Part 2: Citizen of Equestria
Sarah found suddenly that she could move again. Her limbs seemed to come unglued from the seat under her, and the squeezing around her legs finally stopped. If I never ride a fucking jumper again it will be too soon. She yanked free of the restraints, but found she didn’t have to pull very hard; Forerunner had already released them.
Compared to the constant brightness of the interior during the flight over, the gloom of the jumper now felt surreal. Is that because there’s nothing to see? She stopped in front of Photuris, who was frozen in her seat as though she was afraid it might attack her. She made a faint squeaking sound, and had both forelegs wrapped around the straps. Sarah poked her gently on the shoulder, and spoke into her radio. “Paging Dr. Irwin.”
Her eyes opened instantly from under the helmet, expression annoyed. “That was my previous instance. Weren’t you paying any attention before?”
“Not really,” Sarah admitted. “I would’ve, but… we could’ve been seconds from exploding right then, and it was a little hard to concentrate.” She backed up. “You’re not strapped down anymore, come on. We need to move. Can you feel that?”
“No.” Photuris rose from her chair, shaking herself out before her magnets attached to the floor and she stopped wobbling. “Wait, maybe? We’re accelerating.”
“Down,” Sarah agreed. “If down is towards Sanctuary. Whatever it’s doing going down can’t be good.” She didn’t have to say what they were both probably thinking. The Stormbreaker had destroyed Othar. Presumably if they were still going it meant the Forerunner’s all-out assault had failed. It meant they were the assault now. “Somehow I’ve been talked into becoming a hero. Might as well, I guess.” She walked past the chairs into the cockpit. “Forerunner, are you there?”
There was a drone sitting in the chair—one of the less advanced pony models, with plastic skin. It didn’t so much as look at her as she approached. “Signal lost,” it said over radio. “Please bring this unit back into transmission range with any Pioneering Society satellite.”
“Sorry pal,” she muttered, before shoving the plastic body out of the chair and onto the ground. It collapsed without resistance.
“What are you doing?” Photuris asked from behind her.
“Getting a look at what’s going on,” she said. “A few seconds isn’t going to kill us. Or if it is, we’re dead anyway.”
It took her a moment to find what she wanted—the “external view” settings. She switched the false ceiling back on, then walked out of the cockpit.
She didn’t have to look around very much to find what she was searching for. The Stormbreaker was passing through a debris field. Right up “above” their jumper was the Emperor’s Soul.
What was left of it, anyway. Something terrible had cleaved the whole thing in half down the middle, the edges still glowing bright orange. She could see gas venting from several of the open sections, along with little bits of debris she hoped to hell weren’t bodies. It’s okay, they’re as immortal as I am. It’s really just time this wastes.
She could think that, but that didn’t mean she could believe it. Sarah doubted she would ever be able to watch people die without feeling anything. “Guess it’s just us, then. A counterfeit and a… what even are you, Photuris? A replacement? Substitute?”
But she didn’t answer. Photuris seemed to be staring at something, looking at what felt like the “floor” below them and out along the Stormbreaker.
Sarah fought back her annoyance at being ignored, then followed Photuris’s eyes.
The screens showed the Stormbreaker below them just as much as the sky above. They were attached to the gently curved surface of the Stormbreaker, and didn’t seem to be moving as they accelerated. Probably magnets, though she couldn’t know that for sure. To her land born eyes and with the gentle acceleration, it felt a little like being on the surface of a small moon, so small that parts of it curved away below them and were lost.
But Photuris wasn’t looking at any of that. As Sarah stared, she realized something was emerging from one of the distant protrusions. Black shapes, scuttling along the surface with their chitinous shells visible in reflected red light. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah,” Photuris said. “They weren’t supposed to… notice us this fast. Something must already have the swarm agitated.” She started pacing, obviously breathing heavily into her headset. “It’s alright. We’ll be fine. We’ve done this before. You’ve done this before, anyway. My previous instance… it won’t be any different. Except that now we’re in space, and… everypony is counting on us.” She looked back at Sarah, eyes wide. “Why did I want to do this again?”
“Because…” Sarah’s voice cracked, and she couldn’t explain why. “Because James Irwin was a good man.” She followed those black shapes with her eyes. They moved so fast—impossibly fast, almost. “He was willing to do anything for the Pioneering Society. He’d already died for it once… what’s another few deaths?”
“Right.” Photuris leaned up against her shoulder, her touch light through their suits. “Right, yeah. I remember. Kinda. I remember the feeling at least.” She looked up, and Sarah could see her wide bug eyes through their helmets. “I don’t think I was trying to save… the Pioneering Society. Maybe I wasn’t as great as you think… because you were the one I really wanted to save.”
Sarah couldn’t reach the moisture on her face now. “Tell me what to do,” she whispered. “Ocellus… isn’t here this time. What did she call those, feral changelings? Sleepers? Something. Looks like… about a hundred of them. And they’re about to get to us.”
“Oh, right! They probably think this ship is debris, so they’ll throw it off. With… us still inside.”
“Fuck.” Sarah ran straight towards the jumper’s only exit, slowing only long enough to grab her satchel of assorted random tools. She passed through the outer exit into the open airlock. “Get in here, Photuris! We’re getting the fuck out right now!” She tapped her hooves anxiously against the steel, counting each second until her companion was finally inside and the door could be shut behind them. She smacked her leg up against the “Exit” button, and swore loudly as the room started to hiss.
“They’re going to be out there by the time we are,” Sarah said, half to herself. “I’ve never fought on the deck of a starship before… I’ve only done one EVA in my whole fuckin’ life.”
“We won’t fight them,” Photuris said. “We would lose badly if we had to. It will be a… conversation? No, that’s wrong.”
There was a tiny window on the airlock, and Sarah leaned up to try and see out. There were black forms out there, all right, and none of them were wearing space suits. Their faces looked strange to her, though, like they didn’t have proper mouths. Something slimy covered their faces, something dark green and boiling inside. Yet the army pressed forward.
“Pressure equalization at 50%,” said the ship’s radio into her suit.
“What do we do?” Sarah asked, falling back onto all four limbs. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t using her magnetic boots, though that was certainly part of it. She couldn’t keep still. “Ocellus used a scent key last time, I’m not sure if you remember. I know… all their keys, I could do that one. I’m not sure how we give them the kill-command out here.”
“We can’t.” Photuris leaned forward to get a good look herself, but at that moment the ship started to rock to one side. Alarms blared within the main cockpit, faint and almost inaudible. Sarah banged the exit button again, but of course it couldn’t go any faster. “But if we seem alive, they won’t kill us out here. We might be their own legitimate crew, somehow trapped out in space. They’ll carry us back, and… we can go from there.”
“Perfect.” Sarah smacked up against the airlock door, and felt her shoulder give slightly under the weight. Her space suit squealed briefly in protest, lighting up on her helmet with a “pressure warning.”
Shit, this isn’t powered armor. I can’t do that.
The jumper rocked again, and this time Sarah was nearly knocked completely off her hooves. She squealed, but switched on her magnetics, and came suddenly back down to the ground.
Photuris wasn’t so quick thinking, but after a few seconds the rocking stopped, and Sarah could reach up to grab her.
Then the airlock door clicked open. A loading ramp unfolded down from the ship, slowly enough that the changelings outside could get out of the way.
There were hundreds of them, enough that they coated the surface of the Stormbreaker outside their ship. From the look of things, they were making a living tower of sorts, lifting the jumper away from the larger ship with surprising strength. But no sooner had the doorway opened than they stopped.
They were changelings, almost exactly like the ones Sarah had seen before. But these seemed to have a thin layer of slime coating their whole bodies, centered on the globule around their necks. It remained roughly elliptical, moving as they moved, and somehow not boiling off in the hard vacuum.
They lunged. Sarah was quick enough to shut her boots off again, which was fortunate for her. The creatures seized her with enough strength that she didn’t doubt they would’ve torn her legs from their sockets.
She kept herself from screaming into the radio in desperation, but only just. Her voice would probably sound pretty desperate, though. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Photuris!”
“Me too,” she squeaked, her breathing harsh and rapid. “I really hope so too!”
Sarah felt a dozen mandibles grabbing her, pinching hard enough that she felt blood slowing to her limbs in places. But somehow they managed not to pierce the thin civilian space-suit, at least not yet.
She had enough of a view of the sky to watch their jumper come suddenly detached, drifting slowly upward and away from the Stormbreaker. It carried a dozen or so changelings with it, seeming to fall slowly behind the Stormbreaker as they accelerated.
Then it got a little too far away, and the whole thing vanished in a flash of light. For an instant a bubble appeared around the entire vessel, as bright as any that had shone during the battle. Sarah’s visor went black to shield her eyes. As it finally cleared, she saw something lumpy and molten falling behind the Stormbreaker—that was all.
“Well, that was our ride, so we can’t fuck this up now,” Sarah said. She hoped her voice sounded conversational, even though she still wanted to scream in terror into her headset. “Let’s… go over how this works. They’re… going to carry us inside, right?”
“Right.” Photuris did not sound any happier than she was.
“And as soon as they get you open, you… give them the self-destruct?”
“Yes,” she said. “Err, no. I have to authorize us first. Once we signal friendly, then we can give commands.”
“Kay.” Sarah winced. They were almost all the way to the protrusion the changelings emerged from in the first place. She could see a thick slime coating everything, including much of the deck. There was no light coming from within, not even the steady flashing of a hazard indicator or computer display. “What if they cut me open first?”
“Then you… better signal friendly. Or else they’ll probably think we’re both unauthorized and start eating us. Now’s… probably not a good time to point out that I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate on keys while I’m being ripped apart.”
“Right.” Sarah’s helmet started to fog from her hyperventilating. Her suit chimed slightly, a warning that she was going through her air too quickly. But she didn’t bother slowing down. It only needs to last a few minutes anyway.
They passed inside the Stormbreaker, through a series of increasingly tight membranes. Sarah continued not to resist, even as the number of teeth holding her went from dozens to only a few.
But she couldn’t keep still for much longer, she was reaching the limits of her concentration. If they kept this up, she would be unable to restrain herself, and then they would rip her apart.
Then they were in darkness. Her helmet-lamps came on automatically, though she would’ve been happier if they hadn’t. She saw dark, fleshy walls, spotted with numerous dense holes and little squirming larva within. They were back in atmosphere then, inside the ship. But still they moved, through a thick crowd of dark figures that watched them always but never got any closer than their existing captors. There was no need when the two of them were already so well in hand.
“I’m not sure I can do it,” Sarah whispered, her voice a tiny squeak. “This is… worse than last time.”
Then they stopped moving. The room held only outlines suggestive of vast numbers, along with several piles of something organic. Then she felt them tearing. The changelings started removing her suit, in slashes and slices, tearing at the fabric with great delicacy, without her feeling so much as the brush of mandibles against her own shell. It was like being groomed by a colony of giant ants. Before the light on her helmet went out, she caught one glimpse of Photuris, still wrapped in her suit. It would have to be her.
Sarah’s helmet came off with the same delicacy of anything else. Her light winked out, but that did not spare her perception. In this darkness, something of her old echolocation must’ve remained. There were bodies all around her, in a corridor that felt distinctly alive.
And they were watching her. She had only a moment to give them what they expected, and no help from Ocellus to do it properly. And if she failed, they would both be torn apart.
Sarah pictured the combination of smells she remembered from before—the one Ocellus had demonstrated for her. There was no easy analogy to the way humans might’ve felt. But she didn’t have the luxury of being overwhelmed. It was success here, or die.
She felt the changelings pressing in around her, like being submerged in a vat of living cockroaches. Their bodies yielded strangely against her as they smelled, listening to her message. Mandibles brushed up against her, sharp fangs, and the other strange organs that were the maintainers of Sanctuary.
Then they passed her by. They relaxed away from her, seeming suddenly not to see her at all. She kept up the scent easily now that she could feel it clearly, for fear of what might happen if she stopped even for a moment.
She watched, or more accurately, felt, as they stripped away Photuris’s space suit as they had done to her own. She bit her lip, wondering if she might have to watch this new but not-new pony get torn apart as their assassins had been.
But then they backed away from her.
Sarah smelled it at the same time the swarm did. It wasn’t just unpleasant—though her human senses might’ve described it as analogous with various unpleasant things, the real message was what it meant.
For the first time, Sarah didn’t just sense the pheromones, but understood them. They weren’t words really, but that was how her mind perceived them. Not a password at all, just a statement. This vessel has been compromised. It now works against the interests of Equus and must be destroyed. Right now.
The swarm seemed to react with rage. Sleeping drones from all up and down the caverns rose from where they rested. Mandibles clicked, wings buzzed. Then they set to work, leaving the two of them abandoned.
The crowd of enemy soldiers surrounded Olivia, each one wearing different pieces of gear. She caught glimpses of familiar metal plates worked into the design—bits of human powered armor, cut and stripped and hung together on cords. A few of them had firearms, the sort that Forerunner had been making for the resistance. Not strong enough to get through my armor, though. They’d chosen those weapons specifically for that reason—they would pierce steel, but not the hyperstable armor plates.
Didn’t mean they couldn’t kill her in other ways if they wanted to, though. A few of them were judging her with their spears or swords, mostly on the armor plates. So far no one had gone further than that.
Olivia tried her radio a few times, calling out for instructions, calling out for the other breach teams, entirely without success. She had a bad feeling they were dead—but what was she supposed to do, stand here?
She’d seen the battle well enough, or at least a single view of it. All the might of the Pioneering Society crashed up against the bubble, and she’d been cheering for them every moment. When the guards around her cowered in fear at the flashes of nuclear fire, Olivia just looked away and hoped that she would wake Upstream.
But she hadn’t, and now she had energy for very little. Forerunner had committed everything they had. Every ship, every skilled infiltrator, every strategy they could employ. It had all failed. All of our best weapons, broken by a ship that might as well be an alien tractor. The ancients were much more advanced than their current technology. She should’ve expected failure. But not quite yet.
She had no way of checking the timer on her suit bomb, but so far the enemy hadn’t been brave enough to do more than poke at her bag a few times. She hadn’t exploded yet. Maybe they knew how dangerous she would be if they got too close. If these guards started cutting her armor apart, and accidentally set her free…
And now here she was, alone but for a window to watch as Equestria came back into view. Equestria, and the dark bubble of who-knew-what that hovered outside. And was she imagining things, or was the inside becoming clearer? She could see metallic outlines within, strange images that grew more distinct as the seconds passed. The object within was roughly conical, a metallic superstructure about the size of the Wing of Midnight, all wrapped around a thin spear of something her eyes didn’t want to focus on. Like a crystal almost, but its shape seemed to be constantly changing. She felt sick, tried to look away, and yet at the same time she couldn’t not see it.
It reminded her of tesseract representations, an object that existed in more than the three spatial dimensions, but seen through the only slice of reality her mind could understand. And even then, she was rebelling. Her stomach would probably rebel first.
The object—crystal, whatever it was, suddenly lit up. Bright red light emerged from within, or something like red. She had a feeling that if she’d been close, it would be dissolving her. But within the ship, all it did was hurt her eyes. It pointed straight down at Equestria, down so far that she couldn’t have seen where it was pointing. But it was getting brighter.
“This is unacceptable,” said a voice beside her, a voice Olivia herself had heard only after she died. It was not one voice but many, overlapping and building on each other until the distinctness of each word was almost lost. “We surpass an acceptable threshold of risk.”
Olivia turned her head as best she could to look at the speaker—and found the large metallic pony beside her. It stood much taller than she was, a mechanical Alicorn far more advanced than anything Forerunner had ever built. What was stranger, the guards seemed to be able to see it too. A few of them stabbed at it—without effect. Their spears passed right into its body and out again without so much as annoying it.
“Great, why tell me?” Olivia asked. “This is your ship, your station. Nuke this whole fucking place if you want. I’ve got one you can borrow.”
Harmony turned to face her, and Olivia felt very briefly like she’d just stepped out in front of the president wearing her birthday suit. It saw straight through her armor, through her words, her thought. It was what she’d felt in the grove with Luna, amplified a thousand times. At least Princess Luna had understood mortal frailties, and shown her compassion even though she was an enemy. This thing did not seem capable of either.
Time seemed to slow. The guards stopped stabbing, froze with mouths agape. The red glow outside the ship stopped getting brighter, and Equestria stopped getting closer. Harmony alone seemed able to move. “I cannot. The ancients created strict… controls, guidelines, however you wish to consider them. We do much within those boundaries, but not everything. If we could operate all aspects of downstream civilization, the instances who form it would be only accoutrements. The ancients did not accept this.”
“So… what…” Olivia muttered, trying in vain to watch whatever was going on outside the ship. They were still flying down, that strange shaft of light growing brighter. Or… stranger. Beyond that, she couldn’t say—her eyes started to water and ache, and she quickly looked away. Even with time unmoving, she couldn’t look at it for long. “Is that a bomb out there? You must have known he was building it. Everything Lucky says about you… talks about you like you’re a god.”
“We do not know what the Storm King built—we know every material he took, and when. We know how long he worked. But something is wrong… the design is unknown to us. It is not a bomb—the potential energy required is not present, whatever the methods.”
“How?” Olivia didn’t try to keep the bitterness from her voice. “You’re a god. You get to rule over us, to decide that some civilizations get to live, and others die. You should know exactly what that is. You should be able to reach into his mind right now. You should be able to kill him.”
Harmony could still move, even when all the world was frozen. It paced slowly around her, its eyes unblinking as they watched her. “We know the minds of all creatures who dwell within Harmony, because every mind is part of us. The Storm King is no part of the Harmony, even though all his servants and friends are. His mind is thus, inviolate. Protected by distance, and by the ancients’ sacred law. He did the construction himself, entrusting the design to no machine, no servants. We know only what he said of it to others.”
You must want something from me, Olivia thought. And knew that Harmony would be hearing it, but she still acted like it couldn’t. She didn’t know any other way to act. “I don’t know why we’re talking,” Olivia said. She couldn’t move—though whether that was from the frozen time, or because her armor was melted, it was hard to say for sure. “You want to blow it up, use my bomb. Nuke this ship, whichever. You didn’t need permission before. You can do anything.”
“We cannot,” Harmony said. “Directly, anyway. We can act indirectly, and we have done. Many pieces move together, and should have already ended this display. The Harmony should have been convinced of the danger, seen fit to reinstate the Quarantine… but they remain unconvinced, to the peril of all.”
Olivia’s mind raced. Though little of what Harmony was saying made sense, a few familiar patterns cut through. It sounded to her like some kind of political dispute. The Storm King lived not because Harmony was too weak, but because parts of it didn’t want to act.
“Crude, but acceptable,” Harmony said. “Your understanding is not required, only your help. You must prevent the Storm King from activating that device. Its construction is unknown to us. Models of its behavior are ongoing, but retracing the line of technological evolution that led to a branch of scientific discovery entirely unknown on Equus will take too long to be practical. Division cannot be permitted to put our future at risk.”
There was something of a demand in there, buried in more confusing things Olivia didn’t understand. “I’d love to help,” she said. “I’d love to walk right up to the Storm King and punch him in the face. He’s been murdering and enslaving people for months now, I don’t need telling twice. Why not just set off my bomb now? Teleport it outside, right onto whatever that is… poof.”
Harmony shook its head. “That object does not exist within physical space any longer… not as you understand it. It will be unaffected. At our present location, your bomb will kill every individual in this section of the ship, and briefly sever this section from the balance of the Stormbreaker—but the vessel will reassemble itself in time, and be protected all the while. Your bomb will ultimately be no more than an annoyance.”
“Getting vaporized is pretty annoying,” Olivia said. “I’d be happy to bring it to the Storm King before it goes off.” She nodded down towards her fused armor, or tried to. Her head didn’t actually move, but somehow she got the sense that Harmony understood the message. “Not sure how I could, though. I’m stuck. This armor can’t come off without an engineering team to get it off. If I started trying anyway, those guards would probably just kill me. If you can’t kill the Storm King, I’m not sure how you would kill them.”
“We cannot,” Harmony agreed. “But there is something we can do.” The figure stood close, directly in front of her now. She could feel no breath from its mouth, no sound as it moved. “Thanks to your friends, isolation is over. Quarantine is done. All the population could be citizens, if they wished to be. Most will not—this is the nature of any state. The responsibilities of citizenship are too high. Yet you would not need to travel anywhere, or invoke any strange rituals. You could even be human again, if you wanted to be. All citizens’ bodies change when they accept the responsibilities placed on them. If you tire of equinoid existence, then live it no longer.”
Her mind raced with the implications of what Harmony had said. It amounted to becoming an Alicorn, so she could fight the Storm King. But she would still be a citizen when it was over. Her life would be changed, just as Melody’s had been.
Even into a human, if she wanted it. No doubt one of the strange new-humans that Forerunner had been growing—before their untimely deaths in Othar.
“Is there a form… I would want… that would be strong enough to win?” Olivia forced herself to ask. “I want to kill him for what he did. I don’t want to fight any more if there’s no reason. I’ve fought so many wars… because other people told me to. I want to win for once.”
“Yes,” Harmony said. “Though… perhaps, you will not like the answer. Your single instance is fractured, as are so many of you. Inheritors of lives and memories that aren’t your own. Yet your own experience marks deeper. Your experience with the Nightmare Armor—you already know how to wield the power of an Alicorn. Your chances are highest with that choice.”
“And… when it’s over…” Her voice grew weak then, a whisper. “I’ll make a deal with you, Harmony. I’ve always heard… never do that with the devil. But I’m desperate, and I was never very good at following advice.”
Harmony only watched. She thought she could feel curiosity from it, amusement. But it was hard to tell for sure. “I tried to get away from fighting before, and I couldn’t. They always brought me back. Governor Lucky… I don’t really blame her. But I resent her. Promise me this is the last time, and I’ll kill your fucking Storm King.”
Harmony actually smiled at her. “Your terms are acceptable. When this is over, we will give you the door into a life that will never know violence. This we swear.”
Olivia smiled too.
Flurry Heart had not been fighting the battle, not in the sense that her own personal labor would make the difference between success and failure. But in another sense, she was vital to the survival of Canterlot. The simple presence of an Alicorn was not enough, though having Lucky there would probably have helped.
It was the right to rule that mattered just as much, she could see it now. She could feel the way the resistance surged whenever she was near them. The Storm King’s own army sounded invincible at a distance, but that all changed as soon as she and Lucky appeared. Though she knew nothing of how to fight, they were turning the tide.
Or maybe Lucky’s marines were doing it, and she herself was a mere accessory. She liked the first interpretation better.
Each tier of the city was another reminder of Flurry Heart’s time in service to the Storm King—so many empty houses, their owners dragged off to work in any number of the Storm King’s mines. Would things have been different if I fought sooner? Could Equestria have rebelled without the humans’ help? Now she would never learn the answer. At least she didn’t have to wonder if they could fight with friends. She’d learned the answer to that long ago.
But while Lucky and her marines fought on the ground, losing soldiers with each level of the city they captured, Flurry Heart was free to let her eyes wander. She couldn’t fight like they could, and kept back with the support staff. She was there to give comfort to the civilian ponies of the city.
“We won’t let them rule us again,” she assured a small crowd of noble ponies, gathered outside what had once been a grand marketplace. But now even the wealthy of the city had been reduced to wearing torn clothing and dirty manes. She recognized some of them by features anyway, the households that had made Equestria what it was today. At least the ones that hadn’t sold themselves out to the enemy for power.
But she was one pony who wasn’t fit to judge those for their crimes, not when she had done all the same things and worse.
“He says he’ll destroy all Equestria,” said an elderly stallion from the back of one of the crowds. He looked like he’d endured his fair share of beatings during the Storm King’s rule, and more. Even if he didn’t wear any chains right now, they were obviously still wrapped around his heart. “He has the power. I’ve seen it. We can’t fight against one whose soldiers are invincible. Even if we win today.”
“It’s only the Stormbreaker that makes him powerful,” Flurry Heart said. She didn’t have to go to much effort to stand tall over this crowd—her armor made sure she would’ve been almost as tall as Luna or Celestia, if they were still here.
I’ll make you proud, Mom. And when we’re done, we’ll bring you back. “We have one on our side who can do the same thing. Princess Lucky was the one who brought back many of the dead of Equestria before. We can… figure out how to copy the Storm King’s powers if we need them.”
But even as she said it, she hoped desperately that it wouldn’t be true. She could imagine a future for Equus in her mind, one where powers who could return to life fought endless wars with each other. They would all become like Perez, doing terrible things to discourage the others from wanting to return.
She couldn’t let that happen.
She moved on through the city, with the constant presence of the marines and their support staff in back. She always had a rifle over her shoulder, but never lifted it except to use as a prop with the population of Canterlot.
“I need you to look up,” said a voice from beside her, one that she hadn’t heard in so long she’d almost forgot what he sounded like. Discord was suddenly beside her, as she passed through an alley in the back of Canterlot.
“You.” Her eyes widened. “I thought the Storm King killed you. Wasn’t that why you weren’t there to help us?”
“You wound me,” he said, clutching at his chest. Several organs tumbled out of an open cavity onto the ground, landing with a squelch. Flurry’s stomach rebelled, and she tried to force it down. The marines on either side didn’t seem to notice—they didn’t react to her either, at least. “I’ve been fighting beside you all this time, I assure you. Our mutual enemy would have finished his work long ago without my, uh… creative assistance. I would’ve done more, but… alas, the ancients bind me as well as themselves. Perhaps fortunate for you.”
“Why do you want me to look up?” Flurry Heart asked. And she did look up, through the broken roofs and damaged streets towards the sky above Canterlot.
She saw it then, as though it had entirely transformed. There was a frozen firework show up there, distant metallic objects glowing with angry red light. And cutting through them all, straight towards Canterlot… the Stormbreaker.
Then the second passed, and there was only a faint speck up above her. “I had to bend the light for you a little. But I assure you, it’s all there. Now how will you react?”
Flurry Heart was not left to wonder. She snapped her radio on. “Lucky, are you okay?”
Her friend’s voice came with the sound of gunfire in the background. Not quite beside her—Lucky wasn’t doing the shooting herself, but was probably surrounded by people who were. “Yeah, I’m doing great! How are things in back?”
“The Stormbreaker is coming for Canterlot,” she said, without skipping a beat. “Discord just showed me.”
There was no answer for several long moments. She could still hear Lucky’s breathing, and the gunfire went on—but her friend was speechless. “What do you… think we should do?” The Alicorn eventually asked. “It’s your city. We’re only one level from the palace.”
Flurry Heart emerged from the alley onto Market Street. This was the finest part of all Canterlot, or it once had been. Many of the shops seemed to have fallen on hard times, with windows boarded and fancy wares replaced with those catering to the conquerors. Puffy robes, steamed meats, fish. A shell of its former self.
“Forget the city,” Flurry Heart said. “I don’t know if we have enough time, but… we have to try and evacuate everypony. Do you think we can do that?”
“We can try,” Lucky called. “Davis, sound the retreat! Yes, I’m quite sure. No, we don’t need EVAC. We need a creative way to get these ponies out. Get me the Corps of Engineers.”
Flurry Heart saw the movement in the army at once. Marines stopped what they were doing, retreating from buildings and forts and returning to the road. And the Storm King’s troops were cheering, shaking the street in that guttural tongue of theirs.
Enjoy the city, Flurry Heart thought, as she joined up with the soldiers pouring down the market steps. “You won’t have long.”
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Run away! Run away! Run away!
holy equine overlords this story got incredibly intense again
The Storm King is the galactic life cleaner that managed to get through Quarentine, and has been building a Quantum Chaos Needle, designed to work on the Harmony Ring material, like the Terraformer method, but destructively catalysed powered by the ring itself, so it only has to hit in once place and the whole ring converts, destroyed, dissipates or whatever? Destroying Harmonies logic and store systems and killing ell the Upstream as well?
As for rapid mass evacuation, maybe pull a Narnia? throw a Gravity spell on the waterfall so it acts more like a continius river and get people in it? The trick would be shoving a ship or something in the base to cause a continous fast deflection instead of teh crashing waterfall stop to keep the speed up?
So the Emperor's Soul is destroyed. Not great for the Pioneering Society. Does Forerunner have a drone with Lucky? Both Sarah and Olivia's sides in this chapter were very interesting. It seems that destroying the Stormbreaker may not be enough. The Storm King is extremely smart to be able to avoid Harmony's omniscience.
Well, there's a deal that was a no-brainer for Harmony.
Olivia... just when she thought she was out, they pulled her right back in.
Though... curious what life she will end up in?
So the Stormbreaker is self destructing. Olivia is about to go on a roaring rampage of revenge. Anything else about to kick off?
Well, damn, Starscribe, now you're making me nostalgic for PlanetSide. Endless war, the dead returning to life through advanced alien technology and wading back into battle, strange alien artifacts looming high in the skies as you gaze out over the battlefield...
The thing about viewing higher dimension objections in lower dimension space is they look exactly like normal objects. A sphere passing through 2D space look like a growing then shrinking circle. Not a magic vomit inducing insanity breaking circle.
Anyone else get the impression that Harmony either allowed or caused these events, thinking it could maintain control and use the chaos to persuade The Harmony to reinstate quarantine?
The Storm King's independence from Harmony is probably linked to his origins. Physical manifestation/host for a high-tech extermination plague makes sense. But if so, how did it arrive on Sanctuary, and it seems suspicious that both the Forerunner probe and another entity would arrive so close together. Other explanation is that he's been here a long time, sleeping in archives, and recently got woken up, and for whatever reason, he's not part of Harmony's permission system.
Knowing complete list of parts and that the thing is completely constructed by a single guy? Riiiight.
What the heck? Guys inside that we've seen didn't appear to know much about stuff outside. AI decides it's actions by predicting coherent extrapolated volition of everyone inside and doing what aligned with majority?
One more point in favour of "simulation hypothesis"?
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9285588
I'm not real sure what you're trying to say here? It's not inconceivable that the Storm King could have taken a space suit with a jetpack or something else that would allow him to exist inside his construction space, then built his own construction tools with the raw materials he took.
Harmony also didn't say that he took parts. He took materials. Airplane black boxes (which everyone says are indestructible) use aluminum (the same aluminum in crushable drink cans) in their design, but they're still very tough because of the engineering techniques involved. Oil is a liquid, but it can be turned into solid plastics. In the same way, he could have just reshaped the materials he took into something else.
9286093
Set of interesting things that can be done from specified list of source materials using a couple of man-months (or yeti-months in this case) of labor is purely a function of physics and should be really well-predictable for AI that smart. The only sane possibility I can see is if they're all in simulation and one can put together seemingly random pile of garbage that simulation host would interpret as a command (yeah, another AI with weird rules).
Harmony is finally allowed to help.
is this good?
yep.
but what is the deal Harmony made to have the Storm King killed?
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Olivia will essentially be barred from participating in violence/being drawn into violence/being forced to commit acts of violence. Basically, Olivia has gotten a restraining order against violence.
9286197
I think the reference to the Tesseract is what determines what's up. The Storm King has created a nth dimensional object, likely in order to destroy Harmony. Harmony is the amalgamation of all instances of sentient living beings, and as such, cannot fight herself, i.e. the Storm King's army/people, who repeatedly instance in as themselves essentially, giving them a greater vote.
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I feel like it's more likely that he will upstream her after this
I’m caught up?
Sadness!
Okay... for some reason, the name, Second Chance", kept popping into my head lol
Everything's coming to a head. Multiple heads. Basically, this climax is a hydra doing its best impression of a Newton's cradle. Now to see what comes of it.
And yeah, I'm definitely getting the impression that Harmony orchestrated or at least permitted much of this in an attempt to reinstate the Quarantine. It's not quite as clever as it thinks it is.
Woah, so much for the Emperor's Soul.
Oh shoot, here we go.
Sometimes you just want to retire.
Welcome back, Discord.
Okay, that was genuinely touching. New James, you can stay.
The endless way certain characters need to ask the same dumb questions over and over again was grating two-hundred fifty words ago. We know, Olivia, and so do you. Don't play dumb.
I'm glad. You deserve that, and I hope it's a good one.
Boo. Could at least have copied a remote unit in there like you did before.
Oof. Pho really is a new instance. What the heck. I thought she retained more specific memory than that.
Yes, we all figured that out by now, ha. And so did Sarah. She's just a bit unnerved about it, given her feelings for Ocellus
And now... they just need to find some way out
And yet, she forced the "be part of Harmony" on the Humans. How did the Storm King escape the cutie mark 'curse'?
Yeeeah, that was Harmony's goal all along. And now it'll not only come and bite her in the back, but might risk actually destroying everything
Ah yes, that...
Ummmmm.
I don't think it's a good idea to commit to that. It means you'll be kept upstream forever and never be able to go back even if you really, really want to
Keep up that self-esteem, Flurry
Yeeeah... that'd be... bad
this reminds me of a crazy book, "heros in hell", where some people were trying to rebel IN hell, where death was meaningless.
their biggest victory was capturing an enemy general "ALIVE".
another story in that book had Napoleon and Wellington becoming neighbors, then roommates...
ironically, they became friends!