Canterlot Castle
3:26 P.M.
“And what, dear sister, do you mean by ‘it’?” Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ve unlocked the humans’ dreams!”
Celestia’s paperwork fell to the ground, immediately forgotten. “You have?! What have you learned?”
Luna grimaced. “So far? All they think about, all they have ever known, is violence and cruelty, even since… Well, not ‘birth’ like you or I would think of it, but instead… No, I can’t describe it. Perhaps it would be best if I simply showed you. But I warn you, their minds are truly horrifying.”
Celestia sighed. “I would expect nothing else.”
The Royal Sisters made their way back down to the caves beneath the castle, coming to a stop in front of one of the cells. Inside, a naked, legless human snored. Luna turned to her sister. “Are you certain you wish to go through with this?”
Celestia nodded. “What better way is there to learn about them?” She lay down on the stone floor, and despite the lack of comfort, she was soon breathing deeply and evenly.
Luna concentrated, and beams of light stretched out from her horn to her sister and the human. The alicorns found themselves in the dining room of the Castle of Friendship. The sight they were greeted with sickened them. The room was filled with stormtroopers, who were chatting, laughing, drinking, and singing off-key. At first glance, it seemed like a normal party, aside from the fact that all of the party-goers had the same face. It didn’t take long to notice, however, that one of the humans was using Celestia’s mutilated corpse as a footrest, another had Luna’s tail draped over his shoulder, and Twilight’s head was the centerpiece of the table. Celestia’s spoke in a whisper. “Is this really what they dream about?”
“Poodoo!” one of the seated troopers shouted, noticing them and catapulting to his feet. “How?! We killed you! Your bodies are right over…” The dreamscape wavered. “Oh, no. This is a dream, isn’t it?” The party disappeared, replaced with an endless field of white, and the stormtrooper crossed his arms across his chest. “Go ahead – torture me. Show me the worst horrors you can imagine. I won’t break. My loyalty is absolute. I’ll give you nothing.”
Celestia shook her head. “How dreadful that your first thought is that we’re here to torture you. Ponies are better than that. We’d never do something so barbaric.”
“Ah, in a way, sister,” Luna said, “we are. If this human holds to the pattern the others have established, there are few things that we could show him that are worse than his own memories.”
“Making me relive my battles, eh?” The human chuckled grimly. “Go right ahead. I already do that every single night. Come on, hit me with it.”
Luna’s horn shone, and the alicorns were suddenly in a skyway with a gleaming black and white floor and glass walls and ceiling. Huge glass pillars were crowded outside. Celestia took in the scenery with a skeptical eye. “These humans certainly enjoy their stark aesthetics, don’t they?”
Luna nodded. “From what I have seen, this city holds the most pleasant architecture they have.” She turned to the closest pillar. “I told you that they are not born in the same way as ponies. They are not even hatched in the same way as griffons. Look closely at this column. What do you see?”
Celestia studied it. At intervals along its height were black rings studded with glass cylinders. The cylinders were filled with a light blue liquid, and floating inside the liquid…
“Are those… human foals?”
“It would appear so, yes. Not born or hatched. Instead, perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say that they are grown.”
Celestia looked around at the forest of columns. “There are hundreds, thousands of them!”
“I have glanced at the dreams of several of these creatures,” Luna said grimly. “This is but a small portion of the humans being grown. There are millions, in just this city. Who knows how many other places they have like this.”
“How long does it take for them to be… grown?”
“Ten years, I have heard. Of course, we do not know how long a human year is when compared to an Equestrian year.”
Celestia nodded, somewhat absently. “This is a memory, isn’t it? Where’s the human whose mind we’re in?”
Luna concentrated, and the sisters were teleported to a different hallway. This one looked down on a large, white room filled with humans. Three dozen were dressed in white armor, though not quite the same as that worn by the stormtroopers. The design of the plates was different, and, more obviously, the helmets barely resembled the ones the alicorns knew. Instead of scowling visages, these helmets were essentially cylinders with domes and fins on the top, sunken cheeks, and black visors that resembled headless humans with their arms and legs outstretched. The other humans, perhaps a hundred of them, were all dressed in identical blue clothes, and were noticeably shorter than the humans they had encountered so far. All of the humans held blasters in their hands.
“Older foals,” Celestia murmured, “and already armed.”
Luna grimaced. “All five minds I’ve accessed have had the same memory of this place. If this is what I think, then –”
A loud explosion cut her off, and a door at the side of the room flew inward, slamming into the crowd. Blue energy beams lanced out from the blasters into the cloud of smoke obscuring the doorway, and red beams came back. Humans fell with smoking holes in their chests – and to Celestia’s horror, it wasn’t just the adults dying. Tan, skeletal bipeds emerged from the smoke, the red beams now clearly from their own blasters. The creatures were cut down in droves, but they kept coming. Dozens, a hundred fell, but still they marched into the room at their steady pace. And human casualties were mounting. Almost half of the armored humans were dead. Celestia couldn’t bring herself to look at the foals’ bodies long enough to count them.
The terrible slaughter continued for several agonizing minutes. Finally, to Celestia’s relief, the tide of creatures stopped. The fading of the blasterfire allowed her to hear the moans and screams of the wounded. She turned to Luna, sickened. “How could they just kill foals like…” She trailed off. Her sister was still staring at the doorway, a look of dread on her face. “Luna?”
“Just watch,” she rasped.
Celestia looked back to the room, apprehension mounting. A few seconds later, the fighting started again. This time, however, different creatures entered the room. These were bulky, neckless, dark gray bipeds as tall as Celestia without her horn. The blue beams that slammed into them barely slowed them down unless multiple beams hit in the same spot. The few remaining adult humans were quickly cut down, and the creatures turned to the human foals, slaughtering them mercilessly. Celestia’s stomach churned.
Just as the last foals seemed about to fall, a hail of small spheres flew through the doorway and landed in the midst of the creatures. Blue bubbles emerged from the spheres. Any of the creatures caught in the bubbles collapsed with arcs of electricity coursing over their bodies. The remaining creatures turned back to the doorway and were swiftly felled by a huge quantity of blue beams. More of the armored humans rushed into the room, and one looked down at the surviving foals. “You’ll be okay now, cadets,” he said in a soothing voice. “We’ll keep you safe.”
Celestia barely registered that the humans apparently referred to their young as if they were being trained for military service. She was too appalled by the awful massacre she had just witnessed to do much of anything. “If this is the sort of lives their foals have… Oh, by Star Swirl’s beard…”
Luna nodded, her mouth in a tight line. “Yes. Their lives do not get much better.” Her horn glowed again…
A vast network of platforms above an endless sea. Hundreds of clones are arrayed in battle formation, their rifles held vertically at their left sides and their helmets tucked under their right arms. No sun, moon, or stars can be seen through the raging storm, but when lightning flashes, their armor gleams. As one, they lift their helmets to their heads, turn, and board their transports, flying off beyond the clouds…
A dense jungle. Their armor no longer shines. It is deeply scarred, covered in burns and ground-in dirt. In the distance, flames soar over the tops of the trees, filling the sky with smoke. Screams can be heard from all around. Monsters from the worst nightmares of madponies emerge from the trees, their powerful jaws crushing armor and their massive claws ripping men apart. The clones push forwards, desperately trying to escape the river they are caught in. It is a torrent of their own blood…
A barren desert. A thick cloud of dust and smoke obscures almost everything. Almost. The cloud is illuminated by constant streams of blue and red energy. A rocket explodes nearby, throwing the few visible clones to the ground – all but one, who catches the full force of the blast and is shredded. His gore speckles the armor of his friends. It’s a different armor, somewhere between the two styles the Royal Sisters have already seen, but it’s already marred from heavy use. The men pick up themselves and their shorter rifles, and they continue their advance. One falls with a small black circle on his helmet. Others aren’t so lucky. They are cut in half by automatic weapons, or their legs are torn off by mines. Only three make it to their destination. A wall of stone extends high above them. They start to climb. As the ground fades into the cloud, one takes a bolt to the hand. His screams are mercifully drowned out by the roar of weaponry before they can be cut short at the bottom of the cliff…
A scorched, flat plain. Once, it might have been green. Now, it is a field of gray and brown, interrupted only by towering war machines. A human female in a brown cloak leads the clones, her blue lightsaber deftly reflecting all the red bolts that come near her. The troopers suddenly tense, and their rifles change their targets from the wall of tan on the horizon. The female’s eyes widen, but she has barely begun to turn when the blue bolts tear into her. She falls, and the bolts keep coming. When she is no longer recognizable, the clones aim back at the horizon. On their way to the enemy line, many step over the charred remains…
A cavernous room of dark metal. Lines of clones dressed in red uniforms and holding their armor walk up to other men, who take the armor and give new sets to them. One trooper hesitates, examines his old gear one last time. Every gouge, every stain is a memory – a fallen brother. But he turns it in. The armor he receives has a helmet that returns his scowl…
A forest of trees the size of mountains. One clone holds another’s hand as he bleeds out, his stomach armor ripped off and his innards exposed. The hand loosens, then slips to the ground. The survivor stands up. He stares at his friend for a while, then abruptly turns and marches deeper into the forest. A human in a gray uniform stops him. “You, there!” he calls. “The battle’s over. Go clean that mess off yourself. You’re an Imperial stormtrooper. You have a proper appearance to maintain.” The clone looks down at himself. His lower legs are painted a darkening red from the pool he had moments ago been kneeling in. In previous battles, many clones had their armor colored the same way and never washed it off. But things have changed…
Celestia gasped as she returned to wakefulness. In only a few minutes, she felt like she had lived several thousand more years. She also felt a heaving deep inside, and she lost her lunch. She had known that the humans were willing to engage in mass slaughter, but the sheer brutality of their warfare was far beyond anything she could have possibly imagined.
Luna waited patiently until her sister managed to haul herself to her hooves. “I thought you should see all of that,” she said, “so you know why I am going to do this. After I get all of the information that I can out of them, I am going to help them. I believe that these memories are what have made them the way they are. What you and I have seen is only a small sample of their experiences. Nopony could remain sane after seeing things like that for their entire life.”
“You’re going to wipe their memories.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
Celestia was torn. She agreed with her sister’s assessment – traumatic experiences were certainly capable of changing somepony for the worse, and human lives seemed to be nothing but one such experience after another. It wasn’t even the general methodology she opposed – she herself had found, on rare occasion, that the best way to help a traumatized pony was to make them forget the trauma. The thing that bothered her was the extent. What Luna was suggesting wasn’t removing a few minutes, or even a few days. It was years, perhaps decades. Perhaps even their entire lives. She sighed. “Let Twilight and her friends try to heal them with the Magic of Friendship. If that doesn’t work, then…” She bowed her head and sighed again. “Go ahead.”