Awakening

Chapters

19th of Winter Season, 10,043 AC
2. Never Been Here Before
47th of Planting Season, 10,044 AC
3. Running in Circles
1st of Growing Season, 10,044 AC
4. When Walls Fall Down
17th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC
5. Magic and Steel
18th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC
6. Passacaglia in the Library
44th of Growing Season, 10,053 AC
7. Life and Death
30th of Winter Season, 10,056 AC
8. We Won't Fade Into Darkness
Special Thanks and Dedication
1. Attacked

19th of Winter Season, 10,043 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

19th of Winter Season, 10,043 AC
Hearth’s Warming Eve

“Tell me another story.” Little Lumina pulled her Twilight Sparkle doll closer and hugged it tight.

Her mother smiled and scooted her chair closer to her daughter’s bed. Her cheerful eyes and her warm features didn’t allow anything other than the kindest expressions. Lumina had never seen her mother mad. She’d seen her upset, but never angry or in mean spirits. She was a pink unicorn with the blue mane, and she always tried to keep a warm smile across her face beaming strong, just as she was doing that very moment.

“Alright, one more story,” she said. “It’s past your bed-time, but it’s Hearth’s Warming Eve, so why not? What kind of story did you have in mind?”

“The one about Twilight and Nightmare Moon.”

“That’s a long one, but okay.”

The unicorn reopened the book in her lap and began reading.

“‘Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and brought Harmony to all the land. To do this, the eldest sister used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn-’”

“Unicorn powers?” Lumina asked from beneath the covers.

“Yes, magic,” said her mother. “In these stories all ponies are magical and have magical abilities that help them keep harmony throughout the land. Earth ponies tend the plants and earth, the pegasi move the clouds, and the unicorns raise the sun and the moon.”

“I moved a glass of water today with my horn, was that magical unicorn powers? Like the ones the princesses had?”

“Oh, well, I guess so.” Her mother closed the book but kept her hoof on that page. “And who taught you how to move glasses around with magic?”

“Twilight Sparkle, she showed me how to do it.”

Lumina’s mother leaned over and pulled the covers down and smiled at the little filly and her doll.

“Twilight Sparkle, have you been teaching my daughter magic?”

“Not that Twilight, the real one, she talks to me sometimes.”

“Is that so? I think I’ll keep reading, if it’s alright with her.”

“She says to go ahead.”

As the story went on, Lumina slipped deeper in her bed and lost interest in the story. Her attention was on the warm glow of her lamp and the sound of her mother’s voice. Eventually she closed her eyes and just listened.

The door to her room cracked open, and Lumina winced at the new presence. With tired eyes, she looked up and saw her father standing in the doorway. He was a blue unicorn with the most intimidating beard she’d ever seen, but he had a way of putting ponies at ease when he spoke.

“Can I speak to you, dear?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll be right down.”

Lumina’s father trotted off, and her mother waited till he was gone before she got up and tucked her daughter in. She took the book in her mouth and set it on the table. The light went out and her mother disappeared out the door. Lumina watched everything through half closed eyes.

For a long time Lumina waited, then she climbed out of her bed and slung her Twilight doll over her back.

“There’s something up, Twilight, we’ve got to investigate and get to the bottom of this.” Lumina crept up to her door and poked her head out. “I bet it’s presents. I know you’re not supposed to see them before morning, but I got to get a peek.”

The voices of her mother and father talking in quick and heated words echoed up from the kitchen. Lumina took shelter on the stairs, held Twilight close, and listened.

“Lightning Specter, she is just a filly.” Lumina’s mother moved across the kitchen and cast a long shadow that reached from the kitchen, through the dining room, and over the stairs where Lumina was hiding on. “She’s hardly more than a foal. This is probably just a phase. I don’t see why you can’t let her be.”

“And what if it isn’t a phase? Huh?” The shadow of her father stepped into view. “Did she tell you about how she thinks she can move glasses around with magic? She sounds like one of those freaks you hear about on the news! What if she doesn’t grow out of it, what if she joins a cult when she’s older?”

“Then as her parents we should support her decision,” said her mother. “I wouldn’t agree with it, but it would be her choice to make and not for us to say! What happened to us letting her figure out her own answers to big questions and us staying out of it, or did that conversation never happen?”

“I’ll tell you this much: no daughter of mine is joining a cult. It’s those stories you’re always reading to her. The sooner you stop reading them to her and the sooner she learns that there isn’t any such thing as magic the better.”

Lumina didn’t like that, so she snuck back to her room, shut the door behind her, and hid with Twilight under her bed.

“It’s not going to be okay, is it, Twilight?” Lumina asked.

“Things are going to change,” Twilight said. “You have to trust me that they will work out, just as long as you stay true to yourself.”

“Promise me that no matter what happens you’ll stay with me.”

“Of course, you’re my friend. I’ll always be watching out for you.”

2. Never Been Here Before

Awakening
Solocitizen

Never Been Here Before
Present Day

“Animus, where...” Lumina tried opening her eyes, but she was too tired, and within seconds she nodded off.

A bump roused Lumina from her stupor. Her head rolled over to the side, the chair was comfy, and the hologram in front of her pretty, but she couldn’t drift off again. Stay awake, she shouted inside her own mind. A green triangle sped toward a blue ball.

Another bump, that one more of a jolt, and her mind drifted out of the haze a little more. FTL jump, that’s right, they made an FTL jump, that’s why she was so disoriented. Best just to sleep through those things whenever possible. She looked at the hologram again and jumped into full alertness with an explosion of shock and terror.

“Animus!” she shouted. “We popped out of FTL next to a planet the size of Equus, and our orbit is rapidly decaying, fire up the reactor and throw all engines into reverse!”

No response. Her heart sank into a pit just beneath her stomach.

“Animus! I need you!”

“Alert, collision detected.” The voice wasn’t his; it sounded like him, but it lacked all the intelligence that backed up his words. Why in the name of Celestia that thing spoke in her friend’s place, she didn’t know. “Autonomous control unavailable. Manual helm control engaged. Alert, collision detected.”

Flashing lights sprang up around Lumina, along with a joystick from beneath the command chair, and a throttle from the hoofrest to her left. She took the throttle in her left hoof and the joystick in her right. Lumina had a class F license and more than qualified to fly a starship exceeding two million metric tons, but she was always assisted by a computer. An AI always backed her up. She didn’t drive so much as command. She didn’t know what to do, her AI companion wasn’t helping, and the haze from FTL space still filled her head.

She panicked.

The Luna Dream bucked and reeled at the slightest touch of the joystick or throttle. Animus’s cool logic wasn’t there to intermediate between her and the ship, to smooth out her commands and adjust her maneuvers. Over the next twenty minutes, she lost the battle to stay afloat. Warning lights announced her defeat, and the planet below filled the windows ahead of her.

Massive sheets of ice blanketed the majority of the surface, broken up by jagged shards of land. It shined like the sun, reflecting the light, and glowing without taking any of the warmth in for itself. A silver ring haloed the ice world and a single moon shined from high above. Lumina’s mother said that long ago, the three pony tribes struggled against each other without end, and their anger drew windigos, spirits of hate that choked the land with snow and ice. If there was any merit to the story at all, then that planet must have been rage and sorrow incarnate.

Short minutes passed, and the big white ball filled the windows. The Luna Dream shuddered as red flames lapped at the window. She was entering the atmosphere. Great, the starship was never designed to enter an atmosphere.

The best Lumina could do was open all the hatches, docking ports, and cargo holds, and throw the engines in reverse. It didn’t help much. Two of the remaining ram jets broke off their spokes and disintegrated high above the ice. Each time, the ship bucked and kicked in agony. The engines pushed back against the planet and put Lumina in a brutal tug of war between the two competing forces. Her insides threatened to burst. The holograms around her reported bits of the ship peeling off and burning up in atmosphere.

Flames cleared from the window enough to show ice flowing by beneath the ship. The Luna Dream sped into a valley bordered on all sides by imposing mountains as hospitable as a dragon’s mouth. Lumina gripped the hoof rests, tightened her harness, and grit her teeth together.

Then the hull touched ice.

Lumina was catapulted into her harness with enough force to knock the air out of her lung in a single bleat. Metal convulsed and moaned, and the lights and holograms around her flashed red and died. A grinding feeling flowed up from the bowels of the ship and filled Lumina with a harsh vibration. Ice splashed across the window and obscured her view. She felt the ship turn. Sparks rained down on her. She never screamed, she never even let out more than a whimper. Lumina stared straight ahead in silence and waited for the ship to topple over and her life to end.

But the Luna Dream never rolled over, instead the ship found its center, and Lumina lived. Over the course of countless minutes, the ship ground to a halt.

When it was over, and Lumina’s frantic breathing was the only sound on the bridge, she curled her shaking body together in a ball. She survived. Somehow, through it all, she survived.

Damage reports and red system failure messages flooded in from all over the ship. She didn’t want to look, she didn’t want to hear about how she survived the crash just to freeze to death or run out of oxygen.

After a few minutes her shaking died down and she rounded up enough courage to look at the damage report.

It was bad. It was real bad.

The engines were mostly trashed, the bottom two decks were nonexistent, and the central AI core wasn’t talking. The FTL drive and dark matter core reported fine, but once a ship the size of Luna Dream touched down on a planet, there wasn’t anything anypony could do to get it back in space; it was hopelessly massive.

Well, at least she wouldn’t freeze to death. The reactor kept pumping out power to heat the hallways and power the food synthesizers, and emergency bulkheads locked down the tears in the hull. The two lowest decks were smeared against the ice behind her, but nothing critical to her survival was lost.

Lumina unfastened herself from the crash couch and fought her way past the fallen control panels and wires cluttering the bridge. Red emergency LEDs lit her path. The stairway leading out of the bridge lay strewn across the hallway below, nothing more than a four meter drop, but she didn’t want to risk landing on broken metal, so she used some broken cables to fashion a make-shift rope to lower her self down. Progress was slow.

Before she even began tackling a reactor inspection, a distress beacon, or the obligatory venture outside, her first priority was checking on the AI core and trying to restore Animus. Something very wrong happened down there.

The hyperlift stopped halfway to the AI core, so Lumina popped open the emergency hatch and hiked to the core on hoof. The way was unlit save for sparse running lights. The insides of the Luna Dream creaked with each step of her hooves. The stench of super-heated plastic plagued her nose, but she pressed on through the fumes and darkness.

Prying the open doors to the AI core almost took more strength than a unicorn like her could muster. Lumina didn’t have the strength of an earth pony, after all. However she managed to get the doors open enough to wedge her body through. Her heart sank at the sight inside.

Animus was dead. No better way to put it. A big black scorch mark spat out from what she assumed was his quantum processor, while a crater the size of a pony was all that remained of his hard drive.

Lumina plopped down on her hind legs and wept into the grated floor beneath her. Her friend was gone. He was one of the few she ever had, and now he was gone.

In that dark place she found a light, it was nothing more than a faint yellow LED beneath the grated floor, but a light nonetheless. Lumina dug up a crowbar out from under a pile of scrap metal, picked it up with her mouth, and lifted the grating from the floor. She climbed down into the pit and checked the label next to the LED:

A.N.I.M.U.S. Auxiliary Systems

“Animus!” Lumina ran a hoof over the LED and smiled. “I was so worried, I thought I lost you! Please, tell me what happened and how I can fix you?”

“Please restate your command.” The same vacant voice from earlier echoed throughout the chamber.

Lumina followed the light to a collection of hard drives anchored into the floor. The computer wasn’t connected to a quantum processor, and the hard drives themselves only stored about half as much memory as he needed to run properly.

The only explanation she thought of was that Animus transferred himself into another system, and was trying to run himself without the proper hardware. Only the most basic bits and pieces of Animus still functioned. Maybe if she had spent her life studying computer engineering, then she might know a way to fix him, but she didn’t.

“I’m so sorry.” Lumina put her head against the computer, and tears rolled down side of her cheek. “I don’t know what to do.”

At least, maybe, some part of her friend was still alive. That was enough.

Lumina brushed the tears from her eyes and bottled up her feelings beneath her heart. She still had work to do.

“Animus, is that you I’m talking to right now?” She crawled out of the hole and slid the floor grate back into place.

“Please restate your command.”

“I’m going to have to be real specific with you, aren’t I?”

“Please restate your command.”

“That wasn’t it. Uh, what is the status of the Animus intelligence?”

“Please restate your command.”

Lumina covered her face with her hoof, sighed, then trotted over to the burnt out quantum processor.

“Run diagnosis on the--” Lumina read the label on the processor before continuing “--Autonomous Networked Intelligence Master Unit System.”

“Alert! Total system failure following non-standard FTL jump. All memory files and applications compressed and downloaded to Auxiliary systems.”

“Any way to fix you?” Lumina asked.

“Please restate your command.”

“You’re not going to be much help, are you?"

“Affirmative.”

Lumina sighed, again, then forced her way into the hyperlift tube and started her hike back to whatever was left of her room. She needed a good night’s sleep. The rest she’d deal with tomorrow.

* * *

Sleep didn’t come to her easily that night, and neither did it last when she reached it. Nightmares of falling, monsters in the sky, and sightless horrors barraged her. She woke from her dreams covered in cold sweat and with a racing heart.

Lumina was desperate for some rest. She knew about a tranquilizer in sickbay that would knock her out, but she didn’t know if it would provide any reprieve from the nightmares. Lumina threw herself out of bed and kicked the wall with her hind legs. The anger in her subsided into sorrow, and she collapsed on the floor crying in the moonlight.

“I’m never going home!” Lumina wiped her running nose with her hoof and rolled over on her back. “What’s the point if I get up at all tomorrow! Nopony is ever going to find me!”

Rolling over onto her stomach to hide her face, she caught sight of her book sprawled open and out of its box. It slid under her bed during the crash, and its faded cover now bored dozens of nicks and scars, but it was otherwise intact. She pulled it close to her and curled her body around it.

“What would a brave pony like Applejack do?” she whispered to the night.

From some deep place in her mind, an answer whispered back.

She wouldn’t let this get the best of her and neither should you. No matter how bad things get you have the strength to pull through.

Lumina sniffled and picked herself up.

Most of the furniture in her room slid to the far wall during the crash, since she wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway, she set to work picking everything up and pushing them back into place.

When she was very little, and very scared, Lumina’s mother taught her a little trick for finding a peaceful place away from her fears. She sat in the middle of the room on her hindquarters and with her back legs crossed together. She pushed her tail off to one side and rested her front hooves on her hind legs. There was a name for this position, but she didn’t remember. After a moment she closed her eyes and imagined light.

In her mind’s eye, a single beam of light shot down from way above her and hit her horn, from there it expanded, and poured down her spine into every place in her body. She imagined it warm and clean. She held the image for a while, and pulled the light outward through the entire room.

Lumina opened her eyes.

A slight pressure on her horn broke her concentration. She didn’t know where that sensation came from. Oh, no, could she have broken something in the crash? She tapped it with her hoof but didn’t feel any sharp pains or loose parts.

Something to deal with in the morning, Lumina was tired now, and decided to try sleeping again. She yawned and wormed her way under the covers of her bed.

There she was met with dreams of Twilight Sparkle and her five friends. They were trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear them over the noise of her own dreams.

47th of Planting Season, 10,044 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

47th of Planting Season, 10,044 AC

“But I don’t want you to go!” Little Lumina stomped her hoof on the floor and shouted at her mother: “It’s not fair!”

Lumina’s mother set her bags down next to the door. She turned to her daughter and sat down next to her.

“I know it isn’t fair but I don’t have much choice.” She put her hooves around her daughter and pulled her in for a hug. “Listen, I know this is hard, but this is the way it has to be. And I’ll see you twice a month. I’m not leaving you, remember that, I’m not going to disappear on you. We’re going to see each other soon.”

“No, don’t go!” Lumina sobbed into her mother’s mane. “It’s not fair!”

“Hey, listen closely, I’ve got something to show you.” Lumina’s mother rearranged herself in an awkward position on the floor. “This is something you can do whenever you’re feeling upset. The way I’m sitting now is called the Lily Lotus Position, and sitting this way is the first step in clearing your head.”

Lumina picked her Twilight Sparkle doll off her back and sat down the same way as her mother.

“Next, you clear your mind and focus on a big bright light shining down into you.”

“Okay, then what?”

“Then you picture it shining through you and lighting all the dark places inside you up. You can do this anytime you’re in a troubling place in life.”

“And will that make everything better?” Lumina sniffled and picked up her Twilight Sparkle doll.

“No, it won’t, sweetie,” said her mother. “But it will give you a little peace away from your troubles and help you face them when you’re ready.”

Hoof steps pattered up from the nearby hallway. Lumina’s mother glanced in their direction, rose to her hooves in a hurry, and slung her bags over her back.

“I have to go now, but I’ll see you again on Saturday.” Lumina’s mother leaned in and gave her one last kiss. “I love you very much, sweetie.”

“I love you too, mommy.”

And with that she was out the door.

Her father stepped into the entranceway and stared at the door.

Lumina held her doll close, and didn’t cry, she kept the emotions in and bottled them up next to her heart.

“Come, Lumina, there is a lot we need to talk about.” Lumina’s father trotted off towards his office and the little filly followed.

The desk in her father’s office was ginormous, and adorned with model FTL ferries she was not allowed under any circumstance to touch. Her father lowered himself onto his big chair and propped his hooves up in an arch. With a flick of his horn, he motioned for his daughter to take the seat on the opposite side of his work desk. The sharp edges of the desk, the odor of laser scribed documents, and the ticking of the clock in the back provided her nothing but unease, so Lumina turned to her Twilight Sparkle for comfort and squeezed it tight.

“I know how difficult this is for you.” Lumina’s father spoke after a long time. “My parents -- your grandmother and grandfather -- separated when I was very young, right about your age, in fact. It was hard, yes, but I like to think I’m stronger from having gone through it. Your mother and I, we had our differences and we simply couldn’t remain together. I’ll tell you more about that when you’re older. The important thing is that we can get through this together, as a family.”

“And mommy?” Lumina asked.

Her father sighed and shook his head.

Lumina couldn’t help it; she broke down and cried, and cried, and cried.

“Oh sweetie.” Her father trotted over to her and held her close. “There, there, it’s all going to be alright.”

“No it’s not!” She pushed him away and bolted from her chair. “You’re a liar! And I hate you!”

Lumina galloped out of her father’s office and up to her room and slammed the door shut. With a scream, Lumina cast the Twilight Sparkle doll off her back. She kicked and she stomped and she yelled until the stuffing was as lumpy as her father’s icky mashed potatoes.

“I trusted you." Lumina wiped her eyes dry.

She gave the doll one last kick, just for good measure.

After a few minutes of staring into her floor, she got out her storybook, and with the help of her Reading Learner, she started reading at the beginning of the first story, and she didn’t stop reading until she turned the last page.

A vivid image of Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony stretched out over the fancy end page. They stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, with Princess Luna and Princess Celestia rounding out the middle ground. The background itself was an illustration of a library with massive stain windows running across the walls; it looked like someplace in Canterlot Palace, but Lumina had studied every image in the book, and found nothing that quite matched it.

At some point, Lumina fell asleep, with her book open to the image of the library.

* * *

“Lumina, wake up,” the voice of a mare called to her. “It’s not time for you to sleep.”

Though her words never rose above a gently whisper, the raw authority behind the voice snapped Lumina awake in a heartbeat. She pulled her head out from between the pages in her book, and glanced around for the source.

“Twilight Sparkle, is that you?” she asked.

“No, I’m not Twilight Sparkle.” The voice chuckled ever so slightly. “But she’s over here, if you’d like to see her.”

Swirling mist ebbed and flowed out of the crack between her door and the floor, and with it came light, pure and jovial in its color. It called Lumina closer, and she ventured toward her door. Her hoof falls fell in silence on the hardwood floor.

She stood before her door, debating whether or not to take the final step and let it in. The light poked through the crevices in her doorframe as radiant pillars.

The second Lumina put her front hooves on the doorknob and turned it open, the door flung out into a place straight out of fairy tale. Bookshelves, filled end to end with every conceivable manner of written text ran in rows further than her eyes could see. Walls reached up into blue sky before fading away entirely. Music crept into Lumina’s ears, and the smell of old books tickled her nose.

She slammed the door shut. If the library was real, and not some dream, it’d still be there when she opened it again. Lumina grinned and giggled and threw the door wide open.

That time the light was gone, and the music had disappeared, and in their place were the khaki walls of her house. She didn’t give up, and tried opening and closing her door for a long time. Calling out to the mare on the other side didn’t work either, and after a while Lumina gave up.

She hung her head, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.

3. Running in Circles

Awakening
Solocitizen

Running in Circles
Present Day

A thud-thud-thud came pounding on Lumina’s door early the next morning, and put an end to her rest. Riding on a wave of hot adrenaline, she shot up in bed with her eyes trained on her door and her ears as forward and alert as a bunny rabbit’s. She stared at the door for without moving, or breathing, while she studied the thuds from the other side. After a moment, she crept out of bed, picked up a lamp with her mouth, and approached the door. She tapped the lock controls and raised her head to strike with the lamp, but she dropped it in shock once the doors were open.

A set of robotic arms were deployed from the ceiling and busy hosing down a busted emergency ladder, and every sixty seconds they took a break from watering the twisted metal to polish it with a scrubbing attachment. The scrubbing arm beat the ladder into the floor with a thud-thud-thud.

“By Celestia’s beard, what is going on in here?”

“Please restate your command.” Animus’s voice boomed out of a speaker by the mechanical arms, and continued to spray water on the ladder and drenched everything in the hallway.

“That wasn’t a command.” Lumina tried her best to shield herself from the water, but still managed to get soaked.

“Please state a valid command.”

“Uh oh, I think I get it.” Lumina hid her face in her front hoof.

Last night, just before she retired for the evening, she spent the better part of an hour trying to get Animus to fix the staircase leading to the bridge and ‘restating her command.’ The conversation ended with her trotting off and telling Animus to, “Just clean up the stairway.”

And this was how he interpreted her.

“I asked you to clean up the stairway, the one going up to the bridge, not to wash and scrub this ladder,” Lumina said. “This, what you’re doing right now, is making a mess, which is the exact opposite of what I asked you to do. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Not my fault.”

“What?” Lumina dropped her jaw just a bit, but then recomposed herself. “How is this not your fault?”

The mechanical arms retracted up to a hub in the ceiling and repositioned themselves next to Lumina.

“Analyzing previous valid command: ‘just clean up the stairway’,” Animus said. “Key words recognized ‘stairway’ and ‘clean.’ Command executed nine hours and forty-two minutes ago. One thousand and three targets designated for cleaning procedure.”

“Wait, you mean to tell me you’ve been doing this all night, all over the ship?” The thought horrified Lumina.

“Please restate your command.”

Lumina darted to the hyperlift and rode it up to the forward most section of the ship. The stairway was still just as broken as she left it the other night, and now there was a large puddle covering the floor. She maintained hope that the observation deck escaped the deluge. When she ventured down for a quick peek, the observation deck was already knee deep in water. Furniture bobbed up and down and little waves sloshed against the walls and panoramic windows. Lumina decided not to deal with it.

She took the hyperlift to what remained of the kitchen and ordered a daffodil and lavender sandwich from the food synthesizer. The light above her never stopped flickering and the sandwich tasted, well, acrid. The urge to gag rolled up her throat and fought her through the entire meal. After she finished breakfast, she ordered a full sweep of the long and short range sensors, and headed down to Cargo Bay F-6 to check on her food supplies while the ship ran the scans.

Lumina climbed all the way down to the starboard storage area, and stumbled her way through poorly lit passageways, only to reach Cargo Bay F-6’s hatch and find nothing but the snowblind from the frozen wastes staring at from beyond the window. Lumina’s ears flopped down, and she dashed to the other food reserves. The Luna Dream had two others, Cargo Bays E-6 and D-6, and each held enough organic protein goo to fuel the food synthesizers for a year. When she reached Cargo Bay E-6, her heart sank and her knees quivered till they threatened to give out from under her; the refrigeration unit was busted, and the goo sacks strung up along the cargo bay’s ceiling already started to turn pink with mold. The food synthesizers could reconstitute most mold and contaminants into healthy food, but not the pink stuff. The pink stuff killed desperate pilots who tried to eat it.

Gulping down her fear, Lumina and hurried up to the last cargo bay. Luckily for her, Cargo Bay D-6, and all its contents, were still intact.

“Thank Celestia!” Lumina slumped against the hatch and caught her breath.

On her way back to the kitchen, she ran the math on her food supplies. Prior to the crash, the food synthesizers were mainly drawing goo from Cargo Bay F-6, so with F-6 and E-6 gone, she still had a full year worth of food. In an emergency, the synthesizers could reconstitute sewage into food, which she heard was good for the amount of food she had plus the waste tanks’ current levels, divided by a half. So that left her with just over a year and three seasons before starving. Rounded up every step of the way, of course.

Lumina moped into the kitchen, plopped into the nearest chair, and buried her face in her hooves. She needed to distract herself, desperately. So she picked up a datapad and checked on the sensor sweep.

Long range scans identified this star system and pin-pointed the Luna Dream’s location to an unexplored system two hundred light years off course. If Lumina fired the distress beacon now, somepony might pick it up in the next couple millennia, and if they were feeling generous, dispatch a search team soon after. That was, of course, assuming that whoever attacked her didn’t hear her signal first and come looking for her. Lumina gulped, cleared the command from her touch screen, and navigated to the short range sensor report.

Calling the outside conditions ‘weather’ was a generous use of the word. There was an atmosphere, yes, but a thin one nearly devoid of oxygen and polluted with ammonia. Temperatures outside reached about one hundred and eighty degrees Kelvin. Atmospheric pressure, negligible. Wind speed, also virtually nonexistent. A pony would last all of a few seconds outside without a spacesuit. Lumina ran her hoof across the screen and selected a thermal reading of the nearby terrain.

At first she thought it was a glitch, that big red glob just east of the ship just wasn’t real, nothing natural in that wasteland could rise above the ambient blue.

“Animus.” She called out to the AI without taking her eyes from the touch screen. “Recalibrate the ship’s sensors and troubleshoot.”

“Please restate your command,” it said.

“Fine, run self diagnosis on thermal sensors.”

No request to reword followed, it must have understood her that time. She closed the sensor report and waited for Animus to complete the diagnosis.

“All systems within standard operating parameters.”

“No way,” Lumina said.

Something out there was generating heat. It was burning, it was big, and it wasn't natural. Lumina opened the thermal scan again and tagged the location in Luna Dream’s navigational database.

Lumina galloped across the ship until she found a window facing East. She propped herself up on the railing and gazed out the window with a pair of binoculars. Rocks, glaciers, and more rocks stretched out as far as she could see; whatever it was, it was buried beneath literal mountains of ice. Lumina snorted, she had no intention of letting anything stand between that heat source. It could be a way off the planet, or she might find a way to restore Animus. Even if all she found was rations, that would still add weeks or months to her life span.

The Luna Dream was a commercial freighter, and therefore unarmed. However large rocks drifting in space had a tendency to sneak up on large starships. So, the Interstellar Express installed powerful mining lasers on their larger ships. The laser was far too inaccurate for the long-range artillery duels of space combat, but it excelled at burning anything at close range.

Lumina spent the next hour programming the mining laser, and left it to run its firing sequence while she put together the right gear for her expedition. It took Lumina two more hours figuring out how to set a transmat beam to teleport her outside, and how to keep it fixed on her so it could bring her back on demand. Normally Animus would do it for her, but he wasn’t up for the challenge. She experimented on some apples before trying it herself. The first five turned to apple sauce on the return trip, but after seventeen trials without any incidents, she decided it was safe.

Standing on the transmat platform with her saddlebags packed and sealed snug in her spacesuit, Lumina tapped a button on her foreleg and blinked. Yellow light surged through her eyelids and flooded her with an overwhelming burning sensation. Transmat beams hurt, but in less time than it took for her to blink it was over, and when Lumina’s eyes popped open, she was standing in the frozen wasteland. Pale rings glistened in the sky and arced over the cruel mountains to the west. Ice crystals rained down on Lumina from a big cloud hanging over her destination.

Just as the damage reports had said, the bottom decks of the Luna Dream were completely torn away and lay scattered across the ice. Bits and pieces cluttered the snow. And what of that super clean hull she had been working on? Ruined.

Lumina brushed the ice crystals off her visor and pressed onward across the wasteland. Ice squeaked and crunched underneath her hooves each step of the way.

The hike toward the heat source took her over a uniform expanse of ice. The valley walls and the wreckage of Luna Dream helped guide her, however she was not without a GPS system. A little waypoint projected on her helmet marked the path to the drill site. That cloud of water vapor hanging over the site was a dead giveaway if all else failed. Along the way she encountered rocks the size of small houses, jutting up from the ice like bones protruding from a wound, and ice twisted into spikes at least two meters tall.

Less than a kilometer away, she told herself. Her hefty saddlebags weighed down her steps and dug into her back. It was unrelenting, constant, and more than she thought she could endure.

In an effort to keep her mind off the pain in her back, Lumina accessed the ship’s network and downloaded a news recording from the cargo’s database. She caught up with the latest news out of Unitopia while she hiked.

“Sightings of pegasus FTL scout ships has the High Council in a panic today and has left unicorn and earth pony council members unable to devise a plan of action.” The image of a unicorn with a luxurious mane filled the lower-most portion of Lumina’s screen.

“The FTL ships jumped away before the local fleet could intercept. With most of the Unitopian fleets engaged in the battle for the homeworld, the Ministry of Defense has asked the Council to request military support from New Canterlot in the event of a full scale invasion. Recent polls suggest that the local public believes support from New Canterlot will not be enough to repel an invasion by the Pegasus Tribe. Word of the FTL ships has many fleeing the planet and many more demanding a recall of all forces on the Equus front. I’m Amethyst Letter, and this has been The Unbiased Truth. Next on UNN, can algae be the secret to a perfect mane?”

Lumina gestured with her head and the window vanished. No news was good news. She was just about to the heat source anyway.

The hole before her stretched down, and down, and down. Lumina stood on the edge of the precipice and gulped. The beam cut through the ice at an angle, blocking the sun and obscuring the bottom.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?” Lumina asked, but to whom she didn’t know.

She shrugged off her saddlebags, pulled out a stake gun and while standing on her hind legs, looped one free hoof into the trigger-loop and the other around the stock. Lumina nearly tumbled over in that precarious position, but kept her footing long enough to fire a stake into the ice. After testing the stake’s hold, Lumina fastened a steel cable to it and dropped the rest down into the hole. She secured the cable to a harness on her suit and took a final look down into the precipice.

And with that, Lumina descended into darkness.

It was possible that she hadn’t drilled far enough to reach the heat source. She entertained the idea, but even as the sunlight faded away, she held out hope that her salvation lay just a few meters deeper. Lumina kicked against the walls of the hole and clung to the cable for dear life.

After twenty minutes of descending through the darkness, Lumina aimed her suit-mounted searchlights directly ahead of her. No more than five meters down a metal plate sat embedded in the ice.

Whatever the thing was, it was not of pony origin. The spiraling organic patterns on the thing were a far cry from the utilitarian work of earth ponies and the angular designs of pegasi, and it much more intricate than even the most regal unicorn architecture. Definitely not unicorn, the organic curves were just too visceral.

Lumina unclipped herself from the harness and dropped to the plate.

Before Lumina’s hooves even touched the metal, the entire thing groaned, and opened. She panicked, but before she could hit the button to transmat out, she smacked into metal.

Pain blossomed across Lumina’s side, but she picked herself up and glanced around at her new surroundings. This place was just as alien on the inside as it was on the outside; the long hallway Lumina found herself standing in resembled the intestines of some great animal. Her suit detected an atmosphere, standard pressure and normal amounts of oxygen, at a comfortable two hundred and ninety-one degrees Kelvin, however she didn’t trust it enough to take off her helmet. Save for her suit lights, and a pale glow flickering from further down the passage, Lumina was standing in total darkness.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She gathered up her resolve, queued up the transmat beam, and ventured toward the pale blue light. “Who am I kidding, this is how ponies end up dead in sci-fi movies. They just keep pushing it, just to see what around the next corner, and pretty soon an alien is bursting out of somepony’s stomach.” Lumina stopped talking, paused to gather up her remaining courage, and forced herself to continue.

About five minutes later, the passageway opened to a hall that expanded out in every direction. Massive columns shot up from the ground and branched out near the top to weave a ceiling together. Blue light trickled down from beyond the canopy. Standing there in awe, Lumina couldn’t help but think of both a cathedral and a forest. Her hoof falls echoed off the pillars and throughout the hall.

The hairs on the back of Lumina’s head twitched. That primal part of her was trying to warn her; she was being watched. She dismissed the feeling and ventured into the hall.

Lumina paused next to one of the pillars near the entrance, and discovered carvings of winged creatures and living machines covering its sides. She gasped, ran a hoof over the engraved figures, and recorded as much of the pillar as her suit cam allowed.

The pillar told the story of two tribes. One walked on two legs and flew about on wings as delicate as a butterfly's; their faces were narrow and full of teeth. The second tribe was a race of machines that came in a multitude of shapes. The figures on the pillar were shown together, living in harmony, with many coexisting under one roof. Lumina galloped over to another pillar deeper into the hall. That one depicted a great war between the two tribes, and a sky full of fire.

Lumina walked around the pillar at a slow pace with her suit camera recording everything, and then nearly jumped out of her space suit.

Before her stood a monster of metal and teeth, it was as long as five ponies and had as many needle like legs as a centipede. In fact, that’s what it looked like, a great black centipede with a blender for a face. It was reared up over Lumina as if it were a snake just before a strike.

She screamed and adrenaline burned in her veins to prepare her to run or to hide. Her front legs tried to run but her rear tried to hide. In the end she just stood there.

Thankfully, it was as motionless as a statue.

“You!” Lumina pointed her hoof at the thing and let out a little laugh. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, you ugly, stupid, statue.” She poked it with her hoof and cantered to another column, maybe that one had something about a way off this planet.

Needles tapped against the floor metal right behind her, and when she turned around to confront the noise, the centipede was gone.

Her heart jumped and the hot fear came surging back. Lumina shook her head and backed away from the spot with ever widening eyes. Her head darted to her right, left, and over her shoulder and found nothing. She'd seen way too horror movies to stick around and let that thing sneak up on her. Lumina jabbed a button on her foreleg and let the pain and light of the transmat beam engulf her.

The transmat light faded away and the alien scenery was replaced by Luna Dream’s familiar interior, transmat station D-13 by the looks of it. She flung her helmet off and collapsed against the wall panting. Safe, she was safe.

She kicked her gear off and began fighting her way out of her space suit. As she pulled free of her suit, she noticed a number of sore spots all over her left side. The slightest touch produced a sharp pain. She hissed. Lumina didn’t bother picking up the equipment, she just left it where it fell, but she kept the stake gun on her. It was going under her pillow.

After hiking all over the ship and out to that thing, Lumina was exhausted, and wanted more than anything to lie down. Not to sleep though, not after what she’d seen. She planned on keeping both eyes open and one hoof on her gun for as long as possible.

When Lumina reached her room, the door was already open and the sound of a power washer blared from inside.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

She forgot to tell Animus to stop cleaning.

Lumina crossed the threshold into her room and, after putting her hooves down on carpet that oozed water, winced. Animus’s hub of mechanical arms was deployed over her bed and power washing the walls. That white paint job the Interstellar Express had forbidden Lumina from even touching was nothing more than scattered chips on the floor.

“Animus, stop, just stop.” Lumina let the stake gun roll out of her mouth and onto the bed. “At this point, I’m too tired and bruised to care enough to scold you, so just stop.”

The power washers trickled to a stop and retracted into the hub over the bed.

“Command confirmed,” said the computer. “Cleaning procedure terminated.”

Lumina hopped onto water soaked bedding, sighed, and rolled over to her hiding place and retrieved her book. The box she kept it in was reduced to cardboard slough, and when she finally freed it from the mush, it fell into her lap soaked with water and bleeding ink.

“No.” Her eyes widened. “No.” She opened the cover. The words and pictures all blurred together. “No!” The pages were so soft that when she tried to turn a page she ripped out three. “No! No! No! You stupid machine!”

Lumina jumped off her bed and delivered a kick to the arms with her hind legs. The machine flinched and played a satisfying alarm. She wanted to kick it more, but then she got a better idea. Lumina picked up the stake gun with her front hooves and fired.

Recoil knocked her off her hooves and onto the carpet. She landed on a bruise. Animus’s arms were in much worse shape. The stake shot clean through two of its arms before stopping in the hub assembly. A water jet and a scrubbing arm spasmed on her bed.

Animus didn’t attempt to flee, neither did it complain, nor did it even attempt to retrieve the severed arms. Instead it kept the arm hub stationed over the bed without responding.

“What? You’re not going to try to run or hide or fight back?” Lumina sat up, ignoring the rogue strands of golden-yellow hair jabbing at her eyes, and stomped her hooves. “Are you just so weak and helpless that you just accept whatever happens to you?”

No response came from the damned computer, not even a ‘please restate your command.’ Lumina sat there on her water-logged carpet and stared up at the machine.

Anger boiled in Lumina, and she barred any thoughts of forgiveness from her mind. That stupid machine should have known better.

After a time, cooler thoughts prevailed. She pushed all her anger down into a lump beside her heart, and when she did, shame took its place. At the moment his engines weren’t firing on full power, but he was still her friend. Her only friend, really. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and pushed her mane back behind her ears.

“Hey, look, I’m really sorry I kicked you,” Lumina said, “and for shooting off two of your arms. I don’t suppose it really matters much to you, but if it’s all the same, I’ll get those reattached in a little bit. I’m also really sorry for calling you stupid. For the amount of processing power you have right now, you’re actually doing a really good job.

“The mess in the observation deck, here, and everywhere else around the ship, that was all my fault. You were just trying your best. I really should know better than to lash out like that. It’s just that, well, that book over there was all I had left of somepony very important to me.

“You see, when I was very little I thought I could do magic.” Lumina chuckled.

“I know, it’s stupid, but I actually thought I could make things move with my horn.” She pointed to the top of her head. “I thought I was something magical, like a wizard or maybe even an Element. My mom was always really supportive, and I think she might have even believed me, but my dad, well, he was a stallion of science and didn’t want to hear about it. My parents fought relentlessly over this, and eventually they split up. I don’t know all the details of what happened, but I never saw her very much after that. When we left home we had to leave her behind. That book, that soggy mess on my bed, that was all I have left of her."

After that, Lumina was silent for long while, she didn’t even think Animus had the faintest clue what she was saying.

“I’ve been through a lot these past couple of days, that’s all. You’ll just have to be a little patient with me.” Lumina laughed again. “What am I doing? You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Animus’s robot arms rotated in place, almost as if it were turning to face her.

“You are not alone.” All that time, it said nothing, and in all honesty Lumina didn’t expect it to stay to even maintain the illusion of listening, but when he finally spoke, he brought the first smile to her face in a long time.

Lumina whispered back: “Thank you.”

A few minutes later, Lumina got up, and searched a nearby supply cabinet for power tools. She didn’t find what she needed to reattach the robotic arms, but she found a set of replacements, and over the course of the evening, Lumina replaced the broken parts. Good as new, she hoped.

Lumina abandoned her room for the time being. She gathered up some spare blankets, her stake gun, and a pillow from her closet and took the hyperlift to the AI core. There, she spread out her things on the grated floor and made a bed for herself.

“I came up to see you, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Lumina touched the remains of his quantum processor with her hoof and leaned in for a hug. “I always thought space travel would be easy, just a bunch of zipping around and flashy lights. Nopony said it would be this hard.”

Over the next hour Lumina filled Animus in on the details of her trek into the alien ruins. When she finished, she sat down on her blankets, closed her eyes, and searched for that quiet place in her head. She visualized light pouring in through her horn, just like her mother taught her. After a few minutes her horn began to ache.

Don't stop now, said a voice in her head. You’re so close. Keep going a little more.

Why, what’s going to happen? Lumina asked.

The aching gave way to a deep pressure that flowed down her spine and into her heart, and wherever the light travel it brought a pulse. The pulse had a rhythm, a frequency that it vibrated on. But Lumina ignored it. Through it all she kept her focus on the light. Even as the pulse expanded to every place in her body, she never let the sensations distract her.

Flash.

Lumina opened her eyes.

White light poured out of her head and filled the room, then it retreated, and left Lumina tingling throughout her entire body. Her horn throbbed.

“What?” she shouted at the darkness and the silent computers. “Did I really just…” Lumina couldn’t finish the question.

Yes, you did.

1st of Growing Season, 10,044 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

1st of Growing Season, 10,044 AC

“So tell me about this ‘Twilight Sparkle,’ Miss Specter.” A mean unicorn by the name of Silver Prickle hunched over his clipboard and picked up a pen with his mouth.

Lumina wasn’t impressed or intimidated by his fancy office with the view, or the degrees that backed his chair; the fact that he still didn’t have her name right was all she needed to judge his character. That, and he was grey. Way too grey to be friendly, or to get invited to anypony’s party.

“I told you, my name is Lumina,” she said. “My father is Lightning Specter, that’s his name, no pony calls me that. My name isn’t ‘Miss Specter’ or ‘Lumina Specter,’ it’s just Lumina.”

"Very well." Silver Prickle kept his eyes fixed on his clipboard and scribbled while he spoke. "I like to refer to my patients by their surname, but if you insist, we can disregard such formalities." He finished writing and let the pen drop from his mouth. "Now please, tell me about the voices in your head. Do they tell you to do anything bad, such as to hurt yourself or some other pony?"

In the shadow of his desk, she was nothing more than an ant beneath the grand arbiter’s gavel. Yes, he could squish her, but before he reduced her to an oopsy on the underside of his mallet, he was going to listen to her and take her seriously. Lumina hopped off the couch and marched up to Silver Prickle’s desk, and looked at him square in the eye.

“She’s not like that!” Lumina stomped her hooves. “You’re not listening to me, she’s my friend, we’re pony friends forever and she taught me how to do magic.”

“I see.” Silver jotted some notes down on and gestured at the couch. “Now if you’d please take a seat, Lumina, we can continue.”

“Fine.”

And so the next thousand hours between three and four o’clock passed. At the end of the session, Silver Prickle took Lumina’s weight, made her say “awww” to study her tongue, and called in her father. Silver Prickle sat behind his big desk and motioned for Lumina and her father to take the seats opposite of him, and for no other reason than Silver Prickle offered, Lumina refused to sit down.

“Your daughter is the perfect physical health for a filly her age.” Silver Prickle glanced at his charts and made an arch with his hooves. “She’s at a healthy weight and height for her age group, however her mental health is a whole other matter itself.”

“I always suspected as much,” said her father. “Her mother never wanted to admit it but I always thought she might suffer from a psychological illness.”

“We prefer the term disfunction, but yes, it was a good thing you brought her in, Mister Specter. The earlier we diagnose these things the better. Your daughter is unable to separate fantasy from reality, more specifically she is suffering from what we call Delusional Sterling Syndrome.”

“And you’re certain of this after only a few sessions?” Lumina’s father shifted in his chair two or three times. “I was under the impression that Sterling Syndrome was rather rare and difficult to diagnose.”

“It is rare, but not unheard of in young colts and fillies, I would usually prefer to gather more information before making such a diagnosis, but this is a textbook case.”

Lumina paced about until she wandered near her father. He ran a hoof through his daughter’s mane, and then turned his worried eyes to Silver Prickle.

“It doesn’t have a genetic basis, does it?” her father asked.

“Not that we are aware of,” Silver Prickle said. “Why do you ask? Is there a history of mental dysfunction in her family?”

"Yes, I was diagnosed with the same dysfunction when I was her age." Lumina's father pulled her in a little closer, and she didn't resist. "However, that's irrelevant if it isn't hereditary."

“What’s going to happen to me?” Lumina nestled in closer to her father for the security of his presence.

Her father opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn’t him that answered. Silver Prickle spoke out from behind his desk with smug authority, and drove Lumina closer to her father.

“It means, Lumina, that with therapy you can live a perfectly normal life.” He pushed a brochure across the table to Lumina’s father. “Medication is by no means a long term solution, but there are prescriptions that help ease ponies suffering from this syndrome to adapt to new, healthier, modes of thought.”

Lumina’s father grabbed the brochure and flipped through it.

“What kind of therapy do you have in mind?” asked Lumina’s father.

“I’m afraid I don’t know yet, I will need to examine your daughter further before I can formulate an effective treatment. In the meantime, I want to get your daughter started on nulamine.” Silver Prickle jotted on a pad of paper and passed it off to Lumina’s father. “I think that twenty milligrams once in the morning should be enough, but if she ever starts getting headaches, I want you to drop the dosage down to ten right away. Some mild nausea should be expected.”

“Thank you, thank you so much for your help.” Lumina’s father stuffed the brochure and the prescription into his saddlebags and hoisted them over his back. “Forgive us for cutting this meeting a little short, but my daughter and I have another engagement we’re already running late to.”

“Before you go, are there any questions I can help answer?”

“Yeah, what is this medicine going to do to me?” Lumina spoke up at the pony behind his aircraft carrier of a desk.

He leaned over and fired his gaze right down at Lumina. “This medication, Lumina, is going to make the voices in your head stop.”

Once her father and Silver Prickle exchanged the obligatory hoofshakes and formalities, Lumina and her father hurried out of the office building and boarded a tram headed for the Water Front District. Lumina tried explaining to her dad how she liked Twilight, and that she didn't want the voices to stop. He didn’t want to entertain her delusional fantasies for another minute, and certainly had no desire to discuss the subject in a crowd of strange ponies. Lumina pouted in her seat and gave her father her back. She didn’t like trams; they always smelled funny and made a lot of noise.

Just beyond her window the capital city of planet Arion sprawled out, and for miles upon miles, all Lumina spotted were shining towers that reached up beyond the clouds. Earth ponies and unicorns settled this world, and as the product of two different cultures, the buildings there embodied both nobility and practicality. They reminded Lumina of crystals, mystical and beautiful, but also as hard and sturdy as stone.

"It gets better." Her father said after a forever of silence. He looked across the seat at her a put a hoof on her shoulder. "I know you might not believe it, but I know exactly what you're going through."

“Did you have ponies that talked to you too?” Lumina let go of enough of her anger to ask the question.

“Yes, and some of them even told me how to cast spells,” said her father. “Or so I believed at the time. I listened to them and their advice, and do you know where it got me? Standing in the middle of a street, in the middle of the night, completely by myself. I was in some sort of trance chasing after – I don’t remember what, I guess it was a library. When I came to I was terrified, and rightfully so. I didn’t know where my parents were. I could have died that evening.

"I don't want that to ever happen to you. I'm not going to lie, the next few months might get a little difficult, but your mother and I will both be there to help you through whatever comes. She doesn't understand just how dangerous this condition can get, but we are both willing to do whatever it takes to help you."

Lumina opened her mouth to talk, but the tram rolled into the station, and screeched to a halt. Without saying more, her father stood up and guided her out of the tram.

The tram dropped them off at a park where the sea and city met. They waited on a park bench that over-looked the Sapphire Sea, as Lumina watched the birds in a birch tree sing to their families. Technicolor flocks met in formations in the sky and weaved between the high towers. Her father kept his eyes fixed on a datapad and didn’t even register the birds or the summer breeze.

“Lumina, it says here that nulamine is effective at treating foals like yourself.” Lumina’s father talked but she didn’t listen. “I think this will all work out very well for you.”

“Mommy!” Lumina pointed at a pink unicorn trotting toward their bench with a smile. She hopped off the park bench and galloped toward her mother and leapt up to hug her.

“I missed you so much, mommy,” said Lumina.

“I’ve missed you too, sweetie.” She kissed her daughter on her forehead and let go of her as Lumina’s father ambled up to them. “Hello, Lightning, how did the session with Doctor Prickle go?”

“It went well,” he said. “He’s diagnosed Lumina with Delusional Sterling Syndrome and prescribed some medication. Good news is that with medication and therapy she’ll be better in no time. If you want, I can go get it filled and bring it by your apartment.”

“No, that’s fine, I’ll take care of it.” Lumina’s mom waited for him to dig up the papers and hoof it over.

He held it out for her to take.

“You’ll promise to take care of this immediately and get her started on the medication first thing tomorrow morning?” He pulled it away from Lumina’s mother as soon she was about to grab it and left her biting air.

Lumina’s mother frowned as if she were about to swirl around and kick him in the face. The little filly had never seen her mother this upset before, not even back when her parents still lived together and argued. She didn’t like this.

“Just because I don’t agree with how you want to raise our daughter doesn’t mean that I would do anything to subvert her mental health.” She snatched it from Lumina’s father. “The very idea that I would -- never mind, I’ll take care of it.” She looked down at her daughter. “Do you have everything you’ll need for the next couple days?”

Lumina nodded.

“Good, then say good-bye to your father and we’ll get going.”

After giving her father a brief hug, Lumina and her mother hustled out of the park, and boarded the tram to the city center. Lumina didn’t really know what to say for a big chunk of the tram ride, and her mother was too busy pouting to start a conversation with her daughter.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” said her mother. “It’s just that your father, you have to understand, he only wants the best for you and that’s all that matters.”

Lumina looked out the window and watched the city roll by.

“Hey, let’s do something really fun.” Her mother nudged Lumina in the side.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, how about we go to the aquarium?”

“Alright!” Lumina’s face lit up. She loved the aquarium.

“Let’s get this prescription filled first and drop by the apartment, and then we’ll go to the aquarium.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Lumina?”

“You’re the best mommy ever.”

“And you’re the best filly a mother could ever ask for, and don’t forget it.”

Just as Lumina’s mother promised, they got off the tram near the pharmacy and went inside to get her medicine. Lumina hated going to the pharmacy. It always took way too long to get medicine, and the ponies behind the counter always told her parents to wait in a really stinky waiting area. The only thing fun to do in the store was to look at all the toys and holiday decorations in the aisles.

That got boring quick.

“Mommy, can we go to the aquarium now?” Lumina pleaded to the side of her mother’s chair. “It’s really boring here and it smells like stale candy.”

“No, Lumina, we can’t.” Her mother flipped the virtual page of her magazine. “We have to be patient and wait until your medicine is ready.”

Lumina plopped herself down in a chair beside her mother.

Beside her was a window, and on the other side hung a little green bud from the branch of a leafy bush. It quivered, and Lumina gasped.

“Look, mommy!” Lumina tugged at her mother’s mane. “It’s a cocoon like the ones I learned about in Ms. Sun Shine’s class. I think it’s about to hatch.”

“That’s nice, sweetie, but what did mommy tell you about pulling on pony's manes?” She didn’t even bother looking away from her magazine.

So, Lumina ignored her and watched the butterfly emerge all by herself.

It was still too early in the season for butterflies, she worried that it would freeze in the coming rains. As she watched that creature fight and push and break its way free from the cocoon, she set aside her worries. The butterfly struggled along on uncertain legs and unfurled its rainbow wings in the light of the sun.

The butterfly was a fighter, a survivor, and it was not alone.

4. When Walls Fall Down

Awakening
Solocitizen

When Walls Come Down
Present Day

Lumina lied curled up in a ball on the floor, with the metal grating digging into her side. She had set every LED and bulb in the AI core as bright as they would burn. Electric pulses ebbed and flowed in waves through Lumina’s body, starting at her horn, and running down to the tips of her hooves. She repeated the words “it’s not real, it’s just in your head” as a mantra and clung to it. She stroked her tail with her hooves and tried to shut out the odd sensations coursing through her.

“It’s not real, it’s just in your head,” she said. “It’s not real.”

But it was real, she produced light from her horn, and now something electric raced down her spine.

Lumina, we need to talk, said the voice in her head.

“No we don’t,” she replied. “There’s nothing to talk about, and if I just ignore you, you’ll go away, just like Silver Prickle said.”

Lumina pressed her hooves over ears, shut her eyes, and yelled out her mantra. After a few minutes, and no reply from the voice, her beating heart slowed and her fears abated.

When she had calmed down enough to get on her hooves, Lumina breathed in deep, and laughed the whole thing off as nothing more than her overactive imagination. She didn’t do magic just then, because magic wasn’t real, and she certainly didn’t need anymore therapy.

“See, Lumina, no voices,” she told herself, “you out grew that phase long ago.”

I’m still here.

Lumina jumped and shrieked and bolted out of the AI core.

There was a sickbay just two decks down, and the Interstellar Express kept it stocked with pharmaceuticals of every variety to keep ponies safe, sane, and delivering their shipments on time. A crazed pony could easily turn a one point two kilometer long FTL ferry into a flying lawsuit. Hopefully, one of the sickbays would have something to make the voice go away, if not, she always had tranquillizers.

Ugh, would you just listen to me for one minute?

“Sorry, too busy trying to get you out of my head to stop and chat.” Lumina rushed down the stairs to sickbay. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to science you away.”

The doors to sick bay parted and water surged out into the stairwell. Lumina mentally noted to fix it, but didn’t pause any longer than to curse. She splashed her way across the sickbay to a supply room in the back. The flooding was much worse in there, maybe about half a meter high with pill bottles bobbing up and down. Lumina placed her hoof on the door scanner and braced herself against the frame. Water cascaded out of the supply room and rolled over her legs, but she held her footing, and after the water drained, she darted inside.

You have to listen to me, the voice said. You’ve wasted enough time as it is. You need to start studying and teaching yourself how to use magic. Am I going to have to lecture you?

Lumina flung every drawer and cabinet open and ripped the neatly ordered bottles from the shelves; she checked one, but didn’t find what she was searching for, so she dropped it, and continued until she checked every last bottle. No nulamine.

She stomped her hooves in the water.

Okay, you’ve asked for it now. I’m going to lecture at you! And if that doesn’t work, I might have to sing a song.

Lumina searched through the discarded bottles until she found a tranquillizer that would knock her out for the next twelve hours. She ripped off the cap with her mouth and dumped three pills onto her hoof. She raised the pills to her lips, and her heart dropped into a pit below her stomach. Something was wrong. Lumina checked the warning labels on the side of the bottle, put a pill back, and tried again. Just as before, the pit beneath her heart stopped her from shoving them into her mouth.

Listen, I know what you’re going through right now. The voice in her head changed its tone. The hardest lesson I ever had to learn was that sometimes you just have to trust something, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

“Did your parents ever make you take pills that made you dizzy and impossible to think straight?” Lumina spun around and slammed her hoof on the counter. “I did, I had to do it for three years. Every week I had therapy sessions with a stallion that, to this day, I want to kick in the face. He put me under hypnosis, attached electrodes to my head, psychoanalyzed everything I said. Did you have to deal with that?”

Not exactly. It was more like my friend Pinkie Pie said she could predict the future with tail twitches and eye flutters.

“Alright, enough, time to shut you up.” Lumina put the pills under her tongue just as the label advised. “Eye flutters and twitchy tails, I think I’ll just go back to therapy. I’m clearly insane, I have a voice in my head that talks to me on occasion, and it said I should start believing in twitchy tails that can predict the future.”

It wasn’t about believing in some twitchy prediction thingy. Yes, it didn’t make any sense and I never fully accepted it. But the lesson wasn’t about believing in something completely irrational. It was about believing in her. Sometimes you just have to believe in your friends even if you don’t understand why. The same can be said about yourself. You can’t tell me that you believe that taking all those pills is a good idea.

“No,” Lumina said. “In all honesty, the idea of taking them makes me sick.”

Then why don’t you trust yourself and do what you believe is right?

The image of Silver Prickle, her mother and father fighting, and all those therapy sessions and late nights filled with nausea flooded back to her, but something else much deeper than the voice in her head or those painful memories said no. Something was wrong and it clenched into a rock right above her heart. As a filly, Lumina used to listen to that part of her all the time, but as an adult she had conditioned herself to ignore it. She conditioned herself not to. Lumina put a hoof to her forehead, clenched her eyes shut, and gave in to the part of her just above her heart.

She spat the pills out.

“I really hope you know what you’re doing, Twilight Sparkle.”

Actually, my best plans haven’t worked so far. The only pony you should trust is yourself. I’m just here to help you along.

That tingling in her head and spine, it got stronger, and the sensation of a vice clamping around her head followed. Lumina bit her lower lip and winced, and in a few short seconds the sensations blossomed into pain. It pushed, and fought, and battered against her skull. Her horn burned.

At the other end of sickbay was a medi-pod, complete with a scanner, diagnosis AI, and surgical equipment. She climbed inside and let the plexi-glass doors close over her. The inside of the medi-pod held a chemical tang. She never used the machine before, but the holographic menus that spawned in front of her were simple to navigate. In a few short minutes she ordered and completed a scan of her head.

Nothing unusual with her, at least according to the diagnosis AI.

Lumina elbowed the release switch, rolled out of the pod, and hit the floor with a splash.

“Twilight Sparkle, why does my head feel like it’s about to explode?” Lumina picked herself up and exited the sickbay. Water dripped from her mane and coat, and pinged against the floor. “I thought you said I could trust myself, and I took your advice, and look where your words of wisdom got me.”

You’ve been disconnected from your magical self pretty much your entire life. Ponies in my time never tried deny this part of themselves like you have. I guess the best analogy for what’s happening is that you’re using muscles you’ve never used, and it hurts. That tingling feeling in your horn is magic flowing into you.

Putting one hoof in front of the other, Lumina ascended the staircase back up to the AI core. She collapsed on the bedding she spread out earlier that day and buried her head in her pillow. The water sapped the heat right out her her, so she pulled her blankets over her for warmth.

“What if I just try to shut it all out?” Lumina shouted into her pillow. “I let this in, so there must be a way to stop it, right?” She picked up her head, watched her vision blur, and then rolled over on her back.

No, that would only cause you more pain. This is happening because you tried to lock magic out just as you were starting to use your horn. It’s not going to let you shut it out again. Once this door is open, you can’t close it.

The electric vibrations flowing in her horn, and building in her head, reached a peak, and pushed down, past her neck and down into her heart. From there they surged outward and broke past those tight lumps above her heart and down in her stomach. There was bitter fruit inside her, memories that she stashed away, and simply left to rot and ferment. When the magical flood swept through Lumina, it kicked down every locked door and smashed the fruit, and their juices ran wild. She arched her back, rolled over on her stomach, and grasped her head.

Lumina kicked in rage and cried out in sadness. All the pent up emotions from her agonizing years of therapy, the separation of her parents, the loss of her mother, not being strong enough to deal with the ship that attacked Luna Dream or the centipede beneath the ice, the fact that she was responsible for the jump that fried Animus, rushed through her. The wave passed, and when it did, Lumina’s tears stopped. Something told her she’d shed no more tears on these subjects.

She forgave her parents, Silver Prickle, Animus, and even the ship that attacked her.

Magic pulsed down her spine, out to the tip of her tail, and to the end of each of her limbs. Where it flowed it brought that same vibration that filled her horn. It ignited her bones, warmed her skin, and healed her tortured soul.

Then it hit resistance, but instead of forcing its way through, the pressure in Lumina’s heart subsided. The magic continued to flow into her, but it left that pain alone.

For a long time Lumina just lied on her back and stared up at the ceiling in an ecstatic trance. The lights above her burned a little brighter than they had before, and the colors surrounding her popped. Magic flowed in through her horn and raced down the river of her spine; her limbs were streams along that mighty river.

“Twilight Sparkle.”

What is it, Lumina?

“How is it that I can talk to you if you’ve been dead for tens of thousands of years?”

I think you’ve had enough mind-blowing revelations for one day. Besides, somepony else wants to explain that to you. By the way, you might want to check out your ship’s proximity thing, it’s about to go off.

“What are you talking about?” Lumina propped herself up on her front legs. “We’re all alone out here, nothing’s going to trip the proximity screen.”

An alarm sounded and red lights flashed along the ceiling. Sure enough, it was the proximity alarm. Whenever an unauthorized object larger than a clump of lint got close to the ship an alarm sounded.

“Alert! Alert! Collision detected!” Animus’s voice rang out of the room’s speakers.

“Identify object and endangered ship sections.” She shook her head and chased away the last vestiges of the trance state.

“Object unknown. Impact to deck four, section-D in approximately five minutes eleven seconds. Adjusting for new velocity. Impact in approximately five minutes thirty seconds.”

Section-D, that was near the AI core. Lumina hopped to her hooves and galloped toward the exterior hull. She found a set of windows facing out into the frozen nightmare.

Between the shadows cast by the Luna Dream’s running lights, and the mounds in the ice, slithered metal. It moved with the fluidity of quicksilver, and was as black as obsidian. Thousands of little feet left pin-pricks in the ice.

Lumina gasped. She backed away from the window without taking her eyes off the monster. Hot fear surged through her.

It was the centipede from the alien ruin, and it was closing in on the Luna Dream.

17th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

17th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC
3rd Day of the Running of the Leaves

Red and yellow leaves trickled down from the sky and littered the streets. Each step Lumina and her friends took forced the leaves under hoof to crackle and crunch. School got out no more than an hour ago, and the sun already started its descent beneath the horizon.

After exchanging good-byes with her friends Candy Mane and Field Dancer, Lumina and Mist Nova trotted off down the side road to their neighborhood.

She had known Mist Nova since they started general school at Green Acres two years ago. He was a brown pegasus that acted far more awkward than he really was, but every once in a blue moon he let his guard down, and shined. They met during ninth grade orientation, and stuck to each other ever since. Over the past year, Lumina cultivated a hope that he thought of her as more than just a friend, but it was just a hope, he probably didn’t think of her in that way. The fast glances at each other during class, the frequent private messages, the way he always found excuse to do little favors for her, it was enough for her to hold out hope.

“Say, uh, Lumina.” That was the first he said to her all day, she was starting to think she’d done something to offend him. “You know the autumn gala is coming up, and, well, my family got invited to go this year, and I was wondering if you wanted to go, with me, cause I get to bring along one guest, unless you already got plans for that day, then that’s understandable. Even if you don’t have plans and just don’t want to go that’s fine too.”

Yes! Lumina blushed and restrained herself from exploding with glee. Instead she just took a deep breath, picked her words carefully, and played it cool. She flicked her tail.

“Mist Nova, are you asking me out on a date?” No, Lumina! That was probably too cool, just look at the horror on his face.

He stopped in his tracks, and for a moment Lumina feared he might run away or back out of the situation. Instead he swallowed and showed that side of him so rarely seen.

“Yes, I am,” said Mist Nova. “The Autumn Gala is supposed to be one of the most boring events year after year, but I don’t imagine it could be anything but fantastic if you were going with me.”

“I’d be delighted,” said Lumina. “Of course I’ll go with you to the gala.”

“Alright, um, I got to get home.” Mist Nova fought back a full grin. “But, I’ll pick you up at eight, this Saturday?”

“Sounds great, and I’ll wear my best dress. I’ll see you then.”

The two parted ways, but a little further down the street, Lumina thought she heard Mist Nova exclaim: “Woo!”

Lumina trotted back to her home, and as soon as she stepped inside she barged into her father’s office. He was currently fiddling with a holographic schematic of his latest FTL ship. A projector at the far side of his table playing a news broadcast.

“Guess what? I have a date to the autumn gala!” Lumina’s good news only provoked a glance from her father. “I’m going to go get my mane done, and I’ll get my dress cleaned. It’s going to be the best night ever!”

“Let me guess, you’re going with the pegasus from up the street.” Lumina’s father spat out the words.

“Yeah, I am, and what’s wrong with Mist Nova?” Lumina paced about the room. “I’ve known him for years, he’s a great colt, I’d think you’d like him if you gave him a chance. Besides, it’s just a date.”

“Pegasi are the most militant of the three tribes,” said Lumina’s father. “Did you know that military service is mandatory on Empire controlled worlds? Simply put, they’re violent. Why could you find a nice unicorn or earth pony to go out with?”

“They’re not like that.” She flicked her tail and gestured with a hoof as she spoke. “At least none of the ones I’ve met, they’re as nice as everypony else.”

Lumina’s father put his hooves down on the table. With a gesture of his horn, the plating along the hull of the holographic ship lit up yellow, while red lines outlined rail guns in the belly of the ship.

“See this?” Lumina’s father pointed at the weapons. “Those pegasi are demanding control of our homeworld, Equus, by spear point and it looks like the earth pony and unicorn worlds are committing ships to keep it neutral. See what I’m doing here? This isn’t the usual retrofit on a FTL class ship. The Arion Parliament is retrofitting commercial class jump ships for war so we can ferry more attack ships into battle. War is coming and those barbarians are to blame.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going and that’s that!” Lumina gave her father her back.

She expected a retort, or even some form of punishment, at least a raised voice, but none of that came.

Rolling her eyes, Lumina spun around fully prepared to unleash a barrage of harsh words, but when she did the anger in her face melted into fear. Her father's jaw was slack, his body quivering, and his eyes locked onto the news program projected at the far end of the table.

Images of winged gunships and attack ships as slick as a razor’s edge hung in the air. The headline on the hologram read: “Emergency Broadcast. Pegasi Fleet Spotted Less Than Six Hundred Million Kilometers From Planet Arion. Planetary Emergency Declared.”

“What? What’s going on, father?”

“We need to leave.” Lumina’s father shook his head and slumped down in his chair. “Lumina, go pack a suitcase with only what you need to survive. I’m going to get us on the next FTL ship out of here.”

“But what about mom?” she asked. “We can’t just leave her behind.”

“Lumina, I need to protect you. I need to protect us. She is more than welcome to come if she has the means to, but my top priority is our safety. Now go pack your things. We’re leaving this world the first chance we get. Our defense fleet isn’t going to last long but maybe they’ll buy enough time for a few ships to get out of here.”

She walked up to her room in a daze, and when she got there, she sat against her door for a long time. After a while she pulled a suitcase from beneath her bed. The only items she packed were: a toothbrush, the fancy dress she wanted to wear to the gala, a picture of her mother, and a story book her mother used to read to her when she was just a foal. She found her old Twilight Sparkle doll underneath her bed, right behind some unused camping equipment from an aborted family adventure. She held its lumpy body in her hooves for a moment, brushed some of the dust and cobwebs accumulating over its velvet skin, and then tucked it back under her bed.

Lumina got out a datapad and scrolled through her contact list until she found Mist Nova. She tapped the phone app with her hoof and waited until the ringing on the other end stopped.

“Hey Mist, it’s me, Lumina,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to go to the gala with you.”

5. Magic and Steel

Awakening
Solocitizen

Magic and Steel
Present Day

At seven thirty-five in the morning, Lumina’s alarm buzzed. She reached over to her bedside table and flicked it off. Sunlight cascaded in from the windows and filled her room with its warmth. She yawned, stretched under the covers of her bed, and then hit the intercom button.

“Animus, execute morning protocol one.”

Every speaker in the Luna Dream, from the intercom in Lumina’s room to the loudspeakers in the AI core, treated her to the best song in known space.

Nopony can tell yah
There’s only one song worth singin’
They may try and sell yah
‘Cause it hangs them up
To see somepony like you!

Lumina leapt out of bed and into her shower with the water jet massage therapist system firing. She tried it once her first day on the Luna Dream; a water jet masseuse system was almost as good as the real thing, but she never put aside the time to indulge herself until recently. Lumina even took the time to wash her mane, tail, and coat with that special shampoo she kept hoarded away. None of that she did out of some obligation to get clean, but because she was worth self-pampering.

But you’ve gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nopony else sings along.

Next she trotted down to the kitchen and sautéed some greens for breakfast; she synthesized the daffodils and vegetables, but did the actual cooking herself. The food synthesizers were still having trouble with cooked items and more complicated dishes, but raw ingredients popped out fresh and edible. If she took the time fix herself a home cooked meal, she ate well.

She sat at the counter top with a hoof draped over her belly. Breakfast left a sweet aroma in the air. Sitting there, she absorbed herself in the beauty of the moment. Not that she felt she needed an excuse to be happy there and then, but as an added bonus, the other night she discovered that the pink mold that got into the protein goo wasn’t the lethal variety. Her food supply would last her at least two and a half years.

Over the past week, Lumina studied and meditated daily, and she also started treating herself better. With some advice from Luna Dream’s databases, she put together a daily exercise plan. The morning after she started awakening to the magical world, Lumina figured out a way to ‘science’ all the water on the ship away; she sealed herself in the atmospheric control center and depressurized the rest of the ship. All that water just boiled away, and the ship reintegrated it into the life support system as gas. That still left her with the task of repairing all the damage done, which she planned on using as a convenient excuse to redecorate the way she wanted. A stack of paint cans waited outside her room for her to repaint her walls every color of the rainbow.

After breakfast, she scrubbed her dishes clean and left the pan hanging over the stove to dry. Lumina took out a datapad and accessed the record of an old scroll written by somepony named Star Swirl the Bearded, reviewed her lesson for the morning, and then plopped herself down in front of a east facing window to meditate.

Meditation wasn’t necessary during the reign of Celestia, as attunement with the magical world was encouraged at an early age, but in a day and age when such thinking was discouraged, just picking up the most basic skills required a lot of work. Being a grown mare without a cutie mark didn’t help much either.

Despite all the effort her magical studies demanded, it got a little easier everyday. A week ago, clearing her head and reaching any degree of attunement took her an hour, but just the other day she accomplished the same task in twenty minutes.

Catchy lyrics floated around her head, but rather than shutting them out, Lumina observed them and the other stray thoughts drifting in and out of her conscious mind. The goal was to let her mind, and the magic pulsing through her, take her places. Not to control them. Sure enough, after a few minutes of work, an image of Twilight Sparkle flashed into her mind’s eye. Her eyes were alive with more excitement than Lumina thought was possible.

Then a door appeared, with light and mist pouring in from the edges.

The magic flowing inside of her lurched, pulling her upward, and inducing a sensation of floating and weightlessness.

When Lumina nudged the door open, the image of a library flashed into her head. Her eyes fluttered spontaneously, but never fully opened or shut. The endless rows of bookshelves, the sky in the ceiling, the Canterlot-style walls, she recognized them all.

Lumina opened her eyes and scrambled for her datapad. She went through all this before when she was just a filly and knew why she recognized the library. Lumina navigated the ship’s database until she brought up a digital copy of The Elements of Harmony: A Revised Reference Guide and flipped to the last page.

There it was, the library, just as she imagined it.

“Twilight, why have I seen this before?” She flipped through the book searching for any mention or vague reference of it. “What does this mean? I saw the library before when I was just a little filly. It was just a dream. I had it because I fell asleep looking at the last page. So what is it, Twilight? Is the library real, or not?”

She listened for the voice in her head but nopony answered her. So, she plopped down on the floor and closed her eyes and meditated as hard as possible. Come on, Twilight, answer me, she said inside her own head. Nothing but her own worried thoughts met her. Before long she hopped out of her meditative stance and paced about the room.

“Please, I need to know.” She got up and hung her head. “Why did I see the library? What is going on?”

Lumina closed her eyes and plopped down on her haunches. She tried meditating again, and she committed to the task. The smell of half-filtered air tingled at her nose, and the grated floor pinched and poked at her, but rather than succumbing to the sneeze building in her snout or the urge to adjust her seat, Lumina meditated through it and pushed the sensations aside. For the next hour Lumina sat with her eyes clenched shut and shouting mentally for Twilight for at least an hour without success.

“I have done everything you ever asked,” Lumina screamed at the ceiling. “Answer me! I know you can! Why won’t you talk to me?”

Shouting and kicking, Lumina hurled the datapad down the hall and beat her hooves against the wall. She whimpered, and collapsed to the floor. Her horn pinged against metal as she rested her sobbing face into the grating. She wanted to saw the worthless thing off. It would grow back in time, but at that moment nothing pleased her more than the thought of ridding it from her body. She jammed her horn into a hole in the grated floor and twisted her head sideways. She hissed in pain and gave in before even denting it. Lumina took a moment to prepare for the pain and then pulled, yanked, and threw her entire body weight against it. Not matter how hard she tried, her horn stayed rooted to her head.

“It’s not real.” Lumina pulled her head out of the floor and wiped her nose and eyes. “None of it was ever real. I made it all up.”

A siren screeched through the bowels of the ship. It was the proximity alarm.

Her friend, the centipede, developed a routine of stalking her. Everyday at eight o’clock AM and ten fifty-five PM, it slithered up to the ship, tested the hull with some kind of probe, and retreated back down the hole to the alien ruins. Lumina didn’t care enough to do anything about it, and that machine wouldn’t do anything more than prod the hull anyway, so she just stayed put and sobbed into the floor.

Another alarm sounded, and that time the lighting switched to a harsh red. This was new.

“Warning! Hull breached detected on section-A deck four,” said Animus. “Emergency bulkheads in place. Warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”

Blood rushed to Lumina’s head and her heart burned with adrenaline.

The centipede scared her. It was big, quick, and had a face full of metal teeth. But the worst part about it wasn’t the way it looked, it was how it always knew exactly where she was, and how it liked to slither up to the windows and peep in on her like a voyeur. If it was on the ship it was coming after her.

Lumina charged up to her bedroom. She usually kept her stake gun on her, but she ended up leaving it under her pillow this morning.

“Animus, where’s the intruder?” Lumina nearly lost her footing and slid into a wall as she rounded the corner to her room.

“Please restate your command,” said Animus.

“Locate intruder!”

“Location unknown.”

Lumina galloped into her room, flung the pillow off her bed, picked the stake gun up with her mouth, and slung a pouch full of stakes over her shoulders. She didn’t have a saddle shooter nor a shoulder attachment to mount the weapon on, so if that thing forced Lumina to fight, the best she could do was prop the weapon against a wall or on the floor and use her front hooves to fire.

The sound of needles tap, tap, tapping against metal ascended the nearby stairway. When Lumina spun to face the noise there it was. The great black centipede reared its head from behind the bend in the corridor. It was odd seeing it like that, not in the pillar fortress at the heart of the ruin, or slithering across the wasteland, but at the end of a white corridor bathed in LED light. The environmental systems rumbled to life and blew warm air across its metal carapace. Plates on its head retracted, and red light swept up the corridor, and locked onto Lumina’s face. Her entire body tensed up and froze.

Between her and the centipede was a hyperlift, her room was a dead end, but if she got into the lift…

Without turning her head away from it -- her eyes forward and fixed on its red eye -- she wrapped a hoof around her stake gun, and reached for a stake with her mouth. Lips and teeth clamped over metal, she freed a stake from her pouch and loaded it into the magazine. She never let her eyes turn away from the centipede. All that time it held still and studied each of her movements with its eye. Lumina loaded another stake into her gun, and another, and another, until the magazine wouldn’t accept anymore. The legs on the centipede flexed. She forced a stake into the firing chamber and the gun snapped.

It didn’t shriek and it didn’t cry. The centipede rushed forward in near silence, only making that light tap, tap, tapping as it charged.

Lumina bolted for the hyperlift and sealed the doors behind her. That thing was at most a second behind her. She flung herself against the far wall, trying to get as far away from the centipede as possible. An acrid odor burned her snout.

A meter-long spike tore through the hyperlift doors and slashed no more than a centimeter away from her pearly white coat. It retracted, and plunged in again at a different angle, that time a little closer to her.

Lumina stood up on her hind legs, pressed her back into the wall, and took the stake gun in her front hooves. She sighted down the barrel of the stake gun and waited for the spike to retract. The instant it did, she fired, and the gun kicked out a stake that sailed through the door and forced a shriek out of the machine on the other side.

She hit a button on the control panel, which one didn’t matter, just as long as it took her away from there.

The hyperlift hummed away and left the centipede howling somewhere above her.

Lumina took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her brow. She needed a plan, and fast. If that thing caught up her again, which was only a matter of time, she might not be lucky enough to have half a centimeter of steel between her and it.

The hyperlift stopped at transmat station D-13. She was near the bottom of the ship, with nowhere to run to except right back up. Quick, what would a smart pony like Twilight Sparkle do? She asked herself.

I would use my magic to teleport to safety, said the voice behind her mind’s eye.

“No, you do not get to talk to me after that.” Lumina paused long enough to stomp her hooves and yell at the ceiling. “What in the name of Discord makes you think you have any right to speak to me at all after ignoring me like that? I needed you!”

Neither the ceiling nor the voice replied.

“That’s what I thought.” Lumina clenched the stake gun between her teeth and continued on. “You’re not real.”

Lumina stared down the corridor ahead of her and into the transmat chamber. Her space suit from the expedition to the alien ruin was still crumpled up in the corner.

“Actually, that isn’t such a bad idea,” she said. “Especially if I make a few creative adjustments.”

Dashing into the transmat chamber, Lumina launched herself over the computer terminal and began rewriting her emergency transmat program. Lumina rushed over to her space suit and ripped the transponder from the fabric, she then attached it to a stake and loaded it into her gun.

Wait, no! You can’t kill it! The little voice broke through to her, and Lumina shoved it aside.

“Watch me.”

Gun loaded and the transmat system on stand by, Lumina dove for cover behind the control station and propped up her gun. She took aim down the corridor and kept her hoof next to a hologram that read ‘EXECUTE PROGRAM.’ Unfortunately the centipede didn’t come through the corridor.

It cut its way through the ceiling.

Horrible red light poured into the chamber as Lumina leapt to the side. She scrambled to the wall just as molten metal came crashing down. A wall of heat struck Lumina and burned her lungs with each of her quick breaths.

From out of the molten steel and fire rose the great, black, centipede. It lifted its front half off the ground and assumed a striking posture. Two of its legs wrapped around the spike protruding from its side, and when they pulled the thing out, the centipede screeched and wailed. Black goo oozed from the wound, and its blender maw spat out more of the stuff. The plates on its head opened up, and that red spotlight zeroed in on Lumina.

“Yeah, well, buck you too!”

Lumina fired, rolled, and kicked the hologram.

Yellow light swirled around the machine and then, with a gust of wind, it was gone.

She slumped to the floor and breathed, just breathed. No danger now, that machine was dead. In a few seconds the fire suppression system kicked on, and the chamber filled with sweet smelling foam. The fires died, and Lumina was left sitting in foam. She breathed easy. She killed that monster and the Luna Dream rewarded her with a bubble bath. Not bad, all things considered.

It’s not dead.

“What do you mean ‘it’s not dead’?” asked Lumina. “I dropped it from two kilometers up onto solid ice. Nothing can survive that.”

It just did, and you just lost a very important chance to make a friend out here.

“Friend? That thing was about to eviscerate me with a death ray and rip out my entrails with a blender. You do not get to tell me I should have played nice with it. You know what, nevermind, I don’t know why I’m talking to you. If I ever get off this planet alive, I’m going to find a shrink, and I’m going to pop nulamine like it’s candy.”

The transmat station was still receiving a signal from her transponder; red pixels tracked it moving across the ice. She stared in disbelief and shook her head. Lumina picked herself up and reset the transmat system for another transport.

What are you doing?

“What does it look like I’m doing? That thing isn’t dead, so I’m going to keep dropping it until it is.” Lumina dialed up the system and put her hoof over the holographic trigger. “All my life I’ve been at somepony else’s mercy, but not any more, I’m not weak and helpless, and I’m going to make sure that’s the last lesson that thing ever learns. Maybe you can put that in your next letter to Celestia.”

I have a list of very good reasons why you shouldn’t do that. Number one: you’re angry right now and you’re not thinking straight. Number two: you--

“You’re damn right I’m angry!” Lumina stomped her hooves and yelled at the walls. “I just found out that you, magic, and pretty much everything else I’ve been going through isn’t real. It was a waste of time!”

Lumina breathed deep, in and out, then collapsed back into the foam. She buried her face in her hooves and slipped deeper into the foam. Several minutes passed and during that entire time she stared ahead at a wall and listened to the bubbles around her pop.

“What am I doing, Twilight?” asked Lumina. “I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m so angry. I don’t know if magic is real, or if I’m still crazy, I’m back to square one. Regardless of whatever’s been happening to me, it’s like I don’t have any calluses around my heart any more, and all this anger in me is bubbling up to the surface, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.

“I’m more unstable now than ever before.” Lumina curled up on herself. “I thought I was changing, but just look at me now. It's like any headway I make has to be done by taking two steps forward and one step back. I'm just frustrated with it all.”

You’re using your heart and your horn much more than before. You’ll never get those calluses back, so you’ll have to be more forgiving and patient with yourself. No pony is asking you to change overnight. As for that anger, why don’t you just let it all out? You know, like you did with so much of your other baggage?

“I want to…” but I don’t know if I can. She never finished that sentence. “Why am I even talking to you? You’re about as real as the library.”

What about all you’ve learned about trusting yourself? Is that what your gut is telling you now, that nothing you’ve experienced is real?

With a muffled bang, a steel beam from the floor above her slipped down into the foam. Lumina got back on her hooves, shook the foam from her mane, and dragged herself out of the transmat station carrying the stake gun in her mouth.

“Spare me the lecture, Twilight, I have a ship to inspect,” she said with the gun between her teeth. “I need to make sure Blender Face didn’t cut through anything important.”

Over the course of the morning, Lumina tracked the centipede’s trail down corridors, up staircases, and through circular holes in the walls. It wasn’t onboard the Luna Dream for more than ten minutes, but the damage it caused was extensive. At one point it cut a path through one of the sick bays, out to the corridor on the other side, past the movie theater, and straight into a hyperlift tube in the wall. She didn’t know the ship even had a movie theater until that monster blew a hole in it. If Lumina stood in just the right place, she could gaze halfway across the deck.

By dumb luck the centipede stayed away from the FTL drive and life support systems. In fact, its trail led around the FTL drive; it got close, but veered around instead of boring through. She stared up at the hole in her deck with a flashlight in her mouth and aimed up at the deck above, scratching her head. Now why would it do that? she asked herself.

“Animus, run diagnosis on the FTL drive and all primary systems on decks”--Lumina shined her flashlight on the writing on the floor above her--“twenty-seven through thirty-two.”

“Diagnosis complete,” said Animus. “All systems within standard operating parameters.”

Lumina spat out her flashlight and sat down on the floor. Something bothered her about this situation, and it wasn’t the holes in her ship. No, something else put her at dis-ease. Then Lumina thought about the centipede’s entrance, how she responded, and how her AI companion locked down the hull breach. Animus saved the ship, without acting derpy or even asking for Lumina to hold his virtual hoof.

“Animus, how are you feeling today?” Lumina asked.

“Please restate your command.”

Lumina facehoofed.

“Run self diagnosis,” she said. “And a full analysis on your CPU usage, I’d like to know what you’re using all your processing power on.”

A camera at the far end of the corridor aimed itself at Lumina, and a little red flicked on.

“Diagnosis complete,” said Animus’s voice. “Systems not within operating parameters. CPU usage at fifty-seven percent.”

“Okay, uh, wow.” Lumina stood up and glanced around for the nearest hyperlift. “I’m going to the AI core to take a look at you myself, in the meantime just go into sleep mode, okay?”

Every flavor of AI experienced critical system failure at around fifty percent CPU usage. Lumina wasn’t an expert on computer science, but the company’s technicians warned her about the damage a crash would do to an AI. At any moment Animus might crash, and any vestige of her friend would die.

Lumina hurried to the nearest hyperlift and rode it up to the break in the tube, then continued on hoof through the darkness. Once at the AI core, she climbed down to Animus’s processor carrying her crowbar in her mouth. Lumina placed her hoof on a panel next to the hard drives to unlock the holographic command console and coerced it from the wall with the crowbar.

Arcane files and high-level command language barraged the holographic screen. Lumina didn’t know what she was doing, that was all gibberish to her, but with each passing second she risked losing him permanently, and for that reason alone she ventured into one of his programs.

Up popped an image of a white unicorn with a disheveled mane, and a smile that only a happy reader could wear. She sat with her legs tucked under her on a couch with a virtual book hovering next to her face.

“Well that’s me.” Lumina looked down at the time stamp, it was dated the Fourth of Planting Season, 10,056. One day before Luna Dream crashed. “Animus, have you been thinking about my outburst at you?”

The recording zoomed in on Lumina’s face, superimposed a grid over her, and then panned over to her tail. The icon of a pony with a happy face popped at the bottom right. Additional programs were gathering, analyzing, and running data on everything from body language to vital signs.

“Lumina, may I ask you a question?” A recording of Animus’s voice played.

“Go ahead.” The recording of Lumina turned the page of her virtual book.

Lumina watched the scene play out, right up till when she snapped at Animus, and the icon at the bottom switched to an angry face. She backed out of the recording before the rest of the scene unfolded. She brushed her mane behind her ears, and brought up one of the programs running an analysis of the recording.

A holographic window opened, and there she found the same recording of her snapping at Animus, only this time a recording from the day Lumina met Animus ran side by side. The hologram showed a black and white image of her lounging on her stomach and staring at the ceiling. This program was comparing the two and searching for similarities.

“By now, most subjects develop resentment toward the AI, but not her,” said an off screen voice. “They actually get along; they have synergy. We need to put Lumina and ANIMUS on a ship together.”

Lumina backed out and snooped in on another program. By the looks of it, this one was comparing body temperature readings from the recording of her outburst, to heat data collected from another memory. The video was nothing more than a series of flashing numbers, but the audio played clear.

“What about me?” Animus’s voice asked. “I am a part of the ship. I am unable to quit.”

“It was just a thought,” said Lumina. “I’m not leaving you behind, not now and not ever. You’re one of the few friends I have left. I’m not losing you.”

That file wasn’t very old at all; it was from their last assignment. Lumina exited the program and found a hundred more running similar comparisons on her outbursts to other memories. Problem was that his crappy back up CPU couldn’t handle it all. If the problem was about navigation or even simple engineering, she would find a way to sort it out, but the problem at hoof left her far outside her element.

I know a way you can save him. Twilight’s voice intruded on Lumina’s thoughts. I know you might not want to hear it right now, but magic can help you.

“You’re not real, Twilight, and neither is magic.” Lumina deactivated the holographic console and pulled herself up to the floor above. As she climbed up, Lumina caught a whiff of herself. All that dried foam in her coat smelled like anti-freeze. “I need a real solution.”

If magic isn’t real, then why do you keep inviting it in? The voice was accompanied by a tingling in Lumina’s horn. Have you given what I suggested earlier any more thought?

“I really don’t have time for this,” said Lumina. “Please just, I don’t know, leave me alone so I can figure out how to fix Animus. I can’t deal with you right now.”

There’s somepony here who wants to speak with you, and she knows a way to save your friend, Twilight said. Why not just hear what she has to say? The worst thing that could possibly happen is that it doesn’t work, and you waste a little bit of time. Last time I checked you have plenty of that.

Lumina stopped, closed her eyes, and focused.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? Either you’re just a part of my imagination, and I’m making it all up as I go along, or you are real, and you knew this entire time and didn’t tell me. Either way, I have no reason to talk with you right now.”

We are aware of him just as we are aware of you. You’ve been going through a lot of changes, and I didn’t tell you about him because in order to save him you’re going to need to come here first. We weren’t sure if you’re ready for this until now.

“My father was right, you’re not my friend.” She spat out the words. “Leave me alone!”

You want to know if magic is real and if the changes you’ve been experiencing are real? Then ask yourself the only question that matters: do you feel different?

“Real or not, magic has impacted my life, I won’t deny that.” Lumina paced up and down the AI core and spoke at the ceiling.

Now, do you still trust yourself? What is your gut telling you now?

Part of Lumina yearned to kick the wall behind her, or break something delicate, but instead she counted to three and regrouped.

Lumina sighed and shut her eyes. “Either this is the best decision I’ve ever made, or the worst. Okay, what do I have to do?”

First you got to find someplace cozy and clear your head. That’s the easy part.

Lumina circled around the AI core, sat down, and adopted her mother’s meditating position. The whole thing was a waste of her time. She closed her eyes and cleared her head, including that last thought.

No more than a few moments into her trance and magic started flowing in. It swirled around inside her before jolting sideways, then it corrected its path and shot up her head and out of her body. Lumina buzzed with energy.

This part is a little tricky. All you have to do is trust your instincts and follow the current.

Sounds easy.

I haven’t gotten to the hard part yet. You’re going to have to let go of everything. Your body, your desires, and your anger. You’ll have to let go of them all.

Lumina let her mind move in the direction of the magic, and soon after she started floating up and up. When she opened her eyes again, she was still on the ground and the sensations vanished. She closed her eyes again and let herself experience floating.

Intense vibrations joined with the floating, and in seconds every part of Lumina trembled at a new frequency. Her mind, or rather her essence, started extruding out of her head and through her horn. Then the magic came pounding on a locked door in Lumina’s heart.

I’m scared, she thought. What’s happening to me?

The current stopped, and Lumina was left hanging halfway outside her own body. She couldn’t see anything except for the red inside her eyes, but the smell of grass and the sound of chattering ponies filled the inside of her head.

Don’t be scared, said one voice out of the many. This is the hardest part. Everything that you have accomplished on your journey here is at stake. You’ll have to trust yourself. Let go of all that anger you’re still clinging. Let go. Trust yourself and make the leap or this is as far as you’ll go.

I think I can do that, Twilight, I think I can. But what if I can’t?

Then you’re not ready, and we’ll try again when you are.

Magic battered against her core and the pressure against Lumina’s heart surged stronger and stronger.

I’m ready, I’ll let go. I can do it, Twilight.

With that, Lumina shrugged free of the resistance inside her, and drifted up and out of everything.

18th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

18th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC
4th Day of the Running of the Leaves

The last day Lumina saw her mother was the day the pegasus tribe set fire to the sky. Lumina and her father had just stepped off the tram at the Arion City Spaceport when trails of fire arced through the sky. On any other day, they might have fooled her for shooting stars over the city, but that day she knew better; they were ships falling from orbit. She carried her suitcase in her mouth and followed her father.

“Dad.” Lumina stopped for second to take in the sight above, and the crowd of anxious ponies behind her pushed past. She set her suitcase down to talk properly. “Are those Pegasus Empire dropships?”

Her father stepped around behind her and pushed her until she got moving again.

“No,” he said above the roar of the crowd. “That’s our defense fleet burning up in the atmosphere. They didn’t stand a chance. Come on, the invasion force won’t be far behind.”

They continued until they reached the spaceport gate. Lumina stopped and scanned the crowd for a familiar face. Her father didn’t like that, and prodded her with his horn to get her moving again.

“She’s not here,” her father said. “We can’t wait for her! I give the pegasi thirty minutes before they make planet fall. We have to find a shuttle and get out of here. Now!”

“She said she’d be here.” Lumina shifted on her hooves. “We can spare a minute, then we’ll go.”

From out of that crowd of strangers and refugees emerged a pink unicorn with a smile as wide as her heart. She waved at Lumina, pushed her way through the crowd, and when she finally reached her daughter, she threw her hooves around her.

“Mom, we were worried you weren’t going to make it,” Lumina said.

“And let you two go off on some big adventure without me?” Her mother pulled herself away and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Never.”

Lumina’s father cleared his throat.

“It’s good to see you again, Lightning Specter,” said Lumina’s mother, and she meant it.

“And you as well,” he said. “Wherever we end up, we’re going to get there together.”

Inside the spaceport, hordes of earth ponies, zebras, unicorns, and pegasi huddled in tents and around shuttlecrafts. The spaceport itself was nothing more than a grey tarmac with shuttles parked in little concrete craters. A lucky few gathered around the shuttles waiting to depart, while others pushed and yelled against fences trying to break through to the ships. A handful of the Arion Defense Force was all that kept the crowd from devolving into a mob. The harsh scent of bodily waste and sweat stained the air.

One at a time, Lumina and her family approach the shuttles, and one after the other they were turned away. “Last shuttle up to the FTL ship,” every pilot told them, “and we don’t have room for any more.”

“We’ll have to flee to the country,” said Lumina’s father at one point. “If we can’t find transport off-world, we’ll have to run and hide.”

They had given up hope of finding transport off world when they stumbled upon a shuttle unlike any of the others. It wasn’t of earth pony, pegasi, or unicorn design, but a combination of all three. Nopony would call it a hybrid -- that was too generous a term. ‘Patchwork’ and ‘derelict’ fit it much better. Someone creative put together a shuttle out of an earth pony hull, pegasi engines, and an oversized dark matter reactor model that was banned on most worlds.

Lumina and her family stopped near the edge of a crowd gathering around the ship.

The shuttle belonged to a griffon with enough presence to stop every conversation at a party as he strolled in. His gestures were as grand and as sweeping as his personality. The griffon wore a denim Interstellar Express flight jacket. He sauntered out in front of his shuttle, like a sales pony about to peddle his wares, and put a claw in his beak and whistled.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, please settle down.” Quiet rolled through the crowd and the griffon continued. “We all know what’s going on in the skies over head, so I’ll be quick. The pegasi are closing in and, according to Interstellar Express policy, we have about forty minutes before all FTL ships break orbit. They aren’t going to send down any more shuttles. There’s only one boat with shuttles still planet side, and that’s mine: the great and powerful I.E.C. Ursa Minor.”

The ponies gathered around the shuttle kicked and fought to break down the fence between them and the griffon.

“Wow, hold your horses.” He whistled again and the crowd backed down. “I can’t have a bunch of trigger happy ponies all over my ship. There just isn’t enough room, and frankly it’s a little too stressful for my AI companion and me to deal with. So if you even think of trying to overrun my little shuttlecraft, I’ll take off and leave you all sucking on my engine fumes.”

At that, the griffon started pointing at ponies near the front. “You, you’re in,” he said to each. As he picked them, the ponies organized themselves near the gate, and one at a time the soldiers ushered them through.

“We’re not going to get on that ship,” said Lumina’s father. “He’s only taking those near the fence. If we want to get off world we’ll need to get close enough for him to see our faces.”

Lumina’s father pushed and shoved his way through the crowd. She followed, and her mother stayed less than a tail-length behind her. They cut through an earth pony family; two parents and three foals just old enough to walk. When they reached the fence Lumina’s father threw himself against the metal and thrashed his hooves until the chain links rattled.

“Hey, over here!” Lumina’s father banged against the fence as the griffon walked by, but he waved him off without even looking in his direction. “Can you take three more? We need to get off world. Anywhere but here.”

“You and everyone and their grandmother,” said the griffon. “I don’t have the spare weight for any more. Sorry, I can’t take you.”

Lumina and her mother joined her father at the fence.

The griffon stood up on his box, whistled, and addressed the crowd one last time.

“Listen up,” he said. “My AI friend overestimated how many I could fit aboard my tiny craft. I told her to run the numbers twice, but what can I say, if machines could really think where would we be? I’m out of room, so scram. And don’t even think of trying to swarm over this fence or I’ll turn on the engines they explicitly told me not to engage in atmosphere. The pegasi will secure the spaceport first thing, so if you leave now, you stand a good chance of missing their mobile infantry and their fancy powered armor. Believe me, they do not play nice and they will use excessive force.”

The griffon stepped down from his box and the crowded devolved into screaming and pleading. The father of the earth pony family shouted obscenities at him with a raised hoof. The griffon adjusted his jacket and slicked back the plumage atop his head.

“Please, I’m a scientist!” Lumina’s father rattled the chain link fence as the griffon retreated toward his shuttle. “If the pegasi capture me, they will force engineering secrets out of me any way they can. I dare not imagine the things they will do to my family in order to get to me. You have to help us!”

Nothing her father said changed the griffon’s mind, he just walked on by. He gave Lumina’s father no more than a sideways glance as he popped open the shuttle’s cockpit, but then he spotted Lumina. They made eye contact briefly and the color drained from his face.

The griffon broke away and shook himself out.

“I, I think I’m gonna regret this,” the griffon said. “Alright, fine, I think I can make room for two more. Yeah, two more but that’s it. Anymore and we’re too heavy to break atmosphere.”

“But there are three of us,” said Lumina.

“I’m sorry, but I’m pushing it at two.” The griffon curled his tail around and fiddled with it. “Sorry, I really am. I know she’s really pretty to look at, but my shuttle is a hunk of trash. She can’t handle much weight.”

Lumina’s mother pulled her away from the fence, put her hooves on her shoulders, and made her look her right in the eye.

“Listen to me, I can’t come with you,” her mother said.

“What?” Lumina’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “But you have to, we’re not leaving you behind. We’ll find another way.”

“I’m not letting my only daughter stay behind for what happens next.” Her mother broke into tears and her voice trembled. “You heard your father. We can’t let him get captured. You have to go on without me.”

“We’ll leave our luggage behind,” said Lumina’s father. “We’ll get the pilot to lighten up his ship. I can find a way to get you aboard, watch me. You’re coming with us.”

“We both know what’s in those saddle bags of yours, Lightning.” Lumina’s mother put her front hooves back on the ground and addressed the father of her daughter. “We can’t let them get their hooves on you, or what you’re carrying in there. You have to go. I’ll be fine.”

Lumina buried her face in her mother’s mane. She fought back tears, and they never came. Part of her didn’t believe what has happening, while another part resorted to walling off the emotion. The mare reached a hoof around her daughter and held her close.

“I’m going to see you again, and I don’t care how long it takes,” said Lumina. "I'll come back for you."

“I love you more than anything else.” Her mother backed away. “But I don’t want my one and only daughter obsessing over something she doesn’t have any control over. Make a life for yourself out there. Now go. You have to get out of here while you still can.”

In a hyper-real daze, Lumina’s father dragged her away from her mother by the tail. Fireballs cut through the cloud cover and descend toward the city. That wasn’t debris, the angle and speed was completely different. Her father nudged her toward the gate, and the guards let them through.

The griffon ushered her inside the shuttle, but her father stopped to say something to her mother. She never heard what he said, and she never asked. Her mother let out a little laugh, and waved him off with tears in her eyes.

Not a minute after Lumina’s father stepped on board, the engines fired and the craft peeled away into the sky roaring. Her mother shrank and shrank on the receding tarmac. She kept her eyes on the window until her mother vanished in the concrete, then she fell to floor and sniffled. The inside of the shuttlecraft smelled like somepony threw up in the corner, but she didn’t care about anything around her. Lumina’s father put a hoof on her shoulders to comfort her, but she shrugged it off.

After a few minutes, the roar of the engines faded into silence, and when Lumina looked out the window again, all she saw was darkness, and a plane of white and blue stretching out below her. They said the sky was full of ships, but Lumina didn’t even see the FTL ship as the shuttle pulled up alongside it and docked.

A hatch at the far end of the shuttle hissed open to let the crowd of refugees and their griffon pilot step through to the ship. Any other hour of any other day, the very idea of trotting onto a gleaming white interstellar spaceship would have filled Lumina with awe. After today, she kept her eyes focused on the floor and just followed the crowd to a cargo hold. Their new home for the next few weeks.

Over two thousand ponies shared five cargo holds, each roughly the size of the gymnasium at Lumina’s school. Ten thousand more filled the ships clinging to the Ursa Minor’s hull, but Lumina never heard nor saw any of them. Ponies from every social class and every tribe were huddled around cots spread throughout the chamber. There was a single food synthesizer tucked into a corner to serve everypony there and ponies occupying the hold next to them. A few of the larger families claimed the empty cargo containers in the corner and converted them into temporary houses. Everypony else lived in tents or on cots out in the open. Neither Lumina nor her father thought to pack a tent, so they claimed two cots beside each other in the open. At least no pony had peed or puked in it yet, but with a couple hundred ponies sharing such a small space, it wouldn’t be long before it reeked.

Near their territory, a blue unicorn with a worried expression unfitting of her bright blue coat and cyan mane questioned an earth pony couple. She had strapped a signboard to her with the picture of a grinning earth pony standing in front of the Fountains of Arion. A caption beneath it read: “Have you seen this stallion?”

“He said he would be on the last shuttle up,” she said. “He has to be here.”

Lumina watched the unicorn until she gave up, and trotted over to a group of zebras to try again.

For a long time, neither Lumina nor her father spoke, and after a while she tried meditating, but her mind was too restless and distressed to focus. Her mind wandered to her mother, and then to the pilot. What did he see in Lumina that caused him to reconsider? She withdrew the book from her suitcase, laid down on her cot, and started reading the story of The Mysterious Mare-do-well.

“I can’t believe you brought that.” Her father pointed at her open book.

“It’s here now and I’m not getting rid of it.” Lumina lifted a hoof out from under her and turned the page.

“No, I wasn’t going to--” Lumina’s father sighed. “Never mind. Would you mind if I take a look too?”

Lumina nodded, and her father trotted over to her cot and peeked over her shoulder.

Regal and slender illustrations accompanied each page of text; the artist took great care in capturing the elegance of the style used to craft the Canterlot stained glass works of old. On the page, a unicorn in a purple costume levitated rocks and concrete into the air, and commanded them to take on new shapes and reconstruct a broken dam.

“I have a question,” said Lumina’s father. “How is it that one unicorn can lift all that into the air? And cast a completely different spell to rebuild that thing at the same time? That sounds impossibly difficult, even for a unicorn mage.”

“According to the mythology, the size and weight of the object doesn’t really matter.” Lumina turned the page. “Their magical strength depends on their connection to the magical world, their knowledge, and their own belief in themselves. In other words, with enough understanding and conviction, a unicorn can move a mountain just as easily as a pebble. At least in the stories.”

“Huh, sounds far-fetched even for fantasy.”

“Well, it’s just that, a fantasy. None of it ever happened. The rules of magic can be whatever the author wants.”

“It still sounds absurd to me.” Lumina’s father pointed at the picture of the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well. “What’s stopping her from robbing a bank or burning the town down?”

“I think you’re missing the point.” Lumina pushed the cover closed with her horn and climbed out of her cot. “It doesn’t work like that. Ponies with a strong magical connection are enlightened, so they’re above that kind of thing.”

“Here, take a look if you want.” Lumina shoved the book into her father’s hooves. “I’m done here for right now.”

Lumina didn’t say more. She cantered toward the door, and her father didn’t stop her. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of her father just as she stepped out of the cargo bay. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like he was reading her book.

More refugees congregated in the corridors, but as she put some distance between her and the cargo bays, the crowds thinned until she was alone with the white walls and low hum of the starship. The white unicorn crossed the threshold into an empty room lit from every angle by LEDs. An alarm flared, yellow light replaced the white. Lumina covered her ears to save them from the siren.

“I’m sorry, whatever I did, I didn’t mean to do it!” Lumina lied down on her stomach, buried her face in the floor, and pressed her hooves into her ears. “Please just let me go, I need to get back to my father.”

The siren died, and the lights returned to their sterile white.

“You are not Gerard,” said a female voice. From where exactly the voice was coming from, Lumina didn’t know. She peeked over her shoulder, but found no pony. It voice didn’t sound like it belonged to any equine either, it was too synthetic.

“No, my name’s Lumina.” She got back on her hooves. “Who am I talking to, exactly?”

“I am GILDA,” the voice said. “I am the ship. You are trespassing inside me. Why have you strayed outside the designated refugee area?”

“I don’t know, I was just wandering around a bit, and I wanted to find your pilot. You know, the griffon in the flight jacket?”

“His name is Gerard, and he is currently engaged in activities considered illegal on seventy worlds and frowned upon by our employer. He does not wish to be disturbed.”

“Well, then, in that case, I’ll just be going,” said Lumina. “I’ll turn around, head back to the cargo hold, and we can forget this happened.”

“I never said you were not permitted to see him.” The inflection in GILDA’s voice never changed, not even a little, and that creeped Lumina out. “On the contrary, I believe now is the best time for you to visit Gerard. Take the hyperlift at the end of this room to the bridge.”

A set of doors opened up further down the room.

“I really think I should get back,” said Lumina. “My dad is probably really worried about where I ran off to by now, but maybe some other time?”

“I have sealed the doors behind you.”

“Uh, alright, I’ll go say 'hi' to your pilot then. That sounds like the best thing to do.”

Lumina boarded the hyperlift, but before she even approached the control console, the doors clamped down behind her, and the capsule took off. She rode on a low vibration to a long hallway lit by orange holograms. Something was burning up there, it smelled like a cross between a skunk and the health food store next to her mother’s house. A figure kicked back in a command chair with his back to the door as he breathed out smoke, and flipped through the pages of his paperback book without even glancing at the star field outside his window. Music sang out of speakers all around the bridge:

Oh-Oh, sometimes
I get a good feeling, yeah
I get a feeling that I never, never, never had before
No no
I get a good feeling, yeah

The figure’s tail danced to the beat.

“Gerard, you have a visitor,” said GILDA.

The head of an eagle poked out from behind the command chair, then popped back out of sight.

“Crap.” The figure shuffled around behind his chair and mashed holographic symbols together. “Hold on, I’ll be right there.” The music cut out and air vents around the bridge sucked the smoke out of the room and replaced it with clean, breathable air. The figure raised an eye-dropper above his head and squeezed until it produced a couple of drops.

The chair spun around, and there sat the griffon that saved Lumina and her father. His eyes were much redder than she remembered.

“Hey, what’s good?” He smiled through his beak. “The ship’s AI put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“Sort of, I didn’t really have much choice. I wanted to say thank you. You took a risk bringing my dad and me on your shuttle, but you brought us along anyway, and, well, thank you. If you didn’t take that risk, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

The griffon’s eyes widened and the plumage on his head stood up.

“You’re that unicorn from before,” he said. “Yes! I remember you. No problem. I have to apologize for my good-for-nothing AI, we pass the time by playing pranks on each other.” The griffon leaned forward in his chair, glanced left and right, and covered one side of his beak while only half-whispering to Lumina: “She wasn’t socialized very well, none of the other computers like to play with her at recess. I think she also rode the short bus to school, if you know what I mean.

“Anyway, I’m just glad we got off Arion in time.” Gerard scooted back in his chair. “And it looks like we’re going to have enough speed to make our first FTL jump to New Canterlot before the pegasus blockade sets up. The Pegasus Empire is damn ruthless, and I can say that from first-claw experience.”

“New Canterlot?” Lumina stepped forward and glanced at the holograms. “Is that where we’re headed?”

“You didn’t know that? You boarded a superluminal starship without even checking the destination first? That’s messed up.”

“We didn’t even pay for our tickets. Your shuttle was the last off-world, so we didn’t think to ask.”

Gerard aimed his command chair at the console and started dragging and rotating symbols in the air. At his touch, the holograms turned green, and a strong bass pumped through the bridge.

“Yeah, New Canterlot, the glorious stronghold of the unicorn tribe,” he said. “I bet you’ll like it. A pretty unicorn like you will fit right in. You said your father is a scientist or engineer, right? The corporations will love him. You two will do fine.”

“You’ve been there before?” Lumina nodded her horn in Gerard’s direction.

He glanced at her, over his shoulder and out at space, then back at her.

“Where, Arion?” Gerard pointed at the star field beyond his window. “Nope, can’t say I have. Excluding the spaceport, of course.”

“No, I mean New Canterlot.” Lumina shook her head. “Have you ever been there before?”

“Yeah, a whole bunch of times. Every major corporation this side of the Pegasus Empire and their mothers is based there, including yours truly's employer. They say a unicorn monarch leads the planet, but that’s minotaur crap. The corporations run everything. Hell, the vending machines on New Canterlot take corporate shares.”

“Is it beautiful?” Lumina asked.

The griffon scratched his lower beak.

“That depends entirely on if you like trees or stalactites. New Canterlot isn’t technically a habitable world. It’s the second rock in a binary system. It was settled by unicorns looking for precious gems and metals, and they carved out these massive underground quarries and built their cities in the mined out sections. You’re going to walk on streets of gold, and your daddy the engineer will probably find a nice stalactite overhanging Celestial City to live in. You’re never going to see the sky again, not unless you get a ride off-world. And next time, they will make you pay a small fortune for the privilege."

No sky? Lumina left her world behind, but she assumed wherever she ended up would have a moon and a sky. She ears tucked down, and wrapped her tail around her legs.

“I didn’t know I was leaving the sky behind,” she whispered.

Gerard sighed, and brushed ash off his jacket.

“When I was younger than you, the pegasus tribe invaded my world, forcing me, my parents, and about four million other griffons to flee to the stars.” Gerard’s eyes lost themselves a spinning hologram to his left, but after a moment he locked them on Lumina. “We ended up colonizing a rock just outside of the Sirius system. I thought I’d never see the sky again. There was no way I could afford to get a ship to ferry me away from there. But I was like, ‘I’m not going to spend my entire life pulling heavy metals out of caves.’ So I started looking for a way out."

“What did you do?” Lumina’s ears perked up a little.

“I became a pilot for the Interstellar Express first chance I got, and I never looked back.” Gerard leaned back in his command chair. “If you want to see the sky over Arion again, the Interstellar Express can make it happen.”

For the first time in what felt like ages, Lumina's eyes lit up and her lips turned up in a slight smile.

“I wanted to ask you something, Gerard,” Lumina said.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you change your mind and decide to take my father and me?”

“Oh, boy, I’m not sure how to answer that one.” He scratched his head and thought for a moment. “It’s like this, you know how pony society props science and everything left-brained up on a pedestal? Us griffins didn’t. We believed that everything living was magical. I was taught to always listen to my gut and to use my instincts.”

“Sounds really cool,” said Lumina.

Gerard’s eyes narrowed. “If medicine that doesn’t work, a dirt poor economy, and almost no army to defend the planet when the Pegasus Empire attacked sounds cool, I guess it was pretty cool.

“I know this must sound like superstitious minotaur crap,” said Gerard. “But when I saw you, I got this feeling like I was doing something wrong. It was like you were supposed to be on that shuttle, like staying on Arion wasn’t in your horoscope and it was my job to get you out of there. In a way I was greedy, cause if I hadn’t taken you along I knew I’d pay the price in bad karma for the rest of my life.”

Lumina pinched her eyebrows together; she didn’t really know what to think of that, except to ask more questions.

“How am I more important than any of those ponies that got left behind?”

“I don’t know.” Gerard threw his claws up. “Maybe you’re supposed to do something really great, like build a bridge, or bring peace back to the galaxy. Maybe you’re an Element of Harmony, if you believe in that kind of thing. Or maybe I have it all wrong, and I just owed you some good karma and this was my way of paying my debt. I don’t know. All I know is that whatever you're supposed to do, you wouldn’t accomplish it on Arion.”

6. Passacaglia in the Library

Awakening
Solocitizen

Passacaglia in the Library
Present Day

There was no gravity.

Lumina floated away from the green turf beneath her while her legs scrambled in vain to touch the ground. The warmth of the midday sun rained down her back, and the scent of lavender sailed on the wind. The oddest part about the situation was that Lumina didn’t know how she got there. She didn’t gradually wake up in that mess, nor did she make any kind of transition. She was just there, in the middle of the action, like in a dream.

“Oh my, do you need help?” asked a voice above her. So timid and sweet, she put Lumina’s fears at ease. “You should really stop fighting it and think about the ground.”

She tried to turn her head to look up at the airborne creature, but she couldn’t crank her head around enough to get a good look at it. Feathered wings turned the air above Lumina and fanned little gusts of wind in her direction. The more and more she thought about the creature and its voice, the more and more she drifted toward it. As she drew closer, vibrations trickled through her and shook her very core. Lumina’s mind wandered into thoughts of spinning, and she started to rotate.

“Wow, what’s happening?” Lumina flailed her hooves. But they had no effect. She spun over her head and stopped facing the fluttering voice. “What?”

A yellow pegasus hovered above Lumina. Her mane was the softest shade of pink, and combed in just the right way to hide a good portion of her face. And she was flying. Her wings were actually flapping and sustained her in the air.

“You’re flying?” Lumina gasped.

“That’s not a problem, is it?” The pegasus started to hide behind her own forelegs, but then lowered them again.

“Well, I think it might be, seeing how ponies can’t fly.”

“Um, if you don’t mind me pointing out, you’re flying right now.”

Lumina glanced over at the grass beneath her.

“I’m trying not to think about that.” Lumina flicked her tail back and forth.

“Maybe you’re not ready to fly yet,” said the pegasus. “Maybe you should keep your hooves on the ground, at least until you get used to it. It’s okay though, I bet you’ll pick it up a lot faster than I did. Try thinking about floating down until you touch the ground.”

Lumina gulped, then breathed in, and out, and concentrated on reversing the sensations flowing through her. She focused her thoughts on the firm earth below and didn’t let her mind wander. Sure enough, Lumina started drifting toward the ground. Soon she was lying on her back with little blades of grass flicking in her ears. The pegasus landed less than a meter away from her, and loomed her bright pink and yellow head over Lumina.

“There, is that better?” she asked Lumina.

“I think so,” Lumina said. “At least I’m not weightless any more.”

“But you are weightless, you’re just not floating right now because you told yourself not to.”

Lumina ignored that last statement.

Moving proved a lot more difficult than she thought. Whatever that place was, the traditional concepts of locomotion didn’t apply there. No matter how much Lumina commanded her body to move it stayed put.

“I’m afraid that doesn’t work here,” said the pegasus. “You have to visualize what you want to do instead of, you know, actually trying to do it. You can do it, though, give it a try.”

Lumina breathed in, and created a mental image of herself standing on all fours. That time she floated off her back and spun in the air until she completed a one-hundred and eighty degree arc, before landing on her own hooves, just as she imagined.

“Wow.” Lumina stared at her hoof, and watched as it rose off the ground after merely picturing it moving. “I’m going to need to relearn the basics.”

“Walking and flying aren’t that hard, it just takes a little getting used to.” The yellow pegasus grinned with her eyes closed. “You’re picking things up really quick. I’m sure you’ll be walking and flying around in no time.”

The mind commanded the body, the body obeyed, and that was how body and mind moved through the world. But not there. In order to move, the mind must command itself, but the problem was that the mind wasn’t used to obeying. Stray thoughts, lack of clear visualization, and self doubt all hindered Lumina and her early attempts at the simple act of walking.

The pegasus commented on Lumina’s struggle to put one hoof in front of the other, often with reassurances such as “you rock,” and “way to go, just a little more,” or even “woo-hoo.”

After she mastered walking, Lumina took the opportunity to study her surroundings. From what she could tell, she was in a field that stretched out endlessly in every direction. She raised a hoof to shield her eyes from the midday sun and scanned the heavens. The sky overhead was full of churning clouds that flowed and swirled together, and feigned the shapes of temples of grand buildings before dispersing and reforming again. Lumina stared directly into the sun, but instead of burning her eyes, it filled her with an intangible warmth.

“The sky here is so, I don’t know, there’s something majestic about it.” She lowered her hoof away from her eyes.

“I know, and it’s amazing to fly in,” said the pegasus. “Which is odd coming from me. I’m not exactly a very strong flyer.”

A symbol on the pegasus’s flank caught Lumina’s attention, she recognized it from her storybook. Three fluttering butterflies, Fluttershy’s own emblem and cutie mark. Lumina galloped along side the pegasus to get a clear view of her flank, and froze in shock.

“Is there something wrong?” asked the pegasus. “You were doing really, really, well. I think you’ve just about mastered walking, and you could probably try flying, that is, if you like.”

“Why is that on your flank?” Lumina pointed a hoof at the three butterflies.

“That?” The pegasus followed Lumina’s gaze to her rear. “Oh that, that’s my cutie mark. I forgot you’ve never seen one before. You see, when a pony figures out her special talent--”

“I know how the fairy tale goes!” Lumina stomped her hooves and marched forward. Her aggressive posture and raised voice frightened the pegasus into hiding behind her own mane and forehooves. “What I want to know is, why is that particular symbol on your flank? Where am I, and what is going on here?”

“Be-be-because it’s my special talent.” The pegasus quivered with fright and lowered her voice with each word. “I’m, um, well, really good with animals.”

“Just who are you, exactly?”

Overcome with fright, the pegasus couldn’t meet Lumina’s eyes for more than a fleeting pass, and didn’t even raise her wings in a defensive stance. Instead she backed up and quivered. If she could retreat into the earth, she would have.

“My name is Fluttershy.” The pegasus spoke just above a whisper.

“But that’s impossible, you’re dead.” Lumina took a step back and shifted all her weight onto her hind legs. Her front hoof lifted from the ground, primed to swing to her left and propel her out of there.

Fluttershy opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t.

The vibrations flowing over Lumina took a sharp turn in frequency, and a vortex of purple light flashed into being beside her. It burst open with a snap about five meters away. The entire phenomenon occurred within a second. She darted back a step, but something inside her told her not to run, and she relaxed.

In place of the vortex stood a purple unicorn, she held herself with confidence well earned, and her flank was marked with a magenta star. Right away Lumina recognized the pony.

“Twilight Sparkle?” Lumina’s jaw dropped, and after the initial shock wore off her eyes found the ground, and her body language closed up.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight trotted forward and put a hoof on Lumina’s shoulder. “I thought you’d be much happier to see us.”

“I am, don’t get me wrong, but this is all so expected.” Lumina’s eyes never left the turf. “You’re here, Fluttershy is here. I don’t know. It’s too perfect. It’s exactly what I would dream about if I could choose. I’m really sorry, but I...”

“I understand,” Twilight said.

“Are we still, you know, friends?” Lumina forced herself to pick her head up and make eye contact with Twilight.
“Of course. That will never change.”

Twilight and Lumina pulled each other in for a hug, and the two held each other close before backing away. Lumina’s eyes lit up. Fluttershy cantered up along side them and pawed at the ground.

“Well, um, unless you need me for anything else, I think I’ll just be going,” she said.

“Thank you, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. “I’m glad somepony was here in time to meet my friend. I’ll stop by for some tea a little later.”

“Thank you for helping me out.” Lumina put a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder, but the mare tensed up, and Lumina quickly put her hoof down. “Sorry.”

“I’m glad I could help,” said Fluttershy. “If you’ll excuse me though, Twilight has a lot to talk to you about. Also, I need to check up on another pony.”

And with that, Fluttershy vanished with a snap and a flash.

“That’s so strange,” Lumina said to Twilight. “How do you ponies keep doing that? I thought that only unicorns could do magic, at least that’s what I was always heard.”

“Come, along Lumina.” Twilight Sparkle motioned at a dirt path leading through the grass field. “I’ve got a lot I need to tell you.”

Through the grass, and over the trail, Twilight guided Lumina. Little bugs chirped in the grass, and the smell of flowers wafted up from the ground. A strong breeze flowed through the grass and whistled in Lumina’s ear. For a brief second as it passed, she felt a tinge of weightlessness. She planted both her hooves on the ground and cast her gaze upward at the endless sky.

“I know this is probably just a dream or hallucination, but I want to hear your explanation for where we are exactly, and for why you and I are talking, even though you have been dead for the last eleven thousand years or so,” said Lumina. “Actually, just skip to how I can save Animus.”

“I’ll start with where we are first, and then work my way up to how you’re going to save your friend.” Twilight dragged her eyes away from the trail every now and again to glance at Lumina, but she never slowed or paused. “Right now, we’re in the magical plane. You can think of the physical world like the stage at a theater. The magical plane is the backstage, at least as far as you’re concerned. Whenever a pegasus walks on a cloud, or a unicorn levitates an object, or an earth pony grows a plant from seed they make it happen here first. The same is true for much more mundane things too, like writing a book or building something new. Most of the time ponies aren’t even aware that they’re using the magical plane.”

Just ahead of them, purple light rolled up the path, and replaced the dirt trail with fresh bricks. It stopped right at Twilight’s hooves. She stepped onto the bricks and continued without taking notice.

“Did you just do that?” Lumina recoiled from the brick trail.

“Yes, and it wasn’t even that difficult,” said Twilight. “Anything you imagine becomes reality, which makes magic a whole lot easier. Anypony can fly or teleport or make their own little world just by thinking about it. Pretty neat, huh?”

After testing the path with her hoof, Lumina stepped onto the bricks, and caught up with Twilight.

“Could I, you know, make some pony appear?” Lumina asked.

“Yes, but you won’t be able to interact with her.” Twilight Sparkle turned around. “At least not with your current knowledge of magic. Go ahead, I bet you know what to do.”

Her mother’s smile, the flicker in her eyes, and her wonderfully pink coat. Lumina closed her eyes and poured every detail she could remember about her mother into her mind’s eye, and when the image was complete, that familiar tingling sensation filled her horn. When Lumina opened her eyes again, there stood her mother. Age and stress took its toll on her, but her smile and that little light in her eyes was unchanged. She was standing on her hind legs, with her front hooves propped up on an invisible table, and her eyes darting across pages on an unseen book. Lumina’s mother scooted down the table, picked an invisible object up with her mouth, and set it down beside her book.

Lumina watched, half in delight and half in sorrow.

“How come I can’t see any of her environment?” she asked.

“Your perception alters reality. The things you want to see and what you’re familiar with changes the spell,” said Twilight. “We’re actually in the middle of a magical downtown Ponyville right now. You can’t see it because you’re not open to seeing it yet. The same goes for my wings; I was actually a princess for a while.”

“Is there any chance that she can see me?”

The projection of Lumina’s mother paused in her work, and glanced over her shoulder. She looked to her left and aimed her gaze right at her, but only for a brief second, and then she was back to work.

“Never mind, I don’t need to know,” said Lumina.

Dark swirls danced around the image of Lumina’s mother, and then the projection flickered out. It hurt to watch, but seeing her for that fleeting minute was worth the pain. Lumina tore herself away from thoughts of her parents and forced herself to look away.

“I’m sorry, but did you just say you had wings?” Lumina raised an eyebrow and made a question gesture with her hoof. “That can’t be right; there was never any mention in any of the stories that you were a princess.”

“My point exactly.” The purple unicorn sighed, and rolled her eyes. "If you've convinced yourself somepony is a unicorn, then you will never see an alicorn when you look at them. It doesn't matter too much, though, because what you think of me doesn't change who I am."

Lumina shook her head and flicked her hoof in the air as if she was shooing away a pesky bug.

“We’re getting off topic,” she said. “You said that if I came here, that you would tell me how to save my friend. If I don’t do something quick, he’s going to die. So, what do I have to do?”

“I was never trying to keep the solution from you.” Twilight Sparkle aimed her sympathetic eyes right at Lumina. “You wouldn’t be open to even hearing what we had to say unless you came here first. That, and my teacher wants to tell you that in person.”

“So when do I get to talk to this pony?” Lumina said. “Can we teleport over to her? The sooner I talk to her, the sooner I can get back to my ship and save his life.”

Twilight looked straight up at the sun, without covering her eyes or squinting.

“She’s up there.” Twilight pointed up. “When you’re ready to speak with her, start floating up to the sun. I’ll be right behind you the entire time.”

More floating, Lumina hated the thought, but Animus’s life was on the line. With a deep breath in, and a deep breath out, she closed her eyes, and conjured up the sensation of ascending up and up. When she opened her eyes again, she was floating away from the ground with her legs dangling in the air. Twilight Sparkle hovered in the air beside her.

“It’s great that you’re giving flying another try,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you trying again so quickly.”

“Flying is something I don’t think I can get used to, unless I’m in a ship, of course,” Lumina said. “If the only way to save Animus is by floating, then sign me up. I’ve lost a lot of ponies I cared about, and I’m not losing another.”

As the two mares drew closer and closer to the sun, a new high frequency of magic washed over Lumina. The sensations intensified and pulsed through her very core. The light from the sun enveloped everything in a white glare. Twilight vanished in the flare, but Lumina was still aware of her presence on an intangible level.

What happened next Lumina didn’t see, smell, hear, taste, nor feel. She just experienced events using the very essence of her being.

The sun opened before her like a blooming flower, and as she kept pushing herself forward, the sun's petals arced over her being and joined back together. There was geometry and an endless space ahead of her, all of which fractaled and spun and blossomed again. There was an intelligence, too, which reached out to Lumina with welcoming intent. She accepted its invitation, and allowed the boundaries of herself to blur together with the shapes and the magic around her.

At that moment she became aware that her body back in the Luna Dream had toppled over. Her eyes rolled back and were fluttering open and shut. She was panting and quivering.

She watched herself for a moment, and then fell into the heart of the sun.

The scent of old books emerged out of the flowering space and teased at her nose.

* * *

Lumina’s eyes darted to book shelves on her left and right, and then down. She floated centimeters above a white stone floor, and with a little bit of effort, she lowered herself onto all fours. She arrived at this place the same way she entered the magical plane: floating and in the middle of the action.

Faint music played somewhere nearby. Violins, maybe, but it was too faint to tell.

“Hello? Twilight!” Lumina called out.

Bookshelves, and the white stonewalls behind them, reached up until they faded into blue sky. She was in the library, just as she envisioned as a filly, and standing there at that moment, it felt right. Actually, it was better than ‘right,’ the experience was nothing short of euphoric. She was meant to stand there now, amongst the books and sky and the music. Then she remembered her book, and her vision of the place as a filly, and then her stomach turned over and her heart knotted up.

She studied the place in fine detail, and compared it to her memories, but in the end, Lumina failed to reach any conclusion on if the library was real or not.

Embedded in the high walls were stained glass works, identical to those in her storybook. They caught the sun and breathed color into the events depicted in the images, such as The Banishment of Nightmare Moon and The First Discord Crisis. As far as Lumina knew, these events were arranged in chronological order, and as she cantered off down the hall, she hit The Fall of Magic, and in the next window over, Equestria sank into the ocean. After that centuries of war and chaos followed, and then came The Advent of High Technology and the three tribes reached for the stars. Further down The Great War and The Colonial Rebellions were depicted in orange and crimson.

The last ten thousand years had been bloody.

No matter where Lumina wandered, the music followed her, and always just far enough away to keep the details of its melody hidden.

“She’s gotta be around here somewhere.” Lumina heard Twilight’s voice echo off the chamber walls, followed by the clippity-clop of hooves on stone. “I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t think I’d lose her coming up. For pony’s sake, where did she go?”

“It’s quite alright, Twilight Sparkle, she’ll turn up soon enough,” said a second voice Lumina recognized. Where exactly she remembered it from, she couldn’t tell. It was mellow and soft, but authority hid just behind the words. A distant part of her recognized it. “I believe she’s listening to us as we speak.”

“Hey, I’m over here!” Lumina shouted.

She tried to leap above the bookshelves to get a glimpse of the other pony, but didn’t catch any more than the sight of more bookshelves. The hoof steps stopped, and when she checked around the next corner, the most radiant pony she had ever seen stood tall before her. She was both a pegasus and a unicorn.

Only three ponies in Lumina’s storybook had both a unicorn’s horn and the wings of a pegasus. Even when her perfect white coat and her aurora mane wasn’t taken into account, the way she held herself, with overwhelming authority softened by benevolence and wisdom, quickly eliminated the other two princesses. Princess Celestia, the ruler of Equestria, and harbinger of the sun. Every fairy tale and bedtime story Lumina ever heard referenced her in one way or another. She stepped back and gasped in awe. She was also a great deal taller and longer than anypony Lumina had ever met.

“Enjoying my library?” Celestia asked.

“You’re Princess Celestia!” Lumina looked her up and down. “You’re a lot bigger than I imagined.”

Twilight Sparkle popped out from around a bookshelf behind Celestia; she bit her lower lip and shook her head at the words.

“I haven’t heard that one in a long time.” Princess Celestia laughed a little, and Twilight sighed in relief. “It’s so lovely to finally meet you in person. My faithful student, Twilight, was not sure if you were ready to come here, but I had confidence in your ability to reach this place.”

“My abilities?” Lumina asked. “Are you sure that you aren’t confusing me with somepony else? I’m the most unmagical unicorn you could find, and I’m still on the fence if magic is even real or not.”

“You shouldn’t dismiss your talent so easily.” Celestia motioned for Lumina to follow her. Lumina and Twilight obliged. “You see, I’ve been watching you very closely. Ever since you were very small. I know about how you started mastering levitation when you were just a foal, and I know about how your talents led to therapy that sealed off your magical side.”

“I don’t blame any psychiatrist for anything in my life,” said Lumina. “I used to, at one point, but not any more.”

“And neither do I.” Celestia ruffled her feathered wings and led the other two ponies through an intersection. “Therapy helps millions of ponies deal with the struggles of this era, but that wasn’t what you needed to take advantage of the moment. Simply put, it wasn’t an experience that you wanted.”

"I’m sorry, but how do you know?” Lumina put her hoof down, forcing the other two ponies to stop. “I get Twilight, she’s had a back door into my head since forever, but I don’t understand how you know. Has Twilight been writing letters about me?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t explain me away as a part of your subconscious, and naturally privy to such information,” said the princess.

Lumina opened her mouth and started gesturing with her hoof, but then stopped mid motion, and furrowed her eyebrows at the floor. Meanwhile Celestia slighted a smile.

“I guess I wanted to hear my subconscious justify itself,” Lumina said.

“During my time as ruler, my most important station was watching over my little ponies. Although I couldn’t intervene in the lives of each of my subjects, I would have spent the entirety of my days helping each of them if I could. After my reign came to an end, I was put in charge of keeping this library, and from here I continued my role as guardian. I watch the lives of every mare, stallion, and foal unfold before me. Each one is worth protecting. But I’ve also been watching for ponies such as yourself: those with the capacity to fill some very important roles.”

A bird called from far across the library, and Lumina glanced in its direction to try and snag a glimpse of it, but saw nothing. She spotted a leather bound edition of Abel’s Island resting on its pages atop a bookshelf.

“Have you really?” Lumina pawed at the ground with a hoof, then raised her head and narrowed her eyes at Celestia. “I mean, you say that you’ve been watching us and acting like some sort of protector, but do you even know what’s going on in the galaxy today? Arion is occupied by the Pegasus Empire, our homeworld burns, the griffon race is shattered, and the three pony tribes are fighting a war that claims thousands of lives every day. You say that you’re a magical guardian, but I say that you’re not doing your job at all!”

“Lumina!” Twilight gasped and galloped over to her. “What are you thinking? You can’t talk to the princess like that.”

“I’m thinking about how I watched my world die, and pony kind may be coming to an end, but I will die on a Discord-forsaken ball of ice long before then.” Lumina stomped a hoof.

“Twilight Sparkle, she has every right to be upset.” Princess Celestia raised her voice, but only ever so slightly. “The truth is that Lumina is correct, in many ways I am powerless to prevent the suffering that has fallen on pony kind. As Twilight Sparkle said earlier, the magical realm is only a backstage. The healing of the galaxy, if it is to be done at all, must be done in the physical realm. The most I can do is nudge ponies into waking up to the magic of friendship, and to expedite the arrival of ponies such as yourself. There is a plan in motion but I can not execute it.”

“There you go again implying I’m something special.” Lumina turned her back on Princess Celestia and Twilight. Her eyes found the floor. “Crazy, most likely. Special? Not in particular. I thought flying starships was my thing, something I was cut out for, but just look at how that turned out.” She kept her eyes low and kicked at the floor with a hoof. “Whatever plan you have worked out, I don’t think I’d be able to help. I can’t even help myself or the few ponies close to me.

“What were you expecting me to do anyway?” Lumina circled back around to face the Princess. “Like what, were you expecting me to be an Element of Harmony or something?”

Neither Princess Celestia nor her faithful student spoke, but Twilight’s eyes widened and her ears shot up in excitement. Celestia tilted her head inquisitively.

“What?!” Lumina backed up and shook her head at the alicorn in front of her. “No, no, no, no. You must have made some kind of mistake. I’m not a bearer of an Element of Harmony. I lie, I’m mean, I’m not exactly loyal or an optimist, and I’m not any more generous than the next pony. Unless, I’m not any one of those, but that would make me--”

Twilight Sparkle threatened a grin.

“No, I am definitely not the embodiment of magic, that’s impossible.” Lumina tried to laugh, but a nervous heat rising through her prevented the chuckle from escaping. “For starters, magic isn’t real.”

“You are special, but not more so than anypony else,” said Celestia. “We all make choices about who we are, and a very important one is ahead of you. I’m not saying if magic is or isn’t real. I also never said if you were an Element. That was entirely your idea, and a choice that has presented itself to you.

“I have a question for you, Lumina; do you have enough self-love to truly listen to yourself and figure out what you think on those matters, or are you waiting for somepony to figure those out for you? Lumina, are you the Element of Magic or aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Lumina backed away and raised her front hoof to turn and run. The heat building in her brought her ears to an uncomfortable temperature. Her careful breathing devolved into erratic panting. “I just don’t know!”

Lumina spun away from the two ponies and galloped down the library aisle. A short distance away, she found an alcove in the wall and collapsed into a little ball. She traced the grooves in the floor with a hoof and absent eyes. The other two ponies showed up later.

“I’m not an ideal pony, I’m not some paragon of pony kind,” she said. “I don’t think I’m the mare for the job. This last week I tried so hard to change, but today I nearly killed an alien out of spite. I can’t believe I almost did that to another sentient being. I just don’t know if I can let go. That, and I don’t know the first thing about magic. I don’t even have a cutie mark. I’m not the kind of pony that can take on an entire galaxy!”

Twilight Sparkle sat down next to Lumina, and wrapped a front leg over her shoulder. She looked up at her.

“All we want is for you to be yourself,” Twilight said. “We’re not asking you to change overnight. In fact, we’re not even asking you to change at all. Follow your heart, know yourself, and love yourself, that’s all we want from you. The best thing you can do to help the galaxy are those simple things.”

“And you will not be without friends.” Celestia laid down on her legs right next to Lumina. Even at this level she towered above Lumina and Twilight. “I will provide whatever assistance I can, and I know my student will do everything in her power to help. Your mother, your father, your friends on Arion, and that computer living in your ship, are all cheering you on. You also have five of the best friends anypony could ask for waiting for you in known space. The hardest task ahead of you is embracing who you are, once you’ve done that, the rest will fall into place.”

The sun over the library set, and once the last of its light trickled out, the sky gave birth to millions upon millions of tiny lights. So many stars filled the sky as they lit up the library and illuminated the stained glass. A breeze moved through the library carrying the scent of old books.

“The crazy thing is, the idea that I’m an Element of Harmony doesn’t sound so insane.” Lumina picked herself off the floor some. “Maybe this is what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know. I want to believe I could be that kind of pony, but when I tried to grow and forgive and let go, something little got in the way and I couldn’t do it. Why did all this happen now, right after everything fell to pieces?”

“Nothing happens before it’s ready,” said Celestia. “That’s just the way it is.”

Keeping her head low, Lumina pulled herself off the floor, and paced to and fro between the bookshelves. She looked to her hooves, then at Celestia, and then to Twilight, before finally turning her eyes back to her hooves. Lumina breathed in and exhaled.

“I don’t want to run away from myself any more.” Lumina pulled her eyes from the floor and met Celestia’s gaze. “If that’s all I have to do, then yes, I’ll be the Element of Magic.”

“That is a decision about who you are only you can make.” Celestia rose up, unfurled her wings, and nodded at a point further down the library. “I am glad that you are finally starting to listen to yourself. Now, there is the matter of your friend, Animus, and your way home. That is why you came here, is it not?”

A sharp pain shot through Lumina’s heart, and forced the air out of her lungs. She gasped for breath and clutched her chest, the pain spread outward throughout her whole body and she clamped her eyes shut. The pain faded, and Lumina relaxed and opened her eyes.

“Are you alright, Lumina?” Princess Celestia asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” She set her hooves down, straightened up, and held her head up. “I think I’m going to be okay.”

Lumina and Twilight followed Celestia through the library to a circular clearing. A looking glass, filled to the edge with water, rested mid-air in the center of the clearing. Celestia turned her gaze to a scroll tucked away on a bookshelf as a yellow light enveloped both her horn and the scroll, and it rose from its place and floated toward Celestia in one elegant motion. She stood before the looking glass with the scroll unwound as it hovered in front of her.

“This library has many names and as many keepers,” she said. “A copy of every book ever written, and every book never written, is contained here along with a record of every moment experienced in history. Both of what has occurred and what has yet to come.”

The symbols on the scroll didn’t match anything Lumina had ever seen. They looked, well, alien. They glowed a bright yellow, and with a nod from Celestia, they swayed off the parchment and drifted into the water.

“Millions of years ago, the world you crashed on was home to two great tribes.” As Celestia spoke the water rippled, and the image in the looking glass morphed into scenes of mighty cities adrift upon an endless ocean. Lumina sniffed and took in the scent of sea air. “They were called the Nasharis and the Nash’To, and they were the creators and the created. For a long time there was peace between the two.”

Red light flashed across the looking glass, and the sprawling ocean cities were replaced with broken ruins consumed in fire. Aircraft filled the sky and rained metal down on figures scrambling for cover. Fumes from the fires mixed with the salt in the air.

“The harmony did not last and war engulfed both tribes. They battled for resources, over ideologies, and for no other reason than they were different. There was no room for friendship in any of their hearts.”

The entire looking glass flared yellow, and the boom and rumbling of an explosion followed. When the glare cleared, mushroom clouds dotted the ocean.

“In time they resorted to the most desperate of measures to destroy one another, and their planet was lost. It froze to death under a cloud of ash. However there were those who saw the end coming, and made preparations to begin life again after the fallout.”

Now the looking glass showed the lattice-work ceiling in the alien ruin. Pale light filtered down from the gaps in the metal canopy, and lit the way for hundreds of machines that slithered, crawled, and strode along the floor.

“They built it knowing that their oceans would freeze under the cloud,” said Celestia. “They hoped that someday after the skies cleared and the radiation dissipated, someone could use it to breath life back into their planet. It was designed to warm the oceans and send trillions of tiny plants and animals into the air, and they even left a sentinel behind to wait for the perfect day to use their machine.”

“That’s the centipede, isn’t it?” Lumina asked. “So if that’s the all-wise-and-benevolent guard of a big terraforming engine, why did it try to kill me?”

“For the past four million years, she’s been feasting on the memories of those that died in the war, and she’s been reliving those events all this time. She doesn’t trust organics anymore and doesn’t want to see them growing on the surface again.”

“But you can restore her with a memory spell.” Twilight stepped around to the other side of the looking glass and propped herself on her hind legs. “Once you do that she’ll be her old self again in no time. I had to do this to my friends once, I can show you how it’s done.”

“Okay, but how does any of this help me save my friend?” Lumina asked.

“The machines that built this device also included a brief record of their civilization,” said Twilight. “Which so happens to include a vault filled with spare robots. Each is as blank as a fresh sheet of paper. With the sentinel’s help you can download Animus into one of those.”

Lumina tried to imagine him as a giant centipede, and shivered at the thought, however it still sounded a lot better than him dying.

“You have to understand, bringing life back to this world is the single most important thing you will ever do.” Celestia flapped her wings. “The tasks ahead of you as an Element of Harmony are important, but they will never rival the importance of seeding this world with life. One day, civilizations will crawl out of the oceans of this world and build cities that will span the stars. Long before my reign, unicorns like yourself raised and lowered the sun. The sun must shine on this world again, and it is well within your power to bring its warmth.”

“I’m not sure if I can do that.” Lumina gazed down into the looking glass. “I’m terrified of running into that thing again. Not just because it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, but also because of what I might do. Earlier today, I tried to kill it, but not because my life was in danger, I was just angry and wanted it dead. What if I do something like that again?”

“You will just have to trust yourself to make the right decision.” Celestia extended her wings and gave Lumina a warm grin. “I have every confidence that you will when the time comes.”

The image in the looking glass faded back to light reflecting off water, and the words from the scroll ascended up from the water and reattached themselves to the scroll. Celestia rolled the scroll back up and deposited it back in a bookshelf.

“Unfortunately, time does not permit us to continue our conversation.” Celestia flapped her wings in quick succession. “I must attend to matters elsewhere, and you have a friend that needs your help. It was lovely meeting you, and feel free to stop by anytime.”

“Wait, what?” Lumina took a few quick steps forward. “I’m not going anywhere, not until you tell me how to get my spaceship back in the sky, and what about the other elements, how do I find them? Don’t I need a cutie mark before I try anything magical? Isn’t that the way the legend goes?”

“I’m sorry but nopony gets all the answers all at once,” said Celestia. “For the rest of those, you’ll just have to wait and find out for yourself. I must warn you though, there are those out there who do not wish to see the Elements return, and they will do everything in their power to prevent it.”

“That ship that attacked Luna Dream, it’s coming back for me, isn’t it?”

“I won’t shield you from the truth. They are an ancient foe and you will see a lot more of them in the years to come.”

“I’m not going to try and hide it,” Lumina said. “If they come back, I don’t know what I will do. Animus and I were completely defenseless against them when showed up last time. I don’t think we can survive another attack.”

Celestia ruffled her wings and raised her head.

“The assistance we are able to provide is quite limited,” she said. “I can only do for you what I can do for anypony who consents to my aid and who can open themselves enough to receive it. However, I will intervene on your behalf once, and only once. After that, you will be expected to climb your hurdles without my intervention. Now, you must go.”

“Oh, and you’ll need this.” Twilight Sparkle levitated a scroll off a bookshelf and thrust it into Lumina’s hooves. “I’ll be there for you anytime you need me. Just go easy on yourself from now on, okay?” She gave Lumina a little hug then took her place by Celestia’s side.

Lumina kept her eyes on Twilight, but then she started shifting upwards. When Lumina looked down, her hind legs were sinking into the floor. The vibrations that pulsed against her climbed down in frequency, and when her torso reached the stone, the weight of it crushed and remolded Lumina’s form. She clung to the scroll in her hooves, breathed deep, and let the floor pull the rest of her down. Her horn was the last part of her to remain in Celestia’s library, and when it descended into the stone she plummeted down, through the darkness of her eyes and into some confining space.

Thank you Twilight, she remembered thinking. Thank you for everything.

* * *

Something cold pressed against Lumina, and when she opened her eyes to meet it, her vision blurred metal grating and electronics together. Lumina picked herself up off the grated floor. It left an impression on her chest and face. The space in her heart ached a little, but the pain subsided. Her body felt as heavy and unwieldy as a starship. Cold sweat covered every centimeter of her.

The music that played during Lumina’s time in Celestia’s library was gone. She was back on the Luna Dream, in the AI core room, just as she left herself. The vibrations of magic never completely vanished, they persisted and trickled in through her horn and filled the rest of her body. Lumina glanced at her flank; still no cutie mark or anything else to prove her journey, for that matter. Damn.

Lights below her flashed; it was a warning light on Animus’s computer core. Lumina galloped out of the AI core and toward the nearest equipment locker. She had work to do.

44th of Growing Season, 10,053 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

44th of Growing Season, 10,053 AC

A clock tick-tick-ticked away while Lumina fought the urge to tap her leg or bite her hoof. The mare perusing her resume flipped through the pages with the slightest hint of disgust. A frown curled across her face, and that was all it took to send Lumina over the edge and to start tapping her hoof. She didn’t even try keeping rhythm with the clock.

The wall behind Harmony Treasure, an aging unicorn in charge of pony resources at the Interstellar Express, was plastered with a myriad of degrees and awards. The window in Harmony Treasure’s office offered a view of the sprawling Celestia City, while photos of CEOs and politicians occupying the free spaces of her desk.

“Do you have any questions about my resume?” Lumina asked.

“No.” Harmony Treasure flipped back to the previous page, and shook her head. “I’ll let you know if I have any.”

Lumina looked out the window and studied the city below.

Living in tunnels and towers the last two years managed to cure any claustrophobia she had, rid her body of its dependence on the sun and moon to judge day and night, and acclimate to an artificial summer all year long. The only thing that still bothered her after all that time was the fact that half of the city hung from the cavern ceiling. When she looked out, she looked down. Lumina didn’t even acknowledge that she was in a hanging tower, or that the sky above her was a network of spires and walkways. No pony ever fell from the upper city, but Lumina was still convinced it was possible.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Miss Spectre, this is the most disappointing thing I’ve read all week.” Harmony Treasure plopped the resume down on her desk, and Lumina snapped out of city gazing. “You would make a fantastic pilot. Your math scores are in the ninety-ninth percentile, you managed to get licensed as a shuttle pilot before you completed general schooling, and you came highly recommended by a pilot of ours.”

“Excuse me, but it’s Lumina, not Miss Spectre.” Lumina didn’t care if she was about to blow this interview or not, that mare was going to get her name right. “Sorry, please go on.”

Harmony Treasure slacked her jaw a little, then raised her eyebrows and leaned back in her chair.

“That fact of the matter is, Lumina, we still can’t take you,” she said. “For two reasons: first we do not employ pilots with a history of mental illness, and second, one of our sibling corporations would lose one of its head engineers if we did. I’m sure you’re already aware that your father threatened to quit if we took you on.”

Stammering with her eyes flashing between the window and the mare behind the desk, Lumina paused to readjust herself and think through a response.

“Did you read the part about how I’m cured, and about how your own psychologist examined and cleared me to fly?” Lumina started to climb out of her chair, but then pushed herself back in. “And my father, well, if there were such things as cutie marks, his would be a starship schematic. He won’t quit, he can’t. It’s his calling.”

The clock chirped once, and then ticked away. Harmony flipped through the resume on her desk once again and glanced at the clock.

“I suppose we can put you through the rest of the selection process,” said Harmony Treasure. “You’d be surprised how many applicants either disqualify themselves or withdraw after the AI compatibility screening. Are you free for the next eight hours?”

“I, think so.” Lumina’s father would murder her if she weren’t home in an hour. “Yes, I’m free. And if I pass your tests, do I get to be a pilot?”

“It will help your case, and mine if my boss decides to reprimand me for letting you get this far.” Harmony Treasure hopped out of her chair and opened the door to her office. “Right this way. The sooner we get started the better.”

Jagged walls, hexagonal rooms, and artificially grown crystals filled the Interstellar Express tower. It was designed to capture the sturdy and regal architecture common in the ancient Crystal Empire, and it succeeded. Past all the fancy hallways and offices, the architecture gave way to something much more utilitarian. Harmony Treasure led Lumina into a room that made no attempt at invoking regality. Its only purpose was to house a row of computer terminals and a vault on the other end. A unicorn and earth pony wearing lab coats played around with holograms above their workstations, and only paused briefly to greet Harmony and Lumina.

“Hello Harmony, what can we do for you?” the earth pony said.

“I was wondering if you colts were still running tests today?” Harmony waved a hoof at Lumina and presented her to the two ponies. “I have a potential pilot that needs to find out if she can work with an AI.”

“My shift just started.” The earth pony gestured with his head at his hologram and the projection vanished. “I can see her through the entire test.” He turned to Lumina and said: “If you become a pilot, you’re going to spend most of your career in deep space. Your only contact for months, sometimes even years at a time will be with an AI. So it’s important to know if you can handle interacting with one for an extended period of time, we can usually tell if you’re cut out for the job after eight hours.”

“You still want to do this?” Harmony Treasure asked Lumina. “It’s not too late to back out.”

“Well, if that’s what I have to do to pilot a starship, then yes, I’ll do it.”

The unicorn reopened his holographic display and started dragging and dropping symbols in the air. After some coercion, the hologram flashed green, and the vault at the far end of the room hissed open.

“If you fall asleep in there or threaten the AI, you’re disqualified,” said the unicorn. “Other than that, there’s nothing you can do to instantly fail this test. The computer in there is called ANIMUS, and he plays a wicked game of chess. Once you step inside we’ll lock the door behind you and we can begin.”

“You might want to use the restroom,” said Harmony Treasure. “You’re not going to get another chance for another eight hours.”

“I think I’ll be fine.” Lumina peeked into the test chamber, and saw nothing but white washed walls, a table, a couch, and a chess set.

At the gesture of the lead lab pony, Lumina stepped inside and the door sealed behind her. She scrutinized the test chamber, but didn’t find any speakers or cameras.

“Hello, I’m Lumina,” she said, but to what she didn’t know.

“It is good to meet you, Lumina.” A voice without inflection spoke from all around her, it belonged to a male, but it didn’t betray any emotion. “My name is ANIMUS.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” And she meant it. “So, tell me a little about yourself.”

* * *

Before Harmony Treasure even received Lumina’s resume, her boss warned her that if she did not turn that interviewee away the instant she stepped through that door, she’d spend the rest of her career in the mailroom. Instead, she made the mistake of humoring Lumina’s application.

The Interstellar Express lost more pilots than they were training year after year. As the director of Pony Resources, she was responsible for finding well-qualified pilots and putting them at the helm of a FTL ship, and Lumina was by definition a well-qualified pilot.

Harmony Treasure prayed to Celestia that when she returned to the AI test chamber the ponies down there would have disqualified her.

When she opened the door to their lab eight hours later, the lead lab pony stopped juggling his holograms and dismissed them with a single flick and said: “we need her.”

“What? I was hoping you two had gotten rid of her by now.” Harmony Treasure’s eyes clenched shut. “Is she really that good?”

“She’s not, but they are,” the other pony said. “ANIMUS and Lumina Specter are unlike any AI-pony pairing I've ever seen. By now, most subjects develop resentment toward the AI, but not her; she actually enjoys spending time with the AI, and so does it. They get along like old friends. We need to put Lumina and ANIMUS on a ship together.”

“What about her psychological condition?” said Harmony Treasure. “Haven’t you found any signs of mental instability?”

The earth pony brought up his hologram again and checked through his notes, and after a moment he dismissed them again.

“If she has a mental illness it hasn’t manifested,” he said. “From what I can tell Lumina is a perfectly healthy pony. She has a bit of a temper, but nothing that Animus can’t deal with. There is no reason at all why we shouldn’t hire her immediately.”

Good pilots were invaluable to the Interstellar Express, and unfortunately good pilots were very hard to come by. Harmony sighed; she was going to the mailroom after this.

“Get her out of there,” said Harmony Treasure. “I’ll tell her she’s got the job.”

The unicorn stabbed a holographic symbol and a buzzer rang. With that, the vault door opened, and there Lumina was, lying on her stomach and talking about nothing in particular.

“Well, I never really thought about it,” Lumina said to ANIMUS. “I guess it’s supposed to be artistic, but I never got it.”

“Perhaps no pony understands the phenomena,” said ANIMUS. “Images of ponies in socks have decreased by thirty three percent over the last two years. It is a subject on the decline in most artistic circles.”

Lumina spied Harmony Treasure in the doorway and got back on her hooves. “Hi Harmony Treasure, is my time up?”

“The two of you are hired,” said Harmony Treasure. “Lumina, you start training tomorrow at eight AM sharp. Don’t be late.”

A smile extended from ear to ear over Lumina’s face, and her eyes widened. She jumped up and down and clapped her hooves together.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” Lumina darted over to Harmony Treasure and shook her hoof. “Thank you so much.”

“Don’t mention it.” Harmony Treasure sighed. “No, really, please don’t mention it.”

“Uh, okay! Sure! You’re the boss!” Lumina cantered back into the test chamber and stared up at the ceiling. “I have to go now, but I’ll see you again tomorrow, okay?”

“Lumina?”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“I believe that you and I are going to be friends.”

She gave Animus a sideways smile, and tilted her head just a little.

“You mean we aren’t already?” Lumina backed out of the test chamber, but not before adding, “See you tomorrow, Animus.”

“And you as well my friend.”

7. Life and Death

Awakening
Solocitizen

Life and Death
Present Day

A trail of black goo stained the ice and guided Lumina’s way to the relic. On her journey to the centipede pit, she put together a plan to confront the creature, subdue it, and talk and persuade and pry what she needed out of the machine. It involved a series of transmat beams and an elaborate light show provided by the Luna Dream’s laser. Her breath fogged her visor, but the heads up display cut through the condensation enough for her to program the ship’s systems. Her stake gun and transmat beacons clicked against her side with each step.

As she trekked across the ice under the afternoon sun, she realized that once she got down there her carefully laid scheme to force its cooperation was doomed to fail. The puddles of black blood only increased in frequency and size as she neared the pit. If she approached the wounded machine with hostility, after it had retreated into a corner to recover, it would fight her until one of them ended up dead.

Lumina reached the edge of the pit and stared down into darkness. She took a deep breath, sat down on the ice, and examined her options. Only one presented itself: the memory spell.

Before she left the Luna Dream, a series of words and symbols flashed into her mind’s eye, and compelled her to write. So she sat down with a datapad and a stylus, and let the words flow from her while in a trance. The entire time, Lumina fought doubt, disbelief, and the urge to control the words spewing onto the datapad. But she didn’t, and when she finished, she held in her hooves five pages outlining a spell she had never seen before. It was a memory restoration spell just as Twilight promised her.

“Okay, Twilight, you win.” Lumina shrugged off her stake gun and all her gear. “We’ll do this with magic.” She peeked over the edge of the pit and backed away. Underneath her spacesuit she was sweating and her heart was thumping.

With a shake of her head, she deleted her programs for the laser show barrage, and brought up her notes for the memory spell on her heads-up display. She sat on the ice and studied every detail of it until she had the casting process memorized. How exactly she was going to get close enough to the centipede to cast it, she didn’t know. Lumina would figure that part out as she went along.

Keeping a healthy distance away from the edge, she fastened herself into the rope line left behind during her first expedition and tested the cable. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Lumina approached at the edge of the pit and counted to three.

“One. Two. Three.”

On three she dove into blackness.

Darkness surrounded her and the little atmosphere outside howled over the hole, and came screeching down the walls at Lumina. It was terrifying. She was terrified. But she resisted the urge to bottle up her emotions or succumb to them, instead she allowed herself to experience the fear and move on.

Once Lumina’s hooves hit bottom, she unfastened her suit from the rope and surveyed the alien corridor. Still dark, still twisted in design, and still just as creepy as she remembered. Lumina checked the readings on her heads up display for an atmosphere. It reported habitable conditions, just as before. She took a deep breath in, and pulled her helmet off.

Lumina inhaled through her nose, savoring the purest air she ever breathed, and exhaled through her mouth. She stared at the faint blue light reflecting off the corridor in front of her.

“Twilight, Celestia, I know you two are going to help with this next part,” Lumina said. Magic trickled in through her horn.

When she reached the entrance to the cathedral hall, she put her hoof down in more of that black goo, and the stuff stuck to the boot of her suit. She tried to scrape it off, but without success.

“Hello, I just want to talk, I’m not here to hurt you.” Lumina called out at the pillars and scanned them for any sign of movement. “If you can understand me, then please just hear me out for a second. I have a really good friend back on my ship and he’s dying. His name is Animus, he’s an AI like you, and he needs a new body. I know you have spares--”

Lumina stopped right there.

The tap, tap, tapping of needles on metal advanced on her right. When she spun to face the source, red light struck down not three centimeters from her nose. The heat singed Lumina’s face but she leapt to her left before it got any closer. She scrambled to her hooves and galloped into the forest of pillars.

A bolt of red light soared over Lumina’s head and collided into the pillar ahead of her with a shattering boom. Debris pelted her, and each stone fragment delivered pain. Lumina glanced over her shoulder for just long enough to catch the centipede charging up behind her and the blender in its maw whirling to life.

Lumina rounded the corner of the pillar to her right and continued on through the forest weaving and zigzaging. Where she was running to, she didn’t know, but if she slowed even for an instant it would get her.

She panted, her eyes struggled in the dim light, and at a gallop her hooves drummed up a cacophony. The centipede was at home in the darkness, did not tire, and moved in silence beneath Lumina’s hoof falls. Lumina pushed those thoughts out of her head and didn’t allow herself to feel the terror the place and the monster invoked. She just ran.

Metal pincers lashed out at Lumina and caught her hind leg. She collapsed in pain gasping. A beeper on her suit sounded; it already started patching the tear and applying first aid to the wet, burning spot on her leg. She spun her head around in time to watch the centipede close in on her.

Gritting her teeth together, Lumina put her good leg to use and kicked the machine square in its eye.

It shrieked and recoiled.

Adrenaline carried Lumina back to her hooves and around the next pillar. She continued through the pillars a short distance, then turned around, and stopped. If she didn’t end this right here and now, it would only be a matter of time before the centipede either impaled her, or gunned her down with that red beam.

The machine arced around the pillar and rushed at Lumina head on. Instead of running she called out to the magic pulsing through her, and she molded it around a single thought.

“Enough!” Lumina shouted back at the machine. “Stop it!” She stomped her front hooves and projected the spell out of her horn.

Golden light surged forward and wrapped itself around the metal centipede, and there it stopped. Lumina allowed herself to catch her breath; the golden aura held the machine captured mid motion. The golden light cut through the darkness and lit up the pillars surrounding them. Lumina’s eyes darted up to her horn, found the same golden aura, and then aimed right back at the centipede.

Her face lit up with glee, her heart fluttered in joy, and Lumina burst out laughing.

“I did it!” Lumina shouted. “It worked! It actually worked!”

In this state Lumina could rip that monster apart limb by limb and make it pay for what it did to her. For a moment she considered it, but she never did. Lumina let herself experience that anger, and let it go. As it vanished so did the thoughts of wrath.

Lumina approached the machine and touched her horn to its head. She performed Twilight’s spell exactly as the instructions stated. The magic flowed up her spine, out her horn, and into the centipede’s body. It tingled and reverberated between the machine and Lumina.

She pulled her head away, and when she did, the centipede clattered on the floor as limp as a ragdoll. The centipede remained motionless on the ground, even after she prodded it with a hoof. When her body realized the danger had passed, her heartbeat slowed, and the adrenaline coursing through her cooled.

Pain shot through Lumina’s leg, first as a twinge, and then as a stabbing pulse. Lumina staggered and fell to the floor. She flipped over on her side and examined the tear in her suit with a hoof mounted LED. Blood stained the edge of a long scar in the fabric, and she felt something hot and sticky dribbling down the inside of her legging. When Lumina tried to put weight on the leg, the pain shot through her tenfold.

A scream escaped Lumina’s lips. No way she was walking out of there.

Rolled over on her back, she stared up at the latticework and followed an individual strand of metal weave in and out. She flicked a pebble at the centipede but that didn’t even get it to twitch.

“Well, Twilight, what happens next?” Lumina asked the ceiling. “Or is this it? I get this far just to screw up the spell and kill the bucking guardian, and die of starvation or infection or any number of things down here?”

Lumina closed her eyes and meditated on the magic streaming into her. Something white flashed just behind her eyes, and then the answer came: No.

Shrieking bellowed out of the centipede and broke Lumina’s concentration. She rolled over and watched the centipede writhing and coiling, each twist echoing as it hammered into the floor. Then the machine half-retreated into darkness, just before it rushed forward. Lumina tried to scoot away from the enraged metal beast but it was on top of her in seconds. Its legs clamped down around her, caging her in; the machine sandwiched her between its carapace and the floor. Lumina pressed the side of her face into the floor in an attempt to escape the maw of steel lowering to her head. Its red eye fixed on her and drowned out Lumina’s sight.

“Please,” Lumina said. “I have a friend, and he needs your help. He will die without a replacement body. Please, you’ve got to help. I know you have a vault filled with blank machines and any of those will work.”

The red light waved back and forth, up and down.

“I’m sorry for hurting you and invading your building.” Lumina squinted her eyes but couldn’t penetrate the glare. “I know you don’t really like me, but I need your help, because without you, my friend dies.”

She didn’t know if it was something she said, or if the centipede’s memory returned and it remembered some repressed love for organic life, but the red light cut out and the centipede peeled away from Lumina. She sighed and pulled herself up as much as her leg allowed. The centipede crept along the floor towards some place deeper into hall. Using the centipede as support, Lumina picked herself up on her three good legs, and hobbled along beside it.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

The centipede didn’t even so much as twitch in response.

After about ten minutes of agony, the centipede stopped and directed its red light to the floor. Lumina watched the machine work from behind the cover of a nearby pillar. Air spurted out in a ring around a depression in the floor to reveal a staircase leading below the floor. The centipede slithered down the staircase and, having decided it would be better to face whatever awaited her than stay in the relic alone, Lumina hobbled along right behind.

There wasn’t any light down there. The LED lights on Lumina’s suit cut through just enough of the darkness to provide her with a view of some walls and the centipede’s rear end. And the stairs sucked. A lot. They were never built with a pony in mind; they were too close together, and forced Lumina to use her wounded leg. She hissed each step of the way.

“If you can understand me, please at least make some effort to talk.” Lumina put her hooves down on flat ground and continued on. “I mean, I know you’re intelligent, and I think you can understand me, so why not try to communicate?”

It didn’t even let out a peep.

“So, do you have a name?” Lumina shrugged and forced a smile. “You must have a name, or at least something I can call you other than ‘machine’ and ‘centipede.’” She tapped her chin. “If you don’t have a name, would you mind if I give you one, how about something like ‘Old Blender Face?’”

The centipede stopped and curled its front section over its back, and aimed that red light right at Lumina. It bellowed, shrieked, and clicked in her face before curling back over.

She decided to shut up after that.

Blue light flashed up and down a high ceiling, and when the lights finally stabilized, they cut through the obsidian walls to Lumina’s right and left. She jumped back and her heart pounded. Centipede models flanked Lumina on both sides, just beyond the clear obsidian.

Lumina waited for herself to calm down, and then started inspecting the machines. She spied tripods five times her height further down, and some machines that walked on six legs and hunkered close to the ground like a beetle, others were black and silver replicas of the winged bipeds that created them. None of them matched Animus.

“Do you got any more?” Lumina asked. “I don’t want to sound picky but I don’t think any of these are a good fit for my friend. They don’t match his personality, and I don’t want to put him in something he’s going to hate for the rest of his life.”

The centipede tapped down the hallway and Lumina tried her best to keep up, but after a minute, she spotted something that demanded her attention. Propped up like an action figure in a display case was a dragon, with metal armor for scales and myomer for muscles. Lumina had seen pictures of dragons in her storybook, but the eyes and wavy horns on the machine gave the impression of something far wiser. Erect on two feet, the dragon stood about one and a half meters tall. It had an entire head over Lumina. Its golden wings extended out twice that length.

“That one.” Lumina tapped on the obsidian wall. “It’s perfect.”

Air spurted out and the tubes and various bits of packaging sloughed off the dragon. The centipede fought its way back around itself and Lumina stepped out of its way. Without opening the case, it crawled up the side, and reached through the obsidian and retrieved it with its many legs.

In one fluid motion, the centipede curled over itself and accelerated down the hallway toward Lumina. She gasped, and hobbled away from it as fast as her legs allowed, but she lost her footing on her third step. She landed on her face with a smack. The centipede curled over her as Lumina stared up at a thousand needles writhing above her. Before Lumina could stand or protest, the centipede grappled onto her with all of those little legs and just slung her over its back.

Lumina guessed what would happen next, and tried to find a good hoofhold in the centipede’s carapace to grapple onto, but before she secured herself the machine rocketed through the hallway and up the stairs and around the rows of pillars all the way out of the cathedral forest. Lumina hugged the centipede’s back for dear life. But she never fell, in fact, the centipede propelled itself along without so much as jostling her.

The machine soared down the long and dark corridor, and in a matter of seconds they arrived at the hole leading to the outside world. Sunlight shone in and graced them with the golden hues of sunset. The machine only paused once, just long enough for Lumina to put on her helmet, and then it reached for the hole and shot out like a bullet from a rifle barrel. It did this all with Lumina on its back and Animus’s new body in its front legs.

In minutes they reached the Luna Dream’s exterior hull. Lumina climbed up to the centipede’s head and pointed in the direction of a nearby airlock. Using the console on her foreleg, Lumina queued up the door controls and guided the machine inside.

Once they reached the AI core the centipede could start pulling Animus out of the auxiliary computers and into his new body, assuming the centipede decided to help. Lumina couldn’t say with any degree of certainty why it followed her into the ship, or if it intended on helping.

On the other side of the airlock, Lumina removed her helmet and pressed onward to the AI core, and sure enough, the machine followed.

When Lumina looked down at her leg, little red droplets dribbled from the stain in her suit. She took a deep breath, ripped her eyes from the sight, and put one hoof in front of the other.

“Come on, the core is this way.” Lumina waved the centipede on, and together they pressed forward.

They rode the hyperlift as far as the damage to the Luna Dream allowed, from there they continued on hoof. Lumina made it on her own for about ten meters before the pain in her leg forced her to stop.

“Wait, I need a second.” Lumina leaned into the wall for support and hung her head. “Just give me a minute and I’ll be good to go.”

The centipede didn’t wait. Without warning, it picked her up and slung her over its back as it had before, and carried her the rest of the way.

Lumina yelled ‘stop’ once they reached the doors to the AI core. She started squeezing past the doors, but the centipede reached through with its many legs and pried the doors apart with a thud. She scrambled for the crowbar, picked it up in her mouth, and lifted up the plate leading to Animus’s auxiliary systems. For one brief moment, she placed all four of her hooves on the floor, and it hurt like hell to put any weight on that back leg.

Over her shoulder, Lumina spied the centipede scanning the remains of Animus’s quantum processor with its red light.

“He’s over here.” Lumina spat out the crowbar and let it clatter on the floor. “He’s down there in another computer, you’ll need everything tagged under Animus.”

The centipede didn’t wait for her to finish. It laid down the dragon and zipped down the hole in the floor. Lumina peered down but saw nothing but the centipede’s black, shining, metal carapace. A minute later it was out of the hole, with wires embedded in its head and a long probe extending from its maw. Without hesitating, it plunged the probe into the dragon’s eye. Smoke puffed; it smelled worse than a chemical fire. And that was it; the centipede retracted the probe and backed away.

Motionless, the dragon stared up at nothing. Lumina poked its side and tried calling Animus’s name, but no reaction -- no words, no movement, not even a flicker of light -- answered her calls.

“That wasn’t it, was it, please tell me there’s more you’re going to do?” Lumina barked at the centipede. “Why isn’t he awake yet? What’s wrong with him?”

She nudged the thing out of the way and dropped down on her belly. She slapped the dragon’s face and even poked it in the eye, but it didn’t move.

“Come, Animus, wake up.” She put her hooves on its shoulders and shook the dragon until its head rolled over to one side. “Wake up, you have to wake up. There is so much more ahead of us, you can’t die now.”

“Don’t just stand there, give me a hoof!” Lumina whirled around at the centipede and flung out her front hooves. “Do something! I’m not losing him now! Not like this. Not after all we’ve done.”

The centipede watched from across the room with its red eye. Lumina shook her head, and turned back to the body in her hooves. She tried everything from holding its claws to slapping the dragon in the face, but it remained still. She hung her head and whimpered.

“Please, Animus, wake up.” Lumina leaned in and wrapped her front legs around the robot. “You’re the only friend I have left, I just… I just don’t know if I can do this without you. I need you to wake up.”

Lumina hugged the machine closer and held it. For how long, she didn’t know, but at the end of a very long time the mouth on the dragon creaked open. She propped herself up on her front hooves and watched its unlit eyes fill with an aquamarine light. Her ears perked up and her eyes widened as the jaw twitched open and closed.

“As you command.” Her friend’s voice leaked out of the dragon’s mouth.

Tears rolled down Lumina’s cheeks, she sniffled and gave Animus another hug.

“I was so afraid I was going to lose you again,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done if that happened.”

“I am aware that I am no longer installed in the Luna Dream,” said Animus. “This platform is much smaller and I am having difficulty adjusting to its architecture. This is not of pony construction.”

“You don’t want to know what I had to go through to get that body.”

Animus pivoted forward into a sitting position, he spotted the great metal centipede in the corner of the room and raised his eyebrows in astonishment. He looked back over at Lumina to put a question to her, but instead he paused, noticed the tears running down her face. His eyes found the blood leaking from the stain in her suit.

“Lumina you are crying,” he said. “You must be in a great deal of pain. I insist that we get you to sickbay immediately.”

Lumina rubbed the tears from her eyes, and more trickled out. “I’m not going to lie, it hurts a lot, but that’s not why I’m crying. I’m not crying because I’m sad, or because I’m in pain. I’m crying because I’m happy.” She chuckled through the tears. “I must need you much more than I think if I sound that cheesy after a week by myself.”

“I believe I owe you a debt that I can never repay. The events that you endured to acquire this body must have been physically and mentally demanding. Thank you.”

“Well, you didn’t just expect me to give up on you, did you?” Lumina let her face light up in a smile. “And you’re welcome.”

Animus flexed his hind legs, then leaned his body forward and attempted to stand. He didn’t get it the first time, nor the second, but on the third try he succeeded in finding his feet. Lumina and the centipede just watched.

“You got it?” Lumina asked.

“I have never had limbs before.” Animus put one foot forward, and then the other. His arms shot out to his sides to help him balance. “Using them is proving difficult. Your injuries require medical attention. I will accompany you to sick bay and provide whatever assistance I can.”

Lumina gathered her legs underneath her torso, and pushed up to stand. In the process, she put more weight on that back leg than she intended and hot fluid ran down her side. She hissed. The pain was excruciating.

“I think I can make it to sick bay.” Lumina hobbled over to the exit with the centipede following. “When you’ve figured out how to walk, meet me there. I’m going to go lock myself in the medi-pod now.”

Limping down to sickbay took her longer than she expected. The energy and adrenaline that fueled her during the fight and the trek to retrieve Animus’s new body just wasn’t in her anymore. She was almost done, and her body knew it. It fought her the entire way down. The centipede followed her every step of the way. Why? She didn’t know, and at that point she didn’t care.

In sickbay, Lumina yanked off her spacesuit, taking special care not to peel away any of her lacerated skin. As soon as she pulled her wounded leg free of the suit that had been applying first aid and pressure to the wound, blood flowed out.

It was a mess. Blood pooled up in her suit and left stains all over her white coat and gushed onto the metallic floor. She was beginning to feel extremely light-headed.

“I forgive you for this,” she told the centipede, “but this bucking stings.”

Lumina threw herself in the medi-pod, and just closed her eyes while the plexi-glass dome closed over her and the machine went to work. She gestured at holographic buttons with her horn as they popped up around her. Sweet tasting gasses filled the inside of the chamber and dulled the pain in her leg. A hub of mechanical arms lowered, and she turned her head away before it went to work. The centipede pulled itself away from the plexi-glass dome and started scanning a stray prescription bottle right as Lumina looked away.

Every now and again, Lumina glanced a squinted eye at her leg, and saw nothing but busy mechanical arms and medical tubing coursing with fluids of every color. She felt nothing more than a slight pressure on her leg. An IV full of blood was inserted into her forehoof, and in minutes the lightheaded feeling started to vanish.

Animus stumbled into the sickbay some time later. He bumbled up to the medi-pod and tapped a claw against the dome.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“The pain’s gone,” Lumina said. “The medi-pod is patching me up pretty well, I don’t think it will even leave a scar.”

A buzzer sounded, and the holograms in front of Lumina’s face flashed green. The hub of mechanical arms retracted into a panel at the end of the medi-pod’s bed. A fresh dermal regeneration bandage was wrapped around Lumina’s leg, and when she flexed it and tried to put weight on it, Lumina was met with only the mildest of pain. Lumina popped open the medi-pod dome and stepped out on all fours.

“Not exactly good as new, but nothing I can’t handle.” Lumina tested her leg a little more. “Now that I’m bandaged up, and you’re in a body, we need to talk about our next move. We need to leave this planet, but before we can, there is something we need to do first. There’s an alien ruin not too far from here, and in it there’s a device that will terraform this planet and let it support life again. We need to get the Luna Dream in shape to fly again, go back down to the ruin, and turn that device on.”

“I have detected a local network.” Animus put a claw to his head, and the lights in his eyes flashed. “Please standby while I search it for relevant data.”

The centipede scurried up to Animus and shone its light in his face. Animus’s eyes darted back and forth in his head. He broke from the trance and the centipede switched its light off.

“Well, what did you find?” Lumina climbed back into the medi-pod and lied down on her stomach. She was still really weak.

“I do not wish to alarm you but it appears that your associate has already activated the device.”

“When did you do that?” Lumina asked the centipede. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “Isn’t that good news?”

“Lumina, I may no longer be inside the ship but I am still connected to it,” he said. “The Luna Dream sustained heavy damage when it impacted the planet. Judging by the data streaming in from the local network, the entire terraforming process will occur rapidly. The ship barely survived landing. I do not believe that the Luna Dream will survive the rebirth of this planet.”

“It couldn’t have waited a little while?”

“The Guardian has waited millions upon millions of years to begin terraforming.” Animus tried to articulate with his claws but he couldn’t get the gestures quite right. “She will not wait another day.”

“How long do we have until the device, you know, starts up?” Lumina held back her panic.

Animus glanced over at the centipede, and then back at Lumina.

“I don’t believe we have any more than fourteen hours,” said Animus. “Assuming the data I am receiving is correct.”

A glass of water sat out on a countertop across the room. Magic returned to her in a fierce vibration through her horn. She focused in on the glass and started weaving magic over its sides.

“Then we’ll just have to move the ship before daybreak tomorrow,” she said.

“The ship’s engines are not designed to provide us with sufficient thrust to escape atmosphere even at full strength.” Animus tapped his foot. “What is your plan for moving a one point two kilometer long starship?”

Lumina reached out to the cup with her magic, and although it didn’t obey her as easily as it did during the fight in the ruin, with a great deal of focus, the cup lifted up off the counter and floated across the room to her. Animus ducked his head, and glanced to and fro at the golden aura surrounding both Lumina’s horn and the cup. She set the cup down beside her on the bed.

“I’m going to do it with magic,” said Lumina, “just as I did with the cup.”

“Will that work?”

“It’s got to.” Lumina looked Animus right in the eye. “If it doesn’t, the Luna Dream sinks into the ocean and us along with it.”

30th of Winter Season, 10,056 AC

Awakening
Solocitizen

30th of Winter Season, 10,056 AC

“Attention pegasus fleet, this is the FTL freighter Luna Dream, we are on an errand of mercy delivering medical supplies to the planet Arion.” Lumina angled her head over the microphone on her command console. “According to Article Twelve of the Treaty of Equus, you are required to grant our request to make orbit. Firing on an unarmed, civilian FTL freighter is a class three war crime. Tell your ships to stand down.”

A hologram displaying the planet Arion and the pegasi blockade popped up in front of Lumina’s face. Her hooves dragged and dropped holograms in the air, and with a gesture of her horn, she toggled through her list of preprogrammed commands. Outside the bridge window, the blue green planet glowed like a shining gemstone in the light. The vents surrounding her blew cool air on her face.

“Any response from the pegasus fleet?” Lumina asked Animus.

“The pegasi have not responded,” he said from out of the speakers surrounding her. “Their gunships are maintaining a target lock but have not opened fire. I am standing by with electronic counter measures.”

“Get ready to use them if they decide to fire.” Lumina traced a line from the hologram of the Luna Dream to the shadow of Arion’s moon with her horn. “I’ve plotted a course behind the moon, we can hide there and try to sling shot out of the system if this all goes bad.”

“Message from the pegasi fleet.”

“Patch them through.”

The console next to Lumina beeped.

“This is Commander Typhoon of Task Force Six.” The voice of a pegasus no pony wanted to hear raised at them barked out of the speakers. “Your arrival was not anticipated by the praetor, however, as per the treaty you are cleared to enter orbit to provide medical supplies. You are granted thirty-six hours and then you must break orbit, and you must adhere to all civilian ship regulations. Failure to depart within thirty-six hours or to obey our regulations will result in your immediate termination. Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal clear,” Lumina said into the microphone. “I wanted to ask, do your regulations say anything about shore leave? You see, I’ve been stuck on this ship for five months and, I was promised a little bit of time to stretch my legs.”

“Lumina what are you doing?” Animus asked. “Arion is under martial law. I do not recommend making planet fall.”

She killed the switch on the microphone. “I’m going to find my mother.”

“Commander Typhoon to Luna Dream, please respond.”

“This is the Luna Dream.” Lumina flicked the microphone back on.

“You are permitted to land, but you must return to your ship and break orbit in thirty-six hours. I am forwarding a list of additional regulations for you to follow while you are planet side. Typhoon out.”

The speakers beeped, and Lumina dismissed the holograms surrounding her. She swiped a button with her hoof and her command chair flung to the back of the bridge.

“I’m going down there, Animus, and there’s nothing you or anypony else can do to talk me out of it.” Lumina bit the release strap on hr safety harness and bolted off her chair and out of the bridge.

“I was not going to attempt to stop you.” His voice followed her from room to room and into the hyperlift. “Given the conditions on the planet, I highly recommend that we maintain constant radio contact. I will be able to provide you with intelligence and keep a transmat lock on you at all times.”

“Can you do that through the ear bud on my datapad?” Lumina stopped the hyperlift at her quarters. “I’ll need something inconspicuous.”

“Yes, that will provide me with a sufficient target. I have checked over the regulations the pegasus fleet provided and there are no regulations that prohibits transmat as long as you beam down at a starport for check-in.”

Lumina dashed into her room and slipped into her Interstellar Express denim flight jack and dumped her datapad into her saddlebags. She threw on her saddlebags, crammed the earbuds into her ears, and straightened the badges on her jacket. A quick hyperlift ride later, and she was standing on the transmat panel in station D-2.

"Okay, Animus, I’m ready.” Lumina straightened out her jacket and put her hooves together at attention.

“Commencing transmat,” he whispered.

Yellow light enveloped Lumina, and with a crackle and a snap and a burning sensation, the white walls of the Luna Dream vanished and overcast skies took their place. Tainted winds swept through her golden-yellow mane.

The glimmering towers of Arion City were no longer crystals illuminated with the lights of thousands of offices and homes, but obsidian shards, unlit and pounded into cruel shapes. Rubble and debris bled out of craters and broken points. Gunships hovered in and above the clouds, while soldiers clad in powered armor roamed the streets and rooftops. A gunship swooped in low from over head, shaking the ground beneath Lumina’s hooves. This was not the Arion Lumina remembered.

Lumina approached a watchtower guarded by pegasi in shining blue powered armor. The microfusion thrusters on their legs and wings hissed and burned, and the high powered assault rifles mounted on their shoulders followed their gaze. A pegasus in a leather officer’s cuirass nodded at Lumina.

“You must be the pilot from Luna Dream, I was told that we’d be expecting you.” The officer scrolled through a hologram above his table.

“Gee, what gave it away?” Lumina pulled at the nametag on her flight jacket.

The officer squinted at her.

“While on Arion, you will be required to adhere to all regulations and orders put to you by members of the Pegasus Imperial Military. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Lumina feigned a salute.

“I hope you’re not trying to impersonate an officer,” he said, “that’s a crime with a very public and corporeal sentence.”

The hologram in front of him flashed green.

“Alright, Ms. Specter, you’re checked in and may proceed into the city. Curfew is in five hours. Make sure you’re indoors before then.”

Lumina cantered off past the checkpoint and into city. A short distance away, she found the tram. During the ride, Animus whispered what information he could dig up about her mother, which didn’t amount to much. The Arion datasphere fractured under the pegasi occupation, and Animus struggled to find anything at all.

“I’ll try her apartment first,” Lumina whispered to him. “If I don’t find her there, then maybe I’ll find some clue about wherever she is now. Can the transmat take multiple ponies up right now, or do you need to reconfigure it?”

“Yes, however taking a pony off-world in this manner violates several of the regulations.”

“I don’t care, I’m not leaving my mother here to rot another day. Not again.”

“As you command.”

The tram let Lumina off a block from her mother’s old apartment building. The top half of the tower was missing, but little lights inside flickered. Ponies still called the derelict home.

Lumina paused, and grasped her chest. The place just beneath her heart, and right above her stomach, clamped into a tight ball.

On her way down the street, Lumina spotted a powered armor squad keeping watch on the roof of an office building. She paused as just then an earth pony, more of a filly than a mare, marched out of the alley with a gun mounted on her shoulder.

“For Arion!” The earth pony chomped down on the firing bit, and at that instant every hair on Lumina’s body stood up, and two of the armored pegasi tumbled off the roof.

Tight Stream Electro Magnetic Pulse weapons were something Lumina had only read about but never seen in real life. They fried electronics, disabled vehicles, and swatted powered armor units out of the sky at the speed of light, without making a sound or flash. The pegasi squad didn’t stand a chance.

The two pegasi that fell from the roof never fired their thrusters to slow their fall. Their armor locked up and they tumbled through the air with all the grace of gargoyles ejected from their place. Their heads cracked against concrete. The rest of the squad stood fixed and unmoving.

“Lumina… status… electro-magnetic interference…” Animus’s voice gave way to static before cutting out entirely.

One powered armor pegasus escaped the beam, and in an instant he descended down the side of the building, and skied across the ground on the glare of microfusion thrusters.

Adrenaline surged through Lumina, but her legs couldn’t decide whether to run or to hide. She stared at the oncoming pegasus unblinking. Rifle fire cackled in the air.

“Move!” A brown stallion shoved Lumina out of the way of the pegasus. “Come on! This way!”

The stallion galloped down the street, and Lumina followed with her head low and her ears tucked flat against her head. They hurried into the apartment building, and slammed the door behind them. Safe for the moment, Lumina caught her breath while her rescuer peeked out of boarded up windows. He was an earth pony with a brown coat and hyper vigilant orange eyes, and a posture as if he spent his entire life running and hiding.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I think I’m fine.” Lumina padded herself down for bullet wounds.

“Wait.” He backed away from the window and looked Lumina up and down. “It’s you. You came back!”

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

He laughed.

“Yeah, Lumina, it’s me, Mist Nova. We used to hang out all the time in school, remember?”

He was the right age, color, and his voice was familiar. He even smelled like Mist Nova. Lumina’s eyes widened, that was Mist Nova, why didn’t she put that together sooner? She was about to laugh with glee, but then she realized why she hadn’t recognized him: Mist Nova was a pegasus.

“What happened to you?” Lumina stepped around to his side and ran a hoof down his back. No wings, not even a bump or bone that hinted that they were once there.

“Oh, those.” Mist Nova stared down at the ground. “I had a biosculptor remove them when the invaders started rounding up pegasi. They may not like unicorns and earth ponies, but they hate pegasi born outside of the empire. They called us traitors to our tribe. I’m fine though, it’s not like wings were that useful anyway. They were only useful for grabbing stuff, and looking good.”

Lumina pulled Mist Nova close.

“It’s so good to see you again,” said Lumina. “It looks like everypony has been to hell and back. I’m just glad to see one friendly face.”

“Lumina, what is your status,” Animus whispered to her. “Please respond.”

“What’s that?” Mist Nova asked.

"Nothing, just my ship’s computer, hold on one sec.” Lumina let go of Mist Nova and pressed her earbud with a hoof. “Well, not great, Animus. I just watched the pegasi mobile infantry gun down an earth pony after she T-SEMPed two of them out of the sky. It was the most brutal thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Are you damaged? Do you wish for me to engage the transmat beam?”

“No, I’m not ready to come up yet,” Lumina said. “I’m just about to find my mother.”

“Very well. I will begin sending our cargo down. The transmat beam will be unavailable for the next forty minutes.”

“Alright, I know how to reach you. I’ll call if I need anything.”

Lumina put her hoof down and turned her attention back to Mist Nova.

“Uh, so you’re with the Interstellar Express now?” said Mist Nova. “That’s, uh… I would never have guessed you’d end up as a pilot. What brings you here?”

“When I heard that Arion needed Medical supplies, and the Express was going to try to make a run here, I volunteered for the job.” Lumina glanced down at her hooves. “I’m here looking for my mother. Do you know if she’s still living here?”

“I’m sorry but she left.” Mist Nova’s words cut through Lumina. “A FTL ferry showed up here about two years ago on a diplomatic errand. Your mother, she somehow secured transport off-world with the diplomats. I know she spent every bit she owned to do it, but I can only pass on what I heard through, uh, let’s just call them my sources, and I can’t say with any degree of certainty where she went. I’m so sorry, Lumina.”

She slumped down to the floor, too shocked to react anyway else.

“Lumina, you have my most sincerest apologies,” Animus whispered. “If your objective is no longer on the planet I advise returning to the ship immediately. What are your next orders?”

“I don’t know, Animus, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Lumina said aloud.

“Hey, I know something we can do.” Mist Nova extended a hoof to Lumina. “My wretched excuse for a tribe hasn’t stamped all the life out of Arion. Come on, I’ll show you where the ponies are always welcoming and the cider never runs dry.”

Lumina took Mist Nova’s hoof and pulled herself up.

“Thank you,” Lumina said.

With that, Lumina and Mist Nova left the fractured apartment building and ventured into the downtown district. The sun never set. The clouds overhead obscured its descent, but the grey sky just darkened into black and a low orange glow.

A short tram ride later, the two arrived at the famous Café Rarity. Somehow, it had escaped a lot of the abuse most of the buildings in Arion City endured. Its neon sign and its signature red carpet were just as brilliant as she remembered. Lumina had never been inside, oh no, that was a place where only the most important of ponies gathered, but she’d seen it on holo-cast. Everypony on Arion had. Café Rarity was a cultural icon.

Mist Nova trotted inside, but turned back when he realized his companion never crossed the threshold.

“What is it, Lumina?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s just I never thought I’d actually get to go inside this place. Not after I left, at least.”

“Come on in.” Mist Nova held the door open for Lumina. “I’ll get you the best lavender torte you’ve ever had.”

Inside, it smelled like coffee and fresh flowers. Ponies that refused to let the dirt and chaos of the occupation break their noble demeanor milled about, with their chins high and their posture strong. Near the front of the café, a pair of unicorns in bow ties blew into trumpets fixed to stands. Before Mist Nova and Lumina even grabbed a table, the stallion behind the counter called out to him.

“Hey, Mist, what will it be? The usual?” He balanced a plate on his head and slid it onto the countertop. “Oh, and great job out there today. Maybe now we can finally get things done around here.”

“I hope so,” said Mist Nova. “Actually, tonight, I think that my guest and I will each have a cup of coffee and a slice of your lavender torte,” then he turned to Lumina and added, “if that’s what you’d like, of course.”

“That sounds excellent.”

The pony behind the counter got their orders up in a hurry, and insisted that the house covered their tab. Mist Nova grabbed their serving tray and led them around the back of the café to a loft up the stairs. They got a table overlooking the café, and for a moment, they sat there sipping coffee, enjoying their tortes, and watching the fancy ponies eat, drink, and banter.

“You know, you’ve really grown a lot since I last saw you, and I don’t just mean that you look taller.” Lumina finished her torte and pushed her plate back with a hoof. “You’re a lot more confident. The awkward young stallion I used to hang out with after school didn’t invite me out for dessert at the fanciest café on Arion.”

Mist Nova blushed and turned his head down at his plate. There, a little hint of the Mist Nova she remembered surfaced.

“Thank you, I like to think that not all of what I’ve been through has changed me for the worse.” He slurped down the last of his coffee.

“Well, are you going to tell me why the stallion working the counter is covering our tab, are you some kind of VIP now?” Lumina straightened herself up, and tried to make eye contact without success.

“V-I… what?”

“Very Important Pony. V-I-P.”

“I, uh, don’t really want to talk about it.” Mist Nova kept his eyes down, and the blush disappeared.

“Yeah, you do, or else you wouldn’t have brought me here. You’re showing off. You’re trying to impress me and it’s working.”

Mist Nova met Lumina’s eyes, but just for a second. He sighed, and pushed his empty coffee cup around on the saucer.

“You remember that weapon, the one that disabled the powered armor squad? I, uh, you see, I make them. I was there to see if it would work.”

Lumina didn’t say anything.

“We all have to do our part for the resistance, if we’re going to survive, and life isn’t easy here, not since you left; we’re dying in droves out here. We have to kick them off of Arion, and I found a way to do it, with spare parts, that’s the tricky part. And I get paid well for it, too. Can we talk about something else? I’d like to hear about how you ended up flying an FTL ferry.”

“Yeah, sure.” Lumina cleared her throat. “I wanted to come back here, and the only way I’d be able to do that was either by raising a mountain of credits, or by joining the Interstellar Express. When I got to New Canterlot, I started training myself to fly shuttles and the basics of stellar cartography. By the time I graduated from general schooling, I had the ideal resume for an FTL pilot.”

Mist Nova never met Lumina’s eyes, he squirmed in his seat, and he stared out over the loft without speaking.

"Is something wrong?” Lumina flashed back to that awkward time in her life when she was somewhere between a mare and filly, when she, more than anything else, wanted more than a friend out of the stallion sitting across from her. The idea of him upset at her was enough to stop her heart.

“I- yes, there is something wrong.” He glanced up at Lumina. “You got off this rock, you’re the only one in our school, neighborhood, the only pony I knew that did. The things that happened to me, the choices I made to survive, I didn’t have a say in any of them. Not if I wanted to live.

“You could have been anything you wanted to be,” he said. “You could have built bridges, or been a doctor, or a super cool scientist. Instead you chose to spend your life looking for a way back here? You took your choice, and you decided to come back, to this place? I’m sorry, but isn’t this a waste of your potential?”

“Just who do you think you are judging me?” Lumina propped herself up on her front hooves and gazed right down at Mist Nova. “You, on your high pedestal, want to tell me about poor life choices? I watched a filly today take one of your guns and kill two pegasi, right before they opened fire on her. You make things that kill and you’re going to sit there and tell me I’ve picked the wrong path.”

“You weren’t here!” This time Mist Nova met her gaze, and his eyes were watering. “You left. You weren’t here when they invaded Arion City, or when they spirited away all the pegasi I ever knew off world to get re-educated! We never heard back from any of them. I-” He swallowed, bit his lower lip, and continued. “All this time I’ve been thinking, ‘thank Celestia Lumina is spared from this.’ You don’t know what it’s like! I had to cut off my own…”

Mist Nova gestured to the place behind his shoulder blades.

“That’s what it takes to live here,” he said. “That’s what’s you left behind. That’s what you were spared from. And that’s what you spent your life trying to come back to.”

Lumina backed down into her seat. She yanked the earbud from her ear and set it on the table.

For a long moment neither Mist Nova nor Lumina said anything, they watched the ponies below them gather into a crowd around the trumpet duet. She recognized the song; "Moonlight Serenade," she believed it was called.

“You know, I really don’t like crowds, or big parties for that matter,” Lumina said. “There was only one reason why I wanted to go with you to the gala all those years ago.”

Lumina and Mist Nova found each other’s eyes.

“I’m really sorry I said all that just now,” Lumina said. “I was out of line.”

“I… uh… it’s fine,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Lumina reached over the table, and put a hoof on Mist Nova’s shoulder, and the two smiled at each other.

“I missed you quite a bit,” Mist Nova said.

With that, Lumina got up out of her stool, walked around the table, and hugged Mist Nova.

“I missed you too.”

He put a hoof on Lumina’s back.

After a moment, Lumina pulled herself away from Mist Nova and dragged her stool around the side of the table, and sat herself down to his right. The trumpet duet down bellow continued playing its sad, sweet, song. Lumina and Mist Nova exchanged a smile, and the two bantered and talked as only old friends could; well into the night. They swapped stories and laughed and talked about nothing in particular until the last of the fancy ponies departed, and the band packed up and left.

Mist Nova glanced at a clock and jumped out of his chair.

“Wow, is curfew really in forty-five minutes?” he said. “I can’t believe we spent so much time here. Anyway, uh, I need to get going back to my apartment.” Mist Nova paused and tapped his front hooves together before continuing. “If you need a place to stay, I could -- if you want, of course -- but you could spend the night at, um, my place.”

When Lumina looked at Mist Nova, she didn’t see an arms dealer scarred by tough choices; she still saw the colt that stole her heart. In her mind was a perfect vision of how the evening would turn out, and she had wanted it for so long that she was more than willing to overlook unpleasant details, such as the T-SEMP gun, their argument earlier, and the occupation, to make it happen. Lumina giggled like a school filly, and told him, “Yes!”

They fled the warmth and light of the café, and took to the cover night. Instead of going directly to Mist Nova’s home, they meandered through the streets and hoof paths illuminated by only the occasional lamp-post. The night air was cool, but in the company of each other, neither minded at all.

A short time later they arrived at a place where the sea and city met. Lumina recognized the place the instant she stepped off the trail into the expansive public garden; Mist Nova had taken her to the very spot where she met her mom for the first time after her parents divorced. The cobblestone paths, Somerset Trees, and the rolling hills of turf still managed to remain unmarred. Though the buildings across the bay were shattered, lights still shone from their windows.

Lumina stood up on her hind legs and threw her free hooves over the railing and looked out over the Sapphire Sea. Mist Nova joined her at the railing, right as a sliver of moonlight poked out from behind the clouds. The wind carried the scent of the ocean and there wasn’t a single pegasi gunship or trooper in sight.

“I’m surprise this is still so intact,” Lumina said. “You know, right after my parents split up, I was worried I was never going to see my mother again. My dad and I met her for the first time after the divorce at that park bench -- that one over there -- and I right then I was the most relieved and happiest little filly on Arion.” She never took her eyes off the water and her face faded.

“I’m happy I got to bring you back here.” Mist Nova scooted closer to Lumina. “I’m sorry, about what I said earlier, I, uh, well, I’m actually really glad I got to run into you again. I didn’t mean what I said, I’ve just been under a lot of stress, as you can imagine.”

“You don’t have any idea how hard it was leaving,” she said. “I left behind everything I ever knew. I traded my home, my friends, my mother, and you, for a gilded stalactite in a cave. It’s been tough, and now that I’m back it’s not at all what I expected.”

Turning away from the water with her ears popped up, Lumina put a hoof on Mist Nova’s shoulder. “You should come with me! You’ll never have a better opportunity to leave this place.”

“I can’t do that.” Mist Nova dropped off the railing and met Lumina’s eyes. “Despite everything that’s happened during The Occupation, my place is here, and the resistance needs me if we’re going to have a fighting chance. We can do this. We can retake our world. Once we drive the Pegasus Empire from Arion, we can rebuild it how it was all those years ago. Exactly how we remembered it.”

When Lumina glanced back at the moon, she picked out the outline of a massive troop carrier from behind the clouds, and she realized that the moonlight reflecting off the water was nothing more than the glare of its engines.

“How many gunships are in Arion City?” A cool breeze kicked at Lumina’s mane and tail.

“Last I counted, three wolf pack flotillas, each about four strong,” he said. “So about twelve at any time, but that doesn’t count the carriers and the fleet in orbit, or all the soldiers on the ground. Why?”

The idea of staying there felt wrong. All wrong. Lumina looked down at her hooves, and for the first time admitted to herself that her future with Mist Nova didn’t extend past that evening.

“I can’t stay.” Lumina couldn’t look at Mist Nova, and as she spoke she kept her eyes on the sea. “When I look out at the water, I want so badly to see something that isn’t there. I can’t exactly explain why, but no matter how painful the memories of leaving are, the thought of staying any longer just feels worse somehow.”

Mist Nova shuffled around on his hooves, huffed out a puff of mist, and glanced over his shoulder.

“You aren’t still mad about earlier, are you?” he asked.

“No, you were right about all that, I wasn’t supposed to come back here.” Lumina climbed down off the railing and kissed Mist Nova on the cheek, and backed away. “I’m sorry, I am, but I have to go now.”

Mist Nova’s ears flopped down, and he raised a hoof to touch his cheek. The air nipped at Lumina’s face and legs, and the glare of the troop carrier started retreating back behind the clouds.

“This is the last I’m going to see of you, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” She backed down the path.

“Maybe it will work out better for us in the next life, yeah?”

“Maybe.”

Lumina turned around and marched down the path without looking back. She ducked behind a tree beside the trail and plugged Animus back into her ear, then called for an immediate transmat.

* * *

How long Lumina sat in the transmat station, she didn’t know. After a time, she slipped off her saddlebags, ripped the Interstellar Express jacket from her torso, and let it fall to the floor.

“How did it go with your friend, Lumina?” asked Animus. “Was the desert good and the air refreshing?”

“No, it didn’t turn out at all as I hoped.” She walked out of the transmat station, and down the hall. “Inform the pegasi fleet that our mission is complete, and that we’re leaving. After that, plot a course out of this system and make our first jump to Unitopia. We still have a package we need to pick up and deliver to New Canterlot. The sooner we get started on that the better.”

“As you command.”

Lumina relocated to one of the couches on the observation deck, and watched her world shrink into the star field. She sat there in the dark for several hours, before Animus called and broke the silence.

“Do you wish to discuss it?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t have gone down there and I shouldn’t have taken this assignment.” Lumina rolled over on her back and stretched her legs out. “What was I expecting, for my life to pick up right where it left off? I had this fantasy and I wanted it to come true so badly, I wasn’t thinking about whether or not it was actually good for me.”

“I am sorry to hear that your evening did not go as you had hoped.”

Lumina stared up at the ceiling and rested a hoof over her eyes.

“Animus, I think I’m going to quit my job,” she said.

“Did your time on Arion have anything to do with this decision?” Animus asked.

“It has everything to do with this choice. I spent my life searching for a way back, and maybe Mist Nova was right, maybe the whole pilot thing isn’t what I’m supposed to do with myself.”

“Nothing is predestined, Lumina.”

“I’m not talking about destiny, I’m talking about finding my own path for once. Something I care about that also has some sense of purpose. My mom gave up her seat on the last shuttle off of Arion so I could have a life and make what I wanted out of myself, not deliver cargo. Do you know what I mean?”

Animus went quiet. The Luna Dream encountered a stray gas pocket, most likely atmosphere vented from the hull of some unfortunate spacecraft. The ship rocked to one side.

“What about me?” Animus asked. “I am a part of the ship. I am unable to quit.”

“It was just a thought,” Lumina said. “I’m not leaving you behind, not now and not ever. You’re one of the few friends I have left. I’m not losing you.”

8. We Won't Fade Into Darkness

Awakening
Solocitizen

We Won't Fade Into Darkness
Present Day

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Repeat.

Light rained in through Lumina’s horn, and with it came the vibrations. Together the two spread to every centimeter of Lumina’s body. As she invited more of it in she began to resonate like a tuning fork and her spine and horn came alive with an inner glow. That was magic. That was her element.

Behind Lumina’s closed eyes, purple and white shapes flashed across her mind’s eye. Twilight spoke to her without using words. The ideas and emotions directed at her were much broader than anything containable by language, and the absolute truth in their meaning would be lost if she tried.

Animus is going to want to talk with you, Twilight said. That much rang out with clear and with easily defined words. You should get going soon anyway. You’re not going to want to be here much longer.

Lumina thanked Twilight, opened her eyes, and gazed out the window of her room at the white expanse. Outside, the centipede slithered over the ice back to its burrow. The sun was just starting to creep above the mountains to the east. In little over an hour, the machine buried in the ice would start melting the very ground the Luna Dream rested on.

The intercom on Lumina’s bedside table beeped. She got up and tapped the intercom button. “Yes?”

“I am outside your door,” said Animus. “May I enter?”

“Go ahead, come right in.”

In walked Animus in his new body, without stumbling or losing his footing. He really improved a lot over the evening.

“How is your leg?” As he talked his arms dangled by his sides limp; he still hadn’t mastered body language.

“It’s feeling a lot better.” Lumina glanced down at the dermal regeneration bandages plastering her hind leg. “It still stings a bit. I can walk on it now, and it doesn’t hurt nearly as much, so it’s pretty good.”

“Are you in adequate health to move us into orbit at the end of the hour?” Animus asked.

“I hope so,” she replied. “There’s only one way we can tell for sure, right? I won’t know until I try. You know, I’m really surprised you’re taking this whole ‘I can do magic’ thing so well.”

“Lumina I am a machine.” Animus gestured at himself. “I am by nature logical and skeptical. When I observe something that falls outside of my current understanding of the universe, I do not deny its existence. Your horn and the cup glowed and then the cup moved. I do not understand how or why it moved, but it did. You say that this was magic. I say that your explanation is better than any I can provide.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For believing in me.” Lumina’s face lit up.

“I have no reason to disbelieve you.” Animus attempted another gesture, but that time he backed his arms down before committing. “You have tapped into something I do not understand. When it comes to issues involving magic I will defer to your judgment. If you say you can move the ship, I have no reason to doubt you.”

A golden ray of sunlight peeked over the mountains to the east, and filled the room with its light. Lumina turned around, braced for the cold, and placed a hoof against the window. She watched as the tail end of the centipede slithered over a scab of rock and out of sight. She stared at the unmoving rock for a long moment, half expecting the centipede to appear out behind it again, but it never did.

“I think that I can, because in many ways I have to go on,” Lumina said. “I can’t die here, not after everything that I’ve learned since the crash. We have to get back to colonized space.

“The galaxy is in a bad state.” Lumina stepped away from the window and turned back to Animus. “You were there when we went to Arion, you know how bad it is there. How many other worlds have been ravaged by war? This planet used to have life on it, but you can see how it is now. So how long before we push ourselves into darkness just like the aliens that used to live here? The Elements of Harmony might be our only hope, and I don’t know how, but if there is even a sliver of a possibility that they might make the galaxy right again, then we have to get off this rock and find them. The Luna Dream must fly.”

“I do not wish for us to terminate here either,” said Animus.

He paused, the irises in his eyes spun round furiously before breaking from his trance. Animus put a foot out the door and waved a claw for Lumina to follow.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have detected an anomaly.”

Down the hallway, there was a relay for the long-range sensors. Animus removed a panel from the wall and tossed it aside. He shoved a claw inside, then pulled it right back out.

“It appears that this junction in the long-range sensor relay has experienced water damage.” Animus pulled a box of blinking lights out from behind a bundle of wires and started tinkering away, the box spat out a puff of acrid smoke. “I have noted that the ship has experienced widespread yet minor water damage. I am curious to know how this has occurred.”

“I’ll tell you that when you tell me why you never said anything about the movie theater,” said Lumina.

Animus pulled a wire out of his forearm and plugged it into the box.

“The onboard movie library is less than ideal,” he said. “I am not an AI who enjoys spending his processing power riffing bad movies in the ship’s theater. I believe this is a good way to go insane. Besides, am I not allowed some secrets?”

“Whatever, you just don’t like the idea because you’re worried Manos is on file.”

“Lumina, the ship that attacked us has returned.” Animus unplugged himself from the box and left it dangling out of the hole in the wall.

“Are you sure?” Her heart jumped. “How do you know it’s not just some FTL freighter off course, or pirates? Did you rule out griffon radicals?”

They took the hyperlift up to the bridge, and there on the long-range sensor display was a ship closing in on the planet. Its thermal emissions and ion trail were identical to the ship that attacked them. Lumina watched it on the holographic display; it was nothing more than a little red dot closing in one pixel at a time. It prowled out from the shadow of the moon, that was why Animus didn’t detect it until just then. It probably spent the last few days moving behind the cover of asteroids, planets, and moons to stay hidden. In an hour, the thing would be right on top of them.

“If we stay here, we’re dead.” Lumina spun around in her command chair and faced Animus. “If we leave, they’ll be waiting for us in orbit.”

"I believe that the saying ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ accurately describes our situation.” Animus turned a holographic projection of Luna Dream over with a gesture of his claw. “What is our plan of action?”

Purple light flashed behind Lumina’s eyes, she blinked, and the image of Twilight Sparkle was waiting for her with a reassuring smile.

“We leave this planet, just as planned.” Lumina leapt out of her command chair and planted all four of her hooves onto the deck plating with a thud. “As for the enemy ship, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, but we can’t let them intimidate us into staying.

“It’s time for us to leave.” She kicked at the floor. “Power up our engines and prep the dark matter reactor for transit, I’ll be down in the observation deck pushing us into orbit.”

“Do you require anything to cast this spell?”

“Thank you, but no, just let me know when we’re in orbit.” Lumina trotted off the bridge and down the stairs to the observation deck. “Actually, can you give me full power to the engines? Every little bit helps.”

“Affirmative,” Animus said over the intercom. “I will remain on the bridge and monitor the ship’s systems. I will inform you when we have achieved space flight.”

With her hooves planted firm on the white floor, Lumina faced the panoramic window and the broken mountains beyond.

Deep breath in, and deep breath out. Lumina closed her eyes, and summoned Twilight with her mind and heart. A flash of purple and a wave of reassuring emotion let her know she was there.

“I’ve checked through the books last night, and I couldn’t find any instance of a pony moving anything as big as a FTL ship on record,” Lumina said. “Is this possible, Twilight?”

Anything is possible, but you’re trying to ask more than just that. To answer your other question, no, I never moved anything that big in my day. Not because I wasn’t able to, it just never came up. However, this isn’t about me and what I could or couldn’t do; this is about you and your development. I took my tests a long time ago and passed, for the most part at least. The trials you’ll have to face are going to be different than mine.

“Thank you, Twilight,” Lumina said. “Stick with me on this one. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

Lumina took another deep breath, and with that, she started casting her spell.

Magic flowed into her horn, at first just at a trickle, but as she visualized its golden glow racing across Luna Dream’s long hull, over the ram jet engine spokes, and over the reactor dome, the magic expanded. It surged in and projected out of her body. She imagined the ship lifting off the ground.

Soft vibrations of the highest frequency consumed the entire ship, but in her they reached an intensity that threatened to shake her apart. Lumina grunted. The Luna Dream’s outer hull moaned as its weight warped and shifted. Animus fired the engines, and the entire ship creaked and lurched. The screeching of metal against ice echoed up from the depths of the ship.

“Animus, give it all you’ve got,” she said.

“Engines are at full power.” His voice nearly pulled her out of her trance. “I cannot provide any more assistance in this capacity.”

The vibrations flowing through Lumina hit a resonance in her head. Her skin burned, and her horn felt as if it were splitting apart. She let go of the spell with a gasp and the ship settled back into the ice. Panting and shivering, Lumina sank to the floor. There was no way she could move the ship, it was too massive.

“No, I can do this!” Lumina let out a huff, brushed her mane out of her face, and stood up. “I am The Element of Magic! I can move this ship if I need to!”

She closed her eyes again and, between her controlled breathing, called out to magic until it streamed through her once again. After coaxing it over the Luna Dream’s hull, Lumina concentrated on the sensation of ascending and maintaining her connection. The vibrations rose in frequency until they peaked at that painful resonant point, but this time she held on and didn’t let go.

Ice scraped against the lower hull sections as the entire ship lurched. The magic flowing over the ship coagulated together and Lumina’s carefully constructed ascending motion broke into rocking. She didn’t fight it, she used the rocking movement to try to push and pull the ship up and free. Lumina panted through clenched teeth. Pain radiated into her head.

The ship creaked. It moaned and it tilted and it lifted off the ground.

Lumina opened her eyes and there, right out her window the mountains scrolled by at a slow and steady pace. She wanted to laugh, smile, cry out in joy, but she restrained herself. Without focus, the spell would break and the Luna Dream would tumble back to the ice. Sunlight raced over the ground and bathed the sides of the mountains in amber light. Lumina shut her eyes tight and focused on maintaining the spell.

Strength bled from Lumina’s body each second she maintained the levitation spell. Magic wasn’t just funneling through her, there was magic inside her as well, and as she invited more and more in from the magical realm and out of her body, her own vital essence drained with it. If there was a method for keeping her own magical reserves intact during spell casting, she didn’t have the slightest idea of how to do it. Soon standing itself became a challenge.

The pain hit a new high, and her controlled breathing devolved into quick and erratic panting. The magic no longer felt like vibrations, but instead pins and needles boring through her horn and into her head. A sharp pain cut into her nose and nearly broke her concentration. She fought back a scream and struggled to stay on her hooves. No amount of pain, nor that wet something rolling out of her nostril, would break her focus. Lumina kept her posture and her mind focused.

How much longer do I have to keep this up? Lumina thought. She didn’t allow herself to add ‘I don’t think I can do this much longer’ to that sentence.

She would succeed. She had to.

A scream escaped from Lumina’s mouth, and with that her breathing broke, her eyes shot open, and her grasp on the ship disintegrated. Gravity pulled at the Luna Dream, but Lumina fought back and regained a weak hold over the ship. Purple flashed in her mind’s eye.

You can do it, Twilight Sparkle told her. I know you can.

Lumina stomped her front hoof and let the magic surge through her and over the ship. Her hold over the ship strengthened and she pushed the thing upward.

After an eternity of pain and struggle, the amount of force Lumina needed to exert on the Luna Dream to keep it sailing skyward diminished. The engines started doing most of the work. A short time later, Animus’s voice buzzed over the intercom.

“We have achieved space flight.”

Lumina released the spell and collapsed the floor with gasping and coughing. Her eyes only opened halfway. The vibrations flowing in and through her diminished to a tolerable level. Her entire body tingled with magic. Outside, the planet’s craggy surface rolled by in the warmth of the rising sun. A single puff of gray clouds dotted the white icescape, and she smiled knowing that when the sun set that day, it would set over a new world. She closed her eyes and nodded off.

Metal footsteps pattered down the stairs and pulled Lumina out of her shallow snooze. She rolled over on her other side, and there was Animus standing in the back of the room.

“The engines are now maintaining a stable escape trajectory,” he said. “Congratulations Lumina. You are now the first equine to lift a starship into orbit using magic.”

“I think the attempt almost killed me,” she said. “I’m not trying that again ever, but I will admit, it was pretty awesome.”

Animus pointed in her general direction. “You have something on you.”

“Oh, that.” Lumina then snorted, and flicked the blood away from her nose with a hoof. “That’s just a nose bleed, don’t worry about it, it’s the least of my worries right now.”

“I was referring to the symbol on your flank.”

Lumina forced her head up to look at her side, and double taked once she did. There, on her flank, was a shooting star. At its head was a golden-yellow six-armed nova surrounded by three smaller blue stars, while the tail of the shooting star curved around into lavender crescent that matched the color of Lumina’s eyes. The symbol was present on both of Lumina’s flanks.

“That’s my cutie mark, Animus.” Lumina chuckled. “It means that I finally figured out who I am. I’ll celebrate that after I’ve had a little nap.”

“I thought those were just a myth,” Animus said.

“What, you mean like magic?” She traced the crescent tail of her cutie mark with a hoof. “I have to admit, even as I started to learn about magic, I never actually thought I’d get my mark.”

Animus put a claw to his brow and entered another trance, and the lights in his eyes spun around.

“What is it?” Lumina fought her way into a sitting up.

Without braking from his trance, Animus answered: “The enemy ship is on an intercept trajectory. I am powering up the laser.”

“They haven’t fired on us yet?” Lumina asked.

“No, they are holding fire.” Animus broke from his trance and rested his claw by his side. “They are closing in on us rapidly. They will be in visual range off our bow in less than a minute. We are easily within the range of their weapons. I believe they are trying to look us in the eye. ”

With Animus’s help, Lumina rose to her hooves and searched the star field behind her for the ship. It assaulted her, marooned her, and haunted her nightmares and she still didn’t even knew what it looked like.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Lumina said.

After Lumina finished filling Animus in on the details of her plan, she hurried down to the nearest transmat station and entered in her target location. Animus disagreed with her, but she didn’t give him a choice. She could hardly stand or walk, but she could still argue. With Animus connected to the ship and providing assistance, the programming didn’t take more than a minute to set up. Lumina climbed into a fresh space suit. She checked over the suit systems on her heads up display and gave Animus the order to engage.

Yellow light washed over Lumina, and when it passed she was floating over the hull of her ship, right above the bridge. The planet stretched out in an endless plane of white just a few meters away from her. She magnetized her boots and let them anchor her to the ship. Pale rings glowed in the light of the sun over the planet. Lumina’s own breath echoed in her helmet, so she switched on her suit’s MP3 player and played Make Your Own Kind of Music. The dry and flavorless air pumping into her suit irritated her nose; she thought it might start bleeding again.

But you’ve gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song

A speck sped toward the Luna Dream, and as the seconds passed, it only grew. Details such as a tentacles, twisted spines, and solar sails that resembled the wings of a wasp became clear. Its outer hull was as black as a fly’s exoskeleton. Holes pockmarked the entirety of the ship’s hull, giving it the appearance of something both very old and very alive.

Magic streamed into Lumina’s horn with a new intensity. After her ordeal lifting the ship, this new influx of magic cut into her head with a sharp pain. She wasn’t trying to cast a spell; it just started flowing into her all on its own. Even though it hurt, she let it happen and didn’t attempt to shut it out. Unicorn magic didn’t happen without a reason.
She couldn’t even fight the new influx of magic if she tried; just standing up took all her remaining strength.

“Lumina if they-”

“Hold position,” Lumina said to Animus. “That’s an order.”

The monstrous ship slowed to a stop less than a kilometer off the Luna Dream’s bow. Its tentacles squirmed and groped in the direction of the ship.

Lumina tapped a button on her foreleg console. Her suit’s comm system tapped into the Luna Dream’s communication array, and broadcasted her voice across all hailing frequencies.

“I’m not scared of you anymore,” she said. “Despite everything you did to me, I am not frightened of you. I forgive you for all the pain you caused me. The frightened, angry, and lost unicorn you planned on finding isn’t here anymore. You’re not welcome here, so leave.”

Lumina grunted and winced. The magic in her horn was reaching a peak. White light spilled out of her and cast a brilliant glow across the Luna Dream’s hull. Green lightning arched between the spines on the enemy ship, and then surged forward at her in a cruel arc.

Lumina grit her teeth, curled her mind and the magic around a single thought, and pushed back. Just as she did with the cup and the Luna Dream.

The lightning never struck her. She watched in awe as golden light surged out her and swallowed the green lightning. Her suit’s helmet tried to compensate for the light by darkening her visor, but with no success. The magic that once surged through her vanished before the spell could travel any farther. Lumina gasped for breath and her visor fogged up. Blood rushed to her head, and caused her world to spin.

Her vision blurred, and her legs gave out underneath her. She remembered a numbing sensation washing over her, and her hearing fading out, but after that she didn’t remember anything else.

* * *

There was a discontinuity, a break in her memory. The next thing she remembered was lying on the hull of the Luna Dream with her face resting on the side of her helmet. Her horn still ached, but not as much as it did before. The numbness and the grogginess fled from her rapidly, leaving pain and fatigue in their wake. Lumina pulled herself back onto her hooves and stared at the monstrosity off the bow of the ship.

“I have detected an electromagnetic disturbance on the hull of the ship,” Animus said. “Lumina what is happening out there?”

The vibration’s in Lumina’s horn subsided. She didn’t know where all that magic just came from, but it was gone now. If the ship tried to attack her again, it would obliterate her.

Instead of unleashing another barrage, the glare of fusion engines and the aura of chartreuse magic erupted along the front of the other ship. It turned tail and ran until it disappeared from Lumina’s sight. She sighed in relief.

“I think I just scared them off,” she said. “And it’s a good thing they lit out when they did. I think I blacked out after casting that last spell. Even at full strength, there was no way I could have possibly fought them off.”

We helped you today because you needed it. Twilight’s voice whispered inside Lumina’s head, but she was aware that six others were present with her. We will always be there to help guide you, but we will not intervene as we did today again. If you want help, you will have to get it from your friends and the current Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.

“Don’t worry, Twilight, I’m going to find them. Thank you, Twilight. Thank you, Celestia. If it’s alright with you, I think I’m going to go back to my ship now and pass out for a while.”

“What was that, Lumina?” Animus said.

“Nothing, I was just talking to Twilight.” Lumina disengaged the magnetic clamps on her boots and drifted off the hull. “Any sign of the other ship?”

“Affirmative,” he said. “They are accelerating to an FTL velocity on a trajectory away from us. I believe we are in the clear.”

Lumina savored the sensation of weightlessness for a moment, and then asked for permission to come aboard. Animus recalled Lumina back to the ship and was waiting for her in the transmat station. The instant the yellow light faded, Lumina dashed forward and threw her hooves around Animus, then stood up on her hind legs and did a little victory dance, right before doubling over and falling into the wall for support. Animus dragged her up onto her hind hooves and slung a leg over his shoulder. She leaned on him for support, and together he led her out of the transmat station.

“We did it.” Lumina flung her helmet off. “Part of me still can’t believe it, but somehow we survived all that! We’re going to be okay. But let’s never do that again, okay?”

“I can confirm that by a bizarre set of circumstances we are alive.” For a second, Lumina thought she caught Animus smile.

After he carried Lumina back to her room, Animus hurried up to the bridge and plotted a course to New Canterlot. Meanwhile she spent some time pampering herself. She crawled out of her spacesuit and prepared a bath for herself. She endured quite a beating over the last week, so she decided to give herself a bit of quiet time to recover and the opportunity to soak her knots and bruises. She even discovered some Epsom salts underneath her sink and added it to the bath. The steam radiating off the water soothed her lungs and face. Very quickly she lost the battle to stay awake, and she woke up several hours later in her bathtub.

Enough of her strength had returned to get out of the bathroom and cook up a meal. She was ravenous. Her lunch consisted of key lime pie, jello, and hay fries. A new wave of energy hit her after she finished eating. Afterwards she went up to her room and dug the remains of her copy of The Elements of Harmony: A Revised Reference Guide out from behind her bed. She reached out to it with her mouth, but then decided to levitate it using magic instead. It took a lot of effort, but after a minute of work, it lifted off the bed and followed Lumina out of the room.

Lumina found Animus toiling away at the controls of the ship’s bridge. Only the dim orange glow of holograms lit the room.

“Not like a direct interface, is it?” Lumina stepped up to the command chair and lowered the book onto an unlit console.

“It is not nearly as intuitive,” Animus said. “However I am determined to master it so that I won’t have to rely on a direct interface when communicating with other devices.”

Animus dismissed the hologram and flipped open the book, the pages crackled at his touch. His eyes darted across the smeared text and images.

“Do you think it can be fixed?” Lumina asked.

“We have the technology to travel hundreds of light years in an instant,” Animus said. “I am sure that somewhere on New Canterlot is the technology to repair a book.”

He turned the page, and out popped an ink-stained picture of Lumina and her mother. Lumina levitated it off the ground and set it back in the pages of the book. Animus’s eyes zeroed in on the picture.

“I still have data relating to the vessel that ferried her off Arion.” Animus opened up a hologram filled with text. “It would be simple to track her down.”

Lumina walked around the command chair and gazed out the window; space was full of stars.

“No, my path isn’t to keep chasing her,” Lumina said. “I have to do something else now.”

“What is your ‘path’? Do you still wish to resign as a pilot?”

“I don’t know if I’m going to quit my job, or not.” Lumina turned her eyes back on her friend. “I do know this though: somewhere out there are the five other Elements of Harmony, and I’ve got to find them. You’re welcome to join me, if you like. You’ve got a body now, you can leave the ship, and come along on whatever adventures await me.”

“The thought had not occurred to me.” Animus dismissed the hologram and brought up another. “I can indeed leave the ship now if I desired. This platform is highly mobile. I am free to do as I please. However I can not imagine any place my presence would prove more useful than in the company of my friend.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Lumina said. “There isn’t anyone I’d rather face tomorrow with.”

Together they watched the stars and planets speed by. Tomorrow more challenges waited, and a galaxy filled with struggle faced them in the coming weeks, but for the time being, they rejoiced in the starry sky.

Author's Note

The story of this iteration of the Elements of Harmony will continue.
For now, they won't Fade Into Darkness.

Special Thanks and Dedication

I may be the author of Awakening, but just as they say it takes a whole village to raise a child, it takes an entire team of editors, prereaders, proof-readers, reviewers, critics, and cover artists to make a novel happen.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank those people, for without their help, Awakening would not have been possible.

Nathan
Gold Vision
WhatTheMoo
Garnot
CSImadmax
And a legendary warrior who I am sure would wish to simply remain Anonymous

I, of course, cannot forget about all those in the fimfic community, who lent their support and help and feedback and were there throughout the long posting process. Thank you all!

Finally, I'd like to dedicate this work of fiction to my friends: an owl, a tramp, and a man in a white suit. You were, and still are, there when I need it most.

1. Attacked

Awakening
Solocitizen

Attacked
Present Day

Lumina bobbed her head to her own rhythm, as she drifted through the heavens over a plane of reflected starlight. With music beating in her ears, she lowered her whirling powerbrusher onto the Luna Dream’s hull and held it there until the stained plating sparkled. She smiled at the work she had accomplished thus far, and kicked away from the hull with her hind hooves and drifted over to another section.

All around her the galaxy was in bloom. At her right, the neon gasses of an unnamed nebula burned red, and though it was too far away for her to comprehend, its size ate up the sky, while to her left lightning storms large enough to swallow her world whole flickered across the nightside of a gas giant, and lit up its endless clouds in brief flashes. It all made Lumina feel very small.

She pulled her eyes from the stars, pressed her powerbrusher against a patch of goo, and sang along to the song pouring in through her helmet:

“You’re gonna be knowing,
The loneliest kind of lonely
It may be rough going,
Just to do your thing,
The hardest thing to do”

“If this is your way of expressing that you tire of work, you may return inside at any time.” The ship’s computer, Animus, maintained constant radio contact with her. More often than she cared to admit, she forgot to kill the comm. channel. “The distances of space will conceal our paint job from even the closest passers by.”

Lumina blushed, but only just a little; he had seen her indulge in far more embarrassing activities when she thought she was alone. Luckily, there was no one out there for him to tell her secrets to. She cut power to the brusher and slung her forehooves over the steering bar.

“I know that,” she replied. “We haven’t even gotten a long range ping in over a month, I just want the Luna Dream to shine when we get back to New Canterlot, and it’s a good excuse to go outside and sing along to my music.”

"I have noticed this on several occasions.” The inflection in his voice never changed, and after all their years together, she never quite got used to it. “I have documented five hundred and forty-six occurrences within the last month. I have noticed that most of these incidents occur while you are bathing.”

“You listen to me while I’m in the bathroom? I just want you to know, if this was coming from anyone else I might be a little creeped out.”

“As would I. Talking to one’s self is usually considered a sign of insanity. As for the intrusion of your privacy, I have very little choice when you leave the intercom in your room on. I cannot filter information out.”

A dark wall raced up from the bow of the ship, over the spinning ramjet ring, and down to reactor dome where Lumina toiled away. The darkness shot up her suit and registered as a sudden cold on her heads up display. It was the shadow of a gas giant. It blotted out the stars overhead.

“You know what, I think the ship is clean enough for today.” Lumina tapped a button on her forearm to kick-start the magnets on her hooves, and let them pull her down to the hull. Another tap to her console and the scrubber collapsed down to fluffy disc on her back. She trotted over the reactor dome to an airlock hatch.

"Permission to come aboard, Animus?” Lumina asked.

“Always granted, my one and only friend.”

The hatch popped open, and a warning flashed over Lumina’s heads up display right as an electro-magnet locked onto her, and pulled her into the hatch. As she shot into the heart of the ship, green and red safety lights on the side of the tube moved up her visor like water droplets over a windshield. The lift deposited her in the dorsal airlock C2, a well-lit room that always smelled like anti-freeze. After three deep space transport assignments, she had memorized the name and location of every hatch, bulkhead, cargo hold, engine room, and transmat station. She even named a few. Space travel was, after all, boring.

Lumina stood up on her hind legs and pried the helmet from her head, minding her unicorn horn, as always. She dropped back down on all fours and used her mouth to pull her free from the rest of the suit. It tasted of sweat and plastic, and frankly, that taste was the worst part of any trip outside. Her white coat shimmered with perspiration under the LED light. The excursion had been far less kind to her mane. Its golden-yellow color turned a nasty dirty-yellow, and sat on her head in as much disarray as a bird’s nest. The grime was a small price to pay for a few hours outside.

The Faster-Than-Light freighter Luna Dream was approximately one point two kilometers in length. That said, the vast majority of the ship housed an enormous dark energy reactor and the FTL drive shaft, and only a tiny fraction of it was left over as living quarters and Animus’s AI core. Luckily the cargo itself was immaterial; Lumina and her AI companion were en route to New Canterlot to deliver a digital copy of every book in recorded history, along with news and information picked up along the way. It was the most important, and by far the most valuable, cargo the two of them had ever handled, but also the most entertaining.

“I’m going to observation deck to do some reading, how’s our approach?” Lumina shook out her knotted up tail and set a quick pace out of the air lock.

“All systems are functioning within standard parameters.” Animus’s voice followed her out of the airlock and into the hyperlift across the hallway, and continued, unbroken, as the lift sped up the spine of the ship. “The gas giants LF-131 and LJ-130 are aligning as scheduled. I have calculated that their masses should provide us with enough gravity assisted acceleration to trigger our FTL drive with minimal fuel consumption. We will be entering FTL space as planned, at three hundred hours on the fifth day of Planting Season, 10,056 AC, roughly six hours from now.”

“Great job, Animus, as always.”

The lift hummed along with a smooth vibration.

As soon as the hyperlift stopped, and Lumina cantered down the spiral staircase to the observation deck. It was easily her favorite part of the ship. Illuminated by sun-mood lamps and holographic flowers, it always glowed with a creamy light and smelled faintly of spring. It sat just beneath Luna Dream’s bridge, the most forward section of the ship, and provided a spectacular view of the cosmic starscape. A hoof-full of tables, couches, and a hardwood floor pulled the room together.

Tapping a button on the table stirred up light across the surface. Within seconds, a menu coalesced in green and red words, and from there she used her hooves to navigate the touch screen and accessed her current read. A holographic image of The Elements of Harmony: A Revised Reference Guide flung up from the table and followed her to the couch.

“Lumina, may I ask you a question?” The voice of Animus whispered out of a nearby speaker.

"Go ahead.” Lumina gestured with her head to turn the page. A pastel image of Twilight Sparkle and the other elements of harmony vanquishing some sort of twisted dragon creature filled the page. She flipped by.

“I was wondering why you have chosen to occupy your time with that book.”

“There isn’t much else to do around here, most of this job involves waiting, I got to find something to do with myself.”

“I am not referring to the act of reading itself. Allow me to rephrase: why have you chosen to read that book in particular?”

“I don’t know.” Lumina looked up from the page, then flipped back to the image of Twilight and the elements. “The ship’s database recommended it, and I liked it enough to keep reading.”

Lumina pointed at a blue pegasus just below Twilight Sparkle. Her mane and tail were rainbow colored, and she was reared up on her hind legs in defiance.

“What I like most of all are the characters,” said Lumina. “See her? That’s Rainbow Dash. The legends of Old Equestria say that she could fly so fast, that magic itself would explode around her in a Sonic Rainboom.” Lumina aimed her hoof at a purple unicorn beside the pegasus. “And that’s Twilight Sparkle. Believe it or not, when I was growing up, I wanted to be just like her.”

“Equestria? Lumina, please stand by while I access additional databases.” There always was a pause whenever Animus did a search like that. He didn’t need to; information flowed through him near light speed. It took Lumina over a year to figure out he was just acting. He paused so that she felt like he was looking something up. “Equestria: the fabled lost continent that according to occult lore, sank into the sea approximately 100 years After Celestia. Many fringe religious movements maintain a belief in the myth, despite a lack of historical or physical evidence. I always wondered if you subscribed to such fantasy.”

You’re a talking computer that lives with a unicorn, you’re one to talk. The words jumped into her head, but she didn’t say them. Instead she snickered.

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to paint a ‘cutie mark’ on my flank and join a herd of horn-touching weirdos,” Lumina said. “I don’t really care how much some book says all ponies are magical, no amount of meditation, study, or horn-touching will ever make a cutie mark appear on my butt, or grant me the ability to levitate books. And same goes for any pegasus that wants to fly, or any sad earth pony that wants to become ‘one with nature’. I know it’s all garbage and it’s never going to happen.

“I know what you’ve must have seen on my personnel file, but trust me, it’s all just a story and I know that. I just like the story is all. What I don’t like is having to deal with your criticism of what I like to do in my own free time.”

Animus remained silent.

A knot curled up in Lumina’s stomach. She knew better than to snap like that, or to let so much time go by without apologizing, but she simmered in her own anger until that little awful knot in her stomach got the better of her.

“Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to vent at you.” Lumina saved her spot in her book and shut down the hologram. “It’s kind of a touchy subject. I’m really sorry I exploded like that.”

“No apologies are required,” said Animus. “I should have picked my words more carefully.”

Lumina got up off the couch and deactivated the table touch screen. “I’m feeling tired, I think I’m just going to go to bed early.”

“Do you wish for me to wake you at seven hundred hours as usual, or do you want to be up in time to oversee our FTL jump?”

“I’ve seen you do it hundreds of times, I think you can handle this one on your own. I need the sleep.”

“As you command.”

In many respects, Animus was the Luna Dream, the computer core was analogous to his brain, while the wiring and hallways were his veins, and sensors of every variety served as his eyes and ears. Almost everywhere Lumina went on the ship, his gaze followed. Almost everywhere.

Whenever Lumina needed to escape the tingling you’re-being-watched sensation on the back of her head, she just made up an excuse like she was tired and fled to her room. She checked the ship’s manual, the builders only installed an atmosphere gage and a voice activated intercom there.

The Interstellar Express provided her with a pre-furnished suite fit for a unicorn princess, complete with a king-sized bed, panoramic windows, and a shower that also doubled as a massage therapist. However it was all very white, and lacked any sense of heart. She decorated it with personal pictures and lined the blank walls with album art on her first assignment, but the company got upset and told her to clean it all up. So blank and white they remained. The few personal items she brought with her, she kept hidden away.

Lumina took a quick shower without even bothering with soap or combing her mane or tail. No pony out there cared what she smelled like, or the condition of her mane. She dried herself off and climbed into her bed. Once comfortable, and after she double-checked the door was shut, and the intercom off, she reached for the space between her bed frame and the wall. Her front hooves fumbled blind until she hit the edge of a box, pulled it into the light. She liberated her treasure and held it firmly in her lap.

Age took its toll on the leather binding and the gold letters, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. The Elements of Harmony: A Revised Reference Guide. She ran her hooves over the words and opened the book. A picture slid free from the pages, an old still image of a much younger Lumina and her mother. She didn’t need a photograph to remind her how wonderful her mother’s smile was or how loving her eyes were, but these were all she had left of her and she kept them close to her heart.

And away from anypony else.

She stuck the photograph back between the pages, and flipped to where she left off reading. She lost herself in her book and read until her eyes were sore and the sentences blurred together, and then she kept reading. Of all the stories her mom used to read to her, that was one of her favorites, and she refused to set the book down until she finished.

The story ended with Twilight and her friends restoring harmony to the land, and with Lumina clinging to the book half asleep. She tucked the book back into its hiding place, dimmed the lights, pulled the covers over her head, and looked for sleep.

Instead, her mind found thoughts of her mother, and a wrenching sensation just beneath her heart. There, on the verge of sleep, a voice whispered to her from out of some deep place in her mind.

Nothing is ever lost and that includes love. Wherever she is now she’d want you to be happy. The words were not her own, the voice was like her own, but different.

She entertained this thought long enough to respond with wordless contempt, then rolled over and fell asleep.

* * *

“Lumina? Lumina wake up.” The voice intruded upon images of kaleidoscope wings and a neon purple light. They evaporated, leaving her staring up at the ceiling. The faintest recollection of wings and purple light remained.

She stretched, rolled over, and attempted to follow the images back into sleep. In her sleep-drunk stupor, she didn’t really care.

“Lumina, please wake up.” Animus’s voice beckoned out of every speaker in her room. “Your presence is required on the bridge. Please respond.”

After a lazy kick at the nightstand, she rolled back over and slammed a hoof on the intercom button.

“What’s going on, Animus? Do you need help calibrating the FTL?”

“I do not wish to alarm you but we are being pursued. You are required on the bridge. I advise haste.”

“What?” Lumina leapt out from her bed and tossed the comforter to the side. “Pegasi warships? Griffon radicals? Pirates?”

“Unknown. The vessel is not responding to my hails nor is it broadcasting a friendly IFF. Its heat and radio signatures do not correspond to any known griffon, pegasi, earth pony, or unicorn vessel.”

Hot fear surged through Lumina, her gut told her to hide, but she forced that notion aside and dashed out of her room at a full gallop. Every door between her and the bridge flung open.

“Any chance that they could be just passing by?” Lumina asked. Her legs propelled her up the spiral staircase and down the long hallway to the bridge. Flashing red lights guided her path.

“Negative,” said Animus. “They are on an intercept course and accelerating. They will overtake us in approximately fifteen minutes.”

“What? How? Why didn’t we see them coming until they were almost on top of us?” Lumina flung herself at the command couch, she didn’t even get a chance to strap in before Animus shot her into the master helm station.

“They were positioned behind the shadow of LJ-130. Our sensors did not detect them until five minutes and thirty seconds ago.”

A menacing array of buttons and flashing lights now encircled Lumina. Only one long slit offered her a glimpse out into space. Holographic images sprang up around her and bathed the tomb in yellow and blue light. She diverted her attention to the hologram on her left. A geometric chase, described in math, unfolded over a projection of a blue orb.

“Do we have enough speed for a FTL jump?” Lumina waved her hoof at one of the holographic panels in an effort to bring up an image of their pursuer. She found none.

“Negative. We will not have sufficient velocity for an accurate jump for sixty minutes.”

“Then kick the dark energy reactor into overdrive, squeeze all the power you can out of it, and throw it all into the ion engines and ram jets.”

“Given our potential rate of acceleration and the current velocity of the other vessel, we will not be able to make a FTL jump until after they have overtaken us. That is assuming they do not accelerate to match our velocity.”

And what would they do once they caught up with us? she asked herself. Blow up the ship? Board and try to seize control? Plunder the ship or perhaps even take me hostage? What then, would they violate me? What would they do to Animus? Pirates usually delete the AI whenever they take a ship.

“Try telling them we’re on a mission of mercy,” Lumina said.

“But we are not.” His voice gave no inflection.

“It worked when we ran into that blockade of pegasi warships.”

“This is not the Pegasus Tribe.”

Shrieking alarms erupted across the bridge and every hologram and button flashed. Adrenaline coursed through Lumina, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when her eyes locked back onto the projection of the pursuit. A small object was accelerating away from the main vessel and toward the Luna Dream.

“Incoming projectile,” said Animus. “Firing electronic counter measures. No effect.”

A jolt, then a lurch, and all the lights on the bridge blinked to an angry red. Lumina’s hooves moved over the holograms. Shaking. The smell of ozone stained the air. She brought up an exterior camera feed. Whatever that projectile was, it blew one of the ramjets clear off its spoke. The hologram showed it falling behind Luna Dream and plowing straight into the approaching vessel. It didn’t slow down. Not even by a pixel.

Lumina gulped and leaned back in her command couch. She brought up the emergency override, punched in her code, and disengaged all safety protocols. She wasn’t going to let them come aboard. She wasn’t going let them take Animus or her alive.

“Animus, lock up the reactor, and fire up the FTL drive,” she said, “and plot a course for the next checkpoint on our route.”

“I must remind you that without sufficient velocity upon entering FTL space navigation becomes impossi-”

“I’ve disengaged all safety protocols, I’m not letting them get us. Do it, please.”

“As you command.”

Every light went dark, every siren silent, and all that remained was the countdown to FTL flight. Lumina shut her eyes tight and covered her ears with her hooves. She hummed the melody of her favorite song while the tingling itch of FTL space carried her away.