Amber Ashes

by GMBlackjack

Capella's Call

While other ponies were having dramatic personal revelations, Applejack was busy staring at Glimmer.

“So…” Glimmer tapped her staff on the ground, bored. “Read any good books lately?”

“I don’t have much time to read books in the Mesh. Nopony does, really.”

“Ah.”

The awkward silence returned again.

“I mean there has to be something we can talk about!” Glimmer said. “Even though we’re enemies, we’re still both ponies, and neither of us really want to kill each other. We’ve got at least two things in common!”

“How do you keep up your cheery attitude?”

“Honestly? Anti-depression pills and an intense feeling of obligation.”

“Huh. Efficient.”

“You are literally the first pony to say that. Everypony else goes all ‘that can’t be healthy’.”

“It’s not?”

“Oh. Right. You’re from that Mesh.” Glimmer smiled awkwardly. “Yeah. Definitely isn’t healthy. If I didn’t live with constant access to Starcross Society medical technology my heart would have exploded in my chest long ago from overstress.”

“Seems like you got that under control, though.”

Glimmer stared at her. “…I have met a lot of strange ponies in my life. I don’t think I’ve met somepony with your attitude.” She smiled. “It’s refreshing!”

“Think how the world must look to me.”

“Hm?”

“Everypony else is completely off their rocker.”

Glimmer let out a joyous laugh. “Nobody stays on their rocker very long out here.”

“Figured that one out.”

Glimmer cocked her head. “Already getting to you?”

“In some ways. I don’t feel the beat of the Mesh right now. Doesn’t bother me at all. What does bother me is that I can’t do anything while ponies die out there.”

“Ah. Yes. That.” Glimmer bit her lip. “I am sorry.”

“No you’re not. You think you need to do this. Don’t apologize for something if you don’t mean it.”

“Oh. That’s… actually good and pretty obvious advice. Huh. Thanks!”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I wonder if I could give you something in return…”

“Let me go?”

“Nice try.”

“Was worth a shot.”

Glimmer chuckled. Following this there was silence again.

Gimmer tapped her hoof on the ground. “Maybe we could play a game or something? I don’t know, twenty questions? Twenty questions is kind o-“

A streak of rainbow flew past Applejack and tackled Glimmer to the floor. “Gotcha!” Rainbow shouted, ripping the staff out of her telekinesis.

“Hey!” Glimmer shouted, tugging on her artifact with her hooves. “Give that back!”

“Make me!”

Glimmer grabbed Rainbow in her telekinesis and threw her as hard as she could. Rainbow’s grip on the staff was too strong – but so was Glimmer’s. As a result, throwing Rainbow meant throwing both of them, end over end, across the tunnel. Both ponies smacked painfully into the rocks on the other side of Applejack.

“Let go!” Glimmer shouted.

“The staff is only free if I say it is!”

“I’ll make you talk if I have to!”

“Okay, guess I lose, staff is free.”

“Wait, really?”

“Free from you.” Rainbow cackled and unleashed a gust of wind, removing Glimmer’s grip from her staff. She found, annoyingly, that she couldn’t grab it with her telekinesis again.

“What’s the trick?”

“Breath of freedom, Glimmy,” Rainbow said, smashing the staff down on a rock. It bounced harmlessly back up. “…Huh. This is more durable than it loo-“

Glimmer shot a laser right into Rainbow’s face, tossing her to the ground. Rainbow shrugged this off, flying further away… Glimmer teleported after her…

Applejack looked left. Applejack looked right. Slowly, she stood up and began walking down the tunnel again.

She could still hear Glimmer and Rainbow going at it back toward the tunnel entrance. Applejack hoped Rainbow could keep that up for a while.

Glimmer had been the last guard for the tunnel. Behind her, there was only the thing Applejack was looking for – a many-spiked machine holding a spark of purple energy, drilling a small hole into the ground. Above this spiked arrangement was a small glass sphere with a noxious, green cloud inside that occasionally pulsed orange. It was affixed with several wires and pipes to a black, Runic device in the ceiling that had a lot of metal plates affixed to it.

Applejack may not have had any idea how all these fancy machines worked on the smallest level like she did the workings of the Mesh, but she was a mechanic. She could make deductions. The purple spark was Twilight’s stolen power, and the spikes were using it to dig. She could try to stop that, but she expected letting Twilight’s spark go could be explosive.

She turned her attention back to the glass sphere. If she were judging correctly, it would be what fell through the hole and, presumably, blew up the whole planet. Hard to imagine something so small could be so deadly, but she had seen so much on this journey she wasn’t about to judge otherwise. It was held tight by all the wires and presumably would release once the drill component was finished with its hole.

Applejack saw a few options – find a way to stop the glass sphere from falling into the hole, catch the glass sphere as it fell, or remove the glass sphere from the device safely.

The first option would involve figuring out how the wires in the Runic device in the ceiling worked, and she doubted she had time to do that. The second one was super-dangerous, for all she knew contact was what triggered the explosion.

That left option three. She was going to have to remove it. There was no ladder around, but there were a few metallic boxes that had presumably held the components of the devices. She created a small staircase out of three boxes and climbed to the top. Carefully, she rose to her hind hooves, an adjustable wrench strapped to her hoof.

There were three major wires connecting the sphere to the cylinder, all with simple bolt connections. All she needed was that wrench and a good leg, and all mechanics had good legs.

She was fully aware there was probably a fifty percent chance removing the cables from the sphere would make it explode, but there were better odds there than in the other options, far as she could tell.

Taking a deep breath, she set her wrench to the joint of the wire with the Runic cylinder. She twisted, loosening the nut. She twisted again, loosening it further. Using her free hoof to steady the wire, she twisted precisely one half turn, separating the wire from the cylinder.

Nothing exploded.

She strapped the wire to her hoof so nothing would fall when she removed the other two wires. She moved to the second wire, and it went much the same as the first. No adverse side effects.

The third, though, that was the real danger.

Not that she let this deter her. After affixing one of the loose wires to her other hoof-strap she stuck her wrench at the topmost bolt and turned, methodically, carefully, but not slowly. It came free with a wobble.

Nothing exploded.

Applejack was now the proud owner of a doomsday device with three wires sticking out of it. She didn’t dare touch the actual doomsday device.

She walked down her makeshift staircase. In the middle of her journey, the drilling spark stopped drilling – no doubt having just finished it’s journey to the center of the earth.

The Runic cylinder beeped… but it had nothing to drop into the hole.

Applejack smirked. “Gotcha.”

Glimmer teleported into the room with both an unconscious Rainbow Dash and a staff holding a blue bundle of magic energy. She locked eyes with Applejack.

Applejack lifted the globe into the air, threatening to smash it. “Don’t think I won’t.”

Glimmer recoiled. “Nononono! Let’s nooooot do that! That would be… end-of-the-world-without-destroying-Rx’len bad!”

“Then you’re going to do what I say or I bust this thing open. Don’t get any ideas. Maybe you can teleport it out of my hoof or do that weird time thing. Maybe not.”

“I am nooooooot taking that risk,” Glimmer assured her.

“Good. Give Rainbow her magic back.”

Glimmer returned the blue orb to Rainbow, though she remained unconscious. “Done.”

“Break your magic staff.”

Glimmer sighed. She cast a black fire spell and consumed the entire artifact. “Done.”

“And knock yourself out.”

“Okay, before I do that, do not let the glass touch anything. It will explode.”

“Figured. Now knock yourself out.”

“Sure thing!” She created a boxing glove and punched herself in the face, dropping her to the ground easily.

Applejack smirked. “Looks like I beat the fancy wizard. Imagine that. Guess I did something after all.”

~~~

“Oh no,” Pinkie said.

“I don’t like that oh no!” Twilight’s voice came back.

“We’re off script!” Pinkie started panicking. “That wasn’t how that was supposed to go! WhatdidIdowrongwhatdidIdowrong?”

“YOUR PROPHET HAS FAILED YOU…”

The words of Rx’len faded into the background as Fluttershy turned to Pinkie. “Pinkie…”

Pinkie was staring at a blank page of a notebook, holding up a pen. She shivered.

Fluttershy swallowed. She got out of her seat and walked over to Pinkie, slowly laying a hoof on her shoulder.

Pinkie twitched, turning to stare at her with fear, tears, anguish, confusion, and loss. And at the end of all that was a question Pinkie didn’t want to ask.

All Fluttershy did was nod. Do it.

Pinkie gulped, nodding slowly. She set her pen to the paper…

Fluttershy, she began.

Fluttershy returned to her seat. She got the impression she wasn’t going to be sitting here much longer, so she put on her helmet and made sure her shield was strapped on tight.

“Pinkie!” Twilight called in garbled anguish.

“I… I’m working on it!” Pinkie shouted, pen slipping as she scribbled furiously. “Just hold on!”

Rx’len began a monologue about tragedy Fluttershy wasn’t listening to. She just watched Pinkie – watched her closely.

When Pinkie looked to her, she knew it was time to go.

“Hold on, Twilight!” Fluttershy called. She set her massive shield on her front hooves and jumped into the hole, splaying her wings.

“Don’t!” the Unity Helix called.

Fluttershy heard Pinkie say something in response, but she didn’t even try to listen. She focused.

Time to go as fast as she had ever gone. She spread her wings, channeling as much magic into them as possible. She flapped, acting in tandem with gravity to accelerate herself faster and faster. Her halo started to vibrate dramatically as every ounce of her power was pushed into getting down.

Her shield began to heat up from the friction, but Fluttershy knew it could take it. She hadn’t met anything it couldn’t take, yet.

She had a few moments to wonder what she was going to do when she got down there. She had no protection from the Unity Helix, and would no doubt freeze upon arriving.

But Pinkie was writing her right now. Maybe, here, now, at the end of the story, at the climax of all action she could overcome her curse. She could avenge Saturn in a way only she could – by staring an eldritch abomination in the face with the power of a goddess and fighting back.

Could Pinkie pull that off?

Yes.

Yes, Pinkie could do it, Fluttershy was sure of it. She had made the curse in the first place, she could lift it, even if just for a moment.

For once in her life, Fluttershy would be able to fight back.

Setting right what Saturn had failed to do.

With a grin on her face she roared, plowing through the small demons on the interior of the world with ease. They didn’t even register that she’d been approaching – she had become a flaming comet, and there was nothing that could stop her.

She was going to save Twilight.

“INCORRECT. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU.”

In that instant, Fluttershy realized what a fool she had been. Her wings locked up and she lost all feeling in her limbs. She had no protection from the Unity Helix, so she saw Rx’len. Burning in many places as it was with dark red flame, it was still… impossible. There were tentacles… maybe. There were eyes… maybe. There were colors Fluttershy had never seen before, massive grids of fractals that appeared in her mind as something beyond three dimensional.

And then she couldn’t see anything.

Worst of all, she couldn’t hear the whining buzz that had been her ever-present companion all these years…

…

…Twilight noticed in shock that Fluttershy was suddenly in front of her, a strange black cloud over her face. She held her shield firm…

Rx’len hit it with all its might instead of Twilight.

Fluttershy’s greatest creation took the brute force attack of a being that devoured universes.

And held.

For, in the end, it was a shield created by not just Fluttershy, but by Saturn herself, filled with faint memories of the king of monsters who had so soundly defeated her long ago. A goddess who knew, deep down, the only thing that could really end Rx’len… was itself.

Twilight watched in awe as a green humanoid figure took a vague shape around Fluttershy. She was Fluttershy, in a way, eternally connected to her, fused with her essence… but she was also Saturn, the goddess of battle, bravery, and victory. She was just as frozen as the pegasus, but that was exactly what they needed.

Had they not been frozen in an absolute sense, they would not have been able to hold the shield steady. They would have had uncontrollable muscle spasms from simply having looked upon Rx’len’s true form.

But they couldn’t move, no matter how much their minds were telling them otherwise.

The shield began to crack as it absorbed more and more of Rx’len. The monster tried to pull back – keeping some of its power from the artifact.

This was a mistake. If Rx’len had pushed a little harder, the shield would have broken, for even it had an upper limit.

But by trying to limit the energy the shield had to work with… Rx’len gave it permission to release.

And so it did.

Torrents of burning red tentacles, eyes, mouths, impossible shapes, viruses, and random puffs of magic came out of the shield like vomit, hitting Rx’len with everything the eldritch abomination was. Mouths devoured mouths, tentacles folded each other into nonexistence, and much of the collective entity of Rx’len forgot which side of the conflict it was on.

Rx’len ate itself, screaming, biting, flailing as it shrunk smaller and smaller…

…But it didn’t disappear. A massive, undulating mass that resembled a cross between a brain and a heart remained, criss-crossed with immense centipedes and angled spikes.

It didn’t move.

Twilight set up a few shield spells and turned to Fluttershy. “Fluttershy! Fluttershy!”

To her horror Twilight realized Fluttershy had no eyes. There wasn’t any blood or evidence of trauma, just holes. She still had the halo above her head, though it was weak, and she continued to hold firmly to the shield.

The shield itself had chipped in a few places and had an immense crack down the middle. It wouldn’t be reflecting another attack of that sort.

“YOUR PROPHET IS RESOURCEFUL.”

Twilight turned to face the pulsating organ. “You’ve destroyed her mind!”

“SHE DESERVES WORSE FOR THIS BLASPHEMY.”

Twilight twitched. She tapped the Rune on her chest – discovering that it was glowing a soft green. “She’s not down yet.”

A green laser shot forth from the Rune – alone, hitting Rx’len dead on. The light that had seemed so miniscule before was devastating to what little of the eldritch abomination remained.

But Rx’len was nothing if not determined. Despite the light of Fluttershy hitting dead on, it moved forward, getting closer to them… ready to drive a spike through both their chests…

Twilight unleashed a hundred glass shards once more, and they did significant damage. Rx’len no longer seemed to care, though. It wanted Fluttershy now. And it was going to have it no matter what.

“We’ll see about that!” Twilight declared. “Unity, I need in its head!”

“Twilight, you-“

“JUST DO IT!”

Twilight was split in two again, once more in the mindscape. The filly that represented Rx’len was still there, though she was foggy, and parts of her seemed to be missing. Black tentacles still swirled around her, deflecting the metropolis buildings the moon was sending at her. Now that the Unity Helix was back in, it started assaulting the filly as well.

Rx’len screamed.

“You’re dead, Rx’len,” Twilight said, walking toward him – the light of her Rune glowing green.

“I know!” The filly shouted, whimpering in pain – but refusing to cry. “You have the power now… and even if I defeat you, the Unity fleet has enough power to deal with… this…”

“So die.”

“No.” She looked Twilight in the eye. “I’m taking that goddess with me.”

Twilight tapped the rune, and the light of Saturn began shining in Rx’len’s head as well. Both inside and outside the mindscape, the eldritch monstrosity reared back out of reflex.

“You’ve already taken enough ponies.”

“There is never enough,” Rx’len laughed. “It was going to be a garden.”

“…What?”

“The equivalent to one of your mortal gardens. It’s the only metaphor you have even a chance of understanding. I would have killed a few weeds to make room for the great Capella’s Call. The Eldritch Embodiment would hear the song throughout the worlds…”

Twilight spat in contempt. “We ‘weeds’ object to being uprooted.”

“That’s your problem. You think you’re more than weeds.” The image of the filly vanished, as did all the tentacles protecting her. The mindscape fizzled out of existence, and Twilight was one again.

And yet, as the eldritch organ collapsed in on itself, it still had one last thing to say.

“EVEN I AM A WEED COMPARED TO THOSE WHO HAVE TRUE POWER.”

~~~

Rarity’s mind swam. She was pretty sure she opened her eyes… and saw… Scarcity? Walking through a portal to a city in the clouds? But that wasn’t one of the worlds… she was sure of it.

Must just have been her delirium…

Blood loss, and all that…

Heh…

Wait… what was that thing floating over there?

It was very white, whatever it is. And it had an orange-gold “U” on it… Like the one she had seen on Rainbow’s uniform…

Wait…

That meant the Merodi were here, right…?

“Nova! Get over here! This Rarity needs help!”

“Got it, Flutterfree!”

That meant the quarantine was up… Rx’len was no more…

Her world was saved…

Strange… Now that it was over, she didn’t really want to go…

She wanted to know how it had happened…

Oh well…

…

Comments

[Amusementist]

Pop goes the eldritch abomination!

[guldringr]

This was a good conclusion all the characters got to show off the best qualities over the course of the last few chapters I got to say these are some of the most unique and interesting versions of the characters we all know and love out of any story on this site as usual for you

[FanOfMostEverything]

Brilliant work in several senses of the word. I thought divine intervention might play into this. Oh, if only I could see the look on Zeus's face...

Looking forward to the denouement.

[Black Hoof]

Twilight could have told Rx'len "You will never be a god...".

[Jalthir]

This isnt the end. They may have defeated the boss but... 'then why are we still playing?'
there is no complete light yet.

[keybounce]

“EVEN I AM A WEED COMPARED TO THOSE WHO HAVE TRUE POWER.”

"Rx'Len, are you a god?"
Looks around
"No?"
"Then Die!"

[RoboRed]

Didn't expect Flutters to drop in with the almighty "No U" shield. That worked out just right.

Rx'len is dead now and the six worlds are saved, but at what cost? Scarcity appears to have gotten away. Fluttershy is scrambled and eyeless. Rarity's beaten within an inch of her life. Quasar's still presumably running rampant. Thousands are dead. Blue Bolt is...still presumably dead. Not a happy victory. Still, it's a victory nonetheless and Merodi is here to help. Time to deal with the fallout.

“What’s the trick?”

“Breath of freedom, Glimmy,” Rainbow said, smashing the staff down on a rock.

Called it.

“Figured. Now knock yourself out.”

“Sure thing!” She created a boxing glove and punched herself in the face, dropping her to the ground easily.

Applejack smirked. “Looks like I beat the fancy wizard. Imagine that. Guess I did something after all.”

...She must've really not wanted that thing to go off unplanned if she was willing to pull a move like that.