• Published 5th Jun 2018
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Meliora - Starscribe



Earth is only just recovering from a war that almost wiped out the pony descendants of humankind. But when the Alicorns fail them, the survivors turn to an unlikely source for aid: Jackie the bat pony.

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Chapter 37: Lasiurus

Meliora was on fire.

Jackie could smell the smoke the instant they passed through her dream-gateway. They hadn’t used the Dreamlands of the city, not when she was bringing so many with her. The bats would probably be nervous about a hundred heavily-armored seapony mercenaries.

They called themselves the Caeneans—children of Poseidon’s violent whims and gifted by his magic. And judging by the billowing clouds of smoke rising from the city, Jackie felt they’d probably be needed.

She took in as much as she could at a glance—panicked screams, the quiet bark of gunfire. Most important of all was the distant, reverberating rumble of a war horn, making all her organs shake and her eyes water at first. But while that sound was clearly unknown to the stream of armored ponies splashing out of the portal behind her, it was not unknown to her.

They were standing on a balcony overlooking the city, so it wasn’t hard to get a good look for confirmation.

Down below, the handful of soldiers of Meliora had formed reinforced battle lines, behind makeshift barricades and protected with a few gun turrets. It was no small fraction of their entire military resources, and from the disarray down there she could see they’d already suffered casualties.

If Athena had attacked us, there would already be ruin. But if Athena had attacked and burned the tree, she would’ve felt the destruction of it all across the Dreamlands. It still stood, at least for a little longer.

A handful of snipers were gathered here on the balcony, resting on makeshift chairs and with runners to keep them supplied with ammo. One looked up, his eyes widening with relief. “It’s the Dreamknife. She heard us.”

“I don’t understand…” Liz shifted uneasily from foot to foot of her armor as the balcony began to fill with seaponies. “How did she attack us so fast? It hasn’t even been a whole day!”

“It wasn’t Athena,” Jackie answered. “Find Fatima,” she instructed. “Bring her to the lowest safe level. Uh…” She pointed. “You four, stay with Liz! Protect that deer with your lives. The rest of you… you wanted a fight? Looks like we have one waiting.”

“Songless primitives,” one of the Caeneans sang, from just behind her. They all wore thick armor, much thicker than the simple shells to hold in water that scientists wore. Their faces were entirely covered, except for thin slits for eyes. But their suits seemed to have speakers too, because she heard just fine. “I thought we were going to make war with a demigod, not a tribe of animals in the woods.”

“One thing at a time,” Jackie called, cutting him off. “Down the barricade, quick as you can. We have to survive long enough for the demigod to get here.”

Jackie flung herself over the edge. She wasn’t too concerned with arrows or spears, not with as quickly as she fell. Her magic blurred her position in shadows and darkness, passing as much through that space as the physical world. What arrows did come whizzing past zoomed through empty air, and struck harmlessly against City Hall.

She landed in the center of a brawl. There were just over a hundred deer down here, each wrapped in the living armor gifted to them by Voeskender. It was meant to make them look like terrifying incarnations of nature, living bark and green leaves tied together into armor that would stop most blades and arrows without difficulty.

It hadn’t done so well against tungsten bullets, as the corpses all around the entrance showed. The battle seemed to freeze around her, with the wary defenders behind their barricade staring in shock at Jackie right in the center of the ranks of deer.

“Ankaa should’ve minded his own fucking business,” Jackie muttered. “Attacking us now? Are you people insane? We haven’t even fought Athena yet!”

She glanced up, but from the look of it her reinforcements didn’t have wings like Liz did. They’d have to take the stairs.

She could feel their attention turn on her, barricade almost forgotten. Hundreds of bucks, each taller and stronger than she was, only the thin slits of eyes visible through the bark armor around their faces.

“It is the dream witch!” one of them called. An officer of some kind, or maybe a chief. She wasn’t sure exactly what all the feathers on his helmet meant. “Most hated by the Jinn! Great rewards for whoever brings her head.”

“You’re kidding me.” Jackie was no noble warrior, determined to face every enemy standing and with a weapon in his hand. She didn’t have Archive’s strange code of honor, and felt no need to offer each of these a surrender before killing them. She sunk back into the shadows, passing through the army and emerging behind the chief. She swung with her knife, severing his head in a single stroke.

“How do I collect my reward?” she asked, using the deers’ strange proto-Arabic. “I got the head. That’s what you wanted, right?”

She tossed it onto the floor at her hooves, even as the body slumped uselessly to the ground beside her.

But if she had expected that to intimidate the army into fleeing, she was disappointed. A roar went up from all around her, and carried with it a bloodlust that a minotaur would’ve approved of. The deer closed in around her, not even seeming to notice as bats defending her barricade continued to pick them off at the edges. Please don’t fucking shoot me. They seemed to be keeping their fire away from her for now. That was good, since a tungsten bullet in the head was probably the only way for her to die in this fight.

These deer sure tried, though. Spears flew, arrows loosed from the back ranks, but she always slipped into the shadows and out of sight before they could strike. Plenty of the deer fell to friendly fire, though not as many as Jackie herself killed.

The world itself seemed to change around her as she fought, becoming its own little domain of the Dreamlands. She rose up onto two legs, protected by the imagined armor of the Enduring Ones as she wore one of their bodies. Her hair stayed soft blue, her eyes still glowing slits, but she fought like a human.

If there were any deer watching from afar, they would learn why she’d earned herself such a stupid nickname. Jackie twisted the time around her battle, but only for herself. Deer with charges that could shatter her bones lunged with the speed of melting ice, and with a careful tap from her hand friendly arrows were redirected towards their own side.

By the time the first seaponies began pouring out of City Hall, Jackie stood alone in a field of a hundred dead. Fat black flies buzzed in thick clouds in the heat of an Australian sun.

“Don’t shoot!” she called, as a few of the retreating survivors started to fall. “I want the others to know what’s waiting here.” She wiped her dagger gently on the headdress of a fallen deer, then sheathed it and approached the barricade.

“Gods of wave and shore…” one of the nearest Caeneans muttered. “You killed their whole army.”

Jackie laughed bitterly, glancing briefly over her shoulder. It might look like that from the ocean of corpses, but she knew better. Smoke rose in the distance, the smoke of thousands of burning trees. Ankaa’s real army took time to march. “I killed his scouts,” she answered. “A few of them, anyway. These brave ponies at the gates did more.” It wasn’t true, but she could see the way they lifted at the praise. Pride practically glowed from around the surviving ponies.

“You.” She stopped in front of one, who immediately dropped into a bow before her. “What is your name?”

“Vesper,” she answered, voice shaking. “Please, Dreamknife, I have done only my duty today. I do not—”

“Hey,” she cut her off. “Stop it. You did great, Vesper. You all did. When did this attack start?”

“Few… hours ago…” she stammered. “Before sunrise.”

“Did they send anyone first? That warlord’s daughter is in the city. What does he think will happen to her?”

“I don’t…” The pony shook her head. Jackie sighed, and the last vestiges of her dream faded around her. She returned to a bat, and the field of corpses behind her started to stink. “I don’t think so, Dream—Governor. Nopony came.”

“He doesn’t care. Gave me a disposable daughter, I guess. Uncooperative… maybe he wants an excuse to go to war.” She turned to Demetrius, leader of the Caeneans. “I want you to scour the forest. Any deer you find, leave like this.” She flicked her tail. “Oh, and when you’re done, burn them. Their religion can’t stand corpses left out for more than a day.”

“Why do we… care?” the seapony asked. “Don’t we want to send a message? Make them as upset as possible?”

“Not this time.” Jackie kept her voice low. “I want the soldiers to see the things their warlord promises not coming true. I want them to see that we’re honorable, and he’s not. Don’t get goaded out of the forest, either. When you’ve finished eliminating the scouts, return here.”

She turned her back on the battlefield, passing through the ruined barricade. Already ponies were emerging from within, carrying scrap wood and nails and replacement parts for their turrets. We weren’t supposed to be fighting the deer. All this is for Athena.

They weren’t ready. This was worse than she’d seen in Estel. At least then they’d had an entire winter to make guns. But here… they’d barely been working for a month. If it wasn’t for all the supplies they’d stolen, they would still be fighting with sticks.

She found Liz waiting halfway up the stairs, just outside one of the smaller meeting rooms. There was Fatima, her face and body entirely obscured by thick robes. She hadn’t been wearing most of those lately—but apparently today was a different day. Jackie couldn’t read her scents like a pony, but it sure didn’t smell happy to her.

“Have you been told?” Jackie asked, her voice flat. “What your father has done?”

“I have,” she said. Her voice remained even, though it obviously cost her greatly. “You have come to kill me in compensation. My father gave me as a hostage of peace, and he has broken it. I’m ready.”

Jackie frowned. “I’m, uh… not really sure what good that would do me, Fatima. I’ve got a lot of dead deer outside if I wanted any. I don’t need another one.” She gestured, and Liz led them into the meeting room—this was one of the smaller ones, used by locals for various hobby groups. It had a fairly large window to the outside, glass set right into living wood. Jackie could see her work crews emerging outside, strengthening the barricades. She hadn’t had to order them.

Because I’m not Alex. I don’t have to control everything myself. This is what delegation is for. Of course, there was one thing Jackie could do better than anypony else in the fortress—maybe in the world.

“I do not… understand,” Fatima said, stumbling after her in confusion. “The mageblood is… not filled with rage? Or perhaps suspicion. How can you now trust me not to betray you from the inside?”

Jackie shrugged. “You could. But you didn’t seem like the type. Does she seem like the type, Liz?”

Liz shook her head. “Not really.”

“See, she agrees.” Jackie flicked her tail towards the ruin outside. “Look at what your father has done.”

She looked. “I… heard him speak of you. Long before you came. He means to drive you into the sea. He only waited because you were… making the land safer. We could not have lived here before. But now it is safe, thanks to you.”

“Your father is an asshole,” Jackie said. “I have a serious question for you, Fatima. I want you to look me in the eye when you answer it.”

The deer obeyed. She couldn’t see much more than her eyes through the veil anyway, but they were wide with fear. Constantly twitching away, as though she was debating whether to run at every moment.

But she didn’t run. Maybe she knew how that would end. “When this is over, those deer are going to need a ruler. Want the job?”

She gaped. “I am… not able to… understand. My father has been blessed by Voeskender himself. He has already ruled for a dozen winters. The god promises him a hundred winters before his reign comes to an end.”

“I give him… two hours.” Jackie flicked her knife out from nowhere, tossing it onto the table. It sunk down to the hilt without resistance, filling the air with the iron scent of blood. “I’m going to kill him, Fatima. I have to—Meliora cannot win a siege. But his army is united only by loyalty to their chief. When he dies, they will be shattered.”

“He has killed many magebloods,” Fatima whispered. “Others who wanted to live in this land. Those who… r-returned. From the era before. Some had magic. Voeskender took him on many voyages beyond, to hunt you. He will hunt you.”

She laughed. “My loyalty to Voeskender has ended. If I have to kill his champion… that’s what I have to do. That’s why I’m asking—your dad is going to die. Want his job?”

“They would never accept me,” she whispered. “A female cannot rule. My father has obviously left me for dead if he has attacked you while I am hostage here. My authority will not be recognized.”

Jackie shrugged. “Just give me a yes or no. Let me worry about the deer.”

“Then… yes,” Fatima eventually answered. “My father has done terrible things. I hated watching as he continued to hurt. After living with you… I like the mageblood way better.”