Werewolves of Knicknik

by Atuhor Name

CH. 21 Camna

Camna

The orbital ring defied scale. It was so incomprehensibly gigantic that it stretched off beyond the horizon in both directions. So wide you could plop a city down on it, so long that it encircled the entire planet. And they did plop a city on it, they did more than that they plopped a lot of cities on it.

There was nothing to say, nothing Twilight or Naudia had ever experienced had prepared them for a construction on this scale. Nothing about it registered inside their heads, it was impossible to fit in there. Not the time scale, as to how something THIS large was built this quickly. Not the pony scale, as to the sheer amount of living space provided by this ring. Not the material scale, as to how much raw materials went into constructing something like this.

They could see buzzing around like bees in the distance ships, hundreds of thousands, if not millions all working on the orbital ring. Trees shaped into houses, each taller than a Manehatten skyscraper with small parks on every branch filled up the space like a literal forest. Twilight and Naudia could not think clearly at the moment, but if they had they would have realized that this singular orbital ring out-populated Equestria many times over.

And the whole thing was just sitting there, hanging over nothing, a stationary mindbogglingly gargantuan structure had been hanging above their heads, and camouflaged in some fashion. They had seen some of it on the way down but it was now brought into focus and scale to them.

They knew the scale of the First Administration in theory. But it had never been demonstrated in such a physical way before. Twilight and Naudia actually had to be wheeled out of the train by a handcart because they were taking too long.

“Come on you, the First Administrator needs to hear about Meadow Dispatch.” Gwynn said.

That kicked at something in Twilight’s brain again, the suspicion that had been growing clicked in with the sheer amount of ponypower available to the First Administration and gestated inside of her mind. They shouldn’t have known about that yet, Twilight and Naudia hadn’t told them yet.

It must be that First Administrator. Twilight thought.

Bringing his face into mind again, Twilight hated it.

And there he was, the First Administrator. Standing there with his stupid looking hat, edgelord looking coat, mirrored sunglasses. Just looking at his face again Twilight wanted to punch it.

“So, have you started to decide the fate of Rolled Oats and the Rest?” The First Administrator said.

Which turned out to be what was needed to set Twilight off.

She snarled at him, going full wolf form in a fraction of a second and slashed at his face, and then backed off to fight back against the guards that would be there to restrain her.

There were no guards, nobody was trying to restrain her, everybody, even Naudia at this point, was backing away, all eyes locked on the First Administrator behind her.

Twilight realized what she had just done and could feel something strange from her right paw. Looking down at it she saw that it was covered in a thick black substance.

And then Twilight realized it was dripping out of his face. Inside the cut that Twilight had made, there was no blood, only a liquid as thick and black as crude oil. And she would have gone the rest of her life thinking it was as such, except for the way it pulsated and formed little tendrils that tried to reach out for her.

Twilight tried to meet The First Administrator’s eyes but found them entirely missing. One resembled a charred hole that still burned like charcoal, and the other was simply a gash with an onyx black gem sticking out of it.

The gem... called to her "Give up." Twilight could almost hear inside her head "Give in." It became the focus of her entire world "They sleep." Twilight could hear the voices now they cried out for her and she reached out a paw to catch them.

"Forevermore." the voices in her head spoke ever louder even more seductively calling out a beautiful and vile siren song that begged her from a thousand directions at once. "In silence." It promised the embrace of an endless nothing to hold-

Then it stopped, the voices stopped, and he stopped Twilight's hoof with his hand mere inches away from the shard.

Twilight could only stand there shaking, breath coming in short gasps, staring at the single smoldering hole that met her gaze. Her mind stretched to it’s absolute limit, she blacked out.

-------------------

Twilight woke up feeling like she had been run over by a train, everything hurt, her brain hurt, her soul hurt.

She was not however in some kind of prison, she was inside of some kind of medical facility and hooked up to a disquieting amount of medical equipment, and underneath some kind of clear dome. She could recognize some of them, like the ventilator, but a lot of it was foreign to her.

Blearily she moved her gaze around the room until it came upon the changeling queen in the next bed over.

Naudia wasn’t hooked up to nearly as much stuff as she had been, merely an IV drip and some monitoring equipment.

Twilight tried to move her right hoof but found that she couldn’t feel it, like her whole right arm was deadened.

The truth was her whole arm wasn’t even there.

Her mind was in no fit state to process that at the moment, so it drifted around to other things. Twilight was like that for a long time, thoughts were hard to get a handle on, her situation was hard to keep in place in her head. she tried to think, and that was as far as it went.

Eventually she began to wake up and realized there was a tube going down her throat and began to violently choke on it. The ventilator tube needed to come out, hell or high water. After a particularly nasty coughing fit the entire tube was sitting on her chest, but she didn’t spit it out, her slime anatomy had allowed her to force it out through her throat and skin and now she was wearing a mask with the tube awkwardly pressed against her chin.

This finally caused a doctor to come into the room along with Gwynn Hall. They briefly talked to one another before the doctor came over to Twilight. They were both wearing some sort of hazmat suit. Twilight couldn’t see their faces but could tell one was Gwynn.

“How are you feeling? Can you understand me?” The Doctor asked her voice coming through a speaker behind Twilight.

Twilight nodded, she couldn’t speak, not right now.

“You have had extreme levels of exposure to Camna, your right arm had to be amputated and incinerated.” The Doctor said gravely. “It will take a while for a new arm to grow in for you, and in the meantime you will have to use a rune setup.”

Twilight looked down at the stump that was all that remained of her right arm. There was a dull terror in the back of her mind, but it was dull, this wasn’t real, this was a dream.

The doctor had to operate some sort of remote arm to remove the ventilator from her face. The doctor removed most of the machinery she was hooked up to, including something that seemed to be cycling her blood through it.

“Particles have dropped to acceptable levels, we’re going to have to depend on your kidneys to get rid of the rest.” The doctor said removing a bag from the machine that looked extremely nasty, and even felt nasty from this distance. “When you go to the bathroom from here on out, use these bags and activate the runes on them that will incinerate them with plaguefire, make sure they completely burn up, do so for two weeks.”

The doctor did not remove the number of IV drips that had been put into her remaining arm. He explained them to her, touching each one in turn.

“This is for the stimulation of white blood cell growth, cultured stem cell delivery, titan protein monitors to revive damaged cells, parenteral nutrition, and also targeted antifungal, antibacterial and antiviral solutions.”

Once the doctor was done with her list Gwynn Hall came over wearing a grave expression.

“Camna has spared you from Cam’umek.” She said. “Some more fanatical people would say that you have been gifted to gaze into the Ryladite, I would say you are gifted to even survive seeing it.

“I would like to ask you not to try that again. But I can’t stop you if you surprise me like that. If Camna hadn’t stopped you, you would have touched the crystal.”

Twilight remembered the crystal.

“I take it that will not happen again.”

Twilight slowly shook her head. Twilight remembered the crystal.

Slowly, agonizingly she turned her head towards Naudia’s bed.

“Is… She…?”

“She will live.”

Twilight tried to relax, but she remembered.

“Go back to sleep, you’re no longer in direct mortal peril. The First Administrator will see you when you are better.”

That made it much harder to go to sleep for Twilight.

-------------------

Twilight awoke again from unpleasant dreams where she remembered. She didn’t know what time it was, and it took her a second to remember where she was.

But her head was a lot clearer now and at least the clear dome above her bed had been removed. A “lot” being a relative term.

There were less things hooked up to her IV at this point as well.

This might have been a good time to reflect on what had happened. Twilight shied away from that thought, there was nothing to reflect upon, no further consensus could be reached. Only a litany of “what ifs” stretching back in time.

She turned her head to Naudia who was awake now.

“You… alright?” Twilight managed.

“I think so.” Naudia said, she sounded scared.

They sat like that for a bit.

“That… whatever that was, I think if I was still a normal changeling, would have killed me.”

“Even… from there?”

“Yeah.”

Twilight’s body was feeling much better, she felt like she could run a marathon, if she could bring herself to get up out of bed. If she could use her right...

“How long… have I been out?” Twilight asked.

“I would guess… fifteen hours.” Naudia replied.

“So we finally found out his name after all this.”

Naudia sat up a bit to look at Twilight.

“Camna. The First Administrator’s name is Camna.”

“But what does that even mean, how-”

“The one down below.”

Twilight and Naudia turned instantly to the door into the room.

“My name, that’s what it means.”

The First Administrator strolled into the room followed by a doctor holding some sort of case. Inside the case was a prosthetic right arm for Twilight. A hollow looking thing made of wood, inlaid with amber that glowed. It had some sort of anchor attached to it that looked like it would go inside of Twilight, but resembled more of a handle.

“Why do I need that? Can’t I just…” Twilight made a gesture with her remaining arm. “Uhh, bloop out a new arm somehow?”

“The downside to making your entire body 200x stronger than steel but still slime-like by avoiding omni cells, is that your limbs take time to grow back. We’ve actually stopped your arm from growing back-”

Twilight audibly protested.

“-until the one in our lab is finished and we can just attach that one.”

Twilight realized she should have expected that they could do that.

“How are you going to attach it? That handle doesn’t look terribly comfortable.”

“We don’t attach anything, you just… grab onto the handle and channel magic through it.”

Twilight wiggled her stump at the doctor angrily.

“With what?”

“You’re a slime right.”

“She has only been a wereslime for a matter of days.” The First Administrator said, which shut up the doctor extremely quickly.

As if, up until that point, he had forgotten who he was in the room with the Doctor became a lot more polite and a lot more understanding. Whether he remembered Twilight or the First Administrator was not apparent.

The prosthetic hoof for Twilight was strange, she had to put it next to her shoulder and then “reach” out to grab the handle and pull it into her shoulder. At which point the arm flopped about on it’s joints uselessly.

“You have to channel some magic through it.”

Doing so caused a shield to develop around the arm that made it look like a real arm, if you didn’t look too closely, and it allowed her to move it around. It didn’t feel right, but it looked okay.

Getting up Twilight could feel a bit of a drain on her walking around with it.

“I would like you to avoid trying to rest with this prosthetic.” The First Administrator said. “The more you use it the more you’ll build up your magical power.”

“What are you.” Twilight stated.

Naudia and even the doctor looked at The First Administrator at that.

The First Administrator stared at them with the eyes Twilight knew he didn’t have.

“I am Camna, the one down below. Potentate of the Camkut.”

The First Administrator stared at Twilight a moment longer.

“You have recovered enough. get used to walking on that leg, because in half an hour I will take you to Kana.”

Before he walked out of the room he said.

“Steel your mind.”

“But-” The doctor tried to say.

“They are ready enough for this. They need to understand. They need to be reigned in before they do anything else so, stupidly suicidal.”

The doctor shut up but they didn’t look happy about it at all.

“Umm… pace around the room a bit to try and get used to using your leg like you normally would.”

“Should I try to pick anything up with it?”

“If that’s what you would normally do with your leg, just don’t go over five tons since it’s a prosthetic.”

The distracted doctor left the room.

Twilight began to pace around the room, this was annoying, she would have much preferred to pace down the hall.

“Why did you reach out to the shard Twilight?” Naudia asked.

“Because it called to me.”

“But, it’s so… vile.”

“Yes.”

Twilight knew she would remember that crystal for the rest of her life, possibly longer.

“Was it’s pull really that strong?”

“It doesn’t have any pull, none at all.”

Twilight paced back and forth.

“It was like walking into a room where we were back then, a year ago, nobody believed me and all I could see was a gilded prison and everything had gone wrong.”

“Then why did you reach out to it?”

“Because it felt like a better place than there.”

There was no doubt in her mind. The crystal would remember her.