Daring Do and the Hand of Doom

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 76: Journey to the Core

Absence stood, rising on two legs. The framework of machinery that had grown around her made it possible despite her pony body. The conversion was almost complete.

Before her sat her new army, rows of White Pegasi, staring blankly and waiting. At their lead was a stallion with one artificial eye. He was already beginning to show the earliest signs of infection, but the process was slow. The creature within Absence needed to devote a significant amount of effort toward maintaining its growth. Their immune systems were surprisingly strong.

Somewhere, the Questlord mages- -her mind named one of them “mother”- -were trying to break her defenses. Their efforts were futile.

Yet she saw something else. One who saw her back. Neither Absence nor the thing within her understood why she was coming, but Absence recognized her. Distantly, Absence was also able to see Rainbow Dash- -and a glimmer of hope arose within her. It was tiny, but deeply disturbing to the creature within her.

It did not understand what hope was, but understood it only as a kind of fear.

Daring Do sensed that something was looking at her. She shivered.

Then things moved in the darkness. She heard the sound of metal shifting and clicking, and saw the reflection of lenses in the dark corners of the dungeon-like hallways around her. From the apexes of high arches and the deep drainage canals before her came machines. They were like the one she had fought in the sewers beneath Wun’s home: thin, narrow things roughly in the shape of a pony.

“Great,” said Sweetie Drops, drawing her sword. “More golems. I hate fighting golems.”

“Hold on,” said Daring Do. From her pocket, she removed a piece of cloth. One that she had prepared earlier. On it was inscribed the symbol of the Red Bloom. “It worked once. Let’s see if it works again.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Sweetie Drops, how many are there? Twenty? Forty? I couldn’t even fight one. Let’s see if we can do this without fighting.”

One of the machines stepped forward, curious. Daring Do approached it. The machine did not attack her, and she raised the piece of cloth. The eye of the creature stared at it.

“Questlord insignia recognized,” it said, speaking in a voice that almost sounded like that of a pony. “Primary directive superseded. Hello, welcome. Please prepare to be terminated.”

It drove a hoof sideways, intending to sweep out Daring Do’s front legs. She reared, but it caught the end of one of her front hooves and turned her sideways. She was knocked to the ground and immediately rolled, barely dodging a thin metal hoof to where her head had once been.

“It didn’t work!” she cried.

“No! Because I can’t see that!” Sweetie Drops lunged forward, the black blade whistling through the air as she did so. Daring Do barely ducked out of the way in time, and the blade sliced through several of her mane hairs on its way toward the robot’s chest.

For a moment, Sweetie Drops was sure that she had missed. She did not know how, because the impact should have been perfectly centered. Somehow, though, she felt no resistance against her sword. Her body was already automatically preparing to raise the blade into a block for defense against a counterattack, thinking that the machine was far faster than a normal golem- -when she saw its body split down the middle. Gears and wires spilled out from its wounds; she had cut it entirely in half.

Her body immediately changed the step. Instead of a block, she planted one of her hooves against the ground and spun, lunging over the body of the destroyed machine and striking wide through another three that had moved swiftly to assist it. They were fast, but Sweetie Drops was faster. Two fell, and the third tried to dodge only to end up losing its front legs. For the first four, it was already over in a flash.

She landed on all fours, the ring of her sword in her teeth. The silver and obsidian gleamed. It was no less sharp than it had been, despite cutting through steel armor and steel flesh alike.

A strange sensation began to well in Sweetie Drops. It was not unfamiliar; to her, it felt like a surge of adrenaline, the kind that always came with fights like this. The only difference was that something hurt inside her head, and she was sure she could hear a voice, one that was quite angry.

“Sweet Celestia,” she said, repositioning the sword to her hoof. “What is this sword?”

“Are you alright?” asked Daring Do.

“This sword…it’s TALKING to me…”

“Really?” A look of recognition and dread crossed Daring Do’s eyes. Perhaps Sweetie Drops would ask later, if it even still mattered. “What is it saying?”

“How should I know? I don’t speak rock.”

More of the machines advanced, clearly not highly interested in their own personal safety. Sweetie Drops was on them in a flash, cutting through them. They outnumbered her, though, and they seemed to be adapting. One of them, despite losing half its body, managed to strike her hard in the ribs. Sweetie Drops cried out and rolled to the side. To Daring Do, it was apparent that the injuries she had sustained fighting Dulcimer had still not yet healed.

Daring Do drew her whip. With a single motion, she had extended it and grabbed the leg of the half-destroyed creature that was about to crush Sweetie Drops. She pulled, yanking its leg out from beneath it and causing it to fall sideways. It stumbled, and Sweetie Drops cut it in half again. She got to her feet, but by then more of the machines had arrived.

Another machine seemed to take offense to Daring Do’s interference, and it attacked her. She rolled, dodging the first blow. The machine lunged again, but this time found itself impaled at the end of a zebra spear.

The robot struggled, but Zel pushed it back. Daring Do looked up at him, momentarily wishing she was thirty years younger- -for more reason than one. He extended a hoof, and she took it.

“Fighting these is easier than fighting gods,” he said, “but still, I don’t like our odds.”

They had come ill prepared. Too few of them had weapons. Caballeron realized this, and the thought made him unreasonably furious. After all, he had traded something virtually priceless so that they would not have to be the ones to fight.

“Are you just going to stand there?!” he spat, glaring at Scarlet Mist. “DO SOMETHING!”

“Are you sure that is what you desire?” she replied, calmly. “Every bit of magic I use shortens this body’s lifespan. Yes. I could help. But I do not want to unless to do so is absolutely necessary.”

The ground shook. Caballeron looked up and, to his dismay, saw a pair of enormous machines marching down the hallway. For some reason- -a reason he now saw as foolish, whatever it was- - he had assumed that the small, foldable drones were all the Questlords had. Yet, standing before him, were a pair of enormous, heavy tanks, shaped roughly like ponies with a single glass eye where the neck would normally start. To him, they looked like mechanical, cyclopoid jellenheimers.

“Don’t worry!” said Rainbow Dash, producing the Spear of Extinction. She twisted it and the tip ignited with white light. “I’m gonna poke a hole!”

She flew forward toward the large golems- -and was immediately punched in the gut from below by one of the smaller creatures. The Spear clattered away from her. They descended on her, their one chance at success. They would have crushed her had the dial in her chest not activated, giving her a temporary shield.

“DO SOMETHING!” cried Caballeron.

“So be it.”

Scarlet Mist’s horn glowed with red magic- -and the battle ended. Every machine shuddered, and was instantly torn to pieces in a plume of red light- -along with most of the stone walls surrounding them. The whole of the machine forces and the building itself swirled around for a moment, a vortex of destruction, and then it reconverted, liquefying and solidifying into lethal crimson-tinted crystals. The pair of tanks had already been ripped apart by the first salvo, and the crystals converged on whatever was left of them, ruining their mechanical innards in the process.

Then Scarlet Mist turned her head. The destruction was thrown back into the walls with a thunderous sound, roughly rebuilding the damaged walls with a combination of still semi-molten stone and the remnants of the robot army. Some of them still twitched quietly.

“I think I like this body,” said Scarlet Mist. “Most lesser beings would not have survived that. But this body seems to excel at regeneration. That will not save it in the end, of course.”

The color drained from Caballeron’s face. He knew full well what he had just done, and what it had done to Argiopé. In his mind, he was still trying to think of some way to get her back, to remove the mask. This event had only shortened the time he had.

Rainbow Dash grabbed for the Spear and sat up. By the time she did, Caballeron was already over her.

“You fool! You idiot! You rainbow-headed moron!” he cried. “If you’re going to use the Spear, use it PROPERLY!”

“This isn’t exactly standard Wonderbolt training!” shouted Rainbow Dash, standing up.

Caballeron raised his hoof, as if to strike her. Strangely, even though she saw what he intended to do, Rainbow Dash did not recoil.

He was interrupted by a sudden flash of white that nearly pushed him over. White shot past like a blur, leaping through the carnage and onto something hiding just in the shadows. That something had already started to run, but White tackled it to the ground.

The machine struggled, striking at White. It hit her several times, and it hurt badly- -but she held on as long as she could, holding it and biting it as best as she could. By the time it finally threw her off, Sweetie Drops was already at her side. Her sword was drawn and the tip of it was pressed against the robot’s throat. She was breathing hard, and her eyes had grown eerily bloodshot.

“Mercy!” cried the machine. “Mercy! I yield! I yield!”

“Denied,” growled Sweetie Drops, and she raised the blade.

“WAIT!” cried Daring Do. Sweetie Drops heard her, and only by a great effort was she able to stop herself from bringing the sword down.

She approached the robot carefully, and saw that it was different from the others. Its form was distinctly more pony-like. Its legs were normally proportioned, although robotic aspects were clearly visible beneath its armor. Its neck was covered in segmented armor, and it had two eyes- -but no mouth.

“None of the others begged for mercy,” she asked. “Why you?”

“Because I do not want to die.”

“Irrelevant,” sighed Scarlet Mist, moving forward slowly and seeming to pay more attention to making sure she looked perfect doing so than any sort of speed or caution. “I have rarely met beings that wished so. Shall I crush it?”

“You can’t!” said Rainbow Dash. “He yielded! That’s like a rule or something!”

“I am not a knight.”

“You! All of you! Shut it!” shouted Daring Do. She turned back to the machine. “Why are you different from the others?”

“The others are drones. I am not. I am a squire. An AI.”

“Oh this is rich,” muttered Caballeron. “How far are we going to get outside of my wheelhouse? First alternate dimensions, dark wizards…now this.”

Daring Do looked to Softwings and White, the latter of whom was already developing bruising. “Can the Questlords do that?”

“Yeah,” said Softwings. “But I always thought they were creepy.”

“We tend to think the same of you,” retorted the AI.

“They’re not really like ponies,” said Softwings. “They’re…different. Weird. But he was probably the one controlling all the others.”

“So he’s the one that attacked us,” said Sweetie Drops. She raised the sword again. “Good enough for me.”

“Stop,” ordered Daring Do, not bothering to yell this time. She focused on the AI. “Why did you attack us?”

“Because I am programmed to.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“But not an untrue one. I was tasked to defend the rear from intrusion while the Grandmaster and Grand Seneschal deal with the containment breach.”

“What containment breach?”

The AI paused. “I am not authorized to speak on that.”

“You yielded,” said Daring Do. “That means you have to deal with our terms.”

The AI paused again. “True,” it said. “At three sixteen this morning there was a containment breach in the Necroforge core. Contact was lost with internal systems, although observations indicate a restructuring event. Whatever system currently exists there is drawing immense power, and appears to be defending itself. We could not penetrate it.”

“Can you take us there?”

The AI looked astounded at this request. Daring Do realized that Softwings was right. These things were creepy. “That would be highly contrary to my mission parameters.”

“We’re here to help.”

“I cannot guarantee that. I do not understand your intentions.”

“To destroy this accursed thing,” said Caballeron. “As quickly as possible.”

“Then your goals are contrary to that of ours. At present, the objective is to stabilize the core and to restore the function of the Necroforge.”

Daring Do looked at him. She did not know why, but this thing was a “him”. “Do you think that is possible?”

He thought for a moment. “No. I do not think it is.”

“Then will you help us?”

He stood slowly. “To the extent that I can,” he said. “Because I believe you, and because you spared my life. But I can only lead you. The Grand Seneschal will most likely not agree with your presence, and I refuse to fight my creators.”

“Fair enough,” said Daring Do. “Lead on.”