A sudden pounding caused Silver Spoon to awake with a start. For one brief moment, everything seemed fine and safe. Then the memories came flooding back to her, and the panic immediately found its way directly into her heart, which seemed to rise into her chest.
Pick, likewise, heard the pounding on the door. He jumped up and clung to Silver Spoon in terror. Both of them looked at the door and watched as the now charred and useless technetium dial sparked and clattered to the ground. Whatever shield there had been was gone, and the plants knew it.
They pounded again, and tendrils started to come through from under the door.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” said Pick, looking up at Silver Spoon.
Silver Spoon looked down at him and tried to smile. Then she reached for the end table beside her and picked up her pearls, quickly putting the necklace on.
“If I’m going to go, I’m going to go with my pearls on.”
The two held each other tightly as the plants worked their way through the door. The thumping accelerated- -but then was followed by a different sound. Silver Spoon opened her eyes, confused as to why she was hearing the characteristic sound of a small two-stroke engine.
The sound shifted, revving itself up, and then dropped as something wet seemed to drop to the floor. The tendrils that had reached beneath the door shook violently and then went limp, wilting as a puddle of strong-scented fluid flowed into the bedroom.
The room was silent for a moment, save for the sound of an engine- -and then the door burst open. Silver Spoon and Pick cried out in fear as a figure burst through the door. For a moment, Silver Spoon thought that she was seeing another morlock: a small pony dressed in tight black material with fragments of silvery, shiny armor, holding a spattered hedge pruner. The figure was covered in twigs and drenched in fluids to the point where her coat color was not even visible, and she was breathing hard.
Then the tiara on her head glimmered, and Silver Spoon understood.
“Diamond Tiara!” she cried.
“Silver Spoon…Pick? What are you two doing in bed? Together?”
“Nothing I haven’t done with you when you needed it,” said Silver Spoon, jumping down from the bed. She hugged her friend, disregarding the plant guts that covered Diamond Tiara’s body.
“Barricade the door,” said Diamond Tiara. “Find furniture, anything. Push it up against it.”
Silver Spoon nodded, and she and Pick joined Diamond Tiara in moving the heirloom dressers and tables against the door just as the mulched piles of material on the other side were beginning to pull themselves back together.
Then, now all out of breath, the three of them collapsed against the pile of things that were not the only thing standing between them and desiccation. Diamond Tiara seemed immensely tired, but Silver Spoon could not stop smiling.
“Oh Diamond!” she said, wrapping her forelegs around Diamond Tiara and feeling herself starting to cry. “I thought I would never see you again!” Silver Spoon looked down at Diamond Tiara’s clothing and grimaced. “And what are you wearing?”
“I know, right?” groaned Diamond Tiara. “Butt ugly…but really, really useful. A gift from a friend.”
Diamond Tiara turned toward Pick, who was holding looking down forlorn at what was left of his technetium dial. Diamond Tiara realized that this was the first time that she had seen him without his suit. Firstly, she saw that he was small and poorly colored; second, she realized that he had been in bed with Silver Spoon without any clothing, and though she knew that Silver Spoon was not that kind of pony, the thought of it made Diamond Tiara angry.
“Pick,” she said, nodding toward the dial. “Is it broken?”
He looked up at her. “Iieh’iiueaeii’hiie- -” Pick clapped a hoof over his mouth, and his tiny eyes widened as he looked down at the dial. He tried turning it, but the mechanism was frozen. It was so badly damaged, he could not even translate anymore.
“Here,” said Silver Spoon, pulling open a drawer behind her and removing a pen and a pad of old paper. “You can write, right?”
Pick took the pad and put the pen in his mouth. He scrawled quickly across the paper, then held it up for them to read.
“Of course I can,” it read in almost geometric block-printing, “I am not an idiot.”
“Is it broken?” repeated Diamond Tiara.
Pick scribbled, then turned the pad again. “Yes. Duh.”
“Don’t get snippy with me! I just cut my way through an army of these things to get here!”
Scribbling. “Not before a costume change, clearly. BTW, you look AMAZING.”
“Can you fix it?”
Pick sighed. “Ie,” he said, writing down the word “no” on the pad. Then, continuing, “systems too badly damaged. Can be repaired, but not here. Probably could do it. Would need spare parts.”
Diamond Tiara reached into one of the pockets of her impromptu suit and pulled out the technetium dial she had found in Pith Helmut’s research room. She watched as Diamond Pick’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head and his jaw dropped open. The pen fell to the floor, but he picked it up and wrote furiously.
“You gloriously attractive porcine idiot!!! Where did you even get that?!!!”
“Is this enough to fix yours?”
Pick did not respond with text. Instead, he held out his hoof. Diamond Tiara gave him the dial, and Pick immediately carried it over to a roll-top desk on the far side of the room, one that had been too heavy for any of them to move.
“Wait…” said Diamond Tiara, “did you just call me a pig?”
“He also called you ‘gloriously attractive’,” noted Silver Spoon. She leaned closer to her and whispered. “I think he has a crush on you!”
“Ih’ieaheaeia’ehehi,” muttered Pick over his shoulder.
“We can’t understand you, dimwad!” said Diamond Tiara, standing up from the barricade behind her. The pile of furniture seemed to be holding, for the moment, but she was not. Her legs felt like rubber, and every part of her body ached.
She crossed the room awkwardly and looked at what Pick was doing. He set down the too dials on the table beside each other, and Diamond Tiara was able to see that they really were different. Even in its damaged state, his was smaller and more intricate.
Pick tapped the front of the ancient dial, and it responded. Multiple rings twisted within it, aligning the alien text on their edges until the entire surface of the dial snapped open. Pick did the same to his own dial, except that he had to force it to behave instead of it doing so automatically.
With expert precision, he began to pull pieces from the old dial and insert them into his own. The two occasionally shifted as they were merged, and a pile of discarded parts started to form as Pick pulled away the damaged pins and gears of his own dial.
Sliding a large, gold-colored gear with seemingly thousands of teeth into place, Pick spoke.
“Eiiaeuieh’iieiaaiethis thing’s a relic,” he said, his translation coming back online. “I mean, this thing is literally thousands of years old…where did you even get it?”
“Pith Helmut,” said Diamond Tiara, turning toward Silver Spoon. “He dug it out of the ground. He thought it could stop them.”
“The cacti?” asked Silver Spoon.
Diamond Tiara shook her head. “I don’t think it’s just the cacti. There’s something…” she turned toward Pick. “There’s something else.”
She leaned on the desk next to Pick, looking into his left eye, which seemed not to be looking at his work at all. The tiny reflective sphere flicked toward her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Pick.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Like what?”
“Like the real reason you’re up here.”
“I’m up here because I am an idiot,” admitted Pick. “I should have just stayed at home.” His eyes narrowed, and the tiny black specks that made up his pupil stared directly into Diamond Tiara’s far larger eyes. “But that’s not what you mean…”
“You’ve been trying to get us to go with you the whole time. To go underground, to your ‘family’.”
“Because it is safe there. I told you that.”
“Or is it because you are actually trying to eat us?”
Silver Spoon gasped, and Pick froze, dropping a spring assembly that he was holding. His lips retracted from his sharp teeth slightly, and his eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”
“So it is true!”
Pick stared at her for a moment, and then sighed. He turned his whole head toward Diamond Tiara. “Look,” he said. “I would be lying if I told you that no morlock has ever eaten a pony. Even within the past half-century. And I would be lying if I told you that I hadn’t considered it.”
“You WERE! You were trying to eat us! You’re no better than- -”
“BUT,” said Pick, sharply, “I never would. Not now. Not that after the time I’ve spent with you both. I daresay that I consider you two to be my friends. Perhaps my only friends.” He turned back to his work. “That, and you look like you would taste disgusting.”
“Excuse me!” cried Diamond Tiara. “I’ll have you know that I would be the best meal you ever TASTED!”
“Forgive me for not wanting to test that.”
“He means it,” said Silver Spoon, putting her hoof on Diamond Tiara’s shoulder. “I trust him, Diamond.”
“Oh yeah? Is that because you were ‘tasting’ each other last night?”
Silver Spoon winced and stuck out her tongue. “Eew! You mean kissing? No!” She sighed. “I really do trust him, though. And you trust me, right?”
Diamond Tiara groaned. “Yes, Silver Spoon, I trust you.”
“Ihiea!” swore Pick, loudly, throwing down something.
“What?” said Diamond Tiara, turning sharply. “What happened?”
“Nothing! That’s the problem!”
“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”
“The piece your brought me is too old, too corroded! It works, but not without lubrication!”
“Lubrication?” said Silver Spoon. “Like, what, grease?”
“Grease- -no, not grease! Perhaps it translated wrong…”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Diamond Tiara, feeling Pick’s panic starting to flow into the room and attempting to control it.
“The old system was badly damaged. The crystals within are shattered. It needs gems to achieve proper resonance.”
“So, what? You need a piece of quartz or something?”
Pick shook his head and picked up the assembly that he had thrown down. Although burned out, Diamond Tiara could see a heavily cracked clear crystal in the center. “Quartz won’t work, not in an old one like this. Not robust enough, not pure enough. I need something better. A corundum derivative, or a beryl, or- -”
“Or a diamond?”
Diamond Tiara unhooked her tiara from her hair and turned it around to face her. She sighed, and then bit down on the largest of the central diamonds, wrenching it free from its setting.
“Your tiara,” gasped Silver Spoon, putting her hooves over her mouth.
Diamond Tiara spit the large, perfect gemstone into her hoof. “Will this work?” she asked, passing it to Pick.
Pick’s eyes expanded to a size that Diamond Tiara had never even thought possible. He looked down at the stone, and then at Diamond Tiara, and then back to the stone. “You…you’re giving this to me?” he asked, sounding as though he were about to faint.
“Yes,” she said.
“But…it’s your diamond…”
“And if it means saving my friends, I’ll gladly give it up.”
Shaking, Pick reached out and picked the gem out of Diamond Tiara’s hooves, as though he were concerned that it were going to break. “Thank…thank you,” he said.
“Will it work?”
Pick opened the central clasp of his dial. “I don’t know. Diamonds are exceedingly rare here. Nopony I know has ever seen one, let alone one this free of flaw…and no pony in recorded history has tried to use one in a technetium dial…”
“So…what if it doesn’t work?” asked Silver Spoon.
“Well…how wide do you think this house is?”
“Um…why?” asked Diamond Tiara.
“Well, if it fails, at least the blast radius should take out most of the plants…”
Before Diamond Tiara could fully process what he was implying, he set the stone into the center of the dial. The clasp mechanically closed around it and pulled it into itself, sealing around it. The rings and gears turned, reacting to the presence of the new gem, and then a piercing ring filled the air. The dial began to shake and to leak a harsh, white light from its edges, and all three ponies dived beneath the room’s bed.
Then, all at once, it stopped. They looked at each other, and then slowly pulled themselves out. The dial had, apparently, accepted the gem. It had extended a kind of mechanical spiral from its surface, producing something that looked like a complex sculpture.
Pick’s eyes widened. “No way,” he said.
“What is it?” said Diamond Tiara.
Diamond Pick gently lifted the dial and then pressed the spiral protrusions in the center. They retracted into the metal circle, engaging the gears and systems. There was the sound of an electrical discharge and a flash of white light, and pick vanished.
A raspy, giggle-like sound filled the room, and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon turned quickly to see Pick on the far side of the room.
“I can jump!” he said, gleefully. “I can’t believe this- -an actual jump system! Nopony in my family has EVER had a jump capability in their dial!”
“Wait, jump?” said Diamond Tiara. “You mean you can teleport?”
“YES!” cried Pick, running across the room and hugging her. He was gross and ugly, but Diamond Tiara allowed the embrace. In fact, he was surprisingly soft.
“So, wait a second,” said Silver Spoon. “If you can teleport…” her eyes lit up. “Then you can teleport us out of here!”
Pick’s expression fell. “Well…yes and no…”
“No,” said Diamond Tiara. “It’s either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Not both. And it had BETTER not be a no!”
“I can, but the system is still in its infancy. It might take me years to get it to work right.”
“So, what?”
“So, yes, I can ‘teleport’, but I have no guidance system. I can only jump line-of-sight, and probably no more than eight hundred metres.”
“You mean you can only teleport where you can see?”
“I just said that. Yes.”
“So what good is that going to do?”
“Well, you said we can’t run through the enemy…but with this, we can get past them.”
“But only if you can SEE past them!”
“The towers,” said Silver Spoon, suddenly. “The keep! All those weird turrets! If we could get up there, Pick could see far enough to teleport us into the desert, past the spiny trees!”
Diamond Pick realized that Silver Spoon was right- -and realized the implications. “Silver Spoon, we’re on the outer wall! How are we supposed to get from here to the keep, and then all the way up it with all those plants in the way?!”
Silver Spoon pointed at the hedge trimmer. “You fought your way here. So we fight our way out.”
“Are you insane?”
“It’s the only way, Diamond, and you know it.”
“She’s right,” said Pick. “If we stay here, they’ll get in eventually. We have no food, no water…we won’t last long even if they don’t get us.”
“We’ll last even less long out there,” said Diamond Tiara. “Buuuuck…I know you’re right, but I’m not going to admit it.”
“So…we need to fight through them,” said Silver Spoon, suddenly realizing what she had suggested.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Diamond Tiara. “I have this armor, and so does he, but you don’t.”
“She can have my external armor,” said Pick. He pulled the dial off the table. “I can’t do much while the jump is charging, but I should be able to protect myself with just my inner armor.”
“Will it fit?”
Pick looked at Diamond Tiara. “Not you, but her, yes.”
“Oh, you’re mean.”
They immediately set to work making the preparations. Pick separated his armor into pieces and helped adjust the hard external parts to fit around Silver Spoon’s body. Diamond Tiara, meanwhile, rested and checked the fuel level in her clipper. The gas level was low, but she hoped that there was enough.
Within minutes, they were ready. Silver Spoon was clad in a more professional version of the armor that Diamond Tiara wore, her body encased in plates and in form-fitting black material. Pick, meanwhile, was wearing only the innards of that very armor. Most of his skin was exposed, but the internal pipework and red, glowing heaters formed a framework around his body complete with his newly rebuilt dial held in by mechanical interface pins in the center of his chest plate.
“Right,” said Diamond Tiara. “We’re ready?”
“Yes,” said Pick, twisting the dial nervously.
“Okay,” said Diamond Tiara, standing up. “It’s like Tartarus out there…and this isn’t going to be easy. We might not make it.” She turned toward Silver Spoon, who was staring back with wide eyes. “And I don’t want to have any regrets.”
Before Silver Spoon could react, Diamond Tiara leaned forward. Their lips connected, and Silver Spoon’s eyes widened, then closed as she leaned into Diamond Tiara. Their kiss lasted for several moments- -until it was interrupted by a loud chirping sound.
Both of them looked at Pick, who’s wings were vibrating and releasing the sound. He blushed profusely and tried to get ahold of them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes, the excitement- -”
The he was silenced as Diamond Tiara put her lips against his, being careful not to cut herself on his long teeth. He resisted just slightly, but because of his small size, Diamond Tiara had no trouble taking control of the exchange.
She eventually released him, and he looked up at her wide-eyed.
“Oh, wow,” he said.
“There,” said Diamond Tiara. “Silver Spoon was my first, and you were my first colt. That’s a huge honor, you know. You should be really happy.”
“I…I am,” squeaked Pick. He attempted to regain his composure- -and to press his wings back into their normal conformation- -and looked as Silver Spoon. “Um…does this mean I need to kiss Silver Spoon too?”
Diamond Tiara’s eyes narrowed. “If you even THINK about touching her, I will personally poke you in the eye. Got that?”
“Eep,” said Pick, stiffening.
Silver Spoon leaned in close to him. “She’s a bit of a jealous type.”
“She’s very protective of you,” admitted Pick.
Silver Spoon smiled. “I don’t think it’s me she’s being protective of.”
Diamond Tiara looked up at the pile of furniture blocking the door and sighed. “Great…more physical labor.”
“Not really,” said Pick. “I can move it.”
“How? You’re like, the size of a hamster.”
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m not. No.” He smiled widely, something that was eerie with the number of teeth he had. He twisted the dial on his chest and it expanded outward slightly. “This may take a little bit of extra power…but I’ve always wanted to do this…”
A silent wave of distortion poured out from Pick’s dial, and Diamond Tiara suddenly felt oddly light. She watched as the furniture near the door shook and then lifted into the air, as if it were being levitated by a unicorn’s magic. It floated gracefully through the air for a moment as Pick pulled it backward- -and then all fell at once, much of it breaking as it hit the stone floor below.
Diamond Tiara winced at the sound. “Yeah, don’t do that again,” she said, “like, ever.”
Pick smiled and twisted his dial back into its normal conformation. “Sorry…my sister’s way better at that than I am…”
His voice trailed off as he looked toward the door. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon also turned toward it, and the room fell silent as they watched, waiting. As quietly as possible, Diamond Tiara picked up her hedge clipper. When she heard the sound of long needles scraping across the tile outside, she pulled the string and the engine hummed to life, the blades clacking together, hungry for plant flesh.
The door suddenly exploded inward, forced back by a swarm of fleshy cactus branches- -but the three ponies inside were ready. With a cry, Diamond Tiara leapt forward, swinging the hedge trimmer into the mass. Plant fluid and wood fragments poured over her as she cut a path through. Their journey toward safety had begun.
Breathing hard, Diamond Tiara paused over the bodies of the hedges she had slain, their wriggling appendages shaking and crawling beneath her metal horseshoes, their green blood dripping tiny worms as they struggled to escape.
“Come on!” she cried, spitting the hedge pruner into her hooves. The engine was already starting to shudder and skip- -there would not be much time before it ran out of fuel. “We’re almost there!”
That was a lie, she knew- -they were barely even close- -but she felt like she needed to encourage Silver Spoon and Diamond Pick, both of whom were trailing behind her. Silver Spoon had been hit by cacti limbs more times than Diamond Tiara could count. Her armor was holding, but it was only a matter of time before one of the vine-like fingers reached into the two slots on her back that were meant for Pick’s wings.
Pick, meanwhile, had mostly relied on his flightless, bony wings to protect himself, as well as whatever field that dial was projecting around him. The blows had not managed to cut or impale him, but without the mass of his armor to stabilize him he was thrown about too easily. Every hit knocked him back, slowing him. He was tired- -they all were.
A rustling sound came from the darkness behind them, and Diamond Tiara saw several pony-shaped cactuses rapidly gliding across the expanse, quickly closing in. Their bodies were covered with thick bark and long, curving spines. Diamond Tiara was not sure if her clipper was simply growing dull, but it seemed like the plants were beginning to adapt.
She ran forward, and the other two joined her. It was now clear that there was no time to stop or to slow, not if they were to survive.
“Silver Spoon, which way!?”
“I don’t know I don’t know! Left!”
They ducked into a parallel corridor that slanted quickly into a curving wooden hallway with a creaking, unwaxed wooden floor. Plants were already starting to grow up from the cracks between the wood, their razor-sharp leaves cutting at Diamond Tiara’s hooves.
They continued to run as fast as they could, cutting their way through whatever stood in their way. Diamond Tiara refused to stop, even though her body was beginning to fail from the strain of being awake for so long, of carrying heavy armor- -and being so, so thirsty.
Something was wrong, though. She was not entirely sure, and her mind raced to try to analyze what was making her so afraid. It had something to do with the voices. She could still hear them, echoing through her head as whispers- -but the plants themselves were silent. When she cut them, they did not scream or cry out. They simply fell to the ground, just as an ordinary plant would. The voices were coming from something else, something she felt she should have known about.
“Diamond Tiara, slow down!” called Silver Spoon. She was breathing hard, and her braid had come undone. Her normally perfect hair now streamed over her head and shoulders, dripping with sweat even in the cold, drafty halls.
Diamond Tiara looked back at her- -and her mind was overcome with a single thought. She was just so thirsty, and Silver Spoon was filled with so much fluid. She was like a delicious sponge, just waiting to be squeezed dry until there was nothing but dust left. And Diamond Tiara was holding a hedge clipper.
“Diamond Tiara?” squeaked Pick, noticing the suddenly depraved look on Diamond Tiara’s face before Silver Spoon did.
Diamond Tiara reached for her head. She could feel them inside here, the worms wriggling inside her brain, growing there from spores carried on the desert sands- -the same worms that animated the plants. She had a sudden desire to put down her weapon, to stop hurting the plants. She should take the cuttings and plant them, and give them water. She would make a garden, but not too close to the house. Because it needed to be expanded. It was not a bad place…it just needed to be bigger.
The pain increased sharply, but Diamond Tiara forced it back. Her sanity was starting to bend, but she would not allow it to tear. If the endless training in the horrid ways of “high society” had not broken her, an alien voice in her head would certainly not be able to.
Suddenly, the whole house shook. The pain in Diamond Tiara’s head was replaced with the sound of a roar or rage, and her eyes widened as she understood.
“Caddis fly,” she said, softly, her voice cracking. “Sweet Celestia…It’s not the plants! It never was! RUN!”
Silver Spoon and Pick started sprinting after her, not understanding what was happening- -but she did. She watched as the walls of the house around them started to split and tear. They were not breaking randomly; there was no snapping of wood or cracking of beams. Instead, the walls were coming apart at unseen seams, revealing the true contents that ran through the walls of the entire house.
It had always followed the same pattern. It had gotten to Pith Helmut before he even understood, and it had been trying to take Diamond Tiara next. It would reap all of them, save for one. That one would exist to expand the house. Over and over again, always making it bigger- -because IT wanted it bigger.
From the walls burst hundreds of roots, some of them as wide as tree trunks. The house was not fully awakening, pulling away its camouflage, dispelling the deception it had created for countless millennia. The plants that they saw were only a part. They were no more than drones, miniscule cuttings of something far greater.
“What’s happening?!” cried Silver Spoon.
Diamond Tiara did not bother to answer, in part because it was self-evident and in part because she was too busy running. From every wall, the central plant emerged. Hollow, glass-like needles as long as full-grown ponies burst outward from the mass of shifting wood, reaching outward toward the ponies that suddenly found themselves inside its body.
Silver Spoon cried out as a cabinet next to her was pushed over, spilling its china and silverware onto her. Pick dodged several vases, running past the exploding porcelain, its sound deadened by the creaking of the house as it came to life. As he tried to escape, a spine suddenly burst through a brick wall and into his path.
Diamond Tiara looked back, but she was too far ahead to try to cut the spine. Silver Spoon, however, leapt into action, moving faster than Diamond Tiara had ever seen her move before. She grabbed a falling teaspoon in her teeth and leapt forward, putting herself between the immense cactus spine and Pick. Deftly, she caught the deadly spike in the bowl of the spoon. She was pushed backward, but stopped its growth completely.
Both Diamond Tiara and Pick’s eyes widened. “Silver Spoon,” said Diamond Tiara, “what the BUCK is your special talent?!”
“I have no idea!” cried Silver Spoon.
They all cried out in unison as the floor beneath them lifted up, propelled by the trunks that had grown attached to it long ago. Pick braced himself, adhering to the wood instinctively, but Silver Spoon went rolling backward. Pick managed to catch her with his teeth, but the force of catching her loosened his grip.
Diamond Tiara slid backward, grabbing onto the spike that had nearly impaled Pick, being careful to avoid the barbs that covered its tips. She reached out her hoof and took Pick’s, dropping her hedge clipper into the pit of plant material that had suddenly seemed to form beneath them. The plant roots grew into the cracks of it and pulled it apart, ripping through the metal as though it were nothing.
“The trimmer!” cried Silver Spoon, who had failed to grab it as it fell.
“It was out of gas anyway!” groaned Diamond Tiara, pulling Pick and Silver Spoon back up and back onto the path. With a substantial effort, she pulled them to safety. There was no time to rest, though; the entire house seemed to be closing in on them now. The voice in Diamond Tiara’s head had been reduced to screaming a single word, over and over: “MOISTURE”.
Once again, they ran, but this time, they really were close to their goal. Up ahead, Diamond Tiara could see where the wood of the house gave way to the stone of the keep- -stone that the central plant did not seem to manage to have infested.
She raced forward, her friends at her side. The distance felt like an eternity- -vines struck out at her from all sides, tearing into her hair and slamming against her armor. Each blow was like getting hit by a hammer, but the shorter spines of the flexible branches were not long enough to penetrate her armor. The longer ones, though- -she knew that those would almost surely take her water, with or without armor.
Then she felt the cold touch of stone beneath her armored horseshoes. Ahead of her was windowless blackness, leading to a wide set of dusty, spiraling stairs. Diamond Tiara groaned; she doubted that her legs could carry her up them- -but she would try anyway.
She leapt up the stone steps, and as she did, noticed that the area up ahead was not as dark as she would have expected. It was instead filled with a flickering white light, and as Diamond Tiara got higher in the tower, she distantly recalled that this was where her parents had stayed for the night- -and realized that they had left a crystal lantern hanging on the wall.
Jumping up, Diamond Tiara grabbed the lantern in her teeth.
“Pick!” she cried, watching as he looked up at her and winced at the sudden brightness. “Take this!”
She threw it to him, and he caught it, closing his eyes from the brightness. With his teeth, he pulled off the protective bottom plate and threw it down the stairs at the bladed, deadly vines that were rapidly sinking into the stone in search of its quarry.
The light exploded violently, driving the vines back while the three young ponies were able to run forward, moving higher in the tower.
Eventually, they reached a final door. Diamond Tiara threw it open and felt the rush of cold, night air against her sweat-drenched face. She collapsed onto the ground, unable to move anymore. Above her, she could see the hazy light of the moon shining through the gathering clouds. The atmosphere smelled electrical and strange, like something was about to happen.
“Come on, Diamond Tiara!” said Silver Spoon, shaking Diamond Tiara’s shoulder. “Stand up! You’ve got to stand up!”
“Ohhh…I don’t want to…”
“Well, if you don’t, you’re going to be jerky soon,” said Pick, slamming shut the heavy stone door and sealing it with his dial. With that door impassible, there was no going back.
“Bite me,” retorted Diamond Tiara.
“If you are jerky, I might have to.”
“Silver Spoon, if he tries to eat me, slap him.”
“You can slap him yourself,” said Silver Spoon, picking Diamond Tiara up. “When we get out of this, you can slap him as much as you want.”
“Um…no?” said Pick. He approached the edge of the top of the keep, peering between a pair of large and broken stones that had been used to form the archery slits at the top of the tower. Silver Spoon helped Diamond Tiara over to the same location, and gasped as she looked down.
Diamond Tiara wished she had not seen what lay below- -even though, on some level, she largely knew that it was there. The entire house was overgrown, its sections pulled apart to reveal the building-sized plant that now stretched from every wing and hallway, clinging to the walls around it like a shell. It had always been there, dormant, waiting. They had been inside it, and it had watched them when not even the Pick had known- -but not just for them. For them all. All the voices it had collected through the ages, the ghosts of those it had infected.
Because, Diamond Tiara realized, it was not really a plant at all. The plant was just another layer, like the house was. Inside it was something different, a colony of things so tiny they could almost not be seen. Things that fed on the plants, that had become indistinguishable from them- -the same things that now lived in her own brain, perhaps permanently.
Down below, the vines were starting to climb up the keep, followed by a veritable army of trees and cactuses, all looking dry and brown, hungry for pony fluids. The same was true out in the distance: it was as though the entire desert had come to life, sprouting and endless number of plants from a root system far larger than could be seen.
“Pick…” said Diamond Tiara.
“I’m targeting,” said Pick, holding the dial out in front of him and turning the pieces.
“You should really hurry,” said Diamond Tiara, watching the plants rapidly ascending.
“I am hurrying don’t rush me!”
“If you don’t go faster, we’re ALL going to be jerky!”
“Really,” he said, twisting the system even faster. “Because you already kind of ARE.”
“Guys,” said Silver Spoon, her eyes wide. “Quit the banter and make with the banter or this is about to get REALLY messy…”
“Got it!” said Pick, the dial extending its characteristic low spiral. He held it out toward them. “Ready to go.”
“Great,” said Diamond Tiara, extending her hoof and grabbing one third of the dial.
“Are you sure this will work?” said Silver Spoon, also taking hold of the dial.
“Probably,” said Pick.
“PROBABLY?”
“It’s our only option!” cried Silver Spoon, her eyes widening as the plants crested the edge of the keep.
Diamond Tiara looked Pick in his eyes. “I’m going to trust you on this, Pick. Do it.”
“Right,” he said, extending his hoof over the spiral. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon put theirs over it as well, and then, in unison, pressed down the trigger.
Teleportation was surprisingly uncomfortable. There was really no feeling quite like it, but the closest thing Diamond Tiara could image was being thrown. It was not that there was any sudden surge of motion, but a feeling of sudden nothingness, as though she lost everything to hold onto and complete control of her direction. Her hooves left the ground, and she became instantly nauseous.
Then, all at once, space collapsed around her and resolved back into the real world. She was dropped into sand below, disoriented and confused. There was no way to tell which way was up, or to the sides; she had momentarily lost everything that bound her to Equestria, and those links were not easy to retrieve.
Through her daze, she heard Pick swear in his native language.
“I miscalculated!” he cried through the fog.
Diamond Tiara’s mind crystallized suddenly back into a cohesive mass, driven by sudden panic. “You WHAT?!”
As she said it, something grabbed her rear legs, and all at once she was dragged across the sand. She cried out, more in surprise than fear, and Silver Spoon and Pick jumped forward, grabbing her forelegs and holding on.
Diamond Tiara looked backward and saw the mass of cactuses that had taken hold of her. She saw the tentacles wrapping around her legs, and felt them working into the joints of her armor. They found every weakness quickly, and she could feel the sudden coldness as they penetrated the back of her knees. It did not hurt, not really, but when she saw the centers of the transparent needles fill with red fluid, she started to panic.
“Pull me out! PULL ME OUT!”
“What do you- -UFF!- -think we’re doing?!” cried Pick, tugging hard.
Diamond Tiara looked back at the creature behind her, and saw its cactus body split open, the wet flesh inside healing over and sprouting a new set of sharp, barbed spines that gnashed open and closed like a great mouth, preparing to take her inside it. Its tentacle-like tongues stretched out toward her, and toward her friends.
There was only one option. Diamond Tiara sighed, and made peace with her fate. Then she looked up to her friends. “Let me go!” she cried.
“Diamond- -that’s counterintuitive!” cried Silver Spoon, her tears indicating that she understood perfectly what Diamond Tiara wanted.
“Let it have me! You two run! Get to the morlocks! Just leave me!”
“NO WAY!” cried Pick, digging his hooves into the ground, adhering to the loose sand and trying- -and failing- -to take a step back. “I’m not leaving you here!”
“Neither am I!” cried Silver Spoon, also pulling harder but proving unable to resist the tug of the plant.
Diamond Tiara could feel her strength starting to fade, and knew how Pith Helmut must have felt all those years ago. “Go…” she said, weakly.
“You’re our friend!” said Silver Spoon. “If you go, we go with you!”
“Agreed!” said Pick.
Diamond Tiara smiled at the gesture, and prepared for one last surge of strength- -a final burst of power to knock their hooves away. As she tensed her muscles, however, something caught her eye. A shadow seemed to be crossing the desert toward her. At first, she thought that it was a symptom of her dehydration and impending desiccation, but after a moment she saw it was real.
Then, with a resounding explosion of cracking wood and a squelch of bursting plant, something landed behind her. The bindings that held Diamond Tiara suddenly broke, and Pick and Silver Spoon cried out as they fell backward, pulling Diamond Tiara onto them.
“Oof!” cried Diamond Tiara, nearly crushing Pick. She immediately reached down toward the still-twitching tendrils wrapped around her legs and pulled them off. As she did, she looked behind her.
The plant had been crushed completely- -by a large, wooden crate. All three of the ponies stared at the box, and at the image painted on the front: a cartoon image of the smiling face of a gray, yellow-eyed pony, both her eyes looking in opposite directions.
Then, with a sudden small explosion, a parachute burst open from the top of the box, flying into the air and then fluttering down over the cracked and damaged crate. Diamond Tiara looked up, and saw numerous other crates descending from the sky. The parachutes had deployed properly on the others, allowing them to fall from the gathering storm clouds above- -and Diamond Tiara understood.
“The Pegasi!” she cried, standing up, her tiredness dispelled by the sudden surge of hope. She turned to a confused-looking Silver Spoon. “Daddy’s supply shipment! It’s here!”
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon both looked up to the sky. High ahead, in the clouds, lightning sparked in the wake of the rapidly-blowing storm, illuminating the silhouettes of the flock of Pegasi carrying their storm across the desert. Thunder cut the air as the moonlight was blotted out by the darkness of the clouds.
“Down here!” cried Diamond Tiara, waving her forelegs. Silver Spoon joined her. “Help us! Down here! DOWN HERE!”
It was no use, though. The Pegasi were too high, and the thunder that they were carrying was too loud for them to hear through. None of them changed course, and none of them descended to help the three young ponies below.
The plants did not seem perturbed by the Pegasi overhead, but had taken advantage of Diamond Tiara’s sudden distraction. They had moved forward, pulling themselves across the sand quickly, and now the three ponies found themselves surrounded completely by the swollen, fleshy, spine-covered bodies of the cactus ponies, all waking forward, closing the circle.
“Pick…” cried Diamond Tiara, backing into her friends. “Teleport us TELEPORT US TELEPORT US NOW!”
“I can’t!” cried Pick, tears running down his face. “It- -it needs to recharge! I can’t jump!”
“Then…then I guess this is it,” said Diamond Tiara. Silver Spoon took her and Pick in a hug, and the three huddled together. The Pegasi flew above, not noticing what was going on below, so close but so far away, and the cacti with their glimmering, razor-sharp spines leaned in closer.
Diamond Tiara closed her eyes as one of the misshapen false-ponies reached toward her, its barbed spines reaching out toward her face. She tried to shield Silver Spoon, even though she knew that it would do little good. Instead of the cold numbing sensation of the touch of the plants, though, she felt something else: a drop of water on her forehead.
That one droplet was followed by several more, and Diamond Tiara opened her eyes. The cactus had completely stopped moving, its brownish hoof inches from Diamond Tiara’s nose. Then, as the sound of rainfall filled the desert, it pulled its hoof back. All the cholla ponies did, and turned their faceless heads toward the sky.
“MOISTURE,” they said inside Diamond Tiara’s head.
As the rain started to pour down from clouds towed by winged ponies high above, all motion of the plants ceased. They simply stood, their bodies soaking up the water from the sky. They did not attack, because they no longer had a need to. They had gotten what they wanted, the only thing that they had ever wanted. They had been watered.
And, realizing this, Diamond Tiara hugged her friends tightly and laughed, collapsing into the muddy sand with them breathlessly. It was over, finally over. They were safe at last.