//------------------------------//
// Chapter 20 
// Story: Hegira: Rising Omega 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
December 11th, Gregorian Calendar

Skye

For a good few seconds all I could see was darkness.  It took longer than I'd expected for the spell to resolve what I wanted to get at as something both Fyrenn and I could visually understand.  A tiny tendril of the weave stayed behind at the tip of my horn, projecting what I could see and hear for him as a ghostly, but fairly resolute full color image with sound.

In turn, I constantly imaged him, and piped the feed from my ears into the mind-space, resulting in a fairly substantial image of him sitting right beside me, complete with his voice.

"Amazing..."

I opened the eyes of my own projection, and grinned, rising to my hooves.

"We're past the first wall.  This is just a sort of antechamber of the mind that represents a bridge between Astris' and mine..."

I gestured with a hoof as a silhouette emerged from the omnipresent fog at the edges of the space.

"I have to get through *that* before we can make the rest of the connection-proper."

Fyrenn let out a low growl, and moved into a ready stance as the bony, familiar, scorpion-tailed shape came fully into view.  A representation of the Wisp's internal mental defenses, not too different in composition, and inner workings, from my own projection.

And bigger, and stronger looking than I'd anticipated.  Bigger than any real Wisp.  It was actually slightly larger than Fyrenn, and heavily armored in black crystalline plating.  As it fixed each of us in turn with the red glow of its eye sockets, I wished that Fyrenn could have been there directly in the link.

His mind was so strong, and aggressive, right down to the way it was physically patterned, that it would have more than evened up the fight...

Patterns.  Interesting idea...  I reached out for a half-second to see if the thought had any merit, and was surprised to find little or nothing standing in my way.  Huh...

I turned and held up a hoof.

"Hey, red...  Is it ok if I scan your brain?"

He raised one eyebrow crest, never taking his eyes off the Wisp as it slowly began to circle us, pawing at the nondescript glossy black surface of the 'ground' occasionally with one hoof.  It couldn't make the first move, I had to be the one to engage, because of the way I'd structured the link.  It could approach, but nothing more, until I struck the first blow.

"Of...  Course you may...  Is that even possible?"

I nodded, and began to rethread the appropriate sections of the spell to achieve the desired effect, closing my projection's eyes as I did so to facilitate concentration.  I could barely spare a few cells of my brain to answer.

"Yes.  I can't read your mind, or anything like that.  But I can see and copy the physical patterns of your brain, same as an FMRI.  The same way they make AI's.  I can use those patterns to strengthen my projection.  Make this an even fight."

I let silence fall as I began to chip away at the most complicated part of the modification.  Almost there, I could just see the bit I needed, change this segment out for that one and---

YIKES!

I'd known the change would affect the visual representation of my projection, but I hadn't expected the sensations.  

I suppose I should've, I was literally temporarily remolding the expression of my brain's patterns to match the base patterns of another species in real-time.  I was making my brain act like a Gryphon brain.  Feel like a Gryphon brain.  Fight like a Gryphon brain.

As always the dull, very distant sense of my physical body was still there, and still attached to me...  But the sensations of my projection, until that point decidedly familiar and Equine, changed suddenly in a burst of blue light.

Fyrenn blinked, and tilted his head slowly.  A sly grin began to spread across his beak as I glanced down to take stock of my own new feathers...  Tan, just like my coat, with streaks of blue in my head, primaries, and tailfan that matched my mane...

The spitting image of what I would have looked like as a Gryphoness, complete with surprisingly accurate and concrete sensations.  I felt my new head crest rising reflexively in curiosity as I flexed the talons of first one claw, then the other.

"This...  Is absolutely trippy..."

I mantled my new wings, and stared at the left one, mesmerized by the sensation of a limb that hadn't been there a moment before.

"So this is what it's like to be one of you...  Wow!  I can see why you like the wings so much..."

Fyrenn chuckled, and tilted his head back in the opposite direction as he finally found words to reply with.

"You know, you make a really pretty Gryphon...  But don't ever change.  You're a prodigy with that horn of yours, and your skill with it has saved us more times now than I care to count."

I lowered my head, and narrowed my eyes, trying for that 'teacher looking over spectacles' expression that I'd seen him do so many times when he wanted to say 'really?' without saying it out loud.

"I would love to be able to fly.  But I'd be content to have one of those power armor suits, or something that can fly the same way.  I wouldn't want to *be* a Gryphon, or an Alicorn, or a Pegasus full time...  Absolutely no offense..."

Internally, I winced.  That had still come off a little more snippy than I intended.  Best to clarify...

"...That being said?  I always wanted to know what it was like, just for a bit.  And I have to admit, it is nice to be able to see you eye-to-eye.  Is this the sense of power all you bigger taller species feel all the time?"

He chuckled, and then gestured to the Wisp figure as it continued to circle, visibly frustrated.

"You might start to get a real idea once you put those claws to use...  I'm right here if you need pointers."

Nice pun.  I smirked, and shook my head, cracking the knuckles of my claws as I stood to my new hind legs.  That was immensely satisfying.  I could see why Humans, Gryphons, and dragons were always doing it.

"Thanks, but I think I've got it from here.  This isn't a physical fight;  The little dance that's about to play out is just a visual avatar for something much more complicated.  Appreciate the offer though."

I squared up, and spread my wings slightly further, holding both claws in a velociraptor style 'ready position' that I'd seen both Humans and Gryphons use.

"Bring it, bone-head.  I've tangled with much worse than you."

I lashed out with one claw, and the opposite wing, both limbs connecting with immensely satisfying jolts.

I had to admit;  Visual abstract representation or not, hitting something so deserving of the pain with outstretched talons was *very* very cathartic.





Fyrenn

It was very strange to see Skye in Gryphon form.  I had to choke back a completely situationally inappropriate chuckle as I realized that actually made her the second person I'd seen take a Gryphon form, without actually becoming one.  

Even if IJ's moment had only been a few seconds of demonstration, it had stuck with me for the sheer strangeness of the concept.  The concern I'd once felt had mostly melted away.  I trusted IJ to take whatever shape she wanted, including that of my own kind.

I wished in that moment that she was there to help.  I knew Skye was extremely skilled in mind magic, but IJ had been spawned into a Hive, grown up with the concept, and could now tap a level of power that approached a young Alicorn's.

The two of them had already shown what they could do together when they'd killed a Hive Queen, freeing IJ's Hive in the process.  Not a small feat of quite literal mental gymnastics.  

Not that Skye was having any trouble holding her own against the Wisp's mental defenses.  It didn't quite look the way I might've expected;  Less a real fight between a Gryphon and an extra large Wisp, more of a cinematic engagement as seen and interpreted through the eyes of a Unicorn who had watched real fights between Gryphons Wisps.

It was the same feeling I always had as a former Marine, watching Human-made action films.  Elements of the familiar, twisted through the director's lens to fit a cinematic expression rather than a realistic one.

Same as the action flicks, it was certainly fun to watch Skye beat the piss out of the Wisp's own mental projection, whether entirely realistic or not.  

If the visual representation of the way her wings, talons, and beak were tearing into the enemy was an indication, the actual lines of mental attack she was pursuing were catastrophically aggressive.

My fear started to run less to the idea that she might lose, and more to the idea that she might somehow damage the Wisp's mind in her fury.  

She knows what she's doing.  Relax.  Learn to let others do what they do best.  Trust your family.

Family...  I certainly had not missed the look she shot me, peering out from under one of my wings.  I think she knew that too.  But neither of us had pressed the issue.  I couldn't say for sure what was going through her head, but for my part, I'd simply let it go because I couldn't quite work out enough to draw any useful conclusions.

I needed useful conclusions before I could safely press on anything, especially a sensitive issue.

One thing I knew more or less for certain;  It probably had a lot to do with her families.  The one she was unofficially in with the rest of us, the herd she'd been with for several years before she emigrated to Earth, and then her biological family...

Every tiny sliver of data I'd been able to gather on that subject could fill a thimble...  If you packed the thimble nine tenths with padding first.  But the overwhelming emotional range that seemed to be associated with her biological family was negativity.

That thought brought back more than a little stress of my own that I certainly didn't need to be sparring with in the middle of a critical mission.  Alyra was gaining a mother, out and out...  She doubtless was awake by now, and knew that...

Would that change her reaction when she saw her biological...  I couldn't bring myself to associate the word 'father' with the man.  Progenitor, perhaps.  Gene donor.

I'd already set everything in motion to give her the power to choose.  I'd placed a request with Martins' head logistics officer, first thing after I'd parted ways with Neyla.  I knew I had to do it before the courage and warm afterglow of a proposal accepted started to fade...

The Genesists would see to his transport.  Probably were seeing to it at that very moment.  If Alyra wanted to meet him, he would be there.  Tonight.

If not, they'd pack him off quietly and make sure he made no further fuss.

Focus, Fyrenn.  It's out of your claws now, as it should be.  Trust God.  Trust your daughter.  Focus on the problems of the moment.

I managed to force my mind back to the present right as Skye elbow-slammed the Wisp projection's skull into a fine powdered dust.  I replayed the rest of the fight in my head as the defending projection vanished.  Fantastic finisher to cap off an excellent bout, all things considered.

She picked herself up gingerly, dusting off her chest feathers with her claws, then sticking her tongue out the side of her beak, and squinting in concentration.  The next moment, a familiar tan and blue Unicorn stood where the eerily familiar Gryphoness had been.

I smiled as she gestured with a hoof towards the distant foggy image of a bridge.

"Solid form, for a Pony!"

She stuck out her tongue at the words, this time as a gesture directed fully at me.  I snorted, and fell into step behind her as she tossed her mane, and muttered aloud.

"You *wish* you could look that cool when you go in for the kill."

Dammit.  She was right.

Little sisters can be so annoying.





Skye

As we crossed over the bridge, a nondescript ugly thing made of something resembling onyx that reflected the utilitarian construction of the spell underneath, echoes of memory began to filter past.

I was too focused on reaching the end of the bridge to really pick up on details, but I was able to get the gist.

A charmed, quiet foalhood.  Loving parents doting on their only son.  A string of fantastic academic successes.  A prestigious series of relationships with Earth-side universities.  A stand-out moment of clarity meeting Councilor Martins for the first time.

Charming.  Apparently Mr. Perfect had the kind of foalhood most nerds could only dream of, and an academic career worth more than a couple PhDs.

Other intense images and sounds mixed into the daily blur and grind of work, each tied to a moment when the Genesis project had caught a big break.  The first real rounds of funding.  The discovery of a habitable target zone.  The lightspeed barrier breakthrough.

I stiffened as Fyrenn put out a wing to stop me.  The limb was insubstantial to me, but I still reflexively skidded to a halt, and shot him an annoyed, probing glance.  Sightseeing at this point was an unnecessary distraction.  We were there for the Wisp's memories, not Astris' almost-too-perfect life.

And aside from the need for efficiency, and speed...  I didn't really want to look any closer.  Too many reminders of the foalhood I could have never had.

"I think this is it.  This is the moment he was...  Implanted."

I wanted to see the horror of that moment even less than the joys of the others that I so envied...  But we were there for information.  It was important to know.

I steeled myself, and then turned to focus on the hazy image Fyrenn had picked out amongst the cacophony of other memories.  The little window expanded and sharpened, until we suddenly found ourselves standing on a street corner.

The area was awash in emergency lights.  Military Police.  Ambulances.  Potential Crystallization teams.  

Fyrenn turned in a wide circle, and began to nod slowly as Astris, Martins, several other Humans, and a group of staggering Ponies were escorted from a building across the street by a gaggle of beings in full isolation suits.

"London.  This happened in March.  Earlier this year...  I read the incident report.  We arrived on Earth only a day after this happened...  The PER potion-bombed a Genesist board meeting..."

The memory followed Astris into the back of a waiting ambulance.  Standard procedure after a Potion attack;  Check *everyone* for indications of allergic reaction, or miscellaneous injuries sustained in the ensuing panic.

The space of the memory suddenly constricted to a tiny two by five by three meter box as the Ambulance doors swung closed.  

Oh.  Not good.

The sight of what was waiting up against the vehicle's back wall made my stomach turn.

Astris hadn't noticed until the doors were closed.  And by then it was far too late.  As Veritas stepped out of the shadowed end of the compartment, two armor clad Diamond Dogs leapt from the spaces adjacent to the doors, snagging the Unicorn in an inescapable claw-grip from both sides.

A flash from Veritas' horn was all it took, and Astris lost all muscle control.  Awake.  Aware.  Helpless.

I didn't want to watch.  I knew Fyrenn didn't either.  But he needed to see.  And I had to keep watching, or he wouldn't be able to see.

If I was being honest, I needed to see as well.  Astris was a Unicorn.  His memories contained more for me than the mere visual and auditory stuff I was projecting for Fyrenn.  They contained his feelings and impressions of the magic done in his vicinity.  And to him.

If he'd been awake for the entire process, I might learn something about the way the Wisp bonded to the host that could be useful in removing it, and maybe even protecting against possession in the first place...

That hope gave me enough impetus to keep my eyes, and my arcane sense, locked firmly on the horror that was playing out with frightening speed before us.

Lights snapped on at full intensity.  A vertical tube, not unlike a cryogenics pod, was suddenly thrown from gray shadow into harsh white relief.  The strange machine perched on top of the cylinder was thrumming with a pent up arcanic signature that almost made Astris' head hurt.

Under Veritas' direction, the Diamond Dogs deposited Astris into the tube gingerly, almost gently, and then pressed the glass aperture closed behind him.

Suddenly the memory was little more than a window out into the ambulance from the inside of the tube.  As frost began to form on the glass, the last thing Astris saw of the outside world was her sick, terrifying leer.

I wanted to kill her more in that moment than I had even when she'd shot Aston...  Though honestly it was a close contest either way.  I couldn't help myself.  I snarled.  Not a common sound to come from a Pony muzzle.

Guess that's whatcha get when you put a filly through the kind of foalhood I had, and then follow that up with a lotta time spent around Gryphons.

As the machine came fully to life, I could feel Astris' panic reflected in his frantic attempts to reach out with his deadened hooves.  His blocked magic.  Something.  Anything.

But he couldn't even scream as the beam of Thaumatic energy pierced his skull.  As frost formed on his coat while the tube chilled to allow superconductors to do their grim work.  As an alien presence began to filter into his mind, borne into him through that piercing, frigid purple-blue ray of light.

I could feel every second.  The intense sensations of white-hot pain.  Of loss.  Of tingling prickling strangeness as the mind of something other, and menacing, began to flex itself out into Astris' thoughts, memories, feelings, and finally, his body itself.

All at once the pain stopped.  But the horror didn't.

As the machine spun down, and the chamber began to heat back to room temperature, the glass finally slid away.  Astris dropped to all fours, shakily at first, and then with growing confidence.  Fyrenn couldn't see or sense it, but he must've known.  

I, on the other hoof, could feel Astris' pain, his fear, his outright panic, as he reached once again for his limbs.  For his horn.  

To his lips, to scream.

And nothing happened.

The Wisp was in control.  And  to any external observer, there wouldn't be even a tiny thing out of place to betray the presence of the demon nestled just behind the young Unicorn's horn.

The memory faded abruptly, mercifully taking the unspeakably violating sensation of an outside mind driving Astris' body with it.

Suddenly we were standing in a grassy field on a hillside, a star-filled sky above our heads, a cool spring breeze whipping across the knoll.  I recognized the stars.  Equestria.

And I recognized the Unicorn sitting dejectedly in the center of the green expanse.

Astris turned, and sighed.  Fyrenn opened his beak, probably to ask a dozen questions, but Astris beat him to the answers.  His voice sounded so...  Broken.

I shuddered involuntarily.  I'd heard that note of despair-without-hope before.  Too many times.

"For the first few hours, the hope was the worst part.  I just knew, deep down, that somehow Martins would figure it out.  Or one of my colleagues, or my subordinates in the lab...  I don't suppose I really truly gave up all at once...  The hope just sort of...  Slipped away."

He rose, and made his way towards Fyrenn and I, looking morosely to each of us in turn.

"It knew me.  As well as I knew myself.  It reached in and just...  Sifted.  Every single thought.  Every last memory.  Every emotion.  Every hope, and fear, desire, dream, and longing.  It was flawless in its performance.  And I had to watch.  I could never look away.  Every second the body was awake I was... Chained.  Bound to my own senses..."

Sounds and images streamed past in the sky.  Humans and Ponies shot.  Strangled.  Burned.  Each incident made to look like an accident with painstaking care.  Consistent rendezvous with operatives.  The construction of the bombs.  

The moment the Shenzhou's device had detonated.

I could see the tears forming in Astris' eyes.  I knew mine hadn't stopped since the moment I'd felt that... *thing* slither into his skull.  Fyrenn looked ashen.  At once both hollowed out, and kicked in the ribs.

Astris' voice broke as his confession tumbled out.  I closed my eyes and winced, before opening them again.  Fyrenn couldn't see if I couldn't see.

"It made me watch!  I killed so many people!  It used everything I knew!  All the access I'd been given!  Every last piece of trust granted to me...  So much pain...  So much damage..."

I dimly heard Fyrenn sit back hard on his haunches.  I didn't know anything else to do;  I leaned forward awkwardly and wrapped my front hooves around Astris' back.  Let him lay his neck on mine and sob.

It felt like an eternity that we sat there.  But finally, mercifully, Astris pulled back, and sniffed loudly to clear his nose.  A faint glimmer of hope finally began to trickle into his eyes, and his voice.

"You're not just a figment of my imagination then!  You're real?!"

I nodded, but it was Fyrenn who spoke.  I couldn't find words.  I must've just sat there nodding in silence for a moment too long.

"She has connected herself to you, and is sharing everything with me through a projection."

Astris' face visibly brightened, and his voice jumped up an octave.

"Aha!  I had at first thought you were merely a fevered imagining of a breaking mind...  I know Gryphons' minds have a peculiar immunity to telepathy, and the like...  But that explanation makes sense!  And it explains why I can't feel your presence quite like I can Skye's..."

His face fell once more, and his ears drooped.  I didn't like the look of that expression.  I liked his next works even less.

"You can not save me.  The Wisp's presence is...  Corrosive, to the link between the part of me that survives, and my body.  I've been to the PER's central facility.  I've seen them perform the procedure on others, both through my own eyes, and through the Wisp's Hive-link.  If you can extract the parasite within a few days, or perhaps weeks...  But after a couple of months, the bond between mind and body withers.  Like tissue exposed to radiation."

He gestured absently with one hoof, and the sky filled with more gut-wrenching images.  Hundreds of Ponies, thousands, many forced-converts of the PER, loaded methodically into tubes lining the walls of basement chambers.

The same macabre defiling of mind and body carried out over.  And over.  And over...

All the while Astris' voice provided explanation, in dull, almost lifeless tones.  I could feel the blood draining out of my face.  And the hope along with it.

"They exist as beings of pure energy.  They have very little capacity to influence the physical world, and no means of experiencing any sensation, except for pure excruciation, in their natural state.  The only way for them to escape that pain, and to feel pleasure, or anything else.  For them to influence the corporeal world...  Is to take a host body.  And they can only take Ponies as hosts."

I could hear Fyrenn's breath suck in over the edge of his clenched beak.  His muttered imprecation matched my dark thoughts exactly.

"God damn.  They funded, built-up, and led the PER because they *wanted* Humans to convert in large numbers...  They wanted---"

"More hosts."

The way Astris said the words chilled the blood in my veins.  I was so afraid that there was more.  And his next words made that fear manifest.

"They can do it much more easily in Equestria's magic rich environs.  They don't need the machine there, but it still takes some time and effort.  They prefer to do it while a Pony is sleeping, or can be restrained by others who are already infected...  There are billions of them.  And so they need billions of Ponies...  They...  They even..."

He bit back another sob, and shook his head, taking a moment to collect himself before continuing in the same dejected timbre.

"You'll see for yourself.  I can't say it.  I am so...  Tired."

I swallowed hard.  Reached out tentatively with my magic.  I didn't want to know...  But I had to.  I gently probed the stem of Astris' brain, and then brushed over each hemisphere in turn.

Fyrenn tilted his head and raised one ear inquisitively.  I shook my head slowly.  Astris was right...  Something essential had withered away, to be replaced by scarred, hardened cords.  Not physically on the visible material level, but deep inside on a quantum level, somewhere so deep down that it sat at the bridge of the quantum, material, and Thaumatic realms.

Somewhere so deep down that no Human technology could detect it.  And so deep down that no technology, nor magic that I knew of, could ever hope to fix it.

Astris shook his head, and exhaled slowly.  I could almost hear a hint of hope buried under the resignation in his voice.  Hope, I realized, that even if he couldn't be reconnected to his body, that soon his torment would...  End.

"It is just as well.  To access the Wisp's memories, and Hive-link connection, you will have to do several things that will have the net effect of overloading my physical brain.  Death will be instantaneous, and painless.  You will then be able to briefly access whatever you wish, before the cascade effect incinerates that... *thing.*  And I...  Will be free."

My breathing quickened.  I could feel hot, angry tears starting up again.  No.  No, no, no...  After all that...  He expected me to---

I almost gagged on the thought...

To kill him.  To kill him to get to what we wanted...

I suddenly felt a hoof under my chin as he gently raised my eyes to meet his.  I could see empathy.  And sadness.  Desperation.  A longing, begging stare...

"Please!  Please, you have to do this!  You have no idea what is at stake!  Billions of lives!  Fates that are far...  FAR worse than death!  And my own torment...  I can not go ON like THIS!  You don't have a choice.  You are spared that!  It is simple...  Simple logic.  *Please!*"

I choked back a sob, and my breathing quickened again, entering into hyperventilation territory.  Not fair!  It was hard enough for a Pony to learn to be violent at all.  To ever strike out to kill another Pony?  I'd heard of it, but it was so rare...  So... Monstrous...

Astris swallowed, and pierced the ground with a sullen stare.  His voice dropped back to a dead, hopeless register again.  How was he even still cogent after everything he'd seen...?  Everything he'd been forced to do...

"I...  Would not want to live...  With the things I have been used to accomplish.  The things I have seen.  You do me a mercy.  A kindness.  I am so...  Sorry.  To ask this of you is the smallest evil I have done...  But it is an evil nonetheless."

I felt a slight prickle at my shoulder as Fyrenn laid a comforting claw on me in the real world, matching up with his apparition inside the link.

"I will do it.  We can do without whatever might be gained...  I can not ask you to do this.  You don't have to do this.  We are not doing this."

I shook my head violently, and a cry of pain escaped my lips aloud for the first time.  Astris strode forward with a sudden urgency, and tried to bat at Fyrenn's apparition.  His voice carried an intense desperation.

"No!  You must see!  There are things even I do not fully know, but which you will be able to access in those last moments!  Things I have only inklings of...  *Her* very inmost secret plans!  And there are truths...  If I but put them into mere words?  No!  You must *see,* so that she can in turn show it to others!  They must SEE!  Or else nothing will CHANGE!  It will be TOO LATE!  You have to show them!  To make everyone else SEE!"

I could feel a rock forming in the pit of my stomach.  I knew he was right.  I'd known what would have to happen the second the words 'Fates far worse than death' had come out of his mouth.

I'd stood there and watched as Lantry died.  There had been nothing I could do.  Helpless.  He made the sacrifice, and I was left behind to watch.  I'd seen Fyrenn hesitate.  Seen Gilchrist make to pull the trigger to end his life...

Helpless.  Helpless to do anything, the same way Fyrenn had been in that moment.  If Kephic hadn't been there?

I'd seen Stan crying over IJ's almost-lifeless body.  Powerless to do anything to save her life in that moment...

Helpless.

If she had been just the tiniest bit weaker, or slower...

I remembered how helpless I'd felt in the Shenzhou Core Chamber.  That blinding moment of clarity.  I'd known exactly what I needed to do, how to do it, and how much time was left.  I'd known the stakes.  And I had been able to make a difference.

That moment I'd watched Gilchrist and Veritas put Fyrenn, Neyla, and the others behind the security barrier.  Condemning them to die.  Known exactly the right way to bring down the Thaumatic forcefield.

Made it just in time.

I knew that if I didn't do as Astris had asked, that I'd be standing by helplessly.  Watching as Fyrenn quietly shed his tears...  Embraced Astris over the shoulders with his wings...  Flicked out a single talon, and laid it along the back of his next.  Against his brain stem...

All that we could extract from that Wisp.  From Veritas herself even.  Information that might turn the tide...  I'd seen how she fought.  I'd heard the legends of Nightmare Moon.  I had heard the others talk about their encounters with Wisps, and now I'd seen plenty for myself.

I could choose to either be helpless again...  Or to make a difference.

And I knew that as hard as it would be to live with what I was going to have to do...  That it would be far, far harder to live with the consequences of standing aside.

A solemn duty...  In a flash, I understood what it really meant for the Human soldiers.  For Fyrenn, and all of the Gryphons when they fought...  For the Ponies in the JRSF, and Celestia  and Luna's Guard...

Hard choices.  Intractably hard choices.

I nodded slowly, and began to build the necessary changes to the link's spellweave.  I didn't mean for my voice to come across so...  Cold...  But what else could I say?

"I will make it completely painless.  Is there anything you want us to pass on, from you?  To Martins?"

Astris nodded, and his tears flowed freely once more.  The expression of relief and gratitude on his face made me want to vomit uncontrollably.  What kind of experience did you have to go through to make you *so* grateful for the idea of death?

"Tell her that...  I'm sorry.  And that I love her as much as my own mother.  If you could get a message to her, and my father...  Tell them that I made a difference.  And that they're going to name a star after each of them, at my request.  Just like I always promised."

I could feel one of Fyrenn's wings close entirely overtop of me in the real world.  I needed the contact so badly, that it almost caused me to break down and lose the spell entirely when his feathers came to rest.

I kept Astris' words at a distance.  Locking away the image, and the sound, so I could project it back later.  I didn't want to think about what he'd said.  How it would make me feel.  The way it would feel to play it back for Martins...  For his parents...

I just focused on the math.  The Magic.  The cold, precise, mechanistic structure of the surgeon's knife I was crafting.  The arc of one smooth instantaneous light-speed stroke in just the right place.

The preparation of the intrusion, countermeasure evasion, search, view, and record magics that I needed to have cued up to fire in sequence instantly afterwards.

Finally it was all ready.  The terrible instrument of killing.  And of knowing.

I nodded, and glanced up at Fyrenn.

"Ready."

The dead, emotionless tone of the word made him jolt physically.  He nodded in return, and then fixed his gaze on Astris.  Said the words I couldn't find.  Words to make the going easier.  For us both.

"Thank you.  You have endured something no one should ever have to experience...  And I promise you that we will take your sacrifice, and forge it into a weapon to end this horror.  Because of you, all of this evil will come to a stop."

I could see the words washing over Astris like a flood of golden light, driving back darkness as it went, searing away the pain, and fear, and hopelessness even as Fyrenn fought to keep his voice even, and confident.

"Generations will live on free of that fear, because of you.  You will be remembered as a hero.  All that this evil forced from you will be undone.  Martins is so proud of you...  Your father and mother will be too..."

Astris smiled, and mouthed a 'Thank you' silently through his tears.

Fyrenn exhaled a ragged breath, and held up a claw in salute.

"When you reach that far green country beyond...  Please find a Gryphon named Seldar.  And tell him that I am doing my best to make good of his gift.  Find, if you can, a little Human girl, named Sonya.  Tell her that her sister is doing so, so well."

Astris nodded, and began to sob in earnest, pushing out his response between each heaving wracking cry.

"I will!"

Fyrenn screwed his eyes shut, and rivulets of tears ran down the feathers of his cheeks.  They matched my own as he whispered his last request.

"And...  Please find three other Humans...  Linda, Charles, and Nell Wrenn.  Tell them that...  I love them.  And I miss them."

Astris nodded, and exhaled, his sobs finally ebbing into unsteady breathing as he lay down in the grass, and buried his head in the blades, inhaling deeply of the sweet scent, and staring up at the stars.

I heard Fyrenn begin to mutter a prayer in a low, somber tone.  Something in old Gryphic that I couldn't even begin to parse.  Astris spoke one final time.  And at last, he seemed to be truly at peace.

"I'm read---"

I let fly with my invisible scalpel.

And he vanished.

I felt his presence disappear.  Not destroyed, but moved...  As if off our plane, but not quite like a teleportation...  Cut free from the body, but not unmade.  There was no pain.  It was over almost faster than I could make sense of it.

The field too vanished.  But not the stars, or the blackness.

The complex sequence of spells I'd prepared began to fire off in rapid sequence.  Sounds began to fill the void.  Voices.  Colored streaks.  The afterimages of ghostly Pony-like creatures, molded of a force one park dark pattern, two parts pure malice.  A personified hate for life itself.

In the center of the vast web of billions, a familiar presence.  A dark roiling mass that exuded arrogance.  Desire.  Hatred.

The Nightmare.

Then all at once Fyrenn and I were standing on some kind of ring.  A structure so huge that it stretched off into the horizon in either direction as its arc swept up to meet in a vast  frisbee shape far above.  Smaller points of silver light drifted back and forth in the void.

Ships.  Starships.

All around us Humans...  And Ponies!  And Gryphons!  And Changelings, of the sort that IJ had in her Hive, rather than the black chitin of Chrysalis' drones.

And just as quickly the image dissolved into a fleeting memory of a planet bathed in fire.  Weapons so immense that they made the Genesist Antimatter torpedoes look like a mote of light dancing on the head of a pin.

Then darkness.  Pain.  Endless voids of pain.

A moment of clarity.  A huge build-up of energy.  The image of a giant ring buried beneath the surface of the Earth, great coils of superconductors pressing against the fabric of reality itself...  

...And the slightest sensation of a tweaked equation, like the slight plucking of a stringed instrument.  The moment that Nightmare's magic collided with carefully contrived particle beams in just the right way...

Order collapsed into chaos.  A world's sky burned to a familiar ashen gray dome...

And then a young Alicorn...  Familiar somehow, various shades of blue...  Luna!

Her own rage.  Pain.  Loss.  Fear...  Vulnerability.

Another infestation.  Invited this time, but no less horrific to witness.  More panic, and suffering as the Nightmare seized her for own ends.  A whirlwind of destruction and death...  A final confrontation.  Celestia's visage twisted by unspeakable betrayal, loss, and furious determination.

Then silence.  An unbroken stretch of silver-bathed light for a thousand years, that passed almost as quickly as a heart-beat...

Then freedom at last, as her Wisps seized on a moment of cyclical weakness in Celestia's spell to free their dread Queen.

Another confrontation, six multicolored points of light...  And power.  Power so great that one could shape galaxies...

Or move universes.

An image of a truly vast inverted flower, petals opening down instead of up...  A huge glittering silver and gray artificial construct suspended in a void of stars, and covered in deepest blue oceans, and verdant green trees...

Equestria!

Then the sense of pushing a heavily loaded thing over the crest of a hill, and then the release as quantum gravity took over...  And an image of something at the bottom of the spatio-temporal hill as the entirety of the envelope that made up Equestria's universe began to roll under its own inertia...

A dull gray and teal planet with familiar continents...

Oh God no!

A young Unicorn with ambitions of making this new 'Earth' a better place.  A horrible accident.  Bitterness.  Sadness.  Vulnerability...  And the Nightmare took a new host once again.

I wanted to wretch all over the floor, but the reflex was so disconnected from my body, that all I could do was continue to suffer through the condensed deluge of images, sounds, and sensations in horrified silence.

A young Human man, also painfully familiar.  Robert Gilchrist.  A dying organization with just the right goals, and fervor, but no vision, nor resources...  A perfect opportunity...

A facility.  Stark.  Cold.  Sophisticated.  A white and gray monolith beneath the shimmer of a cloaking field, and the twisted gray branches of dead Amazonia's petrified forests..

Horrors unknown to the world at large tucked away beneath...

A dozen thousand careful manipulations.  

The Nightmare was like a spider, sat in the center of an immense web.  I could suddenly see her entire perspective...  

There was her thread connecting her to Chrysalis' dreams, which she had used to first ally the Changelings with the HLF, creating an exchange of captured Ponies to the Changelings, for their Chitin excretions back to the HLF...  Then turning them against each other when the time was right.

There was the slender strand that connected the idea of a series of tungsten and platinum orbital rods, to the mind of a man whose hate for all things Equine was the whole and entire driving force in his life.

And right beside it the tiny nudge that had convinced him to end his life on the barrel of his own antique side-arm before anyone could find out how he knew what he knew.

Across from that the threads linking Gilchrist, the PER, and half a dozen major Earthgov corporations.  

The Diamond Dog Trolls to the HLF.  

An Earthgov party to the HLF here, to Echelon Twelve there...

A carefully woven series of almost invisible gossamer filaments going back to Luna.  Horrid dreams.  The seeds of an idea...  The weaknesses in a castle's defenses...  Six familiar gemstones...

How long had they known the Elements were missing?!

And then beside that, a small but sturdy beam that terminated just outside Fyrenn's head.  More nightmares...  Just a reflection back at him of his own fears, but still...  No wonder he'd been struggling to sleep soundly!

And then I saw a wide, thick cord vanishing off into the curvature of the future.  Plans laid down, but not yet come to fruition...  And I tugged.

All at once, new abominations exploded around me.  

An army of hundreds of thousands marching down from the hills.  Four hulking familiar dark shapes descending from the clouds behind them.  Their destination a familiar city-castle on a mountain...

Two Alicorns twisted, their normally compassionate, almost deific features scrambled into rictuses of rage, and unbridled power, standing behind a third, more familiar form.  Nightmare Veritas, Sun, and Moon.

A field of Gryphons.  Charred.  Dead.  Bleached.  Filled with wisp spines.

Ponies rounded up by Wisps in dark crystalline armor.  And Trolls, collaborating to ensure their place in the new order.  Ponies forced to lie down on stone tables, as already infested Unicorns restrained them and...   

I tried to look away, but I couldn't.  The images were in my mind, and coming with the pressure of a firehose.

The whole of Equestria infested, turned to submission, or killed off...  And then...  

The Earth, a blasted hulk of its already twisted former self.  Nuclear fires burning across every city.

Humans rounded up by thousands of Ponies, and Trolls, and Chrysalis' Changelings, all clad in dark crystalline armor.  Millions...  Billions forced through sickening bastardizations of Conversion Bureaus.  And then straight into infestation tubes.

The whole Earth Ponified...  And then enslaved, and exported to Equestria.

At long last, the Earth finally consumed...  And suddenly a paradise.  Ponies living in almost sickening luxury.  Cavorting, enjoying every possible pleasure, and delight...

No.  Not Ponies...  Wisps.  Bodies broken, worn out, abused in pursuit of enjoyment and decadence...  Then discarded.  The young allowed to live just enough of a life to make them useful for breeding...

Camps.  Concentration camps.  Where generations of Ponies were birthed, indoctrinated, curated to the height of physical perfection, made to breed to ensure the next generation...  And then marched off for infestation, to act as replacements for bodies already battered and worn out...

The few who ever managed to see the truth?  To escape?  The Trolls, and the Changelings saw to them.  Sometimes infiltrators were placed inside the camps to intentionally sow tiny seeds of rebellion.  Any takers were swiftly executed.  Or infested, if they were...  Ripe enough...

And watching over it all, the unholy trinity.  Nightmares Veritas, Sun, and Moon.

At long last, great ships built to specifications older than the wars of Discord.  Huge engines of terrifying destructive power flung out across the stars, and the membranes of universes...

The children of Humanity.  The fruits of Genesis.  Overwhelmed in a single night and day of terror, and fire...  More fuel for the engine of the final triumph of the Dispossessed...

And then nothing.  Nothing but the constant cycle.  All else left in the universe cold, and dead, but for that which was enslaved.

"NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

The scream tore out of me with real, almost physical force.  Everything seemed to collapse to a single dark point.  And a face.  The Nightmare's enraged visage.  The bolt of my anger surged across her network, violently dissociating the Wisp that had been occupying Astris' skull, and then slamming into the side of the Nightmare's own head, leaving behind a bright glowing blue and black streak.

Even as she began to lash out in anger, the connection vanished.  I'd immolated the Wisp that had been forced into acting as our conduit.

Suddenly I was left back in the confinement Chamber.  Fyrenn's heavy breathing, and my aching sobs the only sounds, echoing forlorn off the walls.

I saw the smoking crater my final outburst had made of Astris' head.

I buried my own head in Fyrenn's side, and cried.  Great, heaving, wracking, rib bending sobs.  And screams.

I just couldn't stop screaming...