Heat Death

by ScottTrek

The Fray

“Forge! I think I’m going to black-out.” Twilight groaned, clutching her head. “Forge? Forge!” Twilight looked round to see Forge drifting, lights and engines dead. “FORGE!”

Twilight flew over to Forge, trajectory stuttering as the pain in her flared. She’s first noticed the headache half an hour ago but not thought anything of it. Now it was quickly escalating up to migraine levels. Twilight tried to scan Forges interior but the pain in her head was making it impossible to concentrate.

“FORGE WAKE UP!” Twilight yelled, pounding his psi-receptors with her mental energy to try and get a response. “Oh hell,” Twilight thought to herself, “Is he dead?”

Twilight head butted his hull in frustration, as she pulled her back she noticed something floating between them. Blood was leaking from her nose. Twilight was panicking now; she tried to fly but the pain had grown to the point that it was preventing her from using the magic that let her travel through space. Her thoughts became less and less coherent, her brain felt like it was having all the fluid drain from it and shriving up.

There was a sudden thump and Twilight was launched backwards. Looking down Twilight tried to process the fact that there were now two metal barbs sticking out of her chest. Twilight forced her head up to follow the lines trailing from them, leading back to… Forge?

.

.

.

.

Then the nadion particle pulse hit her.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Conducted through the prongs embedded in her chest, the particle blast hit her like freight train. Twilight’s body spasmed and convulsed as she screamed in pain, but this was manageable pain. The crushing pain in her head was swept aside as she juddered in space.

The pulse cut out and the crushing head pain returned but not nearly as strong. Twilight, feeling completely fried, could only watch as Forge light up, power flooding back to his systems and he opened up with his phaser banks.

Beams lanced across the void, some slamming into Twilights body, jerking her around, but many more were bursting in the void around her. Another particle pulse surged through the coils and Twilights entire body went numb.

No. Not quite numb, there was the slightest sensation on the back of her neck.

No. In the back of her neck.

Forge was reeling her in now, the coils retracting back into his hull but he hadn’t changed his firing angle. The phaser beams were lancing the area behind her body, Twilight managed to jerk her head round in time to see a phaser beam impact against something. Its outline traced by the nadion particles that led down an emaciated arm tipped with claws passing ghost like into her head.

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“Twilight unit?”

“………………………….”

“Twilight unit please respond.”

“…………………………..”

“Administering 10 milligrams cordrazine.”

“………………………………”

“Cardiac functions non responsive. Applying cortical stimulators. Administering 20 milligrams adrenalin, 10 milligrams tricordrazine."

“Uhhhhhhh………”

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Twilight blearily blinked back to consciousness, then immediately began giggling at the alliteration in her last thought. She dozily swung her head around and tried to sit up, but wooziness overtook her and she flopped back into the bed.

Ohhh.

What?

Bed?

“Twilight unit, are you operational?” Forges voice filled her head and a holographic image materialised, being projected from a wall panel.

“Forge!” Twilight grinned broadly, hiccuping slightly and waving a hoof. “Where am I? And why am I in bed?”

“I placed you in the bedding unit…” Forge started.

“Phhhft…Forge got me into bed.” Twilight giggled, the room wobbling slightly.

“….to recover from the Terror Child attack.” Forge continued, ignoring Twilight. The holograph showed a cross section of Forges infrastructure. “You are inside one of the old crew cabins.”

“In bed and inside you?” Twilight giggles, rolling over and tucking her legs in. “Sorry Forge but I’m just not into robots.”

“And I have neither the subroutines nor the inclination.”

Twilight burst in full, proper laughter. “Oh Forge you’re so funny sometimes!” Twilight said between gasps. After a few moments the hilarity wore off and she turned back to the hologram. “Hey, I feel really, really weird; like I was hit by a small asteroid.”

“Twilight unit suffered neural trauma during the attack.”

“Hmmmm…..”

“Twilight unit is also under the influence of several stimulant compounds. You nearly went into cardiac arrest.”

“……….” Twilight looked at Forge.

“………” Forge looked at Twilight.

“You shot me didn’t you?”

“Affirmative.”

Twilights face grew stern as she lifted the bed covers and regarded the two burn marks on her chest.

“It was necessary.” Forge explained, forelegs rubbing together nervously. “This unit was encountered Nightmare Children and Terror Children in the past, they are extremely hard to track, let alone be damaged whilst they remain in the Aether. This unit had to wait until it was vulnerable before acting. “

“Ohhh its fine!” Twilight mumbled, stern expression dropping away under a massive yawn. “Celestia always taught me to play against your opponents egos. Bet that Terror Child never suspected a trap.” Twilight yawn again lay down in the bed. “I’m gonna’ have a nap ok? Keep an eye on me ok? We are in the ‘Nightmare zone’ aren’t....zzz…zzz...zzz.” Tendrils emerged from the wall and carefully tucked Twilight in before lightly attaching to her forehead to monitor her dreams, whilst Forge began running a search in his data-banks for reference to ‘Celestia’.”

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Simultaneously to this Forge continued to run high intensity scans on any patch of space that looked the slightest bit off. He’d seen what appeared to be a cloud of gas a few times before thoroughly determining that, despite what his eye was telling him, it definitely didn't exist.

More worryingly as he’d passed a sub-space vacuole; a pocket of warped space-time most likely caused by the wake of a black hole, he thought he saw a toothy maw and obsidian eyes peek out of the folds of space-time. It hadn’t been another Terror Child. Like their Nightmare Child ancestors they appeared to their prey in a form that invoked their deepest fears, and what Forge feared was far worse than black eyes and a few teeth, no matter how sharp.

Intensive scans and a log check showed that not only was nothing there but his visual sensors hadn’t actually recorded the image of a face. Forge still put a disruptor bolt into the vacuole to be sure.

Not for the first time Forge hoped that The Valkyrie’s spell had worked properly and time had been frozen for them. Otherwise Twilight would wish that they’d died in the Hrath attack.

Comments

[Europa]

Hmm, wonder what's up with these Nightmare zones. And I like how you elaborate how empty it is; he thinks he sees a cloud of gas but no. So far out it's so... empty. It sounds like Twilight's near the end of the Degenerate Era, where all the stars are dead, the galaxies expanded away from each other, the galaxies evaporated into intergalactic space, but matter still exists.

Really wonder what's up with these Nightmare zones.

[Flurshy]

3954955
Maybe it's the remains of concentrations of dark energy, those supervoids in the structure of the universe. The Nightmare Zones, I mean.

[Europa]

3956500 I don't know, remains of dark energy implies it's going to go away, but it's the opposite. The more empty space there is the more dark energy there is, which forces things further apart, which makes more dark energy, forcing them apart faster...

[MLai]

3956596
Both Twilight and Forge are hyper-advanced entities, persisting as organized matter despite the laws of the universe having changed around them to be hostile to the very existence of normal matter. To borrow a term, they're like "reality marbles" in an entropic void.

Which makes me wonder how the NZs can still harbor complex organized entities like sentient Terror Children. Unless they're just as hyper-advanced as Twilight and Forge, but surviving entropy in a different way.

[Prometheushunter2]

8882412
Judging by how these “children” take the form of whatever the victim fears and according to forge hide in the “aether” which I’m guessing isn’t normal space, my guess is they’re beings where things such as entropy wouldn't ever be a concern, they probably aren’t even “alive” as we know it. My guess is the nightmare zones are places where space has begun to fall apart, undergoing the big rip, and do to these zones being full of cosmic holes things from... outside, are able to come into there universe to feed on whatever is left. Like eldritch vultures