S-0452-9
Is it better to be feared, or respected?
The carriage ride was mostly silent between Cortana and Clover, as Cortana watched the outside world go by. The town was slow to accept progress as apart of its life, but it was still a start. Printing presses, steam power, electric light bulbs to name a few life improvements. Rail ways began to spread across the land as towns that would require days to travel to now take a couple of hours, and she would be taking one up to mountain to the newly built air ship launch port. She heard that they had planned to build a town around it but she had to admit that it would be a marvelous feat of engineering. She’d have to find a way to get herself involved with the project if it was approved.
“So, how long will you be gone?” Clover asked, jarring Cortana out of her thoughts for a moment.
“For a few weeks. Just to make sure that they don’t blow themselves up,” Cortana snorted at that last bit. “Gun powder is a very volatile substance, but this would give our soliders a leg up as far as ranged attacks.”
Clover frowned softly as she looked directly at Cortana and asked, “You do realize that by creating these weapons, you may force our enemies to respond in kind, right?”
“Clover, we’re already in a losing war, and our soldiers need every edge they can get.” Cortana looked out at the town with a heavy sigh. “We lost our mentor to someone who threatened this land, one of us had to make the hard choice to fight back.”
“We should’ve finished his work. We were so close.” Clover jumped as Cortana slammed the window to the carriage closed.
“The shield would have required a unicorn, or several, that specialized in that kind of magic.” Cortana sighed as she felt the carriage lurch to a stop. “Now, if you wish to conversation, at least let me get some booze in me first.” With that, Cortana hopped out of the carriage and started heading towards the train station.
Clover sighed as she hopped out of the carriage as well, following Cortana to the platform. “You are not getting drunk on the train again.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t get drunk on the train.” Cortana said with a grin on her face.
Two hours later…
“I’M ON A BOAT IN THE SKY! WHOOOOO!” Cortana yelled before vomiting over the rail of the air ship while Clover sat nearby with a feather fall spell ready just in case.
“Um, is she okay?” A guard asked as he walked over to Clover.
“Oh yes, she’s just-“ clover paused as she tried to think of a less insulting term to describe the situation. “-Calming her nerves.”
Cortana groaned as she lifted her head and began to chuckle. “Hey, hey, someone fly us over the gryphons, I wanna *hic* I wanna do a bombing run over them.” Cortana chuckled before immediately vomiting over side again.
The guard cringed as he turned back to Clover. “Um, does she means she wants to-“
Clover sighed as she nodded. “Yes, yes she does.”
“YOU YOU DANG BURDS POOPED ON MY CAR TOO MANY TIMES! IT’S MY TURN NOW!”
Cortana and her interrogator sat in silence for a moment before Cortana spoke up and said, “I don’t remember doing that.”
“She wrote it down in great detail,” The interrogator responded with a slight chuckle.
“Let’s move on please,” Cortana pleaded.
The integrator settled her chuckling as she composed herself. “Fine fine, where were we?”
Cortana sighed as she had a feeling that she wasn’t going to live this down anytime soon. Though she was curious as to where and how they obtained Clover’s journal. She knew that it was heavily enchanted and that Clover would never leave it out of her sight. She’ll have to ponder this later.
“Okay, so we had the testing grounds held in one of the more secluded desserts in Saddle Arabia. We knew that the Minotaurs were pushing in to that territory so the sooner we could get the weapons in to our troops hands the better. I remember sobering up a day in to the trip. Then the airship caught on fire”.
It was the first shake that tossed her out of her bed and woke her, but it was the loud boom that threw her out of her against the far wall of the ship. Her ears rang and her head swam as she tried to regain her her bearings. All she knew was that her bed was gone and she could see several meters straight down to the ground below.
“CLOVER!” Cortana yelled as she managed to make her way out of her cabin. The ship rocked as another explosion hit close to it, sending her tumbling against some barrels. She hissed in pain as she was jostled, bringing the shrapnel of wood in her side to the forefront. “Well, that’s going to ruin my day.”
Cortana kept moving as the pain slowly grew and the adrenaline started to fade. All she knew was that she had to find Clover. She called out again for her friend. Not knowing if she was alive, if she was dead, or if she was hurt. She started up the stairs, eventually reaching the top and weakly opened the hatch to the upper deck. There was a screech and pain in the back of her head.
Then everything went black.
Voices…
There were voices speaking…
Cortana looked around slowly as her vision slowly cleared and sound came to her. She looked around as she seemed to be in some sort of holding cell in a cave. The voices, that she now realized was one voice, slowly became clear. She turned her head as her breath seemed to stop. The pony in the room with her wasn’t a pony, and yet it’s shape resembled one. How it could stand with holes in its legs, Cortana couldn’t comprehend. Then it looked at her, and she screamed in fear as it dashed towards her.