Ah, together at last! Isn't that sweet? Surely everything will be better now.
…
I know, I know. I should stop being so facetious. Sweetie Belle was right when she called me a jerk. Even here at the end, I can't help myself.
Chapter 7
Reunions
Scootaloo – magnificent artificial wings spread, eyes glittering, standing over a defeated griffon.
She'd found her!
Sweetie Belle's quest was over.
A dozen eloquent speeches, each practiced a dozen times, jostled in her mind, drowning each other out. As she grasped for one, any one, they scattered like pigeons, leaving her her with nothing but visions of how wonderful this reunion would be.
It was Millie who spoke first: “'Ey up. We're here to save you!” Then she burst into laughter.
Scootaloo looked over at her and grinned broadly. Her wings retracted with a sort of sussuration. “Millie! Glad you could make it, you old –”
“Oi,” said Millie. She was at the control panel again; Dignity began to accelerate. Wind whipped through the shattered windows.
Scootaloo shook her head, then looked round. “Tom? Sweetie Belle? What in Luna's name …?”
“Hey,” said Sweetie Belle. “I … We … I mean …” Millie's interruption had rather taken the wind from her sails. In the end she gave up and rushed forward to pull Scootaloo into a hug.
For a brief moment she felt a squeeze in return – then Scootaloo pushed her back. She was glaring at her. “Seriously, Sweetie, what the hell are you doing here? What is wrong with you?”
“I came to… ” stammered Sweetie Belle.
“Lassies, can we keep t' soap opera out t' cockpit?” said Millie.
Looking over to her, Scootaloo's eyes flicked briefly back to Sweetie Belle. “Sure thing.”
“Gregor there, I'm presumin' he in't dead?”
“Nope,” said Scootaloo.
Millie looked round at Sweetie Belle. “And I'm presumin' we ain't gonna just toss him outside?”
She shook her head. “N-no. I'd rather –”
“Righto. Tie him up. And this big flying snake you was fightin'?”
“Dead,” said Scootaloo. “I crashed the gunship into its flank,” she added with a grin.
“Good to hear. But we've still got pirates chasing us, so I'm takin' us down to Pinion Beach Terminus. There are a couple of Ilmarinen battleships stationed there. With any luck, these lot won't want to have a go.” Millie turned to look at them. “Now, I think you two have summat to work through. So go on, bugger off out of it.”
Sweetie Belle followed Scootaloo out of the cockpit and into the main cabin. Tom trailed them, dragging Gregor by his rear legs. Before Sweetie Belle could begin an explanation, Scootaloo had retrieved some diamond rope from beneath a shelf, and she and Tom began to tie the griffon. They talked briefly as they did so – about the fate of the rest of the researchers, and about other events Sweetie Belle hadn't been told about. She hovered off to the side, unsure.
Scootaloo's new wings kept drawing her eye. At first they looks like they might be metal, but the barbs of the feathers seemed impossibly detailed. A cobalt sheen resolved into spectral waves that shimmered across the surface as the angle changed. Close to the surface, the air itself seemed to refract light. When they moved, there was nothing mechanical in the motion. Perfectly symmetric, save for one thing – something more solid, almost like a pendant, hooked around the vane of a feather on the left.
When they were finished, Scootaloo sat on the oil-stained carpet opposite Sweetie Belle and stared at her. “Are you gonna tell me what you're doing here?”
Sweetie Belle's voice caught in her throat. She tried again: “I came to find you.” It came out in a tone quieter, more fillyish, than she'd imagined in her head.
“Why? I said in my note not to come looking for me.”
Sweetie Belle scratched at the threads of the carpet. “I know, but …”
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Neither should you!” Sweetie Belle dropped back, surprised by her own outburst. “Fuck,” she muttered. “This isn't … Couldn't you be glad to see me?”
Scootaloo gave a slight smile. “Look at you with the language.” She chewed on her lip. “But no. I didn't want to be followed. I said that. This place is dangerous, Sweetie Belle. And if you get hurt because you came after me … I mean, look what just happened.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the floor.
“And – I'm not going back with you. I'm not going back to Equestria.”
“Scoots,” said Tom, striding over from the trussed griffon, “to be fair to her, she's the reason my team got rescued. And the reason Millie is here.”
And the reason the pirates are here, thought Sweetie Belle, but she didn't say anything.
Scootaloo closed her eyes and sighed. “Thanks,” she said, putting a hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “That doesn't make it okay. But thanks.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “There's something else,” she said eventually. “About me being in danger … I kinda am. When I was looking for you, I got zapped by something.”
From there, she recounted everything she had learned from Saffron, and what had happened when she was captured by the griffons, including the size of the bounty.
“You've talked to her now?” said Tom.
“Yeah.”
Tom scratched his ear. “What's she like?”
“Kind of a jerk, actually.”
Scootaloo slammed her hoof down between them. “See? This is what I was talking about. It's dangerous here. Even if we escape the pirates, what if Twilight can't get this Saffron thing out of your head? What if it …” She looked at Sweetie Belle, her eyes wide and fearful. “And what about the daemons being dangerous? What's going to happen there?”
“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle. “She didn't get around to telling me.”
“Well, she'd damn well better. Do you have to be alone to talk to her?”
“I –” began Sweetie Belle. She was cut off by Dignity shuddering around them. “What was that?”
Scootaloo stood. “I'll go see.” Then, as Sweetie Belle tried to follow her and Tom: “No! Go talk to that thing in your head.” She grimaced as she turned away. Tom followed her into the cockpit.
A lump formed in Sweetie Belle's throat as she fell back and trudged towards her room.
“Love's a bitch,” said Saffron. “Eh, love?”
Sweetie Belle looked up from the blanket she'd been crying into. “What took so long? Its been ten minutes.”
“Bit too much inner turmoil for me to manifest.” Saffron stood on the far side of the room, tail swishing. “Don't worry, though. I'm mapping out that little brain as we speak. Soon I'll be able to appear whenever I want.”
“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle. “Wonderful.” She frowned. “But you still know what just happened? Or what I was thinking?”
“Both,” said Saffron. “I have access to all your sensory input – more or less – and everything in your conscious mind. But nothing deeper than that, so don't expect me to tell you why you're so messed up. Although … ” She shrugged “… I was in love once, and it made me do some pretty stupid things, so I'm not entirely unsympathetic.”
Sweetie Belle held up a hoof. “I'm not in the mood. You heard what Scootaloo said, didn't you? So what's the deal with the daemons?”
The faint smirk playing about Saffron's lips vanished. “Daemons,” she said softly, “are the reason why my civilisation is dead.”
She paused. If she had been expecting an awed response, Sweetie Belle didn't give her one. She just waited for Saffron to continue.
After letting the silence drag out, she did: “Just by whispering. You're immune – so far – because you don't understand the language they're speaking. But if you could …” Saffron turned and looked out the window. “I suppose you could say hearing what the daemons say drains your sanity. But it's more than that: They see the worst part of you, and return it to you, magnified. It's subtle. So subtle you don't notice it at first. But over time, your personality changes, your preoccupations become obsessions, your empathy becomes overshadowed by your own particular set of vices.
“That's how they destroyed us. Twisted our spirits until we could longer work together or care for one another. Seven years after they arrived, we had been reduced to savages, scavenging our past glories to survive. Maybe a decade after that, we were extinct. Barring yours truly, of course.”
Sweetie Belle stared at Saffron. “Why? Why would they do that?”
“They're not intelligent,” said Saffron. “Their effect is just a side effect of their nature. They no more intend to harm us than an insect intends to tickle you when it walks across your skin.” She smiled, but it was a deeply unpleasant expression. “The evil, if you must call it such, came from we, the victims; they merely reflected it back at us.”
“And we're in danger?”
“The daemons are speaking to you in our language – the qilin language. All our spells are in that language; the more you use them, the greater you'll understand our language, and consequently the more the daemons will be able to affect you.”
“Right,” said Sweetie Belle. “So, just we're on the same page: I have access to the most powerful set of spells ever, but using them will knock me out and slowly drive me mad.” She rubbed her hoof against her face. “I should have just brought the Alicorn Amulet with me, It would've been easier.”
“Close enough – except you have enough power to use some of the lower-level spells without hurting yourself. They'll still let the daemons in, though.” Saffron grinned. “Ain't life grand? Oh, and there's one more thing: When the daemons came through, they didn't speak our language. It took a little over three years for them to learn. You work out the implication for yourself.”
Sweetie Belle said nothing for several seconds. She just sat and listened to the oily muttering in her ears, almost drowned out by the engines. Dignity rattled again. “I just need to get back to Equestria with Scootaloo … Twilight will be able to fix everything. Or Celestia and Luna. It'll be okay.”
“I hope you don't mind me coming along for the ride,” said Saffron.
“Can you … leave, please? Now?”
Saffron shrugged as she vanished.
Disconnected shards of thoughts fell through Sweetie Belle's mind while she lay on the sideboard: Her past with Scootaloo, her future with Scootaloo, the entirety of Amaranth, the layers of doom accreting above her, and, briefly, how Saffron must be feeling. Dignity continued to shudder intermittently. She wasn't sure how long she lay in thrall to this malaise, but eventually she shook her head about to clear the murk, and stood. Everything's going to work out, she told herself. You found her! The hardest part is past you. All you have to do now is get to Ilmarinen, then back to Omphalos, and to Equestria. And then, without wanting to: Except you didn't apologise. But now, she felt she didn't want to. Or at least, that could wait until they got home.
She trudged back into the main cabin and, finding it still empty apart from a still-unconscious Gregor, headed into the cockpit. Warm air howled through the broken windows. Millie was still at the controls. Scootaloo sat at the back of the room, Tom beside her. Sweetie Belle suppressed a pang of jealousy, and began loud enough to be heard over the wind: “About the daemons –”
“That can wait,” said Millie. “We got more pressin' concerns. Again, wouldya believe it?”
“What?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Dignity's taken a hit. And …”
“That big snake I killed?” said Scootaloo. “I, uh, didn't.”
This time, no one needed to direct Sweetie Belle to the telescope; through the front windows, a winged shape hugged the horizon, body undulating with each wing stroke. The resemblance to the hatchlings was clear – the mandibles, the bright blue eyes – but even at this distance, she could pick out details that gave away age: Mottled patches of discolouration, radiating cracks across a forward eye, a craquelture of scars like great ridges and canals. It's mandibles opened, and a moment later a roar hit them, so deep, so laced with undertones, that Sweetie Belle felt it through her hooves and in her teeth rather than heard it.
It was still to distance for her to judge its size. She dragged her eyes away and looked round at Tom. “How large did your boss say the aelewyrm was?”
“Big,” said Scootaloo.
Tom nodded. “210 metres long, give or take. Sixteen metres wide in the middle. Wingspan of about seventy metres. It's amazing, really. Anything made of flesh like ours would collapse under its own weight before it reached even a quarter of that size.”
Scootaloo growled. “Thanks, dude. That'll make things so much more bearable when it crushes us like bugs.”
“Hold on,” said Millie, “that's brilliant. This thing is big, and it's heavy, right? How manoeuvrable is it?”
“The airship had no chance.”
Tom stared at Scootaloo. “But with the gunship you had no problems.”
“And Dignity in't a big fat airship.”
Tom stood and strode over to Millie. “The aelewyrm can turn faster than you'd expect. But if you keep those tricks up …” He looked round at Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, scratching an ear. “Crumbs. We might actually survive this.”
“I bloody well hope so,” said Millie. She played with the control panel, and outside the sky shifted until the aelewyrm was straight in front of them. “Now, I wonder …” She checked the rear view. “Persistent buggers, I'll give 'em that. They must've seen it, but they're still chasing us.”
Sweetie Belle cleared her throat. “So we're going to fly – drive – straight past it?”
“Best option,” said Millie. “It's between us and Pinion Beach. And unlike t' pirates, it won't try an' shoot or board us.”
“And running away from both would send us in the wrong direction and give one or both of these things a lead.”
“Yep.”
The four of them remained in the cockpit as the aelewyrm approached. Scale finally became apparent: A pony could hide in the cracks in its skin; each one of its six wings could blanket an ursa major; its eyes were as big as houses. It roared again, a contrabass rumble like an earthquake, and dropped closer to the ground. On its flank, just ahead of the rear pair of wings – where Scootaloo had rammed it with the gunship, perhaps – a fresh wound leaked grey and brown liquids.
“Finally got t' message,” said Millie, returning from the viewscope. “T' pirates are turnin' back. One headin' left, one right.”
Closer still: The aelewyrm was flying straight towards them now, its rear wings intermittently braking against the wind.
“Oh, Celestia,” said Scootaloo. “We're really gonna do this, aren't we? This is awesome”
“Aye, wonderful. Reight glad I came out here.” said Millie flatly. She was doing a bad job of suppressing a grin.
Sweetie Belle said nothing and tried not to shake off the mental image of the cockpit crumpling around them under the force of the aelewyrm's mandibles.
It was less then its own length away. “You know t' drill,” Millie said. “Grab summat and try not to fall out t' window.”
Sweetie Belle and Tom took up the same positions they had previously. Scootaloo strolled over beside them and hook a foreleg round the same pipe as Sweetie Belle.
The aelewyrm continued to slow.
A hundred metres, maybe.
Tens.
The middle pair of wings folded and smacked into the ground, one after the other. They embedded themselves into the bitumen, booming like a giant's heartbeart and kicking up a shower of grey-black fragments. A hundred metres further back, the final pair of wings did the same.
Millie pulled her control column back as far as it would go. Dignity accelerated.
Still the aelewyrm moved forwards, dragged by its inertia, taking immense strides on its wings. It was almost upon them. Glistening, slime-slicked mandibles descended, came towards Dignity – and hit the ground behind, a fraction of a second too late.
Scootaloo whooped as more chunks of bitumen rained down on the cockpit. The front pair of wings came to ground – more crashes – either side of the hovercraft. Sweetie Belle could see the the aelewyrm's belly above them, stretching ahead like a vast bridge.
One of the middle pair of wing-legs lifted as they closed the gap, stepped forwards to crush them. The elbow – or foot – was a pad textured like roughly-hewn marble. It missed, burying itself a few metres from Dignity's skirt. The staccatto clatter of debris against the hull. Again Dignity juddered.
Nearly there.
The final pair of wings stepped and landed before they were in range to step, and Dignity slid past unharmed.
Millie laughed. “Smooth sailin', if –”
“Spikes!” shouted Scootaloo. “Watch out!”
The tail, the thagomizer – tipped with two rings of four crystalline spikes – hung above them. It swept down.
Millie nudged the hovercraft to the left. The tailtip followed, accelerated. Pulling on the control column, Millie sent them back to the right, fast enough to start it spinning.
The tailtip hit the ground, the top bottom spikes entirely buried, and they were passed.
Millie killed the rotation when they were travelling backwards, so they could see the aelewyrm receding from view through the front windows.
It had finally come to a halt and stood like some giant monument on all six wings. Its tail was in the air again, but too far away to threaten. Two, three hundred metres away, its head seemed to be looking off to the side; Sweetie Belle realised a moment later that was all it needed to fix on them with its two right eyes.
Beyond it the two pirate airships were just about visible in the distance, still heading in different directions.
The aelewyrm stood, watching them retreat. Then, with a graceful sinuous motion that seemed impossible for such a large creature, it unfolded its wings and kicked into the air. But it wasn't heading towards them. It turned towards one of the airships and ascended.
“Well,” said Millie as she turned Dignity around, “that went pretty bloody well, considerin'.” To Scootaloo, she added, “You didn't kill it, though.”
“Don't worry. I'll take on the winner,” said Scootaloo. She glanced at Sweetie Belle. “When I get back from Equestria, anyway.”