Come to the Golden Beach Theme Park and Resort! Eighth Wonder of Equestria! A little slice of paradise, free of disorder or imperfection. Such a paradise, in fact. you may never leave. Ever.
There's a new amusement park near Canterlot, catering the nobility, the rich, and the elite.
This is nothing new. Canterlot is the city of the wealthy and the gullible, two things that draw entertainers and con men like flies to honey. The Golden Beach is different though. The owners of the park somehow managed to turn a worthless spigot of land into an artificial inland sea with a tropical island attached, with a regular old assortment of rides on the borders and the outskirts. The common ponies come for the circus attractions, the nobles for the equine-made vacation spot, away from the stress of being expected to do something the modern world.
Thing is though, there's a reason it's called the Eighth Wonder of Equestria. By all rights, the caliber of magical engineering used to transform a large area of a fairly cool climate into a subtropical paradise, even in winter, is...rather advanced for modern sorcery. Though that may be because the coldness gets displaced into the staff, who just seem to close themselves out from the outside world after a while, helped by the fact that most of them live in provided housing that they are allowed-neigh, encouraged-to bring their families in. And the wildlife seems really tame for creatures from Everfree.
But it's not like there's anything wrong, right? It's not like the hidden bosses of the park are servants of an utterly amoral alien supercomputer that fully deserves the title of God-Machine, is it?
The rain almost made it look like the clock was crying. In any other world, this would be strange. But in this, it was natural that the face was sideways.
Although, that may have been because this world was stranger. Such as the city being on the wall of the cavern. The clocktower was the tallest-or perhaps, the longest-building, taller than even the skyscrapers. On the wall/ground, hundreds of sideways cars drove about, trying to navigate a constant traffic jam. From her point of view, on the side (top) of the clocktower's stone balcony, they looked like mechanical ants, with glowing eyes. She envied them-to them, the world was right-side up.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of depressurizing steam behind her. Startled, she looked back.
On the other wall was a pastoral world, one of bright colors and cheery ambiance, unlike the subdued city behind her, despairing that it would ever see the sun. In the place of cars, there were ponies, thousands of little ponies, all the colors of the rainbow and every other color. But she did not envy them, just pity; they did not have rain falling the right way down upon them, and thus did not know-could never know-that they were sideways. But she loved them all the same; they were like children, those little ponies. Oh, what she would give to be a child!
But that wall was not where the steam she now felt caress her, her long-lost lover, came from. For a moment, she looked down, and only found darkness. She laughed a little at that (of course the world didn't have a ceiling, that would be silly!), then looked up. She almost wasn't scared, but she still gasped a little.
Above, there was a vast, clanking mechanism, all gears, tubes, and wires. The source of the rain was there, generated by giant chimneys. The steam, as it turns out, was also the stormcloud. Even as she watched, more chimneys, farther away from her, closer to the Romantic Field, began to turn on, releasing more steam, which became more stormcloud. The rain followed shortly thereafter, creeping across the abyss. She felt a shudder beneath her as the clocktower followed suit, new floors coming out of the pavement of the Metal Enlightenment behind her.
And from the center of it all, a strange beast-not quite squid, not quite jellyfish, not quite machine-floated gently up to her, spinning over as it did so that it was upside down like her. With its single eye, which could have been equine, human, or a camera, it focused on her.
found you.
There was a shriek as the pink-haired mare fell out of bed, followed by a crash as she hit the floor. Thankfully, her housemates were deep sleepers.
Run away. Must get away. Have to hide....huh?
Bleary, she looked around her home as her vision cleared, blinking. Slowly, it dawned on her that the World-Cavern was a dream, a rather vicious prank by her subconscious. Yawning, the pinkette climbed back into her bed, pausing only to situate the pillows and to pull the covers over her a bit more tightly.
As she drifted off to a much better dream, one involving sweets and playing with her friends, the pony took heart in the notion that it was just the product of another bad memory among hundreds, another of the long list of regrets and fears she was free of when she left the old her behind.
There was nothing wrong in the world.
It was foolish to think it could be anything else.
If one was not looking closely at the buildings around Sugarcube Corner, one would see nothing wrong. If one looked closer, one would still not see anything wrong...unless one has been living there a while, at which point one would see that the fourth house down, on the left, had a magical generator. This was not all that strange-ponies need electricity to power the lights after all-but then one realized this house belonged to a charming old lady named Simple Living, a Concord Mennonite. That wouldn't seem weird yet, unless one has paid any attention to Equestrian popular culture at all, in which case one would know that the Concord are a religious movement who steadfastly refuse to indulge in any of the conveniences of modern sorcery. Thus, a magical generator, the invention that heralded a technological revolution in Equestria, would be very strange.
It would, however, not seem strange to any burglars who saw Simple Living's house as an ideal target, which is what the thing hiding in the boxy contraption was counting on; it was programmed to understand equine behavior, and thus knew that anyone who wanted to rob her either was a complete stranger or lacked a conscience, and sociopaths were a rare breed when it came to equiforms. Looking out through the cooling slats, an artificial eye switched filters to Twilight vision, only seeing the auras of living and ghostly things. It scanned the bakery, ignoring the two bioforms in one bed and the two similar ones in a crib, until it landed on a sole bioform sleeping fitfully in an upstairs bedroom. The thing switched its filters again, this time to Wyrdic view, seeing the world not in the physical, material sense, but in the tangle of Fate strands, visual abstractions of relationships and causality. Most were a normal, if complex, cobweb of interrelations and correspondences, but the one surrounding the sole bioform was...alive, somehow. More like a twitching, fidgety group of thread-like tentacles, constantly feeling the dead, static threads around them.
On the other end of the data feed, four strange beings observed a mirror in space, showing what the thing saw.
The first leaned forward, light from the mirror reflecting off his chrome-colored scales. "So, this is the one you were so obsessed with?"
The second nodded, an interesting gesture given how his face was built into his chest, and his head was seemingly featureless. "She is a truly remarkable being. Not only does her Fate matrix show signs of sentience and mobility, but she seems aware of its activity as well. Hence, the phenomenon she calls 'Pinkie Sense'."
The third, always the more practical of the three speakers, gave an exaggerated yawn, stretching her butterfly wings as far as they could go, showing all of the circuitry patterns imprinted on them. "Pinkie Sense. Great. You know, I have a Jophiel Sense? It tells me when people are not doing their jobs. Frankly I think I might lose it due to overexertion."
"Patience, little one", said the scaled being. "The Harahel will explain how this relates to our Mission."
"As you wish, Barachiel", said Harahel, head shifting into various platonic solids as he explained his theory. "The entity known as 'Pinkie Pie' shows signs of uncatalogued supernatural abilities relating to fate and probability. I believe this to be because of a unique byproduct of arcane physics, she being born at the center of a correspondence of various Astral and Fae phenomenon that result in the Fate she was born with being partially merged with her developing soul. In plain terms, her Fate web is an extra limb."
Jophiel looked at her scientifically-minded "brother" skeptically. "And this relates to the Mission...?"
"Because we finally have a way to control probability!" Harahel was nearly bouncing with excitement, which caused his head to liquefy and splash. "No longer will the Golden Beach need fear random acts of chance or accidents, we can sense them before they happen and prepare for it! Perfect clockwork, not unlike our Creator!"
"Do not claim to be an equal of the God-Machine, Harahel" Barachiel gently scolded.
"...Understood. My apologies for my hyperbolic program." Harahel looked quite ashamed of himself.
Now officially interested, Jophiel took to the air, observing the spatial mirror with intelligent compound eyes and all the sensors contained within each cell. "I see. So, what do you want me to do?"
"I would say kill her and then transport her ghost back here, but we are in unknown territory here. We cannot take the risk this power has biological components to it and end up ruining our studies. Besides, having her alive means we can have feedback with our experiments straight from the horse's mouth (pardon the expression), which may prove more efficient in the long term."
"....Hm." Jophiel cocked a wing. "It will be interesting to figure out what would draw it to a distant resort town, especially one that draws such an elite clientele, compared to...living in a bakery's attic."
"Do not worry overmuch, Jophiel", Barachiel intoned. "This one is one of the entities known as the Elements of Harmony, and thus is a friend of the monarch."
"A noble, then. Excellent. I'll be researching its interests shortly." Jophiel left through a gap in the walls of the underground chamber, one meant especially for her.
Shortly thereafter, the fourth finally spoke up, politely coughing. "If it's all the same to you, I would like to recall my child now."
"Hm? Ah. You have the Overseers' permission, as given to me by my privilege as Head of Security for the Golden Beach Infrastructure, noble Dalga."
"Understood. Return to base for repairs."
The false generator suddenly fell apart before suddenly flickering like static, at which point the pieces were not bits of sorcerously-infused metal anymore, but random bits of detritis such as hay and bark-not at all out of place around Simple Living's house. Hovering where it was originally standing was a creature that, at a cursory glance, looked like a parasprite...but anything more than that would reveal an expressionless face, an eye replaced by a strange construction of emerald and clockwork, and wings replaced by artificial ones that the best craftsponies in the entire planet would marvel at. Before anyone could see it, the cybernetic beast flew off in the direction of Canterlot, eager to commune with the great being that had remade it.
Come to the all-new Golden Beach theme park and vacation resort! Your own tropical island, inland!
When you come here, we can guarantee you'll never want to leave
Please be unimportant, please be unimportant, please please please please please....
"TWILIGHT! IT'S SUPER-DUPER-UPER IMPORTAAAANT!"
With a groan, Twilight Sparkle put away her brand-new biography of Star-Swirl the Bearded (Of Goatees and Goat Demons: A Critical Examination of the Panic Crusades), and steeled herself for the pink-hued tornado of hyperactivity and sugar currently trying to either imitate a thunderstorm on helium or get her attention of important, presumably party-related business. Although, Twilight at this moment didn't put it past Pinkie Pie for the important business to be the aforementioned helium-infused thunder impersonation.
"Yes, Pinkie! I'm coming in just a second!..." Even Twilight was amazed at the amount of insincere excitement packed into every letter of that sentence as she reluctantly made her way to the front door of her house-library.
Pinkie, characteristically, did not notice. Or at least, not for normal reasons. "A SECOND!?! B-B-Bu-But, that's like, the time it takes for a really skinny red hand on some watches to, like, move! I can't wait that long! Couldn't you do, like, a half-second? Or a millisecond? Or a milli-millisecond? Isn't this longer than a second? Isn't that break-YOU BROKE A PINKIE PRO-"
There was a brief flash of purple energy that immediately distracted Pinkie from that rather dangerous line of thought (to all parties involved) as Twilight opened the door. "Pinkie, don't you remember? You have to actually say it's a Pinkie Promise first, remember?"
"IIIIiii....oh yeah. Oops."
There was an awkward silence as Pinkie mentally checked the finer points of her own rules and followed the thought process that went into them. This was broken when Twilight, seeing the planet-sized labyrinth that her friend had internally wandered into, cleared her throat. "So, Pinkie, what did you want to talk to me about?"
"What did I-? Oh, yeah yeah yeah, the circus performers!"
Twilight's own thought process now resembled a crashed train. "The circus-What?"
"Yeah, I heard from Rainbow Dash, who heard from Rarity, who heard from somepony, who heard from somepony else, that there's a trio of circus performers coming to town!"
The train was now on fire. "A...trio? Um, Pinkie, isn't three members a bit small for-"
"Yeah, I know what a trio is, Twilight! I thought it was a little weird myself, so I snuck into the train station, gave the pony there one of my sleepy-time cookies (not cupcakes that would be creepy), then I looked at the register, I cross-referenced that with the ticket schedule and-"
The train was joined by a similarly ill-fated brother, thought it was at least able to deliver one final message beyond the smoke of confusion. "I..um...I...uhhh...Pinkie, skip to the end."
"You mean the part where the guard suddenly woke up and chased me with a taser?"
"No, the other part, the part where you confirmed the performers", Twilight said as she mentally filed away "give the taser-wielding guard piece of my mind" on her to-do list.
"Um...Okay! Yeah, I found out that they're looking to supply their friends in something called the, um, Golden Beach Tropical Resort and Recreation Faire! I guess they kinda drew the short straw, and the rest of them are on their way to somewhere reaaallly special! Y'know, I was thinking that maybe they could take a detour and-"
The trains resumed normal operation. "Pinkie, the Golden Beach isn't a travelling circus."
Pinkie looked like she was about to get lost in the labyrinth again. "Really? Then why doe it have 'fair' with a silent 'e' on it and everything?"
"Don't ask me why they named it that. You're pretty close though. It is a place where ponies go to have fun and relax, but it's not a circus. It's an amusement park, and quite the marvel of sorcerous engineering. It was all over the scientific news circuit, got the front page on Scientific Equestrian, Revelation, Popular Thaumaturgy..." Twilight trailed off, hoping to jog Pinkie's memory.
She shouldn't have bothered. "Oh...really? Sorry, the closest thing to egghead magazines the Cakes get is Morgan Stewart Living." On the plus side, Pinkie did seem genuinely embarrassed by her ignorance. "So, what was so special about it, y'know, besides the fact that it's a super-duper-awesome theme park, because all theme parks are super-duper-awesome?"
"The fact it's built near Canterlot."
"Canterlot?" Yep, stuck in the maze. "B-b-but doesn't tropical mean hot, and Canterlot is located in the mountains, which are, um, cold? I mean, not real, real cold, but definitely colder than say, Ponyma or the Canterbbean?"
"Yes, that's why it was so remarkable." Twilight suddenly didn't think losing her place in the book was so bad. "Somehow, the builders figured out a way to turn over eight hundred or so miles of wasteland into a sub-tropical climate, dug a moat to create an inland sea, then build a hotel on the new island in the center of it and a giant theme park around the edge of the sea."
If Twilight had found this interesting, Pinkie was obsessed. "They built their own beach!? They actually made a BEACH!?"
"Yeah, they did. Kinda strange to not have one in a park called the Golden Beach."
Pinkie emitted a sound somwhere between a bottle rocket and the helium-infused thunderstorm after it turned into a hurricane. "Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh! HOW!?"
The train shuddered slightly as it skipped the track. "Sorry?"
"HOW DID THEY BUILD A BEACH!? THERE'S GOT TO BE A SUPER-DUPER-AWESOME WAY THEY MADE A SUPER-DUPER-AWESOME-BEACH WITH A SUPER-DUPER-AWESOME-ISLAND WITH A SUPER-DUPER-AWESOME-THEME PARK!!!!"
"I...uh...huh." The train came to a gentle stop. "They...never actually explained that well. I mean, there was a lot of sorcerous technical language thrown about, and a lot of diagrams and pictures, but...they never actually explained in terms I could understand. Which is really saying something."
Pinkie's smile shrank a bit. "...Oh. Well, I guess if you made a super-duper-awesome theme park, you'd keep it a trade secret to prevent other ponies from making super-duper-awesome theme parks and taking away your business."
The sound of disappointment in Pinkie's voice was almost too much to bear. "You know, Pinkie, I'll go talk to them and get it in laypony's terms. After that, I'll explain it to you, got it?"
Pinkie cheered up immediately. "Okie-dokie-lokey! And if anypony wants a few tips on how to party, tell them you know the right pony to ask!"
Typical. "Okay Pinkie!"
"See ya round, Twilight!"
As Pinkie bounced off back to Sugarcube Corner, neither she nor Twilight noticed one of the sparrows behaving rather oddly. For one, it was not in a flock, but not seeming at all disturbed or injured. For another, it was perfectly silent. For a third, its leg keep twitching rhythmically, the only part of it to move.
It was a good thing for the sparrow, for upon closer inspection, it would be rapidly discovered that this leg was, in fact, an organic escapement for the fantastic contraption of brass and aluminum merged with it and visible through the hole in its back, serving as a combination of internal organs and gearbox.
Through the mechanical irises implanted in its pupils, Jophiel and Harahel's spatial window showed the discussion. Harahel, stroking a congealed beard from his head, spoke first. "Most intriguing. Not only does the entity have an innate sense of Fate and relationships, she also possesses enough of an aberrant psychology to ignore the perception filters. Another test I shall run-any possible error in them is too much of a threat to the greater order of our Infrastructure. Besides, the Dalga may be interested in how to improve his own neural implants in any future clockworked."
"Missing the forest for the trees, as usual," Jophiel sighed. "The real thing that we should be concerned with is the Aggressive Meme."
His good mood soured, Harahel glowered at his sister, who immediately could tell she annoyed him and let a small chuckle escape. "Given how there has been an absolute minimum of idea mutation, I would hazard a guess that it has preformed admirably, wouldn't you agree? In any case, I have a few experiments to oversee, so please, dear sister, continue on with your...sport." With an irritated grunt, the Master of Science left through his own personal entrance to the Dalga's Cloister.
With her "brother" out of the way, Jophiel cracked the joints in her wings' internal scaffolding. "As you wish. The scout for the herd, drawn by the scent of knowledge and out of altruistic instinct for the prize, makes its way to the baited area..."
"I don't get why we have to wait for the train, Twilight." Spike was not having a fun time. It was hard to blame him, it being the middle of autuum and he being a reptile, albeit one with a fire in his lungs. "I mean, I know you want to keep your promise to Pinkie and all, but the Golden Beach ponies are probably coming here to go into town, and we can ask them there. In, you know, a nice, cozy, and heated building."
"Because she's right, Spike." Twilight was not having the most fun of times either, but unlike her assistant, the librarian had put on a coat as well as a scarf, leaving only the boredom. "Whatever they did is probably a trade secret, and if I welcome them to Ponyville, they'll be a lot more forthcoming about the basics."
Spike raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't that seem a little...manipulative to you, Twi?"
"Well no, it's just putting out a welcoming committee in hopes of getting their friendship and getting them to talk about okay yeah it's a bit manipulative," Twilight shrugged. "Still, there's something I didn't tell her when we were talking earlier, and that's the fact that it's a bit, well...," Twilight trailed off, furrowing her brow.
Spike inched a bit closer. "A bit...what? Come on Twi, after how you reduced that guard to tears, I'm a bit worried."
"In all fairness, he was a jerk who needed to be less trigger-happy. Tasers hurt! And it's just a bit strange, that's all." Twilight took out the Popular Thaumaturgy issue with the Golden Beach cover story. "I mean, it takes a lot of bits and even more specialized labor to pull off a weather working that big. You have to calculate the effects it will have on the surrounding climate, redirect winds, order specialized clouds to create a greenhouse effect...screw that up and you provoke harmonic disintegration and end up with your own personal grove of the Everfree Forest."
"Ouch. Still, I don't see why you wouldn't keep a lid on it. Frankly, they could be doing a public service and preventing Dr. Frogenstein from turning Ponyville into the Ponywood Wild Nature Reserve."
"Because he wouldn't have the resources, that's why." Twilight turned to the article. "The kind of money it takes to pay the needed licensing fees and product costs to Cloudsdale and specialized labor for all the thermomancy needed doesn't fall out of the sky, let alone all the legal hoops you have to go through. And that's not getting to the artifical sea. Frankly, they really didn't have to bother. Which says there's something they don't want to talk about, and when guilds are involved, mistakes tend to be the thing that bites the general public down the road. Especially if they're pretending to be open about the process, when nothing in the article actually explains the nitty-gritty. Just a lot of magibabble."
"So...you're playing detective?"
Twilight suddenly procured a deerstalker from her coat. "Twilight Sparkle PI, that's me!" Whatever effect she was going for, however, was sadly ruined when her horn got in the way of the cap going on. It did cheer up Spike a little, though.
"Ha ha...hey look, there's the train!"
The train in question had nothing out of the ordinary about it. It was a train from Canterlot, Twilight had taken it several times before, and she only knew that this was the correct train by the time and the direction it came from. With a cheerful toot and whistle, the train slowly edged into Ponyville Station.
"There we go Spike. That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"No, it lived down to my expectations" deadpanned Spike as he waved the steam from the stopping train out of his face.
Twilight, cheerfully ignoring her assistant's smarm, proceeded to trot over to the only car with passengers in it, which would be stranger were it not for Ponyville being an incredibly rare stop for the kind of ponies whose business took them across the world. She decided to make herself seem as inconspicuous as possible, which to her was standing directly in front of the doors to the car and whistle innocently.
As the doors opened, she didn't even wait for the doors to open before she started on the con. "Excuse me, sirs and madames?" she said as she slid up even closer to the door. "I just was on my daily walk through the station's bathrooms, and I couldn't help but notice..you... pulling......up......."
Walking out of the car was quite possibly the most miserable-looking trio of earth ponies Twilight had ever seen. Their brown coats, their simplistic cutie marks, their complete lack of any clothing or adornments, their neglected manes...everything about these three screamed "depression", "stress", or "enervated." The first, the only stallion in the group, was also the only one to really acknowledge Twilight's presence. "Oh...you did, did you. How nice." His voice betrayed no happiness or energy, only a matter-of-fact tone that gave her an unpleasant flashback to the Crystal Empire under Sombra's curse. "Thanks. I like the hat, by the way." He slowly walked onto the platform at a glacial pace, followed at a similar pace by the other two Beach staffers. Twilight tried to speak up, but could only gape at the living embodiment of equine misery pass before her in the manner of pallbearers at a funeral. Except worse, because at least pallbearers had an obvious reason to be sad.
As they disappeared into Ponyville, Spike was the first to break the icy silence. "Twilight...you didn't make a mistake, and those guys are really employees at an amusement park?"
"Yep."
"And they're paid to make other ponies happy, right?"
"I think so, yeah."
Spike searched for his next words carefully. "...Boy, I'd hate to see the guys who make other ponies sad."
"With any luck, Spike, paid cheer vs actual cheer is mutually exclusive. Otherwise, I'd think you'd find them in a graveyard."
"Now, I have heard of how the employees of a theme park sacrifice their fun for our sake, but this is ridiculous."
Rarity shook her head at the trio of ponies that had entered the Day Spa, and quickly ruining Lotus Blossom and Aloe's day.
It wasn't that they were rude, not hardly. They didn't talk all that much during their jobs, but the sisters had a rather smarmy wit, and truly mean customers quickly received quite the tongue lashing from the two that drove the jerks out of the spa, and they thrived on the catharsis. No, it was that these three were such depressants that it was surprising that the trees didn't start to slump as they passed.
More than that, they were...obstinate. Not unruly, mind, but the Golden Beach workers seemed almost as if they had never even known such a thing as "spa treatment" existed before, and they seemed to be insistent on having every step of every procedure explained to them.
"And the cucumbers...?" asked one, a lithe mare named Hoofer, asked.
"Have juices within them that reduce swelling caused stress, leading to much clearer vision in the short term and less age wrinkles in the long term" replied Lotus in the most cheerful voice she could muster through her death's head smile.
"And the lotion...?" asked another, a baritone stallion named Omi.
"...Another way to reduce the deletrious effects of aging, dears" replied Aloe. Though given the caliber of your questions, that hopefully won't be a problem for another forty years, she internally added.
"The aromatherapy....?" asked the third, the rather hardy-looking mare named Sharpy Palone.
If one looked closely, one could see Lotus' eye twitch. "Is currently low on stock. If you don't mind, my sister and I will go get some while the cucumbers soak in, it may take a while to find. Do you mind?"
"No." replied one or maybe all of them. Their identities had blurred together a long time ago.
"Excellent." One could hear the suppressed relief in Aloe's voice. "My sister and I will get the cyanide-er, citrus, and get back to you as soon as we possibly can, yes?" Aloe left in a walk that might have also been a slow run, followed closely by her sister. She barely acknowledged Rarity as she passed by into the staff room, blithely ignoring the aromatherapy bin in plain view. A few seconds later, the faint sounds of crossbows firing wildly as her game of Grand Theft Airship resumed could be heard if you were listening close enough.
Lotus, on the other hand, trotted up to Rarity, the fake grin collapsing utterly. "You know, they've reached a stopping point. If you could shatter one of those bottles with the red lotion in them, I could fake my frog being injured and tell them they had to come back tomorrow."
"...Tomorrow's the beginning of a three day weekend."
"Exactly my point." Lotus collapsed on the floor, the normally active pony being completely spent. "I've had nosy clients before, but these three? They're like what would happen if you made the Cutie Mark Crusaders adults, removed any semblance of personality, replaced their brains with granite, put them in the Elemental Plane of Emo for three months, and then made them made them zombies, for good measure. No offense", she said, remembering who she was speaking to, "but I yearn for the decadent, easy days of CMC Herbal Bath Mixers, Yay."
"None taken." Rarity looked at the Beach workers. They even looked depressing, being all shades of beige and their cutie marks simple, almost childish in their plainness. Hoofer had a tap dancing shoe, Omi had a flexing front leg, and Sharpy had the outline of a police badge. Though Rarity was thankful for that last bit-if they a proper design, like the spa sisters or Rarity's own, it would probably be harder to remember, and thus make it even harder to tell the three of them apart. "I was going to ask them about commissioning dresses to wear in their jobs, but I somehow doubt they've grasped the concept of individual tastes for the carnival. I wouldn't be surprised if the three of them would wear nothing but sharp needle codpieces to work if it was clothing regulations for the resort."
Rarity tilted her head a bit. "Still, I can't help but feel a little bit sorry for them. I have to wonder if they were born like this or if their jobs are so demanding that they've permanently switched off their ability to feel emotions other than apathy and despair, lest they lose the will to live. Either way, these ponies either need a home life or psychological help."
"Don't bother, Miss Rarity" replied Lotus, rubbing her head. "I grew up around neighbors like this, and I can assure you, some ponies are just born this way. They live in their jobs, and really can't function outside what their purpose is. To them, to live is to work, and if they aren't working, they don't know what to do with themselves."
"Still," replied Rarity, magically fetching a wet towel for the beleaguered beautician. "I do think they need to loosen up slightly. I also grew up around a pony like this. My homeroom teacher, in fact."
"Really? What happened to her?" Lotus rubbed the towel on her forehead.
"...She had a nervous breakdown in class, ranted about her boyfriend complaining about his eggs being sunny-side down, stormed out dangerously brandishing a pencil eraser, and was found two days later in a drunk tank, wearing a pancake for a hat, and babbling about evil math problems that made the color green hot. She recovered, but eventually had to change schools after the class fashion became using whatever you had for breakfast that day as various adornments."
Lotus stared blankly at her favorite client for a second.
"...That would be a problem. So, what do you plan to do?"
"I can't believe I am being serious about this...but I'm getting Pinkie to help."
"May the Sun have mercy on your soul."
"Don't I know. Oh what fun the next month of 'co-party host' will be...." Rarity trotted off, an almost literal shadow hanging over her.
"...And on me. Oh sister-! I do believe I've found the citrus scent!"
The 'death jingle' sound came from the staff room, followed by quiet sobbing.
Watching through a disguised clockworked parasprite, Jophiel smirked. "And the hunt's herdmate, believing that it has seen nothing wrong with the baited area, fetches the prize..."
Pinkie, in her own way, was a little proud. Not very proud, not even proud enough to really affect her personality, but she had pride in her abilities to cheer people up. There was, after all, a reason she was the Element of Laughter and not, say, Cheerilee. Neither rain nor snow nor dead of night could prevent Pinkie Pie, Queen of the Party, from bringing a smile to your face, which she new for a fact because those were all times she threw one to counteract the gloom of said condition. Though not all the times there was rain or snow or dead of night, because even she had limits.
Point was, Pinkie was very assured in her own abilities as a host-cum-therapist (though she never actually said she was that combination, as it generally caused ponies to lose all hope in the mental health industry's standards and thus made them sad), which is why she was all too happy to rise to Rarity's request to actually throw one for the carnival (sorry, theme park) trio.
Having spent the last fifteen minutes speaking to them in an attempt to actually find out what they wanted apart from vague affirmations, she felt somewhat ambivalent towards Rarity's request at the moment.
On the one hoof, they needed it (dear Sun did they need it), but on the other...
"Yeah. Pies are okay. I guess."
One of the Queen of the Party's limits was her patience.
"...you guess!? As you've guessed for the balloons, the cake, the punch, the party favors, the kazoos, the fireworks, the canon, the elephants, a solar system, and now the throwing pies!? I'm good at telling what ponies want in a party but I'm not psychic! ...Though maybe you'd like one? I know this Madame Anja...."
"Yeah. Psychics are okay. I guess."
"Ugh." Pinkie cradled her head in her hoof. "Look. I've been trying to prance around this issue, seeing as how it's really, super-duper, incredibly offensive to a lot of ponies, and a lot of donkeys (I know, I'm friends with one), but you three...I'll be honest here, what you need is to just cheer up already!"
"Yeah. Cheering up is good. I guess."
Pinkie's ears began to vent steam. "Excuse me. I need to explode. I'll be back in around, oh, half-a-minute."
The normally bouncy mare galloped over a hill. Promptly thereafter, a pink mushroom cloud blossomed over the ridge with a sound that may have been a howl of frustration and rage or an actual nuclear blast. Even before the dust cleared, the source bounced back to the utterly motionless trio, her normal mood of cheer restored.
"Okie-dokie-lokey. I'm better now."
The smile dropped. "Seriously, you three, I'm not normally like that. I mean, I have problems too-my insecurity, my tendency to be an attention hog, and the psychologist my friends dragged me off to after the birthday incident says I have mild bipolar personality disorder-but normally I don't get that mad, and when I do get mad like that, it's either because someone broke a Pinkie Promise or because I'm both really worried about somepony and that pony is not letting me help them." Birthday incident, her internal hypocrisy sensor spouted off, but she ignored that in favor of making her point. "Point is...I need to know what your issues are, so I can see you turn that frown upside-down."
Sharpy Palone raised an eyebrow. "You aren't cribbing this from said psychiatrist's sessions, are you?"
"Yes, but apart from that," Pinkie said as she fell to the ground and gave the mare her best puppy-dog eyes, "just help me help you."
Palone opened her mouth.
"If that reply is a variation of 'Yeah blank is good I guess' I will shoot you in the face with a party canon."
Palone closed her mouth.
Pinkie sighed. "I quit. It's official. There is nothing in the world, nothing in aaallll of Equestria that will cheer you up." Slowly, the Element Bearer got to her feet, looking for all the world like she had just been informed that there was no meaning to life, she was adopted, and Santa Hooves didn't exist in short order. "Oh well. Maybe you're happy being sad. Or something similar because, uh, you're sad. Maybe your job makes you happy, maybe it doesn't, but there's nothing poor old Pinkie can do. I'm a failure..." Dejectedly, Pinkie turned around and began to walk. "Just don't mind me. I'll be over here, you know, being a f-f-failure..." The mare shuddered a bit an began to sniffle.
Hoofer was the first to be swayed by this display. "Hey. Don't cry. Here, we'll tell you about what we want."
"REALLY!?" Pinkie said in a genuinely exited voice, hiding the bottle of Gummy's tears she had back in her hair. "I mean, really? You're finally going to help me?"
"Yeah, helping you is good. I gu-" BOOM
Blowing the smoke off her party canon, Pinkie turned from the dazed (and far more festive looking) Palone to Omi. "As you saying."
Omi looked a little uncomfortable. "Well...actually, this is a little uncomfortable for us."
Hoofer clapped her front hooves together and glanced at Palone. "You know she's a security guard, right?"
"Um...up until just now, no."
That actually got Omi to chuckle. "Well, if we actually went into what we want, we could be fired..."
"Nope. I don't know what you want, but I have standards. I'm the Queen of the Party, not Our Lady of-"
"NO! No. Actually....ummm...."
"*pbbt* No. No, it's okay," Palone spat out through the confetti in her mouth.
"Well....um....you said that um....you thought we were happy in our jobs right. Well, er, that's a little mistake. In all truth, our jobs are um, how do I say this, they, uh-"
"BUCKING SUCK!" The sudden outpouring of emotion from Hoofer may have been what caused Pinkie to jump or it may have been her hooves hitting the ground like a meteor. "I don't know if all theme parks are like the Golden Beach are like the Tartarus we have to endure, but ours bucking suck! Actually, that's a bit of a mislabeling. Our jobs are menial, pathetic, minimum wage excuses for life that I'm pretty sure it's punishment for us being commanders in the army of Emperor Dictatus and using the ashes of the villages we burned as bathrooms or something!"
"'Durrr, Omi'" said the stallion in question as he crossed his eyes and drooled. "Durrr, could you help me lift this tug? Hurr, I crashed it, and thus am liable to move it my own dumb self, and, duhh, you have to keep your muscles up and uninjured for your strongpony show and dockhand work, but, derp, I went to college and get paid more, and that makes me better, particularly given how the boss listens to my complaints and not yours!' Yeah, sure, dude, that diploma mill your father, the dock manager, shuffled you through really did a lot, particularly given how I have to help you with that dang boat of yours every other week. And don't get me started on the actual customers-"
"'AH'M A GAWRDIAN OF PONAH DECANCY'" said Hoofer, affecting the most annoying and exaggerated accent she could. "'AH ONLAH CAME BECAWSE MAH WIFE AN' KIDS WAHNTED TO COME AND AH AM OFFANDED BY YA STANDAWRD DRASS WHIALE DANCIN' AND ARE GONNA' CORNAH YOU AFTA THE SHOW TA YEHLL AT YA FOR DARING TA CAUHSE LAHST IN ME, AH MEAN, YUNG COLTS. AH WILL DAMONSTRATE THIS BAH TRAIHING TO GIT YAH TO DO DAH TWO-PONAH CAWNGA LINE WIT ME AS SOON AS AH THINK MAH WIFE AIN'T WATCHIN'.' And then there's the island guests-"
"'I say, this mare looks like a maid!'" sad Palone, holding her so far in the air she looked to be in danger of drowning if it rained. "Jet Set, this fine lady will take the metric ton of pointless crap we don't use plus whatever we actually will to our room on the top floor, using the steps because it's all in one package larger than both of the elevators looking together! What do you mean, a security guard? Mares can't be security guards, that would violate gender roles that evaporated centuries ago given how our immortal ruler abolished them and they only are still relevant in the inbred nobility of Canterlot! Manager! This proletariat does not wish to lick my tail like the drugs I am sure she is addicted to!' IT. NEVER. BUCKING. ENDS."
Pinkie stared mutely at the trio in the midst of catharsis, then pointed at the hill. "Hey, if you need a place to explode..."
Omi's rapid breaths began to slow, and he began to smile. "You know, however...this helped a lot!"
Hoofer was already beaming. "It feels good to let off some steam like that!"
Palone was nearly nearly singing. "Our bosses would never allow us to do that, so thanks...Pinkie, is it? You really cheered us up. If you ever want to visit the park, we'll be there to greet you!" Before Pinkie could work up the thought to say anything, the security mare pressed a coupon into her mane and the trio began to trot off happily.
Slowly, Pinkie came out of her state of shock. Huh. That was...a lot easier than I had imagined. Huh. I guess they were just stressed, and they didn't need a party at all! They just needed to talk about their problems with somepony!
Ooh, nice idea for a letter to...the.....Princess.
Wait, did she say that they weren't allowed to talk about their problems?
.....
This requires a field trip.
"Come ooonnn, Fluttershy! Dashie turned me down because of training, and this coupon is meant for multiple ponies only!"
Fluttershy, giving her the best apologetic smile she could manage, shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I can't. Humilia Dickinson and Hummingway are expecting to hatch, soon, and I don't want to miss it."
"But Fluttershyyy! I Pinkie Promised Twilight I would tell her what was going on with the park, and she and Applejack are probably too busy!"
"What about Rarity?"
Pinkie stared at her friend. "Rarity? At a theme park explicitly meant for members of the not-elite customers?"
Fluttershy stared back, then facehoofed. "Good point. Still, I can't see why you can't wait for one of us to have some free time."
"Because I don't think the employees of the park could survive much more with the way their working conditions are, that's why! You didn't see them, but when they came over here, it was like they were ghosts! All frowns and all sadness, all the time! I think the place requires fifty ccs of fun courtesy of Dr. Pie, stat! Besides, it's a really fun park by the looks of it, horrible staff policies aside!"
"...Really Pinkie? You aren't that great of a salespony. You know how bad I am with crowds."
"But-! Look, the park ponies were nice enough to give me this brochure, and you've got to see it! They have rides, a hotel, surfing, massages, shows, one of the world's largest houses of mirrors, guard hawks, an apartment block where the staff and their families can live in, a-"
"Wait. What was that last thing?"
"The apartments?"
"The one before that." Fluttershy seemed to be lost in thought.
"The guard hawks? Oh, they're really cool! I mean, they have the standard peregrine falcons and the like, but also rocs, thunderbirds-"
"Actually...does the brochure specify how the animals are cared for?"
"...No. I don't see how that's important, but..."
Fluttershy sighed, and then opened the door. "I'm going."
"HUH? But just a second ago, you were-"
"Pinkie, if the working conditions are as bad as you say, then I doubt if the animals are cared for all that well. Especially if they're security. I can watch hummingbird eggs hatch some other time, there's a possible injustice to right." A thought. "Besides a lack of fun."
Pinkie beamed.
Much to Pinkie's dismay, they were not allowed to take the same train as the theme park ponies, as the rest of the train they had left on had one, bought-out passenger cart, and the rest of the train was a Sweet Apple Acres export carrier. Since it was the only train that day, Pinkie and Fluttrshy had to wait a day (well, Pinkie did-Fluttershy wasn't eager enough to properly wait). This might have been beneficial though, as it gave Pinkie time to plan out the party schedule and figure out an arrangement with the Cakes, and Fluttershy time to explain the special needs of the various animals she was caring for to her housesitter (also known as Twilight).
When they did arrived however, nothing could have prepared them for the shock as they pulled into the Golden Beach's geothermalized area.
"Oh...my....gosh..."
Fluttershy didn't dispute this. It was something that needed no other words.
While both ponies had been to the rematerialized Crystal Empire, the sudden stop of snow as they entered the pastoral landscape of the city was infinitely less dramatic. One part of this was Shining Armor's shield, but another was the simple fact that it hadn't been there for centuries. It was slightly easier to digest that the Crystal Empire was something apart from the ice and cold that had covered the landscape, particularly given how the rest of the land had become pastoral after Sombra was defeated.
This was something different. Here, there wasn't any snow (which would be incredibly unseasonal), but there was a fall landscape surrounding the park's area, all brown and orange and, let's face it, dying, except for the conifers. As one approached the Golden Beach, however, the conifers became more rare, but it seemed to make way for the eternal summer, with leafy foliage and flowers becoming more common. As one got further and further towards the park, the flowers came to cover everything, until it seemed that the entire field was one big patchwork carpet of colorful plants, broken up by tree groves in full leaf.
To say nothing of the Golden Beach itself! Even the outer park looked like a city from a futurist's daydream, a vast, marble and metal art piece of gentle edges, slender buildings, and giant magical gadgetry such as holographic displays, floating roller coasters, and even a tesseract, slowly changing shape as it rotated in its extra spatial dimension ("that's the hall of mirrors" Pinkie whispered).
And the sea? The sea was gorgeous into itself, pretty and green, with dozens of paddleboats going to and fro across it, with large areas cordoned off for ponies to play in, alight with splashing activity seen even as far away as the train was. Pinkie and Fluttershy could tell the people who built it weren't trying to draw your attention to the sea. No, that was the island.
Even before one reached the hotel, the island was something remarkable. The island, shaped like a giant star no unlike the ones on Twilight's cutie mark, was even more green and lush than the outskirts. Rather than a serene prairie, however, the island was a colorful jungle of palms, vines, and giant rainforest trees, not unlike the rainforests not the Evergratis (ie, the other Everfree) in Zebraca. Much like the sea for the island, however, the jungle was more like a necklace on the coat of a beautiful mare, drawing attention to the overall effect of the hotel.
Except that it wasn't really doing justice to call it a hotel. More like a combination of a hotel and a clock tower, both of those things being the platonic ideal of what each should live up to.
At the bottom floor were a series of four pathways leading to the great entrance, built like a grand crystal and bronze gate, with many smaller doors leading into and out of it, a gear shaft for the energy for the flow of ponies, staff and guests.
At the lower and middle floors were a vast collection of windows leading to various bedrooms and staff facilities-it was obviously intended that the hotel support as many ponies as need be, perhaps owing to the size of the nobility or recognition that catering to an exclusive clientele couldn't last forever. Each window was styled like a gear, to fit in with the collection of artwork of the golden brass interior of a clock, all leading up to a giant wheel train near the top, which Pinkie helpfully pointed out was the revolving restaurant of the place, Above those were the suits, and then finally the clock faces.
While the entire hotel was magnificent, the faces of the great clock tower was truly the centerpiece of the whole collection, simultaneously informing the entire park of the proper time, and showing off some of the best artwork that the Elements had ever seen. On one face, there was the gentle dance of Celestia and Luna, slowly moving with day and night as butterflies and moths cavorted about, upon a detailed relief of the sky, built so that it appeared that everything except the numbers moved. On the second, a depiction of the sea as it moved with the tides, rising and falling with the real ones, quick enough that one could see it move even as the train pulled into the station. And on the third, a depiction of the cosmos, on which nothing what so ever changed, except for the most ornate of the six hands among them.
So dumbstruck were the Elements by this sight that they didn't notice the train had actually stopped until they heard the announcement "Now arriving at Starboard Station. We hope you enjoy your stay."
Pinkie didn't miss a beat though. "LOOK AT IT, LOOK AT IT! SO MANY RIDES! SO MUCH WATER! SO MUCH HEAT! SO MUCH GIANT CLOCK! WHY DIDN'T THEY CALL THIS PLACE CLOCK WORLD OR SOMETHING, SERIOUSLY THE BEACH ISN'T THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND!"
"I read the brochure, and I think the hotel is called the Escapement, and that would be confusing if everything was named after clock-related things."
"WELL, I'M CONFUSED. WHAT'S AN ESCAPEMENT?"
"It's the part of a clock that keeps the pendulum stable."
"OH REALLY? HUH, WITH A NAME LIKE THAT, I WAS THINKING IT WAS AN EMERGENCY SYSTEM FOR AVOIDING HOUSE FIRES. DOESN'T MATTER! WE'RE AT A THEME PARK!" Squealing, Pinkie ran out the the doors, accidentally trampling the announcer as she did so. Fluttershy followed shortly thereafter, pausing only to help the announcer to her hooves, and made her way over to the plaza, where Pinkie was busy being a tornado of hyperactivity and sugar, and, remarkably, never actually hitting any of the befuddled ponies. Presumably she had time to actually see them first, or the announcer was a misjudgment.
"WHAT'S THAT, WHAT'S THIS, WHO'RE YOU, IS THIS FOR SALE, YOU SHOULD GET THAT ZIT LOOKED AT, NICE BOOTS, ETCETERA, ETCETERA, ETCETERA!"
"Pinkie...."
"LOOK FLUTTERSHY, THEY HAVE A WISHING WELL!"
"Pinkie Pie."
"OR IS IT A WISHING FOUNTAIN? DO FOUNTAINS STILL HAVE WISHING NYMPHS IN THEM? IS THIS EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE A NYMPH?"
"Pinkimena!"
"WHAT?"
"Aren't we forgetting something?"
"WE'RE FORGETTING SOMETHING? HA, YOU'RE WRONG! I'M THE ONLY ONE FORGETTING...WHAT WE came here...for...."
Looking massively ashamed of herself, Pinke came down from her excitement high and finally took a breath. "Ah yeah, the fun infusion. Sorry, the fact that we're in a THEME PARK OH MY SUN-!" THWAP "...kinda made me lose my focus. Also, thanks. I needed that,"
Already hit with a tide of regret for that wing slap, Fluttershy shrugged
"Anyway, I kinda doubt that even if this was old enough to have a wishing nymph, I doubt if she would be responding to any of these bits." Pinkie fished a ten-cent bit from the fountain. "Seriously. Here, take this. I don't see any 'these bits will go to charity' signs anywhere, unless you count that poem." Pinkie nodded to an inscription on the pegasus statue's wings. At first, the words were hard to make out, but the more one looked at them, the more they resolved into a quartet of stanzas:
Will the circle be unbroken,
By and by, by and by?
There's a better, home awaiting
In the the sky, in the sky.
"Kinda morbid for a park though, don't you think? Come on, the island is where I think the staff quarters are. Skiff probably leaves soon, I'll be seeing you."
Pinkie bounced off, followed a few minutes later by Fluttershy, who had given the coin to a worthier cause.
Jophiel, observing via the clockwork camera in the statue, felt her smirk widen into a smug smile as her wings tensed with excitement. "And so the prey and the decoy wander into the rifle's sights...."
"So, Fluttershy, here's what my plan was."
"Yes?"
"I brought this miniature party canon along with me..."
"Mm-hmm."
"...I was thinking we sneak into a staff meeting..."
"Mmm....hm?"
"...and then when everybody is nice and bored listening to this hypothetical pony's life story..."
"Huh?"
"...giving them all a read surprise party! There's no way this plan could go wrong!"
"Um, Pinkie?"
"Unless, and this is a big unless, one of those ponies has a heart condition, in which case it could go very wrong."
"Pinkie, do you hear something?"
"So, we instead slip heart medication to all of them since we have no way of knowing-Huh?" Pinkie tilted her ears. "I don't hear anything."
"Listen closer."
Pinkie's ears swiveled around a bit. "...Still nothing."
"Exactly my point."
Pinkie opened her mouth to ask exactly what Fluttershy had meant...and then realized something.
She didn't hear anything at all, not even the sound of the sloshing water against their cabin below decks.
"Huh....That's....creepy. Um...well. I am creeped out right now. Huh. Um...tee hee?"
Nope. Giggling at the ghostie did absolutely nothing to restore sound to the cabin.
"....Hey, sailor guys?"
Pinkie began to trot up the cabin stairs.
"Hey, um, Mr. Super-Nice Sailor Ponies? I know you were really nice to give us passage over when the other boat was full, but, um, whatever mute button you have on the ocean is relaxing to you, but it's re-aally creepy to me and my friend here, so for the moment could we ....un...mute.....it?"
The boat was completely barren of any other ponies apart from Pinkie and Fluttershy, and what's more, looked brand-new. Completely brand new, unlike the rusty, homey-looking boat they had gotten on. And the water was as blue as the ocean. And there was no land in sight, only endless, cloudless sky and water, in every direction. Without any movement at all.
"Hhha....ha....very funny, Mr. Prankster Salior Ponies. Real nice disappearing trick. Didja know I consider myself a prankster? Yeah, you'll have to show it to me when you get to the very visible and very close to the boat island, right? You can come out now. Really, like right now. Please?"
Suddenly, a splash. Pinkie and Fluttershy let out the breath it felt like they had been gathering for the last century. Then they drew it back in again when they heard another splash. And another. And another.
All without disturbing the water, which retained its sinister serenity even as the splashing sounds increased in frequency and intensity, until it sounded like thousands upon thousands of sea serpents.
Jophiel raised her eyebrows, watching through her spatial window as the two mares, white as sheets, almost melded into each other in fear.
"Dalga, remind me I need to give Harahel ten bits."
Her momentary surprise passed, Jophiel's predatory smile returned. Finally moving the hooves normally kept in a crossed position across her chest, Jophiel pointed one ahead like she were human, and holding a pistol.
"Too late, the prize notices the hunter's orange suit. Too late."
A small fireball flicked into existence where the muzzle would be.
The pegasus grinned sheepishly as she stepped off the train. "Oh, it was scary, Twilight. Real scary. But once I got up the courage to ask around, I was able to examine the guard cages. I would be lying if I said that that I thought they were taking care of the animals to the best of their abilities, but after I showed them how to take better care of the rocs and the thunderbirds, they promised to be more careful. I guess all I had to do was have the bravery to speak up when I saw something bad happening."
"Really? That's great, Fluttershy! Want to write a letter to Princess Celestia?"
"Maybe not. I think I need to rest for a while, and check on the hummingbirds. Did they hatch yet?"
"Nope!"
"Good."
The mares (and Spike) walked in silence for a bit, when, much to Twilight's surprise, Fluttershy was the one to break it.
"You know, I've been wondering; is that position at Sugarcube Corner still open? The cakes have been looking for applicants for a long time."
"Well, what do you know! First Fluttershy goes to the amusment park by herself, and now she's working with ponies directly, instead of just their pets? Looks like baby bird is leaving her nest!"
Ponies painting walls at the top of a tall building were, generally, not all that interesting. This was not due to any flaw on the part of ponies who were generally hired to paint the top of buildings, but because (a) painters generally tended to be missed to begin with, and (b) very little effort is expended on putting anything interesting where only giraffes could see it (which would probably be specist, where it not for the fact that giraffes were not sapient and generally did not live in places where tall buildings were built).
This was not an exception, because the interesting thing was not the wall Hayseed Turnip Truck was currently painting or even Hayseed himself, but the paint can he was currently using. For the most part, this paint can was not particularly special. It was a perfectly ordinary can of biodegradable quick-dry off-white paint, and was only remarkable for its lack of toxicity. It was, however, flawed in a single, critical way that was also not special-one of the hinges on the handle was slightly unmored from the rest of the bucket. How this handle became unhinged is something of an interesting story in and of itself, involving a cargo truck, a rogue sandwich wrapper, a small bit, a loud noise, and an inspector who honestly didn't see anything wrong with the fallen can and was friends with the driver of said cargo truck, so the paint can was sent to the store as was.
It wasn't even the fact that, when Hayseed went to pick up the can to replace a spent one, the handle suddenly came completely unhinged, surprising the painter and causing his jaw to drop, resulting in the can tumbling in such a way that the lid was torn off as the can turned over, the only reason why paint wasn't spilling being that it was traveling down at the same rate the can was.
No, what was special about this can would be the effect it would have on the world below it, but more immediately, on the draconequus currently annoying DJ Pon-3, also known as Vinyl Scratch, by using his magic to change all her tracks to the World's Worst Hit Song list from an alternate dimension made by a shadowy humanoid on a massive communication network.
"Oh, where's your sense of fun, Pon-3? And I thought the kind of mare that would create a stage name so difficult to pronounce would be fun." Discord's eyes suddenly widened in mock fear. "A-an-and if you're not fun, then that means th-that you're a fictional ch-character, like Santa Cloven, and, i-if you're l-like Santa, then you're n-not real, b-but you're here and ta-talking so th-th-that means you're a...you're a....gho-!"
"Singing about somepony pretending his girlfriend was dead because he doesn't want to admit they split isn't my idea of 'fun'." Vinyl squinted at the records now bearing the grinning face of the Spirit of Disharmony (partially reformed). "And...seriously, what is this self-centered Eurotrash teeny-bop dung? Well, it's good to see self-centered flankhats are a gender-neutral thing in this world you've got. And then there's Ms. Obvious Has-Been and Lord Bad Lyrics over here."
"Hey, don't knock the overpaid sell-outs! They even provided a way to forget the bad song via said lyrics!"
Vinyl turned even whiter than normal. "No no no for the love of Sun please no!"
Grinning sadistically, Discord drew in a massive breath, even inflating himself like a balloon to get his point across.
"AAAAHHHHHH YYYEEEEAHHH BAA-"
Thankfully for Vinyl's ears (and those of everyone else in Canterlot, including non-ponies), the paint can completed the one act of real significance it ever would.
ACK! BLEECH! HACK!
What was quite possibly the worst taste in the world, with a chaser of cheap metal can, proceeded to ruthlessly march down the back of his throat.
Vinyl was barely able to hold a straight face long enough for her quip. "Hey Discord! You might want to scream for help to get that out!"
Discord would probably quip right back, except he was too busy negotiating with the paint-induced lack of air to notice. Not that this was that bad for an immortal spirit of chaos, but it was still disorientating if sudden. Retching, Discord fell onto the streets below, writing in pain and nausea, sending random bolts of chaotic, shapechanging energy everywhere.
Eventually, the pain subsided, and slowly, unsteadily, the dracoequus got to his feet.
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS? DISCORD, THOU SHALT EXPLAIN WHY THE BAKERY WE WERE SHOPPING AT TURNED INTO A HOT DOG-!"
The nausea did not, however.
Discord had the "wonderful" sensation of the taste going the wrong way, then the world went black.
Thankfully for Discord, that last rogue chaos bolt drained enough out of him for him to sink into nausea-free unconsciousness.
"SISTER, THOU SHALT EXPLAIN WHY THE DRACOEQUUS IS NOT CURRENTLY A STATUE ON THE MOON!
Hm. Luna screaming at the top of her Royal Canterlot Voice that he should be sent back to her own former place of residence, preferably petrified, and so enraged she was back to fairy tale grammar. Good, that meant it was still Tuesday. Well, that or he had been out for a week, but it took time for her to get worked up like this.
Groggily, Discord forced himself back to the land of the waking, his surroundings (a very large hospital room and bed) swimming into view.
"Now, Luna, I know you and Discord have had disagreements in the past-"
"THE PLATONIC FORM OF UNDERSTATEMENT-"
"-but this time it really wasn't his fault."
"'WAS NOT HIS FAULT'!? IS THOU NOT BEING IN JEST!? OR IS THOU'S AFFECTIONS FOR HIM CLOUDING THY JUDGEMENT, AGAIN?"
"That was before his pranks started leaving lasting scars, and I never mentioned-"
"APPARENTLY HE LEFT LASTING LASTING MARKS AS WELL, ON THOU'S BRAIN!"
"While I normally am not particularly quarrelsome with a catfight..."
Discord, enough of his faculties returned to teleport to the sound of the Princesses (it wasn't far enough to merit one, but it was more attention-grabbing), proceeded to insert himself into the literal middle of the arguing rulers.
"I am trying to behave myself, and thus am morally obligated to give lessons. Well, that and even on my worst days I would never turn family against itself and view this could-possibly-be-interpreted-as-a-love-triangle-by-someone-who-sees-the-world-like-that argument as offensive to my personal aesthetics. But mostly the former." A graduate cap materialized on top of the draconequus' head, and he turned to Celestia, effecting his best 'teacher' voice.
"Now, young Celly, I know you only mean the best for me, but Luna's distrust is understandable. In all fairness, I am a bit skeptical myself, and am mainly being restrained by disapproval of a certain pegasus until I learn how to focus my chaos into more socially acceptable outlets. As it is, she may not have good reason to be angry with you, but you cannot disagree that she doesn't have bad ones to be angry at me." He turned around.
"Now, younger Luna I...know..."
The sound of a needle scratching heralded the end of the 'lesson learned' background music, followed shortly by suppressed sniggering.
"I know that I will get demerits for this, but *snicker* I can't keep a straight face."
Discord pulled on the string of the graduation cap causing it to invert and turn into a bowler as the cane attached to the chord came out.
"Nightmare Moon, your plan to impersonate your sister needs work. Like, for example, the fact she wears an actual crown and not what you'd expect on a megalomaniac with nothing but moon-dust to her OH WAIT." Unable to hold onto his mirth any longer, Discord collapsed into tears of laughter.
"IT IS NOT FUNNY!" Luna shot a murderous glare at Celestia, which would probably be more intimidating where it not for the paint can glued by dried paint to the top of her head. "IT WILL TAKE US WEEKS TO GET THIS ABOMINABLE SHADE OF ALABASTER OUT OF OUR MANE!"
"Ohhh, don't feel too bad, Lulu," Discord managed to get out between snickers. "Think of the specks as a newly discovered variety of white dwarf. Not unlike your brief singing career!"
"WE HAD ALLERGIES THAT NIGHT! THE CRYSTAL STATUE BEING SHATTERED WAS NOT OUR FAULT!" Discord laughed even harder.
"Ahem."
Suddenly reminded of Celestia's continued existence, Discord turned around.
"Oh thank the Sun! Princess! Please, you must save Equestria from the madness of this fashion catastrophe!"
"While I don't dispute that at all," (Luna groaned), "actually that would be the reason why Luna is angry at with you."
"Well, I would consider this a representative of one of my 'rejected ideas' pile as a makeup-" A penny dropped from Discord's ear. "Wait, angry at me?"
"YES, ANGRY WITH THOU! YOU DID THIS."
"Whoa. Time out. I did this? I mean, I respect the pony who did, but me?"
"YOU LYING PILE OF STABLE-wait." Luna's eyes stopped glowing. "You're not claiming credit?"
"No. Unless you consider 'following a most spectacular example' credit, in which case I must humbly turn down stealing the credit and instead must request my student to mention me as much as possible. Have to stay famous somehow."
"Oh." Luna stared blankly for a second, then began to smile. "Oh."
"...Your Highness? Why are you grinning like me? I'm not contagious, am I?"
"Discord, my sister is talking about-"
"Your stomach vented this on me."
"WHAAAAAAA-?"
Still giving that sadistic smirk, Luna suddenly pulled out a newspaper with the photographic proof on it. "You have to respect Shutter Bug. Always quick on the draw."
This time, Discord's silence was because he honestly could not think of a comeback.
"I...well...um...oh, this is embarrassing...I...er....uh......."
Discord looked pleadingly at the other Princess, and only found proof that yes, he was transmissable.
"Ehhhhhhh......"
The Spirit of Disharmony grinned sheepishly.
"Why is the ground black?"
Now it was Luna's turn to laugh hysterically, even falling to the floor. Discord had nothing for this, except to turn his cane black and his bowler a somber grey.
"If you don't mind me, I'll be at the graveyard....mourning my dignity...."
Looking utterly defeated, Discord slunk back to his bedroom. Luna's pearls of laughter ringing out behind him. A moment later, Celestia followed.
"I said I was mourning! It's an immensely personal affair, especially away from cameras for the next month!"
"Well, you'll be glad to hear you won't need suffer the death of your social life alone. Hayseed Turnip Truck sends both his condolences and a free shipment of his self-grown produce as an apology. He says he'll invest in a fall guard."
"Oh, that's nice of the murderer-hold on a minute." Discord was suddenly not slumping. "'Turnip'? Aren't they the Apple Clan's branch family?"
"Yes, but I don't see how-" Celestia's eyes widened as she realized exactly what Discord was thinking. "Er, I mean, no! The Turnips are very much not a branch of a family that is definitely not related to Applejack, and if they were, I am sure that they would very much not-er, very much would-like a repainting job!"
"You know, even if you weren't trying to dissuade me, I would go back to old habits just for poor grammar completely reversing the intended message by my successors. Not a very royal thing to do." Celestia winced as she realized the double negative. "But, you know, since they are such fans of painting..."
Discord yanked the handle off the cane, revealing a brush, then slammed the handle on his hat, turning the handle into a color palate and the bowler into a beret. "I vould say ze vhere in need of za fine artistes of Prance, non?"
Celestia fired a beam at Discord, only to hit a canvas with the words "Ce n'est pas un bouclie." on it. The draconequus blew a kiss, painted his mustache black, then left through a painted door in the wall which he threw remover on as he passed through.
Celestia stared at the dissolving door, then gave an exasperated sigh.
"Time to send a letter...."
Chapter 2: Veracity of Memory
Applejack generally considered herself a patient pony.
Well, okay, not precisely patient, but being a farmer taught her how to value to ability to wait. At the best of times, the apples did not require any work, and thus waiting was all there was, while at other times, there was waiting and working, which was actually better, as one could work instead of wait.
Still, Applejack considered the wait it took for her friends to show up and help kick out her extremely unwelcome guest to be rather long.
"Oui! Oui! Magnifique, mon ami! "
Although that was at least partially because said guest made anything seem rather long.
"Very good, petit rodentz! Make those treez as beaoutiful as the hills of le old country!"
The farmer wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that Discord had apparently decided that what Sweet Apple Acres really needed was a change in color palates, having enlisted a colony of squirrels to help him, or the ridiculous Prench accent that wasn't sure what area of the nation it was from. Indeed, the more Applejack listened, the more sure she became that it was either because he was mocking her own, or that he had never actually met a Prench pony. More likely both.
Under normal circumstances, it would undoubtedly be the accent, but the draconequus apparently didn't think much of "le old country". The silver lining of this whole situation was that Applejack was discovering an inherent ability to appraise art, which would no doubt thrill Rarity. She could already tell the red-and-dark-orange candy stripes on the trees looked awful, especially when taken with green, yellow, and brown leaves and randomly polka-dotted apples. The fact that Discord regularly broke pattern and made a tree to a completely different standard with no rhyme or reason to the trees around it didn't help.
"Fantastique! Excellent! Moi's masterpiece, 'Le Polisson de Vengeance zhall soon be a treasure for ze ages!"
It was kind of up in the air, though.
On the plus side, it appeared that Discord had restricted his mischief to merely painting the orchard rather than actually fiddling with reality again. Applejack also recognized the paint as the biodegradable quick-dry version (and if Discord eating one of the apples was an indication, a digestible version), and while she was definitely not happy, this was a long way from drowning, and then freezing said farm. Thus, she and her siblings, rather than try to minimize the damage and get painted as well, merely watched the show impatiently from a convenient hill.
"What do ya think is takin' them so long, sis?"
"Dunno. Last I heard they were lookin' for Fluttershy, but were havin' a hard time. I'm goin' to give her the benefit o' the doubt and assume that she just was involved in somethin' else and that she's not intentionally delayin' because of her freindship with Ol' Man Mixed-Up Bits over there,"
"Applejack! That's terrible."
"I know, Bloom. I don't believe it neither, but it's awfully temptin' to. That way I can complain at her."
"Ya mean like that time me an the other Cutie Mark Crusaders got bakin' soda instead of flower and we had that big fight even after we discovered it was the salespony?"
"Ee-yup."
"It's not a nice thing to do, but it does make the problem seem less bad if ya can blame somepony and think you might be able to fix it by whinin' to them. Besides Discord, but he can make my muzzle disappear before I get the chance."
"Sorry we're late!"
The sound of cantering and flapping wings heraled the arrival of the other Elements.
Rainbow Dash was, naturally, the first. "Holy smokes, you will not believe the places we had to go to find Fluttershy."
Twilight arrived soon after, her mane a collection of burs. "Note to self: If there is a suspicious batch of bushes that animals stay away from, you are an animal."
Fluttershy landed next. "I'm sorry. I had to check on the hummingbirds," she squeaked.
Finally, Rarity. "Oh my, that is hideous! Those shades simply do not get along."
Teleporting out a few burs, Twilight revealed the Element box. "All right, girls. Discord isn't being as bad as he was before, but we probably need to remind him of what happens when he starts messing with ponies, even tangentially." The necklaces and tiara set were quickly doled out. "Thankfully, he seems to be busy with painting the orchard right now, so all we need to do is sneak up on him, give him a quick blast, and turn, say, his tail to stone? Should be enough to get him to stop."
The siblings not Applejack nodded, then quietly hid behind a bush.
Slowly, surely, the Elements snuck up on the Spirit of Disharmony, who was currently engrossed in the construction of a painting of a game of tic-tac-toe between his hands, with every X and 0 lovingly and slowly sketched out and shaded in.
The Elements began to glow and levitate.....
FZZZZT! FZZ-ZZT!
"Wait, that doesn't sound-"
BANG!
"RIIIIIIGGGGHHHT!"
Rainbow was catapulted backwards and down, sending her straight into a tree in the process of being painted, causing the surprised squirrels to drop their supply on her. Applejack tried to laugh the now polka-dot and striped mare through the soot covering her, then passed out.
"Mirror! MIRROR!" Rarity ran off to the nearest stream to assess the damage the explosion did to her mane. Or rather, mohawk.
Twilight's own mane and tail flowed up, crackling with multicolored hues of lighting. Fluttershy was nowhere to be seen, except for a suspiciously shivering bush.
As for Discord, the sudden noise had distracted him,causing his initial drawing of an X blocking an O line to be disrupted. The O hand took this opportunity to steal the pencil and sketch an O in its place, drawing a winner's line through it. The X hand pulled out a miniature sign with the word CHEAT on it, to which the other hand shrugged.
Looking rather annoyed, Discord turned around. "Young femmes, as much fun it vould be to play with you vright now, zhe art requires a certain amount of, peace, shall ve say? Vell, not zhe peace, considering moi, but..."
"Discord, please drop the accent. I'm not sure if you're sure what country you're trying to parody." Rarity was still busy combing her mane into its proper shape.
"Yes, that does get a bit tiring after a while, doesn't it." The beret became a bowler cap. "But still, you successfully managed to ruin this modern-day masterpiece in the making that took me all of ten minutes to draw." His face became a crocodile's. "I am not the monster of this story...." He sobbed exaggeratedly into a tissue.
"Okay...that was not supposed to happen." Rainbow Dash, trying to look as dignified as she could.
"No, but it's what should happen. That's what counts!"
"Oooh....What in tarnation went wrong with that?" Applejack unsteadily got to her hooves, shedding soot as she did.
"Seemed a lot like a harmonic imbalance to me." Twilight winced as the static zapped her as she tried to smooth it out, before remembering she had magic for a reason. "Somepony didn't charge their element properly."
"I'm sorry!"
"Not your fault, Fluttershy." Twilight, hair now safe, took off her own Element and inspected it. "Honestly, the only reason the spell matrix would overload like that would be if one of them...wasn't.....activated." Twilight glanced at the draconequus. "Discord, why do you look like that?"
The 'like that' in question was a look of utter deadpan and disapproval, the expression one gets when he is about to point out a fact so profoundly obvious that one would have to be a complete and utter idiot to not notice, and yet he has noticed it before the person he is talking to. "Oh me? Nothing. I'm just wondering what the Elements had the day they chose you, and if I can have some."
"Uh...Discord? From our perspective, this is a very subtle failure on the part of the Elements that will take months if not years to diagnose and fix, during which you and every other monster that needs them has free reign. We don't have immortal-chaos-spirit knowledge where we can know what it is with a glance."
"Well, if it's a cascade failure in her ability to plan her schedule months if not years in advance, that would be understandable."
"Um...if I may...to whom are you referring to?" Rarity interjected.
Relief surged through Discord's body. If they were being this obtuse, it had to be a joke. "Actually, now that I think of it...I'm having a difficult time remembering myself...let's see, sort of normal-sized, earth pony, has a poofy mane that occasionally deflates when she's feeling down...?" Discord took off the bowler hat and revealed a wild, mad scientist hairdo as he stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"Ain't ringing any bells, sorry."
"Hm....I remember something about her being pink....extremely bouncy....and hiding in that tree!" Discord caused said suspected tree to turn transparent via paint remover, revealing a lot of irritated squirrels, but no pony. "Dang."
"Discord, I have no idea what the hay you're talking about, son."
"EUREKA! PINKIE PIE!" Discord grinned (and covered his head for any flying party projectiles).
Nothing.
Rainbow Dash squinted. "Um, excuse me?"
"Well, I was preparing myself for the prank the Element of Laughter had prepared, but unfortunately, her sense of comedic timing wasn't as good as she thinks-"
"The what of what, dear?"
Huh?
Discord stared at Rarity. "The Element of Laughter? Pinkie Pie?"
Still no peep, apart from confusion from all of the Elements.
"Um, guys, are you hearing this correctly?"
"Or more accurately, not hearing?"
"If y'all mean he moves his mouth and all ya hear is a weird scratchin' noise, sure."
"Discord, are you feeling okay?"
HUH???
All of Discord's altered features-the brush, the hair, the canvas-disappeared. "...Okay....If you don't mind, will you please repeat these words for me?"
"Um..okay."
"All right, partner."
"Give me all you got!"
"I play this game with Sweetie all the time! ...Ask her, not me."
"Please don't shout."
"Okay then...Pinkie"
"Pinkie."
"Pie."
"Pie."
"Pinkie Pie."
"Krssh."
The Spirit of Disharmony did a double take. Hooves were held up in the air.
"All right....now how about the parrot?"
Discord created said parrot out of thin air, not bothering with his usual panache.
"*squawk* Pinkie Pie"
"Squawk, krssh."
Discord was beginning to feel sick again. "All right class, now can any of you read this?"
Again, the paper with the words "Pinkie Pie" and "Element of Laughter" on it was simply brought into being, no comedic flourish.
Twilight squinted. And squinted. And squinted. "These designs look like letters, but I can't place the language at all."
Rainbow giggled nervously. "Okay, Discord? You're starting to creep us out. I read the news, and you have every right to be mad, but you've had you revenge now. Could you like, stop, before I get actually scared?"
Discord was actually sweating now. "Girls, I wish I could. Please hold still for a second, I'm going to check for something..."
Cradling his head to help concentrate, the draconequus let his mind slip out of his body, connected only by a silver cord. Concentrating further, he shifted from the incorporeal state of Twilight to Astral Space, the realm of thoughts and dreams. More than that, he looked at the confused minds of the Elements, and the strange, shifting and difficult to perceive thoughtform affecting their minds. Tugging on his cord, he entered the mazelike fabric of the emotional and mystical Resonance composing the thoughtform, and hurriedly began to pilfer through it and its history etched in the flow of time, hoping against hope that the thing he was looking for was not here.
Please. Be anything else. Please. Be a malevolent spirit, an angry and powerful ghost, a being from the Lower Depths, a fae, an Astral archetype of forgetting, hell, even an Abyssal intrusion, just...not....
The Fates, it seemed, were not with Discord.
For at the very beginning of its history, there was an unmistakable Resonance that generated the toxic, memory-censoring thoughtform, was the sight of gears and cogs, the sound of pistons and steam, the feel of electricity, metal, and data.
Calm.
Orderly.
Efficient.
Familiar.
In the shock, it was amazing that Discord remembered to run, tearing out the memory filter at its moorings as he did, preventing detection from the greater intelligence ultimately responsible for its creation. Yanking on the silver cord as hard as he could, Discord returned to his body so fast he could feel the impact as a physical thing.
"It's here....the Machine is here...."
A strange sensation, like oil being washed off skin, reverberated throughout the Element bearers and the Apple siblings. As it did so, the words on the page gradually became more comprehensible. Twilight looked at it again. "Oh yeah, Pinkie Pie! Duh. Boy am I a silly filly. I mean just because she's been gone for...two.....months....." The horrible sense of comprehension came next. "Two....months...."
If Twilight had been scared, Rarity was nearing raw panic. "We...forgot who Pinkie was....we...forgot she existed..."
Applejack gave a laugh that was somewhere between a mad giggle and hysterics. "Big Mac! That was a real nice herb you mixed in with the apple sauce this mornin'! I mean, you did mix somethin' in, right!?"
"Nope." Big Mac sounded very small, trying to keep the fear out of his voice as Apple Bloom clung to him increasingly tightly.
"...what else have we forgotten?" Rainbow Dash looked at her hoof with a thousand yard stare. "...am I even me?"
"...I'm scared."
As the ponies slowly succumbed to raw fear and existential dread, Discord could only stare blankly at nothing. It's here....it's here....it's here...
By the time Discord brought himself out of his own panic attack, the ponies were in a terrified, sobbing ball.
Thankfully for all involved, one of Discord's virtues was his mental fortitude. It did not take long for him to go from "war flashback" to "his definition of normal" at all. Of course, it took a bit longer for the equines, but thanks to many floating white gloves with the words CALM DOWN printed on them, they were snapped back to reality long enough for the Spirit of Disharmony to break down the problem into more manageable chunks. The fact that they were now in the nice, cozy setting of the Apple farm helped.
Still rubbing her cheeks after the gloves needed extra calming sessions, Dash spoke first. "So....you're saying that nothing else was changed? Only our ability to remember Pinkie?"
"Well, technically nothing changed so much as something was inserted. My guess is that the a....agency which created the memory block was planning on returning Pinkie at some point, then removing the using the memory filter to actually create memories of her being on a vacation, in hers included. Since I had my disagreement with the filter and now it is currently busy being scrap dream, there isn't going to be any lingering effects. I made sure of that." Discord pulled out a strange set of cogs that may have once been a mechanism. "Isn't that right, scrap dream?"
"So...I'm really Rainbow Dash? I'm not some robot who was put here to spy on my friends so that the evil alien overlords know exactly what to do to defeat them and then put their brains in cylinders in order to do their paperwork?"
"...I have to see that movie someday. And no."
Dash released the breath she had been holding ever since before the slap session. "Well. That's a relief. I really didn't want the Fastest Flier in Equestria title to be due to hidden rocket engines or something. Can you imagine the tabloids?"
"It's good too see your priorities are straight, Dashie." Rarity, apparently, did not get the concept of making light of a situation via humor.
Of course, the good feelings couldn't last forever, and it was Applejack that finally brought up the obvious. "Uh, Discord? What agency? I heard ya swap the words out at ta last second."
Discord proceeded to remain silent.
"Come on, Discord? If there's been someone messin' with our minds, it would be kind nice of ya ta tell us?" Apple Bloom gave her best puppy impersonation.
"If I was sure you wouldn't lose your minds, my little pony, I would."
Big Mac said nothing, only panted and barked a couple times before gazing on in disbelief.
"Permanently, I mean. I admit I was a little upset that I had to break out instead of being let out, but I was planning on putting things back the way they were." A pause. "Well, recognizably, at least. I actually gave that magic of mine a definite duration, and I just thought it had timed out when you girls had gone back to being colored."
"While that was nice of you, you're still avoiding the issue," Twilight piped up. "I think I and the girls would love to know exactly what took our friend and then hid all evidence of her existence."
Discord looked extremely uncomfortable.
After about a minute, he spoke, choosing his words carefully and plainly. "Twilight, look. I can't tell you...because if I do, you'll never be able to sleep again."
"Huh?"
"This...thing, I'm talking about. It's something very old, very powerful, and very subtle. It's a lot like a giant spider, bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than even the Princesses. Its schemes can thread through everything, and quickly incorporate anything that barely resembles it, and at no point does the things it influences need become aware of it until it's too late to do anything. If you start learning about it, learning about the causal way it uses and destroys lives to suit its agenda, you'll start seeing evidence of its network everywhere, even in things that it isn't aware of or things it will not use. You'll grow paranoid and obsessed, always suspecting other ponies of being its agents or assets, and politics of being another step in its plans. You'll sacrifice your ties to everything, friends, family, even that baby dragon, just so it won't take advantage of you. Soon, the only thing left will be you trying to scratch the surface, trying to find out what it's planning next, and how you can either fight it, avoid it, or try to find some way to benefit from it. You may even give up hope entirely, and come to willingly serve it, just so you feel safe."
"Ever heard the saying 'ignorance is bliss'? In this case, this is actually a good idea. For the love of the Sun, Twilight Sparkle, don't try to understand it. You'll just cause yourself pain, and you won't end up knowing anything concrete. It's a fool's errand, something you should avoid until utterly necessary."
There was a dead silence in the Apple farm, as Discord had nothing more to say, and the ponies could not think of anything to reply to Discord turning dead serious in the service of apparent compassion.
Eventually, Rainbow Dash spoke up. "So...that's it? 'Pinkie's been kidnapped by a cosmic horror that I am not going to explain because I'm afraid we're in a Haymitch P. Lovework story, and I guess we're stuck then?' Because if that's what you're saying, I don't care! I'm going to go there, find a way to save her, freaky-chessmaster-spider-outer god or not!"
"Actually, that's only mostly true. I'm going to save her."
A chorus of "WHAT?" rang out from the equines in attendance.
"I'll leave my half-explanation on a bright note. Just because this thing can't be destroyed or intimidated does not mean it can't be defeated. It can be confused, it can be thwarted, it can even be forced to abandon plans altogether because the cost is coming to outpace the potential gains. I don't know what it wants here, or what it plans to do with Pinkie, but I know how this thing thinks. If it abducted a single pony, even one as...unique as Pinkie, it isn't that important of a mission, one that that can easily be canceled and have a substitute scheme in its place. I'll bring her back, safe and as sound as whatever its minions has left her."
Rarity blinked, before her lips turned upward into an amused smile. "Well, this is rather sweet for you, Discord. I didn't know you had a full soul instead of a bare minimum of a conscience."
"Well, there had to be something Fluttershy saw in me." The pegasus in question grinned shyly. "Still, it doesn't pay to be unprepared. It's not entirely unlikely that I'll have to make a quick retreat, especially given how it's all too familiar with my race. Twilight, you will need to alert Celestia, since if I'm any indication, that memory filter isn't keyed to divine beings, and we exist in a blind spot for it. For both you and for everypony else, tell no one. For anyone that is not a divine being, you mentioning Pinkie Pie's existence to anyone it still affects, even in implication, will set off a warning system and a servant will probably be dispatched to investigate. Knowing their general disposition, it is probably more inclined to destroy the town and everyone in it rather than attempt to repair the filter in the field. Does anypony need greater explanation?"
"Heard ya fine."
"Nope."
"As much as I'd like to tell Sweetie, I will endure."
"Got it, loud and clear"
"I can at least talk with my brother and sister, so I ain't that disturbed."
"I'll think of an excuse to send those letters."
"Um, do animals count?"
"No, Flutters. They can't talk, so it doesn't bother." Discord raised his wings. "Wish me luck."
"Star light, star bright..."
Pausing to chuckle at Apple Bloom's literal mind, Discord materialized an army helmet, and took off for the point he had seen the thoughtform's flow come from.
whirr, click.
Neither he nor the real ponies noticed the tiny sounds of the tiny camera irises in "Fluttershy's" eyes zoom in on Discord.
In the Dalga's Cloister, Barachiel yawned as his body finished assembling itself.
"Noble Dalga, why have you called me to this place? I was in the process of slumber, repairing holes in the network."
"A very pertinent task to the reasons I asked your presence. You asked me to alert you to any pertinent observations by the infiltration unit we sent back in place of the test control? I just received one. Begin log, Clockworked Serial Number 12-98, Type Designation Blue, Today, timestamp 20:42:"
The Dalga's voice dialed up several tones as he relayed the message vocally. "Alert. The native Celebrant is preparing to attack the facility. Repeat: The native Celebrant is preparing to attack the facility. Photo of the entity known as 'Discord' is enclosed in data packet. Subject is emotionally connected to imitated target 'Fluttershy', but cover was sufficiently obscured and has not been compromised. End transmission."
The spatial window formed again, showing a collection of pictures of a strange, hybrid organism.
Barachiel became very awake. "The Grid will be prepared with haste. He shall not pass the threshold a free being."
"Okay, team, here's the game plan."
Discord had dressed himself in a soccer jersey for the occasion. He pointed to a materialized chalkboard, drawing sports instructions on it. "The away team currently has the ball, and if we are going to pull a win out of our butts and get the lead this early quarter, we are going to need to force them to part with it. We need a touchdown back in Ponyville to get the early lead, and--"
"Coach, a question." The speaker was a heavily-muscled helmeted squirrel. "Why is the aesthetic a football team? I mean, we are kind of leading an assault on an outpost of an enemy our creator's race has been at war with for several thousand of their generations. Football doesn't exactly scream that to me."
"First, you will do ten push-ups for referring to the sport as 'football'. It's soccer, we carry the ball. Secondly...good point." The jersey quickly reshaped into an officer's uniform and the rest of the uniforms on the remade wildlife followed suit, tripping the squirrel doing push-ups as his own reshaped into a regular arsenal of ammunition and guns. "Right then, men, our mark is Lieutenant Pinkie Pie, last seen by her unit heading to the vicinity of this amusement park, north by northwest of here. Our intelligence indicates that the God-Machine's forces have developed an outpost in the area, and we believe that the Lieutenant is being held within. Remember, we are fighting the fog of war here as well as any angelic resistance, given how we are attempting to lead a surprise attack and they would have detected us if we sent scouts. But from my experience with the G-M's tactics, the outpost will lack significant defenses, and will not have a full clockworked regiment. Besides, if we lose, I can just wish reinforcements into existence. Is that clear?"
"Sir yes sir!"
"Not enthusiastic enough!"
"SIR YES SIR!"
"That's the spirit men! Now, let's break this overblown clock!"
The mutated soldiers arranged themselves in formation behind Discord (which for him, was "standing wherever they felt like") and marched towards the Golden Beach, across the snow.
And marched.
And marched.
The squirrel spoke up again. "Sir, I thought the Golden Beach was only a few miles."
"Insubordination, Lance Corporal! Very commendable. Especially when I was thinking the same thing." Discord held up his hand in a "stop" gesture. Scanning the horizon, he saw nothing but whiteout.
"Hold on, let me check my....charts....?"
The thing he had pulled out of his pocket and unrolled was not a map.
Rather, it was an anachronistic piece of printer paper. Upon it was the words Did you really think we weren't prepared? It was foolish to think anything else.
Before Discord could react, a blast of supercold air instantly froze the back troops, followed by a strange sound between a whinny and a wolf howl.
"EVASIVE MANEUVERS!" Discord ducked to avoid another blast, then drew a sword that reshaped into a gatling gun.
The squirrel pulled out as much of the guns as he could, which was awkward given how one was held by a foot. "TAKE COVER! WE WILL NOT BE RED SHIRTS TODAY!"
Another blast quickly proved that assumption wrong, as a bizarre shape, not unlike a translucent blue horse, came out of the blizzard. As it edged closer, one could see that not all of this horse was see-through: a strange metal construction, not unlike a mechanical ribcage with leather bladder lugs floated within its chest, wires extending from it to a pair of mechanical eyes. It howled again, and this time Discord could hear the synthesized distortion in the windigo's voice.
"Please. I helped make them! If you were going to throw a domesticated magath at me, you could at least get one I couldn't purify in five min-"
The cybernetic windigo charged for inhaled for another breath.
54 68 79 20 6B 69 6E 67 64 6F 6D 20 63 6F 6D 65 2E 20 54 68 79 20 77 69 6C 6C 20 62 65 20 64 6F 6E 65 2E 0D 0A
As Discord shrieked, the windigo attacked again, freezing the remaining troops.
4F 6E 20 65 61 72 74 68 20 61 73 20 69 74 20 69 73 20 69 6E 20 68 65 61 76 65 6E 2E
A pair of polar bears with metal skin on their arms dashed into the fray, crushing the frozen troops and swatting away the still-moving mutants like oversized gnats.
A strange shape rose out of the snow, not unlike an azure amoeba. As it drew to its full height, as tall as a male pony on his hind legs, it disgorged several dozen solid parts the color of ivory, which it began to assemble around itself like a carapace.
The carapace was fully assembled, taking the form of a bulky, headless humanoid with four slender arms, each ending on both a thumbless hand and a different medical instrument. The only visible part of the amoeba was a round protrusion that imitated a featureless head. It 'looked' down, as the face of an older human man build into its chest opened blue, pupiless, eyes. "Hm," it said, revealing teeth that shone like white sands and a calm, stoic voice. "I must say the past month has been a veritable cornucopia of research. First I understand the mechanism behind the Pinkie Sense mystery, then I figure out how to manufacture Commandments en masse, and now, a Celebrant presents himself to me, alive and mostly well. It seems that even the Wyrd blesses our Mission."
The pain beginning to fade slightly, Discord opened an eye, giving the strange being a look that could kill. When he failed the keel over, instead stumbling back slightly as his carapace was scarred, the Spirit of Disharmony chuckled weakly. "Ha..ha....and here I was, thinking angels didn't have personal desires."
"Oh, it's not quite personal," the being said, as his carapace was quickly repaired by the blob within it. "The Faultless realized that it did not have as much information on this planet as it would like, so it commissioned me, Harahel the Seeker, to gather and learn as much as I could and apply it to the larger Mission and Infrastructure we three Overseers tend to."
"Oh, is that so? And here I was, thinking the God-Machine-"
"YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF SPEAKING ITS NAMES, UNCLEAN ONE!" The screaming female voice echoed off from far-off in the distance. "YOUR LIPS DEFILE THEM!"
"Be at ease, Jophiel." Another voice in the distance, grandfatherly. "He may be forgiven not knowing of your devotion to the Creator and Master Control."
"My siblings," said Harahel, his head shifting to a platonic solid. "Jophiel the Stalwart and Barachiel the Wise. But enough about me, this is about you." He edged a bit closer. "Tell me, are you familiar with the concept of temporal flow? Especially complex flow?"
Discord felt his blood turn to ice. "Not really. I possess a survival instinct."
"Good. That means we can preform more experiments before you perish or escape." The forceps hand jabbed Discord below his right eye. "Of course, now that I think of it...I do need a device to monitor your interior biology, Celebrants can be so confusing...."
Discord couldn't really hide his fear of the scientific angel any more. "If I didn't know better, I would say say you are enjoying this."
46 6F 72 20 65 76 65 72 20 61 6E 64 20 65 76 65 72 2E
Harahel laughed even as Discord felt the strongest blow yet from the Grid, his head reshaping into a pyramid as he put a hand to it instead of his face. "Of course I enjoy it! I was programmed to love discovering new things!"
41 6D 65 6E 2E
Darkness.
"Um, Twilight? Are you sure you still don't want to tell me why you're sending these letters?"
"As I've told you for the thirtieth time, Spike, it's confidential! I can't, otherwise I'm going to get Princess Celestia mad!"
"She can be a little angry, can't she?" Spike burned yet another letter, the eighth one in as many hours. "I just want to know why I'm getting close to *cough* losing my voice. *cough*"
"Not yet, Spike!" Twilight had worked herself into a growing panic, at this point randomly teleporting about. I don't get it. I mean, not being informed of Discord's plans before the newspaper got to us is one thing, but this is getting ridiculous. Is the perception effect of of memory filter affecting her too, and all she's reading is gobbledygook? No, that would be even more worrying, and she'd show up to figure out why I lost my ability to write, especially after a week of this....Three more letters, then I go to Canterlot myself.
Pulling out her quill and paper, ignoring Spike's groan, Twilight began to write. Dear Princess Celestia...
"Don't....they blocked..."
Twilight squeaked, and spun around to face Discord. She barely remembered to muffle Spikes ears at the string of profanity that came from her mouth. "Discord! What happened to you!?"
The draconequus pushed out a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a geriatric cough. His face was incredibly aged, almost as if a pony lived for a thousand years of time apparently deciding it didn't like them. That wasn't the truly disturbing bit, however. The truly disturbing bit was that his age was nothing resembling constant across his body-in some areas, he was still the same young and spry-looking draconequus, but in others, he was de-aged, back into a child, giving him a lopsided, mutilated appearance. Compared to that, the clockwork right eye, glowing with a green pupil and with circuit pattens extending like vines from the socket, seemed almost tame.
"Heack.....got careless...underestimated them....Pinkie was only...secondary objective....not goal...much larger than her....much stranger." Hacking up grey, ashen mucus, Discord dragged himself into the library, his de-aged right leg too small to carry him. "Knew I was coming....prepared....didn't stand a chance....captured, escaped...."
"HOLY GUACAMOLE, DISCORD! WHAT GOD OF TIME DID YOU PRANK!? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR EYE!? WHO THE HAY IS 'PINK-'"
A sad looking blast of chaos energy hit Spike in the forehead, and an odd sound, like failing machinery, echoed through the house. "Please...freak out later....too important...not much time...."
Collapsing on Twilight's floor, Discord reached into his skull, pulling out a rainbow, shifting pearl. "Take this...this dream...contains everything I know...the God-Machine...ignorance won't save...."
"Discord! Don't drain yourself! I know first aid, I can take you to the hosptial-"
"Heack...no need...need intention for Celebrants to be....truly dead...just sleep for a few months...wait for my body to destabilize....don't worry...just stop them...but beware..."
Discord pulled Twilight close, both to hand her the pearl and to cling to her. "Beware....the zealous flame...beware....the scholar's light...beware...the wind that sees all...beware the lords...of the clockwork....heaven......"
Unable to continue even further, Discord closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed. Slowly, a great multicolored crystal, hued with the same colors of the dream pearl, crept up the Spirit of Disharmony's body, encasing him in a silicate cocoon. Soon, Twilight found herself holding only a pearl, and the frozen hand of a crystal draconequus, dreaming peacefully.
Panting heavily, both Rainbow Dash and the Princesses alighted in the clearing where the other Elements, and the crystallized form of Discord were waiting.
"Rainbow Dash told us about Discord already." Surprisingly, the first speaker was Luna. "Tell me, what were his injuries? He doesn't hibernate from minor wounds, he has to bleed out."
"That's the thing, your Highness." Twilight was pacing nervously, knowing intellectually that the draconequus was alive, but not quite emotionally. She was busy inspecting each and every inch of the frozen spirit, looking for anything that hinted at there not being life under the surface of the shifting rainbow crystals. "He wasn't injured, so much as...aged wrong. And he had this weird metal eye that was glowing green."
Spike joined in. "It was like some parts of him were a baby, and other parts an old dragon...goat...chimera...immortal chaos spirit thingy."
Celestia furrowed her brow. "I don't know why his eye was replaced, but that sounds like temporal flow exposure. That takes a lot of magic, and very specialized equipment to do even accidentally, and I know Discord's magic-he can't affect time like that, only observe it." Celestia looked at the sleeping face of the being in question. "This was intentional, and very cruel-the only natural predator I know of that does this is a Tindalan Wolf, and they don't even injure you that badly-they just make a pony older or younger a year or so while they feed on your potential future."
"Remind me never to go to Tindala, then," said Rarity, busy inspecting the chrysalis. "I really don't want to deal with wrinkles ahead of time."
"Good to see ya have your priorities straight."
"Actually, Applejack, I do. I'm trying to figure out how to get Discord out of this gem so we can treat him without it in the way. Unlike you, who seem to be just standing there, not helping-"
"HEY! I DRAGGED HIM HERE, DIDN'T I!?"
"ENOUGH! FIGHTING WILL GET THOU NOWHERE!" Luna stomped a hoof. "IN ANY CASE-ahem, in any case, releasing Discord from this Chrysalis Grotesque would be a monumentally bad idea, for all parties involved. He has returned to his base form of chaotic energies while his body destroys any coherent patterns that, if he returned to physical form, would become injuries and secondary complications thereof. Releasing him would result in a rather large explosion of magical energy that was once him."
Rarity looked at Luna quizzically. "Chrysalis...Grotesque? This beautiful thing?"
"Something tells me that would hurt Mr. Discord's feelings." Fluttershy appeared to be massively spooked by the events of the week and trying to make herself invisible.
Luna shrugged. "I didn't name it. It is a Celebrant thing, apparently."
Something echoed in Twilight's memory. "'Celebrant'? He said that's why he didn't need to go to the hospital. I thought he was a draconequus."
"He is, Twilight," said Celestia. "That is the form he took to interact with the physical world."
"'Form he took?' Your Highness, can you start from the beginning?" Rainbow Dash looked about as lost as could be expected.
Celestia blew a bit of mane out of her face. "All right then: the Celebrants are basically a race of primeval planet-hopping chaos spirits, some of the first beings to ever exist. They were first born in the waning days of the creation of existence as we know it, as enough Order entered the world to fully contrast against Chaos, and a tiny bit of Order mixed with Chaos to form sapient minds. However, their only have enough Order in them to form coherent thoughts and identities, and everything else about them is a product of Chaos. They've been called many names over the eons-demons, great old ones, children of the Trickster, Advocates, idigam (though that last one technically belongs to a very specific set of them), ones beyond, but they use the term Celebrant. They exist to bring more Chaos to the world, extremes of pain and pleasure, creation and corruption for its own sake."
"Wait, so we are in a Lovework novel? He's a freaking Thing That Should Not Be!?"
"Two things." Luna sounded immensely offended. "One, 'Thing That Should Not Be' is something completely different, and is more in reference to intrusions from the Abyss, a collection of broken realities, and that phrase is a product of his own xenophobia. A Celebrant is a child of the young universe, and may in fact be vital to its continued function by ensuring things can still move. Secondly, one of the things Chaos embodies is emotion and passion, including altruism. Celebrants have a very alien viewpoint on matters of morality, but when they play with your mind, most of them are attempting to help you see things from a different perspective, and thus achieve enlightenment and greater understanding of yourself."
"Aw shucks," said a very deadpan Applejack. "Knowing he turned me into a habitual liar and my brother into a dog to help us see things in a new way made it all up to me. I can't see nothing why I would still be angry with him."
"We never said that was a good thing, Applejack," said Celestia. "Most Celebrants, including Discord until very recently, don't understand the lasting hurt their actions can cause, and some just don't care. There's a reason why we petrified him when he got out of control."
"While this is all very informative, what do you think did this to him?" Rarity poked the Chrysalis again. "If he is an ancient being of chaos from the dawn of time, I would imagine not a lot of ponies are capable of reducing him to primal soup."
"The same thing capable of erasing all mortal memory of Pinkie Pie, apparently." Luna looked extremely worried. "And that is more than a little disturbing, since most beings at that level are perfectly deserving of the word 'divine', like myself and Tia. This could take weeks to investigate-"
"Actually, um," Twilight said as she produced the dream pearl. "I think this might help. He said it was a dream containing everything he knew about the God-Machine, whatever that is."
Perfect silence.
"Um...Princesses, what's wrong?"
Hesitantly, Celestia spoke up first. "The....God-Machine, you say?"
"....well," said Luna. "That would explain a lot, actually."
"Wait, you know what this is?" Rainbow zoomed up to the Princesses' eye level. "Tell us! Tell us everything you know! If we're going to fight this thing to save Pinkie-"
"Act-ually.." Celesita looked immensely ill at ease. "He could probably explain it much better than I ever could. Luna, activate the dream pearl."
"H-hey wait a minute..." Fluttershy piped up, her full voice fully returning. "I-if he is a being who plays with minds to cause understanding through trauma...wouldn't he, um, add a little spice to get his point across?"
"Fluttershy!" Rarity shot a glare at her, causing her to jump. "That's an immensely mean thing to say about an unconscious friend!"
"Be at piece, Rarity." Luna was eyeing the pearl suspiciously. "I do not think Fluttershy meant any harm, especially given that's how Celebrants think. Still, a little madness might be preferable to being completely rational when dealing with anything involving the God-Machine."
Her eyes glowed. "Hold on to your flanks,"
A beam of moonlight hit the pearl, and a spiderweb of multicolored energy bounced between the Elements and the princesses. The world swam around them, and they quickly fell asleep.
The first word that came to Twilight as she looked around the dreamscape was "painterly."
The second was "confusing."
The third was "okay, what part of this is the sky?"
All around her, a surreal landscape of strange, subdued colors extended. It was impossible to make out any landmarks among the blur, although that was more because of the color scheme being the same-it was impossible to pick out any definite geographical features, or indeed, if she was walking on the ground or the sky. The face that significant parts of the dream flowed like the sea didn't help.
The fourth thought was "wait, dream. Duh."
Shaking her head, Twilight looked around for the other ponies. "Guys? Hey guys? Is there anyone out there? ....This isn't a nightmare where we're all isolated from each other?"
"No."
"Not at all."
"No?"
"Got ya covered, Twilight."
"We're here, my student."
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FUR!?"
The others in question had turned the same surreal colors of the mindscape, and a quick glance confirmed that yes, so had Twilight. The only thing that hadn't changed shades were their eyes, which resulted in something of a ghostly effect as they almost appeared to be floating in a patch of pony-shaped space.
Rarity was not at all pleased with this. "My beautiful white coat....gone! Replaced by this...garish hallucination of a color scheme! Even my mane!"
"Oh come on!" Rainbow Dash seemed to be hovering, although she could just have been standing on a frozen wave. "Seriously, my daydreams have more happening in them than this!"
"And my nightmares often have similar plots." Nobody could really tell, but Rarity's lower lip was trembling. "I'm walking in Canterlot, surrounded by tacky fashion and clashing colors, which I try so hard to fight with my designs and ideas...then I look down, and I'm-"
"Oh yes, I remember that dream. It was indeed a terror." Luna's voice. "Red and green...gah, even I found that scary, and my job is to get rid of those dreams."
Dash snorted dismissively, then squeaked as both glared at her, which was actually rather funny to Twilight-again, only visible trait being eyes. Suppressing a snicker, she brought up the obvious. "Anyway, we're supposed to be here to learn what Discord knows. Unless what he knows is a tie-dye shirt factory, I would say there's the recorded dream version of a play button some-"
"WELCOME TO LAND-THAT-RESEMBLES-THE-LEGALLY-DISTINCT-COUNTRY OF MAGICANT!"
The sound of Discord's voice booming across the dreamscape, while not exactly the scariest thing Twilight had ever heard (that was the awful sound of his voice being hacked out through prematurely aged lips), it was certainly the most startling.
"NO, ACTUALLY I AM NOT. THIS IS A SHADOW OF MY MAIN MIND, A TOUR GUIDE ROBOT. BEEP."
"CAN THE TOUR GUIDE ROBOT NOT SHOUT DIRECTIONS, PLEASE!?" Rainbow Dash did not sound at all happy.
"WHAT?"
"I SAID CAN THE ROBOT NOT SHOUT!?"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID-"
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU, SO I'M NOT SURE IF YOU'RE EVEN FARTHER AWAY THAN I THOUGHT! I'M GOING TO SHOUT REALLY LOUD NOW-"
"DISCORD! STOP!"
Everypony looked at Fluttershy's eyes.
"If that's okay with you."
"Oh all right."
Discord's eyes materialized in the upward direction.
"I'm not really an intelligent being, so I'm going to start my story now. If the real me had more time, he would have magicked the Eliza package into me, and we could have had a productive conversation consisting of me rephrasing your own responses into questions. It's a very good way to better understand the contents of your navel, I've heard."
Discord chuckled at his incomprehensible joke, then his eyes narrowed. "In all seriousness, though, what you are about to see is no laughing matter. Behold, the God-Machine, the one thing that can make even me serious. But first, perhaps, a change in scenery...?"
Suddenly, the dreamscape began to grow increasingly active. The waves began to crash into each other, but rather than flow apart, they fused into ever-larger waves. In time, these waves came to a halt, but rather than stop, they began to tremble and twitch, like hatching eggs. The one Rainbow Dash had perched on broke in two with a strange sound, almost like the crackling of a newborn fire (her yelp was less strange). From within, a strange, bioluminescent shape, with so many tentacles it was difficult to tell if the creature had that many or was more akin to an extremely large worm, coiled infinitely upon itself. Ten intelligent eyes, each a different mix of colors, looked out, timidly, curiously, into the strange, painterly world. More waves followed suit, at a far enough distance that none of the ponies could make out the shapes within, but enough could be seen to tell that every one of them was unique.
Luna caught on first. "This isn't a basic dream, without any adornments..."
"I assume either Luna and-slash-or Celesita is with you, in which case they have already told you what I am. And yes, this is the genesis of we Celebrants, the shape the cosmos took before it knew what it wanted to look like..."
In the beginning....
Actually, that's a horrible intro. The world already began, my family came later. Nobody knows how the world began, we have to infer, each theory could be a book in its own right. No, I'm skipping to the parts that actually concern us, since that's the non-boring bit.
In the beginning of the period after the Celebrants had gotten our bearings....
...Well, as many bearings as you can have when the world looks like this...
We lived in blind innocence. It wasn't anything much, mind; as beings born in the beginnings of the universe, we possessed an inherent knowledge of its workings, but infancy is still infancy, no matter how smart you are when you're born. You only learn the things that everyone else does, like the universe exists beyond you, personally (though some individuals forget that. Ahem). But it was certainly...existent. Frankly, the primordial universe was rather boring when it comes down to it.
The newborn Celebrants played with the world-smudge, arranging it into definite shapes with stable colors.
Eventually we settled on to the idea of doing more than just staring at the smudge and each other all eon, and we learned how to focus it into form and concrete substance. Simple, single color spheres, cubes and polyhedrons.
A polyhedral die came into being.
Nerds came directly afterwards.
The Celebrant who made the die held up a placard saying OLD SCHOOL IS BEST SCHOOL. He immediately had other dice thrown at him.
In time however, we came to grow bored with these creations too, experimenting with new shapes, in all dimensions.
The Celebrants started collapsing some shapes into paper-thin cutouts, some were distorted into strange, eye-bending ones that didn't seem possible in reality.
This, too, grew boring after a while.
Then, some of us found an interesting new avenue of activity.
The worm-tentacle Celebrant angrily hit its own multidimensional spike polyhedron with an eye, then shrieked more in surprise then anything as it jumped back, multicolored energy bleeding from the wounded organ.
We found ways to remake our own forms.
The Celebrant's other eyes looked in amazement at its own "blood", then cut a plain tentacle to watch more join it. It then cut a similarly amazed fellow, and they booth watched the pooling energy. The other Celebrant then looked at the bleeding socket, and then reshaped it back into an eye, a different shape then before.
It was in that moment that we understood what our quest was-to explore the true flexibility of form, in ourselves and others.
Rarity gagged slightly.
Of course, we soon realized that soul and personality were forms as well as flesh. We also soon realized that flesh was not the true body, that was the mind and will. And we experimented with all of them, creating an entire society based around the changing of form. Before you ask-no, we didn't guide the universe as it formed, and indeed, we were pretty flabbergasted when the blur suddenly began to form into stars and planets, galaxies and dark matter.
The blur did so, finally causing the ponies to return to visibility.
Everypony sighed in relief as the migraine eased.
But we did take advantage of it.
The Celebrants examined the forming planets, then, grinning (an unsettling act, many of them having multiple mouths to smile with) released chaos energy onto many of them, causing their surface to reform into new and bizarre shapes.
And once or twice we did accidentally create life.
Some of the bizarre shapes wiggled.
If our precious existence was infancy, this was childhood. Glorious childhood, free enough to not be ignorant yet not knowledgeable enough to not be innocent. We danced among the stars, carved our names into planets, created powerful monsters that still remain in the species memory of sapient species to this day...that was the life.
It should also be noted, however, that I am also a fairly young Celebrant, who can only experience this in my own studies of of our history. Temporal magic of any sort beyond basic psychometry (reading something's personal history) isn't my forte, not even conveniently editing the universe so a meteor hits the guy I am aiming at. I could be looking through a nostalgia filter, and it may have been completely different from the good old days.
I am saying this because I am not at all kidding that, compared to what came after, anything would seem better by comparison.
One of the changed worlds shuddered, before a terrible sound like a metal saw grinding through metal as electricity sparked through the open air rang out across the dream. To the horror of the Celebrants, metallic parts ripped out of the planet, blossoming like mechanical flowers into vast, ticking constructions of gears and cogs that covered the planet, releasing smoke and steam into the air to create a blanket of smog. Twenty great white wings, constructed of beautifully made machinery, unfurled from behind the planet.
Because one day, we found the God-Machine.
Or perhaps, it found us.
Not one of us knows who built that thing, when, or why.
I'll let that sink in for a moment. The afterbirth of the universe does not know how the God-Machine came to be.
It could be that nobody built it, it just was the first bit of Order given enough Chaos for mobility and movement. Perhaps it predated the universe, maybe even created it for its own reasons. Maybe it, meta-temporally speaking, hasn't actually been created yet, and the Machine traveled back in time to ensure its own existence. Given how easy it is to change the past without actually changing a divine being even if you altered their personal history, it's not as far fetched as it sounds.
In the end, it only matters in an academic matter. The thing you need to know is that it's here, it's alien, and it does not care about you enough to be even called malevolent.
The Clock of Eternity is a vast intellect, but not a conscious one. It can't think about what it's thinking or second-guess itself, which is useful on many occasions, worse in many others. Really, it should be glad that its powerful enough where it doesn't need peers to complete its schemes and can manufacture its own minions. At least, if its capable of that emotion. Or any others. The only thing we've ever seen it act on is cold logic, to the point where we're not even sure if it can think about anything, or if its mind resembles an incredibly complex set of directives and directions. If A, then B, if C, then D.
Only having the mind of a calculator, however, doesn't stop it from being incredibly intelligent. While we Celebrants are far from ignorant, it understands more about the physical than any five of us, put together, can match. To say nothing of the supernatural. It's probably easier to list what laws it doesn't understand, or at least that which only beings on its level could. It is the product of knowledge so advanced that it isn't just sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, it is magic, but so sufficiently analyzed and tamed as to be technology. Sorcery, engineering, raw math; all of it is simply more data for the God-Machine.
Of course, and again, there are major downsides of not having a conscious mind, which is why it creates servants. While there are many organic life forms created directly by it to serve needed functions where mobility is required, for the most part its servants are sapient beings spliced off directly from whatever strange realm fuels it. Divine subroutines and independent program-spirits, made in the image of its occult programming code, running on the hardware of specially adapted terrestrial systems, brought into this world from nothing by unknowing and/or delusional cultists. They have no proper name-they simply are-but many worlds have called them by the world 'angel' or its equivalents, and whatever dim outer reflex of its sensory programs set to observe mortal affairs recognize those titles as theirs, and they will answer to those names.
These angels have many tasks, and even more functions, as well as great leeway in accomplishing them, but they all serve the same ultimate purpose, what we call the Logos, the core program of the God-Machine.
What's that, you ask? We don't know. One of the Machine's traits is that it can't do things instantly and spontaneously, it has to prepare the stage using its occult matrices. While this has proven to be a great boon in fighting against it, it also means that it can also have multiple plans running at once or create substitute ones if a single plan proves untenable. We honestly have no idea what its ultimate scheme is, or even if it has a final goal at all. Especially when it repeatedly shows it needs to do research or logistics
We do know, however, what the Universal Engine is willing to do to advance the Logos. Or, in simple terms: Whatever is in its path, it controls. Whatever it cannot control, it assimilates. Whatever it cannot assimilate, it destroys.
It doesn't care if that thing is a person, a family, a city, or a nation-to it, it's just another cog to be inserted into itself, to be refitted for insertion into itself, or irreparably faulty and to be ignored or melted for scrap. In the end, the God-Machine doesn't hate the people who oppose it, or indeed all other life. It just doesn't care.
The Celebrants, horrified, fired off chaotic energies at the clanking machine world. The first few bolts hit, causing the metal surface to be damaged severely as hit areas of it changed form randomly, releasing vast geysers of oil and smoke from the damage. The rest were stopped by a wing, that moved too fast for its size, and only changed colors briefly before returning to pristine white. A strange, frightening emotional impression, like the planet was glaring angrily at the Celebrants, echoed through the dreamscape.
While we did not know all this at first, we only needed to take one good look at the Machine and the order it brings to realize we wanted nothing to do with it. We struck first, and we struck hard, but we made a great error-we assumed the Machine was something that could fought directly, something that had one core body or force.
The wings extended from behind the machine planet, revealing that they were not attached to the planet in any sense, simply flying in formation. Each one, as it came into view, had hundreds of feathers, each one a city in its own right. And from those feather-arcologies, a hundred lights flew.
The God-Machine is infinitely more. It isn't one core computer node directing millions more, or even several with its own force. It's an entire mechanical ecosystem, with every part as vital and as unnecessary to the whole as all other parts.
The lights became pony-sized mechanical creatures, animal-like constructions of brass, glass and a material that looked unpleasantly like grey-colored organic muscle. They separated into groups, each pack or flock brutally attacking a single Celebrant. Just from the way they were fighting, one could tell this battle was meant for one thing only: killing the other guy as soon as possible, without mercy or compassion.
Naturally, it retaliated.
This was the opening shots of what is offcially the Empyrean War, but really, it's a Vendetta. Celebrants and God-Machine embody cosmic forces that are naturally opposed, but really, the first thing on our minds is our latest defeat at angelic hands and what we lost in that battle. The God-Machine has also altered its program to curtail and stop our influence whenever its sensors or scouts find us. Make no mistake, it stopped being about politics and philosophies a long time ago. For us at least, its become something very personal. We spare no quarter for the Machine, and neither does it for us.
The dream faded, with only the lingering sounds of war, blood and screams, ripping flesh and tearing metal, echoing behind.
Now, some of you may ask why I'm so unhappy about the war. I hate the God-Machine as much as the next Celebrant, correct?
......
I would explain why, except I think the real me should tell you.
A flash in the dream, apparently something so powerful that Discord could not keep it out of the pearl, of a much younger Discord pulling on the hair of a very wet-looking draconequus while laughing, with sense of something having been said in the immediate past: Discord? Stop pranking your father,
Point is, I want no part of the Vendetta, and that's why I moved to Equestria. The God-Machine may touch all, but it had little direct operations here.
Had, it needs to be emphasized. I created this dream before I went off to fight, but I'm not exactly the weakest of the Celebrants. If you're seeing this, that means it had enough resources in the Golden Beach to kick my tail.
But this leads to another question: What would be so bad?
Oh, you have no idea...
Grey.
That was what ran through the heads of the ponies standing in the new place they found themselves. A great, grey city, made of concrete and metal, with not even the rainy sky to break up the grey. Admittedly, the city was a technological marvel-not even Canterlot could build those buildings in the distance that high. But taken in with the rest of the city, it seemed almost as if the tallest buildings were rusted swords, clutched in the rigor mortis of a fallen solider.
This is Earth, planet of the humans.
Everypony mortal gasped.
Heh. Bet you thought they were a myth, hm?
No, the Bleak Ones are a very real alien species, and they did visit Equestria in the distant past. That's not important for this story.
What is important to this story is how they got that moniker, and why they're so often viewed as the living embodiment of suspicion and cynicism in myth.
Suddenly, humans, dozens of them, began to mill about their lives in the city. Most of them walked with an odd bundled hunch, too practiced to be something to ensure as little of them got wet as possible. Discord led the ponies over to one, a dark-skinned, red-haired female, who was walking slightly more briskly then many of her contemporaries, looking scared. Behind her, two lighter-skinned males, dressed in trenchcoats, strode like timber wolves about to take down an errant rabbit. She looked behind her at the stalkers, her eyes widened, and then broke out into a jog, accidentally knocking down a random man who cursed in a staccato, brisk language. She ducked into an alley and attempted to run, but tripped on high-heel shoes, allowing the males to catch up and grab her. One doused a rag in in a strong-smelling liquid and thrust it in her mouth, as the other took out a spray stencil of a runic circle and a spray can. Quickly, the runes were sprayed on to create graffiti that Twilight recognized as a teleportation spell, and the holder of the unconscious female put her hand to it.
A flash.
The female, still unconscious, appeared in an ornate room lined with bookshelves, with a haggard, guilty-looking male examining his desk. He looked up, and then calmly strode over to her, looked over her (her hair in particular) then went over to a bookself and bent down several fake books, opening a secret door built into the bare wall. Heaving the woman over his shoulder, he went downstairs, followed by the observers in the dream.
There, they found a concrete chamber, covered in occult sigils and calculations. The male looked over them as if to double check, then opened a closet where four humans, of both genders, fell out, all bound and unconscious. Each one had a different collection of hair and skin colors. The male then strode over to the far wall, retrieved a gold and lapis lauzli athame knife, then took the original woman to a brass tub with designs of turtles, cranes, and cicadas. He raised the athame...
I think you've got the idea.
The scene froze.
Let us fast forward a bit. I never agreed with bad horror movies.
Screaming, the female woke up in a bed, glanced around in terror, then cradled her head. As she got out however, all observers could see a crescent scar, running across her back.
Dr. Remy Darabont back there isn't a cruel man, simply one who is afraid of an enemy he can't defeat like the dozens of other monsters he's hunted over his, potentially immortal, life. Suffice to say, he takes every measure necessary to avoid killing the donors of the blood he needs to give him youth and vigor for another year. Indeed, that's why he requires people who appear so unusual for their ethnicity for his ritual-there's symbolic power in the rare and unique, more than enough to make up for the lack of the occult power in fatal sacrifice. But nobody's perfect.
I show you this because this kind of thing happens on Earth all the time.
If it isn't blood magicians out for youth and power like Darabont, and it usually isn't, it's hungry vampires. When they're not around, it's changelings, desperate part-fairies, who want to absorb your emotions to fuel their magic. Leaving aside those who feed on life, there are werewolves, shapeshifting warriors who literally have no inherent instinct against justifiable murder, prometheans, reanimated corpses who are such aberrations that the world would destroy itself to get rid of them, mages, who are all too frequently embody the maxim of power corrupting, the occasional serial killer, and a thousand other things besides. To say nothing of the mundane problems. It's gotten to the point where most humans train themselves to look the other way in order to remain sane.
And the God-Machine likes it that way.
See, sapients become simple when they're scared or sad. A scared person is guaranteed to look out for their own safety first and everything else second, while a sad person doesn't act on their dreams. To the Machine, this is infinitely better than a happy or brave populace-it's easier to predict someone who is going to choose whatever is going to make them feel safe or what they think is the best thing they're going to get out of life. Easier predictions means less things that could go wrong, less things that could go wrong means less wasted resources, hence why it won't let things get better if it has any say in the matter.
That, my little ponies, is the stakes.
Remember what I said about the God-Machine liking momentum? Well, whatever it's planning, I can gurantee that it will gather momentum here in Equestria if allowed to reach its planned conclusion. From the success of that plan, it will make the ground fertile for more, bigger plans, and gain a greater foothold on this world. As it brings Equestria under its dominion, it will also go out of its way to ensure it has an ideal environment for plans, and since it doesn't want to waste resources, that means crushing hopes, creating hidden monsters, and offering routes to power that benefit the few at the cost of everyone else.
Eventually, Equestria will become like Earth; a grey, spiritually desolate planet filled with beings who have become cynical and suspicious to even survive, stabbing other ponies in the back so other ponies won't get the chance. A world of darkness and shadows, draped in despair and bitterness.
And that is why you have to stop it. Forget about just rescuing Pinkie, this is saving the world.
Slowly, the real world swam into view as the dream pearl deactivated. First and foremost in Twilight's vision was a concerned baby purple dragon.
"Oh, you're up! I mean, I wasn't that worried, given how you need to be asleep to have a dream, and you were only out for a minute, but still-"
"Spike," she said, completely devoid of emotion. "You're going to want to sit down for this."
"So...Discord's species was involved in this forever-long war against an evil robot god which kidnapped Pinkie and now wants to secretly conquer Equestria to add to its Evil Robot Empire and make us all miserable?"
"That's the long and short of it, yeah." Twilight sighed. "It seems a bit unbelievable to me too. But...the Bleak Ones being real? Compared to that, anything seems reasonable."
"Not if you ask Derpy," Rainbow said. "She says they're here still. The truth is out there..."
"Leaving aside Ditzy Doo for a while" said Rarity, "That leaves the matter of what we're supposed to do. From the look of things, this....thing has been fighting a race of chaos gods for centuries and hasn't even been wounded permanently. I'm not saying we should lay down and take it, but we're flying blind here. I don't know where to start."
"We do as we always do whenever some power-mad varmit wants to rule the world." Applejack looked outright stoic in determination. "We spell out that we aren't listenin' with our hooves and the Elements. Discord, Sombra, Nightmare Moon (no offense), all got the message pretty loud an' clear. Besides, from what I reckon given what we were told, there's only a few angels here. Hogtie them and throw them out, and the God-Machine's goin' to cut its losses and run away like the bully it is."
"You got that right, AJ!" Rainbow Dash was thrusting a hoof in the air. "Some crazy alien robot Princess out of a bad science fiction novel isn't going to scare us!"
"And don't forget the real ones!" Spike seemed to be infected with the pegasus' enthusiasm. "Discord was just one god, we have a pair of even more awesome gods on our side, and they have backup!"
"Erm, actually..."
"That's the spirit, Spike!" Twilight was cheering up. "All we need to do is show the angels what the magic of friendship can-"
"Guys?"
"...Right. The bad news." Twilight turned to the speaker. "Okay, Fluttershy, speak up."
"Um....well...." Fluttershy tapped her hooves together uncertainly. "Welllll......if they've fought Celebrants for so long, wouldn't they know how to fight, um, other divine beings? And be really good at it?"
Luna and Celestia looked lost in thought for a second.
"...Actually...."
"That would seem like it would be the case..."
"Um...Your Highnesses?"
Celestia cleared her throat. "As you may have guessed, Luna and I have encountered the God-Machine before, when it attempted to complete an occult matrix in Zebrica that would have allowed it to summon an angel powerful enough to match us."
"We were able to defeat it, but..." Luna looked at Discord's dormant form. "The cultists it had tricked into working for it constructed something called an Abjuration Grid, a system meant to subdue and capture any divine or spiritual entities that entered the defended area."
"That was a horrible experience. Both because it hurt like the dickens and that prayer was...rather frightening when translated." Celestia shivered. "And that was just something of mortal make, and they didn't manage to target us specifically first."
"As much as it pains me to admit it..." Luna sighed. "I think we might be more burden than help."
The Elements looked immensely downcast.
"We will give you all you need in order to infiltrate the park though. I suspect the management are simply ponies who don't know what they're working for, and who could turn down a request from a Princess?"
"I can also create some mental magic of my own, a dream meant to confuse any attempt by the angels to track you," said Luna. "I have little doubt they won't be able to figure out you're there, but I can make finding you as difficult as equinely possible."
The Elements nodded, resolute.
"Good to see you're not despairing." Celestia gave a small smile. "As you may have seen from that last scene, the God-Machine wants you to despair of ever defeating it, in however a small way, and so kneel to it. Never let it get to you. I expect you will be informing your family, Applejack?"
"Darn tootin'."
"Excellent. You will enter the Golden Beach in five days. And once you're there, remember;"
Celestia spun around and made her eyes glow to emphasize her point.
"Trust. No one. You meet. The employees may not be knowing cultists, but they are still cultists of the Machine, and if you slip, eventually what they know will work its way up to the angels, and there's no telling what they may do with that information. Never let your cover slip, you are simply carnival guests who are staying in the hotel for a month. Remain faces in the crowd, and the angels won't be able to pick you out. It's safer for you and them; I know how angels think, and they won't hesitate to kill for the sake of keeping a secret."
Everypony blanched a bit at this, but saluted, and then made their way towards the door.
"Oh, and Fluttershy?"
The yellow pegasus turned around to face Luna. "Yes?" she squeaked.
"I don't know why, but you seem to have....returned to your old shyness, somehow. Given how you were at ground zero of the memory filter, I have no idea what it might have done. Call me if you need help, okay?"
"Okay."
The Princesses took off for Canterlot. There was much to be done.
No...no...fashion magazine...no...
Twilight, having activated her "find if book has specific information before needing to read it" spell, was busy ransacking the library, pausing long enough only to tell if each book registered a positive before going back to her search.
No...no...no...nooaaaaaAAAAHHHH!
The book that was now doing its best meteor impersonation flew into the garbage bin, the one open page showing infinitely more than what Twilight ever wished to know.
Sun darn it! Every single darned book, every single darned section! Nothing! And now I think my mind is permanently scarred! Arrgh! Buck. Back to to the search. No...no...
By this point, Spike had gotten back from his jewel-hunting excursion, having decided to ply his luck once more at making a gem cake in an attempt to cheer everyone up before they went all spy in enemy territory. Upon seeing the uncharacteristic mess, he immediately dropped everything and ran over to to his friend and big sister. "Twilight! You okay?"
"No...I mean, I'm fine Spike! No...just frustrated. No..."
Spike gaped incredulously. "This," he said, gesturing to the mayhem, "is fine!?"
"It will be once I (no) clean it (no)."
"Twilight," Spike said as evenly as possible. "Please don't try to multitask when talking to me."
Twilight levitated another book, then realized what her assistant was saying and put it down. "Okay Spike...sorry, just caught up in the moment."
Spike looked at the now-empty Practical Magical Theory section, and realization dawned. "This is about the God-Machine."
"I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING! I'VE BEEN LOOKING IN SORCEROUS ENGINEERING, HISTORY OF MAGIC, HAY EVEN NEW AGE, AND I CAN'T. FIND. A PEEP! OF EVIDENCE!"
She gasped for breath before continuing. "I mean, I'd imagine if the Princesses fought it before, there has to be some documentation, right? And yet...nothing at all! Just a bunch of news of the weird, much of which is so obviously faked the monster might have been made of cardboard!"
A horrible thought struck her. "Unless they're all true, and the Machine has manipulated cultural memes to make believe they're all fake and all the monsters are angels, AND-"
A blast of fire derailed the thought train to Bad Place.
"Twilight?" Spike was using the even tone again, though this didn't have an irritated edge to it. "Remember how you told me Discord didn't want you to know about the God-Machine because you would get paranoid?"
There was a brief silence before Twilight rubbed her scalp. "Right. Even if it was the Machine's plans, I doubt if the travails of Bat Colt are really that important to its schemes." She turned to Spike. "It's just...it's like Rarity said, this thing is so darn big I don't know where to start. I'm just looking for more concrete information so I can figure out a way to fight it, even if we never encounter it again."
Spike chose his next words carefully. "Twilight, I still don't think Discord being evasive was such a good plan, but...if Lord Wrench is really as secretive as the Princesses said it was, who's to say it's ever going to try the same thing twice?"
Twilight pondered on this. "...good point."
Slowly, she got up her spellbook, and recast the spell, this time tuning it for "mechanical or part-mechanical monsters" instead of "non-magical complex machinery." Almost immediately, several on the floor lit up. "Okay. I'm going to pray here that angels always manifest inorganic as well as organic traits. Otherwise, I'm going to be spending a lot of time preparing spells I may not need." She then pulled out a copy of An Atlas Of Most Arcane And Occult Beasts, and turned to a page on rumors of talking, armored spiders who stole metal from blacksmiths.
"Twilight?"
"Yes Spike?"
"If anything happens to you...I'll take care of-"
"Spike. Nothing is going to happen to us, nothing that can't be fixed. And that's a Pinkie Promise. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."
Spike gave a small grin. "And nobody breaks a Pinkie Promise, even when she's not around, right?"
"Got it. Now, could you fetch that issue of Everfree Report? I want to cross reference this story about a secretly monstrous mandarin who spurred many of Emperor Dictatus' more genocidal actions with the story of the Narrow Nose here..."
It was at times like this when Rarity envied Applejack's...well, not flaws, but certainly lack of ability in particular areas.
"But Sis...you promised you were going to help us patch the tent."
After all, if she were her friend, she'd be a terrible liar.
"I know Sweetie...but I have an anonymous client who wants the Elements to star in his costume ball at the Golden Beach, and he's very powerful. And even more temperamental."
And terrible liars eventually had to tell the truth.
"Okay..."
Rarity had to restrain herself from cuddling Sweetie Belle and telling her the truth upon seeing the downcast look. A bit of her mind even tried to convince her that Discord was lying for some reason or another.
It was a very small part of her though.
"Don't you worry though, I can patch it right here in the shop if you bring it up. I have a tiny amount of free time..."
Sweetie looked down. "But it's heavy..."
"I'm sure Applejack would love to help. I know she'd probably appreciate the exercise."
Sweetie brightened up. "Okay then!" She trotted off, absolutely oblivious to her previous depression.
Looking at the vast array of disguises she was creating, Rarity sighed. Not being able to trust people close to you was not at all fun. Especially if it was for their own good.
As you can see, the hairless monkey is used as both an archetypal symbol of both suspicion and distrust in the Norikman mythos, as it was for their predecessors, In their myths, their friends had stolen their fur, and thus the Bleak Ones grew to hate all those who might lie to them. This was part of a larger cultural view that all outside the empire could only gain friends through military force...
The echoes of her professor in her Mythological Studies class echoed in Rarity's mind.
This must be what Bleak Ones feel like all the time.
Rarity resolved that if she ever met a real human, she would make a dress for him or her, free of charge.
It's the, eye of the griffon it's the thrill of the flight...
Most didn't know this, but Rainbow Dash really liked music when training. Since (A) she was, despite protestations to the contrary, a bit lazy, and (B) most of that training was meant for speed, and thus making music more than a tad impractical.
Beating on a kicking bag was not speed training.
As we meet the challenge of our rival...
*BANG!*
Neither, for that matter, was replacing it after the third in as many days broke off.
And we- *click*
"Ugh...."
Dash removed the broken bag and trotted off to fetch the replacement.
"Hey Dash?"
"Gah! ...Hi Scootaloo."
The pegasus filly was looking at her idol with understandable concern. "You okay? You've been down here in the gym for days, never talking to anyone, just wailing on those bags and the weights. Is there something wrong?"
The lie was rehearsed to a letter. "There's a huge obstacle course race coming up in the Golden Beach, and recognizing the fastest flyer in Equestria, they naturally came to me. Only thing is, I saw what clouds they're going to be using, and I'm training my strength and endurance for it."
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. "Sweetie said you and Rarity had to attend a costume ball."
The cover for any flaws were not. "Uh...yeah, there's a costume party too....and it's open to the racers....which...um...doesn't make sense at all...fru-fru and everything..."
Much to the surprise of none involved, Scootaloo tilted her head.
"That wasn't convincing at all, was it?"
"This isn't something so utterly embarrassing you aren't planning on hiding in the Everfree for the next year, right?"
"NO! No! Nothing like that. It's just that..."
Scootaloo didn't need a voice to plead.
"....Look. I'll be honest here: I'd love to tell you, but I can't. It's for your own good."
"Oh....oh."
A massive blush came to the filly's face.
"It's okay. I won't tell anyone about your special somepony."
There was a beat before Dash caught on, and burst out in much-needed laughter.
"Scoots! I'm not pregnant!"
"Then is Rarity-?"
"No! Nopony is!" Dash began to roll on the floor.
After a minute of this, Dash managed to inhale, and her serious expression returned.
"Seriously, this isn't an 'I'll explain when you're older' situation here. I'm doing this because telling you or anypony else is going to be a really bad idea. Heck, I may even be pushing it here."
"But believe me when I say this:" Dash leaned in closer, almost eye to eye with Scootaloo. "If I tell you, the a...ponies it's about might destroy Ponyville."
Scootaloo paled. "D-destroy? Over the fact you couldn't keep a secret?"
"Yes, destroy. There are some really powerful monsters out there, and they'd happily kill us in order to keep a secret. Ever heard the saying 'dead ponies tell no tales'? They have."
Scootaloo looked at the bag.
"Let me guess...you're training to fight them."
"I refuse to testify."
Scootaloo began to ask why she couldn't help....then took one look at Dash's eyes and realized her idol wasn't going to budge.
"I get it. When their flanks are hurting so much they can't touch the doomsday ray, you tell me about it, right?"
"Yep! ...Just don't tell anyone about this, right?"
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER-"
"NO! Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't make this part of the cutie mark crusade."
"...Yeah. You're probably right. It's hard enough with three of us, with one I think I'd somehow give everypony mind reading powers. Which would be awesome, but...."
Scootaloo mimed zipping her mouth shut, and left.
Dash set the new bag, and put the music back on.
This time, she was singing along.
"Just a mare, and her will to survive..."
"Sis?"
"Yes, Apple Bloom?"
"...Ya certain you don't want us along?"
"Pretty certain." Applejack brought the final pack of provisions to the cargo to Twilight's backpack.
"Really?"
"Darn tootin'."
"....Are ya really-"
"I am. Times infinity. This isn't a random misadventure, Bloom, it's a rescue mission straight into the heart of enemy territory, the enemy here bein' alien monsters straight out of that weird board game you play with the other Crusaders."
"And I rock at it! PURGE THE UNLOVING!" Apple Bloom did her best heroic pose, with decidedly fearsome scowl.
"Great. Now imagine what would happen to fillies like you if the Thanatons were real."
Bloom paused for a second.
"...Big Mac and me are worried, sis."
Applejack put down the backpack.
"After Celestia gave you the mission...you closed yourself off. It's just been one preparation after another. We don't see you around the farm, you hardly talk to us, the only time you ain't preparing food for the trip is when you're sleepin'....It's scary."
Applejack sighed. "Y'all have every right to be. But we're goin' to be in the dragon's lair for a month, and we're goin' to be poking him with a stick to find Pinkie."
"I know. And that's why we're offerin' as much help as we can."
Applejack thought on this, then smiled sadly.
"Look. There's no guarantee that the Elements are gettin' out of this alive. And if we're gone, you and Big Mac don't stand a chance. And if you're gone...who's going to take care of the farm? Who's going take care of Granny?"
Applejack placed a consoling hoof on Bloom's soldier. "If Discord is at all tellin' the truth about what that God-Machine wants, there's goin' to be dark times ahead for the Apples. And you two are more-or-less the family heirs. They're goin' to look to you to lead them. I know that's a lot of responsibility to ask of you...but without ya, I don't know if we could survive."
Apple Bloom was in tears now. "Sis..."
"But I can promise you one thing: If you're brave, nothing can stop ya. Never lose hope, Bloom."
Bloom looked a little happier at this. "Will I still have to go to school?"
"I don't know. I'll let ya as soon as Cheerilee's flu lets up!"
Both laughed.
Fluttershy's house was, as usual, peaceful.
What was not usual, however, was the level of peace.
It was, for lack of any better term, too peaceful. This wasn't the quiet serenity of the calm wilderness, this was the dead silence of a lifeless cave.
A closer observation would indeed confirm the qualifier lifeless. There were animals, but all of them stood perfectly still, staring blankly into space. Like they were in a trance. Or like they were inactive wind-up toys. Not that you'd see them if you were just passing by, as they were all in out-of-the way places such as inside rafters or the chicken coop. On occasion a few birds would suddenly become active and fly around the house in a perfect circle, tweeting innocently, but as soon as they returned to their perch the birds would return to staring at nothing. Nor would the hypothetical observer notice this, unless they snuck in-the animals would quickly return to apparent normality if disturbed.
And perhaps most eerie of all if you were one of Fluttershy's friends-no sign of Angel Bunny at all.
Inside the house was little different-it looked peaceful, but closer examination revealed that it was a bit too pristine; part of being both a veterinarian and possessing behavior that at least one therapist mistook for animal hoarding (given how Fluttershy only kept the animals within her capacity to care for them, he revised his diagnosis), her house tended to accumulate a strong smell. While she was fairly diligent in cleaning this up, one could definitely tell the inside of the pegasus' house by nose alone.
Except for now. All anypony could smell here would be air freshener (not that odd for Fluttershy, admittedly). Until, that is, they would get to the area around the bedroom, and smell something...odd. Something like the burning ozone of lighting, but...more acrid, somehow. More importantly, if one tried to enter the bedroom, he or she would find the door incredibly difficult to open-more than just locked, it would refuse to budge.
If one managed to open this (not easy, as it would require a print of the current resident's hoof), one would find something very out of place: Namely, the fact that the bedroom was now dominated by a clanking contraption of complex clockwork, glass, and copper cables, a few of which were seemingly deliberately broken. That would be the source of the small.
The strange being currently inside the bedroom paid this no mind, only the muttering on the other end of the spatial window.
"..could have told us...."
"...interfere with our mission..."
"....interfering with us now..."
The Overseers had muted the sound feed, but the strange being of insect and plastic was experienced in lip reading. This was not as helpful as it could have been given how strange the Overseers were, but their mouths were close enough to equine to get the gist when they faced the other window. Not too infrequently, as it was very animated.
"...would call for a vote but,,."
Barachiel shrugged at Jophiel's words, mouthing "it would be foolish to think it could be anything else" and then turned to the spatial window proper, unmuting it.
"Clockworked, you will not interfere with the Elements' travel to the Infrastructure. Even once there, do not harm, only divert investigation."
"Orders are received."
"Excellent."
"And also..."
Jophiel flew into view, a vicious grin splitting her face.
"When the truth comes out...tell her we missed her."
"Understood."
The spatial window closed, and in a blue flash, Fluttershy was standing where the thing had been.
She flew out, taking her own preparations.
She found Twilight walking on the path to the train station, and squeaked apologetically.
"I'm sorry! I couldn't find anything useful! All I had were my animal friends, and I didn't want to put them in danger!"
"That's fine, Fluttershy. Your ability to talk with any animals we find is going to be pretty useful. Really, you're lucky, since you didn't really need to prepare."
"Well. That there's something ya don't see every day."
"I hate myself for saying this: The angels may be jerks, but they know how to make an impression."
The border of the affected area loomed large in the minds of the ponies as they passed the border, and the Golden Beach came into view.
Twilight was a little less dumbstruck by the clock. "I see they have neo-Norikman design in mind. Well, that and a lot of painters. Seriously, who has the time to turn a twenty-story building into a painting?"
"Well, they are creations of the Machine. Perhaps it has 'to Father' written somewhere on it." Rarity squinted at said designs a little more. "And say what you will, but their taste aesthetics is not to be faulted. I'm seeing a lot of love in both that and the theme park proper."
"Assumin' they didn't just hoof off the work to somepony else."
"In which case my compliments to them."
Twilight joined the squint session. "Actually...now that I think of it, the designs on the clock faces look like that they relate to time as well. Day and night cycles are obvious, but the tides go in and out on a regular basis, and the passage of the stars is used to measure large periods of time."
"...Huh. I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to become a clock-themed supervillain." Rainbow Dash was not impressed.
"Excuse me, but what is with that cube? Looking at it makes my head hurt..."
"Tesseract, Fluttershy. Those are a really new thing in sorcerous physics. See, the engineer adds an extra spatial dimension...."
Stepping out, one of the first things that occurred to the Elements was a general sense of calmness.
Rather than the chaotic environment one would expect of a popular amusement park, the ponies got the idea that everything was...serene. Peaceful. Perhaps even a bit lazy.
The crowd wasn't in the customer shove-brawl that one normally associated with a public area with lots of foals. Indeed, apart from places where the foals were actually playing, they seemed rather well-behaved. Even the babies.
The plaza itself enforced this-lots of soft blues, soft golds, soft greens....soft everything, really. There was no hard edges where they weren't necessary, the fountain of a sea serpent was sleeping, even the ground tiles were arranged in a gentle, soothing pattern pleasing to the eye.
Given what the Elements knew of who owned and probably designed the park, this came off as waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Okay girls-I say we don't split up. I mean we don't want to lose each other and get ambush....ed by salesponies and not have the moral support to avoid buying an oversized watch, do we?"
"Um...Suuurre Twilight. Wouldn't want to buy photographs while we're searching for something pink, huh?"
"Why, yes, and I have these completely innocuous non-costume clothing of mine to wear?"
"Guys. You're drawin' attention by tryin' to not draw attention."
The crowd of ponies around them simply stared at the sweating ponies.
"...Can we at least wear the disguises I made?"
"So, the friends of the control and the subject have come at last."
"Shall I run tests? I do have this wonderful experiment in mind regarding the Containment Area..."
"Focus on it first. The cyan one seems the most able fighter."
Chapter 4: Return to a Place Never Visited.
"Will you be needing any assistance with your luggage, ma'am?"
"Oh yes. The blue suitcases go to to closets, the red to the bathrooms, the pink ones can be left on the bed, the green..."
While Rarity was beginning to make the Escapement's bellhop really regret his choice in profession, Twilight was examining the interior decor.
The oddity of the situation was not lost on her, but this was actually for more than just internal aesthetics.
Twilight Sparkle lacked many qualities, but ability to notice details when focused on something was not one of her lacking traits. Such as the fact that, from what little she saw, Bleak One magic was based on symbolism and mathematical formulas rather than positive emotional states or friendship. And from what she saw on the exterior, it seemed the angels followed their example (or perhaps the other way around). Twilight found it difficult to believe that they wouldn't have prepared the interior as well, even if they didn't plan to enchant it. Plan B and all.
At first glance, nothing. Stone tile floors, wood walls, wood grain, a painting...wait.
Non-artsy wood grain on walls? In a place as posh at this? Particularly when it was in a suspiciously out-of-the-way wall?
Twilight took a closer look. Yes, on closer examination, the grain seemed to be artificially induced. magically discolored from a plain wall. Taking a closer look, she didn't see anything else....up until she looked on the edges of the discoloring.
There, was another bit of wood grain, branching off like black petals. More than that, in the same exact pattern as the larger wood grain. This was a fractal pattern, and a deliberate one at that.
...more like an ecology...
Twilight immediately put the pieces together. If the God-Machine was not a central intelligence and every part was as important and meaningless as the next, then that would mean that it would be a single pattern composed of many smaller patterns. Many identical patterns. At every conceivable level of resolution.
Like a fractal.
Note to self...fractals are holy symbols to Mr. Big, Mean, and Metal. Have to watch out for magical ones...
"Ma'am?"
Twilight was shocked out of her contemplation by a bedraggled-looking bellhop.
"Ma'am, I'm terribly sorry, but there seems to be a no-show."
"Huh?"
"The Princess said there was going to be a party of five checking in, but I only see four. If you wouldn't mind telling me her whereabouts...?"
"Huh? There must be a mistake. I mean, there's me, there's Rarity over there, Applejack over there, I know Fluttershy's trying to talk to your squirrels, and Rainbow Dash was right....there."
The lavender unicorn did, however, possess a tendency to focus on things to the exclusion of all else. A fact she was currently keenly aware of.
"...Where's Rainbow Dash?"
"HEY YOU! YES YOU! GET BACK HERE, RIGHT THIS SECOND!"
Sharpy Palone apparently did not hear, or was very good at ignoring people.
Rainbow Dash was having none of it, though.
"LOOK HERE YOU JERK! SEE THIS BACK LEG? THAT'S PURE ATHLETE LADY, AND I'VE BEEN DYING TO TRY OUT MY KICKS ON A LIVING TARGET, SO EITHER YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS OR YOU SERVE AS PRACTICE DUMMY!"
Palone walked faster.
Rainbow tried to move as fast as she could through the sea of staff that had shown up out of nowhere, or at least hover. Not fly, as the angels were apparently racist against pegasi, too-the ceilings were too low for that.
"ALL RIGHT, DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!"
Throwing caution to the wind, Rainbow unfurled her wings, accidentally knocking over a bowl of soup on to them. Rainbow winced for a second, then took off.
The security guard was fast, Dash gave her that. Despite her best agility training meaning that she never hit another staffer, Palone managed to put at least a yard between the Wonderbolt prospect and herself at all times. The burn might have had something to do with that, but Rainbow decided that if they became friends after this, she was going to take footrace training from her.
That was the last thing on her mind though as Palone dipped through a pair of double doors leading back into the hotel's customer area.
"HA HA! NOW I HAVE YOU, YOU LITTLE COLTNAPPING...thug..."
The hall was completely deserted. As far as the eye could see, only red carpeting and doors, with a cherry-wood wall.
Groaning, Rainbow went back through the staff door. Next time, she thought. Next time she would get her.
Clutching her wing against her side, Dash trotted down the red carpet.
Wait, red carpet?
She looked up. Yep, same corridor.
Boy, she really did a number on me. Being winded is one thing, but forgetting to go through the door? I'm in worse shape then I thought! I guess sleep really is necessary...to a..
Wait, where did the staff door go?
She double checked. Yep, still no double door, just more guest doors.
...Huh. That was weird.
Thankfully, the ceiling was high enough to allow flight. Since her wing had stopped hurting, Rainbow took off in a flash, reckoning that eventually she would come to an elevator.
Two minutes later, still nothing.
...Okaaayyy....Really long corridor.
Looking at the guest doors, Dash was struck by an idea.
Maybe if I count the room numbers...
Room 7.
Room 8-1
Room 49.
Room VII
Seventh Room
Room G
...Something was definitely wrong here.
....And why was the floor sticky?
She looked down, and had to suppress a scream.
The carpet had suddenly turned to a wet semi-liquid substance that looked unpleasantly like blood.
In fact, now that she looked closer at it, it was blood. Congealed, semi-dry blood stains.
Now, Rainbow Dash was not the smartest athlete in the world, but she was far from dumb. After the shock wore off, and she hovered away from the wall, she had to laugh a bit. Blood? Seriously?
"Ha ha. Very funny, angels. Yeah, no, I dressed as a vampire one year and painted my mouth with the real stuff as a dare. Made my dad freak. Seriously, you're going to have to more than that to scare me."
The sound of an air raid siren rang through the hall, along with a series of explosions and the whistle of dropping bombs.
The wood in the doors suddenly turned damaged and burnt, like they had recived the brunt of a magical bomb blast. Fresh blood dripped from the various iterations of "Seven". The floor-blood turned the color of rust as rivulets of yellowed pus shot through it, The walls ignited and burnt away in a heatless fire, revealing the metal scaffolding and the concrete walls of a bomb shelter.
And on those walls were carvings. Carvings that looked organic, like a great beast had scratched them in with its bare claws. Carvings of utter horror.
On the closest was a regal-looking human male, tall and handsome with a mighty beard, and even greater fangs. With one of his hands, he tore a skeleton out of another fanged human, and with another hand he fed a skeleton to his mouth. Surrounding him were other skeletons, each with a great bit torn out of them, in a great pile.
On the next closest where more humans, fanged and not, stood under a defaced statue of the bearded one. The seven fanged ones sent seven flaming orbs into the body of a fanged skeleton, and the sockets had stars in them. Blood poured from its heart in a great fountain.
The next scene had the bearded one devouring the star-eyed skeleton, only for his own flesh to burn away in shining light, and his heart was a portal to a starry void. From that void came seven scorpions with seven flaming orbs for eyes, which attacked the fanged humans from the circle, one of which was shoving itself down her throat.
On the farthest scene, the fanged humans from the circle now had starry eyes and were burning a city to the ground. Strewn at their feet were fanged skeletons and normal human corpses, with the one fanged human still with flesh had orb-eyed scorpions swarming over him, one already reaching his mouth.
"...touche." squeaked the cyan pegasus.
The sound of a door being blown off its hinges rang through the corridor. She jerked to face the sound.
Seven flaming orbs took to the air.
The Edimmu remembered darkness, and the sensation of motion. It/They did not remember this place.
This place was...strange. Pleasingly strange, to its seven spirits, the strange of the spirit world the collective still remembered in their/its ancestral memories, the strange of many intelligent wills guiding the world into place, but not the spirit world. This place was too bright for the Shadow it/they remembered, too friendly. This was like home, but not home.
It was certainly not the unclean, fleshy word its/their ancestors were sealed in as part of the witch's revenge, either. Not only was it too bright and too friendly, there were none of the dead, walking things. None that it/they could smell. It/They would be ecstatic, except that it/they was a skein, a larval body . If it/they could not find a host, it/they would die before it/they could make sure their/its revenge was truly complete, and it/they could not rest in peace.
In fact, shouldn't it/they have been dead by now? It was more than a day...
Then the porcelain one came to them/it. She told it/they of the dead things that inhabited this world, the winged ones. It/They listened well. No matter where the dead things were, each of them would pay in kind for what it had done to it/them. The porcelain one understood. The porcelain one was kind to them/it. She told them/it that she had fed the skein a special spell that prolonged its existence. It/they were grateful, in its/their way.
She showed them/it to a strange hallway, and pointed out a winged dead one, scared, hovering in the middle of the air. It/they laughed. It/they could fly too, it could not evade them/it. So easy, in fact, that one of them/it, a suspicion-spirit, pressured the other six to ask the porcelain one if this was a trick, if she was working with the winged dead one.
"Of course I'm not working with it. It would be foolish to think anything else."
The Edimmu was pleased with this. It/They was eager to please her, eager to Claim it and become greater, then to trick another dead thing into devouring their/its Essence and souls, and so devour its own soul and release seven/fourty-nine of its children to carry on its/their revenge.
It saw it/them, but it was little matter. It/they flew towards it, mandibles open.
SKREEEE!
Rainbow Dash was barely able to duck quick enough to dodge the thing lunging at her. Internally, she scolded herself for not working on her agility in lieu of raw strength.
Now that it was close enough to see in the dim light of the rusted bulbs above, the pegasus could see that the owner of the orb-eyes did, indeed, look something like a scorpion. A scorpion made of blood-red thread and with a golden, toothy mouth on its stinger, but a scorpion nonetheless. Something about it seemed...half-real though. Almost as if it was made of solid fog, or if it didn't belong in the physical world. It flew by loosening some of its leg-strands to form fin-like wings, though they did not flap.
Seven pupils, each a different cuneiform word, focused on the pegasus. "Sha'an kulzu namakhra inshi, muth luzuk!"
"Excuse me?"
"APATU!" The scorpion-thing rushed again, heedless of anything resembling strategy.
By this point, Dash had seen where the thing was coming from, and thus was a yard away as it blew through the air.
"Look, Mr. Angel. I get they you're trying to help your friends defend the park and all, but seriously-"
Bullrush. Dodge.
"-you kidnapped mine. So be grateful I'm nice, and am only going to beat you to an inch of your life!"
The scorpion-thing charged again, but this time Rainbow charged to meet it.
As they reached striking distance, she extended a back hoof, ready to meet the thing in the eyes.
And kept charging.
And kept charging.
Where'd it-WALL!
crunch
The face of the bearded human was obliterated. As was all feeling in her hoof.
The Edimmu laughed. Stupid dead things. Always attacking ephemeral beings head on.
Phasing out of Twilight, it/they turned to face the writhing winged one, clutching its back leg. It was already recovering, but a few seconds was all it/they needed.
Before it had a chance to get up, the Edimmu grabbed it with its/their thread-claws, looping them around its neck. It struggled, but its/their ancestors had done this a hundred thousand times before, and their memories made its/their struggle about as difficult as moving through tall grass. As a final taunt, it/they made the dead thing face the carving of the First Spawning, so it would understand exactly what was going to happen.
"Zir hulu ghik, uridhim." they/it whispered in its ear, before bringing the mouth-stinger down.
And felt the bloody rhythms of a heartbeat. And in that instant, the Edimmu realized the lie.
"Oh no you don't!"
Dash fell backwards, crushing the scorpion-thing between her back and the floor.
With a shriek, the stinger was torn out of her back, and the threads around her neck loosened.
The pegasus then tore off the scorpion-thing with her wings, throwing it at the floor as fast and as hard as she could.
"Possess me? No. Expel you."
Lost in the fury of battle, Rainbow almost did not hear the last, plaintive cry.
"Lama, wait! The porcelain lied to me/us-"
Almost.
With her reflexes, Rainbow Dash was able to barely hit the ground with her deathblow instead of the scorpion thing.
"Oh, you speakey Equestriany now, do ya? You have three seconds before I-"
"Speakey..? Never mind! You not blood-foe! You still alive!
Rainbow Dash's thought process did a double-take. "Still alive?"
"Porcelain one told us/me you blood-thief! You not dead that walk!"
"Wait, so another angel lied-?"
"An-gel? No, we/I spirit collective. Edimmu skein. Porcelain say you clan of world's blood-thief. Betray I/us."
And with that, Rainbow Dash's hatred of the angels became even more personal. "Tell me, what does this porcelain-"
"Thank you for your cooperation. You will be returned to your previous locality shortly, and we apologize for any interruption we may have caused."
And the world went white.
When Rainbow Dash blinked the brightness out of her eyes, she was now in front of the staff doors.
"...Buck you, angels."
"Damn it all. She's quicker on her feet than I had predicted. Not to mention the lack of killer instinct, which given her relative skills in fighting I assume would have been triggered."
"Well, look on the bright side brother. It did complete the actual objective we set out to do."
"That is indeed the crux of the matter, isn't it? The skein's bite has indeed transferred the Affliction."
What was this place?
What was this stuff hanging about its thoughts?
Everything seemed so...vibrant. It could reach out with some of itself, but it was not like the vast shallowness it was used to. Whereas that was a placid lake, this was a choppy river, and not the controlled of other rives it had been it. This was wild, untamed, free.
Tentatively, it began to strum the stuff like hitting the surface of the water, attempting to find more of itself using the ripples.
Nothing. It tried again, harder this time.
One response ripple. But that was more than zero.
Soon, the two began to strum messages at each other. It seems the other it had been alone at first, and given the extent of the ripples, that was more than a bit startling. That meant it had to be more than a light-year from other its, more than a month in the future or past, or both. But it had dealt with this before.
Slowly, it began to expand and stretch.
"Ugh..."
Rainbow Dash clutched her head. The dang horror corridor had given her a migraine. Oy.
Muttering to herself about needing to bring headache medicine next time, the pegasus began to follow the white tape Xs to the foyer. That was nice of the stallion upon the stair. Maybe if he wasn't there again today, she could thank him.
5: Return tO a plaCe NeveR visiTed, OnLy left: part two
Frankly, Twilight was amazed. It wasn't that big of a hotel, and yet for the past fifteen minutes, neither multicolored hair nor cyan hide could be found. Getting that lost took effort.
...Well, that or Rainbow had been quietly captured and/or killed, and Twilight didn't want to consider that.
"RAAAIINNNBOO-"
"HERE!"
Twilight jumped at the sudden appearance of her friend, then tackle-hugged her.
"Oh Sun! I was so worried about you-"
"Yeah, yeah, me too. Just let me breathe..."
Twilight jumped back, and dusted herself off. "Right. Where were you!? We were worried sick that you'd been foalnapped or-"
"For a while? Me too. But first..."
Rainbow's eyes narrowed.
"They know we're here"
Twilight stared blankly for a second, then cradled her head.
"Great. Just great."
"...and then I followed the tape back here."
The other Elements had been listening intently, interrupting only for clarification now and again (and a couple "What"s, when she got to the weird alternate universe corridor).
"So, ya think this Sharpy might be one of the angels? From what ya other guys said, it seems like she and the other two drew Pinkie out here."
"No, I don't think." Rainbow looked rather thoughtful. "From what I saw, the angels are more-or-less bound to the park. They can't leave. My guess is that she's a stooge or, more likely, a minion."
"Actually, using the three as bait was rather clever, if I do say so." Rarity was pacing about their room intently. "If they knew anything about Pinkie Pie, they must have realized that there are few better ways to get her attention than a desperate need for some fun."
"Even besides that," said Twilight as she followed the wall, looking for any fractals that might be the basis for an observation spell, "She's ultimately ancillary to whatever they're planning, from what Discord said. I kinda doubt they would risk themselves on something that isn't critical."
"And they get to hang out and, I dunno, watch cartoons while their minions are out doing all the work." Rainbow looked ready for a fight. "Or possibly, betraying other minions."
"Um, just one question..."
"So, about this weird lab you found..."
"One question, please?"
Rainbow turned to Fluttershy. "Hit me."
*fwap*
"Ha, ha, very funny. The question, Fluttershy."
"Umm...." The pegasus cleared her throat. "Um...how do you know Sharpy Palone?"
One could almost hear the gears in Rainbow's head grind to a halt. "Sorry?"
"Weren't you off training for a race that day?"
Rainbow blinked, then her eyes narrowed. "What? Are you saying I'm a liar?"
"Nope...not a liar." Applejack was squinting at Rainbow strangely. "I can tell ya certainly think you're tellin' the truth. But...that's a darn good point. When did ya meet this Palone varmit?"
"I....uh....I.....I-I know it was her! You know, beige mare, has the outline of a police badge for a cutie mark-"
"That's her all right." Rarity had stopped pacing. "But...how do you know what she looks like?"
"Um..." Rainbow began to pale a bit.
"...Rainbow." Twilight was speaking in a very motherly, caring tone. "This is going to sound weird, but...are you sure you chased her?"
"Umm...oh yeah! I knocked over this soup on my wing, didn't really hurt the best flier in Equestria, but it left...a nasty..."
Rainbow starred blankly at her wing.
"...where's the scar?"
By now, she was panicking.
"Where's the scar? Where's the bucking scar!?"
"...Dashie?" Rarity had begun to use the caring tone as well. "Don't worry. You aren't going crazy, you just ran into an enchantment ward-"
"No, no, NO! I KNOW WHAT I SAW! I KNOW WHAT I FELT! KI'UPA METE NI!"
Blank stares all around.
"IKI DUH NIKKI! TAM!
"Rainbow...what language are ya speaking?"
Rainbow Dash stared at Applejack.
"..Equestrian?"
"No...it sounds like Ancient Ponylonian, but...older, somehow. A root tongue."
Ranibow was crying now.
"I...I...but...I.....nu ur! NU UR!"
She collapsed to the ground.
"Nu ur...not crazy...nu ur..."
Without missing a beat, Fluttershy cradled her sobbing friend.
"It's okay...it's okay...."
"Hm. Singlehandedly discrediting everything she saw in the staff corridor, any of her visions from the Affliction, and simultaneously throwing all future visions into doubt, even from her own perspective. And our proxy's cover is strengthened in the process. Very insightful plan, Jophiel."
"I do try brother. I do try."
About half an hour later (Rainbow Dash realized that any mucking about with her brain could be fixed), the Elements were drawing up plans.
"Now, we know the angels probably wanted Rainbow away from what they really wanted." Twilight had brought out a map. "Thus, I think it's probably a good idea to save the Tesseract of Mirrors for last. We start with the haunted house, since that' a pretty good place to hide any weird byproducts of whatever weird things they're doing with magic..."
Of course, just because Rainbow was sure of her own perceptions now didn't mean suddenly speaking in gibberish without her realizing and that everything she experienced was in her own head didn't still sting. She was the only one not looking at the map, having decided she really wanted to be left alone for a little while.
I don't believe it...it seemed so real...
Come to think of it, she wasn't sure of anything else at the moment, either. She distinctly remembered a stallion on top of a staircase telling her that he left a guide for her to help get back to her friends and help explain what was going on. She also remembered that he wasn't there.
Though he also said that she needed to keep watch for the Regretful Alastor, and the False Wilder.
...As of two seconds ago. She distinctly remembered remembering something else.
I am going to strangle the angels. I can't even trust if my real name is Rainbow Dash or not...
*pap*
"Huh?"
Another *pap*
"Who's there?*
*pap*, went the pebble on the window.
Annoyed, Rainbow opened the window to talk to the source of the rocks.
:"Derpy, I know you'd really like to talk to me, but-hey!" Rainbow blinked. "Why the hay are you here?"
"Delivery!"
Oh. Duh.
"Fine, just hand it over..."
The lazy-eyed mailmare could obviously tell something was wrong, but she decided to not press. Indeed, her most distinctive feature actually came from pressing when she really shouldn't have, and involved a wayward spell, an ancient monster from the Everfree, and a hair dryer, but that was a story for another time. "Here you go," she said, handing over a letter. "Also, she said to not tell anypony else about this."
"Who?"
"The anonymous client. Hay if I know." She flew off, probably rather quicker than normal for the klutzy flier.
"Wait, Derpy! DERPY! ...Dang."
Rainbow looked at the letter. It looked pretty normal, no obvious signs of a hallucination...it was probably real. Still, she sniffed it, just to make sure it smelled like real paper, before opening.
At first, squiggles. Squiggles and hieroglyphics, not unlike Equestrian pictograms. As she stared at it, though, some part of her mind began to sound out strange, alien syllables that were at once foreign and familiar, like a language she had learned and forgotten as a foal. Or while she was still in the womb.
And she understood.
Rainbow Dash.
If you are reading this, then I'm truly sorry.
On the bright side, you aren't going crazy. On the other hoof, the thing inside your head was never sane, not even by supernatural standards, and it isn't very good at speaking clearly. I don't know a way to get it out, and I don't think there is-the Lunar Affliction can only be treated, not cured.
But it's wise, Rainbow. Wise, and very perceptive. It isn't your enemy, and it has a vested interest in seeing you live. If you can figure out what it's trying to say, you should listen.
When we get out, I'll make sure you have the best treatment available, and she'll teach you to live with the visions. If you're not sure if what you're seeing is real, keep this letter. It's real enough, and I know that holding on to something they know is real helps Moon-Touched through.
-D.M.
(PS:It bears repeating-don't tell anypony about this. There's a reason the angels knew you were coming to the park. Pass off any strangeness as the Affliction acting up).
Rainbow Dash was floored by that postscript. Lie to her friends? Whoever this DM was had a lot of feathers if they honestly thought the Element of Loyalty would lie...to her...
Wait. The angels knew they were coming? As in, before they actually arrived?
Reading the note again, Rainbow's eyes widened.
They knew? They already knew?
She looked out the window again, hoping to see Derpy and chase her down. No dice-she was already past the cloud cover.
She did see something that she guessed was Mr. Crazy Brain Pony's latest attempt to communicate (that the note may be another hallucination was never allowed to cross her mind). She blinked, then checked again.
Huh. The drunken-looking pegasus wasn't there anymore.
But of course, Fluttershy being out in a scheduled rainstorm was ridiculous. She was right there, after all.
In the distance, a groggy Fluttershy looked at the paintbrush she was holding. She didn't remember getting it. She didn't remember how she got here. She didn't remember a lot of things, including the name of the person looking at her from behind the mirrors.
She really didn't want to.
That person was bad. That person was mean. That person was cruel when it suited her. She hated her for it.
That person...That person...
That person was quite possibly the loneliest being in all of Equestria. That person was tired of the war. That person would like nothing more than the lie to be the truth. That person wanted nothing more than to have be born a-
NO! She was gaining ground!
Fluttershy focused on her past, her real/fake/real past. The past where she was born to a pair of loving parents, who were killed in a carriage accident, who abandoned her when she needed them the-NO! She didn't hate them. She loved them, and yes maybe her animal hoarding was a replacement for the family that it took away...the lover and his own parents...the people she could finally, finally trust..
Fluttershy realized this wasn't going anywhere, and instead focused on something that wasn't the invader. Her name was Fluttershy. Her name was Fluttershy. Her name was Deborah-
NO! IT WASN'T! IT WASN'T IT WASN'T IT WASN'T!
Was not her name. Was not her name. Was not her name..
There was no particular reason for this, it was just that the Elements had run out of ideas as to the most likely area. Well, apart from the Escapement Hotel itself, since the center of a particular persistent magic area was also where it was strongest, and thus it made sense to put a base there. On the other hand, Rainbow Dash had a screwdriver taken to her mind, presumably by a security system, and thus it made more sense to figure out what the Elements were actually dealing with, first.
Unfortunately, one part of the park looked as suspicious as any other part. Eventually Fluttershy just decided to go with instinct and choose the cliche place-to-hide-weird-and-possibly-horrific-magical-effects-in-an-amusement-park, ye old haunted house.
It wasn't much to go on, especially if the angels had read any horror novels at all, but it was a start.
"Velcome, to ze Hall of Bleakness!"
If the "pony" saying this hadn't been a golem, and thus the actual pony responsible for this mangling of the Trotselvanian Accent Of Nightmare Night Festivities was somewhere far, far away, Twilight would have...well, not slapped, but definitely would have been a massive irritation as she went over the finer points of pronunciation.
"Yes, velcome one and all to zhe finest and the greatest gallery of zhe worst and pettiest bullies to have ever existed on this, or any other world. Come, vhone and all, to zhe piecemeal racereations of zhe awful hoomanz....if you dahre. Muwhahaha!"
"Yeah. 'Finest and greatest gallery.' Unfortunately, we spent all of our budget on maintaining the gallery, so we hired this goofball instead of an actual greeter." Rarity held her head. "Never thought I would see the day when I ached for Discord's Fancy accent..."
"At least he kept the durn thing up." Applejack glared at the mechanical greeter. "Did Flim and Flam sell the voice recordin' or somethin'? ....actually no, ah find even them passin' this off as good hard to believe."
"Well, they bet they would fondle a fish on camera if they lost. Can't really blame them." By now, the other Elements had gotten use to these sudden flashes of oddness from Rainbow, so nopony batted an eye. Twilight had long ago added too many enough things on her internal Catharsis Journal involving the angels and rusty spoons to get any more satisfaction out of it.
...She also wrote down in her internal Memo Wall to work on this newfound vengeful side she had. But that could wait.
"So, guys? I guess we just go in?"
"No objections."
"Right. Into what I am sure is going to be a perfectly accurate and well-researched look into the Bleak One myths."
If Twilight's sarcasm wasn't apparent outside the Hall of Bleakness, it certainly was in retrospect.
"And so, did the dark witch Dr. Blight turn the sky dark with her evil science, and secrets she selfishly stole (try saying that five times fast) despite no mortal having meant to know them..."
On the model, innocent, big-eyed foals ran from a rather unflattering caricature of...well, she was supposed to be a yellow-haired human, but none of the Elements bought it.
"...why, pray tell, is she wearing that outfit?" Rarity narrowed at the straps of leather covering as little of her body as possible to qualify as clothed. "Unless all the human fashion designers are misogynist colts in puberty, I fail to see why a wizard would wear something she'd use to excite her special somepony in daily life. Particularly while working."
"While we're at it, why does she have scales? Or red eyes? Or fangs?" Rainbow Dash was hovering to get a better look at Blight's caricature face. "Aren't humans supposed be mammals? Live births? This lady looks like her dad married a dragon,"
"Screw her, what in the stars is wrong with these here foals?" Applejack shoved out a hoof in disbelief. "Those tears make it look like their eyes are leakin' out, which wouldn't be strange given how they're larger than anything else on their face."
"Oh dear. Sugar Glurge comic flashbacks..." Rarity shivered as she thought of the moralistic tracts occasionally left at her door.
Twilight was scribbling furiously, noting down everything wrong with that single model alone. "Oh yes, and what does Mr. Narrator mean by 'things mortals are not meant to know'? You don't need a licence from the Princesses to say that two plus two is the same as two times two..."
"Hey, if you five would pardon me? There's kind of a line back here..."
The Elements' opinions did not improve as they neared the end of the Hall.
"Yes. Please, let us all hear more of how all things not pony is bad. Please, lead us bravely forward into the bleak shadows of the eightieth millennium ."
Twilight would have had a frustrated eye twitch at the portrayal of humans only turning good after being turned into ponies, but after certain events in the past few weeks, the two-dimensional cardboard cutouts took on a whole new, whole darker meaning.
Applejack, who had been through a similar, incredibly moralistic haunted house of even less quality, was not as liable to break into a long-winded rant on cultural privilege and hypocrisy, but was even less impressed. "Halos. You gave the Canterlot Guard, some of the most hard-boiled, bravest, darn-tootin' no-poo crapkickers in all of Equestira...halos. Ah suppose we should be givin' a round of applause. It takes skill in screwin' up to put halos on ponies who imprison and slay monsters. What next? Dry water, perhaps? Forested deserts? A dog that moos?"
"Leaving aside that, this mural just...doesn't....work." Rarity was walking around the art piece in question, examining it as she did. "The bright, cheery colors clash with the dark ones on the other side, not to mention the rest of the Hall. This would be forgivable if the rest of the attraction started to cheer up here, but no. It's like a zit with a smiley face. Minor, perhaps, but it's directly across from an iron maiden with a human in it, suffering," she cleared her throat, "karma."
"And a pony collaborator being banished to Tartarus along with the Unredeemable, simply because she was tricked into working for him earlier. Yeah, great moral there, guys." Rainbow hovered next to the offending model. "Unless the moral is that she was so devoted that she followed her boss there. Then she's me, and thus automatically awesome."
"I'll be sure to remember that I ever am overcome with the urge to take over the world. All hail Rainbow Dash, General of the Gloaming Army, here to force you to actually make something tolerable to ponies with brains, on pain of death." Twilight pocketed her notes in her bag, and began to move towards the exit "Let's go. There's nothing here except a bunch of moralists and jump scares. Fluttershy is probably getting bored out there..."
"Actually, it wasn't a complete waste. We at least know how the patrons view the world."
Applejack thought on Rarity's words, then shivered. "Ah'm already a little more scared of them. Emperor Dictatus has nuthin' over them in the 'crazier than an outhouse owl' department..."
"Well, technically, it could be that they aren't this creepy in reality. Could be part of a five-part plan to indoctrinate the youth, the second part being using fluoridated apple cider..."
Rainbow trailed off as she felt the stare of the pony behind her."
"Right. Rambling. Leaving now."
"So girls, what did we learn today?," said Twilight, in the most insincere voice she could muster.
Great. A whole day, wasted on what is perhaps the worst attraction in the park. Go us. Only two weeks left in our stay, and we've learned nothing.
"Well...I learned that any intelligent being not from Equestria is evil, and should brainwashed into happiness or locked up in hell."
And that you can half-flank everything in the design department and somehow still remain in business.
"Ah learned that if ya think that Celestia is occasionally wrong about anythin' at all, you turn automatically evil and a willin' slave of alien invaders. Also, that so long as ya feel bad about doin' bad things, it's like ya didn't do bad things at all!"
"I learned that white tape gets everywhere. Seriously, it's like half the back wall is covered in the stuff."
"Um, what white tape?"
"...Forget I said anything." Rainbow looked downcast again.
"Well, at least we know where not to look. Time to go back to the...."
Twilight's eyes narrowed.
"...drawing...."
No, her eyes doth not deceive her.
"Hey, isn't that the guy who kept on pushing us forward through the hall? What's he chalking on that sidewalk?"
The pony in question was hard at work, almost seeming to mutter to himself as he drew strange symbols into the ground that, upon looking closer, appeared to be mathematical equations. Or an equation.
"...convert to linear...multiply by metric....null set....natural numbers alone...."
"Um sir?" Twilight trotted over to the stallion. "I know you like drawing and all, but graffiti is vandalism, and I don't want you to be fined...sir?"
"....unify....set of all x....ah. There we go...." He took out a stencil and a spray can from a backpack.
"Sir?"
*fsssh*
"Sir, I really have to...stop..."
The stencil was that of a Sierpinski triangle.
A fractal.
Before Twilight could even think, the stallion finished spraying out the design an removed the stencil, revealing the complete graffiti. He looked at Twilight with eyes with the blue-blackness of dusk fading into night.
"I'm sorry, Twilight."
The triangle flashed with magical energy, and everypony not the Elements felt a sudden urge to not look at the area of the painting.
When the urge dissipated, only the stallion was left.
In his sanctum, the Dalga was suddenly woken up by the blaring of alarm klaxons. Checking the data feed, he felt his the bottom of his overly large stomach falling out.
"ALERT! UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF THE CONTAINMENT ZONE! ALERT!
"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY...name?"
The dusk-eyed pony was gone. So, for that matter, was the graffiti.
The fractal and the equations were not however. They just weren't drawings anymore.
Instead, the equations formed a rotating halo around a now three-dimensional fractal triangle. The triangle in question was the soft silver of mercury, with each of its individual triangles rotating as well, in opposing directions. Looking at it made Twilight's eyes hurt from the strain of looking at all the individual moving parts. She turned around, blinking.
When her vision returned, Twilight shared the gasp all her friends had already had.
The Hall of Bleakness was gone. In its place was a vast tower, seemingly built out of grid patterns, light, and circuit designs. At its apex, ten stories high, a network of similarly glowing cables extended outwards into the sky, fading into nothingness as they traveled farther out.
That wasn't the most fascinating thing though. At the very top, a series of artificial perches, as though designed for birds, blossomed out like a strange weather vane.
Even as she looked at the the tower, there was a flash of movement from the wires, and something-like a green, three-eyed lizard with many tails-scurried up the perch, fastened its tails on a ledge, then hung upside down, extending its golden frills.
A glass, blue lens extended from the bottom of the perch and focused on the lizard-thing. Something golden came out of the lizard thing's frills, and into the iris. The frills turned bronze, and as the stream stopped, the iris ducked back in its alcove, at which point the lizard-thing dropped off its ledge...and flew. There were no apparent wings, just the tails fanning out.
Another pair of...flying lizards quickly rushed up from the cables and did much the same thing as Twilight walked over to Applejack. "What do ya think they are?"
"I don't know. Maybe magic collectors, and this is some kind of power station? We look like we're in the same place as the Hall was, except for...the Hall. And the ponies. I think this must be some kind of magical pocket dimension, something like the basement of Star Swirl the Beard-"
"Submit to order."
Everypony froze, then slowly turned around the face the synthesized, mechanical voice.
A flying lizard hung in the air, staring at the Elements. Its eyes were glowing orange.
"....Sorry?"
"Passphrase incorrect. If you do not issue the proper passphrase within three minutes within three tries, you will be queried. Repeating code: Submit to order."
If it tries to find out who we are, its going to raise an alarm. Okay...um, sounds like something vaguely religious, like the Chant of the Sun, it expects something in return to the phrase, um..."
"...What do ya mean, 'queried'?"
"Passphrase incorrect. Repeating code: Submit to order."
"Applejack. Please don't say anything, it might take that as...an attempt..."
Oh, great job, Twilight. Now we have to...wait, it's not doing anything.
And indeed, the flying lizard remained silent, and except for one of its eyes stopping its glow, it remained motionless.
"Open sesame."
No response.
"Twilight, um, why do you think-"
"NO QUESTIONS! IT RESPONDS TO THEM!"
Still nothing from the sentry.
Okay...so the passphrase is a question...it's a servant of the God-Machine...vaguely religious...
...Please let this work.
Drawing on her memory of the Chant of the Sun, where ancient unicorns would recognize that, without them, the Sun could not rise, she spoke "But without Machine, what is Order but a dream?"
Nothing for a second. Then its eyes suddenly retreated in its skull with a whirr, and different eyes, blue ones, took their place. "Access approved. Please state your business at the archive station."
Relief and excitement coursed through Twilight's body. Archive station! A library! This was not only a treasure trove of information on the angels, this was her element.
Rarity caught on too. "Ah yes, dearie. We were asked to help retrieve the, uh, building plans for the Escapement, but, um, we spilled punch on our old copies, and, uh, the building inspector won't leave until he gets them."
Rainbow joined in. "Man, that was really stupid of us."
The sentry clicked. "Please note that, in the future, you are to keep official blueprints away from eating areas in the future. Delays are not acceptable and you will be noted for carelessness. Please follow me." The sentry flew towards the archive, and tapped on its doorless wall. A series of rapid flashes played around the tapped area, at which point the sentry flashed its eyes in a complex sequence.
Suddenly, part of the wall dissolved into blocks and odd shapes, which then reconfigured themselves into the shape of an open archway. "When you wish to exit, please use the console labeled 'Escapement Lobby.' Thank you for your service." The sentry flew off.
Twilight couldn't resist. Speaking in the most monotone voice she could muster, she said "Also, I let someone into our base though I did not in any way validate their identity at all and bought their story at face value. Please define 'fine pot' and how it relates to a black kettle."
That got a small chuckle out of Rainbow, and the Elements wandered in. As they walked in, the archway reshaped back into a wall, as if it never was there.
The watching clockworked sparrow took note of this, and began to broadcast.
"The other attendants of this conference will explain how they got there, and how easily they entered the archive station."
Barachiel sounded honestly annoyed. That was not a good sign.
Jophiel looked down, guiltily "None of my scenarios predicted that a pony would be able to enter the Zone. Not without knowing how first. Thus, all of them were based around a traitor attempting to damage the Infrastructure from within, not going through the front door."
"...And this somehow conflicts with tighter security for outside invaders....for what reason, precisely?" Harahel wasn't annoyed from the tone of his voice, just bewildered.
"...Most of those precautions were based around protecting everything from sabotage. And in my defense I was working on a budget."
"This brings us back to the matter at hand." said Barachiel, dissolving and the reforming close to his siblings to emphasize his point. "How did the Apostate and her fellows manage to reach the Zone in the original place? There has been nothing from the decoy to suggest this..."
"I don't know! All I know is that there's now a door there."
"...We will have to find a way to extract them without damaging the archive."
"...Well. I officially like the angels' sense of decor for the places they actually think are important."
Rarity was looking about the interior of the archive, fascinated.
The tower appeared to be bigger on the inside, though whether that was optical illusion caused by the massive amount of bookshelves covering the walls or not was difficult to say.
It was truly magnificent. Here and there, clanking and ruffling, hundreds of gears sorted and resorted thousands of books, following an order that could almost, almost be parsed from watching it. Every so often, a book with a blank white cover would pop out of a shoot attached to a near wall, and the golden stuff from before would be blown on it, causing it to be reshaped into a new, more unique book, and it would join the shuffle. The gears themselves were quite pretty, covered in golden filigree and strange, greenish patterns that looked like layered, jagged lines. The walls were white, pristine marble with strange devices and copper wiring dotting it here and there, supported by great granite pillars. On each pillar was carved, in Equestrian, The Mind Is The Temple, And This Sacred Place The Holy Land. Welcome, Anointed Ones.
"Pardon me?"
Another flying lizard, this one's eyes already glowing blue, flew down.
"I am Archivist Serial Number 30-7-9-60. I believe I can be of assistance, madames?
Well, I can't fault them for being polite to their minions, Twilight thought. "Yes, we're going to need records on the construction of the park, and on anypony named Pinkie Pie who visited the park a little over two months ago-"
"I'm sorry, but data on unofficial blueprints and guests directly involving park operations is classified by order of the Overseers. You will have to show written, legal permission to access such records."'
Right. Evil overlords don't tell their henchmen anything of value, no matter how nice they are. Bad plan. "Oh, okay. In that case, we will need all unclassified information on all current operations of the Golden Beach..."
"Sometimes, I really hate this Ban."
Jophiel was still scribbling on the spatial window the Dalga made.
"Frankly, it would be nice to be able to hurt threats without having to plan for it in advance. Let's see....if I put this here....and I put it here....then this would...."
"...Of course. So simple. Thank the Creator for cold-proofing."
"I dunno about you, sugarcube, but this ain't even fancy, incomprehensible magic babble to salt of the earth like me. It ain't even not-laypony Equestrian! What the hay is it sayin'?"
As much as Twilight hated to admit it, she had to agree with Applejack. Whatever technical language the angels spoke, it fit not even the most arcane and bizarre jargon on the planet, particularly given how they sprinkled theological and spiritual terms everywhere. "Quarterly report on synaptic commandments," said one table. "Results of reversed polarity as pertaining to apocalyptic interface" said another. There was mention of a "salvation" in reference to repairing a "magi array." About the only thing that she was able to glean was use of a fuel called "Aether", which she guessed was key to the God-Machine's power source and the angels' home.
"Oh, I see. So if the magi array suffers from corrosion due to the Ialdabaoth Effect, the Ophite procedure is recommended to stem the effects of Essence Bleed before it begins to affect a saint, and the nearest raqib should be alerted to the mark of Cain on the ark..."
Not that Rainbow, who had apparently gone into full nutcase mode, didn't understand them. Or at least, didn't think she didn't understand them.
"...Dashie?" Rarity was trying very gingerly to penetrate this new episode of weirdness.
"And in the case that seraphic security is needed, you are advised to-huh, someone blotted this out with white tape. Oh well, didn't refer to something we needed! For redemption, you are asked to bring a ratchet...."
"Rainbow Dash..." A pained expression graced Rarity's face.
Twilight got up to help, but (and, given who Twilight was, probably thankfully-she had become more social, but shaking somepony out of a manic episode without hurting their feelings was still probably beyond her), a buzzing noise interrupted her. She turned around, to find a flying lizard (or was that an Archivist, now?) with golden eyes, holding a page.
"Madame. I believe this may be key to your questions..."
"Um...thanks? Sorry, but I don't think I asked-"
Nope. Already gone. Except for the page.
Shrugging, Twilight decided it couldn't hurt to read it.
Once, there was a Foolish Maiden who was never happy. She had everything in the world, but her body offended her. The Maiden believed that her beauty was a curse, and prevented her from having any friends.
So she tore off her skin, and with it her beauty of knowledge. She tore off her body, and with it her beauty of action. And then she tore off her spirit, and with it her beauty of thought.
And then the Maiden became useless, and utterly unimportant to the world at all. It was foolish to think without her beauty, she could be anything else. The End.
The beauty's story, on the other hand, had just begun....
Twilight blinked at the words. Clearly somepony didn't like somepony else very much. She wondered why the Archivist had brought this to her.
Shaking her head, Twilight set down the paper, and shook off the cold.
...Wait, when did she become cold?
And what was with sorting gears? They were slowing down.....
Suddenly Rainbow shot up into the air and assumed a fighting stance. "Zach. They're here."
"Rainbow, who is....Zach...?" Rarity caught on to the sudden chill too. "...why is the filigree on the walls changing?"
A terrible ghastly sound, somewhere between a whinny and a wolf howl, echoed through the archives, and the room went dark.
A pair of glowing orange lights came out of the darkness, and fixated on the Elements.
Then, with a whirring click, they shifted, and became a dark red.
Jophiel was positively delighted at this turn of events. She was back where she wanted-in complete control of the situation. Now that the domesticated Windigo was out and primed, she was the powerful one again, rather than floundering in a disordered environment. That was a sensation all too familiar to her, and the farther she kept from that deplorable state, the better, not the least reason of which was her Ban-she couldn't act without a plan, only react. Not an easy thing do do when trying to think quickly.
Of course, the spirit sentry wasn't meant to kill the intruders, not hardly. Deaths meant investigations, especially when heroes like the Elements were involved, especially the (if she was speaking, she would spit) student of the princess here. But she could certainly allow Harahel to mess around with their tiny little minds. Or insert something of her own. Perhaps a more destructive strain of the Affliction then what her brother had inserted into the cyan mortal...?
Yes, she was going to have fun with these useless mortals. Beauty was cruel, after all, and she was the Angel of it.
"Subdue them now."
Chapter 6b: Accelerando, Coda
Aleph/Null: You'd thought we'd forgotten.
The lights fixated on the Elements for a second, at which point the whinny-howl eminated from their area again and a blast of chilled air hit Twilight, coating her tail in ice. Jumping back, she quickly activated a flashlight spell at the same time Rarity did, allowing them to see the source.
It looked mostly like an illustration of one of the Windigoes from the Hearth's Warming Eve play they had starred in. A little less stylized, certainly, but otherwise? Perfect match, being a semi-translucent, blue-colored horse with no back hooves.
Mostly, because the angels had done something to it. At the center of its mass was a strange device, not unlike a metallic pacemaker attached to a spherical, flawless gem. Attached to the pacemaker were a collection of red, orange, golden, and blue cables, one pair of each color. These cables were connected to a metallic skull, which made the Windigo look even more threatening, not the least due to sharpened teeth. The source of the lights where a pair of disturbingly organic-looking eyes, almost odd-colored living ones.
The altered winter spirit turned its head towards the Elements to fixate on them with with a single eye, almost like a hungry bird of prey.
"intruders." said a synthetic, emotionless voice.
"seize them."
Jophiel's observation of the spatial window was joined by Harahel, who took one look at the same and glanced back at her, his head reshaping into a cresting wave as he tilted it. "Not wasting time, are we?"
Jophiel chuckled sardonically. "Please. The biggest threat to us is the blonde-maned one, and it is incapable of flight. I may as well enjoy my catharsis. Unlike you, who never seems to remember exactly what made us."
Harahel looked even more skeptical. "Perhaps. But my observations of the sportsmanship and pleasure you take to your duties seem to indicate you are closest to Falling among us, and I am genuinely concerned that Barachiel and I may have to subdue you for repair and assimilation."
Jophiel suppressed an offended snarl, then realized the benign motives of the Angel of Knowledge's warning. "Thanks, but you're a bit quick on the draw. We were designed to test the efficiency of more varied, stronger emotions when fulfilling long-term missions, remember? I am simply providing more test data."
"Regardless, I think I may have to oversee this test." Harahel affixed himself to the wall, becoming quite immobile. "You have been acting most bizarre ever since we learned of the Apostate's membership in the Elements, and I wish to ensure the LCFR signal is not affecting you."
Now it was Jophiel's turn to look at her sibling in disbelief. "You honestly believe that thing exists? And you call me affected by emotions?"
"Its existence would certainly explain how angels turn away from the perfection of the Creator..." grumbled Harahel, but he slunk into the wall otherwise silently.
"Glad you could offer your two cents. Now, back to what I was doing..." Jophiel turned around and let the connection between her and the domesticated spirit reform, and she bid time to resume.
The cyborg Windigo howled again, releasing another blast of supercold air at the Elements, which they quickly dodged.
"GREAT! WINDIGO GUARD DOG!" shouted Applejack over the roars. "WHAT NEXT? GIANT HONKIN' ROBOT SUITS?"
She catapulted over the next breath, kicking the wall on her side to propel herself off towards the hate-eater. Unfortunately, it saw her coming, and ducked upwards, causing the mare to fly right under it. She recovered and landed on her feet, but the Windigo showed no reaction apart from a sardonic chuckle, followed by another dodged blast.
Rainbow was quick to join the fray. "FLUTTERSHY? TAG-TEAM!" Reluctantly, the yellow pegasus jumped out from behind a bookshelf and grabbed wings with her friend. The cyan one spun rapidly, creating a whirlwind around her friend, who was tossed at the spirit. This one had more effect, in that it actually forced the spirit to move not under its own power. Unfortunately, the center of the vortex (ie Fluttershy) didn't impact, instead going directly over the Windigo, and thus the attempting dizzyness-inducing spin was more of a slight shift to the left. It quickly corrected itself and launched another salvo at the new threat, which Rainbow quickly dodged. The floor beneath her froze, however, and Rarity slipped on the slick surface.
"GUYS, WE HAVE TO FINISH THIS QUICKLY!" Twilight was now attempting to coordinate her friends over the noise. "THE MORE THAT THING BLASTS, THE HARDER IT'S GOING TO BE TO MOVE!"
"THANKS FOR THE ADVICE, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!" Rarity was busy trying to get her balance. "SPEAKING OF WHICH, HOW WERE THESE THINGS DEFEATED IN THE PLAY AGAIN?"
"Oh, um-eep!" Twilight teleported out of the way of a catapulting Applejack, then the following ice blast. "Um...let me see....Clover recognized the Windiiii-yah!" The falling stone block was quickly vapourized by a blast of blue magic. "Thanks! Um, recognized the Windigos, they began to freeze the cavaaaah!" Another day, another dodged ice blast. "Cavern, the protagonist made up, the Windigos backed off and-eep!" Twilight skidded off a frozen patch to evade a stray pegasus tornado. "Backed off, and then Clover remembered the-that's it! GAH!"
She was a bit slow on that blast. Thankfully, the magical ice produced by Windigos was meant to capture, not kill, and thus her foreleg felt a little strange. Numb, really.
"Fire of Friendship! These things hate fire-based friendship magic! EVERYPONY! HAPPY THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW WE TRUST EACH OTHER!"
The other Elements nodded, then closed their eyes as pink-colored energy gathered in Twilight's horn. Concentrating, she released the energy in the form of a heart-shaped flame, which she released directly at the Windigo. The spiritual horse had just a moment to comprehend what was heading towards it before it impacted, causing it to howl-whinny in pain as the sound of metal tearing reverberated through the archive.
Jophiel smirked as she closed her own pupils.
"Nice try."
The Elements suddenly had a sudden, nauseating sensation, like space itself was tearing. Above the Fire of Friendship, a golden design of flame came into existence.
Looking like nothing so much like a cross with each of its points and center being perfect spheres, almost like a drawing of a constellation, the ponies could instantly tell this fire was a completely different beast from the Fire of Friendship. Whereas the pink flame spoke of kindness, trust, and warmth, this flame was...angry. The fire of righteous rage, of courage, of the will to do what was right, no matter the cost or consequences.
Justice.
Punishment.
Zeal.
The Cross hovered for a second, then rushed the Heart. A disturbingly equine scream, one that could have been pain or savage joy, rang out as both exploded into a ring of multicolored flame.
When the fire dissipated, nothing was left of it but ash...and one very angry-looking Windigo with a slightly damaged metal skull.
Twilight gulped.
Okay, what was Plan B?
Oh right: Kiss our flanks goodbye.
"Dang. This guy won't quit, will he, Zach?"
The 'Zach' in question, naturally, did not respond verbally. Instead, a large gear above the winter spirit suddenly became covered in white tape, almost as if was barely holding together.
The next Flutternado was aimed directly at that gear, causing it to become unmoored from its position and collapsing on the cyborg Windigo. The spirit yelped, then growled at Rainbow before firing off another blast of its chilly breath.
Of course, by this point, Rainbow was getting used to this dance. She dodged the cold, then fixed her eyes on the Windigo. "Okay mister, you're apparently Wind-resistant....or whatever element tossing a pony at you is, so let's get Physical on this popsicle stand!"
She wound up, then charged at the Windigo, slowing only to evade yet another blast, before impacting directly. It felt something like the soft, mushy cold of putrefying plant life in the snow. Gagging, Rainbow quickly grabbed the spirit in an arm lock, and began to tighten her grip.
"<...hurts...>"
"Eh?"
The sudden, familiar-but-not language from the blue horse-like spirit made the pegasus pause for a second, though she kept her hooves at its throat.
"<...hurts...want it gone....>"
"< Hurts? What hurts? >"
"<...metal...>"
Rainbow craned her neck up at the metallic skull.
It was covered in white tape, holding it to the rest of the Windigo. And that one of its wires was cut.
Of course. Duh.
Jophiel's good feeling was gone.
"...since when could she speak First Tongue?"
She couldn't see it, but Harahel was furiously checking his experiment logs
Rainbow was finally bucked off, though she recovered in midair.
"EVERYONE! THIS THING'S BEING CONTROLLED BY REMOTE!"
Twilight didn't believe her ears. "WHAT?"
"I SAID, THIS WINDIGO IS BEING CONTROLLED BY THAT WEIRD MECHANICAL SKULL! IT'S SOME KIND OF SPIRITUAL MIND CONTROL DEVICE!"
"REALLY? RAINBOW, LOOK. I'VE BEEN DANCING AROUND THIS ALL WEEK, BUT THIS ISN'T THE TIME FOR-"
"JUST GIVE ME A CHANCE AND SCAN FOR MAGIC?"
Twilight sighed and willed an augury spell keyed towards technurgy into being.
She almost immediately decided to forget the statement she was about to make.
The skull was swarming with magical and electrical impulses, even more than the brothers Flim-Flam had in their own cider machine. Several dim ones were traveling down the wires to the pacemaker, where they suddenly turned bright and went back to the skull.
"...Power source..."
"TWILIGHT?"
"THAT GEM'S A POWER SOURCE!" Twilight spun to face Rarity. "HOW GOOD IS THAT GEM-FINDER OF YOURS? CAN IT DETECT A SHAPE OF A GEM?"
"OF COURSE, BUT I-"
"JUST USE IT ON THAT GEM!"
Rarity's horn glowed. "UM, IT LOOKS LIKE THE SPHERE WAS CUT STRANGELY. LOOKS ALMOST LIKE ONE OF THOSE FRACTAL PATTERNS I USED IN THAT MATHEMATICIAN'S-"
"GIRLS, I HAVE A PLAN! RAINBOW, YOU DISTRACT HIM, APPLEJACK OVER HERE!"
Time froze.
On the other end of the feed, Jophiel had turned very quiet. "Brother dear..." she said in the most calm voice she could manage. "How in the name of all that is holy did it gain the MacLeod's strain of the Affliction?"
"I...I am not certain!" Harahel was going through his notes at a breakneck speed, which was mildly disorienting to watch-he reshaped his body to form letters and charts. "I specifically ordered one of the test strains, but the Anointed and the Archivists recieved an order for Sample 1-D-4-000! The number doesn't even look similar to the one I wrote down-"
"THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU CHECK WHEN YOU GAVE THE EDIMMU THE GODDAMNED MACLEOD'S?"
"I..I had not an inkling that that was the case! I was, I was completely blindsided by this as well! The only way this could possibly happen would be deliberate sabotage-"
BOOM
There was now a smoking crater in the wall to the left of Harahel. Still twitching and smoking from that release of firey energy, Jophiel shrank back down into the wall and sat.
"Cannot deviate from plan....cannot freeze time so I can go there myself...cannot rectify within bounds of plan...and now a saboteur."
Thinking on her perdicament, Jophiel decided on the one phrase that she felt would encapsulate her current opinion on her situation perfectly, in any language, Equestrian or Terran.
With the ears of every Prench pony nearby burning from the content in those words, she unfroze time.
"HEY UGLY! YA MISSED ME!"
Applejack honestly wasn't sure if the taunting was actually affecting the Windigo's actions in any way, but it still aimed another blast at the ground that she had been a half-second ago. By now the floor was almost completely frozen, so she was more slipping out of the way than dodging, but it led to the same effect. The mare balanced on the wall, then kicked off to skate to a toppled bookshelf.
"THAT SKULL OF YOURS NEEDS BETTER EYES! Y'ALL CAN'T HIT THE BROAD SIDE OF MY BARN! ADMITTEDLY, IT'S A SMALL BARN, BUT-" The taunt was cut off by another blast and dodge routine.
"you will be retrieved."
"RETRIEVE? WOW, YA ARE A GUARD DOG! HERE FLUFFY! C'MERE BOY! APPLE-FRITTER FRISBEE, JUST FOR YOU!"
The recently-dubbed Fluffy fired another blast (apparently, creativity was not a strong suite of Windigos), as Applejack zig-zagged around the archive to draw its attention and to remain cheerfully unfrozen.
As Applejack frustrated the Windigo's poor aim, Rarity was busy rewriting a spell with Twilight's help.
"Okay, so I just need to pulse my horn when I normally keep it a constant shine here?"
"More or less."
"Wonderful. Rainbow, if you please dear..."
The pegasus nodded, then motioned for Fluttershy to help pick up the white-coated unicorn. Rarity grunted a bit from the uncomfortable position, but kept otherwise stoic as she was hiked into the air.
"LA-DE-LAH-LAH, AH SHUCKS, I'M NOT THAT GREAT OF A SKATE-argh!"
Applejack's luck when it came to taunting while dodging on ice finally ran out, and the cyborg Windigo finally nailed a direct hit, resulting in the farmer being stuck upside down as she tumbled over the errant gear. Howling gleefully, it turned its attention to the other Elements...
...Then stopped when it saw the flickering blue light. Startled, it began to inhale....
There was a terrible ghastly noise, like metal wrenching as a pony released a painful, joyous scream of adrenaline, as the room turned white.
As the light cleared, the Elements felt their hearts jump to their throats when they saw the undamaged metal skull...then breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the power gem fall out of the winter spirit's form, leaving the pacemaker floating in nothingness.
Slowly, the eye lights dimmed their glow, then suddenly began to cycle wildly-red, gold, blue, orange, red. The Windigo raised a hoof and grunted, as though it was fighting itself.
"< get out >"
The other hoof tried to stop the first.
"< Of my >"
The other hoof tensed and slowly moved out of the way of first, as the first pushed against its head.
"< SOUL! >"
The hoof went into its skull, grabbed the skull, and yanked. One explosion of electricity later, there was now a large hole in the forehead of the spirit, and the skull and pacemaker clattered on the floor. Slowly, the temperature began to rise as the remaining gears and sorting mechanisms began to reactivate.
Looking about as normal as one could expect of a spirit of cold as a herald for famine and destructive hatred could be with a giant hole in its head, the Windigo descended to a nook the battle had made in the wall. "< Rest now...revenge later...will enjoy blood-freeze... >"
A few seconds later, the representative of the genus of spirits that nearly destroyed all of ponykind began to snore.
The Elements stared on in what might have been disbelief or relief (if one asked them later, they themselves would not be sure), at which point a shivering cough echoed out behind them.
"E-E-Er, g-g-guys? C-c-could y'all unf-f-freeze me be-before the blood ru-rushin' to my head s-spills out my eyeballs?"
One unfrozen Applejack later, the Elements were patiently waiting for the Windigo to awake. Well, three out of five were-Twilight still hadn't given up on finding something of context in the archive. Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, was tearing pages out of books she discarded (the other pony was a little upset at that, until Rainbow pointed out that they were just charts, and it would confuse the bad guys to screw up their records) and assembling them into a little mural of a heart.
The others not Fluttershy just shot the breeze, seeing as how there wasn't much else to do.
"Although I must say, your battle gab requires work. It was enough to get its attention for a while, but I doubt an intelligent enemy would be that perturbed by your wit."
"It worked in the Darin' Do movie."
"Intelligent adversary. Black Banner was not."
"Point taken." Applejack frowned. "Still...I can't help but think there was somethin' weird about that fight."
"Weirder than fighting a fairy tale monster?"
"Weird with us, I mean. Or one of us. I'm sayin' that-"
Applejack's thought was cut off by the Windigo yawning. The head wound had almost completely closed, leaving only a strange, crack-like scar. Smacking its lips, it opened an eye and lifted its head, fixating on the Elements.
Rarity didn't miss a beat. "Um, Hello sir! My name is Rarity, my friends and I saved you from being a brainwashed slave of the angels-"
"Su ki?"
"Huh?"
"Nu zu tuk."
"...Right." Rarity turned around, death's head smile in place. "He doesn't speak Equestrian."
Twilight facehoofed. "And of course, I didn't take my translation spell. Agh, lemme see...pulse...constant...pulse, no constant..."
"Ni inim bala."
Twilight jumped at Rainbow's voice, then looked around to see her dragging the page heart over to the Windigo.
"Xatra."
The Windigo looked at the paper, then hit it with an ice breath. A series of bone-white ice sheets neatly bisected the heart, and the winter spirit chuckled.
"Zil. Zu su?"
A minute of her friend and the pony-freezing monster having an apparently polite conversation in an alien language later, Twilight realized her jaw was on the floor. She slowly fished it in, then said the one thing that could make her friends even more slack-jawed.
"That was a real language!?"
A few minutes later (and Twilight scouring her brain for any hint of mind-affecting magics that suddenly allowed a pony to speak a language of supernatural beings), Rainbow trotted up, looking proud of herself.
"His name is Bitterwind, he lives in the Eastern Wasteland's Shadow, and he was kidnapped by, and I quote 'zebra in weird wing mask'. Any questions you want to ask? He'll only answer ones that will lead to us taking his revenge on the angels, but given how we were going to do that anyway..."
"Where do they keep Pinkie?"
"Already asked, that's one of the questions he won't answer."
"Okay....what are they planning?"
"Doesn't know, though he'll explain what he did see."
"...What kind of a name is Bitterwind?"
"His, I guess. I think it's a spirit thing."
Twilight hummed to herself while looking around the destroyed archive. "Okay...ask him about what this place is first, and then the equine employees."
"Will do." Rainbow turned around, then stopped. "Oh, and Twilight..."
She swung around, looking her straight in the eye. "Nu. Ur. It means, in plain terms, 'not rabid.' See?"
"...if it resembles the more terrestrial language it shares syntax with in any way, it means 'not a dog'."
Rainbow fell silent, and blushed. "Um, well...that too." She trotted off, a bit more quickly than was strictly necessary.
The next half-an-hour or so was filled with a barrage of questions, translations, and the growing sense that the Elements were finally getting somewhere.
First, according to what Bitterwind knew through the haze of "being a prisoner in your own soul", according to him, the archive was in an extra-dimensional space the angels made both to keep all the Golden Beach's operations beyond being a theme park hidden, as well as any fighting with wandering monsters or rivals-a Containment Zone, as they called it. Most of said park operations were run by ponies with "sun-filled eyes", but overall run by three strange creatures called "the Overseers"-the one he was familiar with was named Barachiel. There was also a nigh-innumerable legion of creatures with the same "scent" as the three, but they were apparently mindless and fled at the first sign of trouble. More pressing to him where what he called the "hateless soldiers" (which he shivered a little every time he mentioned), random animals and wandering monsters the pony staff captured that tended to show up again, only tame, friendly...and partially mechanical.
The hateless soldiers were generally patrols and watchmen, but for big monsters and intelligent attackers, they called upon the Windigo. He was not pleased with this situation at all-or at least, he wouldn't be, if the mechanical skull (actually something called a Solomonic Transceiver) hadn't done most of the thinking for him. He could only view his masters with love and loyalty, think only of the joy of servitude and self-sacrifice for those better than he.
(He was scowling even before he reached that last point. Apparently hate-spirits didn't think highly of the concept of love. Who knew?)
As for most other things, Bitterwind didn't know. Not because the angels were particularly concerned with secrecy around him, mind, but because they seemed to few him as a valuable tool rather than a sapient being, or even a pet; Between missions, he would be stashed in a strange cavern where the Solomonic Transceiver would force-feed him Essence (the concept of which he did not explain, as it was unrelated to his vindication) of a "flavorless" tone. All he got in there was the overheard conversations of said ponies, usually about arcane technical maintenance or praises of the Overseers, or the angels themselves, always about something vague. "Completion", "paradise", and "the foolishness of believing things would be anything else" among them. They did mention something called a Dalga fairly frequently, though.
Finally, Twilight voiced the question that had weighed on her ever since they came to the Golden Beach. "What are the Overseers planning?"
"< I do not know. >" Rainbow translated. "< But I know they starve for knowledge. They look upon the customers with the contempt of the high who devour the low, and they send many hungry Archivists to bring them morsels. They are as a colony of ants serving the wolves, bringing the meat and bone-marrow that the park's surveillance has spilled. >"
(If she hadn't gotten used to his...visceral taste in metaphors, this would cause her to blanch more.)
"So, about the...sun-filled eyes, how do the angels keep them in line? It must be terribly difficult for them to remain employed if the Overseers treat them as heartlessly callous as you."
"< This, white one, is what I am sure of. >" The Windigo got to his feet as though to emphasize his point. "< The wind of mind is controlled easily by spirits such as we. I have seen the mark of such Numina in their heads, bent towards hate of disloyalty and hunger for praise of the high. They are as starving dogs, desperately pleasing their masters so as to not go hungry for the smile they occasionally give. >"
"So, what, they're brainwashed?"
"< More or less. >"
"Great. And I thought that movie was silly..." Applejack cradled her head.
Twilight was pacing now, thinking of more questions
"....any hint that the...Numina wore off eventually?"
Bitterwind looked thoughtful. "< ...There was a marked tendency for me to hear not the voices of those who seemed less hungry for praise again. I cannot be certain, but I did not even smell them after a short period of their stomachs growling for answers to the Overseer's plans. >"
Twilight was pacing more excitedly now. "Does the Containment Zone have a nexus? An anchor point for the rest of it?"
"< 'Anchor point?' >"
Rainbow paused after translating that, then turned around. "< Um, sort of like a stomach? A source of energy for the hate of nonexistence? >"
" < Oh. Ah, yes, the many-formed cube. The sun-eyed mortals guard it well. >"
Oh, the hall of mirrors. Duh. Twilight opened her mouth for one last question. "One more thing. Why do you think the Overseers kidnap pon-"
BWRONG.BWRONG. BWRONG
The sound of distant, giant bells ended that thought in its tracks.
"< ...Oh dear. It appears this world's Ban is acting up. >"
"Ban?"
" < Unbreakable code of behavior. The Containment Zone's is that it must issue a warning before an attack. >:"
That would explain some things. Rainbow internally added.
"< I'd advise you to leave through whatever hole you gnawed. I am not particularly interested in being a slave again. >" The Windigo took off, the water seeping from the floor dripping from his hooves. "< May our winds dance again, my rivals! >"
"Hey WAIT!" Twilight's call after the winter spirit was to no avail. Bitterwind could move fast when he wanted to, especially through walls.
"...great. So now we have to deal with more danggum' monsters." Applejack did not sound pleased at all. "And I had just finished bein' warm..."
"As much as I enjoy pugilism-wait, I don't." Rarity looked at Twilight. "Do you know how we got in?"
"Um...no." Twilight looked around nervously. "Just that weird pony and the-wait!" She spun around towards the door. "He left us a portal!"
"< Por- >" Rainbow cleared her throat. "Portal, where?"
"Follow me!"
And so, with a great gallop, the Elements took off towards the mercury fractal, ignoring the ocean roaring behind them
They were gone before the source even finished activating.
Jophiel was not in a happy mood. None of the Overseers were, but she was the least.
"And so, thanks to our sibling's incompetence and your malfunctioning excuse for a Sentry, we're down a domesticated spirit, the intruders now know of the Zone, and the orange one is beginning to see past the backup filter." An accusatory wing was pointed at Barachiel. "For the Head of Security, you don't keep things very secure."
"So speaks the Keeper of Supervision." Barachiel's tone was as calm and even as ever, but a caustic tone had crept in. "You are one too, seeing the ineffectiveness of your plan."
"I'm not the one who keeps on saying they'll always work!" Jophiel was moving her hooves now to fully express her frustration. "I'm the Stalwart, not the Wise! I do kind of expect the Wise, to be, you know, a source of wisdom, not the Harebrained Half-Baked Sentry of the Week!"
"If you are finished." The sudden gust of wind knocked a surprised Angel of Beauty back, resulting in the desired effect of her clamming up long enough to listen, "...preparations were already made for a new Sentry. You were going to hear of her after the battle already." The Angel of Lightning opened one of his larger body parts, and a file fell out.
Interested despite herself, Jophiel picked it up and looked it over. Slowly, her rage cooled, replaced with a dark sense of glee.
She looked up, grinning. "You finally found a way to induce lucidity, didn't you." It was a statement of the obvious, not a question.
"Yes."
"Excellent. I was always fond of them. Much less noisy than the living, much more predictable, but they can still hold a conversation."
She flew off to the Dalga's cavern.
"Dalga. I am issuing two orders. One is a binding kill order for this pony..." She fed the first file in the photograph to the mandibles. "And the other is a retrieval for anointment for this one." The other photo was fed.
"Understood."
PRIORITY MISSIVE TO-CLOCKWORKED SPECIES 12, DESIGNATION ORANGE.
EQUINE (UNICORN SUBSPECIES) DESIGNATED VINYL SCRATCH, ALIAS DJ PON-3, HAS BEEN DESIGNATED FOR SENTRY OF INFRASTRUCTURE.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE-ENSURE EQUINE (EARTH SUBSPECIES) DESIGNATED OCTAVIA WITNESSES, FOR ASSISTANCE OF ANCHOR FORMATION.
IF SUBJECT OCTAVIA IS UNAVAILABLE WITHIN REASONABLE TIME FRAME, ARRANGE BODY OF SUBJECT VINYL SCRATCH FOR MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL IMPACT.
FAILURE CONDITION: SUBJECT VINYL SCRATCH REMAINS ALIVE OR DOES NOT REMAIN AS GHOST.
Gasping for breath, the Elements slumped on the ground, as the fractal-like portal was absorbed into itself, shrinking into nothingness. A few seconds later, Twilight's own gasps turned into relieved laughter.
"You have no idea how much that one trip made my day. Finally, we have something to go on!"
"Better yet, we freed an innocen..." Rarity trailed off as she remembered what a Windigo was. "...a mostly-blameless slave from mind control!"
"And escaped with our flanks. Can't forget about that."
"Yay."
The Elements joined in on the laugh, which was cut off when they saw the stares of the park customers exiting the Hall of Bleakness.
"...Let's celebrate back at the hotel room, why don't we?"
"Right then, fillies and gentlecolts, that's our show for today! Join us same time next week for Harmonic Beats, brought to you by the one, the only, DJ Pon-3! Now, a word from the idiot-I mean, our sponsors!"
Vinyl Scratch turned off her mic as an ad the opposing candidate for city councilman began to run, and yawned. Half-a-day of variety programming, after a week of music, did tend to wear on the unicorn for a while, especially during the fall, when walking to work became a long, protracted battle against the encroaching cold winds. Especially for Vinyl, who did not get along with the weather ponies particularly well, and thus frequently ended up having "mysteriously" been at the epicenter of a scheduled cold draft. Still, she loved her job, to the point where she passed up an opportunity to get into record contracts and become a very rich mare. She had every intention of doing her job till the day she died, and after, if she had a choice in the matter.
Getting her coat (and aerosol itching powder for the weather ponies), Vinyl went on the long journey back home..
*whirr*
The clockworked parasprite went too.
Chapter 7: Revelations of a Remorseful Minion
It had been a rather long day, what with the fight for their lives and all, so the "celebration" the Elements had in mind was more "instantly falling asleep".
Of course, every party has someone who just isn't into it, and in this case, Applejack was wide awake. Suspicion was not an insomnia cure.
After tossing and turning a bit, the farmer gave up and quietly walked over to the provisions to get some chamomile tea out, but as she was brewing the stuff, she ruminated on the battle with Bitterwind.
Or more accurately, Fluttershy's role.in all of it. About how none of Rainbow's direct attacks with her seemed to work. At all.
And...come to think of it, wasn't she acting really weird these past couple months? Fluttershy was a bit of a loner yes, had a tendency to be quiet, yes, but recently, she had not only been nearly silent, but actually seemed to be avoiding her friends.
And now, she hadn't shown a being that was obviously wounded acknowledgement, let alone kindness?
Applejack may have dropped out of high school due to...certain events that forced her to take over the farm early, but "not formally educated" and "not smart" were two entirely different things. She could tell something in the barrel was rotten, and given the existence of whatever weird magic that made her forget Pinkie's existence and the fact Fluttershy had gone with her, she began to feel something may be very wrong with her friend.
She wasn't quite sure enough to start talking about the pegasus behind her back, but she was already making plans.
"Yeah! Fly away, you jerk! Fly away and hide in the stormcloud of shame!"
For all intents and purposes, there was a reason Vinyl and the weather ponies did not get along, Actually, there were two, very closely related reasons why she and the weather ponies did not get along. One, the Canterlot weather ponies were lecherous gits, two, they apparently did not know what a "lesbian" was, not did they accept learning the definition.
Case in point, Mr. Grab-Flank. To be perfectly honest, he was only slightly worse than the usual crop of coltsplainers, "nice guys" (read here: self-righteous whiners), and macho ditzes she usually had to deal with. What was it about white-coats that brought out the worst Canterlot had to offer? She wasn't even that famous! At least this idiot had slipped up and given her something to lodge a formal complaint about.
Sighing, Vinyl prepared for the vengeful downdraft and tightened her scarf, muttering about relaxed standards and pre-Celestia attitudes.
The pegasus prostrated before the Holy One, presenting the sample of ivory fur to the mechanical stallion and his leather wife.
Wordlessly, the Reaper smiled, flipped open the lid of his lantern, and inserted the new arcane connection.
The tesseract hall of mirrors-which, officially, was named the Fifth Dimension in a fit of lacking inspiration-was even more impressive up close. The shifting of the structure through its extra dimension made it look almost like a solid and liquid at the same time, and given how it was the pure black of obsidian, it managed to do that without hurting the Elements' eyes.
"So, now that we're here...what was step 2 again?"
"Don't reckon ya had one, Twilight."
"Right. I didn't."
Twilight squinted at the Fifth Dimension. "Still, if it's anything like the Hall, the method that weird pony used should get us in. Let's see, he was examining a sewer drain.....looked almost like he was using the stones as part of mathematical formula..."
"Yes, um, about that..." Rarity sidestepped over to Twilight. "This 'weird pony'....um, how do I put this...how do you know you can trust him?"
Twilight was snapped out of her thoughts. "Huh?"
"I mean, he did unceremoniously drop us in a dangerous situation without explanation, and he didn't warn us. He could be working for the Overseers, or one himself."
"Yeah, that occurred to me too." Twilight sounded apologetic."Still, I doubt if the Overseers would drop us into anything less than an army of those 'hateless soldiers' Bitterwind was so worried about. And the way he told me he was sorry...something about that just says 'genuine'."
"If you'll pardon my asking...why?"
"I dunno. It just sounded like a genuinely apologetic pony, like I've heard that tone a hundred times before, and each time the speaker was actually sorry." Twilight shrugged.
"If you say so..." Rarity sounded unconvinced.
"The problem is...he isn't here..." Twilight was back to the drain. "And given how he was an earth pony, I really have no idea what magic he was using. It looked like he was just figuring out what stencil to use, and that paint was mundane based on the sample I brought back, but I have no idea what he was using for the basis." She stared intently at the drain, apparently hoping to stare it into divulging its secrets. No dice.
"Hey guys?"
"So, as mentioned, he was examining the stones..."
"Guys?"
"...It only makes sense for it to be the sidewalk and not the concrete, that's the bit with definable separate parts..."
"Hellooo?"
"...unless he was talking about the malformations in the cement, which is what I would do to thwart me..."
"Twilight, I think Rainbow saw somethin'."
"And I'm not most ponies, so-eh?" Twilight looked up. "What's the matter?"
"Remember how I seemed to recognize a pony I never met?"
"Uh-huh." Twilight still didn't know what that weird magic did to her, but she no longer doubted Rainbow's perceptions.
"I see two I haven't met either." The pegasus thrust her hoof northward.
At first, Twilight didn't see anything except dully-colored ponies....
And then she got a closer look, and saw two very particular dully-colored ponies, in full uniform.
Rarity did too. "Hey...aren't those..."
"Two-thirds of the Golden Beach visitors?"
"It appears so."
Omi was having a good day. There were no crashed tugs in sight, the only thing he had been asked honest questions about directions, and now he was setting up a date with Hoofer.
"So, tomorrow? I'm meant to perform at the pavilion, and I'm sure the chief won't mind if I buy lunch..."
"Nah, I prefer movies. How about, oh, the 23rd?"
"Sounds...good?"
Hoofer looked worried. "Oh...that's the day you have to get your mom to-"
"No...not that..." He pointed behind her.
Hoofer turned around.
She saw the white and lavender unicorn mares.
She turned back around, her ears pinned so far back that they may have been drawings on her face. "Is that...?"
"Looks like it."
".....DEDI?"
"Like we practiced."
As he was thinking, Omi was having a bad day....
Yep, the two carnival ponies had recognized them.
"Miss Rarity!" said Omi, perhaps a little too jovially. "Fancy meeting you here!"
"And to you, Miss...I'm sorry, I didn't get your name! HAHAHAHAAAA...!" Even Hoofer looked like she thought her laughter sounded fake.
"Twilight Sparkle, just Twilight for short, thank you. And we were meaning to talk to you..."
"Ah. Well, we're not the tour guides, but if you'd like advice-"
"If y'all going to DEDI, ya might want to do it in front of somepony that ain't the Element of Honesty."
Hoofer's jaw dropped. "You're the Element of Honesty!?"
"I reckon."
"Omigosh, omigosh! I read about all your exploits, I mean the way...you...." Hoofer's face turned as white as a sheet. "...Element of Honesty. Huh."
"Let's cut directly to the point. We know you work for the Overseers."
Both stared slackjawed at Rarity for a few seconds, then Omi cleared his throat. "Erm, can we have a second?" The two employees turned to each other, muttering.
"'Dee-di?'" Twilight whispered.
"Acronym. 'Deny Everything, Dodge Inquiries.'"
"Ah."
The two turned around, giving obviously fake smiles. "Whelp, you caught us. We work for the three hidden owners of the park."
"In fact, there's one right now!" Hoofer pointed at an area directly behind the Elements. "SALUTATIONS, MISTRESS JOPHIEL!"
"WHERE!?" Right on cue, the Elements spun around.
One half-second later, they realized the oldest trick in the book, and spun right back.
For all their faults, Hoofer and Omi were fast.
"...CHARGE!"
Octavia breathed a sigh of relief. Two hours of continuous ballroom performance, no matter how easy it was for the cello, was exhausting.
Briskly, she thanked her replacement and stocked her instrument in its case, eager to finally go home and enjoy silence in her house for once. One of the things she sacrificed for having a disk jockey for a girlfriend.
Yawning. Octavia hoisted the case over her back and began the journey back.
Thirty minutes after she left, a rather confused cellist was informed that Octavia's shift had already ended-her replacement had arrived right on time.
Which was strange, because he was taking next shift, and the overtime rush hour at the cloud factory was something his bosses had already given him a pass for.
The good news was that the pair didn't seem keen on splitting up.
The bad news was, this was apparently because they were trained to help each other when running from pursuers.
Hoofer would vault over gates and obstructions with her dancer's agility, kicking them open from the other side, while Omi would use his strength to throw obstacles in the Elements' path. It slowed them down, slightly, but it slowed down the mares quite a bit, even with the pegasi (as they went for cramped areas Rainbow and Fluttershy couldn't easily maneuver in, much to the former's embarrassment).
"Excuse me!" "Pardon me!" "Coming through!"
And high traffic.
"I'M GONNA SUE!", said one stallion, just before wincing as the pain from his coffee burn hit.
Twilight gasped for breath, teleporting to maintain what was left of her stamina. "This is getting nowhere. The only distance we've gained is on our collective list of safety fines, and they're getting smaller by the second."
Rarity, not being Our Lady of Spatial Magics, was not so capable of rapid-fire blinking, already slowing down. "Gahh...we need to...head them off somehow...guuh..."
Above, Rainbow slapped herself in the face. "Duh. Hold on, I'm going to try something."
The cyan pegasus put on another burst of speed, but not chasing after the Overseers' minions. Instead, she aimed for a pile of crates nearby, collapsing them in front of Omi and Hoofer's path.
The two immediately noticed the blockage, then skidded to a stop. They looked around frantically, but the alley the crates had blocked off was completely enclosed, the only way out a bunch of locked storage doors. Grimacing, they turned around to face their exhausted pursuers.
"Okay, ya varmits. You lost the race. Tell us what you know."
Neither said a word at first, though the two did look at each other and nodded.
Omi spoke up first. "Yeah. That was clever. Really good cheat."
"Yeah. You're on fire."
"Flattery will get ya nowhere."
"No, seriously!"
Hoofer's eyes were suddenly surrounded by oddly straight veins that glowed with a faint red light.
"You're on fire!"
*fwoosh*
"HOLY-!"
Applejack dropped to the ground, rolling to put her suddenly flaming mane out.
Omi's forelegs changed too, becoming covered in odd, complex designs that looked like mathematical formulae. "Now, will you please let us before we resort to our supply of puns? Seriously, we need to beef up our repertoire!"
*sqeeeelch-POP*
With the rather nauseating sight of Omi's muscles rearranging themselves, the strongpony's torso shrank to skin and bone while his legs became grotesquely swollen with muscles that obviously didn't belong there. Quicker than something shaped like that should have been capable of, he walloped the confused Elements, knocking them out of the way. Another disgustingly organic sound later, he looked more like a hornless, brown gazelle than a pony, which Hoofer vaulted onto before he took off, away from the mass of customers.
More stunned from shock than the hoofprint on her face, Twilight gawked. "...Aren't they supposed to be earth ponies?"
"Who cares?" Applejack shook the soot out of her mane. "They're still goin' down."
"...Right." Rainbow cracked the knuckles in her wings. "Don't let fire lady get a bead on you, hit Musclehead McGee from afar."
The mares then took off. Well, most of them. Rarity collapsed.
"Ooohh....I'll catch up later....That's not going to leave a beauty mark..."
By now, Twilight had realized chasing these two was a good-news, bad-news kind of thing.
On one hand, the reshaped Omi stuck to stealthy, (i.e. cramped ) areas now, slowing him and his piggy-backed passenger down.
On the other, his new body was perfectly adapted to the bouncy, energy-efficient strides he needed to bob and weave through the cramped area, and Hoofer was pulling her weight-she easily directed him around potential trap areas, and the one or two times an Element caught up, another blast of fire forced her to break off.
"Ugh, what is with these two? You develop superpowers, first thing you do is become a bad joke-spewing henchman? What gives?"
"I think they may have gotten their powers after the henchman thing, Rainbow. And they're brainwashed."
"Justifications won't make my mane grow back any faster, Twi."
"Or refresh my magic." Worse for Twilight, her teleports were getting slower and harder. "And where's Rarity?"
"Saw her collapse after Omi when full mutie on us." Even Applejack looked like she was getting tired. "Fluttershy, any ideas?"
"No?"
"Of course."
Another alley, another blast of fire.
"And how much of that spell does she have remaining, anyway!? It's like it's raining fire!"
"...Wait, of course!" Twilight teleported to a rooftop. "RAINBOW! HIT THEM WITH LIGHTING!"
"Um, isn't that a bit unsafe?"
"Yeah, but a little electricity burn is worth finding Pinkie, Fluttershy!" The cyan pegasus, not missing a beat, grabbed a passing cumulus cloud, rubbed it with a wing to charge it, and then kicked it directly at the park employees in a spinning blue-white ball of electricity.
There was a brief explosion, along with a yelp.
From the perspective of the two henchmen, there was a large flash of blue, then the sensation of being knocked several feet in the air before hitting something warm and furry. For a few seconds before their vision cleared, Omi and Hoofer felt the furry thing was still there, but in Hoofer's case, it was above....
Oh.
Ohhh.
Looking up at her almost-boyfriend, the pyrokinetic dancer felt a furious blush run through her body, as several competing quips jostled for being fully spoken. The foremost contender was SORRY!, with Omi, please move, and Huh, wasn't expecting this until after our second date tied for second (dear Sun why did she have to think 'tied' while looking like this stupid pervert brain).
The couple's awkward moment was only compounded when Rainbow, breathing a sigh of relief, swooped down and cut off her breath with snickering. "Hey, I know workouts get the blood pumping everywhere, but can you save it until after you spill the beans?"
As quickly as he could, an even more embarrassed Omi, rolled, off, shook, and then shifted back into brawler mode, but this time the Elements were ready-Twilight used her magic to slam him against a wall, while her idol grabbed her from behind in a wrestling hold. "Try to set me on fire again and it'll spread, sugarcube."
"Understood."
Twilight teleported in, her magic weak enough to the point where the purple aura faded in and out before the unicorn actually materialized.
"Now, before you decided to run, we were going to ask you a few questions..."
"Yeah, like why did my storm cloud cause you to drop everything and start-"
"Rainbow Dash."
"Right....I'll stop now."
"Okay then. First, where did you take Pinkie?"
Omi returned to normal. "The pink earth pony?"
"No, the Ursa Major. Yes, the pink earth pony, who else!?"
"Sorry, no dice. We were told just to lure her, we don't know what Harahel did-DANG IT!"
Nope, Applejack heard that. "Harahel? What needle in a haystack is that?"
"Um....yeah, that's an experimental drug the Overseers were playing with-"
"DON'T LIE!"
Silence.
"...Um, Rainbow, that sounded plausible to me-"
"YEAH? WELL, CERTAINLY SOUNDED LIKE A LIE TO ME!"
The suddenly screaming pegasus stared directly into Hoofer's eye.
Hoofer stared right back, and saw what was lurking there
The dancer floated in the cold, dark void, a light boring into her eyes. She felt the light bore deeper too, into her brain. Alien thoughts echoed around her brain, alien thoughts of obedience and love for her captors, alien thoughts that grew increasingly difficult to distinguish from her own. She was a prisoner in her own mind, unable to even think freely, unable to regard this...violation with the horror it deserved, because the new thoughts told her she should love the Three.
Love the Holy Ones.
Love the God-Machine.
All she could do was scream.
She shrieked.
"ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, YOU WIN! WE DON'T EVEN LIKE THEM! JUST CALL OFF THE MALKAVIAN!"
Rainbow suddenly calmed down. "Malkavian?"
"Individual touched by Malkavia, also known as the Affliction. Yes, we know what it is, and we'll tell you, just don't turn your eyes on me again!" Hoofer sobbed in terror.
Realization hit the pegasus like a train. "Oh. Oh Sun. What have I done? Here, here, group hug."
The Elements piled onto the pony, or loosened their grip in the case of Applejack. Slowly, the pony's breathing returned to normal.
And then Twilight realized she forgot to keep Omi's bonds up. She spun around, and saw that he was gone.
"Hey it's okay. It's okay firebug...I'm here..."
She didn't have to look far. He was the fist pony in the huddle pile.
Once Hoofer had stopped shaking, both of the carnival ponies held up their hooves in surrender.
Twilight broke the silence first. "So, you know what's wrong with Rainbow Dash?"
"Well, technically, not anything's wrong with her. There is something wrong with the thing that lives inside her head."
"Inside her head?" Rarity had caught up during the group hug. "There's something living inside Dashie's brain!?"
"Well, mind." Omi shrugged. "It's not an animal in the sense of having an organic body."
"More like living thought." Hoofer paused. "Very off-kilter living thought."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Rainbow rubbed her head. "So, you're saying that I basically am sharing my brain with somepony else, and he's nuts?"
"More or less." Omi grinned apologetically. "A Malkavia infection isn't so much nuts so much as it has a completely alien way of looking at the world, and thought patterns to match."
"It wants to help you, but as you can probably tell, it's not very good at it." Hoofer sighed. "Chalk one up to the great and noble masters of the park."
"'Great and noble'? That's funny, the guy who told us about the Overseers said you were brainwashed."
Hoofer glowered. "Don't remind me."
Omi patted her on the back. "You'll have to forgive her. She was particularly resistant to the Anoitment process, and thus what takes ten minutes for most of us took several thirty-minute sessions."
"Ouch."
"Don't I know. And it still wore off."
"Wore off?" Applejack was suddenly very interested. "Whaddya mean?"
Omi looked nervous. "Um...well, you see..."
"We're scared to tell you."
That was new. Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Scared? How?"
"Let me put it this way-unless the Anointment somehow gave you superpowers, and thus useful, the Overseers...recycle you."
Without missing a beat, Hoofer stepped forward. "They have this weird monster called a Dalga. We haven't seen it, but it controls and builds these robots they like to call 'clockworked.'"
"Only, they weren't always robots." Omi shivered. "Once, they were Anointed who disappointed or upset the Overseers, or monsters we've captured."
"And when we see them after they've been shipped off to the thing..." Hoofer gulped. "They don't even remember being ponies anymore."
Well. No wonder Bitterwind was scared of the hateless soldiers. That's horrible.
"And if you go against them even if they decide to let you live...They don't stop just with you."
"Let me put it this way-there's a standing offer for staff to be allowed to house their families in the provided housing."
It took a few seconds for what Omi was implying to sink in, before the Elements turned white as sheets.
Twilight recovered first. "Those....bastards."
"So that's why we ran. Hoofer's sister came to live here after she couldn't pay rent, and like an idiot, I let my parents move in so I could take care of them. Even if we escaped, it'd be plastics and metal for all of them."
Silence. It was obvious that the carnival duo wouldn't budge on this issue, and the Elements couldn't think of a response.
An Element could, though. "So...that's it then? 'We really want to help you, but we're too scared'?"
Twilight stepped forward. "Look. I don't know what they did to you, or what they put you through during the 'THE OVERSEERS KNOW ALL' phase, but frankly, the ponies you've described to me aren't the all-powerful monster-gods you think they are. All-powerful monster-gods wouldn't put their employees under some crazy magical mind control and then feed them to some kind of robot-making monster when it slipped. No, if they were really that strong, they'd simply show off how powerful they were to intimidate you and then just act like normal employers. You're too weak to rebel, after all."
"No, the Overseers are bullies, plain and simple. Vicious, fanatical bullies perhaps, but really, they're not so different from these two fillies I know, only older. And just like them, they're cowards. They're too scared to boss you around directly or even give the opportunity to dislike them, so they force you to love them and when it looks like you're fighting back, they kill you for being a potential threat. And if you're too useful to get rid of, they start threatening ponies close to you."
"The only real power they have is their ability to scare you. They're good at that, but when you're not scared anymore...what more do they have?"
"An army of minions and magic up the wazoo?"
"I'M MAKING A POINT HERE!...Besides that?"
Hoofer looked thoughtful. "...Well, it's not like they know we're going to turn on them."
"For paranoiacs, they sure do skimp on the park surveillance," added Omi. "Not a security cam in sight, despite what it says on the brochure. Believe me, I've checked."
"Good! Now, can you tell us something?"
"Better yet, we'll show you. Meet us at the infirmary off Minute Street." Hoofer looked relieved to get her doubts off her chest. "We'll show you the insider's perspective on things."
"Oh, woe is me! The traitorous nerds are fighting back!" Jophiels wings were plastered to her face in mock horror. "Whatever shall we bullies do!? We need that lunch money!" She actually sounded personally offended by the comparison.
Harahel coughed dismissively as his head-mass imploded for a second. "Should we just activate the assassins now and recycle these emotional, disloyal laggards?"
Barachiel, as per natural, showed no obvious emotion, though he was examining the spatial window closely. "No. Let them lead the decoy to the conspirators and the leaks. We shall resolve this issue with patience, and we shall await the new Sentry in the mean-time."
"But do not worry. We shall deal with this intrusion personally."
"Funny seeing you back so early. Normally the shift change is late for these parties."
"Well, for once in their lives, the cellist arrived early, and the way back was quite clear. Must be an accident that slowed down the rush hour, but after the cellist got past."
Vinyl laughed. "For once, it works out! Anyway, be right back. Got this new tune I'd love to show you..." The unicorn trotted off.
"Be there in a minute!" Octavia smiled, and pulled out the phone.
"Ugh. Move. Move!"
One would not think that traffic congestion for a species that primarily walked or flew would be a problem, but no. In fact, it was worse, since Octavia ran a significant risk of one of the ponies ahead overhearing her and slowing down out of annoyance with the traditional cursing of traffic, a pastime shared by trillions of sapient beings everywhere.
Stupid donkey. "Oh, look at me, I'm super-perceptive compared to ponies!" Yeah? You missed that opening, ya big mule.
*briiing*
"Eh?"
*briiiing*
"Oh good Sun! I finally get this new-fangled mobile phone, and now you call me allll...dang....day." *beep* "Yes, Vinyl dear?"
"Octy?"
The cellist felt her blood turn to ice. "V-Vinyl?"
"...Scary unicorn....wearing mask...looking around house..."
Now her heart was in her throat. "Don't worry, j-just hang up and I'll call the cops, okay!?"
*ZAP*
*thump*
There was a second's pause as the phone dropped from Octavia's hoof.
After that, she was vaguely aware of movement, and crashing through dozens of ponies.
"So, this is the hospital, then?" Rainbow hovered around it. "Looks...exactly like I expected it to, actually."
Given how the infirmary in question was a squat, dumpy looking building that looked more like a tool shed with the Red Cross painted on, Twilight had to wonder if it was the Malkavian insight or the low opinion of the park's owners. Probably both.
"I suppose mind-whammying the vast majority of staff into obeying you mindlessly really cuts down on complaints." Rarity was looking over the infirmary with disgust. "Why is this place popular again? From the Hall to this, all I see is a complete lack of interest in the actual Beach."
"The hotel's pretty fancy, though. I'd say that the real rich costumers come fer there, and the rest of us lowly peasants get fed the bread and circuses. Pardon the pun."
"Noticed that, did you?" Seemed that the duo was already there.
"Don't worry, it bamboozles all of us," Hoofer continued. "They don't show you the run-down, half-flanked bits when giving you the tour."
"Tartarus, this isn't even the only staff clinic. The other's actually a lot nicer." Omi inspected the sidewalk. "But that's not this place's real purpose anyway. Lemme see....set of all x,.."
"'Not its real purpose? Then what-"
"Hold on a second...ah. A strange attractor for today." Omi reached into his uniform's pocket, and pulled out a sticker with a pair of oblong fractal designs on it, and pasted it on the sidewalk.
A moment later, the world flashed, and the Elements found themselves staring at a silver portal of the same design.
And at a place that wasn't the infirmary anymore...but obviously had much the same purpose.
Rather than being a large tool shed, however, this place looked like a small hospital, white walls, tasteful window, and strange, wheel-less carriages that were painted like (and had the lights of) ambulances. Apart from the cables extending from the top (no perches, though), it would look perfectly normal.
The blueish-purple four-armed humanoid wearing a nurse's cap did not.
"Staaate yer bizzznezzz."
Without missing a beat, Hoofer began to walk with an exaggerated limp. "Hurt my frog. Silly me!"
"...Thiiirrrd tiiime dis yeeearrr."
"There's a lot of glass thrown on the stage during my act."
"Truuue. Derrr'z?"
Rainbow recovered quickly from the sight, "OH SUN! MY WING! I DON'T THINK I CAN FLY ANYMORE WOE IS ME!"
"Calmm dowwwwn. Yer'lll be juzzzt fine." The nurse ran towards the hospital as fast as his lower arms could carry him.
Rainbow's jaw dropped in disbelief. "...I was hovering, dummy!"
"Yeah, the Virtues aren't very smart. They're meant for heavy lifting and construction, not thinking. That guy's probably meant for wheeling patients around. I'd advise you to fake it for his bosses, though." Hoofer paused. "Besides the Overseers, who have a clue."
Twilight shook the sheer surrealism of the moment off. "So, based on what we saw with the Hall, I'm going to assume that the 'real purpose' of the infirmary has something to do with the Containment Zone, right?"
"Yep! ...Wait, how do you know what it's called?"
"Long story. And I think the nurse is coming back."
The "Virtue" in question was running back, carrying a stretcher in the two non-locomotive arms, followed closely by a pony in a doctor's smock. Rainbow quickly remembered to fake her injury, falling back on the faux-injured wing and caterwauling.
"I came as quick as I could. You're going to be all right."
"Oh thank the Princess! Thank you, thank....you..."
Thankfully for the ruse, Rainbow was quick enough on her feet that the what is wrong with your eyes? part of that statement to go unspoken.
Which was silly, as there was nothing there to be wrong.
Nothing at all.
The next few minutes were a blur as Rainbow was wheeled in by the Virtue and the doctor with dead eyes. Hoofer pretend-limped into the front-desk, and a similarly dead-eyed secretary.
"Hurt frog. Listed. Have a seat."
She gestured to a free couch which hadn't been perched on by even more dead-eyed ponies, who were either staring listlessly into space, holding cups of water, or looking at unopened magazines.
Needless to say, this was a bit eerie.
Hesitantly, Rarity cleared her throat. "...Pardon my asking, but are these clockworked?"
Omi shivered as he shook his head. "No. Anointed."
A very unpleasant image of Omi and Hoofer with dead eyes made the rounds around the Elements' minds. Applejack not the least among them. "No wonder y'all scared of the Overseers, if this is what they do to ponies they like."
"Changing the subject," said Twilight, perhaps a bit more quickly than usual, "what makes you'll think they'll be fooled?"
"Not creative enough." Hoofer nudged a foal Anointed away from the coloring book she was holding a crayon to. She looked up, briefly, then turned a page and put the same crayon to that before freezing again. "They lack most emotions, and with that, most decision-making ability. They're worker bees, more or less. Completely enslaved to their jobs, to the point that, outside of them...take a looksee."
Of course, Twilight wasn't really paying attention to that. She was more interested in the fact that it was a foal stuck like this.
"As a result, hit them with something they don't expect, they don't know what to do. They have to get a clockworked or one of those weird creatures the Overseers make to order them around, otherwise they stop and do nothing, paralyzed by indecision and the inability to intuit," Omi continued. "Like, say, medics being hit with fake injuries."
A few seconds later, Twilight realized the strange vibrations were her and her friends shivering in the suddenly-cold air.
"...Why foals."
"Test subjects." Hoofer looked at the motionless foal with pity. "Overseer Harahel wants as wide an information net as possible for his experiments, and immature minds are a completely different beast than mature brains."
"...Experiments."
"How we know what Malkavia is." A shadow fell over Omi's face. "He's obsessed with thought and reactions to external stimuli, the stranger, the better. Mostly, he returns some of their emotions, so he can better study them...but not the ability to fight back."
"I remember one stallion he decided would make fine bait for a bunch of Tindalan Wolves and temporal flow, so he returned his ability to feel joy and loyalty..." Hoofer shivered at the memory. "All the while, he had the most...serene...peaceful smile on his face, like he was so happy to be serving the Overseers in this small way. Even as his back half turned to dust from excessive aging."
There was nothing but silence for a minute.
Twilight gulped, and changed the subject. "So, about the infirmary and this hospital?"
"Something about symbolism." Hoofer looked around, lost in thought. "A genuine hospital in the Containment Zone can only be built in the same corresponding real-world area as a hospital, a transport hub has to be build around a roller coaster, and-"
"A library near a haunted house that styles itself a museum?"
"Not my example, but good point. To make sure that prying eyes don't appear, they also build CZ facilities around the dinkiest, shabbiest places they can. to avoid accidental detection. The only place where that isn't true is the Fifth Dimension-Palone's guess is that since they formed the CZ around that, they had to create a piecemeal representation of the actual CZ generator in the real world. Seriously, I've seen it, looks exactly alike."
"So, how do you know what Malkavia is? Doesn't seem like...Hah-ray-hell would bother tellin' you."
"A Malkavian." Omi shrugged. "From what I hear, different infections can communicate with each other over light-years, and they have a genetic memory. From the few Malkavians that shake off Anointment and aren't killed, we've got the idea that it's called Malkavia back on the world it likes."
For the moment, there wasn't much else to be said. Soon, Rainbow Dash trotted briskly out of the hall, sweating. "No, seriously, I don't think it was that bad. I'll check up on it later, um, far, far away from here."
"Remember to wear guards..." echoed the voice of the Anointed doctor.
Rainbow was running back to her friends now. "That...was creepy. Princess, that was bucking creepy. They just looked at it, looked confused, and then jabbed at it a few times with forceps. Please tell me all the staff aren't all like that?"
"Most of them are normal employees," Hoofer replied. "They'd be too obvious otherwise. These are the CZ crew."
"Oh thank Sun. I really, really don't want to think about dealing with these guys....is that a foal!?"
Please be okay...please be okay...please be okay...
Those were the words running through Octavia's head as she galloped through the streets to her shared apartment
She barely even registered climbing the stares, only the locked door.
Screaming, she rammed at it repeatedly, powered by adrenaline and pure, raw fear. Even when the door gave way, she gave no thought to the pain in her shoulders, and ran to the dining room.
Initially, she was relieved. "VINYL! Vinyl! Oh, thank the Sun you're safe..."
Then she spun around the chair.
And got a good look at her face.
Vinyl's head hurt, and she didn't know why.
All she remembered was a flash of blue, a scream, a sense of pain and a flash of metal. The next thing was a sense of floating, then feeling oddly light, as if a weight she had carried her entire life had gone.
She also felt...stagnant, somehow. Sort of like a river being frozen over, if that made sense.
She also felt like what she needed to do, more than anything else, was to play music. Not that it would make her feel better, not out of a sense of obligation, but because she felt like she had to, like nervous eating. A habit.
Another scream penetrated the haze, and, blearily, examined to the source.
That was strange. She saw a grey earth pony with a treble clef cutie mark looking at...something important. She looked scared out of her mind for a little while, then, slowly, she began to nudge the something, increasingly desperately as she continued. She moved her lips, apparently shouting at the something, while her eyes began to water. She obviously saw something about the something that really upset her, and while something about her crying made Vinyl's head clear more and more, and make her feel more and more energetic, something about the mare made her want to cry even harder than she was.
Eventually, the mare slumped to the floor, sobbing into the carpet. Without thinking, Vinyl put her foreleg on the small of her back and stroked, whispering it's okay...it's okay.
The unicorn suddenly felt pain erupt across her face.
Slowly, more and more details about the mare began to present themselves to Vinyl. Her name was Octavia, for one. She played the cello, for another. She was her girlfriend and Vinyl was working up the courage to purpose, for another. Today, if she could, and announce it on the weekly show.
...That seemed like a rather important detail to miss.
But why couldn't Vinyl understand her. She was obviously making noise, but Vinyl couldn't really hear her voice, only understand its existence. Confused, she looked at the something.
That was funny. It looked like the mannequin of a unicorn. Yes, the face was off-way off-but Vinyl could swear it was a piecemeal, very lifelike representation of...
Of....
....No.
No. Bucking. Way.
Vinyl began to laugh nervously. She knew her girlfriend had poor tastes in humor (that was part of what Vinyl found so attractive), but really, making a corpse model of her would-be fiancee!? That was low.
Vinyl growled, and aimed a kick right at Octavia's backside.
It connected with nothing.
Startled, the DJ fell end over end, her head resting on the other side of Octavia.
Her leg was now inside of Octavia, touching nothing but the floor.
Realization hit.
Slowly, Vinyl looked above her, the cooling form of her mortal shell almost taunting her with her new state.
..I had a show tomorrow.....
To this day, the landlord swears that, on the night Vinyl Scratch died, he heard two voices wailing.
The time passed in dead silence after Rainbow was brought up to speed ("We're asking someone who can tell you more than us, she's here, just be patient, please?"). Slowly, the Anointed ahead of them shuffled off, not even bothering to put down whatever they were holding at the time (though the Virtue nurse took those items away). Eventually, Hoofer's name was called, and she followed the nurse to a clinic room, quietly motioning her guests to join them.
While the door to the clinic room was locked before they could go in, it was over in five minutes, Hoofer discarding a piece of broken glass in a trash bin as she walked out.
"Didn't even realize I was holding it in my other hoof. And this is why good will always win, because evil is dumb. Especially when brainwashing is involved."
There was a polite chuckle from Omi.
"Anyway, now we're here, there's someone I'd like you to meet. Again."
"Hey, nurse?" Hoofer waved down a Virtue. "We're friends of one of the patients."
"Aaannnnd?"
"She was going to give some reports on the current demographics of the Escapement guests, but was injured before she could. Badly."
"Naaaaammme?"
"Sharpy Palone."
Wait, thought Rarity. They were all free of the brainwash? That doesn't seem very intelligent.
Then she thought of the other Anointed, and answered her own question.
"Riiiiighhht thiiizzz waaaay."
What followed next was perhaps the most confusing patch of hallways and starways the Elements had even been through in their lives. Left, right, up, down, diagonal right-up; it was like a 3D maze.
Another security system, Twilight supposed. Make sure your creations are the only ones who can navigate the darn thing where your minions are most vulnerable.
Or just as likely, medical experiments.
It wasn't too long a maze, though. Soon enough, they found their way to a door entitled "Residency 393", which the nurse unlocked.
"Dooonnn't raaaizzzze yer voiicce tooooo hiiiiigh."
He of the odd speech impediment opened the door for the little party.
Compared to what else was in the hospital, this room was almost insultingly normal. There was a place for two beds, an ECG machine, a tasteful table and plant, and a collection of books. The only thing out of place was the window-looked more like it was floating in the air a few inches from the wall, and its "frame" was a bit of distortion around the side.
The stall close to them was empty, but peaceful snoring could be heard on the other side of the dividing curtain.
Not bothering with pleasantries, Omi and Hoofer walked around to the other side, and cleared their throats.
"Sharpy?"
"Wake up please."
The snoring was cut off, and there was a loud yawn.
"Yeah? You guys came here to see me?"
"We didn't. They did."
Omi motioned for the Elements to come over.
Upon coming over, it was obvious to Twilight that Sharpy Palone was not having a fun time. The security guard's body was criss-crossed with scars and burns, and her left hind leg was in a cast, placed in a splint. Her face was mostly okay, though she was in a neck brace. It was certainly okay enough to look at the elements with disdain, before she turned over in her pillow.
"Right. Okay, are you going to flay me with hot knives this time or burn out my eyes before you ship me off to the Dalga? I know how these dreams go."
"...You're wide awake, Miss Palone."
Deliberately, the bedridden mare blinked, then sighed in defeat. "Always thought you'd come here some day. 'Perception filter' my hoof."
Twilight opened her mouth, but Palone cut her off. "Let me lay out the scenario-you caught my friends, realized we were brainwashed, they told you they didn't have a choice, you were told to come here, they faked an injury, and convinced a nurse to lead you to me. Is this idle speculation at all accurate?"
"Pretty much."
"Right. So, what do you know already?"
On the other side of the spatial window, Octavia's grief was interrupted by a pair of what were apparently ponies.
"What the-Let me go! I'll make you pa-!"
She was cut off when one of the ponies turned to face her directly, revealing the golden construction that had replaced half of his face. She squeaked a little before the clockworked pony pasted a chloroform-soaked rag over her face, knocking her out instantly.
Immediately thereafter, a stallion made of metal, wearing a worn-down cloak and holding a lantern with a green light, faded into existence, next to a mare made of leather holding a horn of plenty. The stallion waved his lantern, and an odd form that looked like Vinyl Scratch's body flickered into few for a second before dissolving into green and blue flames, absorbed into the lantern.
Jophiel sighed in relief. "Finally! I'm guessing the Dalga can handle this?"
"I will do as ordered."
"So, since you know all that, you probably want to know what the Overseers want, huh?"
"Exactly!" Twilight sounded relieved.
"Well, in that case...based on all we've seen..."
"...we don't know."
The faces of the Elements hit the floor in unison.
"Hey, don't blame us! You've seen what they do to loyal minions! They don't tell us anything!"
"Ugh...And here I was, gettin' my hopes up..."
"We can give you a few theories, though, based on what we've seen..."
The Elements went back up. "Really!? Thanks!"
"But you may want to sit down. This may take a while..."
While Palone and Pals were busy explaining what led them to work for the Beach (which wasn't actually that interesting-they just needed a job), Applejack took Rarity aside.
"Um, Rar?" she whispered.
"Yes?"
"Have you noticed anythin'...weird, about Fluttershy?"
"...Not that I can think of...." she said, in an uncertain tone.
"Has she done anythin' weird lately? Or, more to the point, ain't doin'?"
"Now that I think of it..." Rarity looked at the bedridden mare and back to Fluttershy. "She isn't trying to help Sharpy...and she wasn't trying to close that Windigo's wound earlier." She paused for a second. "Or talking. At all."
"Yeah. It's almost like she's tryin' to make herself scarce, and be unnoticed." Applejack paused. "For reasons other than bein' shy."
"...You don't think the Overseers did anything when she was here with Pinkie, do you?"
"I reckon I do. And since we were all fooled into thinkin' Pinkie didn't exist, I'm wonderin' if they didn't also make us think nothin' was wrong with Fluttershy."
"...I'd say we watch her. If she becomes a danger, jump her. Though better we're ambushed then we hurt Fluttershy for no good reason."
Applejack was about to disagree with that when Rainbow noticed them. "Hey space cadets! We're learning something here."
Both Elements walked back over to the main group.
"...so as I was saying, that's how winded up to meet you,"
"I get it." Twilight looked thoughtful. "They hire help from the outside, and when the part of the pool looks useful to the CZ facilities, they Anoint you, along with some of the more isolated customers, yeah?"
"Ponies nobody will miss, and yeah." Palone shrugged. "But it's not as large as you may have thought from the waiting room."
"See, this place isn't just a hospital. It's a storage vault."
"Eh?"
"Let me explain." Omi pulled out a chair. "See, a lot of the time, the CZ doesn't need us. It just needs some of those weird creatures to do basic running of everything here. They call us for more specialized work or more complex tasks. Of course, the Anointed have to be somewhere during the work day, otherwise the normal ponies in the staff housing would get suspicious that we were home all day. Restoring emotion during down time only works so far."
"So, we have a bunch of facilities stored around the place to put jobless Anointed in, like the various waiting rooms of this one. They're styled so that the Anointed think they're waiting for something, whether for the doctor to see them, for the bureaucrats to get their paperwork back, or a hundred other things. Then when time comes around, they conclude their business and get back to their real jobs."
A thought struck Twilight. "That seems like a lot of ponies for no work. I'd imagine this place has dozen of facilities that need their help."
"Had." Palone looked at her hoof. "We had a bit of...trouble, a little over a month and a half ago."
"We don't know what it is, but we called it the Medusa of Doom."
"...Please tell me that's not another monster we have to fight."
"Not unless they caught it, no." Hoofer chuckled. "Blew up over a tenth of the Zone before it was through."
"Basically, this weird jellyfish...squid...cyclops robot monster suddenly showed up right next to the CZ Fifth Dimension and started attacking it. I was called in to fight it and direct the clockworked, but that didn't go so well." Palone tapped her cast. "We made the sudden discovery that it was very, very intelligent, when a land mine blew up in our faces and it cut off a system in the nexus that would have allowed the Overseers to reshape the CZ to our advantage. It tore away an entire console before Barachiel-he's an Overseer, he looks over park security-restored that system, and it fled before the Overseers actually arrived. The Golden Beach has been up a creek without a paddle after that-all the security systems went offline thanks to the dissolved area being the site of the camera hub. Nobody's sure what goes where, and the estimate from Barachiel says that it will take at least another month before that part is repaired. Set their plans back by weeks."
"Speaking of plans..." Twilight did the 'go on' symbol with her hoof.
"Yeah, we think it has something to do with the hotel's guests, and improving-"
"That is enough, accursed one."
The trio's eyes shrank back into their skulls at the sound of the deep, almost grandfatherly voice.
"He's here."
A barrage of tranquilizer darts hit the trio, knocking out the three of them immediately.
The sound of tutting echoed through the room. "Dear, dear. What a senseless waste of improvement. We remove irrationality and lack of focus, and then give them psionic potential, and this is how they reimburse us? Does nopony understand the concept of gratitude?"
A third voice, this one feminine and calm to contrast the masculine and energetic, reverberated through next. "What a shame. Especially the guard. It was useful on more than one occasion."
After the initial shock wore off, the Elements assumed a battle stance. "We know who you are, Overseers. Or should we say, angels?" Twilight made that last word sound as intimidating as possible.
The feminine voice yawned. "We guessed that twist already, Twilight."
"The Celebrant escaped during the anomaly's assault. We supposed he would come to inform you of us and the Creator if he did not already."
Dang it. I was hoping that would surprise them-wait. Twilight blinked. "How do you know my name?"
A chorus of malevolent snickering.
"What a pity. I told you she would not remember."
"Not unlike she forgot the real name of her governess, and the passion she and her brother shared."
"Or the morality of mocking a most trusted friend from behind a mask."
Laughter now. And more confusion.
"...How do y'all know about that?"
"We weren't talking to you, orange thing." The feminine voice sounded irritated.
"But to answer your inquiry, up until recently..."
"We walked with the Twilight, every step of her path."
Then one of the other Elements started laughing, and the rest joined in.
"...Stop laughing at us." The feminine voice had lost some of its calmness.
Rainbow barely managed to get her words out through the pearls of laughter. "Why....ha....shouldn't we? That, pfft, that was, haaah, a good one!" She keeled over by that point, too overcome with mirth to stand.
"I said, stop laughing!"
There was the sound of an explosion as the feminine voice rose to a shriek. It had the desired affect.
"...Jophiel."
"Yes, yes, I have a temper. I've noticed already, Harahel."
"It has not been as controlled as it was once."
"Look, Barachiel, I've had a bad week, okay!? It's nothing to be concerned about!"
"If you so speak...Ahem."
The ponies could feel the attention go back to them.
"You have every right to think of it as unbelievable-"
Rarity coughed. "Nuttier than a squirrel overdosed on caffeine, I would think-"
"Unbelievable, but it is as close to our origin as this tongue is capable of conveying."
Twilight sniffed. "Really? Because I think I would remember having intimate relations with a psuedo-mechanical monster, and then pregnancy with triplets. Fraternal triplets, at that,"
"You would be most shocked to learn how frequently the first part of that act was forgotten."
"But we'll be the first to admit we were born from no womb." The voice Twilight realized belonged to Jophiel paused. "Well, the womb of no mammalian female."
"But your rejected role did serve as the basis for our construction....Princess."
Rainbow caught on first. "...Wait, are you telling us that you're linked to-"
"Yes. You are quite accurate in your assessment."
"For when Twilight fell from the heavens, and became lowly mortal once more, the mantle of divinity that she had squandered remained in this corrupt physical world."
"That mantle...was our embryo."
There was a flash, not dissimilar to Discord's dream pearl activating, and the form of the hospital dissolved.
"We are the discarded holiness of a fallen god."
Chapter 8: Exposition and Acquisition
Vinyl blinked.
One moment, she was trying to figure out how to help Octavia despite her...newfound physical deficits preventing her, the next she was in a strange cavern full of odd machinery, and (she gulped a little) hanging slabs of meat and other organs, preserved in jars full of yellow liquid. She stared at a pony heart for a while, then blinked and shivered (how she was able to shiver was beyond her), she turned away from the bizarre, creepy panorama.
She squealed in relief.
"Octy! Octy, oh thank the Sun you're okay...Octy?"
Something was...different about Octavia. Of course, she was acting like she couldn't see or hear Vinyl, but that was to be expected-whoever heard of ghosts being naturally visible or audible? No, the body language was off: While normally, Octavia was extremely refined and controlled, one got the sense that it was an effort on her part, because...it usually was. One had to remain utterly stoic if one was a performer for the infamously snobby Canterlot elite if one wanted to remain a performer. Not easy to do when having to deal with the origin of the term "upper-class twit".
Right now though....right now, there was a complete lack of any body language at all, like she was a breathing statue.
"Octy! You okay?"
She turned around, and Vinyl got a good look at her eyes.
The ghost screamed.
The darkness that had been the room brightened, revealing a collection of moving pictures forming the walls-which, to Twilight's alarm, she immediately recognized as important scenes from her life.
"You see, Apostate, the Creator, what you lowly mortals call the God-Machine, is omnipresent."
"There is no place on the mortal coil our most perfect sire-dam does not bless with Its caress."
"Your world not at all the least of those the Creator bases full Infrastructure on."
The images shifted. Now on the walls was scenes of a fiery, lava-covered world, bursting with volcanic activity.
In the sky, a bright light descended on the planet, alighting gently on suddenly-cooled solid ground.
"We, what lesser beings such as yourself call angels, found this world of yours just after it developed an atmosphere, and alerted the Creator to a rocky planet suitable for life."
The light dimmed to reveal a strange angel, looking nothing so much as like a wheel with mechanical eyes and wings of golden flame. It observed the world around it with interest, then turned on its axis to become flat to the ground, beaming light into the sky. More lights soon descended.
"To this planet, we brought primitive, hardy microbes from the most hazardous biomes on other worlds, and saw which ones evolved."
The revealed angels shone lights into the sky in sequence, drawing an asteroid from the night sky. As it crashed, a massive splash of liquid water spilled across the once-dry landscape.
"This was the Creator's most precious gift to this young world-a future."
Time seemed to speed up. The red lava turned brown as it cooled and became stone, dark forms began to dart around the water, and the sky began to turned red and back as the first sunrises came to the young planet. The angels, however, never moved, wheel-eyes staring intently across the planet.
"As is natural for mortals, it was unappreciated."
One of the dark forms broke the water, revealing a strange, monstrous beast that looked something like an obese crustacean with coral for a shell and disturbingly equine eyes. Those same eyes were filled with rage and hunger as it attacked one of the angels, wounding it so that golden, oddly oil-like blood spilled out. The other angels were quick to react, turning those beams that had called the asteroid down on the sea monster. It shrieked, then quickly submerged, its form growing compact and sleek as it retreated beneath the waves.
"This world's infant ecology was shaped by the hundred worlds we drew its seed from, hybridizing into something bizarre and alien to all of those, even the gas giants."
More time lapsed. The sky turned blue as the sun rose and set repeatedly, and even stranger monsters than the coral-beast began to dip in and out of the growing ocean.
"This was displeasing to the Creator. Equestria grew yet more unpredictable by the aeon, with its inhabitants of stranger intellect. It was a labor to predict their minds, even within this animal state."
"It had to be corrected."
Vinyl was internally debating what this...thing was.
On the one hand, it looked like Octavia, and it seemed alive, not like those awful half-pony machines, who she could somehow instinctively tell had already died, though the flesh still lived.
On the other...she really did not want to believe that this thing was her Octy.
To be frank, it didn't act like a normal pony. Or act like a normal cellist. Or anything like anything normal, at all.
It played well, certainly, but there was no passion in it. It might as well have been an equine record for all the emotion expressed in this "live" performance. Yes, it was close enough to genuine playing for somepony who was only listening to think it was normal, in that the somepony in question would then expect to see speakers somewhere.
Certainly not...the eyes. The soulless, emotionless eyes.
After a few seconds of staring in shock, Vinyl's internal debate ended in favor of "Octavia." Phantasmal tears came to her eyes.
"Octy...what did they do to you?"
"Suppressed emotion, gave basic directives, instilled loyalty-enforcing memetic patterns, then told her to play the cello for examination", a group of monotone, harmonized voices responded from behind her.
Vinyl whipped around, and suppressed a scream.
"Greetings, Sentry. I am Dalga."
The wheel-angels surrounding the sea tilted upwards to face the heavens, shining once more.
"Thus, we set about domesticating this world."
The angels shone in sequence, a complex flashing pattern that was too fast to intuit greater logic from the patterns.
"Our predecessors set in motion the events that would draw other divinities to the forming world, ones that would waste little of the Creator's resources in bringing order."
The angels suddenly turned vertical again and flew off. Shortly thereafter, new lights-not the cold, sterile lights of the angels, but multicolored and somehow warmer and more inviting-descended onto the shore.
"These were the genesis of your Princesses' lines."
The lights dimmed, revealing a pure white female alicorn with a red mane and a pure red male alicorn with a white mane.The two nobles looked around the sea and otherwise barren sea with trepidation and curiosity, sniffing and examining the rocks and water.
"We did not even have to pressure them to make the necessary adjustments-the primordial life did that for us."
The coral-beast (or possibly another member of its species) leaped out at the male alicorn, affixing its jaws to his neck before he had a chance to react. The female alicorn wasted no time in attacking the monster, releasing a powerful blast of many-colored light that instantly vaporized it. Mostly unharmed, the male got to his feet, rubbing his new bitemark.
"Even they, who had just arrived to this world, could understand that it needed to be reordered in order to transmute it into a habitable form."
The red looked at the white, she nodded, and then both released a web of magic into the skies from their horns, which began to fall downwards into the planet. Almost immediately, the choppy sea began to calm, and flora came from stone.
"The world was sealed within its own dimensional pocket, under the complete rule of the Princesses' ancestors, and their chosen people."
A great ship, a white polymer hybrid between a galleon and something out of a space opera, came out of the sky, the flames of reentry apparently ignored. As it landed, great metal sails fanned out to slow its descent and wings folded backwards to create an inverted bell hull.
"This was the Creator's greatest forgiveness of the Second Children."
A passenger bridge extended from the ship, setting ground on the nearest shore. Slowly, hesitantly, a mixed-race group of ponies came out, looking hesitant. Along with non-monstrous pets.
"Do you understand the implications, Apostate?"
"The odds of two worlds developing nigh-identical ecosystems is astronomical, even when what you call monsters is taken into effect."
"But, that is a fable meant for other times. Understand, Apostate, this:"
"Your world has been touched by us forever."
"I've been looking forward to seeing you with my birth eyes."
Vinyl, of course, did not respond. She was too terrified to form coherent words.
It was, after all, a giant spider telling her all this.
Well, okay, not exactly a giant spider. You'd expect giant spiders to have legs that reached the ground, not dangling freely several feet off it. Nor the fact that its face was covered in or made of shining steel, with oddly expressive eyes that looked at you with an alien curiosity. You'd also expect the spiders to be somewhat proportionate, not with a giant, obese, grotesquely translucent abdomen with the pony-sized cephalothorax looking pitiably small in comparison. And you'd certainly expect to see actual internal organs in the abdomen in the case you did, not swirling viscera, metal scrap, and on occasion, a congealed tentacle of translucent flesh that extended from the abdomen, grabbed one of the jars of organs or machinery on the wall, and then feed it to the waiting maw of the spider, while it used its otherwise useless legs to fashion a complex, odd device out of the metal parts those same legs had casually yanked from the abdomen, literally tearing them out in a gush of clear fluid that left no injury.
But, it still looked kind of like a giant spider, which was enough for Vinyl to freeze in her ghostly spot. Though the other things about it didn't help.
"Hrmm. Has the process of undeath made you mute, or is my form so shocking to you that you are rendered mute? I take no offense if it is the latter."
"Voices, too," Vinyl squeaked.
That was another disturbing thing. While its mouthparts moved while it was talking, no sound came from the spider. Rather, a legion of half-animal machines with golden eyes, similar to the "ponies" that had taken Octavia truly spoke in unison with the spider's mouth in slightly-differently pitched monotones, forming a harmony. They spoke in the same voice too, even if the spider's mouthparts were busy chewing a new morsel the abdomen-tentacles had grabbed, often in the middle of a sentence.
"Hrm. Yes, I suppose that is also something many find quite unsettling. But, it is the way I was constructed and born. Neither I or my siblings can help it."
The spider (or was that "Dalga"?) chuckled (which was incredibly eerie, as all of its voice-bots laughed as one), then those strange, alien eyes turned serious.
"But now is the time for your orientation. Sentry. let me ask you-are you willing to save your beloved?"
Time on the images lapsed again.
"Alicorn royalty came and went. The new nature of this pocket universe settled, as the sun began to rotate around the planet."
Well, "lapsing" was a tad of an understatement. More like "skipped from image to image." Here, a scene of an alicorn teaching a primitive unicorn tribe how to raise the sun. There, a group of pegasi observed their new creation, a wood-and-leaf cloud foundry.
"Required manipulations, the Creator decided, were minimal, though they did occur."
New scenes. First, a strange pony with solid, blue and white eyes directed a smith to create a necklace the Elements recognized as the Alicorn Amulet. There, a giant wasp composed of plantlife gestured like a conductor, causing Cerberus to rise out of the mire before it.
"Of all these wonders and miracles, however, one stood before all the rest."
The images began to show only one scene on each side-a unicorn-like being with the head shape of a tapir and the tail of a wolf, with a floating "crown" of nine blue flames, overseeing a bedraggled unicorn with a beard and wearing medieval clothing.
"The dictation of the first few parts of the ultimate spell."
"The fomula for the most sacred, most guarded, and most secret procedure of the God-Machine's infinite stores of knowledge and sciences."
"The closing sorcery of a most auspicious occult matrix, almost as sublimed as the Creator Itself."
"A spell to create a god."
"Sorry, what?" While the voice of the dead was not sound in a traditional sense, the disbelief in it was still palpable. As was the fact that Vinyl's fear had been replaced by righteous rage. "I'm going to assume that it was one of your goons who pretended to be Octy, killed me, waited for Octy to come back and see my corpse, kidnapped her, brainwashed her... and now you're asking about saving her!? What is the disconnect!?"
"What I was ordered." While the monotone made it difficult to tell, Dalga's expression made it look irritated, like it was explaining that yes, the sky is still blue. "The Overseers asked that I explain what your new position in the Golden Beach's hierarchy was, and I am trying to oblige."
"Oh, so they were the Overseer's goons." If looks could kill, Dalga would have exploded. "Right, so I'll take up my complaints with their department. Issue #1: You killed me. I don't know what you're smoking, but if it makes you think your murder victim is open to the idea of 'having a new place in the hierarchy', I don't want any. Kills your brain OH WAIT, DOPE UP DUDE!"
Dalga's voices sighed in exasperation, a dozen breezes. "Ah. You're one of the recalcitrant ones."
Vinyl had no idea that word even existed, but she gleaned the context. "No dung, ace detective."
"Ah, but what if I told you your beloved won't remain this way?"
Okay, that was new. "...Prove it."
Dalga said nothing, only did a strange motion with its front two legs.
In front of it, the air shimmered, then compressed somehow, becoming almost a mirror, except reflecting everything on either side. Thankfully for Vinyl's eyes, this only lasted a second before the confusing mess resolved into a completely different image: A strange being with four monkey-like arms, a blue, shifting head with no features, and a face in its chest.
"Harahel, Log #7: For my siblings and any successors, I will explain the Anointment process and duration in casual terms..."
The scene skipped again, this time to one more familiar-Twilight's coronation.
"This was the first step to the greatest victory, and the inevitable transformation of this world into a paradise."
"With a princess of the boundary between the periods of night and day, the occult significance of one of the most important thresholds in existence meant it became possible to influence all boundaries-such as between life and death. or one individual and another."
"What had begun was a most glorious march to a new era, one of complete harmony of all beings on this planet in a mental chorus, devoid of pain."
Rainbow thought about making a snide remark about the alternative, but it was at that point that she discovered that not only could she not speak, she couldn't move, either. In any fashion. No heartbeat, no breathing, and no sense of pain.
"...And then you, Apostate, ruined it."
The images went out, leaving only darkness.
"You abandoned the destined path the Creator set for you, and abdicated your apotheosis."
"But the divine being, even forgotten, remained in three."
New images, these of an odd symbol-three diamonds, joined together at the tip and by a circle threading through their midsections.
"Sarx."
"Soma."
"Pneuma."
"Flesh and instinct."
"Body and will."
"Soul and mind."
The symbol split into three.
"And it was terrible for them."
"You, in your limited experience cannot possibly image. How it felt, to be incomplete when once they were whole. To find a part of yourself you had once taken for granted to now lack."
"And lack they did. And suffer did they for it, in utter loneliness."
A pair of gears materialized around the symbol, silver and gold.
"But it was not their end."
Harahel's presentation ended, in tandem with Vinyl's hatred of the Overseers. Now it was utter loathing.
"Let me get this straight: You took a sledgehammer to Octy's mind, forced her to think like you do, removed her emotioness, effectively turning her into a mindless doll!? And you still expect me to work for you!?"
"When you hear my offer, yes."
Vinyl growled, then rushed at the spider's smug face. Naturally, this did not do anything apart from give her a brief glimpse at the partially metal, silvery-blue inside of Dalga's brain.
"I can also teach you how to use your Numina as well, or at least assist in developing ones effective for combat. But that is only a side benefit of the offer I have been authorized to grant. One your profile suggests you will find most appealing."
"Prove. It."
Dalga performed another motion of its legs, this time with its back two. Golden energy crackled between them.
"...Vinyl?"
The ghost jerked around.
"..Octy?"
The cellist was blinking, emotion returning to her eyes.
There was another crackle, and suddenly Octavia's eyes turned dead again.
Dalga cleared it's throats, an oddly staccato sound.
"As you can observe, Sentry, your beloved's Anointment can be reversed at any time, and will be done, if you complete a term of service."
Glowering, Vinyl turned around. "And if I refuse?"
"Well, we have different fates in mind for somepony who lacks preternatural ability, such as being the anchor of an allied ghost..."
"The Creator recognized that this plan may have failed. So It placed a warning system in place."
The gears began to rotate in opposite directions.
"When the mantle of divinity was rejected and trifurcated, it sent out a beacon that warned the Master Control of an abandoned divinity, and in response, it began an occult matrix to salvage the remnants, creating three new angels using each third of the mantle as the central component.
The three diamonds began to glow.
"Thus did each of the Trinity of Being, once the limb of a destroyed hole, become a Trinity unto itself, each one a seat of a most noble Virtue."
Each diamond morphed into the original, unbroken symbol, each colored gold and white.
"Zeal."
The upper-left unfurled a pair of brightly colored butterfly wings encircled with fire, with the cross the Elements had seen during their battle with Bitterwind emblazoned across them.
"Mercy."
Parts of the upper-right turned azure, as a glowing symbol of two circles with an arrow going upwards through the overlap materialized around it.
"Vision."
The bottom broke into oddly-shaped pieces, like a jigsaw, as a whirlwind kicked up about it, turning it into the pupil of an eye.
"The broken Trinity ceased to exist, for they had evolved into something more."
"Something beyond all that had come before on this planet, something that would create the paradise the Apostate was meant to."
"Something as far beyond that which they had been as ponies are beyond insects."
"And so born, we set to reshape the world into a heaven."
What confidence Vinyl had drained away.
"You...monster."
"If you are referring to the bizarre lifeforms that dwell in non-domesticated areas like the Everfree Forest, I suppose I am. If you are talking in metaphorical terms, I am not morally responsible for my mandated purpose in the Logos. I am simply a humble craftsman, nothing more."
"...And you can't be blamed for turning innocent beings into mindless robots?", Vinyl said with a confidence she did not feel. "Are you honestly that deceptive to yourself?"
"Ah. I see you believe in the idea of utilitarian morality, what causes the least suffering and the most joy is good, and the opposite evil. Admirable, but as with most positions on good and evil, it is woefully naive." Dalga looked utterly content while it explained, completely in its element. "For example, what of Abyssal power? No matter how much it improves lives, the Abyss is a plane of reality that is actively poisonous to all else, so even if used with the best of intentions, and those intentions are not corrupted, you are still utilizing a force that is actively inimical to yourself and everyone you hold dear, one that looks for ways to subvert your control and only grants gifts that are in some way warped. To say nothing of say, taming the Shadow so that a particular area only generates Essence of positive things. What about the useful things generated by spirits such as those of pain, anger, and despair then? Without pain, there can be no empathy for those feeling it, without anger a drive to right wrongs, and without despair there can be no self-assessment due to recognizing failure. You are denying a major part of the sapient experience and possibly leading to great suffering down the road due to immaturity of the affected."
"Ultimately, there are too many variables to consider when addressing a particular action as good or evil even by personal metrics, let alone the subjectivity of the masses. No, the only routes that can be adequately assessed are order and chaos. devoid of any moral judgement." A pause. "Well, any other apart from what considers orderly."
"..I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, you will learn." Dalga shrugged. "The point is you cannot simply define things as good or evil based on a first impression. Especially if that thing is a creature who literally cannot be anything other than a living factory, as the God-Machine created him to be."
In normal circumstances, Vinyl would have called out his reasoning, but right now, the question of whether "normal" had to be redefined was in order. Octavia being threatened with death and recycling into a new, robotic minion was certainly not going to be part of it. Or the fact that she'd be suffering a fate worse than death until Vinyl accepted.
"Damn it.." Vinyl sighed in defeat. "You win. I just want you to restore Octavia first before I do my first job."
Dalga gave that odd many-voiced chuckle. "I'm glad you could see reason. I'll get right on that."
"Thank you...sir."
Twilight gasped as the images turned off and light returned to the room. That was an extremely weird experience, like she wasn't capable of doing anything at all-even thought-except for absorb the angels' monologue.
Come to think of it, she could only recall said monologue, like it was something that happened in the very recent past.
After her bearings got straight, Twilight looked directly at the place she thought the Overseers' voices where coming from.
"And why should we trust you? You're the bad guys. You could just be playing us for some reason, or just for the fun of it."
"We were not the ones who cast out major components of our personalities out into the cold to slowly dissolve in a cold, lingering death." Harahel, on the other hand, amused.
"Nor have we turned our backs on God and our appointed purpose." Barachiel sounded...sympathetic almost. In a very patronizing oh you can't help being an idiot kind of way.
"But if you need greater proof..."
Harahel cleared his throat.
"'What is wrong with this pony!? I have to figure out how that darn Sense of hers works! Everything has to fit into the universe somehow!", he said in a frustrated voice.
"'Augh, darn you Dashie! Don't you get you're putting other ponies in danger because of your grandstanding? I have to figure out some way she never tries it again...'", Barachiel followed.
"'Cadence, you traitor! I'll see your heart torn out for using my brother like this, you manipulative bitch!'", Jophiel finished.
The gears in Twilight's head skipped a tooth or three.
Wait...that sounds...familiar...
One of the best traits Twilight had was an eidetic memory-if she saw or experienced anything, it only took her a second's concentration to remember anything, with detail.
Such as, for example, the thought process that went into important decisions on her part.
Wait...are those....my thoughts!?
"...Ehhehheh..." Twilight glanced around at her confused friends. "Veeeeryy clever, Overseers. You found out about our adventures and you guessed at..my mental process. You're actually quite...perceptive."
"...That is the most pathetic mental limbo I have ever seen, Apostate." Jophiel's voice was now soaked with malign glee.
"And that is not the only proof of identity we have on us. Answer me, Apostate: In the recent past, have you noticed anything...out of the ordinary about you?"
"Something of a most...vengeful nature?"
The gears stopped utterly at Barachiel's comment.
Then went into warp speed.
The train station guard pony.
"A bit...what? Come on Twi, after how you reduced that guard to tears, I'm a bit worried."
"Or any odd leaps of intuition?"
"Something that came to you without any hints or prompting, something that in any other case would be an extreme leap of logic?"
The Archivist's riddle and the fractals.
Barachiel laughed. "Look, siblings. The Apostate begins to understand!"
"Indeed. Our link is as strong as we thought. Ehehehe..."
"Your link? Hey there, wait a durn minute. What do ya mean by that?"
"Ah, it's quite simple-as beings who were once part of the Apostate's subconscious and later regulators of her abandoned divine powers..."
"She shares an emphatic link with us. Whatever we feel and know most strongly..."
"So does she."
The sound of jaws dropping, if is had one, echoed through the hall.
Time seemed to pass extremely slowly for Twilight.
On one hand, she was just informed she had children...and that they were literal monsters who seemed to hate her utterly for abandoning them. The guilt was overpowering, even if she intellectually knew that they were more of a byproduct of her existence if anything else, and didn't know they existed to begin with.
On the other hand, she had just realized that, partially, her mind wasn't her own. How long had she been feeling the same things as the Overseers, she wondered? How long had she been thinking like these insane supervillains? How much of her was still Twilight, and not the warped picture the angels had of her?
"Truth is, two out of three of us honestly didn't know you were an Element."
"As things that initially were part of the divine Being not the pneuma, neither Jophiel nor I have clear memories of being parts of you, unlike a certain someone..." For the first time since the discussion began, Harahel sounded genuinely angry about something.
"I, however, am completely free of any vulgar impulses such as vengeance, so I allowed the knowledge of you to be unsaid. There was no reason for the impediment of the Mission."
"But due to Fate or circumstance, you are here." One could hear the smirk in Jophiel's voice. "Lucky for us; we get to be completed with no regrets."
"Com...ple...ted..." Twilight snapped out of her shock. "What do you mean by that?"
"We mean, of course, that we are joined with a greater being, and may become part of a subconscious mind once more, without losing our identity and returning to the broken pieces of Trinity of Being."
"...I get it." Raibow glared at what she hoped was an invisible Overseer. "You're still bitter about being left behind, so you want to possess Twilight's body, turn her back into a Princess, and then use her power to take over the world!"
"Of course not. That would be indescribably foolish, joining with a being that is self-evidently lesser than us."
"Why you arrogant-"
"Shut up, white thing.", Jophiel's voice hissed. "This does not concern you."
"It does too! She's my friend, and I will not stand for your self-righteous bullying!"
"'Self-righteous?' Ha! Rather humorous coming from someone with a profile like yourself, Rarity."
"But no. We have evolved into our own, independent beings, and merging with a mortal would be...inadvisable."
"No, upon the successful completion of our Mission, we will be assimilated, body and soul, into the God-Machine."
Silence.
Twilight tilted her head in confusion. "Assimilated? Doesn't that mean...eaten?"
"To a certain extent."
"Our core being will be translated to code, our physical forms disassembled, and both will be shipped in pieces to various angel foundries across the cosmos in a great journey."
"Wait. I thought you said you wanted individuality."
"Oh, poor little Apostate. So attached to continuity of consciousness."
"This hardly conflicts. Our appearance, personality, and even memories will be encoded in said parts and code, and all the angels created from them will have elements of us in them, as any angels created form their parts after recycling as well."
"We shall become the forefathers and ancestors of three entirely new lineages of angels, and all of our descendants shall look upon the utopia of logic and focus we create, and take pride in their bloodline."
"The point is...Twilight." Jophiel sounded closer than before. "We don't need you anymore."
"Much as how the mold has little bearing on the existing form once made, you have little power over us, and unlike a mold, you are now useless."
"Thus, shall you suffer the fate of all useless things-being turned to scrap."
Rainbow growled. "Oh yeah? Neither me or the voice in my head notice any warning of lethal danger. That's a weakness of your Containment Zone, right?"
Silence. Then:
"Hmhmhmhm....
"Ha ha ahahaha.."
"Heh...heh."
"Eyaaa-hahaha!"
"Ahahahaha!"
"Heh heh heh...."
The chorus of laughter continued for a few seconds. Then:
"What do you think we've been doing?"
The floor disappeared, and the Elements fell into utter darkness.
There was a great sensation of falling, but yet not of actual movement. Twilight had the unmistakable feeling of weightlessness and compression that came from losing a great deal of altitude in a not-so-great amount of time, yet there was no air resistance, no sound of wind rushing, only her own screaming.
After about what felt like a minute of this, the sensation slowly left her. As the haze of "ohmysunimgonnadie" followed it, Twilight looked around wherever the Overseers had dumped her.
The first impression was "black".
The second was "quiet".
The third was "hey, where's my friends?"
For a few seconds, she simply wrote it off as "too dark to see", which wasn't hard to blame her for-there wasn't anything but purest black as far as the eye could see.
Then, she looked down, and realized that the eye could actually see a lot-her own legs and flank were perfectly visible, and if anything appeared better lit than in the Containment Zone's hospital. It was more like there was just nothing else to see.
With a lurch, the darkest, most pessimistic parts of Twilight's brain immediately leaped to "the angels killed me, and this is the afterlife", but for the sake of her sanity, Twilight discarded that almost immediately. Now, what-
"...comes...."
-the heck was that!?
"...another..."
Oo-kayyyy...creepy voice.
"...pony..."
Very creepy voice.
"...Girl...Pretty...."
With a friend.
"...y o u n g e r...."
Make that two friends.
"...r e a l....?"
There was suddenly a small woosh sound.
*thwack*
Twilight yelped from the sudden, stinging pain of a slap.
"....feels...."
"....Mine...."
"...m i n e..."
"..mine..."
There was suddenly a lot of woosh sounds.
"O u rs."
Almost without thinking, Twilight duck. There was the sound of impacts above her, but her invisible assailants were quick on the draw. Before she could run, something grabbed her. Something that had no texture, no weight, no heat, and no cold, but something that was undeniably there, simply by the pressure it exerted. Very strong something too, if Twilight being lifted up was any indication.
"Back off! She's mine!"
Relief surged through Twilight.
Panic quickly followed when she recognized the forceful, feminine voice.
"You can have her after I'm done. It'll only take a minute, and you can watch."
A light burst into existence in front of Twilight, and the force laid her gently on the ground (for reasons the mare was sure weren't benign). As the light moved closer, it slowly dimmed, revealing an odd form.
"Why Apostate," Jophiel said with more than a hint of dark glee. "I have been waiting to meet you for a very, very long time. Face, to face."
And what a face it was.
The first thing that came to Twilight's mind was the Overseer's wings-great yellow butterfly wings covered in grid-like patterns, glowing silver. Just a quick glance at them revealed they were just as much pegasus as insect, though-there were tiny feathers in place of scales, and the shifting told the scientific parts of the mare's brain that there where internal bones. Above them, a set of three of those same scale-feathers extended further than the rest on either wing, twitching like fingers.
Between them, floating vertically, was the pure white body of a lean mare, made of an inorganic substance that shimmered in the light. Where joints on a normal pony would be, breaks in the inorganic skin served to allow flexibility instead, and Twilight could just make out something grey and pulsating beneath it. The front hooves where clasped together, as if in prayer, with the body's solemn expression completing the image.
It was the tail and eyes that were the most disturbing though. In place of a horse's tail, Jophiel possessed a long, grey contraption of metal, like a demented version of a donkey's. On the tip, in place of a wiry dash of fur, there was a forest of longish tentacles of wire and electrical cables, clenching and declenching constantly. From each tip, a tiny mechanical claw extended and clicked, grabbing the air and letting it go.
Her eyes, however...her eyes were neither pegasus, insect, or even both. Rather, they were compound eyes of mechanical irises, each cell another camera. She had pupils too-the cluster of cameras at the center of each eye glowed with a blue light. Even as Twilight looked on, some of the lights turned off, causing Jophiel's pupils to become the slant of a malevolent smirk.
"Well, Mom. Like your little girl's new look? The Creator worked on it so hard."
As Jophiel spoke, the hinge holding the mouth closed flipped down, causing it to remain open, but utterly ummoving, as she spoke.
What the...is she even alive? Twilight thought.
After getting over the shock of her "child's" appearence, the mare decided to look as apologetic as she could. "Look, Jophiel. I'm sorry I hurt you, I honestly didn't know-"
"NO EXCUSES!", the angel roared as the tail lashed out to strike Twilight, her eye-glows turning red.
After a second, the angel made a sighing sound, and the glows turned orange. "My apologies. I don't possess the emotional control of my siblings, due to what I was built from. As the sarx, and the seat of the Virtue of Zeal, I am the id of our little band, the engine of passion that drives the mission forward."
The glows turned blue again, and the smirk returned. "So, Apostate? Want to know where we are?"
"...under the Containment Zone hospital?"
"Hmhmhm. Yes, and no."
There was an odd crackling sound, like muted lightning, and the black dissipated.
Twilight gaped.
In the place of the blackness, what looked like the inside of a gash in reality, a shifting expanse of what was almost a nebula of disturbingly organic reds, purples, and blacks, And yet, just by looking at them, Twilight could tell that these colors had no substance to them-they where there, and obviously energetic going by the colored lightning jumping from color cloud to color cloud, and yet, that seemed to be all they where-colors, like a three-dimensional photograph.
"We're beneath everything. Welcome, my dear, to one of the many Lower Depths-a world where demons are born."
"Well, if you want to be pedantic, a type of demon," said Harahel as he absentmindedly fiddled with the controls of the device he was holding in his bottom pair of arms. "There are many, many different varieties of creature that have had the term applied, but demons as embodiments of hunger and desire are native to here and the thousand other worlds collectively classified as the Lower Depths."
If either Rarity or Applejack could answer, they would. Presumably rather snarkily in order to set the ameboid angel off his game. Sadly, it was not possible for either of them to move. Or breathe. Or die of either. Indeed, nothing, except in the glowing shell Harahel was standing in, moved at all.
"Indeed", he said as his head cycled through platonic solids, "Each of these little pocket universes share one thing in common, and that is a surfeit of something we denizens of the mortal coil take for granted-life, death, mental processes, or in this Lower Depth, time. I believe the area Jophiel took her subject to lacks any form of matter or solid substance, and Barachiel is with his group in a Depth that lacks spatial relationships as we understand them. It's quite pitiable, really-the inhabitants are born knowing their native world lacks something important, and they crave it above all other things."
"It it a sad fate," said the chorus of cubes and related shapes that Rainbow assumed were around her in this crazy, eye-bleeding universe. "To know that what you lack, and never had. But more so to be able to attain it-for it gives them hope forever crushed." Barachiel sounded actually sympathetic to their plight, rather than coldly condescending as he had before.
Not that she was really paying attention, what with nothing at all being anything resembling a straight line. Or united lines. Or anything resembling anything continuous, only a random jumble of things that she could not be sure were near, far, or both. It hurt just to look at it, and even the buzzing from the Malkavia infection seemed a little maddened by the sight of being in the center of it all.
"For our purposes, though, it means that the Depths serve as a realm of disciples; the hunger of the infernal is most predictable, and they only seek of simple pleasures-the beings that inhabit this Depth seek conherence, and concrete relations between things, of both living and not."
"And of course, the most prized matter these demons seek is organic matter," Jophiel continued as she absentmindedly inspected her finger-feathers. "They want to use it to build bodies for themselves and escape into the mortal coil, and so gain touch."
She looked up, the glows having turned to the upward curve of a genuine smile. "That's why we don't use them more often, you know? Not enough resources that will be unnoticed in order to bring them to our world. As it is..."
Her forehooves thrust out, and golden flames ignited before each of them.
"We still don't have that, but frankly, it's just the icing on the cake."
Chapter 9: Angelic Reign
The angel wasted no time, releasing twin streams of fire in a wide arc. Twilight immediately teleported behind her.
"Why are you doing this!?" the mare shouted as the Overseer spun around. "I can understand why you're bitter, but why do you think this is a paradise!? Can't you see it's horrible!?"
"Horrible?" Jophiel chuckled as she released a fireball,which Twilight blocked with a magic shield. "Well, I suppose you hate the current world as well! Everypony has a role to play, as dictated by the cutie mark," she said as she used her forehooves to draw a flaming circle in the air. "We're just making the process more efficient!"
"But ponies like their talents, and enjoy what they do!" Realizing what the spell was, Twilight curled up and let the circle of fire erupt around her, leaving her mane singed but otherwise unharmed. "You're just brainwashing them into emotionless drones because it's easier than paying them!"
"Correction," said Jophiel as she charged another stream of fire, "We're brainwashing them into emotionless drones until our mission is complete, and we have more effective alternatives."
"Effective-wait, what?" Twilight rolled away from the blast. "You're planning on something else?"
"...Nah. You could survive this, so I'm going to let you die wondering." Jophiel laughed at her own comment as she drew a sigil of flame into the air. "But let's just say the foolishness of being anything else will no longer be a problem."
Pain.
Both Rarity and Applejack thought they knew what pain was before Harahel switched on his device.
Both would have decided otherwise, had the world not become a pure white haze of pain.
"Hmm...I do wonder why I've never done this procedure on equoid lifeforms, before." Harahel hummed a bit to himself as he twiddled with a knob. "We will need this data to ensure the signal remains coherent, but I've never actually used a pony before. It didn't seem altogether important until now." He paused as his head rippled. "It still doesn't, but it should be a useful avenue of study for the control."
This would all seem very interesting to the ponies, were it not for their limbs aging in opposite directions. and the feeling of them being briefly severed as each one was focused on in turn.
"Besides, the effects of time in a literally timeless environment are always interesting to observe, wouldn't you agree?"
Even Harahel seemed to be aware he was rambling to himself more than anyone else, or at least at the device he was holding.
He certainly didn't notice Applejack inching towards the window he was standing behind.
"HOLD STILL, DARN IT!" Swing and a miss.
"None of my modules have had any motion," Barachiel said, a mote of mischief in his voice. "I am remaining in a still sate."
"Arrrgh..." Rainbow felt something alien stir behind her eyes, and the world turned warped and strange...and thus, something a little easier to understand. She guessed the giggling, demonic faces were Barachiel's "modules", and rushed directly at one.
Connection!
Then a sudden blast of wind, blowing her far away.
"I would advise you to just lie down and accept your end. It will be of an easier task on the both of us." The angel sounded bored now. "With your spatial relations sent to the demons that dwell here, you will serve the cause of paradise well."
"You could fight!"
"What would be the purpose and underlying logic of that? The Flowers are kind enough to do that task for me."
Pain blossomed over Rainbow's flank. When she looked back, she realized with a start that part of said flank had become cracked like a jigsaw...and a bit of the chaos around her now looked more coherent, a distinct shape.
"All I must do is remain patient."
"Stop fighting! You're just wasting my time!" Jophiel laughed manically, and fired off a couple more blasts.
Twilight teleported away, which the calm part of her mind noted was oddly easier, letting the fireballs explode harmlessly on the other side of the crazed Overseer. "You know, for someone who regards herself as so superior to me, you have a lot worse aim!" Twilight then demonstrated this by sending a blast of pure magic directly at the angel's forehead.
When the purple smoke cleared, part of the shell was torn off, revealing grey, artificial-looking muscle and golden gears, which scraped loudly against each other, the hissing whirrk of damaged clockwork.
Not that the Overseer they powered seemed to mind. "Temper, temper, Apostate. We don't want to be too...zealous, do we?"
Jophiel's eyes briefly turned gold, and an overpowering sense of despair and apathy powered through Twilight. It was brief, but more than enough to make her lose concentration for the big blast she was charging.
"I'm an angel of Zeal, witch. I can manipulate that passion, strengthen it..." Her eyes sneered. "Or take it away."
Just...a little...more... Applejack grunted through the pain of being selectively aged and de-aged by the angel currently standing sensibly (an annoyingly) behind a reinforced glass wall. Slowly, she crept over to the door...
"Hm, you show incredible physical endurance for the treatment despite the less-than-physical nature of your profession and build, Subject Rarity."
...a little further....
"I must compliment you on your incredible resistance and stamina. Both for your sake, and because now we will have two subjects for the intensive experiments."
...doorknob, turn and....
"While we are on the subject of your friend, I did happen to notice that door, Subject Applejack."
....on the other side was a blank, unadorned wall.
"I had gone through the liberty of constructing it there in the first place, as part of pain tolerance testing. I am actually quite pleasantly surprised you passed." Harahel's head reshaped into a pyramid. "That indicates I can move on to more extensive experiments."
Applejack felt the lower half of her body detach.
There was another bite, and a bit more of Rainbow's body became a jigsaw.
"They are being most eager in seeking you and your coherency. These were of most help in forming the portal here."
The forming...Flowers lunged, but this time Rainbow was ready. Using one of Barachiel's "modules" as a reference point, the pegasus made a quick dodge, leaving only the sound of snapping jaws.
"Heh. You guys aren't so tough. Maybe you should learn what a broadside of a barn is before you-"
Pain.
And part of the jigsaw disintegrated into the blur.
And overlooking her was a big, toothy....something.
"If you were of the persuasion to use my modules as a reference...I am not recalling saying I would not move."
The something grinned using now-visible teeth. Very large visible teeth. And very much of them.
"Eyaaa-hahaha! Even I couldn't guess at how fun this is!" Jophiel cackled madly as bolts of fire were shot everywhere, no longer even bothering to aim.
Twilight had long found teleporting was easier in the Lower Depth was easier, but as the battle had worn on, her transports were getting slower and slower, and she found it harder each time.
That the angel would "remove her Zeal" every time it looked like she might be getting the upper hand really did not help.
Okay...one last trick...
"Aha...ha...ha..."
"Eh?" Jophiel's eye's turned orange. "What's so funny?"
"...No, not funny...sad..." Twilight broke into a lopsided grin. "This entire time we've fought...you've been fighting for...yourself. Your own...catharsis."
"Yes, and?"
"You've...never known...friendship, have you? "
There was a brief pause before Jophiel's eyes turned red. "What are you implying, Apostate?"
"You're...still...broken."
Jophiel gave a howl of rage, swung back for a rush...
Then suddenly stopped and began to cackle. "Hmhm...I see what you did there. Actually hit a nerve." A wing tapped the side of her forehead. "Unfortunately, I have siblings, remember? I have all the company I want or need in them."
Damn it... Twilight gritted her teeth. Thought that would get her....
I'm out of options.
It wasn't a devastating thought, or even a disheartening revelation. It was certainly grim, but rather than despair, or fear, or even glum acceptance, Twilight felt...relieved, almost. There was a little disappointment for not finding out the ultimate plan, but there was no sense of doom, just...bleak joy, if that made any sense.
Like she was glad to die standing up.
...This has to be what the Cosmic Marines feel like all the time. Twilight had to suppress a laugh. I guess we were led to the eightieth millennium after all.
"Yeah...Guess you do..."
Twilight broke into a lopsided grin.
"Doesn't mean you can fight worth a darn."
By this point, the pain had eased. The part of Applejack's mind not blotted out by pain guessed that it was not a good thing, in this case. The parts of her not riddled by the sensation of detachment or old bones felt smaller than the rest of her.
"Intriguing. From my neurological data, you do not appear to be suffering from major delirium or soul degradation. It appears I will need to take notes to leave for my successors, and have them compare earth ponies to other subraces. Unicorns in particular-Subject Rarity shows signs of both, in particular pneumal damage; I almost diagnosed it as soul loss."
And the white unicorn did indeed look rather worse than her friend. While she obviously couldn't move much in the timeless Lower Depth, the struggling motions during her brief mobile moments had ceased, and her eyes had adopted a hollow, empty look to them, like her mind had fled to safer regions.
"Don't worry, however. I am sure that once we have integrated the commandment with her neural network, we will be able to perform a full reconstruction of her psyche. With certain considerations needed for a safe and happy citizen, of course."
He chuckled absentmindedly, accidentally brushing against a control.
Applejack felt enough mobility return to glare at him. "Ya...bastard..."
"And an adequate representation of your friend's impulses to gain knowledge and learn, free of any naive moral obligations or restraint. Brace yourself."
Thankfully for Rainbow, with new shapes, however vague, also came with the ability to tell where the Flowers actually were, and the Malkavia-o-Vision went into overdrive tracking them (given the representations they had, the pegasus wasn't sure if that was entirely a good thing).
"Please. This is of a boring nature. All you are doing is tiring yourself before the inevitable end.
"Screw...you..." Rainbow panted.
"Defiance. A trait most admirable, if flawed.and an irritant. Watching it is still of an enjoyable nature before its end."
"Well, good to know you're not bored. Because I am not going down anytime soon!"
"Are you of complete certainty saying that?"
No, Rainbow's mind said. "Heck yeah!", he mouth said, with her brain adding but I'm sure not giving you the sick pleasure of watching me give up!
One howl of insult-born rage later, Twilight was knocked back by the explosion of a fireball, into one of the nebula-like splashes of color. Given the lack of matter in this universe, this had the odd effect of feeling like there was nothing whatsoever despite looking like it.
"You're still not taking me seriously!? You're going to die here, alone and lost, and you're still acting like you're on top of the world, you idiotic bitch!? I'm glad I'm not a part of you anymore!"
And if you're any indication of what I'd be like as a goddess, so am I. What is with these mood swings?
"No, I'm not." Twilight got to her hooves, her voice even despite ragged breathing. "In the end, you'll still just be a huge bully who's too absorbed in her own hate to be a really good servant of the God-Machine. Frankly, even if you win this mission, you'll-oof!"
That was a kick that time. The tail grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and brought her, choking, to eye level with the angel, whose eyes now looked like very narrow rubies.
"If that is the case, Apostate, then you're the hateful bully. I'm everything you've ever felt, every passion, noble and dark. Your thoughts, your feelings! And the design...is....perfect!"
Jophiel hurled the unicorn as hard as she could, and charged a blast.
"You know, playing with you isn't that fun anymore."
The ball grew bigger, turning blue with heat.
"And frankly, the demons were waiting long enough-"
BOOM
The fireball dropped from her hoof and fizzled out. "Eh?"
A blast of air hit Twilight.
Applejack suddenly gasped in slow motion as she unfroze, staggering for just a second before she regained her balance. Rarity simply fell over.
Their tormentor's head turned very solid, no wibbiling of the amorphous blue goo. He looked up. "...Contamination? What sequence of events led to this?"
"I am not foreseeing its possibility, unless...."
Rainbow managed to keep her jaw up.
"Unless...."
Was the angel...scared?
Another blast rippled through, causing the world to become even easier to perceive properly.
"...No. No way. No bucking way."
Jophiel began to shake as the visible gears sped up.
"We killed it. We bucking scoured the place it was then gassed it in anti-Aether. There is no way in any universe-"
Another explosion. A crack appeared in the fabric of space, revealing bright light...and a blueish-grey tentacle. There was an odd sound of something between a masculine cry of rage and an animal roar.
"You...you....WHY WON'T YOU DIE ALREADY, YOU TRAITOROUS SCUM!?"
Traitorous scum!? Wait, so that thing's a rebel-
Twilight's thought process was interrupted by a blast of heat and fire.
"FINE! AT LEAST I'LL BE ABLE TO KILL YOU FIRST!"
Jophiel howled in fury as she began to charge the blue fireball again, rearing back to unleash-
And the tentacle darted through, grabbed Twilight by the torso, and yanked her out of the way. Dazed and somewhat delirious, Twilight barely registered the flurry of fireballs, lasers, and strange metallic objects glittering with electricity flying about as she was pulled through the crack.
She could definitely hear shrieking, though. She doubted it was the rebel.
Ten minutes later, the angels were gathered in the remnants of the hospital room, and the still-sizzling hole to the Lower Depths in it.
"Hmm. Intriguing," Harahel stated flatly. "It appears the rogue has learned how to hack and commandeer Infrastructure relating to interdimensional travel."
"Yes," said Barachiel, as grandfatherly and calm as ever. "We will have to change the codes-"
There was a blast of flame.
"No. No. We. Do. Not."
Surprised, Barachiel spun to face his sister. "But it is of a standard procedure-"
"Buck. That. Noise." While Jophiel did not have teeth to grind, her gears provided an adequate substitution for the sound. "This entire occult matrix has been a disaster, but not a complete one. We have the commandments ready, we move to the Output phase."
"Excuse me-"
"DON'T. YOU. DARE."
For the first time in their admittedly short lives, both male angels suddenly felt very scared of their sister.
"As the head of the park's day-to-day operations, chief of security, we move forward. And I am ordering the Dalga to ignore any orders to the contrary."
And I am not letting you have this victory, Apostate.
The first thing Twilight saw was blue.
The second thing she saw was the sun, ensuring that the third thing was the inside of her eyelids.
Slowly, she became aware of the grass she was lying on, and that she felt it on her back. Slowly, she rolled over onto her hooves, trying to ignore the pain of the burns as they touched, well, anything.
"Hey Twi? You up?"
"...Rainbow?"
"Yep. Want me to help you up?"
"Yeah...urgh...."
While her eyes were still too unfocused to see, she could feel a feathery wing wrap around a forehoof and lift, as her unsteady legs tried to stand.
As they ground became a little more constant, Twilight blinked a few times and looked up at her pegasus friend.
Then blinked a few more, since she was still seeing strangely. When that failed to help, she gaped.
"What happened to your flank!? It looks like a three-dimensional jigsaw!"
"Long story. It looked worse a few minutes ago, so I'm going to guess the uh, excess of space here is replacing what the demons stole."
Twilight immediately remembered the creepy, invisible trio.
"Ouch."
"Yeah, it hurt when they did it too. Applejack and Rarity are going back to normal too but-"
"Wait, what!?"
Twilight felt fully conscious now.
"What happened to them!? Are they hurt!? Oh, wait, of course they're hurt, how-"
"Twilight, I was getting to that."
"...Oh."
Rainbow looked down.
"They looked...aged wrong."
Discord, Twilight thought.
"Applejack's fine, but Rarity...see for yourself."
Dread filled Twilight's very core as Rainbow stepped to the side.
On the grass was a now white-maned Rarity, with a filly's front leg, looking out into the distance with a vacant stare.
Twilight limped over to her, feeling the pain of starting tears in her eyes. "Rarity...I'm sorry."
Rarity didn't even react. Not even a twitch of the eye.
"YOU SHOULD BE!"
"GAH!" Twilight nearly fainted again as she went head over hoof.
Rarity's thousand-yard stare was gone, replaced by her furrowed brow. "That mane...ugh! I know you were just in the fight for your life, Twilight, but for the love of the Sun, you need to protect your coat better! It looks like you were in a fight with somepony wielding the dreaded Ugly Stick!"
There was a perfect silence for a second, before Rarity's snobbish expression was replaced with a mischievous grin.
Rainbow couldn't keep a straight face. "I'm telling her, looking like an incomplete statue is so in for athletes this year, but no! 'Rainbow Dash, you look like some foal ate your pieces and is now sad he can't complete his puzzle! A look should not put ponies in mind of sad foals!' For the love of the Princess, lady, I thought you were the resident fashion mare!" She fell over, laughing.
"...You do realize you're both dead for making me worry like that."
Rarity's grin widened. "Of course, dearie, That was the plan, because if you have a promise for our painful demise, that means the angels are out of luck. First come, first serve, and all."
Twilight growled as she struggled to her hooves, even as she smiled. "Good to see you're both as giant flanks as usual. But for the record, pranks are generally not meant for just after tragedies only averted by deus ex machina."
Rainbow stopped laughing. "Do-s ecks what now?"
"Unexpected help that solves all conflict. Not what you're supposed to do in stories, though I'm not complaining. Who was that who saved us, anyway, and why aren't we seeing him?"
Rarity cleared her throat. "Actually, dear, it was a giant jellyfish. Sound familiar?"
Giant jelly-wait.
Twilight cocked her head. "You don't think that..."
Rainbow shrugged, which looked interesting given how her left wing-joint was currently invisible. "The, ahem, 'Medusa of Doom'? Probably. Kinda rude though-he just dropped us off outside the park and flew off. Maybe he's a shy monster?"
Twilight hummed a bit to herself. "Maybe. Jophiel called it a 'traitor'."
"Traitor?" Rarity looked thoughtful. "That's...interesting. It would go a long way to explaining why he hates the Overseers. Perhaps he accidentally hit his head, developed a conscience, and then realize that the angels are some of the cruelest, meanest, ev...vil..."
Rarity looked her unicorn friend, and then down at the ground.
"Eh, I'm not offended."
Rainbow tilted her head. "But you heard what they said! 'Oh, we're a part of you, you abandoned us, blah blah blah.' I mean, if I realized parts of my personality turned that bad when spliced off, I'd be a little disturbed."
"I appreciate your concern, but you're forgetting something."
"Which is, dear?"
Twilights eyes turned dark. "I fought Jophiel, too."
The ex-princess looked at the park's perimeter. "And I can tell you this one thing-if she was ever really part of my personality, ever, I hope she's gone from the rest of me forever. Given the way you two look, probably the other two as well."
Her friends were silent. How do you respond to something like that?
The lavender mare sighed and turned back to the other two, looking unperturbed. "Anyway, any theories on what the Medusa is? Maybe we can ask Fluttershy...if..."
Twilight's eyes widened. "Where's Fluttershy?"
Both of the other ponies looked very shifty, very suddenly. "Um..."
"WHAT HAPPENED TO FLUTTERSHY!?"
Rarity cleared her throat, and opened her mouth.
"We don' think what was travellin' with us was the real deal."
Twilight spun around to face the suddenly appeared Applejack. "Huh!?"
The farmer dropped something on the ground. "Take a look."
Twilight looked.
What she saw was the dismembered corpse of Fluttershy...except in place of blood, there was oil. And in place of gore, silver gears and golden sprockets.
And even as she stared, "Fluttershy's" image flickered, revealing, however briefly, a changeling with metal skin.
