Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 64: Come Along With Me

I looked around the room. The guards had asked me to come with them, then let me in and refused to elaborate. It wasn’t a bad room or anything, but it was really weird, something like a giant boiler room crossed with a spa, a huge, sturdy-looking machine woven out of crystal and steel surrounded by expensive decor, potted plants, a towel rack, and plush carpets. There was even a massage table off to the side.

What was really setting my mane on end was the feeling humming through the place. I could taste magic in the air, a massive amount of it. The only time I’d felt anything like it was when I’d been standing in front of the Grandus with its thaumobooster at full power.

The massive machine let out a deep hiss and the sound of various locks and latches opening. It sounded almost the same as a Stable door hissing open on well-maintained hinges. Mist poured out of it as it cracked open like an egg along armored seams, and I caught the scent of lavender and sandalwood.

Queen Flurry Heart stepped out, and behind her I glimpsed the inside of the chamber, all exposed magnets and antennae focused on a plush seat. She carried a book in her magic and closed it when she spotted me, folding down the corner of one page to mark her place.

“Thank you for coming to meet me,” Flurry Heart said. She motioned for me to follow her and trotted over to a towel rack, pulling one free to wipe sweat from her body. “Do you know what this place is?”

I looked back at the huge machine, which was already sealing itself up. “Not really. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I can feel a ton of magic in the air. Enough to power a megaspell.”

Flurry Heart nodded. “An excellent observation. Most pegasus ponies can’t sense magic, you know. Raven mentioned she suspects some sort of interaction between your armor’s repair talisman and your repeated regeneration from near-death experiences. Regardless, what this is… is the true heart of the Exodus White.”

I tapped a hoof, thinking. The heart of a ship was usually the power plant, right? “Some kind of magical reactor?” I guessed.

“Correct!” Flurry Heart said, amused. “For Raven to perform all the little miracles she does, providing us with food and water and all the things we need to survive in Limbo, she requires energy to keep her SIVA cells active. I provide that energy. Every day, I serve my subjects by sitting in that small chamber and pouring out my magic into huge banks of crystal capacitors.”

“Does it really take that much?” I asked. “I mean… everything seems pretty stable.”

“Every day I must provide enough energy to feed thousands, to keep the lights on, to keep water flowing and time itself from standing still. Yes. It does take that much.”

She tossed the towel aside and walked out of the room, expecting me to follow at her heel, and I did. She was an easy pony to follow, and I don’t mean that just because she had a nice flank and could absolutely murder me in an instant.

“When we arrived in Limbo, it was clear we would have to rely on SIVA for everything. I had volunteered to become the White’s life core, but Raven convinced me it was better to have a separation of power, to be able to keep SIVA on a leash and, if needed, destroy it.”

“Life core?” I frowned.

“Ah, I see Destiny Bray has been remiss in her education on SIVA. It requires a living component, a will to drive it. Raven was a normal pony, once. One of my Great Aunt Celestia’s hoofmaidens.”

“How did she end up here?” I asked.

Flurry Heart looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “She was babysitting me to ensure I didn’t cause another international incident.”

She stopped in front of the most secure set of doors I’d seen so far in the palace and the guards to the sides of the door entered a passcode, gears and locks moving aside to allow the thick doors to open.

Inside, guard stations were set into both walls, concrete bunkers with mounted guns on swivels to cover the whole room. Red and yellow lines were painted on the floor, clearly marking where ponies were and were not allowed to go. It was like the entrance to a fortress, but buried in the core of the Exodus White.

In the far wall, flanked by bulkheads on hydraulic pistons ready to slam shut to cover it, was a large mirror.

“What’s all this for?” I asked.

“Something else Destiny hasn’t mentioned,” Flurry Heart said. “This is one of Star Swirl’s mirrors. This one allows for passage back to Equestria. He built others that lead to… different locations.”

“Other locations?”

I was pretty sure Flurry Heart wouldn’t have answered even if she’d had all the time in the world to do it, but she didn’t have the chance. Instead, the mirror flared with light, the reflection of the containment chamber vanishing. The surface rippled like water and a pony stepped through, Star Swirl stumbling out with a dazed look.

“Ah, there he is,” the Queen said. “Was your search fruitful?”

Star Swirl looked up, half-surprised to see her and definitely surprised to see me. “I see you’ve decided to just reveal all our secrets to her, then.” He sighed and took off his hat, pulling something out of it. A ceramic pot and a wilted flower, long dead.

“Not what you were hoping for, then?” Flurry Heart asked.

“No,” Star Swirl said. “It was supposed to be enchanted and everlasting, but… there are limits, even to magic.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Some kind of potion ingredient?”

“Mistmane had a deep connection to her homeland and saved them from a curse,” Star Swirl explained, putting the pot down and sighing when one of the dry, brown leaves fell away from what was left of the stem. “This flower was an artifact connected to that deed, like a pearl forming in an oyster.”

“Okay?” I frowned. “But why not--”

“Whatever you’re going to suggest I’ve already thought of it,” Star Swirl said dismissively. “I’ve tried other times, finding a caretaker, growing the seeds myself… none of it is working! I might need to find some other way to catalyze the spell, and that could be tricky. Maybe I could use a blood relation, but it would need to be a close one and I don’t know where they’re buried.”

“But--”

“Yes, I thought about asking the zebra! I’m not a bloody tribalist like the ghost you drag around. Back in my day we were too busy hating each other to be worried about stripes or spots.”

“Sure, but--”

“And I already tried different soil. The problem is the seeds are dead!”

“Star Swirl,” Flurry Heart said. He shut up and didn’t interrupt her. “I believe Chamomile has an idea, and it would be polite to listen to what she has to say rather than assume you already know what it is.”

“Fine, yes, you’re right,” Star Swirl said. “Well?” He looked at me pointedly, daring me to have an idea better than any of his.

“When I was out at the main Braytech Cosmodrome, the Exodus Green was full of plants from seed banks. The SIVA had gone wild and was growing a whole jungle out in the tundra and keeping the plants alive when they shouldn’t have been able to survive. Maybe SIVA can bring the flower back to life?”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that idea is?” Star Swirl scoffed. “Anything could happen!”

“It can’t make the flower more dead than it is now,” I pointed out.

“It’s something to try,” Flurry Heart said. “Star Swirl, you should try and come up with an alternate idea. Raven and Miss Chamomile can see to an attempt to regrow the flower. If they fail, we can discuss something else.”

“Fine,” Star Swirl sighed. “I need to find something without going back too far,” he mumbled. “We’ve accomplished so much this time and I can’t reset it again. Not when we’re so close…”

Flurry Heart gently touched his shoulder.

“Rest,” she whispered. “We will succeed.”

---

“And she ate the dragon?” Raven asked when I finished recounting what I’d found in the Exodus Green.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just tore the core out and ate it. I’m pretty sure that stopped the jungle from growing any more. Kind of like…” I shrugged and motioned to the dead houseplant on the table between us. “Like cutting it off from the root.”

“Without a control node of some kind it will be difficult to program the SIVA correctly, especially if it had already undergone so many generations of self-improvement,” Raven noted. She ran her hoof along the edge of the small, almost spherical pot. “It was a good idea. We just don’t have the resources.”

“What if I did have a control node?” I asked.

Raven looked up at me, tilting her head. I tapped my skull.

“I’ve got a cortical node from the high priest I fought. I haven’t had to do much with it, but it’s been keeping my SIVA infection under control.” I shrugged. “I’m also like fifty percent sure it’s why my bones grew back the way they did. Some of the raiders I fought had the same spikes growing out of them I did pinning my bones back in place.”

Raven nodded. “Then we’re in luck. If you can revive the flower, we’ll be able to save Mistmane and ensure the seal on the Darkness stays in place.”

“I’m willing to give it a shot,” I said. We both stood there for a moment. “So, uh… how do I start?”

“I assumed you’d know,” Raven said.

“You’re the expert, right?” I countered. “What would you do?”

“I don’t think my methods would be useful,” Raven apologized. “I would start by constructing a virtual blueprint and then allocating resources to a subsystem to print the actual item.”

“That’s pretty much how we made the Valkyrie weapon,” I sighed. “Kulaas provided a blueprint and I had to stick my hoof in a SIVA node and stare at the blueprint until it responded and started making it.”

“Try picturing the flower,” Raven suggested.

I picked up the pot and closed my eyes, feeling it in my hooves and trying to picture it alive and well. A minute passed.

“Is anything happening?” I whispered.

“No.”

I sighed.

“Let’s try another approach,” Raven suggested.

---

“I’m not really comfortable with all this,” Meadowbrook sighed. “I know how to heal just about everything that can happen to a pony, but this isn’t a pony.”

I frowned. “I thought earth ponies were good with plants?”

She glanced at me, but she hadn’t really looked at me since she’d walked into the room. It was like she was trapped in a cage with a tiger, and speaking as the tiger, it was a little uncomfortable for me too.

“I’m not saying I can’t tend a garden,” Meadowbrook said. “Goodness knows I had a whole heap of medicinal plants I grew from cuttings. This isn’t a healthy little herb that needs a little good soil, it’s a few dead leaves and dry sticks.”

“I know,” I said. “But… there has to be something!” I groaned. “It’s connected to Mistmane and the big… spell thing that Star Swirl keeps talking about without explaining! I have to believe there’s some way to make it work.”

Meadowbrook made a non-committal noise and kept looking the other way. I was starting to get a headache, and I could feel her discomfort hanging in the air like sour milk.

“Look, I get you don’t like me because I’m not a normal pony,” I said. “I’m trying my best to help your friends, and I’d appreciate it if you’d put it aside and just work with me for a minute here!”

She turned to me and finally met my gaze. I was tearing up, and I couldn’t help it. I was angry, and frustrated, and I’d been bottling up worries about what was going on inside me. I didn’t need her making it worse!

“I’m not a bucking monster or a robot or a freak, I’m a pony, and I don’t need somepony who’s supposed to be some kind of legendary doctor refuse to treat me like I’m even a person! Star Swirl might think I’m an idiot, but he doesn’t act like I’m so far beneath him that he can’t even be in the same room!”

“I’m…” Meadowbrook’s expression fell. “Oh, darlin’, that ain’t it. It ain’t you. It’s all on me, and I’m ashamed my own problems hurt you.”

She stepped around the table and took my right forehoof in hers, squeezing it lightly.

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

“Do you know what the hardest thing is for any doctor?” Meadowbrook asked. “Most ponies think it’s havin’ to tell somepony that they’re not gonna make it, but any healer has to learn how to do that real fast or they don’t last long in the job.”

I shrugged weakly, letting her talk.

“The hardest thing is saying ‘I don’t know’,” she said. “Back in my time, and that was an awful long ago, I got to be known as the best healer around because I always knew. I could diagnose a pony from a county away and cure anything short of a rainy day! I taught other ponies and even got some of them to the point I wasn’t a nervous wreck wanting to step in when they work workin’.”

She smiled faintly, but it was a very somber smile.

“I thought… when we all went back to Equestria for a time, I thought I could take those ponies that got hurt and heal them. I’m used to seeing folks on their worst days, working with no real supplies, having to improvise but… I couldn’t make heads or tails of things.” She slumped. “Turns out almost all the sicknesses I knew about? They died out centuries ago, or ponies had cures ten for a bit in every corner store. And there’d been a thousand years of medicine I didn’t know about. Surgeries and treatments and tinctures and potions that I didn’t know how to use at all! I was a foal starting again from zero and the best I could do was some first aid. I felt pathetic.”

I swallowed. “If it helps, I can’t even do first aid.”

She laughed and wiped at her own eyes. “None of that was as bad as all the things I couldn’t cure. Poison in the air and the water and the ground. Ponies told me about radiation sickness right quickly and I had my own bad experience with it that left me laid up in an awful mess for a few days, but then there’s taint and all kinds of things designed just to hurt. Things that aren’t just hard to cure but were made to be incurable.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I hate the part of myself that was glad to come back here,” Meadowbrook said. “It felt like abandoning a patient in need. Felt like I was sitting there over an open wound and makin’ somepony else take care of it because I couldn’t cut it.”

The healer let go of my hoof and touched the spot on my chest that was different from the rest, where my coat had grown back silver, with fur that caught the light like tinsel.

“When I look at you, it ain’t that I think you’re less of a pony than I am. It’s that I’m less of a doctor than I should be. Didn’t even know how to start helping you, and then I start having all sorts of worries about what might happen to any of us. You bounce back real good but what if it’d been Star Swirl or Somnambula who ended up stuck on a branch like that? What if I’m not good enough a healer to save them because I lost the touch?”

“I think as long as you care, you haven’t lost your touch,” I said.

“Thank you,” Meadowbrook said softly. “I’m gonna think for a bit on things to try. Maybe you could try asking around? There has to be a farmer or somepony who worked with plants around here, right?”

---

Clang.

I’d ended up back in the forge almost without meaning to do it. Destiny had set up a little workshop away from the heat and sparks of Rockhoof’s metalworking, and was helping him with the more delicate parts of his work.

“I don’t like being idle,” Destiny explained. “I’m already dead, and I can’t really sleep or rest, so it’s just lying there doing nothing.”

Rockhoof laughed and brought his hammer down on the metal. He was looking much better than he had before, his build and muscles filled out until he was literally twice the pony he had been. He nodded to the floating helmet, and she levitated the dully-glowing bar of metal back into the flames.

“I should have asked a unicorn to help me smith years ago!” Rockhoof chuckled. “I used to have to do that bit with tongs and me face! Haven’t had to put out a beard fire once since she took over!”

“It’s just too bad you don’t know anything about farming,” I sighed. “I was hoping you’d have some kind of advice.”

Rockhoof wiped his brow and gave me a big slap on the back between the wings.

“You shouldn’t be so worried. The only thing I’d know is how to do it the earth pony way, and you’re no earth pony. Maybe you need to find your own way?”

“I guess,” I mumbled. “I just sort of thought all earth ponies knew about farming.”

“Sorry, lass. If I’d been a farmer, I wouldn’t have left with Star Swirl when he invited me on his grand and foalish adventures! I think that’s true for all of us. Mistmane was the closest we had, but truth is, she couldn’t bear to stay in her own homeland.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “She broke some kind of curse, right?”

“Nay, what the mare did was take the curse into herself,” Rockhoof said. “The way she tells it, her best friend was blighted by the backfire of a spell of eternal youth. She broke the curse and saved her friend and her people, but at great personal cost. When Star Swirl found her, she was already on the road doing what good she could.”

“I don’t get it, she was willing to sacrifice everything, but still left?”

Rockhoof sighed. “I don’t know if it’s my place to talk but you’re mixed up in this and you deserve to know. Mistmane knew her time was short. It had been ever since she saved her friend. She wanted to leave the world a better place than she found it.”

“Must have been a shock to end up this far in the future,” I said quietly.

“A bigger shock when she found out nothing she’d made had lasted,” Rockhoof said.

“I can sympathize with that,” Destiny said. “Until we came here I thought my technology was only good for creating monsters. Chamomile’s whole hometown got wiped out by infectious SIVA. This is what I wanted it to do, to let ponies build a whole new civilization from scratch!”

“It’s not a bad place,” Rockhoof agreed. “But I hope someday we can go back to Equestria proper. Do things the earth pony way. It isn’t as fast and easy as your SIVA, but doing it yourself connects you to your work.”

The doors burst open, and Star Swirl strutted in.

“Everypony, shut up!” he declared. “I’ve arrived with a solution to all of our problems! Again. You can begin applauding me whenever you like.”

“You figured out how to bring the flower back to life?” I stood up, excited.

“No, I fixed your broken plan. With how much you’ve been asking around it’s clear you have no idea what you’re doing.” Star Swirl trotted over and took off his hat, producing a leather-sided canteen from within it before returning the bell-lined hat to his head. “You’re trying to get your implants to work and you can’t communicate with them.”

“Right, so?”

“And what did you do last time you had this problem?” Star Swirl asked.

“Well, uh… I had some problems getting the cortical node activated, and I had to sort of go on a spirit journey thing. I don’t know if it was magical and actually spiritual or just a kind of guided meditation.”

“Neither do I,” Star Swirl said. “Frankly I don’t like all that wishy-washy business with connections between souls and reincarnation and higher planes, but we’re in a room on another plane and at least one pony in the room is a disembodied spirit, so I’m willing to leave my comfort zone in the presence of strong evidence.”

“I hope the point comes along soon and finds its way out of his mouth or we’ll be here all day,” Rockhoof stage-whispered.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “I visited your friendly little zebra tribe. It’s absurd but they had no idea who I was! I had to explain I was a friend of both of you, and they agreed to give me something that should help. This--” he shook the canteen, something inside splashing around. “--Is their special little Datura brew that sent you on your spirit journey before.”

“Will that work?” I asked.

“Of course it’ll work,” Star Swirl said. “I even made a special trip back to the wasteland just to get it. You should stop questioning me and start thanking me. I practically had to beg them for help, you know. I hate having to beg for help. Ponies used to respect me!”

“I respect you,” Destiny said.

“And that’s why I consider you the second-smartest pony in the room after myself,” Star Swirl replied. “So, get on with it! Drink the tea and let’s get this show on the road!”

“Well, it can’t hurt to try,” I said. I took the canteen from him and unscrewed the top. The potent herbal smell of the tea wafted out. I braced myself for the bitter taste and raised it to my lips, taking a long slug of the herbal infusion.

Around me, the world spun in two directions at once. I stumbled when the floor stopped holding me up and tried to catch myself on the--

---

--sandy shore of a misty sea of stars. I blinked and looked around. I was in the familiar field on a mountaintop, overgrown with grass and scattered patches of flowers. It was the same in the way a recurring dream is the same, where even if things have wildly changed you just somehow know it’s the same place.

A new landmark had appeared, a tall, scraggly tree in the field, twisted and tough and hanging on with roots driven into the rock to hold it against even the strongest winds. I slowly approached it, noting a beehive hanging from one branch. It didn’t feel dangerous, with no sense that I might be stung.

“You’re back,” whispered a weak voice. I squinted, and I could just make out a face in the grain and bark of the tree. It moved when it spoke, something between a carving in the bark and seeing shapes in clouds.

“Fornax?” I asked.

“Just a memory of a memory of a pony,” he said, his voice carried from somewhere far away on a wind that rattled the tree’s branches just a tiny bit. “Hanging on, lingering, persisting. As life does, even just a phantom pretending to be life.”

“This is gonna sound weird, but I’m actually kind of happy to see you,” I said. I sat down in front of the tree.

“I didn’t expect to speak again, so forgive me if my pleasantries are rusty from disuse,” Fornax croaked. The tree shuddered slightly in a silent laugh that I felt more than heard.

“You know basically everything about how to use SIVA, right?” I asked.

“Ah, you’ve come seeking enlightenment, then,” he said. “All I have is yours to take. That’s what it means to be truly defeated. I can only hope to linger as somepony you used to know, however briefly.”

“I’m trying to grow a flower.”

“Should I remind you I was a poet in life? I didn't even see a living flower until I found the Green.”

“Yeah well, nopony seems to be a farmer around here, and the Green dragon was making a buckload of trees using SIVA, so you’ve got to know something!”

“I do,” Fornax agreed. “The Green isn’t something you tame and control. It doesn’t bend to the wishes of ponies. You saw the dragon. It couldn’t be controlled by the will of ponies.”

I thought back to it, and for an instant the beast appeared, a vision in the fog around the little mountain peak of my inner world. It had been massive, made of copper turned completely green with patina from the volcanic gasses leaking into the broken Exodus ship. The faces of something like a dozen ponies had been embedded in its belly, like a mural of half-melted flesh and metal.

“It had been programmed not to care about ponies, at least no more than any other creature, so no single will could master it. All of them together, the whole crew of the ship, were forced into one body. All they had in common was their desire to heal nature.”

“Great, because that’s what I want to do, too! I need to get this flower back to life.” The dragon vanished, replaced with an image of the dead flower hanging over us, a hundred times larger than life.

“To do that, you need to stop being so afraid,” Fornax said. “Deep inside you, you’re afraid of SIVA.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” I said.

As if to spite me, images flashed around us, like a thunderstorm with the clouds lighting up as huge projections of my twisted foreleg, the monsters in my home town, my mom, being broken and crippled with spikes growing from every part of my body. The feeling of ants crawling between my skin and the muscle underneath. Being eaten alive.

“You are,” Fornax retorted. “And not without reason. You are allowed to fear things. Fear keeps ponies alive.”

“I need this to work,” I said.

“Being able to use SIVA like this will mean awakening it again,” Fornax warned. “It has acted to save your life, but it has done little else. It could decide to change you further.”

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

---

I woke up gasping, holding onto the table for dear life. I was dizzy and drained and I started to fall. Tiny bits of plastic and metal ripped away from me, pulling out of my skin bloodlessly, as easy as detaching cables inside a machine. Strong hooves caught me, and I looked back to see Raven standing there, looking pensive.

“Are you alright?” Raven asked. “There was a significant disturbance."

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Star Swirl said, stroking his beard and looking at the mess I’d made.

The flowerpot sat on the small table we’d left it on before my little trip, but that was about the only thing that hadn’t changed. Coppery wires and thin, pulsing veins of green plastic twisted together to form vines that sprouted from where my hooves had touched the table and spilled out from there, crawling across the table and floor and going up the wall almost to the ceiling. Flowers and glowing, metallic fruit hung from it like grapes made in a foundry.

A few of the tendrils grew right into the pot, and the dry stem was green again, reinforced by a delicate lattice of metal. Needles pierced the dead plant, forcing its circulatory system back to life. The leaves were already regrowing, though they were backed by carbon fiber.

“I really hope it works,” I said. My head was pounding. “I’m getting a terrible migraine.”

“You forcibly reprogrammed a significant number of my SIVA micromachines,” Raven noted, looking up at what I’d made. “It was some kind of high-powered microwave burst transmission.”

“It’s how the Green was controlled back in Equestria,” I said.

“You must have a small transmitter inside you somewhere,” she noted. “Or… perhaps your subdermal weave acts like an antenna?”

“Don’t ask me.” I shrugged. “Could I have some aspirin and a lot of water?”

“Of course,” Raven said. “I’ve alerted the staff to have some sent up.”

“It’s blooming!” Star Swirl yelled.

A new bud formed at the top of the stem, the edges going from green to bright pink. I was afraid to see what it’d turn into. Was I going to be responsible for creating some kind of awful plant monster?

The petals unfurled, long and beautiful. A light scent of perfume filled the air, strangely nostalgic. It looked almost perfect, aside from the small status light in the very center of the bloom, a tiny LED glowing green and telling everypony that things were fine despite its very presence meaning the opposite.

“Let me see if you bungled this up…” Star Swirl muttered, casting a spell and muttering to himself.

A changeling ran into the room with a tray, offering me a few pills and a glass of water. I took them gratefully, downing them while Star Swirl paced around the flower, casting a number of other spells and looking annoyed.

“This might actually work,” Star Swirl decided, after a few long minutes, and either the relief hit me like a truck or the pills kicked in at just the right time because the pain and throbbing started to fade. “The connection is still there. It’s a little weaker than the others, but present. I wouldn’t have wanted to risk it as our first attempt, but we’ve got two successes already, and I can make a few alterations to the ritual to fine-tune it.”

“Does that mean…” I asked.

“That’s right,” Star Swirl said. “Once you’re feeling back in fighting shape, you’re going after Mistmane.”

Comments

[FridayPie]

Chamomile is about become an Alicorn of Technology,

[Reese]

Finally getting back to more of this story. :)

"in when they work workin’."
"in when they were workin’."?