Chapter 44: Returning Fate
Silver wobbled on his hooves, momentarily overwhelmed by the magical strain of the jump. Even charging the return portal over a few days, the passage between still felt like it was going to suck all the heat out of his body and leave him to freeze. Considering his immunity to freezing, it was the coldest he’d ever felt.
Then the world came back into focus, showing him basically what he expected. The guild’s empty hall had been fortified with pickets, sandbags, and a single mounted rotary gun, all aimed directly at him. The sharpened spikes were positioned inches outside the circle, ready to impale them if they’d come through running. Though he had his doubts about whether or not a metal spear could puncture his Alicorn air-armor.
“These are some serious defenses,” Magpie said through his helmet. Now that she was wearing armor too, they could talk at seemingly any distance. Of course she didn’t need the air, or the heat for that matter. But she rarely took it off. “Too bad there isn’t anypony here to use them against us.”
“You want to fight?” Silver advanced, pushing the spears out of the way and inspecting the gun. A belt of bullets ran all the way to the ground, covered with a thin layer of frost. Real lead ones, not the plastic used around Moonrise.
“Hell no!” Magpie held up one leg, though of course Silver couldn’t see it through the suit. “You’re bucking kidding me. Does fine pottery like to fight? Or crystal glasses? At least before all I had to worry about was an eternity of misery.”
Oh yeah, that sounds so much better. Silver held still a few moments more, scanning the room for any active spells. Even in the freezing cold, some trap might’ve been left for them. Someone had to think they might use the cold to come back, right? But if so, the spells were subtler than anything he could detect. I wish I did find them. Now I’ll have to wonder if something is about to kill me.
“That doesn’t sound any better. Presumably we can… fix you, if something breaks? I’ve heard of spells to repair thaumic crystal. Or we could go back to the Polestar and ask it what to do.”
“Buck. No.” She yanked a spear right off the wall, pointing it at him under one arm. “If you ever try to bring me back to that place, I’ll break that helmet and leave you out on the surface. You’re already on thin ice, Silver.”
You don’t sound very committed to it though, do you? He shrugged, combing through the rest of the defenses. There were a few rifles tucked away behind a barricade. He grabbed one and levitated the other towards Magpie. “Do you know how to use this?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.” His frown deepened, and he held it up. “If they’re simple enough for an earth pony to fire without magic, it can’t be that complicated. Let me see…”
“Just don’t point it towards me while you’re doing it, stupid! You might have a death wish, but I don’t. I intend to make this not-undead thing last.”
Can’t blame you for that. At least she hadn’t decided to hate him for getting her changed like this. She was right about it being his fault.
The rifle seemed simple enough. There was a loop of metal emerging from one side, which was used to advance through the ammo-belt or load a new one. Both of these guns already had a belt loaded, with the ammunition nestled into a box to the right. Then there was the trigger, which even a foal would’ve recognized.
Silver held the gun carefully in his magic, pointing at a solid stone wall, and pressed. The trigger didn’t move very far, and more importantly there was no bang, no explosion of gunpowder.
“Maybe they don’t work in the cold?” Magpie guessed. “There’s ice on everything. It must be fifty below in here.”
“It should still…” Cold would make the metal brittle, and possibly make the gun come apart or jam. But there was still air, so it should still fire. At least if he understood his chemistry. Maybe there was a… yes, there. Another switch. He pulled it across with a hoof, then aimed and pulled the trigger again.
This time the gun jerked against his magic, cracking loud enough for it to hurt his ears even through the helmet. On the far side of the room, stone chipped and sprayed through the air, and a little cloud of smoke rose from the side of the gun.
“Damn.” Magpie picked the other gun off the ground, slinging it over her shoulder. “These are what you ponies use as weapons now? Equestria doesn’t stand a bucking chance.”
“It’s not Equestria I’m worried about,” Silver muttered. Though for him, the process wasn’t over. He moved the handle back the way he’d seen soldiers do, and the belt advanced. An empty aluminum shell casing hung from the cloth now, still smoking with heat. “Equestria never hurt me, but Moonrise did. If somepony doesn’t put things right, then… they won’t get any better.”
“Well yeah, that’s what it means for nobody to…” Magpie patted him on the shoulder, her helmet only inches away. She wasn’t any bigger in there, though they’d found armor that fit her fine. But for a creature made of stone, she seemed far more alive than she’d ever been as a bat. Sometimes she was entirely opaque, other times something excited her and she glittered and shone with it. Right now was somewhere in-between.
“We don’t have to change the world, Silver. It’s okay if we just want to survive. That’s what most ponies do—just get out of the way and try not to get stomped on.”
He shook his head. “You can do that if you want, Magpie… but I can’t. I can’t just put my ears down and close my eyes and pretend it isn’t happening. Someone has to wake up the princess.”
“We should try to get back to my place,” Magpie went on. “Which means you have to take me there, since I don’t have my magic anymore. Once we know we have somewhere to hide, we can, uh… I don’t actually know. Whatever rebellion ponies do once they have somewhere to rebel from.”
They walked together through the abandoned Gatecrashers’ guild, with Silver slowing at each doorway to check for magical traps. Still nothing, though just because he couldn’t sense anything didn’t necessarily mean there wouldn’t be something more conventional. Or just a few soldiers with the right spells to keep them alive.
Silver lifted the armor off his face, ignoring the flash of “temperature warning” that appeared before the clear dome folded. As comfortable as it was, and as convenient as it could be to talk to Magpie, he needed to be able to hear their environment. Soldiers might be lurking anywhere, and he wouldn’t hear them with the constant hissing air from inside the armor. “You were there when the princess rebelled against the Sun Tyrant. What did she do?”
Magpie’s answer was too muffled for him to hear. She glanced sideways at him, then twisted, holding still with her neck beside him. He removed the clasp, pulling it back with magic. “They’re not that hard to do yourself, even without magic,” he said. “You don’t need my help.”
“It’s easier if you do it,” she countered. “Anyway, I was saying that we had an Alicorn leading us back then. Even in the early days, we had Princess Luna. When she became Nightmare Moon, we had a power that only her sister could fight. The battles got really easy after that.”
Princess Luna. Silver could guess what that name meant, even if he’d never heard it before. Whoever the princess had been before she took Nightmare’s power. Could she reject it, like Magpie did? Or would she even want to? “I can’t give us what we don’t have,” he said. “But we might be able to get Nightmare Moon’s help. Once we, uh…”
“Already win? Once we reach her, the rebellion is over. Either she sides with us and fixes everything, or she sides with her generals and turns us to dust. There really isn’t going to be a middle ground.”
I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to tell her when we get that far. “You think we could skip the rebelling thing? Just… sneak into the palace? You probably know the way in.”
Magpie laughed, shoving his shoulder with a hoof. “If you wanted me to get you in, you should’ve stayed away from Polestar. I can’t shadowstep anymore, so there’s no way to reach the princess directly. Besides… I guess you don’t know any better, but it’s been centuries since I left. Her palace was just a few rooms in the shelter. Now she has an actual fortress. You know more about it than me.”
“Not much,” he admitted. “Only that it’s… the only building on the surface. I’ve seen the drawings, but that’s it. I think there’s no air or water up there. And… her servants are all ghosts?”
There was a brief, awkward silence between them. Magpie let the weight of his words linger, or maybe she was just considering them. “It’s possible. The princess was… alive, but… she didn’t have to follow any of the rules. She could walk out on the surface; she could decide not to eat. Not sure about the ghost thing, though. That sounds like a rumor to keep ponies from bothering her.”
They already can’t bother her if they don’t have air-armor. That’s the whole reason she lives there in the first place.
“But it’s a waste of your time anyway,” Magpie continued. “Even if I could get you right up there—you have to give her a reason to listen. Right now you’re nopony, with nothing to your name. At best, we broke into her city and stole these suits. So we’re clever thieves.”
“Not true!” He stopped in the hallway, puffing out his chest. They were nearing the exit now. Out those doors, Moonrise waited. “The Polestar chose me. I have its power and everything! To…” succeed at this rebellion. It doesn’t think the city will survive if I don’t.
“Don’t tell her that,” Magpie snapped. “The princess I know was furious at Polestar. It wouldn’t give us the magic to beat Celestia’s spell and go back to Equestria. Its endorsement is worse than nothing. We’re much better off going to her after defeating one of her generals. You do that, and you’re somepony who proved themselves. Not to mention you’ve shown her you respect the system she put in place.”
By killing the ponies who work for her. Maybe they would’ve been better off with ancient Luna on the throne, instead of her more powerful counterpart. I’m sure Equestria was bad if she wanted to rebel against it. But that doesn’t excuse what Moonrise has become. We have to be better, not the same.
“Fine. It’s a good plan. I’ll… be happy to do it. Flint had innocent ponies lined up to be killed. When I’m in charge, I won’t let ponies starve if they can’t work. And I won’t execute them if I hear them criticizing me.”
“High bar,” Magpie muttered, though she sounded almost cheerful. “If that’s all it takes to be a leader, you’ll be golden. But… we’re getting ahead of ourselves even thinking about it. Let’s see if you’re still standing when this is over and go from there.”
They finally reached the massive vault doors of the Gatecrashers, shut as he’d expected. But it hadn’t kept them out last time, and it wouldn’t keep them in now. “Take my hoof. I’ll—”
She did. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t rub it in or I’ll get sour again.”
He closed his eyes, took a breath—and stepped into the void. Eyes surrounded him, the eyes of a thousand stars. It didn’t matter that his own were closed, he could feel their baleful gaze on him. Fury, frustration, maybe a little disbelief that he had come so far. There was almost a mind behind them all. If he only lingered here, he might be able to hear what it was thinking…
Air cracked around him, freezing instantly along his exposed skin and fogging up the glass of his air armor.
“Buck me,” Magpie said, clutching at her head with one hoof. “That is horrible. You put up with that every time you teleport?”
“You mean the eyes?”
They stood just outside the oversized doors, atop a layer of dirty ice run down from higher in the city. It would take a bonfire to keep someone warm enough to stay out here. There was no bonfire, and no soldiers.
But it was loud, with voices echoing through the icy cavern. Wailing, screaming agony. Like every shelter in the city below had collapsed, leaving all of them exposed to the elements.
Stars above. Flint said they weren’t going to let ponies into the shelters during the first day. “I didn’t completely lose my mind, did I?” He pointed one shaking hoof up the hill, towards the lights of the lower city. “This is the third day of night.”
“Third day,” Magpie repeated. “I’m positive.”
They’re going to freeze.
Silver’s father had told him the story of one time in the ancient city, before they’d built the first heat-shelter. The ponies had to huddle together in tents, and one in every ten did not survive. Those creatures had to last through the whole night—but they’d also been soldiers, with coats and fuel to burn and plenty of food. How long could the desperate creatures of the lower city survive?
Not much longer.
“I wonder if this was her plan all along.” Silver broke into a trot, moving towards the loudest part of the city. “Get ponies to cooperate while they were locked out, expecting they would get back in before it got too cold. Only they never would be. Let the cold kill… everypony.”
Magpie had to take two steps for every one of his. Her wings spread in the suit, though she didn’t fly. She probably could, in the moon’s light gravity. But flying would make them easier to see from the sky towers. “Could anypony be so heartless? Executing rebels is one thing—the princess did that. But just murdering everyone?”
We’re running out of food. They waste our time digging holes and barely feeding us. Maybe they discovered something more efficient. “I can see why the Polestar didn’t want us waiting a second night. This is… this has to stop.” He levitated the gun off his shoulder, keeping it in front of him as he ran. “Forget going back to your cave, Magpie. We have to do something before everypony freezes to death.”
She nodded gravely. “I’m with you, Silver. I just don’t know what difference two ponies can make. You’re not the Lord Commander! We can’t change the world.”
“Not alone we can’t.”
There were no soldiers out here around the furthest sky towers. He’d expected scouts at least, to report anypony returning from the Sacred City. But it probably took every pony they had on hand to carry out their genocide.
He found the first cluster of desperate refugees huddled outside a heat-shelter. Its layers of insulated-doors were sealed, and a pair of guards in air-armor stood at the front. Unicorns, each one armed. Several corpses had fallen not far from the doors, blood frozen over in the chill.
Magpie yanked on him, pulling him sharply against the wall and behind the crowd. The ponies in their workers’ white didn’t seem to care about them. They huddled together desperately, barely moving. Some didn’t even have coats. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Something,” he said, struggling against her. She wasn’t irresistible anymore, though wearing armor of her own he couldn’t easily overpower her either. It was a fight.
“Is it smart to start here?” she asked. “Think critically, Silver Star. As soon as you start fighting, the word gets around. Do we want our war beginning here?”
“They’ve already killed ponies,” he argued. “It won’t sound any different. We have to get everypony into the shelters! If they’re too weak, they can’t fight.”
She stopped holding him back, resting one leg on his shoulder. “You’re not cut out for war, Silver. It’s going to chew you up and spit you back out.”
“I don’t care. If someone doesn’t fight, it doesn’t get any better.”
She let go, shrugging the rifle off her shoulder. “How do you make this work?”
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A horde of unarmed ponies running against seemingly Gatling guns won't be the best results... but it'll be one hell of a distraction.
Here we shall have the opportunity to witness an important truth. You cannot intimidate those with nothing left to lose.
10108988
It is very likely that they'll deploy a single Gatling gun at strategic choke points and then supplement that with a number of rifle ponies. Against that an unarmed and unarmored mob stands no chance...
If however, the mob advances, the soldiers start spinning up the Gatling gun, and suddenly a projectile like none they have ever seen before arcs its way over the heads of the mob and strikes the Gatling gun on the front plate of its barrel assembly...
1 meter penetration IIRC, a shot of that power hitting there would tear the barrel assembly and firing mechanism in half utterly ruining the gun, and possibly spraying the operator and any soldiers standing too close with high velocity shrapnel... and oh look! The mob is still charging and has now closed half of the distance the soldiers had to work with before... bolt action rifles are a lousy crowd suppression weapon, and in close quarters are only really useful as clubs (or spears if bayonets are affixed).
10108995
As always, it shall be a lesson painfully learned...
You know I’ve not been reading this story since you’ve started naming the chapters with fate at the end. Thinking that it would last no more than 3 chapters and been sticking to my guns about it. Please end this naming convention so I can get back to enjoying your story!
It might be weird to suddenly be see through.
That's a good goal.
Only if Celestia has been sitting on her hooves in light of the threat from the moon.
Save time, kill all the generals first.
Apparently we need to rebel faster.
Time to take a stand.
10109053
And why does the word "fate" render these chapters unreadable, exactly?
RIP that, then. Could be problematic since shadow stepping could have been quite useful for reconnaissance. Wonder what abilities Magpie will end up with.
Wasn't there something about eyes when a bat pony shadow stepped earlier in the story? Or was that also teleportation?
Seems things have gone quite a bit downhill in the meantime. Maybe Silver's disappearance was an excuse to crack down further?
10109035
Tactically wise, strategically foolish.
Polestar gave the impression that the rounds from this weapon do not miss, which indicates a significant degree of maneuverability. However many ponies are manning the gun, I suspect the majority of them will be within one meter of each other. Deal with the crew, the the weapon is yours. And now the mob is up one gattling gun.
What was that slogan? I believe it was from a mechwarrior game... "Kill the meat. Keep the metal."
10109358
The alien gun can only fire once every 53 seconds. Kill the operator, and his buddy will just take over, or failing that the nearest soldier would still be able to jump on the Gatling gun and crank it through the currently loaded clip or belt, which will be plenty enough to destroy the momentum of the mob and give the other rifle ponies enough time to thin the mob's numbers.
10109159
Well due to the pace of the story at the time when the first “fate” chapter came out I was a bit hesitant to get into it and be left on a cliff hanger. So doing what I thought at the time to be smart was to wait till the fate naming scheme was over to get back into it. Only thinking it would last at most 3 chapters. I have nothing against the story itself beside that abhorrent time skip that came out of nowhere .
10109755
The fate chapters will continue until the perspective character changes and we get another large timeskip. I don't know how much longer that will be, at least two months and probably more.
10109836
☠️💀
I don't really know, Polestar seems to honestly be the stupidest out of them all. Sends a child with a massively dangerous, limited, irreplaceable weapon, and expects.. something viable? It had intended to kill off Magpie anyway which is why Silver did not immediately dump his chances at doing this mini-coup thing. Even if the Polestar can somewhat control Silver, it makes little sense; No strategy or any sort of guidance, just sent off.
Essentially forced Magpie canon fodder; which is entirely mean now that she's alive again.
Maybe, but the armor should offer enough protection against bullets it wouldn't matter if they manage to sneak close to him.
Personality shift is too jarring. And attempt to ship together is unnatural. Silver got somewhat horny and somehow magpie "not angry" are supposed to be romance?