//------------------------------// // The Mother of Gold // Story: Odrsjot // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Beneath the dim glare of stars, Rainbow Dash soared after the trailing exhaust of the stolen Ledomaritan Dreadnaught. She gritted her teeth, flapping her wings as hard as she could. Prolonged whistling noises tickled her ears as her glowing ruby pendant acted as an enchanted windbreaker. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t seem to get a single inch closer to her target. From far behind, the rear thrusters of the Lightning-Bearer flickered like a flock of burning blue falcons against the charcoal black night sky. Rainbow knew that she was speeding; the mountain peaks and treetops blurring beneath her were obvious indication of how swiftly she was slicing her way northwest. However, so long as the bane of Seclorum’s base remained just beyond a scream’s distance from her, she felt like no amount of progress was even remotely being made. She could just have well been riding the shells of snails to reach her foe. Grunting, Rainbow angled her body straighter, turning into a veritable arrowhead as she skimmed the rocky faces of plateaus. Gradually, the air around her grew stale and staler. The forests withered away, giving way to broad valleys of gravel and arid rock. The temperature dropped as Rainbow chased the Lightning Bearer across a stretch of desert. The stars above glowed with greater majesty, but their shimmer highlighted nothing but black open space. “Come on… come on wings…” Rainbow snarled into the wind. “Don’t buck things up now. This is for the gold. Horseapples, this is for the mother of gold! Get with it! Come on!” Rainbow’s body twitched all along her spine. She wasn’t entirely sure how she managed it, but her wings blurred even faster. The air stopped whistling, instead spreading around her in a faint cone that refracted the starlight bathing her sweaty coat. Rainbow panted… then panted some more. Her muzzle twisted into a proud smirk, but her body jolted at the sound of an immense rumbling. She darted her eyes left and right. Desert plateaus, stone mesas, and craggy ravines soared past her, stretching thinly beneath her. Everything was dead silent--still and cold like a cemetery after dark. “Where the frig is she anyways…?” Biting her lip, Rainbow Dash bravely pressed forward, gliding away from the unsettling noise, her eyes locked on the Ledomaritan battleship as she slowly inched her way towards its burning stern… “Unnnngh…” If Josho’s face had a taste, it would have instantly induced a pony to vomit. His muzzle was twisted into the mother of all grimaces. Rivulets of sweat ran down his skull as he stirred awake. “Somepony fetch the sound stone of that elephant that made love to my brain bone…” Silence. And then… Stirring noises. “By the spark…” “Haalsuthien menul thrielem.” “He’s conscious! He’s actually conscious already!” “So? Most ponies my age deal with consciousness…” Josho sat up with the help of several friendly hooves. “Nothing that a little prune juice won’t solve.” At last, after rubbing his head for several seconds, he opened his eyes. Blinking, he squinted quizzically. Several ponies stood over him. Most of them were unicorns, and they all had metal caps over their horns. There were stallions in uniform, field nurses in tattered gowns, and engineers in greased fatigues. They reflected the obese stallion’s expression with at least three dozen sets of wide eyes. “Is this it?” Josho grumbled. “The afterlife is just a lame-ass, endless staring contest?” “Alas…” An old soldier nervously smiled and shook his head. “This is not the Spark’s embrace, brave fellow.” He reached a hoof out and helped Josho onto his legs. “Though, we may all be heading there soon.” “It’s…” Josho’s teeth chattered. “It’s so cold down here.” He rubbed his forelimbs. “And with blubber like mine, that ain’t no small thing to shake off.” He blinked at the others. “Where in the Queen’s fluff hairs am I?” “We certainly hoped they’d throw down a pony for once who could tell us,” said a nurse. As she stepped aside, Josho became aware of a grand expanse behind her. Suddenly, there was a flash of light overhead, followed by distant thunder. Josho glanced up. He saw a sliver of light, beyond which was gray mist and muddled starlight. As more thunder rolled, the flash of another shell erupted across the wartorn heavens. This time, its death beams ran down like bright fingers, glinting across every nook and crevice of the walls that had swallowed Josho and his sudden companions in one fell stream. The stallion caught dormant conveyor belts, frozen cogwheels, and dangling pendulums in the distance. Everything was made of the smoothest, most reflective metal he could imagine. Judging from the shine, it was an immaculate gold substance that he had never had the grace of witnessing before. “Fartnuggets. What kind of upside down hallucinogenic bridal shower did I just land in?” “What do you remember last, sir?” a soldier asked. Josho frowned. “I’m the one asking questions here!” “Just think about it…” The pony pointed. “You were tossed down here. But by what?” “Not what…” Josho slurred. “Who.” He ran a hoof over his head, wincing. “Seclorum wanted to show me what he was protecting.” The ponies jolted in shock. “General… Seclorum…?!” “The one and only. I thought the old bastard was a friend of mine. Seems like he’s gotten a little too friendly with the ‘old’ and ‘bastard’ parts. Hmmph…” Josho rubbed his scalp some more. “No legit pal of mine would surround me with his guards and slap a cone over my--” He gasped, his hoof tapping the metal cap over his horn. “Seagull stroganoff! Now I remember! Secchy friggin’ hornblocked me! Why that liver-stained sonuvabitch!” Gritting his teeth, he spun towards the other ponies. “You guys gotta help me--” The weary, emaciated equines avoided his gaze, their sad expressions weighted by an identical array of heavy metal cones atop each of their horns. “Oh…” Josho blinked. “Well, this sucks like a baby humpback whale.” “We were hoping you’d be a normal soldier,” a mare in a tattered uniform said. “Not another one of us.” “Sorry to disappoint, lady,” Josho muttered, pacing across the frozen machinery in the dark. He paused, then glanced back at the crowd. “Just who is ‘us,’ anyway?” “We hail from separate units,” one stallion said. “But we all have one thing in common.” “What’s that? Bad luck?” “We’ve asked too many questions. And now we are down here.” “Yeah, well, what for?” Josho frowned. “Why didn’t Secchy just kill y’all if there was something that he didn’t want you around for?” He leaned his metal-capped head against a golden wall and groaned. “None of this makes any friggin’ sense. What turned him…?” “Lekkun meniel thrassa…” A voice casually said in the shadows. “It brings much despair to its heart to see it betrayed by a friend of most dearness.” “Buh?” Josho went wall-eyed. Shaking his head, he spun about. “Okay, who just spat out some evilsghetti?!” Several ponies flinched from the stallion’s accusatory glare. At last, a pony with tattooed body markings stood in open view. “Ehhh… it is… how do you say it... full of the kill kill for it?” “You!” Josho snarled, immediately thrusting forward. “What’s a mana-sucking deathbag like you doing down here?! Huh?!” Several young soldiers held Josho back, a combined effort that took no less than five equines. “Is this some sort of crazy Xonan plot for your bastard of a Princess?! Did she pollute Secchy’s head somehow?!” A mare rushed up, waving her forelimbs frantically as she stood between Josho and the frightened warrior. “No! Don’t! Save your breath…” She sighed. “They’re harmless to us down here.” Josho leaned back, his face scrunched in perplexity. “‘They?’” Slowly, his head pivoted about. As his eyes adjusted to the dark basement of the metal world, he saw more ponies with tattooed coats. Suddenly, whole droves of them could be seen standing shoulder to shoulder with fellow Xonans and Ledomaritans alike. Everypony looked identical in their misery. The only bright thing about them was the occasional glint of the caps atop their horns when a shell lit up high above. “I… I don’t get it…” Josho glanced at the closest ponies to him. “Who did this? Who put all these yahoos here?” “The same ponies who have turned this battlefield into a murder-pit,” said a soldier in a grave voice, bearing a doubly somber expression. “And your ‘old bastard’ of a friend is working for them…”