Our seventh day in the Wasteland dawned clear and cold. Our modest altitude put us above the usual morning dust clouds that scudded along the ground, so the sunrise illuminated the empty red sky. It was something resembling beautiful. Everyone seemed to be feeling it. Our breakfast of broth and gruel even seemed more satisfying, seasoned by easy conversation. The ley line continued straight on to the west, and our march felt jaunty as we followed its lead. During our midday pause to dig our lunch of trail rations out of our bags, I read the ley line again, listening to the deep whispers of the dead earth, and what I felt made a smile burst out on my face. For just a moment, I allowed myself to think of home, my little house with its white plaster walls and the sheepfold outside with my flock calling for their food in the morning, and the golden sun rising behind the Princesses’ castle. I missed the peace and the green with a longing ache, as I always did when I was away. With a little luck, I’d be home again soon.
Hook noticed my expression and smiled too. “Found it, huh?”
I nodded quickly to him, but spoke to Sarge. “Sarge, I can feel an intersection. It’s around ten miles away.”
Quiet cheers went up from the squad, and Sarge’s craggy face relaxed into a smile. “Good work. Let’s move out!”
An eager pace brought us to the intersection well before dusk. It proved to lie in a tiny valley between two of the gently sloped foothills. The ley line we had been following led us straight into the valley, and the intersecting line ran off almost perpendicular to it. At least for this mission, X really did mark the spot.
I left my bags on the ground a safe distance away while I walked the intersection, getting a feel for it. Intersections were large places. Two small ley lines might make an intersection a few paces across. This one, at the confluence of two bigger lines, could have accommodated most of the squad standing nose-to-tail across its diameter. I circled it slowly, spiraling in toward the middle, feeling carefully for just the right spot. As I walked, using my hoofprints in the gray dirt to track my course, I tried to imagine what this place had been like before the War. Standing where I was, I would have been virtually immolated in magic, practically drowning in it. I wondered whether the hills and mountains had been formed by the storms, or whether houses and farms had straddled the valleys and climbed the slopes. I wondered who had lived here two centuries ago, when the world was whole. I wondered how they had died in the End.
Two yards north of the intersection’s geometric center, my hooves tingled. I stopped walking to probe more deeply. Dead ley lines weren’t entirely dead. There were innumerable, miniscule sparks along any stretch of line where the planet’s magic still glowed like embers buried in ash. Those embers were a big part of what let me feel the ley lines at all, but they were otherwise useless and meaningless – except where ley lines crossed.
I smiled, feeling exactly what I had been looking for. At that moment, I stood over two overlapping embers, one from each ley line. Their combined glow was more than an ember. It was smoldering punk, and any breath of air would coax it into flame. And I had carried a breath all the way here from Equestria.
I dug down into the dead earth with my hooves until I was knee-deep, then I stepped out of the hole and returned to my bags. The atmosphere around the squad sparked with excitement. This was the mission. We’d made it, and soon we would turn our steps toward home. Hook clapped me on the back as I unfolded my bag. Anvil and Glacier danced a jig together. Even Bluebelle looked happy.
First, I opened the pocket containing the Seed that fed us. I reached in and laid my hoof on it, letting it restore the energy I had consumed since last night. When I was full to the brim, I tied its pocket securely closed and opened the other pocket. Inside was the second Seed, fully charged with undiluted Equestria and set aside untouched until this very moment. The green motes under its skin were beacons, stars pulled from the sky, so bright I had to avert my eyes as I brought it out. It sloshed so full of the vital magic of the living planet that holding it was like wading through a rushing river of springtime, filled with the smell of new grass tickling my ankles and lengthening days spent peacefully grazing the sheep.
I carried the Seed to the shallow hole and placed it gently inside. I brushed the dirt back into the hole, covering the Seed. Then I concentrated.
Each squad included one earth pony. Earth ponies were all but helpless. We couldn’t defend ourselves or our squadmates against the creatures of the Wasteland. There were even some unicorns who had magic senses nearly as sensitive as mine. On the face of it, earth ponies were nothing but a liability in the Wasteland.
But each squad included one earth pony, because our magic is green.
I reached into the Seed, not with my senses but with my magic. I let the Seed’s magic flow into me and around me, putting all the power of Equestria at my command, and I had no need of a horn to shape it. I forged the spell with hooves that had walked through rows of growing green crops and with bones that had carried me over the good black earth that would one day hold me. I called to the Seed and it responded, filling my body with its eagerness to send down roots and grow up toward the sun. I smiled, and I let it.
Magic rushed out of me and into the ground like a silent explosion. I staggered from the loss and the joy of it, and where I had stood, a sapling thrust up out of the dead earth, its tiny leaves glistening silver with dew that had never fallen in the Wasteland. In a heartbeat, its thin branches were at my eye level. In another, they shaded me from high overhead, bright green leaves and strong branches supported by a trunk thick enough to hold up the sky. I touched its gnarled bark and felt through it to its roots, creaking and groaning as they spread wide to clutch the earth in an unbreakable grip. And most importantly, I felt its taproot, a limb formed more of magic than of wood. Its unknowable length plunged into the depths of the earth and pierced both ley lines’ embers, binding them together and breathing the magic of life through them.
Touching the tree, I felt the embers catch fire. It was a small fire, hardly noticeable, but the Wasteland couldn’t extinguish it. It would grow and spread, slowly at first, but inch by inch it would infect the Wasteland with the rejuvenated power of the earth. That power was anathema to the Wasteland, and its touch would transform the Wasteland into something else. It would not be what it was before the War, but it would be something my children’s children could call home. Someday, these ley lines would flow again with power.
I slumped against the trunk of the tree, exhausted and drained. Hook rushed over with the other Seed, pressing it to the back of my neck. replenishing the vast quantity of magic I had just spent. “Thanks,” I said weakly.
He just nodded and sat down next to me, holding the Seed in place as I recovered.
We made camp under the canopy of the tree. It would be years before the ley line flowed with enough magic to draw from, but we all felt happier being near a piece of Equestria. Besides which, the magic of the activated Seed was as hostile to Wasteland life as the lack of such magic was to Equestrians. The creatures would steer well clear of the tree. A night in a tree-camp was like a holiday for us. It was our reward for making it here.
With the glowstick casting merry shadows among the windblown leaves, we gathered for dinner. Sarge always smuggled a treat along in his bags for the night we accomplished our mission. This time, it was a little pot of honey and a hoof-sized round of hard old cheese. I drizzled honey over a biscuit of hardtack and shivered with pleasure at the taste. Anvil and Glacier laughingly toasted our success with slivers of cheese, and ate them looking into each other’s eyes. Hook teased them with catcalls, making Anvil blush and earning a smack on the arm from Glacier.
Doc mostly ignored the festival atmosphere, still immersed in fiddling with the magic-storing crystal. After her initial catastrophic success, she had learned to exert some degree of control over how much magic the crystal discharged at once. It struck me as a useless project, because the crystal’s discharges were only raw magic that simply flashed into light. Its function as a new kind of magic storage medium was much more interesting, I thought. I was already envisioning squads wearing bandoliers of charged crystals against their coats, holding enough magic to feed them during an entire mission without any need for lengthy sessions individually holding a Seed.
I looked away as the crystal flashed, blinking the dazzle out of my eyes as Doc grumbled under her breath. As my vision cleared, I noticed Bluebelle sitting by herself against the tree, partially hidden by the gentle curve of the immense trunk. I hesitated, then slipped away from the party and quietly went to join her. As I approached, I saw that she was holding Boxer’s horn. She had partially unwrapped the bandages from around it and was cradling it in her hooves, looking down at it with fathomless eyes. “Bluebelle? Mind if I join you?”
She flinched away, covering the horn with a spastic movement, but when she looked up and saw it was me, she relaxed. “I don’t mind if you don’t,” she said.
I eased myself down next to her. We sat in silence with our backs pressed to the rough bark. I didn’t look at Boxer’s horn. I knew anything I could say would be inadequate, so I waited for her to say it. Princess Luna’s moon glided over the hills, huge and full, casting gray shadows over the gray Wasteland. Its light made quicksilver of Bluebelle’s tears.
“He loved fighting, you know.” She looked at me as though making sure I was listening, as though I could be doing anything else. I met her eyes and she turned away. “He always knew he’d die in the Wasteland. He told me so. But he never seemed afraid of it. It was more like he looked forward to it, like it was something glorious instead of…” She choked. “Instead of dying where we couldn’t even bury him.”
I just nodded.
“Even at the very end, he wasn’t afraid.” She clutched the horn tighter. “He was angry. Because he couldn’t keep fighting. He whispered it to me.” A tear dropped into her lap as she turned to face me. Her eyes were pleading. “He was so much braver than I am. Why does that make me hate him?”
“You’re no coward,” I told her. “I’ve seen you fight just as hard as Boxer ever did. You were his equal in every way, except one.” She held her breath, hopeful and yet fearful, unsure what I would say next. “To you, death isn’t glorious.”
Her held breath hissed out in a sigh and her eyes fell to the horn. Slowly, she nodded. “He’s just… gone. There’s no reason for it, no justification. He can’t wear the medals the Princesses will award him when we get back.” She snuffled and wiped her nose roughly with the back of a dirty hoof. “And we’re gonna have to fight those things again, and now I have to fight hard enough for me and him. He’s a stupid fool for dying and making me do that.” She laughed like sobbing.
I nodded in agreement, and smiled wryly, and stayed by her. It was the only form of repayment I could make.
The moon hung high above the hills when Bluebelle spoke again. “Shepherd, would you bury Boxer for me?”
“Of course,” I murmured.
“Here, under the tree,” she said, looking around. “He wanted to be buried in the Wasteland, but if he’s here it’s like being buried in both the Wasteland and in Equestria, don’t you think?”
“I think that’s true.”
She swallowed hard, but her voice remained steady as she held the horn out to me, still partially wrapped in its bloodless bandages. “I want you to do it because you’ll find just the right spot for him. That’s what you do.”
I accepted the horn and carefully wrapped it back up. “Do you want to be there?” I asked gently.
She shook her head. “Show me where when it’s done.”
I nodded and quietly left to look for just the right spot.
I had a good idea of where Boxer should rest. There was a place I had noticed earlier, a lee between two of the tree’s roots, facing the wind and the mouth of the valley, where he could stand eternal guard.
I circled the tree’s huge trunk, stepping carefully over roots and stones as I went. My path took me through the camp, which had grown quiet in my time with Bluebelle. Everyone seemed to be either asleep or casually conversing as they stood a practically-ceremonial watch. Everyone except Doc.
Even as filthy as she was after an unwashed week in the Wasteland, Doc’s white coat shone in the light of the glowstick. She was burning the midnight oil, still hunched over the chunk of crystal. As I stepped over a root immediately behind her tent, the crystal let out a burst of light and my magic sense jolted as the horn jumped off of my hoof.
I froze in shock, blinking down at it. After a moment I gathered my courage and picked the wrapped horn up, holding it at arm's length. I twisted it around, inspecting it from all angles, uncertain about what I might find. The bandages at the tip end of the horn were torn in a ragged hole, as though something had burst through them. I stood staring at the horn for a long moment while pieces of the puzzle clicked together in my head.
I gasped aloud. My heart thundered as I hurried back to Bluebelle.
“What?” Bluebelle said, looking poleaxed.
“I think there is a way for Boxer to keep fighting,” I repeated, holding his horn up between us. “But it’s your call whether I reveal it to the rest of the squad.” I fell silent, waiting, unable to guess what her answer would be.
She sat perfectly still with her gaze turned inward. The moment stretched.
Finally she nodded. “He would have liked nothing more.”
I tried not to let my relief be too obvious. We would need every possible advantage to meet the danger posed by those too-intelligent creatures. Now I just had to hope that I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree.
“What?” Doc said, looking suspicious.
Sarge only grunted in agreement.
I jabbed Boxer’s horn at them eagerly. The two unicorns flinched away. “An amputated horn still works. Boxer’s can still shape his spell.”
Doc straightened, seeming to get her bearings. She shook her head dismissively. “There’s no evidence for such an outrageous and perverse claim, but even if there were, so what? Without a living body to supply raw magic to the horn…” She trailed off, slowly following the line of my pointing hoof. Her eyes found the crystal. “You can’t mean…” She trailed off into silence. I was prepared to argue further, but noticed the faraway look in her eyes just in time and clapped my mouth closed, allowing her to talk herself into it. “The bursts are raw magic, it’s true, but they’re undirected— perhaps a Lodestar manifold? Yes, that could work… and a shaped crystal to enhance the effect? Though that will have to wait for better facilities.” She continued muttering to herself as she wrenched open her notebook and began scrawling furiously.
I looked at Sarge. He shrugged, torn between resignation and wry amusement. “If Doc’s OK with trying it, I’m OK with trying it. Good thinking, Shepherd.”
We remained camped at the tree for another day as Doc cannibalized every spare piece of metal in our equipment, using Anvil and Glacier mercilessly to heat and cool the metal with their magic, mangling and reshaping it into a seemingly endless series of enclosures and rigs, flanges and curlicues. I had no idea what any of it did, but Doc knew her business. I didn’t doubt her.
I was by my tent, allowing my mind to wander as I cleaned my remaining gear for the hundredth time, when my reverie was broken by Doc’s voice calling me. I stood, a little stiffly from laying in one place for so long, and went around the tree trunk to where Doc’s improvised foundry had been set up to keep the heat and noise away from the rest of us.
Anvil and Glacier lay in the shade, looking exhausted. Even Sarge was a little ragged around the edges.
Doc, by contrast, seemed full of energy. She waved a hoof insistently. “Shepherd! Come come, we need to test it.”
“It?” I asked, my eyebrows tilting.
Doc grinned and stepped aside with a flourish, revealing a stubby metal object laying atop a spread piece of canvas.
“Oh.” I squinted, trying to make sense of the thing. “What is it?”
Doc rolled her eyes, but even my obviously staggering ignorance couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm. “Quite possibly the greatest leap forward in magical engineering in a thousand years! Even Coldfire’s hatpin didn’t have implications as far-reaching as this!”
“You don’t say?” I had never heard of Coldfire or their hatpin before.
“I do indeed! Why—” Sarge cleared his throat meaningfully, and Doc’s eyes darted to him. She visibly restrained herself. “Ahem. We’ve tested the device in isolation, but naturally it needs further testing, in a field setting. That’s where you come in, Shepherd.”
“Me?”
“Of course. It’s your weapon, after all.” Her horn glowed, levitating the object up to hover in front of me. She slowly rotated it so I could admire it from all angles.
From a distance it had merely been unimpressive. Up close, it was ugly. It was a short tube, about the diameter and half again the length of a unicorn’s horn. It was formed from a piece of metal that had been rolled and joined at the seam by a lumpy weld. A crude cap sealed off one end of the tube, but the other end gaped open. As Doc rotated it to reveal the opposite side, I felt a lump in my throat. A word had been etched into the metal: BOXER. Around the name, a roughly square section of the tube had been cut on three sides, like a flap.
“Like it?” Doc asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Boxer’s horn and the crystal are inside, as well as a magic-transferring circuit of my own design.” She paused for a moment to look self-satisfied. “The button here—” She indicated the square flap. “—closes the circuit and sends a shot of magic from the crystal into the horn, producing one of Boxer’s telekinetic bucks.”
“Now, let’s get you into the harness.” She tied the tube down under a flap of canvas attached to a crude bridle-like assembly made from lengths of rope and strips of blanket, then held it up for me to see. “It will hold the weapon next to your head, so you should be able to aim simply by looking at your target.”
The harness looked itchy, but I held still as she pulled it over my head, seating it around my muzzle and behind my neck. Not only was it itchy, the weapon made a strange weight on the right side of my face. I hoped I’d get used to it soon.
Doc stepped back, eyeing the harness critically. “The fit is alright. Try using it on the dirt over there.” She waved a hoof generally away from the camp.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, and reached up to my cheek. The button depressed silently, which surprised me for some reason. I felt magic jolt out of the crystal and through the horn, shockingly close and intense. A tiny crater thumped into existence a few yards away, tossing a plume of dust into the breeze. I gaped at it. “Huh.” It felt strange. Not the physical discomfort of the harness, but the possibility that I might not be helpless forever. “Huh,” I repeated.
It took me a while to get the hang of aiming the thing. The crude harness couldn’t hold it perfectly straight, so I had to compensate for its tendency to pull right as I pressed the button. Doc and Sarge helped by stacking rocks and making marks in the dirt for me to aim at as I fired over and over again. Boxer’s magic packed a punch, denting the ground into craters and shattering most rocks after a hit or two. I threw myself into the task and by the time dusk was rolling in, I’d progressed to shooting at thrown rocks. Doc’s horn glowed as she lobbed them as frequently as she could manage, while Sarge stood nearby, floating a steady stream of rocks to Doc to replace the ones I was turning into powder. I was just pleased that I was hitting more rocks than I was missing.
Finally, Doc called a halt. She wiped a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead, though I felt fine. She considered me appraisingly. “I hadn’t considered how much of an advantage mechanical magic would provide. Without the necessity of focusing and shaping the magic, the user suffers much lower levels of mental fatigue. Even unicorns would find devices like this useful.”
Sarge’s mouth twisted. “Maybe so, but having someone else’s horn like that… it’s not right.”
She frowned disapprovingly at him. “Such atavistic opinions have no place in scientific progress.”
He waved a hoof with a sigh. “I don’t have to like it to see the benefits. Shepherd here has been practicing for half a day and he’s already as combat-capable as unicorns who’ve spent decades honing their abilities. That’s a big deal, no matter how you slice it. This tech isn’t going away anytime soon. I’m just, yanno, expressing my reservations.”
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” I began slowly, feeling the words out as I said them, remembering Bluebelle under the tree and my flash of impotent anger at Hook. “While we’re alive and fighting, we matter. We’re working toward a future that’s better than the past. When we die, our part in that dies with us. Boxer is gone, but this—” I touched the weapon gently. “—means that he’s still able to work toward that future. It means his death wasn’t meaningless. That’s important, I think.”
Sarge looked at me for a long moment before walking toward the camp. He didn’t say anything, but he patted my shoulder as he passed by.
I chose to continue wearing the harness during dinner, hoping to get used to its awkward weight as soon as possible. I should have expected that it would be a topic of conversation, but luckily, Doc was more than happy to field all the questions about it. To her credit, she kept the boasting to a minimum.
As I ate, I thought about what I had said to Sarge. It still felt right, but I wasn’t sure how much of it was true and how much was born out of what the weapon meant to me personally.
I felt eyes on me, and looked up to meet Bluebelle’s gaze. I quailed inside, wondering what she thought of giving her approval now that she was confronted with the reality of it. But she smiled, and nodded to me, and turned her attention back to her food. I relaxed. Maybe what I’d said hadn’t been quite as self-serving as I’d feared.
A few minutes later, I popped the last bit of ration into my mouth and chewed as I went to my tent, leaving the cookfire conversations behind. I began gathering the supplies to scrub out my mess kit, but a moment later, I froze. The quiet rustling and scraping sounds of chitin moving against chitin rose up through the gray earth, rapidly growing louder. My heart hammered in my chest and I heard my own voice screaming, “We’re under attack!”