Commander: The Equis Invasion

by Meep the Changeling

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Science Fiction, XCOM, Adventure, Violence, Anthro, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 25430

A lone mare must protect the world from an alien invasion in a world reshaped by a century old cataclysm.

70 years ago, Equestria was rocked by an arcane cataclysm which warped the bodies, minds, and magic of every equine species in the world. In the modern era, Ponykind is forced to rely more on technology than magic. Mages work to discover how to use their new bodies to cast ancient spells Equestria once replied upon. International politics are weaker than ever. Eldrly ponies lament they are entering their twilight years at a mere 120 years of age.

In this new world, some have gained abilities once rare or even unheard of outside of the pages of comic books. Some of these ponies, inspired by the Elements of Harmony's work last century, chose to use their powers for the good of all. Others, decided to walk down a more selfish path. The conflict between these groups spills out into the streets of nearly every city and town in the world, and has plunged Equestrian into chaos.

With Princess Twilight focusing nearly exclusively on undoing the effects of the Cataclysm, there is little the Crown can do to keep Equestrians safe from themselves. It is the absolute worst possible time for an existential threat to come to Equis... And so, one has. Unbeknownst to all, an Interstellar Empire works in the shadows, priming Equis for invasion.

Fate has chosen one Equestrian archeologist to be Equestria's shot at remaining a free people. Fortunately for all ponykind, their unknown enemy has enemies of its own.

Published 2021-10-02 02:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-10-14 19:55:43 UTC

2 - Orgins...

Amber’s hooves clicked against the hard tile floor as she left her carpeted office in a blur of half-panicked activity. Motes of white light trailed behind her as she levitated her notebook from her desk to a messenger bag hanging on the back of her door, followed immediately by the reliquary, then finally pulled the bag to her as she entered the hall, slipping it over her head and shoulder. Meanwhile her hands scrambled to latch her belt around her hips, strap her crossbow holster to her thigh so it could be properly drawn, undo the holster flap’s buckle, and shrug her way into her jacket with her free hand.

All while sprinting out of her office towards the nearest exit.

Most ponies would scream at me to leave the jacket, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to ride my bike without one in the rain or forget my warded jacket in my office during a bucking mage attack! Amber thought to herself, trying to remain logical about solving her panic.

Amber zipped up her jacket, activating it’s spell and hex resistant wards, causing a shimmer and ripple of lavender light to wash over her body for a few seconds. Every archeologist had a similar warding article of some sort. After all, nopony knew ahead of time which floor tile would activate the thunderclap trap they had missed during their inspection.

Hopefully this thing olds up to one or two of their spells… Better yet, hopefully I can get out of this stupid tower unseen.

Amber ran down the hall, her hooves clicking loudly on the tiles. One would assume sprinting in these circumstances was an idiotic choice. Surely every League of Mages soldier on the 14th floor could hear Amber sprinting towards the stairwell. As a matter of fact, they could, yet it didn't matter. Sneaking past any spellcaster without knowing stealth assisting spells to counter their divination charms was the true fool’s errand.

The Mages will know where everypony is by now. They’ll also know that I’m up here running. Probably a lot of ponies are running. I don’t think I’ll stand out… But if they spot me running down the stairs towards a side exit, they’ll probably assume I have something important. So I can’t just run to the ground floor directly… I’ll take one of the sky bridges to another building. But which one? Amber pondered as she made her way down the beige walled corridor.

The Royal Canterlot University of Manehatten’s campus was one of the worst improvised campuses in the history of Equis. After the original RCU had been destroyed, dissolved into a crater by the pink fog left behind after the Sovereign Stone exploded, the Manehatten Campus had been created by buying a city block containing a large skyscraper, formerly an office building, and then just doing nothing at all to the surrounding buildings.

Warehouses converted into lecture halls. Old delis serving as micro-cafeterias. Shopping centers turned into laboratories. A hotel to serve as a dorm. Little to no renovation happened anywhere. The most anypony did was link every building with more than five stories with skybridges.

They could have put in more elevators and made transit hubs in this tower, but nooooo! Gotta have the first flowers for the memorial garden. Never mind the living, the dead need fancy shit! Amber grumbled as she planned her escape route.

Amber skidded to a halt in front of the stairwell door, nearly falling over thanks to the recently waxed tile floor. She threw the door open with a grunt of effort, took two steps, and froze, her ears twitching as faint whispers echoed up the stairwell.

“You’re sure this is her?”

“Yeah, I can sense a muted power signature. He said Doctor Hex would probably flee with the artifact. Now be quiet, she might hear us.”

Amber’s brow furrowed. Oh. The dean sold us out. Cool. Her teeth grit in rage as she stepped out of the no longer safe, definitely now cursed stairwell. Okay, they are after me specifically, and this stairwell is right out…

Amber thought for a moment about the layout of her office floor. It was basically just a big square loop around the separate inner core of the building, linked only through one elevator and some stairwells. I could go down two floors, get into the core, then take one of the express elevators to the fifth floor.

Amber’s frown softened as a thought occurred to her. “Or…” she said to herself as she checked her tool belt. I don’t think I used it on the dig, should still be.. Ah ha!

Amber’s left hand retrieved a small folding grappling hook and 30 meters of thin steel cable from one of her belt pouches. The hook wasn’t designed to be thrown upwards to permit somepony to scale a cliff, or a wall… But if you needed to get down something and had a moment to securely mount the hook, well…

Amber turned around and ran across the hallway to the first office door she found. She reached out with her free hand and jiggled the handle. Nothing. Buck! Of course Doctor Ivy locked her door!

Amber dashed down the hall, trying door handles at random, occasionally wincing at a panicked squeak or gasp from the other side of the door.

Sorry, Not trying to freak you guys out… Just trying not to die. Amber thought though increasingly worried huffing breaths.

She’d never been all that good at sprinting for long periods. Amber’s lungs were beginning to feel a bit like they were starting to combust. Not that it mattered. Slowing to a jog would be futile. They’re definitely coming up the stairs after me by now.

Amber reached out again, seasing the next door handle and wrenching down on it. It turned. Amber threw the door open. A lime green pegasus mare squeaked in terror and ducked behind her desk. Amber stepped inside and slammed the door shut.

“Sorry! Gotta get off this floor,” Amber called out to the pony she didn’t recognize as she ran towards their office’s window.

“O-oh! Doctor Hex,” the mare stammered, letting out a sigh of relief. “Wait… Uh, this isn’t the stairs.”

“Yeah,” Amber agreed as she reached the floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall window.

The storm still raged outside. Amber could hear the windows howling and groaning, see the sleet battering against the slightly tinted window pane, feel the building twitch with each thunderclap. Streamers of lightning shot down, striking the tops of the skyscrapers stretching out before her, creating brilliant blue-white columns of light as the rooftop Thunder Rods stored some of the lightning’s energy for ponykind’s future use.

Amber looked out into the hellstorm for several moments before nodding once. Better odds than the stairs.

Amber withdrew her rockhammer from her belt.

The lime mare’s eyes bulged. “Do not?”

“Stairs are occupied,” Amber said as she drew back her arm. “Feel free to climb down after me.”

“NO DON’T!” The mare squeak-yelleded as Amber swung at the glass.

The hammer’s point struck the pane. The glass spiderwebbed under the impact with a sharp crack. The tower’s security wards reacted instantly, electrifying the glass with a sharp crack and hiss. Sparks shot out from the glass, enveloping the hammer and racing across Amber’s body. Her jacket’s wards shimmered and crackled as they shirked off the stun spell before fading out of visibility.

Amber struck again, and again, then once more. Her hammer plunged through the safety glass on the third blow, more folding the glass outwards than breaking it. The winds instantly screamed and hissed as they pushed through the small breach, the sheer force of the gale outside pushed the glass inwards, inverting the small cone shape Amber’s assault had created the moment her hammer no longer pressed against the glass.

Amber quickly tucked her hammer back in her belt, opened her hook with a flick of her wrist, wedged it into the metal window frame beneath the pane she broke, then kicked the shattered pane as hard as she could.

The once window now shards-of-glass-attached-to-a thin-sheet-of-plastic popped free of the frame and fell the 14 stories into the grounds below. Wind, rain, and sleet exploded through the gap, chilling both mares to the bone in an instant. Amber grit her teeth against the cold, turned around to put her back to the window, made sure her hook was secure, and tossed the cable out the window.

The wind threw the cable into the glass walled tower, cracking several other panes of glass. Amber grabbed hold of the cable, gave it a firm tug to make sure the hook was still secure, and—

The office door exploded inwards, turning to splinters and shrapnel in an instant. Amber yelped, instinctively jumping backwards. Out the window.

As she fell back, Amber got a good glimpse of the Mages bursting into the room. Two of them. A unicorn, and an earth pony.

Their features were hidden beneath the League’s uniform form-fitting purple cloth hood/mask combos. Their bodies were obscured beneath bright gold robes remmenessient of Ancient Equestrian battlemage’s garb. Each identified with a colored sash designating their rank, though none outside their order knew what the colors ment.

Amber’s eyes locked onto the earth pony horror. Everypony knew the League accepted anypony who could cast spells. Not just unicorns, but any Powered ponies whose abilities allowed them to cast. Everypony also knew that Powered ponies were often quite detached from normal ponies. Their lives and experiences were just too different to relate to normal ponies very well. Especially when it came to things like relative durability.

I’m gonna die! Amber thought as her eyes widened and ears lay back.

Then the backs of her shins caught the window frame she’d just accidentally jumped through, flipping her upside down and out into the stormy night.

I’M GONNA DIE! She reiterated, her horror having been doubled.

Amber plunged through the sleet like a brick, but only for a moment. Her right hand still held the cable she’d lashed to the window frame… A fact she instantly regretted as the wind caught her and whipped her outwards from the building, wrenching her entire arm hard enough to make it burn, then slammed her into the side of the tower, forcing her shocked arm to let go.

Amber plunged dowards, scraping the glass walled tower amid a truly pitiful yelp as two stories vanished behind her in a heartbeat. Amber had just enough time to think she should scream before the cable glowed blue as one of the League Mages animated it.

The cable shot down, guided by the Mage’s spell to Amber’s left leg. The cable cracked like a whip, the end curled around her left leg and cinched around it. A few seconds later she reached the end of the cable with a painful jolt that came just shy of dislocating her hip.

Wow! This got so much worse somehow, Amber panicked to herself as the enchanted cable began to pull her back up the tower.

Thinking quickly, Amber fumbled for her hammer. Fortunately it had managed to stay tucked into her belt during the fall. With strength born of desperation, Amber slammed it into the glass, burying the spike to the handle and stopping her accent with another sharp painful jerk. The magics protecting the glass sparked and popped, blasting Amebr’s warding with another stun spell. Amber could feel her jacket grow warmer as its magics struggled to handle a second spell so soon after the first.

Hope I can get three before this thing burns out...

Gritting her teeth against the pain of her leg being pulled almost hard enough to tear it off, to say nothing of her burning arm, Amber panic-scrambled for another of her tools. Specifically, the cable cutter she’d carried ever since that time she’d been trapped in a tomb for three days without any way to free a counterweight which would have forced open a sealed door.

The cable pulled and pulled. Amber’s arm burned and twitched. Her grip holding out purely due to adrenaline. The window cracked and creaked as the hammer’s spike slowly started to break a channel through the pane. Amber’s hand found the cable cutter just as the enchanted cable began to tear her pants leg.

Summoning up all of her remaining strength, Amber curled up so her hand could reach the cable near her hoof. She tossed the cutter’s jaws over the cable and squeezed for all she was worth. The hard diamond coated blades snipped through the thin cable with ease. Amber breathed a sigh of relief as the cable coiled around her leg fell free… then yelped as she began freefall.

Her hammer rotated against the cracking glass, grinding and scraping, then popping free of the hole.

Ohhh, I am become error… Amber thought as she plummeted to the ground once more.

A truly impressive gust of wind slammed into Amber’s back, knocking her into the tower, right square against the pane she’d hammered into. The Campus tower audibly groaned as the gale force wind slammed into it like a freight train, visibly swaying under the force of nature’s fury. The glass shattered, sparking and hissing as the stun ward went off a third time.

Amber’s jacket started to smoke, the outside nearly ignitng as its warding failed with a flash of bright purple light. Her jacket was now just a jacket.

Amber hit the floor with a loud thud barely audible over the storm’s howling, glass cutting her face and hands as she landed. Unbeknownst to anypony, the reliquary on her bag cracked under the impact. The sound of cracking obsidian and splintering petrified wood lost to the wind.

The box. Was breached. Yet death did not come for the University. A fact Amber would have found unthinkable were she even aware of the reliquary’s now-damaged state.

“Ow…” Amber whimpered over the roar of the wind outside.

“Celestia’s cake fetish! Are you okay?!” a stallion’s voice panic-shouted over the roaring wind.

Amber looked up to see an older, reedy looking unicorn stallion, hunched to brace himself against the wind which tore and ripped at his tweed jacket. She recognised his straw colored mane and gray fur instantly.

Two Bits. The university’s Chief Financial Officer.

“Nope. I got what the League wants, Bits,” Amber said as she pushed herself up, ignoring the pain of her cuts due to her many years of experience being randomly battered and injured.

Bits glanced down at Amber’s overstuffed messenger bag, his silver eyes narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again. “Get it out of here. Your best bet is the tunnels. They lead to an old shelter. It was made to protect ponies from Tirek levels of magic. It’s your best bet.”

Bits reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and produced a ring of keys along with his ID badge. “These will get you there. Whatever you do, don’t tell the dean you have it if you see him. I’m pretty sure he’s responsible for this.”

Amber nodded in agreement and took the keys and badge, wincing at her very much on-fire leg and arm. “Yeah, me too… My leg feels pretty bucked up. Got any painkillers?”

“No. But there should be healing tinctures in the bathroom med kits. Take as many as you need,” Bits said as he jogged to the office door and opened it, peeking left and right in the hallway. “It’s clear, get out of here. I need to find another place to be, they’ll be following you through the window soon enough.”

Amber nodded and limped her way out of the office and into the much nicer hallway. Hardwood floors, cheerful yellow painted walls, potted plants, posters. Everything the “drones” weren't allowed to have since it could be “distracting”.

Amber looked up and down the hall. It was indeed clear. She could also see a nice black sign hanging from the ceiling just in front of a rather lovely oiled bronze light fixture reading “Restrooms”.

Yeah… let’s go for the med kits. I won't make it out of the building like this and how often does a mare’s boss tell her to go drink a shot that costs two months of her pay?

Amber limped her way to the bathroom, covering the ground as fast as shock and adrenaline permitted her to move on a twisted angle, hyperextended knee, and seriously tweaked hip.

Fortunately for Amber, she made it into the mare’s room in under a minute. Unfortunately for Amber, the pain prevented her from fully enjoying the marble floored, gold trimmed, perfumed and lavishly decorated executive bathroom. Ignoring the display of wealth entirely, Amber staggered her way to the whit painted metal box on the wall and ripped it open with her magic.

Adhesive bandages flew everywhere as Amber dug through the contents, stopping only when she found a pair of blue crystal vials stoppered with rubber corks. Amber popped both viles open and threw them back like a pair of shot glasses. The amber liquid inside flowed down her throat and evaporated instantly on contact with her flesh, transforming back into magical energy and casting their spell.

Amber nearly screamed as her body contorted and twisted back into the correct shape. Her ankle slotted back into place, the tendons relaxing and knotting their rips back into a singular whole. Her knee popped, fluids receding as swelling vanished. Her shoulder clicked, its spatial dislocation shlooping away with an unpleasant grinding of bone on bone. Glass pushed out of several of Amber’s more major cuts as they sealed up.

The potions effects faded, leaving Amber with only her most minor of wounds. Bruises, light cuts, and of course, dull throbbing pain from the accelerated healing process.

“Buck me… Those suck a big fat one,” Amber groaned out loud. At least there isn’t an old pony here to complain about when they didn’t hurt to use.

“So I hear,” a gruff stallion’s voice stated with a surprisingly large amount of menace. “Turn around, slowly.”

Amber closed her eyes tightly. Buck me in the eye socket… All of that pain for dick and/or diddly.

She turned around and opened her eyes. The League mage standing in the bathroom doorway was tall, thankfully a unicorn, had a crimson colored rank-sash, and their black gloved left hand was holding out a crystal and gold-wire talisman of some sort which glowed with an inner light of a color that defied easy description.

“This can go two ways,” the Mage said with an eerie calm. “You can hand over the Stone then walk out of here a free mare, no worse for ware… or I can unleash the Amulet of the Screaming Beast and use you to figure out what it does, then take the Stone from what I presume will be your mindless feral mutated form. Your choice.”

Amber’s ears fell at the news. He has no idea what his toy does. He wont let me go. He’s going to find out.

Amber let out a long, slow sigh. “Yeah… okay. Just, let me get it out of my bag. It’s enchanted. It will electrocute anyone but me who tries to open it.”

The League Mage’s hood wrinkled as he made some expression or another under it which Amber couldn’t read. “Okay… But one false move and I blast you. I can put a spell bolt in your chest before you can reach me from there, just in case you think you can dodge my amulet.”

Amber reached for her bag’s buckle and fumbled with it, doing her best to move it away from her hip. She continued to fumble a little, then looked up. “Sorry, my hand’s still kinda bucked. Fell on glass. Let me just…”

Amber took her right hand off the buckle, replacing it with her right… and dropped her left hand to her holster, where it thankfully found her crossbow.

Amber unbuckled her bag’s pouch.

The mage’s eyes flicked to her bag reflexively, forcing him to look away from her other hand for the briefest instant.

Amber drew her crossbow and let her knees fold, dropping as she pulled her weapon free.

Time slowed to a crawl.

The Mage unleashed his amulet.

Amber brought her arm up to aim.

The amulet warped in on itself.

Amber’s bow snapped open with a metallic click.

A bleeding a crackling ray of colorless yet colored light welled up from the amulet’s heart.

Amber twisted as she fell, moving away from the ray’s path.

Her finger tightened around the trigger.

The ray oozed through the air.

Amber’s bow sang as it spat out a dart.

The ray flew past Amber’s cheek.

Amber’s dart wooshed towards the Mage.

The ray hit the wall behind Amber, splattering across its surface.

The Mage jerked to the left to dodge Amber's shot.

Amber hit the floor and fired again.

The reliquary in her bag slammed into the hard marble floor.

The wall behind Amber began to hiss and bubble, concrete flowing like mud.

The reliquary’s cracks spread further from the impact.

Amber’s first dart caught the mage in the neck. He’d dodged into it.

The wall behind her liquified, flowing down to form a hole into the Gentlecolts Room.

Amber’s second dart caught him in the side, stopping in his robes.

The magic tranquilizer in Amber’s dart transmuted into a stun spell.

The mage dropped to the floor like a sack of hammers.

Amber let out what felt like the longest breath she had ever held. Holy bucking crap! That was awesome! Amber silently shouted as her lips twisted into a manic grin… then slumped into a frown. I am never going to do anything that cool ever again and nopony saw it… Aww…

Amber pushed herself back up onto her hooves, took a second to remember her escape plan, then booked it back out the door. Okay. Stairs. Tunnel. No shelter. Probably trap. Bits could be working with the dean. I don’t know. Get out. Get to bike. Buck right the hay off!

Amber made her way to the closest stairwell and quietly opened the door, keeping her hand crossbow drawn and ready. While she knew damn well the League knew where she was, she wasn’t about to let them know they had line of sight to her if she could help it. There are four more darts in the magazine. Turns out a pony isn’t much harder to hit than a timberwolf. I can do this!

“What do you mean Kale’s down?” A mare’s voice whispered quietly from above Amber, distorting somewhat due to the small stairwell.

“Tac-Wisps say he got hit with a monster stunning spell. He’s going to need to be carried out of here.” A stallion answered.

“Well buck me… Okay, new plan, just blast her and take it from the corpse.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Amber’s ears drooped. Oh no. Uh...

Amber quickly weighed her options. There weren't many good ones. They’ll have somepony on each starwell by now… Elevators are out… I’m not going out a window again. Just. Buck. That… Stairs are too slow to run down to escape these guys without somepony cutting me off… Oh no… nononononono!

There was only one option. You can do it… They literally trained you for this as part of your degree. Amber whimpered to herself. I soooo don’t wanna though...

Amber bit her lip. “Fate of the world,” she mumbled quietly.

Amber eyeballed the not-all-that-large gap between her landing and the one below. Come on Amber, big mare panties time. Literally part of your job description. That is super still a pit tho...

Her tooth started to pierce her skin. “Fate of the world!”

Amber… You’re not afraid of heights. Technically, a pit is heights. There’s not always spikes, or acid, or cheese wire, or piranha at the bottom. There’s super-duper none of that at the bottom of this. It’s just a stairwell. You can make the jumps. You can do this!

Amber took a deep breath to find her courage, then raced towards the railing protecting ponies from the 8 story drop down the hollow center of the stairwell, and vaulted over it with a panicked cry.

“FATE OF THE WORLD!”

Amber soared out into open space, her mind flashing back and forth between trauma inducing years in highschool track and field, and trauma inducing mad leaps over deep pits in the darkest of ancient temples and tombs. She cleared the opposite guard rail by a hair’s breadth, landing on her hooves with a loud thud.

“There she is!” the mare cried from now further up.

Amber whimpered, ran to the wall, turned around, ran back and jumped again. This time with a cry of “N🌣PE!”

And so began her descent. Land, run, jump, scream nope. Once, twice, three times. Spellbotls sizzled through the air as the Mages above her began to fire down into the stairwell’s core.

Three, four, five times. Amber’s panic-yelps devolved into manic laughter. Her legs began to throb, really not liking the rapid impacts.

Six, seven, eight times. A spell bolt lanced past amber close enough to catch her left pant leg on fire. Amber frantically slapped it out amid half-mad cackling wimpers.

Amber turned and ran for the doorway into the ground floor amid the flurry of spellbotls slamming into the now quite scorched floor tiles, reaching them before remembering the tunnels and turning back towards the stairwell, yelling otherself with each step.

“Never-again-never-again-never-again-never-again!”

Amber reached the shelter of the overhanging stairs as a spellbolt scorched tip of her tail away. Morning Snow’s instructions on how to use the hidden passage came to mind, but only partially. Most of Amber’s mind was stuck on being shot at by evil crime wizards and also being amazed at the fact she hadn’t wet herself during that little stunt she somehow survived.

Adrenaline is one hay of a drug, Amber nervously laughed in her head as she walked at the space the stairs should be, hoping the hatch mechanism just worked.

It did. It worked perfectly. Unfortunately for Amber, the hidden passage was perhaps the single most horribly designed set of stairs in all of Equestria. After all, stairs are absurdly dangerous things, especially when one cannot see them and are standing at the top of a flight or two.

And also don’t know where they start.

The hatch’s charm detected Bits ID badge and the presence of a pony trying to walk down, and slid open with a soft hiss. Amber’s hoof sailed through the space she thought a stair would be, and past the space any reasonable stair should have been, entirely missing the rather steep and narrow steps, prompting Amber to tumble straight down the stairs amid a collection of pained cries and compound-swears.

Amber bounced down the steps, shoulder back, hip, guts, ribs. A brief but seemingly never ending cycle of pain until her momentum carried Amber free of the stairwell entirely to plummet a good meter down onto the concrete floor of the bunker… and also whip her shoulder bag around like a meteor hammer to smash into that very same floor.

Time slowed for Amber once more, her pain forgotten as she watched the reliquary fling itself from the bag she’d forgotten to close earlier. It sailed from the pouch like a slingstone.

“NooOoo!” Amber screeched with the terror of a pony who had just lobbed a weapon of mass destruction directly into a stone wall. Corner first.

The damaged reliquary shattered with a truly terrible crunch, breaking into dozens of pieces. Amber’s heart stopped. She curled up, waiting for a death-blast of arcane light.

Please contain the blast, tunnel!

No blast came. Nor did an ominous black crystalien sphere bounced out of the shattered remains to roll across the floor.

Instead, a small, diamond shaped, silver, spindly, thing amounting to a decorative silver frame for a blue crystal meant to serve as a pendant bounced across the floor, sliding to a stop just ignorant of Amber’s nose.

“Oh…” Amber said, tembeling in terror. “Good.”

I’ve never been happier to have been mistaken about what a dig site contained. Amber thought to herself as she pushed herself to her hooves despite her once-again battered body’s protests. So… the hay is this thing? Is my “Danger communicator” translation correct?

Amber looked down at the thing for several long moments, quite hesitant to touch it. That was, until something banged against the closed hatch at the top of the stairwell. Amber winced at the sound echoing through the tunnel, then groaned.

“Right. League of Mages. Want me dead,” She groaned, doing her best to ignore her growing fatigue.

Amber spared another look at the mystery crystal and it's delicate looking silver diamond frame. Whatever this is… They shouldn’t get a hold of it. With luck, they’ll see the broken reliquary and… oh hey, wait a minute! The tunnel walls are probably thick enough to block lifesense spells!

Amber wasn't a mage, but most every unicorn learned a spell or three which were relevant to their occupation. Amber focused her mind inwards, searching her memory for a somewhat repressed fragment from her foalhood. The pink clouds which clung to the old Canterlot University campus when her mother had rushed her over to the Campus the day her father had died.

Amber’s face clenched as she drew the memory out and examined it in detail, weaving her spell from it. Her horn shimmered, sparkled, then glowed white as her spell completed, ready to be cast.

Doing her best to keep her concentration, Amber turned towards the stairs and yelled “RUN! THE RELIQUARY BROKE! IT HASN'T BLOWN YET BUT—”

Then she cast her spell. The illusion started with a loud, dull, basy thud and a crackle like a spell matrix failing, only huge. Then a bright flash of light, and lastly, a dense bank of pink fog filled the tunnel around her.

Amber let out a quiet breath and wiped her brow, ignoring the headache of casting such a potent illusion so quickly as best she could.

There. If they breach the hatch they’ll see this and run, and also think I died. Perfect. Now let’s just scoop the mystery-pendent up and quietly leg it the buck out of dodge.

Not wanting to touch the mystery item, just in case her idea of what it was turned out to be the worst mistake she’d made so far today, Amber reached out with her telekinesis to pick the relic up and put it in her bag. The instant her magic enveloped the device, the crystal within it began to glow a bright blue.

Amber had just enough time to think a terrified Oh no! Before the world around her blinked out of existence, replaced by a starry expanse which stretched out to eternity.

An alien presence filled the space around her. Something ancient. Something twisted. Something hateful. A wounded animal, but much much bigger. A plural entity unfathomable to an individual mind existing outside of itself.

“P̶o̷n̷y̸…̸” the living presence said with an endless hunger and bottomless lust.

“Eep!” Amber squeaked in existential dread.

The presence lurched and leaned, moving towards her. Amber recoiled, unable to move within whatever rift she’d been transported to. The presence extended itself, reaching out in hunger and need. Amber felt her heart speed up, threatening to burst under her massive building panic attack.

A shimmering purple crack opened within the air in front of Amber from which a hand extended. An alien hand. Pale peach in color, but shadowy and oily, as if it didn’t really exist within this place.

The hand lacked any fur, or scales. Its skin was dry, lacking any mucus or slime like other skinned creatures Amber had seen before… But it had five fingers, a thumb, and nails just like her own.

“Grab my hand!” An alien voice called through the rift.

An individual alien voice. One much more attractive than the thing lurking in the expanse all around her.

Amber needed no further prompting. She seized the hand, which immediately pulled her through the rift into a dim, hazy, white or possibly gray room. Like the hand, and like the hand’s bipedal, twice her size owner, this place didn’t seem to really exist.

“What the buck is happening?!” Amber demanded of… well, everything and anything.

“I’m going to assume that was an expletive,” the alien figure said with some amusement in its voice. “Don’t panic. They can’t reach you here.”

“Okay yes, but the buck is happening though?!” Amber demanded, her chest heaving with panicked breaths. “I have absolutely run out of bullshit tolerance juice for today!”

The alien figure pulled a chair out of nothingness and sat down, looking for all the world like they'd just reached over and moved a chair over to sit, yet there had been no chair. “It’s okay. You activated a hyperwave communicator. Your mind has been linked to a universe-spanning psychic network. It’s okay, it’s not permanent. Whatever you do, do not disconnect. Your world is in extreme danger, and since you clearly didn’t know what you were touching, you don’t even know about the threat yet. But don’t worry, we’re here to help.”

Amber frowned and did her best to process all of that in spite of her panic. “Oh… speak with the demons. That… that thing in the void. It made the talisman.”

“Demons are a good name for them,” the alien agreed. “We call them lots of things. X-Rays, Xenos, Elders… The individual species have names, but they don’t seem to have any name as a collective group. The Elders aren't really the kind of people who let their subjects have free will so it doesn't matter.”

Amber gave the alien a blank look.

“Ah… Right…” The figure cleared its throat. “What you just encountered was a technologically created psionic hivemind. It is composed of the individual soldier-slaves belonging to an alien faction calling themselves the Elders. They are currently in the process of invading your world through clandestine means.”

Amber blinked, frowned, then shook her head. “Okay… That’s a lot to take in.”

“I understand,” the alien said calmly. “We have time. Whatever you were doing before you touched the communicator can wait. Time flows differently in this link. We could talk for days and only a few seconds would pass in the real world.”

Amber gave the alien a quizzical look.

“No, really. It does. Take your time.” He insisted.

Amber nodded and just stood there, letting things process for a bit. “Okay… So, aliens are invading. Why?”

The alien cleared his throat. “Long story short, a very long time ago, the Elder’s species tried to transcend reality and become purely psychic beings, living their physical forms behind. Only a few managed to do it. The rest became vampire-like creatures that need to feed off the mystical energies found within certain species… and they also want to find new bodies to transplant themselves into since their physical forms have withered away to almost nothing.”

Amber winced, her frown deepening immensely. “Oh… That’s pretty bad.”

“Mhm.”

Amber bit her lip. “Okay. So… I’m guessing you guys are their enemies?”

“Yes. As far as we know, we’re the only species to fight them and win,” the alien answered calmly. We’ve been monitoring your plant for…”

He looked down at his hand at some sort of rectangular device which just appeared in it form nothing then vanished as he looked away. “Seventy of your years. A massive pulse of psionic energy radiated out from your world. Drew these last few Aliens out of some temporal rift they were hiding in. Dregs from the fleet we fought a long time ago. We’ve been trying to find a way to communicate and warn you while monitoring the Alien’s activities.”

“Okay,” Amber said slowly, shaking her head slowly. “I mean… It's indisputable to me that there’s something horrible…” she slowed to a halt, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “Oh for buck’s sake! The bucking Change also summoned bucking space vampires to eat our magic? Come the buck on! That’s just not fair!”

The alien smiled slightly. “Life seldom is. I take it The Change was some sort of disaster?”

“Yeah it was,” Amber sighed, shaking her head. “Okay… So, we have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” the alien asked calmly.

“You’re right. There are aliens. You, at the minimum… But, I can tell you’re not that… that thing! Totally different arcane signatures. Not even tangentially related. I’m not a mage and I can feel it! That thing is big, and also objectively evil. I didn’t even think anything could be actually objectively evil, but there you go!” Amber laughed nervously then looked up into the aliens’ eyes. “So, you want to warn our army, right?”

The alien nodded silently.

“Yeah well, I’m an archaeologist. Pulled this crystal out of a ruin,” Amber answered with an awkward and nervous cough.

“I see. Well, it’s a simple matter to prove the invasion exists if your species can sense the Elder’s nature though the link, and there’s nothing stopping us from hacking into this comm again later. Our technology is much better than theirs now,” The alien said calmly. “Take the communicator to one of your leaders, and we’ll deliver the warning.”

Amber laughed and then slumped somewhat. “Yeah, about that… I’m not in the field. I'm in a University. And not like, in my office on a normal bucking day. We’re being attacked by a criminal syndicate that wants this thing… They think it’s something else but they want it. I’m hurt. Like, bad. If they don’t buy a bluff I made, they’ll kill me. Knowing the League of Mages, they won’t warn the Princess about the invasion if you tell them about it. They’ll find a way to exploit it for profit and political power. They’re… psychos with a good point. Our world is in chaos. Historically we’ve been ruled by powerful spellcasters. We’re not right now, most of our leaders are normal ponies. Maybe we do need our leaders to be people with literal physical power as well as political power. I don’t know. But I do know damn well that the League is NOT the people we want or need in charge!”

“That is a problem,” the alien agreed with a steep frown. “Are you injured?”

“Yeah. I don’t even know how bad. I downed some healing pots, but I’ve been shot, well, grazed, and fell down some really bucking stupidly designed stairs…” Amber closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Look, I’m exhausted. I just repelled down a building in a hurricane, sprinted a good three hundred meters, and just jumped down a stairwell while being shot at, floor by floor. For all I know, I have until the adrenaline wears off before I just drop the buck dead. I… I don’t think I can help you warn everypony. Sorry.”

Amber hung her head. The longer she talked to the alien, as surreal an experience as it was, the more the terror of her escape faded and the more clarity she could muster up. This was probably her end. Sure, thick stone walls could block detection spells, but the hatch was just a hatch,nice and thin. Her bluff would probably not do a damn thing. Especially if one of the Mages has a spell running to detect illusions, which, why wouldn’t they? I’m dead already…

The alien nodded and hummed. “Yeah, that’s a problem. Look, the state of your world is at least partially the Alien’s fault. They invade subtly at first. They infiltrate, find weaknesses, exploit them, seed chaos and distrust. Warp society. Make cracks. They only attack openly once they’ve cut away the bulk of your defences. For example, my people had to fight them with one military base and a few dozen good soldiers at first. We had to build ourselves back up during the Long War.” the alien sighed and stood up to pace the room in thought. “This League of Mages might even be working for them, whether they know that or nor is another question entirely.”

Amber gulped. “Excuse me, what?”

“Trust me, creating terrorist organizations is exactly their MO for the early phases of an invasion,” the Alien repeated. We can’t risk the communicator falling into their hands. Look… My people want to help you. We’ve dispatched a fleet, but space is big. Really big. You may think it’s a long ways down the road to the grocers, but that’s nothing compared to space.”

Amber nodded slowly. “Yes, space is big. How soon can you get here?”

“My people, erm, we call ourselves Humans, by the way,” the alien informed casually. “We’ve developed what our science says is the fastest possible engine you can build. We might be wrong, but that’s extremely unlikely. Thing is… the Aliens only got to you because they used an emergency temporal rift to transcend space and time to get away from us. You’re in a whole other galaxy. It will take us twenty years to get there.”

Amber’s ears and heart fell as one. “Oh… That’s too long, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he confirmed with a nod. “Even worse, if you can’t repel their invasion, by the time we arrive, the Aliens might be able to beat us in spite of the tech gap since they’ll have your absurd psionic powers and strong physical forms once more. Just know that no matter what, we’ll fight to free you. The Aliens need to be stopped once and for all… And even those of us who don’t care about ending their threat understand that if they win their invasion of your world they are a threat to us again, and will almost certainly come right for us to take revenge. We kinda killed most of their religious leaders this one time.”

Amber winced.

The alien nodded. “Yeah… So… This isn’t our optimal play,” he admitted, “but we have this one ace in the hole we were going to send one of your world leaders. That’s no longer an option. If you have gods, thank them. Today’s your lucky day. You’re going to live.”

Amber snorted. “Oh yeah, real lucky! I’m going to get transmogrified into a snack food and my planet is being invaded by pure evil space vampires,” she said with a dismissive hand wave. “And I’m also possibly gonna just drop… Wait, going to live? How?”

“We have… a protector,” the alien explained slowly. “Recall how the Elders became psi-vampires?”

Amber paused and thought back a moment. “Yeah, you said some of them ascended.”

“Turns out, ascending does create a powerful psychic entity.. But it wipes out your entire personality. Blank slate. The creature that spawns from you is not you,” The alien explained. “The Etherials who managed to ascend… which are rather unimaginatively called “Ascended Ethereals” drifted through the cosmos, washed ashore on various worlds, and have become gods, guardians, or friends to many different species. Ours… Well, he’s the most personable of them we’ve encountered. What’s more, he’s a brilliant strategist. Even better, as a psionic entity, we can transmit him as information through this link.”

Amber’s heart skipped a beat. “You can email me a genius tactician wizard? Oh buck the hay yes! That might just get me out of here alive. Do it! I’ll show him where our leaders are as soon as we’re out of the mess I’m in!”

The alien cleared his throat. “It’s… not that simple.”

It’s not? Amber’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

“Well… The Commander can’t exist in the physical world for long without a host. He’s a symbiote. He’ll have to bond to you once he arrives,” the alien said slowly, making sure to lean into every word so he couldn’t possibly be misunderstood.

“Ah… Okay,” Amber’s lips pulled into a frown to match her narrowed gaze. “And that will do what to me?”

“Well… Your personality and his will blend to form a gestalt consciousness. An independent personality from either of you. The resultant person will have your combined abilities and knowledge. Once separated, you’ll believe everything that it did was in fact done by you. If he chose to bond to you without you knowing of his existence, you’d never know he existed. You’d just feel like you’d suddenly gained then lost tremendous mystical power. But… for however long the Commander exists within your body, you won't actually exist. A lot of people, and even entire species, see this as dying.”

Amber nodded and took a breath to think about it. “Well… I’m probably going to die anyway. If I say no… We’ll probably all get enslaved and eaten by space vampires… I’m not selfish enough to say no to that.” Amber took another breath and shook her head. “But… that depends on whether or not you’re telling the truth. For all I know, you could be helping the aliens out like the League might be.”

To Amber’s surprise, the alien nodded. “That’s right. We could be. Of course, if we were working with the Aliens we probably wouldn’t need to find a dying archeologist in a real bind to slip our friend into, now would we?”

Yeah no… They could just grab somepony with political power in their sleep or something.

Amber hummed and nodded. “Fair point… Can I talk to this Commander first?”

“Sure,” the alien replied instantly, looking over his shoulder. “You’re on, sir.”

The room’s dim shadowy nature recoiled as a being of pure blue light shimmered into existence within it. It was about as big as the other alien, and also humanoid in shape, but had four arms instead of two, and its head was large and bulbous, kind of like somepony stuck a jellyfish atop the aliens head. An image that was greatly enhanced by long, thin, bulbous tipped tendrils growing from the creature’s shoulder blades.

“Sup!” the glowing creature of pure magical essence said with shocking casualness. “Is this their Volunteer?”

“Not exactly, sir,” the alien reported with unmistakable military bearing. “The situation is already sideways and FUBAR. She’s all we got, but she seems like a tough little thing. She apparently repelled down a building mid hurricane and is currently escaping a terrorist attack while wounded... By jumping down a stairwell one flight at a time while being shot at and nursing some recently healed wounds.”

“Woah!” the glowing blue entity said, clearly impressed. It reached out towards Amber with a closed fist. “Badass!”

Amber looked at the fist and frowned. “Uh… Before we merge—”

The magic creature shook its head. “No, this isn't that. It’s a fist bump.”

“A what?” Amber asked with a confused head tilt.

“A way to show someone respect,” the flesh-and-blood alien said oddly quickly. “Sir, please, do be a little more thoughtful. This is their first contact.”

Amber stared at the outstretched fist. Respect? I… But… But it’s a god-thing… I… Wait, badass. Bad ass. Ass. Butt. flanks. Badflank. An Elder Thing thinks I am badflank… What?! How?!

Amber stood there silently for several long awkward moments, just processing. Then she extended her own fist and bumped it against the Commander’s, as the gesture’s name implied.

“See? She gets it,” The Commander said to the other alien.

Amber cleared her throat. “Okay so… he said I’ll never really notice you using my body. Is that true?”

“Oh it’s more than true,” the blue glowing alien replied instantly. “My first host… Look, it’s two way. I honestly thought I was William Carter for the first few weeks of my life. I was just as surprised as he was when our friends figured out I existed. We both get combined into a new being, my power and skills combined with their will, memories, knowledge, and physical form. What you bring to the table is more important than what I bring. No! Really! Your unique experiences, knowledge, it’s all crucial to this. I don’t know anything about your species. I’ve only ever augmented humans before. I thought I’d try a Viper one time, but they’re too noodly to grab hold of.”

Amber raised an eyebrow. “Augmented?” That’s not how the other alien described it...

“Yeah, it’s what I prefer to call it. To me, I’m more the interface and my host is the Commander. I am my own person… but each “Commander” has always behaved more like my host than me. Except Carter. He was… a tool,” the Commander said with a little sadness. “A broken man. And not because of me, before you ask.”

Amber nodded slowly. “Okay… Well, uh… I actually don’t know what else I should ask. Other than that, you will let me go, right?”

“Totaly,” the ethereal alien said, flashing Amber a gesture she recognised, a thumbs up. “You’re a unique person. You have rights. I only inhabit someone in times of need. I don’t like being bound up in flesh, unable to truly be myself anymore than any of my hosts did. It’s not fun, but the Elders need to be stopped once and for all. I’m sick of fighting them every so often. This will be the thirteenth time, and whats worse for me is I exist outside of space and time as you know it, so I’ve fought the fuckers in three fucking timelines! These are the last of them that exist anywhere and anywhen I can exist. Let’s go finish them off, then you can go do… whatever it is you do, and I can finally have some time to see if that old show Firefly is as good as everyone back then said it was.”

Amber couldn’t help but smile at that statement. That was so genuine. This isn’t some Elder Thing, it’s just some nerdy colt in the same pinch as me who happens to be a tactical genius.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Amber said with as much confidence as she ocul dmuster. “Let’s do this.”

The other alien nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Alright. Break the connection. We’ll send him through after you and he’ll bond once transmitted. It will be almost instantaneous.”

Amber rocked back on her hooves. “Okay, but how—”

“It’s like waking from a lucid dream,” the alien informed.

Amber nodded once more then thought about opening her eyes. In an instant she was back in the tunnel, surrounded by an illusion of pink fog, her body aching, her muscle sore, and her heart beating like a drum.

Amber frowned slightly. If that was a hallucination I’m going to be—

The crystal within the relic pulsed rapidly, building in arcane energy at an alarming rate. Amber winced, ready for the end of her for the moment. The gem flashed brightly, releasing the same magical essence she felt while speaking to the Commander. Then she felt it, a very gentle, almost imperceptible brush against her arms and back.

The Commander’s voice said from somewhere adjacent to her mind.

Amber recoiled somewhat as she felt the Commander’s rage towards the aliens. We’re not cute. We’re just… people. This guy is acting like we’re puppies or something! Wait a minute...

“Aren’t I supposed to not be here?” Amber asked out loud, more than a little perplexed.

The Commander trailed off sounding very concerned.

Amber felt the Commande brush against her mind, searching for cultural references.

“Both?” Amber asked, her tail flicking curiously.

The Commander said before waving Amber's left arm.

To Amber, it felt like her body had moved on its own. Reflexively. But she’s also been entirely aware of the action. Amber narrowed her eyes and moved her left arm. It responded just like it had before today had happened.

“Actually… This is better,” Amber said with sincerity.

The Commander asked.

“Because this just feels like I have a friend over. I still exist. I have control. I’m just sharing,” Amber replied earnestly, wincing as the mages on the other side of the hatch struck it again.

Okay, they’ll break through soon. We need to move. Amber thought to herself.

Amber yelped. Okay, you hearing my thoughts is a little freaky!

I mean I did feel you dig around earlier, Amber noted as she started to limp her way down the tunnel, following a painted arrow on the wall labeled “Weather Lab”. I guess I’ll believe you for now.

The Commander offered.

Amber frowned, uncertain how exactly she could do that. But, then, instinctually, she did. It was just like trying to remember anything. She could feel the Commander’s mind and his form, and even powers and abilities as if they were her own.

You’re not lying. Good! Amber sighed in relief, then stopped limping. Wait, you can heal me! I can sense the power there. Would you mind?

The Commander laughed.

Amber felt an upwelling of alien magic within her. Her horn glowed blue, no sparkles, no shimmering, just on. Like the old days of magic. The blue light washed over her, painlessly knitting her battered body whole once more.

“Woah! Okay… Maybe the old timers got a point. With magic at least,” Amber said out loud as she looked down at her no longer sliced up and glass filled hands.

The realization that this healing power couldn’t be used willy nilly hit Amber as if it were her own spell. Once cast, the Commander’s spells needed time to rebuild themselves. Almost ten minutes, in the case of this particular ability.

Fine by me… Uh, for now though, you’re the tactics guy. I’ve got a motorbike parked in the garage near the Weather Lab. Should we head there or… what?

Amber snorted and started to run down the tunnel. “Sounds like it would have been awesome if you could have shown up ten minutes ago…”

3 - Escape

Amber jogged down the tunnel, chest heaving as her panting increased with each step. Her hooves clicked and clattered on the concrete floor. Their beat chaotically reverberated up and down the tunnel. There was no way in Tartarus that anyone even near the tunnel system didn’t know she was alive and moving.

So much for that ruse… Amber sighed to herself as she rounded the first bend.

The Commander asked.

I made a smoke illusion to make them think… I mimicked a national disaster which would have happened had the box I found your Space Messenger Gem in had contained what we’d believed it had when we dug it up. Amber took a moment to quickly look over the tunnel wall and make sure the red line she was following was the correct one to lead her to the Weather Lab. But my hooves are super loud on this floor.

Amber winced at a light cramp forming in her left leg. Magical healing could do wonders, though strictly speaking, lactic acid build up wasn’t an injury. It’s just the physical process the body undergoes as it tires out.

Yeah. True. My grandmother died that way. Amber’s ears drooped as she did her best not to remember the way her grandmother looked, and especially not how she’d smelled, when she’d passed on.

We have lots of kinds of hoofware. But they’re not business attire. Amber deflected.

The Commander mused idly as he took note of one of the turn offs from this main tunnel.

What’s with the mental note? Amber wondered, trying to distract herself from her budding cramp.

Not one that has cover from spellslingers firing out from the windows, Amber grumbled as she rounded another of the tunnel’s corners.

The cage-wrapped crystal lamps affixed to the tunnel’s ceiling flickered and sparked. They’d been doing that off and on for the entire run so far.

Maybe we should focus on getting out of here? Amber suggested. This tunnel specifically, I mean. Before the storm knocks out the lights. I can do a light spell, but that will make us much more detectable.

The Commander “shifted” in the back of Amber’s mind. She wasn’t quite certain what he was doing at first, but it came to her after a few more steps. Amber frowned, not quite able to put it into words. I know what you’re doing, but… I don’t know how to…

Amber narrowed her eyes irritably. I know I said do what you need to keep us alive… But that seems just a little invasive.

The Commander said, cutting off her concerns.

Oh, um, yeah go ahead and do that. The tactics guy should be able to read signs. Amber mused as she slowed to a brisk walk to catch her breath a little. Whew! I haven’t sprinted any real distance in… ages!

Amber felt the Commander quickly tap into her knowledge of language and copy it, then immediately leave her mind alone.

Well sure, I… Did also do a lot of running in the office too though. Probably about… Three minutes to… Wait a minute! Amber skidded to a stop and reflexively wheeled around to address the person she was speaking too. Hold on! You said you were just taking language! I—

<... Language includes units of measure. Are you okay? I know you’re stressed out but try and focus.> The Commander urged.

The realiszation of just how dumb Amber’s accusaion was hit her like a delivery van. Even worse, the person she was being stupid around was in her head, so there was no hiding the concentrated essence of dumb she’d just taken a bath in.

Amber groaned and ran a hand down her face. Yeeeaaaah... That does include how long a meter is. Can we please forget that happened? I’ve never had ponies trying to kill me before.

The Commander chuckled to himself for a moment, leaving Amber to take a moment to stretch her leg before the cramp set in.

The Commander noted.

Amber’s tail flicked irritably as she turned back around to resume following the red line. I’m not in poor shape! I’m quite fit, thank you very much!

The Commander corrected with a mixture of apologetic and informative thoughts.

Amber sputtered out loud, nearly tripping over her own two hooves in shock.

“I’m sorry, what?!” she demanded. “What kind of horseapples is that?!”

“Celestia…” Amber muttered with a shiver as she did her best to focus on the fact she was being chased by ponies and not some gangly, furless, thing twice her size that she could not outrun.

Something that would just keep coming. Running until she weakend. Until her reserves were gone. Something truly relentless.

The thought lent some serious speed to her legs.

The Commander cleared his metaphysical throat, sounding more than a little embarrassed.

It’s fine. Every tribe has its strengths and weaknesses. Why would alien tribes be different? Amber’s chest heaved once more as her panting returned with a vengeance. Even worse, while the cramp had been banished, her legs were starting to burn from the extended sprint.

The Commander switched tracks almost instantly, detecting something Amber could not.

Amber’s heart fell even as the fear lent her a little extra stamina. Options?

Do it!

The Commander drew Amber’s crossbow and quickly inspected the weapon. Amber could feel him analysing it, doing a lot of complex math she couldn’t follow, at least not yet. Watching the Commander’s thoughts while he worked was like staring at static you swore there was a pattern in. Like a magic eye painting Amber didn’t know the trick to seeing through just yet.

However, she did understand he was working out how her bow worked.

Amber focused on her run, only for her ears to lay back in fear as the sound of running hooves behind her entered her conscious mind. Hey, why not just use my memories of shooting that thing?

Ethics can go to Tartarus for things involving not dying! Amber snapped, her left eye twitching.

The Commander swiftly tapped into Amber’s memory, searching for times she shot her hand crossbow.

Amber’s heart leapt in her chest ever so slightly. Yay! Someone got to see that!

Amber nodded and concentrated on running. As much as the adrenaline spike had done to push her through the wall she’d hit a few moments ago, adrenaline could only do so much. She was starting to tire again.

Ten steps. That’s how long it took the League mages to round the corner. Amber counted them.

The Commander turned her head and shoulders, bringing her arm up to shoot, and bringing a squad of four mages into view. Amber immediately disliked the sensation. It felt like a reflex, like ducking out of the way, only also active. The confusing neurological signals broke her stride. She began to trip.

The Commander fired once.

The dart sped through the air.

A mage hurled an electric blue ray towards Amber’s back.

The Commander fired again.

The first dart struck the right most mage in the chest. He began to fall.

Amber fell forwards, her hooves slipping out from under her.

The Commander’s second dart slid off course.

The middle-right mage flicked her wrist. A ruby ray melted a furrow in the floor to Amber’s right.

The Commander fired yet again.

The dart whistled as it flew, striking the left-most mage in the shoulder.

Amber hit the floor at the same time the first mage crumpled to the ground.

A pair of spell bolts hissed over Amber’s head, singing her mane.

Amber rolled onto her back out of instinct.

The Commander fired twice.

The darts flew. The crossbow chirped, its enchantment warning them of its empty magazine.

One of the two remaining mages ducked, casting a shield spell. The dart sparked off the shield.

The other took the dart in the hip, and fell.

The Commander groaned as the remaining mage advanced on them, growling in anger and frustration.

Good shots though. Amber thought, trying to be brave.

Yeah, it’s super not a consolation. Amber looked up at the advancing mage, still doing her best to be brave. “Well? What are you waiting for? Transmute me into a rug or whatever.”

The mage popped his neck. “You’re one of the more frustrating ponies we’ve ever had to work with,” he said, his voice low and rumbly, like a babbling brook. “I can see your bag’s empty. You broke the box. You didn’t use the Stone. It didn’t explode. So where is it?”

The mage stopped a good three meters from Amber and lit their horn, plunging the tunnel into a deep red glow as they readied a spell Amber couldn’t quite identify. “Tell me, and I’ll let you go.”

Oh hey! They need me again. Maybe I can talk my way out of this?

The Commander said as he began to go to work.

Amber could feel his every move, though she couldn’t comprehend the bulk of his efforts. Her mind simply was never built to comprehend the full nuances of time and probability as an Ascended Ethereal did. All she could see were snatches, fragments, motes of thought and calculation zipping past at speeds that rendered observing these moments impossible.

Yet she still knew what her unlikely friend was doing. Running through each and every likely course of action and outcome in search of a hand to play that would win this pot. He’s like a living computer! We’re so getting out of this alive!

Amber cleared her throat. “Yeah, about that… You know the Stones are locked onto altering the Equine form right now, right? You’d need to find all of the others and use each in turn before you could wish for… What do you guys want? You sure do a lot of work to hide the League’s political campaign contributions. At least, you know, to the courts. Are you trying to wish your leader into being the Princess or something? Sure, the Stones could do that, but—”

The mage snorted and waved his free hand dismissively. The other drew a small gray-blue crystal wand from his robes. “Do not presume to know the League’s goals! We don’t want the Stone to be used. Not yet. This time of change is what our species needs to survive. We’d grown too stagnant, too fat, too complacent.”

Amber’s lips pursed in surprise. There was genuine sincerity in the Mage’s words. Even if those are not his boss’s actual opinions, he sure believes they are.

“Alright,” Amber nodded slowly, but didn’t take her eyes off the stallion. “Let’s say I trust you not to use it. How do I know you’ll let me go? I did just shoot your friends.”

“Be that as it may, you have your job, I have mine,” the Mage said quite firmly. “The quicker we acquire the Stone, the better. You can save us a few minutes searching the side tunnels and air vents you had time to stash it in. Last chance. Where is it?”

The Commander sighed.

“I rolled it down the third hallway I passed,” Amber lied, using her years and years of experience as a mischievous foal to make it sound and look as genuine as possible.

The mage nodded, clearly buying her ponyfeathers. “Thank you,” he tilted his head to cast. “And... goodbye.”

Amber’s heart nearly stopped.

Time seemed to slow.

The mage’s horn crackled and sparked as the spell began to release.

Amber twisted, trying to roll out of the way.

Even as she began to move, she knew in her heart it was futile.

Something silver flashed over Amber’s head.

A folding chair smashed rim-first into the mage’s horn, shattering it.

The mage flew backwards, screeching in agony.

His cries stopped as he struck the floor skull first.

The Commander noted in shock.

Was this your plan somehow? Did you magic up a flying—

Amber spun around, jumping up to her hooves, more than ready for a fight. Morning Snow stood in the center of the tunnel, left arm extended, right arm holding a second folding chair.

Amber’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me! You’re at least half unicorn, but still have full earth pony strength?” She groaned and rubbed her temples. And all I get from my pegasus half is higher meat tolerances and a kinda nerfed mana-pool!

Morning smiled wide enough for his teeth to glint in the dim light. “E’yup!”

The Commander stammered.

Eh, not most. Morning here is in the like, 95th percentile or so… Amber informed, bemused that something about her species discontented the alien as much as his friends had her. Wait, did the mage die?

Morning cleared his throat and transferred his chair to his now free left hand. “Come on, we should run back and pick up the Stone you ditched. He could have been sharing senses with his friends!”

Amber shook her head. “No need, it’s not back there. I lied. Box was empty, actually. They wouldn’t have believed that though.”

Morning nodded, frowning slightly. “Okay. You run to the Weather Lab. It’s clear there! I’ll hold them off here.”

Amber raised an eyebrow as her mouth twisted into an o. “Um, do you want to be melted into a puddle? These are wizards, not street thugs!”

Morning’s cheeks turned the lightest shade of pink Amber had ever seen. “Oh. Uh, right.”

Amber took a deep breath and began to run down the tunnel once more. “Then come on! There’s definitely more of them on the way. They think I have what they want!”

The Commander murmured in the back of Amber’s mind.

Amber and Morning ran down the tunnel silently for nearly a minute before Morning cleared his throat. “Uh, think that guy’s dead? I hit him harder than I meant to.”

Amber snorted and waved her hand in dismissal. “Who cares? He’d have killed me. Golden rule, filly!”

“Ah don’t think that’s how that is applied,” Morning said with the most confused ear droop.

“Totally is,” Amber panted. “Treat others as you wish to be treated. Goes both ways.”

Morning shook his head. “Eh, yeah, but, it applies to me too. I’ve only punched-out the other ones…”

Amber briefly felt her heart twinge for the young stallion. Maybe I've gotten too used to death from this job...

She cleared her throat and looked at the brown pony’s eyes as best she could while running. “You gonna be okay? I know a good therapist.”

Morning snorted dismissively. “Ain't the first time I killed somepony. Ah was in the E.U.P. Just… Don’t like doing it by accident.”

Amber nodded, understanding at least in theory, what he meant. “I hear killing in self defense is something most ponies aren't bothered by… I’ve killed a few animals, but never a pony. Is that true? I mean, I might need to kill one of them now that I’m out of stun darts.”

“Mhm. ’S different then, and when y'all protecting somepony. Won’t bother you none. Just feels like stopping any other predator… Which is bad. Can make you stop thinking of ponies as ponies,” Morning warned as they passed a tunnel with a sign at the entrance labeled ‘Arcana Shelter’.

“There’s an Arcana Shelter down there,” Morning added quickly, “but the Admins locked themselves in it. There’s a safe room in the Weather lab incase we do someth’n real stupid. It’s spell-proof. You can hide there.”

Amber shook her head. “Thanks but no thanks. I’m gonna hop on my bike and get the buck out of here.”

Morning sputtered, his eyes widening visibly. “In this weather? Y’all got some kinda death wish?”

Oh right. Hurricane Buck You is happening… Amber thought to herself, her face slowly twisting into a frown.

The Commander advised soothingly.

Amber cleared her throat and gathered her courage. After seeing the Commander help her shoot like she had in the bathroom again, and repeatedly, she believed him.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve driven in worse,” she insisted.

Morning shrugged and scrunched his face. “Suit yourself… Guess I’ll see ya to the parking garage then.”

Amber’s ears perked. “Hey! I can get us both out of here. There’s enough room for two on my bike.”

Morning shook his head, causing Amber’s tial to lift in surprise. “Nah. You go.”

Amber frowned, slowing down somewhat in surprise. “You… want to stay where evil ponies are—”

“Ah know. Look, it’s simple. Mage’s want you, not me. If you leave, just might make ‘em follow you. If they do, or don’t, nothing changes. There will still be ponies here who need help,” Morning said so adamantly Amber knew there was not one way in all of Tartarus that would make him do anything else.

Amber tilted her head even more. “What are you, a cape?”

Morning snorted and grinned. “Nothing like that. Ah just gotta do what my heart tells me is right,” the little stallion’s ears drooped back, his eyes dimmed as despair slid across his face. “Ah’m a soldier… Ex-Soldier. Saw too many poor ponies hurt in the Powered Wars to not help when ah can.”

Amber hummed, not sure how to respond to that, but definitely understanding. At least, in principle. There was a lot of pain in that war for sure… Morning’s only old enough to have been involved in the last few years. Not that it matters with how they went…

The Commander asked, interest radiating off his every being.

Long story very short, some of us are being born with powers and abilities beyond the norm these days. A while ago, the ponies using those gifts for their own ends got everypony else mad enough for an open war to happen. Our Princess intervened about a decade ago, forcing a peace. War ended two days before the date I was to report in for the draft. Amber explained as they rounded the tunnel’s final corner.

The Commander trailed off.

Amber grunted an acknowledgement and made a b-line for a set of stairsstares labeled “Weather Lab” as they came into view. Yeah. That happened. It sucked.

Amber blinked once, in that moment realising how very odd Equestrian nobility must seem to a total outsider. No. Princess is the title of our uh… Executive leader? Uh… So the senate is like, the proper true head of government. So our previous Diarchs took the title Princess rather than Queen, because… History. Look, it’s complicated.

Mhm.

The commander said in a way Amber found far too excited and fancoltish.

Amber and Morning reached the terribly designed stairs and headed up, hooves clicking against the hard plastic edge banding thrice as loudly as they had the concrete. The hidden door at the top of the steps hissed open as Morning approached, revealing… Just another stairwell.

Nothing special. White painted cinder blocks, silver railings. Black tiled steps. The usual.

Morning reached the top of the stairs first and peeked through the chicken-wire reinforced windows set into the doors as Amber caught up to him.

“It’s clear,” he reported calmly. “Parking garage is… Uh, left, then out. Right?”

Amber nodded, wincing slightly as she picked up the distant, or rather dampened, howling winds outside.

“Yes.”

Morning nodded and with an interesting little two handed gesture, opened the door slowly and in such a way as to absorb the vibrations caused by the latch clicking open with his palm. He then soundlessly stepped outwards, pushing the door open while using it as a shield for his right side and looking out to the left.

Amber marveled for a moment at the totally silent way of opening the normally very clicky doors for a moment, then slipped into the hallway. The Weather Lab seemed far nicer than the administration floor Amber worked on.

Carpeted hallway. Framed paintings. Cheerful blue walls with a nice dark wood wainscoting. Light fixtures that didn’t look like they were on loan from a prison.

Why can’t my floor be decorated? Amber idly mused while doing her best to quiet-jog down the hall towards the exit sign.

The Commander said, his thoughts carrying a strange sincerity.

Who?

Amber had never empathised with somepony so completely before. That sounds like a give-hug situation. Too bad I can’t hug you.

Amber smiled as she felt a vague sense of discomfort from her headmate.

Amber paused to consider that for a moment. She wasn’t sure if that was something you could do with magic, if it was an obvious thing one would think to do if it was possible, and if that fit with the League’s tactics. She slowed down, still thinking as she reached the door that led into the parking garage.

I don’t know. Amber admitted as she put one hand on the door handle, doing her best to ignore the now very loud bellowing shrieks of wind, rain, and hail crashing down on the other side of the relatively thin metal door. Brace yourself for some serious wind though!

Morning drew up next to Amber a heartbeat after she started to turn the handle. “Ah’ll help you get through the wind. Brace and all that.”

Amber nodded, wincing at the realization of what going back outside would mean. “Thanks. Uh, good luck with your sticking around…” Amber bit her lip then on a whim reached into her inner jacket pocket and removed a flat, oval shaped, slice of pink crystal.

Amber pressed a finger against the largest faset on the bevel, making the stone glow with an inner white light as its magics activated. “Here, link your Messenger. That way you can call me later. I’d still like to get a drink and talk about comics… I need that more than ever now.”

Morning blinked, facepalmed, and took his own Messenger out, activated it, and touched his crystal to Ambers. The two gemstones flashed twice, then went dark once more.

“Sure thing,” Morning promised as he slipped the stone back into his pocket. “Let’s go. No sense delaying. Especially not if there’s any of ‘em in this build’n.”

Amber took a deep breath, pushed the all-too-recent memories of repelling down the tower out of her mind, and pushed the door open. The wind caught the door the instant it cracked open and ripped the heavy steel door from Amber’s grip, smashing it into the wall with a thunderous bang. The wind’s muted roars were unveiled as the wrathful screams of mother nature herself.

Amber felt a chill wash down her spine, not only from fear, but from the side-ways flying rain which instantly drenched her head to tail.

“Which way?” Morning shouted over nature’s fury.

Amber only barely heard him. Squinting her eyes to keep as much water out of them as possible, Amber searched for her bike. It was a fairly distinctive ride. It had belonged to her grandmother, and was one of the first motorcycles ever designed.

It didn’t take long for Amber to remember where she’d parked. The hard part was finding the bike nestled between two autowagons on the outer edge of the garage, parallel to the little concrete half-wall through watch all the rain in the world poured into the garage, seemingly intent on showing everypony it’s peas-soup-thick fog impression.

No fancy windscreen or body work. Simple, elegant. Refined. Cherry red with chrome accents and black leather. Classical Equestrian design present in every feature.

Like it? Amber asked. It was my grandmother’s. It’s one of the first models Gem Hound ever made!

The Commander agreed, shivering as if he were somehow also soaked and chilled to the bone.

Amber turned as much as she could to face Morning without the wind knocking her over, and pointed to the windward side of the garage and began to walk. Each step required her full strength to push against the wind. All of her concentration and focus went into pressing on, maintaining her balance in her battle against the storm.

The Commander’s shock washed through Amber’s mind. She stumbled. Morning caught her. Amber regained her balance and pressed forwards once more.

Can you still drive us out of this? Amber asked as she leaned into the icey wall of wind, doing her best to cut through it one shuffled hoof at a time.

Amber nodded, mostly to keep her focus on moving forwards. She’d felt that earlier in the tunnels. She really was half of their little cooperative. It was nice to have been told the truth about that. Most stories you’ll find with something like this have the Elder Things being super vague assholes.

The Commander laughed in distress.

Amber couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that. Morning braced her as the distraction caused her to stumble once more.

“Please tell me ya didn’t forget the keys,” Morning pleaded over the gale.

Amber felt her heart stop like blowing out a candle.

Amber’s hand shot to her lower left jacket pocket. Her hand found her keys. Her pending heart attack receded.

“Just the situation getting to me,” Amber yelled back. “It’s absurd!”

“E’yup!”

Amber struggled forwards once more. Her bike was nearly in reach. She could feel the anti-theft enchantments screaming in metaphorical agony as they resisted the wind’s attempts to push the bike away. Woah, feel that, Commander? Those wards were worth every bit!

Amber managed to make the last three steps to her bike. The winds died down ever so slightly. Seemingly out of respect for the mare’s struggles.

The Commander asked.

Amusing… Amber grunted and reached out to grab her bike’s handlebars. The wind picked back up again, nearly tearing Amber off her hooves. Morning reached out and braced Amber with both hands, going as far as to push her up and onto her seat with a grunt of effort.

Oh! Sure. Sorry!

“Thanks!” Amber shouted to Morning over the renewed wind’s howles.

“Good luck!” Morning shouted back, flashing Amber a thumbs up.

Amber fished her keys out of her pocket, jammed them into the ignition, and turned the key. Please start…

The bike’s engine roared to life on the first crank, seemingly as eager to be out of the storm as Amber was. She twisted the throttle, revving the engine three times to prime it and make sure the alchemist’s fire flowed through the engine correctly in spite of the cold, then released the parking brake, gunning the throttle so the wind wouldn’t push her backwards into a wall.

Amber’s bike roared, audibly struggling as she pulled out of the garage against the wind’s wishes. A glance down at her gauge cluster showed her engine was running a good thousand RPMs higher than normal. A testament to the wind’s strength.

Amber felt Asaru go to work as she turned towards the garage’s exit. It was as if her every sense understood exactly what the wind was doing to her and her bike, and she just knew how to work around the gale.

Okay. Let’s— Amber frowned, wanting to stop for a moment, but continued to roll through the garage exit, fearing being knocked over if she stopped moving. I can’t go home, can I? The League will be able to find me. All they need to do is question somepony I work with.

Amber hummed and pulled out into the street, her tires throwing a rooster tail behind her as she entered the two inch-deep river which had been a road just hours before. You sure?

Probably not. That’s pretty advanced and I don’t think I’ve ever heard even a rumor of the League knowing teleportation spells.

Amber nodded, twisted the throttle wide open, and raced off into the night.

What was normally a twenty minute drive consumed an hour. One of the most hellish hours of Amber’s life. Practically every road was blocked in some way or another. Floods. Ice. Rubble. Piles of Autowagons, trucks, vans, and even normal pull wagons. If none of those blocked a given street, then emergency services had it cordoned off to evacuate ponies from buildings which were just a little too in danger of collapsing under the hurricane’s unrelenting force.

They’d run through police lines, ramped off rubble to jump obstacles, even driven up onto one of the city’s monorail lines for a time, but they’d made it. The Manehatten city center was in their mirrors, receding into the distance as Amber pulled into the suburbs.

Neighford. A charming little community consisting mostly of duplexes and condos, created just for the ponies Manehatten needed as workers, but refused to pay enough to actually live in the glass towers with their “betters”.

Amber’s headlights cut through the rain as she turned down Cherry Lane, shivering like her life depended on it, and doing her best to ignore the impossible level of soaked she’d managed to make herself. The storm wasn’t nearly as bad in the suburbs. Here it was simply a very, very bad rainstorm. Thank Twilight the Weather Ponies deflected the storm by a few kilometers.

Asaru asked, curious as always.

Pegasi have always been able to control the weather. We used to have them keep everything safe and scheduled, but after The Change reset the ways we access our magic… Well they’re still figuring out the new ways to do the old things. We should have proper weather control back in ten to fifteen years. Amber twisted the handlebars, following Asaru’s subconscious directions to avoid hitting a pothole mostly hidden by the slightly-flooded street.

Amber squinted, doing her best to pierce the darkness as the silhouette of her duplex emerged from the dreary night at the limits of her vision. It was a nice place. Modern construction, all Cedarwood siding, carved arched windows, and subtle gables. Complete with a large reading nook above an enclosed porch that was more of a sunroom than anything else. All of which sat in a lovely yard with a nice big tree specially growth-accelerated by an Earthpony so it looked positively ancient.

The quintessential Post-Change Equestrian home.

Amber’s eyes checked the windows. No lights were on. Doesn't look like anyone’s in there. It's as cluttered as Tartarus. You’d need a light to keep from tripping over. Though I guess the power could be out… Storms like this usually mess up the aether pretty bad.

Yeah.

Amber turned her attention to her driveaway. Her jeep was parked where she’d left it, the doors still closed. Her neighbor’s auto-wagon was missing, as it should be given they were on vacation. No other vehicle she could see was parked in either drive.

I think I recognise every wagon I can see… Amber mused as she looked towards her porch.

The storm had blown the outer doors open, and cracked two of the windows, but that had happened during the last wind storm too.

I think it’s safe. Amber said as she pulled into her driveway and reached out with her magic to open the duplex’s shared garage.

The door’s wards recognised the touch of Amber’s magic, and unlocked as she pulled on it. The door slid open with a slight creak, revealing the collection of tools, old moving boxes, chest freezer, and yard care paraphernalia which Amber shared with her neighbors. More importantly, it also had one of the building’s alarm panels.

Amber took a good long look at the copper and silver plate riveted to the wall above the door leading from the garage into her side of the building. There was no glow, nor were any runes visible on its surface.

Yeah it’s safe. Amber said as she pulled into the garage and turned her bike off, letting the door drop shut behind her.

As the bike’s engine rumbled to a halt, the headlight blinked off, plunging the garage into total darkness.

Landlord is a security nut. Our alarms are Aura Masked so you can’t find them without knowing exactly what you’re looking for and where it is. A League Mage would have looked for an alarm ward, but found nothing. Unless they’re like, really very good. In which case, we’d be bucked because they’d just cast a spell that would be called something like “Detect Amber and Turn Her into Crispy Bacon” from their home thirty kilometers away. Amber elaborated as she stepped off her bike and cast a quick light spell.

Amber couldn’t help but feel a little happy as the garage lit up under her spell’s cheerful white glow. She’d always loved her magic’s color since it didn’t tint everything around her some random color when using it. In this case, the white walls remained white.

Amber walked over to the garage door, unlocked it with with her keys, and stepped inside her rather cluttered home. The place screamed “Bachelor Pad” so hard that Asaru’s alien nature didn’t matter one bit. He understood exactly what he was looking at.

The Craftspony style home was covered in all manner of nerdy posters advertising tabletop roleplaying games and settings, comic heroes, maps of fictional places, old bands, and even mock propaganda posters for fictional armies from what were obviously wargaming games. That alone would have made Amber’s duplex feel cluttered… But she also had a rather extensive collection of melee weapons from all periods of Equestrian history displayed on shelves, floor-stands, and end tables. There were even a few shields and a suit of Classical Era Equestrian Guardsmare armor on a stand visible from the garage entrance.

An entrance which was, infact, a dead-end of a hallway with an immediate right hand turn into a livingroom. A livingroom best described as a breeding ground for randomly set down novels, plush throw blankets used as beanbag chair covers, and empty Cider bottles.

Topping all of that off was the way Amber clearly didn’t give a single buck about coordinating her home’s furniture in a given room. No two lamps matched. The “chairs” were all different sizes and covered by different blankets. Two curtains matched, but were clearly not ones Amber had purchased due to the fact their wine red nicely contrasted with the dark walnut wood-paneling on the walls.

“Whelp,” Amber said out loud. “Here we are. Make yourself at home.”

Asaru said, holding in a comment about Amber needing an interior designer, stat.

Sure, but… Amber closed her eyes and listened intently for several seconds. Okay, no sounds. Not a rustle or creak. Nopony’s here. They’d have shifted a bit when I said something, right?

Amber nodded and walked into her living room, hanging a left to get to the stairwell. “Get yourself a drink or whatever. I’m going to dry off,” she said to keep the ruse up as she climbed up to the second story.

A second story that was comparatively very tidy.

Asaru noted that the posters in the hallway were actually hung with care and not overcrowding the walls.

Living room is for fun with the girls. Upstairs is for calm, Amber informed, understanding his confusion perfectly well.

Amber took the second door on the right, entering into her bedroom. It was a fairly empty space. Amber spent little time here. A bed. A night stand. A dresser. Each very simple, plain, and basic. Cheap flat packed particle board and screws. The most boring furniture imaginable. The only noteworthy things in the room being the massive nest of comforters and weighted blankets atop Amber’s bed.

Before you ask, I like to feel cuddled when I sleep, Amber commented as she opened the topmost drawer of her dresser.

Asaru commented idly.

Amber ignored the fact she could feel he totally had been about to ask, and turned her attention to the drawer. It was mostly filled with a large gray oil-cloth hiking backpack, but of course… a mare’s dresser drawer usually contained other, more private things as well.

Amber hesitated for a moment, blushed, then turned to one side so she could lift the bag out and close the dresser without looking at what resided beneath her pack. I keep a spare field kit ready to go ever since I got called at two in the morning and told I had to be at a dig by four. It’s got everything needed to rough it in the woods for three days, including dried rations!

Asaru snickered.

Amber’s eyes narrowed. HEY! I thought you said you wouldn’t read anything other than surface thoughts!

he teased.

I’m still not going to show you my collection, Amber muttered as she slipped the backpack on and walked over to her nightstand.

Asaru said earnestly.

Amber huffed and pulled up on her nightstand’s top, opening a hidden compartment within it. The hinged top opened with a creak, revealing four magazines of tranq darts and a second hand crossbow. Amber took them both, tucking the second bow into her belt, placing the magazines into her belt pouches, and then reloading her spent bow with darts from a box hidden away in the depths of the compartment.

Asaru asked as Amber closed the compartment.

Amber tilted her head as she tried to follow his logic. Yes, why?

Good point. I’ll get it from the garage before we leave… Amber frowned and sat down on the edge of her bed. I have no idea where to go.

Asaru sat quietly in the back of Amber’s mind for a few long minutes as she struggled to think of anything and came up short.

Amber’s ears perked up. Hey, that's an idea! It’s a few days drive to Canterlot. Mom and I used to take the RV on camping trips everywhere along the road! I know the route like the back of my hand.

Memories bubbled up within Amber’s mind the moment she remembered those “camping trips”.

Long hot summers in a chrome plated rolling trailer home lacking a comfort talisman to keep things cool. Freezing winters with only the wood stove and blankets to keep warm. Her mother ducking out multiple times a night for “work” and coming back home exhausted but satisfied and smelling of changelings, or bitter and sullen and smelling of strange stallions.

Years spent without friends as they pulled away from one illegal camp after another as local authorities inevitably chased them away from their communities with the other refugees.

Amber looked down at the floorboards for a long quiet moment.

We could just go see the Princess. Her mental voice now quite hesitant. I doubt the League thinks I’ll just head straight for Canterlot.

Asaru asked, seemingly in shock.

Yeah. Sort of. Open court on Mondays, but anypony can make an appointment for urgent business. Which we have. Amber said as she stood up. Come on… I’m not going to sleep in my Jeep. We’re going to borrow the RV from mom and have a little road trip.

Asaru said, positively aglow with joy.

Amber nodded solemnly. Yeah… Long as you have a home to come back to at the end of one.

1 - The Reliquary of an Extinct Empire

Wind howled and moaned, pressing against the city’s skyscraper’s as if nature wished to topple each glass and steel tower due to some long forgotten personal vendetta. The sea crashed against the piers, splintering the older cargo docks while eroding the concrete foundations of the newly built shipyards. Nearly frozen rain glided down from the skies, striking the the sides of buildings and flash-freezing for brief moments before the warmth radiating from the city’s homes and businesses liquified the sleet once more.

In the old days, Manehatten would have never been battered by a storm of this feroisity. The mayor would have dispatched squadrons of Weather Crew pegasi to disrupt, divert, or disperse the hurricane long before it made landfall. Those days seemed like fairytales to all but the oldest ponies in Equestria. The Change had made many things hard to imagine for those who grew up in a world where the pegasi were still re-learning how to tame mother nature.

It was all the Weather Crew could do to keep the wind down just a smidge and divert the bulk of the storm to the north, away from the majority of residential districts. Not that it mattered. This particular storm had plenty of minds wondering if this was mother nature’s punishment for thousands of years of subverting her will. A fair assumption, given the buildings impaled by uprooted traffic lights, flooded subway tunnels, and the thin sheets of black ice coating the streets.

“—leading meteorologists believe we’re approaching the halfway point of Hurricane Ribbon. The eye is expected to miss the city by ten kilometers, so please don’t assume there will be a brief period where it is safe to move through the city. The Shelter in Place order will remain active until the storm—”

The deep voiced stallion was cut off with a sharp click as Amber Hex switched off her office’s radio. The mare sat across the room from the small red plastic pocket radio, a few motes of white light drifting through her pale amber bangs betraying her use of telekinesis to manipulate her radio.

Amber sighed and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes in irritation while drumming her fingers next to her keyboard. “Figures…” she muttered bitterly.

Amber had been trapped in her office for five hours. As much as she enjoyed her job, and as important as archeology had become to Equestria, Amber had other things to do with her life.

Admittedly the one she wished to do was get out of her pant suit, take a long hot shower to wash the office sweat from her pastel pink fur, give her hooves a trim, then bundle up on the couch in a nice heavy blanket and read the four graphic novels she’d missed out on during her recent field assignment. Not exactly anything important or crucial in the judgmental eyes of society, but every one needs to turn off their brain sometimes.

Amber huffed once more then turned back to the document she’d pulled up from the university’s maneframe. The large glowing crystal mirror serving as her office terminal’s monitor was incredibly out of date. It had probably been installed in the university before The Change, maybe even long ago enough for Princess Twilight Sparkle to have been a normal Unicorn mare in elementary school.

As a result the screen was monochrome, using a sickly green-silver color for everything it displayed while being quite blurry and hard to look at for extended periods. Exactly the sort of thing nopony at all wanted to read badly scanned microfilm on. It in no way made Amber want to have a good long cry then hug her toughbook when she got home and apologize for ever calling it crappy.

Amber turned her head a bit to try and examine the ancient writing on screen from a few angles. The throughline and tick writing system she was working with was more than a little hard to read for someone who grew up learning Equish’s loopy runes.

“Mmm… no,” Amber said decisively after a glance back down at the black and silver puzzle box next to her computer. “That’s not eawin.”

Or more precisely, the reliquary. No puzzle box made from slabs of polished obsidian tinted petrified wood, trimmed in gold, and decorated with a trio of magically illuminated rubies on the corners could possibly be called a “puzzle box” with a serious face. It simply looked far too important to be called something so... normal.

The ancient reliquary had been the target of Amber’s last dig. They’d been quite fortunate to retrieve it, especially after a boobytrap claimed the lives of two of the other archeologists working the site. Including Silver, who had been teaching Amber how to read the language she was presently translating.

Before the floor-spikes had taken Silver’s life, Amber had managed to learn how to pronounce Gaw̃hen words… but had no clue what a given word actually meant. Cracking their language was a relatively new discovery. So new that even one of Equestria’s foremost experts on Gaw̃henish artifacts had to learn it in the field on a dig.

Yeah this is totally the best place to be doing this… Amber silently muttered while squinting hard at the box’s engraved lid. You know. A university office back room with a small safe. Totally the safest place for a potential arcane warhead that’s also the most sought after object in all Equestria to be. I totally shouldn’t just be working in the lab with armed guards to protect me in case one of oh a dozen different criminal groups breaks in to try and steal this to ransom it back to the Kingdom. Nooooo! This totally makes sense! Can’t just tell interns to not poke at this. Or ban them from the lab for the project… Gotta leave it here… Potentially accessible by random students walking to or from a lecture who decide to snoop around my stuff. And is there anypony I can report this to? Nope! Mother nature’s on the rag tonight and nothing can be sent out. Wheee!

“I swear if he’s trying to get me killed and not just an idiot…” Amber murmured under her breath before deciding to push that particular existential read to the back of her mind. Yard Sale was the worst option for the new dean… Still can’t believe the board elected him.

Amber had too much on her plate to waste time worrying about her boss. After all, she had to translate the inscription atop the lid of an ancient and most definitely boobytrapped box which looked exactly like what an arch-lich would want to house their soul in. At least, according to Dashing Colt Comics.

While most of Amber’s general frustration was with her seemingly insane employers instructions, a good chunk of her present anger was with the form of Gaw̃hen whoever made this box had chosen to use. The language had two known written forms. One for ink and brush, composed of runes not too alien to Equish’s own… and one composed of small tickmarks and lines made along a throughline that could be carved in seconds with a chisel into stone, metal, or wood.

A form made to endure and, consequently, very hard to read.

ᚋᚁᚔ ᚔᚐᚒᚒᚂᚅᚌᚐ ᚓᚈ ᚋᚓᚊᚚᚐᚒᚒᚒᚒᚄ ᚋᚁᚔ ᚈᚐᚏᚐᚒᚒᚐᚌ ᚊᚚᚐᚄ ᚊᚔ ᚂᚔᚒ ᚔᚊᚐᚒᚒᚚ<

ᚄᚐᚋᚒᚋᚋᚐ ᚋᚁᚔ ᚈᚐᚏᚐᚒᚒᚐᚌ ᚐᚔᚐᚒᚒᚂ<

ᚋᚁᚔ ᚈᚐᚏᚐᚒᚒᚐᚌ ᚂᚓᚄ ᚋᚁᚓ ᚔᚑᚌᚁᚔᚒ<

ᚐᚔᚐᚒᚒᚂ ᚈᚓᚈ ᚇᚓᚏᚈᚒᚒᚅᚌᚔᚒ ᚐᚔᚚ<

ᚔᚋᚔᚓ ᚊᚒᚌᚁ ᚐᚔᚚ ᚐᚁ ᚔᚁ ᚄᚐᚚᚔᚚ<

ᚇᚐᚋ ᚋᚐ ᚓᚈ ᚔᚔ ᚁᚑᚅᚌ ᚐᚔᚐᚒᚒᚂ<

ᚐᚊᚒᚈ ᚇᚒ ᚐ ᚌᚁᚓᚇ<

ᚋᚁᚓ ᚌᚔᚌ ᚅᚌᚒᚅᚌ ᚄᚒ ᚄᚓ<

The puzzle box was quite large. About the size of a mare’s head. Big enough to contain one of the items Ponykind had become obsessed with finding over the last century. A Sovereign Stone, or Ketsĩtephĩmě as the Gaw̃hen had called them. As far as ponykind knew there were seven of the large black crystals, one for each of the Emperors and Empresses of the ancient fallen empire called Gaw̃hen.

Amber turned her head to her notebook in order to double check that her rubbing matched the chiseled message. It just wasn’t practical to keep turning the heavy box to double check the makings. Unfortunately, the box’s engraved message was quite shallow, which made taking a rubbing of it quite difficult. Amber’s charcoal covered page indeed contained several mistakes.

She took a deep breath and crumpled up the rubbing, tossing it onto the floor.

“At least this means I can just make another of these real quick,” she said to the empty office.

Amber reached across her desk, grabbing her charcoal pencil and a fresh sheet of paper with one hand. She then carefully taped the page to the top of the box, keeping it as taught as possible. Then, slowly, evenly, and consistently as possible, she brushed the side of her pencil tip across the box’s lid.

Amber held her breath as she worked. A steady hand was not just wise, but mandatory when working with Gaw̃henish artifacts.

Odds are good this box’s trap won't spring from this… Amber mused to calm her nerves. Twilight’s Bookshelf, the Gaw̃hen sure did love their boobytraps! And not just sensible magical ones you can just scan for. Nooo they had to be Engineering Gods capable of making tech traps of stone, bronze, iron, and wood that somehow lasted for ten thousand bucking years!

Amber carefully removed her fresh rubbing from the box and placed it next to her keyboard, resuming the translation by muttering it to herself.

“The yawlngã et měkpaw̃s the Tarawãg kpas ki liũ ĩkawp. Samũmmã the Tarawãg ãyawl. The Tarawãg only mbě do not. Spared tet all-death aip. Ĩmye kugb ãip not ib sapip. Dãm mã et yi bong ãyawl. Ãkut du a gběd. Mbě gig last resort sě̃.” Amber took a deep breath through her nose and let it out slowly.

“Yeeeahh! This is a super safe thing to be opening up. Perfectly fine!” she exclaimed throwing her hands up in frustration. Ugh… I know I have to be the one to open it, I’m the foremost expert on these and last time something like this happened three thousand ponies were liquifacted when they opened the thing wrong but that box didn’t have a warning label containing a word that I am pretty sure is a compound word made from the words all and death!

Amber took a moment to take a few deep breaths and calm down. A tall order given what was running through her mind…

She turned her head to her office’s corkboard and to a 30 year old newspaper clipping pinned to the wall beneath her motivational poster of a kitten hanging from a tree.

Canterlot University Devastated By Arcane Explosion!

An explosion struck Canterlot University this morning at 1029 when archeologists removing a Sovereign Stone from its container triggered a protective ward which had not been detected during the recovery operation. The explosion caused extensive damage to the university’s campus and several surrounding buildings. Organic matter caught within the blast was liquifacted, transforming to puddles of organic matter. This includes the 2876 students and faculty within the university at the time. The blast also created a caustic and toxic pinkish fog which is slowly settling out of the air. Citizens are advised to remain clear of the grounds regardless of any circumstances until the fog recedes completely.

Recovery crews searched the ruins for survivors and the Stone, and were able to find neither. The Stone was either destroyed or teleported elsewhere during the event. Amongst the dead is head researcher Doctor Granite Hex…

Amber sank deeper into her chair and turned back to her work. I wonder if dad was as careful then as I’m being now… Mom’s never mentioned if he took his work seriously or not. At least he made damn sure I won't make a single mistake if I can’t help it.

Amber took a few minutes to check her water bottle’s level, make sure her pencil was sharpened, sort the stray papers on her desk, and a few dozen other tiny tasks just to avoid further work on the box. I don’t know how many safety violations working on this thing outside a secure facility is. Let alone in a populated campus… At least just translating this is safe-ish. Still, I wish you could tell your boss no and still have a job at the end of the day. Or that landlords would be fine being paid with exposure.

Her honey-colored eyes refocused on the blurry screen in front of her. The translation was barely finished, something she knew would enrage her boss if he found out it took her more than an evening to work out. It’s a real pain to know what a language sounds like, and be able to read it out loud, but not know what the words actually mean… Especially when your boss thinks knowing a language’s phonemes means knowing its lexicon!

This inscription has to be one of two things: A cryptic warning about the protections on the box, or a description of the contents. That’s how Gaw̃hen works. Everything else they made that we’ve found works like that. They had to have known they were going to collapse and wanted others to make use of their things as a legacy. A way to have mattered. Shame we don’t know why they underwent a collapse. Especially since they could make reality warping artifacts!

Amber grumbled as her squinting eyes began to water while she tried to work out if a line was bending left or right on her display. It would be nice if we could go back to studying the past for the sake of academia. It would be nice to focus on why they fell, she thought bitterly. I’ve spent my whole career just plundering their tombs for salvation. I think I deserve to know more about them than how to disarm their traps. Shame the Princess won't fund those until we “break the curse”.

Amber sat up and rubbed her temples for a moment. “I swear this job…” she half grumbled before taking a sip from her water bottle.

Amber looked through the dictionary again, scrolling down several pages before smiling just a little.

“Okay, so that is taraw and ãg is a plural designator for a large group. Okay. Great...” Amber said with dull excitement as she scribbled on the page of her notebook where the rest of the translation in progress resided.

Taraw meaning Demons/devils/monsters ie: anything alien and hostile. Yeah I’m really super fine being in the same room as this thing! Amber thought to herself to contain a horrified nervous laugh. Yeah this is almost certainly a Sovereign Stone. They probably used them against Tartarus’s monsters or something else like them.

The Stones worked much like the Elements of Harmony, so much so that Equestria’s scholars were pretty certain that the Elements had been created by people who had studied a Sovereign Stone and decided such things should require more than one person to activate. And shouldn’t be nearly as powerful. Only a single Sovereign Stone was needed to reshape the world as one saw fit… with a twist.

Whatever somepony wished for with a Sovereign Stone was done for or to everyone. A wish for a million bits would give everypony a million bits. A wish for a swift death would kill everypony. Or, more relevant to ponykind’s current obsession with locating a Sovereign Stone, a wish to change one’s physical form would change everypony’s body as the wishmaker specified.

The Stones couldn’t take back a wish made on them. You needed another of the Stones to undo what another Stone did. The odd number of the Stones ensured that whoever fired last would “win” with their will becoming reality for the rest of time. Most ponies who studied the Stones believed that to have been an ingenious way to ensure their owners were very reluctant to ever use a Stone. That they were made to be a last resort for preserving the Gaw̃hen empire.

Funny how even with reality warping artifacts up the ass the Gaw̃hen still fell, Amber thought to herself as she began working on the next word. It would be a great idea to stop and figure out why they fell before we buck around with a Sovereign Stone again, but noooo! Dig, dig, dig. Never question. Never analise. Never do real archeology. Just tomb raiding.

Amber paused and flipped her pencil between her fingers for a few moments. She was thirty two as of last month. She’d never known being a quadruped. Her mother had a few hazy memories of walking on all fours and somehow holding a toothbrush with her forehoof. Amber honestly couldn’t imagine herself doing that.

Amber eyed the puzzle box for a long moment. It was indeed big enough to contain a Sovereign Stone. Every last scrap of information she had pulled out of the jaws of entropy said the Gaw̃hen had stashed something crucial within the tower she’d exhumed over the last ten months and this was the sole thing to be secured there with traps as a test of ‘worthiness’.

Should I really open this box? Amber asked herself silently. Wouldn’t turning everypony into quadrupeds now be just as traumatizing? The ponies who remember life before The Change have what… two, maybe three decades left at most. If I open this, and it is a Stone, they’ll use it. There’s no question about it.

Amber turned back to her screen, deciding to keep working for now. Unfortunately, this meant continuing to glare at the crystal screen and hope her concentrated hatred didn’t cause the thing to shatter. Due to the vastly different arcane controls that pre-Change devices like this worked with to accommodate forehooves, that was an actual possibility.

I should just buy a computer for my office… Amber grumbled as she resisted the urge to punch the crystal display to see if that would break it in such a way as to cause an improvement.

Amber raised her pencil to her notebook one more time and jotted down the next word in she was able to identify.

“MaÌƒ… to speak with, conversation…” She frowned sharply and checked the rest of her in progress translation.

That’s definitely their word for talking to someone. Why is it the start of the third to last line in the inscription? Is the last part instructions on how to talk to someone who might know how to open this? Or am I wrong about deÌŒrtuuÌƒngyuÌƒ being a compound word formed from death and all? Is this actually holding some kind of communications device?

Amber pursed her lips and mulled it over for a few moments. “No… I’m pretty sure that’s basically the word genocide. Or at least, massive death,” she murmured out loud.

Amber’s eyes shot open as a realization struck. Wait! Maybe this inscription is trying to tell us about what happened to them! Maybe it’s something like “We’re all dead now, but if you want to speak with—

Three sharp knocks on Amber’s office door snapped her out of her focus state just as the knob turned and the door started to swing open without so much as a word of warning.

Amber spun in her seat, almost knocking it over as she stood up, half from surprise, half from fear the reliquary was about to be stolen. Her short horn flared white as she grabbed her field-kit’s utility belt from the coat rack next to the door, yanking it across the room to her waiting hand.

Her hands moved like lightning, seeking the folding hand crossbow holstered within the belt.

The door flung open to reveal an elderly pegasus mare, graying yellow fur, fully silver mane and tail, slightly bent with age. The mare was dressed in what could only be described as a gown, as befitting somepony who fancied themselves a “Belle” and modeled their lifestyle after Equestria’s most fashion focused heroine.

Amber’s left eye twitched. “Twilight, bucking, damn it! Penny, don’t bust in here without warning!”

The elderly mare’s eyes widened in alarm as she registered that the young archeologist was in the process of readying a weapon. “Amber! This is a University! Why are you even allowed to have such a thing in here? Put that thing down!”

Amber levitated the belt and still holstered crossbow onto her desk while she gestured towards the obsidian reliquary with both hands while putting on her most deranged upset face.

“I’m not! But do you have any idea what might be in this box?” she snapped.

Penny huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “It can hardly be so dangerous as to mandate you keeping a firearm close to hoof in a school!”

Amber’s eye twitched again as her stress broke. “Okay, first off, this isn't a gun. It’s a crossbow with tranq darts I keep at hand in case I get attacked by wild beasts in the field. It would be a gun if I could afford one because those are just better, but that doesn't bucking matter for this argument! This could be a bucking Sovereign Stone reliquary, Penny! I’m supposed to have armed guards for this! And here you are just barging in without warning, ignoring the Do Not Enter Without Identifying First sign on my door. I’ve been panicking all bucking night worrying someone from the League of Mages is going to just boot in my door, blast me with a wand containing magic I just super can NOT counter, turning me into a bucking orange or Twilight knows what sort of abomination, then buck right off with this massive security breach of a box!”

“Sovereign…” Penny’s eyes ran across the desk, noticing the reliquary’s obsidian clad sides for the first time. She gasped, bringing one hand up to her muzzle. “Oh dear sweet Celestia! What is the dean thinking?!”

Penny whirled around and slammed Amber’s office door shut with the force of a panicking old mare faced with a heinous security breach being yelled about by a young upstart employee.

“Right?!” Amber asked, letting out a strained laugh. “He told me to keep it in my office safe for now. At least it means I can get fresh rubbings of the engraving because those are super easy to buck up or smudge beyond recognition.”

Amber took a deep breath, then another, and let it out slow to calm herself down. “Look, I’m sorry… What did you need?”

Penny shook her head slowly. “Well… Before I get into that let me say I will be submitting a formal complaint to the board about this. Not you, your work order. This is madness! Do they want another Canterlot University?”

Amber’s left eye twitched slightly. “I… beg… your… pardon?”

Penny’s lip curled up as she sucked in a quick breath. “Oh dear… I didn’t mean it like that. I’m certain you’re being more careful than anypony else would ever be,” she cleared her throat and did her best to put on a professional expression. “I just… needed some help grading an essay.”

Amber twisted her lips into a confused o and gave the elderly professor a long hard stare. “I… I’m not a teacher. I'm on the research side. Not the education side.”

“Yes, yes,” Penny said with a dismissive hand wave as she fetched a neatly bound 12 page report from a very cleverly hidden pocket within her gown. “Look, I don’t know everything about archeology or history. How could I? How could anypony? This is Glowing Dawn’s report and well, he’s made a rather ludicrous claim that normally I would outright dismiss but given he’s the Princess’s colt it’s possible he overheard it from “the source” as it were… If it’s true, I’m certain you’d know, given your field and specialization. Would you mind checking page 8 paragraph 10? Where he’s talking about The Change.”

Amber shrugged and levitated the report to her hand, flipping it open with a mote of white light. “Alright… Just give me a moment to read this.”

Amber quickly found the relevant paragraph and began to read the paragraphs leading up to the one Penny indicated. After all, context was the Princess of understanding.

The Change occurred on the 10th of Solar Dusk at exactly 0735. The transformation wave originated from a Gaw̃henish temple which had sank beneath the muddy earth and washed across the globe, altering the physical form of all equine lifeforms such that their natural state transitioned from quadrupedal to bipedal (including Changelings, Zebras, Mules, Donkeys, everything not classically considered a pony, but sharing a similar form).

While the transformation performed only the minimally viable amount of alterations to impose the new form on all of equiniti, the alterations made to equine brains in order to permit the newly transformed individuals the use of their new hands and a sense of balance to permit walking upright wreaked havoc on the natural magics of ponykind. While all magical powers and abilities are still present within each species, their full potential has been locked behind the gates of knowledge as new biomechanics mean new gestures, new thaumaturgic currents, and so on, effectively resetting ponykind’s arcane knowledge (though great strides have been made in reclaiming these abilities in the decades after the Change).

The Change itself has a known cause, the accidental activation of a Gaw̃hen artifact referred to as a “Sovereign Stone”. These large black crystals function very similarly to the now inaccessible magic of the Elements of Harmony, in that Sovereign Stones can warp reality on a massive scale. In the case of The Change, the heart’s desire of the pony who found the Stone, one Lyra Heartstrings—

Amber snorted in amusement. “No, that’s just flat out wrong,” she said with a giggle as she looked up from the essay.

“Can you explain why?” Penny asked hopefully. “I know you’re not a teacher but surely you know something of the politics in marking the Princess’s son’s essay as anything less than perfect without—”

Amber nodded twice. “Yeah, I do. Sure, Lyra Heartstrings is an Archeologist, or at least was. I think she retired a few years ago. Sure, she lived in Ponyville at the time which is next to the Everfree. Yes, her uh… fetish, is public knowledge… and yes she’s on record as saying she’s fine with her current body aside from the lifespan reduction,” Amber admitted with a shy smile and a few awkward hand gestures. “But! She was provably in Saddle Arabia when The Change occurred, working on exhuming the Tomb of Tarx the Magnificent. Princess Twilight herself vouched for poor Lyra several times. You know she’s in witness protection due to the sheer number of ponies who think she did this to them, right?”

Penny sighed and took the report back from Amber. “Thank you… Sad to see such a bright young colt slide into a conspiracy theory… Dooo you have any documentation of Lyra’s wearabouts I could use? I don’t want to get into an argument with the Princess without proof.”

Amber nodded and took a few steps over to her filing cabinet. “Yeah, hold on,” she said as she started to dig through her archive of Change related news.

A few moments of folder flipping and document title checking later, Amber produced a folder of newspaper clippings, reports, and photographs for Penny. “Here, everything I have on The Change’s origins. Do bring that back. I have copies but I like one for my office, one for my house, and one for my trailer.”

Penny accepted the folder and tucked it into her gown’s hidden pocket. “Thank you, and sorry for barging in… I’d let the others know the sign is very serious but I imagine you’d rather keep this quiet.”

“As the grave,” Amber said with a sharp nod.

Penny flinched. “Must you be so… macabre about it?”

“I plunder tombs for a living so, yes!” Amber exclaimed with a playful grin before plopping back down in her chair.

Penny couldn’t help but giggle at her coworker’s joke. The elderly mare’s eyes strayed once more to the reliquary sitting atop Amber’s desk. Her bemused expression slowly melted into a hopeful frown.

“Do…” Penny began, pausing and biting her lip. “Is it likely there’s a Stone in there?”

Amber nodded solemnly. “Yeah. This box is very similar to the one my father found. The main difference being the inscription and three gems per corner rather than one. It’s the right size, shape, materials… If it’s not a Stone, it’s something as important to them as a Stone was.”

Penny’s smile returned. “Oh do I hope so! You have no idea how worried I’ve been for the last twenty years.”

Amber cocked her head. “I’m sorry… I know you lived back then but… Weren't you a teenager when it happened? I’d have figured you’d have adapted given most of your life has been well, as you are now.”

Penny shook her head slowly. “No… I mean, yes. But… no,” Penny turned to look Amber in the eyes. “It’s not the body that has me worried. Like you said, I adapted. You’re young. You don’t understand. Which is just the way things are. I, on the other hoof, am approaching ninety years old. I should be just starting to live out the tail end of the first third of my life. Instead, I… I have two, maybe three decades left.”

Amber mmmed and nodded. “Ah. Sorry about that.”

“Unless of course, you’ve got the means to undo everything right there on your desk!” Penny said with longing in her eyes.

Amber hummed for a moment then nodded to herself. You know… I really should bring that thought up.

“I get it. I really do, but… May I ask you something?” Amber said as casually as she could

Penny nodded. “Of course, dear.”

“Have you ever thought about this from the perspective of somepony my age?”

Penny frowned. “I… no. Why?”

“Well…” Amber spread her hands in a shrugging gesture. “I’m just saying The Change was incredibly traumatic for everypony, you included. We had a societal collapse for a few years from it. A whole lot of ponies never managed to cope with The Change and they’re still in mental institutions. We lost a lot of knowledge and skilled labor as older poneis just rapidly aged to death as our biology changed. Other ponies were left with some powers and abilities beyond the norm and frankly we’re lucky most of them were inspired by Princess Twilight to be the heroes we needed and keep order during the transition… But we still had plenty of ponies who gave in to greed, their lust for power, or just plain old normal lust. After all, a lot of you older folks have a very hard time empathizing with people who don’t have four hooves since we just don’t look like people to you… No offence. I’m just saying it as a psychological fact. One I’m super glad isn't true for those of us born into these bodies. That would have definitely ended our species given enough time.”

Penny mmmed and nodded. “I see… You’re saying you're worried about another Age of Chaos if we undo the change after so long. I don’t think so, everypony wants to go back to how things were.”

Amber shook her head. “No, that’s not it. See, not everypony does. It’s been two generations since The Change. I’m thirty two. The Change was seventy years ago. I’ve never been a quadruped. None of my fillyhood friends were quadrupeds. Most living ponies do not have any memories of being like you once were. This is normal for us. Don’t you think that we’ll be just as traumatized as you were back then?”

Penny’s frown steepened as she mulled that distressing and new idea over in her head. “Well… I… I suppose? But it will be better for you! We have whole warehouses filled with magical things all ready to go which will carry us back to our previous, superior, level of development! Healing magic will work so well no foals will die at birth and cancers will be generaly beaten easily instead of all that torture with radiation and drugs that probably won’t even help. Besides, you’ll live three times longer, and be young for most of it! It will be worth a little trauma. I mean, after all I adapted. So will you.”

Amber flicked her tail in irritation. Yeah, figures an oldtimer wouldn’t understand… Who wants to live to be three hundred? Two more centuries of bills, political arguments, and idiot bosses? No thank you, please. “Eh… I’m not so sure. Thanks for indulging my question though.”

Penny nodded and turned to leave, paused with her hand on the door knob, then turned back. “Wait… if there is a Stone in there, you’ll turn it over to the Princess to help us, right?”

Amber nodded without hesitation. “Of course. It’s not my call to make. Besides, it might be possible to fix you old timers while leaving us younger folk alone. I know the Princess won't hurt anyone if she can help it.”

Penny’s ears perked up. “You know, that’s true! Well… Good luck. I’d like to still be friends fifty years from now.” Penny said as she opened the door and ducked out of Amber’s office.

Amber nodded and turned back to her work. “Good luck with the rest of those essays,” she said while narrowing her eyes at Penny’s statement.

Why does everypony of her generation assume everyone is friends? We’re coworkers. I don’t hate her but I don’t want to hang out with a mare who keeps trying to hook me up with stallions because: “Well I never see you with anypony and it must be so hard to find your special somepony when you’re out and about in filthy dungeons most of the time!” Ugh… How is it that dosn’t qualify as sexual harassment?

Amber picked up her pencil once more and began to tap it rhythmically against her notebook as she refocused on the translation. She quickly settled back into a working rhythm and managed to get a few more individual words translated before hitting the major roadblock of all translation work. A lack of cultural context.

Amber stuck the end of her pencil into her mouth to chew while she mulled over the current iteration of her translation.

The et měkpaw̃s the kpas ki liũ ĩkawp. the ãyawl. The only mbě do not. Spared tet all-death aip. Ĩmye kugb ãip not ib sapip. Dãm et do not. Ãkut du a gběd. Mbě gig last resort sě̃.

Okay… This is talking about some kind of way to speak and danger. Maybe it’s some kind of warning system? It could still be a Sovereign Stone, if it’s trying to say that they’ll know if we open this. Amber groweld around her pencil. This is why we need to know about the Gaw̃hen as a people. Did they store their artifacts in this way for their own use, or did they pack them up for others knowing they were to be no more? Am I looking at a message meant for someone like me in a distant future from the writer, or something like the sign on my door that everypony just ignores?

The moment Amber finished her through somepony knocked on her door, using the old rhyme shave and a manecut’s rhythm for their knock.

“Doctor Hex? Ya in there? Storms’ getting worse. I’m checking in with everypone. Making sure y’all okay,” a reedy stallion’s accented voice called through the door.

At least he knocked and stayed outside. Amber sighed to herself before calling loudly. “I’m okay… Who are you?”

“Oh, there’s a sign,” Amber heard the stallion murmur before he loudly called out through the thick oak slab far louder than necessary. “Name’s Morn’n Snow. Uh… I’ma junior researcher. We’ve never met. They hired me to carry Bright Streak’s load.”

Amber frowned suspiciously for a moment until everything clicked into place in her mind. “Oh right he quit just before I left,” Amber began to quickly tuck the reliquary into her office safe with her telekinesis, quietly closing the door and spinning the lock shut hopefully securing the artifact without alerting the stallion she didn’t know that she’d put something away. “Hey you got a minute? I like to know everypony I work with and we haven’t officially met.”

“Huh? Oh, I gesso. Ain’t exactly told to check up on folks and everypone's been fine so far,” Morning Snow reapplied with an audible shrug.

Amber hummed, assessing his tone of voice. That was pretty genuine befuddlement. I don’t think he came here intending to get into my office. He’s probably genuine.

“Come on in,” Amber called.

The door opened to reveal the smallest stallion Amber had ever seen. He had the rough stature of a short mare, and given Morning’s Earth Pony heritage, his total lack of muscle tone instantly betrayed heavy unicorn ancestry. What’s more the simple earth-brown furred, jet black maned’s stallion was dressed in the proper uniform of black slacks, blue dress shirt, and white lab coat for the Physics department’s researchers, and even had what appeared to be a real ID badge pinned to his coat.

He also had an incredibly dweeby pair of black framed glasses which no evil wizard would ever be caught dead in, not even for a disguise. That combined with the newspaper tucked under his left arm and a thermos of the most bland and boring soup ever seen or smelled in his other hand made the little stallion so non-threatening he could have probably just walked into a military base and been escorted out instead of jailed.

Amber relaxed visibly, making Morning flinch visibly. “Oh, uh,” he stammered lightly. “I know ya invited me in, but… You look like I’m annoying you. I can go if ya want.”

Amber shook her head. “Nah, it’s fine, I'm just really stressed. Working on some things recovered from the expedition. Tight deadline.”

Morning grimaced. “Yeowch… I know how those are. Doctor Bright’s a real slavedriver, ya know?”

Amber nodded in agreement. “Yeah…” she rubbed the back of her head for a moment. “Look, if he pushes you too hard instead of just quitting like the guy you replaced, ask the department to move you somewhere else. We’re always short staffed somewhere and like, it’s just expected you’ll want to leave in a few months.”

Morning groaned. “Yeah… Yeah… Already there,” He rocked up on his hoof tips then back down and took a brief look at Amber’s undecorated office. “Mmm, no fan of decor?”

Amber frowned, taking a moment to figure out what he meant before making an irritated face at her inability to understand the simple though oddly phrased question. “My tastes in decor are not shared by the dean. So I just… don’t.”

Amber looked off to the side to grumble silently to herself. Superhero posters are not “pin ups”... or political propaganda… I mean, not those ones. Stupid vigilantes. Life was already hard on comic nerds before you decided ”Oh hey costumes are a good idea to evade identification by law enforcement.”.

“Uhhhmmm….” Morning said slowly, making the awkward moment a few orders of magnitude worse before remembering he was carrying the day’s paper. “Oh! Did you read today’s paper?”

Amber looked up then shook her head. “No. Why?”

Morning took the paper out from under his arm and opened it, holding the front page out for Amber to read. “Take a gander. Interesting, ain't it?”

Amber levitated the paper over to her outstretched and and quickly skimmed the headline article.

Mannequin Busts Fake Youth Potion Ring Wide Open!

Costumed vigilante and self proclaimed super hero Mannequin received an official endorsement from Manehatten’s Chief of Police Silver Star this morning after putting an end to the supply of the aptly named fake youth restorative potion “Snake Oil” which several criminal groups were using to con the eldrly out of countless bits. The group behind Snake Oil was not the League of Mages as widely believed but in fact a small gang of amateur alchemists who will go unnamed so as to minimize their infamy and impact on the criminal underworld. Mannequin brought the gang’s leader to the 8th Precinct’s Headquarters along with the formula for Snake Oil as well as the distribution plans after capturing the gang leaders earlier this morning by her usual means.

While fighting crime and corruption as a civilian remains illegal in Equestria, Mayor Hedge Fund’s “Deputization Initiative” provides a few layers of protection for specific individuals whom Manehatten’s Chief of Police has deemed to be assets to citizen safety. For her actions in putting an end to Snake Oil racketeering, Mannequin has joined this growing roster of vigilantes sanctioned by city officials. Sadly, Mannequin remains impossible to photograph (due to her costume fogging film) and thus this reporter is prevented from including a picture of the new Deputy accepting her licence to fight crime at City Hall.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mannequin in name, appearance, or both, the costumed crime fighter presents as a mare dressed in a white morph suit, concealing the entirety of her features, over which she dons a near-black purple trench coat, silver aviator’s scarf, and a wide brimmed fedora which matches her coat. Like most of the city’s vigilantes she employs the use of violence to stop crime directly, and is known to patrol Haverville most nights where she will strike using stealth and ambush tactics.

The Manehatten Gazette wishes to remind our readers that crime fighting, behind a badge or under a cape, is extremely dangerous. For every pony that manages to make a “career” of vigilantism, a hundred more wind up injured, maimed, or worse. All successful costumed crime fighters to date either demonstrate skills taught to law enforcement agents and/or soldiers, or possess abilities beyond the equine norm due to unique arcane circumstances. Please do not allow the success of a small number of outliers to influence you down the path of vigilante justice. Instead, please vote for politicians who support increasing funding to the police—

Amber stopped reading, blinking several times. While her face remained scrunched in confusion, her inner filly was busily hopping from hoof to hoof while chanting yes repeatedly.

“I’m sorry,” Amber said slowly as she looked back up at Morning. “Did… Did superheroes become an actual official thing while I was out?”

Morning grinned like a dork. “Yeah! I mean, well…” his face fell somewhat. “We’ll see how things go after the first time the Crown takes one to court. But looks like the mayor's set on just deputizing anypony who can help clean up the mess.”

“Is there a super team yet?” Amber asked hopefully as her inner filly just spilled on out of the prison of adulthood.

“No, but I heard somepony’s trying to start one! I think I’ve got the paper talking about that in my locker,” Morning said with an easily childishly-happy grin. “I uh… ya’ll like comic books too I take it?”

Amber cleared her throat. “I mean, a little… Okay a lot.”

Morning blushed, scratched the back of his head, then cleared his throat. “Uh, well, then to be wholl honest…”

Amber’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Penny told you to come ask me out, didn’t she?”

Morning nodded once. “Yeah… Uh… I mean we got something in common. I didn’t think we would. So… ya want to get a drink once the storm’s died down? If any place is open that is.” He asked with a shy smile.

Amber frowned and shook her head. “Sorry, Morning… I mean, I would like that, but not as a date. I really need to just tell Penny I don’t like colts like that,” she admitted with a shy blush.

I don’t like girls either, but… I really don’t want to have a discussion about my sex life with that old bitty.

Morning took the news surprisingly well. “Oh! Well, as friends then? I’m new to town.”

Amber’s smile returned. “Sure! Do you read The Astonishing Astromare?”

“No, is it any good?”

“Extremely! I’ll pitch it to you, you can pitch me your favorite,” Amber offered before nodding back to her desk. “I do need to finish this up tonight though… Uh, tell you what. We don’t need a drink to talk shop. How about I finish my work here then find you and we hang out in the break room or something?”

Morning’s smile broadened and his glasses gleamed as he tilted his head back happily. “Sure thing, sugar! Uh, pardon my country-ism.”

“It’s fine,” Amber said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Where do you work?”

“I’ll be in the Weather Dynamics lab,” Morning replied, jerking his thumb over one shoulder to the northern side of the campus.

Amber blinked twice. “Wait… But, that’s only reachable with a walk outside.”

He shook his head. “No? There’s the tunnels.”

Amber tilted her head. “Tunnels?”

“Yeah, you know, they link the campus buildings. Hidden doors at the bottom of each stairwell. Probably so students don’t find them and get up to shenanigans. They've got all the campus’s water pipes, crystal traces, and power lines in ‘em,” Morning said with the enthusiasm of somepony who really loved secret doors.

Amber blinked twice. “I’ve… never heard of them. Are you sure you’re allowed to be down there?”

He shrugged. “Been using them since my second week and ya’ll haven’t told me not to. ‘Cides, there’s maps and direction arrows down there.”

“Huh. Neat!” Amber said with a decisive nod. “How do you open the doors to them?”

“Ya know how stairwells work? Act like you’re gonna go down even though you can't see any stairs. Floor slides open magically. Uh, it hasn’t worked without having my badge on me. Just so ya know,” Morning rambled before turning to leave. “See you soon?”

Amber shook her head to clear the shock of the small stallion’s secret tunnel revelation. “Uh, no. An hour, maybe two. You know how a note that reads “If you take my lunch again I will punch you so hard you poop out your intestines.” could either be super serious or a total joke depending on who wrote it and who they intended it for? Yeeeaaahh… I’m butting heads with that problem with translating an ancient document.”

“Yeowch! Good luck with that,” Morning said with a sympathetic wince. “See ya later then. I’ma finish checking up on everypony. I really was doing that. Professor Penny just tacked on a side quest, so to speak.”

“Bye!” Amber called as Morning left, closing the door behind him.

Amber turned back to her work with a smile. Looks like I might finally have a work friend who isn’t likely to just keel over and die. Nice change of pace.

Amber turned back to the translation and her terrible screen, the work no longer quite as stressful now that she had something to look forward to. A good ten minutes of poking and prodigy at the ancient Gaw̃hen script came and went, bringing Amber to one crucial conclusion.

Wait a minute! We should have some known phrases translated in the Library network! I can compare the texts to see if anything matches and that will help with the context problem!

Taking full advantage of the freshly lit fire her revelation sparked, Amber steamed ahead with her work. Thirty minutes passed as she poured over paper after paper on her terminal, jotting down phrase after phrase then comparing her list to the translation. A few furious scribbles later and Amber was left looking at what she felt was a working though incomplete translation of the reliquary’s inscription.

Within this box lies the way to the . The do not . The only . You will be spared . . Ĩmye kugb ãip not ib sapip. We do not recommend speaking to them. you think differently. Only as a last resort.

Amber read the partial translation several times before letting out a long, slow, yet excited breath. Okay… This probably isn’t a Sovereign Stone. That sucks, but at least I get to make a real contribution to archeology! The Gaw̃hen Empire definitely had a Tartarian War. No supprise since we’ve had three… But, this proves it! This reliquary probably contains a magic mirror, or some other arcane communicator. This might be our first clue as to what happened to them! They could have been drug down into Tartarus at the losing end of a war.

Amber rocked back and forth in her seat both excited by her discovery and looking forward to studying whatever the requary contained once it could be extracted. I guess It’s time to put this into the safe, tell the boss we need to open this in a secure facility to be sure, but it’s probably not what we hoped it—

Amber’s thoughts were shattered by the university’s intercom crackling to life and the dean’s voice calling out in a tone both serious and worried. “Ladies and gentlecolts, may I have your attention, please. The lockdown alarm has been initiated. In the interest of your safety, we request that you remain calm and stay in your seats. University administrators and local police are taking appropriate actions. There is no cause for alarm. Please listen for instructions from administrators and staff. If confronted by anyone purporting to be a member of the League of Mages, please comply with their demands.”

Amber’s good mood burnt down, fell over, and sank into the swamp. “And there it is! Twilight. Bucking. Damn. It,” she growled while getting up to strap on her field belt. Time to play keepaway with wizards... For keeps.