Amber Ashes

by GMBlackjack

Among the Stars

Rarity explained everything she could to the Unity Helix, describing exactly what had happened beginning with the lights around the sun and ending with the defense of the ‘station’.

The Unity Helix listened in silence. Rarity could tell it was listening because occasionally the simplified eye on every screen would shift in reaction to some of the things she said, though Rarity had little luck discerning what the reactions meant. Whatever she was talking to was like no pony she had ever met…

“There is much to explain,” the Unity Helix said when she finished. “Doctor Jet, begin overseeing repairs to the station, I will be keeping tabs on the project. You are under the fleet’s protection, do not worry.”

“Got it,” Jet responded.

“Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and… Twilight.” The alicorn in question was still passed out on the ground, mumbling something about pancakes in her sleep. “I will be teleporting you to one of our ships, specifically a room where I will be able to explain things in a way you can understand.”

“Why would the room help?” Rarity asked.

“It allows me to craft detailed illusions through magical projection. I can show you what I’m telling you rather than wasting time in verbal communication. Were you a Unity unicorn, I would recommend direct information transfer, but I cannot be certain the procedure would be safe in your case.”

“Oh.” Rarity nodded. “Very well.”

With a flash of green light Rarity, Rainbow, and Twilight were in a large, cubic room with a single door and featureless white walls. The eye of the Unity Helix appeared in midair, floating at Rarity’s eye level. It was still little more than neon lines drawn in the air but the glow provided the illusion of depth.

“So… what did you need to explain?” Rarity asked.

“You need context for the world you find yourself in. You are surrounded by things you do not know, things that do not exist in your world. You do not know what Unity is.”

“You?”

“In a way, but you also do not know what I am.”

“…Fair enough,” Rarity admitted, tossing her mane back. “Start explaining.”

“Keep in mind that nothing you see aside from Rainbow and Twilight is real.”

And then Rarity was standing on an expansive desert. At first she thought it was her world, but then she realized it wasn’t quite right. The grains of sand had the wrong consistency and were of a duller color. This sand would clash with the amber glow of Runes.

“I chose a desert because it would be familiar, though naturally I do not know how your world appears.”

“This is pretty close,” Rainbow admitted. “Sand. Sand. More sand. Whoop-de-do, sand.”

“An admirable effort,” Rarity complimented.

“Thank you.” The Unity Helix began to explain. “Let’s pretend this is your world. It isn’t, but let’s put that aside for a minute. You are aware that your world is a sphere, yes?”

Rarity nodded. “I was educated.”

“Not all universes are like that…” Rainbow commented.

The Unity Helix turned to gaze at the pegasus. “Rainbow, while that information is pertinent and fascinating, I do not wish to confuse Rarity.”

“Oh. Uh… sorry?”

The Unity Helix continued. “You are aware that air gets thinner the higher you go, and that prevents pegasi from flying away from the world even with their magic-infused wings.”

Rarity nodded.

“Well, in worlds that aren’t suffering the tragedies yours is, people have the opportunity to overcome this limitation. It turns out that simple pegasus wings are not enough to reach maximum height… but there are other methods. One of the most basic is a thaumic rocket.”

Rarity watched as a magic crystal solidified in front of her, amethyst in color. It flashed for a moment and unleashed a torrent of fire beneath it, like a much bigger version of a firework. “The force this crystal produces… launches it far higher into the air than anything that came before it.”

It shot into the air almost faster than Rarity could track it, soon vanishing into the sky above. “So, what does one do with these… thaumic rockets?”

“Well, if you’re Twilight…”

Several dozen of the crystals appeared in front of Rarity, arranging themselves into the shape of a disc. This disc was quickly encased in a sheath of metal with several holes on the bottom of it, and a dome of glass was set on top.

“…You make this. And you get inside.”

“Seems ill-advised.”

“It is, but she was never one for caution.”

They were suddenly inside the glass dome. The thaumic rockets fired and they began to rise into the air at alarming speeds. “If this were real, the force would smash us into the ground like pancakes and the noise would be unbearable. Be glad we’re experiencing a smooth ride.”

Rarity tried to look down, but found the metal disc was interrupting her view of the ground. The Unity Helix must have sensed her desire because a window poofed into existence in front of her hooves, showing the desert below receding rapidly. She could no longer see any dunes, just a large block of dry color.

Eventually… she could see oceans in the distance, lined with green. This isn’t my world. There may not be oceans. …But this could be it.

Her breath caught in her throat as the curvature of the world became visible. No longer were the dunes and oceans on a flat map, they were on a ball. A ball that, at this distance, she could hold in her hooves.

She reached out at the land so far below. It didn’t even seem like below anymore – it just seemed distant.

“Look around,” the Unity Helix encouraged.

Rarity did. She saw the moon, understanding it for what it was, another place like the desert they had just left. She saw the stars spread out in every direction… and she saw the sun, lighting both the desert and the moon with life.

“Whenever a race creates a rocket of some sort, inevitably they turn their gaze to space. They go to their moon, if they have one, and then they look even further beyond.”

“How… how much further?” Rarity asked, discovering she was out of breath.

“Much. You see every single light out there? Every little star?”

Rarity nodded. “Yes.”

“Every last one of those is just another sun – but really far away.”

“Every… every one?”

To prove its point, the Unity Helix zoomed out even further. The sun soon became nothing more than another speck of light among hundreds… thousands… millions more. Soon it was impossible to pick any single one of them out, allowing her to see a new object – an immense swirl of stars spread out in the shape of a disc, a brilliant center trying its best to outshine the majesty of the reaching arms.

“Wh…”

“This is the galaxy of Unity. We have some holdings in other galaxies…” A few more swirling conglomerations of stars appeared around the main one, but they were kept in the distance. “Those are fringe territories. This, Rarity, is Twilight’s world. This is what she built.”

Rarity swallowed hard. “You really have everything, don’t you?”

“There are no threats to Unity. We have the resources to restore magic to a single planet with minimal effort. We could build another Mesh. We could exterminate all monsters with ease.”

“I… I don’t think I really believed that until just now…” Rarity admitted.

“Our world is much larger than all the others you have visited.”

“I get that, now…” Rarity held a hoof to her chest. “And I think I understand… ponies came from one of these… planets, and the other things I saw came from different ones. But… you’re different. What are you?”

“…That requires some more explanation.”

The imagery shifted, and suddenly they were watching a unicorn looking at a bunch of equations on a piece of paper. He lit his horn, and suddenly the answer was in front of him – five.

“Arithmetic spells,” Rarity said. “I know of them. Only really worthwhile for mathematicians who understand the nuances of mathematics. There… aren’t too many of those.”

The Unity Helix flashed. “And what might happen if, over the course of thousands of years, you begin to ask the spells more and more complex questions? You find ways to enchant objects so they can do the math on their own, and you make them smaller and smaller…” Rarity saw a crystal with several levers affixed to it, levers that represented mathematical operations. She watched as it shrunk, the levers became buttons, and eventually it became small enough to fit in her hoof.

Then it shrunk further, further, further… becoming a bunch of shining lights atop a green board. A piece of glass slid over the chip, flashing with light before displaying the number five.

“That is a screen,” the Unity Helix explained. “We use them to display, well, everything.”

“A screen…” Rarity blinked. “Those things on the station. They were… complex mathematical machines?”

“We call them computers.” The screen Rarity was holding in her hoof floated into the air and stitched itself together with hundreds of thousands of other screens, creating a vast wall displaying so many numbers Rarity couldn’t keep track of. “They eventually became more complicated than the brain of a pony.”

Rarity’s mind went blank for a moment.

“You should see the look on your face,” Rainbow chuckled.

“Sh… shush,” Rarity said halfheartedly.

The giant screen folded up and thousands of wires sprouted from behind it, coiling together in a giant ball that shrunk to the size of Rarity’s head…

She identified the shape it took. A brain. Around this brain, metal was pressed, and many complex things Rarity couldn’t identify were welded in with magic sparks – and to her mild disgust, she saw actual fur grafted to the outside, along with a few biological components.

Eventually, a filly with an innocent smile stood before her.

“Hi! I’m Unity!” She waved. “I was built to save the galaxy from the terror of the fuzzface empire, and I succeeded! And then I became the Unity Helix, the largest artificial mind in the known universe!”

Rarity turned to the eye behind her. “She… was you?”

The eye nodded. “She was never intended to become me, of course. She just needed to manage a few things. But, over time, as the alliance that was Unity became more and more conjoined, too much for Kings, Queens, or Empresses to rule effectively. So I was allowed to grow as far as I needed to do the best for Unity. I became the Helix. Roughly six hundred years ago Twilight officially stepped down, giving me absolute authority.”

“I… I don’t think I understand how…” Rarity shook her head.

“You don’t have to understand how. But know that I… am everywhere within Unity. While I am explaining this to you, I am also managing the repairs on the station…” The visuals changed, showing a rotating silver structure in the middle of darkness, around no stars or planets. Many sections of it were charred or damaged, and it looked… frail. Rarity didn’t want to know what would happen if it had been destroyed with her in it.

“…I am also overseeing the media circus on Anbazar…” the image changed to a large world covered in mushrooms. There were no ponies here, only a bunch of flying bug-things singing in front of many screens, a handful of which displayed the Unity Helix’s eye. “And I am in a distant galaxy, running negotiations with the Ictham.” Rarity saw a floating screen talking to spider-people with wings.

“Yeah yeah… you always did like to brag…” Twilight muttered, coming to. “…Did anyone get the number of the anvil that hit me?”

“Negative seven,” the Unity Helix responded.

Twilight snorted.

“Your world is… amazing,” Rarity admitted. “The… the polar opposite of mine. Filled with so much hope, opportunity, and… diversity.”

“Thanks,” Twilight said with a wink, shakily coming to her hooves. “Hope you’re not too overwhelmed.”

“I’m a bit short on breath and I find myself wondering how much of what I just learned applies to my world, but otherwise, perfectly fine.” Rarity was struggling not to hyperventilate from the mixed excitement, confusion, and awe.

They could do it. They could restore everything.

With a shock of terror, she realized she had let herself hope.

But who wouldn’t hope when given all this directly to their face? Your world is saved, Rarity! The Enchantress’ mission is soon to be over!

“Soon…” She said, chuckling softly.

Twilight coughed, turning to the Unity Helix. “You should download everything from my head. Figure out what you can. Devote extra processing power.”

The Unity Helix blinked. “Some people in sector J-seven are going to complain about their food replicators being slow.”

“So?”

“I was thinking that was a plus, not a detriment. They need to learn some patience.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and lit her horn – the glow was significantly fainter than Rarity remembered. It was still more than enough magic to “download,” whatever that meant. Something to do with the information in her mind, if Rarity was following context properly.

The Unity Helix closed its eye for a moment, and then opened it again. “Thank you, this is all very useful. I have already dispatched spellskimmer probes to investigate. They are gathering data in the Crystal Sea now.”

“Y-you already made it back!?” Rarity gawked.

“It was as simple as redoing the spell she cast earlier. The probes are smaller than your eye can see, they did not need much energy to cross the barrier between worlds. It does appear that some of their functions of higher complexity do not mesh with the magic of your world well, but their basic operations have translated without incident. I can show you what they see, if you want.”

Rarity nodded. “Show me.”

They were suddenly standing in the right sand, under the sun she had known all her life. It was familiar…

But also alien, for there was an immense black husk in the distance driven into the sand, pulsing with all the colors of the rainbow. Slowly, but surely, traces of amber color coursed up the structure and went to the top.

“They landed their ship,” Rainbow observed.

“They… they plugged it into my world!” Rarity shouted, waving a hoof in anger. “They’re draining the power of the Runes into their own!”

“Right, your planet has Runes,” Rainbow remembered. “They have an odd relationship with Runes…”

“Her entire planet is made up a big network of the ‘Runes’,” Twilight said, as if that information weren’t all that important. Rarity would have agreed with her, had Rainbow not stared at her in shock.

“The… entire planet!?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Below the ground, the source of most the magic in the world is from a shell of material that occasionally pokes up from the ground. Those Rune things.”

Rainbow put a wing to her head. “I… hold on a second, I need to parse this.”

“I take it this is important?” the Unity Helix asked.

“Of course it is, you bucket of bolts! The Starcross Society only does two things to Runes – steals them, or destroys them! We were almost wiped out by their society just because we were ‘corrupted’ by Runic influence!”

“…’We’ as in ‘your world’…?” Twilight asked. Rarity barely heard this – she was busy imagining her entire world exploding.

“No, not my world, all of Merodi Universalis! We only got out of it because our friends in the TSAB bluffed the Starcross into running away!”

Twilight turned to the ship plugged into Rarity’s world. “We need to stop them.”

“Agreed,” the Unity Helix said. “I am already ordering a meeting aboard the Jammer.”

Rarity turned to Rainbow, eyes aflame. “Why?”

“…Helix, buddy, can you get me an image of Scarcity?”

“Searching… done.” A holographic representation of a white unicorn wearing nothing appeared in front of them. She looked like Rarity, but younger, angrier, and with a large scar across one of her eyes.

Rarity’s body couldn’t decide if it wanted to attack the image or back away in fear, so she stood frozen.

“This is Scarcity,” Rainbow said, walking up to the false pony. “She was from a world like mine, grew up as a fashion designer – proceeded to get lost in the multiverse and came back with a dream of bringing her ponies to the many worlds beyond. But, well, see, there was a little problem with this. Her world was already owned by another multiversal society, the Stars. They thought of ponies like we think of ants. Worthless, mindless, yada yada. Yeah, it was pretty evil.”

Rarity thought back to her many nights looking at the stars, hating them for their mockery of her dying world. Perhaps that anger had a basis in reality…

“She declared war on them. And she won. Became an absolute monster in the process.”

Rarity frowned. She won…

“But, it turns out, when the kinds of Stars that make up multiversal societies die, their corpses become solid husks infused with magic. These husks are, more often than not, Runes. And the Starcross Society is dedicated to eradicating the influence of the ancient power of Stars. That means isolating anything that’s been infected by them… They wanted to quarantine every universe in Merodi Universalis, and at the time they could have done it if they wanted.”

“So they’re obsessed,” Twilight observed.

“Very. They’re largely isolationist, hate progress, are impossible to reason with, and have a serious case of savior complex going on. It’s a… whole tub of issues that’d take way too long to get into. But… well, this explains everything. If there’s an entire planet filled with a giant Rune, they wouldn’t want to take any chances that we got our hooves on it. This explains the quarantine – the, uh, blocking off of universes. They’re jamming dimensional travel to any universe that isn’t closely related to these Runes!”

“How could they jam that effectively with a damaged ship?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do! One of their ships is enough to decimate most universes with ease when fully operational. They wouldn’t need more. But if we got our ships involved we could try to stop them from, you know, destroying an entire planet for the sake of their isolation.”

“What are we waiting for!?” Rarity shouted. “We need to go stop them!”

“And we will…” the Unity Helix closed its eye. “The meeting is ready to begin. Rainbow, Rarity, I regretfully cannot allow you to join the proceedings, we will be discussing things that are highly classified in order to execute our attack. Rainbow, I already have the station’s scans of their capabilities, anything you might tell me will not be that helpful. Rarity, I understand you’re upset at this, but I need the military personnel to be willing to engage in mental connections. This will be the fastest way to do this.”

Rainbow and Rarity stared at the eye, shocked by the unload of information.

“Time is of the essence. Teleporting.”

Rarity and Rainbow were suddenly sitting, alone, on a couch in the middle of a large room covered by a glass dome. Despite the dozens of seats all around, there were no other people in the area.

Outside the glass they could see the station – the real station. Rarity couldn’t see any difference between what she had seen in the illusion room to what she was seeing now – it was round, metallic, and burned in a few places.

Fragile.

She looked away, finding her gaze drawn to lots of other objects drifting in the blackness of space. Most were metallic and pointed in the front, but several were pure geometric shapes while others seemed to be living tissue strapped together.

A fleet made to fight among the stars…

Rainbow put a hoof on Rarity’s back. “Hey. Don’t worry. We’ll go to save everyone, okay?”

Rarity frowned.

I’m so close… and I’m also so far… today could be the end, one way or another…

She let out a shaking breath and sat down on the couch, trying not to cry.

~~~

Rarity sighed. “You… you should leave me here.”

Rainbow looked up from the screen she was reading off of. “What?”

“I’m not cut out for this the way you and Twilight are. I-“

“Stop talking right now,” Rainbow demanded, shoving her wing in Rarity’s face. “You’re coming.”

“Rainbow… that’s unreasonable.”

“It’s perfectly reasonable! You’re an amazing spellcaster with a crazy determination streak. You’ve been wandering around that desert of yours for how long looking for anything to help your world?”

Rarity couldn’t be sure how long. It had all blurred…

“You’re not going to just check out before you see it through because you’re not ‘cut out’ for it. Bah.” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “You’re coming with us and seeing this through. You can’t not be there, you’re the one who needs to save your world.”

“Am I?” Rarity asked.

“Well… yeah.”

“Why?”

Rainbow thought about this for a moment. “It’s… look, it just wouldn’t be right, okay?”

“I’ll ruin it.”

“You wouldn’t ruin it!”

“That’s what they always say,” Rarity said with a bitter laugh.

“Always…?”

“Always.”

“Rarity, you haven’t had other worlds at your disposal before.”

“So?” Rarity asked. “I was Queen, Rainbow Dash! Queen of the last nation on the face of the earth! I had all the resources I could possibly need, a loving people, and a plan! It all came crashing down!”

“That was ju-“

“And then I rebuilt it. And then it crashed done once again.” She took an aggressive step toward rainbow. “And then I rebuilt it. And then it crashed. Rebuilt. Crashed. Lifted. Dead.”

Rainbow stared at her in shock.

“I’m cursed by failure, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity spat. “The only reason I kept trying was because there was nopony else. There was no other Enchantress. I. Was. It. It was very simple: if I gave up, the world died. But now…” she realized she was crying now, but she didn’t let that deter her. “…Now I can leave it to somepony else… You. Twilight. Fluttershy. The other two, they’re probably better suited than me.”

“So what?”

Rarity gawked. “So what!?”

“So what if we’re better than you? How can you be sure we’ll succeed without you?”

“Look at you!”

“Rarity, you look at me.” Rainbow stood tall and spread her wings. “We can fail too. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve just barely gotten through something, and if somepony else hadn’t been there at the right moment, I’d be dead. And those are just random bystanders most of the time! You’re not! You’re the center!”

“…Center?”

“You, your world, take your pick. It and its massive Rune… it’s the reason all of this is happening! The rest of us are orbiting you! Twilight may seem like a big hotshot Princess who’s in charge of everything, but she’s not the center. You, Rarity, are the core of this group. We all came to your world. You might be the most important pony to all of this.”

Rarity remembered.

The symbol – a circle surrounded by five others.

A tapestry in her palace. The symbol of the Enchantress buried right in the center.

She was the center, wasn’t she?

She laughed nervously, wiping her eyes. “Why… I… I want to stop, Rainbow. No mare should have to strive for this long…”

Rainbow put a wing over her. “Hey. You’ve striven for this long, you can strive for… what, a few hours more? A few days if something goes wrong?”

“Something’s going to go wrong. I’m here.”

“Hah. Something’d go wrong either way. You’re the pony who’s going to be able to make it go right.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, probably. But at least I have experience!”

At this point, Twilight teleported into the lounge with a… very large reptilian creature behind her. He filled most of the room with his dark scales, every one of them shimmering with the stars of the night outside. He would have been well camouflaged had it not been for his brilliant, piercing eyes.

“Rarity. Rainbow,” the beast said. “I am Quasar, the immortal of dragons. I will be leading the assault on the Starcross Base, as ordered by the Unity Helix.”

Twilight grinned, pointing at Rarity and Rainbow with her wings. “And we’re going in as a team!”

“Perfect!” Rainbow shouted. “What’s the plan?”

Rarity decided she should just accept Quasar and move on without any fanfare. “Yes, a plan would be appreciated.”

“There’s a lot of complex tactics I’m not going to explain…” Twilight admitted. “But the basic idea? Attack from the sky, distract them, and send a bunch of teams into the Starcross ship to disable it from within. That’s what the three of us are doing.”

“Please tell her not to go,” the Unity Helix said, appearing on a nearby screen. “As the immortal of ponykind, her loss would cause irrevocable damage.”

Rarity huffed. “If I’m getting dragged into this, she’s coming as well.”

“Wouldn’t be right without her,” Rainbow grinned.

Twilight looked from Rarity to Rainbow. “I feel like I missed something.”

“You did,” the Unity Helix said. “Some rather… interesting bonding, I must say.”

Rarity glared at the screen. “Did you ever hear of the concept of privacy?”

The Unity Helix blnked. “Doesn’t really exist unless you’re Twilight and demand to take your station off the grid. Foolishly, I might add.”

“Psh, we’re fixing it!” Twilight said. “Don’t get your wires in a twist.”

“All my wires are twisted.”

“You’re no fun today.”

“You missed the show I gave Rarity. That was fun.”

“Children!” Rarity shouted. “Save the fighting for our enemies, hmm?”

Twilight had the decency to look embarrassed. “…Right. Ahem. Quasar, prepare the fleet. Rarity, Rainbow, to my personal fighter.”

“…We’re getting a fourth member?” Rarity asked, confused.

Quasar laughed. “You should keep this one, Twilight. She’ll be an unending fount of entertaining reactions.”

Rarity pointed at him. “I didn’t react to you.”

“Give your mind a moment to reset.”

Comments

[PhycoKrusk]

I feel we’re getting close to a final battle.

[FanOfMostEverything]

This sand would clash with the amber glow of Runes.

Under all the scars and hardship, she's still a Rarity. And she certainly lies at the core of this. The cover iamge says so!

Still, there are three others involved, and they need to get out of an eldritch hell-city. And I suspect they'll find their way to that ship when least expected and most needed...

[dragonus85]

I'm loving this XD

[keybounce]

Hold on.

So, in SotS, I have just gotten to the formation of MU.

Now? Apparently, this spoils a bit of SotS -- I now know what runes are, what the whole issue with the StarCross society is, what the Stars do / why they say "don't go out there", etc.

And ...

So you have apparently two immortal Rarity's -- the Empress, and Scarcity.

Can I conclude that for you, Rarity is best pony?

... A Rarity defeated the stars?!??

Also: How did The Society of Apple Blooms manage to bluff so well? That is what TSAB stands for, no? What will Scootaloo's group be called?

[Julian the Dreamer]

Rarity gained a Scar and combined the two words to form Scarcity... which relates to her original name, as things are rare because they are scarce. Simple, yet fitting.

So her world is the connection with all the others, then?

[My name is R]

“And then I rebuilt it. And then it crashed done once again.” She took an aggressive step toward rainbow.

Rainbow

The Unity Helix blnked.

blinked

9916113
Naah, it’s Pinkie, but GM knows that he can’t always make Pinkie the center, variety is the spice of life after all, and Pinkie loves spice and life.

[RoboRed]

Ah, yeah, the runes stuff. Forgot about that bit.
Yeah, if the entire planet is runes I imagine Starcross wouldn't be for that.