Chapter 25: Earthrise
"Sir Gray." The voice was loud enough to rouse him, yet quiet enough to be respectful. Charles opened his eyes, blinking the sleepiness away. "We've arrived." It was Ayyubi, armored and armed, standing a respectable distance from the bench Charles had fallen asleep atop. "His grace requests an audience. We should not keep him waiting."
That got his attention, and Charles was soon on his hooves. Much to his chagrin, he was now the only one aboard. Rainbow Dash had evidently been carried from the bed, and Lonely Dawn was beside him no longer. It felt strange to be alone, a feeling he very much did not wish to continue feeling. Was this what it was like to feel like part of a herd? "Where are the other ponies? The injured one, the civilian I brought?"
"Safe," was all his escort said, turning and walking away towards the ramp. He was a knight, and so Charles believed him. Ayyubi hadn't just been a friend, he had also been his direct superior back on Earth. If he was going to trust anyone, it would be him. "The sick and the weak have no place on a battlefield. You are neither, correct? You serve the Tower."
"I serve the Tower," Charles repeated, conscious of the way his mouth twisted the English. "Until death."
"Good. I have seen too many of the natives to think them weak by nature. Still, to be struck down to the weakness of flesh, and I was concerned. If you tell me you are a true servant of the Tower, then I welcome you to fight beside us. We will need every soldier."
Charles walked down the ramp and onto frozen ground. He shivered involuntarily, though he did his best to conceal that reaction from his former mentor. To feel the cold was a weakness of the flesh. Instead of his feebleness, Charles focused on looking around, trying to get a feel for where they were.
He stood atop a hill covered with snow, overlooking the assembled army of the Tower. Tanks hovered in orderly rows, while great clouds of drones filled the sky above them. Larger wheeled crawlers tore into the frozen ground behind them, with massive cannons far too large to lift from the ground.
Good King Richard led his army from horseback, though it was no living beast. Like every being of the Tower, the horse was a creature of steel and silicon, with little resemblance to proper pony proportions. Atop the beast, with his robes flapping in the arctic breeze and a glittering sword in his hand, he seemed cast in the very image of God. With each lift of his sword, the people cheered. These were the moments history was made of.
Richard finished addressing the assembled troops, and he retreated from the edge of the hill. The mount was perfectly responsive and lowered itself to the ground for him to step smoothly off. There it sat inert, in a morbid parody of life.
For all his silicon flesh, there seemed nothing at all that wasn't brilliantly alive about the king, no matter how synthetic he was. "Charles, my boy!" He grinned. "Apologies for the awakening; we had to upgrade your control implants. It seemed better to get the work done."
Charles lifted a wing to the back of his neck, and indeed he felt raw flesh and a metal set smoothly into the coat. It was a far better job with implants than Rainbow Dash had done, yet he still felt robbed somehow. Rainbow had done it for him, just as he had made her wing. Now both of those bonds were dissolved. Still, he said nothing of that to his king. Instead he said, "I had no idea we were still so strong. Sir Ayyubi told me of the virus; I would've thought their troops would have turned against us immediately."
Richard laughed. "We expected treachery from the first, child, and were long gone before they found us! We learned well from the Federation back on Earth; you can't kill your enemy when you don't know what patch of ground they're hiding in!" One mighty hand clasped him on the shoulder, as cold and lifeless as the tundra all around them. Charles forced himself to hold still and not shiver, though six months ago he would've been burning with pride to receive such a gesture of endearment.
"We never had to contend with large numbers. Most simply went to sleep, with only the strongest setting out to make war on what remained of Equestria. We suspect Samil can only control a limited number with any dexterity. Even the devil has his limits, eh?"
Richard turned him forcefully, not that Charles had any mind to struggle. They seemed to be facing empty air, except for the characteristic shimmer of active camouflage. With a wave of his hand a doorway took shape in the steel. Charles recognized it at once for a mobile command center, of the very sort he had often operated from during times of war. "We don't make seats in our fighters for horses, but I don't see any reason why your skills would have grown any weaker." He met Charles's eyes, all trace of laughter gone. "Answer truly, sir knight. Are you still my best pilot?"
"Better than I've ever been," he answered, without hesitation. "Except I probably can't handle quite so many fighters as I used to." He raised a hoof, gesturing at his head. "Meat brain, Your Grace."
Richard's smile returned. "You always spoke the truth, even when it reflected badly." The door opened, and they walked inside. Charles was relieved to find it warmer than the tundra outside, though not by as much as he would've liked. The warmth was not because someone had turned on climate control, but probably had more to do with the shelter from the wind and the enclosed metal space filled with computers. Tower structures usually lacked climate control when only fully cybernetic individuals would ever inhabit them. Well, that was half true. Some of them had cooling units for the computers. At least nobody had turned those on.
"I wouldn't worry. You have an excellent copilot. Had her control interface installed right before yours, in fact. I'm told she's the best in all Equestria."
They reached the control consoles; there were only two. One was empty, except for a little modified padding obviously meant to hold his pony body in place. In front of the other was a hospital bed, complete with every accoutrement. Life support monitors beeped, and heated blankets protected Rainbow Dash from the cold. Her body was restrained, but in a sitting position, with the bed reclined almost into a chair as the nicest hospital beds always could. Charles had never seen an expression so smug in his whole life.
"We don't believe the enemy has much of an air presence beyond those half-alive insects. Our drones will take care of them. I don't anticipate I will be needing you, Charles. Yet I expect you to be ready if the enemy surprises us with an air presence we didn't anticipate."
He bowed. It felt strange to bow as a pony, but he did his best. "Of course, Your Grace. It will be done." He paused, and didn't dare meet his eyes as he asked, "Who is the enemy? What are we doing?"
Richard's expression hardened back into granite. "We have found the traitor Samil and his puppet troops. When they are dead, we will move north until we unite with Equestrian strength in the Crystal Empire." He turned away. "It's time to end the war, Charles." Richard left him then, far too quickly for Charles to respond. The whole exchange left Charles feeling very strange. It seemed as though Richard had barely even noticed he wasn't human anymore. Almost as though he had expected what happened to him.
He was startled out of his confusion by a familiar voice. It came raspy, croaking from the restrained body in the hospital bed, yet none of the familiar confidence was missing. None of the cockyness either. "About time you showed up."
Charles advanced to the edge of the bed. Unfortunately it was at human height, and he had to prop his front hooves up on the edge to be at her head level. "Rainbow, what the hell are you doing here?" He learned in close to her face, trying to look as angry as he could. "I didn't even know you woke up! How hard was it to convince them to let you fly?"
The fact she was here meant to Charles that King Richard must be extremely confident they wouldn't be needed. If he was making sweeping political gestures again, did that mean the war was nearly over? He hadn't learned much during the flight here, but what he had learned told a very different story than one where victory was imminent. You didn't retreat to your last city and leave your whole country to the enemy when you had nearly won.
"It wasn't that hard." She pointed at the back of her head, no doubt where the control interface had been installed. "They said I already had the houseplants to do it. The big guy just asked what I did, and I told him I was the best flier in all Equestria! It's true!" She wiggled fruitlessly against her restraints. The gesture held almost no force, yet in it Vigil saw the personality of the pony he had come to know. It brought relief to see her acting like herself again. Maybe even joy.
"Implants," he corrected. "You have the implants. I told that bitch not to stick anything else in your head!"
Rainbow only looked more confused. "You let a dog do my surgery?"
Charles rolled his eyes, climbing up into the control interface beside her. As if they had been waiting for this exact moment, several technicians emerged from the shadows all around him and began to work his body into the straps and restraints. Of course, all of the timid figures belonged to the Technocratic Order, but this sort he never resented. Most low-level technicians didn't think themselves superior to the knights of the Tower. "How's the wing feel?" he asked, unwilling to answer the other question.
"Like I should be out flying already!" she answered, without hesitation. "Three days without getting out of bed is crazy! I would be way more helpful if I could fight out there!" She gestured at the ceiling with a hoof, in that vague way Charles had long come to associate with her half-formed ideas.
Without meaning to, finding himself utterly unable to stop himself, he laughed. Her angry look only made him laugh harder. "You say that now. Just wait until you feel what it's like to really fly." If the technicians were moved by this conversation, they showed no sign. Maybe they didn't have Equestrian translation programs, or maybe they just didn't care. "You might want to back out now. Once you taste it, you'll never be able to get enough."
He rested his head against the padding, testing the connections with his mind with a few simple commands. Master control responded as swiftly as ever, as though he wasn't weeks out of practice. He turned to the lead technician, the one wearing a red robe instead of gray. "Put Rainbow Dash on maximum intervention level," he said. "She's only ever flown like a bird before."
The man sneered at him as if to say, 'of course we're doing that, how stupid are you?' Though all he did was nod.
Charles ignored him, turning his attention on Rainbow Dash. "So we're almost back. Are you excited to see your friends again?"
"Well duh!" Her voice didn't have anything near her usual energy, but it was still a valiant attempt. "I can't wait to introduce you! Pretty much the coolest ponies you've ever met. There's Pinkie Pie, party animal like nobody's business. Fluttershy, nicest sweetest pony in the whole world. Rarity's kinda snooty, but she's also elegant and graceful and a surprisingly good fighter. Applejack's the strongest, hardest-working, most dedicated pony you ever met, 'cept me of course." She took a deep breath. "And then there's Twilight. I... I think you'll like her too."
Charles nodded. "I'm sure I will. I hope my king was right about this being the end of the war. If the war was over, I could do whatever I wanted, including getting to know your friends. If it isn't... I don't know what will happen." He shrugged. "King Richard didn't say anything about changing me back."
Rainbow stared at him. "You're not mad?"
He shook his head. "Of course not! Why would I be mad?"
She folded her hooves across her chest, closing her eyes and smiling. "Oh, no reason. Just thinking of something you said. A few weeks ago, when this all started. Back when you thought being a pony was the worst thing ever."
He shrugged. "I'm not sure what I think. Except that I don't think there's a chance in hell we'll actually be doing any piloting here. Trusting an officer who might be compromised is just the sort of bold thing King Richard might do, but... no offense, but you've never done my kind of flying before."
* * *
It was hard to give comfort to a pony wearing hard plated armor, even if she had removed the helmet. Still she tried, wrapping a wing briefly over her shoulder and holding it there for a few seconds. "Applejack." She glared as sternly as she could. "The ponies they're fighting eat magic. Are you sure you want to go with them? That armor won't protect you from necromancy, Applejack. You must still remember how it feels."
A collective shiver passed through the room. All of Twilight's close friends had been exposed to such magic more than once during their many adventures. They all knew the awful cold that chilled at the heart and pulled the strength from the flesh. It was an occupational hazard of being close to Celestia's apprentice.
Applejack slammed her hoof down, though her expression relaxed a little. "If we don't stop those ponies, they'll be 'ere in no time. If I know 'ow to make a difference, I gotta make a difference!" She sat back on her haunches, glancing around the throne room.
There were six of them, all of Twilight's closest friends and Spike, standing or sitting or pacing beneath the banners and tapestries of the Crystal Empire. High above them, its magic barely gleaming, the Crystal Heart rotated, a blue radiance that barely flickered anymore. The spell, after all, was driven by the hope and joy of the crystal ponies. There was little hope to be had on the streets these days, and no number of fairs would fix things now.
There were crystal bowls filled with crystal berries, vases of freshly tossed salads and a crystal fountain of cider. Not even Pinkie Pie seemed interested in eating the snacks, though like Applejack she hadn't removed her armor since arriving. Rarity and Spike sat together on a heavily padded sofa, seeming to be in a contest to act as relaxed as possible and failing spectacularly.
Pinkie Pie was pacing around and around the stone box in the center of the room, the one with six different keyholes that had saved Equestria more than once before. The keys were already inside, since there was no point removing them when only their owners could turn them. "I don't get it," Pinkie said, her face scrunched up in discomfort. "We could really use that loyalty right about now."
Twilight abruptly looked away, searching her mind for something, anything they could talk about instead. If she could direct the conversation somewhere else before the questions came, maybe she wouldn't have to-
"Where is Rainbow Dash, anyway?" Rarity asked, a glass hovering near her mouth. As usual, she didn't actually sip from it. It was enough just to hold it nearby and act like she was about to. "Whatever her assignments might be, surely Princess Celestia recognizes we could do much more if we had every magical resource at our disposal. Even if we couldn't use it to strike down those magic-devouring fiends, there are plenty of garden-variety fiends we could make short work of."
Fluttershy nodded in agreement. "I think... maybe you could ask the princess to give her some time to see us... If it isn't too much trouble."
Twilight sighed, fighting to keep the emotion from her voice. She didn't turn around. If she met any of their eyes, she would cry. Even if nopony said it, Twilight knew they were depending on her to stay strong for them. Somepony had to, and if she broke, everypony would. It didn't matter that her relationship had been more intimate than theirs. That would only strengthen their resolve. If she could remain stoic, then they could too.
"Rainbow Dash is... no longer with us." There was no emotion in her voice, each word like slate. It was either that or break down and completely lose it. "That secret mission she was sent on; not even half the ponies came back."
She heard Fluttershy start to cry. Rarity gasped. Neither Applejack nor Pinkie Pie showed any overt signs of powerful emotion, however. She didn't have the courage to turn and see, so there was no way to know if they weren't actually taking the news hardest of all. Applejack spoke quietly into her ear from very close. "Fer' a smart pony, you can be really dumb sometimes."
Twilight was stunned speechless. Rarity, however, was not. "You insensitive oaf! How could you say something so awful at a time like this? Don't you know that Twilight and-"
Applejack ignored Rarity, walking around Twilight so she could look her in the eye. "You haven't asked Luna about her, have you?"
"W-what-" She was crying now, there was no fighting it. Not because Applejack was giving her a hard time, since of course she had already expected Applejack would be the most hurt by her deception up until this point. No, it hurt because not all her friends seemed to share her pain. Applejack seemed to be making fun of her, or at least being brutally honest.
"Nopony ever told you she was dead, right? Just that she didn't come back."
Twilight nodded, unable to see Applejack's face anymore. It was blurred right along with the rest of the throne room.
"Luna told us she's up an' felt Rainbow lost somewhere. She don't know where, but..." She embraced her, without a trace of the judgement that had been in her voice only moments before. "She's not dead, Twilight. Just lost. If anypony can fight her way back, it's her."
Pinkie Pie seemed almost oblivious to the emotional exchange, her friends all around her on the roller-coaster of despair and relief. She sounded exactly as she had, and hadn't let her vision wander from the box. "I hope she hurries it up. That welcome-home party won't wait forever."
Applejack jerked suddenly, eyes moving to a part of the room that was clearly empty. Nopony else noticed the apparent attention she was paying a patch of empty space, at least not until she rose to her hooves. "Sorry everypony, duty calls."
"Group hug!" Pinkie shouted, and the occupants of the room rushed to comply. It was hardly the same when two of those in the hug were wearing rigid armor, but the gesture was sweet all the same.
"Come back safe." Twilight met Applejack's eyes, opening the door for her with her magic. "We'll keep things under control until you get back."
"Ya' better." Applejack nodded respectfully to her, then vanished into the crisp outside air, and was gone up the muddy path.
* * *
Charles and Rainbow watched the battle from high above, eyes patched into a dozen different cameras. The Federation tanks moved in tight formation, surrounded by goblins and half-changelings by the thousands. Explosions rocked the ground around the center of the convoy, occasionally damaging one of the armored vehicles or turning a crowd of troops to reddish chunks.
Yet the longer Charles watched, the more uneasy he felt.
Rainbow Dash apparently felt something similar, because she said so. "This is gross. I can't believe you guys invented guns that do that to people." Her voice came over the radio, so it lacked any of the weakness her recent operation might have imparted. "Like... big red dandelions."
"I don't like it either," Charles admitted. Their fighters were cloaked, flying in slow circles over the battle, but there was very little for them to do. Richard's army had caught Samil's convoy at the bottom of a valley and almost completely without warning. Even knowing the good guys were winning did not make it much easier to watch the slaughter. It was mostly goblins dying, and Charles didn't think of them as animals anymore. They were the descendants of Avalon Colony, twisted to serve against their will!
He had said as much to the officers carrying out the battle. "It didn't matter where they came from," he had been told. "They were the enemy now. Until they surrendered, they had to be fought and killed." And Charles agreed, they couldn't let the goblins rampage over Equestria just because there were some connections in their family tree. When the war was over, then they could figure out how to help their distant cousins.
"Does something look off to you?" Charles zoomed out as far as he could, watching the battle from the widest possible vantage. He tried to see the patterns at work in the movement of individual troops, as he had once done easily as an android. His pony brain lacked the almost-instantaneous access to the libraries of tactics and recorded battles, and that made it slow going.
Still, he hadn't been made a knight for nothing. He could see the pincer formation King Richard had chosen, and it looked as though it would soon bring victory. They had the convoy overmastered in about every area, nevermind what feeble reinforcements the Draconic troops might summon.
For the enemy that managed to conceal a virus in every military Nanophage strain for decades, managed to conceal his presence from the entire UEF Congress, a blind charge through clearly compromising terrain was foolish in the extreme. Their enemy knew the Tower was still out there, knew that the bulk of their troops had survived the initial skirmishes as they fled to underground retreats. So why had Samil acted so foolishly?
"Yeah! They haven't surrendered already. Their big metal things can't even get good shots at our big metal things, firing down on them into that valley. I don't know why they would've even come here... There's a nice road that follows the railroad all the way to the Crystal Empire. This detour makes no sense."
Charles turned sideways to look at Rainbow, lying in the bed beside his. "There's a road somewhere else, and they came all the way out here to get slaughtered?" Charles pulled one of the fighters out of the formation, taking it higher and higher until he could see the terrain for miles around, all the way to the distant railroad tracks. He could even see their camp, semi-permanent structures anchored tightly into the ground with a handful of guards patrolling like little ants.
The camp rested atop a massive rock-formation, a long-weathered section of the nearby mountains. As Charles watched, a veritable wave descended from those mountains, a wave made from scaly bodies instead of flesh. The goblins crawled on all fours from previously-concealed cave mouths, in numbers that vastly exceeded anything protecting the convoy.
"King Richard!" Charles immediately relayed the camera from his lone fighter to the monarch's private channel, where he hoped his status as a knight would send it to the top of all the other messages he might be getting.
It wasn't as though everything depended on Charles's information anymore. The wave crashed down on the camp's guard. Machine-gun embankments sounded through the walls into Charles's ears. There was a painful fizz near the back of Charles's skull, and his connection with the fighters went dead. Rainbow Dash yelped beside him, apparently feeling the same pain as a potent jamming signal abruptly cut them off from the aircraft and every soldier outside of speaking distance.
"Seal the doors!" Charles yelled, loudly enough that one of the technicians nearby looked up. They were none of them soldiers, and few had even bothered to wear sidearms. These were programmers, engineers, not fighters. Still, over the shouts from outside, the snarlings and the gunfire and the screams, one of them managed to stumble to the door and twist a large handle. There were no windows, so all it took to seal the control-room was a heavy blast-door. With a rush of hydraulic fluid, the door snapped into place, securing them.
"Someone get me out of these restraints!" Charles tried to yell, struggling against the soft straps meant to prevent his real body from accidentally responding to the instructions he gave the fighters. His request was nearly drowned in the sounds of battle from just outside, and the panicked yells from inside. He kept right on screaming until the young woman sitting at a console next to his interface got up and started fumbling with his restraints. She might be in a full prosthetic, but her fingers still shook, moving with infuriating slowness.
"I can help too!" Rainbow protested, her voice not half as strong as she probably thought it was. "Get me out of this hospital bed, and I'll kick so much flank you wouldn't believe!" The technicians, if they could understand her at all, made a point of ignoring her.
Charles didn't. Once he was out of his restraints he thanked the technician and moved to the side of Rainbow's bed, having to speak quite loudly to be heard over the din. With such a powerful jamming signal, none of the technicians could use radio to communicate as they probably wanted to. "Rainbow, you've got sutures running up your belly. If you strain any way at all, you could tear something. You can't fight."
"Yeah?" She glared up at him, defiance in every drop of her features. "Got a better idea? It sounds like we're going to have company any second. My sutures won't help if goblins come in here and eat us!"
Charles set to work tugging Rainbow free of the restraints with his teeth. He was getting much better at doing things that way. "If you hurt yourself trying to fight them, I'll kill you."
"What good would that do?"
Charles's answer was cut short by the sound of metal grating painfully on metal, loud enough that he whimpered and pressed his ears as tightly closed as he could. Rainbow Dash moaned, kicking weakly at nothing. He fought to push the sound from his mind, and focused instead on finishing his task. Charles carefully lifted each of the straps, freeing Rainbow Dash to slide off the bed and onto unsteady hooves.
"How many of you are armed?" Charles shouted, his voice so firm and confident that the feeble noises the technicians were making fell to silence. A few raised their hands, though not so many as he had hoped. The groaning sound near the door had stopped, plunging them into an abrupt silence. "How many of you have some practice?" Every hand went down.
There was a sudden jerk, and renewed protest of metal. For a moment it seemed as though the blast-door were about to be torn off its hinges, but in the end the steel held. "Listen to me! We need a barricade! It's such a small door that once they get inside, we're going to be able to clog their advance!" Charles stepped forward, pushing through the crowd of frightened technicians and gesturing with a hoof. "Push those desks over! We're going to make this as hard as possible!"
The crowd just stared, even as metal screamed again and the room tilted slightly to the right. In the end the anchors held them firmly enough to stop them from tipping over, nor did the door give way. Relative silence returned. "Are you people stupid?" He gestured more emphatically at the doorway. "Just because we lost contact with the rest of our men doesn't mean they're all gone. They're only a few miles away! We just have to hold this room until they make it back!"
That did it. With full prosthetic bodies even engineers and programmers could push around heavy desks and computer equipment with ease, forming a barricade near the door. At Charles's command, they formed a second wall as close to the rear of the control room as possible, and there they all huddled. "Those of you with firearms, keep them aimed on that opening at all times! Their numbers don't mean anything in a small space like this! Just keep killing them, slow them down! We only have to buy a little time!"
The technicians obeyed. With fear in every gesture, with hands quaking, but still they obeyed. The doors gave one last protest, one last hopeless attempt to resist whatever was pulling them, and then gave way. A roar came from outside, a roar of unrestrained bloodlust, and suddenly the room was rocking slightly from all sides, as though they had just been tossed into violent river rapids. Through the opening came a rush of scaly flesh, obsidian weapons glinting in the artificial light.
"Fire!" Charles bellowed, not allowing the slightest trace of fear into his voice. "Just keep shooting!" Not even in his younger years, when he had trained beside many other children to serve in noble households, had Charles seen such awful aim. In any other situation, his little army would have been hopelessly overwhelmed almost instantly. He was lucky that his troops managed to point their handguns downrange. Many fired at such absurd angles that projectiles splashed against the walls. Still, even in these cases the angles always seems to bring the ricochet towards their enemy. The enemy was so densely packed that almost every shot was a hit and many penetrated the crowd several deep. Each goblin who fell choked the entrance and tripped the newcomers, slowing their advance.
This was good, because his soldiers had to slow their shooting. Energy weapons couldn't be constantly discharged without cooling, even if they had the electricity to fire. Still, the sheer volume of the enemy began to win out, and fresh reinforcements began to press the dead forward in one grotesque wave, providing cover to the living.
It was a bold stand, but ultimately a hopeless one. The closer the goblins got the worse his brave army's aim became. Eventually one got close enough to leap, and a panicked technician discharged his weapon into a neighbor's arm. She screamed, and the barricade descended into panic. Goblins took hold of humans, tugging them one at a time into the massive crowd and evidently tearing them apart bodily. Full cybernetic bodies presented no pain of course, but still the engineers screamed, screamed until they had been beaten into such small pieces that they no longer could.
Charles rose to his hooves beside Rainbow Dash, intent on joining the fray. He would die of course, and far more painfully than the programmers and engineers. Yet he would die bravely, as a soldier of the Tower. He would fulfill his oath. He would also make sure Rainbow was the last they would get their hooves on, whether she liked it or not. Maybe, if there was a god somewhere, their soldiers would arrive in time to save her at least.
Yet as he rose, spreading his wings and rushing forward for his last charge, he found the tenor of the battle abruptly changed. As they saw him, the goblins all stopped, halfway through dragging one of the last of the engineers from behind the barricade. The man struggled, and in response the goblins holding him let him fall with a thump to the ground. He was wise enough to remain silent after that. Shouts of anger and bloodlust fell silent, and a hundred eyes fell on him and Rainbow Dash.
"Did you find him?" came a harsh voice from outside, in something not unlike English. Only in the silence could Charles hear it, and even then it was well-muffled with bodies. "Bring me that bag of circuits that pretends to monarchy!"
The goblins did not move, but the pegasus did. It wasn't him the owner of the voice was looking for, it was his king. Charles was a knight of the Tower, he would not permit anyone to speak so in his presence. Honor demanded action. As he moved, the goblins retreated, never coming close enough to touch him or Rainbow Dash as she followed. It was as though they were even more afraid of them than the speaker. No, not afraid. In awe.
Yet the voice seemed satisfied by the movement of the goblins, perhaps unaware that anything had changed. Charles stepped carefully over the fallen goblins, as well as the still-twitching bits of engineer seeping milky cybernetic fluid. Charles knew not to feel sorry for them; violent dismemberment would not hurt them, and they could be reassembled easily enough. Still, he wondered what Rainbow Dash had to be thinking.
He had no way of asking, and could only wish how close he walked was sign enough of his appreciation that she had not abandoned him.
Charles could not have said how the outside somehow managed to drop from merely frigid to arctic in such a short time. The sun hadn't moved much, yet it seemed somehow further away, as though shining through from a great distance. The light twisted strangely, into colors Charles had no names for.
The camp had been torn to pieces. The other structures, mostly empty barracks and supply rooms, had been ripped open and had their contents dumped haphazardly all over the floor. There were no soldiers left, at least no pieces large enough to easily identify. Goblins were already taking defensive positions around the camp, fortifying with primitive cannons and digging trenches.
In the center, perhaps a dozen paces away from the exit, stood Dr. Samil. His clothing had not changed much since Charles had last seen him in the old war vids, though the hems of the jacket had become caked in mud. It was his face that had changed the most; his eyes too large and too dark and forehead far too pronounced. He smelled too, something like sulfur mixed with vinegar. Around him frost collected on the ground and blood congealed, and though the air felt below freezing, his breath did not fog the air as Charles's and Rainbow's did.
"I said to spare only the monarch alive!" The man made no violent gesture, yet all around him goblins began to cower, retreating as though they feared some immanent death. There were no other humans in sight. "I know the man; he would never make himself a beast even if death was the only alternative. Strike this one down and continue your search!"
Charles stopped perhaps a dozen paces away, where the air became so unbearably cold that he could go no further. He stood boldly beside Rainbow, heedless of the death that might be seconds away. Gray Vigil was a knight of the Tower. There would be no fear from him in the face of an enemy. "You do not know King Richard well if you think he would be here. This is not the Federation; the King of All Mankind fights beside his troops, often in a common uniform. He is not here." Charles couldn't help it. He laughed. "All you managed to do was kill a few systems engineers and supply technicians. When my king comes, he will not spare you."
Samil seemed barely to register that Charles had even spoken. When he looked, he seemed to barely see him. With a contemptuous flick of his fingers, Samil sent a wave of crystal night cascading down towards him. With awful certainty, Charles knew that strike would be instantly fatal.
It never hit him, though. One of the many goblins, pressing in from all sides, threw itself in front of him. The awful magic struck, and the reptilian creature simply turned to dust, crumbling away in a pile of dark fragments.
"It's over," Rainbow croaked, through to Charles's amazement she was still standing entirely without support. "You can't win here. This is Equestria; evil never wins here!"
Dr. Samil looked in Rainbow's direction, but seemed not to see her at all. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
Another voice, a far deeper voice, did answer. "Well said, Captain Dash." Samil's chest was broken with the glimmering point of a sword, steaming with crimson fluid. The air shimmered, and King Richard's strong features formed in the strange light. King Richard drew out his sword, then swung it high, separating Dr. Samil's head from his neck in one smooth swing. He struck Samil's body, where it crashed down on the cold ground like a tree.
"Death is swift for the enemies of humanity." He turned, facing the silent goblins all around them. "Are you our enemies?"
The assembled reptiles looked to the corpse, then to Charles and Rainbow.
"You don't have to be!" Rainbow Dash shouted, a little more strongly than before. "You don't have to fight; you can all go home!"
Slowly, first in ones and twos, but then in far larger groups, the goblins tossed their weapons to the ground. Spears, firearms, clubs and swords tumbled to the earth, until the only one with a weapon was King Richard. Slowly, cautiously, he too let down the sword.
* * *
The cargo crawler could not remain here long. This close to the epicenter of age-old nuclear detonation, Chance was sure a Geiger counter would sound more like riverdance than marching cadence. Yet despite the risks, their carrier remained parked. Her closest friends in the world were all here, save perhaps for Spike and for those few that were too close to simply call friends.
They had tried to talk her out of it all the way here, told her all the correct reasons why this was stupid. She could wait, at least until after the war. Unmanned drones could extract Truth and she could do the same exact thing without having to die of radiation poisoning along the way. It was an utterly foolish thing to do.
Perhaps they were all right. Perhaps Chance had been right with her retorts. In the end, she didn't have to convince them; the Crusaders were far too close to try to compel her not to do something she knew was right, even if they didn't agree with her.
That brought her to the airlock, her back against the plastic and her eyes wet with tears. The human Enrique, who had so bravely helped them in spite of the personal consequences, had voiced his objections and left them in peace. His arguments that there was no such thing as magic and that she was throwing her life away for nothing had been quickly drowned, and Chance hadn't even heard them. With time so short, none of the ponies bothered arguing with him. He would learn the truth of magic soon enough.
"Now listen carefully," she said, looking between each of her friends, coltfriend last of all. "It's only about a kilometer, probably less than five minutes. The radiation out there is so intense that I expect disorientation immediately. At the end, I have to remove my helmet to touch Truth's surface. You have to keep in radio contact with me all the way. Don't let me get distracted. If I stop, I'll... I'll die for nothing."
Ponies did not handle powerful emotion well. Scootaloo alone managed not to cry. Pip tried, tried valiantly even, but Chance could still see the water on his face.
"Don't you worry," Apple Bloom croaked. "We'll be with ya' the whole way."
Sweetie Belle shook her head to clear it. "I've got magic too. You don't have to... to go alone."
Chance embraced her. "Sweetie, you can't. You can't die for my planet."
"Didn't stop you." Scootaloo's eyes were hard.
Chance ignored that and hugged her too. "I know. But... if any of you die here, you won't be able to be on the first pony-built starship. You've got to make it happen, just like we talked about." They all nodded, some almost imperceptibly.
Last of all, Chance looked to Pip. She stood inches away, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her coat. Brown eyes met gray and neither of them said anything, just cried.
Eventually, she squeaked, "H-help with my helmet?" He kissed her instead. Not long, not deeply. Then came the helmet, smooth plastic clicked into place, and the rush of air and whirring of motors. Pip never looked away, not as she backed up into the airlock. Not as the plastic slid closed behind her, not as she stepped backward out the shelter of the cargo crawler and onto the soil of her own planet.
She waved, and the crawler began to speed away, the faces of her friends fading from sight. Chance groaned and turned her back on them, looking instead towards the blasted ruins of the city. She walked.
"How does that poem go?" Truth's voice was the first she heard over the radio, lacking its usual brevity. For that, Chance was grateful. Despite whatever Truth might say about his lack of an "ego," Chance suspected the imminent end of his own life was pressing down on him. Even if he wouldn't admit it.
Chance knew exactly what he meant, as hooves crunched on dead soil and lifeless buildings rose all around her. "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Her tongue was tingling, along with her ears. Her hooves felt like she was walking on pins.
"It looks like ponies really let the place fall apart." Scootaloo was the first to speak over the radio, her voice almost normal again.
"It's hard to fix a place when anyone who goes there dies," Chance replied, her breath raspy. She felt a wave of nausea sweep through her body, and did her best to ignore it. The world was a watery blur, but that didn't matter. She was already a third of the way there, passing black sidewalks covered with dust and asphalt cracked to pieces by erosion. The writing was all in Spanish, but she couldn't see straight enough to read any of it.
"Nightmares again?" Twilight Sparkle's voice did not come over the radio, because she wasn't there. It was too late to be called night, too early to be morning. The bottom floor of the library was quiet and empty, tables dusted and floor swept. Chance sat on her haunches by the window, looking out at the unfamiliar constellations as she rested on unfamiliar hooves.
"Yeah," was all she managed to say, melancholic. She had felt melancholic more often than not in those early days.
Twilight sat down beside her without shyness, holding her to her side with the gentle pressure of a wing. "Would you like to talk about it?"
Chance shook her head, looking away from Twilight but not actually fighting to regain her personal space. She was only just learning that ponies had some very different ideas about what was appropriate and what wasn't, to say nothing of becoming a child again.
"That's okay." Twilight produced a brush, and with it levitating in the air she began to stroke Chance's mane. It did not make the dream any less terrible. She did not forget what she had seen. Still, she found her breathing coming easier. Soon she relaxed, and was asleep again under the shelter of her mother's wing.
"Chance! Second Chance!" The voice came so loudly she gasped, eyes wandering vainly for the speaker. The old library was gone, and she was on the street of the city. Twilight wasn't here. She wouldn't ever see her mother's face again.
"I'm here," she answered, blood dribbling from her mouth along with the saliva. "Sorry." She started walking again. "Wreckage is ahead, I think... Shapes sticking out of the ground. Looks like... our rainbow paint... stopped rainbowing..." She started walking forward again. It felt like she was wearing weights on every fetlock, like Scootaloo did when she was training. Yet they moved; her will was stronger than the weakness.
"Keep talking to us!" Pip said. "Please keep talking! That way we know you're still all right."
"All right," she repeated. "I'm all right."
She was lying face down in the snow, tiny body bent unnaturally from her brief flight. The slope had only been a green, but unlike her younger brother, her handling on skis was weak at the best of times, and she had ended up transferring quite involuntarily to a blue run. Not knowing what else to do, Kimberly had done the same thing she did on the greens: ski straight down. At least, until a hump in the snow had sent her flying through the air. She landed with an explosion of fresh powder, sliding sideways on her back until she slid off the run entirely and into the trees.
She was more afraid than hurt, the bodies of children as flexible as they were, yet there was red in the snow from her nose and hot fluid dripping down her face. It steamed when it hit the snow, mixing with the steam of her breath and tasting of iron. She had bit her tongue too, though not badly. "I'm all right," she insisted, though when she had tried to get to her feet she found them shaking so much from adrenaline she tumbled again.
"You will be," her father had said, who in the way of fathers had not displayed nearly enough panic for her mother's satisfaction. "My tough little girl." He pulled her into strong arms and held her there until the medical snowmobile arrived to take her back down the mountain.
"How much further?" Sweetie Belle's voice made her head throb, and the evergreens around her returned to rusting hulks of streetlights and telephone poles. "You must be close by now, right?"
Chance looked around in bewilderment. "Close to what?" Her legs were numb. It was a wonder they were still holding her up anymore. Sound had become a static whirring, white noise in her ears, and even the nausea had stopped. She felt tired, more tired than she had felt in her life. If she could only sit down to rest...
"Close to Truth! To the fury!" Apple Bloom was just as loud, though her voice wasn't as grating. "Don't you remember, Chance? You have to get to Truth so you can finish your spell! The one you've been working on for years now? The one you told us would save your planet?"
"Right... Earth..." Chance wasn't sure of what she was being told, but she didn't have the energy to argue. She lifted her legs one after the other, and each step cost her terribly.
She passed a tall man in a patchwork suit standing over a desperate looking woman scratching at the dirt, looking for something large enough to use as a weapon. "And there you go again, looking for something to kill me with. Is that all you are?"
Chance watched as the man tossed a rifle at her feet. "Go ahead then." The man spread his arms wide, his back to her. "Shoot me. If it will make you feel better."
She didn't. She kicked the gun away. "It isn't our nature!" came the scream, though it didn't hurt her ears to hear it. "We wanted peace! Maybe we weren't as good at it as the ponies, but we damn well tried!"
She wasn't on hooves, she was on her hands and knees, fingers so numb she couldn't separate them. They dragged limply along the street, ignoring the broken glass.
Her mother's hand was on her back, the hand she had watched burn in a fireball that turned her home to ashes. "You have to fix the planet. We need you to figure out a way to undo all the damage. Lots of people will be counting on you, not just me. The whole world."
"I can't!" she protested. "Nobody can. It's too late."
"Be brave. We're counting on you." Chance could not see anymore, yet behind her she saw everything she had ever lost. Her mother and father, her brother and sister. Her friends, her home. The friends she had known and forgotten. The childhood in Equestria she had never deserved. She could not feel them, yet she saw each face as clearly as a photograph.
It had been Sweetie Belle's voice. "We're counting on you! Almost there!"
"Almost... there." Chance found herself walking into a wall, the plastic of her helmet thumping against it. The wall was made from a dull metal, undented despite the awful crash. Nanosteel yielded to nothing.
"Just the helmet now, Chance." Truth's voice was calm, the only one she could hear clearly. There was a machine on the ground next to her, coils of wire and Equestrian crystals. It was already glowing. She knew what it was, but couldn't remember the name. She couldn't remember much of anything anymore. "Helmet off, and you can rest. Just make sure you touch me, okay? You can do that."
She didn't have the strength to answer. Her tongue had gone numb, and the only thing that came out of her mouth was ragged breaths and bloody coughs. She braced her head against the wall, pushed her hoof against it, and twisted. No good.
"Again," Truth said. "Harder."
Alexi's hand was gentle on her shoulder as they climbed from the MGLV, and her embrace was warm. They only made it as far as the first quiet corner in the tube leading from the docks before they sat down to cry in each other's arms. None of the adults made a move to stop them, if indeed they could see them at all. Alexi's arms weren't much bigger or stronger than her own, yet she never let go. Kimmy wondered who Alexi would go to now when she needed to cry.
"We'll be okay," Alexi had said, after a long time. "We'll make them proud, Kimmy. We'll do what they said. We'll fix the whole world. Together."
The plastic came loose, and stale air came rushing in. Breathing the radioactive particulates would surely mean death, but Chance was already half-cooked.
She rested her head against the wall, not so much because she remembered her mission as because she was tired. She was weak enough to sleep, but not before one last spell.
There was no delay. Truth already held the spell, and she found her mind moving in ways she couldn't remember. Ways that she had never moved before. Thoughts and patterns formed themselves there, borne mostly on the strands of the Nanophage implants. She saw a great tree in her mind, a tree twisted from the laws the clockmaker had wrought thirteen billion years before. She looked up into the branches from below, at the crystals that hung there, thinking they were beautiful.
It was about time for Earth to have trees again.
From several miles away, four ponies and one human could hear through the walls of the cargo crawler as the Earth began to shake. "Truth's signal's gone!" Apple Bloom shouted, pushing the crawler's engines to maximum to give them the greatest cushion above the shaking earth.
"Did it work?" Pip shouted back. "I can't tell!"
There was light then, as bright as a nuclear fireball, but without the heat. It moved so fast there was no chance of avoiding it, overtaking them almost as soon as they had seen it.
There was no pain as the wave passed over them, none at all. The lights flickered briefly, the engine died, but it kicked back in before they struck the ground. As the wave passed over them, life seemed to return to the faces of each of the ponies. Without realizing it, Sweetie Belle found she was levitating herself back to her hooves instead of climbing. The slow death of magical strangulation was gone as the light passed by, growing brighter by the second and growing large enough to swallow the planet.
The spell was only so powerful. Verdant forests did not spring up in its wake, animals were not conjured from nothing to populate them as they once had. Yet as it passed, the flashing warnings of the radiation detectors abruptly went dead. The flashing red warnings over the airlock proclaiming outside conditions of "73 mSv/second estimated exposure" to ".01 mSv/hour estimated exposure." Air sensors cycled and clunked, and after a moment, the screen expanded to include the further proclamation "no airborne contaminants detected."
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N-no. It cant almost be over... right?
Yeah, thats right, its not over.
It'll go on and on, forever!
5352143
Well the universe will, I've got way more stories to write. And no matter what happens to Chance in this story, my next story will also be about her, since it's in the past. So I suppose in some ways you're right!
Wow, we're catching up with everypony now!
As I said before, though, this Twidash thing really came out of nowhere. And I like Twidash.
5352413
I've popped in what subtle references I could. I like Twidash too, but I didn't want to be obvious about it. All we got was some subtle ways they interacted with each other when they talked outside of Normandy early in the story. Then the way Twilight refused to talk about her after she died; she'd lost more than just a friend in her mind, and that clouded her judgement more than a little. The way Rainbow spurned Charles's attention more than once, because she already had somepony.
And then I couldn't be subtle anymore and just went out and said it. (shrugs) I've never been any good at writing romance, that's why I didn't make it more of a part of the story. Also I thought Rainbow was one of the best to represent Equestria's stubbornness and its virtues compared to a human companion. I suppose it worked. Could've been better.
5352430
Wait, I completely missed the implied TwiDash. Guess I'll have to re-read the entire story now, sheesh.
*is not upset about that*
5354739
dat Demesne reference
Samil could have a back up of himself, I can't really see a person that smart not having some way of surviving being decapitated. Plus, we haven't even seen the dragon king, so if this whole story is wrapped up in another chapter I'm going to be kind of disappointed. No big boss fight where we get to see Celestia and Luna double teaming a baddy, maybe with Twilight's help.
AND THE LAST BIT IS JUST PLAIN EVIL CLIFFHANGER!!!!!
5354739
Also an entirely valid way to look at what's happening.
5356153
I'm not sure it's a spoiler to say that the plot hasn't been resolved yet. As you say, the Father of Dragons hasn't been encountered yet. Beyond that, there's still an army of undead marching on the crystal empire, to say nothing of all the dragons and airships and gryphons and stuff that are headed there too. There's another full chapter before the story is resolved, even if Second Chance's work with earth is done.
5356435 So we get to see Alicorns vs Mega Dragon??????
5356666
I wouldn't want to spoil anything, but...
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/5/10/622788__safe_twilight+sparkle_princess+twilight_magic_hub+logo_fight_spoiler-colon-s04e26_lord+tirek_beam_super+saiyan+princess.gif
5357166 MWAHAHAHHAHA, THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!!!!!
Well there we go, thanks goodness for silver linings.
Dammit, Dash! I suppose hoping she really would take it easy for the sake of her recovery was too much to hope for.
Loved the description of the rest of the mane six by Dash. And while I hate to pile on, that really was the most subtle TwiDash I've ever read.
Man, so Twilight has been in such denial about Dash she didn't even realize that multiple other ponies had confirmed she was still alive. Silly Twilight, though it kind of would have been nice if one of the ones in the know had cleared it up for her.
Of course it was a trap. But, traps don't always work out as planned. And good riddance to Dr. Samil.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah x2.
Not sure I believe Chance is dead. She survived that first trip to Equestria, as well as the end of story one. I'm less in denial about Truth, but I really hope we don't lose him either.
>"It didn't matter where they came from," he had been told. "They were the enemy now. Until they surrendered, they had to be fought and killed."
Shouldn't that quote be in present tense?
>Energy weapons couldn't be constantly discharged without cooling, even if they had the electricity to fire
I forgot what I was going to say about this
>Gray Vigil was a knight of the Tower
Is there significance to the use of that name here?
>Last of all, Chance looked to Pip. She stood inches away, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her coat. Brown eyes met gray and neither of them said anything, just cried.
This is the perfect time to bone!
The addition of ', just cried' to that last sentence is awkward
>"Close to Truth! To the fury!"
y u no Fury
History is now and Equestria. Damn, I love "Little Gidding", some days I feel like arguing that it was the single greatest thing written in English in the 20th century. And what better grace note for a pony Pentacost than the verse that ends with "And the fire and the rose are one"?
Greater love hath no mare than this; that she shall lay down her life for her friends.