Euphoria

The fight had been gruesome and to her dismay, magic was something that pierced her stallion's defenses. At first she could only see too well what horrible darkness stole their senses, but to her fortune she had also soon discovered her broken horn's affinity with absorbing this darkness. Drinking it all up had felt like swallowing an ocean, but she had been through Tartarus and by comparison this evil felt almost feeble to her.

She had spent most of her javelins and just as she started feeling fearful, that magnificent weapon had crashed again like thunder. Samuel's aim was spectacular even though she suspected he wasn't getting any help aiming it. SAM was possibly suffering even more under the magical onslaught and she worried for him a great deal. Magic was just not something the spectral voice could get a handle on even though it seemed to absorb all other knowledge with uncanny speed. The three crashes had felled the closest of her ghastly assailants and from there she had not allowed herself to be cornered again. Her hooves might be clumsy but they served her well now, crashing into the necromantic bodies of her enemies and the fact that she was fighting and winning, elated her. No longer a feeble doll in a cage, she seemed stronger than these once-ponies.

In the end she had reveled in the destruction of her enemies, joining Samuel in stomping them into the ground until there was nothing left, except for that last ghoul who had impaled her stallion so cruelly. She had wanted to destroy that one herself, but SAM's barding accomplished that as he was brought to his doom under his own momentum.

Panting she had scanned her surroundings for any signs of their enemies, finding the dread temple devoid of any more necromancers. Rushing to Samuel's side, watching through the visor she could survey the extent of the damage to both of her allies. The red glyphs scrolled madly and most disconcertingly they made less and less sense as SAM's mind seemed to be coming apart. Only the most vital information was available: Samuel's life signs, wavering but luckily stabilizing as the things in his bloodstream kept working diligently to save his life. She wasn't sure she could endure watching his heart stop again. She crept up to him as he lay sprawled on his back amidst the carnage, his VENGEANCE still clutched tightly in his right hand. The weapon continued to illuminate the area, pulsing with a spectral light as if the soul of the brave Unicorn's spirit was crying out in defiance of this unholy place. She wanted to pull the spear from his body but she hesitated. So much blood was going to come pouring out if she did that. Samuel seemed to have lost consciousness, his tormented mind fleeing from the visions that had been plaguing him. SAM was still there, scrolling his words in both Equestrian and that other language as if he wanted to scream. She spoke to him, though her voice was gone, she hoped he could still understand her as she mouthed the words.

"Calm down, SAM. We need you," she breathed, aware that the fine threads on her throat might still be picking up on her meaning. It seemed to work to an extent, as the madly scrolling glyphs stopped for half a beat, then began to rearrange themselves into some semblance of order. He was trying to write something to her and at first he did not succeed, but a few alterations made his meaning clear: Purge. Taking the hint, she felt the diminished stump of her horn lighting up once more as she drank up the last remnants of the eerie magic that had scrampled SAM's wits. She almost panicked when this at first seemed to make things worse and for one terrifying moment, her visor was completely clouded with hectic writing but then it completely blanked, leaving the display dead before it seemed to come back to life.

Simulated Artificial Mind

System purge in progress...

Loading backup...

At first the words appeared in Samuel's tongue, but then SAM provided translations though she was not certain of the meaning. She got the eerie feeling that the icy intellect had somehow regressed back to a point before the necromantic energies hurt him. Life and death was apparently well within SAM's grasp and now she heard his spectral voice emanating from the mask which still lacked the top half through which she could see Samuel's eye, closed as he slept.

"Well, that happened," SAM breathed. "I hate this sorcery. Well, no time to dawdle. Let's get Samuel patched up."

With another hiss, the leg barding that held their ever diminishing supply of medical supplies popped open. Quickly she set to work extracting the items the visor targeted on her display: a syringe and adhesive bandages. SAM's tail lashed out, neatly cutting through the wooden shaft of the spear, leaving just a few inches protruding from the hole in Samuel's armor. Using the wings to raise his body off the floor, he repeated the gesture, cutting off the tip of the spear. Following SAM's on-screen instructions, she cradled the syringe and bandages in her forelegs and bent to bite down on the diminished spear shaft, clenching her jaw as he pulled it from her stallion's body. Fresh blood sprayed onto her muzzle and SAM opened the chest barding, allowing her access to the injury. She jabbed the syringe into the wound, cringing internally but SAM insisted that this would help. Depressing the plunger, she pumped the contents into Samuel's body before discarding the needle and slapping on the bandages, sealing the wound. SAM fully detached himself from Samuel's body and rolled him onto his side, allowing her to repeat the procedure on the exit wound.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she watched her stallion's breathing steady as the injury had been sealed. SAM sat in his equine form beside him, the empty helmet angled down to look at VENGEANCE, still clutched in Samuel's right hand. The gaping hole left by the visor she wore made the sight somewhat eerie, as she could see into the shell that made up the machine's body. She could tell SAM was busy even in stillness, somehow commanding tiny machines that lived within her stallion's body. They were the reason why he seemed to recover from his frequent injuries as quickly as any Earth Pony and she had been shown images of the insectine silver beings as they reforged the body, albeit on a scale too tiny to comprehend. She was not easily disturbed but somehow the alien procedure did worry her. The diminuative machines had looked alive when SAM had shown the images to her, and SAM himself was definitely a living being. The definitions of 'alive' seemed terribly vague, knowing that it was all lifeless matter at its core. The visionary intellect that had birthed such life had apparently deciphered the tiny building blocks of living things and replicated them. Pushing those thoughts from her mind, she was quietly thankful for their existence. Without SAM and his 'nan-ites' none of this would have been possible.

As the silence dragged on, she became aware that the thoughts scrolling on her visor were more subdued now. She could tell SAM was reading her stallion's life signs, monitoring them closely. That was the only thing he seemed to be doing and usually he could do so many things at once, she could barely keep up. For whatever reason, he was only dwelling on Samuel's physical being. Normally he would also be updating things like 'Psychological profile' and others that helped paint a picture of Samuel's mental being, but those were curiously absent now. It took a while to realise that when the ghostly intellect had blanked out, it had returned in a diminished capacity.

She got up and paced the room. SAM had carefully pulled her stallion to a cleaner corner of the building. As she pondered the machine, she began to worry that he had been damaged permanently. It had nearly driven him mad when the spells had been going off all around him and now he seemed only to exist in the world that he understood: heart rate, blood pressure, tissue damage, diagnostics. Usually he would review recent events leading up to a catastrophe such as this, but for whatever reason he now focused singlemindedly on the physical aspects. She decided to try her voice again and was pleased that this part of SAM still worked.

"Is he going to be okay?" she queried.

SAM sat ramrod straight, turning his one red eye fractionally in her direction as his own replicated voice spoke aloud, sensing her need to break the silence.

"He is going to recover. The spear missed the most vital spots and I am repairing the damages," he droned on. His tone was mirthless, detached. Usually he would work to convey some emotion when he spoke aloud.

She shallowed. "Good. Thank you for helping him, SAM. Those spells seemed to hurt him though. How is his mind?"

In that instant, the red glyphs in her visor seemed to explode with lines of chaotic ramblings until their cut off altogether, erasing themselves and starting over. SAM seemed frozen when this took place and she worried for him again. The silence dragged on and just as she was about to ask again, the ghostly voice warned her.

"Corrupted data. Files quarantined," he deadpanned, refusing to speak any further on the matter.

She was always unnerved when he spoke in these terms. She knew what the words meant individually, but the context seemed alien to her. Samuel had tried to explain it to her, but the language barrier prevented him from giving her the full details. In the end he had just told her that was how a 'computer' worked. Samuel wasn't awake now to provide his insight and near as she could guess, it seemed like SAM was isolating those parts of himself that he could not understand. In particular, anything related to magic.

Poor SAM. She wanted to comfort him but how? He usually always bounced right back, able to set his own thoughts straight whenever he got confused. Now he sat rigid, watching over Samuel's sleeping form and his good cheer had evaporated. She settled on the stone floor next to her sleeping stallion, occasionally nuzzling his cheek. His sleep had been peaceful at first, but soon he started to shiver and his breathing sometimes came out in short, distressed gasps, his eyes rolling behind their lids as if he was plagued by nightmares. When she grew increasingly distressed, trying unsuccessfully to start conversation with SAM, he seemed to notice her worries, but what he said did little to soothe her.

"I know you're worried for us. You want to help. Unfortunately what I need isn't here," he gestured with a claw to the world at large. "I am a machine. Machines need maintainance. A lab, a staff of technicians," he continued and then turned to face her with that one glaring red eye.

"I need to return to earth," he said and the detached tone of voice again unsettled her.

Earth... She had thought at first that their need to return was primarily for selfless reasons. They had many wrongs to set right and people that depended upon them. Now however, she began to realise that they had an even more urgent reason. SAM could not exist in Equestria and stay sane. Again, the alien nature of his half-life set her on edge. She chewed on her lower lip and nuzzled Samuel's cheek, praying that he would wake up soon.

Twilight Sparkle

Back in Ponyville, a studious young Unicorn was pacing back and forth in her library. Her thoughts were on their most recent visitor. Samuel had gone off again on another wild quest of his. While his companion had been candid with information, she had not been able to tease much out of him when it came to their origins. He had asked many questions and answered many in return, always steering the conversation towards safer topics, like her life in Ponyville and her friends. Their numerous adventures and all the fun they'd been having together since she had discovered the magic of friendship.

Recently however, SAM had taken to perusing her library and she got the feeling that he did most of his reading when nopony was watching. His senses were uncanny and usually she found him poring over lighter material, but she was not easily fooled. A gnawing suspicion had settled in her gut and she suspected that the diplomatic 'machine' was actually up to more than he let on. Usually she didn't indulge in her more paranoid side, but the hollow metal friend just seemed a bit too well-behaved. She would find her more advanced tomes still sitting exactly where she had left them, not a sign that they had been moved. Except, she thought, they hadn't been attracting any dust.

No, the thought was silly and surely her friends would tell her to stop obsessing over dust particles. She had actually started using a spell to count them at one point, but Rainbow Dash's laughter had put a stop to it when she had noticed this while reading more Daring Do.

"Really, Twilight? I know you have a thing for order but seriously! Dust is just dust," she had giggled, flapping about the library making the motes dance in a beam of sunlight.

Twilight had been chagrined and quickly dropped the matter. Yet later, sitting alone poring over some of these tomes, her more analytical side had refused to let this go.

I know this book is exactly where I left it, but SAM could have put it right back. He is very precise when he needs to be...

The book she was pondering was not a light read. It was archaic in its descriptions of spatial manipulation, even going into detail on things like teleportation and magical portals. It was even hypothesized that a sufficiently skilled Unicorn could, Celestia forbid, sent sompony to Tartarus! She heaved a sigh, attracting the attention of her number one assistant. Spike waddled over, holding a feather duster.

"What's on your mind, Twilight?" he tilted his scaly head slightly to one side, peering at her book with a slightly furrowed brow.

"Oh! Just thinking about our new friends, hehe..." she tried to play it off, not wanting any further teasing about her musings on dust and how these books were always in exactly the place she'd left them, as if some unerring metal creature had meant to leave no trace of his passing.

"Yeah, they're off on another trip now, aren't they?" Spike supplied, thankfully keeping the topic light.

"Yup! Didn't even say where though..." she sighed. "Lyra told me she'd seen them heading towards the edge of town this morning."

Spike just shrugged and went back to dusting shelves. She went back to her reading, yet she couldn't help but notice her assistant pausing ever so briefly as he passed the very spot Twilight had been so carefully monitoring. He let out a soft 'huh' as his duster passed over the spines of the books, but he moved on, deeming the work unncessary in the end.

"Err, Twilight, you eye is doing the thing again..." he pointed out.

Noticing her tics, she giggled and smoothed out her mane and went back to reading, making an effort not to show any 'neurotic behavior' in front of him. In her mind however, she was picturing SAM's equine form moving with total precision, waiting until nopony was in sight before carefully extracting a book, thumbing through the pages much too quickly and then neatly sliding it back into place, making one final adjustment to make sure it sat right here he'd found it, just a sixteenth of an inch deeper on the shelf than its neighbors. Unaware of her musings, Spike kept up the light conversation as he strode down another isle where he did find some dusting to do.

"You haven't written another friendship report to Celestia in a while. Not since you mentioned Euphoria though. I bet she'd be super happy that you're making friends with a guy like Samuel," he grinned. The little guy had taken to the human right from the start, finally able to socialize with somepony who was decidedly less 'girly' than most of his friends.

"You know, you're right Spike! I think she would be just as curious as we all were if she knew we had a visitor from another world," she smiled. The little dragon happily traded his duster for a quill and paper, ready to disctate another letter.

"Dear Princess Celestia,

"Recently I have been making some new friends, though not from Ponyville. Amazingly there is a species we had never even heard about, called humans..." she went on and Spike stuck out his tongue cutely, face scrunched up at he scrawled on the scroll.

Outside, the day was just winding down and her mentor was getting ready to lower the sun to make way for Luna's night. She knew her beloved teacher was less busy during this time and her letter likely wouldn't interupt anything important as she liked to stand out on her balcony as she lowered the sun. She finished her letter quickly, pleased to receive a quick response, immediately launching into a reply as she began to share what she had learned about Samuel.

Euphoria

Back in the temple, night had fallen and Euphoria kept watching her stallion's uneasy sleep and SAM's utter stillness. As promised, the injury was already healing and outwardly there were few signs of it. His sleek, muscled body still clad in the flight suit had been patched up with the bandages neatly covering the small puncture wound in his abdomen. They hadn't even needed to peel off the suit as the shot she had administered, loaded with more 'nan-ites,' had been sufficient to ward off infection, and the bandages fit over the holes in the fabric to create a tight seal. While his troubled sleep had continued, she had noticed more concerning signs. She knew SAM kept a 'program' running called the Reality Filter, one of the things needed to keep the two minds seperate. Usually she could bring up a list displaying this 'program' among others, always running to ensure that her stallion could safely access the nearly limitless library of knowledge SAM kept. However, now she noticed the absense of the Reality Filter as well as many others, like those used to track and identify local flora and fauna. She desperately wanted to bring this up, but her fear of receiving another clipped response about 'corrupted data' kept her from voicing these concerns. She did not want to contribute to SAM's burdens and only prayed that her stallion would be able to set things right once he came to.

As time passed, she busied herself by maintaining her own equipment, having retrieved her javelins and cleaned the worst of the blood from her fur. She cleaned them meticulously with a rag which she spat out, discarding it on the floor as she reholstered her projectiles. She was in the process of replacing the cord on the last javelin when Samuel suddenly gasped, eyes snapping open. She sat upright, watching him anxiously as he raised his head and scanned the surroundings. She noticed SAM moved at the same time, curiously mimicking the quick side-to-side motions with his own head as if their bodies were connected with invisible puppet strings. Before she could stop him, he sat up with a slight wince but he fought bravely past the pain in his abdomen. Again, SAM stirred at the exact same moment as if he too felt the sting.

Finally he seemed to notice her and his baritone voice rang out, sure and strong. "Euphoria," be breathed and she rushed up to him, stealing a quick kiss and smiling when he caressed her jaw, leaning in for another. She only noticed something was off a moment later, glancing down to find that it was SAM's hand on her cheek instead. Samuel kept the halberd clutched in his right hand, unwilling to let go of the luminscent blade and needing his left hand to support his body. Again, they both shifted at the same time. SAM retracted his hand and Samuel sat up on his knees, using his left hand to stroke her mane. He seemed to dismiss the oversight with a grin, getting to his feet.

"Let's get out of here," he said and suddenly SAM's prehensile tail lashed out to flip his rifle into his waiting left hand. He briefly inspected the gun, then passed it back to his counterpart where it was holstered on the left thigh. The room had gotten quite dark after the sun had set but curiously, her stallion was able to steer around the obstacles and torn bodies even though his eyesight wasn't that good in the dark. Whatever nightmare visions had been haunting his sleep seemed to have left him now and be seemed to shrug off the entire ordeal as if it hadn't fazed him in the slightest. She trailed behind him, watching through the visor as SAM paced beside him. They left the temple, striding into the night. Euphoria turned to once again behold the curious structure, wanting to get another look at the illusion that concealed the true size of the building from the outside. She paused then, craning her head back, now seeing the mammoth structure fully revealed. Apparently she had been successful in dispelling the magic that lingered in this place. Breathing a sigh of relief, she brushed off her earlier concerns about SAM's behavior as the duo walked in front of her keeping up light conversation through their mental connection. She watched them 'chatting' on her visor, SAM making a quib about how they needed to be careful not to expose the little ponies to the secrets of gunpowder if they wanted to replenish their stock.

As soon as they had reached a clearing big enough to allow takeoff, SAM unfolded the Pegasus Frame to envelop Samuel and he flexed for a moment, rolling his shoulders and twirling the tail in a circular pattern before splitting it down the middle, revealing the membrane spanning between, so like a swallow's tail. The halberd was slung over his back and he scooped up Euphoria, cradling her in his arms as he unfolded the wings, launching himself into the air in another great leap. Swift and sure wingbeats carried them into the nightsky together, setting course for Ponyville. No longer dwelling on the absense of the Reality Filter, she was simply relieved to leave the awful place they had discovered. While they hadn't lingered long enough to really study anything in detail, she knew SAM kept detailed records of everything they had seen. She was eager to contribute her own knowledge as well. Being a Unicorn, even a broken one, did afford her intimate knowledge about the magical glyphs they had encountered.

"I hope we'll be able to find a way back to your home now. I got a good look at their magic back there, and did you see? I even absorbed their spells," she boasted, enjoying her new voice. When SAM missed a wingbeat, causing them to lose a bit of altitude just as she brought up the subject of magic, she grew apprehensive once more, chewing on her lower lip, but Samuel simply chuckled.

"I saw. That was something else, damn...!" He shook his head and she was able to peer up at his face, watching his dark brown eye through the gap in the helmet. Outwardly he didn't seem fazed but there was the slightest tightening around his eye, suggesting that he was really more bothered by the memory than he wanted to let on. SAM remained curiously silent.

"Are you alright, SAM?" she asked, watching the visor for any signs of distress from the machine. Samuel paused as well, seeming to share her concern. After a lengthy silence, the ghostly voice spoke again in a deadpan.

"I really don't like magic. Most of my systems crashed and I have not been able to reboot them," he explained.

"Power down as soon as we land, buddy. I'll have to fix that code myself until we can return to earth," Samuel sighed. He sounded more determined than ever when he spoke of their mission to find a way to travel between worlds.

The rest of their journey continued in silence. Euphoria worried for her 'computer friend' as her stallion sometimes called him. She set her jaw and glared into the night, resolving to see just how much magic her broken horn might be able to channel. Surely they would need somepony with magic if they were going to make that trip and possibly, her newfound powers might serve. At any rate, she had trouble picturing another Unicorn coming to their aid in this... Perhaps Twilight?

Twilight Sparkle

She was breathing into a brown paper bag. Spike stood holding it to her muzzle, rolling his eyes. "Jeeze Twilight, you really need to calm down. The Princess said it would be just an informal visit," he tried to soothe her. Behind him on the desk lay the last in a little string of letters to have arrived as Twilight and Princess Celestia wrote each other. Usually it bothered him if he had to relay more than a few messages, but he understood the appeal. After all, not many ponies could just reach out to their mentor in spite of any distance and just receive a reply like that. So the Princess had asked questions and follow-up questions about this ape-like species until finally, she had just decided to come to Ponyville and see for herself.

Hence the brown paper bag and one very stressed Unicorn...

Having gotten her breathing somewhat under control, Twilight stood up and was just about to start pacing or running out the door. It didn't matter which. Spike placed himself squarely in her path.

"Spike! I need to-"

"Nuh-uh, you don't need to do anything, Twilight! Seriously, Princess Celestia is your friend. Friends can visit each other without upsetting the entire town." The little drake retorted and to his surprise, his mother figure seemed to relent just this once. She was moping just a bit but she did settle down. Possibly the hour had just grown too late for her to get really worked up about this. Owlicious hooted from his perch, still not certain who they were even talking about.

"You're right. I'm sure she really is just curious," Twilight smiled at her number one assistant, always there to help keep the panic attacks to a minimum. So she turned in for the night and Spike gratefully curled up in his basket at the foot of her bed. The Princess would be here tomorrow and she had asked specifically to keep things low-key. No fanfares, no parades but possibly a Pinkie Pie party because those just seemed inevitable.

Owlicious sat looking out the window as his owner slept. The owl noted the ape in question just gliding in for a landing somewhere over in the other end of town, his silhouette quickly disappearing behind the rooftops.

Author's Note

So, another chapter finished and while this one is mostly just talk and travel, it does build up towards exciting new things. Next chapter I'll add Celestia tag and we'll see how that goes.

Also, I am deliberately avoiding Samuel POW in this chapter because I don't want to reveal too soon what happened to his mind in the last fight, but as you can probably guess it's not good.