With a crack of magic, Seht emerged from the void, dropping to the red sand and collapsing from the exertion of repeated teleportation. It had been a choice made out of desperation alone. The battle at the pony town had almost entirely depleted her of magic.
Unable to stand, she sat, the only sound escaping her a kind of wet gurgling behind her mask as she gasped for breath, suppressing the sobs of pain. She looked down at one shaking hoof, watching as the gray skin began to collapse away into dust. What lay beneath was not flesh, but a mass of black tendrils already showing signs of blight in this unfamiliar world.
She focused her mind, and the marks of her spell emerged over her skin, coating her body as she forced her magic to the verge of failure. With great effort, she willed her skin to rebuild itself—and slowly, it did.
The sky was red with dust, and the atmosphere at ground level still with a clouded fog of silica and iron oxide stirred up by the ion storm overhead. Yet, although she could not see it, Seht knew she was close. She had been unable to teleport through the mountains and instead had taken herself as far as a thin pass between them. It had once contained vast hydrocarbon pipelines, but they had long-since been buried under the sand or chipped away to build primitive iron tools. This was the only way into the central crater. The only way home.
She could hear the voices, and feel herself leaving her mind, replaced only by the Codex. Its power was returning to her, making her whole again. If she could only get a bit closer, she could use it to fully restore her cellular integrity and her magical power.
Except that it would never be so easy. Through the darkness of the storm and the blinding brilliance of the sun-lit world, Seht saw a figure emerge from the silence of the dust. Another unicorn, pure of Line but of a different breed, one of the three available types. Her body was in draconic scales, and rifle was held at her side. She was smiling. The fragments obtained from the soft-winged filly indicated her as Wun, daughter of Wun-Hun-Dredd, of the Line Perr-Synt.
Seht remained ambivalent, as she had been programmed. She only stood. Then, she began to walk. The only direction she could move was forward, toward the Codex. It was her only hope for survival.
Wun watched as the dark unicorn struggled to stand. Her hearts were beating in excitement as she watched her prey
in its weakened state. It was a core instinct, one from the days before magic had allowed her ancestors to dominate the world. There was a certain liberation to it. Her organs were in all the wrong places, a problem only further compounded by the use of compressed magic—and there were no plants of any kind around for her to draw strength from. No nature but sterile, iron-contaminated soil.
And yet this was the spot her sister had chosen, and Wun had put all her faith into a single event. A single decision that could only have one of two outcomes. The sense of commitment was exhilarating.
“You can understand me,” she said, shifting her weight and assuming a defensive stance. “And you need to understand that your continued existence is important to me. After all, I do not enjoy destroying my possessions. I loath it, in fact. And regardless of how much you are resisting me, I own you. Understand that I have purchased you, body and soul.”
Seht did not stop moving, and did not speak. Wun had fully expected the former, but was disappointing by the latter. She had truly wished to hear her future husband’s voice.
Wun summoned her magic, ignoring the intense pain of doing so. She fired a bolt, which Seht deflected. Not with a shield bubble, but only a small portion of magic. Just enough to absorb the impact. Seht countered with a weak strike of lightning that split into several heads.
Wun cast a shield that immediately disintegrated on impact, but allowed the remaining bolts to strike her, instead firing again, directly at Seht’s head. Seht deflected, parts of his skin turning to dust and flecking off as he did so. Even then, he did not stop. Wun felt her horn tingling, and not only out of the severe pain of magic overuse. As all unicorns, she was utterly incapable of love, but she certainly felt desire. At this point, it was the only thing keeping her standing. And it only continued to grow.
Wun fired again, and Seht blocked, focusing his energy onto a shield spell. It was almost enough, but he was still holding back, still containing his beam within several spells that Wun did not have the ability or skill to discern. But he needed to stop.
“Now,” she ordered, quietly.
Chains dropped from the clouds above, suddenly wrapping around Seht’s neck. Seht, startled and confused, struck at them with his magic even as the griffons took hold of both ends—but his magic did nothing against the unicorn-forged metal. In his current state, he was too weak to break them, and in seconds the formation of griffons had wrapped the chains around him--and they began to pull with all their might.
Through the hum of magic and the screaming of griffons, Wun heard the sound of several whips cracking as what remained of the thestral forces emerged from the clouds, their whips of snake leather wrapping around Seht’s legs and torso. Seht struck out at the bands of leather, managing to damage a few—and that was Wun’s chance.
Wun focused all her force directly at Seht’s head. Distracted, Seht had no choice. His magic struck hers, merging and combining into a single beam linking their horns.
The darkness of the desert was instantly illuminated with the glow of crimson magic meeting mossy green, and Wun felt the energy of her magic flowing through her, arising from every ounce of her marrow and directed into her horn. There was no longer any need for spells. Their magic had been reduced to its purest form—and Seht had allowed himself to lose his one advantage.
Seht did his best to attack the griffons and thestrals holding him tight, but every tiny bit of magic he directed at them only resulted in the green of Wun’s magic drawing closer and closer to his head. So, ignoring it, he focused all his effort on Wun—and even then, with all the force holding him back, did not stop walking, his enormous body straining with each step but dragging the entirety of the force behind him forward as he forced his beam closer and closer to Wun.
Bits of liquid magic ejected from the merged beams, falling to the desert and melting through the sand. Wun was forced to her knees to keep herself from being pushed back. Her hearts were beating even faster. It was the first time in her life that a pony had brought her to her knees, and she felt an entirely new sense of rage at the humiliation of it—a rage that she so desperately enjoyed.
“Come on, PULL!” screamed Gruff, his wings beating as he pulled on the end of the magic chains. “You pullet’s, PULL! PULL! May Celestia spank each and every one of your mothers, daily! HOURLY! PULL!”
Wun barely heard him. Even through the spellbinding, Seht was performing spells. They were weak, but subtle—and she felt the force of his—her—mind probing her own.
Except that nothing could break through. Not completely. The connection could not be forged. The rune that she had taken great pains to teach her little sister was part of her very soul, the imprint of her bloodline. Telepathy could not reach her mind, as it was utterly empty save for her greed and desire. The only things she knew that could keep her alive. The only things that truly mattered.
“Why...” whispered a voice, like a wave drifting over a seawall at high tide, an eddy current coming off her own horn. “You must yield...because I shall not...”
Wun opened her eyes. Her vision had grown gray. Her brain had already begun to overheat, and she could feel her horn beginning to physically buckle from the strain. If it cracked, she was sure it would shatter, and what that would do to her she had no idea—nor did she want to know.
“My faith in my sister is absolute,” she said, softly.
“You have faith in your own racial perfection. The racial perfection of unicorns. And yet I exist.”
Wun forced more magic into her horn, and the spellbinding connection suddenly jumped—toward her. She was losing.
“Even if you succeed, I will simply regenerate,” said the voice in her thoughts. “Yield.”
“No.”
“I am more powerful.”
Wun smiled. “Such adorable ignorance.” She raised her voice, lifting her head to the cloud of griffons pulling on Seht, their strength already waning. “One million bits!” she cried. “To each griffon, if she stops walking!”
Seht’s body suddenly hitched, her neck pulled back by immense force. Looking over her shoulder, she saw an absolute frenzy of wings and screams. The griffons had redoubled their efforts, and even retripled them. They pulled with greater force than if their own lives were on the line, than if their families and little griffon kittens were in danger—they pulled as if there was an opportunity for pure, unalloyed GOLD.
Seht took a step forward, resisting the immense force but only barely. Wun did what she could, but his red magic was drawing even closer to the tip of her horn. If it reached it, she would surely fail.
She shifted her weight, producing her rifle, the number eighty-nine compressed spell already loaded in the chamber—and awkwardly, with her hooves, she pointed it at Seht’s chest.
“No,” said the voice at the periphery of her mind, suddenly sounding desperate. “The griffons, the thestrals behind me...they are in the line of fire...”
Wun’s smile grew, revealing her pointed teeth. “And you do not have the magic to shield them all, do you?”
Wun struggled to reach the rifle’s trigger with her hoof, and Seht sighed, no longer able to contain the sobs of pain and despair that wracked her soul. She stopped moving, her skin collapsing away as she used the last of her magic to shield the griffons and thestrals behind her.
“NOW!” screamed Gruff.
Several of the griffons pivoted, pulling suddenly and with tremendous force—not on Seht’s chains, but at a set buried beneath the sand. Two stone blocks suddenly rose from the red-tinged soil, one on either side of Seht, pulled upward from where they had been buried on their sides.
From the darkened sky overhead, Daring Do dropped to the ground, plunging her was-staff into its location behind the left stone—and Caballeron, carried by his one-eyed henchhen, dropped to the opposite side, inserting his half into the symmetrical location.
The sand erupted with light, the buried strips of metal that formed the runes of the spell igniting with white light. A spell that Seht now stood in the center off, in the inscribed spells and between the two halves of her sarcophagus.
Seht’s head slowly turned, her mechanical eyes focused on Daring Do, and the light behind her helmet grew for a strike of magic—but Daring Do did not hesitate. She looked to the notebook she held, where the spell had been copied phonetically from the marks inscribed in the walls of Seht’s very tomb.
She called out the spell, pronouncing strange words in an ancient language that had never been intended for the vocal organs of a pony—words that even Seht did not know the true meaning of.
“Warn’enthdath phlgath’th vortain’nekg, p’thal’flath anaen!”
Caballeron responded, his voice booming but terrifying, with the other half of the spell. “Del’enthadath’n phlgath’sh darain’keg, f’thal’nara anaen!”
Seht tried to use her magic, but as she did the runes of the sarcophagus halves ignited and the space between them surrounded her, the air distorting as it became luminescent, motivated by a magnetic field that formed a bubble between the halves. The spellbinding to Wun snapped, sending Wun to the ground and knocking Seht back, her spell rebounding harmlessly off the bubble that now contained her.
Daring Do felt the feedback from the was-staff flowing back into herself, and she was thrown backward off the spell. She landed hard, confused and disorientated, but immediately forced herself to stand. She ran to her sister’s side.
Wun was lying in the sand, her horn smoking and her eyes open—although she was not moving.
“Medic! MEDIC!”
A griffon medic landed beside Wun and immediately began to administer the only medication that griffons ever used. That is, she began slapping Wun’s face relentlessly and with significant force.
At first, nothing happened—and then the griffon’s claw was caught in green magic.
“Stop that,” muttered Wun. “I am starting to enjoy it.”
“Wun!”
Daring hugged her sister, finding her cold and sweaty—but Wun still hugged back, weakly.
“My faith was not misplaced.” Wun smiled. “And neither is my pride.”
Daring Do laughed, and then looked over at Caballeron. He was shaking, although apparently out of fear rather than of any particular damage.
“I’m...I’m alive?”
“Of course you are alive,” said Seht, causing everypony and everygriff present to jump. Daring Do looked to where she was trapped, still contained in the magnetic bubble—but still standing, and still alert. “The containment spell is not harmful. Your health and duration may even have been increased.”
“So you can talk,” said Wun, standing. “And you really are a mare.”
“Yes. This disappointments you.”
“Not at all. There are spells that can adjust for that quite readily.”
“There are. And I have made liberal use of them in my lives. Although I assure you. In both male and female forms, this body is utterly sterile.”
Daring Do approached the containment bubble, as did the thestrals. The griffons did not, as they were too busy cheering and slapping each other out of happiness that they were all now extravagantly wealthy.
Seht’s eyes, though, focused only on Daring Do. “These are the pieces of my containment vessel. They were intended to preserve me. Across time. But now they stabilize my body in this spot. This is not what they were designed for. Yet this use is inspired.” She looked up at Wun. “Although with a caveat. I cannot exert my will outside this cell...but likewise, no will can be exerted upon me.”
“Then can you...can you take the mask off?”
Seht looked down at Daring Do. “It is surgically grafted to my spine. So no. Or if you mean to lower the blast shield? Also no.”
“Why?”
“Because I do not wish to.”
“Let her hide,” said Caballeron, who was now helping to brace Wun, her role as his high-paying employer now restored. “What she does in there is her own concern.” He smiled. “After all, she cannot reach us out here any longer.”
Seht’s head shifted suddenly toward him. “Can’t I? Do you think I do not know you, Pontracio Caballeron?”
Caballeron shivered at the sound of his own name pronounced in such a strange, cold voice.
“You know nothing.”
“I know your lies. As should they. I do not even need telepathy to see. Your bearing. The way you stand, the way you speak. That you are of noble birth.”
Daring Do frowned, then turned to Caballeron. “You said you grew up on a farm.”
Caballeron’s expression grew dark. “I did. She is lying.”
“I would trust little of what he says. He dwells in untruth. As to be expected, from a pony who gained his mark by looting his own family’s crypt.”
Caballeron became pale, and Daring Do felt sick.
“Stop it,” she said.
“Daring, it isn’t true--”
Daring stepped away from Caballeron, “I don’t want to know--”
“Because for you, Daring Do of Line Perr-Synt, lack the strength to reject comfort. The strength, and the will. And that is your greatest fear. To languish in luxury, powerful, and important. All the while hating your life. Or a life of adventure where you will be forgotten and irrelevant—and forever unloved.”
Daring Do took a step back. “Why—why would you say that?”
“Simply resist it,” said Wun, dismissively.
Seht turned to her. “You. I do not understand you. This emptiness. This singlemindedness. No fear. No love. There is nothing I can say to hurt you. Nothing in this world has meaning to you. Only the joy of obtaining more.” Seht paused. “Is...this what unicorns have become in my absence?”
“Yes,” said Wun. “I am perfection.”
Seht turned back to Daring Do. “Then she, as he, speaks only lies to you, Daring Do. She is nearly as much a failure as I have been.”
The thestrals came closer. More had emerged from the darkness and the shadows of rocks. Those who had stayed behind, being too old or sick to have fought before. Now, though, they felt safe.
The oldest among them stepped forward. Wisdom, his eyes not breaking from the sight of Seht’s gaze, spoke slowly.
“Do not speak to it,” he said. “It is trained to deceive. To spread discord among us, to utilize our fear for its own goals, to force us to release it. Do not listen!”
Seht turned toward him. “You are the Avatar of Wisdom in this age,” she said. “And yet you bear no trace of our Line. Your role has become decadent. Which explains the state of this land.”
Above her, the dust storms had begun to clear. The sun was at the far edge of the horizon now, and in the red light of a glorious sunset Daring Do could see just how close they were to the Iron Pyramid. It was distant, but they had stopped Seht within sight of her home. She started to shake at the thought of how close they had come.
“I will not fall prey to your tricks, evil one,” said Wisdom.
“There are no tricks. Only sadness.”
Daring Do looked up at her. “I don’t understand.”
“It is a liar,” snapped Wisdom. “Do not address it!”
“The knowledge we gave you was meant to be deployed. Utilized. To carry on what we began. And yet your ancestors feared it. Perhaps they coveted it. Imagining the power it would bring. And it became contained. Sequestered, and lost.”
“They sealed you,” said Daring Do.
Seht stared at her, and then at Wisdom. “Is that what they told you? Is that the secret you keep?”
“Silence! SILENCE!”
“Because you cannot accept the truth.” The thestrals had drawn near and, though afraid, watched with rapt attention. “That your kind wept when we chose to sleep. That we departed by choice. To await a cure. Until one would return to wake us.”
“You enslaved our race,” said one of the thestrals. Honor, stepping forward.
“Because your minds are not adequately evolved to know that freedom and slavery are the same thing. Through our power we created food. Medicine. Light. Purpose. But the iron-star no longer burns.”
“We were placed here by our ancestors, to contain you--”
“No. That is what you have been told. By a line of deceivers terrified of their own failure.”
Honor slowly turned to Wisdom. “I don’t...I don’t understand.”
“Honor. Do not listen--”
Seht’s horn ignited, and the entire group jumped back. Instead of striking at her cage, though, she reached into what little sand was available to her and lifted it from the ground, assembling it into a block. As her magic compressed it and gave it form, Daring Do gasped, because she recognized it.
It was a copy of the bas relief in the ruined thestral city—except that the parts that had been scratched away were once again present. Daring Do stepped forward, staring at the sandstone.
Much of it was the same. Identical, even. Of work done at the base of the pyramid representing their society, performed by the zebra-like ponies—and above them stood the thestrals. Among them now stood priests clad in dark iron and robes, holding offerings up to their masters—and Daring Do realized that the soldiers were not raising their spears in a sign of aggression. They were saluting.
“You were our warriors. Our servants. Our allies and friends, and those born of us our priests. Those worthy to speak. Whose minds could survive contact. The day we chose to sleep, your entire race wept in sadness. You begged us to remain.” She paused, suppressing a sound from behind her mask.
“I raised them like my own," she continued. "The Avatar of Wisdom and his mate, the Avatar of Knowledge. As if I were their mother. So you can imagine my sadness. When I awoke to find that, by choice, they never left our side.”
Daring Do’s eyes turned to the was-staffs, recalling the skeletons they had stood beside.
“They...”
“Were meant to rule a verdant empire. To use what we gave you to expand. To grow.” Seht gestured upward at the cliffs, and her copy of the bas relief collapsed into dust. “But you have failed. And I weep for what you have lost.”
Honor shook his head, and then turned back to Wisdom. “Is...”
“No,” snapped Wisdom, himself shaking. “What I speak is the truth! Passed down from Wisdom to Wisdom for fifty centuries--”
“An oral tradition,” said Daring Do. “It...it might have changed.”
Wisdom stared at her, on the verge of tears, and to her horror she realized that it had not changed at all. That he had always known—but by the time he had accepted the knowledge, it was already far too late.
“Boring and irrelevant,” said Wun, dismissing Wisdom. “Traditions are pointless things. What matters is that we have captured her.”
“Yes,” said Seht. “You have captured the weakest of us.”
Daring Do faced her. Her smile shifted to an expression of amusement. “You aren’t a soldier, are you?”
“No. I am...was….” Seht paused, regaining her composure, “...a Codex Interface. There is no equivalent in your world. The closest word is ‘librarian’.”
“And you sought out the nearest source of knowledge.” Daring Do moved so close to the containment failed that she could feel the wind through her mane. “Even though it would make you vulnerable, you found the nearest library. So you could understand the world you woke up in...”
“This series of body is notoriously unstable. I cannot exist far from the Codex for long.”
“But...you risked it anyway.”
“Telepathic convergence was not possible. It would have caused irreparable harm. It is strange to speak. To not have to select the worthy. Those who can survive communication. It is unfamiliar to me.”
“You were confused and trying to communicate...”
“Again,” said Wun, approaching Daring Do’s side, “Irrelevant and very, horribly boring. Griffons! Stop licking each other or whatever it is you do, we need to move the camp! The Pyramid is secondary! I have planning to do.”
“You heard her!” shouted Gruff, slapping another griffon in the back of the head so hard he toppled over. “Come on, you sack of pullets, get the camp set up and it’s triple-portions of nip tonight! Unless you’re slow, then your mothers are all apple trees!”
“Apple trees?” asked Caballeron’s henchhen.
“Because they get BUCKED by a dirty PONY! Now WORK!” He pulled a thestral whip away from a thestral and began to snap it wildly against various griffon flanks, motivating them to work even faster.
Daring Do watched them mobilize, and watched the thestrals looking at each other, confused but relieved. She wished she could feel as relieved—but somehow, she did not. They had captured Seht, but it felt wrong.
Her questions had still not been answered, and she still felt deep suspicion in her gut. The puzzle was still not complete.