Fallout Equestria: The Light Within

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 52: Crystal

Chapter Fifty-Two: Crystal

“You find anything yet?” I asked Roaring Thunder as I dumped out a file folder on the table.

“Not yet,” he said, “You?”

We were seated in Stable 103’s cafeteria, looking through the files Roaring Thunder had swiped from the commander’s office in the Frostpoint army base. It hadn’t been difficult to extract a map of the Stable from one of its terminals, and I quickly established where the other way out of the Stable was. We were in no great haste to pass through, though. The Frostpoint ponies didn’t know where it came out, so they’d be searching everywhere. After a while, they’d tire and begin to think we’d escaped. That would make things much easier once we left the Stable. For now, we had other things to keep us occupied.

“Nothing on Sat-Con, or anything from after the War,” I said as I flipped through the pages, “Listen to this. ‘Winter Contingency: plans for the seizure of the Crystal Empire in the case it becomes necessary to dethrone Princess Cadence and restore the Empire to direct Equestrian rule.’ Did they really think that would be necessary?”

The page which I’d seen that on had come from a package labeled with a very serious-looking font: Top Secret: For the Eyes of Princess Luna, Ministry Mare Rainbow Dash, and Frostpoint garrison commander only. Open only in crisis scenario. The package had once been sealed, but somepony had torn it open.

“Apparently it was necessary, judging by the hover-tanks permanently parked outside the Crystal Empire,” Roaring Thunder said, dropping the pages he’d been looking at in frustration, “There’s nothing we can use here. What a waste.”

“Hey, at least you tried,” I said, and Roaring Thunder looked back at me blankly, “No, seriously. You could just have easily swiped all of Lord Lamplight’s plans. Really, it was a good idea, but we’ll just have to try something else to get what we need.”

I wasn’t very excited about my backup plan. All I could think of so far would be to sneak somepony into the Frostpoint Garrison again, but Rare was the only candidate. They probably knew what I looked like, and Roaring Thunder (as a pegasus) and Zherana (as a zebra ghoul) would stick out. Without her Steel Ranger armor, Rare Sparks could’ve been anypony, though she’d be exposed without her armor, and if her description had spread then she’d be just as dead as the rest of us.

“Ready to go?” Rare asked as she trotted into the cafeteria after finishing her exploration of the Stable, her headlamp scraping against the ceiling.

Every Stable I’d been in had some experiment going on in it, though I couldn’t figure out what this one’s was. The only difference I could detect from others was that the ceilings were all much lower than usual. I don’t know what that was supposed to accomplish, but Stable-Tec had done some pretty bizarre things as experiments.

“Sure, we should have waited long enough by now,” I said as I rose.

I tucked some of the files into my backpack for later reading. None of them had anything to do with Sat-Con or the Northern Lights Coalition, but they were relics from the War, and I was interested in learned what exactly had gone on and what had gone wrong.

Rare led the way through the Stable, heading the direction my power armor’s display identified as northeast. We were passing under the Crystal Empire now, as if that weren’t obvious by the occasional window we passed. It was weird to have windows beneath the earth, but there was a purpose to them. They looked out on a small underground pocket where crystals jutted down. Light had once been supplied by bulbs that were now outshone by the crystals themselves, glowing a bright green. Whenever we passed the windows, the radiation meter on my PipBuck would click faintly, the chirping directly in my ear now that it was linked up to my power armor.

There was another Stable entryway just like on the other side of the complex where we could exit. The door groaned in complaint when I first tried to open it, but broke free a second later and retracted before rolling aside. As soon as the door opened, the radiation climbed. A needle jabbed into my flank as my armor injected me with Rad-X in an injectable form to combat the radiation. A green glow came through the gear-shaped exit.

A cavern lay on the other side of the Stable doorway, a cavern entirely composed of glowing green crystal. It was so smooth, I felt like I was going to slip and fall when I stepped out onto it, and yet somehow my armored hooves found footing. Balefire radiation was seeping from the crystal for sure, bombarding us from all sides. It posed some threat to the three living members of our party, but not a large one if Rare’s and Roaring Thunder’s armor were protecting them as well as mine. Still, it wouldn’t do to dally here.

We headed to the far wall, where there were handles set into the crystal. I gave them a push and walked through, finding myself surrounded by bookshelves. The door to the Stable had been hidden behind a section of shelving, and when it closed up after we left, you couldn’t even tell it was there. The entrance was well-hidden within the library we were in, on a lower level in an out-of-the-way section. We had to explore a bit before we found the stairs up to the library’s main level.

At the library’s exit, I opened the door a crack and peeked outside. A pair of ghouls with practically glowing skin wearing NLC armor trotted past but didn’t take notice of us. I spotted a few more before closing the door, searching the Crystal Empire for us. Nearby was that tall central spire I’d seen from afar, and the ghouls seemed to be staying clear of it. We could make it there, I thought.

I shared my plan with the others, and once there were no ghouls in sight (other than Zherana) we ran for it. The spire did not extend all the way to the ground uniformly, instead splitting into four legs near the base with doorways set on the inside of each leg. As we dashed toward one of the doors, I briefly noticed the shattered and blackened pieces of a crystal lying under the direct center, but I paid them little mind. Our first priority was getting out of sight before more ghoul patrols from the Emerald City showed up.

I monitored EFS as we climbed, but it appeared we’d given them the slip. Things may not have been as great as I thought, though. Once we climbed high enough, we checked the windows. I spotted movement all throughout the Crystal Empire, ghouls moving between the buildings. The empire was an exact circle, and the building we were in, identified by my PipBuck as the Crystal Palace, was in the exact center of that circle. We were surrounded.

“Now what?” Zherana asked.

“Now … we wait again,” I decided, “They’ll relax their searching eventually, and then we’ll escape. We have plenty of Rad-X and RadAway. We can wait them out here, and if they try to attack, this is a defensible position. We should be able to hold them off.”

Something else was drawing my attention, a door behind Zherana with a plaque next to it inscribed with Prince Shining Armor. I headed through into the office beyond, eager to find out anything more I could about the general. It was a simple but comfortable office (if it weren’t for the glowing walls spewing radiation) with a couch and some bookshelves along with a typical desk setup. The bookshelves were piled high with family photos as well as mementos from Shining Armor’s time in the Equestrian Army. I’d witnessed bursts of his life, both through his words and through his memories, and I could see his life unfold again through the things he’d kept, all the way from the start of the War and the birth of his children through the last days before the megaspells fell.

On the desk was a terminal, but it would be of no use to me; it was completely burnt out. Something peculiar sat next to it: a tiny case with a memory orb in it. What was oddest was not that it was here—I’d seen memory orbs kept as mementos in other places—but what was engraved on the case. A lamp. Somehow, I knew for certain that this memory orb was another of Lord Lamplight’s, but how? What was it doing here of all places? I placed it in my pack for later and started opening the drawers on Shining Armor’s desk.

Within one was a packet of papers tied up together with a map on the top. Eagerly I extracted it, and set it down on the desk to examine the illustrations and inscriptions in detail. The map had the Crystal Empire on it, with Frostpoint at the bottom edge of the map. Most of it was dedicated to an area labeled Ruins of the Old World, just what we were looking for. Three towns were marked on the map: Solidarity, Unicornica, and Peleponysia. Additional markings had been added in pen. North of Solidarity was Solidarity Missile Site, and almost on top of Unicornica was marked Sat-Con. The rest of the packet consisted of reports on and photographs of the locations on the map, those for the locations that hadn’t been added later marked like the map with Equestrian History and Archaeology Society. Shining Armor had compiled this information for some other reason than what I intended to use it for, but this was a gold mine. It was exactly what we needed to find Lord Lamplight, and I marked the locations on my PipBuck’s map.

“Hey, you’ve got to come see this,” Rare Sparks said, pausing at the doorway to tell me that only before taking off.

My friends had left me to my absent-minded exploration, which I had a habit of doing, while doing some of their own. Whatever Rare had found, I was sure it was something interesting. I followed her up through the Crystal Palace until we entered the throne room. Roaring Thunder and Zherana had already gathered near the throne, examining something on the ground. I gasped as I got close enough to recognize what it was.

Shining Armor was encased in the crystal floor, only a hoof and part of his PipBuck sticking out. Other than that exposed hoof, he was perfectly preserved. He seemed in the midst of shouting, his other hoof reaching for the surface, but his eyes made him look resigned to his fate.

“What could have done this?” I wondered aloud.

I noticed that his PipBuck’s power light was on. After all these years and being half-encased in crystal, it was still working. If Stable-Tec had done one thing right, which still wouldn’t balance out all the wrong they had done, they had certainly made these things to last. Through the power armor that had once belonged to the pony now trapped forever beneath me, I plugged my PipBuck into Shining Armor’s device and transferred the files that were on it. There were two audio files, and I could guess what they’d contain based on what I’d taken from the SAS vault. I pressed play on the older of the two files and was greeted by the voice of Shining Armor again.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these, though maybe not as long as I think. I haven’t been out of the Equestrian Army all that long. No, Shining Armor, focus on the task ahead of you.”

I projected the audio through my armor’s speakers so that everypony could listen in. Zherana, of course, hadn’t heard the earlier recordings, but she listened all the same.

“We ponies really messed things up, didn’t we? The megaspells dropped, and I couldn’t believe they came here. The Crystal Empire was no threat, yet the zebras attacked us anyway. When the news came in that Cloudsdale was hit, Cadence knew we’d get pulled in, so she did the only thing she could. She seceded from Equestria and issued a formal declaration. It didn’t make a difference, though.”

“I remember when we first arrived in the Crystal Empire, and she had to shield it. She did it again, with the Crystal Heart this time, as much as that helped. She claims it helped lighten the load, but the Heart’s been dead for years now, ever since the High Pines Massacre stole the life from the crystal ponies. Cadence … my love … She put up the shield to defend us from those fool soldiers in Frostpoint first. Her secession triggered some pointless attempt to take the empire by force. Then a megaspell hit the shield. Then another … and another … and another.”

“They just kept coming. Did Canterlot get hit as hard? Why were we singled out? She kept the shield up through all the barrage, until the last one. She … she died when that last megaspell collapsed the shield. If it hadn’t been for Sunset Rose’s quick shield around us, we’d all be dead.”

“It’s just her and me now. Cadence is gone, and so are all the crystal ponies. I hope some of them made it to the Stable; the door’s locked now and they won’t let us in. I saw plenty just … vanish when the megaspell hit, though …”

“We’ve got to get out of here, yet I can’t bring myself to leave. Sunset’s spells are keeping the radiation at bay for now, but how long can that last? The entire empire has been poisoned. We have to move on. Cadence is gone, but we have to move on … I have to move on.”

I paused for a moment before playing the next recording. I didn’t have high hopes, given how poorly things had been going in the last recording and where we were standing now. The Last Day in the Crystal Empire had been brutal for Shining Armor. Losing his wife had hit him hard, it was easy to tell from the recording. At least he had had one of his daughters with him. I didn’t see here embedded in the floor anywhere, so what could have become of her?

“I’m alone now,” Shining Armor said, it sounded like through gritted teeth, “It’s for the best. At least I know Sunset is safe now. She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t have a choice. I teleported her to the convoy preparing to leave for the ruins to the north. She should be safe there.”

“I’m trapped here, because I refused to leave, even though I knew it had to be dangerous to remain. I never expected … that, though. The crystal ponies that vanished, they aren’t gone. One of them tried to kill me, though they weren’t a crystal pony anymore, they were more like a crystal … ghoul. That seems a fitting name. Dragged my leg into the floor; now I’m trapped.”

“It’ll be okay, though. Sunset is safe. I hope Aurora is, too. She was in Stalliongrad, far from Resolute. Nopony should have to be far from the one they love in times like this, even if it may be more merciful not to watch them die.”

Something that sounded like a cross between a raspy cough and rattling chimes sounded from the recording, thick with static.

“Come on. I’m not going anywhere!” Shining Armor called out, “I’m ready!”

“Crystal ghouls? Something tells me he wasn’t referring to the usual walking corpses like the ones we saw down below,” Rare said, and looked at Zherana after she realized what she’d said, but the former zebra didn’t seem offended at all.

“We need to be extra careful,” I said, “We’re still surrounded, so we can’t go anywhere. We’ll lie low here for a few hours, but stay on your guard.”

***

The ghouls from the Emerald City—which turned out to be an old stadium we could easily see from the Crystal Palace—were more tenacious than I expected. Darkness fell over the Wasteland, and they were still out searching for us. We slept in shifts, Zherana and I bedding down first with the two of us taking Roaring Thunder and Rare’s place as guards when they went to sleep. We sat together in silence, one of us occasionally venturing out to the palace’s balcony to survey the city. The glow from every surface didn’t dim from the daytime, so it was still relatively easy to see.

“What would be your dream job in the Wasteland if you could do anything?” I asked Zherana, trying to start a conversation. She’d been with us for nearly three weeks now, and none of us knew much about her outside of the rumors in Tartarus and the few snippets she let slip.

“Seems a pointless exercise, given my current situation,” Zherana said, staring at me blankly.

“I think I’d compile everything I’d learned about Wartime Equestria,” I answered my own question, “Everypony seems to have forgotten, but there are a lot of sources of information out there. Terminals, memory orbs, books, buildings. Almost everything tells us something about what Equestria used to be like, and I don’t think we should forget it.”

“I was on the opposite side of the War from Roaring Thunder. We were taught that Equestria was a vile, self-serving culture. What I saw in the brief time I spent here before the megaspells fell did not do much to contradict those beliefs,” Zherana said before looking away, “Though, I will concede that the empire may have been just as bad in its own way, in the end.”

“The Zebra Empire?” I asked.

“I suppose, if anything were open to me, I would return to the empire. Roam has no doubt been destroyed by an Equestrian megaspell, but I still long to return,” Zherana said.

“You should, then,” I said, “It’s a long way, I guess, but you’re practically immortal now.”

“There are two flaws with your suggestion,” Zherana said, turning back to face me again, “First, I am sworn to follow you, and even if you were to command me to go to Roam, I would have to refuse, for that would mean abandoning you. Second, I am not immortal. All ghouls go feral eventually. It is like a sword hanging over your brain, and when it falls, you will lose all control.”

“That’s …” I said, trying to think of what kind of response I could give to that revelation.

“What was that?” Zherana asked, saving me.

I hadn’t heard anything, but obviously she had. I couldn’t believe she would make something up just to save me from having to reply to her telling me she could go feral at any moment. I turned up the audio sensors on my suit in case whatever she’d heard sounded again. A rasping cough with chimes and static mixed in sounded loud in my ears.

“Everypony get up!” I yelled, wincing as my own voice sounded overloud in my ears before I turned the volume back down.

Shadows flitted in the walls, almost pony-shaped at times. Roaring Thunder and Rare Sparks spotted them as well as they awoke, the pegasus jumping up into the air. One of the shapes emerged from the wall, a ghoul made of crystal, emerald flames dancing within her body. As she lurched toward Zherana, Roaring Thunder fired at her. The magical energy beams refraction through the crystal ghoul’s body but seemed to be enough of a deterrent that she dove down into the floor.

Crystal hooves emerged from the floor, grabbing at me, and I fired at the ghouls with my magical energy rifle while bouncing around. Occasionally, a hoof would shatter and the strange noises coming from the ghouls would sound like a shriek, but mostly the shots just drove them back.

“The other ghouls are gone,” Zherana announced after running to the balcony and back, dodging attacks from crystal ghouls, “We have to leave.”

I nodded in wholehearted agreement and dashed for the nearest exit. I nearly tripped down the stairs when I spotted crystal ghouls blocking the way ahead, but kept on going and fired a missile from my armor. That took care of them, sending crystal body parts flying and leaving some half-phased out of the walls. My friends followed close behind, dealing with the ghouls as they reappeared from all directions. No wonder the ghouls of the Emerald City avoided the Crystal Palace; they had the sense to know what lurked here.

Six main roads led away from the Crystal Palace, three of those headed to Frostpoint. We galloped due north, in the exact opposite direction of the town filled with NLC ponies (though they might actually be preferable to ghouls that could drag us into the floor like Shining Armor). They didn’t let up on us after leaving the palace. It seemed like hordes of them were out roaming the streets or else watching from the buildings and below our hooves. They continually tried to trip us up or leap for us. Between my missiles and Rare’s grenades, we had to be making a lot of noise, but we didn’t care. Anything to escape these ghouls.

The edge of the Crystal Empire came in sight, a perfect edge where the street suddenly cut off, followed by ground covered in stunted grasses. I’d never been so happy to see the open wastes of the Wasteland in my life. I prayed the crystal ghouls couldn’t follow us out onto open ground.

Zherana galloped ahead and made it out first, setting up her sniper rifle and attempting to hit some of the ghouls harrying the rest of us. She gave up after it became clear that her bullets didn’t faze them in the slightest. Roaring Thunder provided overhead cover, firing on the ghouls without stop to keep them away from Rare and me.

Rare and I were neck and neck until a pair of the crystal ghouls managed to get ahold of my hindlegs. I fired at them with my magical energy rifle as I stopped cold, but more swarmed in than I could deter. I felt my hindlegs sinking into the crystal as if I were being dragged down into a bog. Yet I knew that if I didn’t pull free, that I would face the same fate as Shining Armor. Could I even shoot the ghouls holding me without becoming stuck where I was? Rare Sparks skidded and turned as she saw the plight I was in, but she was powerless to do anything about it. She’d already used up all of the grenades she’d had on her, and her minigun and auto-shotgun would do about as much good as Zherana’s sniper rifle.

Suddenly, I was struck from behind. My hindlegs rose out of the crystal street as Roaring Thunder pushed me free. Using his wings to knock the crystal ghouls back, he shoved me free of the swarm. The crystal ghouls piled onto him, dragging him down now. All his legs submerged in the crystal, he continued to fire the weapons on his armor.

“Roaring Thunder!” I yelled, running back toward him and firing my rifle.

“No!” he yelled, and I came up short, “Get out of here!”

More ghouls phased out of the surrounding building and rose from the street around me. I had to redirect my shots to my immediate surroundings instead of focusing on Roaring Thunder. A group of the crystal ghouls tried to pull me under again and were shot up by the pegasus.

“Go!” he yelled, one of his wings submerged now.

“We won’t leave you!” I yelled back.

“You have to!” he called, “It was an honor serving with you.”

He made a salute with a wing before swinging it around at the crystal ghouls.

“No!” I yelled, and tried to run toward him, heedless of the crystal ghouls trying to trip me up.

Rare Sparks grabbed ahold of me and dragged me back. We’d both be lost if we didn’t focus, so I forced myself to turn and run for safety, firing on the crystal ghouls in our way. Shots continued to come from Roaring Thunder, helping us out until they eventually ceased. Once over the edge of the Crystal Empire, I immediately turned back.

Celestia’s sun was beginning to rise, and the crystal ghouls seemed to react negatively to it, hissing and disappearing back into the walls and ground. I hesitantly stepped back into the Empire, but no ghouls rushed in to pull me under, so I picked up the pace, galloping by the time I reached the point Roaring Thunder had been. I could see him clearly, trapped within the crystal just like Shining Armor, entombed here forever.

“No!” I yelled as I slammed my armored hooves on the glassy green surface, but it refused to budge for me. Roaring Thunder was lost forever.

***

It was hard, losing Roaring Thunder. Though Rare had joined me first, I’d met Roaring Thunder earlier, and in many ways, he was my first companion. He’d found me when I was lost and didn’t know what to do, and he’d given me a direction to go. He’d guided me down the path that had eventually led me to the rest of my friends and to where I was today. We’d had our ups and downs, our disagreements and fallings out, but eventually we understood one another. Me, a pony with no memories beyond the last few months thrown into the Wasteland and cast as a hero by DJ Pon3. Him, a pony foalnapped and experimented on during the War, turned into a supersoldier who watched all his companions die over the years that followed.

He’d told me that I was a pony worth following. Did he still feel that way when I led him to his death? Was that why he had been willing to sacrifice himself to save me? Who was I to deserve something like that? Plenty of questions bounced around in my head over the following days, questions with no answers.

We still had a mission to complete, and nothing more we could do for our fallen friend. We circled back to the Clinic now that we knew our final destination and set out for the Ruins of the Old World. Two days brought us to the windigo fence, where we had to disembark. The Clinic could go no further, so we loaded ourselves up for the journey and tied a line between the three of us so we wouldn’t become separated.

Massive pylons stretched into the sky here, energy buzzing between them. East and west they stretched without end, holding back the blizzard that raged on the other side. It seemed as if a wall of snow was in constant motion just past the barrier, an eternal storm that stretched up as high as the clouds. I swallowed hard as I looked up to the gray ceiling and spotted the gaps where the sky went up forever. Even after all this time in the Stable and experiencing Wartime memory orbs, it was still a little disturbing to see the sky and know that there was no barrier there; it just went up forever.

The Ruins of the Old World weren’t some insane distance beyond the windigo fence, but it was slow going in the snow. I estimated it would take us about a week of walking to reach Solidarity, the southernmost of the ruins, but after failing miserably to reach our goal on the first day, I revised my estimate to twelve days. We couldn’t see hardly anything, having to rely on my PipBuck map and helmet compass alone to tell us whether we were headed in the right direction. Though most of the snow was in motion in the air, some of it had settled and piled into drifts in places, which made traversing it even more difficult.

On the fourth day, we came, it seemed by chance, upon a caravan of vehicles abandoned in the snow. It was hard to make out anything in the blizzard, but we were able to determine that they’d been Equestrian Army vehicles once. Almost without a doubt, this was the convoy that Shining Armor had talked about in his recording. Sunset Rose hadn’t made it to safety. It had ground to a halt here in the snow more than a century ago, yet the loss still seemed fresh, so soon after we’d lost Roaring Thunder.

We slept in one of the abandoned vehicles that night. It would have been more morbid if they hadn’t taken care of their own dead, but even so, it was kind of grim. Still, it was better than sleeping out in the snow again. The shelter we’d brought with us provided some protection, but not nearly enough to be comfortable. I was grateful to be able to take my armor off for the first time in days, though Rare wasn’t so lucky. Lying down on a blanket-covered chest, I pulled out the fifth Lord Lamplight memory orb, the last one from the Vanhoover Spire.

<-=======ooO Ooo========->

I was back in Frostpoint in the body of Lamplight. I recognized his surroundings as the Northern Lights Coalition warehouse next to the train station. Many more crates than had been there when we’d visited recently were stacked up in this memory. My host was also not alone in the warehouse. Several ponies were gathered around with him, including Clear Rivers and Mr. Bucke. Some of the ponies here looked back at the warehouse doors nervously as gunfire sounded outside.

“They were too concerned with fighting each other that they didn’t stand together against outside threats. Settlements,” Lamplight said disdainfully, “Civilization. If this is what passes for civilization, then I don’t want it. Equestria has changed; civilization must change, too.”

“What are we going to do?” a mare in the crowd asked, looking to me, their leader.

“I have a plan. The Frostpoint Alliance has failed, but I know what we must do differently. All of Wasteland society must come together,” Lamplight announced, touching one of the crates with his hoof, “We can’t do that here, though. We must head farther north, but I guarantee you we will return one day, and Equestria will be restored.”

[Max Level Reached]
Lord Lamplight Memory Orb (The Beginning of the Coalition): +1 to Charisma.
New Quest: Long Live the King – Reach Sat-Con and confront Lord Lamplight.
Charisma +1 (7)