Making Friends
Time passed in the strange, alien place beneath the ground. Trade Wind couldn't have said if she rested a few hours or a few days. True to the words of the stranger, her joints felt sore and stiff and strained whenever she moved them, as though too sudden a gesture might tear the new leg right off her body. Nothing about what had happened to her made any sense, and her constant delirium did little to bring clarity to her.
There had been many contradictions, though one seemed chief among them: the plague. It had three stages, each deadlier than the last. The necrosis she had been suffering was the fate that many suffered—once it began, there was no escape. A pony who reached the first or second stage might get better, but one as far along as she had been would certainly die. Nowhere in all of Alexandria had she heard of a pony who had survived it. She was so far gone that even the bandits and worse had kept their distance from her, knowing what fate might await them if they touched her.
Yet as she surveyed her reflection in the clean wall mirror, she could see no signs of infection. The only stories about cures for the plague proclaimed that ponies should come to Alexandria. I came for a cure, and found it?
Maybe. Her foreleg sure hadn't been cured. Trade Wind spent nearly an hour examining the crystal limb, lifting her leg at the joint and moving it in every way she could think. Despite apparently being made of glass-like stone, it moved as though it were flesh, not cracking as it bent and compressed. How it could move this way and still look like it was made of glass, Wind couldn't even imagine. But she couldn't imagine how the plague gone necrotic could be cured either, and yet here she rested.
Her strange host had provided her with a tray of food and a few bottles of water, but the food tasted stale and the water came in strange bottles that looked like glass but were still soft in her hooves. Even her bedroom was a place of wonders—it had working lights which she presumed were the same magical variety that had once lit the university, but had been stripped by scavengers like just about everything else. There was no blood here, no damage of any kind, no sign of struggle. Where in the world is safe like this?
Trade Wind slept, and ate, and used the facilities, and much time passed without interruption. The old stallion she'd seen only once did not return to check on her, or to deliver more food and water. Eventually what little he'd left for her began to run out, and Wind could feel the gnawing return to her belly. It was nothing compared to the agony of her body rotting away before her eyes, but it was still unpleasant. I'm not a captive. I don't care if he saved me, I'm not going to let him keep me here against my will. I'm not going to let him starve me.
So she rose, leaving the remarkably clean bedroom behind. True to her suspicions, the entrance wasn't locked, and it swung open easily. Trade Wind stepped out slowly into a gloomy hallway. The walls outside were made of more crystal, pure green not unlike the material used to build the university spire. Could this place be hidden away in the school? That stallion did look old enough to be a teacher...
But there was no taking anything for granted just now. It might not have even been the stallion who had healed her. For all she knew, he might just be the clerk sent to make sure she found her room alright.
Trade Wind stepped out into the hallway, movements slow enough that her hooves wouldn’t fill the entire building with their clopping as she walked. The university was supposed to be looted and gutted, but this building was neither of those things. It had the regular lanterns shining from the expected places on all the walls, as bright as she'd read about from times long passed. There were no cracks in the crystal, no missing furniture as she walked—it looked for all the world as though Wind had been dragged back into the past. Into a happier time, when the university had been a place to learn magic, and foals didn't rot away from terrible disease before their parents’ eyes.
The hallway took her past a room filled with what looked like birds, birds that moved constantly through the air on strange spinning wings. She didn't stay long enough to get a closer look, lest they notice her trespassing. For all Wind knew, she would be seen as a hostile invader in this sacred place. She had not been given permission to leave her room. But he didn't technically tell me I had to stay in there, either.
It wouldn't make much of a defense if the guards caught her. This place had to have guards around, powerful ones if they'd kept the hordes of marauding scavengers out. If whoever runs the school really can cure ponies, she could get the strongest guards in the world to protect her. Wind knew from experience that ponies would often be willing to give up anything in exchange for the promise of treatment.
She eventually came to another set of doors, this one made of ancient wood worn smooth by the touch of many hooves. There was no lock on them she could see, no traps she could detect, nothing that should stop her from opening them. Wind took a deep breath, then pushed on one of the doors with both hooves. The wood was immensely heavy, and filled the air with loud creaking sounds as they swung open. She winced as the air shook all around her, but didn't try to stop. There was no way she was turning around and going back to the room without any food, that was for sure.
The room within was massive, even larger than the strange room filled with birds. There were many different tables in it, most lining the walls but at least one row in the center. Each table held a host of strange machines, constructions of metal and glass and crystal with purposes she couldn't guess. Quite a few of them looked stranger still, made from the soft, flexible materials worked only by the ancients in the world long ago. I've stumbled into a fortune. Everything looked like it still worked, though some of the machines were covered with a clear fabric that seemed to be protecting it, keeping out the dust.
The room was not empty, though the pony within hadn't noticed her. He was the same stallion she'd seen earlier, with his orange coat turning slight gray with age, and a cutie mark like a pair of strange rectangles on his flank. No, not rectangles. It's a device of the ancients. She'd stumbled upon a sacred reliquary, there could be no doubt about it. Maybe it hadn't been a pony at all who had healed her, but one of these incredible machines. The stories about what they could accomplish were as wild and fantastical as the stories of Alexandria's university. And here I am, having found them.
For as noisy as the door has been as she came in, the stallion did not appear to have noticed her. Wind walked across the stone room, staying well away from the tables and their relics, particularly the ones that seemed to be flashing or lighting up with magic or other forces. She had no intention of straying too close to something that might turn her to stone, or make it so she couldn't breathe air, or some even worse transformation.
As she got closer to the stallion, she got a better look at what he was doing. The long table in front of him was covered with rows and rows of shallow trays, each one with many clear disks inside. Something like slime seemed to be growing in each one, in slightly different shades within each individual disk. Wind couldn't get a good look without pushing past him, and that was a little bolder than she wanted to be. "Excuse me," she said, as loudly as she dared. "I ran out of food."
The stallion remained hunched over his work, levitating the next disk into a special opening in an ancient machine. A flat surface like a pool of water right in front of his face changed as he put the disk inside, seeming to match the color of the slime. There were objects moving on its surface, but Wind couldn't tell what they were. Just now she was too hungry to care.
"Excuse me!" she shouted, right into his ear.
This time the stallion did stop what he was doing, turning around to glare at her. "I'm busy with something Sky..." He stopped abruptly, dropping the other disk he was holding in his magic. It shattered, sending clear slime splattering everywhere. The unicorn retreated from her, looking actively frightened as he did so. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out.
"Were you the pony who saved me?" Wind asked, ignoring his obvious fear. She was far too used to that reaction from the last few months of her life. Anypony could recognize one of the infected, even one without much education. Somehow, she suspected this pony had plenty of education. "The one who gave me this?" She held up the crystal leg, so that it caught the light beside her.
Every word she spoke seemed to be torturing the poor stallion, who started to back away, walking right over the broken glass as though not the least bit concerned about how badly it might cut him up. She soon saw what that might be—it wasn't just that this stallion had a gray coat, but he looked far less like a regular pony than she did. Much of his body was transparent crystal, and in those parts, he didn't look so cosmically old. Replacing a limb was one thing, but how could somepony's whole torso be almost entirely made of stone? How did he breathe like that?
"Y-yes..." he stammered. "T-that's w-what... I... helped you." He spoke with a thick accent, like a pony who hadn't used their voice in a long time. Unless he just had a sore throat. "Wasn't easy."
"No, I bet it wasn't," she said. "I heard the plague couldn't be cured. What you did shouldn't even be possible. I came to Alexandria to find a cure, like lots of other ponies did. But none of the others found it. I stopped thinking it was even real..."
"The sickness." The stallion stopped backing away from her. The longer they remained in conversation, the more he seemed to relax. "There was no treatment on file. Nothing in my database. So far as I could tell, it's a contagion alien in origin. Still uncertain why an Equestrian disease so potent would remain undiscovered for so long. One possibility: artificially engineered." He smiled then, though Wind had understood very little of what he said. "No engineer clever than I am. Their pet disease is going to the ash heap of history where it belongs."
Wind let those words sink in, considering what the stallion had said. Apparently, it wasn't some other pony who had cured her, or some ancient magic from the world of the ancestors. "Are you saying... Are you saying you found me sick, without knowing of the plague, and invented a cure?" There was no keeping the skepticism out of her voice, or the shock. "That's... not possible. The smartest ponies all over the world have been trying to find a treatment for the plague for years. One pony locked up in a lab... couldn't do it on their own!"
Far from looking angry, the pony smiled. "Maybe just anyone couldn't, no. But most people up there are idiots. You should've seen them... as far back as you look, they wouldn't have a clue what to do without me. Alex thought that building the university was a waste of resources. She wanted to add a brick extension to the high school. Bricks! You think any of it would still be standing now?" He started pacing, walking past her, up and down the rows, fast enough that she was afraid his crystal limbs might shatter as they struck the stone floor. But they didn't, and she took heart from this.
If his won't break, I bet mine won't either.
"When the city council wanted to set up a coal plant, who designed the first weather-fed gravity generator? Well, Cody did, but my spells made it work! I built the Kimballnet, I helped write Athena's ethical kernel, I invented the soulprobe! Not that cheating Alex, with her cheating memory and an army of ghosts, me!" He turned gesturing with one hoof at the vast array of artifacts in front of him, many of which were still quietly whirring away. "I can't wait to see her stupid smug face when I complete the Arcanum Apotheosis and cast it right in front of her."
"Who are you?" she asked, barely able to form the words. Despite this pony's incredible claims, there wasn't even a trace of doubt in his voice. No hint that he might be lying, or that he questioned what he was telling her. This laboratory and her newly-cured body suggested he wasn't being dishonest, either.
The stallion waved a hoof through the air, dismissive. "You primitives call me Mystic Rune. My friends called me Joseph... but that was long ago." He finally seemed to deflate, sitting down on his haunches and looking around him. It seemed to Wind as though he were seeing ponies that weren't there.
"The ones I... ignored. My son, my... did I have a daughter too? I don't remember..." He reached up, brushing a few strands of unruly mane away from his face. "I've been down here... longer than you can imagine, primitive. Longer than anypony could understand. Only the seaponies live as long as I have, and they don't age well. Most of them get sick and die of some stupid, preventable disease before they're four centuries old. I doubt you are capable of comprehending what I have experienced."
"Trade Wind," she said, walking right up to him and sitting less than a foot away, without touching him. She could see his fear as she approached, and so she didn't make contact. "My name isn't primitive, it's Trade Wind. I've... I'll admit, I was never much for history. I've never heard of anypony named Mystic Rune, or any of those other names you used. But... you saved my life. Where I come from, that would make you my friend. Can I call you Joseph?"
"Sure," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "Sure." His eyes widened a little, as though he'd just realized he'd left a fire going somewhere untended, and he recoiled in horror. "Dammit pony, you waste my time! I can't afford to waste time with you when I should be wasting time saving ponies from the plague." He turned away then, gathering up the glass and slime he'd broken into a bin on the far side of the room, before returning to the machine he'd been working on when she first got in. "Find some... plants to eat, or something. Stay out of my way.”
"No," she said, following him back over to his machine. It didn't matter that this pony had the power to cure an incurable disease, and sounded like he had lived in this lab for hundreds or thousands of years. It didn't matter that magic itself seemed to boil from his crystal skin like a chunk of sublimating hail falling through the sky. Wind's life had ended long ago, nothing more could frighten her. Not even a pony as powerful as this.
"No?" He looked up from his machine, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean no? I saved you, pony. You owe me peace at least."
"No," she said again, taking a deep breath. She didn't take long enough that he could send her away, or worse, get angry. She would say what she wanted to say. "I don't know who you are, Joseph, but you saved me, and you sound like you're planning on helping other ponies. I want to help. I don't have power like yours, or centuries of experience, but... I have these." She spread out her wings, displaying the unruly feathers. "I can fly, and you can't. Whatever I can do to help, I want to do it. The plague took my family from me. I want to return the favor."
Joseph stared at her for a long, silent moment. He seemed to be seeing past her, though what he might be seeing, she couldn't even guess. Eventually he nodded. "I could use an assistant. I will be going to the surface soon. I have already exposed the population above to my retrovirus, but I must spread it to the other continents as well, or else it may mutate before the cure can be brought naturally."
His eyes darkened, and now she saw what anger looked like on this pony. The crystal of his body seemed to grow cloudy, as though it contained a raging storm she couldn't quite see. "I wasn't going to do anything, Trade Wind. I've been down here so long... Time took my wife from me. It took Cloudy. My heart, well... it turned to stone." He tapped lightly on his chest with one crystal hoof. It sounded like two glasses ringing together.
"But my wife... and Cloudy... those weren't tragedies. They died doing what they loved. But not this." He gestured at the rows of identical glass containers, and all of them lifted into the air, a hundred objects all spinning around him at the same time, rotating so fast that his face blurred behind them, moving so quickly that a slip would shower them both in pieces of broken glass. "Do you know why the water stopped running?"
Trade Wind opened her mouth to answer, but of course she had no idea what this unicorn was talking about. She retreated a step from him, her heart thumping in her chest. Maybe she'd been premature in thinking she had nothing left to be afraid of.
He started walking again, through the rows of tables and machines. How he could pass between them without striking his little containers against them, how he could keep so many shapes in his mind, Wind couldn't even imagine.
"I always knew it wouldn't be my job! She always said how it was our responsibility to 'carry the human legacy forward,' but it wasn't mine to carry, it was hers! The self-appointed Alicorn police of the universe even gave her a fancy title, and a cheat code for death so she could keep going until that slow brain of hers figured things out." He gestured, and the massive doorways on the edge of the lab were ripped out of their hinges with a terrible roar. Doors so heavy she could barely push them went flying and smashed into the stone of the far wall, shattering to the ground in a sea of splinters.
Now she had no choice but to follow, though she kept her distance. She still couldn't tell how this pony kept his different clouds from hitting anything. She wasn't about to stick her head in no matter how powerful he seemed.
"Archive was my friend. Someone murdered her, so they could murder everyone else. I didn't care what happened to anypony else... but nobody kills my friends. Now I'm going to kill his stupid disease. And when I'm done... maybe kill him too. Haven't decided."
He stopped then, in the wide hallway with its bare floors and stunning crystal ceiling. Joseph seemed to realize then that he'd left the lab behind, because he turned, glancing backward over his shoulder at her. "O-oh." He deflated a little. "I'm talking to someone. You heard all that."
"Every word," she answered, voice quiet and respectful. She didn't meet his eyes. "I didn't know what most of it meant."
"You don't need to," he said. "All that's important is that Charybdis pissed me off. He's the one I'm fighting now. It's his fucking disease. If you want to help, you'll be fighting him too."
Wind shivered as she heard the name, though it was the first time she'd ever heard it. It didn't sound like a word in any of the languages she knew. "I don't care who we have to fight. I don't want anypony else to get sick."
"Okay." Joseph waved, and all the little disks landed on the ground, ordering themselves in regular rows. "Come with me, then. Let's get you outfitted. I planned on leaving this afternoon anyway. You can... carry my tent or something."
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Joseph... is pissed off! Ha!
Dangit, this arc is so good! Argh!
I don't think Joseph has become a better pony in his old age. Yeesh.
I'm kind of hoping now to see Joe ascend with the power of friendship or something, instead of working out a logical, magical way of doing it...
What Joseph really wants to be doing, is working out what Charybdis cheat code is, and how to hack it. Slowly.
Lets call it. Project Despair Squid.
8160087 that would be hilarious. SPECIALLY if nice right after they met, so archive could laugh while crying over finding an old friend anew. It would be cute
Go go Sparktail!
Go go!
Whohooh!
8160176
Project WHAT NOW?
Proved my conjecture- even after centuries, Joseph is still an ass. Some ponies never learn...
#1 THANK YOU SPARK TAIL!!
#2 Great continuation!
#3 I REALLY want to see how Joseph plans on fucking with Char, besides destroying his little pet plague
Whoohoo! Very looking forward to seeing pissed-off ancient Joseph in action!
Good to see another part of the old guard spurred back into action.
You're a hero Sparktail!
I'm excited to see the adventures that Joseph and his new companion have while fighting Charibdis.
So, this means that the desease didn't burn itself out. Joseph made the cure. Although, he could've at least told them he made the cure before spreading it. It would have avoided all that cultist nonsense of sacrificing the refugees. I wonder how he reacted to that, or if at all. What happened to Joseph??
And now the nutty professor has rejoined the fight
Im waiting for like in three thousand years him and trade wind, now immortal simply by being around his experiments and them just hanging out
The founders of Alexandria everybody, sticking it to Charybdis since the Event.
I just realized something
Doesn't this change the prophecy of the failure of Charbydis' attempt to destory everything?
Somehow, I don't think using biological weapons doesn't count as attack. And it's still good 300 years before the contract expires.
I had a feeling something more had happened then joe just blowing himself up. Still did not expect him to have faked his own death. With his wife dead and son gone i could see why though. Its good to see that even after years of isolation he still cares about his old friends in his own weird way.
Though for some reason i have a feeling he never quite made it too meeting alex again...
I love the pony he's turned into. It's exactly what I'd expect of him and it's wonderful.
Joseph is still a jerk. What a surprise.
Joseph is still a dick... I wonder if his son/daughter leaving was part of why he faked his death...
Still even if he is a dick, least he's trying to help in his own way