//------------------------------// // Act III, scene ii - Fractals // Story: A World Rent Asunder // by NeverEatTheLemonsAlone //------------------------------// Time wears on. My consciousness begins to win out, and the dreams largely stop coming as I resume a semi-regular sleep schedule. Oh, they aren't entirely gone, not at all; occasionally, one still cuts through my rest and I wake up sweating and screaming. On the whole, though, they've departed. It's a small comfort, though; I've started seeing the lattice with my waking eyes. I'll be looking around and boom: it's imprinted on the wall. Nopony else can see it. I'm fully convinced I'm really, finally going crazy. Clearly, that hasn't changed. Something else that hasn't changed? Magic, legs. Both are still worthless. And so, my days are now occupied by learning how to be even remotely functional. Trixie brought in a pair of jerry-rigged braces to keep my hind legs straight, so it's really just a matter of letting those hooves slide across the floor while propelling myself solely with my front legs. [1] I haven't actually left my room yet, but I'm sliding around in it, and I really need to get out of here soon. I'm going stir-crazy, as if I wasn't enough regular crazy already. Dash comes in every so often, giving us updates on how the war is going. I swear, that single eye sees more than all of ours combined. She's been scanning around, alternately convincing and..."convincing"...nearby ponies to give her information. So, yes, the Lunar troops are currently starting to pull a bit ahead int he war. They've made some incursions into no-pony's-land, and they've established a foothold a few hundred feet forward from where they were before. That's all but stopped now, though. Because Luna's gone missing. Nopony's seen her for weeks. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure it's since she prompted my first episode in front of Cullwood. The Lunar army hasn't been able to advance any further; they're like a snake with their head cut off, largely leaderless. I shake my head; because of me, one army is leaderless, and one is homeless. Once again, the lattice...slides, I guess...? Yeah, sure. The lattice slides into being on the wall, and I pedal my way across the floor and over to it, so I can look at it with more clarity. Yes, it still hurts my head to look at it for too long. Yes, I am spending valuable time looking at a hallucination projected against a wall. But yet another thing that hasn't changed? I'm curious, and I'm obsinate. So it's with a scientist's clinical eye that I begin to look over the lattice, and with a jolt, something clicks in my head: the reason the lattice is so different from any other I've seen. It's a fractal. An infinitely self-repeating pattern, stretching down into infinity. I know that might not mean much to anypony else, but to me, that's critical. See, there's a reason spell lattices aren't fractals. The latticework structure is what, all at once, creates, directs, sustains, and cuts off the flow of magic. It's always structured in such a way that there's a beginning and an end, and both are clearly defined. But a fractal? A fractal is different. If I were to put enough energy into this to kick off the activation sequence—somehow—it would create a feedback loop. Like I said before, there's no direction. The power would feed into the fractal pattern, which would create more power, which would feed down into the next level of the fractal pattern. My eyes widen as I realize that this lattice is a constructed way to create so much power it might not be dissimilar from infinity. Using that power, though, is another matter. With the new knowledge of the massively increased fractal production of power, this enchantment wouldn't just evaporate the caster(s). It would evaporate them, anypony near them, anypony near them, and probably about a hundred miles of earth around them when the energy became too much to hold. Then the door creaks open, and I turn away from my deep inspection of the wall. [2] What I see nearly knocks me to the ground by sheer force of surprise: It's Rarity. She looks highly contrite, and her hoof scuffs loudly against the rough floor. Her voice, when she speaks, is throaty and rough, as though she just drank sand or something. "Hey, Sparkle." I stare at her as though she just grew another horn. A lot of thoughts blast through my head, and most of them are none-too-kind, but one rises above the others, probably as a way of preserving my sanity through logical explanation: "How did you get out of the sleep spell?" She shrugged, not meeting my eyes. "It just failed a few days ago. Trixie said that your magic has been acting up, so it probably broke during that, if I had to guess." Makes sense; I nod. Then my eyes narrow. "You," I say, jabbing my hoof out at her, "have a lot of explaining to do, Rarity." She sighs and nods, dropping her head. "I do, don't I." It wasn't phrased as a question. "Okay. Where do you want me to start?" I glare at her. "Try why you betrayed my trust, lied to me, and nearly got me killed multiple times just so your boss could see that I, the foremost mage in service of the entire Dominion at the time, am not incompetent. That might be a good place to start." [3] She takes a deep breath. "...Fair enough. Okay. I've worked under Luna for a long time. She rubs off on you after a while, leading you to be far less forthcoming than a reasonable, rational pony is. That's where the whole thing starts. I may have worked for her for many years, but I haven't always worked for her." As she speaks, I continue to glower at her. "This better be good," I mutter to myself. "In regards to you," she shifts, "I was mostly following orders." I make to lash out at that, but she interrupts me. "Wait. I'm not finished. I was following orders, because Luna has my sister." My mouth clamps shut for a bit as I stare at her uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Go on," I drone, looking at her with narrowed eyes. "Yes, you heard me correctly. Like I said, I haven't always worked for her. Initially, I didn't want to. When Luna's recruiters vet you as a marksmage, though, you don't have a lot of choice. There are plenty of powerful unicorns around here; not so many with fine control. They had to get some sort of leverage in order to get me to work for Luna, and soon enough, they found it. My sister, Sweetie, is currently a ward of the Lunar court. Both of my parents have been dead since I was barely a teenager." Her brows drew together, and her voice grew bitter. "Apparently, years of experience wasn't enough for them to let her stay in my care, since I wasn't a 'real adult.' Which equates to her being a prisoner. She's cared for, but if I were to leave her," she shudders, "I don't wish to imagine what would become of her. Which is why," she gives me a look, "I need to get back to the Sanctum as soon as I can. She's counting on me, and I would give anything for her." I raise my eyebrows in surprise. Okay, I'm going to be totally honest: I really didn't expect that. That's actually approaching a good, solid reason, and we can't have that, can we? In fact, I'm so focused on what she's saying that I barely notice the flickering light pulsing from her cutie mark. "News flash, Rares—" I see her eye twitch and give her a schadenfreude-ridden grin. Oh, I'm going to use that. "—Luna's been missing for weeks." Her eyes widen until I'm pretty sure they're just about to fall out of her head and roll on the ground near me. Her mouth moves, but nothing comes out for a good few seconds. When something finally did emerge, it's a clumsy "Whuhhh...?" I shrugged. "After she...well," I motion at my braces holding my worthless back hooves upright, "she looked at me like I was some sort of monster. Apparently she hasn't been seen since." I neglect to mention the last thing she mentioned, which began ringing through my head: What are you? What...what future is this? As weird as it sounds, that's the most confusing thing Luna's said to or (to my knowledge) about me. Despite the fact that she's absolutely mental, she's still pretty high-functioning, and her Oculi can apparently see the future pretty well. The fact that we're now in what seems to be an uncharted future, with an uncharted me...I honestly can't tell if it's more comforting, or more terrifying. [4] --- [1]: Trust me, it's much harder than it sounds, and a lot more annoying than you think. [2]: We are the wall inspectors! Show us all your walls! [3]: Sparkle spittin' fire over here, watch out! [4]: Or both. Somehow. --- After some more talking and some intense counseling/consultation with Trixie—who's mostly just overjoyed to see me out of bed and holding a conversation—Rarity and I come to an agreement. We get her sister Sweetie Belle out of the Lunar Sanctum and bring her here, which, as I've learned, is indeed a safehouse of Trixie's near the southern end of the demilitarized zone, set pretty far back into a deep cave, and she'll stick around with us permanently. She doesn't have a whole lot binding her to Luna at this point. Turns out that even she didn't actually know about Luna's Effigies, so she really did think I was calling in the fire against innocent ponies. That doesn't mean I've forgiven her. That's going to take some time, and we're nowhere near there yet. "Hey, Trixie," I start one day, when I've finally worked up the effort to leave my room and join the rest of them—a somewhat contrite Rarity, a businesslike Trixie, and a twitching, nervous wreck of a Rainbow sitting on the ground—in the living area, "what happened to Pinkie?" "Oh, she's still around. I've just asked her to not come here too often. She hasn't been seen with us over here except for a brief stint with Twilight before the Chasmlands and she isn't a recognizable face, so she has a little bit more freedom to work with than we do." She wiggles her eyebrows. "She's been my spy." I can't help it; I laugh. The idea of Pinkie/Mena as a spy is too much to not laugh at. Then, of course, reality runs into me like a giant tree in the face. I remember that I can't move my legs. I remember that my magic is unreliable at best and realistically worthless. I remember that I have no idea how I can get Rarity's sister out of the Sanctum, and that we barely survived getting out of there once, let alone twice. My laughter stops abruptly, and the grin falls off my face. Everypony looks at me with some form of concern. Okay, yes, I'll be honest, I didn't sound entirely sane just now. In fact, I kinda sounded like Pinkie/Mena. Funny, that. I take a long, dragging breath, trying to steady myself, and paste a smile back onto my face, hoping it doesn't look too unnatural. [1] "...Uh. Sorry about that, just...the recent events catching up to me." "Well, have them catch up with you somewhere else," snaps Rainbow, glaring at me. The effect of her single-eyed boring stare is slightly lessened by a few things; her pallor, her trembling, and the fact that her voice should be about an octave lower. I'm suddenly reminded of when she, Trixie and I were stuck in the cave in the Sleipnir range, and Rainbow's remark about not liking it underground. I raise an eyebrow and look at her, an expression of boredom on my face. "Look, Rainbow, we get it. You don't like being underground. Poor little pegasus can't handle a little bit of cave." I roll my eyes. "That doesn't mean you have to snap at us, especially when you're so clearly in no stat to be snapping at anypony." "Look, you..." she snarls, getting to her hooves. A small grin hopped on to my face. [2] "Both of you, be quiet!" snapped Trixie. Now, see, Trixie isn't Rainbow. When Rainbow snaps, you can usually just ignore it, because she's always bad-tempered and there's a huge gap between her yelling at you and actually taking action. The same is decidedly untrue for Trixie. She doesn't yell often, and when she does, it means something important is happening and you better damn well listen. I turn away from Rainbow, looking at her. "Thank you," she grunts, turning back to what she'd been doing, which was, well, sitting in a chair with a magical aura playing about her horn and her eyes shut tight. I stayed quiet—as a unicorn, I know what it's like to have other ponies break spellcasting concentration. So does Rarity. Not so much Rainbow. She looks at Trixie curiously. "What's she doing?" Trixie opens one eye thinly. "Looking in on something. So shut up," she growls, then immediately closes that eye again. I frown. Something's got her worked up, more than I usually see her. We watch her in uncomfortable silence until she gasps and her eyes fly open, staring around at us with wide, scared eyes. "If anypony's got a plan, now's the time," she says, voice ragged. "Look's like they're coming for us." --- [1]: Don't kid yourself. [2]: I may lose everything else, but I will always keep my gift at getting under other ponies' fur.'