Surrounded by a couple dozen undead Frenchmen, Lara reflected that this was still better than the time she’d discovered a handful of dinosaurs in the jungle.
Daring, too, seemed relieved, but still said more casually than she felt, “Okay, just zombies. Should have expected it, really.”
“Qui etes vous?” one of them asked, in a voice that sounded better than expected from decaying vocal chords.
Daring glanced at Lara. “Equestria pretty much has only one language, so I never bothered learning anything besides the ancient forms.”
“He wants to know who we are,” Lara replied. Cautiously holstering her guns, she struck up a conversation in French. She turned her headlamp on, to its lowest setting, though upon seeing the crowd, wished she hadn’t.
While she was busy, Daring turned to look back down the hill. In the distance, she could see a few moving lights, probably flashlights from the group that had arrived to the house. They might find the tunnel, or they might just climb up here on the surface. Either way, if she and Lara were going to find a cure for her condition, it was going to have to be soon.
And, though she was trying to stay optimistic, surely there wouldn’t still be zombies in Rocca Sparvièra if there was a cure here.
Lara abruptly turned to her. “We don’t have any wine, do we?”
“Why would we?”
Lara gestured. “The French. Okay, use the water we packed, then. I have a vague plan.”
“How vague?” Daring asked as she took off the backpack to retrieve the bottled water.
“Do you think the curse on that amulet has run its course?”
Daring touched the dark stone of the Mortal Amulet where it rested inside her shirt. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve got some willing volunteers who can help us find out.”
“They...just agreed to it?”
“Most of them are a couple hundred years old. Would you want to live like that for that long?” Lara paused, and then went on in a quieter voice. “It might cure them, or it might kill them. And they’re fine with that.”
Daring looked at the small crowd of badly decayed zombies. She’d had a taste of their condition, but couldn’t bring herself to imagine the full extent they must have suffered.
She still didn’t know what would happen to her if she removed the amulet, so Lara helped her dunk it in an opened bottle of water. There was a definite reaction, a small swirl of angry bubbles illuminated by Lara’s headlamp.
“Well, here goes nothing.” Lara handed the bottle to a man who didn’t have much of a face left. He lifted it to the ragged hole that passed for his mouth and drank.
At first it seemed like he was swelling up, but as they watched, it turned out to be just an effect him regaining his flesh over the course of several seconds. His eyes brightened, missing skin regrew, and teeth even began to come in.
However, the changes almost immediately began to reverse. The man looked down at himself as he began to wizen away again, but this time it was not death, instead age.
Lara hastily grabbed the bottle as the man fell over and apparently passed away from old age in just seconds, his body continuing to decay to dust.
There was silence and stillness for several seconds before the crowd swarmed Lara to get the bottle.
“Que up!” she exclaimed. “Etre patiente!”
Still reeling from what had happened, Daring still maintained enough presence of mind to being dunking the amulet in the second bottle of water. She wasn’t sure there was going to be enough to go around.
It was a strange feeling, having people line up to die. If anything, it only made Daring that much more determined to put things back as they were. She had a feeling her next book was going to be much more soberly introspective.
Lara took the next bottle of treated water from her and finished with the last few zombies, who gratefully crumbled to dust at her feet. She, too, was experiencing some internal struggle with the experience, but was able to turn her mind away and focus on the next task, that of not dying herself as the armed group below began to advance up the hill.
“We need to get out of here,” said Daring.
“We don’t know if there’s something here that caused this,” Lara pointed out.
“It’ll take more time than we have to search.” Daring gestured to the flashlights coming closer and then towards the hills. “And if we don’t leave now to either get to the tunnel or circle around, then our only escape is going to be higher up into the mountains.”
The light from Lara’s headlamp fell on the amulet. “It-” She reached out to touch it, but stopped prudently. “It’s white now.”
“What?” Daring lifted it to look for herself. Sure enough, the stone had changed color from its original bottomless black to a pure white. “How did...well, not that I would expect you to know. I have no idea.”
“Do you think something’s changed about it? After we...helped those people?”
Daring stared at the stone as she rolled it between her fingers. “What if I take it off and I die too?”
Lara lifted a hand. “Taking it from the temple and putting it around your neck may have turned you into a zombie. Something about it apparently removed the condition from these people so they could die naturally as hundreds of years caught up to them. I really don’t have an answer on what happens if you take it off. Maybe you’ll go back to normal.”
“Normal for me is being a pony.” Daring touched her chest. “But even still, what if I come back to life just to immediately die of my wounds?”
Lara glanced down the slope of the hill and turned off her headlamp. Her hands went to her guns. “We’re out of time.”
Daring took a breath. “Alright. I’ll…” She looked at Lara. “This is actually an opportunity. I can’t die.”
Lara held her gaze in the darkness. “That’s… Well, alright then. Get to a position where you can get around behind them. I trust you to know when to come in.”
Daring nodded and rushed away into the night, doing her best to get through the ruins in the darkness. She pulled the borrowed climbing axe from her belt. The lights below were getting closer. Daring worked her way across the slope, trying to flank them.
Premeditated attack was something she had never done before. Sure, she had been in plenty of scrapes, but had never been the one setting up the ambush before. Violence was...unfortunate. She was going to have to explore her inner conflict more once she got behind the typewriter. For now, she had to survive that long - and protect Lara.
Elsewhere among the ruins, Lara crouched, her USP’s held to either side of her head, deliberately taking measured breaths and waiting until the right moment. Jonah hadn’t been able to tell her specifically how her opponents were armed, but it was safe to say she was outgunned. She was going to have to use speed and surprise, plus whatever help Daring was able to provide.
She heard muffled footsteps. The beam of a flashlight went over her head, moving about the ruins. It was time. Lara stood up, raising her guns. Eight flashlights. Aiming at the lights themselves was imprecise, but it was all she had.
Using volume of fire over accuracy, Lara pulled the triggers as quickly as she could, sweeping her sights across the targets, and then tossing herself back behind the stone wall. She estimated she’d fired about half the capacity of her pistols’ magazines, roughly eighteen rounds.
Moving as quickly as she could to reposition, Lara heard organizing shouts from her opponents. Some were still alive, then. Not that she’d been expecting to get them all. Chancing a glance over the wall, she now only saw six lights. Unfortunately, they spotted her and a bullet hit the wall just below her face. Rapid fire started, chipping the stone away all around her as she ducked again. Submachine guns, it sounded like, so probably nothing powerful enough to penetrate her cover, but nothing to trifle with. Lara clenched her teeth and tried to make herself a smaller target.
Daring had heard the shooting start. She’d hid inside a destroyed building and was just about even with the line of advancing attackers. Now that they’d been scattered by Lara’s bullets, she emerged, axe in hand.
Sprinting forward, she saw a weapon lying on the ground, its attached light only illuminating the grass around it. The owner lay nearby, bleeding and gasping. Daring ignored him and aimed straight for the nearest one still on his feet. He was busy shooting at something. Probably Lara, Daring realized, but if he was still trying to kill her then she must still be alive.
Daring burying the head of the climbing axe in his neck would help with that. He went down with a sound that Daring really didn’t care to hear again. She put her foot on the side of his head and wrenched the axe out.
Her distraction in getting her weapon free brought Daring to the attention of another shooter nearby. Daring leaped at him, already realizing she might be too slow. He brought his weapon around on her, but she knocked it away with a wide upward swing of her axe. The move put her off balance even as the weapon pointed away from her. The man grabbed for the sidearm strapped to his leg. The gun pivoted out of the holster, not coming level, but the distance was so short that aim wasn’t a factor.
Getting shot a second time was no less pleasant than the first, but the bullet didn’t slow Daring’s momentum. She brought her axe back down to slam into the man’s temple. The steel blade punched right through bone and she pulled him to the ground by the head.
Lara heard a scream and the flying bullets stopped impacting the stone wall she crouched behind. Daring must have gone into action. She swung up from behind the cover, guns out. The range was still a little long for a pistol shot, but she fired off the rest of her magazines at the flashlights in the darkness before ducking back into cover to reload.
That done, she checked the situation again and took a chance, bursting from cover in a sprint to another nearby wall. There seemed to be some movement in the darkness ahead and she kept going.
In the darkness, Daring was shot again, but it didn’t stop her, either. From somewhere else in the ruins, she saw muzzle flashes that could only be Lara returning fire, which Daring appreciated.
She didn’t see anyone still standing, but wasn’t sure that they were all dispatched. That intuition turned out to be quite correct when someone sprang at her from behind a ruined pillar. Daring got her axe up, but wasn’t able to strike, only to block.
It was Von Croy himself, wearing the same tactical outfit as his men. Daring remembered Lara’s comment about his fitness considering his age. He was more than strong enough to wrestle her to the ground.
There was no time to do anything but brawl. Daring aimed for his face, she threw elbows and knees. He gave at least as good as he got, tearing her clothing and gouging her skin. His hands grabbed for her throat and Daring blocked, feeling the necklace cut into the back of her neck as it was pulled away.
The chain snapped and Von Croy fell off of her, the amulet clutched in his hand. He took one shuddering breath, eyes wide, and then the same as the people of the village, began to crumble away to dust.
Lara arrived just then. She saw the amulet on the ground amid the remains but didn’t pause. She turned to Daring, kneeling beside her. “Are you alright?”
Daring swallowed and put a hand to her chest. Lara flipped her headlamp on.
They watched in silent astonishment as the metal wire around her sternum surfaced, the bone knitting back together. A couple of lead slugs and slivers of wood worked their way out through Daring’s skin, the holes closing after them.
Daring felt an odd writhe in her chest, and realized her heart had begun to beat once more.
She lay back in the grass, letting out a long breath. “Sweet Celestia.”
Lara sat down beside her, and for the moment the two of them simply breathed. It wasn’t the first time either of them had simply paused to appreciate being alive, but this time it was different.
Alive. Well, that was a problem solved. Daring looked at the stars for a moment, but that only reminded her of travel, and her other problem: how she was a long way from home. She sat up. “Well, where do you think we should start on getting me home?”
“I was thinking about that,” said Lara. She reached to Daring’s backpack and inside found the counterpart to the mirror Daring had destroyed to bring her to Lara’s world.
“Do you think it will work?” Daring asked, hushed.
“It either will or it won’t,” Lara pointed out. “We should try.”
“But-” Daring paused. “If we use it, then that’s it. The other one is broken.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” Lara asked.
Yes. There was no reason for reluctance, except…
Daring leaned forward, hugging Lara. “Thank you. For everything you did.”
Lara didn’t reply, but leaned into her.
After a moment, Daring pulled back. “And who knows, maybe Princess Twilight can figure out something to connect the worlds again.”
Lara smiled. “Maybe.”
Daring got up. She removed her shirt, which had at least one other person’s blood on it. Might as well get used to fewer clothes on the way back to Equestria. Using her shirt, she picked up the amulet, which was still white, and wrapped it up.
Lara handed her the mirror. Daring glanced at a nearby stone wall, which seemed ideal to break the mirror against and send her back to her own world. She held the mirror up and paused to look into it, seeing her dirty, tired, human face. Her eyes then went to Lara.
There was so much she wanted to say. Even as a writer, words failed her.
She eventually went with something they both would understand.
“It’s been an adventure.”