Chapter 32
"I'm not sure any of that makes a difference." All eyes went to Jackie. "So maybe the ponies believe we're like them. Maybe they're right, maybe not. But I can tell you something we don't have to wonder about: there are people trying to kill us. I think they've made the call for us."
Katie shook her head. "That doesn't mean we have to help them fight. We can keep things going back here without needing to… do whatever Sunset plans on for her war. What is she planning, anyway?"
Jacob shrugged. "Harley can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the ponies had a plan going for a real war."
"More like a backup plan." Harley sat a little straighter. "I can't tell you very much. You're getting into Luna's territory. All I know is it relied on making it so people couldn't fight us anymore. Stealth, information control. Breaking humanity's will to fight by showing them what you all just learned, showing them over and over until they see it's true. Not really the killing kind of war, which is good. That's such a wasteful way to fight."
"I'm not sure I want to fight any kind of war," Jacob admitted. "Not the same as not wanting to help. Making this place… Imperium… making it somewhere worth living seems like a noble goal. I think that's somewhere I'd like to stay."
There were murmurs of general agreement, though Stalwart and Jackie remained quiet until they were finished. Jackie raised a hand until they all shut up. "That's a good idea for now, you're right. I think in the end we'll have to man up and pick a side. Decide if we're going to stick up for the way we grew up or the ones saving us. Because… because the other side isn't as kind and understanding as the ponies. I don't think the pony way of fighting will work—in the end, we'll have to pick if we want to crawl away and hide, or prove we've got the will to survive and fight."
"I'm not saying any of you have to pick now, or even this month. Just… think about it."
Elise nodded. "I think she's right. You ponies don't have a chance of just convincing the powers that be to give up, not after what you did. Humans are so great at demonizing people when it seems like we have a good reason."
No one argued.
"I guess that's where we stand, then." Jacob slumped into his empty cot. "Tomorrow we'll get our assignments, and we can hope that Sunset's strategy will work without us." He covered his face with a rough-feeling pillow. "Maybe Sunset's strategy will work, and we'll never have to fight."
Life in Imperium was not smooth and structured the way Unity had been, with regular meals and classes and rules. Despite the cave's apparent size, it soon seemed filled with sprawling campsites. Anywhere that wasn't being used to grow food was being used to house ponies.
Their names and faces were known among those they had rescued, and Jacob could seldom wander through the camps without teary ponies cheering and celebrating. They were soon all eating the same flat paste of wheat berries and barley, which wasn't as offensive as he might've expected but still made his stomach squirm after the second straight week.
Some things remained as true for ponies as they would've been for a similar group of humans, and boredom was one of those. Though at first many of the ones they had rescued were in very poor health, a few weeks of clean water and stable (if boring) food nursed most back to the point where they could contribute.
Whenever Jacob wasn't studying, he went out and joined them. The cave rang with song almost every day, as groups of ponies baking bricks from cave clay and slicing stone blocks with magic kept inventing new tunes to keep themselves amused.
Jacob couldn't help himself. He sang along to "Make this Cave a Home" and "Work is Easier with Friends" and a dozen others, without ever knowing where the words had come from. It felt good, though he never got the same satisfaction Danielle or Stalwart seemed to.
Sunset seemed to get the message that they weren't interested in fighting anymore, because she didn't ask for their help with any more missions. Occasionally he served shifts at the medical tent, and sometimes they brought in ponies that had obviously been shot or otherwise injured, but that was it.
Despite their apparent physical disadvantages, even large numbers of formerly-human ponies were more than capable of getting work done. More than that, magic often did the job of heavy equipment or specialized hardware. What an earth pony couldn't do, a unicorn probably could.
The unicorns’ most significant contribution took about three weeks. Jacob wasn't part of it—he was too useful as a doctor, even a bad one, for him to devote his time to anything else. There was no announcement—he went to bed to a world lit by dozens of standing construction lights, and woke up able to see the sky.
Imperium might be almost unfathomably large, but it wasn't large enough for the sky to turn blue. It was strange to see something yellow out his window, with scraggly uneven rock behind it instead of blue. The clouds almost made it seem as though he were looking at the real sky, if he squinted his eyes just so.
With that single improvement, life in Imperium was transformed. The "sun" might only be some complex spell, sustained with unicorn effort and Sunset to "raise" it, but ponies weren't meant for living in dark, cold places. The spell brought enough warmth that Jacob no longer used his blanket at night, and enough light that every part of the cave seemed almost lit with daylight. Only the pegasi complained, since it was in fact a gigantic fireball and amounted to a very serious hazard in the sky if not carefully avoided.
Other changes came more subtly. His body didn't get any worse, not since he stayed out of the most serious magical needs, but attitudes changed. Ponies that had been depressed and reserved opened up. Songs became more common, and struggling plants surviving only on magic alone drank in the light and spread. Only the most remote sections stayed dead for long, where the light from their fabricated sun didn't quite reach.
After a full month of expansion, what had been an empty cave with one structure was a growing town with over a dozen. Houses were last priority (since they were already inside anyway), but workshops, classrooms, and factories went up in a little circle around the capital building that quickly became known as the "industrial quarter". Much of the rest of the land area that didn't have tents on it was soon swaying with grain, and another week later Jacob got his first taste of not-emergency-rations.
Jacob was privately grateful they weren't being told about the war—and maybe a little grateful that he didn't even see Sunset more often than not. She may've been an ordinary unicorn before, by some definitions of normal. But that illusion was totally shattered now. As Celestia before her, her power literally caused the sun to rise in the morning and set in the evening. If ponies were trapped down here for many years, would she live for thousands of years as Celestia had done? Would she become as mythical to his descendants as Celestia had been to Equestria's ponies?
Jacob perfected his short-range teleportation after the first month, and used it to wander places he wasn't supposed to go. He enjoyed finding his way to the top of the capital just after sunrise, where he had an excellent vantage of the cave all around and could watch ponies as they rose.
Jacob could never tell if he was just imagining it, but it always felt warmer when he climbed up onto the building. Well, teleported up. He had become far more athletic since he had left his real life behind, a combination of hard work and a superb diet, but he doubted that would make much difference when he had no hands to climb with.
He usually wasn't interrupted—Eric was the only one who might've come looking for him, and he resisted any attempts to wake him before noon as though under the assault of a hostile army.
Yet the second week after the sun turned on, Jacob heard someone land on the platform behind him, and jerked so suddenly he nearly fell from the top. He sat on the edge of a wide dome, exactly far enough where he could brace his hooves on the ground and not slide down the curve. If he did start to fall, the chance of him being able to teleport before he hit the ground was very small.
He didn't fall, though his tail flicked around wildly and he whimpered in shock. Neither really helped him, though the pair of gentle hands that yanked on his shirt did. "You didn't see me coming?" Katie's voice, and her hands. Jacob recognized both. It did nothing to settle his racing heart, though no longer falling to his death helped.
"I was watching the ground," he answered, glancing back at her. "Most unicorns need line of sight, so I figured if anyone was going to catch me up here I'd see them coming."
Katie rolled her eyes. "The sky's above you, Jacob. A third of us can fly, and we're the ones more likely to notice someone sitting on a building who shouldn't."
Katie hadn't changed much in the last few weeks, except maybe to get prettier. Like Jacob himself, an extremely vigorous lifestyle and restrictive diet was improving her build and athleticism by the day, though she hadn't had as much ground to cover as he did. Like him, she hadn't become that much more pony over the two months. Stress and serious magical exertion seemed the most likely cause, and all of them had remained back in Imperium.
"I honestly didn't think of that." He chuckled. "Guess humans are all like that. That prison was a fortress from the outside, but they never thought we'd be able to just teleport behind everything and shut down their last defenses. Being a pony doesn't get rid of those strange ways of thinking."
Katie shivered. Clothing was quite scarce in Imperium, with what little they had usually reserved for those going topside. Katie had a single jumpsuit, which she had trimmed off sleeves and legs. The thin fabric hadn't been made to contain a half-pony, even if it would've been sized right for a human her height. "I'm glad I wasn't there. The stories they tell about the inside…"
"They're true," he said. "I've seen dogfighting dens on the news that were cleaner."
"It's a good thing we have Sunset." Katie set her head gently on his shoulder. He was a little more strongly built, though not as thick as even a female earth pony. Katie didn't complain. "What are you even doing up here?"
"Watching the morning." He didn't complain either. Katie was much more secure in high spaces, even her hooves seemed to grip better. "The farming ponies are already out there, coaxing their fields. Weather team's started… you probably came from there, huh?"
He didn't see her nod, but felt it against his shoulder. "There isn't much to do. Limited air volume, and right now the only really important thing is keeping the crops watered and ponies happy. They won't even notice I'm gone."
"Good." Katie didn't move away, not even when he set one hand gently around her waist. She only clung to him, bringing with her a little of her pegasus warmth. Pegasus ponies apparently ran a few degrees warmer than unicorns, which were just a little warmer than earth ponies. The difference was so subtle he had only learned it from the doctors. "About you having some time, I mean. Not about your work being boring."
She smiled, squeezing once. "I got it." She looked back out over the edge, down at the cave. It sloped very gently away from the capital on all sides, an effect only visible now that the whole thing was lit. It seemed almost as though they were at the peak of an incredibly gentle mountain, with a few squat buildings and then endless farmland beyond. While above them the sun wouldn't quite reach the edges of the cave, so looking ahead almost made it seem like they were outside.
"Do you think it's weird?" Katie asked, after ten minutes or so of near silence. "That… I mean…"
"Not weirder than anything else." He didn't make her finish. "I think it would be weirder if ponies were less like humans. If ponies spent their whole lives alone."
"No such thing as humans," she corrected. "Remember?"
That wasn't quite true. It was an easy oversimplification, the one her older sister favored reminding them every time she left on another mission. Jacob didn't like it, but he never would've told Katie so. "So it isn't weird."
"Guess not." She lowered her head back onto his shoulder, taking his hand. Without even meaning to, Jacob found his fingers weaving with hers. "Just don't tell Jackie, alright?"
"Don't tell Jackie wh—" she kissed him.
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Romantic tension will be in the air...
7542749 Indeed!
7542749
Yeah. When Jacob slips and falls.
Just read the new chapters and it seems I was closer to the truth then I thought when I compared this story to Mage the Ascension, so with that in mind, Starscribe was Mage one of the inspirations for this story?
Awwwww <3 yay for some romance!
So that was really sudden but I still really liked it? Nice job
I'm sorry, but what?
7543390 sadwhere
meaning giant squids crawled out of trees and decimated the local human population. thus making them sad.
God damn it. No offense to Katie, but she's just such a flat character compared to Harley. I mean, how much have those two actually interacted? Come on, man. This is a serious blow, but my Jacob x Harley ship still sails proud. Fuck canon.
Now, to talk.
What kind of arrogance fills these Equestrians? To just come in and "help" humanity. Feed their magic into the world and show them what they really are, ponies underneath the skin. Granted, that may not have been the original goal, but it certainly is now. Just erase who humans were and make them see the "truth." Fuck that, no matter if ponies breed true they're just as much human as they are pony. They've had thousands of years to integrate and grow alongside humans, adopting human customs and cultures, working together to forge ahead as a new species. Look how far they've come without magic, the wonders they've made. We're not perfect and we make mistakes, a lot of them, often with devastating consequences, but is that really a bad thing? We've done just as much good too. And they want to come in and say "sorry you were alone so long, why don't you come on back home?" Like everything would be okay. It's so arrogant to think that they're still your ponies after they've flourished for so long alone, working hand in hand with humanity to make a better future for themselves. They really should have left well enough alone. Even now many of the true ponies act as if this transformation is nothing major. Merely wayward refugees embracing their roots. As if being a human for all your life could just wash away. Not likely, the human identity is as strong as ever. You can see that in Jacob and Eric and the other humans. They don't want to forget or let go.
I dunno, perhaps not everyone thinks that way, and maybe that isn't the true intention of this little Equestrian excursion, but it seems to be so. It seems so horribly presumptuous. I still love this story and most everyone in it, but damn does it seem like Equestria could have left well enough alone.
Wait a minute... is this somehow related to TCB???
The Best way to end a chapter.
To be fair, they've given them a good couple of reasons so far even without a 3rd party pulling the strings.
7543888
Gonna have to mirror this opinion about the equestrians. All throughout the story they've been rubbing me the wrong way to the point where im feeling less and less like continuing to read this story. arrogance would be the word i've been looking for it seems.
Its characters like Harley that have kept me reading so far but things seem to be heading into a direction that's gonna leave a sour taste in my mouth at the end of this story. Still the characters and writing are solid for the most part so ill stick it out till the end.
The mental shifting of the transformed is also getting more noticeable and disturbing...
Any chance they'll pull a fire emblem fates revelations and side with neither side to fight the true enemy?
Silly stallion. The old life was the fake one.
D:
Poor Harley - I think she and Jacob have far better chemistry.