Corrupted Lands

by Nameless Narrator


Sunrise In Manehattan: Reminiscing

Polite knocking on the door of my room wakes me up. There is no morning daze for Corrupted, or at least for me. Hmmm, I've never bothered to ask. Alert and ready, I slip from the bed and walk over to the door of the spartan room I was given in the Order mansion. The visage of Bucket the robot reminds me well of my current situation. Cromach looked insanely strong, and even he said Bucket was a threat. Despite my weakened state, I still wonder how the thin skeleton of steel plates and cables underneath could be THAT dangerous, though.

Ooooh, the rest in a warm and comfortable bed helped a ton.

"Sir Cromach is waiting for you. Mercenaries Desert Shade and Lyam opted to assist you in any way you deem necessary," Bucket drones in a pleasant, yet mechanical voice.

"I can't help noticing that the three 'ponies' first to help me against griffons are, in fact, griffons or half griffons."

"Griffons deciding to spend their time here rather than in the Empire usually have good reasons for avoiding the place and others of their kind. Manehattan might be in the grip of iron talons, but the Empire is strict in their laws as well. They observe ancient traditions very carefully, and certain things considered normal in Equestria are atrocities in the Empire."

"What did Lyam and Cromach do?" I ask, curious about what was so abominable that it forced them to live in a place crawling with Corrupted.

"According to our... sources, Lyam is a son of one of the ruling families, and he fell in love with a deer. Racial mixing is unacceptable for the high nobles. When he refused to leave his mate he was disowned and she was executed."

"Oh..." I must admit I'm in shock. Once again, the complete lack of sanctity of life we hold so dear in the enclave is beyond me. When a pony's life is worth less than some unwritten ancient tradition then you know something is rotten and wrong.

"Sir Cromach had to leave the Empire some two centuries ago for having an affair with a male Griffon Legion soldier. He earned his status back shortly after, but he had to fight off assassins and perform services crucial to the survival of the Empire."

"That makes even less sense. Why is he here then?"

"Because he is a very fair and dutiful griffon, Mana Burn. Those old enough usually grow to be either insane or wise. Aren't you glad he is the latter?" Bucket's blue eye shuts down for a moment, and I realize the robot has just winked at me.

This being is definitely more than just a machine.

"What about you?" I ask.

He smiles.

"I am exactly twenty-four years younger than sir Cromach. The events surrounding his escape to Equestria led indirectly to my creation. It is a long story, however, and he prefers not retelling it. Even after so much time, it brings back painful memories."

A staircase later, he opens a door same as every other inside the mansion and ushers me inside. It's a spacious office filled both with shelves bending under the weight of ledgers, and various items lying all over the place some of which must be memorabilia and souvenirs.

Those, and Cromach's terrifying battleaxe.

The griffon is sitting in an armchair behind a work desk stacked with documents, a strange metal construction I recall him throwing at me hanging on his back and reaching over his shoulder. A closer look reveals it to be some kind of leg prosthesis. Lyam and Desert Shade are already inside, relaxing in chairs, drinking something. Well, Lyam looks fine, but Des is eyeing a certain portrait on the wall with barely contained disdain and hatred.

A portrait of somepony I recognize. At least, of somepony extremely similar to somepony I recognize.

"Here you are," Cromach looks up from his work, "Slept well?"

He just is the guy who can smile in the worst situation imaginable, definitely one having a mischievous streak inside him. The key is to play his game.

"Very much so. Until recently, I've slept either on the ground or beds made of stone due to the lack of resources underground."

"Excellent. I just have few things to say before you can go grab something to eat. You said you needed to recover," he nods to me questioningly.

I realize how detached I feel now that there is no corrupted soil anywhere around and shiver. This is going to make regaining my strength more difficult.

"I'm going to have to go out into the wild to heal faster. I can sense corruption present, but I can't tap into it to drain energy from the area."

"Interesting, is that how it works?"

"I can share all I remember from Twilight's experiments and what is my own experience both from before I was transformed and after, but for real details you'll have to talk to my mom herself."

"Which brings us to the main subject. Do you have any idea how to get a message across half of Equestria, or is the plan still to just wait for your recovery? The best thing I came up with overnight is a long-range radio transmission, but we have tried that over and over in hope of contacting any surviving ponies and the broadcast doesn't reach far enough. A beamed signal instead of a broadcast would reach much further, but we would need to know the exact geographic coordinates of your Ponyville. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. First, do you actually have a surface radio station there?"

"Hmmm," I work through the possibilities of the enclave in my head, "There is an antenna built into the crystal tree castle. We use it from time to time to spread a message for any random survivors. I'm not sure if there is anypony stationed at the reciever when it is not in use-"

Wait!

"Actually," I restart my train of thought, "We don't really use radios because it's impossible to transmit underground properly, but there is an intercom announcement system for the enclave built into the main radio circuitry."

"You mean that anything the antenna recieves is broadcasted throughout the entire Ponyville?" Cromach looks at me skeptically, "That seems incredibly impractical and, forgive me, downright stupid."

"With all due respect," I frown, "There was no enclave when Canterlot fell, only the surface town of Ponyville which has never been a center of industry. When Corrupted rolled over Canterlot, most ponies tried to escape and were transformed. Whoever survived the flight to Ponyville fortress got there without resources. My mother saved what knowledge was possible from Canterlot library, but even with her interest in most things she didn't have a comprehensive guide on how to make and fix everything. After Ponyville surface fortress fell, the ponies barely survived living in the caves while preserving what little technology they scrounged up. The situation now when we have working mining operations, farms, and manufacture-based industry was built upon near nothing. These days we have resources, but there is no need to replace anything that has worked until now. Waste not, want not."

That's how I've been brought up in a place where comfort was very rare. It hits me just now to its full extent how astonishing the change coming with Nightshade was. A little thing like a pegasus mare sent on a mission to scout a small strange stretch of the forest changed absolutely everything.

"I apologize," Cromach bows his head, "I had no idea the situation was that bad. Here in Manehattan, outside of the social implications, our situation has not changed to such degree. That makes our situation even worse, though. Can your 'enclave' even handle taking care of Manehattan ponies?"

"Actually, if the estimated amount living in Manehattan Des told me about was correct, then we just might. A drastic portion of the Crystal Empire's population has recently been wiped out during a Corrupted attack, so there is a lot of free space up north. As for the enclave itself, the new conquered territories should be able to host at least a hundred thousand ponies. Food would be a concern, but with new workers, especially unicorns and pegasi able to control the weather it should be possible. Twilight will know more."

"Alright, I think I have a plan. Give me few days to think about it and we'll talk again."

"Are we supposed to just sit here until you're ready?" Desert Shade asks, "Lyam and I have business to take care of in the city."

"Right, the Badlands expedition. Found anything interesting?" Cromach asks with a slight smile.

"You can check for yourself," Des shrugs, "I don't mind your mages and engineers looking through our things as long as you return everything in perfect shape. To be honest, though, even Corrupted apparently don't like the Badlands. There is little to no life aside from them there, and even those whom we observed looked weak and starved. We found old remains of changelings preserved by their goo but that's about it."

"If you need to talk with changelings, queen Chrysalis and her hive are part of the Ponyville enclave."

"Griffons want to dissect them and experiment on their bodies to find out about their natural shapeshifting abilities," Des explains, "I honestly pity any live changeling getting into one of their laboratories."

"And the Order doesn't perform those. Some of our members ARE changelings and we let them keep their secrets to themselves," Cromach adds, "You, miss hippogriff, can leave as soon as our guys check your bags. I'll tell you a way to contact me when you're free to go. As for you, Mana Burn, your situation is a little different."

Lyam and Desert Shade leave, escorted by a pair of armed ponies in simple white tunics, probably the standard Order clothing. There was one inside a chest in the room I slept in as well.

"What do you mean?" I ask, watching the exit with a tiny eyeball I grow on my tail, "Are you going to try to experiment on me?"

He raises his talons.

"I choose to believe you and princess Sparkle will be of all possible assistance once our business here is over. No, I was thinking about the fact that you needed to go outside to recover properly. Getting out of here is simple, but coming back without knowing the right path is nigh-impossible, thankfully. I'll show you later when I go out for my practice."

I'm not sure why this bothers me, especially after being savaged by corrupted griffons, but still...

"Do you kill Corrupted for training?"

"Kill?" Cromach shakes his head, "No, that would be too easy. I try to fight them off without killing them, which is much more difficult."

"How?" I recall him slicing Corrupted into bits, "How come you can cause such damage to them? I can believe you are strong, but you can't be physically strong enough to slice a Corrupted in half, no matter what your axe is made of. What IS it made from, anyway?" I nod to the huge weapon propped against a shelving cabinet behind Cromach.

"Just steel," he shrugs, "I've met creatures similar to Corrupted waaaaay before they swarmed Equestria."

"You? Desert Shade told me she and her past friends were the first to spot Corrupted presence."

"Where?"

"In the Smokey Mountains to the west. She said they came from the direction of White Tail Woods."

Cromach freezes. If he could pale through his already pure white feathers he definitely would. He looks as if he finally put two and two together and wished the answer was anything but four.

"What?" he chokes.

"Princess Celestia took her best guards before Canterlot fell and went west. We have managed to find her encrypted journal recently and deciphered a message about a place called the Barrier situated in a valley not too far west from White Tail."

"Did the journal talk about a sacrificial altar and the ruins of an ancient pyramid?" Cromach shoots out with the speed of a machine gun.

"We don't know. We haven't deciphered the entire thing yet."

"Did we buy ponies less time than we thought?" Cromach looks at a bejewelled alicorn statuette on his table and whispers.

"You think you know something, right?" I ask with absolute certainty, "You know where Corrupted come from."

"Of course I do. When two Corrupted love each other very much, they find a nearby Breeder, have kinky tentacle threesome, and some time later there is a little pony-like thing prowling the forest and transforming real ponies into its image," he says distantly, as if thinking about the real answer and just keeping his beak occupied, "It might be a coincidence. As I said, I've met 'ponies' able to survive under insane circumstances. They pledged their alleagiance to an entity who infused them with divine power and made them resistant to damage, able to adapt to their surroundings easily, and even change reality to a small degree. The Corrupted feel similar, only not so... intentional."

"What do you mean?"

"The ponies I'm talking about called themselves the Vigil and worshipped an evil deity, attempting to bring it into this world. I, and other brave or suicidal individuals, opposed them. The place where your Barrier is supposed to be broadly coincides with where we fought and stopped the god and its cultists."

"So... the Corrupted are a cult or something? From what little I remember before I locked the 'presence' out of my mind there is no coordination between the Corrupted aside from... never cooperating with ponies under any circumstances," I finish my thought, realization growing in me.

Cromach sighs.

"I'm not going to bother you with the whole story. Suffice to say that your mother is to be blamed for our failure. If, and that is a BIG if, my suspicion is correct then... hmmm... then she is at fault for the entire era of corruption," he stops, "What do you know about gods, Mana Burn?"

What? My mom caused all this? That can't be right.

"I suppose you don't mean alicorns."

"No. I mean those who created this world and the primal alicorns themselves."

"Not much, honestly. I remember my mother talking about an entity called Discord, but he disappeared long before the corruption."

"There were three of them - Discord, Nightmare, and Harmony. I'm not going to go into details, but they are beings of raw essence. Their bodies, memories, energy they possess is all that one universal essence we call, for the lack of better understanding, divine power."

"You said your body was made of it. Are you a god? Immortal and able to slice Corrupted with ease."

Alright, it might be dumb, but there is a little sense in that, right?

"I'm neither a god nor immortal by any means," Cromach chuckles, "Just an unaging griffon who got pulled into things he did not understand. It's always like that. I possess only a miniscule fraction of what gods can muster, and it still makes me not age. I died and got revived into a divine body. Over time, I learned to harness the divine power and make it manifest in certain ways."

I recall the thunderbolt coming from the sky and scorching the corrupted griffon just as Cromach cleaved him in half.

"The lightning."

"Yes, that is the manifestation. Plus, items close to me for a long time absorb a little of my essence. That's why my axe can go through most mundane materials with ease. The Corrupted are tainted by the divine power we fought, but it's unfocused, as I said. If there is a similarity between Corrupted and the Vigil then the Corrupted feel like a byproduct of massive, uncontolled divine power tainting fauna and flora."

He rubs his eyes and continues.

"Yes, the longer I talk about it, the more it seems like the remains of Harmony festered within the soil of the sacrificial valley until the area itself was tainted enough to transform an unsuspecting random explorer."

"How do we stop it then? There are Corrupted like me, those who have minds of their own. Others can be torn away from the evil presence in their heads."

"We... don't?" he shrugs, "You don't understand. IF there is an organized will behind all this, even as weak as it has to be for you to be able to break its influence, it is deep inside the land itself and penetrates every wild Corrupted. And if there isn't a malevolent presence behind all this, just the remains of Harmony's hatred towards us within the divine presence inside every Corrupted then you are asking about wiping out an entire species."

"But-"

"Look, this is all guesswork. Only one thing is certain - when our business in Manehattan is over I must visit the Barrier, whatever it is. The coincidences piling up are too much to be ignored."

I calm down a little. Time. If we have something in abundance then it is time. Maybe...

"Alright," I focus on something else. Specifically, on a familiar photograph hanging on the wall. The one Desert Shade was looking at with such disgust. It shows a red-maned, red-eyed, black batpony mare. Next to it, there hangs a photo of a bronze-coated alicorn with light blonde mane. There are more framed photos of those two accompanied by Cromach and an earthpony I recognize from the statue in the main room of the mansion. I point to the photo of the villain-esque mare, "I've seen her before. That's Joy. I had no idea you knew her."

Cromach squints at the picture and raises an eyebrow.

"You must be mistaken. That mare is- was Choking Darkness. Don't laugh, she didn't choose the name! She died in the same incident as me when we were attacked by the Vigil cultists. Unlike me, she was impossible to resurrect. However, while painful to watch, red and black color scheme is not too out of place among batponies. The common misconception about black and red being the stigma of evil is complete nonsense though. The name is terrible, I agree."

"She looks exactly like Joy. Only with membranous wings and without a horn, of course."

Cromach just shrugs.

There is a ton of pictures portraying Cromach with many more ponies. The walls of the office look much like those of my mother's 'room of memories'. The most prevalent are of him and the bronze alicorn, and the second place is firmly taken by those of him and a black mare with white mane and tail. On a closer look, the mare's eyes are different each. I grin as I spot a picture of her spread on a couch attempting to look raunchy. Her well-toned body criss-crossed with scars defies the setting too much, though. There is a line written on the bottom part.

"To Crom from Connie," I mumble.

"Good eyes," he grins and scratches his head.

"Marefriend?"

He nods.

"My second real relationship. From my student to my marefriend and later... wife."

"What happened to her?"

"Fortunately, nothing bad. She died of old age."

"Sorry for dragging out old pains."

"It's fine," he sighs, "It looks like the old world is not letting me move on anyway."