Starcraft: Queen and Country

by Wanderer D

Chapter 004

2503, Koprulu Sector █

She fell, her magic dying the moment blood exploded in her field of vision. What had happened? Why couldn't she stand up?

She felt herself losing her grasp on reality, the world looking slightly brighter and off-focus around the edges of her vision. She heard, distant stomping, saw large, thick, bipedal figures stomping around the cave, looking at some sort of… thing next to the entrance.

Wasn't the Professor next to it? She couldn't understand… slowly pain crept up, from just under her barrel, it was unbearable, but she could barely muster the strength to moan in pain, when what she really wanted to do was cry out. Scream.

'It hurts! Gallus! It hurts! Zeratul… Quantum… oh Celestia…' a fuzzy image took face in her mind. A kind smile. Soft, white coat. Twirly, purple mane. Loving words. "R-rari…"

A pair of large, metallic boots stopped before her, something heavy thudded around her, and everything went black.

For a few seconds before she completely lost consciousness, all she could hear was her heart and her breathing. It felt like a long time before she passed out.

They were sitting in Sweetie's room, facing the mirror of her vanity. Sweetie couldn't really make out her face, nor Rarity's but it didn't bother her. The world around her felt more colorful and full of meaning than normal, and yet, as much as she was aware of that, it was still on the back of her mind.

"So we talked about it all night, and we really think that we can help!"

Rarity looked at Sweetie Belle with a smile a she kept brushing her sister's mane. Sweetie could tell her sister was smiling. It made her feel happy and appreciated.

She hadn't told Rarity enough how much she loved her and how as she had gotten older, had grown to understand and appreciate all the things her sister did for her.

As the brushing continued, Sweetie felt a slight sense of dread.

"Hey, Rarity?"

"Yes, Sweetie?

"Promise me you'll never leave me?"

"Oh, Sweetie," Rarity held her close. "I'm already gone."

The sounds of machinery. Motors of some kind. Scrapping of gravel. Marching, steady footsteps. Bumps in the road. Sweetie shook awake when her head smashed on the side of the container.

She was too baffled to understand what was happening, and the pain.

She started screaming, her voice rough until she couldn't even breathe.

"Sweetie!"

She galloped across the arid, hard, cracked desert ground, chasing the voice that echoed in the air all around her. She couldn't see him. But he was there! He was there, just a few steps away wherever it was she was going.  "Gallus! Don't leave me!"

"We can't wait Sweetie, the universe is changing!"

Sweetie slowed down as the world around her seemed to suddenly increase in magnitude. Green clouds of gas exploded from within the cracks; distant thunder and lightning shook and lit the world beyond her, incomprehensibly strong winds lifted pebbles and sand around her.

She was in the heart of a tornado that went up all the way to the two moons in the sky, both glowing bright red.

'What's happening?' Pain seared through her, increasing and decreasing in time with her heartbeat. She couldn't see anything. She couldn't move.

All was dark. She let herself go.

"We came through the Void."

Sweetie walked into the cavern, searching for Gallus or Zeratul, but only found a single unicorn.

Professor Quantum's back was to her, his horn glowing with a red-black aura as equation after equation was etched on the wall. There was something wrong with him. His movements were jerky as if he didn't have full control of his motor skills.

"We came through the Void. And it wants us back. All will be destroyed."

Another bump. Shaking. Pain. Disorientation. "How long have I… I feel so… weak…'

She stood, a tiny white speck in the middle of an immense cavern. All was dark and creatures moved, creeped and slithered in the shadows. The walls of the cavern were carved into titanic crevices and stairs and columns, all surrounding a massive, circular stone with some sort of keyhole in the middle.

There were markings on the stone that she couldn't… quite… make… out...

Voices. Guttural, incomprehensible mishmash of syllables and consonants. Sounds of creatures alive around her. Suffering. A searing, forceful invasion. Sweetie tried to scream, but no sound came out.

The tone of the voices changed. A command of some sort was issued. She felt herself moving again.

Twilight Sparkle sat across from Sweetie Belle. "You're alone, away from magic, friendship and possibility of rescue."

"I know," Sweetie said, not looking up to meet the princess' eyes.

"Sweetie. You need to be strong. We miss you. We're looking."

She looked up, eyes wide. "You're not a dre—"

Light. Bright. Hurt her eyes, distracted her from the pain for just a second. The surface she was on tilted, and she started sliding down. She tried to reach out with her hooves to hold on to something, but she couldn't move her forelegs. She couldn't even feel them.

She gasped as she splashed into cold liquid. She kicked with her hind legs, trying to stay afloat, but there was no buoyancy and she had no force to do more than move them a little. She sank, crying out desperately. Or trying to-her body barely had the energy to twitch.

Liquid enveloped her completely. She tried to hold her breath. Think through her addled, confused state. Summon magic. Beg for help.

'Sis! Rarity!'

The liquid covered her. She felt herself sink further down, her left hind-hoof tapping gently on something solid. She couldn't hold her breath any longer, she had barely had time to get a full gulp of air.

'Not like this! Please, oh Celestia! Not like this… Rarity! Gallus! H-help me!' She couldn't hold it any longer. She opened her mouth, bubbles escaping her lungs before she took an involuntary, painful breath of liquid.

She felt her body convulse, her lungs fill up with it. It tasted like blood. It filled her. She was going to drown… she felt tears, even underwater and felt herself fade away from life.

A deep, echoing voice reached her through darkness and panic. Sweetie floated, her senses forgotten, her mind breaking… until it brushed briefly with the memory of this voice.

Kind, yet strong. Fearless, yet gentle. A memory of a mind, powerful, ancient and focused—a presence she had only known for very little time, yet had extended hope and friendship to her.

She grabbed onto this memory like a lifeline, drawing strength and kindness and courage and endurance and will and focus and hope.

Green gems, glowing with the might of his will behind them. She didn't know how, but Zeratul was saving her again… somehow.

She was floating in something warm.

Sweetie slowly opened her eyes to discover the world around her had an orange tint to it now. Her whole body ached, but it was dull, as if she had been doing too much exercise and her muscles were cramped.

It was then that she realized she had been tossed into a tank full of liquid. Eyes wide, she immediately held her breath, shaking and trying to bang against the glass surface of the tank she was in with her hooves… but they were gone.

Sweetie screamed, a gurgling sound that still carried the terrified feelings of helplessness and horror she felt,when she noticed she only had meaty stumps left where her legs used to be. The flesh itself was little more than an angry red, cauterized muscle.

Sweetie kept screaming hyperventilating as she shook her head in denial and tried to escape. Her hind hooves hit the glass, but did little than throw her painfully forward, to smack painfully with her head against the opposite glass.

She could see figures outside, bipedal and covered in protective lab gear. One of them moved close to her container and pressed something.

A new taste invaded her senses, and she felt herself calming down, her thoughts clearing. 'Some sort of sedative?' she thought. She realized now that she could still breathe and that despite the ache, she wasn't in real pain anymore.

She felt herself getting tired, so she looked around, trying to take in as much as she could now before she was once more unconscious. The room, as far as she could see, was huge, and had been separated into several levels by platforms which had elevators of some sort that moved creatures around.

There were thousands of other orange-liquid pods, all containing different creatures. Fighting the drowsiness that was slowly becoming overwhelming she turned around. To her left and right were creatures she had never seen before.

Insect-like, and yet not, they had carapaces and teeth and tentacles and fangs and claws and pincers and insectoid wings and bat-like wings as well. They were horrifying, nightmarish creatures… deadly and dangerous like nothing she had ever experienced. She had no doubt that any of them would make a feast out of a pony.

Turning around fully, her eyes widened and she stared up and up at the massive tank behind her, where another creature like the others floated, but it was gigantic. Gargantuan! Just one of its claws would trample a huge chunk of Ponyville. It was heavily damaged and barely held together by exposed muscle under damaged chitin.

The sight of the creature slowly opening a great, yellowish-green glowing eye that locked onto hers was the last thing she saw before sleep took her once more.

"Did you know my sister once fought a manticore in the Everfree Forest? And that Princess Twilight Sparkle levitated an Ursa Minor after putting it to sleep?"

"That's very impressive," Gallus replied, checking his claws. "So what to you intend to do about that thing?"

"What?" Sweetie asked, turning around to find a giant, yellow-green eye, staring at her.

When she woke up, she started breathing fast, disgusted by the feel of the liquid filling her lungs, but she slowly calmed down. For now, she was safe. Whatever that meant.

She didn't know how long she had been there, but she needed to figure out a way to escape. If she could make it home… Twilight could probably do something about her legs… but she needed help.

She bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying not to be distracted by the hungry looks from the other tubes, or the strange creatures that had captured her. She tried to find the trail of the crystal she had followed earlier… but it was gone. Still, she had to try. "Hello? I-is anypony out there? Can you hear me?"

A chittering echoed in the back of her mind as the telepathic signal echoed around the cavern and tried to expand. The creatures in the other tubes seemed sensitive to her magic, while the bipedal creatures did not. The silence continued and Sweetie felt despair rising. "Anypony?"

It was like calling out to an empty world.

She really had lost track of how long she'd been there, drifting in and out of sleep, occasionally using her magic to try to call for help. Without the link provided by Zeratul, she wasn't even sure she was projecting her thoughts at all—that had been a byproduct of his contacting her, somehow opening a part of her mind that she had had no idea was closed to experiences like that.

All she could do was try to recreate the feeling from before, but the only thing she could hear was that annoying chittering sound.

Her musings were interrupted by a new, whirring sound. She glanced up and noticed with alarm that part of the top of the container had opened up, and long mechanical arms with tubes and worse, syringes attached to them were lowering into the liquid of the container. Just as she was about to kick and use her telekinesis, she noticed the familiar, bitter flavor of the sedative kicking in.

Her strength left her just as the first syringe stabbed her mercilessly on the back, and two more were jammed into the stubs of what used to be her legs. The liquid took a new flavor as something else was mixed in, but she couldn't concentrate on that. She couldn't even pass out as the pain shot through her body, blinding her and burning through her veins.

Sweetie twitched, slowly awakening from a dreamless sleep.

Something felt… different.

Sweetie looked down, feeling legs she thought gone… and fought the urge to scream in horror again, as the things growing out of the stumps where her forelegs used to be twitched and moved almost of their own initiative.

They were thin, chitinous things, resembling the appendages of some of the creatures around her. They were too thin, too alien.

"Please!" she shouted, her magic sending out the strongest telepathic signal she could attempt with her limited knowledge. She didn't notice the slight, chittering background to her words as they emanated. "Please! Help me! I'm trapped! They're doing something to me!"

Sweetie sobbed, but nopony would answer. She was truly alone.

"You will never be alone."

Sweetie's head snapped up, eyes wide and looking around. Had she imagined that?

"I come, little zergling."

"Who are you?" Sweetie projected through the mental link, but there was no reply.