Air quality alert. Terrain warning. Stall warning. Medical alerts. I was getting every flavor of alarm blaring in my ears. If I had time to read them I might have been able to understand about half of what they were saying, but time was the one luxury I didn’t have. I was falling, first through the decks of the Exodus Green and now through rock, in a fissure under the ship. Dozens of plastic crates and boxes fell with me, an avalanche carrying me down into the depths with it. Basalt walls rushed by on both sides, the rift wide enough for a cloudship to fly through it.
“Pull up, Chamomile! We’re going to hit the rock!” Destiny yelled.
I flapped hard, knocking some of the tumbling boxes away and kicking myself into the open. Thermals from somewhere below buoyed me up, and I hovered in the rift, shaking off my disorientation and looking around.
“Where are we?” I asked. “Did that dragon really pull me right out of the ship?”
“I think it’s a volcanic fissure, like the valley the zebra are living in,” Destiny said. “It must all be along the same fault line!”
“But right under the ship?” I asked.
“There’s a crater where the Exodus White should be. A megaspell probably cracked the ground open where it was weakest.”
I turned around, trying to spot the dragon. Something else caught my eye. The rift wasn’t just bare rock. Thick cables grew down towards the glowing floor of the rift, and the walls were studded with shelves.
“What are those?” I asked, flying closer. It looked identical to the shelves back in the Exodus Green, complete with plastic boxes filled with seeds. “Did it fall out of the ship?”
“No. Look at the labels. It’s all gibberish.”
I squinted. I wasn’t much of a reader, but she was right. I’d ignored it because I’d assumed it was just in Pone Latin, but when I looked closer the letters weren’t even fully formed. It was like somepony had jammed a bunch of letters in a blender and poured the shreds onto a sticker. Something else caught my eye, too.
“It’s all one piece,” I said, tugging at the plastic bins. They were melted into the metal shelf. No, they were growing out of the shelf. And in turn, the edges of the shelf blurred into the stone.
“This was made with SIVA,” Destiny said confidently. “Remember how it was replicating seeds up above? I think it’s making backups of the whole gene bank down here. Or at least it’s trying to make backups…”
“SIVA’s not good with biology,” I said, rubbing my right forehoof.
“The trees in the jungle growing out from here are all stuffed full of cybernetics. They must be more than just adaptation to the temperature -- it’s life support making up for whatever mistakes it’s making trying to replicate living things!”
The air shuddered with a sound so loud it was more like an explosion than a sound.
“Sounds like the big guy is still unhappy with me,” I said.
“It attacked right after we disrupted the SIVA structure in the seed bank vault,” Destiny said. “The dragon is a little overprotective. The SIVA core must have been programmed to preserve the seed bank as its core directive!”
Another roar burst through the air, and I ducked into the shadows between the SIVA-made copy of the seed bank and the wall. A massive shape rushed down and past me, and the wake from the dragon hit me like a microburst in a wild storm. I slammed face-first into the shelves, rattling them along with the contents of my skull.
“We need to make Valkyrie javelins,” Destiny said. “Do you see any of those SIVA nodes down here? Maybe we can get to one without that thing spotting us.”
“I’m not seeing anything…” I leaned out into the open and traced the thick cables and plastic vines. The fruiting bodies always seemed to grow off of them. A glint of light caught my eye. “There! I see one!”
“Good eye! Even DRACO is having problems down here. If we’re careful--”
The rock walls shook. I ducked back into the dark, behind the shelf. A claw slammed into the wall next to me. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t immediately followed up by an attack. The dragon levered itself up, climbing up the basalt cliff right part me. Its tarnished copper body blocked the light, coming through the empty spots on the shelf, and the tortured faces of the ponies pressing out of its belly like it had eaten a bunch of bronze statues made of ponies in agony.
“Wait… I know those ponies,” Destiny whispered. “That’s Captain Pine! And the one next to him is Doctor Gauze Gaze! All of those faces are members of the Exodus Green’s crew!”
“It must have eaten them. Like how the other dragon ate my mom!” I hissed back. “This is good!”
“Actually I’m over ninety-nine percent confident it’s a fate worse than death.”
“I mean if we can free them by defeating the dragon with the Valkyrie, we can free my mom the same way!”
“Anything’s possible,” Destiny admitted. “All we can do is trust Kulaas.”
“What-what-w-w-what is an Ark?” A soft, tired sounding voice boomed. It was a pony speaking into a microphone, blasted out at volume close to a Vertibuck’s engine roar. It started as a distortion, skipping and repeating before it stabilized.
“That’s Fluttershy’s voice,” Destiny sighed.
“The Ministry Mare? Is the dragon playing a recording of her? Why?” I asked.
“She made the recording to explain everything. She knew she’d have to, someday. She knew she was making the wrong decision, but she was the only one who could make it.”
“An Ark is built to protect something precious,” Fluttershy’s voice continued. The dragon crawled along the wall, the voice trailing after it, loud enough to echo even as it started to move away. “When the idea of the Exodus Arks was presented to me and my friends, they all ignored it. Rarity even suggested it could be unpatriotic and subversive. According to her, taking precautions was the same as admitting we’d lose.”
“Why is it playing this now?” I muttered, trying to keep track of where it was with my limited view from behind the shelves.
“I hear that kind of thing too often. It’s always an excuse for ponies to look away from the truth. If they call something unpatriotic what they mean is they don’t want to think about it. They can’t be bothered with harsh truths. They can’t see clearly because everything in front of them is for the good of Equestria. A forest is cut down for charcoal, for the good of Equestria. Animals driven to the brink of extinction, for the good of Equestria. Our friends and loved ones die in the mud, all for the good of Equestria.”
“She really doesn’t sound like the Fluttershy I know from history books,” I whispered. The dragon was starting to move off. I took a careful peek around the edge of the shelf.
“Those books were heavily censored. Towards the end of the war, Fluttershy was… very troubled,” Destiny said.
“Both sides in this war have ravaged and destroyed the earth. I used to care for animals more than ponies. They didn’t hate the way ponies could hate, but they could still love. They’re simple, and live according to their nature instead of being driven by greed and ambition. They’re like children to me, and every day since this war started I’ve had to watch my children suffer, with no advocate willing to speak for them. Forests would be declared nature preserves one week and then logging would start the next, because it was needed. For Equestria.”
I hovered quietly out of the shadows. The dragon was looking the other way. I bolted for where I’d spotted the bronze fruit, the thermals from the magma below buffeting me.
“The other Ministries refused to fund the Arks because they can’t admit that all this is for nothing, that even if we win the war, we have lost what Equestria used to be. That is why I personally funded the Exodus Green. This ship carries my hope, and my apology to the world that we destroyed. None of the others are willing to protect nature, so I will. This ship will carry with it a seed bank containing samples of every known plant, and a gene bank with samples from almost every animal, with one exception.”
I touched the SIVA node and felt it react. Destiny blared the Valkyrie schematic into my vision, the images flashing even faster this time. The node started to heat up as it came to life and began to build.
“There is no Pony DNA in the archive. Every other animal is innocent of the sin we created that threatens to destroy us, but we are not. The animals and plants didn’t start this war. If ponies want to survive, they have to do it themselves. If we go extinct… maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it’s better than… than some of the things I’ve seen ponies do.”
A black metal shaft grew, and the node fell away, totally spent. I pulled the javelin free. The dragon was still on the other side of the canyon, searching for me.
“To whoever hears this, I can only pray that you make better choices than we did. I hope I’m wrong, and that this ship is never needed. If it is, don’t grieve for us. Please, I beg you, do what you can to heal the world with the things I’ve left behind.”
I hefted the spear and threw it. The black metal soared, and I swear it jumped out of my hooves faster than I could chuck it. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was alive and wanted to hit that dragon as much as I did. It hit right in the center of mass, middle of the back low and between the wings, that one spot that’s almost impossible to scratch when it gets an itch.
The green dragon roared in agony, scales tearing away from the clockwork and twisted strands of rubbery tubing below.
“That got it!” Destiny yelled. “It’s really hurting now!”
“Destiny,” I said carefully, as the dragon turned to look at me, eyes literally burning. Flames licked from the metal sockets. “It’s not dying!”
“Maybe it just takes a few seconds for the full effect--” Destiny started.
The dragon launched itself at me, screaming like an exploding steam engine. It was faster than it had any right to be, and I only just got out of the way even with it having to move the full distance across the fissure. I dove under its flapping wings, and it twisted its long neck, opening its maw.
“Watch out!” Destiny shouted.
There wasn’t time for anything. The dragon exhaled. I braced myself for a gout of dragonfire. I wasn’t sure how much the armor would actually help. In the hospital I’d gotten burned pretty badly, but that had been some kind of supernatural soulfire, and this was--
It wasn’t fire at all for one thing. The dragon exhaled a huge spray of yellow-green gas, thick enough to leave me flying blind. More alerts started popping up and I had exactly zero time to read them because I started losing altitude, my wings refusing to catch on the air.
“What’s-- argh!” It took a moment for the pain to hit. The gas was eroding my exposed feathers, corroding them away like acid. The loss of lift carried me out of the cloud, but it was still clinging to me, the acid biting into me painfully.
“It’s some kind of chemical weapon,” Destiny said. “Looks like chlorine gas, but there’s some kind of caustic agent in there too!”
“I noticed the burning part!” I snapped, using what little lift and control I had to make a hard landing on a wide rocky ledge. My legs went out from under me when I landed, and my tumble came to a halt the hard way when I hit the cliff face. It was still better than hitting the lava down below.
“It must not use fire because it would damage the forest,” Destiny said. “I mean, chlorine gas would probably still not be great for trees, but at least it wouldn’t cause a forest fire.”
The dragon watched me from above, not immediately pouncing.
“It’s afraid we might hurt it again,” I said.
“Let’s make that fear a reality. Where’s the nearest SIVA node?”
I looked around, scanning the walls. I’d fallen halfway down the fissure, and it was getting uncomfortably warm. Not enough to burn, but sweat was already getting in my eyes. There had to be another one down here somewhere!
My hesitation must have made the dragon decide it was time to attack again. It flew past the ledge I was on, spitting up something thick and lumpy and vomiting it on the rock. It missed me entirely and for a second I thought I was safe, until the lumps started to move, zombie-like dregs pulling themselves up on shaking legs, half-digested flesh slumping and almost dripping when they moved. I was surrounded.
“Guess it didn’t come alone,” I groaned.
“They’re not a real threat. Don’t let them distract you.”
One of the dregs hissed and jumped at me, fused skin over its mouth splitting to show twisted fangs poking up around broken teeth. I still had one bullet left in DRACO, and it felt like a good time to test it out.
I fired when it was at the peak of its arc, and the recoil from the shot made me slide back a fraction of an inch, the shock kicking up dirt and dust around me. The bullet impacted the dreg’s soft, spongy chest and left only a tiny entry wound, like it wasn’t even there. The dreg fell in a heap, and I saw the exit. It had blown a hoofball-sized hole out of the monster.
“We have got to make a few more of those,” I said.
DRACO beeped unhappily.
“He’s not happy about how much you wildcatted that round,” Destiny said. “We’ll try and find something a little less spicy for next time.”
“Is spicy a technical gun term?”
“Stop criticizing me and stab something!”
For a ghost, she gave some good advice. I kicked backwards without looking and hit a dreg pulling its tortured body towards me. It fell back, something inside it bursting. I’d been able to feel it getting closer, like I had eyes in the back of my head. I snapped my blade into place and slashed at the dreg in front of me, ignoring it once it fell in a twitching mess. They could barely hurt me when they were in top form. One almost dead on the ground wasn’t a threat.
“There!” Destiny said, drawing a box in my vision and zooming. A SIVA node, right in reach of the ledge above me.
I stretched my wings and glanced at them. My feathers were ragged around the edges. The cloud of gas had tarnished the metal foil of my rebuilt outer primaries, and the rest of my exposed feathers were curled and burned.
“Can you make it up there?” Destiny asked.
“Yeah, I just need a running start,” I said. I bolted, right towards the two dregs ahead of me. They stumbled towards me hissing like tea kettles. Behind me, I heard the wind rushing and the beating of massive wings. I glanced back and saw the dragon swooping towards me, gas streaming from its jaws.
I jumped, landed on top of one of the dregs, and jumped again. The dragon swept past, spraying a cloud of acid as it flew. The dregs screeched in pain, their exposed skin bubbling and boiling. I caught as much air as I could, clearing the gas and landing on the upper ledge.
“Made it!” I yelled, rushing to where the SIVA node was growing on the conduit-vine. I pressed my hoof against it and caught my breath. I’d been holding my breath, the sight of the poison gas instinctively making me afraid to breathe.
“We need to try and hit it somewhere more vital,” Destiny said, while the SIVA node forged the Valkyrie.
“What’s vital on a giant metal dragon monster?” I asked. “Remember back on the Smokestack? They took off the dragon’s head with a shot from a battleship and it just made it angry!”
“At least you know not to go for the head,” Destiny said with a mental shrug hard enough I could feel it.
I looked down. There was live magma down there, along with a sprawl of random-looking machines. Half-finished catwalks, pipes spewing water and steam, wires strung from one end to the other, and a lot of stuff I couldn’t identify through the heat haze. Most of it looked awfully fragile.
The dragon roared, turning in the tight space and flying back towards me.
“I might not know where to hit you to make it hurt, but I do know where I wouldn't want to get hit!” I threw the Valkyrie. The dragon flinched away from it, and the javelin streaked past its face. Not that I’d been aiming for the face. It lanced in right next to the shoulder wing joint, and there was a sound like an engine tearing itself apart. The erosion from the Valkyrie’s anti-SIVA payload spread like a plague on fast forward, melting through the main support for the dragon’s left wing.
The whole limb tore free from the aerodynamic forces. The dragon screeched. And I realized I’d made one tiny little error.
Everypony knew when a shot was important, you wanted the target to be coming towards you. You could line up your shot, get ready, and the whole time the shot would be getting easier.
I’d hit the dragon almost exactly where I wanted. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it didn’t immediately fall out of the air. It was huge, it had more momentum than I had brain cells, and it was still coming right for me.
The massive beast slammed into the rock, grabbing onto the basalt shelf I stood on. The impact knocked me off my hooves, bouncing me into the wall. A wall that cracked under the strain of multiple tons of metal dragon. It strained to pull itself up, and the entire rock face shifted. The dragon scrabbled at the cliff, massive claws tearing through rock without finding purchase. It started to fall, and my footing decided in that moment to become an avalanche and follow it down.
“Oh buck,” I said.
My tattered wings slowed me, but they couldn’t stop my fall. The dragon wasn’t quite as lucky. It smashed through a corroded, half-finished catwalk, tore wires from the walls, and crashed down towards the magma.
I needed to make sure I didn’t fall down there too! I grabbed for anything that might support my weight, my hooves closing on a thick wire. It should have held me. It definitely should not have stretched like it had suddenly turned into taffy. I yelped and lost my grip when it pulled apart and shredded in my grip.
I slammed butt-first into a metal platform. The impact rattled my teeth and sent a surge of pain down my spine like when you stub your hoof in just the wrong way. I hissed in pain and fell onto my side.
“You sure the Auto-Doc cleaned up all the spine trauma?” I asked, my voice tight from the pain. “Still feels like something is broken!”
“All you did was land badly on your tailbone,” Destiny said. “You’re fine! You need to get up before the dragon comes back and make another Valkyrie!”
“That might be a problem,” I said. The platform I’d landed on was a rough square, with two of the corners wedged into the walls and holding it just off-level. It was maybe half the size of a cloudball pitch, and enough debris had come down with me that I wasn’t sure how long it’d stay in place.
Worse, there weren’t any vines anywhere near us. There were a few high above, too far to reach until I got my wings healed, and I was pretty sure that was going to require plucking damaged feathers and downing healing potions. It didn’t help that this close to the magma it was so hot I was starting to feel dizzy.
So dizzy that I almost missed it when the dregs that had fallen along with the debris started to come back to life.
“Last thing I need is another distraction,” I mumbled. I got up and shook some feeling back into my legs. I trotted over to the dreg, raised my hoof, ready to stomp on the thing’s skull… and looked down into a big purple eye full of fear and pain. I hesitated. This thing had been a pony at some point. I’d almost forgotten. I’d started just thinking of them as monsters and not as somepony suffering a horrible fate.
The worst part was, even if I stomped on it, it’d just be forced to heal and get back up. Instead of stomping on it, I grabbed it by what was left of their mane and dragged the dreg over to the side of the platform. The magma below roiled and bubbled, toxic gas spewing into the air.
“Sorry,” I said. “This is the best I can do.”
I threw it over the side. It burst into flames even before hitting the molten rock. Reminding me that I was hurting actual ponies had completely ruined my dragon-hunting mood.
“Did the green dragon fall all the way to the magma layer?” Destiny asked. “I lost track of it.”
“I know it fell further than we did,” I said. Something tickled at the back of my mind. Something eating away at me, trying to get my attention.
“Let’s look for the corpse and a way out of here at the same time,” Destiny suggested. “It’s not exactly fast or easy, but maybe there’s a way to climb back up if you can’t fly.”
I held out my wings and flapped carefully.
“I think if I use the thermals and take it really slowly I might be able to work my way up,” I decided.
And then the dragon’s claw slammed down on me, pinning me to the metal platform like an oatcake on a griddle. I shoved with everything I had, but it was like I was caught in a hydraulic press. The pressure increased, and I felt my barding creak.
“The structural integrity field is at its limit!” Destiny shouted. “We need to get out of here!”
“I know!” I snapped. I fumbled my blade free blindly and slashed, hitting one of the dragon’s talons. I saw the spray of sparks in the corner of my vision, and the dragon roared in pain, the pressure lessening. I kicked my way free and bolted for the other end of the platform, skidding to a halt with a bump against a chunk of rock bigger than I was.
The green dragon pulled itself up the rest of the way, both front talons digging into the platform as it levered its injured body up. The massive crown of antenna-like horns cast a shadow over me.
“Oh, he looks angry,” I muttered. The dragon’s tail raised up from behind it, the end shifting into a club made of counter-turning gears.
“I’ve got an idea,” Destiny said. “Remember that canister full of SIVA we had to pull out of the Auto-Doc after it filtered your blood?”
“Get to the point!” I shouted. I ran to the side to avoid the huge tail slapping down, and scrambled on top of the fallen debris and jumped off just as the dragon’s tail whipped across at ground level, barely clearing the danger zone and landing on the other side of the swing.
“You might be able to use it to make a Valkyrie!”
The dragon’s maw opened, and I could see the vapors swirling before it disgorged a huge blast of choking, blinding gas. I tucked my wings in tight, trying to shield what was left of my feathers. It had done some kind of damage to my barding when it crushed me, because I could feel tickling and itching around my joints. I had to hope I was just imagining the smell.
“Destiny--” I warned.
“I know, I know, I see it,” she said. “That gas burned through a gasket seal. I wasn’t expecting to have to walk through acid in this suit!”
I grunted in annoyance and tried to ignore the itching. “What’s the plan? How do we use the SIVA?”
“It’s going to need raw materials. We could try just… opening the canister and pouring it on the platform? It’s metal, so the micromachines should be able to process it. I think.”
“Not like I have any better ideas,” I mumbled. “Let’s do it quick. I don’t think the dragon can see though this soup any better than we can.” I could barely make out my hoof in front of my face through the yellow-green haze.
The canister popped out of the Exodus Armor’s Vector Trap and into my hooves.
“You can open it by pushing down and twisting--” Destiny started.
I smashed the glass on the rock I was hiding behind and poured the grey dust inside onto the ground next to me.
“--Or do that, sure,” Destiny said.
I gingerly touched the swirling dust. It immediately snapped into shape, like water flash-freezing into ice. The dust turned into square spirals and cubes, all of it shimmering like an oil slick. Destiny flashed the designs in my display without being asked. I tried to let the information flow through me, but it was starting to ache in the same way as when you stare at a light too long and you’re fighting the urge to blink.
When the data stream cleared out of my vision, the SIVA had already started reacting. It wasn’t like the clean little factory-fruit that hung from the vines. I could see something spreading through the metal floor of the platform. It bubbled and flaked and turned spongy. I backed away from it because it really didn’t look like it was going to support my weight if I stepped in it.
“It’s working!” Destiny said. “I was worried this was going to blow up in our faces.”
I could see it taking shape, sparks running across the almost-liquid metal and defining the edges a little at a time as the Valkyrie came to life, unneeded bits of slag dripping down and leaving holes in the platform.
I gingerly touched the forming shaft, and sparks crawled up my hoof as it finished taking shape in my grip. The way it looked, I thought it would still be soft, but it felt the same as the other Valkyrie javelins, like spring steel and coiled power wrapped around a payload designed by alien minds.
“Looks the same as the others,” I said, turning it over to look for any obvious mistakes.
“Let’s hope it works the same,” Destiny said.
The rock I was using for cover shattered, the dragon’s huge maw snapping shut on it. I stumbled back, hefted the weapon, and hesitated.
“What are you doing?” Destiny asked. “You need to take it out!”
The dragon reared back, crumbling pebbles falling out of its mouth as it crunched the boulder into gravel. The swirling gas had mostly cleared up. I could see the dragon perfectly. I had a clean shot at its hideous face.
“A headshot won’t work,” I said, then I adjusted my aim lower and threw the javelin. It streaked across the space between us and slammed into the dragon’s belly, right where all those tortured pony faces pressed out of its metal scales.
The dragon reacted with obvious shock, grabbing at its chest and tearing at it with one claw, scrambling further onto the platform and crashing down, roaring in agony. I could feel it resonating through me beyond just the noise, like the dragon was broadcasting its pain through the air.
Something inside the dragon exploded, gears and wires cascading into the air. The monster struggled to get up, and one of its talons fell apart under it, just shattering into bits. A sound filled the air, behind the dragon’s roars, like a boiler straining under a heavy load.
“It might be a good idea to find cover,” Destiny suggested.
I threw myself down behind what little debris was left. The dragon was squealing like a hundred tea kettles. I readied myself for an earth-shattering explosion.
There was a soft pop. It sounded like a cork coming out of a bottle. The dragon’s cries went silent.
I peeked over the top of my chest-high cover. The dragon had collapsed, literally, falling apart into a miniature junkyard. Gears slowly spun to a stop, pistons hissed and released the last bit of their pressure, and a forest of green plastic wires lay in loose bundles.
In the middle of it all, copper ribs stood tall around a buzzing light.
“That must be the core,” Destiny said. “If you destroy that, it’s all over.”
I stood up and brushed myself off. I was still itching like crazy. With all the gas cleared away, it should have stopped, but it actually felt like it was getting worse. I was probably covered in blisters.
“This kind of reminds me of the whole vision quest I had to go through with Fornax,” I said, kicking debris aside as I made my way to the exposed SIVA core. “There was this whole metaphor with bees and a queen bee in the middle that I had to kill to take control.”
“It’s actually not that dissimilar. The SIVA core is the main control node of the whole network. It’s even more primal than a brain or heart, more like the stem cells that divide and form everything else. The nucleus of the cell.”
“Well today this nucleus is going to learn the real powerhouse of the cell is--”
“Kneel.”
My knees slammed into the ground like they were magnetized to the deck.
“What’s happening?” Destiny yelped. “Chamomile, your vitals are going crazy!”
“I’m so proud of you, Chamomile.”
The shadows moved, blue sparks outlining a figure and fading away as it faded in from total invisibility, colors shifting from the red-lit rock walls to a very familiar grey coat studded with plates of very unfamiliar blue steel.
“Active camouflage?” Destiny whispered.
“You’ve grown so much stronger!” Mom said, smiling warmly. Her eyes were slitted and glowing pale blue. Some kind of cape was draped over her, and scales grew over her body like natural barding. “It’s actually taking some effort to keep you from standing back up. You’ve started to get control over your new gift!”
“When-- how--” I gasped.
Mom stepped closer. She was taller than before. We should have been eye-level, even with me kneeling. Now she was at least a head taller, looking down at me imperiously.
“I got here before you did,” Mom said. “I’m glad to see you, though. I wanted to apologize for that mess I caused. It took me quite a while to assume total control of the SIVA’s power.” She laughed lightly. “I made quite a mess of your hometown, I’m afraid! Part of me missed you, and when I went to see you, well, things got out of hoof.”
“You killed all those ponies--”
“Let me see your face while we talk, not that ugly helmet,” Mom interrupted.
She patted my head and unlatched my helmet. I couldn’t stop her. Destiny tried to float away, and Mom’s cape moved, slapping the helmet to the ground. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a cape at all. They were leathery, dragon-like wings.
“Stay there if you know what’s good for you,” Mom warned Destiny. She turned back to me and smiled again, stroking my mane. The lingering fumes and volcanic gasses made me tear up, and it was a struggle to breathe at all. “I came here to help save Equestria. This SIVA network had part of the solution, but it’s corrupt. It needs a guiding hoof. When it first woke up, it tried to absorb the ponies in the ship’s crew because according to the directives Fluttershy gave it, they didn’t belong. None of them had the willpower to take control, so it became a beast, driven purely by instinct.”
“And you are worthy?” I gasped. It was too hot. Too hard to breathe. I forced myself to stay awake. Passing out now would be certain death.
“Of course!” Mom laughed. “The Green SIVA core contains information on all the plant and animal life that existed before the war. That can’t be left in the hooves of monsters and fanatics!”
She ran her hoof through my mane and kissed my forehead before trotting over to the core languidly, wrapping it in her magic and lifting it up.
“With this, I’m one step closer!” Mom opened her maw, wider than it should have been possible, like a snake dislocating its jaw. She had fangs, more like a wolf’s teeth than a pony’s. She ate the core in one bite, swallowing it and licking her lips. Copper scales and etchings grew across her body and quickly tarnished in the acrid atmosphere, turning green with patina.
“You can’t--” I gritted my teeth and fought my way back to my hooves. “I won’t let you… kill anypony else!”
“Oh? You’re still able to stand?” Mom raised her eyebrows. “You’re growing minute by minute, Chamomile. I want you to get stronger. Strong enough to shake the foundations of the world! Once you understand what power is, what power really is, you’ll join me willingly. Until then, I’ll be hunting down the other three cores.”
“They were destroyed,” Destiny said weakly.
“Oh no,” Mom chuckled. “They’re still out there. I can feel them, weakly. Once I have all five, I’ll be able to truly save this world!”
She spread her wings and took off.
“Keep growing, Chamomile! Become somepony worthy of being my daughter!”
Mom flapped and lightning surrounded her. She shimmered and became invisible. The pressure trying to force me to my knees went away. I collapsed, letting out the coughing I’d been holding back. Destiny hovered over to me and slipped over my head.
Clean air blew against my face and I sucked it down, my chest feeling awful.
“Your mom is kind of a bitch, Chamomile,” Destiny said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, between coughs. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”