//------------------------------// // Chapter 26 - Battle Hymn // Story: Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny // by MagnetBolt //------------------------------// My wings felt like they were going to fall off. “You sure you’re doing okay?” the mare I’d saved yelled up at me. I was pretty sure she was cute, but I was also so tired I was starting to hallucinate so maybe she wasn’t as good looking as I thought. “I’m good,” I said. It was almost the truth as long as you were really really generous about what counted as good. I didn’t have any new holes in me, and that was about as good as it was gonna get. We were flying low, and the steel jungle was behind us. Destiny was putting big arrows on my heads-up display to try and guide me back to something like safety. I wasn’t even really looking at where I was going. I was just dazed out and looking at the arrows and focusing entirely on staying up in the air. Which meant focusing on my wings. Which, as I previously mentioned, felt like they were coming apart at the joints. The arrow tilted, and I forced myself to focus on where it was pointing. I could see the Iron Temple through the light snowfall, the front entrance and bonfire becoming visible past endless fields of white. I started letting myself drop towards it. A coughing fit hit me hard, and I tasted blood. My sense of balance vanished along with the horizon in that world of snow reaching from the ground to the sky and turning everything into white nothing. The arrow turned into a terrain warning. Destiny was yelling in my ear. I didn’t know how long she’d been talking before I was able to understand the words. “Pull up, Chamomile! You’re too low! Pull up!” I fought my way through the black closing in on the edges of my vision and flapped hard. The ground was right in front of me. I let go of the mare I was holding and stalled out, letting her drop the last few feet to the ground and falling myself, sliding on my side through the slush and coming to a rest against a block of concrete studded with bullet holes. “Ow,” I groaned. The mare prodded me with a hoof and frowned down at me. “You alive, Blue?” “My name’s Chamomile,” I muttered. “Ain’t what I asked but it’s still an answer. Long as we’re introducing ourselves and it don’t look like we’re going to die immediately, I’m Riptide. Riptide Rush. Thanks for saving me and where the fuck did you fly us to?” “Somewhere with friends,” I groaned, trying to get up. I felt the armor helping me with that, and I was on my hooves pretty quickly. “I’ll go first. They won’t shoot me.” “Hold on,” Destiny said. The helmet latches opened and she pulled herself free. “They’ve never actually seen you wearing this armor. It might go better if they can see your face.” I didn’t have the mental or physical energy to argue with her about how it’d be better to have a helmet on if they decided to attack first and ask questions later. I satisfied myself by imagining the really great and persuasive argument I’d make. It was a nice distraction while I stumbled to the Iron Temple’s front doors. Or where the doors used to be. They’d been torn off at the hinges. I groaned and my headache took that moment of inattention to increase its power to maximum and evolve into a full-on migraine. “Is anypony here?” I called out, standing in the ruined doorway. “Chamomile?” There was a burst of light, and a flare sprang to life, burning with hot light. Wolf-in-Exile held it high so we could see each other. He was standing behind a wall of old metal crates that had been set up covering the entrance. “Well that’s a better surprise than I was expecting. From all the noise I thought the dragon had come back!” “No such luck,” I said, stepping in. Zebras peeled out of the darkness where they’d been hiding in the shadows. Their armor was banged up and torn. “You guys saw some action while I was gone.” “You could say that,” Wolf grumbled. He walked with a pronounced limp over to the wall and yanked a switch, turning on flickering lights and bringing the Temple back to life. “Sky Lady!” Two-Bears appeared next to me and grabbed me in a big hug. “I thought you were dead!” “I’m not that easy to kill,” I said. She let me go, and my chest seized up again. I coughed into my elbow, and when it finally subsided, I could see the blood I’d tasted before. Two-Bears frowned at me. “You’re not well.” “I haven’t been well in a long time,” I said. “Anyway, Riptide, get in here. These are friends.” The mare I’d saved trotted in cautiously, not looking happy about being surrounded by a pack of zebra warriors. “I got her out of a bad situation,” I said. “Those augmented raiders killed two of her friends.” “She’s a raider, too,” Two-Bears said, glaring at her. “Hey! I ain’t no raider!” Riptide snapped. “I’m a scavenger! There ain’t no profit in killing ponies instead of trading with them. Kill one merchant, no more come that way. Trade with ‘em, and you get a bunch coming to sell you what you need. Then you can make caps guarding caravans, selling scrap you can’t use, an’ get a decent life. That’s the Diamond Shark way.” “The important thing is they were trying to kill her,” I said. “That means she’s not with them.” “You’ve got a pretty nice setup in here,” Riptide said, looking around. “Decent prewar construction. Some of these places are fallin’ apart because they used stuff that don’t hold up to the cold. Guess for a memorial they were willin’ to put in more money and effort.” She peeked into one of the side rooms. “Woah! You should see all the salvage in here!” Riptide gasped. “This place is a treasure trove! There’s guns, barding, supplies--” “All of which are already owned,” Wolf-in-Exile said firmly. Riptide rolled her eyes. “What happened while I was gone?” I asked. “I remember there being doors.” “We were attacked,” Two-Bears said. “We fought them off but… they took some of us with them.” “That ain’t good,” Riptide said. “If they took ‘em alive, they’re gonna try and turn them.” “Impossible. We’re protected against the infection,” Two-Bears said. “Don’t mean they won’t try anyway,” Riptide pointed out. “They took most of the Sharks already, and we weren’t the first. I’m pretty sure I recognized some of those ponies from when they were with the Steel Vipers. They vanished along with the Hell’s Horses after that big storm.” “Big storm?” Destiny asked, floating past my shoulder. “Yeah. Some big light show in the sky. A meteor or somethin’ hit in the old Cosmodrome. We figured they went after it and got themselves into trouble. Everypony knows the Cosmodrome is haunted!” “That must have been when the dragon landed,” Destiny said. “I don’t know what it was, but after that storm, the jungle started growing and those freaks made out of metal popped up and were snatchin’ ponies left and right,” Riptide said. “Where did they take the other warriors?” Two-Bears demanded. “I have to try and rescue them.” “What? How should I know?” Riptide groaned. “I ain’t with them!” “Maybe we can figure it out ourselves,” Destiny said. She floated over to the metal crates and focused. Light spilled out of her horn and formed into a glowing red map, projected onto the metal. “This is the map data DRACO was able to pull from the server in the monitoring station.” “That’s really neat,” I said, poking a tiny floating building. My hoof went right through it. “What’s this? It looks like the middle of the jungle.” I pointed at a big shape covered in thick vegetation. “That’s whatever’s left of the Exodus Green,” Destiny said, sounding oddly sad about it. “She was a joint project with the Ministry of Peace. She was carrying seed banks and animals in stasis. I guess it explains where all the trees came from…” “Sorry.” “At least I know why they didn’t respond to radio messages. They never got off the ground. And the White and Black…” I followed her gaze to a conspicuous crater next to the Exodus Green. “Maybe they got away,” I suggested. “Maybe,” she said quietly. “Anyway, right now, we’re here,” Destiny said, making a spot on the map blink brighter. “How long ago was the attack?” “Not very,” Wolf said. “Half a day.” “Would they be able to keep a Companion knocked out that whole time?” Two-Bears-High-Fiving frowned. “Neg. Even with strong drugs, they would be awake by now.” Destiny bobbed. “They didn’t go into the canyon, so if we think about a circle encompassing as far as they could have gotten on hoof…” she drew a curved line across the map. “There are only a few places of note.” “They probably didn’t get all that far,” I muttered. “I wouldn’t want to carry an angry transforming zebra monster too long.” “We can also probably eliminate any locations that wouldn’t be able to hold prisoners. I don’t think they’re going to keep them in a gas station or Hayburger Princess.” “What’s that leave us with?” Destiny hesitated. “If I had to put money on it… the old VAB.” “VAB?” Two-Bears asked. “Vehicle Assembly Building. It’s a large structure where we, well, assembled rockets. Or at least we did before the space program collapsed. It’s built like a fortress, and more than big enough to hold prisoners.” “Can you carry me and fly?” Two-Bears asked. “Uh…” I hesitated. “Chamomile isn’t in any condition to fly anywhere,” Destiny said. “She’s barely even conscious! I was pretty sure before, but now that I’ve gotten readings from the armor, I can tell she’s got a buggy implant growing in her somewhere. It’s speeding up her reaction time and absolutely mucking up her metabolism from top to bottom.” “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said. “It’s also raising your body temperature so high you should be passing out with heatstroke, but it’s also overridden that, somehow. It’s why your feathers keep getting hot. They’re acting like a radiator and venting waste heat.” “She did crash pretty hard when we were flying in,” Riptide mumbled. “I’m fine!” I snapped. “Okay, sure. It’s burning a ton of calories. My stomach agrees with you. Wolf, you got anything I can snack on before I leave?” “I’ve got enough old MREs to feed a batallion,” Wolf-in-Exile said. “Give me a couple of those and I’ll be good.” “What about her?” Two-Bears asked, nodding to Riptide. “Is she coming?” Riptide backed up a step. “Woah, I’m grateful and all, but I ain’t jumping in the deep end again. This shark’s sticking near the shallows for a while.” “I’ll put her to work,” Wolf said. “We could use the extra set of hooves.” “Ain’t got anything better to do,” Riptide said. “When you’re a Shark, you’re a Shark for life, and that means payin’ back your debts.” My stomach rumbled. “So how about that food?” “I can’t believe you’re eating that,” Two-Bears said. “When you’re hungry enough everything tastes good,” I said through a mouth full of ancient protein bar. It had at some point in the distant past been peanut-butter-and-jelly flavored. I really hoped the streaks of gloopy dark stuff were supposed to be the jelly. Aside from the texture, which was like oily oats and grit held together with slime, it wasn’t bad. Okay, the taste wasn’t amazing either. Or the smell. Actually on the whole it was bad, but it was something and Wolf had given me a whole crate of them because I could eat them on the fly. “I used to eat those when I was working late nights at the lab,” Destiny said. “They’ve technically got all the nutrients you need to stay healthy.” Two-Bears looked a little uncomfortable every time Destiny talked. She’d had to hold on to the helmet the whole time we flew so I’d have my face free for very important snacking purposes. Destiny was helping pull them out of storage, even if she had an annoying tendency to wiggle them in front of my face like she was feeding a treat to a dog. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah. And it doesn't look like two centuries have really changed them much. The taste was never a selling point. There's so much artificial junk in them, they don't even rot properly.” “At least they didn't do anything to you right? Otherwise you wouldn't have just been bones when I found you!” I said, trying to be encouraging. “You just say the sweetest things,” Destiny groaned. I popped the rest of the bar into my mouth and kept flapping while chewing. Carrying Two-Bears wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. She was all muscle, but the Exodus armor was powerful enough to offset most of that mass. Really the hardest part was trying to pretend I was totally cool and not turned on at all by hugging a zebra that could totally kick my ass. I still wasn’t sure about the monster bear thing. It made me want to wrestle her but I didn’t know if I wanted to wrestle wrestle her or what. Maybe I could ask Emma for advice once I figured out how to get in touch with her again. My only other option for seeking advice was dead and haunting my clothing. “How close are we?” Two-Bears asked. “We should be able to see it any moment now,” Destiny said. “It’s a big building.” “How big?” I asked. “That big,” Destiny said, and as if she’d timed it for maximum dramatic effect, the snow parted with one final gust of chill wind. The building was big enough to be a tombstone for a whole nation, dozens of stories tall and almost featureless. It loomed over the forest, reducing the cybernetic jungle to nothing more than waves of green lapping against a mare-made mountain. “How do we even get in there?” “Unless the big doors are still working, you’ll have to use the staff entrance on ground level! And I really doubt the hangar doors will open after all this time. The things barely worked when we mothballed the place!” “You stopped using it?” “We moved on to bigger and better things.” A warning blared from the helmet, and Two-Bears almost dropped it. “What does that sound mean?” she asked. “It means missile lock! That’s not a problem, DRACO can--” the gun beeped several times in a harsh tone. “--what do you mean you’re out of chaff?!” Dodging an incoming missile was no problem for a Wonderbolt. Unfortunately I wasn’t a Wonderbolt and was close to the bottom of my class at flight camp, with the kind of scores that implied I’d find a way to fall through the floor and splatter against the ground. Which I more or less had done, so in retrospect my teachers were right on the money. I dove for the biggest clearing I could find with a missile warning tone in one ear and the surge of the SIVA broadcast making my blood feel like it was going to burst out of my veins. I got below tree level and let go of Two-Bears, dumping her in the field and hoping it was soft grass and not made of razors. Without Destiny I couldn’t load anything into the Junk Jet. I’d only get one shot with whatever was in there already. I pulled straight up and over into a roll, coming back to face the missile. I had no time to even aim. I just pulled the trigger and hoped for the best. A stuffed animal I didn’t even remember picking up fired out and slapped into the missile half a heartbeat before it exploded. I remember bringing my hooves up to protect my face, and then I don’t remember anything else until I was on the ground. “I need a vacation,” I said. Or I think I said it. I couldn’t hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears. I started to get up, and my right hind leg decided to veto the whole operation and keep me on the ground. I gave it a stern look, and the twisted spear of shrapnel going all the way through my thigh looked right back at me. The good thing was I was in shock so the pain hadn’t hit me yet. I gingerly touched it, which was a mistake. All the pain came rushing to the forefront hard enough to make everything go black for a second. “Chamomile!” The voice was distant, echoing from miles away. I tried to look at where it was coming from, and Destiny floated into view. “This is going to hurt,” she warned. “That’s why I’m distracting you.” “Distracting me from what?” I asked. Then Two-Bears ripped the shrapnel out of my leg. I hadn’t even noticed her walking up to me. If there was mercy in the world I would have blacked out but instead all I got was a lot of blood loss and the cold hiss of the barding’s autoinjector pumping healing potions into me. “That really hurts,” I groaned. “Don’t be such a baby,” Two-Bears said. She sniffed at the blood-covered metal and blanched, tossing it away with a disgusted look. "Smells like sick..." Destiny bobbed in the air, getting my attention again. “You’ll be fine, Chamomile. Just rest for a second while we figure out a plan.” “We don’t need a plan,” Two-Bears said. “They are pathetic cowards who fled the field of battle. If we attack, they will break.” “Hah, that’s exactly the kind of plan Destiny would yell at me for suggesting. Right, Des?” I turned to the floating helmet and laughed. “Let’s try and come up with a plan where we don’t get shot again because all my plans up to now have basically relied on me being relatively bulletproof and that doesn’t seem to work well against real bullets.” “She ran off while you were talking,” the ghost sighed. “Well… buck.” “Why couldn’t I have gotten stabbed on the other side?” I grumbled as I limped after Two-Bears. Despite the healing potions, my back leg still felt messed up. Destiny said something about how I’d probably need surgery to really fix it back to a hundred percent and then went real quiet like she was trying to avoid the topic. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could fly, but every time I popped up above the treeline, everything started screaming about missile lock. I used my blade to slash through another bush that sounded like wind chimes in the wind from all the metal in the leaves, and I was finally out in the open. The dirt underhoof was replaced with broken asphalt, and the jungle gave way to just a few weeds working their way through the ancient tarmac. The shadow of the building fell over me and I looked up at the monolithic structure. Up close, the VAB looked even bigger. It was big enough that you could park a couple cloudships inside as long as they didn’t mind pointing straight up. “At least the zebra left an easy trail to follow,” Destiny said. I hopped over the crushed bodies of either two or three dregs. They’d been maimed enough that I wasn’t sure how many I was looking at. She’d bullied her way right through the cyberjungle, too, smashing aside branches and leaving a trail of her own blood from the razor-edge foliage. Actually from the other angle I was pretty sure it was only two of them, and the rest was a crumpled metal door. It seemed like a safe bet because there was a matching doorway missing said metal door. “At this rate there won’t be anything left for us to do,” I said. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It was dark inside, too dark to see anything after the glare of white-on-white from outside. I squinted and trotted in slowly. I could hear her roaring, but with all the echoes I couldn’t figure out which direction anything was coming from. “Blind and deaf,” I muttered to myself. “On your left,” Destiny warned when I walked inside. I turned, stumbled, hit safety railings that were doing their job properly, and saw a dreg standing there once my eyes had started to adjust to the gloom. It wasn’t moving. I steadied myself and limped over to poke it. Half of it fell over. “I’m guessing she went that way,” I said. “Hold on. There’s still power here,” Destiny said. “There should be a light switch near the door. If we turn everything on, it could at least get the emergency lights running.” “Good idea,” I said. I felt along the wall until my hoof hit the row of switches. For a second I thought everything was broken, but then I heard the rising electric tone. Dim lights shone out in orange and yellow like stars high above us. “These things take forever to warm up,” Destiny groaned. “At least they’ll give us enough light for-- what the buck is that?!” I froze and looked around, trying to spot whatever she’d seen. It was still too dim to make out the far side of the building, but it reminded me of the inside of the SPP tower, a huge vertical space criss-crossed with scaffolding and machines. “I didn’t catch it,” I whispered. “What was it? Something in the dark? A sniper?” “No! That! The missile!” There was a massive rocket standing on the factory floor. From the look of it, it had never actually been finished. There were inspection panels pulled open and the top part seemed to be missing entirely. “You said this was a place to make rockets. Why is this weird?” “Because that isn’t a civilian rocket! That’s a military ICBM! We never built these!” “Somepony must have, because here it is. I guess it makes sense since there was that missile silo down the road.” I looked up. Midway up the rocket, the scaffolding was joined up with thick wires and suspended platforms like a giant metal spider had made a nest there. I didn’t notice the cold until some of the fog pooled around the building blew past me towards the open door. It sent a chill down my spine. “Where the buck is Two-Bears?” I asked, my teeth chattering. “And why is it colder in here than it is outside?” Destiny made a thoughtful sound and popped open a window with a pie chart and a lot of numbers. “It must be a talisman making LOX. The air mix in here is all over the place. I’m not sure this is a great place for a firefight.” “Lox? That’s smoked fish, right?” “Brined, but also no. Liquid Oxygen. It’s used as an oxidizer in rockets.” I heard metal scraping on metal, and an annoyed grunt. I followed the sound carefully and found a collapsed platform and rusting ladders pinning a big white bear to the ground. She looked up at me and grunted again. “Let me guess,” I said. “You tried to climb up and everything came down with you.” Two-Bears-High-Fiving growled at me and averted her gaze. “And if you change back you’ll get crushed by the debris, but if you don’t change back, you’re too big to get out.” She made another annoyed bear sound. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you out. Give me a second.” I grabbed the corner of the main beam holding her down and started lifting. “You know it’s funny, last time I did something like this it ended with a pony shooting at me and a giant explosion.” “For Celestia’s sake, Chamomile, don’t say that kind of thing around all this liquid oxygen,” Destiny hissed. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this stuff is?” “Not really, no.” “Well it’s pretty bucking dangerous, so don't give it any ideas!” “I’ll take your word for it.” The rest of the debris shifted, and Two-Bears pulled herself free. She shook herself off, her wounds healing fast enough that I could see bruises fading and bones straightening as I watched. “You going to be okay?” She nodded and looked up, sniffing and growling. “You can smell them up there?” I followed her gaze to the steel web hanging over us. “Cool. That makes things easier. Up is way simpler than having to track them down in tunnels and stuff.” “Except there’s no way you’re carrying her up there,” Destiny pointed out. “She can stay here and watch my back?” I suggested, shrugging. Two-Bears made an annoyed sound. “Yeah well you ran off without me, it’s my turn!” I huffed. “Just stay here. With my luck everything’s going to be on fire in five minutes.” I flapped away before she could start complaining at me with cute bear faces. There was something about a giant bloodthirsty monster being grumpy that made me want to pinch her cheeks. She’d probably break a few bones if I tried, but it’d be worth it. The broken bones would need to wait for after the daring rescue. I landed on one of the hanging platforms and it swung back and forth gently under my hooves. I needed to get my bearings, and it wasn’t easy with so much stuff littering the air in all three dimensions. The place was like an obstacle course. I carefully picked my way through the biggest gaps until I was above the main part of the nest itself. “What do we have here?” asked a voice from the shadows. “I wasn’t expecting a pegasus.” I hovered out in the open, looking around and trying to place the pony talking. “I’m so unpredictable I don’t even expect myself!” I said, which sounded better in my head. “You must be the pony in charge. Let my friends go and I’ll let you live.” “We’ve got missile lock warnings,” Destiny cautioned. “They must be crazy! If they fire explosives in here…” “Can DRACO still do that thing where it tracks a signal and shoots at the source?” I whispered. “Loading up the anti-radiation targeting. Try to keep them talking for a minute.” “You’ll let me live?” the voice from the dark laughed. I turned slowly in a circle. It wasn’t just echoes. There were speakers hanging from the walls. He could have been anywhere. “Do you even know what I’m doing? The breakthrough I’ve had?” “Fine,” I said. “Impress me.” “You see, I don’t believe in the pure survival of the fittest like High Priest Fornax. My esteemed colleague is blessed with talent, but because of that he lacks artistry. It’s trivial to make something beautiful with good materials, but it takes real skill to polish a diamond in the rough. Skill, and a few failed attempts.” A spotlight snapped on. I almost vomited at the sight, my throat hot with bile and rancid peanut butter. One of the Companions was there, or what was left of them. They were disassembled like a broken machine, peeled back in layers. I didn’t even have time to start screaming at the son-of-a-mule who did it before another light came on to showcase another horror show. I’d wondered very briefly about what it would look like if I’d been able to use the tincture and all the metal inside of me suddenly didn’t fit. Now I knew. The zebra looked like a metal bear had tried to rip out of him from within. “The machine god’s gift just never took well to the zebra we’ve captured before. It’s frustrating - they’re clearly good material, but they resist rebirth! Fornax thought it was impossible, but I worked! I made it happen! I started with a few here and there that were hunting on their own, and I cultivated a greater gift that can even be granted to these savages!” A last spotlight turned on, and I saw what he’d made. A werebear was chained up against the wall. Or at least, what was left of one. “What the buck did you do?” I whispered. “I simply removed the weakest parts of this specimen and replaced them with superior machines. I can sense the gift in you, dimly. You know of its strength. Isn’t it beautiful? Not just growth, but care and control! A garden, instead of a wild jungle!” The werebear, whoever it had been, was an abomination. It looked like a suit of armor had been fitted to it and then nailed in place. Black and green veins wrapped around its limbs and lashed the heavy armor to the former zebra, covering almost every inch of flesh from the long, jagged copper claws to the eyeless helm set over a drooling maw. A blue light flashed in my heads-up display. DRACO had a lock on two missile launchers being pointed at me. The priest stepped out into the open. “Isn’t it amazing?” he laughed. His head was encased in a smooth-ended cylinder with a design scrawled on it in paint, and he wore a cape over one shoulder, leaving the other bare where a complex antenna like the green dragon’s horns was growing from his side like a skeletal wing. “Take the shot,” I whispered. DRACO barked twice, and two armored raiders fell out of the shadows above me, crashing down onto the hanging platforms. One snapped off entirely, sending that raider to the ground far below. I landed next to the other one and kicked him in the jaw, sending him over the side and grabbing the missile launcher he’d been holding. It was squirming unpleasantly, but I only needed to hold it for a second. I pointed it towards the priest and pulled the trigger. “I don’t think so,” he said. His wing-antenna-thing glowed with lime-colored light, and the missile streaked off course, right into the abomination he’d created. The missile tore off one of its long arms, and the beast roared in pain before slumping. The priest screamed in despair, rushing to its side and frantically trying to do something about the mortal wound. “That works too,” I said, tossing the infected weapon aside before it could take a bite out of me. “That was my greatest creation! You’ll rue the day you befouled my work, the work of the great priest--” The werebear came back to life with a hideous roar and ripped its remaining arm free from the restraints, grabbing the priest before tearing his head off with its jaws and biting down, crushing the featureless pod. “Can’t say I didn’t see that coming,” I said. “Okay, let’s make this fast. I know you must be suffering, and if you can still hear me, I’m sorry I couldn’t--” I should have known talking to the monster was a bad idea because it’d gotten that priest killed, too. The abomination jumped at the platform I was standing on, throwing itself through the air and just barely catching the edge, sinking its claws into the metal and hanging on, snapping and snarling. The cables holding us up jerked to taut attention and almost immediately gave up the ghost. Two of them snapped and the platform tilted to ninety degrees, sending me face-first into the monster. It bit down on my shoulder hard enough to crunch through the armor and sink an inch into me before it stopped. The last two cables holding the platform up snapped. We started falling. “No, no, no!” I swore, bringing my blade to werebear and stabbing, trying to get it to let go. We were something like halfway up the building. Call it two hundred feet. That was maybe three seconds until we hit the concrete. The abomination stopped squeezing after a second. I wasted another second after that pulling myself off its fangs. I needed a third to kick myself away from it and spread my wings. That was about half a second too late for me to actually stop my fall. I hit the ground after the monster, and a lot softer than it had landed, but it was still hard enough that I bounced and slammed into the same safety railing that had kept me from falling when I’d stumbled into the building before. I ended up sitting upright, with my vision full of warning messages. My left shoulder felt like it was torn apart. It more or less was. “Am I dying?” I asked, every breath coming with sharp pain. “Not yet!” Destiny promised. “Just hang in there. I’m giving you almost everything we have left!” The autoinjector pinched my neck and I flinched, which was a mistake because it just made every other pain I was feeling explode and almost knock me out. Some feral part of me forced me to stay awake, my heart thudding in my chest as the idea that going to sleep even for an instant would kill me thundered through my brain. Was it true? I have no idea, because I’m not a doctor, but it sure felt that way. “Are you alive?” Two-Bears knelt down next to me. I looked over at her. She’d changed back. Either the Tincture had worn off on its own or she’d forced herself to change back because she was worried about me. I privately hoped it was the latter. “Do I have to be?” I groaned. “That sounds like a yes. What happened up there?” “They’re all dead,” I said. “I’m sorry. I got the pony who did it, but…” “I don’t want to know,” Two-Bears said grimly. “That was a bad fall you took.” “You should see the other guy,” I joked. “Actually, on second thought, don’t. It’s not good.” “Let’s get you back to the elders. They can heal your wounds.” Two-Bears lifted me up like a foal and put me on her back. “I hope you don’t mind. You carried me here, the least I can do is return the favor.”