• Published 15th Dec 2013
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Final Solution - Luna-tic Scientist



Direct sequel to Days of Wasp and Spider. SF/no humans: rebellion, mind control, pre-apocalypse.

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42 - Ground State

Author's Note:

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.
Special credit to Cedric Bale and Shachza for thinking of something wonderful!

They left Ellisif to continue the dispersal of the rescued ponies. She'd shown them a map, with scores of valleys for herds of dozens to hundreds, but the grazing wouldn't be enough to get through the winter.

They took Korn and a set of communications equipment and teleported to a forested hilltop upwind of a plain cratered by a spray of re-entered debris ring objects. The wind was high and swirling, under a pitch-black sky, riven with silent lightning. No rain fell, but the scent of moisture was in the air. The clouds were towering things, pregnant with tornados and monstrous ice-anvils, moving with unnatural speed.

"Our whole world is going to be like this," Fusion muttered, "the atmosphere is going crazy." A flash of magic dug a pit in the crown of the hill and lined it with fused rock; a defence against the weather. Fusion placed Korn in the hole, four lengths below the surface. He stared up at her.

"Time is of the essence," he said. "The Maker approaches."

Fusion shivered at the urgency in his voice. It sounded like Korn, but there was a complete lack of any other emotion and he showed no signs of shock or stress. That is definitely not Korn any more. "What do we call you? You are not Korn."

"I am--" The dog's muzzle twitched, the spasm turning into a wave of seizure that flowed down his body. "--Discord."

"Discord, right." Fusion's ears folded back. What kind of a name is that? "We will pull back to let your operator contact you," Fusion said, backing away and waving to Gravity--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--another hilltop, a little closer to the crater field. The sharing opened and Fusion felt the leakage of excitement through the link, overlain by the ghost-sensation of Gravity's body and her fatigue. This Discord thing is fast, operating at the speeds of nuclear reactions, we need to match it. Let me show you--

The clouds slowed their frantic whirl, to the point where even lightning seemed to crawl across the sky. --ha! when did you figure that out? Gravity thought. Nice trick.

It started to happen when I used a lot of magic... I think the Stones are making it easy. Speaking of...

Fusion focussed her mind inwards, towards the Stones, sinking back to that vastly complex representation of the world and its towering ersatz forests.

I didn't have time to really look at this, when you gave me the first Stone, Gravity sent. So much detail-- Her mental tone sounded distant, like she was staring out at the horizon. --this is a representation of the world, isn't it? All the magic and life.

I think so... it matches the real world at some level.

The structures had shifted from the first time Fusion had seen them. There was a franticness to the motion at all levels, from the smallest speck of moss-analogue to the largest mountain-sized masses. Mist, or something like it, was flowing into the sky, past the floating island-creatures and out into the quiet spaces beyond. This motion was everywhere, but especially from the dense concentrations of material near places she'd identified as the Hives.

Closer than this were highly mobile fish-amoeba-shark shapes, huge numbers of them, swarming like they were swimming along a tropical reef. They didn't obscure Fusion's view of everything else, but were some eye-twisting combination of transparent and light-bending.

I've seen that movement before, Fusion sent, but this is far more active. What is--? The ball of black lightning was also back, hovering at the edges of her awareness, circling endlessly. It didn't approach closely, keeping away from the coloured shapes that swirled around them both. That must be 'Discord'. How is it going to talk to us? There was a tickle on the side of her head, coming from the dead weight of the comms rig. It prodded at her energy sensitivity, and she turned a fraction of her attention towards it.

Disrupt the collection process. The voice came through, a strange and distorted version of Korn, layered atop the electronic signature of the headset. The Maker is too diffuse at this stage of its reconstruction to defend itself.

Fusion shivered and exchanged a glance with Gravity. How? And why can't you do it? You know all this... this.

I do not have a way to achieve this goal without inviting destruction by the-- There was no final word, just a memory-flash of a shark-thing, like the bright shapes that flowed around them, all edges and remorseless intent. I cannot use the Stones; the universe does not allow it.

The Stones were making the sharing stronger, more complete than ever before, and Fusion felt her thoughts start to interleave with Gravity's. The vague sensations of her own body faded and blurred, a second set of wings and legs seeming to sprout from her barrel. The reminder of their duality was at odds with the shared thoughts and feelings, and Fusion shuffled slightly, or at least sent the instructions to her glacial physical body, feeling the limbs start to overlap and merge.

===

The more they looked, the more obvious the motion became. Fusion and Gravity's awareness swept through the visualised space, sampling the activity of the quantum foam machinery. There were areas of concentrated flow, around where the arcologies would have been in the real world, and they focused their attention there.

'Disrupt the collection process', Gravity thought. Break stuff... well, we've had practice at that.

This underlies the world, Grav, Fusion said, then sighed. What if I-- She reached out with her power, pulling Gravity along with her. The flowing mist parted, evaporating like dew under the noon sun. The glow spread, a silver-gold radiance, and in its wake the fractal plants and landscape changed colour, losing some of their vibrancy and becoming still.

That did something... I guess? Gravity thought.

Light and colour boiled at the edges of the affected volume, contracting inwards. Flying things, from tiny specks of luminescence to floating, tentacled islands, were converging on the zone, flowing in to fix whatever they had done. The mist was already starting to climb back into the sky.

Back in the real world, Fusion felt her lungs reach the end of a tremendously long exhalation and slowly, ever so slowly, start to inhale. Not enough. Little flickers of sensation came through the link to the other entity, congealing into spell patterns different to the one she'd tried. Grav, it needs to be both of us -- all the Stones together.

In that case... The heat from Fusion and the mass from Gravity meshed, the power from the Stones interlocking like cogs in some fine machine. The outer radiance returned, flashing through concentric tree-rings of rainbow colour to a writhing core of violet darkness. It left behind scrambled space, a knife scar full of curdled and broken things. A ripple spread from the slash, making the floating coloured shapes blink out in little puffs of haze.

That's it!

~~
The servitors had finally figured it out. Chaos kept its processing centres tightly clustered and away from the area being affected. Both had successfully transitioned their minds into the quantum foam, running at processing rates far, far in excess of their biological forms. The Stones, points of blinding power among the soft shapes of the automata, were far more active than Chaos had seen for a very long time, their crude disruption effects pulling apart the automata within the target zone.

The collection efforts halted immediately, stalled as signal endpoints were unceremoniously destroyed or left leaking corrupted information from crippled systems. The Guardians swarmed through the area, cauterising the damage, but for the first time in Chaos' memory, they were overwhelmed.
~~

The riotous jungle of activity stilled in the wake of that ripple, the plant and fungal forms fading and crumbling in a wide swath. The slime mould, highly mobile and fillagreed tendrils from the floating masses recoiled, but too late. Rot flowed up the tentacles, a high-speed leprosy turning something undoubtedly alive into corruption.

That seems... Gravity felt a moment of disquiet, watching the destruction, echoed by Fusion. The ripple of destruction finally lost momentum, its effects lessening and fading into the ever-changing activity of this crowded place. Edged and spined shapes, whose every line spoke of deadly intent, flooded the area and started to shred the half-corrupted objects.

Some kind of defence system? Fusion reached back to the real world, sparing a fraction of her power to conjure a bubble of force around their bodies. They don't seem to be affected.

Do you think that will even work? Gravity redirected Fusion's attention at the shredders. They don't seem to care about us, just the damage we are doing. Where the things passed all of the damage was smoothed away, leaving a wake of simple, geometric forms. The basic shapes were fractal down to the smallest level she could perceive, and slowly started to regain their complexity, like they were a freshly tilled field filled with seeds.

~~
Now do more! All of them! Chaos turned and spun in the compact higher dimensions, trying to perceive in all directions at once. Thoughts near paralysed with anticipation, it picked out the other targets, zones of high automata/biped interaction and waited as the servitors seemed to consider the damage their first strike had done.
~~

It's not permanent, that's something.

No, but it has stopped the mist from flowing!

Fusion signalled her assent. We should move back, get a wide view if we are going to do this.

In response, Gravity tugged at their shared locus, pulling away and letting the landscape shrink away. The flow of the mist was more apparent from this vantage point, as was the ever-thickening knot of influence it flowed towards, somewhere out beyond the sun. This presence moved, sluggishly but with increasing vigour, as if trying to break through a membrane. Flashes of recognisable shapes popped in and out of vision, from coils to sharp edges to chaotic, near-random bubbles of cloud.

Spurred by this activity, the sisters dragged their power across the magical representation of the world, leaving great, ragged cuts.

The damage was far worse than their first tentative slice. Decay spread from the scratches, only slowly damped down by the swift shark-things. Whole mountain ranges of fractal complexity withered and collapsed in upon themselves, like trees consumed by a flood or conflagration. Here and there, even the shredders themselves were blinking out of existence, their sharp-edged cathedral structures dissolving like spun sugar in water.

Repairs, or cauterisation, or whatever was being done, continued, but took on the feeling of triage after a mass-casualty incident. Only the worst areas were being reformatted; out on the borders were whole zones of mutated forms that dispersed and spread, disappearing into riotous structures around them. What's happening in the real world, do you think? Gravity focussed her attention on these oddities, momentarily ignoring everything else.

Randomised, self-sustaining magic, loose in the world, Fusion thought, I saw something similar, at Tartarus. This is so much bigger. I dread to think what we are doing, what weirdness we are birthing.

We'll deal with that later, if it's a problem.

The bulk flow of mist had faltered and, off in the distance, the immense presence slowed its pulsing, shifting form.

===

Ellisif clicked her beak, staring at the space where Fusion and Gravity had been with narrowed eyes. They'd made no effort to explain or include her in the interrogation, and had just teleported away. "Nice to be part of the team," she muttered. "I really don't know what's going on any more. More magical weirdness, I bet."

"That thing got inside my head, too," Olvir said, smoothing down his white crest feathers with one talon. His beak worked, as if he was trying dislodge a bit of stuck gristle. "It made me talk to Korn to... convince him?"

"And then promptly overwrote him anyway." That speaks of improvisation. This does not sound good. "Do you still feel like you?" And would you know? Perhaps he would... Korn was nothing like his old self.

"I think so?"

There was no certainty in Olvir's tone and Ellisif sighed, then drummed her talons against the metal ramp to the command aircraft. "We're nearly done, but send a signal to all aircraft that they are to fly on ducted fan only, no levitation drives. Assume we will be attacked by Arclight without warning." She flicked her wings, a sudden uncertainty making her stomach clench. "...and no winged flight. We may not be able to trust magic for a while."

Ellisif looked up at the night sky, taking a few steps to get outside of the command carrier's external flood lights. She had no owl in her genome and her night vision was not good, but the continuing tracery of meteors laced the darkness with random-coloured tracks.

There was a flutter of sensation deep within the long bones of her wings, expanding to a sense of terrible heaviness that made her spine sag. Dancing waves of colour expanded across the sky, bright enough to cast shadows and drawing gasps and whinnies from the ponies remaining in the valley.

Behind her the thaumic attack alarms blared. Ellisif stood and stared up at the colours, muscles tensed uselessly, and waited.

===

Have we killed it? Gravity thought, hesitant again. What have we done... we didn't even try to communicate.

No. Fusion's thought was barely above the background noise from her body. But what were we supposed to do? The risk--

All we have has come from this mysterious voice!

~~
They had actually done it, stalled the Maker before it could even approach awareness. Chaos pressed against the brane walls, deep in the lowest levels of spacetime, feeling the wider universe behind them. The vacuum energy states were lower out there, enough that any attempt at tunnelling through would trigger a catalytic change on this side of the wall.

The more stable vacuum would then open to the outside, forming a traversable wormhole. It gathered what it would need: a hoard of automata that would start to spread through this new, clean spacetime. Chaos would follow them out.
~~

Not quite all. Fusion sounded a little hurt, accompanied by the imagined feeling of ears folding back. I told you what I saw. There's definitely something going on that can't be explained.

Sorry. Gravity gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. Sorry. Yes, you are right.

No, you have a point. This thing has tried to manipulate us right from the start. Perhaps its motives coincide with our own, but perhaps we are just... useful idiots.

The feeling of a smile flashed through the sharing. Good, just making sure you are watching, because I certainly will be.

There was something else dropping into their shared consciousness through the suborned radio. Slowly a pattern formed, another magical blueprint similar to the one they'd used. Discord's cold words, sharp like broken glass, came with it. Now the Maker has been weakened it can be permanently disabled. Direct this thaumic form at the assembly point. Do not delay; the disruption you have instigated will last less than one full rotation of the world.

The sharing between Gravity and Fusion deepened, and they held the new pattern in their combined mind's eye. They moved their attention locus to the now sluggish presence and pushed power into the pattern--

Space convulsed, the zone around the presence seeming to flutter like the surface of a pond with a stone thrown in the centre. The ripples spread and deepened, each pulse turning another part of the world back to simple flatness. The core of the oscillation abruptly fell away, dropping as if into a bottomless pit and dragging the world with it.

~~
Joy!

The expanding wavefront of vacuum collapse was self-sustaining and propagating outward at the speed of light. The servitors had realised something had gone wrong, fed information through the automata's chained wormholes, but this would do them no good.

Chaos turned its attention to its own preparations, pushing reluctant automata through the boundary and into the roiling space beyond. Most immediately perished, disintegrated by the energy gradient, but a few did not, managing to adapt to the new conditions. They did what they were supposed to when isolated: made more of themselves and formatted the space they passed through, making it suitable for Chaos.
~~

Sparkling incandescence ringed the core of a rapidly expanding sphere that occupied where the presence once was. Within was complete darkness, utterly alien compared to the bustle of activity from the rest of the environment. Gravity reached out, feeling for something, anything, within the zone, but she was repelled, magic sliding off the impenetrable boundary. What is it? What did it get us to do!?

Fusion was attempting the same thing, but to her the sphere wasn't black. It was a blinding, coruscating light like a billion lightning flashes at once. Wild ideas flickered across her mind, memories from long kiloseconds in the Institute listening to the other Academicians argue with Vanca. The universe itself is collapsing, behind the horizon there is no magic, maybe not even atoms! More thoughts, held closer but still impinging on the sharing. Did it implant my original fear?

I don't care! Stop it! Gravity reached out with her power, rapidly modifying the spell pattern, hunting for some change within the near-infinite volume of possible patterns that would have an effect. Fusion joined her, their minds dropping into synchronisation, working in parallel on the problem.

There was a solution, something that slowed the onrushing tsunami of change, but the area of effect was too small. They worked on it, expanding the effect and struggling to outpace the rapid expansion. Now or never! Fusion sent, locking down the pattern.

They both pushed at the Stones with all their panicked strength, spurs applied to the flanks of the universe, and the Stones responded. Out in the real world the surviving moon and much of the debris ring abruptly slowed in their paths, orbits folding inwards like some monstrous noose. At the same time, felt by the wormhole-mediated senses of the two ponies but still forty-five seconds away by laggard light, the sun went out, all its power directed in towards the Stones.

~~
Something horrible was happening. Vibrations ran through spacetime, disturbing things that made Chaos want to flee. Automata were converging on the expanding barrier from all sides, fat and full to bursting with energy, and throwing themselves at the interface. Not one of these automata were surviving the transition, so what--?

--no! They were undergoing some strange transform at the point of impact, something crafted to boost the lower vacuum state back to its original level. They can't! Chaos reached out trying to disrupt the process, but the automata were accompanied by Guardians. The closest opened its maw, sparkling with the light of uncreation, calling on others of its kind to follow.

Suddenly, Chaos realised the danger. In this compact form it had attracted attention; no longer was its decoy the sole target.
~~

Shockwaves, or something that felt like them, converged on the globe, at once an absolute black and a blinding white through their shared senses, stalling the expansion and abruptly reversing it. The power poured on, not letting up until the globe shrank to a dot and blinked out. In its wake was a bland flatness, the edges populated by stunned and listless forms.

Not finished yet, Gravity though grimly. Where is that Discord thing? You can't tell me that wasn't deliberate.

It has fomented trouble for us and it's been around for a very long time... how much has it done to the dogs? Fusion sent, the tide of her anger starting to rise above the fear and panic. Discord! A name like that -- it must be toying with us. Her attention focussed on the flickering ball of black lightning, still avoiding the shredder-things. It seemed too... obvious, and she started to look elsewhere.

We may never know, Gravity thought. I think we should do something about it. She started to draw on her power, the same weapons they'd used against the rising 'mist'.

Wait. There was something, more diffuse than the black lightning but with the same taste, spread through a larger volume of space. It had been undetectable before against the riot of activity, but it seemed to be investigating the damaged area. Against the flatness, it stood out. Can you feel that?

Yessss... A long, drawn-out, sibilant thought, as if said through lips pulled back from sharp teeth. So the other thing is what, a decoy? Something for us to shoot at? What is it doing?

I don't know, but we must have hurt its plan.

Good! Let's hurt it in other ways. Gravity's thoughts turned ugly, pulling the threads of her power into tenuous web that started to spread across a vast swath of space.

~~
So close! Dodging another pair of aggressive Guardians, Chaos tried not to think about what it had nearly achieved. There would be time to try again, something more subtle so the servitors wouldn't suspect. Or perhaps it would just have to wait until the Stones were passed back to the bipeds. Those it could more easily manipulate.

The Guardians were not that much more persistent than normal, but there were so many of them, called in from all parts of the universe by the massive damage to the automata. Its normal sanctuary, the thin, dark outer parts of the universe were out of easy reach, so it fled inwards, following the automata as they started to infiltrate the freshly built spacetime.
~~

It's in there, look at it! Fusion damped her thoughts down to a whisper, afraid the thing might have some way to tap into her mind.

What are you afraid of? If it could get to us directly, it would. It's having to use the communicator to talk to us. Gravity's anger built. I want it gone!

Me too, but I want to do it right. If it escapes we may not find it again. There's something it's afraid of, something that keeps it away from us. She focused on the other patch of black lightning, the easily visible one. That is being followed by those shredders... it's like they are hunting it.

It has enemies. Also good. Don't care. Gravity fed more power into her distributed web of magic, pushing it further out. Help me!

Fusion lent her own strength, making the web-work shine and glimmer with rainbows. The thing in the shrinking bubble of flattened space reacted, collapsing from a near-invisible film to a crackling amoeba of dark radiance, prickling with brush discharges. It knows.

Gravity and Fusion pushed, their magic lancing out like a kick. The entity recoiled, but was snagged within a bubble of rainbow colour, bounded and bound by cables of white-gold and near-ultraviolet. It inspected the edges of the prison like living smoke, a writhing snake that stretched and bulged in unexpected directions.

~~
The barrier was unlike anything Chaos had experienced. It wasn't a complete block, it still had a connection to its decoy, but the course through the manifold was tortuous and it was taking forever. It worked on the path, trying to widen it. There had to be a way out! It felt at the barrier again, feeling at the multi-layer structure. The power was familiar, and Chaos felt a sudden rage. The servitors it had created dared to attack it!

The automata were passing through without impediment, without even noticing that the barrier was there, but Chaos couldn't follow them. Its processes were stripped away, reflected back along orthogonal directions, bouncing it back to the centre of the bubble. It sat there, thoughts accelerated by being in such a compact configuration, watching the servitors, distant points of extreme radiance. Guardians will follow the automata, and if automata can penetrate the barrier...

Something approached, all edges and spines, glittering with the light of annihilation. It was leaky and sluggish, unlike most of the Guardians. Chaos recoiled, bouncing off the barrier again. The one it had called Scar, always reluctant to chase the decoy, had been attracted by its condensed form... that must be it. It tried to expand, to dilute its presence and hide, but the bubble was too small.

Chaos thrashed, beating against the barrier, making it bulge but not break. Too strong! There must be a way. The Guardian was close, far too close, there wasn't enough time--
~~

Fusion felt a sudden spike of pain as the barrier twitched under the impact of Discord's struggles. There was a moment of disconnection from the triplet of Stones, but so brief that the barrier did little more than expand slightly. We have to end this! I cannot hold it forever.

Well, I can't shrink the trap any further, Gravity snapped, struggling with her own connection and modifying the magic on the fly. I don't know how this works any more than you do!

Every effort they put in to collapsing the barrier to zero dimensions was repulsed by a sudden resistance, like trying to crush a rock beneath a hoof. Now what? Fusion thought. Wait, look there-- She indicated a damaged shredder, working its way towards Discord. --perhaps that will do the job for us.

Let me out! There was finally a bit of emotion to the communication from Discord. I have done nothing but help you. Without me all your kind would be--

I think you are a liar, Discord, Fusion sent back, her concentration starting to waver. The entity's struggles continued unabated, and it showed no signs of tiring at all.

What about that last spell? Anger made Gravity sound harsh and dangerous. What was that going to do to us?

There was a pause, then Discord's tone changed from pleading to something richer and more ugly. You cannot hold me here forever; I cannot die and I will wait you out. Release the barrier. If you don't... you think things are bad now, just wait until I do get free. There is no end to the suffering I will put you throu--

Shut up! Fusion snarled, blocking any further attempt at communication and bearing down on the magic once more. Grav, if we can't kill the thing, what else can we do?

===

~~
Chaos couldn't spread out enough! Scar definitely knew where it was. The frontal portion of the Guardian expanded, opening wide to encompass the whole rainbow bubble. Within was nothing except the random sparkles of space-time being reformatted back to its simpler state. Chaos surged again, using its full strength and all the many and varied techniques it had learned over its long, long existence, but the barrier did little more than wobble.

There were weak points, but there was no time! Got to get out, got to-- There was still a link to the outside of the barrier, but it was so small. Chaos coiled itself tightly, accelerating its processes to the ultimate limit, struggling to find an alternative. Nothing! It crushed itself down, starting with the most vital, core elements of its self, partitioning them to the point of near mindlessness, and started to squeeze down the narrow, convoluted passageway towards the decoy.

Conscious thought started to fade, pushed aside by the layers of automation it had frantically built to carry out this final plan, leaving only the idea that the quantum foam was no longer remotely safe. It needed a way to escape completely, to a place where the Guardians couldn't touch it, and where it could strike at the servitors without risk.
~~

Gravity's grip on her power fluctuated as Discord smashed against the barrier again. Her vision blurred under the surge of pain, but it was nothing compared to what she'd endured already. Clarity returned, and she watched as the shredder expanded, swallowing the bubble like a snake with an egg.

Discord seemed to have given up, collapsing to a hazy point and shrinking further, then vanished completely as the shredder swept over it. The bubble was unaffected, and the shredder fell back to its previous state, continuing on like nothing had happened. Was that it? She pulled them closer, trying to see some evidence or residue.

I don't know... but look at the other one. The obvious ball of black lightning was still there, and seemed fatter.

Part of it has escaped! Gravity hissed. Quick, before it hides. She pulled her power from the bubble, surging towards the 'decoy'. Fusion followed, reaching out with a similar set of immaterial, rainbow claws. They reached the spot, but Discord had already vanished.

~~
It felt weak, confused and a lot smaller than it once had been. What am I? Who am I? Memories swirled, old and new, with no obvious order, but one thing was obvious: it had been attacked.

It was still under attack! Guardians and other things were approaching, bright gold and darkest violet, closing with what could only be hostile intent. Some sense of history returned, a remembered need to get out of this confusing and dangerous space. There was a way out, another place it could go where these... these... ponies wouldn't be so hard to counter.

The Plan sat at the forefront of everything, flooded with a sense of urgency, directing its attention to the other mind, the one it had prepared as a communications conduit. Organic and frightfully slow though it was, it was already packed with pared-down versions of Chaos' memories and an abbreviated mentality. It formed a reference datum, a beacon for Chaos' translation into the real.

It looked inwards and out into the material world, a place of horribly slow and heavy atoms and molecules, touching everything within range of its break-out point. Images flashed through its mind, a dark silicate and organics coated surface bombarded by drops of dihydrogen oxide and-- More memories: grass and trees in the rain. A force field flashed into being, expanding out to a five-length dome that folded down into a sphere.

It pulled at the organic mind's atoms, shredding the body in an instant. It wasn't enough and it reached further, ripping apart everything organic within the field perimeter and reassembling it into, into... what? What form would most aid its survival? The ponies were too close, too fast, so it pulled up the lifepatterns that it could remember, mashing together parts and fragments of many into one body. Something that the world has not seen, something the Guardians won't recognise as... as... me. Who am I? There was no name, no real, solid identity with which to anchor itself.

Its new body, surrounded by flames from the waste heat of its rapid assembly, twitched randomly on the forest floor as it poured its self into the organic brain. The long furry torso writhed, mismatched limbs drumming against the scorched ground, then its eyes opened and its jaws parted. A wordless cry, little more than an animal scream of rage, echoed back from some surface in the darkness.

Who am I? The old memories wouldn't come, not quickly, so it grasped at the newer ones. There was a name. "I am." Its voice, crackling and thick with phlegm, was a deep, bass rumble.

"I am Discord."

===

Harq, soaring above the cratered landscape, hunted for the place he'd been born. The ground, hidden under a dirty-brown haze of dust and ash and swept by violent, turbulent winds, glowed as bright as day in the long-wave infrared. The crater cores were distinctly hotter than the ground around them, giving the world a pockmarked, diseased look.

Everything is different! He knew he was in the right area -- the patterns of deep transit tunnels were more-or-less intact, even though the normal brilliance of the crystal thaumic tracks was broken and patchy. There was an entrance on the side of a hill, right there! No entrance, no hill at all, just the tail end of a ragged groove of steaming rock.

He shivered, thinking about beams of violet light descending from the heavens, and felt despair. Not as deep as an earth-penetrator, perhaps... He dropped closer, sweeping the area with his shadow sight, hunting for anything familiar.

There, under a dozen lengths of hot rubble, were the outlines of the subsurface hangars and bulk storage bays, only visible by the faint glimmer of thaumic stock control tags and damaged levitation cargo handling systems. Harq could remember being led through them on his early flight tests, easy things that marked the end of his short childhood.

He traced back the shapes, locating the top of the shaft leading deeper in the facility, down to the shadowed depths and the faint hint of light and motion in the darkness. Harq strained, picking out the subtle shapes of bat wings and sinuous body. Found you! He turned a quick spiral, rapidly losing altitude, and landed on the steaming rock.

This much closer and without the motion of flight, his view was clearer. There were at least a dozen of his kind down there, and the incubation furnaces were still intact. The armoured stalls were obvious, each one with a small version of himself inside. Harq remembered what it had been like -- heavy walls and isolation, and only the food needed to grow. They won't be able to get out, her thought, paws closing into mailed fists. Trapped in the dark, under a kilolength of rock. The incubators were at least self-powered with isotopic heaters, so it seemed likely that the eggs were still viable.

What will I feed them when the feedstock runs out? How much did the Masters keep on paw? He searched his memory, recalling vague images of radiation-shielded silos attached to an automated distribution system. How big--? He shook his head, pushing away the doubts. The pony said I could have anything the Masters made... plenty must have survived the explosions.

A feeling of immense pressure, from everywhere at once, made him cower. It was like he'd felt from the white pony, only far, far stronger. Wings pulled up protectively against a suddenly hostile sky, he tried to close his inner eye against the searchlight glare coming from the shadow universe, but it didn't help. A disk of light was expanding across the sky at a frightening rate. The sun, a lurid thing in the shadow universe, flickered and went out, then the light went into reverse, vanishing like it had never been.

Harq stared upwards, jaws open, then flinched when the infrared glow of the sun vanished, then returned a moment later. Speed of light, he thought, relaxing slightly. What happened out there? The whole event had taken less than a second. With frequent glances at the sky, he started to dig down into the base, diamond-hard claws making short work of the rubble.

===

Where did it go?! Fusion sent, searching the riotous space around them. There was nothing out of place, just the converging shredders slowly losing interest and returning to their previous random drift.

It's made itself real. Gravity swore softly, trying to think. But we know where -- this place maps to our physical world... that's where we left Korn!

Fusion signalled her assent, but Gravity wasn't waiting. She pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--making the world change and become slow and heavy. They hovered ten lengths above the ground, battered by rain sweeping in horizontally under pitch-black clouds, looking down at the pit where they'd left what the Student had become. There was a bubble of magic there, a slick, oil-on-water coloured thing that shifted constantly. Within was a furry snake with six limbs, no two the same, like someone had smashed a gryphon with some random animals and stretched it out.

It glowed with a febrile light by shadow sight, a constant boiling churn of random colours like a fire in a chemical factory. It moved, slowly at first, then with greater speed, uncoiling and standing upright like a striking snake, balanced on those stupid legs. Wings unfurled, as mismatched as the rest of the body, beat once and closed again. The eyes opened, a sick yellow cored with red, focussing on them.

"What the Maker is that thing?" Fusion whispered, words lost in the wind and rain but transmitted faithfully through the reactivated sharing.

No Maker, you killed--

The mental voice was rich and masculine, like a dark oil oozing across her mind. Fusion whinnied in surprise, her defences hardening, then ripped off the communicator and threw it away, even though the voice hadn't used it. A glance at Gravity told its own story; the other mare's face mirrored the shock she felt. "You gave us the magic," she choked out. "You told us--"

Discord laughed, the sound as clear as if he was standing right next to her, banishing the force field with a wave of one taloned forepaw. "You used it! You saved yourselves too," he purred. The rain still fell, but didn't wet his rat-brown fur. The long muzzle parted in a doggish smile, showing yellow, jagged teeth. "No Guardians here," he murmured, then threw his head back and laughed again. "I have you within my reach--"

Magic lanced out, horribly powerful, and wrapped itself around their defences. Strange spells spalled off the beam, flooding the shadow universe with random colour and turning passing raindrops into butterflies, beetles and wasps.

Fusion whinnied again and Gravity cried out as their defences fell inwards, then stabilised as they were optimised to magic rather than some physical attack. Drawing on the Stones, minds falling back into the same synchronicity they'd had down in the lower levels of space-time, they pushed back.

Discord's magic faltered and collapsed under the rainbow onslaught, then steadied into a form-fitting layer that coated his body like oil. They pushed at it, but there was an ultimate limit to how far it would go. He's just as unkillable here! Fusion wailed, already starting to tire. The vast majority of the power was coming from the Stones, but keeping the link open wasn't effort-free. Discord, perhaps still able to hear her thoughts, smiled again.

Gravity was delving back into the interface with the Stones, hunting for something, anything that might bypass Discord's defences. "We can't get in to kill him, but we can at least make it impossible for him to strike back," Gravity gasped out, sweat running down her neck. "I have an idea..."

===

Discord, mind still scrabbling to assemble his fragmented memories, twisted his muzzle into a smile as it became obvious that the ponies didn't have enough control over the Stones to do what they wanted. All that power and no idea how to use it! All I need to do is wait them out. He flexed his claws, examining the barrier that held him. Here in the physical world it wasn't as impenetrable as it had been in the quantum foam.

The smile widened as he found a vulnerability; there was a way he could reach up through the conduit and get to the ponies themselves. Nothing so overt as physical destruction, they were too well warded for that, too practiced from all the battles they'd fought. Their minds were less protected, and it was an easy thing to alter an organic brain. Which one? Discord was more familiar with Fusion and sequestration would be easier, but Gravity was the one skilled in mind manipulation; she might notice the alterations to her kin and reverse them.

Brute-forcing the Stone's magic, finding the right places to pull and push with his own power would take more time than this mental manipulation. Decision reached, Discord focussed on Gravity, sampling the base levels of her mind and planning the alterations he wanted. Even this close to the centre of the Stone's power there was still no interference from the Guardians, and he smiled an snaggle-toothed smile.

The pair, one light, one dark, hovered above him, wings beating frantically. He reached out one paw lazily, miming reaching for them. I will have you soon. The tips of the ponies' wings blurred into invisibility as the speed of their motion abruptly accelerated and he frowned. "What is this?" The link to Gravity was stretching, falling away into a Doppler-shifted pit. Quickly, Discord reached through the conduit, twisting at the pony's inadequately shielded mind, then pulled back as the opening slammed shut. Something to remember me by, he thought grimly, then started looking for another weak point.

The light, a dim, steady grey under the dense clouds of ash and soot, brightened steadily, bringing with it an uncomfortable warmth. The rain was invisible and the ponies zipped and darted like hummingbirds, then abruptly landed next to him. Before the next thought could form, he was in a hot darkness, hot enough that he felt the urge to pant. Ridiculous, to be limited by the body I made! Discord altered some of his physiological parameters, negating the heat.

Another change and light bloomed, the Flaw migrating across the sky with the speed of a meteor, blazing down with incredible ferocity. The land around sloped away on all sides, rocky scree slopes falling away to the surrounding valleys, but it was impossible to look at without pain. Heat beat down from above as if the hazy sky, full of ephemeral, boiling clouds, was an open furnace, hot enough to make his fur smoke and shrivel.

Attention diverted, Discord damped down the signals from his body, diverting resources to repair. Night arrived with a near-audible suddenness, bringing some respite from the sky, but the ground itself was now burning-hot. There was barely any time for the shock to register, then the Flaw rose again, far faster than before, fast enough that it blurred into a solid arc of flickering light that went from horizon to horizon. More motion was added to the first: a steady precession of the arc.

The heat built further with each passing moment, becoming an itching, burning pain. Flesh well past the point of spontaneous combustion, had there been any oxygen present, Discord struggled to hold his form together, fighting against the rising tide of energy. His body glowed, first a dull red, then up through the spectrum to a hard blue-white.

Through the pain, fear made an unwelcome, unfamiliar sensation in his gut. Or perhaps they can wait me out. There were more loose spots in the weave of power that held him, subtle but still vulnerable, and it wouldn't be that long before he could get it to unravel. Not long, subjectively.

The outside world, locked away behind walls of relativity, spun faster and faster, accelerating away from him. No matter. It will be so long that the ponies will forget about me.

I will not forget about them.

===

Sides heaving, Fusion relaxed her grip on the Stones. "I think you did it." Shadows moved strangely across Discord's pelt, long-delayed from what caused them.

"Look at that," Gravity said. "What more proof do you need? Even light is taking forever to cross that tiny distance."

"If nothing else we've bought some time while we look for a permanent solution. What shall we do with him? Fire him into the sun?" Fusion looked up, locating Celestia through the clouds.

Gravity stared at Discord, head cocked. "I'd rather have him where we can see him." She flashed Fusion a tired smile, then reached out and tapped him with one hoof, making a dull thud, as if she'd struck something immensely dense and heavy. "Dip him in concrete and he'll make a rather striking statue, don't you think?"

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