Alicorn falls

by Savanah

Hope will bloom and a light will shine

Twelve hours after the dragon raid Lux had been called back to her job in the inner city. The communal house where she lived still didn’t had electricity and several ponies were still missing, but the city couldn’t stop.

On the inner wall there was frenetic movement as ponies rushed around to repair the damage caused by the attack: one of the big cannons had been torn in half and at least three others that she could see had been melted to an amorphous metallic blob. All over the walls there were claw marks showing where the dragons tried to climb it and, in a few points, there was the splatter of blood where they did manage to climb the walls and brutally killed some of the defenders.

She crossed the security gate with little hassle, the security ponies were too tired to bother with the regular inspections and were content to simply check her ID card and rush her trough. Once inside the inner walls she was assaulted by the loud noise and the strong scent of fake apples that came from the industrial farms, a shift was just ending and a lot of tired ponies were exiting now.

All around her there were gun emplacements and patrols keeping a constant vigil over the industrial farms and the power plants, and towering over it all was Ponyville’s spire. The giant tower was covered in faded crystals, once in the past they could make it shine with magical light and in case of attack the tower could repel invaders with powerful beans of searing magic, but now they were just stones.

Going closer to the center were the giant diesel-power plants that provided power and heat to the entire city, there was four of them working in a constant rotation, three would work and one would be down for maintenance. In the past, as magic faded the ponies had tried at first to heat the city by burning wood and coal, but only when the ponies begun to collaborate with the zebras and those taught the ponies about how to drill and use oil that the cities could have a real chance of survival without constant magic. Big diesel-powered drilling machines begun to create new tunnels and princess Twilight Sparkle herself christened the first of the land dreadnoughts that would become so vital in the defense against the enemies of ponykind. Some ponies spoke of new and even more advanced ways of generating power using the geothermal energy, but these days there was never enough resources to upgrade the existing infrastructure or build a new city.

She slowed her pace a bit; amidst the giant power plants was the only place where you could feel really warm in the entire city. She liked to close her eyes for just a moment and think about how it would be to live in a world that was not cold.

It was then that Nox appeared as she always did: by surprise and without any respect for Lux’s personal space.

The black-coated pegasus hugged Lux tightly, the unicorn had always wondered how she could have so much energy to spare.

“I was so worried with you,” Nox said as she nuzzled Lux’s cheek. “I heard the siren and knew you should be sleeping at that hour!”

“I’m fine,” Lux answered gently pushing the pegasus away. “I was safe in the bunker, we just ate some apples and gossiped a lot.”

Nox smiled and pulled Lux closer once more.

“If you want,” the pegasus whispered in her ear. “I got a can of moonshine and we could share it later…”

Lux blushed a bit, the temptation of spending a night drinking and sleeping with the pegasus was always a very hard one to pass, but right now that was exactly what she would do. Ruby Cogs was a very recent memory and she didn’t wished to drag Nox into her problems once more.

“I’ll probably have to work two shifts to compensate the time I spent on the bunker.” Lux pushed the pegasus away softly. “I have to go now, I’m already running late.”

“I’ll save it for later then!” Nox pecked Lux’s cheek and jumped away happily.

Lux kept walking toward the center of the city, the warmth of Nox’s body a waning moment of happiness, passing by what once had been the villages created by the pony nobility, but that had been converted in military barracks and garages. She could see the shapes of two other land dreadnoughts parked there being worked on by large teams of earth ponies. Most of the army was comprised of earth ponies and gryphons, unicorns and pegasi were considered more valuable in maintaining the cities.

In the perfect center of New Poniville is the arcane research center or the Center as most ponies called it. Designed by Twilight Sparkle herself, the colossal building had been supposed to work as a central conduit for magical energies, a small team of unicorns using specially constructed machinery could not only provide light and heat to the entire city, but in an emergency they could shield the entire city. That at least had been her dream, by now the tower was a decrepit giant, the circuits of magical crystals had faded long ago and the pylons that would conduct magic trough the city had been dismantled for spare parts.

Lux passed by a tired guard with a flash of her identification card and walked two floors up to her workstation. The place was a grey and rusty spacious room with twenty chairs around a smaller cube of concrete with big tinted windows that allowed them to peek inside the smaller room, but prevents anyone inside to look outside. She quickly connects the wires to her horn and a diminutive green light is turned on over her station. Together as one all the unicorns begin to focus on one of the simplest spells any unicorn ever learned.

The Center now was used as a command center for the military and industrial lords, but it also provided a much more important function, something that the military, industrial and agricultural lords would pay dearly for.

Sunlight shines into the smaller room. Not really sun light, in fact a pale comparison, but the light produced by unicorns was the closest thing possible. Twenty foals run into the room, the interior is decorated with green visages and even a mural showing ponies around a big apple tree. They play and run around, happy to shed their heavy coats for at least a couple of hours every day. The Center has four rooms working almost non-stop to provide every young foal with enough magical light so they can develop their innate magic adequately, as it had been discovered in the first days ponies totally deprived of sunlight would never develop any kind of magical ability and so they became useless.

The rooms had been built as magic had begun to fade, the unicorns couldn’t keep the entirety of the city illuminated anymore and so a system where the magical light was concentrated in a small room was devised. As the years passed more and more unicorns were required to the task, once there had been needed only five unicorns to illuminate the entire city, then ten unicorns to generate enough light to forty foals, then fifteen unicorns for thirty foals and now it was twenty unicorns for twenty foals. Lux always dreaded to think of what would happen to the next generations as the number of unicorns needed would keep growing and the number of foals would keep dwindling.

Lux focused her magic and let it flow through her and into the machine. The first minutes were always easy, but to keep the magic for two hours straight was extremely hard. Some unicorns took medication to ignore the pain that come with the effort, others would simply power through it and took pride in their resistance. Lux had her own tricks, a few times she had recurred to drugs, but she usually preferred to avoid them in fear of causing micro fractures on her horn without even noticing.

By the time the two hour alarm sounded the unicorns were struggling to keep their magic going, some of them had already collapsed on their chairs. They helped each other to get out of the chairs and disconnected their horns before dragging their hooves to the rest room. The small room was barely more than a table, a few chairs and a small cabinet with water, but for the unicorns it was a paradise after the extraneous activity. Some of them simply dropped on the ground and slept, a few would manage to sit in chairs before sleeping. Lux took a can of water with her own hooves, using magic for at least a few hours was out of question or she could risk micro fractures on her horn that could lead to weeks of recovery or even complete loss of magical ability. She pressed the can against her horn, the cold felt wonderful against her hot horn, and let her body slid down on the floor.

The small speaker on the room cracked to life and with a monotone voice spoke.

“Worker 211-LG, please report to your supervisor immediately.”

Lux spits her water, she was sure that their production was in the acceptable levels and even though she had been late a few days it had never been more than a few minutes! She finished her water in a single gulp, shoved the can in the garbage bin, and rose to her hooves. Around the other unicorns where giving each other disgruntled looks, each trying to guess what she had done wrong and hopping that they wouldn’t be punished as well. No one liked to be called to see the supervisor because it meant that they probably had screwed up and would be reallocated to some horrible position that no sane unicorn would want or even being given to the military and end up as biological hardware in some of the big war machines.

She tried to smile confident to her coworkers, but they all knew what would happen, they all had seen it before. Star Chart, the oldest unicorn of the team, even gave her a pat on the back and a small smile as she walked out of the room.

She followed the faded white lines that showed the path to the supervisor’s room in complete silence. By the looks of the hinges Lux could guess that in the past it had been a much bigger and sturdy door, but it now probably was being used in some place considered more important or even melted down.

She knocked on the door a single time, part of her wishing that nopony would answer and she could return to her deserved rest, but soon the door unlocked with an electronic buzz. She walked into the room, small and bare of any kind of decoration, there was only a small stone table and a locker of cheap steel. The pony sitting behind the table was so grey and dull that Lux could almost confuse her with the walls of stone.

“Worker Lux?” She asked in a tired voice.

Lux confirmed with her head and presented her identification card. The supervisor took the small plaque of bronze and brought it closer to her eyes so she could read it, it was then that Lux noticed the horn stump on her head.

“You have been summoned to the top floors.” She tried to keep her voice detached and emotionless, but the sadness crept into it. The top floors were domain of the military and she had done this kind of thing way too many times to know what would happen to her. “I’m sorry.” She whispered under her breath.

Lux wasn’t listening; she was trying to understand where she had gone wrong. She followed the green lines, took the long stairs and showed her identification to the guards without even noticing, trying to understand what she had done wrong that could justify her being conscripted. She was instructed by the guards to go to the top where she would receive her new assignment.

Two big ponies guarded the door, at least as big as ponies could get these days with their restricted diets. They carefully inspected her identification card and demanded she took out her jackets to be patted down before allowing her inside.

She opened the doors and found two big griffon’s eyes staring at her from behind a big table. She froze in place, something inside her, something primal that said that those eyes were from a predator. She had seen griffons before in the movies and in some propaganda, but to actually see one of those up close was different, there was something that simply couldn’t be captured in a picture and that scared her.

“Worker Lux?” He asked with a gravelly voice.

Lux nodded, resisting her urge to run away from the room. She needed to remember that griffons were a client race of the ponies, they depended on the ponies to keep living. Rationally she knew they were allied, but still the fear in the corner of her mind kept pleading her to run away.

“According to conscription act you are hereby officially pressed into service,” He recited. “And you will…”

“You are scaring her, general Ailen.” A soft voice interrupted him, Lux attention was suddenly attracted to the deep of the room where a deep blue mare had been silently watching her.

The mare took a step forward and Lux almost fainted as she recognized the princess of the night. She couldn’t believe that in front of her was princess Luna and with a note of despair she realized that the princess wasn’t perfect as she was commonly shown into the propaganda. She had scars, several scars trough her chest and back, three long and sinuous that crossed her neck, several of her feathers were broken or cut and even her mane wasn’t elegant and flowing, but it was kept trimmed and seemed to be made of normal hair.

Looking at her like this she felt a pang of fear, to know that Luna wasn’t immortal, that she could be hurt and maybe even killed. She knew that Celestia had been murdered, but that had been different. Nopony knew exactly how it had been done, the official version said something about the elements of disharmony, but there were many other versions running around that spoke of zebra necromancy or even pony sacrifices to dark and forgotten gods that had been cast down an infinite the abyss during the creation of Equestria.

“We need your help, Lux.” The princess spoke and Lux wanted to fall to her knees and kiss the princess hooves.

“Yes, your majesty!” She answered quickly.

“Call me Luna, please.” She asked with an awkward smile.

“Yes, your… Luna” Lux answered.

“As the general has said, we have a need for your services.” The princess said and Lux felt ready to give her life for her.

“We will need you to…” Luna begin, but Ailen interrupted her with a loud cough.

“If you really wish to disclose our secrets I must beg you to at least check her allegiances.” The griffon spoke firmly.

Luna agreed with a short nod. “I’m sorry for having to do it, but the general is correct. I need to make sure you are a loyal pony before telling you anything else.”

Her horn glowed with her softly blue hue and Lux felt incredibly relieved. There were but a handful of unicorns that could use this kind of magic anymore and so this kind of tests would be made in… unpleasant ways. Her heart thumped hard on her chest as the princess touched her horn against her smaller horn, she was sure that a lot of mares and stallions on the city would probably kill for this chance.

The princess’s magic flowed through her horn and into her mind gently, without even noticing she slipped into a dream. She dreamed of her infancy, of playing in the sunlight room with Nox, the two of them pretending to be soldiers fighting for the city, defeating every enemy of the cities and painting marks on their flanks with paint that Nox’s mom had smuggled for them from her work.

Then she was older, studying how to control her magic and working in maintenance, cleaning and helping repair the city. Nox was there too, they would steal moments to be together and escape the monotony of everyday, and a few times they even missed classes to go watch a movie or simply to stay togheter.

There was sadness, cold. A mare in uniform gave Lux a small copper plaque, she spoke something, but Lux couldn’t hear it, she could only see the small plaque between her hooves. In it there was her mother’s name, Steel Rivet, and two dates.

“I’m sorry” she heard a whisper behind her.

What followed was a blurry mess, days, weeks, months that passed without distinction. Lux kept going through the motion mechanically: She would eat, she would work, but there was no purpose or motivation behind it besides simply moving forward. All around there was Nox helping her, forcing her to clean herself, to at least eat something. Then one day, she walked out of her shared room in the middle of the night and walked to the old enchanted steel doors that once had allowed ponies to go to the surface, but that for several generations now had been welded shut. She deposited her mother’s plaque together with others dozens of plaques that ponies had deposited there along the years. She sat in front of the plaque and conjured her light.

She shines her light until it pains her and kept going through it. A light to guide her mother’s spirit. She would woke up the next morning with a security mare poking her with a stick and a cutie mark on her flank. That night she would get drunk with Nox and the next morning she was ready to move on.

She grew up, got assigned to her post on the Center and eventually even found companionship with Ruby Cogs. At first he seemed like a perfect stallion for her, but then there was sadness again. In the end there was Nox once more, helping her to get over everything.

She woke up with tears rolling from her eyes, Luna’s deep eyes still were locked with hers.

“Sorry for making you relive this.” The princess said and for Lux’s shock there was understanding in her eyes. All the movies and posters always made her to be so great and powerful, bigger than life itself, but now she could see that the princess was hurt not only in her body, but also her mind.

“It was needed.” Lux said trying to appear strong.

“I’m convinced that she is a loyal citizen of New Ponyville.” Luna declared and the general conceded with a wave of his talons.

“If you allow me, princess, I can explain it all to her.” Lux sight was attracted to this new voice, it came from a scrawny brown earth pony with saddlebags filled to the brim.

“Of course,” Luna agreed. “Lux, this is my assistant Numeric Variable.”

Numeric Variable took out from her saddlebags several sheets of copper, each of them filled to the brim with numbers and notations. Lux tried to read it, but the numbers seemed to dance around in her tired mind so she simply nodded as if she had understood it.

“As you can see I noticed a net increase of about 0,34% in the medium arcane force amongst the foals of New Ponyville. You understand that it is way into the error margin, but still it was an increase and you must understand that any potential increase sparkle my curiosity.” Numeric spoke with passion; it was clear to everyone that she felt proud in her work.

“I decided to dig more, and to my surprise this number was almost constant! Every year the foals of poniville were just slightly better than the medium. My first guess was that it probably meant faulty machinery during the tests, but I decided to analyze only the foals of ponyville and to my surprise there was a small group of foals that where 4,78% above the medium!”

Numeric gave Lux another sheet of copper, this one had a long list of names followed by row after row of personal information: age, sex, sexual orientation, work group, weight, height, marital status, etc etc.

“I tried to isolate what was causing it, trying to detect what anomaly could be injecting magical energy into a closed system. I believe you understand the concept of arcane entropy, right?”

Lux nodded, she had studied it many years ago, but the concept was a constant reality for her: In a closed system the total potential arcane energy tends to approach zero with time. That meant that with every generation there was less magic to go around, in the past the sun had worked as an external source of arcane energy.

“So, I was sure that something was generating new magic inside the walls of Ponyville, but it didn’t matter how many hours I poured upon the charts I couldn’t discover what it was. Until I considered a new variable.”

She gave Lux another sheet of copper; this had the same names from before, but a single row with the unicorn work group that had provided magical light for the foals. All the ones that showed the increased arcane force had been illuminated by Lux’s work group. The unicorn looked disbelieving from the earth pony to the alicorn to the griffon, but they all had serious faces.

“After that it was a simple question of tracking back this anomaly in time, to see when it begun, your work group where responsible for all of them. After that we only needed to discover who was the responsible, we analyzed your group and I’m pretty sure that you are the anomaly.”

She concluded with proud smile.

“No, this must be a mistake, I don’t do anything special! I'm just an ordinary employee.” Lux said quickly.

“No, there is no mistake, Lux.” Luna said in her angelical voice. “If Numeric is saying that you are the anomaly I believe her, because that’s her cutie mark.”

Lux suddenly looked at the princess's assistant, a clear question in her eyes, Numeric turned and lowered her pants just slightly enough that Lux could see the mark on her flank: a percent symbol.

“I Believe you have one too.” Numeric Said as she raised her pants. “I showed you mine, nothing fairer than you show me yours.”

Lux gasped amazed, she had never known another pony with a Cutie Mark! Shyly she turned and lowered her pants just enough so Numeric could see the image of a rising sun in Lux's flank, quickly raising them afterwards. Numeric and the princess smiled.

She could not believe that was happening, it was so surreal that she came to think she was in a hallucinatory dream, maybe she'd be exhausted producing more light and was now in the infirmary, having dreams about the princess and cutie marks.

“We Need your help, Lux,” Princess Luna said and Lux knew then that it would be impossible to say no the princess, just from being close to her she felt motivated to do her best, she wanted to impress the princess, show that she was a good pony.

“If it had been me, I would have simply conscripted you, but the princess believes that you must have a choice.” The griffon general spoke dismissively.

“What is this job?” Lux asked, a bit scared of what could be so dangerous that the princess herself had abandoned the front lines to supervise personally.

“We need you to be employed in a special project that has the potential to reignite the sun and save everypo… everyone.” Luna spoke confidently.

Lux giggled nervously, she was sure that this must have been some kind of dream or feverish hallucination. It wasn’t possible, the princess of the night, the sun shining once more, she being important. No, this couldn’t be happening.

Comments

[RandomName1]

Makes me wonder if you know what kind of symbol you have as the stories pic.

Anyway, I love how Celestia was just shot. It's actually kinda realistic when you think about it, since magical beams normally need charge-up and she might eve be resistant to it, but a gun? She never saw it coming :3

[Savanah]

7310605

About the symbol, as far as I know it's the Black Sun, also know as the Burn Out Sun. It was used by the Nazi mystics and was supposed to symbolize a mystical source of energy capable of regenerating the Aryan race. It's also a symbol of everything that is not seen, of the spiritual realm.

[RandomName1]

7311109 True. I was just wondering because choosing that kind of symbol might be the reson why this decent story has a bad ratio. You know, first world people being triggered and all that^^

[Savanah]

7311762 So far it seems it more like the fact that my english is not so good and that I killed Celestia too quickly.

The first one I understand and I'm trying to improve, but the second one? That's supposed to be like that! It's supposed to feel like it was too quick and too simple. So far into the story, not even Luna knows how her sister could have been killed so stupidly.

[RandomName1]

7312234 Well, given what we know about Celestia, I wouldn't put it past her to do the Zarus XD