Episode 3.7: Civilization 101
Dear Diary,
The number of ponies I've found went from two to fifty today. Found a bus I think came from a retirement home or something, and we were attacked along the way. Had to do some fighting to keep them safe, but we only lost one. I'm not sure how they snuck up on us with so many eyes watching. Nothing for it now. Can't bring back the dead.
These old people are adorable. Well... maybe that's the wrong word, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. It isn't the way they talk—experienced, patient, meandering. They don't look old anymore, but that doesn't matter.
So we find our way to an intact apartment block—it looks like Section-8 from the identical concrete bricks and uniform design on the inside. Funny how some of the most modest housing for the poorest lasted longer than the uptown mansions.
I say lasted, but that's extremely generous. The structure is sturdy and the ceiling doesn't appear to be falling in. The glass is dirty, but intact. Didn't warp down to puddle at the bottom of the frame. I used to think that glass would all do that, and that's why old-timey buildings had windows that looked all warped. No, it has to do with the glassmaking process. Pre-Event glass was made on a bath of molten tin, so it always came out perfectly flat. Wish we could do that!
That's about all we can say about the building's resources. It has been stripped of anything valuable—no furniture that hasn't crumbled away, the wiring appears to have corroded away to nothing and the pipes are missing. None of the plastic finishings have survived and most of the wood ones turned to pulp too.
I am again reminded of the inconsistency of decay, and I was forced to admit to these new ponies that I don't know the exact number of years that have passed since the end of the world. I told them everything, though I might've focused on the details that were simplest and easiest to accept. Harder pills will come later, when they trust me.
The building is fairly large—eight stories, and a dozen individual apartments on each floor except the bottom two (which have rec rooms, laundry rooms, etc). We can only assume what the purpose of these spaces might've been, since the machinery and furniture is all gone. Still, it will work well for getting this little population of pioneers situated. The stairs are still safe, and with a little cleaning the windows might even make it a nice place.
One of the nicer parts is that we're in a very poor part of town. The bottom floors are thick, and there are metal bars over the windows. How these didn't rust when the interior wiring appears destroyed is another mystery that will keep me up at night. Magic, probably.
There are a large number of intact buildings on this block, all of which surround an interior park that's turned into forest. Probably half an acre of space, which is a nice place for us to start.
I was saying I thought these ponies were cute. One of the ways I meant that is how much they hold onto the old world. There are so many of them in one place—more refugees than I've seen in a long time, and all equally fresh from Earth that was. It's almost like they create this little pocket of American culture around them, thick enough to feel with my magical senses. I step inside, and it's like stepping back into a warm room after walking a long distance through the cold. It's good to feel that optimism again, that ramshod confidence that anything is achievable if only we have enough determination and work hard enough.
Once we got our bus parked up right beside the apartment, I helped dress a few little wounds with the first-aid kit from the bus. That done, I went to go get Stride and Robert from our old hiding place.
Robert was thrilled about the news, Stride... much less so. She went off to forage on her own, grumbling about how it was going to be impossible to feed so many mouths. She might not be wrong.
By the time I got back, Tom let me know they had elected me interim president of their "New American Equine Association," at least until they could "draft a formal constitution and organize a proper election in November." I am not making that up.
They sound a little like I did back in Alexandria, if I'd been about a dozen times more methodical and had a group of more competent, harder-working ponies. Looking at you, Joe. You could've been both.
Consider the riddle: You have a bus with most of a tank of diesel, and enough food for one more meal of sack lunches. You must feed 53 ponies indefinitely, without tools or seeds or enough time for a harvest. How do you do it?
I'll tell you the answer, and it's a boring one. Ever wanted to rebuild civilization from scratch? Most people haven't. Fortunately for the "New American Equine Association" (dreadful name by the way), I wrote a book on the subject. I can't help but notice none of these new ponies appeared with one. One of these days I will have to find out what happened to Ezri and Jackie.
I'll keep abstract for the sake of brevity (and succinctness. I don't know where my saddlebags are with more blank journals, so I will conserve the space I have).
What you do is sort through the lunches and sort out anything that can be planted. Tomatoes, strawberries, wheat berries (the real gold of the lot). Carrots, potatoes (god yes!). It's the little mercies, like the fact this bus wasn't transporting the invalid sort of elderly who eat nothing but baby food. Can't plant jars of pea-paste.
This returns us to the question: How do you restart civilization?
1. Keep the ponies alive.
Remember the pyramid of needs? The bottom level is the first priority, and it's also going to be the most difficult for us at first. If this was winter, most of these ponies would be doomed to starve. It is not winter, however, and with green grass growing that will not happen. That does not mean it will be easy, however.
Water is easy—there is a river about a hundred yards from the back of the building, and a stream offshoot from it comes even closer. Trips will not have to be very long, and we have plenty of containers to fill with the watery spoils.
Shelter we have, so long as ponies are alright sleeping on the floor of an empty room or inside a bus with a hole in the side. Building anything new will be out of our reach in the short term anyway.
Once we spent some time getting these ponies used to moving around, I split everyone up into groups. Robert and Stride each took one group, though Stride doesn't speak a word of English and none of these refugees know a word of Dutch.
Another team helped clear the first floor—any entrance that wasn't the front door made a perfect place to dump refuse, piling it up so high that getting in will take a great deal of effort. Not that the building is secure—some windows have bars, but plenty more have fallen off with age. A flying pony could easily get in. Not to mention I've seen earth ponies take down brick walls.
The (former) laundry rooms on the second floor don't have windows, so they made the perfect target for another team—carrying everything of value that isn't tied down from the bus to the inside. The ponies of the NAEA (confusing name again) were only expecting a day-trip, but there are plenty of cameras and a few tablets and laptops, not to mention clothing, DVD-players, fire extinguishers, mechanics kit, first aid, and lots of personal effects.
I'm sure we'll have to vote or something before we use all of that, but... we're getting closer. I had them all turn off everything to save power. When we get a little further and I can reliably produce even high temperatures, I bet I could tear some of that stuff apart for the parts I need to make a communication device Athena can hear.
Not that it would be easy. It will have to wait on our more urgent needs.
Last team was all earth ponies, and they had the hardest job. The park in the center of the block—the one not visible from the street—that's going to become our first field. Half an acre to clear with nothing but our bare hooves and lots of determination.
Earth ponies are strong, and they're good with the earth. Debris fell, stumps came loose, and boulders rolled. There were several among them who had farmed before, and they knew the general idea. Rocks would make convenient walls for our three sections:
Potatoes, wheat, and veggies, all about equal sizes. As of now there are still plenty of trees in the way, and we avoided those. We can't cut them down yet.
Oh, and that's not quite all the space. A few latrine ditches needed to be dug, not to mention a large open work area for me.
See, I wasn't on any of the other teams. They frequently came to me for instructions or clarification, but mostly I had another mission.
2. Harness fire.
Fire is the tool that builds civilization. Even before the event, almost everything we did relied on it. Our industrial farming system relied on the heat of natural gas to produce fertilizer, our houses were lit with burning coal, and our cars zoomed around burning oil. The HPI might not burn fuel, but even they relied on heat (when I left), fusing hydrogen together and boiling water with the resultant energy.
We cannot do anything like that. We must make do with the technology we can reach, and leapfrog our way back. We'll drag ourselves back to technology by the bootstraps, then teach the world it can't murder and abuse its refugees.
So I dug a trench, with the help from the ground-clearing ponies. Into that ditch went all the wood we gathered clearing the land (that we could gather. The living trees are still growing for now).
The trench has lots of little stuff underneath—kindling and leaves and the like, which will spread flames easily but then crumble away and leave an air-channel. Lots and lots of living branches got piled over the top, and then an endless ocean of mud goes on top of them.
One end of the trench got left open, and I started a nice fire, then sealed up most of that too except for a single opening for air, which should be able to travel all the way through to the opening on the other side of the trench.
Anyone who's read my restart-civilization book (which apparently doesn't exist) knows what I'm doing: making charcoal. Wood fire alone will not produce the temperatures we need, so we burn the wood slowly in a low-oxygen environment to drive off the volatiles and concentrate ourselves an essentially pure-carbon fuel.
If we want to get anywhere, we need tools. There is ample metal scrap all over this city. I've seen three main types in the few days I've been here: steel, copper, and aluminum. The last one will be where we start—you don't even really need a proper furnace if you have the right fuel. We can pour into sand-and-clay molds I can shape by hoof.
Of course, aluminum is also soft, and we'll have to upgrade eventually to something more lasting. Unfortunately, while aluminum metal is extremely non-reactive, steel just loves to rust and most of the steel we've seen is in some state of decay. The metal is all still there... but we'll need to refine it first, drive out the oxygen and make something new. Steel will take a blast furnace, and the painfully slow process of blacksmithing.
I think I've gone too deep into the specifics. Suffice it to say that there were no serious complications today. Charcoal making in progress, scavengers came back with not too much food but more we can plant with, so that's good. Ate the rest of what was on the bus, sans the meat (which left us with plenty of lunch meat only the single griffon can eat, lucky him).
Well I say that, but I can't say meat sounds appetizing. It's been so long since I last had any. The part of my life where I enjoyed eating it was so short compared to the rest of it. I don't even really remember... the perfect memory didn't start until I left Equestria.
Planted everything we have (depressingly little), and I gave the ponies instructions for how to give every seed the tender loving care it needs. And with that, we are out of food. Tomorrow the ponies will be introduced to the wonders of grazing.
Nancy remained with me for the whole day. She was... in shock, after what happened in the morning. But at least she was comfortable around me. I guess she knows that I mean my promises.
Five people died today because of me. Five died, but more than fifty weren't beaten, robbed, abused, violated, murdered...
Not only that, but fifty is a much better way to start than just four hiding in some empty apartment. These might've been old ponies, but they're competent. A full twenty of them are veterans of some war or another. Lots of the mares have useful skills as well—old fashioned type skills like cooking and sewing. The sort of skills we'll need.
I wish I could be in many places at once. I am the best organizer, but also the only one who knows how to do the technology things. I'm the only one who can teach their racial magics, which they must all learn rapidly if they are to stay alive in this corpse of a city. I can't do it all.
So I end up not doing very much, other than giving instructions and getting information about how people are doing.
I've got a nasty wound, but the medkit had disinfectant and liquid bandage. I don't think I'll get infected.
Ponies are living mostly on the third floor, spread out between the dozen apartments. I have one with my little group, and it feels enormous. Plenty of refuse to clean out tomorrow.
We have a watch, and sleeping shifts. I wanted to take one, but the ponies out-voted me. Typical.
I don't expect another attack so soon, though. So far as I know, there are no groups this size currently operating in the city. The gang we dismantled was probably one of the largest.
Of course, if I do this right, our prosperity will be visible in time. Bad ponies will get together to take it. A mob of hungry, determined ponies will sweep over us and try to undo what we've built. I must have these ponies ready before that happens.
We will survive, we will grow. Once we have anything worth coming to, we can spread the word that hard work will earn anyone a spot.
I hope you're listening, Athena, because I need your help. It's time to take this city of bricks and make it a city of marble.
-Interim President Haggard (NAEA)
(I always wanted to be president of something! Might as well be a few dozen old people and a broken apartment building.)
* * *
Alex could feel the sweat pooling at her hooves, and even behind her makeshift goggles the intensity of the forge practically smothered her. We need to start making leather substitute soon, or more ponies are going to get burned. The forge was nestled against their apartment building, a makeshift structure made from scavenged bricks and plant mortar. It was barely large enough for the four ponies crowded inside, all of which were earth ponies. Well, except her.
In the center of the round space was the furnace, about three feet wide and filled with searing charcoal flames. There was an opening at the base, where one of the ponies moved their hooves back and forth with the bow-bellows, blasting waves of air that stoked the flames and brought life to the dead steel. "Listen carefully while you work!" she shouted, settling the blade onto the flat of their anvil—really just a single solid chunk of dense steel that they had scraped the rust away from. "Listen to the steel. It's made of Earth's blood, she'll tell you how much carbon is left inside!"
She wrapped the straps of the hammer around her left hoof, then demonstrated the proper technique as she slammed it down onto the glowing metal. There was something deeply satisfying in the sound, even if she could no longer feel what the metal was telling her.
"It already looks flat!" one of the aspiring blacksmiths, a mare with a dark coat and reddish mane, shouted over her hammer. "Why can't you just quench it now and start sharpening?"
"Because there are still too many impurities in the steel!" she answered, not interrupting the motion. Each swing practically made her leg go numb, but she kept at it. These earth ponies no longer had any concept of what it was like to tire as other ponies knew the sensation, so it was important that she set an example they would recognize. "Without more advanced methods, all we can do is drive them out with brute strength! We can't cast them with molds—cast iron is too brittle! Only steel will do."
She kept hammering, flipping the blade over several times and striking with exacting precision. It had been many, many years since she had done work likes this—during her first century in Alexandria, in fact. But that didn't matter. Time could not dull her memory.
Eventually she did quench the blade, and a thick cloud of steam filled the little shop. "We'll have to repeat that process several times more. You'll feel it, when you touch steel that's right. Just use the surface of the anvil for comparison, until you can get it worked out in your mind."
"That's a lot of work for just one sword," the mare, Elinora, said. "How did people in the middle ages deal with all this?"
"Patiently," she answered. "That's why weapons were so valuable. We won't be stuck doing it forever. Eventually we'll be able to punch and machine steel parts ourselves. But we'll need... a few thousand ponies, and electricity, and chemistry, and—" Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she spun.
It was a unicorn, a pastel-colored stallion with an apologetic look on his face. "Excuse me, Alex? Do you have a moment?" His hooves and legs were covered with wet clay—he had come from where ponies were making pottery, then.
She turned back to her students. "Do you all... does this make sense?"
They looked uneasy, but there were a few nods. "I'd like to see you work through the whole thing. I want to know what it's like when it's done," Elinora said.
"Yeah, well... if there was time." She removed her gloves, really just leather loops made of someone's cut purse. "I want to see each of your best attempts at making the blade. Elinora, you can start. Take some scrap steel and get started. I'll... be right back."
She hurried from the blacksmith shed, hanging up the last of her protection on the wooden hook outside. "What's wrong, Kerry?"
He looked away, embarrassed. These ponies seemed quite impressed at her ability to remember all of them, and consistently address them by name after such a short time together. It was a good way of showing them that she valued their individual contributions. "Well, uh... remember how you talked about cracking?"
She nodded. "Let me guess. The first pots came out of the kiln, and they're all cracked."
"H-how did you know?"
"Because I was pretty sure it would happen," she muttered, setting the pace for both of them towards the place they were doing pottery. They had found a clay bed about five hundred meters away from their building, in a section of field they didn't need yet, and so had set up a flat beam of wood to work as a table.
Their kiln was really just more scavenged bricks and tiles fired with charcoal from beneath and kept steady using a metal plate and a small container of water. The speed it boiled gave a modestly accurate approximation of the temperature inside, using a conversion table Alex had jotted down for them.
There was no fire burning now, and as they got close she could see a dozen dried pots and bowls and plates on the table—all of which were laced with large cracks.
The gathered ponies, another five including Kerry, looked various stages of embarrassed and apologetic. "We didn't..."
"I know." Alex kept her voice as calm as possible. "It's no big deal, really. Clay isn't a scarce resource." But their fuel was. They had expanded the charcoal trench, and kept the fire burning constantly now, but between the kiln and the blacksmith they went through it pretty quickly. Sooner or later they would run out of trees, and they would have to drag them around with them through the city to make more fuel.
"We followed your instructions!" Kerry insisted. "Kept it burning just as long as you said..."
Alex raised a hoof to silence him, inspecting the long crack running the length of an unglazed pot. "This is daunting. The shape of these... yeah." She set the pot down. "You cooled them way too fast. You have to reduce the temperature extremely gradually, particularly around 440 or so. The silica in the clay contracted suddenly, and that's what caused these cracks."
She explained the process again, in detail. They listened, looking less bashful and more determined. Eventually she finished. "And don't throw away any of the cracked stuff," she said. "Break it into manageable pieces, and store it somewhere. There are uses for broken pottery."
"Alex!" another pony shouted, a tiny pegasus mare barely her own height. "Alex!" She slid several feet in the dirt before coming to a stop, panting from the effort of her run.
"What?" She sighed, then turned away from the ceramics workstation. "What is it, Melissa?"
"Guards caught someone trying to sneak into the stockpile!" she shouted. "Another barbarian—with a knife."
"Right!" She turned away and broke into a gallop in seconds, far too fast for the stunned Melissa to keep up. She flapped her wings along with her run, trying to imagine the little currents of air that might lift and speed her. Bats might not have the same swiftness that the pegasi inherited, but they could be damn fast. At times it felt like her hooves barely touched the ground, and she remembered a little of her joy from long ago.
Except that reality kept bringing her back. Alex could do anything—but with ponies so new, it seemed that far more often she was doing everything. I've got to offload some of these responsibilities, somehow. Trouble was, there wasn't anypony else who could teach like she could. Plenty of these ponies had useful skills—carpentry, plumbing, electrical, from a time before the digital age. Unfortunately, they hadn't attained a level of technology that would make their skills useful yet.
She could hear the commotion in their storeroom even before she reached the building, and she dodged between the growing crowd with grace. She took the stairs three at a time, in arching leaps more than simple jumps.
The upstairs storeroom held everything of value they had stripped from the bus, all their possessions, and any food they had that would keep (mostly fruit). A lone earth pony was backed against the wall, a knife wrapped tightly around one of his hooves. One of her own "guards" was crumpled on the floor, clutching at a broken leg, and several others had been cut.
"Oi!" She pushed through the ring of watching guards. "What's going on here?"
"He attacked Jerry!" one of her guards, a lean unicorn shouted. "Barreled him right over. He's got a bag with all our food, see? That 'saddlebag' thing you made."
"You all are going to let me out!" The earth pony lunged sideways, smashing their makeshift wooden shelf and sending suitcases tumbling. "I'll kill the next one!"
Alex turned briefly, facing the guards. "All of you, doorways. Clear the room."
They obeyed, though this was no military organization. They didn't carefully retreat so much as shamble, dragging their wounded along with them.
"The pretty one's got the right idea," grunted the stallion. She could smell him even from here—obviously bathing hadn't been one of his priorities. "Get away, nobody else gets hurt. I get this fancy bag of yours, and I'm gone."
"You're going to put the bag down." Alex kicked a fallen spear, really just a stick with a sharpened point, catching it on one of her wings. She couldn't strike that way of course, but she could brace it against the wall. "And you're going to leave."
He laughed, brandishing his bloody knife. "Or what, girl? I don't know where you all came from, but every one of you is clueless. This food is mine, on account that I got it now. Feel me?"
"The ponies here are trying to rebuild, Randy O'Brien. We are going to bring civilization back for everypony, but to do that we need to keep the supplies we gather. Those apples aren't yours."
The stallion did not react to her words as Robert had, with shock and shame. His smile vanished, and he briefly bared his teeth in a sneer. "What, you think you're going to trick me into giving you what's mine? I've seen better. I've seen people who can lift things right up into the air. But you don't have a horn, so I don't need to worry. You let me go right now, or I'll break you."
She was facing down an earth pony, and this time he hadn't climbed up into a metal and rubber building. Bricks and cement would not keep him from his strength. "You are stronger than I am, Randy O’Brien. If you fight, I will have to kill you." She dropped the spear, and began circling around the earth pony, watching his every motion. "It won't be fair."
"Because you've got wings and I don't," he said, lowering closer to the ground—preparing to charge. The body language was obvious, even if he didn't know. "You all break easy. You'll be no different."
"Please don't," Alex said, her tone as flat as she could. "Actually, I was going to say because I'm four hundred years old and I know every fighting style humans or ponies ever taught. I don't know how long you've been robbing and murdering in this ruin, but you've never fought anyone like me." She met his eyes, and called on every drop of power she had. It wasn't much. Archive was so weak. "I am an immortal, Randy O'Brien. Even if you killed me, I would return and come looking for you. Accept our offer of surrender and be gracious."
His expression faltered, and it seemed as though she had gotten through. He glanced from her to the ponies in the doorway, then back again. "I... I can't believe you found idiots stupid enough to believe that. Maybe I'll make them my idiots when you're dead! No reason I couldn't be an 'immortal' too!" He charged.
Randy O'Brien was not an immortal. Alex's spear caught him in the throat, and he died bloody and messy on the floor.
"God in heaven." One of her "guards" inched closer to her, where she still stood flecked with blood and covered in dirt and debris. It was Tom. "He didn't even touch you." The spear still poked out the back of his neck, where she had driven it through to a full foot. Blood pooled around the corpse, deep red from the broken arteries.
"I warned him." Archive sat on her haunches in the middle of the ruin, staring down at her bloody hooves, her voice pained. "None of these ponies were even trained."
"Were you telling him the truth, Alex?"
She nodded very slightly, little enough that she doubted any of the ponies gaping in from the doorway would see.
"How?"
"Not now." She rose again, turning back to the corpse, and tore the knife from the cloth at his hooves. She dipped the tip in his blood, and drew seventeen precise lines on the dead pony's back, dropping the blade from her mouth. It tasted like copper. "Tom, touch your horn to that mark. Right on the center."
The body vanished in a brief flash of flames, consumed completely by the simple burial spell. Even the blood on the ground around him was gone. Alex turned away. "Get back to your patrols," she said, walking slowly from the room. "Where's Jerry? Let's take a look at that leg."
Another few hours found Alex by the river, washing the blood from her coat in the icy chill. Nancy watched by the side of the river, playing with the wildflowers. It felt good to let the water wash over her, carrying with it a numbness that washed away the pain of another life taken.
"Cold," Nancy said, touching one hoof briefly into the water, before pulling it back.
"Yeah." She tried not to react to the word—even though she was thrilled to hear the little pony speak. At least one of us is healing. "You don't have to. I'll be done soon."
She heard the other pony approaching before she saw them—the huge ears of a batpony were good for something, after all. Tom looked purposeful, though he quickly turned away from her as he passed the last of the trees. "Sorry!" he called. "I can wait, Ms. Haggard."
She smiled faintly at the embarrassment. It wasn't that she felt any of it in return—nudity had long lost its taboo, even around other returnees. Hundreds of years of practice could do that. "One moment more, Tom." She walked out of the water, shaking herself out. There were no towels, but she didn't really need one. She would dry quick enough. Nancy got behind her, putting her between herself and the stallion. Guess you still have more healing to do. "Alright. What is it? Not another emergency, I hope."
"No." He looked back, ears flattening again, but he didn't turn away. It wasn't as though any of them had very much to wear. "Nothing like that. Just... hoped you could explain things. I'm not the only one, er... the others are nervous about you. After that fight. They're afraid of you."
She sighed. "I'll respect your vote if you want me to leave. Our little democracy is the only law there is."
"No, nothing like that." Tom watched her from about ten feet away. She could see some of the fear in his eyes as well. It hadn't been there last time. "Jerry... he started spreading around you were some kind of avenging angel. That maybe God sent you, to protect all of us. Since he would've known the trouble we'd be in, coming back like this."
Archive didn't look away from him, resting one of her wings protectively on Nancy's shoulders. "What do you think?"
"I think you seemed pretty miraculous," Tom said. "Showing up right when you did. There's a whole ruined city, and you knew exactly where we'd show up. Both times I've seen you kill, and you always look like you're full of regret. I think maybe he has a point."
"I know things you don't, but that doesn't make me divine. I was created by natural laws. Anypony could go through the same process I did, and come out with similar abilities."
"Are you sure your name isn't Gabriel?"
She sighed. "Positive. I've met many strange creatures over the years, and some of them were incredible... but I never met that God."
"Tell me this then, Ms. Haggard. Why are you really helping us."
She didn't look away. "Because I want to see civilization returned. I want to see all the banished humans united, our strength and intelligence and resourcefulness combined. I want all of you to live long, happy lives, and not be destroyed by this awful place. Because, one day, I want to see this city rebuilt. I want to see the starvation and the desperation and the violence end, and every set of hooves in the city joining us." She didn't flinch, even as Tom's eyes bore into her. "I lived through the end of the world, Tom. I've already helped rebuild civilization once. With your help, I will do it again."
* * *
"You don't know how long I've been looking for you, Archive." the voice came so quietly that at first Alex thought she might've imagined it. She froze, searching her surroundings for anywhere a pony might hide. Could it be Nancy, searching for her?
It wasn't. Just behind a stand of tall grass was a large puddle, only a few inches deep but as wide as a koi pond. A human figure stood in the bushes, his form vaguely transparent and swimming with mosquito larva. The outline in the water was tall, handsome, and confident. He still wore what looked like an expensive suit, though it was as watery as the rest of him.
"I can only imagine." She stopped a dozen paces or so from the edge of the water, close enough to converse easily but not stand within easy access of the creature. "If only you had waited forever."
"We weren't able to continue our conversation, all those weeks ago. I have been searching for you, but you've become a difficult dream to find."
"Imagine that." She paced sideways from the pond, eyes scanning the area around her. She had no intention of letting something sneak up on her while she was distracted by this creature’s attention.
Charybdis could only send some small fraction of his power at range like this, she knew. But living servants around her might still try to take advantage of how distracted she was by the conversation.
"Do you like what I've done with my planet, Archive?" Charybdis did not advance past the grass at the edge of the water. His expression was as unfriendly as anything she had ever seen, a smile that somehow conveyed hatred as endless as the ocean. "Your cities are all ashes. Your 'technology' is forgotten, and your allies made feasts for the crows. I wish you could have been here when I killed them. Whole towns so overflowing with corpses a thousand generations of flies had food for their maggots."
Archive felt hatred of her own. Her wings flexed beside her inadvertently, each of the delicate bones cracking in turn like a human might do to their hands. "Don't think I'll forget that, spirit. Someday, I will see you get the same treatment as your brother. My species is strong—they'll rebuild, stronger than ever. Nothing is forgotten while I remember it." She tapped the side of her head with one hoof. "Mock all you want, monster. One day we'll be coming for you."
Charybdis did not laugh. "You may regret that promise, Archive. By revealing your power, you've presented a target for myself and all my servants. I would not need to raise my hands against you—your own actions already set your demise in motion. But I'll speed them along, don't worry. You clearly need reminding of what pain is. I will be certain you are the last to die this time, instead of the first. When my servants come for you in their numberless millions, I hope you remember this day. Remember the promise you made to destroy me, and see how far that promise has taken you."
Archive felt a chill at her chest, and her breath briefly seized. Did Charybdis really command numbers like that? Could he slaughter her rebuilding civilization without effort? Was her entire mission doomed?
"Not today," she said, feeling the indignation as it boiled in her chest. It was the same sort of fury she had felt when she fought Odium at the Keeper's command. "Not here. You're not welcome in my city, demon. GET OUT!" Power surged briefly through her, power channeled through the swelling population of humans that surrounded her. It wasn't the strength of an Alicorn, it wasn't even really a spell. Even so, it was enough, and the magic blasted out from around her at her words. All around her, hundreds of little puddles exploded into steam. The figure was not immune to this effect, and he exploded outward, stretching briefly towards her in fury. It wasn't enough.
Moments later, all the water near her had boiled to nothing, and Archive was panting from the effort.
Stats
Page generated in 0.028 seconds
Total duration
1,074 users online
1,917,232 hits today, 2,814,898 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
It's really nice to see a more optimistic chapter. Things have been pretty depressing since Charybdis killed Alex, and I'm hoping she gets a chance to return the favour soon.
YEAH! kill the umbrum, make him regret existing.
I'm still wondering about her daughter, in-law, sunset & athena
but yeah, gotta take it as it comes. Nothing like fifty strong with wisdom and will that just got young bodies to work with to restart civilization. Just wait for the foals to come, now 
Okay, let's see... Big flat to zero, up a little, up some more, Alex killed, got down, ten up again, then Alex killed some more, up again, then Alex killed on HPI, big down, then revived, slowly up again.
Alex never gets a break!
Well, that's some progress at least. It really is like Alexandria all over again.
I'm very slightly disappointed that the refugees heard Alex say she's immortal already. I kinda wanted that reveal to wait until she made contact with Athena again.
*everypony gathered around a jerry-rigged cell phone*
Alex: Athena, are you there?
Athena: Alex! It's good to hear from you again.
Alex: How long was I dead this time, Athena?
Everypony: WAT?!
I'm so sad that I've caught up. It was much fun though.
7734730 although it seems that this did appear just in time to catch me.
I think that the "leader" spoken about in the first part is Alex. The section with Ezri and Jackie is actually a ways in the future from where Alex popped in.
Kill the "demon"! Make him regret existing!
For far too long has he roam! For far too long have his kind crush, kill, destroy, swag!
Kill them all, and show them no mercy! As long as they live, there can be no civilization.
Terra Invicta!
7734678
Agreed, through I doubt that many ponies believe that she's immortal at the moment. They would probably dismiss it as crazy.
Well, that election certainly was less painful than this past one.
So that's how charcoal works! I've been wondering how burning something could make it burn better. Didn't make sense to me before.
things are moving along on the rebuild of life.
it looks as if there is hope.
Charybdis is really proud of himself here. But it seems like he's also posturing quite a bit too. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he might be afraid of Alex.
For some reason I have been feeling trepidation about reading new chapters.
Ahh horse puns. 
In lighter news. It may be spelled NAEA but I am reading it as Neigh.
Charybdis is a fucking cunt. All that work to rebuild civilization, wasted -- all because of a loophole in a demonic treaty.