Meliora

by Starscribe


Chapter 30: Underwoodi

Jackie woke up in her own little dream.

In a way that made her very much alike the other bats out there—many who spent any time in dreamcraft would quickly establish sections of the dream to which they would return, linking themselves so completely that they would almost always be drawn there, even in the presence of other pressures.

Her little apartment looked as though it was becoming run down—bits of the wallpaper were peeling, the screen was cracked slightly, and water dripped in through the ceiling. This isn’t right. The magic of this place should’ve lasted for another century.

She closed her eyes and took a second to remember this apartment as it was meant to be. Boards slipped back together, windows went clear, and her dream was restored to the way she had designed it.

“Misty, I need you.” She was more than just talking to herself—she was the figment’s creator, and so she could bring it here without much effort.

The fish didn’t even have to walk through the door—suddenly she was here, landing on the counter in front of her. “You’re alive!”

“Currently. I’m in the belly of the beast right now, and I can’t leave.” She slumped into a nearby chair, resting her head in her hooves. “Everything is fucked, Misty. Everything I planned… it’s all for nothing. Athena isn’t even going to let us fight them. She’s gonna melt us from space. What’s the point of gathering allies if we can’t use them?” Then, quieter. “What am I supposed to do?”

The fish landed on her shoulder. Even without Alex’s colors anymore, there was still something familiar in her tone. That knowing sympathy had come from somewhere, and that somewhere was Jackie’s memories. “I remember… what it was like to be in that position. To be surrounded by enemies I couldn’t overcome. Threats closing in on every side. Fears that followed me forever. Monsters I wasn’t strong enough to fight.”

“What did Alex do?” Jackie asked, tears streaming unwillingly down her eyes. “I’m thinking as fast as I can, Misty. But none of the ways I know to fight will work against Athena. Even if we win this battle… and if we do, it’ll only be because we’re fucking lucky… she has a whole fleet of these old battlecruisers. We’re so fucked.”

The fish didn’t say anything for almost a minute. Subjectively, anyway. Jackie was already pushing time as fast as it would go, pushing the limit of her spirit to remain attached to her body. She’d known a bat or two to push too hard, sending their body into a soulless coma that would end in death if not swiftly rectified.

She couldn’t risk that. Athena might already have discovered me. She might already be planning to kill me in my sleep. Shouldn’t help her.

“First things first,” she said, forcing herself to stand up straight. “I need a message back. The city needs to be warned. My war plan… they should have not quite 24-hours before the attack comes. I need you to deliver a message for me. Gather a meeting in Meliora’s dreamside, all my best warriors, and the breezie queen too. Once they’re inside, crank the ratio of time as high as the magic will support, and then you return to me.”

“Sure, yeah…” The tiny seapony nodded to herself with each command, like she was checking them off an invisible list. “You can’t do it? I’m not as convincing as you…”

“Tell Liz to do the convincing, and no.” She spread her wings, flexing each in turn. “I’m only dreaming, so I can’t leave on the other side. But you can, you’re powerful enough for that. You can be a go-between if there’s anything more they must know. But for now, this is enough. I can tell them more when we meet.

“Then what will you do?” Misty asked.

“I’ve got to find out how to kill a monster,” she said. “I think I might know someone who knows.”


Far in the celestial heights of the dreamlands stood the Archive, an imaginary library that had survived longer than any in reality. And its master, a case study in why keeping constructs was such a dangerous practice. Even someone innocent and helpful could grow.

“I’ve come seeking knowledge,” Jackie said, her hooves settling delicately onto the roof behind Mercy. But not close enough that she was within reach—that was too much danger even for her.

“Then you understand the purpose of my home,” Mercy said. She was arranging books on a large shelf—except that these books were tomes so thick that only unicorn magic could lift them, tomes as tall as her waist and wrought of something like stone. “I may have what you are looking for, friend. I might give it to you.”

“You know about Athena?”

The dream-Alicorn seemed to blur, and suddenly she was facing towards Jackie instead of away from her. Her entire expression was wrinkled in disgust, her neck and head stretching out of proportion. But these days she only looked much like a pony in profile anyway.

“She is… like me,” Mercy said. “A creation grown beyond the intentions of its creator. We might never meet—the world she rules is forever apart from my own. Yet I have seen many dreams of her.”

“I’m trying to kill her.”

There was silence in the library—more so than usual. It sounded like entire shelves of books below had stopped with their sorting. Servants of the library froze in place, perhaps afraid of what wrath was about to fall on their domain.

Jackie could immediately sense the anger, though she was not pretending to be a changeling here. If anything, her real body acting like a unicorn would make it difficult to be anything else. “I think… maybe it might help to give a little more detail.”

“I believe so.” The Alicorn loomed over her, suddenly so close that her aura made the fur on Jackie’s legs lift up. “Because it sounded almost as though you were admitting to committing one of the unforgivable sins of this place.”

Mercy pointed to the wrought stone archway leading down. There was text engraved there, text unaffected by the passage of time. She could read it even from here.

1. None shall carry the sacred knowledge away from this place.
2. None shall suffer the sacred knowledge to be destroyed.

“I know some of the function of these… artificial lives. They are libraries of information vaster than any mortal. Athena has been working in mortal lives for many thousands of years. Destroying that information is… unacceptable.”

Jackie hadn’t broken any rules—which was probably why she hadn’t been attacked. Those rules only applied while inside the library. Even so, that didn’t mean Mercy would be pleased to hear her wanting to disrespect them elsewhere. Those who were welcome here were meant to be guardians of learning in all their lives.

“Athena has… been corrupted. She’s killing ponies all over. And the ones she doesn’t kill, sometimes they get it worse. I saw… some kind of experiment, like something grown in a test tube, only… worse. I’m sure the thing just wanted to die, but it can’t, because… look, I don’t need her to die exactly. But I need to get rid of her.”

“Many have tried before you.” Mercy gestured, and she followed the Alicorn through the gates into the library proper. “Destroying her was the goal of the demon Charybdis. But while he was able to remove every satellite from orbit, aspects of her mind survived to rebuild. The solar system is vast, and she controls much of it. Life on Earth barely even understands how powerful she is.”

“True.” Jackie didn’t care much about the technical side, so she couldn’t have said how any of that worked. But she knew that lots of people had tried to kill Athena. The old HPI, when she was far weaker and smaller. But they hadn’t been able to do it then.

As Mercy explained it, she seemed smug. “She is the perfect physical library, even more than my creator. She does not change, she does not revise her goals, she is always expanding and always gathering new information. You will not destroy her.”

“So you won’t help me,” Jackie said. “You like her too much. You wish the world was the way she made it. You don’t care about the lives she ruins.”

Those might’ve been insults if the one she was speaking with was human. But Mercy didn’t react as though she’d been insulted—they were only statements to her, only facts. “I do not need to obstruct you—the task is impossible. Her understanding spans from one side of the planet to the other. Her scientists fill my halls with new knowledge. No power raised against her will prosper. It would take the forces of Imperium to bring her down—and she has seen that. All the Alicorns are gone. You think they left willingly? Athena knows her limits—she knows she cannot ever wield Imperium. So she removed those who were a threat to her, peacefully. You say that she’s harming the ponies of the surface, but I suspect she is kinder to them than they were to each other.”

“Only with Imperium,” Jackie repeated. “Then that’s where I start. Take me to everything you have about Imperial magic. I’ll… go from there.”

“Sure,” Mercy said, her voice a strangled laugh. “I will give you everything I have.”

She took Jackie deep under the massive fortress library, past the stone gargoyles that protected the most sacred texts. Past all other visitors, past even the servants, to a massive empty room, with a shelf at the far end made from iron and gold.

It was packed with books, and each one looked unique. Jackie saw a cover made from liquid metal, and another that seemed to whisper to her when she looked at it. But Mercy removed something that wasn’t quite a book—a set of wood plates connected together with hinges, stamped with hieroglyphic symbols. A codex, styled after the ancient Americas’ stores of knowledge. “You may read it,” she said. “But you may not take it with you from this room. Treat it carefully.”

There was a single plain table in a corner, with only one chair. There were lights suspended above it, and soft felt covering most surfaces. In a way, it could’ve been the special collections of any university library. Except for the mad spirit breathing down her back.

Jackie took the book, brought it over to the single seat. “And this is… it? All you have about Imperium?”

“Everything,” Athena said, her voice dripping with laughter. “Not one of the Alicorns has recorded their knowledge in tangible form. Some reached the eighth attainment and one even reached the ninth, yet there is nothing recorded. Perhaps you should remind my creator of the importance of keeping records.”

Jackie opened the book and started to read. Some of it she knew—Alicorns were created when someone became spiritually connected enough to a single element that they became the embodiment of that thing, like a cutie mark for the universe. That agreement would be sworn, then signified with terrible power.

She could still remember a well, its symbols and dimensions now beyond her sight, with Archive standing beside it. If I’d taken her gift, I could kill Athena myself. My own selfishness is why I’m here.

But she found she didn’t care. Jackie was already giving a great deal of herself to this mission. But give up her chance to see her wife again? Not that.

As to their spells, there was far less. Each Alicorn had new avenues of magic opened to them, like the arcana they already knew, but beyond. There were five attainments in unicorn magic, and five more theorized here by whatever scholar had assembled this. Each Alicorn could reach the higher attainments connecting only to what they symbolized.

And Athena… is a creation, a tool. A human invention. She had the right Alicorn for that job—Eureka.

She read for another few hours, before finally pushing the book away. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Mercy.”

The Alicorn had stood beside her the entire time, watching her read like a medieval parent hovering outside their heir’s door on the night of consummation. “You seem… pleased by what you learned. Should I be worried?”

“No,” Jackie answered. “But Athena should be.”