//------------------------------// // First Engagement // Story: PaP: Bedtime Stories // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Charybdis came. The outer fortress had already lost most of its fortifications—the gates were already torn down, sections of wall had been reduced to rubble. There was no way to hold them all, and few weapons that could hit them at range anyway. Some soldiers had bows, or javelins, and the Romans had brought some of their siege weapons, but that was it. Even if nopony in the whole base ever missed, they would run out of projectiles a long time before Charybdis ran out of soldiers. Archive saw most of it from the air, where she fought alongside Sunset and some of the other heavies. There were many monsters in the air, which could bombard her troops from above or do more damage to the inner city beyond them. Earth had rarely seen such horrors. Her own army was made exclusively of the dead, who could not be returned to sleep simply by suffering bodily harm. Wounds that might’ve crippled or killed only annoyed them. Not only that, but they didn’t need to eat, or sleep, or any of the usual biological needs. Their enemy’s troops had some of the same advantages—Charybdis owned them so completely that he could force them to keep fighting until the moment their bodies failed. What killed ponies their own size would not kill them. They had one advantage every human and pony below lacked: they could not feel fear. Monstrosities crawled from the river in thick columns, charged screaming madness at the entrenched defenders, and were cut down by the thousands. Yet no matter how long they fought, it didn’t seem like they made a sizeable dent in the enemy’s forces. There was no end to the foot soldiers, there were always gigantic squid-monsters in the air, always new artillery bombardments in their walls, and buildings collapsing. If the war went on for long, there might be a deathless army fighting in the rubble of a city. The first night of the siege ended with the dead still holding the walls. By then the Romans had made an orderly camp in the courtyard, complete with walls of scavenged rubble and trenches dug by sturdy legionaries. The pony defenders still had their barracks, though much of those had been destroyed. Besides, they couldn’t sleep, and there was no food left to pretend to eat. Archive met with her generals atop the wall near dawn. Sunset Shimmer, Ironblood, and Caesar. They stood atop one of the tallest towers, overlooking the sea of shiny wet bodies that surrounded Mundi. The river did not look blue at any point. “How is your army holding up, Emperor?” Archive asked. She had returned to a human form—as much because she knew the ponies would understand as the Roman might not if she didn’t. “Will you be prepared when the sun goes down?” He nodded. “It is easy to find men to die for you—it is harder to find men willing to suffer for you. My men endured worse than this in Gaul, but… this enemy is not as mindless as it first appeared. Near the end, they shifted their tactics—aiming to dismember and drag away, rather than to kill. I estimate we lost two hundred men before the battle ended.” “There is some good news,” Sunset said. Alex didn’t know if she was able to understand Latin or not—it still wasn’t clear to her just what kinds of magic worked for the undead. Oracle couldn’t see into the future anymore, which was a shame for predicting the enemy’s strategies, but he could still fight in other ways. “I think he’s almost out of flyers. I don’t think he can make new ones very quickly, either. He overcommitted to a crushing victory, and we brought too many of them down. The air may be mostly clear going forward.” “Assuming he doesn’t have a reserve,” Ironblood said. The earth pony now had an arrow sprouting from one eye, which he hadn’t removed. The grizzly trophy was the only thing that looked completely solid under the weak sunlight. “He may be hoping we’ll pull our heavies out of the air, only to attack from that direction again. Our ground troops may’ve become largely immune to their attacks, but the city shield is not. If it fails, it won’t matter whether or not we still hold the outer city.” There was another human on the tower with them, though she was human only in appearance: Riley had taken the shape of a dark-haired woman, and now wore bits and pieces of scavenged armor. She spoke quietly into the Emperor’s ear, presumably translating for him. “What will our enemy do, goddess?” The Emperor finally asked. “His troops didn’t break last night, no matter their losses. They seemed to be trying to make us tire of swinging our swords. I don’t think I’ll ever get the stink of fish from my nose.” “He doesn’t care about losses,” Archive agreed. “He won’t need any of his troops when the war ends. They have no families to go back to, Emperor. There will be no widows if they die—many of them aren’t even capable of the feelings you know. They are less than animals.” He scratched a little at his chin. He was clean-shaven, though Archie doubted he had taken the time to shave. I don’t think undead need to. “I asked your servant to explain what forces drove this titan you face. Its name was familiar to me, but its form is not. Perhaps you can explain. He did not arrive on the battlefield, so I could not attempt to capture him myself.” Archive inhaled sharply, trying not to imagine how that might’ve gone. If the Emperor had tried to capture Charybdis… could one of the undead serve him? Was enough of his spirit here that he could be dragged down from Stygia? Death will never forgive me if that happens. “What I can tell you has no equivalent in your experience, Emperor. There is nothing like him in your world. He is not like a god or like a man. Charybdis is an Outsider—a being that does not belong in our world. It desires only to consume as much of this place, until it has taken all the light it can. It would see the whole planet a blasted, withered husk. It cannot be persuaded, intimidated, or frightened. “Not only that, but it’s immune to the foibles that have brought down the gods. It doesn’t grow proud, and I have never seen him tricked.” “And his troops? Are they as endless as they seem?” She nodded. “Moreso. He has more soldiers than every Roman citizen you have ever met, and everyone they have ever met, all together. Billions of slaves, who fight with absolute loyalty. His army has no supply lines to cut except for that river, and so many troops that our attempts to sever it in the past have been fruitless. No sooner have we broken his lifeline to the ocean than a new one is dug in its place.” The Emperor fell silent, looking thoughtful again. Ironblood was not, however. “I don’t know how long we can fight like this, Archive. Your magic has made us immune to pain, but… the price we paid was very high.” He rested one hoof on the shaft of the arrow. “I don’t feel right, Archive. My heart isn’t beating. Everything is cold. The longer we fought, the easier it was to feel anger, and the harder it was to feel anything else.” “What is the equine auxiliary saying, goddess?” The Emperor asked, looking as pensive as her general. “That he fears for his ability to fight a prolonged campaign here. And after what I’ve seen, I am reluctantly inclined to agree. We have bought ourselves time, but we can’t fight forever. I had hoped to wait for help, but now I realize help will not come in time.” “Jupiter? Or Mars, perhaps?” Archive turned to glare at where Athena stood, silencing her before she could say anything. This situation was complicated enough without the AI taking more of an opportunity to roleplay. “No. Great men… your own descendants, I suppose. They traveled to a far country, beyond the borders of the world. I hoped they might return before the battle was done, but that does not seem likely.” “If that is so, then we cannot leave the terms of the battle to our enemy. He has no camp, save the river. Can we attack him there? Do your strange horses wield some new weapons we could use? Poison, perhaps?” She nodded. “Yes, we have…” She struggled for a moment for how she could explain the concept of electricity. “A war-chariot, which can be aimed into the depths. If we can make it to the bank of the river, it will kill all the creatures in a large distance. But it won’t matter, Charybdis will not allow us to get that close. If we march out, he will rise to meet us. The demon will come himself, he has each time we attacked the river.” And each time, her troops had been massacred. Whenever she approached the water, their enemy seemed determined to stop them no matter what it cost him. “That means you’ve found his weakness,” the Emperor said. “Despite retaking the city, he did not return to ensure he could defeat us. Yet he puts himself at risk whenever you attack the water. Something in the water is the key.” “The demon himself is the key,” Alex said. “All his servants rely on his magic to survive, they’ve been completely corrupted. If his magic was destroyed, they would all die. The problem is that he’s a far mightier warrior than I am. I fought him beside my greatest soldiers, and we lost. Only I escaped with my life, and only barely.” The battle that had killed Sunset. She could feel her glaring at her now, though Sunset had grown a little less sour as time went on. Probably just getting used to whatever unpleasantness being undead brought. Alex didn’t know—for all the times she had died, that was one thing she’d never experienced. “I find it hard to imagine one enemy might be altogether different from another. Even Mars could be beaten by his father—is this titan mightier than a goddess?” “Unfortunately,” she said, heedless of the danger. But after the battle, somehow she doubted that the Emperor would be betraying her here. He had seen the servants of the enemy—they would be trying to kill him whether he had her help or rejected it. “We lasted three minutes,” Sunset said, her voice barely a whisper. She was using a translation spell—speaking for the Emperor’s benefit. “Oracle is barely functional anymore. I have lost most of my power as well. And the ‘goddess’ has given most of herself to raise the army. We will not last half as long as we did before. We didn’t land a single blow on him.” The Emperor took a moment before he replied. “If he cannot be beaten, then… perhaps he can be tricked. We know what he wants, and we know what we have that might interest him.” He nodded slightly towards the necklace Archive was wearing. “This strange object… you stole it from Pluto, didn’t you? The key you used to lock Cerberus away, perhaps, so that you could make off with the souls of the dead?” “That’s, uh… close enough, I guess,” she said. Almost none of that had been right, except for what he had implied. “Well if he wants to destroy, if he wants objects of power, then surely he would desire it. The question is, could we use that desire against him? Perhaps he might be made to meet with us, and then you could slip a knife into his gut while he took it. Or something to that effect.” Sunset Shimmer’s eyes widened, and she immediately rose to her hooves again. She clearly wasn’t translating her words anymore. “Lonely Day—you can’t do that. You can’t bring that thing anywhere near him. If Charybdis somehow had a way to plunder the world of the dead… even our total destruction would be a preferable alternative.” Archive opened her mouth to argue, to point out that some souls simply hadn’t come when she called. That was why she didn’t have Adrian to be with her at the end of all things, and others. Yet just because Joe’s spell had that limit now didn’t mean it couldn’t be reverse-engineered, or modified somehow. Yet perhaps there was some way she could do the same. Maybe she did have a knife she could thrust into Charybdis after all. “I have an idea,” she announced. “But for it to work, none of you can know. If he glimpses within your minds—a power he does possess—then it will fail.” She rose to her feet. The Emperor did as well, along with Sunset and Ironblood. “What are your orders?” Ironblood asked. “Whatever your plan, we can’t do nothing.” “We won’t do nothing.” She pointed off towards the river. “We’re going to march on him. We hold no reserves, nothing back. We will put the power of this deathless army to the test. We will prove to him that we have something of value in trade. And when he takes it…” She drew her revolver from its holster. “We’ll end this. For good.” Archive had to find somewhere to hide she wouldn’t be disturbed, somewhere that none of her soldiers could observe her plan even by accident. If any of them knew what she planned, then Charybdis was certain to discover it. The only hope they had against him was bringing weapons that he couldn’t see coming. Her kind was safe, along with the other Alicorns, but she doubted very much Sunset wanted to be a part of this. She found herself an intact housing block not far from the tower, and made her way in. It wasn’t very large—Axis Mundi had to house the survivors of all races from all over the world, and it did that by putting them very close together. Barely twenty feet by ten for what looked like six ponies. She made her way to the back of the room, switching on the lights as she went. There was still food on the table, and it had gone a little rotten, with flies buzzing around the slurry of green algae that was all anypony ate these days. Thus was survival at the end of the world. But the family who had lived here had done a great deal to try to make the place nicer. There were pictures on the wall, and she was a little surprised to recognize at least one of the faces. A refugee, one she’d never met, but that didn’t matter. She remembered them—she remembered all of them. Marissa had arrived at the worst possible time, but she’d survived despite it all. Fell in love with a unicorn while working in an ammunition factory, and had more children than she ever expected. Most of their single “elective items” crate was filled with foals’ toys. She levitated one out of the box—a stuffed doll shaped like a human. I know what you intend, Human. It was not a voice, exactly. Certainly not one she had heard very often. She knew with so much death magic about her there was no chance she would be able to sense the Keeper. But there were other spirits, no less important, or less powerful. This was the one she had feared meeting the most. She had many names over the years—but most ponies just called her the Pale Mare. Archive turned around and found a strange fog growing around the sturdy door at the far end of the room. The lighting system, still undamaged despite the siege, did not light that part of the room no matter how brightly it shone. She stood taller than an Alicorn, for indeed Archive did not see her as a pony at all, but as a human. There was no gender to the voice, no voice at all really. She just was, older than civilization, older than the oldest thing Archive’s racial memory contained. “Do you intend to forbid me?” Alex asked, rising to her hooves. She had already removed all her possessions from her armor, scattering them on the kitchen table. Only two would be coming with her, her crystal radio and her ancient handgun, Kerberos. She would not be able to bring anything else. An instant passed, and the shadowy outline was suddenly within a hoof’s reach of her, looming over like a chill ghost. Frost condensed on every surface in the room, the bowls of old food froze white all the way down. It is natural for mortal creatures to fear the end. Even those who live as long as you struggle against it. You flee, but in vain. I will have what is mine, in time. You had your chance to live, and you lived well. Others have gone, and they will survive your extinction. Those swimming things, in their floating stations. The ancient children of this world, who escaped me to build elsewhere. Take your victory in this, and die in peace. She reached out with one pale hand, as though she were going to take the artifact from around Alex’s neck. But she didn’t let her—didn’t intend to give it up. She stepped back. “Are you going to tell me the same lie that I’ve told so many of my subjects? That a story can’t have meaning unless it ends? That the way we die is as important as the way we live? Or maybe there’s some solace in Timeheart when this is over?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “Maybe it’s not all lies—but maybe we don’t care. We’ve made it all these years because we don’t accept defeat. We were bred to survive no matter what. Survive disease, survive predators, survive the climate, survive the hostility of the universe itself. I will not end that struggle now. I refuse to be the link that breaks the chain.” If you fail, whispered the voice, directly into her ear. You will do much worse than that. Archive glanced to one side, but there was nothing there. The lights came back on, the Pale Mare was gone. She was alone. It felt a little like she always had been. Of course, she wasn’t completely alone. She could hear another voice, one she’d been tuning out since putting on the Stygian Key. Yet now she focused on its words, letting them come to the forefront of her mind. “This is good, yes. Free me, and there is no limit to what we will achieve. We won’t just survive against this demon, we’ll send him back where he came from! And then we can bring back all the missing souls. Fill in all the families, all the histories. We can fix everything. Nothing will ever be forgotten again.” “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Archive said.