I sat there, crouched, waiting for anything to happen for a long time. Could have been thirty seconds, could have been two minutes. Time changes when you’re in battle. And I couldn’t get past the thought that it was just too easy. Not even in some of the movies I’d watched had the hero gotten so many lucky shots.
So few guards. So little skill. What the hell was I up against? Like a terrible AI in a game. AI? Alive technology. Hush, I’m telling.
So, I was crouching… Then, oh yeah. Okay, so, I get up, rifle at the ready, cheek to stock, finger on the trigger. There are several houses between me and the blue one. So, I go to the first one and sneak along the porch, peek in the window, and see… a cowering human family.
Three women huddled over several children. They all start crying as I walk by.
Same for the next couple houses. Families, sometimes a couple groups huddled together in the living room. I began to wonder how many were in the other rooms of these houses. Was I the bad guy? No, I had a simple mission.
I got to the house that I’d blown up. Several soldiers lay, mostly in pieces, across the main room. I froze in my tracks, so to say. I also saw a large group of, erhm, I’m sorry. Uh, I saw a large group of dead children. Yes, I’m guessing the soldiers were trying to guard them.
The next thing that went through my mind was how long it’d take this many children to grow to such an age. I was missing something; something big.
I made it to the blue house. There was a guy in uniform, back to me, and holding a knife. He had to be the guy in charge. I turned and kicked in the door, leveled my rifle at him, and waited.
“I-I’m s-so sorry… I didn’t mean it, she was supposed to be a bargaining chip!”
“What the hell are you-” I stopped and looked at the knife. There was blood along the tip. He hopped to his feet and fled into a side room and there she was. Strong Heart, on the floor. A small pool of blood under her, and a stab mark in her chest.
I heard a heavy door open, heavy and metal. I stood at that damned doorway for too long before I dropped the rifle and ran to her. Her little form looked so delicate. Like she was asleep, just waiting for me to nudge her awake.
I spent too much time crying over her before I picked her up. That broke me, my mind. My sanity. They wanted me to break. They got it. It got a bit fuzzy after that. I know I picked her up and then I ran outside and popped the four explosive rounds, not concussion, at the mountain wall by the door, destroying its hinges. Then I was inside a tunnel, into the mountain. Then I fired a shot and it took of, most of his leg.
I don’t know what came over me on that mountain, but I wasn’t me. I remember him begging for mercy, then his head exploding after I shot him. The terrible ringing in my ears from the reverberation from the gunshots finally caught up to me.
It didn’t matter. Every person on that mountain was dead. Me too. I was broken. I lost my reason to fight. Wherever they’d taken Lom, I wouldn’t ever see her again. I hugged Heart and just kept walking deeper into the mountain, however it wasn’t dark.
There were powered gems the whole way, they were light blue and flickered. I remember that because once I reached the end I saw an enormous cavern. What was more interesting, was that in the center was a large bomb. Specifically, as I recalled, the Genesys bomb.
The accursed weapon that sent me here.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” a man’s voice boomed, the echo resounded for a minute.
It resumed at a quieter tone. “Yeah, well, volume was a bit high. Welcome to the project.”
“What project?”
“You’ve been here for a few months; some of us have been here for years. Time doesn’t move in a straight line when you’re being ripped apart between realities. This was to be our way home. We were gathering families and soldiers to send home. Maybe to find a way to get us all home.
“Now, thanks to your Rambo tactics, almost everyone is dead and the bomb is without purpose. So,” he stopped and I heard a click, “time to go home, or die trying.”
“Then that was it.”
Lyra, I finally knew her name, had taken the quill and paper back and was writing again, albeit wearily. “So, then what?”
“That was it, I said. I died with Heart in my arms. Pretty unceremoniously, to be honest.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. How are you here when you died then? I thought you were immortal.”
“I am and I did.”
“I-I don’t get it. Can you, elaborate,” she said hesitantly.
“Okay, remember what I said about time being meaningless between realities?”
She nodded, looking at me curiously.
“Well,” I continued, “it was a gift and curse, I guess. The bomb worked, only this time it was a bit different. This time, it’d happened here,” I gestured to the window as the terrain, while still vibrant and green with luscious, delicious life in all its beauty, was beginning to become hilly, with a few boulders scattered around.
“What’s that mean?”
“Heh, this world has magic and mine didn’t,” I looked out and remembered my earth. Sure, it was shitty, but I knew what to expect. “when the bomb went off, inside a mountain full of arcanacite, something changed in me. Well, those of us who lived through my rampage, anyway.
I woke up in what is now Canterlot. More like ‘Rubble-a-lot’,” I chuckled, “it was just a blank mountaintop, leveled off from the explosion and it was cold, given the height, even it seeming to be mid afternoon.
I was wearing heavily scorched clothing but I wasn’t broken or bleeding.
“So, you survived thanks to the latent magic?”
“Let me explain.”