Chapter 18
They landed. It was rough, rough enough that he fell over sideways, probably from a sprained ankle. He rolled in the dirt, slicing open his clothes and skin on twigs and rocks and rubbing dirt all over the wet slime that covered his body. Yet at the bottom of a little hill he finally came to a stop, and Harley beside. He offered his hand to Harley. “You okay?”
She seemed barely able to stand, weakness clear in her face. “Lost my damn wand with that teleport.” She held up one hand, which had numerous splinters and a pattern of ash around it. “What were you saying just now?”
His answer was interrupted by a violent shaking at their feet, coupled with a deep, resonating crash. He turned, though he already knew what he would see. Some distance away, the massive chunk of earth that had been Unity finally finished falling. It held together about as well as a cake might’ve done, the little frosting of buildings and plants on top crumbling to dust. Forest animals roared, flocks of birds scattered, and the landslide just went on and on.
Eric landed with Danielle just beside them, quite a bit more gracefully. Rather, Danielle seemed so sturdy that she was able to absorb the brunt of the landing and protect Eric from injury without too much difficulty. There was no relief in Eric’s face, though. Only horror.
Horror they could all share as their home of the last three months crumbled to charred ruin. Far above, a bomber escorted by a half-dozen fighter jets made another pass, bombarding the ruin with explosives. There wasn’t much left to destroy.
“Hey, uh… Jacob?” Danielle sounded distant and grim. “I… there’s a pony behind us.”
Jacob barely heard Danielle’s voice as he turned. Little of the rubble had fallen here—there was a new mountain rising a mile in the distance, a death so overwhelming he couldn’t even imagine it.
Yet for all that, he could suddenly see nothing but the pony on the ground in front of him. She had landed in the soft soil, avoiding any of the trees or bushes that might’ve impaled her. Even so, it was like something out of a horror movie. Blood everywhere, bones splayed at horrible angles and visible through the flesh. Yet as he watched, her chest rose in vain effort, as she struggled to draw one more breath.
My fault.
He met the pony’s bright blue eyes, and knew that face even with a fractured skull. He kept walking towards her.
“We can’t do anything for her!” Danielle had Harley slung over her shoulder, her form shriveled and pained. “Jacob, there’s nothing you can do! We have to get out of here!”
The best human surgeons could not keep this pony alive if they had her in the world’s best hospital. Jacob felt her feeble life draining away with agony beyond description. Whatever miracle had stopped her from dying immediately had been no kindness.
Jacob didn’t have a knife, but he didn’t need one. He was already bleeding from his shoulder, and he let some of that mingle with the blood of the fallen Allie. “I’m sorry I saved you for this,” he whispered. “You probably would’ve been better off getting caught.” To make it out here, she must’ve been caught in the teleport—then been separated from Eric in the fall? It was hard to know. Jacob himself had been so overwhelmed he saw very little until the landing.
It hadn’t really been his rescue. Even so, his eyes streamed with an agony of guilt. How many of those he had rescued had made it through the mirror?
There were two types of healing magic. The first was diligent study, mastering the anatomy and rote spells that could repair any damage if performed properly and with the right ingredients. Jacob had learned many of these, at least those concerned with first aid.
Allie was well beyond that. Her body was ravaged with a thousand wounds, and many of them were killing her in different ways. Bones were broken, organs smashed, blood drained away. So many different deaths.
There was another kind of healing. “You can’t die,” he commanded, and the wand he held burst into brilliant sunflower life. He kept walking towards her, ignoring the gore, ignoring the agony.
He spoke the words to a spell, though he lacked the ingredients, lacked the knowledge, lacked everything. “Stay the hooves of the pale mare a little longer. She will take you in the end, but not today.” She was still breathing. Light filled her, pouring like a liquid from the wand. It was more magic than Jacob had ever felt—more than he had experienced with Sunset Shimmer, more than any teleport.
“Ignore the swaying of distant grass, the heart of time and its endless herd can wait another lifetime.” The light was so bright he couldn’t see anything anymore, anything but the pony. Jacob didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate or entertain even a shred of doubt. “Breathe deep.”
She did, with a feeble death-rattle.
Jacob dropped down to his knees beside the ruined pony. “Feel the Lightgiver’s touch on your back.” Little sunlight made it through the ash and smoke that still filled the sky. It would have to do. “Hear no more Banshee, she will not scream for you tonight.”
“G-g-od.” The pony’s voice was filled with agony. “I d-deserve th-this.” But she could speak. That meant it was working.
“Love repairs the broken.” He rested one hand on the side of her head, feeling the soft coat marred with dirt and blood. He didn’t know what this pony thought she deserved, but he didn’t care. “Threads frayed remember the tapestry as it was. They remember the strength Earth gave them, the freedom of the sky, and the wisdom of magic.”
Torn flesh slurped, bones cracked, and the poor pony started to scream. Jacob held her still as light washed over her. His own strength was the price, but he did not care. “Share your pain with me, Allie Langford. Share my breath, and Celestia’s fire in my veins. The herd grows stronger as it suffers together.”
Jacob knew pain as he had never before imagined. Something greater than the human kept him awake, forced to endure a little of what this pony had known. If his will broke now, the spell would fracture and kill them both. He had to stay awake, even as he felt his life draining away. There was good reason ponies in Equestria didn’t employ magic like this on a daily basis: it could easily kill you.
Eventually the pain ran out, and his will hadn’t. Though his hands shook, Jacob could still speak. “Be whole.”
The last words of the spell, never learned but known nonetheless, released the magic at last. The light went out, and Jacob fell over sideways, his breathing ragged. The world went dark.
* * *
Mind who you rob.
Time became meaningless. Jacob felt himself being moved, saw lights passing before his eyes, rough fabric, distant voices. He felt like he was moving, though it was hard to say why or where. It was even harder to care. How many people he had known and respected had been killed right in front of him? It was so much easier just to let go, let the whole world melt away.
Then he woke up, jerking so violently that he struck his head and fell back with a stab of pain from his forehead. Something crayon-red fell in front of his eyes, and he tried to pull it away—only to learn that it was attached to his scalp, and all he was doing was yanking it out.
“Did someone move in here?” Danielle’s voice came from nearby, though he couldn’t immediately pinpoint from where.
“Yes.” A sliver of light came from the end of the room. He sat up much more slowly, feeling his way up with a hand. The ceiling was low, but not as low as he had expected. Then something on his head touched the roof above him, stopping him. “Dammit.”
“Hey Eric, I think Jacob’s waking up!”
His eyes were still a little blurred, yet he could make out a few more details. He was in a bunk-bed, and not a big one. There was a window behind him, and darkness outside. There were another two beds across from him, equally cramped, with only a foot of aisle space to get between them. Jacob himself was on the bottom bunk, dressed in clothes he didn’t recognize and no longer smelling like garbage. Most of the light came from the doorway, where there was a miniscule kitchen and an old TV mounted to the ceiling.
The way the ground bounced and jostled as he sat up was enough to tell him where they were: a trailer. Jacob rolled sideways into the tiny aisle, catching himself before he could smack into the ground. “This sucks.”
“N-no!” Danielle reached out, then yanked him to his feet. “It’s not that noticeable!”
“Sure it isn’t.” Jacob’s eyes widened as he realized he was now the shortest one in the truck. “Since when did you get taller?”
Eric spoke from behind her, sounding nervous. “Should we shout for Harley to stop?”
“She already said there was nothing she could do. He has to go all the way before the mirror can do anything.”
“There probably isn’t a mirror.” Jacob straightened, pulling his arm free. He almost fell over, but the doors were small and the walls were close. Danielle retreated into the little kitchen, giving him space.
Eric had the same expression she did: pained sympathy, as someone might wear while visiting an ailing relative in a hospice somewhere. He was also taller than Jacob now. “Is Allie okay?”
“She’s… still alive.” Danielle gestured back into the bedroom, at the lower bunk across from where he had been sleeping. “Hasn’t woken up yet.”
He went back inside, and checked the sleeping pony quickly with one hand. He didn’t have his wand anymore, yet he found he no longer needed it. There was life in this pony. At least for the moment, it was enough.
He made his way out again and shut the door, not wanting to wake her. “Is there a mirror somewhere? I wanna see the damage.”
“By the sink.”
He made his way over. There was very little space to stand. All the furniture was squashed against the walls, and even still it felt cramped. Well, it would’ve if he had been his proper size.
The reflection staring back at him was… wrong. Jacob found himself touching his face, arms, making sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. He checked more than once for a VR headset, but of course he would’ve felt it. Getting the Cutie Mark had been frightening, but it had been a fairly minor change. This wasn’t.
It was very hard to tell if he had just gotten smaller, or if he was somehow younger too. The two things had gone together until now, but how could he tell? He had to be about four feet now, horn not included. That added another seven inches or so, curling bone about on par for what a unicorn might’ve had on the show with a head as large as his. He didn’t touch it much, just enough to feel that yes, it was glued onto his head. Despite how absurd it looked, it didn’t hurt.
He wasn’t just shrunk, his proportions were different, though he couldn’t say if he was more youthful or just more athletic. His hair had gone from black to absurd red, a strange compliment to the yellow of his eyes. There was also a lump in his pants, which he quickly discovered to be a matching tail. He had been dressed in clothes that looked stolen from either a hipster or a hobo, it was hard to tell which. At least he wasn’t alone in that regard.
His companions were unchanged, save that Eric had some stubble and Danni looked more grim. He could understand why.
“I’ve got some questions.” He reached over and opened the mini-fridge. The only thing inside was a large basket of apparently wild-picked grasses and berries. He shut it in disgust. “The hell is that? Wait… actually, no. I don’t care.” He slumped down against the back wall, looking up at Danni and Eric. He already felt so small that a few more inches didn’t make a difference. “How are we still alive?”
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7469354 And every last one of them is a winner.
Unknowingly saving the culprit. *sighs* Might not take the news well.
An excellent question, Jacob.
Pony transformation: 20% complete.
The ponies of Unity gave the impression of having had most of the fight knocked out of them even before this. With their hidden base and possibly even their mirror portal taken out by this strike, will they just completely give up the fight? Write it off as unwinnable?
I guess she wasn't so sturdy to survive after all. And why does Harley care about these humans so specifically?
Guess we've got our Five-Man Band set up now. I mean, the characters don't fall into the archetypes presented extremely well, though that may be something that's ironed out in time. I will say, though, that while everyone is upset with Aliie The Deceiver, from what I remember she was already kinda on the moral fence about all this to begin with, and this may very well be what pushes her onto the side of the Equestrians. Or, at least, the rest of the Band.
Current crack theory is that we're following what's going to become some sorta third party in all this nonsense, though to be fair the current shift in advantage WAY to the side of the government makes me think that, in reality, this group's just gonna be the archetypal protagonists instead (making up for the severe disadvantage with luck, heart, and awesomeness). Of course, there's nothing wrong with that.
So has he become a pony entirely, or is he a tiny anthro horse? I wasn't totally sure about that; the descriptions in these stories are little sparse. And what colour is his coat? Does he have a coat yet or just the red hair?
EDIT: Nevermind, I re-read it. Tiny horned man with no coat. He'd better hope that when he loses his fingers, he gets their magic magnet hooves all at once, instead of some awkward in-between period. Me, at this point I'd do whatever I could to move this along to its final stage.
And could you imagine being a brony who got roped into this, and you become a pony, and you don't look like your OC? How embarrassing would that be, like 'Oh ... oh, I had it wroooong ..."
I think Death was talking to him here:
I guess that was inevitable.
I wonder what kind of fighter aircraft took down Unity?
Unless the flight components were outside the fortress (that way regular fighters could take em' out), I would assume it was some kind of ground attack aircraft, like a fleet of A-10 Warthogs or something. Maybe they were helicopters?
Oh man... this is gonna be interesting... can't wait for that explanation!
7469806
What I find intriguing about this story is that I can completely sympathize with the government's point of view here. Even if they accepted that the Equestrians' intentions are ultimately benign, just look how easy it is to go too far when using magic and start turning yourself into a pony. Now imagine that happening across the entire planet. This has the potential to get out of control very fast and very badly.
7471477 I don't think government will ever treat ponies benign. At least they'll stop when they'll hear how ponies call the Friendship is Magic show:
It kind of contradicting fact, after all: Harly states that Equestria wasn't sending enough magic to change anyone meanwhile ponies call show about them as something capable of "awaking" magic in humans.
I just hope Starscribe won't make ponies actions be like "we only wanted to save your species from something more dangerous!".
7471864
I'm not really getting that vibe from the story. To me, Equestria really just wanted to help us out, perhaps in exchange for something we have that that don't (like certain kinds of tech that don't have a magical equivalent). The bottom line is that Equestria really botched this. They were ill-equipped to deal with how our society works.
7471913, we don't have enough information to solve this puzzle. From everything Harley said in chapter 12 we only get information about Lighttenders, which are, presumeably, run all this witchhunt and act like S.C.P. Foundation. Meanwhile we still don't know why have monsters appeared on Earth and why does magic change humans into ponies or why does it change humans at all. And to be honest, variant "It changes humans into ponies because it's magic" is a pretty dumb twist, especially for an author like Starscribe.
7471967
Yeah that would be a terrible twist.
Rip humanity. You will be missed.
If the S.C.P. Foundation were handling this the ponies would be fucked
If the GOC were handling this the ponies would be even more fucked and probably dead. ("Sir! How do we kill it?" "Fire a nuke through the mirror")
this story needs a death or dark or gore tag, i really wasn't ready for this...