Titan's Arcology

by pushi

Reconciliation

There was the sound of frantic hoofsteps approaching from behind, and Twilight turned, to see an out of breath Fluttershy stumbling toward them.

“Rainbow!” she gasped, “don't run off like that! You know I can't keep up with - sweet Celestia! Is that a Sh-Shrieker? And Twilight! Goodness, I'm so glad you're okay!” Twilight smiled, breaking her hold with Rainbow, and hugging Fluttershy.

"I'm so sorry about those things I said, Fluttershy." Twilight said, looking into Fluttershy's blue eyes, "I'll understand if you don't forgive me, but I hope that -"

Fluttershy cut her off with a little giggle. "It's okay, Twilight. I forgive you."

"Hey girls?" Rainbow said from behind Twilight, "have either of you seen this?"

Twilight follow Rainbow dash's gaze to the giant black sphere floating above them.

“That Shrieker’s what the Hive have been funneling the energy gathered from those Guardians into. I think they're trying to summon something here, to Titan. With that amount of power, who knows what they could force into existence. It's got to be destroyed. The only trouble is, it's dormant, so we can't as much as dent it. We need it to open up.”

Twilight sat herself down on a nearby rock, unfazed by the sticky web-like substance that covered its face, thinking hand, but no ideas came on how to awaken the Shrieker.

“We could try exposing it to the Light,” Fluttershy suggested, a hint of orange burning in her hooves.

“You could try,” Twilight replied, “but Shrieker shells are made of an osmium-titanium alloy plated with zeptocyte. Nothing’s gonna get through it.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy mumbled, the tiny flames in her hooves extinguished. Twilight let out a deep sigh, frustration kicking in. They had come too far, Twilight almost dying for the final time, to be stopped by something as silly as a Shrieker hiding in its shell.

“Any ideas, Rainbow?” she asked the blue pegasus. The answer she received was not at all what she had expected.

“Yes.” Rainbow grunted. “We wait.” Twilight was taken aback at the short tone of her friend, and wondered if she still felt sore about the things Twilight had said to her.

“Rainbow,” she began, approaching her, “I’m sorry for everything I said before-”

“This isn't about that!” Rainbow exclaimed in frustration, whirling around to face her. “There’s supposed to be a filly here! We spoke over the radio! She said she was in a chamber with a giant Shrieker and that purple horned Wizard - this chamber! But I can’t see…” Rainbow’s voice trailed off as her eyes landed on the crystal behind at the base of the Shrieker. Twilight too, turned to face it, and understood.

“Oh, Rainbow,” she began to say, approaching the pegasus to embrace her once again, but she was pushed away by Rainbow, whose face was hidden in shadows, and whose body was trembling with barely controlled rage.

“We wait,” she said at last, after what felt like minutes, but could not have been more than a few seconds. “We wait for the Wizard to show up here. I know it will. I can just feel it.”

Twilight nodded, though Rainbow could not see her.

The three climbed part way up the side of the room, where chitinous growths and rocks provided hoofholds and cover from the sight of anything on the ground.

Five minutes later, there came the echoing, bone-tingling sound of cackling laughter from a point in front of them. The three ponies peered around the rock behind which they had been hiding, and gasped. There it was at the base of the Shrieker: the purple horned Wizard, floating impossibly a meter off the ground, its skin-dress fluttering in a non existent breeze. But it was not the mere sight of the demon that caused them the react in such a way, but the unexplainable thing clutched in its clawed grasps. The Wizard held in its claws a serpentine struggling, pearly white worm. It was far longer than any Hive worm Twilight had ever seen, and it thrashed its sightless head violently in every direction, but the Wizard’s hold was too strong.

Twilight stared, almost transfixed, as the Wizard encapsulated the worm in an moss coloured aura, and lifted it effortlessly into the air with an invisible hand, its entire body squirming as it floated higher and higher. There was another terrible screech of laughter - the Wizard pushed its arms outwards - and the worm was torn end to end. Twilight heard a sharp intake of breath behind her, but did not turn to face Fluttershy. She was too focused on what was happening. A white, viscous liquid was oozing out of the two wounds in the now unmoving worm, and the Wizard was waving its arms around, squeezing every last drop of the pearly goo out of the worm’s corpse.

When all of the liquid had concentrated in a floating mass, the two halves of the worm fell to the ground with a barely audible splat, and the Shrieker, at long last, stirred. A low hum began to reverberate around the chamber, as a glow of purple lit up behind its rocky shell. A gigantic black hole opened up on the surface of the Shrieker, and the Wizard directed the worm’s fluids to float right into it. Once all of the liquid had been fully devoured, the Shrieker awoke fully. The shell opened up, revealing its gigantic, purple eye.

It began to spin, each rotation making the air in the chamber heavier and darker. A sound rent the air, bouncing off the walls and chilling Twilight’s spine, like a tragic song whose dead singer’s voice was caught on a frozen wind. The Wizard rose up, swelling with pride, her job complete.

The Song had begun.