//------------------------------// // Remnants of War // Story: Alicorn Construct // by Shadowed Rainbow //------------------------------// "Rarity, get down!" The unicorn immediately did as instructed, ducking behind a cluster of fallen debris as an explosion shook behind her. The blast kicked up a blinding wave of dust, which resulted in her white coat and purple mane becoming soiled with patchy spots of gray. Years ago she might have cried out in disgust at her coat being covered in dust, and run to the nearest bath to rid herself of the grime. But things were different now. The filly she had been was a far cry from the mare she had grown into. She was dimly aware of the mare who had shouted finding a place to hide as well, her hooves scrambling to find a cover where the explosions wouldn't hit either of them. The clanging of metal rang in Rarity's ears, and flickers of red light passed over her hiding place, like searchlights. Searching if we survived to make sure it can blast us properly, no doubt, the mare thought. "Ya okay, Rarity?" A voice resounded among the ringing in the mare's ears. "I-I'm fine, Applejack," Rarity assured, meeting the bright green eyes of her friend who had hidden behind the debris patch as well. Turning her gaze back through the crevices, Rarity fought to stop her hooves from trembling as she held herself high, charging her horn before raising herself into view of the equine form of metal and flesh that trotted nearby. The red light of his eyes were trained ahead, and she could see the lengths of twisted wire hanging from a mangled back leg, some metal framing visible in a side wound charred with flame. Before the synthetic creature could turn around, a blast from Rarity's horn aimed squarely at its exposed chest, the laser hitting its target as the cybernetic alicorn was struck. The pony-like creature shrieked in agony, writhing before breaking apart in the blast, a mess of metal and blood left in its wake. Dust came up around it as it plummeted to the floor, dead. With shaky breaths, Applejack and Rarity came out of hiding, looking cautiously at the fallen creatures. Its body had been almost entirely destroyed, only half of its head and its left front hoof remaining. The one eye that was visible was completely dulled. Applejack nearly collapsed in relief. "We got another one. Happy Anniversary I guess..." Applejack tried to force out a laugh, but with a somber look from Rarity the laugh died quickly. It was 20 years ago to that day that the terrible Scourging begun, turning their once-green, wonderful home into an unknown wasteland. Inhabitants were scarred physically, emotionally, and mentally, thrust into a world turned upside down into an environment that many were not prepared to survive. Stepping closer to the carnage, Applejack fixed Rarity's gaze with her own. "Well, you know what we gotta do since this one hasn't been completely destroyed." "You do it, Applejack," Rarity said with a wince. "I've touched enough corpses this week." "This is the first one you got in two weeks," Applejack retorted, a deadpan expression on her face. "Well, still, you're better at this than me!" Applejack sighed, unable to argue with that statement. Taking a deep breath, she looked carefully at the mess of wires for anything that could be salvaged to figure out how these things worked. She tilted her head, noticing that the horn was opened, half of a metal capsule underneath it. "Now here's somethin'," Applejack said, using her hoof to coax out the half-destroyed contraption. "It's busted, but it might help us figure out what makes these things tick." "And taking it will prevent any other scavengers from getting at it," Rarity said, levitating the capsule into her bag. "Last thing we need is some other group of ponies planning on building a war machine against us." Applejack nodded in agreement. Leaving the alicorn wreckage behind, Applejack and Rarity raced across the landscape, the dry gravel beneath scraping their hooves. Among the broken and abandoned buildings as they ran through what was once their city, a small shack made itself visible through the growing storm. As they drew closer, the door opened, and a white-coated mare with a light-pink mane waved her hoof. "Come on!" she called. "Get in here!" The pair raced through the metal door, the nurse pony shutting it behind them with a heavy click. She leaned against the door as the wind began to howl against the walls, her nurse hat nearly falling off her head. "Bless you, Nurse Redheart," Rarity said, brushing the dirt and ash out of her mane. "Of course," Redheart said, finally moving away from the door as the sound faded. "I was getting worried for you two. Did you find anything?" "We ran into an alicorn out there, but Rarity defeated it," Applejack said with a note of pride in her voice. "It was already injured a bit when she blasted it, but we were able to salvage half a horn-capsule." Rarity's horn glowed as she levitated said capsule out of her bag, Redheart taking it in turn. Despite it only being half of a container and in no condition to even have a spark, a smile formed on Redheart's face. "We might be able to work with this. I think we have one fragment I might be able to connect to it." "That's good news," Applejack said, carefully hanging up her hat on a rack and dusting it off to return it to a reasonably-pristine state. "We oughta note it down." "I'll take care of it," Rarity offered. "It's my turn, anyway." Nurse Redheart coughed, looking a bit nervous as she spoke. "I think from this point on you should think of yourself as the first." She glanced around their shelter, eyeing their various belongings. At least their new living quarters were looking somewhat like a home now, Rarity paused at that. "You can't be saying we should act like the past didn't happen?" "Certainly not," Redheart said, trotting over toward the back of the building with the damaged capsule in tow. "Which is why you should note it down in your log. If the past is left forgotten then its mistakes are doomed to be repeated." Sighing, Rarity walked over to the table at the side of the room, lit up by a bare bulb. On its surface rest a frayed quill, a midnight-blue covered book, and a crumpled piece of paper with eloquent writing visible on it. Listening tensely to the heavy winds outside, the white unicorn's horn shone an azure blue as she picked up her quill, penning down her journal entry for that day. The journal their group had been recording in had been destroyed in the last raid. She had to start over. As far as she knew, what they wrote here would be the only first-hoof account for those in the future. Assuming they had a future. Year 20 P.S. (Post-Scourging) Month 1, Day 1, 14:32 Our search today was only partially successful. Applejack and I barely escaped being killed by an alicorn, and we destroyed it before it could do anymore damage. We're both a bit shaken but alright, and half of a capsule used to enhance their magic is better than nothing. It could have been an older model. But the important part is we got something and we're safe. Relatively speaking. Rarity was just about to finish it off with her name to end the entry, but she glanced up the page, her eyes training on where she had written the time again. Sighing, she levitated the quill and continued to write. Even as I simply write down the date and time as we have calculated since the War, my mind is filled with conflicting thoughts. Those... monstrosities we hunt down every day seem to calculate time differently. What is their timeline like? I wonder if they really have any perception of time at all... we just survived an attack from another one just now, violent as ever. But, I know this will be our only record for the future, so it's best to bring you what details I can. Hopefully there will at least be someone in the future who can read this. Where to begin... it's been so long since we've actually detailed the start of these events, trying to put the past behind us... Being a dressmaker, I know that life can be considered a tapestry, a woven tale meant to depict Ponykind's triumphs, trials, and tribulations. Every waking moment adds a new thread to the work. Unfortunately, the tapestry of our recent past has become... well, 'frayed' or 'scorched' is the only way I can describe it. Like all my supplies of needle and fabric have been blackened by soot and ash. Even with the larger scale of the tragedy having come to an end twenty years ago to the day, the world is still struggling to pick up from where they left off. Families are growing, the pony population is beginning to pick itself back up. It's hard to remember at times that wasn't always like this. In the past, long ago, Ponykind was sinful and proud, and the Holy Mother Celestia regretfully called her Four Ponies of Perdition to trample the wicked. The Four who manifested as stars surrounding Luna's moon were called into action. Now we scrabble and fight in a world scarred by their hoofprints. In the past, we strived to harness the raw, untapped power of magic and combine it with biological and mechanical processes. To form a being as perfect as possible to live in our mortal world, and to enhance the traits of Ponykind. In the past, we set out to make alicorns. Why? My parents claimed it was because we had to show Celestia that we could step up to her throne. That she and her Celestial Sister, Luna, were not the only ones who could attain the power of earth pony, unicorn, and pegasus alike. Ponykind thought we could do so much more than what our mortal bodies limited us to. Unicorns like myself had magic, pegasai soared through the skies and regulated the weather, and earth ponies were known for their strength, connection to the earth, and long life span thanks to their endurance. Surely it couldn't be too difficult to combine the three? We should have known that wouldn't be true... Unicorns attempted to use spells to help advance this goal. They tried to grant unicorns wings, pegasai horns, and earth ponies both features. But like a dress that's one size too small, or a misplaced cog in a machine, the new additions to their bodies didn't fit them no matter how hard those who were part of the research tried. My parents among them. The unicorns would crash constantly on their unstable wings. Pegasai would either find themselves creating small sparks of mana or uncontrollable explosions that set raging fires in more than a few Sectors. The poor earth ponies who volunteered had to deal with both problems—with uncontrollable aspects of flight and magic that were foreign to their bodies, they suffered more casualties than the other two races. There was silence from our Celestial Mother and her sister, and we worried. We hadn't been devoid of communication with her before, but since then, she didn't respond to our calls. Didn't she care for us while we sowed our own seeds of destruction? Did something happen to her and her sister, perhaps our own creations destroying them? I still tell myself that can't be, but then, where were they? Why wasn't there a sign like ponies of the past had experienced? Her sun hung in the zenith of the sky, no longer kind, as if the rays themselves were mocking us, testing us. The silence echoed the intent to some of us: "You're destined to fail. The power of alicons is something only the likes of my sister and I can wield. If you try, it will end in disaster for you." If that was Celestia's intent, our kind tried to prove her wrong. After a while the seeds of our science and labor bore fruit, and Ponykind's constructed children waited for the right time to stick the knife of their existence into the real world, ensuring their place among us. Too bad in their confusion they didn't care who they stabbed. They turned on their creators and the everyday pony who had wanted no part in the Project. Perhaps it was because they found out they weren't real in the sense that we are, or perhaps it was an innate trait. Regardless, nothing could stop them. It seemed that they were only fueled by rage and a terrifying desire to kill all those who weren’t their kind. A rage like that of the fiery sun and silent moon together as one. Then the War started. The three living pony races fought against the alicorns known as Constructs. Their bright eyes burned with nothing but hatred for us normal, living ponies as their galloping hooves left deep imprints in the ground, firm as the gravel which rained down from the sky in explosions of shards. The fire was fueled by Ponykind's desire to be like the sun goddess herself, the Construct bodies looking so real and yet possessed gears and wires deep in their inner workings. I was just a filly at the time the War began, but I remember looking into the eyes of one as it stared down at me. On the surface, the eyes looked like those of any ordinary pony I would meet in town, but only on a closer inspection could I see the barest hint of wires and refracted lenses beneath the filmed structure that served as their eyes. It would have been considered a marvel of invention that I could appreciate for its beauty, if the alicorn's teeth hadn't been bared in a snarl, its lowered maw thrust downward with a snap that barely missed my head. As time passed, almost everything became fire. Air became fire and burned our lungs, water became fire and seared our fur, and ground became fire and melted our hooves. The smoke clouded our vision and snuffed out what breath we still had, choking our organic forms while the partially mechanized Constructs still functioned. The land as our kind knew it became unrecognizable. Gone were the mighty skyscrapers of Manehatten, and Cloudsdale became overwhelmed by a tumultuous brew of storms, which only added to the ashen shade of the smoke-covered landscape. The pegasai were forced to descend to ground level, or they would be fried by the bolts of lightning that the Constructs seemed to control on their own. It was as if the heavens above would continue to retain that murky gray coloring indefinitely. After what felt like an eternity, the War ended, and whatever remains from the Days of Fire and Blood limps along. In a way, it was our fault, as we did nothing to stop the Project when it had first begun. Now we and the innocent lie impaled on the Constructs' knives and equine blood has washed all the good things of the past away. Few of us seem to remember much before the War—me included. It's dreadful that we’ve been forced to grow up in a world where desolation and decay are our only reality. We pray every day for Celestia's forgiveness and mercy, and every night for Luna's, in a land bereft of mercy now. But though the Project was said to have formally broken apart after the War finally finished, there are factions still in effect, working behind the scenes. Supposedly trying to right their previous wrongs. Needless to say many doubt that claim. Sinister cults have done the same sort of thing before. I'm not sure how much longer we will survive this. The barren wasteland we now live in is devoid of most life, nearly all buildings leveled or reduced to rubble that barely stands. The Constructs don’t run as rampant as they did in times past, but it’s become harder and harder to distinguish from a normal pony if you can only see their wings or horn. They look more and more real, acting increasingly like a normal pony would. But we know that these constructed alicorns are soulless monsters deep in their cores, ponies that could kill as soon as look at us. No matter how many of their organs are living tissue, it's all run by mechanical means. Without all the vital parts, they have no souls to speak of, just programming. It is for that reason that we have one primal rule: Kill any alicorns, or be killed yourself. There’s no reasoning with those who don’t possess a soul as a normal pony does. They may try to convince us otherwise, simulating emotions that a normal pony would show, but it's all a part of their robotic programming. I only wish that things could be different. But the one main clue that we have to the Project’s present dealings—along with occasional reported sightings of alicorns themselves—is a form template from one of the Project’s laboratories, liberated from the rubble of what I can assume to be a house of one of the newer recruits. I can only hope that the fruits of its message never leave the abominable place of science that it came from. -Rarity Resting her quill on the desk, Rarity picked up the crinkled paper and taped it underneath her newest entry. Alicorn Project Ver. 3.7. The goal of uniting the traits of pegasus, unicorn, and earth pony alike is held within our grasp. Every day, the Alicorn Project increase its capabilities. Our research expands, and the Constructs are far more flesh-and blood than their initial programming had been. Variations in genestock are expanding to emphasize certain traits, and every minute we earn more data collection to make these beings as perfect as possible. Rest assured that they can react, learn, and think just as a normal pony can. All registrants must swear to keep the code of honor that you will uphold to the values of the Project, and remember that only the most capable alicorns are entered into Placement Review. We will not make the same mistakes of the past. No matter what the cost, the alicorns will grow into the brilliant constructions of science that we have dreamed of. It will be hard work for the creators and our creations, but soon it shall be worth it once we achieve our ends. Through Magic, We Grow, Through Flight, We Rise, Through the Earth, We Build a New Foundation.