Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 111 - One Little Spark

It should have helped me sleep better knowing that the Kahuna hadn’t put Bird of Paradise and Gleamblossom to death. They ended up exiled to the same farm Bird’s father had gone to, with enough supplies to start a new life. She’d even let them gather their things from the Bungalow and apologized for everything that happened. It almost seemed too soft to me, but what did I know?

I’d been offered their bungalow as a reward and turned it down. The room in the resort hotel was a little small, but it also got cleaned every other day by robot maids, and that alone made it the best place I’d ever stayed in. They were going to have to use deadly force to make me leave.

Despite all that, I couldn’t sleep.

“Do you want anything from the hotel bar?” I asked Embe. The ghoul didn’t sleep either. I wasn’t sure if it was a psychological thing or a physiological one. Probably both. The Kahuna had given her a giant box of tapes to watch, mostly old cartoons and newsreels. Embe was enjoying seeing something new, and the ponies here had seen all of them hundreds of times and were glad to let her have them.

Embe nodded and carefully shut off her tape player, following me down the giant main staircase. I had to take it slow, one step at a time. It probably would have been easier to slide down on my butt. Ever since the raider had yanked on it, I’d been having problems with the prosthetic leg, and I was getting annoyed that it didn’t fix itself. Maybe my expectations were too high. The stitches in my shoulder were a reminder that I wasn’t fixing myself either.

“Do you need help?” Embe asked.

“No,” I grunted. “I should ask Fog Cutter when those Imaginseer Tribe ponies are going to be in town again. They built this thing, they should be able to fix it.”

Embe made a non-committal sound. “Not everything broken gets fixed. Sometimes it stays broken.”

“You know what they say. Hope springs eternal. Maybe they can at least sell me some duct tape so I can keep it from slipping.”

We finally got to the lobby and I looked around. Something felt off. At night, the robots turned the lights low, but not totally off. It was just dim enough that we could still see out of the big windows, but not so dark that we’d bang our hooves on any of the couches and tables scattered around the room. A servitor robot stood at attention behind the front desk, its screen face black and blank.

It almost felt haunted, which was silly. This was one of the few places that hadn’t seen much death even during the war.

Embe looked at me. Technically she was haunting the building too, I guess. Why were so many of my friends undead? Were they just more patient with stupid ponies like me?

“It’s because you don’t… get scared of what I am,” Embe said. She looked at my expression. “Weren’t you asking me? You kind of… mumbled.”

“I have a bad habit of making my internal monologues external,” I sighed. “It’s past midnight, do you think the robots are still doing dinner things, or can I get breakfast?”

She shrugged and followed me to the hotel restaurant. I didn’t even get halfway there before something spooked me. Movement in the dark. They lurched out of the shadows. I fell sideways until the wall caught me in an instinctive attempt to get into some kind of fighting stance.

Grog stumbled into the light, looking dazed. He was out of his usual barding. Way out. He must have been incredibly drunk, because he wasn’t even able to walk in a straight line and he was mumbling to himself and staring at his hooves.

“Buck, you spooked me,” I sighed.

“Stop,” Embe hiss-growled. I froze and looked back at her. She nodded to Grog. “He’s sleepwalking,” she explained quietly. “It’s bad to wake up a sleepwalking pony, right?”

I took a careful look at the older de facto head of security. His gaze was unfocused. He was looking right through me and into whatever was going on in his own head.

“You’re right,” I whispered. I stepped aside to let Grog go past. “Good thing it’s safe here. He’s probably just going to go for a walk on the beach.”

“I don’t know about that,” Embe gowled. She was looking past me through one of the hotel’s full-length windows. Outside, more ponies walked past, all of them with the heavy, slow gait of somnamabab… sommnambu… sleepwalking. I can’t remember the fancy medical term. The point was, it isn’t normal for a whole town full of ponies to go for a jog in the middle of the night.

“Alright, this isn’t normal. I’m gonna try and wake Grog up.” I trotted over to him. Even with my even-more-pronounced-than-normal limp I was faster than a pony literally walking in their sleep. I gave him a light tap. “Wake up.”

He didn’t notice. I shoved him harder.

“Wake up!” I yelled in his ear.

He just kept mumbling to himself and got to the doors, walking out into the moonlight and turning to follow the trail of other ponies going up the path.

“He didn’t get up,” I mumbled. “I’m starting to think this might not be natural.”

“It’s not,” Embe shivered. “There’s bad magic in the air.”

I was going to tell her to calm down, but she was right. I could feel it. It was like a low-pressure front bringing a storm, that sense of something changing all around me.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Some kind of magic. I’m going to find out where they’re all going. You wait here.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to… be alone…” she moaned.

“It could be dangerous,” I warned. She shook her head and stepped closer to me, her head down. “Okay, okay. Just stay close to me until we find out what’s going on. If it’s really bad I still want you to run, okay?”

Embe nodded silently. I followed Grog at his own pace down the trail. If there was somepony watching, they might think I was just one of the sleepers. With the condition I was in, a few seconds of confusion could mean the difference between life and death.

We walked past the hotel buildings and out to the bungalows, and the whole time I felt that magical pressure. It was a growing migraine behind my eyes. I squeezed them shut and tried to block it out, but it was getting worse the closer I got to whatever was causing this.

And then I saw it. Glowing, the tip reaching above the trees and bungalows. A crystal spire radiating magic, the same one I’d seen last time I was down here. It was tall and thin and all these ponies were walking right up to it. I got close enough to see what they were doing and stopped.

Dozens of ponies, at least half the ponies in the resort, were circling around it, walking in spirals and mumbling to themselves, unaware of everything around them.

“That is really sinister looking,” I whispered.

“I don’t like this,” Embe rumbled. She got closer to me, trying to hide in my shadow.

“The Kahuna said she was having problems sleeping,” I remembered. “She even mentioned it was going around. This must be why. Instead of getting any kind of decent rest, they’re walking around all night.”

“But not you,” noted a voice from the darkness. I almost jumped out of my hooves. A pony in a black cloak stepped out of the darkness. I could see pouches, a belt full of small vials, and ragged layers of clothing. “Dat’s interesting.”

“Who are you?” I demanded, moving to keep Embe behind me and putting myself in the firing line if she had a weapon.

The strange pony pulled her hood back, revealing that she was a unicorn, with a dark grey coat and black mane shot through with a streak of white. “I am Acadia. Dey call me a witch, an’ dat is a fair ting to call me. You, though. You are special, non? You aren’t in de same sad state as dey are. Your cute little undead friend dere is immune, but your mind is untouched as well? You have a strong will, or meybbe something else?” She looked at the metal scales growing on my legs.

“Are you the one who did this to them?” I asked.

“Non,” she said dismissively. Her horn glowed with mixed green and red flame, and a tattered notebook and pencil rose up. “I am jes’ studying dem. It’s interesting, oui? Dey are caught in a nightmare by dark magic.”

“Well yeah, obviously it’s some kind of magic,” I said dismissively.

“You do not listen, child. I said Dark Magic.” This time she said it with an emphasis strong enough for me to know there were capitals. “It is old, a thousand years old before Old Equestria even fell.”

“Uh huh. So can you stop it?”

She looked surprised that I even asked. “Why would I do dat?”

I tilted my head. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

She cackled. “Oh! Dat is rich. De right ting to do!” She laughed again, struggling to control herself. “Non, non. I am a witch, pegasus. Dat means I don’ go around helping.”

“Of course not. So I have to do all the work like always.” I huffed and walked up to the crystal, trying to ignore the way it made me itch inside. I stopped a few paces away and realized I knew that itch. It was too familiar. It was the feeling I got when there was active SIVA in the area. “No…” I groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Embe asked.

“This had better not be my fault,” I groaned.

I got close enough to the crystal to see through the glare. There was some kind of complex circuitry inside it, woven into the structure of the crystal itself, and I could see something else, strands of black metal weaving themselves into it, growing inch by inch, moving like the minute hand on a clock, just fast enough to see if I watched carefully.

“I can’t believe I did it again…” I sighed.

“Oh look at de poor pony, ready to take on all de sins of the world on her shoulders,” Acadia scoffed. “Dis was not you, fool. I saw you arrive in fire, dis started months before.”

“Months?” I felt the crushing weight of guilt ease off my shoulders, but only a little bit. I knew that was SIVA in there, and that meant it was still somehow tied to me.

“Ah,” the witch smiled. “So you still feel responsible anyway? Interesting.”

“What is this crystal, anyway?” I asked. “SIVA can’t control ponies like this. I mean it does control ponies but they turn into metal zombies. It’s not mind control.”

“Dis crystal is part of de new park,” the witch said, motioning at it. “After de maker of dis place passed away, it went into de hooves of ponies who had dere own ideas. Dis was part of it. Using magic to create illusions instead of building tings dat were real. Replacing de staff with machines. Putting everyting under de control of a single mind.”

“So it’s all connected?” I asked.

“Of course it is. Everyting in dis world is connected. Dat is part of de magic, non?” She smirked and pulled her hood back up. “If you want to get to de core of de ting, it is in de old park.”

I was getting tired of being in over my head and not understanding anything. “The old park?”

“In de morning, when dey wake up, ask dem. Dey can point you the right way.” Acadia pulled a vial out of her belt and smashed it on the ground. Foul-smelling smoke billowed up around her, and by the time a gust of ocean wind blew it away, she was gone.

“What are you going to do?” Embe asked.

“I’m going to try getting back to sleep,” I sighed. “Sounds like I’m going to have a busy day tomorrow.”

---

“Sleepwalking?” Grog grumbled, rubbing at his eyes.

“If you don’t believe me I’ll get photos next time,” I joked. “Can I have a little help?” I tugged at the straps of the barding I was trying to get into.

Grog sighed and adjusted some of the parts that were harder to reach. I could tell he didn’t like me wearing it. It was patched together from some of the sturdier parts of the barding the raiders in the tunnel had been wearing. I would have preferred Bird of Paradise’s black leathers, but she was several sizes smaller than me. If nothing else, a quick scrub and a fresh coat of paint covered up the rust and bloodstains pretty well.

“You remember what I told you?” the stallion said.

“The monorail track goes all the way to the old park,” I said. “So as long as I stay on it, I won’t get lost.”

He nodded. “It’s elevated two stories above the ground, so it should keep you safe from the wildlife. Some of the gators have gotten pretty big over the years, and they absolutely can and will eat a pony if they can catch you.”

“Why not use the tunnels?” I asked.

“You already fought one set of raiders in the utilidors. There might be more. If you get cornered down there, there’s nowhere to go. At least if you’re up here, you can get down off the track and get away from any trouble you can’t handle.”

“I guess it’d be easy to pick up the trail again since it’s so high up,” I admitted. I looked down the track. It wasn’t exactly as spacious as an elevated highway, but it was a little wider than my shoulders. The track didn’t have any surprise hills or tight bends, just easy curves like an elevated sidewalk.

“That’s the idea. And if it’s collapsed you don’t have to turn around.”

“Keep Embe safe while I’m gone?” I asked.

Grog nodded. “Of course I will. We wronged her terribly in the past. The least we can do is treat her well and make her comfortable.”

“Thanks again for the help.” I grabbed the saddlebags he’d prepared and slung them into my back. They were uneven, with more weight on my left side, but that was deliberate to balance me out a little bit. I had the GLUU Gun along with the extra glue canisters and a little food and water.

It really wasn’t a bad walk, and for the first time I started to get an idea of the scale of the island. I’d left the resort a few times, but the only time I’d gone very far had been when I’d gone to the naval base. I hadn’t really looked around much when I got there, which I was now kicking myself about. There were probably a bunch of guns there that I could have used… And if I was honest with myself, mostly just wasted ammunition. My aim with regular guns was awful. Big heavy stuff just made sense to me in a way that small arms didn’t.

Anyway, the island. I’d seen highly stylized maps in the resort and it looked like a curled-up alligator, sort of bent in a crescent moon shape. There hadn’t been a scale on those maps, but with a higher viewpoint I was starting to get a feel for the geography and it had to be around six or seven miles at the wide point. I passed by a few small stops that I ignored - Grog had told me what to look for and that I’d know it when I saw it anyway - and noticed that there was a stark difference between the areas where visitors might end up and the island’s natural terrain.

Most of the island between stops was some kind of mangrove swamp, and I was sure I could see large shapes slowly drifting beneath the murky water. I kicked a stray branch into the mire below. Something snapped at it and dragged it under.

Falling in would probably end in getting eaten, but the monorail line was surprisingly intact. I could sense a little magic in it. Maybe there was some kind of preservation magic? Or, more likely, robots were involved somewhere. For all I knew there was a robot train that went around fixing the line as it went.

Something I quickly discovered was that traveling like this really sucked. I had to take careful steps because I didn’t want to get eaten by alligators and the stupid prosthetic was getting more and more broken the more I used it.

Two miles in, the knee seized up and almost threw me right over the edge. I yelped, spread my wings, realized I only had wing, singular, and caught myself with my good forehoof. The one that had a deep cut that was only stitched up. I hung over the short drop and I didn’t look down because I could sense the hungry teeth waiting for their next meal.

I scrambled back up, barely, and smacked the fake leg against the concrete until the joint unfroze and it had learned a valuable lesson. It must have picked up on my frustration because it didn’t act up again, even if it did make worrying wheezing squeaking sounds when the track started going up at a gentle incline.

No wait, I was the one making those sounds. I was not in great health. I focused on my breathing, watched my hooves, and just put one in front of the other over and over again.

“This must be the place,” I gasped, hopping over from the rail to the station. It was multiple times the size of the other stations I’d passed by, in bright, unfaded colors, and I collapsed onto one of the worn but well-maintained benches and caught my breath. I felt like I was fighting pneumonia after a bad bout of feather flu.

After a minute or two, a small robot shaped like a saucer hummed out of a small gap between the wall and floor and slowly rolled across the floor, sucking up a few stray leaves and leaving the platform spotless. When it got close to me, it bumped into my side.

“Do you think I’m garbage?” I joked. After a moment, it bumped again, then backed up and beeped. I tilted my head. I couldn’t read its mind or anything but it almost seemed more like it had come out to check up on me.

I got up and shook some of the fatigue.

“I’m okay,” I told the robot vacuum. It beeped again and trundled off. Did it understand me? I shook my head and got going. I had places to go and no idea what terrible dangers I’d find.

---

“This isn’t what I expected,” I said.

“Would you like to try another flavor?” the robot asked, the black screen it had for a face showing a pleasant smile. I looked down at what I was holding. A sugar cone topped with a yellow and white twist. It was a soft frozen dessert made of pineapple and sugar and it was disastrously good. It was better than some drugs I’d had, and I’d been pumped full of a lot of highly addictive painkillers.

“No, no, this is really great,” I assured it. “I mean, uh… never mind. Thank you for the dessert. Great job!”

I waved to it and took a few steps back, avoiding a pony who was slowly making his way down the street, his eyes unfocused while he mumbled.

“Sorry,” I said, after almost bumping into him.

“She grows ever near to us,” he mumbled, walking off to somewhere else. I shook my head and watched him join the flow of the crowd. Maybe half a mile down the street lined with shops and buildings that could have come from any town in old Equestria, Canterlot Castle loomed tall over us.

Not the real one, obviously. This one was smaller, with exaggerated features and brighter colors. It was like a giant toy made in the real thing’s image.

“Or a theme park attraction,” I said to myself. I sat down and ate my Pineapple Whip while I thought. I wasn’t just being lazy, the sugar was helping me get some of my strength back. Also it tasted really good.

Once I felt well enough to move on, I followed the flow of ponies. They weren’t just going to the castle. They were all over the park, more like slow, sleepy ants in a colony. I wasn’t sure what they were doing until I saw a group of them keeping robots away from a steel flower growing out of the ground in the shadow between two buildings.

“SIVA,” I mumbled. “Again.”

I heard someone yell in frustration and for once it wasn’t my fault. Probably. I made a mental note to be more careful about what I ate just in case it was infected by something and followed the noise into a walkway going through the castle. It was a path through the park but an exhibit on its own, with furniture and paintings on the side that might have come from the real castle.

In the center, hanging overhead, was a crystal spire suspended in chains like a huge chandelier, partly disguised and almost fitting in with the decor. Ponies circled under it, staring up at it, and one pony in particular was ignoring it and delivering a hard slap to the face of the pony next to her. She was an earth pony wearing the same red robes as the stallion she’d slapped, though hers weren’t as tattered as his and she had a belt full of tools.

“Wake up!” she ordered. “Come on, brother! It’s going to work this time!” She had a complicated-looking tangle of electronic components in her hoof and pointed the antenna extending from it at the slapped pony. There was a hum, several vacuum tubes glowed slightly, and one popped before the whole thing gave up the ghost, smoke rising from the device.

I walked over and looked at it. I’d never seen anything like it.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a delta wave inducer that should set up a resonance in his brain and wake him up,” the pony explained, fumbling for more vacuum tubes in her saddlebags. She stopped and looked at me. “Ah!” she yelped.

“Ah!” I yelped back.

She glared at me, then her gaze drifted to my prosthetic. “You! I know who you are and-- what did you do to this poor leg?” She shook her head and grabbed my hoof, lifting it and feeling the joints. She made a very displeased sound at the noise the joints made.

“Sorry. I got into a fight with some bandits.”

“It looks like somepony ripped it off your shoulder and clubbed you with it,” she said. “The machine spirit inside this leg is very unhappy.”

“Maybe that’s why it tried to throw me in the swamp on the way here,” I joked.

She didn’t take it as a jest. She nodded. “It’s possible. This needs maintenance. I don’t have time for all the rituals you require, but an Imaginseer does what they can with what they have. Hold still.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the leg. She dug a bottle of oil out of her bags with her teeth and applied it to the joints, whispering something that sounded like prayers and the contents of an old manual.

“...it is written that the main gears of the bearing are splash lubricated, the lubricating oil level is signaled by the indicator, we thank the machine spirit and beg for understanding and smooth operation until the next scheduled maintenance…”

I waited for her to finish, which apparently also required replacing a broken buckle on the straps holding it to my shoulder and a quick burning incense that was something like aromatic flash powder.

“That will hold for a day or a few miles, whichever comes first,” she said after finishing up and putting things away. “I am only a Junior Imaginseer and I don’t have the parts or tools with me to finish the job properly. I apologize. I need to focus on freeing my brother.”

“He’s sleepwalking because of that crystal,” I said.

“Enthralled by it,” she confirmed. “The things are cursed. They should never have been allowed in the park. The Imaginseers were against them, and now they are finally breaking us.”

“They’re part of some… new park thing, right? Using magic and illusions?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a long tale of greed and ponies wanting change for the sake of change.” She picked up her antenna-laden inductor thing and started playing with it, checking all the connections.

“The same thing is happening at the resort,” I said. “That's why I came here. I heard all the crystals were connected.”

“It might be happening all over the park,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rude to a guest. My name is Lathe.”

“Chamomile.” I shook her hoof. She took a close look at the scales on my leg.

“Interesting,” she mumbled. Lathe reached behind her ear and pulled a lens down over her eye, flicking on a small flashlight attached to the loupe with a motion of her ear. “Very delicate work. I wonder if the machine spirit in your new prosthetic is jealous.”

“Maybe I can duct tape a knife to it so it feels better.”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” she agreed. “But only after proper maintenance checks.” She switched off the light. “I would take you to my village but…”

“But you’re busy with your brother,” I said.

She nodded.

“These systems are all connected, right?” I asked. “What’s the hub?”

“Below us somewhere,” Lathe said. “Deep under the utilidors. Right under our hooves. Nopony has seen the core system in generations.”

“If we want to wake up your brother we might not have to go that far,” I said. “It has to connect to the crystals somehow, and if ponies built it, I can break it. I wouldn’t mind some help making sure I break the right thing, though.”

“It would be bad if you broke anything irreplaceable,” Lathe admitted. “I’m not making much progress here. I need to try something different. But to be clear, we’re not breaking anything. It’s against the code of the Imaginseers.”

---

“That door had been there for almost three hundred years! It was old even before the war!” Lathe whined through rebreather over her muzzle. “It was a good, sturdy door!”

“It wasn’t all that sturdy.” I’d broken it with only a few kicks. My security pass hadn’t worked here like it had at the resort, but I’d still found a way.

“I have a tool for picking the locks without damaging them,” Lathe said.

“You can get the next one,” I promised her.

She huffed and walked past me, pulling her hood up around her head. I heard a subtle clank of metal. The red robe had metal plates woven between the layers. “This is a small island. We can’t afford waste.”

“Right, sorry,” I agreed. I followed her deeper into the utilidors. They were half-flooded here, with murky swamp water reaching up to our knees in places. The smell made me wish I had a rebreather of my own.

My ear twitched.

“Stop!” I hissed. “There’s something ahead of us!”

Lathe froze and listened. She heard the same splashing I’d noticed and took a step back, then motioned to the side where an array of vertical pipes came out of the floor below us and joined the main lines hanging overhead. They had clearance on all sides, and just enough room behind them for us to hide in their shadows.

“Do you have any weapons?” I whispered. “There are raiders down here.”

“I have a nailgun,” she said, pulling it from her toolbelt. It wasn’t much of a weapon but it was more than I feared she’d have.

“I’ve got this glue launcher,” I offered. “As long as there aren’t many of them, we should be able to handle them. I’ll go first and you follow up, okay?”

She nodded and we waited for them to approach. From the noise it sounded like a big group of raiders.At least six or seven. I peeked around the edge of the pipes to look and was almost snout-to-snout with the biggest alligator I’d ever seen. It was longer than a Vertibuck and looked like it had even more armor.

“Oh buck,” I swore.

It roared. I roared back at it. It was not intimidated. I punched it in the snout. It lunged forward and smacked me with the tip of its nose, sending me flying back into the wall and establishing its dominance.

“So that’s how it feels,” I groaned.

“Don’t move! Its vision is based on movement!” Lathe warned.

I froze. “Is that true?”

The gator charged me where I’d fallen, opening its huge maw and showing more fangs than I’d ever seen in one place before. Just before it got to me, a bell went off above us and a plume of frigid foul-smelling gas sprayed down at it. The gator shook its head and fell back, and another plume of gas hit it, forcing it further away.

The gator roared and charged away, annoyed by the cold. When it got into the next tunnel segment, a wide door came down behind it, cutting it off from us.

“Its vision is absolutely not based on movement,” I informed Lathe.

“Sorry. It seemed like it was a theory worth testing,” she said.

“What happened with the…” I looked up. There was a red pipe with big sprinkler heads above us. I read the words printed on the side of the pipe. “Fire suppression system?”

“The machine spirit protected you,” Lathe said seriously. “These park systems have a mind of their own. Not just the robots, but even the smallest things. They keep the guests safe and demand respect.”

“That’s--” I was going to call it silly, but she’d gotten my prosthetic working with the power of prayer. The robots all seemed to understand just a little too much. And now the fire suppression system… “--Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “I’d have to be an even bigger idiot to pretend it isn’t possible.”

“Just treat the machines with respect,” Lathe told me, patting my shoulder. “They want to be of service. They understand that you don’t know the right rituals to maintain them.”

I nodded. It wasn’t bad advice.

“So the machine spirit probably doesn’t think we should go that way,” I looked at where the fire door had slammed shut and trapped the giant alligator. “Any ideas?”

Lathe closed her eyes. “Mmm…” She produced an orb. “I’ll check the auspex.”

She shook it and it beeped. A small screen on the side flickered through a few messages, the text changing faster than I could read it before settling down on a single result and stopping with a chime.

“What is right is sometimes all that’s left,” she read, then put the auspex, which looked suspiciously like a plastic fortune-telling toy, away.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“This way,” she said, walking confidently the other way down the utilidor. I raised an eyebrow and followed her. “It can’t be far.”

I followed her to a branch in the tunnel and she took the left corridor after a moment of contemplation. She stopped and thought for a moment when the lights flickered around us, most of the fluorescent lamps shutting off. In the darkness, my eyes were drawn instantly to a single set still working, right over a door down the left-hoof branch. A second later, the rest of the lights turned on.

“Did you do that?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen the machine spirit acting this strongly,” she whispered. “We are meant to be here.”

“I think I might need to sign up for your religion because it sure seems to be working,” I told her. We walked to the door and found the security panel blinking between red and green, completely glitched out. I tested the handle and it opened without a problem. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find inside. A server room full of humming banks of computers?

Lathe backed up away from the door. “No…” she whispered.

I could understand why she had that reaction. The inside of the room was a techno-organic mess, metal growing like fungus in the lightless depths of the earth. Sinister red light shone from blinking LEDs like tiny eyes on the tendrils spread over the walls, and in the center of the room was a pedestal like a claw reaching right out of the concrete and clutching an oversized memory orb.

“Most of this is SIVA,” I mumbled. “But that orb is weird.”

I took a careful step inside, looking around and being careful not to touch anything that might be infected.

“It’s part of the new park,” Lathe said. She spat on the ground. “They were going to replace rides with them. With false memories of rides. Illusions instead of real machines.”

“Do they work like other memory orbs?” I asked, reaching out to poke it and see if I could free it. My vision blurred and I fell out of the world.

---

“Chamomile… it’s time to wake up…” a gentle voice called to me. One I hadn’t heard in a long time. I opened my eyes and…

I must have been on some layer of Tartarus. The sky was glowing with uneven red light. The ground was black steel. Spires rose up to impossible heights around me, and my mother was watching me, amused, from a twisted throne.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Lemon Zinger chuckled. “You’re taking more and more after me every day, Chamomile.”

“How are you here?” I gasped, trying to stand. A claw pressed me down into the ground before I got there. I looked up into the skeletal face of a black SIVA dragon. “Lady of Dark Waters?”

“She nearly died at your hooves,” my mother explained. “Now she serves me.”

“How--” I gasped.

“I’ve never stopped being in control, Chamomile,” Lemon said. She stood up and strode closer, growing moment by moment. “I’ve just been letting you make a few decisions on your own. Her blood mixed with yours, and when she was too weak to resist… Lady became my avatar. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” the dragon rumbled sullenly.

“She’s a bit unhappy about being used like this,” Lemon said. She laughed. “I suppose an ancient vampire does have her pride to consider. It must be fate that you two are meeting again. However… you don’t belong here, Chamomile.”

My mother leaned down to look at me where I was pinned against the steel.

“Go back to your little resort. Take a vacation. Your part in this story is done. Soon, my endgame will begin, and everything will be mine.”

“I’ll stop you,” I grunted.

“You don’t have the power,” she said. “Especially not here.”

Lemon’s body twisted and swelled. Three huge dragon heads rose up out of the swarm of SIVA. Wings as wide as a city flared out. All three maws opened, and energy crashed down onto me, erasing me from existence.

---

I gasped and snapped awake. Lathe was pulling me back through the door.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “Some of the illusion-rides are buggy with how old they are, not that they ever worked right.”

I shook my head. “I think we’re in a lot of trouble. A lot. Of trouble.”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Hmm, there has to be an actual AI running the park at least for the moment, right? Because Lemon probably would have started killing everypony if she was in control of everything.

[FridayPie]

11516042
That's what machine seers would refer to as a Machine spirit. And, if this fic is true to Project Horizon\Homelands, things indeed have spirits if you to look for them. It's just canonically ponies are blind and greedy. But to SEE a spirit means to be SEEN.

[Reese]

"Embe gowled."
"Embe growled."?

"whined through rebreather over"
"whined through the rebreather over"?

Thanks for writing!