It wasn’t long before they discovered just what the effects of the “bioforming aerosol” really were.
Lyra guessed the victims had probably been griffons once, or something so close to them that there was no meaningful difference. They had once had wings, and beaks, and claws. They’d once been wearing armor and carrying strange long objects with imposing spikes that had to be weapons.
But they wouldn’t be using them anymore, because they’d been melted into the ground. The jungle floor wasn’t just soil, but a mat of living fungus. The griffons—maybe a dozen of them in all, originally wearing thick metal armor not unlike what Computer had made for Bon Bon and the others—were no longer alive.
They retained much of their original shapes, somewhere buried in the growth. But feathers fell out at random, replaced with living fruiting bodies that pulsed with red fluid.
“They’re not moving,” Bon Bon said, tossing another rock into the center of the jungle mass. She was right. The rock landed exactly how Lyra might expect, bouncing once and skidding away without provoking violence from the entombed birds.
“Should I set up the tripod here?” Muffins asked.
“No, dear.” Time Turner pushed her gently away with one hoof. “I think we’d better not do that. I think the ponies back home are better off not seeing this.”
“Computer…” Lyra wanted to pull up her helmet, so she could look at her friends directly without glass in the way. But it remained stubbornly in place. “Computer, what the buck is this?”
“Planetary immune system,” it answered. “Given your observations, I believe I understand the nature of the bioforming agents. Consider the warning issued earlier about exposure revoked. You are not in danger.”
Her helmet hissed, then popped up.
She gasped, fingers struggling against the clear rim. But she didn’t force it back into place. “Computer, are you really telling us we’re safe now?”
“Affirmative,” it answered, directly into her headset. Based on the blank looks on her friends’ faces, Computer was not using the speakers. “This is a known defense mechanism for compromised planets. Are you familiar with the expression ‘salt the earth’?”
“No.” Lyra began walking forward towards the nearest corpse. Or… was it even a corpse? One eye emerged from the mushrooms, and she could’ve sworn she saw it twitch.
“Lyre.” Bon Bon reached for her, but didn’t try to stop her. “What are you doing?”
“Computer says it’s safe,” she repeated, approaching the griffon slowly.
Computer’s voice seemed almost cheerful as it recited for her. “And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.” Pause. “This destroys the soil, ensuring it will remain barren for hundreds of years to come. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem quite the apt analogy. Those who did this were not the victors conquering a city and destroying it completely—it was the fleeing natives. So I suppose you could think of it as lighting an oil field on fire.”
“Great,” Lyra said, without any comprehension in her voice. She reached a gloved hand towards the captive bird. The mushroom grew through him and up, casting his body in perpetual shade. “So why are we safe?”
“Because the agents are harmless to humans and their creations. This ensures that when the time to repossess a planet arrives, it has not been settled by the enemy. The infection you see is itself a bioengineered strain of remarkable sophistication. This one appears to kill in days rather than hours, giving a scouting crew time to return to their ship and infect their comrades before succumbing.”
The people here would do this? From what she saw, these birds had died in agony, then been pierced by fungus that tore their armor and rotted their tools right before their dead eyes. “Are they dead?”
The one in front of her moved. One eye opened, fixing her with an amber iris more hateful than any creature she’d ever met. Its voice was low and terrible, rumbling through its gigantic rotten body. “We will… erase,” it croaked. “Safe… from you.”
It spoke its last words in Old Ponish, heavily accented with an unknown tongue Lyra couldn’t even guess at. It thinks I’m human, and it used their language. That seemed to be all the creature could manage. Its beak twitched a few more times, but no more words came out.
Lyra backed away. “There’s got to be a way around this,” she muttered. “Computer, can you guide us another way?”
“Rerouting,” Computer answered. “There is little additional distance to cover. But for reasons of safety, you should return to the ship as soon as possible once your mission is complete. Even if the bioforming agents are safe, I would like to remove them anyway.”
“We’re going in another way,” Lyra said. She pulled up her helmet again, and sure enough there were a few new arrows to light the way for her. She pointed off towards one. “Let’s go.”
“Those were weird plants,” Muffins said, as they left the corpse-field behind.
“Yes,” Time Turner agreed, his voice haunted. “I suspect I’m never going to forget them.”
They walked for another hour or so through the jungle, moving from one overgrown path to the next. They were not attacked, though in the distance Lyra could see many more dead griffons, all wearing metal armor. It wasn’t just one group of a dozen birds, apparently a whole army had descended to die on the Homeworld. But why?
“Are you ready to give up yet?” Bon Bon asked as they walked, once they were out of earshot of the others. Not that it would make a difference, since computer was the one with all the power. “We should turn around and go home. That’s the worst magic I’ve seen in my life. I don’t think even Nightmare Moon could be that cruel.”
“We don’t know why they did it,” Lyra argued. And while it was true, her heart wasn’t really in it. That griffon hated me. Not even during the Changeling Invasion had Lyra seen hate like that. “Maybe they didn’t have a choice. Maybe it was the only way to…” Not survive, exactly. “Protect their home.”
The path led them directly to a rock, not all that different from the various bits of broken stone all over the place. But as they approached, this one began to rumble and lift, parting for them. Bon Bon’s eyes narrowed as she stared in at the darkness. “It’s wrong,” she said flatly. “No matter why they thought they were doing it, it’s wrong. We can’t keep doing what they want.”
“We’re doing what Computer wants,” Lyra said. “Not them. And anyway, we don’t have a choice. You saw how far away from Equestria we went. The best we could do now is run off into the jungle, maybe become like them. Computer is our only hope.”
Muffins strode past them, turning on her torch as she went. Its batteries couldn’t stand constant use, but she didn’t seem to realize that. Ahead was a stone hallway cut to comfortable height for someone like Lyra, with rails cankered with rust.
“You’ve nearly arrived,” Computer said to them all, apparently ignoring Bon Bon’s suggestion of disloyalty completely. “The Conflux external node should be located at the bottom of those steps. Captain, when you approach, your suit will interface wirelessly. Wait for the node to give you confirmation that the download is complete before you leave. The installation beyond is shielded against all attacks, and that unfortunately includes wireless transmissions. I will not be able to speak to you during the rest of the trip. Follow the map I’ve stored in your expedition suit, as no other path is safe.”
Time Turner straightened, nearly dropping his camera. “Muffins, wait! We can’t go just any way we wish!”
“This is it,” Lyra said. “I want you to promise this is it, Computer. No more missions, no more changes against our will. When this is over, you take us back to Equestria and change me back.”
There was a long silence. “I promise,” Computer said. “That once you successfully upload my mission recordings to the Conflux, I will take you back to Equestria and reverse your modifications, if it is something you still desire. Not that I can easily comprehend why you would want to return to a primitive reservation-world, into bodies that age and die, surrounded by ignorance of the world outside your doors.”
“You don’t have to understand,” Bon Bon said, her voice harsh. “As long as you promise to obey.”
“According to the terms I have outlined, I promise,” Computer said.
Lyra considered them another moment, searching for some logical loophole. But so far as she could tell, the only variable in all this was her. Did Computer think it could convince her to stay its captain? That might’ve been a proposal with serious prospects before she’d seen the griffon army.
She stepped into the darkness, pulling up her helmet again so she would see its directions in front of her. It didn’t just tell her where to go—with the clear dome fully raised, the darkness itself didn’t seem to matter. She could see ahead perfectly, save that the world in front of her was tinted slightly green. It didn’t matter how far away Muffins’s torch got.
“There’s one good thing about coming down here,” Bon Bon said, after they’d been walking for several minutes into the gloom. “Computer said it couldn’t talk to us. Has it said anything I couldn’t hear in the last few minutes?”
“No.”
“Bucking finally,” Bon Bon said. Then she raised her voice, calling behind them. “Muffins, Time Turner? Let’s talk.”
They hurried back. Muffins’s torch had ran out of batteries from constant use, but Time Turner’s still worked. “Something ahead of us?”
“No,” Bon Bon said. “Behind. We need to decide what we’re going to do about Computer. We can’t let what happened to this place return to Equestria.”
“I don’t think it will,” Lyra said. “Computer said he wanted to remove it from our bodies even if it was safe.”
“Delightful,” Time Turner muttered.
“Not good enough.” Bon Bon lowered her voice to a whisper, glancing down the hallway behind them. But if she expected Computer himself to come stalking down it, she was mistaken. There were no sounds down here but the rumble of distant machinery, and the occasional, unseen drip of water. “Lyra, it seems to like you. Do you think you could trick it into shutting itself down?”
“I…” She whined. Computer might have forced them to see terrible things, but she did want to see the Homeworld. Even if the jungle and ruins had been a tad underwhelming. “I don’t know.”
“See what you can figure out,” Bon Bon said. “When it does take us back to Equestria, we need to make sure it doesn’t hurt anypony else. Maybe there’s nothing we can do here, but we should be thinking about it.”
“I will,” Lyra lied. Or at least think about how I can stop you from doing anything crazy.
The hallway ahead of them led to another door, this one much thicker than any that had stopped them so far. It was at least ten feet across, with a solid metal look and a lightly rusted surface. Lyra stepped up, and bright blue light washed over them from within.
“Visitor ID confirmed - EQ-00002. Your weapons will be disabled while within the facility.” Something metal on Lyra’s back clicked. Then the door began to rumble, internal mechanisms spinning until it lifted upward like an opening mouth. One half sunk into the floor, while the other remained partially angled above them, teeth ready to close at a moment’s notice.
Light spilled out from beyond, so bright white that it blinded her. Lyra heard voices from ahead, heard machines in action, and knew beyond a doubt that they had reached their destination.
Alright Conflux, here we come.