Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 60: Lost Sector

I bit into the green sandwich. Green is a good color for food, most of the time. I wasn’t so sure a dry, sort of crumbly bread should have been that shade. It didn’t taste like anything I’d had before. I could taste salt and something vaguely vegetal like I was chewing on random grass and leaves. It barely mattered, though. Not with the spread between the two slices.

“Oh buck this is great,” I mumbled through a full mouth. “I donno what this is but it’s so good!” I took another bite, chewing slowly.

It was sweet and sticky like liquid candy, and there had to be something really weird in the mix because it made me feel relaxed and warm in the same way as the herbal healing teas the zebras had given me.

“I made it myself!” the changeling who’d given me the sandwich said, obviously excited. I hadn’t learned the trick of telling them apart yet, but she was dressed up like a maid, appropriate for serving me tea and sandwiches in a silver-toned garden. It might have been the fanciest lunch I’d ever had.

“What is it? Some kinda jam?” I asked.

“No, no, it’s honey!”

“And you... made it yourself?” I looked at it again. It was very vibrantly green, practically glowing. I’d seen how bees made honey. I was caught between violently conflicting emotions. Part of me wanted to throw the sandwich away. Part of me wanted to ask if they also made mead. Before I could resolve it, my stomach had taken control from my distracted brain and made me finish the snack.

“I’m glad you liked it,” the changeling said. She licked her lips a little, like she’d gotten a snack too.

Eh, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever eaten. “Thanks for the lunch.”

“Miss Chamomile?”

Raven waited politely at the edge of the garden clearing. She had a pushcart with her, with a familiar suit of power armor on it. I waved her in. Destiny floated along with her, following the repaired armor like a worried parent.

“I’ve completed the necessary repairs,” she said. “Some of the tiles had significant damage that the repair talisman wasn’t able to deal with. Notably a patch on the chest, the missing tiles along the left shoulder, and some additional lines of damage here, here, and here.”

Raven pointed at the spots as she explained. They matched where the undead Steel Rangers had cut me up with that cursed sword, when I’d been blasted in the chest fighting with Four on top of a cloudship, and when an abomination that was half werebear and half SIVA mutant had tried to bite off my leg.

“I left the new pauldron in place on the left side,” she said, indicating the red shoulderpad. “I thought it might have sentimental value to you.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” I said. “Thank you.”

She smiled. “I’ve also prepared a few healing potions for you, and ammunition for your weapons. I’m working on software updates to assist you and your partner, but that will take some time, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll be glad for the help if she can automate a few functions,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, I remember when you showed me all the stuff you usually have hidden off to the side,” I said. “You said the armor was kind of a test bench model, right?”

“Correct. A limited prototype run. We didn’t make more than, oh, five or six suits total, and some of those were just partial rigs to test individual systems. Nowhere near ready for the kind of combat we’ve been seeing. That's why DRACO has been such a boon. It's got its own fire control system. With Raven's help, I was able to get the weapon switching program working with the Dimension Pliers. It won't cause the suit's Vector Trap to collapse.”

Raven cleared her throat. “Additionally, Mister Star Swirl asked me to pass along a message that he is waiting, and that there is no hurry. I believe he meant it sarcastically.”

“Great,” I sighed. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Not at the moment,” Raven said. “I wish you luck in all your endeavors.”

---

Teleporting left a tingle down my spine and twisted my guts around. I don’t know if Limbo was just more difficult to transit magically or if Star Swirl simply wasn’t as good at it as Cube. The latter seemed more likely, but that might have been the last traces of my half-sibling pride rubbing up against the abrasive unicorn who seemed less than grateful about having me along with him.

“If there’s anything ponies have become exceptional at inventing, it’s new varieties of undead horrors,” Star Swirl said from behind me. I was following navigation markers Raven had provided, which at the moment meant working our way across trails clinging to the sides of steep cliffs.

“Have you been studying them?” Destiny asked.

“Of course I have. It’s important to know one’s enemy. There are of course categories and subcategories of the undead but the two most general classification categories are spontaneously generated undead and those created by ritual. Most of the undead in Equestria’s wasteland are ghouls animated by fallout from necromantic megaspells.”

“Balefire bombs,” Destiny suggested. “Everypony knows it’s what the zebras used.”

“Messy stuff,” Star Swirl groused. “When we had wars, they were proper ones. You’d line up your ponies, and they’d line up their ponies, and the two leaders would talk to each other and try to settle things before swords were drawn. Sometimes it even worked and nopony had to die that day.”

“What makes these undead different from the ones the bombs made?” I asked. “I know they don’t act the same. I’ve met smart ghouls that were just like any regular pony, and dumb ones that were sort of wild animals, but the zombies and stuff the zebra necromancers made… they’re not like animals. They’re monsters.”

“That’s a keen observation, and I’m surprised you could tell the difference,” Star Swirl said. “I made it long ago, of course.”

We turned around the edge of a ridge, and below us, a long bridge joined this floating isle to the next. It was beautiful and slender and already infested by the undead.

“Where do they even get all the bodies?” I mumbled. “It’s not the crew of the White, is it?”

'“There are pathways back to the world, in dark places,” Star Swirl said. “Rituals and workings and nexuses of ill portents and dark magic that turn into sinkholes leading to this place. The largest was in Hollow Shades, but since the war, since the bombs, things have only gotten worse.”

I aimed DRACO down, trying to decide where to start. Star Swirl held up a hoof to stop me.

“Wait a moment. This is a good opportunity to learn something. Behold, the most basic reanimated pony, the zombie. They’re mindless and follow basic instincts, rather like insects. Unlike the wild wasteland ghoul, they lack even the smallest traces of a soul, making them broadly similar to an animated construct.”

He picked up a stone with magic and threw it onto the bridge. The nearest zombies hissed and turned at the noise, peering towards where it had landed for a moment before turning away and resuming their aimless shambling.

“As you can see, they’re easily distracted. If there were only a few of them, we could simply cause a bit of noise and walk past them without being noticed. With this many of them, it will be better if you drop down in the middle of them while I provide fire support.”

I held up a hoof to interrupt. “Actually, from here I could use DRACO to--”

Star Swirl’s horn blazed, and my stomach twisted in an extradimensional knot. I popped out of existence and back into it right in the middle of the bridge, with a loud bang and flash of light. The undead all turned to me and ran forward, screaming and wailing.

I said some very unkind things about Star Swirl.

“Watch out!” Destiny shouted, and a wavering barrier of magical energy formed around me. A moment later, a glowing marble exploded against the ground next to my hooves, and an explosion rocked the bridge, blasting most of the undead apart at the joints and throwing the rest off the bridge entirely.

Star Swirl teleported down a moment later, looking pleased.

“There we go. That was easy enough.” He nodded with approval at the cleared bridge. “Shall we?”

“You…” I glared at him, not that he could appreciate it. “You tried to blast me with that fireball!”

“I told you I was going to provide fire support,” Star Swirl huffed. “You would have been fine even if the brains of your little operation didn’t have the wisdom and reflexes needed to protect you. You’re the bait, girl! I’m too important to die and you love risking your life.”

“Just let it go,” Destiny whispered. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s Star Swirl the Bearded!”

“He almost blew me up!” I hissed.

“Even if he’d hit you, you’ve shrugged off worse than that. It’s no big deal. Just trust him, okay?”

I sighed. “Fine, but if he blows me up again…”

“I’ll yell at him for you while you heal,” Destiny joked.

I shook my head in frustration and stomped towards the waypoint. Star Swirl had stopped ahead of me and was looking pensively at a wavering field of shadows stretched across a doorway.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“No, of course not. It’s just an ontopathogenic infection eating away at the fabric of reality,” Star Swirl grumbled. “Why would anything be wrong with that?”

“You use big words when you’re scared, huh?” I asked. “It’s okay. When I panic I start punching ponies in the snout. We all have our own coping methods.”

“I am not afraid! I am a wizard and we are never afraid!” Star Swirl snapped, before marching directly into the maw of darkness. I shrugged and walked after him, the shadows closing over us like nightfall.

---

“Every one of these little pocket realms is worse than the last,” Star Swirl said. He hadn’t gone far, waiting just ahead of me in the monochrome half-light. He glanced at me, then nodded off to the side. “Look at this.”

“It’s a volcanic chasm,” I said, looking down the cliff wall off to the side of the path. A hundred meters below, it ended in a field of glowing magma. “You know, I almost died fighting a huge metal dragon in something like that.”

“There can’t be any real geology here,” Destiny noted.

I spread my wings a little to feel the air. It was stagnant, even with all that heat down there. Something else worried me just as much.

“I’m not sure I can get much lift around here,” I said. “We should stay away from the edge.”

“No, of course not,” Star Swirl agreed, nodding. “Your pegasus magic is being drained just like my spellcasting. Limbo itself has loose physical laws already, and this place simplifies them even further. All the nuance is reduced to binary black and white. Literally. That’s why colors are so muted - things are either lit, or not. They absorb light, or they don’t.”

“It makes it difficult to judge distances,” I said.

“Among many other deleterious effects, yes. Magic pushes back against it a bit, so magical sources of light can still have at least some color to them, but having to push against such a twisted reality is an additional strain.”

“We noticed,” Destiny said. “This suit of armor is almost entirely reliant on telekinetic fields for motion control and weight reduction, and it’s training the fusion core an order of magnitude more just being in here.”

“Mm.” Star Swirl nodded, obviously only half-listening.

“So what’s with the lava?” I asked. “I get it’s not real or whatever, but it’s still there.”

“Rockhoof had a troubled past,” Star Swirl said. “When he was young, he was weak and sickly, an outcast among his clan forced to do menial labor to earn his keep. A volcano erupted near his village and threatened to consume them all. He saved them, miraculously. Through sheer force of will, he transformed into the biggest, strongest pony in the village, and used his shovel to dig a trench around the town for the lava to flow into.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? He just wanted it so much that he got bigger and stronger?”

Star Swirl chuckled. “More specifically, his earth pony magic finally manifested. It had been blocked when he was a foal. It reminds you of something though, doesn’t it?”

“The darkness, whatever the force is behind all this, it tried to make me an offer when I was slamming the pyramid shut. It offered to make me the best possible me.”

“It made me the same promise,” Star Swirl said. “I was offended! As if I wasn’t already the greatest wizard!”

“I panicked and punched it in the snout,” I said.

Star Swirl laughed loudly, wiping his eyes. “Yes, excellent! I wish I could have seen its expression. A terrible force of darkness with no plan about what to do if a pony smacks it in the face. Excellent!”

“You think Rockhoof didn’t just tell it to shove off,” I guessed.

Star Swirl’s expression fell. “When we went back into the world, though it was a brief trip, Rockhoof’s spirit was crushed by the idea that he couldn’t save anypony. He blamed himself. He thought if he was just a little faster, stronger, smarter…”

Star Swirl trailed off and shrugged.

I shook my head. “And it was offered to him on a silver platter.”

“He got what he asked for, but not what he needed. The Darkness makes a pony stronger and takes away their free will in return. You know noughts and crosses, yes?” He drew two parallel lines in the dust, then another two perpendicular to them, making the nine-square grid. “It’s a simple game. So simple that ponies can quickly be taught to play it perfectly. There is always a best move, and if two ponies who know what they’re doing are playing, every game ends in a tie.”

He added Xs and Os to the grid as he spoke, then wiped it all away with a hoof.

“Playing noughts and crosses perfectly means abandoning free will. Choosing anything else means you’re in a weaker position. It stops being a game and just becomes a deterministic machine.”

“Okay?” I shrugged.

“Imagine being able to do the same with chess. Playing perfectly every time. Always knowing the best move. It’s not something ponies can do, but you can imagine one of your computers doing it, working through all the possibilities and telling you the best move, every time.”

“It’s theoretically possible,” Destiny allowed. “There are a large but finite number of moves available from any position. You could, in theory, check all of them, then all the possible responses, then all the responses to that… I can’t imagine the complexity.”

“Complex, beyond ponies and our technology, but possible,” Star Swirl agreed. “Take it to the extreme. A life, perfectly lived. That’s what the Darkness offers. The assurance of making the best decision in every situation, to be the strongest and best version of yourself, all for the price of your free will. After all, your free will lets you make mistakes. Why not abandon it?”

“So we’re supposed to think that this version of Rockhoof is his very best?” I asked. “What about… I don’t know. He saved ponies before, right? He doesn’t seem interested in that anymore.”

“That’s probably what he thought he’d be doing,” Star Swirl said. “But what if the perfect game of chess means sacrificing almost all of your pieces? What if someone else, something else, got to decide what ‘perfect game’ really meant?”

Star Swirl turned and started walking down the path.

“Keep up! I need you to walk ahead of me to trip any traps!”

---

We stepped back into the world of light, and everything felt lighter and more alive. I took a deep breath on reflex, as if there hadn’t been enough oxygen in the eclipsed place. The path had been relatively peaceful, but also a long walk near a crumbling cliff with lava at the bottom.

Star Swirl stood next to me and took off his hat for a moment to wipe his brow.

“I’m getting too old for these long trips,” he said. “The worst part about chasing after them is that it’s often paradoxically uphill both ways.”

“We didn’t even go that far,” I said. I looked back, annoyed. It had been a mile or more in the dark, but here in the real world, we’d only ended up on the other side of that doorway.

“Unfortunately it was still needed,” Star Swirl said. He looked around. “We’re in part of the preserved structure of the Exodus White. Why would Rockhoof come here?”

“With the ship broken up it’s difficult to guess,” Destiny said. “I think this was part of a cargo hold. The cargo elevator is up ahead.”

The elevator was huge, big enough for the small ship Flurry Heart’s guards used to bring me to her home-grown crystal palace.

“Let’s take it up,” I said. “Was there any rare cargo they might be after?”

“It was Princess Flurry Heart’s personal ship,” Destiny reminded me. “We couldn’t inspect the cargo even if we wanted. They had diplomatic immunity and, well… I hate to say it but BrayTech was her first choice precisely because she found out about our ways of getting around the Ministries. If we’d pushed too hard, she could have collapsed the whole house of cards, and that meant she got everything she wanted.”

“Including a total lack of oversight,” I guessed.

“When I was younger I had Celestia and Luna as students and they were considerably less difficult to deal with,” Star Swirl said. He poked at the control panel for a moment, trying to puzzle it out. I reached past him and slammed the big red button.

The elevator was an enclosed space surrounded by metal bars and chicken wire. The doors slid open with a squeal and I stepped inside, looking at the big square platform and making sure it wasn’t going to kill us before waving him onboard.

“What was it like when you first met her?” Destiny asked.

Star Swirl pulled the door closed, and a buzzer sounded before the elevator lurched into motion and started rising up.

“Flurry Heart or Celestia?” he asked. “Because one was an overactive destructive child and the other one decided to give herself a promotion to Queen.”

The elevator shuddered. The lights flickered.

Star Swirl wrapped a shield around himself an instant before Rockhoof slammed into the platform, the impact making every emergency brake snap to attention, sparks flying where safety systems struggled to keep us from falling. I was knocked off my hooves by the sudden list towards the massive dark pony, his body radiating unearthly negative light, the shadows cast by it glowing faintly like mist at sunrise.

“I think we found him!” I yelled, firing DRACO. The round exploded against his hide, and Rockhoof turned to me, reaching back to grab a massive square-bladed axe from his side and lifting it with his mouth.

I rolled to the side, out of the way of the massive blade. It came down in a slow arc and sheared right through the elevator, lodging itself into the metal.

“Don’t shoot him!” Star Swirl shouted. “He’s my friend, you idiot!”

“It was a warning shot!” I yelled back.

“You shot him in the chest!”

“It was a very firm warning!”

“I’m switching DRACO over to flares,” Destiny said, effectively ending the discussion. “Come on, Chamomile! Don’t embarrass me in front of Star Swirl!”

Rockhoof tore the ax free and the elevator tilted, the metal squealing in protest from the strain. It came at me faster and harder than I expected, and I had no chance to consciously respond. My right hoof moved practically on its own, and the edge of the knife unfolding from my hoof met the edge of the ax and a blow that would have cut me in half turned into an impact that raised a shower of sparks and tossed me into the air. I caught myself, beating my wings hard to kill my momentum.

“Oh hey, that’s working again,” I said, sliding the knife back in and snapping it out experimentally. “I need to thank Raven next time I see her.”

“Stand down, you muscle-bound blockhead!” Star Swirl shouted. For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but then he cast a lightning spell that raked over Rockhoof’s body, staggering him for a moment. The massive dark form slammed its ax into the elevator deck and steadied himself on it. A shield of that strange negative light sprang up around it, glowing darkly and casting bright shadows. The lightning hit it again and stopped short.

Rockhoof regained his composure and swung that massive weapon at Star Swirl. I knew the unicorn’s shield wasn’t going to stop it. I could just feel it. I slammed into it from above, deflecting it down in a shower of sparks. DRACO fired a barrage of blinding flares, but they just hit the shield and deflected away, barely even serving as a distraction.

“That shield around him will stop any attack,” Star Swirl warned when I landed next to him. “It’s an absolute barrier. Of course I have a spell that should work perfectly to bring it down.”

He raised his head and fired a ball of grey magic at Rockhoof. The stallion’s spotlight-bright eyes saw it coming and he moved so quickly it was like his image stuttered, suddenly out of the path of the spell. It went past him and splashed against the elevator’s cage, landing with all the impact of a wet fart.

“Damn,” Star Swirl grumbled. “I’d like to think I can hit the broad side of a barn, but not if it teleports around!”

“I’ll get his attention, you shoot him in the back,” I said.

“Doesn’t seem very honorable,” Star Swirl muttered.

“Do you have a better idea?”

He looked up and shoved me back with a burst of magic. The ax came down between us, smashing through the metal of the cage. Star Swirl stood up on his hind legs to look over the huge blade at me.

“I didn’t say I hated the idea!” he yelled. “Get out there before he remembers how to fight properly!”

I took to the air and fired another bunch of flares, getting right in his face, or as close as I could with the shield in the way. I pressed a hoof against it, and it was like a physical mirror, pressing back at me as hard as I pushed against it. Rockhoof reached up and swatted at me, knocking me down.

I bounced against the ground, intentionally going limp and rebounding like a rubber ball into the wall.

“Ow,” I mumbled. “For the record, I did that on purpose.”

“If you were trying to get him to come after you, good work,” Destiny said. Rockhoof lunged at me, his hoof coming down in a huge stomp. I braced myself and caught it, and it was instantly obvious to me that he was way too strong for me to just stop. It was like a hydraulic press, probably tons of force. Even with everything I had, the best I could do was push it aside.

Trying to crush me had given Star Swirl enough time to get another spell together. He fired it off, and Rockhoof must have been waiting for it, because he ducked to the side with that unnatural blinking movement, leaving me right in the path.

“Hold still, I’ve got an idea!” Destiny warned me. I felt her magic surge, and she caught the glowing ball, holding onto it for just a second, the spell fizzing and sparking in her magical grasp. I could feel the energy backing up, going through both of us like an electric shock. She cried out in pain and threw the ball, the spell starting to destabilize and shatter, sending out streamers of energy when it hit Rockhoof right in the back.

The shield of strange light around him shattered, and Rockhoof stumbled, staggered by the shot.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Destiny gasped, her voice wavering and weak. My head was pounding with the start of a migraine headache.

Rockhoof jumped, hitting the wall above us and somehow finding purchase there before leaping off again, traversing the elevator shaft in a half-dozen violent bursts of motion, leaving shattered crystal and twisted metal in his wake as he fled.

I watched him go, and Star Swirl trotted up to stand next to me, panting and obviously exhausted.

“Stars and the void, that went badly,” he grumbled.

“No kidding.”

“Not a bad idea, bouncing it like that,” the wizard said. “If he hadn’t run away we might have had him there. You two are at least somewht reliable in a pinch, and that was an excellent rebound spell. You’ll need to work on stability, though. Almost tore the spell matrix apart.”

“Sorry,” Destiny said.

“Don’t apologize. It wasn’t something we’d planned. I’ll give you a few tips along the way.”

“Along the way?” I asked.

“This elevator has graduated from completely broken to a total wreck,” Star Swirl noted. “The next floor is up there and I want to conserve my magic. You’ve got wings. I assume you can also do basic math.”

I could add two and two, and they equaled me giving him a ride. I sighed and nodded.

---

“It really is beautiful,” Destiny said. I’d halfway expected an ambush at the top of the elevator shaft, but it just led out to a garden pathway winding along a wide ledge at the edge of the island. Filigree stems and carbon-black solar panel leaves glinted in the strange half-light of Limbo around crystal formations in a rainbow of colors.

“Is it?” Star Swirl asked. “I find it… very melancholy. These fake flowers and false ferns are all ghosts. They’re mimics in the shape of species that no longer exist. Copies with no original.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I said. “Equestria is rough but it’s not awful. I’ve been to the surface a bunch of times and it seemed sort of fine.”

“Then you haven’t seen the same parts of Equestria I have,” Star Swirl said. “Canterlot, Manehattan, practically the whole east coast. I’ve seen terrible things. All of us did. Time flows differently in Limbo -- it’s like a clock that only moves when you can see it. Things happen one after another but they’re only locally coupled.”

“Locally coupled?”

“In the real world, the passage of time happens at the same rate everywhere at once. If a minute passes in Stalliongrad, a minute has also passed in Canterlot. Here, it depends on observation. From my perspective, only a few moments passed between my spell that cast us into Limbo and the arrival of Princess Flurry Heart and her ship of wonders. To Equestria it was a baker’s dozen centuries and change.”

“That must have been exciting,” Destiny suggested.

“Oh yes. And terrifying.” Star Swirl sighed. “I feel sorry for him, you know.”

“Rockhoof?”

“Yes, but I’m talking about the first pony the darkness took, at least the first I can name. Stygian. The Pony of Shadows. He was a good friend, responsible, devoted, loyal. That’s what I thought until his jealousy overtook him. A decent pony but not really a hero, you know? No great skills or strength but he had a nose for potential and helped us uncover threats to the world. Being surrounded by our greatness was just too much for him, I suppose. He wanted to exceed us, and thought he found a way, but it just took him and used him as a host.”

“And he’s not still around.”

“Of course not. I never wanted to hurt the boy. The decision was taken out of my hooves by Flurry Heart. She hadn’t started calling herself Queen yet, but she already had a reputation. I’m sure you know about the birthday debacle.”

“She got kidnapped by changelings,” I said. “And she killed a bunch of them freeing herself.”

“That’s the sanitized version of the story, yes,” Star Swirl said.

“I didn’t want to mention the rest,” Destiny said quietly. “The Queen of the Changelings took hostages to try and compel Flurry Heart to obey.”

“Indeed. Chamomile, what would you do if your friends were taken hostage? Bray already knows what Flurry Heart decided, so asking her would be pointless.”

“I donno,” I said. “If I didn’t think I could rescue them, I wouldn’t have much choice, right? I’d have to surrender.”

“Yes. That’s the answer most ponies would give. Depending on the circumstances, maybe they’d make a heroic attempt to free their loved ones, or maybe it would be hopeless and they’d have to give up.” Star Swirl nodded. “I’d find a third option, of course, but that comes with age, talent, and experience.”

“Flurry Heart was under a lot of pressure,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t a simple decision! She had to think of her friends and family back home. The Queen probably would have hurt thousands of ponies, and Princess Cadance would have let her!”

“Flurry Heart thinks her mother was weak,” Star Swirl said. “So she took the decision out of her hooves.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“The only power the Queen had over Flurry Heart was to threaten her friends. She took that leverage away. She shot through the hostages.”

“It enabled her to break the back of the Queen’s army,” Destiny said weakly. “It kept the Empire from falling.”

“Yes, she’s had quite a while to justify herself,” Star Swirl agreed.

We walked in silence to the end of the path, which led into a sort of enclosed rock garden, with sand and artfully arranged stones around a silver gazebo. I could see the sand moving on its own, some mechanism under the surface making it look like an unseen rake was slowly working it into spirals and patterns of lines around the small boulders.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like he’s been here.”

“I assumed he’d follow the path,” Star Swirl said. “Let me take some readings--”

The world was swallowed by darkness, everything dropping into black and white around us. A chill went down my spine along with the sense of immediate danger. I grabbed Star Swirl and bolted for the gazebo, just before the grenades hit the ground where we’d been standing. Shrapnel bounced off my armor, a few sharp spikes working their way into the joints and tiny gaps between the plates.

“Damn,” Star Swirl grimaced, looking over the edge of the gazebo at the strike team of Steel Rangers that was surrounding us. “I knew things were going too well.”

Comments

[Reese]

Oof, I am behind here. Sorry about that!

Chapter 57:
"on the back of my neck I felt the danger a"
"on the back of my neck; I felt the danger a"?

Chapter 59:
"standing on the other side of my cell."
"standing on the other side of my cell's bars."?
Not a mechanical error, but I did get an incorrect understanding of where she was initially, until corrected by later text.

Chapter 60:
"strain. It came at me faster and harder than"
"strain. He came at me faster and harder than"?

Ah, so a whole strike team of undead Steel Rangers, attacking them in one of the magic-draining pockets. Well. :D

In any case, fun times, on this side of the screen at least! Thank you for writing, and I'm glad I finally got caught up on this. :)

(Also, I'm guessing that Chamomile's experience with the zebras Rockhoof helped is likely going to come into play to help save him.)