Days of Wasp and Spider
by Luna-tic Scientist
=== Chapter 18 (remastered): No Good Choices (2) ===
Fusion dropped off the edge with half folded wings and let her speed build before twisting them sharply and rocketing across the open centre of the shaft. She paid attention to the multitude of other openings, adjusting her trajectory to avoid the occasional gryphon and a single heavy lift floater that had chosen that moment to descend through the middle of the pit. She kept her speed high and within a few breaths had reached the opposite wall, flaring her wings and backstroking frantically to kill her forward velocity and avoid crashing into the cage structure that filled the middle of the hangar space.
She hadn't seen it from her starting position, having assumed the hangar would be an essentially empty volume, and had been paying more attention to the risk of collision in the congested airspace of the pit than where she was headed. The cage had an improvised look to it; a cubic construction of metal bars strung with mesh, more similar to temporary fencing than anything else. It was large, over fifteen bodylengths square and three high, and bare of anything except a water trough, food dispenser and one of the fluidised bed latrines she'd experienced while in medical isolation. There was no floor covering, just raw concrete painted with cryptic lines and abbreviations.
Clustered in the middle, as far away from the cage walls as possible, was a tight huddle of ponies. All were young, made smaller by the expanse of the enclosure and the adult sized thaumic restraint collar each wore. Eyes fixed on the group, Fusion came to an untidy landing between the barrier and hangar wall, wingtips thrumming as they stroked the metal mesh. She searched, hunting for the familiar size and colour of Random Walk among the foals.
Fusion's jaw clenched and she fought to keep her face expressionless as she took in the details of the scene. Gone was the joy and wonder she'd seen on the foal's faces immediately after they were Blessed, replaced instead with despair and the dull hopelessness of a trapped animal. None had moved at her arrival, but every visible eye tracked her as she stepped up to the mesh, almost hypnotised by the sight.
There, in the middle of the pack, was a pony closer to adult size, with tan coat and a close-cropped black mane. She lay there, wings unfurled to their full stretch and covering as many of the foals as she could, trying to shelter her charges from an a world turned unexpectedly hostile.
"Fusion Pulse TC4668." It was a statement, not a question, and came from a heavily built gryphon that approached her from around the far corner of the cage. The soldier, with similar armour to Olvir, but a different insignia -- some kind of skull slashed by three red lines -- studied Fusion with open hostility, orange eyes glaring from a grey feathered head. The grey continued all the way back to her hind quarters, where a black-ringed tail was lashing the air.
"Yes," the mare replied, voice sounding thick. Calm, I must remain calm, she thought. "I am here to see Random Walk DP2114."
The trooper, a female as far as Fusion could tell from her limited experience of gryphons, hissed in displeasure. "Stay here," she said, then stalked back to her squadmates, currently lounging behind the cage. There were some snarled orders and a soldier -- one of the common white and brown eagle/lion variants, sitting slightly apart from the other three -- reluctantly trotted to a mesh panel and tapped something onto a device attached to one edge. There was a click and the gryphon pulled the door open.
"Pony Random Walk, to the gate," he said in a loud, harsh voice.
There was a general stirring as Random stood and carefully extricated herself from the huddle, stepping delicately through the tightly packed foals. Stepping up to the gryphon, she bowed her head and followed him out of the cage, casting one quick glance over her shoulder as she did so. Behind her the huddle of foals seemed to contract slightly as the limited comfort provided by their teacher vanished.
Fusion studied Random as her friend approached. She didn't seem to be in any physical pain, although her right wing shoulder joint looked distinctly swollen compared to the left one. She stared at Fusion with dull, uninterested eyes, stopping when the second soldier snapped his beak at her. Little tremors ran through her, the skin on her upper legs twitching and shivering as if she was being plagued by flies, and she was missing about a third of the feathers on each wing.
This was the thing that made the fur on Fusion's spine stand on end; they hadn't been evenly clipped as was sometimes done to very young foals to prevent them flying before they were ready. They had been pulled out, most likely by Random herself. There had been dark whispers of such things; ponies under extreme stress managing to side-step the Maker's Test with this self-harm, the pain of the body distracting the mind.
The gryphon trooper turned and walked away, leaving Fusion standing there looking at the shell of her friend and wondering what to do now. A familiar anger started to rise in her breast; she wanted nothing more than to cut loose with her full power and smash this abomination of a facility to rubble and rapidly expanding gasses.
"...usion?"
At the faint whisper, Fusion's anger fled and her ears swivelled forward to catch the faint sounds coming from Random.
"Are you real?"
The mare took an involuntary step backwards at the strange question. Lowering her head to look into Random's eyes, she stepped in close again and nuzzled the other mare's neck, hoping to provoke some reaction. Random froze for a second, so still that even the twitching of her skin stopped, then her legs buckled and she slumped bonelessly to the floor. Tears rolled down her muzzle, her mouth opening and shutting, but no words emerged.
"I'm here, Random, I'm real," Fusion said quietly into her friend's ear, sitting down next to the other pony and trying to keep her voice even and soothing.
"I-I-I thought you were another t-test," Random said, pressing her head into Fusion's shoulder as if to confirm the white mare's words.
"What are they doing to you? I was told you were receiving extra training..." Fusion tailed off, willing the other mare to talk to her.
The words poured out of Random in a rush, the rapid speech of a pony who didn't know how much time she would have. "It's like school, when they let us experience the memories of the old heroes, only nopony ever made these memories--"
Fusion made an encouraging noise in the back of her throat, starting to understand what had been done to her friend.
"--they connect you to a machine and it puts you in a scenario, tests you to check you are making the right choices. They started off easy, but on the second day something changed. They came for us more frequently and the tests got harder and harder; after a while there are no good choices and no matter what you do the Maker punishes you. They made me do terrible things, I think I k-killed Packet." Here the mare pulled back from Fusion, eyes desperately searching her friend's face. "It was so real, is he...?"
"Packet is fine," Fusion said firmly, "you've been here for two days, it's all a part of the tests they are putting you through." The mare now understood Random's first words to her; she was obviously having trouble separating the real world from the simulated environments used to test her Blessing. Her eye drifted over to the mass of foals in the cage. "Are they doing the same to the foals?" she asked, the answer obvious from the miserable expressions she'd seen on their faces.
"I think so, we've been ordered not to discuss the testing. Every time one of them is taken away they come back changed, withdrawn. It's hard enough for me, but they have no experience to draw on." She nosed under one wing as she spoke, the words becoming indistinct as her teeth found another flight feather and started to tug at it.
"Random, don't," Fusion said sharply, trying to distract the other mare, "my Master wants you to train me on the memory spell you use with the foals to teach them magic."
Random's head pulled out from under her tan wing, a large, bloody-ended feather dangling from her lips. "They want me to help?" The hope in her voice was almost painful to hear.
Fusion nodded firmly, then narrowed her eyes at the collar her friend still wore. "Wait here, I'll get that thing off you." The mare stood and trotted smartly over to the little group of gryphon troops, all seated on a padded mat and talking amongst themselves. Standing in front of the one who had opened the cage, she cleared her throat, only to be ignored. Fusion waited another couple of seconds then, starting her telekinesis magic with the barest whisper of power, bent down to place her head level with the soldier. "I am here under orders to be magically trained by that pony. I need her collar removed for the duration of the training."
The soldier turned his head slowly, big orange eyes staring into Fusion's own. His beak opened slightly to increase the implied threat, the razor edges glittering in the lights. The glare was obviously meant to intimidate; a megasecond ago it would have, she'd have run away or, if her orders were specific enough, begged and pleaded. Not now, though. The mare gazed back unflinchingly, doing her best to project an image of bored indifference. "Please," she said flatly.
Compared to Salrath, this trained killer held no fears for her. She had her orders and this bird had no right to impede her without contacting a Master first. A part of her almost wanted the soldier to do something stupid. "Fine," she said, "your cooperation has been noted. I'll remove it myself." With that she wheeled away and trotted back to Random, feeding more power into her horn and making it glow with an obvious aura. Behind her there was a scrabbling noise and the sound of running, the gryphon catching up just as Fusion sat back down next to her friend.
Even Fusion could recognise the fury on the soldier's face; for a second the mare thought he would actually strike her. The moment passed and the solder plucked a small device from his armour harness and touched it to the collar around Random's neck. There was a faint click and the collar sprang open, falling to the concrete with a clatter. Not waiting for permission, Fusion plucked the jewelled ring from the other mare's horn and held the whole contraption out for the gryphon.
"Two kiloseconds, not a second longer," the gryphon snarled, snatching it from Fusion's magic, then clipping it to his armour and stomping back to his squadmates, none of whom appeared sympathetic to his humiliation.
Fusion watched him go, satisfying herself that she wouldn't be disturbed, then turned to Random and smiled. "That's better. Shall we get started?"
Random took a deep breath and nodded, seeming to come alive for the first time since Fusion had seen her here. Her horn started to glow with a deep golden light and Fusion could feel something, some ill defined presence, as if somepony was standing behind her, just out of eyeshot.
Random had her eyes closed now and moved her head in slow careful arcs. "This is always easier with foals, not so much magic to get in the way. The sharing is quite delicate; the patterns involved in certain classes of spells are highly disruptive," she said.
Fusion's ears pricked up at this, remembering those crystalline memories the Maker-thing had given her. If there's some way to block it... she thought. "Can you give any examples? So I know what to avoid?"
"It's the complexity of the spell that's most important; if your mind is active then it's hard for the sharing to take hold."
"Interesting," Fusion said. Both times this happened to me I was sustaining a spell; the power levels were high but the actual complexity was low, she thought. Anypony could do telekinesis and, while complex to setup, force fields were simple to maintain. "Okay, what do I need to do now?"
"Nearly got it... there!"
The sensation of somepony standing behind her suddenly became very strong. Then the world faded to black.
The first thing Fusion noticed was the silence. Startled, she glanced around and saw that, although she was still lying at the side of the hangar, the cage, foals and gryphons had all vanished. Out the open side of the hangar there was nothing but a vague and featureless blur that shifted continuously, just like she was looking through rain-soaked glass. In front of her, Random jumped to her hooves with none of the stiffness Fusion would have expected for a pony in her physical condition.
It's a construct, Fusion thought. "I don't ever remember my early magic lessons being like this!" she blurted out.
"That's because our teacher was very good; also it helps we did it in one of the training centre's berms. It's easy to create a convincing sky. This is the first step, a kind of virtual environment that the teacher has near total control over, one where there is no magical background. You don't need to do this, but this will be easier for me without any distractions. Oh -- I'm sure you realise this, but you are still sitting in the hangar; it's basically a lucid dream. Anything you do here has no impact on your body, so feel free to walk around. You are disconnected from your voluntary muscles." Here the mare tailed off, then shook her head. "Now I can cast the sharing proper." Random's horn started to glow again.
There was a sensation of pressure without movement, like the feeling you get when standing next to a locked door when somepony was pushing against the other side. Fusion opened the door in her mind and invited the presence in.
"There, can you hear me?"
Fusion twitched, Random's voice had come from the same place her communicator normally spoke from, some undefined location inside her own head. I can, she thought.
"Talk normally; it helps to focus your thoughts into a form that's easier to read. You're not actually talking, of course, but it helps to bring things to the surface."
"I can," Fusion said.
"Good. Now, I want you to start to use your telekinesis to lift that box, but don't actually lift it." As Random spoke, a grey plastic shipping crate appeared on the ground between them.
Fusion did so, forming the pattern in her mind but withholding all but a fragment of her power. As she did so, something moved through her and seemed to twist the pattern into a new and far more complex shape.
"This is the basic construct; you modify it here," the magical pattern shifted slightly, "if you want to visit them, so to speak. This is the spell I'm using right now, by the way." The pattern changed again. "...or you can use this if you want to invite them into your own head. That one works like this--"
This time Fusion was on the outside of the door; she pushed gently and--
The world flicked around one hundred and eighty degrees and Random disappeared, replaced by a white coated, pink maned pony with a shocked look on her face. Slowly the mouth twisted into a smile. I'm sitting in Random's head, Fusion thought, she makes this seem so easy--
Then the rest of Random's senses seemed to expand and overlay her own. Touch was the last and most obtrusive; smell and sound didn't really change, but Fusion was prone while Random was standing. There was the oddest sense of vertigo, of knowing she was lying on her belly on concrete, yet feeling like she was standing. Unlike the other senses, the illusion wasn't perfect. Some trace of her friend's real body leaked through; a general ache in her wings, little pinpoints of pain where the feathers had been pulled out.
"So if I want to leave I just..." Fusion gave her magic a little twist and was back to looking at Random from the outside. Another push and the presence in her own head was gone.
Random smiled back at her, an actual, genuine simile. "See, easy. Want to try it on me?"
Fusion practiced, and after a few false starts was able to demonstrate the technique to her friend's satisfaction.
Random suddenly winced, then hissed as if in pain. "I think that's all I can show you," she said.
"Time's up," said a loud, raspy voice.
The real world came back with a rush; cage, foals and angry gryphon suddenly popping back into existence. The white and brown feathered soldier had just finished putting the jewelled ring back on Random's horn and had one foreclaw wrapped around the collar. Fusion watched, disorientated, as the gryphon pulled the tan mare roughly to her hooves and shoved the half choking pony in the direction of the cage.
Fusion gritted her teeth and kept silent, knowing that if she did anything the other ponies would bear the brunt of any revenge. She yearned to break Random's Blessing and give the mare some relief from all this, but dared not. The gryphon passed Random over to one of his squad mates, then returned to glare at Fusion.
"You have completed your orders, pony," he spat. "You have ten seconds to leave before I report you."
The mare held the stare for a long second, then wheeled and galloped for the edge of the hangar. Unmindful of anything that might have been in her way, Fusion flared her wings and accelerated into the sky, desperate to be away from this place before she lost control and did something that everypony might regret.
===
The tears streamed back along Fusion's muzzle, squeezed out from between tight closed eyelids and whipped away by the slipstream of her passage through the air. She navigated purely by her shadow sight, following the great arterial tracks of active gems and crystals filling the Master's tunnel system.
Most of a pony's flight was magical -- even their great, swan-like wings couldn't lift them even slightly -- reducing their effective mass until purely aerodynamic forces were sufficient to control their movements. With special skill a pony could achieve extreme feats of flight; most of those gifted ponies went to work in the weather teams, controlling and shepherding storm systems to ensure the enormous farms were watered correctly.
On some occasions power could substitute for skill. Fusion accelerated in an upward spiral, clearing the pit and the crowded airspace above it in a score of seconds. Beyond caring what the Master's saw, she opened herself to the energy in the local space, redirecting it to fuel her forward progress. Around her the air temperature dropped precipitously, water vapour condensing into a short-lived fog of ice crystals and forming a diffuse contrail behind her. The battering of the wind on her mane became intense and she formed another spell in her mind, a conical force field that sheltered her body and left only her wings exposed.
Still it wasn't enough, not enough to let her escape the image of the foals clustering around an anguished looking Random, the mare already reaching beneath one tattered wing to grip another feather. And when she runs out of feathers-- Fusion shied away from the thought, trying not to think about Redshift at the infirmary. All her agonising, all her debating whether it was worth the suffering came down to this one fact: Was she prepared to let her friend endure a painful death so she could take to slow and relatively safe route to ponykind's liberation?
This capped all her vague plans with a very definite time limit. What exactly was she prepared to do to free her kind from this arbitrary and cruel treatment? She thought back to the unnamed gryphon jailer, how close she'd come to attacking her. It was different when it was just her own pain; she could take that, take any level of suffering to protect those she cared about. When it was somepony being punished because of her... she suddenly had a keen understanding for what had driven Random to fight the gryphons at the training centre.
A certainty settled over her. She always knew she'd be able to die for something; this was drilled into every foal every time they experienced the training centre's stored memories, all those ponies giving their lives for the Masters. Today had been the last straw, that little extra pressure that broke the barrier of reluctance and uncertainty in her mind. She was sure now, this was the only way forward.
Around her, unnoticed, the air bellowed and screamed as Fusion ripped it apart on her way home.
===
Unsurprisingly, her return trip was considerably faster than the outbound one. Noon was still a few kiloseconds away as she cantered to a fast landing near their family's shelter; as was normal for this time of day the corral was almost deserted. She'd seen Slipstream, basket of vegetables in his teeth and heading for one of the more distant shelters, as she'd flown overhead; other than him there was nopony at all on their side of the corral.
The sound of her hooves hitting grass drew Gravity out from under the red and white striped canopy, a shallow bowl of Master's food floating by her side. "That was quick," she said, smiling at Fusion. "Were you trying to break a record or do you want to switch to one of the weather teams?"
Fusion eyed the bowl of pellets, wondering if there was any way to stop the mare from eating the stuff. No time like the present, she thought. "The security hub isn't the most fun of places," she said seriously, "but I got what I went for."
The blue mare's smile faltered. "How is Random doing, did you see any of the foals?"
Tan head nibbling at ragged wings. Fusion shook her head violently to lose the disturbing vision and cleared her throat. "I'll tell you later," she said, not trusting herself to make up a convincing lie. "How about we start your training?"
Gravity's ears pricked up and her eyes widened. She hurriedly put the bowl down and trotted to Fusion's side, looking up at the slightly taller mare. "Yes!" she said excitedly, then looked a little doubtful. "What about your eye, we're only supposed to do this after it's better?"
"Spiral only need to open the lid; she can do that later this evening. Not to mention that--" She paused to give her sister a twisted smile. "--I need my horn for this, not my eyes. Eye."
Gravity blinked at the expression on her sister’s face, confused by the bitterness. "Are you sure? We can do this later...?" she said hesitantly.
"No, let's get started." Fusion hooked one wing a her sister's withers and guided her towards one of the orchard groves dotted around the corral.
The ground was dry and carpeted with a hoof-thick layer of shed leaves, forming a comfortable resting place for the pair as they settled to their bellies under one of the larger trees.
Fusion stared into her sister's expectant eyes, then sighed. "You remember back to your first magic lessons? Back Draft used a couple of spells -- one to show us what to do and the other to allow us to practice safely. I don't think I need the second one, but do you mind if we try it a bit later so I can have a bit of practice?" She grinned at Gravity's impatient nod. "Excellent. I'll go first and show you how I do it."
Fusion opened her shadow sight and examined her sister's head. Now she'd done this a few times the threads of the Blessing were obvious, fine wires of pale green growing like a fungus through Gravity's brain. She steeled herself and delicately felt the threads, focussing in on the area where they merged with Gravity's horn material. Much to her relief, the actual affected area was small. Fusion carefully built the spell in her mind, mapping it to the exact volume the Blessing was tied into.
This is it, there's no going back now. Please, please, please let this work, she prayed, then fired a short, sharp pulse of magic into a point no bigger than an apple pip at the base of Gravity's horn. That tiny volume abruptly went dark, crazed by a tangled spider's web of fine cracks. The Blessing started to slowly fade.
Gravity blinked at her, muzzle wrinkling as if she was trying to dislodge a fly without moving. "I can feel something funny, is that -- OW!" She jerked back from Fusion, forehooves coming up to wrap protectively around her head. "Maker damn it, Fusion, what did you do!?"
"Sorry!" Fusion said in a panicked tone, "are you okay? I only had a chance to try this once with Random."
Gravity rubbed the side of her head and lowered her hooves. "I'll live, but let's just say you should stick to thaumophysics in future. I'm not sure you'd be too popular as a teacher."
Heart rate slowly dropping back towards normal, Fusion smiled weakly. "No, you're right about that. Let me try again; I know where I went wrong." The mare formed the correct pattern in her mind and all of a sudden there was the feeling of somepony else in her head. So far so good, she thought.
Gravity had the strangest expression on her face; as Fusion watched, her mouth opened and shut like a fish gulping air. The white mare smiled in genuine amusement. Not just me, then, she thought. "If you have quite finished making funny faces...?" she said, trying not to laugh.
"Sorry," Gravity said, "it's just so strange. Imagine being a teacher and doing this all the time!"
===
Gravity resisted the urge to blow a raspberry just to see what it looked like, dragging her attention back to her sister's display of magic. Fusion had just swept a patch of ground clear, piling up the leaves into a shallow mound. She could feel the telekinetic force at work, just as if she was doing it herself.
"You can feel the way the magic is built?" Fusion said.
"Yes," she said, impatience slightly colouring her voice.
"Good, here's the first trick."
Gravity felt Fusion reach out again, this time enfolding a large patch of ground in her telekinetic field. The magic had an odd flavour to it, like it was distorted by a secondary spell. Around them both, the carpet of leaves acquired a silver sheen as frost formed on every edge and wrinkle. Gravity's breath started to fog. This is what she did on the training ground, the blue mare thought. Ahead of them both, the patch of ground gave a shiver and creaked loudly before rising a hoofspan into the air on a halo of white magic.
She drank it in, memorizing the extra little spell as her sister allowed the multitonne block of earth to settle back down. It was so obvious! Using that technique she'd be able to outperform any pony at her launch site, even old Geodetic, who'd been doing the job for gigaseconds and was practically a legend.
"That's the first part," Fusion said.
More? There's more than this? Gravity thought with a flash of jealousy, wondering how her sister had managed not one, but two ground-breaking advances in magical technique in less than a megasecond. She frowned in concentration as Fusion seemed to turn her attention outwards, like she was focussing her shadow sight on some remote object. There was something there, some distant point of warmth...
Gravity gasped as a tingle ran through their shared body, a pulse of sensation running from muzzle to tail root, just like they'd walked through a powerful force field or had stood too close to a high voltage power line. The point of warmth seemed to bloom, filling them both with boundless energy. The blue mare sensed that what she was feeling was the merest trickle, a carefully controlled pinhole into something vast and potent; she shrank away from the contact, suddenly afraid of the potential it represented.
As soon as it had come, the power bled away, returned to its source or diffused into the surroundings by a reversal of the first technique Fusion had used. Around the seated mares the frost quietly disappeared, turning into little curls of mist where it met the cool air. Gravity took a deep breath, suddenly feeling very warm.
"Going to have to watch out for that," Fusion said absently, "looks like it's going to take a bit of practice to get the hang of it."
"How many times have you done that?" Gravity asked, feeling distinctly overawed. She felt her sister's face twist into a bitter smile.
"That was the second time. Why don't you give it a go?"
No! Gravity thought, suddenly afraid, then twitched as sharp pain stabbed through her head. "Okay," she said in a small voice, confused by the way the pain had tailed off almost before it had begun, certainly before she had changed her mind. She felt a gentle push, then she was back in her own head and looking back at her sister. The white mare looked unaccountably sad, despite all she'd achieved.
"If you let me in I'll guide you, make sure it goes okay," Fusion said.
Gravity nodded jerkily and allowed the presence in when she felt a gentle pressure in her mind. She started to form the first spell, linking it to her telekinesis in the same way her sister had. Instead of picking up a huge mass of earth as a test, she levitated a small pebble and sighted down it towards a slight rise in the ground a couple of lengths away. Gathering her strength she pushed with all her might, shoving the stone away.
The pebble disappeared with an ear-splitting crack that left both ponies' ears ringing and punched a three hoof wide crater in the grass. Gravity blinked in shock, shaking her head to dislodge the bits of dirt and leaf litter now lodged in her mane. Despite what she'd seen Fusion do in the training ground, it still didn't seem real until now. Beside her Fusion collapsed the force field disk she'd raised in front of her face. The white mare turned to look at Gravity, raising one eyebrow questioningly, breath steaming in the suddenly cold air.
"I wondered if that might happen," she said, suppressing a smile. "Want to try the other one now?"
Nodding again, Gravity closed her eyes, directing her shadow sight outwards and looking for that point of warmth. She searched where her sister had found it -- there was something there, but it seemed slippery and hard to see clearly. At the back of her head she felt Fusion's attention sharpen and take on overtones of disappointment and... was that fear? She's promised her Master she'd be able to train me, Gravity thought, I can't fail her. Perhaps this thing is different for each pony. The mare widened her search, looking in other locations for something similar.
It wasn't warm, but cold. A somehow comforting sensation of mass, of tremendous weight moving at enormous velocity. She focused her gaze; there were at least two of them, one large, the other small and seeming to be blurred as if it was a tight cluster of things rather than just one. The more she looked, the more she found, smaller and smaller things occupying a wide, flat disk, each one moving at a different speed. She shivered, an odd tingling sensation sweeping her body from muzzle to tail root.
The arrangement was somehow familiar and Gravity continued looking while her mind worked over the problem. She could sense Fusion thinking too, but her sister seemed even more confused than she was. "It's the moons," she blurted out, "and the debris ring!" Everything fell into place at that moment; her sister was in some way connected to the sun while she was linked to the moon and everything in orbit. She opened her eyes and shifted her gaze from the solar disk on her sister's white flank to the pale crescent on black on her own.
"How? How can this be?" she said. Everything felt so right, as if she'd had her eyes closed all her life and all of a sudden been able to open them. Her gaze flicked back to her rump. "What's happened to my tail!? she yelped.
By the Maker, it's full of stars, she thought. Her normally pale blue tail had turned a much darker shade and seemed to be sprinkled with little glimmers and sparks.
"I don't know," Fusion said faintly. "I didn't expect this; but it does make a kind of sense though, our magic isn't the same. I've always been good at energy control, while your special talent is remote manipulation. Perhaps your mane is an odd manifestation of that, a bit like our labour tattoos. Mine does something similar, although it's more pastel colours than--" she paused, staring at Gravity's tail, "--than like a section of the night's sky."
"Does... does it mean that if I use this power I'm changing the orbit of the moon?" Gravity felt the insides of her ears heat with a blush at this ridiculous statement. To her surprise Fusion appeared to be taking the question seriously.
"The power has to come from somewhere," she said slowly, "look what happens when you just use the local environment." Fusion paused, a sly smile crossing her face. "I do get to call you 'Luna' now."
Gravity winced, but found herself nodding. All that cold; how it worked made no sense to her -- she was as much an engineer as Fusion was a scientist, and the idea of being able to cause a local reduction in entropy to fuel another physical effect somewhere else was unimaginable. "I suppose that's why they call it magic," she said, looking at her tail and the way it seemed to shimmer with distant points of light, visible even in the dappled sunlight under the tree. There was an odd feeling of depth to the sight, like the lights were somehow much further away than they should have been. She released the unconscious hold she'd had on the moons, watching as her tail turned back to normal hair.
"Show me what yours looks like," she demanded.
===
After she'd had a kilosecond or so to get used to the new magical techniques, Gravity noticed her sister staring at her with unusual intensity. "What is it?" she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. There was something about the other mare's expression, like she was trying to decide how to break bad news.
Fusion twitched, refocusing her eye on Gravity's face. "Sorry, I was just watching you with my shadow sight, seeing what it looks like from the outside."
"Really," Gravity said in a disbelieving tone.
"I have something I need to tell you, but--" here the mare shifted uncomfortably "--it will be hard to hear. If you don't mind, I'd like to share some of my memories with you. Things from the last few days."
Gravity stared back at her sister, suddenly worried by the intensity in her voice. "If you think it would help, of course I'll share with you. This is the other trick Random taught you?"
"Yes." Fusion took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm so sorry it's come to this, but there are no good choices left."
A white nimbus surrounded her sister's horn and Gravity felt the now familiar sensation of pressure in her mind. Still puzzling out Fusion's last words, she opened the door and let the other mare in.
The world went dark and, when the light came back, was replaced by a dark plane of grass filled with motionless images of ponies, Masters and vehicles. In front of her knelt a copy of Fusion, wings wrapped tightly around a green colt, while a Master held a black circle of metal above the foal's head. The colt appeared to be struggling, trying to wriggle out from Fusion's grasp.
"I don't think you were near when they Blessed Tangent," Fusion said, appearing suddenly next to Gravity. "He was really scared of something he saw, but I couldn't understand what it was until I switched to shadow sight."
The scene changed, turning to silhouettes and shadows punctuated with the coloured glows of magically active gems and pony horns. Suddenly everything in the scene started to move as Fusion played the memory forwards. The crown touched the colt's head, causing Gravity to recoil slightly at the thick green tentacles that emerged from it. As she watched, the questing arms converged on the colt's head and started to do something to his brain. The scene froze again; the tentacles were gone, but little traces remained, laced through the skull from horn to brain stem and on down the spine.
"This is the Blessing; just a spell, nothing more. There's no divine touch, just automated casting systems built into the crown."
Gravity looked away, choosing to stare at her sister rather than the disquieting scene in front of her. "What are you saying? That this little spell somehow knows when you are thinking about disobedience?" A righteous anger started to creep into her voice. "How can you possibly believe that? There's no way any spell could do that."
"How much do you remember of your physiology classes? Do you recognise the areas the spell is connected to?"
"A little," Gravity said, swallowing hard and looking closely at the colt's head. She traced the lines of thaumic energy, trying to remember what the different areas of the brain did. The threads were concentrated in the limbic system, deep in the core, with connections out to the neocortex.
"It's tied into areas processing emotion and memory; whenever you feel guilt relating to the Masters it hurts you. The more guilt, the more pain. The spell knows nothing; it just reads your guilt. We punish ourselves."
"I don't believe any of this, why would you make something like this up?" Gravity shook her head vigorously, trying to silence the little voice of doubt. She immediately cringed in expectation of punishment, but nothing came. She held the position for a few seconds, then relaxed slightly, not quite believing that it wouldn't take her by surprise.
Fusion had been watching closely and noticed the little flinch. "Didn't hurt, did it? You must have felt a little doubt then, but it didn't hurt."
Gravity's eyes widened. "What did you do?" she demanded.
"I set you free."
"You're not making sense," the blue mare pleaded, "stop this madness, I'm sure the Masters will forgive you."
Fusion remained quiet. "There's a word for what we are to the Masters. It's 'slave'. We are just tools, made useful by our ability to think. Don't tell me you haven't seen anything that makes you worried?"
Gravity stubbornly shook her head, but she was thinking of the surgical robot back at the institute and its highly adaptable restraint system, one big enough for a pony. Again there was the guilt from thinking bad thoughts; again there was no pain. She whinnied in distress, suddenly very confused.
"I'm really sorry, Grav, I had almost a megasecond to come to terms with this; this has hit you all at once." The white mare paced in circles, a curious mix of sorrow and determination on her face. "I can show you many other things, but here's a question for you: what happened to Random and her group of foals?"
"You said they were fine," Gravity mumbled.
"For now." Fusion blinked and the world went dark again.
The next scene was unfamiliar to Gravity; a large room, one wall open to some kind of vertical shaft, with an improvised cage in the centre. In the cage was a sorry-looking huddle of ponies -- mostly foals, Gravity realised -- with a single adult in the middle. "What is this?" she demanded.
"This is where I was this morning. This is the Security Hub. My Master said that they were being retrained; I knew he was lying--"
"You have no right to judge a Master's actions," Gravity said sullenly, unable to draw her eyes away from the tableau. It must have been her first accident, she thought, she must have some kind of brain damage. The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like that was the answer. Her sister hadn't been herself since after that event; she'd been withdrawn and seemed scared all the time. She leant forward, searching Fusion's face for any sign of the pony she knew so well. "Listen, we can get you help," she said urgently, "I know you're good at what you do; the Masters--"
Fusion shook her head slowly. "The best 'help' I can hope for at the paws of the Masters will be a quick death. If I thought that would fix the problem I might even visit the infirmary myself--"
"Don't say that!" Gravity shouted.
Fusion continued remorselessly. "--but it won't just be me. My Master, Academician Vanca, will experiment on you after she's tested me to destruction." Seeing Gravity's shocked face the white mare nodded grimly. "I can show you that memory too, if you like. The last pony Vanca had her paws on is nothing more than a carbon shadow blasted into the accelerator's backstop."
Gravity sat down with a thump, feeling dizzy. I don't believe it, she thought, I was told I'd be returning to the launch site after... After what? Her sister had recovered days ago, yet she hadn't been ordered back to her old job. Around her the memory started to play forward. Her initial unease built to a crawling horror as she watched Random, dead eyed and seeming to be in a trance, break down in front of her sister's image. Worse was to come. She listened to the tan mare's description of what was being done to her, then finally squeezed her eyes shut at the sight of the bloody feather dangling from Random's lips.
"You were there, do you think they deserve that?" Fusion said gently, unable to keep her eyes off the memory turned real. "I don't think any of them will last much longer." Her throat had closed up and the words came out choked and distorted, while tears pricked at her eyes.
"They fought against the Master's troops," Gravity replied, but the excuse seemed weak, even to her. This is wrong, she thought, then took a sharp breath in anticipation of the pain... which never came. This confused her further -- questioning a Master's actions always resulted in swift punishment -- and she thought back to Fusion's cryptic 'I've set you free' comment.
The answer came in a flash of horror and Gravity struggled to her hooves, backing away from her sister as fast as she could. Such was the shock that she could barely get the words out. "You've removed the touch of the Maker from me. Why? We were put here by the Maker to serve the Masters. How could you do this to me!?"
Fusion stepped forward, following her sister's unsteady retreat. "This might be the only chance our people have," she said urgently, leaning forward and staring at Gravity intently, "we can free them all if we do it right."
The words blasted through the blue mare like they had been delivered by a railgun, and she staggered back as if struck. Mouth opening and closing, unable to think of a response, let alone articulate it, Gravity blinked out from the memory.
The real world flicked back into place, dispelling the disturbing images that Fusion claimed to be her memories. Gravity was on her hooves even as Fusion sat there, blinking in confusion. "Stay away from me!" she shrieked, springing into the air and scattering the carpet of leaves with her first downstroke.
Half blinded by tears, Gravity flew unsteadily away from the corral at tree-top height. Behind her, she heard the pounding of Fusion's wings, getting rapidly louder as the mare gained on her.
"Gravity, please, don't do anything hasty," Fusion pleaded, her voice thin and high with fear. "At least talk to me!"
The blue mare felt the hesitant caress of her sister's magic, but ignored it. Why won't she just leave me alone, doesn't she know she's done enough damage already? Gravity thought, beating her wings harder in an effort to escape. The contact strengthened, exerting an irresistible pressure on her body, and she started to be pulled back.
Confusion and horror gave way to a visceral fury and Gravity pivoted on one wing, wheeling around to face her tormentor. "Don't touch me," she screamed, her horn burning with violet fire as she lashed out with her power.
Magic surged, and Fusion had no time to react before the pulse of pure force struck her. She gasped, all the breath driven out of her body by the impact, and flew backwards. Wings and legs trailing, the white mare was thrown violently into the trees she'd just climbed above, the air filling with the gunshot crackle of breaking branches. Underneath the leaves there was the sudden, awful, sound of a body striking something hard, then nothing but silence.
Above the canopy, uncaring, Gravity accelerated into the sky.