Fallout: Equestria - The Spark of Life

Chapter 7: Mount Aris

We need to find the Hippogriffs. Do you know what happened to them?

I am no stranger to pain. I’ve experienced so much pain in my short life. The pain of a mare long gone, the pain of losing friends, the pain of losing family. Pain transcends our very existence. It defines us. It refines us. It empowers us.

I needed to go through my pain, to come out the other side and be better for it. My pain made me stronger, and it was never ending. I was never going to stop experiencing the pain. But I would not let it end me. I would push through. I would not stop. I would live.

* * *

My eyes flashed open and I breathed deeply, my head pounding as I struggled to get up. The first thing I became acutely aware of is that I was utterly drenched from mane to tail. The second thing was that Violet was next to me, also drenched from mane to tail. The third thing was the others standing behind her, also completely drenched. The rain above us pounded down, and there was little shelter to speak of in the immediate vicinity.

“Star!” Violet shouted, her voice soft against the pouring rain. “Star, can you hear me?!”

I nodded, groaning loudly as I moved to situate myself. From what I could tell, my body was protesting against literally every possible movement I could make and my head was protesting against every possible thought that popped into my head. It made for a disorienting state of affairs as I tried to get to my hooves.

I managed to somehow do so, but felt shaky and queasy. I could still feel my horn’s injury, the blackness having settled there. I didn’t even think I could eat anything, my stomach feeling like it was going to revolt and leap out of my chest at any moment. In fact, whatever stomach contents I did have ended up on the ground in front of me.

“Sunshine!” Violet called back behind her. “Do we have any healing potions?!”

“One left!” Sunshine shouted over the rain and thunder. “We should get inside somewhere, though!”

Violet nodded, turning to me. “Star, we need to move you. Can you walk?” she whispered in my ear.

I looked down at her and took a small step, nodding. I let her lead me forward as we made our way up a desolate hill where what looked like a guard shack waited in the darkness. I stumbled a few times getting up the hill, but between Violet and Sunshine helping me along we finally made it into the somewhat dryer shelter of the guard shack. I slumped down in the corner of the room and groaned.

“She took a nasty hit from that exploding portal,” Sunshine said, reaching into her saddlebag and pulling out a bottle. “I’m a little surprised she’s even alive right now.”

“Alicorns are hardier than regular ponies are,” Violet said, taking the healing potion from her. “Star’s taken some hits, you know that. She’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah but are we? You heard what that thing said. We’re trapped here? There’s no way to get out?” Sunshine asked. “Did we make the right decision?”

“It was… the only way…” I slurred, dipping my head as Violet caught me, forcing the healing potion down my throat.

The pain in my head began to clear up slightly along with the pain along my body. A subtle warmth filled my chest, but I was still a relatively hot mess. After all the potion had gone down, Violet pulled the bottle out and I coughed a bit.

“I’m… I’ll be okay,” I said weakly. “Just need to rest.”

“Star, what if we can’t get home? What if this entire expedition was for nothing?” Sunshine said angrily. “What if this was the trap?”

I looked up at her and grimaced. “We’ll get home, Sunshine. We have to have hope,” I said softly.

“Can you see anything out there?” I heard Bright Ember ask Trick Shot. “I have a very bad feeling about this place. It feels off.”

“It feels dead,” Trick Shot uttered. “Nopony has been here for a long time.”

Sunshine sighed, looking back at me. “It just feels like this whole thing has been one giant clusterfuck since we left Klugetown, Star. Like we’ve been led here to get us out of the way,” she said.

I put a hoof up, weak and shaking, on her shoulder. “We’re together. We’ll get through this together. I know we will,” I said with a weaker smile. “Now… I need to get some sleep. We’ve got some time here and it seems like there’s nothing here. Trick?”

“You got it. I’m on watch. If anything moves out there, we’ll wake you,” Trick replied without missing a beat. A soldier to the bitter end.

I nodded, laying my head back down onto the cold wet ground. It wasn’t the most pleasant thing, but it would do. I let my eyes slip away and into the realm of dreams.

My dreams were fraught with visions of Tempest Shadow, of the route she had taken to get here. What was it that she sought to do here? The creature mentioned the pearl, which had to be the object in the journal. Is that why Tempest came here? Is that why the Ministries and Luna set all of this up? To do what… study it? What even was it? The text suggested it was some form of powerful artifact, but what did it do?

I awoke a few hours later, feeling stronger than I had been. The others had managed to build a fire, having noted that the rain had stopped and they had been able to find something inside the guard shack that would burn. Old papers stuffed in a drawer that hadn’t gotten wet served as fuel for the impromptu fire. While the fire wasn’t that big, it was still some amount of warmth.

We huddled about the fire for a while and looked out the window. There was still very little light, but the rain seemed to have calmed down. A chill wind blew across the island and I began to make out some features of the structures above us. A massive tower extended out of the middle of the island itself, surrounded by what looked to have been an old settlement.

“There isn’t much we can make out of the journal about this place,” Sunshine said, scowling as he pulled the old book out. “It’s almost like it’s in a different language or something.”

“Or a cipher,” Trick Shot offered. “Tempest was the type to keep secrets. She probably didn’t want anypony finding out what she knew about this place. So she probably codified her journal on it.”

“But without a key, we can’t easily decipher it,” Sunshine said. “We’re going to have to just go up to that tower and see what’s up there, aren’t we?”

“That seems like the most logical place for something like this pearl to be stored,” I said. I turned to Trick. “Do you remember anything about this pearl? Or any stories possibly about it?”

The ghoul shook his head. “I think that had to have been while I was growing up or something, I’m not really sure,” he said. “Tempest never said anything about it, for sure.”

“You knew this Tempest pony?” Bright Ember asked. “The one who wrote the journal?”

Trick nodded. “I lived through the end of the war,” he said with a sigh. “I was a sharpshooter in her Special Forces division. She was… was my friend.”

“You do not know what happened to her?” Ember said softly. “I am sorry. I did not know.”

“It’s alright kid,” Trick said, giving the kirin a soft smile. “Had a lot of time to come to peace with that one.”

I shifted my weight and pushed to my hooves. I was already starting to feel so much better, and even my horn pulsed softly with latent magic. I took a few steps towards the window and looked up at the tower, imposing itself on the skyline above us.

Violet stepped up next to me and smiled softly as she nuzzled into me. I looked down at her and my eyes watered for a moment as I caught sight of her horn. It was still partially broken, but I could see new material poking through the breakage. I realized we had all come into this situation broken, and we were finding out how to repair ourselves with each other as friends. Even though I hated her guts, Twilight probably would have been pretty proud of us. I looked back up at the tower. There was just one thing left. One final journey and then we could go home.

“We’d better get going,” I said. “We still need to find a way out of here as well.”

“The entrance to the tower is up the hill just past the settlement. We’ll have to cross it to get there,” Violet said.

“Let’s go then. No time to waste.”

* * *

The hill up to the settlement was dark and cold, winding around the mountainous terrain of the island. One thing I found incredibly strange was how I could still see the ocean surrounding the island. Still, the darkness obscured anything in the distance other than a faint glow on the horizon. It was very weird that the sun hadn’t come up yet. Thunder rumbled overhead, painting a picture of a world perpetually drenched by torrential rain.

The path up was a stretch of paved cobblestone that had long been unused. Cracks throughout the road snaked back and forth. Nothing grew up out of the cold hard ground here. It was as if this island hadn’t seen a lick of sunlight in ages. The other interesting thing was the utter lack of any bodies or skeletones. There was absolutely nothing. Even the guard station had been completely empty of any remains. What happened to everyone here? I thought as we looped around a bend and back up towards the entrance to the settlement.

We crested the ridge finally and got our first real look at the settlement before us. It was a ghost town. However the creatures here lived, they lived in interesting dwellings set on the faces of the cliffs and hills throughout the settlement. Old dead trees littered the main plaza, complete with broken buildings hanging off the sides of them. Open air market stalls sat here or there, empty as well. The whole place felt simply wrong.

“This place is… dead,” Bright Ember said softly, echoing what we were all thinking.

“Something really wrong happened here,” Sunshine said, stepping up to one of the buildings on a side wall across the way. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“It’s like everypony just disappeared,” Violet confirmed. “What happened here?”

“I don’t know, but we have to make it to the tower. That is the only place here that could have the answers we’re seeking,” I said, narrowing my eyes as I took in the tower looming over the settlement. It sat there, looking imposing and dark. A shadow across this broken land.

“Shouldn’t it be morning by now?” Violet said, stepping up to me as we walked across the grand plaza. “Like… I feel like we’ve been here for hours.”

I glanced at my PipBuck out of sheer curiosity. According to its internal clock it was still somehow in the middle of the night. But then… the clock also wasn’t moving at all. I scowled deeply.

“The clock on my PipBuck is stuck,” I said. “But you’re right. It should be morning. What is going on here?”

“Huh… mine is stuck too,” Violet said. “Some sort of electrical interference?”

“I don’t know, but so far I’m taking no chances with this place,” I said. “I’ve had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach since we got here.”

“How is your horn feeling?” my marefriend asked casually as we walked.

“I can feel a pulse of magic now. I’m guessing the distance from that creature is weakening the spell he put on me. I still don’t know how that happened,” I said. “And you? How are you doing?”

“Cold. Wet. Tired. Probably hungry, I’m not sure,” Violet said with a soft smile. “But I can feel some amount of magic again. At least it’s not all super wonky like before. It’s just very strong feeling, almost overpowering when I try to use it.”

I nodded, looking away from Violet for a second. “Was I wrong in bringing everyone here? What if that creature was right? What if we are stuck here?”

“Star, you can’t let that thing get inside your head,” Violet replied. “We’ll find a way out of here. We always do, don’t we?”

“Sort of. It feels like our entire journey has been nothing but true blind luck sometimes,” I said. “The only reason we got here is because there’s still enough of Twilight inside me to trigger the genetic bypasses keyed to her. What are the odds of that?”

“I don’t know, but trust me when I say… I know you’ll get us home safely,” Violet said, placing a hoof on my shoulder. “I trust you, my love.”

I sighed before nodding. “You’re right, you’re right. I gotta focus on the positive here. We made it to Mount Aris… despite the fact that it’s a cold cesspool out in the middle of nowhere.”

We both laughed at that and continued on in silence through the plaza. The hippogriffs hadn’t left much behind. Many of the stalls that presumably had been for market were completely and utterly empty. The domiciles were also completely empty save for furniture and those were intact, outside of the domiciles that had broken off the trees.

Something had led to the abandonment of this place. Whatever happened here, it stunk of bad.

We made it across the plaza in one piece, the tower looming ever over us as we discovered the road that led up to it. Another guard station sat at the base of the road, leading through a tunnel that went up in front of the entrance of the massive monolith. A wall surrounded the base of the tower, but it didn’t look very protective and was more decorative in nature.

“Oh yay, more upward walking,” I said aloud as we passed the guard station and up the road. I hated hills almost as much as I hated stairs.

The hill was quite steep as it continued upwards into the tunnel. We were bathed in black, our horns the only source of light as we pushed through to the other side. The shadow of the tower loomed even more over as we reached its base. I noted once we made it past the wall that there were magical energy defenses everywhere. Turrets set in the side of the building combined with standalone defense systems. Even the wall itself had multiple cannons extending from it. It’s almost as if this base was expecting an attack at any moment. Whatever was here must have been extremely important. For now though, all of these defenses were completely inactive. Dead. Just like this place was.

At the end of the tower courtyard sat a door leading into the complex. It was like a tomb, dark and gray. The door appeared to be closed tightly as we got closer to it. With my magic at the strength it was, opening it would prove difficult. Even so, I tried to reach out and tug on it, feeling my magic completely slip away as it touched it.

“Well that’s weird, it’s like it’s repelling my magic,” I said.

“Let me try,” Sunshine said, stepping up next to me, her horn glowing softly. After a few seconds it dissipated as well. “Yeah.. it’s almost as if the magic is just slipping off the door. Maybe to prevent unicorns from getting in easily?”

“The terminal here is still active, but it’s flashing a power symbol. I think this place just needs power,” Violet said from the side. She pulled up her PipBuck, connecting to the cabling hanging out just below the terminal. “But where’s the feed? Did we miss something?”

“Over there,” Trick Shot said gruffly, pointing across the courtyard.

My eyes followed, seeing a large power converter in the midst of the area surrounding the base of the tower. It sat silently. I let my gaze wander down the line of its connections, finding a break in the cabling that led outside of the compound.

“Something broke the connection,” I said. “There’s just no power. That’s why the door isn’t working.”

“So we need to restore the power to get inside?” Bright Ember said. “That sounds easy enough.”

My eyes drifted to all of the artillery adorning every inch of this place. “Easy… yeah…” I said to myself. “Just so long as none of those defense systems activate.”

“I’ll stay here and try to get the door open,” Violet offered. “Do you and Trick want to go get the power back on?”

I grimaced, but finally nodded. “That sounds like the best plan. Just be ready in case something happens.”

We moved silently across the courtyard towards the power converter, inching closer every second to where the break in the cabling lay. From best as I could tell, the cabling hadn’t fully broken, just had become disconnected from each other. It was some form of modular cabling that allowed for multiple connections.

Hoping I was wrong, I lifted the two cables in the air with my magic. “Alright, folks. Let’s hope nothing goes to shit.”

The two cables came together with a click, a spark of electrical energy passing through the air before they came together. Behind me, the power converter began to hum to life, energy crackling the air all around it as it settled into its power on routine.

“That did it!” I heard Violet call from the entrance. “Come on back!”

I started to move, warily watching the towers and the walls of this place. I didn’t hear Trick’s call until he had tackled me to the ground, a magical energy blast from one of them just missing my head.

All Tartarus broke loose. Magical energy turrets flared to life, firing their death bolts our way as we picked ourselves up and dodged through what had become a minefield. I reached for my magic, finding a shield that was weak but still reasonable enough to deflect some of the bolts away from us as we scrambled across the courtyard back to the entrance. I was thankful I heard Violet shout in happiness as the door opened and with a burst of energy we were through behind them as the door closed.

“That… that was close. Trick, you okay?” I asked.

“Peachy, if a little singed,” the ghoul replied. “Sounds like we woke this place up alright.”

“In more ways than one,” Violet said, looking up the facility we’d walked into. “Look at this…”

The facility was massive, extending upwards into the darkness above us. A spiral staircase with steps that glowed a soft blue went up the center of the facility. Large terminal screens were mounted to the walls around the central room we found ourselves in, each of them displaying some sort of metrics that the computers were tracking. I couldn’t quite understand exactly what the machines were keeping tabs on.

The primary section in front of us was lit up like a Hearth’s Warming tree, lights flashing back and forth. Off to one side, I could see an armory built into the outer wall. Several suits of what appeared to be power armor were standing inside, but they didn’t appear to be made for ponies. Wings and spaces for claws could be seen built into the suits. These definitely weren’t the work of Applejack’s Ministry. This had the Ministry of Awesome written all over it.

The other striking thing I noticed immediately was that this was the first time we’d seen any remains. Several skeletons with wings and claws for feet were present in the room next to the terminals, along with multiple piles of ash. These had been the hippogriffs, I theorized in the back of my mind. The only race that would have had this combination of physical features.

“What the fuck is this place?” Trick Shot said. “It’s like some sort of massive research facility.”

“Whatever it was… this is where they died,” Sunshine said. “What could have possibly killed them here? In this secure facility?”

My eyes narrowed. “That’s a good question. Maybe the power shut them in? They couldn’t escape,” I reasoned. “Starved to death.”

“Possibly,” Violet said, stepping over to one of the terminals. “Whatever killed them may be a mystery, but they left behind this entire facility… untouched by anypony since the end of the war.”

“Those are often the worst kind in my experience,” Trick Shot said gruffly. “Prewar ponies didn’t know when to quit poking at the inevitable.”

“There are pony skeletons here too,” Bright Ember said, poking his head into the armory. “If this was a joint operation, it makes quite a bit of sense to have ponies working alongside the hippogriffs.”

“Exactly what were they working on though?” I said aloud, turning to Violet. “The pearl that creature mentioned. Is there any reference to it in these databanks?”

“I’ll see what I can find before we head up further. Might be a good idea to see if there’s any additional security as well,” Violet replied, connecting her PipBuck to the central terminal. “At least the software is all the same. Stable-Tec built these systems, so they too had their hooves in this.”

“How did nopony not know about this? About the hippogriffs? None of this makes any sense,” I said, before remembering that somehow Rarity had tricked the entirety of Equestrian civilization into believing Twilight Sparkle was a regular unicorn through sheer marketing. I knew the answer to that question as soon as I said it. Ponies were dumb and gullible.

“If this was as black ops as it gets, only the highest of the high knew what was going on here,” Violet said, her eyes widening. “I think I found something. There’s a… a life support tank at the top of the facility. The systems here are monitoring it. Star… there’s a life form inside of it. The system is reading it as stable.”

“A life form? That makes even less sense. Is there any information on it? What about the pearl?” I asked frantically, stepping up next to her.

Violet skimmed through the terminal’s contents, arriving at what appeared to be a video file stored in the system. She hit play and the mainframes center console shifted to show a group of hippogriff scientists. They were examining an object in the center of a room. It glowed brightly with magical energy.

The camera shifted again to a pale bluish green unicorn dressed in a lab coat. She wore goggles. It was sort of cute, to be honest.

“Chief Scientist Glitter Drops reporting. I can’t really tell what day it is because of the shield, so we’ll just go with Tuesday. Not like anypony’s ever going to watch this. Well, maybe Fizzy will, but that’s besides the point. She’s here and not out there with the rest of the world. Maybe nopony will ever realize we were even here. Certainly not the zebra. They would never think to look here for a secret Equestrian facility.

Anyways, we just got done with the latest tests on the pearl. It’s incredible the kind of power source this thing is. It’s almost as if it is powered by magic itself! Harnessing its power however is another story. Queen Novo can do it, but she’s royalty and ancient.

We did find that shaving a sliver off the pearl and wearing it as a pendant does allow the user access to a small bit of the magic latent to the artifact, but that’s impractical. This allows the user to transform from their primary race into a seapony and back. That’s hardly useful and not really what we’re going for here.

Interestingly enough, placing the sliver back on the pearl does force it to reabsorb the piece. This does make this function much more interesting in that the artifact can break pieces off and still reabsorb itself to stay intact.

The idea I had to spread the load of utilizing the pearl’s magical abilities while not overloading the pony using it was to build it into a suit of power armor. Our first test with one of the hippogriff volunteers was last… uh… carry the four… Wednesday? We’ll go with Wednesday. It didn’t pan out so well. The poor thing was crushed inside of the armor by the sheer power and weight of the pearl’s magic.

Suffice to say, Queen Novo has been very tight-lipped on the origins of the pearl, so that we may understand it better in the long run. I think she doesn’t care for this project personally, even more so now that Fizzy is here and in charge of everything for the Princess and Ministry Mare Twilight Sparkle. I suspect Novo still holds a grudge against Twilight for attempting to steal the pearl during the invasion by the Storm King. She doesn’t really have a choice though. Fizzy has seen to that.

I’ll make another status update probably next… Thursday. Sure, we’ll go with that. I don’t know why I bother making these anyways. I think I’m going to go get a drink.

The image shimmered and disappeared and I gawked in awe. The pearl was some form of magical artifact that seemed to enhance transformation capabilities? They were experimenting with magic on the highest end of magic possible in all of Equestria. What they were doing here was… it was revolutionary.

“I guess we know what the power armor was for,” Violet said after a few moments of silence. “This explains the weather and the weirdness outside, too.”

“What do you mean?” Ember said.

“This entire place is supposed to be shielded from the outside world. If anything, I’d guess from the outside the shield makes this place look abandoned to outside viewers. They built a fucking weather filter into the inside of this place just to keep things going,” Violet explained, tapping a few more keys on the keyboard. “See? It’s all here.”

A visual diagram of the shield system outside the island of Mount Aris appeared on the screen. It extended all the way around the island itself and even down into the waters below where there was an even larger structure. A massive set of power cabling along the ocean floor fed directly into the island itself. Hippocampus’ power network was even greater than any of us ever realized.

“Is that… a city?” I said, pointing at the structure on the screen.

“Holy shit,” Sunset said. “It’s an underwater city. Maybe that’s where all the hippogriffs went? You heard the recording. They turned from hippogriffs into seaponies.”

“The Queen hid her subjects away while they worked up here, trying to figure out how to use the pearl as what… a weapon? A form of protection? What exactly was their end game here?” I mused out loud, glancing over at Violet. “Are there any more recordings?”

Violet tapped a few more keys, frowning. “Most of the system is pretty heavily corrupted, but I was able to find one more recording. It looks like it’s the last one in the system,” she said.

The screen glimmered to life again, this time showing both Glitter Drops and another mare I knew all too well from seeing her in a memory orb. Tempest Shadow. I heard Trick Shot’s breath tighten as he saw the mare he once thought he loved. The two ponies were standing on a platform. Tempest appeared to be wearing some form of power armor, but it was sleeker in design than the bulky ones stored down in the armory.

“Fizzy, you don’t have to do this,” Glitter Drops said. “We can do more tests. We don’t know what will happen to you if…”

“Glitter. I told you. We’re out of time. We’ve already lost contact with Canterlot. The future of Equestria may ride on what we do here today. We have to try or all is lost,” Tempest replied coolly. She broke her calm demeanor and lifted a hoof around the other mare’s shoulder. “I know you’re worried about me, and I’m sorry to make you have to worry. I’m just glad you’re here.”

“I… me too,” Glitter Drops said. “The… the suit is ready to receive the injective whenever you are. The rest of the staff have fled below to Seaquestria, but there’s no guarantee that the bunkers there will keep them safe. Stable-Tec didn’t build them after all. It’s just you and me.”

“I know, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tempest said, moving to stand in the middle of the platform. “Signal me when you’re ready to go.”

“Will do,” Glitter said, moving out of the image entirely. Her voice came through an intercom next. “All levels look good. I’m going to start the process now.”

“Glitter?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about not coming for you sooner,” Tempest said softly. “I’m sorry I let hate poison my heart. But most of all… I’m sorry for what I did as a foal to you.”

“Fizzy… you’re my best friend in the entire world. I’ll always be there for you,” Glitter responded. A sniffle followed on the intercom. “Starting injective now. You shouldn’t feel a thing.”

A gleaming set of injectors descended upon the platform, each one filled with a glowing, shining substance. They attached to the various points around Tempest’s power armor and each one made a hissing sound as they locked into place. The glowing substance started to empty out of the injectors, pushing into the power armor’s receptacles.

Tempest began to groan wildly, lowering her head as she struggled with some invisible force unseen in the image.

“Fizzy?! Fizzy are you…” Glitter Drops started to say.

Tempest Shadow exploded in a massive wave of energy that extended outwards from herself, causing the feed to go static for a brief second before it reappeared, showing the mare standing on the platform. The power armor had completely disintegrated. Glowing lines appeared along the mare’s body. For a moment, she stood. And then she fell over unconscious.

“FIZZY!!!” Glitter Drops’ voice roared through the intercom. Heavy hoofsteps pounded into the room as Glitter Drops came into view once more, cradling her fallen friend’s head in her lap. “Computer! Ready the stasis pod! We need to stabilize her!”

“Scan suggests possible brain damage and extensive organ failure. The stasis pod will not heal these injuries. Do you wish to proceed?” a robotic voice said from somewhere off screen.

“Yes, dammit! Yes! Do it now!” Glitter shouted, tears streaming down her face. “It’s going to be okay, Fizzy. It’s going to be okay. I’ll be here with you. As long as it takes. I’ll be here…”

The recording stopped. All of us stayed silent for several long moments as we tried to process what we’d just watched. I looked at Trick, noting he was trying to remain as stoic as possible. Sunshine began crying into Ember’s shoulder, and Violet just looked on impassively at the screen. After several seconds she began tapping on the keyboard some more.

“Holy shit,” she muttered. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Violet? What is it?” I asked, stepping up to the terminal next to her.

“The life form in the pod above us,” Violet said. “It’s her. Star… it’s actually her.”

My eyes widened as I realized what she meant. “No… it can’t be. The stasis pod… it couldn’t have possibly lasted that long.”

“What if it did?” Violet asked, staring at me hard. “What if it did?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that she is alive inside that pod?” Trick Shot said, stepping over to us. “She’d be over two hundred years old. How would she survive?”

I grimaced, moving over to Sunshine and Ember. “Sunshine, I know that was… emotional, but we need your expertise here. Is it possible she’s alive?” I asked.

Sunshine pulled herself away from Ember, sniffling. She nodded and cleared her tears before starting to choke out some words. As she spoke they came more confidently. “With our current technology… unlikely. But this place? The things they were doing here? It was more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s very likely whatever tech they had here for that kind of medical treatment… it could have saved her.”

I looked up above at the spiraling staircase. “Their primary lab for studying the pearl was up above. I’m pretty sure that was what they were injecting her power armor with. The question becomes… what did it do to her?” I asked aloud.

“I can’t believe Glitter Drops was here,” Trick Shot said with a grimace.

“You knew her?” Violet asked.

Trick Shot nodded. “She was one of Fizzy’s oldest friends. Well, sort of. Fizzy always said there was something between them when they were younger. Something that happened between them. I’m not really sure what. They seemed to be good friends whenever we would hang out. Guess she got a job working for the Ministries.”

“It’s hard to believe this place was a Ministry project. Luna and Twilight… I suspect even Rainbow Dash was involved in this project as well. It screams Ministry of Awesome for how convoluted it is,” I said. “All this to hide this pearl from the zebra? Why?”

“Because they thought they could make themselves better,” Bright Ember said softly. “They were trying to use its magic to make themselves impervious to the zebra weaponry.”

“Imagine an Equestrian army bolstered by transformative magic so powerful that it negated enemy fire? Imagine granting that ability to the citizens of Equestria? We would have survived the balefire with nary a scratch,” Violet said. “The zebra would have never stood a chance.”

“Insane… no wonder the Queen didn’t like this research,” I said. “She used it only to protect her subjects, based on what the recording sounded like. She didn’t want it to be used as a weapon.”

“Well, despite all that… it looks like it failed anyways,” Sunshine interjected. “But the pearl itself may still be here. Just… not where we thought it would be.”

“What do you mean?” Violet said.

“I mean… it’s here. It’s just inside of Tempest’s body,” Sunshine said with a sniffle. “You saw the recording. Something happened to her.”

My mind exploded. The pearl was inside Tempest? I couldn’t even begin to fathom how that was even possible. While I was struggling to understand such a thing, Violet spoke for me.

“We don’t really know what happened in that recording. The only way we’re going to know at all is to go up there and find out,” she said.

“What if she’s… she’s…” Bright Ember said. “You know… dead?”

“According to the system, she’s stable,” Violet said, bringing up the monitoring program yet again. “She’s alive. I won’t know more until we go up there. With Sunshine’s help we should be able to find out more information.”

“So just so we’re clear. We’re going to go upstairs and potentially wake up a pony who has been in stasis for over two hundred years who may or may not have a magical pearl inside of their body?” I asked aloud, just to make sure I wasn’t sounding overtly crazy.

“Sounds about right,” Trick Shot said.

I stood, looking up the stairwell. There was no other way but forward. With the shielding around Mount Aris, we needed to do what we came here to do and figure out how to get off this island. That started with going up those stairs.

I took the first step, heading towards the base of the stairs. I walked upwards in silence as the others followed behind me. I felt Violet next to me at some point, her presence giving me strength to continue on. We passed by several levels of research laboratories and testing labs, all of which lay empty. No security systems remained to challenge us.

We reached the top level and everything changed. A wide open space filled the very top floor of the tower, in its center a glowing stasis pod. My gaze drifted to what appeared to be somepony’s living quarters near the stairs. A bed, a couch, and even a refrigeration unit had been moved up here. A vase sat empty on an end table next to the bed, its flowers long dead. On the bed lay a skeleton of a unicorn. A book sat next to one of her skeletal hooves. I picked it up with my magic. It read The Journal of Glitter Drops on the cover. My eyes widened as I realized it was Glitter Drops’ skeleton here. She had stayed to the very end, loyal to her friend. I deposited the book into my saddlebags for later, before turning to the pod in the middle.

The glowing pod was hooked up to all sorts of machinery, pulsing a gentle blue as the fluid inside bubbled up every so often. Several large terminal screens sat connected to a maneframe system attached to the pod device.

And then… I saw her. Tempest Shadow. She was in the center of the pod, hovering in the liquid. Her mouth was covered with a breathing apparatus, and several diodes connected to her body to read her conditions with. Her eyes were closed. She looked… serene.

“It’s really her,” Trick Shot uttered from next to me. “It’s actually her. I can’t believe it.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I wasn’t seeing it for real,” Sunshine echoed. She moved across to the terminal. “Violet, come here and help me with this.”

Violet nodded and walked over to help Sunshine. I moved about the other side of the pod, studying the mare closely. Her cutie mark was that of a strawberry sundae topped with a bright red cherry, ringed with firework explosions. Her horn was cracked and jagged.

“She always hated her cutie mark. She claimed that she didn’t believe in the destiny it represented,” Trick Shot said from beside me. “She told me once her special talent was magical in nature, but I suspect it was making sundaes myself.”

“She didn’t believe in the magic it represented?” I asked.

“Not sure. I think she always felt that she was allowed to make her own destiny. That she didn’t need to follow her cutie mark to be her own pony,” Trick replied. “It was her way of being herself.”

I could relate to that. I had been born to be nothing but a shell for an insane Princess-Goddess figure, but I’d found my own way. I’d become my own pony, for my own reasons and nopony else. I stared hard into this mare’s face, wondering what she had gone through. Why was she here? And what did the pearl’s magic do to her?

“She’s alive,” Sunshine said from around the pod. “She’s alive! And in stable condition. Like, stable enough that we could wake her.”

“Wait, you mean…?” I started to ask.

“Star, she’s been in this pod for over two hundred years,” Violet said, interrupting. “According to these logs, the final healing magic that the pod was delivering to her finished the process around one hundred years ago. Glitter Drops would have been long dead by then.”

“We can actually wake her up?” Trick Shot said. “But won’t her body just disintegrate from age?”

“Okay, how many horror movies have you been watching?” Sunshine said, raising an eyebrow. “This stasis technology doesn’t work like that. She has been perfectly preserved for two hundred years plus, and the only reason she’s able to get out of here is because we’re here. It’ll be just like the day she entered the pod, without all the life threatening injuries she received at the end.”

“Do it,” I said. “This isn’t living. She is owed the chance to live.”

Sunshine nodded, moving over to the terminal. After a few long moments of nothing but clatters on the keyboard, something began to happen. The liquid in the pod began to fizz as it started to lower, draining into vents in the floor beneath it. Slowly, Tempest’s body began to lower to the ground. When all the liquid was drained, a flashing blue light emanated across the pod and the doors began to hiss, pulling apart.

The breathing apparatus pulled away from the mare, revealing her full face. Her eyes remained closed, but her barrel rose and fell as if she was sleeping. The blue light had apparently dried the inside of the pod, because there was no liquid to be found, not even on her.

Then she coughed. Her eyes opened, pools of teal as they tried to analyze what was going on before her. With cold steel in her eyes she locked eyes with me. Then she spoke, very weakly, but with firmness in her voice.

“Who… who are you? Where’s Glitter?”

Author's Note

DUN DUN DUN!

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