The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Kind of Machine

Valey spiraled directionlessly in her glide, in no hurry to reach the ground far below. Her sound stone was empty and her mind was full, and she didn't even know how to begin processing what she had been told.

How much of what Dorable said had been inference? How much proven? How much mere guesswork? Even if he knew, she didn't, and there had been so much irrelevant science and technical things that were less important to track than the ending results... She squeezed her eyes shut for as long as she dared. Moon glass was deliberately created, and for some negative purpose. No word on what that meant about her, a maybe-soul brought from space in the meteor that delivered the glass to the world.

Really, it was just a confirmation on things she had worried about earlier, right? She'd seen the unquestionably negative effects of moon glass before with her own eyes, time and time again. Sure, she'd hoped there could be some harmless or benevolent explanation for why she came from a rock with a reputation for possessing unwitting ponies, but she'd always been confident enough there wasn't not to go looking for one. Now she knew for sure, or as surely as she trusted Dorable's ability to do research. There was also the vague and definitely-hypothetical threat that someone could do something bad by obtaining Nightmare Modules, lots of them, but there were always bad guys doing bad things. So what did this even change?

Amber couldn't talk to her, but made it clear that she wanted to, and still trusted her. The vast majority of the empire hated her either way. What she had heard were just words. They didn't have to make a difference. Didn't have to... Didn't have to do anything...

She drifted closer to the ground, convincing herself as logically as possible yet unable to remove the slight extra weight that had settled in her heart. There was Puddles, laying by herself in the grass far below. Maybe she'd distract herself with the windigo.

"Yo!" Valey stuck out her legs for a landing, hitting the ground next to Puddles. "Whatever you've been up to, listen, I..." She frowned. "What are you doing?"

Puddles was on her side with her legs splayed and her cheek in the grass, an expression of great discomfort on her face. "Leave me alone..." she moaned, kicking a hoof weakly for Valey to go away.

"Uh, hold on, what?" Valey squinted at her and leaned closer. "You feeling your usual wintery self, there? Not gonna demand I give you hugs, or anything? Who are you and what have you done with the icy jerk who dragged me all the way out here?"

"Ughh..." Puddles burped. "You were right about there being better things in life than hugs, cute Valey... I just discovered food..."

"Huh?" Valey dug around in one ear with a hoof.

Puddles sat up slowly in discomfort. "Unfortunately, it's something these feeble pony bodies have a limit on! I overate. Ow." She gingerly got to her hooves. "No hugs or belly rubs! I feel like I'll explode. Ooog... How do you handle having things to eat and not being able to indulge in it as much as you want?"

"...Really?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "First off, you stuffed yourself? Try not to make yourself sick; this place would charge extra for that and I'm sure not paying. Second, how are you discovering food? You've been a pony for like five or six years!"

Puddles gave a cocky smirk that was disrupted by her obvious discomfort. "Immortal magic. If I can exist without a physical body, I can make a physical body exist with just me."

Valey stared at her for a second longer, then rolled her eyes and turned away. "That makes no sense, but whatever. You, like, wanna go back to our room so you're not sitting out here instead? Because seriously, I need to lie down for a bit and it looks like I need to keep an eye on you constantly to stop you from doing stupid stuff and hurting Morena's daughter."

"S-Sure," Puddles managed, burping again. It smelled like cake frosting. She put a hoof over Valey's shoulder and leaned on her, and as they made their way back to the cabin, Valey even suspected she really needed it.

---

Puddles had made herself sick.

Valey lay on the bed, a pillow over her ears in a fruitless attempt to drown out the pitiful noises coming from the room's small adjacent bathroom. "Pony body, noooo..." Puddles moaned, hunched somewhere out of Valey's sight but very much within her hearing. "It tasted so good though..."

"Would you close that door?" Valey growled, holding the pillow tighter with both forehooves. "It's your own fault! Deal with it and next time don't be an idiot!"

"Why does this pony body hate me...?" Puddles feebly retorted. "My magic isn't even making it feel better! Valeyyyyy, help Puddles!"

"What even did you eat?" Valey snapped, still cold and trying to warm up.

The toilet flushed. "It was called a wedding cake, and I only had one! I didn't pay for it, either!"

Valey rolled over, redoubling her efforts to ignore the windigo and still having no success.

An age and a half passed, with nonstop complaints and whining met by denial and frustration from Valey until Puddles finally lost her energy and resigned herself to her fate. Just when Valey was starting to fall asleep, a faucet turned on, and eventually Puddles plodded out of the bathroom, pasty-faced, with a dark crystal held in her jaws. Valey sat bolt-upright at the sight of it.

Puddles shakily put it on the bedside table. "If Puddles' stomach hates her, maybe I need a better place to keep this..."

Valey jumped out of bed, no longer questioning anything that had happened. That was a Nightmare Module, right there? It looked like moon glass, only carved to a prism and with a partially-see-through internal structure. She needed a closer look...

Puddles hauled herself into bed and curled up, doing nothing to stop Valey from approaching it.

"You know, even if you weren't going to eat that ridiculous of an amount of sugar, it's really not a good idea to keep evil artifacts in... uh, you know..." Valey muttered as she approached it, not trying to hide from Puddles what she was doing.

"Let the windigo sleep, please," Puddles said, her voice approaching its cold, metallic special tone but at an incredibly subdued volume. "Her cute pony body has really been put through the wringer, hasn't it, Valey? But you're more than welcome to look at her coughed-up treasure if you want. Or even touch it."

Valey took a quick step back, staring at Puddles' huddled form. "Bananas, you just can't decide on a personality or a way to refer to yourself, can you? It's really creepy."

Puddles didn't answer, and Valey's curiosity took hold. The Nightmare Module was clean... she must have washed it off. At a close inspection, it was transparent, but the dark crystal's inside seemed to be filled with thousands or even millions of lines of refraction that would have formed a glorious rainbow had all light that moved through it not been rendered to gray. It sat there, on the table, and in Puddles' weakened state she could grab it and possibly fly away before the windigo could even catch her. But the crystal was made of moon glass, and if she even touched it...

Frowning, Valey stretched a hoof out. It was only empty moon glass that drained batponies. It would drain her too; she wasn't immune by being from space. Her cutie mark could tell her that much. But as she reached for this one, when her flank tingled, it was an entirely different danger than the sharp needling of pinpoint death. It felt like a distant ocean, or storm clouds, or a bottomless pit... and it was less dangerous than a sucker punch to the face. This moon glass was different.

Better she carry it than Puddles. She picked it up.

Instantly, there was a presence. Valey recognized it instantly; it was the same way she had felt when an active dusk statue was near, and more strongly when she refused to join in on Melia and Sirena's song. Whatever the module was, whether it was the crystal itself or something inside it, it was pressing on her, and it could speak.

"Nightmare Module Zero-Two: Dishonesty Module," a cool, collected mare's voice said in her head. "Permission is required to activate using this socket. Warning: potentially nonreversible physical changes are required by this installation process. Waiting on user permission."

"Woah!" Valey jumped backward in alarm, nearly dropping the crystal and ready to throw it at a moment's notice. "No! No way, no permission! Leave me alone!"

The presence vanished, as did the tingle from her cutie mark, leaving the crystal inert in Valey's hooves.

"W-Woah..." she repeated, staring at it and shaking.

"Be quiet," Puddles groaned from the bed, back to her normal voice. "I wanna rest..."

"Yeah, join the club," Valey retorted, still staring at the module before her. She needed to walk. She needed to think. And she needed to keep this thing somewhere where it wouldn't fall into the wrong hooves.

What was it Dorable had said about the modules, again? They were like instructions for a machine, but one far more advanced than any he had ever seen before? He never specified how he had been able to use them, but he had found a way...

She huddled against a wall. Icereach's legends on the subject were passed down through countless generations by word of mouth, and who knew how embellished, but there were always stories of the Mare in the Moon, a shapeless figure visible in the pattern of the moon's dark spots when it was full, who had created batponykind yet was also a monster who lived beyond the world, banished to her namesake. Had she always been there, or had she been sent there? Why would someone bad create a full race of ponies? Dorable had said the moon glass seemed of intelligent, malevolent design...

Valey shuddered, still holding the inert crystal. She had a decent idea of what kind of 'machine' the Nightmare Modules were supposed to run on.

Comments

[FloydienSlip]

Hmm. Interesting development.

[ZanyZapper]

Dishonesty module? Nightmare Moon attempting to create anti-elements of harmony in preparation for her return? Or the product of someone doing it on her behalf?

Couldn't help but read that bit from the module in Majel Barret's voice - the voice of the Enterprise's computer.

"You only ate one wedding cake? Amateur!"

[KMCA]

I hear CABAL from Tiberian Sun.

[Quinch]

I suspect Shinespark's next quest will be to run Doom on that thing.

[Quinch]

Also, are we just going to gloss over the fact that Puddles up and outright destroyed someone's wedding? They probably went and planned to have it in this resort town, too!

[BurningSkies]

11133163
Braen armor would make a pretty good model for Doompony...