Chapter 15: Summer Sun
Today had not gone according to plan, not in the least. Nevermind that it was Chance's first time having the library all to herself, an enormous trust she might not have truly deserved. It hadn't been easy to convince Twilight not to take her to the Summer Sun Celebration, not when the trip was scheduled to last for several days. Somehow, against all the odds, she was home alone, given the run of the library all to herself.
There hadn't been any nightmares, at least not while she slept. Then she woke up, and found that it was only half day. It was also half night. It wasn't just that the moon was out at the same time as the sun. Rather, it was as though someone had divided the sky in half down the middle, with day in one half and night on the other. Nor did there seem to be any predictable way to see it. As she walked from window to window, the views shifted, making it impossible to be sure which area was truly lit and which were dark.
For once, Chance didn't even have Spike to count on for solace, since he had gone with Twilight to Canterlot. That left her in the library, with the solemn promise she had made not to leave the property for any reason. There were powerful wards on the property, Twilight had told her, which would protect her from almost anything. It was the safest place in town.
Chance had skipped breakfast that day. Instead, she took what coal they had left in her magic and headed straight out into the backyard. Twilight was gone. Spike was gone, and she was as safe as she was going to get. Maybe this wasn't the best day to try and get the Jebr Stone working, but... even now, Chance put far more stock in the protection of a functional OMICRON Core than in any magic spell, no matter what Twilight said. If she could get root access, maybe she could fabricate a microsatellite, and get a real look at the sky to see what was going on. Just because she was stuck at home didn't mean she couldn't help! It was a noble theory, but it didn't go very far. She got to the back door, and saw that the sky wasn't the only thing wrong with Ponyville.
The plant life of Equestria looked too healthy to be real, more the ideas of the plants they represented than the real thing. The black thorned creepers crawling along the ground were unlike anything she had seen before. In any case, they grew faster than Equestria fauna, creeping along the ground so fast they looked like they might even be able to catch a pony, if one wasn't careful! Chance looked to her hooves, and sure enough the creepers were encroaching on the library, though none seemed to have made it yet. Even as she watched, one inched toward her as though it had eyes.
And hit a solid wall. There was plainly nothing there, and yet it started growing vertically instead of horizontally. After a few centimeters, it fell over backward on itself away from the library, and had to begin its advance again. "The wards!" She exclaimed, mostly to herself. "They're working!" There was no telling for how long, though. She would have to act fast.
Chance darted over to the generator, dumping the sack of coal into the opening and slamming the metal door shut. The ignition spell was a little tricky for her, but pressure had a way of motivating. She got it right on her first try, and the turbines began to grind to motion. She switched the library's breaker onto generator power, then patted the generator with one hoof. "You better work... I need that coal to last until I can get root access!" Once she did that, she could simply order the cube to manufacture some solar cells or something. So long as she could find a patch of daytime to put them in.
Ponyville was in a panic, but there was nothing she could do to help, and she didn't linger long outside to worry. She wondered briefly about the fate of her friends the Crusaders, but did not let her wondering keep her outside. They had their families to look out for them, adult ponies that could do more than little Chance could. Unless, of course, she could get the OMICRON Core to obey her. Not once did she stop to consider her odds. The Core hadn't listened to her during any of her previous attempts, and it wasn't likely to work for her now.
The basement was clear of debris, with the core situated prominently in the center of the room. Thickly insulated cable ran directly into its surface, humming faintly with the surge of energy. Chance stopped in front of its nearest face, less than a foot away. "OMICRON Core." She said, in her badly-garbled English. "Disengage standby mode." The surface of the cube flared to life, with its many sections rising and falling as many different symbols appeared and vanished.
Ready
The core said in its synthesized voice, its words recorded on its surface. Even now the sound of her native tongue was strange on her ears. She had been in Equestria so long that it seemed to grate on her, though it had sounded so graceful and expressive before. Not enough horse-noises.
Analyzing command. Probability of mission failure: 98.71%. Margin is acceptable, attempting to enter recovery mode. Designate new Administrator.
"Designate this user as Administrator. Designation: Second Chance."
Access Denied. Alien species may not be designated Administrator. Please indicate a human Administrator.
"I am a human Administrator!" She insisted, frowning. The machine did not respond, and she went on. "Fine! Designate this user as Administrator. Name: Dr. Kimberly Colven." She hadn't tried using her human name before. Maybe that would make a difference? Depending on when this had been sent, it ought to be in the system. Being under pressure was giving her such great ideas!
Working. A brief delay, then. Records located. Identify this user as Dr. Kimberly Colven?
Change grinned. She was getting somewhere. "Yes! This user is Dr. Kimberly Colven!"
Dr. Kimberly Colven is identified as: Deceased. Change status to: Active?
"Yes!"
To change status, please input access password on file for user: Dr. Kimberly Colven.
Now that she hadn't expected. Her access passwords? What the heck had her passwords been? Little things like that hardly mattered compared with all the other things she couldn't remember, like her mission! If she couldn't remember something as important as that, how could she possibly be expected to remember a dumb password?
"Wait!" She jumped, her grin getting wider. "It's... it's..." She recited a long string of numbers and letters and symbols. Unlike her mission, Second Chance had used this password thousands of times. She could practically feel ghost fingers flying across a keyboard as she recited.
Password accepted. Step one of two complete. To designate this user as Dr. Kimberly Colven, please make contact with this system. A genetic sample will be compared against sample on file.
"B-but..." Chance backed up, her eyes watering. She had been so close! "This user's genetic profile no longer matches sample on file! You can't use that to check who I am!" She half-screamed, half-cried at the cube.
To designate this user as Dr. Kimberly Colven, please make contact with this system. A genetic sample will be compared against stored files.
Chance tried yelling at the cube some more, with little effect. Eventually she gave up, and trudged slowly up the stairs out of the basement to switch off the generator and put out the fire. As usual, she was getting nowhere. She might never get anywhere with the stupid core. No matter how many times she tried this, she wasn't going to have a human genetic sample. This was hopeless. Unless, of course, she decided to go graverobbing. But there was no time for that now in any case.
* * *
Chance couldn't say how much time had passed. The generator was quiet, and for the moment it seemed the library remained safe from the danger outside. Clearly whatever disaster was taking place was only getting worse. Never in all her time in Equestria had Chance ever seen anything approaching danger like this! Could Equestria be ending just as her old world had? Perhaps this death was somewhat more supernatural than what had consumed her beautiful Earth, but that seemed only fitting for a world that seemed supernatural to her.
She was a little surprised to hear frantic knocking at the door. This was the Ponyville library, but today hardly seemed like the sort of day ponies would come in to check anything out. For her part, Chance had opened at least a dozen different books to search for anything that might hint at what was going on, but so far she hadn't found anything. Her reading level still had a way to go, and progress was very slow. She had spent more time looking up words in the dictionary than actually researching the problem, and wasn't likely to find anything.
It was Applejack. No, not just Applejack. It was all of Twilight's friends, along with two of Chance's. Sweetie Belle was there beside her sister, and Apple Bloom not far behind Applejack. "T-Twilight's not here." She stammered from behind the door, scratching nervously at the ground with one hoof. Twilight's friends could be a little overwhelming to her, ever since she had learned just how important they were to Equestria. One on one she could handle them, but... everyone? All at once? Her ears and tail drooped, and she tried to hide herself behind the door a little, as though she were going to close it.
"We know that, sugarcube." Applejack said, extending one hoof into the doorway to stop it from closing on them. "We were 'a... we were..."
Rainbow Dash flew over them both and into the library, much too fast for Chance to protest. "We're here to do Twilight stuff!"
Chance blinked. "Uh..."
"Yeah!" Pinkie Pie offered, stepping in beside Applejack. Despite the insanity behind them, she looked as bubbly as ever. "Books! Twilight loves to use books! She throws books at every problem, and most of them get squished! The... problems do. Not the books, because books are already flat." She grinned. Nopony else did.
"Can we come in, youngin'?" Applejack asked, glaring at Rainbow behind her. "Nothin' else we've tried seems to do anythin’. We figure we're goin' at this the wrong way."
Twilight hadn't said anything about not letting other ponies into the library with her. In any case, she doubted very much Twilight would have said no to her friends, had she been here. More to the point, five grown ponies and three fillies ought to be able to tackle the problem better than just one filly who could barely read. She stepped out of the way, pushing the door wide open with her magic. "Okay." They began filing in, and she kept talking over the buzz of conversation that had apparently resumed once she gave her leave. "I tried to figure it out! But I didn't find anything in the books I looked through."
The adults nodded, and a frenzied search began. Rainbow Dash began lifting books at random from the shelves, reading the titles, then tossing them aside and letting them fall to the floor. The others were more dignified about it, but they were still a storm going through the library. Soon a sea of books began to form on the ground, as the shelves slowly emptied. It was reshelving day all over again.
Two of the ponies hadn't gone past her, though. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle smiled weakly at her, watching the chaos going on inside the library. "What... what are you two doing here?" Chance asked. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but... it looks like a pretty dangerous time to be traveling."
Sweetie Belle answered. "I was at my sister's for the weekend. She didn't want to leave me at the boutique all alone." She glanced up at her horn, expression suspicious. "Not with magic going nuts."
"And ah wasn't doin' any good at Sweet Apple Acres no matter how hard ah tried!" Apple Bloom said. "So ah came to help my sister!" She sat down on her haunches, looking far more confident than either of them. "We ain't got nothin' to worry about. With my sister and the others on this, it'll be over in no time."
Chance wished she was as confident as Apple Bloom. "Well, your magic should be fine in here." She demonstrated by reaching out, and gently shutting the door to the library with her own. It behaved exactly as it ought to, and the door clicked gently closed. "See? No problem. Twilight's got wards on the library, since she lives here and all." Of course, that was far from the only reason. The basement was another, and she suspected (though Twilight would never have said as much) that she herself was yet another reason.
Just as Chance knew she had some important mission she had been sent to Equestria to do, she had a feeling that the pony keeping her also had a mission of some kind, though she didn't know what it could be. Why else would anypony take in a potentially dangerous stranger? Okay, maybe that had been the reason once. Twilight cared about her. She didn't doubt that now, not with all the nice things Twilight Sparkle had done for her. Like letting her crawl into bed with her when she had nightmares. Or looking the other way when Chance got up to go look at the stars. Or all the hours she spent teaching her magic. Or lots of other things.
Sweetie Belle looked nervous, but attempted the test with her horn. She winced and looked away as she focused on a nearby tome, and levitated it over. As usual the other Unicorn was far less adroit than Chance, and the book half-dragged itself over. Still, it didn't sprout tentacles or attack them, nor did Sweetie Belle go flying uncontrollably through the air. She opened her eyes only when the gesture was complete, looking relieved. "You're right!" The other fillies both looked relieved. "At least there's one safe place left in Ponyville."
About that time, something slammed into the side of the library, shattering its way into the sea of books. That something was Twilight Sparkle.
Before Chance knew it, Twilight was removing the glass case protecting the Elements. Even in the kitchen with the other fillies and out of the room she could feel the protective spell in which they were contained being released, its potent magic allowed to merge back into Equestria's background. "B-but Twilight!" She called weakly from the doorway, looking in. It hadn't taken long. Twilight's arrival had turned her confused friends from a mob into a smoothly-operating team. It was amazing to see the change, one that hadn't taken more than a few minutes.
"Stay here, you three." Twilight called back. "I've got some idea who's behind this. Testing that theory is going to make Ponyville even more dangerous for a while, until we fix this. The wards should keep you safe."
Chance wasn't so sure about that, considering one of the alien vines had found its way into the open window only moments before. But Applejack had dealt with it quick enough, and it didn't seem likely there would be any further incursions. The library was emptying right before their eyes. Her fellow fillies protested, with their elder sisters giving similar responses. They were to remain here with Second Chance, where they would be safe. They argued and protested, but were quickly cowed. In the light of Celestia and Luna's disappearance, it was hard not to be afraid.
She had to admit, that news had frightened her more than it ought to. Celestia and Luna weren't just the princesses of this alien nation, they were demigods. Beings of eternal, mind-bending power. If something could take them out, what hope did Twilight and the others have? Also, much more importantly, Luna was her friend, and she didn’t enjoy the thought of anything bad happening to her.
At least they had the Elements of Harmony on their side. Those artifacts had been potent enough to purify a mad god, enough to seal away another mad god in stone. If anything could end this, they could. Even now Chance could no more understand how their magic worked than she could force the stone downstairs to obey her commands.
The door slammed shut behind Twilight and her friends. "Well... I guess we're on our own." She muttered, walking back into the library proper. "Would you two... help me put all these books back? I'm sure Twilight would be really greatful if this place was cleaned up when she got back! I mean, if she's out there saving Equestria, she shouldn't have to pick up books."
Sweetie Belle nodded. "Sure, Chance! I'll help!"
Apple Bloom frowned. "Well... since ah can't help Applejack... ah suppose ah could too." She sighed. "Might as well do somethin' while we wait on the sidelines, like always."
* * *
They hadn't been at work for very long before Chance began to feel something strange, and she stopped reading the title of the book she had been looking at to try and identify it. The feeling began to grow very rapidly, so fast that she froze in place, staring straight through the wall to the source of the pressure. At once her body felt distant, and the world was replaced with a frothing quantum sea. In it, the minds of the Ponyville population made only dim reflections, barely visible. Except for Twilight, who was a structure of power and order against the even randomness. That was all she had expected to see. It was all she should've seen, since only beings of nearly deific power made any sort of imprint here.
But it wasn't the only thing she saw. Somewhere very near to Twilight, something was gathering itself together, easily brighter than she was. That was not to say it was more ordered, though. She focused her mind closer, trying to get a better view, passing the thing she recognized as Twilight with its interlocking spheres. The thing was far larger than her teacher, and brighter. Thousands of different shapes roughly piled on one another, interlocking and phasing through each other at random. Even as she watched, forms Euclid would have no names for twisted themselves out of the foam, while others slipped away into the smoke without fanfare. The very sight of it could drive a pony mad. Maybe it had. She began to retreat, pulling her mind back and back into her body, but she wasn't fast enough.
The thing had noticed her. She felt its presence reaching for her, searching, heard its words. "Why, hello there. This is interesting." She made it back to her body, shivering all over. She felt chills all over her, and dropped all the books she had been holding in her magic. "Forget 'em." She said, urgently. "We need to get into the basement. Right now." She tried not to sound hysteric, but in that she failed. She was halfway to the basement door before either of her companions had time to reply.
"Why?" Sweetie Belle put down a book, looking curiously after her. "I thought you said nothing could get in past the wards?"
Chance shook her head. "I'm not sure the wards will help. Just... follow me! I'll explain once we're down there!" The other ponies looked confused, but didn't argue with her further. It was quite clear from just how upset she was that she meant what she was saying, even if they couldn't understand why. When she had locked the basement door, she moved rapidly past the others, lifting a desk with her magic and carrying it up the stairs. The wood was enormously heavy, and she had to walk very slowly, sweating and whimpering with every step. To her immense pride, she managed the weight, propping the heavy wood against the door. She lifted a stream of smaller objects, piling them up against the door too. Only when the entire area was barricaded did she dare to relax, collapsing against the base of the stairs from the thaumaturgical exertion.
The others stood not far away. Sweetie Belle looked worried, Apple Bloom was looking at her like she was crazy. "Uh... sure!" Sweetie said, looking up at the barricade she had made. "We... sure will be safe down here! From... something?"
Chance nodded. "I hope so. It's the best I can do, anyway. Best anypony could do except Celestia, and she's missing." She was still panting, and her head felt sore. She probably wasn't going to be doing any magic for awhile after that. Getting out again was going to be an adventure. But Twilight wouldn't blame her, right? She had broken some rules by taking the Crusaders down here with her. But in light of the danger, the crusaders seeing the OMICRON Core hardly seemed to matter. Maybe if she didn't mention it, they wouldn't notice.
"Safe from what?" Apple Bloom asked, looking up the stairs at the barricade. "What were you so scared of? Ah ain't never seen a filly move that fast."
Chance shrugged. "I don't know what its name was." There was no way she was going to explain the way she could briefly extend her senses past her body, could she? Maybe there was a way to express it that didn't involve going into too much detail. "I've got... look, Twilight's been teaching me magic, right?" They nodded. "Well, I know a spell that lets me... always sense when there's danger nearby. Well, that spell just went nuts. We were in more danger than I've ever sensed before."
"Did your spell tell you what we were in danger from? Was it something from the Everfree forest? It probably makes sense there would be dangerous things comin' inta town, with it invadin' and all."
"It..." She began, struggling for words. How could she explain what she had seen to two fillies who had no experience with non-bodily senses? It wasn't as though she could use the shapes she saw, since those weren't even real in any meaningful sense. They were just her mind trying to give her input she could understand, interpreting the structures of energy and probability in meaningful ways. "Something like Celestia. Something with her kind of power, anyway. Not an Alicorn, though. It was... disorder. Worse than entropy, because that's an ordering force in the sense that it's consistent. It was like... what if the least probable thing was the most likely to happen? And it kept happening, over and over. Disorder. Chaos. Ultimate, universal chaos."
Her companions looked to one another, and gulped in almost perfect unison. "Discord." They muttered together. Ears and tail drooped, and they moved closer together, shivering with the word. As though that word were an answer.
"Exactly! Discord! That's exactly what it looked like!"
Sweetie Belle backed away from her, searching for somewhere to hide. As though she thought that the basement was no longer a sufficiently good hiding place. "Not what. Who."
"Course it would be him!" Apple Bloom retreated right there with her. Chance followed, satisfied that at least her fellows were finally taking her seriously. "Everfree invading, night and day at the same time. We shoulda' figured it out before now! This whole thing had him written all over it!"
Chance frowned, struggling to understand what her friends were trying to communicate with her. "Are you... saying the thing that's here, it's a he? And his name is Discord?" They nodded, and she retreated all the closer to the cube. The message from before was still there, raised against the ordinarily flat surface. It felt very strange to be cowering behind the monolith of an OMICRON Core with her pony friends, as though her two lives were intersecting. Or perhaps, were about to intersect.
Discord sensed me. She knew, fearfully so. Would he come for her? What could a being of such unbridled chaos do to her and her friends? She was quite inclined to believe as they said, that such a powerful being could be responsible for what was happening to Equestria. But she had faith in her teacher, and in her friends. If any of the stories she had told about the dangers Equestria had recently faced were true, then Chance did not doubt she would handle this whole mess, somehow.
All they had to do was hide down here until the storm blew over. Maybe the wards wouldn't protect them from something so powerful, but they might conceal them from its attention. He could occupy himself looking for her through all of Ponyville. Maybe that would distract him from... whatever he might otherwise do to the ponies who lived there.
Her musing was interrupted by a synthesized voice, along with a familiar high-pitched shrieking from Sweetie Belle. She screamed quite loud, but not so loud that Chance couldn't hear the voice of the Core speaking over her, in flat English.
Sample presented does not match records for Dr. Kimberly Colven. Please provide a valid genetic sample.
Nevermind how the heck that thing was still running with the generator off. Maybe she'd run it long enough to charge some of its emergency stores? She doubted that, considering how much energy these things could hold. Then again, it was possible. It wasn't her first concern. Rather, her friends now backing into the furthest corner of the room, afraid of the cube and even more afraid of what was upstairs.
"Ah reckon that thing just tried to talk!" Apple Bloom called, comforting Sweetie Belle as best she could, though she was clearly equally terrified. "Ah couldn't make out what it was sayin'."
"Don't worry." Chance stepped between them and the cube, careful not to touch it lest it take a sample from her as well. How many attempts would it allow before she would have to abandon all hope of using this method? Three? Two? Not that she had any hope of success. Her human body had been left behind, and not a trace of it had accompanied her into Equestria. There was no sample to present the cube, nor would there be. "It's harmless. You know Twilight. She's got all sorts of strange things." She didn't want to lie to her friends, and she hadn't. But she hadn't told them she knew exactly what it was, either. That would involve telling them lots of other things, things that she wasn't sure she was ready to tell them. "Just don't touch it again, okay?"
Sweetie Belle nodded, still looking a little shocked. She could tell her friend wasn't about to disobey her suggestion, after the start she'd got. Of course, they were also far more accepting of what she was saying than she thought Earth children would be. In a world of magic, one more magical artifact must not seem to be all that remarkable.
They passed what felt like hours away in the silence of the library. Occasionally they could hear muffled sounds from above, and none of them were good. Whatever was going on in Ponyville was clearly not good. Their friends and family were out in the middle of it, and there was nothing they could do but keep their heads down and wait for it to pass.
She almost got away with it. It seemed as though part of a night must have gone, and they were all getting worried. Her friends had sisters out in the thickest of it, after all. Chance had her teacher, thought it was hard to think of Twilight as nothing more than a teacher. Plain old teachers didn't open their home to possibly dangerous aliens from another universe. Didn't do everything in their power to make sure you were happy. She wasn't sure what Twilight was to her, exactly. It wasn't just a teacher, though. Was this how Twilight felt about Celestia? And she was out there putting herself on the line for her own mentor, at that exact moment.
They sat solemnly behind the Jebr Stone, talking about the most boring things they could and pretending nothing at all was wrong. For once, the more boring the conversation the better. None of them had any desire to think about anything extraordinary right then. Her friends didn't even ask to hear more of her human-world stories, not that they knew those were what they had been listening too.
Then someone knocked on the door. It wasn't the outside door, and none of them had heard footsteps on the floor upstairs. Nevertheless, there were four harsh knocks. The three of them huddled together closer with each knock, and somepony whimpered. Chance couldn't say who. "It's... probably Twilight coming back." Chance offered. "With your sisters, and her other friends. They fixed everything. It's time to go home and go to bed."
Sweetie Belle nodded from beside her, though nopony looked convinced. "Yeah. Course it is. Rarity, is that you?" She called suddenly. It was probably pretty stupid to advertise themselves. But if there was a being out there as powerful as he had seemed, no hiding place would last forever. Of course, she could use her other senses to look behind the door, but... if she did, that would give them away for sure! There would be no hiding if she used that power. The thing might sense her from the other side of the city, even if it was Twilight and the others, perhaps moving them to a safer place to hide.
There was silence for a moment on the other end, until whoever it was came through the door. It wasn't Rarity. He wasn't even a pony.