//------------------------------// // Chapter 25: Scarred World // Story: Equestria 485,000 // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// Under normal circumstances, Pinkie Pie would have been quite quick and far more agile than her squishy, sugar-fed body would seem to allow. She was not adept at moving through the snow, though, and the going was clumsy. Eventually, she just stopped. Twilight, who was flying, had no trouble catching up to her.             Twilight descended from the cold sky and sat down next to Pinkie Pie in the snow. Pinkie was looking out over a small ice-cliff into a thin ravine.             “Pinkie?” said Twilight.             “Go away,” said Pinkie. She no longer sounded angry, or even sad. Her voice sounded empty. Somehow, that was worse.             “Make me.”             Pinkie Pie turned and glared through tear-filled, bloodshot eyes. Her expression softened for a moment, and she quickly turned back to the ravine. “I know,” she said.             “Know what?”             “That it isn’t your fault. You didn’t take us here, or really do all this. You’d probably have an aneurism making the planet this messy.”             “Believe me, I’m no stranger to brain injury at this point.”             “But it’s just not fair! Not the brain injury, I guess. Or maybe it was? I mean us being here! We’re not supposed to be here, not like this! Look at this place!” She pointed across the ravine. On the other side was nothing but rocks and ice covered in strange dull-green cyanobacterial moss. “How am I supposed to have a party here? Am I going to throw a depression party, and we can all get together and sigh and lament! I hate lamenting!”             “Well, you certainly are doing a lot of it.”             “I’m really sad, Twilight! And I don’t know how to make it go away.”             Twilight paused for a long moment, and then took a breath. “Yeah. I know how it feels.”             “You do?”             “Of course I do. Pinkie, remember, I outlived you. I outlived everypony. And I will outlive everypony. Silken, the captain, my personal students…they’re all going to leave me. Like you did.”             “Twilight, I didn’t mean to! If I could have pickled myself, I would have- -”             “You were pickled. It was in your will. Weirdly enough. If I recall, you also stated that the drywall in your home should be replaced with graham crackers before it was given to your granddaughter.” Twilight paused. “In retrospect, you may have become senile in your old age.”             “Oh wow,” said Pinkie Pie, her eyes wide. “Old mare me was so cool!” Her expression fell, and she looked back out at the emptiness. “But now I don’t have a granddaughter. Or a house. Or any graham crackers. I’ve got nothing. You’ve still got a cult, and space ships, and probably a planet or two.”             “I only have one planet.”             “But what do I have?”             “You have friends. That’s something I don’t have.”             Pinkie Pie gasped softly. “But- -you’re the Princess of Friendship! You not having friends would be like me being a blue pony, but, you know, still named ‘Pinkie Pie’ instead of “Blueie Pie’.” She shuddered. “Wow, that’s a terrible name!”             “I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Twilight, looking out into the ice that had once been cities and forests filled with happy, smiling ponies. “I didn’t want to make friends if they were just going to leave me. It’s not their fault. I know it’s not. For a while, though, they were immortal, and I was happy…but then the Virus came. Now all those friends I thought I would have forever are gone too.”             Pinkie Pie stared at Twilight. “My heart feels like it just ate twenty cakes too many. It hurts, Twilight. How do I make it stop hurting?”             “You forget,” said Twilight, still staring outward. “That’s what I did. I filled my brain with facts and figures, memories and endless texts. I pushed you and the others out of it. I pushed everypony out of it, until all that was left was my work.”             “But- -but- -I don’t want to forget! Maud, and Marble, and Limestone, and all the others, I don’t want to forget them! I love them!”             Twilight looked at Pinkie, whose eyes were starting to fill with tears again. “Then the pain isn’t going to go away. It will get duller over time, but it never goes away. It will always hurt. It hurts me right now, looking at you. But I’m not going to look away because of that pain, now am I?”             Pinkie Pie sniffled and then smiled. It was a weak smile, but one of the first real smiles Twilight had seen on her face since Pinkie had emerged from the tank.  Twilight could not help but smile too.             “Hey,” said Twilight. “The others are heading for that forest over there, but I told them to wait for us. If I recall, you used to be an excellent skater. And look.” Twilight pointed toward a large exposed portion of the glacier, one that had filled with meltwater and frozen into something reminiscent of a pond.             Pinkie Pie saw it, and her face lit up. “But we don’t have skates!”             Twilight reached up to her face and grasped the morphiplasm respirator mask she wore. She took a deep breath and pulled it off, reconfiguring it as she did. It assembled itself into a set of eight small skates. After a moment, though, she had to breathe. And she did. She could smell the ozone and toxic magic of the world, and she felt the cold of Equestria’s air in her nostrils. Even after all this time and even as deeply as it was buried under pollution and evolution, she still recognized the base notes of that smell. It smelled like home.             “Here,” she said, giving four of the skates to Twilight.             “But you don’t know how to skate.”             “I didn’t once. But I’ve had a long time to practice a lot of things. We can’t spend all day here, but…well…I don’t think Silken will get impatient after a few minutes.”             Pinkie Pie smiled. “I get it,” she said. “We can skate, but we can’t go late, or will catch some hate, and that wouldn’t be a great fate. Pait…drait…bate? I can’t think of any more.”             “So we have to be in time for the date,” said Twilight.             Pinkie Pie gasped. “Oh! You did it!” She stood up and took the skates in her mouth. She paused, though. “And…do you think we can make a snowmare? Just one, before we go? I don’t know when we’ll get a chance again, you know, living in space and all. And we’ve certainly got enough snow.”             Twilight looked at the forest in the distance, and decided that there would be time. “Yeah,” she said. “Of course we can.”             When they returned, Twilight was flying and Pinkie Pie leaping across the ground. The going had been far faster than it had been before; Pinkie Pie seemed a million times lighter, and seemed closer to her usual springy self than before. Twilight, meanwhile, had taken back her morphiplasm but assembled it into a visor rather than a full facemask. That left her with the HUD, but allowed her to continue breathing the air around her. The increase in oxygen made flying vastly easier, and, interestingly, the heavy exposure to magical elements which should have been toxic to her had visibly accelerated the healing of her damaged horn. Her magic was nowhere near normal, but was now roughly the equivalent to that of a normal unicorn.             The wind had picked up, but not to the point where it had completely buried the tracks of four ponies and one remnus. Twilight spotted them easily and followed them into the forest of immense trees.             “Oh wow,” said Pinkie Pie. “Those are some big trees!”             “Indeed,” said Twilight.             “And you know what they say about big trees.”             “Um, no. I don’t.”             “They have big squirrels!” Pinkie Pie stifled a giggle. That had clearly not been the punchline. “And you know what they say about big squirrels, right?”             “There are not big squirrels in the forest. There aren’t any squirrels at all. Because they’re extinct.”             “They have big NUTS!” cried Pinkie Pie, suddenly howling with laughter and rolling in the snow. “HA!” she cried, “teen rating, here we come!”             Twilight had no idea what she was talking about, nor did she get the joke. “They’re not nut trees, though. They’re fruit trees.”             Pinkie Pie’s laughter faded, and she let out a long sigh. “Twilight, if I have to explain it, it’s not funny anymore.”             “But it’s not funny at all if I don’t get it.”             “Trust me, you’ll get it. Eventually. Hopefully.” Pinkie Pie sat up. “Okay. How about an easy one, then? Knock knock.”             “Pinkie, I don’t have time for- -”             “KNOCK. KNOCK. Open the door, or I’ll lick your doorknob. And believe me, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d licked somepony’s doorknob when they weren’t home.”             “Doorknobs…Pinkie, this isn’t that kind of joke, is it?”             “Just answer the door!”             “Fine! Who’s there?”             “Who.”             “Who who?”             “Ha! You’re an owl now!”             Twilight groaned. That joke had been almost physically painful.             “Oh come on! That was funny and you know it! Oh, oh, how about this one! A Pegasus, a unicorn, to yaks and a potato salespony walk into a bar…”             “And they had to put a sign on it so people would stop running into it?”             Pinkie Pie blinked, and then laughed. “That’s as good one! I should have thought of it! But no. One of the yaks orders a drink, and two unicorns start rubbing the other one down with rich, creamy butter…”             Pinkie Pie continued her story as Twilight followed the circuitous path of hoofprints in the snow. They went deeper than she had expected, and she began to wonder if Silken had actually followed her orders. That was until she saw Rarity standing in a rocky clearing, and Rainbow Dash sitting on a massive root above her, watching from a position of repose.             “…and then the Pegasus says: ‘that’s not my feather pillow, that’s my EX WIFE!’” She burst out laughing so hard that she snorted. Twilight chuckled a little bit, even though she was actually quite embarrassed at how dirty that joke had been.             Rarity, as expected, was changing her morphiplasm incessantly, moving between different styles of winter coats.             “How’s this?” she said, looking up at Rainbow Dash. “A peacoat never goes out of fashion.”             “Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “If you don’t mind looking like a stallion.”             Rarity grumbled, and then shifted her clothing again. “A layered sweater, then? Or how about something in fur? Fake fur, of course, the last time I didn’t add that Fluttershy didn’t speak to me for a month.”             “You might just not have heard her. She’s pretty quiet.”             “Oh. Hmm. How about a hat, too? And a matching muff?” Rainbow Dash giggled and snorted. Rarity glared at her. “It is a legitimate garment!” she cried, “and it is quite elegant! Even if, you know, you can’t walk properly while you are using one. But when you’re sitting, they are indeed excellent! I’m sure if you tried putting your hooves in one, you’d love muffs too!”             Rainbow Dash snorted again. “You know what? I bet I would.”             Rarity grumbled. “Perhaps a winter dress with a jacket? Or maybe- -” She saw Twilight and Pinkie Pie approaching smiled widely. “Twilight! Pinkie! I was beginning to worry!”             “There’s nothing to worry about,” said Twilight.             “But the cold, darling! You’ll catch a chill! You should have at least brought a muff!”             By this time, Rainbow Dash was loudly guffawing. Neither Twilight nor Rarity knew why. Rainbow Dash, to Twilight, did seem a bit healthier. She was less pale, and seemed to have more energy. Twilight wondered if it really had been the lack of a sky overhead that had been making her so ill- -or if it was her imagination that she was getting better at all.             “Ooh! Ooh!” cried Pinkie, jumping up and down. “How about a quad-muff!”             “A…quad muff?” Rarity looked confused.             “Yeah! One that puts ALL your hooves in one muff!”             “Darling, how would you move?”             “How do you move with one? You’d have to walk on your back legs! And ponies can’t really do that, I’ve seen Lyra Heartstrings doing all the time. She just ends up falling down.”             “I will…make a note of it?” She switched her clothing to a high-collared jacket. That was when she saw Twilight’s visor. “Twilight! You changed your helmet!”             “I did,” said Twilight. “The other one was…needlessly restrictive.”             “Well, I think the minimalism is far better. And more futuristic!”             “Yeah!” called Rainbow Dash. “You look awesome! All future-y! Now all you need are some armor-plated calf-high boots!”             “Rainbow Dash!” cried Rarity, her voice rising several octaves. “That is not the sort of thing Twilight would wear!”             “Why? It would be totally cool! Like, sci-fi warrior cyberpunk or something.”             “Cyberpunk fashion works well in theory but looks hideous in practice! Twilight would look better in a double-button blouse, uniform style but with some accents.”             “I only have enough morphiplasm for the headpiece.”             “Or for skates,” added Pinkie Pie. “The hoof kind. Not the fish.”             “Wait,” said Rainbow Dash. “There’s a fish called a skate? Since when?”             Rarity ignored them. “Well, you can borrow some of mine, if you like.”             “No,” said Twilight. “It looks much better on you. And you need it more than I do anyway. You’ll find it’s a lot more durable than normal fabric.”             “But does it stain?” mused Rarity, looking at her sleeve. “That’s the question…”             “Do you know where the others are?”             “The others?”             “Fluttershy and Applejack?”             “And Silken! You know, the tall one? About eleven feet tall, looks like a gerenuk?”             “I know what she looks like, Pinkie. I’ve known her longer than you. Admittedly not by much, but at least a little bit. And I’m not worried about her. She’s a sixteen ton machine. I’m more concerned with the squishier members of the group.”             “They walked off that way,” said Rarity, pointing. “Rainbow Dash wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed behind with her. That and it looked awfully muddy in that direction. And I can’t risk getting muddy! There’s no soap anywhere nearby, or even a spa!”             “I’m not sick,” said Rainbow Dash, standing up and visibly shaking for a moment. “I’m fine! I just wanted to wait for Twilight and Pinkie, that’s all!”             “And to listen to Rarity talking about muffs,” said Pinkie. Rainbow Dash laughed again and nearly fell off her branch.             “Do you know where they are now?”             “I do,” said Rarity, forming herself a pair of cold-weather boots and stepping from her clearing into the snow. “They went this way.”             Rarity led them through the snow. Rainbow Dash followed, and Twilight was sure to take note of the fact that she walked rather than flying. Her concern over Rainbow Dash’s health was growing, and although the Pegasus’s condition had improved Twilight refused to allow herself to become too optimistic.             Applejack had not gone far. The others found her standing at the base of a root ten times wider than she was tall, which in turn led to a tree that stretched high into the sky above. She was staring up at the canopy as if she were waiting for something.             “Applejack!” said Rarity, stepping to her side. “We were wondering where you went off to!”             “I’ve just been over here,” said Applejack, still looking up at the tree.             Rainbow Dash looked up at the tree where Applejack was looking. “Um, AJ? What’s up?”             “Trees,” she said.             “Well, I’ve never seen a tree go DOWN,” mused Pinkie. “It would be like a big potato. I could probably hollow it out and live in it. Or make the BIGGEST potato skins EVER!” She paused. “But then I would need big bacon…”             “I’m not looking at potatoes,” said Applejack. “And for the record, ponies don’t eat bacon. That’s just wrong.”             “Then why are you staring at the tree, Darling? Surely it’s not going to do a trick.”             “I’m about to win a bet.”             Almost on cue, a shape moved quickly through the branches of the tree. Twilight breathed in sharply, wondering if she would have to defend her friends from some strange beast from the canopy. Her visor quickly focused on the object, though, and confirmed that it was Silken. She was descending from the top of the tree at great speed, easily leaping from branch to branch as she moved. There was almost something elegant and magical about the way she moved, or rather, there would have been had Twilight not known that she was a machine whose body had specifically been precision constructed for unnatural grace.             Silken was not alone, though. She was carrying something. When she finally descended to where Applejack was standing, she set down her load. It was a single, massive red fruit almost as large as Silken herself.             “Well slap me on the flank and call me Fluttershy!” cried Applejack. “I’ll be tied up and dipped in caramel, you weren’t kiddin’! They really are apple trees!”             “I told you,” said Silken. “I am programmed to be completely unable to lie.”             “No you aren’t,” said Twilight.             Silken smiled. “Exactly.”             Applejack approached the fruit in awe, and looked up at the trees. “So these…these are all Appletrees?”             Twilight nodded. “My guess is that these are the descendent of the trees from your orchard.”             Applejack gasped. “You think?”             Silken looked up at the trees. “It must have taken a great deal of love and care to produce trees whose offspring could survive and grow wild under these conditions.”             “Applejack,” said Twilight. “Didn’t you have names for every single tree?”             “You’re darn tootin’,” said Applejack.             “Every single one?” said Rainbow Dash. She turned to Rarity. “Did you know that?”             “Well, I knew SOME trees had names, but…darling, there must have been thousands!”             “Eight hundred and fourth seven, plus two hundred and six babies,” said Applejack. “And eawch and every one had a name.” She looked up at the vast tree overhead. “But these ones don’t, and that’s an awful shame. They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves, though.” She pointed suddenly, and narrowed her eyes. “And this guy looks a bit like a Bartolomeu…”             “How can you tell it’s a boy tree?” asked Pinkie Pie. “Is it from looking at the twigs?”             “Well, yes, but you also have to consider the trunk and the root, and…” She turned suddenly to Pinkie Pie. “Wait a darn minute. Were you just making a joke?”             “No. I’m programmed to be absolutely unable to joke.”             “You aren’t either!” said Twilight. “You’re not programmed at all!”             “Exactly.”             “Well,” said Applejack, “it’s good to see you’re feeling a little better.” She turned back to the giant apple. “How about we celebrate with the world’s largest apple fritter?             She reached up and gently caressed the apple. As she did, it suddenly started shaking. Applejack cried out as the bottom part of the apple unfurled into a number of stocky, jointed legs. The middle part then split down the center, revealing an asymmetrical complex of eyes imbedded in a woodlike pit. A large claw snapped at Applejack, and when she jumped back the apple sprayed her with a torrent of small black seeds. It then scuttled off sideways.             “Crab apple!” cried Pinkie Pie. “CRAB APPLE!”             “CRAB!” cried Rarity, promptly fainting. Rainbow Dash caught her.             “You get back here!” shouted Applejack, wiping the seeds from her face and proceeding to chase the fruit. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to wrangle some kind of ambulatory apple before! I’ll make fritters out of you if it’s the last thing I do!”             She only managed to get twenty feet before something else with a preponderance of legs dropped from the overhanging arch of one of the roots. This, though, was not an apple of any kind. It more closely resembled a huge scorpion, although its body was covered in moss and mushrooms. That was how it had camouflaged itself as it lie in wait for something more palpable than walking fruit.             “Gah!” cried Applejack, falling backward onto her haunches. “Mah apple!”             The apple, of course, was not in danger. It took one last look back at them and retreated vertically up a nearby rock face before disappearing in the distance. The scorpion, though, loomed over Applejack and did indeed appear to be the more pressing concern. Twilight charged her horn, preparing a spell that even with her greatly reduced power should have still been quite potent. She had nearly fired it when she spied Fluttershy sitting calmly on the back of the scorpion.             “Fluttershy!”             “Hi Twilight,” said Fluttershy, calmly.             “What are you doing up there?!”             “Sitting. It’s very soft.”             The glassy eyes of the scorpion shifted from pony to pony, and Twilight could see saliva dripping from a many-toothed mouth that looked more like it would belong on some horrible deep-river fish than on a giant arachnid. It did not attack, though, and in fact lowered itself to give Fluttershy a chance to climb off.             “Huh?” said Rarity, recovering from her faint. “Oh my head…Rainbow Dash, I just had the worst dream. There was an enormous crab, with all sorts of legs and…” She looked up at the scorpion, and it looked at her. “Oh for pony’s sake,” she said, fainting again.             Fluttershy stepped down and hugged the scorpion. It hugged back, although with many, many more legs.             “Hugs for bugs!” cried Pinkie Pie. “I want a hug too!” She ran forward, and the scorpion immediately began to squeeze her with its several large claws. “Eek!” gasped Pinkie. “That’s a strong…grip! Carefully…you’ll squeezed out my filling…”             “Fluttershy, what is this?” asked Twilight, still annoyed. Her heart was beating quickly, which made the implants that surrounded it throb painfully. “You could have gotten eaten!”             “Oh no,” said Fluttershy. “Simon only eats apples.”             “Simon?”             “That’s his name. Well, it’s actually more complicated by that, but Simon’s sort of close.”             “And why were you riding a scorpion?”             “He’s not a scorpion. He’s a type of vinegaroon.”             “That explains his…sour…expression,” gasped Pinkie. She was still being “hugged” with incredible vigor.             “I met him when I went for a walk. I was talking to some hummingbirds- -”             “Wait,” said Twilight. “Hummingbirds? There aren’t any birds on this planet.”             “I checked,” said Silken.             “Well, no, they’re not REALLY hummingbirds. More like enormous mosquitos.”             “Mo- -mosquitos!” cried Applejack. “Where? Gosh darn it, they’re gonna try to take my apple juices, aren’t they?”             “That would suck,” wheezed Pinkie Pie.             “- -and they told me that there was a vinegaroon that needed help. And he did. He was so sad. Crying, even. Well…more of salivating. But in a sad way.” She stroked the moss on the creature. “He was having trouble finding a lady vinegaroon, but I told him that all he needed to do was build up his confidence. Maybe get pruned a little. Rarity always says first impressions are very important.”             The creature snorted. Twilight could not tell if it was a happy snort or a hungry one.             “I want to ride a scorpion too!” said Rainbow Dash.             “Vinegaroon,” corrected Fluttershy. “And I’m afraid he’s busy right now. But we can come back later. Isn’t that right, Simon?”             The creature grunted again.             “Go on now! Make thousands upon thousands upon thousands of adorable little eggs! And don’t forget to duck, or your head might get bitten off!” Fluttershy giggled and the scorpion did something that might have been a smile. Then it hugged her and walked off, dropping Pinkie Pie in the process.             “Oof!” she said. “Applejack?”             “Yeah?”             “Can you take a look to see if my upper part is still connected to my bottom part?”             “I’m not looking at your bottom part, Pinkie.”             “Well, neither am I! What if he loved me to pieces?”             “You’re fine,” said Silken. “And even if you weren’t, I’m pretty sure I know how to reconnect them.”             “Really?”             “No. I lied again.”             Fluttershy rejoined the group as the scorpion left. “This place is amazing,” she said. “The level of biodiversity is really quite impressive. I thought I knew every single animal, but now I don’t know any! So many new things to learn, and new furry- -or rather chitinous, I guess- -friends to make!”             “I’m pretty sure I saw a furry cockroach,” said Rainbow Dash.             “Rarity can use as a muff!” said Pinkie Pie, jumping to her feet.             “Ugh,” said Rarity. “Who’s talking about my muff? What?” She blinked. “Is it gone?”             “Yes.”             “Oh my,” said Rarity, finally letting Rainbow Dash release her. “I simply cannot believe this place. You know I detest spiders. Almost as much as Twilight detests snakes.”             “It’s been like elevendy bajillion years!” said Pinkie Pie. “There’s no way Twilight is still afraid of snakes after all that time!”             “You would be surprised,” said Silken. She was then silenced by a glare from Twilight.             “Are we all feeling better?” asked Twilight. “Because as much as I don’t want to rush anypony, we are on a tight schedule.”             “Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “We know.”             Twilight was surprised. “You know?”             “Twilight, it’s not exactly news,” said Applejack. “You schedule everything. Every time.”             “No I don’t.”             “Darling,” said Rarity, “you had a schedule over your bed that defined time allotments for making other schedules.”             “I remember that,” said Twilight, her eyes widening. “I loved my schedule schedule…”             “But moving shouldn’t be a problem,” said Applejack. “My legs have been ichin’ for a walk worse than a pair of boots made out of poison oak.”             “Yeah, moving isn’t a problem at all!” exclaimed Pinkie. “Unless you have aquariums! Then it’s an absolute bi- -”             “Pinkie!”             “- -t of trouble?”             They laughed, and started walking. They did not get very far before Twilight suddenly stopped.             “Twilight?” said Fluttershy, turning around. “What is it?”             “Silken?”             “I hear it too.”             “MOVE.”             The pair of them moved in unison, grabbing the other ponies and shoving them firmly beneath a large root. Pinkie laughed loudly, and Rarity squealed in offense.             “Unhoof me!” she said.             “Quiet!” hissed Twilight.             The others did not seem to understand what was going on- -until they heard the sound too. A low, sterile groan that sounded too deep for any organic being to make. It was so low as to be nearly inaudible, as ominous as it was impassive.             The whole group fell absolutely silent, save for the sound of Fluttershy’s quivering. Then the more adventurous members among them stuck their heads out through the thick tendrils of moss-like algae that hung from the root and looked toward the source of the sound: the sky.             At first, there was nothing. The trees obscured the grayness beyond, and there was no motion, not even that of the various winged insects that Twilight was sure resided up in the leaves of the vast apple trees.             This silence and stillness did not last long. Twilight was the first to see them, and even though she knew exactly what to expect her breath still stopped from fear as they passed overhead.             There were five of them, their rust and metal-coated bodies seeming to drag through the air. They were propelled by long, well-formed sets of wings: two bore blue wings with blue feathers, and the other three had shorter wings in a pale yellow color. The blue ones had assumed long, vicious-looking shapes with various limbs of thin machinery and gray flesh emerging from below their snakelike bodies. The yellow ones were far stockier, to the point of being almost round, although they dragged long trails of tentacles behind them as they buzzed through the air.             “What in the name of Celestia’s vanilla-scented rump are THOSE?” whispered Applejack.             Fluttershy peaked out. “They’re not animals,” she said. “Definitely not animals…”             “Not animals?” said Pinkie. “Does that mean they’re…MONSTERS?”             Fluttershy squeaked. “Pinkie, no….”             “Does anypony have a silver sword, then?”             Twilight shushed them angrily, but it was too late. One of the stockier creatures seemed to have heard them. It deviated from the flock, tilting and rolling almost randomly through the air until it came to rest against the trunk of a tree. A number of mechanical legs emerged from the side, locking it into the thick bark. It took a step forward, something that appeared extremely awkward for a creature with radial symmetry. Then it stood for a moment, silent and waiting.             A sound went out over the forest, almost deafening despite being on the lower range of pony hearing. It rose quickly to an electrical hum, and Twilight’s friends covered their ears in pain. Twilight did not. She kept watching, and she was rewarded by something she wished she had not seen. The metal carapace on the back of the creature split open, dripping a large volume of hydraulic fluid and mucous in the process to reveal a single, massive eye that seemed to take up most of the creature’s body.             They eye shifted around the forest, moving in rabid panic from tree to tree, its blue iris and jaundiced yellow sclera flitting from surface to surface as its tiny round pupil searched for the source of the sound below.             “It’s going to see us,” wept Fluttershy, “oh Celestia, it’s going to see us!”             “How could it not?” said Pinkie Pie. “I mean, it’s eye is HUGE!”             “PINKIE!”             “What? It’s not like it made a giant ear, it’s an eye so- -HFMMFMMF!!”             Pinkie had been silenced by Silken putting a long and oddly flexible leg over her mouth.             Above, the creature took another step forward, the eye turning exactly to where the ponies were. For a moment, it seemed to lock on Twilight, and her eyes locked on it. Then its genderless, distorted voice rang out through the trees.             “Vortog…plath idena…thanthakta…”             The pupil then dialated to the edge of the iris. It paused for a moment, and then dilated further. The eyeball burst open into undifferentiated tentacles, which then spread outward, wrapping around each other and changing shape as they sprouted yellow feathers. Within seconds, the creature was covered in roughly made, ragged wings, and it took flight, rejoining its compatriots. Twilight had been so focused on the eye-creature that she had not noticed that the others had begun to circle, waiting for its report.             They circled one last time, and then departed. Their sound continued to carry for a few minutes longer, but then stopped suddenly without fading. The ponies stood in silence for a long moment, and then proceeded to panic.             “What were THOSE?!” cried Rarity. “Those bodies, that- -that EYE!” She shuddered so hard that her morphiplasm clothing momentarily reverted to its default form. “So DISGUSTING!”             “They looked like the monster from ‘Daring Do and the Three-Lobed Eye’!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, seemingly both excited and terrified at the same time. “You know, the one that sucks the marrow from- -”             “Please no!” cried Fluttershy, “I don’t want to hear about marrow being sucked! Or anything being sucked out of anything else! I just can’t take it!”             “Those weren’t some fanciful creation out of some book,” said Applejack, “Twilight, those were monsters! But I haven’t seen anything like that near Ponyville- -”             “Well, they’ve certainly seen you,” said Pinkie Pie. “In tiny, intricate detail!” She looked up at Silken. “You taste like licorice!”             Silken smiled. “My husband used to say the same thing. When we were both alive, of course.”             “You had a WHAT- -”             “Don’t get distracted!” shouted Applejack. “Twilight,” she said, turning to the pony in question. “You’ve been here longer than us, what in the name of applebutter and applejam on applebread sandwitches were those…things?”             Twilight shook her head. “I haven’t been here much longer than you. Nopony has. I don’t know what they are. But I have seen them before.”             “You have?”             “Yes. One of them attacked me. And it knew what it was doing. It purposefully disabled my horn. If I hadn’t been an alicorn…”             “Twilight,” said Rarity. “You can’t mean THOSE things have some level of intelligence, do you?”             “I highly doubt it. But they are extremely dangerous.” She pointed at Rainbow Dash. “And we can’t win a fight against them.”             “Why are you pointing at me?”             “But where…where did they come from?” whispered Fluttershy.             “Civilization has risen and fallen since Equestria died,” said Twilight. “Perhaps  more than once. Those might very well be the remains of the last one.”             “Or what ended the last one,” said Silken. She paused, then added, “or both.”             “It doesn’t matter what they are, or where they came from,” said Twilight. “What matters is that I have a feeling that there are a lot of them.” She looked at her friends, addressing all of them. “We need to get you to the rendezvous point, as quickly as possible.  I think you can see now, this planet isn’t safe. We need to hurry.”             “Right,” said Rarity.             “I’ll scout ahead,” said Rainbow Dash, taking to the air.             “Don’t get farther than two hundred meters,” said Twilight. “Silken, keep an eye on her position.”             “It will be done.”             “Silken and I will bring up the rear. We’re both durable enough to hold our own.”             “The rest of us aren’t exactly wet tissue paper either,” muttered Applejack. She then looked down at where Fluttershy was cowering. “Well, at least most of us.”             “Can you walk off getting a tentacle through the chest?”             “Uh…no?”             “Exactly. Silken and I can. So we get the back. You keep an eye on each other, okay?”             “Or else they will keep an eye on you,” said Pinkie Pie, jumping down from Silken’s grasp. “It’s okay, Twilight. I’ll watch out for being watched, and if I knew the time I’d watch my watch too to make sure we’re moving in time! You don’t have to worry!”             “Alright,” said Twilight. “Just be careful. I’ve already lost you all once. I don’t know what I would do if I had to do it again.”             The others nodded, and began to walk in the direction Rainbow Dash had gone. Silken and Twilight held back for a moment.             “This does raise a concern,” said Silken at last.             “That the path to the point takes us directly past my Castle,” said Twilight, darkly as she watched her friends head in that very direction. “I know.”             “Now that I have access to the ship’s scanners and Inky Nebula’s results, I have concluded that we are in the base of a valley. Passing over the mountains will be impossible. The temperature is one hundred eighty, and the radiation levels between three hundred fifty seven and six hundred twelve rem. They would not survive the journey on any alternative paths.”             “Which is why I didn’t suggest it,” said Twilight. “None of that matters to me. It’s the time that I care about. We can’t afford any delays. Every second they’re left on this planet, they’re in danger.”             “As are you.”             “I am immortal. No force on this world can end me.”             “That may be true,” said Silken, “but approaching your old home will be harrowing.”             “And I am prepared to face that.”             Silken let out a sound similar to a sigh. It must have taken a great deal of conscious effort, as she had no lungs. “I anticipated this,” she said. “I used the nanomanufacturing suit to produce a number of drugs. Some of them will be able to reduce but not eliminate your reaction to proximity to the Map.”             “I’ll get as far as I can without them,” said Twilight as she started walking, feeling her fear of the oncoming pain growing with each step. “I don’t want them to know I’m sick, or in pain. Can you make sure of that?”             “I can try, Goddess.”             “Good,” said Twilight. “Then let’s go.”