Chapter 26
She Did Betray Me
The cavern enveloped them, distant on all sides. Its surfaces were dark, smooth, covered in gentle ridges like ribs that arched horizontally, then netted together. Threads of glowing white were woven through them in some pattern too complex to follow, trailed by smeared reflections in nearby surfaces. It made Sweetie Belle think of the interior of some giant gothic-style hall, mutated and turned half organic, where the walls, floor and ceiling flowed into one another and became indistinguishable.
At the far end, the cavern closed up. Halfway up the end wall a semicircle platform stuck out about, leading to a deeper cavern. Above it, an array of skeletal looking spines jutted out. “The interface to the Apotheosis Machine,” Saffron offered.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo brought the Shrike to a halt below the spines. From the bottom of the gondola, they unfurled a rope ladder to covered the last few metres down to the platform. Sweetie Belle carried the two ansibles in her aura.
Standing on the platform looking back offered a succession of framed images. First, and closest, the inelegant bulk of the airship like a roof; then the liquified gothic of the cavern; finally the backdrop of Tanelorn itself, looking at this distance like a charcoal painting.
“How are your wings feeling?” she asked Scootaloo.
Scootaloo opened the wings to full length and retracted them, then smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Better,” she said. “Good enough to fight with.”
They trotted through the wall of the cavern deeper towards the machine. An already broad tunnel eventually broadened out into a giant round chamber. The floor wasn't all there. At seemingly arbitrary places, it dropped away like a cliff edge; sometimes the drop was sheer, sometimes odd little overhangs would stop a fall. A few broken repositories lay in various places. And other bits of unplaceable detritus – rods of some corroded metal, cables, trinkets.
There were more threads of light here too – but not threads anymore. They were three or four feet across, so bright you couldn't distinguish any internal structure beyond a vaguely cylindrical shape. They came up though floor and headed serpentine to the ceiling.
“If this was a research facility,” asked Sweetie Belle, “Why does it look so much like an ancient temple?”
“All the qilin aesthetic is ostentatious,” said Saffron.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“But not in the way your Blueberry Pancake is. Not to show off. We'd solved nearly everything else. The entire population lived in wealth and comfort. We'd long passed any design limitations on technology. In which case, why not go as far as you can with creativity and curiosity?”
Sweetie Belle looked around. “So what are the lights?”
“The Scar. We're not underground anymore, remember. We're in a facility on top of the Scar. It's woven into this place so the Machine can use it.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “The actual Scar?”
“Yes. Speaking of which. Take that metal rod off the floor and poke that bit of the Scar with it.”
“Is … is that safe?”
“You'll see.”
Sweetie Belle did so. The rod entered the thread of light without resistance. But when she pulled it back, it was a foot or so shorter; the part of it inside the light hadn't come out. The cut was impossibly smooth.
“So don't touch it, right?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Well, that's good to know,” said Scootaloo. She looked around. “So I guess here's the best place to make our stand?”
“I guess so.” Sweetie Belle stopped for a moment, listened to the daemons whispering in her ear. “Hide behind the statues and jump out when she comes through the door, right?”
Scootaloo laughed. “Yeah, we could do that.”
Sweetie Belle laughed too. When she'd finished she was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I'm glad you came with me.”
“Are you kidding? There's no way you'd be able to stop her by yourself.” Scootaloo grinned at her again. “C'mere.” She pulled Sweetie Belle into a hug. “I'm glad I'm here too. I mean, uh, it kinda sucks that we have this madmare trying to become a god and all, but since we can't help that … well you know. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's really awesome that you came up with all this to stop her. And that we can do it together.”
Sweetie Belle stepped away from the hug and nodded. “Eloquent.” They both laughed again. She realised in that moment how convinced she was of winning. The only question that seemed to remain was: How? What the most awesome way she could smack down Blueberry, get her revenge for all the pain she'd been through, and convince Scootaloo to fall in love with her? Some finishing move, some coup-de-grace that would establish her as the hero of the whole thing.
She realised Saffron was saying something to her. “ … Are you there? There's something else we can do.”
“What?”
“There's something more we should do. I can sense a working repository.”
There was another door – or opening – on the far side of the chamber. “This way,” Sweetie Belle said. “Saffron has an idea.” Then: “So what is it?”
“Suppose she sees you here when you … jump out. And then she teleports past you.”
Sweetie Belle wrinkled her nose. That would be embarrassing.”
“And, potentially, the end of the world. Both important considerations. Anyway, I can set up a counter to all teleportation spells in this area. And a counter to some of the other nastier ones that she might know.”
“So she'll have no magic at all?”
“Not quite. Some spells can't be stopped. But it should make things easier for you. I was also thinking I'd give you all the spells I know that still work.”
“At last.”
Saffron sighed. “All or nothing situation, I suppose.”
Carrying the ansibles with them, they went through the opening down a short corridor, and into another room. It wasn't as broad as the previous chamber (which Sweetie Belle dubbed the antechamber), but it was much higher. So high, in face, that she couldn't see the ceiling; the walls stretched up and up, like the inside of a tube, punctuated by the same threads of light coming through oval windows – until they faded from sight. A helical staircase wound up around them until, a hundred metres above, it stopped by a hole in the wall.
A repository stood by the base of the stairs. Its glowing, insouciant face seemed almost ridiculous amid such ostentatious architecture.
Sweetie Belle trotted up to it and stared at it for a moment. Last time she'd seen this was … the time she'd had Saffron dropped into her head.
She reached out with her aura and connected to it.
The sensation was so rich it was almost sickening. A sense of the whole facility, a map in three dimensions, and everything in it. A sense of the Scar running through it. All the thaumic wiring and machinery hidden in the walls. She could feel the airship they'd left outside, she could feel Scootaloo and herself along amongst the ruins. It was like some absurdly complicated diagram – everything was there, but there was too much to take in.
“This'll take a while,” said Saffron. “Just keep calm. You'll get used it it.”
While Saffron worked (Sweetie Belle could feel this too, like a stream of information washing over her consciousness), she concentrated on the most comprehensible part of the facility: The physical map. First, the platform they'd arrived on. Then through a corridor to the antechamber. Then this room – the staircase room. And at the top of the stairs, the end. The interface itself.
That was the battlefield, and that was the prize. They had to keep Blueberry away from that.
“Done,” said Saffron.
The connection ended, and Sweetie Belle found herself back in the real world. She wobbled slightly, and a moment later Scootaloo was as her side to hold her up.
“You alright?” she asked.
Sweetie Belle blinked a few times, then nodded. “Yeah, I'm fine.” When she'd recovered, she picked up the ansibles and cantered over to the staircase. “I want to see the interface room,” she told Scootaloo.
“Why?” asked Saffron.
“It's better to be familiar with the whole facility, isn't it?” Sweetie Belle was already a few steps up.
Scootaloo shrugged and followed her.
The canter became a trot, then a walk, then an amble. Sweetie Belle was just beginning to regret her curiosity when they reached they top. The repository below looked tiny; above, the walls still stretched beyond the limits of vision.
An arch gave onto some dark room. Before she turned towards it, Sweetie Belle caught sight of the view through one of the windows.
It was hard to make sense of it at first. It was an ugly sort of mottled plane. Mostly shades of yellows, oranges and browns, but other colours were mixed in. Lurid blue, white. When she leaned to the side, she got a glance at a painfully bright disc to one one side. She pulled back, blinking. As the afterimage faded, she realised.
“Amaranth?” she said.
“Yes. The view from the Scar.
Amaranth – and the sun – from above.
Sweetie Belle shook her head and went through the arch.
The interface room. It was dimly lit. No – that wasn't quite right. It was inconsistently lit: The floor was not just black, but dark; the walls were so shadowed it was hard to tell if they were there at all. She got the sense of a vaguely dome-shaped space, but it could just have easily been a infinite black void hanging above them. More fat threads of light slithered up through the floor, twisted about, and vanished into the walls. The air smelt wet, some combination of sweet and rotten, like overripe fruit.
Her hooves made muffled thumps against the floor. Even moving into the room, it was hard to get an idea of its size. It wavered between intimate and immense. She had a haunted feeling that it really was changing size when she wasn't paying attention.
And it the centre, something glowed.
“That's …?” she asked Saffron.
“The interface,” confirmed Saffron. Then, after a moment: “It's actually a repository. It does that when it's plugged into the system. We never figured out why.”
Sweetie Belle walked up to it, staring. Just to confirm her suspicion. It was her. Rendered in all the colourful, glowing translucence of a repository, yes, but not a statute. In the portrayal, she floated a few feet off the ground. She seemed to be in the process of falling; some sort of silk robe trailed up above her. Though she was stationary, everything in the image suggested motion. Her eyes were closed, face expressing a serenity she'd never felt in real life.
“Everyone sees something different,” Saffron offered.
t's me.”
“Ah.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the image of her face a little longer before pulling back. The room seemed too large again. “What is it for you?”
“I'd rather not say.”
She asked the same of Scootaloo, who said she couldn't describe. “It has wings,” she offered at last. “Too many of them.”
Sweetie Belle reached out with her aura and connected with the repository. It felt the same as the one below, except – something else lurked in there, almost invisible, but bigger than everything else.
I could do it, she realised. As soon as Blueberry's connected, activate the repository, do it myself. Become a god, fix everything. Rewrite history. Blueberry, out of the picture. Amaranth too. Me and Scoots together. Bring Saffron back, get her together with Discord.
It would kill a few thousand, of course. But she'd been responsible for other deaths by this point, hadn't she? The thought came with a sort of detachment alongside everything else: Ships damaged, glass broken, blood spilled. Well.
She wondered if Saffron could stop her. If she would try to stop her, even. She had a stake in this too, didn't she?
Through the repository's sensors, she saw herself. And Scootaloo watching her, waiting. Something sickly welled in her throat, and she pulled back, and disconnected from the repository.
“Let's go back,” she told Scootaloo.
On their way down the staircase, a message came through one of the ansibles: Blueberry's ship had just been spotted entering Tanelorn.
The Mettlesome crouched in the shadows of the hangar. The bridge was already dark, but as soon as Blueberry's ship – barely visible near the top of the window – came into view, the crew fell silent.
For a while, all Millie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. The air already stank of too many animals in a confined space, taut with anticipation. As the qilin ship passed, a wave a tension went through the crew. They'd all seen what it was capable off. If it noticed them …
But it didn't. It slipped easily through the portal Sweetie Belle had opened, the passed out of view.
The silence continued, as if no one knew how to change it. Then came Proper Order's voice:
“Battle stations! Get those lights on. Check all sections for combat readiness!”
A flurry of motion. The lights came back in two stages. Communications officers called back reports: “Assault teams one through five reporting in!”; “First-wave gunships operational.” A growing thrum animated the bulkheads and the diesel engines came back online.
At last: “All stations report readiness.”
“Good,” said Proper Order. “What's the word from Sweetie Belle?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Take us forward anyway. Get us in position.”
“Yessir.”
A distant boom sounded from outside the ship. Then, from one of the ansible operators: “Message from Sweetie Belle. The Shrike has been destroyed and the enemy is in position.”
The Mettlesome moved into position near the portal, a little to the side where it would be out of sight of Blueberry's ship.
“Communications officers,” said Proper Order. “Prepare a message to the whole ship. Begin: 'This is the Captain. Our fight begins now. Amaranth, Equestria, Aquileona. Their fates will determined by what we do today. I trust each and every one of you to do the job to the best of your ability. That is all.'” He looked over at Millie. “Anything you need to add?”
“Yeah, actually.” Millie checked with the communications officers to make sure her message would be going to the whole ship. “Millie here. In the quite likely event of an emergency, put your head between your knees, and kiss your arse goodbye.”
Proper Order stared at her. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” said Millie. “Yes, it was.”
He sighed, then turned his attention back to the crew. “Full acceleration on my mark. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark!”
The floor lurched. The twelve gunships leashed to the hull pulled in unison with the main engines, an extra force the ship was never designed for. A few crewmembers stumbled and steadied themselves on the bulkheads. The ship's superstructure groaned, but held steady.
“Release the first wave,” said Proper Order.
“First wave is away!”
Ahead of them, the length of the cavern – ridged, immense, threaded with light – came into view. At the far end, three kilometres away, the qilin ship sat. A thin, twisting band of light tied it to a set of gnarled spines.
“Open fire,” said Proper Order. The chatter off far-off gunfire came, punctuated by the intermittent bangs of larger shells, all of it concentrated on the qilin ship's weak spot.
Two minutes to go. It seemed a horribly long time.
Gunships pulled into view. These ones were unleashed. A couple at first, then three, four. Ten in total. The first wave. They pulled ahead of the Mettlesome, spread out, weaved back and forth. They fired together, joining the battleship in their focus on the weak spot.
A thunderclap, followed later by a deeper boom echoing through the hull. The bridge shuddered. “They're returning fire!” called someone.
“You think?” Millie murmured to herself.
A communications officer called out a damage report.
Another thunderclap. One of the first-wave gunships seemed to fold up, its nose pressed into its tail. It tumbled down. A shot made the Mettlesome shudder. In the far distance a sound like shrieking metal came through.
They were still accelerating. Nearly halfway there now.
Gunship One of the First Wave reached its target. Its allies stopped firing. Its pilot, a pegasus, bailed out at the last moment, and the gunship barrelled into the rear of the qilin ship. The gunship, laden with explosives, blossomed into flame as it hit. The pilot swooped away unharmed, and the impact left the hull stained with soot.
“Halfway point, sir,” called one of the communications officers.
“Hold it,” said Proper Order. Noises battered the ship from all directions. Then: “Reverse thrust!”
The communications officers went straight to their channels, signalling or calling out orders. The Mettlesome and the gunships hauling it reversed their thrust together. The hull whined, groaned, shrieked. The bridge seemed to tilt forward.
Millie looked ahead to the qilin ship, where another gunship crashed against its hull. The wound it left looked burnt, twisted, but was still intact. Proper Order had left it too long, she knew. They couldn't stop in time –
Another crack of thunder; the bridge twisted to the side, nearly throwing her off her hooves. Metal shrieked as the ship righted itself.
“We've lost a tug gunship!”
Now the Mettlesome definitely wouldn't be able to stop in time . But perhaps it was enough.
The qilin ship swelled up ahead. Closer, closer, closer. The guns stopped. The last of the first-wave gunships ejected its pilot and crashed into the weak spot. The explosion left a scattered map of cracks in the crystal-or-metal.
“Everyone brace!” shouted Proper Order. “Prepare the harpoons!”
“Harpoons ready.”
The harpoons; the tiny bit of Dignity coming along for the show. Come on, girl. Don't fail me now.
“Fire!”
The harpoons went out, clang-clang-clang. The first bounced off the cracked hull. The second penetrated, knocking the metal away. So did the third and forth.
The cables tying the airships together went slack immediately as the Mettlesome bore down on its prey. Slow now – maybe twenty, fifteen miles an hour – but still too fast.
It slowed.
It approached.
It collided.
Millie, foreleg wrapped around a console, was pulled free and thrown forward. The bridge tumbled about her. Glass shattered. Metal tore. A dozen smaller sounds trailed: Bulkheads shearing away, beams twisting, and the like.
The Mettlesome drifted back almost lazily. Millie looked around as she pulled herself up. Proper Order had fared better then she had, though he now sported a cut across his brow. “Tighten the cables!” he shouted. “Now!” The crew scrabbled to get the order out, and a moment later the ship pulled in again. Through the ragged-edged remains of the front windows, Millie saw the soot stained wall of crystal-or-metal.
“We've got a hold” said one of the communications officers.
“Good. Assault teams have a go.” Proper Order turned to Millie. “You'd best get going.”
Sweetie Belle, hiding behind a broken piece of equipment in the antechamber, found herself grinning. My game now, bitch. But no – not yet. She needed to concentrate. Hold her at the antechamber. Fall back to the stair room of you have to. But don't let her get any further. Just delay her, yes, just delay her until the captives are rescued.
A soft clipclop of hooves came from the corridor. That was her. Blueberry.
The sound was trailed by a more diffuse noise. A patter, whirr, buzz. Chevaloids, she realised, and a lot of them. Of course Blueberry brought backup. But Sweetie Belle had spent the last few minutes making an army of elementals. Sylphs, salamanders, gnomes. Enough to keep them busy. And she had Scootaloo by her side. No contest.
“Ready?” said Saffron.
“Ready.”
They came flooding in. Spells, too many to count, all learned perfectly. So much power! She grinned again.
Blueberry stepped into view, head up, broad smile, clean tresses of mane dangling over her translucent neck. Chevaloids trailed behind her in rows of three.
Then, from all the way back in the cavern came a faint sound like distant thunder. It was quickly followed by others – undertones of gunfire, fighting.
Blueberry's composure dropped immediately, and she looked back the way she'd come. Good! The attack was unexpected.
As this one would be.
Sweetie Belle leant out from behind her piece of wreckage and threw her simplest spell – a bolt of aura – at Blueberry.
The lead chevaloid reacted before she did; it threw itself in front of Blueberry before the bolt hit. As the chevaloid was thrown back, Blueberry's gaze snapped to Sweetie Belle, and she put up a shield.
Oh well. Sweetie Belle put up her own shield – something stronger than she'd used before – and walked out from behind her cover. On the far side of the chamber, Scootaloo did the same.
For a second, the only sound was the distant battle. Blueberry's look of surprise faded and a thin smile flickered across her face. “The two of you, together again! What a pleasant surprise,” she said.
Sweetie Belle looked over at Scootaloo. “Here's the plan,” she said. “You take the robot army and I'll take the superpowered psycho bitch.”
Scootaloo grinned. “Works for me.”
Blueberry regarded them for a few moments. “Of course,” she said at last. “I've been had. Just … one question.”
Why not, if it helped delay her?
Blueberry continued, looking only at Sweetie Belle: “The other ship, that was you wasn't it?”
Sweetie Belle kept her gaze. “Yeah. That was me.”
“Cannons and Sorghum. My boys. You killed them.” Blueberry looked away for a moment. Her shield quivered. “Everything I love gets taken,” she murmured.
Sweetie Belle said nothing.
Then Blueberry looked back up and smiled again. “It doesn't matter, you know. I'll bring it all back. And your little plan to try and stop me? Well.” She teleported away.
Sweetie Belle burst into a gallop towards the spot where Blueberry had been. Get the chevaloids! she ordered her elementals. Scootaloo raced in from the other side.
A second after she'd gone, Blueberry reappeared. Her eyes widened. “You sneaky little –” She got no further as Sweetie Belle, still at a gallop, headbutted her.
A six-foot wide chasm: On the far side, the charred and ragged breach into the qilin ship, two and half decks high. Sheared-through bulkheads billowed steams or erupted into occasional showers of sparks. The harpoons burrowed deep inside. On the near side, the open portals on the Mettlesome's nose.
Cables held the two together. The winged were already crossing, helping the assault teams to extend gangplanks across the gulf. Inside, a whirring, clicking sound, silenced by gunfire. The ships swayed independently, puling the gangplanks back and forth.
“Oh, crumbs,” said Tom, staring into the opening. “We really didn't have enough training for this.”
“Hey! We're on the clock here!” called Cerise from the inside of the qilin ship. “Come on!”
Millie nudged him. “Get on my back.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Tom obliged her, and she leapt across the gangplank. He said nothing, but she could feel him tense up. A second later they were on the qilin ship.
“Okay. Off! Off now!”
Tom swung himself off Millie and looked around. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
Millie grabbed a mouthgun from the holster on her shoulder and said through her teeth, “Yeah, yeah. Let's go.”
Millie, Lucille, Cerise and Tom. Assault Team One. They'd studied the map enough to know where they were immediately. They pushed forward. Following them came Assault Team Two – four minotaurs – then the support team, carrying canisters of oil and boxes of explosives to leave at vital points. The backup plan, if everything else failed.
Round the next corridor, they came upon a group of chevaloids. Millie and Lucille fired, took the first two down. The others began to retreat; Cerise came in to help take down the stragglers. From elsewhere in the ship, gunfire echoed. Someone cried out, then went silent.
The lights on the corridor flickered fitfully. Bulky objects filled with irregular edges covered each wall. It took Millie a moment to see what they were: The execution units. Two creatures in each one.
Tom came up to the nearest unit and flicked through the deactivation sequence. Together he and Millie pulled away the black tentacles. “Together on three. One. Two. Three.” They opened the unit;s ribs and caught its occupants – two unicorns, barely conscious – together as they slipped forwards. As they lowered the captives to the floor, Lucille and Cerise fired at something up ahead.
The minotaurs were working on the unit on the other wall. Tom and Millie moved onto the third on the far side, and repeated the procedure. The first two captives were beginning to wake. They looked around with a faint but growing alarm. “You're bein' rescued,” Millie told them. “So calm down and wait here.”
The fourth unit, the fifth, sixth, seventh. Fourteen captives already. The corridor was beginning to get crowded. Cerise and Lucille didn't seem to be having many problems holding the crew back. That was something to worry about. The support team joined them from behind.
“Okay, you lot,” said Millie, gesturing at the captives who were awake enough to move around. “Time to go. Any of you good with a gun?” A couple were. She singled out one of the guides. “Arm 'em, and take 'em back.”
With the group gone, she went back to helping Tom deactivate the units. A tedious but tense exercise. She sweated, and her legs began to ache. “Any problems?” she called up to Lucille after reassuring another group of captives.
“Pretty clear so far,” called Lucille.
“I don't like it,” said Cerise. “They've got something planned. And we're dawdling.”
Millie paused to help lower another captive to the floor. “Not much choice on that one, lass.”
At last the corridor was empty. They pushed forward, past the broken remains of some chevaloids. Next: A room filled with units. She sent Team Two in to deal with them, and kept going forward. The following corridor was lined with even more units, and a storage room that was, thankfully, empty.
As Millie and Tom set about freeing the captives, Cerise and Lucille peered round the next corner, then pulled back at the sound of gunfire.
“There's our problem,” called Cerise. She glanced out round the corridor, fired, then pulled back again. “There's crew there too. And they've armed the chevaloids.”
“How many?” said Millie, deactivating another unit.
“Hard to tell. I counted five chevaloids, two ponies, but I'm pretty sure there are more.” Gunfire followed from the far end of the corridor.
The support team came up the corridor from behind. Millie explained the situation. “You two, up the front there. The rest of you, help get the rest of these captives freed. Give the combat capable weapons and bring them up to speed.”
She trotted up to the front of the corridor, mouthgun raised. Before she reached it, a juddering mechanical gallop sounded from the corridor up ahead.
Blueberry, blood smeared from her left nostril, scrambled to her hooves, horn glowing. Sweetie Belle dissolved her shield as it began to form a spike, put a shield of her own up in time to block an aural bolt. Dancing together, another volley of bolts, shields, and dissolving spells that ended in stalemate, they moved deeper into the antechamber.
The army of chevaloids broke into a canter. From the left, Scootaloo's outstretched wing swatted the first couple of rows into those behind. Salamanders descended on those further back, clutching their metal spines and melting through them.
Blueberry pulled up a cloud of shrapnel telekinetically and hurled it Sweetie Belle. It battered against a shield formed at the last moment. Sweetie Belle ran through her spells: A wall of frozen air (Blueberry melted through it); liquified floor (Blueberry hovered, and Sweetie Belle dragged her back down again.)
Her next attack was cut off as a chevaloid thumped into her side. She went sprawling as Scootaloo came up from behind and dragged the thing back – “Sorry about that!”
Blueberry was – where?
Galloping across the antechamber, of course. Sweetie Belle chased her, dissolved her shield, then with a long reach aura pulled her rear hoof. Blueberry went face-first into the ground. She look round and threw a bolt back at Sweetie Belle. It was far away enough to dodge, and by the time Blueberry had prepared another Sweetie Belle had caught up with her.
Again, they weaved back and forth through the spells – shattered rock, flying bolts, flying shrapnel, lightning, venomous snakes striking from interdimensional portals, bursts of fire so hot they made the floor glow red and fracture. Sweetie Belle managed, bit by bit, to push her back towards the middle of the antechamber.
Broken chevaloids lay scattered across the floor. The others had spread out – were there less of them than before? – and Scootaloo was chasing after them to stop them getting too close. The salamanders burnt themselves out after a few attacks; Sweetie Belle felt the small needles in her chest with each one. She was getting tired, but so was Blueberry.
The colour of their attacks fell back. The defence became the same old formula: Bolt or telekinesis; shield; dissolve. Blueberry's chest heaved.
Just keep her busy. That's it. Just occupy her until the others save the captives. Defeat her and win and win Scootaloo and become the glory the power the – The thought – or was it a voice – came from nowhere.
The distraction only came for a moment, but the next thing she knew, Blueberry was galloping towards her, hoof raised. It thudded into Sweetie Belle's nose. She stumbled, trying to find a spell in retaliation, knowing it was too late.
Scootaloo's wing came in from the side, collided with Blueberry's head, knowing her over. As Sweetie Belle got up she saw a pale blue bolt flick from Blueberry's horn to Scootaloo's wings. The wings folded up with a whisper.
A look from Scootaloo told Sweetie Belle everything she needed to know. The wings had stopped working.
But Blueberry was retreating, stepping back slowly while the smattering of surviving chevaloids gathered around her. Her horn glowed. Sweetie Belle put a shield round her and Scootaloo, but the spell darted off to the side. As it left her horn, Blueberry stumbled. Something exhausting, then.
The torn-apart chevaloids, lit in a faint violet glow, began to move. They scraped across the floor and slowly came together in masses to the left and right. Sweetie Belle recognised the motion: A scrapwolf. She hunched down, strengthening her shield, and began knitting together sylphs from the air and pygmies from the sand.
But the scrapwolves, as they formed, didn't attack. As soon as they could move they stepped backwards with great clanking sounds, until they flanked Blueberry and her little entourage of chevaloids.
Blueberry struggled to stand upright. Her mane was tangled, her makeup smeared, her muzzle bloodied. She looked even more exhausted than Sweetie Belle felt.
“We should talk,” she called.
“Yeah, right,” said Scootaloo. “That's not gonna stop us kicking your ass.”
Sweetie Belle put a hoof on her shoulder. Just keep her busy She held Blueberry's gaze and stepped forward. “What's there to talk about?”
“We can't go on like this, can we?” Blueberry, exhausted as she was, still managed to give Sweetie Belle a winning smile. “And you don't seem to be the power-sharing type. No, the thing is … back when I was looking in your mind – remember that?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I saw some other stuff too. And …” Her, Blueberry smiled again and turned to Scootaloo. “You know your girlfriend here betrayed you? Went into your apartment and tore up your Aquileona visa. Just after that argument you had.”
The chevaloids came galloping down the corridors in rows of three, firing blindly. They were doubly armed, holding guns and long knives in their pincer jaws. When one fell, another from the row behind leapt over its body.
The attack gave them their first casualty: When one of the chevaloids got to close, one of the minotaurs from Assault Team Two has picked it up before it could impale anyone and twisted its spine in two, and in doing do had caught a bullet in the neck. Millie had never learned his name. Lucille had been shot too; her injured wing lay tense against her body.
After that, there had been a lull. Millie crouched, handle of her gun pressing against her teeth, and looked up the corridor. Smoke hung in the air. Dead chevaloids lay on the floor. From elsewhere in the ship, she could hear distant gunfire. Behind her, To and few of the support team worked to free and reassure the last of captives.
“You done yet?” she asked them.
“Nearly there,” said Tom, ears flat against his skull.
“If we retreat …” said Cerise.
“We don't have much choice.”
Before things could continue, a new wave of chevaloids appeared at the end of the corridor, firing. Millie pulled back. “That's it!” she called. “Pull back.”
“We haven't finished,” said Tom.
“Go! Get 'em out of here.” She leaned back out and fired into the mass of chevaloids advancing through the smoke. A couple of the nearest went down. Behind her, she heard Tom hurrying away the mass of captives and support team.
The first row went down together. A pause. The next came galloping through the smoke, scrabbling and leaping of the bodies of their compatriots.
The realisation came late: One of the chevaloids had made it to the end of the corridor where she waiting. A blade clutched in its jaws, aiming for her.
Millie threw herself to the side, kicked out with her hind legs. The hooves connected with the chevaloids spine, threw it against the far wall. It kicked against the wall, pushed forward, and its moment carried it past her into the corridor behind. The noncombatants had all cleared out except for Tom, who was opening up the last execution unit.
Two things happened simultaneously. First: Lucille, who was closest, swept forward, fastened her beak on the chevaloid's spine, and bit down hard enough to snap it. Second: The chevaloid's blade went into Tom's belly.
“Oh,” he said, watching the blade as it slipped out “Crumbs.”
Another group of chevaloids was coming.
The minotaur retreated first, picked up Tom midway through his fall and held him under one arm, then took the still-unconscious captive under the other.
At last, Millie and Cerise, the last of the front lines, fell back too.
They fell back like that, past the empty execution units, to one of the storage rooms. How many captives had they saved? Would it be enough to stop Blueberry? And if not, could they justify pulling the qilin ship back now and killing those who remained?
The chevaloids were still advancing, faster and more numerous. It wouldn't be enough to retreat, Millie realised. She had to stop them here.
Well, that left one option. As she passed the next canister of oil, she kicked it over. Watery brown fluid spread out ahead of them. She had to stop to reach into her saddlepack for a match.
“Millie!” hissed Cerise.
She looked up with a brief glare. No time for anything else. By the time she retrieved her match, Cerise and the others has retreated further down the corridor, and the chevaloids were about to reach her. Their hooves splashed weakly in the oil. One raised a gun.
The storage room! The door was still open. She leapt into it as the chevaloid fired, threw the match behind her, and – a flash, a whooshing noise and a rush of heat – pulled the door shut.
The fire warbled faintly. Inside, stacks of boxes and barrels were lit in faint ghostly outline by the glow of a qilin statue. She could see no more weapons, no way of defending herself. Her allies were gone, retreating. Perhaps the whole battle was on its way to being lost.
“Well, shit,” she whispered.
Silence. A second stretched out to unbearable lengths. A coiled strand of main hanging in front of Blueberry's smug grin.
Then Scootaloo's voice, starting off defiant: “Yeah, right –” Scootaloo meeting her eyes.
Realisation.
Oh.
(Yes, she did betray me.)
And then Blueberry struck.
A bolt of light hit the side of Scootaloo's head. It impact like something physical. Knocking her to the side. Sweetie Belle retaliated immediately. Not a planned attack; just an outburst of rage. Again, a chevaloid leapt in front of Blueberry. It shattered under the force of the impact.
The two scrapwolves were already in motion. One brought its paw down on Scootaloo and batted her to the side with a powerful motion that at that scale looked oddly gentle. It sent her sliding across the floor, to a ledge. She lay there, unmoving, for a second, then rolled off. The second scrapwolf reached down with its jaws, and Blueberry clambered into a gap between its shrapnel-teeth.
An anti-golem spell? There it was. A powerful thing, though. As Sweetie Belle was charging it, the scrapwolf carrying Blueberry leapt over her head, landed with an immense clang. The other brought its paw down towards her.
She fired the spell.
The first scrapwolf slowed. Its aura faded. Its paw came down short and, as it hit the floor, fragmented. At last, it came apart into a rain of debris, falling on the remaining chevaloids.
Before it had collapsed, Sweetie Belle was thinking. Try and save Scootaloo or stop Blueberry?
The choice was obvious.
I'm sorry. She turned and galloped across the antechamber.
The scrapwolf, at a crouch, was slinking under the arch leading to the stair room. She charged another spell. And as she was about to fire, it leapt into the air.
She galloped through the arch to find the scrapwolf already thirty or forty feet up, irregular spine curled, clinging to the spiral staircase. Its body opened like a spring; it leapt to the other side of the chamber and gained another twenty feet or so.
Sweetie Belle started up the stairs without slowing, trying to get a good aim on the scrapwolf. After it had leapt again, she fired. Blueberry fired back.
Two spells, green and violet, passed each other. The first burrowed into the scrapwolf. The second hit Sweetie Belle.
A physical impact like a kick in the ribs. It threw her to the side. Another thump as she hit the wall, then the world seemed to tumble. It took her a moment to realise she'd fallen off the stairs. Not a long drop, but long enough. A final thump as she hit the floor, a fiery pain in her front pastern, then silence.
She opened her eyes. A couple feet away, the repository glowed, reduced to a colourful smudge by her tears. Her pastern hung off the joint at an odd angle. But never mind that. She looked up, saw the scrapwolf above dissolving.
Come on. Fall already!
As the scrapwolf dissolved, it reached forward with its jaws, and deposited Blueberry on the stairs halfway up. Then it fell.
It tumbled almost gracefully, remnants of the spell just about holding it in one shape. Then it hit the ground and came apart all at once. Shrapnel flew out in all directions.
On her three good legs, Sweetie Belle tried to stand. White hot pain billowed from her side. She shrieked and collapsed again.
As the pain receded, she looked over to her side. Her coat was soaked with blood. A piece of a chevaloid, torn into a spike, protruded several inches from her belly. She wasn't sure how long she stared at it. Far above, the faint clipclop of Blueberry's hooves became a tinny echo. She tried to move again, but the pain stopped her.
A background hum shifted pitch, a higher tone, reaching toward something.
The ansible sitting at the foot of the repository flashed green in her peripheral vision. With her aura she reached out and pulled the new message out of the tray. Please, she thought. Say you're done. Say you've got the captives free. Say I won.
Proper Order's neat, hurried handwriting told her the mission was failing. The crew, aided by an army of chevaloids, had repelled the attack. They were already invading the Mettlesome and taking hostages. It's up to you, read the final line.
Sweetie Belle stared at the message for several seconds, then laughed. The volume of her voice surprised her. She craned to peer at the arch, and shouted Scootaloo's name. The stair room gave her words back to her in echo. There was no response.
The background shifted again, becoming louder. The ribbons of light knotted through the chamber seemed to shiver.
She looked back up to where the walls faded into infinity. Her jaw tightened. Okay, fine. I can do this. It's only pain. I just have to get up the stairs. She's alone, and so am I. It's only pain. It's only pain. I can do this.
She stood up.
Except – she didn't. The wound in her side seemed to tear wide open; her side coated in white-hot molten metal. It melted her resolve in an instant, and she found herself on the ground again, shivering.
“Saffron!” the hissed. “Do something! Mute the pain!”
“I'm doing as much as I can,” Saffron told her.
Sweetie Belle stared at the floor. After a moment, she tried to stand again.
This time the pain was even worse.
She slumped down, shuddering, and let her head droop. The tip of her horn scraped the ground. Daemons whispered fragmented admonishments in her ears.
Another pitch-shift. The air seemed to whine. Now the ribbons of light leap into motion, twisting and knotting in some complex pattern. The Apotheosis Machine, she though, beginning to spin up.
That was it. No clever plans, no tricks hidden up her sleeve. She'd lost – she'd lost Scootaloo, and she'd doomed the world, all through her own arrogance.
Sweetie Belle began to weep.
And so we reach the end – or, perhaps the beginning.
I wasn't sure we'd get there to be honest. With all the interruptions, it's taken nearly twenty minutes to get this story out. I suppose it took a while for Blueberry's goons to fill up their airship again.
But they must've done it. I can hear the Machine entering its final stages now.
I wonder if anyone will ever read/view/dream this, and under what circumstances.
Part of me wonders why I bothered to make this story when it'll all get swept away in the end. And part of me knows exactly way. Because when faced with a universe that will sweep away all you dreams and achievements, what else do you do but fight it, even when the battle is already lost?
I'm sorry, Sweetie Belle.
Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now?
… What?