Sarah could hear the swarm. Her ears and brain were overwhelmed with the sound of scurrying legs and clicking mandibles. There was so much sound from up ahead that she could no longer imagine a clear picture of the cavern they were climbing through, except that it might as well be made of bodies.
“So, these are the same guys you said could break us down into atoms, right?” James asked, his voice a nervous squeak. Barely even audible over the noise from the massive crowd of drones. “Why are we going towards them?”
“Because they have their own ways to get around,” Ocellus answered, surprisingly relaxed for the danger that was obviously close. There was no light in the cavern, so no way for Sarah to see exactly how close. Ocellus had already made it clear that light spells would be a bad idea, and James hadn’t disobeyed that instruction. “We’ll be able to use them too, and ride to Irkalla. It won’t be as quick as a ship, but we can’t use the river without a navigator, and I know neither of you have the skills for that job.”
Sarah couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to her like Ocellus was constantly glancing behind them, more afraid of the ones following than the drones up ahead.
They had crossed a great distance, walking for what felt like days in the featureless blackness. It seemed like just one taste of the glowing glamour could rejuvenate either of her companions. But not Sarah—she had to trudge through the exhaustion.
“Just as long as whatever bus they use has a corner I can sleep in,” she said, her words melting into a yawn by the end.
“It doesn’t seem like a passage we should be using,” James said, his wings buzzing in discomfort. “I never had an ant farm growing up, but I watched plenty of them in the wild. You know what happens when a cockroach lands on one of their mounds? It might be twenty times their size, but they’ll tear it apart in seconds. Sounds like we’re about to stumble into their hive.”
“Not stumble,” Ocellus countered. The ground under their hooves became suddenly soft and slick, though not enough that Sarah fell. She found herself spreading her wings a little to maintain her balance, but even then her steps were shaky. “I know exactly where we’re going. So does our tail—apparently they didn’t want to risk coming in here. I hope they enjoy the hike back to Chroma.”
Or they’re waiting for the noise of this place to mask their approach, Sarah thought. She tried to keep listening to the caves behind them, but knew her odds of success weren’t good. She heard plenty of hooves in all directions. Most from up ahead of them.
“Well seeing as we’re almost through the gates, maybe you should tell us how we can make it through without getting killed?” James asked. “If we don’t know what it is, we won’t be able to do it.”
Ocellus shrugged, then lifted her tail. Sarah smelled the same strange combination of scents, and found she was copying her without meaning to. This was different than last time—not a call and response, but a constant broadcast. She didn’t know the message any better than last time, but she could guess. “This,” Ocellus said. “Copy me exactly… and I do mean exactly. My father taught me all the signs, and I’m pretty sure this one still works. The swarm doesn’t change very often.”
“Copy what?” James stopped walking behind them, making a fair amount of noise as he stumbled around in the dark. “Ugh, don’t reach out too far. We must be in some kind of… slimy tunnel. God I wish I hadn’t touched that. And that wall is pulsing. Ughhh.”
“Use your nose,” Ocellus muttered, exasperated. “I know you’re from the surface, and maybe you’re ignorant, but it’s instinct. It’s in your body the same way it would’ve been if you were actually part of the maintenance system.”
“Maybe we should’ve had this conversation outside,” James squeaked, making a few exaggerated sniffing sounds. “I have no idea what smell you’re talking about. Do you mean the stink of paint thinner? Or the dirty lawnmower?”
Sarah felt the ground shake under her hooves, getting a little more violent by the second. Someone was coming, and they were close.
“Don’t think about it.” Ocellus no longer sounded angry—more urgent, desperate. “Just unfocus your brain. Everything you’re doing is making it harder. There’s no pony equivalent for what you need to do. There are new organs there.”
James squeaked again, like someone had just stabbed him in one of the legs. Then there was a flash of green light, one that came directly from him and illuminated the blackness of the cavern.
Sarah’s eyes weren’t blinded by the light, not enough that she couldn’t take in every detail in the instant it lasted.
Her surroundings were every bit as disgusting as she imagined, strands of sinewy slime hanging from every surface and forming a burrow around them so tight that she wasn’t sure how she hadn’t brushed against it yet. Bits of organic matter were stuck into the walls, and plenty of them looked like dead drones, crammed in with as little regard as an ant-colony might’ve had for their own corpses.
But she had been looking back towards James when the light came, so that wasn’t the only thing she saw. Not a wave of oncoming drones, identical and thoughtless and mad with the labor they had been programmed to do.
No, she saw only four of them, with scars on their carapaces. They carried no weapons and wore little clothing—but she didn’t see them long.
They were perhaps ten meters away from James, and they’d been frozen in place by the flash.
Shit shit shit. The ones following them hadn’t given up after all. Obviously not! Ocellus said we had the wealth of a king! That’s worth dying for. Sarah knew that from experience. Even if she’d been much too clever to die.
Sarah hadn’t been the only one to notice the light, though. The quiet sound of working insects behind them transformed into a roar of rage instantly, like the time she’d thrown a rock at a hornet’s nest.
“Run!” Ocellus reached back, yanking on James and pulling him along with one desperate hoof. Sarah ducked her head, pounding along after them as fast as her hooves would go. Her wings spread and began to flap a little as she did, but she still didn’t know how to use them and there wasn’t enough space to fly anyway.
They didn’t run towards the grizzly thieves, but straight away from them, towards the sound of enraged insects.
“Are you fucking insane?” James screamed, though after a few steps he had started galloping along under his own power. He was actually more coordinated than Sarah herself—he had quite a bit more practice. “We’re going the wrong way!”
After only a dozen paces or so she was the one Ocellus had to help, catching her as she stepped the wrong way and jammed one of her hooves straight through the wall and nearly tumbled over all of them.
“That’s right!” called a voice from behind them, closer than the thieves had looked before. “We just want what you have! The sleepers will take more than that! Turn around, and we can escape together!”
“Go feed on yourself!” Ocellus shouted back, pushing Sarah even harder. “We’re almost there! The swarm sounds like they’re just around the corner. Both of you, grab onto me and don’t let go. If we get separated, then the greatest queen who ever lived couldn’t find where they put you!”
A chunk of metal went flying past them, smacking through the soft wall and into the stone. Sarah heard the sharp ping, and from that realized that the thieves had at least one spear. Not anymore.
She didn’t need echolocation to feel the swarm coming from up ahead. They were packed almost solid in the dense tunnel, crawling along the walls, the ceiling, the floor. She felt the warmth of their bodies as they approached, driving a wall of stinking air ahead of them.
Ocellus stopped running abruptly, pulling them close. Sarah smelled the strange scent again, and copied it as “loud” as she possibly could. “Now, hold on!” Ocellus held still on the ground, the three of them wrapped together into clinging hooves and ducked heads.
One of the thieves got to them a moment later. Sarah felt something dig into her back, and felt the sharp pain that meant blood was coming. She kicked behind her as hard as she could, though she didn’t let go. She felt something crunch under her hooves, though she couldn’t look behind her to see in the dark.
Another second later, and the swarm reached them.
If the hug had been an uncomfortable violation of her personal space, then the swarm was much worse. Creatures shaped like James skittered all around her, touching her with antennae and making strange squeaking noises. She felt them prodding at her, yanking at where she held to her companions. Everything she felt on all side were bodies.
Somewhere close by, she heard screaming, along with the sound of tearing, ripping, and grinding.
“Don’t move,” Ocellus breathed, her voice barely audible over the terrible noise. “They’re going to carry us to the larder. Hold on as tight as you can.”
“You… sound like you’ve done this before,” James squeaked, sounding like he’d wet himself. “We should’ve just walked.”
Many limbs lifted them suddenly upward. Not to be carried, exactly, more to be squeezed and pushed and maneuvered through a living tunnel, down into the dark to parts unknown.
God have mercy on the idiots following us.
“We can’t grow anything here,” said Mayor Pyrite, for perhaps the third time that meeting. Olivia didn’t much care what the politicians and negotiators shouted at each other, but she found the sudden surge of emotion roused her from her stupor.
“The earth ponies know what they’re talking about when they say it can’t be done,” he went on. “Questioning them is a waste of time. The soil is too poor, and you’d need a gigantic weather team to get enough moisture at this altitude. There’s a reason the valleys all around us are so green.”
“We require agricultural production from this location,” Forerunner said. For this discussion he’d brought out one of his new pony-shaped drones, which looked just as unsettling as any of the human synthsleeves. But the locals had wanted to talk directly to the one running their ships, so here he was. At least he wasn’t using one of the half-organic hybrids, which probably would’ve looked like they were chopping ponies up and using them for parts.
“Maybe we should make deals with one of the valley towns then,” Pyrite said. “Ponyville grows plenty more than it needs, or maybe Rainbow Falls. You could get your food from them.” There were three of them representing the human side of the table—Lucky, Qingzhi, and Forerunner. On the other side it was only the mayor and his wife, but they spoke with confidence, and wouldn’t let themselves get told what to do.
Amazing how firm they are. Don’t they know how little chance they have without us? Olivia herself was one of several here to “protect” the meeting, though she was certain that Lucky had picked her to make sure she stayed informed of their military details. She hadn’t been asked to speak at all yet, and mostly just stayed alert by the window of the little shop. They were watching the ground, since radar would warn them well in advance of any threats from the sky.
Forerunner was more than just confident in its negotiations, though. The computer was absolute, never wavering. “If we can’t obtain food conventionally, we will simply have to diversify our production. Involving other locations is not an option. Motherlode’s chief asset aside from its mineral wealth is its isolation. Every flow of goods or information makes us more interesting to the enemy.”
The pony synthsleeve was plain brown instead of white, with a fur texture that didn’t even approximate real. It still looked better than the cheap replacement limb Olivia was using, which had actuators that whined slightly with every step and such a weight imbalance from her other legs that she felt like she might trip whenever she ran.
Forerunner marked something on his large notepad beside so many other things. “So far we have a forge, manufactory, school, water treatment plant, library, and vertical farm. Are there any other needs I should note as well?”
The ponies shared a confused look. “We don’t… even know what most of that is,” Pyrite finally said. “It doesn’t seem like you’re actually solving these problems. Just writing something else down.”
“Those are the solutions,” Forerunner said. “We do not expect the population of Motherlode to reconfigure their lives around our requirements. We do not expect you to have the methods to provide for our needs, when you cannot even conceive of how you might do so. Nor do we expect to replace you in your own city or use your labor without repaying you in some way.”
Olivia chanced a glance over her shoulder at General Qingzhi. The stallion looked as bored as she felt, though he was good enough at hiding it that the civilians wouldn’t notice. But she had seen that vacant look many times—it was the expression of someone who had been taken outside their sphere of experience. Qingzhi didn’t care about how they kept his ship supplied, so long as there was food in the cupboards and railgun rounds in his magazines.
“But aren’t you going to save Equestria?” Sunkiss Sheen finally asked. “That’s why the princesses sent you here, wasn’t it? You can’t save the rest of Equestria if all you do is hide here.”
This time it was Lucky who answered. “We are not all soldiers, Sunkiss. I’m not, most of my staff are not either. We work best supporting the troops from the back. And to do that, we need to be able to provide them with things. Bullets, bread, blankets.”
“I hope to do more than supply our own troops,” Forerunner continued. “Once we complete the initial construction phase, I should be able to scale up production within the first month. We can use that production to supply the rebellion.”
“Without letting the Storm King figure out where we’re coming from,” Lucky put in. “It’s as important to us as it is to you to keep this place secret. I’ll be living here with you. I’ll be in as much danger as any of you.”
“You’ve seen our city map.” Pyrite tapped the yellowed paper on the desk in front of him. “Those are the properties I want respected. So long as nopony in Motherlode has to give up their homes and their stakes, your construction is fine.”
Forerunner took in the map with just one glance. “I can easily guarantee the homes of all citizens will remain where they are. It would be desirable for the moment when we are eventually investigated that the surface remains a convincing approximation of an Equestrian village. These stakes, however…” He tapped the page with his hoof. “There are names claiming mineral rights on the entire mountain. If I respected those claims, we would have no iron to make steel, no tungsten, no boron, no copper… I could not accomplish my purpose.”
“Ponies bought that land,” Pyrite ground his teeth together. “Much of it on behalf of FlimFlam Sustainable Energy Co. The amount of bits we have invested here… ponies spent their whole savings, their whole lives. You can’t just take that away. Maybe you could buy the land?”
Forerunner looked like he might be about to argue, but Lucky rested her wing on his shoulder, and he fell silent.
“Mayor Pyrite, I know how important all those claims must feel. But your country is falling apart. Cities going dark, ponies getting enslaved into the Storm King’s awful new system. Either we have what we need to fight the Storm King, and ponies get Equestria back… or you have to hope somepony else saves you, because we won’t be able to.”
She leaned slightly to one side. “General Qingzhi, what are we going to do if Motherlode won’t have us?”
Despite seeming completely spaced out, the stallion answered immediately. “Return to the original plan. Establish our outpost outside Equestria’s borders and abandon the land war.”
“We would love to buy the land, Mayor Pyrite. But we don’t have bits.” She opened the satchel with a brief glow of violet magic, removing a little pouch. She dumped out the plastic slips inside, each one with a little hole in the middle. “These are Interim Government Supply Tokens, this is what we use. We can pay you with them if you want.”
Olivia probably should’ve stayed by the door. But if she hadn’t died, she would’ve been the one in charge of this negotiation. She wouldn’t have to see it bungled so badly. So she rose, walking right over to the table and glaring at the ponies on the other side.
“Is this really the most important thing? I don’t know if you saw the ship outside, but we’re your last hope. When the war is over, we could fucking drown you in gold if that’s what you want. Or silver, or platinum, or palladium, or yellowcake… whatever. Just agree to pay them back in market value for all the minerals we extract, Lucky. We can sign it, make it official.”
That got the ponies’ attention. “When this is all over,” Sunkiss said, her voice quavering. “When Celestia or Luna is back on the throne.”
Pyrite went on. “We want the owners of this land to be paid, and we want the mines returned to us. If we can get that in writing, then you have a deal.”
Forerunner drew out a fresh sheet of paper, and began scribbling on it with the speed of a plotting machine. In less than four seconds he had a contract, written in flowing Eoch letters. He passed it to Lucky, who signed without looking, before sliding it across the table.
“We’ll need a moment,” Pyrite said. “I’m not a princess. I want Motherlode’s okay.” He lifted the contract up into his magic, turning to go. “You can wait, can’t you?”
“Until the stars go out,” Forerunner said, voice even. “Equestria less so.”
They left the human delegation alone in Pyrite’s office, surrounded by black and white photographs of various miners, plaques of their accomplishments, and geological texts.
“I was handling it,” Lucky said, as soon as the door was closed and they were alone. “They would’ve given us what we wanted. We’re building them everything.”
“That’s the civilian mindset,” Olivia answered, pacing a slow circle around the room. “Move as carefully as possible, protect your resources, conserve. From where I’m standing, it seems like if you really care about living here you’d give them enough to guarantee it happens. If you save half your bullets but you die on the mission, then it hasn’t really been a success. And if the bean-counters want to give you a lecture, you can still rest easy knowing you got all your people home.”
“A promise of payment does not compromise our future colony,” Forerunner said, before Lucky could argue. “Do not be concerned. These ponies deal in quantities so insignificant that compensating them will be a rounding error. So long as they respect the terms, and don’t try to renegotiate.”
“They will not get that opportunity,” Qingzhi muttered, his voice flat. “We will respect the terms of the agreement as made. We are not required to do more. We could do much less—their population is insignificant compared to our own, and the situation is grave. If this were my campaign, I would not have asked the locals.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Lucky muttered, glaring sidelong at the general. “We want them to love us when this is over, remember? We still want to live here.”
They didn’t have long to wait for a response. It felt like minutes before the mayor returned, the ink still wet on the bottom of the contract. “Welcome to Motherlode,” he said, handing it over with a hoofshake. “There’s a lot of promises in there. I wouldn’t think you could keep them, if it wasn’t for your airship. If you can build that… I’m sure you can do the other things you promised.”
They did.
Olivia’s role in the construction was minimal over the next few weeks. She wasn’t an engineer, wasn’t a city planner, and General Qingzhi knew more about how to build defenses for a port than she did. Even so, she was still amazed by the efficiency of the operation.
Every drone on the Emperor was working by the end of the first day, along with the Emperor’s engineers. They had many more ponies than that who could’ve moved shovels and turned dirt, but that wasn’t what they really needed. They only had the one digger, made from a repurposed APC. Since most of their construction was underground, there wasn’t really anything the soldiers could do that Forerunner’s drones or Motherlode’s population couldn’t do better.
The slapdash nature of the construction was obvious even so. Olivia had seen construction diggers lay ten meters of corridor a day—but most of that time came from setting the plumbing, the electronics, the floors and simulated windows. When the digger didn’t care about how things looked, ten meters could easily be increased by an order of magnitude.
Plain stone, simple structural bars and a little composite spray with an exposed artery of cable up the center of the roof.
It wasn’t just Forerunner’s hard work, either. Within the first few days the foundry went up, and ore mined by ponies went into the smelter to make desks and doors and lights.
Motherlode was an earth pony town, with perhaps five individuals of other species in total. That meant the patrols of pegasus ponies sent out to watch the surrounding mountains would be crewed entirely by humans—with Olivia put in command. It was a relaxing if nerve-wracking position, since they were given no armor or weapons, only a communicator they could easily destroy if they had to pass for a fleeing pony refugee.
It had been over a month before someone spotted something out of the ordinary. Not Olivia herself, though she happened to be on duty at the time.
“Prefect Fischer,” said the soldier, his voice mixed with the high-altitude wind. “There’s a train coming. Just two cars and an engine.”
“Any idea who’s on it?”
“Well ma’am, it’s got a car covered in blue and black banners, so I’m guessing it’s not friendly.”
The colors of Equestria’s petty tyrant. “Alright. Forerunner already has your report, we’re turning around.” She switched channels with a little twitch of her ear. “Forerunner, how long do we have?”
“That depends on whether or not I destroy any of a number of bridges while that train is over them.” It was the first joke Olivia had heard from him in a long time. She didn’t need to tell the AI why just making this caravan disappear would not serve their interests. “Two hours. That train has an awful lot of switchbacks in its future. I hope none of its passengers get motion sickness easily.”
“Can Motherlode get ready that fast?”
“We’re about to find out.”
Sarah never wanted to see another horror movie again. For hours it seemed she knew only unnamable sounds and skittering limbs, assaulting her senses. She couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t even relax her grip on her friends for fear she would be torn away and lost to wherever these creatures were taking them. If anyone ever asked her what it might be like to be carried alive through an ant colony, she would now be able to answer that question in great detail.
Eventually the creatures carrying them around finally let them relax, settling them down somewhere damp and bathed in green light. Sarah felt herself completely soaked with some kind of slime, and she didn’t try to shake it off. The others had it just as bad.
“This is… completely barbaric,” James muttered, finally pushing away from them and rising to his hooves. He nearly fell over at first, apparently unused to the weight. “You people need to graduate from organics. Take a look at how Forerunner keeps our cities running next time you’re in Othar. Drones get dignified charging booths and repair stations. Not living bodies that eat and shit and—”
“We have very limited time before they move us again,” Ocellus said, glaring at James until he fell silent. “Your opinions on the swarm are irrelevant. They penetrate all sections of this District. They maintain the superstructure, and have done so effectively for many years. Hopefully we can stay under their notice.” She turned, grinning at Sarah. “I’ve got to get you into the capital. I want to see the look on everyone’s face—maybe my father will talk to me again after that.”
Sarah nodded. “That’s what I’m here for. Big speech, state of the surface, all that.” She looked around, rising and stretching her sore limbs. They had been dumped in something that looked frighteningly like a refuse pile. A mountain of various bits of organic debris sat not far away, with white fungus growing slowly around it. Every now and then a drone would arrive, bite off a huge chunk of the sinewy white growth, then carry it away. “You sure we aren’t in a trash compactor scene?” She looked down at her hooves, though there was no sea of garbage or guttural calls of some disgusting alien trapped with them. She was playing that role today, or maybe James.
“I know what trash is. Why would you compact it?”
“Nevermind.” Sarah shook her wings, trying in vain to dry them. “Just tell us your plan. I’m sure it’s really good, right? Because it looks like the wild changelings are just going to leave us here until we turn into food.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But you aren’t going to like it. The male might not be brave enough.”
“The male is brave enough for anything,” James said, glaring at her. “The male buried his friends with a shovel while his organs were turning into slime. A different copy of me toppled a kingdom that has lasted for thousands of years and killed a tyrant with a ragtag group of scientists and an ISMU team.”
Ocellus rolled her eyes, but she didn’t actually address anything James said. “The swarm is a singular, adaptive intelligence. It is collectively far more intelligent than any individual mind, probably smarter than we can even comprehend. But it works in really predictable ways. These individual drones, think of them like… single brain cells. You know what those are, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for confirmation. “We’re basically inside the swarm’s brain. It doesn’t care that we’re here, it only cares about keeping Equus going. But these individual drones, they’re much dumber than we are. They respond in predictable ways. The scent we used, that’s like saying that we’re part of the swarm. But the fact we don’t act like them makes them think we’re defective, so we end up with the other living things that aren’t working right. Thing is, we can manipulate them in way better ways than that. Give them instructions, even. So long as we give them correctly, the swarm carries them out, thinking that we’re just another part of the system.”
“Damn you’re hot when you’re smart,” Sarah muttered. Then she realized they were both staring at her, and she picked her jaw up off the floor. “So you can… do that? Tell the swarm what to do? And regular losers like those thieves can’t?”
“Anyone could,” Ocellus said. “But most of us don’t know, yeah. The first queen was the one who discovered their secrets. She never shared them all, but my father was her most important general, so he knew everything important to us. And my uncle, he was one of her spies. He’s the one who taught me the trick we’ll use today.”
“Just so long as that trick doesn’t involve going on some kind of wacky adventure with a crew of loveable bugs, I’m sure it’s fine,” Sarah said.
James turned, staring at her in the low greenish light. “What kind of munitions engineer are you again?”
“The fun kind,” she snapped. “Please, Ocellus. You said we don’t have much time.”
“Right. Well, the scent we used to represent ourselves as members of the colony will let us walk out of this place whenever we want. There is no method to send members of this swarm from one District to another, but they do sometimes send cargo or machines. All I have to do is stop one of the drones, and tell them to take us to wherever they’re prepping cargo. We can make them wrap us up and send us out just like all the other stuff they’re sending back and forth, and we’ll get there almost as fast as if we took our own ship.”
“You’re fucking with us, right?” James’s horn flickered briefly green again, but this time there was no surge of anger from further on. The light of his magic was indistinguishable from the light coming from all around them. “We’re going to mail ourselves? I don’t know if your world is anything like ours… seems like every time I assume it is I’ve been wrong… but where we come from, pretending to be mail could kill you. The machines designed to send boxes around don’t generally treat them gently enough for people.”
And for once I don’t feel like telling you to shut up. Sarah had been thinking something similar, if only because she’d been one of those people who’d almost died trying to mail herself. But that had been towards the end, when she knew she didn’t have long to live anyway. It didn’t feel like she had as much to lose.
“That’s just a question of signaling correctly,” Ocellus said. “If they treated us like a shipment of steel, yeah. We’d probably be stuck in the pipes for so long we starved, assuming we didn’t die in lots of other ways. But there are signals for other things. And lucky for you two, I know all of them.”
“Lucky for you,” Sarah said. “I’m the one who’s going to convince your species to stop hiding in the dark, remember? Can’t do that if I’m dead in a pipe.”
“Right,” Ocellus said. “Dying would have been the faster way to get around, before our queen died. But we haven’t had as much love to go around.
“I don’t plan on dying,” Sarah said, a little louder than before. “Whatever plans you have that include death as a step, just cross those the hell out. And I’m pretty sure James is with me on that one. Where we come from, we see death as the end. It’s something you fight, as desperately as you possibly can. I don’t care if we have to walk around this ring, we’ll arrive at the other end of it alive.”
Ocellus shook her head, muttering something about primitive cultures and how backward life on the surface must be. But she didn’t seem to want them to overhear it, because she didn’t say it very loudly. “Then we need to get moving. I don’t know when the last time they tilled their garden was, but we can’t be around when they do. Nothing here is supposed to be alive, so…”
“I get it,” James and Sarah said at the exact same moment. Sarah was the one who kept going. “Lead the way. We’ve made it this far. I’m sure you can get us through to… what did you say the capital was?”
“Irkalla.”
“Right, Irkalla. And maybe after we get there, I can treat you to dinner. I am incredibly rich.”
Ocellus shrugged her wings. “Get my father to consider taking us to the surface, and then maybe we’ll talk about dinner.”
Walking through the alien hive wasn’t nearly as bad as being carried. Yes, the passages looked like they were alive, and the array of smells and sounds would probably haunt Sarah’s nightmares, but at least she didn’t have to spend every moment wondering when she would get dropped into a gigantic mouth.
Ocellus was not exaggerating her abilities—every time they met the changelings she called “soldiers,” she answered their challenges with another sound or smell and they were left alone. They stopped several drones along the way, following each one part of the way to their destination, until that specific individual wandered too far from their post and they had to find another.
Sarah was reminded many times of ant-colonies, except that this colony seemed just as likely to repair faulty alien machinery as it was to scavenge dead bugs from the forest floor or sting a misplaced foot.
But eventually they reached their destination—a tunnel that seemed entirely devoid of top, bottom, or sides, just thin walkways stretching through insane dimensions and intersecting to make shapes that hurt her head to look at. Ocellus and James could walk up the sheer walls between different platforms and floors, Sarah had to make due by flapping her wings and letting them drag her.
“I can’t do this,” James squeaked in nervous fear, while standing upside-down on a bit of transparent green platform that formed part of a distended dodecahedron. “I can’t keep going. We have to go back. I’m gonna fucking puke.”
Sarah glowered at him, wings flapping desperately to keep up with them, clinging to Ocellus’s side with one hoof. She could just about hold herself still in the air, with ample assistance. “Shut the hell up and keep moving,” she panted. “We must be… close.”
Canterlot was a different place.
It was amazing how quickly the city had transformed—but the Storm King’s orders were strict and his punishments ruthless, as Flurry Heart knew too well.
She skulked about in the corners and alleys, in the parts of the city that she never would’ve visited on her own. The lower district, where the laws were lax and ponies sold things that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Every city had them—but unlike in the Crystal Empire, she wasn’t using her power and reputation to walk into any club she wanted and expect nothing to happen.
Perez had found her a nondescript dark robe, along with a chemical that smelled like laundry. But no sooner had he rubbed it into her mane and tail than they had started to fade, and ten minutes later they were both completely white.
“Nothing we can do about the rest of you, unfortunately,” Perez had said. “There’s a machine back in Othar we used for it, but…”
“There is no Othar,” Flurry whispered back to him, brushing a rough strand of mane out of her face. Perez had cut her hair down to something much shorter, one of the styles he’d said were now common out among the abandoned ponies of Canterlot.
There were two classes of pony in the city now—those healthy enough to work, and those who weren’t. The former became slaves, the latter were left to fend for themselves. Perez had been right about her mane—one glance at her reflection in a bit of polished streetlight, and she could see he had transformed her into a pony who looked as wretched as any of the others they passed.
At least Perez had managed to get the magical inhibitor off her horn. Being able to perform simple levitation again was a bit like being able to stand up straight after crawling for hours, a relief as much as it was overwhelming.
Many ponies gave them room as they passed, taking one look at his mask and muttering awed incantations. “La Calavera,” they would say, and doors opened, ponies blocked the way of approaching guards, or food was produced from nowhere.
“You know what you’re doing,” Flurry Heart said, when it was around evening. They’d found a quiet corner of an illegal shop hidden in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, where fruit that might’ve been sold on every street corner was now offered to them with the reverence of a princess’s blessing. “How do all these ponies know you?”
“This is not my first time,” Perez said, slipping bits of fruit under the front of his mask to eat, rather than revealing the face underneath. There were other ponies in the shop, though none close enough to overhear. Perez had asked for a private table. “Every dictator does the same shit when he takes over. Every occupied state is the same. Goes through different phases as the bastard gradually unifies his powerbase and replaces old institutions. Storm King already started with that, but it takes a long time and he doesn’t have many men. He’s going to need a lot more collaborators first.”
“Traitors like me,” Flurry Heart muttered, staring at her plate. Her appetite was already fading.
“No.” Perez dropped his plate with a violence that surprised her. “You’re the second group—most people will be like you. People who hate the new regime, but do what they must to live. Everybody wants to live. Collaborators are the bastards wearing blue stripes on their old guard armor. The ones reporting their neighbors to the Stasi. Not very many so far… but every despot promises the same things. The worst in people always comes out at a time like this.”
“Like what you did to those guards? Drawing with their…” She couldn’t even finish.
Perez shook his head. “Didn’t waste my time with it at first. But then I realized that the ones I killed kept coming back.” Her eyes widened just a little, probably not as much as he was expecting. He went on. “Oh yeah, I watched it happen. That’s one of the things the Storm King promises his loyal servants. His soldiers always come back… and they remember you. They know your tricks, and they’re angry. So I’ve been using that against them. If they’ve got memories, I’ll just make their deaths as brutal as possible. And try to make it just as bad when they find each other dead.”
Is this how Celestia won her wars? Her instinct was to deny it on principle, but then she had her own memories. Considering what the sun princess had done to her before Lucky’s rescue…
“Anyway, the others should be here any second, so I’ve got a request.” His eyes fixed on her through the holes in his wooden mask. “Don’t tell them where I come from. Twilight in particular might know me, or at least know who I am. It’s better if you don’t use my name. Call me… Viserion. That’s what I told her my name is, and it would be real shit if our stories don’t line up.”
“Why?”
“Because Twilight still hates anyone involved with the regime change. I don’t know how the hell we’re going to convince her to work with…” He shook his head. “Look, just do it, please? I can’t force you, that’s why I’m asking. No threats, no intimidation, nothing like that. But if Twilight knows, Equestria’s chances go way down. That’s all there is to it.”
Flurry Heart probably would’ve done exactly the opposite of what she was being told to do, as she had disobeyed her parents so many times before. But this dragon had saved her—he’d put himself at risk and arrived at exactly the right moment. More importantly, Lucky had sent him. Even if she didn’t know him—beyond his raucous drinking songs and the awful music he played in the cafeteria—she knew Lucky, and so she could trust him too.
“Okay,” she said. “But I’m not promising forever. Just for now.”
He shrugged. “I know I can’t force you. Just talk to me if—”
A passage opened in the floor, and Perez fell silent. She could hear familiar voices coming from within, though they sounded as nervous and subdued as the rest of the city. A second later and a party of ponies in similar dark robes to theirs emerged from below. She recognized them by what glances at coats and fur she got, through the corners of their robes. These were the Elements of Harmony, Equestria’s greatest heroes.
Our best hope is still free. This wasn’t the first time something or someone had overpowered the princesses. While I was doing exactly what he wanted, they escaped. I should’ve been like Twilight. I should’ve been far away.
Would I rather die in Othar? But she couldn’t ask it now, not if they were going to be pretending that Perez was just a helpful dragon with a weird name.
“Flurry!” Twilight removed her hood, revealing she’d done far less to conceal her appearance than Flurry Heart. Her mane only looked frizzy and dirty from days of neglect, not sheared and bleached. There was no way anypony who saw her wouldn’t recognize her on sight.
Flurry Heart rushed over to her, though her wings were concealed in the robes and so she couldn’t hug her in the familiar way. She held her like an earth pony, and didn’t let go for several long moments.
Then she finally seemed to notice her head. “Viserion, was that really necessary? I told you to get her out, not be her stylist. You’re worse than Zephyr Breeze.”
A tiny voice squeaked from behind her, from a pony with yellow wings emerging from her robe. “My brother’s quite a good stylist now, Twilight. You should see some of his clients.”
“Not now, Fluttershy.”
Perez rose as she entered, though he didn’t bow or make any other signs of respect. He did remove his mask, pushing it up so it stuck out of his robe like a strange hat. He still spoke with the same accent as all his Eoch, one that Flurry recognized as distinctly human. But Twilight hasn’t been around them as much as I have. She probably just thinks it’s a dragon thing.
“I made sure she wouldn’t be caught,” he said. “We could take her right past the palace and no one would look twice. If you all tried that you’d be digging coal before I could turn around to save you.”
“Save us,” Rainbow Dash repeated, amused. “The dragon thinks he would need to save us. We weren’t the ones who needed rescuing, Viserion. I know you dragons can be proud, but… we remember.”
Perez looked bashful, tucking his tail and lowering his head. But Flurry was standing closer to him, and his display didn’t look terribly sincere. What else are you lying about, Perez?
I ran away with a liar and a killer.
But at least she’d run to her aunt, and the Elements of Harmony besides.
“What are you gonna do, Twi?” she asked, her voice a nervous squeak. “You’re gonna save Equestria, right? You have a plan?”
“We sure are,” Applejack said, before Twilight could answer. “We’re still a mite fuzzy on the specifics, though.”
But it wasn’t the other Elements Flurry Heart wanted to hear.
Twilight’s nod came slow, unsure. She doesn’t know if we can. “The plan is… still a work in progress,” she eventually said. “But that’s okay! The early steps are all finished. We made it out, you’re safe…” She stared upward towards the empty warehouse, where a few faint shafts of sunlight streamed in.
Who’s moving that now that Luna’s frozen? Is Twilight doing both the sun and the moon every day? If she dies too, will we freeze to death?
Frightening questions, but probably they could answer those another time.
“I’ve been thinking about that, princess,” Perez said, all traces of his earlier discomfort gone. “I’ve got a few ideas. You might like some of them.”
“Just as long as they’re better than what you did to the princess’s hair,” Rarity said. “Because that is a crime against fashion, and I intend to see you duly prosecuted once the Storm King is in Tartarus.”
“Much better,” Perez said. “We need to…”