The Weary Traveler

by The Psychopath


Deoxyribonucleic acid

Celestia and the princess arrived in the auditorium, its size allowing for two floors of seats to look upon the wooden stage normally hidden behind white curtains accentuated with blue rope. The entire area had its walls painted a clean white while the seats were still a golden shade with red trims. Much of the school had no been fully 'repainted' for Luna. Sitting upon the stage were several monstrous machines thrice the size of a pony in both height and width. Twilight galloped up to them in a hurry, her excitement overflowing from her grin that reached ear-to-ear.

"Are these things from that pony you mentioned?" she asked Celestia.

The alicorn shook her head. "No, I'm afraid these are just from us. These were taken from a hospital where they were being developed. I was told about them and, thus, asked for insight." She scratched the back of her neck. "They wanted to lend them to us for this procedure, as long as you write down your reports on what you discover," Celestia explained. "The vial with the blood the stranger gave me and a vial from one of my guards should be in the rack there on the table. The cabinets behind you contain multiple chemicals I...didn't really have time to memorize.

Celestia noticed Twilight going on a tangent about all the machinery are chemical compounds present, overhearing something about dioxygen. Celestia had barely taken a single step when Twilight called to her.

"Uh, Princess Celestia?"

"Yes, Twilight?" the princess answered in her ever-patient tone.

"Do you expect this to be done today?"

Celestia shrugged. "I honestly have no idea how long that sort of work takes, so take your time, Twilight." She raised a hoof after remembering something important. "I almost forgot: Don't take too long. In three weeks, everypony who accepted the invitation will be coming here, and I was hoping to have this done by then."

Twilight nodded. "Okay. I'll work as fast as I can."

"Thank you, Twilight. I know you'll do fine, so don't worry."

"One more thing, though. Are you expecting some kind of grandiose difference?" Twilight exaggerated by waving her forelegs in the air.

"Honestly, I would be lying if I said no."

"Alright then," Twilight said.

Celestia returned to her room, having given the instructions to close the appointments for the day. She was quite exhausted from the events of these past two days. She crawled under the covers of her bed from the base and plopped her head on the large pillows. It almost disappeared in their fluffiness. In the comfy, soft embrace of both her comforters and pillows, the mare quietly drifted off to sleep, finally relaxed and at peace. After all, when you're asleep, you don't need to worry about the real world for a time, and there's no better moment of existence.

Yet her dreams were bothered. Disquieted by the screams of the burning and dying. She could see a murky image of her and her sister yelling at the pony and trying to imprison him. His face was so bright. So happy. He seemed to be so young despite being so old, and yet...The mares tried to imprison the stallion, but when they tried, he vanished, like he had the day before. And then the light. Equestria set ablaze and the whole world turned into a barren and dusty desert in a fit of rage and frustration. Everypony was dead because of him, and yet here he had stood, unbatting his many eyes at the prospect of potentially killing everypony again.

Another dream still after Celestia had calmed down, yet this one was more positive. Much happier. She could catch glimpses of it, where there were ponies like the traveler, within massive constructs in the vast darkness of space. So much progress and development, and creatures she had never before seen in her life. Then came a moment of brightness where almost god-like beings swam through space, seemingly embracing the crafts. It is then that she awoke to her sister staring at her from the other side of the bed.

"Did you see them?" Luna asked her sister.

The princess was still groggy. "See what? The weird dreams you gave me?" She wiped her eyes and noticed that night had set in. "How did you even do that?"

Luna rolled her eyes. "You know very well that the dream realm links all of time." She scratched her head. "Although I wasn't expecting it to transcend space." She looked back to her sister and took a deep breath. "I spoke with the residents in it despite them not liking me and discovered those few memories of our traveler. They're blurry and not very revealing, but they showed me quite enough that I thought you should see them."

Celestia blinked in disbelief. "So those were real?"

"I'm afraid so."

The princess leaned forward in her bed and dropped her head onto the sheets. "Do you know what I saw today?"

"Your former student being creepy as usual?" she asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"What?"

"I went to see her in the college. She was...enthusiastic, saying she had at least partially decoded both samples and found some similarities already, but she didn't have enough to formulate a proper presentation yet."

Celestia didn't seem that surprised and scrunched her face as a way of displaying 'What are you going to do?'. "That isn't what I had seen, however. It was something...worse..." she trailed off. The mare decided to levitate a pillow towards her and hug it. "That...thing disintegrated a full-grown dragon in not even a second, and whatever it used kept going like the creature had no substance."

Now it was Luna's turn to be in disbelief. "You mean the same dragons that are practically impossible to hurt with basic spells because of their scales and tough bodies?" Celestia nodded. "I see...That must have been something to behold."

"It makes you wonder," Celestia continued. "Does he intend to get rid of us or keep us?"

"Why would you think of something so horrible? I recall him mentioning something for us, and he wouldn't be able to take us on himself if we were prepared!" Luna pounded her chest once.

Celestia glared at her sister from the corner of her eyes. "Luna, we can't believe anything he says. He's killed ponies, with no regrets."

The lunar princess looked down at her sister. "Our hooves aren't clean in that respect."

"But we didn't do it out of spite. We did it because we had no other choice."

"Then what do you propose we do?"

"Wait to see how everything unfolds," Celestia said. "Wait and see if progress takes us with it or if it abandons us and forgets we ever existed."

"Sister..." Luna said melancholically. "You shouldn't think that way. Don't let your fears get to you."

Several days had passed with Twilight still hard at work in her new lab, still adding substances to the blood and determining the sequences thanks to the machines that could analyze everything bit-by-bit, when at least she had come to a response.

"Huh. Aside from a few dormant mutations and active ones, there's no real difference between the two." Twilight looked at her notes again then tilted them to the side. "Well, that's disappointing. I wanted to know what exactly it was that the princess wanted to know." The lavender alicorn gathered up all of her notes and set to returning to Canterlot. "Er...maybe I should clean up first, "she chuckled to herself.

Celestia and Luna were busy discussing matters of state before going to the council chambers for more in-depth talks with the 'elected' representatives of the panicked ponies. They didn't get to finish thanks to Twilight interrupting them.

"Princesses, I'm here!" she shouted. She lowered a huge packet of paper and parchments with her notes on them. "I did the analysis, using two methods just to be sure, and aside from a few minor mutations, there weren't any real differences amongst the two samples that I was aware of." She sighed. "I was really hoping to find some grandiose discovery, but it's..." She scratched the back of her head. "It was pretty mundane, to be honest."

The alicorn sister looked at each other with wide eyes.

"Then he was telling the truth," Luna muttered. "That's not...But how?!"

Twilight was confused. "What's wrong? What's so special about this pony?"

"The visitor...He's...looks nothing like us," Celestia said in a calm and quiet tone.

"Uh huh..." Twilight hummed sarcastically.

"Twilight," Celestia started more calmly. "What I meant is that he looks nothing like pony-kind save for his body shape, and that's still stretching it?"

The lavender alicorn was doubting what she was being told. "Different how?"

"He almost looks like an octopus," Luna blurted.

"...What? But...then how is the dna practically identical? What does that mean for us?"

Celestia shook her head. "I do not know. It is also a disturbing thought considering the three machines in the shape of ponies that accompanied him."

"Yes," Luna added. "Allegedly they were real ponies put in those bodies. My sister initially thought them to be machines, as she put it."

"Well, that's too much for me to take in at once," Twilight stated meekly.

"Say, wasn't Spike with you?" Celestia asked.

"He's at the college, watching the machines," Twilight explained. "But I wanted to know: Is this 'visitor' going to be here soon? I would like to meet him."

"In three weeks. Until then, you'll have to be patient," Celestia said. "Then you'll meet him and his...retinue," she spat.