Act 3 Chapter 64 : At The Gates
‘I am Limerence Tome.’
‘My father was Don Tome, born Zenga Tome. He led the Archivists, the most powerful arcane artificers in all of Equestria.’
‘I have killed hardened criminals and delved into the deep places in the world, seeking artifacts that could end all life. I carry a necromancer in my sword and I have destroyed a bedeviling, parasitic dimension with only my wits. I am the last Archivist.’
‘I’m not going to be defeated by another sewer!’
----
Sadly, there is only so much a pony wearing a city’s worth of feces on their hooves can do to bolster confidence in their life choices. There was no telling what hideous, paralyzing diseases I was acquiring just being down in the dank dungeons beneath Detrot once more. How many times had I traversed them since finding myself fighting alongside Hard Boiled? I’m sure I’d lost count.
The flashlight attached to a band tucked into the front of my vest played over yet another intersection that looked more or less like every other, save the number etched into the ceiling. As convenient as using my horn for light might have been on any better day, I was still suffering the effects of magical exhaustion and didn’t want to push my luck. Besides, one never knows when one will need to permanently scar themselves for heroic purpose. Losing the ability to flush a public toilet without touching the handle was surely worth saving the world, no?
‘I shall give all four legs for a shower once this is over,’ I thought, glancing back at my retinue.
Three of the most dangerous ponies I’d ever met followed in my wake, each far too quiet for creatures with hooves.
Zeta, zebress from the Vivarium, strolled along behind me like she was out for a walk in the park. She wore a cheerful grin and enough bundles of rope to hogtie a small country. I hadn’t asked her along for my portion of our little adventure. She’d appeared in the bathroom of Supermax while I was relieving myself, somehow fully briefed on my intentions, and declared that she would be going along.
Behind her, Hard Boiled Senior, who was chewing the end of an unlit cigarette and seemed to be lost in thought. The blue lights in his eyes flashed and flickered, but he remained inscrutable as ever. He didn’t appear armed, but having heard something of his recent exploits that probably had no bearing on exactly how much firepower he was carrying.
Ancestor Sweetie Belle brought up the rear. Despite her advanced years, she seemed unbothered by the rough going or the quick pace. She’d abandoned her evening gown in lieu of a dozen gang sigils painted into her pale white fur that reminded me of toothed animals, preparing to pounce. Her wrinkles and delicate manner masked wiry muscles; there was not an inch of sag on her entire frame.
“We are almost there,” I called back to them, pointing down the left tunnel towards a ladder set into the wall. Above, a thin ray of red light filtered from what appeared to be a ponyhole cover.
“I don’t feel like being surprised up there. Miss Belle, you still have that life-scan spell we used when the dragons tried to take Mount Aris?” Hard Boiled Senior asked.
“Now that is one war crime I didn’t think I’d be committing again,” Ancestor Sweetie grumbled.
“Ahem, pardon? War crime? Do we need to stand back?” I inquired.
“No, you should be fine,” she answered, limbering her neck with a couple quick jerks of the chin. “It is a spell banned by the various concords. It very accurately detects life, but also incidentally increases that life’s chance of developing aggressive cancers by about twelve thousand percent over five years. Let us hope anypony with sense has evacuated the street above us.”
Before I could ask for a pair of lead pants, Ancestor Sweetie’s horn flashed a brilliant green, then seemed to tune back and forth across the arcane spectrum until it hit a particular note. A thin line of energy lashed out and brushed across the wall, arching across the roof before coming down the other side. Frowning, she let the magic fade.
“Well, that is most unhelpful,” she muttered.
“Do please elaborate?” I asked.
“There is life above us, in the loosest sense of the word. It is not equine life, nor does it resemble those vile mutations. It is also, so far as I can tell, entirely immobile.”
“Immobile?” Zeta inquired, cocking her head as she pulled a length of rope from her side and wound it around her foreleg a few times. “Why should that be special?”
“Immobile in the way statues are immobile, Miss Zeta. Life is never immobile. This particular life is not even breathing.”
“Mmm...it just gets better and better, doesn’t it? This wouldn’t perchance be coming from the opposite direction of that Pylon, would it?” Hard Boiled Senior asked, pulling the end of his cigarette out of his teeth and tucking it into a fold of his sleeve.
Ancestor Sweetie Belle shifted her weight from hoof to hoof. “None of us lead charmed lives, Egghead.”
“I died to get away from that nickname, ‘Miss Sweet Embrace’,” the skeleton muttered, turning toward the ladder. “I’m going by ‘Bones’ these days.”
“I suppose that suits you a little better.”
“No kidding. So how are we handling this? You want to do the ‘Omelette’ maneuver?”
Zeta rested her hip against the sewer wall, heedless of the slimy streak left on her leg. “The Omelette maneuver involves five ponies against a dragon, does it not? We do not even know what is above us. It may not be a dragon.”
The lights in Hard Boiled Senior’s eyes brightened, slightly. “You know that one? I thought that was a Crusader trick. We only pulled it off a couple times, but it was damned effective, particularly if you had a nice distraction.”
“My grandfather was at the defense of Manehattan,” Zeta said, softly. “He was your ‘distraction’ on that occasion.”
Ancestor Sweetie Belle perked up. “Really? Small world. What regiment was he in?”
“The Sixth Zebra Lighthooves,” Zeta replied, touching her forehead with a hoof then raising her eyes to the ceiling.
The elderly mare drooped like a sagging fern. “I’m sorry to hear. I remember some of the Lighthooves. Good sorts. If they hadn’t held the eastern flanks, we’d all be speaking draconic and digging gemstones out of slave mines.”
Lowering her head, Zeta put a hoof to her chest, covering her heart. “Mother told me he went to the Endless Veldt covered in a dragon’s blood. I find that doubtful, considering how many of the Lighthooves were incinerated, but I now work for a dragon, chasing Celestia’s mythical Crusaders into battle. We may follow grandfather in similar circumstances, no less. Fitting, I suppose. Father taught ponies to fight. Grandfather saved the kingdom. Maybe I will save the world. Life is full of little ironies and coincidences, no?”
“Of the moment, I am largely worried for what is at the top of this ladder and less for the possibility of immolation,” I mused, loosening my bladestaff in its sheath.
“I’ll check the street. There’s only so much more dead I can get,” Hard Boiled Senior said, nudging his way around me and starting up the ladder. At the top, he pressed the side of his skull against the ponyhole.
“Hear anything?” Zeta asked.
“What might be fire, but not close. Gunshots, but not close. It doesn’t sound like coordinated weapons use. More like one or two low skill handlers. I’d say some gangers getting in a dust up with each other. They’re wasting a lot of shots.”
“Not mine, then,” Ancestor Sweetie Belle added, tossing her beautifully kept mane from shoulder to shoulder, “I trained my gangers to pick flies out of the air.”
Wrenching the sewer cover open, Hard Boiled Senior poked his skull out, then clambered over the edge. “Clear up here. Road is empty. The fire is a couple blocks over. Looks like somepony had quite the party over there.”
Zeta shrugged and pulled a coil of rope from her ‘dress’, using it to wipe her hooves clean before clambering up the ladder behind Hard Boiled Senior. Pausing half-way up, she glanced down at me and asked, “Is it me or―to use a pony metaphor―are we having the red carpet rolled beneath our hooves?”
“There are dozens of pylons,” I reminded her. “We picked this one with a roll of the dice and a flip of two separate coins. If a trap awaits, it was there before we planned this attack.”
“It is simply that I cannot repress the sense that we are trespassing on abominable grounds,” she muttered, then hooked her hooves over the side of the hole and hauled herself out.
“Miss Belle? After you,” I said, holding out a leg and bowing my head, respectfully.
Ancestor Sweetie rolled her eyes and wiped her hooves on the brickwork. “Doesn’t a gentlecolt go first to draw the fire?”
“Not when I suspect the fire will have less effect on you than it will on me. I don’t have Crusader body modifications and I am withdrawing from a petal of black lotus and no less than three rounds of magical exhaustion in the span of three weeks.”
“How are you still standing, colt?” Ancestor Sweetie asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Earlier, I chewed off part of my sword’s occupant for magical energy and cast a spell to shunt my discomfort into the blade. If he could, he’d be vomiting blood right now. As it is, his pain will be a good lesson against the use of magical substances on unwilling ponies. May we proceed?”
The ancient unicorn’s eye twitched in that fashion I’d long ago become used to when I told the truth. Of course, it might have been more convenient had I any concept of how to properly lie, but until recently I’d little need for social dishonesty. Books and artifacts are rarely discombobulated or affected by cognitive dissonance.
“Remind me never to ask what you do for fun, Mister Tome,” she said, at last, then hauled herself up the ladder into the light.
Unhitching my sword, I cracked the sheath for a moment and stared down into the distinctly green face of my brother. His defiant gaze met mine briefly before he yanked his head to one side and disappeared from view. I felt the blade vibrate in my hooves for a moment.
Returning a moment later, Zefu mouthed the words, ‘Brother, this is cruel!’
“Indeed, and I confess to enjoying every moment. When you feel the need to apologize and I believe you mean it, I’ll deal with my own withdrawal. Until then, I hope you can manifest yourself a bucket and sponge.”
Snapping the sword back into its sheath, I followed Ancestor Sweetie up the ladder, heaving myself out with a sigh of relief.
Unfortunately, my relief was short lived. The sweaty heat and vile odors were replaced with thick, choking smoke that blew down the deserted street on a frigid wind, carrying alternating blasts of warmth and cold. Now that I was on the surface, I could make out the ongoing gunfight somewhere in the distance.
The road we’d emerged on was a single row of disused apartments with stores along the bottom. It was an unpleasant architectural trend which somepony on the city council decided would rejuvenate sectors of the economy which nopony asked to have rejuvenated; namely the ‘coffee shop which charges for everything including ice’ and the ‘boutique spa which never seems to have any customers yet survives, regardless’. Most of the bottom floor shops were thoroughly looted, though the single connoisseur cheese emporium which only had a few extremely stinky pieces of cheese kept under glass was seemingly intact.
Our Shield Pylon of happenstance stuck up in the middle of the row like a blackened limb, jutting up three stories into the air to just below the roofline. The structure sloped away from the street and was made of something glossy-black like obsidian. A pair of doors comprised of two slabs of grey marble fitted so tightly together they appeared to be a single piece matched the slope of the building, sitting a few meters back from the road. No sidewalk ran up to them and the only sign they were ever opened was a thin rut of trampled, browning grass across a short lawn.
One might think that having one of the wretched things on one’s street would badly affect property values, but a fluke of Detrotian psychology tended to simply put the pylons out of the mind. Though, considering Hard Boiled’s recent revelations regarding Starlight Tower―the perfectly harmless construction site in the center of the city which could, in no way, be a source of our problems―it was possible there was another mechanism at work.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to a pylon before,” Zeta mused.
“I have stood this close, but things which are there for a person’s entire lifespan without proving dangerous tend to warrant less consideration,” I replied, scratching at my chin.
“These things were still being built when I went into the darkness,” Hard Boiled Senior murmured, tilting his skull back to look at the towering edifice. “There were only a few dozen of them back then. Enough to keep the city from getting hit by a major dragon strike, but you’d still get a hydra or two wandering up to the borders back then.”
“Miss Sparkle’s hoofprints are all over this,” Sweetie muttered irritably, sweeping her pale pink tail around her thigh. “Always so well meaning and always had her nose stuck too deep in a book or wrapped up in the lives of her students to keep track of all of her creations.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
Sighing softly, Sweetie Belle gave me a slightly sad look. At least, I believe it was sad. I’ve never been particularly good at reading expressions.
“Twilight Sparkle is a good pony, Mister Tome,” she began, “Make no mistake, she’s one of the best. That being said―”
“She’s as dumb as a smart person can get,” Hard Boiled Senior said, flicking his ancient lighter out and spinning it around his hoof before applying a thin flame to the end of the cigarette still clenched in his mouth. “Somepony brings her an idea like this Shield network and she looks at what they show her. They say ‘Ah, grand advantages! Magnificent outcomes!’ and she says ‘Let me write you a check. Send me your theories and I’ll do a few inspections, then turn it over to somepony else to manage’. If you were lucky, you ended up with one of her friends.”
“And if you’re not lucky?” I asked.
“If you are not lucky, you are on the outskirts of Equestria in a major metropolitan area with only the easily bribed or coerced local officials for oversight,” Zeta said, shaking the kinks out of her shoulders and thighs, one at a time.
“The Shield Corporation existed to maintain these things, but I suppose it’s obvious they’ve been corrupted since the beginning,” Ancestor Sweetie grumbled, trotting forward a couple steps to the edge of the curb. Lighting her horn, she played a gently pulsing ray of energy across the doors. “Oh ponyfeathers. That’s cheating!”
Taking a deep breath to resolve my badly jangled nerves, I pushed a breath of magic through my horn. The pain had subsided somewhat since my recent nap, but it still felt as though somepony had filled my cerebrum with a hundred ball bearings before an impromptu ride in a tumble drier. Even the magic stolen from my brother’s prison only slightly reduced the agony.
I’d often thought father’s arcane endurance training a waste of time and ceased it the instant he’d given me lease over my own administration. What good was attempting to hold up a waterfall until my nose bled? Part of me thought it sadistic, but ever did I try to please him in those days. More’s the pity I didn’t spend more time under waterfalls. It was an oversight I intended to correct, if I lived another week.
My simple scan spell passed over the pylon and a blazing shape took form within my mind, as though a spider were building a web of light behind my eyelids. Examining the spell confirmed more or less what I’d suspected: a shield of some kind encased the building, though with a magical matrix so tightly woven I couldn’t see a single thread to pick for a counterspell. The structure was incredibly complex and cleverly assembled.
“Thoughts?” I asked Sweetie Belle.
“Somepony with too much time on their hooves wrote this one,” she replied. “You see the way the power distribution is sitting crossways on the Planck scale five-simplex monitor?”
I nodded, trotting onto the grass to wipe my feet. “Very stable and requires almost no energy to maintain. Were it not an instrument of our demise, it might be revolutionary.”
Hard Boiled Senior tapped his forehead. “At risk of sounding like my grandson, ya’ll want to clue the rest of us? I don’t care for being left out of the ‘horn-waver loop’ any more than I did when I was still squishy.”
“Being the first of the truly living dead I have personally met, I find it strange to say we have something in common,” Zeta added.
“You met my grandson. Doesn’t he count?”
“Ah...I suppose so,” she answered, thoughtfully, before turning back to the pylon. “Still, leaving that aside, what magics do we face?”
“Fussy ones,” Sweetie explained, scratching at the base of her horn. “This would take a hundred unicorns to cast and one foal to keep powered. It could probably take a whole division worth of War Scooter blasts without budging. Genius stuff. Mister Limerence, I believe this is your ballpark.”
“Much as I would give an eye to study this at length―” I began.
“Colt, you already gave an ear,” Hard Boiled Senior murmured in the back of my mind, “You sure you want to say things like that out loud?”
“I see where your grandson got the irritating tendency to take my turns of phrase literally for his own amusement. As I was saying, we are short of time.”
Plucking the strange key-ring Hard Boiled had absconded with during his attack on the Family’s mansion out of my bandolier, I sorted through the various keys until I found the one Miss Swift had pointed me to. It was a beautifully crafted thing of some substance I couldn’t readily identify with a crystal mounted in the tip that changed color as one looked at it from different angles. Every spell I’d cast on it seemed to slide off like water from the back of a proverbial duck.
“A key? You have a key to the pylons?” Zeta asked, raising one eyebrow.
“There’s a story that would give you nightmares, Miss Zeta,” I answered, then turned to Sweetie Belle. “Do you mind? I don’t want to get closer than I have to and that shield seems to be of a subtly variable size.”
The Aroyo Ancestor smirked as her horn flickered and the keyring lifted out of my hooves, drifting across the distance to hang in front of the door.
“Where’s the hole?” she asked.
Before I could respond, a brilliant slash of light arched down from the heavy doors and ran back and forth over the key. It began to glow internally, before suddenly flaring and leaping out of Ancestor Belle’s magical grasp. Dangling in front of the portal, the key left off a low hum which was echoed a second later by a resounding tone from within the pylon.
Silent machinery engaged and the doors sank into a recess, then pulled back from one another, revealing an unlit hole that seemed to draw in and devour what little luminance reached the shadowy street.
Somewhere nearby, the gunfire started again in earnest as the four of us waited for whichever would get brave first. With a certain pride, I took a step only for everypony else to take the same step forward. We all glanced at one another. Sweetie Belle and Zeta smiled and Hard Boiled Senior shifted his chin in a way that suggested he might have rolled his eyes.
“Well, at least there are no cowards here,” I murmured, snatching the key up off the pavement where it’d fallen when the magical field released it.
“No cowards, and nopony smart enough to walk away,” Zeta added.
“I’ll take the dumb brave ones over the smart cowards. I’ve worked with cowards. They have a way of getting everypony around them killed and dying last,” Hard Boiled Senior said, trotting up to the opening and waving a hoof back and forth across it before cautiously sticking his leg through into the unlit hole.
“A positive result! I do so love when an experiment proves fruitful!” I exclaimed.
“Wait...you didn’t know that was going to work?” Hard Boiled Senior demanded.
“As you have repeatedly opined, you can only get so much more dead,” I replied, trotting over to peer through into the pylon. From somewhere ahead, I thought I could make out a flicker of light, but between the smoke and general dim atmosphere it might have been a flight of fancy.
“I think a shield might be prudent,” Ancestor Belle said, flicking her horn in our direction. A subtle bubble of glistening energy surrounded us, forming to the contours of my body. “That will stop bullets, but it’s permeable to slow moving objects. If someone gets in close, we will have to fight hoof to hoof.”
“That is fine with me,” Zeta chuckled, hitching a rope between her front legs. “I like an intimate approach.”
Hard Boiled Senior pulled his golden lighter out of his front pocket, flicked it open, and pressed some sort of button on the side. The flame that leapt up from it burned far too brilliantly for such a tiny device. It was almost as good as a proper lantern. Lifting the lighter above his head, he quickly scanned the interior of the pylon, no doubt looking for traps.
“Oh! You still have that old thing?” Ancestor Belle asked, cocking her head.
“It was all I had to see by for thirty years,” the skeleton replied. “If I see her, I’ve got to thank Princess Sparkle for overbuilding her birthday gift.”
“If the rest of us Crusaders ever get to sit down for tea with her high booky-ness again, I’m sure she’ll be glad to upgrade it. We’re fairly sure some of the others are still alive, somewhere, despite the reports. I can’t imagine something managed to kill Babs Seed.”
“If a full size dragon falling on her didn’t do the job, I tend to agree. Let’s get this over with. I’d rather not miss the actual fighting because we were playing hide and seek.”
With that, he turned and marched into the black recesses of the shield pylon.
----
It is a strange truth that, despite the dangerous natures of the characters I’d recruited into my venture, I wanted more than anything to be alongside Hard Boiled Junior. It wasn’t so much that I thought his mission to be safer than ours. On the contrary, I expected him to die again and need several hours or days attached to the city power grid.
Largely, I desired his company because he’d brought me back alive, again and again, when the odds dictated I die. How many times did we all walk away, when every one of us should have been buried? The loss of an ear was an inconvenience, but for a pony whose life was dictated by the desire for silence and calm, it was an acceptable loss in service of a greater good.
----
The hall was featureless, slate grey stone which all appeared to have been cut from a single piece, though a certain amount of magic could easily cover up any maker’s marks. It rose only a pony length above my head to a sheer, blank ceiling the same color as the floor and walls. Hard Boiled Senior took point and I followed along with Zeta behind me and Ancestor Belle bringing up the rear.
As I trotted along with one hoof on the cool wall, trying to keep my mind focused on the task ahead, I began to feel an odd sense of disquiet. It took a long moment to place the sensation and when I did, my stomach tightened into a knot. I stopped where I was, putting a hoof to my forehead.
“Something wrong, colt?” Hard Boiled Senior asked, pausing to look back over one shoulder.
“Only insofar as I worry we have disobeyed a few of the major rules of geometry. Tell me...how large is a Shield Pylon?”
Ancestor Belle trotted up beside me and traced a square on the floor with the tip of her hoof. “As far as I know, they’re all half a hoofball field front to back and side to side. There’s one in the Skids the foals used to use as the border for games.”
“I...feel we have traveled farther than that,” Zeta said, nervously.
Looking back the way we’d come, I pointed into the darkness. “We have traveled in a straight line.”
It took her a moment, but Ancestor Belle caught on first. “Did the door close behind us?”
“I don’t believe so. Feel the air in your fur. It’s still moving that way.”
“He’s right,” Zeta whispered, bringing her rope up and resting a line of it against the wall in two places as far apart as she could with her outstretched hooves. “Yet, look! This is flat. We must have―”
“We didn’t,” I said, firmly. “Miss Belle, could you perchance use your ‘life’ finding spell, again?”
Throwing out her chest, Ancestor Belle turned to the opposite wall. “Alright. Stay behind me if you value your genetic code.”
Zeta and I edged up against the wall behind the elderly mare and her magic lanced out against the wall, a green line flicking back and forth several times in quick succession. Her expression darkened as she expanded the line a little farther. Finally, she let the magic fade, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead.
“I take it we are surrounded, then?” I asked.
“I haven’t renewed my anti-invasive mind-magic spells in a few years, but I know―” Sweetie started angrily, but I interrupted before she could get too riled.
“I did not read your mind. I can barely lift my weapons right now, much less a working like that. It was simple extrapolation. Mister Hard Boiled...are you perchance feeling odd?”
The skeleton gave his neck a shaky rattle and nodded. “Now you mention it, since we stepped in here my whole body is aquiver. A bit like a particularly nasty burrito on the way out. That’s one biological process I ain’t missin’, let me say.”
“But...I smell nothing alive other than the four of us!” Zeta exclaimed.
“Maybe you better explain what you think is going on, Mister Tome,” Ancestor Belle said.
I nodded. “Miss Zeta, would you object to running as quickly in that direction as you possibly can?” I gestured at the hall.
“Will I not hit the back wall?”
“Indulge me. If you do, I shall purchase you a popsicle and pay for any damage to your nose out of my own pocket.”
Zeta narrowed her eyes, then pulled her own flashlight out from amongst her apparently endless supply of rope. Flicking it on, she galloped off faster than I could ever have hoped to follow. After a moment, her rapidly retreating form and the light’s beam were swallowed up by the impenetrable dark.
“Mercy, that filly can run,” Hard Boiled Senior nickered, settling against the wall.
“Zebra yogic body meditations can do things to the musculature that have to be seen to be believed,” Sweetie explained, giving the cord sticking out of her neck a gentle tug. “I wondered why we were taking a sex worker into this fight. Now I think I know.”
“Miss Zeta was with Hardy during his battle with the King of Ace,” I said, turning to face where the entrance should have been. “She disabled a Jeweler Red-hoof in single combat without killing her and without the mare landing so much as a love tap. Ah! Here we go!”
Coming at speed down the end of the hallway from which she’d left, Miss Zeta skidded into sight, stopping just shy of running me down. She shot a quizzical look over her shoulder, then turned back to the three of us. “I...I ran in a straight line!”
“Yes, you did,” I replied, sitting down and leaning against the wall. “We are in what is loosely referred to as ‘Mobia’s trip’.”
“Oh...I remember this story,” Ancestor Belle commented.
“Really? I thought it an obscure historical piece.”
“Well, I guess it is, but I took a class in exo-dimensional research in college. About the only thing I do remember is that story. Our professor liked to tell us ‘safety first, unless you want to go on Mobia’s Trip.”
“Sorry, I must have missed that course,” Hard Boiled said, “Mind enlightening me?”
“Err...let me see if I remember it correctly,” Ancestor Belle’s forehead - already wrinkled - gained a few new chasms as she stared off into her memories. “Two centuries ago, a unicorn named Mobia figured out a way to put more space inside something than existed outside. She ended up trapped inside an old chest for almost three months, surviving off food and water conjured into the space by her assistant. She finally got out by weaving her mane into a string and teleporting one end into real space, then following it out.”
“Mmm...a sanitized version, though it does have a seed of truth,” I explained. “In actuality, her assistant finally went into the trip and discovered her dead body covered in a massive heap of rotten food. She had expired from a heart attack minutes after entering, her life’s work brought to nothing. Worse, because pocket dimensions cost a thousandth the power of ‘Mobia’s Trip’ to create, her sacrifice only proved an amusing historical anecdote on the follies of single-minded pursuits.”
“Yikes. I liked my version better...”
I closed my eyes for a moment and exhaled. “History is often messier than the kind narratives we tell our children. My brother and I once spent an afternoon trapped inside an endlessly looping closet. My father’s ‘lessons’ tended toward either the amusing or the hideously traumatic, depending on how firmly he wished to fix them in our minds. Regardless, it does suggest a course of action.”
“So, what is it, then? How do we make our escape?” Zeta asked.
I gestured to Ancestor Sweetie Belle. “Can you teleport?”
She slowly shook her head. “I can teleport other things, if you don’t have much care for where they end up. If you want it in a specific location...no. A steel plate into the general area of a dragon’s intestines is a nice big target, but I’ve never ported myself. Call it a ten meter margin of error.”
“That...does complicate our situation considerably, then,” I muttered. “I haven’t the power for a teleportation, though I do know the theory. If I manage it, I’ll be too exhausted to alter the spell core at the center of this pylon. Leaving the trip does us no good if we appear in a wall. Or the ground. Or ten meters in the air.”
“We’re stuck, then?” Hard Boiled Senior asked.
“No...no, not stuck. A moment to think. I...mmm...” I paced back and forth a couple meters, mulling over our options. “We...we must create an internal paradox. Mobia’s trip is a single spatial surface looped upon itself. For it to exist, we must be...points along its interior. If it ceases to contain points and instead contains an intersecting plane―”
“Colt, you’re babbling in ‘brainy pony’ talk to a bunch of people whose resumes are largely made up of skills related to violence,” he interrupted, putting a hoof on my chest. “Go back and reorder this for the dummies in the audience.”
I got back to my hooves, forcing my racing thoughts to slow down. It is an obnoxious reality that my years in the Archive frequently left me ill prepared to deal with the vast majority of ponies. My brother was the diplomat. I am a scholar, through and through, but that left me spare a weight of whatever grey matter makes small talk.
Most of all I regret that years bent over books or delving into ruins left me without the part of the brain that can simplify a theory without sounding like a patronizing prig. I truly do not mean to come off in that fashion, but it is out of my control.
“Mobia’s Trip is a big mathematical thingy that somepony sticks in a box and pumps a bunch of magic into until it warps the space into a scary loop. To get out, we have to make the loop think it shouldn’t exist.”
Hard Boiled Senior slowly nodded. “What worries me is I can tell you weren’t trying to sound like an ass there.”
“I have not had the chance to check, but I suspect a congenital brain defect which makes me ruinously impolite when trying to speak simply. It does make ordering a pizza quite the trial. Either way, does my explanation make sense?”
Zeta shook her head and tugged at her rope dress. “Not a bit, but I have been patronized by ponies far more irritating than you, though I was being paid to beat them until they could no longer use their mouths to be snarky and we don’t have time. What must we do?”
I rubbed at my own temple. I’d had a headache for almost a week solid, such that it was becoming all too familiar. If successful, I’d promised myself a month’s recuperation where somepony else could follow me about flogging their horn to exhaustion.
“I believe if we could create a connected series of contiguous points in space which prove there is no way the trip could exist, we might cause it to collapse. Magics like this merely allow reality to lie to itself. Force an existential confrontation upon the system and it will eventually require more energy to maintain than dispel.”
“A series of contiguous points?” Ancestor Belle prompted.
“If my horn were operating, I do have a string generating spell that might work. Outside of that, unless one of us happens to have a length of―”
I trailed off as Zeta cleared her throat. Looking down, she ran a hoof over her dress and did a little curtsy. “I have cord enough to bind the world right here, Mister Tome. Would you like me to get undressed?”
“Far be it for me to ask a mare to dis-rope, Ma’am.”
Hard Boiled Senior’s hoof clapped me on the back of the head hard enough to rattle my teeth.
“Tell another pun like that in my presence, colt, and I will gag you until the sun shines again,” he growled.
Rubbing the little knot he’d left, I gestured for Zeta to continue. “If you please, Ma’am?”
For a zebra I’d just seen move faster than the eye could follow, Zeta managed to slip out of her dress much more slowly and with a great deal more tail flicking, hip wiggling, and mane tossing than was strictly necessary. Beneath it she wore a set of lacy lingerie with belts and bobs that spoke to a raft of potential sins and fit her shockingly muscular form in a way that would have set a lesser stallion’s heart racing. The thin, black fabric matched her stripes in an alternating pattern which suggested custom tailoring.
“Ahem...Are you gentlecolts done staring?” Ancestor Belle commented, hotly.
“If I did not wish them to look, I would not show off in this fashion,” Zeta purred, stepping back from the dress and dropping it at her hooves. “Besides, what is the point of girding myself for exciting action if my armor never sees combat? Durability and shielding spells on lace are quite expensive.”
I swallowed a muzzle full of saliva and began the arduous task of wiping as many hormones out of my neural pathways as possible. Unfortunately, the first thing my mind latched onto was the interesting ontological question most recently presented.
“Y-you enchanted your underwear? I thought your condition would prevent you from enjoying―”
Zeta giggled, covering her mouth with a hoof and winking at me coyly over top of it. “My ‘condition’ as you call it is one of nerves misfiring. The pain is immense, but that simply makes the little pleasures I take all the more important. That includes sex. Besides, a mare never knows what situations she’ll find herself in, particularly in my line of work. Best be prepared, whether in bedroom or on battlefield.”
Hard Boiled Senior leaned sideways to look at Ancestor Belle who was practically seething. “Is that envy I smell, Sweetie?”
“Yes, it is, and you best not forget I can still take you in a fight while you’re being all glib about it,” the elderly mare hissed before snatching up the rope dress in one hoof and shoving it in my direction. “If we survive, I am taking Apple Bloom up on her offer to restore certain parts of me to a more pristine and less...wrinkled...condition. Now, get us out of this mess, Mister Smart Pony.”
Picking up the dress I quickly breathed through my mouth before the intense scent of Zeta’s perfume could make it any more difficult to think. “Ah, yes. Agreed. Miss Zeta, we need a straight length, as long as possible.”
Unwinding the various ropes, Zeta quickly began tying them together with a speed and dexterity that matched even the deftest unicorns. There were even a few knots I’d never seen before. She seemed to waste absolutely no cordage as she wound them one after another, into a single coil. In a matter of minutes, it was done. The heap of rope was considerably deeper than I’d thought it would be.
“Excellent!” I said, picking up one end and holding it out. “Now then. Miss Zeta, will you take this and and...Mister Bones, the other? I need you to run in opposite directions and meet back here.”
Zeta pursed her lips in thought. “Will that not just tie a...wait...no, it is a loop...except it is on flat ground. Eh...” She let the unspoken questions hang in the air for a moment, then shook her head. “I live with a permanent headache that has driven most sufferers to suicide. This has not improved it.”
“Truly. As traps go, it would have been effective in delaying all but the most canny of creatures. Shall we get out of it?”
Zeta and Hard Boiled Senior picked up their respective ends of the rope and trotted off into the dark, vanishing a moment later into the distant shadows.
“I’ve been letting myself get lax,” Ancestor Belle muttered.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I spent a couple decades out of action and walked straight into a trap I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to escape from,” she said, giving the black floor an angry stomp. “I pictured retirement having fewer dangers than the war, not more. At least when I was in battle against the Dragon King, it was against ten tons of angry lizard, rather than conniving madponies and their pet over-educated arcanists set out to come up with the worst possible ways to kill us.”
I couldn’t quite repress a smirk of amusement. “I do believe, Ancestor Belle, that your problem may be that you don’t like the way the arcanists being on both sides levels the playing field.”
“This playing field doesn’t feel real level. It feels like somepony carted a whole heap of dragons, psychos, and magic weapons over to the baddies’ side before the starting bell, then poisoned the ref.”
“An unfortunately apt analogy,” I replied, then raised one ear as hoofsteps clattered from both ends of our little prison. Zeta galloped into sight first, followed a second later by Hard Boiled Senior, ropes clutched in their teeth. “Welcome back! Now, pass each other right here in front of me, then cross the ropes together!”
Bobbing their heads, they both adjusted their speeds to match, slowing to a walk as they moved closer to one another.
Ancestor Belle cocked her head in my direction and whispered, “Are you sure this is safe?”
“I was released from my last time in Mobia’s Trip. Do you genuinely want to know if I think collapsing a geometrically impossible manifold spatial anomaly from the inside is safe?”
“Now you mention it? No.”
Zeta and Hard Boiled Senior hesitated only a moment before meeting in the middle. The skeleton held out his rope as the zebra braced herself as they met. I tried to will my stomach to sit very, very quietly through what I felt sure must be coming.
The second the cords touched, there was a sound like several dozen large gastropods having a wrestling match in a dog pool full to brimming with scrambled eggs. A violent wind picked up, yanking my mane over my face and very nearly lifting me off my hooves. A sound like the whistle of air over the mouth of a bottle, amplified a thousand times set my bones quivering in their joints.
With a wet pop, followed by the smell of burning ozone, all the flesh on my body jerked a half inch to the left as the rope leading off into the dark seemed to draw in upon itself, both ends yanking together into a tiny clump on the floor only slightly larger than two hooves held side by side. Then, it was done.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well! We are not dead,” Zeta murmured, looking towards the end of the hallway which was just ahead of us. Another closed stone double door sat there, leading into what I presumed was the inner chamber. Behind, the pylon’s outer was still open to the street, letting in a trickle of smoke and air.
Picking up the clump of rope which was too tightly wound to even see the individual strands anymore, I presented it to the zebress. “Your garments, Ma’am.”
Glaring at the knot, she gave it a light picking with the tip of a hoof, then snorted irritably. “Is this a joke?”
“No, but...I believe your clothes no longer exist exclusively in three dimensions. On the upside, it is a knot that is impossible to unwind without time travel. In your profession, it may make an interesting conversation piece.”
Hard Boiled Senior shuffled his hooves, his spine humping slightly like a nervous cat’s. “Colt, I don’t like being in here. Can we pick up the pace? Something feels familiar and anything that feels familiar to me is bound to be nasty.”
I drew a short blade, tucking it under my leg in a ready position before pointing towards the sealed doors. “The core should be through there. I selected you all for stealth, but if it does not avail us I did bring this along, should we need to make a sudden escape.” Reaching under my bandolier, I plucked out a brilliant pink stick with a purple cap covered in swirling stars.
“Luna’s Stars, colt! That’s arcanite tricobalt!” Hard Boiled Senior yelped, backing away several steps until his hips hit the wall with a thump. Ancestor Belle was right beside him a half second later. “Were you carrying that on you this whole time?!”
“Obviously. The last of my father’s supply, unfortunately, but I do have the recipe if ever I can find the ingredients again.”
“Arcanite tri-what now?” Zeta asked, curiously.
“A magical bomb,” I replied, balancing the stick on the tip of my hoof. Zeta hit the wall with her flanks the second the words left my muzzle. I let out an exasperated snort. “Oh do be calm! It is stable enough! Simply a precaution! I don’t intend to use it unless I must!”
“If there’s one thing I learned being a Crusader, it’s that ponies with bombs always find an excuse to use them,” Ancestor Belle grumbled. “Explosives were Apple Bloom’s thing. I still have my hearing. She’d be deaf as a post if those were her original ears.”
“Unless you wish me to leave this outside for somepony to find, I believe we are better off having it than not,” I said, slipping the explosive device back into its hiding place. Fishing out the pylon key, I nodded at the door. “If you would order for expeditious ingress?”
The three of them stared at me blankly. Pulling a face, I trotted over and leaned against the wall.
“Stack up?”
Hard Boiled Senior and Ancestor Belle immediately darted over to the door and pressed against either side as Zeta snatched a knife out of my bandolier, clenching it in her teeth. I internally promised myself I’d learn a spell to make myself temporarily stupider at some point, if only to make my relationships easier. Hard Boiled Junior’s route of drinking himself insensate made more and more sense of late.
Raising the key, I braced to rush in. The crystal tip let off a flicker of light.
Somewhere underneath our hooves, some great mechanism whined like a sad animal. A sudden scalding-hot blast of steam rushed out of the opening portal, almost singeing my muzzle. I danced backwards, almost bumping into Zeta, who was quick enough on her hooves to get out of the way.
The door clanked all the way open and an instant later a furnace-like wave of boiling hot air rolled over us. I took one breath of the searing air before gagging on the stink of roasted flesh filling my nostrils. A leg thrown hastily over my nose did little to alleviate my discomfort. I ruefully regretted not bringing some mint oil; after our adventures in the Office, that should have been standard kit.
Harsh blue light spilled through the opening, bathing us in a sharply contrasting glow that rendered everything in shadows and shine. We waited, those of us with noses holding them, as the vile miasma cleared and a few lungfuls of fresh air reached us from the distant entrance. The heat was still nigh unbearable, but no longer threatening to scorch us alive.
Carefully leaning out, Hard Boiled Senior edged his face around the corner then quickly jerked it back.
“Oh, bugger.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s...uh...there’s a fire. I think it might be a pony.”
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Hehehe, oh hehehe. I like Limerence so much at times, and here he is in magnificent form.
Snark, jokes, and someone on a way to as normal as he may one day hope to see such as from such trauma.
And he plays off things so well. Poor guy, but a proper scary sort too.
...
Did they trap the Warden and finally have her reach her critical saturation levels?
Thats a really nasty trap to use, fully keeping with the style, and with the description of the remaining rope being similar to that of the spell work in the pylon, the shield spell was applied to a sheet or equivalent, then a Mobius spell cast, then the sheet placed so the collapse of the Mobius formed the actual Pylon shield?
Zeta needs a Calcium channel blocker?
Starcore pony is Celestia stellar style, Twilights Rapidash style, or willing or unwilling trapped forced and tortured because of the construction of the spell needing to lead to the Other Side in order to be able to corrupt reality the way it does?
Somehow I dont think a bucket of water is going to help here, not sure if a direct dump by city mains would short anything or the effect of water distort reality itself to mess the spells up. I mean, its theoretically possible to use water with fibreoptics to build a wetware processor, but thats just runtime. Flood it or dry it and the processing in detail fails, but the firmware is still there. Just need to gunk it up a bit.
Looks like Limerace is going to have to stick it in again and Red Adair this guy?.
Oooh, I wonder if this pony is like the warden in some way.
9743628
Heh, no, but that might have been cool.
9743649
Heeee! I can't wait to show you what is actually going on.
-Chessie
9743926
This right here is why I live in fear of, and cannot wait for, each and every new update for this experience.
9744087
Is it really so horrific? I do my best to keep it awful, but I don't want to over-do it with you guys.
-Chessie
Must. Have. MOAR!!!1!
9744126
Have you heard the tales from the original run of Doctor Who of people watching the show from behind the couch because they were too scared to look but too enthralled to look away?
You instill a very similar feeling in me whenever I see a Starlight Over Detrot chapter show up in my feed.
Keep up the good work, the end is near, but it is always darkest just before dawn.
Limerence may use that bomb, proving Bones' statement.
"See? I told you that you were going to use it!"
"Yes yes yes, I will buy you a carton of cigarettes. Please be more quiet. My head is still ringing."
9744126
I have no problem with this story.
9743926
This is one of the things I love about this story; it keeps me guessing, and I'm never disappointed in the reveal!
Also loved this from Limerace's POV!
Okay, I have a major problem here:
Yeah, no shit, what did you expect her to do?
Of course not! Of course she was going to take on the project. Also, she's a Princess, of course she is going to delegate the management of projects to others. Maybe you think she didn't do enough background checking on the ponies she assigned to this? You think that would've mattered? You know how meticulous the Family are, you think they weren't prepared for that? Twilight had ponies working for her for decades that ended up betraying her, background checks, inspections, more oversight, none of it would have made a difference and you know it. To try and pin even a little of the blame on Twilight because she might be a bit too trusting, is complete bullshit.
"Hmm this Shield seems like a good idea, I know Detrot has a huge megafauna problem so it'll probably save lives. Buuuut, I think there is too much risk that a Multi-generational crime syndicate family could hijack the project and turn it into a spell matrix more dangerous than any Equestria has seen before. Sooo, I'm going to have to pass."
Really?
9745563 Welcome to Detrot.
It's not a very fair place, sometimes, and old friends grow resentful. Bones has more reason to resent Twilight than most. He was in a hole for thirty years and hasn't seen her since then. She didn't try to reassemble the Crusaders, nor listen to his fears about the dragons when the treaty was signed. She asked for his weapon and his silence.
She's saved Equestria many, many times, but to him - and he is a bit of a simple pony - she's the pony who wrote him (possibly the greatest hero of the Crusades) out of history and left him to rot in a cave for the sake of diplomacy.
-Chessie
9745690 Okay, fair enough, doesn't really excuse Sweetie Belle though. Also, I doubt she knew he was in that hole for thirty years. And she also wrote herself out of history, hell she wrote herself out of living memory entirely, though he may not know that I suppose.
9745710
Where Sweetie Belle is concerned, what she saw was Twilight Sparkle being willing to disassemble the greatest weapons of war Equestria had ever designed for the sake of a peace agreement, rather than using them to make sure the agreement stayed in place.
The CMC gave their bodies and minds to the war effort and rather than defeating the dragons, Twilight showed mercy. Unfortunately, she also made a gesture of goodwill (the disassembly of the Crusaders) hoping to turn the dragons into friends. Those decisions are now costing Equestria considerably.
Twilight - at least at the time - was more innocent than 30-year-on drunken Twilight who learned a lot of lessons in between.
-Chessie
9745718 Yeah, that's diplomacy for you. Would Sweetie have rathered the war go on until they commited genocide?
Also, that doesn't the fact that Twilight's decisions in regard to the Shield were perfectly reasonable and logical.
Limerence is probably my favourite character, and remains so.
If I didn't know any better I'd say Lim has a Zebra fetish, but Zeta is also probably just that sexy.
Now, flaming pony brings most minds directly to "warden", but if not for the fact that she was the only pony ever described as a pony shaped flame I would say it's impossible. Still unlikely, but it seemed to be lying in wait.
Is it something else? The result of collapsing the spell? Some sort of avatar of the living statues that Swetie Belle sensed? Chances are, it's probably the result of another tortured soul(s) used up when making this pylon nonsense.
9745735
True. Something being perfectly feasible and logical doesn't change old resentments, though. Sweetie and Bones have their own feelings. They aren't necessarily right or correct.
-Chessie
9745899
Considering he had a Zebra family it would be quite understandable for him to be attracted to one as much as a Pony... and Zeta is a very interesting example of her tribe.
9745718
9745710
This is a hard situation. Bones may feel very much betrayed by Twilight and everyone else who left him to spend years in a pylon. He will soon find she betrayed herself just as much when she did not just 'sweep' herself under a rug of bureaucratic paperwork like she did the Crusaders and the Ancestors, she actually completely wrote herself out of all living memory and has since paid quite a price for her wishful thinking on the Dragon Peace front. Her erasure of herself would also change History's notes on all of the Bearers. This means that the sisters and mentor that the Ancestors would have looked up to likely suddenly became ponies of less note to History hence their deeper sense of betrayal. This harm to and loss of her friends and the way their memories have been reshaped to remove her from history combined with seeing her idealistic hopes for Peace shattered would have played havoc on her idealistic mind.
Also, keep in mind that Bones and the Ancestor's interpretations are not universal... Quote from Mayfly to Princess Twilight:- “Whatever. Point being, you did more to keep the world from descending into chaos than just about anypony ever with the possible exception of your mentor. So, with all due respect, Ma’am...shut up, before you make me regret my mother’s decision not to accept extinction.”.
Always remember, everyone looks at reality from their perspective and our perspectives shape our opinions and opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one and folks often think that the other person's stink.
Always love a good POV change 😁
The failed soldier pony that DW took over burst into flame as I recall? Perhaps this is another.
More than anyone really wants to, I'm sure.
That sounds pretty badass, actually.
Is it wrong that I find this a great deal more troubling than most of the other Crusades-era stuff so far?
What kind of flies are in your neighborhood that you need to shoot them down instead of using a fly swatter?
Not sure who to feel sorry for in this encounter.
Well, they did live the longest...
I would expect nothing else from a Vivarium employee.
Like, alive alive, or like, Egghead alive?
What, do you think she's Mag's age?
That's one nasty case of constipation.
Reminds me of the cast of Scorpion.
*cough*
That's the upside?
Flame on!
9746625
I will do a lot of things for a Popsicle and a pat on the head. I have sucked dick for less.
-Chessie
9747271
So, "What would you do for a Klondike bar" isn't an idle question, but a business proposal?
9747271
Well damn.
9748630 Jeez, for a Klondike bar, I'd blow a clean goat.
Clean goats only, though.
-Chessie
9759135
Yeah, I just finished the Correctional School fight, and both me and the detective feel we’re just in the cusp of some weird ass stuff.
9759666 I've had a long standing policy of avoiding 'grim dark'...but, lots of what goes on later is just plain weird.
-Chessie
9769643 Nope! Didn't guess anything. Literally nothing. We were riding by the seat of our pants the entire time. Everything had to be adapted, chapter on chapter, as the show evolved.
A lot of people seem to think we planned the entire thing out in advance. I want to be clear, we really didn't plan anything. We had an end goal and are headed for it, but that's all.
-Chessie
9772451
Are you sure you needed to say anything?
Armored lingerie eh? Well isn’t that something. And now I can’t help but want to watch Zeta do her fighting maneuvers for the rest of the story in slow motion...
Minor continuity thing Chessie, the chapter before this it was said that Apple Bloom was going with Lim instead of Sweetie, not sure if that was intentional or leftover from other ideas or it'll be explained later
My first thought was something very similar to the Warden of Tartarus is trapped and used to fuel this or each Pylon
9779272
Whereabouts is this error? I'll correct it if you point it out.
-Chessie
9795958
I AM EVERY DAY CHESSIE
I meant in terms of an ignorant princesses and populace. When something breaks out all shit will break loose.
Right now it’s just a question of what kind...?
Seeing the discussion about Twilight and Bones in these comments makes me realize just how much of this story – what we’ve learned of the backstory, characters’ histories, etc. – I’ve forgotten over time. (I can’t remember how Bones ended up in that chamber at all. Nor much more about Twilight other than that she erased herself from memory over some failure or other.) Problem is it’s so crazy long by this point that the thought of re-reading it is … daunting.
Gonna see if TVTropes has anything that can clear the cobwebs out of memory lane …
(Great chapter, loved the Mobia’s Trip concept, and Bones is way too harsh against puns.)
EDIT: Alas! The TVTropes page is badly out of date. Barely mentions Twilight, doesn’t even mention ol’ Bones. Drat.
9797871
I really do need to just FINISH so people can do the 'big re-read'. There's so *much* here that it's come to a place where it's best absorbed as one single read-through.
-Chessie
9798027
Didn't stop me from binge reading 1.3mill words in 5 days. What a glorious trip has been.
Man
I need to reread this when I haven't been up past 36 hours
I had to reread everything a few times before simply giving up
Normally I understand complex stuff and love reading explanations
But not today
...
Now to turn on audible and have weird dreams about WoT and MLP cross overs in the most confusing way
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