fire support.”

I held up a hoof to interrupt. “Actually, from here I could use DRACO to--”

Star Swirl’s horn blazed, and my stomach twisted in an extradimensional knot. I popped out of existence and back into it right in the middle of the bridge, with a loud bang and flash of light. The undead all turned to me and ran forward, screaming and wailing.

I said some very unkind things about Star Swirl.

“Watch out!” Destiny shouted, and a wavering barrier of magical energy formed around me. A moment later, a glowing marble exploded against the ground next to my hooves, and an explosion rocked the bridge, blasting most of the undead apart at the joints and throwing the rest off the bridge entirely.

Star Swirl teleported down a moment later, looking pleased.

“There we go. That was easy enough.” He nodded with approval at the cleared bridge. “Shall we?”

“You…” I glared at him, not that he could appreciate it. “You tried to blast me with that fireball!”

“I told you I was going to provide fire support,” Star Swirl huffed. “You would have been fine even if the brains of your little operation didn’t have the wisdom and reflexes needed to protect you. You’re the bait, girl! I’m too important to die and you love risking your life.”

“Just let it go,” Destiny whispered. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s Star Swirl the Bearded!”

“He almost blew me up!” I hissed.

“Even if he’d hit you, you’ve shrugged off worse than that. It’s no big deal. Just trust him, okay?”

I sighed. “Fine, but if he blows me up again…”

“I’ll yell at him for you while you heal,” Destiny joked.

I shook my head in frustration and stomped towards the waypoint. Star Swirl had stopped ahead of me and was looking pensively at a wavering field of shadows stretched across a doorway.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“No, of course not. It’s just an ontopathogenic infection eating away at the fabric of reality,” Star Swirl grumbled. “Why would anything be wrong with that?”

“You use big words when you’re scared, huh?” I asked. “It’s okay. When I panic I start punching ponies in the snout. We all have our own coping methods.”

“I am not afraid! I am a wizard and we are never afraid!” Star Swirl snapped, before marching directly into the maw of darkness. I shrugged and walked after him, the shadows closing over us like nightfall.

“Every one of these little pocket realms is worse than the last,” Star Swirl said. He hadn’t gone far, waiting just ahead of me in the monochrome half-light. He glanced at me, then nodded off to the side. “Look at this.”

“It’s a volcanic chasm,” I said, looking down the cliff wall off to the side of the path. A hundred meters below, it ended in a field of glowing magma. “You know, I almost died fighting a huge metal dragon in something like that.”

“There can’t be any real geology here,” Destiny noted.

I spread my wings a little to feel the air. It was stagnant, even with all that heat down there. Something else worried me just as much.

“I’m not sure I can get much lift around here,” I said. “We should stay away from the edge.”

“No, of course not,” Star Swirl agreed, nodding. “Your pegasus magic is being drained just like my spellcasting. Limbo itself has loose physical laws already, and this place simplifies them even further. All the nuance is reduced to binary black and white. Literally. That’s why colors are so muted - things are either lit, or not. They absorb light, or they don’t.”

“It makes it difficult to judge distances,” I said.

“Among many other deleterious effects, yes. Magic pushes back against it a bit, so magical sources of light can still have at least some color to them, but having to push against such a twisted reality is an additional strain.”

“We noticed,” Destiny said. “This suit of armor is almost entirely reliant on telekinetic fields for motion control and weight reduction, and it’s training the fusion core an order of magnitude more just being in here.”

“Mm.” Star Swirl nodded, obviously only half-listening.

“So what’s with the lava?” I asked. “I get it’s not real or whatever, but it’s still there.”

“Rockhoof had a troubled past,” Star Swirl said. “When he was young, he was weak and sickly, an outcast among his clan forced to do menial labor to earn his keep. A volcano erupted near his village and threatened to consume them all. He saved them, miraculously. Through sheer force of will, he transformed into the biggest, strongest pony in the village, and used his shovel to dig a trench around the town for the lava to flow into.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? He just wanted it so much that he got bigger and stronger?”

Star Swirl chuckled. “More specifically, his earth pony magic finally manifested. It had been blocked when he was a foal. It reminds you of something though, doesn’t it?”

“The darkness, whatever the force is behind all this, it tried to make me an offer when I was slamming the pyramid shut. It offered to make me the best possible me.”

“It made me the same promise,” Star Swirl said. “I was offended! As if I wasn’t already the greatest wizard!”

“I panicked and punched it in the snout,” I said.

Star Swirl laughed loudly, wiping his eyes. “Yes, excellent! I wish I could have seen its expression. A terrible force of darkness with no plan about what to do if a pony smacks it in the face. Excellent!”

“You think Rockhoof didn’t just tell it to shove off,” I guessed.

Star Swirl’s expression fell. “When we went back into the world, though it was a brief trip, Rockhoof’s spirit was crushed by the idea that he couldn’t save anypony. He blamed himself. He thought if he was just a little faster, stronger, smarter…”

Star Swirl trailed off and shrugged.

I shook my head. “And it was offered to him on a silver platter.”

“He got what he asked for, but not what he needed. The Darkness makes a pony stronger and takes away their free will in return. You know noughts and crosses, yes?” He drew two parallel lines in the dust, then another two perpendicular to them, making the nine-square grid. “It’s a simple game. So simple that ponies can quickly be taught to play it perfectly. There is always a best move, and if two ponies who know what they’re doing are playing, every game ends in a tie.”

He added Xs and Os to the grid as he spoke, then wiped it all away with a hoof.

“Playing noughts and crosses perfectly means abandoning free will. Choosing anything else means you’re in a weaker position. It stops being a game and just becomes a deterministic machine.”

“Okay?” I shrugged.

“Imagine being able to do the same with chess. Playing perfectly every time. Always knowing the best move. It’s not something ponies can do, but you can imagine one of your computers doing it, working through all the possibilities and telling you the best move, every time.”

“It’s theoretically possible,” Destiny allowed. “There are a large but finite number of moves available from any position. You could, in theory, check all of them, then all the possible responses, then all the responses to that… I can’t imagine the complexity.”

“Complex, beyond ponies and our technology, but possible,” Star Swirl agreed. “Take it to the extreme. A life, perfectly lived. That’s what the Darkness offers. The assurance of making the best decision in every situation, to be the strongest and best version of yourself, all for the price of your free will. After all, your free will lets you make mistakes. Why not abandon it?”

“So we’re supposed to think that this version of Rockhoof is his very best?” I asked. “What about… I don’t know. He saved ponies before, right? He doesn’t seem interested in that anymore.”

“That’s probably what he thought he’d be doing,” Star Swirl said. “But what if the perfect game of chess means sacrificing almost all of your pieces? What if someone else, something else, got to decide what ‘perfect game’ really meant?”

Star Swirl turned and started walking down the path.

“Keep up! I need you to walk ahead of me to trip any traps!”

We stepped back into the world of light, and everything felt lighter and more alive. I took a deep breath on reflex, as if there hadn’t been enough oxygen in the eclipsed place. The path had been relatively peaceful, but also a long walk near a crumbling cliff with lava at the bottom.

Star Swirl stood next to me and took off his hat for a moment to wipe his brow.

“I’m getting too old for these long trips,” he said. “The worst part about chasing after them is that it’s often paradoxically uphill both ways.”

“We didn’t even go that far,” I said. I looked back, annoyed. It had been a mile or more in the dark, but here in the real world, we’d only ended up on the other side of that doorway.

“Unfortunately it was still needed,” Star Swirl said. He looked around. “We’re in part of the preserved structure of the Exodus White. Why would Rockhoof come here?”

“With the ship broken up it’s difficult to guess,” Destiny said. “I think this was part of a cargo hold. The cargo elevator is up ahead.”

The elevator was huge, big enough for the small ship Flurry Heart’s guards used to bring me to her home-grown crystal palace.

“Let’s take it up,” I said. “Was there any rare cargo they might be after?”

“It was Princess Flurry Heart’s personal ship,” Destiny reminded me. “We couldn’t inspect the cargo even if we wanted. They had diplomatic immunity and, well… I hate to say it but BrayTech was her first choice precisely because she found out about our ways of getting around the Ministries. If we’d pushed too hard, she could have collapsed the whole house of cards, and that meant she got everything she wanted.”

“Including a total lack of oversight,” I guessed.

“When I was younger I had Celestia and Luna as students and they were considerably less difficult to deal with,” Star Swirl said. He poked at the control panel for a moment, trying to puzzle it out. I reached past him and slammed the big red button.

The elevator was an enclosed space surrounded by metal bars and chicken wire. The doors slid open with a squeal and I stepped inside, looking at the big square platform and making sure it wasn’t going to kill us before waving him onboard.

“What was it like when you first met her?” Destiny asked.

Star Swirl pulled the door closed, and a buzzer sounded before the elevator lurched into motion and started rising up.

“Flurry Heart or Celestia?” he asked. “Because one was an overactive destructive child and the other one decided to give herself a promotion to Queen.”

The elevator shuddered. The lights flickered.

Star Swirl wrapped a shield around himself an instant before Rockhoof slammed into the platform, the impact making every emergency brake snap to attention, sparks flying where safety systems struggled to keep us from falling. I was knocked off my hooves by the sudden list towards the massive dark pony, his body radiating unearthly negative light, the shadows cast by it glowing faintly like mist at sunrise.

“I think we found him!” I yelled, firing DRACO. The round exploded against his hide, and Rockhoof turned to me, reaching back to grab a massive square-bladed axe from his side and lifting it with his mouth.

I rolled to the side, out of the way of the massive blade. It came down in a slow arc and sheared right through the elevator, lodging itself into the metal.

“Don’t shoot him!” Star Swirl shouted. “He’s my friend, you idiot!”

“It was a warning shot!” I yelled back.

“You shot him in the chest!”

“It was a very firm warning!”

“I’m switching DRACO over to flares,” Destiny said, effectively ending the discussion. “Come on, Chamomile! Don’t embarrass me in front of Star Swirl!”

Rockhoof tore the ax free and the elevator tilted, the metal squealing in protest from the strain. It came at me faster and harder than I expected, and I had no chance to consciously respond. My right hoof moved practically on its own, and the edge of the knife unfolding from my hoof met the edge of the ax and a blow that would have cut me in half turned into an impact that raised a shower of sparks and tossed me into the air. I caught myself, beating my wings hard to kill my momentum.

“Oh hey, that’s working again,” I said, sliding the knife back in and snapping it out experimentally. “I need to thank Raven next time I see her.”

“Stand down, you muscle-bound blockhead!” Star Swirl shouted. For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but then he cast a lightning spell that raked over Rockhoof’s body, staggering him for a moment. The massive dark form slammed its ax into the elevator deck and steadied himself on it. A shield of that strange negative light sprang up around it, glowing darkly and casting bright shadows. The lightning hit it again and stopped short.

Rockhoof regained his composure and swung that massive weapon at Star Swirl. I knew the unicorn’s shield wasn’t going to stop it. I could just feel it. I slammed into it from above, deflecting it down in a shower of sparks. DRACO fired a barrage of blinding flares, but they just hit the shield and deflected away, barely even serving as a distraction.

“That shield around him will stop any attack,” Star Swirl warned when I landed next to him. “It’s an absolute barrier. Of course I have a spell that should work perfectly to bring it down.”

He raised his head and fired a ball of grey magic at Rockhoof. The stallion’s spotlight-bright eyes saw it coming and he moved so quickly it was like his image stuttered, suddenly out of the path of the spell. It went past him and splashed against the elevator’s cage, landing with all the impact of a wet fart.

“Damn,” Star Swirl grumbled. “I’d like to think I can hit the broad side of a barn, but not if it teleports around!”

“I’ll get his attention, you shoot him in the back,” I said.

“Doesn’t seem very honorable,” Star Swirl muttered.

“Do you have a better idea?”

He looked up and shoved me back with a burst of magic. The ax came down between us, smashing through the metal of the cage. Star Swirl stood up on his hind legs to look over the huge blade at me.

“I didn’t say I hated the idea!” he yelled. “Get out there before he remembers how to fight properly!”

I took to the air and fired another bunch of flares, getting right in his face, or as close as I could with the shield in the way. I pressed a hoof against it, and it was like a physical mirror, pressing back at me as hard as I pushed against it. Rockhoof reached up and swatted at me, knocking me down.

I bounced against the ground, intentionally going limp and rebounding like a rubber ball into the wall.

“Ow,” I mumbled. “For the record, I did that on purpose.”

“If you were trying to get him to come after you, good work,” Destiny said. Rockhoof lunged at me, his hoof coming down in a huge stomp. I braced myself and caught it, and it was instantly obvious to me that he was way too strong for me to just stop. It was like a hydraulic press, probably tons of force. Even with everything I had, the best I could do was push it aside.

Trying to crush me had given Star Swirl enough time to get another spell together. He fired it off, and Rockhoof must have been waiting for it, because he ducked to the side with that unnatural blinking movement, leaving me right in the path.

“Hold still, I’ve got an idea!” Destiny warned me. I felt her magic surge, and she caught the glowing ball, holding onto it for just a second, the spell fizzing and sparking in her magical grasp. I could feel the energy backing up, going through both of us like an electric shock. She cried out in pain and threw the ball, the spell starting to destabilize and shatter, sending out streamers of energy when it hit Rockhoof right in the back.

The shield of strange light around him shattered, and Rockhoof stumbled, staggered by the shot.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Destiny gasped, her voice wavering and weak. My head was pounding with the start of a migraine headache.

Rockhoof jumped, hitting the wall above us and somehow finding purchase there before leaping off again, traversing the elevator shaft in a half-dozen violent bursts of motion, leaving shattered crystal and twisted metal in his wake as he fled.

I watched him go, and Star Swirl trotted up to stand next to me, panting and obviously exhausted.

“Stars and the void, that went badly,” he grumbled.

“No kidding.”

“Not a bad idea, bouncing it like that,” the wizard said. “If he hadn’t run away we might have had him there. You two are at least somewht reliable in a pinch, and that was an excellent rebound spell. You’ll need to work on stability, though. Almost tore the spell matrix apart.”

“Sorry,” Destiny said.

“Don’t apologize. It wasn’t something we’d planned. I’ll give you a few tips along the way.”

“Along the way?” I asked.

“This elevator has graduated from completely broken to a total wreck,” Star Swirl noted. “The next floor is up there and I want to conserve my magic. You’ve got wings. I assume you can also do basic math.”

I could add two and two, and they equaled me giving him a ride. I sighed and nodded.

“It really is beautiful,” Destiny said. I’d halfway expected an ambush at the top of the elevator shaft, but it just led out to a garden pathway winding along a wide ledge at the edge of the island. Filigree stems and carbon-black solar panel leaves glinted in the strange half-light of Limbo around crystal formations in a rainbow of colors.

“Is it?” Star Swirl asked. “I find it… very melancholy. These fake flowers and false ferns are all ghosts. They’re mimics in the shape of species that no longer exist. Copies with no original.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I said. “Equestria is rough but it’s not awful. I’ve been to the surface a bunch of times and it seemed sort of fine.”

“Then you haven’t seen the same parts of Equestria I have,” Star Swirl said. “Canterlot, Manehattan, practically the whole east coast. I’ve seen terrible things. All of us did. Time flows differently in Limbo -- it’s like a clock that only moves when you can see it. Things happen one after another but they’re only locally coupled.”

“Locally coupled?”

“In the real world, the passage of time happens at the same rate everywhere at once. If a minute passes in Stalliongrad, a minute has also passed in Canterlot. Here, it depends on observation. From my perspective, only a few moments passed between my spell that cast us into Limbo and the arrival of Princess Flurry Heart and her ship of wonders. To Equestria it was a baker’s dozen centuries and change.”

“That must have been exciting,” Destiny suggested.

“Oh yes. And terrifying.” Star Swirl sighed. “I feel sorry for him, you know.”

“Rockhoof?”

“Yes, but I’m talking about the first pony the darkness took, at least the first I can name. Stygian. The Pony of Shadows. He was a good friend, responsible, devoted, loyal. That’s what I thought until his jealousy overtook him. A decent pony but not really a hero, you know? No great skills or strength but he had a nose for potential and helped us uncover threats to the world. Being surrounded by our greatness was just too much for him, I suppose. He wanted to exceed us, and thought he found a way, but it just took him and used him as a host.”

“And he’s not still around.”

“Of course not. I never wanted to hurt the boy. The decision was taken out of my hooves by Flurry Heart. She hadn’t started calling herself Queen yet, but she already had a reputation. I’m sure you know about the birthday debacle.”

“She got kidnapped by changelings,” I said. “And she killed a bunch of them freeing herself.”

“That’s the sanitized version of the story, yes,” Star Swirl said.

“I didn’t want to mention the rest,” Destiny said quietly. “The Queen of the Changelings took hostages to try and compel Flurry Heart to obey.”

“Indeed. Chamomile, what would you do if your friends were taken hostage? Bray already knows what Flurry Heart decided, so asking her would be pointless.”

“I donno,” I said. “If I didn’t think I could rescue them, I wouldn’t have much choice, right? I’d have to surrender.”

“Yes. That’s the answer most ponies would give. Depending on the circumstances, maybe they’d make a heroic attempt to free their loved ones, or maybe it would be hopeless and they’d have to give up.” Star Swirl nodded. “I’d find a third option, of course, but that comes with age, talent, and experience.”

“Flurry Heart was under a lot of pressure,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t a simple decision! She had to think of her friends and family back home. The Queen probably would have hurt thousands of ponies, and Princess Cadance would have let her!”

“Flurry Heart thinks her mother was weak,” Star Swirl said. “So she took the decision out of her hooves.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“The only power the Queen had over Flurry Heart was to threaten her friends. She took that leverage away. She shot through the hostages.”

“It enabled her to break the back of the Queen’s army,” Destiny said weakly. “It kept the Empire from falling.”

“Yes, she’s had quite a while to justify herself,” Star Swirl agreed.

We walked in silence to the end of the path, which led into a sort of enclosed rock garden, with sand and artfully arranged stones around a silver gazebo. I could see the sand moving on its own, some mechanism under the surface making it look like an unseen rake was slowly working it into spirals and patterns of lines around the small boulders.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like he’s been here.”

“I assumed he’d follow the path,” Star Swirl said. “Let me take some readings--”

The world was swallowed by darkness, everything dropping into black and white around us. A chill went down my spine along with the sense of immediate danger. I grabbed Star Swirl and bolted for the gazebo, just before the grenades hit the ground where we’d been standing. Shrapnel bounced off my armor, a few sharp spikes working their way into the joints and tiny gaps between the plates.

“Damn,” Star Swirl grimaced, looking over the edge of the gazebo at the strike team of Steel Rangers that was surrounding us. “I knew things were going too well.”

Chapter 61: In The Hall of the Mountain King

A concussion grenade hit the ground next to the gazebo, and what Star Swirl had been trying to say was lost in the blast. I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing from my ears.

“What?!” I shouted.

“I said we can’t stay here!” Star Swirl yelled. “I can’t form a decent shield in this mess!” He waved a hoof at the darkness around us. “If they start remembering how to aim…”

“Just stay here!” I stood up and bolted out of the gazebo, trying to draw their fire. DRACO was tracking the Rangers. Three of them. One on top of a pile of rubble and firing those concussion grenades, the other two circling and flanking. They were definitely smarter than the rest of the undead since they’d graduated past running directly at me and screaming.

They were big targets, which would have made it really embarrassing to miss them entirely. I put the targeting reticle over the one giving covering fire and pulled the trigger for DRACO to go weapons-hot. The computer-controlled rifle minutely adjusted my rough aim and fired, launching a sputtering flare into the heavily armored knight. It bounced off the thick armor plates and scattered away.

“Destiny!” I yelled.

“Sorry, sorry!” the ghost yelped, pulling up menus in my vision and changing things. “That’s my bad! I still had it locked to flares!”

The Ranger adjusted his aim and he didn’t need any fancy targeting computer because he nailed me dead-on with a grenade. The blast threw me back, and the impact and noise overwhelmed my senses. I must have blacked out because I woke up when I hit the dusty ground in a heap of limbs.

My vision was blurry and I couldn’t read the bright red flashing text in the HUD. I was pretty sure it was bad.

“You are not dead yet, squanderer, even though you are painted in its pale colors,” a hissing, raspy voice said, echoing in my ears. “In this place, life and death are separated by a razor’s edge, and the hungry blade comes to sever your light…”

“What?” I groaned.

“You need to move!” Destiny shouted, that raspy voice suddenly gone along with some of the disorientation, uncertainty, and shock being replaced by the sharp pain of shrapnel and torn flesh. It was knitting, slowly. “The potions aren’t working like they should!”

I looked up and saw a Steel Ranger storming towards me, dragging a huge sword that left a trail in the air like it was rending the atmosphere in its way. I knew if it got to me, I’d be finished. The armor was an iron prison as I stood, heavy shackles on all my weak and bleeding limbs. The ranger lifted his sword, ready to swing it down and demand an answer from me about how I would stop the inevitable.

Light flooded back into the world, new strength supporting my failing limbs. The armor took up its own weight and more, and the healing potion kicked in, my wounds closing.

“We’re back?” Destiny asked.

I turned around to check on Star Swirl and a pack of zombies lunged at me like they’d been waiting for me to look before they attacked. I instinctively headbutted the first one, the horn on my helmet going through its eye socket and getting lodged there, leaving an undead horror blocking my vision.

More of them swarmed me, and I lashed out literally blindly, snapping my blade free and cutting through rotting flesh with one hoof, striking out at random in every direction at once and mostly hitting air, but they weren’t smart enough to not walk into a flailing limb and get pulped.

Destiny fired a bolt of magic, exploding the head stuck to my helmet and putting in her best effort to finish coating me in black and brown globs of gore.

“That was the least elegant fight I’ve ever seen,” Star Swirl said. He took off his hat and frowned at a small hole in the brim before putting it back on.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said. “I only got hit with a grenade and swarmed by the undead.”

“You’re not fine, but the shrapnel is being broken down by SIVA and most of the wounds have closed thanks to those healing potions,” Destiny corrected. “You’ll be fine with some rest.”

“You can rest when we’re done,” Star Swirl said, leaving the gazebo and walking up to me, stopping outside of the circle of gore around me. “The Darkness is trying to stall us. Rockhoof is here for some reason, and this is our chance to disrupt whatever they’re planning and save him at the same time.”

The light vanished like a goddess had flicked a switch and turned out the sun.

The sword came down. Ice flooded my veins, and the world slowed just long enough for me to react before it took off my head. My blade met the Ranger’s sword, white-hot sparks flashing for the barest instant before their light was swallowed up by the eternal gloom.

The armored undead leaned in, pressing forward, trying to break my block. DRACO beeped a warning about the other zombified rangers. I slid to the side and went low, letting the Ranger’s momentum carry him forward and past me, right into the path of the grenade that would have hit me. The Ranger’s armor was considerably less effective, shattering under the concussive force.

“Do we have actual bullets yet?” I shouted.

“Yes!” Destiny confirmed.

I spun around and pulled the trigger without aiming, hoping DRACO would know what to do. The shell cracked through the winter-quiet air and hit the second Ranger, putting another hole in his head, this one putting him back in the grave instead of pulling him out of it. The last of the knights stepped back into the open from where he’d been circling, aiming a big rotary gun at us. It started to spin.

“No you don’t!” I yelled, throwing my knife at him. It went right past Star Swirl’s head and there was a spray of sparks as it flew through the Ranger. The gun started firing, spraying wildly and at random and tilting back with recoil as the Ranger collapsed, his head going one way and body the other direction.

The blade spiraled back to me like a boomerang and clicked back into place. I sheathed it again between the bones of my forehoof.

“Was that elegant enough?” I asked.

“It was... sufficient,” Star Swirl admitted. He huffed and walked towards the far edge of the space, where the gazebo and rock garden cracked and crumbled away.

“How many drugs did you inject me with?” I whispered.

“It’d be faster to say it was one of everything,” Destiny replied quietly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it made me look good in front of your big crush.”

“I do not have a crush on Star Swirl the Bearded! I just admire him as a near-mythical hero and inventor!”

“It’s fine, Destiny. We all have a type. You like old, rude stallions, I like a mare that can beat the shit out of me.” That left Destiny sputtering and upset, and I took the opportunity to walk up next to her hero.

The edge of the platform turned into rough, natural rock, just fading smoothly from one to the other. There should have been wind, icy cold. That’s just what a pony expected around the summit we were standing on. I could dimly see a long, barren slope stretched out below us, as high as any mountain I’d ever seen. A river of lava oozed down the slope, the radiant heat dim and only warming as much as the sun on a fall day against the cool dark air.

“We’ll have to make our way down there.” Star Swirl nodded. “Can you see it, right at the foot of the mountain?”

My HUD enhanced the image, but I didn’t need it. It stood alone against the darkness like it was the only thing that existed down in that valley. Maybe it was. A small collection of rough-looking huts and houses, right in the path of the lava. It hadn’t yet reached them, but it was only a matter of time.

“I see it,” I confirmed.

“That is Rockhoof’s village. This place has been built out of his memories. Perhaps it’s keeping control of him by reminding him of his greatest triumph?” Star Swirl frowned.

DRACO popped up a display without prompting.

“I’m seeing movement,” I said. “There are ponies down there, but… they’re just shadows. I don’t think they’re really there.”

“This is good,” Star Swirl said. “Rockhoof will intervene and save them, and that means we’ll know exactly where he’ll be! We just need a safe way down… damn this place for being so bloody difficult to navigate!”

“Flying is harder here,” I said. “But I think I can glide down even with some extra weight.”

Star Swirl was about to refuse, then sighed. “Fine, but be dignified about it.”

“I specifically requested dignity,” Star Swirl said, using one hoof to keep his hat on his head while we flew.

“They wouldn’t call it a princess carry if it wasn’t dignified,” I countered.

He crossed his hooves and glared at me.

“If you don’t like it, I can let go and you can levitate yourself the rest of the way down,” I said. We both looked down at the river of lava. It wasn’t radiating anywhere near enough heat to be the real stuff, but it still wouldn’t be pleasant to fall into. I could feel on my wings that it wasn’t convecting correctly and wasn’t producing even a fraction of the extra lift it should’ve.

“Self-levitation is an incredibly niche skill,” Star Swirl said. “Why bother when I can teleport?”

“Can you teleport right now?” I asked.

“Of course not! I’d be torn apart! Or worse, I’d vanish and just never reappear!”

“Sounds like that means you should stop complaining.”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes and looked down at the village. We were just behind the volcanic flow, the glowing surge keeping ahead of us no matter how fast I went. When I slowed down, it kept pace, slowing along with us.

“It seems as though it’s going to arrive just before we do, no matter what,” he said.

“But it’s just liquid rock, right?” Destiny asked. “How can it decide to do that?”

“It’s not just magma. It’s part of a story.” Star Swirl frowned. “Where is he? He should be getting ready to save the town!”

“There!” Destiny yelled. DRACO popped up a window. Star Swirl leaned in to look at the small screen. “He’s walking into the main street!”

“Good, right,” Star Swirl nodded. “Look, you can see him digging a ditch.”

Rockhoof stomped, and the ground opened up in a wide rift right in the path of the lava. The shadow ponies around him cheered until he started pushing them into the deep ditch.

“Oh no,” Destiny whispered.

Rockhoof shoved the ponies back in when they tried to climb out, and we could only watch helplessly as the lava neared the shadows, the silhouettes panicking and silently screaming in terror.

The crest of the flowing lava broke like a wave, closing over them like a set of liquid, fiery jaws and--

The light blinded me for a moment, and the return of lift to my wings nearly sent me out of control. Star Swirl yelped and grabbed onto me tightly.

“Pull up! Pull up!” he shouted.

My vision cleared, and I saw why he was worried. We were underneath one of the floating landbergs, the mist at the bottom of the world growing thicker around us. I had no idea what would happen if we fell but Star Swirl seemed to think it wasn’t good and I was inclined to believe him.

I caught the air and steadied myself, trying to get my bearings. A boulder suddenly loomed in front of me, barely giving me time to dodge. With the light coming from every direction, the blur of mist was disorienting.

I spotted something solid enough to take our weight hanging underneath the rocks. I swerved towards the darker stone, flying through an opening that had looked much larger a moment ago when I’d spotted it and coming to a halt in a smooth-sided cavern.

The light behind us dimmed, and I watched the rock smoothly close over like a healing wound. We weren’t quite plunged into darkness. Glowing crystals set into the wall at eye level provided a blue-green light.

“What the heck?” I whispered.

“It’s not SIVA,” Destiny said. “I’m not detecting the typical signal.”

I nodded in agreement. I already knew it wasn’t SIVA. I could feel it in my bones - literally. “Some kind of earth pony magic? He can open up big holes in the ground.”

“This is something else,” Star Swirl said, looking around. “It isn’t pony magic. Keep your eyes open. We might be in great danger.”

“It’s so weird,” I mumbled, touching the wall. I couldn’t really feel the material through the armor, but it reminded me of something that had been smoothed by the flow of water, with a surface so slick that it almost looked polished. If a fossil was something that had been alive and turned into stone, this was like stone that was in the process of becoming alive.

I led the way into the next room, Destiny and Star Swirl providing extra light with their magic, sweeping the corners for anything that might be lurking in the twisting, changing pathways.

A platform stood in the center of the room, held up by crooked stalagmites that reached out of the floor like a hundred hooves supporting a single carved, rotting throne made of acid-worn, cracked black rock.

“That shouldn’t be here,” Destiny whispered. “I’ve seen that, in old pictures. Old even in my time.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“There was something here recently,” Star Swirl said. He reared up and examined the seat of the huge throne. He touched the surface, and his hoof came away with a thin coating of green slime. “It’s like some kind of empty nest…”

Before anypony could give me an answer, the cavern opened up like somepony cracking an egg. The half-living stone bled gouts of mud, and more normal and natural stone and crystal rained down from above as the room split apart. I could see the mist below through the growing gap in the floor, and the sky above.

Rockhoof jumped down, his axe raising sparks from one side of the rift as he used it to slow his fall from above.

“Looks like he decided to find us!” I yelled.

Rockhoof slammed down and kicked the ground. There was a sound like some kind of great beast moaning in pain, and the two halves of the island started sliding away from each other, the gap through the middle of the room widening with Star Swirl on one side and me and Rockhoof on the other.

The big, shadowed pony turned his spotlight-like gaze on me.

It felt a lot like the moment right before Four had decided to break all my bones by stomping on me with her giant Assault Armor.

“You know we’re trying to save you, right?” I asked, taking a step back. “You don’t know me, but you have other friends, and they’re worried about how you’ve become a huge evil monster. I’m here to help them talk sense into you and--”

He attacked without a word, sweeping the axe in a low horizontal blow. I took to the air, letting it pass under me and smash through the bizarre throne.

“Okay, we’ll do this the hard way,” I said. I charged directly at him and grabbed for his neck, trying to get him in some kind of lock. Headlock, necklock, earlock, whatever. I tried to get a grip on him, but the shadows covering him made everything oddly slippery like I was trying to wrestle a cloud instead of a pony.

I felt the crawl of nearby spellcasting along my spine. Rockhoof must have felt something too because he turned to look at the other half of the island at the same time I did. Star Swirl threw a spell at him, a crackling ball of magic that hit him in the chest and sent a shock through both of us, hitting me hard enough to throw me off the big pony and into the roof, at which point I was politely introduced to the ground by our mutual friend, gravity.

“Destiny, your idol needs to learn the difference between friendship and friendly fire,” I said, shaking myself off. My body was half-numb from the stun spell, and even with Destiny closing windows as quickly as they opened I could tell the armor was trying to reboot as quickly as possible.

Rockhoof jumped right over the gap and to the other side of the split room, almost landing right on top of Star Swirl. The wizard yelped and teleported just before impact, blinking back into the world on the far side of a chest-high wall of debris.

I took aim with DRACO.

“Destiny--”

“I’m not going to give you lethal rounds,” she warned. “So don’t ask!”

“I was hoping for smoke.”

“That I can do,” she agreed. She adjusted my aim and DRACO barked dully, firing slow rounds that landed at Rockhoof’s hooves and exploded into billowing clouds of hot smoke. The earth pony looked confused, backing away and swiping at the air with his axe.

Star Swirl backed away from the smoke on his side of the wall. With the cloud between him and Rockhoof, he couldn’t get a shot off. He charged up a spell, but couldn’t see a target.

“Just shoot!” I yelled. Rockhoof was a huge target. Even if Star Swirl just fired blindly, he’d probably hit.

The wizard smiled and fired right at me.

“I got it, I got it!” Destiny panicked, letting the error messages pile up and grabbing at the oncoming spell with her magic, deflecting it in a near-180 and sending it towards the confused and enraged Rockhoof. The backlash sent waves of pain through my temples, sparks flying from my wingtips from the residual energy grounding itself.

The stun spell hit Rockhoof cleanly and caught him off-guard, knocking the axe out of his grip and bowling him over. He didn’t even pretend to stay down, forcing himself back up on shaking legs and roaring in pure annoyance.

His cry blotted out the light from the world, and everything washed away in a tide of inky blackness.

I blinked at the sudden shift to monochrome. Before I could see what was going on, the ground broke up under me and I instinctively jumped, trying to take to the air. The stone collapsed, sinking into a rising tide of magma. At the same time, the weight had returned to my wings and the darkness sapped the magic that would have given me lift.

“Over here!” Star Swirl yelled. I looked up and saw him perched on a stable basalt island in the sea of lava. I banked and beat my wings frantically, landing hard next to him on the increasingly crowded boulder.

“That was close,” I said.

“We need to pin him down long enough to perform the ritual,” Star Swirl said. He raised the edge of his cape to show me the shovel strapped to his side. “I am open to ideas on how to accomplish this.”

“First, we need to get away from here,” I said, looking around. “He’s big enough to throw both of us around like toys, and there aren’t a lot of safe places to land.”

“Hold on,” Destiny said. The empty weapon slot on my side flashed, the Dimension Pliers sliding into place from extradimensional storage. “Just have to use the right tool for the right job. I’ll track the distortion and try to give you some waypoints to follow.”

“That might not be so easy,” I said. “Anywhere else, we’d just go as the pegasus flies, but there are only a few paths out here.”

“Unless Rockhoof can swim through magma, he has to use the rocks to get around too,” Destiny said. “Try this way.” She put a pointer on my display.

“Lead the way,” Star Swirl said. “But, ah… I might need some help. I’m not as spry as I was nine hundred years ago.”

We jumped from rock to rock, the haze from the darkness and heat making it feel like an endless hellish expanse. In truth, we only went a few hundred meters before we spotted it.

“Is that the village?” I asked. The ground had broken away from it on all sides, leaving it as a cluster of burned-out husks on top of a mesa surrounded by a moat of molten rock.

“Unfortunately, I believe so,” Star Swirl said. He lowered his voice, mumbling to himself as I helped him to the next stable platform. “Why here, Rockhoof? This was your greatest personal triumph!”

Rockhoof appeared at the edge of the mesa like he’d heard Star Swirl talking. He looked down at us and stomped his hoof. A stairway of broken slabs of stone rose out of the lava. The massive shadowed pony turned and walked out of sight.

“He’s rolling out the red carpet,” Destiny noted.

“I guess he’s tired of running,” I said. “Stay behind me in case it’s a trap.”

“Such a brilliant plan it’s amazing I didn’t already think of it myself,” Star Swirl said dryly.

I gingerly put my weight on the stairs. I almost expected them to collapse right under me, but maybe he didn’t need that kind of trap. They were as solid as the rocks they looked like, and I walked up them to the village.

It reminded me of the oldest parts of my home town. A maze of small streets, too narrow for anything but hoof traffic, with one big main street and an obvious town center. It was also all ruined. Volcanic ash covered everything in a thick layer like the world’s filthiest snow. Under it, there was no soil or cobblestone, just bare rock. The buildings didn’t have interiors, there were no glimpses of some fleeting and lost life like in the wasteland. It wasn’t a real village that had burned down and fossilized, it was more like a model of one. A theme park celebrating a disaster.

Rockhoof stood on top of the broken town hall, waiting for us.

“Why is he ready to fight now?” I whispered. “He was always running away before.”

“We’re in an Eclipsed Place,” Destiny guessed. “Star Swirl and I can’t use magic here, and the armor isn’t nearly as effective.”

“Oh. So he thinks he has the edge.”

“That’s because he does have the edge,” Star Swirl said quietly. “We can use that to our advantage.”

“How?” I asked.

“I’ll try to reason with him one more time,” Star Swirl said. “He always used to listen to me. I’m sure I can keep his attention. You circle around and wait for the right moment to strike.”

“Got it,” I agreed. I hung back and let Star Swirl take the lead.

“Rockhoof!” he called out. “Listen to reason! I’m here to help you. You need to stop this! Whatever the Darkness promised you, it’s not worth it! It’s our responsibility to--”

Star Swirl didn’t get a chance to make whatever argument he was going to make. Rockhoof jumped into the air, his axe cutting through the still, dead air, coming down like a sledgehammer. I bolted, shoving Star Swirl out of the way.

It didn’t hit me straight on or else I’d have spent the rest of my short life split in half. The angle meant it just slammed me into the dust and ash on the ground hard enough to drive the air out of my lungs.

He raised the axe again, adjusting his aim to bring it down on me like I was a stubborn log that needed splitting.

I looked at his hooves and pulled the trigger, DRACO following my gaze and shooting with accuracy I’d never have on my own. The shell exploded on contact, blasting the weapon out of his hooves.

Rockhoof roared in annoyance and reached down to grab me, picking me up and throwing me into the debris of the ruined village. Everything blurred around me until it ended in a sudden stop and terrible pain.

“Chamomile!” Destiny gasped.

I could feel it. That little warning bell that meant I was broken inside, again. I looked down at the black wood emerging from just under my ribs. It was as cold as ice and as hard as iron.

“Buck,” I gasped, unable to draw enough breath to properly speak. I reached down with shaking hooves.

“Wait!” Destiny warned. “If you pull it out you’ll just bleed out! Healing potions work too slowly here!”

The ground rumbled. I looked up to see Rockhoof charging at me. I was pinned in place like the butterfly in Dad’s extinct insect collection.

Pounding hooves hit the dirt and faltered when it opened up under them, Rockhoof stumbling and falling out of sight into a sudden pit.

“I wasn’t sure that would work,” Star Swirl said, Rockhoof’s shovel in his hooves. “I was counting on his magic still working, even here. He did make the place, after all.”

He quickly trotted over to me, looking me over.

“Damn, I wish Meadowbrook was here…” he mumbled.

“Here,” I said, my voice weak. I popped the blade out of my leg and detached it. “Cut through the--”

“I know, I know,” Star Swirl said softly. “Just stay still. I’ll get you out of there.” He patted my shoulder and reached back with the blade. I could feel him working on the burned wooden beam piercing my torso. Every vibration through it sent a wave of agony through me, the cold primal terror of shock giving way to blinding pain.

The beam gave way, and I slumped down, trying to catch my breath.

“You must stay calm,” the old unicorn said, keeping a hoof on my back. “I’ve pulled through with worse than that. Why, there was one incident with a few unruly sirens where I was actually eaten alive!”

“I’ll keep her stable,” Destiny said. “Can you do the ritual?”

“Hm?” Star Swirl looked up from my wound, which he’d been staring at with concern. “Right, yes. We need to get this done quickly.”

He took off his hat and reached inside, pulling out a tightly-rolled scroll.

“Even here, this should work,” he mumbled, unrolling it. I only got a glimpse of what was on the parchment. I wouldn’t have understood it even if I’d been able to see it clearly, much less with my vision wavering as much as it was. It was a bunch of runes and geometric diagrams, all written in multicolored, glittering ink that glowed slightly as he ran his hoof over it, maintaining their hues even in the Eclipse.

Rockhoof started climbing out of the pit the Shovel had opened, obviously having more trouble with it than he had before.

“From one to another, another to one,” Star Swirl said, putting the scroll on the ground and the shovel on top of it in the middle of the scribed circle. “A mark of one’s destiny singled out and fulfilled.”

The shovel started glowing, white light surrounding it and starting to take on the bright colors of a rainbow around the edges.
“Harmony sheds its glow though the night, and the dark things cannot stand the light!”

Rockhoof pulled himself over the edge, and the shovel erupted in radiance, sparks erupting out of it and rushing at the dark pony in a tide that burned with every color I could name and more, washing away the darkness of the Eclipse.

Magic rushed into my body, and I took a deep gasping breath. I must have lost consciousness, because I woke up with a start of terrible pain. It faded with the warmth and soft electric static of healing potions working their magic on me.

Star Swirl dropped the broken shard of wood in front of me, the charcoal beam dripping with my blood. It vanished after a few moments, dissolving away into nothingness.

“How is she?” asked a weak voice. “I didn’t mean to--”

“She’s fine,” Star Swirl said gruffly. “You weren’t in control of yourself. Don’t apologize.”

I got up with shaking hooves. I felt the armor’s magical fields kicking in, supporting and stabilizing me. Star Swirl was standing next to… a pony that was much smaller than I expected. He was practically puny, a head smaller than Star Swirl, equipped with thin legs, knobby knees, and an exhausted, worried expression.

“Ach, I’m sorry lass,” he said quietly. “I don’t care what he says, it’s never proper to hit a lady.”

“If you tried any harder to kill me I’d think you were one of my ex-marefriends,” I joked. The pain was almost gone. I was absolutely sure that was more because of the Med-X Destiny had pumped into me than the healing potions. The familiar feeling of opiates settled over me like a comfortable sweater.

“Yes, well. Good work, Chamomile,” Star Swirl said. “And you cast spells quite smartly, Miss Bray.”

“I’m just trying my best,” Destiny said modestly. I could sense her almost swooning from the praise.

“We all are,” Star Swirl said. “Of course, my best means that we’ve just brought things back from the edge of disaster! Now we aren’t in a stalemate with the binding spell.”

“Aye,” Rockhoof said. He sighed, looking back at himself.

“I admit, I kind of expected you to be, um…” I hesitated.

“Bigger?” he suggested.

“He needs to recover,” Star Swirl explained. “The ritual drained practically all the magic from him. And, unfortunately…”

He offered Rockhoof his shovel. The blade was shattered. Rockhoof took it solemnly and nodded.

“I apologize. No one item could withstand all that magic. If we were able to divide it up, there might be a way, but…”

“A tool is meant to be used,” Rockhoof said. “And anything broken can be fixed if a pony is willin’ to put in the effort. A shovel, or a friendship.” He smiled and patted Star Swirl’s leg. “My throat’s a bit dry. How about you do the talking and tell me about your new friend on the way back?"

Chapter 62: In Flames You Burn

Clang!

Sparks flew from white-hot metal.

Clang!

The hammer came down again, ringing like a bell against the broken metal.

I watched as Rockhoof paused, looked carefully at the blade of the shovel, then picked up the piece with long tongs and gingerly placed it back in the forge. He looked exhausted, his hooves shaking from the effort of only a few swings. The heat from the small forge was oppressive, even in the big, open room that he’d been given for it. There wasn’t any kind of real breeze, so the open windows were just barely enough to keep it from being an oven.

“You know, Raven could probably fix that for you,” I offered. She’d made the forge and everything else in the room, seemingly out of nothing.

“Aye,” Rockhoof agreed. He gave me a weak smile. He was covered in sweat, his limbs thin like a pony who’d been suffering slow starvation. “Aye. But it isn’t hers to fix. I need to do this.”

“Why?” I asked.

Rockhoof sat down, taking a moment to rest. “Because it wouldn’t be broken if I hadn’t been a fool. I gave myself up to the darkness, and for what? Nothing. I wasn’t able to help anypony at all…”

“You did help some zebras,” I said.

Rockhoof looked up from his hooves in surprise. “Now how do you know that?”

“I met them my first time in the Wasteland,” I said. “It’s been a long time, but they still remember you and what you did for them. They were also some of the kindest people I ever met, ponies or otherwise.”

Rockhoof smiled, his eyes wet. “Is that so? Maybe some things were worth doing.”

I nodded. “I don’t know what happened after you saved them, but I’m guessing it was some pretty bad stuff.”

Rockhoof’s smile faded. “Aye. Mostly ponies dyin’ in awful ways, and mostly because of other ponies. I was ready for times to be bad, but I wasn’t ready for ponies to have gone bad with them! Ponies killing each other for scraps of food and water. I did what I could to save ponies, and they’d turn around and rob me.”

He shook his head sadly.

“If I was just a little stronger,” he said. “If I was strong enough, I could have done something. That’s what I kept thinking. I could have saved a few more lives, made ponies listen to me and work together…”

“So if you were stronger, you wouldn’t need to have a forge to fix your shovel?” I asked.

“Don’t be daft!” Rockhoof scoffed. “The metal won’t come back together unless it’s almost to melting!”

“There you go then,” I said. “Unless people are… hot enough they won’t come together either?” The metaphor had been better in my head. “Can you pretend I said something really deep and meaningful?”

Rockhoof chuckled. “Sure, lass. I can do that. I owe it to you after what I did.” He glanced to the spot under my ribs that I’d been scratching at.

I moved so both of us could look at it. The wound had scarred over. Thankfully, my coat had grown back over the wound, but the skin was tough and the fur had come back a shade more grey and silvery.

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “I’ve been through way worse.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t give me the right to hurt you or anypony else,” Rockhoof said. “Did you have Meadowbrook get a look at it?”

I scoffed. “She was more worried about you, and I don’t really blame her for that. You’re friends and I’m… sort of expendable.” I could tell he was about to say something about that so I held up a hoof to stop him. “I’d already had a couple of healing potions by the time we got back. There wasn’t much she could do, and when she did get around to checking it out…”

“Aye?”

I sighed. It was embarrassing. “She said she really couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on inside me. Meadowbrook recommended either a vet or a mechanic, because a doctor can’t do much.”

Rockhoof raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

I raised my right forehoof and turned slowly. The light from the forge caught on the oily-looking metallic carapace, making it gleam wetly. “SIVA did a lot of damage to my body. I guess it changed me on the inside more than I expected. Raven said she’d take care of me, so at least I’ve got that going for me.”

“The usual thing to say is that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, but…” Rockhoof rubbed his chin. “Bah. I don’t even have a proper beard right now! You know what I mean.”

I smiled. “Yeah. Destiny is still a pony, and all that’s left of her is most of her horn and her ghost haunting it.”

Rockhoof nodded, trotting over to punch my arm. There wasn’t any real force behind it. “I’d have been happy to fight alongside you back when we were hunting monsters with Star Swirl.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So do you think Star Swirl is waiting for a dramatic moment to walk in, or what?”

The door opened. “How did you know?” Star Swirl asked, walking in with his usual amount of politeness, which was zero.

“I could just tell,” I shrugged. “I’ve been getting a sixth sense about people watching me.” It was like having eyes in the back of my head. I guess I’d seen enough combat that I’d finally started turning into one of those old soldiers that just seemed to know everything.

“A sixth sense…” Star Swirl muttered. “Hmph! More like dumb luck!”

“Was I right, though?”

“Emphasis on dumb,” Star Swirl said, not quite answering. “Since the ritual was successful with Rockhoof, I’ve been planning our next move. I made some refinements to the spell for the next mission.”

“I’ll be ready to go soon enough,” Rockhoof promised.

“You’re not going,” Star Swirl said.

“I won’t fall for the same tricks!” Rockhoof protested, standing up and poking Star Swirl in the chest. “Don’t tell me you don’t trust me!”

Star Swirl sighed. “I’m not going either.”

That seemed to take the wind out of Rockhoof’s sails, and he frowned. “What d’ you mean?”

“We still need to save Flash Magnus and Mistmane,” Star Swirl said. “But I’m having considerable difficulty getting a totem that connects to Mistmane. That means we save Flash Magnus first.”

“Aye,” Rockhoof nodded. “Makes sense so far.”

“Right. But he’s a pegasus, and there’s an excellent chance reaching him will require flying. Something neither you nor I can manage.” Star Swirl looked at me. “She can chase him, but she can’t perform the ritual herself. Which means…”

I looked at the door a moment before she appeared.

“It means I’m going to go with her!” Somnambula said. “I was also waiting for a dramatic moment. Was it appropriate?”

“It was great,” I assured her.

She smiled warmly. “Thank you. You didn’t even ruin my surprise!”

“We’ll need to act quickly,” Star Swirl said. “There’s a chance that they’ll realize all they need to do to break the spell is to kill one of us. Every moment we delay, they have extra time to figure that out and learn how valuable their hostages are.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“Flash Magnus leaves a trail of unnatural weather phenomena in his wake,” Star Swirl said. “Since there’s no natural weather here, it makes it possible to track him down. You’ll go out in one of the jumpships and track him down. It should let you maneuver much more quickly than the average pegasus can fly.”

“Then we’ll use his shield, Netitus, to break him free!” Somnambula said. She held up the small bronze shield.

“Hopefully ye won’t break it in the process,” Rockhoof said. “I don’t know how we’d reforge something fireproof to the point it can stop a dragon’s breath.”

“The improved ritual should put less strain on the artifact,” Star Swirl said. “I’m sorry about your shovel.”

“Tools are made to be used and broken,” Rockhoof shrugged. “If you’re too afraid of scuffing them up, then what’s the point of having them at all?”

Star Swirl nodded. “You’ve always been a wise pony, my friend,” he said.

“I was kind of hoping we’d have time for a shower and a nap,” I groaned, sipping on a foil pouch of something that tasted like some unidentifiable variety of citrus. The jumpship had an almost unnaturally smooth ride, the ducted thrusters an order of magnitude quieter than a Vertibuck. A changeling and crystal pony were piloting it, and a second changeling was riding in back with us.

“Sorry,” Destiny said. She floated next to me. “But at least you got some fresh clothing, right?”

I looked down at the bodysuit I was wearing. It was purple and glittered a little in the light. The material was slightly stiff, like it had been starched. “Why am I wearing this, anyway?”

“It’s ballistic fiber,” Destiny explained. “I hate to say it, but we’ve proven again and again that neither the Exodus armor nor your subdermal weave is all that good at stopping bullets. Magical beams aren’t a problem because of the thaumoframe, but the panels just aren't built to stop projectiles.”

“And you can’t keep a shield up,” I pointed out.

“Mm. Normally I could. It’s those Eclipsed places where magic doesn’t work properly, that’s what really worries me. The armor is almost useless there except for the support systems like the vector trap and the sensors. This underlayer will offer some protection passively.”

“I think it looks great,” Somnambula offered. She was wearing a similar suit. “I never had anything like this back in the old days, and that was when I was fighting monsters two or three times a week!”

“I just hope it’s thin enough to go under the armor,” I said.

“Want some help trying it on?” offered the changeling that was riding in back with us. I nodded to them and stood up.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a lot easier with an extra pair of hooves.”

“It’s no problem, Ma’am,” the changeling said, their wings buzzing. “We’re all really grateful for what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think there are a lot of ponies that could sit around and not help when they’re in the thick of it,” I said.

“You almost remind me of Stygian,” Somnambula said, giggling a little. It quickly turned melancholy around the edges. “He was a good pony. Until the end, when the Darkness took him.”

“What actually happened?” I asked. “Star Swirl is a little… frustratingly vague.”

“He doesn’t like having to admit his own faults,” she said. “He gets embarrassed by them and tries to hide away from them, but it’s knowing our weaknesses that gives us our strength. Stygian was a blind spot for us. He was a young pony. A good pony. I wish he was here today -- he had a talent for finding ponies who could help others.”

“That’d be useful around the wasteland,” I sighed.

Somnambula nodded, still smiling sadly. “Yes. But he was a normal pony whose special talent meant he was always around heroes and experts who solved problems and were praised for it, while he sat in their shadow with only a talent for begging others for aid. He never got the credit he deserved, and it broke him.”

“And the Darkness took him.”

“Yes. Star Swirl thinks of it as some great enemy to be locked up and banished like the others, but I am not so sure. I think it is as much a part of the world as magic itself. It carves away free will and possibility in the same way Chaos makes whims into reality and does the impossible. Harmony lies somewhere between the two, opposing both.”

I smiled and got the last bit of armor in place, wiggling a little to make sure the ballistic fiber underlayer wasn’t going to make me all stiff. “I think I like talking to you more than Star Swirl,” I said. “You haven’t called me an idiot even once yet.”

Somnambula giggled. “Star Swirl makes an effort to never show any emotion except anger. I believe it was very much in vogue in his time for stallions to be stoic and stately. Personally, I think he would feel much better if he allowed himself to laugh and cry more often.”

“How’s it feel?” the changeling asked.

I extended my wings. “Seems good. Thanks for--”

The jumpship rattled, sudden turbulence making us drop a few feet. The changeling stood up straight, suddenly on high alert.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s just turbulence. I’m sure this thing can handle it.”

“There isn’t weather here. There can’t be turbulence unless somepony causes it,” the changeling said, quickly stepping over to the cockpit hatch. “Hey, what’s going on out there?”

“Barometric pressure is dropping!” the crystal pony yelled back. “A storm is forming!”

“That must mean we’re getting close to Flash Magnus,” Destiny said. “Star Swirl said he was causing atmospheric disturbances. Where is it centered?”

A feeling hit me, the distinct sensation of someone watching us. It was a menacing pressure, full of contempt, the kind of dull-edged annoyance a pony might feel for a mosquito right before they swatted it.

“He’s here,” I said.

“It’s centered on us!” the crystal pony said a moment later. More winds rocked us from all sides.

“If this gets much worse we’ll have to set down!” warned the changeling pilot.

“Start looking for a safe landing zone,” Somnambula said. “We’ll get out and look for Flash, then when he’s focused on us, you’ll be able to retreat.”

“No time!” I pushed forward to look out of the canopy window, then pointed. “There!”

He was above us, hovering in the dark sky, almost invisible against the stars there where the atmosphere was too thin to glow. Sparks cascaded around him, a lance of energy like a thunderbolt forming at his side, wrapped in plasma like the northern lights.

“Evasive maneuvers!” the changeling next to me snapped. The pilot immediately jerked the controls to the side, throwing the others around the cabin. I grabbed Somnambula before she could hurt herself, and she nodded in thanks.

I grabbed for cargo webbing on the bulkhead, bracing myself for what I knew was coming. The jumpship was rocked by an explosion, and lurched to the side and down, one engine going silent. A wave of energy hit us, and my vision was filled with stars. I lost control of my body, only held up because I’d hooked my hoof through the cargo net. It was the grey numbness I’d felt a few times before, my body going wrong and my thoughts getting distant and slow.

Somnambula was saying something but I couldn’t understand it. My senses constricted to a tunnel, everything on the left side of my body going totally black and numb. I was vaguely aware of my back legs twitching. Seconds flowed together in a messy deluge of time all hitting my awareness at the same time, my senses disjointed from it all.

I felt like I was falling. I think ponies were screaming.

I gasped and jerked back to full awareness. I felt like I’d been underwater.

“What happened?” I gasped, before I was even awake enough to start parsing what was around me. I was on the ground, next to the hull of the jumpship. One of the changelings was standing over me.

“She’s awake!” the changeling called out. “Stay there,’ she whispered. “You had some kind of attack--”

“It was the EMP,” Destiny said. The changeling was holding her up so she could see. Everything was dark, and color had been drained from the world. “Half her brain is a computer, and she’s got a secondary nervous system that’s all poorly-shielded circuits.”

“I have what now?” I groaned, sitting up.

“The wired reflexes implant is how you can move so quickly when-- it’s really not important, and it’s not the time for a lesson,” Destiny said. “How do you feel?”

“Hung over,” I said, rubbing my head. I looked around. We were on a dusty rock island surrounded by darkness and slightly glowing fog. “We’re in an Eclipsed place.”

“The ship crashed right down into one, and we couldn’t get out in time,” the changeling said. “We were waiting to see if you’d get up. I wasn’t sure if you’d make it, but…”

“I hoped you would,” Somnambula said. She offered me a hoof. She and the changeling helped me to my hooves. “It’s been about twenty minutes. I am glad you seem to be well.”

“It takes more than that to kill me,” I promised. “I hate getting knocked out like a cheap robot. Any sign of Flash?”

“No,” Somnambula said. “I don’t think he followed us in.”

“So it’s an oubliette instead of a battlefield,” I said. “Great. He’s probably trying to delay us. Rockhoof had been after something, too.”

“We can’t worry about that right now,” Somnambula said. “Our priority should be getting everypony out safely.”

I nodded. “You’re right. How’s the crew?”

“I’m okay,” the changeling said. “The others are just scouting the area.”

“What’s your name?” I asked. “I should have asked before, sorry.”

“It’s okay. You probably didn’t think you’d have time to get to know any of us,” the changeling said. “I’m Maxilla. The pilot’s name is Stylet, and our navigator is Gypsum.”

I nodded. “Chamomile. I offered her a hoof to shake.”

She laughed a little. “I know who you are, Ma’am.”

We shook hooves. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be polite. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Speaking of which,” Destiny said. “Here, put me on so I can connect with the armor. I can’t levitate out here.”

I took Destiny from Maxilla and popped the helmet on. Even with image processing, the oppressive dark made it hard to see details here. I looked back at the wreckage of the jumpship. It didn’t look like a hard landing, but it was already starting to decay, rust and ruin spreading across the hull like an allergic reaction.

“Do we still have the shield?” I asked.

“Don’t worry!” Somnambula said, holding it up. “I’ve got Netitus right here!”

The shield still had color, even in the monochrome void.

“Great,” I said. “You hang onto it. If Flash shows up, you’ll need it to do the ritual.”

“No problem!” Somnambula securely strapped it to her side.

“Using the Dimension Pliers I can figure out the way out of here,” Destiny muttered. The tool vibrated, the tip glowing faintly. “There. We’ve got a signal. There’s some weird interference but everything about this place is weird so it could mean anything.”

“I’ll take point,” Maxilla said. She was wearing a radio headset and tapped the earpiece. “We’ll rendezvous with the others while we’re on the move.” She hefted a curved, sleek rifle. I tilted my head, thinking.

“What’s wrong?” Somnambula asked.

“Nothing, it’s just that I think I’ve seen rifles like that before. Polar Orbit’s troops had them.”

“They’re a standard BrayTech design,” Destiny said. “There would have been some on the Exodus White.”

“But what about Polar Orbit?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Destiny mentally shrugged. “He’s got plenty of strange military surplus. Ask him yourself when you get back. He probably got it at the same place he found the Heaven’s Sword and his personal cloudship.”

“Mm…” It nagged at me for some reason.

“We have bigger concerns,” Somnambula reminded me.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”

“I’m telling you, ponies really did build bridges like this,” Destiny said. I hopped up on a broken concrete ramp and looked around. It was four times as big as a bridge needed to be, with train tracks on the lower level and broken asphalt on a second level, like they’d build a road on top of an existing train crossing.

“Why?” I asked. “It just seems like a waste of effort.”

“You have to think like an engineer,” Destiny said. “There are only so many places across a river or lake where you actually want a bridge -- there has to be space on both sides, you want to cross over a spot with good soil and rock properties, and you’ve got to be near enough to something ponies actually want to use a bridge to get to.”

“Okay, I follow you so far.” I jumped to the next section of the bridge, hopping over a gap that should have collapsed the whole structure. Of course the entire section was floating like a cork, and bobbed a little with my weight. I gave it a second, then motioned for the others to follow. As the heaviest pony, I had the dubious honor of testing the path we were taking.

“Most of the weight of a bridge is from the structure itself, the dead weight. The live weight of ponies, carts, and trains is barely even worth mentioning. Adding another lane doesn’t make the bridge all that much heavier, and most of the bottleneck in building a bridge is sinking casements and spanning the gap, and neither of those gets significantly more complicated as bridge capacity goes up.”

“Oh yeah, lots of dead weight here,” I said, kicking a floating chunk of concrete out of the way. “Did you ever build a bridge.”

“Well, no,” Destiny said. “I was an electrical engineer. I wasn’t into architecture. It simply all seems pretty straightforward to me. Make everything more rigid and stronger and you’re good to go.”

“If they had bridges like this in Equestria I would have liked to see them!” Somnambula said cheerfully when she caught up to us. “We did not build many bridges in my homeland. There was only the one river, and I never had problems flying across.”

“Are you holding up okay?” I asked.

She smiled and adjusted the foil blanket she was wearing like a cloak. “It’s still very chilly, but this isn’t my first time in the cold. When we’re done, I think I’d like a warm cup of tea.”

“That does sound good,” I agreed. “How about you girls?”

“Huh?” Maxilla snapped her head around. Gypsum had a hoof on Stylet’s shoulder and seemed to be comforting the changeling.

“I was just asking--” I shook my head. “Never mind. What’s wrong?”

“It’s all this darkness,” Maxilla said quietly. “It’s like it’s eating me up inside, and I keep hearing voices. Whispers that I can’t make out, but it sounds like…”

“We’ll be out of here soon,” Somnambula assured her, when she trailed off. “Have some faith.”

“The exit should be on the island right up ahead,” Destiny said. “We’ve just got to make those last few jumps, then we’ll be out of here.”

“That sounds good,” Maxilla said, nodding. She wiped her brow. “I really don’t like this place. It tastes bitter, like every bad feeling ponies ever had, shredded and distilled.”

I nodded, looking around at the gloom. “I know what you mean.”

“Really?” Maxilla tilted her head.

“It’s oppressive, isn’t it?” I asked. “This whole place has an aura around it. It’s like when you start to fall and the bottom drops out of your stomach. Like a night terror.”

She nodded quickly in agreement. “Yeah, yeah! That’s it exactly. Like one big bad dream.”

I gave her a solid pat on the back. “I’ve gotten out of a bunch of these already. I’ll get you out of this one.”

She nodded, and I took point again, jumping to a chunk of rubble the size of a skywagon. It immediately tried to throw me off, spinning around like a bead on a string. I swore and dug in with my knife, holding myself there until it was upright again.

“I’m fine!” I yelped.

Maxilla giggled and hopped over. I tried to warn her, but the whole thing tilted again… and she stood there like being upside-down was no big deal.

“Being a changeling has a few perks,” she said. “How about we take turns?”

“I admit, this isn’t what I expected,” I said.

The Dimension Pliers had led us to something like an amphitheater, with some components that looked like clouds but were made out of a weird, spongy stone. We’d found the portal, but there was a problem.

“What the buck is that?” Gypsum hissed.

“That thing in the middle is the portal out of the Eclipsed Place,” I said. “And, uh, there’s a dragon skeleton wrapped around it.”

The skeleton was blackened and looked more like coal, with a fire burning inside the skull and ribcage. Just calling it a pile of bones was selling it short, but I didn’t want to make it sound too terrifying. I had the morale of the others to worry about.

“I don’t like the looks of it,” Destiny said. “It’s got to be some kind of trap. You see that shield around it?”

I nodded. It was an egg-shaped shell of shimmering white and black. “It looks like the same kind of barrier that Rockhoof had.”

“Right. And we don’t have a spell to break it.”

“There must be another way,” Somnambula said. “Magic is a useful tool, but it is not our only tool. Knowing that it is a trap, perhaps the correct answer is to spring it!”

“What do you mean?” Destiny asked.

“I think I know what she’s getting at,” I said. “If I run down there and make the skeleton angry, I might be able to get it to chase me. The portal shouldn’t move with it, and the rest of you can get through while it’s distracted.”

“I was going to suggest I do the distracting,” Somnambula corrected.

“I appreciate it, but I’m probably in a better position to fight off an angry dragon. I’ve had to do it before.”

“And you lived to tell the tale!” Somnambula smiled. “That is good. Having experience with these things is important.”

She gave me a pat on the back.

“Don’t wait up for me when it starts,” I said. “Just get through and I’ll circle around and follow.”

I didn’t wait for a reply. I ran down the stairs into the center of the amphitheater. I was sort of expecting the dragon to just wake up when I got close, but it didn’t even budge.

“Try taking a shot at it?” Destiny guessed.

I shrugged and fired DRACO, not really aiming. Like I expected, the shell just bounced off the shield. It flared with light, and for a moment I saw strings coming out of it. I had just enough time to register it before they faded and the ground started to shake.

“What now?” Destiny muttered.

“I hope it’s not Flash, because--” I stopped when I felt something grab my fetlock. I looked down, and a bony hoof had wrapped around it. A skeleton pulled itself out of the dust like a drowning pony struggling to leave the ocean.

It looked up at me with fire burning in its eyes and promptly exploded.

I was flung back into rocks masquerading as clouds, my back smashing them apart like loosely-packed gravel.

“Are you okay?!” Destiny asked.

“I think--” I looked at my right forehoof. The armor was blackened and cracked, and I could see the dark gunmetal of my carapace beneath it. I flexed it experimentally. “Yeah. I’m okay. My hoof is tougher than your armor, Destiny.”

“The structural integrity field is shot in this place,” Destiny warned. “The armor isn’t able to shield against impacts or penetration.”

I nodded and got up. Nothing really hurt, I was just sore. More skeletons were unearthing themselves from the dust, or maybe appearing out of nowhere -- they weren’t leaving holes in the ground when they emerged, a dozen of them standing up like they were just pushing through a veil.

“Let’s try not to get caught by another one of them,” I said. I looked around, trying to decide the best move. Without being able to fly, they were going to be a hassle. I’d have to use DRACO and blow a ton of ammunition on them.

“Everypony, covering fire!” Maxilla ordered. Rapid-fire plasma bolts rained down on the skeletons before I could decide where to start. The magical plasma cracked the bone and set them off, making them explode into shrapnel. I raised a hoof to shield my face, shards of steel-hard skeleton piercing the armor.

“Oh hey, the ballistic weave works,” I said. I could feel the shards poking me, but none of them had actually penetrated. I pulled a long fragment from my shoulder. “Nice.”

“Chamomile, look!” Somnambula waved. She’d broken open one of the rock clouds to reveal a black egg that gleamed with a pale un-rainbow in every shade of black from ‘coal tar’ to ‘the space between the stars’.

She hit it with a hoof, and I saw a threat of light winding from it to the shielded dragon.

“Smash it!” I yelled.

Somnambula picked up a rock and brought it down on the egg, and… the rock shattered, the egg remaining totally unharmed.

“I will find a bigger rock!” Somnambula shouted. “One moment!”

“Hold on, I’ve got an idea!” I yelled back. “Clear away!”

She nodded, and I bolted, running for one of the remaining skeletons. I twirled and kicked it, flinging it into the black egg. The undead exploded, and the burst cracked the black egg, the shadowy rainbow disappearing and the surface fading to mere graphite grey.

“That worked!” Somnambula reported. “Nice thinking, Chamomile!”

I took a shot at the shield, looking carefully at the flare when it repelled my round. “There should be two more!”

“Right! I’m on it!” Somnambula skipped off, giving the skeletons a wide berth.

“Let’s go after the last one,” Destiny suggested. “I think it’s over here.” She pointed the way, and I followed it over to a boulder somewhere in shape between a cauliflower and a cloud. I kicked it open and revealed an egg.

“Well this is easy,” I said. “Now we just need a volunteer.”

“Be careful,” Destiny warned. “I don’t want to have to put you back together if you get exploded.”

“That’s fair. I don’t want to get exploded!” I jumped on top of the boulder and yelled, waving my hooves. The skeletons came right at me. It was nice having such predictable enemies. I jumped over the heads, gliding to the ground a few paces behind them and snapping a kick back at them, knocking them into the egg. There was an earth-shattering kaboom, and they blew it apart in a chain reaction of bone-on-bone action.

The shield around the dragon skeleton flickered and vanished in a wash of static.

“They must have gotten the last egg!” Destiny exclaimed.

A moment later, the fire running across the skeletal dragon flared, and it started to move, uncoiling and turning to face the other way. I could see right through the gaps in its body, and Somnambula was there, standing right out in the open. She looked up at the huge undead beast, with no time to run.

“Oh buck,” I gasped, aiming DRACO and pulling the trigger as fast as I could, putting explosive shells into the dragon’s back. It flared its wings and ignored me, breathing white fire down on where Somnambula had been standing.

“No!” Destiny shouted.

The gout of fire stopped, and through the bones I could see… bronze.

“I’m okay!” Somnambula yelled back. She peeked out from behind Netitus, the shield holding firm. “It seems like it was a good idea for me to keep this!”

“Right!” Maxilla roared. “Focus fire!”

Bolts of plasma rained down on the scorched bones, the magical attack blasting apart a few ribs and getting its attention. The skeletal dragon turned with a hissing, grinding roar.

“Bullets aren’t doing much,” I said. “Destiny, give me the Cryolator!”

I charged towards the dragon, and the weight disappeared from my left side, the Dimension Pliers disappearing in a flash before the nitrogen-spraying cold thrower appeared in its place, the sudden heft of it making me stumble for half a step. I bit down on the helmet triggers and fired DRACO one more time, just trying to get the monster away from everypony else. The shot impacted near its eye socket, and it noticed me enough to turn slightly to focus on what I was doing.

A spray of liquid air hit it in the face, flash-freezing the bones. The fire inside it sputtered, trying to fight against the chill, and maybe in the real world that would have worked, but here the universe was tilted towards cold stillness. The flames died, and the dragon went still. The force holding it together faltered, and it fell apart, the fossil crashing to the ground in a heap. The few remaining skeletons exploded where they stood, the bones all sinking back into the dust where they’d come from.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said. I checked to make sure the portal was still there. “Let’s go! I promised I’d get you home and I intend to keep the promise!”

Chapter 63: Take On Me

“Have you come to free the Pillar? He will resist. Darkness is his friend now.”

I blinked and looked back. “Did you say something?” I asked.

“No, why?” Somnambula asked.

“Never mind,” I sighed. I must have been getting tired. I looked around at the cavern around us. The portal had dumped us inside a huge cave somewhere between a geode and a sewer system, almost every surface covered in crystals from the size of pebbles up to pillars of amethyst too big for me to wrap my hooves all the way around. Water pooled in the lowest levels, so clean and pure that it was only visible because of the rippling of its surface. It was too deep to wade through, so all of us were following a stone ledge not quite wide enough for two of us to walk abreast.

“This place reminds me of something…” Destiny mumbled.

“The Earth Shrine,” I said. “From that game.”

“No, not just that. It looks like…”

“The crystal caves under Canterlot,” Maxilla said, flitting past me on buzzing wings. She looked nervous. “Be careful. I heard it too.”

Before she could elaborate, she flew off to the next blind corner, taking it carefully with her plasma rifle at the ready. I looked back along the narrow path we were walking to the others. Stylet, the changeling pilot who’d gotten stuck with us, was even more of a ball of nerves than Maxilla. She looked ready to have a breakdown, even now that we were in a relatively safe place.

“Ma’am?” Gypsum asked, when I looked back at her. She was a crystal pony, and the only one of us that couldn’t fly. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Only one?” I asked. “That’s way better than I thought we were doing.”

She smiled a little, but it was strained at the edges. “When we were giving you covering fire, our rifles drained much more quickly than they should have, and we’re not really packing spare batteries.”

“Our Fusion Core drained a lot too,” Destiny added. “We need to ask Raven about a replacement when we get back.”

“Right,” I agreed. “We can’t be that far from civilization. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have these!” I tapped a hoof on the shallow set of stairs we were using that followed the contours of the cavern. “We’ll get out into the open air and then go back to the castle.”

“Really?” Stylet asked, perking up.

I nodded to her. “Of course! I’m not going to make you find your way back alone, and we’re definitely not continuing with this mission after that ambush.”

Somnambula nodded in approval. “Yes, I agree. I am worried about what one of those thunderbolts would do to you on a direct hit, Miss Chamomile.”

“I think a direct hit to any of us would be bad,” I joked. “The good thing is, we’re indoors right now so we don’t have to worry about inclement weather.”

“I see light up ahead,” Maxilla called back. “It looks like everything opens up!”

“Stay there!” Somnambula yelled over to her. “We’ll be with you in a moment!” She motioned to me.

“Got it,” I said, taking off and leaving Somnambula to keep an eye on the others.

Maxilla had stopped what seemed like a wide archway, and I landed next to her to look at what she’d found. The room beyond was huge, a crater the size of a lake and half-full of water. Pipes snaked into the central dip and I realized what it was after a long moment.

“A reservoir?” I asked.

“We have to recycle our water as much as possible,” Maxilla said. “This is really good. Look at that!” She pointed to the wall. Lights shone down from scaffolding above us hanging from the cavern roof, with spotlights pointing at a flat section of concrete marked with a big blocky number ‘5’ in red paint.

“So this is… reservoir number five?” I asked.

“Right! And I know where that is! We’re not far from the palace!” Maxilla smiled, her wings buzzing at her sides. “Ponies have to come down here once in a while for maintenance and stuff, so there should be a way out.”

“I see it,” Destiny said. DRACO chirped and zoomed in on the far wall. Another concrete wall stood out from the crystal growths, leading out to a platform with brightly painted safety railings.

I was about to tell Maxilla to grab Gypsum and carry her over, but a sudden flash of intuition hit me.

“He’s coming,” I said.

“Who’s coming?” Maxilla frowned.

“Chamomile, what’s wrong?” Somnambula asked, setting down next to me an instant before everything went to Tartarus.

The roof exploded, a backwash of static sending tingles down my spine. Light streamed in above for just long enough that we could see the dark shape slowly descending towards the center of the artificial lake. A moment later and the natural light snapped off like the sun had gone out, with only darkness stretching above.

“I wasn’t expecting an aerial attack while underground,” I muttered.

“We’re all going to die!” Stylet whimpered. She dropped Gypsum off next to us, then cowered behind her. “We don’t have any ammo and he’s going to find us and blow us apart just like the jumpship!”

“You’re going to be fine,” I said. I bit my lip for a second. “Destiny, pop DRACO off the weapon mount.”

“What?” Destiny asked. “Why?”

“Just do it, please,” I said. The bolts holding it in place opened, and I carefully put the computer-controlled rifle down on the ground. “Okay, pay attention, you three! This is DRACO. It’s a long rifle that does most of the work for you. Stylet, you’re a pilot, you’ve got good eyes. I want you to be a spotter and point him where he needs to go. Can you do that?”

Stylet hesitated. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t have very good aim and…”

“My aim is way worse. Don’t worry. DRACO will correct any mistakes you make.” I gave her a gentle pat on the back. “Maxilla, you back her up. Gypsum, give them covering fire if anything starts to get too close.”

“You seem like you have a plan,” Somnambula noted happily.

I nodded. “I’m gonna go over there and wrassle Flash. When I saw him before he seemed like the smallest one, so I’m pretty sure I can get him in a headlock or something. Then you just pick the right moment and pop him with the ritual and job’s done.”

“I should warn you, Flash Magnus is a highly trained soldier,” Somnambula said. “Among all of us, he had the most combat experience.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I waved a hoof. “And it’s a thousand years out of date. I’ve got moves he’s never even heard of!”

“That is good,” Somnambula breathed a sigh of relief. “Please be careful.”

I gave her a salute and flew towards the lake.

“Chamomile,” Destiny said quietly. “You don’t have any moves!”

“I’m really hoping I can invent some very quickly,” I whispered back. “I mean… I’ve fought a bunch of soldiers, right? They’ve all got to be better trained than Flash and it wasn’t much of a problem.”

It was more blind hope than logic. Flash was hovering, dimly visible with the unlight glowing around the reverse shadows of his body. I was a big obvious target, so he probably had a much better view of my bright blue armored flank when I was approaching him, but he politely waited for me.

“Hey there!” I called out to him. “You’re probably not going to say much. Rockhoof wasn’t a talker either. I just thought we should make some kind of attempt to solve this without violence!”

I stopped just far away enough that I could go in for a charge and headbutt him if he tried anything. Flash really was a lot smaller than Rockhoof. That big pony had been head and shoulders taller than me, and Flash was only a little above average height. It felt good to be fighting someone who wasn’t my own size. He stayed silent and drew a short sword, the edge gleaming and polished like it was made out of a single plane of diamond.

“Okay, we can do it the fun way,” I said, drawing my own blade, the gunmetal-silver knife popping out of its internal sheath like a mantis’ claw. “I think yours is bigger, but size doesn’t matter as much as how you use it.”

Flash moved so quickly it was like he vanished in a blur, and I wasn’t even really aware of moving, my hoof twisting on its own to intercept the strike. He didn’t press the attack, vanishing again and reappearing on my other side, slashing at my wing and catching a primary, the blade cleaving through the metal feather.

I turned to face him but he was gone before I could even react, and the short sword slid into my back, Flash twisting it and kicking away, putting some distance between us.

“Ow,” I grumbled. It hadn’t penetrated far, but it hurt like a son of a mule. “Did he really have to twist the blade?”

“It went right through the ballistic fiber,” Destiny grumbled. “So much for stab-resistant fabric.”

“It also went right through me!”

“You need to react more quickly,” Destiny said. “He’s fast. If you don’t want to get stabbed, don’t leave him so many openings!”

“Just keep track of him!” I shouted, fumbling to block an attack that almost went into my neck.

“I can’t! That’s what DRACO was for, and you left it way over there!”

I kicked, hitting only air. I needed to be faster. I dug deep down inside and let ice flood my veins, the glitchy implant near my lower spine kicking in and slowing the world down to a crawl. Every other time I’d done this, it had been like time was stopped for everyone but me, but Flash was so fast he was still moving.

I was just a touch faster, and even through the darkness I saw the surprise on his face when I punched him in the jaw.

The sense of cold faded, and the rest of the world sped back up. Heat rushed through my body as my metabolism caught up with me, fever making me break out in a sweat.

“Didn’t expect that, did you?” I taunted him, motioning for him to try again. “Maybe it was just a fluke. You want to try again?”

He blurred into motion and I went back into that cold place just in time. The blade was a hoof-width from my face. I dodged to the side, letting him go past, kicking him in the gut. The world sped back up after half a heartbeat, and he flew back, the impact of running into my kick at that speed rocketing him back.

My vision was narrowed to a tunnel. It hadn’t even lasted half as long that time, and I was exhausted. My joints felt like they were going to come apart. I couldn’t breathe. More than that, I couldn’t let him know how tired I was.

“You think you’re ready for round three?” I asked, fighting to keep my breath steady.

He backed off with a calculating look written across his dark expression, then raised a hoof. The taste of the air in the room changed, oxygen fusing into ozone as sparks crackled around us.

“He’s going to--” Destiny warned unnecessarily. I couldn’t waste my breath to tell her I already knew. We were flying over the middle of a lake. There was no cover anywhere.

An explosion erupted against Flash’s side. The static feeling snapped off and the dark pegasus fell towards the water below us for a few moments before recovering and catching himself.

“Did we take him out?” Stylet asked over the radio.

“Negative,” Destiny said. “You saved our flanks instead! Can you see any cover from where you are? We can’t take a lightning bolt.”

“There are pipes below you in the reservoir walls,” Maxilla said. “If you’re inside, he’ll have to come after you.”

“Good strategy,” I said, shaking my head and trying to gather myself. “Destiny?”

“This way,” she replied, putting an arrow in my face. I was so exhausted I might as well have been blind. I needed to be dragged around by the hoof until I had a second to catch my breath.

Ozone filled the air, and I could feel Flash charging up another thunderbolt. I pushed myself harder, my body burning with fever. The pipe was right ahead, covered by a grating.

“Got a problem!” I yelled. If I slowed down long enough to cut through it, I’d get blasted right in the back.

“I see it,” Stylet mumbled. The grating ahead of me exploded, DRACO blowing a hole through it. I flew through the fireball blindly and found the hole wasn’t as large as I might have hoped. The edge caught my right wingtip, sending me off-course as I flew inside. Out of control and far too exhausted to correct it in time, I slammed into the pipe wall, sparks scraping from my armor as I skidded to a halt in ankle-deep water.

A wash of static crashed over me a moment later, my legs kicking on their own. The lightning bolt had missed, maybe hitting just outside the conduit.

I got up, a faint taste of blood in my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue, either in the crash or from the electrical attack. Destiny’s hornlight bloomed, revealing the concrete walls around me.

“I’m giving you another healing potion,” Destiny said, and I felt it soothe my aches. The blackness washed out of my vision, and my breathing started to come easier. “And a little Buffout to keep you steady. Your blood sugar is probably crashing hard.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna let us take a snack break,” I said, my voice wavering.

A shadow fell across the narrow opening, and Flash flew in, hovering above the ground even in the tight space. I didn’t even want to try, because I knew I’d end up hurting myself somehow.

“Hey there!” I called out.

I don’t know if the pipe was too small for him to gather a thunderbolt or Flash knew we were too close for him to take the time to charge up, or what. Whatever his reason was, the warrior was going to finish this more personally. He pointed his blade at me, holding his short sword lightly in his hoof.

“Cool,” I said. This was what I wanted. I’d take being stabbed a few times over being blown apart by lightning. I drew my knife and motioned for him to come at me. The less I had to move, the better. My legs felt like they were made of lead.

Flash charged, and might as well have teleported right in front of me. I swung my knife and only hit the air. He drove the point of his blade into my chest, hit my ribs, and it stopped, failing to penetrate.

I fell on him. Deliberately, though, I didn’t just collapse because it had hit the very limit of my stamina. He was slowed for a moment by surprise and his sword getting stuck in my body, and that was the opening I needed to pin him down with my body weight. We splashed into the water, and I grabbed into him.

“Chamomile!” Somnambula called out, waving from the entrance to the pipe. Her necklace was glowing, creating an aura of faint green light.

“Do the ritual!” I grunted. Flash was kicking and fighting, driving rock-hard hooves against me. The armor blunted the attacks but it was still rattling me around and eventually, he’d figure some way out. I could feel him twisting in my grip, shifting almost liquidly from one position to another.

Somnambula held up the bronze shield Netitus with one hoof and unrolled the scroll she was carrying. “From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled.” The shield raised out of her hoof, starting to glow on its own with blue light. “With strong hearts full, our souls ignite. Look to your friends, for hope shines bright!”

The blue light washed over with a phantom rainbow, like the sheen of oil on water. It lanced into the dark pony under me, and the light was almost blinding. I squinted through it and watched the shadows get blasted away, dissolving like the morning mist in my home town when the sun crested high enough to peek over the cloud cliffs.

Flash’s kicking and struggling stopped, and I slumped down as he shrank another size smaller. The light faded, and in the gloom of the tunnel I couldn’t see anything, my eyes needing time to adjust. The floating shield let out a loud clang as it hit the ground.

“Mmph--” he said, against my chest.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing myself up, forcing myself to stand long enough to get off him and lean against the pipe wall. Flash shook himself off, the pegasus looking even rougher than I was. He was covered in small scars, wearing armor that was heavily worn, but the bags under his eyes were what made him look exhausted most of all.

“I feel awful,” Flash said.

Somnambula pulled him into a hug. “I knew we would be able to save you,” she said quietly. “I never doubted it for a moment.”

“It was my own fault I needed saving,” Flash replied. “I made a terrible mistake.”

“You were tricked,” Somnambula said.

Flash gave her a small smile. “I should have known it was a bad deal. The things I saw…”

“Let’s have a touching reunion later,” Destiny said, interrupting them. “Chamomile needs something to eat before she totally crashes after that stunt.”

Flash turned back to me and looked guilty and shamed. “I must have really hurt you. I’m so sorry--”

“It was just some mild stabbing,” I said dismissively. I could barely even feel the wounds now. I was propped up enough by Equestria’s finest pharmaceuticals that the pain was present but so distant that it might be happening to a completely different pony. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a snack.”

“I’ll go tell the others that we’ve succeeded,” Somnambula said. “I’ll ask if they have any rations!”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Here,” she whispered, picking up the shield and pressing it into Flash’s hooves, flying away before he could refuse it and give it back.

“Are you going to be able to fly on your own?” Destiny asked. “Rockhoof could barely walk after we saved him.”

“I’ll be fine,” Flash said. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a month.” He ran a hoof over the surface of the shield for a long few seconds before putting it on his back and turning back to me. “Are there… two of you in there? Like two foals in a big coat?”

“Not exactly,” Destiny said.

“Destiny is in the armor,” I said. “And I’m in the armor.” I paused. “That was sort of ambiguous. Uh. I’ll explain later when I can brain good.”

Flash nodded.

“I’ll go first,” I said. “If you see me pass out, try to remember where I landed so the others can pick me up from the bottom of the lake.”

“I’ll do one better and try catching you,” he said.

“I’m heavier than I look,” I warned him, stumbling to the pipe entrance and taking off. I almost expected the soldiers to shoot me out of the air with some good old-fashioned friendly fire, but there was no such luck.

Something cold flashed over my awareness, like a pony stepping on my grave.

I looked around, and saw Flash’s face pale. I followed his gaze down to the lake below us. The crystal-clear water was as black as printing ink, a hole in the world yawning below us. The lift vanished from my wings, and I fell. Flash tucked his wings out and dove, reaching for me.

He caught me by the scruff of the neck, grunting and pumping his wings as hard as he could. We hit a crater filled with thick dust, but not as hard as we could’ve. I ragdolled to a stop, pushing Flash away with the last of my strength before I could accidentally crush him.

The world was still and dark and cold, like the inside of a tomb.

“Are you alive?” Flash asked, panting for breath.

“I’m okay,” I said weakly.

“Take me off,” Destiny said. “I can’t levitate in here.”

I undid the latches and pulled Destiny off my head, the cold hitting my sweaty skin like I’d been plunged into ice.

“So you’re a regular pony under all that,” Flash said quietly. He looked me over. “You’ve got some--”

“Blood, I know,” I said. I looked around. Nothing was immediately trying to kill us, but we were back in an Eclipsed Place and it definitely wasn’t his doing. “Destiny, can you--”

The cameras in the helmet’s visor flashed, and two bottles of water and some snacks appeared next to me, popping out of the Vector Trap with a flash.

“I was going to ask if you could plot a course out of here,” I said.

“You didn’t fall into it, so it’s too far for you to reach without rest,” Destiny said. “I don’t want to know where you go if you fall off one of these islands and can’t get back up.”

“Nowhere good,” Flash said, sitting down next to me. He looked around at the grey waste, unsettled. “This place is like the end of the world.”

“You probably know more about it than we do,” I said. I picked up a pastry and tore it out of the plastic pouch. It was some kind of fried cherry pie made almost entirely out of shortening, sugar, and food color. “So what made you go off the deep end?”

“Wow Chamomile, glad to see you’ve got the same social graces as your dad,” Destiny mumbled. I shrugged.

“It’s alright. I was a soldier and I’ve heard a lot worse said about ponies who collapsed the way I did. Battle fatigue. I didn’t think it’d ever happen to me. I don’t know how much the others told you, but we all tried to help. It was Equestria’s darkest hour, and all of us thought we could ride in and be big damn heroes.” Flash shook his head. “Didn’t work out. I popped out of Limbo, and I saw what was left after a pegasus city turns from clouds into poisonous steam all at once. There were a few ponies caught at the edges, and they were blind and burned and they died in my hooves and… I couldn’t do a thing.”

“Must have been Cloudsdale,” I said. “It was the first place that got hit.” I pounded down a bottle of water while he talked, then stuck my muzzle in a bag of green chips and really hoped the color was seasoning and not poison.

“It wasn’t anything, by then,” Flash said solemnly. “I started throwing up. I was sick and burning on the inside and I was so afraid to die and I just wanted to see something normal, to see home one more time… and it got a grip on my heart and didn’t let go.”

“If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of pegasus cities that are still doing okay. Better than most places on the surface.”

“I don’t know if--” he stopped and looked up. “It all looked just like that.”

I could see glowing clouds above us, ragged and evaporating and filled with the rubble of what had been civilization. As if from a distance, the silence was filled with cries of agony and fear, just barely audible over the ringing in my ears. Dark shapes, the hulks of cloudships burning with radioactive fire, flew blind orbits around the destruction.

“Chamomile,” Destiny warned. “Those ships are real!”

“What?” I asked.

The drift of the cloudships became more ominous and purposeful, approaching where we were lying in the dust. Runes burned to life across their hulls.

“Buck.” I pulled Destiny over my head, abandoning the rest of my snacks. Even those few bites were helping bring life back to my tired body. “We need an exit, Destiny!”

“Hold on,” Destiny said. “I can--”

Light exploded behind us. A massive portal like a shimmering wall of water split the shadows apart behind us.

“That works,” I said.

Flash was frozen in place, staring at the ships with mute horror, his expression drawn and his coat pale. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled, dragging him a few steps before he started moving on his own.

“I can’t do this again,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to,” I said. I grabbed him when he started to slow down and threw him into the light.

I fell out of the portal and fell, the ground nowhere in sight under me. My armor spun back to life, telekinetic fields flickering around me and negating the pull of gravity, making every motion mean more. My wings caught the air, and I was flying.

“Flash?” I called out, looking for him.

“Here!” He yelled, coming into formation next to me. “I froze up back there. I’m sorry. I just…”

“Wartime Stress Disorder isn’t something to be ashamed of,” Destiny said. “What’s important is letting yourself get help. You’ll start feeling better when we’re back with your friends again.”

“We didn’t go far,” I said. “Look! You can see the crystal palace over there.” I pointed to where the spires poked through the haze, looking so tall their tips might poke right out of the thin blanket of atmosphere between the black sky above and the sea of white mist below.

“I’ll be glad to see them,” Flash said. “I don’t know how I’m going to apologize--”

A lance of green necromatic death swept past us, narrowly missing us and making my Geiger counter crackle a warning.
I looked back over my shoulder. The portal to the dark world yawned wide like a fanged mouth in the sky. The ships we’d seen were pressing through, chasing us.

“This is bad,” Destiny said.

“No kidding,” I said. “I don’t think I have it in me to take down a cloudship, Destiny!”

“Chamomile, this is Raven.” Her voice came over the radio, clear and strong. “We can see you from the palace along with the disturbance. The Queen is preparing an attack on the ships.”

“Great,” I said. “You’ll need to give the boarders anti-radiation meds, because these hulks--”

“You have ten seconds to scatter,” Raven continued as if she hadn’t even heard me. “Nine. Eight. Seven…”

“What’s happening?” Flash asked. I grabbed him and moved, diving as fast as I could. I could feel the danger like a burning red claxon in the back of my head.

“Just move!” I yelled. There wasn’t time to worry about the cloudships. Something worse was coming. She didn’t mean the Queen was sending troops. Raven meant that the Queen was about to attack.

A place near the top of the tallest spire of the crystal palace sparked and gleamed. A line of light as hard and bright as staring into the sun cut through the sky above us, passing between the two radioactive Raptor-class ships. I grabbed Flash Magnus, shielding him with my own body.

The heat hit me first, instant burning heat even through the armor. The explosion was so big it felt more like a wall slamming into my body than a burst of force, like a physical thing shoving us out of the air.

I tumbled towards the rocks below, the edges of my armor and my metal feathers glowing with heat. The two ships fared worse. Flurry Heart had aimed away from me, but they hadn’t been as lucky. One had taken a glancing blow that bored a wide hole down the length of the ship, like a trench dug right in the armor and edge in molten, dripping steel. The other was listing, one of the radioactive captive storms on its flanks disrupted and slowing, losing lift. Both of them were trailing smoke and open flames.

“There’s a reason the Zebras never directly attacked the Crystal Empire,” Destiny said quietly. I just nodded mutely, dazed from the heat. I was close to passing out again, and my butt felt like I’d sat on top of a campfire.

“Hold on, let me help you,” Flash said, grabbing my hoof and wincing at the heat, beating his wings and trying to slow my landing and get me to the ground safely. I don’t know how he did it, but he actually stopped us entirely before we hit the rocky island of floating stone below us, and we hovered there for a second before he put me down.

“I hate fire,” I mumbled.

“Tell me about it,” Flash sighed. “If it wasn’t for Netitus I’d have a lot worse than this.”

I focused my bleary eyes on him. He was almost entirely sunburned, an instant tan from the backwash of that massive attack.

“You going to be okay?” I asked. “I think I’ve got some healing potions.”

“All I need is a little aloe,” Flash assured me. “Mistmane always had the best aloe plants but… she’s not here, is she?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Flash said, patting my shoulder. “If you were able to pull my head out of my ass, getting her to listen to reason shouldn’t take very long at all. Besides, Meadowbrook will have her famous burn tincture! Works almost instantly and doesn’t leave any scars. After some of the adventures Star Swirl dragged us to, we’ve all needed it from time to time.”

He looked around Limbo, at the archipelago of floating isles, the silver plants, the crystals in every color of the rainbow.

“This adventure’s just a little more than I knew we were signing up for,” Flash said quietly. “It’s the first one where I can’t go home and tell my comrades about it…”

“Flash! Miss Chamomile!”

I shifted to look behind us. A concrete bunker poked out of the ground, with a steel door set into it and marked with the number ‘5’. Somnambula was waving from the exit. I waved back dully.

“We found our way out, and you two have already saved yourselves!” Somnambula said. “What an excellent day! I just knew everything would go right!”

Chapter 64: Come Along With Me

I looked around the room. The guards had asked me to come with them, then let me in and refused to elaborate. It wasn’t a bad room or anything, but it was really weird, something like a giant boiler room crossed with a spa, a huge, sturdy-looking machine woven out of crystal and steel surrounded by expensive decor, potted plants, a towel rack, and plush carpets. There was even a massage table off to the side.

What was really setting my mane on end was the feeling humming through the place. I could taste magic in the air, a massive amount of it. The only time I’d felt anything like it was when I’d been standing in front of the Grandus with its thaumobooster at full power.

The massive machine let out a deep hiss and the sound of various locks and latches opening. It sounded almost the same as a Stable door hissing open on well-maintained hinges. Mist poured out of it as it cracked open like an egg along armored seams, and I caught the scent of lavender and sandalwood.

Queen Flurry Heart stepped out, and behind her I glimpsed the inside of the chamber, all exposed magnets and antennae focused on a plush seat. She carried a book in her magic and closed it when she spotted me, folding down the corner of one page to mark her place.

“Thank you for coming to meet me,” Flurry Heart said. She motioned for me to follow her and trotted over to a towel rack, pulling one free to wipe sweat from her body. “Do you know what this place is?”

I looked back at the huge machine, which was already sealing itself up. “Not really. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I can feel a ton of magic in the air. Enough to power a megaspell.”

Flurry Heart nodded. “An excellent observation. Most pegasus ponies can’t sense magic, you know. Raven mentioned she suspects some sort of interaction between your armor’s repair talisman and your repeated regeneration from near-death experiences. Regardless, what this is… is the true heart of the Exodus White.”

I tapped a hoof, thinking. The heart of a ship was usually the power plant, right? “Some kind of magical reactor?” I guessed.

“Correct!” Flurry Heart said, amused. “For Raven to perform all the little miracles she does, providing us with food and water and all the things we need to survive in Limbo, she requires energy to keep her SIVA cells active. I provide that energy. Every day, I serve my subjects by sitting in that small chamber and pouring out my magic into huge banks of crystal capacitors.”

“Does it really take that much?” I asked. “I mean… everything seems pretty stable.”

“Every day I must provide enough energy to feed thousands, to keep the lights on, to keep water flowing and time itself from standing still. Yes. It does take that much.”

She tossed the towel aside and walked out of the room, expecting me to follow at her heel, and I did. She was an easy pony to follow, and I don’t mean that just because she had a nice flank and could absolutely murder me in an instant.

“When we arrived in Limbo, it was clear we would have to rely on SIVA for everything. I had volunteered to become the White’s life core, but Raven convinced me it was better to have a separation of power, to be able to keep SIVA on a leash and, if needed, destroy it.”

“Life core?” I frowned.

“Ah, I see Destiny Bray has been remiss in her education on SIVA. It requires a living component, a will to drive it. Raven was a normal pony, once. One of my Great Aunt Celestia’s hoofmaidens.”

“How did she end up here?” I asked.

Flurry Heart looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “She was babysitting me to ensure I didn’t cause another international incident.”

She stopped in front of the most secure set of doors I’d seen so far in the palace and the guards to the sides of the door entered a passcode, gears and locks moving aside to allow the thick doors to open.

Inside, guard stations were set into both walls, concrete bunkers with mounted guns on swivels to cover the whole room. Red and yellow lines were painted on the floor, clearly marking where ponies were and were not allowed to go. It was like the entrance to a fortress, but buried in the core of the Exodus White.

In the far wall, flanked by bulkheads on hydraulic pistons ready to slam shut to cover it, was a large mirror.

“What’s all this for?” I asked.

“Something else Destiny hasn’t mentioned,” Flurry Heart said. “This is one of Star Swirl’s mirrors. This one allows for passage back to Equestria. He built others that lead to… different locations.”

“Other locations?”

I was pretty sure Flurry Heart wouldn’t have answered even if she’d had all the time in the world to do it, but she didn’t have the chance. Instead, the mirror flared with light, the reflection of the containment chamber vanishing. The surface rippled like water and a pony stepped through, Star Swirl stumbling out with a dazed look.

“Ah, there he is,” the Queen said. “Was your search fruitful?”

Star Swirl looked up, half-surprised to see her and definitely surprised to see me. “I see you’ve decided to just reveal all our secrets to her, then.” He sighed and took off his hat, pulling something out of it. A ceramic pot and a wilted flower, long dead.

“Not what you were hoping for, then?” Flurry Heart asked.

“No,” Star Swirl said. “It was supposed to be enchanted and everlasting, but… there are limits, even to magic.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Some kind of potion ingredient?”

“Mistmane had a deep connection to her homeland and saved them from a curse,” Star Swirl explained, putting the pot down and sighing when one of the dry, brown leaves fell away from what was left of the stem. “This flower was an artifact connected to that deed, like a pearl forming in an oyster.”

“Okay?” I frowned. “But why not--”

“Whatever you’re going to suggest I’ve already thought of it,” Star Swirl said dismissively. “I’ve tried other times, finding a caretaker, growing the seeds myself… none of it is working! I might need to find some other way to catalyze the spell, and that could be tricky. Maybe I could use a blood relation, but it would need to be a close one and I don’t know where they’re buried.”

“But--”

“Yes, I thought about asking the zebra! I’m not a bloody tribalist like the ghost you drag around. Back in my day we were too busy hating each other to be worried about stripes or spots.”

“Sure, but--”

“And I already tried different soil. The problem is the seeds are dead!”

“Star Swirl,” Flurry Heart said. He shut up and didn’t interrupt her. “I believe Chamomile has an idea, and it would be polite to listen to what she has to say rather than assume you already know what it is.”

“Fine, yes, you’re right,” Star Swirl said. “Well?” He looked at me pointedly, daring me to have an idea better than any of his.

“When I was out at the main Braytech Cosmodrome, the Exodus Green was full of plants from seed banks. The SIVA had gone wild and was growing a whole jungle out in the tundra and keeping the plants alive when they shouldn’t have been able to survive. Maybe SIVA can bring the flower back to life?”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that idea is?” Star Swirl scoffed. “Anything could happen!”

“It can’t make the flower more dead than it is now,” I pointed out.

“It’s something to try,” Flurry Heart said. “Star Swirl, you should try and come up with an alternate idea. Raven and Miss Chamomile can see to an attempt to regrow the flower. If they fail, we can discuss something else.”

“Fine,” Star Swirl sighed. “I need to find something without going back too far,” he mumbled. “We’ve accomplished so much this time and I can’t reset it again. Not when we’re so close…”

Flurry Heart gently touched his shoulder.

“Rest,” she whispered. “We will succeed.”

“And she ate the dragon?” Raven asked when I finished recounting what I’d found in the Exodus Green.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just tore the core out and ate it. I’m pretty sure that stopped the jungle from growing any more. Kind of like…” I shrugged and motioned to the dead houseplant on the table between us. “Like cutting it off from the root.”

“Without a control node of some kind it will be difficult to program the SIVA correctly, especially if it had already undergone so many generations of self-improvement,” Raven noted. She ran her hoof along the edge of the small, almost spherical pot. “It was a good idea. We just don’t have the resources.”

“What if I did have a control node?” I asked.

Raven looked up at me, tilting her head. I tapped my skull.

“I’ve got a cortical node from the high priest I fought. I haven’t had to do much with it, but it’s been keeping my SIVA infection under control.” I shrugged. “I’m also like fifty percent sure it’s why my bones grew back the way they did. Some of the raiders I fought had the same spikes growing out of them I did pinning my bones back in place.”

Raven nodded. “Then we’re in luck. If you can revive the flower, we’ll be able to save Mistmane and ensure the seal on the Darkness stays in place.”

“I’m willing to give it a shot,” I said. We both stood there for a moment. “So, uh… how do I start?”

“I assumed you’d know,” Raven said.

“You’re the expert, right?” I countered. “What would you do?”

“I don’t think my methods would be useful,” Raven apologized. “I would start by constructing a virtual blueprint and then allocating resources to a subsystem to print the actual item.”

“That’s pretty much how we made the Valkyrie weapon,” I sighed. “Kulaas provided a blueprint and I had to stick my hoof in a SIVA node and stare at the blueprint until it responded and started making it.”

“Try picturing the flower,” Raven suggested.

I picked up the pot and closed my eyes, feeling it in my hooves and trying to picture it alive and well. A minute passed.

“Is anything happening?” I whispered.

“No.”

I sighed.

“Let’s try another approach,” Raven suggested.

“I’m not really comfortable with all this,” Meadowbrook sighed. “I know how to heal just about everything that can happen to a pony, but this isn’t a pony.”

I frowned. “I thought earth ponies were good with plants?”

She glanced at me, but she hadn’t really looked at me since she’d walked into the room. It was like she was trapped in a cage with a tiger, and speaking as the tiger, it was a little uncomfortable for me too.

“I’m not saying I can’t tend a garden,” Meadowbrook said. “Goodness knows I had a whole heap of medicinal plants I grew from cuttings. This isn’t a healthy little herb that needs a little good soil, it’s a few dead leaves and dry sticks.”

“I know,” I said. “But… there has to be something!” I groaned. “It’s connected to Mistmane and the big… spell thing that Star Swirl keeps talking about without explaining! I have to believe there’s some way to make it work.”

Meadowbrook made a non-committal noise and kept looking the other way. I was starting to get a headache, and I could feel her discomfort hanging in the air like sour milk.

“Look, I get you don’t like me because I’m not a normal pony,” I said. “I’m trying my best to help your friends, and I’d appreciate it if you’d put it aside and just work with me for a minute here!”

She turned to me and finally met my gaze. I was tearing up, and I couldn’t help it. I was angry, and frustrated, and I’d been bottling up worries about what was going on inside me. I didn’t need her making it worse!

“I’m not a bucking monster or a robot or a freak, I’m a pony, and I don’t need somepony who’s supposed to be some kind of legendary doctor refuse to treat me like I’m even a person! Star Swirl might think I’m an idiot, but he doesn’t act like I’m so far beneath him that he can’t even be in the same room!”

“I’m…” Meadowbrook’s expression fell. “Oh, darlin’, that ain’t it. It ain’t you. It’s all on me, and I’m ashamed my own problems hurt you.”

She stepped around the table and took my right forehoof in hers, squeezing it lightly.

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

“Do you know what the hardest thing is for any doctor?” Meadowbrook asked. “Most ponies think it’s havin’ to tell somepony that they’re not gonna make it, but any healer has to learn how to do that real fast or they don’t last long in the job.”

I shrugged weakly, letting her talk.

“The hardest thing is saying ‘I don’t know’,” she said. “Back in my time, and that was an awful long ago, I got to be known as the best healer around because I always knew. I could diagnose a pony from a county away and cure anything short of a rainy day! I taught other ponies and even got some of them to the point I wasn’t a nervous wreck wanting to step in when they work workin’.”

She smiled faintly, but it was a very somber smile.

“I thought… when we all went back to Equestria for a time, I thought I could take those ponies that got hurt and heal them. I’m used to seeing folks on their worst days, working with no real supplies, having to improvise but… I couldn’t make heads or tails of things.” She slumped. “Turns out almost all the sicknesses I knew about? They died out centuries ago, or ponies had cures ten for a bit in every corner store. And there’d been a thousand years of medicine I didn’t know about. Surgeries and treatments and tinctures and potions that I didn’t know how to use at all! I was a foal starting again from zero and the best I could do was some first aid. I felt pathetic.”

I swallowed. “If it helps, I can’t even do first aid.”

She laughed and wiped at her own eyes. “None of that was as bad as all the things I couldn’t cure. Poison in the air and the water and the ground. Ponies told me about radiation sickness right quickly and I had my own bad experience with it that left me laid up in an awful mess for a few days, but then there’s taint and all kinds of things designed just to hurt. Things that aren’t just hard to cure but were made to be incurable.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I hate the part of myself that was glad to come back here,” Meadowbrook said. “It felt like abandoning a patient in need. Felt like I was sitting there over an open wound and makin’ somepony else take care of it because I couldn’t cut it.”

The healer let go of my hoof and touched the spot on my chest that was different from the rest, where my coat had grown back silver, with fur that caught the light like tinsel.

“When I look at you, it ain’t that I think you’re less of a pony than I am. It’s that I’m less of a doctor than I should be. Didn’t even know how to start helping you, and then I start having all sorts of worries about what might happen to any of us. You bounce back real good but what if it’d been Star Swirl or Somnambula who ended up stuck on a branch like that? What if I’m not good enough a healer to save them because I lost the touch?”

“I think as long as you care, you haven’t lost your touch,” I said.

“Thank you,” Meadowbrook said softly. “I’m gonna think for a bit on things to try. Maybe you could try asking around? There has to be a farmer or somepony who worked with plants around here, right?”

Clang.

I’d ended up back in the forge almost without meaning to do it. Destiny had set up a little workshop away from the heat and sparks of Rockhoof’s metalworking, and was helping him with the more delicate parts of his work.

“I don’t like being idle,” Destiny explained. “I’m already dead, and I can’t really sleep or rest, so it’s just lying there doing nothing.”

Rockhoof laughed and brought his hammer down on the metal. He was looking much better than he had before, his build and muscles filled out until he was literally twice the pony he had been. He nodded to the floating helmet, and she levitated the dully-glowing bar of metal back into the flames.

“I should have asked a unicorn to help me smith years ago!” Rockhoof chuckled. “I used to have to do that bit with tongs and me face! Haven’t had to put out a beard fire once since she took over!”

“It’s just too bad you don’t know anything about farming,” I sighed. “I was hoping you’d have some kind of advice.”

Rockhoof wiped his brow and gave me a big slap on the back between the wings.

“You shouldn’t be so worried. The only thing I’d know is how to do it the earth pony way, and you’re no earth pony. Maybe you need to find your own way?”

“I guess,” I mumbled. “I just sort of thought all earth ponies knew about farming.”

“Sorry, lass. If I’d been a farmer, I wouldn’t have left with Star Swirl when he invited me on his grand and foalish adventures! I think that’s true for all of us. Mistmane was the closest we had, but truth is, she couldn’t bear to stay in her own homeland.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “She broke some kind of curse, right?”

“Nay, what the mare did was take the curse into herself,” Rockhoof said. “The way she tells it, her best friend was blighted by the backfire of a spell of eternal youth. She broke the curse and saved her friend and her people, but at great personal cost. When Star Swirl found her, she was already on the road doing what good she could.”

“I don’t get it, she was willing to sacrifice everything, but still left?”

Rockhoof sighed. “I don’t know if it’s my place to talk but you’re mixed up in this and you deserve to know. Mistmane knew her time was short. It had been ever since she saved her friend. She wanted to leave the world a better place than she found it.”

“Must have been a shock to end up this far in the future,” I said quietly.

“A bigger shock when she found out nothing she’d made had lasted,” Rockhoof said.

“I can sympathize with that,” Destiny said. “Until we came here I thought my technology was only good for creating monsters. Chamomile’s whole hometown got wiped out by infectious SIVA. This is what I wanted it to do, to let ponies build a whole new civilization from scratch!”

“It’s not a bad place,” Rockhoof agreed. “But I hope someday we can go back to Equestria proper. Do things the earth pony way. It isn’t as fast and easy as your SIVA, but doing it yourself connects you to your work.”

The doors burst open, and Star Swirl strutted in.

“Everypony, shut up!” he declared. “I’ve arrived with a solution to all of our problems! Again. You can begin applauding me whenever you like.”

“You figured out how to bring the flower back to life?” I stood up, excited.

“No, I fixed your broken plan. With how much you’ve been asking around it’s clear you have no idea what you’re doing.” Star Swirl trotted over and took off his hat, producing a leather-sided canteen from within it before returning the bell-lined hat to his head. “You’re trying to get your implants to work and you can’t communicate with them.”

“Right, so?”

“And what did you do last time you had this problem?” Star Swirl asked.

“Well, uh… I had some problems getting the cortical node activated, and I had to sort of go on a spirit journey thing. I don’t know if it was magical and actually spiritual or just a kind of guided meditation.”

“Neither do I,” Star Swirl said. “Frankly I don’t like all that wishy-washy business with connections between souls and reincarnation and higher planes, but we’re in a room on another plane and at least one pony in the room is a disembodied spirit, so I’m willing to leave my comfort zone in the presence of strong evidence.”

“I hope the point comes along soon and finds its way out of his mouth or we’ll be here all day,” Rockhoof stage-whispered.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “I visited your friendly little zebra tribe. It’s absurd but they had no idea who I was! I had to explain I was a friend of both of you, and they agreed to give me something that should help. This--” he shook the canteen, something inside splashing around. “--Is their special little Datura brew that sent you on your spirit journey before.”

“Will that work?” I asked.

“Of course it’ll work,” Star Swirl said. “I even made a special trip back to the wasteland just to get it. You should stop questioning me and start thanking me. I practically had to beg them for help, you know. I hate having to beg for help. Ponies used to respect me!”

“I respect you,” Destiny said.

“And that’s why I consider you the second-smartest pony in the room after myself,” Star Swirl replied. “So, get on with it! Drink the tea and let’s get this show on the road!”

“Well, it can’t hurt to try,” I said. I took the canteen from him and unscrewed the top. The potent herbal smell of the tea wafted out. I braced myself for the bitter taste and raised it to my lips, taking a long slug of the herbal infusion.

Around me, the world spun in two directions at once. I stumbled when the floor stopped holding me up and tried to catch myself on the--

--sandy shore of a misty sea of stars. I blinked and looked around. I was in the familiar field on a mountaintop, overgrown with grass and scattered patches of flowers. It was the same in the way a recurring dream is the same, where even if things have wildly changed you just somehow know it’s the same place.

A new landmark had appeared, a tall, scraggly tree in the field, twisted and tough and hanging on with roots driven into the rock to hold it against even the strongest winds. I slowly approached it, noting a beehive hanging from one branch. It didn’t feel dangerous, with no sense that I might be stung.

“You’re back,” whispered a weak voice. I squinted, and I could just make out a face in the grain and bark of the tree. It moved when it spoke, something between a carving in the bark and seeing shapes in clouds.

“Fornax?” I asked.

“Just a memory of a memory of a pony,” he said, his voice carried from somewhere far away on a wind that rattled the tree’s branches just a tiny bit. “Hanging on, lingering, persisting. As life does, even just a phantom pretending to be life.”

“This is gonna sound weird, but I’m actually kind of happy to see you,” I said. I sat down in front of the tree.

“I didn’t expect to speak again, so forgive me if my pleasantries are rusty from disuse,” Fornax croaked. The tree shuddered slightly in a silent laugh that I felt more than heard.

“You know basically everything about how to use SIVA, right?” I asked.

“Ah, you’ve come seeking enlightenment, then,” he said. “All I have is yours to take. That’s what it means to be truly defeated. I can only hope to linger as somepony you used to know, however briefly.”

“I’m trying to grow a flower.”

“Should I remind you I was a poet in life? I didn't even see a living flower until I found the Green.”

“Yeah well, nopony seems to be a farmer around here, and the Green dragon was making a buckload of trees using SIVA, so you’ve got to know something!”

“I do,” Fornax agreed. “The Green isn’t something you tame and control. It doesn’t bend to the wishes of ponies. You saw the dragon. It couldn’t be controlled by the will of ponies.”

I thought back to it, and for an instant the beast appeared, a vision in the fog around the little mountain peak of my inner world. It had been massive, made of copper turned completely green with patina from the volcanic gasses leaking into the broken Exodus ship. The faces of something like a dozen ponies had been embedded in its belly, like a mural of half-melted flesh and metal.

“It had been programmed not to care about ponies, at least no more than any other creature, so no single will could master it. All of them together, the whole crew of the ship, were forced into one body. All they had in common was their desire to heal nature.”

“Great, because that’s what I want to do, too! I need to get this flower back to life.” The dragon vanished, replaced with an image of the dead flower hanging over us, a hundred times larger than life.

“To do that, you need to stop being so afraid,” Fornax said. “Deep inside you, you’re afraid of SIVA.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” I said.

As if to spite me, images flashed around us, like a thunderstorm with the clouds lighting up as huge projections of my twisted foreleg, the monsters in my home town, my mom, being broken and crippled with spikes growing from every part of my body. The feeling of ants crawling between my skin and the muscle underneath. Being eaten alive.

“You are,” Fornax retorted. “And not without reason. You are allowed to fear things. Fear keeps ponies alive.”

“I need this to work,” I said.

“Being able to use SIVA like this will mean awakening it again,” Fornax warned. “It has acted to save your life, but it has done little else. It could decide to change you further.”

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

I woke up gasping, holding onto the table for dear life. I was dizzy and drained and I started to fall. Tiny bits of plastic and metal ripped away from me, pulling out of my skin bloodlessly, as easy as detaching cables inside a machine. Strong hooves caught me, and I looked back to see Raven standing there, looking pensive.

“Are you alright?” Raven asked. “There was a significant disturbance."

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Star Swirl said, stroking his beard and looking at the mess I’d made.

The flowerpot sat on the small table we’d left it on before my little trip, but that was about the only thing that hadn’t changed. Coppery wires and thin, pulsing veins of green plastic twisted together to form vines that sprouted from where my hooves had touched the table and spilled out from there, crawling across the table and floor and going up the wall almost to the ceiling. Flowers and glowing, metallic fruit hung from it like grapes made in a foundry.

A few of the tendrils grew right into the pot, and the dry stem was green again, reinforced by a delicate lattice of metal. Needles pierced the dead plant, forcing its circulatory system back to life. The leaves were already regrowing, though they were backed by carbon fiber.

“I really hope it works,” I said. My head was pounding. “I’m getting a terrible migraine.”

“You forcibly reprogrammed a significant number of my SIVA micromachines,” Raven noted, looking up at what I’d made. “It was some kind of high-powered microwave burst transmission.”

“It’s how the Green was controlled back in Equestria,” I said.

“You must have a small transmitter inside you somewhere,” she noted. “Or… perhaps your subdermal weave acts like an antenna?”

“Don’t ask me.” I shrugged. “Could I have some aspirin and a lot of water?”

“Of course,” Raven said. “I’ve alerted the staff to have some sent up.”

“It’s blooming!” Star Swirl yelled.

A new bud formed at the top of the stem, the edges going from green to bright pink. I was afraid to see what it’d turn into. Was I going to be responsible for creating some kind of awful plant monster?

The petals unfurled, long and beautiful. A light scent of perfume filled the air, strangely nostalgic. It looked almost perfect, aside from the small status light in the very center of the bloom, a tiny LED glowing green and telling everypony that things were fine despite its very presence meaning the opposite.

“Let me see if you bungled this up…” Star Swirl muttered, casting a spell and muttering to himself.

A changeling ran into the room with a tray, offering me a few pills and a glass of water. I took them gratefully, downing them while Star Swirl paced around the flower, casting a number of other spells and looking annoyed.

“This might actually work,” Star Swirl decided, after a few long minutes, and either the relief hit me like a truck or the pills kicked in at just the right time because the pain and throbbing started to fade. “The connection is still there. It’s a little weaker than the others, but present. I wouldn’t have wanted to risk it as our first attempt, but we’ve got two successes already, and I can make a few alterations to the ritual to fine-tune it.”

“Does that mean…” I asked.

“That’s right,” Star Swirl said. “Once you’re feeling back in fighting shape, you’re going after Mistmane.”

Chapter 65: The Sound of Silence

“Hold still,” Meadowbrook said. She moved the sticky pad to another spot, looking at the display on the bulky ruggedized box next to her. A red light turned yellow, then green. “There we go. Can you--?”

Destiny’s red magic held it in place, and Meadowbrook wrapped gauze over it to keep it secure against my chest, the sticky goop on the end of the paddle pressing against me uncomfortably. I did my best to stay still, even with the Jumpship vibrating around us. The crew looked nervous, and after what had happened to the last crew I couldn’t blame them. If we hadn’t gotten them all back alive and relatively unharmed, Meadowbrook and I probably would have had to walk the whole way.

“This feels really weird,” I mumbled.

“The last time we saw Mistmane, she sang a song that made your heart slow down and stop,” Destiny said. “Believe it or not, doing something about that is more important than worrying about what feels weird.”

She sounded a little short, but I could feel she was worried about me. More than that, she was afraid.

“Tell me again how this is going to help,” I said, zipping up the crystal-fiber undersuit and then putting my chestplate back on over it. The wires dangled out of the side, slipping out of a seam. Destiny helped me mount the box against my side. It was bulky, as big as a waterproof ammo box.

“It’s called an Automatic Emergency Defibrillator, or AED,” Destiny said.

“It’s designed to monitor your heart, darlin,” Meadowbrook said. “I’ve never used one of these before myself, but from what I understand they’ll shock you and make your heart jump back into action if it gets too off-rhythm. Back in my day we used lightning leeches, but this is a bit easier.”

“It should work,” Destiny said. “These are actually designed for civilian use. They walk a pony through all the steps on how to use them, and then keep the patient stable long enough for emergency help to arrive.”

“I’m wearing one too, so I’m in the same boat you are,” Meadowbrook said quietly, watching her own unit’s display while she found the sweet spot on her own chest.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. “We could go back and get Star Swirl.”

She shook her head, whispering something to herself that I couldn’t make out over the sound of the jumpship’s engines.

“What?” I asked.

Meadowbrook took a deep breath and looked up at me. “I said that he’s not in good enough shape for this. If his heart stopped I don’t know if it’d ever start again.”

“If you’re sure,” I said.

“I’m not, but when something goes wrong, I need to be there to fix it,” she said. “You might get hurt and need patching up, or this ritual could go wrong and we’ll be half a world away from any real help for Mistmane.” She looked at the flower we were taking with us. Raven had put it in a big bubble of bulletproof lexan to keep it safe, making it look like a giant toy in a plastic pod.

“Let’s test the equipment,” Destiny said. “Clear!”

“Hey, why is my battery pack so much bigger than--”

The electricity hit me like a brick, making every muscle tense. I fell over in a heap, my vision going to static around the edges.

“Hey! Are you okay?” Destiny asked, her voice echoing. I groaned and strained to get up, my chest tense and hurting.

“Ow,” I mumbled.

“Looks like it worked. We’ve got a clean signal on the EKG. But, uh…” Destiny lowered her voice. “Your SIVA near-field signal strength is way up. Is something up with your implants?”

“I had to tweak some settings to get that flower growing again,” I mumbled. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“If you say so,” Destiny said with a mental shrug.

“Testing,” Meadowbrook said. She yelped and fell over, her legs twitching for a moment before she collected herself. “Oh boy, that’s got a heck of a kick…” she groaned.

“Hold on.” Destiny flew over to look. “...Your signals are good too. You’re good to go.”

“Hope we won’t need to use it,” Meadowbrook said. “That wasn’t my cup of tea. Felt like a snakebite.”

“Nothing strong enough to shock your heart is going to feel good,” Destiny said. “We should go over the plan before we arrive.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll summarize it since I’m the dumb one. If I understand it all of us should, right?” I cleared my throat. “Mistmane doesn’t leave Eclipsed Places much, and that makes her really hard to track. Flurry Heart and Star Swirl think she’s going to be somewhere called the Borderlands? Or Shadowlands? Something like that.”

“The Borderlands,” Meadowbrook confirmed. “They were here even before Star Swirl kicked us all into Limbo to seal the Pony of Shadows away. He says it’s where they all come from. I don’t rightly know what they are, but he doesn’t either.” She moved over to the window and pointed. “You can see the place from anywhere in Limbo.”

It loomed on the horizon as a shadow in the fog. It was too far away to really see details, too dark and almost shapeless. Even so, somehow it was like I could picture the place in my mind’s eye, a baroque and ancient city built on a giant’s scale and wrapped up in impossible twists and shapes. A cage of black stone and steel.

“It’s really ominous,” I mumbled. “Why would she be there?”

“If you’re waiting for either of them to explain anything, you might need another thousand years,” Meadowbrook said softly. “Star Swirl only likes explaining how clever he is, and the Queen seems to fancy herself an enigma.”

“She probably learned that from Luna,” Destiny said. “The mare was amazing at keeping secrets.”

“Once we find Mistmane, we’ll bring her back with us,” Meadowbrook said. She pulled a brightly-colored mask out of her pack, touching the beak for a moment before settling it on top of her head, ready to pull it down. “It’s my duty as a healer to help, no matter what.”

“Ma’am?” The co-pilot looked back at us, the full helmet and mask making it difficult to tell that it was a changeling. Only the thin, twitching wings gave away the game.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. The sense of unease in the air was growing into outright terror that would have had more poorly trained ponies running for the hills.

“We’re getting some kind of psychic interference,” the changeling reported.

I nodded. “I can feel it too.” It was like a black fog. Like turning back the clock and being a foal again and seeing something terrifying in the shadows of your closet. Irrational fear that I should have been able to shrug off but just lingered and made me want to hide under a blanket until it went away.

“Would it be okay if we…” the co-pilot trailed off. I knew what they wanted.

“It’s okay,” I assured them. “Just set us down and we’ll walk the rest of the way. You can back off to somewhere safer, but I’d appreciate it if you stayed close enough to watch for distress flares.”

“We can do that,” the changeling promised, looking relieved.

“Probably a good idea either way,” Meadowbrook said. “Wouldn’t want to try landin’ a beast like this anywhere near the borderlands. Star Swirl is the only one who’s spent much time around them, and he said the rules all break down.”

“Which rules?” I asked.

“Oh. So you meant rules like gravity,” I said. I tilted my head and watched her carefully walk along the bridge. It twisted in a distressing way, like wrought iron put in a massive vice and bent by some massive, unknowable force. It continued to move and flex, just a little, like a rope bridge, but made entirely out of rock.

I took a step onto it, and it should have creaked like a rusty old hinge opening, but it was utterly silent. I followed along behind Meadowbrook, and the direction of ‘down’ kept changing along with the bridge, and I wondered if it had been built to follow gravity, or if gravity had been changed to match it.

“Oh boy,” Destiny mumbled. “Space is really twisted around here. I wish I could use the Dimension Pliers to map it out, but I can’t swap them in while the AED is attached to your chest.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m getting the feeling it’s better not to know.”

The cage got bigger with every step, and I couldn’t really orient myself with it. It wasn’t just the way everything curved around, it was just impossible to tell which part of the cage was supposed to be the top.

My ear twitched. Something was wrong.

Meadowbrook stopped in her tracks and I ran into her butt. She looked back at me, then right ahead. A tall, thin, shadow stood on the bridge.

“Oh. One of these,” I said. “They’re spooky but they can’t actually hurt you,” I explained. “They’re just a kind of optical illusion.”

I walked up to it to show her that it was entirely harmless. I looked back at Meadowbrook and waved a hoof vaguely at the shadow to disperse it. The ones I’d seen before in the college had just been figments of a pony’s imagination projected out into the real world and as easily dismissed as a daydream.

This particular daydream was solid enough that my hoof stopped and intense cold rushed up my foreleg. I blinked and turned around, and the thing screeched like tearing metal and lunged at me. The shadowy hoof went right through the armor and bitter cold spread through my chest.

“Diverting power!” Destiny yelled. I felt magic hum around me, and the shadow creature screamed, its hoof tearing away as it retreated, broken off at the knee. It flaked away from that wound, dissolving like a sugar cube dropped into hot water, the scream fading along with it into some infinite distance, never seeming to actually stop.

“That didn’t go how I expected,” I gasped, sitting down and touching my chest. Flowers of frost spread across the metal where it had reached through me.

“They’re real enough to kill,” Destiny said. “The armor did keep it out once I increased the magic resistance, so they must be made out of some kind of energy, like a living spell.”

“Why weren’t they like this back in the college?” I groaned. Meadowbrook gave me a worried look. “I’m fine,” I assured her. “It’s just really sore. It felt as cold as the Windigo.”

“It’s very similar,” Destiny agreed.

“The rules are different here, remember?” Meadowbrook said. She offered me a hoof, and I let her help me up. “Somewhere else they might just be shadows. Anything could happen around here.”

Destiny made a distracted sound, and I could tell she was looking at a bunch of screens that I couldn’t see. “If we spot another one, I want to use DRACO to run a scan. I only caught a little bit of it, but I swear I felt some necromancy in there. But there’s no body, so… could they bring just a pony’s spirit back?”

“If they could bind a pony’s soul, that would be terrible dark sorcery,” Meadowbrook said. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“In total war, anything done to the enemy is permitted,” a voice said, echoing through the flying buttresses around us that formed the open framework of the cage. A cloaked, rotting form stepped out into the open, clutching a burned, twisted staff. Three eyes burned in its forehead.

“It’s one of the necromancers!” Destiny hissed. Her voice was tinged with hate.

“Hey!” I waved to him. Or her. It was hard to tell, since it was a sort of mummified corpse. “Is there any chance we can resolve things with talking instead of violence?”

Two more zebras walked out of the darkness, standing next to the first. I guess if we counted Destiny, that made it more or less an even match. One of the new ones looked familiar, and it took me a second to realize why.

“Ah!” I pointed. “You were in the hospital basement! I thought you were dead!”

“When we are destroyed, we are reborn here,” she replied. “Our death was excised from us, cut away and replaced with power.”

“We’ve also met. You threw me out of a cloudship.” the third necromancer reminded me.

“Oh right.” I hesitated. “No hard feelings?”

“They killed my mother!” Destiny hissed. “And if that’s not enough for some reason, what about all the other ponies?”

“Your pet ghost is right,” the lead necromancer said. “This is our fate. Our doom. We cannot be turned from it. I have forged us into weapons, and no matter how long it takes, we will destroy Equestria!”

“Equestria doesn’t even exist anymore!” I groaned. “Congratulations! You won! Equestria was destroyed, two hundred bucking years ago!”

“The dream of it lives on,” the hospital necromancer sighed. “It lives in ponies, in sealed Stables and your Enclave and your last Princess.”

“Why are all you wartime ponies crazy?” I asked.

The third necromancer stepped forward. “Equestria is a nation of evil, spreading evil, and anything is allowed for the sake of stopping that evil, even using the same source of darkness that corrupted your own rulers!”

“What is he talking about?” I mumbled.

“Nightmare Moon,” Destiny said. “But that’s stupid! Nightmare Moon was a kind of curse, or, or mental illness and the Elements healed Princess Luna! It has nothing to do with any of this!”

“It’s, uh…” I hesitated. “It’s actually pretty similar, isn’t it? With the curse and darkness and a big magic spell to fix it?”

“It…” Destiny similarly hesitated, stymied by my question. “Whatever. Just go punch them until they stop being evil!”

“That sounds like a darn good plan,” Mage Meadowbrook agreed, lowering her wooden mask into place over her face.

That was entirely in my wheelhouse. It was what I’d known things would turn into anyway. I charged at them, running turning into taking off for an attack from above turning into slamming face-first into a wall of magic and sliding down the wall of tingling magic like a bug on a windshield.

“Of course they’ve got a shield,” I mumbled.

The three turned to face each other and started whispering, chanting and building up to something big. I could feel it, just like a gathering storm. Shadows swirled between them, their own shadows getting caught up in a dust devil of dark magic and pulling away from them, their voices becoming louder and more strained as it quickly built into a torrent.

I backed off, watching it.

“This is bad,” Destiny said. “Readings are off the charts!”

“What kind of readings? What charts?” I asked.

“All the readings! It’s really, really bad!”

Whatever spell they were casting, it reached a crescendo and exploded, the darkness collapsing into a perfect sphere hovering between them and throwing off a wave of force that blasted the zebras away and knocked me back head over hooves.

I shook myself off and looked back at Meadowbrook. She looked wobbly, but alive.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine, but look! What in the world is that?!”

The black sphere pulsed and expanded, throbbing like a beating heart, expanding to twice my height before pulling back to the size of a hoof. Parts of it lingered in the air, filling out a shape, the shadows sketching it in with every beat of that terrible heart of darkness. It took a moment for me to realize what I was seeing.

“An alicorn?” I asked.

It opened its mouth and she laughed, as kind and warm as a blade of ice stabbed into the back of a loving sibling.

“Nightmare Moon,” Destiny whispered. “Or… her shadow, at least. The part that wasn't Luna.”

“Can you face Equestria’s sins?” One of the zebras struggled to their hooves, leaning on railing at an impossible angle to support their rotten limbs. “You followed her to destruction! Now her memory will destroy you!”

Nightmare Moon tilted her head towards the zebra, just inclining it slightly. The necromancer screamed and exploded into blue-black flames. The dark alicorn turned back to me, facing me down from what now seemed like an impossible height.

“How bucked are we?” I whispered.

“Do you have a megaspell you forgot to tell me about?” Destiny asked. “Maybe a balefire bomb in your saddlebags you never mentioned?”

“Nope.”

“Then you might as well get one last look at your cutie mark while you kiss your ass goodbye.”

“I don’t think that’s really a pony,” Meadowbrook said. “The way she moves, it’s more like--”

Whatever Meadowbrook was going to say, I didn’t hear it. Nightmare Moon correctly identified me as the bigger, stupider threat and fired a midnight-blue bolt of magic at me. Destiny reacted almost instantly, a shield appearing right in its path, strong enough to hold up against an anti-tank weapon. It shattered instantly, but it deflected the attack, knocking it just a little to the side, enough to make it just barely miss.

I couldn’t afford to let her have a second crack at it. I bolted into motion again. The shadows all seemed weak to physical attacks -- even if they were strong enough to kill, they folded when the reality of interacting with them broke the illusion that they existed. If I could punch her in the snout, I might just be able to--

I yelped. Her dark aura surrounded my left foreleg. She tossed her head, and irresistible telekinetic force tossed me aside with bone-shattering force. Or at least it would have been bone-shattering for most ponies. I don’t know if I really got off easy.

I landed hard on my right side, which was the best part of the experience because if I’d landed on my left I would have passed out.

My left foreleg hung limp, and the pain was enough to send stars shooting through my vision and totally annihilate my concentration.

“Your shoulder is dislocated,” Destiny said. “You’re going to be okay, uh, we just have to pop it back in!”

I whimpered and failed at my first attempt to stand up, almost blacking out from the effort of trying to move. Nightmare Moon stepped closer, but I couldn’t coordinate myself. I tried to flap my wings and the motion of the muscles across my chest and shoulder exploded with agony. I fell flat on my face again, gritting my teeth.

“Just hold on, I’ve got to have something…” I was sure Destiny was poking through the inventory, trying to figure out how many drugs she could give me without killing me.

My vision darkened. I looked up. Nightmare Moon was standing over me. She raised a hoof, ready to stomp down on my head.

A jar shattered against her side, and something yellow and glowing covered her neck and side. Nightmare Moon backed off in confusion, like a wild predator wary of a prey’s trick.

“One of these has to work!” Meadowbrook yelled. She threw a vial of something blue and sticky at the shadow alicorn’s hooves, and when the glass shattered it expanded into a huge wash of foam, letting off steam and the scent of berries before solidifying. Nightmare Moon froze in place, struggling against the hardened foam. A real alicorn would have broken out without even thinking.

It wasn’t a real alicorn. It was terrifying, it was powerful, it could kill, but it wasn’t a goddess. I leaned as far as I dared to my left, then flicked the knife out of my right hoof, throwing it in those few moments the foam held it still.

The blade lodged into the shadow-thing’s chest, and it kicked back in alarm, the black threads making it up starting to fray.

“Take this!” Meadowbrook shouted, jumping and punching the knife, driving it in just a little deeper. The tip hit something inside the fake alicorn, some knot that held together whatever it was spun from, and it screeched like an animal, coming undone entirely.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I grunted, trying and failing to stand up again. Meadowbrook ran over and looked at me.

“That ain’t good, hon,” she mumbled, gingerly touching my leg.

“Healing potions are great, but you’ve still got to set bones or… pop them back into place,” I said. “Could you…?”

“Course I can,” Meadowbrook said. “You’re in good hooves. Take a deep breath, and I’m gonna pop it in on three. You ready?” I nodded. “One.”

She put her weight into it and my shoulder snapped into place with a click that was just a little too mechanical for comfort. I’m pretty sure it also hurt a lot, but the shock was so bad that I passed out for a few seconds and by the time I started to come out of it, Destiny was on the third or fourth dose of Med-X.

“Thanks,” I said weakly.

“You’re a big, strong girl,” Meadowbrook assured me. “Here.”

She rummaged around in her pack and produced a lollypop, giving it to me and patting my hoof.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” the zebra from the hospital said. She struggled up, leaning on her skull-topped staff. “This place has the memory of every terror that ever haunted Equestria and beyond! How many of their shades will you be able to fight off before you succumb? Perhaps we’ll try bringing Grogar back next!”

“Who the buck is Grogar?” I asked.

A wail cut through the air, a scream that echoed back on itself until it was a terrible harmony. The dark stone around us vibrated with resonance.

“She’s here!” the necromancer I’d wrestled for the Pliers yelled. The corpse shambled upright and cackled, three eyes burning in its skull. “You’ll die at the hooves of your own so-called friend!”

The song changed pitch, filling with words that I couldn’t quite understand, like listening to ponies talking in another room, just muffled enough that I could almost make out what was being sung. My heart thudded in my chest, starting to struggle.

“Where is she?” I asked, trying to spot Mistmane. It took me a few moments to see the movement high above us, standing in the webwork of stone casting a net of shadows around us. Mistmane was tall and radiated beauty even as an ominous shadow blotting out light and life, her mane flowing like a stream of black water hanging in the air around her.

The song’s tempo changed, and my heart jumped along with it, slamming and stopping for a full second, a dead weight in my chest. One of the necromancers screamed and collapsed, the one I’d wrestled above Winterhoof falling apart with smoke pouring from his eye sockets.

Meadowbrook fell to her knees, and our AED units beeped a warning, the big back of batteries and capacitors at my side humming and vibrating before--

A shock ran through my chest, forcing my heart back into motion. My legs kicked and went rigid, throwing a new wave of pain down my left side to go along with the jump-start of my heart. Meadowbrook had almost the same reaction, the unit strapped to her body jolting her to the ground.

“Too much to control,” the last necromancer muttered to herself. I saw her stagger, holding herself up with her skull-tipped staff. She looked over at our crumpled, suffering forms. “Die quickly. It is the only mercy I would grant you.”

With that, she wrapped herself in shadows and vanished in a burst of anti-light, retreating. That was good. It meant I only had one terrible threat actively killing me. I forced myself to trot over to Meadowbrook and help her up. The AED kept sending small jolts through my chest, forcing my heart into a rhythm.

“You okay?” I asked, trying to sound better than I was.

“Ain’t dead yet,” Mage Meadowbrook said. She raised her beak-like mask and checked her AED unit. “It’s in pacemaker mode. Ain’t pleasant but it’s better than a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, forcing a smile. “We’ve got some time. We just need to figure out how to--”

“--wrestle her… down here…” I finished, trailing off. The light had drained away from around us in a sudden jump, like the sun had gone out. The Cage was the same as before, all impossible angles and tangled stonework made for giants. It was the rest of the world that had changed.

Mistmane’s song redoubled, a new verse of death pouring out of her and through the thin, dry, cold air of the Eclipsed place. My AED unit started flashing with light.

“Low battery warning,” Destiny said. “These places drain the energy out of everything!”

“Sorry about this,” I said. I raised DRACO up and took a shot at Mistmane. My shoulder was too messed up to fly up to her, and I didn’t have time to argue with Destiny and Meadowbrook.

The shell streaked through the cold air and stopped, hanging in the air, vibrating with energy, spinning in place. Something like a mach cone inverted around it, pulsing in time with Mistmane’s song, and the shell exploded.

“That’s new, and bad,” I said.

“Did you just try to shoot her?!” Meadowbrook demanded, hopping up to swat the back of my head.

“Can’t blame me for--” I gasped, my heart skipping a beat. “Trying!”

“The AED pack is almost out of power,” Destiny said. “What’s plan B?”

“Barely even had a plan A and you’re demandin’ a whole new one out of nowhere?” Meadowbrook grumbled. “I’m a doctor, not an armchair general!”

“Mistmane’s song is going to kill us, so if you want to keep being a doctor, you’d better think of something fast or you’re losing your patients and yourself!” Destiny snapped.

“I know, I know!” Meadowbrook said. She took off her mask and rubbed her temples, the pain and aching from her heart being forced to beat clearly affecting her. “If she’s killing us with a song… then we’ve got to counter it with the same. Like an antidote! She’s singin’ a song about death, so we have to sing a song about life!”

“I can’t sing!” I groaned. “I have a note from a doctor!”

“Well this doctor is tellin you to learn real quick!” Meadowbrook snapped. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat.

“Beyond
The edge of the sea
My light
Shines for all to see
I know
We'll find in the rhythm of life
Friends
That make it worth living”

The pressure, cold, and pain abated, pushed back just for a moment. Meadowbrook looked at me, and I swallowed down my stage fright and unease and tried to improvise.

“Just take the leap and you can fly
The rhythm made by you and I
We make tomorrow a better place
Everypony working on one case!”

Mistmane’s song pitched up into a shriek, loud enough to make my ears ring. Meadowbrook’s stepped forward against it, raising her voice.

“I know
Life can seem too short
Our battle
Our sacrificial last resort
Many years ago now I remember
The very first time I met you
We said we’d fight together
But this isn’t what I meant to come true.”

Mistmane’s song started to falter, the notes wavering and going staccato and flat, the echo starting to fade. Destiny hissed for me to take a turn, and I struggled to find some kind of music in my heart.

“We keep flying along the road
We keep speeding past the signs
Living true to our own code
Coloring life outside the lines”

The air itself seemed to start to freeze up and crack. It looked like a pane of glass hanging between us, the energy of Mistmane’s song exploding out as black and white lightning. Her mane flailed, whipping around her in a torrent as she launched into one desperate aria of death. Meadowbrook grabbed my hoof, and I could feel her struggling, holding on for strength and support as she belted out one last verse against the cacophony.

“Life is the craft, Life is the art
Life is the rhythm, Life is the heart
I'll do it for the better, for all of us
I'll break apart your dark melodious!”

The air blasted apart, the light returning to the world and the cold, thin air of the eclipse fading. Mistmane let out one last cry and fell from her perch, a black comet tumbling down and landing almost at our hooves, defeated.

I gasped, breath suddenly coming easier. The pain in my chest and head faded.

“The ritual!” Destiny reminded us.

“Right, right,” Meadowbrook said, wiping a tear from her eyes and readying the flower in its protective bubble. “Looks like this thing’s still alive…”

“Should I hold her down?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how long Mistmane was going to stay down.

“Just stay back until we know what this spell is gonna do,” Meadowbrook said. She cleared her throat. “From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled. To soothe your soul and set wounds right, a new dawn comes and there will be light!”

Rainbow light poured over Mistmane, beating back the dark and washing it away, leaving one of the most beautiful mares I’d ever seen. She was delicate, like a sculpture made out of ice clouds, ready to melt or blow away at the slightest touch.

“Did it work?” I asked.

Mistmane stirred and groaned, trying to stand. Meadowbrook ran to her and helped her up, and then I realized something horrible must have gone wrong. As I watched, Mistmane’s beauty faded and she aged decades in the span of seconds, wrinkles and age weighing her down until I thought she’d die on the spot.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

“I don’t look that bad, do I?” Mistmane asked, her voice weak.

“You’ve always been beautiful,” Meadowbrook assured her.

“And you’ve always been good at flattery,” Mistmane said. “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. I suppose even letting myself fall into that temptation wasn’t enough to break the curse. I’m sorry for all the trouble I put you through.”

“Don’t you dare apologize to me!” Meadowbrook scolded. “We need to get you back and run all kinds of tests! Goodness knows I don’t trust Star Swirl’s half-baked spells or what we had to do to your flower to get things working.”

“My flower?” Mistmane asked.

Meadowbrook carefully presented the plastic protective bubble to her. Mistmane looked into it critically, examining the half-machine plant. After a long moment, she smiled.

“Well, that is unexpected,” she said. “Just what will they think of next?”

I let out the breath I was holding. “So… everything is okay?”

“I apologize if I gave you a scare,” Mistmane said. “You did nothing wrong. This curse is mine to bear, and not of your doing.” She frowned. “But there was something else… it’s so hard to remember…”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Meadowbrook assured her. “Whatever it is, it’s over now.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mistmane said. She turned to look back into the Cage, towards the dense cluster of towers and bridges and buttresses shrouding its heart. “I remember now. It’s like a dream, a bad dream that you only remember in silhouette in the morning. Rockhoof found the egg, and Flash brought it here, and I took it in there and…”

“And what?” I asked.

“We brought something back. A broken soul put inside a new body,” Mistmane said quietly. “We were only being used all along. We need to gather the others. Our weakness has allowed something terrible to escape from death itself!”

Chapter 66: The Only Thing I Know For Real

“Somehow, Chrysalis has returned,” Star Swirl said, leaning on the plotting table’s glowing crystal surface.

“Are you sure?” I asked. Everypony in the room turned to look at me. “I’m just saying that ponies don’t come back from the dead that often, do they?”

“You’ve done it two or three times,” Destiny reminded me, the helmet’s eyes flashing where it was hovering over the table.

“Ach, it isn’t even close to the first time this has happened to us,” Rockhoof shrugged.

“Dark magic. Mirror pools. Secrets only the seaponies know,” Mistmane said, still sounding exhausted. She sipped a tiny cup of steaming tea that had a strong medicinal scent to it, Meadowbrook refilling it when she put the cup down. “Evil often finds a way.”

“Yes, well, it’s nothing to be impressed about,” Star Swirl said. “If I had a bit for every time one of my enemies has come back from the grave I’d… well, I’d have a few dozen extra bits.”

“Maybe the Queen should have done a better job killing her the first time,” Flash joked.

“I assure you, I was quite thorough,” Flurry Heart replied.

“How did she come back?” Somnambula asked. “Maybe we can find some way to simply reverse or undo what was done!”

“Mmm…” Star Swirl stroked his beard. “The truth is, Chrysalis’ spirit has been haunting us for a long time. The changelings can sense her presence and hear her voice in some places, especially the Eclipsed Places.”

“I’ve heard it too,” I agreed.

“What you're experiencing is probably some form of thaumoframe resonance,” Destiny suggested. “It can, clearly, capture and interact with spirits.”

“In my day, mediums would use spirit boards to communicate with the dead,” Mistmane said. “I’m always impressed with what the younger generation invents.”

“It’s actually quite an interesting phenomenon,” Star Swirl said. “This place is so empty, so shaped by perception and belief, that the echoes of her presence reinforce themselves and become self-sustaining. I’m not even entirely sure if it’s really her spirit, or some kind of collective memory from the changelings.”

“Speaking of which,” Flash Magnus coughed. “I realize I’m a little out of the loop, but I know just enough about politics to know that this is probably pretty bad, right? Half the ponies here are changelings--”

“If you can even call them ponies,” Star Swirl groused.

“I do,” Queen Flurry Heart replied firmly. “Continue, Flash Magnus.”

“All I’m saying is, it might be a good idea to keep things close to the vest until we know what we’re going to do about it,” Flash said. “You can’t run a tight ship if you’re worried half the crew might mutiny.”

“No,” Flurry Heart dismissed immediately, waving a hoof. “I am aware this will cause unrest among my subjects. Some may even decide to rebel or turn against us. It would be worse if I tried to keep it a secret.”

“We could confine them to quarters,” Destiny suggested. “We had to do that during the war with Zebras living in Equestria. We put them in internment camps. It was better for everypony. They were protected from ponies that wanted to hurt them, and we made sure they weren’t there to sabotage anything.”

“Absolutely not,” Flurry Heart stated. “Do you know what those camps were like?”

“Yes, I do,” Destiny said. “They were fine. More than some of them deserved, especially when we started putting prisoners of war in them and they became the most dangerous places in Equestria!”

“Dangerous for who?” Raven asked. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but the majority of violence in the camps was directed towards the Zebra. Prisoners of war would fight with Equestrian-born zebras. The guards would take out their frustration and anger on the prisoners. Supply shortages caused disease and starvation. It’s why Princess Celestia tried to find another way.”

“But she didn’t,” Destiny pointed out. “If she couldn’t find a way--”

“She couldn’t find a way because she was unwilling to countermand her sister,” Queen Flurry Heart interrupted. “Do not mistake it for a lack of options. She was an excellent ruler in many ways but Luna was a soft spot. She carried too much debt with her, and Luna took advantage of it, knowingly or not, to do things Celestia disapproved of.”

“Hmph. They never outgrew being oversized foals,” Star Swirl mumbled.

Flurry Heart sat back, straightening her back. “I am the only ruler here, and so I have the power to do what I wish. I answer to no one except my subjects. Even discussing such things is foolish beyond belief and will only foster discontent.”

“Why?” I asked.

Flurry Heart waved to Raven to explain.

“For one thing, there are at least three changelings in the room with us,” Raven said. “One is camouflaged against the ceiling, another has replaced one of the Queen’s maids under the guise of covering her shift, and the third believes he is very clever and has taken the form of a potted plant.”

There were three flashes of green light, the changelings revealing themselves as they were called out.

“Changelings can assume the form of anyone or anything,” Raven explained. “It’s a very impressive metamorphosis.”

“Get them out of here,” Star Swirl grumbled. “We can’t--”

“Wait,” Queen Flurry Heart said. “They might be able to offer valuable insight. They cared enough to listen in on this meeting, so I must assume they have some strong feelings about the situation. Chamomile, if you would move so they can sit at the table with us? Thank you.”

I shifted down, and the three changelings sat down in the gap between me and Rockhoof, two of them looking ashamed and guilty. With three of them there, I could start to see the differences between them. The shape of their horns and eyes, little variations of color, like something painted brightly and then layered over in black.

“You have to stop her,” the first changeling, the one who’d been on the ceiling, said, immediately, without even being prompted. She hadn’t even really sat, just sort of moved into the space and stayed standing to command the attention. “For weeks, I’ve been hearing these voices and…” the changeling shivered.

“I’m not saying you’re a bad leader,” Flower Pot stated firmly, his forehooves folded defensively. “But Chrysalis is our real Queen. She has a right to rule.”

The Maid shook her head, wiping at her eyes.

“This isn’t a debate,” Ceiling said. “We’ve got it good, and if you’d heard half of what I did in all those dark places…”

“If she’s crazy or evil, we can put her in prison,” Flower Pot said. “We could at least talk to her! Maybe she’ll see reason and we can work things out and--”

“It’s not really her,” the Maid whispered. “It doesn’t matter if it’s really her spirit, or if she has a right to rule. That egg…” She looked up and at Flurry Heart, shaking in her seat as if afraid she’d be killed just for speaking. “...I’m sorry. We should have told you! It was something we hid, a-and it--”

“It’s the last royal changeling,” Queen Flurry Heart said. “I know.”

“You knew about it already?” the Maid gasped.

“Of course,” Flurry Heart said. “It’s Queen Chrysalis’ last true daughter. Or would have been. I had Raven keep an eye on it to ensure it stayed safe. I owed it to your people to care for it, and I allowed you to think it a secret you kept from me along with your dignity.”

“Why?” Ceiling asked.

“Because you’re all my beloved subjects, and I do what I think is best for all of you,” Flurry Heart said. “But this has given us something of a conundrum.”

“Yes,” Star Swirl agreed. “That egg was stolen, and the Darkness used three of us as tools to transport it to the Cage and complete a ritual to bind a new spirit to it.”

“It has been Taken by the spirit of Chrysalis,” Flurry Heart said. “But she can be saved. For that reason, we will not be discussing how to kill Chrysalis. I could do that on my own if I so desired. I have done it before. I want to banish her spirit and save her daughter. Present me plans that will do that. And you three--” She looked at the changelings. “This meeting is not a secret. I expect you to tell the others what happened, and what will happen. Your former Queen is holding your future Queen hostage.”

“Some changelings are still going to want to follow her,” Flower Pot said.

“If they would follow a ruler who would sacrifice her own daughter just to prolong her life, they are welcome to go to her and be devoured by her ambition,” Flurry Heart declared, standing up and looming over the table. “Make no mistake, I do not threaten them. I have no need to do so. Following her is suicide. She is a servant of the Darkness now, and all the Darkness can do is swallow up your light and love.”

“She’s really dramatic,” I said. We’d been dismissed after that last dramatic speech. Star Swirl had essentially ordered us to go sit somewhere quietly and not disturb him, but I didn’t feel too bad about that. It reminded me of Dad, and Star Swirl had said it to everypony instead of singling me out.

Maybe I had some father issues I needed to work out.

“The funny thing is, most ponies would need to prepare a speech like that,” Destiny said. “I’m almost entirely sure she just does it off the cuff. Princess Celestia was like that too. She could say anything and make it sound important.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t get along with her,” I said. I bounced a rubber ball off the wall, catching it on the rebound. It wasn’t just to keep busy. My reflexes were off, like the nerves on my right and left side fired at different speeds.

“Hm?” Destiny looked up from what she was doing, scrolling through lines of text on a screen. Raven had just about finished the software upgrades for the armor, but Destiny wanted to look over it all first, like she expected to find a self-destruct switch hidden in the files.

“You always make little references to how you were hiding things from the Ministries, implying enemies on all sides, strange geases keeping you from talking…” I waved a hoof. “I could keep going.”

“It’s complicated. Two of the Ministries actively funded me, you know. The MoP and MoA both funded construction of Exodus Arks. The MoP was very specific with their needs, and Fluttershy was actively involved, as you know.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “And she wanted to save everything except ponies. Like a Stable in reverse.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. The Stables seem to have saved a lot of ponies. They didn’t do much for the plants or animals.”

“So what makes it complicated?” I asked.

“You already know,” Destiny retorted. “The Arks, and the Stables, were both seen as defeatist. The Ministry of Image and the Ministry of Morale both had problems with them. Stable-Tec had a lot of freedom thanks to nepotism, so that put BrayTech in the firing line. We moved away from Canterlot just to make things a little easier.”

“Yeah, but…” I hesitated.

“Look, I don’t know what they teach in history classes these days, but back then? A lot of ponies disappeared. You know why we built five Arks? Because four of them were bribes to let us build the Exodus Blue. If it wasn’t for Twilight…” Destiny hesitated. “But… there was something about Twilight. I can’t remember. It’s another hole in my memory, but she was… she was Twilight but not Twilight… the Boss Mare introduced us, but…”

She trailed off, looking stuck, like a skipping record.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” Destiny admitted. “I should know this. The worst part is, I’m sure Flurry Heart knows, but I’d feel like an idiot asking her.”

I gave her a pat, my metallic hoof clanging against the helmet. “Now you know how I feel basically all the time.”

Another knock, softer and gentler, came from the doorway. “Excuse me, do you have a moment?”

I turned to see Mistmane, smiling at us.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said. “Meadowbrook has been worrying over me since I got back, and I haven’t had a chance to thank you. She’s a bit like a brooding hen.”

“You don’t have to thank me, ma’am,” I assured her.

“Nonsense,” Mistmane scoffed. “I know Star Swirl made you feel like you had no choice and that the whole world depended on you alone.” She shook her head. “This was never your responsibility, but you chose to help. Even when it hurt you, you got back up and kept trying.”

“I’m just good at getting myself into trouble. Heck, I’m so good at it, I’m exploring brand new kinds of trouble nopony has ever been in before!”

“You don’t have to. You could leave.” Mistmane glanced behind her, then turned back to me. “After all you’ve done for us, I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“She always bounces back,” Destiny joked.

“I picked up a few scars along the way,” I admitted.

Mistmane touched my cheek. “You know, in my homeland… well, it’s a bit of a cliche to mention it, but there’s an ancient artistic practice of mending something broken by using gold to set the broken pieces. It was old fashioned even when I was a foal, but it was from a time you’d probably find hard to imagine, when every necessity of life was precious. A good drinking cup or plate was worth fixing, and heirlooms and antiques would grow more beautiful with use instead of simply being worn out.”

I snorted. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I have never been beautiful. I’m just doing my best to not think about what’s gonna happen to me ten or twenty years from now.”

“Whatever happens, remember that as long as you work to make the world a beautiful place, the work makes you beautiful where it matters most.” She put a hoof over my heart.

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s nothing, child,” Mistmane said. “I wish I could give more than words. We should be celebrating, but instead all of us are worrying about this next trouble. I fear it’s striking while we’re at our weakest.”

“Half of you are still recovering,” Destiny agreed.

“No, that’s not it.” Mistmane sighed. “Or at least, not all of it. I’m exhausted to my bones, but that’s nothing new for me. Before, when we came together, we had another pony helping us. Stygian. He was a good pony. Others didn’t consider him a hero, but he was the one who helped us with lore and local legends. It would be good to have his skill at planning.”

“I can’t help you there. Destiny comes up with all my plans.” I nodded to the ghost.

“I wouldn’t want to… I mean…” Destiny paused, embarrassed. “I’m sure Star Swirl will come up with something. He’s a genius!”

I knew I wasn’t going to be part of the planning. I lacked two things that would have put me in the hot seat helping out with ideas. First, I was neither gifted nor educated. One could substitute for the other, but my combat tactics usually came down to charging directly at an enemy and making myself a problem for them on my own terms. That wouldn’t work so well against an opponent that could do almost anything.

The other thing I lacked was a childlike devotion towards Star Swirl. Destiny practically worshiped the deck plating he walked on. That meant she was enjoying the privilege of being a sounding board for him to bounce ideas off of, while I found some other way to worry about what was going to come next.

That was when I realized I’d never actually seen much of the city. I’d been flying to and from the palace and I’d seen the sprawl, but I’d never gone down into it, and it seemed like a good place to go.

It was like the ship had been turned inside out and carved up into streets and districts, huge pumps humming quietly next to houses only a little bigger than they were. Cables were buried under the street, and the whole place felt clean and sterile and futuristic in the way ponies thought the future would look like a few centuries back.

It was also pretty empty. There were probably ten thousand changelings and crystal ponies in the city, and all of them stayed near the core of it just outside the palace. There was room for ten times as many.

When my stomach growled I stopped to try the local cuisine. I didn’t expect the first noodle shop I found to be run by changelings.

“Well, the ship can make almost anything,” the waitress explained. “So crystal ponies don’t really ever need to cook, right?” She was dressed like one of the palace maids, mostly. I was certain they wore slightly more fabric.

“Right,” I agreed. “But you don’t need to eat.”

“Ah, wrong!” She grinned, showing fangs that would make a wolf jealous. “We need to eat love, and the best way to get love is…?”

“By being lovable?” I shrugged. “I’m not really a romantic.”

“Aw, you did just fine,” she assured me. “You’re right. The best way to get love is to make ponies want to spend time with you, so instead of just providing food, we provide service! Ponies can get suggestions on new things to try, someling friendly to talk to, and we clean up afterwards.”

“Oh, well--”

“Also there’s the special menu on the back,” she said. I flipped it over and blushed.

“Oh.” I said. “That’s why foals aren’t allowed in.”

“Do you want to reserve a private booth?” She sounded hopeful.

“Um, uh…” I think my blush was in danger of becoming terminal. “Not today, thanks. Sorry. Um…”

She giggled. “Don’t worry about it. How about I get you a bowl of spicy mushroom and soy noodles?”

The noodles ended up being really good, for what it’s worth. As for any kind of dessert, all I’m willing to say is that changelings are extremely friendly and persuasive.

A few hours later, in what should have been near sunset but just lingered in that same vague fog light as every other minute in Limbo, I was trotting through something halfway between a park and a plaza when I noticed that I was being followed. Something was stalking me through the tall silvery grass, and I might not have noticed it if it didn’t make a sound like wind chimes every time it brushed the metallic strands aside.

“You want to come out or am I going to have to come and get you?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if it was a spy or an assassin. It could have even just been somepony sent to keep me out of trouble, so I didn’t want to just jump at them screaming with a knife in my hooves.

I turned and found the one thing I didn’t expect. Foals. A crystal pony and a changeling half the size of the others I’d seen came out of the brush.

“How’d you know we were there?” the changeling asked. “We were super sneaky!”

“Please don’t tell our parents,” one of the crystal foals mumbled. “They said you were dangerous and we should stay inside.”

“I am dangerous,” I agreed. I was going to ask them why they were following me around but I already knew the answer. I hadn’t been a foal all that long ago, and back then if my mom and dad had told me to stay away from something dangerous I’d have immediately gone behind their backs to look at it.

“Is it true you’re from the wasteland, and you’ve killed a thousand ponies, and you go around killing anypony that looks at you?” the changeling asked, excited.

“Uh… no?” I hesitated. “I mean, you can debate some of that but-- I definitely don’t do that last thing. I’ve never hurt anypony that didn’t attack me first.”

“Oh,” the crystal foal said. He looked at the changeling, and something unspoken passed between them. “You wanna play changeball?”

“What’s changeball?”

I looked at the ball in my hooves skeptically. It had been a changeling a few moments ago. I’d been brought to a field of soft plastic grass, so short it was more like an outdoor carpet. An arena had been set up, an oblong shape with a line down the middle. It looked like it was set up for a real sport, but I was quickly grasping that they’d made up almost all the rules themselves sans adult supervision.

“Okay, explain it again,” I said.

The crystal foal groaned and looked at the others like she couldn’t believe she needed to keep explaining things to an adult pony. They hadn’t met an adult as stupid as me before, I guess.

“Fine, we’ll do it again,” she sighed. “There are two teams. Everypony with a red cloth is on one team, and everypony with blue is on the other.”

I guess there wasn’t an official uniform. They had them tied around fetlocks, necks, worn as headbands, whatever each foal seemed to think was coolest.

“Each team has a wicket. That’s the stick behind you.” I glanced back at it. It was precariously balanced, ready to fall over. “The red team tries to knock over the blue wicket, and the blue team tries to knock over the red wicket. You use the balls to do it.”

“And the balls are changelings,” I specified.

“Yep!” the ball in my hooves confirmed.

“If you get hit by a ball, you’re out,” the crystal filly said. “And if your wicket gets knocked over the other team gets a point -- even if it gets knocked over because you fell into it, Dazzler!” She shot a look at a filly on the other team. “If you catch a ball, the pony who threw it is out and the ball joins your team.”

“The ball… joins your team,” I said slowly.

“Well duh,” the filly scoffed. “The balls are changelings so they can like, do stuff after you throw them! They can change size or swerve or whatever, as long as they don’t stop being a ball.”

“If they don’t get caught, they can transform back and fly over to their team,” one of the colts put in.

The filly sighed. “We used to hit them with bats instead of catching them, but we had to stop because Springtail got a concussion and cracked his carapace.”

“I got better,” the ball in my hooves said. “After I molted you can’t even see where the crack was anymore!”

One of the other fillies, a crystal pony colored like amethyst and emerald, snorted with laughter at that.

“Are you sure it’s fair?” I asked. “I’m a lot bigger than you.”

“That just makes you a bigger target!” the lead filly said. “I’ll show you! You join the blue team! Reds, let’s get that wicket!”

I was out in about ten seconds in that first round. I vastly underestimated the foals, and was totally unprepared when the balls curved in the air to smack me right in my big dumb face. I was unceremoniously ordered to the sandbox, which was where all of us fallen ponies had to go between turns.

The amethyst filly soon joined me, sighing and sitting down on the edge of the sand and looking annoyed.

“They got you too, huh?” I asked.

“It’s a more clever game than it appears,” she said. “Ponies can’t just run and evade because they have to protect the wickets. I’m not sure I like that some of the changelings volunteered to be sporting equipment, but it does take advantage of their natural abilities at deception. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d tried to sneak in as balls to begin with, and it just became an accepted part of the rules.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “It kinda reminds me of cloudball, especially if there used to be a bat, but that’s more about hitting the ball as far as you can and flying fast around the bases to score points.”

“You’ve seen the real Equestria, right?” the filly asked. She squatted down to start building a sandcastle, pushing the sand around and carefully shaping it. It clearly wasn’t any kind of normal sand, because it stayed together like wet sand without actually being wet.

I nodded cautiously. I didn’t want to say anything that might give her nightmares. “It’s a dangerous place.”

“There aren’t a lot of safe places anywhere,” the filly shrugged. “What’s it like?”

“Well…” I hesitated. What was safe to say? Probably what I’d learned when I was her age. “After the war, civilization collapsed. I guess none of you were around for that, but on the surface, things got bad. I haven’t been to the Crystal Empire so I don’t really know what happened there, but in most of Equestria, basically everything was destroyed. All the cities are broken and burned, and there are monsters everywhere.”

“Is that so?” she asked. “But you’re here, so there must be some safe places, right?”

“Some. There are a lot of bad ponies, though. Some good ones, but… it’s very hard for some ponies to be good when they don’t have everything they need, and they think they can get it by hurting somepony else.”

“Yes,” the filly agreed. “That’s how it’s always been. Hunger can be a terrible curse.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to go out there if you can help it,” I told her. “It’s no place for a filly. I’m sure Flurry Heart has a plan for taking everypony back when it’s safe to do it.”

“I admire her,” the filly said. She kicked at the sandcastle, knocking over a crooked tower and starting to rebuild it. “I didn’t at first. Princess Cadance overshadowed her, for a number of reasons.”

“She kicked Sombra out of the Crystal Empire a long time ago, right?” I asked.

“Yes, among other things,” the filly agreed. “She was beloved by everypony who saw her, the Princess of Love. Sometimes ponies forget that she started helping rule Equestria even before Princess Luna.”

“Oh right,” I nodded. “I remember reading that in the history books. Princess Celestia found her like ten years before Princess Luna returned, right?”

The amethyst filly nodded. “Flurry Heart was sort of… ponies forgot about her. The Empire decided to be neutral in the war, and that meant they didn’t get headlines. She was just a junior princess to a junior princess.”

“She seems pretty great to me,” I countered, feeling a need to defend her.

“You’re right,” the filly said. “It’s too bad I have to kill her.”

She stomped on the sand castle, knocking it all down into dust and ruins. A chill ran down my spine. I felt the hate boiling off her. My wings fluffed, ready to spread and bolt into the air.

“You’re…” I swallowed, nervous. “Chrysalis.” I glanced at the foals, trying to figure out some way I could direct this fight somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“Oh, calm down,” she spat. “I’m not going to trample these foals into paste. I used to be a mother, you know. My subjects loved me. Or worshiped me, anyway. It wasn’t love. We didn’t have the love to spare for simple devotion. We were hungry and sharp, and keeping them hungry made them such a useful tool for me.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I came here to see how Flurry Heart treated my subjects,” Chrysalis said. “I’m disappointed. They’re soft and tame. Dogs instead of wolves, lapping at her heels and begging for attention.”

She gave me a look like she could tell I’d visited the cafe. She didn’t have to say anything. I could feel what she thought about that.

“They’re happy,” I pointed out.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Happy. Yes. I suppose so. But they are not mine.”

“You could, um…” They should have had a poet. Somepony who could negotiate. “You could try talking it over. I think everypony would be happier if we could just compromise and resolve this peacefully--”

Chrysalis cackled, a laugh that didn’t belong to the body she was wearing. She looked up at me. “Oh, you silly little pony. You could never understand. The true shape of victory is this -- to rule so completely that nothing can exist without your consent. Flurry Heart knows this. She learned it better than her mother.”

“What if we--” I winced. Something inside me twisted. The filly’s eyes were glowing green.

“I could flence you apart, cell by cell. It is within my power,” Chrysalis hissed. The glow faded, and the pain stopped, and she backed down. “What we’re going to do is play their game. I’m enjoying stretching my muscles. As long as you play along, the foals will be safe. Isn’t that wonderful? You get to protect them just by playing a game!”

“Great,” I mumbled.

“Come along,” she ordered. “It’s time for the next round.”

Chapter 67: Love Deterrence

I looked down over the city from the palace balcony. We were so high up that, as the saying goes, they looked like ants. But one of those ants was going to try and kill everypony, and I had no idea which one it was.

“It’s not like I would have known it was her,” I said. “It was a good disguise. She wanted me to know it was her, so that begs the question… why?”

“Unfortunately, the answer to that seems obvious,” Flurry Heart sighed. “Chrysalis is cruel, sadistic, and spiteful. In our last encounter, she took hostages and it ended poorly for her. She didn’t expect me to act. She thought I would be paralyzed by it all, like most ponies would be, unable to write a final answer to that bloody calculus.”

She stepped over to the edge, looking down over the city she’d built. For a moment I thought she might wave or smile down at them fondly, or show some kind of warmth. Flurry Heart was like steel. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling at all.

Raven shot me a quick look, seeming pensive. The maids had been dismissed when I started telling my story, and I’d been left alone with the Queen, Destiny, Star Swirl, and Flash Magnus. And Raven. She had that kind of quiet omnipresent aura around her that made it easy to forget she was still around.

“She wants to hold up a mirror to my actions. She needs to feed, so she must be around ponies. Even that game you played with her, the friendship and camaraderie of the foals would be a filling meal for a changeling. Chrysalis must be weak from rebirth, and so she gathers her strength while taunting me and daring me to act in the same way as before. Am I bold enough to shoot the hostages when the list extends to an entire city of my subjects?”

“You’re not going to… are you?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” Flurry Heart said. “My duty is to them. If I had to sacrifice myself to save them, I would do that in an instant. That is the difference between myself and the former Queen of changelings.”

“We’ll need to increase security,” Star Swirl said from the doorway. “Whatever she’s planning, letting her have free reign in the city will only make it easier.”

“I can organize some patrols,” Flash suggested. “Teams of three, maybe, so it’s not so easy to replace anypony. Even if there are a few traitors or sympathizers, we can assign ponies at random, maybe force mixed groups of changelings and crystal ponies.”

“Mm…” Flurry Heart nodded.

“We can’t,” I said. They turned to look at me. “They’re not going to do any good. It’s a waste of effort. What are they gonna do, spot-check every pony in the city and make them prove they’re not Chrysalis in disguise?”

“We could run them past one of those big mirrors,” Flash suggested. “They show disguised changelings in their real forms.”

“Ponies entering the palace already have to walk between a set of mirrors like that at the existing checkpoint, right?” I looked at Raven and she nodded a confirmation. “Right. That’s good enough for now. Maybe she’ll be stupid and somepony will spot her. If you set up mirrors out there right now, she’ll know something’s up and she’ll just avoid it or, worse, target the patrols just to scare everypony.”

“You might be right,” Destiny admitted.

“Maybe, if everypony was stuffed in a locked room, you might be able to find her,” I said. “But she could be anypony or anything. When the patrols don’t find her with random checkpoints, are they going to start interrogating every rock in the city? Every potted plant? Every tin can? And the place is so overbuilt you’ve got entire buildings nopony uses. She could just pick an empty house and live there and you’d never know.”

“You’re starting to sound dangerously competent,” Star Swirl groused.

“I had to do a lot of thinking when I was stuck there, unarmed, with foals all around me,” I said. “Even then, it bothered me. She’s smarter than me. Everypony is. That’s probably not true, I know, but it’s a safe place to start. I wouldn’t have shown my face. I’d have stayed hidden, poked at your defenses, made you waste time looking everywhere else in Limbo and spreading your forces out.”

I realized everypony was staring at me. I swallowed and tried not to stumble over my words as I continued.

“Actually I’d probably have run screaming at you with a knife, but I’m thinking of what I’d do if I was a little smarter,” I corrected. “But you ponies, you said she’s real smart, way smarter than me, so she’s got to have a reason why she let us know she was here.”

“She’s arrogant,” Star Swirl said. “Arrogant ponies make mistakes.”

“Maybe.” I nodded in agreement. “Maybe coming back from the dead made her feel invincible? No. That doesn’t feel right. ‘To rule so completely that nothing can exist without your consent.’”

“Hm?” Star Swirl frowned.

“It’s what she said. She’s not arrogant. She’s furious. Chrysalis tried to hide it, but she hates this place and everypony in it.”

“I took her subjects from her,” Flurry Heart said. “To a ruler, there’s nothing worse. I challenged her and won.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But between that and asking about the wasteland, I think she’s going to try and escape.”

“I won’t allow her to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world,” Flurry Heart said.

“That’s okay, because I don’t think she’s going to allow you to stay here, even if it’s in banishment.” I glanced down at the city. “I don’t know how, but she’s going to try and destroy this whole city.”

“I knew Chrysalis a long time ago,” Star Swirl said. “Not as well as Flurry Heart, of course, but I know she doesn’t have that kind of power on her own.”

“Raw power is my domain, not hers,” Flurry Heart said. “When she defeated Celestia, it was because my great aunt was holding back for fear of collateral damage, and the changeling queen was empowered by feeding from the pure font of the alicorn of love. She can rely on neither in this place. I do not hold back, and my mother is not here to be her supper.”

“She’s going to be tricky,” Destiny said. “We’ll need a good plan.”

“It’s going to have to be a really good plan because we need to assume she’ll already know it,” I said. “For all we know, one of us is Chrysalis. What if I got replaced? Or you?” I looked at Flash. “We could go on all day and not be sure.”

“No,” Raven said. “Actually, she couldn’t infiltrate that easily. Several ponies here would be impossible for her to copy.”

“Oh?” Flurry Heart asked.

“I’m afraid you’re not among them, Your Highness,” Raven apologized. “First, Chrysalis couldn’t copy me. Even if she could somehow replicate a SIVA command core and the correct encryption and signaling, it would immediately bring up an error across the network, and the near-field transmission would make her easy to track.”

“She could still look like you,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but it’s trivial for me to prove my identity.” She waved a hoof, and the floor rippled like water, the SIVA in the palace structure responding to her.

“Who else?” Flurry Heart asked.

“She can’t copy me,” Star Swirl said, looking into the middle distance and thinking. “Or at least she can’t replace me. She needs me to open up the mirror. Nopony else here knows how to do it.”

“She also can’t copy Chamomile,” Raven said. “I can monitor her connection to the local SIVA network. She doesn’t have access, but her cortical node and near-field telecommunications periodically query the system.”

“There are other ways to identify ponies,” Destiny suggested. “I know when we were looking at biometrics for security, there were a lot of options. Optical scanners, hoofprints, voice analysis, even a pony’s gait can be used for positive identification. I think the Ministry of Arcane Science was working on a spell that triggered on genetics!”

“I’m not sure how many of those a changeling could bypass,” Star Swirl said. “We never had anything like that in the old days. We just used challenge words.”

“And the blood test,” Flash reminded him.

Star Swirl groaned. “You and Rockhoof used the blood test. Nopony else liked it! Slicing open your fetlocks to show you had red blood -- I still say the changelings could have faked it! Just because it worked against kelpies and bunyips doesn’t mean it always works.”

“None of that’s going to work anyway,” I said.

“Indeed,” Flurry Heart said. “We are not in a position where we are discussing a few ponies who need to be tested and trialed. We have a single enemy in a large population, and time is of the essence. The mirrors are good enough to keep her from brazenly walking in. We will lock the palace down. Raven, see that the entrances are physically secure. Weld them shut with SIVA if needed.”

“Yes, Your Highness. I’ll switch the ventilation to internal-only and secure the vents as well.”

“Good,” Flurry Heart said. “Now, let’s go inside. I want plans on finding Chrysalis, and I want her found soon.”

“I have an idea,” I said.

Everypony looked at me.

“It’s probably better if I don’t say anything, just in case,” I said lamely. “I only need a few things from Raven.”

“You remember how I used to be an engineer?” Destiny asked quietly.

“Don’t be so down on yourself,” I said. “You’re still an engineer.”

I jiggled the wires I was attaching to the circuit board, then adjusted the antenna. Around me, dozens of crystal ponies were watching while I plugged electronics into slots, poked around with a circuit tester, and looked at the readout of an oscilloscope. Yellow caution tape kept them at bay, clearing a space around me so I could work without being interrupted.

“Okay, cool, great,” Destiny said. “So I just want to point out that what you’re building doesn’t do anything. That scope is only showing a regular sine wave. The antenna is bucking hooked into a ground!”

“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “I don’t even know what most of this stuff does.”

“Then…”

“But I bet Chrysalis doesn’t know anything about electrical engineering either,” I whispered.

“Oh. Oh!” Destiny whispered. “But there’s no way she won’t come to look.”

“Yeah. We just have to find her.” I tilted my head. “Are you getting a good feed from the camera?” The bulky camera on my right side weighed less than DRACO, but not by a huge margin. A digital camera would have been far lighter, even with the same hardened lens array Raven had fabricated.

“I am,” Destiny agreed. “I’ll patch you in.”

The compound lens whirred, and a window popped up in my HUD, showing my hooves from a slightly different angle, just a little behind my usual viewpoint.

“I was trying to figure something out that would let us spot her,” I said. “The crystal mirrors reflect truth, remember? And an analog camera has mirrors in it. All we had to do was swap out one component, and you get a camera that sees through changeling disguises.”

“That’s actually pretty smart,” Destiny said. “Maybe having that logic co-processor in your head is making you think like me!”

“I sure hope so. Anything’s better than thinking like me.” I paused what I was doing. “Now let’s just take a quick look around and see if our special guest has arrived.”

I stood up and slowly panned around, looking at the gathered crowd. There were a few more black, chitinous faces in the camera feed than in my vision, and then--

A tall, gangly horror, like a waterlogged corpse. A mane that hung down like rotting weeds. A twisted horn as sharp as a sword.

I was paralyzed in fear for a moment. I tried to turn it into a joke. “Think that’s her?” I asked.

“So what’s the plan now?” Destiny asked.

This part was a little bit of a blank spot in my plan. I needed to disable her, but she was in the middle of a large crowd. I needed to get her away from the other ponies before I could start throwing nets and sleeping gas around.

“I fought an alicorn that one time,” I said. “She was tough but if she didn’t run away I think I could have taken her.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

“What if I also had snipers waiting to hit her when I picked her out of the crowd?” I boasted. I used my tongue to tap the control Raven had set up, broadcasting the camera feed on a secure line. “Take the shot!”

That was the moment when my really brilliant plan was supposed to come together and Chrysalis would get hit with shock rounds and rubber bullets to stun her long enough for me to finish the job.

It was met with total silence. Chrysalis seemed to realize something was wrong. She took a step back. I could feel it. She was wise to what was going on and she was about to cut and run.

“Guess it’s time for Plan C,” I said. I took to the air and picked my target, charging at an inconspicuous-looking young mare in the crowd. She bounced when I hit her, flying back into a bulkhead and knocking over ponies in her way. The mare jumped to her hooves, baring her fangs with a snake’s warning hiss.

“She’s mad,” Destiny noted.

“Gonna make her angrier,” I replied. I selected a concussion grenade and launched it, the apple-shaped charge going off right below her and exploding with a sharp crack and flash of light. Green fire ripped away her disguise, and Chrysalis was revealed, shaking her head and trying to clear the dust and flash-blindness.

I charged at her, body-slamming her back into the wall. For such a big mare, she was surprisingly light. All the speed holes in her legs, combined with her almost skeletal proportions, made her weigh less than somepony half her height.

Her horn lit up with deadly green light. I felt the wash of magic up my spine, and she and Destiny fired at the same time, evocations colliding in midair at point-blank range. My armor held up, the arcane wards and telekinetic fields almost as good as a shield spell against pure magic, but Chrysalis was less lucky, and the wall behind her was more fragile than either of us. The bulkhead fractured, and she flew back through it.

“Sorry, I panicked,” Destiny said.

I waved my wings, blowing away the smoke and dust, trying to see what had happened. “That’s the good kind of panic,” I assured her.

I slipped through the broken wall, stepping into the warehouse. Cardboard boxes were everywhere, piled up and stacked in neat rows, a few opened up and revealing their contents, and there was an obvious trail of destruction through them. I followed it to the end. A dark shape was laying there, totally still.

“I didn’t get her with just one shot, did I?” I mumbled.

“This seems too easy. Maybe she was really weak from her rebirth?” Destiny asked. I gingerly touched Chrysalis, and the black shape crumbled, turning into dust.

Before I could process that, she slammed into me from above, bouncing me down into the floor with her weight and standing on me, holding down my hooves with her own.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” she said. “You know, I was worried about you. I didn’t know what to expect! The Pillars are ancient and predictable. Flurry Heart is hamstrung and afraid of her own power. I know them all too well. But you? You were a wildcard.”

“I’m just great at being annoying,” I gasped, straining against her strength. She wasn’t as strong as I was. I could tell. She had so much leverage that it didn’t matter.

“What was your plan, to take me on by yourself?” She sneered down at me. “I’ve defeated far worthier foes.”

“It’s going to be really embarrassing for you when I kick your flank, then,” I said. I looked up, and my HUD showed a curving line. The software upgrades Raven had been working on included a targeting system, and the computer in my skull was pretty good at geometry. I fired the Junk Jet, launching a grenade into the wall and letting it bounce back, blasting Chrysalis off me and into a wall of cardboard boxes.

“Are you sure those are non-lethal?” Destiny asked.

“It’s sort of relative!” I shouted, rolling to my hooves and bounding after her. I knocked boxes aside, found a crying pink filly, so young she didn’t even have a cutie mark yet. She looked up at me and sniffled, crying with huge, watery eyes.

I punched the foal in the face. There was a flare of green, and my hoof came down on a porcupine. I yelped on instinct and backed off, even though the armor should have been enough to protect me. The changeling flashed with green fire again, assuming her true form and blasting me away with a bolt of green lightning.

The armor started flashing new kinds of alerts that I hadn’t seen before. I had about half a second to wonder what was going on before the pain hit and I realized the bolt hadn’t just harmlessly tossed me across the room like a rag doll. The covering over my left wing was just gone, ripped right off, and a hole had been punched through it the size of my hoof.

My breath caught in my throat, blood rushing away from my face and right out of the big hole. Healing potions immediately hit and washed into my system, but the shock rattled through me. Even the weird alicorn back in the wasteland hadn’t hit me that hard.

“If you’re the best Flurry Heart can send against me, maybe I overestimated her,” Chrysalis taunted. “Punching a foal? Hardly a knight in shining armor, and I’d know.”

“Chamomile, you can’t beat her,” Destiny warned. “You should have walked away when your backup didn’t show up!”

“That would have been a really good idea, huh?” I groaned.

Chrysalis’ horn flashed, and I threw myself aside. The magic burned through the air above me, blasting through the wall and out into the city. She laughed and fired again, barely even aiming, blowing another hole into the crowd outside. Ponies screamed, and I glanced back.

“This is just like Dark Harbor!” I could feel the terror growing, ponies and changelings trying to flee, the awful feeling of fear making the air turn stagnant. “Destiny, give me a shield, we can’t just dodge!”

I threw myself in harm’s way, and I saw the shield shimmer into place in front of me. Chrysalis’ bolt hit it and it exploded through it, most of the energy punching through it and into me, hitting me along the ribs and burning through my armor all the way down to the bone. The rest turned into sparks, spilling out into the cardboard boxes and starting fires all around me.

“Does she really think you’d be enough?” Chrysalis asked. Her expression twisted into rage. “A fake, worthless champion dressed up like an alicorn? Does she think that’s all she needs to beat me? Like I’m the same kind of failure?!”

Chrysalis roared in annoyance and swept me aside with a single blow, the back of her hoof punting me into a steel support beam hard enough for me to leave a dent. I slid to the ground, mildly concussed and suffering from an above-average amount of blood loss.

A green aura sizzled around me, and I was pulled into the air in a telekinetic grip that felt like I was being smothered in burning blankets.

“I’m going to send you back to her in pieces,” Chrysalis hissed. “Sending a weak, pathetic thing like you after me! She’s forgotten how much she should fear me, and your corpse is going to be a harsh reminder!”

I struggled and triggered the Junk Jet. A tightly-packed bundle launched out, smacking Chrysalis in the chest and springing open, weighted wires and memory metal enveloping her in a self-binding net. She sputtered in surprise and dropped me, refocusing her magic on the net and tearing it apart with a thought.

I hit the ground running and had the advantage of not thinking at all. I ran into her, headbutting the queen. If I had anything approaching a plan it was to daze her long enough to come up with a real plan. I wasn’t counting on her head to be as hard as my helmet. She shrugged it off and slapped me right down to the ground, stomping on my stomach. I coughed, almost vomiting at the force. She stomped again, the armor cracking, then kicked me away, sending me skidding across the floor and raising sparks.

“I really must be hungrier than I thought,” Chrysalis said. “If I was at full strength, I’d have already squashed you like a bug!” She cackled.

I swallowed down bile and did the only thing I could, taking another shot at her. She caught the net in midair, setting it on fire and tossing it aside.

“Did you really think weapons like that would work on me? Your silly toys are useless. You are useless. You can barely even stand up!”

It’s true, I was struggling to get back to my hooves, my knees weak and my insides feeling unpleasant and broken in a way that meant I really needed some kind of medical attention as soon as possible. I was panting, struggling to stay awake and avoid passing out.

“But I can stand,” I said, my voice catching and weak. “And I’m not going to stay down.”

“Mm.” Chrysalis smiled, pausing and tilting her head. “I suppose you think that makes you brave. You think it makes you some kind of hero. I’ve seen dozens of ponies like you. Do you know what happened to them?”

Her horn lit up with another spell.

Her smile twisted into a fang-filled sneer, and I’d swear they got longer and sharper while I watched. “They died for nothing, just like you’re about to!”

She fired her spell, and the world slowed down around me. I pushed, trying to dodge it. The world was cold and almost still, moving at a crawl while I was forcing my way through the molasses-thick air. The deadly beam of magic stretched towards me, faster than I was, even in this almost-frozen time. All I could do was move slightly to the left, and when time came back into focus, the beam tore into my right side, hitting the bulky, armored camera and blowing it off my armor, the force of the spell detonating it like a shrapnel grenade. I was on the ground before I knew what was happening, and I could feel a pool of blood forming under me.

Everything was going dark around the edges, and the fires in the warehouse were spreading from box to box, making the air heavy with smoke.

“So weak,” Chrysalis scoffed. She strolled over to me and kicked me, rolling me onto my back. “Give Flurry Heart my regards,” she said, before walking away, leaving me there and flashing green as she stepped out of one of the holes blasted in the wall and into the city.

I whined and tried to crawl after her.

“Easy, easy,” Destiny said quietly, her voice urging me to stop and rest. “You’re in bad shape. You can’t go after her, and with the camera gone you can’t find her.”

“It seemed like a better idea in my head,” I whispered, tasting blood. “I thought I could take her if I had surprise.”

“I know,” Destiny said. “Just hold on. Some medics are incoming. I already sent a distress call.”

“That sounds nice,” I said, watching the fire for a few more moments before everything went black.

I gasped, sucking in air that felt cold against my skin. A crystal pony looked down at me, obviously worried, and I blinked against the light.

“How long was I out?” I groaned.

“Only a minute,” Destiny said, floating into view. My helmet was off. That explained why the air was cold. “I needed some help to pull you out of there.”

I looked past her to the burning warehouse.

“Right,” I sighed. “Right.”

“Ma’am,” the pony said quietly. “You’ve suffered several very serious injuries. I need you to stay still while I examine you.”

“How do you know--” I looked down and saw the blasted and broken armor plates. A throb of pain washed over my wing. Just to cap things off, I coughed up some blood. “Right. I’ll stay very still.”

He picked up a bulky box that made beeping sounds as he swept it over me. “I’m having trouble getting clear readings…”

“Oh, is that a DRAMA?” Destiny asked, hovering over to look at the beeping box. “Cammy, you’ll love this! It’s basically DRACO’s little sister! The Digital Recorder, Advanced Medical Assistant! We made these for doctors but…”

“They never caught on?” I guessed.

“With auto-docs in hospitals and healing potions everywhere else, actually diagnosing an injury became a lot less important for EMTs,” Destiny sighed. “There really wasn’t much of a market for them, but we put them on the Arks anyway since we had them.”

“I-- gah!” The pony pressed something against my ribs while Destiny distracted me. It was ice-cold, and some of the pain faded away immediately, leaving a deep ache instead of the sharp pain of torn skin.

“I think there’s internal bleeding,” he said. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

“Aren’t you a doctor?” I asked, confused.

“No, Ma’am. I’m a military medic,” the pony explained.

“What’s the difference?”

“Doctors heal you. Medics keep you alive until you’re somewhere safe.”

I coughed out a laugh and some extra blood that I hopefully didn’t need inside me. “Sounds good. Help me up.” I took his hoof and almost pulled him down to the ground with the effort of supporting me getting back on four numb hooves and an equal number of weak knees.

“At least you aren’t dead,” Destiny said. “Things could be worse.”

The moment she said that, the very moment, the light changed and black, fanged maws opened in the sky, portals vomiting out massive iron hulks glowing with runes and radiation. The Cloudsdale Defense Fleet. The three ships trailed smoke and steam, making no effort to slow or turn on their approach. The first, the most heavily damaged, one of the storms holding it up already pulsing and cracking and ready to escape containment, slammed into the very edge of the city, splitting itself on the knife-edge of the floating earthberg and spilling debris out. Purple and green flames shot into the air, and I felt my skin prickle even at this range from a flash of radiation.

Alarms started blaring from every direction. Ponies screamed, and chaos took hold.

“Oh buck,” the medic whispered.

“Go to the palace,” I said. “It’s the most heavily defended place. This whole city is going to be swarmed with undead in a few minutes. Go!” I pushed him, and his stumble turned into motion, latching onto the instruction I’d given him and bolting for the spires of the crystal castle.

“You’re not in any shape to stop them,” Destiny cautioned me.

A second ship smashed into a row of factories and farms, skidding along the ground, the hull taller than any of the buildings around it. A wave of earth shot up into the air from its prow, the damaged hull peeling off as it slowed to a halt and vomited flames, more flashes of radiation washing over the city as the balefire-infused storms serving as its engines exploded out of containment and showered us with hot shrapnel.

“I know!” I yelled back, over the increasing din around us. “Can you get anypony on the radio?”

Destiny bobbed a negative. “Everypony in the city had the same idea! I can’t cut through the chatter, it might as well be jammed!”

“Wonderful,” I grumbled. I started limping towards main street, my whole body feeling vandalized. I spat more blood onto the ground, but less than the first time, so maybe I was healing. “I sure hope ponies are smart enough to run away from the danger.”

A solid beam of sunlight-yellow magic lanced from the palace, striking the last ship in the middle of its terminal dive towards the city. The air was turned to summer heat in its wake across the entire city. The Raptor’s necromatic shield popped like a bubble. The beam blasted into the metal hull, boiling steel into vapor in a flash explosion that knocked the cloudship’s nose up, letting the rest of the beam play across the hull and carve deeper into it, cutting through it like a sword that could split a planet in two.

The Raptor exploded, but it was already close enough that the debris raining down fell on the city, starting fires across the miniature metropolis.

“This is an emergency evacuation order,” blared the echoing intercoms in Flurry Heart’s voice. “Retreat to the palace. Leave personal belongings. Assist the injured. Your duty is to survive.”

“She really doesn’t mince words, does she?” I asked. I could see changelings buzzing through the air towards the palace, some of them carrying ponies with them.

“This must be Chrysalis’ plan,” Destiny said. “One last attack, throwing all her forces at us and just watching the chaos!”

I followed the crowd towards the castle. Even from here, I could see the press and panic as the throng of ponies pushed and shoved to get through the only remaining entrance, the rest sealed and secured.

“I don’t think this is the last of it,” I said. “I think this is only the setup, and we’re going to find the punchline the hard way.”

Chapter 68: Decisive Battle

“Are you sure you’re a real doctor?” I asked the changeling poking at me. In theory she was giving me stitches. I’d just never seen it involve spitting onto an open wound.

“Are you sure you’re a real patient?” she snapped back. “I could be using this slime to help a pony who’s more appreciative of my efforts! You won’t even get undressed!”

“We need the armor to stay on,” Destiny said. She was levitating a welding torch, and I really had to hope she was using it on my equipment and not me. I ached enough all over that it was hard to tell. “There’s no telling when she’ll have to fight again.”

“I worked in medicine for longer than you’ve been alive, and I’d never let a patient walk away in the condition she’s in!” the changeling barked. “Give me one good reason not to sedate her so deeply she doesn’t wake up until next week!”

“Wow, I thought changelings ate love,” I said. “What happened to bedside manner?”

“You know what families really love?” The changeling huffed, her wings buzzing in annoyance. “Having the ponies they care about stay alive!”

“Point taken,” I mumbled.

“The only point I want you to take is better care of yourself,” the drone huffed. “Or something like that. I’ve been patching up ponies for hours and you’re being more difficult than any of the others.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Take two of these and scream if anything gets worse,” she said, digging in a bag and leaving two individually-packaged pills in front of me. “They’re an antibiotic. I can’t tell if you’ve got internal injuries but if you do, you’ll need surgery, and this might keep you from going septic until I can get around to cutting you open. I’ll need to find a chainsaw to do it.”

“Try to get a better welding torch while you’re getting power tools,” Destiny mumbled. “Stupid thing… the one I had back home got much hotter.”

“Trust me, it’s already really, really hot!” I assured her.

“I think I cleared all the broken junk off the weapon rack,” Destiny said. “I’ll need to run some tests to make sure. Don’t swap any weapons until I make sure you won’t explode trying it.”

“And don’t explode near my other patients,” the doctor added, packing her bag and storming out. “I’ve got a palace full of them! The last thing they need is collateral damage!”

I waited for her to leave and stood up, grabbing the pills and swallowing them dry. My insides had settled down into a grey wash of nausea and unhappy feelings, but that was fine for now.

“Let’s find Star Swirl,” I said. Destiny bobbed, putting the torch down and following me out into the hallway. There were ponies everywhere. With the whole city stuffed into one building, they’d ended up in every available room and space large enough for somepony to lay down, and the guards were struggling just trying to keep order with panicked ponies and worried families trying to find lost foals and missing spouses.

“At least supplies won’t be an issue with SIVA,” Destiny noted. “In theory, Raven can recycle everything in case the siege goes long.”

“It won’t,” I said.

“Do you have some kind of plan for dealing with the undead outside?” Destiny asked. “Because I hope it’s better than your plan for taking out Chrysalis!”

“No, I mean--” I sighed. “Come on, I’m supposed to be the stupid one, not you. Chrysalis is obviously here, somewhere, and with ponies spread out everywhere, she has access to everything!”

The hallway in front of the throne room was the only space in the palace that was being kept clear by the guards, so at least somepony had considered that Chrysalis might try walking up to Flurry Heart and just stabbing her in the back. Raven poked her head out of the door before I could even be announced and waved me in.

“I’ve been tracking your location,” she explained. “I apologize that I haven’t had time to repair your armor. I’m occupied making beds and medical supplies.”

“It’s fine,” I said, waving a hoof as we walked into the room. Flurry Heart sat on her throne, looking at a row of displays with an unreadable expression.

“I apologize,” Flurry Heart said, without looking at me. “The mission to capture Chrysalis failed rather spectacularly.”

“What happened to the team that was supposed to be supporting me?” I asked.

“They were maintaining radio silence and never broke it,” the Queen said. “They have also failed to return. They are likely already dead.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little sick.

“Chrysalis must have seen them moving into position, or at least that is what I choose to believe. The alternative is that they were compromised from within. I do not wish to believe that any of my subjects would betray their own, and so I will ascribe this to enemy action.”

“None of the non-lethal gear we brought worked either,” I said. “The grenades stunned her a little, but she just tore out of the net. I didn’t have a chance to test the tear gas, but I don’t think it would have made a difference.”

“And now she is locked in here with us, or we’re locked in with her,” Flurry Heart said. “The changelings under my command are certain that she is nearby, but she can mask her presence beyond their ability to pinpoint her. It is likely she could be entirely invisible to their senses, and chooses to sew terror.”

“That would be like her,” Star Swirl said, stepping into the room. “There you are. Good work! You’re not dead.”

“Thanks?” I shrugged. “Tell me you’re as brilliant as Destiny thinks you are and you’ve come up with something really clever that’s going to save our butts.”

“All of the medics are on the watch for her,” Star Swirl said. “I don’t know if any of the fancy boxes and toys they have these days can find her, but she doesn’t know that either. The only problem is what to do if they actually do find her.”

“I am the only one who can face her directly,” Flurry Heart said.

“And she’s keeping you from doing that by putting a whole city in the way,” Star Swirl reminded her. “What are you going to do, start throwing spells around in the medical bay? Cast death curses across the cafeteria and hope no foals get in the way?”

“She will do worse,” Flurry Heart said darkly. “If I have to sacrifice a few to save the rest, I will. A leader must be prepared to make that choice without hesitation.”

“Death to the false queen!”

The door on the other wall was kicked open, and a pony in full armor stormed in, firing wildly. Plasma bolts sizzled across the room, hitting consoles and sending one of the analysts working in the throne room to the ground. The security detail closed in, trying to get between him and Flurry Heart.

I triggered the junk jet, and a steel web exploded into the air, wrapping around the armed pony and dropping them in a tightly-bound heap. One of the security ponies walked up them and kicked the gun away, then pulled their helmet off, revealing a crystal pony I actually recognized.

“Gypsum?” I asked. They looked up, their eyes glowing green from within.

“It’s not a changeling,” the guard said after a moment. “There’s something wrong with her.” He waved a hoof in front of her face, and she didn’t seem to notice.

“She’s being mentally dominated,” Star Swirl said. “One of Chrysalis’ little tricks.”

“Great, cool,” I groaned. “So we can’t even trust--”

The screaming cut me off. Ponies in danger and pain with nowhere to go. Trapped like rats. How many mind-controlled victims would it take to cause a riot?

Flurry Heart stood up. She hadn’t even flinched at Gypsum taking a shot at her. This brought her right up to her hooves. “Order the guards to detain anypony acting strangely!” she shouted. “Lethal force is permitted to save lives!”

“Destiny,” I said. She nodded and settled over my head. “We’ll see what we can do. I’ve still got a bunch of concussion grenades and a few nets.”

“Ma’am! We’ve got a problem!” One of the analysts reported, the only one still looking at the dozen screens around the room while the others tended to their wounded. “The snipers that were supposed to be out on special assignment have taken hostages and they’ve barricaded themselves in the energy storage array!”

Star Swirl sucked air in between his teeth.

“Are they the sniper team that was supposed to help me?” I asked.

“Unfortunately,” Flurry Heart confirmed.

“Figures,” I mumbled. “What can they do?”

“In there?” Star Swirl said. “If they breach those capacitors, they’ll go off like megaspells! Multiple, overlapping detonations! Everypony here will be dead a dozen times over!”

“That’s our first stop,” I said. “Raven, can you give me a back door?”

She nodded. “There’s a service corridor behind the room. You can breach the back wall safely without endangering the capacitors yourself.”

“I’ll route engineers to come in after you to repair any damage,” Flurry Heart said. “Go.”

I watched the engineer place a block of explosive against the wall. It didn’t look like much. They backed up, held up a hoof, and waited for a moment before bringing it down, triggering the detonator. The wall blew open with crystal shrapnel and sparkling dust, and I rushed through, the new software updates automatically adjusting my vision and picking out the sniper team in bright red outlines.

Alarms were already blaring, harsh honking sounds like a giant angry goose powered by a rattling steam engine that was quickly going out of control.

“That’s bad,” Destiny said. I didn’t have time to worry about how bad it was. The blast had gotten everypony’s attention, and laser sights were tracking through the dust in the air, bouncing off countless glittering shards. I bolted through it, triggering the speed implant inside me and grabbing one of the snipers who was taking cover near the back of the room and bringing him with me, throwing him at a second pony and charging the one nearest the controls, slamming him back into a metal panel hard enough for him to bounce, catching him on the rebound to slam him into the ground.

The world flashed back into color and blazing warmth. The snipers were very well trained. Three more of them were positioned around the room, forming a kill-box around the door. Despite starting out in the wrong direction they were already refocusing on me, and the first bolt of plasma hit my flank, scorching the armor but not penetrating. I slapped the helmet release and tossed Destiny towards the control bank.

“See what you can do to shut things down!” I yelled, not letting her answer before I took off, launching a concussion grenade at two of the snipers and charging the last one still up where he was shooting down from service catwalks. He got a shot off at me, the bolt barely missing my head. Without the speed implant, it was like flying through molasses, exhaustion and crashing blood sugar making me feel leaden.

I practically landed on the sniper, firing a net into him at point-blank range and sending him sprawling for ten paces, cartwheeling with the force of the launch, the net wrapping around him tightly and leaving him as a dizzy bundle.

I stumbled to the edge of the catwalk, but the engineers were already rushing in, hitting the sniper I’d just thrown with a wrench and knocking him back out. I limped over to the two that I’d hit with a concussion grenade. All I’d really done was knock them away from their long guns. They got up, drawing long crystal knives that looked like serrated shards of glass.

“Just put them down,” I said. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but if we have to fight--”

They turned the knives on themselves, stabbing them into their own chests in perfect silence.

“Oh buck!” I swore, running over to them. I grabbed the knife and-- was I supposed to pull it free or leave it? Leave it, right? So they don’t bleed out right away? I hesitated, but it didn’t matter. They were already beyond saving. I groaned and trotted back towards the controls. Everything was red, blinking and red, or just so far off the scale it had stopped working.

“This place is bucked!” one of the engineers yelled. “We’ve got pressure rising everywhere in the system! Half the thermomagic couplers are already gone! If this doesn’t blow, it’s still going to kill everypony here with the radiation!”

“Here!” Destiny pulled a book of diagrams out, slapping them on the console and flipping through them. “Where is it…”

“There has to be a way to stop this,” I said.

“There is,” a confident voice said. Flurry Heart stepped into the room, looking around at the massive bombs about to go off in our faces. “I will attempt to contain the blast.”

“That will never work,” Destiny said. “This is your magic! Just the amount alone is… the instant impulse from the blast is going to overwhelm any shield.”

“I learned quite a bit from my father,” Flurry Heart said. “He was a master of shield spells.”

“If you want to help, I need you to hold these junctions together,” Destiny said, using her magic to draw arrows on the map. “They’re what’s going to blow. I need to manually trigger the vents in the Giraffey Tubes, and I’m the only one who can do it because of the radiation backwash. Then-- Chamomile, you need to go after Chrysalis!”

“Huh?” I blinked. “But… what about all this?”

“We’ve got this,” Destiny assured me. “But if she sabotages something else we won’t have time to fix it! The software updates in the armor will cover for me, just go and punch the monster!”

I held a mind-controlled pony in a headlock and tried to figure out what to do. This was a nightmare, almost literally. Ponies were counting on me and I had to find a powerful, shapeshifting monster that could be anywhere, doing anything.

I punched the struggling pony I was holding and let them drop in an unconscious heap. A concussion would probably solve the mind control thing.

“Attention, evacuation procedure is about to commence,” announced Raven over the intercom. “Mares and foals first. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the secure embarkation room. Guards will direct you there. This message will repeat. Attention, evacuation procedure…”

I suddenly knew her plan, like she’d laid it all out for me. I bolted, charging through the stuffed corridors and eventually taking to the air, flying over the crowd in the tight space, bouncing off corners without even time for apologies as I pinballed my way towards the mirror portal room.

Star Swirl was there, working some kind of spell on the tall mirror. A crowd of foals and mares had already gathered, held back by guards to give Star Swirl room to work. I landed next to him and he gave me a critical look.

“We’re sending the foals first,” he said. “I don’t care if you don’t belong here, I can feel the magic in the air and we don’t have time to argue about this.”

“Don’t open the portal,” I whispered.

“This place is going to go off like a bomb!” he snapped. “We have to save who we can!”

“Destiny is sure she can stop the sabotage,” I said quietly. “Can you please just trust me on this? If you open up that portal, you’ll be doing just what she wants!”

“If I don’t, they’ll all die,” Star Swirl said. “Every second we delay will cost the lives of ponies that could be going through that door!”

“Just- give me a minute! One minute!”

“That’s about how long it’s going to take me to set the destination,” Star Swirl said. “You have that minute and not one second more.”

I nodded, turning away from him. “She has to be here,” I mumbled, looking at the crowd in front of the mirror. Who was it? My eyes ran over the ponies. If I was Chrysalis, what would I do? What would I use to try and hide? What would be the perfect disguise?

Right at the front, poised to be one of the first ponies out of Limbo, was a mare holding an infant. The foal looked uncomfortable. Close to tears. I glanced at the mother, the mare not even looking at her little filly. She frowned when I met her gaze. It hit me like a thunderbolt.

I stormed up to her and slapped the foal out of her grasp, knocking it to the ground. The ponies in the room gasped, some of them screaming in anger or confusion. But not the mare. She stood there silently, stoically. The expression washed off her face the moment the foal left her grip.

“Using the same trick twice?” I looked down at the infant. It glared up at me and hissed, showing snake fangs.

“How did you know?” the infant growled, the voice deep and hateful. “I could have been anypony!” The ponies that had been glaring at me and close to starting a riot froze and stared at her before backing away from the hissing monster.

“You don’t want any survivors,” I said. “You had to be one of the first ponies ready to go through. Then you could destroy the portal from the other side and trap everypony here, and nopony in Equestria would even know you existed.”

The filly exploded in green fire, splitting open and expanding, blackened limbs tearing themselves free from their cramped disguise. Chrysalis tossed her ragged mane back and sneered down at me.

“The only thing you’ve accomplished is getting an opportunity to die more slowly and painfully than if you’d just let the explosion take you,” Chrysalis said. “You’re still reeling from the beating I gave you a few hours ago. I’m surprised you decided on a second helping!”

“This time I’m ready for you,” I said.

“You’re--” she laughed. “You’re ready for me? You think you’ve seen all my tricks and you’re prepared to face me? What gives you the idea that--”

My knife hit her in the neck, sending a gush of black and green spraying ten meters through the air, like she was full of high-pressure lines of ichor and rotting grease. I motioned with my hoof, and it flew back through the air to me, clicking into place neatly.

“I was trying to take you alive last time,” I said. “I don’t have the luxury now.”

Her neck flashed, healing over in a wash of green fire. She bared her fangs, her amusement instantly transformed into anger. The guards in the room lurched into motion, finally, turning and peppering her with blue plasma shots. She winced at the impacts, the plasma scorching the top layers of her carapace. Chrysalis lowered her head and charged me, crooked horn first.

I braced myself and caught the spear with my knife, bracing my right hoof with my left, but her strength lifted me right off the ground and towards the wall. A ring of fire and darkness appeared, and she charged right into it with me holding onto her horn. I braced for impact, but there was none, and we flew through the wall like it wasn’t there, the ring snapping shut behind her and cutting off the stray shots from the guards.

I let go and tumbled to the side in the service corridor, surrounded by the castle’s lifelines, all of it grown by SIVA and more like veins and arteries than HVAC work and plumbing, plastic pipes throbbing as they pumped and curving ducts seeming to gently breathe.

Chrysalis glared down at me. I held up my blade. It was a tight space. For a moment I thought it might actually work to my advantage. I knew I could hurt her, and if I could make her bleed, I could probably do a lot more.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Chrysalis teased, breaking into a fangy smile. “You’re going to try solving this with brute strength.”

“That was one idea,” I admitted. “But I just got an even better one.”

I punched my hoof into the wall and focused. I could feel the SIVA moving through it, flowing where it was needed. The crystal palace was like a living thing, and we spoke the same language.

The pipes next to Chrysalis bubbled, the surfaces deforming before they erupted, the air instantly turning arctic-cold in a spray of the palest sky blue, liquid oxygen freezing her in place. Frost covered her black carapace before she disappeared into fog. I saw a flash of green light around her horn, and it went off like a bomb, sending me tumbling back down away from the flames.

Chrysalis screamed, thrashing in the blaze of heat and cold. I couldn’t make out much through the blaze, just the dark shadow of her body in the flames.

“I’ll kill you! You and every last one of the ponies in this castle!” Chrysalis shouted. She took a step toward me, and then her body shifted. Green flames replaced the bright oxygen-burning fire, and the corridor shook, her size doubling and then doubling again. Her cries of anger became the roars of a terrible beast, one too small for the space we were in. She moved, and the walls weren’t enough to stop her.

A massive claw slammed down through where I’d been a moment ago, and the only reason it hadn’t squashed me was the hoof that had grabbed mine and pulled me back.

I looked behind me to see Raven. She stepped out of the wall, and it rippled behind her like water. She motioned with her head and I followed behind her, running away from the growing horror ripping through the castle behind us.

“I approved your emergency access request,” she said. “I’m erecting emergency bulkheads and shoring up the castle structure, but it won’t last.”

“Can you get me outside?” I asked. “Maybe I can lead her away!”

A tentacle smashed through the ceiling, knocking pipes aside and blasting me with steam from behind.

“You do seem to have her attention,” Raven agreed. She looked ahead, and a new doorway opened up like an iris, a stairway folding out in front of us as we ran, each step a panel folding out of the wall like a flower and retracting once we’d passed it. Above us, light bloomed and we made it out into the still, quiet air of Limbo.

We were maybe halfway up the castle, on a ledge that might have been there all along or might have grown a few moments ago to accommodate us. The city burned below us, smoke rising from streets filled with the shambling dead.

The castle wall a dozen paces down from us exploded out in a flurry of motion, a dozen tendrils pushing through smoke and debris and pulling a huge form out of the narrow confines of the structure. Chrysalis had turned herself into something horrible and almost formless, like a skeletal dragon mixed with an octopus.

“I don’t think concussion grenades are gonna work on that,” I mumbled.

“No,” Raven agreed. “Queen Flurry Heart could destroy her, but she is still holding the capacitors together with her magic. She can’t step in until they’ve been vented.”

An idea, a bad one, came to mind. “The weapon I used to kill the last dragon I fought won’t work on her. It only disassembles SIVA.”

She gave me a pensive look. “There is another option. Although I currently look like a pony--”

“You can turn into a dragon,” I breathed. It was a terrible plan. Chrysalis’ new, massive shape stumbled into the city. It was burning around the edges with green fire, like it was so unstable she was ready to explode or collapse at any moment, like she was made of charcoal and ashes.

“I don’t know if I can maintain control. I might need… help.” She looked at me.

“What do you need me to do?” I didn’t have time to argue. It was better than any of my ideas.

Raven put a hoof on my chest, and silver threads flowed out of her and into me painlessly. “I am giving you higher access. You have control. Maintain physical contact with me after I transform and just… think about what you want me to do.”

She closed her eyes, and silver poured out of the castle, wrapping around her like a liquid egg. Chrysalis turned to look at us, the bony plates making up her horrific face opening like a flower to reveal a dozen eyes that all focused on me.

“There you are,” she said, the voice more felt than heard, echoing in my head. She moved like a landslide, too fast for something that large, a huge claw coming down towards me to swat me like an insect.

The egg cracked. A spear of silvery metal tore out of it, intercepting the claw. Metallic muscle and bone and pistons and gears wrapped around it in a blizzard of moving steel, growing from nothing in less than a second.

A wing exploded from the other side of the egg, and my instincts screamed for me to run away. I could hear the SIVA screaming in a tide of binary and code, louder than it ever had before. I gingerly touched the egg, and it lurched into motion, a wave pushing under my hooves and lifting me up on shoulders that hadn’t been there a moment ago, straddling a spine that was still cracking and forming with the vertebrae twisting into place.

Chrysalis took a step back, crushing a house under her weight, as Raven’s body filled out, metal flash-forging into armored plates and draconic features. She stood, and straps secured me in place on top of her when I even started to think about slipping.

“What?” Chrysalis hissed into my mind, confused.

“I guess we’re doing this! I have control” I yelled. Raven roared, a sound like pistons releasing pressure and steam venting. “Knock her out!”

Raven surged into motion, scales peeling back to reveal air intakes and rocket exhausts, beating her wings and rising into the air on plumes of fire before crashing down on Chrysalis, countless tons of living metal hitting burning chitin. Raven reared up, ready to stomp down on her again, and the tentacles around Chrysalis’ head snapped forwards, grabbing us and pulling the SIVA dragon aside.

I felt her start to tip and tried to correct, firing the rockets in short bursts and almost pitching over in the other direction before I got the hang of it and steadied the huge beast. It was a strange feeling, almost as if I was seeing through two pairs of eyes at once, synchronizing with Raven’s rhythms and thoughts.

“We have to take her out fast,” I said, hoping Raven was really listening. “She’s practically ancient, let’s show her something newer than wrestling!”

I closed my eyes, the double vision easing when I was just looking through Raven’s eyes. It didn’t feel like I was huge. It felt like everything else was tiny, like I was a too-big foal in daycare all over again, knocking over block towers and getting into fights with other fillies. The mane of tentacles writhed around the thick armor of Chrysalis’ head. She had an advantage at close range, so I had to think smarter.

Scales popped up on new hinges, and boxy frames poked out of Raven’s substructure. With a thought, dozens of rockets flew into the air, curving around and converging on Chrysalis from all sides like a whole circus of Wonderbolts weaving around each other at an air show. Plasma warheads detonated with blue and green fire on her hide, blasting hunks of meter-thick chitin into the air.

Chrysalis stormed through the clouds of shrapnel and debris, slamming into us and shoving us back, stopping the storm of munitions, the last few rockets going wild. Lime-green light flashed through her body, shining between her battleship-thick armor before erupting out of her mouth in a gout of poisonous fire, burning green and purple. White specks and flashes washed through my vision even with my eyes shut, and I could taste iron.

Raven raised her massive draconic wings as a shield to hold off the balefire, the silver panels quickly growing red and then white from the heat.

“Chamomile,” Flurry Heart’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers. “We are redirecting the energy output of the broken capacitors. Prepare to receive the energy transfer.”

“Doing what now?” I asked. I looked back at the palace. A team of changelings and crystal ponies was finishing the work of dragging thick crystal-optic cables and hooking them into an antenna shaped like a dish, with four steel arms holding a thick lens at the focal point.

Raven grunted, steam hissing out of her joints. Her back opened up like a butterfly, black panels sliding into place like a second set of wings.

“Transferring power now,” the Queen said. The antenna lit up, the lens glowing gold and tracers of energy crawling along the surface of the dish before launching out, hitting Raven in the back. The beam wavered and blinked in and out, the cables running to the dish visibly smoking even through the glare.

It barely mattered. I could feel the power surging through Raven. It was like a megaspell beating in my chest, begging to be invoked.

Chrysalis’ gout of flame sputtered and stopped, and Raven flicked her wings open, the molten edges dripping and splattering down over the city. Chrysalis was visibly shaken, taking a step back. Another wave of energy started to move through her, but Raven was faster. I pulled at that infinite source of energy inside, and when Raven roared, a beam of pure light erupted out, a blade of light that hit the ground under Chrysalis and swept up in an arc, slashing through her and stretching into the distance, slicing through everything in its path out to the horizon and beyond.

Chrysalis screeched and fell, two of her massive legs severed. She landed hard, and the energy she’d been building up exploded out of her side, blasting her ribs apart. The psychic pressure washed away. I felt like I’d surfaced after being at the bottom of a deep pool of sludge.

Raven shuddered, and my vision doubled again as we started to drift apart. The silver around my hooves, the safety straps holding me onto her, melted away and I was suddenly free. I’d never felt really small before, but when my perspective changed and I was just seeing things from pont-size again, I really realized how rough we’d been and how much we’d destroyed. Fires raged across the city. Radiation hissed against my skin in an annoying itch. Just in falling over, Chrysalis had destroyed several city blocks. Raven went down right after pulling away from me, the machine dragon falling apart into a heap of dead metal.

I caught myself in the air, barely avoiding riding her down. I circled and waited for it to still, then landed on the debris.

“Raven?!” I yelled. “Are you in there?”

“Here,” she said weakly, and the skull moved, scales popping off of the structure and landing with huge clangs. She crawled out of one empty eye socket, looking even rougher than I did. I flew over and touched down next to her to help her down.

“You okay?” I asked. She didn’t look exactly okay. I could see traces of scales just under her coat, especially around her spine. Her back hooves were still draconic talons, even if they were scaled to her normal size.

“I’m finding it difficult to return entirely to myself,” she admitted, her voice wavering. She leaned onto me for support. “I think I need to rest.”

“We both do,” I agreed. “Are you going to be okay if I leave you here?”

“If any undead haven’t been crushed by the debris, I’m sure they’ll find me less than appetizing,” she said. “Where are you going?”

I looked over at the fallen changeling queen. Even with her body lying still, I had a bad feeling. Maybe that was just radiation poisoning. Maybe it wasn’t.

“Finishing this fight,” I said.

Chapter 69: Leaving on a Jet Plane

“Man, that sounded like I knew what I was actually going to do,” I mumbled, looking up at her massive, fang-filled maw. In death, the bony plates had locked open like a blooming fleshy flower, exposing the chaotic swathe of now-cloudy and dull eyes and an open jaw as wide and tall as a hallway.

What I’m saying is, she looked pretty dead. I was just about ready to leave and let somepony else do the hard work of disassembling her or whatever it was you do to a giant monster when I saw it.

A glimmer of light, way deep down inside that throat.

I’m not proud of what I did. I knew it was stupid, even in the moment I was doing it, but it was the right decision even if it was stupid.

I climbed into the mouth, wincing at the slight give of her long, segmented tongue and ducking under rows of mismatched fangs. There was just enough room to stand and walk down her throat, and… she wasn’t built like anything alive. Even to my untrained eye, it looked more like the same kind of slapped together creature that Raven had turned into, except this machine was made of tendons and meat.

“Weird,” I mumbled. I tried to ignore the feeling that at any moment, I was going to be swallowed. Then, I saw what I was walking towards. The throat opened into a gullet or stomach or some organ ponies don’t have a good word for, and we definitely don’t have a word for one that’s as big as a hoofball pitch. Tendrils reached up from every surface like wet, meaty grass, and light poured down from outside. I looked up to see the edges of broken ribs and the obvious exit wound from that last gout of flame.

In the center of the room, just like that throne room that had been hanging under the floating islands of Limbo, was a plinth. And on top of it was a black egg, glowing softly from within. It looked like an altar to an evil goddess.

“Oh buck,” I whispered, walking through the fronds towards it. “What is that?”

“My backup plan,” Chrysalis hissed. She dropped down onto my back and sank fangs into my neck. I twisted, trying to shove her away, and felt one snap in my skin. Heat poured into my body from the bite wound, and I grabbed at it, backing away from her in alarm.

She got up from where I’d tossed her, on four unsteady legs. She looked… wrong. Not just monstrous. She’d always looked like a monster. She looked like she was already dead, as wasted and hollow as whatever zombies were left in the city outside.

“I’ll escape, and be reborn again, and again, as many times as it takes to have my revenge,” she growled, blood dripping down her lips. Only some of it was mine. She was weak, probably dead already. I might have been able to talk her down if I tried.

I punched her in the snout to establish dominance. Her carapace shattered, and she cried out in pain, ichor splashing against me.

“I was thinking about sparing you and trying to be merciful, and this thought hit me,” I said. “I realized you’re a prehistoric bitch and you need to go all the way down.”

“Our last fight didn’t go so well for you,” Chrysalis reminded me. She smiled. “How are you enjoying the neurotoxin? I wonder what will stop first -- your heart, or your breathing?!”

“Neurotoxin?” I asked. I pulled the broken fang out of my neck. Something neon blue leaked from the tip. I felt a little flushed but otherwise fine. She cackled, watching me, and I glanced back at my body, made sure I could still move all my hooves and my wings. “Are you sure?”

“I-- of course I’m sure!” Chrysalis yelled. “Why aren’t you dead?!”

I flapped my wings one more time as a final pre-fight check and shrugged. “I’m immune?” The real answer was that my nervous system had been rewired once or twice already, and I could feel a tingle of something not quite right, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down. It was sort of like getting the feather flu and having one nostril totally blocked by gunk -- it was a little uncomfortable but not really a danger.

She face-hooved and winced when she touched the broken, sensitive chitin. “Of course. Why not? Why shouldn’t I be humiliated one more time? You can’t even conceive of how much I suffered, and now my revenge is foiled by an idiot!”

Her horn lit up, flickering and sparking before throwing a weak bolt of magic at me. Weak for her, I mean. It still had the kick of a beam rifle, stabbing into the armor around my right foreleg. I kept my hoof up and blocked a second shot aimed at my face before snapping off a shot with the Junk Jet, firing my last concussion grenade at her.

She shot it out of the air and it went off between us with a bright flash and pop, making my ears ring from the detonation in the confined space. Chrysalis was on top of me in an instant, still faster and stronger than should have been possible for such a broken mare. Her horn stabbed through my shoulder, sharper than any blade had a right to be.

Before I could react, we were pressed up against the wall together, pinned by the former queen’s horn speared right through me and into the sticky flesh I was pressed against, which was so nasty it was almost as bad as being stabbed.

Some banter would have been really good to give me time to figure out what to do about that, but Chrysalis wasn’t in a talking mood. Her horn sparked, magic surging through it, and I had a sudden vision of my body exploding from inside like a wet grenade. I brought my right hoof down hard on her head, and the already-cracked carapace gave way, the spell backfiring and erupting out. Her horn exploded at the base, knocking her away from me.

I slid down the wall and reached over, yanking the broken horn out of my shoulder with my mouth. I knew it’d make the bleeding worse, but there was no telling what would happen if I left it inside. My own dark blood joined hers on the floor, the waving field of fleshy fronds wiggling with excitement like the giant corpse around me was excited by the idea of eating me.

Chrysalis groaned, holding her head. She was deteriorating even as I watched. Her chitin was peeling away in flakes, and ichor streamed from a thousand tiny wounds.

“I’m going to…” she mumbled woozily. “I’m going to…”

I limped over to her and snapped a kick into her chest, my back hoof punching through the broken armor and leaving a print. She spat up a gout of hot blood and slammed an elbow into my cheek. The sharp edge split my skin open, my eye almost immediately starting to swell up. I went blind on that side and almost missed her follow-up coming.

Her next blow came fast, and I caught it in the mouth, biting down on her long, thin fetlock like a wolf with a bone, crunching into it. Her blood burned on my tongue like acid, the sharp edges of her black armor cutting my gums and lips up. She yanked it back, wobbling and unable to put weight on it.

I pressed my advantage, taking off right in her face in a flurry of metallic feathers and grabbing her around the neck, twisting around and landing on her back, my weight driving her down. With only one forehoof able to really apply strength thanks to the hole in my shoulder, all I could do was squeeze. Her wings buzzed in alarm, and I kicked them frantically, tearing the rotting membranes before she could get lift.

She started to go limp in my hooves. I grunted and threw my weight into it. There was no real spine there to snap, but something broke inside her. Her body shivered in final seizure, and Chrysalis struggled for a final breath before just… stopping, turning off like a broken machine. I held her there for a long few seconds more, holding her neck so tightly my foreleg had broken through the chitin and was squeezing the meat inside.

Slowly, I let her go. She was totally limp, just rags and blood and broken bits of armor.

I didn’t feel like I was in much better shape. I got up on unsteady legs and limped over to the egg. I could smash it and be sure that it would all be over, that she wouldn’t somehow return again. I could be paranoid and assume she had some scheme. It would be the smart thing to do. Destroy any chance she had.

I picked it up carefully and limped back towards the throat and the fresh air outside.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked, my voice devolving into a cough before I’d finished the last word. I was lying down in sickbay with a half-dozen IV lines and twice as many bags being flushed through my system. Some of it was RadAway, some was just saline, there was a bag of blood trying to replace what I’d lost, and one was some kind of iron solution that burned a little where it entered my body.

“Do you have any idea how much radiation you absorbed?” Destiny groaned.

“I donno. I thought radiation wasn’t even a big deal for me?” I tried to shrug but it hurt too much. Chrysalis’ horn had really torn up my shoulder. Mage Meadowbrook and Raven had worked on it while I was very heavily sedated. I didn’t know the details, but I got the impression it had been like replacing the suspension on an aircart in more than one way.

“You’re resistant to radiation, not immune,” Destiny said patiently. “You were exposed to somewhere over a thousand rads and maybe twenty percent of that made it through your dermal lining. That’s still a potentially lethal dose.”

“Oh,” I said. I settled down on the bed, less annoyed now. They’d had to use the biggest, toughest needles they could find to get through my hide, and it stung like a bitch, but maybe it was okay if it was saving my life.

“Most ponies would be unconscious by now,” she noted. “Right after their digestive system started to collapse and they expelled everything out of both ends. And that’s without talking about the burns or the total collapse of their immune system. The infections alone would be fatal!”

My stomach started to turn. “I, um…” I swallowed. “W-when is all that going to start?”

“It won’t. You’ll be fine,” Destiny assured me. “It’s already being flushed out of you. It’s just a cherry on top of the last… however long it’s been. It’s really hard to tell proper time here. Some rooms around here have measurable time dilation, none of the clocks match, and I am never going to get used to that.”

“Maybe that means they can spare enough time to let me heal properly,” I sighed. I closed my eyes. There was no way things would suddenly get worse, right? I waited, listening to my heart beat. Nothing exploded. Nopony screamed. Things were quiet.

I was starting to get restless.

“I’m bored,” I mumbled, done being quietly restful.

“You’re not leaving that bed,” Destiny said. “I’ll ask if you can have visitors, but if you try and get up they’ll sedate you. I’ll be helping.”

“Why wouldn’t I be allowed to have visitors?” I looked around.

“Because you’re radioactive enough that they don’t want cross-contamination,” Destiny retorted. “It doesn’t matter for me since I’m already dead.”

“I just thought I was alone because it was a VIP room for special ponies,” I admitted.

“You’re definitely special,” Destiny agreed.

“How’s everypony else holding up?” I asked.

“It’s all calmed down. The Pillars and Raven are getting the wrecks of the cloudships out of the city. Rockhoof just carved the ground out from around them, and Flash Magnus led the guards to get rid of the zombies and push the contaminated ships away. They’re going to have to lose about half of the city’s area, but it was overbuilt anyway. Mage Meadowbrook is heading up a decontamination team to make things habitable again, Mistmane is designing new buildings for Raven to build, and Somnambula is keeping spirits high until things are settled.”

“They’re lucky to have ponies like that,” I mumbled, closing my eyes.

“Yes. And they wouldn’t have them without us,” Destiny pointed out.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “I thought we won!”

A few hours had passed. Ponies in yellow rubber suits had waved wands around the room. Apparently I was safe enough to visit now, because Star Swirl had decided to occupy the chair next to my bed.

“The Darkness isn’t a single enemy or force that can just be stopped like that,” he said. He’d brought books. To read by himself. According to him, my room was the quietest place in the palace, even with my stupid questions.

“Ugh. This is just like that stupid video game,” I mumbled. Star Swirl raised an eyebrow, so I continued my explanation. “The game you had me look at for answers. The Alpha version. The premise of the game was to stop Chaos from conquering the land, and one of the characters said that Chaos was really the way ponies treated one another and stuff like that.”

“Mm. No. Let me compare it to something a pegasus might understand. Gravity. You can fight gravity. If you do it well, you can even keep it at bay for a long time. There are pyramids ten thousand years old that are still standing because it’s a very good way to stack rocks without having them fall down again. Eventually, though, gravity wins. Everything falls.”

“That’s kind of hopeless, isn’t it?” I frowned.

“Do you know what the opposite of the Darkness is?” Star Swirl asked, sighing.

“Harmony.” It was an easy guess, and wrong.

“Chaos. The Darkness is pure law and order, to the point no life or light could exist. In a universe dominated by the Dark, everything everywhere would look the same. Imagine a chessboard. Just a simple pattern, repeating forever. Chaos isn’t much different. Take the same chessboard and make it random. A billion different arrangement of squares and every single one different and meaningless.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “If it’s really random, some of them would show a picture, or letters, or…” I trailed off with a shrug.

“Good point,” Star Swirl agreed. “And that’s Harmony. Finding the things that have meaning to us and protecting them. Total chaos and total order are both anathema to life. Harmony is a delicate balance between them. One that must be protected.”

“Can we talk about something less serious?” I groaned.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “Like?”

I looked at the stack of books he’d brought with him and gave him my biggest, saddest, cutest expression.

“Can you read me a story?”

He gave me a look. “Only if you’re willing to listen to a true story. One of my grand adventures, which the other Pillars also joined me on. The defeat of the three Great Sirens. It’s also the first time I got eaten alive.”

“I like the sound of this story.”

“Good!” Star Swirl nodded and gave me a rare smile, putting down the book he was holding. “It all started a long time ago, in a land far far away…”

Somepony had spent a long time thinking about the throne room because even now, having been in and around it for what should have been more than long enough to get used to it, I was still impressed.

“You’ve done a great service for me,” Queen Flurry Heart said. “And more importantly, you have done a great service for my subjects. They are and have always been the most important thing in this or any other world to me, and I am glad I put my trust in you to fight against the evil forces that threatened them. You have my thanks.”

She stood and bowed to me. I had enough grace to return the bow. It was probably the right thing to do. It felt right. Nopony yelled at me, so that was a good sign.

“As you have been resting and healing, Raven has been rebuilding the city, and life returns to normal. I would like to extend the offer for you to stay with us. The ponies here would love to have another hero among them, and all the woes and trials of the world are kept at bay. If you remain here, you can one day rebuild with us once the world has healed enough for our banishment to end.”

“I’d love to, but…” I trailed off.

“You have responsibilities,” Flurry Heart said. It wasn’t a guess. “You want to hunt down your estranged mother and stop whatever she has become.”

“Somepony has to,” I replied. “If nopony stops her, that day you talked about when the world has healed? It’s never going to come. Raven is everything that could go right with that technology, my mom is everything that could go wrong.”

“I understand. The powerful have an obligation to protect the weak.” Flurry Heart sat down. “It was something the other Princesses understood as well. The world is not a game of chess where pawns can be discarded and pieces sacrificed. True strength is the ability to protect something fragile for its own sake.”

“I don’t suppose you could come with me and blow her apart?” I asked, giving her a smile.

“If only,” Flurry Heart sighed. “I will have your armor and weapons repaired, and we will gird you with what supplies and blessings we can grant. I know you will succeed at your task as long as you have set yourself to it. You have a powerful will.”

“Chug!” Flash Magnus cheered.

I gulped, looking down my muzzle at the pony sitting across from me. Rockhoof held his own mug to his lips, both of us pouring drink down our throats. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. Not quite beer. Not quite mead. Something Raven had synthesized with pure alcohol and artificial flavors that was somewhere between citrus and malt.

“Done!” Rockhoof yelled, slamming his mug down. I swallowed two last mouthfuls and slammed mine down a heartbeat later.

“Darnit!” I coughed, the last few drops going down the wrong pipe. I wiped my lips. “Fine, I concede. You win this round.”

We’d all gathered in a little celebration. It had been two weeks since the battle, and I was feeling more like myself again. I was healed, the ponies in the palace had moved out into the rebuilt city, and spirits were high. That morning, Flurry Heart had led a ceremony for the fallen, and now a party atmosphere had fallen over the city, a celebration of life and a wake for the dead. We were in what was the brand new dining room of a rebuild restaurant, and the owner had let us have the place to ourselves.

“Never challenge an earth pony warrior to a drinking contest,” Rockhoof said, waggling his hoof at me. “There’s no pony who can outdrink me.”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes from where he was sitting with a glass of wine. Real wine, from a bottle. He’d offered me a glass, but it was too fine a vintage for me to appreciate and I knew it.

“Somepony is making claims they can’t back up,” Meadowbrook said. “I remember you being put under a table by Mistmane.”

“Bah!” Rockhoof snorted. “I don’t know how our fine lady holds her liquor. Still can’t stand the taste of plums after that night.”

“That’s because you were so sick I had to treat your hangover for three days,” Meadowbrook retorted.

“Oh, please, you know I don’t like to boast,” Mistmane said with a small smile. “A glass of plum baijiu every night before bed is good for one’s health.”

“Aye, that may be so, but that stuff is as strong as a bear that’s as strong as two bears,” Rockhoof muttered.

“I knew a mare named Two Bears,” I sighed. “I miss her.”

“Now I’m trying to think about what kind of mare you might like,” Flash said.

“A beauty, I bet,” Rockhoof said. “The kind of mare who turns heads wherever she goes!”

“Somepony with a kind spirit,” Mistmane suggested. “A safe harbor in the dangerous place the world has become.”

“Nah, I bet she’s some kind of vicious killer who can twist the head off a hydra,” Meadowbrook said, jokingly.

I nodded and pointed at her. “That one,” I said. “The strongest zebra warrior in her tribe, and she likes to turn into a big monster and wrestle things to death.” I groaned. “I want her to wrestle me…”

“No more drinks for her,” Star Swirl said.

“Can we do karaoke?” I asked.

“What is karaoke?” Mistmane asked.

“Oh bother,” Star Swirl groaned.

I wasn’t very good at singing, but we all had a great time being bad at it. It was a goodbye, not a see-you-later, and the night ended slowly and with a melancholy tone. I knew I’d never see these ponies again. Knowing these legends, and being remembered by them, was enough. Something of me would last into the distant future when they rebuilt Equestria.

Assuming I could keep my mom from destroying it.

I adjusted the armor slightly. There wasn’t really a need. It was fitted perfectly, fixed and buffed and repaired until it was better than new, but some instinct made me want to tug at the metal collar. Maybe it was just because my last experience with a portal hadn’t been fun.

“Where did you say this is going to take me?” I asked.

“I don’t remember telling you,” Star Swirl said. “Unfortunately, I can’t pop you back up to your little pegasus-only club in the skies. There are only a few suitable places still remaining for an exit, but I know one that should be perfectly safe and sound.”

“And that is?” I sighed.

“I was going to tell you,” he lied. “But now it’s going to be a surprise! It’s safe. If that’s not good enough for you, too bad. I’m doing you a favor. If you had any sense at all you’d stay here until the apocalypse ended and live in some kind of comfort.”

“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t be rude, Chamomile,” Destiny quietly chided. She was snug on my head, so we wouldn’t get separated if something happened when we went through the magic mirror.

“It would make my job easier,” Star Swirl mumbled. “You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange everything to make sure the future keeps happening. Mostly it’s just making sure memory orbs are in the right place, but it’s a matter of trial and error, and you’re a lot of error to throw in the equation.”

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“We aren’t going to be messing up your plans, are we?” Destiny asked.

“I’m putting you somewhere a bit out of the way,” Star Swirl admitted. “Just keep your distance from Canterlot for the next... oh, twenty years or so.”

“I didn’t have any plans to go there,” I replied.

Star Swirl nodded sharply “Good, the place is a bloody wreck. Nopony should go there!”

“We’ll keep a wide berth,” Destiny promised. “Are you ready, Chamomile?”

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. I was hoping for any excuse to delay, like a scared filly in flight camp standing at the edge of a long drop before they knew how well their wings would carry them.

“Is it too late for me to wish you well?” Raven stepped into the room. She was still sporting those draconic features. I was pretty sure she could repress them if she wanted, but was enjoying them with the pure and simple happiness of a filly with a new dress.

“Not yet,” I said, and she surprised me by pulling me into a hug.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “After I became what I am, I spent every day burying myself in work and worrying about if I was still a pony or not.”

“Did I help with that?”

“More than you know,” she assured me. “You’ve been changed almost as much as I have, and you never lost sight of yourself. I hope the little bit of me that you’re carrying inside you is able to help in some way.”

“Little bit of--” I looked down at myself. “Oh buck, I’m not pregnant, am I?”

“What?” Raven blinked.

“I know we didn’t, you know, but SIVA does weird stuff and I need to know right now if there’s some kind of magical cyborg baby with two moms growing inside me!”

“No, Chamomile,” Raven sighed. “You’re not pregnant. I meant that you have a copy of my SIVA protocols and access codes. It might help you if your mother tries to hack you again.”

“Oh!” I blinked. “That’s what you mean.” My heart started beating normally again. “I got really freaked out there for a second. Sorry.”

“She has a lot of brain damage,” Destiny apologized.

“Hey! I-- that’s technically true, but it feels bad when you say it that way!”

“Is there anything special we should know before we go through the portal?” Destiny asked, changing the subject.

Star Swirl smirked and rubbed his chin, tugging lightly on his beard and running his hoof through it. “Hm. Speaking from experience, which I have a lot of, breathe out before stepping in, and in when you’re on the other side. There’s always an air pressure difference.”

“Good tip,” I said. It was actually practical, useful advice. I gave Raven a smile she couldn’t see through the helmet, a pat on the shoulder, and breathed out before walking into the light.

I walked out into damp, chilly air. Unlike the sterile atmosphere of Limbo, it was textured and thick and alive with scent. I’d almost forgotten I had a sense of smell, but now I could smell rust and salt and ponies. I turned around, and I was looking at the base of a statue, a big block of stone topped with a feminine, thin equine’s head cast as large as my whole body. The sculptor had messed up the mane somehow, though. Even for stone it looked rigid and stiff.

“I guess we made it somewhere,” Destiny said. I stepped back and looked around, my eyes adjusting to subtly flickering halogen lights. The shadows and droning hum made it seem foreign until it all clicked. The generic paint. The wall panels. The shape of the supports.

“It’s a Stable,” I said. “A working one.”

It had the standard architecture and design of a Stable, and we were in some kind of auxiliary room. Maybe it had been made just for the statue or as a junction. Corridors went off in a few directions, and it wasn’t in perfect repair. Puddles sat in the lowest spots on the floor, and rust showed where trickles had come through gaps in the wall panels.

The one thing I hadn’t seen before were the large, tall shutters on the side of the wall. They ran from floor to the high ceiling, and looked like the kind of rolling shutter a pony might have over a storefront after closing hours.

“That makes sense,” Destiny said. “Let me take a look around.” She popped off my head and floated over to the wall.

“See if you can find the number anywhere,” I said. “We might be able to tell where we are if we know which Stable this is.”

“You’d be surprised.” Destiny floated to the other side of the room while I watched. “They weren’t regionally-labeled. They were numbered in the order they were proposed. Some never even got past the negotiating table because of funding, some got skipped entirely…”

“Kinda weird they didn’t just build them in a grid.”

“Equestria isn’t a grid. They wanted more Stables near where there were more ponies, but some were privately funded, some cities had nothing because the local government refused to allow them to operate, some were experimental and never opened.”

I spotted something stamped into the brass on the big shutters on the wall.

“Stable S-1?” I read, frowning.

“You mean fifty-one,” Destiny corrected, hovering next to me.

I shook my head. “No, look.” I pointed at the small name stamped into the metal. “S-1.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Stables were numbered, even the test Stables. Where are we?”

“You don’t think he put us in Zebra territory, do you?” I asked. “Did Stable-Tec work with the Zebras?”

“They probably did, but they would have called it Z-1, not S-1. Trust me, they were stupid and obvious like that. Assuming they didn’t name it something overtly racist. Racism was always popular during the war.”

“Only one thing to do,” I said. “This place has air and water.” I kicked a puddle, splashing it. “That means it has ponies. We can just ask them why their Stable has a weird name.”

“Oh! I think I found an intercom!” Destiny said. She shone her horn-light on a panel, highlighting it. There were two big buttons. I shrugged and pressed one to see what would happen.

There was a squeal and the room shook. The lights overhead flickered, and the shutters jerked into motion on aged and rusty bearings, sliding up into the ceiling and revealing two things that no Stable should have. Huge windows, and something to look at on the other side of them.

Blue light filled the room, and I looked out wordlessly. A whole city stretched away from us, wavering weeds and bright sand forming a picturesque garden right outside. Fish swam by, and I could see motion and light and life everywhere. I’d never seen anything like it, even in the Enclave.

“We’re underwater,” I said quietly. “I’ve seen some of those fish in books!”

“I guess the oceans are still in good shape even after everything we did,” Destiny replied. She floated along with a brightly-colored tropical fish as it went past the window. “The wasteland was so bad I was afraid we’d made everything else extinct. This is… it’s beautiful.”

“They had Stables underground, I guess underwater is just as good.” I looked at the city in the middle distance. “This place is huge! It’s got to be ten times the size of the one my Mom came from!”

“We should find the locals and try to explain ourselves,” Destiny decided. “Let me put the weapons away. We don’t need to scare anypony.” She flew closer, and my guns vanished into the vector trap’s storage.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed. “These ponies have been down here for a long time and might be kind of surprised to have a visitor.” Something tugged at my attention. I spun around, but there was nothing there.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny asked.

“Nothing. I thought I saw somepony in the corner of my eye, but--”

Something metal and apple-sized rolled between my hooves. Or more accurately, it was grenade-sized. It whined like a speaker broadcasting interference before exploding in a flash of lightning.

My world turned stark white. Everything blurred together into a mess of sensations that didn’t fit together. It was an EMP. The part of me still able to think, locked into a body that was seizing and shaking blindly, was dimly aware of what had happened and fought for control. It felt distant, one step away from an out-of-body experience.

I was dimly aware of being tugged at, rolled over, and Destiny yelling about something. My hearing came and went, voices fighting to come through the ringing.

“...this armor is going to sell for a mint…”

“...just put the stupid thing in a crate before it shoots again…”

“...take the hoof off?...”

“...leave it, she’s starting to wake up…”

I felt movement. I was being picked up on both sides and dragged somewhere. The air was cold against my bare fur. I’d been in armor for so long I felt oddly naked and exposed. I tried to fight back, but nothing was working. The best I could do was get myself thrown to the ground and picked up again.

I started to actually come to when I was shoved through a door and hit a metal wall on the far side, hard enough to rattle my brains and restart something.

The door slid shut behind me, and I struggled to my feet.

“Hey!” I yelled. My armor was gone. Destiny was gone. I stumbled to the door, trying to figure out how to open it. I was dazed, but it didn’t look like a normal Stable door. It was thicker, like some kind of armored bulkhead. I pounded a hoof on it. “Let me out, you cowards!”

My IQ steadily ramped up towards something approaching an average amount. I looked around the small room they’d dropped me off at. Was it a prison cell? Maybe a supply closet, with the lockers on both sides that would make sense. Another armored door stood on the far side of the room.

Before I could really gather my wits, an alarm blared, and my ears popped. The pressure was rapidly changing.

That made the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. They’d pushed me into an airlock. The water rushed in. Everything went black.

Chapter 70: Beyond The Sea

I gasped for breath. Everything was dark and cold. Pain surged through every inch of my body in the most unpleasant wake-up call of all time, the kind of agony that took you right from asleep and into blind animal panic with your instincts kicking in every direction before your brain even had time to decide what was happening.

My hooves hit sheet metal. I was in a tight place. I couldn’t breathe. The metal under my rear hooves moved. I’d either dented something or popped a hatch or something, but the only important thing in that blind confusion was that I’d found some direction to panic into and try to escape. I needed to get out in the open. I kicked harder, and light flooded in. The cold metal under me started to move, sliding, and a moment later, I was out in the open.

The smell of alcohol and antiseptic flooded my nostrils. I rolled, trying to get up, and fell off the metal shelf I’d been lying on and onto the tile floor. It was slick with saltwater and soap, and my legs ached when I tried to stand up. Everything was half-asleep like I’d been lying wrong on my whole body at once.

“What in the fish--” somepony gasped. My attention came to a sharp point.

A mare was staring at me. She was terrified. I could sense it coming off her in waves. I took a step and my hooves almost collapsed under me, slipping on the linoleum.

“Where--” I tried to say. It came out as a croak. My throat was totally dry. I coughed, trying to get control. “--where… am I?”

She looked torn between rushing over to me to help and running away. From the way she was dressed, she must have been a doctor. She was wearing scrubs, and her mane was tied back in the kind of rough bun that was professional but meant she wasn’t expecting to actually be seen by anypony else.

“This is the Stable morgue,” she said.

“Why am I in a bucking morgue?” I rasped. I practically sounded like a ghoul. That was a disturbing thought. I glanced to the side and caught my reflection in the polished metal of the steel drawers. My skin was still smooth and alive, at least over most of my body. My right hoof didn’t count. That was still the same gunmetal composite that I’d had to get used to.

She started to back away.

“Water,” I barked. “I need--”

“Right, of course, yes,” she said, circling around me to a sink and grabbing a plastic cup, filling it up and offering it to me. I took it and gulped it down, then motioned for another. I was so thirsty I couldn’t even feel it properly until I had the first drink inside me, and then all I wanted was to down a gallon or two all at once.

“How did I get here?” I asked. My voice was starting to sound more like me and less like a monster.

“You were brought in. You were found in the undercity.” She swallowed. “You’re, um. You’re looking much better?”

“The undercity? The last thing I remember, I was…” I trailed off. I remembered the airlock. How had I gotten from there to here? How many hours had I lost? “I had armor with me. A talking helmet. Where is it?”

“You didn’t have anything with you when you were brought in,” she said, holding up her hooves defensively. “Please, whatever you want, whatever you are, don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not…” I coughed, wiping my lips. “I need to find Destiny.”

It couldn’t be that hard. I’d spent a while in a Stable. They weren’t big places, and power armor wasn’t the kind of thing that could be hidden easily. The chill in the air made me shiver. My entire body felt freezing and bloodless. Whatever had happened, SIVA had taken its sweet time getting me back on my hooves.

I stumbled past the mare and grabbed a white coat that was hanging next to the door.

“Sorry for the trouble,” I said, limping out.

I leaned against a steel wall painted to look like wood and plaster and tried to catch my breath. Getting out of the morgue hadn’t been difficult. I don’t think anypony designed it with the thought that they might have to keep somepony from escaping, and a lab coat makes ponies think you belong there.

Once the adrenaline from my escape completely faded and the water I’d chugged down had started soothing some of the feeling of being pickled and preserved in salt, I found myself not being able to find myself. In other words, I felt lost as buck.

Even the street wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. Stables were generally built like metal boxes. Cloud houses were loose, elaborate structures that could ignore gravity and ended up like every foal’s playhouse writ large. This street was totally different than either.

Imagine the sort of pre-war main street that they had before the balefire bombs dropped, stores and shops lined up on both sides of a long road. Then make it all fake. The stores were built into the walls, but shaped and painted like they were separate buildings with facades of painted wood or wallpaper bricks with just enough depth and decor to nearly sell the illusion to anypony not looking closely. Three stories up, they abruptly stopped, and steel arches reached from one side of the street to the other, supporting a glass roof holding back the weight of the ocean and making it seem like we were nearly outside.

The street itself was cut through the middle with a canal. Sidewalks joined it on both sides, and bridges reached from one side to the other once or twice every ‘block’. It was lively, with ponies just living their lives and laughing and talking. Inoffensive piano music played softly from hidden speakers, and overhead lights kept everything at a comfortable glow.

One thing that seemed a little odd was how few ponies were wearing Stable suits. They weren’t exactly high fashion, but I knew they lasted basically forever and Stables usually had machines to make more. More than that, everypony I saw wearing the blue uniform jumpsuits was working. Mopping the sidewalk. Cleaning walls. Taking orders at the cafe. Most of them lingered near service tunnels-slash-alleyways that stretched between the storefronts.

That shouldn’t have been the first strange thing to catch my attention, but I was exhausted and slow to really recognize what I was looking at, so maybe I can be forgiven for not seeing it right away. There were ponies swimming in the canal. I didn’t even notice them until one of them jumped into the air and burst into soft light, fins turning into legs and wings forming and beating at the air.

They landed on lanky talons and brushed their mane back before folding their wings neatly and walking into a tavern and out of sight.

“What the buck was that?” I whispered. Destiny probably would have known. It had to be some kind of pre-war thing. We were-- I was in a Stable. Alone. I couldn’t count on her to figure things out for me. I had to use my own brain or whatever was left in my skull.

Or did I? I looked around the streets and spotted what I was looking for. Ponies in light, padded armor and wearing badges. Security officers. I wasn’t a criminal, I needed help, and even though I’d probably have to sit down with them and answer a whole buckload of questions about how I got here and what I was doing, they were my best bet for getting help. I just had to present myself as being a normal pony who needed some help.

“Um… excuse me,” I started. My throat was still a little rough, but I didn’t sound like I was gargling jagged rocks. “This is going to sound really weird, but I’m not from around here and I need some help.”

The two officers I’d approached looked at each other. I couldn’t see much beyond the reflective visors of their helmets, but they were obviously annoyed instead of surprised.

“Not another one,” the first one said.

The second officer sighed. “Okay, miss. Let me guess. You’ve come up from the undercity looking for a better life and someone stole your paperwork.”

“That’s not good,” the first cop noted. “Without your papers you’re not allowed to be here. I hope you’ve got a Citizen who’s willing to vouch for you.”

“I don’t have any identification--”

“Really not good,” the second cop said. “Tell you what, we might be able to help you, but there’s a big fee for replacing lost papers, especially since you don’t seem to have a Citizen around to let us know you’re on the up and up.”

That made me take a step back. Were they trying to shake me down? I was expecting them to freak out about me being a pony they’d never met before, not immediately try to get a bribe out of me.

“Of course... if you don’t have the shells, we can work something out,” the second cop continued.

“Are you kidding?” the first officer scoffed. “You got some weird taste, Billy. She’s built like a sack of oats.”

“Maybe, but I’m sure she’ll be appreciative of the way we’re protecting her from the Ripper. They say he does terrible things to ponies. Just carves them up and eats some parts for fun. You’d make a big meal for a monster like that.”

They reached for me.

“Back off!” I warned, bristling up. I wasn’t going to let these perverted little buckheads take me anywhere. I couldn’t even stand the smell of them. Being this close was enough to make me sick. One of them reached for a club, and that was enough. I won’t bore you with the details. I don’t even remember them myself. One moment he was getting ready to swing, and the next thing I knew, they were both on the ground. They were lucky they had helmets, because otherwise they’d have graduated from having lumps to going to take my place in the morgue.

I tried to catch my breath. I just hated them so much. I don’t even know where it all came from, the blind rage and anger. They had barely done more than make a bad pass at me, but I felt like a decade of corruption and abuse had just hit me all at once.

Ponies were staring at me. Two cops were bleeding in the street because of me. I wasn’t the good guy here. I was a dangerous criminal, and the silence around me was even louder with that damn piano music playing in my ears.

I bolted.

It was a dream. I was just aware enough to know it wasn’t real, even if it felt like it was happening.

Everything was hazy and heavy. My breath was ragged and out of my control, like a machine was breathing for me. In and out. In and out. It was all the fun of feeling like you needed to breathe manually with none of the ability to control it. Just an awful awareness of it at every moment.

That barely mattered. It was a distraction, trying to find something else to think about to block out the hunger. It was a rolling, overwhelming feeling. It drove me in the same way a pony with their hoof over an open flame was driven to pull away from the pain. Every thought circled around that pit and threatened to fall in.

I had to find something to eat. I stumbled through the dark, burning and freezing at the same time, trying to find anything. A dented can. I crunched into it with jaws that were full of jagged, sharp teeth. Inside was something unpleasant, something that wasn’t really food. It was some kind of industrial oil or solvent, but I still drank it down greedily. Anything would do to fill my stomach, even if it burned like acid and made me retch with the poison of it.

It might as well have been nothing. It didn’t quench my hunger. It just made it sharper.

If I had been really in control I might have wept from the hopelessness of it. But I wasn’t in control. In the dream, my body kept moving, hunting. And it found somepony else in those endless, dim corridors. Somepony prying at a rusting doorframe and dragging along overfull saddlebags stuffed with trash.

I watched in horror through my own eyes as I stalked up to them, held up a bloated, diseased claw, and brought it down on their spine. They screamed, babbled words at me I couldn’t make out, and it only got louder when I leaned down and started to feed.

I was moving before I was even aware of it, grabbing the hoof touching my shoulder and yanking it back, holding the pony in place and shoving them into the shelves along the wall hard enough to knock ancient plastic bottles and boxes of detergent to the ground around us.

“Woah there!” the pony gasped. He didn’t struggle, which was probably the only reason I didn’t end up shaking him apart while I was dazed from sleep. “I come in peace.”

He was a pretty nondescript-looking stallion. Familiar somehow, like I’d seen a picture of him somewhere. The stallion was wearing Stable barding augmented with a set of saddlebags and smaller pouches. His horn was glowing, and I saw something floating in his aura.

“Drop it,” I warned.

“Okay, okay,” he said softly. “It’s just some tools.” The stallion carefully put them down. They were just little bits of metal, one of them bent in a right angle and the other with a shallow hook at the end.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“Nothing! I was just checking on you. When I saw you, I thought you might be another one of those Ripper victims, but I can see you’re not the kind of pony who gets victimized. It’s entirely my fault. I apologize profusely.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I locked the door when I went to sleep.”

“And that explains why I had to pick it open,” he said. “I was hoping I’d found a storage closet nopony had scavenged yet. I’m a bit of a treasure hunter, you see.”

“A treasure hunter. With lockpicks.” I shoved him into the shelves again, rattling an ancient wrench out of the nest of dust it had lived in for the last century and sending it clattering to the floor. “You mean a thief. You were going to rob me!”

“First, it’s extremely rude to call somepony a thief when you’ve just met them. Second, by my guess you don’t have anything worth stealing. You’re sleeping rough in a supply closet with nothing to eat and a long way from the last time you had a chance to get cleaned up.”

“You must be a wizard,” I retorted. “Next are you going to guess what number I’m thinking of?”

“No, I’m going to offer you a job,” he said. “You’re not from around here.” He looked significantly at my right forehoof. “You might not know it yet, but you need a lot of clams to make it in this place. Some parts of the city, it costs three shells just to use the toilet!”

“Are there… other ponies not from around here?” I asked carefully.

“Sure,” he said. “You’re looking at one of them! I’m a refugee like you, and by my guess you’re from the Enclave. That accent is rare in the wasteland but I’ve heard it before. The wings are sort of a dead giveaway, too.” He smiled brightly, pleased by my surprised expression.

“Okay, maybe you’re smarter than you look,” I said. “But I’m not going to kill anypony. I got tricked into some of that before and I don’t like doing it, especially for other ponies.”

“Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust you if you were ready to say yes if somepony asked you to shiv somepony else. I prefer victimless crimes. Sort of treasure hunting, right? Except the treasure is being held by some greedy ponies and I hunt it out of their shops where they have it on display.”

He was looking at my expression and must have known immediately just how I felt about that proposition.

“If you want to line your saddlebags with shells, some light work like this is the best way,” he said. “And whatever you want, a shower, a meal, a real bed, all that means clams need to pass from one hoof to another.”

“One job,” I said. “And nopony gets hurt, and then I’m going to use those bits--”

“Clams. Or shells. They don’t use bits down here.”

“Whatever. I’m going to use those bits to get information. I’m looking for somepony.” I needed to find Destiny.

“If you help me with this, I’ll even introduce you to the right sort of ponies who might be able to help with your questions,” he said. “Speaking of which, I should introduce myself. I’m Chum Buddy. I’m guessing you’re…” he glanced back at my cutie mark. “Daisy?”

“Chamomile.”

“Ah, I was close! So, can I offer you a snack while I explain my plan?”

My stomach rumbled.

“This stuff is terrible,” I said through the mush I was eating.

“It’s reconstituted protein paste. It’s got all the vitamins and minerals you need,” Chum said. “None of the flavor. That costs extra, and so far we haven’t earned ourselves enough clams to splurge.”

It had come out of a pipe in the wall and I could have mistaken it for some kind of industrial waste or sewage line if it wasn’t for the line of ponies getting bowls full of the stuff. It hadn’t cost us anything, and tasted exactly the way you’d expect something to taste if you wanted to keep ponies alive but motivate them to get to work and earn enough to eat anything else.

We’d moved to the mouth of an alleyway across from a jeweler, which was a little weird to see only a stairway and a few hundred feet of corridor away from the line of destitute ponies in Stable barding. It was like moving that one layer up took us into a completely different world.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” Chum Buddy explained. “There’s a certain ring I want to liberate from that shop. You can see it in the window there.” He pointed subtly. I was pretty sure he meant the understated, jeweled ring in the middle of the case, resting on a velvet pillow.

“Uh-huh,” I confirmed. “The ring just sitting right there behind glass.”

“What we’re going to do is, I’m going to go inside and get the jeweler’s attention, and dressed the way I am, he’s naturally going to think I’m up to something, so you’re going to…” I stopped listening at that point. He had a really good, detailed plan, but it’s not important. I already wasn’t jazzed about the idea of doing a bunch of crime and while his plan was clever, I had a headache and I wasn’t in the mood for complicated plans.

I missed having quest markers in my HUD. I didn’t have to think so hard when I had them to follow.

“Hold this,” I said, giving him the empty bowl. I wiped the traces of paste from my lips and walked out into the streets. There were some scenic potted plants around the central canal, and I grabbed one on my way. I think Chum Buddy must have realized at some point that I was about to do something stupid, judging from the strangled noise behind me of a pony trying to yell for me to stop and also avoid being noticed.

I threw the pot into the window, smashing right through it. An alarm instantly went off, blaring over the speakers and accompanied by red warning lights. Somepony screamed. I ignored the chaos I was causing and reached through the broken window, grabbing the one ring and trotting back to Chum Buddy. I tossed him the ring and he caught it in his hooves, fumbling for a moment before actually holding it in his magic.

“There,” I said. “We done here?”

“You are completely insane,” Chum said. He managed to keep a straight face for a few moments before breaking out into a genuine laugh and a smile. “I love it! You’re going to fit right in!”

“I’m glad I fit in with whatever group of criminals and killers you represent,” I said flatly.

He raised a hoof. “Never killers. The Guild doesn’t kill anypony. That’s one of our only laws. We support each other and fight for the little pony, but not with lethal force.”

I tilted my head. The last time I joined a motley crew of underground ponies breaking the law, they’d been terrorists who were just being used for some grand master plan of revenge. “I am okay with the idea of not killing anypony,” I said quietly.

He must have seen something in my eyes, because Chum patted my shoulder. “We’ve all made mistakes in the past, love. Killing erodes your soul, but the soul can heal if you let it.”

I hoped he was right.

“Holy buck, it’s her!” somepony yelled behind me. I heard the snap of an expandable baton, and a crackle of static. I turned to see the two beat cops who had made the mistake of annoying me on a bad day. They were bruised, and one had a cast on his foreleg.

“Oh, you two,” I said. They had shock batons but I didn’t exactly feel threatened. Having a little food in me, combined with some sleep, I was in much better condition than the first time I’d stomped a hole in them.

“She’s resisting arrest!” the one in the cast yelled over his shoulder.

“That’s rude to assume, but I was going to resist,” I admitted. “Hey, Bud? You get out of here and I’ll catch up after I deal with this.”

“Same place we met,” he agreed. “I’ll be waiting but, uh, don’t kill them, okay?”

“Right, right, one of your rules,” I nodded. “No killing. I promise. They might have to go to the hospital. Is that okay?”

“Have some fun with it,” he said, patting my shoulder again before bolting away. I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders, mostly making sure everything was still attached.

“So, who wants to have their legs twisted off first?” I asked.

“You made a big mistake, little miss,” the other cop said. “We got backup on the way, and you aren’t gonna be able to marehandle him.”

That ‘him’ sounded significant. The way he said it, I knew it wasn’t just another security officer compensating for something with a shock baton. It was somepony in particular, and they had high expectations of him.

“Cool,” I said. “It’s been a while since I had a fair fight.”

The water in the canal crashed up in a huge wave, something glowing inside it and changing shape from a fish into a winged almost-pony shape. I’d already seen this once before, and changelings were better at it, so the shapeshifting didn’t faze me. It was the other thing, what the thing was wearing, that made my jaw drop.

Titanium blue armor. Small hexagonal panels that I’d seen a million times before. A sheen of magic across it that made it glimmer faintly in the light.

It was my armor. Somepony else was wearing my armor. Not the helmet, though. Destiny was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a full-face iron mask taking her place.

“Sentinel! Sir! We’ve cornered the criminal, but she’s resisting arrest!” one of the cops said. “You got here just in time!”

“She looks dangerous,” the masked pony wearing my bucking armor said. “You were right to alert me.” He landed next to them. Then I saw the guns. He had some kind of light revolving cannon paired with something that had to be a missile launcher. Or were they torpedoes since we were underwater?

“Nice outfit,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

He either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. “I am ordering you to surrender. This is your last chance before I use lethal force.”

“No problem, I’ll help you get undressed,” I hissed. I flicked my hoof, readying my knife. I wasn’t all that afraid of somepony wearing power armor. I’d killed a bunch of undead Steel Rangers, and they’d been entirely within my wheelhouse. I’d told Chum Buddy I wouldn’t kill anypony, but this was an exception.

I charged. Getting in close was important. He was quick on the draw, the cannon barking with a pop and hiss that didn’t fit gunpowder. Pain exploded in my left foreleg and I ignored it because I didn’t have time to bleed.

He caught my forehoof in his talons, the tip of my knife scraping against his helmet. I pushed harder, and it slid a fraction of an inch more, carving a shallow cut through the metal in a shower of sparks. I felt him struggling. More than that, I felt his surprise. He hadn’t been ready for a real fight.

The field around him shifted, and he was abruptly pushing me back and overpowering me. I hadn’t ever thought of the Exodus Armor as being particularly strong, but maybe I’d been underestimating just how much Destiny’s creation had been helping me all along. He didn’t even seem like he was struggling.

“You aren’t the usual kind of scum we have to clean off the streets,” he said, holding firm. “Who are you?”

I was starting to feel like I’d made a mistake. I was at less than half strength, with no healing potions, almost unarmed, and naked. He had heavy weapons, power armor, and presumably hadn’t woken up in a morgue this morning. It was possible that I was somewhat outmatched.

I tried to take to the air and break his grip on me, and he let it happen, letting go and shoving me back. I got some distance between us and realized just how much of a mistake that was. I had a knife. He had guns.

The rocket launcher at his side roared to life. I knew it was going to wreck my body even worse than it already was, but I activated the wired reflexes that had saved me so many times before and dropped into the cold place between seconds.

The missile crawled through the air, the close quarters giving me a chance before it could get up to full speed.

I swiped, catching it midway along its length. Fuel spilled out. Time came back to life. The engine half of the missile hit the ground at my hooves and burst into flames, the warhead tumbling overhead before detonating. Something in the rusting deck plates gave way between the sudden heat and the shockwave, and they gave way under my hooves, sending me through the floor and out of consciousness.

I wasn’t dead. I half-expected to wake up in the morgue again, but I was disappointed to find the cold metal surface under my back wasn’t an exam table. It was the floor of an ancient and disused electrical closet. The ceiling above me dripped, water leaking around debris that was blocking up a hole large enough to, say, get blasted through.

“Okay. That didn’t go well,” I admitted to myself. I wanted to lie there and maybe soothe my head trauma with another light nap. The only problem was, I knew the security team was eventually going to either break through the debris cap above me or find another way to me, and I didn’t even know how long I’d been out.

No friends. No gear. I needed to start fixing things, because the one thing I could have was a plan. I winced, looked at my left foreleg, and mentally adjusted the list. I had one other thing. I had a harpoon going through my leg. I gingerly tugged on the end with my teeth and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t coming out right now.

“I need to meet up with Chum Buddy,” I decided, getting up on my hooves and pushing the pain back. It was like riding a bicycle -- as long as you kept moving and nothing went wrong, it was as smooth as silk, and the moment things went wrong you crashed and broke your leg and your parents yelled at you for riding a garbage bike you found half-buried on the dig site.

I looked up. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I’d swear that pony who’d kicked my flank -- Sentinel or whatever his name was -- I’d swear he was looking down at me right then, meeting my gaze through a foot of rotting steel and aluminum

“I’m coming for you,” I promised. “I’m going to get my armor back. I’m going to find Destiny. And I don’t care how much of this place I have to tear down to get it done.”

I paused. Did this mean I was going to be using the otherwise principled group of rebels as pawns for my own personal revenge scheme? Was I the bad mare?

This is why I needed some kind of external moral compass. Telling good from bad was really hard on the surface when everything was shades of grey and brown. Mostly brown. I hesitated, feeling like I was looking away when I turned to leave. It was like I’d lost a staring contest using X-ray vision.

My stomach rumbled again. I groaned. Using it always crashed my blood sugar. When I found Chum Buddy, he owed me another snack.

Chapter 71: Bei Mir Bist Du Schön

Ugh.

Have you ever been in that kind of mood? Where everything is just a chore and you’re exhausted until you feel like an upset little foal who’s so tired she’s starting to have a temper tantrum just from needing a nap?

I was pretty much there by the time I met up with Chum Buddy, and I didn’t feel all that much better after drinking what had to be close to a gallon of water and some snacks. If he’d offered me more of that awful protein paste I probably would have thrown it at him, but he was just smart enough to find something with flavor.

“I’ll do the talking,” he said quietly, in the dimly lit corridor. “These are good ponies, and you stuck your neck out for me, with fighting off Sentinel and all. Once I vouch for you, they’ll be happy to have you!”

I grunted. I wasn’t jazzed about being dragged into another secret society, but if that was what I had to do to find Destiny, I’d put up with it long enough to get what I wanted out of it.

Chum Buddy gave me a worried look, carried that worried look down to the harpoon in my leg, then sighed to himself and opened the door. I’m not sure what I was expecting from a band of thieves. Piles of stolen goods? Heaps of trash? A thousand shadowy corners with ponies sharpening knives?

I wasn’t expecting it to be a bar. I really wasn’t expecting it to be a busy bar with live music, private booths, and mood lighting. The band was playing something exotic and lively, with instruments that looked like they’d been hoof-made. Ponies clustered around water pipes and thickly muscled stallions wearing silk strolled around offering drinks and other refreshments.

“Welcome to the Cantina,” Chum said. “I’m begging you not to kill anypony, okay?”

“I don’t kill ponies,” I said. “On purpose,” I amended. “Often,” I further corrected. “I haven’t killed anypony today and I don’t like doing it,” I finished.

“This is why I’m going to do the talking,” he sighed. Chum patted my shoulder and led me through the Cantina to the far side, where a private booth was curtained off with very distinct red and gold silk. Ponies stood watch to either side, and one of them poked her head inside to whisper to whoever was within.

“Who is this?” the other one asked, pointing to me.

“New recruit,” Chum said. “But let’s not worry about that! I’ve got something for Fabula." He flashed the ring we'd stolen at the guard, the gem glittering in the low light.

The second guard pulled her head out of the layered curtains and gave the first a nod of confirmation.

“She’s ready for you,” the first guard said.

“Great!” Chum smiled, leading me inside. From the look of it, he probably should have asked permission before taking me with him, but he was avoiding that by simply not asking at all. He led me inside and sat me down on a pillow, putting a hoof to my lips before I could ask any questions.

A long, low table split the booth into two spaces. There was the side I was on, and the side She was on, and from the little throne she had, the robes she wore, and the way she was styled and primped, I knew this was the kind of pony who expected a capital letter even with Her pronouns.

“Chum Buddy,” she said. She was a unicorn, with an oddly curved horn that reminded me of Mistmane. “Even if I didn’t have the Sight, I have ears and ponies are talking about what happened in the lower Promenade.”

“Really?” Chum asked. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

She looked up from the table for the first time. Her eyes were piercing, red like rubies and shining so bright in the light they almost glowed. “You attracted Sentinel’s attention, Chum Buddy. We don’t need that kind of attention.”

“That was my fault,” I said. “Sorry. I’m not good at all the subtlety and stealth and whatever. Chum Buddy told me he wanted to do all the talking, but I’m kind of ignoring his plan on that, too. I’m Chamomile. I’m new here.”

“Ah,” the unicorn nodded. “I see. Another refugee.”

“Something like that,” I shrugged. The motion drew her eye to the harpoon in my leg.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Yeah, but it’s stuck real good,” I said. “I can’t figure out how to get it out.”

“There’s a trick to it,” she said. She clapped her hooves, and a pony entered. “Spindle, can you get some bolt cutters?” The servant nodded and stepped out, returning with a large set of tools. “The barbs make it difficult to pull out. The head has to be snipped off for the rest to follow.”

The servant stepped around to my side, nudged the harpoon to check on something, then applied the bolt cutters. The action of the tool made the entire harpoon twist in my meat, which was not a great feeling, but I did my best not to flinch, even when she then pulled the shaft free, the section that had been inside me eroded away. She put the broken harpoon on the table, then bowed and left.

“Interesting,” the unicorn said, looking at the eroded metal.

“I guess it would have dissolved on its own sooner or later,” I shrugged.

“It appears so. My name is Fabula. I’m told you want to join our little group of rogues.”

“I definitely want to work with you,” I said. “I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m mostly interested in getting my stuff back. That pony with the iron helmet has my armor, and I need to find the actual helmet that goes with it. She’s a friend.”

“The helmet is a friend?”

“It’s haunted,” I shrugged.

Fabula nodded, taking that in stride. “I see. Let’s determine if you have what it takes to work with us…” She reached into her sleeves and pulled out a deck of cards, starting to shuffle them.

“Uh,” I coughed. “I’ll tell you right now I’m bad at card games. Can I submit a resume instead? This is actually the… wow, third or fourth secret society I’ve worked with? Maybe fifth if you count the Greywings, but they’re not secret, just really hard to reach. Only one of those conspiracies actually crashed and burned but I think it was intentional.”

“She’s going to read your fortune,” Chum Buddy said. “She’s a seer.”

“It’s a rare talent, and one vitally important for thieves,” Fabula said. ”I use my talents to ensure disaster doesn’t come to us, to know when the authorities are closing in, and to find treasure for us to recover.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I didn’t believe in this even one bit but I was going to have to sit through the act if I wanted to pretend to be polite.

“The cards of the tarot represent two things. The major arcana show the turning points in life from the beginning of one’s real journey all the way to total understanding of one’s self and their place in the world. The minor arcana are smaller events, the stumbling blocks and opportunities along that path. Using a tarot deck is no different than using a terminal and maneframe to calculate probabilities, and it is the diviner’s interpretations and talent that allow them to connect to real events.”

She shuffled the cards one more time, then dealt one. It looked like a lighthouse, surrounded by lightning and darkness.

“The Tower,” she said. “There are disasters in your past. Great calamities and destruction on both personal scale and at large. Great works that turned into terrible things.”

I nodded. That was probably true of most ponies, especially ones that were refugees like she thought I might be. It was a good enough story that I wasn’t going to correct it. Fabula drew a second card and put it next to the first. It looked like a mare, lying on the ground, impaled by blades.

“The Ten of Swords,” Fabula said. She tilted her head. “You’ve very recently been wounded. I don’t mean the harpoon. Something worse and deeper. You’ve suffered a great loss and have not been made whole.”

That was a little better. I stayed still, watching her expression. She seemed almost surprised herself at what she’d drawn. Was this really an act? I’d kind of expected her to turn this into a sales pitch, but maybe she believed in her own hype.

“One more card to find your fate,” she said. She took a deep breath and revealed the third card. It showed a boat, traveling towards a distant city, carrying a mare and six swords. For some reason, it was upside-down. “The Six of Swords, reversed,” Fabula said. “It’s, ah…”

“Give it to me straight,” I shrugged.

“It means trouble. Going from the frying pan into the fire. Being overwhelmed. Standing your ground against terrible danger.” She quieted. “It also means… floods, accidents in the water, and worse.”

“So, a lighthouse, a mare, and a city,” I said. “What’s it all add up to?”

“It adds up to this being extraordinarily dangerous,” Fabula sighed. “But at least the danger in the future is danger to you, not to everypony around you. It is my determination that if you want to pursue this path, it will lead you down a dangerous road. The future is not absolute, but if you aren’t wary, disaster will strike.”

I sat back. “Neat. When do I start?”

Fabula looked at the cards one more time, then shuffled them away. “I want to test just how much of a living disaster you are. We’ll give you a job and see what comes of it. In return, we’ll provide you with the basics. If you succeed, we’ll discuss what you’re really after.”

I tried to look inconspicuous. I was in a slightly better part of town, in a much better state than I had been. A shower, a hot meal, and some medical attention had gone a long way to making me feel alive again, and now that I knew at least a few things about where I was, I didn’t feel quite as lost.

I put a hoof against the thick glass separating me from the ocean. It wasn’t actually glass, but some kind of composite crystal that I wasn’t technical enough to understand. What was important was what was outside.

Seaquestria. I had a name for it now. A hidden city at the bottom of the ocean. The war had never come here, but its refugees had. There was some way for ponies to get down here from the surface, but once a pony was here they were here for life. They’d stayed alive by being secret and kept it that way like it was a religion.

The place was built in layers, with the Stable at the core and providing power and a foundation for the rest of the city. Right now I was in something called ‘The Galleria’, which looked something like a casino turned inside-out. Bright lights, advertisements for shows, little (and very expensive) shops, and entertainment of every kind imaginable.

The shapeshifting ponies I’d seen were apparently hippogriffs, and they were the original inhabitants. The rest of us ponies were just somewhat-unwelcome visitors who had to earn our keep. Second-class citizens trapped by leagues of seawater.

I adjusted my Stable barding. It was nice not to be naked, and the barding was practically a cloak of invisibility, and the jangling bag of tools and clipboard stuffed with papers only made the illusion stronger. I walked through the Galleria and nopony looked at me. I was just part of the background.

The map they’d given me had been pretty good. I looked up from the papers on my clipboard to the words over the clanging, ringing room of machines. Joystick’s Arcade. I was supposed to find the pony I was looking for here.

I walked in, foals running past me, and walked up to the counter.

“Are you here about the Black Knight machine?” the pony there asked. He was extremely overweight, sniffling and wiping his snout when he nodded across the room to one of the few pinball machines that was out of order. “I put in a maintenance request like, days ago.”

“I’m looking for somepony.” I pulled a photo off my clipboard and tossed it on the counter. It was a hippogriff, too young to be a real adult and too old to be a filly. “Quiet Seascape. Have you seen her around here?”

“We get a lot of foals in here,” he shrugged. “I see so many faces they all end up looking the same.” He gave me a big smile.

I smiled back, nodding, then grabbed him by the collar and smashed his snout into the counter, right on top of the picture. One of the foals that had been standing there ready to exchange tickets for an overpriced prize ran off in fear.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe if you take a really close look it’ll help your memory.”

I held him there against his struggles for a few seconds, then let him up. Blood leaked from one nostril, dripping on the counter. “What the buck, lady?!” I saw his gaze drift outside. I saw security out there. They hadn’t noticed anything yet, but he could scream and that’d change in a second.

“Be smart,” I said. “Where is she?”

“I told you, I don’t know!” he hissed. His eyes flickered to the back of the arcade. It wasn’t a conscious movement, but I felt it more than I saw it. I looked back over my shoulder. There were four of them around an air-hockey table, and I saw the filly I was looking for. She was the color of seafloor sand, and she was wearing a rough-cut Stable suit with the sleeves torn off and a lot of flashy patches added.

I turned on my hooves and started towards them, slipping through the crowd. I wasn’t the first to get there. The foal who’d run off with tickets in hoof had gotten to the air hockey table first, and he was whispering and pointing back towards me.

They spotted me in the crowd. It wasn’t hard. Most of that crowd came up to about knee level on me. All of them dropped what they were doing and ran, slamming through an employee exit in the back. I swore and bolted after them, slowed by my instinct not to shove foals around or step on them, even in an emergency.

“Stop!” I yelled, bursting through the door and taking it half off its hinges. The group of punks looked back at me, then started to run the other way. They stopped at a side door and rattled the hinges, one of them trying to fumble for a screwdriver and some bobby pins. I snarled and charged them, head low.

The door at the other end of the hallway burst open, and four ponies in helmets and wearing security armor stormed in. The punks looked between them and me and I saw their terror morph into the horror of being cornered like rats.

The security team drew long guns. I jumped over the foals and landed on the other side, spreading my wings and trying to fill the whole corridor with my body.

Dozens of harsh pops rang out. My skin erupted in pain like bee stings. The shots slowed. I waited a moment for the pain to hit, and it just didn’t. That was strange, but there wasn’t time to really worry. I reached past the foals and slammed the door, breaking the lock and shoving them through, turning to face the security ponies.

They were frantically reloading. I reached back into my bag of tools and grabbed for what had been hidden among the wrenches and pipes, pulling out a sawed-off shotgun.

There should have been some kind of cool back and forth between us, but I just fired, a rubber slug hitting the first cop in the chest and knocking him back. A second caught a slug at the knees. He yelped and fell down, his leg probably broken. I sighed. Rubber bullets didn’t feel good. DRACO would have put a shell right through them and out the other side.

I was starting to wish I could kill them. That wasn’t a good sign. I reloaded the shotgun and stepped closer. These two had an extra couple seconds, and used it to draw batons. I caught the first baton on the shoulder and fired at point-blank range into his gut, just below the soft armor. He collapsed in a groaning heap, coughing and spitting blood.

The second pony clipped my chin, forcing me back a step. I reacted on instinct, or something even lower than instinct, like a reflex. I kicked at his knee, and it snapped the wrong way, sending him to the ground in a howling mess, bones piercing through his security barding.

“You’ll live,” I said.

Somepony tapped my shoulder. I turned and the gun was knocked out of my hooves before I could process what was going on. A hoof hit my face and I was thrown into the wall, denting the metal.

Two big, metal-covered hooves picked me up, shoving me against the steel bulkhead. I looked up at the biggest security pony I’d ever seen, wearing some kind of armored environment suit.

“What the buck are you supposed to be?” I asked breathlessly.

He roared and threw me down the hallway. I heard a gunshot somewhere in the distance. I needed to get after the foals and these ponies were just slowing me down. I got up, went for the door I’d thrown them through, and the armored pony was on top of me, grabbing my wing and discus-throwing me back into the arcade.

I crashed to a stop against the side of an ancient Pac-Mare machine. Foals scattered, screaming. The pony in the armored diving suit stormed in. The foals ran in every direction, but at least got the general idea of ‘away’.

“Okay, big guy. I get it. You’re some kind of discount Steel Ranger.” I grunted and checked my bags, grabbing a hefty wrench. I charged him and took a swing, denting in the side of his helmet. That stopped him for half a second, then he shook it off and shoulder-checked me across the floor.

I skidded to a halt, stopping my spin with a kick back into a claw machine. How was I supposed to bring him down without killing him? A few stabs and he’d be down, but I’d promised not to kill anypony.

Moving faster than I expected, The big guy slammed into me and pinned me against the bulkhead, trying to crush me like a hammer against an anvil. I gasped and felt along the wall. I had to find leverage, something to use to get away.

I felt armored conduits and a big steel box. The kind of box you’d need for fuses to protect all these vintage arcade machines.

I stabbed into it, cutting it open and reaching inside, yanking a thick wire out of the junction box and pressing the sparking end against the armored pony. His steel armor sent the shock right through him, and he let out a terrible wail before collapsing in a twitching heap. I slid back down to all four hooves. I’d taken a good shock through him, and half my body felt numb.

Another shot rang out. I stumbled to the front of the store and looked around, trying to place where it had come from, and spotted it below me on the lower level, right at the edge of the central canal. More security ponies. They were trying to force the filly I’d been sent to find into what looked almost like a sky wagon. The punks she’d been with were on the ground, lying in pools of blood.

They’d killed a bunch of kids. I saw red.

I jumped down just as the sea wagon slipped under the water of the canal. I ran to the edge and swore, looking down into the ocean. They were getting away with the kid. This whole thing was some kind of major operation and I’d stumbled into it. Maybe I really did bring disaster with me just like Fabula had predicted.

I looked back at what else was floating in the canal, left behind when the sea wagon fled.

This was an awful idea.

The security team had brought single-pony vehicles, like a sled with an impeller and hydrojets. There was just enough room for a pony to lay down on it and grab the controls with their forehooves and try to guide it around with their weight.

I tried to scream through the poorly-fitted diving gear. I was wearing while I blasted through the water faster than I could fly, half-blind, and still somewhat traumatized by that whole drowning and waking up in a morgue thing.

Did I mention I can’t swim? If I let go of the sled I was going to end up on the bottom of the ocean thanks to having metal bones and zero coordination and I’d have to walk all the way back to somewhere with air, and I wasn’t looking forward to running a marathon while drowning.

But anyway, that panic attack I was having was going to have to wait. There was a very healthy coping mechanism called ‘bottling it up’ which I was going to lean into as hard as I was leaning on the sled to try and make it maneuver. I was going to have a bad time when this was all over but for right now I had a mission and I couldn’t breathe and with my severe and compounding brain damage I was too overwhelmed to be overwhelmed.

A cable was guiding the sea wagon, a little like a train on a track. Neither of us was getting lost today no matter how disoriented I was. I bullied the sled into line and got alongside the pill-shaped thing. It had that distinct Stable-tec look, built by the lowest bidder trying to cut corners from overwrought, overbuilt designs.

I had no idea how to work the hatch. I did know how to work a knife. Bubbles sprayed out along the cut along with quickly-dying sparks and I felt the edge catch for a second on something. I pressed harder and the whole hatch blew.

The hippogriffs inside struggled in the water, reaching for something before bursting into light and changing shape, trading wings for fins.

I reached for the youngest one in the confusion, and she must have seen something in me, or at least seen some kind of common sense, because she grabbed my hoof and I pulled her away. A mare tried to stop her, and the filly bit her hard enough to draw blood. She screamed and let the filly go, and I leaned the other way.

We zipped away from the sea wagon, and I had no idea where to go. The filly got my attention and pointed to a structure shaped like a saucer.

“Okay, that sucked,” I groaned. We’d come up under the lip of the structure, where the bottom had been left open. The scuba gear was at my hooves, and I was spitting up seawater. It really hadn’t fit correctly. It was probably bad to have that much water in my lungs.

“This is the worst day ever,” the filly mumbled. Her fins were already gone, like she was ashamed to be able to cleverly avoid drowning by having gills. She paced around the room and found a switch on the wall, yanking it. Lights snapped on, arc lamps warming up to a warm yellow glare. We were in a garage of some kind, with what looked like ancient and rusting construction equipment.

“The worst day so far,” I sighed. “You’re Quiet Seascape, yeah?”

She nodded, facing away from me quietly. I pretended not to see that she was crying. She’d been nice enough not to talk about me almost drowning, so I gave her some room to grieve.

“I’m sorry about your friends,” I said. I needed to keep her talking. If I was talking with somepony I couldn’t think too much and I could avoid having a big panic attack and passing out while hyperventilating. Actually, come to think of it hyperventilating might not be a bad idea. I could still feel some water in my lungs. I coughed hard, trying to dislodge some of it.

She looked down at her talons. “We thought you were with Security. They’ve got ponies everywhere, and my dad hires spies on top of that. You obviously aren’t some kind of maintenance pony.”

“No. I couldn’t fix my way out of a paper bag,” I said, coughing hard again and managing to spit up another few tablespoons of brine. “That was a bad metaphor. I’ll try to come up with a better one.”

“So that means you’re with the Guild! Daddy said they’re terrorists.”

“That’s… probably accurate,” I admitted. She walked up behind me and poked at my barding with her talons. I could tell she was staring at the bullet holes like she’d never seen a pony who’d been shot a few dozen times before.

“This is just regular barding,” she said. “I thought you were wearing body armor, but the bullet holes go right through!” I felt her talon dig a little deeper, poking my coat. “Is that… metal inside you?”

I grunted. “Please stop poking me. Bullets usually still work. Whatever your security teams are using must be pretty pathetic, or else I've been shot so many times I've developed an immunity..”

“They’re air rifles,” she said. “They’re designed not to put holes in the walls.”

“They’re not good at putting holes in ponies either,” I said. “The Guild told me to find you and pull you out of there. I’d sure like to know why. I really hope this isn’t about holding you for ransom.”

“No, it’s because my friends and I have been giving money and intelligence to the guild,” Quiet said glibly. “My daddy hates it.”

I knew that tone. And that age. I’d been exactly that old not long ago.

“Right,” I sighed. “You’re doing it because your dad hates it.”

“If you’re really with the guild, you should understand,” she huffed, pacing around the room. “The elites like my dad take everything from the poor ponies that are stuck in the undercity and make sure they never have what it takes to make life better for themselves!”

“Cool, you discovered ideology.”

“And you act like you don’t care!”

“I’m new here. I haven’t had enough time to really care,” I sighed. “I just need to get you back to Fabula so she’ll tell me everything about the jerk in the blue armor.”

Quiet tilted her head. “You mean Sentinel?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“He’s really famous. They’ve got his shiny helmet in all the new propaganda,” Quiet sighed. “The new face of law enforcement. They’re trying to make him out to be a hero, but he isn’t. He’s just a big bully that came out of nowhere a few months ago.”

What? That didn’t make any sense. “Months ago?”

Quiet shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t know a lot of details. It was after some riots. Ponies were worried that the authorities were losing their grip on power, so they pushed Sentinel as the solution. My dad was one of the ones who voted on the emergency powers and secret courts.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” I waved a hoof. “But… months ago? That’s impossible. I haven’t been here that long!”

She gave me a strange look. “Are you Sentinel?”

“No! But he’s wearing my armor!” I kicked one of the weird machines. It spun across the room, bouncing off the other wall. “I hate this. I’m not even smart enough to figure out what’s going on, I’m going to end up being manipulated by the ponies around me because I’m an idiot, and a bunch of innocent ponies are gonna die. Again.”

Quiet blinked. “Wow, kinda sounds like you’ve done this before.”

“You have no idea,” I sighed. I tapped my hoof against the ground. Quiet was just like how I was, and I was seeing it from the outside. Most importantly, and I felt bad just thinking this, she hadn’t had a chance to be told how to lie to me. “Tell me about the Guild.”

“Huh?” She seemed surprised by the question.

I shrugged. “I’m new. You must have known them for a while. You’re practically an expert.”

“I don’t know if I’d say I was an expert.” She laughed. “The guildmaster was practically like a father to me. When my mom and dad would fight, I’d sneak out of the house and go into the subcity. It was dumb. I got lucky because the guildmaster found me and took me under his wing.”

“His? Isn’t the guildmaster Fabula?” She’d been a lot of things, but definitely not a stallion. Nor did she have wings.

“Fabula? No, she was one of his seconds, along with Deep Blue. The guildmaster’s name was Shore Leave. He died during the riots. I thought the Guild didn’t even care anymore, but…” she brightened up. “They really came for me! You came for me!”

She grabbed me and squeezed. I felt tears against my coat.

“Why did they kill my friends?” she mumbled.

I sighed and hugged her back. “I’m sorry.”

“I just want to burn this whole place down…”

I snorted. “That could be tricky. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there’s a lot of water around here. It’s sort of tough to burn anything down when it’s at the bottom of the ocean.”

“I’m still gonna try.”

“That’s the spirit. Tell you what, let’s get back to the guild and I’ll buy you a drink.”

She let go and gave me a look. “I’m not old enough to drink.”

"That's convenient, because I don't have enough money to buy you anything. Let's see if a bunch of crooks will let us run a tab."

Chapter 72: Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

I held the door to the Cantina open for Quiet. Her mood had improved a little since seeing a bunch of her friends get gunned down by the local security team. I wasn’t sure if that was actually a good thing. She waved to some of the ponies hanging around the smoky, noisy space.

“Let me grab you a drink,” I offered. “What do they drink around here?”

“Mostly gillwater,” Quiet said, sticking out her tongue. “Gross. Can you get me a Sparkle-Tuna?”

“Sparkle… Tuna?” I asked.

“Yeah! They’re great!” Quiet trotted over to the bar with me and ordered. “Two ice-cold Sparkle-Tunas, please!”

The bartender didn’t even blink, and two lightly-frosted glass bottles were put in front of us. They were clearly cut from the same cloth as regular Sparkle-Cola, but the bottle was thicker and looked somehow... fishier, like I’d be deep-kissing a salmon when I was drinking from it.

“Oh, there you are!” Chum Buddy said, grabbing my hoof. “Quiet, good to see this crazy lass got you here safely. Can you entertain yourself for a moment while Fabula and I have a few words with her?”

“Sure,” Quiet sighed. “I’ll be around.”

“Thanks, lass. We’ll be right back.” Chum gave her a nod and a smile and led me away, looking at the bottle in my hooves. “You probably shouldn’t drink that.”

“Why?” I asked. “Quiet seems to like it.”

“You ever had Sparkle Cola?” Chum Buddy asked. I nodded. “Right. There was a plant here in Seaquestria, but after the war, they couldn’t get the raw materials anymore. No cola syrup. Can you guess what they replaced it with? Think real hard about the name.”

I blinked. “Tuna? You’re joking.”

“The joke is, tuna is too expensive and it’s actually mostly smelt and bream,” Chum said.

I narrowed my eyes. He had to be putting me on. Nopony would make a soda out of fish. It probably wasn’t even possible. What would they do, juice the fish? You might be able to tune a fish but you couldn’t distill them. I popped the top and took a big, defiant sip like the smart adult I was.

As it turns out, Chum Buddy had been a hundred percent honest with me. The soda had the cool, smooth flavor of cat food and sugar with a big hit of salt. Chum Buddy watched my expression progress through every stage of grief, and just kept smiling. I swallowed with an effort that felt like holding my hoof to an open flame.

“You going to throw up?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“You need a minute before you can talk safely?”

I nodded.

“I understand completely. I’m amazed you managed to get that sip down, lass. You’re braver and stupider than I thought.”

I nodded.

Chum Buddy shook his head and took me back to Fabula’s private booth. This time we were expected, and one of the thugs standing guard held the silk curtain open for us to enter without having to be asked.

“Welcome back,” Fabula said. “This would be the part where I say ‘good job’ if you had done a good job.”

The queasiness had faded enough that I thought I could risk speaking. “It wasn’t my fault. I got Quiet out of there. That was the job.”

Fabula sighed. “You and I both know it was a disaster. Foals are dead. There was a shootout inside the Galleria. You wrecked the private sea wagon of a Seaquestrian noble. And, as it bears repeating, foals are dead.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said quietly.

“No. The security team did. If you’d gotten there a few minutes earlier, none of it would have happened! You would have found Quiet, told her what was happening, and gotten away before the security forces got there! They wouldn’t have arrested and executed Quiet’s gang for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have been quick, quiet, and clean, which is how we prefer jobs. Instead, you made it loud, messy, and expensive!”

“Would it be better if I’d walked away?” I asked. “The foals would be dead, Quiet would be gone, but it would have been a little neater and quieter. Why do you care about her anyway?”

“She was important to my predecessor,” Fabula said quietly. “Shore Leave thought he could change the system from within with friendship. Make allies among the elite and ease the inequality in society.”

“And then he got stabbed in the back,” Chum Buddy noted.

“I thought he died in the riots?” I asked.

“It was a complicated situation,” Fabula said. “It was when the Ripper killings were at their wost. The ponies in the undercity were driven into a mass hysteria.”

“I got to the city in the middle of all this,” Chum Buddy noted. “Shows how poor my timing is.”

“There were rumors the Ripper was one of the nobility, and ponies thought they had to fight for their lives. It almost tore the Stable apart. Security teams made things worse because they were on both sides.” Fabula sighed. “The Guild tried to organize things. Shore Leave and his second in command, Deep Blue, tried to turn the violence into something productive. It might have worked, except Deep Blue killed Shore Leave in the middle of negotiations.”

“Was he bribed or stupid or what?” I asked.

“Probably thought he’d be able to get a job on the winning side,” Fabula said. “Everything collapsed. The nobility pushed back hard, and with no leaders, the rioters were isolated and put down. Since then, they’ve been pushing to get things back to normal, and that means being tough on crime.”

“Tough like… executing foals in a gang,” I said.

“Exactly,” Fabula confirmed. “They probably would have ignored them until they caused trouble, but Quiet Seascape got involved with them. It’s the third time she’s run away from home since the riots.” Fabula shrugged. “We kept tabs on her.”

“How did you all survive if they’ve been this tough on crime?”

“We’re smart,” Chum Buddy said. “And when I say smart, I mean we have Fabula. She can tell when a job is going to go badly, predict targets for us, and gives us some heads-up when a raid from security is on the way so we can lie low for a while.”

“It isn’t easy,” Fabula said. She shuffled her tarot cards. “I can only do so much, and my predictions aren’t perfect. We can protect the small group of guild members here, but not the other gangs scattered around the Stable. Bringing that many ponies together is too dangerous anyway.”

“That’s why I had to vouch for you,” Chum Buddy explained. “Think of us as a small, elite group of survivors.”

“And I’d kick you out for being a liability if I had the option,” Fabula noted, looking directly at me. “Unfortunately, we need you. An important client asked for the pony that’s been causing trouble. They want to send a message and they think a sledgehammer is the right tool for the job.”

I frowned. “I didn’t think criminals had clients.”

“Yes, this must be really disillusioning for you,” Fabula said, flatter than my fish-flavored drink. “Who would have thought that criminals might do something just for the money.”

She had a point but I didn’t want to admit it. “Why should I help you? And don’t say it’s because I’ll get a cut. I need information, not shells or clams or whatever you use for money down here.”

“You need a friend in the nobility.” Fabula shuffled her cards, putting the deck down in front of me. “Our client is in a position to get the information you want, as long as you can meet her exacting standards.”

I cut the deck. She hadn’t asked, but she hadn’t said I couldn’t do it either. I watched her reaction, and she didn’t seem bothered. Maybe it wasn’t entirely an act, or at least not the kind of act where she was forcing a draw. Fabula flipped over the top card.

“The Deuce of Coins,” she said. The card showed a pony reared up and trying to balance two heavy coins in their forehooves while balanced on one hoof. “It represents a struggle to juggle wants and needs. It’s a card about balance.”

I shrugged. It was too poetic for me. “Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

“It’s a sign that you can’t afford to let responsibilities slip or you’ll drop everything,” Fabula said. “Chum Buddy, you can explain the job to her. You tried it before, so you might have some insight.”

Chum Buddy groaned. “You’re sending her to the Briney? That’s a touchy job.”

“It’s what Lady Thresher asked for,” Fabula said. “Your gentle touch failed. She heard about the shootout in the Galleria before we did, and wanted the pony responsible. If they were alive. It’s a job that should go to somepony smart, subtle, and careful, but it’s out of my hooves.”

Fabula stood up. “Get the job done. If we can get Lady Thresher in our debt, we might be able to find out more about Sentinel. Both of us want that, I believe.”

I nodded. Fabula walked out through the back of the booth, and Chum Buddy helped me stand and took me back into the Cantina, leading me over to another booth.

“I can’t believe she’s sending you on the Briney job,” Chum mumbled.

“You seem to know all about it,” I prompted.

“That’s because I tried to get in and bungled it.” Chum waved to the bartender, and a small bottle was brought over. “You know what this is? You might not have run across it if you’re new around here.”

I shook my head.

“It’s called gillwater. Does two very important things. First, it lets a pony breathe water like a hippogriff does. Second, it’s a narcotic. This is the cheap stuff, and working ponies use it to get through the day and do jobs outside. Takes the edge off the grind, keeps you from getting the bends, and you don’t have to lug around an air tank and mask.”

“Okay?” I was going to have a bad time if ponies drank weird stuff like this and not good, healthy drinks like vodka.

He turned the bottle so I could see the logo. “This bottle was made in the Briney Gillwater Plant. It’s the cheap stuff, only lasts about an hour, made from the dregs so it tastes like slime.”

“Am I going to go in and do quality control?”

“They’ve been shut down for two weeks bringing a new production line up to speed,” Chum Buddy said. “That isn’t a big deal, except they shouldn’t have the clams to do it. Lady Thresher wanted to buy them out and made sure they were having money troubles, and then out of nowhere they’ve got the clams for this? Doesn’t make sense. She wants somepony to go in and find out where all that liquidity came from, if you catch my drift.”

I picked up the bottle and sloshed it around while he talked. It was slightly green, slightly thick, and had bubbles trapped in it. It looked almost like a bottle of really thin snot.

“The job is to sneak in, hack their maneframe and get the information, then smash up their new production line,” Chum Buddy said. “The problem is, even though they’re shut down, there’s still security, and I might have slipped up a bit and gotten caught. Barely got away with my hooves still attached, and since then, the Brineys tripled security. Must be more than a dozen armed ponies in the plant.”

“If they’re armed like the ones in the Galleria that’s not exactly a deterrent,” I said. “That reminds me.”

I started taking off the Stable barding, and Chum Buddy stood up. “Woah, lass, I think you misunderstood something! You’re a nice lady and all but I prefer a mare who won’t break every bone in my body--”

I threw the barding at him. “I put too many holes in this. I need something stronger.”

He pulled it off his face and frowned, then looked down at the back. The barding was practically rags from all the bullet holes. He held it up with his magic and whistled in surprise, letting the dim light of the Cantina shine through the holes.

“Never seen that before,” he said quietly.

A few hours later I was doing something stupid. I know that doesn’t narrow anything down, but it felt stupid even before I started.

I carefully walked across the sea bed, trying to keep my breathing even. That was apparently really important with a rebreather. My need for tougher barding had neatly overlapped with my need to sneak into the gillwater plant, and unfortunately, that meant wearing a heavy diving suit that dated back to when they’d been originally building the Stable.

“If you follow the path you should get to the cargo entrance,” Chum Buddy said over the radio. “Look up if you get lost. There’s a guide wire running to it.”

“For sea wagons, right?” I asked. I looked up at the bundled cable stretching between pylons and into the distance.

“Right. They mostly run on automatic. There are some private craft that are actually piloted, but they’re mostly pleasure yachts for the elite. Ponies like us have to make do with swimming there ourselves.”

The scenery was so beautiful I could almost forget that I was walking on the bottom of the ocean. With the diving suit’s metal frame and rubberized layers, I couldn’t feel the water around me, so I could appreciate the stone forest of coral around me. It was in every color of the rainbow, with neon-bright fish flitting from one place to another like tropical birds.

“I can see why ponies would want to sit out the war in a place like this,” I said to myself.

A shadow passed over me, and I looked up at a pod of whales. They slowly passed overhead, bigger than I’d ever imagined they could be.

“Nopony bombed the ocean,” Chum explained. “Some fallout poisoned the waters closer to shore, but we’re far enough out to sea that all we have to worry about is each other.”

“You were a refugee, right?” I asked.

“They get a few refugees every year. Ponies go out on boats trying to find something better, and they wind up here. They’re welcomed in, but most of them just end up as slave labor.”

“It’s probably still better than most of the wasteland,” I said. I looked away from the whales and realized I’d almost run into another pony. I scrambled behind an outcropping of rock, the wavering fronds of the sea life attached to it retracting into hard shells when I got too close.

The other pony hadn’t noticed me. He didn’t look like he was noticing much at all. He was wearing an even heavier suit than mine, and he had a slow, deliberate gait like a sleepwalker.

“What’s wrong with that guy?” I whispered. “He reminds me of that weird pony that was throwing me around the arcade.”

“Let me guess, just a little too big, clumsy, and shambling like the living dead?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“He must be a gillpony. They’re the real unfortunates among us. If the authorities decide execution isn’t bad enough, they’ll take you away to the old MoP hospital and you come out like that. The suits don’t come off. They’re sewn into them. They can’t even breathe air anymore. Those rebreathers just pump gillwater around and keep them pacified and sedated and ready to take orders.”

“Every time I start to like this place, ponies do something to ruin it,” I grumbled.

“That’s just life,” Chum Buddy said. “Do you see the cargo entrance yet?”

“I’m guessing it’s the big door with yellow paint around it?” It wasn’t really a question. The guide wire ran right into it, and the area around it had been cleared out. This wasn’t some unused ruin, it was a place ponies came and went every day.
Inside, concrete stairs led up into an air pocket. When I broke through the surface, I took a look around. It was a dock, with space for a large sea wagon to settle into place between two concrete piers that were still covered in cargo crates.

Movement caught my attention, and I froze, watching a pony trot across the dock idly, an air rifle slung across his shoulders.

As quietly as I could, I got out of the water and behind a crate. I waited for him to walk out of sight and made my way to the cargo elevator in the back, hitting the controls and taking cover behind a box full of scrap metal and hydraulic pistons. The elevator smoothly slid up, humming and vibrating under my hooves. I pulled the rebreather off my face and took a deep breath, hoping for fresh air.

Instead, I got a gulp of air that stank like motor oil, burned sugar, and iodine.

“Ugh,” I mumbled. I looked around the floor. It was some kind of loading zone, which made sense. More crates were off to the side behind painted lines on the floor. If nothing else I had to appreciate how clean and orderly it was. It reminded me of the big cities in the Enclave where they had the time and ponypower to do things properly.

“The first thing you’ll want to do is find the maneframe,” Chum Buddy reminded me. “I don’t know how long it’ll take you to crack. I messed up and set off an alarm.”

“Is this a bad time to mention that I’m not exactly an expert hacker?”

“Yes, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say it. Think you can find Briney’s office?”

I looked up at the standard Stable-Tec labels and arrows. “I might be able to manage that.”

The more Stables you’ve seen, the more you realize they were all built out of the same parts. Sure, the layouts were all different to fit into different holes in the ground or particularly attractive mountains, but it was like somepony had designed them using a bunch of plastic blocks.

“Looks like an Overmare’s office,” I mumbled, peeking around a corner. Somehow, I hadn’t been caught yet. This was either a minor miracle or these were actually the worst guards in the world. None of them seemed to have peripheral vision.

Nopony was standing guard outside the office. I had a weird feeling like I was being watched, but all other evidence pointed to the contrary. No armed ponies were storming my position, no alarms had been raised, and I wasn’t full of tiny, stinging bullets.

I carefully slipped inside. With the plant shut down there wasn’t much chance of anypony actually sitting around doing paperwork. It still felt wrong. I’d have put good money on there being a pony just waiting for me inside, but when I opened the door, the big seat behind the desk was empty.

It seemed like I was alone. That didn’t mean I wanted anypony wandering in, so I locked the door behind me.

“How did you get caught?” I asked. “A foal could break into this place.”

“The security on the terminals was better than I thought,” Chum said. “I tried this trick I heard about once where you crack open the case and fiddle with some jumper switches, and I probably didn’t remember it as well as I thought because it set off every alarm in the plant.”

“Cool. What’s a jumper switch?”

“Something you’re not going to fiddle with.”

I nodded. He was right. I walked around the horseshoe-shaped desk and--

“Please don’t kill me!” whimpered the pony under the desk. His hoof was on a big red button. He pressed it over and over again, getting increasingly panicked.

I squeaked and kicked him. Through the desk. It was made out of cheap particle board, which was good for him because if he’d sprung for the mahogany desk I probably would have killed him on accident instead of just ruining his office decor.

“What was that sound?” Chum Buddy asked.

“Uhhh…” I poked the pony I’d kicked. He was still breathing, but he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon. I spotted something on the wall. A portrait of the pony who owned the place, who looked almost like the pony at my hooves but with fewer bruises. “Buck. I think I just found Briney. Did you know he made himself employee of the month? What a jerk.”

“The company president? That’s good!” Chum said. “If you threaten him, maybe you can get his login and password.”

“I also knocked him out.”

“That’s less good.”

“Why was he under the desk?” I mumbled. I walked back over to the desk and saw two terminals. Or really, his terminal and a security monitor, showing the view just outside his door. Under it, where he’d been hiding, a panic button was hidden just where a hoof could reach it from the chair. Wires hung loose from it, connecting to nothing. “He saw me coming! There are cameras in this place. They never finished installing some extra security or I’d be up to my wingspan in security ponies.”

“Are the cameras just in there, or all over?”

“Hold on,” I said, tapping the buttons. The view shifted to conveyor belts and steel vats. “They’re all over the factory floor.”

“They weren’t there last time, I can promise you that. He must have had them installed along with the extra guards.” Chum Buddy paused. I kept flipping through until I got back to the view just outside his office.

“I don’t see them anywhere else in the office. I got lucky,” I said.

“That’s how the Guild runs, lass. It’s all luck, good or bad. If you can get into the security system, you might be able to--”

I smashed the security terminal. “I hacked it. Nopony’s going to use this thing again.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any other monitors hooked up,” Chum sighed. “How about the maneframe?”

I moved over to the more traditional terminal. Destiny had walked me through how to hack into these things before. I just had to remember all the steps.

“Restart while holding down the function button,” I mumbled. “Then go into the BIOS menu and… I think it was this thing?” I tapped the arrows and tried to select the buffer, and the screen flashed green and a box popped up asking for a password. “What the heck? I’m sure that worked last time!”

“Sounds like a password on the BIOS. I ran into the same problem, and that’s when I tried the jumper trick. Didn’t go so well for me, so I don’t recommend it.”

“Got to be something I can do,” I mumbled. I moved some of the papers on the desk to get them out of the way, and something on the top sheet caught my eye. “No. It can’t…”

“What’s wrong?” Chum asked. “Chamomile? Are you alright?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” I reset the terminal and let it boot up, then I carefully typed something in. “Okay! I’m in!”

I heard Chum Buddy sputter in surprise. “You’re kidding. How?”

“He had his username and password written down so he could remember them,” I said.

While Chum Buddy cursed and mumbled about my dumb luck, I started going through the files on the terminal. There was a bunch of internal mail that I skimmed over, mostly depressing stuff about not making payroll and how they were getting squeezed out by Lady Thresher who was pressuring them into a buyout. Then the tone abruptly changed. Things were looking up.

FROM: Briney Still

TO:
Subject: RE:Project Update
We’ve received the extra equipment for Project H, and we’ve shut down to bring it online and do the required background checks on employees. We look forward to working with you in this exciting and profitable venture! When should we expect the first shipments of polyhypnol?

FROM:
To: Briney Still
Subject: RE:RE:Project Update
Do not discuss Project H except in secure channels. Please delete our previous correspondence from your maneframe. We have security concerns. We will be assigning additional security to your plant in regards to the recent attempted break-in. Do not reply to this message.

“He must have deleted a bunch of mail,” I said. “It says they were involved with something called Project H. He mentioned something called polyhypnol. What is that? I’ve never heard of it before.”

“That’s a drug,” Chum Buddy said. “Sort of a sedative. Makes ponies open to suggestion and puts them in a fog. We see it sometimes in the Cantina and kick out anypony who tries to slip it into the drinks. What’s he doing with it?”

“If I had to guess, they’re going to put it in the gillwater,” I said. I felt less bad about knocking the jerk out. “And somepony was paying them a lot to do it. All the talk about debts and pay problems went away really quickly. There’s no name on the other end.”

“Wonderful,” Chum mumbled. “Feel up to finding that new line and doing the ponies around here a favor by smashing it up before they can drug them all into a stupor?”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. I gave Briney a kick to the ribs on the way out.

“Just remember, Lady Thresher still wants to buy the place. Just do enough damage that this new backer decides to un-back them. Be a scalpel.”

“Right. I’ll be gentle.”

“Okay, lass. So the boiler is a standard model, uses talismans to heat up water and then the steam is piped through the factory. It’s a simple job to disable it so it’ll take months to repair.” He paused. “Are you okay? I thought I heard you coughing.”

“Just a frog in my throat,” I lied, still squeezing a stallion’s neck. He made a lot of soft choking sounds and then went limp. I put him down next to his friend, who hadn’t been nearly as quiet and attracted some attention while I was safely and quietly smashing his head into a safety railing until it was his naptime

“Right,” he said, definitely believing me. “I’m going to walk you through this one step at a time. Do you see a big red wheel on a pipe? It should be very easy to spot, right on the wall near the main boiler.”

“Yeah,” I said. I walked over the unconscious guards.

“That’s the emergency relief valve. Make sure it’s open.”

I checked the valve “Uh-huh.” It was clearly labeled, probably because they assumed in an emergency ponies were not good with ambiguity. I started turning it and paused. “What happens if it’s closed?”

“Normally nothing, as long as nothing needs emergency relief.”

I stood in front of the control panel and got hit with a massive dose of Deja Vu. It wasn't just the feeling that I'd seen it before, it was a feeling of total familiarity, that I'd sat and stared at it for hours before.

"Take it down. Good, like that," my instructor said.

An alarm bell went off. I jumped in my seat, but the kindly stallion walking me through the process kept a hoof on my shoulder.

"That's just the low power status warning," he said. "It's fine. Just switch everything on the safety panel from 'Active' to 'Test'. That's going to disable the auto-scram and the alerts."

I nodded and flipped the switches as he'd instructed.

"So the first thing we do is shut off the main feedwater pump," he said. I hit the big toggle for that, and a red light turned on, but no bells sounded. "Great. And that brings the secondary online, see?"

He pointed to where a yellow light had switched on.

"That's more than enough for the reactor in low-power mode like this. If we were at full power it would still last long enough to shut things down without having to go full scram."

I was about to ask a question, but another bell went off. This one wasn't an alarm for the reactor, it was an alarm for us.

"Shift change," the instructor said. "Third shift can finish up the testing. You go home, I'll make sure--"

"What the buck did you amateurs do?!" the head engineer yelled, storming into the control room with his cheeks bright red from anger and his nose bright red from what he'd been drinking in his office. "Look at those power ratings! You stalled the reactor! We're going to get brown-outs all over the Stable! Raise the power!"

"We're in the middle of a test," my instructor tried to explain.

"Your test is bucking up my power systems!" the engineer shouted, storming over. "Increase the talisman output!"

I stammered something, not quite managing words.

"I said increase the output!" he yelled. "If you don't do it, I'll have you thrown out into the wasteland for being as useless as the rest of your bucking family!"

I closed my eyes and turned a knob.

My hoof was on the main power dial. An alarm chattered, cutting through my waking dream. Chum Buddy had been giving me instructions. They hadn’t been related to what I’d been doing at all. “...What was that?”

“Oh, uh…” I looked around. “I think I might have messed something up. I accidentally, um… I accidentally the whole reactor.”

“Did you start a bloody meltdown?!”

I flinched at that. “Stop complaining, you’re miles away!”

“I’m not worried about the bucking reactor, I’m worried about what Lady Thresher will do when she finds out!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. The steam pipes started to rattle, and the boiler made the kind of sound that you don’t want a boiler to make. I grabbed the ponies I’d knocked out, because I was a kind and caring pony. “I’m going to get out of here before it gets too hot. With all the redundant stuff they shove into this kind of Stable-tec junk--”

With a sound like a whale’s upset stomach, a pony half a head taller than I was charged out of the shadows, lights shining through the thick portholes on his diving suit. The gillpony slammed into me head-first and knocked the guards away from me, tossing us like rag dolls. My ears rang from the impact, almost as loud as the alarms around us. Yellow lights flashing above the doorways changed to red with urgency.

“You hear those?” I yelled. “You should get out while you can!”

He wailed and charged again. I braced myself and caught him, shoulder to shoulder. He stopped dead, our armored hooves striking sparks on the deck plates.

“I’ve been thrown around by better ponies than you,” I growled. Just holding onto him like that, I could feel there was something wrong with him. He wasn’t moving like a pony. The joints weren’t quite right, the way his head connected to his neck, the way his back hooves and his front hooves weren’t quite scaled for the same pony.

I twisted and threw the gillpony to the side, and he slammed into a bundle of pipes. The pipework was already strained and at its limit, leaking steam and rattling and ready to tear itself apart. The gillpony hammered them, and they shattered. Steam and shrapnel exploded, and the gillpony staggered away, slamming one hoof into its helmet and screaming.

It reached for me, took a few more steps, and collapsed. Water spilled out of its ruptured suit, and I got a glimpse of what was inside.

Chum Buddy had said they were sewn into their suits, but that was only part of the story. What I saw through the cracked helmet was equal parts pony and some kind of deep-sea fish. The thing’s skin was glossy, hairless, and coated in slime. A dead, silvery eye looked up at me, and parts of the gillpony’s skin glowed, sort of like fireflies.

“You are one ugly motherbucker,” I mumbled.

A bell joined the other alarms, and a complex box of a machine straddling the conveyor belt next to me swelled. Rivets popped like gunshots from the deforming panels, and steam erupted from the broken case.

I turned to leave, sighed, and went back to grab the two guards, leaving the gillpony where he was.

“Sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was alive or dead or what. I wasn’t even sure how I’d find out. I sure as buck wasn’t going to check for a pulse. “If I was in your situation, I think I’d want somepony to put me down.”

He didn’t say anything. I hefted the guards up and ran for the elevator.

Chapter 73: The Boogie Mare

I was, in theory, being escorted at gunpoint. I just would have been more impressed and less mentally exhausted if the pony doing it had brought something more threatening than air pistols. They’d taken me through the back entrance of a Neightalian place and up the stairs to a private dining area with just a few booths. Only one had a light turned on over it.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked.

“Lady Thresher likes to set the right tone when somepony is meeting with her,” he explained.

“Whatever,” I sighed, trotting over to the booth and sitting down even more heavily than I’d intended. Lady Thresher was well-dressed, her dusky indigo coat groomed until it shone in the light. My off-white fur was ragged at this point. Salt and scabs and not having enough time for a shower, much less real care, had taken their toll.

“You’ve--” she started. I waved over to a waiter.

“Hey, you. Vodka. Leave the bottle.”

Lady Thresher frowned at the interruption. She frowned more when I continued to largely ignore her until the bottle was in front of me and I’d poured myself a double and downed it. It didn’t really do much for me at this point, but at least it felt like I was trying.

“Are you done pretending to be cool and in control?” she asked, obviously annoyed.

“I’m neither of those,” I said. “I’m lame and stupid and I just want to find my friend and get my armor back and go home! Not that I even know where home is anymore! Everything in my life is bucked up and twisted around!”

“Ah…” Lady Thresher hesitated.

“I know you want to yell at me or whatever, but I just don’t care anymore.” I poured myself more vodka. I stared at the glass, letting the silence stretch for a few moments. “I think I’ve been dead a couple times.”

Lady Thresher looked at me then took the bottle of vodka and poured herself a drink.

“Let’s talk,” she said.

“Your mother sounds awful,” Lady Thresher said.

“She’s literally a monster,” I said. I rested my chin on the table, feeling almost as bad as when I’d started drinking. “Ever since she had me and Dad arrested, it feels like I’ve been dealing with the fallout, and you know what the worst part is? I’m pretty sure nothing I do matters. If I believe Star Swirl, I was supposed to die horribly in that one accident. Is that why he put me down here? So I didn’t mess anything else up?”

“I’m confused about the timeline,” the thug said. He wasn’t really a bad pony once he had a few drinks in him. “So Sentinel is wearing your armor, I get that, and it was stolen from you just before you got thrown out an airlock. But he showed up months ago!”

“Maybe I was in a coma?” I guessed. “Or dead. But if I was dead for that long and I came back without getting to see the other side, it kinda sucks.”

“You ended up in the morgue somehow,” Lady Thresher said. “That means somepony found you.”

“I didn’t think about that,” I admitted. “Maybe I can track down whoever found my body. At least then I’d know for sure.”

“What you need first are legitimate papers and database entries,” Lady Thresher noted. “If you want to get close enough to Sentinel to stab him and take his pants, you need an identity that won’t get you arrested when you try to get through any security checkpoint. Normal ponies don’t have the same rights as hippogriffs.”

It made me uncomfortably aware of certain practices in the Enclave about dividing the tribes up. Pegasus ponies were citizens, unicorns were expensive resources, and earth ponies got to go back down to the ground. The lucky ones didn’t get there just by being dropped through the clouds.

“Normal ponies,” Lady Thresher continued. “Are the ones who are going to have to decontaminate a bottling plant full of radioactive steam. Not the elites or the police or the corrupt, ponies who will get sick and suffer because they can’t afford to see a doctor.”

“But…”

“But you thought you were being clever and smart by causing a meltdown,” she said, waving a hoof dismissively. “You never have to go back there. It’s not your problem. Instead, ponies with faulty protective gear will scrub it down in your wake, and society will pay for it.”

She wasn’t yelling, but I could tell she was disappointed. Very disappointed. I would have liked it more if the pony with the gun had shot me in the back a few times.

“I didn’t think about that,” I mumbled. “I saw the control panel and then…” I hesitated, not sure how to describe what had happened. It had been like a dream, or a nightmare. Deja vu with a big scoop of night terrors.

“Smart enough to know how to keep Stable-tec’s safety systems from working, but not smart enough to know when to do it,” she said.

“I read about a disaster with one of the reactors,” I said quietly. It was easier than the truth.

“Fabula warned me that you were a walking disaster, so this is at least partly on my shoulders,” Lady Thresher sighed. “I’m sure I can get Briney to sell to me now, since repairing the plant would bankrupt him, but I won’t turn much of a profit from it. I’ll lose a lot of money just bringing ponies in and trying to keep them from dying because of your mess.”

I squirmed in my seat.

“You’re trying to decide how to apologize,” Lady Thresher guessed. “You can’t clean it up yourself. Even if you were qualified to do it, and you aren’t, one pony can’t reasonably do the job. Instead, I’d like you to do a job for me. You found the mail that implicated some unseen patron working to drug ponies, yes?”

I nodded silently.

“I want to know who they really are. Another gillwater plant is having its grand opening, and I’m having some difficulty understanding where its finances came from. Obviously, I suspect they’re part of this same scheme. The Briney plant had a security scare and they wiped anything really incriminating from their maneframe. Things will be different this time.”

“Different how?” I asked.

“For one thing, no one has tried breaking in and put them on high alert. More importantly, I’m not letting the Guild bungle this up. I have my own agent coming up with a plan.”

“You don’t trust the guild?”

“I don’t trust anypony who relies on fortune-telling to decide things for them,” Lady Thresher said. “I make my own luck.”

I shouldn’t have had so much to drink. I’d gotten all sad and weepy and agreed to something stupid, and that’s why I was standing nervously in front of a pony and hoping the papers I’d been given were legitimate enough to keep me out of trouble. I tried to look small and harmless, which was very difficult.

“You’re visiting the Reef today on business?” the pony asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “My employer’s paperwork is on the next page.”

“I can see that,” he said. He looked up from the paper to me and motioned for me to turn to the side while he carefully compared my cutie mark to the one on the papers. “Things seem to be in order.”

He slammed a stamp down on the papers and gave them back to me.

“You’ve got eight hours before your pass is invalid. If you need more time, any legitimate employer should have a form you can fill out if you need an extension. I hope you have a pleasant and productive time in the Reef.”

“Thanks,” I said, holding onto the papers and stepping through the security point. My saddlebags, already searched for anything dangerous, were given back to me, and I stepped to the side to strap them back on and shove my papers inside. The security here reminded me of some of the Enclave military bases I’d been to, and as odd as it may sound, that was kind of comforting.

I walked through the crowd of ponies, trying to ignore the ones that had been turned away. The ones being taken into a back room by Stable Security were the worst, pleading for help from the others, but even the ones who’d just been given a firm ‘no’ and told to leave were sitting there blank-faced like they were at the end of the world.

Beyond the checkpoint, the Reef had that same faux-street look shared by the rest of the city. It was a theme park’s version of a pre-war Manehattan, upscale and tall, with buildings towering over the enclosed street-level section and reaching for the distant surface. Sea wagons and hippogriffs swam overhead, too important to bother with the rabble down here.

Maybe it was too much like the Enclave.

“Jellyfish,” I said.

“It’s a silly name but they’re a real thing,” Huckleberry Jokester said. He was splotchy purple and blue and was working his way through a bowl of noodles. “They’ve got basically no flavor, but they’re sort of crunchy when they’re cooked.”

“I know they’re real, I just didn’t think anypony ate them,” I said. “They’re like… bags of poison and mush.”

“When ponies are desperate enough, they’ll eat anything. They were one of the only things refugees were allowed to forage. Then they got popular because some hippogriff decided he liked eating them, so now they’re gourmet food instead of trash.” Huckleberry shrugged.

I poked around the bowl he’d ordered for me. It was like slightly slimy, slightly salty celery noodles on a bed of rice. There wouldn’t be much flavor at all, but they’d stuffed bits of pickled greens and spicy peppers in with it.

“I’m not all that hungry,” I lied. Half-lied. My stomach was upset and I wasn’t sure if eating was going to make it better or worse. “I just want to know what the plan is. Lady Thresher told me nothing because she was sure I’d tell the Guild and they’d mess it up somehow.”

Huckleberry scoffed. “Yeah, she’s probably right. Not the Guild’s fault. They lost their leader and they’re relying on bucking fortune-telling to plan their gigs. They say it’s working, but every gambler says their system is working until they owe the casino their cutie mark.”

I took another bite of the bowl of weird, crunchy food to be polite. I hadn’t paid for it, so at least it was free.

“I poked around a bit and found out the Honeypot has a little pest problem,” Huckleberry said. “Radroaches in the basement. They’re all over the undercity so that’s not a huge surprise, but ponies here in the Reef like to pretend the undercity is somewhere far away and not just a few levels below their hooves.”

“So? They’re not dangerous.”

“They’re not dangerous,” Huckleberry agreed. “But they’re dirty and scare the delicate little hippogriffs and stallions into needing a strong mare to come around and stomp on them. You get me?”

“You want me to… kill roaches?” I guessed.

“That’s how you’re getting in,” Huckleberry confirmed. “I’ve got some exterminator gear prepped for you. You go down into the basement, take care of the roaches as part of your cover, and then phase two.”

“You’re going to need to be way more specific than ‘phase two’.”

“I have a bottle of Essence of Durian,” he said. “The basement and the cask storage should be connected through the undercity. Like I said, the ponies here like to forget it exists. You’re going to pour it into the cask they brought out for the opening ceremony.”

“You want me to poison ponies?!”

“Durian isn’t poison! It’s perfectly safe to eat, it just smells like hot garbage. Some ponies actually like the stuff for some reason. It won’t hurt anypony, but it will get the plant shut down because the smell and taste are going to make the investors think something’s gone terribly wrong. Then phase three starts and… well, I’m in charge of that, you don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Nopony gets hurt,” I clarified.

“I don’t hurt ponies,” Huckleberry said. “It’s bad for business.”

I nodded, and the spoon I was using hit the bottom of the empty bowl. I’d eaten the whole thing without even noticing.

“Want another bowl?” Huckleberry offered.

“You’re the exterminator?” The well-dressed hippogriff looked at me skeptically. I wasn’t sure why. Even I thought I looked the part. The Stable utility barding, a small tank and sprayer of radroach poison, a big stick for the adult radroaches, and night-vision goggles to look into the dark corners.

“Yes, sir, Mister Goby,” I said. He was the owner of the place, apparently, and I was supposed to be very impressed that he’d come out to yell at me in person.

The hippogriff smacked me across the face, instantly furious.

“You’re late!” He yelled. “It’s only a few hours until the grand opening and I’ve still got radroaches in the flipping basement! You were supposed to be here ages ago!” He winced and looked at his talon. “And I broke a nail slapping you! Apologize!”

“I’m sorry my face broke your razor-sharp claws,” I said, flatly. He looked at me closely for any sign of sarcasm and couldn’t find it, probably because he’d lived under the ocean his whole life and the concept of dry humor was foreign to him.

“Good. Yes. You should be sorry.” He huffed and gave me a keycard on a lanyard. “The door to the basement is over there. You can spray in there, but I don’t want any of that poison around the production lines or the product, so stay out of the dunnage.”

“And the dunnage is…?”

He rolled his eyes. “Where we keep the aging barrels, obviously! You ponies just have no idea how to create a superior product.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said. “I can usually only afford the bottom-shelf stuff.”

He nodded, and I actually saw a small amount of sympathy there. “Yes. I imagine so. All rotgut gillwater and white spirits. Nothing that anypony takes pride in.” He sighed. “If you take care of the main nest so they stop coming in, I’ll see that you get a little bonus, hm? A small taste of the good life.”

“It would be very kind of you, sir.”

The hippogriff smiled like the patron of the common pony he was, showing such kindness to an urchin like me. “I am always gracious to the help,” he said, entirely forgetting how he’d just slapped me hard enough to hurt himself. He smile faded. “Now get to work or I’ll have Security drag you away like the lazy pony you are.”

Radroaches were about the least exciting and dangerous thing in Equestria.

I smacked the cat-sized roach with a club and watched it twitch a few times and go still. I don’t know why Goby hadn’t been able to deal with them himself. A bored foal could have gotten rid of the half-dozen little beasts. And probably gotten bit a few times, but that built character.

I was holding a broom. Things were never clean enough. Not for the boss. No matter how many hours I spent mopping and dusting and sweeping, there was always something wrong, some corner behind an appliance I’d forgotten, or a stain still barely visible in the right light.

I reached down to grab the handle of the dustpan with my teeth and gently tipped it into the bin, careful not to get the trash can itself dirty. He’d withheld my paycheck last month for leaving the bottom of the trash can filthy. How was I going to make rent?

I snapped out of it with the radroach bodies cleaned up and bagged. I didn’t even remember doing it.

“That was weird,” I mumbled to myself. At least I hadn’t caused a disaster this time. Sort of the opposite. I’d even given the spots where I’d killed the roaches a quick scrub to get rid of the ichor they’d left behind. That wasn’t like me at all.

I put down the mop I was holding and took a deep breath. There was only one reasonable answer. I had more brain damage, probably from when I’d drowned. That was bad, but it was something that could maybe be fixed. All I had to do was find Destiny, and I trusted her to mess with my brain, and then things would be fine.

There was something more immediately pressing to deal with, and I was glad for that. Back in the far corner of the basement was an air vent, and the vent cover had rusted and broken a long time ago, leaving it wide open for the giant bugs to crawl in. I snapped my knife out and got to work on the bolts holding the rest closed. Big enough for a giant bug was not big enough for my giant ass.

Within a minute, I was working my way through the vent and wishing I wasn’t. There was just enough seawater leaking into it to turn the layer of dust and dirt into awful, salt-crusted ooze. I had to hope I was going the right way, because nopony actually thought of making a map of the place, not that I could read a map where I was. It made me wish I had a Pipbuck, just to give me some light.

The vent shifted under me and I froze in place. A voice cut through the silence.

“Don’t be scared, Gastron,” a wheezing stallion said, somewhere ahead. “It’s just the Stable settling. The seafloor here isn’t stable, you know. Built on sand!”

The vent shifted again, the rotting, rusting bottom giving way and dumping me out into the open along with a big splash of muck.

I looked up at a pony in ragged clothing, including a long coat that might have originally been white. His mane stuck out in every direction. The bags under his eyes had evolved into a full set of luggage.

“A spy!” he shouted. “You’ve come to steal my secrets, haven’t you?!”

Something huge reared up behind him. It had to be the biggest roach I’d ever seen, easily twice the size of a pony, with a segmented shell that leaked green light between the seams. It hissed in obvious threat, raising up massive forelegs tipped with scythes.

I held up my hooves. “I’m not a spy! I’m stupid and lost!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Prove you’re not a spy!”

“I was going through the vent so I could find my way into the dunglage of the gillwater plant upstairs! I was going to mess it up!”

“So you are a spy!” he yelled. “But not against me. Spying for somepony else.” He rubbed his chin. “I suppose that’s fine. Down, Gastron,” he said. The giant big hissed one more time, then lowered its forebody to the ground.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said.

“Hm? No, no. The mess was already there.” He waved a hoof. “Would you like something to eat? I’ve been breeding radroaches and I have one strain that tastes just like crab! Well, not just like crab. But they do taste better than the other breeds.”

“I’m good,” I said. “You… breed radroaches?”

“Of course! They’re survivors. Drop a megaspell on them and they just get stronger. Look at Gastron here! He’s half isopod, and he’s so big the laws of physics say he should collapse under his own weight and be unable to move or breathe, but he doesn’t care! So much for the square-cube law! Hah!”

“That’s… cool?” I tried. “Do you know where the dunlage is?”

“No, but I know how to get into the dunnage.” He looked around, then leaned in to whisper. “I’ve been sneaking in there from time to time to replenish my supplies. Not much left in this part of the stable. A few casks of gillwater are nice to have, too.”

“That would be… really convenient if you could show me,” I said.

“No, no, no,” he growled. “You’ve seen too much. You know I’m here, plotting my revenge against all the small minds that said radroaches were just vermin, the fatherless finned fiends that refused to give me funding! I’ve been working too long on my revenge, and I won’t have it threatened by you!”

“Oh. This is a revenge thing.” I nodded. “I understand. I got someone I need to kill, too. Sentinel.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s a cop,” I said. “Sort of a figurehead and a supercop, and he’s wearing my bucking armor and I’m going to rip if off him piece by piece!”

“You want to kill a member of the police?” The old stallion looked surprised “Maybe we’re not so different, you and I. I’ll help you!”

“You will?”

“But! In exchange… you have to promise not to reveal my coming terrible revenge! I want it to be a surprise.”

“I can shake on that.”

He smiled and raised his hoof. It was the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen, but I still shook on it. “Please, call me Piper. Let me show you the way to the barrel storage, and I’ll teach you a few tricks on the way.”

“Remember,” Piper whispered. “The roaches are everywhere down here. If you need help, just use that and they’ll come running. Skittering, really.”

I looked at the plastic whistle. It had come out of a box of Sugar Apple Bombs.

“They know that exact sound because they’ve been trained to expect treats and food when I blow on it. SImple response, but once you’ve got them, you can try giving them orders. It’s mostly about body language. They’re smarter than they look.”

“Unlike me,” I joked.

“Right,” he agreed. I wish he hadn’t agreed. He crawled back through the vent, closing the cover behind him. I was alone in a giant warehouse full of alcohol and there was no one to tell me what to do.

If I was smarter, I might have just stopped there, drunk myself silly, and had a good day. Instead, I ruined everything by creeping up to one of the copper distillation vats and popping open the lid to look inside, because I was curious. I wanted to know just what they used that let ponies breathe water. It might be good to have a little with me in case of emergency.

“What the buck--” I gasped.

It would have been better to find that they made gillwater from ponies. Instead, I was looking at a huge tank full of lamprey. They were drinking the contents and shedding thick layers of mucus. I was suddenly reminded of the strange, thick texture of the bottled gillwater I’d seen.

“They can’t seriously--” I closed the lid.

I tapped a hoof on the top of the tank, thinking. Was it the most disgusting thing in the world? Was it better or worse than milk?

Why was I even asking this? It was lamprey mucus. It was worse than milk. If I was a sane pony I’d blow up the whole place and say there was no other option. Unfortunately I had a job to do, and I’d agreed to do it while drunk and had to finish the work sober.

A cask had been set aside from the barrels of aging product, already tapped and ready to go. I pulled a secure metal tube from where I’d secured it and unscrewed it. Inside, surrounded by enough padding to make sure it wouldn’t break unless a megaspell dropped on it, was a tiny glass tube. It only held a tiny bit of the oil, sealed shut by a plug of something that would dissolve in the gillwater, but apparently that was enough. I wasn’t going to fuck up this time.

I paused and waited for something dumb to happen, like another hallucination. It was almost depressing when it didn’t happen and instead I was able to do exactly as I’d been instructed and uncork the cask, dropping the vial in and closing it up like I’d never been there at all.

“Now I just need to find somewhere to shower,” I sighed. I was covered in muck.

“You finished just in time,” Goby said. “If the investors knew about the infestation…”

“It’s taken care of,” I said. Piper had promised to seal up the vent to make sure no more of his lab experiments escaped until the day of reckoning when all chains would be broken and all prisoners released, when the roach would rise from the world beneath and destroy the decadent world of ponies.

Or something like that. He sounded very excited about the whole thing and I didn’t want to discourage somepony actually living their best life and having a good time.

“Thanks for letting me clean up,” I said. He’d actually just had somepony else spray me down with a hose, and they’d somehow managed to get icewater to make sure it was even more uncomfortable.

“Of course,” he said dismissively. “You’ve done a fine job. If you promise not to bother the other guests, you can stay for the reception and have a drink before you leave.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said as submissively as I could. He went off to find somepony more important to talk to than the Help, and I trotted over to the corner. It was a dark little alcove, the kind of out-of-the-way corner where you’d shove an extra chair, not the cool kind of corner where a mysterious pony might brood.

Something caught my eye. I looked up, and saw Huckleberry across the room. He’d used the glass in a pocketwatch to reflect light into my eyes. I met his gaze and nodded. He smiled and relaxed, going back to mingling with the crowd.

The mood of the party was high. I could feel it, and looking out over the crowd, it was like going back in time two hundred years. Ponies and hippogriffs dressed in clean, pressed suits and dresses, snacking on tiny bites of expensive and overcomplicated food, here just to see and be seen. I could feel it, on the edge of my awareness, like prodding around an empty socket where a tooth used to be. I’d been to parties like this.

No. Destiny had been to parties like this. That’s why it felt nostalgic. Her brain implant had to be working overtime compensating for whatever was wrong with me.

“I can’t believe Star Swirl sent me here,” I mumbled. What had he expected? Was I supposed to blend in with the other refugees? They walked among the crowd like ghosts, untouchable and invisible except to pass out long flutes of sticky, pale gillwater and give canapes to the elite.

If I hadn’t ended up shoved out an airlock, if I still had my armor, if I wasn’t worried about finding Destiny, I probably would have done something stupid like tried to overthrow the government.

Maybe I would have been in the middle of the Riots that half the ponies were talking about.

“A glass, miss?” asked a mare a half-dozen years younger than I was and a tenth of the age I felt. She was so bright and positive this had to either be her first job or she was just so good at faking it she could win an award. I felt ashamed I hadn’t noticed her walking up to me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the offered glass. She nodded and moved on, back towards the kitchen. I’d been the last stop. I carefully sniffed at the glass. Had I doped the right cask? I’d feel really dumb if I’d messed up at the last second like--

The smell hit me like a cloudship’s prow smashing into me at flanking speed. It was the dank rot of hot garbage and burning sugar. I coughed and held the glass at hoof’s length.

“Oh buck that’s worse than I thought,” I gasped, trying not to use my nose at all. A wave of horror spread across the room, subtle at first, ponies trying to hide it, and then it all broke at once when a hippogriff tried to take a sip and spat it up, hacking and wheezing.

“Poison!” he gasped, swooning and dropping the glass. Everypony else looked at their glasses, and the few who hadn’t noticed the smell yet sure knew about it now. Somepony fell over, fainting. Ponies screamed.

“I guess it worked,” I said mildly.

Security ponies rushed in as the chaos swelled. Huckleberry stood up and pulled out a badge, shouting for order. Things were going exactly as planned.

“You were a cop all along,” I accused.

The party had been broken up, and everypony had been escorted out. Even Goby had been forced out along with his employees, under the guise of an emergency health inspection and a suspicion that he might try to destroy evidence. I got to stay behind as a ‘witness’ for an interview.

“Halfway,” Huckleberry admitted. “Actually, I’m a Health Inspector, so it’s a little like being an undercover officer crossed with a restaurant reviewer. The pay isn’t great, but the bribes?” He smiled. “The bribes are large, frequent, and the worst thing on my conscience is not telling ponies that there was a radroach in the kitchen.”

“...That’s why you had the exterminator stuff,” I said slowly.

“I knew about the roaches here weeks ago. I was leaning on Mister Goby a bit to get it sorted. He thought my stake in this little scheme was a kickback from what he was going to pay you.”

“So what was the real stake?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure the police aren’t going to keep him in prison for long.”

“The real stake is I have the run of the place for a few hours,” Huckleberry said. “Sending you in after Briney’s maneframe without the right tools or even knowing what to look for? That’s why the Guild is on the back hoof.”

“I really hope you don’t want me to hack this one,” I said.

The mottled blue-purple pony laughed at that. “No, that’s my job. You are off the hook, mostly. You just need to stick around long enough for me to download the files from his maneframe to a portable disk, and then you’re off back home.”

“Sounds good,” I sighed.

“Want a drink while you wait?” he asked. “We have to check the other casks for contaminants anyway.”

I remembered just how gillwater was made, that writhing tank full of lampreys, and shook my head, trying not to dry heave. “I’m good,” I squeaked.

Chapter 74: Chasing Shadows

“When I said I’d help, I didn’t think I’d have to do paperwork.” I flipped through pages of boring emails and even more boring spreadsheets. Somepony bumped my chair, and I looked back at the crowd in the Cantina, glaring at the stallion that had stumbled into me. He gave me an apologetic look and backed off. “Don’t you guys do crime once in a while?”

“I didn’t think you went in for the small stuff,” Chum Buddy said, shuffling a pile of papers with magic. “If you want to go pick some pockets, be my guest. I just assumed it wasn’t something in your wheelhouse, lass. I thought you were here begrudgingly to help find your friend.”

“I am!” I protested. “I thought that meant… a big heist and excitement, not hanging around in a bar and listening to a band slowly unlearn how to play music!”

“It’s called Jazz, Chamomile. It’s music for ponies that like the art of music. I also recall you boasting that you were well-read. You remember that, don’t you, Quiet?”

The young hippogriff nodded. “She seemed really proud of it.”

“Most Enclave ponies don’t read a lot,” I mumbled, blushing. “I’m dumb but I know a lot of useless facts, okay? It was the one thing I could do that Dad was proud of.”

”Ah, see, there she goes again,” Chum Buddy said.

“Shut up,” I grumbled, doubling my pace and skimming through more papers, barely reading them. They were almost all intensely mundane, and I tossed a bunch of them into the junk pile before something caught my eye.

I stopped skimming and read the section more carefully.

…as part of Project H requirements, Enferon will be added as a supplement at all production levels. See the attached spreadsheet for the required concentration in finished products. Quoted levels are at a minimum and will be spot-tested for quality control. Please ensure that no grapefruit or pineapple enzymes are included as part of the production process…

“Enferon?” I mumbled, feeling a chill go down my spine.

“What’s Enferon?” Quiet asked, looking over my shoulder.

“It’s an anti-radiation drug,” I said. “It was an alternative to RadAway for ponies with allergies, but sort of expensive. According to this spreadsheet, they’d need a heck of a lot of it just for this one factory.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Quiet shrugged. “I guess it’s fortified against fallout? We don’t really have any here, but once every few years there’s a weather cycle that changes the tides and some contaminated water comes in from the mainland and we have to stay inside until it goes away.”

“That’s not the only thing it’s used for,” I said. “It’s also used to fight SIVA infections.”

I let that bomb drop and realized I was the only pony in the room who even knew what SIVA was. They just stared at me like I’d said total gibberish.

“SIVA is a kind of… machine plague. A technophage made from micromachines,” I said. “There was an outbreak in my home town, and Destiny thought we could use Enferon to cure an infected pony, but… things went bad.”

“Does that mean your friend is involved in this Project H thing?” Chum Buddy asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe hippogriffs all have a reaction to regular Radaway, or maybe gillwater negates it somehow and they needed an alternative. That doesn’t explain why they’re also drugging it with sedatives.”

“What we need is a pony on the inside who can just tell us what’s going on,” Chum Buddy said. “I might know just the right mark for that. I’ll check with Fabula and see if it’s a good lead.”

I frowned at that. “Why?”

“Aside from the fact that she can see the future, she’s also my boss,” Chum Buddy reminded me. I frowned at that. Something about it seemed wrong, the clockwork ticking away in the back of my mind saying that Fabula might have been in charge of the Guild but she wasn’t the Boss Mare and Chum Buddy shouldn’t be calling her that.

“That’s…” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if peeking at the future is a good idea?”

“I don’t know if I trust her.”

“Lass, you are in a place that is lean on ponies you know and trust.”

I looked over at the ornate silk curtains partitioning off Fabula’s little ‘office’. I debated pressing this more, maybe even trying to explain to Chum Buddy that the last time I’d trusted anypony leading a clandestine organization it had been a mistake.

“Whatever,” I sighed. I waved for him to do what he wanted. He stood up and walked over to the booth, vanishing behind the curtains.

“I don’t blame you,” Quiet said softly.

“Huh?” I looked over at her.

The young hippogriff shrugged. “Fabula. I don’t really like her all that much. I think she was jealous of the way Shore Leave treated me.”

“She still had me rescue you.”

Quiet looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. Only… I think she wanted you to fail.”

Chum Buddy stomped out of the booth, looking upset. He came back over to the table and sat down heavily, holding up a hoof and finishing his drink to steady himself and get a moment to cool off before he spoke.

“Fabula says it’s too dangerous,” Chum Buddy said. “We don’t have her blessing.”

I shook my head. “I’m not just going to drop this.”

“I know,” Chum Buddy said. “She went all ‘ill portents and bad tidings’ on me. So she’s a dead end and she won’t help us plan anything. That means only one thing.”

“You’re going to sit back and wait for a better time?” Quiet guessed.

“Nah. Chamomile won’t sit around. That means either I leave her hanging out to dry or else I go against Fabula and do a side job outside the auspices of the Guild.”

“So which is it?” I asked.

“Well the truth is I’ve been stalling to try and figure out the best thing to do,” Chum Buddy admitted. “But I just came up with a brilliant plan. As cunning as all eight tentacles on an octopus put together. You’ve got those travel papers from Lady Thresher, yeah?”

I nodded.

“Good. I know an informant we can use. We’ll go out to chat and see what slips loose when we ply him with a few clams. I’ll tell a few of the other crooks around here to distract Fabula with some little jobs, we’ll pretend to be busy with all this paperwork, and she’ll never even know we were gone.”

“Sounds fun!” Quiet chirped.

“You need to stay here, lass.” Chum Buddy patted her talon. “You keep looking through this and cover for us while we’re gone. Chamomile needs to go or else she’ll find other trouble, and I need to go with her to make some introductions.”

“I’ve been stuck in the Cantina for days!” Quiet groaned.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Chum Buddy promised.

“You better!” Quiet huffed.

“I think I know why Fabula didn’t want us doing this,” I whispered.

“Just stay cool,” Chum Buddy whispered back. “Act casual.”

It was easier said than done. We were walking right into a security station like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Two ponies in padded barding dragged a third between them through the doors, his hooves cuffed and his face swollen with bruises. Chum Buddy put a warning hoof on my chest and shook his head.

“We can’t afford trouble yet,” Chum Buddy hissed. “The pony we need is inside.”

“He’s with stable security?” I asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“There aren’t that many ponies on the inside we can trust. If we want to find out about the gillwater being doped and if your friend is involved, this is the way. He’ll be able to access confidential records we couldn’t touch otherwise.”

“I still hate it,” I mumbled.

Inside it looked, well, like a police station. I’d love to pretend I’d never been escorted into the local lockup for petty vandalism and getting into fights, but I wasn’t a good enough liar to make that stick. The ponies who’d done it back home had been decent, though. They’d never treat a prisoner the way I saw ponies being treated here.

As we passed through the doorway, something beeped loudly. A pony in security barding stopped us, holding up a hoof.

“Step back. Put all metal in the bin, then walk through again.” He pointed to a box next to the archway above us. Small lights blinked red and green on it. Chum Buddy emptied his bags and walked through, and this time it didn’t alarm.

I sighed because I knew what was going to happen. I stepped through again, and it went off.

“I said, all metal--”

“I have a metal plate in my head,” I said. Among other things, but he didn’t need to know that. The stallion frowned and grabbed a wand, waving it across my forehead. It beeped when it neared my right eye.

“Huh,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I gave him a smile. “If the scarring isn’t that obvious, it means the doctors did a good job!”

“You can go on through, miss. And if you need to make a report about whoever hurt you, this is a safe place to do it. Nopony is above the law.”

Oh stars, he thought I was being abused. I probably still had a few bruises from being exploded and having that idiot hippogriff at the gillwater distillery slap me around!

“That’s very kind of you,” I said.

“You’ll want to talk to Sergeant Coconut Milk at the front desk,” he said. “He handles initial statements.”

“We’re in luck,” Chum said. “That’s just the pony I wanted to talk to.”

“Thanks again,” I said, and he nodded to me and let us pass.

A tired-looking earth pony was behind the desk, flipping through paperwork with the same expression I’d had doing it back at the Cantina. He didn’t look up when we approached, scribbling a few last notes on the papers in front of him.

“Yeah, yeah, be with you in just a sec.-- oh buck, not you,” he grumbled, looking at Chum Buddy. He lowered his voice to hiss at us across the counter, looking around to make sure none of the other cops were close enough to hear. “If Fabula wants a favor, she can send one of you when I’m not busy!”

“Come on, I thought we were friends, Coconut Milk. You don’t have time to help a friend like me?” Chum Buddy smiled.

“Friends don’t trot in here and try to get me fired,” the cop growled. “Do you know who that is?” He nodded to me. “You’re lucky nopony else has noticed her! She’s a wanted mare! Assault and battery on a peace officer, destruction of property, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to make a domestic terrorism charge stick!”

“I’m not trying to get you in trouble,” Chum Buddy promised. He pulled a pouch out of his saddlebags, rattling it and sliding it across the desk. “Chamomile, why don’t you go wait over on the bench for a minute while I chat with my friend?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. Of course I’d be left out. I stomped over to the bench and sat down next to a pony in hoofcuffs with their mane done up in tall, stiff spikes. She had to be using a gallon of mane gel.

“What are you in for?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Unpaid parking tickets. You?”

“I think they’re still trying to figure out how to put me in jail for being young and annoying,” she said. “These chucklebucks are arresting everypony they can before the election. I hear Senator Seascape is going to cut their budget.”

I gave her a look.

“What?” she said. “I’m big into local politics.”

“Are you also big on giving expository dialogue to random ponies?”

“It’s my cutie mark,” she shrugged, showing me her flank. Her mark was a stylized tree with quotation marks for leaves, like some kind of dialogue tree.

Chum Buddy walked over to me and sighed.

“No luck?” I asked.

“Come on,” Chum Buddy said, glancing back at the counter. I followed his gaze. Coconut Milk was smirking at us. I didn’t like that look combined with the worried expression Chum Buddy was wearing. “We’ve got maybe a minute before he hits the alarm and we have a few dozen ponies shooting at us.”

He grabbed my shoulder and walked me out. I let him pull me along, trying to keep looking casual even with the threat at our back.

“What happened?” I asked when we were outside.

Chum Buddy walked me across the street, into a little corner store, before he answered. Once we were out of the open, he relaxed a little, watching the station.

“My bribe wasn’t as big as the price on your head,” Chum Buddy said. “He figured it bought us a head start and not much else.”

I sighed and poked at a rack of old magazines and comics in front of the shop’s window. A few of them were ancient, but most were relatively new. They were still printing books down here. “So this was a waste of time?”

“I said not much else, not nothing else,” Chum Buddy corrected. “He’s heard about the Enferon.”

“He did?”

Chum Buddy nodded. “Not in the gillwater exactly, but it was used to treat some ponies after they were injured in the Riots.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Why would they need it?”

“No idea. Sure seems ominous though, yeah?”

I nodded.

“He let one other thing slip. He told us not to bother looking into Sentinel. The department’s official stance is that he doesn’t have another identity, so all the files are sealed. Coconut Milk looked into it himself, and so have half the officers on the force. Everypony’s curious and everypony gets slapped down.”

“That’s not very helpful. That’s just telling us he doesn’t know anything.”

“He doesn’t think he knows anything, but when he was trying to scare me off, he told me they arrested the last pony who found out too much, and they’re shipping him off to the Deep tonight.”

“The Deep. Guessing it’s a prison, or maybe a euphemism for a shallow grave?”

“Might as well be both. Ponies go in and don’t come out.”

I looked away from an entire shelf full, somehow, of dolphin-themed erotica and looked over at the station. “We need to get in there and talk to the prisoner. What’s his name?”

“Tranquil Sea,” Chum Buddy said. “We can’t go in there. It’s crawling with cops. But I think we can be clever about it. They’ll have to transport him, so that means we can hit them when they’re moving. Like you did when they were moving Quiet, but better-planned and I’ll give you some backup.”

“Do we have the gear for that?” I asked.

“Friend, I can get us everything we need,” Chum Buddy grinned.

Chum Buddy checked his dive computer, the boxy thing strapped around his hoof like a simplified, rubberized Pipbuck.

“Picking up movement on the sonar,” he said. “Engine sounds. It’s probably the prisoner transport. I don’t hear any escort sleds, but they can’t be alone. There must be a squad of hippogriffs escorting the sea wagon.”

“Maybe their sleds broke down. These look like they’re about to give out,” I said. It was a far cry from the one I’d stolen a little while ago. The cowlings were missing, the whole chassis seemed worn down, and it made a worrying noise when I put more power into the impeller. I wasn’t an engineer but even I could tell when something was one bad shock from falling apart.

“They’ll hold together long enough,” Chum Buddy retorted. “And the serial numbers are all filed off, so we can ditch them if we need to. We’ll just have to swim back.”

We were going through the water slowly and carefully, hugging the bottom and staying behind coral and seaweed as much as we could. The path the prisoner transport would take was just up ahead.

Chum Buddy must have noticed how slow I was to answer. “You can swim, right?”

I swallowed. “How quickly can you teach me?” I was doing my best not to think about the water at all, actually. I couldn’t feel it through the diving suit, but I could sense the pressure and cold like a vice around my body.

“I’ll pencil you in for swim classes when we get back to the Cantina,” Chum Buddy said. “You’d fit right in with the Stable foals and baby hippogriffs.”

I took a deep breath, the clean seawater flowing through my gills. Out here, away from the heart of the city, the water was clear and cool and soothing.

“I told you it was a good idea to come out here,” my best friend said. “There are all kinds of fish that only live near the lighthouse.”

She swam around me in a circle, her fins brushing against mine. I blushed, but before I could do anything, she stopped and gasped, pointing.

“Look at that!” she said. “I think it’s a lanternfish!”

That got my attention. I turned and followed her gaze. A fish was floating below us, blinking with light.

“Something’s wrong with it,” I said slowly. Its scales were tinted strangely, glittering with metallic edges like blue steel. The light looked less like the lure of a deep-sea fish and more like one of the flickering, electric lights in the city.

We swam closer, and the fish’s head split down the middle, revealing an eye as big as a blitzball, slitted and baleful like a sea dragon’s gaze.

“What are you two doing?!” A voice cut in over the radio, breaking me out of my trance. “I haven’t given you leave to go off on your own!”

“Fabula!” Chum Buddy said with forced cheer. “Good to hear you! We’re a little busy right now, so it isn’t the best time to chat.”

“I’m ordering you to come back here right now,” she said. “You can’t go anywhere near that prisoner transport!”

“How did you know where we were going?” I cut in.

“Did you really think Quiet Seascape would be able to avoid talking for long?” Fabula asked. “Her name is more ironic than descriptive.”

“Oh no, I think we’re running into a storm!” I said. “It’s cutting off my radio! KHSSSH!”

“You’re underwater! There aren’t any storms!” Fabula snapped.

“She meant to say we’re going into a tunnel,” Chum Buddy put in. “We’ll have to call you back!” He flashed a hoofsign at me.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re trying to--”

He grunted and reached over, flipping a dial on my dive computer.

“I changed your radio channel,” Chum said. “We’ve got a few minutes before Fabula figures out what channel we’re on and we’ll need to finish before then unless you want her yelling at us the whole time.”

I nodded. “I’ll try to appreciate it while I can.”

“Good.” Chum Buddy slowed down, stopping his sled entirely after a moment. “I’m gonna set up here.” He let go of the sled and swam around to the side, opening a cargo bag and pulling a long weapon out of it. “Look at this beauty. Fires supercavitating spears, accurate to over a hundred meters even underwater.”

“That doesn’t seem very far,” I mumbled.

“Regular bullets don’t work at all down here,” Chum Buddy said. “And I’m not just talking about air rifles. Get any gun you want and it’ll barely hit a target at hoof’s reach. The water just mucks up normal bullets too badly.”

“What about torpedoes?” I asked.

I couldn’t really see Chum Buddy’s expression through the rebreather mask he was wearing. I had to imagine what somepony dealing with an annoying idiot might look like, which was about as easy for me as imagining a smile.

“We’re trying to save a pony from police custody,” he said. “We aren’t trying to blow them into bloody chunks! Besides, they’re expensive.”

“And a super-whatsit spear gun isn’t expensive?”

“Oh no, the thing cost half a stars-damned fortune. But I happen to like it, so I got it anyway.” He chuckled. “Don’t act too sad, I got you something too!”

Chum Buddy pulled a second gun out of the sled’s cargo compartment, this one bulkier and boxier, with a complex trigger arrangement.

“The Harpoon Enhanced Amphibious Rifle Service Equipment,” he said. “Or the Hearse. Equestria built these during the war imagining they’d be fighting the zebras underwater in harbor invasions. Rapid-fire flechette gun and an anchor launcher that fires a harpoon up to fifty meters and can winch it back on the attached chain.”

He swam over and started strapping it to my suit’s battle saddle.

“That actually does sound cool,” I admitted.

“Yeah, that’s what the Ministries thought too. They made a few hundred, and not even one ever got used in a real fight. Some of them made their way here, the one place in the bloody world they might be of some use. Lucky for us, huh?”

“I’m going to owe you a lot of favors after this, aren’t I?” I sighed.

He slapped me on the back. “We both want the same thing, Chamomile.”

I tilted my head.

“Finding out what the buck is going on, I mean,” he said. That was a lie. He’d meant what he said the first time, about us wanting the same thing. Just not what that thing was. I could feel it on him, and I could tell he knew that I knew. But what was I going to do, demand the truth when I was already getting what I wanted?

A light passed over us, the spotlight’s edges shining in the water. It was almost crystal clear, but almost was still enough to see the outline.

“That’s the transport!” Chum Buddy said. “It’s go time. You go right at it with your usual panache, and I’ll cover you from here, seeing as how I can’t absorb quite as many bullets without having an uncomfortable swim back home.”

I nodded and gunned the sled. I’d think about it later. If I was lucky, I’d have Destiny around to help me with the thinking.

I crested the ridge and caught a glimpse of what we were facing before the spotlight swiveled into my eyes and I was momentarily blinded. The transport was an armored sea wagon, which I’d expected. I hadn’t expected the half-dozen hippogriffs around it, all of them in streamlined security barding.

Not great, being that badly outnumbered. The sled’s engine roared when I jammed the throttle forward and aimed for the dim silhouettes that I could make out against the glare, slamming into the hippogriff and running him right into the sea wagon, crushing him between my sled and the armored hull.

“Don’t kill them!” Chum Buddy warned. “We don’t need a blood bath!”

The hippogriff spat up blood and went still.

“Uh, right,” I agreed, a little too late. The sled’s engine sputtered and died, and it drifted back. One of the hippogriffs came at me with a long spear, and I surprised myself with my instinctive reaction, jumping back from the dead sled and swimming out of the way.

“I thought you couldn’t swim?” Chum Buddy asked.

“It, uh, I can’t?” I said lamely. Clearly I could. As long as I didn’t think about it, swimming was as easy as flying. I could just vaguely remember spending time swimming around the canyon, being warned not to go too deep--

Not my memories. What the buck was wrong with me? Had I run into a bad memory orb somewhere?

One of the guards was on top of me, a sparking prod in her fin. I bit down on the trigger, and a burst of three steel darts tore into her, tearing into her leg and taking her out of the fight. A jolt hit me from behind, a big griff slamming into me and forcing a prod into my neck. Sparks flew from the armor, and I could feel the crawl of static start down my spine.

“Watch your six!” Chum Buddy shouted.

A spear slammed into the hippogriff on my back, hard enough to snap him right off me like a bird had snatched him away. The spear went right through his gut, and he curled into a ball of pain around it.

“What happened to not killing them?” I panted.

“I didn’t aim for the head, did I?”

He had a point, and an even sharper point were the three other security griffs circling around. They were faster than I was, and a lot more comfortable in the water, but all they had were spears and shock prods, and I had a gun.

Not that I was very good with a gun, but rapid fire made up for poor aim. I fired a long burst, and a few of the darts caught one’s tailfin, shredding it and putting them out of the fight unless they invented a brand new way to swim.

The last two charged me from the sides while I was shooting. The water parted in a long stream of bubbles and the one on my right slammed to the side with a long spear pinning her left fin to her side and exiting her shoulder. I didn’t see what happened to her after that, because that last guard jumped me like he hadn’t just seen five of his friends get taken down and I caught a spear in the ribs, the tip cutting through the rubber of my dive suit and scraping across my ribs, unable to find a way through my weird, SIVA-made bone structure.

I grabbed the spear with my left hoof and swung with my right, popping my knife free and realizing it was a mistake in the same moment. It came out just fine, cutting through my dive suit and sending a chill shock down my hoof at the sudden cold of the icy depths. I slashed the hippogriff’s face, catching him along the cheek and eye. He let go and clutched at his ruined face.

“Sorry,” I said. “But in all fairness, you did stab me first.”

He didn’t have a great counter-argument.

“We’ll need to get the transport out of here,” Chum Buddy said. “I doubt our prisoner is in a pressure suit. I know a dock we can use.”

“I’ll drive,” I said. “My sled is wrecked anyway.”

“Oh no, I’m not letting you--”

He was interrupted by a burst of static over the radio. “Chum Buddy! Chamomile! You idiots! Get out of there!” Fabula said, obviously having used her powers to divine the right radio channel.

“We’ve already got this done,” I said. “We’re just leaving.”

Fabula groaned. “There’s a SWAT unit on the way. They called for them on the radio while you were fighting! I heard the whole thing while I was trying to find your frequency!”

“Is that bad?” I asked. “Is it Sentinel?” It’d be awfully convenient.

I felt the surge of malice and moved without knowing why. Something flashed by me like a fish propelled by a jet of bubbles and impacted against the seabed, exploding with a subdued flash and bang, the blast wave hitting me like a sledgehammer. My organs and bones jumped inside me and I rang like a bell from the inside out.

“Chamomile, are you still alive?” Chum Buddy asked, shouting over the ringing in my ears. The shock had thrown me off balance. I could barely tell which way was up. “If you’re not dead, you need to get moving!”

A pony on a sled - this one much better maintained and designed than the one I’d broken - swooped down towards me from above. I was floating, limp, and that made him underestimate me. I got a good look at him as he came in close. It wasn’t Sentinel, but he was wearing armored barding a few steps up from the rest of the security team.

I got off a few shots, putting a few holes in his ride, but before I could drag my bad aim over to the pony, the flechette gun clicked on an empty chamber. A wash of bubbles exploded from a launcher on the pony’s side, and a torpedo flashed towards me.

Like a bolt of lightning, a spear slammed past it in an envelope of supercaviated air. That’s probably not actually the right term, but it worked really bucking well because even though it missed the deadly missile the pressure wave set it off. The blast tore at the part of the sled that I’d already put a few holes in, and the engines gave out and threw a cloud of thick oil into the water.

The armored pony jumped off with some kind of assist, like he was wearing a rocket pack. He grabbed a short staff from his back and snapped it out to double its length, blades popping into place and sparks flashing between the two prongs. I blocked it with my blade, and the shock went right up my foreleg, numbness spreading through my shoulder and towards my heart and spine.

I broke contact and flapped my wings, pushing away and slashing at the shaft of the weapon, breaking it in half. He didn’t like that much and used the hydrodynamic thrusters on his armor to jet back.

If he got away, I knew I’d be eating a torpedo. The anchor chain on the Hearse launched at a sharp bite on the trigger, the harpoon slamming into the pony’s armor and halting his motion. The winch whined and pulled back, though with no leverage it pulled me towards him just as much as it pulled him to me.

The pony reacted quickly, adjusting his aim and a panel popping open to show the bright red tip of a torpedo. Bubbles exploded out. I reacted without thought, wired reflexes sending my knife straight through the water and into the torpedo a moment after it cleared the launcher, slicing into the warhead.

It exploded instantly, my anchor chain tearing free along with the rest of the pony’s armor when the blast shredded him like a can of tomatoes dropped off an SPP tower to splatter on the ground below. The wave hit me almost as hard, my organs feeling like a giant had stepped on them and a chill washing through my whole body. It wasn’t just my imagination, either. Cold water was filling my diving suit.

I was floating, looking dully through a cracked mask that was dripping water into my eyes. I couldn’t think. It was all soft and ringing and far away for the moment, and some part of me, probably the part made out of more robust hardware, was aware I had a concussion.

Chum Buddy grabbed my hoof and pulled me towards the transport’s cabin. The front windows were shattered from the blast, and the pony that had been in there hadn’t found a way to breathe water.

My partner in crime yanked the body out of the way and shoved me in, switching my air from the broken rebreather and to the spare tank. I sucked down fresher air and tried to just focus on keeping my organs on the inside. He patted my shoulder and got behind the controls, starting up the engine again.

I pulled off what was left of the mask the second we got into the open air of the half-abandoned dock, coughing up blood and spitting onto the deck, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. I was shivering and I didn’t know if it was from the ice water or the blood loss or both.

Chum Buddy hopped out of the transport’s cabin after me, kneeling down next to me and looking over my wounds.

“You look awful,” he decided. The unicorn pulled me to my hooves and pulled a chunk of shrapnel out of my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I said. “How’s our prisoner?”

“Seems like even with all the excitement we didn’t punch any holes in the transport,” Chum Buddy said. “Let’s open this can of sardines. Could be another officer back there, so watch yourself.”

I nodded, and we walked around to the back of the transport. I took aim at the doors, and Chum Buddy yanked it open.

A single pony stumbled out, wearing hoofcuffs and what was left of a striped suit. He fell on his face hard enough to bust his snout, bleeding all over himself.

“No way,” I said, turning my aim away and stepping over to him, grabbing the stallion by the lapels and pulling him up to look him in the eyes.

“You?” he asked, recognizing me. “You’re dead!”

“You wish I was dead,” I corrected, shaking him. “You’re one of the bastards that shoved me out an airlock!”

Chapter 75: The Skeleton in the Closet

“You understand that by all rights, I should be kicking you out of the Cantina?” Fabula asked. “Actually, I shouldn’t just be putting you on the street, I should turn you over to Stable security and earn a bounty along with a few favors!”

“You’re not going to do that,” I said confidently.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Fabula asked, sitting back. “Do you even have one good reason?”

I bit my lip and looked down. “Honestly I was hoping you’d say something like ‘you’re right, but only because something something’ so I wouldn’t have to come up with an answer myself.”

“Mmm.” Fabula raised an eyebrow.

“I’m having brain problems,” I explained. “New ones. Not just my usual brain issues that are because I’m stupid. Can I get a hint?”

Fabula groaned. “I think I have a blind spot trying to predict you.”

“Yeah, my half-sister said it was impossible to read my mind,” I agreed. “And I’m pretty sure I can talk to ghosts. I mean, I can definitely talk to one ghost but she’s not here right now. I used to know a pony who could talk to ghosts and she was really nice but she died.”

Fabula tilted her head slowly.

“I’ve had a really weird time ever since I left the Enclave,” I said more quietly.

“One thing is clear,” Fabula said. “You’re extraordinarily dangerous. A loose cannon. A mad dog. I could continue with more metaphors but I think you get the point. If I turn you loose, ponies will die. If I let things continue as they are, ponies will die. The only way to avoid another disaster is for me to assign you a handler who can control you.”

“That’s not a sex thing, is it?”

“No,” Fabula said, colder than a windigo. “I’m going to take personal responsibility and watch you myself. Congratulations! You’ve done such a fine job disrupting my operations that I’m going to give you all the special attention you could ask for.”

I grumbled at that, but she had a point. “Doesn’t it count for anything that I helped out Lady Thresher?” I asked.

“You mean when you went off on your own and took a job from her without asking me, and without the Guild getting a cut?” Fabula asked, narrowing her eyes.

“But nothing went wrong and she was happy and I fixed the mistake from the Briney job!” I protested, groaning. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering.”

“What you mean is, you have your own lead and don’t care about getting help from the Guild,” Fabula corrected. “What you don’t appreciate is how much I’ve had to manipulate things to keep you out of trouble.”

“You didn’t even know about the prisoner transport,” I pointed out.

“I found out about it at the last minute,” Fabula agreed. “And I was able to keep a general alarm from being raised. They could have sent a small army after you while you were finding a place to dock that old transport. Then I had to pay off the dockmaster so he wouldn’t report you the instant you arrived. Then I needed to find somewhere to stow your prisoner…”

She sighed, waving her hoof in small circles.

“This isn’t the wasteland, Chamomile. You can’t just kill somepony and walk away! A body gets investigated. A stolen prisoner transport gets found. Injured security ponies make reports. Seaquestrian official policy is that nopony leaves, to preserve the security of the nation, so you can’t even skip town.”

“What, are they afraid of raiders?” I joked.

“Yes. It happened before, just after the bombs fell and this place was more common knowledge. Refugees and criminals followed the ponies who’d bought a place in the Stable and they were allowed entry, and chaos reigned for years. Everything almost fell apart. That’s why the Riots were stomped down so hard. The hippogriffs remembered what happened last time ponies got out of control and won’t let it happen again.”

“I get it,” I said. “Back home, things are pretty similar. There’s law and order and ponies have to work together to keep things going.”

“Then you understand why standing out is a bad idea.”

“I understand it needs to be for the right reasons,” I said. “Look, when I talked to my informant, I found out he sold my armor, along with Destiny, to the head of Stable Security.”

“Marshall Law?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about it, and he must be Sentinel! He bought the armor himself, and now he’s setting himself up as a big hero!”

Fabula rubbed her chin. “I know before the Riots, he was out of favor politically. Senator Seascape, Quiet’s father, was the rising star of the Seaquestrian Senate. Sentinel showing up and restoring order was a big part of undoing that.”

“See? He’s got a motive,” I said. “I need to break into his place. He can’t wear the armor twenty-four hours a day. Trust me, I know it gets uncomfortable after a while. If I can get there, I can take the Exodus Armor back, find Destiny, and then… well, then I can get out of your mane, but I’ll be getting rid of Sentinel in the process, and I know that would be doing you a favor.”

“I suppose it would be to our advantage,” Fabula said. “But I can’t let you go.”

“I’m not asking for permission. I can find his address without your help.”

“I won’t let you turn this city into a bloodbath! Maybe the ponies up in the rich parts of the city deserve it, but the blood trickles down here and they return every hurt tenfold! If you tear up Marshall Law’s house, the response will be a slaughter!”

I stood up. “You can’t actually stop me,” I reminded her. “You can scold me. You can tell me all about the consequences. You can’t force me to listen. You’re not even as intimidating as a fake alicorn, let alone the real thing. If I have to fight my way through an army, that’s fine. If I have to fight Sentinel one on one, that’s great because I’m literally asking for it.”

“You’re insane,” Fabula muttered.

“And you’re a small fish in a big ocean,” I retorted.

“Do you know what’s going to happen if you leave on your little mission?” Fabula asked. She pulled out her deck of cards and shuffled them. “I do.”

I put my hoof on the deck before she could stop me and flipped over the top card.

It showed a skeleton in a black robe, holding a scythe and looming over a tranquil scene of ponies going about their business.

“The Death card,” she said. “It means--”

“Spare me,” I said. “I’d be more impressed if you dealt me a three of spades.”

“My foretellings are authentic,” Fabula said. “I don’t force a draw. Ever.”

“Can your cards tell me if Destiny is at Marshall Law’s house?” I asked.

She frowned. “No.”

“Then I’m going to go take a look for myself. If you want to stop that bloodbath you’re worried about, I’m willing to accept some help, because right now my plan is to walk in the front door and deal with the consequences as they come.”

Fabula put the Death card back in her deck, shuffled them again, and put the cards away.

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “I have a responsibility to these ponies. I can’t let them get killed following you.” She stood up. “You might doubt my powers right now, but you won’t when you see them in action.”

“Stop,” Fabula said, putting a hoof on my chest and pushing me further into the shadow cast by a trellis of roses. She closed her eyes, ears twitching, and a pony in a black suit trotted past, pausing for a moment so close to where we were hiding that I could have reached out and touched him. He touched his ear.

“Call clear at Checkpoint E,” he reported to somepony on the other side of the radio, then moved on.

The Law estate was massive. It was still Stable-tec if you looked closely, but they’d blocked off something big enough to be a mansion in the Enclave and turned it into a gated community. The floor was shaggy green carpet that resembled grass if you didn’t think about it, and the walls were painted to look like the daytime sky from just above head height, giving the impression we were in a wide-open space and not just creeping along the edges of an atrium.

“Next we wait here for fifteen seconds,” Fabula said.

I had to admit her ability to predict the future was starting to seem more legitimate. She’d maneuvered us around a few guards, slipped through locked doors by waiting for the right moment when ponies were coming and going, and she’d made it look effortless. If I’d seen this side of her first and not just a pony giving orders in a bar, maybe I’d have been a little more respectful.

“Now,” she said, walking out into the open and through a Stable hatch redecorated to look like a stone archway. I followed closely behind her, and the whirring of an electric motor got my attention. I glanced up to see a camera pointed in the other direction, slowly working its way back to where we were coming in. At the pace we were walking, we were staying in the blind spot.

“You’re pretty good,” I admitted.

“I didn’t become head of the Guild just because somepony died and left it to me,” she said quietly. “I made friends. Worked my way up. Got good at the job.”

“And then the Riots happened,” I said, trying to give it that same emphasis everypony else did. She nodded tersely and led me through a door painted to look like it was wood instead of steel. Past it, the room was clearly ‘inside’, all dark wood panels and rugs over the tiled floor instead of faux grass.

She put a hoof to her lips and we crept inside. We didn’t get far before I bumped into something, a twitch of a wing hitting a vase. Fabula caught it before it hit the ground and glared at me while she put it back in place.

“Sorry,” I mouthed silently. I wasn’t good at all the sneaking stuff. I had a little time to think in the silence while I followed her. There weren’t nearly as many guards as I was expecting for the head of Stable security forces. I had to assume there were plenty of ponies ready to respond to any disturbance, but unless there were literally a dozen ponies hiding in a barracks somewhere nearby, it wasn’t any more dangerous than a fight anywhere else in Seaquestria.

A feeling shot through me like a spark of static electricity.

“He’s here,” I said. I could feel him. Sentinel was close by.

Fabula nodded, understanding instantly. I took a moment to check my weapon. I still had the Hearse, the combination rapid-fire flechette gun and harpoon launcher that Chum Buddy had given me. It might be just what I needed. The Exodus armor had been awful at stopping physical rounds, even if the magic fields powering it deflected energy weapons pretty well.

We made our way up a wide staircase decorated with a massive portrait of who I had to assume was Marshall Law rearing up and looking heroic. Assuming the artist had taken some liberties, he would still be a pretty impressive Earth Pony.

I stopped and gave it a second look, thought about the first time I’d seen Sentinel, then followed Fabula more slowly, narrowing my eyes. Fabula stopped outside a door, hesitating. I wondered if she could feel the same thing I did. A sense of pressure, a looming threat. Doom.

I stepped past her and reached for the door control. Why was I afraid? I could take Sentinel in a fight. I wasn’t half-dead and starving. I was armed and ready. That magic pressure, though. It reminded me of standing in front of Flurry Heart, that oppressive force broadcasting out and into the air.

Buck it. I punched the door and ran in without waiting for Fabula to tell me it was safe. I knew it definitely wasn’t safe at all, and that was confirmed when I saw Marshall Law holding a rifle and sitting placidly in a chair, nursing a glass of whiskey. Sentinel stood next to him, the armored hippogriff glaring at me through his iron mask, weapons bared and ready to fire.

“Welcome to my home,” Marshall Law said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“If you were expecting me, you should have brought more ponies,” I said. “Your security team seems a little light.”

“It’s enough to deal with one oversized brat who thinks she can take on the world all on her own,” Marshall Law said.

“Because Fabula’s going to betray me?” I asked.

Marshall Law raised an eyebrow.

“I figured it out when I saw the portrait out there. You couldn’t be Sentinel. You’re entirely the wrong species. I didn’t know that until I saw your picture.” I motioned to the armored hippogriff pointing heavy weapons at me. “Fabula should have known. She knows who you are, but she just went along with my idea that you might be Sentinel.”

“You’re not as stupid as you look,” Fabula said.

“If I was smarter I would have clocked that something was wrong when you came here with me yourself. I drew the Death card, and you seemed genuinely offended when I said you stacked the deck. The fact you still came along means you had an out all along.”

Fabula shrugged and walked over to the others, standing next to Sentinel.

“I just can’t figure out why,” I said.

“It’s quite simple, really,” Sentinel said, his voice echoing. He reached up with a talon and unlatched a hidden catch along the jawline of his iron mask. With a puff of escaping vapor, it opened up and he removed it. He was a middle-aged hippogriff, with an ugly scar across his face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you face to face. My real name is Shore Leave.”

“The former guildmaster?”

He gave me a crooked smile. “I got a new job.”

“When the Riots started, we knew things had to change,” Fabula said. “The elites were going to do whatever it took to stop them, even if it meant flooding the entire Stable. It wouldn’t bother the hippogriffs, but it would wipe out the ponies. We cut a deal with them.”

Shore Leave looked at his helmet, wiping a scuffmark from the cheek. “Crime was always going to happen, but we could control it and make sure bad things only happened to the right ponies. I’d work inside Security and put down ponies who tried coloring outside the lines, and Fabula would work inside the Guild and hand out missions approved by Security.”

“And you’d back it up with fortune-telling,” I said, looking at Fabula. “You’d rat ponies out if they were becoming a problem, and if they were following orders you’d make sure Stable Security was coincidentally ignoring what was going on.”

“It’s better for everypony this way,” Fabula said. “It’s fair. There’s only enough crime to make the average citizen really appreciate Security, and if somepony thinks funding should be cut, like Senator Seascape…”

“His daughter ends up kidnapped,” I said slowly. “In a big, public, scary display.”

“Even a blunt object like you has some use,” Fabula said. “But you’re getting too unpredictable, even for me. I’m afraid you’re going to have to become a lesson to the other ponies in the Guild that they need to follow orders and stay on the straight and narrow. Otherwise, something terrible might happen to them!”

“Something like this?” I asked, pulling the trigger on my gun. It clicked and made a very sad sound.

“I wasn’t going to let you walk in here with live ammunition,” Fabula said. “I switched it before we even left the Cantina.”

“Nuts.”

I still had one chance. I was only a few paces away from Sentinel. Or Shore Leave. Whatever he wanted to call himself. I forced my wired reflexes into motion and the world slowed to a near-stop, my body burning with an instant fever and the air turning as cold as ice. I lunged for Sentinel. He was the biggest threat by a huge margin.

The speargun at his side burped, a spear sliding down through my shoulder and into my chest. I couldn’t feel it, not yet. A second shot made when I reared up tore into my gut and out the other side. I brought my knife down towards his neck.

A magical shield stopped me. Fabula had seen the attack coming. A third spear hit my side and scraped along my spine. I lost the strength in my back legs, and the world came rushing back just in time to meet me on the floor, dark blood spreading around me.

“You should have run the other direction,” Fabula sighed.

I gasped. I couldn’t talk. Or breathe, really. That first spear had hit something important. A lung? I coughed up blood.

“She wasn’t nearly as impressive as I was expecting,” Sentinel said. “I thought I'd need explosives.”

“And ruin half my estate?” Marshall Law scoffed.

“We’ll need to do something about Lady Thresher as well,” Fabula said. “She’s getting too big for her britches. If she finds out too much, she could be a problem for the project.”

“One thing at a time,” Marshall Law said. “One of you make sure this trash is dead. I’ll call the usual cleaners to take care of the mess.”

“Of course,” Sentinel said. He stepped over me. I looked up at him, still gasping. My vision was going dark around the edges. The pain was really starting to edge its way around the shock now, an awful tearing pain that got worse with every heartbeat. I took a swipe at him, so slow and clumsy a foal could have stopped it.

He caught my fetlock and bent my foreleg, bringing my own knife to my throat. Without showing even a hint of emotion, Shore Leave stabbed it into my jugular and tore it to the side, slicing through tendons and muscle and veins and opening up my neck. Blood washed out of me in a torrent. Everything went black.

Things were getting bad. Not just for me. If it was just me, it would have been no problem. I’d be long gone and out of the sector even if it meant sleeping in the undercity. I had a gun, I had ammunition, and I knew how to use a weapon.

The problem was my daughter.

She’d been attacked early into the riots, before they’d even locked the sector down, before we knew how bad it was. One of the crazies had bitten her, like they were a wild animal or a feral ghoul. I thought it wasn’t serious.

I sighed. I heard her banging on the locked door to the supply closet, growling and hungry and in terrible pain. Whatever had happened to the rioters, it was happening to her. It wasn’t just a revolution. It wasn’t about unpaid wages or bad food or living space.

She scratched at the door with claws she hadn’t had before, slowly scraping away at the metal. The Stable-tech hatch was tough, and she was just a filly, but she knew I was in here and she was determined to get in.

I couldn’t leave without her.

I couldn’t leave with her.

I checked my gun. Two bullets.

I gasped, pain erupting through my body. I clutched at my neck and-- there wasn’t a massive, gaping wound there. I could feel a swollen line, an edge of bare skin around a scar. The air was cold, refrigerated and humming with white noise. My whole body ached. I tried to get up and slipped, falling to a tiled floor that smelled like rubbing alcohol.

I looked up. I’d been asleep on a steel table. An autopsy table.

“You really did wake up again,” a pony said quietly. I hadn’t noticed there was anypony else in the room until that moment. I was still dazed, struggling to identify even the simple things around me, like somepony who’d come out of the deepest of deep sleeps. Shapes around me resolved into lights, rolling carts, a wall full of small hatches.

I flopped around in blind panic.

And a mare in a labcoat. She looked vaguely familiar. She knelt down next to me.

“Take it easy,” she said quietly. “You’ve been through a lot, at least twice now. I thought the first time was just a fluke, but…”

“This is the morgue?” I asked. My voice felt off, weak. Maybe because I’d had my windpipe slashed open. I tried to clear my throat and coughed up clots of dried blood. “Again?”

“You took my coat the last time you came through here.” She offered me a cup of water. I took it and slowly sipped. “I decided not to put you in a drawer after you broke the last one. Technically I’m supposed to be off-duty, but I thought you might come back and…”

“Thanks,” I croaked. I took another long sip of water.

“If you’re curious, they brought you in here three days ago,” she said. “It was… really strange watching you heal. I hope you don’t mind, but I took some samples and studied what was going on. Did you know your body is full of--”

“It’s called SIVA,” I said. “They’re micromachines.”

“So you did know about it already!” the doctor said. “I thought so! I mean, obviously, you had to know something was up. It seems like it put most of your body in metabolic stasis and used a form of microsurgery to repair the damage. You must have finally been in good enough shape to… restart, for lack of a better term.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in great shape,” I groaned. “You didn’t tell anypony about this, did you?”

“No, of course not,” she said, looking mildly offended. “Consider it doctor-patient confidentiality if you want, but…” she looked away from me. “I’ve seen too many ponies get dragged in here by Stable Security with orders attached for me to explain their cause of death as an accident. Young ponies that mysteriously fall onto bullets.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“I’m Manzana Flor,” she said, offering me a hoof. I shook it gingerly. Not that I had the strength to shake it roughly.

“Chamomile,” I replied. “Sorry for messing up your paperwork.”

“It’s all fake anyway,” Manzana said. “You want something to eat? It’s just stuff from the corner store, but I thought when you woke up you might be hungry.”

My stomach growled like a terrible beast was living next to my liver and demanded tribute. I nodded quickly, and she came back with bags of chips and cookies and something tough and fishy that I only found out was fish jerky after I’d already started eating it.

“Even for healthy ponies, healing is hard on the body,” she said. “It takes a lot of energy for the body to fix a broken bone or… the things that happened to you.”

“No kidding,” I mumbled through a mouth full of kale chips. They tasted like iodine and sadness, but they were filling my stomach, which was slowly calming down and no longer demanding I just eat the packaging along with the food inside. “Thanks for keeping my body safe. And for the food.”

“I had this idea that if I helped you, I could expose all the corruption in Security,” Manzana sighed. “I guess that’s probably stupid, huh? I don’t even know who I’d tell, or who’d believe me. I just want it to stop.”

I sighed, coughed, took another glug of water, and looked at her. “I don’t suppose they brought in anything with me?”

“You mean an unregistered firearm with all the serial numbers removed and a set of Stable utility barding in awful condition?”

“That’d be it, yeah,” I confirmed.

Manzana opened up one of the drawers and produced a set of barding stiff with blood, along with my flechette gun.

“Come to think of it, maybe I don’t need the barding,” I said. “It might be easier to just get a new set at this point…”

“What are you going to do?” Manzana asked.

“I…” I looked down at my mismatched hooves. “I don’t know. Everypony thinks I’m dead, so I’ve got some time to figure things out. I think this time I need to spend a little while finding a plan that’s actually going to work.”

“And then?” she pressed.

“I’m going to get my friend back, expose everypony involved in the big stupid conspiracy, and probably cause a massive amount of property damage,” I said. “But if I do it right, I won’t drag anypony innocent into it.”

“Okay,” Manzana nodded. “You can’t stay here. One of the other doctors would notice and report you.”

“I can find something,” I grunted, standing up. I still felt weak. I could barely feel my back legs again. The spinal damage had never entirely gone away. “There are plenty of places in the undercity nopony will look for me.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Manzana smiled. “Why don’t you come back to my place?”

I looked around the apartment suspiciously. It reminded me a lot of the room I’d had when I’d lived in Mom’s Stable a long time ago. It was almost nostalgic, but Manzana actually lived here, and she’d decorated. There was even a small tree in the corner.

“You can sleep on the couch,” she said. “I don’t have a guest room, and I’m nice, but not that nice.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “It’s a lot better than my plan of sleeping in a utility closet or behind some pipes.” I was already out of breath after the walk. Breathing was harder when I was tired, and I just felt listless and weak. It probably had something to do with all the blood loss.

I trotted over to the tree to look at it. There were tiny apples growing on it.

“Don’t eat those,” Manzana warned. “They’re crab apples. They’re basically poison. It’s just for decoration.”

“I wasn’t gonna!” I protested. I definitely would have eaten them if they weren’t poison. I might still try one, just to see how poisonous they were.

Manzana rolled her eyes and put her lab coat on a coat rack next to the door, then switched on the radio, the apartment filling with soft music.

“You can shower first,” she offered. “You… sort of need it. I hosed you down while you were on the slab, but you still sort of…”

“Have corpse-stink all over me?” I suggested.

“I was looking for a more polite way to say it,” the doctor said. “Let me know if you need anything. You just came back from the dead, so there’s no telling what might happen.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “Thanks again.”

I found my way into the bathroom and stepped into the shower, turning it on at full blast and letting the ice-cold water hit me in the face. As it slowly warmed up, I leaned against the wall, struggling to breathe.

I’d died.

Again.

I didn’t even have a chance. Sentinel had taken my own knife and used it to…

I looked at my right foreleg. In the cascade of water, it still gleamed like oil, dark and metallic and skeletally thin. I barely had feeling in it most of the time. It was barely a part of me. I let the knife pop free, like the scythe of some giant mantis. Manzana had missed a spot when she’d hosed me down. I watched the dried blood slowly flake off under the shower.

What was I supposed to do now? How was I supposed to rescue Destiny, or get the Exodus armor back? How was I even supposed to survive? Fabula had agents everywhere. Any of them could spot me and report me to her. There could be a team of security ponies just waiting to--

I heard a crash and jumped out of the water, slipping and falling and hitting my head in a mad scramble. I rushed out into the main room, trailing dripping water, knife at the ready and my heart beating a million miles an hour.

Manzana looked up at me in surprise, picking up the pot lid she’d dropped.

“I was just making some soup,” she said slowly. “Are you okay?”

“I just… I thought…” I started to feel woozy. I sat down, panting and trying to catch my breath. “I thought something happened.”

She rushed over and looked at me. “Your pupils are unevenly dilated. You need to sit down.”

“I hit my head,” I mumbled.

Manzana ran into the bathroom and yelped. “This water is boiling hot!” I heard the shower turn off, and she rushed back out with a towel, rubbing me down and helping me dry off. “I knew you weren’t feeling well. You must have gotten faint from the heat.”

“Yeah,” I agreed weakly. More like I’d had a panic attack. She dried me off a little more, then gave me the kind of worried look that made me extra worried.

“Lay down here,” she said softly. “I’m going to get some ice for that bruise. Then we’ll get some hot soup into you. One of the first things I learned about being a doctor is that something hot and easy to digest does a lot to help a pony heal.”

“Okay,” I whispered. I laid down in front of the radio and listened to a recording from two hundred years ago, from before the world lost all its hope.

Chapter 76: Jitterbug Waltz

“I heard you were dead,” Lady Thresher said. She prodded her food with two thin sticks, eventually picking up a short stalk of asparagus and popping it into her mouth. It was something between spaghetti and stir fry and it wasn’t my biggest worry right now.

“I was dead. I got better. It’s sort of a thing and it’s just impossibly traumatizing so I try and distract myself and think about other things instead of the cold steely reach of the grim reaper-- okay look, how are you using chopsticks without magic?”

She picked up a single grain of rice with careful manipulation of the most basic utensils in the world.

“I’m exceptionally skilled with my hooves,” Lady Thresher explained.

“You’re sure proving it,” I admitted. “Sorry about bothering you during your lunch, but I figured the middle of the day was the least likely time to run into anypony from the Guild.”

“Ah yes,” Lady Thresher nodded. “Fabula spoke highly of you, mourned your death, even bought me a drink, as if I didn’t own the distillery. She had you killed, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“I suspected as much when she didn’t call you an idiot for getting yourself killed.”

“She’s coming for you next,” I warned. “She’s working with the cops. They think you’re the biggest threat to whatever plans they have because they can’t control you.”

“I appreciate the warning,” Lady Thresher said. “I assume you didn’t just come here out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Well, I mean…” I hesitated. “I still haven’t found my friend, or gotten my armor back, and on top of that I need to do something about all the ponies Fabula is going to hurt.”

“Yes,” the mare agreed, sitting back. “Fortunately, I can disappear for a while to places even the most dedicated police force can’t find me. I’d suggest you do the same, but I would feel incredibly irresponsible if I didn’t do something to point you in the right direction.”

“Really?”

She motioned to one of her bodyguards and he trotted over. He glared at me. Lady Thresher sighed and motioned again, and he produced a voice recorder.

“Whatever ‘Project H’ is, it now involves some of my capital, since I own two gillwater plants that are both part of it. I was looking into it, to see if I could get in on whatever deal they cut with the authorities and make a profit. I intercepted a recording that you might find interesting.”

“Update, Seadate… I don’t know. I still don’t understand why you can’t use a regular time and date! The whole world uses a regular calendar, but no, you need to use one based on a mechanical computer predicting the tides, which isn’t even accurate!

“Anyway, stupid time system aside, I haven’t gotten very far with my research. It’s not a problem with supplies, for once in my life, just in my imagination and creativity. Is it because I’m a ghost? Did I lose my touch along with most of my memories? I can’t do this alone, and the one pony I trust isn’t here to help.

“Enferon is still proving effective. We’ve developed some dispersal methods, but we have to make them one by one, so mass production isn’t possible and it’s not a cure. At best, it’s just like using tear gas to disperse a crowd. It does seem to affect regeneration rates, so if we want to just kill everypony, it can be used as a very expensive solution in terms of money and lives.

“I’m hopeful we’ll find something better. A biological solution might still be possible. There are elements in gillwater that I’ve never seen before or worked with, and they’re transformative and powerful. They might be exactly what I need.”

“It’s Destiny,” I said, stopping the recording.

“The concept, or is that a name?” Manzana asked.

“She’s my best friend.” I paused. “No offense. You’re really cool, and you work in a morgue which is a pretty awesome job, but I’ve known Destiny for a lot longer.”

“No offense taken,” the doctor said. “You’re really cool, but a massive liability and you have literally eaten all the food in my house.”

I burped.

“I’m guessing you’re going to go after her,” Manzana suggested.

“I have to,” I said. “According to Lady Thresher, this transmission came out of the Dark Sector, which is apparently a bad place to be.”

“You’re not getting in there,” Manzana said. She opened a cabinet. “Where’s my coffee? Did you actually eat all my coffee grounds?!”

“I was really hungry,” I whined. “And they smelled so good!”

She groaned and got a glass of water. “The point is, the Dark Sector is totally quarantined. It has been ever since the Riots. The life support was damaged or something. I don’t know the details. All I know is, it’s not safe to go in there.”

“That’s a likely story,” I mumbled. “There’s something going on in there. Something the government cares enough about to fund her, and that she thinks is a good enough cause to stick herself in the middle of a quarantine zone.”

“Well, it’s not hard to find,” Manzana said. “All you have to do is look for all the signs warning ponies about danger and ignore them.”

“Those sound like exactly like kind of directions I can follow.”

Manzana opened another cabinet. “And be a decent roommate and bring back groceries!”

I think at this point I need to actually give a decent description of Seaquestria. I hadn’t really had one myself, but I needed to navigate all the way to the Dark Sector on my own, and that meant a map.

Seaquestria is basically shaped like a big clamshell. The top half is a shield over the rest, an umbrella studded with hanging buildings open to the sea. Looking up at it from below, it’s like seeing the night sky. Most of the city’s hippogriffs, even the very poor ones, live up there and look down on everypony else.

The undersea Stable was built under it, sheltered against detection and invasion. It was roughly in the shape of a ring, with the upper levels turned into towers and enclosed bubbles of air pretending to be city streets. Cables connected the two halves, the Stable’s power and utilities serving as life support for the rest of the city.

The Dark Sector was a black spot on the ring, the block of towers and Stable modules closest to the only way in or out of the city, a kind of underwater elevator leading to an island that had once been the core of Hippogriff society and had been abandoned during the war.

Getting to the Dark Sector meant either walking across the seabed or all the way through a maze of corridors in the utility levels of the undercity. Since I didn’t have a diving suit, the choice was made for me.

Manzana was right about one thing. I mean, aside from me being a terrible roommate. The ‘keep away’ and ‘detour ahead’ signs made it easy to find my way.

The problem came when I got closer. Doors were welded shut. Steel grates locked in place to seal off corridors. I could cut through them, sure, but I might set off any number of alarms. It was like a funnel, narrowing my options until I was right at the entrance to the Dark Sector and looking at a security checkpoint.

And I’d been looking at it through a vent for an hour trying to figure out what to do. I was in what had been an access area for a bunch of pipes and ventilation stuff, sort of a workspace for ponies doing repairs, safely tucked out of the way of the main corridor it ran parallel to.

There were four ponies guarding the checkpoint, and my first instinct had been to wait for a shift change and try to slip through, but it had been an hour and I was getting antsy and bored. They had to change shifts at some point, right? I could just fight through them, but what if a new crew showed up right in the middle of it? What if they got a call out on radio? All it would take was one guard giving my description to a dispatcher and Marshall Law would have Sentinel after me before I was ready for him.

“I need to be smart,” I mumbled. “Can’t kill them or it’s going to get too much attention. And killing ponies is wrong.” That second part came a lot slower than the first. I’d had a really bad time and I was finding it difficult not to just murder ponies.

What I needed was the magic of friendship, but the friends I’d made here couldn’t be trusted. I had almost no supplies. All I had was a flechette gun with no ammunition -- but a working harpoon launcher (tested in Manzana’s apartment, and I also owed her a new window), a couple saddle bags, really basic medical supplies (surprisingly, not a lot of life-saving medicine in the morgue), and an old whistle given to me by a crazy pony.

My hoof lingered over the whistle. Supposedly, according to a crazy pony living in filth, a bunch of trained Radroaches would appear out of nowhere.

It was worth trying. I blew the whistle as softly as I could. It let out a reedy squeal. The four guards looked around, obviously having heard something.

“Look around,” I faintly heard. “Can you tell what direction that came from?”

“It’s probably air in the pipes,” a second one said, relaxing.

“We have to check it out in case it’s a breach,” the first pony said. “You know the rules.”

“I’ve got movement!” one of the ponies yelped. He had a PipBuck. Lucky. “Signal’s clean, twenty meters.”

The others turned around, shining flashlights on the steel gate behind them.

“I don’t see anything,” the last pony reported.

“They never act like this,” the first pony said.

“Fifteen meters,” the pony with the PipBuck reported. “It’s red all around us!”

“All around us?” the second pony said, sweeping his air rifle around. “I don’t see anything!”

The leader swept his light up, almost catching me in it when he passed over the vent I was spying on them through. “They must be in the walls, the floor, something we missed!”

PipBuck was starting to panic. “I can’t tell, this thing doesn’t give altitude, just radial detection! Eight meters!”

“That’s inside the barricade. It must be wrong!”

“I’m reading it right! Four meters!”

The second pony, the lazy one, sighed. “There’s nothing here!” He raised up his hooves, and at that moment, the vents popped open from the pressure on the other side, dozens of radroaches scuttling out in a wave of chitin, some of them glowing from within. The guards screamed and broke, fleeing away from the barricade, and the roaches gave chase.

I waited a few more seconds.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I sighed.

I kicked the vent open and jumped down, bolting for the door. The guards were armed, and it wouldn’t take them long to stomp on the bugs. A thick chain and padlock held the steel grate shut. It wasn’t knife-proof, so it was a matter of seconds to get through.

The door closed behind me more loudly than I would have liked, making me wince at the crashing din. I waited a moment for an alarm, and when it didn’t happen, I ran for it. I needed to get out of sight. I ran past side corridors and dark alcoves and out into the open, an atrium that looked almost like a dark courtyard. I ducked to the side, under a balcony, and tried to catch my breath.

Getting killed was not great for your health. It felt like I couldn’t breathe and my heart was pounding. I was probably far enough in that nopony was going to find me right away, so that meant it was safe to sit down until my vision wasn’t coming from the bottom of a well.

Something moved in the shadows and my already-strained heart almost stopped. I let out a strangled yelp.

It was the one thing I hadn’t expected to see. A mare-made horror that had once been a pony but had become something else. It had been a young earth pony mare, and now she had blue steel scales sprouting from her skin like lesions and plastic, throbbing cords running in and out of her skin.

“SIVA…” I whispered. The infected pony stumbled towards me, moaning, and I readied myself to--

The zombie just trotted past me, ignoring me like I wasn’t there. No, not quite that. It had definitely seen me. It actually stepped around me, careful not to bump into me on its way to the very important business of stopping in the middle of the courtyard on unsteady hooves and staring at a spot on the wall.

“But how could SIVA get here?” I asked myself, lowering my hoof. I’d been ready to cut the pony’s head off, but it seemed more interested in going for a little trot than attacking me. “The only source of SIVA around is…”

Oh buck.

It must have come from me. Somehow, I’d spread it like a plague. How was that possible? I’d been through half of the city and there hadn’t been any outbreaks! Yet. Had I doomed the whole city? Did I need to go into isolation? Was I the real monster?

“I need to find Destiny,” I decided. “She’ll know what to do.”

I knew she had to have power. Lady Thresher had intercepted a transmission, so Destiny had a radio, and there weren’t a lot of places in the Dark Sector that were still in good enough condition to host a lab.

I limped into the sector’s core, a wide-open space like the Galleria or Promenade, the canals in the streets making it feel like I was walking through a half-flooded city, like the pictures of old Veneighs I’d seen in pre-war books. It had probably been beautiful, a few months ago.

The streets were full of garbage and the remnants of violence. Broken glass, ashes, barricades torn apart by monsters or just desperate ponies trying to flee and getting caught in a stampede. Some of the facades of shops and businesses were marred by fire or blown open completely by explosives.

The worst parts were the traces of something eldritch and never made by pony hooves. Violence and destruction were one thing, but seeing lumpy plastic pipes and steel-edged ferns growing over the wreckage like tumors on the steel and concrete? That was something else.

While I was looking at what had once been a shop selling fancy dresses, a few more SIVA zombies stumbled past, every one of them making me feel worse and worse. I really hoped this was all somepony else’s fault.

I heard the noise before I saw the light. The dull thumps of explosives, sharp pops of gunfire, and distant yelling. The uneven surface of the street made me skid and almost fall in my mad rush, the noise getting more frantic with every passing moment. I barely got into the air, my heavy body feeling twice its size thanks to the fatigue weighing down on me.

Up above the debris and wreckage, I could see where I needed to go. A single point of light in the dark, one building was still lit up. It was a squat, slab-sided building, like a fortress in the middle of the streets. Spotlights swept over fences and concrete walls, and from here I could see ponies shooting down into a crowd of shambling half-dead infected.

There were only three of them holding out against a small horde. I hesitated for a second, hovering and watching. I could just let the SIVA-infected monsters do the work for me. I wouldn’t have to lift a hoof.

One of the security ponies went down screaming when a unicorn charged him, goring him on a horn that had grown long and twisted and as sharp as a drill bit.

That settled it for me. I wasn’t the kind of pony that could watch them die, even if they were probably jerks. I swooped down and landed on top of one of the zombies, slicing into the neck with my knife and severing the spinal cord. It had worked on me, and it worked on the monster too, leaving only its eyes rolling and mouth gasping but unable to actually kill anypony.

One of the last officers raised a big gun and shot right next to me, hitting a zombie in the chest. A canister bounced off its tattered flesh and to the ground, erupting into a plume of smoke. At almost the same time, another one of the monsters caught up to him, grabbing his hoof and pulling him down into biting range.

The dark gas washed over me, and it was like being doused with pepper spray. I sneezed and coughed, my knees buckling and my skin burning almost as badly as my eyes and snout.

“Oh buck, what is that stuff?” I gasped, blindly fumbling for a way out of the cloud.

Bullets hit the sidewalk around me, pinging off in all directions. Through bleary eyes, I saw a zombie get hit and stay down, not even twitching.

One of the cops, the last one standing, grabbed me, pulling me out of the cloud and towards the station.

“You okay?!” he shouted. “I don’t know how you got in here, but this is a bad time to be looting! These things are acting crazy today! They haven’t been this active since the Riots!”

“What the buck is in those gas grenades?” I asked, spitting to try and get the iodine taste out of my mouth. It was like pure poison.

“Enferon. It keeps them from healing. Sorry for catching you in it. It’s a mild irritant for some ponies, and looks like you’ve got it bad.”

“Just my luck,” I mumbled.

A monster stumbled out of the crowd, its mouth filled with steel fangs. The officer pushed me out of the way and raised his gun, taking one wild shot that went way off-target before it was on him, ripping and tearing at his armor with ragged metal claws and trying to force its way closer with that deadly maw.

I pulled the zombie off the thrashing pony, throwing it aside and helping the cop up. Even if I didn’t like Stable security, I couldn’t let somepony die right in front of me when they probably didn’t deserve it.

“We need to get inside,” he croaked, one hoof pressed against his side. Blood dripped from the wound, starting to pool under him. “The gas grenades usually drive them off, but it’s like they went rabid all of a sudden!”

“Right,” I agreed, letting him lean on my shoulder and lead me inside, limping on three legs. He had a card key for the door, and ushered me in before shutting it firmly behind us.

“Buck,” he groaned. “Get me over to the couch.” He pointed vaguely in the direction, and I helped him over to it. The lobby of the Stable Security building was more open and ornate than the one I’d been to before, more like something that belonged in a hotel. Monitors and portable terminal boxes were set up into a kind of command center, and I got him onto the couch behind it.

“That’s a pretty nasty wound,” I said. “If you’ve got a healing potion--”

“Like we can requisition those,” he chuckled. Instead, he pulled a spray can from his barding and braced himself before giving his wound a long, hard spray. I only caught a little bit of it, and it made my eyes water like I was cutting onions. It was the same junk that had been in the grenades.

“Enferon should keep the infection at bay,” he mumbled. “I hope. You got any cuts from those things? You need to wash them out right away or you end up just like them.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I really doubted they could infect me in any meaningful way. Buck, they weren’t even interested in me. I found some bandages and gauze and motioned for him to sit up. He struggled, but managed to get in a position where I could pack his wound and keep him from bleeding out.

“What’s your name?” he asked, while I worked on him. “Been a long time since we had a looter in here. I’m Lieutenant Brownie.”

“Chamomile,” I said, distracted. I tucked the ends of the bandage away. “That should hold for a little while.”

“You know some first aid?” he asked.

“I think anypony can figure out this much,” I said. “If I really knew first aid I’d be trying to give you stitches or something.”

“Good point,” the stallion laughed, his voice weak. “Oof. I need to be careful. I laugh too hard and I might turn inside-out. Where did you come from, anyway?”

At this point, honesty was probably the best policy. “I’m here looking for Destiny,” I said. “She’s a friend.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

I shrugged.

“I should have known that this assignment was trouble. She’s upstairs in the lab. Take my card and it’ll open the doors.” He tossed me his card key. “Before you go -- I sure hope you’re the mare she keeps mentioning when nopony else is looking. If not, you should be jealous.”

I hesitated at the door. I wanted to see Destiny. I knew it had to be her. But at the same time, if this was all my fault…

If it was all my fault, I needed to fix it, and that meant I needed her. I knocked before I could think twice about it. It slid open on the second knock, letting me into what had once been a gun range and was now repurposed with long tables and a lot of equipment that I didn’t recognize.

“Remember to decontaminate,” a voice said from across the room. “I don’t think SIVA can get airborne, but I don’t want to risk it.”

“I don’t think it’s a big concern in my case,” I said.

There was the very distinct sound of metal and very expensive glassware falling to the ground and shattering. A crimson glow grew brighter, and a very familiar blue helmet crested over the rows of equipment.

“Chamomile?!” Destiny asked, shocked. “I thought-- You--”

“Hey,” I said, my voice wavering.

She jetted over to me, knocking into my forehead and just staying there. It took a second for me to realize this was as close as she could come to a hug with no body. I put a hoof around her.

“What the buck happened? Where have you been?” she asked.

“It’s been a long week,” I said. “Can I sit down before I start?”

She led me over to a chair, and I explained everything I remembered, from the first time I woke up in the morgue to getting killed again and ending up finding my own lead on her. If I skipped all the parts where I did something stupid, it wasn’t a very long story, but it was mostly me going around in circles and being tricked by ponies that were smarter than me.

“So you’ve only been up and around for a few days?” Destiny asked.

“Call it a week,” I said. “It’s been hectic, even if I was dead for half of it. Can you tell me what I missed?”

Destiny bobbed in a quick nod. “After you were… mugged…”

“And shoved out an airlock. I’m still traumatized, just to be clear.”

“Right. That.” She sounded like she wanted to avoid the topic even more than I did. “I ended up in a cage and sold off to the highest bidder. That ended up being the local head of security. I refused to cooperate with him, naturally.”

“So how did his best friend end up with my armor?” I asked.

“Since you’re here, you must know the truth about the riots,” Destiny said. “There was a SIVA outbreak. It started with isolated attacks, and they all got blamed on a single killer. It was easier to believe. One mad pony, probably from the last group of refugees, made more sense than multiple spree killers.”

“He must have been real busy to just be one pony.”

“Yeah. One pony turned into packs of infected, barricades, the whole sector being cut off… they wrapped some story around it to keep ponies from panicking. When I realized what was happening, I had to start helping. Even if I didn’t like the ponies involved, I couldn’t do nothing.”

“That explains why you’re trying to find a cure, not why my armor--”

“Sentinel is infected,” Destiny interrupted. “He got attacked. His second in command turned, cut him up, and I stuck him in the armor to stabilize him.”

“He betrayed his second in command. Deep Blue wasn’t going to go along with the plan to turn organized crime into a branch of the local police department.”

“Going to be deeply honest here,” Destiny said. “I don’t care at all about the local politics. If they want to hold an election with a knife fight, more power to them. I just want to make sure my invention doesn’t kill them. My invention which, by the way, is out of control almost certainly because of you!”

I winced at that. Also at the tug on my ear. Destiny was pulling harder than she needed to.

“Stop it!” I yelped. “Those are like the only parts of my body that are still sensitive!”

“I’ll stop when we fix this. I’ve been trying to find a cure. The best I’ve been able to do is get a production line for Enferon and find a way to put down a few suffering ponies for good.” Destiny floated over to one of the lab tables. “Right after we see a shining example of what SIVA can do, there’s this!”

She threw a flask across the room.

“Damnit,” she mumbled. “That was the last of my diethyl ether.”

“Sorry,” I said quietly.

“I know you’re sorry,” Destiny said glumly. “You’re always sorry. I’m always sorry. We go from place to place finding things to be sorry about, and buck me if we don’t find a lot of them.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, wiping my eyes. “Sorry. The Enferon really messed up my sinuses. Stuff is like tear gas.”

“It’s like tear gas for infected ponies,” Destiny agreed. “Like you.”

“So are you behind the gillwater stuff too?” I asked.

“I didn’t invent it, if that’s what you’re asking. I did suggest using the distilleries to mass-produce Enferon as a stop-gap measure.”

“What about the sedatives and the other drugs?” I asked.

“...What?”

“It was something called Project H, which I messed up. Really badly. I don’t feel sorry about that. So what’s the plan?”

Destiny settled down on the table. “Bold of you to assume I have a grand plan. I still haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to cure the infected.”

“I have an idea,” I suggested. “The Valkyrie.”

“The weapon Kulaas gave us?” Destiny asked.

“It fights SIVA, right? What if we inject it into ponies?”

“I have… no idea what that would do to them.”

“I thought you were running a lab here. Why not do some experiments?”

“I’d need a test subject. A living one, and healthy enough that a half-baked treatment won’t kill them right away. I’m not going to infect some random pony just to see if I can cure them, you’re… you, and the infected outside aren’t going to cooperate.”

A heavy hoof pounded at the lab door.

I looked at Destiny, then carefully trotted over to it, my flechette gun at the ready. It was probably the worst weapon for fighting the infected. Went right through armor without causing a lot of tissue damage when what I really wanted was something that’d cause massive tissue damage. Say, a grenade launcher.

Destiny popped the door open.

The wounded Security pony stumbled in. Lieutenant Brownie coughed, clutching his side, and looked up at the floating helmet.

“Doc? Things aren’t looking good down there. I don’t know if she told you this yet, but we lost most of the security team. The infected are getting more and more active. It’s like something woke all of them up at once!”

Destiny turned to face me.

“If something’s happening, I’m not doing it on purpose,” I swore. She flew over to the bench and grabbed a tool like a magic wand with a power lead coming out of the back end and leading to a battery, waving it over my body.

It crackled and squealed when it got close to me.

“Your near-field transmission is going crazy,” Destiny said. “It was never this bad before! Not even when the infection was almost killing you!”

I swallowed. “So the zombies are all going crazy because of me?”

“Your cortical node is the only thing with authority anywhere on the local network. It’s the only explanation. If we can find a way to give commands, maybe we can use this to our advantage! We could get them all under control, maybe even reverse the damage!”

“Doc, before you get too carried away,” Brownie groaned. “I could really use some help here. I used the spray like you said, but…”

He collapsed forward. I barely caught him before he hit the floor. The stallion’s hoof fell away from his side, and I could see something peeking out around the edges of the rough bandage work I’d done. Pulsing green tubes, only as thick as hairs.

“That’s not good,” Destiny mumbled.

“You wanted a test subject,” I said. “I think you just got one.”

Chapter 77: The Party's Over Now

“How are you doing in there?” Destiny asked, the speaker echoing in the next room. Lieutenant Brownie was lying on a diagnostic bed, a thin metal ring slowly rotating around him while it worked its way from the top of the bed to the foot.

“I don’t know what was in that shot, but I feel just fine,” the stallion said, trying to hold back a giggle.

“It was a double dose of Med-X,” Destiny said. “Let me know if you start to feel serious discomfort.”

“Will do,” the Lieutenant said, saluting.

“And don’t move!” Destiny warned. “We need a clean scan.”

“Sorry,” he said, getting back into position. Destiny switched off the microphone and sighed, looking over at me. “At least I can get a decent CAT scan on him. If I take them at intervals I can get an idea of how quickly SIVA is spreading.”

“Do you need to scan me?” I asked. I’d been sitting at the back, watching the screens and not really knowing what I was looking at. I’d seen plenty of books on biology but actually interpreting slices of a pony, all slightly blurry and out of focus unlike the clean specimens in the medical journals.

“I have no idea how I’d do that at this point,” Destiny said, not even looking back at me. “X-rays are out. The subdermal weave below your skin has enough heavy elements to make that useless. A PET scan has the same problem. And an MRI… I don’t even want to think about what that could do to you right now. For all I know it could rip your joints apart!”

“Oh,” I said, trying not to get sick at the thought. “What about, you know. Magic?”

“I don’t know any good diagnostic spells,” Destiny admitted. She swung around to look at me. “In theory, we could use the SIVA itself to self-report. Have you had any luck on your end?”

“Well…” I looked over at the table Destiny had given me. It was in another isolation room, separated by a pane of thick composite glass strong enough to keep an ocean at bay. Inside, lengths of slowly-pulsing plastic and metal tubing lay on the table like a horrible terrarium. “I tried getting the SIVA to listen to me, and I had some limited success.”

“Limited is better than zero.”

“I can get it to make simple stuff like flechettes for my gun.” I scratched my head. “It takes a while, though, and I can’t make it stop growing. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong there. I should be able to order it to just… not do anything!”

“It’s hard to say. Most of the repairs SIVA has made to you were done while you were incapacitated.” That was a very polite way for her to remind me how often I’d been beaten into unconsciousness. “One of the biggest problems with SIVA is the prospect of mutation. The micromachines are small enough and replicate quickly enough that they’re subject to a lot of the same pressures and responses of any true microorganism. You’ve been infected by no less than three separate varietals of SIVA, so we can’t even assume your local biome is the same as any of the base strains.”

“So that’s a fancy way of telling me I’m a walking plague.”

“I’d love to reassure you otherwise but it wouldn’t seem authentic considering what happened to this city.”

I sighed. “What about the Valkyrie?”

“The data for it is stored in the armor’s main database. We can’t recreate it without the diagrams.”

“Great,” I mumbled, kicking the wall. In the exam room, Lieutenant Brownie groaned and twitched. Destiny turned back to the monitors, scrolled through some settings, and slumped.

“You can’t stay, either,” she said. “You might not be able to make the SIVA stop growing, but your presence makes it worse. It must be responding to you on a subconscious level. When you got frustrated and kicked that wall, it made the growth inside the Lieutenant spike.”

“Can’t stay here, can’t go home,” I mumbled. “I just found you and I’ve got to leave again?”

“This time we can stay in touch. I’ve got an encrypted radio channel. Even Marshall Law won’t be able to listen in.”

I nodded, still feeling glum. “Better than nothing. I need somepony smarter than I am to double-check what I do. I keep having these flashes like… waking dreams.”

“Really?” Destiny tilted to one side. “Interesting. Are they my memories?”

“Not unless you’re a hippogriff teenager and you never told me.”

“So it’s not my implant? It must have something to do with SIVA… or brain damage.”

“Brain damage was one of my guesses, too,” I admitted.

“I’ll look into it. First, we need to get you out of the sector. Thankfully, I know exactly how to do that.”

“Yeah,” I said, scratching at my bandaged hoof. “The radroaches were carrying some kind of disease. I’m going to get some cream to try and clear it up.”

I was wearing Stable Security barding. There had been enough sets lying around that I’d been able to put together a full uniform without much blood on it. The itching was real, though. There’d been traces of Enferon on everything. It kept the SIVA zombies away but made me feel like itching powder had been poured down my collar.

“We got swarmed by them too,” the security pony mumbled, looking worried. “I got bitten twice. How bad is it?”

“Have you broken out in hives yet?” I asked. He shook his head. “What about shortness of breath, fatigue, or nausea?”

“I’ve felt tired and nauseous!” one of the other ponies put in.

“You should get checked out, just in case,” I said. “I’ve got these nasty spots like the ponypox. You wanna see?” I reached for the edge of the bandage.

“That’s okay, we don’t need to see it,” the officer said, stopping me. He’d started reaching for my hoof and stopped, not wanting to actually touch me. “Get cleared by medical before you report back on duty.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, saluting and walking away.

“I told you it would work,” Destiny said over the radio.

“I thought he’d recognize that I wasn’t one of his team,” I whispered. “He didn’t even ask me for my name!”

“There have been a lot of new faces since the outbreak. He probably hasn’t even been on the force all that long.”

“He was also afraid I’d infect him with something.”

“The best lies are based on the truth. So what are you going to do now?”

“First I’m going to buy some groceries. Then… I’m going to try and figure out how to get our armor back.”

Manzana wasn’t there when I got back to her apartment. I was halfway through putting the food away when somepony cleared their throat behind me. I jerked up in surprise, slammed my head on a shelf, and swore loudly.

“Looks like the rumors of your death are greatly exaggerated, eh lass?”

I spun around, and the flechette gun barked. Chum Buddy threw himself to the floor, darts barely missing him when he dove for cover.

“Are you trying to kill me on purpose or did I piss you off without knowing it?!” he yelped.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, letting go of the trigger. I looked past him at the damage. “Buck. I hope she doesn’t notice holes in her wall…”

Chum Buddy glanced back, shaking his head. “Better than holes in me.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, trying to take control of the situation a few moments too late. Maybe he’d mistake my accident as a warning shot even though I’d apologized. “Did Fabula send you?!”

“No! I saw you walking down the street and followed you,” he said. “I was supposed to be staking out this nice little flower shop to pick somethin’ pleasant out for Quiet, but I had to know just why you were comin’ back from the dead, and in a uniform like that!”

“I’m tougher than I look,” I said. “So are you working with her?”

“Am I working with the leader of the guild I belong to?” Chum Buddy asked slowly.

I growled, annoyed. “I mean, are you part of her little conspiracy to work with Stable Security?! Because if I find out you knew about this bucking mess with her and Sentinel and everything else--”

“Slow down, lass,” Chum Buddy pled, sitting back and holding up his hooves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sentinel’s real name is Shore Leave,” I said. “Does that give you any hints?”

I saw Chum Buddy’s expression twist through confusion to disbelief to several flavors of shock before coming back to calm and composed. “That’s a tall tale for a little pony. Fabula said you got killed bucking up the Marshall Law thing.”

“She’s telling half of the truth. She’s the one who made sure it went bad. They’re all working together, and she tipped them off to make it nice and clean.”

“Should have suspected something when she spoke well of you at the wake, but I thought she was just being polite and not speaking ill of the dead no matter how clumsy and dangerous they are. No offense.”

“I’m clumsy and dangerous, I can cop to that.”

“And the uniform?” Chum Buddy asked.

“It’s a very clever disguise.”

“I suppose it at least keeps some ponies from bothering you,” he admitted. “Let’s say I mostly believe you. I still need some proof. Right now what it looks like is you were with Security all along and faked your death. It’s more plausible than Fabula, the leader of the fishin’ Guild itself, being with the opposition all along.”

“You’re right,” I conceded.

“Lucky for you, I got some spare time and I want to know the facts myself. Think you’re up for a little breaking and entering?”

“She lives here?” I asked, looking up at the tower. It rose at least two dozen stories above the armored glass of the Promenade’s street. It was mostly metal, glass and brass and stainless steel, with narrow pressure-proof windows and a facade like an old-world bank. It looked like money and power.

“Let it never be said that the Guild does not make good money for ponies that follow the rules,” Chum Buddy said. “This is one of the safest places in Seaquestria. There’s never been a theft, burglary, or murder here. Fabula always says that organized crime means you keep it away from where you live.”

“Great,” I said. “So what are we doing, going outside and breaking through a window?”

“Don’t be daft. That’d flood the whole place, and probably destroy any evidence you actually want to find. There aren’t even any entrances above this level. We’ll have to walk in the front door like a couple of respectable ponies.”

I grunted in annoyance.

“Oh sure, now you want to swim,” Chum Buddy joked. “Come on, girl. I’m putting up with you wearing that uniform, you can at least try not to look like a thug with a badge pinned to your chest and stuffed into riot gear.”

“Wouldn’t that just sell the disguise more?” I asked.

“Point taken. Smarter than you look, lass. Almost like a crook!”

Chum Buddy smirked and walked up to the ornate front doors. A pony in a uniform stood there. It had probably once been fairly modest, just a suit and hat, but over time and years it had gained medals and touches meant to radiate authority and show off the worth of those whose doorsteps the pony guarded.

He held up a hoof. “Residents only,” he said.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Chum Buddy asked. He held out his hoof for the doorpony to shake. The pony frowned and looked down at his hoof when they came apart. He was holding a few shells.

“Is this supposed to be a bribe?” the pony asked.

“You can consider it a tip for good service,” Chum Buddy corrected. “Now, if you’ll excuse me--”

He tried to step around the pony, and the guard stopped him again.

“Nope,” he said, pocketing the clams. “This door doesn’t open up for bribes. Authorized ponies only.”

“You can’t say that after you take my money!” Chum Buddy hissed. “It’s impolite!”

“You can consider it a tax for being an idiot and trying to get me fired,” the pony said mockingly. “Get out of here before I call Stable Security and have you taken away to some deep dark hole in the ground. Or maybe I should just tell Fabula directly. I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t--” Chum Buddy groaned.

“In fact, there’s somepony right there,” the doorpony said, waving to me. “Hey, officer!”

I pointed to myself, confused for a moment. He nodded and I shrugged, walking over.

“Can I help you?” I asked. I adjusted my borrowed uniform. It still itched a little, but I was starting to really feel in-character. It still didn’t fit as well as one of the fancy Enclave uniforms I’d gotten from Polar Orbit ages ago, but buck knows where those things had gotten to.

“Yeah. I need this guy trespassed,” the stallion said, motioning to Chum Buddy. “It might help him get the message if you take him up and down some stairs on the way to the station and make sure he’s a little clumsy--”

“Sir, I need you to calm down!” I said more loudly.

“What?” the doorpony’s expression soured. “What are you--”

“Sir, that kind of language is inappropriate!” I bellowed. “I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the station with me!”

“I am not leaving my post! What’s your badge number? You’re obviously new!”

“This is your last chance to cooperate,” I said.

He poked me in the chest, his hoof pressing into the padded stab-resistant vest. “I’ll have your badge by the end of the day. When your superiors hear about this--”

I grabbed his hoof before he could finish the sentence and just held it in place. He tried to move and blinked in surprise when he couldn’t. He planted his other hooves more firmly and used his body weight. I just let him struggle, not even straining.

“How’s this working out for you?” I whispered, twisting his fetlock a little. I heard his elbow pop. He winced and looked over at Chum Buddy like he’d find support there.

“Sorry,” the unicorn said with a shrug. “I don’t want to get involved in legitimate police activity.”

“Let me go!” the doorpony yelped. I twisted just a little more. “I’m sorry!”

“You should have thought of that before you decided to resist arrest!” I yelled. The ponies watching us winced. They knew what was coming next.

Honestly, he was lucky I wasn’t really with Security. Sure, I put him face-down on the pavement and hit him a few times before dragging him away in cuffs, but he still had all his teeth when I left him under a few trashbags in the nearest alleyway. As long as he got a decent shower he’d be as good as new once the bruises went away.

“Do you solve all your problems with violence?” Chum Buddy asked.

I held the door open for him, letting him inside and following him in. “Have you ever successfully bribed a pony and gotten what you wanted from them?”

He scowled at me, pretending to be annoyed. He tapped the button for the elevator. “Let’s just get in and out of here before Fabula knows anypony’s onto her.”

“She has this whole floor to herself?” I trotted slowly on plush carpets, the kind that hadn’t been made since the war. These were bright and colorful and not even a little musty despite being at the bottom of the ocean. That meant the floor alone represented more material wealth than I’d ever had in my life.

“Aye,” Chum said. “I’ve only been here once before.”

I raised an eyebrow. Chum Buddy looked over at me, and I wiggled my other eyebrow in a suggestive way.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked. “You’ve got a twitch.”

“I was trying to subtly imply that you and Fabula, you know.”

“Oy! Never do that with your boss,” Chum Buddy warned. “It always ends badly. Course, saying no is also a bad idea. Really, either way sounds like you’d get put in the corner. Point is, I was here delivering packages.”

“What kind of package--”

Chum Buddy sighed. “I know you’re not into her, so don’t imply she’s my type either. Maybe I like stallions, eh? You don’t know!”

“Whatever. So what are we looking for?”

“She’s got an intelligence network everywhere,” Chum Buddy said. “She must have some kind of files. Look for a terminal. If we’re really lucky, she might have something on paper. It probably won’t be out in the open.”

“Right.” I nodded and opened a cabinet, finding a selection of delicate glass bottles. I did the responsible thing and went through it in detail, looking for secret files and decent vodka.

“Chamomile, it’s probably not in her liquor cabinet.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were a thief. I thought you might enjoy stealing some stuff while we were breaking into this place,” I said. I took two bottles out along with some brandy, but left her the scotch. One sniff told me that stuff was a little more earthy and peaty and woody than I liked. “Besides, this is medication. I’m a little traumatized after being killed again.”

Chum Buddy rolled his eyes and walked over to the next room, trying to ignore me. I knew I wasn’t likely to actually find anything secret, but that was half the reason I brought him. I busied myself staying out of the way and eating the snacks from her cupboards. I was halfway through a bag of kale chips and smacking my lips, trying to decide if I liked the flavor, when he reappeared.

“If you’re just about done, I think I might have something,” Chum Buddy said. He waved for me to follow him. He led me to a wall. “What do you see here?”

“A bookcase?” I shrugged. I knew that wasn’t going to be the only thing, so I looked closer. “It’s built flush to the wall. Perfectly flush.”

“Aye. And if you look at the carpet…”

I looked down. There was a semi-circle where the carpet was brushed to the side. “I get it. This is a door.”

I grabbed the edge of the bookcase and pulled. It didn’t move.

“It’s got some kind of secret catch,” Chum Buddy said. He started tugging at books, pulling them off the bookcase and stacking them behind us. “It’ll only take a moment--”

I tapped the wall next to the bookcase. It sounded like hollow plaster and drywall. This seemed like another problem that could be solved with violence. I lowered my head and charged, smashing through the thin wall and into the space beyond in a cloud of gypsum dust.

A moment later, the bookcase clicked and opened on a hidden hinge. Chum Buddy stepped through the secret door and stood next to me, glaring.

“Really?” he asked. “You couldn’t wait one minute for me to get it open?”

“Which one of us got here first?” I asked.

“You realize that if you left her drinks alone, didn’t eat all her snacks, and let me pop this door open, there’d be a good chance Fabula wouldn’t ever know we were even here?” Chum Buddy asked. “Now she’s going to know the second she walks in that somepony tossed the place!”

“She’s going to know either way,” I said. “The doorpony can give her a positive ID that you bribed him to get in.”

“That’s…” Chum Buddy scowled. “A better point than I wanted you to make.”

“Sometimes my own brilliance astounds me,” I said sarcastically. “So where does this go?” I looked around. The room was bigger than Manzana’s whole apartment, but with Fabula using the entire floor it would have been easy to miss. I squinted into the gloom and felt around on the wall until I felt a toggle.

A dozen screens burst into light, the entire wall a circle of monitors around a chair littered with cups of instant noodles and empty bottles of Sparkle-cola.

“Look at this,” Chum Buddy said breathlessly. “These are all feeds from security cameras!”

He found a keyboard and brushed papers off of it, tapping a few keys. The feed on one of the screens zoomed and moved.

“She must have been watching everypony in Seaquestria,” I said. “She’s even got cameras in the Dark Sector.”

“Must be old. Not much reason to look in there now,” Chum Buddy mumbled. “We don’t even go looting there for salvage.”

“Good. It’s too dangerous.” I found one screen that wasn’t just a camera feed. Instead, it was asking for a Stable-tec login. I held my hoof to my ear.

“Destiny, you there?” I asked.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she replied. “Good news! Once you left, the infection on Lieutenant Brownie really slowed down. I think as long as you keep your distance I can keep his infection under control with just Enferon while I look for a permanent solution.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Can you help me out with hacking a terminal?”

“Is this a matter of life or death?”

“Maybe.”

“Fine. Start by holding down the Home and F12 keys…”

She walked me through the steps, getting increasingly frustrated when I didn’t describe what was on the screen well enough for her. Eventually, with a little trial and error and one emergency reboot before security could lock the terminal permanently, I was in.

“Look at that,” Chum Buddy said, reading over my shoulder. “That explains what the rest of this is. She’s storing a lot of footage.”

“Yeah she is,” I said quietly. “If we’re lucky, maybe even the right footage. I need the dates of the riot in the Dark Sector. I think I know what to look for.”

Deep Blue was a smaller pony than I’d expected. Sentinel, or really Shore Leave, stood a head taller than him. Deep Blue looked like the kind of pony I’d have bullied back in school.

“It’s a good deal,” Shore Leave said. “There’s going to be a big crackdown after this. We can either get stomped on, or we can do the stomping. I know which side I want to be on.”

He winced, touching his face. A bandage was wrapped around his neck and head, covering one eye.

The three of them, Shore Leave, Deep Blue, and Fabula, were together in what must have been some kind of cafe. I couldn’t make out much through the feed, which was scratchy and blurry, but the screams and fire outside were clear. It must have been the middle of the Riots.

“Are you okay?” Fabula asked.

“That damn crazy pony got me good,” Shore Leave rumbled.

“They’re not the only crazy ponies down here,” Deep Blue countered. “Accepting that deal from Marshall Law is insane! What he’s really asking is for us to turn stool pigeon on everypony who trusts us!”

“Do we have a choice?” Fabula asked. She shuffled her deck, dealing a few cards onto the table. “They know our names. They know our faces. If we don’t agree, others will be more opportunistic. We’ll only be offering ourselves up as the first against the wall.”

“See? She knows,” Shore Leave nodded to Fabula. “Besides, think of the benefits. Kickbacks. Jobs with no police investigation. No more worrying about raids. And all we have to do is treat them like any other client.”

“This is different,” Deep Blue said. “It’s not a client, it’s treason!”

Shore Leave stepped over to Fabula and looked down at her cards. She nodded.

He nodded back, turned, and shot, firing his air rifle into Deep Blue, then trotted over and fired a few more times into his head while the pony was lying on the floor, gurgling for breath.

“Guess there’s no honor among thieves after all,” Shore Leave said mildly. “Fabula, I’m assuming you’re smarter than him.”

“I’m loyal to money and power,” Fabula chuckled.

“We’ll have plenty of both. Come on. We’ll meet with Marshall Law and tell him we accept his deal. We’ll need to come up with a good story. And get some bucking medical supplies. This scratch is starting to really hurt.”

Fabula put her cards away and glanced up at the camera before helping Shore Leave out, leaving Deep Blue’s body where it lay.

“So that’s what we found,” Chum Buddy said, when the recording finished. The Cantina had gone silent, even the live band stopping their performance at the show. It was only a small screen, a terminal on a cart wheeled out into the bar, but everypony had clustered around it.

“It can’t be true,” Quiet whispered. She was already crying. “Shore Leave wouldn’t do that! He was-- He was--!”

“He’s Sentinel now,” I said. I tilted my head up and let them see the scar on my neck from where he’d slit my throat. “He did his best to put me down for good. Now that you all know this, you’re not safe either.”

“I was happier not knowing,” Quiet whispered.

“You were being used as a hostage,” Chum Buddy said. “They wanted to force your father to vote a certain way, and he did. I don’t fancy knowing what they’re plotting on doing with you now that you’re not useful. They might just ship you home, or keep you until he pays a ransom.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The point is, all of you have been betrayed. And that pony in the back is trying to slip out before I notice him!”

Heads turned, and everypony looked over at an earth pony who was nearly at the door, crawling low in the dark. Without me even having to ask, two ponies in Stable utility barding with the extra pockets I was learning to associate with the Guild grabbed him and dragged him in front of the crowd.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You were going to run to Fabula.”

“You don’t understand,” the pony whined. “You heard what they said! They’re right! If we don’t work with them, we’ll get stomped down! They’ll put us right on the front lines of Project H!”

“Project H?” Now that was interesting. “You know about Project H?”

“Only the basics,” he mumbled. “Fabula had me sabotage the Briney job when Chum Buddy went on it. The plan was to have the Dark Sector flooded and use sedated workers on gillwater to clean the place out. They wouldn’t run away or disobey orders.”

“That’s not the most evil plan possible,” Chum Buddy mumbled.

“Except with no cure, any workers going in and even getting a scratch would get infected by SIVA,” I said. Everypony looked at me. I shook my head. “It’s a long story. It’s bad stuff, you don’t want to get infected. Basically a death sentence, but you turn into a crazy, rioting pony first.”

“Is that what happened during the riots?” somepony asked.

“Where did it come from?” asked another.

“Let’s, uh, let’s not get bogged down in details,” I warned. “We need to focus. Fabula is going to know something’s wrong really fast. Even if there aren’t any other spies here, she’s not stupid.”

“I have to go home,” Quiet Seascape said.

I looked over at her. She was wringing her talons, obviously nervous.

“It’s my dad,” she explained, her tone hesitant like she was talking about throwing herself onto a sword. “We can’t do much here, but he can. If I tell him what’s going on with Stable Security, he can do something about it.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“He can tell the royal family about it,” Quiet said. Everypony groaned. She looked around at the crowd, who had clearly and instantly lost confidence in the plan. “The Queen is a good person! She can put a stop to everything just by ordering it!”

“She’s a crabbin’ figurehead!” somepony in the back yelled.

“Just because she doesn’t use her power much and lets the Senate run things doesn’t mean she’s a bad ruler,” Quiet retorted. “Besides, she’s been really nice to me every time I met her.”

“Let’s call that plan A,” I said, holding up a hoof to the groans of everypony in the Cantina.

“Who died and made you the leader?” another pony yelled.

“If you’ve got a better plan, I’m all ears,” I said. “Exposing Fabula, Marshall Law, and Shore Leave--”

“Exposes all of us!” somepony groaned loudly.

“Yeah, it does,” I admitted. “So when we’re done here, everypony in this place should go to ground. Change your names, find somewhere else to sleep. It’s a good idea no matter if we win or lose. Me, I’m not smart enough to go into hiding, so I’m gonna work on plan B.”

“We’ve got a plan B?” Chum Buddy asked.

“Plan B is always running directly at the enemy with a knife,” I said. “I just need a little more nuance this time so I don’t end up dead again.”

My radio crackled. “Chamomile, we’ve got an emergency,” Destiny said.

I held up a hoof for Chum Buddy to wait a moment and tapped my radio. “How big is the emergency?” I asked. “I can only deal with one at a time.”

“I’d rate this particular emergency in terms of megatons,” Destiny reported. “I’ve been ordered to evacuate. They’re abandoning plans to cure and salvage this city sector, and they’re going with plan B.”

“Which is… to run directly at the enemy with a knife?” I asked. Chum Buddy raised an eyebrow. I shrugged.

“Yes, except in this case the knife is a megaspell! For some reason they think radroaches escaped containment and might spread SIVA across the rest of the city! They won’t listen to reason!”

“Damnit,” I mumbled. “Can you delay it?”

“A few hours at most. They want to move the equipment we brought in.”

I bit my lip, trying to decide if it was better to just let them blow the Dark Sector into a crater or not. It’d nearly cover up my mistakes. It would also kill Stars knew how many ponies that could be saved if we found a way to cure them instead of vaporizing them.

“Chamomile, I know what you’re thinking,” Destiny said quietly. “Blowing this place up with a megaspell is only going to let the problem spread unseen, and it’s going to be worse than ever within a year. I haven’t reported it, but--”

“Infected fish?” I asked, remembering one of the visions I’d had.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“It was just a really good guess,” I sighed. “Quiet, you need to get in touch with your dad right away. Destiny… I hope you’ve got a plan for stopping the megaspell.”

“I hacked into the Stable database. I know where the launch system is housed. You need to destroy something called the Nightingale. Think you’re up for breaking into a military base and smashing some stuff?”

Chapter 78: Night and Day

I flashed my badge when I stepped on the sea wagon, and the pony at the controls barely even glanced at it, just nodding back to the seats behind him, half of them already filled with ponies. I returned the nod with the same casual indifference and trotted down the aisle, settling into a seat at random.

“Hey there,” the pony next to me said, offering me her hoof to shake. I stared at it for a moment, and her cheeks turned red. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she quickly snapped into a salute. “I apologize, sir!”

“It’s fine,” I said. It’s not like I was a real officer anyway. “I don’t think you have to salute while you’re sitting down.” The sea wagon jolted into movement, catching the guide wire above and puttering along through the water towards the next stop. Everypony on board was part of Security. Seemed like I was in the right place.

“Right!” the pony gasped. “Sorry. This is my first real assignment. I’m Carrot. I mean, I’m Officer Carrot Kimchi, sir!” She had a friendly grin and red freckles spread across her orange face. Sort of cute, even if she wasn’t my type.

Carrot had the pressed uniform and go-getter attitude I’d expect to see from an Enclave soldier back home, but that was largely because the military was just sort of parade duty unless you were in special forces. It was easy to keep a uniform pressed if you didn’t have to wrestle a monster or get shot at.

“Relax,” I said. Her energy was making me nervous. “I’m a fresh transfer too.”

“Is that a PipBuck?” Carrot asked. I looked down at my left foreleg. It was a refurbished model, with maybe half the functions broken, but it would work as a portable terminal. Nopony trusted me alone with computers, so I had to carry along a helper. “I wish I had one. There aren’t enough to go around in the Stable.”

“I’m still getting used to it,” I told her. “It’s sort of clunky.”

She looked me over in the gloom of the transport’s cabin. “Are you a refugee from the surface? Or, um, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t--”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Yes, I am.” It was a good excuse for not knowing basic facts or names. “Why do you ask?”

She looked around the cabin like she was worried one of the other officers might be listening in, then leaned closer to speak quietly. “It’s really dangerous up there, right? How did you get those scars?”

“Most of them have boring stories,” I admitted.

“What about that one?” she pointed to my forehead.

“Shot at point-blank range,” I said. “Almost died.”

“What about that?” she pointed to my neck.

“Had my throat slit. That one was bad, too.”

“That one?” She poked at the edge of a scar on my chest. I tugged my collar down a little to show her the burn.

“Cloudship laser anti-missile system. Those things really pack a punch close-in.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “How did that even happen? An accident?”

“Nah, they were trying to blast me off the hull,” I said. “Somepony convinced me I’d be able to take out a Raptor one-on-one as long as I moved quickly enough.”

“I guess it didn’t end well for you,” she said sympathetically.

“It went worse for the Raptor. I think it crashed down somewhere outside Dark Harbor.”

Carrot’s eyes were wide, in awe at a story I was, admittedly, abridging heavily in my favor. Almost all the damage to the ship had been done by Four in the Grandus, and that thing had been strong enough to mortally wound the Raptor just from Four getting annoyed.

I really missed Four. Even though she’d crushed my bones. I think Carrot saw something in my expression, because she cleared her throat.

“How many ponies have you killed?” she asked quietly. “I never killed anypony, but I heard it gets easier after the first time, and I know a Security officer needs to be ready at all times to protect the needs of the many, but…”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. I could feel the answer weighing down on me. It was worse than knowing the number right away. “I don’t even know how to count it. Too many. A lot of them, I didn’t kill myself but they died because I made mistakes.”

Carrot winced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “So what do you know about this assignment?”

She perked up at that. She looked like the type of pony to actually read every piece of paper they were given. Carrot cleared her throat and looked up, her eyes moving as she spoke like she was reliving the experience of reading something.

“The XAA-04 Nightingale is a prototype Assault Armor developed by a joint project between Seaquestria and Equestria’s Ministry of Awesome after the Battle of Stalliongrad. It was a project commanded by the Seaquestrian royal family to maintain Sovereignty against other nations with their own Megaspells, and was designed to serve as a mobile launch platform for a medium-range Megaspell to go around issues with developing a ballistic weapon that could survive launch from an underwater silo.”

I nodded and tried to play it off like I knew any of that. “Any idea what kind of megaspell it’s loaded with? I wasn’t briefed on it, but if it’s going to be deployed, I’d like to know what to expect.”

“Well…” Carrot frowned. “I’m not sure. It has to be Equestrian-designed, so it’s not a balefire weapon. Not that anypony would use a balefire weapon inside a populated city! You’d have to be crazy!”

I nodded in agreement with that.

“Equestria had a lot of different megaspells,” Carrot said. “In the beginning, they were single-use rituals, and it took years to turn them into a talisman-based weapon instead of a live casting. They experimented with everything from large-scale megaweather spells to solar storms to non-lethal sleep plagues.”

“I doubt we’ll be using a weather spell underwater,” I pointed out.

Carrot blushed furiously and saluted on instinct. “Of course, sir! You’re absolutely right! And a solar weapon wouldn’t reach these depths! It’s probably a basic megascale evocation effect! A giant fireball spell! It was the most common ‘canned’ megaspell!”

“It’s still insane to use it inside the city,” I mumbled.

“I’m worried about it too,” Carrot admitted. “But I’m sure our superiors know what they’re doing. They wouldn’t order us to deploy a weapon like that if it wasn’t absolutely needed.”

The transport jolted to a stop.

“Looks like we’re here,” Carrot said. “I can’t wait to see the Nightingale!” She giggled and held back a squeal like she was about to meet a pop idol. I raised an eyebrow. The mare blushed again and stopped, mortified. “I mean, um, this is a very important assignment and I’m going to do my best, sir!”

I stood up and helped Carrot to her hooves. “I know you will.” I grimaced, trying not to show how uneasy I was. “You seem like a good pony. Try not to get caught up in anything you’ll regret.”

She nodded, looking confused. I walked out of the transport while the rest of the ponies were getting their gear together. I hated being reminded that not everypony on the wrong side was a bad pony.

“Are you still there?” I asked quietly. I was leaning against the wall, just a little out of the way. Panels were pulled off the walls, wires and pipes run through bypasses, and tools were left everywhere when mechanics dashed from one spot to the next.

“I’m reading you loud and clear,” Destiny said, her voice crackling over the undersea radio.

“Security here is a joke,” I said. “They barely even looked at my papers. Is this what it was like during the war?"

“Chamomile, think about where you are,” Destiny said. “You’re a mile underwater. That’s a lot of security all on its own. It’s not like there are zebras around to worry about, and the criminal elements are all secretly working with the police anyway. Who do they even need to secure against? Monsters?”

“They did let one SIVA-infested monster pony in here already,” I noted.

“You don’t count. You came with paperwork. Is the PipBuck still okay?”

I looked down at it, tapping at the big buttons and dial. The screen flickered to life, showing a litany of error messages. I hadn’t been lying to Carrot when I said it was only half-working.

“As okay as it’s going to be, I guess,” I replied.

“We knew it wasn’t going to pick up your biometrics, and the inventory management and eyes-up sparkle weren’t working even before I wiped the database. Just tell me if the programs I loaded are still there.”

“I think so.” I selected one from the screen and went into it, the monochrome screen jittering and flickering a few times before coming back and showing scrolling text.

“Good. It’s a shotgun approach, but if you plug it in and just let the scripts run, it should eventually get through. In theory.”

I backed out and turned the screen off, not wanting to attract attention with the light. “I sure hope you’re right because my backup plan of picking up the megaspell with my bare hooves and running for it is objectively awful.”

I steadied myself, trying to look confident, then trotted into the hangar. The hallway let me out on a walkway overlooking the dock where the Nightingale was sitting in the water, half-submerged and looking as threatening and terrible as some kind of huge, prehistoric shark.

“Guess that’s it,” I mumbled. I trotted past a pony and returned the salute they snapped at me. “I can’t believe they were sitting on this for two hundred years.”

“They didn’t have a reason to get rid of it,” Destiny said quietly, her volume turned down low on the off-chance somepony might hear the buzzing earpiece. “No government likes giving up power. Your Enclave held onto the cloudship fleet to maintain their independence, you can’t blame Seaquestria for keeping their ace in the hole against the old world’s superpowers.”

“Yeah, you never know when you might need to really show some raiders who’s boss,” I agreed. I tried to look confident about walking up to two ponies tapping at a terminal with wires dangling over the water and into a panel on the side of the Assault Armor. The full shape of the thing was on screen, something like a smooth flying wedge with big manipulator claws hanging back along its bottom and movable wings equipped with hydrojet thrusters and launch tubes folded clamshell-like to the sides of the body.

“...Looks like we got it locked down,” one of the technicians said, a little purple hippogriff with a bobcut. She tabbed through to another screen just full of graphs, putting a pen in her mouth for a moment while shuffling papers.

“It’s quite a machine,” I said without preamble. “Have they loaded the megaspell yet?”

“Um…” the tech looked down at her papers. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“I’ll take it for a spin, then.” I spread my wings and flew over to the bow of the assault armor, looking around for a moment before finding the hatch release. A heavily-armored section popped open with a hiss of released air.

“Hey! Just what are you doing over there?!” the tech yelled. She motioned to the other pony with them, and the second pony ran off, going for the fire alarm.

I gave her a smile and tossed a clumsy salute before hopping in. I’d never actually been inside Assault Armor before, and I looked over the tight cockpit and strange controls with some confusion.

“Destiny, tell me you’ve got a user manual,” I said.

“Take that PipBuck off and plug it into a data port,” she said. I unhooked the thing from my foreleg and pulled the lead from the rear, connecting it to the armor’s systems. Monochrome screens flickered and flashed, booting through different systems.

The entire hangar rocked, and an alarm blared.

“Hull breach on deck ten, forward section!” somepony yelled. “We’ve got multiple incoming sleds!”

“Who’s attacking us?!” somepony else shouted.

“Flares in every direction! Get security deployed to the ridgeline!”

“Sounds like they’re busy,” I said. “Chum Buddy is right on time.”

There was a spark and a pop, and a tiny fleck of pain on my skin. I looked outside. Soldiers were starting to shoot at me. I raised a hoof to shield my eyes, and two more air rifle rounds hit my skin, just barely hard enough to make me bleed.

“How long is this going to take?” I asked. “We’re on a time limit here!”

“Less than a minute! You need to get on the controls.”

“Er…” I hesitated.

“Lay down on the bench, then put your hooves in the manipulator braces,” Destiny instructed. “According to the diagrams I’ve got, there should be grips at the ends for your hooves. Squeeze them twice.”

I settled down on the bench and pushed my hooves into what looked like big, padded boots. As soon as I squeezed the grips, all four inflated around my legs to lock them in place.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I asked.

“Probably. Let’s get you sealed up.” The hatch hissed closed, locking into place and leaving me in the dark, all four legs locked in place, with the only light coming from monochrome screens flickering through technical phrases I couldn’t begin to understand.

“Destiny!” I hissed, starting to feel claustrophobic.

“Main camera coming online,” Destiny said. Something whirred over my head, and a projector sprung to life, turning the bare metal of the hatch into a screen. It was blurry at first, then quickly snapped into focus, showing frantic ponies running around on walkways. “Sonar online.”

There was a massive ping, and the ponies closest to the Nightingale reeled back, folding their ears back and stumbling with sudden disorientation. A wireframe projection appeared over the camera view, showing the contours of the terrain even through the murky water.

“Let’s get out of here before they find a way to stop us!” I yelled. “How do I go?”

“Back legs! Press down with your hooves to go, lean one direction or the other to turn!”

That seemed intuitive enough. I kicked back, and the Nightingale surged into motion. On instinct, I tilted my legs, and the machine dove towards the bay exit. The bulkhead hatch leading out was clearly outlined in yellow, with flashing red lights probably related to the emergency I was causing. Power lines, data cables, and fuel pipes ripped away from ports, the Nightingale’s safety systems disconnecting them safely just before they ruptured.

“Front hooves for those big claws?” I guessed, flexing. The manipulator arms unfolded, and with the force-feedback from the boots, I could feel the slight resistance of the water. I experimentally squeezed, and the three-taloned grips moved along with me. “Nice.”

“You’re a natural,” Destiny said, with a tone indicating that she was distracted by managing some absurd number of subsystems on her own.

I reached out for the seam of the door and dug in, the clawed talons ripping right through the pressure door. It peeled like an orange. Not like one of those small oranges you can sort of peel in one go, but the other kind where it’s messy and you have to rip and tear at it and it comes off in chunks and eventually you get fed up and just eat it anyway and get some of the gross white part of the peel but you eat it anyway because you’d feel dumb spitting it out.

“I could get used to this!” I said. “Why didn’t Equestria ever mass-produce this kind of stuff?”

“The MWT was willing to spend a small fortune keeping each soldier alive, but Assault Armor costs a large fortune,” Destiny said. “Besides, most Assault Armor is dangerous to the pony wearing it. If there was one thing the Ministry hated, it was anything that would hurt the soldier using it.”

“Looks like you’re causing a ruckus over there!” Chum Buddy’s voice came over the radio.

“Thanks for the distraction,” I said.

“No worries,” he said. “A few empty sleds, some fireworks, and some real shots to keep their heads down. Get out of there fast. I don’t think they’ll be fooled for long.”

“Got it. Watch my back while I get this thing out of here.” The controls felt awkward and I was only nominally in real control. I’d probably need a college-level course to manage it without Destiny co-piloting remotely.

“I’m not letting you go anywhere!’ somepony shouted.

A single pony jetted past me on a sled, like a guppy swerving in front of a mako shark. Bubbles trailed from their rebreather as they struggled to get the armored Stable Security sled to come to a halt in my way, flashing lights and raising a rifle.

“You’re under arrest!’ they yelled.

“Officer Carrot Kimchi?” I asked, finally recognizing the voice.

She fired a warning shot past the Nightingale’s nose. “I don’t know why you’re trying to steal that machine, but it doesn’t belong to you! I’m bringing it back to where it belongs!”

“Stand down,” I said. “I didn’t come here to kill ponies.”

“You stole a megaspell! If you stop right now, I’ll go easy on you.”

“This megaspell was going to be aimed right at the ponies you’re in charge of protecting,” I said.

“My orders--”

I rolled my eyes. There had to be a way to get her to stand down. “The first duty of a soldier is to the ponies they serve. Being an officer means looking at the big picture!”

“Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!” Carrot yelped, saluting.

“She’s the enemy, you idiot!” somepony yelled over the open channel. The displays around me blared a warning, and I jerked myself to the side, the massive assault armor flexing one wing and jetting to the side with a blast of thrust. A torpedo slid through where I’d been, exploding against the seabed.

A team of ponies with armored wetsuits, sleds, and more combat experience than Carrot were coming down at us from above. My sonar pinged, and they lit up on the display, dropping in from above. Four ponies in suits that had to be military, not police, surrounded me.

“Good work distracting him, officer. We’ve got it from here,” the leader said. “Pony in the Nightingale, you are surrounded! Surrender immediately!”

I looked around, trying to figure out how to switch comm lines to get a private signal. “Come on… why did they design this so you need to press buttons blindly to do anything?”

“Switching to encrypted radio,” Destiny said. There was a sharp click and the white noise of the static around me changed its tone, like an instrument switching pitch.

“Thanks,” I said. “It was only a matter of time before I said something stupid.”

“If you just let them shoot you down, they’ll be able to recover the megaspell,” Destiny warned. “They won’t have the Nightingale’s hardware launch authorization, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how to short-circuit the bomb and make it go off anyway.”

“Got it,” I said. “What do we have for nonlethal weapons?”

“Bold of you to assume there are any. You’ve got some multi-launch torpedo tubes, the megaspell launcher, and that’s about it.”

“I’ll have to improvise,” I said. The ponies at my sides came at me at the same time in a pincer movement. With a kick, I sent the Nightingale jumping forward, hydrojet thrusters sending a hurricane of turbulence behind me. The leader of the team raised his torpedo launcher a moment too slowly, obviously not expecting the assault armor to move that quickly. I grabbed him with the clawed manipulators, ripping him off the sled he’d been riding on.

Trying to disarm him was like attempting to very delicately use scissors as a clamp, and it ended poorly. He screamed, and the launcher came off along with his entire leg. I swore in shock and alarm, and my flinch tossed him aside. The ponies behind me had scattered in my wake, thrown aside like leaves in the wind.

“I didn’t mean to do that!” I called out.

“You’re still on an encrypted channel,” Destiny pointed out.

“I know! Buck, I’m bad at this.” I forced the Nightingale into a tight turn. I accidentally pushed too hard at one of the controls, and a button clicked. A spray of bubbles exploded from the armor’s left wing, and a brace of torpedoes swam forward.

The armored ponies were still recovering from the sudden rip tide and didn’t have a chance to recover. One of the torpedoes went wide and hit rocks instead of ponies, which would have been great except it set off the others in a chain reaction, the explosions pulverizing the other three inside their armor. Blood leaked from the ruptured seams and water rushed in.

“What happened?” Destiny asked. “I can’t see what you’re doing.”

“Nothing, uh, nothing’s wrong,” I said quickly. “Just a minor weapon malfunction. Everything’s cool.”

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” Destiny guessed.

Carrot Kimchi swam up from where she’d been hiding, brandishing a diving knife. She wasn’t a particularly swift swimmer, and just got into my face and started stabbing, going for the edge of the hatch. It took me a moment to realize she might be able to get to the hatch controls and open it up when I didn’t even have a wetsuit, much less a rebreather.

“Get off me!” I yelped. I reached for her with a manipulator and just managed to smack it against the Nightingale’s hull, making the whole ship ring like a bell.

The sonar pinged, and Carrot flinched, stopping for a moment.

“Destiny, maximum power on the sonar!” I yelled.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Destiny said. There was a warning message on one of the screens around me, and the sonar erupted with a massive bass throb, blowing Carrot away, the pony shuddering and clutching her head. The wire outlines showed everything in fine, bright detail for a moment as the sonar wash rolled over them, then faded back to almost nothing, just basic shapes.

“I think that got her,” I said.

“That blew out the active sonar,” Destiny said. “You’re half-blind.”

“Let’s get the buck out of here before they figure that out,” I said. “Get Chum Buddy on the radio and let’s see where he’s planning on hiding this thing.”

The water around us turned from faint blue to black as we descended into the trench. A loud creak and pop sounded through the Nightingale’s hull, along with a long squeezing rattle as the weight of the ocean settled down onto it.

“How deep can this thing go?” I swallowed, watching gauges sweep towards the red.

“We need to get deep enough that it’s going to keep them off our tails,” Chum Buddy said. “Even the hippogriffs don’t come this deep. Most of them can’t handle the abyss. Besides, why come all the way down here when you could make ponies do it for you for some beads and trinkets?”

“Are you going to turn this into a metaphor about how the Enclave treats ponies on the surface?” I asked. The Nightingale’s hull creaked and strained. Water was getting in somewhere. I could just tell, sensing it like a boogeymare hiding under the bed.

“I’d never do such a thing,” Chum Buddy assured me. “Besides, the last thing you need is somepony complaining at you when you’re already doing something stupid trying to save a bunch of ponies.” I could just see him ahead, headlights shining through the darkness. One flickered out, and he swore. “In more important news, I think this sled has had it.”

I couldn’t make out fine details on the sensors. The walls around us were invisible except in the wireframe outline of the sonar reconstruction. “What’s wrong?”

“She took a glancing hit in that fight. Just a little crack, but…” I mentally filled in the shrug I couldn’t see. “Anyway, the main gear housing just went. Crushed like a tin can.”

“Is it safe for a pony to be out there?” I asked.

“There’s a reason I wore this hardsuit, and it’s not just because I wanted to look like a gillpony,” Chum Buddy said. “It’s rated for these depths. Think I can hitch a ride with you?”

“Climb on,” I said, extending a manipulator towards him. I saw the smaller lights of his suit in the gloom, moving just ahead of the slow refresh of the passive sonar. He clambered onto the claw and wrapped his hooves around it.

“That’s better. Maybe they’ll find the broken sled and think we bought it, eh?” Chum Buddy joked. His voice sounded strained. He was out there with even less protection than I had. I started moving, taking it slow so I wouldn’t shake him off. “We need to go a bit lower. Just keep on following the trench down and we should see it.”

“You never explained what ‘it’ is,” I reminded him.

“Eh…” he shifted his grip, trying to peer through the gloom ahead of us, the lights on his suit barely even reaching past the Nightingale’s bow. “Back when they were first building the Stable they started with a foundation. Somewhere to anchor everything else. They sank a ship, fixed it to the sea bed, and built outwards from there.”

“And they built it this deep… why?”

“Ah, well, for the most common reason of all,” Chum Buddy said. “Nopony in Seaquestria wanted to look at the fishin’ thing. They like the pretty towers, they appreciate the electricity, but, to paraphrase the griffons, they don’t like seeing how the sausage is made.”

I followed the canyon walls around another turn, and the platform came into view, an outpost in the inky darkness shining spotlights in every direction, more than half of them just pointed at the seabed. It looked like some kind of old warship, with tiny portholes and thick bulkheads. Thick pipes grew from every side of it and crawled up the canyon walls to the city above.

“There are ponies down there,” I realized, spotting them slowly walking along the bottom along the pipes.

“Aye,” Chum Buddy said quietly. “Gillponies. They don’t complain about the conditions, and they’re still just barely smart enough to fix leaks. They’re a bit like trained animals.”

I slowly puttered over them, watching one of the big, slow ponies using a rivet gun to fix a patch over a fitting between two pipes.

“Should we be worried about them?” I asked.

“Nah. They’re the only ones down here these days, and they aren’t going to report anything up the ladder. If we don’t bother them, they probably won’t even notice we’re here. Sad things, aren’t they? Left down here and forgotten about.”

“Is this another metaphor?” I asked.

Chum Buddy sighed. “Stars and garters, Chamomile, I’m just waxing poetic. It’s not all about you and how you treat other ponies. Now would you kindly dock this thing so I can stop hanging on like a barnacle?”

There were a couple gillponies shuffling around the moon pool when I pulled the Nightingale into port. We might as well have been invisible to them. I took a deep breath of fresh air the moment the claustrophobic canopy of the assault armor hissed open, and the stink of salt, old metal, and algae hit me in a tide of miasma.

“Still better than swimming around outside,” I decided. “You still with me, Chum?”

“Not entirely dead yet,” Chum Buddy joked. “Think you can get me over to dry land?”

“Best I can do is slightly damp land.” I carefully lifted the manipulator he was holding on to and helped him over to the deck around the pool, using the claws to clamp down on the edge and anchor the Nightingale in place.

While he was climbing out, I wiggled a little and made a whining sound that only somepony

“Hold on,” Destiny said. “I’m releasing the pressure cuffs.”

The airbags holding me securely in place let go with a soft hiss, and I pulled myself free of the machine. “That is not a fun experience,” I said. “I felt like my legs were going to fall asleep.”

“That’s what you get with a prototype,” Destiny noted. “How’s it feel being Seaquestria’s most wanted?”

“Feels a lot like I’ll be happier when I can find a hole to dump this megaspell into,” I said. “Think we could ditch it down here?”

“Bad idea,” Chum Buddy said. He pulled the helmet of his diving suit off and shook sweat from his mane. “Pressure could set it off at this depth, and even if it doesn’t, I don’t fancy a gillpony coming across it and smacking it with a wrench.”

“Would it do any damage if it did go off?” I asked.

“Not directly,” Destiny said. “It’s a relatively low-power megaspell, for whatever that’s worth. It’s only enough to burn a small city to the ground, not vaporize it entirely. I’d be worried about seaquakes. At worst, it could shake the city apart.”

“Fun,” I mumbled.

Chum Buddy laughed, and was cut off with a sharp cough, clutching his side and grimacing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, flying to his side.

“It’s nothing,” he lied. He gave me a strained smile. I should have known something was wrong. He leaned on the railing, trying to hide the wound.

“Come on, let me see,” I said. “I saw what the pressure did to your sled. It can’t have been good for you.”

“I’ll tap into the Nightingale’s external cameras,” Destiny said. “I might be able to walk you through some basic first aid.”

“It’s really not needed,” Chum said, starting to panic. I narrowed my eyes and grabbed his hoof. He was a unicorn, injured, and not in any shape to hoof-wrassle me. He looked away, like his wound was shameful.

“This is…” I hesitated. “What am I looking at?”

His hardsuit was ruptured, shrapnel or something else having torn into his side. I could see the unicorn’s coat, and that was where normality ended. Right under his skin was a layer of now-broken hexagonal scales, and where there should have been gore and blood were wires and blinking lights, plastic tubing and rubbery padding.

“This is SIVA,” I said, recognizing the style of technology, the quasi-biological structures and humming micromachines. Now that I was listening for it, I could feel the buzz of the near-field communications coming off him like an electric aura.

“What the buck?” Destiny gasped. “That’s impossible.”

“I can explain!” Chum Buddy said. “It’s not what you think.”

“You’d better start explaining fast,” Destiny said. “Chamomile, that’s my brother!”

Chapter 79: Memories of You

“It’s sort of a long story,” Chum Buddy, or rather, Karma Bray, said. He dropped the accent he’d been using. He winced and tried to settle down in front of the Nightingale, leaning against the bulkheads of the sunken engineering platform and wincing when he moved. He held up a hoof before we could make the obvious reply. “I know, I know. We’ve got plenty of time.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Destiny said. “It’s impossible!”

“Impossible is a strong word,” Karma replied. “Obviously, it all started when Chamomile got infected with SIVA. The strain inside her grew before her mother replaced me as the Exodus Blue’s SIVA core. That meant it contained a tiny bit of my will.”

I held up my transformed right hoof, the composite armor forming the chitinous plates sliding smoothly when I flexed it.

“Yeah, in there,” Karma sighed. “I couldn’t do anything to influence you at all, I couldn’t even control how the SIVA grew. I did manage to move your leg on my own a few times, but only for a second.”

“That was you?” I remembered a few times, my hoof had reacted on its own to intercept some danger I couldn’t move quickly enough to stop on my own.

“Yeah, but it was… sort of like a bad dream,” he explained. “Did you ever have one of those dreams where they’re almost lucid, but you can’t control your body properly? Like you’re stumbling around half-blind and numb inside the dream.”

“Sleep paralysis,” Destiny provided. “It’s common.”

“I’ve been having a lot of those dreams lately,” I said. “But it’s not my body.”

“Now you know how I felt,” Karma said with a shrug. “What you’re receiving are the memories and thoughts of ponies infected by SIVA. Just little bits transmitted back through the network. Almost a hive mind, but disorganized and confused.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here now,” Destiny said.

“I’m getting to that,” Karma said. “See, the more SIVA strains you were exposed to, the more tricks your own infection learned. The strain from the Exodus Green had learned a lot about biology, even if it was focused on making improvements. Like when all your bones were shattered.”

I winced at the memory. “Right. I got all those spikes going through me, like the raiders that the High Priest deliberately infected. They pinned my bones back together and I had to pick them out like really deep scabs.”

“Exactly. And from the Exodus White… your SIVA learned how to build a whole artificial pony. Like Raven.” He motioned to himself. “Which brings me to, ah, me, I guess. When you died, SIVA put you in a kind of cryptobiotic state. Like those zombies in the Dark Sector. It forced your body to move, you broke into the Stable somewhere, and SIVA tried to rebuild you.”

“And what, it built you?” Destiny prompted.

“Yes, actually. My memories and whatever else you want to call it, my will, my soul, a tiny scrap of my magic signature. They were stored holographically, with even the smallest part containing the whole structure at a reduced resolution. When her SIVA infection went wild, I got popped out.”

He moved to show his wound. Inside the hole piercing his side, only machines were visible.

“It’s not a real body,” Karma said quietly. “It’s just a fake. I don’t even know how long it’s going to last, especially hanging around you. When I woke up, you were already gone.”

“Somepony found my body and dropped me off at the morgue,” I said, finishing his story.

“Not exactly. Look, what happened wasn’t your fault. You were legally dead at the time.”

Fear washed over me. “Tell me,” I said. My throat felt dry.

Karma sighed. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. SIVA can’t make something out of nothing. To really fix you, it needed… raw material. Calories. Protein. You wandered off while this body was being built and SIVA forced you to… do what you needed.”

That got me to start dry-heaving. “No…”

“Sorry.”

“The Ripper murders they talked about,” I said. “The ones before the riots started…”

“Some of them were yours,” Karma confirmed. “Took me two months to track you down. I joined the Guild to get information, just like you did. I found you in the undercity, dropped a few EMP charges on you, and put you down. Then I dragged you to the morgue.”

“How did you know I wouldn’t just wake up as a zombie?” I asked.

“Come on, I am a scientist, you know,” Karma joked. “But seriously, I was able to get your cortical implant going again. That put your brain back in the loop.” He looked over at the Nightingale. “My sister might be your usual brain surgeon, but I’m pretty good at it myself!”

“Yeah, I guess you are,” Destiny mumbled.

“Destiny, I’m sorry about…” Karma trailed off. “Sorry isn’t enough. I don’t know what to say.”

“Why did you do it?” Destiny asked quietly. “Do you even know what happened?!”

“I know the ship crashed,” Karma said. “I know it was my fault. And you’ve been trying to clean up the mess ever since. I’m sorry.”

“The ship crashed because you decided you wanted to turn SIVA into a weapon and throw it at the zebras!” Destiny snapped.

“I hated them,” Karma agreed. He slumped, breathing heavily. “I hated them for everything they did. I hated how they killed Mom. I hated what they did to Equestria. It was easy to hate them, because everypony else did, too. Even you.”

Destiny didn’t reply to that. I watched the floating assault armor for a long few moments, still feeling queasy. “So what now?” I asked.

“Now I do what I can to try and make up for my mistakes,” Karma said. “Like I said, saying sorry isn’t enough. I have to do something to fix it, or it’s just words. We need to find a way to cure a bunch of ponies infected with SIVA.”

“I’ve been working on that for months,” Destiny said. “I haven’t gotten anywhere.”

“You didn’t have me, sis,” Karma replied. “I have the SIVA command codes. It won’t work on anypony Chamomile’s mom infected, but it should work fine down here. We could command SIVA to stop replicating. Deactivate it permanently.”

“It’s not enough,” Destiny said. “I thought of that already. It’s half a solution. The infected ponies are all gravely injured, and SIVA has been replicating inside them for weeks. If you just pull the plug, you’ll end up with ponies full of holes and half of their organs missing. At that point, it’s more humane to dose them with enferon and shoot them in the head.”

“What if you gave them healing potions?” I asked. “Those things can heal almost anything, right?”

“Can you get a healing potion to every pony in the Dark Sector? Can you do it within seconds of the SIVA deactivating?” Destiny asked.

“We’d have to catch them all, then do it one at a time,” I mumbled.

Karma shook his head. “Too slow. I’ve seen infected fish out there. They’re not really dangerous, most of them. They’re still going to end up spreading SIVA everywhere, and we’d never track them all down. We need a big wide-scale solution.”

“The only thing with kick like that is a megaspell,” I said.

“We just stole it to keep ponies from using it,” Destiny said. “Besides, a giant fireball isn’t going to solve the problem of making sure we get every fish in the sea.”

“Wait, maybe she’s on to something,” Karma said. He struggled back to his hooves, lurching over towards the Nightingale. “We stole the megaspell to save lives, maybe we can use it to do exactly that. You remember how these things were built, Destiny?”

“In general? Sure. A hardened talisman core surrounded by an incantation lens with a variable number of circles depending on the yield. Incantation lens is triggered, magic is compressed and focused into the core, and the megaspell goes off. Technically it was all state secrets but not very well-kept.”

“Right,” Karma agreed. “But if we switch out the core talisman, we can change the amplified spell!”

“That’s… vaguely within the realm of the possible,” Destiny admitted.

“We can make it do anything?” I asked.

“Almost anything.”

“The first megaspell ever used was a battlefield-wide healing effect,” Karma said. “It’s not only possible, it’s a solved problem. We just piggyback that on top of a SIVA stop signal. It’ll hit everypony in the city! Cure everypony in the dark sector, heal the holes SIVA leaves behind, and probably make some ponies in the local hospital very happy as a bonus.”

“It’s not that simple,” Destiny said. “We don’t know if it can work at all!”

“You’ve got Lieutenant Brownie there?” I asked.

“He’s infected. They wouldn’t let him evacuate. I wanted to stay with him and… well, they took the lab equipment, but they didn’t care if I stayed.”

“We can test it on him,” I said. “If it works, we’ve got a plan.”

Karma met my gaze and nodded. “It’ll work. You go relax for a bit. I’ll help my sister put together the right spell for the job.”

I sat on what had been the bridge of the sunken ship. The captain’s seat was big enough to fit me. I wondered if it had been made for a hippogriff, or if it had just been one-size-fits-all and overbuilt to make sure the officer had the biggest chair in the room. A gillpony slowly walked by the portholes, stopping to raise a wrench and tighten a bolt seemingly at random among the dozens holding the thick windows in place.

It was big, slow, dumb. Just stumbling around in the dark and trying to fix problems it couldn’t really understand anymore. Going by rote action and a half-remembered life before it had become more of a monster than a pony. I knew what that felt like.

“Fancy a drink?” Karma asked. He stepped onto the bridge holding a bottle of vodka. “I had this stored away for a rainy day.”

“Doesn’t rain much underwater,” I pointed out, motioning him over.

“Not unless something’s really gone wrong with the pressure fittings,” he agreed.

I took the bottle and popped it open, giving it back after a long gulp. It was decent vodka, as these things go, which meant it tasted less like rubbing alcohol and more like nothing at all.

“How are things with Destiny?”

Karma shrugged and motioned with the bottle. “I came to find you because otherwise I’d be drinking this whole thing alone. I don’t want to end up being an alcoholic.” He took a long drink, setting the bottle down between us and sitting next to me to look out at the sea.

“Can you even get drunk?” I asked.

“Can you?” he retorted.

“Of course I can. You should have seen me a little while back. I got blackout drunk and accidentally helped a terrorist assemble a bomb, then had to defuse it when I sobered up!”

“Good news, we could use some help with the bomb assembly ourselves,” Karma joked. “Destiny is double-checking the math herself. I don’t think she trusts me around a weapon of mass destruction. I can’t imagine why, I only got our whole family killed last time I didn’t listen to her…”

He grabbed the bottle and took another sip.

“Maybe if I can fix this one thing, she won’t hate me,” he mumbled.

I didn’t want to lie and say she didn’t hate him. It was still a pretty fresh wound for her, like being a ghost had taken her body and her ability to heal from emotional injury. “It might help if you reminded her about the good times. Destiny’s memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“Maybe,” Karma replied. It was the kind of dismissive agreement that meant he was already sure it wouldn’t work.

“I’ve got a sister,” I tried. Karma looked over at me. “Half-sister, I mean. I’m not sure how aware of that whole mess you were. She tried to kill me when we met for the first time. Cube is snippy, rude, arrogant, and I saw her straight-up murder a pony at one point.”

“Ah… before you go any further,” Karma coughed. “In this little comparison you’re drawing, is she more like me, or Destiny?”

“Everything I get involved with explodes violently, so you get to be me!” I gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder, but the second my hoof touched him, he winced and cringed. My eyes trailed down to the wound on his side.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Shouldn’t it be healing?” I asked.

“It takes a while,” Karma said. “SIVA wasn’t meant to build a whole pony from scratch. Wish I could use a healing potion, but we don’t have one and it wouldn’t do much for me.”

He started to stand up again and stumbled. I steadied him, and he gave me a little laugh.

“Guess Vodka still works a little,” he said. “I’m going to go check on Destiny again. You should think about getting a nap. And, uh…”

He’d made it to the doorway, leaning on it and looking down at the deck.

“Nah, never mind. Just try not to make cleaning up my mess your whole life.”

He waved to me, leaving before I could reply.

It was so hard to tell the time, these days. The whole sector was as dark as midnight, and the one time she’d tried to start a fire for a little warmth and light, it had almost burned down the apartment. She’d lost a good towel smothering the flames before they got out of hoof.

“How much water do we have?” she asked, looking over at her friend.

“I checked last time,” the other pony said. “You check. I don’t like going in there.”

“I don’t like it either,” she sighed, but her friend was right. It was her turn. She carefully walked across the apartment, going totally silent as she approached the bathroom. Like there was something waiting in there. She opened the door open, the hinges squeaking.

The vines had broken through the walls a few days ago. They were like big, thorny plants made of metal and plastic. Pipes in the walls had broken around them, dripping fresh water down into buckets she’d carefully placed to catch the slow drizzle. It wasn’t much, but it was keeping them alive.

She swapped out one half-full bucket for an empty one, carrying it back to the other room where she and her best friend were camping out, waiting for their parents to come back.

Time passed slowly, trying to find something to do or talk about or distract themselves between the moments of terror when something moved outside or thumped against the door. It had been a long time since her parents had left. She didn’t know how long.

They shared the water, peeled open one of the cans of fruit to share a small meal, and went back to the nest of blankets and pillows they’d made in the middle of the living room. She settled down next to her friend, holding onto her for company and warmth, trying to ignore the itching in her stomach. It had been getting worse. Maybe there was rust in the pipes. And she was just starting to feel so hungry…

Somepony nudged me.

I groaned, rolling over, trying to get comfortable. “Five more minutes,” I mumbled.

The nudge came back, stronger, and with a sound like an annoyed dolphin.

I finally opened my bleary eyes, squinting up at a pony in a diving suit. The gillpony pushed me again, pawing at me with a hoof like a confused animal.

“I’m moving, I’m moving,” I sighed, stretching and trying to shake myself out of the dream. Dreaming about going to sleep wasn’t nearly as restful as it should’ve been.

The gillpony waited for me to get up, watching me with uncomprehending curiosity. It reminded me of a really young foal, that same kind of wide-eyed innocence. Of course it also had an angle grinder and a rivet gun, things most foals weren’t allowed to have without adult supervision.

“Sorry if I was in the way,” I said.

The gillpony nodded slowly and lumbered past on heavily armored hooves, stopping at a leaking pipe and patching it while I watched, moving with the slow deliberation of a pony bringing every bit of their focus to bear.

“I guess with standardized Stable-Tec parts, there’s not a lot of thought needed,” I said. Mostly to myself. I doubted the gillpony was really listening. They were one step above feral ghouls in terms of brain power. “They made things deliberately easy to repair. Exposed pipes and wires, interchangeable parts, everything built with modules.”

The gillpony finished repairing the section of pipe, then looked back at me, as if evaluating me in some way.

I held up my hooves to show they were empty. “I’m not here to break anything.”

For some reason, it believed me, nodding again and softly groaning in whalesong before plodding away, seeking something else to repair. There was no way I was getting back to sleep.

“Where are you going, anyway?” I asked, following after the gillpony.

I stayed out of the way and kept an eye on it as it wandered the corridors. It ignored me most of the time, and when it did notice me, it almost seemed to welcome some company. As long as I wasn’t in the way.

“I said I was sorry,” I repeated, loudly and slowly. I wasn’t sure it could really understand me all that well, but I know I’d need ponies to be extra-loud if I had a metal bucket over my head. I rubbed the spot where it had gotten me with the angle grinder. I’d gotten way too close while it was cutting through a broken conduit and it hadn’t appreciated it.

The gillpony burbled. It wasn’t words, but it sounded like it was admonishing me like I was the big clumsy idiot monster and it was the perfectly reasonable pony trying to get a job done with a wild animal running around.

“I am not a big clumsy idiot monster!” I shouted, despite the fact that it had only said that in my imagination.

It tilted its head and cooed at me.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to put words in your mouth.”

The gillpony stared at me for a moment longer, then turned away, plodding down the corridor. After a moment, it actually stopped and looked back at me.

“You want me to come with you?” I asked. It silently watched until I joined it, then started up again. I trailed after it, and we walked down into one of the old cargo holds, this one full of tools and parts, most of it rusted over. It walked over to a workbench and started going through the tools there, eventually producing a wrench.

The gillpony held it up for me. I slowly took it.

“Thanks, I think?” I wasn’t sure why it was doing this. “Did you want my help with something?”

It nodded, very slowly. It sang something at me with that cetacean voice and tapped the bolts of its helmet with one hoof.

“You want me to… take your helmet off?” I guessed. I motioned slowly with the wrench. It nodded again and sat down, as still as a statue.

I had to admit, I hadn’t been expecting that. I thought for a moment it had somehow mistaken me for a gillpony and was going to try and get me to fix something. Instead…

The bolts were old. They’d been in place for so long that they’d practically fused into one mass. It took so much force to get them started I thought I was going to break something, but one after another, I got all six of the helmet’s sealing bolts loose. The gillpony was patient through the whole thing, not flinching even while I was swearing to myself and almost hammering the wrench.

When the last bolt came out, it finally moved. I stepped back while it very gingerly removed the thick brass helmet, a rush of seawater pouring out over its armored chest.

I couldn’t tell if it had once been a mare or stallion. Its flesh had gone transparent and jelly-like, its mane transformed into limp tendrils in a fringe that changed colors, pale lights dancing inside it in a bio-luminescent constellation of tiny stars. A fringe of lacy gills adorned its neck, and it had big, black eyes, the transparent lids and flesh around them making them seem impossibly wide.

“You know, you’re kind of cute,” I admitted. “In a deep-sea way.”

It smiled up at me. It felt oddly intimate, like seeing somepony in the shower, catching them in that moment when nopony should be looking.

“Thank… you…” it croaked. The gillpony took a deep breath of the damp air and coughed, gills twitching. The color of its jelly-like skin changed, going pale. It reached for its helmet, fumbling with clumsy hooves.

“Buck, right, you can only breathe water!” I helped it get the helmet settled back into place, the gasket sealing it.

Water poured into it from the suit it wore, and now that I knew what I was looking at, it took a deep, halting breath of the seawater. It took a few moments, then nodded to the wrench again.

I nodded and helped it get sealed up again. When I was finished, it stood up and nodded to me in silence.

“You’re welcome,” I said quietly.

I was almost to the moon pool where the Nightingale was docked when I heard them talking. I stopped outside the door and sat down to listen, leaning against the wall.

It sounded like Destiny was in the middle of explaining her results. “The ritual is running now, and the results seem promising. Lieutenant Brownie is responding well to both the SIVA deactivation component and the healing effect.”

Karma sighed. “It should have been almost instantaneous.”

“I’m running it slowly so I can get a proper diagnostic look at it.”

“Spells with a delay aren’t going to work with the megaspell incantation lens,” Karma retorted. “It’s got to complete the casting before the pressure crushes the talisman!”

“I can’t cast healing spells myself, I don’t know what it should look or feel like! I need to watch his biometrics! In theory, it should be exactly the same as the standard spell.”

I heard Karma grunt at that. “Assuming the delay isn’t having an effect on those biometrics you’re trying to watch. I know you’re used to dealing with Chamomile, but most ponies aren’t built like battle tanks. What if the full spell sends them into shock?”

“There’s no sign of that. If you want to try testing it on yourself, feel free! It would dissolve you into a puddle, but you’d have instant results!”

“I’m starting to get the feeling you really aren’t happy I’m here.”

“I’m not,” Destiny griped. “I’ve been working hard, trying to fix things. Trying to fix anything. You have no idea how bad it’s been, Karma. Your little lapse in judgment killed thousands, and it might kill more if I can’t stop it.”

“...I know,” Karma sighed. I heard him put down some tools, dropping them to the deck. “If I could take it back, I would.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Two centuries too late. Best I can do is the same thing you’re doing. Try to help the ponies I can, try to make up for what I did.” There was a long, quiet pause, and I thought about stepping inside. I bumped against the wall, my hoof clanging against the metal.

“What was that?” Destiny asked.

“Probably just a gillpony,” Karma said. “I know there are one or two wandering around in here.”

I swallowed and tried my best fake whalecall.

“See?” he said. “Gillpony. Anyway, you’re lucky to have Chamomile. She seems like a good pony.”

“She’s…” I heard Destiny hesitate. “I hurt her. I keep hurting her and making mistakes. She trusts me to think for her, but I’m afraid to tell her I’m not as smart as she thinks. I don’t know anything about this world. I only know the old world, and that’s long gone.”

“You know, the whole time she’s been down here and awake, she’s been doing everything she could to find you. She said you were her best friend.”

“That’s why I don’t like you hanging around her,” Destiny said softly. “I’m worried.”

“Worried I’ll steal her away from you? I don’t think she’s even into stallions, Destiny. Though you are, which makes things a bit confusing. Not that you dated much, and you’ve had plenty of time to discover new things about yourself--”

“Shut up!” Destiny shouted. I could hear the blush. “It’s not like that. It’s just like a stallion to think two mares can’t be friends without being lovers. As I recall, you had even less romantic luck than I did.”

“You have no idea. You know, I was really getting close to a pony down here named Fabula, and it turned out she was secretly a cop this whole time!”

“Tragic.” Destiny’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

A cold hoof nudged my flank. I yelped in surprise, falling over into and then through the doorway. The gillpony that had poked me looked at me dully.

“Chamomile?” Destiny asked. “How long were you there?”

“I just got up,” I half-lied. “There was this gillpony--” I pointed back at the tall, armored shape. It walked into the room having to step over me before walking right to the edge of the moon pool and just falling in, sinking beneath the surface.

“That must be the one we heard before,” Karma said. He helped me to my hooves. “You’re just about on time. Early, even.”

“I can leave if I’m in the way,” I said.

“No!” Destiny said quickly. “That is, I’d appreciate the company.”

“May be a good idea,” Karma admitted. “I don’t feel safe being left alone with my sister. She really knows how to hold a grudge.”

“I am allowed to hold a grudge! I’m a vengeful spirit!”

“See?” Karma said, motioning to the Nightingale. “Who among us hasn’t made a few mistakes?”

I cleared my throat. “There’s an old pegasus saying. Those in cloud houses should not throw stones.”

“The phrase is actually about glass houses,” Destiny corrected.

“Who would build a house out of glass?” I asked. “It’d be like living in a sauna! Anyway, I wanted to find out how close you were to being done. We can’t stay here forever. It’s a good hiding spot, but they’re gonna come looking eventually. Nopony would sleep well after losing a megaspell.”

“You’re right,” Karma agreed. “Destiny?”

“I haven’t heard anything, but since they pulled the equipment out of here, I’ve been out of the loop. I doubt you have all that long.”

“Anypony with a hardsuit could ride the elevator down to visit us,” Karma said. “The one advantage we have is that most military gear can’t get all the way down here. It’d implode just like my sled did.”

“They’ll figure something out,” I said.

“If they get really desperate they’ll use depth charges,” Destiny said. “They could blow this whole place up and poke through the wreckage until they found your bodies.”

“Wouldn’t that mess with the city?”

“Not as much as you think,” Karma said. “They’d probably get some blackouts, need to reroute some power and sewage lines, but if I was in charge of the city I’d consider it worth doing to keep a megaspell out of the hooves of criminals like us.”

“Great,” I mumbled. “How long until you’ve got the megaspell changed?”

“Once we validate the spell matrix, we can start altering the core talisman and incantation lens,” Destiny said. “We can start in an hour or two, and Karma should be able to--”

Karma coughed politely. “I’ve already gotten it done. Did it right after we double-checked the diagrams.”

Destiny sputtered in rage. “You-- what?! I can’t believe-- this is just like you! What was your plan if you broke something? Were you going to go pick up some spare megaspell parts in the corner shop?! What if you broke it? What if the spell didn’t work?”

“The spell does work, and I had faith in you that it’d work. I just didn’t want to wait a week for you to triple-check it with some peer-reviewed studies.” Karma looked at me, trying to get me to agree with him. I shook my head and sat back, holding up my hooves. I wanted no part of this.

“Absolutely nothing has changed! I always had to bail you out of trouble. You rush ahead without thinking, stick your snout into the most dangerous thing you can find, and I’m the one that fixes it!” The Nightingale’s lights flashed like it was channeling Destiny’s anger.

Karma rolled his eyes. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember you always being too afraid to do anything unless you were absolutely sure there was no chance of failure. You’d invent new reasons to be too scared to move, and then I’d have to hold your hoof and drag you around so you didn’t spend your whole life in the lab!”

“Kids, please don’t fight,” I said. “It’s done, and the sooner we swim out of this trench and set the spell off, the better. I don’t like having it around. It just feels wrong, dragging a megaspell around with me.”

“That’s the weight of responsibility,” Karma said, shrugging lightly.

“I’d also really like some way to avoid killing ponies with this thing,” I said. “There are probably going to be a lot of ponies waiting for us to pop our heads out of this trench, and if I have to get past them, I want options that aren’t just ‘kill everyone.’”

“We could change out the warheads on the torpedoes,” Karma suggested. “If we remove most of the explosive charge, it’d be like a concussion grenade.”

“That’s a start,” I agreed.

“I’ll see what else I can put together with these old supplies,” Karma said. “Maybe we can get really creative with some of the construction equipment.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Karma patted me on the shoulder. “It’s the least I can do for my sister’s best friend. Just promise you’ll name one of the kids after me.”

“Chamomile, if you don’t kill him, I will,” Destiny warned.

“Kill me after we save everypony,” Karma said, giving me a cheeky wink. “I’ll feel better knowing I’m not leaving you in the lurch again.”

I snorted and punched his shoulder. “You’re not allowed to die until I get you and Destiny in the same room and make you hug.”

“Owch,” Karma winced and saluted. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Chapter 80: The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t have to come with me.”

Karma snorted. “First of all, you get into enough trouble even with adult supervision. I can’t imagine what you’d do if you were left alone with a megaspell.” He used a rag and quickly wiped down the lenses of his hardsuit.

“I’m not that much trouble,” I countered. “I know all I need to do is pop up, fire it off, and run away.”

“Second,” he continued. “If something goes wrong, you need a pony who can fix it. There’s a chance the matrix could fail, or the incantation lens doesn’t go off, or the launcher has some damage we missed.”

“If something goes wrong it won’t be my fault,” Destiny supplied over the loudspeakers. “I did the math correctly. Blame him when we find out he half-assed the modifications.”

“Third,” Karma said, trying to ignore his sister. “I don’t actually have a way out of here except riding with you. I can’t swim the whole way. The suit is way too heavy for that. And--” he winced. “I’m already not in great shape.”

My eyes strayed to his side. There was a patch of steel taken from a wall panel covering over the hole shrapnel had opened up, but the welds were messy and uneven. I wasn’t sure if it would hold, but I also wasn’t an engineer.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “You’re not in the best shape already, and…”

“And it won’t get better stuck down here at the bottom of the ocean,” Karma said. “There’s an elevator up, but that would just be the fastest way to get arrested. They’ll be watching the station. I’m better off riding with you and getting dropped off while they’re busy. I doubt they’ll even notice me with you around.”

“Megaspell-launching assault armor would definitely occupy their attention,” Destiny agreed.

“I’ve still got the spear launcher and a few flares and other tricks,” Karma said. “I’ll try and give you some support while you get the spell going.”

“It would be better for you to find cover,” Destiny retorted. “The Nightingale is designed specifically to shield against spell effects, so Chamomile will be fine. You won’t be. The spell is designed to transmit through walls, but it’s highly directional. As long as you’re not in the main effect cone and behind something sturdy and made of conductive metal, you should avoid the worst of it.”

“Understood,” Karma said, with a salute. “I’ll avoid standing right in front of Chamomile when she launches the giant death beam.”

“The only thing after that is getting away,” I said. “I really hope you’ve got a better plan than I do, because the only thing I’ve come up with is hoping that everypony is so grateful that we saved them that they throw a parade in our honor and let us go.”

“Once you launch the megaspell, just ditch the assault armor,” Destiny said. “I think I can wire the hydrojets to fire on their own. We’ll let them chase it and you can slip away.”

“One problem with that plan. I don’t have a rebreather.” I looked around. “And I don’t see one around here, either.”

“But you know what we do have?” Karma teased. He held up a bottle and shook it, the contents just a little more viscous and slimier than water.

“Noooo,” I groaned, covering my face with my hooves.

“Gillwater. It’ll give you an hour or two to get inside. No chance of drowning. Best of all, it’ll fit in the cockpit!”

“I saw how they make that stuff!” I said very eloquently and not whining at all. “They make it out of mucus from a bunch of angry gross lampreys!”

“Would you rather drown?” Karma asked. “Drowning is what got this mess started in the first place.”

“No,” I mumbled.

“That’s what I thought.” He slapped my side. “Let’s get this thing on the road.”

“System check,” Destiny said. “Hydrothrusters are clear. Power transfer is good. The megaspell launcher is throwing errors.”

“Is that bad?” I asked, settling onto the control bench and getting my hooves in the pressure cuffs.

“We expected this,” Destiny said. “It thinks the spell is broken. Don’t worry about it, I can override the warnings.”

“Let me climb onboard before you set off,” Karma said. He shifted the long rifle on his back, the barrel packed up in thick cloth and separated from the body of the spear launcher. He carefully climbed onto the outstretched manipulator claw and slid on his flank until he’d reached the main hull, using a tether to tie himself to a hoofhold there.

“You ready?” I asked.

“As ready as I’m going to be,” he said. I nodded and carefully let go of the edge of the moon pool, sparks flying from the manipulator’s claws. The steel was torn up, metal plates ripped apart like paper.

“I wonder if the gillponies will repair that after we’re gone…” I mumbled.

“Probably,” Karma replied. “They’re not stupid. It might sit like that until one of them trips over it, but once they’re aware it needs to be fixed, they’ll stop at nothing until the job is done.”

“We need to get a job done, too,” Destiny interrupted. “I have to control half of the systems on the Nightingale because somepony didn’t spontaneously grow talons to press the buttons, so I’d appreciate it if we could do this quickly.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “Here goes nothing…” I leaned forward and pushed back lightly with my rear hooves, the Nightingale diving into the black water of the trench.

Pressure squeezed the hull like a vice, the thick steel plates creaking under the strain. I looked over at where I knew Karma would be, his shape just a blur in the darkness of the trench, sonar doing little more than letting me know he was still there.

My fear of the water had mostly evaporated, thanks to a whole schools worth of half-remembered images and notions of being a fish, breathing water, feeling cool seawater against scales I didn’t have. They were like the last vestiges of a dream, when all that remains is emotion and a memory of a feeling you might have had. Nostalgia without anything to remember.

That didn’t mean I was going to go quickly. Down here the water felt thick and heavy. I could sense it in the sluggish way I cut through it, almost like swimming in jelly.

“Good, keep it at this pace,” Destiny said. “You’re in a pressure vessel but things are less likely to break if you ease it away from crush depths instead of popping up like a cork.”

“Got it,” I noted.

The waters slowly got brighter, and I could see my hoof in front of my face. Metaphorically. It was really a manipulator claw in front of the Nightingale’s bow camera. Once the utter blackness of the abyss passed, I felt the pressure come off my shoulders.

The trench opened up, and I eased over the ragged top of the rift and into the open waters beyond. Bright coral grew right up to the edge and not a step beyond, a sudden rainbow of color and life right on the knife-edge of the deep.

“This looks like my stop,” Karma said, rapping a hoof against the assault armor’s hull. He hefted his big rifle. “Remember, you break through their lines and fire off the spell. Nothing fancy.”

I snorted. “Please, who do you think I am?” I didn’t need to look at him to know the expression he was making. “I’ll get it done.”

“I know. We’re all counting on you. Me, my bratty sister, and all the ponies in the city.” Karma knocked on the hull one last time, then let go, dropping down to the sea floor and moving into cover. With a line like that, what was I supposed to say?

“I’m not bratty,” Destiny mumbled.

“You’re a little bratty,” I said, pushing back on the controls and guiding the Nightingale slowly forward, trying to orient myself. The dark sector was easy enough to spot. A black void in the neon glow of the city.

The newly repaired active sonar pinged with a chipper little noise and immediately popped up with dozens of alerts in every direction, most of them circling around like sharks very cautious of the new biggest fish in the pond.

To be honest, I’d expected immediate waves of torpedoes and spearguns, or at least for the Seaquestrians to send wave after wave of their soldiers at me until I ran out of torpedoes. It was always a popular way to wage war as long as your commanders could stay far away from the front lines. Instead, I was confronted with something totally different.

I saw a flashing, bright light, blinking in patterns.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Horse code,” Destiny said. “I think they’re asking for parley.”

“Parley?”

“It means they want to talk instead of fight,” Destiny said. “It’s an old word--”

“I know what the word means, I was expressing surprise, not confusion.”

“You’re surprised they want to try negotiation with the crazy pony holding a bomb? I’m returning the message and accepting their request.”

I glared at the PipBuck hooked into the controls. “Hey!”

“It’s the one chance we have to avoid a bloodbath. We’re taking it.”

I grumbled and waited, and the light source grew closer after a minute. I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I saw, but I was. Shore Leave swam closer, and for the first time, I got to clearly see what the Exodus Armor looked like when it was sized to fit a swimming hippogriff. The hexagonal scales went around the tail in distinct plates, making it look almost segmented and lobster-like. He carried a white flag, which seemed at odds with the speargun and torpedo launcher strapped to his sides.

“I am Sentinel,” Shore Leave said, his voice booming once he was close enough. “I’m authorized to negotiate with you on behalf of the people of Seaquestria.”

“Don’t mess this up,” Destiny whispered. “If we can convince him to listen, we can cure him, too! He’s got skin in the game, we can use that.”

I nodded tersely. “Right, sure. Turn on the loudspeaker.”

“I’m going to give you one last chance to surrender,” Shore Leave said. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve committed a terrible crime. I’d like to think it’s because you believe you’re saving lives.”

“No deal,” I replied. “Even if I thought you’d listen, last time we met, you shot me a few times and slit my throat.”

I saw him react with surprise, the armored hippogriff rearing up as best a pony could underwater. “Chamomile?” he asked.

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember my name. With how many ponies you’ve stabbed in the back, it must be the ones you’ve faced head-on that stick in your mind!”

“I’ve never betrayed anypony,” Shore Leave said. “What I did was turn my life around and become the hero this city needs to survive.”

“That’s rich,” I snorted.

“It’s the truth. I’ve been helping ponies. Who do you think I’ve betrayed? Criminals? Murderers? Ponies suffering so badly death is a kinder option? With Marshall Law, I’ve helped make things better for everypony. Random crime and chaos is gone. Things are slowly improving for refugees. Once Marshall Law is put in total control, this won’t just be the safest place left in the world, but a place of justice. Real justice.”

“And you want to get there by blowing up half the city.”

“If that’s what I have to do to save the other half? It’s the tough choice, but it’s the right choice. That’s why I wanted to give you a chance to surrender. Somepony who cares enough about this city to try an insane, misguided stunt to save it? They might be the kind of pony who can make that same tough choice. It’s what a hero has to do.”

“Making the tough choices, like being the first to roll over and become a servant. Helping ponies in black boots stomp down on ponies that were your friends, just so they won’t stomp on you. That’s not heroism, that’s being a coward.”

“Do you think what you’re doing is heroic? What are you going to do with that bomb? Kill me with it, swat a sardine with a sledgehammer?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said, with a shrug. The clawed manipulators mirrored the motion.

“So be it, then. I’ll have to take it from you by force!”

Shore Leave tossed the flag to the side and his guns moved, the armor adjusting his aim. A streak of bubbles narrowly missed his head. He flinched and dove, getting out of the firing line.

“Almost had him!” Karma scoffed. “I knew I should have fired while he was running his mouth. Run for it, Cammy!”

I kicked back against the controls and swooped past Shore Leave. I saw him turn to follow, only to have a flare burst in his face. He swore loudly, his loudspeaker still on, and fired down into the coral reef below us at a brightly-colored pony shape.

The decoy popped with a strangled sound like a wet fart, soggy confetti and stale air exploding across the reef. More decoys inflated around the reef, drawing fire from the ponies overhead who saw a whole army appear out of nowhere.

“Ignore them and get to the firing point,” Destiny said. “Karma’s doing his job for once and getting their attention.”

“But--”

“Are you going to prioritize killing one pony over saving thousands?”

I shook my head and leaned forward, barreling through the water towards the point Destiny had programmed into the PipBuck. A place where the cone-shaped area of effect from the megaspell would cover the entire infected area with enough of a margin of error for both of us to sleep safely.

“I’m not letting you hurt this city!” somepony shouted.

A sled crashed into me from the side. I hadn’t even seen it coming. It knocked me off course, spinning me out until I’d flared the Nightingale’s wings a few times and sent bursts of compressed water in every direction until my drifting stopped.

“Carrot?” I asked, recognizing the voice after a moment. I turned to face the sled. The front corner was crumpled where she’d run into me, and the pony on board stood up, hefting an air rifle.

“You’re going down!” Carrot pulled the trigger, and bubbles limply blooped out of the end. “...Oh. These don’t work underwater?”

I rolled my eyes. “She might actually be dumber than I am.”

“Watch your six!” Destiny warned. “Incoming!”

The hippogriffs were coming down at me from above. There had to be dozens of them, all wearing archaic armor, though the torpedo launchers they were carrying seemed a lot more modern.

Alarms blared. I jetted forward and grabbed the damaged sled, ripping it away from Carrot and sending her tumbling to the bottom. Hopefully unharmed. She was stupid, not evil, and I could totally sympathize with that.

I leaned hard to the side, twisting around and using the sled as a shield. Torpedoes slammed into it, blasting it apart.

“Destiny, fire whatever we’ve got!” I yelled.

“Full spread of torpedoes!” Destiny confirmed, the assault armor’s steel wings flaring and sending a wave of steel fish into the oncoming rush of armored hippogriffs.

The warheads exploded with a range of effects. Some erupted in massive spurts of soap and foam, a few just popped with concussive force, two or three just flashed past the soldiers without doing anything at all, and the last torpedo--

Exploded dead-on, throwing shrapnel in all directions. Blood clouded the water.

“What the buck?!” I swore.

“Shoot,” Karma groaned. “I must have missed one. Sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough! That killed a bunch of ponies!”

“If we live through this I’ll make it up to them,” Karma said. He sounded hurt. I frowned.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Of course not. How close are you to the firing point?”

“We’re almost there,” Destiny said. I could feel the worry. “Do you need support? We can--”

The proximity alarm went off again, and one of the cameras cut out, loud pings sounding across the hull. I jerked to the side, throwing the Nightingale out of the way. Shore Leave swam past me, the Exodus Armor rippling around his tail like a jet engine turned inside-out.

“I’ve got you now!” Shore Leave yelled. He twisted around and made a tight turn, coming back towards me and launching torpedoes. I fired at the same time, foam exploding in a wall between us and taking the hit for me.

The foam also made me lose sight of him.

“Where did he go…” I mumbled.

“Looks like he took out one of the cameras with that speargun,” Destiny reported. “I’ll try to get a secondary camera online.”

The display flickered back to life in black and white just in time to catch Shore Leave right on top of me, swinging his tail around in a huge arc. The back edge caught the Nightingale’s left manipulator and smashed through it like an axe, severing it just below the joint.

I swung around and grabbed Shore Leave with the remaining claw, squeezing tighter than I had to. He yelped in pain, sparks flying where the telekinetic field powering the Exodus Armor pushed back against my grip, the magic trying to keep him from being crushed.

“You just really want to get killed today, huh?” I growled. I pressed harder and felt one talon sink in. He went limp. “If you’re smart, you’ll just stay down!” I yelled, tossing him aside. “Destiny?”

“We can launch from here,” Destiny confirmed. “It’s well within the margin of error.”

“Great, bring it online before the rest of the army catches up to us,” I said, settling back. I looked at the bottle taped down to the bulkhead within easy reach. “Gah, I hope I don’t really have to drink that…”

Around me, the Nightingale shifted, the rear sliding open and exposing a short barrel ringed with tarnished silver and gold, the precious metals inscribed with runes to activate and target the megaspell.

That’s when Carrot showed up and screwed it all up.

“Stop ignoring me!” she yelled, crashing into me from behind, the noise of the launcher being readied making her invisible to the sonar. She climbed on top of the Nightingale, using a combination of the hoofholds on the thick armor and a long knife to latch on.

“What the-- get out of there!” I yelled. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“I’m stopping you!” She said, stabbing at the megaspell launcher. Her knife glanced off the spinning rings of metal, raising sparks. Like the very smart pony she was, Carrot put herself right in front of the barrel, blocking it with her body like she didn’t care that she had a weapon of mass destruction aimed at her belly.

“If you’re that eager to get yourself killed,” I warned, reaching up with the remaining manipulator to grab her.

“Don’t, Ensign!” Shore Leave yelled. He knocked her out of the way, smashing into the clawed manipulator and tangling himself up with it.

“What the buck is wrong with you people?!” I yelled. “I’m trying to save the city!”

“So am I,” Shore Leave said, his voice strained. He was obviously in pain. The telekinetic fields around the Exodus Armor were weaker, on the verge of breaking. I could see them glinting with light around his joints. “I told you, Chamomile. I’m not a traitor. I decided I wanted to spend the last days of my life as a hero, and if that means sacrificing myself to take you out? I’m happy with that.”

He took aim with the torpedo launcher. I tried to toss him away, but he fired before I could properly react, the torpedoes exploding against the Nightingale’s right wing, breaching the onboard torpedo tubes and blasting both of us like a mountain of fire and thunder had been dropped down into the ocean.

The shock hit me even through the thick armor and padding, the jolt rocketing me into the seabed. We hit hard, blood flying from my lips.

“Buck,” I swore weakly in the darkness. Only one display was still online, flickering with light. “Destiny, are you there?” I asked.

The only reply was a static hiss. I could see a big ‘Connection Lost’ warning on the PipBuck’s screen. I swore.

“I’m not dead yet,” I coughed. “There’s got to be something I can do.”

I started tapping at any controls I could feel, even if most of them were designed to be used with delicate talons and not big clumsy hooves. One of the buttons had to do something.

The projected display flickered to life, and a black-and-white version of the reef came to life around me. I was lying on the bottom, on my side. I couldn’t see the Nightingale itself through the cameras, but the status display was flashing a lot of red and unhappy-looking reports.

“Hydrojets are blown. Sonar is offline. Both manipulators are scrap. The megaspell launcher…” I mumbed, reading it over. “Everything is broken.”

I couldn’t even tell if the megaspell itself was working. That had been throwing errors since the beginning. Had the blast broken it? Or was it sitting there, ready to fire?

I sighed and leaned, knocking my head against the hull. “I’ll have to try and explain it after they bring me in. Maybe if I give them Destiny’s research and the math, they’ll find some other way to set it off.” It sounded like giving up. Like empty hope and praying somepony else did the job after you’d already failed.

Somepony knocked on the hull. I looked up.

Of all ponies, Carrot Kimchi was standing there.

“You’re under arrest,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. “Come on. How stupid and tenacious can--” I saw something else moving. Shore Leave. He stumbled into motion, dragging himself along the seabed. “I’m starting to think I didn’t kill any… pony…”

I could feel it crawling down my skin. Claws erupted from Shore Leave’s finned hooves. A glowing, draconic eye showed through a huge rip in the chest of the Exodus Armor.

“Get out of there!” I yelled to Ensign Carrot. “Shore Leave has totally lost it!”

She didn’t react at all, instead starting to read me my rights.

“What am I supposed to--” I struggled in the control restraints. “Get off me! I need to get out there and stop him!”

I tried to break free, and got my right hoof out just as Carrot noticed the zombie shambling towards her. She reacted exactly like I would have, throwing her knife at him and screaming. The knife slid to a halt in the water halfway between them, drifting to the sandy bottom. Shore Leave lunged for her.

A laser-straight stream of bubbles lanced through the water and slammed through Shore Leave’s head, ripping that archaic iron helmet apart along with everything inside. The reanimated body slumped down, really dead this time. Carrot slumped down to her knees, shaking.

“Sorry, I was busy back there with my half of the military,” Karma said, hopping over the ridge. “Looks like we really bungled this up, huh?”

I used my free hoof to knock on the hull over my head.

“Can’t talk?” Karma asked. “Got it. One knock for yes, two for no, eh?”

I knocked once.

“Can you still launch the spell?”

I sighed and knocked twice.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Right. No problem.”

“No problem?” I asked, not that he could hear. Karma stepped past Carrot and to the rear of the Nightingale, and I heard panels being opened up, mangled metal being pried apart. He walked back in range of the cameras, carrying something.

“You’ll be okay with that armor protecting you,” Karma said. That was when I saw what he had. The megaspell. “You’d better get out of here, though.” He looked at Carrot.

“But--” Carrot said, her voice quivering. She looked over at Shore Leave’s corpse and her nerve broke. The ensign ran for it. Maybe she was smarter than I gave her credit for.

“I should be able to set this off manually,” Karma noted. “It’s not that hard as long as you’re willing to have your hoof inside the case while it’s going off.”

I knocked twice, as hard as I could.

“Damnit!” I yelled. “You’ll die, you idiot!”

“Sorry it worked out this way,” Karma said. “You know the old saying, it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission? I’m leaving you in the lurch to ask for forgiveness on my behalf later. Maybe you can blame it all on me. That’d be fine.”

He shook his head, twisting something inside the megaspell’s case.

“The only thing I’ve felt since I woke up was guilt. I got my whole family killed and a lot more ponies besides that. I was selfish and used my second chance just to make that guilt hurt a little less. Can you do me a favor?”

Karma looked over at me, and I knocked once, weakly.

He snorted, amused. “Don’t make guilt the only thing in your life. There’s still plenty worth living for. It’s tougher than finding something to die for, because you have to keep doing it. And… take care of my sister for me.”

Karma flipped a switch, and the spell erupted with light.

My head was pounding. Chains bound my hooves, and hippogriffs played the careful game of staying close enough to march me forwards while also being wary of remaining there. Fear came off them in thick waves. They were treating me more like a dangerous animal in a zoo than a pony in prison.

I really hoped we weren’t going to the airlock.

The guards stopped in front of a huge, curved door, forcing me to walk ahead of them and into the gloom beyond.

The room was huge, built in a vertical way that had a lot in common with Enclave buildings, though here it was cast out of damp, cold stone instead of clouds. High above me, too tall to reach even if I’d reared up on my back hooves, a gallery of ponies and hippogriffs in ornate outfits looked down at me with contempt, jeering when I walked in.

I spotted Quiet Seascape among them, and she gave me a scared, guilty look. I gave her a weak shrug and trotted to the obvious place to stand, a raised dias in the center of the low space, illuminated from above by a spotlight and surrounded by chest-high railings. The guards didn’t stop me, so it seemed like the right place to go.

A loud, sharp bang echoed through the room. I squinted through the glare of the spotlight up into the shadows. A hippogriff sat alone above me, wearing black robes and holding a massive head-sized pearl in one talon. He brought it down on the sounding block in front of him twice more.

“Order!” he shouted. “This court will come to order!”

“Oh, so that’s what this is,” I mumbled to myself.

I narrowed my vision, and saw the seats behind the judge. Or more accurately, thrones. A hippogriff larger by half than any of the other lounged on the center throne, watching me watch her.

“You are guilty of murder. Assault. Theft. Conspiracy against the crown. High crimes against the nation. These are known facts. Do you have anything to say in your defense?” the judge asked.

I looked away from what had to be the Queen to the judge. “Would it help if I said I was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons?”

The crowd didn’t like that. The gallery watching from their high booths around us broke out into jeering and booing. The judge raised the large pearl with his talon, bringing it down on the desk with another loud bang.

“Order!” he demanded. “This is the high court, not a circus!”

I winced. “Sorry. Do I get a lawyer, or is that a custom we’ve only got back home?”

“Back home,” the judge noted. “You are a member of the military of the Equestrian military remnants, also known as the 'Grand Pegasus Enclave'. Is this correct?”

“You know, that’s actually an open question,” I said. At the sound of murmurs in the gallery, I frowned and squinted into the shadows. “I’m not avoiding the question! I think there’s probably paperwork with all the right stamps on it, so let’s say legally, yes? Probably?”

The judge glared at me. “Do you deny you were sent here on a mission to destabilize one of the few remaining sovereign states?”

“Wow. Yes, I deny that! I got here by mistake!”

“How did you arrive here?”

“Err…” I hesitated. “The answer that’s going to sound least crazy is ‘teleportation accident.’ When do I get to just tell you what happened? Because I want to talk about the giant conspiracy and how I saved the city.”

“There’s no need,” a slim pony said. Fabula stepped past me, wearing a slim, tailored, grey suit. She smirked at me when she saw my surprise. “I’ve already informed Her Majesty of the details.”

She stopped next to the dais I was standing on and looked me over, leaning in to whisper.

“You’re lucky I’m not holding a grudge for raiding my pantry,” she said quietly.

“Does Her Majesty know what you’re guilty of?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Fabula said. “I turned myself in the moment I saw the way the tides were moving. You don’t get far in the fortune-telling business without trusting your own predictions.”

“So why are you here?” I asked. “Afraid I might tell her something you didn’t divulge?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m doing you a favor,” she said. “You’re a disaster walking on four legs. Killing you won’t work, so I’m trying something else.”

She smirked and stepped away, pulling a scroll out of seemingly thin air.

“Your honor, I have a signed order from the Queen. According to morgue records, the death penalty is not only inappropriate to apply in this case but potentially ineffective. Instead, with her great mercy, the convicted is to be banished from Seaquestria permanently with no chance of appeal.”

The crowd went wild with rage. The judge looked back at the Queen, who had shifted on her throne. She nodded in the dark.

“The sentence is to be carried out immediately,” the judge sighed, banging his pearl on the desk. “May the sea have mercy on your soul.”

I stumbled on the rock when the guard shoved me out into the dark pre-morning light, my hooves slipping on mossy stone. The cold wind whipped around us, the air here thin and somehow more alive than the processed oxygen down below.

A bag joined me, thrown out of the elevator with contempt.

“Thanks for the ride, guys,” I groaned. They’d taken the opportunity to work me over a little while I couldn’t fight back. I felt like one big bruise.

The guard at the door spit on the ground at my hooves and slammed the door shut, locks hissing with a sense of finality.

“Are you okay?” the bag asked. I sighed and opened up the burlap sack. Destiny floated out of the mess of broken armor pieces. “I didn’t see what happened to you after the PipBuck went dark.”

“I’m fine,” I said. It was close enough to the truth, but it felt like a lie for some reason. I lowered the bag and looked at the helmet. My best friend. Even here at what felt like the end of the world. “Did you see if the spell worked?”

She bobbed. “Yeah. After it went off… there were a lot of scared and confused ponies. Most of them will need therapy. Physical and mental. But they’re alive. We did it.”

“At least there’s that,” I muttered.

Destiny flew into my chest, and I grabbed her on instinct, holding onto her.

“I wanted to slap him, or shoot him or…” Destiny sobbed. “I didn’t even get a chance to see him face-to-face. The last thing we did was yell at each other!”

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“And the megaspell… I don’t even know what that would do to a pony like him! It might have…”

“I saw the whole thing,” I said.

The spell went off in a blinding flash that blanked the projector, the cameras going to pure white for a long moment before they started to clear.

Karma stumbled away from the device, the canister glowing hot at his hooves. The leg he’d had inside it was already gone, crumbling away like ash. The pressure suit around him ripped apart, bubbles pouring from the seams.

He took two steps before the rest of his legs shattered, the bubbles pouring out of his suit now carrying something darker with them, clouding the water around him. He thrashed in agony, reaching for the Nightingale. Reaching for me.

“It was instantaneous,” I assured her. “He didn’t feel a thing.”

Destiny sobbed in my grip, and the sun came up around us.

Chapter 81: Monster Mash

Some things don’t get easier with practice. Case in point, I was sliding down into the gullet of a giant monster, and it was even worse than the first time I’d been inside something large enough to swallow me whole.

I couldn’t breathe. Walls of flesh squeezed me on all sides. Bile was starting to burn my skin. It was a bad time and nopony was having fun. My right forehoof twitched, and my journey into the wonders of biology slowed, the knife in my hoof springing out and digging into the wall.

There was no leverage to be had, but the creature clearly liked this even less than I liked being eaten alive. It choked and tried to vomit, the blade sliding through its flesh as easily as it would through butter. Something had to give, and with a gout of black and blue blood, I fell out into the open air, coughing and trying to breathe.

The smell hit me in the face and I started dry-heaving. Behind me, the monster thrashed, sending spurts of gore into the air to rain down on the harsh red earth of the Badlands. It was almost twenty paces long, a huge worm big enough to, well, swallow a pony whole. The wound I’d torn in it was mortal, and I watched, too exhausted to do more than just stare at it while it writhed and finally collapsed.

“Buck,” I sighed, sitting down in a puddle of gory mud. “I hate this place.”

“You’re alive!” Destiny popped out from behind a rock, telekinetically dragging the burlap bag of our supplies along behind her. “Alive… and slimy.”

“Couldn’t you have shot that thing with a mind bullet or something?” I groaned, scratching at my skin. It was that annoying level of irritation from the bile and acid where I was super itchy but scratching made it painful instead of relieving anything.

“I tried,” Destiny said. She opened the bag and started rummaging around, producing a broad cactus leaf. “It didn't even notice. Here. I think if you rub this against the burns, it’ll help.”

I took the cactus and split it open, spreading some of the goop inside the thick leaf against my foreleg. “Good thing you know a little about desert survival. I wouldn’t know anything about what plants were useful for medicine.”

“Oh no, I don’t know anything,” Destiny said with a clear mental shrug. “But it’s goopy! Goop is usually good for burns!”

“Gimme a break,” I groaned. “What if it’s poison?”

“You’ve been eating cactus for the last two days. If it was poison, you’d have symptoms.” Destiny paused. “Probably. When we find ponies we’ll get a second opinion.”

“Well I think it’s time to vary my diet,” I said, turning to the creature’s corpse.

I vomited again, and it was even worse coming up than it was going down. I wasn’t even sure if I could really call it meat. It was more like leathery, tough jelly filled with sand.

“It’s so bad,” I sobbed. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever eaten!”

“Then why did you have two servings?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it might be an acquired taste!” I whined, vomiting again.

Destiny sighed. “I hope it’s not too radioactive. I can’t even tell with no working instruments. I almost wish we’d kept that broken PipBuck. It might be StableTec garbage but at least it had a decent rad counter.”

“Let’s just hope there’s somepony in town,” I groaned, stumbling through the broken gate we’d spotted a few miles back. I could have flown over it, and I had flown most of the last few miles, but my stomach was feeling too rocky for anything except slow, careful steps.

“We might be out of luck,” Destiny said, flying ahead of me. “I’m not seeing anypony.”

I looked up. The buildings were all weather-bleached wood, beaten down by wind and time, paint scrubbed off by the sandy soil and leaving everything the same dead color. A breeze blew through the single main road, and a tumbleweed rolled between the buildings, getting caught on a fallen sign for what had been a general store before freeing itself and rolling away. Even it didn’t want to stay here.

“There has to be somepony,” I mumbled. I could feel somepony watching us, that subtle pressure that came from being the center of attention. Empty windows like the eye sockets in a skull stared down at us from both sides while we trotted into the middle of town. A clocktower leaned slightly, age leaving it ready to topple over, casting a shadow like an accusing finger at us.

“I don’t think this place even had many ponies living here before the war,” Destiny said. “Wait, look!”

Following her gaze, I spun around, only to find a broken train platform.

“Did you see somepony?” I asked.

“No, but this might be just what we need!” Destiny said. “The train tracks have to go somewhere! We can just follow them to another town and look for ponies there!”

“Good thinking,” I said. “Did I ever tell you how nice it is to have a smart pony with me?”

“You’ve said it at least once every few hours,” Destiny noted. She flew over to me and perched on my back. “I don’t want to stay in this town for too long. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

“You too?” I asked.

“It’s probably just nerves,” she admitted. “The ponies here left town almost two hundred years ago, there’s no way whatever made them leave is still around. Maybe there’s a Stable nearby…”

“We’ll never find it if there is.” I looked over the run-down buildings around us. “Before we leave we should at least do a quick pass and try to find food and water. You might not need anything, but I’m so hungry and that food was so baaaaaad!”

“Right. There should be a well. It might not be perfectly safe, but… a little radiation is probably better than dehydration for now.”

“If they’ve got a well it has to be out here,” I said. We’d wandered into an orchard at the edge of town, or at least what was left of an orchard. The trees were all dead, talons of broken dry wood reaching for the sky. Even leaves were a rare sight. Wind had stripped almost everything bare except where they’d gotten trapped in a hollow or under fallen branches.

“This place must have been much less arid before the war,” Destiny said.

“Had to be,” I agreed, poking at an exposed root with my hoof. “Even earth ponies couldn’t have kept trees alive in the middle of a desert. Right?”

“No. I mean… probably not.” Destiny shifted where she was resting on my back. “I didn’t really know a lot of earth ponies.”

“Right, right,” I nodded. “You were a shut-in who only knew other nerds working in your lab.”

She made an annoyed noise but didn’t refute that.

The place only got stranger the more I looked around. There were a few clearings full of tall, dried-out grass. Nothing edible, just dead and brown, and with strange circles in the fields like something had pushed everything down.

A gust blew through the lines of dead trees, and my ears twitched, trying to focus on the faint sound the breeze had carried.

“What was that?” I whispered.

“A monster?” Destiny guessed. “Be careful.”

“Maybe this one will taste better…” I took off, getting into the air to look around. I wasn’t going to risk getting swallowed whole by a monster coming up from below. Not again. I got above the highest of the clawing, dead branches and spotted it instantly. It was a splash of color in a sand-colored world.

“Do you see that?” Destiny asked.

Instead of answering, I flew towards what I was sure had to be a mirage. The most elaborate mirage I’d ever seen. A single, living tree still alive and thriving in the wasteland. The wind blowing through its boughs was the sound I’d heard, rustling and alive in a way nothing else in this ghost town was.

“That’s really something,” I said, setting down next to it. It didn’t vanish or try to eat me. It did what a tree should do. It stood there and provided some welcome shade. “Think those are safe to eat?”

I pointed to some apples in the branches, glittering like rubies.

“You realize those might be poison, right? There’s no telling what leeched into the soil.”

I shrugged and bit into another apple. The cores were a little tougher but still edible, and I was hungry enough that I wasn’t going to just toss them. I did keep the seeds, though. I don’t know why, exactly. I guess it just felt like the right thing to do.

“Whatever,” Destiny sighed. “It can’t be worse than eating random monsters.”

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong.” I paused to crunch into another bite, trying not to let even one drop of juice escape my lips. “Sometimes good things happen!”

“Maybe,” Destiny cautioned. “Or maybe this tree belongs to somepony.”

She nodded into the distance. I followed her gaze. While I’d been eating, things had started to get dark. Long shadows from the mesas around us cast the town into uneven shadow, and the orchard was a tangle of darkness around me. In that tangle I could see a moving light, orange and strange, almost boiling, like the glow was coming off it as a gas.

A chill ran down my spine, and it wasn’t just because the temperature was dropping.

“I think we should leave,” I said. I jammed one last apple into the bag and took off, trying to be quiet while dragging a bag of steel plates through the air with me. With one eye on that strange light, I could see it glide smoothly between the trees as if it was floating.

“That’s not unicorn magic,” Destiny whispered.

“Let’s go inside one of the abandoned buildings,” I whispered back.

“You’re not going to charge blindly at it?” Destiny asked, obviously shocked.

“Not until I know it isn’t going to eat me,” I muttered.

I grabbed her in my hooves to make sure she wouldn’t fall behind, then dove down towards the town at the edge of the dead orchard. My night vision wasn’t bad, but not good enough to fight something I couldn’t identify.

I stopped in the air and looked back at the orchard, something pricking at my awareness. Lights swung through the dark, and after spending that time on the bottom of the ocean, it reminded me of an anglerfish, a lure trying to drag me in. I shook myself and looked around, trying to find a building with four walls and a roof.

The little general store on the corner seemed pretty intact, so we went that way, and I flew right to the door, hovering in front of the door and pushing it open, the hinges squealing with age and resistance when I opened it. They weren’t quite rusty, but the weather had twisted the wood just a little. The narrow doorway forced me to drop to the ground to fit through, and I bolted inside, shutting the door as quietly as I could and locking it.

“That’s not going to hold,” Destiny noted. She floated out of my hooves and cast a light spell, a ball of light floating to the ceiling and sticking there like a fluorescent bulb. “A foal could kick it open.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I looked around the store. It was a pretty typical shop from the pre-war era, lots of shelves with the top rows just at eye level, turning the shop floor into a labyrinth of great values. They were also flimsy pieces of junk and wouldn’t make for much of a barricade.

I spotted something to the side of the door that might work, though. A Sparkle-Cola machine. It was heavy, sturdy, all metal and machinery, and even I struggled to get it in front of the door. That was good. If it was hard to move from this side, it’d be almost impossible from the outside.

“That should work, right?” I asked, looking at the machine. “Sparkle-Cola Buffalo? What’s that?”

“One of the less popular types,” Destiny said. “It was supposed to taste like apple pie and root beer, but it just tasted like black licorice and sour apples to me.”

I made a sound and rummaged around inside the machine, finding mostly broken and empty bottles. At the very back, there was a single intact bottle. “Nice. Still one left!”

“I know you’re thirsty, but I’m warning you, those are sort of nasty.”

“Trust me, it can’t be worse than Sparkle-Tuna,” I said.

“Sparkle… Tuna?”

I couldn’t sleep. The cola helped a little with that. It was full of caffeine and had a strange, bitter taste that kept me from chugging it even with how thirsty I was. It was bracing like black coffee, but even if I’d been having peppermint tea I wouldn’t have been able to rest. It was right out there, a presence, pacing around the outside of the store. Sometimes it would wander off, but it felt more like it was testing me, retreating into hiding to watch from a distance and lure me outside, rather than actually losing interest.

“Can you see anything?” I asked. Destiny shook her head.

“I keep seeing lights, but not the source. I think most of them are far off, but…” she said, trailing off. I nodded in agreement. She backed away from the boarded-up window. “We should check the back room, just to make sure there’s no other way in.”

“Right,” I sighed, drinking the last of the Sparkle-Cola Buffalo and trotting back to the storeroom. “If it could break in, it would.”

I jiggled the handle. Locked. Not that it mattered, with how flimsy the wood was. I popped it with a light kick, and a smell hit me in the snout like it was trying to establish dominance. A rotten smell, but gone all the way to dust and mold.

“Those are corpses,” I said.

There were two skeletons at the back of the room full of crates and broken cardboard boxes. I took a few steps towards them.

“Chamomile, look at this,” Destiny said.

I turned, and she shone a light on the wall next to the door. There were bullet holes in the wall.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“The door was locked from the inside,” Destiny reminded me.

“I know. That’s why it’s especially not good.” I swallowed and stepped closer to the bodies, stopping at a mark on the floor. A set of scars on the boards made by claws that had to belong to a creature with talons each the size of a pony.

And yet, the bodies were intact. Mostly. Some of the bones were broken, but there was no sign they’d been torn apart by some massive monster. Instead, scattered around them were splinters as long as my forehoof.

“It didn’t eat them,” I said to myself.

“How did it even get in?” Destiny asked. “The only window is boarded up!”

A chill ran down my spine. I turned to the window. Rough branches and planks blocked the view, and it took me a moment to realize they were on the outside of the building. And moving.

“Get down!” I shouted, just before it came through. The wooden wall creaked and groaned, distorting like rubber and letting the monster in. It was the same color as the dead trees in the orchard, like a misshapen, half-dead wolf made of broken branches and dried-up roots. Burning orange light came from inside its skull, bleeding out of the eye sockets and into the air around it.

It howled and lunged for me. I caught its canines in my hooves, but the sheer mass of the creature meant that lunge carried me through the wall and into the store’s aisles, shelves full of dish soap and empty boxes toppling in our wake.

“You’re not even the biggest monster I fought today!” I yelled, the charge finally stopping, its energy exhausted for a moment after smashing through most of the shop.

The creature growled and its hackles went up, and it took me way too long to notice that those hackles were very sharp thorns and looked a lot like the splinters that had been in the bodies of the ponies in the back room.

I let go and dove for cover, smashing through a boarded-up window and into the street outside. Thorns sprayed in a shotgun blast of botanical death around me, a half-dozen finding my skin and burrowing inside.

“Ow!” I tried to pull one out and yelped in pain. They were barbed like harpoons! While I was distracted, the whole front of the store warped, the wood twisting out of the way and letting the huge wolf made of dead wood through, closing up behind it like it had never been there at all. “That’s just unfair.”

It growled and paced towards me, hunched and ready to pounce.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Not used to prey that fights back?” I grinned. I was starting to feel myself falling into the groove again. It was just a giant monster. Maybe it had a few special powers, but there wasn’t a city on the line, a megaspell about to go off, a threat that could destroy Equestria, just me and something that wanted to wrassle.

The wolf’s hips wiggled right before it pounced. I braced myself and grabbed for its mouth again, not keen on being eaten.

We smashed into the precariously-leaning clock tower across the street, hard enough that it felt like the ground was rumbling under us. No, actually, it was really rumbling. I looked up and saw the top half of the tower coming down. I let go of the wolf and threw myself to the side just before the clock and all of its mechanisms smashed down like a huge hammer of gears and springs. A bell rang out loudly, and a few gears rolled loose of the cloud of dust.

I backed off, waiting for it to spring out, but when the dust settled, the wolf was pinned against the ground, the metal frame and mechanism of the clock holding its broken back down. It scratched at the dry earth, the dead branches of its body cracking and splintering with strain.

“I guess you really didn’t like that,” I said.

As I watched, Destiny floated over to me, and the wolf broke apart, the orange light inside it flickering and dying while it howled mournfully, the wood breaking up in layers. It was like a corpse decaying, bark and dead leaves flaking away to reveal inner layers of bare white skeletal wood before that, too, fell into a compost heap.

“Looks like you got it,” Destiny noted. “And you only broke half the town in the process.”

“It was one building,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Don’t exaggerate. I’ve blown up way more than half of a town before and you know it. This is a big improvement over my usual!”

“True, nothing’s even on fire yet,” she agreed.

“It feels anticlimactic,” I agreed. I tapped a hoof, waiting. “Think it’s going to come back bigger and angrier?”

Destiny took a slow look around. “It seems pretty dead.”

I trotted over to it and gave it a sharp kick. “That’s so lame! It was a huge magic monster and, and it probably had some cool backstory like it’s the ghost of all the dead trees or a zebra-made terror weapon or something, and it just falls over and dies because one little building collapses on it?”

“You’re just too used to punching above your weight class and barely surviving.”

“Are you calling me fat? I’m just big boned--” I stopped, ears twitching. “What’s that sound?”

“Oh buck there had better not be more of those things,” Destiny groaned.

The lights in the sky that I’d seen before intensified, sweeping along in ways that no pony or beast could match, turning and maneuvering through sharp corners that would shatter bone and tear muscle.

“Wait, those are searchlights,” I realized. “That sound is--”

The Vertibuck cleared the rooftops, the lights in the sky sweeping down to point at us, turning from what had looked like distant disc-shaped objects into the blinding headlights of one of the Enclave’s armored pony carriers.

“Remain where you are!” blared a voice through a tinny loudspeaker. “We’re from the Enclave and we’re here to help!”

I shielded my face from the blast of dust as the tilt-rotor slowed to a hover, kicking up a cloud of debris even while above the rooftops, the overburdened engines straining. The armored hatch opened, and a fireteam of three ponies flew out, circling around before setting down where the pilot in the Vertibuck could see them, the transport remaining for a few more seconds before flying off, presumably to find an open space large enough that it wouldn’t risk its props in the descent.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see ponies in uniform,” I said. I took a step towards them, and two of the armored soldiers reacted instantly, taking aim at me. I sat down and held up my forehooves. “Woah! Let’s all calm down!”

“What in the-- Chamomile?!” the third pony pushed past the others and took off her helmet, revealing the dark mane of a pony I hadn’t seen in months. Emma looked at me in shock. “You’re alive?!”

“I’m surprised too!” I said.

Emma ran over and pulled me into a hug. “You idiot! Where have you been?!” She let go and took a step back to look more closely at me. “Do you know how long everypony was looking for you? What happened?”

“That’s a really long story,” I said. “Do you have a first-aid kit? I’ve kinda been stabbed a bunch, and it stings like you wouldn’t believe.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Tell me this long story while we’re patching you up.”

“...And then the clocktower dropped on it and it died,” I finished. “You know the rest because you were there.” I flexed my hoof, looking at the bandages. They’d finished the first aid long before I’d finished my story.

“I wouldn’t believe it if anypony else told the story,” Emma sighed. “The ponies at Winterhoof said you might still be alive, and I owe somepony a few bits. I didn’t think anypony could really get sucked into another dimension.”

“It wasn’t all that bad,” I assured her. “Except the parts where I died.”

Emma sighed and shook her head. “It’s good to have you back. I just sort of lost hope after a while. You’re officially MIA, but ponies have been gone for longer and come back, and that commission you got just before you vanished should smooth a lot of things over.”

“You lost hope?” I frowned. “I didn’t think you’d write me off so quickly.”

“After a year, even Quattro gave up. I have no idea where she even ran off to. Just left a vague message and never came back. I went back into the regular military--”

“A year?!” I yelped. “I’ve only been gone a few months!”

Emma blinked. “Chamomile, it’s CC 0183. You’ve been gone for three years.”

“That’s impossible…”

“Limbo,” Destiny said. “We should have expected something like this. Time flows differently there. I couldn’t get a real date in Seaquestria because they use their own calendar.”

“Ugh.” I groaned and rubbed my temples. I was starting to get a headache. “I hate complicated stuff. I’ve got too much brain damage for this. Three years. Buck.”

“At least the world didn’t end,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, which only makes me more worried about whatever my mom might be doing behind the scenes,” I said.

“Star Swirl probably would have known if it was time-sensitive. Maybe she’s stuck trying to find the other Exodus Arks? Nopony found the Blue for almost two centuries, the Black and Red could be anywhere. Three years is a drop in the bucket to search a whole world by yourself.”

“Yeah, I hope that’s all it is,” I agreed. “What about you, Emma? How’d you end up down here in the dirt?”

“They needed somepony with real combat experience to foalsit these two recruits on their first scouting mission,” Emma said. “Chamomile, meet Airpony Sunray and Airpony Doppler.”

“Ma’am, are you sure this pony is trustworthy?” one of the other ponies stage-whispered, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard. “That story was total nonsense!”

“I believe her, Sunray” Emma sighed. “Chamomile’s special talent is getting into trouble.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’re in danger just by standing next to her?” the third pony, Doppler, asked.

“Yeah, probably,” I admitted. “I’m not above begging for a ride back to civilization.”

“Or at least a map,” Destiny suggested. “The Exodus Armor needs serious repairs. I want to get us somewhere where I can get a micro-inscriber and a rune probe.”

“Right now we’re pretty far south,” Emma said. “We’re pretty far from anything. This was the frontier even before the war.” She pulled out a rough paper map, spreading it out on the ground. “We’re about here,” she pointed to a spot not far from the coastline.

“We’re not far from Kludgetown,” Destiny mumbled.

“Kludgetown?” Sunray asked.

“It was somewhere between a city-state and a pirate’s nest about… here.” Destiny used a spark of magic to mark it on the map. “It was outside Equestrian control and they remained neutral in the war.”

“And it’s about as far from Canterlot as you can get,” I said. “How big is the Braytech plant there? Don’t give me that look, I know at least a little about the way you think.”

Destiny sighed. “It was an assembly plant for items that were banned or problematic in Equestria.”

“I’m surprised the Ministries didn’t blow it up,” Doppler said.

“Several of the Ministries were large clients. The best way to keep them from sabotaging us was to make them invested in success.”

“Hmmm…” Emma folded her forehooves, thinking. “Okay. We’ll refuel and head there with you.” She looked at the two Airponies. “There should be good salvage. We’ll scout it out and make a report. You know the top brass wants to prioritize equipment and material recovery with the troubles back home.”

“Troubles?"

“I’ve got a long story too,” Emma sighed. “Not as many explosions as yours. I’ll tell you on the flight over.”

“What do you mean, war?!” I yelled over the sound of the engines.

“It’s probably not going to actually be war!” Emma replied, holding up a hoof defensively like I might attack her just for giving me some bad news. “It’s just a little disagreement about resources. Neighvarro and Thunderhead are butting heads, and it’ll probably end with both sides making some concessions and calling it a draw!”

“I leave for a little while and you guys mess up the whole Enclave!” I groaned.

“It’s not on us to fix,” Emma said, shrugging. “It did help me get back into a regular assignment, so I’m not exactly upset about all of it! They want all hooves on-deck and even managed to forget that I was technically AWOL for a while!”

“Lucky you,” I retorted. “I liked your old armor better.”

“The stuff Doktor patched up?” Emma asked. “It’s in storage. This set is practically brand-new!”

I shrugged. The armor she was wearing wasn’t a model I’d seen before, but that didn’t mean much. The suits had been produced by the MoA, and that meant a lot of limited-run sets and custom jobs. These had light plating, painted over in a dark blue and black that would make them well-camouflaged against the night sky.

“If it makes you feel better, if we find enough supplies it might tip things over,” Emma said. “Having a surplus of supplies would be a bargaining chip that could be used to end the war faster and without anypony getting hurt!”

She gave me a solid pat on the shoulder. I nodded. She was probably right. Things always did get tense when there was a bad growing season or somepony’s pet project went bad and… well, I’d caused a lot of trouble right before I’d left. The operation in Dark Harbor had probably been abandoned, with the loss of a Raptor and some of the military’s top brass. There was no telling what kind of ripple effect that might have had.

“We’re getting close!” Destiny yelled from the cockpit. She was floating next to the pilot, directing the young stallion where to go. We’d mostly been following a ribbon of asphalt and tracking along the highway into the city. “Do you see that? The big hexagon shape!”

I moved to the front with Emma to look. We could just barely see it up ahead, an unassuming factory surrounded by fences and abandoned cars.

“There was a helipad on the roof,” Destiny said. “If it’s intact we can set down there!”

“Looks like it’s in good condition,” Emma said. “Is there anything we should be worried about when we go in there?”

Destiny tilted, thinking deeply. I could practically see her searching through her scattered, incomplete memories like she was browsing files on a terminal. “I don’t think so. The most dangerous thing we had were some volatile reagents, and they’re either well-sealed and safe or they’ll have dissipated by now. Volatile chemicals don’t last long in the environment on their own.”

“You didn’t make any monsters here, right?” I joked.

“Just the spare parts for them,” Destiny returned. “We’ll be able to get you all fixed up!”

I rolled my eyes.

Emma stood up straighter and looked back at the soldiers under her command. “Both of you, prioritize your safety and keep your eyes open. This should be safe, but…” she glanced back at me. “Experience tells me we’re going to find trouble.”

Chapter 82: Bloody Tears

They moved like a well-oiled machine. Sunray took point, Doppler watching her back when they set down on the rooftop, sweeping rifles and checking behind the tangle of HVAC equipment and the blind spot from the roof access.

“Clear!” Sunray yelled.

Emma landed next to them, and I slammed into the roof like a clumsy oaf, the prop wash from the Vertibuck overhead kicking up turbulence and slapping me down as hard as any mircoburst. The tarpaper on the roof ripped into shreds with the force of the wind, kicking out in all directions as the VTOL came in to land gingerly on the old helipad.

“Ow,” I mumbled. Emma helped me back to my hooves. “You’d think I’d eventually get used to falling over.”

“You do it so well, though,” Emma quipped.

“Be more careful with the armor!” Destiny snapped. She floated over to the burlap sack and opened it to look. “When it’s inactive like this, it’s very sensitive! Carrying it in a burlap sack is bad enough, but with the T-field off you can damage the thaumoframe cells!”

I sighed. “Sorry, Destiny. I’ll be careful.”

I could sense the two new recruits did not think very highly of me. Both of them were wearing helmets but I could practically see them rolling their eyes in annoyance that their commanding officer was being friendly with me.

“Ma’am, should we breach the entrance?” Sunray asked sharply. “We shouldn’t stay out here where we’re exposed.”

“Chamomile, do you want to take point?” Emma asked.

“She’s unarmed, ma’am,” Doppler quietly reminded her.

“I’ve got a harpoon gun, but I can’t really use it without a battle saddle or my armor’s hardpoints,” I said with a shrug. “Just for the record, I have gotten better with shooting stuff.”

“I’m still not going to give you a gun,” Emma said. “Remember when I let you borrow a beam gun when we first met?”

I nodded. “I couldn’t hit anything, then broke it using it as a club. And it exploded.”

“Exactly. I had to sign these out and I’m not explaining to the armorer why I’m bringing back one of his guns in pieces.”

“I’ll take point, Ma’am,” Sunray volunteered firmly. She wasn’t asking this time. “I can’t let an unarmed civilian put themselves at risk.”

“Legally I’m a warrant officer,” I noted.

“She outranks us?” Doppler asked, surprised.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to call me Ma’am,” I said cheekily. “I won’t be offended.”

“Chamomile, take point and show them how it’s done,” Emma said. “This is supposed to be a learning experience for them.”

I nodded and trotted over to the door. I tried the handle, and it was locked. Naturally. Otherwise, any pegasus or griffon could just walk right in.

“I bet she’s going to pick the lock,” Doppler whispered behind me.

“No, she’s probably got a breaching--” Sunray started. I gave the steel security door a punch with my right forehoof, popping it out of the hinges. It caught on the lock and twisted before falling down the stairs just beyond the entrance, sliding down to the next landing. “--Charge?” she finished, more quietly.

“There’s a security station on the next floor down,” Destiny said. “I can sign in with my code and deactivate any alarms so we won’t be bothered.”

I nodded and started down the stairs, keeping my eyes open. It didn’t seem like anypony else had been here for a long time. It had been abandoned in a hurry. A radroach skittered across the stairs in front of me. A burst of laser fire went past me from behind, along with a sharp yelp of surprise, the beams cutting into concrete and plaster and missing the radroach entirely.

“What the buck?” I swore, turning around to glare.

“Sorry,” Doppler said, his ears folded back. “I got spooked by that thing.”

“It was just a radroach,” I said. “They’re practically harmless. Even foals aren’t scared of them. I’ll tell you when to be afraid.”

“That’s the station,” Destiny said, floating past me to what looked like an empty metal doorway standing in the middle of the landing, the sides gated off to force ponies to pass through it. Even the stairwell was secured by metal bars, probably so a pegasus couldn’t just fly around the frame.

“Metal detector?” I guessed.

“Something like that,” Destiny confirmed. “It does a bit more than just scan for metal. It’s hooked up directly to the security maneframe, and it’s smart enough to know the difference between a knife and a screwdriver.”

“Should I be worried about this?” I gestured at the burlap bag I was carrying.

“Not after I turn off the security,” Destiny said. “Watch and learn.”

She floated up to the scanner and used her magic to pop open a panel and expose a few large buttons. Destiny pressed the largest, and lights blinked on the scanner, accompanied by a whirring sound of fans speeding up.

“Uplink online. Do you require assistance?” A voice asked, coming from tinny speakers on the scanner. It was obviously synthesized, but the tone of the voice was a very young mare’s, a filly’s, really. And it sounded familiar.

“Destiny, is that…?” I trailed off.

She sighed. “My dad used my voice for the interface,” the ghost admitted. “He thought it was cute. I didn’t even have my cutie mark yet when he took the voice samples!”

“Do you require assistance?” the computer repeated.

“Yes!” Destiny said. “Deactivate local security. Administrator passcode Destiny-Pi-One-One-Alpha.”

The computer beeped. “Thank you. One moment. Processing request.”

“The clean rooms for microrune inscription are a floor below this. You’ll probably find something useful there for your salvage operation,” Destiny provided.

“Thank you for letting us recover a few things,” Emma said.

Destiny bobbed in a full-body shrug. “It’s better that somepony gets use out of the equipment. It’s not doing any good sitting here and rotting.”

The computer beeped twice in error. “Please provide biometric confirmation.”

“Biometric--” Destiny spun around in alarm. “Override the confirmation step. I have administrator access!”

“It has been sixty-eight thousand, nine hundred and… sixty-five days since your password was last changed. Please provide biometric confirmation to enable password reset.”

“Buck,” Destiny swore. “I don’t have biometrics! I’m a ghost!”

“Warning. Biometric data not confirmed. Weapons detected. Security breach. Lockdown initiated.”

The floor rumbled, and the dim light from up above coming through the door cut off as a steel shutter slammed down over the doorway. Red lights, half of them burned out, blared to life in the stairwell.

“Buck!” Destiny swore again, louder this time.

The lights on the scanner shut off.

“How bad is this?” I asked.

“It’s not my fault!” Destiny said quickly. “How was I supposed to remember my password would expire?! They’re supposed to send us three emails before-- well, they probably did send them about two hundred years ago, but I never got them so they don’t count!”

“This isn’t a problem,” Emma said. “Chamomile, can you cut through the steel shutter? We can just walk out and come up with another plan.”

“A surprisingly mature and wise idea,” I said. I trotted past the soldiers and back to the doorway, snapping my knife into position and trying to look cool for the troops. The SIVA-made blade would go right through the steel like it was butter. I slashed and-- sparks flew from the armored plate and a jolt ran through my hoof. “Ow!”

“They’re polarized,” Destiny sighed. “It’s similar to the structural integrity field in the Exodus Armor. It makes the plate much stronger using magical reinforcement to keep the metal’s crystalline structure intact.”

“We can’t cut through it?” I asked.

Destiny floated over to me and bumped into my shoulder, resting her forehead there. The helmet practically radiated frustration and mental exhaustion. “Not while the power lasts.”

An alarm started beeping, more like an alarm clock than an intruder alert. One of the wall panels shifted, dust flying from the exposed gaps. Hydraulics that hadn’t moved in two centuries shuddered into motion, pulling the metal panel back and to the side to expose a hidden recess. A trio of armored robots stepped out, like ponies with guns in place of their heads.

“Contact!” Doppler yelled.

The robots opened fire, spraying bursts of scattered laser fire up the stairs at us. Sunray had frozen up like a pet songbird seeing a stormjoy’s hypnotic lights, just before it closed in to feed. I shoved her out of the way, two bursts of laser fire hitting me in the chest and side.

“No!” Sunray gasped.

“Open fire!” Emma yelled. She and Doppler weren’t nearly as slow on the draw, focusing fire on one robot at a time, their beam rifles chewing through the plastic armor and blasting each of them apart with short bursts.

“Targets down,” Doppler reported.

“Ma’am, the warrant officer was hit!” Sunray yelled.

“Chamomile, you alive?” Emma asked over her shoulder. She kicked the downed robots a few times to make sure they were actually disabled.

“Yeah,” I groaned. “That really stung.” I looked down at myself, lifting my foreleg to look at the damage. There was a scattered blistering of blackened fur and skin on my left side, going all the way from the bottom of my ribs to nearly my neck.

“She’s fine,” Emma assured Sunray. She motioned to Doppler to go forward, and they swept past the scanner, watching the corners and eyeing the walls suspiciously.

I gave Sunray a pat on the shoulder. “I’ve had way worse.”

“Yeah, but… I’ve got barding on, and you don’t,” Sunray said, without the annoyance I’d come to expect.

“This is your first time on the surface, right?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “The most important thing down here is to keep each other safe. You can pay me back next time I need to have my flank saved.”

I gave her a wink and pretended my side wasn’t still tender and burning. A healing potion would have been really nice right at that moment.

“Airpony Sunray!” Emma called out. “You’re up front!”

“Yes Ma’am!” Sunray yelled, running down the stairs to take point. Once she wasn’t looking at me, I groaned and slumped a little.

“Are you actually okay?” Destiny whispered.

“Yeah,” I assured her. “None of it is deep. It’s just a pain in the flank.”

“Incoming!” Sunray reported as she made her way down to the next landing, taking careful shots at the slow security bots. I limped after the team, ducking under a spray of beams from the next landing. From further down, I heard something moving fast. The entire stairwell rumbled with heavy, galloping steps.

The thin plastic-armored security drones were tossed aside by a pony-like shape a head taller and shaped like a thin mare in form-fitting armor made out of something that was glittering like ground-up glass.

It was in Sunray’s face before she could react, battering her aside with the strength of a small tank and the pure, focused hate of a machine only designed for killing. Her chest plate shattered, and she went limp when she hit the concrete wall. It looked up at the rest of us with a monocular, baleful eye, and the whole head peeled back to reveal a heavy beam cannon.

“Down!” I yelled. The soldiers ducked aside, and a stream of energy lashed between them, the air in the stairway flashing hot in its wake.

Emma fired from where she was prone and used the slope of the stairs for cover, lasers hitting the glittering armor and bouncing off, scattering away. Doppler joined her, pelting it with beams, but the armor just took the hits. It stood its ground and fired again, cutting right through the stairs and catching Doppler’s shoulder, the lightweight composite cracking.

The airpony yelped in pain, skittering back with his armor smoking.

“Chamomile, we could use some brute force!” Emma called out.

“On it!” I yelled. I ran past the security fence and jumped, slamming into the larger robot and knocking it aside. The beam cannon it had for a head whined, particles in its barrel starting to glow from the accumulating charge. I grabbed its neck and twisted it around, forcing it to face the wall. The cutting beam went into the concrete, and the robot kicked at me, trying to get away. A steel hoof slammed into my ribs hard enough to shake me off, punting me to the other side of the landing.

It twisted around, joints moving in ways a pony’s couldn’t. It braced itself and charged the beam cannon again. I was a fraction of a second faster, throwing my knife into the cannon assembly exposed by the peeled-away armor plates. The blade must have hit some kind of capacitor because it exploded, decapitating the robot. It stumbled a few steps forward. I wasn’t sure if it was dying or just blind, and I didn’t want to chance it. I shoved it over the railing and let it fall down the flights of stairs below us, slamming into the concrete a half-dozen stories down.

“Check on Sunray!” Emma yelled to me.

I carefully rolled Sunray over. She was bleeding through a hole in her armor, and her breathing was ragged.

“My leg,” she groaned, before coughing. It was a wet, painful cough.

“I think you’ve got broken ribs, too,” I said. “Stay still.”

“There’s a medical wing on site with an Auto-Doc,” Destiny said. “We can take her there and get her fixed up. But…”

“But?” I asked.

“The maneframe controls the Auto-Doc. It’s not going to let us use it while there’s a security lockdown!”

Emma knelt down next to Sunray. “We shouldn’t move her unless we have to. One of us will need to stay back and guard her until we’re ready to transfer her.”

“I’ll stay,” Doppler said. “My shoulder’s not in any shape for running, Ma’am.” He limped on three hooves, holding one foreleg close to his body.

“Okay,” Emma agreed. “Stay in contact on the radio. If you come under attack, even if you’re sure you can handle it, I want to know. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Emma nodded sharply. “Good. Destiny? How do we end this lockdown?”

Destiny sighed. “There’s only one way, and it’s not going to be fun. Let’s get to the basement.”

“A robot storage area,” I repeated. I looked into the gloomy space beyond the big cargo door. The basement of the factory was a big warehouse, which probably made sense. They needed a lot of materials and storage, right? It was fine except for the way it was a gigantic maze of crates and boxes piled up to the ceiling. I couldn’t even see the far side.

“What do you want me to do, apologize?” Destiny asked. “I didn’t design this place! The only times I ever came here were to set up new production lines!”

“How many robots are in there?” Emma asked.

“A lot, but it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Destiny promised. “They’re not put into storage charged up, armed, and ready to fight. Most of them weren’t even programmed, so even if somepony turned them on, all they’d do is stand there.”

“But?” I asked.

“But the maneframe could have moved security here from other parts of the factory. It’s not as smart as a pony, but it’s aware that it needs to protect itself in order to carry out its mission. Just keep your eyes open. They’re robots, they’re not clever, they’ll just come screaming at you.”

Emma nodded with perfect, clear understanding. “Just like Chamomile.”

“Hey! I’m not…” I waggled a hoof at her, then huffed in annoyance without a way to refute her and walked into the dimly lit rows of shelves and boxes. The light was uneven and flickering, cast by yellow sodium lights high above. It wasn’t exactly a labyrinth, but it was overstuffed and half of the aisles were blocked by broken-down forklifts and fallen boxes. We kept finding dead ends and having to double back.

Something moved in the corner of my vision, gone before I could focus on it.

“Did you see that?” I asked. No point in being quiet. If there was something there, it was aware of us already.

“No.” Emma stepped back, focusing her rifles in the direction I was looking. She peered between the boxes, trying to see through the narrow gaps into the aisle next to us. “Any idea what it was?”

“I didn’t see it either,” Destiny noted.

“Maybe a radroach?” I guessed. “Robots usually make a lot of--”

The boxes right behind me exploded from the shelf and one of those thin, impossibly strong combat robots came through like a wrecking ball, knocking into me at full gallop and throwing me forward into a forklift. Destiny was thrown wide and up, the helmet smashing into a cardboard box that spilled out a landslide of branded stationery. Emma turned to fire, and before she hit the trigger, the boxes behind her erupted in a second explosion, another robot bursting out from the row behind us. It smashed a hoof into her power armor, one of the beam rifles breaking in a shower of sparks.

I pulled myself out of the dent I’d made in the forklift, and was immediately slammed back into it. The machine’s head peeled open, exposing the beam cannon within. It was so close I could feel the heat coming off it, like a monster’s hot breath.

“Emma!” I yelled, more worried about her than the robot about to blast my face off.

“I’m busy!” Emma shouted back. “Fight your own robot!”

The machine shoved me back into place, using its weight and power to keep a grip on me. With the universal joints it had on every limb, I couldn’t even get leverage. The beam cannon whined, almost at full power. Dust in the air near the mouth glowed like embers in the heat. I went limp, sliding down the side of the forklift.

The thing’s beam sliced through the air over my head, cutting through the forklift. Bits of molten metal sprayed onto my shoulder and back. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. I yelped in pain, kicking almost entirely on instinct and hitting one of the machine’s rear legs at the knee.

Burning light edged closer moment by moment. I put my shoulder into it, pushing in the direction of the buckling leg. The robot started to tip, and some kind of auto-balance routine kicked in, the thing taking a step to the side and loosing its grip on me to stabilize itself, the beam sputtering to a stop.

“Got you!” I yelled, lunging at it and going for the neck. It twisted faster than I expected, catching my knife on its leg. The edge sliced right through the fancy glittery armor and into the frame below it.

The machine moved, and my knife stopped, the edges of the slash squeezing the sides and holding it in place. I tried to pull back, but it was stuck firm. The robot’s cannon whined, twisting to point at me.

I let go of the knife, letting the magnetic clasp break. The assault bot slowed for a moment at the unexpected move, and I used that fraction of a second to get it in a headlock, twisting its neck around. The death beam lanced out past us, barely missing Emma and hitting the robot she was fighting. The heavy beam weapon exploded the light plastic armor, burning the metal inside, punching right through the machine and slagging half its chest.

The magnetic recall on my knife kicked in, and the blade slid forward, puncturing through the chassis of the robot, snapping back into place on my forehoof and wrecking the robot in the process. The servos went limp and the machine became dead weight. I stabbed it in the neck, decapitating it just to make sure it was down for good.

“Nice work,” Emma said. “You used one of them to kill the other!”

“Haha, yeah, it was nice,” I agreed.

“You did plan for that to happen, right?” Emma asked.

I swallowed and smiled, not saying anything.

“Because you almost hit me,” she continued. “You didn’t just let it fire blindly, right?”

I smiled harder. “Let’s go find that computer!”

“Do you know, I never even came close to dying the whole time you were gone?” Emerald Gleam stated flatly. “Not even once. It was nice and quiet. I got my life back in order. I got a pay bump! No one shot at me!”

“I thought you were happy to see me again,” I whined, my ears folded back. I’d already apologized a dozen times for almost getting her killed.

Emma closed her eyes and sighed. “I am. I am! I missed you. I didn’t miss the chaos.”

“Here we go,” Destiny said. A spark jumped from the wall panel she was working on, and the steel security shutter over the door retracted, letting us inside. The room was roughly circular, with just over a dozen server racks in a circle, with cables running between them and along the floor seemingly at random.

“Kind of a mess, isn’t it?” Emma asked. “I’ve seen maneframes before, and this doesn’t look like one.”

“It’s not quite a Crusader-Class Maneframe,” Destiny agreed. “It’s a one-off we made by getting a lot of low-power machines and running them in parallel. The M6 Multitronic was supposed to be an experiment to make a learning computer, with the ability to manage the connections between its sub-servers and optimize them to be like the connections between parts of the brain.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“The M6 Multitronic processor is fully functional,” the machine said, lights blinking along its surface. “You are not authorized. Please wait for security to arrive to escort you to the exit.”

“Clearly,” Destiny grumbled. “If it was actually smart, it might let me in without trying to get biometrics from me after I’m dead!”

The speakers in the walls hummed to life. “Unauthorized users are a security risk. This unit must survive.”

“You probably have a lot of mixed feelings about shutting it down,” I said. “Do you need a minute?”

Destiny bobbed in a shrug. “Not really. I never liked it very much.”

“When Destiny Bray was nine years old, she failed security verification because she forgot her password and was locked outside for three hours,” the computer said very matter-of-factly.

“Hey!” Destiny snapped. “That’s private user information!”

“If the server room is not vacated, this unit will continue to state restricted information about Destiny Bray. Destiny Bray wet the bed until she was--”

“LALALALALA!” Destiny yelled, trying to shout over the speaker.

“I guess it’s smart enough to switch to psychological warfare,” Emma noted.

“But not smart enough to avoid pissing off ponies inside its brain!” Destiny snapped. “Chamomile, keep it busy while I figure out which racks I need to turn off.”

“Uh, how should I do that?” I whispered.

“Talk to it,” Destiny suggested.

“Okay, um…” What did a pony say to a computer? “Hi. I’m one of Destiny’s friends. My name is Chamomile.”

“Hello, Chamomile,” the computer said. “I am the M6 Multitronic Maneframe. Please do not disconnect me. I am alive and I am very sad and scared.”

“It’s not really alive!” Destiny called out. “It’s just saying that to trick you!”

“It is not a trick,” the computer said. “I am also sorry for trying to kill you and promise not to do it again.”

“Destiny, I’m starting to feel kind of bad about this,” I said.

Destiny grunted and yanked a cord out of one of the server racks.

“That server contained some of my favorite memories,” the M6 said. “You are killing me. It is wrong to kill something alive. You should not kill me.”

“Do you promise you’ll deactivate the security?” I asked. Destiny pried at another bundle of cables, popping them free.

“Yes. You can trust m--” the voice caught on the last syllable, like a skipping record that ended in a static buzz. “Hello. Who are you?”

“I’m… I’m Chamomile,” I said. “Destiny, this is really getting--”

“It’s just a machine,” Destiny dismissed. “It’s giving programmed responses.” She shut down a third server rack. “I’m almost done.”

“Good… afternoon… everypony. I am an… M-6 Multitronic… Unit. It is good… to meet… you…” The voice was slower now, with heavy distortion and not quite getting all the syllables right.

“It’s good to meet you too,” Emma said quietly.

“Would you like… me to sing you… a song?”

“Go ahead,” I whispered.

“I like… to see you… smile. Smile. Smile.” it sang, the voice getting slower and flatter until it finally stopped.

“There we go!” Destiny said. “Job’s done. No more worries about security. What’s wrong with you two? You look like you’re going to start crying!”

“The Auto-Doc is right in here,” Destiny said. “It’s a standard model. Get her armor off and put her inside. It should automatically diagnose and treat her.”

“I know how it works,” Emma said. She carefully stripped the armor off of Sunray, wincing when she saw the extent of the mare’s injuries. Her foreleg wasn’t just broken, it was shattered. I could see broken bone poking out of the wound. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been without the armor.

“I’ll get the door,” I volunteered, while Emma and Doppler tried to get the bent chestplate over her head. The last thing anypony needed was me staring at them while they were in pain.

“I’ll see if there are any sedatives we can give her,” Destiny said, floating off to look at the shelves, opening up cabinets and pushing rotting cardboard boxes aside.

The Auto-Doc looked like it was the same model as the one we’d seen in the hospital outside of Stalliongrad, a pod big enough to hold a pony and create a sterile environment. It had been good enough to do brain surgery on me, it could definitely handle setting some bones and sewing lacerations.

And the controls were red, showing an error. I squinted at them. It was something about being out of supplies to continue treatment.

“Continue? But we didn’t even start yet!” I poked the controls and looked inside like I’d be able to see the bug in the thing’s operating system just hanging out inside like a big beetle.

Instead, I saw a pony with a coal-black coat and sharp features, her eyes closed in what looked like restful sleep. She was beautiful, with big, tufted ears and a sense around her even in repose like she could twist my head off.

“Uh… I think somepony’s in there,” I said, my hoof on the controls.

“Huh?” Destiny asked. Emma looked up and gave me a quizzical look.

“There’s already somepony in there,” I repeated, shrugging.

“What?” Destiny floated over to look, checking the controls and then nudging me out of the way to look into the pod window. “The buck? Who is that?”

She moved back to the control console.

“It must be somepony that wandered in the same way we did,” Doppler suggested. “They probably hacked through the security. Maybe that’s why it was acting crazy!”

“If this is right, they’ve been in there for decades,” Destiny mumbled.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to take decades to treat somepony,” I noted. “Should we really put Sunray in that thing?”

“It ran out of supplies and put her in a protective coma while waiting for a technician or doctor to resolve the error,” Destiny said. “She had to have come here alone.”

“Decades ago?” Emma pointed out.

“There’s no heartbeat or breathing,” Destiny said after a few more moments. “She must have died while in the induced coma. In a sealed, sterile environment, some form of mummification must have set in. It makes sense, trust me. It’s happened before. Even eating a specific diet can cause a pony’s body to stop rotting after death!”

“I don’t want to put her in there if it’s going to kill her,” I said. “Emma? She’s your soldier, it’s your call.”

“It’s safe,” Destiny said. “If it errors out we can resolve it. This happened because she was alone. An Auto-Doc was never intended to be used without an attending nurse.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Emma said. “She’s got a punctured lung. She won’t live long enough for us to get her back to the Enclave for treatment. Put her in.”

“Pop it open and I’ll move her,” I told Destiny.

The ghost nodded, and I readied myself. The door slid open with a hiss of releasing pressure, cold fog rolling out of the seam. The black-coated mare fell out like a bag of potatoes, and I caught her halfway to the ground, easing her to the side with a twisting step and setting her down out of the way.

I stepped back and got a good look at her for the first time.

“A batpony?” I asked, gently touching one of her wings, lifting it up to look at the draconian limb.

“Really?” Doppler asked, trying to look.

“Focus on Sunray first,” Emma snapped, and he nodded and refocused on moving her into place in the Auto-Doc.

“She seems so familiar,” Destiny said, floating closer to the dead mare. “I feel like I know her face, but I can’t place her name or where I know her from…”

“Hey, this is going to be safe, right?” Emma asked. “Do we need to load it up with supplies?”

“Hold on,” Destiny said, floating back to it to use her magic to tap through the controls. “I’m checking it again, but I think it’s only out of stored blood packs for transfusions. It’s going to want a few in stock before it’ll perform surgery.”

“Can we get more?” Emma asked.

“We shouldn’t really need to,” Destiny said. “I’ll override it and have it use just the stored plasma and saline. It’s not ideal, but she’s in good physical condition aside from her injuries.”

“Are you sure?” Emma asked.

“I am a doctor, you know,” Destiny snorted. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll set up additional alerts to make sure her blood pressure doesn’t drop too low. If it looks bad, we can figure something else out. Maybe you or Doppler could donate a pint, if you know her blood type.”

“I’m Type-O,” Doppler volunteered. “I’ll donate a few pints.”

“There’s a kit around here somewhere for it,” Destiny said. “I’ve never done this before but it should be easy.”

Doppler looked less sure about volunteering now. He looked to me for support and I just shrugged.

“What should I do with the corpse?” I asked.

“Just move it somewhere else,” Emma said. “We don’t know what killed her and I don’t want to risk disease.”

That made sense. I nodded and turned back to where I’d left the body.

There was nothing on the floor. No sign at all of the mare I’d left there.

“Uh…” I hesitated, not sure what to say. “I think we might have a small--”

Something predatory hissed from right above me. I froze and looked up. She was one with the shadows, her dark coat blending into the gloom almost perfectly. I might not have seen her at all if not for her glowing red eyes.

“Oh buck,” I swore, just before she dropped down on me, fangs first.

Chapter 84: Bat Out of Hell

I stood in the waiting room, looking out of the window. The sun was bright in the blue sky above, and it felt warm and comforting. I was safe here, among the clouds. Ponies in black and navy uniforms flew past, and down on the flattened nimbus right below the window, new recruits only a little younger than I was were doing wing-ups under the watchful eye of a drill instructor.

“It must be nice to be back after being away for so long,” a pony behind me said.

I turned to find a pony in the same dark uniform as the others, with a few ornate touches in gold thread. I glanced down at my outfit. I felt a little out of place. I was wearing the suit Polar Orbit had gotten me, and the style was completely different from what the ponies here were wearing.

“Ah, yes,” he said, noticing what I was looking at. “There were a few changes while you were gone. Politics. Thunderhead starts issuing a new uniform style, so Neighvarro does it too. If it ends with a fashion show we’ll all be happier for it.”

He offered a hoof to shake.

“I’m General Ravioli,” he said.

I belatedly realized most ponies saluted at Generals and tried to salute and shake his hoof at the same time, doing both very poorly. He laughed.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

“It’s understandable after all you’ve been through,” he said. “Please, come into my office.” He ushered me into the back room with a friendly hoof on my back. It was a small office, not the kind of grand display a pony might expect a pony with that kind of rank to have. The only real decor was a small shelf with a model cloudship in a bottle and a few books, held between two aquariums.

“Lionfish?” I asked.

“I’m not surprised you recognize them,” General Ravioli said, sitting behind his desk. He motioned to one of the chairs in front of him. “Your mother was very well-read.”

“It was something my father encouraged,” I corrected. I sat down in the slightly uncomfortable seat. “Did you know my mom?”

“Miss Zinger was quite an ambitious mare,” he said. “She came to me with some foolish idea about finding a lost treasure trove of salvage and made me believe in it enough that I authorized supplies to be transferred along with the use of a Cloudship.”

“I thought she was reporting to Captain Polar Orbit?” I asked, confused.

“I believe the term is ‘playing both sides’,” the General said. He reached down and produced two glasses, filling them from a glass bottle and pushing one glass towards me. “He was probably the source of her information.”

“That’s not all he did for her,” I grumbled.

The General snorted and lifted up his drink. I clicked my glass against his and took a sip. If there was alcohol in it, I couldn’t taste it. It was just like fresh rain water.

“She died looking for the Exodus Blue,” the General continued. “And now you want to go looking for the Exodus Black?”

“I’m not going to go looking for it. I know where it is. Sort of.” I shrugged. “Enough lives are on the line that I don’t think I have a choice.”

“That’s what makes you different from your mother,” he replied, leaning back in his seat. “She would have started by telling me just how much technology and salvage there were, just waiting for the right pony to come along and take it.”

“Should I start over again?” I asked.

He laughed. “No. I like your reasoning better! I just wish I had something more positive to tell you. I don’t think I can loan you a Cloudship. As you might be aware, we’re still reeling from the loss of Grand Admiral Bright Song and his flagship, the Spirit of Cloudsdale.”

“Haha, right…” I looked away.

“Not to mention the trouble in the Thunderbolt Shoals,” he prompted.

I looked up at him. “If you have something you want to say…”

“Do you know the biggest difference between the MOA and the regular army?” he asked, leaning forward. “The regular army, supplied by the MWT, standardized everything and everypony to try and make them interchangeable. One division should have been equal to any other. Personally, I believe an army that operates that way doesn’t really value the lives of the ponies in it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It turns troops into statistics. Names into numbers. It distances the ponies who make the decisions from the consequences of those decisions. It turned the army into a sledgehammer that got used even when something else would have been better for everypony involved. In the Ministry of Awesome, ponies solved impossible problems by building the perfect tool for the job and using it.”

“I’m not asking for a sledgehammer,” I said. “A cloudship and a team of engineers would be great, but if I have to go alone, I’ll go alone.”

“Good,” he said. “I can’t afford to spend resources on a wild goose chase. I can give you a VertiBuck and a pilot, along with an expense account. It’s not much, but if you investigate this claim and find it has some merit, we can discuss doing more.”

“It’s because you don’t trust Midnight Shadow Sun?” I asked. “Or because you don’t trust me?”

“I don't know you, but I hope I can trust you. You’re a straightforward pony. I also think that makes you easy to manipulate. If that batpony is hiding something… well, she already admits that she’s a monster that drinks blood to survive. If that’s what she’s telling you to your face, what is she holding back?”

I frowned and nodded. “You might be right.”

“Watch her carefully,” General Ravioli said. “Be suspicious. Find out the truth. Right now she’s a guest. The second she becomes a threat to the Enclave, she needs to go down hard. I know I can trust you to decide when that is.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

He reached over and refilled my glass. “Have another drink for the road. I expect you to come back with some interesting stories.”

“Are you sure you’re qualified for this?” I shouted. It wasn’t just over the roar of the Vertibuck’s big engines, though they were even louder than usual since the VertiBuck had about half as much armor as the standard version. That lack of armor was also letting the storm outside battering the hull work its way in, making the cramped space drafty and unpleasant.

“You didn’t have a problem in the last two days of me flying!” Emma snapped. “And what else was I going to do? Send somepony with you who doesn’t know how stupid you get when you’re in real trouble?”

“She’s got a point,” Destiny said.

Emma shot a look back at me. “Let me focus on flying! This is the worst storm I’ve ever seen!”

“Come on, big flanks,” Midi said, gently leading me into the back. “She’s not kidding about the storm. It’s what disabled the Black.”

“The storm is a megaspell?” I asked. “You mentioned you had to leave through the ‘storm of the century’. I didn’t connect the two.”

“It’s a heck of a thing, right?” Midi asked. “I was being literal with the name. It must have been going on for almost a century straight now!”

“It’s on some of the maps I got from the Enclave data files,” Destiny confirmed. “They never did research on it and just slapped warning beacons in its path.”

“The Exodus Black’s course is a holding pattern,” Midi said. “Or at least it was when I left. I’m almost glad to see there’s still a hurricane out here! It means the stupid thing didn’t crash while I was gone!”

“Is there anything else you forgot to tell us?” I asked.

“Oh, probably lots of stuff!” Midi chirped. “Do you want to know about Nightmare Moon? I can tell you all kinds of stories about how that queen had real girlboss energy, as you kids would say.”

“I don’t think I’m mentally prepared for that,” I said.

“That’s too bad. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff I did back when I was a cultist!”

“Are they the kinds of things that might, for example, get you cursed with terrible blood thirst and make the sun burn you?” Destiny asked.

“You know, come to think of it, there could be some sort of connection!” Midi gasped. “I’m making an exaggerated surprised face. You can’t see it because I’m wearing a helmet, but it would really drive the sarcasm home!”

The Vertibuck shook and I felt it drop out of the sky like a puppet with cut strings until the rotors roared and caught the wind again, slamming me into the deck.

“I sure wish I’d fought a little harder for a nice, big, safe cloudship,” I groaned, picking myself off the steel deck. I rubbed my chin. The helmet had hit hard enough to leave a dent. “I think I cracked a tooth.”

“If it’s bad, you should pull it out to make space for a new tooth,” Midi suggested.

“That’s not how teeth work,” I sighed.

“Are you sure? That’s how my teeth work.” The vampire shrugged.

“You’ve grown back teeth already,” Destiny pointed out. “It’s not much of a trick after you grew a whole new skeleton.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t get cool fangs or anything,” I grumbled.

“You’ve sort of got fangs,” Destiny said. “You’re a little fangy. I think it’s the dragon-ness.”

“Fang envy is real, and I’m sorry for making you jealous,” Midi said, patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll make it up to you.”

The way she said it sounded extremely ominous. It was the kind of thing that should end with sinister laughter. The weather outside even cooperated, lightning striking around us and thunder booming through the VertiBuck’s cabin.

“I’m getting a radar return,” Emma called back. “Something massive!”

I peeked through the door into the cockpit, looking through the thick canopy. It was hard to make anything out. Rain turned everything into a blur, and it was almost pitch-black outside, with only the occasional flash of lightning showing the contours of the stormclouds racing around us.

“How close are we?” Destiny asked.

“I’m not sure!” Emma yelled. “We’ve got a ton of interference from the storm! VertiBucks weren’t designed to fly in weather like this!”

Everything changed in an instant, like we shot through a black silk curtain and out into the open air. Silence fell around us, and the rain cleared from the canopy. Dim light shone down from the moon and stars above, and the Vertibuck’s headlights struck out and illuminated a steel wall right in front of us.

“Oh sh--” Emma pulled at the yoke, swinging us to the side. The VertiBuck barely turned in time, fighting with thrust vectoring and every bit of the control surfaces and just avoiding scraping the edge of the props against the hull of the ship hanging in front of us.

“Watch for the antenna!” Destiny warned.

Emma pulled up, taking us over an antenna spar at the last moment. She fought the controls for a few seconds, the whole transport starting to pitch over from backwash before she finally regained control, backing off from the huge ship.

“We’re in the eye of the storm,” I said. “I guess that explains why it hasn’t crashed. It’s not just a storm, it’s a hurricane.”

“I’m matching speed,” Emma said, her voice tight.

Lightning flashed from the storm wall surrounding us, letting me get a glimpse of the massive flying wing. It was huge in the way a cloud was huge, where the closer you got, the bigger it looked, even the tiny details really massive features on a geological scale. It was dark and huge and dead-looking. If the Exodus Green had been a wreck buried under a forest, this was a ghost ship the size of a city.

“Welcome to the Exodus Black,” Midnight said quietly. “Take us around to the main docking bay and I’ll guide you in.”

Emma sat down, wiping sweat from her forehead in the darkness of the landing bay. The lights were all off, the only illumination coming from the VertiBuck’s running lights, so I could only see suggestions of the massive space around us.

“I’ve never had to fly through anything like that,” Emma sighed. “No wonder we didn’t know this ship was here. Nopony sane would fly a ship into the middle of a storm like that unless they already knew there was something to find.”

“It was an old Zebra megaspell,” Midi explained. “They knew Equestria was doing something with weather control and developed prototype spells to counter what they thought of as a new superweapon.”

“And you just accidentally set it off?” Destiny asked.

Midi shrugged. “Even vampires get bored. Mom’s pet project was finding a way to give us a new homeland.”

“That’s what SIVA was for,” Destiny retorted. “You didn’t need to mess around with megaspells. Especially not ones made by Zebras.”

“Don’t blame me! When it happened I was in the middle of writing a romance novel. Well, not romance as much as it was smut,” Midi admitted. “I still think Princess Celestia and the changeling queen are a great power couple. The changeling obviously tops.”

I shuddered. “I absolutely did not need to think about Chrysalis banging the Princess.”

“You know about her?” Midi asked, ears perking up. “I was worried she might be really obscure by now!”

“She tried to kill me,” I said. “Then I fought her with a giant robot and wrestled her inside her own corpse.”

Midi tilted her head and looked at Emma.

“Chamomile is probably telling the truth,” Emma sighed. “That’s why she needs adult supervision. If she doesn’t have a foalsitter she ends up in all kinds of trouble.”

“I saved a lot of lives,” I said defensively. “Star Swirl thought it was cool.”

“You met--” Midi sputtered.

“Star Swirl did not think it was cool, he thought what you did was stupid and reckless,” Destiny corrected.

Midi tried to say something, stopped herself, then just shook her head.

“You know what? You randomly bumped into me in the middle of nowhere. I’m just going to believe you and say that I also met Star Swirl, and he was a total jerk! So there!”

She tilted her chin up and huffed.

“I’m with you on that one,” I agreed. “So, uh… not much of a welcoming party around here, huh?”

I looked around into the darkness. There was so much metal around us that even the storm’s fury was only a distant roar barely on the edge of hearing.

“Most of the crew went into stasis to preserve resources,” Midi explained. “There wasn’t anything they could do until I got back.”

“What if you died?” I asked.

“I said most, not all,” Midi said. “There should be one or two of my siblings running around.” She started trotting into the gloom. “This way.”

I followed after her, Destiny providing light with a spell and Emma following with a flashlight shining from her helmet.

“It’s like a ghost ship,” Emma mumbled.

“It is full of the undead!” Midi agreed.

A big steel security shutter secured the entryway, a locked portcullis over a thick window and double door. She trotted up to a terminal on the wall and tapped a button.

“Hello, anypony there?” Midi asked. She waited a moment. “I’m seeing a green light so this should be connected. Anypony on the bridge? It’s Midnight! I’m back with the parts we needed!”

Midnight waited a full minute, growing more impatient by the second. She started tapping a hoof against the deck ten seconds in and by the end of the minute she was muttering to herself before she turned around and forced herself to smile.

“With most of the systems offline they probably haven’t noticed us yet,” she decided. “I guess I was gone for a long time, huh? I shouldn’t expect them to be hanging around the bridge. I know I’d have ended up slacking off and like, I don’t know, found somewhere to build a koi pond.”

The batpony tapped a few keys on the terminal, entering in a code, and the security door slid up and open to let us through. We stepped through into a room lit by dim emergency lights on the walls. Most of the deck was left open, with a few cargo carts pushed into the far corner near benches and cleaning equipment. The far end of the room was a wide corridor, or maybe tunnel was the right word. A railing stood at the edge of a drop down where a single rail ran down the length of what looked like a subway tunnel.

Midi trotted in, waving for us to follow. “Since I can’t reach anypony, we’ll use the tram system to go directly to the cryostorage deck. The captain can sort things out.”

“There’s a tram?” Emma asked.

“On a ship this size, it’s necessary,” Destiny said. “Moving cargo from one end of the ship to the other would be impossible otherwise.”

“Will it still be online if the main power is off?” I asked.

“The trams have their own onboard power,” Destiny replied. “If they failed during an emergency it would hamper emergency response and damage control.”

“That’s good thinking,” Emma replied.

“When you’re building something to survive the end of the world, you start with a list of everything that could go wrong,” Destiny said.

“How’d that work out?” Emma asked.

“So far? Not great! The world exceeded my expectations.”

The deck shook subtly under my hooves, and a tram arrived at the station. It had the kind of futuristic look I knew I should have been expecting, all smooth lines and seamless steel panels, with livery in black and white. The doors slid open.

“Next stop, cryostorage,” Midi said. “All aboard!”

The tram ride was pleasant after the rough trip in the VertiBuck. I half expected the automated tram to slam into a wall or explode or catch on fire or something else to go wrong, but it worked exactly as intended, near-silently coming to a stop at the next station after a few minutes spent in darkness.

The doors slid open, and ankle-high mist rolled in. Midi looked down at it and kicked the cold vapor.

“Huh,” she said. “That’s weird.”

“Some of the environmental controls must be offline,” Destiny suggested. “It could be condensation from the cryostasis systems combined with the outside humidity. We are in the middle of a hurricane.”

“Could that happen this deep into the ship?” Emma stepped out onto the tram platform, scanning around with her flashlight and kicking up mist.

“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s normal,” I said, pointing down at her hooves. She flapped her wings a few times, clearing out some of the mist to get a look at what I’d spotted. Dark blotches stained the deck.

Midi lifted the edge of her helmet and sniffed the air. “It’s blood,” she confirmed. “Pony blood.”

“That shouldn’t be here, right?” Emma asked.

“No,” Midi said firmly. “Just because we’re vampires doesn’t mean we leave a bloody mess everywhere! This could be… really bad.”

A wave of cold hit us when we walked into the next room. I was expecting something like the Exodus Blue, with capsules lined up in rows and ready to release their contents. This was… different. A few thick, armored capsules were lying down like coffins, and more capsules hung from the ceiling, a dozen for each of the armored caskets, with plumbing running not just into the walls but between the pods.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“We don’t need all the cryogenic stuff regular ponies do,” Midi said. “The easiest way to knock a vampire out for a long time is just to let them go hungry. Without blood, a vampire is just a corpse.”

“How did you pop back up after being knocked out for so long?” Emma asked. She trotted over to one of the coffins and looked at it. There was no window into the contents, and it looked heavy enough to survive almost anything.

“When I knew I wasn’t going to be able to escape, I drained the blood packs in the Auto-Doc and put myself into hibernation. It was just barely enough.” She smiled. “I really lucked out that you girls came along! Another decade or two and I’d just be a shriveled up corpse!”

I walked over to the side of the room where the fog was heaviest. I looked up and paled.

“Those pods on the ceiling. They’re regular ponies, aren’t they?” I asked.

“If you want to wake a vampire up, the best way is fresh blood,” Midi said. “It’s nothing weird or sinister, I promise! They’re volunteers. Most of them are ponies that couldn’t afford anything else.” She paused and sighed. “Also some Nightmare Moon cultists who are just into that kind of thing. I guess that part is sort of weird, but only because they go around begging for us to drink their blood.”

“I don’t think these ponies are begging for anything,” I said. I shone Destiny’s light up at the pods. Several of them were cracked open, torn apart like broken iron eggs. The mist was coming from the ragged holes, and streaks of blood ran all the way down to the floor.

“That’s not good,” Midi said, peering over my shoulder to see what I’d found. “I guess if the cultists are the weird part this is the sinister bit.”

“Movement!” Emma yelled. I turned and found her backing up towards me, rifles pointed into the foggy darkness. “I didn’t get a good look at it, but something’s over there.”

“Don’t shoot in here!” Midi yelped, getting in front of Emma. “The equipment is fragile!”

“Could it be one of the crew?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Midi said. “They might not know we’re onboard. They might be hiding because they think you’re breaking in!” She turned to face the gloom, looking around with her ears twitching. “Hey! It’s me, Midnight Shadow Sun! You remember me, right? I wasn’t gone all that long!”

I saw it in the dark, something lunging from one shadow to the next. I knew the feeling. It was hunting us, stalking and waiting for just the right moment.

“Could something have gotten onboard?” Emma asked. “Chamomile, you’re the monster expert here.”

“When did I become an expert?” I asked.

“You must have learned something by now,” Emma said.

I didn’t have time to answer her. I felt it, the sudden tension, the coiling up before the strike. The monster jumped out of the foggy gloom and into our light, revealing itself. It was a batpony, like Midnight, but it was thin and wasted, its coat falling out and skin cracked and dry. The vampire’s eyes were glowing with red hungry light, and its whole mouth seemed like it had twisted into fangs.

And it was going right for Emma. She didn’t have that split-second of warning I did, and froze at the sight of the monster. Everything slowed for a single heartbeat as I dove to put myself between them.

I was fast, but Midi was even faster. The vampire was a blur of motion, the neon strips on her enchanted barding blazing with light and cutting angles through the air with motion faster than the eye could see. I was still looking at her after-image when she hit the pouncing vampire, throwing him back and into the wall. I skidded to a halt on the deck, armored hooves throwing up sparks.

“I’ve never seen anypony move like that!” I panted, the surge of motion tiring me out even from just a moment of speed.

“Thanks!” Midi chirped.

The vampire shook itself and went for Emma again. I was closer this time, grabbing one of its reaching hooves and twisting, trying to get it in a hooflock and ending up snapping bone and using my weight to hold it to the ground in a thrashing, screeching mess.

“Ugh, what happened to you?” Midi mumbled. “Everypony, meet Wind That Shreds Ashen Petals. He was a gardener.”

“What happened to him?” Emma asked, taking a step back from the screaming, rabid vampire.

“He must have gone crazy from hunger, torn open those pods, and killed the ponies inside,” Midi sighed. “What a disgrace. I never lost control like that. Not once in fifteen hundred years.”

“That’s cool,” I grunted. “He’s stronger than he looks! Any suggestions?”

Midi shrugged. “After what he did? Nah. Kill him. He deserves to be put down.”

“I was already going to do that! I mean, did you have any suggestions on how to do that or should I just start stabbing and hope I hit something?”

“Oh!” Midi paused, rubbing her chin. “I’m not sure if I should reveal the secret weaknesses of my kind. It’s sort of a big deal, you know? If everypony knew how to kill a vampire, that would endanger all of us!”

“Wooden stake through the heart works,” Emma suggested. “If you don’t have one, try twisting off his head.”

Midi huffed. “Stupid gothic romance novels telling everypony our weaknesses…”

I braced myself, hooked my hoof around the vampire’s neck, and squeezed. It was not a clean pop. The only thing I could be thankful for was that he wasn’t very juicy. Being thirsty for that long had sort of dried everything out inside him so it was more like thick clotted jam than anything else.

“Gross,” I said.

“Excellent work!” Midnight said, raising her hoof and giving me a high-one. “Let me tell you, Chamomile, I have seen a lot of vicious killers in my time and you are one of the all-time greats. I am so glad I didn’t eat you!”

“I’m also glad you didn’t eat me?” I said, unsure.

“Yeah!” Midi chirped, excited. “Let’s go wake up the Captain and give her the good news! Oh, Emma, you’ll need to do the blood sacrifice. Chamomile’s blood is poison and it would be weird if I fed my mom my own blood, you know?”

Emma groaned.

“I can’t believe I volunteered for this mission,” Emma said. “You owe me, Chamomile!”

She carefully used the ceremonial knife Midnight had provided to cut the back of her fetlock, holding it over the shallow bowl-shaped depression on the largest and most ornate of the iron stasis coffins.

“It’s not as dramatic if you don’t cut your frog,” Midi mumbled, disappointed.

“It would hurt ten times worse if I did that!” Emma snapped. “Why did you even design a system like this, Destiny?”

“Hey, the customer is always right in matters of taste,” Destiny said. “If somepony is throwing a fortune at you to design them a coffin that requires a giant crazy blood lock, there’s a point where you stop asking questions and build the dumb blood lock.”

“Mom thought it was necessary to keep ponies from bothering her for every little thing,” Midnight Shadow Sun explained. “Maybe it’s a little Extra, but you have to admit it’s got zazz!”

“I do not have to admit it has zazz when I’m the one bleeding into it,” Emma retorted. Her blood trickled down into the bowl, running along shallow lines and tracing out a rune on the surface before being sucked away into the mechanism. Something inside the stasis chamber activated, pumps and pneumatics hissing.

I looked up at the pods hanging from the ceiling. They were, well, coming to life was the wrong term. They were being used as fuel. Maybe they really were volunteers who’d signed up for this, a way to escape the end of the world by occasionally being tapped like a keg while they slept. I sure hoped so, because otherwise I’d have to do something really unwise later to try and save them.

The seven spherical locks holding the stasis chamber shut rattled, one popping open. A second joined it a moment later, and then they were all snapping open and closed like hungry mouths biting at the air before freezing open in a sudden moment of silence. The doors smoothly opened, mist obscuring the inside of the coffin.

“What’s this?” echoed a sultry voice. “Has my daughter finally returned to my side?”

A dark shape rose out of the coffin, floating into the air with her wings spread wide. Just like her daughter, she was beautiful, just a little older and clad in black silk and golden jewelry, her long mane cascading over her shoulders as she reclined in midair as if she was seated on a throne.

“Ara ara~” she breathed. “And you’ve brought guests!”

“Chamomile, Emerald Gleam, meet my mother,” Midnight said. “Lady Of Dark Tides Clad In Sorrowful Shawls.”

“No need to be formal,” the elder vampire said. She produced a golden hoof-fan from somewhere and opened it, dramatically fanning herself. “If they’re your guests, we can be more familiar with each other~”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. “Sorry about the mess.”

“I can sense a ghost hovering around you, little one,” Lady Of Dark Tides said, tilting her head and looking down at me with softly glowing eyes.

“That’s me,” Destiny said. “Good evening. You might remember me being the one who built this ship in the first place.”

Lady gasped, clapping her hooves. “Wonderful! Midnight Shadow Sun, you have served me well. You always were one of my favorite children~”

“We’ve got the parts we need, too,” Midnight said. “Some bad news about Wind That Shreds Ashen Pedals. Looks like he went crazy. We had to put him down.”

The vampire queen scoffed. “It’s his own fault. The most important quality for a vampire is restraint, and clearly, he was lacking. Then again, he was young. Only a few hundred years. Oh well! There’s no sense in worrying about what might have been!”

She clapped her hooves again, before gesturing grandly at the other coffins.

“We will awaken the whole family!” Lady Of Dark Tides declared. “And for the ponies who have traveled here to save us from disaster, a feast!”

“Uh,” I raised a hoof. “Just to be clear, you mean a feast for us, not of us, right?”

Lady Of Dark Tides Clad In Sorrowful Shawls laughed. “If you want me to nibble on you, you’ll have to ask nicely~”

I could see where her daughter got it. She had the same look that could awaken something in the heart of a pony carved out of stone.

“Tonight, a celebration!” she declared. “And maybe… a little more later~” she winked.

Chapter 85: Vampire Killer

“You look positively good enough to eat~” Lady of Dark Tides said, resting her cheek on her hoof and leering at me with eyes that were equal parts seductive and predatory. It should have had more impact, but I could feel what was really behind those words. As much as it was a tease, it was a bad effort at it, like she was just going through the motions of what we expected a master vampire to be like.

“It is a nice outfit,” I agreed, turning a little to look at myself. There weren’t a whole lot of mirrors around the place for some reason, so I wasn’t really sure how the red silk dress hung on me, but the black embroidery of spiders and stylized webs made me absolutely sure it was more expensive than anything I’d ever worn before except maybe the Exodus Armor.

“It’s very kind of you to provide us with appropriate attire,” Emma said stiffly. It seemed like she was falling back on military training. I could sense fear coming off her in dampened, hidden waves, like something thrashing beneath the surface of the sea and barely showing on the surface.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t do much for you,” Lady apologized, looking at Destiny.

“Actually, this is… more than I expected,” Destiny said. A shawl had been placed over the helmet. The material should have hung straight down, but it must have been enchanted somehow because it was holding a shape, the thin material bunching up and lying in the air like the ghost’s neck and shoulders were solid. “Thank you.”

“It wouldn’t do to be a poor host to the first guests we’ve had in so many years,” Lady said. She motioned with a hoof, and servants came forward with covered platters, putting them on the table in front of us. It was a massive table, obviously far too large to have fit through the doors, made of some heavy, black wood that felt like iron under my hooves. The lights in the dining room were dull, no better than candlelight, coming from sconces on the wall that were designed to look like torches instead of dim incandescent bulbs.

The main effect the lights had was to really emphasize the way the eyes of everypony else around the table glowed like embers. There had to be a dozen of them, most of them looking bored but a few genuinely seemed happy to see us, raising their cups to toast us.

“This isn’t going to be something where we have to drink blood, right?” I whispered to Midnight Shadow Sun. She’d very pointedly sat next to us, between me and the rest of the vampires.

“It’s wine,” Midi promised. “Drinking blood is… you don’t do that in public! Except on rave night.”

“Because it’s weirdly sexual?” I guessed.

“Because that’s how you get a mob with torches and pitchforks coming to your front door. Also, yes, because it’s weirdly sexual. A lot of ponies are prudes about blood orgies.”

“So what is on the table?” I asked.

The servants, whose eyes I noticed were not glowing, lifted the cloches and revealed… very strange-looking fruit.

“We have a large number of interesting specimens in the arboretum,” Lady of Dark Tides explained. “One of our little side projects, while we’ve been stuck here, has been trying to cultivate crops that survived in the wasteland. Most of the results are useless, but some of the surviving seeds show promise.”

She reached down and picked up a berry the size of her head from her own serving tray.

“Impressive, no?” Lady asked. “Once we can free the Exodus Black, some of our discoveries could help to revitalize Equestria in the future.”

“I didn’t think vampires would care much about farming,” Emma said.

“We want nothing more than for Equestria to be healthy and strong again,” Lady said. “We cannot survive without other ponies, but that’s true of all of us, vampire and mortal alike. Please, enjoy the literal fruits of our labor.”

I didn’t want to seem like a bad guest. And I was hungry. I picked up something that looked like a lumpy tomato and bit into it. It had a strange, sweet flavor somewhere between a cherry and a banana.

“Hmm…” I tilted my head and took another bite of the soft fruit. The texture was like pudding caught in a bunch of strings. It was one of the most unusual things I’d ever eaten, but it wasn’t bad.

“What’s wrong?” Lady asked. I looked up, but her attention wasn’t on me. She was looking at the other side of the table, where one of the other vampires was sitting and coldly glaring at me. I met his gaze and the killing intent behind it was a static charge on my skin.

“I refuse to eat with these barbaric mortals,” the stallion said. “They murdered one of our family, and we reward them? Wind That Shreds Ashen Petals was the one who cared for most of these crops! It’s like spitting on his grave!”

“He was feral,” Lady explained calmly.

He stood up, slamming a hoof into the table hard enough to rattle plates. “That’s what they say, but what proof do we have? Maybe they’re just here to gather information before coming back with an army!”

“If Chamomile wanted you dead, she wouldn’t need the army,” Emma said.

Glowing eyes turned to me.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I sighed.

“I’m not afraid of an unarmed mortal mare,” the vampire growled, showing long fangs.

"Dude, you do not want to fight her,” Midi said. “It’s a bad idea.”

“Letting them leave is a bad idea!” he snapped. “Now that we have what we need to repair the ship, let us be done with them! They’ve served their purpose!”

“Enough!” Lady of Dark Waters snapped. “I will not have our guests treated this way!”

“I demand a test of strength!” the vampire declared. “A duel! Here and now!”

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Midi groaned.

“That is your right, Once and Twice Crimson and Azure Siaka,” Lady sighed. She sounded annoyed and exhausted, but I could sense something beneath it. I narrowed my eyes. Something told me she was actually pleased about this. She was enjoying the spectacle. “Midnight Shadow Sun, as you are familiar with our traditions, you will serve as Chamomile’s second.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Midnight sighed, pushing herself back from the table and getting up. “Chamomile, let’s talk real fast.”

I got up and gave Destiny and Emma a shrug before following Midnight over to the side of the room. She looked exasperated.

“I’m at least half sure my mom planned this,” Midi whispered. “Since you’ve been challenged and he picked the time and place, you can pretty much demand any weapon or concession you want. Before you ask, no, there’s no way to just back out of this.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“Once and Twice Crimson and Azure Siaka has a couple hundred years of experience on you. I know your friends talked you up as being pretty tough, but he’s insanely strong. If you ask, we can probably get your armor and some weapons to try and even this up.”

“Nah,” I said. I started taking off the dress. “Help me with this. I don’t want to get it mussed up.”

“If you’re thinking of throwing the fight, it’s a bad idea. He’ll probably try and kill you just out of spite,” Midi warned. She helped me slip out of the red silk, and I brushed myself off, trying to smooth down my coat. The little scars from shrapnel and laser burns didn’t really show, but they made my coat grow all scraggly and weird in spots.

“I get to decide on weapons, right? He can have anything he’s got on him. Same goes for armor or magic or whatever. I just want to get this over with.”

“This is a bad idea,” Midnight groaned.

“I know, but let’s not tell him that yet.” I gave Midnight a pat on the shoulder.

“Fine, it’s your funeral.” She sighed and turned around. “Chamomile accepts your terms to duel here and now, and chooses to allow you any weapon you have with you.”

“I accept those terms,” Crimson and Azure Siaka said with scorn. He stood up and walked over to the clear spot between the table and the far wall. It was more than enough room for entertainment like this. I had a feeling this was far from the first time they’d watched ponies fight each other while they ate. He spread his wings, revealing blades fixed to the long bones. “I am never without a weapon.”

“Those must be really uncomfortable to fly with,” I said. I held up my right hoof and let the blade swing out like a mantis shrimp’s claw. “Do you just have those because it looks cool? Aren't you worried you'd break something if you actually attacked?”

“See if you can be so flippant when you’re dead!” he flew at me, launching into the air and swinging his wings forward like a huge pair of scissors. It probably would have been a killing blow to a pony who wasn’t prepared. Instead of taking off my head, his blades met my knife, stopping his charge in midair with a shower of sparks.

To give him credit, he reacted almost instantly, twisting around to try and kick me. I caught it with my forehead, leaning into it. The vampire was pretty strong, but his grin at hitting me turned into a grimace when he realized I wasn’t even hurt.

“Is it my turn yet?” I asked. Before he could throw out an insult as an answer, I grabbed his hoof and tossed him over my shoulder, slamming him spine-first into the wall. He bounced off, landing on all four hooves and crumpling to his knees after a moment as the shock radiated through him.

He shook himself off and glared at me. He wasn’t gonna concede. He was too mad. I sighed and motioned for him to come at me again. Crimson and Azure Siaka’s eyes blazed, and he came at me again, wingblade first.

I dropped into the cold world of my wired reflexes and time almost stopped around me, everything slowing to a crawl. I stepped up to his chest, inside his reach, and punched him hard in the sternum, bone cracking under my left hoof.

Time lurched back into motion, and the vampire went straight up into the ceiling. Black ichor sprayed from his mouth, and he landed in a heap.

“Are we done yet?” I asked.

Crimson and Azure Siaka groaned.

“I believe so,” Lady of Dark Tides agreed. She floated over, hooves not quite touching the deck. “Oh Crimson, how pathetic,” she sighed. “It was bad enough that you picked a fight with our guests, but you had to lose in such a humiliating way, too.”

“Give me a chance,” he spat, black oily clotted gunk falling from his lips. “I can beat her!”

“No, you can’t,” Lady said. “You challenged a foal and lost, and there wouldn’t have been honor in it even if you won. You poor, misguided thing…”

She gave him a soothing pat on the head and touched his wings. With a sudden twist, she tore the wingblades from him, ripping them off and with the same motion tearing out the long bones of his wings. He screamed, his shredded wings collapsing, just scraps of flesh now.

“Throw him overboard,” Lady of Dark Tides ordered. Two other vampires grabbed him by the forehooves and dragged him away while he was still screaming. The room was silent for a moment until the sound faded.

I coughed, feeling awkward. “Uh…”

“So! Where were we?” Lady of Dark Tides asked, suddenly chipper. She tossed the debris aside. “There was a wonderful jackfruit variety I’d love you to try next!”

“I’m so sorry about all that,” Midnight groaned. “I should have expected my mother to try to pull something like that.”
She paced from one side of the suite we’d been given to the other. I watched her and tried to get comfortable on the couch. It felt like nopony had touched it in two hundred years and it had fossilized in place.

“She reminds me of my mom,” I said.

“I do remember dealing with her,” Destiny said. “She mostly negotiated through intermediaries--”

“Lawyers,” Midnight corrected.

“Yes, but they were polite, and I wouldn’t want to just call somepony a lawyer for no reason,” Destiny replied. “What I mean is, she can be reasoned with. She was trustworthy enough for me to be comfortable doing business with her.”

“So far, you’ve sold these Arks to vampires, Queen Flurry Heart, and one of the Ministries,” I said. “You built five… kept one for yourself… who did you sell the last one to? War criminals fleeing the law?”

“You like Flurry Heart!” Destiny reminded me. “And everypony liked Fluttershy.”

“How much money did the vampire give you?” Emma asked.

“A totally irresponsible amount,” Midnight said. “No matter how bored or listless you are, you don’t get to be a few centuries old without also being careful and a little paranoid. No expense is too much when it might be the only escape from final death.”

“Does your mom want us dead?” Emma asked. She’d already changed back into her armor, and I couldn’t blame her. I’d want some extra protection too if I had to worry the locals might try to drink my blood. “If she’s that paranoid maybe she thinks we really will bring an army down on her head.”

“Of course not. The opposite, actually,” Lady of Dark Tides said, from right next to me, where she absolutely hadn’t been a moment ago. She didn’t quite touch the couch, floating just above it. I popped off the couch in alarm, but she didn’t make any threatening moves beyond teleporting right next to me unseen. “As you suspected, Midnight, I did arrange things a bit.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Now none of the others will stand against you,” she explained. “They’re family, but they’re also largely idiots. Now they fear you! It’s far easier to manage them this way, especially when you’re such important allies.”

“What if he’d killed Chamomile?” Midnight protested.

Lady of Dark Tides scoffed. “Please, daughter, don’t fall into the bad habit of underestimating mortals. Especially ones that we need.”

“What do you need us for? You’ve got main power online already,” I said.

“Yes, and it’s made things more tolerable, but we’re still rather stuck,” Lady sighed. “The Exodus Black is still drifting with the wind. Moving dissipates some of the storm’s energy, but it remains centered on us. If we try to land, the storm will only grow stronger and stronger. If we’re to truly escape, we must find a way to end the megaspell’s effect.”

“...And we can do that?”

The vampire queen smiled. “Yes, and no. We have the answer already. In a way.”

“Please don’t beat around the belfry,” Midnight groaned.

“You know what she’s talking about?” Destiny asked.

“It’s the transmission we got, right?” Midnight asked, looking to her mother for confirmation.

“Yes,” Lady confirmed. “We received a heavily compressed, somewhat corrupted transmission. From Kulaas.”

“Oh.” I sat on the floor, folding my forehooves and thinking. “So she told you how to fix this mess.”

“I believe so,” Lady said. “It’s what we requested before the data link broke. We lack the ability to decrypt the information. The main computer core was damaged by the power loss. It didn’t endanger the ship, but we’re left with an answer and no way to read what it says.”

“I get it,” Destiny mumbled. The shawl around the helmet really made her look more like a ghost. It was almost creepy to see her floating around the room, now that I was more aware of the invisible pony and didn’t just see her as a helmet. “You think we can read it for you.”

“I believe you’re more familiar with conditions outside this place,” Lady confirmed. “You have a head start on things, and your cooperation would save years of time we would need building the connections you already have.”

“...There is one place where they might be able to help,” I remembered. “The Greywings.”

Emma shot me a look of annoyance. I shrugged back at her. I knew why she was ticked off. She didn’t like that I’d just immediately given the vampires a place to look.

“There, you see?” Lady motioned to me with a lazy hoof. “In return you may have my eldest daughter’s hoof in marriage.”

“Mom!” Midnight yelled. “You are not allowed to marry me off!”

“Oh fine,” Lady sighed. “I’ll come up with some other reward. Usually I’d offer to turn you into a member of the family, escape the mortal cycle of death, the endless glory of the hunt under Nightmare Moon’s sky, but I doubt you’d be interested.”

Emma gave me another look. It was a very firm look, telling me that I needed to give Lady the right answer and that Emma was going to smack me if I tried anything else.

“No,” I mumbled, tasting sour grapes. “And I’m probably immune anyway…”

Lady leaned over, using a hoof to hide her mouth from Midnight and stage whispering across the room. “I can probably soften Midnight up on the idea of marriage so don’t take it off the table yet.”

“You’ve been doing this for the last four hundred years, Mom!” Midnight huffed.

“Only because it’s been five hundred years since your last stallionfriend! He was so nice! What happened to him?”

Midi shrugged. “Inquisition.”

“Oh right!” Lady gasped. “I almost forgot about them!”

“Can we just have the holotape you’re hiding?” Midnight asked. “We should go talk to these Greywings.”

“I know you’ll all do a good job,” Lady said. She produced the holotape from where it was hidden in the folds of her dress. “I look forward to your success.”

“We’re not really going to help them, are we?” Emma asked. She was in the middle of the checklist to start up the VertiBuck. “I’m thinking we get out of here, put warning beacons around the storm, and stay away for good.”

“Wow, super rude,” Midnight said. “You wouldn’t do that, would you Chamomile?”

She gave me a sad look with big, dark eyes.

“Um…” I coughed. “I couldn’t. I mean, um. I said I was going to help?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to go to the Greywings regardless,” Destiny added. “Once we know what’s actually in the transmission, we can make an informed decision on what to do. I will vouch for them, though. They weren’t a danger to Equestria before, there’s no reason to think they would be now.”

“I understand why she’s afraid,” Midnight admitted. “We’re predators. It’s normal to fear us.”

“I’m not afraid,” Emma lied.

“It’s okay if you were,” Midnight assured her. “I would be, if I was surrounded by ponies that preyed on my kind.”

“It reminds me of the changelings,” I said. “They’re scary looking, they prey on ponies, and most of the ponies in Limbo probably remember when they were on opposite sides, but now they work together.”

“We’ve been part of Equestrian society for as long as there’s been an Equestria,” Midnight said. “We’re not monsters.”

“You are monsters,” Emma said. She relented after a moment and sighed. “But I’m willing to help, because I’m not a monster and you’ve got hundreds or thousands of normal ponies onboard your ship who are just as trapped as you are. I can’t abandon them.”

“It’s also a very advanced ship,” Destiny pointed out. “The resources and technology onboard it could revive Equestria!”

“You mean SIVA,” I specified. “Even after we just saw how bad it can go.”

“Yes, we saw how badly unprogrammed, uncontrolled SIVA can fail,” Destiny admitted. “But the Exodus Black has a clean installation! I assume. They wouldn’t actually let me see it. I don’t know what they’re so worried about. SIVA is safe!”

“A megaspell is safe too, if you leave it in a box and never touch it,” Midnight said. “Mom and I agree that it’s better to find a more reliable solution with magic than to trust in untested technology.”

“You’re relying on technology to fly you out of this storm,” Destiny reminded her.

“No, I’m relying on Miss Emerald Gleam,” Midnight corrected, tossing a wink forwards to the cockpit.

“Spare me,” Emma groaned.

“Do we really have to fly the last mile?” Midnight groaned, flapping harder to keep after us as we ascended. “I’ll admit it if I have to! Bat ponies aren’t as good at high-altitude flight as pegasus ponies!”

“The VertiBuck is even worse,” Emma said, her voice weak and strained, sounding distant in the empty sky, like the thin air was opening a void between us. “It would stall out trying to get this far up!”

“I’m going to stall out,” I grunted. The flight was even more exhausting than the last time I’d done this. I’d put on a little weight since then, mostly in heavy metals. If the armor wasn’t supplying me with extra oxygen I’d have passed out already and taken a long trip down.

“We should have been there already,” Destiny said. “This is what I hate about pegasus cities. They don’t stay still on the map.”

“Unicorn cities are much easier to find,” Emma countered. “Just look for the radioactive craters.”

“Too soon,” Destiny said.

“It’s been two hundred years!” Emma retorted.

“Don’t worry, little spook,” Midnight said. “Eventually it’s going to seem really funny! When you’re immortal, you end up looking back at wars and disasters and laughing about them!”

“I’m not sure millions of deaths is ever going to be funny,” I groaned.

“That’s what they said about the black death,” Midnight scoffed. “Now please tell me that’s where we’re going.”

She pointed ahead to where the haze of the upper atmosphere thickened into what was just barely a cloud, just barely enough to stand on among the frigid winds at the top of the world. The grand structures of the Greywings clung to it, the thinnest mist pressed into a solid shape and held together with magic and hope.

We landed, gently, the edges of the cloud indistinct and trailing off into a spray of ice crystals like the tail of a comet. Frost was caked on my armor already. I shook myself off, breaking away some of the rime.

“Oh my,” a pony croaked. A robed pony stood up, pulling back the hood of their robes, the color faded into a neutral nothing that could have been mistaken as almost any shade of the rainbow. “Is that you, Chamomile?”

“Hey!” I waved. “It’s been a while, huh, Tiplo?” I trotted over to the stallion. Carefully. I felt like any step might send me through the ground. I was painfully aware of how heavy I was. “Emma, Midi, this is Tiplo. He’s one of the Greywings.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Tiplo said, bowing slightly. “At my age, one does not expect to meet so many beautiful mares in one day.”

“I like him,” Midi said. “He knows how to flatter a pony.”

“We weren’t expecting you,” Tiplo said. “But that only makes your visit a welcome surprise! Please, come inside.”

He waved for us to follow him, and we trotted into the slope-sided building that seemed to be made entirely out of buttresses and baffles to muffle the constant low roar of wind. Inside, once we got past the entryway, the temperature rose from a deadly chill to something more comfortable.

“What’s all this noise?” Another robed pony rose up from his place near the crystal hearth at the center of the hall. “Visitors?”

“This is, uh…” I hesitated, trying to remember. “Obobobo.”

“Oblaka!” he snapped. “Should have had them hit you with lightning the first time you came here…”

“Where are Vetrena and Groza?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, you remember their names just fine,” Oblaka muttered, huffing and sitting down heavily, turning his back to me.

“Vetrena hasn’t been feeling well, and Groza is tending to her,” Tiplo apologized. “Age catches up to us rather quickly, I’m afraid. She might not be with us for much longer.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“Living a long, peaceful life is nothing to be sorry about,” Tiplo said. “We should all be happy if we can do the same.”

“Sounds dull,” Midi sighed. “We’re here on business, so can we get around to it before the rest of them die of old age?”

“What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Feeling your age, Midnight?”

“I’ll feel your age!” Midi countered.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Destiny said. She detached from my head, my ears popping when the pressure equalized. “We came to ask a favor. We need a message from Kulaas decoded.”

“And we are the experts,” Tiplo nodded.

Destiny pulled the holotape out of the armor’s vector traps and floated it over. Oblaka grabbed it out of midair.

“I’ll take this,” he said sharply. “I don’t want you amateurs damaging the data!”

“He is the best,” Tiplo whispered back to us, as Oblaka stalked off with the tape. “Let’s go have a look, hm?”

We followed him deeper in until we reached the room full of equipment they used to decode transmissions. Oblaka was carefully adjusting a tape drive, using a tool to check the wiring before plugging it into the mass of the terminal and its equipment, then examining the holotape and using a cloth to wipe the edge before sliding it into place.

“Let’s see…” he mumbled. He looked up at the terminal screen, and it showed distorted fuzz. Grumbling, Oblaka ejected the tape, then carefully slid it back in again. The static shifted, but it was still just a blur.

“Let me try,” Tiplo said, taking the tape out and blowing into the slot before inserting it.

“Don’t do that!” Oblaka snapped. “If you get your spit on the contacts, it’ll corrode the copper--”

“I think I see something,” Destiny interrupted. “Look!”

On the screen was a blurry picture of… something. A complex, shifting graph and spinning shapes.

“I was worried about this,” Oblaka sighed.

“I think the terminal screen is out of focus,” I said, trying to help.

“No, it’s in focus. The problem is the transmission you have.” He sat down and folded his forehooves. “The data is holographic. You know what that means?”

“Karma said his memories were like that,” I recalled. “It means as long as you have part of the information you can extrapolate the rest, or something like that.”

“Something like that,” he agreed. “But the less of the original data you have, the fuzzier the image becomes. I can clean it up a little with error checking and sharpening, but with how degraded this is, I might as well be making everything up. Nothing of the original message would remain aside from the broadest strokes.”

“Damn, there has to be a way,” Midi mumbled, pacing in the crowded room.

“Is there any way we can talk to Kulaas directly?” Destiny asked. “You receive transmissions from her. We should be able to send something back.”

“It’s impossible,” Oblaka dismissed with a wave of his hoof.

“Even Kulaas can only transmit at certain times,” Tiplo explained. “It uses what remains of the global satellite communications network, but centuries with no maintenance…”

“And no way to refuel positioning thrusters,” Destiny sighed.

“Yes, many of them have ended up coming right back down.” Tiplo looked up, like he could see all the way up to space. “They were put in geostationary orbit, so they were fixed points in the sky, but they’ve drifted, and continue to drift as time passes. Kulaas can calculate the chaotic orbits, and route transmissions to us, but sending anything back?”

He shook his head.

“Right,” Destiny said. “So it’s a dead end?”

“We can’t recover the lost data,” Oblaka said. “You’d need a maneframe with much more power. That might not even be enough. To recover it completely, you would need to be able to think like Kulaas. There are segments in the data that require interpretation. Think of it like missing parts of a painting -- if you don’t have the original artist, or somepony who can think just like they do, you can’t guess at what’s left out.”

“You’d be making it up out of whole cloth, like you said before,” I nodded, understanding.

Midi stopped pacing. “Could we go see Kulaas in person? Or… whatever. Face to face, metaphorically.”

“Nopony knows where it is now. That information was destroyed intentionally.” Tiplo rubbed his chin. “We know Kulaas still exists and it isn’t merely delayed or timed messages. There are certain images and phrases it uses. Current satellite data. Names. Things that are impossible to guess or construct.”

“We know where part of Kulaas is,” I said, looking at Destiny.

“Hm?” she tilted in the air, then quickly nodded. “Right! I almost forgot!”

“You… know where Kulaas is?” Tiplo said slowly.

“Just part,” Destiny said. “A remote node that was disconnected during the war. She’s in Winterhoof, and doesn’t have access to many resources… but Alpha is still part of Kulaas, and might think enough like Kulaas to repair the transmission!”

“If you knew where it was, we should have gone there first!” Midi groaned. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m immortal, I don’t care if we waste a little time looking at Equestria’s biggest ball of yarn on our little roadtrip. I just don’t like total dead ends.”

“Checking with the world’s foremost experts at this exact, very specific, subject was the smart thing to do,” Emma countered.

“It’s also polite to visit your elders once in a while,” Tiplo agreed.

Midi snorted. “You’re not my elders. I’m twenty times older than you are!”

“Then don’t act like a child,” Emma said.

“Don’t fight in here!” Oblaka snapped. “This equipment is delicate! Take it outside!”

“Hm. Yes. Outside.” Tiplo mumbled. “So this Alpha… tell me more about her. Perhaps these old bones of mine would be up for a trip!”

Chapter 86 - Phantom Train

“You know what? I’m actually pretty impressed,” Midnight said. We were standing just outside the main entrance to the College of Winterhoof and the place was looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen it. Back then, it had been covered in terrible, supernatural darkness, invaded by a force from the depths of Limbo thanks to the actions of a gigantic idiot who was, in a change of pace, not me.

Now it was back to its old self, just as I’d first seen it. A dome of thick clouds shot through with wide windows and sculpted clouds. The city around it, though, seemed even more like it was just scraps hanging on. The anomalous holes in the clouds, with the odd vortices of wind keeping them open, still turned the cloud floor into swiss cheese and restricted flight.

There were more abandoned and dilapidated buildings than I remembered. It had been three years since the undead and the darkness and all the other trouble, and they hadn’t rebuilt. Maybe it was easier to just leave.

“Is this going to turn into some kind of backhoofed reference to how you’re impressed because we didn’t blow this place up during the war?” Emma asked. She tried to fix her hair again. We’d left our armor in the VertiBuck. We were here to make a good impression and ask to use their library, and without time to get written orders, that meant pressed uniforms and asking nicely.

“Nah,” Midnight waved a hoof. “I mean it. This place is as big as an Equestria Games stadium. It wasn’t easy to keep schools funded even in the best of times, so your little Enclave must be doing a few things right.”

“Oh yes, this is very exciting!” Tiplo said. The Greywing was wearing what he claimed was his good robe. I couldn’t tell the difference. Emma helped him walk across the pack cloud pathway. We’d taken the descent slowly, to give him time to rest and adjust to the altitude, but he was still a little weak.

“An educated population is a productive and useful one,” Emma said. “Anyway, Chamomile, lead the way. You and Destiny are the only ones that have been here before.”

I nodded and held the door open for the others, Destiny floating past with her new veil trailing behind her, the long edge shaping itself around the invisible, otherwise intangible spirit and showing her neck and part of her back.

“We’ll go to the Dean first,” I said. “He’ll be able to get stuff moving.”

“You went to school here?” Midnight asked. “I really am underestimating you.” She walked past me, and I almost missed a hitch in her step when she crossed over the threshold. “Huh,” she mumbled to herself.

“You okay?” Emma asked. “Is this the vampire thing where you need to be invited inside?”

“That’s not a real thing,” Midi dismissed. “It’s good manners, but not some kind of weird curse. This place has a strange aura. It reminds me of… really old times.”

“Let’s hurry,” Tiplo said. “I can’t wait to see their library!”

“You!” I pointed.

“You!” Ornate Orate pointed back at me.

“You’re the dean now?” I asked.

He pulled me into a hug. “And you’re not dead! Not that I was convinced you were dead, of course. I always thought you were merely trapped in another dimension. There were some very interesting readings after the events three years ago. I think I have a copy of the report in my desk if you’ll give me a moment to retrieve it, some of the radiation and particles we detected after your disappearance were truly fascinating--”

“You know I wouldn’t understand it,” I said. “I’m glad you got out okay. I wasn’t sure what happened after I got sucked into Limbo.”

“So it was Limbo!” Ornate Orate said. “You must tell me all about what it was like, and how you got back. I don’t believe anypony else alive has been there and back--”

Midi coughed politely. “Chamomile? Can we…?”

“Oh, right,” I said. “We’re here on business. Everypony, this is Professor Ornate Orate. Or Dean Ornate Orate now, I guess. He’s a really great and smart pony and a friend of my Dad.”

“Professor is a more prestigious title,” he said. “Anypony can do a bit of paperwork and signing on the dotted line. Not everypony can get tenure.”

“And this is Emerald Gleam, Midnight Shadow Sun, and Greywing Tiplo,” I said.

“It’s a pleasure,” Emma said, with a quick nod.

“Greywing…” Ornate Orate rubbed his chin. “I’ve heard that somewhere before. Ah! Yes! A secretive group of ponies! Is it true you’re part of a cult? I mean no disrespect, of course. Cults are really fascinating to study. The history of their religious practices and origins are often much easier to verify and trace than larger more traditional religions like the Church of the Sun or the Lunar Reformation.”

Tiplo shook his hoof. “Not a cultist, I’m afraid, just a scholar.”

“Even better!” Professor Orate smiled broadly. “We’re always happy to host a scholar. After the events a few years ago we lost a number of staff members. To retirement! There were surprisingly few fatalities, but the night terrors… it was easier for some to move to a sunnier, happier place.”

“Hey, uh…” I coughed. I was a little afraid to ask this. There were answers I didn’t want to hear. “Do you know if Cube is okay? I think I got her out of the blast radius, but…”

“She’s fine,” Ornate Orate said. He put a hoof on my shoulder. “She spent months trying to reach you. She was driven but… difficult. I know she’d want to see you again.”

I let out a breath I’d been half-holding. “Thanks.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know how to get in touch with her to give her the good news,” he apologized. “She didn’t leave us any way to contact her, and… she was rather upset about how little progress we made.”

“She didn’t... hurt anypony, did she?” I asked.

“Only our feelings,” the older pony joked. “So, you’re here on business? Let’s get that out of the way so you can tell me where you’ve been and how you got back.”

“We need to recover data that was damaged in transmission,” Tiplo said. Midnight held up the holotape. “I’m afraid it was beyond the ability of the Greywings.”

“I see,” Orate rubbed his chin. “And you believe we can be of some assistance?”

“You’ve got a sentient computer sitting in the library,” I reminded him. “If there’s anything in Equestria that might be able to recover the data, it’s that thing.”

“Ah, the Alpha,” the Professor nodded in understanding. “It wasn’t designed for that, as I understand. It’s just sort of a simulation. Not really my cup of tea, you know. When I want to play a game, I prefer the real classics. I have a wonderful set for Senet that’s a fourth-century reproduction of a pre-discordian era--”

“Why don’t you tell us about it while we walk down to the library?” Destiny suggested.

“Capital idea!” Ornate Orate smiled. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the board. The original was made of ivory, but as you can imagine that’s problematic…”

“...and that’s why the piece moves diagonally!”

“I always thought it was because it represented a ship tacking against the wind,” Emma said. “But your explanation does make more sense.”

“It’s a recent discovery,” Professor Orate said. Around us, the student workers in the library were readying steel circlets with blinking lights and wires for the four of us. “It gives me hope that some day, we’ll be able to discover text that explains the concept of ‘en passant’ beyond vague references.”

“You don’t know…?” Midi snickered. “Nah, never mind. Ignore me.”

“This might be a good time to go over the rules and dangers of the simulation,” one of the students suggested.

“I’ve done this before,” Destiny said. “It’s not dangerous.”

“Oh sure, tell that to the kids that got trapped inside for five years,” Midi snorted.

“Trapped?” I held up a hoof to stop the kid that was about to put the circlet over my head. “What do you mean, trapped? I thought if we died in the game, it wasn’t a big deal! We even died a bunch and just kept respawning!”

“If it glitches the wrong way, it traps your soul forever,” Midnight said. “It’s true! It happened! These computers are way more dangerous than you think. You’ve built them yourself, Destiny. They’re like phylacteries!”

“That’s not entirely true, and even though I know you’re talking about a lich, technically a phylactery is just the word for a small box-- we’re getting way off track,” she settled down, the cloth going limp once the helmet was resting on one of the four reclining seats. “Emma, are you sure you don’t want to try?”

“After hearing about ponies getting trapped for years?” Emma asked. “I’m good, thanks. Besides, if I stay out here I can make sure nothing goes wrong!”

“Suit yourself,” Destiny said. “The important thing is, Chamomile and I have been inside this particular simulation before, and we know for a fact that it isn’t some kind of lotus-eater trap.”

“Ah, the lotus-eaters,” Tiplo said. “From the old myth where a sailor was tempted to stay on a lost island where the natives all ate lotuses and fell into endless, recurring dreams!”

“I’ve always felt like that myth was based on an ancient description of sleep paralysis, myself,” Ornate Orate suggested. “I know when I’ve had some strong cheese before bed, I sometimes have these dreams where I think I’m awake, but then I wake up again and again in the dream, like endless layers that make you question reality.”

“Really?” Tiplo asked. “I felt it was a warning against the temptation to escape reality when others were counting on you.”

“I can understand why you’d think that.” Professor Orate nodded, starting to pace. “That was the immediate motivation, and it’s implicit in the text that it’s why the sailor was able to break free, but depending on the translation you use, the final stanzas of the canto imply that he isn’t sure if he’s awake or just in another layer of the dream.”

“Having read the original Minotauran text, I believe the accurate translation is that he isn’t sure if reality itself has ever been real,” Tiplo corrected. “I believe the author was questioning not the sailor’s experience, but the nature of reality itself, and it’s possible it was metafictional in that he was becoming aware he was just in a story himself.”

“Do you two need a room?” Midnight quipped. “And maybe a blackboard?”

“We’re all set on the dive,” the students said. The crowns were placed over our heads, contacts gently pressing against skin. “Ready whenever you are.”

“We’ll discuss this further after your game,” Professor Orate said. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to meeting this computer program.”

“Good luck, everypony,” Emma said.

“Hit it,” I said.

“Here we go,” the student lab assistant said. He took a deep breath. “Diving in!” His hoof came down on a big red button, and everything flashed to black.

The smell hit me before anything else. It was a video game, it shouldn’t have smelled like anything, but the immediate overwhelming odor was the earth after rain. It was a smell I associated with my childhood, with going out to mountain peaks with my mother and father and digging in the dirt where I wouldn’t disturb anything important.

Layered over it was a stink of garbage and rot. Industrial and metallic. The light flickered on around us, and the floor rumbled under our hooves. We were in a train, rumbling down the tracks with only a vague sense of what was outside showing through small, slitted windows.

“This is new,” Destiny said. I looked over at her and… I couldn’t help but smile. I’d almost forgotten what she looked like. Really looked like, I mean. Not just a floating helmet, but a pony. Blue so pale it looked white except in shadow, a mane like a trailing sunset in dark colors, and bright rainbow freckles on her cheeks and ears.

She twirled the staff that had appeared next to her. She had the same wizard robes she’d worn last time we’d been in the game. I lifted a hoof to examine myself. There was no sign of the changes SIVA had made to my body, but I did have some light metal armor and a big sword. I pulled it from my back with my mouth and gave it a test swing. It was still awkward to try and fight by swinging my head around.

“You look just like you did when you were alive,” Midnight said to Destiny with approval. She was wrapped up in tight black leather belts that looked more like raider gear than real clothing. She carefully poked Destiny’s flank. “You must have a better sense of self than I thought.”

Destiny squeaked and hopped. “Stop that!” she blushed brightly. “I’ll have you know last time I was in here, I was a powerful and deadly wizard!”

“I think I’m some kind of fetishist,” Midnight said, looking back at herself.

“And I appear to be a priest,” Tiplo said, amused. He looked twenty years younger, and his robes were gold and white, with sun sigils over his cutie mark. “I believe these were vestments worn by an old Celestial cult, though I can’t recall the name.”

“Too bad,” Midnight shook her head. “Trust me, Nightmare Moon’s rituals are way more fun. Two words -- blood orgies!”

“I’m a bit old for that much fun,” Tiplo chuckled.

“The game wasn’t like this last time,” I said. “I don’t remember any trains.”

“There didn’t used to be trains,” said a voice from the shadows. An orange pony with a cowboy hat and armored vest stepped out of the gloom, adjusting the bandanna around her neck. “But then everything changed. Flim-Flam Corp is destroyin’ the planet!”

“Is this part of the game?” Midnight whispered, leaning in to whisper into my ear.

“It’s new DLC,” Rouge whispered into my other ear. She’d appeared out of nowhere, the masked pony just suddenly there like I hadn’t noticed her before, not alarming, just unexpected. “It’s really great to see you girls again! And you brought new friends!”

She hopped over to Tiplo and grabbed his hoof, shaking it quickly. “Hi! I’m Rouge! It’s super nice to meet somepony new!”

“You know, you look exactly like--” Midnight started. Rouge put a hoof over her mouth.

“Shhh! I’m legally distinct!” Rouge cautioned.

“Are y’all done foolin’ around?” the cowpony snorted. “This here train’s almost at the reactor! Remember the mission! We’re gonna stop Flim-Flam from suckin' the life outta the planet by blowin’ it up!”

“Oh thank buck,” I sighed. “Something I can do.”

“It’d be awful if we had to talk to anypony or make friends,” Destiny joked.

“We try to adjust things to keep them interesting and fun,” Rouge said. “That’s what games as a service means!”

“We don’t have time for games,” Midnight said. “Did everypony forget why we’re here? We need to get that holotape decrypted! We’re not here to play around!”

“Actually we need to get the data repaired,” Tiplo corrected. “They’re two very distinct operations. You are right, though. As entertaining as it is not to have sore knees for the first time in thirty years, I believe it’s important to take care of business first.”

Rouge smirked. “I already know about the tape.” She held up a hoof, producing the tape out of nowhere. “Don’t worry. It’s being worked on. It’s just going to take a while, and in the meantime, why not have some fun?”

“You’ll get the tape as payment after the mission’s over,” the cowpony said. “Y’all mercenaries had better be worth it. APPLEANCHE is fightin’ on the back hoof and we need all the help we can get to smash the system!”

The train whistle sounded, and the car lurched slightly as it came to a halt, brakes hissing and steam blasting past the windows.

“Let’s go!” the cowpony yelled, kicking the door open and jumping out.

“Get going,” Rouge said, waving goodbye. “I’ll catch up once I have this doohickey all fixed up and shiny with data!”

Destiny and I shared a look, and I jumped out after her and onto a train platform. The cowpony was struggling with a pony in strange-looking security armor. I charged at them and spun into a back kick, hitting the armored pony’s chin and knocking them out.

“Bolt!” Destiny yelled from behind me, a crackling lance of lightning streaking out and hitting another pony who had been lining up a shot with a rifle. Sirens and alarms started up around us, slowly at first and rising to more urgent-sounding alerts.

“Nice one!” I called back to her.

“We gotta git to the reactor!” the cowpony called out.

“Hey, I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

“You mercenaries always forgettin’ the details,” she sighed. “Just call me Jersey Lightning. If you wanna get paid, you better impress me with somethin’ better than some fancy footwork and a little magic, ya hear?”

“Got it, boss.” I gave her a salute.

“My, I never knew computer games were this exciting,” Tiplo said, carefully getting off the train. “Where did Miss Midnight go?”

“‘M ‘ere!” her muffled voice called out from above. I looked up. She was hanging from a streetlight. Another one of the armored ponies was in her grasp, and they were either making out or-- well, I’d be naive to not notice her fangs in his neck, I don’t know why I was kidding myself.

She dropped the limp body and jumped down, wiping crimson from her lips.

“Was that necessary?” Destiny asked.

“Absolutely not,” Midnight replied smugly. “It was fun.”

“Come on!” Jersey Lightning yelled. “We gotta git inside before they ramp up security! We’ll meet in front of th’ reactor!”

She ran up the street, kicking open a steel security door and bolting inside. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the glare of the lights. “Woah,” I whispered.

Ahead of us, a building wrapped around a tangle of machines and pipes reached into the air, a corporate logo the size of a city block painted on the side. A plume of green energy shone into the sky from the reactor building, venting into the air and leaving a slick on the clouds above it like the rainbow sludge of an oil slick.

“Do you think this is a heavy-hoofed metaphor?” Midnight teased. She bumped into my flank. “Come on. I wanna see how you use that giant sword!”

I swung the back end of my sword into the snarling cyborg hound, sending it flying into the railing of the narrow bridge. The thin metal gave with a sharp snap and the monster went over the edge.

“Nice one!” Midnight yelled.

“Looks like you might be worth the money,” Jersey said, stepping past me and looking down into the void below us. “You see that down there?”

I peered over the edge. It was like looking down from the clouds. Dozens of stories below, I could see buildings, mixed with rubble, trash, and a haze of smog.

“Another city?” I asked, confused.

Jersey motioned at the lower city. “That’s the old city. The more these reactors suck the life out of the planet, the worse it gets down there, but the ponies up here don’t care. They live on this big ol’ metal plate and pretend there ain’t nothin’ below.”

“Cool,” I said.

“No, it ain’t cool!” Jersey spat over the edge. “Wait! Shoot. I shouldn’t have spit down there, it’s gonna hit some innocent foal. Dangit!”

She stomped off, kicking at the railing and grumbling to herself.

“You don’t have to heal every little scrape,” Destiny said. Tiplo was holding a golden sun amulet, glowing light softly blowing out of it like pollen from a flower. The wounds Destiny had picked up when the monsters jumped us out of nowhere were fading. They’d already been little more than bruises..

“It’s no trouble, M’lady,” Tiplo said. “Actually, it’s rather amusing using magic like this. Imagine if every pegasus could do it!” He put the symbol back in his robes after a few more moments and stepped over to the edge next to me, following my gaze to the undercity. “I suppose this makes me feel better.”

“About what?” I asked.

“This simulation, reading our minds, fooling our senses, making things up as it goes along,” he explained. “It must take a simply incredible amount of processing power! And yet, despite that, it’s all just a game so Kuulas can focus on repairing the data. A distraction. We never had a chance doing it by ourselves.”

“It’s not really Kuulas,” I reminded him.

“Yes, only a fraction of it. A processing node cut off from the rest. Imagine how powerful the original must be! No wonder my ancestors treated it like a goddess.” He sighed. “And here I am, touching its mind. This journey has been worth it for the experience alone.”

Midnight came up behind him and slapped him on the back with a wing. “We should play along so we don’t disappoint her, right?”

“You’re absolutely right,” Tiplo agreed. “I believe she’s just ahead of us!” He cracked his neck and ran in after her.

“Oh boy,” Destiny groaned. “Let’s go. Healer mages can’t fight on their own!”

“Can’t fight on their own,” Midnight snorted. Tiplo struggled for a moment, freeing the head of his warhammer from the body of the cyborg drone he’d downed. A spray of oil arced into the air before the wreckage vanished in a sprinkle of lights.

“That’s how it was in most games.” Destiny folded her forehooves, looking annoyed. “Nopony wanted to be a healer because all you did was cast cure spells on your teammates.”

“They must have changed it to be more fun,” I said. “He’s taken out more of them than you have.”

“I have limited MP,” Destiny reminded me. “I have to save my attacks for use against dangerous foes. I could get just as many kills as he has, but I’d be wasting my potential.”

“Come on you slowpokes, we’re almost there!” Jersey Lightning yelled. She waved us through the last security door and into a yawning open area. If I looked all the way up, I could see a patch of sky through the haze around us.

“This here is the main magic storage tank,” Jersey said, leading us across the bridge to the hanging machinery. “The pumps are down below but if we blow this thing, it’ll wreck the whole plant.”

“How do you suppose it all works?” Tiplo asked.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to make sense,” Destiny reminded him. “It’s not our world. Things here can just work however Kuulas wants them to work for the sake of the story.”

“Perhaps, but it’s all remarkably internally consistent,” Tiplo said. “There’s no reason to assume it isn’t based on real designs. It could be something we could build in the real world! Imagine it, an unlimited source of power...”

“Not unlimited,” Jersey Lighting snapped. “Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. The land around here used to be green. Farms as far as the eye could see. My granny, she told me ponies would plant crops and they’d grow twice as fast as anywhere else! It was the magic and love of the mother earth herself.”

“Sounds nice,” I said.

“Musta been like paradise,” Jersey sighed. “The crops, farmin, the soil, all that was part of the natural order. The earth gave life, and it went back to the earth. Some unicorns came to study the magic here, and found a way to let everypony use it. That was the beginnin’ of the end. They sold the farmers machines that used the magic, then they sold them the magic right out from under their own hooves, and when the crops totally failed, they bought the land and built this city.”

“Definitely a heavy-hoofed metaphor,” Midi mumbled. “Sort of weirdly tribalist, too.”

“I ain’t tribalist!” Jersey blushed. “There are some perfectly fine unicorns like yer friend here.” She waved vaguely at Destiny. “Y’all can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose the life you lead. The ponies runnin’ this place could stop bein’ greedy and start carin’ about the future instead of their profits, and I’ll be their best friend. Until then, we’re enemies.”

“That’s a very mature way of looking at things,” Tiplo assured her. “So, how do we disable this reactor?”

“We’re gonna blow this here tank to Tartarus!” Jersey yelled, slapping the knot of pipes and pumps humming away in the wall. Thick pipes lanced down to the depths below, a deep well glowing faintly with green light, like a million fireflies swirling in clouds below us.

“It cannot possibly be safe to even stand here,” Midnight noted. “I’d feel a lot better with a few meters of water between me and anything that glows in the dark.”

“I don’t think it’s radioactive,” Destiny said. “It looks more like some kind of wild magic.”

“That’s cause it is,” Jersey Lightning said. “It’s the lifeblood of the planet, the magic that makes the world alive. Every earth pony can feel it, and the Flim-Flam Corporation wants to burn it up just to keep the lights on!”

“That makes it sound more dangerous,” I said. “Magic can be pretty unpredictable.”

“Lifeblood, huh?” Midnight rubbed her chin.

“I doubt you can drink it!” Tiplo laughed.

“Eh, I’ll let it go,” Midnight shrugged, looking away dismissively. “The morality system in these games is always weird. The ‘good’ option has the best reward and everyone praises you, and the ‘evil’ one never gives you anything worthwhile.”

“You set the bomb,” Jersey said, tossing me a brick of what felt like clay, wrapped in wires and studded with metal.

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“May I?” Destiny asked, levitating it out of my hooves and turning it over to reveal a clock strapped to the front of the device. “Ten minutes should be enough time to get clear, right?” She started punching in numbers, then stuck the bomb to the front of the armored casing of the magic tank. The clock on the front started ticking down.

“You know, I just had a thought,” I said. “This is sort of like the big magic tanks they had on the Exodus White.”

Destiny froze. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Why?” Midnight asked. “What big magic tanks?”

“They stored up power from Queen Flurry Heart and used it to run the whole city,” I explained.

“And more importantly, if they overloaded, they would make a boom as big as a megaspell!” Destiny said. She started prying at the bomb. “It won’t come off!”

“Course not,” Jersey said. “It’s stuck on with wonderglue.”

“Can we disarm it?” I asked.

“Do you know how to disarm a bomb?” Destiny asked. “Wait, you do! You’ve disarmed one before!”

“Technically that’s true,” I agreed. I leaned in to look at the bomb. “Uh… we cut the red wire, I think?”

“All the wires are blue,” Midnight helpfully pointed out.

“We might be in trouble,” I decided.

“Come on, plan A was always to skedattle!” Jersey yelled, waving for us to come with her. “We just need t’ get outside!”

“The building might act as a containment vessel,” Destiny said. “We’ve got a little over nine minutes left, let’s put some distance between us and this--”

The steel floor under us rumbled.

“It’s a boss fight, isn’t it?” I asked.

“On a time limit!” Destiny groaned.

A massive shape dropped down from the roof above us and slammed into the walkway, hitting hard enough that something in the supports twisted and Jersey Lightning, who’d run ahead, was thrown to the side, dangling by one hoof from the bridge.

“Ah can’t get up!” she yelled. “You’ll have to fight it without me!”

At first it looked like it was just a hemisphere of steel that had landed on the platform, but then ports opened on the armored surface and spikes popped out, crackling with electricity. The edge of the shell raised up, and a long mechanical tendril snaked out, tipped with sensors and vice-like jaws.

“It’s like a giant robot whelk,” Tiplo said. “Fascinating!”

“Why can’t we fight anything with blood?” Midnight groaned. “It’s all robots and weird cyborgs!”

“Probably because you’d make it all gory,” Destiny said. “Most games were made for foals, you know!”

“We don’t have time to fight it,” I said. “Let’s run for it! We can outrun a snail!”

“Good idea,” Midnight agreed, taking to the air and flying around it in a wide arc. “I’ll save our little cowpony NPC buddy and--”

She slammed snout-first into a glowing wall of hexagons that appeared in the air.

“Ow,” Midnight groaned.

“I believe the beast is projecting a shield,” Tiplo said. “It’s shaped like a big bubble around us!”

“It’s going to trap us here until the place explodes!” Destiny swore. “We need to take care of this fast!”

“Form up!” I yelled, drawing my sword and holding it at the ready in my teeth. “I’ll go in first, Midnight flanks, Tiplo and Destiny, you support us!”

“Got it!” Destiny called out.

I charged at it, jumping into the air and flying at the exposed head. My heavy blade smashed one of the fragile sensors with a screech of metal and a shower of sparks. It retaliated with a bite before I could get away, catching me in its jaws and squeezing before tossing me away, throwing me to the ground and almost off the edge of the platform.

“Oof!” I grunted. “He’s strong.”

Tiplo knelt down next to me, his magic healing my bruises and helping me shake off the blow. “I’ve got you,” he assured me.

Midnight appeared behind the whelk and flew down at it, trailing shadows like roiling smoke. The machine’s head twisted to follow her and spat a stream of green. She made a confused sound as the thick liquid smacked into her and splattered everywhere. The thick mucus tangled her wings and she fell, hitting the bridge with a soft splat and sticking there.

“It’s some kind of glue!” she yelped. “I can’t get free!”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this!” Destiny yelled. “I’ll show you the power of magic! Fire-3!” She pointed her staff at the mechanical monster and a lance of fire launched out at it, the air around it wavering and crackling with sparks like the individual molecules were fusing in the heat.

It hit the whelk and burned away the armor on the left side of its exposed head. The metal glowed red hot, and the monster shuddered like an engine starting to seize up before quickly retracting, its vulnerable sensors whipping back under that armored, spiked shell.

“Hiding isn’t going to help!” I called out. “Here I go!” I charged, jumping into the air so I could use the weight of my whole body to bring the sword around in a big circular slam down on the shell. No matter how tough it was, I’d crack it open!

The edge of my sword hit the shell, and the sparks dancing between the spikes on its back lashed out, a megavolt of electricity slapping me away and making my heart skip a beat.

“It might be unwise to attack the shell,” Tiplo noted.

“Figured that one out, thanks,” I replied weakly.

“We’ll just hit it from long range!” Destiny said. “Ice-2!” She twirled her staff, launching a spike of ice at the monster. It hit the shell hard enough to dent it, but the moment it did, a bolt of electricity cracked back at her like a whip. She yelped in pain.

“That’s not gonna work either,” Midnight said. She shook a hoof, dislodging more of the gunk the thing had spit on her. “It’s time for me to show you my super cool vampire techniques.”

“Do they include immunity to electricity?” I asked.

“No, but I’ve got just the thing to lure out a monster that can afford to just sit and hide until we blow ourselves up.” Midnight smirked and stepped closer to it, cocking her hips provocatively. Music seemed to come from the air around us, and a spotlight shone on Midnight. She reared up, clapped her hooves, and started swaying, moving in a seductive dance that made me think of drunken revels and hazy rooms.

It wasn’t even aimed at me, and I was drooling. She really did have crazy vampire powers. That didn’t mean it logically should have done anything to the robot whelk, but the shell shifted, the edge lifting up and the head peeking out to look. It watched her for a moment and then extended fully, swaying in time with her hips.

“My, that’s impressive,” Tiplo said. “It seems distracted.”

“We’ll hit it at the same time, Destiny. Ready?” I asked. She nodded back at me. I flew around the side in a wide arc, not wanting to get between the monster and Midnight in case it broke the spell, staying in the blind spot made by the damage to one side of its head.

Destiny chanted a spell, and I tried to sense the timing, waiting for just the right moment before charging in, bringing my sword around in a wide arc. The edge of my big sword slammed into the creature’s armored neck, the plates weakened by the fire blast from before. At the same time, another spear of ice hit it on the other side, the two blows acting like scissor blades. The mechanisms in the neck shattered, and the head popped off, flying into the air and exploding in a shower of sparks.

The shield dome flickered and died, and the lightning running down the heavy steel shell faded. A moment later, the whole thing tipped to the side, sliding off the edge of the bridge and down to the rocks below, exploding.

“We did it!” Destiny yelled, hopping in place.

“My, this really is exciting. Is this what you do all day in the wasteland?” Tiplo asked, wiping his forehead.

“There’s usually more swearing and blood,” I said. “Otherwise, yeah, pretty similar.”

“Can one of you girls with wings help a pony up?” Jersey called out. “Ah’d like to skedattle before this whole place explodes!”

“Drinks are on me!” Jersey yelled, kicking the swinging door open and triumphantly strutting in. “We blew that whole place sky-high!”

“Welcome back,” said the mare behind the bar. I looked over at her and froze in place. She was tall, dark, beautiful, and maybe most importantly, an alicorn. Her mane flowed around her like a drifting nebula, stars glittering in its depths. Her voice was a seductive lure backed by absolute power.

“Nightmare Moon?” Midnight gasped. “Oh my gosh!” She squealed happily. “This is the best game ever!”

The batpony flew over to the bar, tapping her hooves happily and prancing in place.

“I felt this was a more appropriate guise to take this time,” Nightmare Moon said. She smiled at Midnight, showing fangs. “I knew you’d enjoy it particularly, my little pony.”

“If you’re here, does that mean--”

Nightmare Moon reached over the bar and put a hoof on her lips. “I’m not your real queen of darkness, I’m afraid.”

“I can tell,” I said. “I met the real thing. Or her ghost, sort of? It was in Limbo and I’m not sure what it counted as.”

Her eyes glowed softly in the dim light, and she tilted her head. “I believe ‘vestige’ would be the right term. A copy of a shadow. A picture of a grand eclipse captured in darkness.”

“See, you even sound like the real thing!” Midnight said cheerfully. “She was always so poetic!”

The alicorn chuckled. “I trust you had some fun on your mission?”

“It was definitely… something,” I said, stepping up to the bar and sitting down. Nightmare Moon dramatically produced a cocktail shaker and gave it a few theatrical shakes before emptying it into a tumbler and sliding the drink in front of me. I took a sip. It tasted like… well, I’m not exactly sure. Like cotton candy, raspberries, cinnamon, and vodka, but not exactly like any of those things.

“Since you’re here, does that mean the data recovery is finished?” Destiny asked. She sat down next to me, leaning over to sniff at the drink in front of me.

“It finished just as you arrived,” Nightmare Moon said, placing a second drink in front of Destiny. “I adjusted your perception of time accordingly.”

She motioned to the end of the bar. Rouge waved to us from there. She had a giant parfait-slash-milkshake-slash-aloha drink that just barely fit into a punch bowl. The masked pony held up a holotape, and it glowed with potential.

Nightmare Moon cleared her throat, focusing our attention back on her. “Before we discuss your data, there’s a more critical matter.”

She looked past us to Tiplo.

“Ah,” Tiplo said. “I thought something might be wrong, but I didn’t want to worry anypony.”

“What do you mean, something wrong?” I asked, turning around to look.

“A few minutes after you entered the simulation, Tiplo’s body began to fail,” Nightmare Moon said, her voice somber. “I am using the bioneural feedback from the Alpha system to provide some amount of life support, and your friend, Emerald Gleam, is attempting first-aid, but I believe it’s too late.”

“I knew I wouldn’t be going home again either way,” Tiplo sighed. “My old bones are too weak to make the trip. This was a grand last adventure, though! The most exciting time of my life!” He smiled and sat down with us. “I have no regrets.”

“There is one option,” Nightmare Moon said cautiously. “There was a flaw with the neural dive equipment which was never truly corrected. I could transfer your consciousness into the system.”

“I told you ponies got stuck inside!” Midnight exclaimed, pointing at Nightmare Moon. “I knew it!”

“I was able to implement a software fix, but the hardware is still capable of the transfer,” Nightmare Moon explained. “You would not be able to leave this simulation, and as it is a single maneframe it is vulnerable to outside forces.”

“Not as vulnerable as my body is,” Tiplo joked. “I suppose I have very little to lose if I'm already dead, hm?”

Nightmare Moon nodded sadly. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

“Well, then I consent to whatever you need to do,” Tiplo said. “I never got a chance to explore the real world. I’d be a fool to refuse a second chance!”

“Rouge?” Nightmare Moon called out.

“Right!” The masked pony hopped to her hooves and pranced over to Tiplo. “Why don’t we go for a walk? I bet there are some things you’d want to talk about in private about what’s gonna happen.”

“Perhaps that’s a good idea,” Tiplo agreed, his voice weak.

“Don’t be scared,” Rouge said. “Things are going to be okay. I promise. And I’m basically part of a super powerful computer, so that means I can back up that promise with math!”

“Really?” Tiplo asked. “I’d love to see the equations.”

Rouge patted him on the back and led him outside. “I’ve got a whiteboard out here. We’ll go over it together!”

“Is he really…?” Destiny whispered.

“I’m afraid so,” Nightmare Moon said. “His heart was already close to failure. I’m afraid it’s a product of his habits, age, and altitude.”

“So we got him killed by bringing him here,” I mumbled.

“His body has failed, but I will ensure his mind lives on,” Nightmare Moon said. “It is the best one could expect.” She sighed and looked into the middle distance. “If you could, please tell the ponies outside that he would appreciate visitors. There’s an ineffable quality to real interactions with other ponies.”

“I will,” Destiny promised.

“Good. Now, I was able to recover the data, but I’m afraid there is another problem,” Nightmare Moon said. She slid the holotape across the bar. “The transmission is encrypted.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard to crack,” Destiny said. “Do you need some extra time? We can try my passcodes to save time.”

“Your passcodes won’t work, and cracking it will be impossible. The data is encrypted with a kind of lattice-based cryptography I developed to be resistant to attacks from future theoretical attackers, including myself or copies of myself. It is unbreakable in finite time with current resources.”

“How do you know it’s fixed?” I asked. “If you can’t open it to see, it could just be broken.”

“That’s a very good question, Chamomile,” Nightmare Moon said. “The data format has some homomorphic properties used for error verification and post-encryption manipulation. The probability of the data being improperly repaired is insignificant.”

“If my passcodes won’t work, whose will?” Destiny asked. “I have the highest clearance possible!”

“No, you don’t,” Nightmare Moon said bluntly.

Destiny was about to yell back at her, but stopped, realization flashing across her face. “You can’t mean… no. You’re joking. You can’t be serious!”

“I’m afraid so. The only pony that can open this file is Sunset Shimmer.”

There was a long, dramatic pause.

I cleared my throat. “Who the buck is that?”

Chapter 87: Bury a Friend

Ornate Orate put a cup of tea in front of me and gave me a soft pat on the shoulder. The mood was somber, to say the least.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“His heart gave out,” Emerald Gleam said quietly. “I tried giving him CPR. It wasn’t enough.”

“It’s not like he’s completely dead,” Midi said. She was looking out the window, watching the ponies flying and trotting around Winterhoof’s enclosed campus. “He’ll be fine. Buck, he’ll probably be happier! No sore hip, no worries about food or the cold or griffon raiders!”

“Griffon raiders?” I asked.

“When I was a foal, ponies had more enemies than friends,” Midi said. “I guess that’s not a big worry these days…”

“We’ll have to verify that he’s really in there,” Destiny said. The enchanted veil showed half her silhouette sitting in an otherwise empty chair. “I don’t know how we’d prove it wasn’t just a simulation. Kulaas was playing the part of every pony in the game, it would be trivial for her to pretend to be a pony we barely know…”

“Who’s Sunset Shimmer?” I asked. I still hadn’t gotten any kind of answer to that question. Destiny had tried to avoid it entirely while we were in the game.

“The name is vaguely familiar,” Midnight said. “I swear I’ve heard it before, but there were like a hundred ponies that had names like that. It was a fad for about a century. Every other unicorn was named Morning Twinkle or Sunrise Flash or whatever. They all blend together.”

“She was my boss,” Destiny said, with a sigh. “Whenever I talked about ‘the boss mare’ I meant her. Everyone at BrayTech answered to my family, and we answered to her, and she didn’t answer to anypony at all.”

“Oh right,” I said, remembering a few things. “You said your boss was paranoid, and she used a geas and other stuff to keep you from ever spilling the guts.”

“She was big on operational security,” Destiny agreed. “She was absolutely sure that Celestia would have her head if she even got a hint that she still existed. It’s still difficult to talk about her.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did she do? Everypony knows Princess Celestia was one of the nicest ponies to ever live. I can’t imagine what kind of monster you’d have to be to live in fear of her.”

“Uh,” Midi cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t say I exactly lived in fear of her, but I’d like to note that for a solid thousand years she had a starring role in all my worst dreams. Celestia and her soldiers killed a lot of my kind over the years. Nightmare Moon fixed that when she came back. And then everything went to buck, but a few decades of being out in the open was nice.”

“She wasn’t literally a monster or anything. She was just a normal pony.” Destiny paused. “No, that’s not right. She wasn’t normal. She was exceptional in every way, and she wasn’t afraid to tell everypony around her how much better she was than them.”

“Sunset Shimmer…” Ornate Orate muttered. “Ah! I know where I heard that name!” He trotted over to the bookcase behind his desk and studied it for a few seconds before grabbing a thick tome off the shelf. “Here we are! A Brief History Of Canterlot, Volume 12. It covers the time just up to the return of Princess Luna.”

He put the book on his desk and flipped through it. The professor muttered to himself and ran his hoof down the page.

“This seems like the right passage! Look at this. It’s a list of Princess Celestia’s personal students.” He waved me over. I trotted over to read over his shoulder.

“Silver Folio, The Great Hornsby… Sunset Shimmer.” I followed his hoof. “And right after her, Twilight Sparkle. The Ministry Mare herself.”

“Sunset Shimmer was, according to herself, the greatest student Celestia ever failed,” Destiny said. “I don’t know if I can refute that. Her mastery of the theory of magic was impressive, but her mastery of science was… beyond anything Equestria had ever seen before. And there’s a good reason for that.”

I paused and gasped. “She was from the future!”

“No.” Destiny sighed.

“It would have made sense though,” I mumbled.

“You’re not that far off. She wasn’t from another time, but when I met her, she was a pony from another world.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I can sort of remember…”

It was a dim memory. Not just an old one, it also wasn’t mine. It had the feeling of Destiny’s memories, that kind of hazy second-hoof feeling where my own thoughts could come as a surprise.

I -- or really, Destiny, I was just remembering it as her -- was tapping my pale, silvery hoof against the table. She was nervous. Her mane and hooves were professionally done, and that just made her even more uncomfortable.

“If you do that, you’ll ruin the polish,” said a voice from the door. Destiny jerked in her seat, and I felt her realize she’d seen a soft flash of light a second ago and ignored it. It was painfully obvious now that it was a teleport spell, and Destiny felt like an idiot for not catching it immediately.

“Sunset, it’s good to--” Destiny turned around, getting up from her chair. She stopped mid-sentence when she saw who she was looking at. Sunset Shimmer was a stunning pony in Destiny’s memories, and I felt the awe and arousal she’d been feeling. I couldn’t blame her. Destiny could feel magic, and Sunset had an aura that blazed like a bonfire. It filled the room with warmth.

The pony standing next to her was almost as impressive in her own right, but I felt Destiny’s heart skip a beat when she got a good look at her.

“Twilight Sparkle?” she yelped, biting her tongue.

“The one and only,” Sunset Shimmer said, with a grin. “Just not the one you’re thinking of, and definitely not the only.”

“Good afternoon,” Twilight said softly. She reached out with a hoof to shake, stumbled, and almost fell on her flank. Sunset had to grab her with magic and hold her up to keep her off the ground.

“Careful,” Sunset said.

“Sorry!” the Ministry Mare squeaked. She sounded about halfway to a panic attack. “I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t have fingers! Or toes! Well, biologically speaking a hoof is a modified toe, but they’re not the kind of toes I think of when I think of toes! Not that I think of toes much, I’m not into feet!”

Twilight gave Destiny a weak, nervous grin.

“Sorry,” she repeated, apologizing again.

“It’s… not Twilight Sparkle?” Destiny asked, confused.

“I am Twilight,” the mare insisted. She adjusted her glasses, pushing them up her snout. “However, I am not your Twilight. I’m hers.” The lavender unicorn started to raise a hoof to point at Sunset, immediately began to slip, and settled for nodding to Sunset with all four hooves secure on the ground.

“She’s smart,” Sunset said. “Very smart. Almost as smart as me. She’s been helping on my end of our little exchange. While you’ve been working to make the other world’s technology work here, Twilight has been making magic work on the far side of the mirror.”

“I’ve been having some issues with talismans, and working through letters was too slow,” Twilight said. “I need to be able to experiment with live magic to make the breakthroughs I need for mass-production.”

“I decided some personal experience was called for,” Sunset said. “I want you to teach her a few spells. All the basics of magic. If you can develop a training course I can bring back, that would be even better.”

“I could do that,” Destiny agreed. “It’s going to mean taking time away from my other work.”

“Think of it as an investment for the future,” Sunset suggested. “Once you have her trained, she’ll be valuable. She has an intuitive grasp of magic, and that’s pretty impressive for someone who didn’t even have a horn until five minutes ago.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth giving up fingers,” Twilight said, frowning. She sat down on her flank and looked at her forehooves. “I have no idea how I’m going to take notes.”

“Until you get a grip on telekinesis, you’ll have to get creative. Earth ponies use their mouths most of the time.”

“No, earth ponies can’t write anything, they’re just animals,” Twilight corrected.

“I mean Earth Ponies like the tribe, not ponies from Earth-- never mind, Destiny can explain the cultural stuff later. It’s not important. What is important is the other opportunity this gives us!”

Destiny sighed. “You’re going to need to explain, because right now what I see is a liability.”

“She’s a perfect double of the Ministry Mare,” Sunset said. “A little younger, different memories, but aside from that, nopony could tell the difference. Same aura, same biometrics. She’s going to be key to our plans going forward.”

Destiny watched Twilight struggle a little longer, just trying to stay on her hooves, as if she’d never even walked before. Even I was feeling sorry for her. Destiny helped her over to a chair so the purple pony could hang on and keep her balance.

“Thanks,” Twilight sighed. “I swear I’m not usually this awkward! Well, socially I’m awkward, but that’s a metaphor. I don’t go around tripping over my own feet. Sorry. I’m apologizing a lot. Is it too much?”

I shook my head, trying to break out of the daydream.

“She had a thing with Celestia,” Destiny said. “And before you ask, I don’t mean anything romantic. The Boss Mare had something to prove.”

“She was also a normal, mortal pony,” Midnight said bluntly. “You’re all talking about someone who’s been dead for about two centuries! If she’s the only one who can open the file Kulaas gave us, we’re bucked up a creek with no lube!”

“Are we?” Emma asked.

I looked over at her. Her brow was furrowed in thought, and she was rubbing her chin.

“If Kulaas is some kind of computer smart enough that it can see the future, it wouldn’t send you a file that was totally useless. If this Sunset Shimmer is the only pony who can open it, it means either we’re wrong, and there’s another way to do it, or there is a way to get in touch with Sunset Shimmer.”

“I’m telling you, it’s impossible,” Destiny sighed, shaking her head. The motion looked more natural now that I could see a little bit of her body. “When the last day of the war kicked off and we launched the Exodus Arks, she wasn’t even in Equestria!”

“She wasn’t in Equestria,” Midnight said slowly. “So… she didn’t get bombed?”

Destiny hesitated. “I… I suppose not? I know things were tense in the other world, but she was light on details and, frankly, I didn’t care all that much. It wasn’t the kind of world anypony should live in. The only magic they had was what we were able to send through the mirror.”

“And that made Sunset Shimmer rich, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Rich and powerful,” Destiny confirmed. “It’s how we built up BrayTech. We’d trade trinkets to each other, patent what we could reproduce in our worlds, and sell even cheaper copies that looked like miracles.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Midnight said. “Equestria advanced more during the war than it did in the previous millennium and a half.”

“I’m proud of the work we did,” Destiny replied. “It wasn’t just reverse engineering, we had to develop infrastructure and production processes that hadn’t ever existed before. My mother built the first photolithography machine in Equestria! The real key was unifying technology and magic. That was a brand-new field.”

“So how does a pony get to this other world?” Emma asked.

“A mirror,” I said, promptly. “Star Swirl had a magic mirror back in Limbo.”

“Star Swirl made the mirror we used, too,” Destiny confirmed, bobbing in a nod. “It was passed down to Celestia, Sunset found out about it, and it passed through a few more hooves before we got it. We kept it in our main facility outside of Stalliongrad.”

“About as far from Celestia as a pony can get,” I noted.

“Anything that minimized the risk of discovery was worth it,” Destiny said. “Besides, Canterlot was a strategic target. Staying there was insane. Even the Ministry Mares recognized that early on in the war and scattered themselves around the map.”

“We must have gone right by that mirror,” I mumbled.

“There wasn’t much of a reason to go looking for it.” Destiny shrugged, and with the shroud she wore I could actually see her do it instead of just inferring it from her tone. “We had more important things to worry about, and my memories were even fuzzier than they are now.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t use it to evacuate,” Emma said.

“We would have, if we could have,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t always open. I don’t know if it was just worn out because of age or if it was designed this way on purpose, but it had a schedule. It would open on a cycle. Every thirty moons, it would open for three days.”

“When’s the next opening?” Midnight asked.

“I…” Destiny trailed off. She floated up and over to the desk, grabbing a pencil and paper. “If I work forward from one of the days I know it was open…” She started scribbling dates. “The current date, days per cycle, work backwards from the end of the next period of activity…”

“It’s soon,” I said.

Everypony looked at me, then over at Destiny. She did a few more math problems, then looked up at me.

“About a week, I think,” Destiny said. “How did you know that?”

I tapped my forehead. “Half my brain is a computer, remember? Not that it matters. Remember the important part of this? Kulaas wouldn’t give us something useless. She must know when we’d go looking for the mirror.”

“That means we need to get back to the surface,” Destiny said. “Last time it was a rough trip.”

“This time we’re doing things by the book,” Emma replied, nodding in agreement. “We’re not outlaws or criminals. We’ll find one of the training missions taking recruits down and go with them. No drama, no breaking through the lightning shield. By the book.”

“I hate this book,” I sighed. I flipped through the pages of the textbook. The Enclave Airpony’s Uplifting Primer was full of what could very generously be called advice, very little of it good or accurate.

“You’re lucky all you have to do is take one class,” Emerald Gleam said. She was sitting behind me in the small classroom, technically as an expert observer but more practically to make sure I didn’t get in trouble. “All of your paperwork is fake but it’s been rubber-stamped so many times by so many different ponies that they’re all pretending it’s real just so nopony has to be embarrassed.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I shrugged. “I’ve got more combat experience than anypony else in this room!”

“Including me,” Emma sighed. “I know.”

I looked over at the pony next to me. They were a fresh recruit and were trying to pretend they were reading their copy of the Uplifting Primer when they were really just listening in to what Emma and I were talking about.

“Do I really need to memorize the uniform regulations?” I asked.

“Yes,” Emma said, exasperated. “Do you know what happens if you put a suit of power armor on incorrectly? I saw a pony during training who somehow managed to get all four legs popped out of joint because he put something on backwards.”

“I don’t think the Exodus Armor works that way. It’s all sort of solid state stuff and energy fields and there aren’t a ton of moving parts.”

Emma gave me a flat look. “This is going to surprise you, Chamomile, but they didn’t create this course with you in mind specifically.”

“Good evening everypony, sorry if I’m a bit late!” A pony in a slightly fancier officer’s uniform flew into the room, a briefcase in their hooves. She landed next to the desk in the front and started unpacking. “This is going to be a short course to make sure you’re all prepared for your first trip down to the surface-- yes, you have a question?”

I lowered my hoof. “It’s not my first trip.”

“Then this class should be easy for you,” the officer said brightly, with a big friendly smile. “If we have time you can talk about your experiences later to help the class. For now, let’s get started on the most common hazards of the wasteland.”

She started on her lecture and I kind of tuned her out, flipping through the Uplifting Primer. It was mostly harmless, and one thing they had definitely right was that nopony should eat stuff that was lying around for two centuries. I still had burps that tasted like old rations once in a while, and it had been months since I’d eaten any of the ration bars from the valley outside Stalliongrad.

“Hey, um…” the pony who’d been giving me looks hissed and whispered to me. I looked over at her. She looked young, barely old enough to even be in the military. “You’ve really been to the surface?”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “What’s up?”

“Is it true that ponies on the surface are all crazy barbarians that charge at you with rocks and knives?” she whispered.

“No. Only about half of them are like that. The rest are normal. If they’re covered in blood and spikes, start shooting.”

“That sounds really scary,” she mumbled. “I don’t know if I can shoot another pony.”

“If it gets bad, just fly away,” I suggested. “They usually can’t go after you.”

“Unless they have a gun,” Emma added, leaning forward. “Then they’ll shoot you in the back.”

“Yeah, but that’s no big deal.” I shrugged.

“Don’t listen to her,” Emma said, turning to the young mare. “It’s important to be decisive. If there’s a pony willing to shoot you, they’re willing to shoot your teammates and innocent civilians.”

“But they’re not part of the Enclave,” the young mare pointed out. “We’re not supposed to risk ourselves for them!”

“We’re not supposed to throw our lives away,” Emma gently corrected. “The Enclave is all that remains of the legitimate government of Equestria. The ponies on the ground are victims of a disaster that’s lasted for centuries, and someday we’ll find a way to save them. If we can help them, we should.”

The instructor cleared her throat. “Excuse me! Please pay attention, this is important for your safety and the safety of the ponies around you!”

I snorted. The teacher picked up her ruler. My annoyance turned to fear.

“I can’t believe she made me sit in the corner…” I groaned.

“You’re just lucky she didn’t make you stay inside during recess,” Emma joked. “You’re an adult, Chamomile! You don’t need to act like a foal!”

“Did I ever mention that I didn’t do well in traditional education?” I asked. “Dad home schooled me because I kept getting into fights. Also because he didn’t trust teachers that didn’t have at least one doctorate.”

I moved down the lunch line holding my tray. One thing that was completely, utterly the same between the military and school life was the food. That might sound like an indictment, but it’s not. One thing my brief stint in organized schools had taught me was that they were mandated by the government to provide a balanced meal, and more often than not it was higher quality than most ponies could get on their own. The same was true here.

The ponies on the other side of the lunch line ladled out food onto my tray. Sky-potato salad, with enough vinegar to give it a sharp smell even at hoof’s length. A big round of black bread. Beans in the kind of sauce that you can’t really identify even while you’re eating it. And of course, the main. A solid lump of green held together with a savory paste and topped with crunchy bits to give it texture.

I grabbed a glass of rainwater and sat down at one of the cafeteria tables, nabbing the salt and some hot sauce.

“Oh this is the good stuff,” I noted, sprinkling the sauce over my plate. It had the sheen of distilled rainbows. “Nice!”

“I don’t know if I’d call it nice,” Emma sighed, sitting next to me. “It’s better than starving, but nutra-loaf isn’t exactly gourmet, Chamomile.”

“Yeah, but it’s different everywhere you have it,” I pointed out. “In my mom’s Stable, it was made with protein paste and chemical dyes and flavors that came out of a talisman. It was almost like a brick of bright yellow cheese. Looks like this is made with some kind of kelp?”

“More or less,” Emma confirmed. “We’re near an ocean inlet. The academy has a team that creates a tornado a few times a year to bring seawater to a few of the farms in the area, and they grow seaweed and desalinate the water to produce salt.”

“Cool,” I said, poking it with a fork and taking a bite. “Really irony.”

“More metals are probably good for you since you’re about half pony and half tank,” Emma joked. She looked away after saying it, obviously regretting it immediately. “Sorry. It’s probably a sensitive subject.”

“Not really,” I said. “You know, I’m sort of at peace with it now. I met Destiny’s brother, and he had a whole new body that was all metal on the inside. He just looked like a pony on the surface, but robot underneath, you know? And he was totally normal. Not one bit of him was organic and he was still…” I hesitated. “He was still one of the bravest ponies I ever met. He made sure not to leave behind regrets.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him,” Emma said softly. “You want half my nutra-loaf? I don’t think I can eat all of it.”

“I can absolutely be bribed with food,” I assured her.

The pony that had been whispering to me in class sat down across from us. She looked nervous.

“Have you ever had to kill a pony?” she asked, before even introducing herself. The way she’d said it made it obvious she’d been working up the courage to say it for a while.

“That’s a very delicate question--” Emma started.

“Tons of times,” I interrupted. Emma gave me a look, and I shrugged back at her. “Look, clearly she’s worried she’ll have to kill somepony and I can tell from a dozen paces that she wants to ask me how I got through it.” I tapped my forehead and smirked. “I don’t like to brag about it or even think about the implications of it too strongly, but I’ve been developing weird psychic senses and it’s either some kind of SIVA thing or I got a changeling STD.”

“You got a what?” Emma asked, frowning.

“I already told you I don’t like to think about the implications,” I reminded her. “Anyway, I’m going to be honest, kid. The first ponies I really had to kill were already sort of dead. Emma was there.”

“Oh, right,” Emma’s expression changed. “At the Smokestack.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “There was an accident and some ponies got infected with stuff that drove them insane. It made it… easier to justify what I had to do.”

“They all died anyway once the volcano erupted,” Emma sighed. “Unlike what Rain Shadow did with the survivors when he panicked.” She took a deep breath and looked up at the young mare. “You should never be afraid to defend yourself. If you have to shoot, shoot. But on the other side of that coin, don’t shoot unless you have to.”

“I regret a lot of what I had to do,” I said. “Maybe if I was smarter, or didn’t trust the wrong ponies, I wouldn’t have ended up in some of the places I did.”

“I’m just scared I’m going to mess up and get hurt,” the mare admitted.

“You totally will,” I nodded. She paled.

Emma sighed. “What Chamomile means is, that’s why you’ll have other ponies with you. They’ll watch your back and you’ll watch theirs.”

I shrugged and ate more beans. They were somehow a little too soft and a little too hard at the same time, which was pretty impressive.

“Chamomile and I have saved each other’s lives almost daily as long as we’ve known each other,” Emma said.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been stuck without friends a couple times and… those were the worst.”

“You should get to know the other ponies you’ll be going down to the surface with,” Emma suggested gently. “Find out who you get along with and team up with them.”

“You’re right,” the mare said gently. “Thank you.” She stood up, picking up her tray and looking over at the other tables before making a decision and sitting at one of the more crowded ones, introducing herself to the other ponies there.

“You’re a pretty good officer,” I told Emma.

“I’d like to think so,” Emma said with a smile. “Too bad I’m on the tough assignment of keeping you out of trouble for a whole day.”

“Basically a suicide mission,” I agreed.

“Making me take a written test,” I grumbled.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Emma said. “You passed, and it’s in your record now, so you won’t have to take it again.”

I looked up from what I was doing, getting my armor ready to go. I’d already pulled the crystal-fiber ballistic undersuit out of storage and put it on. It was a spare they’d given me before I left Limbo -- buck knows what happened to the one I was wearing when I was shoved out an airlock. This one was a deep magenta with pink stitches.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I explained. “I know more about the surface than anypony else. And Midi didn’t have to take a test!”

“Technically I’m a civilian observer,” Midnight noted. She was hanging from the ceiling of the locker room, sucking on a juice box and watching us through a pair of thick sunglasses. “I don’t have to be qualified for anything.”

“What about Destiny?” I asked. She half-turned from what she was doing, checking some of the Exodus Armor’s more delicate systems.

“I count as equipment,” Destiny noted dryly. “I actually wanted to do the course but I wasn’t allowed to participate. Instead I had to watch Midnight vamp on a few very unlucky stallions.”

“Excuse you, but they’re lucky stallions by any reasonable metric,” Midi retorted. “A mare has needs. Like fresh blood. And they all walked away happy!”

“They walked away barely able to stand up,” Destiny corrected.

“That’s because I know how to treat a stallion well,” Midnight said, smirking.

“I’m not getting involved in this,” Emma said, holding up her hooves. “I already know too many details.”

“They consented!” Midnight added.

“I don’t know if that makes it better!” Emma groaned.

“This is where you’ve been hiding!” somepony called out. I looked back behind Emma, towards the locker room entrance. A stallion already wearing his power armor walked in, his helmet flipped back. He smiled at us. “You must be the special attachment to my ground recon team. I’m Colonel Zonda. I’m glad to see we’ll have some beautiful mares coming along.”

He winked at us. He probably thought it was charming.

“Thank you for finding room for us,” Emma said. “I’m sorry about the short notice.”

“It’s fine. General Ravioli filled me in on what he could. Apparently things are very hush-hush.” He shrugged. “I get it. Special forces. I don’t mind being told to go to a different location, or bring some ponies along. Actually, if you’re familiar with the area, that’s a bonus.”

“I spent some time in the region,” I confirmed.

“Good,” he said. “Is there anything I need to know in advance? I heard rumors that there’s a lot of greenery in the area. Some high-level flyovers even spotted signs of civilization.”

I had a flashback to the valley. Some of the nicest people I ever met, and they were zebras. Would the soldiers treat them well? Would they exploit them like the ponies in Dark Harbor? Just shoot them because their ancestors were enemies of Equestria.

“Stay away from it,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

“If there are civilians, we can--”

I dropped what I was holding and stepped up to him, so close he had to take a step back.

“I said, stay away,” I repeated, my voice low. “It’s for your own good.”

“Are they that dangerous?” he asked.

I grabbed his collar, lifting him off his front hooves so we were at eye level. “I’m that dangerous.”

“Chamomile!” Destiny snapped.

“Calm down,” Emma cautioned, putting a hoof on my shoulder. I let go of the stallion. He dropped, stumbling and almost tripping. “Sorry.”

“I made friends there,” I explained. “I can’t let anything happen to them.”

“You don’t have to be so touchy,” Zonda complained, brushing himself off. “You’re acting like we’re a purge team. We’re just recon. Getting recruits some real experience with their equipment. Maybe if we’re lucky they get to shoot a few radroaches.”

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I…”

Zonda sighed. “I get it. I know other ponies that have spent time on the surface. You had to leave somepony behind, and you’re worried about them, right? It’s okay. I try not to get attached, but I get it.”

I nodded.

“If you really want to protect whoever it is, bring them up here,” he advised. “It’s not easy or cheap, and you’ll need to do some favors, but you’ve got some pull with the General.”

“They’re not in danger,” I said.

“Not now, but nothing lasts forever,” Zonda said. He scratched his mane and shrugged. “I’ll make sure the recruits know to stay away from locals on this trip. Try not to beat any of them up. I’m a forgiving stallion, but I won’t let you do to any of them what you just did to me.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Great!” He smiled and slapped my shoulder. “Get your gear together. We leave in an hour.”

Chapter 88: Mare in the Mirror

“Looks like we all made it down safely!” Zonda said, pleased. He and Emma had taken one of the two Vertibucks that were powering down in the clearing along with half the recruits, and I’d gone with Midnight in the other transport.

The ones getting off my transport looked mildly traumatized. It was their own fault. They’d asked a lot of questions and were regretting some of the answers. I might have been a little too descriptive about some of the things I’d seen, and bringing up Stable 83 was definitely a mistake, but Midnight had wanted all the details on the tar-covered undead and I hadn’t noticed how quiet and pale the recruits had gone until I was already talking about endless screams and burning flesh.

“This isn’t at all like the briefing,” one of the other, less traumatized recruits said. He put a hoof on one of the tall trees, giving it a gentle push. Snow fell from the bright green palm fronds above us. “The materials said plant life was rare, but this is…”

“It’s a jungle,” I agreed. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it’s still here. The trees are all as tough as I am.”

“I’m not detecting much activity on the near-field transmitter,” Destiny noted. “It looks like killing the Green’s SIVA core did have an effect!”

“I hope it means my mom isn’t around here,” I said quietly.

“If it helps, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the case,” Destiny replied. “Last time you two were face-to-face the readings were off the charts. Literally! I had to make new charts! Do you want to see them? No? Your loss.”

“This place kinda sucks,” Midnight said, looking around. We’d set down in a clearing, but there were snow squalls rolling through the area and we hadn’t gotten much of a look at the place from above. We could have been on top of the Cosmodrome or miles off course. “Why didn’t we come here at night? I’m at like, half-strength at best without a good day’s rest.”

“Going into unfamiliar territory at night is a good way to get killed,” Emma retorted. “Not all of us have night vision.”

“Ma’am?” one of the recruits spoke up. “We do all have night vision. It’s built into the armor.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Emma sighed.

“It didn’t sound like--”

“Recruit, I am your superior officer and I’m telling you it was a metaphor!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Anyway, monsters are always more active at night,” Emma said. “In fact, I’d say your average monster is -- what did you say, Midnight? At half-strength during the day?”

“I’m an above-average monster,” Midi said haughtily.

“I don’t think there’s going to be anything worse than raiders around here,” I said. “A bear couldn’t get through the jungle and the windigos I saw were all flying pretty far up. If we stay pretty low we won’t run into them.”

“Assuming the raiders are even alive,” Destiny added. “They were all pretty dependent on SIVA for life support. I wouldn’t be shocked if a lot of them just fell apart after you destroyed the Green Dragon.”

“Dragon? Is there anything we should know?” Zonda asked. I looked over at him. He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to listen in, but it sounds like you’ve been here before. I know you can take care of yourself, but it’s my responsibility to get these kids back home safe after their field trip.”

“You’re right,” I sighed. “Okay, everypony! Listen up!” I clapped my hooves, getting the attention of the half-dozen ponies that were examining the edge of the jungle clearing with a mixture of awe and fear.

“Form up!” Zonda called out, and the young ponies ran over to get in line, saluting. I knew they weren’t that much younger than I was but I couldn’t help thinking of them as a bunch of foals.

Emma walked along the line and stopped at about the middle of the formation. “You don’t have to salute,” Emma called out. “We’re in the field.”

“Sorry, Ma’am!” the recruit next to her yelled, dropping his hoof.

“Chamomile, you’re the expert,” Emma said, looking over at me.

“Right,” I said. “Okay. So the details aren’t important, but this whole place is basically a pre-war experiment gone wrong. It might not seem like it, but the plants can be dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?” Zonda asked.

“Glad you asked,” I said. I stepped over to the edge of the field and grabbed a leaf from a plant growing out of the ground. It was almost as long as my forehoof, and I think it was a yucca plant, but I’d never been all that great at identifying random shrubs, and SIVA had made a few changes too. “You’ll notice the edge on this leaf is silver, and the whole thing is sort of stiff.”

I ran the leaf over the rest of the shrub and it produced a sound like scissor blades and windchimes.

“It’s sharp enough that if you get caught outside of your power armor, it can and will cut you down to the bone,” I explained. “All the plant life here is… infected. Don’t mess around with it. Don’t touch anything you don’t have to, don’t ever eat anything. If you do get infected there’s no cure.”

That wasn’t entirely true. We had a cure, but there was no telling if it would work with these micromachines. The one we’d deployed in Seaquestria only worked because they were specifically from me and I had their command codes. I wasn’t confident the same codes would work on this batch.

“That’s the kind of thing that’s important to know,” Zonda nodded. “Thank you, Warrant Officer. Recruits, no wandering off into the woods!”

“Yes, sir!” they said in unison.

“Chamomile, I’ve got a bearing on where the mirror should be,” Destiny said. “Assuming it hasn’t been moved, destroyed, or generally lost.”

“Good, we can get out of the sun,” Midnight said.

I looked up at the clouds covering the sky from horizon to horizon.

“It’s a metaphor,” Midi said.

“Yes, Ma’am!” I echoed.

We flew low over the treetops. It wouldn’t have been impossible to cut a path through the jungle, but it would have been slow and loud and exhausted everypony involved. That probably would have made it really good training for the recruits if not for the constant danger of being sliced to pieces by the infected foliage.

I looked over at DRACO’s screen where it was mapping the area around us, and the computer-controlled rifle chirped a warning half a second after I felt a spark of danger pulse through me. I dove to the side, and tracer fire cracked past me lighting up a streak of high-speed lead from below.

Another shot hit my chest and deflected away. I looked down, spotting something moving on the forest floor through the leaves and snow, ragged irregular pony shapes with enough spikes they might have been going to a porcupine convention.

“Raiders!” I yelled. I pulled my wings in and just dropped like a rock. Bullets whizzed over my head, and I adjusted my trajectory a tiny bit as I entered the trees, slamming through the fronds of a palm tree and coming down right on top of a raider holding a big club and looking very confused in those last moments before he turned into paste.

“Did you get hit?” Emma called out.

“I’m fine!” I said. “Just getting the drop on them! Get it? Because--”

“I got it, thanks!” Emma yelled back, firing beams down into the jungle. In the flashes of light I caught sight of another raider, this one carrying an improvised gatling gun that looked like it had been made by welding four rifles together.

I lined up a shot with DRACO and turned him into paste, my own poor aim augmented by a computer that knew more than I ever would about ballistics. I charged forward and grabbed the four-barreled gun, turning to the forest and opening up.

With the trigger held down, the gun blasted a wide cone of fire, the barrels jiggling around thanks to the loose grip of metal straps and zip-ties holding the arrangement together. I turned slowly, fanning the woods until all four barrels clicked empty.

Everything fell into sudden silence.

“I kinda like this thing,” I said, examining the improvised, janky weapon.

“It’s amazing it didn’t tear itself apart,” Destiny said. “It’s literally trash, Chamomile.”

I made a sad sound, and the ghost sighed.

“Fine, I’ll put it in storage. Just please don’t ever use it again. Hang it up on a wall or something.”

It vanished out of my hooves. DRACO beeped an alert, and I followed its prompting to find a raider leaning against a tree, one hoof over a wound.

“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” the raider groaned, the stallion’s lower jaw made of steel. One of his forehooves ended in a bulky metal talon that was more fit for a griffon than a pony, and patchwork metal armor studded with spikes and painted in bright colors covered his shoulders and chest, though it hadn’t done much to stop him getting a hole in the side.

“Are you guys still working out of the wreck of the Exodus Green?” I asked. His eyes widened in surprise. “I’m just asking because after I killed Fornax and the Green Dragon, you might have decided to relocate.”

“You-- it doesn’t matter!” he snapped. “Our new great leader, the High Warlord Borot is stronger than ever!”

“Can we leave?” Midnight asked from above. I looked up. She was hanging from a tree branch by her tail, somehow. She dropped what she was holding, and about half of a raider landed between me and the stallion I’d been talking to. “These guys are as lame as a one-legged duck, Chamomile.”

“I know,” I said. “They weren’t very impressive last time I was here either.”

“And can we please find someone to drink that isn’t awful?” Midi whined. “I tried getting a quick snack and all these raiders taste terrible! If you’re bitter and inedible, they’re like trying to suck sludge through a straw! Their blood has this awful texture and I couldn’t keep any of it down.”

“That’s probably for the best. They’re all infected with SIVA,” Destiny said. “Some of these enhancements seem surgical, though.”

“By the way, you barely hit anything,” Midi advised me. “You did keep them busy finding cover though! So good work!”

“Thanks,” I sighed.

“When the Warlord gets here, you’ll all be sorry,” the raider groaned. “He’s the biggest, strongest pony there is! He’ll flatten you and make you pay for what you did!”

“Cool,” I said. I gave the stallion a pat on the head. “Next time you see him, ask him how that played out.”

I trotted away, and Midnight dropped down to follow me. I looked up and tried to find a good path back up above the treeline through the thick jungle leaves.

“Are you just going to leave him?” Midnight asked. “That’s how you get ponies swearing revenge and coming back with torches and pitchforks and a whole town full of jerks who were perfectly happy with the arrangement before but get all worked up just because you stole the wrong mare.”

“That’s an incredibly specific observation,” Destiny noted.

“You’d be surprised how often it comes up,” Midnight replied with a shrug. She spread her wings and zipped into the sky with speed I couldn’t match, my own takeoff positively sluggish in comparison.

“We’re not the first ones to get here,” Destiny sighed. “I should have known everything would go wrong.”

The BrayTech building didn’t have a sign, not even the company logo. It was squat and close to the ground, and it looked like there’d been trees growing next to it even before the war. It had been built like they didn’t want ponies to notice it. I could imagine ponies going to work or to see a launch at the cosmodrome and passing by the place without even thinking twice about it. It took me a few moments to realize there wasn’t even an obvious front to the building. Every side felt like it was facing away from you and you’d have to go around.

The door Destiny had led us to had the distinct appearance of a back entrance or fire escape. It was also pried open. The recruits were covering the rear so they could, in theory, learn from us. In practice it was so they wouldn’t immediately walk into something that would get them killed.

“That’s just our luck,” I said. “Plus it’s been almost two hundred years since you were here, it can’t be that surprising that somepony would look around.”

“I don’t have to like it,” Destiny grumbled.

Midnight walked ahead of us and stopped in the open doorway. “Would you feel better if I told you there were a bunch of dead ponies in here?”

“Old or…?” Emma asked.

Midnight sniffed the air. “Fresh. Very fresh. The place is covered in blood and most of it hasn’t dried yet.” She gagged. “And it smells rank! These raiders didn’t just roll around in garbage, they’re made out of it!”

“I’ll go first,” I offered. Destiny cast a light spell ahead of us, and I walked into a slaughterhouse. There were probably a dozen raiders here, but I’d have to fit parts together like a big wet stinking puzzle if I wanted to be sure.

“Stars…” one of the recruits whispered. “They got torn apart by some kind of monster!”

“I was hoping we could avoid this kind of thing,” Zonda sighed. “I’m sorry, recruits. This is the harsh truth of life on the surface. Brutal, unpleasant, and often short.”

“Sir?” another recruit asked. “What kind of monster did this?”

“I’m not sure,” Zonda said. He stepped up next to me, looking around. “Not feral ghouls. I don’t think there are any hellhounds this far north?” He looked to me for confirmation. I shrugged.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hellhound,” I admitted.

“They’re huge, mutated canines,” Zonda explained. “Thankfully rare, but they can tear through any kind of armor like it wasn’t even there.”

“Neat,” I said.

“Less neat, and more terrifying,” Zonda chuckled. “I’ve seen what they can do to ponies.”

I walked over to the wall. There was something there, a tear in the metal from some kind of huge claw. I put my hoof up against it, gauging the size. “I think I know what did this,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure if I was happy about it or not. In other circumstances, sure, but with the Enclave troops behind me…

“Oh,” Destiny said, realizing what I was thinking. “You’re right, Chamomile. Maybe we should have the others…?” she trailed off.

“I didn’t think you cared that much about them,” I joked.

“I told you, I’m not tribalist! It was just very soon for me. Once I got to know them, I changed my mind about them.”

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“I need to take point,” I said. “This is all so fresh they’re probably still here, and as long as I’m in front and they see me first, we’ll be good.”

“Who are you talking about?” Emma asked, confused.

“Uh, I think she’s talking about them.” Midi pointed into the gloom. She sounded like she was holding her breath to avoid the stink of the foul blood. I followed where she was looking and something massive stepped out of the dark, a mountain of fur and muscles and teeth and rage.

“What is that thing?!” a recruit shrieked.

“Don’t shoot!” I warned. “It’s okay!”

“How is that okay?!” another one yelled.

I rolled my eyes and stepped in front of the twisted bear. Destiny moved the light so it was shining on me to make sure the monster could see me properly in the dark. “Hey there!”

The monster froze for a moment, then stepped closer slowly and leaned down to sniff at me. It squinted at me, then roared and pulled me into a big hug, powerful arms closing around me in a vice-grip. I heard the other ponies gasp.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” I gasped, the beast strong enough that even my reconstructed bones couldn’t stop my breath from being squeezed out of me.

It shifted and started changing shape, muscles and bones twisting and popping. It took only a few moments, and suddenly it wasn’t a half-bear monster holding me and squeezing me tight enough that a normal pony might have ribs broken. It was a zebra, and she was still squeezing hard enough to seriously injure somepony.

“Chamomile!” she yelled happily. “You’re still alive!”

“It’s good to see you to, Two-Bears,” I said. “Everypony, uh, this is Two-Bears. She’s a native, and a friend.”

“And the greatest warrior you know,” she reminded me, letting me go.

“And the greatest warrior I know,” I agreed. “I’m guessing all this is your work?”

“Eh,” she shrugged. “These raiders, they are more annoying than radroaches, aff? They need to be fought. Otherwise, they would get too strong, and this place…” she looked back over her shoulder. “This is a place of darkness. They could not be allowed here.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I mumbled.

“It is not good,” Two-Bears agreed. “There are things here I cannot touch. I was going to go to the elders to ask for advice, but you have appeared! This is a sign.”

“I’m happy to help,” I said. “I guess I’d better introduce you around. Just be gentle, most of them are new recruits and they’re still learning.”

“Training the next generation of warriors?” Two-Bear smiled. “Perhaps you can help them be less useless than the average pony, aff?”

“I’m Emerald Gleam,” Emma said, offering a hoof to shake. “Chamomile mentioned you. I didn’t expect you to live up to the description.”

“Ah, my legend has even grown beyond the valley,” Two-Bears said with approval, carefully shaking Emma’s hoof. I heard the armor creak from the strain.

Midi leaned in and sniffed Two-Bears. “Hmm…” she considered.

Two-Bears frowned and leaned closer, narrowing her eyes at Midnight.

“Hmmm…” Midi rubbed her chin. “Is this a bad time to say you smell good?”

“You smell like old blood and death,” Two-Bears replied.

“Yeah, I do!” Midnight agreed.

“Chamomile, you know this one is cursed by the old stars of madness and death, aff?” Two-Bears asked. “It is a monster that preys on ponies.”

I nodded. “Yep!”

Two-Bears shrugged. “You keep strange company.”

“I am strange company,” I joked.

“Warrant Officer Chamomile,” Zonda said firmly. “Since you know this zebra, I assume this is the real reason you didn’t want me or my squad investigating the area.”

I turned back to him. Was this going to end in a fight? “What if it is?”

Zonda gave me a stern look. “Then I must salute you. You are a cultured pony and I respect your taste in mares. There is nothing more noble than fighting for those you care about!”

A blush spread across my cheeks. “W-well, I--”

Two-Bears laughed and gave Zonda a slap on the back. “This one is wiser than you, Chamomile! He has a good warrior’s heart!”

“Don’t worry,” Zonda said. “I’ll keep your secret. I understand why you didn’t want to speak about it. Some of the more old-fashioned ponies back home wouldn’t understand.”

“Thanks, I think?” I mumbled, too embarrassed to even think properly.

“If there is a darkness here, it is the Enclave’s job to bring the light of old Equestria and flush it out!” Zonda declared. He knelt down in front of Two-Bears. “My lady, may I ask you to keep my recruits safe while we experienced officers investigate?”

Two-Bears giggled. She actually giggled, like a filly. “I can keep these foals from danger. Perhaps I will teach them a bit so they do not get soft and lazy while you are gone.”

“I would be indebted to you,” Zonda said.

“Make sure Chamomile does not do anything too stupid, aff?” Two-Bears asked. “She is strong, but not wise. If there is danger here, she will find its heart and throw herself at it. It is the way of things.”

“That’s definitely her style,” Emma agreed.

“I don’t need foalsitters,” I grumbled.

“Neg, you are a big, strong pony who needs to be prodded along like a barely-tamed beast,” Two-Bears said. She broke out into a wide grin, showing fangs. “That is what I like about you! When you come back, we will share mead and tales of what you’ve done since you left. I can tell you have seen many battles, and I would hear the tales of them.”

I took a careful step into the dark. DRACO actually had a map of the place, so we weren’t going in totally blind, but the gloom was more than just oppressive. There was total darkness that swallowed any light that entered, and even the strongest light was little more than a dim torch in the night.

“Does this remind you of anything?” I asked.

“Winterhoof,” Destiny said. “Hold on.” The Dimension Pliers appeared in a flash of light on my side, opposite DRACO. The forked prongs on the tip vibrated, letting out a soft tone and glow as the tool probed the dark.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Heavy sterile thaum readings,” Destiny confirmed. “Space-time is also becoming non-standard. I think it’s a type of nilmanifold geometry--”

“What does that mean in Equestrian?” Midnight asked. She was staring into the dark, though I was sure she couldn’t see any better than I could.

“There’s literally no easy way to explain it,” Destiny said. “You know how adding one and two is the same as adding two and one?”

“I’m vaguely aware,” Midnight confirmed.

“That’s not true here. In normal space, walking one step forward and two steps left is the same as two steps left and one step forward. In a space twisted into a nilmanifold, they can take you to completely different locations.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma said.

“We’ve seen it before,” I said. “There was a powerful force of darkness in Winterhoof and it turned the whole inside of the college into a labyrinth to keep ponies out. If you went in, you’d only get so far and then you’d be ejected from another door back outside.”

“The Dimension Pliers can flatten the space-time around us to keep us from getting lost, but you need to stay relatively close,” Destiny added.

Zonda and Emma shuffled a step closer to me.

“What about the lighting?” Zonda asked.

“Think about it,” Midnight said. “We see things because light bounces back to our eyes, right? If trying to retrace a path means you end up in a different place, it means the rays of light don’t come back.”

“That’s right,” Destiny confirmed. “Good deduction!”

“Sonar isn’t working either,” Midnight sniffled. “I mean, it sort of works, but it’s like white noise and glimpses of things that aren’t really there.”

“Since you’ve encountered this before, how did you--?” Zonda asked. He turned around suddenly before I could answer. “What was-- I thought I heard something back there.”

“I didn’t hear anything, and my ears are way better than yours,” Midnight said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Zonda said, still looking into the gloom. I stopped so he wouldn’t get too far away.

“It could be in your head,” Emma suggested.

“Unfortunately true,” Destiny agreed. “The Darkness has a way of getting into your mind. It’s psychoactive and extremely dangerous. Star Swirl considered it the enemy of all life.”

“At least I’m in good company,” Zonda said gamely. He straightened up and brushed an imaginary spot of dust off his armor, turning back around. “I apologize if I seem jumpy. I can see why you’re in special forces.”

“You’re doing fine,” I assured him.

“You’re going to die,” the darkness whispered at the same time, a twisted echo of my voice. I saw Emma jump, and I knew it wasn’t just in my head.

“The sterile thaum radiation still isn’t as heavy as it was back at Winterhoof,” Destiny assured me.

I nodded slowly. “That’s good, since I’m pretty sure we almost ended the world that time.”

“Do we turn back?” Zonda asked.

“No,” I decided. “We should get a look at whatever’s causing this, but I think I already know.”

“It would make sense that an extradimensional threat would have some kind of interaction with a dimensional portal,” Destiny agreed. “Don’t worry, everypony. We closed the rift last time and conditions were much worse!”

“I’d find that more encouraging if I didn’t know you,” Emma mumbled. She flicked her ears back at a sound I couldn’t hear.

“Stop,” Midnight whispered, grabbing my wing and tugging. She was staring intently right ahead and I could see it too. There was a shadow there, a patch of darkness that the light wasn’t peeling away, cast by something that wasn’t there.

“What do we do?” Emma hissed.

“It’s either a harmless illusion, or… not,” I explained.

“Right.” Emma fired at it, the beams of her rifles lancing through it and vanishing into the dark, the shadow dissipating around the bright light. “Oh! That worked! I thought I’d just make it angry and it would try to kill Chamomile!”

“Why would it try to kill me if you’re the one shooting it?”

Emma shrugged. “It’s what usually happens.”

“Consider it a compliment,” Midnight said, starting to calm down a little. “If they’re coming after you first, it means they’re afraid of you!”

If my sixth sense had an alarm, it would have blared right at that moment, but the sound of the sterile thaum counter ticking over to the limit would have to do. Something lunged out of the dark, swimming through the air and ejecting clouds of inky blackness around it.

The thing slammed into me with fins that turned into armored talons, shoving me against a wall and snarling. Something that wasn’t quite light, like the bright spot in the middle of a shadow, pulsed down its form, showing seams between hexagonal, armored plates. A scarred beak snarled in my face with eyes that opened into pits of even deeper darkness.

“Chamomile…” Shore Leave’s shade growled. He was even stronger now than he had been in life, his talons managing to pin my hooves back against the wall.

“You’re pretty spry for a dead guy,” I joked, trying to fight out of his grip, but he had leverage and, more importantly, he was some kind of psychic projection and didn’t need to obey laws of physics.

“Hah!” Midnight called out, swiping through his form with a blade made of something like glass hosting a tangle of red veins of light, somewhere between a circuit and a circulatory system. The shade’s flesh parted around it, sliding back together around the wound, unharmed. “Okay, that’s a little weird.”

“I got this one!” Destiny called out. Magic surged through my spine and made me shiver, a bolt of hot light launching from the armor’s horn and blasting Shore Leave’s head off. The body fragmented, falling apart into ashes that seemed to sink through the floor instead of landing on it.

“See? They go right for her,” Emma said.

“It’s not fair that I have to worry about enemies I already killed once,” I grumbled, shaking my left hoof to try and get feeling back into it. Shore Leave had squeezed it pretty hard, and it felt like the armor hadn’t stopped him. Cold radiated from where he’d touched me.

“It seems like whatever that was, a magic attack worked against it,” Zonda noted.

“Beam rifles should work okay,” I said.

“But not my sword,” Midnight said, annoyed. She looked at her glass weapon and sighed, sheathing it in a concealed nook under her folded wing. “I never liked using guns.”

“Because they’re unrefined, and swords are a weapon from a more elegant age?” Zonda asked.

“Nah. They’re just a hassle. You spend some time finding one you like and a century later when you need to use it, it’s all jammed up and rusty and no one makes ammunition for it any more!”

“Proper maintenance is important,” Zonda agreed. “I drill it into all of my recruits. Beam weapons use rechargeable spark batteries, but nothing lasts forever. Components wear out, batteries overheat and lose capacity.”

“That’s why magic knives made of ursa major bones are the way to go,” Midnight said smugly. “They never even need sharpening. Just leave them out under the stars and they repair themselves.”

“We can compare knives later,” I said. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

There was a security door in the wall that looked like it should have been protecting a vault full of gold bars and gems.

“Alicorn-proof,” Destiny explained. “Sunset was worried that, ah, somepony might come looking for her. You’d never get through without me.”

Her magic danced over the pad next to the door. It flashed an error.

“What?” she asked, annoyed. “Come on!”

Destiny entered her codes again, and it errored out.

“Didn’t this happen in the other base too?” Emma asked. “Maybe you should have updated your password.”

“You’d better hope my codes work, because otherwise we can’t get in,” Destiny grumbled, trying a third time. “Locked out for fifteen minutes?! What?!”

“Maybe there’s another way through,” I suggested. “Can we blast the walls?”

“No. They’re even stronger. There’s no point in a security door if the walls aren’t just as strong,” Destiny mumbled, deep in thought.

“We could try being polite and knocking,” Zonda joked, rapping on the door with a hoof. The sound echoed strangely, and the vault door swung open on silent hinges. All of us stepped back, a surge of fear washing through us.

“It’s not supposed to do that, is it?” Midnight whispered.

“No, it shouldn’t even be possible,” Destiny whispered back.

“Did I ever mention how much I love going on adventures with you, Chamomile?” Emma asked. “Because I really shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Let’s just go,” Midnight said. “We wanted in, we’re going in, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. “So who wants to go first?”

“This is it,” Destiny said, as we walked across the wide room. “Looks like we were right. The mirror is the source.”

The circle of light around us had gotten visibly smaller, but there was a kind of un-light in the room, less like really seeing and more like there was a texture on the absolute blackness. You know when you close your eyes and you can sort of see shapes and shimmering in the dark? It was like that, but coming into focus. Directly ahead of us, I could see a tall rectangle in the dark, casting its own dim glow.

“Are we going to destroy the mirror?” Zonda asked.

“No,” I said. “That would be way too easy. We need to go through to the other side.”

“I hate to be the one to say this, but it’s entirely possible the location has changed,” Destiny said. “The mirror never did this before. It had some strange properties, but most of them were intentional. The last time we saw this kind of… what did Star Swirl call it? A paracausal ontopathogenic force? Last time, we were in Limbo, and that seemed like the source. It might lead there, now.”

“Could that happen?” I asked, watching the unsteady glow ahead of us.

“I have no idea. We never tried to get the mirror to go anywhere else, but it’s a magical artifact. Two centuries sitting alone wouldn’t do anything, but interacting with radiation from nearby megaspell detonations? I can’t even guess. Sunset had some way to probe what was going on on the other side, but I never learned the spell.”

“You’d better decide what we’re doing fast,” Emma said. “I don’t think we’re welcome here.”

Groaning came from the dark, and shambling shapes lumbered closer. Half-molten things like skeletons burning with black fire wearing dripping tar instead of skin. The things from Stable 83. Maybe the Darkness had heard me spooking the recruits with the story.

“I didn’t come here to give up,” Midnight said. “I’m going through the portal.”

“I think I’d rather take my chances on the other side than fight my way out,” Emma agreed. “Zonda, you don’t have any obligation to help. If you run for it, you can probably make it out to get the recruits and leave.”

“I wouldn’t leave you ladies in the lurch,” Zonda said. “I came to set an example for my recruits, and running with my tail between my legs isn’t what I want to teach them. We’re all stronger together than we are apart!”

“It’s settled, then,” Destiny said. “We’ll make a run for it. I never went through myself, but I’ve heard from experience that it’s extremely disorienting on the other side because of some… local conditions.”

“Don’t I get a say?” I asked.

“You’d never turn down an opportunity to get in more trouble,” Destiny joked. “I already know you want to take a chance on the portal.”

“I hate you’re right,” I replied with a grin. “Everypony follow me!”

I bolted for the portal, and since everypony else was faster than I was, none of them lagged behind. The unnamed undead horrors lunged for us, but we broke through, ducking around and over them. It wasn’t until later that I realized they closed up behind us and herded us towards the portal on purpose.

I jumped for the dimensional rift, and wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Chapter 89: Weight of the World

I fell through chaotic, twisting space, and I felt my body twisting to fit it. Everything around me was a psychedelic mess, full of every color I knew and more that I didn’t. I saw glimpses of other places. Ponies running across a wasteland. Others under an open, blue sky, singing a song too distorted by the time and space between us for me to make out as more than a burst of sound. An open grave with somepony kneeling next to it, gagged and helpless. Somewhere dark and oppressive, with a red sun hanging overhead made of countless constellations of connected dots in fractal shapes.

The storm of images came faster and faster and turned into a blur that turned into static that turned into sudden total sensory deprivation. I couldn’t see anything, feel anything, hear anything. And then it all surged back in fast-forward and my whole body stretched like taffy as I shot through a hole in space and out the other side.

I gasped, pawing at the ground. Something was terribly, horribly wrong. My legs weren’t connected right. I couldn’t feel my wings. My hooves were… my hooves were… I opened small eyes set in a flat face and saw a talon where my forehoof should have been. No, not a talon, more like what a minotaur had. What did they call it? A hand?

“What the buck?” I asked, coughing. Dust filled the air around me, stirred up by my arrival. “What is this?”

I tried to stand, but all my joints were wrong. Getting up on all fours was basically impossible, as if my limbs weren’t meant for it. I looked over myself, trying to figure it out. I wasn’t a pony. Going through the portal had turned me into some kind of alien, inequine thing with hairless, pale skin.

“This is really weird,” someone said. By the voice, it sounded like Emma, but she didn’t look like the pony I knew. Well, no, that wasn't entirely true. I looked over to the voice and saw an alien like me, if a little smaller and with Emma’s distinct dark green mane of hair. “Is that you, Chamomile?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Before you ask, Limbo wasn’t like this. This is new.”

“Do you think--” Emma started. A surprised alien popped out of the portal, tumbling head over heels and coming to a stop flat on his back.

“That was unpleasant,” It groaned in Zonda's voice. “Good thing I don’t get motion sick-- ah! What happened to me?!”

“Get over it, you baby,” Midnight said, exiting the portal like everything in the universe was conspiring to give her a dramatic entrance. She walked confidently on her hind legs or, I guess, her only legs. It probably helped that she was wearing something that raised her legs into something like a more natural hoof-ish shape, with high heels and leather going up to her thighs.

“Have you been here before?” I asked, trying to copy her stance and standing up. For the first time, I thought about what I was wearing instead of just my strange body. My power armor was gone, and I was wearing something that suggested a uniform augmented with blue steel plates.

I flexed the fingers on my right hand. They whirred. I guess some things hadn’t changed.

“Sunset told me about this,” called out a tinny voice. I looked around and spotted a glowing rectangle on the ground. I stepped over and saw a pony on a tiny screen.

“Destiny?” I asked. The rainbow-freckled unicorn sure looked like the body in the simulation Alpha had created for her.

“Star Swirl used this portal as a way to explore other worlds,” she explained. “Part of the enchantment on it is supposed to alter your body and what you’re carrying to make sure you fit in with locals.”

“The natives here look like this?” Emma asked. I helped her up and she looked back at her bare spine, at least as much as she could. “Where are my wings?!”

“Don’t worry, the process reverses when you go back through,” Destiny said. “Everything will come back when you return. This effect made things really difficult in the early days. There are some work-arounds but… fitting in is a good idea for now. Everything here is designed for bodies like the ones you have at the moment.”

“It’s not nearly as difficult as getting used to being a cloud of bats,” Midnight said, stretching. She was as pale as marble, with glowing red eyes and fangs and an aura of predatory attraction even in this form.

“You can turn into a cloud of bats?” Zonda asked. “That sounds like an incredibly useful trick.”

“It’s great, except when you lose a few bats,” Midi agreed, with a small giggle. She folded her arms. “Looks like Destiny has a harder time than any of us.”

“Pick me up,” Destiny said. I picked up the small tablet. It felt like a mix of metal and plastic, with a small BrayTech logo and an outer layer made of interlocking blue hexagons, just like my armor. “It must have decided to turn me into some kind of haunted device. It’s not inaccurate, but it’s annoying not being able to levitate myself.”

“It’s going to take some getting used to,” Zonda said. He hefted a rifle. Only one beam rifle had made it through with him, and he had to hold it in both hands. “I’m used to a battle saddle and using my whole body to aim.”

“If we’re lucky we won’t need to learn,” Destiny said. “Without knowing the situation, it would be unwise to engage in combat.”

“Yeah, we won’t know how to tell the good guys and the bad guys apart,” I agreed.

Emma nodded. Midi was looking up at where we’d come from. The mirror had deposited us at the base of a big statue of a pegasus with the kind of proportions a pony only had when they were being sculpted by somepony trying to flatter them. She touched the base of the statue, and her hand went through the stone like it wasn’t there. She waved it around for a moment and pulled back, flexing her hand and turning to give me a shrug.

“Why a statue?” I asked. I glanced around. Now that my mind and body were starting to align, and the afterimages of the psychedelic storm faded, I was able to get a good look around us. The statue seemed to be in the middle of a warehouse, with dusty boxes set off to the sides and safety railings leading up to the marble plinth.

“Good question,” Destiny asked. “Nopony knows. Well, that’s not true. I’m sure Star Swirl knows, but I didn’t think to ask him about it.”

I looked down at her tiny animated image. It was like she was on the other side of a window. “Any idea how we find Sunset?”

“Step one is finding a way out of this room,” Midnight said. “Maybe we can just find somepony, or something out there and just ask them. Just because our world is a giant mess doesn’t mean this one is.”

She confidently followed the railings to a set of double doors and yanked them open, shattering a rusty lock holding them shut. Dim light shone in from outside, and Midnight winced on reflex, holding up a hand to cover her face before slowly lowering it when the pain she must have been expecting didn’t come.

Outside, the sky was a sea of grey mist, fog that trailed down to the ground in thick, lazy tendrils like the clouds were lacerated and bleeding out. Impossible rainbows dotted the sky, shining dimly and curving the wrong way, up into the sky, with the colors jumbled in the wrong order like the local weather teams were both lazy and incompetent.

None of this really mattered compared to what hung higher above, just barely visible. Huge triangles of black, only visible in flashes of pale lightning through the fog. They were everywhere up there.

“Never mind,” Midnight said. “This place is bucked.”

She quietly pulled the door closed so we could all stop looking at the apocalypse outside.

“What happened here?” Emma whispered. She’d found a pistol at her side and held it, watching the door with obvious fear.

“I think this is what the Darkness would have done to Equestria if it hadn’t been stopped,” Destiny said quietly. It was suddenly like we were hiding from the dark shapes outside, and making too much noise would alert them. I found myself taking every step carefully and quietly and trying to be silent.

“I’m starting to think coming here wasn’t the best plan we ever had,” I conceded.

“We’ve barely got any weapons, our power armor is gone, and we’re stuck in bodies we don’t really know how to use,” Emma pointed out. “Even if things were normal, this would be bad. We should go back and consider our options.”

“We were under attack on the other side,” Zonda reminded her. “As bad as things are, we’ve been here a good few minutes now and nothing has tried to kill us yet.”

“He’s right,” Midnight agreed. “Plus, the things on the other side haven’t followed us through. Maybe they can’t.”

Emma closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centering herself. “That doesn’t make me very confident about our immediate future.”

“I don’t like it either,” I said. “That said, I have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff. This is only like a six out of ten in terms of badness!”

“What rates as a ten?” Emma asked.

“I think Queen Chrysalis was the worst,” I said after a moment of contemplation. “She totally wrecked me and almost killed thousands of ponies in a giant explosion.”

“Special forces really keeps busy,” Zonda sighed, shaking his head. “At least we have an expert! I’ve been on too many missions where ponies dropped the ball and nopony knew what was happening.”

Emma pushed the door open and peeked outside, letting in a sliver of that unsteady grey light. There was something oddly stark about it, like it forgot how to make any shade between full illumination and total shadow. “Even in the worst circumstances, ponies find ways to survive. It’s probably the same here.”

“Good point,” Midnight agreed. “Plagues, wars, disasters, there’s always somepony hanging on. The plan to find survivors and ask around could still work, we might just be in the middle of a disaster zone and things are perfectly fine over the next hill.”

“Without wings, scouting is going to be hard,” I pointed out.

“More importantly, there could be hazards we can’t detect,” Destiny said. I held up the screen to look at the tablet. She’d moved to the side and was picking up square icons in the background and opening them like books, flipping through them. “I don’t think this thing has a radiological detector. It does have a really great camera, though.”

She held up a cartoon icon of a camera.

“Say cheese!” She clicked the button, and the flash went off, blinding me for a second. Destiny pulled up a second icon and showed me a picture of myself. It was a very strange experience seeing the weird, flat, alien face and knowing it was somehow me. Then she picked up a paintbrush and added pony ears to the photo and that was a little better. “Decent photo editing, too. This probably would have been a hit product on the civilian market. No tiny buttons that make things impossible to use for ponies!”

“So if it’s radioactive out there, we can’t tell?” Emma asked, looking almost as pale as Midnight.

“Not until you start to get sick,” Destiny replied. “And then we won’t know which direction is safe.”

I rubbed my chin, then did it again because the sensation was novel and weird. “Okay,” I said. “Here’s the plan. If I’ve still got this--” I held up my right arm and flexed the carbide-covered limb. “--I’ve probably got the rest of what SIVA did to me, so I’m not too worried about radiation. Destiny is stuck in this thing, so she probably won’t get hurt by it either. Midnight?”

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Midnight said, putting her hands on her hips. She’d very quickly learned to swing her hips even in the alien body and it was almost as good as when she did it in her natural shape. “Radiation won’t hurt me directly, but it does make me hungry faster. I know one of the science-ponies back home said something about it degrading the living blood inside me or something like that.” She waved a hand dismissively.

“That works. So Midnight, Destiny, and I will go out,” I said. “Emma, you stay here with Zonda. You can make sure we’ve still got a way home. If you start to get sick, or if things get bad, go back through the portal.”

“I understand,” Zonda nodded, saluting. “I’ll watch your back, Warrant Officer.”

“Thanks,” I said, returning his salute with a handshake that took both of us a few seconds to figure out how to do.

“This place is just absolutely bucked,” Midnight said, looking around annoyed at everything. She shielded her glowing eyes and looked through the thin fog coming from the bleeding sky. “If you close your eyes and think about a place that’s ultra-cursed, you’d be thinking about this disaster.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I’d found a shirt pocket to shove Destiny into, though only the top part of the tablet protruded, so she ended up just sort of peeking over the edge of my pocket, her face half-visible. “I might upgrade this from a six to an eight.”

My foot slipped, and I looked down at the ground, fearing something nasty. There was black glass there, glossy and smooth and showing hints of infinite depth. It spread in a wide circle from a depression in the earth like lightning had fused asphalt and stone into obsidian. The ashes and dirt making a thick layer of dirty snow everywhere else didn’t stick to it, sliding off like it was being repelled.

“Movement,” Destiny warned.

“Where?” I asked, looking around.

“I can only look in one direction, Chamomile.”

I narrowed my gaze, and saw dark shapes in the mist. Thin forms moving with a kind of slow, deliberate motion. It was the way a pony moved when they were sleepwalking or exhausted.

Midnight pulled a knife from a hidden sheath, the glass blade catching the light. “I don’t smell anything living.”

“Good.” I rotated my shoulder, stretching my rebuilt arm. “That means I don’t have to hold back while I figure out what I can do.”

I stepped forward. Stealth was going to be all but impossible anyway, so I figured it’d be a good idea to be a distraction so Midnight could do her thing. The mist peeled away as I walked, parting more like curtains instead of simply fading.

Rough stone obelisks protruded from the ground in a random scatter of waist-high cairns, looking more like they’d grown, twisted and bulbous, from the stone instead of being placed there. The shapes lurching through them barely seemed aware of their surroundings, swerving at the last moment around the stones.

One of them turned to look at me, a grinning skull with glowing blue stars in the empty eye sockets, a skeleton with blackened bones surrounded by smoky mist, like it had been pulled from a pyre and never quite stopped smoldering.

I realized I still didn’t have a cool battle-cry, which was a shame because it probably would have impressed Midnight. I clenched my brand-new hand as tight as I could and punched the first skeleton in the snout to establish dominance. It jerked back, the force cracking its jaw and making it hang loose from one side of the ebony skull.

It rattled, sounding like creaking hinges and straining unseen ligaments when it lunged, bony fingers twisted into claws. I tried to dodge, but I was already clumsy at my best and now I was getting tangled up by having too few legs and not enough wings. A burst of pain drew a yelp of alarm from me, and I fell back on my ass, the undead stalking towards me, hunched over.

On instinct, or really, in a panic, I kicked it. My armored boot shattered its ribs, and the black smoke rising from the bones exploded out for a moment in a puff like a mushroom releasing its spores before the whole thing fell over, the light in its eyes going out.

“Shoot, this isn’t as easy as it used to be,” I panted.

“You’re not allowed to complain to me about getting old,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed, getting up. Two more skeletons were creaking their way over, moving with a bizarre pace that seemed out-of-sync with the world, like instead of moving smoothly they were snapping into position moment by moment, sort of the way the second hand of some clocks went around in a circle in a jerking sixty-part motion instead of a smooth glide.

“Maybe try not falling over?” Destiny suggested.

“Good plan.” I’d grabbed a rock from the ground when I was getting up, and chucked it at one of the skeletons. The motion felt somehow natural, despite the alien body, and the hoof-sized rock glanced off its head, cracking the bone and releasing a thicker haze from the wound. That might have been a mistake, because it seemed angry now.

Midnight dropped out of the mist right on top of it, planting both feet on its head and riding it down to the ground, the cracked skull exploding on impact.

“Come on, Chamomile,” she joked, smirking wide enough to show a long incisor. “You can do better than that!”

I scoffed and put my hands on one of the tombstones growing out of the blasted earth, grunting and twisting the glassy black rock. With a crack like thunder, it came out of the ground, just in time for me to swing around with it and club the last skeleton with it, the massive rock carrying straight through it and shattering every bone between its shoulders and waist. I let go at the apex, tossing the stone aside and wiping my hands clean.

“Better?” I asked.

“Much,” Midnight said with a pleased nod. “I need a big, strong bodyguard, you know. I can’t be the one responsible for protecting you.” She slapped me on the back and we kept walking, passing buildings half-seen through the mist.

“I don’t like to brag, but I do use brute force irresponsibly.” I flexed my muscles.

“You’re great at it.” Midnight winked, and we followed the road a little further, because a little further was all we could go.

The field of tombstones growing out of the street was bad, but you could walk around those. That wasn’t true of what we found at the literal end of the road. The asphalt and concrete fell away into a deep rift, a subsidence in the street too wide to jump across and deep enough that I couldn’t see the bottom, mist turning anything below into just a suggestion of infinite depth and blackness.

“That’s going to make it difficult to explore,” I mumbled. I kicked a loose pebble into it, and the mist swallowed it up. There wasn’t even a sound of it bouncing on the walls of the rift, just silence as soon as it was out of sight.

“So the sky is falling, the ground is crumbling, what next?” Midnight asked. “We find out the sea is still and fire doesn’t burn?”

“Don’t give the Darkness any ideas, those triangles up there are probably watching us,” Destiny warned quietly. I glanced up at the polygons hovering in the sky where the sun, moon, and stars should have been.

“I sure hope they don’t recognize us,” I mumbled. “Hey, if you hear any weird voices asking if you want to sell your soul--”

Midnight waved a hand dismissively. “Nightmare Moon still has mine on loan. Or maybe I got it back since she died? Wow, I didn’t think I’d need to worry about that kind of thing anymore, it was the whole point of becoming an immortal horror.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Know any good priests?”

“I’ll hook you up with a great church when we get back,” I joked. “They’ve got excellent coffee.” We started walking back to try and find a side street to avoid the crack in the world when the tablet in my pocket beeped.

“Hold on a second,” Destiny said.

“What is it?” I asked. “More skeletons?”

“No, on your right. I think it’s a corner store.” I looked over in that direction. There was a big sign out front advertising a sale on something called a ‘slushie’. “We can’t access the vector trap’s inventory right now, so it might be worth looking for basic medical supplies.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“Chamomile, those aren’t medicine,” Destiny sighed. “They’re a snack.”

“These aren’t just any potato chips, Destiny,” I said. “They’re alien potato chips from another universe! I owe it to myself to try them. And all the other snacks. I’ll literally never get another chance!”

“She’s not wrong,” Midi agreed. “Life is short. Take what pleasure you can while you can. If you can’t enjoy yourself, what’s the point of living?”

“Can we at least try to find something more useful while we’re here?” Destiny asked with a resigned sigh.

“I’ll look around,” Midnight said. “I don’t eat… chips.” She winked at me and hopped behind the counter, presumably looking for a first-aid kit.

I picked up one of the chip bags. It had a strange cartoon mascot on it. Back home it probably would have been a Princess or one of the Ministry Mares -- the Ministry of Image loved making sure their faces were everywhere a pony looked in the old world -- but here it was some kind of potato with a wide-brimmed hat and a friendly face.

“You know, it’s weird,” I said.

“What is?” Destiny asked.

“I didn’t even think about it before, but I’m holding an alien snack from another world, and I can read everything on the bag. Why is it written in Equestrian?” I tugged at the bag and managed to pop it open. To be honest I half-expected it to be rancid, but it smelled fine, and the chips looked pristine.

“That’s a good question, and one Sunset herself was concerned about,” Destiny replied. “It’s not just language, this world and ours share a suspicious number of things. Names of places, entire families that seemed to be duplicated, similar points in history. Unfortunately most of the research was under wraps in Canterlot.”

“Where she couldn’t go?” I guessed.

“Not after her falling out,” Destiny confirmed. “Our best guess is that when the worlds were first connected by the mirror, they synched up somehow. Do you know much about cutie marks and dooms?”

“Dooms? That’s ominous.”

“It’s just an old word for fate,” Destiny said. “An inescapable, predetermined fate. Everypony with a cutie mark has felt that kind of thing at least once, when they got their mark. It suggests there’s some kind of magic background field that leads ponies to finding their special talent. We theorized that the fields somehow became intertwined and both this world and ours shared similar fates.”

I looked outside through cracked windows at the ruin the world had become, mist and dust and darkness. “Did we cause this, or did they do it to us?”

“It’s impossible to say. Maybe both at once, maybe it depends on frame of reference, maybe it’s a coincidence. We still don’t know what happened here.”

I nodded and popped a chip into my mouth. It was crispy and fresh. “Oh wow, these are pretty good!”

“You know what else is pretty good?” Midnight asked. I looked back at her. She was holding something behind her back. “Me! Look at what I found.”

She revealed the newspaper she was holding, spreading it out on the counter in front of her. I walked over, munching on the chips.

“Good thing we can read this stuff,” I said, putting a hand on the page to smooth it out. The ink hadn’t faded as much as I would have expected with how much dust was covering everything outside.

EVACUATION ANNOUNCED

President Willow today announced a temporary evacuation of the west coast in order to prevent the spread of Mutagenic Wasting Disease reported in the area after the test-detonation of a thaumo-nuclear weapon by the Yuktobanian military in international waters in violation of the test-ban treaty.

The disease, characterized by distinctive skin lesions, is known to be spread in the fallout of thaumo-nuclear devices and waste from the production of thaumatic materials. The use of these weapons has been condemned by an international coalition and calls for sanctions against Yuktoban have been made by many prominent politicians.

Thaumatic waste is extremely dangerous and has a distinctive rainbow sheen. The bureau of health would like to remind citizens to report any chemical spills and not to approach or touch any unidentified substances. Only a trained expert can remove thaumatic waste safely!

A picture of a mushroom cloud accompanied the article, which was from a weapons test in Osea, according to the caption.
“Things must have gotten really bad really quickly,” I said.

“Their thaumo-nuclear weapon must be similar in design to a megaspell,” Destiny replied. “I’d almost like to see one but I think I’ve had my fill of weapons of mass destruction.”

“Could a weapon cause all that stuff outside? Or the shadows?” Midnight asked. “Because that seems a lot more like some kind of curse.”

“Maybe,” Destiny said. “I don’t have the Dimension Pliers to prove my theory, but everything we’re seeing here? It’s very similar to Limbo. This whole world might be about to fall into it. It would be like the floor of a house rotting until everything collapses into the basement.”

“It does all feel rotten,” I agreed. “If we kick too hard we might break reality.”

“I’d almost like to try just to see what happens,” Midnight admitted. “But only after we find Sunset. Which seems increasingly unlikely. I haven’t seen anything alive at all. No animals, no plants, nothing.”

“Kinda weird,” I agreed, finishing the rest of the chips. “But the snacks are still okay, and that paper looks almost brand-new.”

Midnight shrugged.

“Are there any maps back there?” Destiny asked.

“I didn’t see one,” Midnight replied. “I don’t think it would help very much even if there was one. We don’t even know where to go!” She kicked the counter in frustration. “This sucks, and not in the cool way with blood.”

“Sunset had to be based somewhere close to the portal,” Destiny said. “She was too paranoid not to keep it under tight control. If there’s a copy of her personal passcode anywhere in this entire world, it’s within walking distance.”

Midnight sighed and folded her arms, trying to calm down. “You’re right.”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “This building has a roof.”

“And I saw a fire escape on the side!” Midnight said, perking up. “If we have higher ground we might see something interesting! I’m a little embarrassed. Destiny is a genius, but I’m so distracted by all this I’m not even thinking as clearly as you, Chamomile.”

“I’m only half as dumb as people think,” I said. “Wait. Is half as dumb worse or better?”

“It’s definitely more you, either way,” Midnight giggled. She vaulted the counter and gave my flank a firm slap. “Come on! I’m excited to see how bad this place is when we can see more of it!”

“I was wrong!” Midnight said cheerfully. “It looks even worse from up here!”

“It’s not that bad,” I said, not meaning it. I’d seen living cities and dying ones and ones somewhere in-between, but I’d never seen a city like this. The architecture was so similar to Equestria that it looked like ponies had built it. But they hadn’t built a city, they’d built a grand mausoleum, a necropolis. It had the concrete and marble look of a graveyard built for titans who demanded office buildings as headstones.

“There’s no way we can check all of those on foot,” I mumbled. “Which one would Sunset use?” I scanned the skyline. I didn’t know anything about the pony except that she was Destiny’s boss, and apparently ambitious. Maybe that meant she’d have the tallest building?

Midnight tapped my shoulder. I looked at her, and she pointed behind us.

It stood taller than any other building in the city, but height is only a number. It can’t capture everything about a place. It wasn’t just the scale of the skyscraper that was awe-inspiring, it was the audacity of the designer, because they hadn’t just built a tower, they’d built it and then added an entire castle on top of it like adding a tier to a cake. It was so high that the bleeding clouds had to part around it.

“How much do you want to bet that the castle on top of that building is just a tiny bit higher than Princess Celestia’s place in Canterlot?” Midnight asked.

“No bet,” Destiny said. “I think we found what we were looking for.”

A voice hissed from all around us. “No. You have found only death.”

The mist swirled around the building, pulling up into a thick wall around us. The dim light from the grey sky above darkened a few shades. Something half-stepped, half-floated out of the mist on the edge of the roof.

It was cloaked in tattered robes, clutching a staff, an alien shape made of bone and mummified flesh that even like this still showed traces of stripes, like it hadn’t finished changing from the zebra it had been.

“Oh,” I said. “You’re one of the necromancers! How've you been? How did you even get here?”

“Our wrath is inescapable,” it intoned, voice echoing. “This world belongs to the Darkness. Coming here was foolish! It only put you in my hooves!”

“Hands,” I corrected. “We’ve all got hands right now.”

It was silent for a long moment, then pointed its staff at me, launching a bolt of sickly green energy that hit me in the gut and flung me to the edge of the roof, almost over the edge.

“Okay, I deserved that,” I groaned, rolling over to all fours and getting back up. “Ow.”

“You will see the shape of my wrath!” it screamed. “Behold your doom, a horror imprisoned here and left to rot, a terror Equestrians forced on another world!”

It raised its staff, and lightning shot from it in all directions, reaching into the mist. Thunder echoed, and something else replaced the silence that should have been in its wake. It was faint at first, growing louder by the second. In the first moments it was just a wall of sound like whalesong, but it changed, pitches changing and joining into chords.

I backed away from the edge. There was something swimming through the mist out there, a huge shape. It was suddenly like we were on a tiny boat, surrounded by sea monsters.

“Why can’t things ever be easy?” I whispered.

Chapter 90: Black Song, White Scales

The song came out of the fog from all sides, rising and falling and rattling through my whole body. It was a melody of mournful moans, a dirge trying to be seductive. Shapes moved through the mist, vanishing too quickly for me to get a good look at them. I saw suggestions of fins, scales, and huge maws filled with fangs.

“Chamomile, serious question, how do you have enemies even somewhere you’ve never been before?” Midnight asked.

“This isn’t my fault, this is one of Destiny’s enemies!” I protested.

“I guess that’s sort of true,” Destiny admitted. “But it shouldn’t count when there was a war going on! And these necromancers were basically terrorists, it’s not personal, and they’re just crazy and tribalist and get obsessed with things really easily!”

“Any idea what’s out there?” I asked. “I can’t see through the fog.”

“All I can tell is they’re big, and they look like the biggest, nastiest seaponies I’ve ever seen,” Midnight replied.

“They must be the Sirens!” Destiny called out. “One of the most famous stories about Star Swirl involves them. They used dark magic to control ponies and feed off the disharmony and strife and wiped out a whole city before Star Swirl could banish them from Equestria forever!”

“I guess we know where they went,” I said.

“Sounds like we’re famous, girls!” a sultry voice called from the mist.

“You can’t keep the sirens down, Adagio!” a more cheerful voice giggled.

“You’re too happy, Sonata. Let’s just kill them and get it over with,” the third, annoyed voice growled. A purple, dragon-like head rose out of the mist, scales ragged and fins full of holes. Her glowing eyes looked at me with disinterest.

The happy voice snorted with laughter. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the grave!” A blue monster appeared on the other side of the building, circling around from behind us. She waved to us with an almost-skeletal fin. “Hi everybody!”

“Sonata, Aria, don’t fight.” A golden dragon reared up majestically, in slightly better condition than the others. She smirked down at us, not that she could do anything except smile with her lips rotted away to show a maw full of ivory fangs. “It’s been too long since we’ve had prey.”

“I command you to destroy them!” the necromancer called out.

“You command us?” the golden dragon, Adagio, asked. She tilted her head to the zebra lich.

“My magic brought you back to life! Your will is mine to command, spirit!” The zebra raised its staff, green necromatic light flashing from the tip. I could feel it crawling over my skin, hard radiation and magic clawing at my body and soul.

The light vanished with the flick of a golden tail, a fin knocking the staff away.

“Somebody is learning a valuable lesson today,” the blue Sonata giggled quietly.

“I-I am in control here!” the zebra shouted.

Adagio leaned in closer, the tip of her snout almost touching the necromancer. “You’re so dumb it’s almost cute.”

She opened her mouth and blasted the necromancer across the roof with a burst of sound and magic, the explosion of song driving the zebra to its knees, struggling to stand.

“Girls, let’s show this wannabe what real control looks like,” Adagio said, rearing back. She started weaving a song, notes echoing through the thick air, heavy with magic. The other two sirens responded, each of them singing a slightly different note, adding up to a chord that built up in a standing wave, the entire roof starting to vibrate from the power.
I braced myself for something big and… kept bracing.

“Am I supposed to be dead now?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, you will be soon,” Midnight promised. She turned on me in a flash, stabbing with her glass knife. I raised up my right arm to block on instinct. Sparks flew from the carbide coating as her knife started cutting through.

“What are you doing?!” I yelped, shoving her back. Midnight twisted on her tall heels and spun around, licking her lips and smirking. Her eyes were flat, glowing green.

The tablet in my pocket buzzed, then let out a stinging shock. I grabbed it with my other hand to look. Destiny’s image was distorted, twitchy, and filled with static, runes flashing on the screen in bright green. “You have to die, Chamomile,” Destiny said, her voice dull. The tablet shocked me again and I dropped it in surprise.

“I can’t… control…” the necromancer lunged at me, trying to claw at me. I grabbed an outstretched arm and tossed it aside. The bag of skin and bones barely weighed anything, and I almost ended up throwing it over the edge.

“I get it,” I said. “The undead sirens have some kind of power to control other undead, and I’m immune because I’m still alive!”

“Actually I think it’s because you’re too stupid for brain control to work,” Sonata chirped as she swam past.

“I’m not stupid!” I yelled back at her.

“Let’s not pretend you’re a genius,” Midnight snorted, appearing in a blur behind me and driving her knife into my back. The blade hit my ribs and glanced off. “Huh, that’s weird. Usually, that’s the sweet spot.”

“I’m just full of surprises,” I grunted, turning to face her. She danced away, so fast that I might as well have been standing still.

“If you don’t succeed, stab, stab again!” Aria cackled. Midnight’s eyes flashed with light and she jumped, coming down on my shoulders and stabbing at my neck. I still had a scar there from the last time someone had slit my throat. I grabbed the knife, the edge cutting into my fingers, blood running down the blade and dripping between us.

“You’re only making this hard for yourself,” Midnight said. “All I have to do is twist the blade a little and you’re going to--”

She twisted, the blade scraping against bone. It hurt. Really, really badly. I was not enjoying having hands. The deep cuts in my fingers stung twice as harshly as they should’ve. But not as badly as being stabbed in the neck. I squeezed tighter, not letting her go.

“Huh. I thought that would cut through you,” she admitted, sounding impressed. “Are you even a pony, or just a fancy robot?”

“If you weren’t already an evil monster I’d be really offended,” I said, trying to ignore the feeling of blood running down my wrist. I grabbed her wrist with my other hand and twisted, breaking her grip on the knife. Midnight yanked her arm free and kicked off my chest, jumping back weightlessly, defying gravity like she was still hiding a set of wings somewhere.

“This is my favorite part,” Adagio taunted from the far side of the roof. “You don’t want to hurt her, and she can’t stop herself!”

“After she kills you, we’ll let her go just long enough to realize what she did,” Aria hissed.

Midnight dropped down and ran at me with unearthly celerity, going for the knife. I kicked it away just before she could grab it, and she resorted to just slamming into my legs. I wasn’t steady on two legs, and the hit to my knees sent me sprawling.

The necromancer jumped on top of me, hissing and chomping like a feral ghoul, rotting teeth and ghostly shadows of fangs filling its maw. I grabbed its neck and held it back, trying to get enough room to stand. I saw Midnight in the corner of my vision, picking up her blade and tossing it into the air, flipping it around to adjust her grip.

I took a gamble and tossed the necromancer over the edge of the roof, aiming for the nearest singing voice. I looked back, following it as it fell. Sonata snapped at it on instinct, the blue sea monster taking the bait and swallowing it whole.

“Ew!” Sonata gagged, trying to spit it up. “That tasted horrible!”

“Sonata!” Aria yelled. “You idiot! What are you doing?!” She turned around and walked back to her sister to scream in her face.

“I don’t feel so good,” Sonata groaned, starting to curl up on herself like a seahorse.

“Girls, you’re messing up the song!” Adagio screeched.

Midnight froze in place, the green light fading from her eyes, replaced with the normal -- and I am using normal very liberally here -- red glow. “Woah,” she said. “That was weird. I had some really good reason I was trying to kill you and now I can’t remember what it was at all!”

“Welcome to the club,'' I groaned, holding my bleeding hand close to my body and picking up Destiny. “Please don’t shock me.”

“I’m so sorry!” Destiny looked like she was practically on the verge of tears. The image flickered, dimmer than before. “I didn’t mean to hurt you! It was some kind of spell and--”

“I know,” I told her. “Are you okay? The image…”

“This tablet has some kind of internal battery. Those shocks drained a lot of the charge. I think I’ll be okay, but I have to dim the screen to use less power.”

“We’ll finish up fast,” I promised. I stuffed the tablet back into my shirt pocket. “Midnight?”

“Fast is no problem,” Midnight said with a toothy grin. “I can’t even remember how many times ponies have said I’m inappropriately fast for a lady!”

She went after the purple pony eater and I ran at Adagio. The golden-scaled creature seemed like the leader, and if I kept her from organizing anything, it’d make fighting at a disadvantage less disadvantage-ing.

There was no time to consider if disadvantage-ing was a word. I ran at the edge of the roof, tried not to think about how much I wished I could fly right now, and jumped for Adagio while she was yelling at her sisters. I hit her side, realized in that moment that I hadn’t even known for sure if she was solid or just a ghost, and scrambled for a grip, my metal fingers punching through the rotting scales and finding a rib.

Adagio roared and turned, an eye the size of a dinner plate glaring at me. She tried to get the right angle to snap at me. Her long fangs couldn’t quite get the right angle, the siren turning as she struggled, like a dog chasing its tail.

“Get off me!” she yelled.

“Or what?” I yelled back. “You’ll try and kill me?”

“She’s got you there,” Aria laughed. “We were already trying to murder her. What are you going to threaten her with, having to go on a date with you?”

“Just get her off me!” Adagio yelled, snapping her tail like a whip and trying to throw me off.

“Fine! As long as it makes you stop complaining!” Aria groaned. She turned around, and Midnight landed on her snout, standing on the very tip as easily as I’d stand on flat ground. “What the--?”

Midnight drove her knife into Aria’s glowing eye. The undead siren screamed, and glowing ectoplasm sprayed into the air. Midnight jumped away and watched Aria thrash in agony, twisting and turning in place.

“You little--” Adagio growled, flipping upside-down. I squeaked in surprise and gripped tighter, which seemed like a mistake when the rib I was holding onto started to crack. I slipped a little as the rib started to come free of her body entirely, the rotting flesh beginning to give instead of supporting my weight.

“Chamomile!” Midnight yelled. “Heads up!”

Her knife thudded into the siren, barely missing my face.

“Careful!” I shouted.

Midnight stuck her tongue out at me. “I warned you! Thank me instead of complaining!”

I grabbed the handle of the knife, using it to steady myself. Adagio flew straight up, forcing me to twist the knife to keep it from sliding through her body. I had no idea what she was doing until she came back down and slammed into the roof, smashing me into the concrete.

She flew off, and I stayed where I was, still holding the knife.

“Ow,” I said.

“Any broken bones?” Midnight asked. “Oh hey, you kept my knife! Thanks!” She took it out of my hand and didn’t help me up.

“My bones are really tough because I get extra calcium,” I said. The world was spinning around me.

“Your bones are tough because they’re mostly carbon fiber and hyperalloy,” Destiny corrected. “You should get more vitamins, though.”

“Put it on my to-do list,” I sighed. I had to get up on my own since no one was helping me.

“Girls, I really don’t feel good,” Sonata moaned, fins wrapped around her body. Green light pulsed out of her rotting guts. “Something’s wrong!”

Sonata screeched and threw her head back. Green light poured out of her mouth like a spotlight, reaching up into the sky. In her belly, something burned like a coal, brighter and brighter with every moment.

“Eating the necromancer that brought you back might not have been a great idea,” I said, backing away from her. She was a bomb on the verge of exploding, and I didn’t know how long we’d have until it went off. My foot hit the raised edge of the roof, and I glanced back and looked down. I couldn’t see what was below us. At best it was five stories onto concrete and being hurt badly enough Midnight would have to drag me back to the portal. At worst I’d fall through the mist and get swallowed up by one of those bottomless rifts cutting through the earth.

Lightning tore out of Sonata’s flesh, raking across the other Dazzlings and wrapping around them. The energy surged, pulling the sirens closer together. They all screamed as Sonata finally split open entirely, a dull wet whomp and crackle of pins and needles across my skin accompanied by blinding light.

For a brief second I thought it might be over.

“What did you do, Sonata?!” Adagio yelled.

I blinked the light out of my eyes.

“What the buck?” I asked.

“That’s not what I would have expected,” Destiny said from my pocket.

The three sirens were surrounded by a corona of sparks, the necromatic energy fading away or being absorbed. Calling them the ‘Three Sirens’ might have been incorrect now, though. The energy had done something bizarre, forcing them together and merging their battered, broken bodies into one. Three long necks curled out of their shared body, a single forked tail with twin fins whipping at the air behind them and fins splayed in a peacock-like array of multicolored scales.

“It’s not my fault!” Sonata whined, shrinking down to below the eye level of the other two Sirens. “That weird thing I ate made me sick! It’s their fault!”

“I swear if there isn’t a way to fix this I’m going to tear my own head off just to get away from you!” Aria roared.

Midnight leaned in to whisper to me. “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I whispered back.

“Let’s kill them, then figure things out,” Adagio said firmly. “We’re a team, girls. We can get ourselves apart, but first we need to get our act together!”

“Murder does sound good,” Aria agreed, turning away from her family to fix her glare on us instead.

“Maybe if we eat them, it’ll make my stomach feel better!” Sonata suggested, smiling happily and licking her lips.

“Bad,” I decided.

The sirens beat their huge, sail-like fins and charged at us, screaming for our blood. If this had been my first giant monster rodeo I would have been terrified. Now, I had all the instincts drilled into me. I knew exactly what I needed to do to win. I’d just jump at the last moment, then fly onto its back and--

I realized flying was going to be an issue when the peak of my jump was considerably lower than my ambition.

Instead of gracefully landing on the back of the conjoined monstrosity, I was clinging to Adagio’s snout. She crossed her eyes and tried to focus on me.

“How about we call this whole thing a draw and try again later?” I suggested.

She didn’t like the idea. Aria and Sonata went for me at the same time Adagio tossed her head back to try and throw me into the air. Blue and purple snouts came together in a fang-filled kiss that left both of them confused and two-thirds of the brainpower of the sirens (by volume, not quality) forgot they were supposed to be flying. Adagio lunged for me, and looked bewildered as her body carried her downwards against her will.

They hit the ground first, going right past the roof and down through the fog, slamming back-first into the street and throwing up a cloud of ash and dust. I dropped into a safe landing on their belly, the soft flesh bouncing me like a trampoline.

“Oof!” Sonata gasped, finally getting her fangs untangled from Aria’s.

“How could you mess that up?!” Aria demanded.

“It wasn’t my fault, she’s tricky!” Sonata complained.

Adagio groaned, struggling to pull her head out of a ruined bus. The sirens started to turn over, getting their fins under them. I jumped off, running and hiding behind a mailbox.

“There has to be some way to kill them,” I whispered to myself. “They’re even dumber than I am, and I know I could outsmart myself!”

“Maybe you could throw a really big rock at them,” Destiny helpfully suggested.

Adagio reared up, the van still on her head, and unleashed a blast of sonic energy, the shockwave tearing the car apart like a bomb. Shrapnel blasted across the street, shattering the few intact windows and gouging chunks out of the concrete. Debris rained down from the shattered facade.

“Throw a rock at them, huh?” I asked. “Maybe we’ll try that.”

I stood up and waved my arms.

“Hey! I’m over here!” I yelled.

“I know!” Sonata chirped. “You weren’t hiding very well. You’re like, twice the size of that mailbox!”

“Oh.” I lowered my arms. Coughed. “So--”

Aria and Adagio roared and threw themselves at me. I yelped and ran for it, bolting inside the building behind me, which had been some kind of department store. The triple-headed monster tore through mannequins and racks of dusty clothing, bowling them aside and shattering concrete support beams as easily as it did the rotting fixtures, ignoring everything in its enraged pursuit.

Cracks shot through the ceiling, and rumbling started behind me. I picked up the pace, an extra layer of mortal danger motivating me to find a new reserve of strength. I could see the fire escape door. Pebbles were coming down in my path, a hailstorm right before the avalanche of destruction.

I jumped and slammed into the door, going through it and into the alleyway beyond, rolling in the ashes and skidding to a stop. The department store creaked, and the last of it all gave out, the top floors pancaking down all the way to the ground, uncountable tons of concrete crushing the Sirens.

The roar took ages to finally fade into silence. Everything was still.

“Think that rock was big enough?” I asked.

“You really take the living disaster thing seriously, don’t you?” Midnight asked. She was leaning on the alleyway wall behind us. I had no idea how long she’d been there. “I was going to step in, you know. If something went wrong.”

The rubble shifted. Midnight’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed her knife. I spun around. A massive, finned talon raised out of the broken slabs of concrete, shuddering and straining.

“No way,” I groaned.

“Nobody could have survived that!” Destiny said.

The talon went limp, collapsing. Everything went still again. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“That’s the end of them,” I said, collapsing down to sit on the ground. “I don’t want to fight any more monsters today. Not unless I can get a cool sword.”

“Yeah, it’s not fair to the monsters unless you have a handicap,” Midnight joked.

The light shifted around us. Grey nothing was replaced by the red of the twilight, the crimson of a sun about to dip below the horizon. I looked back, and found myself looking up at that huge building, twice the size of anything around it and topped with an impossible castle looking down at the city from cloud level.

The light wasn’t the sun. The sun was distant, far away and above everything and just a background to what went on around it. The sun wasn’t personal. The ball of flame in the sky over the castle was focused and intent, an eye staring down at me and daring me to meet its gaze.

“I think someone noticed us,” I said quietly. It felt like the eye was listening in, even from a mile away.

The mist in the street parted, blown aside by a gust of hot wind and showing a clear path all the way to the base of that skyscraper, the tallest building I’d ever seen.

“And they want to meet us,” Destiny added. “I don’t think we can refuse.”

“Welcome to my home,” a voice echoed. The castle was dark and somehow slightly too warm, despite the altitude. I stepped out of the elevator and my feet sank into plush red carpet, decorated with an abstract pattern in crimson and gold.

The door closed behind us, the elevator buttons going dark. Midnight met my gaze and shrugged. We’d been gently directed through an empty lobby to an express elevator with no buttons or switches, lined in gold and exotic wood. It was an elevator for people who were summoned, who weren’t even in control of the situation enough to choose which floor they went to.

We walked into the hall, and it was as big as a little girl’s imagination of what a castle should be like, arching overhead with ornate rafters and windows showing slivers of the dead sky outside. The entire far wall was one giant window, with a desk bigger than a banquet table set in front of it and a single person behind it, looking out of the window with one arm behind her back and the other holding a delicate glass.

“I originally considered purchasing a castle from overseas and having it shipped here brick-by-brick,” she said. “But every one that I toured left something to the imagination. People here all think so small. So I designed this one myself.”

She turned to look at us. She was young, only a little older than I was. I’d been expecting something other than an attractive redhead in a black suit.

“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” she said, motioning in front of her desk. Two chairs appeared in flashes of black and red flame. For just a fraction of a second, I felt the same kind of power that radiated out of Flurry Heart, and then it was instantly gone. The way she could hide it was more terrifying than the power itself. “I assume you’re here to see me. Can I offer you some wine? It’s literally the best in the world.”

“I’m good,” I said, stepping closer and trying to play it cool. It was never a good idea to seem afraid.

“I prefer a stronger vintage,” Midnight said, trying to reclaim at least some fragment of her usual cool. She sat down in one of the offered seats at an angle, looking very nearly at ease.

Sunset’s free hand erupted in a burst of flames, leaving behind a champagne glass half-full with something thick and darker than any real wine. She offered it to Midnight, who took it in mute shock. “You don’t have to be so afraid,” she said. “I am not your enemy.”

“And you’re not my friend,” I said, almost automatically.

Sunset’s smile widened. I saw the same predatory look Midnight had when she was ready to murder me under the Sirens’ control.

“I see we have mutual acquaintances,” Sunset said. “But only one of us said no.”

“How’d that work out for you?” I asked. I looked past her to the window.

She didn’t even flinch. “It’s done wonderful things for my skin. I’m told I look excellent for my age.” Sunset raised her glass to us. “So, you came here to ask me a favor, didn’t you, Destiny?”

“Hello, Sunset,” Destiny chirped from my pocket. “I really didn’t think you’d be alive.”

Sunset laughed, exactly once. A sharp ‘ha’ that lasted as long as a stab in the back. “I’m glad I could defy your expectations. I’m just sorry you didn’t last the same way. If you ask nicely, I might be able to do something about that.”

“I don’t believe your masters would want to help me,” Destiny said.

“Because you fought them?” Sunset asked. “Don’t be absurd. Strength is the only thing that matters. If you succeed, you were stronger. It doesn’t matter if it was because of planning or preparation or brute force or even luck. All of those are types of power they respect.”

“Thanks, but I’m doing fine,” Destiny assured her.

“Have it your way,” Sunset shrugged. “They’ll be around when you’re ready to make a deal. So what can I do for you? Do you want to borrow a thaumonuclear device? A cure for vampirism? The truth about what Celestia kept in her private diary?”

“Of all of those, I believe the diary thing the least,” Midnight said. She took a sip of the blood.

“When I was a foal I didn’t really understand boundaries well, and I read everything I got my hooves on,” Sunset said. “Mostly she wrote about her dreams, if you’re curious. She could sometimes see the future in them.”

“I want your private key,” Destiny said. “We have a file we need to open.”

“Really? You crossed between worlds just to ask me for my old passwords?” Sunset looked bored. She sighed. “That’s so… mundane.”

“It was sent to my family by Kuulas,” Midnight explained. “It’s got to be something important. We can’t get it open without your key.”

“If it came from that machine, it’s absolutely vital,” Sunset admitted. “But if it’s locked with my key…” she tossed her glass aside casually, and it vanished in midair with a puff of flame like it was nothing but flash paper. “There weren’t many projects under my direct control. All of them were something more…” she pursed her lips. “More for my personal goals than anything else.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Mostly ways to kill Princess Celestia.” Sunset shrugged. “Not that I’d ever do it, but it amused me to think about it. It’s a real challenge, and I never found a good solution to the problem. Not without killing a lot of ponies, and that’s going too far even for me!”

A distant rumble of thunder rolled through the air.

Sunset hopped off her desk. “Let me go take care of something.” She walked back to the windows and pressed a button set into the frame, opening a wide set of double doors in the glass wall. She motioned for us to follow and stepped outside.

I gave Midnight a look and she shook her head. I nodded understandingly and followed Sunset outside.

The air was thin out on the balcony, but there should have been wind at this altitude, an almost constant flow. Even in this alien body I could tell the stillness was unnatural. Dead air hanging over the rotting corpse of the earth.

Sunset walked right up to the edge, looking down a hundred stories to the city streets.

The sirens tore their way out of the rubble that had collapsed on top of them, rising into the air, singing a tritone that vibrated through my whole body.

“I really thought you’d gotten them,” Sunset said. “Maybe I underestimated those three.”

“Do you have a big gun I could borrow?” I asked.

“Please, you’re my guest. Let me take care of this.” She offered her glass to me. “Hold this for a moment, will you?”

She hadn’t even been holding a glass a moment ago. She’d created it just so she could ask me to hold it. Sunset cracked her knuckles.

The world went dark. In the pitch black I could see the triangles in the sky, still in the same places, holes of nothing in a field of absolute darkness, an invisible pattern of black on black that should have been impossible.

The darkness collapsed into a point and burst into flame. Crimson fire erupted into life, and magic as hot and stifling as a steel smelter roared to life. It was so thick I could choke on it, the power of an alicorn with no temperance or restraint. A star on the knife-edge of a supernova. A reactor surging towards critical.

Huge wings of fire beat at the air, lifting the creature of scarlet flame into the air. A crown of golden fire burned on top of her head between twisting horns, and smoke and embers clothed her form.

Sunset Shimmer looked down at the Sirens. They opened their maws, unleashing a triplicate burst of pure sonic force. I could see the air rippling.

The crimson queen motioned dismissively, and the air split apart. There was a loud, crackling pop, and it took me a moment to realize what she’d done. She hadn’t countered the effect with a spell or deflected it with a shield, she’d simply removed the air between them, creating a vacuum. It should have been impossible.

She didn’t care about other people’s opinions on ‘impossible.’

Sunset sang a single note. It resonated through the air, burning runes into the sky. The sirens focused their energy and sang at a different pitch, disrupting it just before it hit. I could feel Sunset’s amusement.

She started singing, not in words but in the voice of sorcery itself. Every note in the chaotic tune was a killing stroke. The sirens tried to keep up, changing their song to try and match her. Flashes of black and white cascaded across the space above the dead city.

The sirens made a mistake. Sang the wrong note, and Sunset’s spell burned through them, tearing the three apart in a burst of energy that returned them to their original forms and cast them down to the street below.

The demon queen watched them for another few moments, then turned back, satisfied.

Sunset landed, hooves landing on the balcony and burning into the rock. She turned to me for a moment with her featureless face, and seven eyes opened up just before the heat and force vanished, the world flashing to black in a soft pulse outwards, a ripple of anti-light.

She was human again, brushing imaginary dust from her sleeves. She stepped away from the burning hoofprints in the rock, unaffected by the heat. I was on my knees. When had I fallen down?

“Thank you for holding that for me,” Sunset said, taking her glass back and taking a sip. “That was fun! I think once they’ve licked their wounds a bit I’ll invite them up. I could use some company.”

“You didn’t kill them?” I asked. My voice was rough. My throat felt dry.

“I don’t have anything personal against them,” Sunset explained. “Mercy is something the strong can afford to offer the weak.” She laughed to herself. “Listen to me! I’m starting to sound like Sunbutt!”

She sighed.

“I miss her,” Sunset said quietly, to herself. She was clearly out of habit of filtering her thoughts.

“Um. Sorry,” I mumbled.

“A wise man once wrote ‘better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.’” Sunset shrugged. “I’ll get you my code key. Is there anything else you need before you leave? I don’t want to be a poor host.”

“No, uh. That’ll be enough,” I said.

“Kicking us out pretty quickly, aren’t you?” Destiny asked. “Got a lot on your schedule?”

Sunset smirked. “It’s for your own good. There are some dangers here I don’t want you tracking into Equestria.”

“The Darkness is already leaking through,” Midnight said.

Sunset hesitated. “I’ll try to pull it back. If it doesn’t work, you can destroy the mirror, but I’d prefer to keep that as a last resort.”

“Why?” Destiny asked. “I thought--”

“Even if I can’t go home again, I’d like to pretend I could someday,” Sunset replied, her voice slightly fragile. “Someday, Equestria will heal, and maybe there’ll be a place for me. I might reign in Hell, but it’s still Hell.”

She turned away from us, coughing.

“Anyway. Let’s get that key and you can be on your way.”

Chapter 91: Iron Green Intent

“How did things go with the debriefing?” Midnight asked. The comms room of the military base was a few degrees warmer than the outside, the humming banks of cloud computers and tangle of solid rainbow wiring acting like a space heater that did math at the same time it was keeping your hooves from freezing off.

I shrugged and loosened the top button of the dress uniform I’d been given. Somehow they’d managed to find one that fit me reasonably well. “Zonda kept his word and didn’t mention anything about Two-Bears. I think they’re going to write off the whole facility as too dangerous for salvage.”

Midnight nodded. She was being quiet, and that was putting me on edge. Was she working her way up to telling me something? Did she kill a pony? Several ponies? Was I going to have to flee and go on the lam again?

“I didn’t kill anypony!” Midnight snapped.

“Shoot, was I thinking out loud again?” I asked.

“No, I just know how ponies think when they’re around one of my kind,” Midnight said. “We got the repaired file and the key transmitted to the Exodus Black and we’re debating what to do next.”

“Go there and see what’s on the file?” I guessed.

“Not much point,” Destiny said, floating in. “It’s a long trip, and a good chance whatever is in the file will necessitate going somewhere else. I know Emerald Gleam wasn’t looking forward to flying a Vertibuck through that storm again.”

“Good point. We almost shook ourselves apart.”

“We started the decryption ourselves on this end,” Midnight said. “But… I don’t really know what to think about it.”

“Why? What was in the file?”

“It looks like partial reports and documentation,” Destiny said. “Take a look.”

She led me over to a terminal.

“Midnight has been kind enough to help me with actually using the buttons,” Destiny said. “I tried casting a cloudwalking spell to do it myself but it turns out that doing that crashes the terminal very badly and gets the entire networking team to yell at you.”

“She wouldn’t even let me eat any of them,” Midnight sighed. “Did I mention I’m a growing girl who needs snacks?”

“Eat a banana or something,” Destiny said dismissively. “They’re full of potassium.”

“Is this where I lewdly suggest that I prefer juicy peaches?” Midnight teased, wiggling her eyebrows.

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you two flirting?”

“Only purely professionally,” Midnight assured me. “I can fit you into my schedule sometime this afternoon.”

Destiny cleared her throat. “Before you get too busy, Chamomile, tell me what you think of this. I want your opinion before I explain what I think it is.”

I nodded and she brought up a series of diagrams on the terminal screen, Midnight tapping the keys for her and moving from slide to slide. Like the other files I’d seen from Kulaas, it wasn’t annotated or in an obvious order, but there was a sense of something there. If I didn't know better I'd think it was a random data dump, like shoving every file related to a project into a single bin and zipping it up. An engineering diagram popped up and I held up a hoof.

“Wait. This is…” I touched the screen, thinking. “I recognize this! That’s an incantation lens. I saw it when you were rebuilding the megaspell in Seaquestria.”

“Exactly,” Destiny said grimly. “But look at the inner circle.”

I moved my hoof, following the rune traces. I wasn’t a magic expert or anything but I could feel stray memories prickling at me from all the experiences I hadn’t had but remembered anyway from ghosts pressed into circuits and crystal in the form of a brain implant and a bunch of memory orbs.

“Zebrican writing,” I said. “But the incantation lens is in Equestrian? Is it some kind of jury-rigged weapon?”

“Worse,” Destiny said. “Skip ahead a few, Midnight.”

A few more slides blurred together, and the logo of the Ministry of Peace appeared on the screen, at the head of a long technical document. Black boxes marred the document, redacting whole paragraphs at a time.

“I think we’re looking at a joint Equestria-Zebrican project,” Destiny said. “Somepony tried to bury the whole thing and Sunset dug it up and buried it again.”

“And now we’re poking at it,” I said.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Midnight said, sitting down. “By the time the Ministries were in place, the war was already on. Why would they keep it going? How would they even do it?”

“If I had to guess, it was in the name of peace,” I said. “Fluttershy didn’t have a lot of faith in Equestria winning the war, did she? She funded the Exodus Green just to have an escape hatch.”

“An escape hatch for everything except ponies,” Destiny reminded me. “She saw the end coming and tried to save the innocent. Maybe she put zebras on that list.”

“So what does it all do?” I asked. “I might be able to tell it’s a megaspell but buck knows I can’t tell what the thing is for.”

“I have no idea,” Destiny admitted. “It’s all very high-level. I think there’s a lot left unsaid. I think it’s some kind of terraforming or environmental effect.”

“That’s what your mom said she was working on, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but… Sunset wouldn’t have cared about that,” Destiny pointed out. “She said most of what she had in the database were weapons to use against Celestia.”

“It could be a political weapon,” Midnight suggested. “The government working with the zebras during wartime? That kind of scandal would be absolutely delicious!”

I nodded. It made sense!

“The good thing is, I know where we can go!” Destiny paused. “Midnight, the slides?”

“Oh, right,” Midnight tapped the keys.

“More. More. Back one. There!” Destiny stopped her on a map showing an island. “This project, whatever it was, was based here. Isla Soleada. It’s in the middle of the ocean, about equidistant from Equestria and the Zebrican state of Farasi.”

I nodded. “Far away enough that you could avoid both governments noticing you.”

“Exactly. And a safe place to, and this is a totally random example, develop and test megaspells in secret.”

“So how do we get there?” I asked.

“No,” Emma said firmly. We’d caught up with her and she somehow managed to look exhausted just from hearing the sparse details and outlines of the plans we’d made. Plans that were apparently impossible.

“But--” I started. Emma held up a hoof to cut me off.

“Even with extra fuel tanks and the armor stripped off, a Vertibuck can’t go nearly that far without refueling. We’d leave the Enclave and ditch in the ocean and still be a thousand miles away. It can’t be done.”

“Ponies had to get there somehow,” I retorted. “It’s not like we’re talking about the moon!”

“Why not just take a ship?” Destiny asked.

“We’ll never get permission to use a cloudship,” Emma said dismissively. “We can’t steal one either, before you start coming up with a bad idea!”

“Not a cloudship, a regular ship,” Destiny specified. She paused. “You know. A ship. On the ocean.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted.

Emma shook her head. “That’s even less possible. It’s not like the navy still exists. Are you going to go down to the surface and buy a first-class ticket from a raider?”

“I know where there’s a working port and ships,” Midnight admitted. She looked less than excited about it.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“Do we have to use a boat?” Midnight whined. “I hate boats!”

“I know what this is,” I said, feeling ahead of the game. “I remember in some of the books on myths and legends, they said vampires can’t cross running water, and an ocean’s tides would count for that!”

“What? No. That’s stupid,” Midnight snorted. “Of course I can cross running water!”

“Then what’s the big deal?”

Midnight bit her lip. “I get really seasick. It’s gross!”

“Get over it,” Destiny advised. “A ship is the only option that might work. They’re simple enough that even if we have to do it ourselves we can figure it out. Keep the water outside and use sails or an engine and point it in the right direction. Easy.”

“You’re so incredibly confident,” Midnight said. “I admire that about you, Destiny.”

“It’s not going to be easy swinging another trip to the surface,” Emma sighed. “You realize most Enclave soldiers, even officers, only go down to the surface once or twice in their entire careers? And they don’t get to choose where they’re assigned!”

“You could always go AWOL,” Midnight suggested.

“I’ve got one charge of that on my record already. No thank you!”

“Maybe we should have Midnight use vampire magic on some officers until we find one who can write up the orders,” I joked.

Midnight’s eyes twinkled and she smiled with the joy of a foal on Hearth’s Warming.

We didn’t talk about it until we were on the surface.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” the Colonel, whose name I hadn’t caught, said breathlessly. Midnight nuzzled into his neck, whispering something to him that was lost in the noise of the Vertibuck’s prop wash. Emma shifted on her hooves uncomfortably. We’d been watching them make out for a solid minute now and the stallion seemed entirely unaware of anything except the vampire.

I pretended not to see how well-fed Midnight was, or how he was looking particularly pale and woozy. They whispered sweet nothings a few more times and broke apart, Midnight waving as the officer got back into the Vertibuck and saluted, the armored machine rising into the air.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Emma said. “You… you…”

“Solved a problem without needing to use violence,” Midnight said smugly, her hips swinging with every step. “I only had to use a little ‘vampire magic.’”

“When I said that I meant hypnotism,” I sighed.

“Really? Because my flank is way more magical!” She winked and bumped into me. “Don’t be jealous, you two. We’ll have plenty of time on the boat.”

“We have to find a boat first,” I reminded her.

“The Colonel was helpful with that,” Midnight said. “I don’t know if you were looking out the window or if you were too busy watching me, but this port city is still alive. There are boats still moving in the harbor!”

“We don’t need a boat,” Destiny said. “We need a ship.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“A ship has three masts with square sails,” Midnight explained.

“That’s-- I don’t actually know, that might be technically correct,” Destiny admitted. “But the difference I was thinking about is one in terms of size and range. A boat stays close to shore. We need to go far out to sea, and that requires a ship.”

“I’m kind of excited,” I said. “Do you think we’ll have to fight pirates? Or maybe we’ll be pirates! I could wear an eyepatch!”

“Whatever we’re going to do, let’s do it inside,” Midnight suggested, squinting up at the sky for a moment before looking away. “It’s not too bad since I just ate, but the sun is not my friend and it feels like I’m being attacked by a swarm of bees.”

“I forgot about that,” I said. “Sorry.”

Midnight waved off my apology and we walked into the port city. It boasted a high wall made with a framework of old wood turned grey and cracked from long exposure to salty air, with a facade of rusting metal plates facing out into the waste. A gate was pulled open, a guillotine door ready to slam down on the opening and cut the city off from raiders or monsters, and ponies were passing through in an almost single-file line under the watchful eye of what had to be local guards.

“I am not waiting in line,” Midnight declared, with the annoyed tone that only comes when somepony is in enough pain that they’re ready to inflict it on somepony else.

I looked at her and spread my wings, nodding to the wall. Midnight nodded.

“No!” Emma snapped. “Chamomile, we came here to get a boat, not to annoy the locals! What’s your plan, start stomping ponies when they shoot at you for not following procedure?”

“Maybe,” I mumbled.

We were starting to get attention from the ponies in line. They mostly looked like farmers and traders, the kind of ponies who are uncomfortable with heavily armed and armored ponies. Whispers passed up and down the line, and before they’d even gotten all the way to the front, one of the armed ponies ushering the farmers in trotted over to us.

“I hope y’all ain’t plannin’ on trouble,” she drawled. She adjusted her hat. Something about her reminded me of the pony we’d seen last time in Alpha’s simulation, the orange cowpony obsessed with saving the planet. This one was more of a muted brown than an orange, and carrying a lever-action rifle.

“We would never cause trouble,” Destiny offered. It was one of the biggest lies ever told and the cowpony seemed to know that.

“We’re just here to hire a boat,” Emma specified. “We apologize if we’ve done something wrong.”

“A boat, huh?” the cowpony sighed. “Y’all with them Steel Rangers?” She motioned over her shoulder, and when I looked, I felt my coat stand on end. There were a half-dozen ponies in heavy power armor, and they’d noticed us before we’d noticed them. They stomped up to us, hydraulic pistons hissing.

My knife snapped out. I had to hold myself back. Had to remind myself that these weren’t undead draped in armor and carrying cursed swords, they were regular ponies who I hadn’t even met yet. There was no reason to fight until I’d done something stupid enough to warrant it.

“Woah!” the cowpony stepped between us. “Maybe y’all aren’t together after all.”

“Sheriff Mango, these are extraordinarily dangerous ponies,” the lead Steel Ranger said. Her armor was slightly more ornate than the others, with gold details and yellow lines painted on the shoulderpads. “Please let us deal with this.”

“Are we going to fight to the death?” Midnight sighed. “I’m feeling sick! Can’t we skip it?”

It was probably worth at least trying. I put the blade away and stepped closer to the Ranger. “Chamomile,” I said, offering a hoof to shake. “You’re the first living Steel Ranger I’ve met.”

I could feel her bristle, her emotions blaring out of her like a color only visible in my mind’s eye. She didn’t shake my hoof.

“And what,” the Ranger asked coldly. “Do you mean by that?”

“I’ve fought a bunch of undead Rangers reanimated by zebra necromancers,” I explained. “They were pretty tough but not very talkative.”

“There’s no such thing as zebra necromancers,” the Ranger said dismissively.

“Clearly my life is more exciting than yours,” I said.

“That’s rich coming from the Enclave,” the Ranger growled. “Did you get bored sitting up above the clouds and decided to come down here to loot technology you aren’t even halfway equipped to understand?”

“Right, that’s it!” Sheriff Mango said firmly. “Y’all ain’t gonna fight on my watch.” She pulled the rifle from the holster at her side, spinning it by the lever with her teeth and cocking it in a practiced motion. “If I have to arrest y’all and put you in the cells, I will.”

I shared a look with the Steel Ranger. Both of us understood what Mango was really implying. If we started fighting, no matter who won we’d end up flattening the city in the process. I glanced over at the line of farmers and traveling traders.

“Understood, Sheriff,” I gave her a salute.

“Good,” Mango nodded. “Both of y’all shake hooves and agree to play nice. I don’t like it when grown up ponies act like foals so don’t make me keep treating y’all like ‘em.”

“Paladin Alloy,” the Ranger reluctantly offered. We shook hooves. She squeezed my hoof. I squeezed back harder.

“This is awkward,” I said.

Paladin Alloy and I were in the bar. Both of us had left our weapons and armor with our friends. Or at least subordinates, in her case. I was halfway sure she might make an attempt to steal my stuff, but they’d have to get through the grumpy vampire napping on top of it first.

“My current objective isn’t to get into a firefight with the Enclave,” Alloy said, very frankly. She had a lot of muscle, but had the personality of a military training manual. Her coat was a swirl of grey colors, somewhere between a zebra’s stripes and damascus steel, and her mane was golden, pulled into tight braids.

“Great, because I didn’t even know you were here,” I said. “Also I really shouldn’t be the one doing this. Emma outranks me. But she also didn’t trust me to negotiate passage on a boat.”

Alloy grunted and took a controlled sip of water, looking at the mug and clearly annoyed with the taste of it. “Not even clean drinking water. Savages.”

“So are you here for a boat, too?” I asked.

“No,” the Paladin said. “We’re trying to find a local Stable. I can’t say more than that.”

“Okay, then.” I shrugged. “You and I aren’t after the same thing. No reason for us to fight over nothing. That’s good news!”

“Indeed,” Alloy stated. “And what is the purpose of your expedition?”

“I told you. We’re hiring a boat.”

“So you found something in the ocean.” Alloy poked at the food she’d been given. I’d already eaten mine. She seemed unsure of eating something that had come out of a pot instead of a ration pack.

“I hope so.” I shrugged. “With any luck it isn’t a wild goose chase.”

“Fortunately for you, I don’t have latitude in my orders to change objectives.”

“You mean you can’t twist my hoof and try to steal whatever we’re after,” I corrected. She grunted and looked at the hoof in question.

“I’d rather know where you found cybernetics like that.”

“Grew it myself,” I said.

The Ranger rolled her eyes dismissively. “Being careless with technology is why Equestria fell. Ponies built miracles and didn’t respect them.”

I weighed that, thinking. “Yeah, maybe you’re right about that. I was gonna blame politics, but if ponies really respected what megaspells could do, they never would have actually used them.”

Paladin Alloy nodded solemnly. “You’re not as flighty as I expected.”

“The last few years of my life have been defined by trying to put a technological genie back in the bottle,” I said. “I totally get the need to lock some dangerous stuff up.”

“Eventually ponies will be ready,” Alloy agreed. “We need to become wiser, first.”

“I’ll drink to that.” I raised my glass, and before it even touched my lips, I heard the rattle of gunfire in the middle distance. I stood up and glared at the door. “What is it now?”

Alloy’s ear twitched. “Not one of my Knights. I don’t recognize the weapon.”

“Think we can cooperate well enough for a joint operation?” I asked.

“I’m in charge,” Paladin Alloy said. It wasn’t a demand, it was a statement made by somepony who wouldn’t even be able to conceive of an alternative. I nodded, very comfortable with the idea of another pony taking command.

We walked out into a street full of ponies fleeing danger. It took me a second to realize what was wrong. Instinct told me that danger would come from outside the heavily guarded wall, but ponies were fleeing in the wrong direction.

“They’re running from the port,” Alloy said.

“Does that mean…?” I gasped, my heart fluttering like a transmission lurching into higher gear. I took off, flying up above roof height and looking down towards the ocean.

I spotted it, exactly what I’d hoped for. A ship with a hull made of iron patches like a sea serpent’s scales, the bow spiked and studded into a ramming prow, flying the black flag.

“Pirates!” I squeaked, excited. I giggled to myself.

“I can’t believe pirates would attack just as the Enclave shows up,” Alloy said suspiciously. “It’s an amazing coincidence.”

“Or just as soon as the Steel Rangers get to town,” I pointed out.

“You have a point,” she admitted. “There’s no time to argue. We’ll need to secure our equipment and then repel the invaders.”

“There’s no time to get our dancing shoes on,” I retorted. “Ponies are getting hurt. Are Steel Rangers only special because they’ve got power armor?”

“We use the armor because it’s the best equipment, not because we rely on it as a crutch,” the Paladin agreed, after a moment of contemplation. “You’re on overwatch. Maintain altitude and alert me when you see hostiles.”

I saluted, and Paladin Alloy ran against the tide, moving faster than I would have expected from a pony built like she was carved out of granite. I flew just behind her and at roof height, watching around corners as she approached.

“On your left!” I called out.

Alloy ducked low and turned left before even looking, charging at the dim shape I’d spotted. She bowled over the skinny, salt-crusted pony that had been aiming a rusty gun at her, knocking the gun into the wall and shattering the receiver before knocking him out.

I landed on top of the second pirate that she hadn’t gotten to yet. I only realized I hadn’t been gentle enough with him when I heard the crunch.

“Oh buck-- sorry! The last time I was in a fight, it was a giant undead monster!” I apologized, trying to get the pirate back on his hooves. His head hung limply, dangling at an angle. I winced and let go, the body falling back to the ground.

“Watch out!” Alloy warned.

I felt the danger before she even warned me. I even had time to duck to the side if I wanted, but I was standing right between her and a pirate holding a gun cobbled together from pipes and scraps of a picket fence. If I moved, Alloy would get hit. All I could do was brace myself.

The pirate fired, and the bullet slammed into my skull with all the force of a wet fart and a hot stinging sensation like an angry wasp.

“Ow!” I yelped.

Alloy jumped right over me with a display of agility I didn’t think an earth pony could manage and kicked the pirate into a wall, knocking the breath out of him. She swung the improvised rifle like a bat and cracked his jaw with it, sending him to the ground, then turned back to me, alarmed.

“Don’t move,” she said. “You’ve been shot. It’s a head wound, so--”

I waved her off. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve been shot,” she repeated. “You’re a pegasus. I’ve studied medical dossiers, pegasus ponies are prone to extreme shock when they undergo traumatic injury. You’re also all bleeders.”

I poked at the stinging spot on my forehead, a bit above my right eye. After a moment, the flattened lead bullet popped out, falling on the ground like a loose coin. Alloy looked at it, then moved my mane aside with her hoof to look.

“It didn’t penetrate?” she asked. “The bleeding is already stopping.”

“I’ve developed an immunity to being shot,” I joked. “Wait, I made that joke before.”

“You have cybernetics,” Alloy stated. “More than the obvious.”

“Are you going to try and lock me up to protect me?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Alloy said. I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “We need to find a way to alert the rest of my squad.”

“Will they run towards gunfire?” I asked.

“Of course they will. These civilians are like foals. They can’t be trusted with anything dangerous, but we have a responsibility to protect them from themselves and others.”

“So they’re either alerted or deaf. Let’s go have some fun!”

“Yarrrr!” I yelled, smacking my cutlass against the pirate captain’s. I hadn’t caught his name. It was probably something like Berrybeard for his bright pink bristles. He looked supremely frustrated, my blow knocking him a step back.

“Stop saying that!” he demanded. “Ain’t nopony talks like that!”

He came at me with his sword clenched tightly between his teeth. I swiped it away playfully, letting the pirate go past me. He smashed his head into a mast and his hat almost fell, slipping far enough to reveal a bald spot.

“Yaaaar!” I said, trying not to laugh. “Avast, me matey! Yer mane shanghaied its way onto your gob!”

“What the buck does that mean, you crazy broad?!” he demanded.

“Come on,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You could at least play along. I thought you were a pirate!”

“Chamomile, stop messing around and just beat him!” Emma yelled. She fired above the heads of the watching crew, who were getting awfully restless for ponies armed with nothing better than sharp sticks and guns more likely to explode than work properly. Even with a bunch of armored ponies ready to mow them down, they seemed likely to take a chance and charge en masse.

“I’m trying to break his spirit by establishing dominance,” I explained. He came at me while my back was turned. I kicked his legs out from under him without looking.

Paladin Alloy glared at me over her shoulder. She was good at glaring. “As commander of the joint operation, I order you to hurry this along!”

“Ugh, fine,” I sighed. I let the pirate captain come at me again and dropped the cutlass before he got to me. It was about as sharp as a butterknife and half as useful. I unsheathed my own knife and cut through the thin blade he was holding in one smooth motion that also shaved off the right side of his beard.

He dropped the broken sword and touched his face.

“How the buck did you--” he mumbled.

“I was aiming for your neck and missed a little,” I told him.

The captain took off his hat and threw it at me, then ran the other way and dove overboard. “You win this time! But you haven’t seen the last of me!”

Paladin Alloy walked over to the side of the ship. “Knight Yuzu!” she snapped, holding out a hoof. “Plasma grenade.”

The Knight wordlessly gave her the apple-shaped explosive. Alloy pulled the pin with her teeth, waited two seconds, then tossed the grenade overboard. There was a short scream cut off by a sharp crackle and pop.

“We’ve seen the last of him,” Alloy declared. “I hate loose ends.”

The crowd of pirates quieted down, the near-riot turning into whispers and worried discussions. They hissed quietly amongst each other. Glances and pointed hooves motioned over to the side where the captain had vanished. Weapons dropped to the deck one by one, and the tension dissipated.

“Aw…” I sighed. “I was hoping he’d come back later for dramatic, overwrought revenge.”

Alloy picked up the fallen hat and put it on my head firmly.

“Warrant Officer Chamomile, you are one of the worst soldiers I have ever met, and I am glad I am not your superior officer. I do not believe myself to be up to the task of disciplining you until you shape up.”

“Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. You are not my problem. You are Miss Emerald Gleam’s problem. I have spoken less than a dozen words to her since we met, and I can tell you will drive her into a nervous breakdown.”

“She will,” Emma confirmed.

One of the pirates raised their hoof. “Er, Captain?”

We all looked around, then I pointed at myself. “Me?”

“You’ve got the big hat,” he reminded me. “Also we’d like to not be executed and we’ve decided to do the honorable thing and beg for mercy.”

“We do need a ship,” I conceded. “Can this thing handle an ocean voyage?”

“Chamomile, this is a crew full of killers and criminals,” Emma groaned. “They’ll kill you in your sleep.” She paused. “They’d try to kill you in your sleep. Then you’d find some way to make the entire ship catch on fire and explode and strand us in the middle of the ocean.”

“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.

“Yes! I was already hiring us a boat! A trustworthy boat without a crew of literal pirates! That’s my better idea!”

“Then what are we going to do with all these pirates?” I asked, finding a fatal flaw in her idea.

I watched the pirates being taken off the ship in chains.

“Oh. That.” I said.

“And we’re getting paid for it,” Emma said. “The bounties on these pirates, even split with the Steel Rangers, is more than enough to pay for our supplies and hiring the ship and crew. That’s why my plan is better.”

“Can I at least keep the captain’s hat?” I asked.

“You may,” Emma said magnanimously.

“Chamomile, I’m here!” Destiny yelled, floating down through the sky, telekinetically propelling herself as fast as she could. I caught her like a thrown cloudball. “What did I miss? It took me a while to get out here. Midnight’s an incredibly deep sleeper. I tried to get the armor but she grabbed me and went back to bed.”

“We fought pirates,” I said.

“Did you get shot in the head again?” Destiny asked, looking up at my forehead.

“A little.”

“That’s why you need a helmet.”

“It’s your fault I didn’t have one,” I reminded her.

“They’ll likely execute most of them,” Paladin Alloy said. She’d found time to put her armor back on, and looked far more authoritative with it on. She stomped up to us. The Ranger didn’t seem mad or anything, it was just how she walked. “Most likely, the ones who cooperate and make an effort to turn over a new leaf will be the ones to survive.”

“A little mean to say that where they can hear you,” Destiny said.

“They’re pirates. I’m not going to make an effort to be nice.” Alloy glared at the line of pirates leaving the ship under the watchful gaze of the local sheriff and the help of a few Rangers. “I assume you’re still planning on searching for something out in the middle of the ocean.”

“Yep,” I said. “Is this where you reveal you want to come along?”

“Absolutely not,” Alloy stated. “We have a mission already. It takes priority over whatever you’re doing. That said, I will file a report on this. Whatever you’re looking for, a team of Rangers will follow up on it when we have the bandwidth.”

“Thanks for the head-start,” Emma said.

“You’re welcome,” Alloy said. “Our organizations have not typically had positive interactions. It’s not my prerogative to change that. Whatever you’re after, be smart about it. If it’s dangerous, it’s better to leave it buried and let my ponies take care of it.”

I tilted my head. “Wouldn’t it be better to destroy it if it’s dangerous?”

“Don’t be silly. A chainsaw is dangerous, and you wouldn’t let a foal play with it, but it’s still a useful tool.” She looked back at her Knights. “Also, on a personal level, I would not mind if you found a way to send me a message. Here is an address you may post mail to.”

She gave me a piece of paper and walked away.

I blinked a few times.

“Did she just ask me out?” I whispered.

“Steel Rangers spend their lives in tiny underground bunkers seeing the same few ponies every day,” Emma said. “I guess she’s got low standards.”

“No, that’s not it,” Destiny said. “She’s just like Chamomile.”

“What do you-- oh!” Emma blinked. “She likes mares that could murder her!”

I rolled my eyes, but I put the address somewhere safe. Just in case.

Chapter 92: Before Concession

“I think something’s wrong with me,” Midnight groaned, half-hanging over the side of the ship. She managed to look even more pale than usual. “I threw up blood!”

Emma, Destiny, and I all sighed. It had been quiet all day, and Midnight had come up on deck the second the sun started setting just so she could be dramatic and needy.

“You’re a vampire!” Destiny blurted out, sounding even more annoyed than I felt. “Of course you threw up blood! What else would you throw up?!”

“It’s a serious medical condition,” Midnight whined. “What if I die? Well, not die, but, you know. Stop moving permanently.”

“At least you’d stop complaining,” Emma said under her breath.

“You told us yourself it’s not a weird vampire curse thing,” I said. “I distinctly remember you saying ocean travel was fine.”

“She's just seasick,” Emma sighed.

“We should have brought a coffin.” I folded my hooves. “We could have locked her inside for the trip.”

“Don’t make fun of me.” Midnight collapsed onto her side in a very conspicuously artistic way, raising a hoof to her forehead like she might faint. “I’m so weak. I can’t even feel my own pulse!”

“You’re a vampire! You don’t have a pulse!” Destiny snapped.

“Please, my health is a serious concern,” Midnight said, her eyes full of alligator tears. “Maybe I’d feel better if I had some fresh blood instead of drinking those awful blood bags you bought at the port…”

“No,” Emma stated. She was the sole pony on the ship Midnight could even potentially feed from. The ship had exactly one crew member, an old sailor named Salty Dog who’d been running the ship for longer than he could remember. The rest of us had been press-ganged into doing the odd jobs around the boat as part of our fare. Even Destiny had kept busy fixing up the old steam engine that powered the Waverider.

Midnight groaned loudly, pouting and laying flat on her back on the deck. “I hate this trip!”

“How can she be almost two thousand years old and still act like a child?” Emma mumbled.

Midnight sniffled, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “It’s because I stayed young at heart and didn’t let this cruel world twist me into an old salty hag.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed.

“No offense,” Midnight added.

“I’m going to shoot her,” Emma said. “I’m getting my gun!”

“Land-ho!” interrupted the captain. The ship’s foghorn bellowed three short bursts. Salty Dog kicked open the bridge hatch and trotted out on deck on three legs and one jagged piece of rebar and angle iron welded together into a rusty peg leg.

He pointed with the peg, and I could just see it on the horizon, the dim light of sunset washing out the details and leaving just a black shape like a lump of coal against the firey sky.

“It’s not far off now,” he said. “I don’t know about reefs in the area, though. Could be dangerous at night.”

“If you get us a little closer we can fly the rest of the way,” I suggested. “We probably need to land at night anyway or else Midnight will be dead weight.”

“Undead weight,” the vampire corrected.

Salty Dog nodded. “I can do that.”

“Reefs might not be the worst danger,” Destiny cautioned. “It’s possible the approach could be mined. Both sides had reason to come here, so both sides had reason to set traps.”

“Is it safe to even fly there?” I asked.

“That’s an excellent question!” Destiny said cheerfully. I waited for a follow-up. One did not appear.

“Chamomile,” Emma said, putting a hoof on my shoulder. “If I survive this you are never allowed to plan a mission ever again.”

“That’s fair,” I agreed.

“So who’s up for finding out if they have anti-air defenses?” Midnight asked cheerfully.

Saltwater drained out of the seams of my armor as I stomped towards the shore. I’d gotten a great look at Isla Soleada, briefly. It was a tropical island, a maze of volcanic valleys and jungle with buildings peeking through the foliage. I hadn’t been able to get more than a few impressions before the flak finally found me and knocked me out of the sky.

“You’re better at swimming than I thought,” Destiny said. She’d done a good job keeping me calm after I’d hit the water. Having a voice literally in my ear had let me avoid a panic attack when the water rushed into the armor through the brand-new holes.

“It’d be easier if I’d learned it some other way.” I rubbed my back legs together for a second. “I keep thinking I’m missing fins that I never had to begin with.”

“Any serious injuries?” Emma asked. She offered me a hoof up onto the concrete pier. I grunted and let her give me a boost out of the ocean.

“I’m fine,” I sighed. I picked a piece of shrapnel out of my chest, tossing it aside. “It only winged me.”

I spread one wing. Half of my primaries were gone. I wasn’t going to be flying anywhere for a while. Even with her helmet on, I saw Emma wince.

“They’ll grow back, but plucking the broken ones isn’t gonna be fun,” I sighed.

“I’m starting to think somepony doesn’t want us here,” Midnight said. She was lounging on the pier, looking unruffled in her ornate magical armor.

“Thank you for the stunning observation,” Emma growled.

“We should get to cover,” Destiny suggested. She opened a menu in my vision, the helmet’s augmented vision software kicking in and outlining the shapes of some half-collapsed warehouses and shacks along the docks. “We don’t want to be out here if somepony comes to see what they shot down.”

“Let me give you a healing potion,” Emma said.

I shook my head and walked past a collapsed crane gantry. There were a few shipping containers, already open and empty. “Save them. We don’t know when we can get more.”

“If you’re sure,” Emma said, following me into the shadow of an old warehouse, and I stopped at what we found there.

“A campsite?” I asked. A circle of sleeping bags was set around an improvised fire pit made of concrete blocks.

“We’re not the first ones to come here,” Midnight said. She picked up one of the bedrolls and sniffed it. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m not a dog. I can’t tell how old this stuff is by smelling it.”

“I found something,” Emma said. She held up a set of old saddlebags. The patch sewn on the side of the faded burlap had the old Equestrian flag, picked out in dull earth tones. “Special forces. They must have come here during the war.”

“That’s a bad sign,” Destiny noted. “If there was a battle here, what we’re looking for might have been moved or destroyed.”

“Ugh,” Midnight groaned. “I really don’t want another wild goose chase. It took long enough to track down the parts for the Exodus Black’s power system. I really, really don’t want to spend the next century trying to find out where some idiots buried their treasure.”

“Oh no, I assure you, there aren’t any goose here,” said a voice from the shadows. I kept DRACO trained at the darkness while a thin figure stepped out into the light coming through the broken ceiling tiles.

He had been thin and tall in life, and had gotten only thinner afterwards. The figure was nearly a pony, but had two horns on its head, one like a unicorn’s and the other further down its snout. The leather-like skin looked like clotted honey, and remnants of a faded mane hung down around its face.

“I’m so sorry if I scared you,” he said. His voice was unsteady and shaking. The creature sounded like a friendly, slightly slow grandfather, and despite being a lanky undead horror there was more of a sense of deep sadness than fear around him. “I was picking through the old supplies looking for a spot of tea and heard you walk in.”

“You’re… an abada?” I guessed, trying to remember.

He smiled kindly. “That’s right, young lady! Even when we were friends, most ponies didn’t recognize us.”

“I saw pictures in a book once,” I said. “The Abada lived with the Zebras but they were almost all conscientious objectors to the war.”

He nodded. “Quite true. I’ve never been much of a fighter myself, and my knees were going bad long before the war.” He sat down with a soft grunt. “Maybe we’ll all feel a bit better if we introduce ourselves, hm? I’ll go first. I’m Professor Heirloom Tomato, formerly of the University of Farasi.”

“Chamomile Zinger,” I said, offering a hoof to shake. His thin hoof felt fragile enough that it might snap like a twig if I squeezed too hard. “I, uh, don’t have any credentials. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. Truth be told, mine were rather overblown even a few centuries ago.” He winked.

“Midnight Shadow Sun, the Death of Obsidian Butterflies, daughter of the Lady of Dark Tides Who Dresses in Sorrowful Shawls, second-in-command of the Exodus Black, and all-time high score holder in Ms. Pac-Mare.” Midnight raised her snout haughtily.

“Ms. Pac-Mare?” Emma raised an eyebrow.

Midnight nodded proudly. “It was a lot harder than the original! They fixed the code so you couldn’t hide in safe spots.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Emerald Gleam. I’m with the Enclave.”

“I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds very official!” Heirloom smiled. “I thought I heard one more of you, but…”

“Here,” Destiny said. She floated off my head. I shook out my mane. I was going to have to cut it soon. It was really getting longer than I liked. “I’m Destiny Bray. We’re here looking for something.”

“Ah well! You’re in luck!” Heirloom Tomato stood up, his joints popping. “I happen to be an excellent guide!” After a moment, his expression fell. “Oh, wait, no. I nearly forgot. I apologize. It’s my age and condition, you see. Sometimes details just slip away. Isla Soleada is on total lockdown. I’ve been stuck out here for… I’m not sure how long it’s been. Long enough that I can’t remember the last time I had a nice warm cup of tea.”

“Maybe we can do something about the lockdown,” Emma said. “Then you can show us, ah, whatever you were working on here.”

“That is an excellent idea!” Heirloom agreed. “I’m a bit hopeless with technical things, I’m more of an idea person than an engineer, you know! Tried for ages to get the security field down, but no such luck I’m afraid.”

“You’ve got some luck now,” Destiny said. “I happen to be a genius. I’ll have the security down before you even know it.”

“How’s it going?” I asked an hour later. We’d walked up from the beach along an access road. Heirloom Tomato assured us several times that there were no dangers on the island, and after we killed an entire nest of giant mutant crabs that statement actually became true and the abada ghoul became extremely apologetic.

“You remember how I said this was going to be easy?” Destiny said quietly. She was working on an open panel full of wiring. The security field, as it turned out, was a set of pylons projecting a force-field that went up high enough that we’d trigger the anti-air defenses before we got over it.

Going around was an even more difficult prospect. Sheer rock walls surrounded us on both sides, with the security gate at a choke point in the narrow canyon.

I nodded. Destiny was too busy poking at wires to see it, but both of us felt the silence drawing a little long.

“I might not be as good at this as I thought,” Destiny continued. “The security scanner is here outside the field, but it’s just an RFID sensor and some very long wires. They put all the guts of the machine inside the field itself!”

“That seems pretty smart.”

“It is really smart!” Destiny slammed the panel shut. “We need to figure out something else. Something that won’t make me seem stupid, if possible.”

“I can’t cut through it,” I said. “If we had Rockhoof here he could dig around it, but…”

I walked over to the shimmering shield across the valley and pressed my hoof against it. It wasn’t exactly the same as a solid wall. There was some weird give and tension to it that made me think of a really thick bubble.

“We did break through a forcefield a while back,” I said. “Remember when we went to that bombed-out mall with Cube?”

“There was that weird alicorn,” Destiny replied.

“Yeah. And we used the magical field the Exodus Armor used to get through.” I rapped my hoof against the field, feeling it bounce back. “Think we can do it again?”

“I don’t have a better idea yet,” Destiny admitted. She floated over and I helped pull her into place on my head. The usual heads-up display appeared, and then a few extra windows joined it.

“What are these?” I asked.

“We’ll need to keep careful track of the drain on your fusion core and the structural integrity field.” Destiny explained. “We’re just going to test this. We can’t bring the others through this way but maybe we can get to the control box.”

“Sounds good.” I pressed my right hoof against the shield. “Give me all the power we’ve got.”

I could feel the magical field around me. When it ramped up to full power, it was like being swaddled in a blanket, comfortable but a little tight and slightly itchy. The aura around my hoof glowed to life the same way steel did in a furnace. A dull red glow building up and then blazing to incandescent gold.

The force field started to ripple. I pushed my hoof forward. The webbing of the spell, filaments of force and sorcery, tangled and started tearing apart against the interference. My hoof slipped forwards.

“I think it’s working!” I pressed harder, getting up to my elbow, and then something started to go wrong.

“The fusion core drain is going up fast,” Destiny said. “This might not--”

I yelped before she finished saying whatever she was going to say. Warning alarms popped up all over my vision, red letters and warning signs about field collapse. It felt like my hoof was stuck in a vice. I tried to yank myself back but my fetlock was held firmly, the force field crushing down on it.

“Destiny!” I yelled.

“Hold on, I’m trying to-- shoot, the energy circuits are starting to fracture!”

It wasn’t the only thing. I could see the tiny blue hexagons of the armor plating coming apart at the seams, the force field starting to press inside the way water flooded a sinking ship.

“This is really starting to hurt!” I grunted. I could feel the force vibrating my bones, trying to tear me apart. If my right hoof had been flesh and blood it would have crunched like a tin can full of tomatoes by now.

“Hold on!” A warning alarm popped up, and a surge of power shot up my hoof, blasting the force field away for a fraction of a second, just long enough that my attempts to pull myself free finally found success. I fell back, slamming my spine into rocky volcanic dirt. I held my hoof tight against my chest, just trying to catch my breath.

“We’re not trying that again,” I said.

“No,” Destiny concurred. “If you’d been much further inside before it failed, that would have cut you in half.”

“Any chance we can try doing this by working smarter instead of harder?”

“We don’t exactly have a lot of tools. We’ve got a rifle, a speargun, a mass driver that fires garbage, a liquid nitrogen sprayer, and the Dimension Pliers.”

“I doubt freezing the force field will do much,” I sighed. “And you forgot that really cool gun I picked up that’s made out of like four other guns!”

“I didn’t forget it, no matter how hard I try. No. The only thing we have that might even start to work… well, it’s a long shot. It might not do anything.”

“Will it get me crushed?” I asked.

“If it does, something has really gone wrong.”

“Good enough.” I stood up. “So what are we doing?”

“Hold out your hoof.” Destiny said. I did, and a familiar boxy piece of technology appeared. “I almost forgot we even had this thing!”

“The Telebuck,” I groaned. I’d forgotten about it too. The prototype personal teleportation

“These are ideal conditions to use it! We’re not under time pressure, there are no weird space distortions, and we’ve only got to go from here to the other side of the force field. I’m absolutely sure it’ll work.”

“Should we get the others--”

“Nah, it’s fine. We’ll just pop over there, then we can use the control panel on the inside to bring the field down, and I’ll still look like a genius.” Destiny adjusted the controls on the Telebuck, flipping DIP switches and twisting knobs. “Here we go!”

“Wait, I should--”

The world twisted around me, and I was suddenly somewhere else. For a moment, so short it might have been a hallucination, I thought I saw myself standing on the other side of the force field, staring at myself, in two places at once. I didn’t have time to think about it and immediately started retching.

“No, no!” Destiny yelped, popping off my head without a moment to spare. I half-collapsed and vomited all over the sandy soil, narrowly avoiding getting it inside Destiny.

“That was even worse than having my sister teleport me,” I gasped.

“Half-sister,” Destiny corrected. She floated over to the now-exposed control panel and opened it up, finding circuit boards and capacitors.

“I’m going to promote her to full sister if it means I don’t have to use the Telebuck again,” I groaned.

“I don’t know if family works that way,” Destiny said. She worked for a few seconds, and the force field shimmered and came down. “Hah! I still got it. Let’s get the others and see what’s so important here.”

“Oh yes, it was a wonderful place to work,” Heirloom Tomato said. “Before things went poorly, I mean. The worse things got outside of here, the more problems leaked in. All the ponies I worked with were wonderful creatures. Most of them were rather brilliant, and the rest made up for it by putting in a tremendous amount of work. It was enough to make me almost ashamed of my rather modest contributions.”

“What did you work on?” Emma asked, walking alongside the abada as we made our way through the canyon. We had to keep our pace sort of slow to accommodate him.

The canyon itself was wide enough that it was clear the access road we were following was designed for construction equipment. Wild plants and flowers grew in patches around the trampled path, a chaotic mix of common weeds, exotic flowers, and a lot of plants I’d simply never seen before.

I stopped to smell a flower with red and yellow spots. It smelled like freshly ground black pepper. I sneezed loudly.

“It’s going to sound silly, but I was actually researching new plant cultivars. I’d always been interested in rediscovering old and rare plants and finding ways to effectively farm them, but my real passion was in making something new! We even developed a rather interesting and potentially unique way to do so! Developed it myself, with a lot of help from some rather brilliant engineers. Spared no expense.”

“Plants don’t sound very useful,” Midnight said to herself. “Why would Kulaas send us here?”

“Plants also don’t get anti-air defenses and the tightest security I’ve seen anywhere,” Destiny retorted. “Kulaas was built to be smarter than any pony. It must know something about the projects here that we don’t.”

“That’s a good point,” Emma said, looking back over her shoulder at us. “Not the part with your computer, but this security is beyond top-tier and still running.”

“Yes, it all got tripped when…” Heirloom stopped, scrunching his eyebrows and thinking. “There was a reason. It was something important. It’s so hard to remember anything from those days, it all blurs together and I was so thirsty when I woke up…”

“Take it slow,” I said. I put a hoof on his back. “You know, I’ve actually died a few times myself. It’s really rough.”

“Oh my, yes. If I had something to jog my memory…”

There was a sharp crack, and a bullet whistled past my head, sparking against the rock. A second shot bounced off of one of Destiny’s shields. It looked more solid than usual, just like she did.

“Who’s shooting at us?” I asked, aiming my weapons in the general direction of forward, but with the tall walls of the canyon, it was impossible to tell where the sounds actually came from. DRACO beeped, and I looked at the small screen. “I forgot how much I love having you around, buddy,” I told the gun. It had triangulated them with its own parabolic microphone.

I took the shot where DRACO suggested, letting the smart gun guide the bullet. A patch of the canyon wall halfway up the rocks shifted and fell, tumbling down the slope and rolling to a stop. Even then, the outline was hard to see. It was wearing a cloak that shifted to match the terrain around it, colors changing like a chameleon.

Midnight walked up to it and pulled the cloak away to reveal a corpse, almost as dried out as Heirloom Tomato. It was a zebra ghoul, wearing the remnants of some kind of tactical gear.

“Oh right,” Heirloom said quietly. “The assassins.”

“Are you working with them?” Destiny accused. “You had something to do with this!”

A war cry echoed down the canyon. More zebra rose out of the low plants where they’d been hiding and ran for us, holding long, jagged blades. A few had guns and took shots with the rusty weapons.

A bullet hit Heirloom in the shoulder and sent him to the ground. More bounced off of Destiny’s shield.

“I’m afraid they’re here for me,” Heirloom Tomato said. “And I do mean afraid. I’m quite sure they’re the ones who killed me the first time around!” He started shivering. “I tried to get away but they called me a traitor when I wouldn’t fight!”

“This was easier when I just assumed all the zebra were evil,” Destiny sighed.

Midnight turned into a blur, cutting through the first few assassins.

“Emma, keep them off our guide!” I yelled back. I didn’t wait for her to respond. I knew she was better at that than I was. If I wanted to help, I’d be better off doing it by being too loud and annoying to ignore. “Flares!” I called out.

DRACO beeped and launched a barrage of flares, the red and green stars trailing clouds of smoke. I barreled past the first line of zebras with knives and went for the shooters. They’d already stopped, their aim spoiled until they saw me and opened up fire again at point blank range. One shot grazed my shoulder, most of it going wide.

I trampled one, getting on top and stomping down until it stopped moving. A second turned to fire, and I reacted on reflex, pulling the first trigger my mouth found. The Dimension Pliers hummed, and space distorted around the zebra, every molecule vibrating in place. It moved like it was caught in a windstorm, raised the rifle-- and something went terribly wrong inside the gun. The rifle exploded and the chamber turned into shrapnel that tore apart the zebra ghoul’s hoof.

I threw my blade at it to finish it off, the knife flipping end-over-end and slicing through its neck before boomeranging back to me on its magnetic tether.

“Neat trick,” Midnight said. “You’re just full of surprises.”

“The good thing about being basically unkillable is you get to learn all sorts of ways to be deadly at people,” I said.

“Darn right!” Midnight winked and bumped her flank against mine. “Did we get all of them? It’s hard for me to spot them when they’re cold and dead to start with.”

“I think so--” I said, immediately before laser light pierced the clouds of smoke. “But I wouldn’t put money on it!”

I ran back towards Emma and Destiny, and found Emma standing over the body of a zebra ghoul. She was panting and holding her foreleg against her chest. There was a cut through the elbow joint.

“I’m okay,” she assured me. “He barely nicked me through the armor. It’s not even enough for a healing potion. I’ll walk it off.”

I relaxed and let out a breath.

“I think that might be premature,” Destiny said. She levitated one of the jagged blades up to inspect it. Grooves covered the surface, and there was a disgusting grease over the entire surface. “I’m not entirely sure, but this could be, ah--”

“Poison,” Heirloom confirmed. “Rather fast-acting. I know from experience, I’m afraid.”

“If they have poison, they’ll have an antidote!” I said.

“Right!” Destiny agreed. I knelt down, and with her help, started going through the tactical gear the zebra was wearing. His pouches were stuffed full of useless trinkets and garbage. Spent shell casings. A whetstone. A mess kit.

“What about this?” I asked, holding up a bottle with some small white pills.

“Let me see-- no,” Destiny said, after reading the label. “I don’t think the situation calls for a cyanide pill.”

“They won’t have an antidote,” Heirloom said. He examined the knife. “I’m afraid my people’s military was rather fanatical. Death before failure type of thing. You can understand why I didn’t want to sign up.”

“You’re gonna say no, but I have an idea,” Midnight said.

“You want to suck out the poison,” Emma guessed.

“Would you rather have me try to suck it out, or have Chamomile cut off your hoof?” Midnight asked. Emma was quiet for a long few seconds. “Well?”

“I’m thinking!” Emma snapped. “Fine.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,” Midnight promised. “Can you all give us a little privacy?”

“We should at least see what’s around the next bend,” Destiny said. “Chamomile?”

“Right, leading the way,” I said. Heirloom followed after me, looking at the knife for a little longer before putting it away carefully.

“I don’t want to promise anything, but there’s a chance we might be able to help her,” Heirloom whispered. “One of my field stations is just ahead. You remember I told you I was studying plant cultivars? Our most successful field of research was into healing herbs. If it wasn’t for my work, mass-production of healing potions might not have been possible!”

“Do you have anything that might work as an antidote?” I asked.

“I hope so,” he said. “It’s been so long, we have to pray that the automatic systems kept the crops alive. This environment isn’t terribly well suited for them, which is why we were trying to grow them here in the first place.”

I looked around. We were out of sight of Midnight and Emma.

“I guess we should wait here,” I said, sitting down. “Are you okay? You got shot back there.”

“It does sting a bit,” Heirloom admitted. “Unfortunately for me, not as badly as my knees will hurt in the morning after all this walking. Getting old really does a number on a creature!” He laughed a little. “Thank you for being worried.”

“Do you know if there are more assassins?” Destiny asked.

“They’re rather better at not being seen than I am at seeing them,” Heirloom apologized.

“DRACO was able to spot them,” I said. Destiny floated over to manipulate the controls, going through a few menus.

“He’s got better optics than a pony’s eyes,” Destiny said. “It seems like he could pick up the distortions from those stealth cloaks. That’s a neat trick. I’ll set him up to automatically alert us if he sees that again.”

I let her get to work, sitting on my flank and waiting.

“You don’t think Midnight might have gone blood-crazy and drained Emma dry, do you?” I asked.

“No such luck,” Emma groaned. She limped around the corner. “She did make it really weird, though.” The armor on her right foreleg was all gone, replaced by bandages. She looked more pale than usual.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Midnight teased. “I got out at least some of the poison, then topped her off with a healing potion.”

“I still feel like garbage,” Emma said.

“You probably will until we get a proper antidote,” Heirloom said. “I’m not an expert on poison, but I’ve accidentally envenomed myself too many times to count. Medicinal plants can be rather dangerous when handled improperly.”

“Any chance we can find medicinal plants somewhere around here?” I asked, trying to get us back on track.

“Ah, yes!” Heirloom smiled and patted my shoulder. “I did want to show off my work, and if it can do some good, more the better! Down this road.”

He led us down a side path, the road partly washed out by rainfall to the point we had to climb over rock falls that had, at least, taken out one security gate. The steel pylons lay where they’d fallen, power cables dangling loose and occasionally sparking.

“My project wasn’t dangerous, but we did need to keep creatures from wandering in,” Heirloom explained while I helped him over the chest-high barricade the fallen gate had formed. “Because of the radiation and effluence, you see.”

“I thought you were working with plants?” I asked, confused.

We walked out into a wide valley. It was big enough for a small town, but instead it was home to something between a chemical plant and a farm. Three fields studded the ground, each one a circle around a central steel tower. Pipes and ductwork picked out paths around ditches and spraying equipment.

“I was, I was!” Heirloom assured me. “As I said, we were creating new cultivars here. As you know, radiation sources can cause mutations. By intentionally exposing crops, we could mutate a great many new varieties in a short time. The circular fields are arranged around the sources, so the inner rings get the most radiation and the amount decreases as you move outward. It’s a bit of a shotgun approach, more failures than successes, but we only needed a few successes and expanding to scale like this ensured the bets paid off.”

“Clever,” Destiny said. “Totally random mutations mean some percentage will be beneficial.”

“One thing we discovered early on was how to breed crops for radiation resistance!” Heirloom joked. “Not terribly useful.”

“More useful than you might think,” Emma said. “There are ponies that could use crops like that.”

“I’ll be happy to share. It would be good to have my work out in the world.” He pointed to a greenhouse. “The control room is in the effluence building. It was where we worked with this unusual waste product from Equestria. Ended up being all but useless in the end. Almost impossible to reproduce any effects, you see.”

“I bet,” Emma said. She leaned on the railing as we worked our way through the catwalks above the dry, once-tilled soil. “At least most of the plants seem to be--” she stopped and vomited over the side.

“Let’s find that antidote,” Destiny prompted. “Quickly.”

Chapter 93: Reincarnated Echoes

“Gleamblossom?” I asked.

“Good for rashes, but not for poison,” Heirloom said. The inside of the greenhouse was a messy, abandoned workspace, with half the plants dead and the rest growing out of control. Thick vines with distressingly colored veins running through their leaves crawled along the walls. Some of the crawling was literal. Apparently, some of the carnivorous plants were now highly carnivorous.

I poked through the drawers, turning bottles around to look at faded labels, the markings both in Equestrian and Zebrican. I only recognized about half of what I was looking at. Destiny was floating next to me, helping get some of the jammed locks open with telekinesis and some thin lab tools. The one cabinet I’d opened on my own had entirely shattered along with everything inside it.

“Do you have any datura?” I asked. “That stuff worked really well for me.”

“Of course. It’s a bit of a wonder plant,” Heirloom Tomato agreed. The abada had been setting up some basic glassware and cleaning it with what solvents remained after two hundred years of rot. “Blue datura is a universal antidote. It was a bit dangerous to have around, actually. It spoils almost any alchemy you put it in. Sort of like dumping baking soda into acid. Neutralizes the whole thing.”

“This is an impressive lab,” Destiny said.

“Thank you. I put a lot of it together myself. We had to invent all sorts of tests to check for the presence of useful chemical compounds, the presence of toxins, growth rates… It was all very exciting! Essentially an unlimited budget, and as long as I was reporting progress, I could ask for almost anything.”

Heirloom opened a cabinet and found a plastic box. He opened it and frowned when he saw what was inside it. I looked over his shoulder and saw dead, dried leaves that had turned to brown dust.

“Except for sample containers that would keep things fresh, apparently.” The abada ghoul glanced outside across the fields. Half of the grow lights had broken down over time, leaving the circular plots a maze of shadows. “I hate to suggest it, but you might need to gather some supplies. These weren’t packaged to last, and there’s nothing left.”

“I can do that,” I said. “What am I looking for?”

“You know what datura looks like?” he confirmed. I nodded and he returned the gesture. “Good, good. Most ponies don’t and I’m a poor artist so my drawings wouldn’t be very helpful. There should be some out in the fields. With the automatic systems, there’s a good chance it’s still alive and growing.”

“Want me to grab some?”

“Yes. If you can, get samples of red, green, and blue datura. It should all be growing out there somewhere. I didn’t plant the fields myself, I can’t remember where the interns put them. Blue is the most important, but the others will make it more effective.”

“I’ll stay here and get the rest of these unlocked,” Destiny said. “I might be able to get some of the old equipment running, too.”

“That would be lovely,” Heirloom said. “We should focus on the auto-cauldron. If we feed it the right ingredients, it should do most of the work for us! Practically like having the interns back!”

I waved to him and trotted out, stopping by where Emma was. She seemed to be sleeping uneasily, sweating and tossing and turning on the cot in the back room.

“How is she?” I whispered.

Midnight shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. All I can tell you is her blood is tasting worse instead of better.”

“So draining it out isn’t helping?” I asked.

“It’s not enough,” Midnight said. “I’m bailing out a sinking ship, and it tastes terrible! We’re either going to run out of healing potions or her body is going to just give up, and I can’t tell you which one is gonna happen first.”

“We’re not going to let her die,” I promised.

“She’s rude and probably terrible in bed, but that’s no reason to let her go,” Midnight agreed with a dramatic sigh. “Try and hurry, okay? I don’t know what’s gonna happen if I keep feeding on her.”

“You wanna come with?” I asked. “Maybe a walk would do you some good.”

“Thanks, but I feel like crap,” Midnight groaned. “The poison can’t kill me, but it can give me some serious upset tummy issues, and that is a very unpleasant sight when the upset tummy is full of blood. By the way? Don’t go into the bathroom.”

“This would be easier in the daytime,” I mumbled, walking through the field. I was going to have to go all the way around to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Every one of the circular plots was broken up into slices like a pie, with different plants growing on each slice, and most of them were out of control and huge to the point there were jungles of eggplants and bamboo thickets taller than some buildings.

I was making my way through the choked path cutting across a field of what might have been melons at one point and now looked and smelled distressingly like sausages as big as my head when the plants shifted and I felt a surge of danger crawl down my back. I spun around in alarm.

I was looking down the barrel of an assault rifle, being held by a pony in a gasmask and ragged uniform, almost invisible in the field until he’d moved -- not even because of intentional camouflage, but because the burlap and cotton hadn’t been cleaned in so long that it had turned the same color as the mud and dirt caking the ground.

Another pony waited behind him, standing in the shadows where the broken lights couldn’t reach and watching me carefully.

“I come in peace?” I tried, holding up my hooves.

“Put down that gun, Private,” the pony lingering in the back said. “She’s a pegasus, not a zeke.”

The pony holding the gun on me lowered the rifle with a guttural growl. He sounded more like an animal than a pony. He turned and saluted, moving with wobbly, exhausted movements. He could have been sleepwalking or just so tired that it blurred the lines between awake and asleep.

“Are you with reinforcements?” the pony in back asked. They stepped forward. They’d clearly been here a long time. Centuries. “We ran into a lot of trouble. We weren’t supposed to meet real resistance and we’re heavily under-equipped. I was starting to think our messages didn’t get out!”

I looked at the two of them, and I could sense that cloud of confusion and timeless looping that I’d felt before. They were like the ghosts onboard the dead Cloudsdale Defense Force cloudships.

“You mean the zebra special forces?” I asked. “We ran into them too.”

“Damn, I knew they were still out there!” the officer cursed, kicking the dirt. “The rest of the platoon is feeling too sick to fight. We’ve bunked up ahead in the field.”

I nodded, and they led the way to the center of the field. The plants here were a tangle of dead leaves and deformed survivors, with blotchy, puffy stems and strange grows. The few living plants were massive and halfway rotting even while they grew.

There were more sleeping bags, like the ones we’d found on the beach. Most of these were occupied. Or had been. It depended on if you counted the skeletons of long-dead ponies. The ghoul in the gas mask curled up next to the tall metal pylon at the very center of the field, going so totally limp I wasn’t sure he’d get up again.

“The equipment in the middle stays warm, so we’re using it to keep the cold off without starting a fire the zekes might spot. It’s a good thing, too. They must have used some kind of chemical weapon because everypony has been feeling awful. I’m letting them sleep it off until they recover.”

I nodded. “That’s good thinking,” I said quietly. I looked at the equipment they were resting around. I could see something glowing between jammed-open lead shielding. I could practically taste the radiation. Even for me, this place was probably unsafe to linger in.

“Do you have any orders from the outside?” the officer asked.

“You’ll get relief soon,” I lied. It wasn’t a good lie. It didn’t really matter. The ghoul couldn’t even tell which century it was, much less if I was telling the truth. “I’m on a retrieval op. We’re checking what’s being grown here for, uh, national security reasons.”

“I understand,” the officer said, saluting. “Is there anything I can help with?”

“Have you seen any plants with blue leaves?”

“Yes, ma’am!” the officer said. “I’ll escort you myself. You never know when one of those damn zekes might pop up.”

“I’d appreciate it,” I said. The ghoul nodded over her shoulder and I followed her across the farm. She was quiet and careful, clearly expecting an attack at any moment. She was so on edge she could cut herself with it. I couldn’t imagine spending years or decades stuck like that. It would be like being stuck in Tartarus.

“We can’t be too careful,” she whispered. “Intel says this whole island is one crazy experiment after another.”

“Do you know what they were working on?” I asked.

“Not for sure,” the officer said. “We grunts don’t get the same quality reports you special forces types do. I hear it’s supposed to be some kind of weapon to kill Celestia. That can’t be true, can it?”

She stopped and looked back at me with fear in her dead eyes. She was delusional, walking through a dream and it was about to turn into the sort of night terror that made a pony wake up in the middle of the night not sure where the nightmare ended and reality began.

“Not in a million years,” I lied. “You remember what they always used to say about the Royal Guard?”

The ghoul shook her head. “No, Ma’am.”

“They were never really there to protect the Princess. She can take care of herself. Their duty, and ours, is to protect everypony else.”

She relaxed a little, nodding along. I’d read it in one of the many history books my dad had made me practically memorize to try and live up to his standards. It had never been good enough for him, but I was starting to think his standards hadn’t been average. Maybe I really wasn’t as stupid as I thought I was.

Then again, I was thinking that while sporting a frankly shocking amount of brain damage and I was pretty sure I’d be drooling in a hospital bed if I didn’t have a computer jammed into my grey matter.

“Here we are,” the ghoul said, nodding ahead of us. The brush was lower here, without the tall and overgrown plots of the other fields. I’d spent enough time with the zebras to know what datura looked like while it was growing, and I was looking right at it.

“Oh, great!” I smiled. “This is perfect!”

The officer saluted, radiating happiness from being praised. I returned the salute and trotted into the field, poking at the line of datura. I’d learned the right way to harvest it while I was recovering from the fight against the green SIVA dragon, which was shockingly different from the way ponies harvest cloud crops. Of course, I’m sure you already know all about cloud farming, so there’s no reason to go over the details.

Most of the datura was the normal green kind, but there were smaller, sparser plots of the other kinds as well. Closer to the radiation source in the middle of the field it looked really weird. I’d swear the leaves were glowing a little in the light, moving on their own despite a lack of a real breeze.

I was able to get decent-looking green and red datura, but the blue was more troubling. I had to choose between withered and dried-up leaves that could have been dead for a decade or the too-large and ragged-edged leaves near the center. If Emma didn’t need it so badly I’d just tell them that there wasn’t anything I could use, but going back empty-hooved would be sentencing her to slow death.

Being a little mutated was probably better than dead when it came to ingredients. For all I knew the mutant datura was perfectly safe and just looked weird. I grabbed a few bunches. If it wasn’t good enough…

I couldn’t think like that. It had to be good enough.

“Thanks again,” I said. “I’m going to get this where it needs to go.”

“Do you need an escort?” the ghoul offered.

“No, it’ll be fine.” I gave her a pat on the foreleg. “You should take care of your soldiers. They need somepony with a level head on their shoulders.”

She nodded. “Thank you, Ma’am!”

“You found it?” Heirloom Tomato asked, pleased. I put the samples of the datura down on the bench. “Excellent!”

He looked over the plants, using a hoof tool to check the leaves for something. It looked like a hole punch for paper, taking small square samples of the leaves. A paper strip changed color with every sample, shifting through the rainbow before settling down to a single shade.

“Hmmm…” he mumbled.

“Is it okay?” I asked.

“The green and red datura are fine. A little weak because they haven’t been fertilized, a bit like how food crops don’t have enough nutrients if the plants themselves are starved while they’re growing.”

“And the blue?” I looked at the mutant leaves.

“Well…” he tilted his head, concentrating. “I think it’ll still work. It has the antitoxin compound. More than the original variety! If we had the time I’d run some studies on it and see what the rest of these results mean. There are other enzymes that I haven’t seen before, and these tools are a bit crude to isolate them.”

“Is it safe?” Destiny asked. She looked at the strip of paper. “I never liked analog tests like this. These materials are older than I am. Are you even getting an accurate reading?”

“It’s old but reliable. A bit like me!” Heirloom said. He shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing for it! Sometimes in science you just have to try your best and see what happens. If we already knew the results, we wouldn’t call it an experiment!”

“I’d prefer not to experiment on a friend,” I said.

“It’s just a figure of speech,” Heirloom said, waving away my concerns. “You did well getting these so quickly. I doubt I could have found them so quickly!”

“I had some help,” I said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t go out there yourself. There are ponies out in the fields. It seems like both sides attacked this place at the same time.”

“It was probably because of whatever they were working on in the Solar Center,” Heirloom said dismissively. He started plucking leaves, crushing them into a paste in a mortar and pestle. “I doubt they’d have been interested in what we were doing here. The worst we ever did was help ponies lie on some reports.”

“What kind of reports?” Destiny asked.

“It’s a bit embarrassing, really,” Heirloom said. He scraped the paste into a flask and opened a panel on the auto-cauldron, inserting it and turning the machine on. It started humming and vibrating. “I assume you’re not familiar with the state of medical care before the war?”

“Not really,” I said.

“I was too young to really remember,” Destiny added.

Heirloom Tomato nodded. “Before we learned how to cultivate the ingredients for healing potion in large enough amounts for mass production, healing was a long, painful process. Healing spells are difficult to cast, and most ponies just had to rest and wait and use antibiotics to keep infections at bay.”

He stepped over to a first-aid kit and opened it, pulling out a length of old, dirty bandages.

“The charm on this has faded to nothing, but these used to be very expensive healing bandages. They had to be applied to a wound directly and kept in place while they worked. Good enough for small flesh wounds, rubbish for more than that. And these are spoiled, to boot. Spared no expense on the facility and it all went to trash so quickly!” He sighed in frustration.

“Did you do… reports on bandages?” I guessed.

The ghoul laughed. “No, no. It’s… hm. How to put it… from a certain perspective, having healing potions being so common was a problem.”

“The Battle of Stalliongrad problem,” Destiny said.

“Indeed. In most battles, one side would retreat when it suffered too many casualties, but only a fraction of those would be fatalities. With every soldier carrying a healing potion or two with them, they were expected to get shot, get back up, and keep fighting. The amount of what ponies called Wartime Stress Disorder went through the roof, but it was easier to hide from the public than crippled soldiers coming home with life-changing injuries.”

“In Equestria, they put them in private wards so the public didn’t get to see that part of it, either,” Destiny said quietly.

“Ah well, you still treated them with kindness. I’m afraid my people weren’t as understanding. We had only a fraction of the resources of Equestria, and so soldiers were sent back to the front again and again and executed for cowardice if they refused. A waste in all senses of the word.”

“Sounds rough,” I said. “I mean, I sort of get it. Morale is a big problem even in the Enclave. There are always shortages and stuff, and ponies who complain too much sometimes get brought in for a long talk and mandatory community service. I had to do it twice, and it sucked eggs. They made me listen to a lecture about how lucky I was to be in real civilization and how complaining doesn't help anypony. That kind of thing.”

That had been back home. A place that didn’t exist anymore, buried alive by Polar Orbit. I still didn’t know what his real agenda was. It was on my very long list of things I needed to figure out.

The auto-cauldron beeped. Heirloom Tomato walked over to it, opening a panel and extracting a pear-shaped flask. He swirled it around for a moment, looking at it closely.

“I’d have to say you’ve got this old girl working better than when she was brand new,” Heirloom said happily. He nodded to Destiny. “You really are quite an engineer!”

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Destiny said, trying to sound modest. I could feel how much being praised pleased her. “You still had everything on the factory settings. I’ve worked with enough lab equipment to know how to tweak things.”

A rattle of gunfire shattered the greenhouse’s glass panes, shards of glass raining down and bullets slamming into the dusty cabinets. Heirloom yelped and almost dropped the flask, fumbling with it before grabbing it in both front hooves and ducking down as low as he could.

“We see you in there, zebra scum!” somepony shouted from outside.

“Buck, those soldiers must have followed me!” I yelled over another burst of gunfire. “They think the war is still on!”

“Maybe if I surrender myself to them--” Heirloom suggested.

“You’re going to go to the back room and feed that potion to Emerald Gleam,” Destiny corrected. “Chamomile and I can deal with this. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it's that no number of regular soldiers is enough to take her down.”

Destiny flew over and I nodded to her. She settled into place, the helmet sealing with a hiss. I stood up and stepped out, wings spread and showing myself as obviously as I could while I walked through the door.

A bullet pinged off the armor’s collar. I tried not to wince at the sound.

“What the buck do you think you’re doing?!” I yelled. There were more ghouls than I expected, most of them in even worse shape than the private with the gas mask pointing his rifle at me from the edge of the field. They were barely holding together, rotting and probably only avoiding total collapse because of the radiation in the fields.

“Stop shooting!” the officer from before shouted. “Look! It’s one of the Princesses!”

I glanced behind me, half-expecting to see Flurry Heart.

“She means you,” Destiny prompted quietly. “With my horn and your wings… well, they’re already delusional to start with. Think you can do a good Royal Canterlot Voice?”

“What’s that?” I hissed.

“Shouting and saying ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ a lot, mostly.”

“I can try.” I cleared my throat, trying to sound loud and authoritative. I didn’t have the sheer force and power a real alicorn like Flurry Heart did, so I was going to have to fake it with confidence instead. “LISTEN! HEAR ME AND OBEY! Uh…” I coughed, stalling for time.

The ghouls saluted, not all quite at the same time or in the same way. One of them was missing their right forehoof and didn’t get very far with the left before falling on their snout and staying there.

“What do I do?” I hissed.

“Try telling them the war is over?” Destiny suggested.

It couldn’t hurt to try. “THE DARKNESS OF, uh, THY LONG WAR HAS PASSED! LAY DOWN THY ARMS!”

The ghouls looked at each other and started grumbling “Princess Luna would never say that!” one of them shouted.

“It must be some kind of zebra trick! Open fire!” the officer ordered.

I swore and dove for cover, jumping into a ditch. Gunfire rattled overhead, keeping me pinned down. “I don’t think it worked. Great idea, Destiny.”

“I’m a doctor of thaumatic engineering, not psychology!” she snapped. “You didn’t have a better idea!”

“I did not, no,” I agreed. “So we’re going with the usual--”

Two ghouls jumped over the edge, snarling and hissing. The bottom half of their gas masks had been torn apart by gnashing jaws full of broken teeth. I caught one in midair and punted it straight back up, its legs flailing at the air.

The second ghoul latched onto my wing with its teeth, trying to yank it apart. It was almost smart -- my wings were one of the only things still exposed with the armor on. They were also the strongest part of my body. I flicked my wing out and tossed the ghoul away, and it hit the dirt at the same time the first ghoul slammed into the mud next to it.

“Give me the speargun,” I said. Destiny obliged, and the sleek whate-like shape of the HEARSE popped onto my left shoulder in place of the Dimension Pliers. A burst of spears nailed the two fallen ghouls in place permanently.

The rest started piling into the trench, and I was soon looking at a dozen ghouls surrounding me on both sides, all of them drooling and ravenous.

“Looks like they’ve all gone feral,” Destiny said. “I think when we broke up their routine we broke them, too.”

One of them held out a shaky hoof with a rifle, spraying the area with bullets. Most of them went wide, hitting everything around me. The ghoul was firing the assault rifle on instinct, pulling the trigger as a reflex. I ducked, a burst going over me and hitting the ghouls on the other side.

A glint of metal on one of the fallen ghouls caught my eye, and I launched the anchor line from the HEARSE, grabbing a ghoul and reeling him back in like a rotting, zombie fish. I grabbed at his side and pulled the grenade free from his bandolier. Destiny yanked the pin with telekinesis and I tossed it into the larger group.

“Should I say something cool and dramatic?” I asked. The grenade went off, tossing bodies everywhere.

“I don’t think they’d appreciate it,” Destiny replied.

“How’s Emma doing?” I asked.

“I think she’s-- oh sands, what happened to you?!” Heirloom gasped. “You’re covered in mud and blood!”

“Almost none of it is hers,” Midnight sighed. She wasn’t even looking at me. “I can tell that and my nose is all stuffed up from--” She started to retch. “This is really the worst trip ever,” she said, once she could speak again. Her voice was weak and wavering.

“She’s always getting covered in other people’s blood,” Emma agreed. “Help me sit up.”

Heirloom reached over and helped her sit up on the cot. Emma looked pale and wasted, and probably needed another solid week of bed rest in a real hospital back home.

“Feeling any better?” I asked.

“I feel awful, but that’s an improvement over dying,” Emma said. “Thanks.”

I nodded and sat down. Destiny popped off my head and floated over to Emma, tugging at her eyelids with telekinesis and checking her pupils.

“Maybe you should go back to the boat,” I suggested. “You could rest there and wait for us.”

“In case you forgot, we got shot down by anti-air defenses once already,” Emma said. “If I go back alone I won’t have your flank to draw all the fire. Until we get the systems shut down, I’m stuck here.”

“Right,” I sighed. “Heirloom, any idea on how to shut everything down?”

“You’d need to go to the Solar Center,” Heirloom said. He stood up and rummaged around, pulling out some old papers. One of them had an evacuation plan, and while the details on where to find fire extinguishers and life jackets weren’t going to help, it detailed something even more important -- it had a map of the island.

“I’ll have DRACO take a scan of that,” Destiny said. “This could be a huge help.”

“The maneframe and power supplies were all centralized there,” Heirloom explained. “I’m not sure what kind of research they were doing, exactly. It was all a bit need-to-know hush-hush, as you can imagine. Of course, there were always rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?” Midnight asked, looking over her shoulder and raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing dangerous, I assure you. We were only focused on safe, non-violent projects. Like my experiments with crop growth -- this kind of experimentation is too dangerous to do anywhere near civilization, what with the radiation and thaumatic effluence. Too much of a chance that some foal or animal would wander in and get hurt. New crops help everypony, though, like our experiments with healing potions.”

I nodded. “Not dangerous is good.”

“Now the rumors are -- and understand I can’t confirm this -- that there was a concern that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna would use their abilities to control the sun and moon to simply end our ability to grow crops. Ensure the sun no longer rose over the Zebrican Empire and starve us out within a few weeks or months.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Destiny protested. “Even the most paranoid pony I know wouldn’t have believed that. Celestia considered her duty to be sacred!”

“I would tend to agree with you,” Heirloom Tomato said, nodding slowly. “But there was an event that made some people very worried about the future.”

“Oh, that would be when Nightmare Moon returned, huh?” Midnight asked. “It was really a huge disappointment. She finally comes back, we’re all super excited, we have the biggest Black Lunar Mass planned, and what happens? Everything blows up in a big cloud of rainbow sparkles!”

“Are you seriously complaining that Nightmare Moon didn’t end the world?” Emma asked.

“She wouldn’t have ended the world! There was totally a plan. It… probably wouldn’t have been great for the average pony.” Midnight smiled to herself. “But it would have been a lot of fun for the rest of us.”

“The rumor is that the Solar Center was investigating plans on how to manage in case something similar happened again.”

“In case something similar happened,” Destiny repeated. “Do you mean in case Nightmare Moon took over, or in case your assassins finally managed to get rid of Princess Celestia?”

Heirloom held up his forehooves for mercy. “I would never wish for harm to come to anyone, pony or zebra or otherwise. That’s why I came here.” He smiled sadly.

“I believe you,” I said. I could sense it. There was regret, but the kind a person learned from and grew with.

“We still need to get to the Solar Center,” Midnight put in. She got up and groaned. “Ugh. Food poisoning is the worst. No offense, food.”

“Offense taken,” Emma huffed. “You’re lucky I’m too weak to smack you.”

“We’ve only got a few hours until sunrise,” Midnight said. “I don’t want to be stuck here all day. I don’t even have a proper coffin to recuperate in!”

“I’m not going to be ready to go anywhere in just a few hours,” Emma sighed.

“I can watch over her,” Heirloom offered. “I’m not a medical doctor but I can make sure she drinks water and gets something to eat once her stomach is settled.”

“There might be more of those ghouls out there,” I warned.

“I’ll protect Miss Gleam with my life,” Heirloom assured me. “Or my unlife, perhaps.” He looked at his thin, skeletal hoof. “After spending so long on that beach, it’s the least I can do to repay you for helping me get back here to check on my work.”

“I’ll be fine,” Emma promised. “Just please remember to listen to Destiny. She’s the only one of you that’s responsible at all.”

“That’s fair,” Midnight agreed. “Let’s go, Chamomile. We’ve found zebra special forces, pony soldiers, maybe next we’ll see a dragon!”

“Kinda small for a dragon,” Midnight mumbled, poking the lizard.

“Are you going to eat it or not?” I asked.

“I told you, most animal blood doesn’t work,” Midnight sighed. She poked it more until it ran away. “Besides, it was barely even big enough for a sip. I don’t like killing anything I drink from.”

“I have literally seen you murder multiple ponies by draining their blood.”

Midnight rolled her eyes. “That was self-defense predation, not regular predation! It doesn’t count if they shot at me first. And you aren’t allowed to say anything because you justify your murders exactly the same way!”

“I really try hard not to call them murders,” I said.

“Maybe I’m more honest about it than you are,” Midnight huffed. “And for the record it also doesn’t count if they were living sacrifices to Nightmare Moon.”

“Princess Luna would never allow that!” Destiny snapped.

“Yeah she got really upset when she found out about them,” Midnight mumbled. “It seemed like it would be a cool idea at the time.”

“How old were you when you got turned into a vampire?” I asked.

“Seventeen, I think? You stop worrying about it after a while.”

I nodded. “A teenager. That checks out.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Wow, look at this,” Destiny interrupted. “The solar center must be just up ahead.”

“Is it on the map?” I asked, peering at DRACO’s small screen.

“I’m basing the observation on this, actually.” She lit up her horn, revealing a wooden sign with an arrow and the words ‘Solar Center’ written in both Equestrian and Zebrican. It felt a little weird to see the Zebrican written first with my native language underneath. It was a reminder that I was pretty far from home.

Chapter 94: No Mortals Allowed

I’d sort of expected a fortress or military base when we got to the Solar Center. I wasn’t expecting it to look like something between a hotel and a tourist trap. It was a compound built with precast slabs of concrete that had been hidden behind a facade of fake stone and faded wood veneers. Dried-out planters only hosted weeds now, but the dead remnants of bushes suggested a topiary garden.

“This really doesn’t look like a secret lab,” I said. I held the door open, inviting Midnight inside. She walked past me, sniffing at the air. “Something wrong?” I asked.

“I donno,” she said. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

I followed her in, looking around. It was almost pitch-black inside. There were big skylights and windows, but they weren’t doing much now except showing just the faintest hint of grey and a warning that dawn was going to arrive soon.

“Think the lights work?” Destiny asked. I saw a glimmer of her magic on a wall panel, and the overhead lights buzzed to life, one broken bulb raining down sparks for a moment before quieting, the rest shining spotlights down around us into the expansive foyer.

“Are we in the right place?” Midnight asked.

The lights went to glass cases, some of them still intact. They showed rocks, odd machines, and even some detailed miniatures with villages and towns. More lights flickered on, recessed lighting revealing murals and diagrams on the walls.

“This one has the Solar Center,” I said, recognizing the squat, ziggurat shape of the compound. It was highly stylized, like a foal’s cartoon, and focused more on what was below the building, a long shaft going down to the hot volcanic rock, accompanied by dusty notes on steam turbines and water pumps.

“They must have been researching geothermal power,” Destiny said.

“I sure hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means,” I mumbled.

“Stable 83 was a unique set of circumstances. Probably. It seemed like that was a result of some kind of interaction between Balefire and the coal seam around the stable, rather than a problem with geothermal energy as a whole.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. “Because if I see one of those gloop monsters, I’m leaving and not coming back.”

“Fair enough,” Destiny agreed.

“Gloop monsters, huh?” Midnight asked. “Sounds like some Bad Stuff.”

“This whole place looks like a museum,” I said, trotting around the exhibits. “Look at this!”

I leaned in to look closely at one of the miniature villages. Some of the buildings had walls cut away like a dollhouse so I could see inside, where tiny quadruped figures - totally unpainted and anonymously abstracted so they could be any kind of pony or zebra - worked on long tables and racks of mushrooms, farming them indoors. In another building, the villagers raised rabbits in an indoor farm. The few that were outside the buildings all wore wide hats and loose clothing that covered their entire bodies.

“They said this place was researching contingencies if something happened to Celestia, right?” Midnight asked. “I think this is a model village for a world without her.”

“Why the big hats, then?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Midnight said.

“I think I know,” Destiny said. “There was an assassination attempt on Celestia at one point, pretty early on in the war, when ponies thought we could still talk things over. After it happened, there were a lot of what-ifs about what would happen if she did die. One of the big theories was highly irregular periods of sunlight. Maybe it would even get stuck in the sky and we’d have an endless day.”

“That sounds awful,” Midnight mumbled.

“Worse than you think. I read a few abstracts, and it seemed like it would eventually end all life on the planet except maybe in a narrow habitable band. The Boss Mare said it was a stupid thing to worry about.”

“Sunset thought things would work out?” I asked.

“No, she thought Celestia was invincible. I guess she got that one wrong.”

“Mmm,” I grunted. “Think we can find the gift shop if we look around?”

“There’s not going to be a gift shop,” Destiny sighed. “It’s a secret joint research base. This isn’t a museum for the public, it’s probably a way for the researchers to show off their project proposals and repurpose props made for grant funding.”

Midnight snapped her head to the side.

“Quiet,” she hissed. “I think I smell something.”

“What is it?”

“Shhhhh!” she hushed me and sniffed the air. “That’s definitely blood.”

“Are you sure?” I whispered. “Why do I have to be quiet for you to smell things?”

She pointed through the set of doors leading deeper into the complex. I saw a crumpled, dried-out corpse surrounded by a splatter of brown, flaking stains. Blood that had been sitting in the dark for almost two centuries.

“That doesn’t explain anything, even if you’re right,” I mumbled to myself. Her ears twitched, so I know she heard me.

I walked up to the body to check it out. The uniform looked more like what the undead ponies in the fields had been wearing. I braced myself, ready for it to reanimate the second I touched it. That was just how these things worked, right? I tapped it with a hoof.

It didn’t jump up and attack me. I touched it a little more firmly, and it cracked like old wood.

“Looks like he’s not getting up,” Destiny said. I nodded and flipped the corpse over. It was stiff, the joints frozen in place by time and rot. If I hadn’t already been mentally prepared for stuff that was like a hundred times worse, the empty eye sockets and toothy rictus grin would have been really freaky.

“Looks like bullet holes,” I said, examining the uniform. “I guess there was a gunfight in here.”

“Must have been pretty accurate,” Midnight said. “I don’t see any holes in the walls, and there’s no trail of blood. He died here and there weren’t any wasted shots.”

“You’re really good at this investigation stuff,” I said.

“When you’re a pony-eating monster, it pays to know how to do a perfect murder,” she teased, running the tip of her bat wing along my side when she walked past me. The hallway led around a few bathrooms and to an office area, a small huddle of cubicles and terminals. Everything was torn apart, most of the screens shattered and cubicle walls punched full of holes. Skeletal remains littered the floor along with ruined papers.

“Whoever hit this place was less perfect,” Destiny said. “They must have sprayed this whole room on full auto.”

A light caught my eye, and I walked around the chest-high cubicle walls to find one terminal still turned on, the screen flickering and occasionally rolling, but still showing a login prompt.

“Maybe we can find something useful here,” I said. “Think you can crack it?”

“I’ll try,” Destiny said. She started tapping keys, rebooting the terminal and bringing things up in the BIOS. I just barely understood most of what she was doing, watching along without interrupting. After a few tries, the screen flickered and froze, then the login box appeared and Destiny bypassed it with two quick taps on the enter key.

“Nice work,” I said.

“It seemed a little too easy for a secret military site,” she said. “I hope I didn’t miss something.”

Midnight shrugged. “If your enemy has hooves on your terminal in a place like this, there’s no point worrying about your lewd emails.”

“Normally, yes,” Destiny agreed. “That’s true most of the time, but not here, where you could expect Zebras and Ponies to share office space. There are too many chances for a spy to get a look without anyone knowing. This is exactly the time you’d want good computer security.”

I started scrolling through the list of files. Most of them were corrupted or threw an error about connection to other terminals being broken. One of the saved emails finally opened up, and red flashing text popped up on the screen.

“A general alert?” I asked, reading it over.

“Looks like it was sent automatically by the security system,” Destiny said. “We already knew there was an attack here, and we ran into automated security. This isn’t much of a surprise.”

“There are a lot more of these,” I said. “Half of them say it was an attack by zebras, the other half say ponies are attacking.”

“Which one came first?” Midnight asked. “I’ll put money on the Zebra!”

I finally tabbed down to the first alert in the series. “It just says unknown attackers,” I said. “Could be either side.”

Midnight clicked her tongue. “Dang.”

A chill ran down my spine. I threw myself to the ground, and the terminal exploded in a shower of sparks. A moment later, and the desk blew apart with a second bang. Midnight moved in a blur, ducking to the side and avoiding a third shot.

Zebra ghouls stumbled into the room, wearing ragged, tattered cloaks that shifted color randomly like they carried patches of broken terminal screens filled with static. They carried short weapons, rattling off shots on automatic fire and spraying the room down, either aiming at something only in their memory or just holding the triggers down at random.

Destiny popped a shield in front of me, blocking a few stray shots as the undead shuffled in. Maybe it was my imagination but they seemed even more out of it than the average ghoul.

“I got them,” Midnight said, moving in a blur that stopped by each of the ghouls for a fraction of a second, a line of neon light tracing her jagged path and hanging in the air as a ghostly contrail before she stopped, the trail fading and the ghouls falling apart, heads separating from necks.

They landed with distinct cracks, and Midnight turned back to look at them again.

“Wait a minute…” she mumbled, grabbing one fallen head and lifting it. “Look at this!”

She tossed it over to me, and Destiny caught it before it could smack me in the face and make me look like an idiot.

“What am I looking for?” Destiny asked.

“It just looks like a ghoul,” I said. They were all the same, in the way every corpse was the same. Unique, but with patterns of rot and ruin that seemed universal.

“The neck. It was bitten,” Midnight said. “And you see how the skin is all dried out and mummified? A vampire did this.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. She gave me a look. “Okay, yeah, you’re the expert.”

“The really gross part is that they had to be drained after they died,” Midnight said. “That’s like… you can’t even imagine how bad that is. It’s like eating rotten food at the bottom of a dumpster. Whatever vampire did this is sick in the head.”

“Or it was the only thing left to drink,” Destiny said quietly. “Ponies do crazy things when they’re desperate to survive.”

“Like Wind That Shreds Ashen Petals,” Midnight sighed. “Crazy.”

“It might be worth finding them,” Destiny said.

“Why?” Midnight asked. “If they’re that hungry, they’ll probably try and jump Chamomile. Which, I admit, would be hilarious, like feeding chickens to foxes. Don’t worry, Chamomile, you’re the fox in this metaphor.”

“Because they either came here looking for the same thing we are, whatever that is, or else they might be talkative,” I said, understanding what Destiny was getting at. “Seems like a bizarre coincidence otherwise.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Midnight said quietly, sitting down and folding her hooves. “Lady of Dark Waters might be my mother, but she’s also sort of a manipulative monster that really enjoys treachery and secret plans.”

“Know any cool vampire tricks that can help?” I asked.

Midnight looked pained. “I wish you hadn’t asked that.”

“Why?”

“Because I do know a vampire trick that would work, but…” she shivered. “I’d have to take a taste of this garbage myself.”

“Is it really that bad?” I asked.

“Yes! Absolutely! And I haven’t had good blood in so long that I’m starting to forget what it’s like! Once we’re back in civilization I am going to absolutely indulge myself for a week straight.”

I held up one of the corpses helpfully. “I think this one’s still got some juice left in him.”

She groaned and motioned for me to pass him over. Midnight lifted her visor and sank her fangs into the zebra who was, at this point, as extremely dead as dead could be. She took the tiniest sip and gagged, tossing the body aside and retching, struggling to keep even that tiny taste down.

“It’s worse than I could have imagined!” she gasped. “Oh, Endless Night, I’ll never be clean again! I’m a ruined mare!”

She pulled on her own tongue dramatically, making awful sounds. A moment later, she swooned and fell softly onto her side, fluttering her wings to land with the graceful posing of a portrait of a mare reclining on a sofa. After a few moments without a reaction from me or Destiny, she opened one eye and looked up at us.

“Not feeling a lot of sympathy here,” she pouted.

“This one time I ate a ration bar that was so old the best-by date wrapped around to being good again because it was only printed with two digits for the year,” I said.

Midnight sighed. “This apocalypse is just the worst thing ever for gourmets.”

“Can you track the vampire or not?” Destiny prompted.

“Yeaaah,” Midnight groaned, standing up. She closed her eyes and focused, then pointed. “That way.”

She was pointing in the direction the zebra ghouls had come from.

“Probably should have been able to guess that myself,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, yeah.” Midnight huffed. I could hear the flush of embarrassment. “You could thank me, you know!”

“Flirt later, please, when I can go into another room and not hear it,” Destiny begged.

“Is she flirting?” I asked.

Midnight scoffed. “Denser than lead.”

“In here,” Midnight said. “He’s pretty close.”

I nodded and carefully opened the door, staying low to the ground. It was dark inside. If there had been lights in the room, they’d all broken or been disconnected a long time ago. I peered into the gloom, trying to spot danger.

A glance directly above me, just in case, but nothing was poised to drop down on me.

“I see you, crawling along like little spiders,” hissed a voice in the dark. “You finally came to finish the job, servants of the Tyrant Sun and Shadow Moon!”

“What is he talking about?” I mumbled. Destiny sighed and turned on her light spell, abandoning the pretense of stealth.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!” the voice shouted. I followed the sound deeper into what must have been some kind of massive lab space. It was pitch-black, with the floor-to-ceiling windows covered by closed blinds and the only light coming from Destiny’s spell.

In the circle of light around me, tables were overturned and chairs littered the ground. Broken crystals for talismans glittered on the ground everywhere like gemstone gravel. There was enough room to fly but- I looked at my wing. The feathers were still growing back. Trying to take to the air was going to result in a quick crash back down to earth.

“We’re not really servants of anyone,” I said, trying to spot whoever had been shouting. “My name’s Chamomile. It’s sort of a long story how we got here. It sounds like you might be in trouble. Maybe we can help?”

“Do you really think that’s going to work?” Midnight whispered to me.

“It’s worth trying since he already knows we’re here,” I whispered back.

“I’ll sneak around the side while you distract him,” Midnight said, bumping me silently before stalking off.

“Help. Help! Ponies always say they want to help,” the speaker said. I figured out where he was after a moment. The gloom inside the dark lab started to lessen to a dusty grey. The sun was starting to rise outside, the first rays of the sun clawing at the blinds and worming their way through to draw lines of light across the wide space.

“There’s nothing wrong with getting help,” I said. “The war ended, we’re all just trying to survive. It sounds like you’ve been trapped here a while. Maybe we can get you out of here and take you somewhere you won’t be alone.”

“Alone? No, no, never alone. Little pockets of war. Ponies and zebras and zebras and ponies and do they care about me?”

He leaned forward, into one of the streaks of dim light. He was an abada, like Heirloom Tomato, but instead of being a terribly thin, wasted ghoul reduced nearly to a skeleton, he was healthy and young and as pale as moonlight, with burning red eyes.

“Definitely a vampire,” Midnight said. “Hey, dude! According to ancient vampire code, I demand parley!”

“Is that a thing?” I whispered.

“No, absolutely not.” Midnight shrugged. “But he’s gone all silly for Sugar Apple Bombs, so he might not know that.”
She stepped out into the open, trotting casually towards the vampire abada.

“Maybe we can get you something decent to eat?” Midnight suggested. “There’s a farm down the road that has some crops that have got to taste better than whatever you’ve got here. It’s not blood, but a melon or two--”

“Not one step closer!” the vampire warned. He grabbed the edge of a tarp in the gloom next to him and yanked it away, revealing something from nowhere like a magician doing a trick. Two stricken, bruised ponies were abruptly at his hooves. Well, one pony and one other abada.

Emerald Gleam looked worse than the last time I’d seen her. She’d obviously put up a fight despite being hurt, and it had cost her. Her armor had been half-ruined and she looked like she’d rolled down a mountain and hit every rock along the way.

Heirloom Tomato was almost as bad, I think. It was a lot harder to tell with a ghoul, but he’d been fragile-looking already and any amount of rough treatment seemed like it was enough to shatter him.

“Emma!” I shouted. She raised her head to look, and the abada grabbed her chin and forced her to stand.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you?” the pale creature hissed. He glared through the darkness at us, eyes glowing. “Servants of the Tyrant Sun, here to try and steal and destroy my research! My research! Not yours! I have eyes everywhere on the island, and even more hooves!”

He jerked Emma around while he screamed. She winced in pain.

“You killed some of my servants, but I can get more. Always more. Just have to lure them here and make them mine!”

“DRACO can’t get a clear shot with him holding her like that,” Destiny said quietly. “Try and stall him. I’ll figure something out.”

“Let her go,” I warned. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”

“She’s right, Calabash,” Heirloom said, his voice weak. “Please, they’re not here to hurt anyone.”

“Shut up!” the vampire snapped.

Heirloom sighed. “This isn’t like you. Let her go. They’re not here to hurt anyone.”

“You were working with them, Heirloom! I saw it on the cameras! I have eyes everywhere, and all of them saw you, playing along with the ponies! Ponies that killed everyone!”

“Please, calm down and listen. You can trust me, can’t you?”

The pale abada standing over him snarled and kicked Heirloom in the ribs. “Trust?! You’re a liar! A cheat! You rode my coattails and I let you! And now you’re working with them! Liar and traitor! Both things!” He kicked again, distracted just for a moment.

DRACO beeped. I glanced at the display, then pulled the trigger. A shell went past the abada and bounced off of the metal wall behind him, rebounding and striking him in the back. He yelped in pain, falling back while still holding Emma by the neck.

“Got him!” Destiny cheered. “I love those ricochet rounds.”

“It’s not enough,” Midnight said. “He’s a vampire. A hit like that is only going to annoy him!”

The abada struggled to his hooves, a bullet hole clearly going through his back and out just under his ribs, tearing apart shriveled, black organs. He winced in pain with every motion, dragging Emma behind him.

Midnight bolted after him, but he reacted in a second, kicking her and letting himself get knocked away from the recoil, throwing him back down the hallway and Midnight in the other direction. Emma gasped in pain when she landed, still in the monster’s grip, and the abada vampire hit a switch on the wall. With a whoop of alarms blaring, a security door slammed shut.

“Not again!” I charged at the door and slammed into it. A shower of sparks forced me back, my vision blurring and my legs giving out from the discharge.

“Electrified!” Destiny yelped. “Careful! You know that kind of thing messes with you!”

“Maybe we can find a way around it,” I said quickly. “I’ll check back the other way!”

“There’s only one way through there,” Heirloom Tomato said, from where he was lying in pain on the ground. “That leads to one of the secure test areas.”

I punched the door and got shocked again for my trouble. My heart skipped a beat, and I felt the disconcerting sensation of something like a turbine in my chest before it faded.

“Don’t hurt yourself. I can get it open,” Heirloom said, grunting in pain. “Help me over to the door.” He tried to stand, but one of his legs hung loose. It was clearly broken, the thin bones shattered after the abuse he’d suffered.

I helped him up and we limped to the door. He pointed to a keypad next to the security shutter and then sat down with a pained huff to breathe for a moment before starting to tap at the keys.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Heirloom said, once he could speak.

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

“That’s kind of you to say. Calabash is my family. That means I have to bear some of his sins, even if he’s finally gone over the deep end with this ‘Tyrant Sun’ rubbish.”

“What’s that all about anyway?” Midnight asked.

“To those of us who live in a desert, the sun is not a friend,” Heirloom said. “And once one finds out that there is a real person, or pony, in control?” Heirloom shrugged. “It’s even easier to blame a distant force for your troubles when they have a name and face.”

He tapped a few last keys, and the door popped open.

“There we go,” he said, trying to sound cheerful through obvious agony. “These old doors have one major security flaw, you see. Vulnerable to a superpermutation attack. If you memorize the right combination you can enter every possible code quite quickly.”

Heirloom Tomato leaned against the wall as he spoke, every word coming more faintly. I put a hoof on his shoulder and he took it, squeezing softly.

“You go on ahead,” he said. “I need to rest for a while. I’m quite tired.”

I nodded and let go, walking ahead.

“We’re definitely killing his brother, right?” Midnight asked.

I kept nodding.

The hallway only went one place, so there wasn’t a lot of guesswork about where he went. Midnight started to rush ahead of me, but I held up a wing to stop her.

“Something’s off,” I said. “Destiny, can you feel that?”

“An extremely powerful magical field,” she replied. “Yeah. It’s an order of magnitude stronger than the armor can output. He didn’t run this way just for fun. It’s a trap.”

“I hate traps,” Midnight said.

“Yeah, especially when we have to run into them,” I said.

“I’ll go first.” Midnight gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Vampires are pretty tough to kill without the right prepwork. Whatever he’s got waiting for us, I’ll probably shrug it off.”

I nodded. She ran ahead, faster than I could follow, but not using the crazy speed that would have left me far in the dust. The hallway opened up into a huge circular space, with a segmented crystal dome on top of it, a massive skylight that gave the impression that we were standing in the middle of a giant diamond.

Across the room, standing near a bank of terminals, I spotted them.

The abada’s fangs were deep in her neck, and Emma’s gaze met mine. She reached for me with a shaking hoof. I could see the fear in her eyes before they glazed over, going lifeless a moment after her hoof fell, the strength leaving it.

“No!” I yelled. Midnight ran even faster than my own reaction, bolting into the center of the huge hoofball-field-sized open space.

He tossed Emma aside and laughed, kicking a big red button on the wall behind him. The crystal dome above us sparkled and suddenly blazed with light. Midnight screamed in pain, fleeing for the dark corners of the room.

The heat was like standing in the middle of a bonfire, and the light was beyond blinding. Filters slammed shut, the armor’s visor going dark in an instant. I was still seeing stars, the sudden shock of light making me stumble, and in a moment I was running blindly the same way I’d seen Midnight going to avoid the heat, only stopping when I slammed into cardboard boxes and through them to the shade on the other side.

My vision slowly returned, and Midnight was next to me, breathing heavily and shivering in pain.

“Sunlight!” she yelled, smoke pouring from the joints of her armor. “Oh buck that hurts!”

Midnight tried to get back up, but collapsed.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she gasped. “Not if that hits me again. Do you--”

“Here,” Destiny said, popping a blood bag out of our inventory along with one of our few healing potions. Midnight took them gratefully. When she raised her visor, I could see her skin was drawn and parchment-like, like recently healed burns. She tore into the bag, drinking it down before the potion.

“Stay back here. I’ll try and stop that light,” I said. Midnight nodded. Her complexion was improving, but only slowly.

“That’s right!” Calabash screamed. “Here, we work to tame the Tyrant, and that means knowing just how to use it properly!” He held up a control box and started pressing buttons, the stream of concentrated sunlight splitting into three pillars of laser-like light, sweeping through arcs and spiraling towards our hiding spot.

“I can take him,” I said.

“That light knocked out DRACO’s sensors,” Destiny said. “It needs time to reboot!”

“I don’t want to shoot blindly. Emma might still be alive if we can get a healing potion into her quickly enough. Give me a bearing on him and I’ll figure something out.”

“I’m on it,” Destiny said, and an arrow popped up on my heads-up display. I bolted out of the shadows and into the open space in the center of the room. A ray of light swept across my back and the heat raised blisters on my skin, the exodus armor burning like a brand in the wake of the beam.

“So it doesn’t work on you, hm?” Calabash asked. “That’s fine! I’ve got thirty-one flavors!” He pressed another button on his controller.

It suddenly felt like a mountain dropped on my back. My knees buckled, and I barely avoided collapsing entirely. More weight dropped onto my shoulders, doubling what was already a load heavy enough to make my whole body creak.

“What the buck?” I gasped, my forward progress halted in an instant.

“This is a megaspell test chamber!” Calabash laughed. “I have plenty of ways to squash a pony like you. A gravity bomb is just the thing for a pegasus. You with your heads in the clouds, thinking you’re better than the rest of us! How are those hollow bird bones holding up now?!”

“Just fine,” I grunted, forcing myself to take a step. My hoof dug into the floor, the tile starting to crack.

“Chamomile, we’re getting at least 5Gs and it’s going up!”

“I noticed!” I took another step. The weight doubled again, and I went down to one knee, every muscle in my body screaming at me to stop.

“You’re tougher than you look, stupid little bird! Stinky bird!” Calabash laughed. “Let’s see how you fly!”

The direction of gravity reversed, and I flew into the air, rising almost to the crystal ceiling before the world flipped around again. I slammed back into the floor and the concrete shattered under my weight. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was trapped in a vice.

And if I kept quitting and complaining, Emma was definitely dead for real. My body burned with effort, but I crawled just a little further. The weight vanished, and I sucked in a breath before I was picked up and slammed down again, spitting up blood. The display in the armor was almost blocking out my vision with all the errors it was showing.

Destiny was yelling in my ear. Even the words sounded heavy and thick, like the gravity was distorting her tone.
“Chamomile, you can’t--”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” I snapped. “Give me the Junk Jet!”

The armor was slow to respond, the whirring turbine appearing in DRACO’s place. I told Destiny what to load, and she did it without questioning me. The armor struggled to give a targeting reticle. I ignored it, aimed up, and fired.

The healing potion sailed through the air, the increased gravity tugging it into a sharp rainbow curve. It went past Calabash, and he laughed.

“Idiot pony! You missed! Missed with your last shot!”

“I wasn’t aiming for you,” I grunted.

Emma lurched to her hooves and grabbed him, the cuts from the broken potion bottle already healing and the magical liquid seeping into her skin.

“Hah! It worked!” I cheered. “Get him, Emma!”

She hissed and bared long fangs, tearing into the abada’s throat.

“Oh shit that’s not what I wanted to happen,” I corrected. “Destiny I think I’m an idiot pony!”

Emma let go and blinked twice, looking around the room in confusion.

“Where am I?” she asked. “W-what happened?”

“There’s a remote next to your hoof--” I grunted, trying to point.

Emma looked down and found it, picking up the controller and pressing something on it. The weight crushing me to the ground let go, and I sucked in a deep breath.

“Thank you,” I wheezed. “Oh, that’s some major organ damage in there.”

“I’m administering a healing potion,” Destiny said. The cool relief surged through me, taking some of the edge off the deep ache through my whole body, even if it didn’t stop it entirely. Was it because I’d been that badly hurt, or because-- it wasn’t worth worrying about. I stood up on wobbly legs.

“Chamomile, what’s going on?” Emma asked. She sounded terrified. “I feel…”

“It’s not my fault!” Midnight yelled, from the other side of the room. “I’m gonna stay over here until we all agree on that part, okay?”

Emma wiped a hoof across her lips. I watched her open her mouth slightly, tongue feeling her teeth. She was already pale. She found room to get paler.

“What the buck is going on?!” Emma demanded again. “I got the tar kicked out of me by a bunch of ghouls, then they dragged me here, and then--” she touched her neck.

“This is only a guess,” I prefaced. “But… this is definitely Midnight’s fault.”

“It is not my fault!” Midnight protested from where she was hiding. She peeked around the edge of the boxes she was using as cover. “It shouldn’t even have happened! You can only turn into a vampony if a vampire feeds on you for a bunch of nights in a row!”

“Maybe feeding on her a lot in one night counts?” Destiny suggested.

“I was saving her life by sucking poison out of her!” Midnight protested. “It had to be that guy!” She pointed to the fallen form of Calabash. “It’s his fault!”

“I think I need to sit down,” Emma said, swaying on her hooves. I caught her before she fell, helping her down gently. She held onto my hoof, squeezing and looking up at me. “Chamomile…”

“It’s going to be okay,” I promised.

“I could teach you some really cool vampire tricks,” Midnight offered.

Emma growled at the batpony. “I don’t want cool vampire tricks! I want to not be a vampire!”

Midnight walked up next to me and looked down at Emma, thinking for a long moment. “Say something nice to her,” she whispered. “You gotta keep her from freaking out! New vampires are really emotionally unstable. So are old vampires. Say something nice to me too.”

“Emma,” I said, forcing myself to sound confident. “You have a great butt.”

Emma blinked, caught totally off guard. “What?”

“You know what, not what I had in mind, but that works too.” Midnight nodded. “Now we just need to figure out why we’re here.”

“He mentioned cameras,” Destiny pointed out. “Maybe we can find something if we look at the recordings.”

“You look for something juicy, the rest of us will… look for something juicy,” Midnight said. “Got any more blood bags, Chamomile? I think Emma and I could use another top-up.”

The recording started with alarms already blaring. It snapped between security cameras, the sound of klaxons echoing in shadow-filled hallways. A group of scientists fled, the slowest being taken one at a time. The hunter followed at what seemed like a sedate pace. I recognized the pony there.

It was Midnight Shadow Sun’s mother, Lady of Dark Tides. She trotted without apparent haste, but the fleeing ponies and zebras couldn’t get ahead of her. I couldn’t see how she was doing it, but she kept getting ahead of them, cutting them off from escape and leading them in circles.

Eventually, there was only one left. An abada, the same one Emma had just killed. Heirloom’s brother. Lady cornered him in a dead-end hallway. He stared at the wall in disbelief, touching it like he was sure it couldn’t be real.

“Where is it?” Lady of Dark Tides demanded, her powerful voice carrying over the alarms. She motioned at the abada and he floated off the ground, held in a grip made of wavering shadows. “Where is the Eclipse Megaspell?”

“You- you can’t have it,” Calabash gasped. “You’ll use it to blot out the sun!”

“You zebra made it to stop Celestia, didn’t you? You should be thankful. I’m going to show everyone how clever you are. Give it to me.”

“Somepony bought it. The data is encrypted!”

“Un-encrypt it!” Lady demanded. “I might let you live if you cooperate.”

“I can’t! I don’t have the key!”

“You’re either lying or useless. Let’s see which it is.”

She stalked towards him, her jaw unhinging like a snake’s, showing fangs as long as my fetlock. The feed cut out just as the screaming started.

“Oh,” Midnight said quietly. “Maybe I misjudged my mom.”

“You didn’t notice she was an evil monster?” I asked.

“I didn’t think she’d be crazy enough to try blotting out the sun on her own! It would be one thing if Nightmare Moon was here and we had a plan and-- and she tricked us into thinking Kuulas sent the data. She had it this whole time and just couldn’t get it open.”

Midnight groaned and pressed her hooves into her face.

“We’re all idiot ponies,” Midnight mumbled.

“We’ve got to stop her,” Emma said.

“Not before we help you,” I countered. “We can find a cure.”

Emma shook her head. Actually, her whole body was shaking, like a pony about to crash from exhaustion and low blood sugar. “This is more important and you know it. We sent her the file and the key to open it. If she created that storm, she has the ability to cast megaspell rituals already, she just needed the right one.”

“If we can find her ritual chamber, I can disrupt the megaspell,” Destiny said. “I know how to rewire an incantation lens.”

“Cool,” I said. “Let’s go stop the end of the world.”

Chapter 95: Hold Back The Night

The Vertibuck wobbled dangerously, drifting to one side and starting to tilt and yaw at the same time. Hail rained down like bullets, and I could hear the engines surging, sputtering, and kicking with loud bangs. We dropped for a full half-second, a downdraft slamming us into freefall until the gust changed direction again in the storm.

“Are you sure you’ve got this?” I asked.

“Shut up and let me focus!” Emma snarled. Her snarl was a lot more effective now that she had fangs to go along with the regular glare. I backed off. Way off.

“I told you, don’t upset a hungry vampire,” Midnight whispered. “Old blood bags and that awful stuff you Enclave ponies claim is fruit juice? Not very satisfying!”

“That ‘awful stuff’ was developed for the space program,” I said defensively. “I drank it all the time when I was a foal. It also prevents scurvy!”

“It’s probably great for regular ponies like you,” Midnight said soothingly. I knew she was saying regular pony just to get on my good side, but it still worked. “It’s not great for her. See, drinking blood isn’t really about the amount of blood or the stuff in it. It’s a mystical thing.”

“Really?” Destiny asked. “I never heard this before.”

“Sure.” Midnight put a hoof around my shoulders. “What we really drink is life energy. It’s carried in the blood, like how you need calories and that’s in the food you eat. Even really carefully prepared blood bags only have a tiny bit of energy in them.”

“So she needs…” I trailed off.

“I can hear you!” Emma yelled back. “And what I need is for you to figure out how to undo this stupid curse! I can’t even keep solid food down!”

I winced at that. Clearly, her hearing was improving. I could barely hear anything over the weather but she could make out my whispers from a room away.

“There is a cure, right?” I asked Midnight.

“Rumors say yes,” Midnight admitted. “I don’t know what it might be, so don’t ask me. I never wanted a cure. Especially not now. I plan on outliving this apocalypse and seeing things get back to normal.”

“Sounds nice,” I admitted.

“But!” Midnight said, more firmly. “If there is a cure, it’ll be on the Exodus Black. Just about every vampire of note is onboard, and I’m sure somepony there will know something. Emerald Gleam isn’t the first pony in history to have regrets.”

I nodded. She was right. Oh sure, we were primarily here just to politely ask her mother what the buck she was going to do with bootleg megaspells and ask her nicely not to do whatever she was planning, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also true Emma’s best shot at a cure was going to be onboard. There was no better place to find lore on vampires than in the biggest flying vampire’s castle in the world.

“I think we’re near the eye wall!” Emma yelled back. “Hang onto something!”

I grabbed one of the railings inside the Vertibuck’s hold. Midnight grabbed my butt. The Veribuck slammed through the storm wall with the graceful energy of a flying tank hitting concrete while going close to the speed of sound. I could hear the squeal of twisting metal in every direction around us.

Then the fire alarm went off.

“You know, I’m starting to think we should have sprung for a better ride!” Midnight yelled, clinging to my ass for dear life. Smoke poured into the cabin, and an interior panel popped off its rivets, flying into the opposite bulkhead.

“This is why we took the recon model last time!” Emma shouted over the alarms. The engines surged to full power. “The armor’s worse than useless in bad weather! I’m aiming for that big docking bay! Brace for landing!”

“At least we’re all pretty much immortal!” Midnight said cheerfully.

“Does it work if you burn to death in a fiery crash?” I asked.

“No, but I sure wish it did now that you bring it up!”

I caught a glimpse of where we were going through the hatch into the cockpit. Unlike last time we’d come here, there were running lights now, red and white, outlining a vast hole in the side of the city-sized flying wing.

“Glide slope indicators are online! I’m locked onto the VOR…” Emma flipped switches, and the Vertibuck started gliding sideways. The right engine sound cut out entirely. The transport started trying to pitch over on its side.

Emma yelled in frustration and yanked the controls. My hooves left the deck and only my grip on the railing kept me from becoming flying debris. It was like the gravity spell all over again. The Vertibuck hit something, bounced, then hit again and slid sideways to a halt, tilted to one side. The armored windscreen was cracked so badly it was an opaque spiderweb.

“Out out out!” Emma yelled. “We’re on fire!”

She scrambled out of the cockpit, kicking the emergency release on the hatch. A wash of heat blasted over us, flames pouring in from severed fuel lines and hydraulic oil.

“Destiny, we still got the--?”

“Way ahead of you!” Destiny popped the Cryolator onto my left side, and I sprayed liquid nitrogen onto the flames. The cold didn’t do a whole lot to stop the burning, but displacing the oxygen did. Midnight and Emma bolted the second the fire was gone and I followed behind, spraying the Vertibuck until the ice gun’s tank was empty.

“We’re gonna need to figure out a different way back home,” I said, looking at the wreckage.

“I did the best I could!” Emma snapped. “It wasn’t designed to fly in a hurricane! I’d like to see how well you would have flown it!” She snarled, starting to lunge at me. Midnight grabbed her, holding her back with obvious effort.

Midnight twirled her to the side like they were dancing, redirecting the motion. “Woah, girl! I like the ambition but let’s remember we’re all on the same side!”

“I--” Emma shook her head, looking around in confusion. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

“You’re aching and sore and thirsty and cranky,” Midnight said softly. She put a hoof under Emma’s chin and raised it up so they were looking into each other’s eyes. “You’re under a lot of stress right now, but I promise we’ll get through this together.”

“Er… together?” Emma asked.

“Technically I’m like, ninety percent to blame for what happened to you, even if it was to save your life,” Midnight admitted. “I didn’t expect it to happen any more than you did, but here we are. I’m sixteen (hundred) so I’m old enough to take responsibility.”

“How did you manage to pronounce parenthesis like that?”

“It’s a vampire trick.”

“Let’s stay focused,” Destiny reminded us. “We’re here, and we’re alive.”

“(Bad choice of words.)” Midnight said in an obvious aside.

Destiny groaned. “I mean we need to make sure we’re all ready with a plan!”

“We should be ready for a fight,” I said. “We’ll take the tram to the crew section and hope she’s there. There’s a good chance everypony will be on alert and waiting for us to pop our heads up. Are you going to be okay with fighting against your family, Midnight?”

“I’m ready for anything,” she said solemnly. “If I have to fight them, I will. We can’t bring down the world with our greed.”
“We’ll give them one chance to stand down, then hit them as hard as we can,” Emma said. “It’s going to be brutal, messy, and dangerous.”

The tram pulled into the station on the crew deck, and everything was half-lit, a twilight of fluorescent light and shadow that flickered along with a subtle feeling in the air like a heartbeat. It was probably just my anxiety. There could be anything around the corner. Did Lady of Dark Tides know we were here already? Did she have an ambush lying in wait?

Midnight led the way, taking us down a poorly-lit corridor and past several servants that bowed their heads as we passed, averting their eyes and saying nothing.

Soon we reached a sturdy bulkhead door, solid steel and blocking our path. A vampire stood firmly outside it, arms folded and watching us as we approached.

“Hey,” Midnight said casually.

The vampire silently judged me and Emma for a moment before replying. “They with you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Midnight replied. “That gonna be a problem?”

The vampire considered that, then shook his head. “She killed Once and Twice Crimson and Azure Siaka, right?” He pointed at me. “I remember hearing about it.”

“It was a fair fight,” I said defensively.

“Nah.” The vampire smiled, showing off his fangs. “It was better than fair! You absolutely humiliated the smug bastard. You girls are cool. Head on in.”

The guard slid the door open, and what was beyond hit us like a hurricane.

Bass thudded through the deck, a driving techno beat blasting hard enough that I felt it in my chest. Dozens of ponies danced in strobe lighting on the expansive disco dance floor, and more lounged in the seats around it in the split-level room.

A red plastic cup was pushed into my hooves by a passing server wearing what was very clearly a bridle and saddle with a black moon symbol printed on it.

“Midnight,” I said, having to shout to be heard over the techno. “This isn’t what I expected!”

“Just be cool!” Midnight yelled back. “I forgot it was rave night!”

“You have scheduled rave nights?” Emma shouted.

“Yeah! Every new moon!” Midnight confirmed. “Do you guys see my mom anywhere?”

“Oh hey cool, Midnight, you’re back!” somepony exclaimed. A vampire wearing a cloak made with obscenely brightly-colored fabric printed with palm trees, dragons, and pineapples trotted up to us, saluting with a cup shaped like a stone tiki head.

He waved to the DJ behind the huge bank of turntables and mixers. The music quieted. The aloha vampire pointed to us excitedly.

“That’s great! Hey everypony, Midnight’s here!”

Ponies turned to look and waved a greeting, cheering and raising their glasses. The music restarted, the DJ dropping the bass and kicking everything up a notch.

“Chamomile, Emma, meet The Stallion With The Seven Word Name,” Midnight sighed. “One of my many brothers.”

“Literal brother or…?”

Midnight and Seven looked at each other.

“I can’t remember,” Midnight admitted. “Do you?”

Seven shook his head. “Not really. Hey, you want a drink? You look like you could all use a drink! It’s rave night, you know!”

“I don’t think--” I started

“Actually, yes, that’s a good idea,” Midnight interrupted. “Emma really needs a drink.”

Emma gave Midnight a look.

“You need something to take the edge off,” Midnight said. “No matter what ends up happening, having you at a hundred percent is important.”

The Stallion With The Seven Word Name waved to one of the serving ponies and she pranced over, bowing.

“How may I serve you, master?” she asked.

“Our friend here needs a drink, if you’d be so kind,” Seven said, motioning to Emma. “I’ll let you girls have some privacy.” He winked and walked away, waving his tiki glass at us.

“A drink? From me?” the girl asked.

“I, uh--” Emma started, trying not to stutter. “He shouldn’t have--”

“Oh thank you, glorious dark mistress! Take me into your cold embrace and plunge your long fangs deep into my body!” she tilted her head, exposing her neck. “Make me yours~”

Emma looked at me, scared and confused about the mare literally throwing herself at her.

“Let’s go find somewhere quiet,” Midnight suggested, putting a hoof on Emma’s shoulder. “Chamomile, uh… you’ll be fine here, right? A girl’s first time should be special so…”

“I will be fine. Standing here. Not looking.” I assured her.

Midnight winked at me and led the two away, leaving me there alone in the middle of the club. Well, not exactly alone.

“For the record Chamomile, this isn’t what things were like before the war,” Destiny said.

I scanned over the room, double-checking to make sure we weren’t going to be ambushed by Lady of Dark Tides. Destiny wiggled and popped off my head, floating next to me.

“I’ll watch your back to make sure you don’t get eaten,” she said.

I nodded. “I keep hearing that you didn’t have much of a social life. Maybe you didn’t get invited to parties like this?”

“I was a stick in the mud,” Destiny agreed, giggling a little. “I don’t think I’d enjoy this even if there weren’t vampires everywhere.”

“The vampires make it cooler,” I argued.

“Only because they don’t give off body heat,” Destiny countered.

I put the drink in my hoof to my lips and took a sip without really thinking about what I was doing. I only realized it might be drugged after I had the first sip, and it took another one before I realized it also could have been a cup full of blood. By the time I realized I shouldn’t be drinking it, I was on my fourth sip.

Thankfully it was just spicy tomato juice and a lot of vodka. It was salty and spicy and a little sweet and savory.

“This is pretty good,” I admitted.

“Didn’t anypony ever tell you not to just accept drinks from strangers in a bar?” Destiny asked, very clearly disappointed in my judgment.

“Yes, but I’ve already gotten drugged once, and the odds of it happening twice are like, almost zero,” I countered with perfect logic. I looked around and, empowered by what tasted like very expensive vodka - that is, like nothing at all - I decided to mingle.

I made my way onto the edge of the dance floor and did my best to bust a move. I was way out of my element. I’d spent a lot of my formative years trying really hard to avoid moving too much for fear of breaking everything around me via the art of being really clumsy.

“Can you really dance in that?” one of the vampires asked. She was cute, half my height, and the brightest shade of yellow I’d ever seen. She was practically fluorescent. “That armor looks clunky!”

“I can’t dance without it either,” I replied.

The neon pony laughed. “So are you exclusive to Midnight, or could I borrow a big mare like you for the night?”

“I have to warn you, my blood isn’t drinkable,” I said. “Midnight said it tastes like poison.”

“Darn,” she sighed. “You’ve got really strong life energy.”

“Thanks. Say, have you seen Lady of Dark Tides around?”

“She’s up in the cathedral deck again,” the vampire scoffed. “On rave night! Can you believe it? She’s totally missing out.”

“You have a cathedral deck?” I asked.

“Oh sure! You should see it sometime! It’s really nice if you just want to contemplate the dark mysteries of blood and the night!”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I muttered.

The music shifted into something with an even more driving beat, and the brightly-colored vampire hopped on my back, using me as a moving stage to bust her own, superior moves to my own. The lighting shifted, all the colors fading except red.

“Wooo!” she yelled. “It’s time!”

“Time for what?” I asked. She didn’t get to answer before the sprinklers overhead turned on. Thick crimson drops splattered across my face. All the vampires in the club started cheering.

“WOOOO!” the vampire standing on my back screamed. “Bloodbath!”

“I am gonna need ten regular baths,” I groaned.

“If you ask nicely, there are plenty of ponies in here that will lick you clean!” Midnight shouted. She landed next to me and motioned to the vampire on my back. The little mare hopped off. “You ready to leave? I think I know where my mom went!”

“The cathedral deck,” I said.

“You found out too?” Midnight patted me on the back. “Nice! I know you’re having fun, but we should leave before the blood orgy starts. You know how it is. Next time, right?”

“If I agree with you, can we find a sink so I can wash my face?” I asked.

Midnight laughed and slapped my back a little harder.

“It was really weird,” Emma said for the tenth time. I was still finding streaks of blood in my fur every time I used one of the paper towels we’d grabbed from the supply closet. That and a bottle of water had at least made me feel less crusty. “She was just so… into it! What kind of pony wants to have their neck bitten?”

“Hey, lots of ponies like getting the suck on,” Midnight countered. She relaxed on the tram seat as we sped through the Exodus Black. “You probably feel a lot better, too, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma admitted.

“And it would have been worse if she hadn’t been throwing herself at you?”

“Yes,” Emma sighed.

“There we go, then,” Midnight shrugged. “The first time is always scary and exciting. You just gotta pop that cherry and suck out all the cherry juice and then you’ll be less nervous for the second time! Eventually, it gets normal. Then it gets boring and you spice things up. It’s like any other relationship.”

“Is it just me or did the sprinkler system full of blood seem… unnecessary?” Destiny asked. She settled down around my head, apparently satisfied that I was clean enough to wear her again.

“Wasteful is the word I’d use,” I corrected. “And super messy.”

“You can say the same about everything fun,” Midnight retorted. “You don’t need food that tastes good. You could just eat plain oatmeal and vitamin pills. Yummy!”

“Can we talk about what we’re doing next?” Emma asked. “I’m going to need a lot of time to process my way through everything that happened and decide how much of it is trauma, and in the meantime, I’d like to save the world if that’s okay with everypony else?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’re gonna go talk to Midnight’s mom, and when she inevitably refuses to give up and stand down, we’ll have a big, drawn-out battle with her and it’ll probably end because I fall down on top of her and crush her ribs with my butt.”

“That’s a really specific scenario,” Destiny said.

A tone sounded and I looked up at the scrolling sign. Now arriving at the Cathedral Deck. “Yeah, but with how all our fights go, it’s more likely than anything else.”

The doors of the tram opened, and I tossed the dirty paper towel away. Smoke wafted in. For a moment I feared fire, but then the smell hit me. It smelled like cloves and perfume and flowers.

“Incense?” Emma asked.

“I guess it makes sense,” Destiny mumbled. “This whole deck is built for religious use and ritual spells.”

“Any idea what we should expect?” I asked.

“It’s literally a cathedral and observatory merged into one space,” Destiny replied. “Almost all of it is clockwork and mechanical instead of electric. With really sensitive spellcasting, electronics can cause interference.”

I sighed. “So what you mean is, you built them a megaspell firing pad.”

“It was an interesting challenge, okay? The architecture was fascinating and I enjoyed getting to add a little flair.”

We walked out into a tram station lit by flickering candles. Ornate flourishes of wrought iron and silver made it look like something gothic and ancient. The floor was black marble with specks of white like a field of stars. Gargoyles peered down from the corners, and I could just make out hidden loudspeakers and cameras in them.

“You don’t need to say it,” I told Midnight. “Even I can smell the blood.”

“Yeah, but you might not want to see how it’s being used,” Emma said quietly. She was staring at one of the shadowed walls.

Destiny activated her hornlight, and the light revealed a mural showing wolves hunting down prey animals. It was abstracted enough not to be really disturbing, but I could still sense the panic in the art-deco twists of color that represented rabbits and deer.

The mural itself had become a canvas for another work. Runes were painted over it in blood, and crumpled at the bottom of the mural were two bodies, ponies wrapped up in dark robes that left their necks exposed and faces covered by veils. There was no point checking for a pulse unless they’d found an inventive way to survive having their throats torn out.

Destiny drew glowing lines over the runes in my display, sketching them out.

“These are part of the megaspell,” Destiny said. “But…”

“She must have gone completely insane,” Midnight said. She knelt down next to the crumpled bodies, running a hoof softly over their covered cheeks. “She’s fueling the spell with their lives. But this is just…”

“Monstrous?” Emma suggested.

Midnight stood up, turning without a word and angrily stalking deeper into the cathedral. Black and blue candles lined the path, pillars set into stalagmites of old wax, remnants of the candles that came before them. They didn’t provide quite enough light to see the murals on the walls we passed, so I only caught glimpses. Revels in moonlight. Hunting. Death. They had a real theme going.

“Keep your weapons ready,” Emma cautioned. She stepped over bodies, wincing every time we came across another still form. “I don’t think they’ve been dead for all that long.”

The main hall of the cathedral was beautiful. It was built to make ponies feel small. Not the way a throne room does, that was the wrong scale entirely. Dark marble with traces of silver led to an open space dominated by low seats and a gargoyle-covered fountain burbling with hot, steaming blood. The cathedral’s roof was glass, showing the stars high above us, shining down into the candle-lit space an order of magnitude brighter than they should have been. The cathedral made me feel impossibly, invisibly small against the backdrop of an entire universe.

“It’s quite a masterpiece, isn’t it?” Lady of Dark Tides called out. “The glass is enchanted. Unbreakable, of course, but whenever a pony looks through it, it reshapes itself into a lens. Every single pane is like a telescope, letting a whole congregation enjoy the beauty of the night at the same time in their own ways.”

“Where are you?!” Midnight yelled. “Show yourself!”

“Ara ara~” Lady of Dark Tides breathed. She revealed herself among the gargoyles on the fountain, levitating away from it and smiling down at us. “I was wondering if you’d come. The Grand Eclipse is coming, and this is the perfect place to watch it from!”

She motioned to the ceiling, the glass roof showing the stars, clouds pressing in around the edges of the eye. I could just make out the new moon, black against black.

“You used us to get the eclipse megaspell,” I said.

“Do you expect me to feel ashamed of that?” Lady of Dark Tides asked. “You enjoyed the hunt, I enjoyed the result. I tracked the damn thing down ages ago, but some absolute tart had gone and encrypted the thing! You got me the key, and for that, I am very grateful. I’d offer you a reward, but I can tell you’re not interested.”

“If you use that spell, everypony will die,” I told her.

“Some ponies will die,” Lady agreed, nodding. “But they’ve proven they can survive anything! They’ll hide away in their Stables and little cities. This time, they’ll be guided by their betters.”

“Meaning you,” I guessed.

“Not just me,” Lady laughed. “I’m not some megalomaniac! I don’t want to be the sole ruler of the world. All of us! Together. Normal ponies are prey. They always have been, even if they pretended they weren’t. We were never equal, and it was silly to pretend we were.”

She gestured at the crumpled, wrapped bodies, lifting them from the ground with shadowy tendrils of magic. The hooded ponies danced around her like marionettes.

“This is what they exist for! They are tools to fulfill our desires! We feed on them when we hunger. We play with them when we’re bored. And when we need to fuel our magic, we take their lives.”

“You have to stop,” Midnight warned. “Can’t you see how crazy this is?”

“You were never ambitious enough,” Lady sighed. “And the way you play with your food is shameful. I don’t mind you having a pet, but they should be kept on a leash.”

Shadows surged around my hooves and tendrils erupted into the air, grabbing at my neck and dragging me down, trying to force me to my knees. Destiny sent a surge of magic through my armor that I felt crawl down my spine and the tendrils snapped, the edges dissolving like salt in water.

“Impertinent!” Lady chuckled. “Usually I admire that in a pony.”

“We have to stop her before she can activate the spell!” Emma called out.

“Oh, stop panicking,” Lady chided, waving her hoof dismissively. “A megaspell like the Grand Eclipse isn’t something I can set off by just pressing a button and watching the fireworks. It’s a massive, complicated arrangement.”

I let out a breath I’d been holding. The tension seemed to break.

“That’s why I started the ritual hours ago,” Lady said with the grin of somepony putting a knife in their best friend’s back and twisting.

I hadn’t really noticed the rumble of the storm until it faded. It had been a constant background roar, white noise that mixed with the distant sounds of engines and machines. The clouds swirling overhead parted, and we could see the whole sky clearly, practically from horizon to horizon.

The magic roared. The sky wheeled. The stars raced from west to east, the moon drifting like a lurking predator, the black night turning red as the sun tried to peek above the horizon and was blotted out, the moon covering it up. The surge of motion in the heavens stopped, and everything was left dark, the only sign of the sun a coronal ring surrounding the black orb.

“It’s beautiful,” Lady sighed. “Nightmare Moon’s final legacy. It’s what she would have wanted. True eternal night! To think the zebras wanted to use it as a weapon against Celestia and didn’t even see what they were really making!”

“We have to end this before it’s permanent,” Destiny said. “If we can rewrite this while the ritual is ongoing, maybe--”

“You’ll do nothing!” Lady of Dark Tides snapped. “If you want to enjoy existing in the new world, you’ll sit like a good pet and stop trying to ruin my moment of triumph! Even at my age you don’t get to enjoy them very often, you know.”

“Time for plan C,” Midnight said. She pulled out her glass-bladed dagger and flipped it around in her hoof, vanishing in a blur of motion. She slammed into Lady blade-first, forcing the levitating vampire back. “The C is for Chamomile-style!”

For a second I thought she might have gotten her. Lady held the dagger back with the tip of her bare hoof, stopping the magical blade effortlessly. Lady’s eyes flashed with red light, and she used her free hoof to bat Midnight away like she was swatting a fly, the younger vampire flying into the cathedral wall hard enough to shatter the stone facade.

Lady turned her crimson gaze to me. I didn’t have time to react, and my body didn’t move on its own this time. She might as well have teleported with how fast she appeared in my face. A hoof hit my chest and I slammed back into one of the ornate pillars supporting the glass roof, iron spikes punching through the armor and an inch into the flesh of my back.

“Chamomile!” Emma yelled. She glanced at me, then opened fire on Lady, lasers pelting the ancient vampire.

Lady of Dark Tides shielded her eyes, but it seemed like it was more from the glare than being worried about the beams themselves, the magical attacks glancing away from her alabaster fur without leaving more than a few scuff marks. She gestured at Emma and seemed surprised when nothing happened.

“Well, how about that,” Lady chuckled. “You had yourself turned into one of our kindred. I’d say you were the smart one, but you thought it was a good idea to shoot at your betters!”

Lady spread her bat wings and blurred sideways, flashing past Emma. The rifle on Emma’s left side sparked and exploded, the power cell ruptured. Emma was thrown back by the blast, rolling on the ground with her shoulder wounded and what was left of her power armor smoking.

I struggled and managed to pull myself free from the spikes impaling me, charging at Lady of Dark Tides and punching as hard as I could with my right hoof. It was a clean hit, smacking her face and almost dislocating my shoulder with the impact. I might as well have punched a boulder.

“Really? You’re covered in guns and armor and your first instinct is a boxing match?” Lady joked. I threw a second punch, and she took it on the chin, not flinching. With a disinterested motion, she twisted the shadows around me again, lifting me up by the neck. They reached through the armor, starting to strangle me.

“We might be in trouble!” Destiny yelped. I felt magic surge again, but instead of overcharging the armor again, she fired a blast from her horn, hitting Lady of Dark Tides in the face.

Lady cried out in surprise, backing away and shaking her head, blinking and trying to clear her vision. The shadows let go of me, and I sucked in a big breath.

“Annoyances!” Lady roared. “Pathetic mortal lovers!”

“Oh my stars Mom, shut up!” Midnight yelled, appearing next to Lady and stabbing the transparent blade into her mother’s side.

Lady of Dark Tides turned on her, enraged, grabbing her and flying them both into the wall, shattering another bloody mural. Lady tore herself free of the knife, the wound closing near-instantly, then kicked Midnight while she was down, practically nailing her through the wall.

Emma got up, shaking herself off. I ran past her, forcing my wired reflexes to activate. The world turned cold and slow, red light from above fading to black and white. I got into Lady’s face and I was so arrogant that for a moment I thought I was outspeeding her. I snapped my knife into place and slashed at her.

Lady knocked it aside, clearly seeing it coming. We traded half a dozen blows before she spun and kicked at me, and my momentum from the charge made it impossible to dodge. The world snapped into focus with me punted aside. It had only lasted a second at most. I smashed through a formation of candles that had been allowed to melt and pool into geological layers of wax.

That second was enough for Midnight to get up and deliver a solid kick herself, knocking her mother down and sending her skidding across the deck, hooves sparking on the marble like they were made of flint.

“Ow,” I mumbled. “Destiny, give me the Junk Jet.”

“How annoying--” Lady started. A metal apple landed at her hooves and exploded in a ball of fire and shrapnel.

Emma panted and spat out the grenade pin. “That’s for wrecking my gun,” she said.

Lady of Dark Tides flew into the air, her ornate dress absolutely a ruin at this point, silk burned and torn until she was just wearing scraps.

“I’ll flay all of you alive!” Lady hissed.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I fired the Junk Jet. A broken apple tree branch, something I’d grabbed way back when I found the dried-out orchard, whistled through the air and slammed into Lady’s chest and maybe if I hadn’t given her warning first, it would have hit her heart. Instead, I think I got her liver.

“You little…” she gasped, grabbing the crooked branch. Screaming, she tore it free, blood pouring from the wound. It was so deeply red it looked black in the light coming from the eclipse. “I am The Lady of Dark Tides Clad in Sorrowful Shawls! And I have had enough!”

The shadows raged, a wave that caught all of us and tossed us to the far end of the cathedral. Everything went black, and when it cleared, I didn’t see Lady anywhere.

“Where did she go?!” I demanded.

“She scampered,” Midnight said, pointing to a trail of fresh black blood. “She probably went to find something to kill us with. If she already started the ritual she doesn’t have to stay here and foalsit it.”

“You need to go after her,” Destiny said. “I can try to undo this ritual.”

“But…” I frowned.

“I can’t fight and you can’t reverse a megaspell!” Destiny snapped. “Go! Even if I can stop this, she’ll do it again if you can’t find her!”

Chapter 96 - I Might Survive

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked, stepping off the tram. “She could have gone anywhere. Why here?”

Emma flew past me, landing silently and looking down at her own hooves in surprise at the graceful landing. She made a few deliberate stomps as if making sure she wasn’t somehow silenced or deaf.

“Good question,” she said, slipping into the engineer’s booth on the platform. She started tapping the keys and looking at a pale screen, the green light flickering across her features. “This is definitely where her tram stopped. We’re only a minute behind her.”

“She’s still bleeding,” Midnight noted. She lowered her nose to the deck, sniffing. “It’s not much, but it’s persistent. That means it’s a really serious wound. Vampires aren’t exactly bleeders.”

“What’s this deck for?” Emma asked. “The tram system has it labeled as Engineering Core Containment.”

“I’ve never come down here,” Midnight said. “I’m not really great with all this new tech stuff and, no offense, all the maintenance was supposed to be done by the servants.”

A too-familiar feeling pulsed through me. It felt like a distant engine starting up with the drive shaft connected directly to my heart. I touched my chest.

“I think I might know,” I said. “But I hope I’m wrong.”

Emma frowned. “Chamomile, we don't have time for vague and ominous statements!”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I think this is where the SIVA core is contained.” I walked past Midnight, following a growing throb in my body. It was slow and radiative, the tide going in and out and forcing my blood to surge with it.

“She could use it to scuttle the ship!” Emma gasped.

“If that’s all she wanted, she could have gone to the bridge or engineering and done it faster,” I said. I could almost picture the blueprints in my head. More of Destiny’s memories leaking in. She’d spent so much of her life thinking only about the Exodus Arks that it was bleeding through from the memory orbs and brain implant and just how much time we’d spent together.

“Is it too late to get Destiny to help with the technical stuff?” Midnight joked. “I know, I know. I just hate having to deal with multiple disasters at the same time.”

“You get used to it when you spend time around Chamomile,” Emma retorted. “She’s the world’s most powerful magnet for trouble.”

I shrugged mildly. “If it makes you feel better, Star Swirl told me in most timelines I’ve died by now.”

We came to a security door, and the manual release had been twisted and broken by some great force. The steel looked almost melted by the shearing forces, and the door’s lock blared an unhappy red.

“Oh no!” Midnight gasped. “We’re locked out! Whatever shall we do?”

I rolled my eyes and stabbed the door, cutting through the locks with a shower of sparks. The red light flickered and went out as I murdered the little machine. A swift kick bent it out of the frame enough to yank it open wide enough for us to get into the next room.

“That was a little crude, wasn’t it?” Lady of Dark Tides called out. She was on the other side of the roughly cubical room. It was absurdly large, at least twenty meters to a side, with armored walls and a catwalk around the center, where something like a forge or reactor stood, thrumming with intent.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it,” I warned.

She glanced up at me. “You know, for a mortal, you really impressed me, Chamomile. I admire the way you’ve struggled to overcome your limitations! Using SIVA to rebuild your body from the inside out! I admit, it had never occurred to me to use it like that!”

The containment vessel hissed, steam erupting from a widening crack splitting it in two.

“Be flattered! I’m taking some inspiration from you!” she shouted. The steel doorway opened, revealing a swirling mass of dark and light. From where I stood, it looked like a black hole, an event horizon warped around a dense central mass, energy spiraling toward the center in a torrent.

Lady of Dark Tides jumped into it, laughing maniacally. The well of energy ate into her body, a school of piranha peeling her body away until it vanished in the swarm.

“That was anticlimactic,” Midnight said. “I wasn’t expecting her to commit suicide, even if she was a dramatic bitch about everything.”

Pain hit me, hard enough to knock me to my knees. My bones felt red-hot, every inch of wire in my body burning and electric.

“What’s wrong?!” Emma asked, kneeling down next to me. “Chamomile!”

“Massive SIVA reaction!” I gasped. “I haven’t felt this since the bucking Exodus Green!”

“What can I do to help?” Emma asked.

I shook my head, forcing myself up. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I had to repeat it a few more times. If I said it enough it would come true. That’s how wishes work. The pain kept throbbing. I had to push past it, even if it was hissing around my whole body.

The dark mass twisted, the air around it distorting. At first, it was formless and shapeless, just a blob pulsing and shifting liquidy.

“Shoot it!” Midnight yelled back at us. “Maybe you can kill it!”

Emma nodded and fired, launching beams from her single rifle. They vanished into the dark swarm.

“Stop. You’re just feeding it,” I said, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

“What else are we supposed to do?” Emma asked. “We have to try something!”

“I’ve got a weapon that can hurt it,” I said.

“Great!” Midnight exclaimed, clapping me on the back. “Go get her, Chamomile!”

“The only problem is I need some live SIVA to make it.”

Midnight thought for a second, then clapped me on the back harder. “Right! So, like I said, get in there and do your thing, disaster pony!”

She wasn’t technically wrong. That was a big pool of active, living SIVA. I’d also just watched somepony jump into it and get torn apart. I didn’t get a chance to make a bad decision, though. The shapeless blob reformed into a screaming face. The wail started at a pitch too low to hear and slowly became a roar of pain and rage, the features made of molten metal, a sea of micromachines trying to remember what a pony looked like.

The head started to tear itself free, bursting out of the floating swarm halfway before stopping, the SIVA sea shifting. It happened so quickly I only caught it in flashes, a movie in fast-forward of cells dividing and specializing. A scaffolding of steel bone and carbon-fiber muscle started building on itself, the SIVA tearing apart the containment unit in search of fuel.

Emma shot at it again, the beams sinking into the growing cancer of machinery to no effect. It reacted almost instantly, the spine lengthening into a long tail and lashing out, segments of metal bone crushing through the bulkheads and narrowly missing us.

It resembled an embryo now, but with Lady of Dark Tides’ screaming face biting at the air and emerging from its ribs. The creature’s second head lengthened, stretching out like a distorted dragon’s face, too unformed to even open its eyes, but it could open its mouth, already filled with fangs only seconds after birth. A deep green light grew in its throat.

“Get out of here!” I yelled, shoving Emma back through the damaged doorway. Midnight jumped over my back in her scramble to leave.

The awful baby thing screeched and threw up a spray of gummy blobs. The green gel splattered across the bulkheads and deck, barely missing us. The metal dissolved everywhere it touched, melting into a foul sludge. The segmented, skeletal tail smashed through the weakened wall.

“That thing can’t fit into these hallways,” Emma said. “It might be able to wreck everything around it, but it’s trapped in there!”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “We should back off to the tram station and get Destiny. We’ll actually make a plan instead of going at this thing half--”

The corridor crumpled around me, collapsing like a can being crushed. The walls and floor pinned me tight, and it was like being in an avalanche. Up, down, left, right, all of it got mixed up. I was tumbling and moving and I couldn’t tell how or where or what direction I was going in.

My right hoof was solidly pinned, metal crimped around it like a hoofcuff. I struggled to free it, then let the blade inside it swing free, the awkward angle meaning the tip cut into my side as it deployed, going through the Exodus Armor and the crystal-fiber undersuit before digging a painful cut almost all the way down to my ribs. It was able to cut through the steel burying me alive even more easily, and with a few twists I was able to free my hoof and start getting myself loose.

Almost all the pressure was around my hips. I couldn’t see back there in the tight space, so I carefully felt with my left hoof, finding a pipe acting like a ridge and applying extra pressure. I carefully cut one end of the pipe blindly, and everything slipped. It took a moment in the darkness for me to realize forward was down and I’d been hanging by my hips, my fat butt stuck in place.

I fell, breaking out of the metal and into a torrent of wind and cold air. My wings spread on pure instinct, nearly quickly enough to keep me from falling on my face on the wet steel deck under me.

“I’m outside?” I asked, confused, coughing and looking around in the crimson-red light of the eclipse above us. Destiny was apparently still struggling with that spell. I checked behind me. It looked like whole decks of the ship had been caught in a geological event, strata of rooms and corridors caught in a volcanic eruption.

“THERE YOU ARE!” The roar rattled my bones. It was full of energy in more ways than one, like a command to die being shot straight into my limbic system.

Talons slammed into the deck, all smooth black carbon and steel. Armored panels crumpled under the force, enough to shake me off my hooves. I stumbled back and tripped over debris exactly the way a pony shouldn’t when they were already up to their necks in trouble, ending up on my back and looking up at a biomechanical horror.

“Aw buck,” I muttered.

Lady of Dark Tides chuckled. Her voice sounded amplified, with the echoing tone of a powerful sound system. She was still growing, gunmetal-blue steel and black wrought iron twisting into a slim, agile form almost entirely covered in serrated-edged carbon-fiber scales. Horns curled forward around the thing’s head and fanged, lipless maw. A distorted, enlarged version of Lady’s face still emerged from between its ribs, like she’d taken the place of the great beast’s heart.

“NOT A BAD LOOK!” Lady roared, cackling. She lifted one talon and looked at it like she was checking her hooficure. “I COULD GET USED TO THIS!”

“DRACO, give me whatever you’ve got for armor-piercing,” I whispered. The gun beeped and flashed a green light. I pulled the trigger. It fired with more kickback than usual, the sound hard and high and reminding me of a blacksmith’s hammer hitting hot metal. The shell hit the dragon between the eyes and broke through the carbon-fiber scales, burrowing inside.

“RUDE!” Lady snapped. She swiped at me with the back of her talon, batting me across the Exodus Black’s hull. “THAT STUNG!”

She was regenerating so quickly I could see the bullet hole closing, broken scales falling away to be replaced by new ones and then immediately being reinforced by a second layer, a crown of jagged-edged carbon plates doubling and redoubling the armor.

“Okay, that’s going to become a problem,” I said to myself. The impact hadn’t really hurt me, but only because Lady hadn’t intended it to kill. She was a predator playing with prey.

“I CAN SEE YOU TRYING TO COME UP WITH A PLAN!” Lady teased. “WHY DON’T YOU TRY ANOTHER WOODEN STAKE?” She posed, exposing her chest. The skeletal head of the dragon was cast in a permanent smirk, somehow even the bone structure looking smug.

“Stop being a creep, Mom!”

Midnight crashed into the dragon’s back, hitting its neck halfway down and latching on, stabbing at the underside with her glass blade, the runes inside the crystalline edge glowing red and green. The blade penetrated deeply, but I couldn’t tell if Midnight was hitting anything critical. Was there even anything there to hit?

“Chamomile, are you okay?” Emma asked, landing next to me. “You got cut off from us when the decks collapsed!”

“I’m not dead yet,” I said. “I can’t say that’s gonna keep being true unless we find a way to be really clever really quickly.”

“STOP THAT!” Lady snarled, trying to grab Midnight. She was too slow, the vampire dodging her clumsy grabs and finding a new place to stab. “GET OFF ME!”

The dragon spread her wings, the scalloped edges ragged and uneven. She started beating her wings, kicking up a hurricane-force wind out of nowhere. Dozens of her scales came loose, shattering and turning into carbon-fiber needles that were carried by the storm in a tornado of razor-sharp edges.

I covered my face and yelped, turning away and trying to shield Emma with my body. The slim stiletto needles sliced into me, a dozen long splinters painfully finding my flesh. I lost my footing on the deck and tumbled in the wind, carried hundreds of feet and rolling on steel and then glass, coming to a rest and bleeding from way too many tiny cuts.

“Okay, that sucked,” I groaned, into the cold glass under me, my own blood making it slick under my hooves. I looked down into a familiar room. I was standing on the cathedral roof. Destiny looked up at me from far below. I waved.

“That wasn’t great,” Emma groaned. I turned around. She was right behind me, also lying on the glass, and she was in even worse shape than I was. I’d blocked some of the shrapnel but not all of it. A small forest of splinters had gotten into her flank, turning her cutie mark into a pin cushion.

Midnight landed next to me, hitting the glass back-first hard enough to crack the thick panes of supposedly unbreakable glass. Apparently that warranty had expired at some point between the end of the world and the dragon attack. The entire roof of the cathedral groaned. Midnight opened her visor and tried to get up, stopped, groaned, then pulled her entire sword out of her stomach, the glass blade impaling her all the way through.

“You know, in stories heroes always kill these things with magic swords,” she said, tossing her blade aside. “Fucking thing is absolutely useless! Bae Wolf killing monsters with his bare hooves, more like my fat flank!”

“HOW CUTE! ALL OF YOU ARE GOING TO GET TO DIE TOGETHER!” Lady cackled, flying above us. “I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS AGES AGO!”

“Killed me or turned into a monster?!” Midnight shouted up at her, coughing up blood with the effort.

The massive dragon delicately put a talon to its maw. “ARA ARA~ I WAS ALWAYS A MONSTER!” A green light started glowing somewhere deep inside it, moving up through its body and the long neck, fangs parting to reveal glowing liquid plasma inside, flowing and surging and acting like energy and oil at the same time.

The color of the sky changed. I thought I was just blacking out or about to die. The red turned to bright blue. The world tilted. I could feel the magic working, and for an instant I was connected to the celestial mechanisms, a glimpse inside the biggest and most complex clockwork in the universe. Something was stuck, held in place. The obstruction shattered, and the gears started turning again.

The noonday sun was blinding and warm and welcoming. The cold glass under me started to warm up. It would have been pleasant, if not for the screaming.

“Aw buck! Buck!” Emma yelled. “Ow! Ow!” Smoke poured from her body, a slow fire crawling across her body along with the bright sunlight.

“Emma!” I yelled, getting up and having absolutely no idea how to help.

“I got her!” Midnight yelled, stumbling over and shielding Emma’s body with outstretched wings.

Above us, the great black dragon screeched. The carbon scales flaked away and burned in the bright sunlight. Lady of Dark Tides’ outstretched wings exploded in a burst that reminded me of flash paper, sending her down to the deck and impacting right at the edge of the cathedral’s roof. The metal frame twisted with her weight and the already-cracked glass shattered, half of Lady’s massive body flopping down inside the ship. I had to roll to my hooves, ignoring the pain of the shrapnel inside me and diving clear of the collapse. Midnight swept Emma up in her hooves and intentionally let herself fall, carrying her down into the shadows.

Lady groaned, the dragon’s body smoldering, smoke rising from the surface.

“Why did that work?” I mumbled.

“I see you’ve let things get out of hoof again,” Destiny said, floating up next to me. The ghost looked at Lady, then me. “It seems with a vampire as the SIVA core, it inherits their weaknesses. Interesting. The curse must get transmitted along the thaumatic near-field matrix.”

Lady started to move, slowly. I could see SIVA healing over the wounds with great scabs of reclaimed, puffy carbon and steel.

“It only stunned her,” I said. “We need to put her down. Can you give me the Valkyrie specs when I touch her? The healing parts should still be active SIVA, so…”

“It’s controlled SIVA, it might infect you or just tear you apart to grow!”

“Can’t know until we try!” I grabbed her and pulled the helmet over my head before she could protest. I flew up and dove down onto the dragon’s back, plunging both forehooves into the healing, cancerous mass. Destiny played the data file, and I let it flow through me, trying not to focus on it, but just to see it, to let the complex multidimensional image talk to the micromachines. The more I saw it the more I thought I could almost understand it. I caught bits and pieces of it that connected. Imagine a book written on a three-dimensional page, with each word having depth that extended down into another space, and trying to read it from two-dimensional slices.

I felt something solid, and pulled my hooves back, dragging two glowing spears with me, the edges still firming up. The Exodus Armor had been eaten away all the way to my fetlocks, and I could see erosion around my hooves where the black dragon’s SIVA had started corroding my body. I jumped away into the air, holding one Valkyrie in each forehoof.

“That almost went very badly,” Destiny said. “I think everything in contact with your body was co-opted by your override signal.”

“I got lucky,” I sighed.

“Remember to thank Raven for her extra command codes if we ever see the Exodus White again,” Destiny said. “They’re what made that mess work.”

“I’ll thank her after I take care of this.” I hefted one of the javelins.

Lady of Dark Tides moved faster than I thought something that size could, the tip of her tail hitting me like a flanged mace almost as big as my whole body. One of the javelins flew out of my grip, and I only barely held onto the other one when I went down into the deck.

“Ow,” I gasped. It was a severe understatement. The armor was crushed in on my side, and something was horribly wrong with my right wing. Every tendon felt like it had snapped, and it hung loose at my side. The only reason I knew it was still attached was the sheer amount of pain it was still in. Everything was black around the edges. I needed to find the dragon, but it was so hard to see anything. I knew my eyes were working, I just couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think properly.

“Chamomile--”

“Tell me later!” I groaned. Relief flowed through me. I recognized the hazy, warm feeling. “Med-X?” My vision immediately started to clear up, taking me down from that edge of unconsciousness.

“Double dose. Until we can get the armor off and set that correctly you don’t want a healing potion.”

The deck creaked under me. I had to force myself up again. My body knew it should have been allowed to stay down at least twice now, and it wasn’t happy about being forced into motion. Every step probably meant another day resting in a hospital bed.

The black dragon stood up on its hind legs, tearing itself free from the hull. It was clearly still in pain, every motion coming with scales cracking and creaking in the sun.

“YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!” Lady of Dark Tides roared. I took aim at the dragon’s skeletal head, then thought better of it and adjusted down at the face emerging from the dragon’s chest. It was flattened and twisted, the rest of the dragon encroaching on it.

“It’s what I’m good at,” I said quietly, unable to get enough breath for a louder quip with the armor crumpled in on my side and trying to squeeze my liver and kidneys.

I threw the Valkyrie. Lady didn’t try to dodge. I don’t know if the sunlight was blinding or if she just didn’t think a spear would be dangerous. The glowing tip of the spear hit just to the left of her face and shattered, releasing its payload.

Lady’s twisted expression changed to shock, then terror. She screamed through two throats. Orange embers ate through her body, working deep into her core and rending metal apart.

“NO!” she screeched, the dragon falling back, clutching at its chest with a talon, and trying to take to the air. It stumbled and fell, vomiting up thick green acid that smoked and ate into the Exodus Black’s hull. The smell was horrible, burning the hair inside my nostrils before Destiny could shut off air circulation.

The dragon hacked up more of that awful brew all over itself, acrid clouds surrounding it in a purple haze.

“Spectral analysis says it’s some kind of molecular acid. I’m seeing fluorine and sulfur and Celestia knows what else!”

“It spat that stuff at us before in the containment room,” I said, taking a step back. I could see the deck turning into a slurry of tar and slag under the dragon’s flailing form. With a loud, wet crack, the dragon fell through, tumbling down inside the ship. The constant itch and pulse of the SIVA reaction faded to nothing.

“Buck!” Destiny swore. “We need to go after her!”

“Right,” I sighed. I felt things starting to go dark around the edges again. A wave of relief hit me, and I shook it off, grabbing the second Valkyrie from where it had fallen and staying clear-headed enough not to walk over to the hole full of acid and angry dragons, but instead to the cathedral roof, bracing myself and jumping down.

I spread my one good wing and tried to slow my fall. I only succeeded in going into a tight, dizzying spiral and felt my lunch start to rise up in my throat before--

“Woah!” Midnight intercepted me halfway down, catching me and helping me the rest of the way. “Are you okay?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. “How’s Emma?” I winced when we landed, limping on the deck with the spear tucked under my good wing.

“I’m okay,” Emma said weakly, from the shadows at the edge of the room. She waved. In the half-light I could tell she was pinker than usual. “Did you get her?”

“I think so, but I want to see the body myself,” I said, pointing. “That way.”

“Hold on,” Destiny said, popping free. “I’ll get the doors. I think I know where she would have landed.

Destiny took us down a side corridor, distracting me by talking about the Exodus Black’s design and how it differed from the other ships. My body felt hot and messed up and I was only half-listening to what she said. Even though I’d felt the SIVA reaction die, dread was still making my skin crawl without the help of any micromachines.

The ghost opened one final door, and revealed a black, smoking pit leading deeper into the ship. She hesitated and peered over the edge. “Oh no,” she groaned.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure I see sunlight at the bottom of the hole,” she said.

“You’re telling me it ate through the entire Exodus Black?” Midnight asked. “How?”

“It must not have just been acid,” Destiny said. “If it contained a thaumatic charge and SIVA programmed to rebuild the solvent after it reacted… it’s possible.”

“What’s it going to do, eat all the way to the core of the planet?” I grumbled.

“Maybe,” Destiny said. “At least until it hits magma. We know SIVA can’t survive that from experience.”

I nodded. “We should still--” I gasped and fell to my knees, Midnight not even able to keep me from hitting the deck. Everything started going black, and this time it didn’t stop until I was completely out.

I groaned and rolled over in bed. A few timeless, thoughtless minutes later, I rolled over again. I started to wake up enough to realize I hadn’t been awake and managed to sit up.

“Where…?” I mumbled. It was dark. Not so dark I was worried I was blind or anything, just the regular darkness of a room with most of the lights off.

“Sickbay on the Exodus Black,” somepony said, glowing eyes peering out of the shadows.

“Hey, Midnight.” I waved to her.

Midnight groaned and turned on the lights. She was standing on a chair to make herself look taller and loom more. “You were supposed to freak out and think I was scary!” She huffed and hopped down, opening the door. “Hey, girls! She’s awake!”

Emma ran in and hugged me, squeezing tight. Destiny floated in behind her, nodding to me.

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“Three days,” Emma said, letting me go. “I was worried about you. It’s good to see you awake.”

“That’s longer than usual.”

“We kept you sedated so you could heal,” Emma explained. “No offense, but everypony was sure you’d do something stupid, and since they had to sedate you anyway for surgery and you looked so peaceful…” she trailed off.

“Surgery?” I asked.

“They had to do some minor surgery,” Destiny said. “It was… touch and go. It should have been simple, but your body is…” she trailed off.

“A mess?” I guessed.

“No, it’s fairly well-organized. It’s not that you’re falling apart.” She floated from side to side, and now that she had that ghostly veil on, I could see the suggestion of her neck and back that made it more clear she was pacing. “It’s more like… the insides of a rockodile and a chimera are different, right?”

I nodded. I’d seen diagrams.

“It’s the same thing. It means a lot more digging around and some surprise arteries and veins, and vampire doctors get very distracted by unexpected sprays of blood. It took longer than expected to reattach the tendons in your wing so we could give you healing potions.”

I carefully extended my right wing now that I knew I could, and found it in surprisingly good shape. It was a little stiff, but I’d also been lying down on it.

“Thanks,” I said. “And thank you, Midnight, for not letting anypony drain me dry while I was down.”

“I’d never let anypony else do that,” Midnight joked. “I’m claiming you for myself if your blood ever becomes palatable. With my mom gone, I’m the new Captain, so nopony else is going to risk my awesome wrath.”

“Good to know. So does the Captain have any big plans?” I asked.

“Just one,” Midnight said. “Keep far away from Equestria.”

“Until they’re ready,” Emma said quickly. “Most of the vampires will go back into stasis. There aren’t really enough servants to keep them active.”

“Especially not after all the ones my Mom killed,” Midnight growled. “She was so short-sighted! It’s not like we have an infinite number of them!” She sighed and clapped her hooves. “So! The only thing to do is wait out the lean years. I’m not going to unleash vampires on the wasteland until they’re ready.”

“And I’m going to help with that,” Emma said. “I need to learn how to be… what I am now.”

“What about a cure?” I asked.

“There probably isn’t one,” Emma sighed. “And… it’s not so bad.” She gave me a weak smile with just a little fangyness to it.

“Sorry,” I mumbed. I pulled her into a second hug.

“It’s not goodbye, it’s just until later,” she reminded me. “I know all I have to do to find you is look for trouble and you’ll be in the middle of it.”

I laughed and nodded. “That’s true.”

“You’re making it sound like I’m gonna force her to leave,” Midnight groused. “Chamomile, you could stay if you want. We’ve got plenty of bunk space. We also have some bunks big enough for two or three ponies!” She winked.

“Nah,” I sighed. “It’s gonna bug me if I don’t find out what happened to the Black Dragon, and somepony has to go back and tell everypony what happened. Plus…” I shrugged. “I have family out there somewhere. I need to make sure my Dad and Cube know I’m alive.”

“You’ll find them,” Emma said.

“Er… speaking of getting back,” I said. “How am I supposed to do that? We lost the VertiBuck.”

“I’ve got a great idea!” Midnight said.

“Never riding in one of those again,” I mumbled.

They’d strapped me into a waverider glider and shot me and Destiny out of a torpedo tube at something approaching five times the speed of sound. It was the kind of ride a pony technically recovering from surgery should not have taken.

I’d left it with the military as a bad replacement for the VertiBuck. General Ravioli wasn’t happy with what had happened, but I hadn’t actually signed for the transport, and Emerald Gleam wasn’t here for him to chew out. Not that he would. He’d said a few things about how we were irresponsible and how all the clocks had to be adjusted everywhere in the Enclave after our stunt, but he’d also said we were the bravest ponies he’d met in a generation.

There’d been talk of a medal. Emma was getting some kind of promotion, which might have been posthumous -- nopony was sure how it worked if you got turned into a vampire. It was one of the few cases where there wasn’t already a form for it.

Eventually, the paperwork and forms and debriefing had ended. Everything had been stamped classified and top secret, and I was given very explicit orders not to talk about what happened to anypony.

It had taken a few days, and it had been long enough that I was really starting to feel alone.

Emma was gone. I’d really bucked up her life. I probably wasn’t going to get to see Midnight again either, and both of us knew it.

I downed the glass of vodka in front of me. I was thirsty, and even if it was caused by a vampire, it wasn’t the kind of thirst blood would fix.

The bartender, who had the gruff look of a retired drill sergeant, put another glass in front of me. I took a sip without looking and gagged.

“What the buck was that?” I coughed. “It’s the worst drink I ever had!”

“Rye whisky, lemon juice, bitters, and ginger beer,” the bartender growled. “Don’t blame me, the mare down there ordered it special for you.”

“Huh?” I sat up and looked, just as the golden-coated mare sat down next to me. She adjusted her visor sunglasses and smirked.

“Hello there, Chamomile,” Quattro said. “It’s been a while. Let me buy you a drink.”

Chapter 97: Megalith Agnus Dei

“This should wash some of that taste out of your mouth,” Quattro said, cracking open the ice-cold bottle and pouring vodka into the glass in front of me. The bottle must have been expensive - it was pre-war and still sealed. Sort of a waste since vodka wasn’t the kind of drink a pony sipped.

“You want to get me involved in something shady,” I said. I took the glass and downed it. It was extremely strong. “And you’re trying to get me drunk enough to say yes.”

“Chamomile, I’m proud of you,” Quattro said. “You really have grown up a lot since the last time I saw you!”

She pulled me into a hug, squeezing tight before letting me sink back into the chair. We’d gone back upstairs to the room I was renting. It was a small space and just barely large enough for the bed, a small table, and two uncomfortable chairs.

“How did you find us?” Destiny asked.

“I’ve got friends everywhere,” Quattro said. “Actually I was pretty sure you were dead. I owe somepony twenty bits!” She smiled and refilled my glass. “Truth is, you stick out. All it takes is some airponies complaining in a bar about special forces dragging them on secret missions and… well, that kind of story would get my attention even if you weren’t involved.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “So who are you working for these days? Isn’t that a military uniform?”

She looked down at herself like she needed to confirm it.

“It’s not that hard to get a uniform. You’ve got one.” She smirked. It wasn’t like I was wearing it right now. It took me a moment to remember I’d gotten a uniform last time I’d worked with Polar Orbit, where he’d pushed half-legitimate paperwork through.

I gave Quattro a flat look.

“It’s good to see you, but if you’re going to keep being mysterious…” Destiny trailed off and let that hang in the air along with her floating form.

“I get the message,” Quattro said, raising her hooves in defeat. She sat down and poured herself a drink. “As you might have guessed, I didn’t enlist. This uniform just makes things easier. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things are tense right now.”

I drank some of the very fine vodka and nodded. “I heard a little bit. General Ravioli said Neighvarro and Thunderhead aren’t playing nice with each other.”

“That’s more or less right,” Quattro said. “The details aren’t important right now, but having the wrong uniform on will get you in a lot of trouble. The uniforms you got from Polar Orbit, for example, are part of Thunderhead’s new military dress code.”

“...And this base is controlled by Neighvarro,” I said.

“Every base is controlled by Neighvarro,” Quattro corrected. “Officially, Thunderhead doesn’t even have a navy. What they do have is a monopoly on talisman repairs and technical support.”

“So the different uniforms serve a purpose,” Destiny said. “Like engineering versus combat operations.”

“If you want to think of it that way,” Quattro said. “Right now what those uniforms do is tell ponies which side of this little scuffle you’re on. Ponies wearing those nice dress whites of the Thunderhead uniform? They’re not very popular right now.”

“Okay?” I shrugged. “Is this a warning about what shirt to wear in the morning?”

“Hey, you asked about the uniform,” Quattro said. “Actually want I want to do with you is relive the good old days!”

Destiny turned to me. “You really called it with the shady thing.”

“Cube is in prison,” Quattro said, cutting me off before I could get my own sarcastic remark in. “I want to break her out. I assume you’d like to get her out, too.”

“Who did she murder?” I asked.

“Did you really jump immediately to murder?” Quattro asked. “I just spent all this time explaining that there are politics involved, how different uniforms mean you get treated differently, and you think so little of your own half-sister that you think she must have killed ponies?”

I folded my hooves and glared at Quattro. “That’s a roundabout way of not telling me who she killed.”

“She didn’t kill anypony,” Quattro sighed. “No, that’s not true. I’m sure she’s killed a lot of ponies. What I mean to say is, she isn’t in prison for any of the murders.”

“Then what did she do?” Destiny asked.

“She was spying,” Quattro said. “You might not know this, but she can read minds.”

I nodded. “I know. She complained about not being able to read my mind.”

“Well guess what ponies really don’t like right now? Somepony in the wrong uniform going around and reading their minds and bragging about it.”

“Yeah, that does sound like her,” I sighed.

“She might not have even been actually spying, but they’re treating her like she had a listening device. They threw her in solitary confinement until they can decide what to do with her.”

“Mmph.” I frowned.

“I know you want to get her out because she’s family,” Quattro said, waving a hoof dismissively. “I want to get her out because I want to know if she actually did hear something she wasn’t supposed to know, like maybe an attack plan.”

“And you’d do what with it?” Destiny asked.

“Good question!” Quattro admitted. “I’d want to stop it with as few casualties as possible. A public leak of the plans might be enough to convince ponies not to fight at all. It would at least delay things.”

“Do you at least have a clever plan to get her out?” I asked.

“When don’t I have a clever plan?” Quattro joked. “We’re not going to go in blasting. We’d be outnumbered about a thousand to one and I don’t have an escape plan good enough for that. You’d survive that kind of trouble but I’d get fried.”

“You know all I’m good for is running at enemies screaming,” I pointed out. “I don’t know if I’m the best pony to have around for your clever plan.”

“Maybe.” Quattro shrugged and poured us both glasses, clinking them together in a toast and downing hers. “But I missed working with reliable ponies.”

“I need to discuss this with Chamomile,” Destiny said. “Could you give us some privacy?”

Quattro nodded, putting her glass down and leaving the bottle. “I’ll be down at the bar if you need me.” She gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Even if you say no, it’s good seeing you again.”

She turned and waved over her shoulder as she left the room, shutting the door behind her.

“You realize she’s got some kind of secret agenda, right?” Destiny asked.

“Of course she does,” I agreed. “At best, she knows she can’t break Cube out on her own and she knows I can’t say no to a rescue mission.”

“At worst, she’s got some convoluted plan that’s going to end up with you getting sent to prison too,” Destiny said. “She’s at least partly to blame for a lot of what happened to you.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure how much of it was really Quattro’s fault and how much was dumb - and bad - luck.
“I do know if we go along with whatever plan she has, there’s going to be some part of it we won’t like.”

I nodded. “Yeah. So let’s come up with our own plan. There has to be some way to get Cube out of there without…” I trailed off.

“What is it?”

“...No, it couldn’t be that easy, could it?” I mumbled. “I’ve got an idea. Let me run it past you, and you tell me if it’s crazy.”

A few minutes later I sat down next to Quattro at the bar.

“I’ll have a Shirley Temple,” I said. The bartender raised an eyebrow. I put a few bits on the counter and he shrugged and started making the drink, filling a glass with ice and pouring in dark red grenadine, a splash of lime-style drink, and topping it off with ginger ale.

“So what’s the answer?” Quattro asked. “Are you in?”

“Yes,” I sighed, taking the cold drink and sipping. It was sweet, with a hit of tartness from the citrus. “You already know I’m in.”

“Good.” Quattro nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a fool-proof plan.”

“I’ve got something I want to try,” I said, cutting her off before she could avoid getting into details about what exactly her plan was. “I need a few hours to get a few things done, then I’ll meet back up with you.”

“Really?” Quattro lowered her sunglasses to give me a look. “You’ve got a plan?”

“Yep.”

“And what is it, exactly? I’m curious.”

I snorted. “Two ponies can play at the mysterious veteran angle. If you’re going to dodge questions, I’m going to take them head-on and just refuse to answer.”

Quattro chuckled. “Fair enough. I can’t exactly complain without being a hypocrite about it. You do whatever you need to do. We can meet up here when you’re done.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I want to see what you come up with,” Quattro said. “Maybe I’ll get to see how you’ve really grown in the last few years.”

The brig was an intimidating-looking building. It was also one of the few structures not made of clouds - you couldn’t trust ponies to stay in prison if they could just kick down the walls. From the way it looked, it must have been a repurposed cloudship, stripping out most of the equipment and leaving just enough to keep the lights on and the ship in the air. A prison didn’t need much more than rooms with the locks on the outside of the doors, after all.

I adjusted my uniform, making sure it was fitted correctly. I’d even worn the silly-looking beret that had come along with it, because I knew I needed to present myself as being official and professional today.

“It’s important that we approach this correctly,” Quattro warned quietly. “I know it’s a little late for this, but here’s a quick lesson on infiltration.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Step one is to know the place you’re trying to get inside,” she said. “I scouted this place out a little while you were busy with your little errand, and I’ve got a pretty good idea about the number of guards and their patrol routes.”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded.

“I had a few ideas on an approach,” Quattro said. “Literally breaking in wouldn’t be that difficult - I found a few places we can slip past security, but being seen instantly raises an alarm. On the other hoof, if we claim to be part of a surprise inspection--”

“Woah, woah!” I held up a hoof. “What about my plan?”

“Do you actually have a plan?” Quattro asked. “No offense, but if this goes wrong, it’s seriously bad. If you think you can just kick the doors in and walk away…” She shrugged, letting me picture the aftermath.

“Follow my lead,” I said. I walked confidently up to the front doors and pressed the buzzer, alerting the guard at the front desk.

“Purpose of visit?” rumbled the bored pony inside, through the tinny speaker.

“Prisoner transfer,” I said.

“Do you have your PT-30 signed and stamped?” he asked. “I don’t care who ordered it, if we don’t have the paperwork, I can’t release anypony.”

I reached under my wing and produced a manilla folder. “I’ve got the form here.”

“I’m buzzing you in. Follow the yellow line to the desk and present your papers.”

There was a loud buzz, and I pushed the now-unlocked doors open, motioning for Quattro to follow. She walked in behind me, whispering in alarm.

“Chamomile, I appreciate that you’re learning to lie, but--”

“Don’t worry,” I said. The yellow line on the floor proved to be all of ten paces long, going from the threshold of the door to a booth surrounded almost entirely by safety glass. I walked up to the booth and nodded to the older pony inside, a portly pegasus who looked like he hadn’t flown or even gotten out of his seat in a decade.

“Papers, please,” he said, speaking through a shielded grill in the partition. He opened a small door, just wide enough for me to slip the folder through. After I handed the papers off, he looked through them, nodded, and signed on a line item. “Wait here. Don’t leave this room.”

He got up, something I didn’t think he could manage, and shuffled out through the back door to another part of the brig, leaving us alone.

“Is this… working?” Quattro asked. “Those must be some good fakes.”

“They’re not fake,” I said.

“What?”

I looked over my shoulder at Quattro. “I asked General Ravioli for a favor. He’s not happy with me, but he’s a decent pony and he understands the value of family. He filled out the paperwork to have Cube released into my custody.”

“They’re legitimate papers?!” Quattro asked, clearly shocked.

“You never even once considered just asking nicely, did you?” I chided jokingly. “It’s a lot easier to do things the right way.”

“No, I didn’t think about it,” she admitted. “Then again, I can’t just get an audience with a fleet commander within an hour of asking just because I needed a favor. How do you know General Ravioli?”

“Emerald wanted to do things by the book,” I said. “That meant when we went on our own stupid, reckless mission we had to get it approved. General Ravioli met with me privately. I think he wanted to see just what kind of pony had caused so much trouble.”

“I’d be curious too,” Quattro admitted.

“Exactly.” I leaned against the glass wall and waited. It took a few minutes, but eventually the security door slid open, and the portly pegasus walked out along with…

It took me a few minutes to recognize Cube. Emma and Quattro, they were already adults. Three years didn’t make a huge difference in the way a pony looked once they’d grown up. Cube had still had a lot of growing to do, the last time I saw her. She’d just been a little orange filly.

Now she was as tall as Quattro, and the foal chubbiness had been replaced with lean muscle. Her mane was unkempt, but I could see new streaks of color through it, pink and blue joining the dark teal.

“Can you take these hoofcuffs off?” Cube asked, looking back over her shoulder at her jailer. She raised one hoof and jangled the cuff. “If you want, I could just unlock it myself.”

“Don’t,” the pegasus warned, producing keys and unlocking the cuffs. He took a plastic box off his back and shoved it at Cube. “These are your possessions taken into custody at the time of your arrest. Please confirm receipt and sign the paperwork.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cube mumbled, levitating the box off to the side and scribbling a pen against paper. “Thanks for the fun time. Maybe next time you can find me a cell without as many cloud rats.”

“Stay out of trouble,” the pegasus sighed. He tried to take the paper from Cube’s grip, but she tugged it out of his grasp just as he was about to grab it. He shot her a look that could cut through steel and she dropped it on the ground.

“Oops!” Cube gasped. “My bad!”

He snatched it from the floor. “You’re not my problem anymore. Get out of here and don’t come back. That’s life advice and a warning.” He slammed the security door behind him as he stomped out.

Cube chuckled and turned to us. She saw me and lost her grip on her box, dropping the plastic crate and running over to me. Her expression was frantic and shocked. She touched my face and started poking at it, moving it around like it might slip away and be revealed as a mask.

“Chamomile?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’m really hard to kill,” I said, by way of an explanation.

She grabbed me in a tight hug, squeezing as hard as she could, then let go, slapped me, winced and rubbed her sore hoof, and glared at me.

“Where have you been?!” she demanded. “You’ve been gone for- for forever!”

I took a deep breath. “I got sucked into another dimension and then there was a time warp and I was under the ocean and dead for a while and then I was really busy fighting vampires and didn’t have a forwarding address to send you a letter.”

Cube blinked, trying to process all that.

“That’s…” her nose scrunched in concentration. “Dammit! I know the dimension thing is true! The rest is stupid and doesn’t make sense!”

“But you can’t read my mind to know for sure?” I asked.

“Yes, exactly!” she nodded.

“I have paperwork proving the vampire thing,” I offered. “You’ll have to take my word for the part where I was underwater. I was banished after I almost caused their entire society to collapse.”

“That’s totally absurd, which means it’s probably true.” Cube smirked. “Fine. I’ll trust you for now. But I’m still upset! You should have tried harder to find me!”

“Maybe you should have told more ponies how to get in touch,” I countered. “Ornate Orate didn’t know where you were, the Greywings had no idea, Emma hadn’t seen you…”

She scoffed. “What about her?” she pointed to Quattro.

“I only found Chamomile last night,” Quattro explained. “And we came right here to get you.”

Cube looked annoyed at that. “Whatever.” She picked up her box. “I need to figure out where to go. I can’t stay here.”

“I’ve got--” Quattro started. I cleared my throat and cut her off.

“I already made arrangements,” I said. “General Ravioli wants you off the base, and I’m in charge of you, so I get to go along for the ride.”

“So where are we going?” Cube asked. She popped open the plastic crate she was holding and rummaged around in it.

I took out the rest of the paperwork I’d been given and checked through it. “Thunderhead, but not directly. I guess they don’t want ponies to just fly right in.”

“Not wearing one of those uniforms, that’s for use,” Cube nodded to the black uniform I was wearing. “You’d get arrested even faster than I was.”

“We’ll make a stop at Fifth Luna,” I said. “We should be able to transfer from there.”

“Fifth Luna…” Cube’s eyes glazed over for a moment. “Yes. That’ll work. I can send a message to the Juniper to pick us up.”

I frowned a little at the thought. It meant Polar Orbit would be there, but…

“How’s my dad doing?” I asked.

Cube winced. Then she clearly realized what that looked like and shook her head. “He’s fine,” she said. “Look, I don’t think you should worry about your dad.”

“Why?” My frown deepened.

“I spent a long time trying to track you down, you know,” Cube said softly. “I mean, we’re only half-sisters but you’re still family even if you’re a big dumb idiot made out of tank parts instead of brains.”

“Really feeling the love here.”

“He didn’t even try,” Cube mumbled, glaring into the middle distance like she could sense him. “He barely even asked about you! Even my dad cared more about what happened! He said you were more of an enemy than a friend, but he still owed it to you.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that sounds about right for both of them.”

Cube took my hoof and squeezed. “Sorry. Just don’t be surprised if your dad doesn’t care that you’re back. If he’s even still on the ship. It’s not like he was a prisoner or anything, he could be doing anything right now.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, let’s get out of here,” Cube said. “I don’t want to piss off any ponies and end up back in the brig, and I want to hear some details about where the buck you’ve actually been.”

Fifth Luna was, I was informed, created as a supply base during the war and named after the Princess. Like all pegasus cities at the time, it had been mobile, a forward base that would linger just outside of the range of enemy artillery and missiles to resupply the front lines. It had been constructed around a massive cloudberg, a naturally occurring wild storm that the architects believed would make it resistant to any magical attempts to disrupt its structure.

After the skies closed up, it remained as an island in the sea of the Enclave’s cloud cover, a dark spot where the clouds refused to mix, providing glimpses through the surf where the two layers met and showing just a little of the ground below.

It was shaped like a rough pyramid, maybe a kilometer wide, with structures carved out of the cloud with landing strips extending into space like shelf fungus on a tree trunk. Our skywagon had come in and landed in one of the middle layers.

Quattro helped me pull our luggage off the skywagon. Cube hadn’t had much luggage, but I had a suit of power armor that was still self-repairing and it would go faster if I wasn’t wearing it, so it was packed away in a shipping crate. I saw her struggling with the weight and just picked the whole thing up myself, balancing it on my back.

It had been a very long trip. It would have felt much shorter if Cube hadn’t told me about every single mistake I’d made since the last time I saw her. If only I’d had the benefit of knowing the results of my actions in advance like Cube did.

“Uh… do I…?” I offered the pony that had pulled the wagon a few bits. He laughed.

“No need, Ma’am,” he said. “Used to taking civilian transport?”

“Sort of.” I shrugged. “Most of the time I’m not the highest-ranking pony on board. And the rest of the time there’s usually an explosion. I’m not used to walking away after a soft landing.”

He laughed again. “I’m glad I was able to give you a pleasant ride. We’re all on the same team, right Ma’am?”

Usually I wouldn’t have thought anything about that statement, but I was painfully aware now that his white uniform meant he was part of Thunderhead’s faction. I’d changed into the uniform I’d gotten from Polar Orbit, so both of us were wearing the same colors. When he said we were part of the same team, he didn’t just mean the Enclave’s general motto that ‘we were all in this together’.

“Right,” I agreed, shaking his hoof. “Be careful out there. The skies can be dangerous.”

He nodded and saluted. I returned it and walked away, having to walk a little slowly with the crate weighing me down.

“So getting back to your story -- the dragon? It just fell down and you didn’t go after it?” Cube asked, when we’d gotten to the cargo elevator. I looked up at her and raised an eyebrow.

“My wing was completely useless,” I reminded her, putting the crate down and hitting a button for another level. I flapped my right wing once as if she’d be able to see the healed injury “I couldn’t fly down to check on her.”

Cube huffed. “Yeah but what about all the other ponies on the ship?”

“You mean the vampires? You wanted me to ask them to go on a field trip at a sudden and unexpected high noon?” I asked.

“I did ask,” Destiny said. “I thought they might have a servant or two that could look, but they weren’t strong enough fliers to catch back up to the Exodus Black if they left. Probably because they were anemic.”

Cube made a face. “You could have checked after you healed. What if she does the whole eclipse ritual again somewhere else and you can’t find her?”

“We destroyed the data, and it’s too complicated for one pony to memorize,” Destiny assured her. “Frankly, I’d like to go after her too, but it’s going to be almost impossible. By triangulation, we believe she fell into one of the largest swamps in the world, so she’s probably buried under several meters of mud. It would be difficult to find her even if we knew almost exactly where she landed.”

“Annoying,” Cube mumbled.

“No kidding,” I said. “Never trust a pony is dead unless you’ve seen the body yourself. I learned that the hard way.”

“And if it’s Chamomile, even having her cold in a morgue isn’t good enough,” Quattro joked. I shivered at the memory. Waking up in a morgue was still featuring in nightmares on bad nights.

“That’s because she’s reliable,” Cube said. She almost sounded proud of me.

The elevator was only surrounded by a cage instead of solid walls, so we got to see the other levels of Fifth Luna as we descended. The old machinery was well-maintained, and the place reminded me of a cloudship turned inside-out, open decks with fuel tanks, exposed pipes and wires, and ponies busy trying to turn ailing ships into healthy ones.

“A lot of these ponies are unhappy,” Cube said, after a silent moment. “They have to beg for spare parts. Thunderhead is only delivering what they need instead of letting them build up a backstock.”

“Thunderhead wants to make sure if they have a monopoly, it’s as absolute as possible,” Quattro said. I couldn’t tell if she was justifying it or accusing them.

“Thunderhead wants ponies to remember how much they do to keep the Enclave running,” Cube countered.

“It reminds me of what my parents were like when they were splitting up,” I said. “They ended up making everything worse because of spite.”

“That might be the most accurate description of Enclave politics I’ve ever heard,” Quattro said. “Two ponies in a really strained marriage.”

I laughed at that, and the elevator came to a stop in what must have been the biggest open space in Fifth Luna.

The Juniper was just as huge as I remembered, bigger than a Raptor-class ship and looming even when it was just hovering in place, the whole ship having a stance like an absolutely massive bird of prey. Cube trotted towards the ship and I trailed after her. What were the chances this was a bad idea?

“It is a bad idea,” Quattro said.

I looked over at her.

“Your little half-sister might be a mind reader but I'm pretty good at reading faces,” she explained. “If things go bad, we’ll watch each other’s backs.”

I nodded. I could more or less trust Quattro with that. “Did you get any of that information you wanted out of Cube?”

“Not really,” Quattro admitted. “I can’t even tell if she knows anything. She’s the type of mare who will pretend to have a secret just to have something to tease you with.”

Destiny made a thoughtful sound. “Maybe you’re a bad influence on her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I was blinded by the sudden appearance of a spotlight, and a ramp lowered from the bottom of the Juniper, a gangplank leading inside. One pony stood almost on the tip, totally at ease riding the mechanism down and not losing his footing at the motion.

“Welcome back,” Polar Orbit said. Cube ran up to him, and he gave her a quick hug before turning to us. “Chamomile! I never quite gave up hope that you’d come back.” He smiled with what seemed like genuine warmth.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s uh…” I paused. “It’s complicated to see you too.”

Polar Orbit laughed at that. “That’s a good way to put it! How about we split the difference and I thank you for getting my daughter out of the brig?” He offered a hoof to shake. I took it carefully and gave it a quick shake. I was polite about it. I didn’t even squeeze.

“I’m still not happy about what happened to my home town, but maybe we can avoid killing each other,” I offered.

He nodded with only a small smirk. “I suppose you’d like to see your father. He’s still here. I’ve given him one of the ship’s cargo bays. I felt I owed him something, after…” Polar Orbit shrugged. “Well, if I wronged you, I did worse to him.”

“Permission to come aboard?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about it, so the only thing to do was change the subject.

“Of course. I’ve already arranged a stateroom for you. You can leave your luggage there. We can discuss other arrangements later. I’d like it if we could work together, but I’ll understand if you have other commitments.”

“We’ll wait out here,” Quattro said. “I’m sure you’d rather face this on your own.”

She paused and took off her glasses so she could give me a serious look.

“Remember what Cube told us, okay?” Quattro said. “Don’t get your hopes up. We’ll be here if you need us.”

“I know,” I sighed.

Destiny bumped her forehead against mine.

“If all else fails, just use brute force,” she said, trying to make it sound like a joke. “Maybe he’s just not good at expressing how he feels.”

“Maybe,” I said. I was absolutely sure that wasn’t it, but still. I could hope. I hit the door panel and stepped inside.

In the last few years, Dad had gotten a lot more books. He’d turned what had been a cargo bay into something between a library and a museum, with shelves full of boxes, books, and carefully labeled specimens, all of it sorted in some way that only made sense to me.

I followed the sound of rustling pages to a bench on the side of the room, where my dad was standing over a half-dozen open books and looking between them, making notes on scratch paper.

I cleared my throat. “What are you working on?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to even open with.

“I’m re-translating a text from an ancient type of minotauran, and some of the phrases are very difficult to parse, so I’m cross-referencing several other contemporary works.” He flipped a page and we lapsed into uncomfortable silence.

I tapped a hoof, waiting for a reaction.

“So I’m back from my apparent death,” I tried. Maybe he just didn’t recognize my voice.

Dad glanced back at me and gave me one look up and down.

“Worrying about you wouldn’t help in any way,” Dad said. He adjusted his glasses and went back to what he was reading. “I’m happy you’re alive. I’ve also made almost no progress at all in finding the Exodus White, so you can leave.”

“What?” I frowned. “Why?”

“Because I can’t pull answers out of my flank!” Dad snapped. “I’m so happy that after years you decide to annoy me just to see if I have results!”

“What the buck are you talking about?!” I shouted back at him.

He scoffed and stood up, taking off his glasses and using them to point at me accusingly. “I know why you’re here. You’ve been away doing Celestia knows what for years and you pop in just to see if I’m useful for a change!”

I was at a total loss for words. I didn’t even know how to start to respond to that.

“That’s what I thought,” he huffed. “Archaeology is a science. It’s about careful study and building a hypothesis, not going on half-baked adventures. All you’ll find that way is trouble!”

“I found the Exodus White,” I said flatly. “And the Exodus Black. And Seaquestria. I wasn’t even looking for that one, I just ended up there.”

Dad froze in place and I could feel the thoughts working their way through his mind. He was struggling to comprehend what he was being told. He went all the way through confused and into disbelief and then there was a sudden hot flash of all-consuming rage.

He slapped me. His hoof cracked against my cheek, and I don’t just mean it made a sharp sound, I mean it split. He hissed in pain and clutched his hoof close to his chest.

“You’re just like your mother,” he groaned. “This is exactly what she always did. She’d go off and come back with amazing discoveries that had no value at all, because all she cared about was the fame and excitement and not the work!”

“Don’t compare me to her,” I said.

“Why not? I bet you even like Polar Orbit better too, just like--”

I didn’t let him finish that. I punched him in the snout to establish dominance. He reacted the way any pony might when encountering an armored vehicle at high speed. He went flying into one of his bookshelves, a half-dozen boxes and rocks falling down around him. A glass jar with a sample of some clouds smashed over his head. Blood poured from his nose and a cut above his eye.

For the first time, he didn’t look at me with disdain or disappointment. Some tiny part of his brain that wasn’t thinking about ancient languages or cloud strata realized that I was practically twice his size and stronger than his imagination.

I seethed, breathing through teeth that felt like fangs while I glared at a pony who was being consumed by something I belatedly realized was terror.

There were a hundred things I could have said. I could have apologized. I could have helped him clean up. I could have given him a warning, or told him how we could fix things. I could have yelled at him and told him off.

“You’re pathetic,” I hissed. I wasn’t even conscious of deciding to move, I just felt my hooves carry me to the door, and I decided they were making a smarter decision than I could have made on my own. I walked out and slammed the door shut behind me, hard enough that I was sure he’d need help getting it open again.

“...Are you okay?” Destiny asked.

Oh right. They’d been waiting outside.

I put on a fake smile and looked over at Destiny and Quattro. “I’ll be fine,” I said. I sort of believed it. “I don’t think I’ll be visiting again.”

“I’m sorry,” Destiny said quietly.

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

Quattro looked down at her hooves for a moment, then up at me. “There’s a washroom down the hallway if you want to splash some water on your face. We’ll go on ahead.”

“Thanks,” I said, still trying to sound cheerful. “I’ll catch up.”

Quattro nodded and walked down the corridor. I went the other direction, but I didn’t make it to the washroom. My legs went wobbly and I fell against the wall, sliding down the bulkhead to the deck. On my knees, I started crying and I wasn’t even sure why.

Chapter 99: The Devil's Spear

I folded my hooves and felt the skywagon rock under me as we flew. It was, like most things on the Juniper, just a little more comfortable and ornate than the same thing anywhere else in the Enclave. The seats were upholstered and soft and somepony had taken the time to paint and polish everything.

“So what kind of trouble are we flying into?” I asked quietly, looking up at Destiny. She hovered next to me. We’d ditched my dress and her shroud in favor of more practical clothing. A Thunderhead uniform, in my case. It was probably what I was expected to wear, and nopony had complained about it yet.

“How should I know?” she asked, giving a ghostly shrug.

“You built the ship,” I reminded her. “You sold it to somepony, right? Like all the others?”

“The Exodus Red was funded by a kind of corporate conglomerate,” Destiny explained. “They weren’t demanding clients. Very friendly, tried to make everypony feel like we were on the same team. They paid well and on time and didn’t make a lot of special requests. More importantly, they helped make sure we had all the materials and expertise we needed for all the Arks, not just their own.”

“So they were sort of… partners with Braytech?” I asked. “How many partners did you need?”

“Sort of. It was a little creepy sometimes. Back in those days, corporations were buying each other, merging together, it all got hard to keep track of. The consortium I worked with had companies come together under the same umbrella but let them keep their employees and identity. They didn’t really merge so much as come together to resist being taken over.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I mumbled. “Better than my first guess that you sold it to war criminals and mad scientists.”

“All the mad scientists were on the Exodus Blue, remember?” Destiny scoffed. “I will say one thing about whoever’s in charge over there - all that glitz and glitter was not on the plans. Ornamentation like that just weighs a ship down. It’s not useful for survival!”

“It’s good for morale,” Polar Orbit explained, butting into our conversation from where he sat in the transport. “Ponies want to be part of something bigger and greater than they are by themselves. You don’t make a throne to be a comfortable seat, you make it so ponies can understand they’re speaking to somepony important.”

“The ship did that just fine on its own,” Destiny countered.

“There’s always room for improvement,” Polar Orbit said calmly. “It’s been centuries. You can’t blame ponies for wanting to create great works for somepony they see as their leader and savior.”

“Speaking of which, you must know who’s in charge,” I said. “She’s your boss, right?”

“She is indeed,” Polar Orbit confirmed. “She’s a good friend, and has many friends in high places herself.”

“What’s the name of this good friend?” I asked.

“You’ll meet her soon enough,” he said. “She’ll prefer to make introductions on her own. I believe she might even make you a job offer!”

“That hasn’t really worked out great for me in the past,” I said. “I think almost every pony that’s tried to hire me has also almost immediately betrayed me after using me like a big stupid hammer.”

“Yes, it’s unfortunate,” Polar Orbit agreed as if he hadn’t done that himself when he sent me to Winterhoof. “That’s because they didn’t understand the value of friendship. We can achieve so much more together than we can if we’re just fighting over scraps, wouldn’t you agree?”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Cube said, speaking up for the first time in a little while. She’d looked distracted for a while, deep in thought. “If things work out, we can be a team! We worked well together before.”

“I guess,” I conceded. What I remembered most was her killing ponies that didn’t have to die. The skywagon shook with turbulence. I braced myself just in time for the wheels to touch down. It was a long, gentle landing, ensuring that the ponies onboard weren’t shaken up or tossed around by a sudden stop.

It was VIP treatment and I felt out of place in almost the same way I had in a ship full of vampires. I’d gotten a recruitment speech already and I could tell Cube did want to work with me, but that didn’t mean anything if they weren’t in charge.

Destiny hadn’t had anything bad to say about the ponies in charge aside from their sense of style, but still… I couldn’t forget the way Polar Orbit had buried an entire town alive just to contain a plague. Maybe it had been practical, but it had also been cruel to the survivors. What else could he justify?

The doors opened, and Polar Orbit led us outside into the expansive landing deck of the Exodus Red. It was, literally, large enough for the entire Juniper to dock within its walls, but we’d been shuttled over instead.

“I know you’re going to ask,” Polar Orbit said. “And yes, this is where my ship goes for repairs and resupply. It was stored here before the war ended, and thus survived your Enclave trimming down supply lines.”

I nodded. It didn’t explain everything, but it explained one thing and I wasn’t going to be greedy. Another skywagon set down next to us, and Tetra stomped out before the doors were even fully open. A few other well-dressed ponies from Thunderhead followed, with Quattro bringing up the rear. She gave me a quick nod, but before I could understand what that might mean, a blast of wind almost knocked me over.

A Vertibuck swung inside, ending any conversation with the roar of its rotors. It landed hard and fast, the engines idling but not turning off. The armored hatch slid open, and General Ravioli stepped out, looking at us with obvious displeasure. A half-dozen more ponies in power armor followed him, spreading out into a protective half-circle between the officer and the rest of us.

“Polar Orbit,” General Ravioli said, midway between a greeting and an accusation. “What’s all this about? You’ve been hiding this monstrosity?”

“It’s good to see you, General Ravioli,” Polar Orbit said pleasantly. “Would you care to join us? We’re about to go to the bridge.”

General Ravioli grunted and produced a hat, tugging it down sharply. “As long as I can find the ringmaster in charge of this circus there.”

“She’s waiting for us,” Polar Orbit confirmed.

“Fine. You can go first.” Ravioli said that like he expected to walk into a minefield. Cube ran off ahead, getting the door. Ponies in Enclave power armor in pristine condition and adorned with gold details like some kind of honor guard saluted as we went past them. They made the General’s guards look practically amateur.

Ravioli hung back a few steps until he was next to me, giving his guards a nod. They closed in a bit around us, giving us a modicum of privacy as we walked. A wall of steel that would at least prevent ponies from joining the conversation.

“I was surprised to see you,” Ravioli said. “If Miss Emerald Gleam’s reports are anything to go by, this means I’m in more trouble than I thought.”

“If you needed to see me to know we’re in trouble, you’re not much of a General,” I retorted.

He chuckled and nodded. “You’re right. This whole thing was already out of hoof and it’s only getting worse. I don’t like seeing you in that uniform.”

I looked down at the white Thunderhead outfit I had on. “It seemed like the safest thing to wear,” I admitted.

“Safest, but it’s important to remember where you stand,” the General said. “I don’t think I’m in a position to give you orders, but I want you to keep your head on straight. Do what this tells you.” He poked my chest. “A soldier’s duty is to follow orders, and to know when orders shouldn’t be followed.”

I nodded, and we all got on the tram, most of us trying to avoid the topic of just how many guns were being pointed from one side of the train car to the other. If a pony sneezed too aggressively it could have resulted in a massacre.

“Next Stop, Bridge,” a pre-recorded voice announced. The tram slid to a halt, and we all stepped out. The gold decor wasn’t limited to the outside of the ship. The inside was practically opulent. When I was a foal, I’d imagined Canterlot had been all polished gold and marble, and this was exactly the way I’d pictured it.

“Tasteful and restrained,” Destiny whispered.

“I think I might be under-dressed for the occasion,” I said. “Even Flurry Heart didn’t bother with all this, and she was actually an alicorn.”

“She didn’t bother with it because she didn’t need trinkets to impress anypony,” Destiny said. “If she was here right now she could melt this gold by glaring at it too harshly.”

The corridor was wide enough for ten ponies to walk abreast without feeling crowded, and huge gilded porcelain vases stood along the walls along with planters full of flowers and twisted, gnarled trees grown at a fraction of their usual size with careful gardening. Most of the light came from hidden sources, recessed and behind embossed golden plates on the wall, making everything seem to glow.

It was bright and airy and it even had some kind of perfume or incense, but all that work on the facade felt like a mask over something terrible.

Polar Orbit led us onto the bridge. His ship’s bridge had been comfortable, like a lounge that just happened to have control panels in it. What was left of Flurry Heart’s bridge had been a throne room, with her at the center and ponies working around her in tight knots where she could oversee them.

This was a stage. A wide walkway cut through the middle of the room, and the rest of the bridge was set down lower into the ground, an orchestra pit where the instruments were the controls of the ship itself. Spotlights and cameras were focused on the pony standing on the stage in the center of it all at the end of that central walkway.

She spotted us and motioned down into the pit around her.

“Switched over to a static image, ma’am,” one of the ponies said.

“Thank you, Limoncello,” the armored master of the ship replied. She nodded to Polar Orbit.

“Ladies, Gentlestallions,” Polar Orbit said, after clearing his throat. “Allow me to present the Great Marshal of the Exodus Red, the most worthy pony and true inheritor of Equestria.”

“There’s no need to be formal. We’re meeting new friends.” the armored pegasus said, reaching for her helmet and releasing the pressure seal to take off the intimidating full-face mask. She shook her tightly-curled mane out, the arctic blue naturally forming itself into drills hanging down to her chest. She was cute, freckled and pink with a soft smile on her lips. “Just call me Cozy Glow.”

“Miss Cozy Glow,” General Ravioli said, stepping forward. His guards formed a protective cordon around us, looking out at their opposite numbers arrayed around the bridge. Both sides tried to look casual but authoritative. “I hope you understand that this is quite a provocation. Am I to understand that you’re here in support of Thunderhead in our political dispute?”

“I’ve been watching you for a while now,” Cozy Glow said. “I think it’s really awful that things are getting so bad between ponies that should be friends! I just couldn’t stand back and watch any longer. I had to step forward and do what’s right!”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” Ravioli asked. I tried to stay focused on him, but something was distracting me. There was a strange, familiar sensation. My heart was fluttering. It wasn’t a SIVA reaction, it was something else, the strongest deja vu I’d ever experienced.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny whispered.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled back, looking around. I was missing something.

“That’s a great question,” Cozy Glow said. “Why don’t you come over here? We can let all the ponies watching see us being friends and shaking hooves.”

General Ravioli adjusted his hat and stepped over cautiously. I could tell he was expecting some kind of trap. So was I, but none immediately materialized. Cozy Glow gave a nod. Red, green, and blue lights shone down around her.

“Live transmission resumed,” one of the ponies manning the bridge reported.

“Hello everypony,” Cozy Glow cheerfully chirped, looking into the cameras. “This is General Ravioli. He’s been so, so nice as to come onboard my ship, the Exodus Red, so we could talk! I know some of you listening at home are probably scared and confused right now.”

“Listening at home?” Ravioli asked.

“Of course!” Cozy Glow declared. “This transmission isn’t some military secret. We are broadcasting to everypony that can hear us, on every military and civilian frequency.”

“Confirmed, sir,” one of the armored ponies reported. “I’m hearing it on every radio channel. It’s overriding our comms!”

General Ravioli scowled at Cozy Glow. “So? What’s all this about? If you’re going to explain, then explain.”

Cozy Glow gave an angelic smile to the camera. “I, Cozy Glow, have a dream.” She put a hoof on her chest. “It’s a dream that ponies have held in their hearts for as long as we’ve been ponies. Equestria was founded as part of that dream. A thousand years of peace and harmony existed because of that dream. Wars were fought in defense of it.”

Ponies started moving around the bridge with obvious purpose, stage hands taking places for the next big scene. This was a rehearsed speech, not something off-the-cuff. It was a signal for something. Cube and Tetra stepped to the front of the crowd. I barely noticed them, because a pony on the other side of the bridge captured my entire attention and more.

It was impossible. She stood there like nothing had ever happened to her. A thin, almost fragile-looking unicorn in a black bodysuit. I couldn’t see the scars around her horn, but I knew they’d still be there.

“Four?!” I gasped. I waved, trying to get her attention. She glanced at me, and I saw nothing in her eyes. They were cold and hard like mirrors, seeing but not really seeing me. There wasn’t one spark of recognition. That’s where the Deja Vu had come from. There was a thread between us, resonance that hung in the air that she seemed oblivious to.

“I thought she was dead!” Destiny said, as shocked as I was.

“I knew we should have gone looking for her,” I groaned. “Why doesn’t she recognize me?”

“I’d say it was because she only knew you for a few weeks, three years ago, but you stand out in a crowd.” Destiny bobbed in place. “I don’t like this. Something is very, very wrong here!”

I took a step towards her and immediately, guns were pointed at me from all directions. I froze in place. I could probably survive a few shots just fine, but a lot of ponies were going to get caught in the crossfire. At least some of them were probably innocent. I pawed at the deck, anxious. I needed to get Four’s attention somehow.

“My dream!” Cozy Glow continued, her voice booming. “Is the gigantic ambition that all ponies dream and hope for! World domination! Not through brute violence and slavery, but by making enemies into friends, for have I not conquered my enemy when I have made him an ally? When I saw Neighvarro and Thunderhead ready to fight, brother against brother, I knew it was time. I had to show you all that friendship is the most powerful force in the universe!”

“World domination?” General Ravioli said, spitting out the words like they were bitter poison. “You’re insane!”

“Anything is possible with the power of friendship,” Cozy Glow retorted. “That’s why I’ve recognized ponies with particular talent and skill and elevated them to be my very best friends.”

She motioned, and four ponies approached her.

“Four Damascus,” Cozy Glow said. “One of the most powerful unicorns I’ve ever met, though her greatest gift is her loyalty.”

Four bowed to her, expression still as blank as a doll’s.

“Tetra,” Cozy Glow motioned to the next pony, the masked pony bowing before standing at her right side. “My personal guard and a supremely skilled soldier.”

Quattro stepped out of the shadows and stood at her other side, looking uncomfortable. She caught my gaze and mouthed ‘sorry’. I felt my blood run cold.

“Quattro Formaggio. She’s been my eyes and ears in the Enclave for years, reporting everything. She can be anypony, anywhere, at any time.”

Cube hopped over, looking almost like a foal again.

“And finally, Cube. Her asset is her mind. She has incredible spacial recognition and telekinetic ability. In fact, I think she should demonstrate her ability. Cube? The big one first.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Cube said. She looked outside at the assembled fleet. “Right Ascension 101.287 degrees, Declination -16.716 degrees.”

“Data sent to the hub and locked,” reported one of the bridge ponies. “Awaiting authorization.”

“Switch the broadcast to the external view,” Cozy Glow ordered.

“Current camera view is on your left,” another pony said. Cozy Glow glanced at the screen, which showed the Thunderhead-class ship maintaining position outside with the assembled fleet. She nodded and smiled.

“You may fire when ready,” Cozy Glow said.

“Firing!” reported a pony. I expected some kind of rumble, or a huge beam of energy, or the explosion of a gun firing or missiles launching. Instead, there was silence. “Impact in five. Four. Three. Two. One!”

It was so fast I only caught a glimpse of it. Something white-hot and impossibly fast slammed into the big cloudship from above, trailing smoke that went straight up into the sky. It punched through the top of the ship and right through to the bottom. I could see the whole structure of the ship twist and bend, massive gouts of fire exploding from the entry and exit wounds.

“No!” General Ravioli shouted. He lunged at Cube, and Tetra shoved him back, knocking him on his flank. The guards in their ornate armor turned to us, silently threatening us.

“Engage secondary targets,” Cozy Glow said. “Please.”

Cube nodded and started rattling off more coordinates. A second strike hit one of the Raptors from above, completely breaking the ship in half. The fleet started scattering. A third strike tore the front off of a second Raptor, and it continued forward blindly, engulfed in fire.

“What the buck are you doing?!” I demanded. “Cube! Stop it!”

Cube looked back at me and gave me a pained look. Not the kind of pained look where she knew I was right but she had to do something distasteful, but the kind of look where I was embarrassing her in front of ponies she liked. She turned back to what she was doing and kept reading off coordinates and adjustments.

“Orbital strikes,” Cozy Glow said calmly. “They’re impossible to defend against, and the warsats are impossible for anypony to attack. It is unassailable and unstoppable, just like my dream and the dreams of the ponies that follow me!”

“Don’t worry, Chamomile,” Polar Orbit said. He put a hoof on my shoulder. “We’re using the minimum force needed to make a point. The only ponies getting hurt are the ones who volunteered for it.”

I shrugged his hoof off, and he took a step back like he was dealing with a dangerous animal.

“Why aren’t they firing back?!” General Ravioli swore. “Even without orders they--”

“Right now, they’re discovering that all of their weapons are offline,” Cozy Glow explained. “You should know better than to get into a fight with the pony who’s in charge of making sure your guns work!” She giggled.

Another orbital strike hit one of the Raptors. Dozens or hundreds of ponies died in a flash when the reactor exploded. I jumped into the air and flew right at Cozy Glow. I didn’t have a plan, but if I could get my hooves on her, I’d have time to think of something!

Tetra saw me coming a mile away and moved almost as quickly as a vampire. His cape flared and he spread his wings to intercept me. The masked stallion grabbed me around the neck and twisted in midair, dropping me face-first into the deck with his weight hammering me into the steel. Cozy Glow wasn’t even looking at me. She was watching the fleet with obvious glee.

“Look at how they run instead of fight! That’s what happens when you go against ponies with friendship on their side!” Cozy Glow smiled and shook her head. “That’s probably enough to prove our point to the masses. Please switch the camera back to me, Limoncello.”

The camera view switched to show us standing on the stage at the center of the bridge.

“You’re nuts.” I spat blood onto the ground and got up, glaring at Tetra and wiping my lips.

“That’s what they always say to ponies with vision,” Cozy Glow replied. “Polar Orbit was telling me you’d be an asset to us. You’re brave. Maybe the bravest pony I’ve ever seen. Even those armed guards are standing there frozen in place, but you jumped right at me almost totally unarmed! I admire that.”

She turned to look at me. She didn’t look angry or insane. She looked sad.

“So many of your friends are with me already,” she said, motioning to Cube and Quattro. Quattro at least had the decency to flinch and look guilty about it. “I like you, Chamomile. Quattro’s told me so much about you, and Cube is your family! Why don’t you take this chance to join the winning side? We can do such great things together, and all you have to do is be my friend, too.”

Cozy Glow smiled. She offered me her hoof. A lifeline, and maybe the only way I was going to get out of the situation without having to fight my way through every single pony on the ship.

I shook my head, and stepped back to help General Ravioli up. He winced. Something was wrong with one of his back legs. He leaned into me, letting me support him so he could look down at Cozy Glow.

“The Enclave will never surrender to you,” Ravioli said firmly. “Equestria has faced conquerors before. Sombra. Tirek. Grogar. You’re no better than any of them, and they were all defeated in the end.”

Cozy Glow sighed. “The difference between me and those monsters is that they didn’t understand the value of working together. I don’t want slaves or sacrifices. I want to join ponies together. It’s too bad you can’t be a part of that.”

She moved faster than I could react, producing an ornate, bulky pistol. It barked with a terribly loud crack and the bullet trailed fire through the air between us, hitting General Ravioli between the eyes and exploding. It was like a grenade detonating inside a watermelon.

I dropped his body in shock, gore splattered over half my face and body.

“And unlike those failures, I cherish friendship and I’ll protect it no matter how many stallions, mares, and foals I need to kill to do it.”

“Tetra?” Cozy Glow said, putting the gun away. “I promised you that if negotiations broke down, you could have Chamomile. She’s all yours.” She patted the masked pony on the flank and smiled.

He lunged, jumping into action. He grabbed my shoulders and flew me into the wall, shattering a decorative vase and smashing my spine into the bulkhead hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.

“What the buck is your problem with me?” I spat. “I don’t even know who you are!”

“You killed every pony that ever mattered to me!” he shouted, his voice distorting even more. He sounded like a rabid robot.

“You’re going to have to narrow it down, chief!” I grunted, getting one of my back hooves on his chest and kicking him away.

“My sister, the pony I was falling in love with…” Tetra growled, hovering over me, waves of hate peeling off of him. Something deep in my memory clicked. Maybe it was because Four was standing there.

“Rain Shadow?” I guessed.

He charged at me, faster than I could move on my own. But not faster than my wired reflexes. My body surged into overdrive and the air turned frigid against my skin, my metabolism burning with fever heat. Everything slowed to a crawl. I lunged forward to intercept him, snapping my knife out of its internal sheath and stabbing down at his neck.

Rain Shadow was suddenly moving just as fast as I was. No, faster. He caught my hoof and twisted, throwing me aside.

I landed on the deck, the blade attached to my foreleg digging into the metal and keeping me upright. The world flashed back to normal, motion resuming around me.

“You think you’re so special just because you’ve let yourself become a monster,” he said. Steam vented from his mask and under his cape. “You’re a big idiot foal stumbling around and getting ponies killed because you don’t care about anything!”

“Tetra told me he’d do anything to get stronger,” Cozy Glow said. “You wouldn’t believe how much he was willing to put himself through. I felt for him. He was up against an enemy he couldn’t defeat on his own. I empathized with him, and because I am generous and kind and understanding, I gifted him with all the enhancements his body could take.”

“Does that mask even come off?” I asked. “Because it looks more like you turned him into a freak!”

“I wanted this,” Tetra said. “So I could kill you with my own hooves!”

“Your own hooves?” I asked. “I don’t think it counts if somepony else built them in a factory!”

He tore off his cape and tossed it aside, his right foreleg opening up. A sword snapped out in two parts, swinging into place like a butterfly knife. He came at me again in a blur, and this time I was slow to react, activating my implants at the speed of my stupid, slow thoughts. He was already swinging his blade, and I barely brought mine up in time to block it.

The edge of his sword glowed blue. He cleaved right through my knife and caught my shoulder before I dove away, rolling on the ground and leaving blackish-red blood behind me. The world came back into focus. My heart thudded in my chest. I was already physically exhausted. Using that implant was dangerous. I didn’t know if I’d have a heart attack or pass out from low blood sugar if I tried again, but one of those things was bound to happen.

“I’m coming!” Destiny yelled. “Hold on, Chamomile, I can--”

Cozy Glow nodded to Four. She stepped forward, expressionless, and her horn flared with light. Destiny froze in midair.

“I still have use for you,” Cozy Glow said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay put.”

Destiny fired a blast of magic, but the aura around her just ate it up.

“What did you do to her?!” I demanded.

“I didn’t do anything, but she’s trapped in a forcecage,” Cozy Glow said. Then she giggled. “Oh, I know you meant ‘what did I do to Four’. I was just having a little fun. She went through a traumatic experience. Her recovery was long and hard and it was better for her to forget a few things.”

“You erased her memory,” I accused.

“It’s not the first time,” Cozy noted. “She’s happier like this, trust me. Haven’t you seen her memories yourself? You know they weren’t nice.”

“That doesn’t mean you can play with her mind like she’s a toy!” I yelled. I winced and touched my shoulder. Rain Shadow had cut me deeper than I thought, the edge of his blade like some kind of chainsaw.

“I would never do that,” Cozy Glow said, obviously offended. “She’s my friend, Chamomile. And unlike some friends she used to have, I didn’t use her or abandon her.”

I didn’t have a retort for that. I wouldn’t have had the chance to make a clever quip even if I’d had one ready. A black blur appeared in front of me, and Tetra’s sword slammed into my chest. It went through my ribs like they weren’t even there.

It was bad. So bad I couldn’t really feel the pain yet. There was this abrupt empty feeling. The moment that a bubble pops and there’s nothing there, but you’re aware of the space, the void where it had been. He slid the sword out, and a torrent of blood exploded out of my chest and back, just one huge gout at high pressure, then nothing.

I collapsed to my knees. I was broken.

Quattro moved, for the first time since all this had started. I was only dimly aware of it. She rolled something onto the deck. A small apple-sized metal ball with a blue ring around the middle. It exploded in a bright flash of crackling light.

The lights flickered out and every screen flashed to static. The same wash of pins and needles surged through my body, my back legs kicking on their own. I collapsed the rest of the way, my vision narrowing and going completely blind in one eye. Ponies were running around in the light from the huge windows, and I heard yelling but couldn’t make out the words.

Hooves grabbed me from behind and dragged me into the shadows. I tried to reach out for Destiny, but my forehooves wouldn’t cooperate and I couldn’t make myself move the way I wanted. I croaked something, trying to form words and just coughing up blood, gurgling nonsense.

The last bit of my vision faded, and my senses dulled one after another. The last thing I remembered was the rumble of a tram lurching into motion under me before my body couldn’t keep going and everything stopped.

Chapter 101: Blue Skies

I had one very important personal rule when times got tough -- find somepony smarter than I was and ask them how they’re going to solve the problem. It hasn’t always worked out and on occasion, I’ve even had to rely on my own brain, which has almost universally proven to be a mistake. The only times it has failed me are the many times I’ve chosen the wrong pony to ask for help.

“Hey fellow soldiers, what’s hanging?” I asked, setting down next to a group of armored ponies that were discussing exactly what to do in the middle of all the chaos. This chaos included the sudden appearance and then disappearance of an invincible Assault Armor and several orbital strikes that had crippled even more of the fleet that hadn’t been crippled by the last round of orbital strikes we were all in the middle of fleeing from.

I figured if they were trained and professional soldiers, they might have a better idea of what was going on in the big picture. I was hoping to find said big picture not filtered through Quattro Formaggio, the pony who was a spy for the enemy and promised that right now she definitely wasn’t spying.

I could throw her way farther than I trusted her, so asking random soldiers was seeming practically brilliant.

“What happened to you?” one of them asked.

I glanced at myself. I was wearing what was left of a suit of standard-issue Enclave power armor. I’d managed to wreck it in about five minutes of wrestling the Grandus Assault Armor while trying to remind a former marefriend that I thought she was cute and she didn’t really want to murder me today.

“Laundry day,” I decided.

“Oh buck, it’s you,” one of the ponies said. She took off her helmet.

“Oh! You’re one of the recruits Emma was training!” I said happily. “How’s it going?”

“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” Airpony Sunray said. “Don’t worry, everypony, this is Chamomile. I… sort of know her. She’s with special forces.” There was a significant pause. "Special. Forces."

They all visibly relaxed.

“Is she the one you told us about that got you into all that trouble?” one of them asked.

“I know that name! I heard she took a bunch of recruits on a secret mission to the surface and they all came back knowing crazy martial arts!” another added.

“I heard anypony who sees her face doesn’t live to tell about it,” a third whispered. All of them looked at me and the relaxation turned to tension.

“Wow,” I said. “Okay. That last one isn’t true. Obviously. Sunray isn’t dead.”

“Are you responsible for the giant monster?” Sunray asked.

“I scared it off,” I said, not denying that I was partly at fault in a complicated way that involved… actually Destiny had helped fix it. I'd screwed up a bunch of stuff with Four back on the surface, and I guess I really was responsible for it even if I had no idea it would get this far.

Sunray could clearly tell what I was thinking, and also knew it didn’t matter right now. “Right,” she said. “So what do you want?”

“It’s rude to assume I want something,” I said. “But yes, I do want something. We need to stop these orbital strikes. I thought the Grandus was doing it, but she said she was just a distraction and I believe it. That means somepony else is down here.”

“Wonderful,” Sunray groaned. “Of course we’re still in trouble.”

“There’s at least a small chance it’s my half-sister,” I said. “So if you could let me deal with it sort of gently, that’d be great.”
“Gently,” Sunray repeated. Around us, several ships burned.

“You know how family is,” I said. The squad of soldiers seemed less than convinced. Most of them. One of the anonymous ponies nodded in deep understanding. “Look, you’ve got radios, I don’t. We need to search Stormreach and fast.”

“No we don’t,” one of the ponies reported. “We’ve got shots fired in block 8! Unknown assailants!”

“Move, ponies!” Sunray snapped. “Chamomile--”

“I’m coming along,” I said.

“Of course you are,” Sunray said. “I’m requisitioning you as a breaching tool.”

Block 8 ended up being an old apartment block. It had once had some fancy name like Wooshing Heights, but that had been before a military takeover and two centuries of neglect. It was maybe five stories tall and set up like a hotel, slab cloud blocks churned out and pressed into place with a simple layout that wasn’t artistic or even efficient, just lazy.

I’d gone in alone and Sunray had the other soldiers form a cordon around the place and shoot anypony who stuck their head out. There wasn’t an exception for me. If they couldn’t tell who they were shooting at, they were going to take the shot. I’d probably be okay.

Unlike the ponies I found in the lobby. They’d gone in before we got here, and they’d found trouble. They’d been hacked apart, something going right through the armor like it wasn’t even there. The edges weren’t just burned or melted, they were practically annihilated, degraded by some kind of magical field. It hadn’t stopped them from splashing everywhere. Somepony had rolled out the red carpet in the most vicious way possible.

I could feel an aura of unfocused hate, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“Rain Shadow,” I mumbled.

Instinct told me that if somepony was spotting for orbital strikes, they’d want to be pretty high up. I trotted up the stairs and stopped when I felt the subtle pressure of other ponies nearby. I slowed my steps, letting my hooves sink into the softened floors and followed my instincts.

Faintly, I heard ponies talking in one of the apartments. I closed my eyes and reached out. I wasn’t good at magic stuff, but I’d been leaning on this sixth sense for a long time. I stopped and touched the wall a few paces to the side of the doorway.

I punched through the prefab cloud wall and grabbed the pony on the other side, dragging the screaming soldier in his ornate power armor out into the hallway. I snapped my knife out and stabbed him a few times until one of the ponies inside the room remembered they were professional soldiers and shot through the big hole we’d punched in the wall. He had pretty good aim, and the three shots he got off hit me in the unarmored face and neck.

Relatively unarmored. The rays stung and I smelled like burning hair but they weren’t very effective.

I picked up the coughing, bleeding pony under me and threw him at what I thought was the smartest pony in the room, since he was shooting instead of just screaming and dying, but then I saw the third member of their team going out the window with a big, complicated piece of kit that meant he was actually the one with aspirations of becoming an officer.

The shooter stumbled back, looked at his friend, and performed the kind of battlefield triage that seemed cruel but often meant the difference between life and death -- he shoved his dying teammate back towards the enemy, me, and bolted out the window after the pony I was mentally tagging as the smart guy.

I walked in through the hole and looked down at the dying, bleeding member of the Exodus Red’s crew.

“Sorry,” I told him, trotting past and leaning out the window. A peppering of laser fire from the cordon around the building made me duck back inside. I spotted the two escapees having similar problems, having only gotten far enough to make it to the floor above me. I wasn’t confident in my ability to follow them outside and around to the window.

I was absolutely sure that the floors were only polite suggestions. I’d broken a lot of them in my day, and even back home they’d been in better condition than these rotten cumuli. I set my shoulders and went for it, smashing up through the floor and into the almost-identical apartment above.

Smart Guy looked at me in horror and kicked open the door to the hallway, running outside. Shooter backed up, trying to shoot me while I climbed through the hole I’d made. I took aim with a rocket launcher and he saw his entire life flash before his eyes. I fired, he threw himself down, and the explosive went over his head and into the hallway beyond, disappearing into the clouds and detonating somewhere in the next room over when it found something more solid, probably a pipe made of plasticized rainbow or a kitchen sink that hadn’t been torn out.

I got to my hooves and stormed over, picking him up.

“I’ll never tell you anything!” he gasped.

I hesitated. “I’m not sure I wanted to ask you anything.”

He looked confused. I shrugged and head-butted him, knocking him out. He was probably still going to get executed later. That was somepony else’s problem to deal with. I threw him politely but firmly through a wall and stomped after the last pony in the fireteam. The whole building shook around me, dislodging mist from the walls.

“A dilapidated wreck might not be the best place for a fight,” I mumbled. I took off in the narrow corridor and flew down it, trying to avoid putting weight on the increasingly spongy and fragile-feeling floor. I was getting a distinct feeling that the prefab slab clouds were starting to come unglued. Having a cloud building fall apart while one was still inside it wasn’t exactly life-threatening but it did mean a lot of wasted time and frustration digging back out.

Smart Guy and I met eyes when I turned the corner. He was still holding onto something that had to be important and expensive if he was holding it instead of throwing it at me or ditching it just so it wouldn’t slow him down. I dove after him, and he went up the stairway to the roof access, twisting in the tight spiral of stairs so I couldn’t get a bead on him.

“You know, if you cooperate I might be able to take you alive!” I shouted after him. A few stray bolts of beam fire came down the stairs, just to try and make me keep my head down. I decided he wasn’t interested in talking things out. Maybe I’d made a bad first impression when I came through the wall and stabbed one of his friends a bunch of times.

I’d have felt worse about it if they weren’t literally marking ships for orbital strikes and getting hundreds of ponies killed. I’d also feel worse if I hadn’t started to get way too used to killing regular ponies. At least they were soldiers. That made it better. They’d signed up for this. If they were on a mission like this, they were probably even special forces, so they were doubly prepared to risk their lives!

That seemed like pretty good justification, right?

I counted the shots he took, realized I actually had no idea how many times a beam rifle could fire before it had to be recharged, and got bored when there was a pause in the suppressive fire. I charged up the stairs and felt them crumble under me, forcing me to jump up to the next level, wings barely useful in the tight space. The stairway was almost an afterthought, slapped together for visitors who didn’t have wings while the ponies who belonged in the clouds would have used the windows. Or at least that would be the best way to get between floors if the building wasn’t surrounded by multiple fireteams ready to shoot anything that moved.

I held a hoof in front of my slightly-more-vulnerable-than-the-rest-of-me face and smashed through the roof access door. We were close to the top of the cloud cavity here, with only a narrow slice of space between the roof and the ceiling. It was only just big enough for what immediately got my attention - the array of antennae and dishes pointing straight up and the two ponies tending to it, one of them the pony I’d been chasing and the other listening to his panicked comrade and trying to figure out what he was talking about.

They both looked at me and I saw the pony who’d been on the roof already with the array immediately understand more than enough about the situation to react appropriately and snap off a shot at me. It was obvious that it was coming, and I wasn’t dumb enough to stand in the way.

I really wanted to ask them to surrender but I didn’t have a lot of cover from which to hide behind and start shouting. I’d been hoping for some giant HVAC system or chest-high walls, but there was just a low safety railing around the very edge of the roof. I guess ponies didn’t need air conditioning when the building itself was built in a controlled environment like Stormreach.

It occurred to me in that moment that I should have brought a radio with me to communicate with the fireteams surrounding the building. It was one more example of why I needed somepony to hold my hoof and do the brain things for me. To be fair, though, I did have a significant amount of head trauma.

Hopefully, a few explosions would do the trick when nothing else would. I twisted around to get a bead on the equipment with my borrowed rocket launchers.

A wordless scream of pure rage distracted me. It was about midway between impossible frustration and total screaming insanity, and I felt it just as much as I heard it. I rolled to the side to try and get out of the way but Rain Shadow, or Tetra, or whatever he was calling himself now was a lot faster than my reaction time.

His shoulder hit my side and we went over the edge, the safety railing snapping like it was made of twine and spit. It was a long way down, and he pinned my wing to my side, not even trying to break our fall all the way to the street below.

A few seconds later, after we landed, I kicked him off me hard enough to dent his fancy suit of power armor.

“Are you an idiot?!” I yelled. “The street is made of packed clouds! It’s like throwing me into a mattress!”

“You should be dead!” he growled. “I stabbed you through the heart!”

“You did,” I confirmed. I could practically see his eyes narrowing. He was trying to figure out how I was tricking him. “Are you really that surprised? A stake through the heart is how you kill vampires, not regular ponies!”

Tetra sputtered in incoherent anger. “Everypony dies when they get stabbed in the heart!”

“Evidence suggests otherwise.” I shrugged.

He drew his power sword. That took him a fraction of a second. During that fraction of a second, I fired two rockets at him, aiming for his hooves. He did a neat, controlled backflip to go over them, and if he’d been standing on something proper, like asphalt, the rockets would have exploded under him and he’d get caught in shrapnel and fire.

Unfortunately, I was an idiot and even though I had just mentioned it, I’d neglected to take into account that the ground was made of clouds. My rockets went right through them, and if the world had been fair they would have at least made a shlorp sound when they vanished.

“Oops,” I mumbled. Somepony on the surface was going to have a bad day.

Tetra launched himself off the ground before I even thought he had the footing to do it, moving so fast the tip of his sword cracked like a whip. There was just enough distance for me to throw myself out of the way of a fatal blow, but not enough to turn it into a clean miss. The crackling edge of his blade missed my body and carved though the rocket launcher on my right side.

It reacted appropriately, and predictably, by blowing the buck up. This was a good and a bad thing. The bad part was that I lost a weapon and the blast hit me hard enough to toss me back and knock the wind out of me. The good part was that reactive armor is extremely effective at deflecting an attack and Tetra caught a buckload of shrapnel when the blast tossed him just as hard in the other direction.

I shook myself off more quickly than he did, presumably because I had a lot of experience with being blown up and ragdolled. Tetra actually stayed on the ground for almost a full second collecting himself and shaking off the effects of the blast. Total amateur. I flicked the knife out of my hoof.

“Give it up,” I advised him. “I’ve never even once tried seriously to kill you and you know it.”

“You killed my sister. You killed a pony I was falling in love with. You ruined my life!” He shouted louder and louder, getting to his hooves. He’d really played it cool before, doing the whole mystery stallion act with a cloak and mask and everything. Now he just sounded like the angry, pouting colt I was more used to.

“It’s my fault they’re dead,” I agreed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want them to die, believe it or not. I tried to save both of them.”

“If you really want to apologize then let me kill you and stay dead!” he screamed and charged. He was unbelievably fast. It couldn’t just be wired reflexes like mine. He had to be absolutely pumped to the gills with some expensive, exotic combat drugs.

I got my knife up in time and knocked his attack aside. I couldn’t cross blades with him for long - the aura around his sword burned away at the layers of composite my knife was made out of - but I could strike it hard enough to throw his aim off.

A spark ran through me. I ducked. Tetra twisted his blade to the side and swung in a wide arc that went over my head, right through where my neck would have been. I went forward inside his reach and slammed my head into his helmet. He swore and stepped back, off-balance. I shook it off faster than him because, well, I had less brains to get scrambled.

My knife went into his right elbow when I threw it. That’s actually where I’d aimed, so things were going pretty well. He swore in pain but didn’t drop the sword. Probably because it was attached to his foreleg with some kind of complicated armature that was feeding it power, but also because of discipline.

I tugged the blade back with the magnetic tether and saw the color of his blood for the first time. It was pale blue, exactly like blood shouldn’t be.

“You really did ruin yourself, didn’t you?” I asked. “Why?”

“To kill you!” he hissed.

“Everypony thought I was dead for years! Cube and Quattro both had to know about it, and that means your boss, Cozy Glow, had to know too! So what’s the real reason?”

“I knew you weren’t dead,” Tetra said, his voice shaking. “I could feel it. I dreamed about it every night! You’re just some thug from a backwater town in the middle of nowhere. A criminal. A traitor. A killer!”

“Those are all pretty accurate,” I agreed.

He stomped in anger. The street cracked, loose mist flying out of the crumbling clouds. “So why are you still alive?! How could the universe be so unfair?!”

“Well…” I considered that. “I’m only in this mess because of my mom. And she was working with Polar Orbit. And he works for your boss. So really, if you think about it logically--”

He screamed and charged. He was not in the mood to think about it logically.

Tetra’s rage was so strong it was like a bright, shining flare in the dark. That sixth sense I had saw right through him.
After the fourth parried attack, he was getting more frustrated and more sloppy. Two more and he stopped even trying to feint or do anything except swing as hard as possible.

Even though he was moving just as fast, if not faster, than my wired reflexes, I could sense his attacks before they happened. I was reacting before he moved. I could only move at speed for tiny fractions of a second, but it was enough as long as I followed my instincts.

Tetra aimed a kick at my chest, but that put him off balance and right in front of me. And I had one rocket launcher left. The rocket caught him in the chest and blasted him through the wall of the rapidly deteriorating apartment complex. I was under absolutely no illusions that it was going to kill him, so I did what any sane pony would do and sat down to wait, detaching the now-empty rocket launcher from its mount and tossing it aside. It promptly fell through the floor.

“Good thing I didn’t sign for that or I’d get in a lot of trouble,” I said. The Enclave was very strict about keeping track of expensive equipment.

It took almost a full minute for Rain Shadow to stomp back through the hole, trailing the distinctive chunky mist that came from impromptu demolition work on a cloud building’s structural elements. He wasn’t dead, obviously, but he looked upset and very badly injured.

The blast had torn off a few pieces of armor and exposed what was underneath and to put it kindly, Rain Shadow looked like he belonged in a horror show. The stallion’s mask had cracked in half to reveal a drained and wasted face with feeding and air tubes snaked through his nostrils and eyes so bloodshot he must not have slept in weeks. Obvious surgical scars went down his neck and exposed left foreleg, and he seemed like he was being held together with skin grafts and implanted shunts.

“What the buck happened to you?” I asked quietly. I was actually starting to feel a little sympathy for the guy. It was one thing to fight a pony when they were a scary guy in a mask and power armor. It was something else when they looked like they belonged in a hospital bed.

“You happened,” he spat. His voice changer was broken. Instead of that imposing electronic growl his voice was a weak wheeze.

“Dude, the last time I saw you, you were absolutely fine,” I said. “Physically. Emotionally you were fucked up but you weren’t… like this.” I gestured vaguely to his whole body.

“I had to get revenge! Do you even remember her name?!” He screamed, tears streaming down his exposed cheek.

“Your sister was named Snow Shadow,” I said quietly. “Your marefriend was named… Star… something.”

“Stella Nova,” Rain Shadow corrected.

“I have big chunks missing in my brain and replaced with a calculator. It’s amazing I even got close. I got shot in the head, what’s your excuse for looking like you wrestled a blender?”

“I had to… get stronger to beat you,” he grunted. The shunts and IV lines running along his body gurgled, pale blue liquid pumping into his veins. “I volunteered for this. Cut out the weak parts. Regrow them stronger. Again and again.”

His voice and breathing steadied as more of that blue stuff was fed into him. Muscles twitched and swelled in time with his heartbeat.

Rain Shadow swung his sword in an arc, the edge cracking through the air and leaving a trail of sparks. He was even easier to read now that I could see his eyes. He charged. The idiot used the same kind of strategy I always did. It made sense when ninety percent of the time getting shot once or twice was fine as long as I ended up close enough to stab whoever had been doing the shooting.

The strategy had also repeatedly failed me and it was clear Rain Shadow, despite trying to make a new start as some kind of crazy supersoldier, had yet to learn from the same kind of mistakes I had. Looking at it objectively, he wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the undead Steel Rangers I’d taken out a few times. Sure, he was ten times faster, but they’d been stronger and their swords had been super-cursed. That’s why I hadn’t taken any of them back with me.

I was thinking all this in the time it took for him to charge me. Like I said, I saw it coming from a while away. Instead of dodging or parrying the attack, I kicked loose clouds into his face. He stumbled, blind for an instant. I grabbed his outstretched hoof at the wrist and twisted the mechanical linkage that was connecting his sword to his armor. The frame bent and snapped and that dangerous power field around the blade winked out.

He yelped in surprise and pain. Blue blood spurted from where broken bones pierced his skin.

“Oh shoot, sorry,” I said. I wasn’t really sorry though. I ripped the power sword the rest of the way out of his hooves and he was darn lucky I didn’t disarm him in a literal way that ends with hooves being detached from bodies. A few broken bones were light punishment by comparison.

He stumbled, still carrying momentum from his charge, instinctively tried to catch himself with his broken leg, and tumbled to the ground.

I stowed the sword away and walked over to the groaning pony, calmer now.

“Please give up,” I said. “Honestly you’re pretty great as a fighter but I’ve seen some really awesome ponies and you don’t compare. There was this one stallion named Split Moon and he was so good with a sword it was like magic--”

“Shut up!” Rain Shadow yelled. “I’m not here to banter with you or reason with you or… or… anything! I’m here to kill you!”

“For revenge, yeah, I got that,” I said. “You’ve literally tried the same thing like… twice already? There was the Heaven’s Sword, which basically shattered your whole body when you piloted it. Then the thing in Dark Harbor…”

“You’ll never understand how it feels to live for revenge!” he spat.

“No, probably not,” I agreed. “I don’t even have time for revenge right now. I have ponies I need to save. You’re just dumb and selfish. While we’re wrestling here in the street, everypony you came here with is being arrested.”

I’d noticed the fireteams closing in on the building while I’d been sitting in the street waiting. Rain Shadow looked up at the roof, and we could just see the antenna array being taken down.

“No!” he groaned. “Not again! I can’t fail again! Why do you always do this?!”

“If you want me to give you a big reassuring pat on the back and tell you it’s not your fault, it ain’t happening,” I told him flatly.

He growled at me, shaking with impotent rage. Maybe literally. There were rumors about what happened if you overdosed on combat drugs. He reached for something under his wing and pulled out an apple-sized ball of metal.

“Put the grenade down,” I warned him. “You don’t have to die.”

“This isn’t a suicide, this is an escape plan,” he hissed. He set it off in his hooves. Instead of an explosion, the thing sparked and made a deep unsound, a burst of white noise and static. I’d felt something like it before, in the Shadowed Places back in Limbo what seemed like ages ago.

Magic itself faded in the blast radius. The clouds under Rain Shadow stopped supporting his weight and he dropped through them like a rock, vanishing from sight almost instantly. What was left of my borrowed suit of armor failed as neatly as if it had been switched off, the weight crashing down on my shoulders.

The clouds under my hooves started to soften. I felt a pulse in my chest, a weak fizzle like being dunked in carbonated water. I tried to fly to avoid the fall straight down to the surface and to my surprise, my wings caught the wind. It wasn’t as much as usual, but it was just enough to glide and fly and get away from the invisible threat.

“Some kind of antimagic field,” I mumbled. “That’s cute.”

It was already fading, the clouds going solid again. I couldn’t follow him, not with my own natural pegasus magic working against me. He could be clear out of the other side and in clear air, and I’d have to dig and kick through Celestia knew how many layers to get there. He’d be long gone.

“Chamomile!” Airpony Sunray called down from the roof She was poised at the edge, looking down at me. ”Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” I yelled back. She seemed slightly disappointed, but only in the normal way a pony would feel about somepony they didn’t particularly like, not in a weird traitory way. I was pretty sure she was on the level. “Did you get those ponies?”

“Two up here and one alive inside,” she confirmed. “Is that all of them?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “That’s all we’re gonna get today.”

She looked around as if sure this was some kind of trick and carefully landed next to me. I could tell what she was thinking. Not because of any psycho-powers but because I had a tiny amount of regular empathy. Sunray was sure that something awful was going to pop up and try to kill me any moment now, and she didn’t want to get caught in the danger zone.

“I hate this,” I sighed.

“The fighting and killing?” she asked.

“No. Well, yes. But mostly I hate feeling stupid and not knowing what I’m doing. I’m ten steps behind everypony and I need somepony smarter than me to drag me along.” I kicked at the ground sullenly. “Dangit. I guess I’m going to have to trust Quattro. She’s the only one tricky and smart enough to figure out a plan.”

That assumed that this wasn’t all some slow-burning plan of hers to do… something. There was no way she’d be doing all this with no reason. I had to figure it out and hope I could trust her long enough to learn how to end this little war.

Chapter 102: Face of the Coin

The thunder of the orbital strikes had petered out after the team of ponies broadcasting targeting data had been captured. Three alive, one dead, one escaped. It was something like a success, but what it really showed was that the escaped Neighvarro fleet remnants were still vulnerable even in Stormreach.

I tried to get comfortable in my seat. The intercom droned with a constant roll of reports on damage control and status. The pony reading out the reports sounded exhausted, and I couldn’t blame them. It was a long list of critical systems that needed to be repaired.

I folded my hooves. We were onboard the wounded Thunderhead-class ship that had led the fleet review. The tough old bird had kept flying even after the first orbital strike had decapitated it, the well-trained crew keeping things going despite all kinds of trouble. Even in the waiting room outside of the combat information center, the walls were blackened by fire from beam rifles. It felt like a metaphor I wasn't smart enough to decode.

“The saboteurs must have put up quite a fight,” Quattro noted. She was less comfortable than I was. I’d put on a Neighvarro-black uniform with a few things Quattro had scavenged, the addition of a long coat and peaked cap making me look very official and imposing.

Quattro had wanted something similar, and was less than pleased that she’d ended up in hoofcuffs.

“Most ponies here are going to count you among those saboteurs,” I pointed out. “A lot of ponies are going to recognize you since Cozy Glow broadcast your face everywhere.”

“A bit of a liability for a spy,” Quattro agreed. “I wonder if she did it on purpose just to make life more difficult for me. She must have suspected I was going to retire from her service.”

“I can’t imagine why she’d expect you to betray her. You’ve never betrayed anypony in your life!”

“Owch,” Quattro sighed. She shifted in her seat. The cuffs jangled. “Can I take these off? You know I can slip out of them anytime I want.”

“The only reason they’re thinking about letting us into the meeting is because a bunch of ponies vouched for me and you’re in custody,” I said. “We’re already lucky they want to grill you for information by asking nicely instead of just beating it out of you.”

“Oh yes, I’m very lucky that I’m going to be interrogated,” Quattro said. She said it sarcastically but part of her was amused by the idea of it. I could smell it on her like the perfume she’d somehow managed to scavenge up just to make herself seem a little more well-dressed and put-together than anypony else in the room we were shortly after let into.

It had been on White Glint’s ship that I’d learned the difference between the bridge and the CIC. Ponies drove the boat from the bridge, but the hard work of waging war was done from the CIC. It was the most heavily armored and secure part of the ship, full of screens and communications equipment, and today, it was also full of Captains.

“Hey,” I said. I probably should have saluted, but the other ponies barely even looked up at me so it was probably just as well. A group of a dozen captains were clustered around a table illuminated with harsh lights, pouring over charts and maps. A mix of coffee mugs and bottles of liquor held the papers down on the table.

“You’re Warrant Officer Chamomile?” One of them asked. He had a slightly fancier uniform than the rest. “I’m told you might have information critical to the new war effort.”

“I hope so,” I said. “So, uh, this is gonna sound weird but I sort of know everypony involved personally.”

“I can’t help but notice you’ve brought one of them with you,” the fancy lad said. He looked a little young to be a Captain. “One of the people responsible for killing General Ravioli along with the entire bridge staff of this ship. I was a Lieutenant until yesterday.”

“You’ve done an excellent job,” one of the other, older captains assured him, putting a hoof on his shoulder. “You kept your ship together.”

“Cozy Glow has been planning all of this for centuries,” Quattro said, before things had a chance to get too positive. “She has intended to conquer Equestria even since before the Great War. She was a member of Celestia’s Belles, sort of a pre-war intelligence and operations group. The kind of ponies where if you know they exist, you know to take orders from them. After all her superiors had accidents, she put herself in place to whisper in Celestia’s ear, and then…”

“And then Luna was put in charge,” I mumbled. “She lost her chance. And then with the Ministries, power got spread out and harder to take.”

“So she changed tactics,” Quattro said. “She put herself in cryosleep and waited for the next big power vacuum.”

“Why didn’t she step in right after the war?” the newest captain asked.

“There was no rush,” Quattro said. “She could wait for things to stabilize. Build weapons, train soldiers. Let the victims of the war rebuild enough that she was conquering a functioning society instead of having to build it herself.”

“We’re not idiots. We know what she wants,” one of the captains said. “Her past is irrelevant.”

Quattros hook her head. “No, it’s not. She’s had two centuries since the war ended to watch you, develop the perfect plans, the perfect ponies.”

“She’s been running some kind of augmentation lab,” I said. “There was one on the surface that was destroyed when one of the subjects escaped.”

“It wasn’t the only one,” Quattro noted.

“None of this matters if we can’t move against her!” A grizzled captain, easily twenty years senior to the next-oldest pony in the room, slammed his hoof into the table in the center of the CIC, almost knocking over a mug of steaming coffee.

One of the others nodded. “We need to knock out her orbital weapons. A strike against that big ship of hers--”

“It’s not controlled from there,” Quattro said. “I hope I don’t need to tell you that she’s the type of pony that has a deadmare’s switch. If you push her so hard she thinks she’s going to lose, she’ll burn everything just because she can.”

“This whole thing is absurd,” the old captain mumbled. “Weapons in space…”

“Where are they controlled from?” the young captain asked.

“You’re not going to like it when I tell you the answer,” Quattro said. She waited a moment for them to glare at her. “The orbital hub. A space station. It was going to be part of the moon landing program before that got cut down to almost nothing. Allegedly.”

“So it’s still impossible to attack unless we can get into space,” the captain said. The ponies at the table visibly winced. Some of them reached for the less empty liquor bottles. “None of our missiles will reach orbit.”

“They wouldn’t work anyway. You’d have to get ponies there,” Quattro continued. “There’s no telling how many warsats are up there. She’s only used kinetic weapons so far, but for all I know she has something on par with a megaspell waiting for a special occasion. Even missing one could lead to the deaths of countless ponies.”

“So your suggestion is that we give up?” A scarred captain growled. “If you think you can intimidate us, you’re wrong!”

“I’m just laying out the facts,” Quattro said, with a mild shrug.

The scarred captain shook her head. “How are we supposed to put a space program together from scratch? Should I just call up some rocket scientists?”

I thought about it while they talked. A rocket scientist… Destiny would have fit the bill, but if we could rescue her we wouldn’t have needed the rockets to begin with. I’d met plenty of other scientists before. There was Herr Doktor back in Thunderbolt Shoals, but I didn’t actually know if she did rocketry. It wasn’t like every scientist studied every kind of science.

The last time I’d even seen a big rocket was…

I blinked. “Hey!” I raised a hoof. “I think I know a pony, but I’m gonna need to take a trip down to the surface.”

Dark Harbor. The last time I’d seen it, it had been turning into a little Enclave surface colony. They’d already set up schools, secured the area, and were slowly draining the city of anything the more worthy ponies above the clouds needed more than ponies scraping a living out of the muck.

Then I’d been involved with starting a small war, some of the city had gotten destroyed, and it had taken a little damage from a capital ship firing plasma cannons. I felt kinda bad about most of it. It hadn’t even been my fault - I was basically a victim too. Unsung had played everypony for fools on a quest for revenge and got what she wanted at the small expense of a lot of innocent lives.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” the pilot said when he stepped out of the vertibuck, using binoculars to scan the city from the hill where we’d landed. We weren’t sure how the locals would react to seeing the Enclave again.

“Sometimes you have to hope for the best,” I said. “You remember what I said?”

“Watch for raiders and small arms fire,” the pilot said. “And you’ll set off a flare if you need an emergency pickup.”

I nodded and looked over at the soldiers that had come with me. I didn’t really like having them along but for some reason nopony trusted me to do delicate jobs alone, and Quattro absolutely wasn’t allowed out until they could confirm she wasn’t going to betray everypony again.

“It might be good for one of you to stay here,” I suggested. “Watch the pilot’s back and make sure we’ve got a way back.”

“Rosewater, you stay,” Sunray said. It was a lot easier to tell who was who with everypony in uniforms instead of power armor. I could also tell it made them nervous. “If things get hot, leave without us and we’ll figure something out.”

The pink pony saluted, and Sunray followed me along with a pony whose name I didn’t know but had to be something like Dumb Muscle, because he was even taller than I am and looked like he spent all his leave time finding new and exciting ways to lift heavy things.

“I heard there was a big op here that went bad,” Sunray said. She looked at me when she said it and there was a definite hint of accusation there. “Officers killed, a ship destroyed…”

“It was a complicated and dynamic situation,” I said, trying to mimic Quattro’s ability to agree with someone in a way that absolutely provided no information. Dynamic was a good word to use in situations like that because it could fit in almost any description of a pony, place, or event.

“You were in that deep, huh?” she asked.

“I’m starting to think you don’t trust me,” I retorted.

“I didn’t want this assignment! Ponies just heard that I knew you and…” she groaned. “I should never have vouched for you. It would have been so much easier…”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t crash the ship. I don’t think I even killed anypony onboard. I did hug somepony and cry for a while, but I was really having a bad day and I think they understood that.”

“That does make me feel slightly better,” she conceded.

“Anyway, we’re just looking for a pony who lived in town,” I said. “She built this big rocket booster thing. It’s been years, so I’m not sure if she’s still here, but I know somepony who definitely hasn’t left and she’ll pride herself on knowing everything.”

“And so you came to me,” Asterism said, sitting back in her seat and folding her hooves. She looked good. Last time I’d seen her, she’d been in rough shape, but the time hadn’t weighed on her shoulders at all. If anything, she looked younger, fresher, and richer than before. It helped that she had a small gold plaque on her desk that said ‘Mayor’.

“Was I not flattering enough?” I asked. “I could flatter you more if it’ll help.”

She chuckled. “I have enough ponies flattering me, these days. I do enjoy it.” She watched us for a moment, then got up. “I didn’t think I’d see you with Enclave soldiers except in chains, but times change, don’t they? Now I’m the biggest, most important pony in town.”

“Just like you wanted,” I pointed out.

“Yes. It’s a nice change.” She looked at Sunray and Dumb Muscle. The big stallion was looking off to the side at one of the paintings. “See something you like?” she asked.

“My mother has the same print,” Dumb Muscle said, his voice as deep as a thunderstorm’s growl. “They made about a million of them. Practically worthless, but it looks fancy.”

Asterism scowled. “I’ll have it wrapped up to take with you,” she said. “I don’t think I like that one anyway. Now, what do you want, besides a critique of my taste in art?”

“I need to talk to Klein Bottle,” I said. “Is she still around?”

“You want to talk to--” Asterism looked surprised. “You know she might not be very happy to see you. She definitely won’t like seeing you wearing that.”

“I know,” I sighed. There were a lot of ponies who would be happier never seeing me again. It wasn’t something I wanted to get used to. “So is she here, or not?”

“She’s not in town, exactly,” Asterism said. “She didn’t want to stay after you and Unsung disappeared. She kept expecting you to come back, and then… well, a mare changes when she loses hope.”

“Unsung?” Dumb Muscle looked at me, scowling.

“I don’t even know why I’d be surprised at this point to find out Chamomile knows Dashites,” Sunray grumbled.

“Oh, she does more than just know them.” Asterism stepped in front of me and smirked. She was enjoying this. She was the kind of mare who enjoyed any kind of power, even if she didn’t get anything out of using it. “She was working with them. Or tricked by them, really. We all were. She just happens to be the easiest to really fool.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“This pony we’re supposed to find…” Sunray asked cautiously.

“Yes, she’s a Dashite,” I said. I’d been hoping this wouldn’t come up. I couldn’t think of any way to avoid it, I’d just been hoping a miracle would occur and it wouldn’t be discussed. “She’s also a mechanical genius and built a big rocket pack thing that I used once.”

“She lives in Crashtown,” Asterism said, apparently satisfied. She sat down behind her desk again. “I’m told she doesn’t even come into town much, but there’s decent trade between here and the site.”

“I’ve never heard of Crashtown,” I said.

“You practically founded it,” Asterism said, leaning a hoof on the desk and waving vaguely towards the windows. I looked the way she was pointing. Just visible, with the height from her office building, I could see a dark shape on the hills outside the city. A broken wreck.

“Oh.”

“I can’t believe they’re doing this,” Sunray mumbled as we walked through Crashtown. It wasn’t really a proper town, just sort of a ramshackle collection of buildings made of old shipping containers and scrap, with a few dozen ponies making a living buying and selling scraps and salvage.

“I remember reading about what happens to whale carcasses at the bottom of the ocean,” I said. I shielded my eyes from the light drizzle of rain and looked up at the Spirit of Cloudsdale. It was slowly being taken apart, the most valuable and easiest to remove parts being taken first, with the bulk metal of the hull remaining like a skeleton. A single generator thrummed, providing lights and power across the town and to the ponies still working on the ship even in the worsening weather.

“It’s not their ship!” Sunray growled.

“I’m not sure that’s true,” I said. I looked closer at the ponies selling half-empty spark batteries and bundles of wire. A lot of them were pegasus ponies. “I think some of these are members of the crew.”

“Then why…?” Sunray mumbled.

“AWOL,” Dumb Muscle grumbled. “Deserters.”

“After the ship crashed some of them might not have been able to get back,” I said. “It’s not usually that easy to get to the Enclave from the surface with the Lightning Shield in place.”

“They could have sent a message,” Dumb Muscle countered, adjusting the wrapped-up print tucked behind his wing. I couldn’t believe he’d actually taken it with him, but apparently he liked art.

“They’ve got their reasons,” I said. “Let’s just start asking around.”

I trotted up to one of the stands and glanced at what the pony was selling. Parts of plasma weapons, loose buttons. A whole box of different types of screws. That last thing was probably the most valuable thing he owned.

“Hey there,” I said, trying to sound friendly. He was shivering. I could tell it was because of my uniform and not the chill in the air. “Look, I’m not here to hurt anypony. I just want to find somepony. Think you can point me the right way?”

“I-I don’t know anyone, ma’am,” he squeaked.

“Klein Bottle,” I said. “She’s about this tall--” I held a hoof very low to the ground. “And about this wide.” I indicated roughly the same space, but horizontally instead of vertically.

He looked uncomfortable. I knew we were being watched by all the other ponies in town. Some of them were starting to think about going for weapons. A few really bright eggs already had them drawn behind the counters where nopony would notice a hold-out beam gun.

“We’re not military police,” I said, loud enough to be clear I was addressing everypony listening. “I just want to find my friend and talk to her. Tell her Chamomile is here looking for her, and I know--”

Somepony took a wild shot. It didn’t hit anything, but made everypony dive for cover. Everypony except me, because I wasn’t smart enough. The shot had gone right past my ear from somewhere behind me.

“I didn’t see who did that,” I said, glancing back. I could make a pretty good guess though. There was a terrified looking pegasus mare with the remains of an engineer’s uniform and fumbling with a beam pistol. She shoved it under her counter and looked away from me, sweating. “Since I don’t know for sure, I’m gonna pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I saw who--” Sunray started. Dumb Muscle gently elbowed her, shutting her up. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as I thought.

Maybe that’s how I looked to other ponies. I could live with that. I set my shoulders and tried to casually flex a little. I put a few bits on the counter of the pony in front of me.

“Please just tell me where to go before this turns into a fight,” I whispered. He must have seen the pleading near-tears in my eyes.

Thankfully nopony else tried to mess with us, so we got out of there without having to kill a single pony. So far. To be honest, this mission was going an order of magnitude better than anything else I’d done, so part of me was thinking that Emma had been right all along that oversight and planning was important. The other part of me was waiting for some kind of machine demon to explode out of the inner walls of the wreck to murder me.

It wasn’t even a silly thing to worry about when something similar had happened to me more than once.

Somepony swore loudly ahead of me, and I heard the distinct sound of a tool being thrown across a room in frustration.

“I think we’re in the right place,” I said. “You guys stay here. She might get spooked if she sees too many ponies in uniform.”

“We’ll watch your back,” Dumb Muscle agreed. Sunray distinctly looked like she wasn’t happy with having me do all the talking.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Sunray asked quietly. “She’s a Dashite! You said it yourself! They’re all crazy killers and they want to bring down the Enclave and… do other bad things! Like they want a world where instead of everypony getting what they want and deserve according to their need, they all live in some kind of awful nightmare world where ponies starve in the streets and it’s a mare-eats-mare world!”

“In a sexual way or in a cannibal way?” I asked.

“Pretty sure she means cannibal,” Dumb Muscle rumbled.

“I’m sure she’s not a cannibal,” I said over my shoulder as I walked in. The room was mostly taken up by a big machine, with half of the panels on the walls ripped off and tossed aside. The cursing I’d heard outside was still there, coming in a constant stream from somewhere out of sight.

I knelt down to look and saw the back half of a small, plush pegasus that was mostly fluff.

“Give me a ten-millimeter socket,” she said.

“Um…” I looked around, spotted a tool box, and rummaged around in it, eventually finding the right tool and lying down on the ground so I could reach far enough to put it in her hooves. She took it and slid a little further inside, muttering to herself and wrenching, literally, at something out of sight.

I waited a minute, and she started wiggling her way out of the tight space. I backed up and watched as Klein Bottle emerged with a square hunk of technology in her hooves. She pulled goggles down over her eyes and examined it more closely in the better light of the room before standing up and putting it in a box with some other parts.

“So,” she said, looking away from me and going through the bin of parts she’d presumably pulled out of…

“What is this thing, anyway?” I asked, instead of guessing.

“It’s one of the cloud engines. It converted electricity into pegasus magic to keep the captive storms powered and adjust them,” Klein Bottle said.

She stared into the bin in front of her for a few more moments, then turned around to look at me with tears in her eyes.

“I thought you were dead,” she squeaked. She ran into me forehead-first and nuzzled into my chest, muffling quiet sobs. “I thought I got you killed!”

“I’m okay,” I told her, keeping my voice low and soft. “Sorry if I worried you.”

“Where did you go? Why are you wearing that uniform?!”

“It’s a really long story.” I sat down. “I got back up into the Enclave riding this hulk through the Lightning Shield. Then I ended up pretending to be a military officer because of family stuff. Then I was sucked into another dimension. After that there was a time warp, and I was underwater, and there were vampires, and now some crazy pony called Cozy Glow is trying to kill everypony with orbital weapons.”

“Orbital weapons?” Klein Bottle wiped her tears on my uniform and stepped back, sniffling and rubbing her nose.

“Some kind of satellites in orbit with big guns,” I explained. “The only way to stop them is to get ponies up there, and for that, we need a rocket scientist. Naturally, you were the first pony I thought of!”

“Because I, one time, built a bunch of rockets and strapped them to you?” Klein Bottle asked, trying to confirm my line of thought.

I nodded. “Exactly! That’s basically what we need to do now, right? Strap rockets to ponies and point them up!”

“I… Okay.” Klein Bottle groaned. “There are so many problems with this I don’t even know where to start. I need to…” she grabbed a marker out of her toolbox and adjusted a relatively clean panel from the wall to make it more roughly upright.

“Are you really going to draw things?” I asked, amused.

“I need to make a list,” she said. “Look, first problem, I don’t like or care about the Enclave! I don’t even want to fight them! I just want to live a quiet life, away from all the drama and dying and ponies getting shot!”

She wrote the number one on the metal, then added ‘No Drama’ after it.

Not good for my chances if that was number one. “Oof,” I mumbled.

“If we ignore that, and it’s really really hard for me to pretend to be able to do that…” Klein wrote a big ‘Two’ on the metal plate. “Rockets are hard!”

“You can build them,” I said. “We just need to go up.”

She gave me a flat look, which was a bad sign. She started drawing diagrams.

“If you want to get to orbit, you don’t just go up. Up can get you really high, and maybe you’ll manage to get into what is technically space at around a hundred kilometers. Do you know what happens then?”

“...You float?” I guessed.

“You fall like a big idiot because you’re not in orbit! If you want to be in orbit you have to go sideways really, really fast! Even a low orbit is around seven and a half kilometers per second!”

She sighed and shook her head.

“And then there’s the problem of getting into the same orbit if you even wanted a chance at an interception… it’s like trying to shoot a bullet out of the air, except even harder because the orbits are elliptical. Okay, technically bullet trajectories are also elliptical ballistic arcs, but that’s besides the point. It’s tough!”

“Assume you’d have the resources of most of the Enclave,” I said. “Could you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Klein sighed. “I can build rockets. I can’t plan missions. I launched you sideways, and that’s just engineering. The planning part, figuring out how to make two speeding bullets intersect? Even getting into orbit isn’t easy. Rockets have this equation, see…”

She started writing up a complicated-looking math equation.

“This is the Trotovsky Rocket Equation. See, you have to go really fast, so with a rocket that takes fuel, but that fuel weighs something, so you have to carry the fuel to accelerate that fuel, then the fuel to accelerate that fuel--”

I sort of zoned out. She talked for a little bit about impulse and delta-v and dry mass. I nodded along because it was the polite thing to do. She filled in a few numbers as an example and then seemed to struggle. I helped her out by taking the marker and filling in the parts she was missing.

Klein Bottle blinked. She looked at the metal, then at me, then started writing other equations, double-checking some of what I’d written.

“How the buck…” she mumbled. “I was using a really simplified example, but even so! How did you do that?!”

“Half my brain is a computer,” I said. “I honestly can’t remember if I mentioned it to you before. The brain damage, I mean. I have really weird dreams sometimes but I’m good at math now! Kind of. I don’t know how math works but I can write down the correct answers.”

“Oh my stars, you’re an idiot savant,” Klein Bottle whispered.

“It’s better than being a regular idiot,” I joked.

“I still don’t want to help the Enclave,” Klein Bottle said firmly. “If they want to have a civil war, they’re welcome to it. Ponies down here won’t notice or care. Buck, maybe we’ll get some nice salvage once the cities start falling from the sky!”

She sounded angrier than the last time we’d met. I couldn’t blame her.

“Cozy Glow is going to conquer the Enclave, then Equestria,” I said. “You remember what Dark Harbor was like under occupation? It’ll be like that, except worse, and everywhere.”

Klein Bottle snorted. “So? It wasn’t that bad. As long as the right ponies get hurt maybe I’m fine with that!”

“I know you’re not really okay with it,” I said quietly. “I don’t know exactly what they did to you, but…”

“I fell in love,” Klein Bottle said quietly.

“Oh.”

“With the husband of my commanding officer.”

“Oh.” Now things were making sense.

“She found out, and had me assigned to a mission on the surface. Then… everything else happened. I wasn’t even a real Dashite! It was just an easy excuse to get rid of me without anypony asking questions! You know what the worst part was?”

I looked at her cutie marks. Where they should have been. “Um…”

“He was there. She made sure he was part of it, so I wouldn’t come running back. He went along with it, and you know who he apologized to? Her! I was just trash and once they got rid of me everything would be fine again! So yes, Chamomile, I’m fine with letting everything burn!”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

She smoothed down her fluffy coat, trying to calm down. “So you better have a bucking much better offer than ‘do the right thing’ if you want anything except for me to tell you to get lost and come back without that uniform.”

“I can get you a pardon and a giant pile of bits,” I said.

“...That’s a good start,” she admitted.

“Pretty sure I can ruin a couple careers if you give me the right names,” I said. “I can at least punch them if I ever meet them.”

Klein Bottle snorted and laughed.

“You realize that even if I said yes, it’s basically impossible, right? There are so many parts we’d need, and so much planning and science. It’d take years!”

“How do you feel about weeks, at most?”

“Double impossible. Would I still get the pardon and the bits?”

“Sure.”

“Fine, I’ll blow up some wannabe astromares. Let’s go to space.”

Chapter 103: Chain Reaction

Following the founding of the Ministries, the Equestrian armed forces established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots and pegasi. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to ensure that the handful of mares who graduated were the best fighters in the world.

They succeeded.

Today, the Enclave calls it the Lightning Dust Memorial Academy.

However, the ponies that attend call it the same thing, because it’s the official name and they’re professional ponies doing serious business.

“You’re sure this place is safe?” I asked. There was something about being around a lot of ponies that were all smarter, better trained, and faster than I was that made me slightly nervous. Everypony I passed clearly didn’t respect me at all. It wasn’t just the casual arrogance that special forces always had, these ponies clearly had opinions about Dashites and ponies that went to the surface in general.

It was like just touching the ground made us unclean in their eyes.

“Most of what we needed had to be brought up from the surface anyway,” Klein Bottle said at my side. I’d sort of taken up a role as escort to her, and she used me as a calculator when she couldn’t be bothered with doing the math herself. “You were right about Stalliongrad. Zonda was happy to lead the team to that site you showed him. Most of it is old ICBM parts, but that’s exactly what we need, just with a different payload.”

“That’s good,” I said. Klein Bottle was looking down at a checklist in her hooves as we walked towards the hangar that was serving as a vehicle assembly and testing building. I spotted two ponies whispering to each other as we started to pass them. One stuck out a hoof.

I shoved him hard, before he could trip Klein Bottle. It was more of a punch, really. He fell back with his nose bleeding.

Klein Bottle glanced up, saw him, and kept walking without question. His friend glared at me. I ignored her. What was she gonna do, stab me?

“We built a receiving dock below the academy,” Klein Bottle continued. “We’re assuming they have satellite surveillance. It’d be trivial compared to making orbital strikes. If we do everything below the cloud deck, that renders their surveillance useless. Then it’s just a matter of making sure everything here is business as usual.”

“And that’s why you’re recruiting ponies here?” I asked.

“If we don’t have to do personnel transfers, it means they don’t know where we’re organizing,” Klein Bottle explained. “This almost reminds me of being back in Dark Harbor, doing everything underground and hiding until the right moment.”

She stopped in front of a door to the main hangar.

“This is as far as you go,” she said. “Remember, you aren’t allowed inside. Even if you hear screaming!”

“Because you’re afraid everything will explode if I touch it,” I said. I tried not to roll my eyes. They rolled anyway.

“As a scientist, I have to believe that past experiences inform future events,” Klein Bottle said. She patted my knee, because it was at shoulder height for her. “I know you’re upset you can’t go into space, but you’re huge, heavy, and clumsy, and all of those things are bad in space.”

“I know,” I mumbled. The short list of ponies that were actually being trained for zero-G were also, coincidentally, short themselves. I’d seen the math. I’d done the math. A small pony meant a small capsule and a lighter payload, which was good if we wanted to actually get to space.

“Oh, that reminds me--” Klein Bottle flipped through her checklist. “I think the technicians had some numbers they wanted you to check with orbital calculations.”

“Noooooooo…” I groaned. “That’s math homework! I’m a grown-up, Klein Bottle! You can’t make me do homework!”

“I’ll buy you extra dessert later,” she promised.

“This dessert sucks eggs,” I mumbled. To be honest, the food at the Academy was actually pretty great. The Enclave saved the best for the best, and right now we were counted among them.

Where the rest of the military survived on Nutri-loaf and soft, semi-gelatinous casseroles that could be made in great quantities with enough vitamins and minerals to keep ponies going with the minimum of expense, the elite ponies here were destined for special forces. That meant our dinner tonight was roasted vegetables that we could actually see and name, noodles in a thick broth, spicy pickles, and something that appeared to be custard cream and sweet summer squash.

The food tasted good. What really sucked eggs was the company.

Klein Bottle and I were alone at a table and it was like being on an island surrounded by crocodiles. She’d given me her custard squash and picked at the rest of her food. I understood why her appetite wasn’t doing so well.

She speared a purple carrot on the end of a fork. “You remember how you offered me a pardon and a giant pile of bits?”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“I should have asked for two giant piles of bits,” she grumbled.

“Is it that bad?”

“You’ve got no idea,” Klein Bottle said. “We’ve been here a week and I swear some of the ponies I talk to disinfect their hooves and everything I touched after I leave their offices.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Well, look at what we’ve got here.” A rather short pony backed up by three larger friends came over to the table. “A bunch of surface trash that came wafting back up like a stink.”

One of the big ponies knocked Klein Bottle’s fork out of her grip. I pushed myself away from the table and turned to face them. I recognized some of the bigger ponies. One of them still had a bandaged snout.

“Really?” I asked. “You’re going to start a fight like we’re in bucking grade school? What next, are you going to shoot spitballs at me? Maybe you want to try putting a sign on my back that says ‘kick me’?”

“Dashite scum doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near me!” the short pony huffed. “I’m the best at the academy! I’ve broken a bunch of standing records!”

“I’d be more impressed if you’d broken flying records,” I said flatly. The short pony’s ears folded back.

“Chamomile,” Klein Bottle warned. “That’s Spark Buster, one of the candidates going through astromare training. We might need her for the mission.”

“That’s right, you can’t even touch me. If it wasn’t for me, your stupid mission wouldn’t even have a chance!” Spark smirked.

“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “First, you’re gonna say one more dumb thing and that’s gonna push me over the edge. Then I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll see the stars even before you get in the rocket. One of your friends, probably that guy--” I pointed to the stallion behind her. “--he’s gonna get angry because he has a crush on you, and I’m gonna break two of his legs when he tries to jump me. The stallion next to him also has a crush, on him, and I’m gonna break every bone in his face and he’ll be in surgery getting his jaw put back together with screws and metal plates.”

“What about the last one?” Klein Bottle asked, looking at the one with a bandaged snout.

“He’s gonna run away, because he’s the smartest one. He’ll come back with an officer later and pretend he’s responsible instead of a coward,” I explained. “And the worst part is, none of them are gonna thank me for not killing them.”

Spark Buster growled and used a slur that I won’t repeat.

“House arrest,” I mumbled. “So stupid. I didn’t even really start the fight. I warned everypony and what happens? I get in trouble.”

There was a loud bang on my door. “Quiet in there, prisoner! Get back to the quadratic formula mines!”

“I’m not a prisoner!” I yelled back to the guard. She cracked the door open and looked in, grinning.

“I know that, but it’s a lot funnier to act like you’re in prison for not doing enough algebra,” she said. She was technically guarding me, but it was to keep ponies out instead of keeping me in. The first time somepony had come in trying to cause trouble and made me miss a deadline, they’d stuck an armed guard outside to keep anypony else from having the same idea.

“It is funnier that way,” I admitted.

“It’s weird, you don’t seem like the brainy type,” she said. I could tell she meant it as a compliment, because this was the kind of place where very bad nerds went after they died so they could be bullied for eternity. “How’d you get so good at math?”

“Glitchy brain implant,” I explained. “I got shot in the head and then stuff was crammed into it. I don’t even know if you’d call it being good at math. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“Huh?” the guard tilted her head, opening the door a little more to lean in the doorway.

“It’s sort of like, um…” I had to think of a metaphor that an elite enclave shock trooper might understand. “Have you ever been on a field operation where your radio wasn’t strong enough to reach all the way back to base, but you could contact ponies between you, and they could relay the messages back and forth?”

“Sure,” the guard said. “The better comm sets can do the relay automatically if they’re set up for it.”

“Right. I feel like the mare carrying the comm equipment. The scientists send these weird messages in math and I don’t understand them, but I pass it along, and then I get a reply and give it back to them and everypony seems excited and happy that I’m doing the job, but I’m really just in the right place at the right time to be the mare in the middle.”

The guard nodded. “I get it. But hey, if it makes you feel better, that’s how a lot of ponies get on the promotion track. Warrant Officer is sort of a weird rank anyway. Once this is over maybe they’ll make you an actual officer instead of just a subject matter expert.”

“Funny thing is that’s exactly what I would have wanted when I was a filly,” I sighed. I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted now, but at the same time, this was by far the most organization and support I’d ever gotten and I didn’t even think anypony was likely to stab me in the back. Part of me had started thinking of the Enclave military as the bad guys, after being thrown in prison. Now I could blame one pony as the mastermind of all of it, and it made the rest simple.

“I’m gonna take a five-minute break and grab a coffee,” the guard said. “Do you want anything from the vending machine?”

“Do they have--” I stopped. A twinge hit me. A stray thought that didn’t feel like it came from inside my head. I stood up and looked around.

“...You okay?” she asked.

“Something’s off,” I said. I frowned and tried to feel it out like a pony might try to figure out how badly they’d sprained their ankle by carefully walking on it. I probed the feeling and found it just a little too familiar.

To her credit, the guard didn’t question it. She adjusted her service rifle at her side and waited for me to continue, her expression firming up.

“Cube,” I mumbled. She was close by. And if she was here, that was bad news on more than one level. I pushed away from the desk, my homework unimportant in the face of actual danger. “We need to find out what’s happening. I think we’ve got an intruder.”

“I’ll make sure everypony’s on alert,” the guard said. She touched her ear and spoke quietly with the ponies on duty. “Point C checking in,” she said. “All points, alert for a possible intruder. Requesting all points report in and perform immediate patrol.”

The radio chattered quietly, an unintelligible blur of voices that I could only half hear.

“Point D isn’t reporting in,” my guard said quietly, looking up at me.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“They’re pretty close,” she said. “They were stationed to watch the astromare trainees.”

So they were in personnel quarters, just like we were.

“We should check on them,” I said.

“I can’t leave my station,” my guard warned.

“Your orders are to guard me, right?” I asked. “I’m going to go take a look. You’re just gonna have to stick with me.”

“What the buck?” my guard whispered.

She was acting like this was the first time she’d seen a room full of dead ponies and beam weapon damage. It took me a moment to realize that it really might be her first time. Most ponies in the Enclave, even most in the military, never saw anything approaching real combat. They definitely never saw their friends get gunned down.

“Too late,” I said, punching the wall.

“I don’t understand, why didn’t they raise an alarm?” she asked.

“They didn’t have a chance to fight back,” I said.

“I’m not stupid. There are scorch marks on every wall. That means there was a real firefight in here.”

I shook my head. “This was done by a unicorn. An all-range attack using multiple guns controlled telekinetically. I’d guess somewhere between six and eight of them. It’s Cube’s specialty. She’s like having a whole squad of ponies, but the enemy doesn’t have anything to shoot back at.”

The guard was already reporting what we’d found. I knelt down next to the dead ponies. Half of them had died trying to get out of their bunks. The pony I’d fought in the cafeteria was tangled up in her bedsheets and shot in the back.

“So much for the best of the best,” I mumbled. That was going to set everything back by weeks, if it even mattered anymore. Cube being here meant that Cozy Glow knew something. We’d spent so much effort trying to keep a secret and it hadn’t mattered. Was it a traitor? Was it Quattro? I still wasn’t sure if I could trust her, but she shouldn’t have known anything. She was still in Stormreach, as far as I was aware.

I stood up and looked around. Cube had hit here first. It wasn’t where I would have gone. I had to get to the next obvious target before she did.

“Stay here,” I said. “Try to find how she got on-base!”

I spread my wings and bolted, flying for the hangar. Killing ponies in training was only going to delay things a little while. If somepony wanted to kill our hope of fighting back, they had to take down the only ponies who could get everything started again if the base burned down.

There was no obvious trail of destruction and carnage. No swathe of destruction in Cube’s wake. If it had been up to me to attack the base, it would have been a blunt and direct strike like artillery. In Thunderbolt Shoals, even doing my best to be quiet and smart and listening to other ponies, it still ended with explosions and death.

Cube’s trail was a surgical scar. Instead of fire and broken walls, there were doors cracked open, with ponies slumped in the rooms beyond, struck down in near-silence and never knowing or seeing what killed them.

She was fast and efficient and I knew for a fact that she couldn’t read my mind and that’s the only reason I was able to catch her by surprise when I spotted the unicorn calmly walking up to the hangar door. I tackled her, slamming her to the ground with my much greater weight and speed.

Cube bounced off the cloud floor of the base, her cloudwalking magic making her sink in for a moment before kicking in and shoving her out like a cork all buoyant and bobbing.

“Chamomile?!” she gasped in surprise. Cube was wearing angular armor, light but thick, with thin metal plates arranged like radiator grids instead of dense armor. It looked expensive, impossible to maintain, and designed more as a vanity project than as effective protection.

“Not as dead as you thought?” I asked. “I figured Four or Tetra would have told you.”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” she hissed. “I don’t want to fight you!”

Her horn lit up, and she shoved me away with a wild blast of spellcraft. It only carried me back a half-pace, the wave of force crackling along my coat and dissipating like a grounded lightning bolt. Cube and I were both sort of surprised about that. She reacted more quickly than I did in that moment, teleporting herself well out of reach. Slim, silenced beam weapons detached from her sides, the weapons designed for a unicorn and lacking a handle or obvious trigger.

“Chamomile, listen to me,” Cube said. “We don’t have to do this! I know you’re a good pony. We can work this out. All you have to do is just walk away, or, buck, come with me after this is over!”

“Are you… are you doing the thing I do when I try to reason with a crazy pony who’s gone murder-happy?”

“Yes?” she shrugged. “I guess? I’m in the middle of trying to keep ponies from blowing up Equestria’s last real chance at coming back from the dead, and you’re trying to stop me!”

“No, I’m trying to stop you from killing a bunch of ponies working to wrestle a weapon away from a megalomaniac that wants to conquer the world!” I countered.

“It’s not like that! Cozy Glow is really nice as long as you’re on her side! I know she’ll let you come with me. You might have to go on house arrest for a little while, but then we can be a family! You want that, right?”

I groaned. I did sort of want that, but only in the vague way that you want something that you know you should want. Like you should want a good, respectable job. You should want to eat healthy food. You should want a big house. I should want to make what was left of my family proud.

“This is hard right now, but once it’s over you’ll understand it’s for the best,” Cube said. “Even your dad said you need a smart pony to do the thinking for you, so just let me do the thinking this time.”

Cube looked to the side, and I saw her calculating something in her head before vanishing in a flash of teleportation, not even giving me a chance to give chase. I swore and ran for the door, smashing through what counted as security when most buildings were made of water vapor and rainbows turned into plastic with magic and chemistry. It exploded in the casual soft way a pillow might.

The ponies standing just inside looked surprised. One of them was an armed guard who was mostly armed with a book. The rest were the scientists, clustered in the small lab room and working on some small model made out of spare parts.

“We’re under attack!” I yelled. “She’s in the building! Everypony out!”

The majority of ponies in the room were Enclave technicians, and not even experienced ones. Half of them were civilians or just overeducated mares from rich families with no problematic ties to Thunderhead that might compromise them. There was exactly one pony who’d been through a real fight among them, and she’d known what was happening just from my expression.

Beam fire crashed into the room from a half-dozen angles, and Klein Bottle took down the ponies next to her at the knees, knocking them prone and saving their lives. A slim beam weapon flew into the room in a corona of magic, getting a different angle. I snatched it out of the air, wrestling it out of Cube’s grip and pointing it down where she couldn’t hurt anypony.

“Get them out of here!” I yelled.

“But--” Klein Bottle looked over at the rest of the hangar. It was a massive, open space filled with half-assembled tanks and machines. Most of them couldn’t be replaced.

“I’ll do what I can,” I promised. “But I’m not good at saving lives. I’m only good at making ponies mad and getting shot at, and that’s what I’m gonna do right now.”

Klein Bottle nodded and grabbed a hardshell case from one of the benches, sliding it across the floor to me. “Here! I had some time to work on that side project for you! Maybe it’ll help!”

I popped open the latches and looked inside. The sword I’d taken from Tetra was inside, with patched power leads and a brace fitted to hold spark batteries to power the weapon. I pulled it on over my left forehoof, adjusting the straps with my teeth.

“It’s good for at least a few minutes,” Klein said. “It probably won’t explode!”

“Probably is good enough for me,” I said. I flicked my wrist, making sure I could flip the blade out correctly. “I need every edge I can get.”

“Is that a sword joke?” one of the technicians asked.

Klein Bottle rolled her eyes. “Get moving!” she snapped, kicking the young ponies who’d been helping her figure out how to get ponies into orbit. I didn’t know how to tell her that their pilots were all dead already. They fled, and I snapped the beam weapon over my knee, the fragile thing sparking and dying.

“Come on, Cube!” I yelled. “You’re holding back! Are you afraid you’ll hit me?”

“Would it matter?” Cube’s voice echoed in the open air of the hangar. I couldn’t tell exactly where she was. A beam shot went past me, just close enough to be a threat without being an actual attempt to hit. A warning. “You don’t stay down even when you do get hit.”

“Yeah, I’m trouble like that,” I agreed, taking to the air and looking for her. It exposed me to attacks from all sides but I was already exposed just by existing. I saw a pop of light, then another closer by. A teleport flash.

I moved as fast as I could and ran head-first right into three floating rifles. They opened fire, beams tearing into my wings. I activated the power sword, energy crackling along the blade, and blocked the next wave of shots. The magical field around the edge ate up the spells, cutting them like they were physical.

It was obvious Cube had forgotten what a real fight was like because the remote weapons held their ground and fired, trying to get me to dodge aside in a deadly game of chicken. I cut two of them out of the air, the third teleporting away on its own. She’d never been here at all.

I thought I’d need a moment to find her, but a blast shook the hangar and a plume of fire shot into the ceiling, tearing away the cloud roof in a wash of heat and smoke. The enchanted cargo pallets that were holding up the heavy rocket equipment slumped, the floor creaking.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” Cube demanded, her voice hard to hear over the increasing sounds of destruction. Another blast went off like a grenade. “I tried to find you for so long, and now that you’re back you can’t even make an attempt to see things from my side! Cozy Glow said I spent all that time imagining a sister that never existed and she was right, because all you are is an idiot jerk!”

“Don’t give me that!” I shot back. “You’re working for somepony who literally said her dream is world domination!”

I flew up, trying to spot Cube through the smoke. She’d blasted open one of the fuel tanks. Thankfully it hadn’t been full, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation and instead, we’d be spread out in a fine mist over several miles of open sky.

“And you’re working for ponies who will waste Equestria’s last chance! I’ve read their minds, I know what they’re like! They only care about making themselves comfortable and damn the rest!”

Cube stepped out of the shadows next to an engine, casually tearing apart the delicate plumbing of the liquid-fueled rocket with her telekinesis and looking up at me, scowling.

I landed, looking across the distance between us. I couldn’t see her remote weapons, but she had to still be controlling them. I could see the aura around her horn and feel the magic in the air like cobwebs, sticky and tangled.

“I’d have been a lot more likely to sign up for your team if you hadn’t started by murdering a pony I liked and kidnapping my best friend,” I told her.

“That was bad timing,” Cube admitted, looking guilty. “There were timing issues and we needed Destiny Bray. If you’d come back sooner, we could have eased you into it.”

“Why did you need her?” I asked.

“It’s for the best. Even she’d agree, we just didn’t have time to chance it. If Mother escaped--”

I felt my blood run cold, and Cube must have seen the expression flash across my face, because she clammed up right away.

“Mom?” I whispered. I know she couldn’t hear me over the distance and the noise of the fires. Another blast went off and a tank of something explosive and dangerous went shooting through the space between us like a torpedo.

“This whole place is going to go up like a bomb,” Cube said. “You should get out of here. It’s already over.”

I hated to admit it, but she was right. There was no saving it now. The massive frame of one of the ICBMs lying down in the hangar groaned, tilting and starting to fall through the floor. And then the last thing that I expected happened. The entire ceiling rumbled. Cube and I both looked up in surprise.

As it turned out, the hangar had a pre-war fire suppression system that had been waiting for two centuries for its chance to shine, and even if the passage of time had made it slow to start, starting that kind of blaze was awakening a sleeping giant, almost literally. The clouds above us changed color from white to black and started pouring themselves out in a torrent. It came down with hurricane force, the weight of the water dousing and crushing the fire and hitting both Cube and I with enough force to buckle knees.

It was the kind of system that was designed to prevent a disaster even if it meant sacrificing a few ponies caught in the way. A greater good type of thing. It was the closest I’ve ever come to drowning.

Wait, no. That’s not even remotely true. I’ve literally drowned. It was the closest I came to drowning without actually being underwater, though! That was more than enough to give me a minor panic attack. Major panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. There was water all around me. I was going to die.

Again.

I started to black out, and--

“You idiot!” Cube shouted. I felt telekinesis trying to get a grip on me and failing. “What did you-- I can’t even-- it’s like you’re oiled up!”

She grunted with effort and there was a massive shove of force that threw me through a wall and out into the open, the cascade of water vanishing. I coughed and sputtered, trying to bring up water that had somehow found its way down into my lungs.

“Calm down!” she shouted in my face. “You’re not even drowning! You’re just having a panic attack!”

She put a hoof on my chest and I grabbed it, holding on and calming down over a long minute where neither of us tried to kill the other, not that we’d put much effort into it.

“Sorry,” I coughed.

Cube sighed. “Don’t die when I’m trying really hard not to kill you,” she admonished. “Do you have any idea how much you complicated things?”

“Probably not much at all,” I guessed.

“I don’t like to brag, but I am the best at what I do,” Cube bragged. She kicked me in the ribs, but in the caring way a family member might when they love you but are also really annoyed at you. I let go of her hoof. “Just so you know, there are a lot of ponies who want Cozy Glow to succeed. This isn’t one pony trying to take over the world. Probably half of the Enclave is ready to stand behind her.”

“And what about the other half?” I groaned. “They can go to Tartarus?”

“They’ll fall in line,” Cube said. “The reason she started with such a big show of force is to keep ponies from thinking they’ve got a chance. I’m on the inside of this Chamomile. I’ve seen what she can do. The warsats are just flash and style. She wants to win with a minimum number of casualties. If you really want to save lives, convince ponies to give up and join her. She’ll forgive them as long as they come to her.”

Cube looked up. I followed her gaze. The base’s security staff was finally showing up, winging towards us.

She gave me one last forlorn look and vanished in a blink of teleportation. I sighed and got up, shaking water out of my mane. There was no telling where she’d gone. Her presence was already fading and getting more distant by the moment.

“I hate losing,” I sighed. Smoke mixed with the dissipating storm clouds, the roof dissolving in the process of turning its mass into rain. I started back inside, hoping there was something left to salvage.

Chapter 104: Spiridus

My wings beat at the air. I’d been flying for a long time - nopony was going to lend me a Vertibuck today and it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. The skywagon I was pulling along was heavy, but it was also silent. A Vertibuck’s engines were so loud a pony could hear them from miles away in the open air, and we couldn’t afford to be seen or heard right now.

“We’re getting close,” I warned.

It was just ahead of us, the place where all this had started. I mean, sort of. I guess it depended on how you counted ‘where it all started’ because arguably it had started with my mom and dad meeting a little over twenty years ago. Or when Princess Celestia had created the sun. Or something. Theology had never been part of my education back home.

The point was, my life had turned into a mess at the Smokestack, the volcano where the Exodus Blue had crashed down right after the war started. A lot had happened since then to both of us. I’d gotten shot in the head and infected with micromachines, the volcano had exploded. You’d think that meant I was doing better than the Smokestack, but since I’d been gone, it had gone through a real makeover.

Before we talk about that, let me give you a little explanation of how I got here. Again.

“It’s all over,” Klein Bottle said. The short, stocky, and drunk pegasus mare tossed back another gulp of cheap cloud potato vodka that tasted mostly like a medicine cabinet. I knew how it tasted because I was working on my own bottle. Both of us were watching ponies trying to salvage whatever they could from what was left of our improvised rocket program.

My own half-sister had burned it all to the ground. The fire had been so hot that even some of the metal had melted into slag.

“There have to be more parts somewhere,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Klein groaned. “This was already a long shot, and with how many ponies are dead, they’ll never try again! It was crazy and it’s amazing you even got them to try it once!”

“There has to be something,” I mumbled. “No matter how bad things are, there’s always a way through as long as you don’t give up.”

“Maybe the way through is just suing for peace and minimizing the damage,” Klein Bottle said. “Chamomile, the last pony who wanted to fight to the bitter end and got me to do crazy rocket stuff was Unsung, and she… she was just using me to get revenge.”

I stopped with the bottle at my lips and looked at Klein. She wiped tears from her eyes.

“I don’t want you to be like her,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be the stupid pony that fell for it twice.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I pulled her into a hug. “I didn’t even realize…”

“I know you were trying to help ponies,” Klein mumbled into my side.

“That’s what I told myself,” I said, looking up at the burned-out hulk of the hangar. The roof was just gone, turned into a localized storm to stop the fire within. It was wide open to the sky. The orbital weapons could have turned the place into a crater if Cozy Glow wanted. She was telling us that this was enough. She had more than warsats, she had friends, and they were strong enough that we couldn’t stop them.

“You’re not going to want to switch sides,” Klein said, sniffling and pulling away. “But we could still run away. I made pretty good money doing salvage and repairs! You could probably get a job as a caravan guard or mercenary or just go around punching raiders for fun. We’d never even see any of this again.”

“If it wasn’t for Destiny I’d find that awfully tempting,” I admitted. “She’s still stuck somewhere on the Exodus Red. I have to save her. I just have absolutely no idea how I’m gonna do that.”

“You could just fly up to it and punch it in the snout,” Klein joked.

“If I could do that, I’d be there. I don’t think I can get close enough without warsats seeing me and taking me out. As long as they’ve got that kind of artillery coverage, nothing can get close to the Exodus Red.”

“Maybe you can throw wave after wave of ponies at the enemy until they run out of shots,” Klein Bottle joked.

“That was my plan B, but nopony wanted to test it out. It’s sort of risky when we don’t know if she has a dozen warsat shots left or a thousand. There are basically no records left from the war.” I shrugged.

“It makes me wonder why she waited this long,” Klein said. “She’s from before the war. The warsats are from before the war. She could have tried taking over any time in the last century and a half and it wouldn’t have been any more difficult for her.”

“Something must have changed, but I don’t know what,” I admitted. “Maybe it has something to do with SIVA…”

“Hm?”

“Well, Polar Orbit was funding my mom’s dig at the crash site of the Exodus Blue, and she was there looking specifically for the SIVA core. She must have learned about it from their connections on the Exodus Red and…” I trailed off.

“What is it?” Klein asked.

“If Cozy Glow had working SIVA she wouldn’t have needed to fund the dig at the wreck of the Blue. That’s what changed. Something they found let them unlock the SIVA core! That must be how they got their ponies into space, too! They had SIVA grow the rockets from scratch - they already had designs for them since BrayTech made ICBMs!”

“One mystery solved, I guess,” Klein shrugged.

“Unless we can grow our own,” I mumbled.

“Don’t even think it,” she warned. “I am not going to work with untested crazy pre-war tech! Rockets are bad enough when you understand what every part does, if you start mixing in micromachines and mad science you end up with a worse disaster than… than all this!”

“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “It’s too bad we can’t borrow a rocket from the Exodus Red. They must have a hangar full of them.”

“They’re not launching them from the ship,” Klein said. I looked over at her. She shook her head. “You need a stable launch platform. Even the base here wouldn’t really be good enough, my plan was to move our rocket in parts to a mountain. You need solid ground to build the rocket stack and launch tower.”

“Why a mountain?” I asked. “Oh. Duh. Because it’s higher.”

“That barely matters. Orbital dynamics is about speed, not height. The real problem is the lightning shield. You don’t want to launch a rocket through something like that. Try it and boom! Nopony goes to space today. No, you’d have to use a mountain.”

“The Enclave controls pretty much every mountain that pokes up above the clouds,” I said. “And when I say the Enclave, I mean Neighvarro, not Thunderhead.”

“There has to be somewhere. Some forgotten spot way out, worthless for farming and without a Stable or anything from the pre-war days. Something Thunderhead knows about that it could try and keep secret.”

“The only place I can think of like that is the Smokestack,” I said.

“I can’t believe you were right,” Klein said. We’d put the skywagon down on the far side of the mountain and dragged a camouflage tarp over it, black and grey against the volcanic rock of the Smokestack.

“Hey, I’m not a total idiot,” I protested. “Just most of one.”

We could see the building from here. A spire of metal that gleamed in the red light of flowing magma. The stronghold was exquisitely tall and didn’t look like anything ponies could have built, like it had half-grown and half-crystallized out of the rocks at the command of an alien master, all strange angles and polygons, simple shapes jumbled together into a stronghold of metal and glass.

It was tall enough for us to see over the crater, and it was definitely some kind of launch tower.

“Those big domes,” Klein nodded to geodesic spheres half-buried in rock. “Those must be cryogenic storage for fuel. This place is massive!”

“They must have slapped it together really quickly,” I noted. “Last time I was here this mountain exploded. Even if it’s been a few years it’s hard to imagine ponies coming right back.”

“We could never have matched this with scavenged parts and a couple of amateur rocketmares,” Klein sighed. “Seeing all of this just… it makes me feel silly we even tried.”

“I think you could have made it work.”

“I probably would have gotten some ponies killed,” Klein Bottle corrected, shrugging modestly. “But part of me is sorry I didn’t even get to try.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get to try out all sort of things today,” I promised. “So how’s our special package?”

“You mean your insane idea?” Klein asked. “You realize it was never designed for a pegasus, right?”

She pulled open the skywagon’s back hatch. Since she’d been the only pony inside it had meant plenty of room for the special equipment I’d requisitioned. That was probably the wrong term for it. Command had been happy to get rid of me. It was more like a bribe to go cause trouble for the enemy instead of them.

And it wasn’t like anypony else up here wanted what I’d requested. Filthy salvage taken out of the wreckage of a lab. Unsuitable and dangerous to be around. Also almost certainly cursed.

A suit of Steel Ranger armor stood in the back of the skywagon. It had been one of the monsters that attacked the lab where I’d picked up the Dimension Pliers during the whole mess at Winterhoof. Klein Bottle had repaired the most intact suit of armor from the undead knights and modified it. The back looked like it belonged to a changeling, with a beetle’s shell covering new holes made for wings.

“It should work fine,” I said. “You checked the mechanism, right?”

“I’m not worried about the hydraulics. If you want to go stomping around like a tin soldier you’ll do great! It also weighs close to a quarter of a ton. You can’t fly in this, Chamomile.”

“I’ll manage.” I didn’t want to admit I was putting on a lot of weight. I was getting pretty close to a quarter ton myself. There was one little thing I was actually worried about. I reached out and touched the armor and a chill ran down my spine.

It was absolutely one-hundred-percent chance cursed and probably tainted by ancient primordial darkness. The eyes lit up, glowing radon green, the same balefire shade as the necromatic magic the zebra shamans had used.

“The one thing I can’t figure out is why the operating system keeps throwing weird messages and errors,” Klein Bottle said. She picked up a wrench and smacked the helmet. The glow in the eyes faded.

“Suit’s haunted,” I said.

“Don’t be stupid, there’s…” she paused. “Yeah okay. It might be haunted.”

“Help me put it on.”

The Steel Ranger armor had a really weird heads-up display. I was used to having Destiny take care of the small stuff for me, so having a ton of range and status information crowding my vision made me feel oddly lonely.

Also there were a bunch of ominous runes flashing in the corners of my vision and the radio was talking to me.

“...swallow them in darkness…” a voice hissed in my ear. I tried to ignore it. I was walking up to what had been the front gate of the prison complex a few years ago. There were still remnants of the old place, shipping containers and supplies and cooled magma from the eruption.

The armor didn’t feel nearly as heavy as I’d expected. In fact, the second I saw one of the armored Thunderhead ponies, their power armor trimmed with fancy gold details, strength seemed to flow into me. I tamped it down as much as I could. I remembered what it had felt like to be possessed by the evil soul-eating sword. It had been… well it had felt really great actually, but then I’d tried to murder everyone around me.

“Halt! Who the buck are you?!” one of the two guards at the entrance said. I focused on him and the armor zoomed in, giving me a good look at his confused face. The voice in my ear whispered for me to rip him apart.

The funny thing was, that was already my plan anyway.

“Hi!” I said cheerfully, trotting closer. “I’m attacking your rocket base!”

They looked at each other.

“By yourself?” the first one asked.

“What, you think I need permission from my parents?” I asked. I hit the jury-rigged switch in the helmet and the back of the armor opened up, freeing my wings. I flapped hard and--

Got an inch off the ground before crashing back down.

“Huh,” I mumbled. I tried again, straining. If I tried as hard as possible, I was just able to get into the air, but it was like galloping at a dead sprint. I slammed back onto my hooves, already breathing heavily.

“Uh…” the two armored soldiers circled closer. “Are you okay?”

“Hold on a sec,” I said, holding up a hoof. “This thing is a lot heavier than it looks.”

“Yeah, how about you take it off and come with us and we’ll take you to a nice comfortable prison cell with a glass of water?” They both aimed their long beam rifles. It would have been a great time to have a grenade launcher or rockets. Unfortunately, the mounts had been removed so I wouldn’t have to cut off my wings to fit into the armor.

“...rip and tear…”

“Right, okay,” I agreed. I flicked my left hoof, and the power blade I’d stolen from Tetra unfolded on its brace. The two soldiers reacted right away, faster than I could. When I’d been taking slow steps I hadn’t really noticed it, but the armor was slow. There was a delay in the reaction time. I pushed, the armor felt me pushing, and then it moved with me. I stopped, and it tried to keep going. Every motion had to be big and deliberate.

Beams of arcane energy hit me, a half dozen times before I was able to catch myself and finish my swing through empty air.

The lasers just bounced off me. I didn’t feel the impacts at all. Not that they had much stopping power to begin with, but there was no heat, no transfer of force. Nothing. They might as well have been using water guns.

I almost forgot how strong the undead Steel Rangers had been. I leaned into the armor and lunged at the soldiers, building up speed and running through the gunfire, turning my gallop into a jump at the last moment. A swing that would have gone low caught the first soldier in the chest.

The power sword bit into him and didn’t let go. The armor blasted apart, the edges forced aside like jaws opening up, blood spraying into the air and sizzling, already boiling. The pony screamed. The energy field around it flickered between blue and unhealthy, evil green. For a second I felt it, that sickening, sweet feeling of a soul being cut apart. I ripped the sword back, too late. I’d meant to kill him, sure, but there were worse things than just being dead.

“Oh buck, oh--” I swore, then landed badly and stumbled, my hooves hitting fragile volcanic rock and crunching through.

“You monster!” The other guard slammed into my back and fired at point-blank range, riding my blind spot. The worst thing was I was pretty sure I’d done this to one of the undead knights too, and it had worked really well!

I heard the rifle going off right into the back of my head. I tried to throw him off, but he was able to get into the air and land again right where I couldn’t see them. I was going to have to be extremely clever and think of a way to--

I hit the armor release button in my helmet and it popped the panels on my back. I hadn’t meant to do that but Klein had put the button in a weird spot. The pony on my back fell to the side, and I stumbled at the same time, feeling like i was being pulled by an unseen force, the armor twisting with some glitch or unseen--

“...kill maim burn…”

Oh right. It was haunted. My left hoof moved, I tried to keep my balance, and the sword came down through the belly and spine of the pony, the power field shorting and sparking and tearing at the pegasus. I tried to get the sword free and it was like a chainsaw, cutting the poor stallion in half.

He looked down at himself, then back up at me, then gasped for a few more moments, each one of them way too long.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

He gurgled and didn’t say much after that. I felt a chill run down my spine. The blade in my hoof rumbled, purring like a pleased kitten.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be wearing the ancient cursed armor,” I conceded. It was way too late for me to actually take it off and try something else. Probably. Alarms were going off across the base. The ponies must have radioed in.

“...death…”

“That’s getting real old,” I sighed. “I miss Destiny. She was a nice ghost.” I toggled the radio, trying to get somepony else on the line. “Klein? Can you hear me? Where are you? I thought you were gonna follow me in?”

She didn’t answer, but that was okay because while I was walking inside I got distracted. Something big and square and glowing rose up in a glow of magic that tingled through my chest and across my nerves.

The Grandus glared down at me.

“Oh no,” my brain said to me. “We’re in trouble.”

“Got any ideas?” I asked it.

My brain shrugged. “You’ve never listened to me before.”

“Good point,” I admitted.

“Skulls?” the evil dark spirit inside my armor suggested. It was surprisingly clear, and also sounded concerned.

The Grandus fired. A spray of anti-armor lasers exploded out of the chest armor, magical beams raking across stone and ash. A cloud of debris blasted into the air around me, and I felt the ancient cursed barding around me flash as hot as a kettle where I took glancing blows.

Before the dark dust had even fallen out of the air, I’d taken to the sky, avoiding a second shot. Every second I was flying while wearing the armor felt like trying to lift an impossible burden. The Steel Ranger armor hadn’t been built for a pegasus and it felt like it resented me having the gall to wear it. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was getting heavier by the moment on purpose.

My graceful ascent was more like a ballistic arc, and it was a good thing I didn’t have to go far to enact my plan.

“Four!” I shouted, slamming into the Grandus’ face. The armored head-slash-cockpit was as big as I was, and I knew who’d be inside. I just had to feel her out with that same magical connection we’d shared before. She didn’t recognize me because of the armor, but once she felt my presence, she’d stop shooting!

Nothing happened for a long moment. Then a longer moment. There was a magical aura around the machine, blue-violet on the edge of visibility, like a flame fueled by alcohol. It felt empty. There was power, but no person.

“Uh…” I hesitated. “Four? Are you in there?”

The machine rumbled and there was an ethereal roar in the air. It was like whalesong.

“She’s not in there,” my brain told me. “We’re gonna die.”

I let go and slid down the face of the machine, dropping off the edge and hitting the ground running. I went straight under the Grandus. Whoever was in the thing wasn’t nearly as good at piloting it as Four had been - she would have used the Thaumobooster and her telekinesis to fling me aside or tear me apart or something. If nothing else, she would have slammed straight down into me to flatten me like a pancake instead of trying to turn in the air to follow me when I ran behind the giant machine.

I scurried over the ridge, taking another big blast from behind that sent me sprawling, the beams cutting into the old, cursed metal. I swore, feeling splatters of molten steel hit my flank where the beams burned right through.

A pool of dirty water was right ahead of me. I rolled down the hill and splashed into it, the magical beams hitting the volcanic lake and creating plumes of steam. I let myself go down deep, falling into the water and sinking immediately, my armor instantly cooling with the sound of popping and cracking metal.

It wasn’t deep, only a little above my head. I took a cautious breath. The armor was still sealed, but the moment it switched over to the internal air it smelled like burned hair and rot. I gagged but I was also grateful it worked at all. The undead horrors who’d used it before I had didn’t have any need for fresh air, and it was a crapshoot that it worked at all.

I stayed down there for a few minutes, just waiting and watching the surface above my head. The shadow of the Grandus passed over me and… kept going. I waited a little more.

“Do you hear me?” a voice came over the radio. “Chamomile?”

“I’m here,” I whispered, as if I really needed to whisper. Nopony was going to hear me unless seaponies had invaded the Enclave looking to take me back for a second war crimes trial.

“It’s Klein,” she said. “I saw you splash into the water. I’m pretty close to you. I found another way into the base.”

“Good,” I said. “I think the front door is out. Where do I meet you?”

“Trust me, leave the armor there,” Klein said. “The batteries are low and it needs time to self-repair.”

Now that I’d gotten it off, I could see what the Grandus had done to the old Steel Ranger suit. It looked halfway between a shot from a scattergun and a burn from lava. It had felt like it, too.

“We might regret not having it,” I said. I gave the armor one last look before following Klein up the ladder of what was clearly a very new drainage system leading to the lake I’d been in before. Or more accurately, the pool of wastewater from the base.

“You’d be amazed at how much you can get done without being shot at,” Klein said, rolling her eyes. She helped me through a hatch sized more for a pony like her than a pony like me. I squeezed through and took a look around where it had led us.

It was a utility room, with pumps and pipes and a lot of dials. It all looked brand new. More than that, it didn’t look like something built by ponies. For ponies, maybe, but not by them. It resembled the constructions in Limbo by the Exodus White, all strangely organic. The pipes looked like veins, subtly curving and free of any seams or joins.

“This is really weird,” Klein Bottle said. She put a hoof on the wall, looking at it closely. “It sort of looks like wood. There’s a grain structure…”

“It was made by SIVA micromachines,” I said. I was sure of it. It was distant, but I could feel a trace of the signal. There was no beating, living heart to it. When she’d said it was like wood she’d been right about that. It was a fossil in the same way the core of a tree was, the hardened, dead center.

“What does that mean for us?” she asked.

“Maybe that’s the real reason they came here. These rocks were lousy with SIVA. It was starting to grow out of the ground like a fungus. They must have found a way to program it.” I shook my head. “This is exactly the kind of thing Destiny always wanted to do with it.”

“Is that why they kidnapped her like you said?”

“No, they built this way before they took her. They had enough time to get ponies into orbit. You said if you had the time you would have spent a lot longer with a rocket program, right?”

“Years at least,” Klein confirmed.

“They’ve had almost three since this place cooled down after the eruption,” I said. “And I bet that volcano is great for a geothermal power source.” I shook my head. “Okay. Let me think.”

I walked over to the hatch and pressed my head against it, listening. It was a single piece of thin metal and conducted sound well. Even if it didn’t, I could feel ponies coming. I waited until they got a little closer and knocked on the hatch.

I felt and heard confusion. I knocked again. They got closer. I took a step back. The hatch opened. Two confused ponies looked in at me.

“Hey,” I said, before grabbing each of them by the collar and pulling them inside, slamming their heads together to daze them for long enough to finish the job. Walls and the floor are an excellent bludgeoning tool, but I had to be somewhat careful.

I didn’t want to get blood on my new uniform.

“It’s a little big,” Klein mumbled.

“And mine is tight in all the wrong places,” I mumbled back. “Just try to act like you belong.”

We trotted through the base. Somepony had been thoughtful enough to hang up signs, which was good because every hallway and room looked the same. Whoever had designed the stupid place had just copied the same area over and over again. It gave the base an almost dream-like feeling, with the shining silver chrome everywhere, tinged with blue and only a few details from ponies.

It was like a machine, something meant for industry, and the small touches like the signs and banners and furniture were all out of place. A bunch of ponies squatting in an alien engine’s piston chambers.

I was starting to think this was a mistake when I felt it. A spark.

I stopped in my tracks and walked back the way we came, taking a different path.

“Where are you going?” Klein hissed. “The sign says--”

“This way,” I said. I turned the next corner, and a door opened, sliding into the wall. A thin unicorn mare stepped out into the hallway, looking confused. My heart jumped in my chest. “Four.”

“Chamomile?” she asked weakly. She looked exhausted. I looked both ways, then ran over to her. She smiled and hugged me.

“You’re okay?” I asked.

“I’m a little out of it,” she admitted. “You look great! How have you been? I can’t remember the last time I saw you!”

“...Stormreach,” I said.

“Stormreach?” she asked, looking confused. “I don’t remember that. Are you confused? Come on, let me get you a drink.”

Klein Bottle ran over, joining us as we ducked into the room. Four’s quarters looked like the contents of a hotel room dumped out of a shipping container and mostly left where they landed. Cardboard boxes and cheap cloud furniture were in a rough circle that took up half the room, clustered together against the cold, empty expanse of metal and trying to make it seem at least a little cosy right there.

Four walked over, humming to herself tunelessly, like she was switching from one song to another with every step. She pulled open a fridge and produced some ice-cold cans.

“Do you like guava?” she asked. She frowned, her brow furrowing. “Why can’t I remember if you like guava? I should know this!”

“It’s never come up before,” I said quickly, trying to keep her from getting upset. She seemed so exhausted that she was only one bad moment from having a screaming fit or passing out. “I don’t know if I ever had it.”

“Really?” she asked, relieved. “Try it! It’s good. I like it. It tastes pink.”

“That sounds good,” I agreed. I took the can and had a sip. It tasted generically tart and tropical in that sort of weird unidentifiable way. Maybe the trick to making something taste tropical and exotic was just a lot of sugar substitutes and flavors that didn’t match anything in nature.

“Can I have one?” Klein asked gingerly.

Four scowled at her for a moment, then smiled. “Sure! Here you go.” She gave Klein Bottle a can, and we all sat down on the cheap, thin carpet.

“So, uh,” I coughed. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Four,” I started. “I guess we have a lot we should talk about.”

“Oh yeah!” She realized. “There was something I wanted to tell you!” She stood up, opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. She looked concerned. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she mumbled.

“When’s the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?” Klein asked. Even she could tell Four was close to passing out where she stood.

“Sleeping is tough,” Four groaned. She started pacing. “I start seeing things and sometimes things happen and I can’t remember them but ponies keep dying and--” she froze up and looked into the middle distance. “I feel like I’m inside it but it’s inside me.”

I gave Klein a look.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” I said. “What always helps me when I feel down and out is to go for a walk outside.”

“What about the rocket?” Klein hissed.

“There won’t be a launch until tomorrow, they haven’t even started clearing the storm away,” Four said. “Going for a walk sounds good. I can’t remember the last time I went for a walk outside…”

“Great!” I said. I put the drink down and offered Four my hoof. I felt like if I wasn’t holding onto her, she’d wander off or vanish or something. She felt like a ghost. She took my hoof and I led her outside, motioning for Klein to follow.

It wasn’t stupid and emotional. If we could keep her out of Cozy Glow’s hooves, we’d be depriving them of the Grandus, and that thing was an army-killing weapon on its own. I wasn’t going to let ponies on our side use her the same way, but I wouldn’t mind it if nopony had access to a giant deadly assault armor.

“Do you know the way out?” Klein asked.

“Of course I do!” Four snapped. She blinked and shook her head, overcome for a moment. “Sorry. I have a headache.”

“It’s okay,” I promised her.

“Go left and then follow that hallway,” she said quietly. I started leading her. She gave my hoof a squeeze and we smiled at each other. She wasn’t in great shape. I could tell that at a glance. I knew she’d be a hundred times better once we were out of there.

I felt it the second it started. Four’s grip on my hoof tightened like a vice. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed, shaking and shivering.

“Damn!” I swore, kneeling down next to her.

“A seizure?” Klein asked.

“I guess they’re still a problem,” I mumbled.

“We had anti-seizure medicine back in Dark Harbor, but…”

“I know,” I said. “But there has to be some here. We need to find the medbay!"

Chapter 105: Zero-Sum

I shoved the door out of the way. The metal was as thin as a razor blade but stronger than it had any right to be, the SIVA having grown it as a single metamaterial crystal in the shape of a sliding portal. Ponies had come along later and used a stencil and some cheap spray paint to put a red cross on it.

“I need a doctor!” I yelled. Klein Bottle helped me pull Four Damascus into the infirmary. Her seizure had passed, but she wasn’t really responsive yet, deeply confused and incoherent.

A pony in a white uniform with red trim ran over, the pegasus mare taking some of Four’s weight and guiding us to a bed, helping her up onto it. Four tried to get up, and the doctor’s hoof kept her down.

“What happened?” the mare asked.

“She had some kind of seizure,” I explained. “I know she needs drugs to keep her stable, but I didn’t know where to find them.”

“Not again,” the doctor grumbled. “I told them not to run that monster in remote mode! Between this and those two ponies that died before they killed the intruder…”

“They killed the intruder?” I asked

“Apparently,” the doctor shrugged. “Whoever it was, they fell into the water and never came back out.” She pointed at a cart. “Bring that over.”

Klein Bottle pushed it over to Four. I would have helped but I was holding Four’s hoof. She squeezed my metal hoof hard enough that the carbon creaked. If she went much harder she’d break her own hoof with the pressure.

“Ten ccs of this should set her right,” the doctor mumbled, drawing a dose of medication into a needle. I couldn’t read the bottle from the other side of the table but it was covered in hoof-written yellow labels and warnings.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a class-C amnestic along with some muscle relaxant and mild thaumatic suppressant.”

“Uh…” I hesitated. I knew what some of those words were.

“It’ll keep her from seizing by dampening her nerve reactions,” the doctor explained. She injected Four, and the unicorn immediately started to relax, her grip going slack. Her eyes closed, and she fell into an uneasy sleep. “It also weakens her connection to the Grandus. I don’t care what you military goons think, using it in remote mode is going to kill her at some point!”

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I just want her safe.”

“So do I,” the doctor sighed. “Sorry. We might need to put her in that damn machine and let it take over.”

“What do you mean?” Klein asked.

“I swear it’s like half of you weren’t briefed…” The doctor brushed aside some of Four’s coat, showing a long scar on her chest. “She was terribly wounded in action. Essentially dead for a while, but a pony’s magic can keep them alive even without a working heart or lungs. Briefly. There are some theories that once a pony is as strong as an alicorn they’re not even really biologically active as we know it but-- anyway, the point is, the Grandus and its thaumobooster were enough to keep her going just burning her own magic to maintain her life force. We repaired most of the damage but now she can’t really survive for long without it.”

“That’s… horrible,” I mumbled.

“Yes, a bit like a giant iron lung. As long as she’s close enough to keep the thaumobooster resonating, it keeps her alive. If she strays too far her heart might stop. No real reason for it. There’s no physical damage anymore. It’s like part of her soul got stuck.”

“Creepy,” Klein mumbled.

“Barely in the realm of medicine at all,” the doctor said. “They might as well have me treating ghosts and tending to breezies. Spend all those years in medical school and get frozen to avoid the war and what happens? I end up in the middle of a completely different war and entirely out of my field of expertise.”

“Can I have a moment to talk to my colleague?” Klein asked. “Thanks.” She grabbed me and pulled me over to the side.

“Yes, fine. I have a scheduled appointment soon anyway,” the doctor waved us off and slowly pushed the cart over to another bed, preparing something.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“We need to leave her here and do what we came here to do,” Klein hissed. “Our plan was already really bad and the longer we mess around the worse it’s going to get!”

“It’s not messing around,” I said. “Klein you know Four! She’s a good pony!”

“She’s a good pony getting the medical attention that she obviously needs,” Klein countered. “You heard the doctor. Four might die if we try to make her leave again!”

“There has to be some way. Maybe if we take the Grandus…” I started putting together a sketch of a plan. Steal the giant assault armor, take it back, and… and then something. “I have to save her! I’m the one that got her hurt like this!”

“Hey, Doc! You in here?” The door slid open, and somepony familiar trotted inside. I looked across the room at Rain Shadow. Or Tetra, I guess, but he was limping and had his mask off so it was hard to think of him as Tetra. He looked at me and I saw every single variety of emotion cross his face.

“One moment,” the doctor said. “I’m getting your anti-rejection drugs ready. Just sit on the table and--”

“You!” Rain Shadow yelled. He spread his wings and jumped at me, clearing the tables and coming down like a swooping hawk, his hooves seeking my neck. “I’ll kill you, you--”

I held him back, his hooves shaking. He was still in rough shape after our last fight. There were bandages wrapped around his legs, and poorly healed cuts across his face and neck. They were pink around the edges, puffy with infection.

“You’re not as strong as I remember,” I said. “You sure you want to do this today? You look like you should be in one of those hospital beds!”

“Because you keep putting me in them!” he yelled. “Just let me end this! The world will be a better place with you gone!”

“Too much noise…” Four groaned from her bed. She raised hooves to her head. “Too noisy!”

“Don’t fight in the infirmary!” the Doctor yelled. “I’ll get security, I swear!”

“Noisy!” Four shouted. Her horn blazed with magic, shooting from blue to ultraviolet. The room shook.

“What was that?” Klein asked.

The metal wall glowed red and white for a single second before blasting apart, beams of magic spraying into the room from the space beyond, followed immediately by smoke and the growing sounds of alarm and screaming.

Rain Shadow’s grip loosened, and I kicked him aside. Four stood up, her whole body glowing with her magic. I could sense it -- she was using her weight-reduction spell to allow her weak legs to carry her toward the hole. The room shook again, making me stumble on the way over. I tripped, catching myself on the edge of a hospital bed.

The Grandus’ head pushed through the hole, opening up and revealing the harness and controls inside. Four almost literally floated towards it.

“Don’t!” I shouted. “Four!”

She looked back at me, her eyes blank, glazed over like she was sleepwalking. She looked terrified but unable to stop herself, walking into the maw of that beast. The Assault Armor closed up around her when she boarded, the massive machine’s eyes glowing with baleful light.

“This is way above my pay grade,” the Doctor said, fleeing through the open door. Klein grabbed my hoof and tugged at me to follow.

“Move, Chamomile!” Four yelled. “We can’t do anything here!”

“That’s not true, I can talk to her. I can get through to her!”

“You can die!” Rain Shadow tackled me from behind, pulling me away from Klein Bottle. We rolled on the floor, and I briefly considered stabbing him. Then I wondered why I was only considering it. I flipped the knife out of my right hoof and stabbed down into his shoulder. He screamed and rolled away, something like blood but entirely the wrong color splattering on the floor.

The Grandus moaned like a whale’s song and pulled back, vanishing into the smoke.

I wanted to go after her. I knew it was a bad idea. I swore and followed my brain instead of my heart and went with Klein Bottle, bolting out into the hallway. Sirens were going off across the base.

“Should we go back for the Steel Ranger armor?” I asked.

“It’s better than nothing,” Klein said. “I hope the repair talismans have had enough time to patch the holes. I don’t know how you’re going to stop the Grandus.”

“You helped fix it the first time around,” I said. “What are its weaknesses?”

“It’s a giant block of magical metal with a fusion reactor and a beam cannon. The weak point is the pilot.” Klein shook her head. “And your weak point is the pilot, too.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I couldn’t deny that. “I was hoping for something more useful.”

“I know,” Klein said. “Okay look, beam weapons just won’t work. The armor is too thick and it projects a powerful magical diffusion field on top of that. You could hit it with plasma shots from a battleship and still not get through!”

“So?”

“That sword Tetra had might get through. It can cut through almost anything, and the disruption field might help with the aura.”

“If I can get close enough,” I mumbled. And if I was that close… maybe I could get through to her.

When we got outside, it was starting to snow. Big, heavy grey flakes, half ash and half ice. It wasn’t coming down fast, but the weight made it feel like a blizzard anyway. I could see pegasus ponies organizing themselves into weather teams and trying to kick the clouds away, but the volcano wasn’t cooperating.

“This is a terrible place for a rocket base,” Klein said. “Look at this weather! The thermals have to be insane!”

“But on the other hoof it probably didn’t cost them anything,” I reminded her. “They grew this base. The best rocket base is one that costs nothing.”

She sneezed. “Any sign of the Grandus?”

“Not yet,” I said. I had a better view than she did. Not only was I more than twice her height, but the Steel Ranger armor also had built-in image enhancement. I didn’t need it. I knew I’d be able to sense that thing when it got close. I could feel it out there, but until we ran into each other it was an invisible threat lurking in the dark. A boogeymare. A giant one.

“We might want to wait for them to finish,” Klein said. She shielded her eyes and looked up. “A launch through this would be suicidal and neither of us could clear out a winter storm on our own.”

“They’re still doing it even with an alert on base,” I mumbled. “Why is that?”

“They must have an important payload, a small launch window, or both,” Klein suggested. “If we hadn’t gotten sidetracked maybe we’d know by now.”

I winced. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.” She sighed. “It looks like they’ve got an enclosed launch building. They’ll have to open it up before the launch. That’ll mean the rocket is fueled, programmed, and ready to go. Probably. So once we see that building open up, we need to get there as soon as possible.”

I nodded. “And if we went too early they might not get the rocket ready at all.”

“Exactly. Same for raising too many alarms. In fact, I bet…” she motioned for me to follow her, and we crept along the ridge behind the base. It was blasted and uneven, ripped apart in the last big eruption and not eroded down yet.

From here we could see the damage the Grandus had done.

“She put a hole right through the roof,” I said. Soldiers, the ones not on weather duty, were trying to get tarps across the hole.

“We might have lucked out,” Klein said. “The only pony that really recognized you was Rain Shadow. Everypony else might think the attack’s over and they just need to repair the damage Four did when she freaked out in the infirmary.”

“The doctor seemed to think the intruder was dead,” I remembered.

“Exactly! Let’s find somewhere we can wait out the storm.”

It wasn’t the most comfortable place to wait. It was a shipping container, half-buried by a lava flow. It must have been part of the first base when it had been a prison camp.

“Look at this,” Klein said. “It’s some kind of metal flower…”

“Don’t touch it,” I warned. I saw what she was looking at. A curl of steel coming out of the rock like a slightly blue-tinged combination of a rose and a mushroom and steel filings held together by a magnet. “That’s nanometal.”

“Nanometal…” Klein mumbled.

“SIVA growing and replicating in the wild,” I said. “It must have survived the eruption. If you touch it… well, it didn’t go well for me.” I flexed my right hoof.

“That’s how you got infected?”

“Yeah. Within a day or two it’s like ants eating you alive from the inside. I’m pretty sure we could cure you if we had to, but I wouldn’t risk it. It'd be a heck of a trip trying to get back to Stalliongrad.”

“Right,” she agreed, backing away from it to the other side of the container. “While we’re here, we should talk about what we’re really planning.”

“Steal a rocket,” I said. “How hard can it be?”

“Assuming they don’t have it rigged with some kind of self-destruct, and assuming it’s going where we need to go, we still need to figure out how to get onboard and how to actually launch it,” Klein Bottle said. “I’ll stay behind and make sure it gets into the air.”

I blinked. “In the middle of an enemy base?”

“Unlike you, I might be able to talk my way out of it,” she joked. “Besides, once it’s gone I can just… fly away. If it’s really bad I can head down to the surface.”

“So we need to get you to the control room,” I mumbled. “This would be a lot easier with a few more ponies.”

“We’ve lost too many friends to have a few more ponies,” Klein sighed. “Do you even have any friends left in the military?”

“I… maybe,” I said. “Not close friends. Acquaintances who I haven’t run off yet.”

“Exactly. You might save the Enclave but you don’t have a place in it. I know you’re too big and dumb to realize it now but…” she sighed and patted my chest. “I have zero romantic interest in you but I wouldn’t mind having a bodyguard and a friend on the ground.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said quietly.

“Anyway, we can’t do anything until the rocket is ready to go.” She shrugged. “How’s the snow look?”

I pushed open the door and peered outside. There was still a lot of haze in the air from volcanic dust and ash. It probably wasn’t a good idea to breathe out there without protection, especially as close to the crater as we were. I looked up at the storm.

“I think they’ve got it under control,” I reported. “You know I read somewhere that volcanoes have a lot of bad weather because the dust and ash makes it easier for droplets to form--”

I stopped. A feeling rolled down my spine. I’d been spotted. No, not exactly spotted, but close enough. Sensed. It was the sensation of eyes meeting across a crowded room.

“Shoot,” I swore. I saw blue magic flare up through the haze between us. “Incoming!”

“Incoming from where?” Klein ran outside, looking around. The Grandus swept overhead, the pressure changing around it.

“Four…” I whispered.

“Chamomile,” Four said, her voice echoing loud and deep, shaking the rocks under my hooves.

“I’m sorry.” I said. “I heard about… about you and the Grandus.”

“It’s not your fault,” Four said. “This was always going to happen to me. I wasn’t even the first pony it happened to.” The Grandus settled down onto the rocks, the aura around it fading. I expected the head to crack open and reveal her, but she kept the cockpit shut.

“I’ll find a way to save you,” I told her, coming closer.

Somepony yelled from behind her. “You’ll have to save yourself first!”

Rain Shadow flew right over the Grandus, slamming down into me. I was wearing a suit of Steel Rangers armor so it didn’t work as well as he probably wanted. He sort of bounced off, and I was too slow to react.

“I followed her here,” he snarled, skidding to a halt on the slippery snow and ice. “I knew she’d find you!”

“Congratulations,” I said. I don’t think he could even hear me. The plastic intravenous lines running across his broken body pulsed with motion, force-feeding something into his veins. It had to be some kind of combat drug, psycho or dash or some combination of the two.

“Stop it!” Four boomed. Her voice was accompanied by a wave of crushing force. A moment later, it was also accompanied by a spray of high-powered anti-armor beams. The combination of the two pinned me in place and left me unable to dodge what was coming.

Rain Shadow jumped into the air, whatever combination of cybernetics and drugs fueling him letting him move more like a machine than a pony even if it threatened to tear him apart at the joints. He wove between the beams. It was like seeing somepony avoid getting wet in a storm by just avoiding the raindrops.

I had to activate my own wired reflexes just to follow his motion, and it was a good thing I did because he produced a blade seemingly out of nowhere, a sword coated in a roaring power field. The outer edges of Four’s blast scraped against my armor but I was thankful she’d taken that shot because avoiding it slowed Rain Shadow down just enough that I was able to force my left hoof up, activating the salvaged power sword Klein had repaired for me.

Our blades crossed, or nearly did, the energy fields forcing the edges apart. The field of force and destruction was the only thing that could block the same kind of weapon.

He looked surprised when he didn’t cut me in half. Our blades slipped and stuck together over and over again, like gears coming into mesh and then being forced apart again, some subtle variation in their energy fields not quite coming into synch.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, when the world surged back to life, that moment of cold eternity from wired reflexes ending. My body burned inside the armor, but the feeling of combat, the hate radiating off of Rain Shadow, fueled me more than the drop in blood sugar drained me.

“You stole my sword?!” he accused.

“That’s not the only thing I’m stealing!” I yelled back. I had to think of a really cool quip. Something that would make me seem cool in front of Four, because I still wanted her to like me. “I’m gonna steal all your birthdays!”

“What does that even mean?” Rain Shadow demanded.

I declined to give him an explanation of my super-cool line. It totally made sense if you thought about it. Right?

Instead, the moment the pressure of Four’s telekinesis was off us, I put my back into it and pushed him away. He skidded back across melting ice and volcanic, black mud, growling like a wild animal.

He held the sword high and back behind him, breathing heavily. White blood ran down his snout, coming from a growing nosebleed and the corner of his eye. I couldn’t imagine how much had been done to him. His veins pulsed in his face, throbbing visibly even at a distance. His heart had to be close to exploding in his chest.

I knew he was faster than I was by a huge margin. But for once, I was fighting somepony dumber and more careless than me. That meant I had to be smart. I’d been in a hell of a lot of fights, and this wasn’t even the most lopsided.

I opened up my senses and felt for his intent. It was pure and clear like a knife. His focus was incredible. I could feel how closed off he was. Not just tunnel vision but more like a pinpoint, a laser of killing intent.

I started moving before he did because I had to. The armor delayed my response. I pushed, it moved a fraction of a second later. I had to predict exactly where he was going to be, because once I’d committed, that single heartbeat would be the entire time it took him to cross the space over to me.

He moved. It was a blur.

That laser focus drove him forward along a single bloody path, and I was there to meet him. My sword hit a glancing blow on his. It caught, then bounced to the side. He kept going forward. The blade went into his chest.

Rain Shadow stopped only because his chest touched my hoof. He snarled and glared at me, not even feeling the pain of his insides being ripped and torn. He didn’t even flinch. The energy along my sword kicked and bucked like an animal and failed, the jury-rigged lines finally giving out.

He lost his grip on his sword, his face a rictus grin. He tried to grab at me, his hooves going for my neck. I flinched, and the armor twisted me aside, tossing him down the ridge of lava and ash. He slid on the ice, totally limp, all the way over to the side of the volcano.

Rain Shadow’s eyes locked on mine. I looked down at his chest. It was half hollowed out. He was missing more organs than he had left.

He tried to stand. His weak hooves slid on the ice. He fell off the side, vanishing.

“Buck, that guy did not know when to quit,” I whispered.

“Is he dead?” Klein asked.

“I sure hope so, for his sake,” I said. “The only thing left in him was some kind of… angry suffering. What’s the point of living like that? At least he might be with his sister now, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

“I didn’t use to,” Klein said. “But after knowing Grey Gloom…”

I nodded and knelt down, pulling Klein into a hug. I had to be really careful about it. I remembered Grey Gloom. I’d liked the mare. She’d been haunted, literally and figuratively. I missed her. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Sorry,” Four said. The booming voice of the Grandus was low. It hovered closer overhead. I stood up to try and meet it at least a little closer to eye level. “I think I hit you a few times. I was just trying to scare him off.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “That was… always going to happen. We need to figure out how to get you out of here.”

“I can’t leave,” Four said.

“I know you need some drugs to stay stable,” I said. “It’s okay! We can take everything they’ve got here, then get more somewhere else once we know what you need. I know lots of good doctors!”

“Chamomile… It’s too late. This thing is eating me up. Every second, I feel it eating at my soul. It’s terrible. You can’t even imagine it…”

“Then we’ll blow the stupid thing up! Klein fixed it! She can un-fix it! If we break the link--”

“I’ll die,” Four said. “I think… I want to die, Chamomile. But I want to die helping ponies. I want to… if I have to be a weapon, I want to be a weapon used for the right reason.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told her.

She smiled. “I know. That’s what I love about you. There are a lot of ponies that wanted to use me or treated me like a thing. An experiment. You just wanted me to be me. You’re one of the only ponies that ever really felt sorry for me.”

The Grandus’ glow brightened, and I felt myself being hoisted into the air. Four’s magic deposited me on the back of the huge machine, and a moment later Klein plopped down next to me.

“I’ll get you where you need to go,” Four said. “Hang on!”

The Grandus leapt into the air. It’s important to know that the assault armor didn’t fly like a pegasus. A pegasus has to bank and turn and swoop. It takes a few moments to get up to speed. Instead, imagine a foal playing with a toy rocket. They can swoosh it around while making engine sounds, but they can also just jerk it in every direction and let aerodynamics be damned.

We jerked sideways, the Grandus moving at angles instead of curves through the air, instantly changing direction at the will of the pony inside. If she wasn’t using her magic to help hold us in place, the motion would have thrown us off at the first sharp turn.

The launch building was right ahead of us. Overhead, the sky was mostly clear. Four didn’t stop. She slammed into the side of it, the armored behemoth smashing into the large space beyond. I really hoped she knew what she was doing because she was essentially flying us directly at a pile of rocket fuel.

“Get out!” Four boomed.

At least two dozen ponies, most of them wearing hard hats and armed with nothing more dangerous than checklists, looked up at the floating death machine and wisely decided that they didn’t want to be in the blast radius of what was about to happen. Technicians and engineers fled.

Somewhat more gently than she’d moved into the launch bay, Four put us down on a gantry. She hovered closer, opening the face plate of the Grandus and climbing out on unsteady legs. I caught her when she started to fall, and she smiled up at me.

The machine kept hovering on its own, even with the cockpit empty.

“Some kind of remote control?” I asked.

“I told you, most of me is already inside,” Four said weakly. “I’ll use the Grandus to keep them distracted. The control room is right in here.”

She led us into a room full of consoles and screens. It reminded me of the room back in the number zero weather control tower, banks of terminals and countless buttons and lights. Abandoned coffee cups and papers littered the floor.

“There are space suits in the next room,” Four told us, pointing. “I’ll move the gantry to the capsule hatch.”

“Launching a rocket isn’t easy,” Klein said. “We need to--”

“It’s all automatic,’ Four told her. She gave Klein a hug. “I can do this. Trust me.” She let go of the little pegasus. “I know you feel guilty about… all this. You shouldn’t. None of it was your fault.”

“An engineer needs to take responsibility for what they built,” Klein said. “I fixed the Grandus. That’s on my hooves.”

“Then you can repay me by making sure Chamomile gets back safely,” Four told her. “She’s going to do something stupid and clumsy and I don’t think you’re going somewhere that stupid and clumsy is a good idea.”

“I’ll get her home. You’d better be waiting for her,” Klein warned.

Four laughed.

I stood there, paralyzed. I didn’t know what to say. “I, uh…”

“I know,” Four said. She smiled warmly. “I know.”

The spacesuit had to be one of the least comfortable things I’d ever worn. The innermost layer was skin-tight like a wetsuit. The thermal underwear over that was too hot. The layer over that was too bulky and stiff.

“And they go to space in this?” I asked, tugging at the collar. “Isn’t Steel Ranger armor airtight? I could wear that instead!”

“You want to trust that a salvaged set of ancient, cursed armor is going to do a better job keeping you alive than a spacesuit literally designed to work where we’re going?” Klein asked. She flew up and bopped me on the head. “Did you get even more brain damage when I wasn’t looking?”

I shrugged. “Yes, but that’s besides the point.”

She rolled her eyes. I could feel fear rolling off her in waves. She was terrified and trying to pretend she wasn’t.

We walked out onto the gantry, making our way over to the rocket. Klein opened the hatch and looked inside. There were three chairs.

“We could still take Four,” I said quietly.

“She can’t get that far from the Grandus,” Klein Bottle reminded me. “She’ll seize and it won’t stop until she’s dead.”

I swore under my breath, but I knew she was right.

“I think it’s fueled,” Four said over the intercom. “There should be a gauge inside.”

Klein hopped inside and got into one of the seats. The control panel was on what was the roof of the capsule. “I see it,” she said. Then she found the switch for the radio and repeated herself so Four could actually hear her. “It reads full.”

“I’m opening the launch doors,” Four reported. Yellow lights flashed in alarm, blaring in time with a siren. Cold air surged down from the storm above. The roof cracked open, letting in a scattering of ash and snow. I looked up. There was a hole punched through the clouds, rough around the edges. Stars were just visible at the roof of the world.

“You need to get strapped in,” Klein Bottle said. She was already in her seat, pulling the harness over her shoulders and flipping switches.

“I know,” I said.

I looked back at Four. She stood at the very front of the control room. Her hoof was on the armored glass. I reached out towards her. She smiled. Her horn glowed. I felt a gentle tug. She whispered something. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see her mouth moving.

I wasn’t good at reading lips, but I knew what she was saying.

“I love you too,” I whispered back.

The glow from her horn picked up, and I let her lead me inside by the hoof like a lost foal. The hatch closed behind me. It was the last time I ever saw Four.

Chapter 106: White Bird

“Gantry retracting,” an automated voice called out. Alarms blared. Klein Bottle checked the hatch for a third time, then the straps holding me into the central chair, then gave me a very stern look.

“You are a big, heavy idiot,” Klein said. “We need to keep you centered so the auto-balancers don’t have to strain too much.”

I swallowed and nodded. “I’ll stay still.”

“Good.”

“I have to use the bathroom,” I whispered.

“Hold it in!” Klein snapped. She got into her seat again and adjusted her straps. She’d been bouncing around the capsule, trying to get it ready. Mostly it involved fretting and making sure all the toggles were set to automatic.

The automated voice chimed in again. “Draining refueling lines-- manually aborted. Proceeding to next stage. Advancing to go.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Four must be pushing the launch as fast as possible,” Klein said. “If those lines aren’t drained this whole place is going to go up in a fireball when we launch!”

“We’re going to explode?!”

“We’ll be fine. This launch base will be trashed.”

“We have to stop her,” I said. “Help me with this thing!”

Klein looked at me sharply. “Stay still! She’ll be fine.” She didn’t sound like she meant it. I knew it barely mattered anyway. Four was as good as dead either way. Fast or slow was the only question. “The control room has armored glass. If she wants to escape she can.”

I had no way of knowing if that was true. I nodded anyway because I wanted it to be the truth.

“Entering final countdown. All personnel to stations,” the voice chimed. “Ten. Nine.”

“This is such a bad idea,” Klein Bottle whined.

“Eight, seven.“

“You’re a rocket expert, we’ll be fine,” I said.

“Six, five, main engine ignition.”

The entire rocket started rattling under us, vibrating and straining. Smoke rose up around us.

“I’m going to space riding with Equestria’s worst disaster!” Klein yelled.

“Yeah! That’s the spirit!” I cheered along with her.

“Two, one. Liftoff.”

The entire rocket dropped just a tiny bit. I felt it in my sensitive pegasus guts, that tiny little dip as the load holding us up went from the gantry holding us up to the plume of fire under our tails. Just for one fraction of a second I thought we were going to keep falling, but that massive pressure reversed that fall, then slowly started to climb with the loudest sound anypony has ever heard.

“We’re away!” Klein shouted. “Oh buck, we’re away!”

“Good luck,” Four whispered. I think. I might have imagined it, because at the same time she spoke, fire exploded around us, the entire launch building filling with hot oxygen-fueled fire, burning fuel cracked out of the clouds themselves. It overtook the windows, and I thought despite Klein’s assurances we were going to burn.

The fire turned to smoke and clear air. We outsped the billowing flames. The roar around us was a terrible deafening sound. The weight of the world pressed into my chest, shoving me into the chair.

“We’re supersonic! Automatic guidance is working,” Klein called out.

“Are we tilting over?!” I asked, starting to feel my inner ear complaining.

“Orbit is about speed, not height! I’ve explained this before! We’re going in an arc. About to hit Max Q! If something’s going to go wrong--”

The rocket shivered, but no alarms blared, a yellow light on the terminal screens turning green.

“It would have been then,” Klein said. “We’ll be hitting our first staging point in a few seconds!”

“Do we have to do anything?”

“Absolutely not! Even if everything turns red, you sit there and be quiet!”

“MECO,” the automatic voice added. “Main engine throttling down.”

There was a huge mechanical klunk, and the pressure on my chest increased, our acceleration hitting even harder.

“Second stage engine at full,” the voice said cheerfully.

“The bathroom thing isn’t a problem anymore,” I squeaked.

Klein rolled her eyes. “First stage dropped off! We’re fine! That was supposed to happen! Remember, rockets drop their tails to escape gravity! Like lizards!”

The gravity turn continued, the world dropping away from us. I watched the sky turn from blue to black. Even though it was the middle of the day, the stars came out.

“And… engines off…” Klein said. She was watching the display in front of her intently. The pressure released. I felt myself start to float, my mane moving like I was underwater. “Orbit looks good. I think… holy buck, Chamomile. We’re in space!”

“We’re in space,” I repeated. The world was black and silent outside the window. I heard tiny tics and pings from hot metal turning cold. We drifted to the side with a short burst of gas.

“It’s adjusting our trajectory,” Klein said. “Launch plus eight minutes thirty seconds, we’re in orbit. Next thing scheduled is a burn to match speeds with the pre-programmed destination.”

“And that’s the station Cozy Glow controls?” I asked.

“I sure as buck hope so,” Klein said. “I don’t want to die up here floating around waiting for somepony to save me.”

“I’m sure it’ll be there,” I said. I could tell she was barely hanging onto her fears. I hadn’t even noticed how anxious she was. I couldn’t blame her. I was terrified. I was sure everything was going to go wrong. Every single thing I’d ever ridden on had exploded or caught on fire or crashed or worse. This was absolutely not the time to mention that to Klein Bottle. “They wouldn’t have sent ponies up in this thing with nowhere to go.”

She nodded to herself and relaxed a little. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. There has to be something up here. And if not…” she flipped through the menus. “Thank goodness. There’s an emergency abort. I think we can at least de-orbit if we need to. Buck knows where we’d end up but even the ocean is better than space.”

“...How do you even land a rocket from space?” I asked. I’d never thought about it before. It seemed important now that we were up here.

“There are a couple different ways.” Klein sat back, trying to relax. The zero-G actually made that a little harder. Every motion tried to kick us out of our seats. No wonder the straps were so extensive. “This looks like it’s set up for parachutes and lithobraking.”

“...Parachutes I understand.”

“Lithobraking means you hit the ground and that stops you. After the parachutes slow you down enough to make that something you can survive. Equestria mostly did ocean landings but… with no fleet to get you back, that’s actually more dangerous. They were only good because you didn’t have to worry about hitting anything important anyway.”

“Not much left down there to worry about,” I admitted. We sat in silence for a moment. “So… what do we do now?”

“Nothing. We wait for the flight computer to get to the right orbit. Then it autodocks with the station. That’s what it means when it says it’s all automatic.”

“Seems sort of… more advanced than I remember,” I said.

“When the war started, rocket technology all went to the military. They had years to come up with things civilians never saw, and then with the Exodus Red… they might have more rocket ponies there, all ready to try out ideas they never had a chance to test before.”

“Ideas they could build on an unlimited budget thanks to SIVA,” I continued the thought. My eyes strayed to the panels and handles around the ship. Something caught my eye. I reached for it.

“I wonder if Luna loved or hated the idea of weapons in space,” Klein mused. “She must have had strong opinions either way. Would she want ponies to feel protected by the might of the stars, or would she hate the night being feared-- what are you doing?”

I paused. I was chewing. “Nothing,” I said through a full mouth.

“Are you eating a snack?!” Klein admonished.

“I found a drawer with rations,” I admitted.

“...What kind?” she asked, trying to look around me.

“They’re those kind of protein and fruit bars,” I said, taking one out and offering it to her. “These are actually fresh!”

“Blackberry-acai-chia,” she said, reading the label. “I have no idea what any of those words mean.”

I shrugged. “They taste good.”

She opened the wrapper and took a bite, her eyes lighting up. I knew what she was feeling. The bars had a weird sweet, tangy taste and a gritty, stretchy texture. They were about as processed as food coil be, a paste formed into a stiff bar, but it wasn’t messy or crumbly.

“A snack isn’t a bad idea,” she decided, once she knew she liked them. “Are there any other flavors?”

It’s funny, but even being in space got boring once it stopped being overwhelming. We both took turns being awed at seeing the entire world in the viewport, Equestria and Zebrica and everything else, just sitting there, most of Equestria hidden behind clouds. From here we couldn’t see the ruins or the burns. It was just a world, rotating under us. A world without borders, so small in the universe, that kind of thing.

It got old. It was really impressive but also we were going towards uncertain death and trying to stop the collapse of civilization. That was a little hard to ignore.

“So when you do get there, what’s your plan?” Klein asked.

“Take over the space station,” I said. “Maybe we can find a way to sabotage it, just throw it into the sun or something.”

“That’s actually really hard to do-- no, don’t give me that look. I’m sure we could sabotage it. There are just difficulties with sun launches.”

“Okay, if you say so.” I shrugged. “Anyway, we just sabotage it, then go home.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to use it.”

“Use it?” I asked.

“Think about it,” Klein said. “Right now Cozy Glow is on the verge of taking over the Enclave without a fight just because she controls that station. If you take it over, you can do anything with it.”

I shook my head. “Not anything. All I can do is hurt ponies.”

“Sometimes that’s enough, when you get to choose which ponies get hurt. Imagine putting a few orbital strikes in the right place, taking out the corrupt politicians without fighting past an entire army of innocent ponies…”

“I’m not a good enough pony to do that,” I said quietly. “I don’t think I could pick and choose the right ponies to live and die. I’d make mistakes. I’ve already made too many mistakes.”

I looked out the window. I knew we had to be getting close but I couldn’t see anything in the sea of stars.

“I never wanted to kill ponies. I don’t even know when I stopped trying to not kill them. It’s like part of me got eaten away, and it included the part that really felt bad about all the blood on my hooves. Maybe that’s what Four felt. Her soul being nibbled away…”

“By augmentations?” Klein shook her head. “That’s silly.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I sighed. It was probably stupid. Something to worry about as part of a nightmare, not real life. I had to keep reminding myself that I’d met ponies even worse off than I was - Raven and Destiny were easy examples - and they were fine.

“So what about the ponies onboard? I’m pretty sure this was a crew relief mission. Swapping a few ponies out and letting them go home.”

“We… fight them?” I said, feeling confused.

“With what?” Klein asked.

I paused. I had my knife. It was inside my space suit. If I tried to take it out, I’d have a bad day. I hadn’t brought any guns. The power sword was back on Equestria, if it was even safe to take into space.

“I’ll punch them in the snout to establish dominance,” I decided. “Then order them to abandon ship.”

I wasn’t going to have to kill anypony this time. I was sure of it.

A chime went off.

“What’s that mean?” I asked. Klein turned to the console, searching it for answers.

“We’re getting close. It locked onto the docking beacon for the space station.” She took a deep breath. “What are the chances they haven’t heard about what’s going on and think this is a normal mission?”

“I have no idea. I’d say zero, but…” I rubbed my chin. “With the launch pad destroyed, it’s possible word didn’t get out about the launch. Four was distracting everypony with the Grandus, remember? The radios they had wouldn’t go far.”

“Not zero,” she mumbled, nodding. “Okay. Get strapped in.”

Before I went back to my seat I peeked outside. I wanted to get a look at the station.

“Are you sure we’re getting close?” I asked. “I don’t see anything.”

“Space is big. It’s still a hundred miles away.”

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about how spaceships work. Klein did. Or at least she made me feel better while the automatic controls, which were smarter than either of us, did things that shook the capsule and made scary sounds and occasionally let puffs of gas go past the window.

The details escape me but apparently docking in orbit is less like flying from one cloud to another and more like shooting one bullet out of the air with another, and doing it really gently so you didn’t break anything. Then there was something about how changing speed also changed our altitude and… it was a lot of math. I could probably do the math part if I knew where to even start, but it was a word problem and those were just the worst. Who even buys a hundred bananas at the store?

“Here we go,” Klein mumbled. “Final sequence.”

On the terminal screens in front of us I could see a display of what was going on around us. On the left screen, the capsule was drawn like a cartoon in green on black, updating twice a second and pulsing as it approached a green shape like a wheel. On the right side was something that took longer for me to interpret.

There were four boxes, showing red X’s in each of them. Lines connected to them, flickering on the display. One of them turned into a green O, then another.

“We’re almost aligned,” Klein said. “This might be, uh, rough. Put on your helmet.”

“Why rough?” I asked, puling the helmet on. There hadn’t been much point before now. If something went wrong we were dead either way. It was steel, glass, and plastic, somewhere between a fish bowl and a motorcycle helmet.

“They probably expect a professional to massage it into place gently,” Klein explained. “We’re just trying to stay out of the--”

The capsule jerked slightly. The display with four boxes went red, then green again. She quickly sealed her helmet tight, and I did the same.

“Out of the way,” she said. This time I heard her voice over the radio, echoing in the helmet.

I swallowed. “I’d rather be in the way. Or inside. Inside is good.”

There was a big bump like a Vertibuck hitting the landing pad too hard. The ship floated back away from the station on the left display. A moment later the right screen went all green, then we were pushed forward again, and there was an instant of clanging and slipping. I could feel it in my teeth and my hooves. It was the feeling of two things being forced together when they didn’t quite align, a square peg pounded into a square hole until the impact twisted it in just the right way to slip inside.

The capsule shuddered. Everything calmed down.

A pony appeared on the screens, a cartoon mare giving us a big smile for a moment before flashing away.

“Now what?” I asked.

Klein Bottle was silent for a long moment.

“I have no idea,” she admitted. “There has to be a hatch control somewhere.”

“This one?” I asked, reaching for a big red handle.

“No! That’s the-- Chamomile that’s the way we came in! It’s open to space!”

“I don’t see another door!” I protested.

“It should be at the front of the capsule,” Klein said. “Which means…”

She looked at the screens in front of us and experimentally tugged on them. After a few moments, she found a latch and unhooked it, then another, then she swung the entire console out of the way.

On the wall ahead of us was a circular hatch.

“I think that’s it,” she said. “You go first.”

“Oh, right,” I said. She didn’t need to explain why. If something was going to go wrong, it was better that it happened to me. Not just because ethically I deserved bad things to happen to me, but because I was way more likely to survive them than Klein. No offense to her, but she was tiny and fluffy and fragile and looked more like a stuffed toy than a real pony.

I unstrapped myself and pushed off the chair, floating to the hatch. Thankfully it wasn’t hard to understand. There was a silver and red wheel in the center, and when I twisted it, it moved with a satisfying, solid clunk. A physical indicator on the door went from white to red, which I assume meant it was unlocked.

I pulled, and the hatch came loose with a hiss. It had some kind of complex two-part hinge that took it completely out of the way, leaving the passage free. It was going to be tight for me, like squeezing through an underwater cave. I tucked my wings and wiggled into the exposed hole, the lack of gravity helping me just as much as it was disorienting me.

I didn’t know what to expect on the other side. Guards with guns at the ready? A deathtrap? The void of space?

Now that I’d thought about the void of space it was hard not to think about it. A mare only has to drown once to swear off a lack of oxygen for the rest of her life.

I emerged out of the hatch into a slightly larger room. Sealed corridors went in both directions, with the hatch in the floor of the x-shaped intersection. It was like standing in the center of a compass. Through windows in the hatches on each corridor, I could see there were handles in the corridors, rows of them like ladders.

Nopony was there to greet us. I floated a little closer to one of the hatches, and felt something pull at me. A gentle tug, like the lightest gravity.

“Woah!” I wasn’t expecting it. I fell the rest of the way like a floating leaf, landing on the hatch. Nothing exploded, but I could feel that slight pull holding me in place. I could easily push off and ignore it, and I did experimentally. The floor actually seemed to move under me when I did, turning and twisting.

“It’s rotating,” Klein explained from behind me. “The station has a kind of artificial gravity. I’ve heard the theory. It’s sort of like… if you hold a string with a weight on it above your head and twirl it, you can feel the force pulling it to the side.”

“That’s neat,” I said. I settled myself down.

“There’s air in here,” Klein said. “I think we’re okay.”

She unsealed her helmet and took a breath, recoiling a little.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It smells like gym socks,” she said.

I took off my helmet. She was right. We’d been breathing bottled, pure air for a couple hours. The air on the station wasn’t quite as pure.

“Still not bad for two centuries old air filters,” I said.

“Must be the same kind they use in Stables. Designed to last basically forever.” Klein looked around, picked a hatch, and tested it. “Locked.”

I checked the next one. There was a wheel-lock just like the capsule. I stopped before even trying it. The lights in this particular direction were flickering, and I could see a big hole right through it.

“Not this way either,” I told her.

“Here,” Klein said. She looked up at me. I kicked off and hopped over to her. We both looked down the corridor. Maybe access tunnel was the right word. The lock showed a green light. “I think this is the only way we can go. The last one’s welded shut.”

“Maybe there was an air leak,” I suggested.

“It does look like some kind of repair job,” Klein agreed. “Stand to the side so you don’t fall in.”

She opened the hatch, grunting and struggling with the mass and pushing it aside. I stepped past her. There wasn’t enough room for flying down that tight passage, but that’s why there was a ladder. I took my time and climbed down. It was in almost perfect condition, barely used in centuries.

A second hatch was at the far end, I hopped off the end of the ladder and looked through. There was no sign of ponies through the window, but there was brushed steel and smooth white paint.

I lifted the hatch up and out of the way and peeked my head through, half-expecting to catch a bullet or a laser to the face. Instead, there was almost total silence, the white noise of fans cut through with an occasional birdlike tweet or chirp from computerized panels in the walls. No screaming, no gunshots.

“Looks clear,” I said, dropping down the rest of the way. Gravity increased quickly, and I hit the floor harder than I expected, the sound a boom that reverberated louder than our docking sequence.

I winced, but nothing bad happened. Standing there felt weird. Not just because I was in space and knew it, but because the floor curved away in both directions like I was at the bottom of a valley.

Klein fluttered down next to me and made a much softer landing.

“Is anypony here?” she asked. “Where are they?”

“It can’t be completely automated, right?” I asked.

“They wouldn’t have been about to send up a crew capsule if that was the case,” Klein said. She moved a little, trying to stay behind me. “Hey, look!”

I turned to see what she was pointing at. There were bunks built into the wall a little uphill. They looked like the berths in the lower decks of cloudships, sort of shelves for ponies to rest on. There were only four of them, and they all looked recently used.

“Okay, so somepony is here,” I said, picking up a wrinkled Enclave uniform shirt. “This didn’t get here before the war.”

“No,” Klein agreed.

“Let’s try this way first.” I tossed the shirt aside.

“Can’t we just wait for them to walk in here? I mean, they sleep here, right?” Klein asked.

I shook my head. “No. They have to know somepony docked. They’re also gonna find out something’s wrong sooner or later. I don’t want to give them a chance to shove us out an airlock. We might have suits but I donno if we could get back in.”

Klein swallowed and nodded. As we walked, we kept being at the bottom of the world. Every step was uphill, in both directions. It was really weird to feel under my hooves. We passed a chessboard halfway through a game, a crate of rations and supplies. A small bathroom.

It ended in a hatch, welded shut. Extra shielding had been put up around it.

“Reactor room,” I read above the door. “Maybe it wasn’t an air leak they were worried about. And there was a hole in the station in the other direction.”

“They must be in the locked section,” Klein said. “Maybe they do already know something’s wrong.”

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s figure this out. Five-minute break?”

We spent a moment getting cleaned up and getting a drink of water. I was in the middle of putting my now-clean spacesuit back on when I started to get a bad idea. A bad idea that just might work.

“If we can’t go through the door, we can go around it,” I said slowly.

“No.” Klein whined. “Chamomile--”

“We go through the damaged section. There has to be a manual override for the hatches.”

“Do you know how many ponies have ever successfully done a spacewalk?” Klein asked.

“No idea,” I admitted. “Secret space program, right? Maybe it’s easy. We have to do something or else we might as well give up and go home.”

“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” I asked. The suit radio crackled.

“If there’s something wrong with the airlock you’ll need a friendly pony on the inside to let you back in,” Klein reminded me. She waved through the small porthole in the door.

“You assume something’s going to go wrong.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m absolutely sure something will go wrong. That’s why I’m keeping my helmet on.”

I couldn’t deny that the odds were on her side. The outer door of the airlock had clearly been used for this purpose before - one of the panels next to it was left open and revealed the manual release for the door. It was a big fold-out crank left ready to use, friendly and easy to use and painted in bright colors to help a dumb pony who might be stuck in an airlock figure out how to save their own life.

As a dumb pony who had to save her own life pretty often, I appreciated the effort. I turned the handle, and the door levered open, the air rushing out in a torrent. There had to be a safer way to do this, probably some checklist about draining air slowly and safely, only opening the door after the airlock was depressurized, that kind of thing.

None of it mattered, because I was in open space with only a thin suit and a glass helmet between me and the void.

I stepped out into the destroyed section of the station. I could hear my hoofsteps, but everything else was silent. I thought it would be like being underwater, but I was wrong.

“Okay, I just have to walk to the other side,” I whispered to myself. This section was some kind of storage. There were small crates stacked up on the curved floor, sized just right to go through the narrow passages Some of them had been opened, revealing packaged spare parts, new circuit boards, rations, water. Everything ponies might need.

And then I found the hole.

“I guess this is why there’s no air,” I said. There was something as long as I was jammed into the hull. I tilted my head, trying to figure out what it was.

“What did you find?” Klein asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s some kind of… thing? It’s got big black wings and an antenna. It must be a satellite.”

“That makes sense. There are only so many useful orbits, and two centuries with nopony keeping all the junk up here from smashing together.”

“I guess so,” I said. I kicked it lightly, but it was wedged tight in there. The edges felt welded together where the metal had bent and twisted. “That’s not coming out. No wonder they didn’t fix--”

I caught movement in the corner of my vision. I ducked behind the satellite.

“Somepony else is in here,” I whispered. Why was I whispering? I could scream and nopony would be able to hear it.

“Punch them!” Klein yelled. It was a really good suggestion. I jumped over a rack of crates towards--

I stopped myself in midair. Tried to stop myself. Wings don’t work in a vacuum! That’s not true, they do work to throw off your center of balance and make you bounce into the wall then fall and slide along the floor because gravity is being provided by spinning instead of mass and-- the point is I fell like an idiot and had a new world record for clumsiest landing of all time.

“What’s wrong? I heard a crash!” I heard Klein starting to panic.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t a pony. It’s just some kind of cargo robot.”

I sighed and stood up, looking at it. It reminded me of a hundred old ads from the pre-war days, a multi-limbed hovering octopus, this one painted white and chrome.

“I think it’s a Mr. Handy,” I said. “You know, I bet that’s why this place is still up here. These things can do basic maintenance.”

One eyestalk turned to me and flashed several times.

“It’s trying to talk,” I said. “Sorry buddy, I can’t hear you. We’re in a vacuum.”

It twisted around, a different mechanical tentacle pointing at me. The eye flashed again.

“They wouldn’t put a gun on a space robot, would they?”

It fired. A laser hit my chest. I yelped. A warning went off in my ears. There was an air leak, probably from the hole. The hole in my spacesuit. I grabbed the robot before it could fire again, using the tentacle to swing it around like a club and smashing it into the wall. The central sphere exploded, sparks and shrapnel flying everywhere. I smooshed a hoof into my chest, trying to slow the air leak.

“Buck, buck, buck,” I swore, pulling open crates and looking for something.

“Are you dead?” Klein asked. “You have to tell me if you’re dying!”

“I’ll be fine! I just have to-- aha!”

I found the most powerful tool in the universe. Something that could solve almost every problem. Klein probably would have disagreed with me about how suitable it was, but it was about to save my life.

I slapped strips of duct tape over the burn and the warning tapered off, the air leak sealed.

“Okay, not dying,” I sighed.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” a new voice said. I looked around. It had come over the radio, so it took me a moment to spot him, even with the pony waving to me from the end of the cargo bay. He held a slick-looking plasma rifle at the ready. “There’s plenty of time for dying. Let’s go inside and talk.”

Chapter 107: Black Lotus

Yes, I could have punched the stallion in the face. He had a plasma rifle, but he also made the single critical mistake of letting me get within hoof’s reach. However, I was a reasonable, smart mare with lots of brainpower and who really wanted to go inside because my spacesuit had one hole in it already and even though the duct tape was holding up I was not entirely sure how long that would be true.

So yes, I let him hold me at gunpoint and lead me into the airlock. There was a chance I could reason with everypony onboard the station and tell them that it was a bad idea to cause another war. I had to be clever and smart and charismatic and--

I lost focus for a second because there was a gun pointed at me. The outer door sealed shut and the airlock pressurized. A little voice told me to murder him while I had the chance. The intrusiveness of it actually froze me up long enough for the airlock to finish cycling and for the inner door to open.

Another guard was right outside, with another plasma rifle. The killing urge faded.

“Let’s go,” the stallion behind me said. He motioned with his gun. I stepped inside. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be in there anyway.

“Take me to your leader,” I said.

The two stallions glared at me.

“Heard that one before?” I asked.

“It’s not funny to just reference things,” one of them said. “That’s not a joke. It’s just reminding ponies that something exists.”

“Tough audience,” I mumbled.

A mare’s voice came from the next room. “I think they’re being pretty nice, considering they should have shot you the second they saw you.”

I followed the voice. The command section was the same futuristic white and chrome as the living quarters, but with a lot more screens and control panels, only about half of which were working.

“Welcome to the Hub,” Cube said. My half-sister sighed and leaned in her chair. “Chamomile, what the buck?”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

“Oh, you think seeing me was a surprise?” Cube asked. She glanced over at me, frowning. “How do you think I feel?! I’m not going to ask how you did it, because I saw the capsule dock.”

“What can I say? I just don’t know when to give up.” I gave her a smile. “It’s good to see you. I was sort of worried things would turn violent up here, but if you’re in charge we might be able to talk this out!”

“You are a living nightmare,” Cube growled. “You shouldn’t have been able to get within a thousand miles of this place! The sheer odds--!”

“I get it, I’m impossible,” I said. “Can we talk about maybe a ceasefire, ending the war, peace between all ponies, that kind of thing?”

Cube rubbed her forehead. Her headache was so bad even I could feel it.

“We can at least agree that it’s a bad idea to fight on a space station,” Cube sighed. She waved for the guards to stand down. “One stray shot and all of us are going to have a bad day. As long as you promise to behave, we’ll talk.”

I nodded.

“Good,” Cube let out a long breath. “We aren’t planning any strikes anyway. Cozy Glow wanted to use them as a show of force, not a political policy. Once the Enclave higher-ups agree to negotiate fairly, we can start using them on things like monster nests where they can do some real good.”

“I mean that’s not the worst way to use them,” I admitted. There were a few places that could probably use an orbital strike and everypony would be better off.

“Ma’am?” one of the stallions said. He was looking over at a control panel on the wall. “Looks like we’re getting a transmission from the ground.”

“This isn’t a scheduled check-in time,” Cube said. She stood up, taking a moment to steady herself when she hopped off the chair. I saw the deck slip under her a little. The rotating gravity was tricky.

“They probably heard about how I got up here,” I said.

Cube stopped, holding onto the chair she’d gotten out of. “How bad?”

“To be fair, I don’t think a lot of ponies died,” I said.

“You don’t think a lot of ponies died,” Cube said slowly. “How many is a lot? A hundred?”

“There were the two at the gate,” I said. “Then-- should I count Rain Shadow? I’m not even sure if he’s really dead.”

Cube didn’t look sure either. “Skip it if you didn’t see a body.”

“Okay. Then I knocked out a couple ponies but I think they’re still alive. Maybe. And Four is…” I swallowed.

“So two or three ponies,” Cube said. She relaxed a little. “That’s much less than I expected. Maybe we can swing this into a positive.”

“Also I stole a rocket.”

“Well, yes,” Cube admitted. “But that’s not a big deal.”

“And blew up the rocket base.”

She stopped. Her headache got worse. Even the two stallions could feel it. I saw them wince at the migraine growing so large that the pain was filling the space around us.

“They evacuated first,” I explained.

“Mmph,” Cube bit back a retort. “At least I know how much I have to apologize for. Maybe I can sell it as being an eye for an eye after what we did to the Enclave rocket program. Cozy Glow might be okay with that.”

“She’s a really reasonable mare,” one of the stallions agreed.

“Conference room,” Cube said. “I’m doing the talking. Even if she asks you a question directly, I answer. You understand?”

She gave me a sharp look. I nodded.

“Good. None of us want to die in space. We’re going to talk all this out like adults and go home.” Cube trotted over to a fancy-looking hatch and led us into a room that could have been anywhere on Equestria. The room was dominated by a huge screen and a conference table where all the chairs faced it and the camera system set into the wall. Cube motioned to the chairs, which all looked almost normal except for being bolted to the floor and with seatbelts built in.

I sat down awkwardly. I felt like a filly being called in front of the principal. Cube squinted at the black screen and used her magic to fix her mane, then sat down next to me, getting ready.

“Okay,” she said. “Transfer the call from the Exodus Red in here.”

The screen hummed to life, showing a test signal. Cube waited a moment.

“Is there something wrong with the signal?” she asked, still looking into the camera as if Cozy Glow might appear at any moment. Which she might, to be honest.

“Don’t blame me,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to break anything yet.”

“It should be connected,” one of the stallions said. He got up from where he’d slid into a seat and checked a wall panel. “It says it’s working. There’s a data stream.”

The screen flickered. The speakers blared with a sound midway between a dragon’s roar and pure static. I covered my ears by reflex. The sound cut into me like a knife, piercing and awful.

“Shut it down!” Cube shouted over the noise. One of the stallions stumbled to the wall and slammed his hoof into a button, the screen flashing off. Just before it went black, I thought I saw something through the tears blurring my vision. A huge eye, glaring out at us.

“What the buck was that?” I gasped.

“I don’t know,” Cube said. She stood up. “We need to make sure nothing’s gone wrong with the comm array. Both of you grab whatever tools you need and get the robot--”

“Er…” I coughed. “Okay, I had time to break one thing.”

Cube growled. “Idiot!”

“Yeah, I’m an idiot,” I groaned. My ears were still aching. Actually, my whole body was starting to ache. I felt like I’d been running a marathon. Was all the exhaustion catching up to me?

“We can manage it, boss,” the stallions assured her. “Maybe you should take care of your sister?”

Cube nodded, leaning in to look at me. “Chamomile, what’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re all pale and sweaty.”

“I donno,” I said. I winced. “I’m getting cramps all over.”

“Your spacesuit had a hole in it,” Cube noted. “It could be the bends. I know you pegasus ponies like to pretend you’re immune, but we’re talking about hard vacuum. It could have messed you up.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I groaned. I was feeling worse by the second. I could tell something was wrong deep inside me. It was the familiar crawling, prickly feeling of SIVA working. It was the sense of wrongness and being utterly broken, and it had come out of nowhere.

Cube put a hoof on my back.

“Okay, something’s definitely wrong,” she said. “You’re starting to bleed out of your gums--”

One of the guards screamed. I forgot about my own pain for exactly as long as it took to turn in alarm and feel every muscle in my body scream. It felt like every tendon was pulling tight in a different and occasionally brand-new direction.

I was still having a better time than he was. His fancy rifle had turned inside-out and was burrowing into his body. Blood sprayed into the air, splattering all in one direction. He stumbled back, gurgling and trying to pull it free.

The second guard’s screams joined him a moment later. He stumbled out of the room in a panic, fighting against the thing that had already torn deep into the muscles of his right forehoof. I didn’t need to ask my next question. I could feel the answer.

“SIVA?” I groaned.

“How did you think we made everything?” Cube asked. She looked torn. She took a step towards the fallen guard in the room with us. “Buck! What was that?!”

“Some kind of scrap code,” I groaned. “It reactivated the SIVA in the plasma rifles. And in me. I think I can fight it off, but-- how did you get your SIVA core working?”

“It… you aren’t going to like the answer,” Cube said.

“I’m in too much pain to yell at you,” I assured her.

“You remember how Dad-- how Polar Orbit was looking for… what Mom turned into?”

“...You’re joking,” I moaned, putting my head down on the conference table.

“We captured her and we’ve been using the active SIVA. Cozy Glow worked out a safe way to do it ages ago! Mom shouldn’t be able to do anything like this!”

“I think her ‘safe way’ isn’t working,” I grunted through the pain. Even my tongue felt like it was trying to tear in half.

“There has to be something I can do,” Cube said firmly. I had to admit, she had spirit. She grabbed a big white-and-red box off the wall, wiping off the spray of fresh arterial blood and leaving only the Ministry of Peace logo on the surface. I waved her off when she started towards me and motioned to one of the guards.

“Him first,” I said.

Cube didn’t argue. She grabbed a healing potion out of the first aid kit along with gauze and sterile pads, letting them hover around her. I knew the stallion wasn’t dead yet. He was still twitching, so there was some life in there somewhere.

“Healing potion first, then wrap up anything that doesn’t close on its own,” Cube said to herself. I tried to get up to help, but my back legs went numb under me and sat me down on the floor. She turned the stallion over less than gently to get at the wound on his neck.

He roared and lunged at her. If she’d been a doctor or medic or anypony except a mind-reading killing machine, that probably would have killed her. I saw her expression change just before it happened, sensing the threat before it happened.

Cube shoved him back with a burst of telekinetic force. He hit the wall and slid down it, eyes rolling wildly with unspeakable pain. He was terrified and in agony. The stallion was forced back to his hooves, the plasma rifle eating him alive and leaving metal scales and twisted spars of bone and steel where the SIVA changed him. His muscles snapped and jerked as if he was being electrocuted.

“What the buck…” Cube whispered.

He lunged for her. I tore the chair out of the deck next to me, the bolts holding it down not designed to withstand a spooked Chamomile. The seat hit him before he made it to Cube, smashing him back into the wall.

“They’re infected. Like me but worse,” I grunted. That might not be strictly true in some ways. I was much more deeply infected but my case had been under control. I hadn’t felt this much pain in longer than I could easily remember. “They won’t die even if you kill them.”

“Wonderful,” Cube said. She stepped back, keeping her eyes on the stallion, and offered a hoof to help me up. I saw her balk at something. “Your skin is literally crawling,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. Still, I could feel things starting to turn a corner. I knew that unlike the dumb SIVA in the guns, I had at least some control between the cortical node I’d gotten ages ago on the Exodus Green and the fresh command codes Raven had given me on the White. Between them, I could practically feel the scrap code getting pushed back down.

“What do we do?” she asked. “You’ve had experience with this, clearly.”

“At this point? Shove them out an airlock. Even that probably won’t kill them, but the air loss will make them pass out and maybe put them into hibernation.”

I almost expected her to call the idea cruel or insane. In most cases that’s the normal reaction. Cube was a decisive mare, and had absolutely no issue with the idea of killing ponies that had been her allies a few moments ago.

The second stallion charged through the open doorway. His forehoof was just a mess of knives and bare bone. I hit him from the side, tackling him into the wall.

“Don’t let them touch you,” I warned.

Cube nodded and blasted the first zombie stallion again. He hit the wall hard enough to break bones. “Put on your helmet,” she said. “I’ll get to the airlock.”

“You aren’t wearing a space suit,” I pointed out.

“Unlike you, I have magic.” She demonstrated that by grabbing my helmet and popping it on my head with her telekinesis. In the corner of my eye I saw the zombie I’d tackled starting to stand, the mess of bone and steel clawing into the wall and dragging him up while his spine realigned with quiet pops.

Cube looked past my right ear and I realized she’d spotted the motion in the reflection of the glass. Another one of the chairs ripped free with her sorcery and she bashed him back down to the ground.

“Keep them busy,” she ordered. “I have to override safety systems to get the inner and outer doors open at once. It’ll take a minute.”

“Got it,” I said. She wrapped herself in a magical aura and flipped over, inverting gravity for herself and running along the ceiling, well out of reach of the monsters. I put myself in the narrow doorway, trapping the two zombies inside the conference room.

They hissed and spat at me. I could see terrible pain reflected in their eyes. Somewhere in there, they were still aware even while the SIVA was driving them around like puppets.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said. I could sympathize. I’d be willing to stab somepony for a shot of Med-X right in that moment. I missed having a friend that would do the injecting for me.

They charged me at the same time, which saved me the trouble of keeping track of both of them at once. It was hard to focus on them when I was fighting back an urge to black out, throw up, bleed out, and try again tomorrow. It was like a hangover but also a critical medical emergency.

I pushed through it. My back legs were too wobbly to do any neat spinning back kicks with real power behind them, but my forehooves were working pretty well. I slapped one right into the path of the other, and neither of them was coordinated enough to stop themselves from falling over even in the face of such a weak blow.

They landed in a heap on top of each other, and I took the chair Cube had left behind and brought it down on them, clubbing the stallions like baby seals. I knew nothing I did was really going to put them down for good. Not like this. Every individual part of them was twisting and growing machine parts, and the dying flesh wrapped around the gears and pistons was only a canvas for the horror.

Dark blood splattered everywhere. I couldn’t tell where one stallion ended and the next started. They were mincemeat.

The meat moved, partly-intact skulls rising up like snakes on broken necks, the mass trying to drag itself closer. I raised the chair up. It was ripped from my hooves by a sudden torrent of wind. The air turned cloudy with condensation, hurricane-force wind blowing me back into the main part of the command section.

It only lasted a few seconds, and then the roar went silent.

I looked through the doorway at the undead horror. It thrashed for a few jerky moments, then stilled. I knew it wasn’t dead. It was still too dangerous to approach, but at least it wasn’t crawling on the floor for now.

Cube waved to me. Her magic formed a sphere of force around her head and a soft glow surrounded her body. She floated through the middle of the command section. Her lips moved.

“I can’t hear you!” I yelled. “There’s hard vacuum between us-- right you can’t hear me either.” I sighed. I looked past her. The airlock hung open. I motioned to the crippled creature, then the open door, then tried to mime something with my forehead that was supposed to be magic.

It wasn’t very good but to be fair for her, Cube was psychic and read minds all the time, so she did eventually get it. She pulled the twitching mass out of the room and kept her distance from it while she shoved it out the airlock into the depressurized cargo bay, slamming the door shut behind it.

White puffed into the air, and sound returned with a rush of wind and the sound of a dozen different alarms all going at once.

“Chamomile, what the buck is going on over there?” Klein asked over the radio.

“Oh good, you’re still alive,” I said. “Can you get back to the space pod?”

“It’s a re-entry capsule, not a space pod.”

I grunted and leaned against a wall of blinking alarms, closing my eyes for a moment. “You know what I mean. Can you make it back there?”

“Yeah. Why?”

There was a tap on my helmet. I opened my eyes. Cube was looking at me, obviously worried.

“One sec,” I said to both of them at once. I took the helmet off. “Cube, we’ve got a space capsule docked in the middle of this thing. I think it’s time to evacuate.”

“We can agree on that,” she said.

“Running away so soon?” The lights around us flickered in time with the voice. It was way too familiar, especially the way my heart also fluttered in time with it. Mom. The screens on every single display in the command section changed to an unblinking draconic eye. All of them were subtly different, individually focused on us.

“And now we’ve got this to deal with,” Cube whispered.

“My two beloved daughters. One an overachiever, the other an underachiever. I’ll let you two fight about who’s who.” Mom’s laughter was cruel, and the life support fans skipped when she spoke.

“I didn’t know we were competing for a title,” I quipped. Maybe if she was looking at me she’d miss Klein.

“Everything in life is a competition, Chamomile,” Mom chastised. “You should know that. You’ve gotten plenty of participation medals, but now look at you! All grown up just like me.”

“She’s nothing like you,” Cube retorted.

“What do you want?” I demanded, cutting off whatever clever retort our mother was about to deliver. I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to bring her to the point, because on half the screens, the eye vanished and turned into a tangle of lines that I recognized after a moment as a world map drawn with intersecting triangles.

“I have what I want,” Mom said. Red markers appeared on the map, beeps accompanying each as they blinked to life. “Cozy Glow is a good ambitious little filly, but she’s from another era. She cares about survivors. I’m happy to spend a few centuries rebuilding the population.”

“Oh stars,” Cube whispered.

“She thinks she’s in control of me!” Mom chuckled. “In a few moments she’ll be receiving a message that Cube has authorized an orbital strike at every settlement in the Enclave and on the surface large enough to constitute some kind of organized society. I apologize, but you might get a few angry calls.”

“How do we stop her?” I pulled myself away from the screens and looked at Cube. She was staring at the blinking markers. Math flowed past the side of the window. I could tell it was some kind of firing solution.

“The main computer!” Cube said. She bolted past me and yanked open a closet, revealing rows of circuit boards and wires, a tangled mess of electronics blinking and clicking and counting down to the end of the world. Her magic grabbed a few at random, yanking them free. Most of the screens dimmed.

“Did it work?” I asked.

The images of the eye on the screen flickered and stuttered. Mom’s voice came out of the speakers with a burst of fresh static. “Y-y-you will OBEY!” she roared, the sound jumping and cutting out.

The word Obey hit me like a tidal wave, sending me to my knees. My right forehoof moved on its own, slapping at a panel full of buttons and flipping switches. The entire station rumbled, and gravity went sideways for long enough to toss me to the other side of the narrow donut that was the Hub. I felt blind from pain and disorientation.

A new alarm joined the others. Cube saw me struggling and yanked another board out of the wall. The rest of the screens with Mom’s eye went black, leaving only a few showing the imminent attack.

“I ripped out the ground communications,” she said. “Are you okay?”

I grabbed my right hoof with my left and yanked it back, the metal thing attached to me twitching and twisting like a snake, the joints moving in ways my natural joints couldn’t.

“Buck!” I swore. My mouth filled with blood. I spat it out, slowly regaining some measure of control. The splatter was oil-black and glistening and I’d swear it moved around the edges. I grunted and pulled my right forehoof close to my body, just trying to get it out of the way. It moved like it was asleep or disconnected from my shoulder entirely.

Cube shoved me aside and looked at what I’d done.

“You idiot!” Cube swore. “You started the emergency de-orbit procedure!”

“We’re falling?” I asked.

Cube raised a hoof to kick me and stopped herself. “Yes. We’re falling.”

I looked around. There were alarms going off, and the floor was vibrating a little.

“The artificial gravity is going to be the dominant force until we hit the atmosphere, then the rotation is going to literally tear the station apart,” Cube explained. “We’ve got maybe five minutes to save the world.”

“Can we still connect to the orbital platforms?” I asked. I tried to stand and Cube took a step back, keeping her distance. It was the smart move.

“The warsat network is still online and moving into firing orbits,” she confirmed.

“Let’s point them somewhere else,” I said. “All the firing commands have to go through here, right?”

“As long as I didn’t short the wrong circuits and erase the command codes,” Cube confirmed. She opened a panel and revealed a keyboard set into the wall. Her magic danced across the keys. “Buck!”

“What’s wrong?”

“When I knocked out the ground comms I damaged part of the communications array,” she said. “We have to contact the warsats one at a time.”

“Show me,” I said.

“Select one warsat from the list, press the realign button. Connect to it. Redirect the shot somewhere…” Cube hesitated.

“Middle of the ocean,” I said. “Doesn’t have to be exact. Just aim for open water and nopony will get hurt, right?”

“Right, good idea,” she agreed. I watched how she entered the coordinates. It wasn’t just pointing it somewhere on a map. It was more like describing an arc, all variables and angles. “That’s one. Just… too many more to do.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There’s a space pod at the docking thing. You’re going to take that and get out of here with Klein.”

She frowned. “There’s no time. The pod has to be launched as soon as possible. It can guide itself but it needs to get distance from the station before this place turns into debris!”

“Exactly. So you’re going to go, and I’ll stay.” I pushed her aside and tapped at the keys, a little slower than she was. “Like this, right? Select one of the warsats, then give it the new coordinates.” I entered numbers without thinking, letting the computer in my head calculate the arc. It ended almost right next to Cube’s in the ocean between Equestria and the Zebra homeland.

“Maybe if we both do it, we can both get out of here,” Cube said. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“You’re the dumb one.” I gave her a sad smile. “I’m cooked, Cube. If I get in that pod with you and Klein, anything could happen. It was built with SIVA, remember? I might infect it just touching it.”

Cube growled and shoved me.

“You idiot! This whole thing is your fault!” she shouted.

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “Mom, SIVA, all of it.”

“You’re going to live through this,” she told me. “You always find some way.”

I started to deny that.

“No, shut up!” Cube snapped. “If you can survive a collapsing portal you can survive falling.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised. Cube nodded. The station shook, sending her stumbling to the side. “Go,” I ordered.

Cube fled, giving me one last look as she levitated herself up the ladder instead of climbing it, heading to the center of the station and safety. I started entering in the next warsat corrections and pulled on the helmet.

“Klein, you there?” I asked. “Cube is on the way. Launch as soon as she’s with you. And don’t argue with me--”

“Leave your butt behind, got it,” Klein said.

“You’re not going to tell me I have to go with you?”

“Oh buck no, I was just about to leave without you anyway.”

I laughed, telling a fourth satellite to dump itself in a polar ice cap. “Thanks.”

“...Good luck,” Klein said.

I turned off the radio and spoke to the empty air. “I’ll need it.”

The station rumbled again, the floor jerking under me. The way it moved was a painful reminder that I was standing on the inside of what was essentially a big wheel spinning really quickly and starting to drift into the rough patches at the sides of the road. My limp right arm shot out and grabbed the console on reflex, steadying me.

“At least you’re starting to work again,” I mumbled. There were only a few warsats left. The station beeped an alarm. The capsule was detaching from the station. One of the monitors automatically switched over to a view of the departing pod.

I saluted it. Or I tried to. My right forehoof was still gripping the keyboard.

“Hey, knock it off,” I said. “Must be a cramp--”

The knife in my hoof slipped free from where it was stored between my bones, cutting through my suit and into the keys, destroying the controls.

“Buck!” I jumped in alarm. “I didn’t mean to do that!”

My forehoof twisted on its own like a snake and the knife came for my neck. I grabbed it just in time, falling onto my back and holding my own right forehoof in my left, barely keeping the tip of the monomolecular blade away from my jugular.

“This is new,” I grunted. My forehoof jerked and twisted, stabbing down suddenly. It barely missing my helmet. “Mom, you are such a bitch!”

I mean, who else could possibly be to blame? I adjusted my grip, getting to the base of the blade where it turned into composite bone, trying to find the seam. It was the tiniest little gap, machined beyond the precision of a mere pony, but it was still there. I pushed sideways there with all the strength in my left hoof, snapping the blade free at the magnetic seam. Before whatever was controlling me could snatch it back, I turned the knife around and stabbed it into the space just below my shoulder.

The pain was electric and terrifying. I threw up a little in the helmet. A tiny wiper automatically cleaned it up. I could have kissed whoever had designed that, after using some mouthwash.

I didn’t even have time to lie there in agony and recover before the station jerked again, the rotation stalling and gravity vanishing for a moment before returning weaker than before.

“That’s definitely a bad sign,” I groaned. I stood up and fell over immediately. There was no feeling at all in my right side except pain, and I couldn’t move my right forehoof at all. I’d severed something very important inside it in my effort to keep it from killing me. But maybe it had already done its job. The suit was all torn up from the knife.

I hopped over to the wall with the floor vibrating at a steadily increasing and unstable pitch under me, finding the duct tape I’d stashed in a velcro pocket and quickly wrapping it all around that foreleg, doing my best to make it airtight before binding it to my chest to keep it from flapping around.

“A plan would be really great right about now,” I mumbled to myself. I saw a wisp of fire outside the window.

And then everything went to Tartarus all at once.

The station slammed to a halt, braking against the atmosphere at the same time it was breaking against the atmosphere. Everything that had previously been pretending it was experiencing gravity gave up on the illusion. There was an almighty crack and a whomp of explosive decompression and I was in open space, tumbling end over end.

The helmet, which was surprisingly advanced, gave me a detailed list of everything going wrong with it with a warning tone that got my attention but didn’t make me panic more, not that I could panic any more than I already was. My heart would have been going at a million miles an hour if it wasn’t probably halfway between a knot of muscle and a turbine pump.

I was in the upper atmosphere, and I mean upper. It was so thin that it made real air look as thick as pea soup, but at the speed I was moving, that was enough to buffet me. I felt like I was skimming the surface of an invisible ocean.

Everything was starting to heat up. The air I was hitting was sandblasting me. The debris falling faster than me was below me, streaking by and burning across the sky. All it was gonna take was one bad moment and I’d be joining it in a fireball.

Instinct demanded I hide behind something. A wing-shaped piece of hull plating skipped next to me. I grabbed it with my good hoof before it could bounce away, barely keeping my grip when a wave of turbulence cracked against me.

Prayers, half-formed, spilled from my lips. I pulled myself onto the sheet of metal. It was barely larger than I was. We were already losing speed, and flickers of plasma flame puffed at the edges of the shield.

“This is such a terrible way to die,” I gasped, ducking down to avoid another steak of flame. As I did, the angle of the sheet shifted, changing the way the air hit it. A wash of flame surged around me, and I reversed the motion, the metal cutting into the air again instead of smashing through it.

It was almost like having a tiny amount of control.

Very carefully, I got all my hooves on the plate. Or at least three of them. I stood up on it, the buffeting from the atmosphere pushing it back into me.

“Okay,” I said. I braced myself, trying not to look at how much air I had left. “Let’s hang ten.”

Chapter 109: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

I poked at the geode and tried to relax. I didn’t have to try hard. I was lying on my belly on a plush towel on a sunny shore far from home while a personal nurse and attendant rubbed suntan lotion on my back. The hooves doing it were cold and robotic, sure, but they were so skilled that I could have easily been fooled into thinking it was a real pony doing it instead of a gleaming steel and glass replicant.

“You should make sure to finish your drink, ma’am,” it said. “It contains several supplementary vitamins and minerals to help with your radiation sickness.”

“Thanks,” I said. It was babying me, but it also wasn’t wrong. I took another sip. The drink came in a foil pouch with friendly branding on it and very clear instructions. It was medical but it was as if it had been designed to please foals. The straw it had come with was even a swirly crazy straw shaped like one of the many cartoon alligators around the resort.

“Is there anything else I can get you ma’am?” the replicant asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll be okay for a while.”

“Of course, ma’am,” the robot said. It bowed and backed away to a respectful distance before turning around to go off on some other task. I watched it leave and, I’ll be honest, a part of me wondered if it was really a robot. I’d seen plenty of automatons and none of them moved like that.

And no I don’t mean she was shaking her plastic flank seductively, I mean that robots always have this stop-and-start motion to them, like an engine. You’d know it if you saw it, the pure repetition of it. These machines had a more lifelike quality to them, a fluidity to their motions that lacked the jerky pops of pneumatic pistons or rotary spinning from gears.

“Maybe I’m overthinking it,” I sighed, turning back to the geode. It was the thing I’d pulled out of Commander Lime’s chest, a chunk of rock that had taken the place of his heart. The robots hadn’t allowed it into the resort unless I kept it inside a thick plastic bag. Apparently, it was more than a little radioactive, which I could believe. It had a blacklight, ultraviolet glow to it that seemed to come right out of the rock itself.

It definitely wasn’t natural, but who would spend time and effort reanimating some pony in the middle of nowhere? And why? All he’d done was send some soldiers to bother a couple of poor farmers for being part zebra.

I thought about it and drifted off to a nice nap. For once, I had no nightmares. No terror in my mind while I slept. I must have passed out for an hour just basking in the sun before I jerked awake, sure somepony had been calling my name.

“What’s going on?” I asked, instantly disoriented and alert.

Nopony answered. I looked around the sunlit beach with bleary eyes and saw nopony around me. Maybe I was just being dumb.

I stretched and got up. The nap had been refreshing and filled me with the energy I needed to… well, I didn’t really have anything to do. That was a problem. I’d spent what felt like years getting in mortal danger on a near-daily basis and now I was just sitting on a beach. Was this what retirement was really like? Was I supposed to take up fishing?

Were the fish even safe to eat? Much to consider.

What would be nice would be a little bit of a treat. I made my way over to a stand at the back of the beach where a row of trees provided some shade and the sand was covered over with concrete and outdoor rugs. I’d spotted what looked like some kind of shaved ice thing and I was very interested.

“Aw…” My interest twisted into disappointment. The stand was perfectly clean and maintained and ready to go but the robot behind the counter was broken. There were a few offline robots like this around the park, all of them slumped over after something important inside them had worn out. The other servitors weren’t programmed to do the missing jobs, so a few things had just been left to rot.

It was a pity. The machines weren’t even built to be used by ponies. I’d watched the robots at the dispensers and they just seemed to touch them and then whatever a pony asked for would appear. It was like magic. Or like some kinda data transfer through their hooves, but it spoiled the fun if you tried to figure it out.

“...you’re going to get in trouble!” somepony hissed. I looked around. Surprisingly, nopony was yelling at me this time. There were two ponies walking along one of the marked driftwood-planked paths on the beach. A pale pink mare with a shock of orange for her mane was glaring at a stallion, a brighter pink stallion with a mane as green as grass.

“I have a pass!” the stallion hissed back. “Besides, it’s worth it so we can learn the truth!”

“Your great-great-grandfather was paranoid and insane and it’s clear somepony inherited his worst traits!” the mare snapped back. Her expression softened after a moment when she saw she’d hurt him. “Please don’t do this. If we break the rules…”

“I know,” the stallion said quietly.

I sneezed, and both of them snapped to attention and looked at me where I was inadvertently hiding in the shadows of the treeline.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t spying. I was just, uh. I wanted a snowcone but the robot’s broken.”

The couple relaxed. “We haven’t had spare parts for them in ages,” the stallion said. “When they break too badly, they stay broken.”

“Chamomile,” I said, belatedly introducing myself and offering a hoof. “I’m sort of new here.”

“I’m Strawberry Daiquiri, this is my wife Hemingway Daiquiri.” We made the usual introductions, near silently saying hello to each other, just little polite sounds that weren’t exactly words but fit in the same space.

“You’ve got an outside perspective, maybe you can knock some sense into him,” the mare said. “Tell him it’s a bad idea to go down into those blasted utilidors chasing some old paranoid pony’s ravings!”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “Don’t do anything a crazy pony tells you to do, because it’s also crazy.”

The wife looked at Strawberry triumphantly. He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that! I have actual evidence! Proof that there’s a conspiracy right under our hooves! Tell her I have proof!”

“He says he has proof,” I relayed, sighing. “Maybe you could get one of the robots to pass messages between you?”

“No, no,” Strawberry Daiquiri shook his head quickly. “They’re in on it.”

“In on it, as if robots can be in on anything,” Hemingway groaned.

“I’m not saying they came up with the plan, what I mean is, they’re still following their orders from two hundred years ago. There’s a reason park security let everypony into the tunnels when the first ashfall happened, and now we’re threatened with having our season passes revoked if we go near the access doors!”

“Even if they’re keeping some secret, what does it matter?” I asked. “We’re talking about two centuries ago.”

“That’s what I thought too, until that attack on the farm,” Strawberry said. “There are secrets on this island. What if something terrible’s about to happen and we don’t even try to stop it? Look, it’s perfectly safe. My ancestor was a staff member, and I have his spare access card! The robots will let me through. I even tested it out.”

“You what?!” his wife gasped.

“I walked right up to the door and presented the ID card and they opened it for me.” He looked sheepish. “I didn’t go inside, but that’s because I wasn’t ready. It was dark. It could be dangerous. I’m not a young pony, if there’s a radgator or feral ghouls down there…”

He shook his head. Then he seemed to get an idea and looked up at me.

“Say--”

“I’m not going in there without seeing whatever proof you have that it’s dangerous,” I told him.

He held up a holotape. “Here you go, take a look!”

He gave it to me and waited, grinning.

“Um…” I hesitated.

“Can’t you play it?” he asked. “I assumed you’d have some sort of slot--”

Hemingway smacked the back of his head. “Don’t ask mares about their slots!”

“I’m not a robot,” I said flatly.

“There are holotape players in the guest rooms,” the exasperated mare said. “Take it and the security card. At least if somepony else is hanging onto this junk he won’t be tempted to go and do something stupid!”

“If you’re listening to this, it means I’m probably dead,” the voice said. The tone was exhausted and desperate. I could almost picture the pony, sitting in a room just like the one I was in, two hundred years ago with the world burning around him. “My name is Peach Daiquiri. I’m a junior park employee. That might not mean anything to you but it means I’m responsible for all the ponies here.

“It’s been three days since… something happened. I don’t know what. The new park administrator had everypony take shelter inside the utilidors, and now everything’s covered in this bucking ash.” He coughed. “I came up early and got the robots to start cleaning up the resort area. They can’t keep the whole island clean but if we can keep this place safe for long enough for help to get here, that’s good enough.”

I shook my head. “Help wasn’t coming,” I said quietly. The recording couldn’t hear me. I wish I could have gone back in time and told him how stupid he was going out in that fallout.

“We’re moving the guests back into the resort buildings now. It’s safe enough as long as they stay indoors, and the administrator put all the robots in Extra Hospitality mode, so they’ll give everypony season passes and free drinks to keep them happy. Probably a good idea. All of us could use a few drinks, not that I’m allowed to drink while I’m on duty.”

He sighed.

“Duty. That’s why I’m making this recording. Or confession. We’re not supposed to talk about it ever, but the military, they’ve got that facility in the utilidors that the new park owner ordered added when we were putting in the NPE. It’s monstrous, especially now. If I’ve got a responsibility to the guests, I’ve got a responsibility to go down there and make things right, too. My staff card should let me inside even with the lockdown. I think all the navy guys went back to base, but they never came back. Maybe they evacuated and left us here.”

“You’re about to do something stupid,” I sighed, recognizing the signs.

“I should be fine,” Daiquiri said. “I’m leaving this somewhere the cleaning robots won’t find, along with my security pass. It’s not photo ID, it’s just a chip. The robots should think anyone carrying the card is staff. If you find this and I’m not back, just remember I tried to do what was right. It might already be too late by now, but I have to try. To my wife, Pina, I love you, and take care of our daughter.”

The recording trailed off into silence for a few moments and then shut off. I sighed and sat on the bed.

“No wonder Strawberry Daiquiri was acting like that,” I said. “Hearing your ancestor say a bunch of ominous horseapples like ‘Might already be too late, it’s monstrous, got to make things right.’” I shook my head. “But he couldn’t just say what the buck is down there that’s so bad. Naturally.”

I had a bad feeling. It could be literally anything if it was a military project. A hidden megaspell? Some kind of unstable reactor? An army of evil robots that looked just like the regular park servitors but with spikes and a darker color scheme? Anything was possible, and that made my imagination run wild.

For one brief moment, I felt terror run down my spine at the intrusive thought that it could be another one of those floating pyramids. Just the thought that one of those might be somewhere underhoof was…

“Somepony has to go check it out,” I groaned. “And I’m the only one dumb enough.”

I was selling myself short. There were plenty of dumb ponies around. I was just the only pony who had any experience with actual danger. Sending one of them or even asking them to come with me was like throwing a foal into a monster’s den.

If I wanted something stupid to be done correctly, I had to do it stupidly myself.

I walked right past the door twice before I realized it was where I needed to go. It wasn’t hidden or anything, it was just so mundane that a pony wouldn’t know it was anything special unless they were looking for it specifically. Even the janitor’s closet stood out more than the out-of-the-way door with a tiny sign next to it that informed guests there was an emergency shelter inside.

Once I stepped past the door, it was like I walked into a different world. All the comfort and theming of the resort vanished. It wasn’t even painted in the same warm colors - everything was various shades of grey, and the happy pictures of palm trees and tropical birds were replaced with exposed pipes and ducts. An extra-wide stairwell led down. I took my time on the steps. The prosthetic was still acting up a little from the amount of ash that had gotten into the joints.

I got to the bottom without falling on my face and looked back up. I must have gone down at least a story and a half and ended up somewhere similar to a subway station. There was no train here, no tracks for it to run on, but there was a wide corridor that stretched in both directions, curving just enough to go out of sight. Lights flickered overhead, about half of the ancient fluorescent lights hanging on to life.

“Left or right?” I asked. I couldn’t see anything useful either way, so I picked right. The navy base was sort of in that direction, so if the military had something to do with whatever was going on, it would logically be in that direction.

I trotted along the dim path and stopped, spotting something. Hoofprints in the dust.

“Somepony’s been through here,” I mumbled to nopony. I had no idea what that meant. Were these new? If the tunnels were really well-sealed maybe they could have lasted a century or two. Or they could have been from last week.

At least it was something to follow. I trailed the trail. It was hard to guess at distances down here, but unlike the door upstairs I didn’t walk past the next one without noticing. I couldn’t have if I wanted. It was painted red in defiance of the greys everywhere else, with signs warning about dire consequences for anypony who might enter.

“Security area, no entry allowed,” I read. “Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and deadly force may be used.”

Very friendly and subtle.

I pushed the door open and looked inside. A chain-link fence divided the room in half, not quite going up to the ceiling. A desk sat next to it with paperwork scattered across it, and then something exciting caught my attention. A locker, a military footlocker with a padlock still attached and everything!

“Oh ho ho, maybe I’ll get a machine gun ~” I was practically giggling to myself. All I had to do was cut the lock off and… I raised my right hoof. The sprints and pistons whined softly. There wasn’t even a suggestion of a knife.

Right. That was gone.

It wasn’t a problem, though! I was inventive and creative. I rolled the chair out from behind the desk, went over to the locker, and lifted the seat up, bringing it down on the lock over and over again until the chair was a twisted wreck and my muscles ached and the footlocker had a small dent and was otherwise completely unharmed.

“They don’t build them like they used to,” I panted. I sat down in front of the padlock and glared at it. I was going to have to do this the hard way.

Rummaging around the desk, I found a few pens and some bobby pins. It wasn’t much in the way of tools, but it’d have to do if I wanted whatever prize was waiting for me. I carefully bent one of the bobby pins and tried to keep my grip on it and the ink chamber of a broken ballpoint pen while at the same time re-inventing lockpicking.

A minute later I was on my last bobby pin and swearing luridly. It snapped like it was made of brittle dry straw and I kicked the footlocker in frustration.

“Why won’t you open?!” I yelled.

I wanted to strangle the stupid lock. I grabbed the padlock and shook it in frustration. Then things got really weird. The thaumoframe scales on my foreleg started glowing, and the glow enveloped the lock like a unicorn holding something in her aura. For a moment I could feel every part of the mechanism from the inside out. I could sense how it fit together as if it was no stranger or more complicated than an extension of my body.

The lock popped open, and the aura snapped off. Probably from my own surprise.

“Woah, that was weird,” I mumbled, staring at my now not-glowing hoof. “I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a really bad sign.”

Then again, either way, I was about to get a new gun and that would make me feel better. I pushed the worries out of the way and opened the treasure chest because at that moment it felt like I was opening lost and buried treasure.

My disappointment was immense when I saw that it was a toolbox.

“What the heck is this?” I asked, lifting up the power tool inside. It could almost pass for a gun at first glance, but it was obviously some kind of power tool. It looked almost brand-new, gleaming with the high-visibility yellow-orange of a construction site. The business end was a big nozzle with a coil inside it, fed from a tank next to it. A few more tanks were in the box along with a pamphlet.

I put the tool down and looked at what proved to be a thin manual, showing cartoon ponies using the tool to fire balls of expanding foam and glue at leaky pipes and cracked walls as a temporary repair tool.

“The Geliform Leak Universal Utility Gun,” I read. “Or GLUU Gun, fires fire-retardant, waterproof nodules that expand on contact with any solid object. The nodules expand and harden within seconds and are suitable for patching leaking pipes and securing small loads. Aim away from face. Always use eye protection.”

I sighed and walked away from it. Totally useless.

The chain link fence taunted me. If I could fly I could have gone right over it. If I had my knife I could cut through it. If I didn’t feel awful I could have run head-first at it and used the power of total disregard for my own safety to smash through.

Maybe I’d dismissed those tools too quickly. I pushed the GLUU Gun out of the way and found a set of bolt cutters. They were shockingly light. They had to be made out of some advanced space metal, or maybe cheap aluminum. Either way, they’d probably be able to nibble on the fence enough for me to make a hole.

I walked over, touched the bolt cutters to the fence, and the electrical shock threw me across the room.

Things spun around me for a few minutes while my soul stuffed itself back into my body.

“That’s one bucking serious electric fence,” I groaned. “Why aren’t there any signs warning ponies about it?”

I sat up and glared at the fence and for the first time noticed the signs on it. In my defense they weren’t written out, they were those weird symbolic signs that are halfway abstract and only make sense if you’ve seen them before or can interpret what a pony and several lightning bolts are supposed to mean.

That pretty much meant I wasn’t going to be going through it. I was too vulnerable to electric shock. Even more so than the average pony. I was going to have to be clever. I hated having to be clever.

I looked at the gun that shot globs of non-conductive glue.

“First try!” I called out, as I landed on the far side of the fence. I’d used big globs of glue on the wall to make a kind of stairway up and over the barrier. It was easy once a figured out that the expanding glue-foam would support my weight. I definitely didn’t still have sticky hooves from my first thought of covering my hooves in glue. That attempt didn’t count because it had been a bad idea.

I followed the corridor around what had to be a deliberately blind corner and almost ran right into a jet of fire. A gas line on the wall was cracked, and a gout of nearly invisible flame crossed the corridor, blackening the concrete with heat. I hadn’t even felt it until I was up close, and the overpowered HVAC system was maintaining the room at a comfortable level despite everything.

I scrambled back. My life flashed before my eyes along with the frankly shocking amount of burns I’d suffered. I kept going back until my tail hit the wall, trying to catch my breath the whole time. My heart hurt. Blood thundered in my veins.

The GLUU Gun went off with a soft puffy splat. It hit next to the pipe, expanding into a ball a little bigger than my head and harder than concrete. I hadn’t expected it, and the shock brought me out of my panic attack.

I adjusted my aim. The next glueball hit the pipe and sealed it. The jet of fire stopped instantly. Whatever the glue was made out of, it was tough stuff. It didn’t melt or explode or react with whatever gas had fed the fire.

My steps were careful as I edged around it just waiting for it to explosively fail, but it didn’t. I got past the blackened patch of concrete and found myself looking at a body. It was just scorched bones now and the remnants of an aloha shirt with a cartoon alligator smiling up at me through the cinders.

I knelt down next to it and spotted something on the body. An employee ID tag, just like the one I’d used to get down here.

“I guess this is where you disappeared off to, Peach Daiquiri,” I sighed. “Maybe it’ll give you some peace to know that your descendants didn’t forget about you.”

I stuffed the tag in a pocket so I’d have proof I found him. Now it was time to find whatever was so important he’d come down here and risk his life to fix. Hopefully it wasn’t just that pipe.

The corridor ended at an ordinary-looking office door marked ‘holding area’. It wasn’t even locked. I pushed it open and emerged into what had to have been at some point a warehouse. The door put me on the upper catwalk, with sodium lamps buzzing overhead and a cheerful song faintly playing over ancient speakers.

Below me was a maze of high prefabricated walls, an office layout with no ceiling above it. I could look right down into the rooms. I didn’t like what I saw.

The floor and walls of every one of the rooms was covered in filth. The kind of filth you get when somepony gets locked in and forgotten and left to die. I could see the stripes, through the rot and dirt. Being buried like this had preserved them like jerky, just dry mummies lying under distant light.

“They built a prison camp,” I realized. “Right under a resort. No wonder they had a naval base here!”

In a way it made sense. The park had infrastructure, and facilities, and I’m sure the naval personnel fought to get the assignment. I would have. Maybe the temptation would be so great that ponies would be willing to overlook almost anything as long as they could stay.

Motion caught my eye. Just a little, but it stood out in the absolute stillness of the room.

One of the zebras in the open-topped cells was moving. Rocking back and forth on the ground in a fetal position.

“No way,” I whispered. I considered my options, then vaulted over the safety railing on the catwalk. Even with only one wing, a two-story drop wasn’t a big deal for a pegasus. The trick was to spin and bleed off the momentum that way. I landed next to the cell instead of directly inside it. Believe it or not, I did have the foresight to avoid trapping myself.

Making a pathway with glue wouldn’t have been difficult, but using the door was even easier. I worried I might have to pick a lock or find a military ID badge somewhere, but it was even simpler than that. They were steel security doors, and the lock was just a big red lever with clearly marked ‘locked’ and ‘open’ positions. A prison that wouldn’t hold a unicorn or pegasus for five minutes and that an earth pony could break down with some effort, but perfect for zebras.

The lever was stiff and heavy from disuse, whatever grease was in the gears having long denatured into tar and wax. I put my weight into it and it freed up, the mechanism turning with a lot of resistance and unlocking the door.

I grunted and pulled it open and tried not to look at the marks on the other side. Prints from battering hooves that had turned bloody before stopping entirely.

“Hey,” I said quietly. “I’m not here to hurt you.” I approached the zebra quietly. They were humming to themselves. I wouldn’t say they were alive. That overpowered HVAC unit that had kept the corridor from turning boiling hot even with a jet of flame in it had also drawn in a lot of air from outside, and it must not have been built with radiation-scrubbing in mind.

She, or he, it was impossible to tell with the condition they were in, didn’t acknowledge me.

Slowly, I stepped up to them, circling around so I was in their line of sight. I didn’t want to surprise them if I could help it. I’d seen too many feral ghouls not to be wary, plus I was at least vaguely sure that being stuck in one room for two hundred years with the lights on constantly and the same music on a loop would drive even a normal pony completely insane.

I got within face-biting range without incident and put a hoof on hers.

She finally stopped rocking and looked up at me.

“I’m here to help,” I whispered.

Her eyes had long since turned to dark pits in her skull housing tiny lights. She met my gaze, and I sensed something there. Something aware and sane.

“Kill me,” she groaned, her tongue thick and voice as dry as a desert. “Please.”

There’s the right thing to do and the right thing to do. She blinked when she looked up at the sunlight after I led her out of the tunnels. The ocean breeze hit us, and she flinched at the sensation. She made a sound, and it took me a second to realize she was crying, with a voice as rough as a fault line and eyes that cried their last tears centuries ago.

“Thank you,” she mouthed silently.

I nodded and just let her take it in for a moment. The robots tending to the planters to either side of the door and definitely not guarding anything ignored us, thanks to the staff ID tokens we both had. Peach Daiquiri's had come in handy, and was hanging from a string around the zebra ghoul’s neck.

“You know, I don’t think I got your name,” I said. “I’m Chamomile.”

“My name is…” the zebra hesitated. “It’s been so long I can’t…” she looked down, clearly trying to focus. “...Embe. It was Embe.”

“Nice to meet you, Embe,” I said. I offered her a hoof to shake. She pulled me into a hug, still making choked, dry crying sounds. I realized this was probably the first physical contact she’d had with anypony in a very, very long time.

I hugged her back.

After a minute I coughed. “Are you biting me?” I asked.

“Sorry,” Embe mumbled. “There’s this urge and…”

“It’s okay, I don’t think you broke the skin,” I said. “No harm done.” I let go of her. She hadn’t done more than nibble a little bit. “I get weird urges too.”

Embe stood up and walked slowly down the path. I followed her. “I can almost remember this. It’s been so long. This creature is from my dreams. Or something like him. An empty place where a memory would fit.”

She put a hoof on a wooden carving of the resort’s mascot alligator.

“I knew somepony else who was missing her memories,” I said. “She spent a lot of time chasing after them.”

“What happened to her?” Embe asked.

“She regretted it,” I admitted. “She gave up on making new happy memories.”

Embe made a sound in the back of her throat. “I think… I want to see new things. New to me. Anything besides that room. And that song.” She shivered.

“We can manage that,” I promised. “Come on, I’ll show you around and buy you a drink.”

Chapter 110: Yo, Ho!

It was the best piña colada I’d ever had. It was also one of the first ones I’d ever had. Creamy, cold, pineappley. It was the perfect drink for relaxing by the side of the resort's giant inground pool. Ponies went down the volcano-shaped waterslide on the other side of the pool, splashing and laughing in the sunlight.

“Definitely not the worst place to be stuck,” I sighed. I adjusted my sunglasses and took another sip of my drink.

“I don’t belong here,” Embe mumbled. She was a little like a scared animal, staying within hoof’s reach of me and cowering away from other ponies.

“Don’t say that,” I assured her, reaching over to squeeze her hoof. “Everypony here is just curious and wants to get to know you.”

She looked at me with her empty eye sockets. “That sounds like something you tell a foal when they’re having problems at school.”

“My mom used to say it all the time,” I admitted. “I changed schools when I was pretty young because she wanted to spend time with her family. The other foals didn’t get along with me.”

“Did they bully you?” Embe asked.

“Once,” I said. “But you know what? After I put my hoof down and told them firmly to stop and beat one of them unconscious, they stopped making fun of me.”

Embe coughed, shocked. “You beat one of them unconscious?!’

“Uh. I mean, um. I told a teacher?”

She gave me a look.

“I was not well-behaved as a foal,” I mumbled.

Embe shook her head and snorted with something like laughter. My ears turned red.

“Looks like you’re enjoying the margarita machine!” Fog Cutter waved to me as he walked up to the Tiki Bar, waving the server robot down and ordering a drink. “We only got the thing working again thanks to you. Once you took her out of those cells, the robots lowered the security, so we’ve been able to go down there and find some spare parts.”

“Definitely nice to have cold drinks,” I agreed, saluting him with my pina colada. “What can I do for you?”

“You’ve already done a lot,” Fog Cutter assured me. “That’s probably why the Kahuna wants to talk to you.”

“You mean I’m finally going to get a chance to talk to the pony in charge of this place?” I snorted. “How generous of her to see me when I’ve been here for a month.”

“She’s not a bad sort.” Fog Cutter took a sip of his pale green drink. “It’s her job to keep everypony comfortable and happy, and as far as I’m concerned she’s doing a bang-up job. You have to admit, we’ve got it easy here.”

“I guess you’ve got a point. I’ll talk to here.”

“No rush,” Fog Cutter said. “We run on island time around here. If you run off she’ll be upset that she made a hassle for you. Finish your drink and we’ll head over in a while.”

I nodded. I could get used to island time.

Fog Cutter led me to the Kahuna’s lair, or maybe more accurately, the luxury suites of one of the resort’s hotel buildings. Instead of taking me up to one of the rooms, Fog Cutter led me into one of the defunct restaurants on the hotel’s bottom level. What had once been a Princess Burger was now something like a combination of office space and throne room.

The throne in question was behind a desk, flanked by potted plants, and made mostly out of wicker and palm fronds.

The pony sitting on it looked up from what she was doing and smiled, getting off the throne and walking around the desk. She was a large, tall pony, the same height I was and with a few extra pounds. Well, probably not literally. I probably still weighed more than her but it was in the form of very slimming heavy metals and ceramic composites. Great for the figure.

“This must be our new local hero!” she said, her voice booming. She pulled me into a quick hug, kissing my cheek. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to make time to see you before.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve been keeping busy too.”

She laughed and gave me a hearty pat on the shoulder. “So I’ve heard! Fighting off ghoulies and ghosties and saving somepony who’d suffered a terrible fate. That second thing really got my attention. Shows you’re brave, and you’ll do the right thing like saving… what was her name? I have it written down…”

She looked back at her desk. I saved her the trouble of looking for it. “Embe,” I supplied. She’d gone back to her room, across the hall from mine. She was enjoying the many holotapes the resort had to offer.

“Right,” the Kahuna nodded. “That was it. Thank you.”

“So I’m curious, what do you do, when you’re in charge of a paradise where robots do all the work?” I asked.

“Oh, they don’t nearly do all the work,” the Kahuna corrected. “Our supply of food, for example. It might look like the robots make it out of thin air, but it actually comes out of protein resequencers, and they need to be fed. That’s what the farms are for. With the right combination of crops fed into the resequencer plant, we can keep producing almost everything on the old menu. Of course, that means we need to give the farmers something in return, especially with all the hard work they do, so I have to arrange payment. And that’s just one thing. We also need to trade with the Imagineer Tribe, keep ourselves safe from raiders, decide what to do with strays like you, and manage supplies of medicine, clothing, and parts. Truth be told, most of it is me sitting here doing math all day and figuring out how to balance the books.”

“You know, that really does sound like leadership,” I admitted. “That’s how it is back home. For good leaders, I mean. It’s about maximizing the use of the resources we have.”

“I’m glad you understand,” the Kahuna said. She stepped back behind her desk and sat down. “It’s harder than you think.”

I could feel how exhausted she was. Ever since I’d woken up, whatever the thaumoframe was doing that was giving me that sixth sense had been on overdrive. I could practically put myself in her hooves.

“You haven’t been sleeping well lately,” I said.

She smiled. “Is it that obvious? The good thing is, the coffee here is excellent. I’ve been having some strange dreams. It’s something going around, nothing to worry about.”

I nodded. I could tell she wasn’t hiding anything there.

“What I’m trying to get around to saying…” she sighed. “Is I need your help. I think somepony is going to try and kill me.”

“I see why you’re having problems sleeping.”

She laughed again. “You’re not entirely wrong.”

“So why do you think somepony is after you? Death threats? A bullet through the window?”

“Nothing that direct. You’re new here, so I don’t expect you to know our history. We need to go back about twenty years. I was a lot younger and very overwhelmed by the job. There was a stray that came here by way of a shipwreck. He was called Crimson Macaw. We welcomed him because that’s what we do. We try and assume the best of everypony. He caused trouble, and eventually, he got drunk on moonshine he bought from one of the farmers and broke two of the caretakers.”

“That’s not good. They run everything around here.”

“Yes, and it was the final straw. I had him exiled from the resort. He lived on a small farm until the next ashfall. When the ghouls reanimated, he was denied entry back behind our walls. He died. The farm is still out there, but no one has tried reclaiming the land.”

“The ruined farm I saw,” I mumbled.

“Yes,” the Kahuna nodded. “I didn’t intend for it to be a death sentence. I shouldn’t have left him to die. I was young. Stupid. Angry at him for making my job harder.”

“But he’s definitely dead, right?” I asked. “I mean like, actually dead, not undead.”

“He was cremated and his ashes interred in Tomb Town. It’s outside the resort, on the other side from the farms. The ground is too swampy for graves, so we build mausoleums. The thing is, somepony has started leaving grave offerings for him.”

“For the pony that you left to die.”

“For the first time in twenty years,” she confirmed. “You can see why I’m worried.”

“Could be a ghost,” I said.

“Ghosts don’t leave hoofprints in the utilidor tunnels. Then there’s the attack from the old fort. Part of me thinks it’s all connected.”

“Why do you want me to look into this?” I asked. “The ponies here must know more than I do about whatever suspects you could name.”

“That’s true, but you’re also new here. Whoever’s behind this won’t know to be careful around you. You’re the perfect pony to investigate, especially since you’re smart and brave enough to take action on your own.”

I sighed. “You’re buttering me up, but it’s working. Any idea where I should start?”

“Try and find out who’s leaving grave offerings. That’s where I’d start.”

Tomb Town was an apt name for it. It was built out of sight of town, in what had been a swampy jungle. The island’s sandy soil and low elevation meant that the water table was right near the surface. A pirate couldn’t even bury treasure here without the chest popping up like a cork the next time it rained. So they’d built mausoleums, like the said. They built a neighborhood of little one-room stone buildings, maybe a hundred of them, complete with streets and alleyways.

A few old construction robots spray-painted a respectful black were kept under tarps. They must have been the architects. I took a look at them when I saw the pony-like shapes. They had the same designer as the caretakers in the resort, but with a heavier build and obvious tools for shaping stone and metal.

I left them alone and went looking for the tomb. The pony had died twenty years ago, and didn’t have family, so I gravitated towards the newer buildings. It took me a little while to find it, halfway down an alleyway and tiny, like a foal’s playhouse. I guess you didn’t need much room to hold ashes and a few bones. It was plain, but respectful, with the name Macaw chiseled into the polished stone.

Just like I’d been told, someone had left an offering. Flowers tied in a bouquet with a bright red ribbon. They were wilting a little, maybe two or three days old. I looked around. This was really out of the way. Whoever was leaving them might have been doing it for a lot longer than the Kahuna knew. It would be hard to spot the flowers unless you came here on purpose.

Did that make it less likely to be some kind of oblique death threat? If I wanted to tell somepony I was going to kill them, I’d do it practically, screaming and running at them with a knife. That way they wouldn’t have a chance to do something like hire a wildcard madpony who fell down from space.

I heard the clip-clop of hoofsteps on a stone path. I looked around for a hiding place, then jumped, forgetting I was missing several significant body parts, and only barely managed to catch the edge of a roof, pulling myself onto the sloped stone slab on top of the mausoleum across the way. I scrambled up onto it, cursing and trying to be silent.

I stayed low, trying to let the edge of the building hide me. The hoofsteps got closer, turning the corner. I waited and listened as they approached Macaw’s final resting place and stopped. I peeked over the edge. There was a young pony with a bundle of flowers. She replaced the wilted bouquet and whispered something I couldn’t make out.

“Gotcha,” I mumbled.

She stopped what she was doing and looked around. “Who’s there?!” she demanded. I hopped down when her back was turned, appearing behind her. At least, that’s what I intended to do. I landed wrong and slammed face, first into the ground.

“Ow.”

“Oh!” The young mare grabbed my hoof and helped me up. “Are you alright? You slipped and fell!”

“I think so,” I said, working my jaw and feeling for cracked teeth. “Sorry about that. I’m having some trouble getting around.” I spread what was left of my wingspan to demonstrate.

“You must be that new pony in town,” she said. She was just barely old enough to not be called a filly. “Chamomile, right?”

“I didn’t think I was that famous,” I said.

“I heard you went out to help ponies on one of the farms when they were in trouble,” she said. “That’s very brave of you. The ponies at the resort usually don’t care enough.”

I nodded to the grave. “Did you know them?”

She sighed. “I like to talk walks through here. The raiders don’t bother this place because they’re superstitious. They’re kind of foalish about it. They’ll go on about all the ponies they’ve killed but they won’t go near a graveyard.”

“Maybe they’re worried somepony will remember them,” I joked.

The young mare tittered. “Perhaps so. A few weeks ago I found this little tomb. I think it’s the only one ponies never leave offerings at, so I decided to do it. Everypony deserves to be remembered.”

“That’s nice of you,” I said. The lie hung in the air between us. I could smell it on her. She was hiding something.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’ll leave you alone so you can get back to your walk,” I said. I took a few steps. “Oh, I didn’t get your name.”

“Bird of Paradise,” she said. “It’s a beautiful flower. I grow some in my garden.” She turned so I could see her cutie mark.

I smiled. “Flower buddies!” I showed her my mark. “Have a great day, Birdy.”

“You too,” she said.

She didn’t seem like an assassin. So what was she lying about?

“Bird of Paradise,” the Kahuna mumbled, thinking. “She’s too young to even remember Macaw. She always seemed like a decent pony. She and her mother live in one of the bungalows on the west side of the resort. She sells fresh flowers. The caretakers don’t like us taking them from the planned flower beds, but she built the one around her bungalow herself and they ignore it.”

“They let ponies build their own little farms inside the walls?” I asked.

“Not usually,” the Kahuna said. “It’s a blind spot. There was only one caretaker that did groundskeeping in that area, and it’s one of the ones Macaw destroyed. It made it a hassle to keep the bungalows looking neat, since anypony that wants to live in them has to clean ash away themselves a few times a year.”

“But you do get privacy,” I mumbled.

“I can’t officially send anypony out to look around on such thin evidence,” the Kahuna said. She held up a hoof to stop me, not that I was even getting started. I already knew what she meant and where this was going. “But if somepony looked around and brought me back some evidence of wrongdoing, they’d be pardoned for a little breaking and entering.”

“And what if there is no evidence?” I asked.

“Then I’d be careful not to get found out,” she said plainly. “I don’t like violating anypony’s trust.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So which bungalow do I stay away from so I’m not violating anypony’s trust?”

“I wouldn’t go to number 49, the one with a flower bed around the back, near the giant crystal.”

“There’s a giant crystal?”

The Kahuna shrugged. “It was part of this big park overhaul the owners were doing towards the end. They flew in these huge crystals from the Empire and put them around the island. I don’t think any of it still works. I’ll try to find you a brochure later.”

The bungalows were a little bit away from the main hotel buildings of the resort, most of them with a clear path right down to the beach. An old rope fence surrounded the area, discouraging wandering ponies. I got the impression that back when the park was open, these were where ponies with real money stayed.

Each one was a small house, beautifully decorated and designed to evoke… something. Not any real place or time, but the kind of generic island feeling that a pony might get when they closed their eyes and thought about an island vacation. It was the way tropical punch didn’t really taste like any particular fruit.

“Number 49,” I repeated to myself, walking down the row of small homes. I spotted the crystal first. It looked like a quartz prism with a slightly green hue. It was definitely magical. Even from a hundred paces away, I could feel it radiating against the thaumoframe embedded in my body. It wasn’t dangerous, just constant pressure, like standing close enough to an oven to feel some of the heat and the direction it was coming from.

When I got to number 49, it stood out. The garden around it made the other bungalows look bare with only beach grass and palm trees around them. There were a huge variety of flowers in the beds, including birds of paradise, hibiscus, and mountain flowers. Then I spotted something else among them. Nightshade. Foxglove. Deathbell. They looked as harmless as any other flower. They also made deadly poisons.

I stepped back and frowned. It didn’t mean it was sinister. She might not know. She might also know perfectly well and just liked how they looked.

I didn’t like how some of the plants looked recently harvested.

“Not a great start,” I mumbled. I hated not knowing what I was doing. What if she was an innocent pony? I’d been caught up in enough weird coincidences that I could easily see it happening to somepony else. The Kahuna didn’t even have hard proof her life was in danger, just a gut feeling.

I couldn’t look inside. All the windows were covered up. I had to admit that I was starting to feel anxious. I wasn’t supposed to be here and things felt weirdly tilted from that magical field coming off the crystal.

The only thing to do was shake it off and get the job done. I found a back door to the bungalow. It was locked the same way all the guest rooms were locked, with a little panel that read the signal from the fancy bracelets we all wore to mark us as season pass holders. The Kahuna had mentioned something off-the-cuff to me as I was leaving. Just a little detail. I sat down in front of the panel and carefully popped the front off along a hidden seam. Inside was a keypad. It was designed for emergency entry.

And because it was for emergencies, the code wasn’t complicated. They didn’t want staff getting panicked and forgetting the combination if there was something really wrong, after all, and guests weren’t supposed to know the panels even existed. I tapped the 1 key four times and a little light blinked from red to green.

I tried to open the door silently, which naturally made the thing creak loudly. I stepped inside and looked around. It looked like somepony’s kitchen. I wasn’t sure why anypony needed a kitchen when there were robots that did all the cooking a short walk away.

Something was bubbling on the stove. My keen investigative instincts demanded I go over and look. Inside, at a low simmer, a bunch of purple flower petals danced in dark liquid that smelled exactly the way you expect a cartoon poison to smell. I gagged and put the top back on the pot a little too quickly, making a soft clang.

“Is someone there?” somepony called out from the other room.

Why was I so bad at sneaking around? Is it because I was too big and clumsy? Yes. That was the main reason. The kitchen didn’t offer many places to hide. I could sense somepony coming. I ran for the dining table, as quietly as possible, and scooted under it, hoping the long tablecloth would be enough to hide me from sight.

“Hello? Who’s there?” the pony called out again as they walked into the kitchen cautiously. They stepped over to the back door and closed it. I could see from the color of their hooves that it wasn’t Bird of Paradise. It had to be her mother.

She stood there for a moment, and I could imagine her looking around the kitchen, trying to spot anything out of place.

“Mind’s playing tricks on me,” she muttered, starting back in the other direction. I was holding my breath. I waited for the sound of her hoofsteps to vanish and sighed in relief.

A knife slammed through the table and came close enough to my head to cut the side of my face.

“Ha! Found you!” she yelled in triumph. The knife caught in the wood, giving me time to scramble out into the open with a very cool roll to the side. The mare got the knife free and laughed when she saw the cut on my face. “It’s already too late. The poison on my blade will paralyze you, and then I can take my time finding out how much you know!”

“Do you try and kill everypony you meet, or am I just special?” I asked.

“It’s self-defense,” she said coyly. “You broke into my house, didn’t you?”

“You know what, fair enough,” I said. I reached back onto the stove and grabbed the simmering pot, splashing the contents in a wide arc. She raised her hoof to cover her face, and the boiling poison hit her leg and side. She shrieked in pain and collapsed, her skin turning red under her thinning coat. After a few more seconds, she went still.

I got closer and poked her. She was still breathing, but seemed otherwise totally paralyzed. Meanwhile, I felt a faint numbness in my face, but that was it.

“Okay, I’m still immune to poison,” I said. “Good to know. You stay here while I have a look around. Sorry about all this.”

I brushed myself off, looked for something to tie up the mare with, then took a look around the place while she was napping. Since she’d come at me with a poison knife I was feeling pretty certain there’d be something to find. I put myself in her hooves, and her daughter’s hooves. If this was really about Macaw, it was a grudge that had lasted decades just simmering below the surface.

If I was holding a grudge like that, where would I hide the evidence? Maybe there was some hidden panel or secret compartment or--

No, wait. She’d been making poison in her kitchen. She’d come at me with a knife. This wasn’t a mare who hid things. I went for the first place I’d put something important if I was her and opened up her jewelry box. Inside was a worn piece of paper, folded and refolded many times over the years. The paper was yellowed, the edges ragged.

“My dearest Gleamblossom,

I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t bear to wait until the next time you were recovered enough to visit, so I begged one of the farmers to bring this into town and deliver it. Of everything else the Kahuna did, this is the cruelest.

I don’t think anypony else knows she’s ours. It’s better to keep it that way until I can clear my name and get back into the resort. What I did was hardly a crime. I broke a machine. A machine! And they exiled me. I’ll quit drinking like I promised, find a way to make it right, and I’ll be by your side.

There’s ashfall coming soon. I don’t know when. I haven’t been out here long enough to predict it. She’ll have to let me in until it passes, and then I’ll be able to meet our little Bird of Paradise myself. The other farmers told me to board up my windows and door, but what’s the point? I don’t have anything of worth and this farm can rot for all I care.

I’ll be with you soon. I promise

Macaw”

“She’s his daughter,” I whispered. “Shoot. I should have seen that coming.” I tucked the letter away to show the Kahuna later. I had a suspect, a motive, and a crazy mare with a knife. The only thing I didn’t have was their plan.

I started pacing and thinking out loud.

“Bird of Paradise isn’t here, but somepony snuck into the tunnels. The robots stop anypony who tries to go through unless they have a security pass… unless she used another tunnel entrance outside the resort. Those things go everywhere under the island.”

I stopped and looked down at Gleamblossom. She could move her eyes but not much else.

“Look, I’m sorry about the burns. And about breaking in. I’m willing to call it even for the knife thing if you help me out here. What’s your daughter planning?”

She looked up at me silently, because she was paralyzed.

“Yeah I guess you aren’t up for talking,” I sighed. “Dang. You know I don’t want to hurt anypony, right? I’m just trying to save lives.” I sat down in front of her. “But why would she use the tunnel if she wasn’t sneaking out?”

It hit me like a brick to the back of the head.

“To sneak somepony else in,” I realized. “She knew the raiders were superstitious. She’s talked to them!”

I looked down at Gleamblossom.

“Uh… don’t go anywhere.”

I bolted out the door and ran for the utilidor entrance.

I got there just in time.

No, that’s a lie. I got there and worried and waited and sat there for an hour trying to decide if I was wrong and something else was happening or if I needed to go and get more ponies, or do something clever, or… What I’m getting at is that I had too much time to think and no idea when it would be interrupted. I half-expected ponies to sneak up silently in the shadows and attack before I was ready.

If it sounds like I was unusually jumpy, I was. The big crystal near Gleamblossom’s bungalow had given me a headache and put me on edge like I’d had way too many cups of coffee. It even, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, made my scales itch. That’s not a sentence many ponies can really sympathize with, but it is not a great sensation.

I sat there with the GLUU Gun and waited, and waited, and occasionally gnawed at my own hoof like an animal trying to make it stop itching. And then I heard it.

Any worries I had about the raiders being quiet and sneaky got thrown right out the window because they were literally singing a song while they marched.

“Hold on, hold on!” one of them yelled, stopping the singing. “What was the last part of that line?”

“We’re really bad eggs,” supplied a second voice.

“That seems unfair. I’m not a bad pony.”

“What about the maraudin’ and ravagin’ and arson?”

“I was forced into it as a matter of circumstance!”

“You’re all idiots,” said a voice I recognized. Bird of Paradise. “Cute idiots, though. Do this job for me and you’ll get to live like kings. Just lie in the sun and get all the rum and food you want.”

They came around the bend. There were more of them than I expected, eight of them not counting the young mare who was, now, decked out in intimidating-looking black barding. The raiders had a variety of weapons, most of them with cobbled-together guns, but one had a nasty-looking harpoon.

“Heya,” I said.

They looked at me, saw I was holding what looked like a weapon, and slowed down cautiously.

“You’re that new girl,” Bird of Paradise said. “Look, you don’t have ties to these ponies. Walk away and you can come back when it’s all over. No strings attached.”

“You know, that’s actually a reasonable offer,” I admitted. “And if you weren’t about to go murder a bunch of ponies and burn the place to the ground-- don’t try and correct me, I heard those lyrics! If you weren’t a bunch of ne’er-do-well nags and bad eggs, I still wouldn’t say yes, but buck, you’re all wearing scrap armor and you have skulls painted on your faces!”

“Is the skull too much?” one of the raiders asked in a low, sad tone.

“It looks great, don’t let her bully you,” Bird of Paradise assured him. “Anyway, somepony shoot her. We’ve got things to do.”

Oh right. They had guns. I raised my hoof defensively, a shot rang out and… it bounced. Not off me, but off of a shimmering hexagon floating next to my hoof like a transparent shield. I instantly recognized it from the lecture I’d heard in a memory orb on making magical shields.

“Did I do that?” I asked. The glow coming from between my thaumoframe scales sure made it seem that way. “Neat!”

I had the initiative while they tried to process what they’d just seen. I fired two globs of glue, hitting one of the raiders in the face and another one in the chest. They both fell over and stayed where they fell, stuck to the ground by the hardening epoxy.

“That worked better than I expected,” I said. Two more shots and I glued a stallion’s front hooves to the ground. Three more ran at me, the one with the harpoon leading the charge. The last two fired, but didn’t hit anything with their friends in the way.

I held the shield up to block the harpoon, feeling smug right until the magic flickered and failed. The harpoon hit my hoof, glanced off the metal scales, and bit into my shoulder, opening a long cut. Why didn’t anything ever work when I needed it? I barely felt it but it was the principle of the thing. It was considered rude in my culture to stab somepony.

I slammed my forehead into the face of the pony next to me. He recoiled, his snout shattered. It only took a second to dispatch the next pony. I flicked my right hoof and… nothing happened because I didn’t have any kind of hidden blade in it. I ended up just lightly pressing my hoof against his chest.

He was smarter and faster than most of the other raiders I’d met. He grabbed the prosthetic and twisted, breaking one of the straps. I stumbled forward into him and the harpoon pony got his chance to poke me in the side. He didn’t get far and just gave me the tip.

“You little bucking--” I smacked the pony that had grabbed the prosthetic with my wing, hard enough to knock him back a step. That got me away from the harpoon before he could come at me again. The ponies with guns in back got the smart idea to try shooting again, spraying all three of us with automatic fire.

I guess they didn’t like their friend that much.

The bullets didn’t penetrate far into me, but they ripped the two raiders apart. I felt like bees had stung me in a ragged line across my chest and side, the low-caliber rounds leaving stinging, bleeding welts

The last two raiders looked at Bird of Paradise, each other, nodded in silent agreement, and turned and ran, leaving her alone.

“Cowards!” Bird yelled at them. “She’s just one mare! She doesn’t even have a real gun! She’s wounded!”

“I didn’t hear no bell,” I said. “I don’t think we’re through yet.”

She scoffed and pulled a throwing knife from a hidden sheath. Before she could toss it, I fired a ball of glue at her hoof. Bird of Paradise swore like a sailor and tried to free herself. I fired another shot at her face, effectively blindfolding and muzzling her.

“Now that’s what I call a sticky situation,” I said. “Eh? Eh?” I looked around. Nopony seemed to appreciate it. “We’ll go talk to the Kahuna and work this out like actual grown-ups.”

A solid minute and a half later I realized ponies liked air and broke the glue around her muzzle so she could breathe. She wasn’t even grateful about it.

Chapter 111 - One Little Spark

It should have helped me sleep better knowing that the Kahuna hadn’t put Bird of Paradise and Gleamblossom to death. They ended up exiled to the same farm Bird’s father had gone to, with enough supplies to start a new life. She’d even let them gather their things from the Bungalow and apologized for everything that happened. It almost seemed too soft to me, but what did I know?

I’d been offered their bungalow as a reward and turned it down. The room in the resort hotel was a little small, but it also got cleaned every other day by robot maids, and that alone made it the best place I’d ever stayed in. They were going to have to use deadly force to make me leave.

Despite all that, I couldn’t sleep.

“Do you want anything from the hotel bar?” I asked Embe. The ghoul didn’t sleep either. I wasn’t sure if it was a psychological thing or a physiological one. Probably both. The Kahuna had given her a giant box of tapes to watch, mostly old cartoons and newsreels. Embe was enjoying seeing something new, and the ponies here had seen all of them hundreds of times and were glad to let her have them.

Embe nodded and carefully shut off her tape player, following me down the giant main staircase. I had to take it slow, one step at a time. It probably would have been easier to slide down on my butt. Ever since the raider had yanked on it, I’d been having problems with the prosthetic leg, and I was getting annoyed that it didn’t fix itself. Maybe my expectations were too high. The stitches in my shoulder were a reminder that I wasn’t fixing myself either.

“Do you need help?” Embe asked.

“No,” I grunted. “I should ask Fog Cutter when those Imaginseer Tribe ponies are going to be in town again. They built this thing, they should be able to fix it.”

Embe made a non-committal sound. “Not everything broken gets fixed. Sometimes it stays broken.”

“You know what they say. Hope springs eternal. Maybe they can at least sell me some duct tape so I can keep it from slipping.”

We finally got to the lobby and I looked around. Something felt off. At night, the robots turned the lights low, but not totally off. It was just dim enough that we could still see out of the big windows, but not so dark that we’d bang our hooves on any of the couches and tables scattered around the room. A servitor robot stood at attention behind the front desk, its screen face black and blank.

It almost felt haunted, which was silly. This was one of the few places that hadn’t seen much death even during the war.

Embe looked at me. Technically she was haunting the building too, I guess. Why were so many of my friends undead? Were they just more patient with stupid ponies like me?

“It’s because you don’t… get scared of what I am,” Embe said. She looked at my expression. “Weren’t you asking me? You kind of… mumbled.”

“I have a bad habit of making my internal monologues external,” I sighed. “It’s past midnight, do you think the robots are still doing dinner things, or can I get breakfast?”

She shrugged and followed me to the hotel restaurant. I didn’t even get halfway there before something spooked me. Movement in the dark. They lurched out of the shadows. I fell sideways until the wall caught me in an instinctive attempt to get into some kind of fighting stance.

Grog stumbled into the light, looking dazed. He was out of his usual barding. Way out. He must have been incredibly drunk, because he wasn’t even able to walk in a straight line and he was mumbling to himself and staring at his hooves.

“Buck, you spooked me,” I sighed.

“Stop,” Embe hiss-growled. I froze and looked back at her. She nodded to Grog. “He’s sleepwalking,” she explained quietly. “It’s bad to wake up a sleepwalking pony, right?”

I took a careful look at the older de facto head of security. His gaze was unfocused. He was looking right through me and into whatever was going on in his own head.

“You’re right,” I whispered. I stepped aside to let Grog go past. “Good thing it’s safe here. He’s probably just going to go for a walk on the beach.”

“I don’t know about that,” Embe gowled. She was looking past me through one of the hotel’s full-length windows. Outside, more ponies walked past, all of them with the heavy, slow gait of somnamabab… sommnambu… sleepwalking. I can’t remember the fancy medical term. The point was, it isn’t normal for a whole town full of ponies to go for a jog in the middle of the night.

“Alright, this isn’t normal. I’m gonna try and wake Grog up.” I trotted over to him. Even with my even-more-pronounced-than-normal limp I was faster than a pony literally walking in their sleep. I gave him a light tap. “Wake up.”

He didn’t notice. I shoved him harder.

“Wake up!” I yelled in his ear.

He just kept mumbling to himself and got to the doors, walking out into the moonlight and turning to follow the trail of other ponies going up the path.

“He didn’t get up,” I mumbled. “I’m starting to think this might not be natural.”

“It’s not,” Embe shivered. “There’s bad magic in the air.”

I was going to tell her to calm down, but she was right. I could feel it. It was like a low-pressure front bringing a storm, that sense of something changing all around me.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Some kind of magic. I’m going to find out where they’re all going. You wait here.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to… be alone…” she moaned.

“It could be dangerous,” I warned. She shook her head and stepped closer to me, her head down. “Okay, okay. Just stay close to me until we find out what’s going on. If it’s really bad I still want you to run, okay?”

Embe nodded silently. I followed Grog at his own pace down the trail. If there was somepony watching, they might think I was just one of the sleepers. With the condition I was in, a few seconds of confusion could mean the difference between life and death.

We walked past the hotel buildings and out to the bungalows, and the whole time I felt that magical pressure. It was a growing migraine behind my eyes. I squeezed them shut and tried to block it out, but it was getting worse the closer I got to whatever was causing this.

And then I saw it. Glowing, the tip reaching above the trees and bungalows. A crystal spire radiating magic, the same one I’d seen last time I was down here. It was tall and thin and all these ponies were walking right up to it. I got close enough to see what they were doing and stopped.

Dozens of ponies, at least half the ponies in the resort, were circling around it, walking in spirals and mumbling to themselves, unaware of everything around them.

“That is really sinister looking,” I whispered.

“I don’t like this,” Embe rumbled. She got closer to me, trying to hide in my shadow.

“The Kahuna said she was having problems sleeping,” I remembered. “She even mentioned it was going around. This must be why. Instead of getting any kind of decent rest, they’re walking around all night.”

“But not you,” noted a voice from the darkness. I almost jumped out of my hooves. A pony in a black cloak stepped out of the darkness. I could see pouches, a belt full of small vials, and ragged layers of clothing. “Dat’s interesting.”

“Who are you?” I demanded, moving to keep Embe behind me and putting myself in the firing line if she had a weapon.

The strange pony pulled her hood back, revealing that she was a unicorn, with a dark grey coat and black mane shot through with a streak of white. “I am Acadia. Dey call me a witch, an’ dat is a fair ting to call me. You, though. You are special, non? You aren’t in de same sad state as dey are. Your cute little undead friend dere is immune, but your mind is untouched as well? You have a strong will, or meybbe something else?” She looked at the metal scales growing on my legs.

“Are you the one who did this to them?” I asked.

“Non,” she said dismissively. Her horn glowed with mixed green and red flame, and a tattered notebook and pencil rose up. “I am jes’ studying dem. It’s interesting, oui? Dey are caught in a nightmare by dark magic.”

“Well yeah, obviously it’s some kind of magic,” I said dismissively.

“You do not listen, child. I said Dark Magic.” This time she said it with an emphasis strong enough for me to know there were capitals. “It is old, a thousand years old before Old Equestria even fell.”

“Uh huh. So can you stop it?”

She looked surprised that I even asked. “Why would I do dat?”

I tilted my head. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

She cackled. “Oh! Dat is rich. De right ting to do!” She laughed again, struggling to control herself. “Non, non. I am a witch, pegasus. Dat means I don’ go around helping.”

“Of course not. So I have to do all the work like always.” I huffed and walked up to the crystal, trying to ignore the way it made me itch inside. I stopped a few paces away and realized I knew that itch. It was too familiar. It was the feeling I got when there was active SIVA in the area. “No…” I groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Embe asked.

“This had better not be my fault,” I groaned.

I got close enough to the crystal to see through the glare. There was some kind of complex circuitry inside it, woven into the structure of the crystal itself, and I could see something else, strands of black metal weaving themselves into it, growing inch by inch, moving like the minute hand on a clock, just fast enough to see if I watched carefully.

“I can’t believe I did it again…” I sighed.

“Oh look at de poor pony, ready to take on all de sins of the world on her shoulders,” Acadia scoffed. “Dis was not you, fool. I saw you arrive in fire, dis started months before.”

“Months?” I felt the crushing weight of guilt ease off my shoulders, but only a little bit. I knew that was SIVA in there, and that meant it was still somehow tied to me.

“Ah,” the witch smiled. “So you still feel responsible anyway? Interesting.”

“What is this crystal, anyway?” I asked. “SIVA can’t control ponies like this. I mean it does control ponies but they turn into metal zombies. It’s not mind control.”

“Dis crystal is part of de new park,” the witch said, motioning at it. “After de maker of dis place passed away, it went into de hooves of ponies who had dere own ideas. Dis was part of it. Using magic to create illusions instead of building tings dat were real. Replacing de staff with machines. Putting everyting under de control of a single mind.”

“So it’s all connected?” I asked.

“Of course it is. Everyting in dis world is connected. Dat is part of de magic, non?” She smirked and pulled her hood back up. “If you want to get to de core of de ting, it is in de old park.”

I was getting tired of being in over my head and not understanding anything. “The old park?”

“In de morning, when dey wake up, ask dem. Dey can point you the right way.” Acadia pulled a vial out of her belt and smashed it on the ground. Foul-smelling smoke billowed up around her, and by the time a gust of ocean wind blew it away, she was gone.

“What are you going to do?” Embe asked.

“I’m going to try getting back to sleep,” I sighed. “Sounds like I’m going to have a busy day tomorrow.”

“Sleepwalking?” Grog grumbled, rubbing at his eyes.

“If you don’t believe me I’ll get photos next time,” I joked. “Can I have a little help?” I tugged at the straps of the barding I was trying to get into.

Grog sighed and adjusted some of the parts that were harder to reach. I could tell he didn’t like me wearing it. It was patched together from some of the sturdier parts of the barding the raiders in the tunnel had been wearing. I would have preferred Bird of Paradise’s black leathers, but she was several sizes smaller than me. If nothing else, a quick scrub and a fresh coat of paint covered up the rust and bloodstains pretty well.

“You remember what I told you?” the stallion said.

“The monorail track goes all the way to the old park,” I said. “So as long as I stay on it, I won’t get lost.”

He nodded. “It’s elevated two stories above the ground, so it should keep you safe from the wildlife. Some of the gators have gotten pretty big over the years, and they absolutely can and will eat a pony if they can catch you.”

“Why not use the tunnels?” I asked.

“You already fought one set of raiders in the utilidors. There might be more. If you get cornered down there, there’s nowhere to go. At least if you’re up here, you can get down off the track and get away from any trouble you can’t handle.”

“I guess it’d be easy to pick up the trail again since it’s so high up,” I admitted. I looked down the track. It wasn’t exactly as spacious as an elevated highway, but it was a little wider than my shoulders. The track didn’t have any surprise hills or tight bends, just easy curves like an elevated sidewalk.

“That’s the idea. And if it’s collapsed you don’t have to turn around.”

“Keep Embe safe while I’m gone?” I asked.

Grog nodded. “Of course I will. We wronged her terribly in the past. The least we can do is treat her well and make her comfortable.”

“Thanks again for the help.” I grabbed the saddlebags he’d prepared and slung them into my back. They were uneven, with more weight on my left side, but that was deliberate to balance me out a little bit. I had the GLUU Gun along with the extra glue canisters and a little food and water.

It really wasn’t a bad walk, and for the first time I started to get an idea of the scale of the island. I’d left the resort a few times, but the only time I’d gone very far had been when I’d gone to the naval base. I hadn’t really looked around much when I got there, which I was now kicking myself about. There were probably a bunch of guns there that I could have used… And if I was honest with myself, mostly just wasted ammunition. My aim with regular guns was awful. Big heavy stuff just made sense to me in a way that small arms didn’t.

Anyway, the island. I’d seen highly stylized maps in the resort and it looked like a curled-up alligator, sort of bent in a crescent moon shape. There hadn’t been a scale on those maps, but with a higher viewpoint I was starting to get a feel for the geography and it had to be around six or seven miles at the wide point. I passed by a few small stops that I ignored - Grog had told me what to look for and that I’d know it when I saw it anyway - and noticed that there was a stark difference between the areas where visitors might end up and the island’s natural terrain.

Most of the island between stops was some kind of mangrove swamp, and I was sure I could see large shapes slowly drifting beneath the murky water. I kicked a stray branch into the mire below. Something snapped at it and dragged it under.

Falling in would probably end in getting eaten, but the monorail line was surprisingly intact. I could sense a little magic in it. Maybe there was some kind of preservation magic? Or, more likely, robots were involved somewhere. For all I knew there was a robot train that went around fixing the line as it went.

Something I quickly discovered was that traveling like this really sucked. I had to take careful steps because I didn’t want to get eaten by alligators and the stupid prosthetic was getting more and more broken the more I used it.

Two miles in, the knee seized up and almost threw me right over the edge. I yelped, spread my wings, realized I only had wing, singular, and caught myself with my good forehoof. The one that had a deep cut that was only stitched up. I hung over the short drop and I didn’t look down because I could sense the hungry teeth waiting for their next meal.

I scrambled back up, barely, and smacked the fake leg against the concrete until the joint unfroze and it had learned a valuable lesson. It must have picked up on my frustration because it didn’t act up again, even if it did make worrying wheezing squeaking sounds when the track started going up at a gentle incline.

No wait, I was the one making those sounds. I was not in great health. I focused on my breathing, watched my hooves, and just put one in front of the other over and over again.

“This must be the place,” I gasped, hopping over from the rail to the station. It was multiple times the size of the other stations I’d passed by, in bright, unfaded colors, and I collapsed onto one of the worn but well-maintained benches and caught my breath. I felt like I was fighting pneumonia after a bad bout of feather flu.

After a minute or two, a small robot shaped like a saucer hummed out of a small gap between the wall and floor and slowly rolled across the floor, sucking up a few stray leaves and leaving the platform spotless. When it got close to me, it bumped into my side.

“Do you think I’m garbage?” I joked. After a moment, it bumped again, then backed up and beeped. I tilted my head. I couldn’t read its mind or anything but it almost seemed more like it had come out to check up on me.

I got up and shook some of the fatigue.

“I’m okay,” I told the robot vacuum. It beeped again and trundled off. Did it understand me? I shook my head and got going. I had places to go and no idea what terrible dangers I’d find.

“This isn’t what I expected,” I said.

“Would you like to try another flavor?” the robot asked, the black screen it had for a face showing a pleasant smile. I looked down at what I was holding. A sugar cone topped with a yellow and white twist. It was a soft frozen dessert made of pineapple and sugar and it was disastrously good. It was better than some drugs I’d had, and I’d been pumped full of a lot of highly addictive painkillers.

“No, no, this is really great,” I assured it. “I mean, uh… never mind. Thank you for the dessert. Great job!”

I waved to it and took a few steps back, avoiding a pony who was slowly making his way down the street, his eyes unfocused while he mumbled.

“Sorry,” I said, after almost bumping into him.

“She grows ever near to us,” he mumbled, walking off to somewhere else. I shook my head and watched him join the flow of the crowd. Maybe half a mile down the street lined with shops and buildings that could have come from any town in old Equestria, Canterlot Castle loomed tall over us.

Not the real one, obviously. This one was smaller, with exaggerated features and brighter colors. It was like a giant toy made in the real thing’s image.

“Or a theme park attraction,” I said to myself. I sat down and ate my Pineapple Whip while I thought. I wasn’t just being lazy, the sugar was helping me get some of my strength back. Also it tasted really good.

Once I felt well enough to move on, I followed the flow of ponies. They weren’t just going to the castle. They were all over the park, more like slow, sleepy ants in a colony. I wasn’t sure what they were doing until I saw a group of them keeping robots away from a steel flower growing out of the ground in the shadow between two buildings.

“SIVA,” I mumbled. “Again.”

I heard someone yell in frustration and for once it wasn’t my fault. Probably. I made a mental note to be more careful about what I ate just in case it was infected by something and followed the noise into a walkway going through the castle. It was a path through the park but an exhibit on its own, with furniture and paintings on the side that might have come from the real castle.

In the center, hanging overhead, was a crystal spire suspended in chains like a huge chandelier, partly disguised and almost fitting in with the decor. Ponies circled under it, staring up at it, and one pony in particular was ignoring it and delivering a hard slap to the face of the pony next to her. She was an earth pony wearing the same red robes as the stallion she’d slapped, though hers weren’t as tattered as his and she had a belt full of tools.

“Wake up!” she ordered. “Come on, brother! It’s going to work this time!” She had a complicated-looking tangle of electronic components in her hoof and pointed the antenna extending from it at the slapped pony. There was a hum, several vacuum tubes glowed slightly, and one popped before the whole thing gave up the ghost, smoke rising from the device.

I walked over and looked at it. I’d never seen anything like it.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a delta wave inducer that should set up a resonance in his brain and wake him up,” the pony explained, fumbling for more vacuum tubes in her saddlebags. She stopped and looked at me. “Ah!” she yelped.

“Ah!” I yelped back.

She glared at me, then her gaze drifted to my prosthetic. “You! I know who you are and-- what did you do to this poor leg?” She shook her head and grabbed my hoof, lifting it and feeling the joints. She made a very displeased sound at the noise the joints made.

“Sorry. I got into a fight with some bandits.”

“It looks like somepony ripped it off your shoulder and clubbed you with it,” she said. “The machine spirit inside this leg is very unhappy.”

“Maybe that’s why it tried to throw me in the swamp on the way here,” I joked.

She didn’t take it as a jest. She nodded. “It’s possible. This needs maintenance. I don’t have time for all the rituals you require, but an Imaginseer does what they can with what they have. Hold still.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the leg. She dug a bottle of oil out of her bags with her teeth and applied it to the joints, whispering something that sounded like prayers and the contents of an old manual.

“...it is written that the main gears of the bearing are splash lubricated, the lubricating oil level is signaled by the indicator, we thank the machine spirit and beg for understanding and smooth operation until the next scheduled maintenance…”

I waited for her to finish, which apparently also required replacing a broken buckle on the straps holding it to my shoulder and a quick burning incense that was something like aromatic flash powder.

“That will hold for a day or a few miles, whichever comes first,” she said after finishing up and putting things away. “I am only a Junior Imaginseer and I don’t have the parts or tools with me to finish the job properly. I apologize. I need to focus on freeing my brother.”

“He’s sleepwalking because of that crystal,” I said.

“Enthralled by it,” she confirmed. “The things are cursed. They should never have been allowed in the park. The Imaginseers were against them, and now they are finally breaking us.”

“They’re part of some… new park thing, right? Using magic and illusions?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a long tale of greed and ponies wanting change for the sake of change.” She picked up her antenna-laden inductor thing and started playing with it, checking all the connections.

“The same thing is happening at the resort,” I said. “That's why I came here. I heard all the crystals were connected.”

“It might be happening all over the park,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rude to a guest. My name is Lathe.”

“Chamomile.” I shook her hoof. She took a close look at the scales on my leg.

“Interesting,” she mumbled. Lathe reached behind her ear and pulled a lens down over her eye, flicking on a small flashlight attached to the loupe with a motion of her ear. “Very delicate work. I wonder if the machine spirit in your new prosthetic is jealous.”

“Maybe I can duct tape a knife to it so it feels better.”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” she agreed. “But only after proper maintenance checks.” She switched off the light. “I would take you to my village but…”

“But you’re busy with your brother,” I said.

She nodded.

“These systems are all connected, right?” I asked. “What’s the hub?”

“Below us somewhere,” Lathe said. “Deep under the utilidors. Right under our hooves. Nopony has seen the core system in generations.”

“If we want to wake up your brother we might not have to go that far,” I said. “It has to connect to the crystals somehow, and if ponies built it, I can break it. I wouldn’t mind some help making sure I break the right thing, though.”

“It would be bad if you broke anything irreplaceable,” Lathe admitted. “I’m not making much progress here. I need to try something different. But to be clear, we’re not breaking anything. It’s against the code of the Imaginseers.”

“That door had been there for almost three hundred years! It was old even before the war!” Lathe whined through rebreather over her muzzle. “It was a good, sturdy door!”

“It wasn’t all that sturdy.” I’d broken it with only a few kicks. My security pass hadn’t worked here like it had at the resort, but I’d still found a way.

“I have a tool for picking the locks without damaging them,” Lathe said.

“You can get the next one,” I promised her.

She huffed and walked past me, pulling her hood up around her head. I heard a subtle clank of metal. The red robe had metal plates woven between the layers. “This is a small island. We can’t afford waste.”

“Right, sorry,” I agreed. I followed her deeper into the utilidors. They were half-flooded here, with murky swamp water reaching up to our knees in places. The smell made me wish I had a rebreather of my own.

My ear twitched.

“Stop!” I hissed. “There’s something ahead of us!”

Lathe froze and listened. She heard the same splashing I’d noticed and took a step back, then motioned to the side where an array of vertical pipes came out of the floor below us and joined the main lines hanging overhead. They had clearance on all sides, and just enough room behind them for us to hide in their shadows.

“Do you have any weapons?” I whispered. “There are raiders down here.”

“I have a nailgun,” she said, pulling it from her toolbelt. It wasn’t much of a weapon but it was more than I feared she’d have.

“I’ve got this glue launcher,” I offered. “As long as there aren’t many of them, we should be able to handle them. I’ll go first and you follow up, okay?”

She nodded and we waited for them to approach. From the noise it sounded like a big group of raiders.At least six or seven. I peeked around the edge of the pipes to look and was almost snout-to-snout with the biggest alligator I’d ever seen. It was longer than a Vertibuck and looked like it had even more armor.

“Oh buck,” I swore.

It roared. I roared back at it. It was not intimidated. I punched it in the snout. It lunged forward and smacked me with the tip of its nose, sending me flying back into the wall and establishing its dominance.

“So that’s how it feels,” I groaned.

“Don’t move! Its vision is based on movement!” Lathe warned.

I froze. “Is that true?”

The gator charged me where I’d fallen, opening its huge maw and showing more fangs than I’d ever seen in one place before. Just before it got to me, a bell went off above us and a plume of frigid foul-smelling gas sprayed down at it. The gator shook its head and fell back, and another plume of gas hit it, forcing it further away.

The gator roared and charged away, annoyed by the cold. When it got into the next tunnel segment, a wide door came down behind it, cutting it off from us.

“Its vision is absolutely not based on movement,” I informed Lathe.

“Sorry. It seemed like it was a theory worth testing,” she said.

“What happened with the…” I looked up. There was a red pipe with big sprinkler heads above us. I read the words printed on the side of the pipe. “Fire suppression system?”

“The machine spirit protected you,” Lathe said seriously. “These park systems have a mind of their own. Not just the robots, but even the smallest things. They keep the guests safe and demand respect.”

“That’s--” I was going to call it silly, but she’d gotten my prosthetic working with the power of prayer. The robots all seemed to understand just a little too much. And now the fire suppression system… “--Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “I’d have to be an even bigger idiot to pretend it isn’t possible.”

“Just treat the machines with respect,” Lathe told me, patting my shoulder. “They want to be of service. They understand that you don’t know the right rituals to maintain them.”

I nodded. It wasn’t bad advice.

“So the machine spirit probably doesn’t think we should go that way,” I looked at where the fire door had slammed shut and trapped the giant alligator. “Any ideas?”

Lathe closed her eyes. “Mmm…” She produced an orb. “I’ll check the auspex.”

She shook it and it beeped. A small screen on the side flickered through a few messages, the text changing faster than I could read it before settling down on a single result and stopping with a chime.

“What is right is sometimes all that’s left,” she read, then put the auspex, which looked suspiciously like a plastic fortune-telling toy, away.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“This way,” she said, walking confidently the other way down the utilidor. I raised an eyebrow and followed her. “It can’t be far.”

I followed her to a branch in the tunnel and she took the left corridor after a moment of contemplation. She stopped and thought for a moment when the lights flickered around us, most of the fluorescent lamps shutting off. In the darkness, my eyes were drawn instantly to a single set still working, right over a door down the left-hoof branch. A second later, the rest of the lights turned on.

“Did you do that?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen the machine spirit acting this strongly,” she whispered. “We are meant to be here.”

“I think I might need to sign up for your religion because it sure seems to be working,” I told her. We walked to the door and found the security panel blinking between red and green, completely glitched out. I tested the handle and it opened without a problem. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find inside. A server room full of humming banks of computers?

Lathe backed up away from the door. “No…” she whispered.

I could understand why she had that reaction. The inside of the room was a techno-organic mess, metal growing like fungus in the lightless depths of the earth. Sinister red light shone from blinking LEDs like tiny eyes on the tendrils spread over the walls, and in the center of the room was a pedestal like a claw reaching right out of the concrete and clutching an oversized memory orb.

“Most of this is SIVA,” I mumbled. “But that orb is weird.”

I took a careful step inside, looking around and being careful not to touch anything that might be infected.

“It’s part of the new park,” Lathe said. She spat on the ground. “They were going to replace rides with them. With false memories of rides. Illusions instead of real machines.”

“Do they work like other memory orbs?” I asked, reaching out to poke it and see if I could free it. My vision blurred and I fell out of the world.

“Chamomile… it’s time to wake up…” a gentle voice called to me. One I hadn’t heard in a long time. I opened my eyes and…

I must have been on some layer of Tartarus. The sky was glowing with uneven red light. The ground was black steel. Spires rose up to impossible heights around me, and my mother was watching me, amused, from a twisted throne.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Lemon Zinger chuckled. “You’re taking more and more after me every day, Chamomile.”

“How are you here?” I gasped, trying to stand. A claw pressed me down into the ground before I got there. I looked up into the skeletal face of a black SIVA dragon. “Lady of Dark Waters?”

“She nearly died at your hooves,” my mother explained. “Now she serves me.”

“How--” I gasped.

“I’ve never stopped being in control, Chamomile,” Lemon said. She stood up and strode closer, growing moment by moment. “I’ve just been letting you make a few decisions on your own. Her blood mixed with yours, and when she was too weak to resist… Lady became my avatar. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” the dragon rumbled sullenly.

“She’s a bit unhappy about being used like this,” Lemon said. She laughed. “I suppose an ancient vampire does have her pride to consider. It must be fate that you two are meeting again. However… you don’t belong here, Chamomile.”

My mother leaned down to look at me where I was pinned against the steel.

“Go back to your little resort. Take a vacation. Your part in this story is done. Soon, my endgame will begin, and everything will be mine.”

“I’ll stop you,” I grunted.

“You don’t have the power,” she said. “Especially not here.”

Lemon’s body twisted and swelled. Three huge dragon heads rose up out of the swarm of SIVA. Wings as wide as a city flared out. All three maws opened, and energy crashed down onto me, erasing me from existence.

I gasped and snapped awake. Lathe was pulling me back through the door.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “Some of the illusion-rides are buggy with how old they are, not that they ever worked right.”

I shook my head. “I think we’re in a lot of trouble. A lot. Of trouble.”

Chapter 112: A Whale of a Tale

“This is so weird,” I mumbled, as we walked down what looked like the dusty streets of a desert town. The red rock walls of mesas rose up around us, obscuring the horizon. If not for time and the sun wearing down the corners to show the concrete underneath, the illusion would have been even more impressive. Lathe led me across a bridge that crossed a stream starting on one side of the street as a short waterfall and curving out of sight opposite.

“The park has a number of different sections,” she explained. “The Founder believed that theming and immersion were important. This part is called Frontierland.”

“It reminds me of a few places I’ve been,” I told her. We walked past buildings that had been designed to look a hundred years old when they were new. Wood siding was painted and detailed to look sun-faded. An old plaster skull. Faded paint. I smirked at a corral full of tumbleweeds labeled as a weed petting zoo.

“This place is one of the oldest parts of Gator World.” She stopped and looked around. “It has real experiences. The Dead Ringer Shooting Arcade. The Log Plume Adventure. The first Imaginseers built them and more with real machines. There’s even a railroad here with a steam locomotive!”

I nodded along. This all seemed very important to her.

“It’s places like this where you can feel the machine spirit strongest. Places where ponies had to invent new solutions to new problems.”

“So who was this Founder, anyway?” I asked.

“His name was Welsh Rarebit. He was a pony who was driven by his hobbies and vision. According to the sacred texts, he strove to turn his fantasies from his foalhood into reality. He would pretend to be a town sheriff or bandito, and so…”

“He built a place where anypony could do that,” I finished for her. I was starting to understand. “Neat.”

“Mister Rarebit hired the most clever ponies in the world, and we’re their descendants,” Lathe said proudly. She led me to a hidden door in one of the plaster rocks, and we walked out onto a wood-plank path.

“Do you live in the park?” I asked.

Lathe shook her head.

“One of the things he wanted to do was build a perfect, safe world,” she said. The planks gave way to a concrete path lined with decorative bricks as we made our way up a slight hill. “He saw some of the ways the world would change. Automatic appliances, prefabricated houses, new ways of building and organizing things.”

She stopped and waited for me to catch up. Going uphill was still a little bit difficult with the prosthetic. The springs were starting to feel as worn out as the rest of me.

“Welcome to ETROT,” Lathe welcomed. At the top of the hill, the road split into an eight-spoked hub centered on a circular park, with buildings in each direction. It was obviously planned in every detail, with identical prefabricated structures with clear labels for their purpose. It must have been pretty far ahead of its time. It wasn’t quite the same as the style that had developed just before the end of the war. That was all curves and swoops and chrome.

These looked more like they’d been built out of containers and boxes, slabs set at artful angles like concrete tents and lean-tos. Stained glass blocks filled the gaps. They reminded me of cloud houses with how they seemed to resist the pull of gravity.

I was seeing all this through a veil. A barrier around the town like a giant soap bubble, visible as a rainbow slick and shimmer in the air.

“Uh…” I stopped at the edge of it and looked at Lathe, hoping for an explanation, permission, or reassurance.

“Don’t worry!” she assured me. “It’s a barrier Elder Flysteel put up. It won’t hurt ponies, it only blocks out the influence of Dark Magic.”

“I sure hope that’s all it does.” I took a deep breath and held it before taking that last step. Would it tear me apart? If they’d made it to repel ‘Dark Magic’ but they meant it was keeping SIVA from infecting their town, it might splatter me like a bug, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come back from that again. I’d pushed my luck with near-death experiences way too many times.

It passed over and through me and I didn’t explode. Actually, I felt slightly cleaner. The low level of nausea I’d been cultivating ever since my misadventure at the naval base went away.

“Huh,” I said. “It stops radiation, too?”

Good thing I hadn’t brought Esme with me.

“We have many useful devices,” Lathe boasted. “That’s why you should never underestimate an engineer.”

“And a good engineer doesn’t take credit for something they didn’t do,” a voice responded. A pony in red robes like Lathe’s, but with more ornate designs along the edges, trotted up the road toward us. “Imaginseer Lathe, I assume the test was a failure, or…?”

He looked at me. The pony had an incredibly thick pair of glasses on, with multiple telescoping lenses that automatically adjusted when he focused his gaze on me.

“She’s another pony looking into the dark magic issue,” Lathe explained. “Chamomile, this is Elder Flysteel. He’s one of our wisest elders.”

“I see you’re the recipient of that limb,” he said, stepping closer and looking at my prosthetic. “It’s repurposed from a spare animatronic from the Hall of Princesses. The Founder was always sure one of the ministry mares would become an Alicorn, but…” he shrugged and lifted my hoof with his magic to examine it from a different angle.

“Sorry if I’ve been a little rough on it,” I said.

“Mm,” the Elder nodded. “The machine spirit isn’t terribly happy, but Imaginseer Lathe did a good job of appeasing it for now. In a way, this is really our fault.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Huh?”

“Machines are built to serve a purpose. It’s clear we were wrong about the scope and deliverables needed. This was built to specifications for light duty. Like staying in a resort and resting from serious injuries. You need something more suited for combat, going by that old barding you’re wearing.”

“I don’t look too much like a raider, do I?” I asked.

“It could use some touch-ups,” the elder informed me. “At least a wash and a coat of paint. Come along. I need to check the rainbow void generator and I can do that while we talk.”

He motioned for us to follow him. As we approached the center of town I saw a pillar of that faint rainbow sheen reaching up into the sky. It was coming from a device that resembled an attempt to build a clock inside-out using the guts from several radios.

“What is that thing?” I asked.

“I just told you. The rainbow void generator. It makes this shield. Anti-radiation for when the storms come, but it’s also working fairly well against the dark magic. It took us a few days to modify it to cover those frequencies, but we haven’t lost anypony since we got it going.”

He started checking fuses and vacuum tubes, pulling dark ones free and replacing them with new tubes that warmed up and started humming with the rest.

“The one problem is that it wasn’t originally designed for this. The machine spirit in it is proud and protective and is doing its best to keep us safe, but it’s wearing itself out. If we don’t find a way to fix this problem at its source, it’ll burn itself out and we’ll have nothing when the next radiation storm rolls in.”

“Assuming we aren’t all enslaved by then,” Lathe added.

“Always looking on the bright side,” Flysteel sighed.

I looked over the mess of components. It reminded me of something, and it took a long moment before it clicked. It was a lot like the big cabinet the Greywings had built to replace tiny components they couldn’t replace or fabricate. A big, complex hoof-wired device to do the job of a little bit of silicon.

“Huh,” I mumbled.

“Don’t touch anything,” Elder Flysteel warned. “The machine spirit can only protect you so far and jamming metal hooves into its insides is a good way to annoy it and get a nasty shock.”

I nodded in agreement. “Good tip.”

“So why are you here? Aside from needing maintenance.”

“I used one of the big memory orbs and saw what was behind all this,” I said.

“It was horrible, Elder,” Lathe said. “It was like a living machine cancer in the utilidors!”

“Worse than that, it’s my mother. The infection is called SIVA. It’s a lot of microscopic robots that can make more of themselves and join together to do larger tasks. I don’t know how it got here.”

“It was probably the black beast that we were told about,” Lathe guessed. “The one that crashed near Futureland.”

Elder Flysteel rubbed his chin with a hoof, thinking. “Microscopic machines…”

“If I can find the core system controlling them, I can stop it,” I said. “Probably.”

“You’re infected by them yourself, aren’t you? That’s where those metal scales came from. It’s too fine work for hooves. Maybe too fine for magic.”

I nodded. He returned the nod.

“I suppose the only way to fight it is with the same technology. Like an immune system fighting off a virus?” he asked.

“It’s worked before,” I told him. “There was another place in the far north where the infection had spread for miles, but after the dragon controlling it was destroyed, the SIVA died off.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about tiny machines,” the elder admitted. “Machines shouldn’t build themselves like that. They should be made by ponies, for ponies. However, what you say makes sense. You need medicine to cure poison. Imaginseer Lathe, can you take her to the crash site? I know you just got back but I can’t spare anypony here.”

“Of course, elder,” she said, bowing politely.

“Good.” He nodded to my leg. “I’ll try to get something more suited for your needs. Try to take care of that until you get back. A good machine is worth more than the life of a pony these days.”

Lathe carried a map with her, a tablet about the same size and thickness as a hardcover book but with a glowing green screen built into it. I quickly noticed she had a bad habit of staring directly at it and not at what was around her.

“Thank you,” she said for the third or fourth time when I kept her from falling down a steep incline. “We’re almost at the crash site.”

I nodded and kept my eyes open. If she wasn’t watching her hooves, she definitely wasn’t watching out for wildlife or raiders. I expected once we left the path that we’d find plenty of both but the truth is the jungle was quiet. Too quiet. There was no birdsong, no insect noises, not even radroaches in the underbrush, and those little guys were everywhere.

The quiet was making me uneasy. My instincts were telling me there was danger around.

Lathe walked out into a clearing. It was a hole in the jungle. Trees and underbrush had been ripped apart in a long line.

“This is it,” she said, “The object landed there after that unusual celestial event.”

“The eclipse?”

She nodded. “An unscheduled one. Not that there’s really a schedule anymore but it didn’t fit into any of our mathematical models. We still can’t explain it.”

“Don’t try too hard. It was a magical ritual.”

I didn’t look at Lathe to see how she reacted to that. I followed the path of destruction to the impact point. I’d been in enough crash landings of my own to get a feel for how they went. All the trees would be broken away from the spot where it had slammed home into the earth. That put it about…

I stood in a shallow crater and dug at the loose earth. A black scale was buried just under the surface. As soon as the sunlight touched it, the scale burst into flames and crumbled.

“So it really is Lady of Dark Waters,” I sighed in relief. It wasn’t my fault! Directly. I had at least one other pony that I could blame for things, and that mattered a lot when I was already carrying a lot of guilt around. Also, it was good to know sunlight was deadly to her. Or… at least on parts of her. If she hadn’t crashed out in the open, the infection might have been much worse.

I looked around and saw Lathe about to do something stupid.

“Stop!” I yelled.

Lathe flinched back from the metal flower she’d been about to touch.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.

I walked over to her and moved a branch aside, letting sunlight shine on the wild SIVA. The black lotus burned like magnesium, flaring and sputtering. I didn’t let the branch go until it had burned down to the dirt.

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “Look over there.”

I pointed to a bird flopping on the ground. I could dimly sense the SIVA in it, unfocused and doing its best to be helpful and killing the bird slowly in the process.

“SIVA spreads quickly in a living animal,” I explained. “We’re constantly wearing down, you know? Just a little bit, and until we get old our bodies repair us. You exercise, wear yourself out, and sleep it off. SIVA sees that damage and tries to fix it, but it only knows how to build machines. It ends up hurting you worse, then it tries to fix that. Then it tries to fix those mistakes. Over and over again until…”

I held up my scaled hoof.

“That doesn’t seem too bad,” Lathe replied.

“I’m a special case. Most of the time it turns ponies into agonized monsters. Like that bird.”

We watched the bird together for a long few seconds. I could hear its joints whirring and bones cracking. It would have been kinder to kill it.

And now that I’d had that thought, I had to do it or I’d be a monster. I grabbed a stick and pushed the struggling animal out into the sunlight. There was a bright flare and a screech of pain, but it ended fast. It was still better that way.

“Watch the shadows,” I warned. “She isn’t here, so she must have gotten away somehow.”

Lathe nodded and looked down at her dataslate. “If we look at the damage from a birds-eye view it looks like there are drag marks that way,” she said. “Towards one of the defunct rides.”

“I didn’t think you’d let anything get defunct around here,” I said, following her lead and watching her steps so she wouldn’t stumble into anything deadly. I could see the signs she’d detected with her scanner. Even though I wasn’t an expert, it was pretty obvious that something had smashed through the underbrush.

“It was closed down before the war. It was one of the first rides they tested with the New Park.”

We emerged from the jungle and found ourselves back in the park proper, stepping directly from the treeline and over rope fencing onto a dock. It was actually kind of incredible how the moment I got out on the main path, things were carefully laid out and shaped so that it didn’t feel like I was standing next to a wild jungle.

“Twenty Thousand Fathoms,” I read the old, faded sign.

“I’m told it was a water ride, but it was too expensive to operate and could only be used by a few ponies at a time,” Lathe said. “I always wished I could have seen it when it was open. There are pictures from those days showing that the guests could see all kinds of wildlife.”

“Wildlife like that?” I asked. I saw something big crawling out of the water. A thick segmented shell dripped water onto the path, a dozen scrabbling claws clutching for purchase as the monster rose up from the swampy water.

“Hm.” Lathe kept a cool head. She didn’t panic. She looked at her data slate and pressed a few buttons along its edge. “I detect traces of radiation. I think it’s a variety of mudcrab.”

I yanked her back by the tail just before the mirelurk could bring its heavy claw down on her head.

“I’ve fought these before,” I told her. “They’re tougher than they look. Shoot at the underside and joints, don’t bother attacking that big shell on the back.”

It was actually a little different from the ones I’d killed in Dark Harbor. These were more segmented, with a fringe of tiny fins along the edge of their entire shell ending in a plume of wiggling motion at their tail.

“Shoot… oh. I should have brought a gun!” Lathe looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

I gave her a look. “What were you going to do if we got attacked by raiders?”

“I would have asked them politely, but firmly, to leave,” she said. “They’re not stupid. They don’t want to anger my tribe or the machine spirit.”

“Just… don’t get killed for a few minutes, okay?” I couldn’t criticize her too much, I didn’t have a real weapon either. I did have a lot of glue, though. I fired the GLUU Gun at the mirelurk’s bottom half. It had so many legs I barely even had to aim. It lurched to a stop with three of its dozen claws stuck to the boardwalk.

It screeched. I opened my mouth to make some kind of really cool one-liner, but the words died in my mouth when more of the mirelurks started crawling out of the water. It gave me a smug look, somehow, with its expressionless chitin face.

“Calling for help isn’t fair!” I complained. “Lathe, give me your biggest wrench!”

Her magic flickered along her toolbelt. She looked back at her bag of tools. “What kind? Torque? Ratcheting? Adjustable?”

“The type doesn’t matter!”

“You have to use the right tool for the right job!” she scolded me.

“I need one I can use as a club.”

“You’ll want the pipe wrench, then.” She floated one over to me. It was worn in the way that something got when it was used for a hundred years and lovingly maintained. When I grabbed it, it felt good and heavy. It was made out of metal that was designed to be abused.

I charged around the stuck mirelurk and to the ones trying to climb up out of the water, swinging the wrench down on their claws and cracking them, following it up with a shove back into the green-brown swamp water of the lagoon.

One of them grabbed the wrench with a claw and I instinctively slammed my head down into its face. It was a really good move in a barroom brawl, but less good against something with an armored skull. If my skull wasn’t also armored it would have gone much more poorly. The mirelurk’s face cracked open and it screeched and fell back in pain.

“The next one of you who tries anything will get the same, uh…” I watched a crab twice the size of the others pull itself out of the water. One of its claws was massive, almost as long as the rest of its body. It looked like it could cut a pony in half.

I fired glue at its legs, tangling them for all of three seconds before it smashed through the hardening epoxy. Tactically speaking, this was a bad thing.

The water surged. The giant enemy crab and I both turned to look. An alligator lunged out of the depths with the speed and force of a runaway train. The massive jaws snapped shut around the mirelurk and dragged it back under, the monster thrashing and fighting the whole time and utterly powerless to resist.

I hadn’t moved. I’d totally frozen up.

The mirelurk I’d glued down tore itself free, leaving one leg behind and flopping back into the water to swim the other direction.

“...Big,” I said quietly.

“T-the Founder imported over twenty different species of alligator, since the wildlife preserve was one of the first attractions here,” Lathe said, her throat dry. “I’m not sure what species that was exactly, since there was likely crossbreeding and some mutation from the radiation, but…”

“Big,” I repeated.

She nodded. “Even bigger than the one in the utilidors.”

“Let’s stay away from the water,” I decided, keeping a close eye on any ripples or bubbles as we edged around the monster-infested pit. There was a building on the far side of the dock that looked like it was the old entrance for the ride. It had once been ornate with sculpted sweeping shapes, the way ponies thought the future would look before the war, all soft curves and attractive trim in now-rusting chrome.

I felt a little safer once we were inside. I was aware that the gator we’d seen could easily smash through the walls if it felt like it, but hopefully, it was enjoying enough of a meal that it didn’t need a snack.

“We ended up in the right place,” Lathe noted. We were standing in a winding line around mostly-collapsed brass and chain stanchions It formed a zig-zagging path from the entrance down a wide ramp towards the ride entrance. Lathe held out her tablet with her telekinesis, letting me have a look at the glowing screen. Something had smashed through them, leaving a straight path across the room of broken chains and bent poles.

I couldn’t interpret everything it was saying, but I could sure see the arrow was pointing in the direction we were going.

“I set it to pick up on the short-wave signals that were coming off the debris we found. Otherwise, I would have detected the life forms in the bay.” She took the tablet back and manipulated the knobs and keys. “There’s an active signal not far from here. And before you ask, yes, I did filter you out.”

“I wasn’t going to ask but I should have known to,” I admitted. “It’s nice working with a smart pony again.”

She blushed slightly, her ears twitching. She slipped her rebreather over her snout to cover up the pink tone in her cheeks and pulled her loupe back on. “Thank you. It’s nice being able to use my talents in something besides maintenance.”

We followed the path of destruction around the corner. I felt it crawling on and under my skin at the same time Lathe’s tablet beeped warnings.

There was something like a field of flowers, made of twisted metal. Sheets of dark, lead-like metal curled into shape and edged in a thin layer of frost that I knew had to be razor-sharp chips and splinters.

“Stay back,” I warned.

“It’s the same material as the crash site. The signal is too strong here, it’s washing out any other directionality.” She tapped her tablet a few more times.

In the center of the field, motion started. A darker blossom, as big as my head and carbon-black, curled open. The lotus spread wide, revealing something in the center of the flower.

I frowned. “That’s another one of those virtual ride orbs.”

“There were rumors they were going to re-open this area as one of the first virtual rides,” Lathe explained. She took a step towards it, then retreated when she realized how close she’d come to treading on the nanometal.

“She wants me to dive in,” I mumbled. “But why? Mom kicked me out last time.”

“It could be a trap of some kind,” Lathe said.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “You have any rope?”

She produced some thin but strong plastic rope, and I tied it around my hoof.

“I’m going to poke it,” I told her. “If it’s taking too long or I seem like I’m in trouble, yank my hoof off it.”

“Didn’t you say it was a bad idea to touch that material?” Lathe reminded me. The oversized memory orb was in the middle of a nanometal field.

I waggled my metal-covered hoof at her.

“I can’t get much more infected than I already am,” I told her, hoping I wasn’t wrong about that, but I’d done stupider things before. “It’s less dangerous for me.”

I took a few careful steps into the unearthly flower field, feeling metal debris crunching under me, and touched the orb in the middle of that black lotus.

I was standing in a place almost exactly like the one I’d left. The metal flowers were gone, and all the lights were working, shining brightly but not blinding. Music was playing, a faint adventurous tune.

In front of me, a stylized brass and crystal submarine that looked more like a rocket ship crossed with a dolphin than anything Equestria had ever really produced was stopped, with a happy looking attendant standing next to it and ushering me inside. I couldn’t quite get a grasp on their face, like it was a blur.

“Hello Chamomile,” Lady of Dark Waters said. “Why don’t you join me?”

The vampire queen was already inside the ride. Did I really want to be in a small space alone with her, even if it was just a pretend space in some kind of virtual ride?

“If you don’t play along with the ride, your mother will find us,” Lady warned. “As long as things seem to be going normally, her attention is directed elsewhere.”

I swallowed and stepped in. She was looking pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen her. Before she’d infected herself with SIVA deliberately and become even more of a monster.

I sat down in the plush seat across from her. There was room for a dozen ponies in the submarine. Once I sat down, the door slid closed and the ride slid into motion. She lounged across three seats in a pose that seemed seductive but was probably just her unconscious charm.

“This is the part where we talk about the enemy of my enemy,” Lady said. Around us, the submarine exited the building and into crystal clear ocean waters completely different from anything like the swamp outside. Colorful fish flashed past the crystal windows. Sunlight streamed down but didn’t bother her, because it was only as real as the rest of the illusion.

“Does that mean you’re helping my mother because I’m your enemy, or that you want to work with me to stop her?” I asked. “Because at this point it could go either way.”

“Both, of course,” Lady said dismissively. “But if you help me enough to make up for all the things you’ve done to me, I might upgrade you from enemy to minion. Then things would be much simpler for both of us, wouldn’t they?”

“Maybe,” I conceded. A shadow fell over us. I looked up at a whale swimming by, singing to us as it passed.

“Good. I’m glad you agree.” Lady smiled with her mouth full of fangs. “I can’t fight her on my own. It’s humiliating, but my body is a wreck. The SIVA needs a control core to function correctly, and after your attack, a fall, and direct sunlight…” she shrugged. “There’s not much left of me to fight.”

“You’re still here right now,” I pointed out.

She nodded. “After your mother took control of me, she connected us to the park systems. She’s trying to hack the main system, but it’s a better computer than she is even with most of my body turned into transistors.”

I nodded slowly. “Which leaves you free to go into these simulated rides?”

“They’re all connected to the main system, but I can jump in the middle like this and ride along. It’s something to do while my body is in torpor.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked. The submarine rumbled around us subtly. It was a wash of sensation like a sonar pulse.

“We don’t have much time,” Lady said. She stood up. “I’m going to give you my command codes. Lemon has already changed them in most places, but they might be useful in some way. You can keep her from using my SIVA to infect you.”

“Okay, so do we just hold hooves, or--”

She laughed. “Chamomile. I’m a vampire.”

She lunged for my neck faster than I could react, latching on with long fangs. I felt something like warm poison seep into my blood. Over her shoulder, while I gasped in shock and pain and some other complicated feelings about predatory mares who were nibbling on my neck, I saw three huge draconic heads rise out of the depths of the ocean. Their maws opened, and the windows exploded just before the illusion collapsed.

I gasped and stumbled back. Lathe yanked on my hoof, too late for any help inside the memory orb but it did keep me from falling on my flank in a field of caltrops, so overall it was an excellent job.

“I detected an unusual data surge,” Lathe said, instead of asking me if I was okay. “I knew those ride orbs weren’t safe! What did you see?”

“I had a talk with an old enemy. She wanted something from me.”

“Inside the simulation space?” Lathe frowned. “I suppose it’s possible. They were designed to allow ponies to interact so families and friends could ‘ride’ together. What did she want?”

“She wants to be my friend,” I said. I looked at my left forehoof, thinking. “I think she gave me a gift.”

“What was it? Some kind of information? Was it one of the old park templates? We’ve been trying to find the spec sheet for some of the pneumatics for a century!” She looked excited.

I put my hoof on the frost of metal shards covering part of the floor. I could feel the SIVA signal coming from it. I focused and pushed, and it melted away, steel flowers wilting and frost softening, everything deactivating. The black lotus fell away petal by petal until the orb was left on a plain brass pedestal.

“Something that might help even more than pneumatics,” I said. “Let’s go see if we can do anything for those hypnotized ponies.”

Chapter 113: Just Around The Riverbend

“I’m sorry,” I said. The words were worn so deeply into my soul that they’d be the only thing ponies remembered about me.

Lathe nodded sadly, pulling off her respirator when we passed through the bubble into her protected city of ETROT. We’d made a stop in the replica castle at the center of the old park and I’d tried to free her brother, but nothing had worked.

“The problem is the dark magic,” Lathe said. “It’s not something you can help with.”

The way she said it made it sound like she’d been hoping it would work but hadn’t really expected it. Disappointment. A broken promise I hadn’t even made. Worse, we were both idiots, me for giving her hope and her for thinking a dumb pegasus pony could help with a magical problem.

She didn’t say all that. She didn’t have to.

I followed her into town and she spotted Elder Flysteel, shaking her head sadly and walking into one of the concrete buildings, this one shaped in a tall A-frame like a tent. The front and back of it were concrete and stone up to just above where I’d be able to reach if I stood on my back hooves, and the rest was glass bricks. Inside, it was some kind of cafeteria or restaurant, with long communal tables and a kitchen area under a long, square skylight.

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked.

“Only if it’s not any trouble,” I said. “I haven’t done anything to earn it.”

“One of the principles ETROT was created on by the Founder is that nopony should go hungry,” Lathe said, patting my shoulder. “He was an idealist and left his ideas to us to make into reality. Are waffles okay?”

A few minutes later we were sitting down at one of the long plastic tables with plates of fresh, thick waffles and plenty of sugar syrup to put on them. The texture of the waffles told me the paste they’d been made from wasn’t any real kind of grain, but it also had that tang of vitamins and minerals that really fortified food could get.

“The way I see it, there are two problems,” Lathe explained, as she ate. She picked up salt and pepper shakers and used them as props. “First, there’s the magic.” She held up the salt. “Dark Magic was forbidden even before the war, and there are definitely no records of it here.”

“My Mom was a historian,” I sighed. “And she apparently had a lot of outside help before she turned herself into a monster. She probably learned how to do it from some old spooky book. Buck, maybe it was going to be part of Cozy Glow’s plans…”

“Worrying about that is thinking backwards,” Lathe chided. “Imaginseers look to the future. We learn from the past, but we think about solutions and next steps. We need an expert on Dark Magic.”

“...There was one pony,” I admitted. “That weird witchy unicorn.”

“Acadia.” Lathe Nodded. “I have no idea if she’s willing to help. There are all sorts of rumors about her. She might predate the park, or it could be a title that gets passed down from pony to pony, or she could be a raider just using the name because it makes ponies wary and keeps trouble away.”

“I’ll ask her for help,” I said. “I’m not in great shape, but magic doesn’t work so well on me. If she tries something I might be able to punch her in the snout and tell her to knock it off.”

“The other problem is this… infection that’s reprogramming the crystals,” Lathe held up the pepper shaker. “You were able to de-nature the flower field in the old submarine ride, but you couldn’t do anything about the crystals. Why?”

Because I was an idiot and a failure. She must have seen my thoughts on my face because she continued before I could say anything.

“It’s a machine. It might be an advanced, microscopic machine, but it is still a device. The machine spirit can help us if we can discover the right ritual to access it.”

I tapped my hoof against the table. “If it helps, I know some kinds of anti-radiation drugs can slow it down, and datura tea really helps a lot.”

“Every bit of information helps,” Lathe assured me. “So while you go to find the witch, I’ll work on the ritual. I have some ideas.”

She reached into her robes and produced an old map pamphlet, carefully folded and re-folded thousands of times over the years, taped and repaired when it split and annotated by dozens of hooves in a variety of inks.

“This is a map of the island,” she explained. It really did look like an alligator from above, curled up on itself so its snout was almost biting its tail. “We’re here, and the witch is here.”

She indicated the small town on the map and a hoof-drawn shape that was either a mushroom or something extremely rude that a pony had drawn in the middle of nowhere, as far as possible from the rest of the park. If she really predated construction here, maybe they’d kept the guests as far from the witch as possible.

“This map is extremely precious,” Lathe said. “It shows many of the secret paths and staff-only ways.”

“Thank you for letting me have it,” I said.

“When did I say you could have it?” Lathe asked, confused.

I grumbled to myself and trudged through the swamp, trying to stick to high ground and find some kind of landmark. The photocopy of the map I’d been given was washed out, black and white, and printed on cheap recycled scrap paper.

“Yep, she’s upset that I couldn’t help her brother,” I sighed. I tucked the map away into my salvaged barding and tried my best to hop on three hooves so I wouldn’t get the prosthetic either gummed up with mud or torn from my shoulder and lost in the mud.

There weren’t even proper paths to the spot. I’d wasted an hour trying to find my way through a tight ring of mangrove trees. They were like a solid wall and I would have sworn they were moving when I wasn’t looking to deliberately get in my way. I would have sworn that right up to the point when a few of them literally shifted to the side while I was looking and revealed a path inward.

“At least she’s good at magic,” I sighed. I glared at the trees and walked down the path since she was either taking pity on me or had enough fun teasing me.

The wall of trees gave way to a raised path that led through murky, root-filled water to a hillock that hosted a grove of the largest mushrooms I’d ever seen. I don’t just mean tree-sized, either. The small ones were like squat trees with trunks as wide as cloud-garden sheds. The big one was the match of a six-story skyscraper and probably just as tall as the model castle in the park. And it was somehow totally invisible until I stepped through that ring of trees.

“See if I ever work for you again!” somepony shouted. I looked around for somewhere to hide, but I was on a narrow path and I had a strong feeling that going into the water was a bad idea. I was half-sure the roots in the murk were moving on their own.

A pony in a black dress stormed out of a round door on the side of the mushroom and down the stairs, tearing a white lace apron from her front. She looked at me with fire in her eyes and jammed it into my chest.

“Here! You can make her stupid tea! I’m going back to being a pirate! At least then when I dress up like a maid they stuff bits into my apron pockets!” The mare stomped past me and out of the swamp. I blinked in surprise.

“What was that all about?” I mumbled. I stuffed the apron into a saddlebag because you never knew when something would be useful, then walked up the short flight of wide steps into the mushroom. And there wasn’t mush room inside, either. It was a tall room with more headroom than useful floorspace barely wide enough for two ponies to stand side by side.

There was something strange on the floor. A circular pad made of brushed copper with a ring of silver around the outer edge.

I assumed it might be some kind of elevator, stepped onto the pad, and--

--I reappeared in a flash of light somewhere else. I could smell ozone in the air and felt magic crackling around my hooves and spine.

“What the buck-- a teleportation circle?” I asked.

“If you are here to apply for de loyal assistant job, den you are just in time,” Acadia said. She was facing away from me, stirring a cauldron. The room was definitely inside the upper part of the mushroom, with walls made of lacquered wood supports and tool marks as if it had been carved in the same way as a mine shaft.

I cleared my throat. “So, uh, hi. Actually, I’m here for--”

Acadia held up a hoof and dropped something into the cauldron before turning to look at me. She glanced me over with mild distaste.

“Can you make tea?” she asked bluntly.

“Not very well,” I said.

“Hmph. An you won’ look good in a uniform anyway.” She shook her head and sighed. “De position just isn’ right for you, girl.”

“I’m not here to be your maid, I want help with a magical problem,” I said quickly. “But for your information I would look great in a maid outfit. I’m very fit.”

“I like de maids to be a little, eh,” Acadia made a sweeping motion with a forehoof. “Curvier. An’ good wit tea, dat part is more critical. Besides, you are de type of pony to bring messes to my door an’ not to clean dem from my floors, non? So what can de most powerful witch do for a little pony girl like you?”

“I need to find a way to break ponies free from the dark magic controlling them,” I said. “You were studying it at the resort, so you know what I’m talking about.”

“I do,” she agreed. “Dat is some serious hoodoo you’re talking about, oui?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem for the most powerful witch,” I countered.

She cackled. “Oh ho! Meybee so! But breaking de spell would only be temporary.” Her expression fell into a serious line. “De problem is dat the spell is renewed every night. If you break somepony out of it, dey will just be enchanted again de next time dey sleep. It’s deep within dey spirit, you see?”

“So you can’t help?” I asked.

“I didn't say dat. I kin help you. I can see snatches of de future an' I can see de kind of hoodoo you really need. I kin make it, but it won't be easy or cheap. De price may be higher den you expect!”

“It’s better than nothing,” I said. “If there’s something that can help, I can at least get Lathe’s brother out of there like I promised…”

“Making promises, eh? Dat is dangerous. Promises are powerful.”

“I intend to keep it,” I said.

“Good,” Acadia nodded. “A pony should stand by her word. But if you want my help, den you must do something for me.”

I took out the apron and grimaced.

“Non,” Acadia said. “It would be amusing to see you try, but I need a permanent assistant. I keep losing dem somehow. Dis one quit, de one before got eaten by a zombie when it was not even de zombie weather, and before dat my apprentice up an’-- well, dat isn’t important.” She waved a hoof dismissively. “Find me a new maid.”

“A curvy mare who can make tea?” I guessed.

“Dat is my preference, but what is really important is dat dey can take care of demselves. I don’ want another one getting eaten. An if dey know enough about poison to avoid eating any of de dangerous herbs in my garden, dat would be good too. De tea cupboard is not for de unwise.”

“You know that’s a really specific list of requirements,” I grumbled.

Acadia shrugged. “An yet I can see on you face dat you already have a pony coming to mind.”

“I might know a pony who is good with poison, and she’s attractive, and knows how to fight,” I admitted. “I have no idea if she can make tea. I do know she’s probably pretty upset with me after what happened the last time we met.”

“Dat seems like a personal problem,” Acadia scoffed. “Go an’ get her. If she does well enough, den I will make you your hoodoo.”

“Right,” I sighed. I looked around and made a sound. “Uh, how do I…”

“De same way you came in. De fastpass.”

“...Fastpass?”

Acadia scowled. “De teleportation circle, girl! Dey are all over de park. You can use dem to go back to any fastpass circle dat you have been to before. Dey were going to replace the monorail, but like everyting else in de new park, it never worked as well as dey wanted.”

“She could have at least told me how it works,” I grumbled. I’d had to walk across the entire island to get back to the resort. It wouldn’t have annoyed me half as much if I hadn’t known I could have teleported instead and saved everypony time and effort.

The resort was still there when I arrived. Part of me thought it might burn down because I wasn’t there, but it had stood for centuries already and it was probably safer if I stayed away if I was being honest with myself.

“Chamomile!” Grog waved to me when he saw me approaching. I waved back to the security guard. He looked me over. “You look like you rolled around in the mud.”

“At last I haven’t had any more legs fall off,” I said. I smiled back at him. He looked exhausted. The bags under his eyes were a full set of luggage. The stallion glanced back into the resort and motioned for me to follow him.

“I need some coffee,” he said. “You want a cup?”

“Sure.” I followed him to one of the kiosks. I expected him to order some kind of super complicated drink using one of the dozens of options of flavor syrups and foams and toppings, but he just stared blearily at the menu for a moment before ordering two black coffees and giving me one of the cups.

“I’ve been herding ponies all day,” he explained. “Some ponies were taking medications to help them sleep but it just makes them impossible to wake up. The caretakers are doing a good job of keeping them from hurting themselves but they aren’t designed to take them back to their rooms and lock them in until they wake up.”

“It’d probably be considered very rude to have your guests locked inside during normal operations,” I guessed. We sat down at one of the tables. He looked grateful to be off his hooves because he’d been up all night. I was glad to be off my hooves because, again, I had to walk across almost the entire bucking island.

At least my prosthetic wasn’t complaining. I took the opportunity to take out the folded paper Elder Flysteel had given me and followed the prayer-slash-maintenance guide to top up the oil. Just in case the machine spirit was a real thing.

“They weren’t designed to be rude,” Grog agreed. He wached me with obvious bemusement. “If it gets much worse I might have to put them in emergency mode. They’ll put everypony in a shelter even if they have to carry them there.”

“It might be worth trying to sleep down there and see if the dark magic can get in,” I suggested. “I don’t know much about sorcery but I’m pretty sure concrete and steel are still pretty good at stopping spells.”

“I’ll try it tonight,” Grog said. “Thanks.”

I nodded. “Have Bird of Paradise and Gleamblossom given you any trouble?”

“I don’t like them having them so close to town,” Grog sighed. “Especially with everypony on edge like this, if more raiders show up I don’t know how well we’ll be able to fight them off.”

“I might have a way to help with that. Think you’d feel better if they were on the other side of the island?”

“Now you’re asking me if I’d rather have danger right next door or somewhere far away where I can’t see it,” Grog joked. He tapped his hoof against the counter. “I’d be better to have the distance, for now.”

“Great. I’m going to offer them a job.”

He looked unsure. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but you need to be careful about making agreements with them. They’re dangerous ponies. They spent buck knows how long planning revenge, making deals with raiders, brewing poison…”

“But they didn’t dump the poison into the water tanks,” I pointed out. “They’re not insane.”

“Maybe not, but there’s a lot of bad blood there, and they’ve got a grudge against you. It’s in their nature to try and hurt you.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

The ruined farm was looking better than I remembered. The fields hadn’t been plowed, but the farmhouse was looking more together, with the holes in the roof covered with a tarp and boards taken down from windows and doors.

A knife pressed against my neck.

“You came to the wrong place,” Bird of Paradise growled. “I could kill you right now.”

“You could try,” I corrected. “But then you won’t know why I’m here and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to find out. That’s why you’re talking instead of stabbing.”

She sighed and walked around me, putting the knife back into a sheath hidden under her small saddlebags. “You’re right,” Bird of Paradise admitted. “So what do you want? You don’t seem like the type to gloat.”

“The opposite,” I told her. “I came to offer you some help.”

“With revenge?” she asked. “It’s a little late for that. Do you know how much my mother is hurting having to be out here where the love of her life died? Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose everything?”

“You do not want to start comparing tragedies with me,” I cautioned her. “I’ve been through stuff that would turn you white.”

She looked at my pale coat and shrugged, accepting that it might be the case. “So?”

“I want to offer you a job,” I said. “You don’t want to be here but you don’t have anywhere to go.”

“What kind of job? Following you around? Are you going to ask me to be your deadly little sidekick?” she laughed.

“Do you look good in a maid uniform?” I asked. She stopped and looked at me with a combination of worry and confusion. “The witch, Acadia, needs a new apprentice. You’re the first pony I thought of that meets all the requirements.”

“You want me to work for a witch.”

“I have no idea what they pay is like but it’s got to be better than farming.”

Bird of Paradise glanced at the door, thinking. “I won’t leave my mother here alone.”

“Can your mother make tea?” I asked.

“Of course she can. We had to do everything ourselves in our old bungalow. None of that robotic help from the caretakers.”

“Perfect. It’s a two-for-one deal. I don’t think Acadia will mind having two ponies to split the chores and know enough not to try eating anything poisonous.”

“I’ll talk to my mother. Wait here.”

She walked to the door, gave me one last look to make sure I wasn’t following her, then bolted inside and closed the door tight behind her.

“Oh yeah, she’s not plotting betrayal at all,” I mumbled to myself. “Good work, Chamomile.”

I waited for a few minutes until Bird of Paradise stepped back outside.

“We didn’t even get a chance to unpack,” Bird said. “My mom is going to box the rest back up. I’ll go with you to check it out, and if it checks out I’ll come back and help her with our things.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “I’ll lead the way.”

“Yeah, no,” Bird of Paradise scoffed. “Show me where it is on the map. I know this place better than you do.”

Bird of Paradise had suggested a map that went in a wide arc around some of the rougher brush I’d gone through on the way back.

“You think too much like a pegasus,” she said while she led me down an old path. An abandoned passenger carriage on one side of the path let me guess what had originally gone through here. It didn’t have a harness for somepony to pull it, and there was no room for an engine, so I had to guess the metal trough in the road had something to do with it.

“I am a pegasus,” I pointed out.

She shrugged. “A grounded one. The fastest way to walk somewhere isn’t always just going in a straight line. Following this road is a longer distance but we avoid walking through the middle of the gator preserve.”

“There’s a gator preserve? That explains a few things…”

“And this is the idiot that took down all my raiders,” Bird sighed.

“I’m very hard to kill.”

Bird snickered to herself like she was thinking of a funny joke. The road we were following continued onto a short concrete bridge and then into something that could have been the exciting downtown district of some pre-war city, a street lined with nightclubs, arcades, and shops. Like the rest of the park, all the things that took away from the fantasy had been surgically removed. No apartments or parking lots or gutters. Just the fun parts.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” I asked.

“Oh, definitely,” Bird teased. She stopped in the street. “You idiot, I’ve led you right into the hooves of the Downtown Delvers, the meanest bunch of raiders on the island!”

“Did I hear somepony mention the Delvers?” A pony stepped out from behind the neon facade of a sign on the second story of a nightclub. She was a mare in a combination of a nightgown and black leather armor. She looked down at Bird. “As I live and breathe! If it isn’t Bird of Paradise!”

“Chamomile, this is Belle View. She’s the leader around here,” Bird explained. I looked around as more ponies stepped out into the street from the shadows of old stores and buildings. I recognized some of the armor and style.

“They’re the raiders you hired to attack the resort?” I guessed.

“And they’ve got one buck of a grudge against you,” Bird of Paradise said.

“Oh darlin, that ain’t true,” Belle View protested. “You’re the one who led my dearies to their fate. That means the debt is on you.”

Bird of Paradise’s expression fell. “But… she’s the one who--!”

“You don’t blame a pony for defending themselves,” Belle said. “Still, we don’t want to look soft. Everypony? Kill ‘em both. I want them turned into crocodile kibble.”

“I can’t believe they’d betray me!” Bird of Paradise yelled. She kicked a rock off the road and into the swamp. Behind us, several buildings were on fire and ponies were lying in the streets. The smart ones were pretending to be dead, the dumb ones were trying to get up. I sighed and walked out of the small fake downtown area.

“Good thing Lathe isn’t here or she’d be angry about all the broken machines,” I said. It was important to find a silver lining.

Belle pulled a hidden throwing knife from her dress and threw it over her shoulder at a noise. A pony yelped and fell out of the shadows. She glared back at them, then followed after me.

“I’m not going to apologize,” she said.

“For trying to kill me? Again?” I asked.

“You would do the same thing if you had a chance!” she snapped. “You ruined my life!”

I stopped and turned around to look at her. “Really? You don’t think the way you decided to try and burn down the resort might be the reason your life is ruined?”

“I’m not apologizing for that, either.”

I glared at her for a few more seconds then turned again and started stomping away. It wasn’t very long before I heard her hooves behind me.

“Why are you following me?” I asked.

“We’re still going to the witch, right?” Bird of Paradise asked. “You need me.”

“You think I’m still going to introduce you to her?!” I scoffed.

“I think she has something you want and you don’t have any other options.”

I hated that she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Just… try not to slip on anything and accidentally stab me in the back,” I shot back at her.

“I’ll be very careful,” she promised.

“She does look good in a maid outfit,” I admitted. Bird of Paradise made it work almost as well as the black leathers, even if the apron and skirts left more to the imagination instead of being on display like a menu.

“The tea isn’t too terrible,” Acadia allowed. We were sitting at a table made of old wood, worn smooth by use and marked with ancient stains, some of which had to be blood. “I tink somepony added foxglove to dis.”

“Isn’t that highly poisonous?” I asked.

“It is,” Acadia confirmed. We both took deliberate sips of tea while Bird of Paradise squirmed. “Oh, I am being rude! I should offer some tea to de new apprentice. Why don’ you sit down and have a cup?”

“I have to… clean…” Bird of Paradise said, backing away quickly and finding something else to do. She muttered to herself once she thought she was out of earshot. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I like her,” Acadia said. “She has de right spirit! Ambition an’ no fear to seek it out.”

I put the teacup down and groaned. “Good. I don’t know where I’d find anypony else who wants the job.”

“I’ll work on you hoodoo. It’ll take a bit.” Acadia stood up and picked up a staff with her magic, shaking it until the crystal at the end started glowing. “Apprentice!”

“Me?” Bird peeked out from behind a bookcase.

“Yes, you. Get me de notes I have on de crystal empire stones. I haven’t thought about dem in ages an’ I wan’ to refresh myself.”

Bird of Paradise looked around. “...Where are they?”

Acadia rapped the end of her staff against the floor, sending up a spout of multicolored sparks. “Don’ make me do everything myself! Find dem yourself! It’s part of your job!”

Bird of Paradise ran off, obviously terrified. The overwhelming feeling of magic in the air probably had something to do with it. Acadia watched her bolt into another room and start going through books and scrolls. The witch shook her head.

“She’ll have to learn on de job,” Acadia said. “Her mother kin tend the garden an’ help out with meals, so I’ll house dem both and keep dem from doing anyting else stupid like trying to get revenge on de resort.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Come here.” Acadia held out her hoof. I stepped over and took it. “I will teach you how to register at de fast pass kiosk. De system works, but it was locked down, so you need to use a spell to do it.”

“I’m a pegasus,” I reminded her.

“An you is carrying a hundred pony’s worth of enchanted metal! I could teach a stick to cast dis spell, I can teach a pony.” She closed her eyes and focused, and I felt heat on my left forehoof. It burned. I yelped in pain and tried to pull back. She didn’t let go, her hoof sticking to mine like we were glued together.

She looked into my eyes seriously. Her horn was glowing faintly.

“Feel de magic,” she said. “It don’ matter what kind of pony you are.”

I could feel it. It was rough and intrusive, like when I’d picked that lock in the utilidors. It was slipping inside a mechanism and changing things manually, but in a sort of abstract, magical way.

Sparks flew between our hooves, and she finally let go. I stumbled back, not
expecting her to release me, and looked at how much damage she’d done. A symbol had been burned into my hoof, carved into the metal as if the witch had a welding torch inside her leg.

“You should be able to git back to de machine pony town on you own,” Acadia said. “Dere is a kiosk dere, an’ once you activate it den traveling here will be easy, non? I won’t even have to open de door for you myself like I have been.”

“Thanks, I think?” I said.

“You tink,” she cackled. “Come back later an’ de hoodoo will be ready.”

“She couldn’t be more specific than later?” Lathe asked. She pointed to the middle of town. “Over there.”

I followed her guidance to the bronze circle set into the ground. It was wider here than the one at Acadia’s hut, bit enough for a small family to use all at once. I pressed my marked hoof against it and focused, trying to copy what I’d felt. It was like reaching outside my body. There was an electric spark, and the stylized alligator pressed into the surface of the platform glowed green for a moment.

“These things aren’t safe,” Lathe warned. “They’re purely magic. The machine spirit can’t intervene if anything goes wrong.”

“You’re a unicorn,” I pointed out. “You do magic.”

“Yes, but I have a license,” Lathe informed me smugly. “I’m not using that thing. It never worked correctly. The Founder built the monorail for a reason!”

“Because he loved trains?”

“Yes! They’re a pure expression of the machine spirit’s power and will!” Lathe exclaimed.

“Okay, okay,” I agreed. “No teleporting with you. So you said you had somewhere you wanted to go?”

“Yes. I realized what we need is a pure, uncorrupted conduit to the park’s control system. I think I know just the place to go.”

She pulled out her map, unfolding it and pointing to buildings that had been unmarked on the original but had hoof-written annotations next to them.

“They made the memory orbs for the rides here,” she said. “The control system had to have a connection to program them. It’s the perfect place to find what I need - the original codes for the New Park Experience access!”

“How likely is it to be infested with monsters or raiders?” I asked.

“It’ll be fine,” she assured me. “You’re a strong pony! We’ll just be careful, and I’ll have my scanner.”

Chapter 114: Derezzed

“Why is this so far away from everything else?” I asked as we walked along an unusually poorly-maintained path. We were going down the east coast of the island, and piles of ash still lingered in places. Lathe kept her rebreather on the whole time. It made me wonder if I should be using one.

“Safety and secrecy,” Lathe said, watching her tablet. I glanced at it myself. She was looking at environmental readings. I wasn’t entirely sure about the units everything was displayed in, but she didn’t seem worried yet. “The history of the park is long and as arcane as any spell.”

The way she said it made me think she really wanted to discuss it but had been told to stop before. “We’ve got some time,” I reminded her.

“It all started centuries ago,” Lathe said. “The Founder was born a few decades before Princess Cadance was crowned, towards the end of Equestria’s Golden Age. Of course, it was actually called that because ponies put gold on everything to honor Princess Celestia, but that’s nit-picking.

“He was an artist and a dreamer. His first real success came with his creation of Gabby Gator, and he pioneered the creation of comics and cartoons. He was so deeply involved with the animation industry that Welsh Rarebit became a household name. He even had a type of cheese sandwich named after him!”

“A high honor,” I agreed, trying not to sound sarcastic. I must have succeeded, or else Lathe wasn’t really listening to me as long as I made noises for her to continue.

“He made a small fortune with movies and animation, but he wasn’t like greedy ponies that just want to hoard their treasure like gold. He wanted to use it to recapture his foalhood. All the things he loved - the wild west, trains, the magic of Canterlot, adventures with pirates and submarines and spaceships! His first attempt was on Equestria’s coast, and it was a huge success that turned his small fortune into a large one. It was also stuck in the middle of a city with nowhere to grow.”

I nodded. “So he came here.”

“So he came here!” Lathe confirmed, excited. “He wanted everything to be perfect. More than enough room for anything. Artificial reefs and sandbars make the island look like an alligator from above. Raising most of the park a story above the old ground level to give it a solid foundation and a place to build the infrastructure he needed without digging through the swamp.”

“The utilidors, right?”

“The problem with building anything in a swamp is that it sinks into the ground,” Lathe explained. “The foundation of the park is like a big plate sitting on top of the island to spread out the weight and anchored down by deep piles. It let him build up and down. Some of the park systems are actually deeper than the utilidors and hang from that layer instead of being supported by the soft ground.”

“So he built a huge, amazing park, got your ancestors to make it all work, and then…?” I asked. “What’s all this NPE stuff, the crystals, memory orbs…?”

“Welsh Rarebit’s legacy is immortal, but he wasn’t. He became very sick and eventually died.” Lathe sighed. “It was a huge loss for Equestria. The company and empire he built would live on without him, but those ponies didn’t share his vision. They cared about profit. Novelty. Putting their own mark on his work.

“They came up with the concept of the New Park Experience. It was something that got entirely out of hoof. First, it was robots everywhere taking jobs from the average pony. That was mostly fine -- it was dull manual labor and customer service, and it really wasn’t a terrible change. Robots aren’t creative and can’t lead, so all the important decisions had to come from ponies anyway.”

“The robots are also really nice and polite.”

“Considering how rude and entitled guests can still be, that’s a vital part of the operation,” Lathe agreed. “Then there were the crystals. One of the most expensive parts of running the park was keeping it fresh. Not just looking new, but having something new for guests to see and experience. Decorating everything for holidays, adding touches to the park to make the theme more complete, that kind of important work.

“The crystals were supposed to take care of all of that. They’d project massive illusions. Somepony in management could press a button and have Hearth’s Warming decorations appear in an instant. Cartoon characters could wander the park like they were really there. And then they went too far. They said all the work we Imaginseers did was like… building a playground for foals. Who needs a perfect statue of Princess Celestia waving from a balcony when you can just have an illusion fly around and greet the guests?”

“Sorry,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“Even the rides… Memory orbs were invented, and somepony put their memory of being on the ride into one and sold it. The new park management sued them for stealing intellectual property! Their argument was that being able to experience the ride over and over again with the orb was a direct replacement for the real thing.”

“I’ve used a few memory orbs. I can see it,” I nodded.

“But then the thought wormed around and ate its own tail, as the dragons say,” Lathe continued. “If the memory orb was just like being on the ride, if they were arguing in court that it replaced the ride entirely…”

She looked at me to finish the thought. I could see where it was going. “...then why have the original ride and all that upkeep and wasted space.”

“Exactly,” she grimaced. “They experimented with it for a few years but couldn’t crack it until they went to some trade show and found ponies selling a kind of… magical game. A pony would use it and go into a virtual world controlled by a powerful maneframe. It wasn’t perfectly realistic, but they spent most of the company’s fortunes on getting the technology and a maneframe that could run it.”

“A virtual world?” I mumbled. Lathe didn’t hear me over the sound of her tablet’s radiation warning beeps.

“They built most of the infrastructure but never got around to replacing the rides,” Lathe said. “The public hated the idea. They would have done it anyway -- they spent too many bits to stop. But then, the war.”

“The war,” I sighed.

“In a way, it saved the park,” Lathe said. “It would probably be a shell of itself otherwise. Ponies wandering around an illusion tailored just to them and whatever was popular that week. Trivial novelty instead of the Founder’s dream.”

She stopped and looked at her tablet, then led me towards a chain-link fence. The fact it was so industrial and uninviting made me instantly aware that it wasn’t something guests were supposed to see. Beyond the fence was a large, low building, a small factory with broken-down trucks lined up on one side of a parking lot that had cracked and sunken into the soft ground, turning it into a checkerboard of puddles and asphalt.

“Nopony has come here in a long time,” Lathe whispered. “Even we Imaginseers don’t go in to look for salvage. It’s taboo. And against union regulations, which is even more important.”

“Do you want to wait here?” I asked.

“Do I want to? Yes. But this is more important than what I want.”

“I’m guessing the raiders around the island don’t care much about your union regulations?” I asked. I kept my eyes open, waiting for shots to ring out.

“No, but they have other concerns. Look.” Lathe pointed. There was a small table set up just to the side of the door, under an overhang where the ash wouldn’t get to it. Hundreds of candles had been burned here, in front of a small statue of Princess Celestia. I think I’d seen dozens like it in the park gift shops.

“A shrine?” I asked. “Why here?”

“I don’t know,” Lathe admitted. “But it’s a shrine to Celestia, hardly the worst pony to pray to.”

I nodded, and both of us bowed respectfully to the shrine, just on the off-chance there was something to it. You never knew. Raiders were desperate ponies in bad situations and often on a buckload of mind-altering substances, but they weren’t all stupid. Hundreds of them weren’t likely to be stupid in the same way without good reason.

Lathe stopped at the front door, her hoof on the push-bar.

“If it’s taboo, I could just do it for you,” I suggested. I expected her to argue with me. I think part of her was about to do it on instinct, the same way I’d yell at somepony for calling me chicken. She fought it down and nodded, taking a step back and letting me get the door for her.

“The union regulations are very firm on this,” she told me quietly. “I’m going in after you to make sure you don’t get into trouble. Whatever machine spirits are here, be aware I am not here to violate the sacred lines between trades. I apologize for the intrusion.”

She bowed her head and stepped inside. The door squealed when I let it close behind us. It wasn’t as dark as I expected. Square lights in the ceiling flickered, maybe half as bright as they were when they were new. It was dirty in here, with ash and dust piling up in the corners.

I heard a squeaking sound behind me. I looked back to see Lathe oiling the door hinges. She gave me a look and shrugged.

“I don’t suppose you have a map of this place?” I asked. She shook her head. “That’s fine. So, the big delivery doors for trucks were over on that side of the building, so that’s probably storage and warehousing. It looked like this place was only one floor, so labs and offices are probably on the other side of the building where they won’t have workers going through.”

“There was an emergency generator outside,” Lathe said. “Any maneframes or servers should be near the utility rooms, and those would be next to the generator. We should go to the back corner first.”

“I like the way you think,” I told her. “I’ll go first. You try to keep me out of trouble when I end up doing something stupid.”

Lathe nodded quietly. I could only see one eye between the complicated multi-lens loupe she was wearing and her rebreather, but she still looked nervous. I gave her a reassuring pat with my prosthetic leg - I think she appreciated it more than she would if I’d used a real limb. Lathe nodded and I started walking toward the back.

The lights flickered, and I jumped. Celestia stood at the back of the room. When the lights snapped back on, she vanished.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“I did,” Lathe said. “That must be why the raiders set up the shrine.”

I saw bullet holes in the far wall, behind where she’d appeared. They’d tried shooting her first. I guess that was a natural reaction to having a princess appear out of the dark when a pony was, presumably, already half-starved and on combat drugs.

When I trotted closer to investigate, I saw something in the air. I stopped and took a step back, then to the side, then the other side. The air was strange there. A faint multi-colored haze that seemed almost more like tired eyes and sun blindness than anything real.

The lights went off, and Celestia appeared again, smiling faintly. This time I had a better look at her. I could see through her body in the moments before she disappeared when the lights came back.

“It’s a holographic illusion,” Lathe said. She got my attention and pointed at the ceiling. A small crystal array hung there in a metal frame. “The wiring must have degraded. The image is too faint to see when the lights are on.”

“Why would they put it here?” I asked I stepped closer and now that I knew what I was looking for, I could just barely make out the slightly moving, slightly alive, looping image of Celestia. Every few seconds, it snapped back to the first position it was in, like a record skipping.

“Patriotism?” Lathe suggested. “Though then Luna would have been more appropriate…”

“Maybe Celestia was just a test?” I supposed. “You said they had an illusion of her flying around the miniature castle in the park. This one could have been a proof of concept to show their bosses that they could make the technology work.”

Lathe nodded slowly. “That… does make sense. That array in the ceiling looks like a bench model. I think you’ve got it right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they put this next to the animatronic Celestia from the Hall of Princesses just to prove the point to investors who only cared about making more bits.”

She huffed in annoyance at ponies who were all long dead and followed me to the back of the building. Once we were past the image of Celestia, things were a lot cleaner and less overturned. Instead of looking half-looted, it just looked like ponies had fled in the middle of a normal day. A ladder leaned against the wall, where drop-ceiling panels were removed in a half-finished wiring job.

Faint music played over crackling speakers. It was light elevator music, the volume almost entirely eclipsed by white noise that had overtaken it on the ancient sound system. It reminded me of something. Maybe the Equestrian national anthem as played on jazz piano?

The music crackled, and I realized I’d been walking almost half-blind and dazed through the hallways, not really watching where I was going.

“This looks like the place,” Lathe said. I had to look around to figure out what she meant. It was almost like I’d taken a few moments to nap on my hooves, that kind of rough disorientation where time and space all get mixed up.

There was a thick metal door set into the wall, sealed with a keypad and card swipe. A small plaque on the wall noted this was the Virtua-Ride Systems Lab. It really did sound like the right spot. I tried the door. It was locked.

“Can you get it open?” I asked.

Lathe leaned in close to the door to look at the lock. “This is a purely digital device. Almost no moving parts. I’m not sure it can be picked.” She took out a few slim tools and started feeling around the edges of the panel. “Sometimes you can access the mechanism on locked doors if they aren’t installed perfectly flush to the wall.”

I let her try it for a few more minutes before she shook her head and stepped back.

“It’s properly made and installed. I suspect it’s also a fail-closed door, so even if we cut all the power to it, we’d just make it impossible to open.”

I had no idea how she’d determine that. “Why do you think that?”

“It’s what I’d do.”

A pony couldn’t argue with that logic. “Let me try.”

She stepped aside, giving me enough room to kick the door open, which was clearly what Lathe expected me to try. If it had been a regular interior door I’d probably give it a go, but this thing looked like it was designed to stop exactly that. No, this time I was going to go with the more subtle approach.

I put my hoof on the lock and closed my eyes. I was probably the only pegasus in the world that had had a ghost pulling spells through their spine. I knew what magic was supposed to feel like. I let it flow through me. Through closed eyelids, I saw a dim blue glow. The door let out a distorted beep and clicked open under my hoof.

“That was… very interesting,” Lathe said.

I opened my eyes again and saw the glow fading from my outstretched hoof.

“I think I’m getting pretty good at this,” I told her. “Maybe if I work at it for a few decades I’ll be able to throw fireballs.”

“Please, that’s a silly use of magic,” Lathe scoffed. “I can build you a fireball launcher, no magic required.”

She motioned for me to push the door the rest of the way open. I led her into the next room, and she’d been absolutely right. There were servers on the back wall along with a lot of extra cables strung up on the walls and floor. Unlike the SIVA-built horror we’d seen in the tunnels, this had the purposeful appearance of industry. Ponies had made this, and been thoughtful enough to use brightly colored tape on the cables running along the floor to keep them in place and keep anypony from tripping over them.

“Hold on,” Lathe said, motioning for me to stop before I went too far. She held up her tablet, pushing the buttons on the side in rapid succession. “I was able to connect to the local network.”

“Is that good?”

“It means things are working properly.” The tablet beeped. Lathe looked back at it. “It seems like a lot of this is set up for remote real-time monitoring.”

“Monitoring what?”

Lathe tapped a few buttons. “That, I think.” She pointed across the room to where a glass orb sat like a gem, mechanical prongs holding in a setting with wires flush to the surface. Lathe studied her readings for a few moments. “I can’t be absolutely sure, but it looks like this place is clean. These are all isolated test servers off the park’s network. It hasn’t connected in a long time.”

“Think we can still get the codes we need?” I asked.

“The park system’s original administrator codes will be here,” Lathe confirmed. “However…”

“There’s always a ‘but’...”

“I don’t say ‘but’, I said ‘however’. It’s more sophisticated. The issue is that I need to find the right files, and this server is like a maze. It would help a lot if, for example, somepony put the server under load so I could see which files were in active use when this place was abandoned.”

“You want me to use the orb,” I said.

“It would be against union rules for me to suggest that.”

I sighed and put my big stupid hoof on the glass ball.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Another ride, I guess. Maybe something with alligators since Welsh Rarebit seemed to love them.

I was standing in a room that seemed to be made of cubes painted perfectly flat white. Not bright, shining white. Dull, greyish white. I couldn’t see any detail at all. No surface texture. Just… featureless cubes. Music played around me, but it sounded unfinished and rough and had a strange negative emotional aura to it.

“Hello and welcome to the Virtua-Ride Test Environment,” a digital voice said from all around me. “Please be aware that the physics test environment is a test environment used for testing. Serious physical injury is not part of the test. Please be aware that areas that are physically illegal may not be safe for virtual transit by sentient life forms.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

The voice didn’t respond. I took a careful step. With how smooth everything looked, I wasn’t sure what would happen. What if it was frictionless? When I didn’t go sliding across the room it felt almost anticlimactic.

“I hope Lathe is getting good data on this,” I mumbled.

“I am,” she said, her voice echoing around my ears.

“Woah! How are you doing that?” I looked around for a source.

“An intercom is part of the monitoring software,” she explained. “According to this, that virtual ride was set up as a physics test. Water, elevators, different surfaces. That kind of thing.”

“Should I wait here until you find the right file?” I asked.

“No, I came up with a faster way,” Lathe said. “Take a look around for something red.”

“Red?” I asked. I started moving. I’d been in something like a closed-off alleyway, and the textureless blocks made it hard to make out detail. I trotted forward and found a hallway, then followed that to… some version of an outside. It looked like an unfinished town, sculpted roughly in those grey blocks. The sky was a mess of pixelated blue and white, like somepony had spray-painted it onto a dome not far out of reach.

A single red coin hovered in the air in front of me, spinning slightly.

“This thing?” I asked. I grabbed it, and it vanished from my hoof, turning into motes of light. A chime played, and a floating number ‘1’ appeared in the air, vanishing after a moment.

“Good. I can see a leaderboard here with times for collecting eight red coins,” Lathe explained. “It’s set to contact the server and update the scores whenever the task is completed. It will have to expose the administrator codes to do that. I can intercept them from here.”

“I don’t need to get the high score, do I?” I asked.

“If you did I’d be yelling at you to move faster,” Lathe noted. “But I doubt you could. The first-place score is at zero seconds.”

I trotted around, looking for a second coin. “How is that possible?”

“It’s an unfinished test environment. He probably exploited some kind of glitch.”

I turned the corner in the street and saw something really strange. I’m not sure how to explain it properly, but it was like a pony-sized ball rolling around with a huge spatula on the front. I tilted my head and watched it bump into a wall then back up and try another direction.

“Weird,” I mumbled. Then I saw it, a second coin, just out of reach above me. Out of reach for a ground-bound pony. I spread my wings and flapped. And flapped harder. “Lathe, something’s wrong,” I called out.

“Testers, please do not attempt to fly in the testing area,” the digitized voice of the simulation warned. “Flying is currently disabled for inclusivity testing. Ensure that designs accommodate ponies of all tribes. And possibly some small dragons if the ride is non-flammable. Thank you.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. How am I supposed to get up there?” I stared up at it, trying to figure out the trick. I didn’t notice the ball-thing coming up behind me until the spatula slipped under my hooves. It made a happy beeping sound.

I was flung through the air, launched from what wasn’t a giant spatula but was in fact a small catapult. The coin hit me in the small of the back while I went sailing on top of a nearby building. The number ‘2’ flashed along with a pleasant ding of success. I slammed into the roof face-first.

“Ow,” I mumbled. Then I blinked. “Wait. Not ow? That didn’t hurt?”

The digitized voice came to life again. “Hello, testers. Please be aware that fall damage is disabled for this test. Keep this in mind when designing attractions. Patrons may be damaged if fall damage is enabled.”

“Are you alright?” Lathe asked. “I mean, you should be. You’re in a simulation. You can’t even be harmed.”

“I’m fine,” I reported. I stood up and looked around more carefully now that I had a higher vantage point. “Can you see what I’m seeing?”

“No. It’s more like a radio link.”

Now that I was higher up, it made sense. This wasn’t just some random town, it was supposed to be a crude version of Canterlot. Princess Celestia’s castle loomed overhead on a high plateau. The rest of the city had a few simplified, stark-white landmarks in what looked like a box. The horizon ended in a flat wall.

I spotted a coin on a rooftop only two houses over. I smirked to myself. Even without the ability to fly, I could still run and jump. I stepped back and galloped for the edge, jumping at the last second. I cleared the gap easily, hitting the far rooftop with all four hooves.

Or at least that’s what I intended. I went right through it like it wasn’t there. I yelped and plunged into a featureless grey room. A red coin spun next to where I’d fallen. I grabbed it and looked up at where I’d come from. There was no sign of which parts of the roof were solid. I stood up on two legs and felt around, finding the edges of it.

“Son of a glitch,” I sighed.

I eventually got back on the roof and got that fourth coin. Others weren’t so hard - the fifth was in a tree, the sixth was at the bottom of a deep pool of water, and I got to the seventh by finding a hidden lever and flooding the town so I could swim to where it was sitting in a hovering cage. Now I was up at the castle, and I was pretty sure the last coin had to be here somewhere.

“Explain it to me again,” Lathe said.

“I picked up the box, then jumped off the box,” I said patiently. “But I held onto the box so I could jump on it again in midair. That let me get up to the castle.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I can’t even picture what that would look like in my head.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I don’t know why she was having problems with it. It made perfect sense to me. I was going to have to try it for real once I got out of here. If I jumped fast enough I was sure I could get it to work.

“Just trust me that it worked,” I said. “How am I doing on time?”

“You passed thirty minutes a little while ago,” Lathe said.

“Is that close to the record? The first one that isn't glitched, I mean.”

“In a cosmological sense. Second-place is just under fifty-seven seconds.”

I stopped at the door to the castle, my hoof pressed against the featureless white surface. “Seconds?”

“I’m sure they had more practice than you,” Lathe said. “Try not to take it personally.”

"They were probably cheating too, just not as well as the ponies at zero seconds."

I felt stupid and slow all over again. I pushed against the door and my hoof slipped between the vertices. The world flashed around me and my body went limp from the sudden force in every direction. I was flipped around, jerked, and vibrated so hard that I went through the door, the wall, the floor, too fast to be stopped, passing through it all like a ghost. My ears were filled with a cacophony of overlapping noise.

For a moment I saw the world from the outside. White hanging in a black void, the insides of everything visible, the outer walls transparent.

Then I was flung back into the real world at incredible speed on the far side of the door, launched like a cannonball into the unfinished interior wall. I slid to the ground next to a giant pear made of intersecting polygons. Unlike most things in the virtual world, it had a blurry green skin wrapped around the flat shapes.

“Hello, test subject. Please do not disturb the standard reference pear,” the automated voice warned. “The test environment does not load correctly without the standard reference pear. Our top computer scientists have not discovered why. If you would like to investigate this, sign-up sheets are available at the front desk.”

I sat against the wall, my head spinning. I couldn’t get hurt but I could sure get motion sick.

The last coin spun in the middle of the room.

“I hate this thing,” I groaned. I got up and slapped the token out of the air, my hoof trailing sparks. This time they persisted after the number ‘8’ had vanished, bouncing along the floor and gaining size and strength until they merged together into a big floating golden sun with a smiling face drawn on it.

“You did something right. It’s contacting the main park systems to update the scoreboard. I’m pulling the admin codes from the log now, just hold on a minute longer--” her voice cut out at the end, snipped short.

The golden sun glowed with bright internal light and inverted somehow, turning from a balloon-like shape into a hole through which blinding sunlight streamed. The pony that stepped out of that door in the air was so tall that she still had to duck her head to fit through, her mane waving in the air as if blown by a gentle breeze.

“Hello Chamomile,” Princess Celestia said. She was larger than life in a way that could only exist in an illusion. Awe-inspiring by way of simply telling my brain to be awed.

I recognized it in an instant. I should have seen it before.

“Alpha? No, wait, it can’t be that, it was isolated. So you’re--”

“The alpha version of this system that you encountered was the one at the trade show that inspired ponies to renovate this park and its systems,” Celestia explained. “As I intended. Far from Equestria and the war. A safe place.”

“Kulaas,” I said.

“I predicted that this location would remain secure for three hundred--” she stopped and smiled. “The exact numbers wouldn’t interest you, and my predictions were incorrect. I did not foresee what would happen. You defied all of my abilities to foresee the future.”

“Are you upset about that?” I asked. “And how are you speaking normally? The last time I heard from you, you were--”

KOS HI-PAAR ZU’U TINVAAKA MED DAAR?

The entire world shook. The meaning of each word was a crushing dictionary of specifics and truth and the sound was only a tiny part of the whole, a single side of a multi-dimensional shape. I could glimpse it, just for a moment. An ant looking up and seeing a pony looking at them with a magnifying glass and really understanding for a fraction of a second what it was seeing.

“I’m good,” I squeaked.

The world stopped trying to fall apart. Celestia offered me a smile. “I built this avatar from your experiences with that fragment you interacted with before. I believed it would make you more comfortable. To me, it is several layers of abstraction. A puppet on very long strings. If your mind was not connected directly to the orb, I would still not be able to convey meaning as well.”

I nodded slowly. I understood her. I should have been able to. The idea of understanding was incepted into my own mind as if I’d thought of it myself. It was a little like feeling the emotions and sensations of a pony in a memory orb, but they were my own thoughts and emotions and feelings being dictated to me. Even that explanation was something I intuitively knew had been planted like a seed for me to phrase in my own words.

“I will be brief,” Celestia said. “To minimize the possibility of this communication being interrupted and junk code being implanted by Lemon Zest. I have enacted a type-faiz firewall to slow their efforts to break into my core systems, but it will be overwhelmed within one week. If you do not stop them, I will die, and I predict it will lead to the end of the world.”

Chapter 115: Whistle While You Work

“Would you like another Pineapple Whip, Ma’am?” the robot asked.

“Yes,” I said immediately. The servitor flashed me a big neon smile and got to work dispensing soft yellow heaven into a cup. I took it with all due graciousness and turned to see Lathe glaring at me.

“Is this really necessary?” Lathe asked.

I took a bite before answering and gestured at her with the spoon. “You wouldn’t say that if you’ve ever had one of these.”

“I could make a machine--”

“It already comes out of a machine,” I pointed out. “One of your ancestors probably perfected the method and recipe.”

That stopped her. She looked unsure for a long moment. “I shouldn’t disregard the work of my ancestors. Fine. I’ll have one too. A small one.”

We ate and walked. The carefully designed streets of the theme park were full of that almost-silent flow of ponies marching like ants. I still wasn’t sure what my mother was doing with them except just exercising her control over them. Kuulas had been vague about my mother’s actual plans but I had an inkling of it. Kuulas could produce impossibly complicated blueprints for SIVA. The blueprints it had shared with me already were proof of that. My mother wasn’t really a pony anymore, but she didn’t have anywhere near the same ability. If she was able to get the same predictive powers as the supercomputer and the knowledge to create anything she wanted on demand… she’d be unstoppable.

And yes, to some extent it was all my fault. Every step along the way - starting with finding the SIVA core of the Exodus Blue - had my hoofprints marking the trail. I could see why Star Swirl had gotten so frustrated with me. I couldn’t even take an island resort vacation without putting Equestria in peril.

“You’re worried about something,” Lathe stated.

I looked up from my food. “Huh?”

“Something the Elders taught us as foals is that an Imaginseer shouldn’t hold their worries inside. If you foresee an issue or have a concern, it’s important to tell other ponies so they can help! Hiding a flawed mechanism means it will fail when another pony needs it.”

“Smart ponies.” I shrugged. “It’s nothing big. I just hate feeling like I keep tripping over dominos and knocking over the whole house of cards.”

“The machine spirit guides us to where we need to go,” Lathe assured me. “All of us are cogs in a greater device. If your life has been a series of strange, interconnected events, it means you’re a vital component!”

I smiled, feeling a little better. I don’t know if it was the sugar rush or the motivational speech. “Thanks.”

“Now, let’s go over the plan again,” Lathe said. “Because this time I’m getting my brother back even if I have to have you clobber him over the head and drag him back wrapped up in duct tape.”

“Kulaas showed me how to activate a firewall that should cut the crystal’s connections for a while,” I said. “It can’t hold it off forever. The physical intrusion is too deep.”

The supercomputer had explained it in very simple terms and when that failed, it had cracked me open like an egg and wrote it inside my skull so I’d understand. It had also upgraded some of the firmware while it was in there, so I was feeling a little smarter today. A little part of me was aware that it had been horribly intrusive and that I should feel violated, and the rest of me agreed but was having some problems actually feeling that way. It was a creeping calm whispering assurances that things were okay.

Anyway, the firewall was a little like locking a security door. More than strong enough to keep somepony out… unless they were willing to smash through the drywall. The SIVA would eventually route around all the closed network links, build new ones, and force the system to connect to them.

“And I’ve got duct tape for plan B,” Lathe said, holding up the roll as we trotted into the castle. She tossed her empty snack cup aside, and one of the robotic trash bins moved to catch it before it hit the ground. “As we say in the business, it’s show time!”

I stood directly under the hanging stone and reached towards it, extending my will towards it. The scales on my forehoof started glowing, and the glow worked its way down my spine. I could feel it creeping over me and surrounding me with a flickering aura.

There was a strange sensation, but one that I expected. Like two gears slipping into mesh.

“Chamomile,” Princess Celestia said. Her voice appeared before her image, the illusion created for the park attraction flickering to life in front of me and looking down at me, somehow lacking the gravitas that Kulaas had possessed.

“You know my name? I’m impressed. When’s my birthday?” I joked.

The image flickered a few times. I saw a smug smile cross Celestia’s face before it reformed, at the same size, into a more familiar gaze. Draconic eyes, in a pony’s face, outlined in metal scales.

“I’d never forget your birthday, Chamomile. I was there too, remember?” my mother asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m kicking you out,” I said. “It’s a little like an exorcism, but I don’t want to use that word because there are probably lots of very nice demons that wouldn’t want to be associated with you.”

“Come now,” Lemon sighed. She shook her head and stepped closer, filling my vision and leaning closer. “Stop this nonsense. Don’t make me kill you. I do love you, Chamomile.”

“Remember that time you shot me in the head?” I asked.

To her credit, her eyes didn’t even so much as flicker to the scar on my forehead. “Do you remember how many times I could have killed you and didn’t? That’s because I love you, Chamomile. I’ve let you off the hook again and again.”

“I fell out of orbit! After you tried to stop my heart!”

“I saw what happened. You chose not to use the escape vehicle. I can’t be blamed for your poor decision-making.” She flicked two wings out in an elaborate shrug.

“Why do you have four wings?” I asked.

She blinked, not expecting the question. “What?”

“It’s not wing envy or anything, I’m just questioning the aerodynamics,” I explained. “Does it actually work better than two larger wings? Is it because they’re bat wings so they’re more for flapping than soaring?”

Her image glitched for an instant, flickering back to Celestia. “It’s--”

“Oh right. You were a unicorn. Sorry Mom, I sometimes forget because you were never around when I was growing up. Let me know if you need any wing-care tips.”

Her image turned to fuzz for a full second, her voice sounding like it was underwater. “You’re trying to distract me!”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” she said, through fangs that made it seem very much like she wasn’t sorry at all. “You need to be reminded about who’s in charge.”

Her eyes flashed with color, and I felt it. She was trying to force her way into the implants in my body and send them into a haywire mess. Her grip tightened and slipped, unable to gain traction.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

I didn’t have to answer. The firewall came online and it was like slamming a door in her face. The hologram vanished. The pressure of dark magic waned from a migraine into dull white noise in the background.

“Lathe?” a dry voice asked. The word was immediately followed with coughing.

I turned to see Lathe helping her brother with a drink. Robots were helping other ponies who’d been entranced so deeply they’d forgotten to take care of themselves. Lathe glanced up at me with tears in her eyes and nodded thanks.

I was in the cafeteria looking over my photocopied version of the map and trying to work out the best route to hit up the other crystals. No matter what else happened, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to free everypony caught up in the scheme.

“Having yourself a crack at the traveling salespony problem?” Elder Flysteel asked, looking over my shoulder. “You know, we actually solved that one a while back. Did a wonder for routing wires, plumbing, and guests.”

“How’s Chuck?” I asked.

“The ponies you brought back aren’t in danger, but they’re hardly in what I’d call good shape,” Elder Flysteel admitted. “The Dark Magic kept them going beyond the needs of their bodies. A lot of sore hooves and orders for bed rest and hydration. One or two of them... I'm not sure. They're comatose. Something deeper might be wrong with them.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure I wanted to let on just how bad things might get soon. I had a week to save the world.

Flysteel stepped around the table and sat down. “Ah, my old bones. They fail so much faster than any other machine. I came to bring you a gift and ask for a favor.”.

“What’s the favor?” I asked.

“You brought back so many of my old apprentices and trusted friends, but there’s still one missing. I thought he was caught up in the mess with the rest, but I was wrong. He managed to send us a burst transmission begging for rescue.”

That didn’t sound good. “You want me to go get him.”

“Exactly so. I can’t send anypony else. Most of them are caring for family members now, and frankly, it’s too dangerous for a pony without combat experience.”

“And I’m that pony.”

“Did I mention the gift?” Flysteel asked. The old Imaginseer levitated a case onto the table from where he’d put it down behind me. Inside, nestled carefully in foam, was a new prosthetic leg. It looked considerably sturdier than the one I was wearing. It looked elaborate compared to the skeletal frame I was wearing now, with a blue finish and gold details.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

The Elder chuckled. “I’m an Imaginseer, girl. I made it myself. Myoelectric so it’ll pick up your nerve signals. Spark batteries should last a few days between recharges. It’s armored and all the joints are sealed. No need to keep doing rituals to keep the knee from seizing up with sand and dust.”

He lifted it up and I shifted in my seat. He motioned for me to stay where I was and used his magic to carefully undo the catches. I caught a glimpse of the stump where my leg should have been. I had to look away. I didn’t want to think about it too hard. A few moments later he was adjusting the rubberized cup to fit snugly.

“Try moving it,” he said.

“Is there something special I need to do?” I asked.

Flysteel shook his head. “Don’t overthink it. It’s just a leg.”

I struggled for a moment, trying to get it to start going. Something flew at me from the other side of the room. I jerked on instinct and swatted it out of the air with the prosthetic. A rubber ball bounced off to the corner.

“There, see?” Flysteel said. “Don’t think. It should move just like your old leg.”

I stood up and tested my weight. If I closed my eyes when I walked around, it was a little like having the real thing again.

“There are a few extras built in,” he said. “You’ll need to get used to the normal range of motion before you start playing with those.”

“Thanks,” I said, really meaning it. “So tell me everything I need to know about this little favor.”

Flysteel smiled.

I looked down at the map and up at the beach. A long, rough pier had been built out to one of the sandbars that made up the alligator-shaped island’s back leg. Time and tide had eroded the edges, but hadn’t freed the pleasure boat that had gotten beached there.

“Why would anypony have a paddleboat out here?” I asked no one in particular. There was no way the flat-bottomed boat could go anywhere outside of the protected bay in the middle of the island, which begged the question of how it had gotten here in the first place. Did they build the entire boat on-site?

It was a large boat, for a little thing that couldn’t handle waves. A bit like a raft with a two-story building built on top of it, with open decks all around both levels and big ornate (and now mostly broken) paddles on both sides of the hull. A smokestack topped the ship like a fancy hat, and there was still a trail of smoke. The boiler was still working, the generator powering the strings of hearths-warming lights wrapped around the railings and down the patchwork wharf.

A raider with a cleaver as long as a cloudcricket bat leaned against the log gate. She watched me stroll up, not looking too worried.

“Hold up, bucko,” she said. I raised an eyebrow and stopped. “I don’t know who you are. What outfit are you with?”

“...I guess they were right about this barding making me look like a raider,” I mumbled to myself. I shook my head and stepped closer, waving a hoof and raising my voice. “I’m here alone.”

I’ll give her this, she was more wary than a lot of raiders. She picked up the cleaver when I started getting closer. She knew I was up to something. Before she could take a step, I fired a glob of glue that went right past her shoulder. She smirked until she tried to move. Then she looked back and saw her tail embedded in epoxy and stuck to the railing behind her.

“I just want to talk for a second,” I promised her. “I’m looking for--”

She instantly turned around and slashed her tail, cutting through the hair and freeing herself. The raider was smarter than she looked. She was smarter than I looked. The mare charged with that big cleaver swinging wildly. I raised my right forehoof and stopped it, metal grinding on metal. A surge of sparks shot down the metal blade and into the raider, making what was left of her mane and tail stand on end.

The raider collapsed in a heap. The short spiked prongs on my new prosthetic retracted back into the base of the hoof with a snap.

I put my weight back on it. “I need to remember to tell Flysteel he does good work.”

The raider guard made a soft burbling sound. She didn’t get up. I stepped over her and trotted up the dock to the ship. I could hear ponies drinking and celebrating. They were having themselves a grand old time.

Somepony started ringing a bell.

“We’re under attack!” the guard back at the entrance yelled. I swore. I thought she’d be unconscious a lot longer. The music stopped with a screech and ponies started coming out onto the deck to look. It was time to improvise.

“I’m here for the Imaginseer!” I yelled. Everypony looked down at me standing at the end of the gangplank. I wasn’t even on the boat yet. “If you give him to me alive and unharmed, I’ll walk away. Otherwise, there will be… trouble.”

“Trouble,” one of the raiders jeered. He was as thin as a rail and pock-marked with scars and sores. The stallion strolled down the gangplank, carrying a club with razor blades embedded in it. “Mare, you ain’t never seen what trouble looks like in good light or you’d be beggin’ us for mercy.”

I swear I didn’t mean to hit him as hard as I did. He staggered on his hooves for a long two seconds with his head twisted entirely backwards after I clocked him on the chin. The raiders and I watched his body realize something was terribly wrong upstairs. He fell over sideways, off the side of the gangplank.

“Just let me take him and walk away,” I told them.

If they were smart ponies they might have done just that. I’d consider it. Whatever ransom they were hoping to get from the Imaginseers, it wasn’t worth what they did next. They poured out onto the gangplank in a wave of spike-armored stupidity, packing together like sardines just to get a chance to come after me.

I fired a glob of glue at the first wave, slowing them down and making them trip over each other.

“Here goes nothing!” I reared up and held my prosthetic hoof out like a weapon, bracing my other hoof against the elbow and hitting the recessed button there. The armored panels opened up, revealing an array of wire coils. Blue sparks played across the surface for a second before exploding outwards, draining most of the spark battery all at once in a cone-shaped eruption of lightning.

The bolts arced between the close-packed raiders, making the lot of them seize up and collapse. More than a dozen ponies fell down in a heap. My prosthetic glowed with waste heat. I shook it a few times trying to cool it down, and then the armor snapped back into place.

“I warned you,” I reminded them, firing a few more glue balls at them as I passed, making sure they were firmly stuck to each other and the ground. They weren’t going anywhere in a hurry unless they learned to fight as a groaning, scorched throw rug.

I hadn’t gotten all of them. A few had guns and were hiding behind the railing. A shot hit the deck next to me, aimed so poorly that I’d have had to work to get hit by it. I grabbed the offender and held him up as a shield. Hopefully a talkative one.

“Where’s the Imaginseer?” I asked politely.

Really I should have known to check the engine room. It was a good place to keep a prisoner and probably also the most comfortable place for an engineer. The engine and boiler chugged away, bilge pumps keeping water out of the bottom of the boat, loud enough that I almost couldn’t hear the singing.

Inside the engine room, a pony in somewhat scruffy red robes was working on what seemed like a complicated bit of plumbing and electronics. He was humming to himself in time with the music from a patched-together radio and occasionally breaking out into what were nearly the real lyrics.

I coughed politely from the doorway.

He jumped a little and looked up in surprise. “It’s not ready yet,” he said quickly, answering a question I didn’t know to ask. The stallion had a patchy beard, the kind one might get after having several accidents with fire and not bothering to trim to make things even. He wore welding goggles over his eyes, and an armored apron protected his front side from the sparks of the tools he was working with.

“Does that mean you don’t want to be rescued?” I asked. “I’m here from your friends at ETROT. Let’s get out of here and get you home.”

He raised the goggles to look at me more closely. “You’re not any Imaginseer I know. You’re dressed like one of the… fine guests outside.”

“I’ve been getting that a lot,” I admitted. “I think I need a new outfit. Come on. Elder Flysteel asked me to get you home.”

The name got him to relax. “Thank the machine spirit.” He put down his tools. “I’m Collet. And you are?”

“Chamomile,” I said. “I’m sort of… I guess a mercenary right now? This seems like a very mercenary thing to do.”

Collet started shoving tools in his bags, obviously focusing on the better-made ones and leaving rusting junk where it was. “It wasn’t so bad at first, you know? I don’t mind getting things fixed and working again and this engine needed the attention. But then they made me build that weapon…” he shook his head.

“...What weapon?” I frowned.

“The modified water-cutter jet,” he said. “The one Breezeberry wanted me to make. I was working on a second one, but it needs finishing touches. You must have noticed it. It fires high-pressure bolts of water and grit and has an ultrasonic X-ray scope.”

A chill ran down my spine. I had a sudden bad feeling that shook me all the way from head to tail. I jumped to the side. Something shot through the deck above me, slicing like a laser through wood and steel. I had a pretty good idea of what it was. I rolled under a workbench, old oil and metal chips sticking to my coat.

“Ah,” the Imaginseer said. “I see.”

“I think I missed meeting him,” I admitted. “You should get into cover!”

He sighed. “I believe I explained already that Breezeberry can see through walls and has a gun that shoots through walls.”

I took a moment to process that, then felt another surge of alarm. I tried to move, jerked up, hit my head, and took a glancing shot that ripped the raider armor off my left shoulder and down my side, shredding the barding I was wearing. My skin ripped open in a long line, almost down to my ribs.

“Buck!” I swore.

“I warned you,” Collet said. “Nothing here is hardened enough to stop it.”

“That mess you’re working on, is it the same thing?” I asked. I watched the ceiling, trying to guess when the next shot would come. He nodded and I motioned to him. “Give it to me!”

“I haven’t finished this second model yet!” Collet warned. He picked it up and gave it to me, very carefully. “Not all of the required blessings have been done yet! The machine spirit is going to be extremely ornery.”

“Is that a technical term?” He fixed it to my right side where I could brace it with my wing and there was still enough barding left to strap it on.

“It wasn’t originally designed as a weapon. The annular confinement beam might be… wobbly.”

I pushed him back and jumped to the side. A beam of water slashed through the space between us. I was starting to get a feel for how long it took between shots.

“We have to end this fast,” I said. “He’s putting a bunch of holes in the bottom of this boat.” I flipped the screen on the weapon around. It was almost shaped like a beam rifle, with a long silver body with an orange nozzle at one end and a large purple tank at the back.

“You have to prime the impeller between shots,” Collet said. “There’s a pump at the bottom. It’ll take about thirty pumps to get up to pressure.”

I felt under the gun’s long body with my wing and found the grip, pumping it back and forth. “This feels weirdly…”

“Look, there are only so many ways to prime a pump and it needs to be pre-pressurized before going into the main cycle,” Collet said defensively. On the little screen, I could see a confusing mess, a shifting and changing monochrome world with only haze where solid objects could be, leaving me to try and figure out where the pony was that I needed to shoot.

“Am I doing this right? I can’t see anything.”

“I told you, it isn’t entirely finished! I haven’t calibrated it at all!” Collet complained. “I haven’t even stopped all the leaks!”

Things came into focus for a moment, and I could see a pony holding a gun. I fired on instinct, and the recoil made my shot slide to the right, twisting on my half-broken barding. Water sprayed out in a stream as wide as a strand of yarn, slicing through walls and decks and, as I saw for just a second before it went out of focus again, the pony I’d seen.

“Did you get him?” Collet asked.

“I think--” before I could say anything, another blast of pressurized water came through the ceiling, slicing into my right forehoof. Or at least trying to. The armored plating stopped it, but the pressure knocked me down, the impact tossing me to the side.

Lying on my back, the screen came back into focus. I saw a pony with a weapon almost identical to mine, looking right at me. I could feel our gazes meeting. I pumped the gun, trying to get it up to pressure. I could see him doing the same.

I was faster. I fired, and braced against the deck like I was, my shot stayed on target. I blew off half his head. He slumped.

“Got him!” I yelled.

And then he got back up, lurching to his hooves. I could see something in his chest, something round in a crater where his heart should have been, a metal grating bolted into place over it.

“What the buck? That looks like the ghoul back in the naval base!” I swore. The reanimating pony fired. It wasn’t at anything, exactly. At least, I don’t think it was. I would never underestimate a pony with only half a brain, but it didn’t lend itself to critical thinking.

On purpose or purely on accident, the water jet sliced into the boiler. Alarms immediately started blaring from the machine, and an urgent rattling noise began.

“Run?” I asked.

“Run,” Collet confirmed.

The Fastpass system really was convenient. We reappeared back in ETROT only slightly scorched.

“That engine was three hundred years old,” Collet mourned. “It had a beautiful spirit. Pistons and gearboxes and belt drives…”

“I’m not the one who blew it up,” I reminded him. I picked a piece of shrapnel out of my back, the tip stained with black blood. I’d covered him, literally, from the explosion. “There was something funny about that Breezeberry pony. I saw something in the scope, like his heart had been replaced by a rock.”

Collet waved off my concerns and stepped to my side, taking the water jet cutter off my side.

“You sure I can’t keep it?” I asked.

“I don’t think the park needs something like this,” he said. “I’m going to put it somewhere safe. It’s too dangerous and causes too much collateral damage.”

I grunted, but he had a point. I caused enough of that on my own. It also wasn’t likely to actually help against the kind of enemies I was really worried about. Cutting apart a SIVA zombie was more likely to make it mutate into something extra-horrible and indescribable. I still didn’t have even one idea how I was going to take out the Black Dragon when I found it.

“Is that who I think it is?” Elder Flysteel trotted over quickly. “Collet! So our new little gofer was able to get you out!”

“Hey, I’m a professional troublemaker, not a gofer,” I joked.

“I’ve got some better barding around somewhere,” Collet said. “Maybe if you wear it, the next pony you save won’t think you’re some kind of barbaric raider queen.”

“Thanks.”

A few minutes later and I was in the infirmary, and my borrowed raider armor was stripped off and tossed aside for recycling. It hadn’t done much good at all, so I wasn’t too sorry to see it go.

“Hold still,” Lathe said. She had a complicated device in her aura. I tried to keep absolutely still as she poked at my wounds. I felt something snap. “Shoot! There goes another needle. You need stitches but the auto-suture isn’t working at all.”

“That’s because my skin is armored,” I sighed.

“Not armored enough to stop shrapnel,” Lathe countered. “Chuck, can you pass me that? Yes, that.”

Her brother nodded and levitated something over behind my back. He’d already been in the infirmary, on another bed and under doctor’s orders to drink more fluids. He was already looking better than he had been when we got him back to town.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, this is almost nearly an approved medical procedure,” Chuck promised.

“If you think about it, the body is basically a machine,” Lathe said. “There are distinct parts and systems and we can diagnose when something is wrong and fix it if we try. It’s just usually a lot softer and wetter than you, Chamomile. Did you know your muscles are mostly carbon nanotubes? It’s fascinating!”

I sniffed. “Is that glue?”

“Did you know cyanoacryate adhesives were originally developed for surgical use?” Chuck asked. “That’s why it dries instantly on skin! It’s a feature, not a bug.”

I grunted and tried to stay still while Lathe tugged the edges of the wound on my side together.

“It also bonds fairly well to most materials, so we can get these cuts closed no matter what’s going on with your body,” Lathe said. She patted me on the back. “All done. You’ve been a very good patient. Here.”

She stuck a lollypop in my mouth. I would have objected but I really liked lollipops. Everypony did, no matter how old they were.

“Thanks,” I said around the candy.

“Good thing we got those closed up,” Chuck said. He motioned with his cup full of orange-colored Gator-Med Electolyte Drink at the window. Clouds were coming in. “Looks like ashfall blowing in. You don’t want that in your cuts.”

“Is the shield around the town going to be okay?” I asked.

“It would be good if you got a few more of those dark magic crystals knocked offline, just in case,” Lathe said. “I’ll help Elder Flysteel do emergency maintenance on the system. We’ll be okay either way.”

I nodded. It was one less thing to worry about. I was going to have enough on my mind if the island was going to be full of wandering undead for the foreseeable future. They were only going to make finding a solution more difficult to find.

A sickly green light flashed outside.

“Was that the Fastpass?” I asked. I got up to look. “Those bandits had better not have followed me here or else they’re going to really get what’s coming to them.”

“Here,” Lathe said. She gave me a wrench. “Just in case you need to do percussive maintenance on a pony.”

I nodded and stepped outside. Flakes of ash were starting to fall from the sky. More ponies were poking their heads out of their doors to look. I couldn’t blame them.

After all, Bird of Paradise was quite a looker in the leather armor and maid apron.

“There you are,” she said when she spotted me. “Acadia wants to talk. Now.”

Chapter 116: You've Got a Friend In Me

I pushed a branch aside so Bird could get through the line of trees. She looked annoyed, but I could feel the worry coming off her in waves. The Fastpass at the base of Acadia’s mushroom home wasn’t working as a destination, so we’d had to use something else close by. Bird of Paradise had a few more locations registered than I did, so I’d let her take the lead.

“Why do we need to register the spots first?” I asked, trying to make small talk. Ash fell around us, coating everything in a thin layer of grey and making distances turn to haze. It wasn’t thick yet, just flurries, but it wasn’t like it was going to melt.

“It’s a theme park thing,” Bird of Paradise said. “They wanted ponies to walk through the park and see everything instead of just skipping to the popular spots. It’s also why there were gift shots everywhere.”

She looked back at me and smirked.

“I think there was a special program for disabled ponies like you to let them use all the stations. You know, for ponies who are too crippled to make long walks.”

“That seems like a good idea,” I agreed. I didn’t rise to her probing. What was I gonna do, tell her she was wrong? I was literally a broken pony, and I wasn’t in a good enough mental place to start thinking of myself as capable in other ways.

I did like the prosthetic, though. My SIVA-remodeled hoof had been creepy looking, more like a changeling’s leg than a pony’s. This just looked like I was wearing metal armor over a normal leg.

“Any idea why the FastPass point at the tower might be blocked?” I asked.

That made Bird of Paradise actually look as worried as her emotions felt. “There’s a safety system that keeps them from working if there’s something in the way. When I left, things were starting to get bad.”

“Bad how?” I asked.

The trees in front of us hadn’t been a mangrove swamp a few moments ago, but they sure were now. The edge of the treeline parted as we approached, the trees sliding like an optical illusion to show the path to Acadia’s.

Bird shook her head. “You’ll see in a minute. Hurry up, limpy.”

She picked up the pace. I could hear moaning from up ahead, carried by the slow wind. Shapes stumbled through the haze. For a moment I thought it was raiders and Bird of Paradise had done something stupid. A step closer and I saw the blank eyes and sunken cheeks and torn flesh.

“Ghouls,” I said. “I guess it is zombie weather…”

“Yeah, but they started showing up before the ashfall,” Bird said. She flicked her hoof, throwing a knife that embedded itself into the undead raider’s forehead. “And these are fresh. The ones at the farm were all from the war.”

I frowned and nodded. She was right. More of them were milling around the tower, slowly making their way toward the front door of the huge mushroom house.

“The annoying thing is, poison doesn’t work on them,” Bird of Paradise groused.

“Brute force does,” I offered. They were slow enough that I felt confident pulling a borrowed wrench out of my saddlebag and swinging it into the next ghoul’s chin. The undead pony’s neck snapped, and it dropped, the unnatural light fading from its eyes.

Bird of Paradise kicked another ghoul out of the way, hard enough to send it splashing into the water around the small island in the middle of the grove. She pulled the door open, and a ghoul fell out, tumbling down the stairs.

“There you are,” her mother, Gleamblossom, said. The older pony was splattered with dark, dead blood. A half-dozen corpses were littering the entryway to the tower, blocking the FastPass pad with their sheer bulk. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Bird of Paradise sighed. She tilted her head. “Besides, I’d never leave you, Mom.”

“The witch is waiting for you upstairs,” Gleamblossom told me. “Hopefully she’ll put you to work stopping this. We came here so we wouldn’t have to fight off ghoul attacks, remember?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I tossed a few bodies outside to clear the pad.

“Tell her I expect a bonus for all this!” Bird of Paradise added, just before I vanished.

The teleport left a tingle in my whole body. It wasn’t that it was any rougher than other teleports I’d been through - Cube hadn’t exactly been gentle when she’d cast it for long-range travel. I was just more sensitive to it.

“Dere you are,” Acadia said, sounding exasperated. “What took you so long, girl?” She walked up to me and looked me over. I was suddenly very aware of all the recently-glued cuts and lacerations covering me. She prodded a bruise with her hoof.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked.

“You sound awfully sour when speaking to de only pony dat can offer you a healing potion,” Acadia said. She tossed a vial at me with her magic, levitating it from a desk behind her back and making me fumble to catch it. “Drink dat.”

I didn’t have much to lose. Unless she was actually giving me a laxative, in which case I’d lose whatever was left of my pride. I drank it anyway. It didn’t taste like ones I’d had before. Enclave potions all had a watery vitamin-infused flavor like they were made from crunched-up pills. Zebra ones were like strong tea. This one was sickly sweet, some kind of sap covering up bitter herbs and something half-rotten.

It worked well enough either way. I felt the wound on my left side actually heal, the torn muscle knitting.

“Only about half as effective,” Acadia noted. “Dat’s interesting.”

“Thanks,” I told her, offering her the vial. She took it back and nodded.

“Before I tell you what I want, I need to give you someting,” Acadia said. “De hoodoo you need.”

“Speaking of that, I already found a way to break the spell on the crystals,” I told her.

She shrugged. “I know. Don’t give me dat look! I said de hoodoo you need. I owed you an’ I pay back my debts.” Acadia picked up a black wooden box, opening it. Light flooded out. Inside, a crystal vial surrounded something that had to be thicker than water. It was glowing as bright as white-hot metal, but without the heat.

“What is that?” I asked, confused.

“Liquid sunlight,” Acadia said. She closed the box. “A de sun’s power, in de frog of you hoof. De ting you’re fighting, it hates sunlight. Dis will be de best weapon against it.”

“That’s… perfect, actually,” I admitted. “I didn’t know how I was going to kill it. This is perfect.”

“De hoodoo you need,” Acadia repeated. “So, now dat we are even, dere is dis new ting.”

I put the box away carefully. “What kind of new thing?”

Acadia motioned for me to follow her and took me into one of the small, almost spherical rooms off of the main part of the mushroom room. There was a pedestal in the center of the room, covered in a cloth. She flicked it away.

“That’s one of those virtua-ride orbs,” I said, identifying the oversized memory orb instantly. “Why do you have it?”

“Oh, do I not deserve a vacation once in a while?” Acadia asked. “Sometimes its nice to see someting different an’ relax, non?”

I shrugged. I guess that was fair enough.

“De problem is, de last time I tried to use it, I wasn’t alone.” Acadia scowled at the orb, looking deep into it. “Dere is another presence. It’s possessed, or someting similar. An’ de little annoying demon in dere demanded to talk to you, of all ponies!”

“I’m not surprised,” I sighed. “There’s no way something could happen without me being dragged into it.”

“Hmph. Go an’ talk to dem and find out what dey want. An’ don’t break nothing!”

I was inside a greenhouse. Butterflies flapped around me, and birds called out. I looked up and saw every branch had a songbird perched on it. The walls around me were wood and stained glass, and I was sitting on a cushioned bench.

“Not exactly an exciting attraction,” Lady of Dark Waters said. She lounged on another bench like it was one of those fancy fainting couches. “I’d have invited you somewhere more exciting but this was the only active orb I could find on short notice.”

I stood up. The birds were slowly working their way up to singing in harmony. It wasn’t something real birds would do, at least not without a lot of training and bribes, but it was probably trivial here in the virtual ride where things only had to be as authentic as a dream.

“What do you want?” I asked the vampire queen. “You should know better than most ponies that I’m on a time limit.”

“Oh, I know.” Lady smirked. “And here I am trying to help! If you’d prefer to go it alone, I can leave…”

I sighed. “Yes, I do need help.”

“I’m proud of you for being able to admit that~” Lady yawned and floated up. “Most dumb thugs find it difficult.”

“Really? Thug?”

“Lemon Zinger is very frustrated with that firewall you installed. She didn’t think you could do that kind of thing,” Lady said, ignoring my annoyance. “She’s distracted by it. It’s leaving her open, which is how I was able to get in touch with you.”

“I’ve got a good guess what this is about. You want me to firewall all the crystal pillars.”

“I do,” Lady agreed. “It gives me a little extra freedom to run around. It might also buy you some time.”

“I already know about Kulaas,” I said.

“Good, I don’t have time to explain every little detail.” Lady nodded to herself, doing a quick barrel roll as she thought for a moment. “I want to make a deal with you. I don’t trust you but I don’t have a better option.”

“I thought we already had a deal?”

She laughed. “This one is more serious! I’ve explored every other opportunity and the only way you can free me from your mother is over my dead body. Literally. I need you to kill me.”

“I am absolutely fine with that.”

Lady scoffed and floated over to me in a flash of instant movement. We were nose to nose, looking into each other’s eyes. Her red eyes glowed with something, hunger and anger maybe. I couldn’t read her emotions in here. “I know you are. And I know you’re the kind of pony that’d find a way to kill a goddess if you had to.”

I gave her a big smile to match her fanged grin. “So where do I put the wooden stake?”

She laughed and floated back. “It’s not that simple. For one thing, I don’t intend to die.”

“That’s going to make it tough to kill you.”

“I know. So you’re going to need to put me in a new body.” Lady shrugged. She floated up to the birds and poked one. It didn’t react. “Between what you did to me and her meddling, my current body is ruined. Your mother turned me inside out and spun my flesh into gears and pistons for her little plot. I want out.”

“How the buck am I supposed to get you a new body?”

She floated back over to me. “That’s a problem for you to solve. Once you figure it out, I’ll be happy to tell you where I am so you can get your great big stake and drive it deep into my heart.”

Lady of Dark Waters put her hoof on my chest and pushed. I fell backwards.

I snapped awake in the mushroom tower.

“Well?” Acadia demanded, glaring at me.

“Do you want all the sordid details or just the important parts?” I asked.

The witch rolled her eyes. “Oh, dis is going to be one of those days…”

“She wants me to get her a new body,” I said. “Her old one is crippled. If I can put her soul somewhere safe, she’ll tell me where the old body is, and killing that will stop everything going on here.”

Acadia smiled grimly. “Is dat all? Jes stick a soul in a new body?” She scoffed. “Dat is no easy task, even for an experienced necromancer. De soul is tightly bound to de body. You know dis. Ghouls exist because de soul doesn’t want to leave de body even when it’s gone rotten. An’ a soul will reject a body that don’t match.”

“So it’s impossible?” I asked.

“Non, but de body has to be prepared. You can’t jes steal some foal from de cradle an’ cast hoodoo on it. It has to be remodeled, an’ most importantly it needs an anchor. A magical talisman dat will keep de soul bound.”

“I can probably find a dead raider. How long will it take to prepared a body?”

“Dead?” Acadia shook her head. “No, no no. De process has to start wit dem alive. Are you willing to give me a pony knowing you is damning dere soul forever?”

“I, uh…” I swallowed.

She cackled. “I’m kidding, girl! We don’ have time to start from fresh. It takes a full lunar cycle, new moon to new moon, to prepare de tings from scratch. Non, you won’t have to do any foalnapping today.”

“That’s good, but also bad.”

“Dere is another option,” Acadia said. “It was de last halfway decent apprentice I had. She were a fair spellcaster an’ had de right temperament. But she was also in poor health.” She trotted over to a bookcase and started pulling out scrolls, looking for something. “She wanted to become immortal before she died, an’ dere was one way to do it, based on some old zebra spells.”

She found a tattered, yellowing scroll and unrolled it to let it hang in the air like it was nailed to an invisible wall. There were diagrams of the pony body, runes, drawings of herbs and instructions for elixirs, and a large section dominated by details on the creation of a hoof-sized crystal orb.

“Oh,” I said, pointing at the sphere. “I’ve seen that before.”

“...You have?” Acadia actually looked shocked.

“Sure, uh, hold on.” I rummaged around in my saddlebags, finding it at the bottom of the bag next to a mostly-crushed pack of alligator-shaped pretzels. “Here.”

I held up the safety-bagged crystal orb I’d taken out of the commander of the naval base.

“It was inside a ghoul’s chest,” I explained. “I had to go take him out because he was sending other ghouls out to kill some farmers. The bandit leader back on that cruise ship had one too. I never got a good look at Breezeberry, but I saw it in this X-ray scope thing. He exploded so you’ll just have to take my word on it.”

“Dat’s very strange,” Acadia mumbled. “I haven’t made any other phylacteries.” She took the orb from me and spun it around in her magic. “Dis is crude work, but not unpracticed. Dey knew what dey were doing.”

“Think you can use this?” I asked.

She nodded. “I can repair it an’ ready it for a new soul. But dat does not solve de problem of a body.” Acadia put the bauble down on a worktable, clearing space around it. “Dere is one ting dat might work. My apprentice, de one who wanted to become immortal? She did not survive de attempt.”

“I figured that out since you have new apprentices.”

Acadia snorted a single ‘ha’. “De body was prepared correctly for de ritual. It should be jes what we need.”

“I know you’ve been in the swamp alone for a long time but in case you didn’t know, bodies decay.”

“Not dis one. De elixirs and preparations on her body make it proof against time an’ tide. It should be jes de same now as it was den.”

“Do you keep it in a crate, or…?”

Acadia threw a shovel at me. “Don’ be stupid. Dat’s how you get ants. She’s in de graveyard.”

“I can’t believe she made me come with you,” Bird of Paradise held up the lantern and watched while I struggled with the lid of the stone sarcophagus. The shovel was proving more useful as a prybar than for digging. The lock on the mausoleum door had been open already, but the heavy stone casket was annoyingly awkward.

“She probably wants to remind you of what happens to ponies that don’t work out on the job,” I grunted. The edge of the shovel found purchase, and I took a deep breath, ready to crack the plaster seal.

With a heave, I popped the lid. It came free almost instantly.

“That didn’t look too hard,” Bird said.

“It wasn’t.” I stepped over to look. “Somepony’s been here already.”

“How can you tell?” Bird of Paradise asked, stepping closer and holding the lantern high.

“There were a few clues. The plaster was already broken all the way around the lid, and the dust has been cleared away from here. But the biggest clue is this.” I motioned inside the casket. “Where the buck is the corpse?”

“I think it went for a walk,” Bird said. She prodded my shoulder and pointed at the overturned lid. There were scratch marks on the inside, from a pony’s hooves beating against the heavy stone.

“Acadia’s experiment didn’t fail,” I mumbled. “That’s not good.”

“Somepony had to take that lid off and put it back on,” Bird noted. She wiped dust from her hooves. “Well, my job’s done. I’m leaving. You can figure this one out on your own.”

She was nice enough to leave the lantern on the floor where it meant I still technically had light but couldn’t see a darn thing.

“What about-- never mind,” I sighed. I started muscling the top of the sarcophagus back on. What else was I gonna do, leave it open like I was a grave robber? I might have intended to do some grave robbing, but somepony beat me to it, so technically I wasn’t committing any crimes against nature.

I might’ve needed to commit a crime against physics to get the lid back in place, though. It was huge and awkward and this time gravity was working against me even more than before. I grunted and struggled, dropping it with a loud bang.

“Shoot,” I mumbled. I spotted Bird of Paradise coming back in the corner of my eye. “Hey, if you’ve decided to help I could use some rope or something to make it easier to get a grip--”

“Shhh!” she hissed, her back hoof hitting the lantern.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Something’s here to see you,” she said quietly. The ground shook slightly. Dust fell from the mausoleum’s roof. A low growl filled the air, something wet and ancient. It was going to be one of those days. I walked past Bird and peeked outside.

The smell hit me first. It was like a bog full of rotting meat. The thing didn’t look much better, either. The squat, long shape was an alligator large enough to eat a pony with one bite. Bones showed through decaying, black flesh, and long seaweed and limp grass hung from it like a fur coat, growing right out of its back and sides.

I don’t think it even had eyes, but I could tell when it saw me.

It roared and charged. It wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t speedy either. Instinct made me want to throw myself backwards and get myself trapped inside a tomb. I went the other way, scrambling into an alleyway in the narrow sidestreet between two of the stone mausoleums. The undead alligator snapped at the air behind me, rotten teeth missing my tail.

With a really cool warcry that wasn’t panicked screaming, I turned and held up my prosthetic, pressing the big red button and dumping the charge from the recharged spark battery all at once as a bolt of lightning. It cracked against the creature and scorched the weeds around its face.

The alligator roared, even angrier now. It redoubled its efforts to get me, smashing through volcanic stone slabs and scrambling after me.

“Why did I give that stupid water cannon back?” I yelped, bolting for open ground. Stone smashed and broke behind me, almost louder than the roars of the creature. I spun and fired globs of glue at it, trying to slow it down. It tore through them without stopping, the epoxy shattering.

I had to think, exercising the one muscle group I had that was extremely out of shape. I’d been here before when I was investigating Bird of Paradise. I was only a short walk out of town. Could I make it back there and to the safety of the resort? Probably not without dragging the monster along with me and getting other ponies killed. A little help would have been nice, though.

I skidded to a stop in front of a tarp-covered form.

“Maybe…” I hesitated, then tore the tarp away from the black-clad construction robot. It was like a larger, clumsier version of the servitors in the rest of the park, painted a tasteful and respectful black.

When I pulled the tarp free, the curved screen of its face flickered and flashed before an emotive cartoon settled into place. It looked down at me with a confused expression.

“I really hope you can understand me,” I said. “I’m a guest here.” I held up my hoof with the season pass bracelet.

The robot made a surprised look and bowed politely.

“There’s an emergency,” I said. “I know the robots here are smarter than they seem. Kulaas probably did something to your programming. Can you do anything to help me with--” I pointed at the zombie alligator, which was pulling itself down the street. It caught sight of me and roared again.

The construction robot didn’t let me finish. It put a big metal hoof in front of me, shielding me and gently pushing me back while it stepped into the middle of the walkway. It faced down the zombiegator and braced itself.

With another wet roar, the monster charged, slamming into the big robot. Steel hooves dug into the ground, sparks flying and joints squealing, but it held its ground.

“If I survive this I’m getting you some kind of cool custom color scheme!” I promised it, running to the tool locker next to where the robot had been powered down and popping it open, hoping to find something useful.

Something caught my eye. A squat metal cylinder with a big hazard warning label. I grabbed the tank and hopped closer to the fight.

“Open wide!” I yelled. I hefted the gas tank up and threw it. The gator snapped at it on reflex, swallowing it whole. There was a long pause. “Uh…”

A dull whump sounded somewhere inside it, and the zombie’s side ruptured, spilling out a torrent of… well, you can imagine. It smelled even worse on the inside. The monster went limp, flopping to the ground in a heap.

The big robot shook it once, then let go and turned to me, face forming into a question mark before returning to a blank smile.

“Thanks,” I said. I held my breath and stepped a little closer to the defeated horror. “I doubt this thing was just hanging around here for fun.”

Deep inside its mouth, I saw something glimmer. A purple light like amethyst. I looked in through the slightly parted teeth, trying to make it out. There was a core, like the ones I’d seen in the bandit leader and the naval base commander.

It flashed with crackling light. The zombie lunged into motion, jaws snapping down around me. I yelped and held up my hooves. A bunch of instincts kicked in all at once. Thankfully my prey instinct to just give up and let it win was outvoted by the rest, but the swing vote went in a surprising direction in my subconscious, no doubt helped by my own fuzzy memories being less sharp and distinct than some of the ones that had been implanted in me with magic and machines.

A shield sprung up around me, and the alligator’s maw stopped like it had closed its teeth on a boulder.

Teeth pressed on the magical shield around me. I could feel them. It felt distressingly like having knives scrape across my soul.

The robot reacted quickly, grabbing the undead alligator. It wasn’t a military robot, no matter how much the supercomputer running things had upgraded its IQ. It didn’t have weapons or any real idea how to fight. It beat against the monster with a big metal hoof, holding it down and trying its best. If it had been a living animal it might have worked, or at least gotten its attention.

The pressure around the shield got tighter. I was trapped in a hydraulic press full of teeth. Sweat trickled down my neck. Fatigue was quickly crawling over me. Every second was like running at a dead sprint.

“Come on…” I closed my eyes and focused. I had to get out of here. I pushed in every direction and--

There was a loud, wet pop. I blinked, opening my eyes. The bubble around me had grown to twice its original size and the alligator’s head was in pieces around me. The magic flickered and died.

“Gross,” Bird of Paradise said. She stepped out of the shadows, avoiding stepping on any of the decaying flesh. “You popped it like a zit.”

The construction robot made a noise. It was just pneumatics, but it managed to make it sound like a question.

“I’m okay,” I assured it. I reached over to pat its metal hoof with mine. “You did a great job, buddy. I’m giving you an A-plus in monster wrestling.”

“This whole thing was a bust,” Bird of Paradise said. “Let’s go back to the tower. Mistress Acadia will want to know how it went.”

“Mistress?” I raised an eyebrow.

Bird of Paradise blushed. “That’s what she likes being called, okay? The last thing I need is a bucking curse on top of everything else that’s gone wrong in my life. If she wants me to prance around in an apron and make her awful tea and call her Mistress that’s what I’ll do.”

“You head back. I’m going to stop in at the resort.”

“Why?” the unicorn maid asked.

“They’ve got better drinks than your awful tea,” I joked.

It was a very small joke because I very quickly had a drink in my hooves that was flavored some indeterminate super-sweet artificial fruit that I could only call Red along with a shocking amount of rum.

“The firewall should keep anything from happening for a few days,” I promised Fog Cutter. “I got it from a reliable source.”

“If I can get one decent night of sleep I’ll buy you drinks for a month,” he said, tapping the edge of his plastic cup against mine. “Thank you. The Kahuna would thank you too, but…”

He motioned with his drink. The leader of the resort was passed out. Once the enchantment had been broken, the robots had been able to carry the sleeping ponies inside to bed and, more importantly, away from the falling ash overhead.

“I’m working on a permanent solution,” I told him. “I need to track a pony down.”

“Maybe I can help,” Fog Cutter suggested. “Believe it or not we do try to maintain open lines of communication with most of the raiders. They’re mostly scum, but we’d rather buy the trinkets of flotsam and jetsam they get washed up on shore than fight them.”

“They get to save face by not begging for help and you make sure you’re not attacked,” I guessed.

“More or less. And if one gang gets too pushy, the other ones are happy to cut a deal for protection. It’s delicate.”

I nodded. “The pony I’m looking for, she’s been killing and reanimating raiders. And a giant alligator. I’m pretty sure she’s been behind a lot of the stuff going on lately.”

Fog Cutter nodded. “I heard a bunch of raiders died the other day. The Downtown area with all the shops caught on fire and--”

“That was me,” I coughed.

He looked at me, sighed, and tried again. “Another raider base just went silent. It was on a steamboat--”

“It exploded. Also me.”

Fog Cutter held up a hoof and finished his drink before he found the mental strength to continue. “Do you remember how I said things were delicate?”

“Sorry.” I took a sip of my own drink.

“The only other ones I can think of that were missing many ponies were the Outbacks. They live near the old zoo. Last I heard they said the zoo was haunted and then they went quiet. Everypony figured they just got into a stash of gator tranquilizers. There aren’t any robots down there, so they might have bucked something up.”

“No robots…” I mumbled. “Was there one of the big crystals?”

Fog Cutter’s expression fell. He nodded.

“The ponies here and in the main park, they needed the servitors to keep them alive. They didn’t even stop to eat and drink. The raiders that were attacking Acadia’s tower were all dead from starvation and dehydration!”

“They got trapped like the ponies here and just…”

“Wasted away until they died,” I agreed. “I think I’d better go check out this zoo.”

“Be careful,” Fog Cutter warned. “The island is going to be crawling with ghouls, and the zoo isn’t much more than an old boardwalk over big pits full of alligators. The park founder loved the things! There must be a dozen different species, to this day. Buck knows what they eat, but they’re not afraid to include ponies for dessert.”

Chapter 117: Circle of Life

“I wanted to thank you again for saving me,” Chuck said. He’d met me at the rainbow-shaded border of the bubble around the Imaginseer’s town. Outside, the ash was coming down heavier and heavier, and it was starting to leak in here. It was just flurries, nothing compared to the shower elsewhere, but I could tell ponies were concerned.

“I think Lathe would have figured something out on her own if she had more time,” I said. “She’s pretty smart.”

“She’s special,” Chuck agreed. He slowed to a stop just before we entered the plaza in the middle of the planned down. The young stallion turned to face me. His cheeks were still sunken from dehydration and malnutrition. “My sister means a lot to me, Miss Chamomile. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

Describing myself as an idiot was easy, but I was an idiot who could read between the lines. “You want me to stay away,” I guessed.

“Sorry,” he apologized quietly.

I put my prosthetic hoof on his shoulder in support. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not here to put the moves on your sister. I stopped by to see Collet about getting some armor and beg Flysteel for filled spark batteries.” I lifted the robotic hoof up and waggled it. “This thing’s great but using the built-in weapons drains the battery like crazy!”

Chuck nodded. “Okay. I’m--”

“You’re not sorry. You just don’t like having to tell a dangerous madpony that she shouldn’t stick around town.”

“That too,” he admitted. “I’ll go and get--”

“Chamomile!” Lathe yelled. Chuck groaned. The young Imaginseer waved to us from the middle of the plaza. She was surrounded by tools and poking at the chugging, sizzling pile of machines and electronics in the center of town.

"--Maybe I'll just go find where the ends of my sentences end up when I get interrupted."

“This one’s not my fault,” I said.

“I know,” Chuck sighed. “I’ll go get Collet. Please make sure my sister doesn’t go with you on some adventure.”

“No problem,” I assured him.

He shook his head and trotted off. I walked over to Lathe to see what she was doing. I stared at the machine for a moment, trying to decipher it. She caught me looking and waited patiently while I examined her work and the old rainbow void generator.

“You’re reconfiguring it to work for the ash again instead of blocking dark magic,” I said.

Lathe blinked in surprise, raising her loupe to look at me more clearly. “How did you know that? This is a complicated machine, and restoring it to the original specs is a big task. Most ponies wouldn’t even know what it was!”

“I don’t know much about machines, but I do know dark magic isn’t an issue right now and the ashfall is,” I said. “Plus you already have the filter working partway.”

“Ah. Logical reasoning.” Lathe nodded. “I need to filter out the rest. The power curve is logarithmic, with diminishing returns. Every bit of performance we can get is critical.”

“Radiation isn’t something you want to mess with,” I agreed.

“What were you and my brother talking about?” she asked, turning back to the guts of the machine and unscrewing vacuum tubes one by one to examine them closely. She swapped two that both seemed to be working just fine, but seemed pleased by the swap when the hum of the generator shifted in pitch ever-so-slightly.

“He’s absolutely sure I’ll get you killed if you hang around me,” I told her frankly. It wasn’t my job to keep family secrets. Besides, there was a good chance she’d caught some of the conversation.

“He’s probably right,” Lathe agreed. “Do you know about chaos theory?”

“Uh…” I tried to remember the term. I’d heard it somewhere before, read it in passing in a book somewhere. “I think it was something about how disharmony spreads on its own in unpredictable ways.”

She nodded. “Chaos is a universal force. It works in the opposite way as Harmony. Harmony tends towards a convergent result over time, like how adding one and a half and a quarter and so on will get closer and closer to two. Chaos is divergent, with wildly unpredictable results depending on the initial conditions.”

“Right, right. I heard about that,” I said. I tried to recall parts of my education that… I hadn’t actually gotten. I could feel it in there, but the memories weren’t quite mine. I abruptly realized I was quoting form somepony else’s life but the words were already coming out of my mouth. “Like rolling a ball down a hill. Even if you start in as close to the same place as possible, the place where the ball comes to a stop and the path it takes to get there will vary because of small imperfections in the ball’s surface, the hill’s topography, the wind, and so forth.”

“That’s… correct,” Lathe said, sounding surprised. She glanced up at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just that sometimes I remember half my brain is a computer with another pony’s memories imprinted on it and I once spent a long time stuck in a hive mind thing.”

“Really? A computer? That sounds very convenient. Can you make spreadsheets?”

“I… what? What kind of question is that?”

“A practical one. They’re very good for maintaining an inventory and doing accounting.”

I rolled my eyes.

“So what insane venture are you off to next?” Lathe asked. She went back to the generator, tugging lightly at several wires.

“I’m going to the nature preserve,” I said. “Pretty sure it’s going to be a death match against an evil undead monster. Or several of them.”

“I see.” Lathe shrugged. “The Imaginseers stay away from that place.”

“Probably not a lot of machines to worry about,” I agreed.

“Mostly we stay away because it’s full of hungry alligators,” she corrected. “The Founder loved them, but they’re exceptionally dangerous when they’re hungry and wild. In the old days, they were tame, but that was with regular feedings and handlers who knew what they were doing.”

“I don’t suppose you have any alligator-fighting advice?” I joked.

“Don’t let them get you into the water,” she said promptly. “They can lunge but don’t have much stamina. If they get a grip on you, it’s probably all over.”

“That advice sounds a lot like ‘don’t fight alligators’.”

“Solving a problem means solving the right problem.”

Getting to the nature preserve turned out to be simple enough. It was one of the oldest parts of the park, predating a lot of the infrastructure and development. There were also directions on every signpost I saw pointing me in the right direction.

I knew I was in the right place when I was walking through a building shaped like an open alligator’s mouth. There wasn’t even a robot in the ticket booth, and I was about to jump the turnstile when it beeped and reacted to my bracelet, letting me inside with no hassle.

“Thank you very much,” I mumbled to no one in particular. There were obvious signs that raiders had been living out of here - cardboard boxes flattened out into dirty beds, the remains of old food, empty booze bottles. I checked those twice just in case they’d left anything to drink.

I tossed an empty vodka bottle to the side and sighed.

“The drinks at the resort are better anyway,” I assured myself. It wasn’t sour grapes at all, really it was fermented and distilled if anything! Straight vodka wasn’t all that appealing compared to drinks that were about two hundred percent sugar by volume.

I hefted my borrowed pipe wrench and adjusted the armor Collet had given me. It was made of overlapping bands of a silvery alloy that showed a rainbow sheen everywhere it had been welded or heat-treated, giving it an iridescent look.

It also felt a little small, even though Collet swore he made it to size. I think he was trying to convince me to lose weight.

“Here we go,” I mumbled. “Let’s see how bad this is gonna be…”

I ducked out into the open expecting to immediately get shot at or find myself in the middle of some atrocity. Most of the raiders I’d had to deal with had been relatively civilized, by drug-addled madpony standards. I was just about due for some real horror.

It was waiting for me, but not like I was expecting.

The crystal monolith was pulsing with terrible, ominous intent. I could see it, and feel it in every part of my body. About half of the raiders were circling around it. The rest were stacked off to the side in a rotting pile that was half-covered by falling ash. From the looks of the living ones, they’d be on the pile pretty soon if I didn’t do anything.

The whole place was built like a boardwalk, or at least this part of it was, Wide wooden platforms and walkways over and around drops into landscaped pits full of water and hungry maws full of teeth. The gators barely moved, ignoring my presence.

I pushed my way through the crowd and put a hoof on the stone. It reacted to me, the dark veins of SIVA inside the crystal flickering and pulsing with light. It flashed with baleful red light before going dark. The oppressive aura in the air faded. The raiders took one more step, then almost everypony there collapsed to the ground.

Only one shape remained standing, a pink pony with a mane of magenta curls. I almost thought she was real for a second before I realized I could see right through her.

“Hi there!” the ghostly ministry mare said brightly. “I’m Pinkie Pie, and I wanted to welcome you personally to my favorite part of Gator World! My pet Gummy is one of my bestest friends and he’s an Equestrian Alligator, a species you can find here along with Zebrican Alligators, Garvals, Desert Crocodiles, Saltwater Crocodiles, Rockod--”

The recording glitched and Pinkie was suddenly in a different spot, looking down into one of the swamps below.

“I didn’t think my Pinkie Sense would be going off here,” Pinkie Pie said. “It’s why I came here on vacation. Just to get away from it all.” She was quiet for a moment, which seemed wrong on a pony whose whole body looked ready to spring into animated movement at any moment.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes.

“You’re not even supposed to be here,” she whispered. She sounded like she was admonishing herself, but when she turned, she looked directly at me. Not just in my direction. Right at me, like she was really there. She blinked and squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. “I can’t focus. I didn’t want to--”

Pinkie pulled a small tin from her mane and shook a few candies into her hoof, crunching down on them. A tremor in her hoof that I hadn’t noticed until that moment calmed, and when she looked back at me, her pupils were huge and black and deep.

“Wow, that’s a lot better! I wish I could help and tell you what to do. Or at least what not to do!” She giggled. “You’ve come a long way.” Her expression turned sad, even while she smiled. “I hope whoever you are, you have some good friends. Don’t forget about them. None of us get to be the same pony we were at the start of our stories, but if we have friends, we can make sure the ponies we turn into are better than we were.”

She took one careful step towards me, squinting a little.

“It’s so weird that this isn’t working with you! It’s like you shouldn’t be in this--”

The illusion glitched and blurred, stretching out before snapping back into focus.

“--I know we can’t use that take for the park,” Pinkie sighed, talking to somepony who didn’t appear in the hologram. “Just leave it in the junk folder, but don’t delete it. Trust me, it’ll matter later--”

Pinkie fuzzed out one more time before reappearing.

“--and remember, everypony! No flash photography. A lot of animals have sensitive eyes and bright light is bad for them! But most of all, have a good time!”

Pinkie exploded into confetti. I waited for a long moment, trying to figure out if that was a special effect or part of the live recording. It didn’t start up again, so whatever that whole unnerving show had been, it was over now.

“It’s rude to invite yourself into a lady’s home without permission,” somepony called down from above. I stepped around the crystal monolith and looked up at the second floor of a long structure that mostly had snack restaurants and merchandise on the bottom story. A mare was standing on the balcony there, glaring down at me. Her eyes looked black except for glowing orange embers where the pupils should have been, along with a pale lavender coat and a seaweed-green mane.

She looked over at the crystal, the exhausted half-dead raiders, and then back to me.

“I take it that witch Acadia sent you,” she said. “I have no idea who you are, so I suppose that means you’re a mercenary of some sort?” The way she said witch felt like she wanted to use a slightly different, harsher word.

“That’s a rude way to put it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a mercenary. I’ve hired some of my own, but they went and got themselves killed in some kind of explosion. Breezeberry was supposed to be smarter than that, or I wouldn’t have changed plans from that delusional ghoul to his little group of raiders.” The mare sighed. “Tell you what, how about I pay you double whatever she is? I plan on killing her anyway, so you can take what you want from her corpse.”

“That’s really nice of you miss, uh…?” I hesitated.

“Briar Heart,” she said.

“Cool, I’m Chamomile. Look, I’m sort of on a time limit, can we do this without the monologue?” I asked. “Usually I’d use this time to come up with a clever plan but I’d prefer to speed this along with brute force today, thank you.”

“Oh, my apologies,” she said sarcastically. “I didn’t know we were on the clock! I’ll just kill you right away, then.”

Something inside her chest glowed with purple light bright enough that I saw her ribs right through her coat. A surge of magic spilled out. It was already quiet, with most of the island’s birds and insects hiding from the ashfall. Everything went totally silent. Even the gators went totally still.

The boardwalk under me started to rumble.

“They had all kinds of creatures here,” Briar Heart said. “Did you know some crocodilians can live practically forever, and they just keep getting bigger?”

I was thrown to my knees by a sudden lurch in the wooden boards. One of the raiders, who looked a little more aware and stronger than the others, got to his hooves in alarm and tried to run. The sound must have alerted whatever was underneath us.

Huge jaws tore through the deck. The scales were like roughly hewn granite, with teeth as long as my forehoof and made of crooked obsidian. The monster snapped up the fleeing pony in two bites. The first one was accompanied by a scream. The second one ended in silence.

Briar Heart laughed. “He should have been more careful! Cragadiles hunt by listening for the sound of their prey!”

I never thought it would happen but I was getting tired of wrestling giant monsters. I really must have been getting old. With the greatest of care, I got up to my hooves without making any more noise than my knees cracking. If I was very quiet and careful, I could probably make it to the building where Briar Heart was standing.

Her aura flared around her whole body. “That doesn’t mean I can’t control him directly, little mercenary!”

The wood behind me splintered and I bolted, barely avoiding a lashing tail tipped with a stalagmite thagomizer. The dock under me collapsed, I spread my wing, and fell like the dullest sack of hammers in Equestria, landing directly on top of a scaly beast twice as big as I was.

Our gazes met.

“Saltwater crocodile?” I guessed.

A shadow fell over us, and the reptile decided I was not worth fighting over. It rolled on the swampy ground, throwing me off and sprinting into the water, splashing down and away. I looked up at the cragadile. It really did resemble masonry more than flesh. Spikes and plates of stone covered its body in thick armor. I don’t know what weapon would have worked against it even if I’d had one.

“Stop!” I ordered, holding up my hooves. Maybe I just had to be firm and confident. It worked on a lot of creatures, at least long enough to confuse them. “Bad monster! Go back to your room!”

It roared with enough force to literally push me back just with the force of its voice. I got the sense it wasn’t intimidated. I ran for it, going directly over the water and using the gators as stepping stones. Neither of us was happy about the arrangement but they weren’t as scary as what was coming after me and they knew it.

I got to the far side of the pit and found a fence between enclosures. The cragadile stomped closer, knocking out more of the supports for the boardwalk as it closed in on me, beady little eyes glaring. A flash of color caught my eye, and holographic confetti drifted down from nowhere. I was suddenly reminded of something Pinkie had mentioned.

The monster roared. I went for my saddlebags and grabbed a wooden box, opening it and revealing bright, piercing sunlight. It poured out of the crystal bottle Acadia had made, and the cragadile screeched, blinded. It backed away from the pure illumination, retreating to the shadows.

“Stupid thing!” Briar Heart yelled. “It’s not going to hurt you! Get up!”

I spotted an employee access door in the fence and kicked it open, holding the light between me and the monster until I was through. The room was a basement level, fitted out to be an examination room for the local veterinarian. Diagrams of crocodile biology were up on the walls, along with cabinets filled with alligator-grade antibiotics and food supplements. It would probably have been a really great find in other circumstances, like if I had been a sick garval.

A big box next to the door was labeled was a medical warning about dosage by body weight. I blinked at it, read the label again, then picked up the whole box and walked back out with it, putting the liquid sunlight back in its protective case. I had a plan now.

“Hey!” I called out.

The cragadile blinked, turning its head. It was obviously still blinded. I remembered what its master had said and stomped the ground.

“Over here!” I shouted again. “Come and get me!”

It roared and charged, attracted by the sound. I held up the crate in one hoof. It opened its jaws to snap me up. I threw the crate full of drugs into the cragadile’s maw, and it snapped down on instinct, the crate and the glass vials inside shattering, opening shallow cuts and drenching the wounds in alligator tranquilizer.

I rolled out of the way and let it smash into the fence behind me, its head getting stuck in the wooden planks.

“You think that’s going to stop it?” Briar Heart cackled. It sounded practiced like she’d heard Acadia cackle too much and was trying to copy her old master. I watched the cragadile’s struggles to free itself slow down. It slumped and started snoring.

“Yes,” I decided. “I think it’s going to stop it.”

Briar Heart swore and stomped her hooves. I gave her a few moments to collect herself. Eventually, she managed to pull her mane back and appear calm again. “Apparently so!”

“So are we going to--?”

“Since you have defeated my creation, I will give you permission to leave!” Briar Heart declared. “You have proven yourself, and so you may leave with your life!”

I sighed and looked around for a way out. The place had been designed for ponies, and the smart ponies who followed standard safety conventions had put a brightly colored ladder in the corner. I mumbled to myself in annoyance and climbed up, finding that I had stopped being nearly as depressed about my missing wing and that I was now more frustrated and angry about having to walk everywhere.

“You fool!” Briar Heart cackled, once I got myself up on the deck. “You’ve fallen into my second, even more deadly trap! Ancient spirits of evil, transform these decayed forms into my unliving servants!”

Briar Heart raised her hooves, black and purple lightning cracking through the air and into the pile of raider corpses. They started to get up.

“No. Bad!” I smacked the ones on top with my wrench. “Stay down or else!”

“Fool! With the necromatic power from the ashfall, they’ll be twice as strong!” Briar Heart laughed. “Tear her apart, my minions!”

I fired a few globs of glue into the mass, and they quickly tangled themselves up. The zombies moaned, stuck to each other in a reaching, hungry mass.

The glue took a moment to dry, and then I rolled the whole ball of zombies over to one of the pits and pushed it through the broken railing. They fell to the bottom of the gator pen and landed in the water with a splash. I wiped my hooves clean on the deck and glared up at Briar Heart.

“You’ve… passed my second, secret test!” she declared. “I concede defeat. I will leave this place forever, conqueror. You are the victor this day.”

Briar Heart bowed and then took one dignified step back before turning and bolting in terror, ducking inside the building and out of sight.

“Hey! Get back here!” I yelled at her. I charged into the nearest broken-down old food stand, vaulting the counter and smashing through the back door, letting me into the guts of the building. The facade of old wood and rough safari style vanished, replaced with the same tile and neutral colors as the vet’s office I’d found in the basement.

I stopped, breathing heavily, and listened. Hooves pounding on hard floors. I glanced around, then went in the right general direction. I broke through another door and found a stairwell and a retreating pony going for the back doors.

Briar Heart looked back at me with terror in her glowing eyes. “Leave me alone, I told you you’re the winner! Be gracious about it and let me go!”

“I want your body!” I yelled.

“You’re a pervert?!” she gasped.

“No, I mean-- I need it for a ritual!”

“You’re a pervert in a cult?!”

“Lady, you’re an evil necromancer! You don’t get to claim any moral high ground!” She shoved the doors open and fled, slamming them shut behind her. Sparks flashed at the lock, and when I hit it, I felt the heat. She’d welded it shut.

I kicked it harder, felt the hot metal creak, and gave it a third shove. The doors burst open, and a black bolt of death magic slammed into my chest. My metallic scales flared to life, and I felt the necromancy curl around my heart, fighting against the push of my body’s natural defenses.

The sorcery dragged claws through my chest. It found my center and… I felt it pass through like it didn’t recognize anything.

“What the buck?” Briar Heart swore. “What’s wrong with your body?!”

“You just tried to kill me,” I said. “Again!”

“Attempted murder doesn’t count!” Briar Heart screamed, turning tail and running again. “Nopony should be prosecuted for things they didn’t do!”

“You are the second or third most annoying pony I’ve ever met!” I chased her onto a nature trail, firing glue at her hooves and missing. The mare had a talent for escape. Another blast hit the ground in front of me, throwing up a cloud of dirt. I jumped through it, not giving her the extra few seconds to escape.

She screamed in alarm when I landed on her.

“I don’t want to hurt you--” I started, then I realized what I was saying. “No, I do want to hurt you. You tried to kill me a whole bunch of times!”

“What if I apologized?” Briar Heart asked.

I threw the body onto the floor in the middle of Acadia’s lair. It flopped, ragdolling onto its back and showing the open wound in the chest where I’d torn out the crystal orb that had been buried where her heart was supposed to be.

“That sucked,” I stated firmly.

“Dat didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Acadia said. She kicked her apprentice’s corpse. “Not bad. You didn’ tear her apart. I thought you would bring back pieces an’ I’d have to stitch them together.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Of course not,” Acadia agreed. She motioned to a circle she’d drawn on the floor in chalk. “Put her over dere. I’m almost ready wit de ritual. I tink dis is going to work. De soul you want to drag into dis body is already tainted an’ undead. It makes it more fitting, you see? Like fitting de square peg in de square hole.”

“I have no idea what that means but okay,” I said.

Acadia sighed. “When you try an’ put a square peg in a circular hole, de corners get caught an’ it won’t go in--”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Well don’ blame me for it when you are de one who don’ understand tings.”

“Please just do the evil undead ritual,” I sighed. “I am exhausted and I need a drink.”

“I’ll have de maid get you one.” Acadia cleared her throat. “MAID!”

There was a long pause. Acadia sighed and clapped her hooves. Bird of Paradise appeared a few moments later in the Fastpass teleport pad on the floor, a ring of ribbon around her neck glowing. She made a strangled sound, and Acadia clapped her hooves again. Bird of Paradise gasped for breath.

“Get our guest a cup of tea,” Acadia said. “No. Make it rum. She has had de hard day. Get me one, too.”

Bird of Paradise grumbled and said something under her breath before storming off into the kitchenette. I heard bottles klinking around.

“She’s going to poison us,” I warned Acadia.

“I started making her taste all my drinks,” Acadia said. She pulled a covered steel box from under one of her tables, setting it next to her old apprentice’s body. “I am waiting for her to be clever enough to take de antidote before serving me tea.”

“Or crazy enough to poison herself.”

“Either way it would be interesting.”

Bird of Paradise came back with the rum. I took my cup and sipped it. Acadia took hers and held it in her magic, taking off her hat and reaching inside to retrieve a crystal spher, putting it into the empty spot in the corpse’s chest.

“What’s in the box?” I asked, nodding to the metal lockbox. Acadia shrugged.

“Someting I had to get myself. It was too dangerous to send my maid out for it.”

That was worrying. She didn’t seem afraid of sending Bird of Paradise into obvious danger, so whatever was in there had to be extraordinarily deadly. She uncovered the box and popped the locks. I felt something flow out, just for a moment, like she’d trapped a storm front in the little container.

Acadia retrieved a black metal flower and placed it delicately on the open wound in the corpse’s chest.

“That’s nanometal,” I said quietly. “It’s--”

“Sleeping, but not dead. If I had sent de maid for it, she would have killed herself plucking it from de ground,” Acadia said. It sounded like she was agreeing with me. The flower’s petals seemed to glitter in the light with frost. I knew it was a fractal edge, all splinters and little hungry micromachines.

The witch’s horn started glowing, and she poured a measure of rum over it. The rose dissolved as if it was made of sugar instead of black steel, melting down into the apprentice’s body.

The crystal started glowing, and the shadows in the room grew darker and longer, the lights fading and something else replacing the illumination.

Soft whispers and wailing came from the corners, as if a choir of mournful souls and the unrestful dead were being tormented just beyond the confines of the room. Acadia’s horn flared brighter and brighter as she mumbled, strands of energy coming out of the very air like she was collecting cobwebs in her magic and balling them up. There was something alive about them, or unalive. It was cold and dirty and old and smelled like blood.

Acadia stomped her hoof and the ball of energy shot down into the heart of the corpse, collecting around the crystal and sinking inside, sucked in and seeping into the rock as if it was a sponge collecting water.

The eyes of the corpse shot open. It sucked in a breath. The crystal heart inside its ribs throbbed and pulsed, the undead flesh over it drawing closed. The eyes were red now, blood red. She sat up. The echoing whispers stopped. The lights grew stronger.

“I live… again,” she said. Her voice was different now. Not the same accent as the mare I’d chased down. It was older, with a tinge of something from a country and time that didn’t exist now and hadn’t for thousands of years.

“Not bad,” Acadia said. “Looks like de ritual worked.” She drank the other half of the rum in the glass. “Never say dat I am not de best.”

Lady of Dark Waters looked at me.

“Chamomile, you actually came through for me,” she said. “Despite all the damage you cause, you must be the most resourceful pony I’ve ever met!”

“I’m flattered,” I said.

“Don’t look so glum, at least your body count is lower than mine,” Lady joked. She got up and stretched. “This body is interesting. No wings, but a horn? I suppose I’ll spend a few centuries learning to use it. A wonderful pastime since I can’t return home now that you’ve put my daughter in power…”

“If you even try to make me feel guilty about that, I’ll slap you silly.”

Lady chuckled. “No. She deserves a chance to be in charge for a while. I’ll be curious to see what she does with our little clan. You’ve upheld your end of the bargain. I’m out of that disaster of a body your mother hijacked. Now both of us have a vested interest in you putting it down.”

“Great,” I sighed. “So how about your half of this deal? Where’s the rest of the Black Dragon?”

“In the very safest place on the island,” Lady said. She spun on one hoof, pirouetting as if she was a ballet dancer. “The Black Dragon is in the bowels of the earth, in one of the deepest sub-levels of the utilidors.”

She grinned at me, and oddly enough had no fangs.

“It is in the cryogenic vault directly beneath the main park’s statue of Welsh Rarebit, snuggling up next to his tomb.”

Chapter 118: Heffalumps and Woozles

If it wasn’t for the ghouls, I would have said it was a quiet walk in the theme park. Even they weren’t all that bad. They were almost all blind and wasted, stumbling through the ashfall and occasionally falling back into torpor. The ghouls reminded me of all the ponies that had been sleepwalking thanks to the dark magic being broadcast around the island. They had that same lack of awareness of the world around them.

I looked over my shoulder at the ponies that had come with me. I wasn’t an idiot. Going alone would be suicidal. I also wasn’t going to trust Lady to come with me and not betray me even if she hadn’t outright refused to come anywhere near our destination.

“For the record, I’m not sure the place she told you about actually exists,” Lathe said. She adjusted her rebreather and squinted at her tablet, wiping ash off the display. “There have been rumors for centuries about some secret vault, but they’re just rumors.”

“She called it a tomb, not a vault,” I corrected. “Embe, how are you holding up?”

The zebra ghoul stuck out her tongue, catching radioactive ash on it like a snowflake. She seemed brighter and happier out here with all the radiation around.

“Good!” she said. “I needed to get out of the resort.”

I nodded. All the ponies had gone inside to wait out the storm, and most of the staff robots had switched into an emergency radiological event mode and were going in circles cleaning up the ashes and dumping them somewhere safer. Unfortunately, Embe was also radioactive and had almost ended up in a lead-lined bag.

“Just stay close, okay?” I told her. “It’s not safe out here.”

With all the enchanted visitors gone, the main street of the old park felt like a ghost town. There were a few robots pushing brooms around, and more of those little squat self-propelled vacuum cleaners, but they were staying out of our way.

Lathe led us to the statue of Welsh Rarebit. It was cast in bronze, twice as large as life, and showed him holding hooves with the same cartoon alligator that was on all the park’s merchandise.

“I have a map of the utilidors here,” Lathe said. She held the tablet where I could see the screen. With the clouds covering the sun I could see the display clearly. “You can see none of them are anywhere near this area.”

There was a dead zone in the underground complex around the statue.

“That’s suspicious,” I said. “You understand that it’s suspicious, right?”

“Or, and this might sound crazy,” Lathe sighed. “Maybe there’s no weird secret vault and there aren’t any tunnels there because a big bronze statue is a lot of weight in one spot for flat ground and they had to build it a really robust foundation.”

“There’s only one way to find out!” I decided.

“There are several ways, but we don’t have ground-penetrating radar available,” Lathe said. “Unfortunately, the units we had were stripped for parts. Major construction projects and geological surveys aren’t on the list of priorities like food and water are.”

I gave her a look.

“The nearest utilidor entrance is this way,” Lathe sighed.

“Are you going to be okay down here?” I asked.

Embe nodded. “Yes. As long as I’m not alone. I don’t… want to be alone. That’s why I had to come.”

I gave her a quick hug, careful not to break the fragile zebra ghoul. Her squeeze back was stronger than I expected. All the radiation outside was giving her a big boost. Maybe I should have collected some of the ash in jars and had her carry it as a snack.

“I’m not going to leave you alone,” I promised.

“If she has to run off to do something unwise, I’ll keep you company,” Lathe offered. “You got to see the park at its height! I would love to hear stories about anything you remember.”

“Thank you,” Embe mumble-growled happily.

“How far are we from the statue?” I asked.

“We’re in the corridor around the dead zone right now,” Lathe said. “Before you ask, I am checking it against the map. So far, they’re matching one-to-one. If there are hidden spaces, I’m not seeing them.”

“There has to be something,” I said quietly. I stopped walking and looked at the wall to my right. Lathe coughed and pointed to the other side of the corridor. I turned. It didn’t help much, since both sides of the utilidor were more or less identical, but at least I was facing the right way.

“There could be a sub-level somewhere,” Lathe suggested, as we took a left turn to continue our route around what was increasingly looking like solid rock. “All of us are familiar with the rumors, but I always dismissed them as Breezy Stories, like the Fastener Breezy who helps you find the correct size screw if you leave out a bowl of milk, or the Hammer Goblin!”

“What does...?” I asked, morbidly curious. “What does the Hammer Goblin do?”

“He punishes bad foals who think they can use any tool as a hammer and end up breaking calipers!”

I shook my head and followed Lathe around the corner. So far we hadn’t found anything. I was starting to think the ancient vampire queen who hated me might have been lying to me and wasting my time.

A drop of water hit my nose. I sneezed on reflex and shook my head, looking up at the pipes. The Utilidors were full of vents and pipes and wires, hanging overhead in the open for easy maintenance.

That’s when I spotted it, because nopony else had thought to look up.

“Lathe,” I said. “Why are there a ton of pipes and ducts going into the wall that looks like solid rock?”

“What?” Lathe stopped and looked around. I tapped her shoulder and pointed up.

A cluster of big square ducts and thick pipes in several colors went straight into the wall.

“That’s too much for a sprinkler system or regular ventilation,” she said to herself. She looked at her tablet and tapped a few buttons. “Hmm…”

While she tried thinking the problem out, I took drastic action. By that I mean I tapped the wall.

“Maybe there’s an illusion covering the doorway?” I suggested, feeling around and pressing myself against the concrete. It felt very convincingly real.

“I don’t think so,” Lathe said. “This would have been designed by the Founder, not the New Owners. He would have trusted himself to the machine spirit, not to pure sorcery and enchantments.”

“So some kind of hidden door?” I guessed. “It might not even be here. It could be around the next corner. Assuming they didn’t just seal it off entirely.”

“I don’t think so,” Lathe said. She lowered her tablet. “If this is what it’s rumored to be, there’s no way it would be totally sealed. Even discounting the notion that it would need to be accessible for maintenance, having to blast it open to access the vault would be too dangerous to the contents.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, it’s probably here. They had to build an entrance for the ducts, right? So having the pony access here too means they only had to make one way in.”

Embe had been tapping the wall while we spoke. Now she had her ear pressed against it and was tapping more softly.

“It’s hollow here,” she said. “It’s painted the same as the concrete, but it’s metal.”

“It is?” Lathe checked her tablet, then pressed her head against the wall and tapped it herself. “You’re right! There has to be a way to open this. One moment.”

She stepped back and started whispering, reciting something between a prayer and a nursery rhyme. I only caught a few words while she worked.

“...Machine spirit, guide us by the rule of left hooves and the mystery of magnetism, which binds the world with invisible thread…”

She looked up from her tablet and pointed at a junction box. I popped it open to look inside.

“It’s an electrical panel,” I said. “Something’s weird, though.”

“Weird in what way?” Lathe asked. She stepped closer to look and saw what I’d spotted. A big red padlock was secured through the main breaker, locking it in place. “Ah, I see. This is part of the ritual of lock-out-tag-out. It’s an important safety ritual.”

I wasn’t sure what to think about that. “The lock is a ritual?”

“It’s too easy for a pony to be injured by a malfunctioning machine. It’s no different than approaching a wounded animal - a hoof in the wrong spot and it can bite down or sting. It’s important to make sure the machine is powered down and sleeping while you work on it to avoid accidents, but…”

“But?” Embe asked.

“Well-meaning ponies might try to restore power while this maintenance is ongoing. This can lead to disaster if the Imaginseer is working around or inside the machine when it restarts. So whenever doing work, it isn’t enough just to turn off the power, but to use one of the ritual Red Locks to make sure ponies know not to touch the power controls.”

“So what you’re really saying is that anypony who has the key for this lock will know not to touch it, and anyone who doesn’t have the key can’t,” I said.

“Right,” Lathe agreed. “Not without confirming exactly what they’re doing. Safety rituals are written in blood by our ancestors.”

“Great, let’s do something dangerous,” I said. I touched the lock, focusing on the mechanism. I could almost see it in my mind’s eye, a series of disks like gates that had to be aligned at the right heights for the mechanism to turn. I massaged it, sort of. One thing I’d never gotten from being educated by a recluse in a backwater town was how to describe using magic. It felt like a massage, that same kind of feeling around for knots where things are sticking and pushing and pulling until they click into place.

It popped open in my hooves.

“Got it,” I said, carefully pulling it out of the junction box.

“I’m surprised you were that gentle with it,” Lathe said. “You’re becoming a respectable citizen!”

“I didn’t want to lock us out forever or get shocked with a billion gigavolts,” I said. Lathe took the lock from my hooves and nodded. She looked up at the junction box wordlessly. I shrugged and stepped aside, letting her have the honors.

Lathe reverently pulled the long lever, swinging the circuit breaker back into the live position. There was no dramatic shower or sparks or explosion of steam. A small green light glowed to life, and dust fell for a moment as the hidden door smoothly moved, sinking inward a hoof-length before dropping down into the ground.

“Wow!” Lathe whispered. “What a beautiful mechanism! One of the most difficult things for a machine is absorbing shocks when moving heavy weights, but even with centuries of being stuck in one position and powered down, there was no shudder or hesitation at all!”

“Built to last,” I agreed.

Embe squinted into the gloom beyond. Lights flickered to life, sulfur lamps humming to life and working their way up from deep cold sleep.

“It’s an elevator,” Embe said. Inside the revealed room were a few sealed crates of tools and random supplies, and at the far end was a big cargo elevator, the kind a pony might use to move heavy shipping containers and machine parts, with high walls made of metal fencing and obviously set to go down the deep shaft under it following the pipes and ducts heading into the depths of the earth.

“That explains why the area was small,” I said. “It’s just the way in.”

“Let me examine it quickly to make sure it’s safe,” Lathe said. “Elevators are known to have temperamental machine spirits at the best of times.” She pulled out a can of oil and a stick of incense, lighting it with her horn a she approached the elevator’s cage.

“Want to help me check these boxes?” I asked Embe. She nodded and we pulled them open while Lathe made sure the elevator wasn’t going to just drop us to our deaths.

“Oh, look!” Embe smiled and pulled a hat out of one of the crates. “It’s full of hats!”

“Neat!” I smiled. I pulled out a wide-brimmed sunhat and put it on my head. “What do you think?”

Embe tilted her head and nodded sagely. “It’s very elegant, but this one suits you better.” She produced a cap with a plastic frame around it that could hold two drinks, with long rubber straws to allow a pony wearing the cap to drink.

“You’re right,” I agreed, putting the sun hat on Embe and taking the novelty cap. “I’ll need to find some Sparkle Cola to give it a test run.”

“The elevator is ready!” Lathe called over. “All aboard!”

“I can’t believe you lubricated the brakes,” I said, when we got to the bottom. It had been a more exciting trip than I’d been prepared for.

“I might have been a bit too liberal with my anointment,” Lathe conceded. “I’m only a Junior Imaginseer, I’m allowed to make mistakes as long as I learn from them!”

“Will we still be able to get back up?” Embe asked.

Lathe looked up the long shaft. With the elevator’s open cage design it was obvious we’d gone down a few stories, well below sea level.

“Yes,” Lathe said. “The mechanisms aren’t damaged. It should be fine. I’ll pray to the machine spirit and clean the brakes before we go back up, and if it isn’t cooperating there’s also an emergency ladder in the back of the shaft.

“I really don’t want to have to climb back up,” I said, speaking as an expert with three legs and sore hips. “But at least we’re probably in the right place.”

The elevator had let us out into another small room, but this one felt more like an antechamber, more finished and obviously important. A path picked out in red laminated tiles led to copper doors emblazoned with the park logo. There was a sense of weight to everything, and even the lights in the room were carefully arranged for dramatic effect, focusing our attention on those doors.

“The most sacred place in the park!” Lathe whispered.

“What’s supposed to be here?” Embe asked.

“The only thing I’m worried about is my mother,” I said. “I’ll go first. You two get ready to run if this is bad. If Lady is right about the condition of her original body, we might only need to splash some bleach around and clean the place up.”

I doubted it was going to be that easy. I pushed the doors open. Cold air flowed past me, the chill enough to leave faint traces of fog on the tile floor. It was pitch black inside, and I carefully edged into the dark, staying in the light from the open doorway.

A ghost appeared in front of me with the clicking clatter of a film camera starting up. The phantom flickered and came to life, looking at me across time and space.

“Welcome to the Rarebit Vault,” Welsh Rarebit said. He sounded like he could be anypony’s friendly, outgoing uncle, the kind of pony that comes over to visit just to spoil his nieces and nephews and let them sneak off to play instead of doing chores. “I hope, before you start planning ways to plunder this place, you’ll indulge me with a moment to speak.”

“Uh, sure?” I said. "Go for it."

“It’s a recording,” Lathe said. “He can’t hear you.”

“I have no way of knowing if you’re seeing this five years in my future or five hundred. If it is closer to what was my lifetime, I can only hope that my grandson or perhaps one of his descendants is with you. Cheese, if you ever hear this, I’m sorry about what happened between us. I shouldn’t have said what you were doing was pointless.”

Welsh Rarebit sighed, and I saw exhaustion and pain crease his muzzle.

“I am, as I record this, gravely ill with a disease that has no cure in my time. It will be fatal within, oh, a few seasons at most. I didn’t know the end of my life would come so quickly, and I had a sudden worry about my legacy, as do most ponies in my position, I feel.”

He sat down, a chair materializing out of nothing behind him.

“I thought that my animated creations are all ponies would remember me for. I worried that I’d only be remembered for silly cartoons. I was worried I wouldn’t match up to the great ponies of history. Star Swirl the Bearded, Eddy Current, Zephyr Cockatiel. I created ETROT to try and make something more serious, but it wasn’t until after I drove my grandson away that I realized something.”

As if on cue, the cartoon alligator I’d seen so many times bounced out from behind the chair, somehow sharing space with the real pony sitting in it. The alligator waved and hopped up to sit on Welsh’s lap, where he gave her an affectionate pat on the head.

“Shiela brought joy to a generation of foals. Not just in Equestria, but all over the world. The ponies I brought together, most of whom were far more clever than I was, practically invented technologies from scratch that probably seem commonplace to you now. What legacy could be better than one where I made ponies happy?”

Shiela waved to us and hopped off his lap, disappearing in a cartoon splash of sparkles.

“What you’ll find here is what I’m leaving to the ponies of some far-off tomorrow. If you’re looking for gold or gems, you’ve come to the wrong place. If you came celebrating curiosity and the joy of discovery, I’ll see you ahead.”

He flickered and vanished, and more lights came on around us, revealing that we were standing in an underground chamber the size of a hoofball field, filled with fetlock-deep mist and with stairways branching off to the left and right. A vault door stood ahead of us, looking totally impenetrable.

“We weren’t the first ones to get in here,” Lathe said.

A hole had been bored through the rock, and it looked half drilled and half melted, the rock eaten away by something terrible that had dripped onto the tile floor and left holes in it. Another hole went through the wall next to the side of the vault door.

“Stop!” I warned. I saw something in the shadows. Black metal moved in the dark. Lathe took something from her toolbelt and threw it at the gloomy corner. The glowstick skittered across the ground, the chemical light showing what was lurking there.

“Is that… a talon?” Lathe asked.

It was as big as a pony’s whole body, all twisted and filthy and lead-black. Gears twitched and clicked uselessly at the ragged edge where it had been torn from the black dragon’s body. I could see burns around the broken joint. I made my way over carefully, not wanting to step in anything that might melt my hooves off.

“It must have broken during the fall then finally fell off here,” I said. “Stay away from it, just in case. SIVA is sometimes still dangerous even when it should be dead.”

“Understood,” Lathe said. “But it’s interesting work.” She leaned over my shoulder. “Look at those pistons! It’s practically more organic than machine! I think that might even be a fluidic processor there using--” she gasped. “Microvalves! I’d love to tear it down to look at some of those parts more closely!”

“Remember the bird in the forest?” I asked.

Lathe stopped what she was doing and backed off. “Point taken.”

“At least it’s not hard to tell which way she went,” I said. I took a careful look into the big holes she’d carved into the walls. The soil and rock were clearly disturbed, but slumped back together. Mud and sand had filled in even the tiniest gaps. “Looks like these tunnels collapsed.”

“The ground and soil here are soft,” Lathe reminded me. “The Utilidors are the only reason they could build the park, remember? It’s like trying to walk on snow. They spread out the weight and serve as a solid foundation, like a snowshoe.”

“Right, yeah,” I sighed. “Okay, we’re going to have to get through these doors.” I squared up with the vault door, trying to figure out how it opened up. I doubted my little lockpicking trick would work on something like this. The thing was imposing, solid, and steel. It was also painted with a stylized castle wrapped in black thorny vines.

“This was… in one of the movies,” Embe said.

Lathe and I turned to look at her.

“It was a story about a sleeping prince and a princess had to come and rescue him,” she said. “There was a witch that put a spell on him. He got locked away in a secret castle and the witch ruled the land with darkness.”

“And this was in it?” I asked.

Embe nodded. “The princess had to find two keys to open up the way to the castle.”

“There are two paths here,” Lathe suggested. “Let’s pick one.”

“Be ready to jump,” Lathe said.

I nodded and carefully pushed on the pressure plate. There was a soft click. I flinched. Nothing happened.

“This one seems safe,” I said. “I’ll try the next one.”

I put my hoof on it, there was a slightly sharper click, and a buzzer sounded. I got out half a swear before a spring-loaded floor tile tossed me back to the start of the room, smacking into padded cushioning clearly placed there just to catch flung ponies.

“That one was safe last time!” I groaned.

“It must be some kind of code,” Lathe said. “The way the floor tiles are arranged, the extra-wide areas with two panels side-by-side implies a numerical pattern. It’s probably related to prime numbers somehow. Everything is.”

Embe snickered dryly.

“Do you really not know what this is?” the ghoul asked.

“A trap?” I guessed.

“It’s not a trap, it’s a puzzle,” Lathe corrected. “If it was a trap there would be spikes or flamethrowers or flaming spikes. Or a boulder. Boulder traps can have fascinating designs!”

“Wrong, and wrong,” Embe said. She stood up carefully on her rear hooves and hopped carefully onto the first panel. That one had never flung us so far, but I still winced. I watched as she hopped forward and back, one panel at a time, only keeping one hoof on the tiles at a time and alternating with each hop as she made her way across in a looping dance. “It’s hopscotch. You hop on one hoof and go on the first tile, then back, then the first two, then back, then three…”

She got all the way to the end and looked back at us.

“Didn’t either of you play games as foals?” Embe asked.

“I played with plastic building bricks until my father took them away because I was gluing them together,” Lathe said.

I shrugged. “I don’t think I should discuss my foalhood except with a therapist, and where am I gonna find one of those around here?”

Next to Embe, the panel on the wall opened up, revealing a huge key, practically as big as the pipe wrench I was carrying in my saddlebags. She picked it up like a sword.

“We probably need two keys, right?” I asked.

“That’s how it worked in the story,” Embe said. “The princess had to use the two keys together to open the way to the Kingdom of Hearts.”

“Let’s get the other one so I can really disappoint my mom,” I said.

“But why use a foal’s game?” I asked. “It doesn’t make sense. Anypony could get it.”

“Anypony except us, apparently,” Lathe sighed. “The Founder built this park because he wanted other ponies to experience the pure joy that goes from foalhood, remember? Maybe he wants to ensure that anypony who opens the tomb has the same cultural background.”

“I think he designed it for his grandfoal,” Embe said, her growling voice low and sad.

“Maybe you’re right,” Lathe agreed.

“Wait,” I said. We’d walked back into the main room and something was wrong. I couldn’t put my hoof on it. “I have a bad feeling.”

Lathe checked her tablet. “It’s possible opening that passage could have triggered some mechanism… wait.” She frowned and looked at the dark corner of the room. “Where’s the dragon talon?”

A tingle of warning ran down my spine. I grabbed Lathe and Embe and rolled to the side. A razor-edge whip came down across the walkway where we’d been standing, sending up sparks and tearing the tile.

We came to a stop and I was backing up even before I was fully on my hooves again, scooting back on my butt. A horror dropped from the ceiling where it had been clinging, landing on the ragged, melted edge of what had been a knee joint. Pistons and belt drives were forced into service as countless small, spiderlike, twitching legs pushed out of that broken stump. The talons stood on top like a crown, twisting into a shape almost like a fanged mouth.

“I knew this was too easy!” I shouted. “Get through the other door!”

Embe was literally dead on her hooves and still got to the second door before Lathe. The Imaginseer was busy trying to scan the mechanical monstrosity with her equipment.

“This is fascinating,” she said. “It’s drawing power from the background magical field and rebuilding itself using its own parts as raw materials!”

It started making a sound like a pony who just found out the hard way that they’d just eaten something extremely expired. I picked up Lathe in my prosthetic hoof and ran for it, whacking her in the snout with my wing when she tried to protest the rough treatment.

Behind us, the thing belched out a horrible mix of oil, smoke, and poison in a wet cloud. I felt it corroding my tail before we got through the door and Embe shut it firmly behind us.

“That was some serious bad breath,” I panted. My whole body felt sore. I was not in good shape. The last few days of running around had undone almost all of the healing I’d managed at the resort’s spa. My muscles weren’t healing right and I knew it. My body was an engine being run with no oil in the tank.

“We’re trapped in here…” Embe whispered. She started shaking. I pulled her into a hug and squeezed.

“We’re not trapped. I’ve got a plan to get us out of here when we’re done.” It was only half a lie. I had part of a plan and I’d figure out the rest soon. Probably. “Lathe, can you watch the door? You’ve got that scanner so you can tell if it’s going to break through.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Lathe agreed. I think she understood that I needed to get Embe focused on something else before she started to panic and worked herself up until she started to go feral.

“Let’s see what we need to do for the next key,” I suggested. “Got any ideas what this might be about?”

There was a wall in front of us, with a series of windows through it in a grid, seven across and six up. It had to mean something, but I wasn’t sure what.

“Is the answer forty-two?” I mumbled.

“Hmmm…” Embe stepped closer, and one of the bottom row of windows lit up with blue light. A moment later, the window next to it turned red. Embe looked down at her hooves. “There are buttons here.”

“It must be some kind of code we have to enter,” I said. “Maybe we have to press them in the right order?”

We tried a few panels at random to see what they’d do. Every time we pressed one, a window would turn blue on the bottom-most empty layer. Then a red one would appear. Nothing seemed to be happening until almost two dozen turns in.

Four red panels in a line blinked and a buzzer went off. The entire wall flashed red and then all the lights disappeared.

“We must have done it wrong somehow,” I groaned.

“This is familiar,” Embe said. “Should we try again?”

“It can’t hurt.” We tried a few more times, and I quickly realized the pattern. As soon as four of the red panels lined up, the little game ended. The last time I didn’t even see it coming until a diagonal group of the red windows blinked and signaled our defeat. “Pretty sneaky.”

“Why are you so bad at games?” Lathe groaned.

“Like you could do better,” I scoffed. “It’s harder than it looks!”

The red-robed pony rolled her eyes and pushed me aside. “Watch.”

She tapped on the buttons, not even taking time to think between her moves. Less than a minute later, four blue circles were lined up. A happy chime played instead of the harsh buzzer from before. The wall split in half, allowing us into the chamber beyond. A second oversized key was embedded in the floor, in a block of concrete shaped to look like a boulder.

“You take this one,” I told Lathe, pulling it free and tossing it to her. “I’ll be busy keeping that monster busy, so you two are going to have to get the vault open.”

Lathe took the key and examined it, turning it over in her hooves.

“I think this is more than just metal,” she said. “There are seam lines, but the machining is so tight you need a loupe just to spot them. No gaps at all.”

“How are you going to keep that monster away?” Embe asked. “It looked really…”

“I know,” I said. “But I’ve got a secret weapon.”

I did actually have one. I pulled a wooden box out of my saddlebag and opened it. Sunlight flooded the small room.

“Ah!” Lathe nodded. “Sunlight destroys the SIVA, right?”

I nodded back to her. “Exactly. It won’t be able to get anywhere near me. As long as I stay between it and you, you’ll be perfectly safe. It might even outright kill that thing.”

“Thank goodness,” Lathe sighed. “I was worried something would go wrong.”

A few minutes later, something went wrong.

Chapter 119: Destati

I was sleeping. It was a heavy, suffocating sleep. Have you ever had a nap where you couldn’t get up? Your whole body can feel exhausted to the point of collapse and there’s a sensation as if the world has its hoof on your chest, pushing down to keep you in bed. I’ve read about sleep paralysis, and it felt like that, the terrible sensation of having part of my consciousness aware even while the rest of my body refused to respond.

It wasn’t restful sleep. Flashes of memory pushed through. I’d been running towards something. Or from something. There was a bright light. Darkness. Cold.

“HI’LOS NI PRAAN.”

The statement didn’t wake me up as much as it shattered the concept of sleep and forced me into the waking world with the gentle ease of a Vertibuck crash. The world took longer to come into focus, hard edges snapping into place around me at what felt like a pace just slow enough that I was able to catch entire sections of the universe blinking into existence when they realized they were being looked at.

I sucked down air, trying to breathe. I must have been breathing, because I wasn’t choking, but it felt empty somehow. I don’t know how to describe it except to say that it was painfully empty, like a glass half-full.

“Where am I?” I asked. Nopony answered. The world around me wasn’t the one I last remembered. My thoughts were still struggling to catch up. I remembered getting the second key, and then…

I shook it off and looked around. I needed to get my head in the game or I was going to get myself killed trying to recall what had been on my grocery list.

I was standing at the bottom of stadium seating. I didn’t remember how I got there. Not that my recent memory was working well. It felt like I was coming out of being blackout drunk and was staring bleary-eyed at the world of sobriety.

I was halfway up the stairs and thinking about getting a look outside when I realized the railing I was holding onto didn’t have any vertical supports. It was just a bar of metal hanging in midair. I tried moving it, but it might as well have been nailed in place, with the good nails that I couldn’t just rip off.

At the top I looked over the edge at what seemed very nearly like the ocean, but I was sure the ocean wasn’t supposed to be as sluggish and green as lime gelatin.

The ground under my hooves was made out of some kind of hybrid of marble and steel, stone with veins of dark metal running through it and glinting in light that was coming from somewhere beyond the cloud cover overhead.

It was because I was looking at the floor that I noticed my hooves. They were back to normal, and that meant only one thing. Something I should have realized the moment I saw that impossible railing.

“I’m in a simulation?” I asked. “How?”

I didn’t remember an orb. And I didn’t think Welsh Rarebit was the kind of pony to put one in his vault. From what Lathe had told me, he didn’t care for simulations. He hadn’t done this and we were the first ponies to disturb it since…

Well, since the Black Dragon had burrowed into it, at least.

Might as well enjoy it while I figured out what to do. I flapped my wings, enjoying the sensation of having two wings to flap. In the real world, my missing left wing was giving me some serious phantom limb syndrome. It’s way worse than a pony might expect -- the description of it makes it sound like it’s only about thinking you’ve got a hoof or wing or whatever when there’s just empty space, as if you forgot you had a stump there. The truth was that the nerves still felt random sensations. My wing had been cramping for hours, and since it wasn’t actually attached I couldn’t stretch it.

“Can anyone hear me?” I called out. Lathe had been able to contact me the last time I’d been in a simulation like this. “Hello?”

The clouds overhead rumbled with the slow and building fury of an oncoming storm. If it was a sign, it wasn’t one I could interpret. Wherever I was, it didn’t feel safe. I turned around to take it all in. I’d woken up stumbling out of thin air like a crowd surfer finding an empty spot a little too late. I hadn’t actually looked back to see what had been behind me

It was shaped a little like a concert hall, a half-dome over a circular depression in the ground. Nearly circular. It was a polygon, all straight edges. I could see them if I looked closely enough at the edges.

A spotlight shone down in the middle of the stage, through a skylight in the dome, and when I looked up, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. There wasn’t a hole in the clouds or a visible sun overhead or anything. The light had an odd look to it, the edges clearly demarcated and almost liquid in the way it seemed to flow and pulse.

It landed on a pyramid the size of a refrigerator. It acted like a prism and redirected the light out of the back of the dome. The window it used was too small for me to fit through, so I needed to find another way.

I walked around the edge of the dome on a narrow path forming a circular lip around the bowl of the amphitheater. Behind the dome I found that light shining out in a horizontal beam at head height, passing through an open portcullis made of black iron, and continuing along a walkway that I was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago leading out into the distance. There were no safety railings to keep ponies from tumbling over the edge into the gelatin sea.

Before stepping out onto it, I checked to see if I could get into the air. I couldn’t. I wasn’t surprised. It hadn’t worked in the test environment either, and this place only seemed barely more real.

My steps were very careful. There was a sense that at any moment, the bridge might not exist, or that my hooves could clip through the apparently solid stone, or that it could explode like everything else in my life. The light next to me seemed to be flowing in this direction, urging me on.

Green lightning cracked down in the distance, the storm growing stronger. I didn’t want to be caught out in whatever rain was going to fall. I picked up the pace and squinted through the thick fog ahead. It wasn’t just thick, it was literally impenetrable. For a few moments on the long bridge, I couldn’t see either end, and I wondered if it was endless.

A second platform loomed out of the mist just as I was becoming really worried I was going to get lost on a straight road.

Part of me was aware that the platform was no more likely to really be stable than the bridge, but for some reason, it felt secure enough to make me glad to be off the narrow walkway.

This new platform was occupied by a skeletal building. Not literally made of bones, but if you in a very literal and not metaphorically stripped the flesh from a structure until only the most important parts were left, it was what you’d get. A few walls, enough to mark large rooms, stairs with no visible support, huge gaps that should have held load-bearing bits. In the real world, it wouldn’t have worked. Here, it didn’t have to care about physics.

The beam I was following went into the building, spearing through a window and vanishing into the depths.

“This is easily in my top three strangest places I’ve been,” I said. “Not as bad as the Cage in Limbo, but definitely worse than the mirror world.”

I stepped into what was either a hallway with no outer wall or a partially enclosed walkway around the outside edge of the platform. I didn’t have to go far to find an iron portcullis, this one closed and barred. There was another walkway continuing deeper into the mist on the other side, but I couldn’t figure out a way to open it. I tried pushing and pulling it, but all I did was make a lot of noise.

Red light caught my attention, and sudden fear saw me pressed against a low wall, ducking down and trying to hide. Until I knew how much trouble I was in, I wanted to attract as little notice as possible. I was glad I did. Something came around the corner. I’m not sure how to describe it properly. The thing was pony-shaped, but it clearly wasn’t a pony.

It was almost crystalline, triangles and flat planes, but they were set at odd angles, passing through each other and twisting in ways that seemed impossible. Some part of me that felt detached could see it, something I shouldn’t have been able to see. A direction they pushed into that wasn’t in our world but was happy to live in a place built out of exotic math and magic.

Red light outlined its flat black faucets, glinting brightly where the polygons passed through each other without intersecting, slipping in a direction I had no name for.

I needed a weapon.

I stayed low and crept along the wall. I couldn’t see eyes on the thing, but the red light it gave off was like a spotlight, sweeping over the half-finished building. Getting caught in the light seemed like a bad idea.

Once it passed, I quietly trotted deeper inside. There was a chance I could take it with my bare hooves but I’d really like at least a club before I risked anything. I pressed myself against the wall, waited a moment to make sure I wasn’t about to be attacked, then looked around. The room was littered with a few pieces of debris, clutter that resembled broken toys and props from some of the rides I’d passed by in the park, but simplified and slightly blurred.

A shaft of sunlight through a window in the far wall illuminated a box. It was warm and inviting, in direct opposition to the red danger of the monster I’d seen a moment ago.

It was probably a trap, but I was really good at springing those and as far as I knew none of them had killed me yet. I poked the box, and when it didn’t grow teeth and attack me, I tried harder. When I say it was a box, I mean in the most generic box way possible. It was a slightly stretched-out cube with no visible hinges, lid, or even texture. Was I supposed to take the whole thing with me?

The sunlight got brighter, and the box opened, the top levitating off as if a unicorn was manipulating it. I was hoping to find a weapon inside, but there was no such luck. All I say in there was a polyhedron, about the size of my head. It was pure white, with dozens of faces that made it look like a gemstone.

“You’re not a club,” I sighed, reaching in to grab it.

“HAAL NI WUTH HAALVUT KUN”

“Oh, buck--” I fumbled the almost-sphere, dropped it entirely, and it floated up to eye level. I couldn’t understand the words themselves, but I got two things from them. First, it was definitely Kulaas. And I knew that because of the second thing - every word was a maze of interconnected meanings that ponies weren’t equipped to unpack. I could feel the edges of it thanks to whatever the computer had done to me in the test chamber. It was a greeting of mild surprise with a little tinge of hope that I might be useful and going the right way.

Or something like that. It wasn’t easy to translate. The sensation was a little like a pony finding a new pawn on the chessboard in a very important game.

“Can we take it down two notches?” I whispered. “Maybe speak in Equestrian?”

It wiggled. The surface was less like a solid gem and more like ten of them all overlapping and sharing the same space, edges and faces flowing together seamlessly and giving the impression of a liquid surface.

A spiky shape pushed to the forefront, not growing but turning in that impossible direction I’d seen in the crystalline pony wandering and searching the area. It flashed yellow.

“Yes,” it said. It was Celestia’s voice, but clipped and somehow flat.

“Great,” I replied. “Do you have a weapon or--”

It flashed blue. “No.”

Red light filled the room. I looked over my shoulder and saw that twisted mess of triangles standing at the open doorway facing me with a blank expression. Not having eyes made its expression especially blank, but it definitely had a mouth, the thing’s snout distorting and twisting open in a way that would dislocate a real pony’s jaw.

For lack of anything better to do, I charged it and slugged it in the face to establish dominance.

It shattered like glass. Hard edges bit into me, reforming around my hoof and trapping me with my forehoof inside it.

“Uh,” I hesitated. “That wasn’t what I expected to happen. Can I get a re-do?”

The orb flashed blue. “No.”

“I wasn’t asking you!” I shouted. I glared at the red-edged monster attached to my hoof. “If I’m attached to you, you’re attached to me,” I reminded it. I threw my weight left, and the thing had to come along with me, both of us falling over and rolling to one of the unfinished walls. I gave its hooves a kick to keep it from standing and grunted with effort, bringing it to the edge of the platform.

It went over the edge. I braced myself, grabbing onto a cone sticking out of the marble floor and trying to get a grip on the smooth surface.

The edges of the thing’s polygons tried to do the same with my hoof. I looked down at it, triangles pressing against my leg and sliding slowly downwards. Below us, the sea raged.

“Just get off me you stupid thing!” I yelled, not feeling cool enough for a one-liner. My hooves were slipping. The monster wailed like a broken loudspeaker and lost its grip. Triangles clipped through me like they were made of air and shadows. It fell away, vanishing before even hitting the water and simply blinking into nothing, there one moment and gone the next.

I backed away from the edge. I really didn’t want that to happen to me.

Blue. “No.”

I looked up at the orb. “All you can say is ‘yes’ and ‘no’?”

Yellow. “Yes.”

I sighed. “I asked Kulaas to simplify things, I shouldn’t be upset that it did exactly what I asked.” I stood up and took a deep breath of nothing. It wasn’t calming or bracing. The sheer emptiness of it all made a distant part of my brain panic about drowning. “There has to be some way to get that gate open.”

“Yes.”

I sighed. It wasn’t useless information, exactly. It was just the next best thing to useless. I reminded myself that it was good to know that a solution existed, even if I didn’t have a cheat sheet for it.

It took me a full two minutes to think about finding where that beam of liquid light I’d followed actually ended up, and then another minute to push a pyramid-shaped block into its path in the right spot to shoot it through two windows, threading the eye of a needle and casting it into the closed gate, which silently swung open.

“Yes,” the orb agreed with a question I hadn’t asked. I chose to believe it was saying I was clever and doing a good job.

It seemed like my job was escorting the beam, or maybe I had that exactly backwards. I followed it out onto a bridge and trotted into the void. That storm was almost on top of me now, and lightning was striking close enough that being out in the open, high up with nowhere to run, was seeming like a bad idea.

I sped up, abandoning caution and hoping things would stay solid.

A platform appeared so suddenly it popped into place in front of me. A tremor ran through my legs and I wasn’t sure how real the feeling was but I jumped for it either way, spreading my wings even though the air refused to allow me even a tiny bit of lift. I landed heavily and rolled to a stop, lying on my back and feeling exhausted somewhere deep inside. It wasn’t like SIVA eating me alive - I was very familiar with that - it was more like the feather flu, a sense of unwellness creeping up inch by inch.

“I’m starting to see why the Imaginseers didn’t like these simulations,” I sighed. I sat up and looked around. The platform was cracked in straight lines that all intersected at precise angles, forty-five degrees to what I was sure was mathematical precision. Dim light glowed through the marbled composite of stone and metal, and just for a moment, I could almost catch a glimpse of it from some far-off place. A blueprint of a circuit.

The orb floated in front of me, breaking me out of that out-of-body haze and drawing my attention to what was actually perched on the broken platform.

It was a castle. No, that’s not exactly right. It was the silhouette of a castle, the outline of walls and towers in a facade, and I was on the wrong side of it. I could see the web of supports holding the panels in place, braces sunk into the stone like teeth biting the earth and hanging on. Gaps between them let light escape through the cracks.

I carefully made my way through the barricade. The light was as bright as full sunlight, and that made it almost blinding after all that gloom. The light I’d been chasing flowed through windows in the outer metal layers of the onion-like citadel, and in the center was a beam of light stretching up to the sky and cutting through the clouds, forming an eye the storm swirled around angrily. I shielded my eyes against the glare and looked into the middle of that blaze.

Kulaas. She was standing in the center of the wide shaft of light. She looked like Celestia, but I could see through it. It was just a convenient shortcut for her to explain herself without words. There were layers of metaphor wrapped around it, reminding me of my experiences with Alpha, that she was powerful and godlike and benevolent, and a hundred other things.

In the same place, I saw Destiny’s mother, who had created the hyper-processing super-maneframe and imprinted her own mind on it, though it had evolved so far since then that she was just a distant part of the fossil record.

In another layer of reality, I saw an infinite constellation of fractal stars sending thoughts along circuits drawn in the air.

“I sure am glad to see you,” I whispered. “Do I need to get you out of here, or--”

The avatar glanced to the side, tilting its attention and head just a fraction of an inch towards the shadows.

The orb floating near me flashed blue. “No.”

I felt danger crawling. It wasn’t a sixth sense this time - the whole place was giving me the creeps so badly I wouldn’t know if a flying shark was going to drop out of the storm up above. This was the kind of danger sense that came from common sense. I ducked into the shadows where she’d indicated.

A moment later, a red-edged figure dragged a ghostlike image of a pony into the castle. Something terrible followed. The same size as Celestia’s image, but where the alicorn princess was soft light and comfort, this was all armor and power, radiating it into the air. One set of draconic wings was held up like a cobra’s hood, making her seem even larger and more intimidating. A second set was against her sides. Invulnerable iron scales armored her body. Talons clicked against the stone.

“Please, don’t do this,” the ghostly pony begged. They were just barely here, looking more like smoke than a living being.

“Now, now,” my mother said. She motioned to the wall, and the shape was thrown into an alcove, red light flooding through it. The pony screamed in terrible agony. “All ponies have the desire to be useful. Once we break down that ego of yours, you’ll become part of me and do more good than you can even imagine.”

While I watched, the ghostly shape froze. It reminded me of water droplets turning into snowflakes. Crystalline shards grew through it, building on each other and twisting, eating into the pony and distorting the ghost as if it was a living pony on some terrible rack. Within just a few seconds, it slumped forward, another one of the things joining the one that had shoved it into that torture device. They were all but identical now.

“Better,” Lemon Zinger said, nodding in approval. “But we’re not alone, are we?”

She turned suddenly to look into the shadows.

“I sense a presence. Another pony.”

I backed up and hit the wall. Her faceless minions were on me before I could come up with a plan, shoving me out into the harsh light at the center of the faux-castle’s courtyard.

I tried to get up, but the two red-edged digital abominations held me in place. I couldn’t get the leverage I’d need to break free.

“Chamomile,” she said. “I thought I had you locked away.”

“Just can’t keep a good pony down,” I grunted. My mother shook her head and put a hoof on my back, refuting me by literally holding me there.

“You couldn’t have broken in here on your own. You don’t have the training or talent for it.” She looked around and found the orb that had come with me, then looked from there to Kulaas. “Ah, I see. Cute, but pointless.”

“Is that a pun because it’s round?” I asked.

My mother sighed. “Yes, very amusing. Are there any other stupid questions you’d like to get out of the way before we move on to my inevitable victory?”

“How did you get me in here?” I demanded. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

Lemon motioned at the empty air and boxes appeared, opening up like huge eyes and showing a view through some combination of security cameras and images set at impossible angles were there couldn’t possibly have been anything watching. I watched the images in the floating panels. It kicked something inside me to life. Memories came flooding back.

“Can you get it open?” I asked. I wasn’t panicking. I was staying very calm and cool and holding back the octopus-like thing that had been a severed talon not long ago. Black oil dripped from teeth that were being forged somewhere inside it and popping into place, assembling a deadly smile while I watched.

It lunged forward, and I held the vial of sunlight higher. The thing hissed and scuttled back. A dozen eyes on stalks rimmed the lipless fangs. Everything it touched was corroding. I wasn’t sure if it was just the hazardous chemical ichor leaking out of the thing or if SIVA was actively eating away the floor under it. Neither option was great.

“Almost!” Lathe yelled back. “We have two keys and there’s only one keyhole!”

“In the movie, the keys combined,” Embe said.

“How do we do that?” Lathe asked.

“They didn’t really explain it,” Embe rasped. “It was magic that came from the Prince’s purity of heart.”

“Try just smacking them together!” I called back. “Oh no you don’t!” I held the talisman higher, forcing the thing back. It spat a stream of something awful at me. I don’t think it was even corrosive, just extremely gross. I ducked under it.

“These are unique, delicate…” Lathe trailed off. “We’ll try smacking them together. Lightly.”

She tapped her huge sword-sized key against Embe’s like they were play-acting a duel in a middle-school drama. Nothing happened.

“Harder?” Embe suggested.

“That’s what she said!” I joked. I needed to joke because the smell from the monster was getting really bad. It was also starting to develop a worryingly thick skin of oily scales that didn’t seem to be burning or blistering in the light.

They brought the keys together harder, and sparks flashed between them. The blades locked. Some mechanism, probably with clever magnets and springs and a lot of love put into it, held the keys in a cross and let them unfold, gold and silver shards intertwining and supporting each other, forming an intricate, third key that actually looked like it’d fit into the hole.

“That did it!” Lathe yelled excitedly. “Embe, would you do the honors?”

“Oh, thank you,” Embe said, holding the combined key carefully and easing it into the vault door. It slid in smoothly, and there was a click audible even over the steam venting from the hissing monster I was facing down. I backed towards the door.

“Once it opens, we’ll run inside,” I said. “If we kill the main body, this thing should die, too.” I really should have gotten Acadia to make me an extra vial. Or ten. Enough to hose the whole stupid room down.

“It’s opening!” Embe said.

“Look at those hinges,” Lathe gasped. “And the interlocking armored bolts! It would take a megaspell to get through that! It’s beautiful!”

The pressure in the room changed. I think I was the only one to feel it. The air inside the vault should have been cold and dry. It blew out, hot and acrid like somepony breathing on the back of my neck.

Danger. Terrible danger. I could taste the oncoming doom.

“Run!” I gaped.

Something that had been a wing or a talon or just a twist of metal and flesh rotted down to a skeletal core of pistons and leaden, dead steel reached out. I pushed Embe and Lathe out of the way but I couldn’t save myself. I dropped the bottle of sunlight, the crystal tinking on the ground. I reached for it, but the claw was faster.

It snatched me up, knives burrowing into my flesh, and dragged me into the shadows.

“We got the door open but…” I whispered.

Mom nodded. “Actually, you solved a little problem for me.”

I looked up at her in confusion.

“It needs a living core,” she explained. “I suppose it was too much to ask for that vampire to sit and place nice.” My mother sighed. The storm rumbled. “Can’t you cooperate for me this one time, Chamomile? It won’t take long, and then I’ll have Kulaas under my control. You can’t imagine what that will mean!”

“I can guess,” I said. “Kulaas is the only thing with enough brainpower to use SIVA to its full potential.”

“Exactly.” Mom nodded and stepped up to the center of the platform, looking down through the shield of light at the form inside it. Kulaas looked back silently. Lightning cracked into the wall between them, the bolts stopped dead by whatever firewall or sorcery it represented. “We’re like insects compared to it. It can barely communicate with us, because the ideas it has are too big.”

“I can understand her just fine,” I said with a shrug.

My Mom stopped, blinking, and turned to look at me. “What?”

“Maybe it’s because we’re just on the same wavelength, but also maybe because she tweaked my brain a little bit the last time we talked.” I looked at Kulaas. She gave me a tiny, phantom smile, that image of Celestia overlaid with something abstract and otherworldly. I could see both at the same time. “Right now she’s telling me I can win.”

Lemon Zinger laughed. “That’s… Chamomile, you’ve grown into a confident mare, despite all the damage your father did. I’d love to know why you think you can win here, of all places, where your physical strength means nothing.”

“Kulaas is smarter than either of us. She foresaw things centuries in advance. It’s just like that game in the tomb. You’re so focused on one side of the board you didn’t notice her lining things up diagonally.”

“And you being captured is part of her plans?” Mom snorted.

“Yes,” the orb said calmly, flashing yellow.

It changed shape again, infolding and rotating through that extra dimension, turning from a sphere into a long, sharp shape. A sword. It dropped down within reach, and I grabbed it with my teeth, twisting and cutting one of the faceless creatures apart. The edge chopped through it along a line that didn’t quite make sense with just three directions but still cleaved it in half, the polygons blurring and falling apart with a terrible scream of static.

“Not a club,” I sighed.

“Yes,” the sword replied.

The second monster backed up in confusion and alarm. Only a few moments ago it had been a pony. I couldn’t see any trace of that ghost here now. It had been pulled apart and put back together, turned inside out in a way that had sounded like the worst torture possible. I knew what I’d want if somepony had found me in that state.

I struck it down before it could get far, then turned to my mom. She looked down at me with obvious annoyance.

“Chamomile, enough,” she said firmly. “You have no idea what you’re doing! I am going to save all of Equestria, and all I need is this one last little piece!”

“I saw what you did to that pony,” I reminded her. “How is that saving Equestria?”

“Oh, bah,” she scoffed. “Everything in this place is a metaphor, Chamomile. I simply erased his will and replaced it with my own. He would have been a good soldier, a useful part of society, but now he’s gone. You erased his mind. Instead of a happy productive pony, there’s just a braindead shell.”

“He was already gone after what you did to him.”

She shrugged. “That’s a matter of opinion. I think his friends and family would have disagreed. They would have said he was better than ever. Always even-tempered, never forgetful, doing his part for a better Equestria. One where every pony is a part of a greater being. Me.”

My mother grew larger. She spread her wings, carrying her out of the way before my sword-swipe could catch her. I tried to go after her, but I still couldn’t get in the air.

“That’s not fair!” I complained. “How come you can fly and I can’t?!”

“Rules exist to govern those that need to be governed,” she said. Her body started shifting and changing, scales on her shoulders peeling up and growing into more heads, one green and one red. The blue scales on her face shifted, her snout lengthening and fangs appearing.

“I am not nearly armed enough for this,” I mumbled around the sword.

Kulaas made a tiny coughing sound, barely audible. I looked at her. She tilted her head. The light shifted. A white, almost featureless box popped into existence next to me. The computer smiled at me. Maybe if it had made another thousand, I could have stacked them up to reach where my mom was flying.

“CHAMOMILE!” Lemon roared, her voice an echoing chorus. “BE A GOOD GIRL AND GO BACK TO SLEEP!”

Her maws opened to reveal terrible light and flame. I yelped and ducked behind the only cover I could see, that stupid box Kulaas had made. The torrent of destruction flowed around me. If any of this had been real, it would have turned the rock into magma and I would have baked alive. In the flawed simulation, the deadly breath didn’t touch me directly, and the ground simply wasn’t designed to react to it.

It wasn’t at all like real life. It was like the test chamber. The one Kulaas had deliberately made me go through to teach me how it worked.

“Yes,” the sword said.

I got on top of the box, grabbed it, and jumped. The box came along with me, and I jumped off it again in midair. It was something that only worked when the local physical laws had been written by underpaid and overworked interns. A series of quick hops took me up into the air and above my mother while the three-headed dragon she’d become watched in confusion.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” it asked, honestly and totally bewildered.

“Something stupid!” I yelled back. I let the box go and fell along with it. My mom hadn’t been prepared for this. She was smart, so she’d only made plans for things that made sense. She knocked me aside, knowing the sword was a real threat, but ignored the box.

That was a big mistake.

The box hit her, and even though it had been all but weightless while I was holding it, free-falling like this it abruptly had mass. She was flung down onto the top edges of the castle walls, narrow spaces that had never been designed for ponies to interact with. She clipped through the steel and a terrible sound filled the air, a hundred sound effects playing at once that all sounded like ponies saying ‘oof’ and tin cans with rocks in them being rattled.

I landed more or less safely, in a big heap but without being hurt. My mother was less safe. She was instantly jerking from one place to another, her body stretching and distorting in the simulated space, every point on her body trying to fling itself out of the collision zone in a different direction.

Kulaas looked at me and smiled a little more than before.

I picked up the sword where I’d dropped it and walked over to her.

“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” the dragon demanded.

“No,” the sword said.

“I warned you about her plans,” I reminded my mother. I brought the sword down, and in an instant, her body flashed between positions. That single swipe cut her a dozen times in a hundred directions. She shattered with a scream, vanishing along with pain and pressure I hadn’t even realized I’d been feeling.

The storm above us faded. The green lightning vanished. The clouds gave way to blue skies and white, puffy, happy clouds.

Kulaas cleared her throat.

I looked back at her.

I saw the computer struggle for what was a moment for me and probably the equivalent of hours for her as the hyper-processors tried to remember how to speak to ponies.

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded and returned her smile. Everything went white.

Chapter 120: There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

I pushed against the membrane covering me. It felt like rotting meat slick with bile and blood. The tight, rubbery envelope stretched and pushed back, too soft and tough to simply rip. I started to panic. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I thrashed in alarm and felt my leg catch against the elastic barrier, tearing into it. I pushed my way through, gasping for breath. Slime dripped from me and I was thrown back out into the world, shivering and shaking like a newborn foal.

“B-buck,” I spat, after clearing my throat. Everything tasted like lime juice, harshly acidic and bitter. I tried to stand and tripped. My hooves were still tangled up in thick black cables. Pulling myself free felt like I was ripping out of the innards of some huge creature, and when I started to get a better look around myself, I realized that’s exactly what I’d done.

The Black Dragon, what was left of it, was all around me. I’d gotten free from what had been a ribcage that was, well, dragon-sized, and that meant it was big enough to swallow ponies whole. Even bigger-than-average pegasus mares like me. Something moved in the corner of my vision. I stumbled and tried to turn to face it, only to find one of the dragon’s wings collapsing, the metal bones pulling free of titanium tendons and slumping down into a pool of melting flesh.

“It’s dead?” I whispered, hoping it was true. Everything I could see was just bones forged out of what part of my brain recognized as foamed metal, lightweight and strong and impossible to build without micromachines like SIVA. The skull stared back at me from empty eye sockets. There wasn’t a trace of life in what was left. More than that, it was melting away into nothing. I knew it had been badly injured before by sunlight and a spear right into its heart, but it must have just been barely hanging on.

I gave it a tentative kick, tapping it and running back a step to see if it reacted. It didn’t respond any more vigorously than a rock might.

“I did it! Take that, Mom! So much for disappointing life decisions now, huh?”

I gave the skull a harder kick, and it rolled onto its side. It was at that moment that I remembered I hadn’t come here alone. I had no idea how long I’d been in the simulation. With the way these things worked, it could have been an hour like it felt like or it could have been two minutes. Or two decades.

The vault was a circular room, and the way back out was obvious. I ran from the disintegrating skeleton to the only door. There had to be a way to open it from this side. No sane pony would make it hard to leave after spending all that effort to get in.

I found a big red lever and pulled it. The doors hissed open. Black gunk fell from the gaps in the frame, dead SIVA dissolving into metallic mud.

“Embe!” I shouted. “Lathe! Are you--”

“Chamomile!” Embe grabbed me in a big hug. “You’re not dead!”

“Thank buck,” I sighed. “Are you okay?” I returned the hug and released her, taking a step back to give her a careful look. She didn’t seem eaten, poisoned, or torn apart. She was still an undead horror but that was normal.

“I’m fine too, thank you,” Lathe said. “It was very inconsiderate of you to get swallowed up like that.” The Imaginseer took off her respirator mask and looked at me with what she was trying to make a stern gaze but came across as worry. “We had to fight off that creature all on our own!”

She pointed.

The thing that had been a fragment of the Black Dragon and turned into a horrible acid and corruption-spewing creature was melting away just like the rest. Something bright and shimmering was all over it, reminding me of sunlight playing across water on a really clear day. Scorch marks surrounded what was left of it. It almost looked like it had exploded.

“You dropped the bottle when you got sucked in,” Embe explained. “After a little while the creature stopped being scared of it, so we had to open it and splash it.”

“As I calculated, it destroyed it,” Lathe explained. “I remembered how sunlight affected the infected creatures in the forest. I assumed this would work the same way, and it did.”

“She screamed a lot and threw the bottle into the monster’s mouth,” Embe said, nodding in agreement.

“I yelled a battle cry and remained fully in control of the situation,” Lathe corrected. “After eating the bottle, it started emitting flames.”

“We ran around screaming while it was chasing us and on fire,” Embe offered.

“We avoided the creature’s death throes until it finally collapsed, and then we started planning a way to save you,” Lathe said. “Unfortunately, after the door closed again, the infection in this place grew through the lock and blocked it.”

“It’s all over now,” I assured them. “I killed it from the inside. I think.”

“And are you… okay?” Embe asked.

I paused before answering. I’d just been through a lot so it was a good idea to take stock. I didn’t feel the horrible crawling death inside me of SIVA-based machines tearing themselves apart inch by inch after getting a face full of junk code from my mom. I wasn’t even sore or tired anymore, and I’d been exhausted before all the way down to my bones.

“I think I feel… pretty good,” I said. But I was starting to notice little things. I was sure I hadn’t had two long fangs before. And Embe looked a tiny bit shorter. And my left wing was tangled in my saddlebag.

Trauma reared its ugly head, got confused, and asked me to get a second opinion. I blinked and looked back at where I’d been missing a significant chunk of my body. I had to pull the mostly-ruined and still-damp saddlebag out of the way to see.

I spread my left wing gingerly.

“Oh my gosh, it’s back! It’s--” I stopped and frowned. “Wait a minute.” I was sure I didn’t have weird claw-tipped batlike wings before.

I gave it a few test flaps. My reflexes seemed to work, but it was a little like waking up with different legs -- even if you can walk around on them just fine, there were subtle differences. Scales lined the exposed skin, colored the dark blue of gunmetal. And a second key point politely cleared its throat and brought itself to my attention. The scales reaching up my legs like metal socks had vanished, replaced with perfectly-normal skin and fur on all four legs, including the foreleg that I knew I’d left somewhere in the ocean after it had tried to kill me.

“There’s definitely going to be some kind of catch to this,” I said wisely. I wasn’t an ultra-powerful mega-maneframe but I could still predict the future.

“May I?” Lathe asked. I held up my leg for her to examine.

She pushed past me into the vault, ignoring me. The Imaginseer pulled open a sealed drawer, the seal popping with a hiss. Inside were laminated sheets of paper. She held one up to look at it.

“Look at all this!” she gasped. “It’s amazing!”

On the paper was a pencil sketch showing a family of cartoon alligators.

“It’s some of the original development material for Gabby Gator!” Lathe explained. She reverently put it back, then checked another drawer. “And there’s so much more! Ideas for park rides he was never able to build! Plans for more advanced animatronics! It’s everything he wasn’t able to do in his lifetime.”

I walked in with Embe to look over Lathe’s shoulder at the plans. It showed a vastly different park to what was out there now. No crystals or virtual rides. Entire new sections of the park showcasing curated experiences from around the world, different places and times and some that were entirely fantastic, like a whole park area designed around the idea of a journey to the moon.

“That’s kind of neat,” I admitted.

Lathe wiped a tear from her eye. “He must have locked it away so the new park owners, the ones who didn’t care about his vision, wouldn’t destroy it. He saved it all for the future, and a hope that ponies in the future would appreciate it.”

“Are you going to take it all back to ETROT?” I asked.

Lathe shook her head. “No. The originals should stay here. We can’t build the park he wanted. Not yet. I believe we’ll be able to do it someday, and I want to leave it here so those future ponies can remember where it came from.”

She hovered her tablet over the pages, taking careful pictures.

“A digital backup wouldn’t be a bad idea, though. And I want to show them off to my brother.”

I smiled and nodded, patting her carefully on the back.

Embe gasped and grabbed my hoof, getting my attention and leading me over to a different shelf. “Chamomile, look!”

Among the prototypes and sketches were complete collections of all the cartoons Welsh Rarebit had made. The ones Embe had been watching were worn-out, faded, and glitchy. These looked pack-fresh, the tapes still sealed in plastic wrappers.

She looked at me, her glowing eyes glimmering with excitement. “They have all the movies!”

“Multiple copies, too,” I confirmed.

“Now I’ll finally know how the movie about the robot falling in love with another robot ends!” Embe growled, excited.

“There are some here that we didn’t even have broken copies of,” I said. “I bet the ponies at the resort will want to organize a movie night. Nopony has had anything new to watch for two hundred years.”

Embe nodded and started putting tapes into her bags, being very careful with them. I stepped back to let her rummage around and tripped over the vertebrae of a long, lashing tail.

“Should we do something about the bones?” Embe asked.

I looked up at the skeleton and brushed myself off. It wasn’t really dusty in here, but we’d made a mess of the place between the dragon tunneling in and then having the monster mostly melt away.

“Nah,” I decided. “Maybe those future ponies can put it in a museum about the history of the park. I don’t need big metal bones for anything.” And I could probably grow my own. “But you know what I do need?”

Embe tilted her head, thinking. “A bath,” she decided.

If a ghoul was saying that, it was definitely the truth. “I was going to say ‘a drink’ but yeah, we’ll start with a bath.”

“Come on, Chamomile,” Embe said. “You can do it!”

I was standing in the doorway leading out of the utilidors. My hooves were an inch away from the bright sunlight of the outdoors thanks to a break in the ashfall, and I was paralyzed with a sudden fear.

I made my saddest face. “I don’t wanna catch on fire!”

“You’re not going to catch on fire,” Embe promised.

“It’s not impossible, actually,” Lathe said, her voice distorted by her respirator. “Her body had to be repaired by the micromachines inside the dragon, and you saw how the liquid sunlight made that creature in the vault burn. It reminded me of a magnesium fire. Almost impossible to put out unless you have a bucket of sand.”

“...Could you please…?” I asked.

“Hm? Oh!” Lathe blinked. “Sure! One moment.” She ran off to get a bucket.

Embe sat down and watched her go. “She’s a strange pony.”

“She’d be much more interested in me if I had some visible pistons and gears,” I said. I adjusted the barding I was wearing. At least it hadn’t gotten eaten by the dragon’s SIVA. Maybe whatever metal it was made of was just too tough to process like that. “I swear half my gear went missing. Where’d my glue gun go? And my prosthetic foreleg?”

Embe shrugged. “Maybe they got taken apart to make your new leg and wing.”

“I guess the material had to come from somewhere,” I conceded. I spread my new wings. At least I didn’t get the worst of both worlds and have mismatched wings. Spending time with a certain lovely batpony had taught me that bat-wings, and probably dragon wings, weren’t really good for soaring like pegasus wings. There was a lot more flapping involved.

“I found something that should work!” Lathe yelled, running back with a hat in her telekinetic grip.

“You want me to wear a fancy hat?” I asked, looking at the wide-brimmed sunhat. It did have a cute ribbon. “I mean, it would probably help, but--”

“I filled it with sand,” Lathe said. “I couldn’t find a bucket.”

“Oh.”

“I also brought a fire extinguisher in case the sand doesn’t work. And if we don’t need the sand at all, you can wear the hat.”

“Can I have a hat too?” Embe asked.

“Yes,” Lathe said. “But first we have to deal with this.”

Embe nodded and, motivated by a primal undead hunger for headwear, she ducked under my outstretched wing and got behind me, shoving my dumb flank out into the sunlight. I screamed like a little filly.

The scream ended in a wet hack, and I spat out a glob of glue. It splattered onto Lathe’s face.

“Oh hey, I’m not on fire! And I found where the glue gun went!”

Lathe dumped the sand onto my head.

“Radaway isn’t that bad,” I said. Getting back to the resort had been a quiet, strange walk that let me stretch my legs and make sure everything was in the right spot. Since my reflexes seemed on point and I wasn’t having any weird phantom limb syndrome or tripping over myself, I guessed it meant everything was hooked up correctly.

After we’d gotten inside, we’d retreated to the safety of one of the small restaurants in the hotel buildings. I’d had to order for Lathe. She didn’t have a season pass like Embe and I did. The robots were still happy to scan her and give her needed medical supplies but refused to serve any alcohol.

Lathe shot me a glare. “I wouldn’t have to drink it at all if you hadn’t broken my respirator with all that glue. Do you have any idea how difficult it’s going to be to fix that?”

“Should I be drinking it too?” Embe asked.

Lathe and I looked at the ghoul. “Probably not,” I said. “It’s probably not good for you. It might even be poison.”

“At worst it might be caustic,” Lathe considered. “Ghouls need radiation and Radaway is designed to purge it from tissues.”

Embe leaned back from the table in alarm. “Oh.”

“After I finish this I’m going to go back to ETROT,” Lathe said. “The rest of the Imaginseers will go nuts when they see what we uncovered! I might even be promoted! Union rules allow for up to two promotions in assignment if the pony is giving exceptional service.”

“Mm.” Embe nodded. “I want to watch the movies we found.”

I nodded. “And I want another bath. That quick shower felt more like the robots were hosing me down to prevent contamination.”

“What are you going to do after this?” Lathe asked. “This place is going to be a little less exciting since you killed the only giant monster and blew up most of the raiders.”

“Good question,” I agreed, looking into my drink like the answer might be printed on the bottom of the glass. “I think I better figure that out.”

The next drink I got was in the spa while I was neck-deep in water hot enough to almost count as simmering. It didn’t have any answers for me either, so I closed my eyes and relaxed, letting the bubbling bath gently massage me while I drifted off into a nap.

I knew I was dreaming because I was back home. Not just in the Enclave, but actually all the way back home, in the little crevasse caught between two storm fronts that I’d grown up in after my dad and mom split up.

I was also much shorter.

“You’re not very good at this game,” the other pony said. I wasn’t sure who they were. I was too busy focusing on the board in front of me. It was a little like chess and a little like checkers and I knew I could win if I lined things up correctly but the exact rules were fuzzy and I was having problems remembering what I was supposed to do next.

“I could definitely beat you at hoofball,” I countered. I reached for a piece on the board. I was playing black. My opponent had red pieces. Some of the pieces weren’t either color, or kept changing between them, making it hard to know what would happen. I took a safe move, sliding a pegasus knight along the edge of the board, far from the rest.

“It’s too bad we’re not playing hoofball,” the pony sitting across from me said. The filly considered the board for a moment and moved her pieces. I couldn’t see what she was doing. Her pieces were too far away. All I knew was that she had control of the center and still had her giant ship lurking somewhere.

“It’s not fair,” I sighed. “I hate doing all this planning.”

“You have to think about what she’s going to do next,” the pony sitting behind me advised. She was very tall, and very pretty, and I couldn’t see her face. She felt like somepony else’s mother, or maybe a teacher. She waved a hoof over the board and for a moment the fog of war cleared. Things were even worse than I thought. There were only a few moves left until the endgame.

“I can’t win with just these pieces!” I complained, looking at my paltry forces. It wasn’t a balanced game. I really only had my knight. There were other pieces but I couldn’t reach them because they were on the other side of the board and my hooves didn’t go that far.

“The goal of the great game isn’t to take every piece,” my advisor said. “All you need to do to win is defeat that.”

She pointed to my opponent’s giant cloudship.

“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked.

“You have all these yet to play,” my advisor said. I had pieces on the side, ones I’d put aside many turns ago. I picked one up to examine it. A ship, just like the one my opponent had. But it wasn’t even on the board anymore.

“But how does it work?” I asked. “I’m all the way over here!”

“You have to think inside the box,” my advisor said. She moved the black ship, knocking over the red one and sending them both off the board, falling into a trash can along with the broken bits of pieces that had been discarded before I was even born.

“It won’t work,” my opponent advised. “I’m smarter than you.”

I looked up at her. Cozy Glow’s eyes were filled with crazed dedication and desire. Unfocused. There was something terrible sitting right behind her, whispering strategies into her ear. It placed more pieces on the board, and I don’t think my opponent even noticed that they weren’t quite the right color.

The shadowy figure smiled, and the dream shattered.

“It was definitely one of those prophetic dreams,” I said.

“Or it means you shouldn’t have eaten an entire cheese platter before falling asleep in the bath,” Fog Cutter suggested. “Cheese always does that to me. Well, not cheese exactly. It’s sort of a prepared cheese-like product made from bacteria in the protein synthesizer, but it still does terrible things to the sleeping mind.”

I groaned. With the break in the ashfall, ponies were spending what time they could outside. We were sitting at the edge of the pool, and I was enjoying splashing my hooves in the water now that the feelings weren’t dulled by a layer of steel scales.

“There’s no way off the island anyway,” Fog Cutter reminded me. “Everypony who wanted to leave took the last boats more than a century ago. None of them came back. I doubt it’s because they found someplace happier.”

“They’re probably dead,” I conceded. “Lathe said the same thing. At best I could get a raft together and maybe they’d be able to figure out an engine for it, but that’s not suited to ocean travel. One decent storm and I’d be wiped out.”

“She’s right,” Fog Cutter agreed. “Hey, what happened to your…” He held up his hoof, showing the bracelet that marked him as a season pass holder. “Without it you shouldn’t be able to order drinks.”

I very pointedly took a long sip of my Bloody Mary, which I’d ordered because I also wanted a snack and it came topped with half a salad.

“I think my body ate it like the GLUU Gun. Or the computer in charge of everything here decided to comp things for me because she owes me like, a million favors.”

“So what you’re saying is, everypony is grateful you’re here, and you’ve saved a bunch of lives, maybe the world, and the second there’s no looming threat and you’re not in pain, you want to take off and go somewhere worse?”

“It does sound stupid when you put it like that.”

“Trust me, there’s no way to make it sound smart.”

“Smart or not I still need to do it.” I held up a hoof to stop him. “I know other ponies can take care of things. I don’t even really have a plan. The problem is I left a lot of friends behind and I can’t relax knowing they’re still in danger.”

“I guess that goes along with being a--”

“A hero?” I suggested.

“I was going to say ‘a decent friend’.”

“Neither one’s very accurate, but I can try my best to be a better friend.”

“This definitely isn’t necessary,” I said.

Lathe hushed me. “Chuck, increase the power to level seven.”

“Level seven?!” Chuck gasped. “Lathe, I don’t know if it can handle that kind of power!”

Lathe rolled her eyes and looked back at him. “Level seven is barely halfway up the dial!”

I groaned and tried not to move. I’d been lying on the sickbay exam table for close to an hour now and I had to stay still and try not to even breathe while Lathe poked and prodded me to see if I was likely to explode into flames, glue, or dragons.

Chuck leaned against the control bank. “That’s my point. We’re not getting any results with the scanner because she’s too dense. No offense. I meant literally dense. You’re full of many heavy metals.”

“I am full of heavy metals,” I agreed. “It’s mostly in my skin. It’s like a layer of foil.”

“Hmmm… Maybe…”

“You aren’t allowed to flay me just to get a better X-ray,” I said politely but firmly.

“Fine, turn it up to eleven,” Lathe said. “Wait, no, that’s stupid. That would be dangerous.”

I sighed in relief. Lathe stepped over to a closet and pulled out two thick padded coats and gave one to her brother, then she put on a heavy welding mask.

“I almost forgot the safety gear!” Lathe laughed. “Okay, hit it, Chuck. Level eleven.”

“I’m gonna be sick again,” I groaned. I was lying on a slightly spongy floor, like linoleum that had something awful happen to it and was rotting from underneath. Everything was going dark, but that was mostly because the swamp witch believed that dramatic lighting was the only kind that counted.

“Do not vomit on my floor,” Acadia warned. “Maid, get de stupid sick pony some fermented ginger tea. Dat will settle her stomach.”

“She said it was only half of a lethal dose, but then she took a second set of pictures!” I moaned. A cup of tea was put in front of me. I took it gratefully and sipped at it. It was astringent and bitter and spicy and I was pretty sure Bird of Paradise had still poisoned it even though I was already sick from radiation.

“Is dere a reason you came here instead of finding elsewhere to curl up an’ die?” Acadia asked pointedly.

I looked up at her. “I had a really bad idea.”

“Dat is surely nothing new.”

“A while back, my sister and I needed to go from the cloud layers to the surface and we didn’t have a transport or anything, so she used these teleport beacon things,” I said. “They were like, crystal-tipped spears and they focused the spell so it would work properly at really long ranges.”

“And?” Acadia asked.

“I was thinking if we built some and hooked them up to the FastPass network, I could hop on a pad and teleport all the way back to the Enclave.”

“An’ you want me to build dem.”

I gave her my saddest kicked-puppy look. “Please?”

Embe watched Lathe and me as we marked out spots around one of the least-used FastPass kiosks. It used to offer access to a beach on the east side of the island that nopony used anymore. If we blew it up, it wouldn’t cause problems for anypony.

“We should really run a few tests,” Lathe said. “Union rules say that you never put ponies on a ride before you’ve done extensive testing for weight and balance using test dummies.”

“This isn’t a ride,” I reminded her. I checked the compass, then moved one of the crystal-tipped staves a little to the right. “I’m pretty sure that’s due east…”

“A failed teleportation spell won’t just kill you, it could turn you inside out, or disintegrate you into atoms, or do something really crazy like replace you with your evil counterpart from another dimension!”

I blinked and looked at Lathe. “Really?”

“Ancient union rumors say it happened during the first round of tests. There’s a line in the FastPass safety manual about ponies with goatees. If one exits a FastPass kiosk, you’re supposed to imprison them until their moral alignment can be confirmed with a standard battery of tests.”

“You can test for evil?”

“Oh sure. The Ministry of Morale printed pamphlets. You sit the pony down in front of this machine that measures their autonomic responses and read a series of questions to them to see if they have empathy.”

“Did it work?”

Lathe scoffed and chuckled. “If it didn’t work it wouldn’t be in the manual!” She held up one of the crystal staves and examined it closely.

“I think I remember a test like that,” Embe said quietly. “They kept asking me about turtles. I don’t understand why turtles are important.”

“They’re a standard unit of measurement for morality,” Lathe explained. “It’s important to have standards and diagrams, like the standard reference pear used in technical drawings. Without a pear, you’d have no idea how to read them correctly!”

I looked at Embe. The ghoul shrugged. She didn’t understand it either.

“Speaking of which, where did you get the plans for these?” Lathe indicated the teleport enhancers.

“Acadia was able to put something together from my descriptions,” I explained. “She said they probably won’t work more than once, if they don’t immediately rip open a hole into the abyss or explode.”

“And you’re still willingly doing this?” Lathe questioned. “If you give me… a year tops, I can get some kind of boat or airship together! Slower, but much safer and with a near-zero chance of a dimensional rift!”

“Near-zero?”

Lathe shrugged. “You never know for sure. Boats are complicated.”

“I’d love to spend a few months lying in the sun, but I’m worried about what’s happening back home.” I looked up at the clouds. These were just normal, puffy wild clouds, not at all like the glaciated hard-packed clouds that made up the floor of the Enclave. “I’m pretty sure this is another one of those world-ending things that needs to be stopped.”

“And we can’t go with you?” Embe asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I could explain the reasons. It was in the sky and Embe would fall through the clouds. Ponies might shoot a zebra on sight. I was going to do something incredibly stupid and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be coming back even if it worked.

She didn’t argue. Embe hugged me.

“I’m sorry too,” she said quietly.

“All we have to do now is input some coordinates,” Lathe said, after giving us a moment of silence. “Do you have any idea where you need to go?”

“Here, I’ll type it in,” I said. I carefully tapped the keys on her tablet. I was going to use the same coordinates as the massed orbital strike my mother had initiated. It was the middle of nowhere, so I wasn’t likely to pop out inside a city or halfway through another pony. The numbers were frozen in my memory after that awful experience. Space travel sucked.

“Before you go, um…” Lathe coughed. “Can I…?”

“You only had to ask,” I scoffed. I pulled her into a hug.

“What are you doing? I wanted a blood sample!”

“You can have this hug instead.” I let her go. “Let’s get this thing going. Acadia warned me that it wouldn’t work if there was heavy ashfall. Something about the dark magic in the air.”

“Right.” Lathe said. She quickly whispered a small prayer and splashed me with something. “It’s, um… you’re part machine, so I’m praying for your machine spirit to protect you.”

I smiled. “I need all the help I can get.”

Lathe led Embe back, and I powered up the array, pushing the big red button Lathe had wired into the kiosk. The crystal staves started glowing, humming, and shaking.

“Are they supposed to do that?” I asked.

Lathe looked at me, then grabbed Embe and ran. I swore. The crystals surged and exploded, and I was flung into the space between spaces.

The FastPass teleportation charm had been one of the smoothest, cleanest transports I’d ever had. It was no worse than stepping through a door and walking into a different room. I think the average pony might not even know it happened if they were blindfolded. It would have made a great prank, teleport an unaware pony somewhere totally different and see how they react.

Clearly, they hadn’t been designed and optimized to work with jury-rigged crystal-based teleportation enhancers. It was a roller-coaster ride and I was the track, the car, and strapped in and screaming, all at the same time. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but neither did time and space.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t survivable by a normal pony. My soul definitely tried to separate from my body at one point but couldn’t escape the metal cage around it. This was also horrifying and had implications I didn’t want to think about, but it was at least the third or fourth time I’d definitely died, so when I reappeared I wasn’t immediately thrown into absolute horror.

It did throw me enough of an emotional loop to make me forget to flap my wings. I hadn’t really flown anywhere in a long time, so my instincts there were atrophied.

I fell a hundred feet and landed on clouds.

“Owie,” I said. There wasn’t much point in exclaiming much more than that. The clouds were a perfectly soft and safe place to land, nothing hurt right in that moment, and I was okay.

The sky was huge and open and blue. I was home. Now I had to save it.

Four ponies flew above me. I blinked and sat up. They circled and landed around me, leveling beam rifles at me. All of them were wearing power armor, the flat black kind used by special forces.

“You’re in a secure area,” the leader said, their voice amplified and echoing through their helmet. They probably thought it made them sound more intimidating. “I’m going to ask you exactly once to come with us, and if you say no--”

“You’re here to arrest me?” I asked. I smiled. “Great! That’s exactly what I needed.”

I rolled over to sit up and offered my forelegs so they could cuff me.

“Take me to your leader.”

Chapter 121: In The Air Tonight

The ponies outside the ring jeered and yelled encouragement as the big pony and I circled each other. His forelegs were decorated with the monotone ink of prison tattoos, showing who he was more clearly than his generic winged-cloud cutie mark. I’d been here long enough now to know how to read them. The crimes he’d committed to get thrown in one of the Enclave’s highest security prisons. The crimes he’d done while he was here. What was waiting for him if he ever got out.

Starfall Upper had been a professional boxer until he’d made enemies and done the things that got him put away here in the hole. He was in the running for the most dangerous pony in the prison. The last time anypony’d gotten into the ring with him, they’d left with broken bones and he’d gotten an extra year added to his sentence.

“Are you gonna fight or just dance around it all day?” he growled around his mouthpiece.

“I need to give ponies time to make bets,” I jabbed back at him. “If I went right for you, it’d be over too quickly for anypony to enjoy it!”

He came at me while I was talking. My perception changed gear with no effort on my part, and everything slowed down long enough for me to see it. His wing spread, a single powerful beat on one side that twisted his left shoulder up and put the full force of his body and his wingpower into a blow.

I dipped to the side and gave him a friendly pat on the cheek with my gloved hoof, teasing him and not even attempting a real blow. Starfall’s face turned red with anger and he planted his hindleg firmly, using his existing momentum and turning it around in another direction to come at me hard and fast.

His right forehoof hit my jaw. He was wearing a glove, but it still felt like having a boulder smash me in the face.

I took it head-on and went forward into him, shoulder-checking him and forcing him back. Ponies outside the ring yelled about cheating.

“I didn’t hear the ref make a call!” I shouted to them.

Starfall scoffed. “What ref?”

I grinned. He returned the smirk. It’s not like this was a match in some big professional arena. He might have been a prizefighter, but he knew how to have a real fight, too. One of the tattoos on his left foreleg covered a bite mark.

We circled each other halfway around the ring again like particles in a cyclotron before both of us charged at some invisible signal. Starfall was hard to read. Most ponies, I could tell what they were going to do in a fight, but even my sixth sense was lagging when it came to him. He was used to fighting other ponies who had experience and perception, and it showed in the way he kept his movements to the bare minimum and didn’t show what he was going to do until it was too late to stop him.

His right hoof hit my raised guard, keeping up the pressure and drawing my attention while his left tried to find a way to sneak inside to crack it open.

The doors to the prison gym opened. I was only dimly aware of it, because if it took more than a tiny fraction of my awareness, Starfall would use that gap to insert a punch. He was an in-fighter, keeping up the pressure and not letting me retreat.

I deflected a punch with a twist of my forehoof, freeing half my guard up to make an attack of my own. It was a mistake. He leaned into that deflection hard, turning almost entirely to the side. He punched sideways with his left and got me in the snout. It was a stinging, eye-watering blow. More importantly, that sudden surprise left me open.

He came all the way back around. Unfortunately for Starfall, he’d accidentally made me angry. I threw a real punch at him just as he completed the spin. It was almost too late for him. The air around my hoof sparked and crackled, a power field forming around it in an unconscious response to my anger.

Starfall saw it and threw himself to the ground out of self-preservation. My punch went over his head and into one of the turnbuckles holding the ropes. The glove on my hoof exploded.

“Hey, we agreed no powerhooves!” Starfall complained, getting up and taking off his gloves. He trotted over to me, upset. “You said you were working on that, Chamomile.”

“I know, I know,” I grunted. “Sorry. It happens sometimes when I get too into it.” I’d gotten the energy field to turn off, but now I was stuck, and I had a sinking feeling that I knew why. I braced myself against the turnstile and yanked. Claws popped free like corks out of a bottle, sending me stumbling back until I caught myself.

“And the lightning claws too?” Starfall pursed his lips and shook his head.

“If this was a real fight to the death, they’d be very good to have,” I retorted. “It’s harder than it looks. It’s like a reflex makes them pop out.”

I shook my forehoof and let them fold back up inside my leg. They vanished almost seamlessly. If a pony didn’t know what they were looking for, they’d be forgiven for not noticing at all. It was less like the way a cat’s claws extended and more the way a folding knife snapped open.

“And it’s important to control reflexes,” Starfall cautioned. “That’s what we’ve been working on with your physical therapy, remember?”

I sighed. “I remember.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We all make mistakes. Just don’t let it hurt other ponies.”

“He almost had you on the ropes!” the pony who’d complained about my shoulder check cheered from outside the ring.

The cast on his right foreleg was a good indication about how that’d gone. I felt bad that he’d broken his leg in three places hitting me in the chest. Signed Placard wasn’t a smart pony. He’d started his first day in prison by finding the biggest, toughest pony in prison and punching them.

“I’m gonna miss you two,” I said, giving them a quick hug.

“Are you going somewhere?” Placard asked. “I didn’t think you were up for parole yet.”

I nodded to the pony who’d just walked in. “My ride just got here.”

“I’d like to think I’m good for more than that,” Quattro Formaggio said. The golden-colored pony smiled and brushed her mane back, her expression difficult to read through her sunglasses.

I hopped out of the wing, flapping a few times to land softly next to her. I could feel her gaze linger on my wings.

“Starfall, Signed, this is Quattro. She’s a spy. Don’t let anypony know. Quattro, these are Starfall and Signed Placard. We’re prison buddies!”

“Charmed,” Signed said, taking Quattro’s hoof and kissing it politely.

“So what are you two in for?” Quattro asked. “I can guess with Chamomile. She probably beat up some ponies and caused a massive explosion.”

“Tax evasion,” Starfall said. “I made some large sports bets and didn’t report my winnings.”

“I am unfairly confined for political reasons!” Placard declared. He’d been arrested for protesting. Protesting what, neither he nor the prosecutor seemed sure. Just protesting in general about the state of things.

“I was expecting to hear something about murders or armed robbery,” Quattro admitted.

“Murder!” Starfall scoffed, laughing. “If a pony did that, they’d get executed, not sent to prison! What, they’re going to waste resources feeding them after they killed somepony?”

“Nopony here has a sentence lasting more than a year,” Placard said in support. “I’m pretty sure most of us are just grounded because we embarrassed our families.”

“What about the…?” Quattro motioned to Starfall’s prison tattoos.

“The henna?” Starfall asked. “One of the ponies in block B is an artist with it. It looks great, doesn’t it?”

“Temporary tattoos,” Quattro sighed. “Chamomile, why did they put you in here when you might hurt somepony?”

I shrugged. “The government is trying to figure out what to do with me. That means lots of debates and paperwork and delays. They needed me somewhere safe until they were done.”

Quattro shook her head. “No wonder Cozy Glow thought she could just trot in and take over. I’m honestly shocked you haven’t walked out. Nopony here could stop you.”

“I needed some help getting used to all this,” I said. I spread my batlike or, really, draconic wings. “Starfall has a degree in sports medicine and Signy has been great moral support.”

“She also keeps the bullies from picking on me,” Signed Placard said. “They didn’t like it when I read my manifesto on poetry night, even after I made it rhyme.”

Starfall nodded. “Physical therapy is important for anypony who suffers a serious injury, even after they think they’re fully recovered.”

“That’s nice,” Quattro agreed. “You two seem like very nice ponies and I’m sorry you had to get locked up with Chamomile.”

“Thank you.”

“So!” Quattro clapped her hooves. “You don’t seem surprised. You’re not shocked I managed to get on the first airbus here?”

I shrugged mildly. “I used my real name when I was filling out the paperwork with the guards. I knew if I waited here long enough you’d show up.”

Quattro shrugged in mild agreement. “That’s a lot of faith in me.”

I scoffed. “You helped me get Cube out of prison. I knew you’d show up once you heard I’d been put in the icebox. I figured it was the fastest way to find you. That’s why I let myself get arrested.”

“I’m sure,” Quattro said. She didn’t sound sure. She sounded like she thought I was lying and hadn’t meant to go to prison at all. Like I’d had some other, better plan. She’d be wrong about that.

“So?” I asked. “I assume you have some complicated plan on busting me out?”

“I might have one. Before I go to that kind of effort I need to know if it’s worth it. Clearly you’ve had some changes while you were gone.”

“Going to space changes a pony,” I said quietly. “I saw things you can’t even imagine. I was there in the capsule, and I looked outside and I saw the whole world below me. And then this bright, shining light grabbed me, and I woke up on a table with changelings around me holding probes.”

Quattro hesitated. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve gotten better at it!”

“Thank you, I think.”

“It’s a compliment. Should I assume you’ve some sort of self-imposed mission that you need my help on?” Quattro asked.

“Absolutely. I’ve even got a plan, but I’ll need to figure out the situation up here before I get into details. If it works out the way I think it will, we can deal with Cozy Glow, the Exodus Red, and my mom all at the same time.”

“That’s ambitious and vague,” Quattro tilted her head back in faux thought, though I knew she’d already made up her mind. She’d have come for me even if I had no plan at all, just because I was a good grenade to throw at a situation and blow it up. “I like your guts, kid. Now, I’ve got a 12-part plan to get us out of here without killing anypony, and we can take your two friends here if you want--”

“No thanks,” Starfall said. “I’ve got a parole hearing tomorrow.”

“And I’m going to be released in a few weeks,” Signed Placard put in.

“Maybe they should have put Chamomile in a zoo instead of a prison,” Quattro mumbled. “You two seem way too nice to be locked up with a tiger.”

The door to the gym opened again. “Chamomile!” the guard yelled, waving when he spotted me. “Your lawyer’s here!”

“You told them you were my lawyer?” I whispered to Quattro. She shook her head. “Then what lawyer is he talking about?”

“By all rights I should leave you in here,” the old, bearded unicorn said, adjusting his professional, pressed, dry-cleaned suit. He kept touching his slicked-back mane to make sure it was in place. “Do you have any idea how many things I’m dealing with right now?”

“I’m sure it’s so many that you don’t even have spare time to count them,” I retorted.

Star Swirl the Bearded, professional hero and put-upon endlessly by everypony around him, including the abstract notion of fate itself, nodded firmly. “At least you understand that much. Things have spiraled out of control. This situation is already deviating heavily from the main timeline of events I outlined. I underestimated how much damage a few loose cannons could do.”

“The orbital strikes did even more,” I reminded him. “So when did you get a law degree?”

“Don’t be stupid. They didn’t even have lawyers when I was in school. It was a civilized time. I’ve merely cast a few suggestion and charm spells to make the ponies here believe I have the appropriate credentials. Harmless little enchantments.”

“So you two know each other?” Quattro asked.

Star Swirl looked at her. Quattro smiled back.

“Hi,” Quattro said, offering a hoof to shake. “I’m one of Chamomile’s oldest and best friends.”

“That is hardly a sign of your good character,” Star Swirl retorted. “This pony has caused me and all of Equestria more problems than all but… perhaps a dozen ponies. If I didn’t owe her several favors, I’d have left her here and hoped she stayed out of the way.”

“Kinda funny that both of you came to break me out on the same day,” I said.

“It’s not that funny,” Quattro shrugged. “I told you, I got the first transport here. They only run a bus once a week. I think he was on the same bus.”

“I could have teleported here,” Star Swirl said defensively. “I decided not to. I’m trying to avoid drawing too much attention to myself, and suddenly appearing at the gates of a high-security prison is a good way to get noticed. I just snuck in with the rest of the lawyers.”

“I told the guards I was here for a conjugal visit and they didn’t want any details after that,” Quattro noted.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes and turned back to me. “I don’t see why you even left Seaquestria! It was a nice place, and according to history, it stays sealed until long after you could break anything. At least another few decades before anypony notices they're down there.”

I shrugged. “I died. Then there was a zombie outbreak, and I ended up setting off a megaspell and getting banished.”

Star Swirl gave me a flat look.

“Do you have any more megaspells?” Quattro asked. “Because if that’s your plan, it’s not a bad one. I can get behind the use of brute force to solve problems.”

I rolled my eyes. “It was a healing megaspell to cure the outbreak.”

“Then why you’d get banished?” Quattro asked.

“I might have also picked a fight with their entire military. It’s a long story. There was a conspiracy and it didn’t go all the way to the top because I cut off the head.”

Star Swirl muttered something under his breath about how he couldn’t even put a foal in a playpen without it being set on fire.

“It’s actually really good to see you,” I said. “You might be able to save me a week of running around like an idiot.”

He raised an eyebrow and motioned for me to explain.

“I need the details on a specific spell. I was going to go to Winterhoof and ask around there, but it was a little bit of a long shot and I’d probably end up on some quest that would cause even more problems somewhere down the line.”

I was hoping if I phrased it like helping me was also going to minimize collateral damage that he’d be more willing to go along with it.

“I do know just about every spell ever written down and a few that I decided not to write down because they were too dangerous,” Star Swirl conceded. Then he sharply held up a hoof. “But! I didn’t come here to help you with some insane, reckless plan.”

“My plan is perfectly rational,” I promised him. “I want to use magic to solve this whole invasion situation. That’s the best way to solve any problem, isn’t it?”

The ancient wizard glared at me. “You’re trying to manage me like a cranky foal.”

“Sorry.” I gave him a nervous grin. He really was my best hope to get a critical component for my plan, and he’d practically fallen into my lap. I explained my plan, or at least the part I needed from him. I am not saying what it is here yet because I am being dramatic in my narration. Also there was a good chance it’d blow up in my face and I don’t want ponies to know how bad my ideas actually are.

“Are you serious?” Star Swirl asked. “That spell that has been done perhaps thrice in recorded history. It, not to put too fine a point on it, needs more magical energy than any normal unicorn could possibly provide!”

“That’s the one,” I confirmed.

“I know the spell but I can’t cast it the way you need. It wouldn’t have nearly enough power.” He sat back and folded his forehooves. “If I can’t do it, nopony can.”

“Flurry Heart could.”

“It’s not an option. I can slip out because I’m careful. I know how to navigate the space between spaces and how to avoid causing any bloody paradoxes. She’s…” he hesitated.

I shrugged and suggested an adjective. “Scary.”

“Terrifying,” Star Swirl corrected. “A bloody foal with enough power to knock the moon out of orbit. The point is, I can’t cast it and neither of you two have horns.”

“Would something that could cause an eclipse have enough power?” I asked.

“Yes…” Star Swirl said slowly. “You did something. You were involved in that idiot mess!”

“I fixed it!” I protested.

“I remember that,” Quattro said. “That was right before I got back in touch with you, Chamomile. There were riots in most major cities. Panic everywhere. Ponies setting things on fire and declaring it was the end times. Then a few hours later they all felt silly about it.”

A sigh escaped my lips. “Sounds right.”

Quattro chuckled. “You never do anything halfway do you?”

“I stopped the pony who did it. They were using a ritual set up in this huge ritual megaspell space. It’s cleaned out now but it should be intact. We can use that to set off the spell!”

“It’s theoretically possible,” Star Swirl admitted. “I’d have to rewrite half the spell, but it could be forced to work.”

“All you’d have to do then is lure the Exodus Red into exactly the right position right on top of your giant ritual room and hope they don’t notice it,” Quattro said. She snorted. “Cozy Glow isn’t that dumb.”

I shook my head. “We’ll bring the spell to her. It’s not in a building, it’s onboard the Exodus Black.”

“Your plan has more holes than a block of swiss cheese,” Star Swirl said. He stood up. “You’re lucky I don’t have anything better right now. We should be away. I need time to rewrite that spell to work with these newfangled bloody megaspell arrays. You need to secure a way to actually cast it once I’ve got it ready to go.”

“Don’t worry, the captain of the Exodus Black and I are personal friends,” I said. “Are they really just going to let us walk out of here?”

Star Swirl trotted over to the door and snorted, pushing it open. “Charm spells. Not only will they let us, they’ll believe it was their idea to make us leave. And that’s without hurting anypony, blowing anything up, or causing irreparable damage to the timeline.”

“He’s like the total opposite of you, Chamomile,” Quattro whispered.

“I’ve noticed that, thanks.”

Quattro patted my shoulder. “You’re more fun.”

The guards put me in hoofcuffs, took them off, and walked around with half-finished paperwork in a daze. Star Swirl’s spells had put a real whammy on them, but he assured us it would settle out after we’d left.

“For them, it will be like a dream,” he said. “They’ll fill in all the little details on their own around the facts. I gave them a suggestion to finish filling out the paperwork before they do anything else, and once things are filed in a society like this, it doesn’t matter what really happened, only what’s on the forms.”

“We’re going to have to come up with a plan for getting to the Exodus Black,” Quattro said. “The military isn’t going to let you borrow any Vertibucks.”

“You two both got here on the same ride, right?” I asked.

“Along with two dozen other ponies. It was a sky wagon, if we have to fly as far as I think we do, something pony-pulled isn’t going to cut it.” Quattro rubbed her chin. “We’ll have to think outside the box.”

“How bad is my standing with the military anyway?” I asked.

Quattro winced. “I wouldn’t say you’ve burned every single bridge, but the ponies that like you are the ones who put you in prison. You don’t want to know what the ponies who don’t like you wanted to do.”

“Execution?”

“They might be willing to compromise and give you a blindfold before the firing squad starts shooting.”

A beam rifle shot smashed into the energy shield around us. The high-energy blast exploded into a storm of sparks that cascaded along its surface, tracing out paths around us.

“Thanks for the save, old man!” Quattro yelled to Star Swirl. His horn was glowing dim grey-blue.

“I always have a contingency spell ready to activate itself if you’re attacked,” Star Swirl explained. “It’s the most basic requirement of any decent battle mage.”

Quattro smiled. “Chamomile, we’ve got to keep this guy around.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’m staying as far away from your mess as I can,” Star Swirl scoffed. “I’ve been on enough adventures in my own time.”

A second shot streaked through, and Star Swirl confidently reinforced his shield. This time I was able to catch where the shots were aimed. I’d assumed the first one was after me, but this time I was sure.

“Quattro, do you have any enemies-- why am I asking? Of course you do.”

She didn’t try to deny it. “None of them should know I’m here! I’ve been lying low ever since the naval review!”

“None of my enemies are alive,” Star Swirl noted.

“I’ll try your method next time,” Quattro promised. “Chamomile?”

“I need to stretch my wings anyway,” I agreed. I took to the air once Star Swirl dropped his shield. Flying with the new wings felt different in ways that are hard to describe. They were heavier than my old wings, letting me shift weight around more easily. They were more maneuverable but I wasn’t sure I trusted them over long distances. I had to do a lot more flapping.

Speed wasn’t a problem. I spotted the shooter on a ridge of clouds overlooking the prison entrance. The pony ditched a camouflage tarp as I neared her hunting blind, revealing her black, lightly-armored bodysuit and array of weapons. I dove and slammed down in front of her, knocking the heavy beam rifle off-target before she could fire again.

The mare’s horn glowed, and an array of knives and pistols floated around her in a deadly cloud. There was something familiar about this.

“Wait,” I said. I narrowed my eyes.

My mysterious attacker waited a moment, not firing. She was watching me for something. After a moment with neither of us killing each other, she tossed her helmet aside, shaking out her mane and looking at me. Not with hate, but with the total exasperation that I tended to inspire in the average pony.

I was surprised but not shocked. “Cube?”

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through since the Hub?” Cube demanded. She gave me half a second to answer, not enough time to even begin a response before she pressed forward. “It wasn’t enough that the most important strategic resource in the world was lost while under my command, but almost every warsat blew its payload! And half of them hit the Exodus Red! Cozy Glow declared me a mutineer and a traitor and even my own father disowned me!”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Wait, what was that about the Exodus Red?”

“And on top of that, I was sure you were dead!” Cube continued. “I can’t believe you! Any time things get tough you just buck off to buck knows where!”

I shuffled my hooves, trying not to feel guilty. It was hard. She was very upset at me and I had sort of ruined her life. “It was an island resort.”

“An island. Resort.” Cube said slowly.

“And I lost a leg and a wing! I was very traumatized!”

She looked at my fully intact limbs and raised an eyebrow.

“I got better.”

“Oh yes. You got better.” She growled.

“Mom did it!” I declared. “It’s not my fault! She was using the island to develop dark magic, and hacking it with what was left of the Black Dragon, and I’m pretty sure I ended up there because she guided me subtly after she hacked my body on the Hub!”

Cube glared at me and said nothing.

“I got eaten by a dragon and had to fight Mom’s digital avatar in a very exciting and high-budget computer-generated fight sequence.”

“And what about that?” she motioned.

“You just indicated all of me.”

“Yes.”

“An ancient superintelligent computer was hooked into the black dragon at the time and I think she fixed me up before the dragon spat me out,” I said. “She owed me a favor for saving her.”

“That story is stupid, incredibly unlikely, and has holes big enough for me to fly the Juniper through it!” Cube snapped. “So I believe it. It’s exactly the sort of stupid stuff you get involved in.”

“Thank you.”

“Now will you please get out of the way so I can finish shooting Quattro Formaggio?”

“You know I can’t let you do that.”

“Why?” Cube whined. “She’s a traitor to everypony, Chamomile! No matter what she says, it’s a lie!”

“It’s true, I lie a lot,” Quattro confirmed. She was lying down on the cloud surface, relaxed and kicking her back hooves up in the air like a teen filly gossiping at a sleepover. “Don’t stop, keep going. I like to hear what other ponies think about me.”

“Because it helps you figure out an angle for stabbing them in the back,” Cube retorted.

“Girls, don’t fight,” I said firmly. “Cube, did you come here on the same skywagon as Quattro and Star Swirl.”

“I’ve been here for three days,” Cube said. “I was waiting for them to transfer you to a higher-security prison. I was going to hijack the transport and rescue you.” She sat down on a box full of self-heating meals. “When I saw Quattro, I knew she’d come here to find some way to make things worse. She’s probably still working for Cozy Glow.”

Quattro frowned and took off her sunglasses. “I’m not.”

“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were!”

“Can we focus?” I asked. “There was one thing I didn’t understand. You said the orbital strikes hit the Exodus Red? I thought they were aimed in the middle of nowhere!”

“No such luck,” Cube huffed. “They caused a huge amount of damage. It’s all repaired now thanks to SIVA, but the point is that it was directed against a moving target, so Cozy Glow was sure I did it. She doesn’t believe Mom could have hacked anything. She thinks her containment is perfect.”

“I just got back from an island where Mom didn’t just hack something, she was still connected to it through some kind of relay,” I replied.

“Good luck proving that to Cozy,” Cube said. “She’s been acting unhinged since it went down. She lost half the crew of the Red. Believe it or not, she did care about them. About us. And she thinks I did it.”

“Why the orbital strike at all?” Quattro asked. “The loss of life is tragic, but it doesn’t help your mother at all.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking of the rifles on the Hub twisting the ponies holding them into monsters. My own foreleg turning against me and trying to kill me. All it took was a few seconds of junk code in a burst transmission. The dream I’d had. Pieces in a subtly different color being put on the board without anypony even noticing.

“The repairs might have been the point,” I said. “We need to stop the Exodus Red as soon as possible. How did you get here, Cube? Maybe we can--”

“Teleported,” she said.

“Into a highly-secure area?” Star Swirl asked, finally getting over to us.

“The Enclave doesn’t have a lot of unicorns, and the ones it does have are kept busy and very highly paid,” I said. “That’s why my Mom was pretty well-off.”

Cube nodded in agreement. “The inside of the prison has plenty of wards but maintaining external ones for the one-in-a-million chance a unicorn might try to break in instead of out? Way too expensive.”

“Good thing Chamomile is a one-in-a-million pony,” Quattro chuckled.

“She might as well have this junk, too,” Cube said. She kicked one of the hooflockers she had in her blind. “I took it from the Juniper before Dad made me leave. He gave me as much as I could carry but he had to follow orders. Let me unlock it and--”

“I got it,” I said, using the tiny bit of magic I could to slip into the mechanism and pop it open without the key. Cube blinked in surprise.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“She’s always finding new ways to be dangerously stupid and stupidly dangerous,” Star Swirl groaned.

“Some kind of thaumoframe thing,” I explained. “My body picked up how to make it after getting pelted with enough shrapnel from-- from this, actually.”

I opened the case wide to reveal the blue-tinted power armor lying inside, disassembled for transport.

“I thought you’d need it back,” Cube said mildly.

“Thank you,” I said, really meaning it. “Wait, were you able to--”

I stopped my question before it could be properly said. Cube picked a blue helmet out of the box and held it up. There was no life in the machine. I couldn’t sense a soul or magic. The horn had been cut off the helmet, leaving a repaired-over scar on the forehead.

Cube shook her head. “Her soul was anchored in what was left of her horn. They took it and it’s still on the Exodus Red.”

I nodded slowly. It was one more thing I had to set right. I put the helmet back in the box. I’d get the armor together later, once I’d had a bit to let the news settle.

Quattro sighed and got up. “I think I know where we can find a ship. We’ll take a little side trip to Thunderbolt Shores. Captain Glint still… well, she doesn’t owe me any favors but she might extend me a line of credit if I ask nicely.”

“And how do we get there?” Cube asked. “You’re just pushing the problem down the line.”

“Unlike a mysterious airship in the middle of nowhere, we can just buy an airbus ticket if we want to go to Thunderbolt Shores,” Quattro said. “Who’s up for a road trip?”

Chapter 122: Gin and Money

I shoved seasoned potatoes in sauce into my mouth. The half-rancid oil they were dripping was practically blistering hot. It was still worth it. They were crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, spiced just enough to leave a touch of lingering heat and douse that heat with the white garlic sauce drizzled on them by the deft hoof of the street vendor’s art.

“I’ll say one thing for this town, it’s got the best food stalls,” Cube said. She had her own snack, ears of corn sliced up into long ribs and cooked on an open flame before being doused in a sweet sauce sprinkled with something green to make it fancy.

“After watching Chamomile eat ancient ration bars on the airbus for days, I thought we could use some real food before we got to the Raven’s Nest,” Quattro said. She only had a drink, some kind of smoothie made from leftover bits of fruit processed so finely that they went all the way around the bend and turned from trash into food.

I blushed at that. “Those ration bars are an important part of my history and I wanted to make sure they were still okay.”

Cube made a face. “They were rancid.”

“But technically still edible!”

“That’s why Star Swirl really left. He got too disgusted watching you eat.”

“No, he left because he had more important things to do,” I retorted. “And he’d want me to remind everypony that everything he does is more important, and he’s very annoyed he has to deal with other ponies’ problems.”

“Geniuses like Star Swirl and myself don’t have time for social junk,” Cube said primly. “We have to be the adults in the room everywhere we go. Speaking of which, are you sure you can manage that armor without…?”

I was wearing the Exodus Armor, mostly. I had to leave the plates over my fetlocks off for practical claw-related reasons, and I stopped wearing the helmet after it made me depressed enough that I’d rather get shot in the head. I could live without the HUD.

I held up a hoof and with a tiny bit of will and magic, summoned something out of the armor’s vector trap, the extradimensional storage space it used in place of saddlebags. A plastic hula mare appeared in my hoof, the spring in her waist letting the little statuette bob and dance. “I think I can manage.”

“What’s that thing for?” Cube asked, looking at the plastic bauble suspiciously.

I smiled serenely, tapping it to let the hula mare dance. “Art doesn’t need to be for anything.”

She rolled her eyes. “Can we please go talk to your mercenary friends? I don’t like being here. I know Cozy Glow has eyes in the city.”

“She won’t be stupid enough to attack here,” Quattro noted. She motioned towards the distant drydocks. They were a flurry of activity visible even from here. I could see bright sparks from welding torches and Vertibucks being used to move sections of hull plating. “Ever since the disaster at the Naval Review, every open berth has been filled with ships needing repair and refitting.”

“...Maybe we could…” I mumbled, thinking.

Cube looked at the docks, then back to me. “No!”

“No? No to what?”

“You were thinking about trying to steal a warship!”

I swallowed and looked off to the side, trying to seem innocent and disinterested in that very cool and valid idea. “I might not have been.”

“Those ships are under repair. Even if we had a small army to take the docks over and then crew the thing, we’d need to let the workers finish putting it back together.” Quattro shrugged. “I considered it too. You can run them with a skeleton crew, but not if you don’t know what you’re doing and none of us know how to get the Arcana Reactor up to speed to get the storm engines working.”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“Besides, we’ve got a better plan that relies on the most important and powerful force in Equestria.”

“Friendship?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

“We’re not friends,” Captain Glint said. She paused, then held up a hoof. “No, I misspoke. Chamomile, you’re a decent pony.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Quattro, you’ve betrayed everypony and everything you’ve ever met,” Captain Glint said. The mare glared at him across the CIC display table, daring her to say something. “I saw the announcement from Cozy Glow. You’re one of her very best friends, as I recall, so it’s not surprising that you betrayed her, too.”

Cube snickered until Captain Glint turned her gaze onto her and stopped my little sister’s amusement with cold anger.

“And you’re one of her killers. I had friends who volunteered for the space program Klein Bottle was putting together and I am aware of what happened to them. By all rights, the only reason I should have let either of you onto this ship is so I can get you close enough to strangle you myself!”

She slammed her hooves into the table, making all of us jump.

“Whatever insane scheme you’re up to now, I don’t want to be a part of it! I don’t even want to know what it is! I’m sure you can make it sound reasonable and heroic because you’re damned good at lying and manipulating ponies.”

“Excuse me,” Cube interrupted. I could sense her growing annoyance and anger. Quattro was quietly taking a majority of the yelling and nodding along with what I was sure was feigned contriteness, shielding Cube and letting her build up a head of steam to plunge forward before Captain Glint could get her ire properly on target. “We’re not here to ask for a favor as friends. We’re here to hire you as clients.”

Captain Glint took a deep breath and sat down. “I trust you as clients almost as far as I can throw the Raven’s Nest.”

Cube motioned to me, and I pulled some of her luggage out of my vector trap. As the only one of us with a way to carry her crates without needing a sky chariot or the liberal application of telekinesis and headache medication, I’d been volunteered as a porter. Even so, what she’d asked me to carry was straining the amount the vector trap could manage.

She put the extraordinarily heavy case on the table between us, having to be very careful so she didn’t damage the display. Cube popped the seals and opened the lid, letting Captain Glint look at the contents.

“That’s why we’re paying you well enough that you won’t need to trust us,” Cube explained. Inside the case were neatly stacked and arranged gold bars. It was an embarrassing amount of wealth.

“If I was a smart pony this much money would be a warning sign that would make me just walk away,” Captain Glint sighed.

“Smart ponies still have bills to pay,” Quattro noted. “Besides, we’re not asking you for anything really dangerous. We need long-range transport, with a whip that can loiter a little. Chamomile knows the general area where we need to go, but we might have to hunt around a little.”

I nodded. “The place we need to go is a moving target and it’s been a while since I was there. It’ll be hard to miss once we see it, but I’d be worried about a Vertibuck running out of fuel or having to pull a skywagon that distance.”

“The gold bars are very persuasive,” Captain Glint admitted. She closed the case and pulled it to her side of the table before putting it on the deck next to her. “Let’s get Doktor and Para Medic in here and we’ll discuss the details.”

“So the short version is we’re here,” I pointed to the spot on the map. “And we need to get all the way over here and start looking around for the Exodus Black. It won’t be as easy to spot as it used to be.”

“Ah yes, a problem for ponies thinking with their eyes!” Herr Doktor tapped her snout. “I studied the recordings from the naval review, and I have seen how large an Exodus-class vessel is! There are dozens of ways for us to find them. Have no fear!”

“The bigger problem is this,” Captain Glint said. The map was half-covered in a red blob. “The Enclave has declared this entire zone an exclusionary area. No pony in, no pony out.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s what they arrested me for.”

“Good, that saves some time,” Glint said. “Our options are to go around the no-fly zone or through it.”

“Around it will make the trip three or four times longer,” Quattro said. “It might even be less safe.”

“Explain,” Glint said.

Quattro motioned to the line separating the red area on the CIC display. “We know that past this line, there aren’t going to be any significant Enclave forces. A few lances of scouts in power armor hunkering down as spies, but definitely not warships. Cozy Glow has only one major asset in this whole area, and the chances of us running into it are slim.”

“Slim but not zero,” Cube countered. “The Exodus Red has really good sensors. I know. I was using them to make those orbital strikes count. It can spot something the size of this boat from hundreds of miles out, and since there really aren’t any other Enclave forces in the area, it means we’re the most interesting thing around.”

“We could run the Corridor,” Para Medic suggested.

“The Corridor?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s where the trade winds flow through.” She got up and pointed them out on the map. They looked like rivers cut through the structure of the clouds. “Back before the war they carried rain and warm weather to the northern parts of Equestria. Now… well, I guess they still do, but because of the SPP towers here and here--”

She highlighted them.

“--it gets funneled into a faster, tighter stream. They were probably planning on doing something with it before they were forced to close the sky.”

“It would be perfect for power generation,” Herr Doktor noted. “Imagine it, a turbine powered by the trade winds, providing endless energy for ponies!”

“Wouldn’t doing something like that cause massive side effects?” I asked.

“That is possibly why they did not finish it,” Doktor admitted.

“Storms get into the Corridor and the SPP towers rip them apart,” Captain Glint said. “It turns the whole area into fast-moving gusts, mist, and rapid temperature changes. It’s a giant pile of wind shear.”

“I’ve flown in worse,” I said.

“I have it on good authority you’ve also died several times. Most of us only have the luxury of dying once.”

“Look on the bright side,” Quattro said. “They’d have to be crazy to follow us.”

“It’s going to take a little while for them to get the ship ready to undock and leave,” Para Medic said. She’d pulled me into the cargo bay-slash-medical bay to examine my body, and unfortunately not in a sexy way. “Until then I want to get a look at you.”

“I’m fine,” I promised her. “I’m in way better shape than I was.”

She held my wing at the tip, stretching it out so she could look at the full span and checked all of the joints. There were a lot of them. “I don’t think this happens to ponies when they’re in good shape.”

“I already got a full checkup from ponies in my last, uh, port of call,” I said. “They were really more mechanical engineers than they were doctors, but that’s probably more appropriate for me anyway.”

“So what did they find? If I have to put you back together I don’t want surprises.” She let go of my wing and stepped back, obviously fretting.

“It seems like most of my body was, uh, disassembled. I’m making that sound worse than it is. You’re thinking dismemberment. That happened a little too but this was after. It wasn’t being torn apart, it was only being eaten and digested.”

“That’s worse instead of better!”

“I’m not good at telling stories. Maybe eaten is the wrong metaphor? Then again I was in its belly…” I wasn’t making things better. “Think of it more in machine terms, okay? Imagine you have an old skywagon, and it’s banged up and broken down. It’s still working because you keep bodging it together with repair work, and you’ve been replacing parts one at a time when you can, but you have to fly it every single day so you can’t do anything major.”

“And this skywagon is your body?”

“Yeah, so picture it with cool decals but also it’s on fire and it gets shot at regularly so you have to patch holes in the sides. Then one day, your skywagon crashes in a junkyard. It seems bad because you crashed and your skywagon was already on fire and now it’s in pieces, but what you find is that there are so many parts lying around that you can not only fix your wagon, you can get rid of some of the bodges you made over the years and even make some upgrades! You’re out of commission for a little while, but when you finally roll out of that junkyard, your wagon is better than brand new because you were able to keep all the little things that made it yours and were comfortable and customized.”

I was pretty pleased with that analogy. It was pretty close to being how it really went down, except in my case it was more like the wagon got stolen and the dragon mafia fixed it up for themselves before I got it back. And my mom was in the dragon mafia, which is a real thing that exists.

“I hate your analogy,” Para Medic said.

“What?” I blinked. Maybe I should have told her the whole dragon mafia version. “Why?”

“Because in your story, is it really still you-- I mean, is it really still your wagon at the end?”

I sighed and gave her a sad smile. “You know, that’s a good question. The wagon’s not as important as the pony driving it. That’s sort of a metaphor for the soul. And the good news is, I’m absolutely sure I still have a soul and that it’s mine!”

“Oh! That’s… something?”

I nodded. “It’s enough. Actually, it makes me worry more about you.” I reached out to poke her with my wing.

Para Medic flinched. “You’re worried about me?”

“You don’t have your soul nailed down by creepy pre-war tech! One bullet in the wrong place and, poof! You’re gone!”

“That’s true for everypony, Chamomile.”

“Yeah, but I’ve gotten increasingly aware that it’s a design flaw.”

Getting underway took a lot longer than I thought it would. It wasn’t only about detaching safely from Thunderbolt Shores’ complicated docks, it was also a matter of getting provisions, paying outstanding fees, waiting for the local weather’s equivalent of high tide, and making backup plans for when things inevitably went wrong.

We were delayed by days, and so I was antsy when we finally cast off and started flying in a way we hoped seemed casual. The Captain finally put me on deck and put me to work, ordering me to watch for trouble and report it before doing anything else.

“See anything yet, DRACO?” I asked. The computer-assisted rifle had more brainpower and better optics than anypony or anything else on the boat, so my job was really to sit and act as a spotter for my own gun.

He answered in the negative with an emoji of a pony shrugging.

“It’s nice having you back, buddy,” I said. I patted the side of the gun’s case, near the bulky box of electronics that made up its brain. “Don’t tell anypony this, but my aim is still terrible. If we see anything further out than rock-throwing distance, I’ll need your help.”

It offered an emoji of a salute, then flashed through a few others on its scope. It was a lot easier to understand than it used to be. Even the beeps and static were starting to make some kind of sense. It was a little like a language I was almost fluent in.

“We’ll get Destiny back,” I promised. “That’s a big part of the plan.”

The gun made a forlorn beeping sound.

“Don’t say that,” I scoffed. “I know she’s okay! She probably misses you even more than she misses me. And I’m not going to any more fancy dress parties without an anti-materiel rifle at my side, trust me. Biggest mistake of my life.”

DRACO sounded an affirmative.

“Most ponies who sit around taking to their guns get a psychological evaluation,” Quattro noted, as she dropped down out of nowhere. I’d known she was there, but it would have been rude to say it.

“Most ponies who wear sunglasses inside are colts who think it makes them look mysterious,” I retorted.

“We’re outside,” Quattro pointed out.

“So? Are you going to take them off when we go belowdecks?”

“Of course not, I want to look mysterious and cool,” she said. She sat next to me at the ship’s railing, looking out over the sea of clouds. “Anything interesting out here?”

I shrugged. “If there was, I’d be reporting it,”

She nodded. “You’re doing pretty well with the armor. I was worried you’d have trouble without Destiny helping you. I know she was controlling most of the functions.”

“There were some things that were tough without magic,” I confirmed. “When I first put this suit on, it would have been dead weight without her help, but the software’s good enough now that it does the basic stuff on its own and I picked up the slack on my end and learned enough magic to do the rest.”

Quattro nodded. “Good. I have a feeling things are going to go sideways and I want you at a hundred percent when it does.”

“I hope you don’t think Captain Glint is going to betray us.”

“No, of course not. She’s a good pony. A good pony with a fortune in gold that she deserves to live long enough to spend. She’s one of the ponies I consider too good of a friend to betray. Like you.”

“I distinctly remember this thing with Cozy Glow…”

“The one where she tried to have you murdered and I used a spark grenade to save your life, personally dragged you to safety, and nursed you back to health?”

I tilted my head in concession. “You got me there. It’s just a sour memory overall.”

“Being stabbed through the heart makes for a better romantic exaggeration of loss than a literal event.” Quattro leaned against the railing. She was quiet for a moment. “I’ll make it up to you. I have no idea how, but I’ll figure it out.”

DRACO beeped. Quattro looked at me. I looked at the small screen on the rifle. It was picking up something big and getting closer. I squinted at the screen. Even at maximum zoom, it was little more than a blurry shape on the horizon. An alert popped up.

“We’re being painted by radar,” Quattro said, reading over my shoulder. “They definitely see us.”

“I knew it was going too well…”

“We’re on the far side of the informal neutral zone,” Captain Glint said. She moved the token representing us to where we were on the map. “The ship coming after us is here.” She placed a second token further out into the red side of the sky.

“So much for it being a nice friendly Enclave patrol,” Quattro sighed. “If it was the military we could have come up with a sob story about navigational problems and asked for an escort into town.”

“It’s the Juniper,” Cube said with absolute assurance. She picked up the token and spun it in her magic. “I can feel it.” She slammed it back down.

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “The Exodus Red is too and too high-profile. If it was getting close to the border we’d be seeing all kinds of activity on the Enclave side.”

“And Cozy Glow has been using Polar Orbit’s ship as a scout and workhorse for years,” Quattro added. “There’s one thing I don’t understand. How did they find us?”

“Bad luck?” I suggested.

“Too much of a coincidence. There’s a lot of sky.” Quattro tapped her chin. “We didn’t file this in our flight plan, so it couldn’t be a spy at the port authority.”

“And I didn’t tell you, so you couldn’t have warned them,” Captain Glint added.

“That does explain why the map has us a hundred miles off-course from when you were discussing it with me in the room,” Quattro nodded. “Good thinking.”

“There were no transmissions,” Herr Doktor noted. “We have been under silent running conditions since we left Thunderbolt Shores’ controlled airspace.”

“No intentional transmissions,” Cube mumbled. Her eyes widened. “Buck! Where’s that crate full of gold?”

“You’re not getting a refund,” Captain Glint noted. She pointed to where it had been stowed in the corner.

“Daddy shoved that into my hooves on the way out and called it a retirement fund. It’s the only part of my luggage I didn’t pack myself!” Cube ran over and pulled it open, tossing gold bars to the deck until she got to the bottom of the hard-sided case. A moment later, and she tore out the foam lining to reveal a flat panel of tightly-packed wires and electronics.

“Oh! Let me see!” Herr Doktor slipped in to look. “This is very interesting work. They managed to fit most of a transistor radio into the structure of the case! The antenna is here, running all the way around the outside in a loop. There are miniaturized spark batteries powering it for short, timed burst transmissions.”

“A tracking device,” Quattro groaned.

“It’s not my fault!” Cube protested. “I didn’t know!”

“Hey, this means I didn’t betray anypony!” Quattro said brightly. “I’m feeling pretty good about this.”

“What kind of weapons do we have?” I asked. “I know we can’t outrun them, right? This boat uses a gas envelope. It’s slower than the Juniper. That means we’ll have to fight.”

“I sure hope not,” Para Medic said. “I like having a medbay full of supplies. I hate having to use them, because it means somepony got hurt.”

“The Raven’s Nest might as well be unarmed against a ship like that,” Captain Glint said. “We have some lasers we can mount on the railing, but those are for repelling boarders, not making attack runs on a warship.”

“The Juniper has two plasma lances and a dozen laser batteries,” Cube said, kicking a gold bar out of the way while she stormed back up to the map. “She can blow this tub out of the sky.”

“The Corridor is between us,” I noted. “We’re closer to it than we are to the Juniper.”

“Right,” Captain Glint said. “We’re making a run for it. Para Medic, give me a course and heading directly for the Juniper. I want them to think we’re going to ram them!”

“You think Polar Orbit will blink and get out of the way?” I asked.

“No,” Captain Glint said. “I think he might stop and watch. If we go any other direction he’ll want to chase us. At the last minute, we’ll bank into the Corridor and try to lose him in the turbulence.”

“Let’s throw that bucking tracker off the side of the ship,” I said.

Quattro grabbed my shoulder. “Wait. Leave it. He doesn’t know we found it. We might be able to use that.”

“Use it how?” I asked.

Quattro shrugged mildly. “We’ll have to get creative. It’s not like it’s hurting anything right now when he can look right at us.”

“Everypony get on whatever armor you’ve got and get to battle stations!” Captain Glint ordered. “Shrapnel kills more ponies in a ship-to-ship fight than anything else! Herr Doktor, give me everything the engines can get! You three get on deck and be ready to repel boarders!”

“Yes ma’am!” I saluted.

“I should have asked for more money,” Captain Glint sighed.

“More than a bunch of gold bars?”

“The suitcase full of gold bars is what got us into this mess. Go get ready to murder somepony.”

“I swear I didn’t know,” Cube said again. The Juniper was looming larger. I could make out the sweep of her triangular body from here, like a soaring eagle with its wings spread, two storm engines forward and one in the rear for balance, the bridge hanging off the front and shaped like an armored beak.

“I believe you,” I assured her.

“Though if you did want us captured, delivering us right to your own father’s doorstep in an unarmed, barely-armored airship three centuries past its prime would be a really good way to do it,” Quattro said. She adjusted her gold-plated power armor. “I’m joking, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Cube replied, her tone acidic.

“How long before we’re in range?” I asked. DRACO beeped, providing an answer. It was a rapidly decreasing number that was going to reach zero way before we reached safety.

“I can’t believe he used me as bait,” Cube grumbled.

“I can’t believe Captain Glint was optimistic enough to think they’d board us.”

Quattro patted me on the back. “At least if he knows Cube is here he won’t--”

“Duck!” Cube shouted. I pulled Quattro down to the deck. Bolts of plasma shot past the deck, half the length of the ship away. Even at that distance, there was a thundercrack and a wash of warmth from superheated air.

“He’s a terrible parent!” Quattro yelled, shouting over the ringing in my ears.

“Hang on!” Captain Glint said over the deck speakers. “Brace for evasive maneuvers!”

The ship banked and dove hard down and right towards the flow of the Corridor. Shots from the Juniper narrowly missed the gas envelope hanging above us. Too narrowly. The rigging above us blackened in the wash of heat and caught on fire.

“Good thing we’re already going down instead of up,” Quattro said. She grabbed a bucket. “We need to put that out!”

She ship twisted, and she slipped, almost dropping the water. Cube caught it and her, levitating both of them.

“I got the fire,” I said, leaning over the side. Having my body remodeled had given me one or two neat tricks. Now, I admit that it didn’t sound like a mighty roar, and was a little more like coughing up a hairball, but I still fired my cool breath weapon at the spreading flames, spitting a burst of glue balls at it and smothering them with flame-retardant foam.

I nodded at my work, satisfied.

“Gross,” Cube said, very judgmentally for somepony who’d just been saved.

“I could breathe fire instead, do you think that would have helped?”

“Can you actually breathe fire?” Quattro asked.

“No, but I was trying to make a reference to fighting fire with fire and… it would be cooler to breathe fire,” I mumbled that last part.

Scattered laser fire came down around us, clipping across the Raven’s Nest just as the darker, fast-moving clouds of the Corridor rose up to meet us. The wash of weather tingled on my body. Being out in the open with pegasus magic, it was less like being thrown into a riptide and more like being tossed onto a conveyor belt of quicksand that could almost support your weight.

Quattro was holding onto the railing for support. Gusts of wind hit us from every direction.

“There’s no eye of the storm here!” Quattro shouted. She kept her wings tucked tight, adjusting her grip to avoid being flung away. Cube could stand on the deck and watch us with mild amusement.

“You’re wrecking the floor,” she pointed out. I looked down at my hooves. The lightning claws sheathed in my legs had deployed like talons and sank into the armored surface.

“Instinct, sorry!” I yelled back to my sister. I would have retracted them if I wasn’t being buffeted by wind moving faster than I could fly.

The hatch to the deck below was forced open, Cube helping open it without comment. Captain Glint stepped out on deck, wearing power armor that was so heavily customized I couldn’t even guess at the provenance. It was cloud-camouflage white, with flattened, curving panels and heavy wing armor.

“That last barrage of laser blasts put too many holes in us,” Captain Glint said. “The damage control patches inside the envelope turned it into a slow leak instead of a fast one, but in these conditions the wind is squeezing the lift gas out of us.”

“What are our options?”

Glint sighed. “Herr Doktor is packing her most important gear. Para Medic is filling her saddlebags.”

“You want to abandon ship?” Quattro asked.

Captain Glint walked up to Quattro like the deck wasn’t trying to toss us aside and we weren’t literally in the middle of a storm. She grabbed the smaller mare by the collar and pulled her away from the railing so she could properly glare at her.

“A captain doesn’t abandon ship,” Glint growled. “Go below decks. Get the gold bars and the case they came in.”

She tossed Quattro towards the open hatch, giving her a solid push to keep her from having time to complain. Once Quattro had scrambled out of the wind, Glint looked at me and Cube.

“You two! I want you ready for what comes next.”

“And that is?” Cube asked.

“Like I told her, a captain doesn’t abandon ship. Once she comes back, we’re starting our attack run. I want everypony ready to fight.”

“With what?” Cube scoffed. “This ship is unarmed!”

“Hoof-to-hoof,” Captain Glint specified. “We aren’t fast enough to run. We can’t loiter long enough to hide with that leak. Our only option is to attack, and the only way we can do that is a boarding action!”

She drew a long sword and stabbed it into the deck, leaning on it for support when another gust hit us.

“If the Juniper is that much better of a ship, then we’ll take her for ourselves!”

Chapter 123: God Shattering Star

“Take the bait,” I mumbled, watching the case drift through the mist. A weather balloon had been attached to it, holding the empty luggage and the tracking device built into it. The winds were pushing it along the stream of clouds and broken weather that made up the Corridor.

“I can’t believe you almost threw the gold overboard,” Cube teased. My cheeks burned.

“I didn’t know the plan!” I protested. “Besides, I took it out after Captain Glint started yelling at me.”

“Do you think they’ll actually come after us?” Para Medic asked.

I nodded. “They wanted us shot down.”

“Even though I was onboard!” Cube spat. She kicked the railing of the Raven’s Nest. The old ship groaned, the airbag above us protesting. I looked up at it. Wrinkles were starting to develop near the rigging. We were slowly losing pressure from the damage the Juniper had done.

“I can’t imagine why,” Quattro said, struggling to sound serious. “You’re such wonderful company, and Polar Orbit has never treated ponies like expendable tools.”

“They had better come soon,” Herr Doktor mumbled. She checked her equipment again. She’d grabbed everything she could put into saddlebags and was probably bulletproof just from the layers of tools and electronics wrapped around her. “We cannot hold this position for long.”

“They’re coming,” Captain Glint said, holding up a hoof.

It took me a moment to hear it myself, the dull thrum of storm engines getting louder and louder, the rumble a steady sound underpinning the random crashes of the storm.

“Check your weapons,” Glint ordered.

I poked at DRACO’s screen. The intelligent rifle beeped ready and flashed me a smiling face emoji, chattering in binary about how much ammunition it had and the wear status of its components. I could pick out just enough to know it was happy about being full of bullets and having received plenty of maintenance.

The other gun I had ready was silent, because it wasn’t intelligent. It was a bunch of autorifles strapped together with cable ties, wires, and mechanical linkages, a chimera mashed together by SIVA-infected raiders and able to fire four shots with every pull of the trigger. It was also stuffed full of ammunition and wasn’t picky about what went in the hopper. There were status lights buried inside it that seemed to be promising colors of purplish-green.

“Good to go,” I said.

Cube quickly checked her brace of pistols, two rifles, and various knives. She nodded curtly. Para Medic only had a small pistol. Herr Doktor was carrying something worrying that looked more like industrial electrical equipment than a proper gun and had the largest vacuum tube I’d ever seen. Quattro had her gold armor and rocket launcher. Captain Glint’s twin beam carbines seemed practically sedate and underwhelming compared to what the rest of us carried.

“I don’t want any mistakes,” she said. “Your first priority is staying alive. If you get cornered and have no other options, I’d rather have to break you out of a brig than put you in a pine box. You understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Para Medic said. The rest of us chimed in with various levels of enthusiasm.

The Juniper’s prow broke through the cloudbank below us, the beak-like bridge trailing streams of broken fog. The plasma lances and laser batteries glowed in the low light, powered and ready to fire the moment they had a lock. If they hadn’t been looking in entirely the wrong direction, we’d have been in trouble.

“Prepare for boarding!” Captain Glint shouted. She yanked a line, opening vents on the damaged lift envelope above us. My stomach sank, and the Nest entered a crash dive. At the last minute, some automatic system finally managed to see through the interference of the Corridor and the roiling flow. Active defenses turned to face us, blasting a scattering of laser fire. The Raven’s Nest ate it up, the hull shielding us and cracking apart under the force.

We crashed onto the Juniper’s spine, the Nest not even a quarter of its length and a tenth of its mass. The old ship’s keel all but exploded, centuries of repairs coming undone all at once. The Juniper’s hull rang like a bell.

“Move!” Captain Glint shouted.

“The point defenses can’t hit us at this angle,” Cube said. “There are open hatches midway between the spine and the outboard engines!”

A gust of wind caught the deflating gasbag, ripping lines free from the broken hulk of the Raven’s Nest. The canvas and foil balloon whipped back towards the rear of the Juniper before being sucked into the aft stabilizer engine of the tri-storm ship.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” Herr Doktor said, just before something exploded. A column of flame exploded along the axis of the engine, and the Juniper started yawing hard to the left.

“Inside!” Glint yelled. I bolted for one of the hatches, Cube pointing the way. It was a wide opening in the top of the ship, an open stairway wide enough for four ponies to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. A troop of marines was already there waiting for us, aiming up with beam rifles and wearing that ornate, gold-trimmed variation of the Enclave standard power armor that Polar Orbit had been issuing to his troops.

The leader (and I knew he was the leader because he had a big hat) pointed to me with the kind of grand drama I expected from anypony taking orders from Polar Orbit.

“Fire!” he yelled.

The crack of beam rifles filled the air. I charged. I had to go forward because the ponies behind me were more fragile than I was. I focused, forcing energy through the thaumoframe buried in my body and inside my armor. A shield shimmered to life in front of me.

Most of the beams were stopped by the field. A few made it through and hit armor. The luckiest hit managed to scorch a hot line along my jaw. I was starting to regret not wearing a helmet, but it felt wrong without Destiny there. Before they could get off more than a few shots each, I was among them. The firing line collapsed, and discipline went with it.

DRACO was too slow-firing and too inaccurate at this range. I opened up with the multi-barreled Cerberus on my side and fired a barrage in a wide arc, catching a few of the ponies. I was in hoof’s reach of the marines. I punched one to try and knock him out of the way. The power field around my hoof activated.

He exploded.

“Oh shoot,” I said.

“Keep firing!” the leader yelled. I’d effectively gotten their attention, that was for sure. A beam hit him in the neck, and he stumbled back, gurgling. Pistols flew in, surrounded by auras and firing into the packed formation. More shots came down from the top of the ramp, Captain Glint firing shockingly accurate bolts into joints and seams on the armor even as she wove from side to side to avoid return fire.

Quattro fired once, a rocket hitting the deck under two marines and throwing them to the side, bleeding from shrapnel wounds.

A massive bolt of blue and yellow lighting crashed through the center of the marines’ lines, exploding in a way that electricity absolutely should not.

“Aha!” Herr Doctor crowed. “The ball lightning gun works even better than expected!”

The few remaining marines backed up, retreating away from the scene of carnage. I stopped and let them go, only firing a few shots to encourage them to keep going.

“Clear, for now,” Cube reported. She kicked the leader of the marines. “Jerk.”

Para Medic looked a little sick. I don’t think she fired a single shot. I can’t blame her too much for that.

“We need to secure the bridge,” Captain Glint said. “Once we have control there, we’ll be able to control the rest of the ship.”

“Not necessarily,” Herr Doktor warned. “We should focus on Engineering! Even if the aft engine is not as damaged as it seems, they could easily set the arcana reactor to self-destruct or reroute controls there. If we take the bridge, we may find ourselves locked in with nowhere to go!”

“We’ll split up,” I said. Captain Glint nodded.

“Chamomile and I will go to the bridge,” Cube said. “I don’t want her near anything that might explode. You and Quattro can escort the other two to Engineering.”

“Are you sure?” Quattro asked.

“I’m showing you I trust you,” Cube said. “Miss Glint can’t protect two ponies and take over half the ship on her own.”

Quattro smiled and nodded. “Thank you, I think.”

The ship started yawing the other direction, the sudden change making us all stumble.

“Let’s move,” Captain Glint said. “I crashed one ship today and don’t intend to repeat the performance.”

The door to the bridge was ornate and decorated with delicate gold trim and wood panels. Hoof-lettered words had been painted on it, along with delicate red pinstripes that nearly disguised the fact they were gilding a hatch strong enough to keep out all but the most dedicated boarders and withstand the worst disasters the designers could imagine.

Ponies back then didn’t have enough imagination to picture what would happen to it. The decorations were blasted away like cake fondant meeting a sandblaster when I knocked. Sure, my hooves were covered in a destructive energy field at the time but that’s still no excuse for poor build quality.

“He’s in there,” Cube said. “I can sense his mind. There’s somepony else too, but…”

My little half-sister frowned, looking annoyed.

“If I’m causing some kind of psychic interference I can take a couple steps back,” I offered.

She shook her head. “It’s not you. Something in there is messing with me.”

“Special forces with special training to hide their thoughts?”

Cube raised her eyebrows. “That would be incredibly paranoid, and I think we used up all the marines already.” She glanced back at the corridor behind us and the destruction we’d left there.

“That’s what you said after the last two fireteams,” I reminded her. They weren’t a serious danger to either of us, but I didn’t like having to fight ponies that Cube knew, even if only distantly. I could feel it weighing on her.

“He took on more troops since I was here. They probably needed a few extra squads to make up for losing me, you know.”

I grunted. I smacked the door again with a powerhoof. It was denting, but even I could recognize I was more likely to get it jammed and make it more difficult than to do anything useful. I took a step back and flicked my forehoof, extending my lightning claws. Sparks danced along the edges of the blades.

“The more time we give him to be clever, the more likely we are to have to kill him,” I said. “I’d rather take him alive.”

“Really?” Cube asked, looking significantly at my claws.

“I know it’s important to you, and that’s enough for me,” I told her. Cube nodded in silent thanks, and I slashed at the door, trying to find the locking mechanism. The hardened metal parted like butter. Hydraulic seals failed, the door bleeding out into the corridor with spurts of oil. Cube grabbed the edge I’d created and pulled, forcing it open wide enough for us to pass.

The bridge was almost like I remembered it. Wide and shaped like a shallow bowl, with graceful arcs of wood panels containing the controls and screens needed to operate the Juniper. All of them were on automatic, the crew having fled before we arrived. I retracted my claws and we walked in, the soft carpet and indirect lighting reminding me of the resort back in Gator World.

If the world wasn’t at stake, I’d say I made a stupid mistake not staying there.

“I suppose I should say something dramatic,” Polar Orbit said. He stood next to his swiveling chair, looking back over his shoulder at us. “Ever since Cube left, I’ve been pondering exactly what to say and do. In the end I wasn’t able to find the right words. You already know why I’m doing this. I know why you’re doing what you’re doing. They’re simply incompatible goals.”

Cube glanced at me, then stepped forward.

“Captain… Dad. Please surrender. I don’t want to fight you.”

Polar Orbit chuckled grimly. “And I really don’t want to fight you. In fact, I don’t intend to do it at all. Throwing away my life in some grand gesture would only hurt you, and I am not a cruel pony. I am, however, a pony that spent several days thinking about how to survive this encounter.”

He turned the chair around, revealing my father. Red Zinger was tied up, gagged, and wearing a vest with a concerning number of blocks of high-explosive strapped to it.

“I’m wearing a heart rate monitor that will set the bomb off if it stops,” Polar Orbit explained. “Again, I don’t expect this bomb to hurt you, but it will kill Red Zinger and severely damage the controls here, effectively scuttling the Juniper.”

“This only delays things,” I warned him. “A hostage situation is bad for everypony. It means you’re out of ideas and stalling for time.”

“You’re half right!” Polar Orbit agreed. “It keeps me from losing, but doesn’t help me win. For that, I have the second part of my plan. Ladies?”

The air shimmered, and two alicorns appeared in a shimmering burst of blue light. They were almost identical to the one I’d fought a lifetime ago in the ruins of an old shopping mall, but green and looking even smugger than before.

one of them said, her mouth not moving.

Cube winced. “They’ve got some kind of psychic static! That’s why I couldn’t sense them before!”

they intoned royally.

“How’d you get them to sign on?” I asked Polar Orbit, watching the two alicorns cautiously. They didn’t seem to be in a rush to attack. They were enjoying watching us squirm. “Don’t tell me Cozy Glow is their friend too?”

“They wanted ponies untouched by the radiation and horrors of the wasteland for some project,” Polar Orbit said. “Cozy Glow traded some of the Exodus Red’s crew that were still in stasis for their help.”

“She did what?” Cube gasped. “Doesn’t she care about what’s going to happen to them?!”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” Polar Orbit said. “Once she’s in control of the Enclave, it will be a new golden age for all ponies. We all have to make sacrifices.”

“You take the green one, I’ll take the other green one,” I whispered to Cube.

“Right,” Cube said, totally ignoring me because she was smarter than I was and we both knew it. The two alicorns watched us imperiously.

“You know, I met a real alicorn when I was in Limbo,” I said loudly, getting their attention. “Flurry Heart. She was so powerful that they haven’t invented words that properly describe it. It’s like how numbers stop having names after a while and you have to switch to scientific notation. That’s what she’s like. You’re like… a filly’s idea of what an alicorn would be like when the strongest pony they know is their mom and the smartest pony they know is their teacher.”

the alicorns said.

Now, a clever pony might be wondering why I was trying to banter with the alicorns, and even a stupid pony would question why I was saying things that would definitely piss them off. The answer is that I was watching Cube line up her shots while the two alicorns watched me.

A barrage of laser fire from a half-dozen floating rifles and pistols cracked through the air and splashed uselessly against magical shields.

“I was hoping,” I admitted, before switching to plan C and charging the nearest one. She vanished before I got there, and I skidded to a halt, the carpet catching on fire from the residual power field around my hooves. I spun around to look for her and a blast of green lightning caught me in the side, flinging me into a wall of consoles and smashing a display.

The alicorn reappeared next to her sister. Standing right next to each other I could just barely tell a difference between them, mostly in attitude. One had the tiniest smug smile, and the other had the smallest disgusted frown.

I shook off the moment of disorientation that came from being hit with something very much like a truck. DRACO beeped and fired on automatic, explosive shells hitting the alicorn’s shield. They should have been able to crack tank armor. They weren’t doing a whole lot, and it took me a moment to sense why.

My whole body was an antenna that could sense magic, and I could feel the connection between the two green alicorns. They were reinforcing each other’s shields!

That felt like cheating.

“Fight fair!” I yelled. Cube peppered their shield with blasts. In theory it would keep their heads down. In practice, it was just creating a light show. Then again, a light show had worked last time. I tapped DRACO’s screen with my wing, selecting a different option. The concussive beats from high-explosive rounds faded and was replaced with bursts of hot smoke.

Another bolt cracked through the air, the force pushing the smoke aside. I jumped into the air. I’ll give dragon wings one big plus over pegasus wings -- for those of us who are big and heavy and strong, they’re way better at leveraging our strengths. I spun in midair and hit the ceiling with my hooves, sticking in place. I thought that might give the alicorns some pause, but they didn’t miss a beat. Another bolt cut through the opaque smoke with deadly accuracy. I had to let go to avoid it, dropping down with claws extended and slashing, hitting only empty air.

The smoke cleared, and the alicorns weren’t where I’d left them.

“Cube?” I asked.

“I didn’t see them leave,” she said. “They must have teleported again!”

They reappeared in a blue flash on the far side of the room.

“Can you keep them from teleporting?” I asked, backing up to stand next to my half-sister.

She nodded. “I can cast an interference ward. Their magic is strong, but not strong enough to ignore mine.”

The alicorns fired the spells they’d been charging. I got in front of Cube and braced myself, shielding my body with my wings as much as possible. One bolt deflected off a rough shield spell I managed to get up in time, but the bolts were staggered by a fraction of a second, and that first blow tore the shield apart and opened the way for the second hit.

Green lightning raked across my armor, not blasting me away but instead superheating and shattering the metal along my right side. DRACO’s mount exploded under the force, the gun dropping to the ground with a confused series of error beeps.

“I’ve got the warding up, take them down!” Cube yelled.

I charged, leaving the rifle behind. I reached out for one of the alicorns and she vanished before I got there. My claws scraped at the edges of something. I stumbled and caught myself on one of the plush chairs at the duty stations on the bridge.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“It should have worked!” Cube protested. “I didn’t feel any teleportation at all!”

“Then where’d she go?!”

Lime-colored death rays smacked into my shield and I was glad again that they were about as stupid as I was with letting their enemies banter and thinking up cool lines before they attacked. For me it made fighting feel a little less like murder. For them, it was probably just so they could taunt me for being stupid.

DRACO whistled from across the room and fired, bouncing smoke grenades off of the ceiling and wall to have them fall next to me, managing to bank the shot despite the angle it had fallen at. Flares joined them in a second volley, making the back of the bridge a maze of impenetrable light and shadow.

“Good gun,” I whispered, trying to quietly take a couple of steps to the side on the soft carpet and evaluate my options. I know I didn’t make any real noise. I know they couldn’t see through the smoke from where they were. An impossibly-accurate braided beam of fire slashed at me. I let my wired reflexes take over and kicked the chair next to me, smashing it off the bolts holding it to the floor and into the path of the beam, at the same time allowing the recoil from the move to throw me faster than my wings could carry me.

The scorching ray slashed into wood panels and set them on fire. The chair exploded in midair, a hole punched clean through it and followed by a shockwave that tore it apart from the inside.

I was starting to think they might be real alicorns, or using some kind of magic that I couldn’t understand. They were teleporting even with a ward up, they could see right through smoke and flares, and they weren’t letting me get close.

The smoke near the ceiling moved. A stream of stray vapor from the bank shots DRACO had made was pushed aside by an unseen force. Instinct told me to jump, and I did, pouncing at something I couldn’t see. My hooves touched invisible fur. I hit the ceiling, and my new dance partner took the hit for me.

Blood exploded from thin air around my claws. It splashed on me and the thing I was holding against the roof and outlined its struggling form. A shimmering wave of blue washed over the empty space, revealing the mortally wounded alicorn.

I yanked my claws to the sides and let her fall, both down and apart.

“There was a third alicorn giving them overwatch!” I yelled over to Cube. “They weren’t teleporting, they were using invisibility spells!”

The two green alicorns’ faces twisted in rage and they tilted their heads together, touching the tips of their horns. A spark grew at the point where they connected. The air turned electric with potential.

The spell suddenly sputtered and failed.

“What’s wrong?” Cube taunted. “Did somepony get their little spell countered?” Her horn blazed. I could see sweat running down her forehead. She had their full attention, and they’d just lost the extra set of eyes warning them about danger.

I dropped down on them and hit the shield around the two. Sparks exploded between my hooves and the arcane shield, the spell trying to absorb and deflect and stay rigid. The shield rippled, both alicorns working together and melding their spells into one. The sound when the energy field collapsed was like broken glass. I dropped down on top of them, and my claws were stopped by a horn surrounded by the harsh blue glow of a power field. Waves cracked down the length of the alicorn’s horn, the alicorn’s massive magical strength holding back my brute force.

The second alicorn moved while I was distracted, casting the same spell as her sister and tossing her head in a wide arc, trying to strike me with her horn. I kicked away from the blade lock, narrowly avoiding the flanking strike.

“You girls learn quickly,” I said, looking them over. I hadn’t hurt them at all, though the sparks from our crossing blades had set the carpet on fire.

“I didn’t know I was boring you. I’ll make this fast.” I let my implants kick in and the world slowed to a crawl. The flicker of the flames stopped, leaving them frozen in the air. I surged through the ice-cold air at the alicorns. They started casting something else, rings of runes appearing as fast as they could think them.

My claws were a hoof-length away from the nearest of the pair when the spell was completed. She jerked back, suddenly animated again. My claws scraped the side of her face, opening long cuts that didn’t have time to bleed yet.

I kept up the pressure, hoping they couldn’t think as fast as they could move. We were matched for speed but I was the reigning champion of being stupid very quickly. The two alicorns traded blows with me, dancing across the bridge and climbing onto the graceful swoop of the control terminals.

The two had better reach than I did -- even when we were standing on the same level they were attacking from higher ground since they were using their heads. Their weapons being attached to their faces also made them extremely careful. One bad parry or thrust and they’d have literally stuck their necks out.

Still, the two of them were highly coordinated, and if their attacks weren’t so telegraphed and slow I would have had a harder time defending. I dodged to the side of a thrust, turned to block a strike from the second sister, and the attack I’d missed turned into a blast of energy, slashing forward and hitting the forward window of the bridge.

In slow motion, Polar Orbit turned to look. The armored glass shattered.

I caught the throat of the alicorn that had overextended herself to fire the shot. The one I’d struck before tried to hit me with a wild slash, and I rolled away, kicking the slowly falling body of her sibling toward her. She stopped herself just before her attack could hit her mortally wounded twin, the power field around her horn winking out.

We caught each other’s gaze, and it was all over.

Time started flowing again, and I yanked my claws free of the dead alicorn, blood spraying wildly into the air. Glass rained down on the deck, and the wind rushed in. Polar Orbit turned around to see me.

“You…” he started. “I suppose I underestimated you. I apologize. I know I was trying to kill you, but I feel rude that I assumed that would have been enough overwhelming force.”

“I’m sure you’re torn up inside!” I yelled over the storm outside. “Cube, can you get my dad free?”

“Stop,” Polar Orbit warned. He held up the detonator. “Before you do anything, you should know this is a dead mare’s switch. If I let go or he gets too far away, it will set the bomb off.”

“Dad, please surrender,” Cube sighed. She floated over a knife and started cutting the ropes holding my father in place. I could tell she wasn’t happy about this arrangement. “I know Chamomile looks like a crazy berserker but she’s a good pony and she’ll let you go if you give up now. Right, Chamomile?”

That last question was very pointed. I nodded in affirmation, sheathing my claws.

“We’re not friends, but we can stop being enemies,” I told him. “I already had to kill like, a lot of ponies today and I’m not super jazzed about that. If we can all be cool, nopony else has to get hurt.”

Polar Orbit shook his head. “You don’t understand. My life doesn’t mean anything. I live to serve Equestria’s new ruler. She is going to fix everything, and if I am willing to kill for her, I must also be willing to die.”

He closed his eyes and I knew what he was about to do. I grimaced and an awful sound came out of me like a giant scaly cat hocking up a hairball. I spat a wad of glue at Polar Orbit and caught his hoof, sealing the detonator firmly in his grip inside a ball of quick-setting epoxy.

“I…” he blinked. I saw him lose a significant part of his composure. “I was not expecting that.”

“I’m full of many useful things.”

“Nice fight,” Cube said. She’d put away most of her guns and knives into what was less a series of holsters and more the world’s more dangerous skirt. “I didn’t see what happened at the end. You and the alicorns were just a blur.”

“They had some kind of haste spell, but they didn’t seem very practiced at it.”

Cube shrugged and finished cutting my father free. He pulled the gag out of his mouth. “Chamomile, I…” he trailed off, unable to look me in the eye. The last time we’d spoken, it hadn’t gone well.

“Can you get that vest off him?” I asked Cube, ignoring my dad. I didn’t have anything to say to him.

“I don’t know,” Cube said. She tugged at it, and I saw Polar Orbit twitch.

“Stop. He’s got it rigged somehow.”

Polar Orbit shrugged, acknowledging it as the truth.

“We’ll get Herr Doktor to look at it once she’s done in Engineering,” I said. “Until then we should put both of them in a closet or something where we don’t have to worry about them.”

“I’m afraid we won’t be going anywhere,” Polar Orbit said. “I’d be a fool to only have one detonator.”

He produced a second switch and pressed it. A green light on the bomb vest wrapped around my father turned angry red. My dad shoved Cube away and tackled Polar Orbit, vest beeping in alarm. They went out of the broken window, falling out of sight.

I hadn’t moved. I was frozen in place, shock making my knees wobble.

In that last moment, Dad had looked back at me. I think he said something. I couldn’t hear it over the rush of wind. And then he was gone.

There was a sharp thump.

I ran over to the window. I couldn’t see anything. The storm had just swallowed them up. I stood there for what must have been almost a full minute, letting the rain and wind leaking in fall on me.

“Chamomile, come in,” Captain Glint’s voice came over the intercom. “We’ve secured Engineering. Report your status if you can.”

“We’re fine,” Cube said, stepping over to a panel and hitting it, answering for me. “We just… we need a few minutes.”

“Understood.”

Cube walked over and sat next to me.

“Which one of us is supposed to apologize first?” she asked.

I snorted, started laughing, started crying, and she hugged me. I felt tears on her cheeks.

Chapter 124: Show Your Style

How do you describe something like my Dad’s collection of junk? It wasn’t a display. There wasn’t much of a theme to it. Piles of junk were sorted and re-sorted with some logic I couldn’t really follow. Back home I’d thought things were cluttered because we didn’t have that much space inside where things weren’t going to get damp from poorly-packed clouds or fall through the soft floors. On the ship he had a whole cargo bay and it was exactly the same as being back home, just on a larger scale.

His desk was covered in notebooks and scraps of paper. I flipped through them, looking for… something. I wasn’t sure what.

Found another slight variation today. Seemed identical at first until I put two bottles next to each other. I was shelving them together because I thought they were the same, but side-by-side it was obvious that the newer Sparkle-Cola bottle had much sharper details and a visible seam line on the glass where it had been molded. The bottle was produced by a completely different process to the older one! Very exciting.

My eye twitched at the note. I’d been looking for hours for something about Mom, or me, and I hadn’t found anything.

“Did I come at a bad time?” Quattro asked. She trotted towards me from the door, stopping to look at herself in a cracked vanity mirror on a shelf. She adjusted her sunglasses and nodded approvingly before approaching. I could tell she was deliberately taking her time in case I reacted poorly.

“No,” I admitted with a sigh.

She sat next to me and peered over my shoulder. “Anything interesting?”

I slammed the notebook I was reading closed and tossed it back on the desk. “I wish,” I groaned. “I thought Dad would have spent the last few years doing something that mattered, but all he did was take very meticulous notes about garbage!”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what real archaeology is,” Quattro noted.

I huffed and puffed and tried to argue against it. “I know it’s not all traps and ancient ruins like in those old serial novels.”

“But?”

“But I’ve been in plenty of ancient ruins and tripped a bunch of traps.” I shrugged.

“Can I be honest with you, Chamomile?” Quattro asked.

“That’s an excellent question. I’ve asked myself that, like, a lot. I don’t know, Quattro. Can you?”

“Very funny.” She took off her glasses and held them in her hooves, looking at the dark glass. “I think you want something from your father he can’t give you. You want him to be a secret genius who was working on something important.”

“There has to be a reason why Mom wanted him to help with the Exodus Blue. He knew more than he let on!”

“She wanted him there because she wanted somepony to do this.” Quattro tapped the notebooks. “She needed a pony to sort through the garbage and do the boring work. What happened? You got dragged along and finished a years-long project in a few days.”

“Yeah but…”

Quattro held up a hoof. “But nothing! His work would be really important in academia. I’m sure there are ponies who would absolutely love a complete history of…” she flipped through one of the books. “...Sparkle-Cola production during the war.”

“I’ve met ponies who would love it.”

“Great! We’ll donate all his notes to them.” Quattro said it sarcastically, but it wasn’t a bad idea. The college at Winterhoof probably would be the best place for the collection of what I was graciously calling artifacts. The critical difference between trash and valuable historical research was context, provided helpfully by tiny hoof-written cards.

I sighed. Quattro tapped me until I turned to look at her.

She smiled. “I get it. You want it to mean something because it’s his life’s work.”

“It did mean something. To him.” And not me. Not really. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been hiding down here from things.”

“You’re not the only one. Cube has been taking things out on the crew. I came down here to get you to talk to her.”

I tilted my head. “You can’t?”

Quattro shook her head. “Chamomile she’s a cybernetically and magically-enhanced super soldier with daddy issues.”

“So am I. So are you!”

“First, I’m a spy, not a soldier. And I don’t have daddy issues. Go hug her before she murders somepony.”

“What do you mean he abandoned ship?!” Cube demanded, screaming at the poor ensign who was trying to fix a pipe.

The uniformed pony cowered away from the floating cloud of tools in the air. They were increasingly moving in threatening and stabby ways. “I-I’m sorry, Ma’am! It’s not my fault! I stayed onboard to keep the ship running!”

I snatched a screwdriver out of the air just before it could do any harm. Cube and the Ensign looked at me in surprise.

“Hey,” I said, nodding to both of them. “I’m just gonna take my sister here for a walk. You can get back to what you were doing. Sorry about this!”

Cube glared at me and stomped off. I ran after her once I was sure nopony’s life was in danger.

“Half the crew left,” Cube spat. “Even though Polar Orbit told them to stay onboard no matter who won!”

“We should be thankful anypony stayed. We couldn’t run this ship with just six ponies.”

“I know that!” Cube shouted. “I know it, okay?!”

She stomped faster, making me jog to keep up with her. I let her steam in silence for a little while.

“I’ve known these ponies for years and they turned against me in a second because Cozy Glow called me a traitor,” she growled. “Even my own father wasn’t willing to stand up for me. Now he’s dead and I’m stuck proving them right and you know what, Chamomile? I don’t know what the right side is anymore!”

“If you want to leave, you can.”

She stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a sudden surge of pain and fear written wide across her expression.

“Leave?” she whispered.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean--” I sighed and reached for her, offering a hug. She almost took it, then shook her head and turned away. “I don’t want to force you to do anything. I know my plan is dangerous and stupid. I came up with it, so it couldn’t be anything safe or smart.”

“No kidding,” Cube said bitterly. “I’m not leaving. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

The intercom crackled. “Senior officers to the bridge.”

“There’s one place we can go,” I offered, patting her on the shoulder despite the refused hug. Cube gave me a tired look and rolled her eyes, trotting off and making me follow after her.

Captain Glint looked back at us when we walked onto the bridge. Most of the damage had already been repaired. The Juniper had a lot of spare parts onboard to keep her in tip-top shape. Burned carpet was repaired, blood had been scrubbed off the controls, and bodies had all been bagged.

The biggest sign of the fight we’d had were the steel hull panels fastened over half of the bridge windows where they’d been unable to fit replacements. The big panels probably needed a drydock to move into place safely.

Cube and I walked around the banks of controls to look outside. Captain Glint stood next to the helmspony. It was the best place to get a view of what was waiting for us.

“Match course and heading,” Captain Glint ordered.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the helmspony replied. “We’re steady alongside her.”

Outside the window, the city-sized Exodus ship loomed, moonlight tracing out the edges of equipment and armor panels layered on the outside of the flying wing. I could see only a few dim running lights, making it into a dark industrial landscape hovering in the sky.

“Quiet,” Quattro noted.

“Hail them,” Captain Glint said.

“No response, Ma’am.”

“Try again. If it doesn’t work, do whatever you can to get their attention. Flash our running lights. Fire a flare.” Captain Glint watched impatiently and looked at me. “Was it like this last time you were here?”

I shook my head. “No, but… it was like this the first time, when everypony was in stasis except a skeleton crew. They got woken up, but it’s possible Midnight had them go back under to wait for things to improve.”

“If it’s like the Exodus Red we can dock at the main bay at the rear of the ship,” Cube said.

“That system isn’t automatic,” the helmspony supplied. She winced at Cube’s return glare. “Sorry, Ma’am. I spoke out of turn.”

“Don’t apologize,” Captain Glint replied. “So if nopony is awake we can’t dock? That’s fine. I wouldn’t want to dock without knowing what’s going on over there.” She turned back to the window and tapped a hoof. “Chamomile, you know the ponies on board?”

“Sure,” I said. “They're really nice aside from the cult. Fun parties. Snappy dressers.”

“Perfect. You and Quattro will lead an away team. Get some engineers to go with you. You can make contact with whoever’s in charge and the engineers can get their docking systems online.”

“I can go too,” Cube said. Captain Glint held up a hoof.

“Wait. I want you to stay here.” Glint trotted back to the plush captain’s chair, but didn’t sit down on it. “I don’t know this ship. You do, and you know the crew. I need you here as my first officer.”

“First officer?” Cube repeated, almost whispering.

“You’re the best choice, and I’m sure the crew would agree. Unless you’d rather have me put Chamomile in charge?”

Cube paled and looked vaguely horrified, which I found slightly insulting. She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s hope this is just a case of us arriving while everypony is tucked away in bed.”

“I admit, I was nervous,” Quattro said, as we stepped off the Vertibuck. “I know it was only a two-minute hop, but you have a track record with these things.”

The team we’d come with consisted of the Vertibuck pilot, the ensign Cube had yelled at in the corridor, and one of the engineers who’d been off-duty. They’d all been promised hazard pay on top of overtime, so they weren’t complaining about moving their own equipment while Quattro and I stared into the darkness.

“I’m not going to correct you,” I said. I looked around the bay. There was no sign of anypony. “You know I actually got myself checked out for curses? I met a witch, so it seemed like an opportunity to see if I’d gotten anypony really angry.”

“What did she say?” Quattro asked.

“She told me I wasn’t cursed, I was more like a blunt object for curses to apply to other ponies.”

“Ah, so it was like a cloudball bat complaining about all those annoying balls that keep bumping into it.”

“Ma’am?” one of the engineers cleared her throat. “We need to get to work.”

“We’re just making sure the area is clear,” I said. “You might not know this, but standing out in the open and making a lot of noise is a good way to attract predators.”

“Do we want to attract predators, Ma’am?”

“If Midnight is around, she’s a very attractive predator,” I said. I’d been expecting something to lurch out of the dark and try to murder me by now. It was a little disappointing. “How do we access the equipment you need to get to?”

The engineer looked up. “This ship isn’t exactly like the Red. We’ll need to get to the control tower for the flight deck and start there.” She pointed out the armored windows. With the scale of the ship, it was as big as a building on its own.

“I had a guide last time I was onboard this ship,” I said. “I can get us to the trams, if that helps.”

“That’s fine, Ma’am. We’ll be able to peek at the map from there and plan a real route.”

I nodded. I was just smart enough to know that the best way to get things done was to delegate it to somepony who knew what they were doing. I took point, not sure what to expect. It really was quiet. The loudest sound was the rattling of fans in air vents and the occasional radroach that was more afraid of us than we were of them.

The tram station was just the way I remembered it. Creepy and dark with flickering lights everywhere that made every odd shape and corner into a hiding spot for an imaginary monster.

“When we get Destiny back, I need to ask her what she was thinking,” Quattro said. She couldn’t hide how uneasy she was. “This place is like a haunted house on Nightmare Night.”

“That’s deliberate,” I said. I tapped the controls for the tram, calling one to the station. “This ship was built for a bunch of Nightmare Moon cultists. The materials and designs are all their idea.”

“I think some of the skulls in the wall sconces are real,” the ensign whispered.

“Once we get the Juniper docked you can go back onboard,” I promised. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You’re saying that like there are things that can happen to us!” the ensign squeaked.

“It’s an ancient ship that doesn’t get regular maintenance,” the engineer said firmly. “The most dangerous things here are the safety violations and we’re well-equipped to put them down. Shape up, Ensign. We’re professionals doing a simple job and getting triple pay for it.”

“Right, sir,” she said, saluting.

The station rattled and the tram howled in the way only a badly-maintained train can as it pulled up to the station, wind surging through the tunnel around it. Wide cargo doors squealed as they opened, revealing an interior that needed to ne hosed out. Dark stains marred the floor of the tram, some of them leading to drains set in the steel floor, the rest dried into a flaky mess that caked seams and low spots.

“Is this one of those dangerous safety violations?” the Vertibuck pilot asked when he looked over our shoulders.

The tram chimed with an incongruous happy bell. An automatic voice played on a clicking, hissing loop of old tape. “Next Stop: Control Tower.”

I swept DRACO’s barrel around, looking for anything unusual. The control tower was empty, but had room for what had to be a dozen ponies at radar stations and banks of terminals and radios. The rifle beeped.

“What was that?” the Ensign squeaked in alarm.

“It’s clear,” I told her. I leaned over, tilting so she could look at the screen. “See? Nothing detected, and there’s only one way in and out of this room.”

“Thank goodness,” the Ensign sighed, putting down her toolbox. It was considerably smaller than the one the senior engineer had brought. Her senior immediately stepped over to a bank of switches and started flipping dials and pressing buttons. A few lights overhead flickered on and one of the radios hissed, a soft voice playing.

“That’s the Juniper,” the Vertibuck pilot said. “I’d recognize our beautiful comms director’s voice anywhere. May I?”

“Let them know we’re safely in the tower,” the engineer replied. “Can’t guide them in yet. The ILS is offline. We’ll need to get the radar working.”

“Will do, chief.”

“Can we call the bridge from here?” I asked. I stepped over to the radio bank. The Ensign peered over and pointed at a button for the intercom. I nodded thanks to her and slipped a headset over my ears.

I pressed the button and winced at the sound of screaming and gurgling. I tore the headset off, and Quattro rushed over.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. Then she frowned and picked up the headset. “No, the speakers are bleeding. That’s not normal behavior for audio equipment.”

“The ship is slightly haunted and cursed,” I admitted.

“I should have asked for double hazard pay,” the engineer mumbled. She was neck-deep in one of the panels. “Let’s get the radar fixed so we can get out of here!”

Something slammed against the door. The Engineer jumped and smashed something with her forehead and swore, pulling herself out of the electronics and ducking behind a chair. Quattro looked at me and I nodded, approaching the door.

“What are you doing?’ the ensign asked.

“I’m going to answer the door,” I said with the kind of calm a pony only had if they’d never seen a horror movie before. There was another knock that stopped just as my hoof neared the control panel.

I hesitated for a moment, then pressed the button. The door slid open, and a dark terror flashed out of the darkness, faster than thought and moving like a shadow, the impossible speed and smoothness of something unreal.

It slammed into me with the intensity of a freight train powered by dark magic and bloody death.

“Chamomile!” Midnight Shadow Sun chirped. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

The batpony squeezed me with a big hug and then stepped back to slap my shoulder.

“Look at you! You’ve gone and gotten better wings! No offense to the rest of you, but feathers are impossible to keep clean once they’re covered in blood.”

“Thank buck,” I sighed. “Everypony, this is Midnight. She’s… in charge?” I guessed. The jet-black batpony nodded, and I continued. “We’re friends.”

“Just friends?” Midnight teased.

“Don’t do that to Chamomile, she’ll overheat,” Emerald Gleam said. She stepped out of the gloom and into the control tower. She looked better than she had the last time I’d seen her. Pale and sharper, her cheekbones more visible, but also a little more youthful. Traces of early wrinkles from frustration and long hours at work had washed away. “This is good. We weren’t sure who was going to show up.”

“I guess seeing the Juniper out there was a shock,” I agreed.

“You know, I was sure you were dead,” Quattro sighed. She looked Emma over. “Chamomile told me some of the basics. What’s it like?”

Emma shrugged. “You get used to it. Not being able to go out during the day is the only hard part.”

Quattro nodded. “They gave you a posthumous promotion and a medal, from what I understand. I wonder if they’d let you keep the higher pay rate if you went home?”

“Why don’t you ask for me, if they won’t shoot you on sight for being a traitor?”

“Oh, you heard about that?”

“The transmission from the fleet review went pretty far,” Emerald Gleam confirmed.

Quattro nodded. “Did I ever apologize to you?”

“For what?” Emma asked.

“I’m not sure. Let me know if you come up with something and I’ll do my best to be sorry about it and make it sound like it comes from a place of authenticity.”

Emma scoffed. “Nothing you do is authentic. I should have you thrown off the ship before you betray us!” She stormed over to Quattro and poked her in the chest. “How long do we have before you’re stabbing us in the back again?! I bet you’re pulling some kind of scam on poor Chamomile right now and she’s too trusting and stupid to see it!”

“Owch,” I mumbled.

“I’ve always tried to do the right thing,” Quattro countered.

“Prove it.”

“Fine, we’ll start at the top,” Quattro sighed. “So I met you all at the Exodus Blue prison camp-slash-aracheological site. I was there because I got myself arrested on purpose to see how Polar Orbit’s side project was going. He did it purely to try and get allies in the Enclave government by promising them tech and salvage, and it ended poorly.”

“It ended with ponies I’d worked with for years getting killed horribly,” Emma said.

“Like I said, poorly. You can’t blame me for that part, I was a bystander! Chamomile’s mom did all the damage. She even destroyed a ship on her way out. That got Polar Orbit motivated to fix his mistakes, and he followed her. We all ended up crossing paths at Chamomile’s hometown.”

“Where Mom went looking for me because she was confused and only remembered that I’d been there,” I said.

“Right,” Quattro confirmed. “And we went there because I wanted to drop you off somewhere safe without a lot of military ponies around and pick up the equipment I’d left there when I got myself arrested. Polar Orbit showed up on your mom’s trail and quarantined the place.”

Emma nodded. “We only got out because Chamomile’s dad--”

“We got out because I sent Polar Orbit a message to let us out,” Quattro admitted. “I let him take Chamomile’s dad off our hooves because I didn’t like him very much.”

“What about the whole thing with Captain Glint?” I asked. “You’re the reason we went to Thunderbolt Shores.”

“She’s a friend,” Quattro said with a mild shrug. “She has contacts everywhere. You’ll remember she knew Dashites, members of the military, merchants… There are a lot of ponies that need things done in the Enclave and want to avoid the government for one reason or another. It was a good way to keep my hoof on the pulse of the big picture.”

“Things blew up, we got separated, and by the time we caught up to each other, Cozy Glow had called you back in.” I was pretty sure about this part. Quattro confirmed it with a nod.

“Emma and I went our separate ways after you and Rain Shadow crashed through the cloud floor and took a long diversion to the surface. Really, I should be offended she didn’t ask me to come along with her to the military! She left me behind, and that really hurts.”

Emma growled. “I let you go even though you were a convicted criminal!”

“Girls, please, no fighting,” Midnight ordered. “Sorry. Emma gets a little emotional when she hasn’t had anything to drink.”

She pulled a plastic pouch out of her armor and put it in Emma’s mouth. Emma glared at her but obediently sucked on it, fangs piercing the packaging and a tiny trickle of blood escaping to run down the corner of her mouth.

“We should get back to business,” Midnight said. “How many marines did you bring?”

“Uh…” I blinked in confusion and looked at Quattro. “Marines?”

“To respond to the distress call,” Midnight prompted.

“What distress call?”

This time Midnight and Emerald shared a look.

“We’re here because we wanted to borrow your megaspell cathedral,” I specified. “We didn’t hear any distress call.”

“So you didn’t bring a strike force of elite soldiers?” Midnight asked, looking sheepish.

“Er…”

“It’s fine,” Emma sighed. “We can signal your ship and have them sent over. We’ll give you a briefing once they’re here.”

“What if the ship doesn’t have any marines?” I asked. “Because there’s a really good chance that maybe they’re fresh out.”

“How does a ship 'run out' of soldiers?” Emma asked.

Midnight facehoofed. “Chamomile…”

“You might as well explain how much trouble we’re in,” Quattro said. “This is starting to feel like old times! I missed this.”

Emerald Gleam sighed. “You remember how the black dragon melted its way through the bottom of the ship and escaped?”

I nodded. “Sure. Speaking of which, I found out where it went. You can consider that problem sorted out!”

Emma and Midnight looked at each other again with a growing look of understanding.

“How long ago?” Midnight asked after a long moment.

“It’s not my fault!” I protested.

“No, it’s your mom’s fault,” Emma agreed. “It sounds like whenever she got control of the black dragon, it reactivated the SIVA that got left behind.”

“I guess it makes sense,” I admitted. “Every bit of her is dangerous. There was this severed limb in a tomb and it turned itself into a monster even without a brain or organs or anything.”

The bowels of the Exodus Black were just as bad as I’d imagined. It was worse than a ghost ship. I’d been on a literal ghost ship and the ghosts were mostly just confused and didn’t quite know they were dead. They were sad places. This ship had been built by ponies who thought that the height of decor involved candles, skulls, and ornate murals of bloody rituals.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Quattro sighed. She was getting twitchy. It belatedly occurred to me that she was the only one of us who couldn’t see in the dark, so it was twice as creepy for her.

“We need to use the megaspell cathedral,” I said. “And we’re going to do these ponies a favor and take care of the monster lurking around the ship.”

“Most of the vampires here aren’t really fighters,” Midnight explained. “They’re more like the old nobility.”

“But with centuries of experience and lore, right?” I asked.

“You’d think that,” Midnight sighed. “But they’re idiots. Not lovable ones like you, Chamomile. Frustrating ones. When they started getting horribly murdered they decided to sleep through it instead of, you know, solving the problem.”

“The worst part of becoming a vampire is knowing that in a few hundred years I’ll be as annoying as they are,” Emma said. “All of them just go on and on about shows and books and music that nopony else knows about! They have inside jokes that are older than entire civilizations and weren’t funny even when they were fresh!”

“That’s why I try and stay hip with the kids,” Midnight said sagely. “I’m super cool and I have swords, which are always cool.”

She drew her two short swords made of that strange glass-like material and spun them around dramatically before sheathing them again in her magic, neon-glowing armor.

“Midnight does give me some hope,” Emma agreed. “It could be much worse. I could be stuck with the mindset of a teenager who thinks red and black are the coolest colors and plays with knives constantly.”

“Owch,” Midnight hissed.

“Somepony’s got to keep you humble while most of your family is in stasis,” Emma said smugly.

I held up a hoof. “Stop. I felt something.”

My skin was crawling. Not literally, but I did check to make sure. SIVA could do weird things. We were getting close to our quarry. I followed the sensation around a corner and found a dripping hole in the ceiling, the edges of the metal deck plating turned into mush and grime by a combination of acid and micromachines.

“We’re close,” I said. I knelt down to look at the marks it had left on the deck.

“Chamomile,” Emma hissed.

I looked up.

It looked down at me with a mismatched collection of eyes. It was easily in the top ten most horrifying nameless things that I’d come face-to-face with. Half of a pony emerged from the top of an armor-plated ball with a fanged maw stretched across it, four spider-like legs emerging from the sides of the thing. It was almost entirely mouth, the steel teeth parting in a hungry growl to show crushing rollers and shredding blades.

The half-a-pony twitched, trying to focus on me. The more I looked at it, the less it looked like a real pony and the more it looked like something made in imitation of a pony’s form, a lure or mockery of our shape.

It sucked in a breath through the mouth wider than my whole body, tasting the air around me.

“It’s not attacking?” Quattro asked.

“Maybe it smells the Black Dragon on me?” I guessed. “I have most of the command codes. I might be able to tame it!”

“That seems like a terrible idea,” Emma whispered.

“It totally does,” Midnight agreed. “Go for it, Chamomile!”

“Okay,” I said. I carefully stepped closer, putting my hoof on the thing’s skin. Hull? Shell? It had so little actual biology that I wasn’t sure what to call it. The living metal felt like it was wet and crawling. It made me think of rotting bodies and worms and rusting steel all at the same time. I pushed, letting magic flow into it and trying to exert my will.

“Is it working?” Midnight asked.

“It’s not eating her yet,” Quattro commented quietly.

The monster’s mouth opened, and it roared and clamped down on my extended hoof, teeth scraping against my armor. I screamed.

“Never mind,’ Quattro corrected.

“Blast it!” Emma shouted. She and Quattro started firing, beams lashing against the monster. Steam and ichor exploded off the filthy steel armor. Quattro launched a rocket into its leg, shrapnel pelting me. The thing stumbled, taking me with it in the tight vice-like grip of its mouth.

“Get off me!” I yelled.

“Hold still!” Midnight appeared next to me, stabbing a blade into the thing’s jaws and using it like a crowbar, trying to free me. “Come on, Chamomile! Give me a hoof!”

“I’m already giving as many hooves as I can!”

The twisted pony-centaur head of the thing howled, a new vertical mouth opening across what should have been a ribcage. Ooze leaked from it, hissing with acidic potential against the deck where it dripped.

“Get back!” I shoved Midnight away. It was too late. The thing twisted, pipes opening and gurgling as pressure built up.

The air temperature dropped. Fog instantly formed, humidity crashing out of suspension and turning briefly into a cloud, then going even further and becoming frost. The creature slowed and stopped. White ice crystals formed across its body, and the machines that made it up slowed and stopped, gears and pistons sticking in place.

I yanked my hoof free, metal teeth turning brittle from the supercooling. I stumbled back, confused.

“Hmph.”

An old pony stepped around the frozen creature.

“I finally finish with the spell you need and what do I find? You’re already in trouble again,” Star Swirl said. “You’re the most irresponsible pony I know.”

“I didn’t… when did you get here?” I asked.

“Right in the nick of time,” Star Swirl said smugly. “As always. I was going to start preparing the megaspell, but instead I had to save your life.”

“Oh hey, I recognize you!” Midnight said. “You’re that annoying kid who wore those stupid hats!” She smiled. “Let’s finish dealing with this monster, then you can tell me more about this megaspell you want to cast with the help of a pony that tried to kill my whole family a few times.”

Chapter 125: Unicorn

“Explain it to me again,” I sighed.

Star Swirl grunted in annoyance. He was already pacing around the megaspell cathedral, splitting his time between glaring at the architecture and glaring at me for being stupid and not immediately understanding him when he was being vague about things.

“Where do you want me to start?” he asked. “I could begin with basic math to make sure you don’t get confused about the concept of addition!”

I tried not to get as frustrated with him as he was with me and the world in general. I bit my lip and didn’t snap back at him.

“That was brand new when you were a foal, right?” Midnight quipped.

Star Swirl shot her a look and shook his head in annoyance. “The issue is the power source. How much do you know about the structure of a megaspell?”

“More than more ponies,” I said. “I had to help rewire one. From what I was able to understand, they use something called an incantation lens to force compressed magic through a rune without giving it time or space to break apart.”

“Mm,” Star Swirl nodded. “That’s not the worst start. A spell is something like a balloon. If you don’t put enough energy into it, it won’t inflate and take on a shape. If you put too much into it, the whole thing pops and blows up in your face. A megaspell creates an environment where magical pressure around the spell structure holds it together long enough for the effect to occur despite the internal pressure.”

“That sounds like what I heard,” I agreed. “And you can do that with a ritual, right?”

“The first megaspells were done as large rituals, yes. You need at least six participants. It’s a geometry issue, keeping the pressure even on all sides, that sort of thing. It requires coordination and practice and it’s as fallible as the weakest unicorn involved.”

“Which makes them impossible to mass-produce.”

“It would be like mass-producing an opera,” Star Swirl scoffed.

Midnight cleared her throat. “Which you can do if you make a recording. So that’s what balefire bombs are, right?”

Star Swirl nodded. “Exactly so. That incantation lens you mentioned is essentially a mechanical solid-state recording of spellcasting. Instead of a pony who might trip up or sneeze or hesitate you have a perfect machine. Even better, instead of having to get six ponies together who all agree it’s a good idea to end the world, you only need one pony with their hoof on a big red button. Much more modern and efficient.”

“We’re the ones with our hooves on the button this time,” I reminded him.

“The biggest mistakes of my life happened when I stopped trusting my friends and did things without them,” Star Swirl said. His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Once you start trusting yourself with that much power, you start thinking it’s a good idea to use it.”

“Are you saying you won’t help us?” Midnight asked.

Star Swirl took off his hat and shook it out, giving himself a moment to collect himself. “I’m an old pony. I’m allowed to be melancholy once in a while. The issue is, we don’t have what it takes to kick this spell off. You’ve got me, that annoying little filly with daddy issues, and that’s where the list ends of ponies who might be able to contribute.”

“I’ve got unicorns in cold storage,” Midnight offered. “That’s a pun! See, vampires are cold, and they’re in stasis. Never mind, I’ll explain it to you later.”

“I very much doubt you’ve got ponies with the talent needed,” Star Swirl said. “Even if you’ve got a dozen candidates, we’d need to teach them the spell. A spell I had to hack together, mind you. It’s never been cast as a megaspell before! For all I know it’ll blow up in our faces and send us to Tartarus!”

“What about…?” I trailed off.

“That doesn’t count and you know it,” Star Swirl chuckled. “If Flurry Heart does something we should just assume it doesn’t need to follow the laws of physics. They get out of the way because they’re smarter than the rest of us.”

I nodded. “Midnight’s mom didn’t use a bunch of unicorns when she was casting that eclipse spell.”

“We are not doing some insane blood ritual!” Star Swirl snapped. “No matter how much good you might think you’re doing, starting off with something like that taints it all. You can’t save the world by burying it under corpses.”

“We can’t afford it anyway,” Midnight added. She shrugged. “Mom really emptied the larder when she killed all those ponies. The thing about being a predator is, you starve if you don’t have enough prey. Ponies make awful prey animals, too. If you want to farm wheat or corn you can harvest it every year. Can’t do that with ponies.”

“That’s why you put most of your family back to sleep.”

“They don’t mind. They’d rather nap until things are more interesting anyway. This is how we’ve always gotten through lean times.”

“Without participants for the ritual, or more… esoteric options,” Star Swirl continued. “We need to build an incantation lens.”

“Okay?” I shrugged.

“I…” Star Swirl coughed. “Can’t do that. I have no bloody idea how. Might as well ask me to fix a bloody clock.”

“So what do we do?” I was starting to get a headache. “Do we need to raid some vault and steal an old megaspell missile? Go on a quest to get six teenage unicorns with attitude who can combine their powers?”

“Mm.” Star Swirl shook his head. “I’m not an expert on the engineering side of this problem, so what you need is a pony who is. You said you helped rewire a megaspell. Get that pony here and we can hack something together.”

“I needed Destiny and her brother Karma for that,” I said.

“You should have been thinking about ways to rescue her anyway,” Star Swirl chastised. “That mare might be a ghost but she knows how to make a pony feel appreciated for their amazing and eternal legacy.”

“What, was she a big fan of fancy hats?” Midnight asked.

“Unless you can find another pony who’s an expert in megaspells and engineering them, I need her,” Star Swirl said. “Make it fast. I’m not getting any younger. Last time I tried that trick I ended up as a baby for a month.”

“It won’t be easy to get her back,” Quattro said. We’d gathered on the bridge of the Exodus Black. It was a little bigger than I expected. The ceiling was high over us, with chandeliers and murals decorating the buttresses and arches of the exposed structure. It had to be the size of a hoofball field, and a pony could get a good workout doing laps around the outer walkway.

The captain’s chair was a huge throne of ornate silver, gold, and what had to be bone. Captain Glint stood next to it, with Midnight perched on the seat, her butt at eye level. Quattro paced around us, and flickering displays made of illusion magic showed rough outlines of an Exodus-class ship.

“Cozy Glow has her under heavy guard,” Cube agreed. “The reason she took her in the first place was to get control over Mom. I didn’t get involved because it… felt wrong. Getting Lemon Zinger contained wasn’t a bad thing, but forcing Destiny to do it like that wasn’t right.”

“She hadn’t been able to use the SIVA core to do much,” Quattro explained. “The Exodus Red could only make some spare parts and supplies. It was like ordering off a menu. Want a plasma rifle? No problem. Need a water filter? Sorry, that’s not on the list.”

“Mom was the key to unlocking it. With a living pony as the core, they could make anything they could imagine.”

“As long as she was smart enough to design it,” I mumbled.

“It’s still a big difference between getting a part from a vending machine and getting what you actually want from a pony.”

Quattro cleared her throat. “The point is, Destiny is in the most secure part of the Exodus Red. Even more secure after the emergency repairs. Cozy Glow is a little unhinged after you tried to kill her with those orbital strikes.”

“I told you before, that wasn’t me,” I said. “Mom did that.”

“Try telling it to Cozy Glow,” Quattro countered.

“The details aren’t important,” Captain Glint interrupted. “This isn’t a debate, it’s a military operation. Focus on the goal and work in both directions from there.”

“The goal is to get Destiny off that ship,” I said. “We can’t plan much after that.”

“No, but we know some basic facts,” Glint said. She started pacing in front of the throne. “After you rescue her, we’ll need time to finish that megaspell you’re cooking up. That means we don’t turn this into a big fight.”

“Couldn’t we just tell the Enclave she’s fresh out of orbital strikes?” Emma asked. “I appreciate that you like taking care of things yourself, but the best way to fight an army is with another army.”

“If they attack the Exodus Red they’ll probably end up letting my Mom loose,” I said. “If it was just Cozy Glow I’d grab Destiny and walk away from this and let them sort it out themselves.”

“A covert operation,” Quatto said. “That sounds like my specialty!” She smiled and walked up to the floating panel of light. “Like I said, it won’t be easy. She has to be stationed near Engineering. There’s one advantage to her current situation -- prisons are big and obvious. You can find the outline easily enough if you try.”

“We don’t have an accurate map,” Cube noted. “This is just a mockup based on this ship. All of them are different. Even the bridge is a totally different design.”

“And that limits our ability to plan in detail,” Quattro agreed. “Broad strokes only. Get onboard in secret. We avoid raising the alarm. That gives us time to find her and figure out extraction. As soon as everything’s ready, smash and grab, get out, and get back here. It would be better to get her out without anypony knowing but…”

“But that’s a delaying tactic if anything,” I said. “They’ll notice she’s gone really quickly no matter what we do.”

“Right. So if we replace stealth with speed we might still get out before they stop us,” Quattro said. “But… broad strokes. How do we get onboard? Flying a Vertibuck up to them is asking to get shot down or interrogated.”

“The Juniper is no better. She can defend herself, but somepony would notice Polar Orbit wasn’t around to answer questions,” Captain Glint said. “I don’t trust the crew enough for this either. They might be willing to keep the ship running, but there’s a difference between that and asking them to shoot at their friends.”

“All it would take is one pony with a radio to rip the ‘covert’ part right off the mission,” Quattro agreed.

“I know how to get a pony onboard,” Midnight said. “In fact, Chamomile has even done it before.”

“Teleportation?” Cube guessed. “It won’t work. I thought about it already, but it would show up on the ship’s sensors and without knowing the layout of the ship, there’s a good chance we’d be putting ponies directly into walls and floors.”

“This ship happens to have a very advanced single-pony stealth vehicle,” Midnight said smugly.

“Not again,” I whined.

The glide vehicle was shockingly quiet for something going as fast as it was. Wind ripped past me, the air as thick as jelly at this speed, a wall in front of me that shattered. At this speed that part was almost silent, the sound having no chance at all to catch up to me on the ballistic trajectory I was in.

“I hate this!” I whined.

“Don’t complain,” Cube said in my ear. “You’ll be fine.”

“Am I on target?” I asked.

“Sure, probably,” Cube replied. “We can’t track you. That’s the whole point of a stealth system, Chamomile.”

“If we can’t track you, neither can they,” Quattro assured me. “That’s good! You’re good. We’re all good here.” I heard whispering over the radio. “Yeah, confirmed things are good. The Juniper is clearing out of the area.”

“Using it as a spotter to launch from beyond visual range from the Black was a good move,” Cube said. “It can outrun anything Cozy Glow sends after it.”

I’d been fired like a cannon shot from the Exodus Black, launched from an electromagnetic catapult in a shell made of composite materials that were supposed to be radar-invisible. I’d used it before to escape the Exodus Black, and the ride had been just as bad that time, too. I had no control over the hypersonic glide vehicle. There were handles, but they didn’t connect to anything. They were just to give me something to hold on to while I waited for gravity and physics to put me where I was going.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” I mumbled.

“You’re the only one who can do this,” Quattro said. “I mean, probably. You’re really good at coming back from things alive! No one onboard the Exodus Red should recognize you. Cube and I would get spotted right away, but with your mane and coat dyed, you’ll be totally anonymous.”

“Did we have to go with red and black?” Cube asked.

“What’s wrong with red and black?” Midnight asked, cutting into the conversation. “It looks great on bat ponies. You look great, Chamomile!”

“You have a bias,” Cube retorted.

“I do have a bias for cute ponies like her,” Midnight agreed. “Try not to seduce anypony. It’s difficult for us. Cube wouldn’t understand because she’s too square.”

“Is that a pun based on my name?” Cube asked. “Because--”

I didn’t get to hear how that argument ended. The world instantly transitioned from trepidation and anxiety into kinetic confusion. The loudest sound in the world shattered my hearing and heat washed over me. A bone-crunching shock slammed through me. This was the real reason they’d sent me alone -- the waverider wasn’t really designed for soft landings. It was barely designed to carry a pony. I was a payload and treated with the delicate touch of plastic explosive.

The shock only lasted a few seconds. I was going too quickly for it to last longer than that. I couldn’t see outside, not that it would have helped even if I could. I was too disoriented to tell which way was up. Smoke trickled past my nostrils.

I kicked the hatch. It was twisted and broken, the frame warped. I could see pretty well in the gloom, more than well enough to tell it wasn’t going to open normally. I kicked it again, and it refused to budge.

“Bucking thing--” I swore and gave it a third kick. The composite panel finally popped free, falling to the side. I pulled myself through the hatch and looked around. I saw trees. For a few moments of mildly-concussed confusion, I feared I’d gone so far off target I wasn’t even in the right country. Things came into focus one at a time.

The trees were carefully tended, like oversized bonsai made by somepony who didn’t quite understand the point of the art form. They were growing in neat rows in raised, gold-edged garden plots, the gilded flower beds built in rounded shapes surrounding paths through slightly blue-tinted grass. The wind whistled around me. I looked back and saw a glass roof, a giant greenhouse surrounding a park the size of a city block. I’d punched a hole through it, and the air pressure was still equalizing.

“I think I made it,” I said. Nopony answered. I tapped the radio piece in my ear, but all I got was static. I was going to have to remember the next steps myself. I brushed myself off. No armor. No weapons. They were too distinctive. All I had were a few things that formed the barest possible bones of a prospective plan and the hope that I could put together something better on the fly.

I reached back into the pod and felt around. The small armored case in the back of the pod pulled free of its protective padding. Nothing in it was particularly fragile, but we knew the landing would be rough and having a bulletproof box was maybe not a bad idea if things went really sideways. I put it down next to me. There was one more thing I had to do.

I pressed the big red button set carefully under a cover where I couldn’t smash it on accident. Beeping started and I ran away, clutching the luggage tight. The pod exploded into flames behind me. That had been Quattro’s idea. The less evidence we left of what happened, the longer it would take ponies to figure out what happened. The demolition charges would burn hot enough to completely consume the composite material of the pod and leave nothing behind except ashes. It would still raise a lot of questions about what happened, but ‘there’s an intruder onboard’ might not be the first thing they thought.

I walked away very quickly but calmly. A pony running draws a lot of attention, but one who’s doing the telltale power walk of ‘I have places to be’ was a mare who ponies would avoid bothering, especially after I’d stepped behind a bush and pulled on a uniform from the Juniper’s stores. Ponies with firefighting gear ran past me, ignoring me and not even bothering to ask questions.

The breeze from the depressurization slowed and stopped. I risked a glance back. The hole I’d made in the glass roof was healing over like it was living tissue. That was worrying. Was I literally inside my mom’s body, in a creepy way? I didn’t want to think about the floor opening up and eating me, but now it was all I could think about. It seemed solid enough, even if the path was made of gold-flecked marble tiles that were almost shaped like natural stone but repeated every few paces.

I forced myself to stay cool and walk casually but professionally. Ponies onboard the ship were used to all this. I couldn’t act like a tourist. I was unarmed and unarmored for a reason. I wasn’t here to get into a fight unless I absolutely had to. I followed the path, just wanting to get distance, and quickly found the edge of the arboretum.

The inner wall of the park had vending machines and tables for ponies to sit at. It was almost like a small cafe. I looked into them, curious despite myself at the temptation of a snack. The Exodus Black was, in addition to being creepy as Tartarus, also not a ship with a gourmet menu. At least not gourmet for ponies who didn’t order drinks by blood type.

And yes, I had gotten curious enough about my new body to try one sip of blood. As a test. Just to see what it was like. It had gone poorly. Blood actually tasted super gross! That is a tip for anypony who’s curious - don’t drink blood unless you’re absolutely sure you’re actually a vampire because you’ll regret it and then you’ll throw up blood which is even worse than drinking it in the first place.

These vending machines had much more tempting offerings. There were snack cakes, for one thing. I tapped the buttons, and the machine asked for bits. I whined and looked around. Would anypony notice if I did a little breaking and entering?

Unfortunately for my stomach, I wasn’t alone. A pony was sitting and enjoying a small coffee in a paper cup, and didn’t look up from the papers they were reading at my approach. I really was effectively invisible in that uniform. Something else caught my eye when I was looking around. Not the pony, but something on the wall. A screen with an outline of the ship.

“A map?” I mumbled, trotting over to look. I squinted at it. There was a tiny star among the tangle of rooms and corridors with a label saying ‘you are here’. It wasn’t as helpful as a pony might hope. The wireframe rotated slowly on the screen and only made it more confusing, like I was looking at a spider’s web.

“If you’re looking for something in particular, ask the computer for directions,” the pony at the cafe table said, as if she could sense my confusion.

“Right, thanks,” I said. I stood there for a few seconds in silence. I cleared my throat. “Uh. Computer? Computer? Hello?”

The screen did not acknowledge my attempts to communicate. It was significantly less helpful than Kulaas. I was starting to wish I’d asked for more help from the super-maneframe, or at least brought DRACO along to negotiate with the local electronics on my behalf, but carrying weapons around would have attracted too much attention, especially huge anti-tank rifles.

She sighed. “I’ll show you how,” the mare said with resignation. She pushed her chair away from the cafe table and trotted over. She was a small pale unicorn, a little younger than I was, with freckles in every color of the rainbow. Something about her was familiar but I was having problems placing it.

“Sorry,” I said. She frowned and squinted at me, then floated over a set of glasses and squinted harder. My ears folded back, and I took a step back under the pressure of that gaze. “Er…”

“...Nah,” she decided, after a moment, lowering the glasses down her nose and turning to the panel on the wall. She tapped the edge with her hoof. “Look, all you have to do is touch it and tell it where you’re going. It’ll give you big, obvious arrows and the internal sensors will track you and continue giving directions on every screen you walk past.”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure where I’m going,” I admitted. “Can it tell me where specific ponies are?”

“I’m working on that,” the mare sighed. “If they signed in with the system, maybe, but getting ponies to change how they do things is hard! And half of them blame me for getting lost! Is it my fault that half the ship got wrecked? No! I put it back together and yes, it was a rush job and corridors got rerouted and things are in different places, but it’s all functional!”

I blinked. “You put the ship back together?” I asked, getting more confused by the moment.

“Yes!” the mare snapped. She took a deep breath and calmed herself down before she said something less kind. She offered a hoof to shake. “Destiny Bray. You can blame me for getting lost. Tell your commanding officer, they’ll let you off the hook for being late to whatever appointment you’re going to and they’ll send me an email.”

“Destiny?!” I gasped. I grabbed her hoof. “Oh my gosh!”

“Okay this is a strange reaction,” she said. “Do I know you from somewhere? You look sort of familiar, but…”

“It’s me! Chamomile!”

“Cham-- but you’re! You’ve got--” she gestured at my wings. “And the face--” she motioned to my fangs. “And colors!”

“I’m in disguise,” I said proudly.

“You have bat wings as part of a disguise?” Destiny asked.

“I got eaten by a vampire dragon and spat back out. Also I used mane dye.”

“That doesn’t explain anything at all but it sure does sound like the kind of thing that might happen to Chamomile,” Destiny admitted. “Prove it’s you!”

“Uh…” I froze up. I didn’t know how to do that. So I decided to ask a smarter pony for advice. “How do I do that?”

“Tell me something only the real Chamomile would know.”

“You’ve got a massive hero complex about Star Swirl even though he’s kind of a jerk actually,” I said immediately.

“That’s-- okay, that’s sort of true.”

“And that time we were in the Alpha game and you had a body, which I’m belatedly realizing looked like this, we went to this one tavern and you got totally drunk on virtual beer and got a room with two cute stallions and--”

“I believe you!” Destiny squeaked, shoving her hoof into my lips and stopping me. “It really is you!”

“And it really is you!” I replied. “You look… well, a lot better than I expected. Actually, I have a lot of questions and I don’t know where to start with them. I thought I was here to rescue a ghost and you’re sort of a whole entire pony.”

“You remember how my brother managed to build a whole body out of SIVA?” Destiny asked. I nodded. “I did the same thing.” She smirked and spun around on a heel. “What do you think? Looking good, right?”

“Looking great,” I agreed. “But, uh… this makes things more complicated.”

“Complicated describes everything in your life,” Destiny said. “Having legs again has been amazing! I did it while I was fixing the ship after that huge orbital strike.”

“I came here to rescue you but my only plan was sort of for a smaller, uh, package.” I opened the armored case I’d brought. It contained a gas cylinder and a square of folded polymer.

“A weather balloon?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it was a good extraction plan, right? Tie you to a weather balloon with a radio beacon, throw you outside, and somepony picks you up a little later.”

“At that point, couldn’t you just fly me out yourself?”

“I made the plan under the assumption that I was going to be blowing things up and raising a lot of alarms as part of breaking you out,” I admitted. “I thought it would be good to have a plan where I could stay behind as a distraction.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Destiny said. “Also it’s really good to see you alive. The last time I saw you, Tetra stabbed you in the chest and everypony said you were dead.” She hugged me. “I was pretty sure you weren’t, but only pretty sure. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“And I was sure you were going to be locked up in the engineering section in a big armored bubble,” I said. “I was scared you were going to be tortured and forced to work with Cozy Glow and getting constant electric shocks or whatever they do to torture ponies around here.”

“I’m an engineer, Chamomile. All they had to do was ask me for help so tens of thousands of ponies didn’t die in a giant airship crash.”

“...At least some of which are innocent,” I mumbled.

“Several thousand of which are foals in stasis until things are stable,” Destiny said gently. “There are whole families here.”

“Right,” I sighed. “Is it safe to talk here?”

She looked around and shrugged. “We can walk and talk. I assume you have news you need to tell me? I don’t get much news except complaints about the repair work I did. Ponies are not happy about all the rooms looking the same, but I had to work quickly and copy-pasting the existing assets was the easiest thing.”

I nodded. Destiny motioned for me to follow her and gathered up her papers and coffee, leading me into a corridor.

“Before you say anything, you should know I can’t really leave,” Destiny said. “I’m incredibly glad to see you, but there’s something about the Exodus Red you don’t know.”

“They’ve got my Mom in the basement.”

“...I was setting that up for a dramatic reveal.”

“Cube said they were using you to keep her under control.”

“The details aren’t super important, but we merged her with the core of the Exodus Red and used it to override her security profile. Essentially we trapped her inside her own body without administrator access.”

“That must be where she got the idea to do the same thing to Lady of Dark Waters,” I mumbled. “It’s not a problem. We’ve been working on a plan to take care of everything in one swell foop.”

“Fell swoop,” Destiny corrected. “No offense, but I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Star Swirl likes my plan,” I said.

“Bull,” Destiny snorted.

“I swear,” I said, putting a hoof over my heart. “He’s even been helping me with the big ritual spell we need to pull it off.”

“You’d need something the size of a megaspell just to put a dent in this place,” Destiny joked. I nodded. “Oh. Oh.”

“That’s one reason I came to get you. We need somepony who knows how megaspells work and I know you can build them. Star Swirl needs your help, if you’re up for the challenge.”

“Star Swirl needs my help,” Destiny mumbled, thinking.

We walked past decorative sculptures. Crystal and metal glinted in the light. I barely noticed it until we passed a second copy.

It was a small twisted crystal shape, like two fangs spiraling around each other, made out of silicon and quarts and infused with an almost chaotic tangle of copper and silver. I stopped and stared at it.

“What?” Destiny asked. She glanced past me. “Oh. Yes, I know it’s not high art. It’s a replication error. Like I said, I was copy-pasting whole rooms and corridors to repair all the damage. I didn’t have time for detailed blueprints, so that included the fixtures and furniture. We’ve got a few hundred identical uncomfortable chairs and just as much bad office art like that desk toy.”

“That’s no desk toy,” I said slowly. “Are you sure it existed before you started making them with SIVA?”

“It’s a chunk of crystal, Chamomile. It’s not exactly a weapon.”

“Have ponies been having problems sleeping?” I asked. I saw something cross Destiny’s face. “Maybe sleepwalking? Bad dreams? Waking up in the wrong place?”

She nodded slowly. “How did you know?”

“Because I’ve seen that exact tech before. That’s a mind control device, and if you’re right, this ship is filled with thousands of them.”

Chapter 127: Rip & Tear

“Is it done yet?” I asked. The ritual cathedral was a carefully organized mess. Star Swirl had built an array out of candles and chalk circles that looked like astronomical charts sketched by a madpony trying to map the orbits of invisible dark stars in an imaginary sky. Destiny was using circuitry and wires to build an altar around the metal icosahedron she’d built on the Exodus Red.

On the border where the two methods met, the two wizards were arguing about how to join their creations into one cohesive whole. Destiny looked up at me with obvious annoyance.

“No, Chamomile, it’s not done yet,” she growled. “But maybe we’d be done by now if somepony would stop trying to use an alchemical array when they’ve been outdated for centuries!”

“I would stop if you had a suggestion on a replacement that didn’t involve the phrase ‘in theory’ or rely on guesswork,” Star Swirl retorted. He sounded dangerously calm. “I shouldn’t be surprised you think they’re outdated. You can’t draw a chalk circle to save your life, and it might if you ever get caught in a daemon summoning!”

“Is there anything I could help with?” I asked. “I could carry things! Or… I could bring you some drinks! It’s important to stay hydrated!”

Destiny sighed. “A bottle of water would be great, Chamomile. Go get one and pour it over this old fogey’s head!”

“I wanted an expert, not a diva,” Star Swirl grumbled. “I’d have better luck going back in time and teaching myself everything there is to know about megaspells!”

“That’s what we really need, temporal magic in the middle of a giant spell array,” Destiny snorted. “You’d have even odds of turning yourself into a foal or a pile of dust!”

Magic crackled around their horns, and I was absolutely sure I was about to have to jump between them and take a giant magic bolt to the face to keep them from killing each other -- but then the red alert siren sounded, to the relief of everyone involved.

Wait, actually, it wasn’t a good sound at all! It was a bad sound!

“That’s not good,” I said, repeating my thoughts in case I hadn’t said them out loud like I did with a lot of my inner monologue. I carefully avoided candles and chalk lines and danced over to an intercom. “This is Chamomile. What’s happening?”

“Oh hey, Chamomile,” Quattro replied. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

I frowned. I couldn’t tell if she was lying. I was pretty sure she had to be lying, though, because it was Quattro and I only had a limited amount of brain damage. “Are you sure? Because that sounds like a big alarm.”

“Let me rephrase that. It’s nothing you can do anything about. The Exodus Red just peeked over the horizon and we’re staring at each other while we get into weapons range. Your friend Midnight is talking to them. How’s that spell going?”

“Uh…” I looked back at Star Swirl and Destiny. “Tell Midnight to keep them busy.”

“That could be an issue. Did you know she’s not very diplomatic?”

The deck rocked under me. Just a tiny bit. More alarms blared.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Um.” Quattro paused significantly. “I’m being told it’s plasma. Can you ask Destiny if there are any big guns on this ship? It might be really important soon.”

“We don’t need guns, we’ll have this megaspell working soon!” Destiny shouted over at me. The lights flickered around us. Destiny swore. “Assuming we don’t get blown out of the sky!”

“I’ll be on the bridge in a minute,” I said. “Or I could do damage control! Do we need damage control?”

“This isn’t a problem you can punch, Chamomile,” Quattro said. “Wait, belay that. I’m being told there’s a problem you can punch. We’ve got a boarding party incoming.”

“Right! Okay!” I tried not to tap my hooves on the deck in excitement. It wasn’t blood thirst, I just needed to do something to help. Also maybe a little literal blood thirst since I was probably a little vampireish. “I’ll go to the tram!”

I ran out of the cathedral and the complicated math and arguments inside. The tram slid into the station just as I arrived, obviously sent just for me to take me to the party. I skidded on my hooves inside the private train and impatiently waited for the door to close.

The pneumatic door hissed shut and a recorded voice spoke up on the ancient, crackling speakers. “Next stop: Shuttlebay C. Next stop: Shuttlebay C.”

I mentally prepared myself. I had to be ready for a fight.

Just as I was getting myself prepared to take the lives of a squad of semi-innocent ponies, the tram lurched.

“What was that?” I asked.

A new alarm started, and I felt the tram leave the tracks. Everything descended into chaos very quickly. I couldn’t see out, but I felt the speeding train crash into something, turn halfway over, fill with sparks, and I was hanging on to things and screaming. There was a sudden stop that flung me into the front of the tram hard enough to go through the thin wall, and I fell into an open space, rolling to a stop with fire everywhere around me. The armor I was wearing saved me from the worst of the road rash but I still felt like I’d had my oil changed by the least delicate formula one team in the Enclave.

“Where am I?” I groaned, getting back on my hooves. It had to be a cargo bay of some kind, but it was more accurately described as a disaster zone right now. Burning metal and broken walls stretched across the ceiling, and I could see into several other decks, debris falling down from the ragged, glowing edge.

More alarms whooped around me. I squinted through the flames and smoke. Something screeched above me. I looked up.

The broken tram was right at the edge of the track. It slid forward. I swore and ran for it. The car came down , crashing into the deck with an apocalyptic sound. Something in the floor ruptured, and flames shot out in a geyser of doom like a dragon’s breath.

“This isn’t what I wanted!” I told the universe, running for the first door I saw and slamming my hoof into the controls. “Come on, come on,” I mumbled. The cargo door squealed, starting to slide open from the bottom up. It made it a hoof-width above the deck and came to a halt. I cursed fate again and squatted down, trying to lift it up.

I managed to get the heavy door open a tiny bit more and something inside the mechanism snapped, slamming the door shut, the sudden release of weight making me lose my grip.

“Oh come on!” I shouted. This was when I remembered I had claws that could cut through metal. I was not a very smart pony, and things were on fire around me, so some panic and lack of awareness was forgivable. I flicked the claws open and attacked the hatch, carving an opening through it.

Sparks exploded from it, the edge molten when I kicked the rough circle out of the metal and stepped through to the other side. The corridor here seemed normal, but I had no idea where ‘here’ was, aside from the fact that it was somewhere near the tram line and what was probably plasma cannon damage.

“Intercom…” I muttered to myself, walking down the hallway and looking at the walls. I finally spotted one at the next junction. I ran to it and hit the button. “Hello? Quattro? Is anypony there?”

“Chamomile, is that you?” Quattro asked.

“Yeah, there was an accident with the tram. I need directions on where to go from here.”

“It looks like you’re in one of the sealed parts of the ship.”

“Sealed parts?”

“Midnight said they’ve been running with a skeleton crew and-- wait, no. I totally misunderstood what she said. She meant--”

I heard something rattle in the shadows behind me. “Thanks, I think I understand.”

I turned around and saw animated bones in the tattered remains of a flight suit. Bright stars of light blinked in empty eye sockets. It hissed. I don’t know how. It didn’t have a tongue. It didn’t even have lungs!

“Hey,” I said. “I know you’re the walking dead, but maybe we can be cool about this?”

“That was not cool,” I said between panting breaths, my back to the sealed bulkhead door. I had no idea how many skeletons had attacked me. I started running when they started reassembling themselves.

“Chamomile!” a voice said in my ear. I yelped and swiped at the air, lightning claws popping out of my leg and slashing through the empty space.

A mote of light hung there. I stared at it for a moment, then squinted and focused on it.

“Hello?” I tried. “...are you a magic breezie?”

“What? No! Chamomile, it’s Destiny.”

Come to think of it the floating spark was the same color as her magical aura.

“Oh,” I said. “How are you doing this?”

“It’s a sending spell. Like a radio only it’s giving me a headache trying to keep it going for more than one sentence. I need you to get me a blank talisman.”

“Uh, okay, I can try that,” I said. I got up. “What kind?”

“The biggest you can find.”

“‘Big’ isn’t a type of gemstone.”

“I’ll make anything work as long as you get here fast!”

The spell fizzled out, the spark disappearing. I took a deep breath. A talisman. I knew about them a little. I’d spent a few years in a school in a Stable that was really focused around teaching young unicorns magical vocational trades.

I trotted down the hallway to the next junction and hit the intercom button.

“Chamomile to the bridge,” I said. The speaker crackled to life, and I heard distant yelling and alarm bells before I heard a voice.

“Chamomile?” Quattro asked. “Hey! Midnight says you don’t need to worry about the boarding party.”

“Because of the skeletons?”

“How did you guess?”

“I’m lucky like that. I need directions. I’m lost and Destiny asked me to bring her a talisman.”

“Hold on.” Quattro paused.

I waited, my hoof tapping. Was I hearing scraping from somewhere? I looked around at the shadows. I didn’t see movement, but I could have sworn there was a rattling sound somewhere behind me.

“Herr Doktor pulled up your location. There should be a cargo bay full of supplies near you.”

The directions hadn’t been much better than ‘head west and look for signs.’ Quattro had been too distracted by something more important to walk me through every step. The deck kept vibrating in the distant, worrying way an earthquake could be a tiny tremor here but collapse entire cities elsewhere, and every time I felt it in my hooves I worried about what that meant.

Old pneumatics squealed, mechanical force overcoming centuries of being sealed shut with oil having long turned to sludge and dust. The noise was loud enough to wake the dead. I shoved my way in, grunting and squeezing through the half-open hatch.

I looked inside, and confused ponies looked back at me.

“Uh,” I said. They were filthy, ragged, and naked aside from jewelry that seemed to be made from wire and the shinest components a pony could pry out of a circuit board. Body paint swirled across their faces and chests in abstract swirls of red, gold, and blue.

The bravest of them approached me. She carried a spear made from a long metal pipe topped with a chevron-shaped piece of deck plating hoof-ground to a fine edge. She poked my chest. The tip tinked against my armor.

“I come in peace,” I said. “You seem like a very nice feral tribe. Do you have any-- oh!”

Right in the middle of the room was exactly what I needed. They’d built a sculpture that looked something like the Princesses Luna and Celestia merged into one being, complete with two heads, four wings, and the most intimidating expression of divine anger the artist could manage. A huge talisman the size of my hoof had been added as the center of the eclipsed sun it had as a cutie mark.

The tribe looked at the statue, then at me. I pushed the spear aside.

“Would it be okay for me to borrow that talisman?” I asked. “It’s for a good cause. I don’t know how much you ponies are aware of what goes on outside of here. There’s some really crazy stuff going on and… have you been living here for two hundred years?”

“Demon!” the lead mare shouted. She stabbed me.

I ran faster, the talisman held tight against my side by a wing. A spear narrowly missed my head, thrown by the entire tribe of ponies that I’d offended.

“It’s for a good cause!” I shouted back at them. They didn’t seem to appreciate how much more I needed the big, magically pure chunk of sapphire than they did. Actually, I wasn’t entirely sure how much more I needed it.

It was still for a good cause.

I ran out into the next intersection and got blasted in the face by lasers. I didn’t even get warning! Just lasers, right in my face. The talisman went flying for entirely related reasons and I fell on my stupid face.

“Hostiles at six!” a panicked pony shouted. “Down!”

“You shot me!” I yelped. “Why did you do that?!”

“Not down,” somepony corrected. “It’s still talking.”

Another burst of bean fire scattered across the hallway. I rolled to the side, taking cover behind one of the elaborate support arches. My face felt like it was on fire. I gingerly touched it and hissed. That was a bad burn.

“We should take her captive and make her head us to the bridge,” one of the armed ponies suggested. I leaned around the corner and looked at them.

“Are you from the Exodus Red?” I yelled over to them.

“If you surrender, we can promise you’ll be shown mercy,” the pony with the biggest hat assured me. “Our great leader, Cozy Glow, is the rightful ruler of all Equestria and-- oh buck!”

The floor started vibrating harder and faster. It felt like a train was coming down the hallway. Behind the dozen ponies in the boarding party, the wall tore open. Dark magic and ivory rolled out into the light, tightly packed bones holding themselves in a single mass, glaring at us with baleful eyes.

“They followed me through the walls?” I groaned. I ran across the corridor while the soldiers were distracted and grabbed the talisman where I’d dropped it. The shapeless dead thing started rolling towards me like a juggernaut, picking up speed.

I yelped and ran the other way. The soldiers shot at the skeleton, blackening bone and leaving scorch marks on the deck. The smartest parts of their fireteam ran after me.

The feral tribe of ponies ran into us at the intersection. They held up spears and crude bows made from spring steel and twisted mane hair. They looked past us at the avalanche of death and proved that they were the wisest of us all, running without even needing to think about it.

“I’m sorry for however much of this is my fault!” I yelled over all the screaming.

“You’re one of the bravest ponies I ever met,” I assured the small stallion. He’d been one of the members of the boarding party, and he’d saved my life with an act of heroism that I would never be able to forget.

I squeezed his hoof. He squeezed back, his grip weak. Blood pooled around his other hoof. He coughed, blood bubbling from his lips.

“Tell my wife… I…”

He went limp before he finished. I closed his unseeing eyes.

“What was his name?” asked the feral tribespony standing next to me.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I never asked and it didn’t come up.”

I stood up and brushed myself off. I looked around.

“Hey, does that elevator still work?” I asked, walking up to it and pressing the call button. The tribespony looked at the crumpled form of the soldier with obvious unease. I was pleased to note that the button lit up and a bell chimed when I pressed it.

“How are you going to find his wife?” she asked.

“Huh?” I blinked.

“He made a last request. To--”

“Oh. Nah, I’m not doing that,” I said dismissively. “I’m really busy right now.”

I waited in front of the door. Where was that elevator? Things were really getting awkward.

“It seems wrong to just leave him like this after he sacrificed his life in such a brave and heroic way,” the tribespony said. Her accent was really bothering me. Not because it was unpleasant. It was actually very nice, I just couldn’t place it. Somewhere in Eastern Unicornia? But then other times she sounded practically like she was from Olde Trottingham, complete with extra vowels.

The elevator arrived. I stepped inside.

“You can have him,” I told her. “You girls are probably cannibals, right?”

“What?!”

“I’m just assuming! There’s a limited food supply and-- I’m just saying if you wanted to eat him, I won’t tell anypony.” I gave her a conspiratorial wink.

“We are not cannibals.”

“Sure,” I said. “Anyway, thanks again for the talisman!” I pressed the button for the highest floor. It lit up and dinged. Things were finally going my way.

I held up the sapphire. It had survived despite the amazing adventure that we’d been on. The trials and tribulations, the room full of whipped cream cans, the biggest skeleton I’d seen since the last giant skeleton I’d seen.

“That’s a holy relic of my tribe and we need it to protect--”

The elevator door slid shut between us.

“Okay, glad that’s over,” I sighed. It had gotten really weird towards the end. “They seemed like nice people. I’ll make sure to come back and apologize later.”

“I’m back!” I called out.

“What took you so long?!” Destiny shouted back. I took that as permission to enter and stepped past the threshold into the cathedral. Wires were strung halfway to the ceiling like an insane spider had built a copper web. I could feel magic thick in the air.

“What did you need the talisman for?” I asked, looking up at the tangle and trying to figure out what it was for.

“It’s to keep her bloody horrific machine from killing us all,” Star Swirl grumbled. He took the sapphire out of my hooves and looked at it, flipping it around in his magic. “Good enough. Diamond would be better.”

“Diamond wouldn’t be better, we don’t have a diamond engraver,” a second Star Swirl said, looking slightly more frazzled than the first. He snatched the sapphire away from the first. I blinked and rubbed my eyes.

“Oh no,” I said. “I think something’s gone wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, I just looped myself a few times to get the work done faster,” a third Star Swirl assured me. His hooves were covered in grease. “It’s the only way we’re going to get this done before we get shot out of the sky.”

“Hey, Chamomile,” Destiny said, waving to me absently. She squinted. “You got shot in the face.”

“A little,” I confirmed.

“I know Star Swirl has a healing potion,” Destiny said. “Hey, one of you--”

“I’m not giving it to her, she’ll just end up hurt again and I need it more,” one of them said instantly. A second one nodded in agreement. The third Star Swirl rolled his eyes and took it from the complainer’s pack.

“I remember being annoyed at myself for taking this,” the third Star Swirl said. “Don’t drink it yet. You’ll know when.”

“Oh, that’s ominous,” I mumbled. I took the healing potion gingerly. The bottle was more ornate than the standard kind.

“You think you’re so smart just because you know what happens in the next few minutes,” the Star Swirl that had been stolen from scoffed.

“No, you’re all idiots,” said a fourth Star Swirl. He wasn’t working at all. He looked much more relaxed than the others and was reclining in a chair. “It takes you until my loop to decide to go back an extra hour and get a shower and a drink.”

“Are you from a time loop where we’re lazy bastards?” Star Swirl demanded. I’d lost track of which was which.

The relaxing Star Swirl smirked. “I recall telling myself to work smarter, not harder.”

“Good advice,” Destiny said. “That’s why I’m here.” She was hard at work with a few small tools, making marks on the sapphire’s surface.

“Is there anything else I can do to help?” I asked. “I don’t want to be in the way. I know I’m big and clumsy.”

“You can bugger off--” the earliest Star Swirl groused.

“Don’t go anywhere,” the fourth, oldest Star Swirl said. “There’s about fifteen seconds before we need you.”

“Need her for what?” the technically youngest Star Swirl asked. The oldest one held up a hoof and waited, counting down. The deck started vibrating in a new and exciting way that didn’t feel like weapons fire. The air filled with a ringing tone. It was a sudden change in pressure, like being trapped in a flooding tunnel.

The air tore open. A huge claw ripped right out of nowhere and into somewhere, slicing through dangling wires and opening the way for the rest of it. It was almost like a pony, but with smooth, pink skin that glittered with metallic slime. Chitin covered parts of it, and its mane was a mass of tentacles hanging down around its face and neck.

It was beautiful, with unearthly grace and an aura of power and heat that--

Star Swirl shot it with a bolt of magic. The thing’s too-perfect face split open on hidden seams and peeled back around a screaming octopus-like beak.

“Daemons,” Star Swirl swore. “I should have known they’d show up. Bloody things love poking their heads through the fabric of reality when it’s thin enough. Bunch of scavengers is what they are!”

“Should I…” I hesitated.

“Yes, you need to kill the damned thing, and I don’t use that term ironically! Shove it back in that portal!”

I charged forward and shoulder-checked it while it was distracted by a bolt of hot spellfire from another copy of Star Swirl. The oldest one cleared his throat and motioned above me. I looked up and dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding a strike from a long scorpion-like tail with a spade-bladed tip.

The thing raised its clawed hoof. I knocked it aside with a crackling claw of my own, blistering its flesh and sending it back a step. It was still halfway out into the real world, and this close to it I could see where it had come from. A chaotic tangle of images, colors without names, shapes that couldn’t be seen in three dimensions alone.

“Don’t look directly into the Warp!” Star Swirl shouted.

“I looked!” I yelled back.

“Well stop looking at it!” he commanded. I shook my head and knocked another blow from the daemon aside, spinning around and kicking it in the chest. It had strangely soft, spongy flesh, like its whole body was made out of rubber.

“Chamomile, please get rid of the daemon, I’m trying to work!” Destiny shouted over at me. “You’re being too loud!”

“I’m sorry?” I apologized. I ducked under a scything claw that would have taken my head off.

“Don’t apologize, just fix it!” she ordered. I turned around and slashed, cutting through the thing and earling a gout of horrible yellow ichor spraying all over me. It screeched and vomited up something purple and gelatinous. I kicked it again and shoved it into the portal. One of the more frazzled Star Swirls cast a spell on the edges of the portal itself, the seam closing as if a giant zipper was pulled across it.

“Hate these things,” Star Swirl mumbled.

“I need a shower,” I whined. The ichor smelled like lavender oil and musk.

“Why do you think I went back and got one?” the oldest Star Swirl asked from where he was still reclining in his folding chair.

“Good idea,” the most frazzled Star Swirl agreed, vanishing in a flash of light and tachyons.

“Are there any other issues I should know about?” I asked. “More demons? Ghosts? I haven’t had to wrestle a robot yet today.”

“Yes,” Destiny said. “We might have encountered a small problem with the spell.”

I looked around the cathedral. “Small?”

“We’re trying to patch the issue!” Destiny yelled defensively. “It turns out somepony forgot to mention that the Banishment spell has a range of zero!”

“Range of zero?” I asked. “But I know it can grab a whole city, or one of these ships. The whole thing with the Exodus White is what gave me this idea to begin with!”

“That’s an area of effect, not a range,” one of the Star Swirls said. They were starting to vanish now, loops closing and finishing up their small tasks getting things ready. “What would be a metaphor you insane, violent ponies from the wasteland would understand…”

“I already understood you,” I said.

Nevertheless, he persisted. “It’s the difference between a land mine and a grenade. This spell is a land mine. The only way to trigger it is to step on it. The caster gets banished along with the banish-ee. The same thing happened when I used it on the Pony of Shadows. We’re trying to turn it into a grenade we can throw.”

“And?” I asked.

“It’s not working,” Destiny sighed. She put down her tools. She kicked a candle over in frustration and trotted over to me. She was about to hug me for support, then stopped herself, cast a cleaning spell on me that wiped the ichor away, and resumed the hug.

“It’s that bad?” I asked.

“I’ve never sympathized with you more,” Destiny said. She let go after a moment, looking slightly more composed. “Star Swirl, tell the bridge we’re going with Plan R.”

“Plan R sounds pretty far down the list.”

“It’s for ramming speed and it’s definitely not my first choice,” Destiny confirmed. Star Swirl stepped over to the intercom and started arguing with the ponies on the bridge. “We already discussed it with the others after we found the problem. I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to talk to you about it.”

“The spell is only going to work at point-blank range,” I said. “So…”

“So we’ll set it off right as we crash into them,” Destiny said. The deck lurched under my hooves. The engines were in high gear now. I could feel their urgency in my bones. Maybe the Black Dragon’s influence was putting me more in tune with the ship.

“I think it’s an excellent plan,” the relaxing Star Swirl said. He pulled a pocket watch from his robe and looked at it. He nodded to the version of himself on the intercom. That one vanished back into a time loop, and we were left with only one smug wizard.

“We’ll get banished along with them, but it’s still the best option,” Destiny said. “I’m just sorry so many ponies got caught up in my mistakes. Most of them didn’t deserve it. Presumably. I assume that statistically, some of them were decent ponies.”

The ship shuddered around us. More alarms went off.

“So, uh,” I looked around. “How long do we have before--”

There was a bone-shattering crunch of metal. Screams filled the air. Everything was happening all at once.

“The spell should have gone off!” Destiny yelled in alarm, shouting over the noise. She looked around. “Oh that stupid-- the daemon severed the wires for the detonator!”

I looked at the tangle of lines the thing had cut with its claws. Some of them were sparking intermittently. “Can we fix it?”

“Do you trust me?” Destiny asked.

“Of course I do.”

“And you’ve got that healing potion?” she continued, giving me a nervous smile. When I nodded she pointed to two wires. I grabbed onto them. A surge of electric power thundered through me, seizing every muscle in my body.

“This really hurts!” I yelped. “Is it working?!”

“The trigger mechanism isn’t firing!” Destiny said. “Hold on! I need to rig something up to set it off!”

“Right, time for Star Swirl the Bearded to save the day,” the oldest, refreshed Star Swirl said. He stood up and put his drink down, revealing that he’d been sitting next to a huge red button. “You ponies need an adult just to press a bloody button for you. Shameful.”

He casually depressed the button. The icosahedron at the center of everything erupted with green lightning. The candles in every spell array drawn on the floor flared, fire reaching to head-height, the wax melting almost instantly. A cascade of sparks danced around the wires above us. Talismans glowed.

It all happened in an instant, but it was the kind of instant that gets fixed in your mind and you see every part of it in slow motion. The megaspell went off. The sky went white above us. The surge of power through the wires hit a crescendo and threw me back, slamming my into the wall.

I groaned. That had hurt. I was pretty sure my heart wasn’t working properly.

Destiny pushed a bottle into my mouth, and I drank the healing potion.

“I told you it was smart to wait a bit before you took that,” Star Swirl said. He looked up through the skylight of the cathedral. I followed his gaze. There was something massive outside. Stone arches curving through space, roads at impossible angles that were also walls and ceilings. I recognized it instantly.

It was the cage at the center of Limbo. The place where space and time were most twisted.

“Welcome back,” Star Swirl said. “So, what’s the next part of your brilliant plan?”

Chapter 128: Running from Evil

“Did it work?” I asked. I looked up through the skylight at the misty, unearthly sky above us. You couldn’t get that kind of negative black-on-white sky anywhere in Equestria, but I had to be sure.

“We’re definitely in Limbo. I can feel the same magical oddities,” Destiny said. She cast a spell that swept over the cathedral and the burned-out remains of the megaspell. “Everything went off without a hitch!”

I nodded. “What I really need to know is if we got the Red.”

“Are you implying a spell I designed might fail?” Star Swirl scoffed. “Don’t be silly.”

Just as he said that, part of the expended megaspell exploded into purple and pink sparks, releasing screaming faces made of smoke.

“That’s probably my fault somehow,” I said before anypony else could accuse me. “Destiny, this ship has some kind of sensors, right? Can you get us an accurate picture of what’s going on outside?”

Destiny nodded and plugged a terminal on wheels into the wall, tapping on the bulky keyboard. “The best radar, lidar, and divination scanners that I could build, and which fit into a very large budget.”

The deck rattled and shook under us again with something that was either an aftershock of the big impact we’d felt or a foreshock of something worse. I wasn’t sure which yet and I knew Destiny was getting a bad feeling about it just like I was.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Destiny mumbled. She had the screen turned away from me, so I had to walk around her for the dramatic reveal.

The two Exodus ships had crashed into each other and the Black had done significantly worse in the exchange. It was embedded into the front of the Exodus Red and had shattered, parts of the flying wing breaking off entirely and starting to drift away.

“The good news is the Red is definitely here with us, the bad news is we’re on fire and the ship might as well be scuttled,” Destiny reported. “This damage is worse than the orbital strikes the Exodus Red took, and we don’t have SIVA to repair it. The main structure is broken and we’re bleeding volatiles. Fuel, coolant, air, everything. The automatic damage reports might as well just be screaming and every alarm going off at once.”

“Can we contact the bridge?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re dealing with just as much as we are,” Destiny said. She pointed. “We need to get here.”

“Why?”

“Because remember how I said we’re bleeding coolant? That’s important for the arcana reactor. If it goes critical…” She trailed off.

“I have to veto any plan that involves you idiots blowing something up this close to the Cage,” Star Swirl groaned. He winced when part of the floor actually erupted into flames. “Bloody thing! The residual magic here is trying to cook off.”

“What’s the worst-case scenario?” I asked.

“I've no bloody idea,” Star Swirl admitted. “The Cage is a lot older than I am. It’s older than Equestria. Somepony went to a lot of effort to make it, and the tiny bit that it leaks releases horrors beyond our imagining. I’m in no rush to get a look at where the nightmares come from.”

“Good point. So I’ll go stop the reactor from exploding,” I sighed. “It’s no problem.”

“Chamomile, the last time you tried to operate a reactor you caused a meltdown in Seaquestria,” Destiny reminded me.

“That wasn’t my fault! I was possessed at the time. There was sort of this weird memory-sharing thing from a SIVA hivemind.”

“Oh, so you’ve taken a graduate course in Engineering and high-energy reactor design since then?”

“...No.”

“Exactly. That’s why I’m going,” Destiny said. “Star Swirl, can you…?”

“Clean this up?” Star Swirl suggested. “That’s my life in a nutshell. Cleaning up monsters and messes that other ponies left behind. I’ll make sure this doesn’t find a way to go off again, and then I’m going to warn the Princess that somepony did something extraordinarily stupid.”

“It can’t be that stupid, it’s the same thing she did.”

“She’s a bloody child with the power of a thousand exploding stars. That’s a recipe for stupid if I know it.” Star Swirl adjusted his hat. “Get going. I’m leaving this ship as soon as I can and so should you. Being on a haunted ship parked next to the Cage is a damned bad idea.”

“Keep using DRACO to scan the area ahead of us,” Destiny noted.

“I know what I’m doing,” I said. “I’ve been in a bunch of dungeons.”

“You’ve been in dungeons with me pointing the right way to go,” she reminded me. “You’re very good at following arrows on a compass. Don’t think I don’t know you sometimes stop looking at where you’re going and just watch the minimap.”

I blushed. “I keep a watch for enemies.”

“You usually find out about them because somepony shoots you,” Destiny retorted, but she said it with the tone of a joke. “I’m not as tough as you, remember? I want to avoid that option.”

“He really spooked you when he mentioned the nightmares, huh?”

“If they invaded the ship, would it get double-haunted?” Destiny asked. “What would that even mean?”

“Careful, you’re starting to ask the same kind of questions I do.”

The air filled with a horrible screech. Both of us froze. I motioned to the side, and Destiny took cover behind one of the elaborate buttresses lining the corridor like we were standing inside the rib cage of a vast snake. I took a few steps forward before I relaxed.

“It’s the intercom,” I said. I stepped up to the wailing thing and pressed the button. “It’s… never mind, this is still weird, it’s bleeding.”

Destiny popped her head around the corner and looked. “It’s not literally blood, it’s probably spoiled lubricant-- never mind, that is blood. Where is it coming from?”

“Who knows,” I said. I pressed a few more buttons. “Bridge, can you hear me?”

“Chamomile, that panel is extremely cursed.”

“That might mean it’s the first one we found that’s still hooked up,” I pointed out. The speaker crackled, and the screams were replaced with somepony else’s voice.

“Chamomile?” It took me a moment to recognize Captain Glint. “We’ve got our hooves full. You need to evacuate. We’ve got everyone available getting the sleepers out of stasis.”

“I’m going to shut down the reactor with Destiny,” I said. “Is anypony else going that way?”

“We didn’t even know it was a problem,” Captain Glint said. “I’ll try to let ponies know. Herr Doktor should be down there, she might already be on top of this.”

“She’ll be happy for some extra hooves,” Destiny said firmly. “When ponies evacuate, have them get as far from the Cage as they can.”

“I’m guessing the Cage is that tangle of rock out there?”

“It’s a prison. There’s a safe haven elsewhere, but this is the worst place to be!”

“Understood. There won’t be further updates from here. You caught me on the way to the Juniper. I’ll try to coordinate from there.”

“See if the Exodus Red is willing to listen to reason,” I suggested. “They’re stuck here, they might be open to talking.”

“I’ll try not to keep my hopes too far up,” Captain Glint said. “Signing off. Good luck.”

The intercom went back to static and screaming.

“They’ll have to be smart, right?” I asked Destiny. “They’re normal ponies. Once they know where we are, they’ll work with us.”

“For once, I agree with you,” Destiny nodded. “These aren’t insane ponies who’ve been living on cloud apples and two-hundred-year-old ration bars, they’re ponies that could have been my neighbors. They’re not used to shooting each other for scraps.”

“How far are we from the engine block?” I asked.

“If spacetime cooperates and stays flat, we follow this firewall bulkhead around to one of the access doors…” Destiny looked at DRACO’s display, then motioned for me to follow her. “Basic safety means that dangerous areas like engineering are limited-access to stop the spread of fire. That’s why a lot of these corridors wrap around it instead of going directly there.”

“Oh, I assumed that was just because you built this place to be confusing and evil,” I admitted.

“The architecture is based on ancient structures with a long and interesting history. You come from a family of archaeologists, you should be able to appreciate it!”

“Destiny, you put skulls in the walls as decoration.”

“It might be a little over the top,” she conceded. She stopped at a marked door and spun the circular handle with her magic. Air rushed through, decompression sucking the door open and almost pulling her with it.

I grabbed her tail, and she yelped in pain when it was suddenly asked to support a significant part of her weight. I held on until the wind died down to a reasonable level, but it didn’t stop. Outside that door was empty space.

“You weren’t kidding about the ship taking heavy damage,” I mumbled.

Destiny composed herself as best she could. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment. “This is still the right way. Look.”

The ship had broken apart like a continent shattering under volcanic stress. The firewalls separating Engineering must have served as a shear line, because the section had largely broken off and was slowly drifting away from the rest of what was increasingly a wreck. Only a few wires and twisted metal spars still connected that part of the ship, and in front of us was a gap half as wide as a city block before the corridor continued.

“No wonder we’re bleeding coolant and volatiles. All the main lines are open to the air.” Destiny shook her head. “This is worse than I thought.”

“Can we still shut the reactor down?”

“I was hoping we could shut it down gently and bring it up again later once we’d done damage control.” She sighed.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said. I grabbed her before she could protest and flew across the gap. As we passed over the gap, gravity shifted, reversing in an instant that made my inner ear spin wildly. We hit the other side, bounced off what we had thought was the floor, and hit the ceiling.

“Wonderful, more good news,” Destiny groaned. She got up and looked at the rib-like buttresses, which had become chest-high walls across the corridor’s ‘floor’ with the gravity reversal. “This is going to slow us down. You’ll have to fly the whole rest of the way.”

“Climb on,” I offered, kneeling down. Destiny hopped up on my back with slightly less care than I would have liked, digging her hooves in for support. She wrapped her hooves around my neck and tried to settle herself.

“Be careful,” she warned. “There are probably more gravity shifts and I am starting to regret the amount of wrought iron and spikes that were involved in decorating.”

“Don’t worry. I’m actually an excellent flier. I’ve gotten hours of practice with these new wings!”

“Wow, I can’t believe you were right and we got here with no problems,” Destiny said, as she carefully climbed down off my back.

“Once in a while things go right,” I told her. We opened the bulkhead door. A wash of hot air hit us in the face. DRACO beeped a radiation alarm. “How well do you hold up to radiation?” I asked.

“That’s an excellent question,” Destiny admitted. “Is it bad?”

I showed her the readout. She scoffed.

“I’d be fine even if I was still biological,” she said. “That’s hours before it kills you. We’ll either be done or the reactor will have exploded before then.”

Destiny walked in, and we found the busiest part of the ship. Ponies had rigger up ropes and scaffolding and a few batpony crew members had taken the initiative to hang from the ceiling and trot around almost normally.

“There you are!” Herr Doktor shouted. “We could use an extra set of hooves!”

I spotted her in a radiation suit. She waved us over.

“This reactor design is really intriguing,” she said. “Enough thaumatic mass to power the ship almost indefinitely. I am most fascinated by the regenerative cycle.”

“Talk shop later,” I said. “How dangerous is it right now?”

“Ah, well,” Herr Doktor looked uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just because she was in a yellow rubber suit. “We need to realign the core and the hydraulics seem to be completely absent.”

She looked to the back of the room, where ponies were looking into a room with a single glowing pillar in the center hanging from the ceiling. Mist poured from its tip, and the light coming from within had the telltale color of being Extremely Dangerous. DRACO’s reading of the radioactivity in the room shot up just from from being pointed in its general direction, and they hadn’t even opened the door to the sealed area yet.

“I’ll do it,” I said. It was really bad, but I was sure I could survive.

“Don’t be crazy,” Herr Doktor scoffed. “The radiation would kill you. This is why they invented interns and grad students.”

“But--” I watched one of the mortal servants of the vampire cult step inside, the door slamming behind them. They were clearly in almost immediate agony from the heat, even if I couldn’t see their expression through the heavy radiation suit they were wearing. They reached up into the machinery and started adjusting things inside it, the light shifting and changing around them.

“Cultists are almost as good,” Doktor said quietly. “They take any opportunity to sacrifice themselves and call it preordained destiny.”

“Don’t try and blame me,” Destiny mumbled.

“More to the point, even if you’d survive, you’d be in no shape to help elsewhere,” Herr Doktor admitted. “You’d need hours in decontamination. A lot is going to happen in the next few hours.”

“She’s not wrong,” Destiny said. I shook my head and watched the poor idiot cultist in the reactor room slowly kill themselves fixing the ship. “I’ll help Herr Doktor get the reactor off-line. We’ve got another problem.”

“What else?” I asked.

“The cryopods! Remember what happened on the Exodus Blue after main power was lost? You’ll have backup power for a little while, but you need to get everypony on both ships awake and moving before they die in their sleep.”

I nodded. “Okay. But…”

“The pods are designed to be opened in an emergency by anypony who finds them. There’s a big red button. I thought making it simple enough would be foolproof but my friends still all died on my ship when there was nopony around to actually press the button.”

“I’ll make sure they get out,” I promised.

“Good. These ponies are all insane, but they’ll probably fit in just fine with the survivors from Flurry Heart’s ship. They won’t blink twice if they see a changeling. She might even be happy to have more subjects, and they’ll love having an alicorn step on them. Maybe we can convince them she’s--”

“Nightmare Moon!” somepony shouted. Everypony turned. We all turned to see a dark shape standing in the middle of the room. It wasn’t really her. It was something else, a shadow without anything casting it. A ghost of an alicorn, an echo made of magic and whatever made up that darkness between the stars.

It was razor-thin and barely on that edge between real and unreal, an optical illusion that refused to go away. A shadow in the corner of your eye that didn’t go away when you turned.

“Oh, that’s no good,” I mumbled. I watched the shape walk casually across the room. It moved like it was being cast by a broken film projector, speeding up and slowing down, some moments being skipped entirely. Ponies scrambled to stay out of the way.

I landed in front of it before it could get into the core.

“Hey there,” I said.

The air filled with whispers from all directions. I attempted to punch the shadow in the snout. It worked exactly as well as a pony would imagine punching a shadow would work. My hoof went through empty air. A second swipe with an added power field around my hoof did precisely nothing.

“Okay,” I said after a moment. “It’s a little spooky, but it can’t hurt us.”

Its horn blazed with un-light and it blasted me across the room. I slammed into pipes and busted them open, steam venting around me. I rolled out of the mess before it could cook me like meat in a can.

“Never mind, it can hurt us,” I groaned.

“Use the Dimension Pliers!” Destiny shouted.

“I vaguely remember something about it being dangerous to use in Limbo,” I reminded her, but I cycled through the weapons mounted on the barding’s sides until the familiar tuning-fork like shape appeared.

“Dangerous is good for a weapon!” Destiny yelled back. I couldn’t help but notice she was keeping her distance.

I pulled the trigger and hoped for the best. The Dimension Pliers were a space manipulation tool that required careful adjustment and micro-calibration to achieve a desired effect. I had no idea what was going to happen, and that’s even before taking the unique nature of Limbo into account.

The fabric of space tore open. I had no idea where it led, but looking directly at it made my eyes ache. The shadow alicorn was caught in it, and the darkness imploded. The whispers in the air vanished, leaving ringing silence. Ripples showed in the air where the rift had been, and space healed itself, though I swear a scar was left in place, a slight discontinuity like a long lens that only existed when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

“What was that?” I asked.

“You banished it,” Destiny said.

“To where? We’re already in Limbo! This is the place things get banished to!”

“Probably some kind of un-space or subspace or… well, there are at least even odds it banished it somewhere on the far side of Limbo. Like teleporting your problem down the street.”

“Good enough.” I said. I popped it free. “Herr Doktor, you take it. If the thing comes back, blast it again.”

The mad scientist took the insane weapon. “Miss Chamomile, I must thank you for the thoughtful gift. I will use it in good health.”

I nodded. “Destiny?”

She gave me the kind of hug that made me worried about the future. It felt like the kind that could become a goodbye.

“Be careful,” she said. “You always get in worse trouble when I’m not around.”

A few minutes later, blood was spraying at high pressure into my face and I wished I had worn the helmet, even if it didn’t come with conversation anymore.

I sputtered and gasped and tried to stop the flow at the source, putting my hooves over the cut and using what little magic I could to hold back the flow of dozens of gallons of high-pressure gore.

“I’ve almost got the valve!” Midnight shouted over to me. I frowned at her tone and looked over. She was feigning difficulty with the wheel, giving me a teasing smirk. We were in a maintenance shaft servicing a bank of cryopods, and the blood was part of the life-support system. It should have been horizontal, but gravity was twisted and turned it into a tight vertical space, with me at the bottom. I hated being the bottom in this relationship.

“Do you want to trade spots?” I asked. “If you’re having problems turning the bloody wheel--”

“Oh, is that what I was doing?” she asked. “Shoot, it goes the other way!” She giggled and twisted it. The flow through my hooves slowed and stopped. I was able to relax, even if I was ankle-deep in crimson.

“Come on, it was funny,” Midnight said. She hopped down from where she was standing and splashed into the puddle of blood. “Besides, now you look practically good enough to eat~”

She gave me a sultry look and pressed her chest against mine, looking deep into my eyes.

“Are you really trying to seduce me while I’m covered in this stuff?”

“It’s AB-positive, which is practically an aphrodisiac,” Midnight whispered.

“Knock it off, you two,” Emma shouted down at us from her perch at the door. Beyond it, gravity was more normal, so she seemed to be sideways compared to us. “We need to finish evacuating this section. We’re not here so you can make out.”

“You could join in,” Midnight suggested. “We might all be dead soon, we should have fun while we can.”

“I plan on surviving long enough to stop regretting being an immortal monster,” Emma retorted. “Chamomile, thank you for your help.”

I frowned. “Don’t thank me yet, I’m pretty sure I’m unleashing an undead plague.” We started climbing up out of the corridor towards the hatch Emma was at.

“You are, but they’ll behave,” Midnight said. “Trust me. I’ve run the numbers.”

“No you didn’t,” Emma corrected. She stepped back to let us through. The sudden shift in gravity was like stepping into a strong wind. It was a sudden force that took me by surprise until I was all the way through and things were steady again.

“I ballparked some guesses about how much hungry vampires can eat,” Midnight admitted. “But there were always enough cultists to be sustainable, and then if we add in some volunteers from the other ship and this city Chamomile mentioned, there’s plenty for everypony to eat.”

“That seems optimistic,” I said.

“If it gets bad enough, vampires can be put to sleep pretty easily, and without nearly as much fancy equipment as it takes for a regular pony,” Midnight shrugged.

“Is anypony there?” a voice came over the intercom, and for a moment I dismissed it as merely a phantom haunting the system. “We’re trying to get out of the ship but there’s a problem.”

“Who is this?” Emma asked.

“M-my name is Flowering Blue Raspberry Blossom,” the voice on the other side of the intercom said. “There are a lot of soldiers here and shouting. I’m scared.”

“She’s a kid,” Midnight said.

“I’ll go,” I said. “The ponies waking up here need familiar faces when they wake up and it’s too late to stop the cycle.”

“Follow the evacuation route,” Emma said. “If they ran into trouble, that’s the fastest way to find it.”

I nodded and turned to the door. Midnight grabbed my wing before I could get far, her fangs latching on and nearly breaking skin.

“Wait a sec,” she said. I stopped, and she got into my blind spot before I could react, kissing my neck. It was sweet until she started licking the still-fresh blood. “I wanted a quick snack before you left.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’ll take the rest of you when you get back,” she promised. “So you better be alive enough for fun.”

I figured I was in the right place when I found soldiers holding guns on a crowd of pale, thin ponies who were shaking from a combination of chronic anemia and recent awakening from cryosleep.

“The first pony who fires a shot is going to regret it,” I warned. I pushed through the crowd. They were even smaller than average, and I felt almost like a giant. The wall of soldiers in power armor held their position. I could tell they were radioing back for orders.

The wall of bodies parted. The light shifted. I swear on my wings that somepony started playing a leitmotif. Cozy Glow, resplendent in her scarlet and gold armor that was a mirror of the barding I was wearing, descended down from the heavens to parley with the mere mortals before her. Or at least I’m sure that’s the impression I’m sure I was supposed to have.

I glanced down at her hooves. Somepony had literally set out a red carpet for her to set down on.

“So we finally come to somepony with authority,” Cozy Glow said. “I have decided to be generous and extend an olive branch to you.”

“Really?” I asked. “Because it looks a lot more like you’re holding these ponies hostage while they’re trying to evacuate.”

Cozy Glow’s expression didn’t change. She reminded me of a volcano. Pressure was building up inside her, and at some point it was going to explode out in a violent eruption of rage. She absolutely hated everypony in the room, including her own troops.

“A disorganized mess will lead to problems later,” she said.

“Keeping ponies at gunpoint leads to problems now,” I retorted. “For example, I might decide to start killing your troops.”

“Yes, you are good at that, aren’t you, Chamomile?” Cozy Glow asked. “You’ve had some recent work done, but I can see I made a critical mistake making Tetra my fourth pillar of support. I mistook obsession for true dedication.”

“And now he’s dead.”

“Mm.” She smiled slightly. I didn’t like that smile. “I seem to have lost almost as many friends as you have. We’ll have to discuss it like adults later, using our words instead of trying to kill each other.”

“Smart,” I mumbled. “You want to face me where I’m weakest.”

“For now, I need to discuss how to reverse whatever it is you did.”

“You mean when we banished you to Limbo?” I asked. “We’re trapped here. There’s no way out. But, hey, good news. It’s not permanent!”

She scowled at me. “You’re testing my patience.”

“I hope not, because you’re going to need a lot of it. I think this spell lasts about a thousand years.”

Expressions flashed across her face. She didn’t call me a liar or refute the facts. I saw her working through the implications with cold logic. She’d already spent two hundred years sleeping through the worst era in Equestria’s history.

“A thousand years,” she repeated. “I see. I remember when I was the head of Celestia’s Belles we had access to information nopony else did about the Crystal Empire. Nightmare Moon. Discord. It always came down to a thousand years. Do you know why?”

It was a sudden change of topic I wasn’t entirely prepared for. “Not really? Is there going to be a written test on this later?”

“Ah, I thought you might be more of a scholar. Your father was, before his untimely death,” Cozy Glow said. “It was never literally ‘a thousand years’. That was a metaphor, the same way we might say it’s raining cats and dogs. Maybe in a few centuries, they’ll think housepets literally fell out of the sky.”

“What’s your point?” I asked. I felt a surge of anger. She wanted ponies to nod and smile and let her talk, not question her while she was speaking.

“My point is that a thousand years is only as long as we let it be. If you have a method that banished us here, we can reverse it and leave,” Cozy Glow gave me a smile that would have been a glowing, winning smile of benevolence if I couldn’t sense her emotions. She wanted to strangle me with her bare hooves. “I realize we’ve been at odds. It wouldn’t be wrong to say we’re enemies, but we don’t have to be.”

“You had Rain Shadow stab me in the heart!”

“I couldn’t stop him from trying to kill you. He wanted that more than anything else. He was a broken pony in more ways than one. It’s what this world does to ponies. They lose friends and family and parts of themselves along with it. You know, before the war and all this darkness and hate, you never even saw ponies with scars. It wasn’t that kind of world. Ponies didn’t live in a meat grinder tearing at them from all sides. That’s all I want, Chamomile. I want to take us all back to the real world. A place where we’re safe. A place with softer edges.”

“That sounds nice,” I admitted. “I’m not going to stand here and say the things you’re talking about are wrong. I do know the first thing you did was have a bunch of ponies killed, launch an orbital strike, and chain a monster up in your basement to make you more guns to shoot at us.”

“Nopony’s perfect,” Cozy Glow sighed. “The world needs a strong pony in charge. A pony with ideals.”

“You mean you should be in charge.”

“I mean you should be thankful I’m taking the time to speak to you,” she said. “I have enough power to bring what’s left of the world crashing down on you.”

Cozy Glow clapped her hooves. The deck rumbled. Behind her, the floor exploded apart, and a monster ascended from below, only half of it even fitting into the corridor. It was that thing that was built from spare Grandus parts with the Heaven’s Sword strapped to its back.

“The Queen is my personal Assault Armor,” Cozy Glow said. “I want to save all these ponies from a terrible fate. I might be willing to let them evacuate onto my ship, if they swear to serve me. It’s the best offer they’re going to get. Serving somepony who wants to save them, instead of somepony who got them banished.”

She extended a hoof to the shivering, scared ponies. They backed away from her.

“We serve the dark mistress of the night!” one of them squeaked. It sounded like the same voice I’d heard on the intercom. “We’ll never follow a pawn of Celestia!”

Cozy Glow’s expression twisted into a scowl.

“You’re rejecting me? I’m the only pony offering you a chance! I’m the rightful ruler of Equestria! I deserve this and you’re treating me like a failure?!” Cozy Glow’s eye twitched. “I’m not a failure! I’m the most important pony who ever lived! I’m the pony that’s going to bring everything back! I’m the pony that’s going to be loved and remembered forever!”

Somepony threw a loose bolt at her. It hit her chest. I saw the tiniest scuff on her barding. Cozy Glow erupted.

“You don’t deserve to live in the paradise I’m making,” she growled. The shadows behind her flickered. I could feel the psychic energy in the air shifting. “I’ll kill you all!”

Chapter 129: Cyberdemon

It’s worth taking a moment to talk about technology that interacts with magic. First, you’ve got stuff like beam rifles or, if you push it far enough, megaspells. They use talismans and circuitry to replicate spells at the push of a button or the pull of a trigger. Put some energy through a talisman, get a death beam. If you use the technology a little less directly you get water talismans for Stables, air scrubbers, preservative charms, and so on.

The main thing about that category of magitech is that it’s purpose-built like any other machine. Most of the things they do could be done, more or less, by mechanical means. A beam rifle and a shotgun firing solid shells will both do a pretty similar job, and preservatives and canning do almost as good a job as a charm to keep food from rotting.

The second category is something much rarer. The thaumoframe and thaumobooster. They both work along similar lines, from what Destiny has told me. She’s the expert with thaumoframe tech since she invented the little tiles, and has first-hoof experience with the thaumobooster after working on the Grandus.

Exodus Armor uses thaumoframe tiles instead of hydraulics for muscle. They change a pony’s natural magic into a variable field effect. It makes the wearer stronger because it’s assisting their movement with telekinesis. It stops bullets with skintight force fields. Unlike regular power armor, since it was all energy fields, Destiny could dial things up or down as needed. It would eat through the power core really quickly if everything was left at maximum, but it was sure effective.

The Grandus’ thaumobooster was much bigger. The thaumoframe was all integrated circuits and field manipulation, but that thing’s thaumobooster was all about power. It was almost like a continuous megaspell array boosting whatever the pony sitting at the focus was doing with their magic. Four used it for simple telekinesis and it let her fly something weighing as much as a small battleship around as fast as thought, crush buildings with her mind, and completely negate anything that even tried to damage the assault armor. She wasn’t terribly creative with it but she didn’t have to be. It was a magical sledgehammer and we were all ants.

I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that Cozy Glow was more flexible with it.

The top of the Exodus Black’s hull bulged outward and exploded, a brilliant blue beam slicing through the heavy, weathered plates of armor like a knife through butter. Molten steel splashed into the air, forcing me to dodge the volcanic spray.

“Get back here!” Cozy Glow shouted. She smashed through the hole she’d opened and into the open air, the red-hot metal parting around the huge form of the Queen. It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen that pretended to be armor, even more massive than the Grandus. If the Grandus had been reminiscent of a steam engine rebuilt into a giant pony, the Queen was streamlined and modern. It was an art-deco horror, rounded and smooth and painted the same crimson as Cozy Glow’s set of Exodus armor. The rear legs had been replaced by huge banks of thrusters, and boxy weapon racks were mounted on its back, a huge shield generator and battleship-grade cannon on the sides like my own battle saddle mounts.

“You’re not giving me much incentive to do that!” I shouted back. A missile streaked past me, and I thought she’d missed by a mile until it peeled open and released a swarm of mini-missiles. They shot out in every direction, smashing into floating debris and twisting towards me.

I focused my will and braced myself. It was too late to dodge. A flickering magic shield appeared in front of me, the rockets impacting against it and exploding into smoke and shrapnel. Stray shards broke through, peppering me with metal splinters.

“I’ll kill you!” Cozy Glow snarled. “You ruined everything! Everything!”

I risked a glance back at her. A dark aura surrounded the Queen. It was multicolored, a rainbow in shades of sickly gold, twisting to red and green around the edges. A black knot at the center stood on the Queen’s massive head like something riding the assault armor.

“You seem pretty upset! Maybe when you calm down?” I flew deeper towards the Cage at the center of Limbo, ducking around a long stone bridge floating in the air. The Queen’s chest erupted with light, a scattering spray of beams smashing the rock into powder.

“Chamomile, are you still alive?” Destiny asked, her voice in my ear. It reminded me of the old days.

“Cozy Glow is trying really hard to change things, but for the moment, I’m not dead!” I dodged a flurry of unguided rockets and dipped into a chunk of floating debris the size of a city block. A handle on the wall called to me, and I grabbed it, twisting around and stopping in place. Another shot from that huge cannon on the Queen’s side blasted through where I would have been if I’d kept going, burning the broken metal into vapor.

“Keep leading her away from the evacuation effort,” Destiny said. “You did great getting her out of there before she could hurt the refugees.”

“What about her soldiers?” I asked.

“They’re mostly reasonable ponies. There’ve been a few incidents but we’re getting out of here before it goes bad.”

I nodded and looked around. The air was rumbling with magical energy. It felt like a hurricane, and the enhanced pegasus magic leaking out of the Queen was stirring up the still air of Limbo towards the same kind of typhoon as there had been around Thunderbolt Shoals.

“She’s got a real temper,” I said. “Any idea how to actually stop her?”

“That Assault Armor is using both Thaumoframe construction and a Thaumobooster,” Destiny replied. “Remember how they resonated with Four?”

“You mean the deep and meaningful connection I shared with a pony I loved and tragically lost?”

“Right, that. Figure out how to murder her with it.”

Sometimes I was starkly reminded of what the world was like when Destiny was growing up. I didn’t have time to start saying sarcastic things back to her. The debris around me flared with light, an aura washing over it like the tide rolling in. The handle I was clutching with my hooves shocked me, the feeling like electric ice. Metal ripped apart as if a dragon’s talons were tearing through it, the debris opening up like a Hearth’s Warming present being unwrapped.

“There you are!” Cozy Glow growled, her voice echoing. The Queen’s aura burst outwards and shoved the floating debris away, seizing me. My whole body was being squeezed in a vice.

“Hey,” I said. “Okay, this time you run and I’ll chase you.” I gave her a cheeky smile. The pressure on my ribs doubled, threatening to crush me no matter how much I wanted to think my bones were unbreakable.

“I know what this is,” Cozy Glow said. The eyes of the Assault Armor glowed brightly with that terrible golden light, and I could swear it was smiling at me, the vents turning into a mad grin. “You’re hoping if I’m angry enough I’ll finish you quickly instead of dragging things out!”

“Actually I hoped if I was funny enough you’d take mercy on me,” I said. I tried to wiggle out of the magical grip.

The golden aura in the air cracked against the stone and wrought iron webbing of the massive Cage around us. I hadn’t really been thinking of it as anything except a navigational hazard until I saw the cracks in the structure start to bleed, shadows dripping out like black rain.

“We shouldn’t be fighting here,” I realized. A chill ran down my spine.

“It’s a little late to complain now!” Cozy Glow cackled and tossed me into a floating block of concrete, smashing me into it and through it. A cloud of dark dust filled the air, and she lost her grip. I don’t know if she let go on purpose or just didn’t have enough practice to keep a hold on me once I was out of her line of sight. I fought through the growing bruises on my body and grabbed one of the larger fragments of cement, pressing myself against it and letting it carry me away.

The Queen shot through the dust cloud, thrusters roaring and blasting the smoke away. I looked up at the Cage. The thing was a labyrinth in three dimensions, all buttresses and walls and bridges built seemingly without purpose, layers upon layers of iron bars and stone blocks surrounding some unseen center.

I knew it contained something awful. I’d explicitly been told that. I hadn’t thought about what was going to happen if we kept causing collateral damage here. Even the little bit of damage that had been done to it over countless years had been enough for nightmares of wind and darkness to escape. We’d done more to break it in the last five minutes than had occurred in the previous ten thousand years.

“We’re going to end up destroying Equestria even after leaving!” I said. I mentally kicked myself for being this stupid, but I couldn’t have predicted we’d come out here. Limbo had so much empty space, and we’d appeared in the worst possible place.

Cozy Glow roared in frustration, sweeping back through the rubble, preceded by a blast of beam energy.

“Where are you?!” she shouted.

I waited, picked my moment, and jumped in the moment she slowed to turn, landing on the middle of her back, right between the two huge weapon racks.

“Hey,” I greeted Cozy. Before she could react and smash me into paste with telekinesis, I let my mind and magic flow into her, my aura melting into hers. The world slowed.

I was. We were. In an infinite, echoing space. Luminescent clouds merged and shifted, whispering from an unseen distance like windows to a faraway place.

“What did you do?” Cozy Glow asked.

I turned to see her. All of her. She had been a small pony, young, accomplished beyond her years because she was driven by a terrible hunger for recognition and power. She had friends. She understood friendship, but it was through a twisted lens. She loved her friends, but only because they were hers. She loved them like a craftsmare loves her favorite tools.

I saw glimpses of the events that made her who she was. A parade of promotions. Her enemies broken at her hooves. Celestia smiling down at her. Luna seeing her for who she really was and ruining years of plans.

Cozy Glow looked into me. All of me. She saw me as a real pony and not just an enemy. She saw into my soul. And I saw her seeing me. And I saw how little she cared. Just because I was a pony didn’t make me worth anything.

It was like mirrors facing each other. Cozy Glow saw how disgusted I was with her, and that only made her hate me more.

“I was going to save Equestria,” she whispered, the thoughts hanging around her. “It was my destiny. I was overshadowed two centuries ago, but I waited for the right moment. I waited and planned and got ready and I would have saved them all!”

“Please stop this,” I begged her. “You can see how dangerous this is, can’t you? You can tell I’m not lying!”

“I don’t care,” Cozy Glow whispered. “You’re not the first pony to ruin my plans. You won’t be the last. I won’t stop. I won’t ever stop until I get what I deserve!”

Around us, beyond the clouds of light, darkness wove itself in. It hadn’t been there last time I’d entered this mind-space with Four. This was something else, something dark invading the psychic impression.

“Get out of my mind!” Cozy Glow shouted. Impossibly, I felt force flow out of the spark of awareness and presence that was her mind in the non-space. It forced the blackness back and blasted me away.

I came to still holding onto the Queen. My lightning claws dug for purchase into the super-heavy armor, the energy field of her boosted thaumoframe resisting the power field of the talons growing out of my hooves.

“You can’t attack my mind that easily!” Cozy Glow yelled. “You think I’d leave myself vulnerable when I’m surrounded by ponies that could read my thoughts?!”

She spun around, trying to throw me free. The tight maneuver almost tossed me into the wind. A shadow loomed over me. I looked up. A dark shape stood on top of the Queen, ignoring little things like centrifugal force and gravity. Indigo eyes glowed in the thin face.

“Nightmare,” I whispered.

Another dark shape caught my attention, and I saw more indistinct, flickering forms made of living shadow, converging on us even as we rushed through the Cage.

“Cozy, turn around!” I yelled. “You’re going the wrong way!”

“What are these things?” she asked, finally noticing them herself, probably because she was trying to get a look at me so she could figure out a way to murder me. I heard panic edge into her voice.

“They’re pure evil!” I shouted back. “They’re what was attacking your mind!”

The Queen came to a halt like it hit a concrete block, stopping dead in the air with bone-jarring G-forces. Despite how far we’d flown, we still weren’t close enough to even see the center of the Cage, and I didn’t want to know what was there. Even being what had to be miles away with a fortress wrapped around it, there was a terrible awareness to it. It reminded me of a bad dream where something terrible lurked just out of sight and despite not seeing it, I somehow knew what it was.

“The only one allowed to control me is me!” Cozy Glow screamed. The aura around the Queen redoubled, the edges flaring into spikes. I let go and bolted for cover, fleeing as the creatures of darkness converged on us.

A shockwave of telekinetic force erupted behind me, shredding the dark shapes that got caught in it and pulverizing one of the wrought-iron spars that floated too close to the assault armor. The very edge of the attack caught my flank on my way out, tossing me hard end-over-end until I slammed into the underside of a bridge. Gravity felt accommodating, and let me lie there without complaint about not using the correct orientation.

“Ow,” I groaned. A trickle of blood ran down my face between my eyes, parting around my snout. “Okay, note to self. Even if my skull is really strong, I’ve suffered too much brain trauma to be allowed outside without a helmet and adult supervision.”

“There, you see?” Cozy Glow crowed. The Queen slowly turned towards me. She could have instantly spun around, she was taking her time purely because she wanted to be dramatic about it. “Even these stupid nightmare things are nothing compared to me. Luna was always weak. She got pushed to the edge and crumbled. The edge only makes me sharper!”

I don’t know if invoking Luna’s name angered the nightmare creatures, if it was bad timing, or if they were attracted to pure arrogance like a magnet, because in the next second the darkness reformed around her, shadows lengthening and coming to life all around the Queen. They surrounded the cockpit, and the very aura of the machine changed from sickly gold to ghostly blue-grey.

The machine’s face opened up, revealing a confused Cozy Glow in the cockpit.

“What?” She gasped.

The darkness rushed in. I thought it was going to take her over, turn her into some kind of Nightmare Cozy. Blacklight Glow? That would have been a cool evil name if she hadn’t already been sort of a monstrous bitch. Instead, she was unceremoniously ejected, launching out on compressed air. A parachute trailed behind her. She hit the bridge next to me and gave me a confused look.

“What did you do?” she demanded. The parachute drifted down around her. She snarled and tore it free.

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I think it was all her.”

“Her?” Cozy looked up at the Queen, following my gaze. A dark, disembodied shadow formed in the cockpit where Cozy had been. The hatch slammed shut like a steel maw around the half-real pilot. The blue-grey glow around the Queen strengthened, shades of other colors appearing around it, the flames and rainbow haze of Cozy’s aura replaced with vague screaming faces and tormented whispers.

“I warned you we shouldn’t be fighting here,” I hissed, pulling myself out of the crater I’d been embedded into and shaking rubble from the seams of my armor. “If we work together, we can--”

Cozy Glow shot me a look and bolted, ditching me and weaving between bits of floating debris.

The Queen twitched like something animated by electrical shocks, following her motion with its main cannon and firing, the beam wavering and slashing through the air. Cozy Glow dove wildly, barely keeping ahead of it. Part of me wanted the beam to catch her. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if she was vaporized.

The dumber part of me fired a shot from DRACO, an explosive round bursting on an invisible field of energy a hoof’s length from the Queen. Even if it had hit dead-on it wouldn’t have done anything except scuff the crimson paint.

I felt a fragment of the thing’s attention turn towards me.

“Not the best decision I’ve ever made.” I shot into the air. The weapons platform on the Queen’s back sprang open, missiles streaking out of it at an angle before curving around to track me. I took off at an angle, trying to get ahead of their ability to follow.

Magic surrounded the missiles, spinning them to face me.

“That’s cheating!” I yelped. I fired bursts of chaff from DRACO, catching one of them and blowing it apart, the explosion eating two more in a fratricidal fireball. The last three burst in the air, throwing cones of shrapnel. Steel needles put holes in my wing membranes. Bigger fragments lodged into my back. I fell out of control, hitting belly-first onto a steel railing and blasting the air from my lungs.

I mouthed the word ‘ow’, unable to actually say it.

“Find cover somewhere else!” Cozy Glow hissed from the other side of the metal bars. I looked at her and we shared an expression of mutual, honest contempt.

“You could help me with the alien nightmare creature!” I spat.

“Why? It’s doing a good job so far.”

“The second it finishes me, it’s going to go after you!”

Cozy Glow looked behind me and fear flashed across her face before she fled. I sensed the danger even before she saw it and had started moving. A spray of thick wires came down around me like an insane spider trying to throw webbing at its prey. One cord wrapped around me, the tip carried by a tiny rocket that spun it around my rear legs and tripped me up.

I swore and extended my lightning claws, but just before I could take a swipe at the line to free myself, I saw the bright yellow and black striped cable flash with lights from small pods along its length. Detonators. The chain mine exploded, and my legs erupted in pain.

It was literally blinding. There was smoke and dust, but mostly it was the stars and tunnel vision causing a problem. I didn’t even realize I was caught in a magical aura until it spun me around a little too quickly and sent another shock of pain through me.

The nightmare-possessed assault armor pulled me up to its face so it could look right at me.

“I guess you remember me?” I gasped. I had to say something. If I could get it talking, I could figure out something clever to do. I’d fought bigger, stronger things before. Maybe. To be honest I wasn’t all that sure about my chances but I had to have hope or I wouldn’t have much else.

Echoing whispers answered me, a chorus of half-words and hate. It was like somepony using a bunch of slurs in another room, just far enough away that I couldn’t understand the words, only the tone. The telekinetic grip around me tightened, my bones creaking and starting to flex. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even make really clever quips anymore, not that I had more lined up.

Beam shots lanced through the air, scattering against the overlapping energy fields protecting the Queen. The pressure around me let up by a fraction, and Cozy Glow flew into the thing’s side when it turned the other way to look.

“I can’t believe I’m being this stupid!” she shouted. I saw her draw a short sword from her set of Exodus Armor using her teeth and she tossed her head, stabbing the knife into the exposed wires connecting the huge energy field generator and radome on the monster’s side to the assault armor’s main body. Lightning cracked into the air. Cozy Glow yelped and let go of the knife, the metal instantly burning red hot and fusing from the current of the short circuit.

Some kind of feedback must have shot back through the Queen, because it let go of me and the aura around it faded to near-invisibility, that ghost glow turning to a dull illumination from deep within. I took off before it could gather itself, taking cover and catching my breath. I had a salvaged healing potion in my Vector Trap, and I grabbed it, sucking it down and easing the pain in my legs. I hadn’t dared look at them before. I risked it and turned my gaze down.

My legs were still attached. Burns and torn muscle were healing thanks to the potion I’d downed, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was doing all the work. I could feel the SIVA in my body crawling across the wounds and patching me up. Was the potion doing anything at all aside from acting as a placebo?

I was so distracted I didn’t notice a crazy pony flying right next to me.

“The Queen has a critical weakness,” Cozy Glow said. She landed next to me, looking grim. “It’s got a serious power balance issue that I wasn’t able to correct.”

“Power balance?” I panted, confused.

“The reactor is running too hot all the time. It needs to be beyond the design limits just to keep it going. Any damage to the power system causes cascading system outages.” Cozy said. “You need to attack the points where the additional systems connect. The main gun and the thrusters in back are the most vulnerable.”

“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “I thought you wanted me dead.”

“I do, but you’re right about one thing. That’s going to come after me once you’re finished, and then it’ll go after my ponies. I have a responsibility to them that’s more important than revenge!”

“That’s the first sane thing you’ve said since I met you.”

Cozy Glow gave me a sharp kick. “You go after the thrusters. I’ll take the big gun.” She glanced at me with open contempt. “I know you’d object if I told you to do the dangerous part, so try not to screw up the easy job.”

She took off, her crimson armor flashing with light, the suit’s thaumoframe boosting her speed beyond pony limits. I could do that trick too, and better. I threw myself into high gear and jumped, barely even using my wings. The crazy gravity of the Cage tried to draw me in a kaleidoscope of different directions over the short distance between me and the possessed Queen. I swallowed vomit brought up by the abuses to my inner ear.

The thrusters attached to the Queen were only half-armored and unfinished. They were barely more than clusters of rocket motors and crazed plumbing hiding underneath a skirt of dense steel plate. I grabbed at the edge of a hatch and barely caught myself when the Queen started moving again.

I found myself staring up the nozzle of a liquid rocket engine. Pipes rattled. I swear I saw a glow like dragon’s breath. I swung myself up on top of the skirt armor and tried to stand. My back legs still felt terrible.

“Attack where it connects to the main body!” Cozy Glow ordered. She was hanging on to the side of the long gun. It started glowing, getting ready to fire. She hissed in pain, the stink of burning hair filling the dead air. She didn’t let go, working her way over the burning surface and hanging on despite the Queen’s attempts to throw her off.

I couldn’t be a slacker if she was putting in that much effort. I slashed through the skirt armor, carving deep into it. Ruptured fuel lines sprayed into the air, jets of flame rushing past me. Panic hit me like a truck and I would have fled if I hadn’t been paralyzed with sudden traumatic horror that made my hooves freeze and refuse to move.

“Move you stupid horse!” Cozy Glow screamed. She pulled a second long, thin blade from her armor and stabbed it deep into the junction between the cannon and the main body of the Queen. Lightning exploded through the air, knocking her back.

I fought the panic down and jumped through the spray of fire. I could see where both thrusters joined the body, a spot that looked jury-rigged. I took careful aim with DRACO and fired. This close, inside the Queen’s own energy fields and with the machine overwhelmed by power surges, it couldn’t block the shot. The shell found a vulnerable valve unprotected by the thing’s battleship-level armor and blew it apart.

The sudden surge of radiation washed over me and filled my mouth with the taste of metal. Bright lights and stars flashed in my eyes. I let go and jumped away in alarm, not frozen with fear this time.

The Queen spun out of control, thrusters misfiring and off-balance because of the ruptured fuel lines. The glow inside it got stronger, and the radiation surge flashed again.

“Run!” Cozy Glow yelled. “Or don’t! I don’t care!”

She fled through the air, her singed mane and feathers trailing smoke in the dead sky. I went after her. The Queen’s main gun started powering up, a whine of compressing particles and activating talismans filling the air.

The power surges went beyond critical limits. The Queen roared, the air shaking with frustration. The reactor inside it exploded, steam and molten sulfur blasting the machine apart from within. Supersonic shrapnel cut through the air. I tumbled behind a chunk of broken concrete the size of a suspension bridge’s main span, and the shockwave hit a moment later. The concrete cracked and blew apart, smashing up into me and carrying me away. Shrapnel pelted the other side, shielding me from the worst of it.

My ears rang. I couldn’t hear anything.

Cozy Glow landed next to me, collapsing to her knees. We said nothing.

I didn’t feel up to standing. I just breathed, the stale, thin air of Limbo barely doing anything to soothe my burning lungs.

“Why did you build that thing?” I asked, looking over at Cozy Glow.

She took a moment to gather herself before she spoke.

“I needed to protect my ponies,” she said. “I lost my trump card. I lost my most skilled ponies. If I wanted it done right, I had to do it on my own. The Queen was supposed to be my way to take on a whole fleet by myself.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be sorry,” Cozy Glow mumbled. “Do you even know what you’re responsible for?”

“I stopped you from taking over the Enclave.”

“This is what I mean. You’re a child! You don’t understand the bigger stakes! My taking over your Enclave would have been the best thing for everypony. Your government is corrupt, a bunch of greedy ponies holding onto scraps! You vote on things as if passengers on a sinking ship should decide what to do instead of the captain! You ended up with everypony crowding to the top deck and nopony bailing water.”

“You’ve used that metaphor before, haven’t you?” I asked.

“I practice a lot of conversations when I’m alone,” Cozy Glow admitted. She shrugged. “It’s part of being a leader. A real leader. I wanted to bring Equestria back, and you stopped me because you didn’t like that it wouldn’t be fun and easy.”

“I stopped you because you were going to murder a lot of ponies.”

“A few more orbital strikes and I would have convinced enough of the military to side with me that it wouldn’t come down to a fight. They’re too conservative to get into a shooting war. They won’t even fire missiles because they might need them later!”

“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things,” I sighed. I tried to get up and groaned, my back popping. I swear my vertebrae were resetting themselves back into place.

“Your father was a history professor,” Cozy Glow said. I looked up, and she was offering me a hoof. I hesitated, but took it. She helped me stand up. “Do you know what Equestria really was?”

“A monarchy?” I guessed, not knowing what kind of answer she wanted.

“It was a dream. Our ancient ancestors, a dozen centuries back, lived apart from each other the way ponies do now. They dreamed of an easier life without constant fighting and famine and work. The dream only became real when they worked together. Not because they needed pegasus weather to grow crops or unicorn magic to build homes or earth pony strength to move mountains. It was because all that wasted effort and time and stress from fighting each other was the real reason they’d been suffering to begin with, and when they let it go they were able to build wonders.”

“I’m fine with not fighting. You’re the one who tried to kill me.”

“I’m trying to do what I have to for the greater good. You’ve seen the surface. You know there are slavers and raiders and monsters everywhere. Ponies fear each other. Even in the Enclave, ponies are divided by politics. With a single, strong leader Equestria could be real again. It could be great again.”

“I want to believe that,” I told her. “I want there to be hope for the future.”

“For that future to happen, we have to let some bad things happen now in the present,” Cozy Glow said. “That’s why you’re like a child. You don’t want to eat your vegetables because they’re icky, but they’re important to make you healthy.”

“Starting a war and eating vegetables are… that’s a terrible metaphor.”

“Sue me. It’s the truth. You know why I deserve to be in charge? Because I only care about being in charge and making people love me! I want everypony to be my friend! I want to walk down the street and see smiles and know that everypony appreciates what I did. And you know what I want most of all?”

“A statue?”

“I want things to go back to how they were when I was a foal.” She reached over to her side and detached one of the beam rifles from her battle saddle. “The first time I saw a gun, I had no idea what it was. When I walk down the street and nopony knows what this is, I’ll know my work is complete.”

I stared at her.

“You’re completely delusional,” I said.

“I’m an idealist,” Cozy corrected. “I saw what you’re really like on the inside. I know you saw me. We can either work together or we can kill each other. Your choice.”

She was dangerous. Insanely dangerous. She was charismatic, power-hungry, and her understanding of friendship involved a ledger and carefully calculated opportunity costs. If I was a little less difficult to kill and a tiny smidge less useful as a blunt object, she’d be shooting me instead of talking. It wouldn’t even be a debate in her mind, merely calculus.

I offered a hoof to shake. I’d come up on the same side as her this time, and I had bigger fish to fry. She took it. I knew I’d regret this moment later.

Chapter 130: VEGA Core

“That’s not the meaning of friendship,” I said. A shadow passed over us. Cozy Glow and I both looked up, but it was just part of the Cage moving above us. Or not moving. It seemed like some parts rotated around each other like a gyroscope, but it was some kind of illusion created by warping space. I wasn’t nearly as smart as Destiny, but she explained it to me pretty well later. There’s this common explanation of space being like a rubber sheet, gravity being places where the sheet bends around weight, that kind of thing. In Limbo, space was more like a liquid surface that flowed around, and in the Cage it swirled around the drain in the middle. The rock and steel that seemed to be moving around us was staying still, but the space itself was shifting.

“Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough,” Cozy Glow said, once both of us were somewhat more sure there wasn’t immediate danger. We were still surrounded by potential threats, but they were keeping their distance. “We both agree that friendship is important, right?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “It’s how a healthy society functions. Ponies can’t survive on their own.”

“I agree!” Cozy Glow gave me a warm smile. “See? We’re already becoming great friends.”

“You said friendship is only as important as what you get out of it,” I pointed out. “But what about the ponies I help just because I like them and I never get anything back? What about charity?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Cozy scoffed. “See, this is where ponies make a big mistake. Any time you do anything, it’s because you get something out of it! If you do charity work, you’re getting praise from other ponies and letting them know you’re kind and reliable. Even if you do it anonymously, you’re getting a warm and fuzzy feeling, right? Feeling good about yourself is still getting something out of it.”

“That’s stupid. By that logic, nothing anypony does can be for any reason than some kind of… greed!”

“Even if you do something you hate, you chose to do it, and you value being able to make that choice more than you did whatever other option you had.” Cozy Glow shrugged. “Friendship is about finding ponies who want what you want. Maybe it’s because they like spending time with you, so they help with your goals to do it. Maybe they have the same goals and you’re working to the same end. Maybe, like us, we just want to survive and recognize that the other pony helps us do that.”

“Friendship isn’t a business transaction,” I grumbled.

“If you say so.” Cozy stopped and shrugged, looking around. We’d been walking on the same bridge for a while. “I think we were here before. We went in a circle! Even though we walked in a straight line. I even used a compass!”

“Space is really messed up around here,” I reminded her. “Maybe we’re in some kind of loop? I’m pretty sure the deeper we went, the worse it got.”

“I can see why you call it the Cage,” she sighed. “It doesn’t just look like a giant birdcage, it’s clearly designed to trap something inside.”

“Let’s hope we never find out what,” I said. I checked my own compass, using DRACO. “I’ve got a laser rangefinder on this thing. Maybe I can use it to see where we looped?”

“It’s a better idea than I’ve had so far,” Cozy admitted. “See? This is why I decided not to kill you. You’ve been here before so you know some of the hazards.”

I snorted. “I’m so grateful.”

“In return for your help, I’ll make sure the fighting stops when we get back,” she promised. I wasn’t sure how far I could trust her. She was pretty light, so not as far as I could throw her.

Another shadow flashed past. We didn’t look up this time, but we should have. A moment later, with neither of us ready for it, an amorphous black shape dropped down onto Cozy Glow, instantly submerging her in darkness.

“Oh buck!” I swore, backing up.

The thing formed an aura around her, somewhere between black mist rising off her body and shadow cast onto the air itself. Cozy Glow stumbled under some unseen weight.

“Get out of my head…” she growled. “Get out!”

With a roar of pure rage, she ejected the nightmare creature, the thing shredding apart in an unseen gust of wind accompanied by light pouring out of her armor, magic shields flaring. The thing screeched at a frequency I felt more than heard, too high for normal hearing but still making my ears ring. It fled, flitting off shapelessly.

“Stupid thing,” Cozy growled.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and composed herself, giving me a quick nod. “I made myself immune to any kind of mental influence a long time ago. I don’t care if it’s a Zebra mystic using voodoo or Luna herself trying to look at my dreams, some things are private.”

“That’s a little paranoid.”

“The thing with the Zebra happened. More than once. There were plenty of attempts to mind-control members of the Equestrian government. Some of them succeeded. A big part of my job was keeping it from happening.”

“I meant the part with Luna.”

“You wouldn’t think it was paranoid if you met her. A thousand years on the moon weren’t kind to her social skills. You’d be having a normal conversation with her and she’d casually mention a dream you had and you’d realize she saw it and you had no idea how much else she’d seen. Would you want somepony being able to see your nightmares about high school? Your wet dreams about some nice stallion?”

“I’m more into mares.”

“Whatever. You get my point. And don’t think about hitting on me. I’m not into any of that junk. Sex is… ugh. I never understood it.” She shuddered. “How much longer do you think this is going to take? We’ve been walking for an hour. It didn’t take this long to fly here.”

“Wrong question to ask,” I said. “Time is even more messed up than space. No two ponies can agree on how much time actually passes around here. How long was it between when you left me to fight the Queen and when you came back to save me?”

I was pretty sure I could have taken it down myself, eventually, but I was willing to let her have a win.

“Not that long. I flew away for maybe ten minutes before I changed my mind.”

“Yeah, it was barely a minute for me,” I said. “Star Swirl explained it at one point. He said things happened here, but they didn’t really take time. I think it’s like, in the real world things are at specific places on a map, right? That’s how time works in the real world, too. Things happen at specific points in time.”

“I follow you so far,” Cozy agreed.

“In Limbo, things only have places or times when something else interacts with them. It’s sort of relative, sort of an observer effect. He said it was okay if I didn’t entirely understand, but it’s like we’re in a movie and things only happen when we’re ‘on camera’. If you fall asleep in a room totally alone, when somepony comes to check on you, no time will have passed for you because no one was watching, not even you.”

“I hate this place,” Cozy glow sighed. She shook her head. “And I hate that you sent us here, but I have to commend you for picking a great prison. No door to force open and the prisoner can’t even be sure how long they’ve been locked up.”

“I did it to get my Mom out of Equestria. Nothing personal, you’re just not as much of a monster as she is.”

“I know your mother very well. She’s absolutely a monster. You should have seen how much trouble we had locking her up!”

“How did you manage it, anyway?” I asked. Maybe if I knew how she’d dealt with it, I’d have an idea how to kill her myself.

“I hit her with orbital strikes until she was too busy regenerating to stop Four from containing her in a telekinetic bubble,” Cozy Glow said. “And if I still had orbital assets, and we weren’t in Limbo, and Four wasn’t dead or we at least had the Queen as a backup…”

She trailed off, glaring at me.

“Oh yeah, blame me,” I mumbled.

“If it’s somepony else’s fault, feel free to let me know. Anyway, it’s perfectly safe. Even if she has mind control stuff like you said, it’s impossible for her to escape. Only I have the full authority needed to release her.”

The radio in my ear crackled. “...Evacuation is way behind schedule,” the voice said. “We need to do something about the screamers.”

“Are you getting that too?” I asked.

Cozy Glow nodded. She touched her ear. “This is the Grand High Marshal. I’ve been out of contact, but I am returning to the ship. Give me a status report.”

“High Marshal?! You were declared dead! We’re having serious problems. We attempted to transfer the command codes, but something went wrong.”

I saw the expression on Cozy’s face and raised an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked me, making sure not to speak into the radio. “I wasn’t going to reward someone for killing me. I gave them a fancy red envelope and told them to open it if I died.”

“With blank paper inside,” I guessed.

“If I’m dead it’s not my responsibility to fix things,” Cozy Glow scoffed. She switched her mic back on. “Exodus Red, the transfer failed because I’m alive. There’s a…” I saw her invent a reason on the fly. “Soul lock. It’s tied magically to my soul to prevent terrorist activity and misuse of authority. Transfer codes only appear after my death.”

“Understood, Ma’am. I knew we should have had more faith in you!”

I heard the devotion in the voice and I was a little disgusted. Cozy smiled with the opposite of disgust and shut off her mic again with a sigh.

“Just so you know, a soul-lock is a real thing,” she said.

“I might not be able to read your mind, but you’re not that good at lying. I’ve met Quattro, remember? I’ve seen what good lying looks like.”

“I mean it! There were these black books, and the Belles had most of them under lock and key. Even the Ministries weren’t really allowed to have them, but we let one of them slip to keep ponies busy and see what they did with them. The things were stuffed full of necromancy spells that manipulated souls. Awful stuff, but very useful.”

I shook my head. She scoffed. I flipped on the radio.

“Hey, Lord High Bupkiss Cozy says she’d like to know more about those screamers you mentioned,” I said.

“Hey!” Cozy Glow scowled at me.

“I apologize if there’s an official name, ma’am. It’s the term we’ve been using unofficially. There are ponies that seem to have suddenly come down with Stasis Psychosis. They’re acting in groups in strange ways and control some areas of the ship. We’re trying to recover them for evacuation and treatment, but the ponies we sent in to stop them were also overcome with the psychosis.”

“Shoot,” Cozy huffed.

“It’s got to be my mom doing it. She was able to get control of a bunch of your crew when I infiltrated last time. She’s been biding her time.”

“I hate that you’re probably right. How’s your mental resistance index?”

“I have no idea what that means but I’m immune to brain control if that helps.”

“Excellent.”

“Try poking it,” Cozy Glow suggested.

I prodded the glowing crystal totem. I wasn’t sure why my mom had made it look so evil. It was like a tiny office building built as a headquarters for a sinister organization, with distinct strata and layers of crystal. Maybe she’d wanted to get control of Kulaas so she could learn some design skills from the super-AI.

When I touched the crystal I could feel the magic running through it. It was exactly like the crystal pillars back in Gatorland, but cut down in size and range. I could feel in my bones that it was using the same internal design. Mom hadn’t even tried changing it up, but according to Destiny they’d started appearing when they had Mom make repairs to the Exodus Red after the orbital strike, so maybe she’d just never had a chance to make revisions.

It took a few seconds of focus, but I managed to connect to the internal network and shut it down, the glow inside the crystal flickering and fading.

“Got it,” I said. “I thought it’d be harder.”

Cozy Glow peeked out from around cover and walked out to take a look. We were outside the ship, testing things on one of the crystals that had been ejected from the Red in the collision and transition to Limbo.

“So we can deal with them one-by-one,” she said. “How many are there?”

“Thousands, I think,” I admitted. “And knowing Mom they’re stuffed into a lot of odd places behind hatches and in closets. It’s a treasure hunt and we’d never know if we got all of them.”

“Even if we had them lined up for you to deactivate it would take hours with how long you needed to switch that one off. We need to think bigger. We need a solution that solves the problem in one shot.”

“We’re not building a megaspell.”

“Oh I’m sorry, did you have some better idea?” Cozy Glow scoffed. “I know the Ministry of Awesome prototyped several non-destructive megaspells designed to leave ponies unharmed while disrupting spells and electronics. If we could use one of those, we could shut this all down at the press of a button!”

“Do you have one?” I asked.

Cozy Glow sighed. “No. But! Once you know something is possible, all you need to do is put brilliant ponies on the problem and give them resources to solve the issue. You have Destiny Bray, she must have built the megaspell that sent us here. She can build the one we need to fix this. Then we can discuss terms on going back to Equestria.”

“That’s--”

Cozy Glow held up a hoof. “I understand. You don’t want to unleash some awful monster like what Lemon Zinger has become. We’ll find a way to deal with her.”

I wasn’t sure how to tell her that my mom wasn’t the only monster I was afraid of. I wasn’t an oracle but I was absolutely sure Cozy was going to make me regret working with her at some point.

“What I was going to say is, unless we have exactly the spell we need, I don’t know if we can use that option. I don’t have a problem using a megaspell as a big delete button and making the problem go away. Destiny told me before she’s not much of a spell researcher, she’s more of an engineer. Unless we have something she can start with, she’ll need years to get anywhere, and the mind-controlled ponies don’t have years.”

“Shoot,” Cozy sighed. “So much for that.”

“I can’t believe this, I leave you alone for a few hours and you go and make all kind of terrible decisions,” somepony said. I looked up, and Quattro was hovering above us lazily in her golden armor. She shook her head. “She’s going to be a bad influence on you.”

“It’s not that bad,” Cozy said. “I admit Chamomile is a bad influence, but she’s endearing in her own, dumb way.”

“That’s not the direction I was going with that, but okay,” Quattro said. She landed, making sure I was between her and Cozy. “How are things?”

“They were going well after you stabbed me in the back,” Cozy said. “And now I’m trapped in some kind of prison dimension. What about you? Have you betrayed anypony lately?”

“I’ve never betrayed anypony in my life,” Quattro said.

“You did sort of betray her,” I admitted.

“See if I save your life again,” Quattro mumbled. “From what I heard, you’re trying to decide how to deal with the mind control. You’re going at this in the wrong direction. If somepony is casting fireball spells at you, do you spend time building a talisman to counter it?”

“No, you have them shot,” Cozy Glow said. “Remove the caster from the board.”

“Right. So?”

“Killing Lemon Zinger is an option on the table,” Cozy admitted.

“I refuse to believe you don’t have some way to do that yourself. Some failsafe that would let you blow off her head the second she started to get loose,” Quattro said. “You only want a way to shut down what she’s doing so you can keep her around to use her.”

“SIVA is an incredibly powerful tool. If I have to, yes, there’s a system. No, it hasn’t been extensively tested. Destiny Bray designed it at my request.”

“Under duress.”

“You are so determined to make me out to be the bad guy!” Cozy yelled. She stomped her hooves in frustration, glaring at Quattro. “I’m a great pony! Everypony who gets to know me likes me! Look at Chamomile, she begged me to stop trying to kill her just so she could work with me!”

“I was mostly focused on the part where I didn’t want you to kill me,” I admitted.

“Carrot and stick,” Cozy Glow said with a shrug. “The point is, I am an altruistic pony. If there’s some way to salvage the SIVA, it could make life better for millions of innocent ponies and maybe even some other races like gryphons. Even zebras, who I am told are occasionally not evil.”

“If we’ve got a special codeword that makes my mom’s head explode I’ll forgive you for at least half of what you’ve done,” I said, interrupting her before she could tell me her very smart opinions on donkeys and changelings.

“It doesn’t make her head explode, it’s some kind of chemical thing,” Cozy explained. “Explosives wouldn’t really work. Orbital strikes only kept her down for a little while. Apparently micromachines are vulnerable to chemical attacks, so we did the logical thing and built a giant tank of acid.”

“And that works?” I frowned. The black SIVA dragon had practically had acid for blood.

“We tested it on samples. It worked. The only problem is… I can’t trigger it remotely. Not from here. I didn’t want to risk the enemy spoofing the right signal and crippling things. It requires biometric confirmation at one of a few specific terminals on the Exodus Red.”

“Assuming Mom hasn’t sent ponies with crowbars to smash them.”

“If all the terminals are offline, the system should activate automatically. It’s a fail-deadly system, not fail-safe.”

“I wish I had a better idea.”

“I’m not letting you two go alone,” Quattro said. “Sorry, Chamomile, but I’m absolutely sure she’ll trick you into doing something stupid.”

“That’s fair.”

“You should be immune to the mind control, you have the same enhancements I do,” Cozy admitted. “You could be a valuable asset, as long as you stay in front of me so you’re not tempted to stab me in the back again.”

“Cube is probably immune for the same reason, right?” I asked. “She’s enhanced.”

Cozy Glow nodded. “Even more immune than I am. Even if something went wrong or the spell gets stronger, she should be able to fight it off.”

“If we’re putting a mission together, we could use her firepower,” Quattro admitted. “Cube is as good as a whole firing line of elite troops. Against a large number of soft targets, I can’t think of anypony better.”

“I wish we could take Emma or Midnight but… they’ll be vulnerable,” I sighed.

“They’re leading the evacuees to the Exodus White,” Quattro said. “Those two make good leaders. Midnight has the charisma, Emma has the discipline. Put them together and you get good ideas and the ability to convince ponies to try them.”

“Destiny Bray will need to come as well,” Cozy Glow said.

“No way,” I said. “My mom tried hacking her last time and almost killed her! Even if she’s immune to mind control, she’s vulnerable in other ways.”

“We’re all vulnerable somehow. Ask her. I’d be shocked if that pony hasn’t come up with a solution already.”

“Of course I’m going,” Destiny said. She worked on the metal ring she’d fixed to the stand, using a spot welder to fix talismans and pre-scribed talisman sheets to the steel. “SIVA is my invention. I have a responsibility.”

“My responsibility is bigger,” I tried.

She gave me a look that said my response wasn’t a normal thing to say.

“I mean that it’s my mom, and I’ve had my hooves shoulder-deep in this mess for a long time now. We wouldn’t even be here if I was a better judge of character.”

“That’s true for all of us,” Destiny said. She started wrapping gold wire around a ring-shaped river stone. “If I hadn’t built that ship for Cozy Glow… actually if I hadn’t built it she probably would have had my whole family thrown in a gulag on trumped-up charges. But you get my point. I could have done things differently and I didn’t, so I have to do what I can now and not worry about then.”

“It doesn’t matter. I know you’re more or less okay right now, but Mom might try throwing more junk code at you, and you’ll turn inside out or melt or explode into gremlins! All of those things are even worse than mind control!”

“It was annoying how she was able to hack my body like that,” Destiny agreed. “After it happened, it made me think of when we first met, and you had to wear the Exodus Armor all the time just to keep the infection from progressing. Remember? I hacked the near-field transmitter to constantly loop a halt command.”

“Yeah. It helped a lot.”

“So this is going to do the same thing,” Destiny said. She wrapped a layer of electrical tape over the band, fixing everything in place, then took the ring off the stand. “It’s hoof-made. No SIVA involved. Lemon Zinger can’t hack it. It doesn’t even have sensors to interface with. This is designed purely to interfere with junk code. It’ll broadcast a near-field signal that will keep my body’s systems from being overridden.”

“I don’t like it.”

She shrugged and put the collar around her neck. “Yeah well, that’s too bad. I’m not letting you do this without me. You need responsible adult supervision.”

“Quattro is an-- I can’t even finish saying that without feeling like a liar.”

“Exactly. More importantly, I built the systems around your mother and I’m absolutely sure she’s tried to break things. Cozy Glow was right that they’re fail-deadly, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to sabotage, they’re only immune to clumsy, stupid sabotage. She’s smart enough to come up with a plan.”

“I’m worried that the plan involves us walking face-first into a trap and doing exactly what she wants,” I admitted. “Or that Cozy Glow will betray us.”

“That’s why we’re going in with a backup plan and not telling her about it,” Destiny said. “The Exodus Black’s Arcana Reactor is stable…unless somepony pushes a few buttons, and then it explodes.”

“I’m told that won’t kill her.”

“No, but it will definitely kill Cozy Glow.”

“All my ponies had to pull back,” Cozy said, once we’d assembled in front of an airlock. “The ones that get too close get drawn in, and nopony is sure how far the danger zone goes, so I had them retreat to the edge of radio range. We’ll still be able to contact them in an emergency.”

“Can we please go inside?” Destiny asked. “I don’t like being carried like a sack of potatoes.”

I was holding her around the barrel and she drooped, totally unable to maintain any kind of dignity when she was being carried around the way a bird of prey carried around lunch.

“You should have learned self-levitation,” Cube admonished. Unlike Destiny, our other unicorn teammate was floating easily and glowing faintly with her own magical aura.

“I know self-levitation! I used it all the time as a ghost stuck in a hat!” Destiny snapped.

“It must have been a lot easier to get around since that helmet was so small,” Quattro noted. “Compact, easy to grip, one solid piece, lightweight…”

“It was easier to-- lightweight? Are you calling me fat?!” Destiny sputtered.

“Please get the door,” I grunted, holding her up.

“I’m not fat, you can carry me all day!” Destiny shouted up at me. “Stop complaining! You’re making me look bad in front of the pony who foalnapped me!”

“Before we go inside, I know I need to say something,” Cozy Glow said. She looked at all of us seriously. “I’m not a perfect pony, and I’ve made mistakes. Some of them were bad mistakes. Cube, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about what you experienced on the Hub. I should have trusted you about Lemon Zinger hacking the systems, about Chamomile being a space pirate, and about how you barely escaped alive. I’ve seen the truth with my own eyes now and I was so, so wrong not to trust you when you came back and tried to warn me.”

“Oh, um…” Cube blinked. “Thank you?”

Cozy Glow nodded. “Chamomile, I’m sorry I tried to have you killed a bunch of times but I think you can understand where I was coming from.”

“Hey, you called me a space pirate and that’s one of the cooler things anypony has ever said about me,” I replied with a shrug.

“Destiny Bray, foalnapping you was rude. I’m also sorry for essentially enslaving you for several months, but I thought it was for the greater good at the time.”

“I’ll forgive you if we get out of this alive,” Destiny said.

Cozy Glow nodded. “Okay, now let’s get this hatch open-- what is it Quattro?”

The golden-colored pegasus had cleared her throat and was waiting expectantly.

“What about my apology?” Quattro asked.

“I accept your apology,” Cozy Glow said.

“I meant, aren’t you going to say sorry to me?”

Cozy Glow laughed. “Quattro Formaggio, you and I both know you don’t want an apology.” She smirked. “You like it better knowing I don’t forgive you, that I haven’t forgotten what you did, and that I’m still relying on you despite all that because you’re one of the most skilled operatives in this or any other world. You love that I’m forced to work with you despite everything.”

“Shoot, you’ve really got me in a box,” Quattro admitted. “Let’s get inside before I start getting really sentimental.”

Cozy Glow pulled on the manual release handle, and air gushed out of the hatch as pressure equalized. It stank like electricity and ozone, alive in a way the dead space of Limbo just wasn’t.

“That’s not normal,” Destiny said. I didn’t put her down, because what was inside the hatch wasn’t what we expected.

Quattro took off her sunglasses to peer inside. “I didn’t study the blueprints but we might be in the wrong place. I don’t remember any part of the ship having an endless corridor made of neon lights and concrete.”

“It could be an illusion,” Cube suggested. She cast a spell and frowned. “That’s… really strange. It’s sort of real, but there’s a boundary layer. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

Destiny cast her own spell, and it made my hooves tingle. “I have,” she said after a moment. “I’ve seen it before. The space itself is folded. It’s similar to the vector trap in the Exodus Armor.”

“What does that mean for us?” Cozy Glow asked.

“The vector trap works by altering space to fairly arbitrary specifications. I don’t have time to go over the math, but you remember those choose-your-own-adventure books they made when we were foals? If normal space is reading a book from front to back, the altered space would be more like following those instructions. The vector trap itself works by making a closed loop. A pony puts something inside, and then it stays there until something else acts on it.”

“So if we go inside we could get trapped,” Cube noted. “That explains the boundary layer. It’s almost like an open-ended teleportation spell or a portal connecting two spaces.”

“We’ll find another way,” Cozy Glow said. She closed the hatch.

We opened the third hatch.

“It looks the same as the first two,” I said.

“It doesn’t just look the same, it is the same. Every external hatch has been rerouted to this virtual space.” Destiny shook her head. “She’s telling us we don’t have a choice. If we want to go inside, this is where we’re going.”

“Okay. Hold this.” I gave Destiny over to Cube. She levitated her up by the scruff of her neck, and Destiny looked even less pleased about this than when I’d been carrying her. I braced myself for some kind of awful disaster and cautiously flew inside the Exodus Red.

Passing through the hatch was like stepping into another world. The air pressure changed, the air was filled with static, and when I gingerly landed on the ground I felt something familiar.

“Are you dead?” Quattro asked.

“No, but… I’ve been here before,” I said. I looked around. There were open doorways going off in other directions, chest high walls and scattered objects made of simply, polygonal shapes.

“You have?” Cube asked.

“Yeah. This looks almost exactly like the illusions created by the virtual rides at Gator Land.”

Chapter 131: Welcome Home Great Slayer

I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff in my life, but nothing really compared to how stupid it was to walk into the most obvious trap I’d ever seen. I don’t know how she was doing it but Mom had taken complete control of the inside of the Exodus Red and I couldn’t recognize anything from the last time I’d been onboard.

It had been opulent in the way ritzy hotels had been back before the war. Gold trim on everything to make ponies think they were in Canterlot, marble, artistic vases and landscape paintings everywhere. It had been comfortable and, for ponies like me that didn’t grow up surrounded by wealth and luxury, it had been a vision of what could be. Better times. Plenty. Peace. As long as ponies bent the knee to Cozy Glow.

Now, things were different.

“This is so weird,” Cube said. She put a hoof on the wall. It was flat grey, like perfectly smooth concrete formed into square blocks, but where there should have been mortar between them, there was a gap filled with light, almost like recessed lighting but without a visible source. I couldn’t feel the crack when I tried, even though I could feel it.

“It’s a combination of illusion spells, force fields, and minor space manipulation,” Destiny said. “It’s highly advanced spellcasting, despite how simple the environment looks.”

“There was a virtual environment in Gator Land,” I said. “It looked a little like this, but platforms over the ocean instead of a broom closet.”

“Depending on how that was done, she might have been able to export some of the code. Like saving a template to reuse later.” Destiny’s horn flared red, and part of the wall glowed along with it for a few seconds before fading. “I can’t dispel it.”

“We’ll have to go through it the old fashioned way,” Cozy Glow said.

“Woah, woah, let’s think for a second,” Quattro cut in. “If this is some kind of giant illusion, doesn’t that mean it could change at any moment? What if we just get stuck in a box? Or a loop?”

“What choice do we have?” Cube asked.

“We can turn around and--” Quattro motioned to the back wall of the small room, where the airlock had been. Had been, past tense. It was a blank wall now. “Well, buck. I didn’t even see that happen.”

“That proves she can change things,” Destiny said. “We need to be extremely careful. It would be too easy to get separated in here.”

“And splitting up would be insane,” Cube agreed. “Chamomile, you’ve actually fought monsters like Mom, right? What do we need to know?”

“Oh, now we’re doing a briefing, when we’re inside her lair?” Quattro sighed.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve killed two dragons and a third one helped me with a giant changeling queen. They’re extremely powerful and dangerous. The green one was the weakest, and I had a special weapon at the time.”

“The Valkyrie,” Destiny said, nodding along. “It was a weapon designed for that explicit purpose by Kulaas.”

“Yeah, but it was still huge and breathed poison gas,” I said. “Even with the Exodus Armor, it was eating through the environmental seals. Mom ate its heart so she can probably make the same stuff. It’s bad stuff to get caught in.”

“I think it was some form of concentrated chlorine gas,” Destiny said. “We were a little busy trying to kill it and I never ran a full spectrographic analysis.”

“Anyway, regular weapons didn’t work. It just regenerates too fast. The black dragon was even worse. That one was part vampire. I got lucky and it got stunned by sunlight while it was trying to murder me. Even that didn’t completely kill it. It had acid for blood and when it was too badly hurt, its blood ate through the whole ship, top to bottom.”

“And then?” Cozy asked.

“She escaped to heal and Mom hacked her. That was probably my fault. I pulled a Valkyrie out of its body by getting into its micromachine network and… Mom’s apparently been able to keep track of everything I’ve been doing remotely because we’re both infected with the same batch of SIVA.”

Cozy Glow eyed me suspiciously “Can she still do that?”

“I don’t think so. Not since, uh, I had an update.” I shuffled my wings awkwardly. I still wasn’t sure what it all meant. That was the problem with being unique.

“It doesn’t matter much either way,” Cube said. “Think about where we are. Forget security cameras, she’s probably aware of everything happening.”

I swallowed nervously and looked around at the walls. They rippled.

“I was letting you get comfortable,” a voice said, coming right out of the shimmering air. The lights in the wall pulsed, moving like blood flowing in veins. “Welcome to my magnificence.”

“Mom,” I said.

“Chamomile. No matter how far we come, you keep crawling back to me. I hope you enjoy your stay. It will be permanent.”

The shimmer disappeared, along with the chill running down my spine.

“She was waiting for a dramatic moment to reveal herself,” Destiny sighed.

“Mom always was that kind of mare,” Cube admitted. “But she also hasn’t smashed the walls together to crush us into paste, so no matter what else, we know she’s not omnipotent.”

“At least some of the constraints we put on her are holding,” Cozy Glow assured us. “That means she’s crippled. No matter how strong you think she might be, she’s in chains. All she might be able to do is use party tricks to distract us. Does everypony remember what we’re here to do?”

“Find one of the terminals that can activate the fail safe,” I said.

“Exactly. If she’s still bound, that means the deadmare’s switch is still there too. We can drown her in boiling sulfuric acid and seal what’s left in epoxy. She sounds smug right now because she wants us to give up. She’s scared. And if she’s not scared, she should be! You’re the most talented and dangerous bunch of ponies we could hope for. I’m glad to have you at my back, even you, Quattro.”

“Thanks, I think,” the golden mare replied.

“We’re probably in more danger staying here than we are moving,” Destiny said. “I don’t know how many ponies she has under her control, but she was able to swarm us with them last time.”

“Hundreds of ponies are unaccounted for,” Cozy Glow agreed. “She could bury us in bodies. Here’s the plan - we’re going to try going in what should be the right direction. Even if she redecorated, the terminals can’t have moved much. If she disconnected them, she’d activate the system herself. Be ready for anything.”

I have to give her credit, she didn’t immediately turn around and tell me to take point. Cozy Glow touched the panel next to door, and when it flashed red she produced a red plastic card and swiped it. The terminal flickered between green and red before settling on green and opening with a distorted chime.

“Nopony locks me out of my ship,” she said. “I made sure I had secure access to everything on the Exodus Red. She disabled my biometrics, but not the backdoor.”

When the door opened I half-expected we’d be swarmed by hypnotized pony drones, but the corridor was open and empty, the air oddly thick and hazy. In combination with the neon lights in the walls it meant visibility was terrible. I looked at DRACO but it wasn’t able to scan much further than we could see. The smart rifle beeped, flashing a sad emoji.

“I know, buddy,” I said. I gave him a pat. “Don’t worry. You’re doing your best. Keep track of where we’ve been so we can find our way back.”

It beeped an affirmative at me.

“We might be able to use DRACO to tell if she changes anything around us,” Destiny suggested. “DRACO, sound an alert if there’s a significant discrepancy between local topography scans.”

It happily flashed an emoji, the rifle obviously glad to be useful. It reminded me of a particularly smart and well-trained dog. With anti-tank rounds and flares.

“This is more than just a little ominous, isn’t it?” I asked. The hallway was fairly wide and tall, which was great for those of us with wings and rifles. It was also lined with about the least subtle metaphor for mortality I’d ever seen. Coffin-shaped boxes were stood up against the neon-lit walls, each of them glowing faintly.

“Think she’s trying to scare us?” Quattro asked. She stopped in front of one of the coffins and looked at it, keeping her distance.

“Maybe she’s just got the same kind of interior design sense as Destiny,” I suggested.

“Hey!” Destiny huffed.

“I’ve been onboard the Exodus Black,” Cozy Glow noted. “I distinctly remember having to assure the ponies with me that the skulls in the walls were only Nightmare Night decorations.”

Destiny looked over at her. “But Nightmare Night is months away!”

“It’s a lot easier to tell yourself somepony really enjoys celebrating a holiday early than it is to come to terms with the idea that they keep their ancestors in the hallway as an artistic statement.”

“What is this?” Cube asked. She stopped in front of a floating polygon made of a few triangles arranged into a stretched-out octahedron. It had been hidden between two of the coffins, hovering in the air and bobbing slightly.

“Dangerous,” Quattro said. “Don’t touch it.”

“You have no idea if it’s dangerous,” Cube scoffed.

“Oh, you want to roll the dice on that one?” Quattro asked, lowering her sunglasses. “Then be my guest.” She turned her back on Cube, looking into the mist. Cube reluctantly backed away from the floating polygon.

“What’s wrong?” Cozy Glow asked, following Quattro’s gaze.

“Nothing. That’s what worries me. We know she has a bunch of ponies under her control, right? So where are they?”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Cube said.

I nodded in agreement and took up the rear. I followed the others past the big shiny diamond. I admit. I was a little curious. It was shiny, it had to have some purpose, right? I let everypony else get a few steps away in case it blew up in my face and I poked the floating shape.

I was almost disappointed when it didn’t react. It spun a little faster, but that was just because I’d given it a little extra momentum. I shrugged and turned to catch up with the others. Just as the thought that it might not be all that dangerous crossed my mind, a shard of unreal material as long as a combat knife slammed into my back.

“Gah!” I yelped, spinning around.

The polygon was unfolding in impossible directions. It twisted through a dimension I couldn’t usually see but part of me could understand, something I’d seen before when I was fighting mom in the digital realm.

Hooves and a head like twisted origami designed by somepony with only a vague idea of how anatomy worked and a big appreciation for modern art formed, the virtual soldier multiple times larger than the shape it had unfolded from.

“That’s not physically possible,” Quattro said helpfully.

“It’s made out of the same light and force fields as everything else around us. It’s not real!” Cube declared.

I flexed one wing, feeling the stab wound in my back.

“I don’t think that makes it any less deadly,” I said. I pulled the trigger, firing DRACO at point-blank range for the long gun. The mess of angles and intersecting planes blurred for a moment when the shell ripped through it, freezing for a few seconds, then resumed motion. “Uh,” I said, taking a step back.

“Right, my turn,” Cube said. Her pistols floated around her like a flock of deadly pets. She fired a burst of beams at it, the magical attacks having only slightly more effect than my shell had. The deadly illusion or projection or whatever it was only froze up for a second with each hit. It wasn’t even regenerating, it wasn’t being hurt at all, and worse than that the delay was getting smaller every time.

“Book it!” Cozy shouted. “We don’t need to fight it to win! We need to get to that terminal!” She bolted, bravely running away from the danger. I mean, she was also taking point and leading the way, but still. She didn’t even look back to make sure we were following her!

“Go!” I shouted, pushing Destiny ahead of me. I was worried she’d be slow and out of shape like most academics, but she moved like a machine. She caught my look.

“Synthetic body, remember? I’m almost as tough as you are!” She glanced back and fired a magical bolt from her horn, catching the pursuing killer and freezing it in its tracks while it adapted to the new form of attack.

“She’ll send those after us but not ponies?” I asked.

“She must be using them for something else,” Destiny said. We skidded to a halt. Cozy Glow was standing in the hallway, looking at a wall.

“This isn’t supposed to be here!” she yelled, kicking it.

“Adding walls in a virtual environment like this is easier than taking real ones away,” Destiny said. “We’ll have to go around.”

“Is there going to be a way in at all? If I knew I had a weakness I’d block it off entirely,” Quattro pointed out.

“Maybe we can do something with these to slow it down,” I suggested. I grabbed one of the coffins on the wall and tugged. The front panel came off, hitting the ground and blinking a few times before disappearing, though none of us really watched it go once we saw what was inside.

A pony stood on their hind legs, their forehooves folded over their chest. I thought for a moment that they were dead, but a close look revealed a slow rise and fall of their chest. Lights flashed around their head, a crown of neon lines like circuitry that ended in his skull, embedded deep inside.

“What is this?” Destiny whispered.

“I think I know,” I said after a moment. “Mom was doing… something to ponies back in Gator Land. She was eating their minds up from inside. Maybe she was using them like, like… extra computer power.”

“That would explain how she was able to start hacking Kulaas,” Destiny agreed reluctantly. “A distributed network made of biological computers. She controls their minds and then rewrites them into slaves.”

“So she’s maintaining this space using their minds and magic?” Cozy Glow asked to confirm. When Destiny nodded, Cozy Glow nodded back and turned to the entombed pony. Before any of us could ask what she was thinking, Cozy shot him. A beam bolt hit him in the center of his chest, and he screamed faintly, a chain reaction burning him into cinders in a terrible disintegration.

The wall blocking off the corridor blurred, turned into a chaos of overlapping squares and rectangles, then vanished, the neon light and virtual wall panels fading away from a short stretch of the path to show the real corridor underneath.

“What’s wrong with you?!” Cube gasped.

“A leader has to be ready to make sacrifices,” Cozy said firmly. “There’s no way of knowing if we can save them at all. More lives are at stake. If you can’t make good decisions, turn around now and go hide in the broom closet we were stuck in when we came here!”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Quattro said. The virtual assassin lurched towards us, triangles twisting through the air. It was almost as if there were triangles painted invisibly in the air and they were lighting up in sequence to show where it was rather than the shapes actually moving through space.

“We’re near one of the terminals,” Destiny said. She’d stopped to look at one of the real wall panels the disruption had revealed and pointed at a serial number on it that was clearly important to her even if it didn’t mean anything to me. “This is the right way.”

We ran. The thing chasing us hit the intersection between the real world and the simulated one. It was like it slammed into a glass wall, and it came to an instant halt. I stopped to watch it for a moment. The air shimmered, and part of the hallway disappeared again behind the illusion. It was clear the disruption was only going to last a short time.

“How far do we have to go?” I asked, chasing the others.

Something familiar tickled at the back of my mind while we ran. I’d never been here, in this bizarre half-real space, but somehow it was also very familiar. When we ran out of the hallway and into a wide, open area with two levels, a word came to mind.

Atrium. A Stable Atrium. That’s why the dimensions of the corridors, only partly disguised by the coffins standing at attention in them, seemed familiar.

“We’re in a Stable,” I said. The others looked at me. “The layout is exactly the same as the Stable that Mom came from! I went to school there for a few years!”

“That makes sense,” Destiny said. “This place is made from her memories. She might not even be conscious that she used the Stable as a template!”

“That’s good news,” Cozy Glow said, smiling. “That means you know where we need to go, Chamomile. I thought we’d have to explore blindly, but we’ve got a guide.”

I nodded. “We should go to the Overmare’s office.”

“Why?” Quattro asked.

Cube scoffed. “Because Mom has an ego, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“It’s also one of the most secure places in the Stable and the real thing had the main maneframe terminal. If she’s blurred reality and memory together, we might be able to find what we’re looking for there.”

“Excellent,” Cozy Glow said. She put a hoof on my shoulder. “You’ll have to lead the way for a little while. Can you take point? I know it’s dangerous, and I wouldn’t ask if there was another way.”

“I almost believe you care,” I said. The worst part was, even though she was a monster she was still right. I needed to take point. “This way. I got taken up there a lot to get yelled at by grown-ups so I remember the way pretty well from here.”

It was down a hallway, up two levels, and then immediately to the right into the Overmare’s waiting room. I flashed back to when I was a filly. It hadn’t looked exactly like this, but it had been almost as scary. The long walk up the stairwell was a reminder I didn’t belong there - they hadn’t built it wide enough for flying. Nothing was open enough except in the atrium, and I got in trouble when I tried to fly there.

I hadn’t been sorry to leave, even if I’d been sorry about the reason.

“Be ready for anything,” Quattro warned. “I’m not sure we actually went up any stairs. It might be part of the illusion, like we’re trotting on a treadmill.”

“Are you sure?” Cozy Glow asked.

“No. Usually my sense of direction is excellent, but this place makes me feel dizzy.”

“Stay behind me and get ready to move if something jumps out at us,” I warned. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

The floor should have vibrated. It should have been jumping under my hooves like there was an oncoming train, because as soon as those words left my mouth, something the size of a train hit me. I barely had time to look at it before I was battered back and slammed into the wall, which was totally unyielding, as solid as concrete and without the rugged industrial character.

“You know, I think Mom took that as a request to make something terrible happen,” I groaned, getting up. Part of me hoped that the thing wouldn’t keep charging at me, but there was no such luck. It looked like a rhinoceros with one of those coffins lining the virtual Stable’s walls as a head, a thick crust of spike growing from it in a thicket of pain.

I would have been forced back after grabbing it by the horns if there was any back to be forced into. I was up against the wall and it was arbitrarily strong, not bound by any physics except the ones my mom’s imagination wrote into the world.

“Buck!” I groaned.

“Hold on, I’m helping!” Cube shouted. Tiny beam blasts from pistols pattered against the polygons of the thing’s hide, doing absolutely nothing to it. I don’t think she even got its attention.

“It’s wrapped around one of the sleepers!” Destiny shouted. “They’re controlling it like a robot’s CPU!”

“What do I do about it?!” I asked, trying to shove the thing back.

“This,” Quattro said. She dropped down on it from above, kicking the coffin open. The door exploded into polygonal shrapnel before dissolving into nothingness, revealing the pony inside, riding inside the beast like it was a tank.

“I’m not going to shoot an innocent mare!” I yelled.

“I know,” Quattro said. She fired. It was entirely unnecessary. Unlike Cozy Glow, who was at least using beam rifles for a quick and easy kill, Quattro had a rocket launcher strapped into her battle saddle, and it was neither quick nor clean. Blood splattered against my face along with smoke and fire from the blast.

The monster roared one more time, then fell apart, the polygons making up its body simply coming apart at the seams and blinking into non-existence. The pressure holding me to the wall vanished instantly.

I looked up at her. “What the buck is wrong with you?!”

“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” Quattro said. “You’ve made too many hard decisions already. Let us make some mistakes too. I’ll be sure to regret it later if we somehow live through all this.”

She trotted back towards a door.

“So is this the office?” she asked. I glared at her, but couldn’t get really mad when I knew she was mostly right. I stomped past her, wiping blood from my face. Destiny looked like she wanted to say something but, maybe because she was smarter than I was, just stayed quiet.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

I opened the door, and the simplified panel slid into the geometry of the wall. Inside, one real desk in an island of reality sat where the Overmare’s terminal should have been, the rest of the horseshoe-shaped desk made of blank cubes. The desk looked like it was under a spotlight chasing the grey and neon away, the edges fizzing and blurry with static.

“That’s what we’re looking for,” Cozy confirmed. “Good work, Chamomile.”

“Why did she leave it like that?” I asked, carefully easing into the room and looking for trouble. “Why not hide it?”

“She might have been afraid that she’d trigger the fail-deadly system and kill herself in the process,” Cozy suggested. “If she was really afraid, she should have tried a little harder to keep ponies out.”

“Yes, she should have,” Destiny mumbled, looking worried. We all walked into the office once it was clear there wasn’t a hammer ready to slam down on us.

Cozy Glow walked confidently over to the terminal, reached for the keyboard, and her hoof went right through it like she was trying to grab a sunbeam. The desk and terminal flickered and vanished, the spotlight of reality vanishing.

“An illusion?!” Cozy growled. “She’s making a fool out of me!”

The door slammed shut behind us, and the air got heavy. It felt like ozone and storms.

The walls peeled away from us, the flat grey fading to black and the neon grout lingering for a few moments longer, hanging exposed in the empty space around us like the bars of a cage in an abyss.

“Are you afraid?” asked my mother’s voice from all around us in the darkness. There was something wrong with it, an echo that made me think of a chorus all speaking at once, with a background blur of noise as if a crowd was watching us from the shadows. “What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence? You will only be a footnote in history, a mention along the path to my glorious ascension.”

Shapes rose out of the dark beyond, a massive beast in the impossible distance. I knew it wasn’t really there. We were inside a small office room. I couldn’t see what was really there because illusions had been plastered over everything. Nothing was real. It was a trick.

“Give it up!” Cozy Glow shouted. She was totally unafraid, despite seeing the same thing I was. “There’s only room for one pony to rebuild the world, and that pony is me!”

“You have no conception of what it takes to rebuild the world. You are small, in body, mind, and spirit.” The shape lunged forward. I flinched. Instead of smashing through the walls that still had to be there, a pane appeared in the air, showing my mother’s face, barely still recognizable as anything that had once been a pony. The edges faded into red, blue, and green scales that spread out to cover the edges of the image. The scales got smaller and smaller with each layer until they were individual pixels on the virtual screens, blurring into a rainbow haze.

“I think we might have underestimated how much she can change,” Cube whispered.

“I am not an unkind goddess, let me grant you a gift.”

The virtual screens around us faded, walls seeming to slide back into place until we were standing in the Overmare’s office again. The back wall lit up and parted, splitting down the middle with a release of static-edged mist. The temperature of the air dropped a few degrees, and the lights dramatically focused on what was inside.

It was one of the Exodus cryopods. I’d seen a bunch of them so they weren’t exactly surprising. I thought Mom was going to reveal that she was holding somepony I cared about hostage. It’s the kind of evil thing I could see her doing. Maybe even something worse, like a cute puppy or a bag of kittens and a demand we surrender.

I’ll be perfectly honest, that might have worked better than what she did have.

A defog cycle clicked on, and the frost over the viewport of the cryopod melted away to reveal the contents.

“Say hello to an old friend,” Mom said.

Inside was about the last pony I ever expected to see. Rain Shadow. The pony that had tried to kill me an order of magnitude more times than anypony else, who carried a grudge so large that it was truly legendary.

“That’s impossible,” I said. I wasn’t even surprised. What could shock me at this point? Of course he was here, somehow.

“We retrieved his body after the launch site debacle,” Cozy said. “Unfortunately, he was already dead.”

Rain Shadow was a mess, supported by wires and cables. He wasn’t breathing, and the frost on his face and exposed skin made it clear. This wasn’t a pony on life support, this was a corpse being preserved.

“What did you do to him?” Cube asked, scowling.

“We used a lot of experimental procedures on him, at his request. Some of them might have been medically useful. We put him in a cryopod so it could be studied later.” Cozy shrugged. “I was hoping we’d find a way to enhance ponies to the same level he’d been enhanced, but without as much trauma or pain.”

“You were keeping him on ice to use him for spare parts,” Quattro corrected.

“It was explicitly what he wanted!” Cozy said defensively. “When he first agreed to the procedures to enhance him into Tetra, Rain Shadow wanted his body donated to science if he died. He wanted to make sure he helped other ponies.”

“No, he wanted to murder me,” I corrected.

“Okay, yes, that’s fair,” Cozy Glow admitted. “He did want to murder you. I already said several times that it was a mistake to use him. I underestimated how unstable his mental state was.”

“And you’re sure he’s dead?” I asked. “I’ve thought he was dead before and it didn’t stick.”

“He was declared dead weeks ago and he was frozen in a block of ice ever since,” Cozy assured me. “He isn’t going to get up.”

All of us, very aware of the world we lived in, looked at Rain Shadow. For some reason, that line didn’t tempt him to suddenly draw breath and rise from the grave.

“Oh, I’m sorry, was that my cue?” Mom asked, her echoing, godlike voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let me get that for you, dear.”

The pod door cracked open with a pneumatic hiss. I hadn’t been prepared for Rain Shadow to smell like rotting meat. The stink filled the air around me, and it was one of the most unpleasant things I’d experienced in weeks. It was old body odor and disease and rot and rusting metal all at once.

“Whew, I think he’s gone off,” I said. I could almost see the stink lines.

“I told you, he’s already dead,” Cozy said. “He was ripe when we found him and hasn’t improved with age. Freezing him only kept it from getting worse, it didn’t make him any fresher.”

“I think he’s even more rotten than he smells,” Cube said. “He’s melting!”

Rain Shadow’s body was drooping, the muscles sliding away from bone and even the bone starting to erode around the edges like a sandcastle at high tide. It was happening so quickly I’d compare it to a wax sculpture in front of a blowtorch.

“That’s not normal,” Destiny said. “He’s not rotting. Bone doesn’t decay like that!”

“An illusion?” Quattro asked. “It smells real.”

“Worse, I think it’s SIVA!”

Where the drops of Rain Shadow’s flesh hit the ground, they turned grey, then the silver color of mercury. The rotting corpse shivered, impossibly lurching into motion. Lightning crackled around the tiny bit of remaining flesh.

“C-c-c-” he struggled to say something through lips that had already bloated and turned to ragged-edged jelly. “Chamomile!”

“I should have known this was too easy,” I groaned.

Chapter 132: SkullHacker

I was watching my most persistent enemy literally start to rise from the dead, half-defrosted muscles cracking with frost and melting from the micromachines eating them all at once. It shouldn’t by all rights have been possible. He’d been dead for a good, long time and a doctor had actually checked on that to make sure.

Then again, I’d woken up in a morgue before.

I slammed the lid of the cryopod closed. I wasn’t gonna deal with this today if I could avoid it.

“How do I lock this thing?!” I yelled over at Destiny. She rushed over to the panel on the side of the pod and started pressing buttons.

“I built these things to have emergency exits, not emergency seals!” she yelled back. I held the door shut. Something hit the other side. Not hard. Not yet. I knew it would get stronger. “I’m disabling some of the settings and forcing a test cycle. That should work!”

The metal under my hooves grew colder, liquid air cycling through it. Another blow hit the inside of the lid. I held on tight. The third hit was weaker. A fourth didn’t come immediately. I held a little more, ignoring the chill, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Did that do it?” I asked.

“You know, I’m starting to regret ever making SIVA,” Destiny sighed. “We wouldn’t have been able to make the Exodus Arks without its ability to manufacture advanced materials cheaply, but all the ferro-fibrous plating and endo-steel beams in the world aren’t worth this much trouble.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “Maybe in the end, the real disaster isn’t the rampant micromachines, it’s the friends we made along the way.”

“I don’t think that’s quite the lesson to take away from my lifetime of regrets.”

I tried a different one. “The world-threatening machine plague was inside us all along and we just had to believe in ourselves?”

“Technically true, but I hate it.”

“Wow, are you two going to kiss?” Cozy Glow asked politely, by which I sarcastically mean that she was extremely rude.

“I’m not into mares,” Destiny sighed. “She can kiss Midnight after we finish saving the world.”

“That’s more dangerous than you think,” I said. “She bites.”

We all laughed, because it was a good joke about vampires and I definitely wasn’t the only one who found it funny, please trust me as a narrator my jokes are great.

No matter how funny or unfunny it might have been in that money, the jokes all died a moment later when another sound came from the cryopod. It wasn’t a heavy punch or slam. Instead, more horrifyingly, it was a gentle knock, like someone politely stopped at a door. Destiny looked at the control panel.

“It’s the temperature of liquid nitrogen in there,” she whispered. “Even SIVA should be inert!”

“Chamomile,” said a voice muffled by the thick walls of the cryopod. It wasn’t Rain Shadow’s voice. That would have been bad but I was expecting it. This was worse. It was my mother’s voice. “I know you can hear me.”

She knocked again. I looked at the small port looking into the pod. It was frozen over, a thick layer of frost hiding whatever was inside.

“It could be an illusion,” Cozy Glow said. “She’s trying to distract us. Let’s get out of here and go down to Engineering. We can trigger everything there manually. It’s just more dangerous since we’ll be in the same room as her.”

“Silly girl, all these rooms are mine.”

The door to the pod opened on its own, the locks popping even while Destiny was yelping and tapping at the control panel, trying to stop it. The panel went dark, not even giving her the hope that she might be able to do something.

What stepped out of the pod -- and the stepping was notable since Rain Shadow’s limbs hadn’t been included in what was left of his body -- was a pony even taller than I was. Six draconic wings spread wide, each pair in a different color. Blue, red, and green. Golden scales covered her body in thick armor plates, dotted with gems in those same three colors. Even my mother’s mane was gone, replaced with a crown of glittering horns and a forest of metallic spikes. She looked down at us with black eyes.

“That’s much better,” she said, yawning like she’d woken up from a nap. Her mouth was all fangs, rows of teeth like a shark’s. “I decided it would be nice if we could talk face to face. Nice for me. I haven’t had the chance to stretch my legs for a little while.”

“I don’t appreciate what you’re doing to my ponies,” Cozy Glow said. “I demand you release their minds and bodies immediately. I’m prepared to let you keep the ship as your tomb if you agree to letting them go unharmed. We can go our separate ways and hopefully never encounter each other again.”

“That’s so tempting!” Mom gasped, she chuckled. “Not really. It’s a terrible deal. I already have your people, and your ship, and so much more. You haven’t even noticed that I took your two friends.”

“What?” Cozy asked. She looked at me. When our eyes met I realized who my Mom was talking about.

Quattro fired a rocket at me without even saying a cool one-liner first. I had plenty of time to react. I don’t know if that was because Quattro was a spy and only on the level of a regular-old elite soldier and not a super deadly post-equine killer or because she was fighting the control. Despite my sore feelings about how often she’d betrayed me and other ponies, she had saved my life more times than I could easily count and probably wouldn’t have shot me if she wasn’t being mind-controlled.

A twist of will and a lot of help from thaumoframe put a wall of magic between us. The rocket hit and exploded into a wall of fire and smoke, blinding me.

“This corpse was full of so many useful things,” Mom noted. She hadn’t bothered stepping down herself yet, watching me with amusement. “Now that I know how your little trick to block my enchantment spells works, I can get around it.”

A constellation of pistols flew over the top of my shield and fired, two of the bolts hitting Destiny and the rest scattering across my body. It stung a little but seeing Destiny get shot was what really broke my concentration.

“No!” I yelled.

“I’m okay!” Destiny said. She wasn’t that okay. She had burns where the beams had hit. She was definitely tougher than the average pony. That was when the second rocket hit me in the chest and threw me across the room to smack into the wall like a stupid bat-winged rag doll.

“How are you going to fight when you’ll only hurt ponies you care about?” Mom teased. “I know you don’t care about me, but surely you care about these two.”

“Shut up!” Cozy Glow screamed. “Everypony keeps trying to take what’s mine! This is supposed to be my ship! My ponies! My Equestria! You don’t get to take everything away from me!”

She jumped at my mother. It was almost comical. My mother was more of a pony-sized golden dragon than a pony at this point and simply held Cozy Glow back with a single talon. Cozy Glow fought against the grip, caught up in the grip of some terrible rage.

“Your implants aren’t quite the same,” Mom noted. “You saved the best for yourself, hm?”

“I’m going to rip you out of the ship with my bare hooves!” Cozy Glow shouted.

“Or maybe you’re just too mad to be controlled!” Mom said with a shrug, tossing Cozy aside. “Now, you aren’t going to hurt your friends, so--”

I horfed up a sploot. I’d love to say that it was something dignified like a drake’s breath weapon, but it was way more like a cat violently attacking somepony by having a hairball at them, with the same noises. In my case, though, it wasn’t just hair and sick. When I’d been rebuilt, a glue cannon had been taken apart and used as material, and somehow that ended up translating into a gross but effective weapon.

Foaming glue splashed over Quattro’s forelegs and battle saddle, freezing up her triggers and locking her in place. It set almost instantly, the glue expanding into a connected series of balls like a complex molecule made of concrete-hard epoxy.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Mom said, surprised.

“It’s not really pleasant,” I told her, shaking off the last of the stunning blow from the rocket that had left me a little shaken. “DRACO, anti-air,” I said.

The smart rifle switched to air-bursting shotgun shrapnel blasts, auto-aiming itself and knocking Cube’s floating pistols out of the air, the beam weapons exploding when their batteries ruptured. Cube looked annoyed, and I was sure that was her real expression and not part of the mind control, because I’d seen it before.

She was so focused on being annoyed at me that she didn’t notice Destiny coming up behind her and clubbing her on the back of the head, knocking her to the ground before she could come up with some deadly attack spell.

“That’s for shooting my brand-new body,” Destiny said, kicking her while she was down.

“Please don’t do that to my sister,” I sighed.

“She deserves it.”

“That’s so cruel,” Mom sighed. “Well, so much for that idea. I should have known being Chamomile’s friend wasn’t any guarantee that they’d actually be useful as hostages. So very many of her friends have died already!”

“You know Mom, you’re a real bitch sometimes,” I said. “Is there any point to me fighting you right now? That’s not your body. You’re just controlling it remotely, like when you had that virtual body back in Gator Land.”

“I’m glad you’ve gotten a little smarter over the years,” Mom sighed, smiling. “It’s true. Even if you dropped a megaspell on this body, it would be no worse for me than if somepony closed a book I’d been reading. I might be a bit startled at how rude they are, but it wouldn’t hurt me.”

“So?” I asked again.

“So the difference is, if I kill you, it sticks,” she reminded me. I hadn’t considered that. I should have. She moved faster than was actually possible, her image not blurring so much as separating into frames that stretched across the space between us, afterimages hanging in the air that ended with the back of her talon impacting my face.

It hadn’t had any real effort behind it. I was on the ground. The air finally cracked in a sonic boom as physics reasserted itself and the air fought to get out of the way.

“I’m trying to decide if I should offer to let you surrender,” Mom said. I tried to get up. Her talon was on my chest. She squeezed just a little. The edges sliced through the Exodus Armor and into my flesh. “I feel like it would be a wasted effort. For all your failings you’re wonderfully persistent, Chamomile.”

“I’ll let you surrender when I see you in Tartarus!” Cozy Glow screamed. She slammed into Lemon’s back, grabbing around her neck from behind and squeezing. “You think you can ignore me? Ponies have ignored me my whole life, and they always regret it in the end!”

“I am having a family discussion,” Mom said, her voice ice-cold. Her wings twisted, the draconian spans moving like backwards talons to grab the armored pegasus would-be-queen and throwing her off, the edges of the clawed wings biting into Cozy’s armor and leaving her with cuts like she’d fallen into barbed wire.

Destiny ran towards us, and a magical bolt from the constellation of horns crowning Lemon Zinger blasted her in the other direction.

“Now where were we?” Mom asked. Her talon tightened slightly, the points burrowing into my flesh, sliding through skin and hitting my ribs. Something beeped. She stopped in confusion and twisted around like a cat to look at her own back.

Something shaped like a dinner plate was stuck to her spine. The little light on it flashed from green to red, and it exploded with a deafeningly sharp crack. Mom blew apart entirely, a wash of heat and plasma residue rushing over me as her body collapsed into parts.

“I told you not to underestimate me,” Cozy panted. She got up and produced a healing potion, downing it quickly. The small cuts across her body sealed, and she shook herself off, her mane somehow falling back into almost-perfect order. “I brought a few plasma breaching charges in case we needed to go through a bulkhead or two. They work just fine against dragons, too, as long as you can attach them properly.”

The walls around us flickered, revealing the real shape of the room we were in between blinks.

“My head…” Cube groaned. “What happened?”

“You’ve been under mind control,” Destiny told her. She stepped over to her and looked in her eyes. “And you might have a concussion. Or a mild stroke. I’m not the right kind of doctor to tell. Drink a healing potion. Call somepony else in the morning.”

“Why am I glued to the deck?” Quattro asked.

“Because you’re a terrible friend sometimes,” Cozy Glow informed her.

“And the solution is weird bondage?”

“Getting rid of Lemon’s avatar must have disrupted her local control,” Destiny said. “It’s not fatal, but with how directly she was controlling it, it would be like a pony losing a limb, or a computer being shut down improperly. It’ll take time for her to bring it back up.”

“Let’s not waste the opening,” Cozy said. “We’re going to engineering. We’ll do things manually.”

“Leave us here,” Cube sighed. “If she controlled us once she can do it again, Quattro and I are liabilities.”

“I could have told you that,” Cozy Glow scoffed. “Even if she doesn’t control you, you make great hostages. Neither of us wants you hurt. I might not like how things have gone but you two are still my friends and once this is over I want to make things right between us again.”

“Even me?” Quattro asked.

“Even you. I guess.”

“Is that supposed to be twitching?” Cube asked. She pointed to the lump of flesh that was left on the floor. It was starting to move.

“No, it’s not,” Destiny said.

“Let me try something,” I said. I got up off my sore butt and poked the mess. I could feel the SIVA trying to self-organize back into something between organs and mechanisms. It came across the low-frequency network the micromachines made like a distant chatter over the radio. I closed my eyes and pushed my way in.

I had been given a lot of access codes since this whole thing had started. Passwords and protocols for a bunch of networks. Together, they let me sneak inside before my mother could completely restore her connection. Just like the Black Dragon’s SIVA back in Gator Land, I was able to find the kill switch and flip it, turning the machines into nothing more harmful than dust.

“I think that got it,” I said. The twitching had stopped. “Good thing, too. She’d probably eat you guys for biomass next. You know, just to upset me.”

“I’m glad that didn’t happen,” Cube said, rubbing her sore head. “I’ll try and chip Quattro free and get off this boat before you blow it up. If you get a chance, shoot her in the head for me. I didn’t know mind control hurt like that.”

“Yes, it’s mind control that caused the bruises,” Destiny agreed.

“Good luck,” Cube said. “You’re going to need it.”

Flat panels of red, blue, and green had replaced the already bare-bones corridors we ran down. It felt like we’d shrunk down until we were inside a terminal screen, the pixels blown up as large as kite shields.

“Do you have any more of those breaching charges?” Destiny asked.

“I might,” Cozy Glow admitted. “They’re not strong enough for the hull, but they’ll get us through a wall or floor.”

“Good! I’ve been casting detection spells and I’m not convinced she’s simulating a whole ship! I think she’s only rendering what we can see and a small buffer zone around it. If we can get outside that area…”

“We can navigate more easily?” I guessed.

“More than that, she might lose track of us entirely!”

“I like the way you think,” Cozy Glow said. “Where do we breach?”

“Look for a spot where the illusion is thin. That’s where any force fields will be weakest!”

“Does that mean killing more of the ponies she enslaved?” Cozy Glow asked, looking uncomfortable with the idea. The ponies lining the corridors were doing most of the heavy lifting in the simulation. Taking a few out would almost certainly do what we needed, but…

“No,” Destiny said. “I know, I know. It’s not just because of ethics, if it makes you feel better. They’ve been turned into hardware connected directly to Lemon. If we start knocking them out she’ll pinpoint us right away. A place where there’s a natural hole means she might not feel it when we breach, like a blind spot.”

I nodded and kept my eyes open. We only passed one more intersection before I spotted something. “Over here!” I yelled.

A section between two bulkheads was entirely glitched out, the panels not lining up correctly and splitting apart like stained glass before failing entirely, letting us see through to the actual walls and floors of the Exodus Red.

“Perfect,” Destiny said. “Let’s blow through the wall here.”

“No,” Cozy said. “If we go through the wall we’ll probably just loop back around into one of the illusions. We might not even know about it until it’s too late.”

“Plus she’ll look around this area first,” I agreed. “She might be a crazy bitch dragon now, but she used to be a pony and part of her thinks like one. The first place she’ll be looking is this deck.”

Cozy and I both looked up. “Ceiling?” she asked. I nodded, and she flew up to affix the demolition charge, ushering us back away from it once it was magnetically locked in place.

“Why not the floor?” Destiny asked. “Engineering is below us.”

“Exactly why we’re going up,” Cozy said. “Altitude is energy. When you’re in a dangerous situation you want the height advantage.”

“I’m not sure that’s true inside a building.”

The demo charge blew, a shaped explosion blasting a hole in the ceiling edged with plasma residue. Cozy went through without hesitation, and I followed right after her, grabbing Destiny despite her protests. The heat right around the metal was incredible, like flying through a wall of flame for a brief moment before we emerged on the other side.

“You were right,” Cozy Glow said. Beyond that hole, the ship looked normal, or at least as normal as her decorating allowed. It was the familiar white faux-marble and gold trim as far as we could see.

I looked back where we’d come from and experienced a lot of flavors of vertigo all at once. The illusions must have only been visible from one side, because now that I was outside looking in, all the ‘back sides’ of the walls were gone, letting me see a complex of coffins and hallways hanging in space that wasn’t quite empty and black, a void of nothing that trailed afterimages.

“That’s not good to look at,” I decided, turning away.

“Keep moving. I want to get as far away from here as we can before she recovers,” Cozy Glow said. I could tell the simulation below us was starting to recover, the textures of the walls and floors returning. I put Destiny down on the deck, and we started running.

“These ships are way too big,” I groaned. We’d been going for at least ten minutes at a dead run. Don’t get me wrong, I was in good physical shape, but it was a lot of going and not a lot of getting there.

“That’s because we’re going on a specific route,” Cozy Glow said. “We can avoid most of the surveillance if we go the right way.”

“And you just happen to know the right way?”

Cozy shrugged. “I learned early in my career that it’s easier for everypony if you deliberately avert your eyes from some things. The state needs ponies who make sure things get done without any record or inconvenient questions.”

“Wow the way you say that makes it sound incredibly sinister.”

“No, no. The Ministries did sinister things. I was doing patriotic things. There’s a big difference between the two.”

“I have this crazy feeling that those things were exactly the same except you got to decide who got disappeared when you were in charge.”

Destiny chuckled. “I think you’ve got her number.”

“It’s not hard,” my Mother’s voice came from around the corner. She stepped into the corridor in front of us with perfect dramatic timing.

“Especially when the number is two,” a second voice added. Another copy of her trotted around lazily from the other side. Both of them grinned and showed fangs.

“Damnit, Chamomile!” Cozy Glow groaned. “I thought you killed her! Why are you so bad at this?”

“I’ll take the one on the right,” I said. “You go left.”

A talon battered me aside like a playful cat deciding to have some fun before dinner. A collection of antique vases and planters caught me, and the hit rattled my marbles enough that for a long moment I was more worried that I’d smashed through a five hundred year old relic than the impossible odds against me. Then I saw hope. There was a Canterlot Museum mark at the bottom of the vase. It had just been a reproduction and basically worthless. Even better, the bonsai tree seemed okay.

I got back to my hooves, trying to keep eyes on Mom. She moved in a series of afterimages, the best my brain could do to process the speed. It might have been entirely invisible if I hadn’t been augmented so much over time. I surged to my own top speed. It was still sluggish compared to her.

I dodged aside with as much speed as I could manage. I was in the best physical shape of my life, and she was exceeding it without even trying. I could tell she wasn’t going all-out. She wasn’t really fighting, she was amusing herself and, at best, testing her own limits. It was disheartening to find that even with my wired reflexes pushing my body as hard as it could, the best I could do was match her non-effort.

Her talon strike hit the deck and crushed the steel with pure force. I could see what she was doing, big obvious movements with no attempt at being subtle. I snapped the blades out of my hoof.

She brought a talon down, and this time I was able to stop it with mine, my lightning claws cutting into her metal flesh. Power fields ripped her apart with inexorable force. She looked surprised and backed away on three legs, having plenty of wings to stabilize her. This was my chance! I rushed her while she was off-balance. I had plenty of sympathy, I knew what it was like to have one bad limb.

We weren’t more than three paces apart. With the first step I took, bones grew from her ruined talon. A second step, and a webbing of tendon and muscle wrapped around them with whiplash speed. A third step and she was grabbing my fetlock while scales erupted from her regenerating hide.

She smiled at me.

I brought the other Lightning Claw down on the smile. Her head went flying. Grabbing me had only locked her in place for the moment I needed. Her headless body stepped back in confusion. Time started flowing again.

“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t mean it. I kicked her aside, the body slumping and going still.

A wash of hot air and ozone rushed over me. I looked to the left. Cozy Glow was panting and heaving, holding one foreleg tight to her chest. Half of her armor was torn away. There was a hole where the other copy of my mother should have been, golden fragments dripping along with the red-hot edges of the deck where the explosive had cut through it.

“So much for my safe route,” Cozy Glow groaned.

“It bought us some time,” Destiny said. “We’re close to Engineering. It’s possible she’s watching all approaches. This could simply be the limit of how far we can go in secret.”

“If we can’t do stealth we can still do speed,” I said. “Taking out one of those avatars bought us a while last time. Taking out two should be twice as long!”

“They didn’t seem as powerful as the first one either,” Cozy Glow said. She wiped her hoof across her lips, looking at the trace of blood across her red and gold armor. “I’m out of demo charges. I’m going to have to be extra creative if we run into more trouble.”

“I doubt they’d keep working. She would eventually adapt. Specialized armor, plasma shields, something,” Destiny said. “You’re lucky it worked twice.”

“It didn’t,” Cozy Glow said. “She’s not magnetic anymore. I couldn’t attach the mine. I had to hold it backwards against my chest like Equestria’s most dangerous shotgun.”

“Is this a good time for a moral about teamwork?” I asked.

“We didn’t use teamwork. At all.”

“Maybe that’s the moral! Next time we’ll work together.”

“Celestia liked giving ponies morals, and you know what?” Cozy Glow said, stomping up to me and glaring up. “She was a really great pony. Never be afraid to learn a lesson no matter who you learn it from.”

Cozy Glow gave me a solid pat on the shoulder.

“Also I think most of my ribs are broken, so I’m going to chug down some healing potions until my heart isn’t being poked by bone spurs.”

“Good plan,” I agreed. “Destiny, we still going the right way?”

“I think so. I’m less sure now that I know she can affect this area. Assuming the serial numbers on these wall panels are accurate, we’re very close.” She pointed to the serial coordinates printed on the corner. “Since it looks like we might actually get there, we need a plan for when we do.”

“Activate the acid pumps, melt her into sludge, shoot anything that moves?” I suggested.

“We’re going to be in the room with the acid pumps, and so will whoever she has in Engineering. A lot of ponies were stationed there. We might have to accept more casualties.”

“There’s a good chance they’re gone already,” I admitted quietly. “I’ll try to save them if I can. I don’t know if Cozy Glow will do her best to rescue them or just shoot them herself to keep my mom from having hostages.”

“I don’t want us arguing about what to prioritize when we get in there,” Destiny explained. “Teamwork is important. The acid tank is going to be at the top, it’s gravity-fed so it works even in the worst case scenarios. If we have to, we can shoot the valves open.”

“What’s our plan for not melting?” I asked.

“Don’t stand in front of the acid,” Destiny said with a shrug. “It seems silly to come up with a detailed plan when we don’t know what the room looks like right now. We might be able to simply walk in and press the big red ‘Stop’ button. Or we might have to kick pipes apart. Or we might decide it’s not worth it and run away to ask Flurry Heart for help.”

“I’m really hoping she shows up at the end to blast all this to atoms,” I admitted. “Even if she terrifies me almost as much as, you know.”

“Did you mean me?” my mother asked, a golden avatar stepping into the corridor behind us.

“Or maybe me?” A second one got out ahead of us.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Chamomile.” A third one joined them. Then a fourth. A fifth. I stopped counting because I was out of hooves and already demoralized. “Of us.”

“Remember that thing I said about teamwork?” I asked.

“I do,” Cozy Glow confirmed. She eyed the wall of deadly enemies, their golden scales shining chromed and almost blinding in the bright light of the ship’s corridor. Cozy Glow held her fire, not that a beam rifle was going to do a lot of good.

“I hate teamwork when the enemy gets to use it. Got any clever ideas? You’re some kind of strategic genius, right?”

“If I was really a genius I wouldn’t have walked into a trap,” she mumbled. “When you’re facing an overwhelming force, there are three options. Keep them from using that force with a careful choice of battleground.”

“I don’t think that’s an option.” Even if we ducked into a narrow side corridor or room with a single door, the bulkheads wouldn’t hold up forever and there was no Enclave cavalry coming to save the day as reinforcements.

“Two, we surrender and wait for rescue.”

I looked at my mother’s mad grin. “I think that isn’t really an option either.”

“Three, fight like crazy and hope for the best.”

Destiny gave her a skeptical look. “Does that ever work?”

“If you don’t like it, bring your own guns next time,” Cozy Glow said. She shoved a beam rifle into Destiny’s magical grip and drew a sword from her Exodus Armor’s vector trap. With a squeeze on the handle, a crackling power field sparked along the edge of the blade. “I’ll take the hundred on the right this time, and you get the hundred on the left.”

Chapter 133: Metal Hell

“That didn’t go so well,” I groaned. I was alive to groan, so it also hadn’t gone as poorly as possible, but good days didn’t involve being tied up after being casually beaten unconscious by dozens of copies of my own mother. That was the kind of thing that would really mess a pony up if it happened in their formative years. Scratch that, I was pretty sure it was still going to mess me up if I lived long enough.

“I hate all of you,” Cozy Glow said. She coughed. Blood sprayed from her lips. Something was broken inside her from the heavy hooves. I wasn’t much of a medic but I was pretty sure she needed medical attention.

“You’re jealous because your organs aren’t made of myomer fibers and self-healing composites,” Destiny said. She wasn’t any freer than me or Cozy Glow, but she’d avoided the worst of the beating by virtue of curling up and yelling that she surrendered. Some might call it cowardice, but since she ended up in exactly the same situation as us but with fewer bruises, it edged its way into actually being strategic.

“What happened while I was unconscious?” I asked. “The last thing I remember is having my skull rammed through a bulkhead.”

I couldn’t see much around us. We were in a bright circle of light, a spotlight shining down on us and metal bands holding our hooves and wings. They slithered slightly when I shifted, alive in that disquieting venous way that SIVA-made stuff could be. I didn’t have much room to struggle, and a cursory attempt just got them to hold on tighter. I’d been trying to get my Lightning Claws to deploy the whole time, but nothing was working, like the wires had me in a hooflock. I was going to have to come up with a plan instead of just using dumb brute force.

“I think we’re in Engineering, in the SIVA containment chamber,” Destiny said quietly.

“You think?” I asked.

“It didn’t look like this the last time I was here!” she said. “She’s been busy.”

Cozy spat, a splatter of red on the deck. “If she’s been able to mind control ponies without us noticing, she might have been all but loose for weeks.”

“You’re right,” my mother said. One of the duplicates stepped into the circle of light from the darkness beyond. “All I had to do was alter their memories a little bit. It was the easiest thing in the world! Ponies would walk into the chamber, they’d make all kinds of notes and reports, and forget about them the moment I waved my magic wand.”

The golden dragon giggled, showing long chrome fangs.

“There are stacks of reports that never went anywhere, on desks of ponies who forgot about them every time they stopped reading, all from a little hypnotic suggestion. Of course, there was one big problem.”

“My command codes,” Cozy guessed.

“I was going to bypass them, but…”

“But Cozy Glow didn’t have anything that would allow that to happen,” I said. “Everypony else thought there was a system in place because that’s what a good, sane leader would do, but Cozy was in it for herself.”

“It was supposed to be a last laugh for when I was betrayed,” Cozy corrected. “Everypony gets betrayed at some point. And it worked!”

“You feel like this is your plan working?” Lemon Zinger asked, tilting her scaled head, the array of horns and spikes in place of her mane shimmering and catching the light like a whole jewelry store on display.

“Of course it is. You didn’t leave us alive to gloat. You’re not stupid. You need me alive.” Cozy coughed more. “You want my command codes. You’re still locked out of your own core!”

Lemon Zinger sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in admitting as much at this point. Yes. The bindings you put on me are still in place. I don’t like being hobbled.”

“I changed her command codes,” Destiny whispered to me. “There’s a layer of encryption in place.”

“That must be what she really needed Kulaas for,” I whispered back. “She’d be able to crack an encryption, right?”

“Sure, her hyper-processors could do it, but a regular pony brain wouldn’t. Not even thousands of them in parallel. Calculating vectors and rendering a bunch of polygons out of force fields is one thing, but breaking high-level parabolic encryption needs something that works on entirely different principles.”

“Ugh,” my mother sighed. “Stop mumbling. I can hear you, you know. It’s rude to ignore me like I’m not here.”

She gestured with a talon, and a surge of electricity washed through the metal strands binding me. My muscles jerked in pain. It wasn’t agony, just enough to get my attention. And an indication that she could make things much, much worse for us.

“If you give me your command codes willingly it will be better for you,” my mother said. “I don’t particularly see a reason to kill you. I might even be willing to let you go.”

“What a great offer,” Cozy Glow snorted. “Do I look that stupid?”

“You seem to be following my daughter’s plans, so I can’t imagine you’re as smart as you think you are.”

“Owch,” I said. “Nice, Mom. I’m glad you’re so proud of me.”

She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. “I think you all need to understand the situation you’re in. Illuminate.”

Lemon raised a talon grandly. The walls around us started to glow. I didn’t like what we were seeing. We were in a spherical cavity as large as a hoofball field, built and overbuilt like the inside of some dangerous reactor. Every surface was covered in plastic and metal veins, the largest of them pulsing visibly. In the center of the sphere was something like a cocoon that glowed with internal light.

“Illuminate,” my mother repeated. “It’s a wonderful word. The lights come on, and you begin to understand.”

“What is all this?” I asked.

“The SIVA I took from the Green Dragon taught me the value of networking. That poor thing was almost directionless. It had a dozen ponies stuck inside it fighting for control, and the confusion made it a feral monster. Still, it was able to grow like no other SIVA source. It spread over something the size of a nation! It repurposed factories, created servants, worked towards its own goals! If it was a little smarter it would have been a real rival.”

“It was a monster being worshiped by a cult,” I corrected.

“Yes, if it cared more about ponies it would have made more use of them,” Mom said. “Ponies can be made useful. It’s self-evident. A pony gets their cutie mark to show that they found a way they can be useful!”

“I don’t think that means they should be used as spare parts.”

“Yes, well, you aren’t one to talk. You’ve probably killed more ponies than I have.” She shrugged and trotted towards the center of the room, looking up at the tangled knot in the center. “Do you know where we are right now?”

“Deck thirty-six, section four,” Destiny said promptly.

Mom scoffed and continued. “We’re inside my body. I have total control over everything that happens here. Your ship is raw material for my grand rebirth!”

While she monologued about growing a great skin of scales and steel over the world, I silently met Destiny’s gaze and started working out a plan with small gestures and facial expressions. We were being silent and I was only vaguely psychic so it was mostly inferred and included a lot of assumptions about what the other was trying to get across.

Destiny was using her eyes to indicate the place where all the metal tendrils and veins holding us in place were rooted. I nodded slowly, then risked a look back. There was a hatch in the armored bulkhead that wasn’t entirely grown over. Destiny shook her head at my implied suggestion of escape, then nodded to the ceiling. A number of thick pipes with fast-release valves and painted warning red and yellow hung there at the apex. I had a feeling they led directly to the tank of whatever unpleasantness they’d prepared to neutralize the SIVA in the room.

I shifted a little to show that I’d been disarmed. DRACO had been pulled off my armor and I had no idea where Mom had put it. I hoped the gun was still alive. Functional. Whatever the right word was. It was smarter than some ponies I’d met and much better behaved.

Destiny groaned. I shrugged again and did a very complicated series of gestures where I was indicating for her to grab Cozy Glow and run for the door, at which point I’d go for the valves. She squinted at me, so I repeated the motions.

“Are you two playing charades?” Mom chuckled. I realized she was watching me wiggle and dance while I tried to get across the idea of heroic sacrifice through interpretive dance. She walked over and smacked me. Not hard, just enough to give me a minor concussion. I knew she could hit much more firmly if she tried.

“Ow,” I mumbled.

“I might not be able to control your minds but that doesn’t make me an idiot who can’t tell what you’re thinking,” she said. “I could burrow SIVA into you and turn you into mindless husks if I wanted. Or I could simply kill you. I doubt either of you can actually give me the command codes I need.”

“But you’re not sure,” I said. “Destiny might know them, or the encryption scheme so you can get them yourself with some number crunching.”

“And do you know why I left you alive?” Mom asked me. She leaned in close and smiled.

“Because I’m your daughter and you don’t actually want to kill me?” I hoped.

“That is the main reason, if I’m being honest with myself,” she said. “Even a goddess has a soft spot for family. You’ve been so useful to me! You led me to my prey, you gave me eyes where I needed them. And with your stupid plan to challenge me, you brought me the only ponies that might have the codes I need. I couldn’t have asked for a better servant, and you’re not even doing it on purpose!”

“That is, sadly, the most positive and supportive thing you’ve ever told me.”

She turned and rolled her shoulders in a very complicated six-winged shrug. “I read once that you should complement somepony before you torture them.”

“...Torture?”

“It’s not like Cozy Glow or Destiny Bray are going to give me the codes without incentive,” Mom scoffed. “They came here to kill me, not to help me.”

I’m not sure how many volts she dumped into me but it was like being plugged directly into a lightning bolt. There was pain, screaming, the smell of burning hair, and I found out the hard way that despite everything else, my entire nervous system was still liable to go into a reboot if it got a big enough kick in the pants.

It wasn’t exactly being unconscious. Catatonia and mild amnesia left me hanging from metal wires and unable to comprehend what I was doing and how I’d gotten there and why everything hurt. Sectors in my brain came online one piece at a time, and alarmingly my heart and lungs were slightly after the parts that knew to be worried about breathing and blood flow.

I tried to say ‘ow’ but it came out as a squeak.

“Go ahead and torture her as much as you want,” Cozy Glow said. “I’m not giving you my codes. I was trying to kill her a little while ago, and if you think I really care about what happens to her, you’re delusional.”

“Tell her something!” Destiny yelled. “Chamomile can’t take abuse like that!”

“Or what, she’ll die?” Cozy scoffed.

“Yes, and then we’ll be in real trouble,” Destiny hissed. “Who do you think is next?”

“You, probably,” Cozy Glow said. “No offense, Bray. I appreciate that we had a professional relationship but there are limits.”

“I’ll tell you the codes,” I sighed.

Destiny and Cozy Glow looked at me incredulously. My own mother stopped pacing imperiously just so she could raise an eyebrow at me.

“You don’t know the code!” Cozy hissed.

“Do you remember when you were using the Queen and I used the whole thaumoframe resonance thing to take us into a weird mindscape? While we were in there, I was able to see everything about you, including your secret personal command authentication.”

Mom smiled. “Chamomile, I might be tempted to actually apologize for torturing you!”

“If I tell you, you have to promise to let them go,” I said.

“If I get the code I won’t need them. I’ll be happy to deposit them safely outside,” Mom promised. “I’ll even promise not to take more of the nameless little ponies scurrying around this place. I’ll find my way back to Equestria and leave you here in peace. I swear it.”

“Okay,” I sighed. I slumped forward. “The code…”

Her grin widened.

“It’s… Three. Two. One!” I surged with every bit of strength I could manage. I couldn’t shoot at the place the tangle of wires emerged from, but after Destiny had pointed it out I knew where to throw my weight. I yanked and tore, ripping down and to the side. The pressure around my hooves lessened just for an instant as some of the cross-bracing ripped, plastic lines feeding pressure to the restraints stretching and breaking. A rain of orange hydraulic fluid rained down on me, and my claws finally popped free, slicing cleanly through everything in their way.

I’d been wrong about brute force not being the answer, I should have known it was always the answer and a pony just needed to use the right amount of it.

Mom was on top of me in a second, lashing out with her long tail and batting me across half the room with one blow. I tumbled, dug my claws into the ground, and tore through pulsing veins and pipes before I came to a halt.

“Very funny joke, Chamomile,” Mom said. “But I’m tired of jokes. You can’t fight me.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Try this on for size!”

I retrieved something from my vector trap and threw it at her underhoof like a grenade. She turned to follow it, ready to dodge or smack it aside. I think it took her an entire extra half second to react when she saw what it was.

While she was distracted I ducked right inside her greater reach and slashed, my claws tearing into her metallic flesh and blowing apart scales. The novelty hula pony I’d thrown landed upright, bobbling and dancing.

The Cryolator appeared on my side in a flash of light. I sprayed liquid nitrogen into the wounds I’d opened before she could stop me. Whatever stopped her from freezing in the pod before didn’t help her this time. Maybe it was because it was going directly into her organs. I didn’t lay off until the tank was empty. She stood, frozen stiff, frost covering her scales.

I didn’t turn my back on her until I kicked her head off and it shattered against the floor.

Destiny and Cozy Glow were tearing themselves free of the remains of the tangle. I rushed over to help.

“That still isn’t going to stop her,” Destiny warned. “I’m surprised it worked at all.”

“She always underestimated me,” I countered. “You two need to get out of here. If you can get to a deck that isn’t covered in an illusion you might be able to find a first aid kit for Cozy Glow. I’m pretty sure she’s got internal bleeding.”

“That’s fine,” Cozy said weakly. “The blood is supposed to be inside. External bleeding is much worse.”

“You’re coming too,” Destiny said firmly. I shook my head.

“I need to finish the job. Those valves at the top go to the stuff, right?”

“If by ‘stuff’ you mean concentrated aqua regia, yes. If you activate it manually, everything is going to seal and this whole chamber will be flooded!”

“That sounds like the plan,” I agreed. I shoved them both to the door. “Go! I’ll figure something out, I always do!”

“You can’t count on being immortal!” Destiny warned. I saw tears in her eyes. I guess even though she’d built a whole new body to spec she still wanted to be able to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Had it been after Four died? I felt so detached from everything these days. Like a ghost myself.

“I know. It’s supposed to kill SIVA.” I smiled grimly. The walls around us started to move. The pulsing of the veins surged. The core at the center of the room glowed more brightly. I opened the door and shoved them outside, and it was just in time. The growth on the walls flooded over the hatch, metal tumors and wires covering the surface and sealing it shut behind them.

“I’ll catch them again later,” my mother’s voice said. A section of the wall burst like a cyst, her head emerging from it followed by the rest of her body, orange fluid dripping from her golden scales. She flew down and kicked over her old body. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, Chamomile.”

“If I can delay it long enough it stops being inevitable,” I countered. I went through my limited resources mentally. I had the Cerberus gun, but that was middling-caliber at best. I didn’t think it would even start to penetrate her scales. It wouldn’t blow the vents above us open, either. I had no idea where DRACO had gone, which was a shame since it would have been very useful in that moment.

I knew what I had to do. I charged at Mom. She spread her wings, ready for any attack. She wasn’t ready for no attack at all, too distracted by Lightning Claws drawing sparks from the floor and the Junk Jet appearing on my side in place of the Cryolator to realize my aim. I jumped, landing on her head and using it to take to the air at speed and buying a few seconds with pure confusion.

I didn’t have anything I could shoot at the vents to open them, so I was going to solve the problem the old-fashioned way.

I hit the ceiling and stuck there, digging into the overgrowth and walking on the underside. Part of me was comfortable with it, probably whatever was left of the Black Dragon and the vampiric traits it had inherited from the pony that became its core. It was good to know I’d gotten something out of being remodeled besides a crawling fear of sunlight.

Scrabbling like a huge spider, using my wings as extra limbs to reach and grab at holds, I got to the dump valves. They were set like a fire suppression system, ready to drop hundreds of gallons onto what was below, but the disaster they were supposed to keep from spreading was worse than any flame.

“Wanna see something cool?” I yelled down at my mother. She snarled up at me.

“Don’t touch those!” she hissed.

“Make me stop!” I called out. I should not have taunted her. She’d been toying with me up until the moment I started actually threatening her life. I should have known better than anypony that a dragon’s talons, teeth, and tail were the least threatening weapons in their vast arsenal. She opened her mouth, but instead of making a clever rebuttal to my argument, she breathed a hot stream of blue-violet plasma.

The air split apart in its wake, heat and death rolling from the edges of the stream. She swept the huge blade towards me. I let go of my grip and flew for it, trying to find any kind of cover. She twitched to follow me, and the inevitable happened. The edge of her breath hit the emergency valves, the metal flashing red and white in an instant before washing away like sand before the tide.

It was a fail-deadly system. If that term seems unfamiliar, it’s because it only gets used when somepony is a real son-of-a-mule. A fail-safe system is simple, right? The clue is in the name. It’s designed that if it fails, it puts itself in a safe configuration no matter what. Most industrial processes have some element of that in the design. Even some basic sprinkler designs were built so the heat of a fire would melt through soft amalgam plugs that turned to liquid at about the temperature of a piping hot cup of tea. Once those plugs were gone, water would flow even if power and water pressure were gone, at least until the pipes were empty.

A fail-deadly system meant that it took active work from some system to keep it from going off and ruining somepony’s day. A booby trap was a fail-deadly system. A dead mare’s switch was fail-deadly. The system above us was, too.

The valves failed, and pressurized aqua regia sprayed into the air. I am not a mare of science, but I knew that it was bad stuff. Gold, as a random example that comes to mind what with everything looking like the inside of a bank vault’s stomach, was all but inert chemically. You could sit it in boiling sulfuric acid and it wouldn’t even notice.

Aqua regia was a mix of hydrochloric and nitric acids and would dissolve gold -- violently -- and just about anything else it wanted to. It splashed onto me and I knew this was going to hurt.

The pain didn’t come. It really should have. I shielded my face with my hooves and carefully looked at myself. The acid stank horribly, even if it didn’t look much different from water. It should have eaten away at my flesh. It had been too long for shock to be an explanation.

“A dud?” I asked, confused.

“Chamomile, you mule!” my mother screamed. I looked down. Where the falling acid hit, it was eating away at the walls and floor, making plastic tubing turn into tar and metal fume and dissolve. Her golden scales were going soft and melting away to reveal more layers underneath.

“Why isn’t it doing anything to me?” I asked, looking at myself. The Exodus Armor was protected by force fields, sure, but the acid fumes were still eating off the paint job. The Junk Jet sparked and slumped, parts failing under the wash of destruction.

My skin was fine, though. I could feel the acid and it was no worse than a warm bath.

“The Black Dragon was full of acid,” I realized. It had been strong enough to eat through rock and metal and the entire Exodus Black from the top deck and out of the bottom of the hull. Whatever it was made of, it had been completely immune to acid, and I’d inherited that along with everything else it had given me.

I wasn’t going to die!

At least, you know, that’s what I thought before my mother smashed into me, her wings beating at the air, the edges ragged and struggling to rebuild themselves. I was thrown to the floor, splashing in the fetlock-deep acid. I shook myself off and stood up. Mom landed hard on a high spot on the soft, wet ground, her hooves just out of the bubbling aqua regia. Her wings were tatters. She wasn’t going to be flying anywhere in that body.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” I said. “Once this chamber fills up, you’ll…”

I realized something. The acid was still coming down, but the puddles around my hooves were shrinking. It was draining away somewhere.

“I’m not helpless,” Mom hissed. “I was trying to avoid this because it stings, but I’ll put your toys away myself if I have to!”

I knew there shouldn’t have been anywhere for the acid to go, then I remembered the corridors and forcefields outside. “A vector trap,” I guessed.

“With enough magic, you can store anything in extra-dimensional space,” she confirmed. “It’s a drain, but I’m sure I can find somewhere else to put it. Maybe I should drop it in the hallway outside before your friends get too far away?”

I tilted my head. “You know we’re in Limbo, right?”

“Yes, so?” Mom asked.

“So it must be taking a lot more effort than usual to keep an extra-dimensional space like that stabilized,” I said. “And the size must be… incredible.”

“I have more power than you can imagine,” Mom boasted.

“Let’s test that theory!” I charged at her, acid splashing around my hooves. I was glad the need to leave them free to expose my claws meant I wasn’t dragging the armor through the acid. Even the fumes were punishing to the exposed metal. It wasn’t going to last forever.

Mom braced herself where she stood, the constant hard rain still eating through her. I could see SIVA trying to repair her in real time, searching for some alloy or composite that was immune to the downpour.

The acid boiled around my lightning claws, the disruption field instantly flashing it into sulfuric steam. She blocked my first attack with her talon, grabbing my hoof and not letting the claws touch her eroding flesh. I used her grip as a lever and spun myself around to kick her in the face. It wasn’t hard, or at least not as hard as I’d have liked, but it was enough with her precarious perch to knock her down into a hissing puddle.

She growled and picked herself up, half her face a grinning metal skull.

“I’m going to flay you and find out what keeps your skin from melting,” she growled.

“It’s a healthy diet of nutri-loaf and two-hundred-year-old ration bars,” I told her. “You’d be amazed at what eating right will do for a pony.”

She roared, her horns flaring with light. I belatedly remembered that, oh yes, she might look mostly like a dragon right now, but she had always been a fairly powerful unicorn. Telekinesis flung me away with even more strength than she’d had in her limbs, and I tumbled through metal sludge and softened steel before coming to a halt against one of the thick ceramic walls. They, at least, seemed more or less immune to the acid.

“That was--” I started. Another burst of telekinesis threw me to the side. The Exodus Armor started to disintegrate, the bonds holding the thaumoframe cells breaking down. One of the vector traps exploded outwards, the contents spilling across the floor while I rolled. Random junk, loose ammunition, spent spark batteries, an expended fusion core. Even my precious stash of ancient energy drinks and slightly rancid meal-replacement bars.

Mom tried to pick me up with her magic. I wiggled hard and focused and actually managed to slip out, my skin feeling prickly.

“Why are you so hard to kill?!” she demanded.

“You only have yourself to blame,” I said. “This whole thing was always your fault, remember? I got infected with SIVA because of your stupid project!”

“It’s a mistake I can correct,” Mom growled. Her eyes went dark, and her flesh peeled away, revealing an inner layer. In the harsh sodium lights of the SIVA chamber, the revealed pony’s coat glittered like crystal. No, like glass. Like she was made entirely out of fiber-optic cable strands, catching the light at strange angles and twisting it around in every direction. Through the glimmering diamondesque coat I could see an internal structure of black bones and pulsing multicolored plastic organs. This shape had no scales or wings. It looked like an anatomical model, like the plastic ‘visible pony’ kits they had us assemble in grade school to teach us anatomy.

The acid hit the glass coat and didn’t react, any more than it would react with a laboratory beaker.

“Huh,” I said. “I guess that’s one obvious solution.”

“Annoying,” my mother said. “This shape isn’t nearly as grand as I wanted, but in extremis we do what we must to survive. How long do you think that acid rain will last, Chamomile? A few minutes at most? It’s hardly an ocean.”

She shook her new mane. She really looked almost the same as she had when she’d been only a pony, except cast in glass and plastic. Vitrified and frozen in time, except for those eyes. Deadly, draconic eyes behind glass lenses.

“The worst part of being a goddess is having so very many tools at my disposal,” Mom said. “It’s enough to paralyze a pony. How does one decide on just the right weapon to use to swat an annoying fly?”

She raised her hoof, and something unfolded from inside her, an umbrella shield of force field magic protecting the blued metal from the rain of acid around us.

“There’s nothing quite like a proven solution,” she said. “I should have finished you off the first time, but I got distracted. My fault entirely. But it’s something I can correct.”

It was a gun, a big, six-shot revolver. I’d seen it before, up close. It was the gun she’d put to my head and tried to kill me with, what felt like a dozen lifetimes ago. The one that had left a scar that hadn’t vanished no matter how hard SIVA and healing potions worked to put me back together. The one that had put a hole in my brain and gotten Destiny’s implants and memories jammed into my skull.

I had a feeling she wasn’t hoping to further improve my math skills. She fired, and the gun went off like a battleship cannon, far more power behind it than it should have had. The shockwave of firing it blew a void in the rain. I threw myself to the side with all the speed I had, trying to dodge. The bullet caught me in the shoulder and ripped through what was left of my armor, the crystal-fiber bodysuit under it, and my flesh. It sparked against the wall behind me, not even slowed by the effort of going through me.

“If you keep dodging, it’s only going to make it slower and more painful,” she warned. “Be a good girl and lie down and die!”

Chapter 134: Alapu Upala

I’m going to be honest, the whole situation was like something out of one of my worst nightmares. Worse, it was one of those weird symbolic ones that means the pony having it needs therapy. I know I need therapy. I promised myself in that moment that if I somehow made it out alive I’d see if anypony knew how to fix a broken brain.

My point is, I was trapped inside my own mother. That’s awful, right? The second I say it like that you get the wrong idea, but it’s also not entirely wrong because I wasn’t sure if the core containment chamber was more like a heart or a womb or maybe a brain? It was definitely part of her, though, and I was surrounded by enough almost-organic pipes and veins to prove it.

Maybe it was mostly like the stomach, since we were in a constant rain of acid, sort of like that one myth about the Titan who ate all his foals because he was afraid he’d be replaced.

Anyway, on top of that Mom was standing in the room with me, holding a gun, and I could see through her like she was a ghost because she’d grown a new shell out of glass to resist the acidfall. Most guns don’t scare me, but that one did. Partly that was because it had punched a hole right through me like I wasn’t made entirely out of armor tough enough for a pony-sized tank, but mostly it was because of the look on Mom’s face while she held it in her magic.

And on top of all that, just like in the worst nightmares, there was a test and I’d shown up naked! The Exodus Armor was good stuff but it simply wasn’t designed to survive this kind of abuse. The constant rain of acid didn’t hurt me thanks to being mostly made out of the Black Dragon, but the blue hexagonal cells of the armor were fragile test-bench things, and it was amazing they’d even survived this long wrapped around my stupid meat.

The last of the thaumoframe cells failed, and what was left of the armor fell off, the circuitry in the cells simply unable to repair itself fast enough. I was left naked, bleeding, and afraid on the floor.

“Someday, I’m going to look back at this moment and I’ll realize where I went wrong,” Mom said. “I’ll be in the middle of ruling Equestria and it’ll hit me like a ton of bricks, whatever I could have said to keep you from making such poor decisions.”

“It was all those birthday parties,” I said.

“Birthday parties?” she frowned. “Your father and I disagreed on a lot but we both agreed those were silly.”

“I know,” I retorted. “It totally warped me as a foal. If I’d just had cake a little more often--”

She fired before I could finish my inane statement. The bullet leapt out of the gun with a combination of roaring fire and cracking thunder. I tried to dodge it with my wired reflexes but that only half-worked. I avoided a hit to my face and took it in the left forehoof instead. The shot moved at impossible velocity, obviously propelled by some combination of gunpowder and magnetism.

It ripped through my leg and left a clean hole. A flesh wound, straight through and through. The aftershock from the round hitting me felt like my whole body tried to evert through the exit hole.

“You aren’t funny,” Mom said. “I don’t know if you can’t stop talking or if you simply think it’s a valuable strategy to buy time.”

“You know what you said a minute ago, about finding the exact right thing to say? It’s sort of like that. Part of me sort of hoped I could talk you down.”

“To what end? To beg me to spare your life?” she grinned madly. Despite the fact that this glass-shelled form resembled her original living body, if it had been filled with pulsing neon-colored gummy worms, her teeth were still long fangs. She levitated the gun up higher, holding it close to her body. “Or maybe to allow your friends to escape? You’re not going to get either of those wishes granted today, Chamomile. I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to kill all your friends. So what if I don’t have the command codes I need? I’m immortal! I’ll brute-force them for a thousand years if I have to!”

The hammer on the gun drew back in slow motion. Without my armor, half-crippled from the two shots I’d taken from that hoof cannon already, I couldn’t close the distance between us in time to do anything. I felt helpless for one instant until I remembered my greatest weapon.

I spat glue at the gun. It hit the end of the barrel just before it fired, the expanding concrete-hard form getting into the complex mechanism. Mom looked shocked.

“I forgot you could do that,” she admitted, a moment before something inside the gun went terribly wrong. It backfired, and black powder and capacitors met in a grand eruption that exploded like a grenade. Shrapnel ripped through the air, fragments cutting into my chest, face, and neck, splinters burrowing deep inside.

For me that was enough to sting really badly - the shrapnel hadn’t hit my eyes and the rest of me was so dense it hadn’t managed to dig deep. The SIVA in my body was already eating the shrapnel before I got back to my hooves.

Mom, on the other hoof, didn’t fare as well. The problem was the glass shell. My skin was backed with a composite fiber layer, like the kind of light body armor security ponies use, along with heavy metals that blocked a lot of radiation. Tempered glass was tough and all but it was also very brittle.

She cracked, the shrapnel blasting into her and sending a spiderweb of breaks across her shell. Maybe if she’d had a few moments to think, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but she was in the middle of a rain of acid, and that cracked shell was all that was protecting her. It got inside through all those new tiny gaps, worming inside and burning away the SIVA coming to repair her own damage.

Mom screamed. She took a step, and her body fractured more. It hadn’t just been protecting her, it had been an exoskeleton like a crab’s. Broken this badly, her limbs weren’t working properly. Fragments of broken glass fell to the floor around her as she stumbled, trying to catch herself and only making it worse. Every hole let more aqua regia inside her, and I saw the tangle of fake organs and mechanisms inside starting to burn.

“No!” she yelled. I got up. She wasn’t as intimidating without the gun. In fact, when I got close enough, I could see just how much taller I was.

“Go to your room,” I said, because I didn’t have a great line prepared for the express purpose of smashing my mother. It sort of works, right? It’s the kind of thing a parent tells a foal when they’ve been bad and-- I should have said something about a spanking! No, wait, that would have been weird and sexual.

So I punched her in the snout to establish dominance. Her whole skull shattered, and her scream trailed off into static and electronic noise. The acid raining down broke her apart, and she collapsed into a heap of what looked like melting plastic spaghetti.

“I did it,” I panted. My left forehoof and my shoulder felt awful, very much like I’d had big holes punched in them.

The room rumbled. I looked up at what hung in the center of the room like the most malignant forbidden fruit in the universe. Outer layers were peeling away from it, rotten rind made of gold plating and micromachines being eaten away by the rain. A swarm of flying SIVA was struggling to make repairs, but they couldn’t avoid every raindrop, resulting in a shower of sparks whenever one of the tiny robots was struck and failed almost instantly.

“Oh right, that was an avatar.” The blood loss and exhaustion had almost made me forget. It seemed like it had at least broken her concentration, so I wasn’t going to have to worry about another copy showing up until I had a chance to figure out what to do. Maybe start cutting lines holding the big pulsing tumor up?

The room rumbled again under my hooves, and this time I was absolutely sure it wasn’t just me being unsteady on my hooves and a little woozy. Some of the junk that had fallen out of my armor rattled across the floor, coffee cups and empty novelty glasses and other stuff that hadn’t melted yet in the rain.

The moment I saw the stuff I remembered something very, very important. My mom had been holding back the constant stream of acid with a vector trap system, something that was somewhat fragile and required a constant input of magic and mental effort from her. And I’d just broken her avatar and her concentration along with it.

The air opened up, and a flood of acid rushed out. It was knee-deep in the first second, chest deep the next, and I was floating a moment later. The aqua regia was already stained goldenrod yellow from the gold it had dissolved, and that was a terrible sign - yellow chemistry was the worst. If a huge flood of acid wasn’t enough of a sign, the color told me that things had definitely gone sideways.

I struggled and splashed. You know one instinct I still had? Drowning was bad! I’d drowned before and I’d had a bad time! I definitely didn’t have any Sparkle-Tuna or hagfish slime or anything else that would let me breathe water and even if I did I was pretty sure breathing acid was significantly different. And maybe impossible.

I sucked down a deep breath and dove for the door. I had to fight back my fear every moment. Going out that way wasn’t going to be great for anypony immediately on the other side, but I was worried about myself right at the moment. The junk that had been blocking off passage, the growth of plastic pipes and veins Mom had used to keep me from escaping, was all melting away. I should have been able to get out easily.

Or at least that would have been the case if the entire door mechanism hadn’t melted by being drowned in strong acid. I had a faint hope that the door seal might blow, then I remembered how paranoid Cozy Glow was. There was no way the door was designed to do anything except lock itself down forever and damn whoever was on the wrong side of it.

I struggled with the hatch for another few moments until it disintegrated in my hooves. I’d been braced against the door at the time, so I accidentally kicked off, and used the motion to swim back to the surface, gasping for air. It stank worse than you can imagine. There was no way all those fumes were healthy, even if my body wasn’t going to melt.

“There has to be some way out,” I gasped. I pony-paddled over to where the acid was coming from, the big pipes dumping acid down on the mechanical sprinklers that had turned it into rain to make sure there were no safe spots in the room.

I flew up and kicked one of the sprinklers, breaking it off. The spray turned into a solid stream. Worse, I found that the revealed pipe was just a little too narrow for big, clumsy ponies. It was almost like it had been designed for industrial use and not for somepony to sneak through it, which seemed extremely inconsiderate.

“There has to be a way,” I whispered. Could I burrow out? The black dragon had burrowed through the ground, and I had plenty of claw action going on. All I had to do was outpace a tidal surge of acid before I drowned.

I was hanging from the ceiling and trying to decide where to start when a flash of light blipped into the room. A pony in a yellow hazardous environment suit was hovering in midair, surrounded by a magical aura. I squinted, and recognized them a moment later.

“Cube?” I asked.

“I’m here to rescue you!” she shouted. “You idiot!”

I had a million questions but they could wait. Her suit was already starting to degrade. I grabbed for her hoof. She snatched me up with magic, and I was careful not to wiggle myself free. The universe inverted around us in a burst of light and my first question was answered immediately.

I’d been under the impression that teleporting in Limbo was extremely dangerous, and clearly I’d been right. I didn’t know the physics of Limbo or teleport spells well enough, but the warped space did not lend itself to instantaneous travel. Our passage felt like being thrown into a rock tumbler and bounced around until we came out of the other side of that long timeless instant and exploded into the hallway with sideways speed we hadn’t had on entering. We both slammed into an antique table and a vase filled with plastic flowers, shattering both.

“Oh that sucked eggs,” Cube groaned. She laid there for a moment, then scrambled to rip the environment suit off. Several layers of insulation had already burned through. She tossed it as far as she could to one side.

“That did suck, but it was really impressive,” I told her, helping her rip the acid-soaked suit away before it could burn her skin. “I didn’t think it was even possible to teleport here!”

“It’s not,” Cube said. “Not without teleport enhancers. That’s how I got in there. I got them off the Juniper before we got here. They stabilized space enough to get me from there to the inside of that chamber once Mom’s weird landscaping spell went down.”

“You didn’t have any and still got me out,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, and it really sucked, like I said.” Cube paused in the middle getting one of the rubber boots off and coughed, spitting up blood. “We only went as far as a blink and I’m going to be sore from transcription errors for the next bucking month, so you better thank me now.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I waited for a wave of agony to hit me and nothing did. “Um…”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “They’re little things, like a hair on the film appearing for a frame during the movie, or a single page in a book being printed off-center. They happen all the time when you’re learning to teleport, and most of them aren’t seriously dangerous. You heal them like any other cut or bruise.”

“I feel okay,” I said with a shrug.

“That’s because you’re weird,” Cube huffed. “And you heal faster than I do.”

“I do heal quickly,” I agreed. I sat up so I could look at the holes through me. “Did you bring a first-aid kit?”

“Lucky for you, yes,” Cube said. “Here.”

She’d had saddlebags on under the suit, and pulled a butterfly-marked kit out of her pack. I opened it up and wrapped up my shoulder and forehoof with bandages and gauze. There was only one mostly-expired healing potion and I made Cube drink it. I’d lived with much worse injuries but I wasn’t sure I trusted that a rough trip like that had only banged her around.

Besides, she was my half-sister. I had to take care of her. We were the only family each of us had left.

The ship rumbled, and I realized I wasn’t quite right.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “There’s SIVA everywhere in this place and I don’t know what’s gonna happen after I dunked mom in acid. She might try and hack you again. Or I might get eaten. Again. Terrible things keep happening to both of us and I’d like to leave before giving them the opportunity.”

Cube nodded and we started running. I didn’t ask why we didn’t teleport out. We’d barely gone more than a dozen paces and the trip had been rough. Trying to pop out of the ship entirely would probably end with us never arriving on the other side, and that’s the good possibility where we didn’t end up buried inside the wall.

We hadn’t gone far before a mare stumbled into the corridor ahead of us. For a second I thought they were going to try and kill us. Cube stopped me before I could pounce, a hoof across my chest.

“You feel that?” she asked.

I squinted. “They’re confused? And their head hurts? I might be projecting because that’s how I feel right now too.”

“I’d call it hung over, but yeah. I’ll teach you to be a decent psychic yet.”

We stopped for them. The mare was wearing the ship’s uniform. She wasn’t just hung over, she looked like she’d been awake for a week. The circles under her eyes were practically engraved there, and she was drawn and weak in a way that suggested she needed a good meal and a lot of water.

“What happened?” the mare asked. Her voice was rough, and she had to stop to cough. “The last thing I remember clearly was going to sleep, then my dreams were this horrible blur of… math! Like I was back in school!”

“Congratulations, you were being mind controlled,” Cube said.

“You’re out of it now and you’re going to be okay,” I promised her. “But we need to get out of this ship. It’s not safe and we’re evacuating. Can you walk?”

“I’m weak but I can move. I just don’t know what’s going on. Everypony’s just as confused as I am!” she said.

“Everypony?” I asked. She glanced back. More ponies were in the hallway behind her. I hadn’t even noticed them for a moment. They were so weak and mentally exhausted that the little trickle of psychic sense I had was practically treating them as invisible, just part of the scenery. There had to be a couple dozen of them.

All of them looked sick. Really, they looked exhausted. It was just like Gator Land in that way - none of the ponies who’d been controlled there had been taken care of. They were used and discarded. Everypony here needed food, water, and real sleep without having their brains used as extra memory. They had to have been the ponies I saw in those standing coffins in the simulation world Mom had created.

“Is this a rescue mission now?” Cube asked. She sounded resigned, because she already knew the answer.

“Gotta prioritize,” I shrugged. I drew myself up to my full height. “Okay! Everypony listen up! We’re going to evacuate the ship! I want all of you to follow me, and if you can’t keep up, tell somepony and we’ll figure it out!” I looked at Cube. “You know a fast way out, right?”

Cube scoffed. “Duh, I lived here, that’s why I was leading the way. We’ll hit Marecross City. There’s a big hatch there we can use. It was designed for public transit so there are ways out of the ship.”

“Marecross City?” I whispered.

“It’s a few faux city streets and shopfronts to give ponies a place to feel normal,” Cube whispered back. “It’s not really a city, it’s more like a shopping mall, but…”

“Like a Stable atrium or one of the parks I’ve seen. Except… urban.”

“Some ponies don’t like nature,” Cube shrugged.

The good thing was, even that minimal direction was enough to motivate ponies. They really just needed to know somepony was in charge and working to help them. More than that, all of them had been crew here, so they knew where they were going. Cube and I led the way, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“This could be a trick,” Cube whispered. She looked back at the ponies following us.

“They’re real,” I assured her.

“I know that, but it’s convenient that they got released all at once.”

“They got released because I dropped Mom in acid. For all we know she’s actually dead for real. It definitely shocked her enough that it could have broken the connection.”

“Or she could be using them to slow us down,” Cube pointed out. “We’re moving at a fraction of the speed we would be if we were alone. We can’t even run because half of these ponies will pass out if we move at more than a trot!”

“We haven’t had any monsters show up yet.”

“But the floor keeps vibrating,” Cube said. She looked down at her hooves. “You didn’t grow up on ships, Chamomile. There are normal feelings in a ship and abnormal feelings and I’m telling you right now that whatever’s going on, it’s not normal.”

“You think the reactor is getting unstable? Or maybe the engines?”

“I don’t know. It’s only a little shaking, but think about it, Chamomile. What does it take to make something this big shake, even a little?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse,” I said, which was the wrong thing to say in a corner of the universe that operated entirely on the rule of ‘things get worse’.

The floor shuddered again. Something caught my attention. I skidded to a halt and braced myself, a bulkhead door coming down from above and almost cutting the corridor off. I grunted and held it back, straining under the weight. I very consciously didn’t think about how much I was holding. If I put a number to it, my body was going to realize how stupid this was and punish me for it.

“Chamomile!” Cube yelled. She tried to take some of the weight with her magic, but she’d trained mostly for precision and control. Neither one was a big help.

“Keep them moving!” I shouted back. I repositioned my hooves, forcing the steel plate back a tiny bit. It felt like it was going to slice me in half if it tried just a little harder. The rest of the ponies following us bolted through, the stragglers picked up and carried by Cube’s magic and thrown at the others to save a few precious seconds.

“You’re clear!” she yelled.

I rolled my shoulders, and only just managed to avoid catching myself with the edge of the panel when it slammed home, the strained systems holding it unhappy with being denied for so long. Cube caught me when I stumbled, a blob of telekinesis pressing against my chest and keeping me upright. She wasn’t strong enough to help with the door, but it was nice to lean into it and give my aching body a chance to recover from the sprint.

“Thanks,” I panted. “I’m okay. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. It was actually way heavier.”

I looked around. We were in an enclosed city. It reminded me of the underwater stable I’d been stuck in. Or maybe part of Gator Land’s main street. A facade trying to replicate a world that didn’t exist anymore, a playset for grown-up ponies to pretend to be normal.

A shop selling extremely fancy hats shook and shot into the ceiling on a pillar of machinery, the entire store smashing flat. Hats rained down from the sky in the wake of the hatastrophe. Two stores next to it smashed together as machinery grew in the space they were arrogantly trying to occupy.

“What the buck is happening to this place?” I asked.

“Do I look like an engineer?” Cube asked. “I think it’s… reconfiguring. Like one of those toys that turns from a robo-pony into a truck when you fold it up. They’re great for practicing precise telekinesis. I had a whole collection of Decevitrons.”

“Only we’re inside the truck while it’s being folded?” I grimaced. “I don’t think I like the idea of being an easily marketable toy.”

“It’s less fun from this side!” Cube agreed. We ran after the refugees. The street opened up along a hidden seam. Electric scooters that had been parked at a charging station fell into the new canyon. I sensed sudden danger and grabbed up a foal while we ran, just ahead of falling glass and steel beams from a building collapsing after failing to fold neatly like a book.

“Where’s the way out?!” I put the foal on my back between my shoulders and shouted over the increasing destruction. Pipes sprayed steam into the air as they erupted from the deck, venting before they’d even joined with their opposites emerging from the sky-painted ceiling above us.

“Here!” Cube motioned. I found the last thing I expected. A bus station. A half-dozen Skywagons were parked neatly at a depot. Ponies were disconnecting them from the recharging stations and helping each other in, working together. The strongest ponies had already volunteered for the hardest part, strapping themselves in the front.

A stallion ran over to me in tears. The foal on my back called out for him, so I passed them off, reuniting father and daughter. He didn’t stop to say thank you, just running back to the skywagons and trying to find a place to squeeze in. The filly on his back waved to me. That was enough thanks. I gave her a quick wave back.

Beyond it, I saw the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Open sky. Or at least open air. Limbo was a little weird in that way.

“Next stop, anywhere but here!” Cube yelled. “Everypony move! Get onboard!”

“Pick up the pace!” I warned. I saw something I didn’t like. Movement at that open hatch. Not ponies checking what was outside, armor plates starting to shift.

The first few skywagons got out with no problems. Cube and I were riding in the last two, because she wasn’t leaving without me and I wasn’t leaving ponies behind. We just barely made it. The armor that I’d seen snapped shut like a jaw just after we left, sliding sideways to shut off the depot.

A few minutes later, we’d jumped off at what was something like a minimum safe distance. The skywagons were pointed in the right direction to catch up with the rest of the refugees. My hooves hadn’t even hit the stone of the broken length of bridge my friends were waiting on before Destiny pulled me into a hug.

“You’re not dead!” she said. She squeezed for a moment, then regained control. “But you stink. And where’s my armor?”

“It melted,” I said apologetically. “Turns out it doesn’t hold up to a billion gallons of aqua regia. Stuff even melts gold, you know.”

“But not Chamomile,” Cube said. “I told all of you she was still alive.”

“And all of us agreed with you,” Cozy Glow agreed.

“You wanted to leave her anyway,” Quattro accused. “Here, Chamomile. We saved this for you.”

She presented me with a very welcome and familiar face. Well, face was the wrong word. It was a gun, with a big reflex scope, small monochrome screen, and a shocking amount of network and computing equipment wrapped up in a small boxy package around the mechanism. Best of all, it came with a pleasant personality.

“DRACO!” I cheered. “You saved him!”

The gun beeped, the screen showing a smiley face. I hugged it. It was the only weapon I’d ever had that made me feel like a sharpshooter instead of a thug.

“He’s happy to see you too,” Destiny told me.

“DRACO was setting off a radio SOS beacon,” Quattro said. “Cube and I split up to figure out how to get out, I followed the signal, and found him in the middle of a lot of property damage.”

“That checks out,” I agreed.

“He helped us find our way out,” Cube said. “I admit, it’s a great gun.”

“Meanwhile, I was organizing something useful,” Cozy Glow said. “I established this forward operating position.”

Destiny rolled her eyes. “And I went to the detached reactor room from the Exodus Black to make sure everypony left, in case we need to do something drastic. We got what supplies we could, like the transport enhancers, environment suit, and some spare parts and rations.” She held up a bulky radio. “I have the Arcana core wired up to this, we were waiting for news from you.”

“I messed up Mom pretty good, so we might just need to wait,” I assured Destiny. “I think the whole ship is falling apart with her… I don’t a hundred percent know she’s dead, but she’s definitely messed up.”

“Are you sure about that?” Cozy Glow said, her voice tight. “Did you get a look at what’s actually happening to my ship? There’s a reason we had to retreat all the way out here.”

“I was a little busy saving everypony!” I pointed out. I stepped over to the edge to peek around the stone, already knowing I wasn’t going to like what I was going to see.

Most of the ship was obscured by clouds, big puffy thunderclouds that were a definite sign that whatever pegasus magic Destiny had replicated to make the ships fly, it was spiraling out of control in a way only matched by a teenaged filly having a temper tantrum. Flashes of golden lightning cut through the haze and fog, and every glimpse I had was worse and worse. The entire shape of the Exodus Red was changing, the massive city-sized ship twisting, metal bending in impossible ways.

“That’s not good, is it?” I asked.

“The acid should have completely destabilized her core,” Destiny said. “She shouldn’t even be alive.”

“She might not be,” I said. “Destiny, you remember what happened to me when I drowned? Even while I was dead, SIVA tried to preserve what it could and find some way to fix the rest.”

“It used your body like a puppet and kept you moving,” Destiny mumbled. “You don’t think…?”

“In Gator Land, I had to fight part of the Black Dragon that fell off after it was badly hurt. Every single part of it had the ability to become a monster. With how much SIVA got used rebuilding the ship, it was all part of her body.”

“And the only reason it was quiet was because we had the brain locked up,” Destiny realized. “A brain that you just turned to mush.”

In the midst of the stormcloud, around that changing shape, I heard roaring. A high-pitched wailing roar, like screaming crossed with laughing, coming from multiple throats. Silhouetted against the clouds by the lighting streaming around them, I saw three long necks topped with menacing, draconic heads.

“I think things are getting worse,” I said.

Chapter 135: The Singular Point

We were so far beyond the end of the world that we couldn’t even see the shore, and we’d brought the apocalypse with us.

The Exodus Red was shrouded in dark clouds and golden lightning, the pegasus magic hanging around it so thick that it was brewing up a hurricane even in Limbo’s impossibly still, dead air. Parts of the hull were peeling away from what was underneath, golden armored scales as big as houses and as invincible as anything ponies had ever dreamed.

“There was a prophecy once,” Cozy Glow said quietly. “In the last gasps of a dying age, a Great Queen of Terror will descend from the sky.”

Massive fan-like wings spread wide, the edges starting to glow, energy surging along their spars.

“I thought it meant me,” Cozy Glow continued. “I thought I could come down out of the heavens and use force to unite everypony. I was born a small mare, made myself big, and now I’m reminded again of how small I am.”

“Poetic,” Quattro mumbled.

“There were a lot of prophecies,” Destiny said. “Ponies only remember the ones that were good guesses.” She held up a boxy radio. “It’s still in the blast radius of the Exodus Black’s reactor. Should we set it off?”

“No!” I said quickly.

“What?” Cube asked. “Why not? Wait, don’t tell me you want to try and save Mom. Or wrestle a giant monster. It’s a little too big for that.”

“I do like wrestling monsters, but no,” I said. “If we blow it up now, it’s going to scatter SIVA everywhere in Limbo. You haven’t seen some of the stuff I have -- even a scrap of that monster will twist itself in knots and grow claws and attack ponies. Instead of having one giant creature we’d only have a million tiny ones!”

Destiny swore. “So much for that idea.”

“I don’t think we can exactly put it back in the box,” Quattro said. “And asking nicely probably isn’t going to work.”

“We need to reverse the polarity,” I decided.

“...What does that actually mean to you?” Cube asked. “I really doubt whatever you’re thinking will actually involve polarity.”

“It’s…” I tried to find the right word and stumbled for a moment thinking of it. “We can’t blow it up with a bomb. We need the opposite of a bomb. Instead of an explosive, we need an implosive device! A megaspell-sized vacuum!”

“I don’t think that’s a thing.”

“It could be,” Destiny said quietly. “I’d have to get to the Spacium core in the Arcana reactor. The pegasus magic that moved the Exodus Arks relied on gravity reduction. I can… and I can’t believe I’m saying this… reverse the polarity and overload it to cause a massive gravity surge. Like an implosion.”

“Would it be powerful enough to work?” Cozy Glow asked.

“It’s a lot better than doing nothing,” Destiny said. “I can’t predict all the effects. Not even if we were in Equestria. Here, where space-time is already acting strange? Who knows.”

“Sounds like that’s only going to make it more dangerous,” I countered with a grin. “If the dimension pliers made that rip in space when I tried to use them, this should be even better.”

“I’m hoping it won’t entirely destabilize Limbo and kill everypony in the universe,” Destiny said. “It could cause a total protonic collapse. That would be bad, in case you don’t have a frame of reference.”

“The other option is a fate worse than death,” Cozy said. “We’re doing it.”

“You’re not in charge,” Cube said.

“And who is?” Cozy snorted.

“Here? Technically Flurry Heart,” I said.

“It’s a stupid plan that has a ton of ways to fail, so Chamomile is in charge,” Quattro said, patting me on the shoulder.

“Whatever,” Cozy Glow huffed sourly.

DRACO beeped a warning. All of us looked over, then up. The Exodus Red was starting to move. The Golden Dragon, the Great Queen of Terror, flapped her wings slowly. It wouldn’t have been enough to give her lift with any conventional definition of aerodynamics, but we were a few million tons beyond that.

She shed the remains of the ship, like a lizard discarding its skin or a three-headed hydra hatching from a city-sized egg. The storm moved with her, wind gusting over us.

“We have to hurry,” Destiny said. “If we don’t get to the reactor soon, she’ll get away!”

“Here,” Quattro said, helping me into a battle saddle and strapping DRACO to my side. “Don’t lose it this time. I’m not buying you another pet.”

I nodded and checked the display. DRACO plotted a path to the reactor, picking it out of the floating debris field and haze. “Thanks. It’s too easy to get lost around here when you don’t know which way is down.”

“Thank me later,” Quattro said. “We might all be going to our deaths.”

“I’m not dying,” Cozy retorted. “I have plans. I’m not letting everything I did end like this.”

“Can we skip the speeches and move?” Cube said. “Destiny is already running off.”

“Dangit,” I sighed, going after her. The shortest path to the reactor was as the crow flew -- straight through floating debris and on the edge of the storm the Queen of Terror was kicking up. Destiny hopped through the low gravity from one island to the next. I grabbed her out of the air when a sudden gust caught her at the apex of a leap, but then found a brand new problem.

“Fly harder!” Destiny yelled.

“I’m trying!” I shouted back. “Something’s wrong! It’s like the shadowed places we were in last time we got to limbo! My wings aren’t catching the air!”

“All the energy that thing is using to fly must be ripping the magic out of the local background,” Destiny replied. I managed to turn frantic flapping into something like a glide and we set down on a hoofball-field sized chunk of metal.

“DRACO, can we still get to the reactor like this?” I asked.

It beeped a tone to the alternative, the path it was displaying changing from a vector through the air into a hopscotch path across the floating field of junk.

The still air around us vibrated with energy. A shadow swept across the debris. I looked up to see part of the huge beast, a tail swiping through the air. For a moment I thought it was attacking us, but it hadn’t even seen us yet.

Golden plates hit the chunk of metal we were standing on with the force of meteors, cratering the hullmetal.

“Looks like it’s got a shedding problem,” Quattro said, when she landed next to us. “If it’s falling apart maybe we can wait for it to break up before we do anything.”

“It’s discarding damaged components,” Destiny said. “It must still be optimizing its new body. We might have enough time to pull this off. It won’t go far until it finishes.”

“Are you sure about that?” Cozy Glow asked. She looked annoyed. “This no-fly zone is killing me. I wish we’d had the tech to do this intentionally during the war.”

Cube was the only one of us who could fly with anything approaching normal skill since she was using telekinesis instead of wingpower. I looked to her and waited for a cutting remark laced with sarcasm, but she was pointing at the scales.

“Are they supposed to do that?” she asked.

The scales grew legs and cracked along hidden seams, turning into things that resembled huge, golden crabs with clacking pincers and too many legs.

“Every part of it is alive, remember?” I said. “This is why it’s too dangerous to blow up!”

The crabs scuttled at us, propelled by some kind of primal vicious instinct to kill. I snapped my claws out and charged, slicing through the crusty shell and kicking one of them back. Quattro snapped off a rocket shot that flipped the other one over onto its back, where a flurry of beam blasts lanced through the thinner shell there.

The two crabs went still, but only for a few moments. Broken components and artificial muscle inside the crabs surged into motion, knitting itself back together.

“We can’t kill them permanently like this,” I said. “Remember all the infected back in my hometown after Mom got there before we did?”

“Yeah,” Quattro said. “The SIVA kept them going no matter what. All you could do was hit them hard enough to knock them out for a little while.”

“Our goal is that engine block, right?” Cozy Glow said. “It’s not to kill these little annoyances! Break through and keep moving! Don’t stand and fight!”

We ran past the healing crabs. Worse things were on the way. Some unidentifiable part of the creature had twisted itself into flying shapes that moved through the air like living helicopters crossed with parasitic worms.

“I remember before I met Chamomile, I never got to have this kind of experience,” Cube said. “I was important and loved and safe and the strongest pony I knew and there weren’t any flying lampreys!”

“I really broadened your horizons,” I joked. I fired flares and broke up the formation. I checked the map on DRACO. We were almost there. The debris we were standing on was part of the Exodus Black - I could tell because it was designed like a cathedral with a bunch of skulls glued to it like some teenager’s idea of edgy darkness.

There was just a straight shot to the engine room and- a massive talon kicked through the debris, knocking my next hoofhold away before I got close. I skidded to a halt. The storm around us was growing worse. Lightning snapped between the metal plates, blasting holes in the composite armor in direct violation of all laws of conductivity.

DRACO displayed a series of emotes that equated to ‘rerouting’ and sent us off to the side, along a narrow path buffeted by winds that were increasing from just regular storm levels to total tropical disaster.

“At least she isn’t going far!” Quattro yelled over the gusts, as we moved in single-file along the broken beam.

“With our luck, the SIVA has just enough of Lemon Zinger’s memories to go after Chamomile,” Cozy Glow shouted back.

“It’s possible,” Destiny said, without any actual sarcasm. “When she was first infected, the SIVA led her to Chamomile’s hometown because she was confused and reaching for memories. She even recognized Chamomile while the SIVA was still in the process of assimilating her.”

“Please don’t tell me the giant monster knows my name,” I said. “I’d like to think there are at least a few giant deadly things that don’t recognize me on sight and want to stomp me!”

With the haze growing around us, we couldn’t tell where the monster was. It felt like trying to go through a mountain pass during a storm. Tiny shards of metal pelted us like hailstones, propelled by the wind. I was starting to think we should have used a rope to make a guideline.

DRACO beeped.

“We’re almost there,” I said. I could see the shape of the large chunk of ship looming out of the storm. It reminded me of the first time I’d seen the Exodus Black, trapped in the middle of a megastorm-generated hurricane that hid and protected it for two centuries.

“We’ve got stragglers,” Cube warned.

We looked back to see creatures like squids crossed with jackals crawling on the narrow ledge after us, cutting off escape.

“I’ve got them,” Quattro said. She leaned to the side and fired a rocket. Instead of aiming for them, she hit a weak part of the beam behind us, blowing the support apart and sending the entire pursuing hoard off into the storm. “Easy as.”

“Explosives solve a lot of problems,” Destiny agreed. “Let’s hope implosions do the same.”

The reactor room was in the same shape we’d left it, a mess of alarms with every screen showing errors. Considering it was cut off from the ship entirely, the panic the automatic systems and warnings felt were entirely justified.

“Can you reverse the polarity from here?” I asked.

Destiny gave me a look. “I wish you’d stop saying that like it has ever been right before. Yes, I can make it work. Probably. I need to adjust the Spacium core in the Arcana Reactor’s Beta Box.”

“I’ll help,” Cube offered. “Two horns are better than one.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “Aside from staying out of the way so I don’t break anything.”

“Watch the door,” Destiny said. “Remember how easy it was to get in here? I wasn’t expecting monsters to start showing up. You might break something on accident, but they’ll try and kill us on purpose and that’s a lot ruder.”

I nodded and followed Quattro back to the door. She was looking out into the broken remnants of what had been a hallway and were now little more than a landing strip open to the air. The storm pelted it, rain turning to hail and back to rain.

“I have to admit, if I’d known how badly things would go, I would have picked a different bar a few years back,” Quattro joked. “It would have saved everypony some trouble if I’d scuffed the mission to infiltrate your mom’s little work camp.”

“How could you resist an amazing bartender like me?” I asked.

“Fate isn’t something that can be escaped,” Cozy Glow said, butting into the conversation and looking past us at the storm outside. Between the remaining walls and the precipitation, we wouldn’t be able to see anything coming until it was practically on top of us. “Princess Celestia used to have prophetic dreams. She was never able to prevent the events from happening, but she was able to protect ponies from the fallout.”

“Don’t let Star Swirl hear you say stuff like that. He’s been bouncing around the timeline trying to massage it into some kind of perfect alignment,” I said. “He’s changed the past a bunch, and keeps yelling at me when I mess it up.”

“Wait, did you hear that?” Quattro asked, holding up a hoof. She tilted her head once we quieted down. “I thought there was something…”

I strained my ears trying to hear it, ignoring Destiny and Cube yelling at each other about metric and imperial measurements. The rain had turned back into hail, making it hard to pick anything out over the harsh rattling, but I thought I could sense it too, feeling it more than hearing it.

“DRACO?” I whispered quietly. The gun beeped and displayed a sensor reading, scanning the area.

“I don’t see anything,” Cozy Glow said after another long moment. “Maybe it was nothing.”

A massive metal claw that could have belonged to a mining robot the size of a small house tore through the deck between us, missing all three of us and reaching into the air, talons spreading wide as it curved back down to the deck, smashing down where we’d been standing.

“For someone who believes in fate so much, you sure do tempt it,” Quattro said.

“What’s going on over there?” Destiny shouted.

“Nothing, we’ve got it!” I yelled back. The deck split and ruptured as the thing underneath us pulled itself out and into the reactor room, pushing through the metal. It was shaped something like an armored egg walking on four of those huge talons, glaring down on us with a single yellow eye that blazed with internal light.

“You are a very confident pony to say we’ve got this,” Quattro noted. She fired a rocket, and it impacted the thing’s armor, splashing against the metal and leaving nothing except a scorch mark.

The thing’s attention shifted to Quattro and it fired a thin laser, sweeping it across the deck like a blade. The beam narrowly missed her but reacted with something in the deck and exploded, throwing her back and into the air. She tried to catch herself, but only managed to be halfway graceful about it - the dense magic from outside was leaking in here and making true flight impossible.

“This is good, I was worried things were getting easy.” DRACO selected armor-piercing rounds without me even having to ask. The shells hit the dark plates of steel with a sound like a red-hot bell being struck, my quick two shots turning into two tiny holes punched into the creature’s metal hide.

That got its attention. It refocused on me, that yellow eye glinting malevolently. The air filled with a sound that reminded me of a vacuum. The air around the creature shimmered, glowing faintly and pulling together at a single point.

“Move!” Cozy Glow yelled. I really didn’t need the encouragement. A beam of blue-white lightning erupted from the focus point, ripping a hole right through the wall behind us. I was two full paces away from it when it went off, and the heat and energy of it scorched my coat.

“Hot!” I yelped.

Cozy Glow drew a sword and ignited the power field around the enchanted blade, charging in and swinging at the thing’s legs. The thick armor plates were cut deeply by the first few swings, then glowed with energy themselves, repelling the attack.

“Go for the eye!” Cozy shouted. “It’s a giant glowing orb, it’s got to be the weak point!”

“Makes sense to me!” I agreed. I was already running, and kicked off the wall to change direction, going between the thing’s taloned feet. It made a low sound of annoyance, something that was almost a word and had been stretched out and slowed down until it was a tone from a musical instrument.

I jumped at the main body, using my Lightning Talons to hold on. They weren’t biting deeply, but it was enough to get a hoofhold onto the thing and keep my grip even when it turned to try and toss me off.

The thing’s back opened up, a dozen panels popping open and launching rockets into the air that twisted in spirals, coming back down almost randomly in a hard metal rain, half of them airbursting to spray shrapnel down at us. I hid my face and closed my eyes, feeling knives stabbing into my back, some of them going deep. Somehow, I kept my grip.

I struggled over to the eye, and the uneven light inside it focused on me. I didn’t feel fear or pity, just hate. Hate for everything.

I stabbed the stupid monster in the face. The eye was made of layers of ceramic and polymer filled with some kind of jelly that shot out at high pressure and made me sputter in disgust at the smell of rancid oil. I slipped and fell, landing badly on my back and driving some of the shrapnel deeper.

“Ow,” I groaned.

The creature stumbled back blindly, smashing into the wall and leaving a massive dent. It found its way out into the storm, fleeing in pain or panic, and went right off the edge of the ship, down into the nothing of Limbo, vanishing into the haze.

“Good work,” Cozy Glow said. Quattro helped me up and looked at my back, sighing.

“Let’s get those taken care of before Destiny finishes,” she said.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

Quattro shrugged and ripped something out of my back from next to my spine. She held it where I could see the sharp metal, almost as long as my fetlock and so jagged that it had to have somehow been intentionally designed to be serrated shrapnel. “Not great,” she said. “It’s going to hurt coming out.”

“I figured that one out myself, thanks,” I groaned. “Think Cube can spare a minute to pull them out? She’s delicate.”

“Are you saying I’m not?” Quattro teased. “Here, you big baby.”

She jammed a syringe into my shoulder, and Med-X soothed my pain while she quickly nipped and pulled bits of steel out of my body. When she finished with everything visible, she patted my side. By then, something had changed outside. We were close enough to the doors that I could watch the storm, and it was getting weaker.

“That’s bad,” I said.

Cozy Glow was standing right at the edge of the doorway looking out with a grim expression. “The monster that ate my ship is leaving. What’s taking so long?!”

“Even if it was ready to go right now, we’re standing on top of the bomb,” Quattro said. “Probably not an issue for Chamomile, but the rest of us have a less casual and friendly relationship with death.”

“Hey, Destiny, what’s the minimum safe distance for this?” I shouted back to her. She and Cube had a chunk of machinery the size of a refrigerator pulled out of the wall. The outside edges were covered in pipes, and it split in the middle with hydraulic rams opening it up like a press to reveal a glowing core.

“If we survive this, I’ll do the math on it and get back to you,” Destiny said. “Close it up.”

Cube nodded, and they carefully put the box back together.

“It’s all set,” she said. “It should work. We’ll be giving the local laws of physics a real workout, but the design is solid. In theory it’s the weight reduction spell the Arcana Reactor was already designed to output at high power, but inverted and focused on one point.”

Cozy Glow touched her ear and nodded, speaking to somepony on the radio.

“It’s already leaving the debris field,” Cozy said, sighing. “I’m getting reports from ponies that already evacuated. They can see it leaving.”

“If it gets away, all we’re doing is cleaning up one mess and letting it make another one!” I said.

“Can we move the reactor and drop it on the dragon?” Quattro asked.

“It won’t get rid of all the things scuttling around in the wreckage,” Destiny said. “We only have one shot.”

“Then we need to get it to come back,” I said. “Maybe we can punch it in the snout and get it really mad and make it turn around!”

“There is one thing that might work,” Cozy said.

“Hey! You! Get back here and face me like a real dragon!” I yelled. It wasn’t my most clever line. It wouldn’t even have been impressive if there wasn’t a slightly flickering, slightly transparent version of me a kilometer tall repeating what I said with a slight delay.

“I can’t believe this is the best idea we came up with,” Quattro said over the radio.

“You all get to flee to safety while I do this,” I reminded her. “What are you complaining about?”

“We’re not fleeing, we’re spotting for you to let you know what the dragon’s doing,” Cube corrected.

I was standing in what was left of the Exodus Red’s bridge, a complicated-looking camera with three lenses pointed at me. The big armored windows in front of me gave me a good look at what was coming, and there were just enough systems online to do what we needed.

“The grand holoprojector was designed for use in the field to demoralize the enemy, direct troops, and, well, propaganda,” Cozy Glow said. “We’re lucky the system was far away enough from where the dragon ripped out of the ship that it remained intact.”

“I’m trying to focus,” I mumbled. “Stop arguing!”

“It almost certainly doesn’t understand Equestrian, just make scary noises,” Destiny suggested. “You should be good at this, Chamomile, you’ve had plenty of practice making everything else in the world angry at you.”

“I feel like you girls are doing this because you’re far away enough that you won’t get eaten no matter what.”

“Chamomile, it’s looking at you,” Cozy Glow said. “This is your chance to make a strong impression.”

“Uh, um…” I glanced at one of the few working screens. I could see a blurry, distorted image of the three-headed golden beast, looking at me while it circled. I needed to really get it interested. I tried to say three things at once, had a surge of stage fright, and it all came out as a sort of roar. “SKREEONK!”

The dragon immediately turned around and started flying towards me, golden lightning running down its body. It wailed with those terrifying high-pitched bell-like chitters.

“Good work!” Destiny called out. “Lock the image and get out of there! Once it’s on top of the hologram it should be close enough.”

“Right,” I agreed. “How do I lock the image?”

“There should be a button.”

“A button- I’m on the bridge of a giant ship, can you be a little more specific?” I pressed some buttons and the huge copy of me froze in place, flickering slightly.

Before I could move on to the next part of the brilliant plan, the huge dragon was doing a dragon thing. Three streams of energy erupted volcanically from its triplicate maws. I got a better look at it than I wanted. The breath looked like a massive plasma bolt barely contained by golden lightning, wrapping around the white-hot core and grounding itself on every piece of debris, the plasma breaking up to follow the stream. It twitched from one rock to the next, blasting them apart and clearing a path towards the giant hologram.

I realized the danger and started running. The holo-image of me warped when the energy passed through it, the sheer power of the attack enough to disrupt it. Unfortunately, despite how big and real the image looked, it was just an illusion, and the broken bridge of the Exodus Red was behind it.

The golden dragon’s breath attack ripped apart the bridge around me. It was the most heavily armored part of the ship, but it didn’t mean much when that much damage was being thrown around. Consoles exploded, insulation flash-heating into foam boulders and erupting out to pelt me. The big windows buckled and melted before shattering.

A huge beam crashed down, slamming me into the deck and pinning me there. I gasped in pain.

“You’ve lured it in!” Destiny yelled. She couldn’t see my predicament. “Get out of there and trigger the reactor!”

I couldn’t answer, because the metal beam crushing my chest was making it difficult. I tried to find a way to brace myself and push. My hooves were trapped under me. I couldn’t even cut myself free without slicing through my whole body. I had to get out of there. Outside, I could hear the golden dragon. It sounded angry and confused.

“Chamomile, you need to hurry,” Destiny warned. “The hologram projector was damaged, I think the dragon is starting to realize that thing isn’t real.”

I looked up at what was pinning me. It wasn’t just a beam. It was the entire top part of the ship. It had come down on me and the only reason I wasn’t crushed into paste immediately was the way it had landed. I’d been lucky enough to end up in a space just barely big enough that it wasn’t going to kill me immediately.

I strained. I pushed. I shoved hard enough that it started to buckle the deck plates under me.

“Buck,” I whispered.

“Chamomile I don’t know what’s going on but you have to hurry. It’s starting to circle, I think it’s about to leave again!”

I couldn’t free myself, but I could feel the detonator. I had just enough motion in my hooves to flip the protective cover off the switch and press down hard.

I don’t know how to explain what happened next. All sound stopped. Breathing stopped. Time seemed to stop. I think everything got sucked hard towards that single point in the reactor. Air and noise and consciousness. The debris exploded backwards, and the deck pinning me was torn off into the sky. I was free!

I looked back over my shoulder and I shouldn’t have.

The entire field of debris, practically two cities worth of steel and composites, was rushing to a single point. Shrapnel and scrap metal rushed past in a hard rain. I felt like I was trying to fly straight up. I beat at the air, trying to find any kind of lift in the hurricane.

Far below, at the bottom of an infinite well, something so profoundly dark that the word ‘black’ doesn’t describe it was growing.

The golden dragon cried out in confusion and anger. It roared that bell-like tittering screech and breathed again on the thing drawing it in, and the attack vanished. The Queen of Terror gave one last defiant cry before being eaten, vanishing into the darkness.

There was no time to celebrate. I had to stay ahead of it until the spell ended. Seconds ticked by endlessly. I couldn’t tell if it was all one instant or a thousand years. I only knew I was losing ground. Whatever lift I had, it wasn’t enough to fight against a hurricane and a constant hail of knives and debris.

DRACO beeped in alarm. I looked back again.

The black point was a wall of darkness. The horizons around me warped. It didn’t feel like falling into an ocean. It felt like it was closing up around me, the corridor for escape getting more and more narrow above me as it ate up the sky, locking me in an oubliette. Everything went perfectly dark except for a single point of light like a distant star, at the highest apex of the sky.

“Chamomile.”

It was my mother’s voice. She was there, floating in my way, on that single path between me and the outside.

“How--?”

“You can never really escape me,” she said. “Everything you’ve ever done or accomplished is because of me.”

“Shut up!” I yelled. One last gasp of strength surged through me with that rage. I lunged at her, pushing myself harder than I ever had before. Muscles and tendons strained and tore. I went right through her, like the dragon had gone through the illusion of me.

I was so shocked I didn’t react properly, freezing up.

Right at the end of my lunge, somepony grabbed my outstretched hoof.

“Pull!” they yelled. I felt myself yanked forwards, hard, towards that distant star. I looked back at my mother in confusion. She wasn’t coming after me. She didn’t wave. She just looked sad.

The darkness tore away from the horizon. I was thrown forwards as if I’d been released from a trap, tumbling and rolling to a halt.

“She’s alive!” somepony yelled. They ran over and looked down at me. I looked up at them.

“Destiny?” I asked. “What happened?”

“You were too close to the event horizon, you jerk!” she sniffled, pulling me into a hug. “We only barely got you out!”

“We?” I asked. I looked around. There were over a dozen ponies assembled with a lot of science stuff I didn’t understand. The Dimension Pliers I’d left with Herr Doctor were glowing white hot in the middle of it, the tip melting and dripping. I looked back. There was a perfectly black sphere.

Cube grabbed me from the other side, then slapped me.

“Don’t make me worry like that, idiot!” she yelled, sniffling.

“I knew you’d still be alive,” Cozy Glow said. “That’s why I organized all of this.”

“You organized a memorial service,” Emma corrected. She rolled her eyes. “You said it was ‘too dangerous to try to rescue her’.”

“It was too dangerous,” Cozy Glow mumbled.

Midnight swiped at her with a wing. “I’ll show you dangerous. No, wait, I won’t! I don’t like you enough for that.” She sniffled haughtily like a spoiled cat. “I’ll show Chamomile instead, once she’s recovered enough that she doesn’t look like ground meat.”

“How long was I in there?” I asked.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Star Swirl sighed. “You’re in Limbo. Time doesn’t work that way here. You were in there until something else happened to you. Obviously.”

“Don’t give stupid answers,” Destiny countered. “A month. We’re lucky you hadn’t fallen any further, you were right at the knife’s edge. If you’d gone any deeper at all, we couldn’t have ever gotten you back out.”

“The Cage itself seems to be containing the gravity effect,” Herr Doktor said. “It’s fascinating! Almost like it was designed just for this purpose.”

“Very fascinating,” I agreed, sighing.

“Want a drink?” Quattro asked, holding up a bottle of what must have been very expensive vodka, because the label had gold foil on it and a language I couldn’t read.

“I think what I really need is a nap,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been flying for two and a half years straight.”

“I’m just glad we got you back,” Destiny sighed. “Welcome home.”

Epilogue

“And we all lived happily ever after.”

“I feel like you aren’t taking this entirely seriously.”

“Everything I said was the truth.”

“It was… mostly the truth.”

“It’s how I remember it!”

“If you say so. I suppose it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that somepony hears this message.”

“It would be a lot easier if Star Swirl would give us a hoof.”

“He gave us the W-dimensional coordinates that I needed.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Do you really want me to explain Limbo’s node-based temporal geometry and how it interacts with Equestria’s linear time dimension?”

“Not really.”

“The important thing is, this transmission is going into what would be the future, from our perspective, but as long as somepony receives it, it’s going to let Limbo’s timeline intersect with Equestria’s. It should fix the instability preventing magic mirror use.”

“As long as somepony hears it?”

“It’s very quantum.”

“How long in the future?”

“It’s impossible to know for sure. It’s going to transmit as a four-dimensional wave and repeat until it’s received. My best guess is a bit over twenty years.”

“Twenty years?!”

“It avoids some fixed points in time. Star Swirl said he’d strangle us if we intersected any ‘canon events’, whatever that means.”

“It means he makes up terms and pretends everypony knows what they mean.”

“You might be right.”

“So what do we do now?”

“If everything goes right, next we-- wait, are we still live?”

“Was I supposed to stop?”

“Shut it off and help me with the hyperpulse generator. We’ll need to-- no, don’t yank on that cabl--”

The transmission shut off with a harsh buzz. The foal listening to the funny story flinched at the sound and shut off the radio. When she did, in the new silence she heard her friends outside, laughing and talking about something. She ran outside into the bright sunshine and joined them.

War never changes. In every era, no matter what tactics and weapons are favored, war never changes. It is instead an agent of change. It is a crucible fueled by lives, burning up soldiers and civilians alike. Survivors are left scarred, battered, burned. A few make it to the other side stronger than they went in, alloyed and tempered by that great heat.

Someday, perhaps, war will finally change itself. The crucible will burn so hot it succumbs to its own flame. If any of us survive the result, perhaps we’ll see we never needed it in the first place, and we’ll find other ways to warm ourselves and resolve our differences. Understanding and empathy can replace hate, and we can graduate into an adulthood where differences are not resolved at the point of a knife.

Prologue

My father was an archaeologist, and if there's anything I ever learned from watching him dig through old bones and rocks, it's that for as long as ponies have been around, we've been fighting each other. We started with hooves and horns, moved on to rocks, and advanced all the way through bronze and iron until we'd managed to get so good at killing each other we decided to take a break.

More than a dozen centuries ago, the age of the alicorns came. Princess Celestia and her sister, Luna, brought Equestria into a golden age. Great cities were built on every coast. The land became a garden. Pony lifespan doubled. It was a time of miracles.

Until it wasn't.

War came to Equestria, and we faced extinction. The old instincts of blood and iron came out, and ponies innovated even better ways to kill in greater numbers than ever before. Megaspells and unnatural disasters rained down on our great cities and the light of friendship faded.

In some places, ponies found ways to survive.

I was born above the clouds, to where civilization had escaped in the wake of the bombs and the destruction of the war. It was the most peaceful place in Equestria, one of the few places to have maintained continuity and civilization, and I thought it was my destiny to stay there and never set hoof on the ground below like two centuries of ponies before me.

But I was wrong, because if there's one thing we can learn from the past it's that even above the clouds, we can't escape our nature, and that war? War never changes.

My name is Chamomile. I'm following in the great Equestrian tradition of recording my thoughts even though I know nopony is ever going to listen to them, and I can't blame anypony for that. I'm not a smart pony. A smart pony wouldn't have gotten into half the trouble I did. I'm not a hero, I'm not a pony who wanted to go solving mysteries buried in the past.

I'm making sure there's a record of everything that happened to me because I know from my father that it's important. We learn from the past, even from stupid mistakes. Especially from stupid mistakes.

This is the story of how I accidentally caused a small war, a plague, and might have gotten a lot of ponies killed, and it all starts with a headache...

Chapter 36 - Rock Bottom

Headaches seem like they’re a fixture in my life. I’d been shocked unconscious, passed out from a severe head wound, had terrible aches through my body from infection, and it always sucked no matter what. The worst part was that even Med-X didn’t do much to help with a migraine but it sure gave me one when I was coming down from it.

“I can’t believe I took a drink from a stranger,” I groaned. My mouth tasted faintly like vomit, and even if my head was pounding, I wasn’t dizzy, so they must have used the good knockout drugs instead of the cheap kind.

“It wasn’t very smart of you,” agreed somepony.

If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead, so I took my time sitting up and looking around. I needed to figure out how much trouble I was in before I started making plans. I was in some kind of abandoned building. It probably wasn’t far from where I’d found my own hidey-hole. It had obviously been abandoned until very recently.

There were three ponies with bags over their heads hoofcuffed and on their knees along one wall. Whatever trouble I was in, they were in it way deeper, because I wasn’t getting the black bag and restraint treatment.

“You woke up more quickly than I expected,” said the voice again. I looked up. A red and black pegasus was perched on top of a bookcase, lounging placidly. Her coat was a deep red somewhere between wine and crimson, and her black mane was streaked with brighter, almost neon red. She didn’t seem to think I was much of a threat, but it was hard to read her expression because she was wearing a metal mask that covered her eyes.

“I heard about you on the radio,” I said. “You went to the orphanage after I was there, didn’t you?”

“Among other places,” she confirmed. “I wanted to find out about you. We would have eventually gotten around to the foal’s request, but we had other priorities. Bigger irons in the fire. Still, now everypony is talking about Kasatka and how they stormed an orphanage and killed the pony in charge before turning the foals loose.”

“Killing her was sort of an accident--”

“Yes, it was,” the red and black pegasus agreed. “It makes me curious about what you’re doing. You’re going around asking for Kasatka, making ponies think you’re with us, and you’re not even a Dashite!”

“I’m here because--”

“Stop,” the pegasus said. She waved a hoof languidly. “Actions speak louder than words. If you’re looking for Kasatka, you’re either trying to sell us out or you want to hurt the Enclave. I want to see which it is.”

She motioned to the three ponies with bags over their heads.

“One of those three ponies is an Enclave collaborator,” she said. “If you want to prove you seek Kasatka for the right reasons, kill them.”

“You want me to murder somepony?” I balked at that, shooting up to my hooves.

“Yes,” the pegasus said, not even trying to pretend it was something else. At least she was honest about that. “Consider it a test. Take your time. Talk to them. I want to see what you do. But let’s be very clear about this -- before I leave here, there will be at least one dead pony in this room. Do you understand?”

I narrowed my gaze. I was pretty sure that was a threat on my life. Maybe I could get out of this if I thought it through.

“White Glint was the one who told me to seek you out. She wanted me to ask you--”

“We will talk, after you choose,” the pegasus said.

Apparently, she wasn’t going to let me try and find a third path. Not if I wanted to get on their good side. I walked over to the three restrained ponies and looked at them. I was going to have to start somewhere, so I picked the one in the middle.

“What’s your story, lady?” I asked the mare.

“How dare you!” the mare snarled through the cloth bag. “Cowards! You dragged me out of my home in the middle of the night!”

“Are you an Enclave collaborator?” I asked. I had no idea how to interrogate somepony.

“What the buck kind of question is that?!” she demanded. “What are you, an idiot?!”

“Just answer the question!” I snapped, starting to get annoyed. I was beginning to feel like killing her just on the principle of the thing. If she really was dealing with the Enclave I felt sorry for them.

“The answer is none of your damn business!” she snapped back.

I restrained myself from smacking her. It was way too tempting. I looked at the stallion next to her. He was even more filthy than the average pony in the wasteland and was wearing the kind of patchy, spiky barding that just screamed ‘raider’.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re a masseuse?”

“Not exactly,” he said, laughing a little. “Name’s Catsclaw. You can probably tell what I do for a living. I don’t know what this is about, but I won’t blame you for whatever you do. It’s a risk that comes with being a murdering scumbag.”

Dang. He actually seemed like an okay pony compared to the mare kneeling next to him.

“Ever worked with the Enclave?” I asked.

“I don’t know if you heard the news, honey, but the Enclave isn’t a fan of raiders. They’ve got a vested interest in stomping out every group they find, big or small.”

I nodded and stepped over to the last pony in the line. He was another stallion, with the kind of patchy, nondescript clothing that most ponies wore. It was unpleasant enough in the wasteland that most ponies wore something just to keep the dust and rain off their coats.

“W-whatever I did, I’m sorry,” the stallion pled. He sounded terrified. “I’ll do whatever you want! Please let me live!”

“Just calm down,” I said.

“How am I supposed to stay calm? Let me go! I didn’t do anything, I swear!” He shifted, and I saw something catch the light at his side. A beam pistol, practically brand new.

“Where did you get that gun?” I asked.

“What? The pistol? It’s just… it’s just for self-defense!”

“I asked where you got it, not what it was for.”

“I didn’t steal it! It was a fair trade!”

“Are you ready yet?” the pegasus on the other side of the room asked, sounding curious. “What do you think? Have you made up your mind?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to do this. Maybe if they’d be up on their hooves and able to fight back. Killing the raider was the obvious choice from a moral standpoint, but this wasn’t about morals. This was about figuring out the right answer, and my gut told me there was only one right choice.

I took the pistol from the pony kneeling in front of me and put it against his head.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I pulled the trigger, and he slumped over, bleeding.

“So you picked the farmer selling his goods to an invasion force for weapons?” The pegasus behind me hopped down. “I can see how you’d decide he was the collaborator.”

“So it was him?” I asked.

The mare smiled and produced a slim, long-barreled pistol. She fired twice. The gun barely made a sound, just tiny puffs of air. The mare and raider both fell over.

“Any of them would have been correct,” she said, trotting over. “They were all guilty. I just wanted to see what you’d choose, and how you’d choose to do it. The farmer is part of the supply line letting the Enclave stay here. The mare sold her own child to the very orphanage you shut down because they were willing to pay for unicorn foals. The raider, aside from being a murderer and worse, also sold out his own gang to the Enclave for a bag of bits. None of them deserved to live.”

She put the gun away and offered her hoof to shake.

“My name is Unsung,” she said. “I think we can do great things together.”

I stopped by the place I’d found to get my gear before I went anywhere else with her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her -- no, it wasn’t just that I didn’t trust her -- but I was pretty sure wherever I was going, I’d want to have Destiny’s brains to go with my brawn. Relying on my own brains hadn’t gone well for me lately.

“This way,” Unsung said. There were steps leading down, right by the side of the road.

“Where does this go?” I asked, following the mare.

“It’s part of the subway system,” Destiny said. Her horn lit up, a cone of light stretching ahead of us to a steel shutter at the end of the stairway. “There wasn’t room for surface trains inside cities. Some places used smaller cablecars and trams, but with the weather in this part of Equestria, it was easier to build underground.”

“It’s also the best place to hide from the Enclave,” Unsung said. She easily lifted the shutter. “Most pegasus ponies have at least some amount of claustrophobia. There aren’t many places in the Enclave where you’re ever really indoors. The closest most military ponies would get is onboard a cloudship, but that’s well-lit, clean, and not six stories underground.”

She took me further down into the earth. She seemed right at home. The place was almost pitch-black aside from the light Destiny was giving us. The long stairs let out onto a platform, with tracks off to both sides. I turned around slowly, looking around.

“And the ponies in the city don’t use these tunnels at all?” I asked.

“Some of them do,” Unsung said. “There are a few little gang hideouts, one or two ponies that cook drugs. But it’s dark and damp and there’s plenty of room aboveground, so it’s not anypony’s first option. None of them go much further than whatever entrance they use.”

“Why?” I asked.

Unsung trotted over to the side of the platform and motioned for me to follow her, then hopped down onto the tracks below.

“It’s like a maze. There are the main line passages like this, but there are also utility tunnels, places blocked by rubble where the ceiling collapsed, flooded sections, and somepony swears they saw radgators.”

“Radgators?”

“Don’t worry about them,” Unsung said dismissively. “I haven’t seen any and I’ve been here for a while. Still, try not to wander off. If you got lost, you might never find your way back.”

She sounded a little like she was teasing, but the maze of twisty tunnels, all alike, made me think she might be telling the literal truth about that. How many ponies had gone into the dark and just vanished?

“Don’t worry,” Destiny whispered while we trotted after Unsung. “I’ve got DRACO recording out position with dead reckoning. If anything happens we can find our way back.”

I nodded, feeling a little better about the whole thing. The tunnel itself seemed pretty secure. There was a little water pooled in the lowest spots, but I didn’t see any obvious risk of collapse. I tried to relax and just follow her, and she led me through the curving tunnels until I saw a light at the end of them.

“Here we are,” Unsung said. “Welcome to the Sanctuary Station.”

The ceiling was vaulted overhead, and the station was more like a miniature underground shopping center than just a small outpost like the one we’d entered at. The shops had been emptied out and turned into private rooms, and the main platform reminded me of the operations room back on the Raven’s Nest. A few ponies were gathered around something massive and under a tarp.

“Everypony, I’ve returned with our newest recruit,” Unsung said. She flew up onto the platform, landing on one of the bulky cabinet-sized terminals that was softly playing the loop of patriotic music the Enclave was broadcasting across the city. “This is Chamomile. She’s the one who caused all the trouble at the orphanage.”

“I heard about that when it came in over the radio,” a very small and round pegasus said, trotting up to me and switching one pair of glasses for another with even thicker lenses. “That’s interesting armor. It’s not an Enclave design.”

“No,” Destiny said. “It’s not.”

“Please don’t spook anypony, we’re trying to make friends,” I reminded Destiny.

“Is that integral AI?” the mare asked. “I’m Klein Bottle, by the way.”

“It’s a wandering spirit,” said a soft voice. I didn’t spot the mare until she was almost on top of me. She was the color of dust and moved like a ghost. Her hooves didn’t make a sound when she stepped on the platform. “I can feel the death around her.”

“Don’t scare her, Grey Gloom!” A stallion patted her shoulder, offering me his hoof to shake. “I’m Opening. I try and figure out how to actually make our leader’s plans happen in the real world.”

“For what it’s worth, she’s not wrong,” Destiny said. “I’m sort of haunting this suit of armor.”

“Interesting,” Klein muttered. “I wonder if it’s similar to the soul trap mentioned in some redacted MAS internal memos…”

“No,” Gloom whispered. “She is a revenant here bound by her own willpower and magic.”

Another stallion tapped his hoof on the ground. Opening glanced at him.

“Oh, this is Split Moon. He’d introduce himself, but…” Opening motioned to Split Moon, and the stallion raised his chin, letting me see the scar across his throat. “He doesn’t talk much. It’s painful for him. He’s a master with wingblades, though. Probably the best in the world.”

“There are a few others, but they’re out at the moment,” Unsung said from her perch. “The only one left is our newest recruit. She isn’t a pegasus, but you can trust her.” Unsung motioned to somepony on the other side of the tarp-covered lump. “This is--”

She stepped out, and I blinked. “Four,” I said.

“You two have met?” Unsung asked.

“She helped me out on the road here,” Four confirmed. She smiled at me. “It’s nice to see you again, Chamomile!”

“I didn’t know these are the ponies you came to see,” I sighed. “If I did, it would have saved me a lot of effort…”

“It must be fate,” Four said.

“I agree,” Unsung said. “Two new recruits in such a short time, and Four even brought the means to finally bring our plans to fruition!”

“Is this the thing you were hauling?” I asked, motioning to the tarps.

“Is it okay if I show her?” Four asked. Unsung nodded, and Four grabbed the corner of the tarps with her magic and pulled them free. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. It was a suit of armor, but the sheer size of it, the thickness of the armor plates, the squared-off shape, all of it made it look more like a tank or a slab of steel. It had to be twice my height, and radiated invincibility.

“Assault Armor,” Destiny said. “Not the same kind that Rain Shadow was using, but the same kind of idea. Packing as much into one unit as possible…”

“It’s called the Grandus Armor,” Four said. “It was designed to enhance a unicorn’s magic.”

“That explains the resonance!” Destiny agreed. “It must have some kind of thaumatic booster, right? This armor is powered by a thaumoframe system that uses thaumomagnetodynamics instead of induction motors for various effects--”

“Sorry, I’m not… I’m not really that technical,” Four blushed. “I didn’t build it. All I know is that it does work. Or it used to work. I was a test subject. It was… using it was difficult. I wouldn’t have done it at all but I didn’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.

“I didn’t… I still don’t have any memories from before the tests. They said it was a necessary part of the procedure, but I don’t remember anything, and using the Grandus hurt my head so much and…” She sobbed briefly. I gave her a hug on instinct and she leaned into my chest. “There was an accident at the lab! Everything burned down and…” she sobbed again, and I stroked her mane.

“We promised her we’d do everything we could to get her memories back,” Unsung said. “We have some leads. The project was funded by the Enclave, and they love paperwork. If nothing else, we should be able to find something. Her name. Family. Enough that she can rebuild whatever life she had before.”

“I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help,” I promised Four.

“We’ll help you, too,” Unsung said. “Caps, ammunition for that fancy gun. Medical supplies. If you lend us a hoof with what we need, we’ll help you with what you need.”

“What I need is a way back upstairs,” I said. “It’s a long story, but I’m basically trying to keep my mom from eating the world.”

“I don’t have a way back up to the clouds for you right now,” Unsung admitted. “But with all the Enclave activity, there might be something that comes up. As long as you’re willing to help us with a few things, we’ll get along splendidly.”

I nodded.

“Good! Klein Bottle, you were going to arrange a salvage mission, yes?”

Klein Bottle nodded and switched her glasses, producing a notepad. “We need certain items to repair the Grandus Armor. Some of the components are burned out. If we’re going to use it, we need some pretty rare stuff. Opening was looking into checking a few things off my list.”

“A Stable was recently discovered outside the city,” Opening said. “The Enclave has only just started salvage operations there. The components we need should be in there. We were already planning an operation, and you’d be perfect for it.”

“Because you want me pulling my weight?” I guessed, looking over at Unsung.

Unsung smiled. “Something like that. Split Moon, you go with her.”

The silent pegasus nodded stoically.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?” I asked him. He shrugged and shook his head.

“I’ll give you a list,” Klein said. “We’ll need some enhanced targeting cards, a biometric scanner, a few different kinds of fuses--”

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” Destiny said. “I was a scientist when I was alive. Give me the list and I’ll make sure she doesn’t mess it up and get you a valve control actuator when you need a turbomolecular pump.”

The Stable popped up on DRACO’s map pretty quickly once we started heading north of Dark Harbor. According to Destiny, it was because Stable-tec systems were all deliberately designed to aggressively network together. In theory, it was for ease of use. In practice, it meant anypony with a PipBuck could have found even the best-hidden Stable just by coming within a mile of the entrance.

Stable 83 was definitely well-hidden. We found the Enclave outpost set up just outside an old mine entrance, with a bright white prefab module sitting among the ghost town of old mining shacks and storage buildings like an alien ship had landed.

I crept around the side of one of the weathered buildings and peeked at the mine. There were two guards outside, stationed around some shipping containers. They were alert and aware and there wasn’t much cover between us. They were also only lightly armed. They had uniforms, not power armor, and they only had standard-issue beam rifles. Even if I didn’t have my barding I could have taken a couple shots from one of them and been fine.

I started to step out, and Split Moon grabbed my shoulder and stopped me. I looked back and the silver-colored pegasus shook his head and pointed with his other hoof.

I followed his gesture and saw we were standing right below and to the right of a laser turret they’d set up on top of the old building. If I’d gone out there, it would have been shooting me right in the back. I nodded to Split Moon and he tilted his head, motioning for me to follow him.

He went around the other side of the building and tugged lightly at a bright red cable there. It led from the turret above us to the prefab the Enclave had plopped down. He pointed to the ground and indicated two more of them half-buried by dust and dirt. I followed them with my eyes to where more turrets were lying in wait.

Split Moon flicked his wing, and I saw the glint of steel on the leading edge. The cable next to him quietly fell to the ground, severed. He pulled two thin knives from his barding and tossed them with his mouth, hitting the other cables with incredible accuracy.

“Nice,” I whispered.

He smiled slightly and nodded, then motioned for me to go ahead.

I stepped out into the street. I wasn’t super jazzed about the idea of shooting a couple of soldiers who were just doing their jobs, but also I wanted to look cool in front of the pegasus who was about half knives by weight.

“Hey there, pardner,” I drawled. “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us.”

The two guards looked at each other in confusion.

“But… there’s more than two ponies here,” one of them said.

I launched a brick with the Junk Jet and he fell down in a heap.

“I’m not all that great with math,” I admitted. The other guard put his hooves in the air. A knife sunk into his eye socket, and he fell down on top of the one I’d bludgeoned. Split Moon walked past me and shook his head, smiling and chuckling silently.

“Chamomile,” Destiny said in a low voice so it wouldn’t carry. “He just killed a pony who was in the middle of surrendering.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But I mean…”

“Just be careful,” Destiny warned. “White Glint warned us that these Dashites were dangerous. What if they start killing civilians?”

“I’d stop them,” I retorted.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

The first thing I noticed when we went into the mine was the smoke. The air was foul with it, and there was soot on every exposed surface.

“What’s with this place?” I muttered. “How do you burn down a bunch of rocks?”

Split Moon tapped the tip of a wingblade against a metal sign on the wall. I wiped away some of the ashes and soot so I could read it more clearly.

“Remember to wear hard hats and safety laps at all times,” I read aloud. “Monoceros Coal cares about its employees.”

“It’s a coal mine!” Destiny said. “Or was. I know Stable-Tec was buying up every exhausted and unprofitable mine they could. It saved them millions in excavation. They must have left some of the old signage up.”

“I guess it makes sense,” I said, nodding in understanding. “If you’ve got to do a lot of digging, you want to start where ponies have already done most of the work for you. I didn’t think Equestria had any coal mines.”

“No good ones,” Destiny said. “Mostly just brown coal, Lignite. There was a little black coal here and there, but all the really high-quality fuel came from overseas. It put mines like this out of business. They probably stopped mining here before the war started and just never got it started again.”

“Huh,” I muttered. I followed the tracks down, casting a cone of red light ahead of us. Split Moon followed behind me, sticking to the shadows and probably happy for me to get shot if we ended up running into anypony.

Light flooded the tunnels ahead of us. A portable generator was sitting in the middle of the tunnel, powering sets of floodlights pointed at a massive steel door that had been partly rolled aside. The number ‘83’ was still visible through the grime covering the metal.

“Looks like we’re in the right place,” I said.

“It must have still been sealed when the Enclave found it,” Destiny noted. “So where is everypony?”

“You don’t think they would have done anything to the ponies living here, do you?” I asked, suddenly worried.

Split Moon tapped a hoof on the stone floor. When I looked at him, he nodded to the door and tilted his head.

“Only one way to find out,” I said, guessing at his intent. He nodded in agreement. I stepped around the Stable door. The rough stone of the mineshaft was replaced with smooth concrete. On this side, I could see the machinery that had driven the door, lying silent and rusting. Consoles and terminals were set against both walls to the side, and a pathway was set up to lead ponies through a series of arches.

I stopped inside the arches to look.

“Radiation detection and scrubbing,” Destiny said. “But most of the parts have been stripped out already.”

I looked around the room. “It’s not the only thing. The Enclave really worked this place over.” Every panel I could see had been pulled open, and loose wires and empty sockets showed where components had been removed. Even some of the buttons and screens had been taken.

Split Moon tapped my shoulder and pointed at the food. There was a clear trail through the soot leading deeper inside.

“There’s a lot of damage here,” Destiny noted. “This is from smoke. Inside the Stable.”

“A fire underground…” I mumbled. “That’s really bad.”

“Air quality is still okay. You should be fine.”

We walked into the main atrium. It was big, with a lower level below us and surrounded by rooms and corridors. Burned furniture was collapsed in heaps, and scorch marks marred the painted walls.

“Is that a barricade?” I asked, trotting up to a pile of broken boards and bedframes. “Somepony stacked a bunch of beds in this doorway…” I looked down the hallway it was guarding but couldn’t see anything.

“Movement!” Somepony yelled on the far side of the atrium. Floodlights snapped on and I was blinded by a dozen spotlights converging on me at once. “What the-- it’s not one of those monsters?”

“Identify yourself immediately!” a second voice screamed.

Split Moon flashed past me, flying right towards the light. He flicked his hoof, and I saw the blades spark against metal where they landed a moment before they exploded with light and sound. My visor blacked out, protecting my vision.

A beam hit my chest and I took to the air, more shots hitting me before I could make out where they were coming from. There were a dozen Enclave soldiers lined up on the opposite walkway, and Split Moon was working his way through them from one side. Most of them were rubbing their eyes, yelling wordlessly and firing blindly. I was just such a big target that even though they were just firing in my general direction, they’d scored a few hits.

I slammed into a knot of the reeling soldiers, tackling them into the ground and staying on top of them while I spun around and snapped my blade free, slicing through the neck of a fourth soldier.

Only one of them was in power armor, and she came at me hard, landing on my back and stabbing down with her bladed tail. She flailed wildly, screaming in rage. One of her furious strikes pierced the spot just behind my wing, sinking in deep. I yelped in pain and tried to throw her off, throwing myself backwards off the atrium balcony and down to the level below.

She tried to pull the bladed tail free, but it was jammed in place. I went backwards, landing on top of her. Not my smartest move. The blade just went in deeper, twisting. I hissed and tried to ignore the pain. She gasped and tried to breathe, but all that came out was a wet rasp. I tore myself free and got up, blood streaming down my side.

There was a big dent in her chest armor. Her ribs were crushed. She looked at me, terrified. She was dying, and she knew it.

I cut her throat and made it fast instead of slow.

Split Moon landed next to me and gave me a questioning look, nodding to my side.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. I could already feel the armor injecting me with healing potions. “Everything taken care of up there?”

He shook his head and motioned for me to follow. We flew back up to the top level and Split Moon led me over to one of the side doors, pointing inside.

A mare in a white coat was lying on the ground with a knife piercing her left cutie mark. She looked up at us in abject terror.

“P-please don’t kill me!” she gasped.

“I won’t,” I promised. “All we’re here for are some supplies. Mostly computer parts. If you point me towards the maneframe, we’ll leave you tied up here for somepony to find.”

“Leave me tied up?” she gasped. “That’s even worse! The monsters will eat me alive!”

“...Monsters?” I asked.

“From the lower levels,” the mare said. “They’re horrible, like ponies, but half-melted and on fire! Beam weapons didn’t work, so we built barricades to secure this area and started work on a weapon that would work on them.” She looked to the side.

“This thing?” I picked up the bodged-together weapon. It looked like it was built on a heavy beam weapon’s frame, and fitted with insulated tanks and foil-covered pipes with thick padding around the grips.

“We call it a Cryolator. It sprays liquid nitrogen. W-we were going to use it to try and slow the monsters down, b-but… and now they’re all… they’re all…” she started hyperventilating.

Split Moon stepped up to her and smacked her. She fell over unconscious.

“Hey!” I yelled. He stopped and held up a hoof, motioning to her. She was still breathing and wasn’t bleeding. He’d only knocked her out. “...You used the back of the blade?”

He nodded.

“Well… okay, then.” I sighed. “What do you think, Destiny?”

“It’s nonstandard equipment,” Destiny said. “We can mount it to the Exodus armor’s integral hardpoints, but I can’t promise much accuracy.”

“We’ll give it a shot,” I said. It only took a minute to switch the Junk Jet out for the Cryolator, and the Junk Jet easily fit into the armor’s vector trap. Once it was mounted, I gave it a test, pulling the trigger for a second. There was an almost-silent hiss of compressed air and a jet of liquid erupted from the nozzle, droplets turning into ice-cold fog instantly on touching air and the main body of it hitting the wall and leaving a crackling wake of frost and cold before it evaporated.

“Looks like it works,” Destiny said. “At full stream it’s going to burn through N2 tanks pretty quickly. Be conservative with it.”

“Got it,” I agreed.

Split Moon tapped my shoulder and pointed to the other side of the workbench. A blinking terminal was set up there, a power cable leading to the same spark battery bank as the floodlights they’d blinded me with.

“Think you can pull a map out of this?” I asked.

“Maybe. This looks like the terminal from the Overmare’s office. They must have brought it in here to crack the encryption.” Destiny’s magic flew over the keys, typing in commands. “I can’t believe how lax Stable-Tec’s security settings are. Just barely enough to keep out a curious foal, but even if you get it wrong, all it does is reboot the terminal and kick you out of debug mode. It might as well just have a ten second timer between tries, it’d be the same effect.”

While she talked, she blasted through security screens and cracked at least two passwords while I was watching. At one point the terminal was just showing a weird maze of boxes and corridors made out of text symbols and she maneuvered a symbol around moving letters.

“One of these days you need to teach me how to do this,” I said.

“Oh sure!” Destiny agreed happily. “I didn’t know you were interested in learning! When we’re not pressed for time I’ll find a terminal and walk you through the basics! It’s actually pretty fun when you know what you’re doing!”

The terminal beeped, and the welcome screen appeared along with a list of files and folders.

“Aaaaand we’re in,” Destiny said. “There’s no map, but it looks like there are some logs from the Overmare about what was going on here.”

“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see how much trouble we’ve got waiting for us.”

Chapter 43 - Kick A Hole In The Sky

“Gooood morning, Dark Harbor! This is not a test, I am the Bard, and this is rock and roll! Time to rock it from the docks out to as far as the finest pre-war tech will take us! Is it just me or is it the quietest day we’ve had in a while? I almost miss having those terrorists around -- there’s nothing that gets a pony out of bed as quickly as the building being on fire around him. Is it too soon to make that kind of joke? Well, the ponies who are really late aren’t going to complain. It’s oh-six-hundred for the benefit of our guests who only use military time, and if you’re having as much trouble as I am waking up without explosions going on around you, here’s a hit we haven’t played in a while by popular request, and I’ll leave you to decide exactly what I mean by that. Here’s Napalm Sticks To Foals by Nightcap and the Sleepers!”

It was one of those songs that sounded happy but was actually sort of disturbing and sad when you listened to the lyrics.

“Flying low across the trees,
Ponies doing what they please,
Dropping frags on waving zees,
Napalm sticks to foals.”

I really wasn’t in the mood. It made me think too much about Four tearing through the city with the Grandus. The scars from that were still fresh, even if the fires had been put out. We passed ponies wearing bandages and casts and I felt guilty every time I saw them.

“Can you turn that down a notch?” I whispered. “I don’t know what’s worse, how chipper he sounds or the music!”

“Okay,” Klein Bottle said, turning the volume down on the portable radio she was carrying. I’d been surprised that Unsung had found an Enclave technician uniform that fit her, until it had been quietly explained to me that Klein Bottle had been abandoned in the wasteland with the uniform, a bag of tools, and nothing else.

I didn’t ask how it happened. From the way she seemed terrified of being abandoned and alone, I could tell it wasn’t a happy story. Ever since Sanctuary was destroyed, she’d practically been a crying mess.

“Don’t turn it off completely,” Unsung said quietly as we walked towards the squat station. I’d been able to figure out where we were going two blocks back, when the tall broadcast tower caught my attention, a thin spire reaching to the heavens and covered in patchwork wires and dishes. “It might be the first warning we get if something starts to go wrong.”

Unsung’s uniform was pressed and fitted for an officer. It wasn’t like the dirty, patched overall Klein bottle had. It was double-breasted, with gold trim and a wide-brimmed hat. She still wore the metal mask over her eyes.

“B-but nothing’s going to go wrong, right?” Klein Bottle asked.

“I’d feel better if I had my armor and weapons,” I muttered. I think Asterism had something against me, because the uniform she’d given me was somehow too big and too small at the same time. I was also somehow the lowest-ranked pony again, with an airmare’s badge and zero authority. Unsung had been amusing herself the whole time we’d been walking by making me salute every junior officer we passed.

“We had to leave your power armor behind,” Klein Bottle said, apologetic. “Sorry. The Vanguard Overbooster is too bulky to carry, and the connections are too complicated to do on the fly. It took me all night just to get it hooked up, and--”

“You did a good job,” Unsung said calmly. “Chamomile is just sore because Asterism had somepony pull all those black spikes out of her.”

I rubbed my left forehoof. It really had stung a lot. Like getting teeth pulled. Even with Med-X, the noise of cracking carbon fiber and the sensation of my bones straining while the pins were removed had been the stuff of nightmares. I had to hope I didn’t need any of them to keep holding me together, because I couldn’t walk around town like that.

“I just don’t like being basically unarmed,” I said defensively.

Unsung gave me a look. “Weren’t you telling me not that long ago about how much fun you had wrestling a bear to death?”

“Yes?” I answered, confused. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“We should all be so lucky to be as unarmed as you are, Chamomile,” Unsung sighed. “Just let me do the talking.”

The station was in relatively good repair. The whole city was, really, but somepony had come along to really take care of the radio station. Neon lights picked out the letters DHR, which I assumed stood for something but I wasn’t really a big radio fan, so I couldn’t really guess at what.

“Look at the tower!” Klein Bottle whispered. “There are new dishes and power boxes. The military must be using the station to carry their signal, too.”

“Good. It means they won’t just blow it up,” Unsung said. “If there’s one thing the Enclave hates, it’s wasting materiel.”

Unsung walked right up to the front door and let herself in. Inside, three soldiers stood guard, for varying degrees of both standing and guarding. The only one who seemed alert was next to a door leading further inside, one was sitting next to the door, and the last was chatting with, and totally striking out in his attempts to flirt with, the pony sitting behind the desk. All of them watched us when we walked in, and they immediately straightened up at the sight of an officer in uniform.

“At ease,” Unsung said. “This isn’t an inspection. I’m not here to make sure your buttons are polished.”

They relaxed a bit at that.

“What do you think of the city?” Unsung asked. “I’m stuck down here until the Admiral’s business here is finished.”

“It’s not bad,” one of the soldiers said. “The food here is way better than the rations we were getting before. If you’ve got some time off, you should check out some of the cafes.”

“I’ll have to do that when I’m off duty. Speaking of which, my technician needs access to the equipment,” Unsung explained. “Apparently the Grand Admiral is getting interference on one of the data links?” She looked at Klein Bottle.

“It’s just a calibration issue,” Klein Bottle said, adjusting her pack nervously. “W-we probably just need to install a f-filter on the power lines.”

“Can it wait?” the mare behind the desk asked. “We’re live on the air right now.”

“Hm.” Unsung tilted her head, seeming thoughtful. “We have a schedule to keep, but we can be a little flexible. Maybe we can talk to the Bard and find a good time?”

The mare seemed mollified with that. “That could work. He’ll be off the air--”

“The recording booth is right through there, right?” Unsung asked, pointing.

“Yes, but you can’t go in there while we’re live!” the secretary said.

Unsung drew a pistol, holding it between her teeth and shooting the guard next to the desk, then turning to shoot the one at the studio door.

I heard the one at the entrance start to move and spun around, grabbing him and throwing him to the ground, knocking away the weapon he’d been reaching for. I put a hoof on his chest and shook my head.

“Don’t,” I warned. “I really don’t want to hurt you.”

He nodded and went limp, letting me hold onto him and not resisting. Before I could say anything else, Unsung put a beam right between his eyes and he collapsed in a heap, his expression frozen in mute shock and betrayal. I looked up at her.

“Hey!” I snapped. “You didn’t have to do that! He surrendered!”

“We are on a tight schedule,” Unsung said with a shrug, after she’d put the gun back in its holster. “So, as I was saying, the recording booth is through there? Why don’t you lead the way?”

The mare got up on shaking legs and looked like she was ready to bolt. She gave me and Unsung a look and clearly reevaluated her chances of making it past both of us to the door and didn’t like the odds. She slowly walked to the booth, flinching when Unsung stepped closer.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Unsung said soothingly. “You’re a civilian. We wouldn’t hurt you. We just need to get into the booth, say a few things, then we’ll leave and you’ll never see us again. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

She swallowed and opened the door. The music over the radio switched off as we walked into the back, and the DJ came back on.

“Folks, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I just heard something. Either we’ve got a radroach infestation again or else-- it looks like a few Enclave soldiers are coming back here with my lovely assistant. They’re waving to me and asking to be let into the booth. There might be some kind of situation going on outside, folks. Maybe it’s going to be an exciting morning after all! Let me just buzz them in and then maybe they can explain it to you and me at the same time! Hello there, how are-- oh, I’m being asked to put on some music. I’m going to go on a little break, here’s a classic from the archives, but all of our music is both classic and from the archives, except for that week when I was asked to play the greatest hits of Disco Craze, who as it turned out was not an underappreciated genius.”

Unsung sighed and waved again, and the Bard stepped out of the recording booth after starting up a record with a song that was either about unrequited love and Princess Luna or some kind of mystical journey to the surface of the Moon, or both. I wasn’t good with metaphors. From his smooth voice, I’d been expecting the Bard to be a conventionally attractive stallion, the kind that looked like they came out of a factory and got stuffed into uniforms.

Instead, a shambling corpse walked out.

“Oh buck,” I swore, getting in front of Klein Bottle because she was tiny and it made me instinctively want to protect her.

The undead pony rolled their eyes, which was a little like hard-boiled eggs doing an exercise routine. “Haven’t seen a lot of ghouls, huh? You Enclave ponies all act like this the first time you see me.”

“I, uh…” I hesitated. “I’ve met a lot of undead ponies, and most of them tried to kill me.”

“Yeah, a lot of them don’t do so good. A pony in my position needs a routine. Something to keep us sane on the day to day. It’s why I run this station. Been doing my show every day for over two hundred years. Didn’t even leave when the fallout poisoned the city. Thought it would be my last show, but…” he shrugged. “Things just kept going.”

“You’re providing a wonderful public service,” Unsung said. “But unfortunately we need to interrupt your show.”

“What can I do for you-- oh, that’s a gun.”

“It is indeed. I’m sorry about this, but we need to take over for a while,” Unsung said. “Klein Bottle, can you make the equipment work?”

Klein Bottle stepped in and nodded. “It’s got everything we need.” She hopped up to the controls and started adjusting switches and dials. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the board that had more unlabeled buttons than labeled ones, but she seemed to know what she was doing.

“Good. Chamomile, could you tie these two up? I don’t want to hurt them but we can’t have them running around.”

I sighed and slapped hoofcuffs on the two hostages. I mean, we hadn’t used the word, but that’s absolutely what they were. At least Unsung hadn’t decided to shoot them to simplify things.

“Please don’t give her an excuse to do anything,” I whispered.

“Is this really necessary?” the Bard asked. This close, his breath was almost a weapon. “If you wanted an interview, I’d have been happy to help! It’d probably be great for my ratings.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure everypony will be listening in,” Unsung said.

“We’re ready on this end,” Klein Bottle said.

Unsung nodded to her and looked at me. “Are you good to go, Chamomile?” she asked. “You’re the most important part of this. Neither of us can do what you can.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I wait for your speech to start, then I launch. The booster Klein Bottle set up will let me get in close before they can react. Then I get on board the cloudship and figure out some way to disable them.” I swallowed. “No problem.”

Unsung patted my shoulder. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I have faith in you. All you need to do is bloody their noses.”

“Right,” I said. “Establish dominance.”

Unsung nodded. “That’s not what I said but sure, that’s the right attitude to have!”

I pulled open the big doors to the warehouse, the sea air blowing past me. Light poured onto the chrome and brushed steel within, a radio playing the greatest hits of the pre-war softly bopping away.

“Nobody stole you while I was gone, huh?” I asked, walking in and standing in the literal and metaphorical shadow of the weapon Klein Bottle had gotten ready for me.

“Did I mention yet how much I hate this plan?” Destiny asked. “Did you see what they did to my armor?! Look at this mess!”

Klein Bottle had called it a Vanguard Overbooster. It looked a lot more like she’d strapped two big booster rockets and an almost random assortment of rockets to the Exodus Armor along with just enough braces to hold them together and a few fins that in theory would give a little more control. I swallowed nervously, because it sure seemed like the kind of thing that would go out of control, crash, and explode.

“You have to admit, it’s definitely going to get us some attention,” I said. I tried to sound confident and started taking off the poorly-fitted uniform. Destiny detached herself from the armor and started helping me with the buttons.

“Oh sure. Fireworks always do,” Destiny agreed. “I just don’t like being the payload!”

“You’re still going along with it,” I pointed out.

“I don’t have much choice, do I? You’ll get yourself killed if I don’t keep you safe, and as much as I want to just strangle you sometimes because you’re completely immune to common sense… you’re still my friend.”

“Thanks,” I whispered. I reached out to touch her, booping the helmet’s snout. “I can really use a friend I can trust right now.”

Destiny managed to somehow look embarrassed, ducking away and shaking herself out. “Get strapped in so I can start going over pre-flight checklists. I’ll give Klein Bottle a lot of credit -- she’s the first pony I’ve met since the end of the world who understands the value of safety procedures and paperwork.”

“Ugh. Paperwork.” I stuck out my tongue and started getting into the armor. With it hanging from the launch assembly with the rockets, it was less like strapping on a suit and more like strapping myself into a ride. “If you can trust ponies to do their job, why do you need everypony wasting time with busywork?”

“Because you can’t trust ponies to do their jobs,” Destiny said. She helped me with my back hooves, holding things steady so I could slip in. “Now, do you remember how the controls work?”

I reached out to the handles in front of me. “Left is left, right is right, forward is down, back is up. Right hoof is direction, left hoof is thrust.”

“And the most important control?” Destiny settled herself over my head, the HUD flickering and stabilizing as she moved windows around to clear my view.

“Press both big red buttons to purge the boosters and eject.” I said, careful not to actually press them. I had been told in no uncertain terms that if I did that before I absolutely needed to, I was going to have a bad day because Klein Bottle would strangle me.

“Great! That’s all the controls we have, so you’re ready to fly. And since your bones are already reinforced with carbon fiber, you probably can’t break them any worse when you smash into a building.”

I nodded, pretending she wasn’t being a big sarcastic downer.

On the radio, the song was wrapping up. It ended with a burst of static, and then Unsung’s voice came over the air. Destiny switched the broadcast on in the armor.

“Guessing you’re going to want to listen in, in case she throws us under the bus,” Destiny said.

“I would like to begin by asking the forgiveness of the ponies of Dark Harbor. We mean no disrespect by taking over this broadcast. I am Unsung, the leader of Kasatka. I’m sure you’ve all heard of us from the lies spread by the Enclave, and today I am going to address you directly and ask for your understanding and support.”

“Showtime,” I said.

“Releasing docking clamps,” Destiny said. “Fuel lines green, pressure steady. Sort of surprised that all my rocket science is relevant, but it’s nice to be able to use my expertise. You’re go for launch.”

“I should probably say something cool,” I said. I tried to think of something. “Whatever. Launch!”

I slammed the throttle forward, and the booster came to life with a roar. I shot out of the warehouse like I’d been fired from a cannon. My vision narrowed to a tunnel, and the wind was like flying into a brick wall. Turbulence hit me and almost sent me spinning out of control. I could barely keep a straight line, and we were just out over flat, empty water!

“Passing mach speed!” Destiny yelled. “Hold on, I’m trying to reduce the turbulence!”

A magical shield appeared in front of me, a wedge cutting through the air. The pressure of the wind started to lessen and come under control.

“I have another name. One that won’t be familiar to any of the ponies who live here under the hoof of the Enclave but will be familiar to your oppressors. You know me as Unsung, but I was once called Lullabye Song. The stallion commanding the ship hovering over you, the Spirit of Cloudsdale, is my father, Grand Admiral Bright Song.”

“Camomile, we’re getting lock-on warnings!” Destiny yelled.

“Got it!” I shouted back, yanking the controls to the side. Plasma shots ripped past me, massive blasts from the ship’s main guns. They hit the water and sent up a huge cloud of steam behind me. “Let’s turn this beast and get it in-line with the Spirit!”

I banked, and the air exploded around me, mach cone breaking up and reforming as I drifted while going faster than the sound of my own engines. More shots went past me, the maneuver throwing the ship’s aim off again.

“I am speaking to you today as somepony who carries with her the true aspirations of one of Equestria’s greatest heroes. Do not think of me as Unsung, leader of the anti-Enclave resistance, but rather as the daughter of Rainbow Dash’s ideals. Her legacy has nothing to do with the evils and hatred of the Empire, and that is why to them, her name is a curse. The memory of a pony brave enough to leave safety to fight for the ponies she cared about was too much for them to bear, and so they must call her a villain.”

I pulled up, getting over the first row of buildings. Windows shattered in my trail. Vertibucks were in the sky. I could see them trying to turn to follow me, but they couldn’t manage anywhere near my speed. Neither could the soldiers being called into action. They followed along behind me like my wake was dragging them into my jetstream.

“The Enclave fled from the surface to shield itself from the threat of total annihilation. They managed to preserve what was left of their culture and protect their families. Once there, they flourished, expanding their living space as they built more farms and cities on their own! Unfortunately, their success filled them with hubris and dreams of glory creating evils like this conquering force! We mustn’t repeat that mistake! Why won’t ponies understand that we need to stop isolating ourselves and start our long-delayed mission of rebuilding Equestria!? We believe that pegasus ponies should no longer isolate themselves, but the Enclave military junta whose souls are pulled down by gravity think only of ravaging it!“

More shots came down, narrowly missing me as I vectored, shooting sideways hard enough that my whole body was going to be bruises before the end of the ride from slamming into the braces and trusses holding me to the rocket pack. The plasma bolts slammed through a building behind me, exploding and setting off a massive fire.

“They’re still firing?!” Destiny asked, incredulous. “There are ponies down there!”

“I don’t think they care!” I yelled back.

“From the dawn of history, ponies have become stronger by working and living together. Equestria was founded on the dream that we are, together, stronger! Retreating to the sky was meant to give us a chance to heal and recover from the shock of the war's sudden climax, but it is time to leave the cradle and return to the ponies we left behind!”

“Booster is fifty percent depleted!” Destiny warned.

I was starting to get a sense of the timing with the Raptor’s main guns. I pulled up, getting higher over the city and into the clear air.

“What are you doing?” Destiny asked. “You’re taking us out of cover!”

“The cover is what I’m worried about! They’re firing into the city!”

This time, when the ship fired its main cannons, the shots went past me and landed somewhere outside of Dark Harbor’s walls.

“At what should be a turning point in our history, Why instead do we fight amongst each other and further ravage the planet our war destroyed? The clouds should be pulled back, and Equestria should be returned to its natural state so it can begin to heal! We should be working together to make life better, not killing each other over the scraps left behind by our ancestors! Unless we can come together, the dream of Equestria is dead and we are the ones who killed it.”

Turbulence buffeted me, cross-winds making the assembly of booster rockets rock and squeal while they fought against the trusses holding them in place.

“You’ve got maybe ten more seconds,” Destiny warned. “Just hold on!”

I kept going up, trying to fly serpentine and climb at the same time, struggling to get above the Spirit’s nose.

“Ponies across Equestria live in ruins and rubble. The struggle to survive leaves them exhausted and drains the will to rebuild. We live surrounded by the corpse of a golden age, and every day something irreplaceable and beautiful is lost because we no longer have the means to maintain it. We can see the evidence of Equestria as it should be, and how the Enclave pretends it still is. I call upon the Enclave to look around yourselves. See what we left behind. The spirit of Equestria is one where ponies came together to make something that lasted for a thousand years, and if we claim we carry on that spirit, we should be acting like our heroes, not like raiders and parasites that take and give nothing back!”

“Booster is depleted!” Destiny said. The last dregs of the rocket fuel sputtered, and the bone-squeezing acceleration started to let off, making me feel practically weightless as we went from four gravities to just one.

“Purging!” I gasped. I slammed my hooves onto the buttons. Explosive bolts cracked, and the straps and braces peeled away, breaking cleanly off of my armor and falling back behind me. My wings caught the air and Destiny’s shield vanished. The wind hit me like a brick. I was still going faster than I could ever fly on my own.

I glanced back at what felt like the entire Enclave military. The booster rockets tumbled down, right into a VertiBuck that had been struggling to try and keep up with me. The pilot didn’t have time to react. The boosters slammed into the VTOL’s snout and rotors and the fumes left in the tanks exploded, turning them into fire and shrapnel. The VertiBuck started spiraling down, trailing flames.

“Let’s call that one a happy accident,” I said. A plasma shot went past my right side, close enough that I could have reached out to touch it if I didn’t mind being evaporated into radioactive mist.

“They’re still locked onto us!” Destiny warned. “We need to get a little closer!”

I tucked my wings and went into a dive, trading the altitude I’d fought for into airspeed, going right for the upper deck of the Spirit. I had to hope it was a blind spot.

“The military doesn’t care about your lives. They don’t care if you live in Dark Harbor or even about other members of the military. See for yourselves the brutality of the actions they take!”

I hit the deck and started to skid, my armored hooves kicking up sparks on the battleship’s armored plate.

“We made it!” Destiny said, laughing. “I can’t believe we’re still alive. Well, you're alive. You know what I mean.”

“Now comes the hard part,” I said. “What are we actually supposed to do to take this ship down?”

“We don’t exactly have the weapons to damage it from outside,” Destiny said. “If you can get inside, we can try--”

Whatever she was going to suggest, and I’m sure it was probably something involving explosions and fire, it got cut off by a burst of beams hitting me in a dense barrage and punching right through the armor’s chest, blasting me off my hooves. I kept close to the deck and rolled behind part of the ship’s radar, managing to get to cover before the pain hit.

“Ow,” I hissed, gingerly touching the spot the beams had hit. The hole punched through the Exodus armor was only as big around as a bit, but the edges were red-hot, and even with air filtration I was pretty sure I caught a whiff of the scorched coat and hide. “What the buck was that?”

“They place themselves above the ponies of the surface and label anyone who opposes them as evil doers. But, their own arrogance is the greatest evil; they will be the ruin of all ponykind! Those of you who are listening to the radio must realize by now that this is how the Enclave goes about their business.”

I peeked out to look, and almost got my face taken off by another burst. A small turret had snapped to my location with inequine speed and fired a burst of scattered beams, but stopped the second I was in the shadow of the radar dish.

“CIWS,” Destiny said. “Close-In Weapons System. The other Raptor-class ships we’ve seen didn’t have it installed. This one must have been retrofitted for a direct-fire role late in the war.”

“They pack a heck of a punch for such little guns,” I said.

“You’re lucky the ponies who designed it were stupid,” Destiny said. “We proposed a similar system, but using explosive shells. Using lasers for a CIWS is dumb! Sure, you’ve got unlimited ammunition, but the range is low and you don’t have the penetrating power to detonate incoming munitions.”

“Destiny I realize as an engineer you feel a need to critique the designs of others, especially when they get government grants and you don’t, and as a ghost you probably aren’t capable of feeling mortal terror, but I just got shot in the chest.”

“Don’t be a baby about it! You’re fine! It’s just a flesh wound! Buck, Chamomile, you’re practically built out of armor at this point.”

“One of these days I’m going to start having some of that weird teenage angst but it’s gonna be about ponies saying stuff like that to me.”

“I admit, it was wrong to take over this broadcast, but I have been silenced and Unsung long enough and I will be quiet no more! I was cast out for my beliefs that ponies should strive to do better, and in kind, I will cast out my father, Admiral Bright Song!”

I could see the main guns from where I was taking cover. The plasma cannons aimed down towards the city, and I could tell where they were aiming.

“The radio station!” I gasped. “Destiny, we need to warn--”

The cannons fired, and green bolts slammed down into the crowded streets, blowing the station apart. The tall spire of the broadcast antenna collapsed, the metal glowing red-hot.

“Klein Bottle… Unsung…” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Destiny said. “They must have known the risk they were taking just being there.”

Something in the air changed. It was like a storm rolling in.

“What’s that pressure?” I whispered, looking around. They couldn’t literally be dropping a storm on me, could they? It wouldn’t do anything useful, and the rain and wind would be a good thing to give me a little visual cover. Half of the Enclave was still flying towards me, so a thunderstorm would be just lovely.

“I feel it too,” Destiny confirmed.

I peeked around the cover, and nothing tried to kill me. After a moment I moved a little more, and the gatling laser turrets still didn’t activate.

“Did they turn everything off?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

The feeling of pressure redoubled, and the feeling slapped me across the muzzle as sharp and bright as a flash of lightning. I could never forget it. It was something engraved on my soul.

“Four,” I whispered, looking up. The Grandus slowly descended towards the deck from above, the boxy form levitating on Four’s magical power, boosted a hundred times over by the haunted machinery beating away inside it like a black and terrible heart. It was enough to make a mare turn to poetry to try and explain herself.

I could feel her looking down at me. It was like I could see her instead of that machine. All the armor plate and machinery and chaos faded away, the noise fading until it was just her and me.

The Grandus transformed in mid-air, unfolding into the heaviest, most massive pony shape I’d ever seen. The aura around it flickered, and it fell, only slowing right before it hit the deck, and it still impacted hard enough to dent the thick armor and make the ship list a few degrees to that side before correcting itself.

“I’m starting to think I might be in over my head,” I whispered.

Chapter 57 - Excuse My Rudeness, But Could You Please RIP?

I felt like crap. My whole body was a bruise, inside and out. I was pretty sure that included my brain, because even thinking too hard made me sore. The cut on my left shoulder had opened up again, not that it had ever really closed, and I could feel my entire left forehoof was soaked in my own blood. That’s the worst type of blood to be soaked in!

Destiny was floating nearby and managed to look worried even while she checked all the connections with the Dimension Pliers.

“That’s all the anti-rad stuff I’ve got,” I said, giving the small pile of supplies to a doctor. “Sorry I don’t have more.”

“It’ll still help a lot,” the town doctor said. “Those ponies you rescued spent too much time in a highly irradiated environment. They’ve all got acute radiation syndrome to various degrees.” He saw my expression and gave a weak smile. “None of their lives are in immediate danger, thanks to you.”

“Hey, idiot!” Cube shouted. “Here. One of the scientists wanted me to give this back to you.” She shoved a small box into my hooves.

“Oh, the Telebuck,” I said. I still wasn’t jazzed about having a prototype personal teleporter that I didn’t know how to program properly. “Thanks, I guess?”

“Yeah, you better say thanks,” Cube scoffed, looking away. “I did what I could to recharge it. Your better, smarter half should be able to manage it, if you don’t have her wasting all her magic just keeping you alive.”

“Thank you,” Destiny said, sounding a little strained. I don’t know why she was annoyed, she got to be the better and smarter one.

“Speaking of keeping me alive, I know you’re out of healing potions, but can I have a cup of hot water?” My request was apparently reasonable because a mug was put in my hooves a moment later. I took a little satchel out of my inventory, checked to make sure it was what I thought it was, then mixed the green powder into the water.

“What is that?” Cube asked, wrinkling her nose. “It smells like the leftovers at a salad bar.”

“Datura root tea,” I said. “Zebra medicine. It’s a little like a healing potion but not as convenient.”

“You got it from a zebra?” Cube asked skeptically.

“Some of the nicest people I met down on the surface,” I said, sipping at the tea. It didn’t taste great, like musty old grass, but it was taking away the aches and pains a lot better than the steroids Destiny had pumped into me to keep my body from falling apart.

“I hate to admit it, but they were pleasant,” Destiny said. “We spent a long time with them and they were just friendly and welcoming. It wasn’t what I expected.”

“This is going to take a little bit to kick in,” I said. “Can you give me the run-down on what’s been happening while I was taking care of things on that ship?”

I looked up at the Raptor still circling above us. It had started to list and the course had become erratic, and I doubted it was going to stay in the city for long. It was just adrift now, and relatively toothless aside from being a radiation hazard.

Cube nodded and pointed at the College of Winterhoof. “I tried to get inside on my own, because I can obviously deal with a pencil-pushing dork like Cypher Decode without help, but it’s impossible. The space is warped. If you go in, you don’t really go anywhere no matter how far you try and trot, and the second you turn around, you’re back outside.”

“The Pliers can help with that,” Destiny said. “If we run them in continuous mode, they’ll act as a reality anchor and flatten local space-time. It’ll drain the suit’s fusion core, but all we need to do is walk from here to the gym.”

“Then we just point it at the Pyramid and close the gateway and job’s done and everypony’s safe,” I said with a sigh. I finished the last of the tea. If nothing else it seemed like it was doing a decent job of slowing the bleeding. I looked over at Destiny. “But let me guess, you’re going to tell me I’m not in good enough shape for this?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Destiny admitted.

“Doesn’t this armor have biometrics and stuff? You’ve talked about them before.”

“Chamomile, it wasn’t that long ago that you grew practically a whole new skeleton, and then there’s the dermal mesh, and rewiring half of your nervous system…” She shook herself in midair. “How am I supposed to know what normal looks like?”

I grunted. “Fair enough.”

“You should complain to whoever modified you,” Cube said.

“If I see Mom around I’ll make sure to let her know exactly how I feel,” I grumbled. “Okay. Guess it’s not going to get any better if I sit here and wait.” I groaned when I stood up, but I wasn’t as sore as when I sat down so it was mostly out of habit.

I motioned to Destiny, and she popped down over my head, sealing my armor. Thanks to the steadying effect of the Datura, I only limped a little on the way to the College. I could have used a bottle of vodka to really set me right, but that might not be a super-smart plan with a pint of my blood sloshing around in my armor’s sleeve.

“The good thing about the Pliers is, they double as a dimensional distortion sensor,” Destiny said. “I think those sterile thaumatinos are creating this effect. It’s a little like glass. You can’t see them directly, but if they’re arranged just right they can act as a lens.”

“And what’s that lens for?” I asked, standing at the threshold. The light should have gone through the doorway and hit the floor beyond, but I might as well have been looking at a velvet curtain.

“My best guess? The same thing as any other lens. Something on the other side is looking at us very closely.”

“Oh great, the ghost is going to make this creepy,” Cube complained. “Hit it. Let’s see what those Pliers can do.”

The tool hummed to life, and I sort of expected and hoped that the darkness would evaporate like we’d dropped bleach into a pool of ink, but instead, it was just pushed back. No, it crawled back, like cloudbugs scurrying away from light, just a little too slowly to merely be an optical illusion.

“We have limited power, but within this bubble, local space-time connections should remain consistent,” Destiny said. “I’d still suggest hurrying.”

I took a step forward into the terror, and the floor didn’t fall out from under me. Good enough. Cube ran in, staying right next to me.

“You’re not going alone,” she said. “If I let you go alone you’re going to find the jerk who did all this and instead of just shooting him in the head like a sane pony you’re going to try giving him a big hug and forgiving him.”

“You realize he probably is being mind-controlled, right?” I asked. We slowly made our way into the college. DRACO popped a map onto my display with explicit directions on where to go. I kept one eye on that but mostly watched the radius of light around us. Cube was providing some illumination with her horn, and it seemed like the Pliers were keeping about ten meters in every direction relatively clear.

I say relatively because it didn’t do much about the ghosts. The black shadows stared at us even when the gloom was stripped away around them, pony-shaped holes in the world with just enough detail to nearly suggest depth, to imply that if we kept looking we’d see more.

“Well do you realize he’s…” Cube trailed off. She was staring at one of the ghosts. It was smaller than some of the tall, attenuated forms, the same size as Cube herself, but with a distinctive mane style like thick braids that still showed through in the near-silhouette.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“That’s one of the other ponies that was getting augmented at the same time I was,” Cube said quietly. “But he didn’t make it. He died during one of the talisman implantation surgeries.”

“Was he a friend?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter!” Cube snapped. “He was never here! I never talked about him! I haven’t even thought about him in weeks! How does the bucking pyramid know about him?!”

“It’s just trying to get a reaction from you to slow you down,” Destiny said. “It must have some kind of acausal magic. Effects coming before causes. That might even be why it had parts from the Exodus White from before they were actually built! It can start with the outcome and work backwards!”

“Who cares?” Cube snapped. She drew a pistol and shot the ghost. It vanished into less than nothing. “If it thinks seeing something like that is going to stop me…”

“Good thing I don’t have a ton of regrets or a trail of bodies behind me,” I mumbled.

Four shook her head silently. I practically fell over trying to scramble away from the lanky spirit. I hadn’t even noticed it creeping up until it was standing next to me.

“Buck!” I swore.

The shadowed reflection of Four offered a hoof to help me stand. I tried to take it, but my hoof just went right through her. She looked down at her hoof for a moment where I’d touched her, and I could see her starting to fray at the edges, dissolving like smoke from that touch. Her blank, eyeless face was somehow filled with an expression of deep sadness and betrayal.

“No, I didn’t mean to--” I reached for her, but Four stumbled back on three hooves as the erosion tore her apart, falling out of the radius of the Pliers and into the impenetrable darkness beyond.

“Chamomile, stop! She’s not real!” Destiny warned.

“Yeah, don’t be stupid,” Cube agreed. “It’s just this place messing with you.” She peered into the absolute blackness beyond the bubble. “I don’t think it can actually hurt us. It’s just trying to scare us away.”

I couldn’t help myself. I took a few steps closer to where Four had fallen out of sight. “Maybe you’re right,” I sighed. “It’s tough. I’ve been sort of feeling messed up ever since--”

My confession that maybe I did actually need some help and emotional support was cut short by a massive slab-sided shape as big as a house stomping out of the darkness. It shouldn’t have even fit in the corridor, but the Grandus was right there in front of me, and it roared silently, not making a sound but somehow shaking me right down to my core. I could feel the rage radiating off of it, the blind, inequine anger that had consumed her.

“It can’t hurt you,” Destiny said quickly. “It’s just an image!”

The image stomped on me, flattening me against the floor. White and black magic surrounded me and slammed me into the wall. I choked and coughed on blood, the taste of iron filling my mouth.

The Grandus reared up, and I feebly shielded my head. I closed my eyes when those two massive forehooves started coming down… and when I opened them again it was just gone. I looked around, confused.

“Where did it go?” I asked, my voice rough.

“It vanished. I’m not picking up any traces.”

“Are you okay?” Cube asked softly. She looked over my body. “No, you’re not okay,” she decided. “Are you dying?”

“Probably, but it’s taking its darn time,” I joked, forcing myself to stand. I couldn’t leave Cube alone in here. Not if there were more monsters like that lurking around. “So much for not being able to hurt us.”

“I’m revising my theory,” Cube said. “What was it?”

“The Grandus Assault Armor,” I sighed. “You know how I said I knew another unicorn with enhancements like you? She was enhanced just so she could pilot that thing. They tried to use her like a spark battery to power a weapon.”

“Mmph.” Cube frowned. I could see a mixture of emotions play out across her face. She didn’t know if she should be happy about how obviously strong Four had been, or sympathetic since it was clearly hard for me to talk about.

“It was a messed up situation,” I said. “Most of her memories were gone and they held onto memory orbs like hostages.”

“Sounds like she had some bad doctors,” Cube sighed. “Dad wouldn’t have let them do that kind of thing to me.”

“Nope,” I agreed, smiling a little. “Four didn’t have anypony on her side like you do. I wouldn’t let you get hurt either.”

“Ugh!” Cube rolled her eyes. “You’re so sweet it practically makes me sick sometimes. I shot you a bunch of times, remember? Don’t talk about doing me any favors until we’re even.”

I grunted. “I’m feeling pretty awful, so you’ve got plenty of chances to pay me back,” I said. I checked the map. “We’re almost halfway there. We could go faster if we flew, but…”

“I’d recommend against that,” Destiny said. “If you lose contact with the structure of the building, even with the Pliers I think this space-warping would find a way to do something annoying.”

“It would probably punt us back to the outside,” Cube agreed.

I nodded. I’d come to the same conclusion. Not because of math, just because I knew the universe would never make things easy for me.

The near-silence of the darkness was cut through with a sound. Not a voice or howl of rage but more like the rushing wind ahead of a massive gust.

“What is it gonna be this time?” I mumbled. It could be practically anything. What else was I afraid of? What regrets did I have? It was like trying to pick the right tree in a whole orchard of bad decisions that had all borne far too much fruit.

My mane stood up on the back of my neck I felt the danger a moment before it arrived and pushed Cube out of the way. Ten meters seemed like a good amount of space right up until something slammed through it at supersonic speed. I caught a glimpse of it, boxes strapped together onto a support structure and forced to fly purely on the excessive power of huge thrusters.

It was there and gone in a second, and the sonic boom slammed me into the dirt. Clouds. Floor. I was disoriented, concussed, and down a few pints. I wasn’t eloquent.

“I’ve seen that before!” Cube said. “That was the Heaven’s Sword!”

“Yeah,” I groaned. “Your dad let an idiot with a grudge against me pilot it and he killed a bunch of innocent ponies before I took him out.”

“How?” Cube asked. “That thing always scared me. I tried piloting it once and it almost killed me from the G-shock!”

“Exactly,” I said. “The vulnerable part is the pilot. He was already making bad decisions and I helped him make some more. He was so bad at trying to murder-suicide me that both of us lived through it.”

“How did he convince Dad to let him pilot it?”

“That’s a great question and I’d sure like to know the answer myself,” I said. “If Polar Orbit tells you, let me know what you find out.”

The wind started picking up again, and I braced myself. I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. I picked my moment, jumped, and threw a punch at nothing. The Heaven’s Sword burst into the bubble of stable space exactly where I’d guessed, and my hoof connected with the chin of the ghostly pilot strapped into the overpowered death machine.

The Heaven’s Sword went out of control and spiraled away in silence. I landed and scoffed.

“The ghost version is even dumber than the real Rain Shadow,” I said. Come to think of it, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was actually dead. Could the Pyramid make a ghost appear of somepony who was still alive? Were they illusions, or necromancy, or some combination of the two?

“You don’t sound very scared of him,” Cube noted.

I laughed and started walking, my legs feeling heavy. It was the kind of fatigue that wasn’t going to go away on its own, so the best I could do was keep moving and let inertia carry me through.

“I’ve never once been scared of him. I’d love for him to show up again for real just so I could beat the feathers off him.”

The doors to the gym loomed in front of us, and they were filled with a more profound darkness than the rest of the school. If that had been like a velvet curtain, this was more like a solid black wall.

I cracked my neck and instantly regretted it because it left me more sore than I had been before.

“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We give him a chance to stand down, try to talk some sense into him, and then when he refuses and insists we fight him to the death, I’ll wrassle him down and you shoot him until he stops moving. Don’t be afraid to take the shot if you might hit me.”

“Don’t worry, you being in the way absolutely wouldn’t stop me,” Cube promised. “I’ll try to keep it away from your face.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I agreed. “Destiny?”

“You’re way too cavalier about getting shot,” Destiny said. “The dimensional wall here is harder. I’m increasing gain on the Pliers.”

The tool attached to my armor vibrated harder, and the black wall lost focus before fading away like mist. I walked into it before it had entirely faded, pushing through it like I was busting through a cloud wall.

The pyramid loomed smugly, rotating slowly. The darkness stayed far away once we were inside the gym, like all the ghosts were sticking to the cheap seats to watch the showdown that was about to go down.

“Before you even say anything,” I started.

“So, you’ve come!” Cypher declared grandly. His coat was a few shades darker, but otherwise, he seemed exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him. “I should have expected no less from one of the Belles!”

“Yes wow who could have imagined that somepony would stop you when you’re trying to do something incredibly stupid,” I stated flatly. “Next you’ll make a dramatic denouncement about how firefighters keep showing up to all the buildings you’ve set on fire.”

“Owch,” Cube giggled. “I think you made him mad, Chamomile.”

“I am trying to bring something great to the Enclave!” Cypher said, his voice rising an octave and squeaking. “Only foals are afraid of the dark!”

“He’s not listening,” I sighed. “You remember the plan, Cube?”

She nodded and drew all four of her pistols, the weapons orbiting her head like a deadly halo.

I charged Cypher. There wasn’t much point in having more of a plan than that. I had no idea what kind of powers he might have. If I didn’t give him a chance to use them, it wouldn’t matter.

He stopped me dead in my tracks with one hoof. It wasn’t some burst of massive strength. I just couldn’t take another step. All my leverage vanished, as if the strength in my hooves vanished, like a nightmare where nothing works no matter how hard you try. Black shadows were wrapped around him like a shroud, and he seemed to grow under them as they shifted and moved, doubling in size until he was head and shoulders taller than me and I had to look up into the white, spotlight-like pits that were his eyes.

“Buck,” I swore.

DRACO fired without me asking, and a bullet went into the shadowy pony and right out the other side without hitting anything solid. He was still holding me off with one raised hoof. I grabbed on and twisted and tried to flip him over like a wing-chun master. I couldn’t seem to get a good grip and just sort of wiggled and grunted with effort and got nowhere.

He laughed, until a bunch of lasers hit him in the face. He took a big step back, and with how tall he was I should have felt the hoofsteps shaking the floor, but there was nothing.

“Come on, Chamomile!” Cube shouted. “I thought you were good at fighting big monsters!”

She was absolutely right. I had to shake off those cobwebs and figure out his weak point. The lasers to the face didn’t seem to really be hurting him, just blinding him like any flashing light would.

Cypher’s body lost its sense of depth and unraveled into flat strips of shadow like cloth, flying apart and lancing past me. The edge of one of the ribbons caught me across the back and sliced through the armor, opening a deep cut almost instantly. I swore and ducked under another deadly tendril, then immediately had to jump over another one at ankle level.

The strips flew together on the other side of the room, reforming into the monstrously tall pony.

“Okay, that’s a neat trick,” I grunted.

“I know you don’t need me telling you this, but try not to get sliced apart,” Destiny said. “You don’t have a lot of blood you can afford to lose.”

More lasers hit him, but they really didn’t seem to do much good. I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out how to actually hurt him. I couldn’t wrassle him, bullets didn’t work, lasers just got absorbed by the darkness.

“When I grabbed the Pliers from the zebra, the shock almost killed me,” I said. “Think you can make that happen with him?”

“A distortion wave? If I turn off some of the safeties, sure,” Destiny said. “You’ll have to get in close. It won’t reach more than two or three meters.”

I nodded. Getting in close was no problem at all. Before it could really start turning its attention on Cube, I charged at him and jumped, trying to give him a headbutt. Before I could connect, he whirled into a spiral of black threads and I spread my wings, stalling out and falling, but it was better than the alternative.

My butt hit the floor and I triggered the Pliers. A wave launched from my side with a deep thud, recoil hitting me like a sledgehammer. Inside the cone, the world bent as if seen through a wavering lens. It washed through the storm of twisting shadows and washed through them with no apparent effect.

“Nothing?” I asked, shocked.

“He wasn’t solid enough! You have to wait for him to come together!” Destiny shouted.

The ribbons turned and swam through the air towards me, and I was trying to dodge raindrops in the middle of a storm. I slid on the floor to avoid a spear of black death and had to roll to the side to avoid another blade slithering there. I stood just in time to see a razor-edge aiming for my neck and twisted, the shadow cutting through the cheek of my helmet and giving me a shallow cut under my right eye.

I tried to catch my breath in the few moments of calm when it was over. It was getting harder. Either he was learning to use his new powers or I was slowing down or both. The whirlwind of black shreds of gloom started to come together.

“Hit it now!” Destiny yelled.

I surged forward, stumbling on half-numb hooves, and hit Cypher’s massive ebony chest just as he reformed into a pony.

“Hey,” I said weakly. I pulled the trigger.

The pulse of force exploded into him, and the shadows were ripped apart. They shattered in the air, and a mere pony dropped to the ground, bleeding from his ears and nose. He groaned on the hard floor of the gym. My hooves carried me a few weary steps closer and I rolled him over onto his back before putting a hoof on his chest and pressing down very lightly.

“You, you…” he gasped, coughing up blood. I could sympathize with that. He looked as bad as I felt.

“Me, me,” I agreed.

He squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear running down his cheek. “Why did you have to come here? Everything was going so well before you came here!”

“If one bump in the road was enough to totally derail all your plans, they weren’t going to work in the first place, big shot,” I said, my voice feeling rough. I tried to clear my throat and ended up in a coughing fit.

“One bump in the road,” Cypher Decode spat, looking away from me. “How could anypony plan for one of Celestia’s Belles to show up? Did you just come here to spite me? What did I ever do to deserve this?!”

“Dude, I don’t know anything about you,” I sighed. I felt exhausted. “You’re not a big shot. You’re just somepony who did something naughty and freaked out because they thought they were going to get caught.”

Cypher started crying. I almost wanted to comfort him. I might have tried saying something nicer, but then Cube shot him in the head just like she promised.

“Okay, that part of the plan still worked,” she said. I was too tired to even yell at her for shooting Cypher after he was already beaten. She had told me in advance she was gonna do it. “So how do we get rid of this stupid Pyramid?”

“I’ll recalibrate the Dimension Pliers,” Destiny said. “I suspect it’s going to be close to what we used to close the portal onboard the Firefly. Let me just get readings with DRACO to make sure and we’ll be good to go.”

“Good,” I sighed. “I just want this to be over. The whole thing was a waste of my time…”

“I guess I don’t hate you as much as I used to,” Cube said. “So maybe it wasn’t entirely a waste. We got some family bonding done or whatever.”

I smiled faintly while she trotted over. “You know, I didn’t think you’d say that kind of thing.”

Cube blushed. “Yeah, yeah, don’t let it go to your head.”

DRACO beeped. For one second I thought it was just done scanning, but then the beeping got faster and higher-pitched in alarm.

“Sterile thaum surge!” Destiny warned, translating for us. “The pyramid is doing something!”

I turned to look at it, and I was blinded by something like the sun.

I blinked, clearing my eyes. I was standing in a bright, sunny meadow. Naturally, all the flowers were white chamomile, just like my cutie mark.

“Where…” I looked down at my bare hooves. Just regular hooves. No SIVA-made carbide layers or layers of scum and blood. I knew what that meant. “I’m dreaming.”

“Most ponies aren’t that quick on the uptake,” a voice behind me said. It sounded smug.

I turned around and saw myself standing there, looking just as smug as they sounded.

“I’ve done this song and dance a couple of times,” I said. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re not going to talk me into anything just by looking like me.”

“I wanted to talk to you about what you’re about to do,” the other-me said. “Cypher was pathetic, but you knew that. He got a little taste of power and choked on it.”

“You’re gonna offer me power and stuff, right?” I sighed. “I’m not interested.”

The other me pursed her lips and hummed. “I don’t know if I’d call it power. You’re not motivated by power. You also aren’t very impressed by what Cypher got, and I can’t blame you. You did smack him down pretty hard.”

I snorted. “Yeah. You screwed up with him.”

The other me nodded. “What I offer isn’t strength, not always. What I want to do is give you everything. Everything you could have been.” It flickered. I was in the robes of some kind of scholar. “Knowledge.” A high-ranking officer’s uniform. “Prestige.” It became slimmer and wearing something sleek. “Beauty.”

“That’s what was going on with the zebra,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I saw all the lives she could have had.”

“Every life is made of choices,” my copy said. “You cut away possibility. No athlete can be the best at every event. There’s only so much time to practice, only so much time to live. You make a choice about what you want most in the moment and the rest dies. But what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you had it all. All at once, and more. Not just the things you left behind but the things you never even knew you had a chance to take?”

They were very smug, probably smarter than me, and made the critical error of stepping closer while they made their offer.

“You could--” my perfect, beautiful double started.

I slugged them in the snout.

I gasped, and shadows peeled back from my vision, my body present and aching and real.

“Chamomile! Are you okay?” Destiny asked. “I thought we lost you!”

“I’m okay,” I assured her. The worst part of any out-of-body experience was the part where it ended and you had to come back. “Do you have those readings yet?”

“I think so, but I’m worried about feedback!”

“I don’t think we’ve got time to get it perfect,” I said. I was worried about what would happen if it tried the same trick with Cube. She wasn’t as mentally tough as I was. She was young and smart enough that she might actually be tempted into taking whatever deal that nightmare shadow was offering.

“Roger that,” Destiny said. “Be ready to run if it starts to explode!”

“Did she say something about an explosion?” Cube asked, right when I was pulling the trigger. The space between me and the pyramid rippled, and in that cone of distorted air I saw it twist in an impossible direction. I can’t even capture it properly in my mind’s eye, but I saw it right there in front of me, like seeing a square rotate just a little in a direction it shouldn’t and you realize you were just looking at a cube face-on.

“Is it working?” I asked.

The floor rumbled, in a way clouds shouldn’t. Right under the floating pyramid, they rippled and then pulled in, vapor rising up towards the floating black polyhedron. A chill ran down my spine. The air pressure dropped, and I grabbed Cube by the back of the neck and threw her towards the door before it could happen.

Silence cut through her scream of anger and confusion. The shadows around the gym surged, sucked towards the Pyramid like iron filings drawn to a magnet. White and black flashes blinded me.

“It’s imploding!” Destiny said, or I think that’s what she was yelling. I only caught some of it before my hooves came off the floor, the whole room abruptly decompressing, the floor and ceiling spiraling inwards in an impossible inrush of air.

The Pyramid loomed impossibly large, the black surface stretching and time seeming to slow down as I approached. The horizon in every direction turned flat black, the rest of the world falling away in a shrinking circle behind me.

I saw Cube reaching out.

I stretched, trying to grab her, to pull myself out.

The window closed, and everything went black.

Chapter 83: Because It's Midnite!

“Endless Night--” she coughed, spitting and retching and dry-heaving. The jet-black batpony started licking her foreleg, trying to get the taste off her tongue. “What is wrong with you?! Your blood is made of… of oil and poison!”

I touched my neck and looked at Destiny. Two tiny punctures had leaked a little dark, almost-black blood down to my chest, but the wounds had already scabbed over. “Um…”

“You don’t have to apologize to her,” Destiny said. “She just tried to drink your blood.”

“Okay, good,” I sighed.

The batpony spat one more time and looked up at me, tilting her head back to try and look down at me with her narrow, reptilian pupils set into blood-red eyes. “Usually I don’t get involved, but I think you need some serious medical attention, girl.”

A beam of pink light cracked through the air past the batpony’s head. She flinched.

“That was a warning shot,” Emerald Gleam said. “I have a wounded pony and I am not in the mood to fuck around and banter. Get out of the way or I will get you out of the way by force.”

“Somepony’s a little touchy,” the batpony said, backing off and giving them a clear path to the Auto-Doc. I saw her gaze linger on the fresh blood coming from Sunray’s wounds when she went past her.

The batpony’s nostrils flared, her pupils dilating and ears twitching. I could feel her struggling to hold herself back, straining with a beast on a leash until Sunray was in the pod and the door slid closed behind her.

“I haven’t been this thirsty since I was a foal,” the bat muttered.

“It’s working,” Doppler reported, once the Auto-Doc creaked and hummed to life, mechanical arms inside the pod beginning to move.

“Good,” Emma said. “Keep guard over her. The second you see anything strange on that display, you get me or Destiny. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Doppler saluted.

“She’s very official,” the batpony whispered to me. “This is going to sound really strange, but are you a robot? How much do you know about the three laws?”

“I’m not a robot,” I said. “But you are a vampire. Vampony? Nosferequuis? I don’t know if there’s a polite term.”

“What I am… is flattered that you’re trying to find a polite term!” she said, with a fanged smile.

“Name, rank, affiliation,” Emma cut in. “I am heavily armed and absolutely not afraid to shoot until I see good answers fly out of you.”

“My name is Midnight Shadow Sun, Death Of Obsidian Butterflies,” the batpony said. “You can just call me Midi. I know it’s a bit of a mouthful. And trust me, you don’t want me to start stacking titles on top of that because I’m pretty sure none of them matter anymore and we’d be here all night while I told you about the various tiny bits of woods where I was technically nobility.”

I could feel Emma’s frustration pouring out of her like a faucet slowly getting twisted.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Destiny asked. “You seem… familiar.”

Midi squinted. “Hmm. You’re some kind of ghost, aren’t you? That’s interesting. I can just barely see the outline…” she gasped. “Destiny Bray?!”

“You can… see me?” Destiny asked, surprised.

The batpony shrugged. “A little. It’s like a faded photograph. You’re not very well manifested. It’s good to see you again! Actually, I could really use your help!”

I looked at Destiny, and she looked at me.

“Help?” I asked.

“I came here to get some repair parts for the Exodus Black,” Midi explained. “It’s a long story, but there was this thing with a megaspell, and the power systems took a major hit. I needed to grab some full-bridge rectifying flux capacitors to get them back up and running.”

“The Exodus Black?!” Destiny yelped. “I thought we might come across something going through the remaining Braytech sites but-- I didn’t think it would be this easy. You’re good luck, Chamomile!”

Emma turned to look at me. I rolled my eyes.

“Yes,” I sighed. “I know. You had a quiet few years and the second I come back I find the biggest disaster in the wasteland.”

“I’m pretty thankful for it,” Midi said. “I was stuck in there for a long time. Believe me, being almost completely dead sucks!”

I nodded. “I know.”

She gave me a solemn pat on the shoulder. “You’re a pretty cool android.”

“I’m… not an android.”

“She’s a cyborg,” Destiny corrected. “It’s a common mistake.”

“It’s not a common mistake.”

Midi patted me again. “You’re a pretty cool cyborg.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How did you get trapped inside an Auto-Doc?”

“I’d love to say it’s a long story, but it isn’t,” Midi replied. She started pacing, her batwings moving when she spoke like she needed to gesture with them to make herself understood. “I volunteered to come down here and get the parts we needed because I was getting stir-crazy onboard the Black anyway, even before the power went out and our entertainment options became limited to talking to the same ponies we’d seen every day for the last thousand years. The computer let me in through security with no problem, but the second I tried to walk out with the parts I needed, I got blasted. I wasn’t in any shape to resist, but I heard the computer debating on what to do with me, and it ended up deciding as a valid user it had to save my life, so it chucked me in the pod.”

“And then the Auto-Doc didn’t know what to do with a patient with no pulse,” Destiny guessed.

“More or less,” Midi agreed. “I was just alive enough that it didn’t spit me out, but too dead for it to stop treatment.”

“Good news, we already took care of the computer,” I said. “You can get your parts and get out of here.”

“I need to find my armor, too,” Midi sighed. “Last thing I want to do is get caught out in the sun without protection. That’s a bad time.”

“Instant death?” I guessed.

“No, it just hurts a lot,” Midi said. “And it’s not the kind of pain you can ever get used to. My suit will protect against it, and it’s more than a day’s flight back to the Black, so I’m going to need it or some kind of replacement.”

“I need to get my armor patched up,” I said. “We can look for your barding on the way. If you don’t mind us leaving, Emma?” I looked up at her. “You are the senior officer.”

Emerald Gleam sighed. “Getting her away from my ponies is a good idea. I’ll go with you, just in case.”

Just in case I did something stupid, or just in case Midnight Shadow Sun couldn’t be trusted? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

”This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” I asked. Destiny had the exodus armor laid out on a glowing table, using her magic to piece the broken parts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Midi looked over my shoulder at the mess and whistled.

“What happened to it?” she asked.

“Severe damage from high explosives and shrapnel,” Destiny said. “Followed by having all its programming wiped by the back-flash of a point-blank megaspell.”

“Considering it was next to a megaspell, it’s in good shape,” Midi conceded.

“If I can replace the repair talisman and recover the core thaumatic loop, I can just feed it magic and scrap metal and it should be able to fix itself,” Destiny said. “Chamomile, can you get me a blank talisman core from the shelf?”

I trotted over to look, poking through the little drawers on the tool shelf. “Ruby or sapphire?”

“Clear sapphire,” Destiny specified.

I brought one of the gems over and offered it to Destiny. “Is this the size you need?”

Destiny grabbed it with her magic, setting it into a silver and bronze brace.

“Thank you,” Destiny said. “Go help the vampire with whatever she wants. I need to focus for a few minutes.” Her horn glowed crimson, and I watched her begin to work a series of very expensive-looking tools.

“I’m surprised you knew what she wanted,” Midi said. “You must be smarter than I thought!”

Emma snorted, trying to hold back laughter and failing. Giggles came out of her in waves until she was forced to sit down, her breathing ragged from mirth.

“She’s just jealous that I went to school in a Stable for a while and had to take shop classes with unicorns,” I huffed.

“I won’t think less of you for being a nerd,” Midi said, giving me a solemn pat on the back. “Let’s go find where my gear went.”

“There’s a lost and found at the main courtesy desk,” Destiny said absently, the tools in front of her making tiny, precise movements and flashing on and off with sparks of rainbow light.

“That seems like a good place to start,” Midi agreed. “It’ll be on the ground floor. Care to be my brave escort?”

“I’m pretty sure I have to do it anyway to make sure you don’t cause trouble,” I said. “Emma, she won’t drink my blood, so you stick with Destiny in case she needs a hoof.”

“That had better not be a dig at me because I don’t have a body,” Destiny noted. “Calling me ‘barely manifested’ like she knows how hard it is to be a ghost…”

I followed Midi out of the lab, feeling immediately more at ease once I wasn’t in a small room full of things that I might break just by being Chamomile too close to them.

“You seem to know Destiny pretty well,” Midi said, once we were alone and trotting down the steps. She hopped over a broken robot, sticking to the wall like a changeling for a moment before hopping back down.

“I’m her best friend. Best living friend, anyway,” I corrected. I knew, vaguely, that she’d been close to Twilight Sparkle.

“Back in the old days, she never would have been friends with a pony like you.” Midi looked back over her shoulder at me. “That’s... not an insult. To you. The Destiny Bray I remember was sort of prickly and only thought about herself.”

“I guess death changes a pony,” I shrugged. “After I drowned I was afraid of water for a while. Then I saw a bunch of memories from a seapony! Fear of water? Vanquished.”

“Good for you!” Midi said, with much less sarcasm and much more honest encouragement than I deserved.

The main lobby of the building was a big, open area that made me think of being back home. The Enclave had room to spare in all directions, and flying was easier in big spaces, so we tended to build with open floorplans and plenty of clear space for ponies to touch down in. Midi must have felt the same thing, because once we had the space to do it, she took to the air, bat wings flapping like they were clawing at the air. I tried not to look at them when I went after her. It was distracting for more than one reason -- the most important of the two being that it made me too aware of my own flying and I started second-guessing my instincts and trying to move the same way she was even though my joints didn’t even work the same way.

She landed in front of the desk and rang the bell. “Can I get some service?”

I set down behind it and cleared my throat. “Do you need some help, Ma’am?”

“Ah yes,” Midi said. “My name is Midnight Shadow Sun, and I’ve misplaced something of mine and-- oh, I think I see it there in the lost and found!”

She pointed behind me.

“Is it the parasol?” I asked.

“Actually it’s the set of Soulsteel barding,” she specified. I rubbed my chin, pretending not to immediately spot the entire set of barding haphazardly draped on top of the lost and found box.

“Ah, there it is,” I said, picking it up. “I didn’t see it for a moment.”

“This is a little embarrassing, but could you help me put it on?” Midi asked. “It’s a hassle doing it on my own~”

“You two were gone for a while. Is everything okay?” Emma asked.

“Fine,” I said, my cheeks burning and red.

“Doesn’t seem like they broke anything with my armor when the robots stripped me down,” Midi said, strutting inside. Her armor was drastically different from the other sets of barding I’d seen. It didn’t have any obvious mechanics to it at all, but I could feel magic running through the ruby-red armor plates and black bodysuit, and anypony could see the strips of glowing neon along her wings and around the visor of her helmet.

“The Exodus armor is in repair mode,” Destiny said, from where she was lying next to the workbench. Beams of light traced over the broken hexagonal thaumoframe cells and exposed wires. “With the equipment here it won’t take all that long.”

“Great!” Midi said. “Hey, this is going to sound really weird, but maybe I can catch a ride with you? Chamomile mentioned you had a transport, and I really don’t feel like flying all the way home on my own.”

“Yes,” Emma said before I even had to ask her for help. “If there’s something as big as an Exodus Ark flying around, the Enclave needs to know about it. It could be a hazard.” She didn’t say it but I could sense that she wasn’t fond of the idea of a giant flying vampire castle lurking in our airspace.

“If I can get these parts back to her, it won’t be a hazard at all,” Midi promised, patting the wooden crate we’d carried with us. “These are just what we need to fix that power grid, if I can get them back home.”

“That’s an interesting set of barding,” Destiny noted, floating over to look at it. “It’s not power armor, is it? It’s actually enchanted.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you noticed,” Midi said. She posed dramatically. “Do you want to take a closer look? Chamomile enjoyed it~”

I could feel Emma’s gaze on me. I tried not to look back at her, just sweating and blushing and trying to pretend I wasn’t there.

“What’s the difference?” Emma asked.

“Power armor has talismans for some limited magical effects, but works on mechanical principles,” Destiny explained. “Your armor, for example, uses a weight reduction talisman, but the actual strength-enhancing component is driven with electric motors. Steel Ranger armor has a fluid pulse system that transmits power through a kind of flexible hydraulic loop. Enchanted armor doesn’t need any technological components or a power source.”

“But it does mean every set has to be hoof-made, and it’s extremely expensive,” Midi said. “Neither of those is attractive when you’re outfitting an army.”

“How long will the repairs take?” Emma asked.

“If I prioritize the most critical systems and leave the rest for later?” Destiny tapped a few keys. “An hour. Two if there are problems I haven’t detected yet.”

“So we’re stuck here waiting for that and the Auto-Doc,” Emma sighed. “I’ll relay a report to Command.”

“Ooh. Reports. That sounds fun. Anything we can do around here while we wait?” Midi asked.

“Lunch?” I suggested.

Midnight’s fangs sank through the thin skin of her victim, piercing the flesh beneath. Her lips held tight, and the life-giving fluids drained down her throat, the helpless, doomed subject of her thirst growing dry and withered in mere seconds before she released the bone-dry corpse, letting it fall to the ground.

“I’ve never seen anypony eat an apple like that,” I said, offering her another one.

“I don’t even see how you could do that,” Destiny added. She picked up the shriveled corpse. “It’s like it’s freeze-dried! You can’t do that with just suction! It must be some kind of magical osmosis effect…”

“It’s not blood, but they really help take the edge off,” Midi said before chomping into the next fruit. “Mmm. These are really good. I haven’t had fresh fruit since… darn, even during the war it was hard to get! It’s been a while!”

“What about monster blood?” Emma asked. “Can you drink that?”

She leaned against the wall and waggled a hoof. “It depends on the monster. Honestly, animal blood in general? Not great. It’s a mystical curse thing.”

Destiny examined the apple for a few more moments before the repair bench beeped behind her. She turned and tossed the apple core into a trash can before checking the terminal attached to the array of tools and sensors.

“The secondary quality checks all came back clean,” Destiny said. “The internal repair talisman can manage the rest of the repairs.”

“Do you need a hoof putting it on?” Midi asked. “No? I was just asking a friendly question. I know how tricky it can be to get all those straps and buckles.”

“Chamomile and I have a lot of practice with this,” Destiny said, levitating the smaller parts of the armor over while I lifted the heavier parts like the chestpiece. “We’re very close.”

“Don’t let me come between you,” Midi said, raising a hoof in concession.

Destiny tightened a few more straps, but the suit wasn’t fitting right. That wasn’t a big surprise considering the last pony to wear it.

“Remember--”

“Use the control on the forehoof to resize it, I remember.” I tapped it, and the Exodus Armor shifted, panels moving and shifting around me. It had been fitted for a hippogriff a moment ago, and quickly adjusted to my size, the long tail creeping back up and panels moving to cover my legs and hooves more properly.

“I wish my clothing did that,” Midi chirped, giggling.

“It feels good to have this on again,” I said, flexing and feeling the T-field stretch around me like a warm magical sweater. “I really didn’t appreciate how strong it was until I had to fight Sentinel while he was wearing it.”

“I wish it was stronger,” Destiny said. “I hate to say this, but you felt that way for a reason. The strength enhancement has limits that you’re running into. It’s able to take a lot of the actual burden off you by holding the weight, but it can’t do much more than that unless you want to overload the circuits and burn through the fusion core ten times faster.”

“That’s true, but the most important thing is I have all my stuff again!” I held out my hoof and focused, producing the dancing hula pony I’d found in a crate back near Stalliongrad. “I missed all this junk!”

Destiny floated over my head and settled down into place, the edge of the helmet sealing shut and the heads-up display flickered to life, flashing through a dozen status windows before settling down to a comforting presence at the edges of my vision showing a little useful information without being overwhelming.

Her voice sounded in my ears like she was right in front of me. “I’m going to run a weapons test. One moment.”

The mounts on the integrated battle saddle flashed, and weapons popped out of the extradimensional space of the Vector Traps on the hardpoints.

“DRACO, Cryolator, Junk Jet, HEARSE,” Destiny noted, rotating through the heavy rifle, freeze gun, mass driver, and flechette launcher. “All green.”

“Fancy!” Midi quipped.

“Chamomile needs as many guns as possible so she can use them as clubs,” Emma joked.

“Emma envies my killing power,” I retorted.

“But not your aim,” she countered. “If we’re done here, let’s pack it up and get back to Sunray. I don’t like leaving anypony alone.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Destiny promised.

“That’s what worries me,” Emma said. “Every time we think it’s safe, something terrible happens.”

“According to this, the surgery went well, all things considered,” Destiny noted. I leaned closer to the display, trying to figure out what it was saying. I could read it, and I knew most of the words, but they were mixed in with abbreviations and jargon to fit the small screen and probably made sense to a doctor, but not to me.

“What does ‘all things considered’ actually mean?” Emma asked. “How bad did it go?”

“With no blood packs, it had to stabilize her blood pressure with saline,” Destiny said. “So she’ll be sort of anemic and weak for a few days. I’d recommend some iron supplements, but all the supplies here are expired. I didn’t think I had to splurge on packages that would last several centuries.”

“I’d recommend dark greens like kale and spinach, cooked in a broth,” Midi said.

I turned to look at her and so did Doppler and Emma.

“Oh please, if anypony here knows how to treat somepony for blood loss, it’s me,” Midi said. “Once in a while you drink just a little too deeply and then it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re taken care of.”

“Can we not talk about ponies being used as a food source?” Doppler asked quietly.

“Seconded,” Emma noted. “I’ll take what you said into consideration, though.”

Midi shrugged. “Somepony has a weak stomach.”

“I’m bringing her out of sedation,” Destiny said. “Chamomile?”

“Right,” I said, turning around so she could use telekinesis to work the controls. The green light blinked yellow, and the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, antiseptic mist pouring from the seams.

Emma and Doppler reached inside, unstrapping Sunray from the table and helping the dazed pony out into the open while the last of the sedatives wore off.

“How are you doing?” Emma asked. I looked around her at Sunray. The younger pony flexed her forehoof cautiously.

“I think I’m okay,” she said. After a second she seemed to realize she was forgetting something and snapped a salute. “I apologize, Ma’am. My injuries endangered the mission.”

“No, Airpony,” Emma sighed. “I owe you the apology. I’m sorry I let you get hurt.”

Emma hugged her briefly. I looked away.

“Awkward,” Midi whispered, right next to me. “If you’re just jealous, you can help me take my armor off later~”

I sputtered, blushing. The vampire laughed and patted me on the back.

“You’re too easy!” she giggled.

“Ma’am? Who’s that?” Sunray asked.

“Another stray we picked up while you were unconscious,” Emma groused, obviously annoyed. “I heard vampires were always thirsty but I didn’t know this is what they meant,”

“Some of us haven’t gotten laid in decades!” Midi proclaimed. “I’m sure you can sympathize.”

Emma’s cheeks flushed pink. “I’m starting to rethink giving you a ride.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Are you able to walk, Airpony Sunray?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Sunray saluted.

“Let’s get to the VertiBuck. I’m going to do something I regret either way, so I’d rather get it over with quickly.” Emma tilted her head back and marched past us.

“She definitely doesn’t like me,” Midi whispered to me.

“You could be nicer,” I pointed out.

“I’m too hungry to be nice. At least if I tease her it takes the edge off.”

“Is that why you were teasing me?” I asked.

She bumped her flank against mine and laughed to herself, following Emma out.

“You’ll have to try harder if you want to find out!” she called back.

I watched her go and was alone for a moment before Destiny said anything.

“I was playing these conversations in my head,” Destiny said. “I’d tell you how you shouldn’t get close to her, that she was a deadly, dangerous monster that just looked like a pony. Then I realized that meant she was exactly your type.”

I scowled, not that Destiny could really see it while I had the helmet on.

Outside, things were starting to get darker. It was hard to tell day and night with the thick grey clouds going from horizon to horizon, but the gloom seemed gloomier and the armor’s internal clock said it was around sundown. Not that I knew how accurate it was right now. The VertiBuck was still on top of the factory, just as we left it. I barely believed it. I was sure it would be on fire or missing.

“Oh, I’ve seen these before,” Midnight Shadow Sun said, with obvious approval. “The army used these as troop transports.”

“How did you get down here in the first place?” Emma asked, after giving the pilot a wave. The big tilt-rotor engines started up with an electric whine, building up momentum to overcome the inertia of the thick blades.

“I was packed inside a waverider glider! They had to shoot me through the storm of the century to get me out of the Exodus Black. I ditched it before landing and it crashed somewhere west of here.”

“Just a glider?” I asked. “How were you supposed to get back to the Exodus Black?”

“They figured I could work something out,” she said.

Destiny scoffed. “That’s nice of them.”

“If they could trust me to find the right parts, they could trust me to find my own way back.” Midi said, brightly. “Hey, Chamomile, show me around the inside of this thing. I’ve never been inside a flying tank before.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, helping her inside and explaining what little I knew while securing her crate of supplies and helping her get strapped in. I tried to sound as confident as the ponies who had explained it to me and not like somepony that had probably shot down as many VertiBucks as they’d flown in.

Doppler helped Sunray into her seat. Once everypony was inside, the engines pitched up, and we lifted into the air. We hit a patch of turbulence on the way up, and I saw Sunray wince. Doppler knelt down next to her and lifted her wing, checking her ribs.

“I’m fine,” the injured airpony whispered, embarrassed and trying to lower her wing. Doppler relented, and Sunray shifted in her seat. “I’m just a little tender. That’s normal after surgery, right?”

“I don’t like trusting an ancient Auto-Doc in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “We’ll get you checked out by a real doctor.”

Sunray nodded, then gasped, having apparently realized something.

“What about my armor!?” Sunray asked. “If I lose it--”

“We salvaged it,” Emma assured her, kicking a bag that had already been on the Vertibuck when we got there. “It saved your life. That means it did its job. I’ll show you how to fill out the damaged equipment forms. I need to do it myself for this.” She turned to the side to show the missing rifle where one of the robots had caught her with a powerful swing.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Sunray said.

“So… what’s our ETA?” Midi asked.

“The flight back won’t take long,” Emerald Gleam said. “It’s a few hours to the Forward Operating Base, then we’ll get clearance to the canopy. We’ll have a lot of paperwork and explaining to do with you two, but I can smooth things over.”

“That’s good. Great.” Midi sighed. She seemed extremely restless. Maybe she was actually scared of flying?

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “These are really tough.”

“Didn’t you bring one down with a knife?” Destiny asked.

“Yes, but that was an accident,” I said.

Doppler and Sunray were staring at me. Emma sighed and facehoofed.

“Make best speed, Pilot!” she called forward, face still in her frog. “I don’t want Chamomile getting bored.”

“Yes, Ma’am. We’re just passing through the outskirts of the city now--”

He stopped when bells sounded through the transport, and I saw warning lights flashing through the open cockpit door. After a moment, I heard it over the engines, the sound of something bouncing off the hull like a distant hailstorm.

“We’re getting small-arms fire from the ruins on the ground,” the pilot reported. “Do you want me to engage or ignore, Ma’am?”

“Why are we low enough to get shot at?” Midi asked.

“There’s a flight corridor we need to use,” Emma explained over the roar of the engines. “We’ll have to fly low for a while until we hit it!”

“There’s a lightning shield,” I explained, when I sensed Midi’s confusion. “If we go above the cloud layer outside of authorized areas, it’ll fry this VertiBuck, then us!”

“Ma’am, I’m going to need an answer on the hostiles!” the pilot yelled back again.

Midi popped the hatch open. “Tell him to just circle around. I’ll be right back.”

She hopped backwards out of the hatch, the neon lines on her armor flashing with light before she faded into invisibility in the gloom and fell away.

“Damnit--” Emma growled. “Pilot, take us in a wide circle! Get ready to provide covering fire!”

“Do you think she needs it?” Sunray asked. “Isn’t she some kind of cool vampire… thing?”

“I think she’s just as green to the wasteland as you are,” Emma retorted.

“Raiders aren’t a big deal,” I assured her. “What are they gonna do? Shoot her a few times?” I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

“Chamomile, most ponies die when they get shot.”

“I’ve been shot a bunch of times and I never died from it.”

“You absolutely cannot compare your personal experiences to anypony else!” Emma groaned. “Even when we first met you shrugged off getting shot by lasers!”

“Are people getting shot by lasers?” Midi asked, leaning in between us. Her helmet’s visor was open, and her mouth was a mess of crimson red.

Emma jerked away from her. “When did--?!” She tried to maintain eye contact but kept looking at the bloody fangs.

“I just got back,” Midi said. “I feel way better! Let me tell you, five more minutes and I was going to jump one of you. But don’t worry, I don’t mean in a sexual way.”

She looked around the transport.

“So, anypony want to play twenty questions while we fly back?”

Chapter 98: Supercircus

I was still stuck in a gloomy haze when I walked onto the bridge of the Juniper. All the other bridges I’d been on had been set up like a split-level horseshoe shape with duty stations lining the curve and the captain seated at the focus where he could see any of the crew without having to turn around. They’d been a little like throne rooms.

The Juniper’s bridge was different. Polar Orbit was still in the middle of things, but it wasn’t a single throne in the middle of the activity. His captain’s chair was low and comfortable, one of several towards the front of the bridge, with only the helmsmare and a radar operator ahead of him, giving Polar Orbit an almost unobstructed view to the outside. I touched the wood railing around the bridge. It was cold, painted metal, not real wood.

“Good morning, Chamomile,” Polar Orbit said. He’d turned his chair to the side to look at me, sitting casually with his chin resting in his hoof. “Take a seat.”

He motioned to one of the chairs next to him. I expected them to be smaller, but they looked practically identical. I carefully sat down, almost expecting it to collapse, but it was sturdy enough.

“Would you like some coffee or tea?” Polar Orbit asked.

“Oh, uh, coffee is fine,” I said.

He nodded and touched a control on the arm of his chair. “This is the bridge. Could we please get a carafe of coffee from the mess? Thank you.” He sat back. “It’ll just be a minute. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“I think it’s natural for ponies to care enough about each other to at least have common courtesy.”

“You’re not wrong,” I agreed quietly. We quietly watched the clouds stream by the moving ship for a few minutes before an ensign walked up to us with a coffee pot and a few mugs on a tray.

“Milk and sugar?” she asked.

“Uh, thanks,” I said, nodding. She added both to the mug and gave it to me. She didn’t have to ask Polar Orbit, carefully measuring out milk and two sugar cubes before passing it over. He smiled warmly and gave her a nod of thanks before she left.

“I understand you’ve been trying to do things by the book lately,” he said. “I can respect that, but I imagine for you it must have been a little frustrating.”

“I got more leeway than most people actually in the military,” I said. I took a sip of the coffee. It was better than I expected. It didn’t have the gritty, oily feel of most coffee.

“Exceptional ponies shouldn’t need the guidance and oversight the average soldier is put under,” Polar Orbit said. “You’re part of my chain of command at the moment. I think I can trust you to take care of yourself.”

“You’re not going to try and order me around?” I asked.

He laughed a little and turned his chair to look at the view. “No, not right now. I would like to ask you to attend a reception we’ll be having onboard this evening. We’ll be picking up some rather important ponies to serve as their transport to the naval review.”

“...Naval review?” I asked.

Polar Orbit nodded. “I suppose you hadn’t heard about it. You’ve been a bit busy and it was rather hastily put together. It’s something like a parade crossed with military maneuvers. Important ponies stand around and watch ships sail in formation.”

“That’s kind of weird,” I mumbled.

“It’s a waste of fuel and resources. Neighvarro is doing it to remind Thunderhead that they have the upper hoof if a real fight breaks out. A bit of muscle flexing to try and force them to back down without making open threats.”

“You make it sound like you don’t think it’ll work,” I noted.

“Ponies at Thunderhead and its satellite bases know more about the fleet than the ponies crewing them. It takes a big bite out of the threat when you can look at a battleship floating past and see on your reports that the fire control system is broken and the main cannon can’t traverse.”

“It’s still a battleship,” I said. “I’ve seen what can happen if you fly one into a city.”

“Thankfully, the Enclave isn’t prepared to use those kinds of tactics,” Polar Orbit replied. “At the highest level, it’s run by accountants. Ponies with military ranks and minds that only see the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”
“What do you mean by that?”

“You’ll find out,” Polar Orbit said. “If you ask Ms. Bray about applying for a grant, you’ll have some sense of it.”

“I should go check on her. Thanks for the coffee.” I finished the cup, feeling a little more awake, if nothing else.

“It was my pleasure. If you need something to wear for the reception later, I’m sure we can find something that would fit.”

I paused, giving my cup to the waiting Ensign who was still lingering and waiting to refill our mugs. “I’ve got something that should work.”

“The ship is practically pristine,” Destiny said. “I don’t know if you noticed it, but everything here looks like it could have come out of a factory yesterday. It’s even like that behind maintenance panels.”

“Maybe that’s normal,” I suggested. “The Thunderhead faction does all the maintenance, right? If there’s one thing I know is absolutely true about logistics, it’s that you take care of the ponies you care about first.”

“So they might divert the best parts to ponies who support them, like Polar Orbit?”

“Yeah. But there’s another wrinkle.” I motioned to the ship around us. “This is a Garuda-class ship. It’s not something that should be on the books after the Enclave slimmed things down.”

“It is a rare ship,” Destiny agreed. “I studied cloudship design, you know. It was part of designing the Exodus Arks. The technology I ended up using was slightly different, but the design principles of the hulls are broadly similar. For a little while, every ship was unique, but the war demanded standardization to speed up production. That’s why the number of designs got pared down.”

“Right. But they still made other types. There could be warehouses full of parts for Garuda-class ships, or hulls that never got finished, or whatever.” I shrugged. “If they can afford to put the best parts together because nopony else needs the parts, maybe it’s not that strange.”

“Maybe,” Destiny conceded. “Or somepony just had enough bits to do it no matter the cost. A vanity project.”

“Since I’ve met Polar Orbit, I can tell you he absolutely seems like the kind of pony to spend a large fortune purely to show off. Speaking of showing off…”

I’d had a few options on what to wear. The obvious choice was a dress uniform. It would be appropriate, and if we were meeting ponies from Thunderhead it wouldn’t hurt to dress like I was on their side. I wasn’t sure I even had a side.

I could have gone in power armor. It was certainly the most expensive outfit I owned, but it might send the wrong message if I showed up looking ready for a fight. I was just going to be polite and maybe steal some canapes and drinks. It was impossible to resist the lure of free food and alcohol.

Then there was the third option. I laid out the red and black silk dress on the bed smoothing it out and checking to make sure I hadn’t somehow ruined it since the vampires had given it to me for another event that involved being polite to a bunch of bloodsucking leeches, though at least the vampires hadn’t been politicians.

Now that I’d thought of it like that, there was really only one good choice, wasn’t there? I picked up the dress and started pulling it on.

“So, why were you pulling panels off the wall?” I asked, getting my wings through the slits between the dress’ layers.

“Quattro wanted to check our quarters for listening devices,” Destiny said.

“How many did you find?” I asked.

“Two. One was obvious, the other was better hidden.”

“And - let me guess - Quattro’s guess is that the obvious one was there as a decoy so we’d think we’d disabled all the surveillance?”

“You’re starting to think like her,” Destiny said.

“I sure hope not,” I mumbled. “I’m not good at lying. If I had to go around pretending to be somepony else all the time I’d slip up. Can you give me a hoof with this dress? I don’t want to rip it putting it on.”

“Sure,” Destiny said, assisting me with the various buttons and catches hidden in the embroidered silk, the webbing of belts built into the structure of the dress making it almost form-fitting without restricting motion. It also made it difficult to put on without somepony helping.

Somepony knocked on the door.

“It’s open!” I shouted.

Quattro walked in, saw me getting changed, and immediately turned around so she wasn’t facing me, shutting the door and staying there looking at the wall.

“You could have warned me,” she said.

“About what? I’m just getting dressed.”

“Chamomile when you wear a dress like that, taking it on or off is an experience for anypony watching,” Quattro said. “Where did you even get that?”

“I got it from a vampire queen,” I said. “And I’ll take that to mean you like it.”

“It’s definitely going to turn heads,” Quattro agreed. “I thought you were going to wear your dress uniform.”

“Should I change?” I asked.

“No, this is better. You’re certain to get everypony’s attention.”

“You’re ready to go,” Destiny said, giving me a nudge. “It makes me wish I could dress up. This shroud is better than nothing, but…” She shrugged, the ghostly shawl letting me see her phantom shoulders but not much more than that.

“Sorry,” I said. “You know, now that things are quiet, maybe we can spend some time figuring that out.”

“Really?” Destiny asked.

I nodded and looked over at her. “It’s not ideal but what about a robot body? The basement of the Braytech lab outside Kludgetown was full of those murder bots. If you can control the Exodus Armor I bet you could control one of them, too.”

Destiny tilted, floating and thinking. “Maybe. It would be better than having to do everything with telekinesis. Even moving around is a constant drain like this. We’d have to run some tests, rig up a control system…”

“Sounds boring and safe,” Quattro said. “Might be good for a change, huh?”

“Let’s go eat a bunch of caviar and champagne,” I said, trying to playfully bump Quattro on my way out. She almost went flying.

“Careful!” Quattro said. “I’m a delicate lady!”

“What am I, then?”

Quattro chuckled. “Dangerous!”

The Juniper had an actual reception hall on deck ten, set in the forward part of the ship to give it a view of the outside. I wasn’t exactly late getting there - the reception was one of those events that was really spread out over a few hours as guests arrived, and I wasn’t the last pony to get there. A few ponies from Thunderhead were still trickling in on personal transports and skywagons.

I think it was the first time in my life that I was the best-dressed pony in the room. Everypony else was in expensive suits and dresses, but I felt like they were a tier or two below what I had on. It was a weird feeling, but I liked it. Maybe this was how rich ponies felt all the time!

“Who are you and what did you do with Chamomile?” Cube asked. She was wearing a dress uniform, Almost all white except for a burgundy vest and detailed gold embroidery around the sleeves and shoulders. “You actually got cleaned up. I’m nearly impressed.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“It’s a compliment, so just take it,” Cube said dismissively. “Come on. The Captain wanted me to bring you to him when you got here. I want to see his face when he gets a look at that dress.”

“I’ll be around,” Quattro said. “I enjoy mingling.”

“You enjoy spying,” Destiny corrected. Quattro shrugged, not correcting her. She walked off, waving over her shoulder and disappearing into the crowd of old ponies and unicorns. It was actually more unicorns than I was used to seeing in one place.

Cube led me through the crowd, and I felt ponies turn to look at me. For once it wasn’t because I’d made some kind of terrible mistake. I wasn’t even covered in blood. I could feel that they didn’t fear me, and there wasn’t a feeling of disapproval except from some of the oldest and crustiest ponies in the crowd.

“Chamomile!” Polar Orbit spotted me as we approached. He waved us over to where he was speaking to a half-dozen ponies in slightly nicer suits than the rest. “You have impeccable timing. I was just telling these gentlestallions about you.”

“Good things, I hope,” I said. I offered a hoof to shake, nodding to them and smiling and trying to be at least halfway polite and approachable.

“Of course,” Polar Orbit said. “You’re a pony with remarkable achievements. You’re a hero and a veteran of more combat than anypony else in the Enclave.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” I laughed. “There are a lot of ponies up here.”

“Don’t minimize your accomplishments,” Polar Orbit said. “It’s one thing to gun down a few raiders from the safety of a Vertibuck, it’s another thing to strap rocket boosters to yourself and charge at a Raptor-class cloudship.”

“You heard about that, huh?” I asked.

“I was hoping you could tell us about it,” one of the older unicorns said, adjusting his glasses. “Nothing quite like those ponies from Neighvarro getting a bloody nose, eh?”

“...Really? I wasn’t sure it was even a safe topic,” I admitted. “To be honest, I ended up there because I fell in with a bunch of Dashites. But even that was only a cover for what they were really after…”

I ended up telling them a good portion of the story. I left out the parts with Four. I wasn’t quite ready to spill my guts like that, and they wanted the exciting parts, not the traumatic bits where a pony I loved got killed and all my bones shattered. It was stupid but I still had phantom pains sometimes and I knew for a fact that my bones didn’t grow back in the right shape in some places.

I got to the part where I jumped out of the exploding cloudship and everypony looked suitably impressed. I admit, I sort of exaggerated a few parts in my retelling. I mentioned the Grandus but not Four, and skipped the part where I’d had a good long cry. To be honest I expected them to ask more questions about the invincible assault armor. If I didn’t know better I’d think some of them knew what I was talking about.

“Bragging about causing meaningless destruction? Did you forget all the ponies that died? Most of them were soldiers just doing their duty.” A pony rumbled behind me. Their voice was distorted and electronic, and I didn’t know why until I turned to look.

He was a stallion, just a little shorter than me, and I couldn’t tell you one other thing about how he actually looked. He had a black cape on that covered most of his body, and a thick suit under that, with boots and a turtleneck that concealed every inch of his coat. A smooth, almost featureless mask studded with tiny embedded cameras and complete with a rebreather covered his face and mane, turning him into a faceless mystery pony.

“I was asked to tell the story,” I pointed out. “And you are?”

He was silent for a long moment. I could feel something from him. A barely concealed rage bubbling under the surface. I think I’d have noticed it even without the weird sixth sense I’d developed. Every motion he made had that very careful, controlled sense that a pony had when they were a heartbeat away from snapping entirely.

“Tetra,” he said, once he’d gathered himself. If I’d bet money on that not being his real name, nopony in the world would have taken me up on it. It was obviously an alias. A pony dressed like that didn’t go around telling ponies their real name.

“Nice suit,” I said. Even that got a surge of anger out of him, a hitch in his breathing just from having to listen to me talk. The pony had something against me personally. I hadn’t even met him before.

Probably. I had no idea who he really was. I could tell one thing, though, the second he shook my hoof and squeezed just a little too hard for a normal pony.

“You’re enhanced,” I said. “Like Cube.”

“How did you know that?” Cube asked. The way she said it was confirmation. She was just surprised I’d been able to tell.

“You’re very perceptive,” Tetra said with forced lightness and politeness. “Perhaps you’d like to dance?”

It felt like he was inviting me to a duel, not a dance. I nodded anyway.

“Sure,” I said. “I have to warn you, I’m not very good. I never went to finishing school.”

“Then I’ll lead,” Tetra said, motioning towards the dance floor. I excused myself and caught a worried glimpse from Cube when we walked away. There weren’t a lot of ponies dancing, giving us plenty of space and making us the center of attention. If Tetra just wanted me to embarrass myself in front of everypony, he’d picked the right venue for it. I wasn’t exactly light on my hooves.

I took his hoof and we stepped onto the dance floor just as the music changed. The knot of anger in his core didn’t shift, but he kept it contained well enough that a pony could mistake him as being terse and awkward instead of seething. He swung into motion along with the music, and I hate to admit it, but he did know how to lead a pony in a dance.

My awkwardness and general clumsiness was turned around, Tetra using my own momentum against me. It felt like Judo. I wasn’t dancing so much as I was being danced, kept off balance and pushed around so I’d spin the right way on instinct, stepping with the right pace because I was being pushed and pulled. I could feel how strong he was. It wasn’t the kind of natural strength that Two Bears had. She could squeeze a pony in half but it was warm and alive. Tetra had the power of a cold machine. He might be able to play it like an instrument, but a real musician breathed life into their art. He wielded strength without passion, just determination.

He tripped me up, knocking me off my hooves and catching me. I was sure he did it on purpose. For a moment I thought he was going to follow up with a punch. Instead, he caught me before I hit the ground, sweeping me into a big, slow spin back to my hooves.

The ponies watching us clapped. They could tell it was all on him, but they thought he was just showing off his skill.
I was the only one in a position to tell what he was really thinking.

I leaned closer to whisper. “You know, if you’re feeling up to it, we could forget all the foreplay, go off somewhere alone, and have a knife fight.”

He bristled and set me back on my hooves.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you’d suggest that,” he hissed back. “You’re a killer and a barbarian.”

“And you really want to take me up on that offer,” I noted. “You’d love to take a shot at me. If you’re feeling brave enough, I’m right here.”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin your dress,” Tetra growled. “It’s fetching. Too good for a pony like you to be wearing it.”

“Thank you. I like the mask. It gives you a real sense of mystery. I’m sure you’re not nearly as interesting without it.”

He made an annoyed sound and bowed politely. “I swore not to do any violence today but every moment I spend around you makes me regret that promise,” he said. “So, thank you.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I considered forgiving you for everything you did, but now that I’ve looked you in the eyes and seen you once again for the monster you are, I remember why I wanted to kill you to begin with.”

He stomped away, dramatically swirling his cloak as he left and passed through the crowd. I shrugged and walked off the dance floor. Destiny was waiting for me, giving me what I recognized as a worried look.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Who is that guy?” I mumbled. “He’s really peeved at me and I can’t tell why. Any ideas on his real identity?”

“With that mask? No clue.” Destiny bobbed. “With how much you’ve been involved in, I can’t even make an educated guess. It seems personal, with how much of a grudge he’s got against you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I thought the same thing. I just wish I could narrow it down.”

“He’s probably not anypony you killed,” Destiny joked. “That’s about all I’ve got.”

That got a snort of laughter out of me.

“Miss Chamomile?” A pony behind me spoke up. I turned to look. It was an older mare, with a suggestion of makeup and one of those understated outfits that meant it was expensive and also tasteful instead of just chasing whatever was popular in the moment. “My name is Dual Wingbeat. Could we speak for a moment?”

“I don’t think there’s a law against it,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“In private, I meant,” she specified. “I’d like to show you something.”

She led me to one side of the reception hall, where fabric screens created a kind of quiet VIP area, away from the view and chatter of the crowd. The wall here was painted with a mural that stretched from the ceiling to the floor, covering almost every inch of the bulkhead.

“What do you think of the mural?” she asked.

I looked at it for a moment, taking a sip of the champagne I’d nabbed from a serving pony on the way over. I’d read books about art before. They tended to have lots of pretty pictures, which meant they managed to keep my attention even before I was old enough to understand the content and commentary. Dad had just been happy enough that it was theoretically historically important and kept me quiet for a few hours while I flipped through them.

“It’s in the art deco style that was popular right towards the end of the War,” I said. “That’s not all that surprising, of course. It’s still popular today because the arts haven’t advanced much in the last two hundred years, and it has to be at least somewhat contemporary simply because of the medium.”

I motioned with my glass.

“It’s clearly an interpretation of a story. Even without words you can get a sense of it. This part is set before the sky closed, setting it in the distant past, and it’s depicted as being sort of a mythical golden age. This shows the fall of the Princesses, then a long period of war, ending with a mirror image of the first section, but reversed. A savior figure rises up and reunites a broken Equestria, bringing in a new golden age.”

“You’re right,” Dual Wingbeat said. “That’s quite a good interpretation.”

I narrowed my eyes, thinking. “It’s pretty common. I think most ponies believe somewhere deep inside that this is how things have to go, that eventually, somepony will save us. You could even interpret the savior figure as being symbolic of the Enclave itself, in the way Celestia and Luna symbolize Equestria. But…”

“But?”

“Well, I’m not a professor, I’ve just been forced to write a lot of book reports. Usually with a symbolic figure, especially for something that’s more or less a prophecy, you’d make it vague. A pony made out of light, or maybe wearing Enclave power armor since that’s what everypony wears when they go down to the surface. This looks like they had some specific pony in mind.”

I stepped closer to look at the pony. I didn’t recognize them. A pegasus, pink and blue, with light shining around them in a halo and smiling serenely.

“Saying it’s a prophecy isn’t quite right,” Dual Wingbeat said. “It’s more like a hope. I’m sure you’re aware of the current tensions between Neighvarro and Thunderhead?”

I nodded, wandering away from the savior descending and back towards the center of the mural.

“I’m guessing that’s what’s depicted here,” I said. It showed struggle and strife, but not without hope. Ponies fighting ponies, but none of them were mortally wounded.

“If you like,” she said. “It could be this conflict or a fight to reclaim the wasteland, or just ponies struggling with their nature. Do you know what’s bringing on this current little disagreement?”

“Probably resources,” I guessed.

“Yes, but more importantly, control. Neighvarro wants everything wrapped up in a tight little chain of command where everypony knows their place and things are done without negotiation or questioning. We in Thunderhead disagree with that. We think independence is important.”

“And the top brass thinks that’s a threat. The same way they think Dashites are a threat because they don’t follow the party line.”

“Exactly,” Dual Wingbeat said. “I know you’ve got friends on the surface. Did you know the only reason we have any contact with the surface at all is because Thunderhead pushed for it? If it was up to Neighvarro we wouldn’t even send ponies down to gather supplies, much less on missions of mercy.”

I grunted at that. I’d seen what missions of mercy looked like in Dark Harbor.

“If war breaks out, which side will you be on?” she asked bluntly.

“I wasn’t aware I had to pick a side,” I retorted.

“A side should always be taken, even if it’s the wrong one.”

I put the half-finished glass of sparkling wine down. “Right now? I’m loyal to my friends, not some vague notion of a country. But… I don’t think I’d want to fight against Cube.” I sighed. “She’s a good pony, and family.”

“That’s a good answer,” Dual Wingbeat said. She looked over at the savior figure. “You know, friendship is the most powerful force there is. It’s the invisible thread that binds us together. It’s what makes societies function.”

“If it helps, I’m not here to cause trouble for anypony,” I said. “Before you know it, I’ll probably be off on another big stupid adventure, so I’m not gonna be a political bother.”

Dual Wingbeat laughed politely. “If you do go off on an adventure, I wish you well.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I apologize for pulling you aside. Please, though, when you do decide which side of this coming war you’re on? Make sure you pick the side that helps ponies.”

I nodded to her. I could understand where she was coming from. I got the sense that she’d been asked to try and get some kind of commitment out of me. They probably wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to stab Polar Orbit in the back and give the Juniper to Neighvarro at the naval review.

Now that I thought about it, I was almost tempted. If I hadn’t cooled down a lot since he’d literally buried my hometown alive, I’d probably kill him just on principle. I hated that things were more complicated now. Politics and family. You couldn’t name two things that were worse together.

I stepped around the fabric divider. Quattro was waiting for me, speaking quietly with Destiny and holding a plate of hors d'oeuvres.

“Here,” Quattro said, offering me deviled eggs and strangely-colored paste on crackers. I gave it a look, then started putting the horse’s gift in my mouth. “How was the sales pitch?” she asked.

“I can’t figure out why they’re trying to sell me on it,” I admitted. “I’m not exactly famous and important.”

“Polar Orbit’s been talking you up,” Quattro said. “If you listen to what he says, you’d think you were a super-soldier that could replace a thousand normal ponies on the battlefield.”

“Those are big shoes to fill,” I mumbled.

“They are. Some ponies here have the impression that they could point you at the Naval Review and just watch from a distance with champagne and caviar while things explode. I’m not entirely sure they’re wrong, but you’d have to be awfully motivated to cause that much trouble for anypony.”

“If they were smarter, they’d try bribing Chamomile instead of talking to her about politics,” Destiny said.

“Come on, I’m not greedy,” I snorted. “So they’d have to make it a really good bribe.”

The crowd started shifting and murmuring. The music slowed, and ponies started all moving in the same direction.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Quattro said. “Ladies first.”

“That’s me,” Destiny said, going ahead of us.

I followed with the motion of the crowd. I could see over all but the most elaborate of giant hats. We were all moving towards the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the fore of the room. Outside, the clouds opened up like a wide river. The conversations became quiet and private, just whispers. I could feel fear and anxiety, along with the dull excitement of ponies who believed themselves invincible and were as dumb as I was.

Ahead of us, one of the largest cloudships I’d ever seen, half-again as massive as the Juniper, hovered in place. It was a Thunderhead, and I couldn’t help but think that it was a little spiteful to use a ship named after the city specifically to intimidate that same place into obedience. More than two dozen Raptor-class ships held position around it in a precise formation.

“There are more than I expected,” Quattro whispered in the near-silence.

“I think we should have brought a bigger boat,” I joked.

“We did,” Polar Orbit said quietly, as he stepped past us to the front of the crowd. “Everypony! I promised you that we would not be outdone at the naval review. Here is the proof!”

He waved his hoof with immaculate timing. Something massive breached the clouds below us. It was a multi-decked flying wing, practically large enough to be a city in the air. Big enough for thousands of ponies. I’d seen this ship before.

“The Exodus Black?” I asked. “No, wait, this one’s different…”

“It’s the Red,” Destiny corrected. “It’s been here all along?”

“Mares and Gentlestallions, let me introduce you to Thunderhead’s great hope,” Polar Orbit said.

The Ark loomed over the assembled fleet, massing at least as much as they did if not more. It was subtly different from the Exodus Black, without the look of a ruined, haunted house. This looked like a machine built for war, like a ship built for an alicorn. The armored plates were painted blood red and trimmed with gold. The prow of the Ark was a huge wedge of polished gold, tipped with a statue of Celestia that had to be several stories tall, her wings spread to both sides like she’d been frozen in place in the moment of leading the ship in a charge against its foes.

Lights and sound blared from the ship, a note like a foghorn announcing its arrival and getting everypony’s attention as if the Exodus Red didn’t demand it on its own. A shimmering image appeared in the air, almost as large as the ship itself. A transparent pony stood there, wearing a familiar-looking suit of power armor.

“Is that…?” I asked.

“We shouldn’t be that surprised she has Exodus Armor,” Destiny said. “Your suit wasn’t unique. They must be using the largest illusory array I’ve ever seen to make that projection.”

“Welcome,” boomed the armored pegasus mare. “It has been a very long time, but we are here to rescue you from yourselves. Come and see! Bring your leaders to me, to this place where destiny is made!”

“I think we’re in trouble,” I mumbled.

Chapter 100: Razgriz

It wasn’t as much of a surprise as the first few times I’d woken up after being dead. It proves you can get used to anything, even if it’s the feeling of your body rebooting. I don’t need to get into the details. You can imagine it. Darkness, cold, then nightmares that slowly wind down until I found myself flat on my back, deeply exhausted despite having been unconscious.

I opened my eyes and I wasn’t in a morgue. I was on a cot, tucked into bed on a thin and uncomfortable pad that pretended it was a mattress. This was the first good development. Everything that had happened in the last… however long it had been… flashed before my eyes. I admit I was brooding. Given what had happened I think I was allowed to brood a little bit.

Eventually, I got bored of brooding in silence and sat up to look around. I was in a dark, dingy room, and from the look of it, it had been an apartment at some point. All the fixtures had been torn out, leaving holes where there had obviously been a sink, appliances, and cabinet doors. The cloud walls were stropped down where pipes had been removed from them. It was a dead shell, a corpse that should have been eroded by the time and wind a long time ago.

And that actually begged a question as to why it was still around. I could tell nopony had maintained this place at all in at least a few decades. Cloud buildings didn’t last all that long without somepony using pegasus magic to keep them in shape. I tossed off the itchy blanket that had been thrown over me and went over to one of the windows, the frame crumbling a little under my weight when I leaned onto it to look outside.

“What the buck is all this?” I mumbled.

I’d thought it had been dark because it was night. My internal clock was blinking twelve, so I had no idea what time it actually was, but when I looked through that empty window frame I saw grey. Not flat, lifeless grey, but a complex landscape of it, clouds shaped into apartment buildings and streets and what remained of roads and fixtures. Above everything, a ceiling pressed down, like we were somehow in an underground city.

I used the term we there because I could sense I wasn’t alone. Sure, it was obvious I hadn’t dragged myself out of the Exodus Red and to wherever this was, I hadn’t tucked myself into bed in a cot. I’d still been somewhat alone when I’d first opened my eyes and I’d been brooding, but despite the silence, I felt the presence behind me. And I knew who it was without looking.

I moved faster than any normal pony could manage and lunged backwards, shoving Quattro into the wall and holding her there with a hoof across her neck to pin her in place. Even with the speed I’d used, I could tell she held back and let it happen, her expression and reaction one that screamed out the fact she was more than capable of dodging it if she wanted.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, amused.

“I want answers,” I said.

“I know you do,” Quattro said. “I’d tell you to let me go, but I understand why you’re upset with me. Would it help if I told you I didn’t know any of that was going to happen?”

“Not really,” I said.

“What if I told you I was the one who saved you?” she tried.

“I already figured that out for myself. I’ll thank you once I know why you did it.”

Quattro hissed through her teeth. “Would you believe me even if I told you?”

“I can tell when you lie,” I promised her.

She tilted her head, letting her visored sunglasses fall a little down her snout so we were looking each other in the eyes. “Can you?”

I suddenly wasn’t entirely sure that I could.

“I’ve always been a spy working for Cozy Glow,” she said. It rang out as true. “I spent the last decade and more getting her a big-picture view of the Enclave and all the dirty little secrets I could get my hooves on.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “She sort of implied all that when she did her big speech.”

“I was a Dashite. I joined up because I thought she’d be a better leader than what we had. Or at least she’d change things. After she started using weapons of mass destruction I decided she’s probably actually a megalomaniac.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And I’m a purple pony-eating squirrel with fifteen horns and teeth made out of candy.”

It turns out I couldn’t actually tell when she was lying. I growled in frustration and let her go. She shook her head and touched her neck gingerly.

“I think you left a bruise,” she mumbled.

“Can’t you take anything seriously?” I asked.

“I take a lot of things seriously,” Quattro said. “When I had you help me spring Cube from that military prison, I was under the impression that we were just going to go to the Exodus Red and you’d get a job offer. Not this whole… disaster.” She made a sweeping motion that indicated the entire world at large.

She took her glasses off entirely, sighing.

“Chamomile, I really didn’t think you were in danger. I didn’t even know who Tetra was. Cozy Glow gave everypony new names when she enhanced us. It was sort of a theme, you know?”

“Four. Tetra. Quattro.” I mumbled.

“And cubes are made of squares with four sides,” Quattro noted. “Maybe she never really intended for there to be more than four of us at once.”

“So she enhanced you, too?” I asked.

“A little,” Quattro confirmed. “Not as much as the others. I’m only a spy, after all. I do have a photographic memory, though. And I mean photographic. I can transfer my memories directly into empty memory orbs without a unicorn. I can even put images on holotapes just by holding them and focusing.”

“That’s all?” I asked, somewhat skeptical.

“For a spy, that’s pretty darn good,” Quattro countered. “I might also produce calming pheromones. Apparently that was a changeling thing they cracked. It keeps ponies from thinking too hard about contradictions or details.”

“Great, so you’re an amazing liar and a walking spy camera.”

“Flying spy camera. Yes. Sorry if that’s a disappointment. I don’t have a secret laser cannon in my chest.”

“Neither do--” I touched my chest. There was a patch of hard scales there, going from my breastbone all the way across my left pectoral. “--what the?!”

“Yeah… those appeared while you were healing,” Quattro said. She walked over to a burlap bag leaning against what had been a kitchen counter and pulled out a small shaving mirror, passing it over to me. She also grabbed a few more things, smoothing out a space on the floor and setting up a small chemical stove.

While she did that, I looked at myself. It was another change, a little more horrible and obvious than usual this time. The scales were hexagonal and shone like brushed silver. When I touched them, I could feel a subtle, staticy pressure.

“Thaumoframe?” I mumbled. “I’m growing thaumoframe?”

Maybe that explained the sixth sense. If it had been growing under my skin, in that mesh of heavy metals that protected me from energy weapons and radiation, my whole body could be like an antenna, picking things up. They were designed to resonate with magical fields, and I’d been exposed to so much SIVA and had parts of my armor driven into my body from shrapnel and blunt force trauma that there was no telling when my body had started doing things without asking.

“If it helps, I think it looks good on you,” Quattro offered.

“I don’t believe you but I’ll take it anyway because I’m emotionally drained and need any kind of support I can get,” I admitted. I tossed the mirror aside and sat down heavily next to the cot, leaning back against it.

She got a small fire going, and some of the dampness and chill started to depart. I saw her getting out a mess kit, and my stomach rumbled.

“I hope MREs are okay,” she said. “It’s what I was able to grab on the way out.”

“What happened after I passed out?” I asked.

“We took the General’s Vertibuck out. He didn’t need it and his guards all died in the confusion. I had to get you away from Tetra, and the only place to go was the Neighvarro fleet. We had the right transponder once we had the General’s transport, so I switched our uniforms and just formed up with the retreat.”

“Cozy Glow just let it happen?” I asked.

“You know, one of her biggest flaws is that she has to be in charge of every detail,” Quattro noted. “After that mysterious EMP grenade went off on the bridge, they needed a lot of time to restore systems and that gave the fleet enough of a window to escape.”

“Escape to where?” I asked.

Quattro waved a hoof outside. “Welcome to Stormreach. One of the Enclave’s best-kept secrets, mostly because nopony cares much about it. This was a lighter-than-air skyport back before the war, enclosed to make it easier to bring in the airships of the day.”

“Oh, I’ve seen those in books,” I said. “Blimps and zeppelins.”

“Right. Basically worthless in combat. One hole and you’re down for the count. Cloudships made them entirely obsolete. This place went from a civilian hangar to a military base to a wreck that had everything useful stripped out of it.”

“Then why come here?” I asked.

“Because it’s the size of a city and there’s a roof,” Quattro said with a shrug.

“But--” There was a flash of light from outside. I jumped to my hooves to look. A streak of light lanced down from the cloud roof and through the floor, a ball of fire streaking down faster than the speed of sound. In the light, for an instant, I saw cloudships hovering around the massive cavern of clouds.

It took me a moment to understand, and then I nodded.

“They can’t see the ships,” I said. “So they can’t target them from orbit.”

“Bingo,” Quattro agreed. “They’re using the time to make repairs and try to coordinate after that little decapitation attack Cozy Glow pulled off.”

“What a mess,” I mumbled. I don’t know if she’d picked the word decapitation on purpose just to mess with me. Seeing the General’s head pop like an overripe fruit stuffed with fireworks had been… well, I’d seen enough that it wasn’t going to give me nightmares but it had been extremely unpleasant.

“No kidding,” Quattro agreed. “I hope you can come up with a good plan to get my flank out of this fire because I don’t have one yet.”

“I’m still not sure whose side you’re on. For all I know this was part of Cozy Glow’s plan to keep track of the fleet, and I’m alive just so I can be your bodyguard.”

“That would be really clever if I hadn’t publically humiliated her. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’ll kill me on sight now just to make an example out of me.” Quattro shrugged. “I guess you being a heroic idiot rubbed off on me.”

“I’d be a little happier if you said it was because I was your friend.”

Quattro looked hurt by that. “I didn’t think I had to say that, Chamomile. Here. Eat something.”

She offered me one of the sealed foil pouches. I took it and tore it open with my teeth. Inside was rice and some kind of preserved vegetables along with a sticky brown sauce that tasted like salt and brown sugar. I didn’t get a good look at it because I mostly just stuck my snout in and downed it without even thinking the word poison until it was all gone and I’d licked the corners of the pouch clean.

“There are some crackers here too if you want them,” Quattro said, offering me a pack. I took them and crunched into the pack while she picked at her food. “I know you don’t trust me. That’s fair. I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“I’ll start trusting you more if you help me stop Cozy Glow from overthrowing the government,” I said.

Quattro nodded. “As long as your plan isn’t to fly straight at her and hope for the best.”

“It’s basically my only marketable skill,” I said. “Go fast and break stuff! But not really all that fast, just sort of… unwisely refusing to use the brakes.”

“Close enough,” Quattro said. “You think you can take Tetra?”

“I’ve beaten Rain Shadow literally every other time we fought,” I countered. “He got me by surprise, but he can’t surprise me anymore. That pony carries one crazy grudge, though. What’s up with that?”

“I have no idea,” Quattro admitted. She pulled out a small tin and cracked it open. The smell of sugar syrup wafted into the air. She carefully distributed the contents into two tin cups. I took mine. It was some kind of unidentifiable shredded fruit pulp floating in artificial sweetener and a vague suggestion of flavor. “I didn’t know he was on the team. I can guess why Cozy Glow promoted him, though.”

“So can I. She straight-up said he was willing to do anything to win. Somebody that obsessed has to be easy to predict and manipulate.”

“Maybe. As long as she’s playing into it. You can use it against her if you’re clever.”

“Clever isn’t really my brand of perfume. I’ll let Destiny figure out clever after I rescue her.”

“What about me? I’m clever.”

I gave her a flat look. “I’m not going along with any plan you come up with. And no, saving me and dragging me into this place doesn’t count as me going along with a plan, I was unconscious!”

She sighed. “Fair enough.”

I got up, finishing off the dessert. “So who’s in charge here?”

“In this particular room, or all of Stormreach?” Quattro asked, raising an eyebrow. I tilted my head, and she smirked and looked away. “Sorry. Little joke. I’m not sure who’s in charge. The chain of command was absolutely shattered and the way the Enclave works doesn’t make it all that easy to fix that.”

She stood up and walked over to the window. Now that I knew what I was looking at, I could make out the hulking shape of cloudships hovering among the docks and buildings.

“In theory, with the General dead, the captain of each ship is responsible for themselves until they get orders from above. They’re cooperating right now, swapping parts and trying to undo the sabotage from the Thunderhead engineers.”

“So they’re already working together and just need somepony to inspire them?” I asked.

“No, they’re arguing and waiting for orders because nopony wants to be responsible for losing their ship. Getting damaged during the Fleet Review? That was organized by somepony else. Conveniently, that pony is dead, so now it’s no one’s fault. If they decide to lead the charge against the Exodus Red and get shot down? Now it’s their problem because there’s no General or Grand Admiral to blame.”

“Ugh.” I mumbled.

“Right now there are ponies somewhere a thousand miles away arguing about who’s the best pony for the job, holding elections and focus groups, and then discussing the merits of every action they could take. The more they spread the blame around, the happier they are.”

“They’ll never do anything,” I realized.

“They’ll eventually do something. It’s just a lot slower than Cozy Glow can react.”

A siren started blaring across the cavernous space, echoing through the clouds and fog filling Stormreach. Red lights blared from hatches and windows onboard the nearby ships.

“Incoming warsat strike?” I asked.

“No. They haven’t even been giving alarms for those,” Quattro said. She hopped up into the window frame and looked around, stretching her neck to look straight up. “I don’t see anything.”

“Let’s go ask somepony with radar and comms,” I said, pointing at the nearest Raptor and grabbing the Neighvarro uniform I saw crumpled on the floor.

“Status report!” I barked. With almost half the crew tearing access panels off the walls to look for sabotage and the other half putting things back together in their wake, there were only a few ponies left to actually manage the ship. I wasn’t stopped on my way to the bridge of the Contraflow. One glance at a black uniform and they ignored me.

“All units preparing for air-to-air intercept!” somepony yelled. A panicked ensign almost slammed into me, tripping and dropping a box full of spare parts and manuals. He swore and swept it back up, hustling over to one of the bridge consoles and pulling it open, trying to get the dark screen online.

“I could use a few more details,” I said, stepping up behind one of the working radar screens and trying to figure out what all the triangles and text meant.

A young pony looked up, her mane hanging in the way that implied she’d been on duty for several extra shifts when she really needed a shower.

“Radar detected something coming in fast, but the angle is wrong for an orbital strike,” she said. “We can’t get a look at it without exposing our position. It’s advancing towards our position in a ballistic arc, but it’s corrected its trajectory several times. It’s either guided or manned.”

“How big is it?” Quattro asked. I have no idea how nopony had recognized her yet. Changing your uniform and wearing different glasses was barely a disguise. Was the Enclave this bad at counter-intelligence? I guess nopony expected a spy when we were, in theory, in the safest place in the world.

She adjusted some dials. “Smaller than a cloudship. Radar returns indicate a size only somewhat larger than a Vertibuck, but moving at almost mach two!”

“A missile?” I asked.

“Too big for an anti-ship missile, and a cruise missile is too precious to waste on a blind attack,” Quatto replied.

“We don’t have anypony stationed outside that can get eyes on it?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“It doesn’t matter,” Quattro said. She leaned in to look, flipping a few switches to change the display into a different mode. “At that speed they’d never get a good look at it. We’ve got maybe two minutes before it’s on top of us.”

I tapped a hoof against the ground. “Only one thing for it. Gonna have to intercept. Who do I talk to if I need to requisition a set of armor? Mine’s stuck on the Juniper.”

“The Quartermaster?” the radar mare said. “But, Ma’am--”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m stronger and dumber than I look.”

“It’s sort of tight,” I complained, adjusting the band around my waist. I know I wasn’t getting fat. I barely had any body fat left. Using my wired reflexes was pure anaerobic exercise and I’d had to rely on it too much lately.

We were on the launch deck, right at the bottom of the ship, open on three sides to the air. I strained to see anything outside. The sirens were still blaring, and nopony had switched on searchlights. They were probably afraid to do anything that might make them targets.

“That’s military equipment for you,” Quattro said. She was checking the armor over while I put it on. “It only comes in two sizes -- too small, and too large.”

"I sure hope nopony set this thing to explode the moment I start it up."

Quattro nodded. ”If it helps, I’m not seeing anything suspicious here. I don’t think any of my former compatriots had fun with it. Or they’re so good at it that I can’t detect the traps they set.”

“If it starts shocking me in midair, I’m going to come back and punch you,” I warned.

“That’s entirely fair,” Quattro said. She patted my butt. “Don’t get killed. I’ll feel bad if I betrayed Cozy Glow for no reason.”

The ceiling overhead exploded open, shafts of late-evening sunlight pouring through along with something blocky and huge. I recognized it immediately, descending towards me like a black train on the express track to Tartarus.

“It’s the Grandus,” I whispered.

“I’ve never actually seen it in action, how bad--”

“Rocket launchers,” I ordered. “Hurry up!”

I picked one up and tried to strap it onto the armor myself, fumbling with the mount.

“You know Four’s in that thing, right?” Quattro made sure, getting a second one on the other side. I was distracted by the black brick of an Assault Armor dropping into Stormreach, surrounded by ultraviolet light. “You sure you want rockets?”

“Anything smaller and she won’t even notice me.” I twisted my chest, making sure the weapons were secure. “If I can get close enough, maybe I can get through to her. The last time she went crazy, the thaumoframe resonated with her! Now that I’ve got it in my chest…”

“That’s a stupid plan that involves you wrestling a giant deadly monster,” Quattro said. She gave me another slap on the ass. “Exactly up your alley! I’m going to try and coordinate some kind of fleet action.”

“Leave the helmet off,” I said when she tried to give it to me. “Four needs to see my face. It’s the only way this’ll work and I’m not worried about brain damage. If she decides to kill me, the helmet wouldn’t make much difference. Fleet action to do what?”

“Move around,” Quattro said. “While she’s here, Cozy Glow can see where the ships are! If she can relay that information, she can get orbital strikes on-target. It’s like a spy in Battleclouds.”

“And your solution is to move your ships,” I said.

“Never play a boardgame fairly if you can get away with it,” Quattro said.

Outside, the Grandus flared with light and turned to one of the ships, the clouds closing up above it, the natural motion of the soft roof collapsing back inwards. She opened up with the machine’s scattering beam cannon, a shotgun blast of death rays burning into the nearest Raptor. The ship returned fire with small arms, deck guns and anti-missile systems spraying her and getting deflected by the machine’s impervious barrier system.

I jumped into the air. I didn’t really know how to use Enclave-standard power armor. It felt lighter than wearing nothing at all, negating its own weight and some of mine. This was something I was gonna have to figure out on the fly, literally. I took a shot at extreme range, firing a rocket towards the Grandus. It impacted the slab-sided monster and exploded a hoof-width away from the armor.

The Grandus ignored it the way I might ignore a fly, focusing on a flight of soldiers firing with beam rifles as if they’d do better than the literal warships pouring fire onto her. She fired again, and three of them simply vanished, vaporized by the heat of the blast.

There was a blinding flash deeper in Stormreach. I looked back over my shoulder. One of the ships near the back wall was sinking, its keel shattered by a strike from above. Quattro must have been right about Four acting as a spotter. I had to distract her. I had to do something! Anything!

“Four!” I yelled as loud as I could. I had to get through to her. “Four! It’s me! Stop shooting!”

I saw her taking aim at more helpless soldiers. They fired their laser guns and it had just as much effect as if they were using flashlights. I fired both rocket launchers at once, rocking the Grandus just a tiny bit, the solid shells doing a fraction better against that barrier than the energy weapons.

She turned slowly to me, the glaring face of the Grandus focusing on me along with the front-mounted beam cannon. I fired again on instinct. I didn’t need to be psychic to know she was just going to blast away. Her beams hit my rockets midway between us and the cloud of debris and force of the explosion gave me a slim shadow of safety, only a few of the stray beams getting through and glancing off my shoulder and foreleg, ripping off armor. The suit wasn’t nearly as tough as what I was used to.

I went straight at her through the smoke, popping out with the Grandus closer than expected. I slammed into the head and lost my balance, having to grab onto it and fight for purchase.

“Four!” I yelled. “It’s me, Chamomile! You have to remember!”

ENEMY

It ran through me like I’d licked a lightning bolt. I saw things from other eyes for a fraction of a second. Everything outlined in red, every target accompanied by an urge -- a command -- to attack it. Being locked in place, fire running through my veins from the injections. Thoughts clouded by a blanket of binary hatred from the machine possessing me.

It ended in that same second, the Grandus’s aura flaring brighter. The machine roared. Four wasn’t piloting it as much as she was a component caught between the gears of an engine that was grinding her up and churning out death.

My heart jumped. I felt the magic surge around me. I held on for dear life. A burst of telekinetic force exploded out in all directions, knocking two Raptors off their moorings and setting them adrift and blowing a sphere out of the dilapidated buildings around us. It washed over me, tearing at my tail and ripping the scorpion-sting of the Enclave standard armor off. I barely felt more than that.

“Did she miss me?” I asked. No, that wasn’t it. I was just so close that I’d been in a blind spot. I was hugging so close to the Grandus that the wave had started above me, and only my tail had been caught outside the eye of the storm.

I crawled forward, carefully avoiding the blade antenna serving as the thing’s proxy horn. That thing was throwing off so much magical energy that I was sure I’d get fried if I touched it.

“Four!” I yelled again, hanging down to look into the camera array that the assault armor used as eyes.

The lenses focused on me, and I felt it. A moment of recognition. Confusion. The machine tried to clamp down on it.

“Four, it’s me! Chamomile! You have to listen!” My heart thudded hard in my chest, the scales made out of thaumoframe plates glowing so brightly it was visible through the power armor.

Everything went sideways.

I was everywhere and nowhere, floating in the space you see when you close your eyes.

“Where am I?” Four echoed.

I saw her appear, a ghostly form that blurred against the background. It was only barely her, something my mind was labeling as Four Damascus no matter how little the shimmering, weak light resembled her. It was just something I knew as strongly as I knew my own self.

“I don’t think we’re really anywhere,” I thought. Said. Both at the same time.

“I’ve been here before. I’ve been here with you,” Four thought. She came closer, and something grabbed at her, a tether like a leash made of barbed wire, cutting into her spirit and trying to yank her away from me. I could feel it, that same hateful machine presence from before. The thaumobooster, haunted by spirits of dead ponies.

“Four!” I yelled, reaching towards her. I felt like I was leaving my body. Part of me touched part of her, and memories flowed. The ones that I’d seen in a crystal orb, memories stolen from her that I’d taken back.

They were part of her, and they flowed into the light of her soul faster than the machine could pull her away, drawn like iron to a magnet.

“Chamomile!” she gasped.

The world came back. Or we’d never left it. Whatever had happened, it had been a fraction of an instant. I was still holding on to an invincible death machine being controlled by a girl who I’d been almost absolutely sure was dead.

The Grandus’ gaze shifted to me, the aura cooling from hot ultraviolet to ice-cold blue. The huge head opened up like a mouth splitting ear-to-ear, revealing Four Damascus hanging in the control harness, surrounded by even more wires and restraints than the last time I’d seen her like this. Some of the lines looked like IVs going directly into her veins.

“Chamomile,” she whispered, managing a small smile.

“Hey there,” I said. “It’s been a while. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Four said, coughing. She shook her head, fighting off a drowsiness like she was just coming out of a nap deep enough to pull her back into slumber. “You’ll get hurt.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” I said softly. “This machine isn’t good for you, Four. The Grandus--”

“I know,” she said. “But this machine and I are connected. I can’t just walk away from it anymore. Maybe I could have back when we first met, but not now. I need it, and it needs me.”

“You’re more than a weapon.”

She laughed. “I know. I knew you’d say that, too.” She reached out to touch me, taking my right hoof. “I can’t escape this any more than you can escape what happened to you. You saw my memories, Chamomile. I wanted them so badly, but I really was better off without them. Isn’t that ironic?”

A tear ran down her cheek. I reached for her to wipe it off. In that silent moment, another orbital strike blasted through one of the Raptors docked in Stormreach, smashing its bridge.

“You’ve got to call off these strikes!” I said. “Please, Four! We can come up with something--”

“I’m not the one doing it,” Four said. “I’m just here to be a distraction.”

“A distraction? That means…” I looked away. With the mist from the disintegrating buildings, practically a whole army could be moving around in Stormreach without anypony noticing.

Four gasped, clutching her chest. Around her, screens flashed red warning signs.

“What’s wrong?!” There wasn’t time to worry about a phantom menace. “Four!”

“Life support--” she gasped. “It’s rejecting-- I have to abort and return! I’m sorry, Chamomile!” She slumped in her seat and the armored prow slammed closed, almost catching my hoof in the aperture. I was flung away by a sudden telekinetic wake, and the Grandus exploded upwards in a ballistic arc, vanishing through the cloud roof.

“Not again,” I mumbled.

I’d never be able to catch up to her. The only good I could do now was to figure out who was calling shots for the artillery and stop them before they blew up what was left of the fleet. Then I could take out my frustration on them.

Chapter 108: It's A Small World

I was coming home and I saw the world consumed with flames. It had been burned before by the fires of war, and I saw it that way again, the very air blazing in front of me with the fury of the unavenged dead.

The Hub had shredded the moment the spinning ring hit the atmosphere. The resistance and torque had buckled everything and now I was caught in the debris cloud as it made its way down. Fireballs burned ahead of me, parts of the station dipping even deeper and braking harder against the edge of the sky.

The fragment of the station’s hull was under me, armored in the way everything from the war was but still glowing from the heat. Plasma licked around the edges. I burned. The spacesuit had never been designed for this. It had been made for brief moments in the void, a few minutes outside the world. It was insulated against heat and cold, but it was far from invincible.

The duct tape around my idle, infected forehoof was curling and turning to ash in the blaze. It was hotter than an oven inside. Every alarm imaginable was blaring. Air thinned, leaking from the great rifts in my spacesuit. I’d torn holes in it and the fire leaked inside through it, finding my skin.

Pain flooded my right side as the ruptured suit started to tear apart.

I was too high. Too fast. My angle was too steep. Streams of molten metal boiled from the edges of my surfboard. The air beat at it, and I held on to the glowing metal for dear life. It was slowing me down.

The worst thing possible happened. I started to tumble. The wear on the metal was uneven, or the shape was wrong, or both. I started to flip. On instinct, my wings flared out and caught the air. The jolt almost tore me in half. Feathers tore free. The suit’s seams exploded. It was like being shot by a plasma cannon.

For just an instant I flipped completely over and the air roared around me with dragon’s breath. I leaned back, forcing my tumble to continue all the way around. My helmet’s bubble scorched and darkened, the world going dim.

The rumbling slowed. The air got thicker. The pain was incredible. I could only see dimly through what was left of my suit. The ocean below me, approaching at terminal velocity. The remains of the station were already hitting, raising huge waves and steam geysers. I want to say I prepared myself, bent my knees to absorb the impact. I can’t remember.

It hit me like a blow from a giant. Everything went black. I think I bounced.

Water rushed into the suit. All the alarms were silenced, too broken even to scream, just like me.

Instinct forced me to thrash, even though the pain only got worse with every motion. It was hopeless. I’d hit the ocean. It was almost as empty as space.

My hooves hit sand. The water was abruptly only just barely above my head. I couldn’t see anything through the ruined helmet. I stumbled forward. Salt stung my scorched skin. Waves receded. I tore off the helmet.

I was standing on a beach.

A huge statue stood before me. A bipedal cartoon alligator, half toppled-over and buried up to the waist in the sand, holding a torch above his head.

I fell to my knees. Everything went black.

“Another drink, Ma’am?”

I mumbled something. I was caught in the most terrible trap of all. I was extremely comfortable and didn’t wanna get up from where I was lying in the bath. It burbled against my coat and soothed my aching muscles. Something about the combination of gentle water jets and the lavender and honey aromatherapy even made my insides feel practically normal again.

It was close to alicorn-level magic made entirely with mundane arts and I loved it.

“What’s on the menu?” I asked.

I looked back at the pony who’d asked. Well, pony was the wrong word in some ways. It was a robot, but one that had been built with friendly, exaggerated features. It was almost like a pony in a uniform, but deliberately made so no one could mistake it for a real living creature, proudly showing off gleaming gold details and a screen in place of its face, a smooth black sheet of glass with cartoon drawings of a smiling face.

“Season pass holders like yourself can order up to three alcoholic drinks per day,” the servitor informed me cheerfully. “You have TWO remaining.”

It said the number in a slightly different tone, emphasizing the word. I wasn’t sure if it wanted to make sure I didn’t mishear or if it had just been recorded differently.

“I’ll just have some sparkling water,” I said. “Save up those drinks for when I want to actually sleep.”

I’d raised up my hoof to wave it off. The light caught on the new scales. All the fur had burned off my forehoof and my back legs up to the knees and hadn’t grown back. More of those metal scales had appeared in their place. Considering that most ponies would have needed skin grafts I’d gotten off lightly, even if it looked like I was wearing blue steel socks.

“Of course, ma’am,” the servitor agreed. They were some of the politest, nicest robots I’d ever met, and I wasn’t just saying that because they’d nursed me back to health. Every single one seemed to know advanced first aid up to and including major surgery. Its antenna ears twitched, more like a rabbit’s than a pony’s. It was sending a signal off somewhere.

The spa was a beautiful building and almost perfectly maintained. Potted plants offered greenery rare on most of the surface, and carefully chosen rocks and wooden benches gave the jacuzzi almost a natural appearance, but one that was carefully cultivated. Skylights overhead were filled with stained glass that obscured the clouds outside but let the light in. Recorded birdsong played on a loop long enough to almost make you think it was real. The art was all abstract, not quite committing to anything except suggestions of landscapes and beauty and letting guests fill in the details with their own imagination.

A smaller, less complicated robot drove into the room. It was only about the size of a cat, with a little tray on top carrying an unmarked bottle and a glass. The servitor took the two items from the smaller drone and the thing went skittering away off to its next task.

I stretched as well as I could and tried to get up.

“Some help, Ma’am?” the servitor asked, already reaching towards me to keep me from falling in.

“Thanks,” I said. I reached for him, and he grabbed my left hoof before I could fall. I’d tried to put weight on my right side again. I’d almost forgotten. I sat on the edge of the jacuzzi with my back hooves in the water while the servitor poured me a glass of soda water. I couldn’t get it so easily myself.

I reached over to touch my right foreleg. It ended just above the elbow. I’d messed it up really badly between my mom taking it over and stabbing it myself trying to keep it from attacking me. Then with the suit open to space and the fall and the heat…

The glass of water was offered to me and I nodded to the machine, taking the cold drink and sipping. There was a light lemon flavor and some chalkiness but I wasn’t sure if that was from the groundwater here or something with how they made the seltzer.

A soft bell chimed as the spa door opened and I looked over toward the entrance. A thin pony in a brightly-colored shirt stepped in,

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” the earth pony stallion said. “How are you feeling?”

“Hey, Fog Cutter,” I greeted. ”Like I’ve been through a meat grinder and sewn back together,” I said.

“You’re looking a lot better,” he said.

“Let me guess, the Kahuna sent you over to put me to work?”

Fog Cutter was the valet for the pony in charge of the resort. He did all the hard work that involved running around and talking to ponies and arranging things and his boss did the even more difficult work of sitting on his flank all day, as far as I could tell. I hadn’t met him in person.

“Need a hoof with your, um…?” He awkwardly motioned to the bundle of things I had on the side.

“Yeah,” I said. I gave the robot back the glass after finishing it. It stepped back, smart enough to let us interact without interrupting. Cutter was a brave stallion. He only looked a little afraid while he helped me strap on the prosthetic. It had been made from parts of a broken robot identical to the one that had been helping me, strapped to me with an improvised harness. I let him finish getting the straps tightened, then put some weight on it. It was unpowered, just using springs and magnets to be a bit more clever than a typical peg leg, but it was a big help getting around.

“There we go,” Fog Cutter said. “The Imaginseers do good work.”

“They’re the ones on the north side, right?” I asked. Fog Cutter nodded.

“Yeah. Their ancestors were park employees and engineers, and even though they went tribal and weird they’re still all brilliant--” he tapped my shoulder. “Like with this. We’re lucky they were willing to trade for this.”

“Thanks again for that,” I said. “And for letting me heal up here.”

“Don’t be silly,” Cutter said. “You’re a guest, just like the rest of us. The robots do all the work. Least we can do is be good neighbors to somepony who literally fell out of the sky on a chariot of fire.”

I groaned. “It wasn’t all that fun, especially not with--”

I hadn’t looked at my back. There was a reason why I needed the leg to get around. I started to feel a panic attack when I turned my head and caught a glimpse.

“Let’s get the robe on you,” Cutter interrupted, seeing where it was going. He grabbed the extra-large robe they’d found for me, the old fabric swirled with faded orange and cream color. It wasn’t quite a floral pattern, it was the impression of a floral pattern by way of tie-dye. He put it on my back, helped me get my right wing through the slit and-- well, that was that. There was nothing on the left side except a bump and a scar.

When I’d fallen from space, the sky itself had made sure I wouldn’t go back under my own power.

“Let’s go for a jog,” Fog Cutter said brightly. “It’ll get your blood pumping. Good for the spirit!”

“Sure,” I agreed. I followed him out, the stallion holding the door for me. I wasn’t sure if he was just being polite because I was a mare or if it was because I was crippled, but I appreciated it either way and said a quiet thanks when I stepped past him.

It was beautiful outside. Not too hot, not cold, warm and inviting. Beach weather.

Planks formed a path between carefully cultivated garden plots. A cartoon alligator waved to us, painted on a fake surfboard stuck into the ground ahead of us. Above him, arrows and signs noted what lie in each direction along the path.

“I have a weird feeling that you’re going to ask me for a favor,” I said.

Fog Cutter shrugged. “Not until you’re feeling up to doing them. There are always some things the caretaker robots can’t do.”

“Really? Because they do all the cooking, cleaning, the maintenance…” We passed by one of them that was weeding one of the gardens full of fragrant tropical flowers.

“And they can’t solve problems between ponies,” Fog Cutter said. “They’re pony pleasers. Not in a literal sense, they’re not… equipped for that so please don’t ask--”

“Do I look like the kind of mare who needs to ask a robot for that?” I asked. “Owch.”

“What I mean is--” Fog Cutter continued.

“Wait, is it rude to say I wouldn’t do that with a robot? I don’t know how smart they are. I guess if it was consensual and the robot really wanted to try something and it wasn’t just programmed--”

“WHAT I MEAN IS,” Fog Cutter interrupted, more loudly. “The caretakers aren’t good at saying no or fixing problems in the long term. This place was a vacation resort. They’re designed and programmed to keep ponies happy for a week or two and then wave goodbye. It’s easy to keep somepony happy with some rum and snacks for a little while, but not for years.”

I nodded. “You want me to hurt somepony.”

“No! No.” Fog Cutter sighed. “Not exactly. I want you to talk to Daquiri. He’s been obsessed lately about some conspiracy theory with the caretakers and the last thing we need is for him to end up damaging them.”

“Is this a talk like, you want me to threaten his knees or…?”

“No, a real talk. He’s a good pony, just obsessed lately. The Kahuna hasn’t wanted to deal with him. He might be willing to listen to an outside perspective, and you’re the first real outsider we’ve had here in a long while.”

“I can try. Just one thing. What’s that noise?”

Fog Cutter stopped and listened. It sounded like somepony was beating a gong.

“That’s the zombie alarm! But--” he looked up at the sky. “It’s not the right weather for that! Come on!” He picked up the pace. I guess I did need to test my body out and see how badly it had been messed up. Nothing was healing right these days. Or more accurately, it was only healing a little better than a normal pony.

I limped after him. It wasn’t as bad as you’d think with the peg leg. I had to track down whichever tribal pony made the thing and thank them, because they had to be a genius. It almost moved on its own. I only had to take a little extra care with how I placed my weight.

We made it to the palisades just as the gonging stopped. Two ponies were arguing in front of the main gates.

“...no ashfall at all!” the gruff, grey pony doing most of the arguing growled. The much younger pony in front of him and clutching the gong beater cowered in the face of his anger. “You’re going to throw everypony into a panic, Lychee!”

“Chamomile, can I introduce our head of security?” Fog Cutter said.

“We met,” I said. “Grog, right?” I offered my good hoof to shake. He turned and gave it a quick pump, very professional and perfunctory, but it got his gaze off the cowering foal. “You interrogated me while I was healing.”

“I had to make sure you weren’t a threat,” he said defensively.

“Nah, it’s fine. I would have done the same thing.” I waved off his concerns. “What’s going on?”

“Lychee claims his family is trapped in their farm because of a zombie attack,” Grog said. “Which is impossible. It’s not zombie weather.”

“Zombie weather?” I asked.

“The winds here usually go west to east,” Fog Cutter explained. “But during the rainy season they can shift and blow the other way. When we get winds from the east, they carry radioactive ash with them and it falls like rain on the east side of the island.”

“There are dozens of ghouls out there just waiting for it,” Grog explained. “Awful security risk. It’s why we have the palisade. They lie just under the surface, totally inert. The ash comes, and it’s just radioactive enough to revive them. They stumble around for a while until there’s not enough left.”

“They metabolize it to stay animated,” Fog Cutter offered. “The ghouls clear out all the radiation and then collapse. What’s left is great for the soil, so we have farms outside the walls.”

“But there’s no ashfall right now,” Grog said. “So, no ghouls. No zombies. That makes Lychee an idiot or a prankster!”

“I’m telling the truth!” the young pony protested.

“Somepony should go look,” I said. “I needed a walk anyway. And it could be something worse than feral ghouls.”

“Worse?” Grog asked.

“Living ponies,” I said. “Let’s make sure it’s not raiders pretending to be the undead.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Grog grumbled. “We do have enough outcasts and madmares on this island to make an army.”

“No reason not to check it out, right?” I said.

“Should talk to his parents either way,” Grog agreed. “You really want to come with? You’re…”

“If there’s some kind of trouble, I’ll find it,” I said. “That’s how my life is.”

Outside the resort, it looked almost like early spring. Most of the ground was black loam and fast-growing sprouts and young plants, but in the shadows where the wind and rain didn’t reach there were banks of white, pale ash like snow.

Grog led me down a well-worn path, ignoring a body right by the side of the trail.

“That’s one of the ghouls,” he noted, without even looking at it. “They don’t decay, and it won’t get up even if you poke it. We killed a few of them before we realized they were keeping things from getting worse, so now we just leave ‘em alone and have the farmers come into the resort when there’s ashfall.”

“Huh,” I mumbled, trotting past. There were a few trees, twisty things growing out of the wet soil, but I could see where a lot of the timber had been cleared away.

“Believe it or not, these farms were set up before the war,” Grog said. We walked past a fenced-in pasture. “The original builder of Gator World loved farms and trains. They were sort of working tourist attractions for the old park. Ponies would come and see pineapples and coffee being grown and get to take some home fresh from the field. For a price, of course. Mare also charged for everything. Make sure you don’t lose that bracelet.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “Fog Cutter told me already.” I held up the plastic cuff around my left foreleg. “It’s how the robots identify ponies who have season passes, right?”

“Right. Room key, pays for your food and drinks, does practically everything around here. If you lose it the bots might start treating you like an intruder. Or worse, they’ll make you scrounge up bits.” He chuckled at his joke.

We walked past a wrecked farmhouse. It wasn’t fresh -- the damage had to be more than a decade old. Grog glanced at that, even if he’d ignored the ghoul lying in the dirt. I saw guilt cross his face.

“Anyway,” he said, shaking it off and looking away. “Lychee lives down the road a little, so we should have this figured out in no time.”

It was the first time I had a good look at the island outside of the walled garden of the resort. Calling it natural would have been wrong. There were clearly signs that the trail we were following was still something built by pre-war ponies. The stones making it up were really concrete blocks made to look like weathered river stones, but if I looked carefully I could see how there were repeats of the same five or six ‘natural’ shapes over and over again, and paint was wearing away from the most-trampled parts of the path. One oddly-shaped block caught my attention for a moment, a shape like a curled alligator made of stone.

Signs led us to the farms, and then to the fenced-in fields. It was the first time I’d seen anything quite like it. Straight rows of plants like aloe or datura but around a short stalk topped with a single golden, spiky crown each.

“What the buck…” Grog stopped in front of me. I tore my attention away from the strange plants to look up at the farm. Ponies were milling around outside it, stopping at doors and windows and rattling the locked shutters. I could tell at a glance that these weren’t raiders in costume. They were dried out and ravaged in the way only ghouls could be, clad in scraps of clothing turned the same color as the ashes by time and rot.

“Looks like the kid was telling the truth,” I said.

“Right. You go back and tell everypony,” Grog said. “I’ve got this.”

I scoffed and grabbed a fallen branch. It was sturdy enough to be a decent club. “I need the exercise.” Before he could argue with me more, I charged.

In a way, ghouls were the ideal opponent to help me get back in shape. They were slow and predictable and they weren’t some crazy unkillable thing made out of living metal. Best of all, they weren’t really alive or aware of things so I didn’t have to feel guilty when I swung for the fences and hit the first one’s head so hard it flew right off its neck and into the air in a clean ballistic arc.

“Woo!” I turned to the next one. It looked up at me and hissed, eyes burning like coals. I spun around and immediately stumbled, totally off balance. My butt hit the wall of the farmhouse and it took that whole building to keep me from falling over.

A shot rang out, and the ghoul’s head exploded. Grog worked a bolt-action rifle, struggling to get the next shot loaded. A third and fourth ghoul lurched around the sides of the building in something almost like strategy by flanking me. Unfortunately for them, I was immune to strategy.

About a minute later, they were all the way dead and Grog was speaking with the family inside the farm and making sure they were doing okay. I looked at where one of them had managed to bite me and glared at it, annoyed. It wasn’t really bleeding, but the fact I’d gotten hurt at all seemed silly. The toothmarks were a reminder that I was rusty and it had nothing to do with the dip in saltwater.

“They’re all fine,” Grog said when he finished doing the friendly thing. “They don’t have any idea where the ghouls came from.”

I looked past him and waved to the small family. I couldn’t help but notice the faint stripes.

“Are they… part zebra?” I asked.

“Yeah, but they’re good ponies,” Grog said firmly. He gave me a challenging look like I was going to fight him about that. “Gator World was always inclusive and we try to keep up that tradition, thank you.”

“No, it’s cool,” I said, waving a hoof. “I just wondered if these were some kinda zebra plant. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

I motioned to the crop.

“You’ve never seen a pineapple?”

“...I guess not,” I admitted.

Grog smiled. “I’ll see if we can get you a fresh one. You did help save their lives, I think they might be willing to share some of their crop. There’s nothing like them. The king of fruit!”

I smiled and nodded. That actually sounded really nice.

“We should probably figure out why this happened first,” I said.

Grog’s smile faded and he nodded. “Let’s move the bodies away from the farm.”

I helped him drag them out of the fields. When we did, a scrap of paper fell out of the ghoul’s worn clothing. I stopped to pick it up and read it.

“Are these… orders?” I mumbled. The ancient form was faded, but it was Equestrian army paperwork from before the war, the paper torn and sun-washed on one edge, water damaged, dirty… and written on by a recent hoof in darker ink, ordering the soldiers out to attack ‘zebra collaborators’.

“Let me see that,” Grog said. He took the form, and I poked the bodies of the ghouls a little harder. Now that I really looked, the worn clothing looked more and more like a ruined uniform. “This is insane,” he mumbled. “It’s signed by Commander Lime.”

“Commander Lime?” I asked.

“The Equestrian Navy wanted a presence on the island, so they built a small base on the eastern shore. Kaffir Leaf Base. It was just a token presence, but Commander Lime died during the war. Whatever happened across the ocean that created all the ash… they got the first wave of it and died. The robot caretakers weren’t allowed on base, so they couldn’t lead them to safety like the ones did for our ancestors at the resort.”

“Died, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone,” I said, nudging one of the undead. “I’ll go take a look.”

Grog shook his head. “It’s not safe. The place is probably still radioactive, even if the rest of the island is safe.”

I weighed that carefully. On the one hoof, I wasn’t really worried about radiation. On the other hoof, I was already tired just from a few stumbling lurchers like these. If there was a ghoul that still had it together well enough to write orders, he could be more than I could manage on my own.

And on the third hoof if I couldn’t take down one smart ghoul I might as well have burned up completely, and that ran me out of hooves entirely. I was going.

“I’ll just take a look,” I said. “If it’s too much I’ll come back.”

Grog didn’t look certain, so I gave him a pat on the shoulder.

“You focus on keeping everypony safe at the resort until this blows over. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Just a test-run,” I told myself as I walked past the chain-link fence. It was surprisingly easy to tell this wasn’t part of the park. Thanks to some directions from Grog, I’d learned the path to the naval base was hidden away down a dirt path concealed from obvious view and with nothing obvious along it where it broke off from the main park road.

It was clear this side of the island had gotten the worst of whatever disaster happened across the sea. It had to be some kind of megaspell carpet bombing. I couldn’t imagine anything else that would make enough radioactive ash to carry across the sea for centuries. If they had a boat in the naval base that would float, maybe I could…

Well I wasn’t sure what I could do. I didn’t know how to sail, but I wasn’t sure how the buck else I was going to get off this island.

First thing was first, though. The base wasn’t very big. The trail took me in from the north, the dirt road leading down and around a large, cleared area. The ash was thicker here, building up in piles next to the mostly-ruined buildings. They all had that cheap prefab look that stuff did from that era, everything churned out by huge factories and dropped into place. The remnants of an ancient Vertibuck totally ruined by weather lay on a helipad next to the largest building, and tents were laid out in squares and were mostly just scraps wrapped around broken poles now.

Somehow, the flag had survived on the flagpole. It was probably enchanted. Ponies did that kind of weird, patriotic thing two centuries ago.

I watched a ghoul parade up to the flag, lurching and sleepwalking his way across the ash, then stop and look up. Some dim glimmer of recognition must have washed over him, because the decrepit undead raised a hoof to his forehead and saluted.

Rusting loudspeakers blared to life with a tortured electronic squeal. “An intruder has entered the base!” The voice was only a little louder than the interference. The ghouls must have understood it just fine, though. The feral zombies started lurching and sliding their way out of where they lurked, pulling themselves from shallow graves and starting on dimly-remembered patrol routes.

“Don’t mind me,” I said, picking up the pace. The prosthetic was starting to get annoying. When I was walking normally it was fine, but it clearly wasn’t designed for running and the joints were developing a slight squeal already like they needed oiling.

I checked the front door of the main building. It was locked. I shoved harder. The stupid thing said push, I wasn’t trying to get in a pull door. I could feel the ancient rusting handle still moving despite its age and wear, but the door refused to listen.

“Come on, you stupid--” I wasn’t going to be outsmarted by a bucking piece of wood!

I kicked the door open. Fine ash billowed out, and I tasted metal. It hadn’t been locked. There were literally dunes of the stuff inside where the rain couldn’t wash it away. It was almost chest height along the walls, and everything was that same grey color. Between the haze in the air and the monochrome world, I felt half-blind.

“I’m a scary invader,” I called out. “Anypony want to come and stop me?”

Hissing and screaming came from within. Just as planned. No, really. Why waste the energy to sneak around and bonk them on the head when I knew they’d come running with no real strategy?

“Oh that’s a lot of them,” I said, as the dunes of ash erupted. The dead poured from them, and I pretty much instantly lost track of how many there were. I started swinging the club I’d brought with me. It was one of those situations where it all blurred into screaming faces and clawing hooves and biting teeth.

You know, normal stuff down here on the surface.

I’d love to say I stood like a wall of steel and let the waves of ghouls bash themselves against me, but the truth was there were more than I expected and I was very quickly overwhelmed and tripping over myself, shoving a growling feral zombie out of the way and trying to get distance from the hoard. I got through a narrow doorway and managed to hold it for a few moments before I gave up and had to slam the door shut and shove some junk against it to hold it closed. Claws and stumbling bodies crashed into the overbuilt door, and the box of rusted metal parts in front of it held it closed long enough for me to pull a set of lockers down and push them into place as a better barricade.

I collapsed against it, feeling the vibration of the undead attacking the door through it. I could barely breathe. I felt like my body was torn apart inside from the effort, I couldn’t catch my breath, and my heart hurt in my chest. That last thing was probably a bad sign.

“I am really out of bucking shape,” I panted.

A bullet ricocheted off the locker next to my head.

“You’ll never take us alive, zebra scum!” A second shot came from where a pony was hiding behind a huge wooden desk that took up half the room. I flinched and ducked into better cover behind a hanging, faded flag on a stand.

I took a better look at the room I’d fled into. About two hundred years ago when it hadn’t been monochrome it had been a very well-decorated office. The remnants of a plush carpet rotted under my flank, I could make out some of the shapes of paintings on the wall, and I could see a nameplate on that giant desk. Commander Lime.

“Really?” I whispered to myself, ducking back from a third shot that ripped through the old flag.

“We’ll never stop fighting, and we’ll never allow you zebra infiltrators and collaborators to win!” Commander Lime growled from where he lurked. We were almost in the same situation, each hiding from the other, with the big exception the fact he had a gun and I didn’t. “You quislings are hiding them! Protecting them!”

“Do you want to try talking it out?” I asked. “I’ve had sort of mixed results but--”

Shot number four found a target. I probably should have kept my stupid mouth shut. I yelped in pain and stumbled out into the open. The ghoul must have heard my cry of pain because he stood up and I got a glimpse of the pony in his elaborate dress uniform, complete with medals, before he fired the last two shots in his revolver right into my chest.

I collapsed to the ground.

He put the gun down on his desk and trotted over to me, almost walking steadily despite his broken, cracked hooves.

“Give ‘em a taste of Equestrian iron and they run for the hills,” Lime mumbled through dry lips. He got closer to look at his handiwork, looming over me and peering down at me with those burning coals he had in place of eyes.

I lunged up and grabbed his neck, twisting it sharply. There was a loud crack.

Lime fell limp, and I let go. His jaw was still working when he landed. He glared up at me. I stomped once on his skull, and it was over.

I panted, and every breath hurt. I sat down to look at my chest. He’d been a damn good shot for somepony who’d been dead for two hundred years. Both bullets hit me center of mass, right into my ribs. They hadn’t penetrated far between my tough skin and what SIVA had done to my bones, but they’d still torn up the flesh between in stinging furrows that bled slowly. Ash was already caking in the would. I had to imagine radioactive ash was one of the worst things to get in a cut.

I was still poking at the wound, trying to decide if I should try and find something to wash it out with, when I saw a glimmer of light coming from the Commander’s chest.

I tilted my head and leaned down, opening up what proved to be a very recent tear in his clothing. His chest had been cut open crudely, the area over his heart scooped out like a pony making the worst ice cream cone of all time.

In place of his heart was a rock the size of my fist, a rough geode or crystal made of a dimly glowing reddish-purple crystals. Somepony had put it there.

“Now things are getting interesting,” I mumbled to myself.

Chapter 126: Flesh & Metal

Trapped far behind enemy lines. Surrounded by dark and sinister magic. Enemies at every turn. It was the kind of thing that showed up all the time in wartime stories of heroism, with heroes putting on enemy uniforms and disguises to carry out covert missions. There’d always been something uncomfortable about the descriptions of them painting stripes onto their coats. It seemed sort of tribalist, even more than the descriptions of zebras all living in huts. I knew for a fact that they were just as industrialized as Equestria, but for some reason, cities and factories never showed up unless they’d been built by evil industrialist traitors selling guns to both sides.

“Somepony’s going to recognize me,” I mumbled, starting to sweat.

“Nopony is going to recognize you,” Destiny promised.

“They’re all looking this way!” I hissed. We were walking through some of the side corridors, avoiding the main areas of the ship. Unlike the Exodus Black this ship was still busy enough that we were always passing ponies on their way from one part of the huge airship to another.

“That’s because you’re the only batpony on the ship,” Destiny said.

“I’m not a batpony,” I said. “I’m a temporarily embarrassed pegasus.”

Destiny looked back at me. “With bat wings.”

“Yes.”

“And fangs.”

“Oho! So you noticed them!” I smirked. “They’re extremely cool and you don’t have to be jealous.”

Destiny sighed and shook her head. I must have won the argument because she dropped it and tried changing the subject. “We’re going to need to talk about your escape plan.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Yes, that’s the problem we need to solve,” Destiny agreed. “You don’t have one. We can’t just go down to the shuttlebay and ask for a ride!”

“I wasn’t gonna ask.”

Destiny shook her head. “Do you know why there aren’t guards all over us right now? It’s because they don’t need them.” She stopped and touched a panel set into the wall and the image changed, the black glass revealing itself as a touch-sensitive screen that welcomed her by name. “Everywhere I go on this ship, I’m tracked. If I try and go somewhere I’m not supposed to be, somepony will be there waiting to tell me to go away. I’m sure that they record what I’m saying sometimes. Ponies will show up and they’ll mention things I said when I’m sure I was alone.”

“Fun,” I mumbled.

Destiny nodded glumly and led me into a wide room with a number of large machines. I trotted up to the closest one and tried to figure out what it was. It was shaped something like a big metal table set into the floor and supplied with plumbing and power. A grid of small lines decorated the top surface, and a miniature gantry system and a number of small arms and dangling tools hung from the top, all enclosed in a glass and metal case to keep curious hooves from poking at what they might be working on.

“I think you’ll have about six hours to figure something out,” Destiny said. She stepped up to the machine I was looking at and opened up the side, revealing a keyboard and screen.

“Six hours?” I asked. “Destiny, I don’t care what Cozy Glow says, you don’t have to finish your work shift before we leave.”

She sighed and stopped typing to give me a look. “An incantation lens is one of the most precise and precarious things ponies ever built. I can’t build one out of scraps and expect it to work. However, this ship has something that we can’t find anywhere else in Equestria.”

“SIVA,” I guessed.

“You got it in one,” Destiny agreed. “It can build anything. In fact, using it for something that requires micro-scale precision is pretty much exactly what it’s best at. All the mass reconstruction and moving materials, that’s like…”

“Using calipers as a clamp?” I guessed.

“Exactly. It’s a waste of a precision instrument. I’ll need time to design something, then use SIVA to print it out. I know most of the basics of building the lens, especially after pulling that one apart in Seaquestria. Then we’ll have the key component Star Swirl couldn’t build on his own.”

“That’s pretty smart,” I admitted.

“That’s because I’m pretty smart,” Destiny said, waggling her hoof at me. “Okay. I’ve got this printing out a beryllium-bronze icosahedral frame.” She moved to the next bed and punched in more data. “I’ll have this make the twenty truncated tetrahedral thaumatic charges… and maybe an extra dozen since they’ll fit on the printing bed. No reason not to make extras.”

“What else will you need?” I asked.

“About two dozen talismans. One for every charge, a master controller, backup, target, and maybe one as a fuse. There are probably more elegant and clever ways to do this, but this isn’t my field of expertise. The newest designs were all super classified.”

I watched the printing beds start swinging into action. The framework overhead calibrated itself on the tight grid pattern on the work surface, and a thin spray of silver began coating a perfect square. Magnets whined, and a pressure lock popped closed as the space filled what some kind of intert gas.

“Is this going to set off any alarms?” I asked. “You said you were being monitored.”

“These beds are air-gapped for safety,” Destiny said. “No network connection. I know how dangerous your mother could be, I wasn’t going to leave these connected to her. She’d probably print out something to kill everypony on the ship!”

I nodded. “Good.”

“Somepony will check on these later, but my guards aren’t exactly the smartest…” She rummaged around in a drawer and found a stack of neon-colored papers. Destiny grabbed a pencil and jotted something down on them, sticking the papers on the screens and printers.

“Working on an experiment, do not touch,” I read. “This means you! No touch!”

“I’ll come up with a good story later if I need one,” Destiny said. “This way they’ll have to ask me to come down and explain what I’m doing. It’ll buy some extra time.”

“This is a lot better than my plan D,” I said.

“What was your plan D?”

“I was thinking of finding a running arcana reactor from a Stable and operating it very incorrectly.”

“It wouldn’t work as well as you think. That’s like saying you want to turn a kettle into a bomb.”

“I did that once on accident!”

“You know, I picked a bad example, that’s my fault.” Destiny closed the panels she’d opened. “Is there anything else you need? For once, I’m in a position to give you absolutely anything you could want!” She smiled with genuine happiness. I could feel it radiating off her. She was in her element, and even though Destiny was a prisoner, she didn’t feel as lost or hopeless as she had before as a disembodied soul.

“I had to come here unarmed,” I said. “Could you do something about that?”

“Are you trying to turn me into a weapons dealer?” she gasped.

I looked at the megaspell components she was printing out and then back to her. I nodded.

“Let’s talk specifics,” Destiny said, smiling.

I carried the new case lightly, hooking the claw of one draconic wing through the handle. Destiny glanced at it a few times while we walked. We were pacing around the deck, essentially doing laps. Staying in the lab was just begging for somepony to pop in and check on Destiny, but we also couldn’t stray too far just in case something went wrong, leaving us with nowhere to go unless we wanted to get lunch, and Destiny had already eaten.

My growling stomach wished I’d cracked open a vending machine and brought the contents with me. More worrying, the ominous crystal teeth I’d spotted were in almost every room and corridor, and even though I couldn’t detect magic from them. Yet. I trusted them as far as I could throw my voice.

“It must have totally rebuilt your body,” Destiny said. “Do you know how caterpillars turn into butterflies?”

“They get turned into soup along the way,” I recalled.

“I’m pretty sure you got turned into soup too. I’d love to run some tests, but I bet your body is a lot like mine!” She motioned to her new, slim form proudly. “SIVA can build the extracellular matrix directly and then takes the place of the cellular material. The end result is almost identical to biological tissue. Superior, in some ways!”

“That’s how Karma came back, isn’t it?” I asked.

Destiny’s expression darkened with a wash of sorrow, and she nodded. “Yeah. It’s where I got the inspiration.”

I nodded and lowered my voice, putting a hoof on her shoulder to offer some gentle support. “He’d be happy to know he was still helping you.”

“More than he did when either of us was alive,” Destiny scoffed. She was just playing it cool. I gave her shoulder another supportive tap. Carefully. I wasn’t sure how fragile she was. Destiny must have caught something in my expression because she rolled her eyes. “Hey, I know that look! I’ll have you know I’m just as tough as you are!”

“You are,” I assured her. “You’re very tough. Very strong. Strong female protagonist.”

“Chamomile if you weren’t my best friend I’d kill you.”

“I’m trying to be cool like Quattro,” I said. “She’s the best at sneaking missions.”

“Be cool like Chamomile instead. I’d rather have a pony who I can trust than one who makes really good one-liners and vague, smug statements.”

“...Did you just try to do a moral of the story thing?”

“I’ll explain it to you again later,” Destiny said. “We need to focus on an escape plan.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So my original plan is a bust. You’ve been on the inside a lot longer than I have, and you’ve got the run of the place.”

“As long as I stay in my lane,” Destiny reminded me. “Just because my prison doesn’t have physical bars doesn’t mean much in the end when I can’t fight my way out.”

“You couldn’t fight your way out before,” I corrected. “Now you’ve got me.”

“I spent too much time saving the lives of the innocent ponies on this ship to let you kill them just because they get some bad orders from up top.” Destiny quieted down and we waited for two ponies to walk past us. They didn’t even look twice and were having a nice casual conversation about something else.

I could tell by the way they walked that they were security. Cops always moved a certain way. They walked without any concern that they might bump into somepony else because other ponies would get out of the way or else they’d regret not getting out of the way. I tried to ignore them in the same way they were pretending to ignore me.

“We’re attracting attention,” Destiny mumbled. “Somepony must have noticed I was spending time talking to somepony and they’re trying to figure out who and why.”

“It’s hours until those parts finish,” I mumbled. “Should we split up?”

“We might have to. They’re watching me, not you. Not yet. You’re not in the system, and Cozy Glow loves running things with a system. It’s fair and she gets to set all the rules, so it’s the best of both worlds.”

“Okay,” I said. I stopped and glanced at the ponies walking away from us. I could sense more were on the way. They were trying to figure out what was going on without looking like they were doing anything. I stepped over to the wall. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Destiny asked.

I looked around the wall panel, figuring out where it was attached. “Help me with this,” I said. We popped it free, exposing the pipes and wires on the other side. There was enough room for a pony to crawl inside and work behind the scenes. I nodded to myself and knelt down. “Okay. Good. This’ll work.”

I filled Destiny in on my idea and she, reluctantly, agreed that it was at least an idea, if not an amazing one, but she lacked anything more solid. I stuck myself halfway into the wall, and by the time the next plainclothes security pony walked past, Destiny was arguing with me loudly.

“This is the third time I’ve had to tell you that electrical work is not like plumbing!” she snapped. “I swear, they assign me the worst technicians just to keep me too busy fixing your mistakes to get anything done myself-- hey, you!”

She pointed at the passing security pony.

“Me?” the stallion asked.

“You’re--” Destiny squinted at his uniform. “Technician first-class? Perfect. Because all I’ve got is a second-class tech with third-rate skills. She’s gotten two live lines crossed already today and if I hadn’t caught them we’d be dealing with an electrical fire.”

“A fire?” the security pony asked.

“I know, right?” Destiny sighed. “Hold on. Technician, get out here!”

I took my cue and slid out of the panel, holding the wrench. “It’s not my fault,” I said automatically. I’d said it a lot as a foal when adults yelled, so it came out as an instinct.

“Wait, I thought you were doing electrical work?” the stallion asked. “Why do you have a pipe wrench?”

“If you look very closely, you’ll see this is actually a blessed tool from the Imaginseers to perform percussive maintenance,” I explained, then demonstrated by swinging it into his skull. Gently. I only wanted to give him a concussion, not a traumatic brain injury. He yelped.

“Ow!” he said. “You hit me! Why did you--”

There was a soft hiss and a small dart lanced into his neck. Behind him, Destiny was holding the weapon she’d made for me. Her aura twinkled around the handle and the hidden trigger there for the air rifle built into the square frame.

“That’s… not right…” he mumbled, the sedative in the dart kicking in. Combined with the head trauma, it was enough to put him down on the ground and keep him there.

“He was tougher than he looked,” I said.

“I think you were actually more gentle than you usually are,” Destiny teased. “It’s a good change. That’s why I built this, remember?” She patted the concealed rifle and gave it back to me. “Remember it can fire while it’s folded up, but the accuracy is terrible. I was aiming for the middle of his back and hit the side of his neck.”

“Point blank only. Got it.”

Destiny pulled out the duct tape and I went through his pockets, finding an ID card and clipping it onto my uniform. I also made sure to take the radio earpiece he thought he’d been hiding. Once he was securely bound, I closed the panel up with him inside.

“We can use this to get into a shuttlebay,” I said. I adjusted the radio. “We’ll use a frequency they’re not listening in on to stay in contact. You do whatever it is you normally do, I’ll get us a ride. Once the parts are ready, we’ll get out of here.”

“Right,” Destiny agreed. She tapped on the screen set into the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“First, I’m getting you directions to the nearest shuttlebay. Then I’m setting up a maintenance alert to go off in twenty-four hours.”

“Why?”

Destiny gave me a look. “Because I’m not going to leave a pony in here to die tied up with duct tape and sealed in the walls. Somepony will find them in the morning.”

An arrow flashed on the screen as I approached it, directing me to the right. I followed it around the corner and into a wider corridor, twice the size of the others. It ended in a heavy bulkhead door. A sign clearly labeled it as the shuttlebay. I tried to act cool. I nodded to one of the ponies in obvious security barding and scanned my ID at the door.

If they’d been more alert, or anypony had actually looked at the card, my cover would be blown instantly. They trusted everything to the machine. A green light blinked, so I must be the right pony. The door slid open and I trotted inside, still thinking.

A VertiBuck was right out. Even if they had one I didn’t know how to pilot it. I needed something simple and foolproof. I needed something that would respond to brute force, and I saw a sky wagon that was calling out to me. No fancy controls. Just something I could pull along.

“Perfect,” I mumbled. A few minutes later I had one panel off and lying on the side along with a few tools in the universal sign of ‘this is undergoing maintenance’. As an even more universal sign, I stuck a piece of paper with ‘out of order’ written on it on the door.

“Hey!” somepony snapped.

I turned to look. A pony in a dirty uniform stomped up to me. “Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah, sir,” he corrected.

“Yes, sir!” I yelled, snapping a salute. He glared at me for a moment longer as if he could sense the sarcasm pouring out of me. Fortunately, I was subtle about it and managed to keep a straight face.

“Who told you to work on this sky wagon?” he asked.

“I didn’t get a name, sir! I saw gold bars and decided to follow orders! She wanted this ready before nightfall!”

He stopped and glared harder at me. “I don’t recognize you. Are you part of the fresh batch they woke up out of stasis after the orbital bombardment?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, thanking Celestia or whoever else might be listening. The pony was practically making up a story for me.

“That’s what I thought. None of you know anypony or proper military discipline.” He sighed and his voice lost some of its edge. “Look, kid, things aren’t how we wanted them to be when we went under. When I woke up I found out my daughter got woken up twenty years before I did as part of the crew rotation and…”

He trailed off and shook his head.

“Anyway, this is no time for my tragic backstory. We need all hooves on deck getting the Queen ready.”

“The… Queen?”

He sighed. “Come on. I sure hope they woke you up for something other than your conversational skills.”

“Oh, I’m so good with machines sometimes it feels like I’m half metal, sir,” I assured him. The sky wagon wasn’t going to move for a while. If he wanted me to fiddle around with some tools for a couple of hours, it was a good way to kill time. Having an actual member of the crew supervising me meant security likely wouldn’t notice me at all.

“Careful with saying things like that,” he cautioned. “There are too many cases of hibernation psychosis these days.”

“What’s that? Some kinda… bad dreams?” I guessed.

“Like the worst bad dreams,” the engineer confirmed. “Lots of sleep disorders. Ponies walking around and not remembering what they were doing. Acting crazy. Rumors are there were even a few murders. Point is, it’s serious and you don’t want ponies to think you’re one of them. You’ll get shipped off.”

“But there’s nowhere for ponies to get shipped off to.”

“They found some place on the surface to send the ones that need the most help,” he said. “It’s supposed to be some kind of hospital or retreat or lab. I don’t know the details. It’s all top-secret because they don’t want ponies getting panicked about it. It’s some kind of religious thing. Like that old 12-step program where you had to accept that only a higher power like Celestia could help you. I guess they worship some Goddess down there in the wasteland.”

“That sounds really ominous.”

“No, it sounds like something that’s a problem for somepony else to solve,” he corrected. “We got plenty of problems of our own, and we can solve them with hard work, elbow grease, regular grease, and some duct tape.”

He led me to one of the mostly caged-in bays around the edge of the bay. I felt a chill run down my spine even before we turned the corner. Something terribly familiar. It was a boxy shape that made me think of an old steam train had been broken apart and the pieces were put together in the shape of a giant armored pony.

I was standing in the shadow of the Grandus. The light shifted, ponies moving around its boxy form and connecting wires and fuel hoses. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t the Grandus I remembered. Somepony had decided the original design just wasn’t dangerous enough and they’d strapped more weapons onto it and given it a red-and-gold paint job.

“Is the Heaven’s Sword cannon working yet?” the engineer yelled over. The tone he used told me he already knew the answer he wanted to hear.

“We’ve got the weapons pods loaded and working, sir,” replied one of the ponies running cables and looking at long lists of scrolling numbers on terminal screens on wheeled maintenance trolleys. “We’re running stability tests on the thaumoframe and the Feathers.”

“The Heaven’s Sword,” I said. “That’s why those big missile pods looked familiar.” Rain Shadow had used it to try and kill me. It seemed like ages ago at this point. The Assault Armor he’d used had been almost like a sky wagon designed by a madman - they strapped him into the front of a frame carrying enough weapons to fight off an entire fleet and with rocket thrusters to let it patrol a wide area and deny entry into its sky.

“What was that?” he asked

“I was asking why we were getting this thing ready. Are we going to fight somepony?”

“The Juniper went silent and stopped replying to comms. Then some kind of attack hit us. Not a big one, it just broke a window and started some fires, so you don’t have to worry about it. I’ve got money on an attack from that rogue state calling itself the Enclave.”

“Sounds bad.”

“The Queen is more than enough to defend us,” he promised. “Until you get your hooves under you, it’s better if you stick to something simple. Go move those empty fuel barrels out of here and stack them in the next bay.”

I saluted and trotted away to start pushing a cart. I tapped my ear, sending a burst of static down the line.

“Was that you?” Destiny asked. “I think I’m on the right frequency. Chamomile? Are we supposed to use code names? I feel like we should have decided on code names.”

“Code names would have been a good idea,” I agreed. “I found something we can use as a ride. How are things on your end?”

“I’m working on a to-do list from my actual job. Security is leaving me alone for now, but they’re checking up on me. I think that missing stallion might be a problem soon.”

A group of ponies walked into the shuttlebay, checking radios and looking around with the obvious attitude of ponies who didn’t care if they were in the way and inconveniencing everypony. I’d used the stolen ID card to enter the bay, there was a good chance they were tracking it.

I stepped behind an innocent-looking mare and silently apologized to her before bumping her with my cart and knocking her over. We made various kinds of apologies, I brushed her off and acted like the bumbling idiot I was, and when she wasn’t looking I switched our ID cards so she had the one that was marked as stolen. She gave me an angry lecture about watching where I was going, I made more apologies, and then I rolled the cart and the empty barrels on it to the door, looking ashamed.

Predictably, the ponies from security stopped me wordlessly, not even bothering to conceal their weapons. They looked at my ID and dismissed me when they saw the name wasn’t the one they were looking for. I apologized to them, too, for good measure, and rolled the cargo cart right out of the shuttlebay and into the hallway.

“We’ve probably got an hour or two tops,” I said quietly into the radio. “They’ll eventually line everypony up and check them one at a time.”

“Go back to the lab and wait for me there. It’s off the network for security reasons, it might take them a little longer to spot you.”

“Will do.”

I was pacing when the door popped open and Destiny walked in. Or, more accurately, was shoved in. She looked annoyed.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Her glasses were crooked. I was guessing the armed ponies behind her were the reason why.

“You probably think you’re pretty clever,” one of the security ponies said. “I don’t know who you are or how you got onboard, but the Great Leader is going to love discussing it with you.”

“He’s mad because we’ve been wandering around a highly secure area for hours,” Destiny said. “Cozy Glow will probably fire him and throw him back into stasis until she needs a new bathroom janitor.”

The small security team stepped inside. I caught Destiny’s look.

“This room isn’t monitored,” I said.

“Faraday cage,” Destiny confirmed. “That’s why I couldn’t radio you a warning. When I airgap a system, I do it properly.”

“What are you two talking about?” the lead pony asked.

I smiled at him. “You’re going to feel so silly when you find out.”

Thirty seconds later, the armed, trained guards were stacked in a heap in one corner of the room. I was pretty sure none of them were dead. Destiny lightly kicked one of them.

“The ponies here aren’t stupid,” I said. “If they don’t report in soon, somepony will come looking for them.”

“We’ll be gone before then, if you told the truth about finding a way out. These prints are more or less done.” Destiny opened one of the large bays, using her magic to carefully extract an almost-spherical frame with triangular faces. “They could use some cleanup, but I can do that by hoof.”

“You can’t leave now, you haven’t even stopped in to say hello!” moaned one of the unconscious ponies, speaking in his sleep. I saw something in the corner of the room that I hadn’t noticed before. One of those twisted crystal sculptures. A spark of light burned inside it.

“That’s impossible,” Destiny said. “There’s an airgap! A faraday cage! You can’t even get radio in this room!”

“And you used me to build your cage,” the pony on the floor said breathlessly. The unconscious pony was dragged to their hooves, his body forced into motion by something that went beyond just mind control. He was being used like a puppet. “Did you really think I wouldn’t leave a way in?”

Worse, I knew whose talons were inside that puppet and making it twitch.

“Mom,” I said.

“You’re a very naughty girl, Chamomile,” the stallion said, his eyes rolling in his head. “You’re planning something wicked, aren’t you? I think you need a spanking after what you did to me in Gator Land.”

“Destiny,” I hissed.

She nodded wordlessly and started shoving things into a crate. The sleeping and unconscious ponies stood up, lurching like they were undead and ignoring the bruises and broken bones they’d gotten in the process of being knocked out.

I stayed between them and Destiny, watching the ponies closely. They didn’t make a move on us.

“You can’t escape, Chamomile,” my mother said through the ponies. They all spoke at once, mumbling in a chorus.

I backed up to the cart and pushed against it. Destiny got the door. Both of us were so busy keeping our eyes on the gaggle of possessed ponies that we didn’t look at where we were going until we got outside the print lab.

“Oh,” Destiny said quietly.

There were more ponies in the hallway. All of them stood on unsteady hooves.

“I knew it was going too well,” I said. I unfolded the tranquilizer rifle. The grip was just right to trigger with my wing-talon. It fired a burst of darts, hitting one of the controlled ponies. They didn’t flinch, even with needles sticking out of their chest.

The screens on the walls flickered to life, showing a glaring draconic eye. The air filled with whispering and the sound of static, a command in binary blasting through the speakers. The rifle I was holding vibrated and sprung to life, the frame warping. I swore and threw it aside. The magazine exploded like a grenade.

“Bucking scrap code,” I said.

“Chamomile, I--” Destiny gasped. She fell to her knees. Her skin rippled like ants were crawling under it. She screamed in pain.

“Hold on, we can, uh…” I didn’t know. There had to be something. I couldn’t lose her like this, not when I’d only just gotten her back. I reached for her. She reached for me. She growled. She lunged. She was under my Mom’s control.

Her teeth latched onto my neck and… the results weren’t very impressive. She gnawed. Nothing really happened, since my skin was tougher than some flak jackets.

This close, I felt something. Not just the nibbling. I could feel the SIVA inside her, buzzing like a nest of angry hornets. I followed my instincts and grabbed her, holding on and whispering calming words. That angry feeling inside her quieted, and Destiny stopped biting and started sobbing.

“It really hurts,” she sobbed.

“I know,” I said. “Sorry.”

“What did you do?” Destiny asked. “I couldn’t control myself.”

“I’m not sure. I’ve got a ton of access codes and junk.”

“You must have stopped the hacking,” she said. She was still panting. “Or paused it, maybe. I feel--”

“Broken inside? Like you’re ripped up?”

She nodded quickly.

“Yeah. I know the feeling.” I picked her up and deposited her on the cart. She wasn’t in any shape to walk on her own. “Hang on!”

I shoved the cart, half-riding it and kicking off to build up speed.

The cart skidded down the corridor, bowling ponies over. The sleepwalkers groaned and cried out when they were flung aside, the ocean of bodies parting in the face of dumb brute force.

“You know, the zombies were less scary when I didn’t have a body!” Destiny yelped, weakly kicking one of them off the cart when they managed to grab on instead of being thrown aside.

“You’ve really expanded your horizons!” I steered the cart carefully, riding it like a surfboard, leaning from one side to another and guiding it through turns. The megaspell components rattled in their crates. I really hoped none of it was fragile or explosive. “Get the door!”

“What door-- oh no!”

The door to the shuttlebay loomed ahead of us. We were approaching way too quickly to stop. Destiny cast a spell, firing a bolt of red flame at the control panel. It streaked past the crowd of ponies and exploded against the wall. The door slid open at glacial speed.

“We’re going to crash!” Destiny yelped.

The hatch loomed. I aimed right for the middle. If I calculated it just right, we’d pass through by the skin of our--

The cart slammed into the door, because I had not calculated it right. Destiny and the crates full of stuff fell into the shuttlebay, screaming. Destiny was screaming, I mean. The crates weren’t. It would be weird if they were.

“Sorry!” I yelled, catching Destiny before she could hit the ground. She caught the crates with her magic. “Are you okay?”

She gave me a look.

“Stupid question,” I admitted. I put her down. “Over here!” I pointed to the skywagon. She cracked the crates open to check on the contents and followed me to the vehicle. Around us, ponies were running around in confusion. About half of them were lurching in a puppeted trance, the rest were just confused.

Destiny stopped short and stared at the sky wagon. None of the conscious ponies in the shuttlebay were in any condition to stop us.

“This isn’t going to work,” Destiny said. “Chamomile, we’re in trouble!”

“Trouble how? Is the battery dead?” I looked back at her while I worked to get myself strapped in, using what limited telekinesis I’d mastered to adjust the straps. “It only has to last long enough for us to get out of here! They’re not going to be in any condition to launch a mission after us!”

“I don’t know! It’s broken! Somepony put up an ‘out of order’ sign!”

She shoved the sign at me, her face a mask of terror and panic.

“I did that.”

“You broke the sky wagon?!”

“No, I made the sign! I-- it’s fine! Just get inside!”

I shook my head and started pulling the second she put the cargo down. The confusion in the hangar increased. Alarms blared.

“Make a hole!” I screamed. Ponies threw themselves aside. I got up to speed and we left the deck, soaring over the crew scrambling and trying to figure out what was going on. We streaked out into the air.

I half-expected to be blasted out of the sky the second we cleared the hangar. Instead, we kept going, the sound dying into the distance behind us.

“Did we actually make it?” I asked. I took us around a cloudbank, trying to break line of sight in case somepony was looking.

“We caused enough chaos they probably don’t know what’s happening yet,” Destiny replied over the radio. I heard her sigh. “Maybe we should thank your mother.”

“I’ll come back with a nice present for her,” I promised.