Magpie couldn’t have said how long she lay there, her concentration so fractured that she couldn’t process what was happening around her for longer than a few moments at a time. Shapes surrounded her, and she knew some of them. Should she keep fighting? Was Moonrise still in danger?
She tried to ask, but nothing that came out her mouth ever quite became words.
She felt it when the lights came on, a brilliant glow she knew ought to be there. Did that mean they’d won? She hurt too much to care.
Eventually they came for her, with soft cloth they spread beneath her to lift her up. She thought about fighting them—but their faces fractured into a thousand little disconnected pieces, and she thought better of it.
She slept, or something like sleeping. Ever since becoming a crystal pony, that word meant something very different to her. A light trance, where she considered what she’d done that day and planned for the next. Giving up dreams didn’t seem so bad, when she knew the nightmares would be lurking just beneath the surface, ready to remind her of all her failures and drag her back into that gulf of misery and endless woe.
Something moved her for a while, in a shallow plastic tub with lots of broken parts. She went somewhere light, then dark, then light again. Time passed, but she couldn’t mark it. Hours, weeks—it all hurt the same. Reacting to any of it took more coherence than she had to offer. Is this what it’s like to be dead?
She remembered a face of cruelty, one she’d hated for years. It had promised an eternity of pain. Maybe he had been right.
Eventually she was somewhere else, one her old self would’ve called a thaumic workshop. Figures moved past her, blurring so fast she could barely see them. Ponies of many ages and sexes moved past her. At first a patch of bright flowers and other growing things lingered near one corner. But then they withered, and someone took them away.
Magpie watched the sun track slowly across the window as day turned to night. She watched as grading tractors cleared the rubble, and a construction crew rebuilt the tram line to the Tower.
There were far fewer figures now, but still they moved so fast she could barely see them. Here a unicorn, there a pegasus, gone and come and gone again. Except one.
Silver. He was always beside her, and the oversized tub of broken crystal. Whenever the sun came so would he, working tirelessly to select one or two pieces and placing them back where they belonged.
Then the darkness came, and Magpie felt a splash of salty water as she was submerged. She waited, the sun returned, and Silver Star reappeared.
While a dozen different creatures blurred past the table beside her, Magpie watched as they assembled things from the broken pieces. It grew longer each time, and submerged whenever she did.
One sunrise came, and a nearby mountain had grown shorter. Progress there was so much faster than inside, giving her something she could watch. That mountain came down, and domes of dense material rose up in the distance. They lacked windows, but were covered in black heat-absorbers instead.
Time began to slow. With each passing lunar day, she saw more and more clearly, even getting brief glimpses of pony faces. The young technicians were old and wrinkled now, or replaced completely with new, young workers.
Then she started hearing again. First it was the splash of the fluid she bathed in every lunar night, sloshing as it was poured and falling silent again as it seeped into her every crack.
Then voices, like low rumbles of various pitches just out of reach. She could almost make them out—then the day would go by, and she’d realize she’d been thinking about the same sound for hours.
They’re too fast. Why can’t they slow down?
Only one was slow enough to see—Silver, whose face never changed, who worked with supreme patience as he spent an entire day replacing just a few pieces.
A tower of glittering metal rose in sections outside, as tall as a dome. Ramps were cut into the regolith leading to it, and cables snaked away, cutting off where the old tram lines had been and monorails now passed.
Then one day came when there were no pieces left. The other technicians approached with their work—a wing, missing the metal that had once given it shape, and her leg. Both looked different than she remembered. Instead of an even gray glass, they split into a rainbow of different colors, scattering light strangely in all directions. But she could see through them again, which was the main thing.
Silver remained with her a long time after the others left. She heard him, but couldn’t understand. No matter how she tried, his words were just too fast.
The liquid came back, then something moved her. She rumbled away from the window, until her tank was settled into an oversized machine, with lights on every face. They all switched on, and she started to scream.
But there was no one to hear—she saw only the machine, and the strange too-violet light that pulsed from one side of her body to the other and back. Sensations she’d long lost came back with each little flash, as her broken pieces bonded and mended.
Though the pain was excruciating, the fear it summoned was worse. They’d been fighting for the survival of Tranquility—had Luna made it? Did they stop Nightmare? Were her grandchildren okay? So many questions, and no relief except for the little flashes of pain the light produced wherever it touched.
She knew it couldn’t be, but even so it felt as though her time in that little box continued for far longer than it had in the hospital workshop. Centuries seemed to pass between each flash. She realized she had been restrained, that her tank contained clear plastic rope that bound her and stopped her from struggling too much. She could barely even wiggle before something caught her.
I’m going to kill you, Silver. Maybe this was what he was trying to say. He was warning her.
Then it ended. The lights faded, and Magpie moved again. She squirmed and struggled against her bonds, but not with much energy. The pain had exhausted her, even if it had left her capacity to think intact. Something squeaked from below, and she started to vibrate. She screamed again, as a pain far more intense than the light shook over her for a moment.
She was going to shatter all over again! Bits of her came off from all sides, little shards and spikes from her whole body. Stop, please! Just let me die!
This was no eternity of torture, though. Just a few moments, and the pain stopped. Fluid drained away from beneath her, taking bits and pieces of her body along. Except none of those pieces looked like a pony should. They were spikes, little connecting bridges and flaky growths of rock that didn’t belong.
Was that a rock polisher?
“Let me out!” she screamed, as soon as the water had drained from around her mouth. Her throat ached and burned like everything else, but she moved freely. Her neck wasn’t restrained.
Actually, none of the ropes remained. They’d dissolved, right along with the bits and pieces that didn’t belong.
A voice answered from outside, badly muffled by the glass. “Y-you’re alive in there?” Confusion, utter disbelief.
Someone else whispered, probably not meant for her. “It actually worked?”
“We’ll have you out soon!”
“Someone call mission control. The husband will want to be here.”
Old Magpie probably would’ve tried to break her way through the glass. But even if she could move again, she resisted the urge. For all she knew, Nightmare had won at last and Tranquility was its slave.
Even if it hadn’t, these were the creatures who were trying to help her. It felt like torture, but it wasn’t.
Her coat burned as the strange liquid dribbled away, leaving uneven scales all over her body, and an itch that grew more maddening by the moment. She scratched her legs together, but her own body was so smooth there was very little she could do.
Then dark velvet lifted from all around her, and Magpie saw the worried faces of a half-dozen technicians, surrounding her tank. They wore engineering uniforms, and unused medical equipment sat silently all around the room.
Outside things had changed as well. The frame she’d watched grow over who knew how long now had a shiny silvery tower in its center, made of several different sections. Luna’s cutie mark was painted in bright gold, almost directly facing her window.
It was the same workshop room she’d lived in for years, but some things had changed. The table that had once held the pieces of her other broken limbs was now a trough, with an oversized machine settled beside it.
The quiet murmuring of the half-dozen creatures finally settled on a single one—an elderly-looking hippogriff with a few missing feathers and a pair of oversized glasses on his face. “Magpie?” He asked, voice tentative. “Can you hear me?”
She tried to sit down, but couldn’t even really do that inside the bounds of her tank. Her body had been held in that exact position for… who knew how long? These ponies probably did.
“I could hear you easier if you let me out.” She reached up, tapping one hoof to the tank’s lid. The rubber gasket held firm. Did they have to cut her out every time?
“Soon,” the bird promised. Somepony produced a clipboard, offering it to him. Even so, he spoke slowly. “Forgive me, Magpie. My mother spoke highly of your time together, but I never thought… I didn’t think we would be successful in my lifetime.”
Come to think of it, Magpie did recognize that particular mix of white and black feathers. She’d seen it before, what felt like days ago. “Solar Wind?” she asked. “She’s your mom?”
He nodded slowly. “Solar Wind has been gone for many years, Magpie. Her record of your heroic struggle for Tranquility is printed in every foal’s textbook.”
The side-door opened, and a nervous looking pegasus bounced in. He looked in at her tank, then quickly back again, muttering something to the hippogriff. He hurried out as soon as he’d appeared.
“Your, uh… your husband is on his way here,” he went on. “Forgive me, Magpie, but you weren’t supposed to be conscious. We weren’t sure how many times we would have to harden and polish before you woke, if ever.”
She nodded towards the black tray. “Is that thing for polish? Will that make it stop itching?”
“We… don’t know,” someone else said. A unicorn this time. “Tranquility has many crystal ponies, but only a few are so… mineral. We’re making guesses based on observations from Vanaheimr’s old library.”
“Good enough.” She shoved on the lid again with one leg. “Get me out of here, or I’ll get myself out.”
They did. Despite her words, Magpie cooperated. It was incredibly embarrassing to have so many eyes on her, but that was its own kind of novel. It had been so long since she’d felt anything at all.
The “polisher” was exactly what she’d expected, a sandblasting machine used for scouring growth from structures. Most of the little group of scientists and doctors retreated, while a few remained to operate the machine and supervise the process.
The machine roared in her ears, blasting a stream of silica fast enough to cut flesh from bones.
Magpie sighed and stretched like a cat as something finally scratched her itch away, leaving her milky, scaly-looking coat shining again. In less than an hour, the process was done.
Magpie stepped from the shallow container, staring back at herself in the sink’s little mirror.
There was no denying how different she looked. She wasn’t a smooth piece of glass anymore, but many swirling colors, mixing and blending together where the damage had been worse. Her wing and leg were splotchy with different shades. But when she walked, her leg worked. When she spread her wings, they both extended. Without the metal skeleton underneath, she didn’t even feel lopsided anymore.
“Magpie,” said a voice from the doorway. One thing that hadn’t changed much, even while Moonrise itself became a different place. She spun.
Silver stood in the doorway, wearing what she guessed was air-armor. It was lighter than anything she’d seen in a long time, closer to the suits Vanaheimr made than anything Moonrise could’ve produced. Except it had Luna’s cutie mark on one shoulder, the same symbol as on the conical tower in the window.
“Silver Star,” she said. She wanted to run and embrace him, but hesitated. What if she moved too quickly? Could she shatter again, and be sent back into that eternity of limbo?
He strode forward, steps heavy in the air-armor. The bird got out of his way, scooping up several files of paper and vanishing around the corner. The door clicked shut.
“It was supposed to be another six months,” he whispered, dazed. “They weren’t sure if you’d ever… wake up.” He dropped whatever he’d been holding under his foreleg—a helmet, made of light plastic but with a gold visor underneath. Not fighting armor, then.
She took a few weak steps towards him. With each one that didn’t break her, she grew a little more confident. She’d been broken badly, but those had been Voidseekers. She wasn’t fragile, really. “What happened?” she asked. Her eyes settled on the distant tower again. It was easier than looking at him.
“Where do I even start?” he asked, voice cautious. “Let’s see, uh… there are six domes in Tranquility now. Moonrise is mostly used for the reactor and utility space—ponies would rather be up on the surface. I think they’re breaking ground on seven and eight right now, closer to Vanaheimr. They plan on restoring the city, over the next century or two.”
Magpie stopped just in front of him, closing his mouth with one hoof. She realized something else in that moment—Silver didn’t tower over her anymore. Had she grown after all those years in the tank? He was only a head taller now, even with those boots.
“We won?” she asked, voice low. “Against the Nightmare, I mean? It isn’t ruling Moonrise from behind the scenes?”
Silver settled down beside her, letting her rest against him. “I thought that was obvious. That demon wanted everyone dead, so it had slaves to use invading Equestria. Tranquility isn’t dead. We’re bigger than ever, but…” He sighed, tapping the glass with one hoof. There, so far up in the corner she almost couldn’t see it, was Equus’s blue outline. “They have what we need. Tranquility can’t keep growing without some help from Equestria.”
“Water?” Magpie guessed. “Or… wait, flowers?”
Silver chuckled. “You’re not talking to the right pony to understand it. But all the smart ones say it’s about nitrogen. We’ve put everything we could in circulation with mandatory cremations and recycling everything made of wood or natural fiber. Took all the rotten stuff from Vanaheimr… but we’re still stuck.”
Magpie listened closely, for whatever good it did. She understood the technical stuff even less than Silver.
“Some creatures want to be like us,” he went on. “Crystal ponies. But we still eat, just less. Even if everypony was, and we gave up the ability to reproduce, we’d only be pushing the problem forward. We’ve lost a lot of nitrogen out into space over the years, through accidents and leaks and creatures who died and never got recovered. If we don’t get more, it will kill Tranquility.”
“That’s what…” She almost couldn’t believe it. “Silver, that tower out there. Did you really—”
He beamed back at her. “Not me, but… smarter creatures. That’s not even the first one, so don’t get that excited. It’s just the first one we’ve ever planned on sending all the way to Equestria.”
“Home,” she whispered. “Where you don’t have to change your cabin air filter, where the rain is only water, and mold doesn’t grow on the walls. Where you never have to wear air-armor or feel short.”
Was she crying? Magpie blinked, and Silver was right up beside her, wiping the tears away from her face. He was silent for several long moments, expression deadly serious.
“I’d let you steal my spot in a heartbeat. But I’m one of two creatures who know how to fly that rocket. We’re pretty sure the gravity will be too much for anyone born up here, but I’m crystal, so…” He rested one hoof on her shoulder. “It won’t be long, Magpie. If this mission goes well, we’ll be sending cargo ships back and forth a few times a year. Pilots who can handle the gravity will be invaluable. Once we’re sure your glue has fully cured…”
She embraced him, pulling Silver into the tightest hug she could manage. Neither of them had any body-heat, but that didn’t matter. She’d been cold for far longer than she’d been warm, anyway.
“Thanks for putting me back together,” she whispered, after a long time. “When are you supposed to go, anyway?”
“Soon,” he admitted. “The princess is… probably not happy with me. She’s been waiting on this longer than any of us have been alive.”
“Not any of us.” Magpie let him go, nodding towards the door. “Go on then. I’ll watch this time. But soon enough, I’ll be flying with you. Don’t get any ideas.”
He leaned down, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “I never did.”