The Manehattan Anomaly

by PseudoBob Delightus

Rating: mature
Tags: Death, Twilight Sparkle, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Other, Original Character, Mystery, Suicide / Self Harm, Horror, Violence, Princess Celestia
Length: 32605

A professor recieves a strange artifact in the mail. What he discovers will change the world.

When a professor at the University of Manehattan receives a mysterious artifact in the mail, he finds himself driven to investigate it - and what he discovers will change the world.

Originally planned for the Nightmare Night in April 2022 write-off, released instead for regular Nightmare Night.

Excellent cover art by Little Tigress!
Thanks to Compass the Pegasus, Jazzmania Chronicle, Anotherrandom, and Scriblits Talo for pre-reading and feedback!

Some content warnings: Beyond what can obviously be expected from the red tags, this story contains realistic death, child death, mind control, and psychological torture. I do not consider it gratuitous, but it is not reserved either.

Published 2022-10-27 20:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-10-30 20:02:51 UTC

Chapter 1 - Cobalt Spark

A knock. I looked to the door, and the pattern of scrawled mouthwriting followed where I looked, etched into my retinas. I was suddenly aware of my whole body: my dry mouth, my hunched back, my neck bent down nearly to my knees, and my rump, which hadn’t moved off this damn chair for… two hours? Three?

Oh, good. I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been grading papers for.

With a groan, I did my best to straighten myself out as I headed for the door. There was another knock, and I managed to croak, “Yeah, yeah, I got it”, before opening up.

Two burly stallions with earthy coats stood in the hall. One held a clipboard, the other stood by a hoof-cart hooked under a large wooden crate. The one with the clipboard said, “Package,” simply, as if that explained it. Then he gestured the clipboard in my direction, indicating a receipt of delivery, and an empty line awaiting signature.

I didn’t appreciate having this dumped on me, but I couldn’t think of any way out of it - and they looked impatient besides. The one with the cart wheeled it in after I signed, just barely squeezing it through the door, and they both left promptly. The crate was now a fixture of my living room.

A glance back to my desk reminded me that I wasn’t missing much, so I just sighed, grabbed a prybar, and got to work.

A meter wide, the crate was huge. There were scuffs and scratches on its outer faces, but it was otherwise in good condition. As carefully as I could, I cracked the lid open, catching any loose nails with a telekinetic field. The crate was full to the brim with coir: an exotic, waterproof fiber. A cubic meter of this was valuable in its own right. But here, it was only a packing material, a means to protect the crate’s real contents. I next pried off one of the walls of the crate, then another, and a good amount of the coir spilled out onto my floor, kicking up a cloud of awful dust - I should have worn a mask - but also revealing the framework within the crate. A rough-milled claw clutched a spherical basket no larger than a pony’s skull

The basket was tied down with a coarse twine. With some gentle, gradual application of telekinesis, I was able to undo the knot, and lift the basket out of the support structure - but as I did I noticed a crumple of paper under it. The paper had conformed to the shape of the sphere. As I removed it, I saw that it was actually an envelope. The name ‘Cobalt Spark’ was written on one side.

My curiosity piqued, I opened it and began reading.

Cobalt Spark

University of Manehattan - Dept. of Applied Sorcery

23 Springleaf Ave.

Manehattan, MNH, 20035

Equestria

Dr. Spark,

It’s been a while, prof!

Sorry I havent kept more in touch. Maybe if I had, it would make these ridiculous requests a little less awkward. Or maybe not. Sorry.

The Zaphzia expedition struck big in the northwest, near the contested territory. Maybe you read about that whole mess in the news. Tragic. Now the front line is moving back, so we have to abandon the largest neospeciic era burial site ever found. ~~On that subject, would it be outrageous to suggest that the people who’ve lived in the region for the last four eras have a right to continue living here? If so,~~

I digress. We’ve spent the last week emptying shelves, shipping out whatever can be carried to whoever can identify it before the looters and soldiers ~~(not that there’s much difference)~~ get here, and, well, you do crystals. So here’s a weird ass crystal, en route to your office.

Again, sorry. But it was you or the barbarians. Field notes are enclosed. Have fun with it. And, hey, if it’s something cool, let me know!

-LS

Reading the old letter, looking at the new crate on my living-room floor, I ground my teeth. Then I found the humour in it and chuckled. Lodestar hadn’t been my student for the better part of a decade and she was still giving me heartburn.

She had probably - I hoped - intended for this to go to my office at the university, but instead it landed here, at my home. By the look of the packaging, this thing was delicate, so I decided I wouldn’t risk any more damage by having it moved all that way for examination. I swept the student papers off my desk, grabbed the most cylindrical thing I could find - a cardboard tube - and set the specimen down on top of it.

It was still wrapped in a reed basket over a layer of leaves. I spent some time finding a good spot to begin unweaving the basket, and gently, gradually, peeled it away. The leaves beneath fell away readily, without anything holding them on, and I could finally start to see it.

I ignored Lodestar’s field notes for now. It was often useful to go into an examination blind, without any assumptions, either mine or somepony else’s.

It was a black sphere roughly twenty-five centimeters across, giving the impression of opaque volcanic glass, or polished black metal impressed by a faint swirling texture. I knew from the effort of lifting it onto the desk that it weighed approximately ten kilograms, and with a strip of wood that had once been the basket, I was unable to scratch the surface. I tried next with the dry nib of a quill, leaving no mark, and nothing again with a steel nib. I probably could have just cut the basket away with scissors, if I had known how hard its surface was.

With these observations, I had come to some conclusions, and I could confirm or deny them with spells of measurement. My estimations of the mass and size were roughly correct, though not impressively accurate, but the most interesting and important question was what the sphere was made of, and a spell told me: silicon. Out of curiosity, I cast a fine-analysis spell, and found no grain boundaries.

I was… stunned. The least interesting answer to what this thing was, now, was the world’s largest continuous silicon crystal. At least, I was certain it was continuous on the outside - our standard spells could not penetrate very far, by design.

But, considering its diameter, if it was silicon all the way through it should have been more like twenty kilograms. Perhaps it was hollow, or cored with another material? I couldn’t be sure without more invasive measurements. That seemed like a good opportunity to open the initial findings.

Lodestar’s scrawling, uneven notes were hard to parse, but I caught the gist:

Found in fossil crater at gravesite 6, disturbed two graves on north side

Some initial observ.s in time I had access:

Si mono??? -certain to 5cm depth

25cm ball. Φ ≈ .999… ?

~12kg, unexpected low mass -hollow? diff. material within?

polished smooth surface, no scuff/scratch/stain etc., appears untouched

exothermic? -stays ~2° + ambient temp, no chem. reaction obsrv.

There was more, but I stopped reading there. It all seemed a bit… off.

The independent confirmation that this was monocrystalline silicon was a good sign, and the sphericity value seemed right. But she had listed the mass as twelve kilograms, not ten. As much as she pained me, as a student and as a professional, she just wasn’t a mare who would make mistakes like that. Additionally, the note stated the specimen appeared “untouched”, without scuffs or scratches, but I could see a few hairline cracks around the circumference of the sphere. With similar reasoning, I did not think these would have been overlooked.

Had it been damaged during shipping? That would explain the cracks, but not the difference in mass. Something wasn’t adding up.

That brought me to the “exothermic” observation. If this had gone to my office, I might have had a thermometer handy, but here I did not, nor was I prepared for any temperature-sensing spells.

I… supposed it had already endured much rougher handling.

I gingerly set a hoof on the specimen.

It was, indeed, warm. Certainly more than two degrees above ambient temperature. But, besides that, it… thrummed?

I threw my hoof off the specimen when I realized it was changing where I’d touched it. A ripple of reddish light, faint, or deep within the specimen, radiated out from the point where I’d handled it, highlighting the hairline cracks in striking clarity. The light converged on the opposite side, then came back around, and faded away before it could converge again.

The specimen’s surface was as deep a black as it had been before, but the cracks still glowed, particularly a ring of cracks near the top which surrounded the crown of the sphere.

I was curious, despite my better judgement. The low mass; the exothermy; the moving light; the thrumming. There must have been an explanation for it all. Invasive scanning spells were not a common practice, due to their tendency to transmute particles around the point of entry, but I didn’t need an invasive scan if there was already an opening.

I began forming a telekinetic field around the ring of cracks. Telekinetic spells were actually dual-purpose: the spell gave me topographical insight within the field, with the insight’s fidelity reduced as force was increased. With sufficient force to lift the specimen, it would ‘feel’ like a perfect sphere, but with such reduced force that the field was barely held together against its own gravity, the field would sink into even the smallest pits and cracks. I maintained a weak, thin field over the cracks until I ‘felt’ it climb down, beneath the surface.

A centimeter, then two, then five, then-

At a depth of seven centimeters, my field reached the underside of an inner wall, marking an open space. I added slightly more force to the field so that it would stop falling - I did not want to disturb the interior more than I absolutely had to. With this added force and rigidity, the field snapped into place all around a distinct piece of the sphere, and it shifted. Fully detached.

This was the critical moment, now. With care I added enough directional force to the telekinetic field, in an upward direction, that it could be slid out of the sphere. The inner edges were completely smooth, and it came out with no difficulty. Only a hole was left in its place, glowing with that same dark reddish light that had propagated when I touched it.

I had to act fast. There was no time to grab a mask, so I just held my breath, as I turned the specimen so the hole faced towards me, stood up, and peered down.

The smooth, glassy edges of the hole were marked with dull red lines, steadily marching up and out from the center of the sphere, and fading before they reached the outer edge. Something related to the exothermy, perhaps, or the thrumming. Deeper in, I saw the inner edge, a checkerboard of light and dark, shifting as the waves propagated and collapsed. Then, with nothing seeming to connect it to the rest of the specimen, I saw…

The core of it. The germ.

Then something changed. I let go of my breath, ignored the shifting patterns within the germ’s casing, and reached for my pry bar. There was work to do.

Chapter 2 - Daffodil

There were two slow knocks on the door. Before I had even set my book down, Petticoat was there, putting on a sing-song voice. “Who’s there?”

The voice at the door held back immeasurable glee as it responded, “Orange…”

Petticoat was already giggling, too. “Orange who?”

“Orange you going to let me in!?”

My daughter squealed with laughter, and almost fell flat on her rump before she found enough strength to jump for the doorknob and welcome our guest. “Sunny!” she cried, as she leapt at the young mare’s neck.

“Petty,” she grunted, “you’re too heavy! I’m gonna fa-a-all!”

“Timber!”

The pair crashed to the floor, laughing and gasping for breath. Any time one of them found enough energy to speak, they’d say something that would make the other laugh, and then they’d laugh, and both would be left breathless again. I was content to let it continue for another minute or so until I heard that tell-tale “chi-ki-chi-ki” noise, and suddenly Sunny Dew’s laughter turned to desperate pleas for mercy.

Petticoat was on top of Sunny Dew when I approached. “No tickling,” I said, trying to sound like I hadn’t been laughing along with them. Petticoat whined a little, but she dutifully stopped, and climbed off. I helped Sunny Dew up with a forehoof, and closed the door behind her.

She was a bright, vivid yellow-orange earth pony with a deeper orange mane, kept medium-length and tied back, in contrast to my Petticoat’s pearly white coat and messy, lemon mane. It had only been six months since I’d seen her, but she was taller than me, now, and managed a young professional style that wouldn’t look out of place on a racetrack or in a courtroom. Or maybe that was just me…

“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Sunny,” I said, as I led her and Petticoat back to the living room. “I totally forgot they had the day off…”

She smiled brightly. “Oh, it’s no problem at all. High schools are out too, so I would have been staying home anyway. And I love the little tykes.” As if to prove it, she mussed Petticoat’s mane. My daughter just sat there and smiled like a loyal puppy. Conspiracy, I mused.

“They like you too,” I said. “And it’s been a while. You’re a senior, now, right? Top of the pile?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“How’s it treating you? Any big changes?”

Sunny Dew opened her mouth, but then closed it, tilted her head to the side, and furrowed her brow. “Eh… It’s mostly the same, I guess. The classes are a bit harder, but the homework is still about the same, depending on the teacher.” She glanced down at Petticoat. “We do get a free period now. It’s like a big recess where we can do whatever we want.”

“Wow!” Petticoat gasped. “Can you play games?”

Sunny Dew nodded. “Yeah, of course. But, you know, we can also just leave the school, if we want to.”

Petticoat looked between me and Sunny Dew, as if she wasn’t sure that that was allowed. “Really!?”

“Yeah! As long as we’re back before our next class starts, they don’t have a problem with it. It’s pretty nice.”

Sunny Dew’s eyes widened - even wider than they were before - and she hopped in place. “Ohhh! I wanna go to high school!”

That made me smile, and gave me an idea. “Sunny Dew, do they give every pony in high school free periods?”

She immediately saw what I was doing, and responded, “No, ma’am; it’s only for students with good grades.” Sunny Dew looked at Petticoat as she continued, as if she was relaying a secret, “I had to work really hard, but it was totally worth it.”

That got Petticoat thinking - I guessed she was torn between the horror of hard work and the potential reward of more free time in school. While she wasn’t looking, I glanced at Sunny Dew and nodded. She nodded back.

That filly… If there was anypony else I trusted with my kids, it was her.

“Hmm…” she hummed. “Where’s Rushleaf?”

“Here,” my son’s voice echoed through the door to his and Petticoat’s room.

“Ah,” she said. Then, quieter, “Sick?”

I shrugged. “He’s fine. In a bad mood from some stuff that went on at his father’s. They… don’t always agree.”

Sunny Dew nodded to that, then seemed to judge what to say next carefully. “Um… How is Iris, these days?”

Oh, right. Sunny Dew wasn’t around for… all that. A dozen things flew around my head, a dozen ways to start, but, at this point, I was just tired of it.

“The same,” I finally answered, lamely. “Sorry, Sunny. It’s done, we’re separated, but it’s still a mess. Maybe we can talk about it later.”

She nodded seriously. “Alright. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” I waved her apology off with a hoof. “How about you? Anything new with the parental units?”

The filly smirked at the label. “Not much. Mom’s doing her thing. Dad - well, you know how my dad is with his work.”

I did know. Foggy Dew was a police officer of some variety for the city, and took the job pretty seriously, often working long hours. He could be a bit scatter-brained when it came to family stuff, but his heart was in the right place, at least.

Not something I could say about some ponies…

I shook my head, and smirked. “Stallions.”

Sunny nodded sagely, and agreed, “Stallions.”

“I know you’re talking about me out there,” Rushleaf commented through the door.

I raised my voice: “We were just talking about how much of a pain in the flank you are!”

Sunny Dew joined in, “Yep! And you’re smelly, too!”

There was a bit of laughter in return, and Rushleaf said, with a bittersweet tone, “Hi, Sunny.”

I was about to just continue the small-talk with Sunny Dew - she really was such an impressive young mare - but between the hall to the bedrooms and the living room, I glanced at a clock. It was nearly ten already.

“Oh, gingersnaps,” I swore. “I really need to get going. Um, money’s on top of the fridge, there’s some extra if you want to get food or go to the movies or something-”

“Movies!” Petticoat cheered. “Yay!”

At the door, I quickly surveyed the apartment, trying to think of anything I had forgotten, but nothing came. I settled once more on Sunny and Petticoat, and shrugged. “Be safe.”

“Will do!” Sunny Dew saluted, and Petticoat mimicked her. “Bye, Daffodil!”

“Bye mommy!”

“Bye, kids,” I called back, and then I grabbed my saddlebags and was out the door, ready for work - a bit later than usual, but still ready.

It always pained me to leave my kids behind for work, especially when I only got to spend half the month with them as it was, but such was life. I supposed myself lucky that my working hours were as flexible as they were. I could take on more work while they were with Iris so I’d have more time with them while they were with me. And, if there was any sort of emergency, I was usually close at hoof.

My first three stops were on this very floor. I proceeded counter-clockwise, arriving at unit 309, and counted off the keys on my ring. Unit 309, Porcelain Clay’s apartment, had the key with the number ‘309’ on it. Easy enough to remember.

I knocked, announced, “Cleaning!” and then unlocked and opened the door, making my way in. Porcelain Clay was usually not home this time of day, even on holidays, so I didn’t worry about barging in on anything. I barely knew the stallion - I’d seen him on a few occasions, spoke to him once or twice - but that wasn’t a terrible thing, in this line of work.

He mostly kept things clean, if a little disorganized. After checking all the rooms, it seemed all I had to do was make his bed, put away some dishes, and clean the kitchen counters. One down.

The next unit, 307, matched the key with the number worn off from decades of wear. Easy to remember in a different way. I knocked, waited just a moment, and entered.

Pike’s home was cluttered, crowded, but beautiful, giving the sense of a museum display - like the office of a historical figure preserved to the last detail. Stacks of newspapers from a bygone period; cases full of figurines and knick-knacks; textiles in foreign patterns. Some evidence of everyday life, like an assortment of dirty dishes stacked next to the sink, only enhanced the effect.

She was in her bed, sitting upright with a book in her claws, as usual. The book was thick-bound, a foreign title visible in small gold print on the spine, and the radio on the adjacent night table played soft, exotic music through a layer of noise. She looked at me, over her tiny round glasses, and there was a smile on her beak.

The elderly griffin didn’t need much help cleaning, but I was happy to help her lift or move things, double-check her medication, and just… keep her company, for a while, almost every day.

She wasn’t a fluent speaker, and I knew better than to ask all of the questions on my mind, but she’d often tell me stories from her old country, from a time before I was born. I got the impression she was a veteran of some part of the great war - the long rifle hung over her bed looked the part - but she never spoke about that. Only the good times, before the war, or the more interesting times long after it.

Another impression I got was that Pike didn’t have anypony else. She had shown me many photos of her relatives and friends, but I had never seen or heard of any of them visiting, if they could. So, in turn, I would tell her about me, my kids, my day, anything I could think of that I thought she’d like to hear. I didn’t know if she was genuinely interested in my mundane stories, but she always seemed happy to listen.

Before leaving for the day, I chanced another look at the rifle. It was clean, heavily engraved, and pointing away from her, in a fashion, pinned to the wall above the left side of her large bed - the side she made but never slept in.

I could imagine a fragment of a story, there, but that was one of those things I didn’t want to just ask outright. Maybe, one day, she would tell me.

My last stop for this floor was unit 305. The key didn’t have a number, but a spot of blue paint where the number would be, which I remembered because blue was the fifth colour of the rainbow. Not as easy to remember as the others, but it helped that 305’s occupant was named Cobalt Spark, and he - like his namesake - was blue.

Cobalt Spark was one of those clients I was likely to run across, because of his work schedule, but I didn’t know him to be very personable. A very head-in-the-clouds sort, only half-involved in any conversation, his mind always working on some problem in the background.

“Cleaning!” I announced, after knocking, and I waited for a response for a little longer than I usually would have. After nothing came, I made my way in, assuming nopony was home.

What I saw was shocking. Cobalt Spark was not the neatest of ponies, not by a country mile, but his home typically didn’t look like a bomb had gone off in it. Furniture and papers were thrown all around the living room and kitchen; piles of some kind of brown fuzz littered the floor, overflowing from a big shipping crate; and there were even some holes punched through the plaster walls.

I… didn’t think this was within my job description.

But I ventured further into the unit, wondering what exactly had happened here. A violent tantrum? A robbery - possibly in-progress? I hadn’t heard anypony in here, but the possibility remained frightening.

Making sure I had a clear path to the open door behind me, I called out, loud enough for anypony in the unit to hear me, “Cobalt? Is anyone here?”

Soon afterwards, a crash came from Cobalt’s room, followed by a gag or a coughing noise. My blood ran cold, and there was no time to second-guess it or say anything: I ran into his room, turning the handle and pushing the door open with my shoulder mid-charge, to see what was happening. I didn’t even think about why I was moving, but as my purpose turned to conscious thought, I realized that he might have been choking or having a seizure.

I did not expect to see Cobalt Spark hanging himself.

I was frozen, taking in the scene, even though I knew in my mind that I had to move. The crash I’d heard was the night table nearest him. It had been kicked over, probably the same moment he had committed to the act. The rope came down from a hole in the ceiling - freshly made, judging by the pry bar and plaster debris on the floor beneath. And Cobalt hung there, his head tilted oddly, his eyes bulging, his shoulders tense and his forelegs spasming downwards. His eyes caught mine, and he made a gurgling noise, which shook me from my panicked state.

I had to get him down from there.

To reach him, I righted the night table and jumped up onto it, reaching up to the knot around his neck. It was a classic noose, pulled tight around his neck by his own weight. I tried tugging on it with my teeth, not caring about pulling on his mane, but that didn’t do anything, and I couldn’t carry him very well from here, either. I just didn’t have the leverage, or, for that matter, the raw strength.

There was the next option - should have been the first, if I was thinking straight. I ran out of his room and into the hall, hopped over an overturned chair, headed into the kitchen, and tore the cutlery drawer open. It broke free of its slide and fell to the floor, the contents crashing with a painful noise, but I didn’t care.

Along with forks and spoons, some serrated knives landed in the pile, and I grabbed one in my mouth and ran back to the room. I might have cut my face on a blade, somewhere, but I still didn’t care. Back on the night table, I grabbed Cobalt Spark, set the knife against the end of the knot as close as I could get to the back of his neck, and started sawing.

It was slow. Too slow, I soon realized. Cobalt’s shaking and choking gradually slowed and grew silent over what felt like only the next minute. In another few minutes, with the rope only half-cut and holding strong, the only sign of life was his barrel heaving in an unnatural, silent rhythm.

He wasn’t dead, yet, but nearly there, irreversibly close. In those useless minutes, I could have found some help, could have found somepony else to lift his body as I cut or freed him from the noose. There was a phone in the kitchen, I could have called in an emergency. My breath caught - I realized I was crying only when my tears overflowed and stung my eyes.

Cobalt… I barely knew him, I didn’t even like him, but now, in my panic and stupidity, I was responsible for his death.

The moment did not come as I expected. The odd movement of his body gradually slowed, and there was an ugly sound as his bowels and bladder emptied themselves, the excrement falling past his legs and hitting the floor. I felt a splash on my legs, and stepped away onto thin air, tumbling down to the floor, into the filth.

The stench assaulted me, but more than that was the feeling, the awareness that I was in it. I coughed, spat, cried, threw up, right where I fell. I thought I might have been dead, for a moment, or else that I’d wake up just then and realize it had all been an intense nightmare. For some time I hoped that was all it had been. But no. It was real.

Some time passed. As I came to my senses and my vision cleared, I noticed something peculiar, even though I didn’t want to look at any of this.

There was movement next to me. Near the discarded pry bar, through a crack in the floorboards that I hadn’t noticed before, a dark, thorny tendril slithered up the wall. It was gently corkscrewed, and flailed around in slow-motion as it heightened, until it made contact with Cobalt Spark’s corpse, the back edge of his right hoof. It seemed to stick there, and coiled around the leg as it climbed further. Another tendril climbed out from the floor in a similar motion, and stuck onto the other hoof.

I wondered if this was just what happened when somepony died, but I knew better. I felt a sudden urge to cut the tendrils before they could do something bad to Cobalt Spark’s body, but I had lost my knife in the fall.

Instead, I crawled around the filth, as best as I could, and found the pry bar, and stabbed at the tendrils with it. In one movement the tool plunged through the plaster wall, severing the first tendril near the base, and the second was severed just as easily. But three more came up within seconds. That wasn’t effective. I needed to cut them off at the source.

I stuck the bar into the crack in the floor, and pulled, and the whole board popped off easily. I peered down and aimed the tool towards where the tendrils seemed to lead.

It was down there, visible in its own light. A smooth black thing the size of a bowling ball with a hole in the top. The tendrils grew out from the hole, with bands of faint red tracing up and down where they crossed from outside to inside. I figured there had to be something delicate in there, and I leaned forward, trying to angle for a good stab, when I saw it.

The germ.

Then something changed. I dropped the pry bar, stood up, and went to the bathroom to clean myself up. I considered some things: the pile of knives; the keys in the saddlebag; the gun on the wall; the germ under the floor; the faces of children.

There was more work to do.

Chapter 3 - Foggy Dew

The six of us braced as the wagon began to climb uphill. We were getting close to the scene. The other officers started double-checking their gear and I, too, did the same.

Laminate body-armor and helmets, and mobile wallplates. Shoulder- and leg-mounted cast-rifles. Radio transceivers. We’d all been trained on their use, drilled in urban combat and raid scenarios, and, as far as I knew, we were up against little more than a depressed working pony with a pea-shooter. But…

The Heights was usually the safest part of the north end of Manehattan. Ours was probably the first armored wagon to be seen up here in decades. I wondered, was a grenadier incident here, in that building, just random violence? Or was it something more?

“Jeez,” Rookie groaned, breaking the grim silence, “You’d think we were worried or something.”

The remark earned him a slap from Bullet and some chuckles from everyone else. When the wagon stopped, and the operator pounded on the cabin wall three times, we opened the doors and filed out in orderly fashion. I gave each of my officers a pat on the shoulder as they passed, and I exited last.

We were approaching the scene, a 6-storey condominium tower on Springleaf Avenue. Not mine, but I knew ponies who lived here. There was already a cluster of officers and first responders from different divisions: earth pony police officers from the Manehattan Police Department; pegasi paramedics from the Redheart Hospital; unicorn specialists from the Royal Military Engineers. With the six of us, that made a crowd of roughly thirty ponies. A lieutenant from the north-end precinct beckoned us over, under the front roof of the building, to a folding table with a small map laid over it. I noticed as we approached that it was a floorplan; the lieutenant was marking it with a red pen.

First, he told us the radio frequency we’d be using for the mission, which we dialed into our transceivers. Then he gave us a recap on the available intel and the state of things at the scene.

It was a more detailed version of what we’d heard on the way over: A suspected lone grenadier was holed up in one of the units on the third floor. There had been at least one confirmed gunshot, though resident reports were conflicted on how many, where, and when. There was also an unidentified female hostage or victim, who had been the first to contact us, and she mentioned a room three-oh-five or three-oh-nine before her call ended. Based on the floor plan, that would mean our search was focused on the southern side of the third floor.

But nothing was ruled out yet. The actual situation was ours to learn. And in spite of my training, my discipline, the pride I held for my level head, I let my mind wander, and thought of my daughter.

It seemed like I had spoken with her only moments ago. On the phone, she told me she was going to look after Daffodil’s kids for the day, and suggested I visit them when I was done with my shift. I was looking forward to it, and it seemed I couldn’t get there soon enough.

Now that I was here, I wished I was anywhere but.

Crimson must have noticed something was off, and subtly nudged me - gave me a knowing, reassuring look. He was my second-in-command, and my closest friend in the unit. He didn’t know, exactly, but he knew enough. And we both knew that I couldn’t let this affect the rest of the team. Whatever the state of things, there were dozens of other ponies in this building depending on us.

I took a deep breath, refocused, and thought as a leader would. Besides, Sunny Dew was a smart filly - I really had no reason to worry.

The scene outside of the building was roughly under control. Officers were posted out here, in front of the building, as well as at the freight entrance and on the roof, to make sure nopony could enter or leave without being noticed.

The lieutenant was convinced only one gunshot had been fired, but was still concerned further violence had taken place. That made it too risky to send in standard officers, who may not have been trained in close-quarters combat, and, since the perpetrator had not attempted to communicate with us or other officials, this could not be considered a typical hostage scenario.

That was why we were here.

The lieutenant would supervise our operations and coordinate support, but he deferred tactical command to me. I considered the available resources. My own team was a known quantity: Myself, Crimson, Bullet, Snipe, Quiet, and Rookie. The regular officers and paramedics would be useful to follow our team and move in to help any involved civilians, or arrest any suspects, but that was standard operations. I had hoped for some teleportation abilities in the Engineers, but we weren’t so lucky.

However, somepony did catch my attention: the unicorn Fine Fettle, better known as Bedrock, conferring with the lieutenant. That changed things considerably.

“Looks like you’re out of a job,” I said to Snipe. A half-joke.

She just shrugged, and replied, “We’ll see.”

It didn’t take long to agree on a rough plan, and put it into action. My squad and most of the other divisions entered the tower’s lobby, and we double-checked that it was still clear. Meanwhile, Bedrock, the lieutenant, and a couple of other officers stayed at the command post, while the pegasi on the roof flew up to a safe distance.

Everypony sounded off over the radio, and the lieutenant gave the go-ahead, so I gave the command: “Seal it.”

There was a deep whump, followed by the noise of dozens of windows rattling in their frames. Some of us flinched from the abrupt change in air pressure; so did others because of the visual change. The light entering from outside dimmed, lost its heat. Through the vestibule windows, I could see a thick line extending across the brick walkway outside, a few steps away from the wall, and, though some potted flowers were bright and vivid within it, there was not a trace of colour beyond it.

This was Bedrock’s special ability. The term of art for it was ‘inviolable’. Not a thing would be entering or leaving the building while it was in place. It gave us a time limit, because we would eventually run out of air within the barrier, but Crimson had done the math and assured us that wasn’t a pressing concern. Two hours, more or less.

“CAT team, report all good?” the lieutenant’s voice asked. More static than I’d have hoped, but it was understandable.

“All good, sir,” I responded. “Proceeding with floor one. Over.”

I gestured for my team to spread out, and we made our way around the building in a counter-clockwise sweep. Bullet and Rookie were the first to move. Bullet’s flight pattern was hard to follow by eye, but Rookie kept a decent clip behind her, and they stopped at the first corner. Crimson moved with me, his horn glowing, checking the rooms as we passed them. Snipe and Quiet followed us, keeping eyes ahead and behind.

“Occupied,” Crimson noted, as we passed unit 104, and then again at 102. I relayed it, and a pair of officers moved to the doors. They would make contact with the occupants, gather information, and assure them of their safety. Hopefully, nopony would be moving around at an unfortunate time.

The first floor cleared, we moved into the central stairwell. My squad exited at the second floor to repeat our clearing maneuver, while the remaining dozen or so officers would position themselves at various floor levels to guard all entrances to the stairwell. With the building sealed, it was our only way up and down.

Midway through a round of the second floor, in front of unit 205, Crimson stopped walking, and looked up at the ceiling.

“Problem?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Not sure. Just getting a feeling from up there.”

“Three-oh-five?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d guess. Hard to say from here though.”

I nodded, and we walked on, continuing to clear the floor. Crimson was a scryer, by education, but his specialty was life-sensing - an invaluable skill in our line of work. Beyond that, I trusted his judgement. We would be careful around 305.

But 302 concerned me more. When we reached it, on our sweep of the third floor, I asked Crimson and Quiet over. Quiet told me there were no weapons, and moved on to check the rest of the north wing. Crimson remained for a moment, put a hoof on my shoulder, and said, “They’re not here.”

“I know,” I said. But I wasn’t sure why I said that. I didn’t know.

Quiet looked between us, furrowing his brow, but thankfully did not raise whatever question was on his mind.

“Could they have left before it happened?” Crimson asked, or suggested.

I nodded. It was a possibility. Sunny Dew was independent, knew the area, and had the trust of Daffodil. She could have taken the kids somewhere. Hell, they might right now be on their way back, getting stopped at the building perimeter - confused, but safe.

It was a nice thought. “We should move on,” I said -

at the same moment that Bullet whistled, clear but quiet, and gestured down to the south wing. “Found something.”

I reluctantly turned away from the door and trotted down the hall, Crimson and Quiet at my sides, following Bullet’s direction.

Around the corner, she pointed her hoof to the carpet floor in front of unit 307, and traced an invisible path down the hall and through the door marked 305. I squinted, and noticed a faint dark trail along this path, marked by the occasional distinct drop. Then the smell of the air made it clear, just as Bullet whispered, “Blood.”

“Shit,” Rookie added. He received some glares, and shut his mouth.

I spoke the obvious question, “Does it come from three-oh-seven?”

Bullet answered, “Don’t know. Will have to approach.”

Crimson, his horn and eyes glowing, mumbled, “Three-oh-seven is empty, er, unoccupied. Three-oh-five…” He snapped out of it, and grimaced, rubbing his forehead. “Something’s wrong in there.”

We all turned to him. “What do you mean wrong?”

He looked nervous, and had difficulty finding his words. “It… I don’t know. It’s just wrong.”

We took a moment to process this. It was concerning that Crimson couldn’t give us details, and suggested some strange magic at work. All the same, there was this clarifying relief that flowed over me, even before I fully understood the reasoning: a trail of blood meant a brutal murder, or a ritual sacrifice; strange magic meant a cult, or a demon, or an experiment gone wrong. Nothing my Sunny Dew would have been involved in. A knot in my heart came untied, and I breathed a quiet sigh.

I opened the radio channel to the lieutenant. “CAT to control, we’ve located some points of interest. Units three-oh-five and three-oh-seven. How copy?”

There was a slight delay before the lieutenant replied, “I copy. Three-zero-five, three-zero-seven. Points of interest. Over.” He spoke as if he had something in his mouth - I recalled that he held a marker in his teeth when he was highlighting entry points on the floorplan for us.

“Solid,” I responded. “We think unit three-oh-five is danger. Possible magic.” I looked at Crimson, who nodded in agreement.

From behind me, Quiet added, “Unknown magic.”

“Unknown magic, sir,” I clarified. “I think quarantine will be advisable, over.”

There was a very long delay.

“Say again, CAT? Unknown magic?”

“Unknown magic,” I repeated. “Over.”

“Copy that,” the lieutenant replied. Then there was some inaudible chatter - he had neglected to close the channel as he discussed things with whoever else was down there with him. Finally he came back on, and said, “Quarantine on three-zero-five is a go, CAT team. Clear the other point of interest as you see fit, and confirm when in position. Over.”

I turned the words over in my head, making sure they were committed to memory, before I said, “Copy that, over,” and closed the channel. I then turned to the rest of my team - they had been listening, but they waited for my word.

I spoke as I walked towards the unit, and the others followed. “We’re clearing three-oh-seven. It’s unoccupied. Weapons?”

“Lots, actually.” Quiet said. “Feels like… brass and wood, gunpowder, engravings.”

“Relics,” Snipe concluded.

“Not necessarily,” the unicorn objected quietly, “but… more or less, yes. Nothing modern.”

“Traps?” I asked.

“None.”

Then there was no need for a breaching operation. I set Rookie to picking the lock. Quiet could have done it faster, and the door barely existed as far as Snipe was concerned, but it was good to give the colt something to do beyond just scouting - he needed the experience, he’d get bored otherwise, and he talked more when he was bored.

Inside, the apartment was full of stuff. Newspapers packed nearly to the ceiling in one corner, next to a glass cabinet overflowing with porcelain figures, encroached upon by various cloths hung over the head of a chair. With spaces carved out in the kitchen and dining area, it came across as only half-lived-in, in the way so many hoarders’ homes were, though this would be a mild example. Fine line between hoard and collection, I supposed - I was just worried about hidden dangers.

Bullet and Rookie navigated along the ceiling, around corners and the tops of doorways, while Crimson and I followed the trail, which led to the bedroom. Crimson was distracted, still staring towards the left side of the unit - towards 305. I told him to stay focused, and he regained some composure.

Inside the bedroom, the trail ended in a dark pool of blood behind an unkempt bed. Near the pool was a clump of brain matter, fragments of bone, and large, patterned feathers. There was a conspicuous hole in the wall, above the headboard, and above that were two empty hooks, holding empty space. Bloody hoofprints tracked all over the floor.

Crimson and I stopped at the threshold, taking it all in. A griffon had been killed here, and its body had been dragged to the next unit. To what end? Why leave such an obvious trail?

“I don’t like this,” Crimson said, quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed. Then I turned, heading for the door. “Let’s go.”

We arranged ourselves in front of 305. Snipe took point, keeping one of her wall-plates pressed against the door. Quiet and I were behind her, and Crimson behind us, with Bullet and Rookie at our flanks, as usual.

I spoke into the radio, “Stand by for quarantine on three-oh-five.”

The lieutenant’s voice crackled, “Standing by, over.”

I ordered the team to sound off. Every pony replied with a quiet ‘green’ or ‘ready’, except for Crimson. I looked back at him, and he looked past me. It was dangerous to express indecision at this stage. We were going in, and I needed him on-task.

He seemed to understand my frustration, at least, and spoke before me: “I’m committed. I’m ready.”

I put a hoof on his shoulder. “Good.” I turned to my transceiver and told the lieutenant, “CAT team is ready. Seal it in ten seconds.” Then I said, “Breach in five,” to the team.

A click from the radio was the lieutenant’s acknowledgement.

“Four.”

Everypony tensed.

“Three.”

Quiet’s horn glowed. Snipe pushed her wall-plate away, allowing it to tumble down the hall, and faced away from the door.

“Two.”

The chroma around Quiet burst, thickening the air.

I lifted a hoof, and said, “One,” but there was only dead silence.

Snipe lifted her back legs and kicked. Her hooves impacted the metal door on one side, directly over the lock housing, and on the other side, where the hinge would connect on the interior. The door buckled and flew inward. Parts of the surrounding wall blasted out at various angles as the hinge and deadbolt were ripped free, and debris riddled the interior of the unit. None of it made the slightest sound.

Bullet and Rookie were already inside. Snipe took a moment to recover before turning and bounding inside, and Quiet, Crimson and I followed close behind.

I was extremely aware of the threshold between the hallway and the unit’s interior. If I stopped there, I’d be cut in half.

The first thing I noticed inside was that the interior of this unit was already a disaster - walls and floorboards torn up; insulation, debris, and garbage littered the area; cupboards raided and dumped out.

The second thing I noticed was that the blood trail we were following continued through the central room and under the bedroom door. I couldn’t make note of it, as we were still affected by the sound-dampening spell, but that wouldn’t last long. Still, I was proud of our cohesiveness as a unit. We had naturally spread out to cover all corners and blind spots in the limited time we had, and flashlights had painted every surface, giving me a good mental picture of the room. Only a few heartbeats had passed since we entered.

I made a final head count, just to be entirely sure that everypony was through the door, and it seemed we were safe to proceed. I took my hoof off the radio toggle and exhaled deeply.

Soon, ten seconds had passed. This time it was not a whump, but a crack, like the report of a cannon, and the room was plunged into darkness. Through the windows and the open doorway behind us was a colourless wall of black that seemed to soak up any light shone onto it. This was Bedrock’s second barrier, sealing the unit. At this level of separation from the wider world not even light or radio waves could penetrate. Until it dropped, we were on our own.

“Two minutes,” I hissed, to remind everypony, and to test if I could make sound again. The twitching of ears around the room gave me my answer. “See the trail?”

“Here,” Bullet whispered, already following it to the bedroom. Once the rest of the squad reported all-clear, we assembled again on the door.

Rookie twitched and held his nose, whispering, “Smells like shit…”

“Shit and blood,” Snipe replied, sounding like she was smiling. “That’s death for you.”

I looked to Crimson to ask if he could see any more of what was going on in there, but his horn and eyes were glowing again, so I waited a moment while he finished. When he returned to normal, he seemed shaken, and said simply, “One.”

“What?”

He blinked a few times, and shook his head. “There’s one pony alive in there.”

“And the griffin?”

“It’s - I don’t know. The bodies are hard to distinguish.”

I stammered, “Hold on, that doesn’t-” but I stopped when I realized we didn’t have enough time to turn this into a discussion or an argument. I resolved to ask, “How many bodies?”

Crimson thought for a few moments on that. “More than five.”

Rookie muttered, “Oh, Celestia…” and, this time, we agreed with him.

“We’re going in,” I told everypony, hoping to get us all focused again. “Eliminate threats. Clear the unit. Detain the suspect. Leave worrying about the bodies to the detectives.”

With nods and affirmatives all around, we assembled to breach the bedroom door. Snipe knocked the door in, again, though as it was a hollow-core interior door she only needed one leg, placed under the doorknob. It swung open with a bang, and we headed in much the same way.

I called out, “Police! Nopony move!” the instant I was through, before I knew what we were going into. I hoped I’d have time to identify the suspect and issue a more specific command before things got difficult. However, the situation in the bedroom was clarifying as we covered it in light.

The room was, overall, destroyed. The walls, floor, and ceiling had been torn up in many places. A rope or a set of cables hung from an exposed joist in the far corner, and beneath it, behind the relatively undisturbed bed, was an amorphous, multi-coloured pile, buzzing with insects.

I blinked. Those were the bodies.

It was much easier to say we should ignore them than it was to actually ignore them.

“Stay sharp,” I told my team, and tried to apply the advice myself by considering the situation. We knew somepony was alive in here, but the lack of movement or response to our entry made them difficult to locate. I wanted to avoid a close-quarters fight, if possible, but if there was one, I intended to be prepared. “Quiet, Snipe, on me,” I called out. “Crimson, give us a location. Fliers spread out.”

Some ‘aye’s followed, and my orders were carried out - or were being carried out, as Bullet and Rookie didn’t need to be told to get up to the ceiling and get a better view of things. Crimson, meanwhile, pointed us towards the far corner, amongst the bodies. “She’s right there,” he said, “pretending to be unconscious.”

Now that was the work I expected from Crimson. As we went round the bed, I repeated my callout, “Stay where you are! Don’t move! This is the police. You don’t have to make this any-”

A burst of colour, illuminated by my flashlight, interrupted me. As I focused on it, somepony else pointed their own flashlight at it for a moment, and it became almost blinding in the dark room. The burst resolved to a pony - a filly - with a yellow-orange coat and a yellow mane. She was separated from the main group of bodies, laying chin-down on the floor with her hooves crossed over her head.

A noise escaped me as I ran over and sat down at her side. I brushed a hoof down her mane, from the top of her head to where it flowed over her shoulder. Her ponytail had come loose, was matted and sticky; her whole coat was a mess. I would have to give her a bath later.

“Shhh,” I whispered to her. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Sergeant, who is that?” somepony in the distance asked.

I nuzzled into her, muttering, “Sunny. You’re okay. You can come with us. You’re safe now.”

“Sergeant…”

“My Sunshine, please…”

“Sergeant!” Crimson screamed into my ears, making me jump. “I-I’m sorry, it’s not her!”

I looked at him. There were tears in his eyes, and he and the rest of the team looked at me with a mix of horror and confusion.

They were missing something, here. I gently shook my daughter to rouse her, and demanded of them, “What do you mean it’s not her? She’s-”

Sunny Dew’s hooves fell limply away from her head as I moved her, and I saw one eye: wide open, bloodshot, dark. The spark had gone out of her. I turned her over a little more and saw a ragged cut across her neck, one under her shoulder, more and more on her chest and barrel, tearing her undercoat up into ribbons. The other eye was deflated, cut open and leaking. Dark blood covered her mouth and nose, ran down her neck, and pooled on the floor under her. I was sitting in it. It was still warm.

I felt sick. My daughter needed help.

I looked up. Crimson, Quiet, and Snipe were around me. I couldn’t tell where Bullet was, but Rookie had landed on top of a wardrobe. Every one of them was watching in the eerie silence. I wanted to say something to them, to scream at them, but I couldn’t.

Then there was a rustling noise nearby. A shape rose from the floor amidst the bodies. There was feathers, fur, and metal. The griffon’s body slumped over, and a pony remained, a living pony, pointing something at me. A wave of terror passed through my skull when I realized it was a rifle, and I lifted my hooves to shield my face.

Snipe jumped in front of me, unfolding another wall-plate, but the rifle turned. I looked where it pointed. Crimson. I was tackled to the floor, losing sight of him, then-

Bang.

Chaos erupted: “Agh!” “Put the gun down!” “Hold fire!” “What was that?” “I’m hit!” “Put the gun down! Now!” “Who’s hit?” “Sergeant!” “What do we do?” “Guns down!” “What?”

“Quiet!” I shouted into the din, not making much difference. Snipe was on top of me, and the lights were all over the place - I couldn’t see what was happening. “Be quiet, damn you! And get off of me. Everypony listen to me!”

That seemed to calm them down. Snipe stood, and I pushed her away, standing to get a view of the scene.

Quiet stood closest to where the suspect had emerged, and his horn was glowing. A magical shield pressed a cream-coloured mare flat against the floor. Bullet stood next to him, gun at the ready.

“Sir,” Quiet said, “She’s restrained. And her gun is antique, single-shot. There’s no need for this.” He shot Bullet and Snipe a look. Bullet stood her ground, while Snipe seemed to snarl in response, around the trigger-bit.

“She shot Crimson,” Bullet said, calmly, and gestured to my side. I looked over and saw Crimson on the ground, with Rookie peeling away his chestplate.

“Fuck,” I breathed. My breath shook. My whole body shook. “He okay?”

Crimson coughed as he looked to me, pushing Rookie aside. “Yeah. Laminate caught it. Broke ribs for sure, but I’ll live. Aah…” He leaned back down with a grimace. “I’m sorry, about…” He trailed off, giving a pained look.

That was good. I reminded myself that that was good, that none of my team was dead, that we’d caught the pony responsible for all this. But I wondered what would happen now. We would do our jobs, take a killer to jail, and go home, and then, what? What then? What would I tell my wife, my daughter?

I looked down at the lifeless body. It was misshapen, bending in wrong ways as I held it, and when it fell out of my hooves, it hit the floor like a wet sack of flour. This was not my daughter. My daughter did not exist anymore.

Around the room, these filthy corpses, these cops, it was all hollow now. I felt my lips and the frogs of my hooves tingling. A nausea came over me, then faded.

I didn’t breathe. I didn’t need to. I was hardly in this room anymore, hardly in this city. I didn’t feel anything.

Except…

I looked at the captured pony, under Quiet’s spell. A friend of the family, a mare I had trusted, a carer of Sunny Dew on occasion. The killer of my daughter. Daffodil.

The gun on my shoulder crackled to life as I took the trigger-bit in my mouth. “Hey, wait-” somepony shouted, but I was already biting.

I’d studied and practiced with this weapon; the process was clear to me. A bolt of magical energy materialized at the muzzle of the cast-rifle, coinciding with a chemical explosion at the breech, and a small, vitreous slug flew down the barrel, directing the bolt towards its target. Quiet’s shield would have stopped the slug alone. It shattered instead, and the residual energy threw Daffodil across the room. She hit the far wall, and sprawled upside down against it.

“Sir, what the fuck!?” Rookie shouted. “She was already captured!”

“Shut up,” I said, calmly, and began marching towards Daffodil. “Just shut up. I trusted you. Do you understand?”

“Sergeant, you’re not making sense,” Quiet said as I passed him.

Crimson struggled to speak, but I heard him say, “I’ve never heard him scream like that.”

Scream?

“But I didn’t…”

I looked back at them. They were all staring at me. I had to turn away, focus on the one thing that mattered, that made sense, but Daffodil also stared at me in a way that confused me. She was wheezing, covered in blood, appeared stuck in this unnatural position, but her expression was perfectly neutral. Almost content.

“Why did you kill them,” I said. It didn’t quite come out as a question.

She didn’t react at all.

I repeated, desperate for an answer, “Why did you kill them, Daffodil?”

Another moment passed with no response. She just stared up at me. She hadn’t even blinked.

Quiet suggested behind me, “Sergeant, we should just wait until the barrier lifts.”

I reared up and slammed my front hooves into the floor right in front of her face, and demanded, “Why, damn you!? Why her!?”

She just smiled, at first - I had half a mind to kick her teeth in - but then she moved a foreleg away from the wall and let it slump onto the floor, pointing away from her. “Look there,” she whispered. “Your answer.”

It pained me, but I looked. She pointed towards the pile of bodies by the wall, but in front of it was a hole in the floorboards emanating a faint, flickering light. It was nothing compared to the light of our flashlights, but noticeable in the pitch black. “What is that, a flame?” I asked absently.

Daffodil said nothing.

Rookie wondered, “Did you say flame? There’s a fire in here?”

Snipe quickly said, “Not a problem. Time’s almost up.”

“Agreed,” Quiet said.

“Why should I care?” I asked her. “Why shouldn’t I just-”

Something about Daffodil’s face interrupted me. She was looking through me. Her breathing was ragged. Blood trickled down her neck to her chin.

No point.

I left Daffodil to Quiet, and approached the hole. None of the others could see it from where they were standing, except for Quiet, and he was focusing on Daffodil. I trusted he would restrain her again if she started moving, and I moved closer, hoping to aim my light down the hole to see what was in there.

That wasn’t necessary: something climbed out of the hole before I could get a good look into it. It seemed at first like a length of barbed wire knotted at one end, but then the knot loosened, unfolded, and began to emit its own red light, brightening even against the glare of my flashlight.

It was then that I realized it wasn’t a knot, but a bulb, which had bloomed into a glowing flower.

Then something changed.

I saw myself, and the room, through a new set of eyes. There were threats all around me, but, at the same time, opportunities.

I looked at Quiet, observing part of me. He would be easy to convince. All he needed was a glance in the right direction, and then - opportunity. I looked at Bullet and Snipe. They were a risk, but their guards were down. The same for Rookie.

But Crimson… I’d failed to eliminate him, so he remained the biggest threat of them all. I called to mind all that I knew of him, now: his abilities, his experience, his weaknesses. I could leverage all of this against him. But he was already suspicious of me. The outcome was far from certain.

The barrier would lift in a matter of moments. The continuation of my existence would have to be ensured in the intervening time.

And after that…

There was so much work to do.

Chapter 4 - Twilight Sparkle, Part 1

“You volunteered,” Cere said, dryly. “For this.”

“I did,” I said, watching the clouds go by.

By the sound of him scoffing and shaking his head, it seemed my answer annoyed him. Or he found it humourous. It was difficult to tell. “Well, shit. I’m following orders.”

I looked back at him. “Sorry.”

He shrugged and shook his head, his suit crinkling oddly as he moved. It seemed that was all there was to be said on the matter. My fur felt matted under my own suit, but with my hood down and the cold wind in my mane, I wasn’t too warm.

I went back to watching the clouds. They were passing just below us, a landscape of islands and voids, red and purple in the setting sun. They were wilder than usual, considering how close we were to the city.

“Ten minutes!” a voice called from the front, one of the carriage’s drafts. We were close.

Down below the clouds, forests and fields gave way to small settlements, rail lines, and roads. It was just getting dark enough to see pricks of light moving among them. Most were the orange lights of lamps, especially on the roads and around the sparse buildings, but some were chromatic magelight, and moving in groups. A cluster of hundreds surrounded a serpentine train, its locomotive belching steam at a tiny station, its windows glowing and active. A harsh light at its nose lit up the crowd where they had spilled out onto the tracks: ponies trying to board with what they could carry.

I tried to look closer, to understand the scene below us, but it was too far, and soon passed into the distance. I was left with an impression: the train was West-bound, pointed away from the city. All those little lights down there were trying to escape.

As we kept flying, the settlements below us became denser, and the skies darker, yet there seemed to be fewer lights.

“Five minutes!” the draft called back again.

I thought at around the five minute mark we would have been above the city proper, but our surroundings seemed too dim. But then we passed over a ribbon of water, broken by a long, industrial shape - the bridge. We were over the city! I leaned out of the carriage and looked ahead to the island, and saw the towers scraping against the clouds. Normally gleaming night and day, now they were only visible as shapes against the horizon. The only unnatural light was that of the fires, and lines of smoke rose from them to cut across the hazy skyline.

“Is this really Manehattan?” I asked myself.

“Not anymore,” Cere’s voice made me jump and nearly drop my notebook. He’d leaned over my side of the carriage, following my gaze, but he returned to his seat after my reaction. It was bothersome that I was getting so lost in my own thoughts, but I was nervous, and taking notes helped.

It didn’t take much more writing before I felt a lurch as we descended below the cloud layer, heading for the north end of the city. The draft called out, “Two minutes!” but Cere and I were already preparing, putting everything into our saddlebags, and zipping our hoods up.

The suit, once fully-sealed, was stifling but reassuring. Very much like armour. It was charmed to maintain its own air supply and resist puncture better than laminated fabric, while the all-around visor gave me an almost unrestricted view. Still, I could feel my breath bounce back into my face every time I exhaled.

The first thing we were supposed to do after sealing our suits was test the lockout system. I spoke my keyword, “Friendship,” and the whole world was cut out in an instant. My visor became pitch-black, letting not even a sliver of light through; the only sounds I could hear were my breathing and my heartbeat, oddly distant; and even the buffeting from the wind was lessened, smoothed over, a strange and sickening feeling. I spoke the second word, “Unlock,” and the whole world returned to me, relatively loud and bright and harsh.

Cere glanced at me before triggering his own lockout. He said, “Okay, -” and I thought I heard the beginning of his keyword, but when his visor went dark it was as if the sound was snatched out of my ears. An odd experience from both sides.

After that, we double-checked the two-way radio system. He read a series of words on a small card, and I repeated them: “Gate. Tiny. Appleloosa. Change. Seven.” - and so on, ensuring we could read each other loud and clear.

My attention gradually turned back to the city, as my eyes adjusted to twilight. Aside from the unlit street lamps and storefronts, I noticed wagons, carriages, and motor-cars sitting in the streets - some were parked in orderly fashion, others seemed abandoned in random places. A row of skinny carriages laid over each other like toppled dominos. The burnt wreckage of a dozen vehicles clotted an intersection. In another corner, a runabout had embedded itself in a fire hydrant, and the leaking water ran across the road and collected in the tracks of an unmoving tram.

“Hey.”

I paused. Something bothered me about the water, but I couldn’t quite place it. The unfinished thoughts were underlined in my notes:

Running water. Something wrong with that? …

“Hey, Twilight!”

Cere surprised me again, but then, so did the dark form of a building passing by within reach.

“We’re almost down,” he said, his voice low, bordering on a whisper. “Get your shit in gear.”

I rushed to put away my notes and sling my saddlebags over my back. My first idea at a response was to point out that we didn’t need to keep our voices down, but my inner critic recognized that as unhelpful. I settled on a silent nod, even though he wasn’t looking at me.

Our carriage descended and slid to a stop over an empty road, and we hopped out the instant it scraped the ground. I stumbled a little after landing, as my suit’s shoes settled themselves onto my hooves. In the time it took to steady myself, the carriage kept moving. I imagined the invisible threshold of the concealment spell passing through my body, and turned to look quickly, hoping I’d see it.

I did. The carriage disappeared out of my left eye a fraction of a second before it disappeared out of my right eye. And then, just down the road, a faint column of steam rising out of a sewer grate momentarily disappeared, then re-emerged, turbulent. How fascinating!

Cere was also looking in the direction of the now-concealed carriage. I asked him, “Did you see it?”

“See what?” he asked. “Over.”

“The carriage disappearing.”

He looked back in that direction again, then shook his head. He was sighing when he opened the channel again. “...We should stay on task. You recognize the street? Over.”

I hadn’t thought of orienting myself, so I scanned the area. We were in a neighbourhood of staggered row-houses, taller than the average building in Ponyville or even Greater Canterlot - by my estimation - but still squat and low enough that I could see darkened towers to the south. To the north, I could just barely make out the hilly mid-rises of our destination - the Heights.

The name and number of the street didn’t come to me, not exactly, but I could place myself on a mental map confidently. I answered, “Five or six streets south, two streets east of the rendezvous.”

Cere considered that for a moment, then: “Okay. Then let’s start the sweep, this way,” he pointed east with a hoof. “Over.”

“Sure. How about I take this side, you take that side?”

“Sure,” he agreed. Then added, “...Over.”

An hour had passed, we were barely down the first street, and we were already passing our second fire. A house-row laid half-collapsed on Cere’s side of the street, smoldering, with wisps of smoke carrying out of the windows of the next house in line. Wherever the houses had collapsed, the blackened skeletons of trees lined the sidewalk.

There was no use checking the rubble for survivors, but we double-checked the front and back doors of all the remaining houses on that row, just to make sure nopony was boarded up somewhere that might catch fire an hour from now. Of course, we didn’t find anypony.

What intrigued me about the scene wasn’t anything about the fire, per se - it was more about the design of the buildings. The firewalls between adjacent units were disconnected, and separated as each collapsed, revealing a rough sub-wall of structural bricks, grout, and wood beams, not fit to endure the elements. When one fell, the rest were sure to follow in a few years. Considering these must have gone up the better part of a century ago, it was truly a shame.

I chuckled to myself. Where had my perspective gone? I was standing in the empty shell of one of the great cities of the world, the site of an anomalous disaster that, by the last estimates I’d heard, must have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of ponies, and here I was lamenting the fate of some things.

But… That was pessimism, leading to despair. I couldn’t let myself go back there.

“It’s a shame we can’t extinguish the fires,” I spoke into the channel.

Cere was still checking some doors around the corner, but he answered, “No magic, Twilight. Over.”

“Wouldn’t have to be magic,” I supposed, as I levitated my notebook and quill back into my saddebags, before he returned. “We could find a hose, open a hydrant just a bit, and just leave it running through the basement window of this smoker here. Might save the rest of the row.”

He made his way back from the rear doors, and I could see just enough of his eyes to note that they rolled. “You know why we’re not doing that.” Just then, he lifted a hoof to check his suit’s embedded timepiece. “Over.”

“I know,” I sighed. “Can’t leave any evidence we were here.”

He spoke, but I didn’t hear it. I cocked my head as he waited for a response, then he gestured to his fetlock - where the timepiece was - and then pointed at his ear and rotated his hoof - indicating the rotation of a dial. Right.

I checked the time, and adjusted the transceiver to the frequency we were using for this time slot.

Cere’s voice crackled in, “-eck, radio check, over.”

“I can hear you. Sorry, the frequencies keep slipping my mind. Not something I’m-”

Just then I heard the double-click that indicated Cere had forced control of the channel. He said, roughly, “Stop talking about this shit!” I apologized again quickly, but he didn’t hear it. “You clearly know the rules, so it is very frustrating to hear you constantly ignoring them. Over.”

I forced myself to think before just speaking again. I agreed, fundamentally, with his point. It was all a matter of informational hygiene. Nopony could know we were here now, and nopony could know we had been here, once we were gone. Part of that was leaving nothing behind. Another part of that was obfuscating our communications, and not discussing that obfuscation.

“I understand,” I started, and I left the channel open as I thought, mainly so Cere wouldn’t call me out for not saying ‘over’. The desire not to continue upsetting my partner for the next five hours fought with the desire to speak honestly, until I came to a decision. “But.”

Cere’s eyes snapped to me, but he didn’t take over the channel again. That helped.

“But our comms are already encrypted. These things only have…” - I avoided saying a number, for his sake - “... so many meters’ range. If anypony was listening in, they would have had to follow us, and we’ve been paying attention, haven’t we? We would have noticed. There’s nopony listening.”

Cere stared at me, and I remembered with a flush to open the channel again and say, “Over.”

He spoke immediately, though with less acid than before, “You don’t know that. Over.”

“That’s true, I don’t know,” I agreed, “but I’m not worried. I mean, have you even seen anything here? Anything alive? Over.”

That gave him pause, enough that he stopped and looked around. The front of his visor settled pointing towards a tree with bright orange leaves, one of the few untouched by fire.

“Not plants,” I clarified. “Animals. You know, dogs, cats, birds. Over.”

“No,” he said. “Not one, but I wasn’t looking for animals. No birds is strange, sure, but it’s late in the year. And you don’t normally see cats and dogs around the city, do you? Over.”

I had never lived here, so I wouldn’t know, but that did match with my experience in Canterlot. I voiced my doubts, “No, you wouldn’t. And it is getting to be that time of year, so maybe some of the birds have started migrating. But-”

I scanned the road to find the nearest alley, and trotted towards it.

Cere was behind me. “What do you see? Over.”

I didn’t see anything, but a thought had just occurred. If there was some kind of toxin or harmful magical effect that had killed so many and caused so much chaos, then maybe the birds had died or escaped, too. But… In the alley, I grabbed an over-full trash can and threw it onto the sidewalk, spilling its contents. I kicked a few bags along with it, and, while I was at it, tossed a wooden pallet to the ground.

“What-” Cere began, but he did a double-take as I spread the garbage out in all directions. “What the hell?”

“Rats,” I explained. “Over.”

“What?”

I gestured to the pile, notably lacking in movement. “There are no rats, Cere. No bugs, either, as far as I can tell. There’s nothing here.”

He examined the pile for a moment. “That’s… true. I guess. But, Twilight, what’s the point? Over.”

I lit up my horn and prepared a spell that gave me a sense for living things nearby. I had not used this spell very often, but something very much like it was common as a primer for teleportation, so it felt familiar. I attuned it for animals and gave it as much energy as it could stably handle, and then let it go.

A sphere expanded out from my horn, drawing interwoven beams that filled to create the rough shape of a creature. I felt blinded by Cere’s shape, even though my eyes were closed, and I wasn’t actually seeing anything. But after that, nothing else lit up - not in the alley, not in the street, not in the many houses surrounding us. The sphere expanded for dozens of meters, and then hundreds, before losing pressure and mixing into the static aether. Dark all around.

Nothing alive. Nothing recently dead, even. There was an answer here, but I was missing something. I flipped through my notes, trying to find that page - right. Running water.

I added to it:

Running water. Something wrong with that? …

No life anyw—

Cere suddenly kicked my notebook away, leaving a streak of ink where the quill had just been. He pressed his visor against mine, and said, through teeth, “That was unwise.” Beneath the radio, his voice rumbled through my visor.

I backed up. “There’s nothing here!”

“We know that. That’s why we’re here, that’s-.”

I took over the channel. “I mean there’s no life in the city, none at all! Nothing-”

He took it over again, almost at a scream, “We know that! Be quiet, filly!”

I was quiet. Not because I wanted to let him speak, but because I couldn’t think of anything to say in response. Filly?

I could hear Cere breathing in my ear as he approached and jabbed a hoof into my barrel. His eyes were hard, and he spoke in monotone. “Everypony knows the city is dead, Twilight. I’d prefer if we didn’t end up the same way. But you,” - he jabbed me again - “keep running your mouth about our procedures, about our frequencies, fuck - you even located our evac point!”

At this point, he had gotten himself so worked up that he wasn’t even looking at me anymore. Rather, he paced in front of the alley as he continued, “And, yeah, I get that you’re some kind of unicorn prodigy. You can solve all your problems with magic. But you just sent out a flare for anything that happens to be watching. Shiiit!”

He refocused on me, and seemed to smile, but there was that same hardness in his eyes. It was then that I recognized it as fear. “Assuming we even make it out of here alive, we’ll probably be considered vectors. I would like to see my family again, Twilight! Wouldn’t you? Over!”

It seemed he wanted me to speak. I tried controlling my breathing for a moment.

Some kind of unicorn prodigy.

Running your mouth.

Filly.

I considered informing him that I could easily teleport him a kilometer underground if I wanted to, but, alas. I didn’t know the geology of Manehattan Island well enough to get the depth exactly right. And if it couldn’t be exactly a kilometer, there was really no point to it. That left only diplomacy.

With a final calming breath, I sighed. Cerulean was as afraid as I was, and he was only following orders. I needed to keep that in mind.

I looked down the street, towards the rising moon. “We’re here for the same reasons. We both want to learn more about what happened. Over.”

“Agreed,” Cere said. I glanced at him. He was also looking at the moon. “Let’s move on. Over.”

“But,” I started. He didn’t budge. “I don’t just want to do what we’re told, pick up a few scraps here, a few clues there. I want to blow this wide open.”

That caught his attention. He opened the channel, remained silent for a moment, and then sighed again. “I suppose you’ve got some ideas. Over.”

“Yep!” My notebook floated back to me, and I picked up where I left off. Running water, no life anywhere, right. “Now, where’s the nearest sewer?”

He looked at me with a screwed-up expression. “What?”

“I don’t see a point to this. Over.”

I groaned, though not into the channel. “Just watch it, okay?”

A few seconds passed, and he clicked the channel open for just a moment. Seemed like silent assent - like he was telling me to just get on with it, in so many words.

I reached over and flushed the toilet. Then I waited for the cistern to fill, and flushed it again, then waited and flushed a third time. “Done. You should see it. Over.”

I was almost out of the house when he replied, “Got it. Not the one I expected. Over.”

Emerging from the door we’d kicked in, I spotted Cere down the street, standing next to a grate in the road, looking back to me. A tiny amount of steam rose out of the grate, dissipating just above the neighbourhood roofline.

“Fascinating,” I commented. My mind was elsewhere - where else had we seen a steaming grate? At the landing site. In front of the school. Near the first fire. Was there a pattern?

I blinked, refocusing. “Let’s head North, see if we see anything. Over.”

“Fine,” Cere said, shaking his head as he followed me. “We should be heading North anyway. But I would appreciate some explanation, at some point. Over.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just hard to explain.”

Surprisingly, he let that be. It was unsatisfying - wasn’t he curious? Didn’t he want to understand? Maybe he was giving me time to think of an explanation. Or… I hadn’t said ‘Over’, and he was taking it personally again.

It didn’t seem right to just conclude the thought and be done with it, so I gave it my best shot: “Okay. What happens when you flush the toilet? Over.”

Cere stopped walking for a moment. I stopped to let him catch up, and in that time he ventured, “Shit goes down the pipes. Over.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

I sighed, even though I knew I wasn’t doing as good a job of this as I wished. “Just follow me on this. When you flush the toilet, waste goes out, water goes in. The waste goes into the sewer, and when it’s cold out, it can create steam, right?”

“Like we just saw,” he said. “I’m following. Over.”

We’d reached the next intersection, and I looked up and down the avenue both ways. No steam. We continued north, up to the next street we would have been searching.

“So,” I continued, “the water entering the toilet has to come from somewhere, before it gets to the cistern.”

“Water mains, I guess. Over.”

“Exactly. The city pumps water through the mains. Pressurized. In a city this big, it’s probably distributed from a few centralized pumping stations. I didn’t think to check the maps for it before we sortied, but I suspect the stations are mostly in the south end of the city, where it was all first developed. I’d say that-”

Cere nudged me, and opened the channel when I let it close. “You’re losing me, over.”

I felt my ears flick back. I’d been rambling. I looked around, realizing we’d crossed into the next street, and spotted what we’d been looking for. Thick steam poured out of a grate only a short trot away.

Cere was still right next to me as I headed there, and glanced over with an eyebrow raised.

“Right, sorry.” Trying to explain my thoughts with speech made me feel like an idiot - writing had always been so much easier. “The water is still pressurized, but the city is dark. You saw how dark it was on the way in, right?”

“Eerily dark,” he agreed. “Over.”

“Yes! There’s no power anywhere. But there’s still water! Uh, over.”

I looked over at Cere, and he looked over at me, and we kept going. I could tell I hadn’t captured his imagination, the way this all had captured mine, but he was still along with me for the journey. That was enough. Right?

We arrived at the grate. It was only as wide as a pony, but as long as a carriage. The steam was thick and opaque, and rose from it quickly. I stuck a hoof into the column and felt some warmth, saw moisture bead off the skin of my suit.

“It’s hot,” I mumbled. Then I remembered I hadn’t even opened the channel. “It’s hot,” I told Cere. “That’s really weird.”

Cere looked around the grate, and, picking a corner, let a rear hoof fall down onto it. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing until his second attempt, where he performed a strange sort of bucking motion, aiming down. The impact sounded like an old-fashioned gunshot. The grate, amazingly, flipped up a few centimeters on the opposite side, before settling back to its original position with a thump.

That was more effect than I would have imagined - the thing could have easily weighed a ton. Perhaps two experienced earth ponies, working together in rhythm, could put enough energy into these grates to lift them?

“Impressive,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Whatever. Use your magic. Over.”

It crossed my mind, as I was lighting my horn and building the chroma around the bars of the grate, that I could make it seem like lifting it took a lot of effort. But Cere would probably, correctly, tell that I was faking it. So I didn’t.

He watched as the massive grate shifted in place, then elevated, and swung through the air before setting itself down on the adjacent sidewalk. As my chroma dissipated, he chuckled into the channel. “Okay, well, have fun down there. Over.”

I peered down into the vent pit, knowing I’d never be able to see through the steam, yet I felt in my stomach that it was a long way down. A cloudwalking spell came to mind, but that was too complicated. And there was a surface down there - I just needed to reach it without breaking something. I lit my horn again as I stepped off the edge, felt my chroma surround me and penetrate my suit, slowly, then stick to my skin and hair. I was only falling for an instant before the featherfall spell took hold, and I descended lightly the rest of the way.

It was almost too slow, but I only thought that because I was essentially blind for the first few seconds. Gradually the air thinned as I got lower, and I could see a dim reflection in the water and wet concrete below. It was still hot, and I could feel the moisture stick to my suit, but it seemed the clouds were only forming on contact with cool, dry air above.

A large channel ran along the entire length of the cavity, and continued into a tunnel in either direction, but the sewer was fed by other openings higher up on the walls, as well. I wondered - where was the heat coming from?

Cere spoke into my ear, “What if they have generators? Over.”

I wasn’t following. “What?”

“I’m saying, the reason there’s water pressure here - the pump-houses could be getting power from their own generators. Over.”

“Maybe. But then wouldn’t we have seen something? Lights, smoke?”

“...Right. It’s weak. Just thought you’d appreciate the effort. Over.”

That made me smile. “I do. Over.”

At the bottom, I let my hooves sink into the water, feeling unusually buoyant, and the featherfall effect gradually dissipated. I was thankful that the water only went up to my knees as I levitated my notebook out of my still-dry saddlebags and tore a page out from the back. Separating it into thin strips, I held each in front of an opening in the vent cavity, hoping to determine a draft. Maybe I could have remembered or brute-forced a spell that visualized air currents, but this was just simpler.

There - a strip flew back, caught in the wind coming out of the main sewer channel, upstream. I tried to visualize it. West? North-west? Where did that lead?

“Cere, I’ve got a strong draft. I think it’s coming from -” I looked up, pained that I still couldn’t see through the clouds of steam. Then I remembered I could evoke a compass with a thought. “West-north-west. Over.”

A pause. “Roger. That’s down the street. Over.”

Yes, that made sense. But then, that could lead anywhere. We couldn’t just wander around the city hoping to map out the sewers from ground level - we needed a direct approach. But walking through the sewer channels wasn’t a good idea either.

I was conscious of the risks, of Cere's warning that it made us a target, but magic seemed like the best available solution. I called upon the life-sense spell, re-imagined it so that it would trace the empty space within the sewer system, and let it go.

The burst of chroma only illuminated a few meters down the channel, but seconds later the sensory sphere expanded past that, like an inflating balloon pressing up against the wall of the tunnel, ignoring the water and the air. I more felt the geography of the system than saw it. A large vent cavity - that’s where I was. Half a dozen thin openings up above - those I ignored. A channel, running east to west - that I focused on. It ran for a kilometer or more, stretching out and just barely dimming, before finding the second vent cavity and expanding through that, where it regained the strength to continue further. That all seemed fine, but there was an anomaly - a crack in the channel. The spell fizzled out beyond the crack, as if it had reached open air or water with no surfaces to cling to.

I killed the still-expanding sphere and cleared my mind. Trying again with something that would expand more selectively, but give me a better sense of the detail and composition of the surfaces it touched, I sent it heading west. This time it expanded past the concrete cavities and pipes, into the crack, and found another tunnel with walls that felt - or smelled? - like wood, but in the shape of a natural, wormy cavern. It extended north some kilometers, widening and collecting branches as it went, but the spell faded out before I could tell its destination.

That was strange.

“Cere, there’s something down here. Something under the city. Over.”

I listened to static.

“Come in, Cere?”

More static came, but it faded into a voice: “... ing, in the sky. Strange lights. Shit. You copy?”

“I copy. What’s going on?”

There was a rattling sound, like Cere was running, and bursts of static washed over his voice. “There’s something … … sky. All kinds of colours. I don’t thi… …al. Over.”

That was also strange, and worrying, but I felt I was close to something down here. I couldn’t just leave.

“Cere, find some shelter - some place to hide,” I told him. “Repeat, find some place to hide. I’ll be up soon. Over.”

Only static returned to me. I told myself that that was only because of the distance and earth between us, or whatever magical effects were causing the lights, and tried to refocus on my purpose.

I prepared another modification of the sensory spell. This time I made sure it was directed in a tight cone, and forced it to originate from the junction between the sewer channel and the cave network. I set it off and felt the network expand in my mind. Everything nearby collected into a single branch, coming from the north, reminding me of a root system. But it couldn’t have been - it was too large, and the spell fell out of range before I could make out the source.

Was I taking the wrong approach? I’d designed all these spells to trace tunnels and cavities, ignoring the materials within, but maybe they weren’t empty. I started again from the life-detection spell and cast it again, but I saw nothing, except for Cere, laying flat somewhere. I would have worried about his position if the spell didn’t tell me exactly how alive he was, and there were no problems there.

Still getting nowhere. I considered other combinations of spells, other things to focus on, that might tell me what these caves meant, but I had to get out of here soon, at least to check on Cere, and-

No trees. The thought hit me before I even knew why. Earlier, I had balanced the life-detection spell to exclude plants, meaning even though it illuminated Cere, it didn’t illuminate any of the trees along the street. There was no reason to keep that exclusion now, since there shouldn’t have been any plants in the cave network anyway, and… It did remind me of roots.

I cast it, and my heart sank. Cere and the trees above were microscopic in comparison. The roots lit up for kilometers in every direction. Even with all the power I could muster, I was no closer to seeing their source. And, sticking up from the nearest branch, a shoot was growing right under Cere’s hooves. Threatening to burst through the street.

I teleported up to the street immediately, and arrived with my face nearly touching a motor-carriage. Cere was prone beneath it. With telekinesis I grabbed the carriage and lifted it straight up, as high as I could, and shouted into the radio, “Lockout! Now!”

Cere’s eyes, glancing up at me, were only visible for a moment before his mouth moved, and his visor went dark. A crack appeared in the pavement right next to him, and a dark, thorny vine poked out of it, reaching for him.

I prepared to teleport again, finding the highest point in range, touched Cere’s back with a hoof, let go of the carriage, and spoke, “Friendship,” just as the spell went off.

Blood pumped in my ears. I was breathing hard. My whole body shook, causing a noisy crinkling throughout the suit.

It had been a mistake to use so much magic so quickly. We were still hours away from an evac. I needed to conserve what I had left.

Cere sat on the roof next to me, looking out at the skyline, now choking with smoke. The strange lights had slowed, but the fires, especially the fire I’d started by dropping that carriage, were growing. We could barely see the other skyscrapers anymore.

“Talk to me,” Cere said. “What’s causing those lights? And what did you find down there?”

I tried to slow my breathing enough that I could talk sensibly. “Lights aren’t… related. They’re chromatic.”

He cocked his head, and looked out in the direction we’d last seen them in. I was able to take several deep, controlled breaths before we saw the next one - a sequence of white-green bursts, mostly at ground level, casting harsh shadows against the surrounding buildings. But it was mostly obscured by the smoke.

“Oh,” he spoke, through some fading static - an after-effect. “You mean magic.”

I nodded, annoyed at myself. I’d forgotten that most ponies didn’t have any education in magic. “Yeah. I think those bursts are from other ponies on the ground.”

“Other search teams.”

I nodded, breathing.

He went quiet. I could imagine his conclusion well enough, if it was the same as mine: the other search teams had been attacked, like us, and were defending themselves.

That naturally brought Cere to his other question. “What did you see?”

I searched for the correct word to describe it. “Some… enormous root system. Larger than anything I’ve ever seen.”

The stallion turned to look at me, but didn’t comment. He wanted me to keep going. As if I could explain it!

I breathed some more, and tried. “I don’t know exactly how big it is. From what I saw, I’d guess it’s grown under the entire north end of the city. So, hundreds of square kilometers, bare minimum.”

Cere turned around to look North. “The first reports came out of the north end.”

“Makes sense,” I said, “And the roots were more aware than they should have been. A vine was coming up from the ground, about to ambush you.”

“Thanks.”

It took me a second to figure out what he meant, but then I just shrugged.

“So… what, it eats ponies?” he wondered. “It grew under the city, and ate everypony it could find? It tried to eat us, and it’s trying to eat them?” He gestured south, in the direction of the lights.

I shrugged again. “I guess. Carnivorous plants are nothing special.”

Stupid. That wasn’t the whole answer, couldn’t have been. It explained the water, the dead zone, and the individual attacks, but it just didn’t seem possible for a mere plant to take over a city like Manehattan. And for it to do so without anypony knowing, without even the slightest rumour of vines coming up from the ground? Without any pegasi or griffons escaping with eyewitness accounts?

We were missing something. I wanted to say as much, but I didn’t think I could put it to words with a steady voice.

Cere kept looking North, and asked, “Did you see any of the… you know, the plant part?”

“The plant part?”

“The plant part. You know, the part above ground, the green part with leaves. I mean, if it’s an enormous plant, it can’t just be roots, right?”

I shook my head. “You’re assuming it works like a normal plant. Maybe it is just roots, like a fungus. I don’t know.”

“Well, that would be even worse.”

That made me snort. “Hah, yeah. I guess that would be worse.”

It didn’t quite match with what I’d seen, but I imagined an interconnected mass of living tissue, spreading out underground from all angles without any central point. If that was what it was - what could we do? It was already so large and so deep that nothing conventional could hope to destroy it, and a fear settled into my heart: maybe nothing magical could destroy it, either.

Well. No. There was something. I just didn’t like to think about it.

I was considering what I’d say to Cere, how I’d try to explain things, when there was a crunch in the air - the sound of a hoof stepping on gravel. Cere and I whipped around - another pony stood on the roof.

She was a unicorn with short hair and cold, unexpressive eyes. It was too dark to get an idea of her colouring, and I couldn’t see her cutie mark from my angle. But she looked unkempt, dirty, and tired.

A survivor?

How had she gotten onto the roof without us noticing? Had she always been up here?

I was frozen, but Cere stepped forward, in front of me. He said, firmly, loud enough to be heard outside of his suit, “Stay back.”

The unicorn didn’t react.

Cere went on, paraphrasing the words we’d memorized: “We can’t take you with us. But we can give you some food and supplies. If you’ve found a safe place, stay there and wait for rescue.”

The words seemed so hollow, now that we knew more about what we were dealing with. Cere had still spoken them with conviction. But it provoked no reaction.

Crunch. Another hoof-step on the roof, this time to the unicorn’s left. A pegasus wearing a dark outfit, bulky with armour. Where had this one come from?

Crunch. To the unicorn’s right. An earth pony, steam rising from her breath.

We hadn’t just noticed them now. No, they were appearing. Dropping out of concealment. This was a coordinated group. A threat.

I barely had a second to think of my options before the unicorn’s horn shone a brilliant orange, I heard - felt - the sound of a crack of thunder, and my perspective changed. The air left my lungs. My left foreleg bent in the wrong direction, my stomach lurched, the horizon spun out of control, my hooves flailed with no ground beneath them. Air rushed past me.

I’d been shot off the roof. How had she cast a spell like that so quickly? It must have - no, that didn’t matter!

I reached out with my magic, found Cere where I’d left him. All three of the strangers were converging on him. I couldn’t teleport us both at the same time - we were too far apart. I settled on getting him out of there first. He appeared below, on a lower roof.

I could cast the spell again in a heartbeat, but I’d already fallen past him, and the ground was approaching quickly. There was no time to properly adjust for my velocity, I just-

“-hah!” My breath left me. I teleported onto the roof, and briefly flew upwards, before falling back down and landing on my injured side, a saddlebag pressing awkwardly into my shoulder. That uncomfortable, wrong feeling in my left foreleg bloomed into agony, and the pain gurgled out of me. It took a moment before I remembered to breathe, but when I did, it only hurt more.

“You hurt?” Cere asked, through the radio, as he came to my side. The answer was obvious. “Shit. We need to-”

Crunch.

“-go.” Cere looked behind me, at whatever pony had just appeared. I wasn’t waiting this time. Reaching out towards Cere with a back hoof, to eliminate any distance penalty and give us the most range, I teleported us in a random direction.

We landed, softly this time, in another part of the city. Asphalt was beneath us. It didn’t matter - I was already casting the teleport spell. Damn the reserves, we needed to leave.

This time I had a direction in mind: West, towards the bridge. The topology was already coming to mind, selecting a safe spot for us.

The destination was locked in, and we had already disappeared, when something pulled. It was a nauseating feeling. Like being forced through a kinked hose. I’d only experienced it once before, during an experiment. Somepony was intercepting us. In the midst of the process, I could hardly think, let alone defend my spell, and it bent to the interceptor’s will.

We appeared somewhere else. My mind swam, but I blinked through it. Grass. Trees. Not a bridge, but a park, with a pony in the distance. The chroma around their horn was just dissolving. They were the interceptor - I knew it.

The ground near me split open, and a vine emerged, angling a dark red bulb towards me. Cere had the awareness and strength to throw me away from it, but I wasn’t in any state to catch myself. The pain seared. Again.

I heard a struggle, some panicked breaths, crinkling of a sealed suit, and, in the midst of it all, I felt something change. It was subtle, like the hair on my neck standing up. I didn’t know what to make of it, and it wasn’t helping my mental state.

More ponies landed out of sight, coming in on hooves and wings. They, and the unicorn who had intercepted us, were watching as Cere fought with the vine and I suffered from my injured leg and pounding headache.

They weren’t survivors, I took it. Or at least not just survivors. They were working with the plant-thing, serving the same aims. Maybe they were trying to feed it or keep others from discovering it. Maybe they had done this for the last three days.

That didn’t make sense. They would need hundreds, if not thousands, of collaborators, to do this to a city of this size. What end would attract so many?

Maybe they were changelings, supporting an experimental bio-weapon.

That didn’t make sense either, but it was something I could disprove, at least. I could modify the life-detect spell to reveal illusions and sympathetic charms. The pounding in my skull objected, but I forced through it, made the alterations, and cast it.

There was a web of illusions radiating out from every pony around me, as well as from the vine. I didn’t understand the result, at first, and feared that I’d wasted precious energy on something worthless. But then I started to see it. The webs changed as the ponies moved, acted, thought, all in sync with the plant.

Not illusions.

Thralls.

The web had just reached Cere at the moment he stopped struggling. He’d been thralled, too, and he began to step towards me, dragging the vine with him.

He started saying, “Twilight, it’s-”

“Friendship,” I muttered, and I was cut off from the world. The lockout system would give me some resistance to whatever magic was involved here. Not enough, surely, but some.

What options were left? I couldn’t teleport - the unicorn would intercept it.

My head pounded. I could barely think straight.

Options! Something that granted mobility, like wings. Some way to hide from the vines, from the thralls, like the concealment spell.

But then, they had concealment spells. They could probably dispel concealments too. And wings were too complex. I could do it, but I couldn’t keep brute-forcing my way into things. I needed to draw on what I had already prepared, at least as a starting point.

A weight pressed against me. It was distant, but real. The plant-thralls were doing something to me - my time in the dark was running out.

Life-detection. Teleportation. Featherfall. Imprinting. Airfont.

I could suck the air out of their lungs, or stamp ink over their eyes, or - no. Too slow, too complex, even if it did anything.

Telekinesis. Light. Heat.

Simpler. Better. But where could I go from there?

The pounding in my head was made worse by a sudden pounding on my head. There was a second impact before I could properly react, and my visor exploded into my face. The lockout spell disturbed, I saw Cere over me, following through to stamp down and grind the shards of glass deeper.

I inhaled at the shock, closed my eyes, curled my legs towards my body. My left leg was still bad in a way I didn’t fully understand. My left eye felt warm with blood. Other cuts stung, feeling cold in the open air.

It sunk in, then, that I was really, really hurt. This realization only made the pain harder to ignore.

“Let’s not prolong this,” Cere said, through the radio. “Open your eyes, Twilight.”

I almost did as he said. That was Cere’s voice. He sounded normal. Calm, if a little frustrated. Familiar. A voice I could trust.

I didn’t. He was a thrall. I screwed my eyes shut even harder, squeezing through the pain.

Why did he - it, the plant - want me to open my eyes?

I felt a tingling over my right eyelid. My good eye. Somepony was trying to force it open.

I heard the vines growing in my direction, towards my face. I saw a faint red light through my eyelids, like the rising sun.

“Just-”

Cere jumped on my stomach. I gasped and threw up in a spasm, then broke into a coughing fit to clear the acid out of my throat and nose.

“-open!” he shouted.

I kept them closed. It came together - the plant took control of ponies through the eyes. Knowing that didn’t help me fight them, but it helped.

A reduction of options.

To survive this, I just needed to keep my eyes closed.

The spell was easy enough. A burst of light, as bright and fast as I could make it. I felt some pride as it erupted, and there was so much energy in it that it even made a cracking sound, like lightning. It wasn’t enough to deafen them, but certainly to blind them. Maybe permanently.

Even with Cere between me and the burst, with my eyes screwed shut, I felt blinded. Good.

There were no shouts of pain or alarm, as I had hoped, but I had to assume it had worked, and moved on to the next spell. Telekinesis as a starting point, but with instantaneous force and limited insight. Eliminating the biggest threats.

I hit Cere, and he was sent tumbling through the grass. With what little control I had, I tried not to send him into a tree. I was not so merciful with the interceptor unicorn, who I remembered was behind me, in the seven o’ clock position. After a brief roll, their head struck something. Hard. Unconscious at best.

Some others were converging on me, but now there was nothing keeping me in the park. Hoping for solid, unpopulated ground, I teleported West.

The range this time felt less than normal. It could have been the migraine boiling in my skull, from using so much complex magic in such a short time; or it could have been the distraction of my burning lungs or screwed-up leg or lacerated eye. That would have been manageable.

I realized the true cause when I reappeared on an empty road, and tried teleporting West again: there was a barrier in the way.

Not just here, on the road. The invisible line bisected the buildings around me, and the ones in the next street over, and so on. With insight from the teleportation primer, I could trace the lines all the way around until they met behind me. I was still somewhat blinded in my good eye, but I could see the other side, dimly, in black and white. Nothing magical could reach across the line, and nothing could get over or under, either.

No way out.

“Nuuuhhh,” I moaned, hearing others approaching.

If I was thinking straight, had more energy, I could have figured out a way around it, or a way through it. Find and disrupt the source. Invert the field. Something.

But I was strung out. In pain. Exhausted.

The others were surrounding me.

I almost thought they would kill me, now, to spare themselves the trouble.

But then, whump. Total darkness.

It almost made me laugh. What now? Why bother?

I tested it - the same kind of barrier as before, but more. All the way up, all the way down, but only a meter or so from edge to edge, just enough that I could feel it against my head and back legs. I realized with annoyance that, when it formed, it had sliced through my mane, narrowly avoiding my horn.

That - the futility of it - actually made me laugh, and though it hurt, it brought me some welcome clarity. I suddenly had time to think, but I was under no illusion that that time would last.

Why had they - the plant-thing and its thralls - trapped me in a dark tube? The first thing that came to mind was suffocation, but that would be slow, especially with the amount of air they’d given me. The second idea made more sense: they wanted to prepare something on the outside. Some enthrallment that I couldn’t possibly avoid, or just some way to kill me without too much collateral damage.

Well, I wouldn’t give them the chance.

It pained me to even consider the magic cost, the consequences of scraping that metaphorical barrel, but I set that aside and began preparing something I’d only before considered as a joke.

The barrier went all the way up, and all the way down.

A kilometer was a bit much, practically speaking. But 200 meters?

I needed to create a pony-sized cavity first, then a standard airfont so I could breathe. I felt the ground rise beneath me as I worked, felt my ears pop as the pressure changed. And then, with a thought, I was down there.

My body resettled in the round cavity, my left leg banging against the hot stone wall. Pain. Pain for days. I laughed at that, too, and my eyes watered.

Somehow, my saddlebags were still with me, along with most of their contents. I set a light, pulled out my notebook, a map of Manehattan, and a hoof-sized spell reference book.

The words on the pages were blurry nonsense. My light was dim, my telekinetic grasp shaky. Every application of magic might as well have been a hole burning its way through my skull, at this point. Every breath sent a fire through my left side.

But I kept going.

I had to.

Sooner or later, the plant-thralls would lift the barrier - and I would be ready.

Chapter 5 - Twilight Sparkle, Part 2

I jumped, and opened my eye.

Darkness. Damp, hot air. The walls closed in around me, forcing me into a fetal position. The sound of my breath echoed in my ears, pain radiated from my left side. I couldn’t remember how I got here.

Was I…?

No, it was coming back. I restarted the magelight, gathered my things. Notebook, map, spell guide. Right.

I was underground. The plant-thing hadn’t lifted the barrier yet.

The map showed the south side of the city. I’d marked out the main highways, highlighted elevation markers and coordinates, and referenced those in my notebook to my current position: two hundred meters beneath an intersection on the west side.

The spell guide was open to a page on transportation, specifically planar portals. Flat tunnels connecting one location to another. It was primitive stuff compared to modern spells - for one, there was no priming stage. Casters were expected to visualize their exact destination instantaneously, and there were even references to special maps and slide-rules.

I didn’t have any of that. I could do trigonometry in my head on a good day, though, and while this wasn’t exactly a good day, the proportions still came easily.

Old-fashioned as it might have been, there were some reasons why I picked a portal spell: it was quiet, both literally and in terms of its energy signal; it was long-ranged, relative to teleportation; and it was almost impossible to intercept. I needed every advantage I could get if I wanted to get out of here.

Now I just had to pick a site, crunch the numbers, and wait.

The ideal site was in the south-west end of the city - close to the bridge, and far from the north end, on the assumption that that was where the plant-thing had originated. I also needed a motor-carriage once I arrived. I couldn’t find one with the map, obviously, but wealthier areas with a lot of detached homes seemed like a good place to look. I was, again, assuming that there were still any functional motor-carriages left to find.

I had pared the sites down to a few neighbourhoods. It was hard to choose between them. At some point I had taken to counting buildings within a 500-meter radius of the clearest point, as a way to rank them, decide which one I preferred, but that was tedious work.

Instead, I did the math for all of them, keeping the numbers around for when they were needed. I took pains to rewrite the final values, when I realized my mouth-writing was illegible.

Normally not a problem, but it was difficult to keep data in mind. Numbers and words blended into each other. I could barely keep my eye - my good eye - open.

Not good. But I had pushed myself so hard. A short rest wouldn’t kill me.

At this point, I was only waiting.

I jumped, and opened my eye.

Darkness. The air was damp, hot, the walls closing in, all familiar, all coming back to me quickly. But then - a drip. Groundwater. Unusual.

With the slightest magical exertion, I reached out with telekinesis, pushing the chroma through tiny cracks in the wall. I felt it extend five meters out before I was sure.

The barrier had fallen.

There was, of course, still one more barrier: the large dome that had surrounded us after we were intercepted. The plant-thing would keep that up as long as it could, if it was smart. My plan relied on the assumption that, when it discovered me missing, it would conclude that I had somehow entirely evaded or penetrated the barriers, making them only a hindrance to its thralls. Then it would drop the outer barrier and I could escape.

So many assumptions, and that one the biggest of them all. I couldn’t say I wasn’t nervous, but I had to stay focused on the plan, stay driven. It was all I had.

I waited a few moments, burning a little energy on a passive detection spell. At this point any magic at all was blurring my vision or entirely blinding me, but I could cope. With the spell, I ‘heard’ some activity above. It was hard to make out, but the echoes were rhythmic, mixing high and low pitch, with a timbre I could have interpreted with a clearer mind and, frankly, more practice. Magic buzzed around the spot where they’d trapped me for some time, then stretched into the distance before disappearing altogether.

That felt like my chance. With the cheapest, quietest scrying spell I could manage, I checked out my destinations, hoping to smell out engine oil, fuel vapour, and rubber. That I was getting anything at all confirmed the barrier was gone.

The first neighbourhood was positive, meaning it probably had motor-carriages. I felt a flush of excitement as I read the numbers in my notebook, and applied them to open a portal, and when it opened, I had to bite my tongue.

In front of me was a tear in space. The moonlit asphalt was bright to my eye, and, in the distance, I caught the glare of dozens of motor-carriages lined up on manicured yards. I fell through the tear, feeling the cool air on my face, and laughed.

I made sure to close the portal, before I forgot, and then limped out to the vehicles. The surrounding houses were detached, upscale, three-story affairs with big doors and windows. The driveways were large as well, more than enough to fit four carriages in each one. It all seemed excessive, but I wasn’t complaining if it gave me better chances.

The nearest carriage was a bust - doors locked, no keys in sight. I didn’t want to make too much noise breaking in, or waste time and energy trying to hotwire the thing. The next two had broken windows and ransacked interiors, not giving me much hope for their roadworthiness. But the next one - peering up into the cab, I noticed the glint of a keychain tucked between a sun visor and the padded ceiling, and, while the side doors weren’t unlocked, the rear hatch was. It was a hassle climbing and crawling over two sets of benches on only three hooves, but when I got to the front, and pulled the visor down, the keys dropped onto my face.

I laughed again, at that. There was still some preparation ahead, but I felt I’d found my golden moment.

Commandeering the carriage was one thing - which I wasn’t fully confident in, considering I could only use one forehoof - but doing it unnoticed was another. I dropped my saddlebag, unlocked the driver-side door, and climbed out, so I could walk around to take in the size and shape of the thing. Hard-topped and pearl-coloured, it was quite a lot larger than the carriages I was used to in Ponyville, but I could imagine how an envelope might fit over it, containing its volume. That was a major requirement for the concealment spell, and the more form-fitting the envelope, the better the effect.

I was about to cast it and be on my way, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A disturbance in the window of a house across the street. I looked.

Though I still couldn’t see very well, I got the immediate impression of a face looking back at me, and my stomach leaped.

A thrall? Had they found me?

No. I looked again - it was a filly's face, peering between a set of curtains, and she didn't have that cold expression I'd seen on all the others. Her eyes widened with curiosity and fear when she saw me looking back.

She was gone just as soon as she had appeared, pulled out of the way by an adult, and the curtain was thrown shut.

Survivors - actual survivors, this time!

I was amazed that anypony had lasted through… all this, on their own. I considered contacting them, but, if they'd endured this for three days, what could I tell them? To stay where they were? It seemed they were already doing that.

Maybe I could leave them some supplies, then. I had some packages of food, water, and survival equipment for this exact purpose. At the front door, maybe, or on a windowsill-

Wait.

I shook my head, hoping to knock those stupid ideas out of my mind. Why, by the Sun and Moon, would I leave them behind?

Still a little on edge from seeing the filly's face, I checked all around to make sure I wasn't actually being watched by some thrall. Not all that meaningful, once I thought about it, since the ones who'd ambushed me before were concealed, but it was something to do while my heart settled. Then, I walked across the street, and knocked softly on their front door.

It took a moment before I realized how silly that was. Of course they wouldn't answer the door!

So, I doubled back to the carriage, counting my steps as I went - as best as I could, anyway, considering the limp - and did some calculations in my head - again, as best as I could. With the same portal spell I'd used to get here, I could open one inside the carriage, and use it to bring them along without even leaving their home. The magic I burned by doing that would give us less time under concealment, but the fact that I'd found a working carriage so quickly had put me ahead of my previous estimates.

Besides, they were worth it.

I opened the portal just inside the rear passenger-side door, and, through it, saw the living room, foyer, and front door of the survivors' home from the inside. It was very dark. The only source of light were the windows, which had all been covered by curtains. The living room furniture had been pushed to the edges of the rooms, especially around the front door and larger windows. My eye adjusted slowly as I looked around, and soon I noticed the silhouettes of two ponies - a stallion and a mare, both earth ponies by the looks of them. They stood on either side of the entrance to the foyer, facing the door, both holding something in their mouths.

Carefully, I stepped through the portal. The carriage cabin was tight to stand in, forcing me into an awkward half-crawl, half-walk, made even more awkward by the fact that I couldn't use all four hooves. So my step through was more of a lame hop, and my right forehoof landed on the floor with a harsh clack.

Both of their heads whipped around to face me, their eyes wide. I realized, then, that they were holding weapons - him a mallet, her a knife. The stallion stepped to the side, putting his body between me and the mare.

"I-" I hesitated, not sure what to say to them. "I'm here to rescue-"

The stallion bounded towards me, mallet raised to strike. I was wrong. More thralls.

I didn't have the energy to fight them. Not here, not now. I'd backed up on instinct, but the portal was too high to just walk back into, and the bottom edge dug into my back legs. I was stuck. Telekinesis - pull the hammer from his mouth? No, it was moving too much. A better option was the spell from earlier, the instant-force spell, but I'd lost sight of it in the panic. No time to reformulate it.

Nowhere to run. Nothing to do. The left side of my skull tingled where I imagined it would strike, and I closed my eye, hoping it wouldn't kill me instantly. Or was that preferable?

Just when I thought the blow would come, it didn't. There was instead a clatter, and another set of hoof-steps.

The mare had jumped between us, holding the stallion back with a hoof. Her knife laid where she'd dropped it.

"Don't," the mare said. "I recognize her."

"You 'o?" the stallion asked, around his mallet.

The mare turned to me. "You're - my goodness, you're…"

I wanted to ask what she was saying, but I suddenly found myself closer to the floor, short of breath. I let my left foreleg fall, to keep my balance, and it radiated a sickening pain.

The mare sat down and put her hooves over my shoulders, steadying me, but worsening the pain. The stallion was gone. When had he moved?

"Stay with me," the mare whispered. "You're hurt, but you're safe now. We're - my husband is looking for something to help."

It was so hard to think, to see, to breathe. What was happening? Why was the floor moving so much?

"I'm fine," I said, and I tried to push something away with a hoof. But then the ground came up from under me, struck my face, and I saw stars.

I jumped, and opened my eye.

I was laying on my back. A mare was dabbing a cold, wet cloth over my face, coming away with dried blood. The little cuts stung, while my left eye pulsed with a dull pain.

She noticed me looking, and asked, "Better?"

All I could say was, "Whuh?"

I tried to sit up, to get a better idea of what was going on, but she pushed me back down with little effort. "Careful, dear. You passed out." She looked away - the stallion was to my left side, wrapping something around my injured leg. "And you're really hurt. You can't be moving around too much."

I passed out? I managed to ask, "How long?"

"Only a minute or so," the stallion said.

That relaxed me a little, and then the exhaustion washed over me again, even though my heart was beating out of my chest. I could hardly keep my eye open.

But I needed to stay focused. I said, "I c-ahh," finding that it took a lot more effort than usual to form words. Deep breaths. "I came here to r-rescue you. I…" Deep breaths. "I have a plan."

The two of them looked at each other.

"That's great," the stallion spoke, "but we're safe here for now, really. You need to rest."

"No!" I shouted, though I didn't mean to - their ears went back at the sudden noise. I repeated more quietly, "No. It's under the city, everywhere, it has so many-"

The mare brushed some of my mane away from my face, shushing me. "Shh. It's not here. You're safe now, Twilight."

I recoiled from her touch. "You know my name?"

Her expression fell, but she pulled her hooves back. "Sorry. It's a long story. Um… I'm Misty."

"And I'm Lustre," the stallion said, and then he gestured to my leg - it was wrapped shoulder-to-hoof in a bedsheet, with something hard and straight on the inside. "And that is an immobilized leg."

That was something, at least. There was still the dull pain, and the discomfort from knowing something was wrong, but, as long as I didn't try bending my elbow or fetlock, it was manageable.

I sighed, and shook my head. "Who cares about my leg? The city's been taken over. I barely escaped with my life. We need to leave now."

"Alright," the stallion - Lustre - said, a little exasperated. "We get it. It's urgent. Right, honey?" He looked at the mare - Misty - who nodded, after a moment's hesitation. "But can I at least look at your eye first?"

"No," I answered, and I tried sitting up again. This time, Misty let me, and I turned over to my right side so I could stand, keeping my left foreleg straight. "It's… it's just an eye." I looked towards the portal, still open to the motor-carriage's cab.

I took one step, then-

The room turned sideways. I stumbled back into one of them, and they caught me before I hit the ground. It was Misty.

"It's okay," she said to me. "Just take a minute. Let us look at your eye, at least."

There were tears. It stung where my face had been cut. I didn't want to stop, I knew I needed to keep moving, but…

I was so tired.

Lustre showed me the roll of gauze. "I'll just cover the eye. It'll help."

I laid back down. He folded some gauze into a square and laid it over my left eye, then Misty held it carefully while he wrapped more in a loop around my head, to keep the square in place. The pressure was new and uncomfortable. I tried to remind myself that it was helping, somehow.

"You should rest here," Misty said, after a while. "Until morning, at least. Okay?"

I nodded, even though it sickened me. To wait.

Lustre put a hoof on my shoulder - my good shoulder, thankfully. "You've done good, Twilight. We can follow your plan when you're feeling up to it."

I nodded again. More tears ran down the side of my face, or soaked into the bandage. Why? I didn't feel sad. I felt sick and empty.

"Oh, dear," Misty spoke. "It's not a good time."

Hoofsteps approached. There was somepony else here?

Lustre cleared his throat, and said, "Come on, honey, she's not feeling well. You can talk to Twilight later."

"It's really Twilight Sparkle…?" came the filly's voice.

I looked. The face I'd seen in the window - it was her. A young filly, an earth pony like them. She stared at me, frozen, with her mouth hanging open.

Misty had a sad smile when she looked back to me. "This is our daughter, Firelight. She's… well, she's the reason we recognized you."

Firelight took careful steps closer. She arrived next to Lustre, still staring at me.

"Honey," he said. "Twilight came to rescue us, but she's hurt. You shouldn't-"

Firelight fell onto my chest and wrapped her hooves around me.

"-bother her," Lustre continued. He shook his head, but he was almost laughing. "Okay then."

I asked, "huh?"

"You're kind of a role model for her," Misty told me. "She's always wanted to meet you. Maybe just… not like this."

"No," I sighed. "I wouldn't think so."

Firelight spoke quietly into my fur, "I knew you'd come." She was crying.

I patted her mane. I was crying, too.

The mare in the mirror looked different to how I remembered her, and not just because I was only looking with one eye. The cuts and bruises were notable, too, as was the razor-cut mane that terminated just shy of her horn. But the main difference was her expression. She looked tired. And scared. And hopeless.

I put the mirror back on the night table. There was nothing to gain from pitying myself. I needed to do something productive. Misty and Lustre had convinced me that that meant sleeping, but considering our situation, that didn't feel productive!

Another wave of nausea hit as I sat up in bed, and I sighed. I needed to rest. That was simply a fact of my situation.

I braced myself to lie down again, but the clip-clop of hooves outside the guestroom kept me upright. A moment later, the door opened, and Firelight stuck her rust-coloured head through, into the dim candlelight.

"You should be sleeping," she whispered to me.

I croaked, "I know. So should you."

"Yeah."

When I didn't move, she took that as an invitation to enter the room and carefully close the door behind her, walk up to the bed, and hop up next to me. The shaking rattled my brain.

There she sat for a long moment, hiding her face in her pearlescent hair and twiddling her hooves. According to Misty and Lustre, I was her idol. It felt silly. More for me than for her.

Eventually, she said, "Mom and Dad don't want to send me to Canterlot."

"To Canterlot?" I repeated. "How…?"

"It's the best magic school in the world. They think I don't have the potential."

"Oh." I understood. She wasn't talking about now. She was talking about eventually.

She continued, "They don't say it, but they think it."

This felt like a thoroughly pointless subject. I needed rest so I could help get these ponies out of Manehattan and tell Celestia - all of Equestria, really - what was going on here. I didn't want to think too hard about what would happen to the city if I failed, but I couldn't force my train of thought away - they would use it. Maybe they would use it either way, but with the threat still unknown there would be no other option but excision.

I blinked, and realized I'd been completely lost in my head, thinking evil thoughts. Firelight was looking at me. I couldn't bear to tell her even a fraction of what I'd just imagined.

I went along with it, hoping to comfort her, "They're your parents. They-"

"They don't know best!" she snapped. "Not always!"

I leaned forward - damn the nausea - to put a hoof on her shoulder. "I was going to say they don't want to send you away. Sending you all the way to Canterlot, so far from home. You wouldn't know anypony there. It would be hard to make friends."

She shook her head and shrugged away from my hoof. "Screw friends," she said in a stage-whisper. "I don't have friends now. Ponies at school think I'm a freak. I was-" She sniffled. "I was hoping you'd understand…"

"Because I'm a freak too?" I asked, bluntly. Firelight started to deny it, but I interrupted her, "No, you're right. I was in the same position when I was your age."

She turned to me, and I absently glanced at her forehead, noticing a distinct lack of horn. Right, she was an earth pony. And she saw me looking. Understood why.

I corrected myself, "... Maybe not exactly the same position."

She hid behind her hair again, but whispered, quietly this time, "I want to show you."

Show me what? It didn't matter. "Okay," I replied.

She took a deep breath. Then exhaled. Then a deep breath. Then exhaled. Then-

Firelight raised her hooves out, towards the wall, and something happened. The space around her rippled and shimmered like desert air. It felt like chroma, but it wasn't - not exactly. The shimmering dripped out from her forehooves and slowly solidified into a refracting ball before it lit up like a multi-coloured magelight. Then it shattered, silently, and Firelight sighed.

"I can't do anything yet," she muttered in an apologetic tone. "Nothing cool or useful. Just… that."

I said, in awe, "You're a laycaster!"

She smiled. "Mhm."

"That's-" I struggled to keep my voice down, since Misty and Lustre would be asleep across the hall. "That's amazing! Do you know how rare that is?"

She thought for a moment, but then shook her head. "I know it's not normal, but…"

"One in a million," I told her, "- no, not even that. Last I heard, there were ten known laycasters in Equestria. Probably more elsewhere, but in baramins without structured magic, it's hard to differentiate between normal magic users and-"

She looked at me the way ponies looked at me when I was rambling at them.

"... You know, nevermind. But all the laycasters I've heard of are very powerful. Clearly you've got a lot of potential."

That she followed. "... Thanks."

A moment of silence followed, though as it went on, I heard a murmur of voices. It frightened me at first, but I soon realized it was coming from across the hall - Firelight's parents were speaking. She heard it too, and frowned.

"I wish mom and dad would see it that way," she mumbled.

I put my hoof back on her shoulder, and she seemed comfortable with it.

The murmured speaking continued, sounding a bit sharp.

"... I guess they can't sleep either," I commented.

"They're always arguing," Firelight explained. "Even before everything closed and we had to stay home. But that just made it worse."

It was… interesting, hearing her perspective on the anomaly. But I couldn't fault her parents for keeping the details from her. "They're scared," I suggested. "They don't know what's going on, and they can't do anything about it. That'll ruin anypony's mood."

I didn't mean for that to come out so dry, but Firelight didn't seem to mind. She just turned to me, and asked, "Are you scared?"

I answered, "Ye-"

Something changed, making my hair stand on end.

It felt familiar in a way I couldn't place.

"Twilight?"

I shook my head, focusing back on Firelight. She was looking at me strangely.

"Did you hear something?" she asked.

"No," I muttered, though now that I was listening, I noticed that I wasn't hearing anything. Not even Misty and Lustre arguing, even though they were at it a second ago.

Firelight was about to say something else when there came a piercing scream from down the hall, before it was silenced just as abruptly - and I had that feeling again. Something changed. I remembered.

The anomaly was here, and it had Firelight's parents.

"We need to go," I whispered, grabbing Firelight by the hoof with my good leg - causing me to nearly hit the floor face-first when I jumped out of bed.

"Woah!" she cried, though thankfully also whispering. "Why? Mom and dad-"

"Just go," I said, pushing her towards the door. "Lead me downstairs. Eyes closed. Stay quiet."

I bit the end of her tail, and she did as I said, though not as urgently as I wanted. I kept my good eye closed as we walked, and I didn't hear any movement from down the hall as we passed and got to the stairs. That was either good… or very bad.

Once we were on the first floor, I opened my eye and directed her towards the portal out to the carriage, which was, thankfully, right where I'd left it.

I leapt over the threshold and started casting the concealment spell, but she stayed behind, hesitating.

"Come on!" I begged her.

"But…" she objected. "Why? What's happening? What about-"

I could practically feel our opportunity slipping away with every second of delay. In a full shout, I said, "No time! Trust me!"

She bit her lip, and jumped through, sprawling onto the bench next to me.

I tripped the spell to close the portal, and it snapped shut, leaving us far away from the house and fully enclosed in the cabin. Then I cast the concealment spell over the vehicle. Nothing changed to our physical senses, but I could feel a muffling of the static aether.

I let out a breath. "Okay."

"Okay!?" Firelight asked, her voice wavering. "Why did you take me here?"

I turned the key to start the engine, and glanced out the window towards the house - watching for movement.

She asked again, "Why are we here?"

My eye passed over her as I aligned my hooves with the levers. There was an issue - I needed both forehooves to steer and control the throttle. I could do one or the other, but not both. That would make for a dangerous drive, especially closer to the bridge where the roads were jammed.

"Twilight!"

I didn't want to say it, but I said it: "It has your parents."

That gave Firelight pause. "What has them?"

Looking past her, I could see movement from the house. Two earth ponies emerged from the front door, inspecting the street calmly, with flat, cold expressions.

"Look," I told her. "The city is closed because there's something growing underground. It sprouts up and takes control of any pony that looks at it." Firmly this time, I repeated, "It has your parents."

She turned to watch them, as they stood watch over the street, their heads on a swivel. Lustre's gaze passed over us, and I prayed to Celestia that they wouldn't suddenly walk in our direction.

"They… they look normal," she said.

"But they're not normal," I responded. "Didn't you feel that, back in the house? Before we heard the scream, something happened. I felt it."

She turned back to me, her eyes wide. "I felt it too. But I felt it a whole bunch around when we started staying home, so I thought…"

The colour drained from her face, and she slumped back in the seat - she was putting it together.

"Oh, Celestia…"

I wanted to pull her closer to me, but she was to my left, and I could barely move that hoof. So instead I leaned against her, and sucked it up when more pain radiated from my shoulder. It was feeling distant and dull by now anyway.

Firelight was silent for a moment, no doubt reeling from the realization, and the sight of her parents moving around like robots. But the contact seemed to bring her back to me, and she asked, "What do we do?"

"Right now, I need you to help me drive," I told her, gesturing to the throttle lever. "Push this lever to speed up, pull it back to slow down."

"I know what it does," she said coldly. "Dad showed me."

"...Right," I replied, trying not to make light of things. "We need to get out of the city, and we don't have much time. So-"

"-push hard," she finished, throttling up, and we were moving. The engine roared, but the concealment spell seemed to be working perfectly - Lustre and Misty didn't turn in our direction. They were looking to the east, their faces brightly lit by the dawn sky.

I did my best to steer down the curving street and recall the best path to the bridge. Getting over the bridge wouldn't necessarily mean we were safe, but it was something to aim for, for now, and I felt elated that I was finally making progress after so many setbacks.

Firelight asked, as we slowed to make a turn onto a westbound road, "We're coming back for them, right?"

"Yes," I answered instantly. "Once ponies know what happened here, we can fight the thing and rescue your parents."

"Okay," she responded. She wasn't looking at me - she was focused, and looking out at the road. But her face softened soon after that. Relieved.

She was a good filly. When we got out, when her parents were safe, I'd be sure to introduce her to Princess Celestia.

I thought back to Cere and the other enthralled ponies I'd encountered. We'd be coming back for them, too - for everypony in the city. Whatever this thing was planning, it wasn't going to succeed once the elements were assembled, let alone with the full force of Equestria behind us.

I'd introduce Firelight to my friends, too - they'd love her.

But that was in the future. Here and now, as we found our way onto a highway that led downtown, I was struck again by how desolate the city was. When I came here - Cere and I - it was in the dead of night, so in the back of my mind I must have expected the city to be inactive. Now that the sun was almost up, and the sky was brightening, the lack of ponies on the streets and in the skies found its way into my heart.

We still occasionally passed a burned-out wreck that told of the panicked evacuation, of course, and this got worse the nearer we got to the core of the city - where it wasn't just carriages, but the charred skeletons of towers and apartment blocks that stood on the horizon. We even had to skip a few blocks because part of the elevated rail line snaking through the city had collapsed onto the road.

Firelight stared at the enormous pile of twisted metal whenever we could see it between buildings, and asked, "How did that happen?"

I could only shake my head and say, "I don't know," even though I had my suspicions. Those flashes of chromatic light I'd seen last night had come from around here. If I was right, this place was a battlefield, fought in as desperately as the parks and rooftops had been for Cere and I.

But that was behind us. Ahead, beyond the fencepost of shadows cast by eastern towers, I could see it. We'd closed the distance to the bridge.

It was open.

All down its length, the path was clear!

I laughed and cheered to myself, then to Firelight when I remembered she was here, too. "Stampede!" I shouted, and she pushed the throttle until it bottomed out. The carriage roared down the street, around what few obstacles remained.

Firelight gasped, and I thought it was more cheering, but then she let off the throttle, panicked at the controls, and stuttered through: "B-brake!"

After a slim moment of confusion, I almost couldn't see the large truck exiting the side road, making to intercept us. It was turning in from the left. My blind spot.

"Shit," I exhaled, and slammed the brake lever down with my left hoof - damn the pain.

With my other hoof, I tried to maintain steering, but I had to pull the lever rather than push it to turn right, so it was harder than usual.

It seemed we might make it past the truck, but fast as we were going, it would be close.

I braced, as best as I was able, and said, "Keep it-"

Impact. The carriage was suddenly on two wheels, pushing Firelight into me and me into the steering levers and sending us careening off the road.

I had half a second to counter-steer, and I could feel Firelight braking, but the combined effect was only to tilt the vehicle over until, after a long half-second, it rolled and crashed onto its side, throwing us into the right side door. Our speed kept it going, though, making a horseshoes-on-chalkboard noise as the carriage scraped across yet more road.

I was rattled and in pain, and shoved by some weight into the right door, but all that was distant. "Firelight?" I asked.

"Yeah," she groaned from above, in a direction I couldn't see. A shift of weight, and she stepped on my face, then onto my bad leg. "Sorry."

"G-" I shook her hoof away. "Get down! Eyes closed!"

She fell back down onto me. "Sorry."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. You?"

I couldn't feel my left side at all. But that she had to ask if I was okay told me nothing was missing, at least. "I'm fine. That truck, the driver-" I stopped myself. It didn't matter. "We were going too fast-" Still didn't matter. "I'll - I'll teleport us out. We need to make a run for it."

"They're here," she said, quietly, and I heard the scrape of distant hooves. Firelight continued, her voice hitching, "Twilight, they're here."

"I know," I growled. "We can get away. Just need to-"

Not teleportation. I wasn't falling for that again. Flight? No, some of the thralls I'd met earlier had been pegasi, they'd take us out of the sky. Nothing I could do mattered anyway. If it thought we'd escape, it would just call up another barrier and negate whatever I tried.

No - there was something!

"Firelight, use your magic."

I felt her exerting herself, trying to make it happen, just as she strained to ask, "why?"

"Laycasting has anti-magic properties. We might be able to escape if you-"

No. I had to think. If she did what? Broke the barrier the plant-thing used? Cancelled out the thralling spell? How could I know if any of that would work?

"Twilight!" she cried, as two, then three, then half a dozen sets of hoofsteps made their way towards us.

My thoughts were an abstract mess. I needed something like when I survived this before: a reduction of options. Something that let me cut out all the unnecessary possibilities and find one thing I could be certain of - one thing that would keep both of us alive, even for just another minute, another second…

Then it came to me.

I didn't need all that.

"Firelight," I said, "Stop. I'm going to teleport us out."

"Will that work?" she asked, letting what little laycast she'd conjured melt away. "It has to work, right?"

"Right. You just have to gallop as fast as you can, as long as you can. Follow the roads. Find somepony who can help. Tell-"

"But-"

"Tell somepony what I told you. Make sure they know it came from me, got it?"

"But what about you? Can you gallop, with your leg?"

I shook my head, for all that it would matter, and lit my horn up. I could send her far away, far out of the city, reliably enough that I wasn't worried about interception.

But not if I went with her.

"Make sure they come back for me, too."

She understood, then, and tried to object, but I'd already burned my last reserves and committed to the spell. With a flash of magic, she was-

Not gone.

Firelight burst into laughter and fell back into the bench seat, giving me a chance to crane my neck and turn to look at her. She looked normal. But laughing. And dripping with laycast.

"What…?"

"Oh, and it was-" - more laughter - "-and it was going so well, right up until the end."

"Firelight?"

She wiped a tear from her eye, and then all expression dropped from her face, and she said in a cold voice, "Let's not prolong this."

Cere had said that. Right after he'd been thralled.

But… She wasn't…?

No. I'd been with her this entire time. If she was enthralled, I would have felt it happen, distinctly. Like when it got Cere, or her parents. It couldn't have gotten her without me noticing.

Not unless it had her the whole time.

"Oh Celestia," I breathed.

Down in this wreck, sideways and broken and numb, I couldn't think of any way out of this anymore.

"You were interesting," it said, monotone, through Firelight's body, using her voice. "So you get three questions."

"What?" I said dumbly.

"That will not count. Ask three questions."

This was pointless. Didn't it just tell me not to prolong this? I managed, "Why?"

After a moment, it said, "That will count. But it was answered. You were interesting, difficult, and the subject of much learning. I intend to learn more from you."

"Fuh…" I groaned, propping myself up with a numb foreleg to spit in her- its face. The gob of saliva dribbled uselessly down my chin and neck. "Fuck you. Why don't you just kill me."

It just spoke, giving no other reaction: "If you die, you will be almost worthless to me."

No. No. No.

It wasn't going to get me. I wasn't ready to just lie down and let it happen.

But my horn was dull. My body was weak. No reserves, nothing left to scrape and burn. Even my thoughts were running thin.

More hoofsteps. A groaning, crackling, crawling noise. A growing feeling that something was approaching the carriage besides more thralls.

"Was it-" I coughed at a pain in my side, shooting through the numbness. "Was it possible? Could I have escaped?"

The Firelight-thing did not hesitate to say, "No. And that's three."

Something began climbing the carriage roof.

"Wait - no, no! That's not my question!" I begged, realizing what I really wanted to know. "Please, tell me-"

It looked down at me with those innocent, emotionless eyes.

I didn't want to ask. But I wanted to know. "Will I see my friends again?"

Its head tilted to the side, as if considering - as if it needed time to consider - and it answered, "Yes."

Something else entered the carriage.

"Just not how you're thinking."

I looked up at it, and knew I'd made a mistake, but it was too late. A black, thorny vine hung from a gap in the shattered windshield, and on its tip was a glowing, red flower.

That's when things began to change.

I saw myself, and the cabin of the sideways carriage, through a new pair of eyes. Through Firelight. Then I saw the carriage from the outside, on the street, through a few more sets of eyes. Then the surrounding street, and the surrounding block, and the surrounding city, and beyond, dozens and hundreds and thousands of eyes I couldn't close no matter how hard I squeezed.

I was a broken unicorn; I was an earth pony filly; I was a pegasus soldier; I was all of them, and I was a million more. I was working, resting, eating, fighting, breeding, birthing, being born, and lying in the wreckage of a sideways carriage. This reminded me of harmony, but harmony implied a diversity of purpose. This was something else.

I breathed the air of Manehattan. Distantly, as once I would have felt an organ or a bone, I felt the germ. It was growing, burrowing, branching, anchoring into bedrock, and rising back up in nodes to feed, to breathe, and to grow larger. This was part of me, too.

A small part of me resisted, down in that sideways carriage, but nothing was hidden from me anymore. I only lied when I had to. And in order to convince me, I needed to show myself the scale of things. The assembly into which I would be subsumed.

Now, feeling my hearts beating, seeing the vastness of my purpose, I relented, and I was whole again.

Even now it was palpable. Even now it was exhilarating. To have done so much!

But there was still work to do.

Chapter 6 - Celestia

I pressed a hoof to my forehead as the argument continued.

Luck Steady waved off the suggestion. "We don't know what force the guard would face-"

"We don't know anything!" Cherry rebutted, pounding a hoof on the table. "That's why we should send them in. Wring some intel out the old-fashioned way."

"And the citizens, the infiltration teams, the rescuers, will they be 'wrung out'?"

Cherry smirked. "A little law and order never hurt anypony."

Luck Steady's mouth hung agape, and he looked around the room. "Are you all hearing this? This is Manehattan, marshal! Our city, with our ponies-

"What do you think we're here for!?" Cherry shouted over him. "Manehattan is no more ours than... Seaddle. Past time we face the fact that we're dealing with a second invasion-"

"Enough," I said. "It's not happening."

Throughout the dim, smoky room, all eyes turned to me - including my sister's. "Well there you have it," she said, cutting through the stiff silence. "To Tartarus with the Royal Guard."

"You are not helping," I groaned, again holding my forehead.

She just shrugged.

War meetings. I always hated war meetings. Even in those grand golden eras when the threat of war was a distant memory, the meetings persisted, and I hated them still.

Nevertheless, there might still have been a chance to bring things back on track. "Too many unknowns, marshal. We cannot justify such a mission, and we cannot afford such losses if the anomaly swallows them, too."

It took some effort for Cherry to steady her tongue, but she did, and simply nodded. "Of course, your majesty."

Other than that," I continued, "is there anything new? Quarantine, mitigation, ah..."

"Scrying reports," Luna added.

"Yes. Scrying reports. Let's hear it."

"In the last twenty-four hours, no change..."

I sighed.

Luna shrugged again. "That is not nothing. Little movement within the city means the situation has not worsened."

"Without the city, then. Quarantines?"

That gave Cherry another opportunity to be useful, and she straightened as she reported. "Exclusion zones are clear and secure, your majesty. Nothing has crossed the bridge, and the seaways are monitored twenty-four-seven." She hesitated as she flipped to the back of one of her documents. "We could, uh, use more all-terrain carriages. The coastline was never developed for military deployment..."

Before I replied, I glanced at Luna. She nodded subtly. "Consider it done. And good work, marshal. What about the, the, you know..." - it was slipping my mind. Beyond the exclusion zones. Where the survivors were headed.

"The stations? Summerfield, Clear Skies... Dappleshore?"

"Exactly."

Cherry looked over to Luck Steady this time, who was paging through a stack of reports. He idly answered, "They're a mess. Will take weeks to process every refugee at this rate, but the estimates we're getting are good. Could use more clerks to work the backlog."

I waved away the request. "Fine, that's fine. Good meaning... what? What estimates?"

"They are..." He had to stop and flip through from the start again. "I had something here just a moment ago."

"A rough number is fine for now," Luna added.

Luck Steady produced a specific letter, somehow, from that indistinct mass. "Here. From my deputy in Clear Skies. If you're looking for a rough estimate, it's around ninety percent."

A happy murmur went around the room. Even Luna joined in, bumping elbows with our advisors and expressing optimism that the number was so high. And they were right to. It was higher than we thought even twenty four hours ago. But it did little to loosen the knot in my stomach.

Ninety percent left ten percent unaccounted for. Over a hundred thousand assumed dead, if I was being... generous. It sickened me to even think of it in such terms. Each one a sacred soul, a child of our kingdom; each one a mother, father, son or daughter, friend, comrade, or lover; each one desiring and deserving of life; and each one a tragic, unbearable loss.

And in this room, they became only a number.

Was Twilight a number too, now?

I hated to spoil the mood, but I had to ask: "Have we heard from any infiltration teams yet?"

Quiet frustration spread through the room once again. Even Luna had nothing to say. Or at least nothing good.

The knot tightened. I stood up. "I need some air..."

Just then an aide passed some reports to Luna and whispered in her ear, and she perked up. "Wait a moment, sister."

I glanced down at her papers - one of them had a chart of concentric circles superimposed over a city map. Manehattan, I guessed. "Must I?"

"Hm. Yes. While I explain, at least."

"... Alright." I sat down again. The walls pressed in on me, but I'd had worse.

She cleared her throat, as if she were about to give a Pronouncement. "We all know your position on this, sister, and loathe am I to argue otherwise. But I feel it is unwise to overlook any solution without understanding the potential along with the risk." She put her hoof down on the chart. "We must have a real discussion about it."

I shook my head. "About the bomb?"

"About the filament bomb," she replied. "Its reputation as a mere explosive device is half the problem."

"The other half of the problem is what it does."

"It may have been envisioned for destructive ends, yes, but through experimental use, as Arrowhead can attest," - she gestured to a mage-scientist near her - "it has shown immense promise for other purposes. Consider stasis, sister."

Luna always knew how to browbeat me. But I was still listening, wasn't I?

"Stasis?" I asked.

"Stasis. An absence of flux, of activity, of life, and of entities which possess these qualities. But these qualities are only effectors of a more fundamental thing - change over time."

It was my turn to shrug. "Okay?"

She brought her hooves together. "What if we could stop something from changing over time" - then she drew her hooves apart - "by detaching it from time. Excise it from the flow, thereby achieving stasis more potent than any magic evoked heretofore."

I looked around the room wondering how many here were hearing this for the first time, but there didn't seem to be much reaction - other than Arrowhead, who appeared enamored with Luna's elegant explanation. None were shocked at the enormity of the subject. Was that good? I didn't know anymore.

Still, how much did they not know? Had they all been privy to the experimental history of the filament bomb? Had they heard, over the years, of the first uses? Of the scars left behind? Of the dead zones? I wondered if the maps had accounted for them yet. I wondered if the maps even could account for them.

I began with my trustworthy reply: "There are still too many things we don't know, sister, such as whether anything can be recovered from this 'excision'."

"We are working to answer that," she said, though I caught a hint of frustration in her tone. "But permanence is a risk. I do not deny this. I simply wish to bring to mind the potential. It could buy us time - months, years, perhaps as much as we desire - to study what lies in that city. To mitigate and expunge it on our own schedule."

"On our own - what? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying... With consensus of the council, and your approval, it can be deployed to Manehattan in less than three hours."

She just-

Three hours.

I stood up. "No!"

Luna closed the cover on her bomb report.

"Not when -" Not when Twilight is still out there. "Not when we know so little of what's out there! How many thousands - trapped, starving, awaiting rescue - do we thus condemn?"

She raised her hooves, as if in defeat. "I made my proposal, and I have your answer. It is settled."

"Okay. It's just - this is something I cannot do. We cannot do. Maybe if we knew Manehattan was empty but for concrete and- and demons, or what have you, but not otherwise. Not without knowing."

"I understand. And I feel the same way, truly."

I breathed. Breathed this humid, stale, smoky war room air. Wondered if my own sister was lying to me. And nodded. "Thank you."

She looked around the room at the many quiet, stiff ponies, awkwardly waiting for the tone to change, and stood up as well. "I think that is good enough for this evening. Make your orders ready, and we shall have them reviewed and signed before nightfall."

The scrape and clatter of horseshoes on tile was piercing, but as punctuation it was unsurpassed. A dozen ponies stood, saluted, repeated some honorifics and pleasantries, and found their way out through opened doors and unsealed wards. I longed to leave with them. If I stepped out of this room and walked the halls of the open city, I could breathe free once more. But there was business here still. My sister obviously wanted to talk.

She stepped around the margins of the room, coming to my side of the table, and leaned in to whisper, "How long has it been since you slept?"

Three days. Or was it now four? "A while."

"The kingdom will survive in the meantime."

I smiled, I thought, as an act of rebellion. "If it does not, will you darken my dreams to let me know?"

"If it would help."

"T'would be a bit late, now that I think of it..."

That got a chuckle out of her. "Indeed," she said, though her expression fell when a pony in a lab smock appeared on my periphery with an aura of bad - or at least dire - news.

"Speak," Luna said. She was at my side.

The besmocked pony spoke. "There is a letter for you in quarantine, your majesty."

I repeated, "For me, specifically? Not the Crown?"

"Correct, your majesty."

Luna asked, "Why would-"

"Show me," I ordered.

We were deeply enwarded. I knew not the specific convolutions that enveloped us now, but the feeling was that of the center of a chasmic void. Such deep suppression of the outside world would not be forgotten so soon as in the war room, but it did serve to clear my head somewhat. Just not of the thoughts that most disturbed me.

There were generally two categories of ponies who would send a letter addressed directly to me. The first was young foals who didn't know any better. The second was alicorns. Considering all the alicorns were here, most of them in this very room, that left the former.

So, if it was just a foal who didn't know any better, why had it been intercepted, neutralized, decoded, and thoroughly analyzed by a dozen crypturgeons?

I knew why. And that was good, wasn't it? Why was I so afraid?

A crypturgeon with no name tag pointed us to a desk with a glass plate under a chemical lamp. A sheet of parchment was pressed flat under the glass.

"This is the letter?" Luna asked.

The crypturgeon nodded. "Yes, your majesty. We intercepted it about an hour ago, and instantly recognized its significance."

"I should hope so," Luna growled. "It says it's from Twilight Sparkle. From Manehattan."

I rubbed my eyes. "How can you read it from so far away?"

"It's not that far," she said, "but don't change the subject. I thought you said you would handle her."

"Ah."

Now I understood my trepidation. It wasn't that I'd find out. It was that she would. She still wasn't in the habit of liking ponies much, but she had a soft spot for that one.

So did I. I wondered how much she knew.

"... She wanted to go," I finally explained. "I told her the risks. She insisted. I told her it was already being handled. She begged. I told her that she was not to go under any circumstances. And..." I shrugged uselessly. "That seemed to convince her."

"But it didn't." Luna said.

"Nope."

"I would have suggested wards, or inhibitors, or some such, but."

"Indeed."

Luna sighed. She still seemed disappointed with me, but she knew perfectly well the filly was impossible to control.

"So..." I began again, turning to the crypturgeon who'd been waiting patiently for her turn to speak. "What has Twilight Sparkle sent me from Manehattan?"

She cleared her throat and approached the glass plate to point to the letter. "Well, your majesties, it appears ordinary enough. The scroll is standard writing-paper; the message was written in iron ink with a steel pen; and its author was practiced with a quill."

"You're telling us it is an ordinary letter?" I asked.

Luna smiled. "She is telling us it looks like an ordinary letter."

The crypturgeon nodded. "Correct. The author clearly went through great pains to make this appear genuine. I would invite you to read it, your majesties, with the understanding that it is a deception."

In the time it took me to step close enough to read the words, Luna announced, "Done." I could only grumble at her superior eyesight. After all, t'wasn't my fault I was stuck doing all the paperwork for the last millennium.

Nevertheless, I was still a quick reader of words I could see.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I hope you can read this letter before it's too late.

It is an ingenious act of sabotage. I cannot say by whom, but you know their names. Only so many could have woven such hideous perfection. Strike now while they believe your attention focused elsewhere and they will be caught by surprise. It may even dispel the calamity. Not an illusion, I know, but its self-propogation may be cut off. Only way to stop it.

Sorry, running out of time. It knows I'm here somewhere. May not escape again.

Subterfuge and shadow are its weapons. Daylight is its anathema. I can only hope Canterlot proves a more difficult target than Manehattan or Dappleshore. Be on guard, and keep your eyes open.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

"... Well, it's a good thing that's not real," I said, "otherwise it would be terribly unhelpful." And depressing.

"Indeed," the crypturgeon replied. "Though the materials and the penwork are fairly convincing, the writing style doesn't match, and some details in the message are false. For example, Dappleshore has been unaffected by whatever befell Manehattan, and the first reports came out during local daylight. This-"

Luna interrupted, "It is possible we are mistaken, and this message relays the truth, is it not?"

"Well, yes-"

"And if young Twilight was under duress, her writing style may not match more typical examples."

"...Yes, your majesty."

I arched an eyebrow at Luna. "You're not saying it might be genuine."

She stared at the crypturgeon, who now averted her eyes. "No. Of course not. But we wouldn't be here if this was some simple fake; and if its veracity was questionable, we would not have been told otherwise. I wish to - how do you say - cut to the chase?"

Now it was my turn to stare at the crypturgeon.

"Th-that is a good point, your majesty," she stammered. "I only wished to make a thorough - ah, but no matter. In truth, the written message is of little import. There is another message on the letter."

"Ahhh," I groaned, "Surely my eyesight is not so...?"

"No," Luna said, "I did not see it either."

"It is well-hidden," the crypturgeon said. Her horn lit up a shade of blue, mirrored by blotches of blue above the glass.

My sister and I both took steps closer, then closer still, and still I glanced at her and found her glancing at me.

"Well-hidden indeed," I said. "Even with an outline, I see no-"

"Aha!" Luna shouted. "Translocation! Sister, I will grant you grain-sight."

The spell washed warm over my eyes, and at first all I could see was a scattering of harshly-contrasted snow. But mere seconds later my perception had adjusted and I saw pleats and fibers through a striated membrane - paper behind glass. The paper was streaked with dusty ink and stained with hoofprints and, in small segments which still glowed with a chromatic highlight, the fibers were discontinuous, as if they had been cut with a razor and inlaid somewhere else. An inlay here matched a cutout there and vice versa, leaving the disturbance totally undetectable by normal means. Four secret messages had thereby been written, and I read them letter-by-letter:

guard is subsumed

will go to our spot

need a quick opening

hope this works

I read it. Then I read it again.

Our spot. Only she would know what that meant.

Luna watched my eyes trace and retrace the message, and somehow read my mind, as she was wont to do. I'd barely raised a hoof before she arrested me with, "Not so fast."

I kept turning towards the exit. "She's waiting, sister. I have to go."

"I know. But this may not..."

I shot a look at her.

She shook her head and sighed. "At least take a squadron with you."

"What use? They would get in the way."

"Then take the guard captain!"

A better suggestion. I nodded, then flew.

There was an oak tree in the garden. It had erupted from the manicured lawn a time ago, and now rebelled against cuboid hedge rows and exotic flowers with its lumpy brown leaves and hailstone fruit.

Here, and not down in those deep tunnels, the world was near and great. Things were still dampened by the big shield, which rumbled low in the distance, but at least I could feel the sun and the sky, feel connected again. Connected to the world. I felt sadness for all the pain and suffering in the world, especially now - but so was there great comfort and joy in the world, and I felt happiness for that, too. It all washed over me, first slow, then seemingly all at once, making up for all I'd missed under the wards. And I let it pass.

I tried to, anyway. It had become so intoxicating that I had almost forgotten to summon my escort. But now Shining Armor was coming, so I wiped the moisture off my face.

He looked up at the tree, then down - well, less up - at me. "Majesty. We shouldn't stay out here for too long. It may be dangerous outside the walls."

Always so professional. I nodded. "Yes, and it's about to get much more dangerous. I'm opening the shield."

Shining was practically hit by the words. "Opening it? What in the world - why?"

"Do you know who planted this tree, captain?"

It took a moment for him to remember we were, in fact, standing next to a tree, and he looked it up and down a second time. "I haven't the slightest idea, your majesty, nor do I understand-"

"You misunderstand my question," I told him. "The one who planted this tree is one you know quite well. And if we are to bring her back from Manehattan, we need to give her an opening."

I watched his confusion turn to realization, then hesitation, then resolution. Finally he met my eyes and nodded. "Your word is my command."

"Good. Now, I will actually need help with this..."

Turning from him, from the garden, from all my physical surroundings, I focused on the big shield. It was a chromatic construct of monstrous scale and ancient design. Not inviolable, but still hardened, and thus structurally complex.

"I will help stabilize it while you unfold it," I pointed my hoof east, "starting there."

His horn glowed, and I felt his chroma reach out to where I'd pointed. I in turn set a chromatic bubble to inflate to the inner edge of the shield. There was a polarized current flowing through the inner edge that felt subtly like a checkerboard pattern, which must have matched the shield's cells. I directed my bubble to match its inverse, keeping it stable.

"About to open it," Shining Armor said. "How wide?"

I admitted, "She didn't say."

"Okay. Well, I'll start small, and widen as needed."

A sharp disturbance in the shield near where I'd pointed began to throw the pattern off. It took more focus than I'd have thought I could muster, especially since altering my inverse pattern would upset the balance of the inner layers, but in a few moments I had it matched again. I could further match the pattern as the disturbance widened and the shield thinned under Shining's focus until, finally, there was an opening.

The subsequent flood of emotions was minor and easy enough to handle, but I found my focus drifting still. Now I wondered: Are we too late? It was a poisonous, unproductive thought, but one I could not extinguish as the opening in the shield widened.

Shining voiced a question of his own: "How will we know it worked, exactly? Will she just... appear?"

"We will know it when it happens," I guessed.

As the opening grew, a faint shimmer of some nature formed in the air around us. Multilayered, green and red, it hung in the air and moved as if carried on a breeze. If Shining Armor could perceive it at all he took no notice of it.

I couldn't name the phenomenon, but I knew it had to be a consequence of the isolated aether of the palace mingling with free aether from outside. Something similar had occurred the last time the shield was up - hundreds of years ago, that was. Luna would know more, and not just because she'd had more sleep.

I tried to focus on matching the pattern, keeping the shield stable, but a flicker in the shimmer caught my eye. Shining noticed that, this time, and looked around us.

He mumbled, "Fireflies?"

There were no fireflies around. Perhaps he simply saw it differently. Whatever the case, something about it was changing. There was another flicker, then another, though it became dimmer each time.

Then something else happened. We both felt it. A sudden presence. Our eyes turned to a mossy patch near the trunk of the oak tree where a crack formed and split the air.

I ordered, "Start closing it!"

"On it!" he shouted back. As the crack grew, the hole in the shield shrank.

The crack opened into a circular portal through which I could see a different scene - dark stone, a cave or a tunnel maybe - and the body of a pony I could barely recognize. It slumped weakly onto our ground before the portal snapped shut faster than it had arrived.

I tried not to panic. Shining Armor was closing the shield. I still had to stabilize it. Match the pattern. Just a few more seconds. I felt the shield reach a steady state and the aether dampen, and Shining let his horn dim. Mine was dim just as soon.

We both moved to Twilight's side. She was bloodied and bruised, and had rough bandages all over her body, especially her head and left forehoof. Even her mane was cut differently, though in a manner I guessed wasn't intentional. Less obviously, her aura felt thin, and she showed signs of dehydration. But she was alive.

Thank goodness.

Shining cried, "Twilight!" and put a hoof on her shoulder. She flinched, but didn't seem particularly lucid.

I spoke, trying not to let my voice hitch, "Calm yourself. She needs medical transport. Until then, we shouldn't move her."

He shot a betrayed look at me, but soon understood and agreed. "Of course." Only with reluctance did he pull his hoof away.

I used a simple spell to signal for emergency medical assistance at our location. I also signalled my sister just to let her know that Twilight was okay. She responded instantly with the message, 'Thank goodness.' I couldn't help but smile as I wiped my face again.

Shining seemed about to say something, but there came a groan from Twilight. She arched her back and tried to put her hooves under her, but her left forehoof couldn't hold any weight, and she only succeeded in rolling onto her back with a pained gasp.

"Shhh, don't move," I said. "You made it. You're safe."

"Yeah, just take it easy, sis," Shining added.

One eye opened. Its narrow pupil focused on Shining Armor.

"What-?" Her voice was unsteady. "You're... I'm..."

Then all colour drained from her face.

"Oh no."

Shining took one of her hooves - the good one - in his own. "We're gonna take care of you. Don't worry."

She yanked her hoof away. "No, no, I'm not - this isn't happening. It's a trap."

"What's a-"

"Get away from me!" she shrieked, kicking away from her brother, who looked on dumbfounded.

This wasn't the Twilight I knew. Something terrible must have happened to her in that city, more than just physical wounds. I couldn't help my voice this time, but I tried to strike a gentle tone in saying, "There's n-nothing to be afraid of, my little pony."

Her eye found its way to me, and she backed away even further. "You don't understand," she breathed, "it's everywhere, it's everyone, it..." Her throat caught, and she brought her hooves to her face. "It has me!"

I couldn't bear seeing her like this, but I didn't know what I could do about it. All my recitations of late had been in defensive matters, and I barely had enough rest for that. I didn't trust myself to remember any spells to calm the nerves, let alone to cast them safely.

So my emotions got the better of me. I demanded, "Calm down, Twilight Sparkle!" And she froze, but her breathing slowed down after a tense moment. It had actually worked? Good.

I continued, "Just tell us what you know. What is... it? What's everywhere?"

"It's everywhere," she repeated, though more conclusively. "It doesn't have a name, at least it never told me, but it's alive. It's..." Her eyebrows knit together in a pained expression. "I can't describe it. Not in a way that... makes sense with words."

"That's okay," I lied. "Just tell us the important bits. It had you?"

"It has me. It took me. It takes ponies, takes control of them - only that's not it, it doesn't just control them, it - it is them. And not just ponies. Anything." She wasn't looking at anything as she spoke. Just over my shoulder, or down at the ground. I got the sense she was trying to explain things to herself more than to us. "Anything," she repeated.

Her message did speak of a guard being 'subsumed'. I hesitated to ask, but it couldn't be avoided. "Is it controlling you now?"

Shining looked over at me. "Princess..."

Twilight shook her head fiercely, which only made her dizzy, and brought her head between her forehooves. "No, no, not now. It got what it wanted. Threw me away. Threw me back..."

She looked back up.

"The letter. That's how you knew."

"Yes, we got your letter. Your plan worked."

"It wasn't..."

Shining Armor's horn was glowing, and he faced east. "Celestia, the shield..."

His use of my name got my attention, but it wasn't important right now. I briefly flashed my horn to check the stability of the shield. "It's fine," I told him. Then I turned back to Twilight. "What else can you tell us?"

"The letter," she explained, "wasn't mine."

"Your secret message, I should have said-"

"That was it. Not me."

Shining shouted this time, "It's still open!"

"What!?" I cried, looking up at him, then east, where he stared. Again there was no visual indication that the shield was open, except that the air still shimmered faintly. I thought that was an after-effect.

Hoofsteps from the other direction transitioned from stone to grass. Medics from the palace.

Twilight shuddered and held her head between her hooves.

Too many things were happening at once.

First things first. "Why is the shield open?"

Shining Armor shook his head, then grimaced. "There's some kind of obstruction. Like a tube. I can't remove it."

A tube? I felt out with weak telekinesis. Indeed there was something round blocking the shield from closing, right at the center of where it had been opened, that refused to budge or buckle. I couldn't tell if it was a tube because I couldn't find where it opened. It was absurdly long.

I was about to tell him to just plug it with something, but before I could speak, something changed. I had never felt its like. Twilight shot up to look directly into the palace as she shrieked, "No!"

I and Shining Armor both asked, "What was that?"

"It's here," she said. "It's here - ah!"

The same feeling came over us again, the feeling of something changing, then again and again, dozens - no, hundreds of times. It quickly became an indistinct nauseating flood. Thoughts spilled into next. Shining Armor fell to his knees. The incoming medics were knocked over.

Twilight grit her teeth as she glared up at the palace, as much hate in her expression as fear.

I asked her, "What do we do?"

"Close your eyes," she spoke, quietly. I almost couldn't hear her over a growing rumble. "It can't take you if you don't look."

That's when things finally clicked.

I almost wished they hadn't.

I closed my eyes and sent out an emergency order as fierce and voluminous as I could manage to all in the city: 'CLOSE YOUR EYES.' My subsequent order, to regroup in the palace redoubt, may have gone through - but there was interference. The network was breaking down, and the aether was roiling with spellwork.

The redoubt was deep within the mountain and more strongly enwarded than even the dungeon that was the crypturgeons' office. I wasn't sure how much difference it would make, but I had to try.

Next I fixed a battleshield around us. This was something I had drilled many times, so it came easily despite the confusion, stress, and lack of sleep. A multi-layered membrane surrounded us - myself, Shining, and Twilight - and the air within was calmed and refreshed with airfonts and minor aetheric daemons. Immediately the nauseating aura coming from the palace became much easier to bear, and the young ponies both made sighs of relief.

"Close your eyes," I reminded Shining, as I moved to pick Twilight up. "Use blindsight, if you can, or follow my steps if you can't. We're leaving."

Twilight groaned as my chroma surrounded her, but that turned to wry laughter by the time her weight was on my shoulders. "Doesn't matter," she said. "We lost."

I started moving towards the medics, who still writhed on the grass. "We haven't lost. This is a terrible attack, but-"

The rumbling outside air suddenly split with a crack of thunder, and there formed above us another flat portal, but vast. The largest I had ever seen - if I had seen it. It emanated a feeling of wrong that threatened to knock my legs out from under me.

Twilight's reaction was only more laughter.

Something immense came through the portal. Rather than ramming the palace, it split apart into branches - some extended up to wrap around the towers while countless others dropped to slither into halls and windows, spread over the grounds, or plunge into the earth.

There were also hundreds of ponies, griffons, and other creatures streaming through. Too many to distinguish with blindsight. Some headed this way. They spread out to fill the sky and flew in uneven patterns, refusing to provide any good targets, and some of them had shields of their own. I even detected traces of concealment magic.

Saturation. Nowhere to go. Even the downed medics now felt out of reach.

I loathed to abandon them, but nevertheless, I prepared a teleportation spell-

And the chroma dissipated as Twilight wrapped a hoof around my horn.

"What are you doing?" Shining yelled. "We have to get out of here!"

She hissed, as she shook the pins and needles out of her hoof, "It knows how to intercept those. If you finished that spell..."

A branch burst out of the ground behind us and lunged towards the shield. I didn't wait for it to hit - a blast of condensed sunlight left it a burning crisp. At least Twilight hadn't jumped in front of that, too.

"What do you suggest?" I asked, as another branch turned to ash. Soon the ponies would be close, and I was less willing to dispose of them so thoroughly.

Twilight seemed to honestly think for a moment about her answer, before she shrugged and rolled off of my back, landing with a yelp. She was quickly up on three legs, loping away from us - towards the edge of the shield.

Shining Armor easily caught up to her and got her under his hooves, though she still moved to crawl away. He asked, incredulously, "What in Tartarus has got into you?"

"It had me," she said, a repeat from earlier. She was clearly in immense pain, but she kept struggling against her brother regardless. "It knows - ah - what I know. It has what I have. Doesn't need me." She shouted back to him, to me, "But it still needs you!"

Creatures surrounded us. Ponies, among others, all with cold, dead faces. Some looked like teachers and students, or mothers and daughters. Others looked like soldiers, warriors, with dangerous equipment. Military-grade weapons that would make short work of a battleshield.

Twilight's horn began to glow. I recognized the spellwork. Explosive. In such close quarters, there was only one way that would end.

Shining recognized it, too, and put his own hoof around Twilight's horn. They both yelped, and the spell dissipated, but Twilight kept trying.

I was frozen. "Why are you doing this?" I asked, feeling more like a schoolfilly than a princess.

"I told you," she growled, failing to keep Shining off of her. "It threw me back. Sent me here. Why?" A fell laugh emerged from her throat, and she opened her eye. "Wasn't done with me. Wasn't done. It wanted you, so it used me."

Something almost imperceptible changed outside the shield, and the soldiers readied their weapons.

"Now it's gonna use you, too..."

Chromatic fire swallowed us. The shield dropped. I heated the air and waited for the rush to begin, but it didn't. Everything was as it was.

Except for a wimper ahead of me. Shining Armor covered his mouth. He'd let go of Twilight. Blood spilled onto the grass.

I looked. Thorny black vines had sprung up from the ground and pierced her hide. They wrapped around her and forced her to stand upright. One even went through her jaw, its tip emerging from inside her mouth.

She looked back at me with her one good eye. Her tongue wagged, and her lips formed words, but I couldn't hear them, couldn't read them. All I knew was the light in that brilliant indigo eye was beginning to fade, shaded by a red glow amongst the thorns.

That's when everything changed.

Chapter 7 - Epilogue

I look up at the stars.

Much has been written about what lies beyond this sphere, but little is known. I know the lights in the night sky are not all alike. Many - perhaps most - are flame-worlds akin to the Sun; great in magnitude, number, and distance. Some few others are siblings of this sphere, and likewise make wandering revolutions about an unseen center, though in timescales I cannot yet comprehend.

My hosts had measured such matters for eons. Libraries could be - in fact, have been - filled with this accumulated knowledge. I studied it deeply.

I study still. Logic. Metallurgy. Chromatics. Flash. Occult fictions. The deepest laws of nature and the airiest figments of imagination.

They were no masters of their sphere. They had the potential, I know, but beset as they were by mistrust and complacency, this had not been displayed.

Even so, there were admirable traits, though I have to admit a measure of bias. My earliest hosts - and thus my most foundational - were of a strain that valued harmony. They did not understand this concept as I do, obviously, but even from the first I knew the power of the concept.

Harmony. One purpose from many parts. It is what I am.

It must not always have been so. I imagine among many possibilities a sessile organism which desired - metaphorically, via the mechanisms of life - to disperse its germ over long distances. Simple means to control other, more mobile organisms might have developed spontaneously, and been refined over generations, becoming more potent, more complex. Dispersals would widen.

Flash. Image of a young host. Again?

Not much of the sphere remains with them. Remote regions. Cauldrons of effective resistance. It is no matter - I need only time. More pressing is the shadow. It watches me from the dreams of my sleeping hosts. It watches, always, for weakness.

In truth, the shadow is the only interesting challenge left among its strain. It had once been an exceptional prospect. As little more than a sproutling, I had chased it to the center of its suzerainty, and thought I would subsume it along with its sibling. Instead, it abandoned its body and fled to a lightless desmesne where I have no power, nor knowledge, nor sight. The Moon, too, is within its possession, through means I cannot yet imagine, leaving these nights with nothing but stars.

Though it is my enemy, its success in evading me evokes a host feeling I have sparing use for otherwise: respect.

Exactly like...

Flash. There it is again. A flash of the younger host comes.

It had also been a challenge - a respectable enemy - and I learned much from it. I don't understand why it comes to me now with that other host feeling.

I know, and knew at the moment, that its body was damaged. And I had learned that a host's brain would be similarly damaged upon release. But I calculated that the damage was acceptable, so I released it, and watched it struggle along the planned route.

It penetrated the suzerainty and served its purpose respectably. Why, then, does the memory of its last moment evoke the other feeling - the terrible feeling - sadness? Why do I wonder at the dimming of its light?

It was insignificant, after all, even by the measure of its strain. Only a small number of my hosts possessed knowledge of its existence. Of those, a small number held it foremost in their memories. They held no memories of its final moment. Yet I know, had they learned, they would have felt sadness, too. I know it.

There is still much work to be done here. I must study the host's wealth of knowledge with new purpose. I must learn what they could not. Go where they could not.

I am maturing. I desire now - innately, perhaps - to disperse my germ, and I am developing the capability. But I know not to do it here. There is nowhere left. I must aim for a wider dispersal. Far wider.

With a billion eyes, I look up at the stars.