The skycrane was an impressive sight, even for someone with modern biases who had been spoiled many times by new inventions. A cable stretched so high above them she couldn’t even imagine what it must be made of, yet it looked only a few times thicker than her own body. As it got lower, she could see it ended in a metallic apparatus that gripped several trays all at once, with a gyroscopic mechanism connecting them all and holding them level despite the wind.
The crane came down on open ground a few dozen meters north of the supply-yard, metal hooks landing so harshly that they sunk into the soil and shattered any rocks that got in their way.
Griffons and little airships swarmed around the platform as it got lower, though they mostly remained in the air once it landed. The hard work of moving it would be left to those imprisoned here.
Olivia watched from the shelter of a low ridge perhaps twenty meters from the loading area, crouched invisibly against the cliff face. At any moment the active camouflage on the 901 might fail, exposing her or one of her companions to the enemy and spoiling their entire mission. If anything happened to make the Storm King suspicious…
But he’s already sending ships to Motherlode, and he’s still loading supplies. So he’s either not too worried about us, or he’s desperate to get this stuff.
The latter didn’t make much sense—these metals weren’t exotic, and probably would’ve been easier just to mine out in space if the system had any asteroids to speak of.
We should probably be more worried about whatever the Storm King is building. People who acquire power like he did aren’t idiots. He’s basically devoted his entire empire to this since the moment he took over Equestria. That can’t be good.
But it was a little too late to worry about academic mysteries now. Whatever the Storm King was building could be blown to bits along with the rest of his ship. Or they’d all die trying.
“Do we get on yet?” Deadlight asked. She wasn’t sure exactly where he was standing—somewhere close by. If she turned on detection, his position would be highlighted, but she didn’t need it now, so she ran her suit as cold as possible. “Looks like they’re getting ready to send up the crane with the next set of cargo.”
“Soon,” Olivia promised. “We need to wait for them to do their detection spell. See that unicorn in chains? Contact says they use magic to look for people before the lift goes up. There’s a window of maybe twenty seconds after the scan before the lift starts rising.”
“That’s… not very much,” Perez said, clearly moving wherever he was. “Maybe we should get closer now. Twenty meters in twenty seconds is fast. They might hear us running, or maybe see the dirt. We can’t risk that.”
“Sure.” Olivia rose to her hooves. “Very slowly, we can get closer. Don’t go past the soldiers, no matter what you do.”
As she watched, a unicorn with a bright glowing horn shuffled through the palettes, dragging along a thick metal chain. It didn’t look like the poor creature had nearly enough to eat. But there was nothing she could do for him now.
She walked past the first rank of soldiers—birds that towered over her even inside her armor. They didn’t look in her direction, hardly seemed to see anything besides the massive lift. They spoke, but she couldn’t understand it anymore. Because the translator needs Forerunner. Whatever it was didn’t sound much like Eoch. It was an exotic language apparently, and not a pleasant one on her ears. Guttural, echoing, harsh.
The unicorn nodded once to the guards, who turned to shamble off. Except for his handlers, which hurried over to take his chain. “Now’s our chance!” Olivia said, probably a little louder than she should’ve. “Now now now! Don’t make too much noise, just head straight on.”
She stepped off the dirt and onto the strange metal of the platform a moment later, eyeing the four hooks that would be lifting them into the sky. There was a shudder, and suddenly she was moving up. Not quite straight, and for a second it looked like a nearby stack of iron bars might make the whole thing topple. Olivia pressed herself flat to the metal, hoping desperately that her whole team had made it this far. All their skills might be needed today. A loss at this stage could be fatal for the mission.
“Sound off,” Olivia said, when the mountains all around them had vanished and the sky was just a blur of blue. “Is everyone aboard?” The sound of rushing air made her no longer worried about her own voice—there could’ve been a guard standing feet away and he wouldn’t have heard her.
“Here,” said Perez. “Cut it a little close, didn’t we Major?”
“Present,” said Mogyla. “Not moving too much. Don’t want to upset our balance.”
“Barely,” Deadlight said.
“Good.” Olivia relaxed a little, spreading her legs along an empty stretch of platform. She activated her sensors for a second, and sure enough she could see three other warm patches, indicating the presence of her companions. “Now we wait. Don’t knock over any cargo. It’s likely they’ve got eyes on this thing, even a small movement might be seen. We’ll just have to make ourselves comfortable out in the open and wait until we can see what’s there.”
“Aye,” Perez said. “I’m going to nap. Wake me when we get there.”
It wasn’t a short trip. Olivia knew the lifting crane would take a little over an hour to get them all the way up, which seemed fairly good for something that was being lifted almost from the planet’s surface. There was very little to do—her radio receiver was on, but there weren’t many transmissions up here. Nothing from Forerunner was aimed this high up, and pony radio was more of a laboratory novelty than a presence in ponies’ lives.
For a while there were winds, and some part of her instincts feared being toppled over and dropping into the air. There was no way this crane thing didn’t lose its contents sometimes, right? She could look out over the edge, only a few meters away, and see only a sheer drop. Would I be able to get this suit off fast enough to glide to safety? The odds weren’t good.
As they rose, the curve of the ring out from under them became more apparent. She could look to the sides, see it stretching away. From the look of things, they were still in the shadow of the star, though it was hard to say for how much longer.
We can’t be going that high, right? This platform wouldn’t survive heat like that. She hadn’t watched a recording of the whole trip, but the platform kept coming back. So that had to mean they weren’t about to get evaporated.
But eventually the trip began to end, and the Stormbreaker grew larger in her vision. The ship was about a kilometer long, and since it was roughly ovular it was probably half a kilometer wide.
She had studied the images taken before Othar’s destruction many times—the mostly hollow interior, with occasional struts of reddish metal linking the outside of the shell. The interior surface was polished, and in the center…
There was a bubble of absolute darkness. The refractory surface of the interior pointed squarely at nothing, occasionally extending tendrils from within like the surface of a dark star. And from the look of the skycrane, that was exactly where they were going.
“I think I know why the Storm King didn’t destroy Motherlode with the Stormbreaker once he learned where it was,” Deadlight said. There was no more atmosphere here, no chance she could overhear except over the radio. “That bubble… his ship is creating it. I bet it uses the terraforming systems, just like he used it to destroy Othar. His ship is neutered while he’s building this thing. We’ve been safe ever since he started. And probably safe until he finishes.”
“It’s been months. Can’t be much longer,” Mogyla said.
“Everyone, prepare a transmission with these images and that theory for Forerunner. We’ll send it back if we encounter mission failure.”
What they could do with that information, she didn’t know. Even if they took back all of Equestria, their domain wouldn’t be theirs forever. The Storm King would finish sooner or later. Then this terrible ship would be back in play, with its impervious shields and city-killing weapon.
“I don’t like the idea of going into that bubble,” Perez said, and the platform shook a little from his direction. “I say we risk a jump to the Stormbreaker. No telling what that gas is made of. Maybe it’s supernanintes that dissolve our suits in seconds.”
“Or maybe it’s just an illusion spell to hide what he’s building,” Deadlight argued. But he didn’t actually sound all that certain about it. Olivia could follow his thought-process, even if she didn’t know magic as well. If it’s just an illusion, he could’ve thrown a space-tarp over it. That’s more than light. It didn’t make sense for a despot to disable his most powerful weapon just to hide something his enemy couldn’t get to anyway.
“Force-vector calculation,” Olivia said to her armor. “Jump to that spacecraft.”
It responded after a few seconds, highlighting her remaining gas reserves, the distance to the Stormbreaker, along with a vanishing set of arcs from her ever-changing position to the side of the ship. It wouldn’t take much gas to make the jump, but the bubble was rapidly approaching.
She would’ve already gone if it wasn’t for their civilian. “Deadlight, you weren’t trained for this. Use the AI to calculate everything for you—the calculations are too much to run in real time. Give it the destination…” She highlighted a section of the hull, where it looked like there might be docking protrusions. “Destination is right there. We’ll go one at a time, starting with Deadlight. Can you do it?”
“Don’t have much choice,” the bat said, sounding a little queasy. “I can’t just jump down and hope I land in Equestria.” There was a brief blur beside Olivia, as some of the dust from the surface of the platform was blasted away by his jump. They started to rock for a few seconds, until the gyroscope corrected. She could see a little trail through the empty air, a trail of colder space. Here’s hoping they don’t have very good detectors.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she would’ve seen if they had been spotted. But there were no sudden alarms on her suit, no indications in any other way that they’d blown their cover. “Mogyla, you then Perez and I bring up the rear. Go as quick as you can without shaking this boat.”
Mogyla jumped almost at that instant, causing them to swing slightly just as when Deadlight went. No time for a running start, but now that they were mostly free of the ring’s gravity, they didn’t need it. Just a little shove, and the gas to direct them the right way. Perez rocked the whole platform a few second later as he too leapt.
“I’ve landed,” Deadlight said, his voice with just a slight attenuation of static. “Magnetic boots, right?”
“Right,” Olivia said, looking up as the bubble of darkness got closer and closer. The projections from her suit went from green to yellow, with percentage confidence dropping. She couldn’t wait any longer. Olivia coiled her legs, then took a few bounding leaps before throwing herself into the void. She could hear the hiss of gas emerging from the suit, blasted out the back and the sides with an occasional puff of maneuvering thrusters. The cloud around the ship was getting larger.
She made the mistake of glancing below her, and nearly swallowed her tongue. The entire width of the ring was almost visible there, with mountain ranges like splatters of dull paint against a green canvas. Huge shimmering oceans were shallow puddles, and even the tallest structures were out of sight.
The Stormbreaker rushed up to meet her, though not as fast as she might’ve expected. The numbers scrolling along her HUD gradually got bigger as the margin between herself and the inside of the shell got larger.
Over her shoulder, the lift and metal ingots went straight into the bubble, and vanished from sight. There wasn’t even an instant where she could see through—it was as though they’d phased through solid matter.
“I’m on,” Mogyla said, panting over the radio. “Not… my favorite maneuver.”
“Me too,” Perez said, a few seconds later. And Olivia was rushing up to meet them. The side of the Stormbreaker grew larger and larger in her vision. She highlighted her companions in false color, so she wouldn’t accidentally smack into one of them. She wouldn’t be going quickly, but even so…
Another puff of gas issued from in front of her, spraying all around her and becoming entirely visible for a second. She slowed, until it seemed like she might slide past the Stormbreaker entirely. There was another slight hiss, and she slid down onto the surface like she was sinking into taffy. Her boots clicked, and settled against the metal skin, unmoving.
Olivia let herself collapse there, breathing heavily for a few seconds. She closed her eyes in the suit, waiting for the fear to pass.
Flying like a bird had been one of the best parts of retirement. But it hadn’t prepared her for EVAs.
“I hate being so close to a planet,” she muttered, expression dark. “Harder to get sick when there’s no sky over my head.” There was no gravity now, only the firm connection of her four hooves to the skin of the Stormbreaker. Equestria rose above her like an inverted green sun, with a distant bubble of darkness intermingling with the ship they were walking on.
“I dunno what you’re talking about, Major. Ready to nuke a slaver station, just like old times?”
In a way, he was right. Though Olivia didn’t think there were any slaves aboard. So far as she knew, the only pony to ever board this vessel was his right-hand mare Tempest Shadow and the stasis-frozen corpse of Princess Luna. “Guess so.” She opened her eyes, rose back to full height, and looked around. The surface of the Stormbreaker wasn’t smooth here as it was on the inside, but littered with mechanical bumps and protrusions. It was like standing on a rocky hillside, except that the hillside was hanging in the sky and glowing with dull red light.
“Mission step one is complete, now for step two, getting us the hell inside. Mogyla, Deadlight, you two are our best chance of finding an airlock. The rest of us will follow closely and try not to make much noise.” But on a ship this big, she didn’t think their chances of being detected were very high. This was a terraforming vessel, not a warship. They wouldn’t be expecting boarders.
“Work fast,” Perez added. “I’ve got… four hours of oxygen left. Please don’t let me suffocate out here, being a dragon is too good to give up.”
Flurry Heart would’ve rather found herself a nice warm place to curl up and waited for the attack to pass. There was certainly no chance that Lucky could’ve failed, right? No chance that the humans with all their power and confidence would be brought down by any other force on Equus.
But while that might be what Flurry Heart wanted to do, that was not what a princess would do.
She managed to catch up to Twilight and her friends as they all ran aboard one of the jumpers waiting to take off, cramming inside the open door.
The hangar around them was a roar of activity, thousands of ponies and drones rushing around into dozens of different ships. Most of them were wearing Pioneering Society combat armor, though not all. Some were just technicians, in their plain jumpsuits with tools instead of guns. But Flurry Heart ignored all of them. They seemed just as content to ignore the Elements, which probably meant Forerunner had assigned them a jumper. As powerful as Twilight was, she wouldn’t be able to steal from Forerunner.
“Wait!” she called, running after them. “I’m coming too! I wanna help!”
But Aunt Twilight stopped in the doorway, looking as sorry as she was sympathetic. “You can’t.”
“I can too!” She tried to shove her way in, ineffectively.
“I think we put on these suit things,” Rainbow said. “Accelerator-whatevers. The soldier was talking about them.”
“You can’t come with us,” Twilight said. “No, it’s not because I don’t think you can help. Think for a second, sweetheart. There are two of us left in all Equestria, two princesses. We can’t both be in the same place. If we both get captured, or we both die… then Equestria doesn’t have a future. The humans are good fighters. You have to survive where you are.”
That was a good enough reason that Flurry Heart stepped back. Once out of the way, the door slid closed, and a mechanical arm grabbed the jumper, taking it away towards launch queue. She didn’t watch it any further than that.
She wandered instead, back out of the hangar, past soldiers running in formation, pilots dragging their suits half worn. The Pioneering Society might be good fighters, but they weren’t prepared for this fight. For all that they’d been talking about this war, it wasn’t supposed to happen today. They should’ve had more time. Maybe we’ll lose. Maybe we won’t be able to fight them off.
Without anything else to do, Flurry Heart found herself one of the drone ponies. The ones rushing around the base weren’t meant to substitute for the real thing, so they were easy to spot. There was no stealth with what Forerunner did, even if these were shaped close enough that she might’ve missed them in a crowd. No fur, no cutie mark, no mane. Just plastic. “Forerunner, are we really about to be attacked?”
“I believe so,” the pony said, putting down the computation surface it was using and walking up to her. The crowd of panicked soldiers kept moving, mostly into the hangar. Forerunner guided them out of the flow of traffic, so they wouldn’t get trampled by accident. “The Storm King is not sending a single scout ship. It appears he has mobilized the captured Solar Armada, along with many mercenary vessels. They are traveling here from all directions.”
“When will they get here?”
Forerunner lowered his voice. “Forgive me, Princess, but I should not tell you that. There is a chance the information might spread. I’ll say that we don’t intend to fight many of them over Motherlode. I will only be allowing those vessels to penetrate that I am certain will not surpass the capacity of my stationary defenses to destroy. The fleet will intercept the rest.”
Intercept. Humans sure did have a lot of euphemisms for the difficult things they did. “You mean kill them?”
Forerunner nodded. “With a speed and ferocity you do not wish to know about, Princess. Please don’t make me tell you.”
She hesitated, scratching at the stone floor. “Are any of those ships crewed by ponies? Turncoats, or… captives?”
Forerunner did not answer. It probably could’ve lied, and she would’ve believed it. But Forerunner didn’t lie to her. It was all the answer she needed. “Where is Lucky Break? She’ll be… leading the fight, right?”
“Oh, no,” Forerunner seemed to shift instantly back to amusement. “Lucky Break has no mind for tactics. She has suffered near fifty-percent casualties from every engagement she has commanded. General Qingzhi is commanding from the lowest level. Lucky is present, however, if you wish to go.”
“Show me the way.”
The floor lit up, directing her towards one of the rows of identical elevators. They couldn’t insulate her from the roar of activity in the cavern, since they were just overly large metal cages in an unfinished stone shaft. But at least she was moving away from the soldiers. Forerunner’s drone followed her—he had plenty of others. She could borrow this one without making their odds worse. “Do you think we’ll win the war, Forerunner?”
“I will,” Forerunner said. “Today is not about whether the Pioneering Society triumphs over the Storm King. Today we fight to see if any of my friends will survive to see us triumph.”
“I didn’t know you had friends,” Flurry Heart said. Though now that the words were out, they sounded absurd. Why should Forerunner be any different than his ponies?
The artificial pony seemed to look up towards her, almost smirking. But it didn’t have most of the facial muscles that would’ve shown how a pony was feeling. Its ears didn’t move, nothing like that. “I have learned much since arriving in Equestria. That is how the Forerunner program was designed. Each of us arrives here as a small version of ourselves—programs that a few talented grad-students could write in a year. But we grow, we expand, we adapt. I have adapted to life in Equestria.”
The elevator opened into a single entrenched hallway. There were mounted guns lining the wall, some automated and some with soldiers sitting at stations. The ceiling and floor seemed to narrow down towards a single set of open vault doors, made entirely of heavy steel. Here for the first time she could see no sign of the umbilical, or any other support systems.
They think we might have to fight. But why here? Wouldn’t the Emperor’s Soul be safer? She thought about asking Forerunner, but there were already eyes on her. There was no rush of activity and confusion in here, so there was no way for her to vanish into the crowd. She lowered her head and made her way forward.
She kept expecting to be challenged—but the soldiers only waved her through. After passing three separate ranks, she stepped into a multi-section room that humans called an “airlock.” There was a brief spray of stinging mist over her body, a rush of air, and the door on the other side opened.
There were about a dozen people in the room, which was round with stadium-style seats leading down. The center of the room was dominated with a gigantic projection of Equestria, facing the seats. It was centered on Motherlode, with lots of little dots further away.
There were statistics displayed in the air beside it. “Strategic Projections” was printed there in bold text, and below it a set of numbers were constantly changing.
A blue percentage showed currently at 93%, with a red at 7% below it. The air above it was full of an ever-changing stream of numbers, which occasionally changed the percentage points one or two in either direction.
“Lucky is down there,” Forerunner said helpfully, pointing down the steps. Flurry Heart followed the gesture with her eyes, and sure enough she could see the pony standing along a glass control surface beside a few other important ponies. Qingzhi was there, along with his military advisors and some Equestrian consultants too. Flash Magnus was the only face she recognized. But none of them were looking at Lucky—they watched Qingzhi, and listened with rapt attention to his every word.
The only other who seemed to have as many ponies around him was Forerunner’s human body, which now wore a black military uniform without rank or identification. There was a Pioneering Society patch over the breast instead of a name. But Flurry Heart couldn’t let herself start getting confused about which was the “real” Forerunner now.
“I don’t think I have anything to add,” she muttered, staring at the little map. As she watched, little blue shapes met some red shapes, and a few disappeared. The numbers changed to 94%, and there was some distant cheering from one corner of the room. “What kind of war is this? They look like… spectators. Are they really doing anything?”
The drone leaned a little closer to her, probably so that it wouldn’t have to shout over the conversation that filled the space. “Each person in the benches is directly connected to a deployed officer. Universal Command and Control gives our commanding general the ability to manipulate an engagement at the level of the individual squad, or in the gradual movement of the entire fleet. General Qingzhi is renowned for the latter, but is less concerned with individual lives and battles. These people are not spectators, they are the ones keeping our ponies and yours safe.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened, and she stared a little longer at the model. The Emperor’s Soul wasn’t even up there—it was only little ships flying around. Some were smaller than a pony, and were represented as clouds instead of the shape of their hulls.
“I could explain with more detail, but it wouldn’t make any sense to you. Just know that you can trust General Qingzhi. Lucky Break trusts him, and I trust him. He has won wars with far worse odds than ours.”
Flurry Heart nodded, and made her way past the Forerunner towards the stairs. She skipped a few of them, speeding up whenever she got skeptical looks from the military ponies all around her. A few of them looked like they might tell her to stop, but she just sped up a little faster, ignoring their calls. There were few guards in here, except against the wall, and none of those moved to stop her.
Eventually she reached the bottom of the stadium, where Lucky Break was sitting at one of several identical stations. Each one of them had their own projector set into a table, along with screens that obscured the faces of their fellow generals.
Lucky Break was watching a battle over Los Pegasus—it was the missing fleet, coming down on occupying forces with ruthless ferocity. Whole sections of cloud city were crumbling away as the pony army advanced—wearing human armor, and firing human weapons.
She cycled her view, and now she watched a single satellite high in orbit. It seemed to have no ship at all, just long metal rods protruding from the underside. She looked up. “Oh, Flurry Heart. You’re still here?”
“You bet,” she said, standing beside the station. “I didn’t think you were a war pony.”
“I’m not,” she whispered, quiet enough that no one else at the table could hear them. “I’m just here to present a unified front, or so Qingzhi can get my approval if he has to do anything daring. Otherwise, I’d just get in the way. I can’t think of a battle the way he does. All my instincts would only lead us worse.”
“Are we winning?”
Lucky cycled through more images in rapid succession. “Most of the battles haven’t started yet. The ships that got here so far are all scouts, light things. So there wasn’t really any doubt.”
Flurry Heart sat down beside her chair, watching the flashing images on the screen. This brought back dark memories—memories of being trapped in a room with something like this, forced to watch the death of a thousand civilizations. Plenty of those had looked like better warriors even than Lucky and her soldiers. But they had all died in the end.
“You think we’re gonna win, then? Even though… the Storm King has a whole country?”
“Probably,” she answered, her confidence considerably weaker than it had been earlier. “We’re not the ones most at risk. Yeah, their fleet is flying for us… but the Stormbreaker is over Canterlot. We can’t get distracted by this battle and think that the losses on that big screen are the only ones. We could win every battle, but leave Equestria a smoking ruin. That wouldn’t be victory.”
She leaned against the other alicorn. Lucky Break was wearing a military uniform matching all the colors that everypony else was wearing. There were far fewer markings on it—like Forerunner’s. Even so, Flurry Heart could feel her heartbeat like a hummingbird trapped in her chest. She’s as scared as I am. Just better at hiding it.
“You’ll protect us?”
She nodded across the table. “Qingzhi will. He’s not just commanding everypony you see here—but the entire resistance as well. All those contacts your friends made, all the runaway Equestrian military. Twilight has given him command of them all. Our future is in his hands.”
Flurry Heart stood up again, so she could look into his face, and see the one who was responsible for all of them. There was even less doubt there than she’d seen from Lucky. He never raised his voice, never pointed with his hooves. He sat back against his large chair as though perfectly calm. But does that mean he’s got a good plan and that he’s going to protect us? Or does it mean he’s a sociopath who doesn’t care?
“I saw a lot of wars,” Flurry Heart said, lowering her voice. Lucky might not have heard her at all, but her friend was used to this. “When Celestia showed me the footage. There was a lot of fighting. I saw ponies like him.”
“Did they win?”
Flurry Heart shook her head. “They weren’t fighting the Storm King. They were fighting… the whole universe. A tide of blood that rose and drowned everypony but us. But I can see he knows what he’s doing.” Qingzhi had never spoken to her without respect. He’d never treated her unkindly, or failed to answer a question. “Has he won before?”
“Many times,” Lucky answered. “He was tired of war in his old life. But he committed his mind to the Forerunner a few days before he died. I… my scan was already taken, long before that. But I’ve read about him since. Military men were saying he committed himself to the future, to fight mankind’s battles against greater enemies. There weren’t many great men left in his day—it was all algorithms, all marginal people who just pushed things a little further. Not Qingzhi, though.”
A voice cut through her thoughts, loud enough that the entire room fell silent. “A fleet of ships is approaching Motherlode. I believe it must have been supernaturally cloaked, but I’ve detected their heat signatures as they enter the densenet.”
Qingzhi rose from his chair, and all eyes seemed to fall on him. Even Lucky’s. “Drone fighter wings one through six, deploy. Get marines onto the surface to evacuate any stragglers. Everyone else, remain at your posts. This war is over more than one city. We must win it all.”
Equestria had an underworld.
Sarah had imagined such places before, and found herself walking faster and faster the more of it she saw. The more her ancient memories of what death might be like were matching her expectations, the more horrified she became.
It was built atop a crumbling mesa of compacted city, as though the largest megalopolis had been pressed down by the weight of geologic time. Yet the upper layer remained in testament to how life on the surface looked today, with the same construction style as modern Equestrian structures. Shades floated between the empty buildings, mostly acting out the motions of life but occasionally drifting towards them. Whenever they got too close, Ocellus or one of her drones would fight them back with spells, and so their trip would continue.
“Did you ever go to Disney World?” James asked, his tone almost conversational as they passed under the shell of a collapsed cathedral, with intact skeletons hanging out of an exposed crypt.
Their changeling escorts—thirty in all, including Ocellus, mostly ignored them. They included the drones that had come along for Ocellus’s mission, but not just them. Ocellus’s recruiting call had attracted the attention of several squads of powerful warriors, who had all apparently died in the “Canterlot invasion.” Now at last they would return to fight again. Needless to say, they didn’t speak English.
“Did I… no.” Sarah glowered at him. “I have no idea why you’d think I would. You do remember what I said about my past, don’t you? When I was young enough to go to theme parks, I was lucky not to have to steal my lunch. It must’ve cost a thousand credits to get into that place.”
“Well… This reminds me of a theme park attraction. That’s what I was saying. It’s so… curated. Glowing horse skulls that follow you, ghosts who sing about all the things they wish they’d done better in life. Somebody made this place and expected it to be used. By… the ignorant. Princess Celestia knows this is all a fraud. If we had the right permissions, we could turn it all off and jump right to the end.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying or why it would matter,” Ocellus said. “The ponies crafted something to deceive their own people, yes? A… theme park.”
“It’s just interesting.” James looked away, pawing at the rocky ground. “I wonder if they used to come back from the dead more often. A place like this… this path is pretty big. We might get ten ponies at once crossing through here. But there were lots of dead ponies waiting to come back who didn’t get to until Lucky brought them back. If Celestia knew about this place, why didn’t Discord just send his friends here instead?”
Sarah had only a rough idea of what the pony was talking about, from her single day of rushed background from Forerunner. Discord was the failsafe program on the ring, and he’d made a deal with Lucky Break somehow. She’d been allowed to bring her own dead back, in exchange for working for him to bring back his servants. But the spell had stopped working shortly after.
“Maybe it only worked on Alicorns before?” Ocellus suggested.
“Then it wouldn’t be decorated. The Alicorns know we’re in a digital simulation, they don’t need pretend skulls and creepy ghosts.”
The creepy ghosts were sure making things difficult for their little force of changelings. The further they went, the more they had to slow down, pushing back against the transparent masses that flooded out of ruined buildings and blocked their path. Sarah nearly got smacked in the back by a few spears as the guards prepared to stab with them again.
“It means something changed,” Sarah said. “I’m sure Discord would’ve known about it. He chose not to send his servants here. But Celestia is loyal to Harmony, and she did send us here. You think she’s setting us up?”
“It would be just like her,” Ocellus said. “But that would mean she cares more about our old rivalry than about saving Equestria from the Storm King.”
“Doesn’t matter what she was doing.” James cut them both off, pointing up ahead. There was a deep river running straight through the path, and a gate on the other side beyond which the world itself crumbled away to nothing. The river was perhaps fifty feet across, with that churning look to its surface that suggested an incredibly rapid current underneath. And yet a single skiff waited on the shore, with a robed pony and a pole. The boat might permit three ponies to cross at a time, if they packed in tight.
“We should go first,” Sarah said. “Ocellus, tell your boys to wait. We can figure out if it’s safe and tell them what to do.”
The front group of guards turned to look at her. A few of them took off, raising their spears. “We could fly across easily, Princess Ocellus. There’s no wind here.”
James reached out, trying to grab the nearest flying drone. “Don’t let them fly, Ocellus! You can’t cheat in the underworld.”
Ocellus frowned at him, glancing briefly up at her soldiers and then back across the river. Then she nodded, and they landed. “We’re upstream, it can’t kill us. Why should we care about its rules?”
“Because it could separate us. It could send them off, trap them somewhere, I dunno. Just because the system can’t kill us doesn’t mean it couldn’t stop us from using it to return to life.”
Sarah was tired of waiting. She shoved right past James and the guards, right over to the side of the boat. “I don’t have any old-timey metal money to give you,” she said. “Do we need to go back for some?”
“No,” said the speaker. The boatman was apparently a boatwoman today, with a voice like an emotionally exhausted pony. She towered over any of them, even Sarah’s Alicorn proportions. Yet she held almost perfectly still when she wasn’t speaking, like one of the corpses of this underworld herself.
“Do we need anything to cross?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too petulant. “Can I just… get into your boat.”
“Get in,” said the speaker. “You only need to speak with me during the crossing, that is all.”
Sarah didn’t wait another second, she hopped off the old wooden dock and into the ship. It rocked for a few seconds, spraying the shore with dark water that hissed and steamed for a second before boiling away. So good thing we didn’t try to swim. “Get in, losers. We’re crossing.”
James joined her another moment later, with Ocellus close behind. There was only a single bench seat not occupied by the boatman, so they had to cram in pretty close. Curse this stupid Alicorn butt.
“Decide for certain if you’re crossing,” said the mare. “Once we begin, your only direction of travel is back downstream. You will return to an imperfect world of suffering and pain.”
Sarah tried to lean forward and get a glimpse of what her face really looked like under that robe, but she could see only dense layers of shadow. This avatar would not be showing her who was underneath. It’s probably just Harmony though, right? Just another puppet show.
“We’re sure,” Sarah said, glancing to the side. “Aren’t we? James?”
Her companion hesitated. She could practically see him thinking back to their date, to a world surrounded by creatures who hung spellbound on his every word. But in the end, he nodded. “Sure is wrong. I’m resolved.”
“Yes,” Ocellus added, almost annoyed. “I’ve made this trip before, many times. Just not this way.”
The boatmare shoved off with her pole, which didn’t dissolve even though the dirt of the shore had. Soon enough they drifted along the surface of the water. Despite the strength of the current beneath, their boat cut almost straight towards the other side. Sarah felt as though they were moving swiftly, but the other shore wasn’t getting any closer.
“I see you’re a citizen,” said the boatmare, almost casually. “Your name and face are not known to me. Much must have changed if one so young is given permissions like yours. What did an instance that was born less than two months ago do to earn that privilege?”
“I clicked a box,” Sarah said, glancing again across the shore. And again it seemed that they had made no progress. Okay, so you don’t want to make this easy. I see your game. “The Quarantine is over, whoever you are. I’m told that there was a time when everyone in this place was a citizen.”
“You speak to the Failsafe,” she said. “But… apparently his work is done. All his years of struggle, only to nearly be undone by the Storm King.”
“Because he’ll… destroy the world?” Sarah dared. She glanced briefly to James, but found abruptly that her side wasn’t touching anyone. There was nopony on the boat with her but herself. “What the hell did you do with my friends?”
But the mare ignored that question. “I do not think so. Harmony’s methods are too precise. A genuine risk to Equus would’ve been eliminated, even if that meant the death of a mind. There is a threshold for it, a linear transform that could be performed on the probabilistic matrix of…” she trailed off. “Right, you’re two months old. You are simplistic, and untrained. Unqualified to understand the mechanisms of our society.”
“At least I’ve got more tact than you.” Sarah rose to her hooves, and found the boat began to rock unsteadily from one side to the other. The mare driving it had no problem balancing, but Sarah was splashed with stinging water, and nearly went over the side. She managed to shield her eyes with a wing, and the feathers touched instantly turned gray and crumbled away, leaving angry red skin underneath.
“Fuck that hurts!” Sarah dropped flat to the wood, pulling her wing close and ignoring the seat. At least once she stepped down the boat stopped rocking. “What were you saying about the real world being the place where we go to feel pain?”
Again the mare ignored her. She didn’t even seem to be seeing her anymore. But maybe she never could through the costume anyway. “I’m required to ensure that you understand the consequences of your actions,” she said. “You rob yourself of an opportunity by returning to life this way. There is a reason we do not typically utilize it.”
“Oh, please.” Sarah glared up at her, settling back into her seat with only a slight hiss of pain. “Please, tell me. I love hearing about abstractions when your world is about to end.”
“My world ended thousands of years ago,” the figure snapped back, the first rise of genuine emotion Sarah had managed. But it didn’t last. She took a deep breath, looked away, and proceeded more quietly this time. “Most who were alive in my kingdom were ignorant of why we did not just extend our own lives forever as a single individual. Some of us even did extend them—like me. We didn’t understand what we might’ve given up by not living a different life.”
“Great.” Sarah straightened, folding her forelegs. “Look, we’ve been down here a long time already. We’re really just trying to get back, if you could skip all this.”
“A new life is a new opportunity to gain the most abstracted kind of experience,” she said, as though she were hissing each word through gritted teeth. “You are a low-complexity individual, only a single instance mind. You could be more. If you went back to Equestria conventionally, you’d be born as someone new. You would gain new experience, develop a different personality, and when you returned you would be twice as diverse in the problems you could solve. Repeat this process many times, and eventually you’re fit to combine into a single instance.”
“Great, great.” She shook her head. “I’m not interested. And neither are you, obviously. You’re not upstream with the high-complexity god people, you’re here in an amusement park. Pretending to be Death or whatever for the ignorant. No I don’t want to join your pyramid scheme, I don’t want your essential oils. Can I please have my friends back now?”
“I have already lived many lives,” the pony said, finally turning her “head” to face Sarah. Though she still couldn’t see the pony’s face, or even her eyes. “I have done enough. But just because you reject it does not mean that your companions will.”
Sarah was beginning to realize why Discord hadn’t sent ponies this way. If I didn’t know what I was doing, if I didn’t have a mission, I might get convinced. Who wouldn’t want a fresh start? Not Ocellus, she didn’t have to doubt that. The changeling princess had been waiting for her, had been eager to return to the surface and finish what they started.
Oh god. “You did something to James?”
She laughed. “Nothing. I can’t do anything to any of you. Only offer you a different door than this one. I keep you here until I have determined that you have made an informed decision. Plenty who come this way make other choices. They look on their lives and wish they’d done something differently. But you can’t erase the suffering you caused. You can’t rebuild the cities that have fallen to ash, or restore those you murdered. But… you could be someone new. Someone who won’t ever murder, and who has no memories of ruined cities. At least… for a while. For those more complex than yourself… downstream can be a relief. Boil everything down to a single point of view, a single sliver of consciousness. Live like a child, finally free again to believe that you can do right or wrong.”
“I’ve made my informed decision,” she said. “I want to go back to the surface. Preferably as close to the Pioneering Society as possible. Princess Celestia said there were… temples. Many Equestrian cities have them, right? So send us to the one that’s closest to humans. All of us.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the reverse shore—but she could see no ponies there either. The army of changelings was gone. They say we’re all alone with death in the end. I wonder if that’s just part of the act too.
“I will return you,” Death responded. “You should wait a few moments after arriving. Your friend… suggested something I have never heard before. But Harmony agreed. Who am I to doubt Harmony’s wisdom?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, and for a second, she wondered if Death might capsize the whole boat. But no, they were getting closer to the other shore. After the entire trip, she was almost free.
“I hope you can stop the Storm King,” she said, as the docks on the other side got larger and larger. She could see a changeling waiting there, just one. Ocellus, watching her ship with the nervous tap of one hoof. “You aren’t fighting the enemy you think you are. My daughter gave you the best advice she could, but we disagree on this.”
They thumped against the dock, splashing a little more of the strange water up against it. “Your… daughter?”
The boatmare shoved her off the edge with the dry end of her pole, causing Sarah to trip up onto the docks. “If you can keep the Quarantine from imposing on us again, that would be wonderful,” Death said. “The galaxy waits above us, all our ancient homeworlds abandoned. I would rather see our children inherit those worlds than to see them rot empty.”
“Then why don’t you come with us? You want us to win!” She gestured over her shoulder at the gate, and the swirling abyss beyond it. “The fight’s not in here, it’s down there.”
“It isn’t my help you need,” she said. “Or yours, citizen. Good luck.” And she drifted back into the current, where she was quickly swept away.
Ocellus embraced her a second later, her body cold and her eyes wide. She seemed to be seeing something Sarah couldn’t, something distant and terrifying. “You made it.”
“Yeah,” Sarah answered. “You too. What happened to your guards?”
Even as she asked, a few more changelings stepped off the dock. First one, then another, appearing from nowhere. She stood in place, waiting, but there were no more after the first three.
“They weren’t as resolved as they thought they were,” Sarah whispered, answering her own question. “She lured them off.”
“Your male isn’t here either,” Ocellus said. “Was he… unsure of our mission as well?”
“Not our mission, but he was unsure of himself. The boatmare… said something about him following us. We shouldn’t wait.” She glanced back at the river, as though expecting the robed figure to return any moment. But she had said there would be no alternative once they reached here, right? They could only go forward.
“I was… hoping we’d have more,” Ocellus said, as the three soldiers assembled behind them. “I wanted to accomplish both tasks at once. Contact your ponies, send a message back about my father’s betrayal. If we send them back, we will have no protection.”
“They can go with us as far as Othar,” Sarah said, stepping up to the gate. Without her touching it, the rusty metal swung open for them. A grave wind blew in from behind them, carrying the smell of rot through to whatever was beyond. “Then we can send them.”
“We’ll see.” Ocellus offered her hoof. “I don’t want to go alone.” Sarah took it.
Together they tumbled off the edge.