The Ghost transport was true to its name and was practically invisible and silent until it was upon them in the air. The active camouflage disengaged in a single fluid wave of light and color, revealing an aerodynamic craft swept closer to a bullet than an plane. Ghosts were the latest in Tower engineering and did not rely on conventional engines. To call the gravity lens that drove the airship an engine was about in line with comparing modern quantum computers to slide-rules.
The Ghost was perhaps a third of the size of the Equestrian airship, yet it kept pace without visible means of locomotion, extending a ramp over the railing with the thump of metal on wood. A pony screamed, someone started ringing the bell. Someone started yelling, "We're being boarded!" But by the time they had said it, a pair of soldiers had landed on the deck, their armor concealed only partially by the white of their robes. Neither wore helmets, though both had rifles in their hands. A third figure, a young woman in gray robes with a chain around her neck stood on the edge of the ramp but did not step down. "Sir Charles Gray! Your chariot awaits!"
Of course Charles was one of the first to answer the call that they were being boarded, fully expecting what he saw. As ponies drew crude weapons and began to gather on the deck, he forced his way through and turned to face the crew. "It's okay! They're here to take me away, nothing else! They won't harm you or your ship."
The captain was more rational than many of the crew around him. "Quickly then," he commanded. Then much quieter, "I knew you three were trouble."
Rainbow Dash came staggering into the crowd, Dawn supporting her weight. There was a strange hollow quality to her eyes and paleness to her skin that Charles hadn't recognized in darkness, yet he knew it now. It meant he had been right; the bioreactor was completely drained, and she was seriously infected somewhere. He could practically smell the necrosis. "We're... sorry," she stammered, her eyes distant, and her words only mumbled. "Full compensation... Equestrian military fund... War over..."
The woman on the ramp didn't seem to notice how sick Rainbow looked, her eyes never straying from Charles. He felt himself tucking his tail involuntarily between his legs, feeling the first pangs of shame since learning how to fly. "Sir Charles Gray," she said again, though her words were half a laugh. "Champion of London? Best pilot in his majesty's glorious air corps? White defender of the Tower? Flesh and blood."
He spun around on his hooves, so fast he nearly fell over. He didn't, but there was no way any of them could have possibly missed his swaying. He knew the names of both of the knights, as they knew him. There were as many knights as there were high cities in the kingdom, one for each. He was grateful the lord of his city was not watching him now. "Truly. Well met, esteemed... Whoever-You-Are."
Charles turned his attention to one of the knights, a middling man with a thick beard and dark eyes to match olive skin. Charles's Arabic was not nearly as good as his English, but he would bet all the bits on this ship it was better than this woman's. "Sir Ayyubi, my companion is on the verge of death. If you could bring her carefully to the doctor, we should begin treating her immediately."
As it turned out, he was wrong about this woman's Arabic. Either that, or she had a translation program. Not that he should've been surprised. "I am your surgeon," she answered, before the man could speak. "And I have not traded my competence for blood." Though Ayyubi had not responded to Charles's plea, he reacted to her gesture at once, sliding his weapon away and dropping to his knees before Rainbow Dash.
"The doctor is waiting," he said, in Equestrian. "You will feel much better soon. Please allow me to help you aboard."
Rainbow tried to protest, of course, but was too weak to voice a coherent argument. Ayyubi ignored her, though his grip was gentle. The mare's eyes widened, and she looked to Charles, her mouth opening in a silent plea.
Charles nodded in a way he hoped was comforting. "It's safe. I'll be with you in a second." The noble Sir Ayyubi nodded once to him and stepped smoothly onto the ramp, vanishing into the ship.
The officer followed behind, and without looking back, called, "Make it quick, Charles! We've got places to be!"
Charles ignored her. He wanted to scream, but that wasn't something you did to scholars of the Technocratic Order. More than that, she had just said she was going to be the one operating on Rainbow Dash. He would tolerate a million insults if it would mean Rainbow could emerge from the operating table healthy again.
Charles turned to Lonely Dawn, forcing his expression to soften. He didn't want his anger at the officer to find any other targets. "Dawn. You don't have to come with me. I have no idea where we're going, but I know now Equestria is still at war. You might be safer staying here. We could pay for your travel back out of Equestria on this ship. You would be safer."
Dawn was always agreeable with Charles, so compliant he sometimes wondered if she even listened to what he said. There was a flash of fear on her face as he spoke, and when he had stopped her reaction came almost instantly. "No! I mean..." She moved closer, pleading. "I've waited my whole life to see Equestria! I'm not going to turn around now. If the war goes badly, then... that's what happens. I'm not leaving you." If she were human, Charles supposed she might have folded her arms and looked defiantly up at him.
"That's... what I expected." He sighed, and gestured at the airship. "We've worn out our welcome, anyway. Let's go, Dawn. Places to be."
He stopped as he passed the other knight, whispering something into his ear. The knight nodded, reached inside his robe, and handed Charles something. He walked away from the ramp, back to the captain. "Sir, I thank you for giving us passage these few days. I cannot repay you with Equestrian currency, but I hope this will do." He yanked, letting the bag fall open to the deck. Gold glittered from inside, the currency of the Steel Tower in the largest denominations minted.
Charles didn't listen for the reply, he just walked away. His wings fluttered, and he landed on the edge of the ramp. He was the last inside the ship, watching the door close behind them. The Ghost was so light he barely even felt it as it lifted off the airship and began to move forward. Something felt strange in his wings as they began to accelerate, as though they were being pulled in opposite directions. He felt as though his hooves were about to slip through the floor, though of course they didn't. It made him queasy.
He ignored the sensation in favor of the fear he felt for Rainbow's life. The ship was small compared to the one he had just left, so there wasn't far to go to find Rainbow Dash. Some of the seats had been removed from the walls, and a full surgical suite had been installed against a far wall. Bright spotlights illuminated a tank of fluid set into a cage of steel. Six dexterous arms ending in versatile mechanical fingers hung above Rainbow's limp body, already submerged, a mask on her muzzle and tubes in her veins. Whatever else he might say about this Technocratic Order woman, she at least seemed to be a good doctor.
A male orderly stood beside her, with a wheeled cart Charles recognized as the sort that transported prosthetic. "Wait here," he told Dawn, as firmly as he could. He gestured to one of the benches on the wall with a hoof. "You shouldn't see this."
If she had been eager to argue before, she showed no sign of it now, and obeyed without objection. Maybe she was just grateful he had brought her along.
Charles moved as close to the surgical table as he could without actually getting in her way, looking in on the injured pegasus. She was already unconscious, for which he was grateful. Somehow he doubted the sight of the gleaming knives or their robotic arms would have been comforting to her. "Rainbow wants as minimally invasive as possible. Nothing that makes her being a cyborg any more obvious than it has to be. No implants she doesn't need to survive."
The woman didn't turn. He couldn't hear her, but he had no doubt she was instructing the orderly over radio. "Yes, these natives can be backward, can't they? Clinging desperately to flesh as though improvement were a sacrifice."
He moved forward, his face growing angry. "I'm serious. Nothing she doesn't need to survive, and make it as subtle as possible. This pony is important."
The woman gestured with one hand, though did not say anything in response at first. The orderly nodded, moved the cart past the table until it was right in front of him, and slid a plastic container open. Inside, resting in a bed of protective foam, was a cybernetic wing.
At first glance, it looked almost real. The feathers looked very convincing, though Charles recognized the distinctive sheen of synthetics in the reflected lights from overhead. Still, the color was a perfect match, and the synthetic muscle woven in exactly the way a real wing would be. He was sure that if he had taken the measurements on Rainbow's other wing he would have found it a perfect match. "That's... impressive."
"I'm thrilled you're satisfied, Sir Charles Gray. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to work without ponies interrupting me. Surgery is delicate enough, and in case you haven't noticed, we're riding an airship."
Charles didn't stay to argue. Instead he moved about the ship, questioning his fellow knights about the affairs of the war. What he learned was not good.
He returned to watch the remainder of the surgery, even though he did not want to. It was hard to watch someone he had come to care about cut open on her back, the gel turning black from the poison on her blood and chunks of awful something resting on the bottom of the tank. It looked like his friend was being opened for taxidermy, or perhaps being dissected. Yet the surgeon seemed as skilled as she had claimed to be, for never did she seem even slightly perturbed by what she saw. Precision robotic arms moved like dancers, slicing and sewing, laying tubes and carefully settling implants.
Charles watched as one of them removed the emergency bioreactor, itself dripping with a sickly black something that made the aircraft reek of decay. It was all Charles could do not to lose his oat breakfast all over the floor.
He didn't know how long it had all taken, surely not more than a few hours. The incisions were all closed then, the fluid drained and the implants in place. The surgical table became her hospital bed. The orderly removed her oxygen mask and exchanged it with a warm-looking blanket.
"How is she?" Charles asked the surgeon, unable to keep the concern from his voice. He shouldn't have to lie, should he? It wouldn't be true to say he didn't care about Rainbow. "What did she need?"
There was no sign of exhaustion in the surgeon, mental or physical. Unlike biological brains, cybernetic minds never grew tired even after intensely difficult mental labor. "You won't like the answer, and I don't think she would either. Still... The natives are sturdier than they look. Frankly, she shouldn't have been alive when we got here. I'll spare you the details, so you can spare the floor of my ship. She's got an artificial liver, one lung, several muscle grafts, and most of her intestine. You already know about the wing. Judging on the scar tissue, she remained active almost immediately after whatever hackjob surgery you did on her with those stupid stubs of yours."
She gestured at his hooves with her thin fingers, scowling. "She's to remain in bed for the next three days, non-negotiable. No vigorous athleticism for the next three months minimum, preferably six. Regular checkups every day for two weeks, then every week for six months. We have no idea which of the anti-rejection medications her body is going to accept." There was a pause. "But, if you'd like the good news, she can now breathe underwater and we installed an accelerator cannon in her torso."
Charles jerked closer to the woman impulsively, his eyes going steely hard. But she was already putting up her hands in a defensive gesture. "Only joking! I hadn't realized natives didn't have a sense of humor. Or that our King employed knights so opposed to progress."
He relaxed, moving past her to Rainbow's resting form. "Whatever. Just let me know when we arrive. Otherwise, I'll stay here until she wakes up." Charles sat on his haunches beside the surgical table, which still smelt faintly of antiseptic and death. He was true to his word; he would wait.
* * *
The mobile cargo platform was far larger inside than Chance had ever guessed. But then, she supposed at least part of that had to do with being a pony: everything looked big when you were half as far off the ground as the people who had built the thing. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were in the cab with Pip, leading whoever might follow them on a wonderfully circuitous jaunt through the hills that would (hopefully) make it almost impossible to follow them.
The cargo platform had four rooms; a cab, a kitchen and living area, a bedroom, and (unsurprisingly) a covered cargo area. Chance was alone in the last of these chambers. She wanted to sleep, which was exactly what Sweetie Belle had done. But she was so anxious and fearful that sleep had not come, so she wandered past Enrique to sit alone in the cargo area and fiddle uselessly with the radio equipment, trying to get a signal to Truth.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
"Second Chance! Second Chance, I see your signal!" All at once the weight of Truth's transmission came crashing down on her, bypassing the safeguards she had in place preventing high-bandwidth transmissions and forming the illusion of a pony in the room with her, his body glowing blue yet illuminating nothing on the long metallic room around them. "Where the hell have you been? It seemed like you must've been killed in your jump, since I couldn't even get the signal from your suits. By now you'd be cooked alive from the radiation."
A mental projection could not embrace her, yet she felt as though he surely would if he could have. "You're in a vehicle, there's a human in here with you. You've found friendlies then?"
Chance nodded, though she knew the projection couldn't actually see her. Truth was using the implants in her brain to read her reactions, not anything the projection could've seen if it were real. "Barely. There's some version of the virus Samil used; made everyone want to kill us." She sighed, resting her head against the cold metal behind her. "But Enrique didn't have military implants, so it could only do so much with him. We're pretty sure we wiped it out, but there are plenty of other people with it we couldn't help."
"Really?" Truth paused, twisting his face into something like concentration. "Lunar command says the Alajuela bunker went dark a few hours ago. If it's a similar virus, it shouldn't be too much trouble. We've already got an antivirus ready for upload. Unfortunately if they've locked themselves off the grid it means someone will have to get in there and patch themselves into the local network, but that isn't our problem." He smiled, moving so close she would've been able to feel the heat of him if there was anything to feel. Of course there was nothing stopping him from incorporating false sensory input from more than just her vision. He just usually didn't.
"I've got some good news and some bad news." Then he grinned. "I've always wanted to say that!"
Chance felt drained, but it wasn't as though she expected their recent disasters to suddenly impart emotional maturity he had never possessed. "Okay; bad news." Chance rose, glancing once at the open doorway. There was some heated conversation coming from the cab; apparently none of them had noticed her. Then again, for all she knew each of her friends might be in the middle of their own exchange with Truth. "It couldn't make the situation much worse.”
"Not really," he agreed. "And you probably already guessed it. The Prismatic Fury's done, Chance. Stick a fork in it or maybe spread some butter because she's toast!"
Chance didn't laugh. It was like being told about the death of a friend. Celestia help them when Scootaloo found out.
"Oh, it gets worse," Truth said, his voice almost sickeningly cheerful. "We crashed right into an old city, one that was hit directly with the nuclear disruption weapons. It's piping hot down here, hotter than the inside of a microfusion reactor. Also, all but one of the gating machines Avalon gave us got completely trashed. Really, it's a miracle the one survived.
"There's good news?"
He nodded again. "You bet! Avalon also sent the designs for the gating machines, and the programs to run them. I forwarded them to the Aegis. By now, they probably already have engineers grafting the things to the hull. They'll be flying into Equestria with the antivirus in no time! I let them know where we crashed the instant we went down; and the ship's interim captain informed me a rescue gunship would be sent immediately. It's only a day away from you; you can survive that long, right?"
"I'm sure we can." She struck the thick wall with a hoof. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make it ring a little with the sound. "This thing is pretty sturdy."
"There's more, though." He stopped, suddenly avoiding her eyes. True to his name, he did not lie to her. Deception wasn't just against his nature, he wasn't physically capable. Not to a user, anyway. "I got a message through the Rift from Equestria a few hours ago, addressed to you. It's a recording, ultra-high-fidelity, from Princess Luna. She insisted I only tell you about it when you were alone." He looked around, as though the mock eyes she seemed to see could actually perceive anything she couldn't. "You are alone, right?"
Chance hadn't even seen anything, and yet she already felt wide awake. "Yes!" she whispered, harshly. “I'm alone! You can show me!" She started to pace, walking all the way to the end of the cargo area and back again. At least, as far as she could go. Most of this room was filled with supplies; air canisters and CO2 scrubbers and water tanks. As much as they had dared to load with what little time they had.
"You should sit down and get into a resting position, then. It's a full-sensory simulation. The special effects aren't nearly as good as some of the pre-collapse holos, but the work was surprisingly good. I give it six out of ten stars."
Chance hadn't felt the need to watch any of the old Earth holos in a long time. Not that her Nanophage didn't support it, but those holos had assumed a human observer, which meant they assigned the viewer human senses. It was far too disorienting to be switched back to a familiar body only to be forced into her own when the film ended. Still, she wasn't about to argue, and she took a resting position on the ground. She closed her eyes as if to dream. "Truth, you never told me you had printed a sensory recorder. Twilight could've used it to shoot our home movies."
"That's because I didn't," he said, matter-of-factly. "The transmission lacks hardware information from a recorder. If I had to guess, I would say that she assembled the raw byte code manually. Quite impressive for an organic."
Chance nodded. "I... didn't know she could do that." She closed her eyes. "Let's see it."
The world twisted and faded away, taking the cold of metal on her skin and the rumbling of the engines and the smell of dirt and soap. Only the swaying and rocking of the car remained; inner ear function was never bypassed as a way of ensuring someone watching a full-sensory recording could be revived.
It felt exactly like one of her many shared dreams. In this case, the setting seemed to be a wide clearing outside Ponyville, by night. Only the night wasn't dark the way Chance saw it; she saw now as Luna saw. The full moon illuminated everything as brightly as the sun ever had.
She was not alone. Luna stood opposite, looking exactly as Chance remembered. Chance's perception of Luna was not wearing her armor and wielding her sword, as she probably always was these days.
"Listen very carefully," she said, seeming to look Chance directly in the eye. Yet Chance knew this was only a recording; it could not hear or see her, nor could it respond to anything she did. "You will not like what I tell you, and you will not be able to forget. I believe you deserve to know, yet I would not fault you for shutting off this recording now. I wish I could tell you in person, yet I fear there is no time."
She nodded again, face burning with determination. Her dream-form shifted, resolving itself not into herself as a filly, but as the human Dr. Colven. She had blonde hair, and her cutie mark was pinned to her breast instead of identification. Only the eyes didn't change. Her transformation did not make her as tall as Luna, but almost. "What is this about?" Her voice sounded no different despite the change in body.
"If you are hearing this, you have left Equestria and returned to your homeworld. I have hesitated to show you all this out of selfishness. I knew that once I showed you, I would surely lose you. Yet it is wrong of me to sacrifice the fate of an entire world merely because I did not wish to lose a friend."
The field outside Ponyville shifted and flickered, and resolved instead to a laboratory on Luna-7. There was a glass ceiling above them, and a huge holographic display set into the floor. The design for the spell flickered there alongside an image of the Tree of Harmony, looking so similar it was almost frightening. Chance couldn't help but be impressed that Luna's knowledge of Earth had grown so extensive just from sharing Chance's dreams.
Chance moved her hands through the holofield, zooming in on the portion that Twilight simply called "magic", the trunk that on the Tree had an image strikingly similar to her own cutie mark. Symbols and intricate equations came into being, along with a huge empty space. Conditional statements and huge power feeds that connected to nothing, making the structure unstable. The Tree of Harmony had something there, and without knowing what it was she had no chance of finishing the spell.
Luna heaved a heavy sigh and sat down, looking up through the glass ceiling at the night sky. It was hard to tell if those were Equestria's stars or Earth's, if there was a difference. "Very well. It begins like this: why do you think there are only four living Alicorns? Does that sound like enough to sustain a breeding population?"
Chance struggled with that a moment before answering. "You said making the spell made you immortal, right? My guess is it used your souls for part of the structure, which meant your bodies couldn't die."
For a few seconds, Chance almost thought Luna could see her. This was so similar to the oneiromancy Luna had struggled to teach her that it was hard to imagine she wasn't actually here now. Was it just that she knew Chance so well she could guess what she would say? "I did say that. I never said the spell made us Alicorns, however. Not all the participants were even ponies, and the ones that weren't Alicorns when we started didn't end that way when it was finished."
Chance started pacing, her nebulous thoughts forming in the air behind her like a wispy trail as she walked. The stars overhead seemed to swirl, rearranging themselves seemingly at random. "So what you're implying... That Alicorns were their own race, once... How could the tribes possibly compete? Unicorn magic is nothing like yours, and you've also got the durability of earth ponies and the flight of pegasai! Why would the other tribes have crowded you out?"
Luna merely looked pointedly at her, though she didn't actually say anything. Was this a test of her intelligence, perhaps? It wouldn't be the first time that Luna had tested her this way, challenging her to discover the answers for herself. The Socratic Method was alive and well in Equestria. Then again, it also reinforced the illusion that this wasn't merely a recording, but was actual communication. Even if it wasn't.
"Unless... Unless for some reason that wasn't an issue, because... something wiped you out. Otherwise there wouldn't be so few of you." She stopped pacing. "What could've done that? Before the Tree of Harmony, magic wasn't possible, so you couldn't have done it to each other!"
"If that were true, how did I survive on the moon for a millennium?" She sighed. "Or perhaps you think it natural that our planet is so unsteady its orbit must be manually controlled. Perhaps you think it natural the turning of the seasons relies on the hooves of our ponies, and that the animals require our assistance to survive."
Chance did not open her mouth to speak again for several minutes more, as she tried to process everything Luna had just told her. She seemed to be saying that something catastrophic had happened, something that had scarred the planet forever. It was apparently such an ancient event that the physical damage had mostly healed. Whatever it was had wiped out almost all of the Alicorns, not leaving a single male survivor and only two females.
Chance thought she saw distant cities, more glorious and beautiful than anything Earth had ever seen. As if from a distance, she saw the flashes one by one, the distinctive clouds, the shockwaves. She shivered all over. "What does this have to do with Earth?"
Luna paced quietly around the holofield so that she was facing Chance again. "Think on this, Chance. We relied on sources of magic that were almost completely drained. Crystals that collected magical energy, and our own life force. Both of these were nearly exhausted. The lesser tribes were so ravished as to exist only in scattered remnants. The climate was either scorching hot or fiercely cold, only the thin ring between these regions could support life. We had no magic to make things right, and beyond that we didn't even know for sure that we should."
She was crying now. Luna did not sob, her dignity did not lapse and her voice did not break. But there were tears. "We were so young... I was even younger than you are now, Chance... everypony we knew was dead. Every friend, every relative. Our parents. Our elder brothers and sisters. Everypony outside our little group that we had ever met was dead."
"The six of us... different races, but one common suffering." She wiped her eyes, and gritted her teeth. "We would not, could not permit life to take the same course again. If we were going to devote ourselves to ensuring that life did survive here, we would not do so only so that future generations would suffer as we had."
"There were two theories, and an even split between us. The first group, belonging to Chrysalis and Sombra and Tirek, felt that the only way to prevent another catastrophic war was to create some central force to influence and control every soul on Equus. Thoughts that would lead to violence, thoughts that would lead to the creation of devices and spells that might create disharmony and death, would be erased before they formed. No weapons would ever be lifted again. There would never be another war."
Chance could stay silent no longer. "That's horrible!" she exclaimed, hiding her anger quite poorly. "How can a spell judge what thoughts are dangerous or violent? The exact same invention can save lives and take them in different hands! Would there not be any scalpels, because somepony might hurt somepony else? Or take nuclear technology – our whole society ran on nuclear power until we had an antimatter reactor! You can't keep using fossil fuels forever!"
Luna waited patiently for Chance to finish, waited until her breathing had slowed, before nodding with satisfaction. "Celestia and Discord and I agreed with you. We also did not wish to see conflict destroy Equus, but were not willing to sacrifice the free will of its citizens. Our solution was the one that was ultimately chosen, though all three of the others resented us for it. That is the last section of the spell."
"This message contains the spell as we wrote it, complete and functional. As functional as Equestria. Of course alterations will be required, so that the spell understands humans instead of trying to fit them into the Equestrian ecology."
"How does it work? What did you do instead?" Chance's hands were squeezed so tightly into fists that it probably would've hurt, if that had been part of Luna's program. Evidently she hadn't taken the time to incorporate the sensations of pain.
"Celestia, Discord, and I did not believe that any end was worth the sacrifice of free will. Yet we knew the Outsiders would return, would turn ponies against each other. This is what they have always done. It is what they must do."
"Why?" Chance knew Luna wasn't really here. The instant she said something Luna didn't expect, she wouldn't be able to get a response. Yet Luna seemed to know her well enough to predict every question, every objection. "Why don't they leave us alone? Why do they care if we're living happily and well?"
The illusion faded from around her. Luna-7 vanished right along with her body. She could still see and still hear, but in the darkness only the stars remained. Then came Earth, as Chance had always remembered it. It changed beneath her eyes, the continents shifted slightly and human superstructures vanished, and it was Equestria. As she watched, the planet transformed again, the ocean slightly darker. Yet the stars were always the same. Again and again the planet changed in subtle ways, though in every case Chance could still recognize her homeworld if she looked closely enough.
She could not turn around to look, yet she heard Luna's voice behind her. "My answer comes from Discord, so we can't be certain. Yet it seems true; that in universes with life, there is always one planet, this one, which the Outsiders target. Discord believes that the beings that evolve here will always be the only ones with a hope of standing against the Outsiders when in the far distant future they travel bodily to bring their order to the chaos of organic life. Always this is the world they target, and always they conquer it. In time far distant, they will take the entire universe and model it on themselves."
"We can't know for sure, Chance. All that matters is that if our worlds fall, our native universes are doomed to die with them, eventually." The vision shifted again, and the swirling of the stars resolved themselves into a rocky cavern, illuminated by the glow of powerful magic. At its center was a great tree woven of crystal and magic. Chance was a pony again, standing beside Luna in the soft blue light that came from the tree.
"Each doom is tailored perfectly, yet they could not account for our communication. In bringing our two worlds together, we are stronger than we could have been as individuals. Together, perhaps we can triumph in the end, and make at least two worlds in the infinite expanse that never bow to the voices of the Abyss."
"Together with Truth, you have the tools to make of your world what we made of Equestria." While the crag containing the Tree remained unchanged, Chance watched time flow like sand outside it, until the wasteland beyond reminded her very much of the blasted nuclear wasteland of Earth. Climate and rampant magic could do for the planet just as surely as Outsider-designed weapons. "In that lifeless moment, we remade the world. We preserved the planet before the last survivors of all the intelligent species could be extinguished."
"Your world is now as ours once was. Its salvation can be the same. The last part of the spell, the part you were missing and the part that will protect humanity from the Outsiders, is compassion." She extended a hoof, resting it on the crystalline trunk. "As long as this tree stands, no Equestrian can ever think about harming another without first feeling that harm as their victim might feel it."
"It has not prevented evil, for if it did then it would be no better than the solution Sombra first devised. Yet it has discouraged evil, and made it impossible for the Outsiders to get too great an influence. Individuals may fall... as I know better than most... but cities and civilizations will not. Cannot. That is what you were missing, and now you know."
Chance felt hooves wrap around her, a familiar embrace that Luna would not have been able to feel in return. "The spell will destroy you, Chance. Even if you succeed. Yet you would not be the pony I know if you did not care more about your world than yourself. I did."
The recording ended abruptly, so abruptly that Chance found her legs twitching wildly and her eyes blinded by the glowstrips on the celling. She blinked, took several deep breaths, and forced herself to look at the projection of Truth that was still waiting beside her. "Did you... Did you catch all that?"
He nodded, and for once there seemed something somber about him. "And her spell diagrams too. I'm integrating them with our designs right now. Five minutes, tops."
Chance twisted her head a little, so she could see the reflection of her cutie mark in the polished metal of the wall. "Do you think we can make it work? We don't have any Alicorns, or chaos spirits."
Truth sat down across from her, looking thoughtful. "Together? Based on all the knowledge I have been given of magic... I believe it might be possible. My microfusion survived the crash, and I can easily hold the entire spell in my mind. We might be able to make up what we lack in magical reserves with the field-emitter Avalon gave us. The spell is self-sustaining. Once the reaction starts, it's like collapsing a false vacuum, impossible to stop." Then, without any emotion whatsoever, "We'll be in the center of it, Chance. The conduits of energies an order higher on the Kardashev Scale than humanity has ever attained. We will almost certainly not survive."
"Celestia did. Luna did. All six of the others."
Truth nodded. "I couldn't tell you how."
"Does that mean you... don't want to? Are you afraid of your mortality?"
"I... don't think so. There is no 'I', Chance. I have no ego, no self. No conception of myself outside of the abstraction I use to communicate with organics. I can't be afraid of death without being alive first. No, I was talking about you. You're young. You've got a boyfriend, spring's not that far away. Couldn't you wait to save Earth for a few years? Live your life first? I waited for thousands of years in Equestria, a few more years are nothing."
Chance looked at the wall, out the round window with glass so thick it was like the porthole on a submarine. She saw gray trees, all without leaves. She saw distant hills that had once been thick rainforest, dead and empty. "Truth, how many people are living in bunkers? At this exact moment?"
There was no hesitation. "941,983,227 documented Federation citizens."
"How many were there twenty years ago?"
"1,461,772,002."
"That's why I can't wait, Truth. Every day means more children who will never see the sun with their own eyes, more children that will never know what it's like not to go to bed hungry." Chance groaned and rose to her hooves. "I've been living on borrowed time since I got to Equestria. Account has finally come due. It's time to pay the debt."