Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 90: Black Song, White Scales

The song came out of the fog from all sides, rising and falling and rattling through my whole body. It was a melody of mournful moans, a dirge trying to be seductive. Shapes moved through the mist, vanishing too quickly for me to get a good look at them. I saw suggestions of fins, scales, and huge maws filled with fangs.

“Chamomile, serious question, how do you have enemies even somewhere you’ve never been before?” Midnight asked.

“This isn’t my fault, this is one of Destiny’s enemies!” I protested.

“I guess that’s sort of true,” Destiny admitted. “But it shouldn’t count when there was a war going on! And these necromancers were basically terrorists, it’s not personal, and they’re just crazy and tribalist and get obsessed with things really easily!”

“Any idea what’s out there?” I asked. “I can’t see through the fog.”

“All I can tell is they’re big, and they look like the biggest, nastiest seaponies I’ve ever seen,” Midnight replied.

“They must be the Sirens!” Destiny called out. “One of the most famous stories about Star Swirl involves them. They used dark magic to control ponies and feed off the disharmony and strife and wiped out a whole city before Star Swirl could banish them from Equestria forever!”

“I guess we know where they went,” I said.

“Sounds like we’re famous, girls!” a sultry voice called from the mist.

“You can’t keep the sirens down, Adagio!” a more cheerful voice giggled.

“You’re too happy, Sonata. Let’s just kill them and get it over with,” the third, annoyed voice growled. A purple, dragon-like head rose out of the mist, scales ragged and fins full of holes. Her glowing eyes looked at me with disinterest.

The happy voice snorted with laughter. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the grave!” A blue monster appeared on the other side of the building, circling around from behind us. She waved to us with an almost-skeletal fin. “Hi everybody!”

“Sonata, Aria, don’t fight.” A golden dragon reared up majestically, in slightly better condition than the others. She smirked down at us, not that she could do anything except smile with her lips rotted away to show a maw full of ivory fangs. “It’s been too long since we’ve had prey.”

“I command you to destroy them!” the necromancer called out.

“You command us?” the golden dragon, Adagio, asked. She tilted her head to the zebra lich.

“My magic brought you back to life! Your will is mine to command, spirit!” The zebra raised its staff, green necromatic light flashing from the tip. I could feel it crawling over my skin, hard radiation and magic clawing at my body and soul.

The light vanished with the flick of a golden tail, a fin knocking the staff away.

“Somebody is learning a valuable lesson today,” the blue Sonata giggled quietly.

“I-I am in control here!” the zebra shouted.

Adagio leaned in closer, the tip of her snout almost touching the necromancer. “You’re so dumb it’s almost cute.”

She opened her mouth and blasted the necromancer across the roof with a burst of sound and magic, the explosion of song driving the zebra to its knees, struggling to stand.

“Girls, let’s show this wannabe what real control looks like,” Adagio said, rearing back. She started weaving a song, notes echoing through the thick air, heavy with magic. The other two sirens responded, each of them singing a slightly different note, adding up to a chord that built up in a standing wave, the entire roof starting to vibrate from the power.
I braced myself for something big and… kept bracing.

“Am I supposed to be dead now?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, you will be soon,” Midnight promised. She turned on me in a flash, stabbing with her glass knife. I raised up my right arm to block on instinct. Sparks flew from the carbide coating as her knife started cutting through.

“What are you doing?!” I yelped, shoving her back. Midnight twisted on her tall heels and spun around, licking her lips and smirking. Her eyes were flat, glowing green.

The tablet in my pocket buzzed, then let out a stinging shock. I grabbed it with my other hand to look. Destiny’s image was distorted, twitchy, and filled with static, runes flashing on the screen in bright green. “You have to die, Chamomile,” Destiny said, her voice dull. The tablet shocked me again and I dropped it in surprise.

“I can’t… control…” the necromancer lunged at me, trying to claw at me. I grabbed an outstretched arm and tossed it aside. The bag of skin and bones barely weighed anything, and I almost ended up throwing it over the edge.

“I get it,” I said. “The undead sirens have some kind of power to control other undead, and I’m immune because I’m still alive!”

“Actually I think it’s because you’re too stupid for brain control to work,” Sonata chirped as she swam past.

“I’m not stupid!” I yelled back at her.

“Let’s not pretend you’re a genius,” Midnight snorted, appearing in a blur behind me and driving her knife into my back. The blade hit my ribs and glanced off. “Huh, that’s weird. Usually, that’s the sweet spot.”

“I’m just full of surprises,” I grunted, turning to face her. She danced away, so fast that I might as well have been standing still.

“If you don’t succeed, stab, stab again!” Aria cackled. Midnight’s eyes flashed with light and she jumped, coming down on my shoulders and stabbing at my neck. I still had a scar there from the last time someone had slit my throat. I grabbed the knife, the edge cutting into my fingers, blood running down the blade and dripping between us.

“You’re only making this hard for yourself,” Midnight said. “All I have to do is twist the blade a little and you’re going to--”

She twisted, the blade scraping against bone. It hurt. Really, really badly. I was not enjoying having hands. The deep cuts in my fingers stung twice as harshly as they should’ve. But not as badly as being stabbed in the neck. I squeezed tighter, not letting her go.

“Huh. I thought that would cut through you,” she admitted, sounding impressed. “Are you even a pony, or just a fancy robot?”

“If you weren’t already an evil monster I’d be really offended,” I said, trying to ignore the feeling of blood running down my wrist. I grabbed her wrist with my other hand and twisted, breaking her grip on the knife. Midnight yanked her arm free and kicked off my chest, jumping back weightlessly, defying gravity like she was still hiding a set of wings somewhere.

“This is my favorite part,” Adagio taunted from the far side of the roof. “You don’t want to hurt her, and she can’t stop herself!”

“After she kills you, we’ll let her go just long enough to realize what she did,” Aria hissed.

Midnight dropped down and ran at me with unearthly celerity, going for the knife. I kicked it away just before she could grab it, and she resorted to just slamming into my legs. I wasn’t steady on two legs, and the hit to my knees sent me sprawling.

The necromancer jumped on top of me, hissing and chomping like a feral ghoul, rotting teeth and ghostly shadows of fangs filling its maw. I grabbed its neck and held it back, trying to get enough room to stand. I saw Midnight in the corner of my vision, picking up her blade and tossing it into the air, flipping it around to adjust her grip.

I took a gamble and tossed the necromancer over the edge of the roof, aiming for the nearest singing voice. I looked back, following it as it fell. Sonata snapped at it on instinct, the blue sea monster taking the bait and swallowing it whole.

“Ew!” Sonata gagged, trying to spit it up. “That tasted horrible!”

“Sonata!” Aria yelled. “You idiot! What are you doing?!” She turned around and walked back to her sister to scream in her face.

“I don’t feel so good,” Sonata groaned, starting to curl up on herself like a seahorse.

“Girls, you’re messing up the song!” Adagio screeched.

Midnight froze in place, the green light fading from her eyes, replaced with the normal -- and I am using normal very liberally here -- red glow. “Woah,” she said. “That was weird. I had some really good reason I was trying to kill you and now I can’t remember what it was at all!”

“Welcome to the club,'' I groaned, holding my bleeding hand close to my body and picking up Destiny. “Please don’t shock me.”

“I’m so sorry!” Destiny looked like she was practically on the verge of tears. The image flickered, dimmer than before. “I didn’t mean to hurt you! It was some kind of spell and--”

“I know,” I told her. “Are you okay? The image…”

“This tablet has some kind of internal battery. Those shocks drained a lot of the charge. I think I’ll be okay, but I have to dim the screen to use less power.”

“We’ll finish up fast,” I promised. I stuffed the tablet back into my shirt pocket. “Midnight?”

“Fast is no problem,” Midnight said with a toothy grin. “I can’t even remember how many times ponies have said I’m inappropriately fast for a lady!”

She went after the purple pony eater and I ran at Adagio. The golden-scaled creature seemed like the leader, and if I kept her from organizing anything, it’d make fighting at a disadvantage less disadvantage-ing.

There was no time to consider if disadvantage-ing was a word. I ran at the edge of the roof, tried not to think about how much I wished I could fly right now, and jumped for Adagio while she was yelling at her sisters. I hit her side, realized in that moment that I hadn’t even known for sure if she was solid or just a ghost, and scrambled for a grip, my metal fingers punching through the rotting scales and finding a rib.

Adagio roared and turned, an eye the size of a dinner plate glaring at me. She tried to get the right angle to snap at me. Her long fangs couldn’t quite get the right angle, the siren turning as she struggled, like a dog chasing its tail.

“Get off me!” she yelled.

“Or what?” I yelled back. “You’ll try and kill me?”

“She’s got you there,” Aria laughed. “We were already trying to murder her. What are you going to threaten her with, having to go on a date with you?”

“Just get her off me!” Adagio yelled, snapping her tail like a whip and trying to throw me off.

“Fine! As long as it makes you stop complaining!” Aria groaned. She turned around, and Midnight landed on her snout, standing on the very tip as easily as I’d stand on flat ground. “What the--?”

Midnight drove her knife into Aria’s glowing eye. The undead siren screamed, and glowing ectoplasm sprayed into the air. Midnight jumped away and watched Aria thrash in agony, twisting and turning in place.

“You little--” Adagio growled, flipping upside-down. I squeaked in surprise and gripped tighter, which seemed like a mistake when the rib I was holding onto started to crack. I slipped a little as the rib started to come free of her body entirely, the rotting flesh beginning to give instead of supporting my weight.

“Chamomile!” Midnight yelled. “Heads up!”

Her knife thudded into the siren, barely missing my face.

“Careful!” I shouted.

Midnight stuck her tongue out at me. “I warned you! Thank me instead of complaining!”

I grabbed the handle of the knife, using it to steady myself. Adagio flew straight up, forcing me to twist the knife to keep it from sliding through her body. I had no idea what she was doing until she came back down and slammed into the roof, smashing me into the concrete.

She flew off, and I stayed where I was, still holding the knife.

“Ow,” I said.

“Any broken bones?” Midnight asked. “Oh hey, you kept my knife! Thanks!” She took it out of my hand and didn’t help me up.

“My bones are really tough because I get extra calcium,” I said. The world was spinning around me.

“Your bones are tough because they’re mostly carbon fiber and hyperalloy,” Destiny corrected. “You should get more vitamins, though.”

“Put it on my to-do list,” I sighed. I had to get up on my own since no one was helping me.

“Girls, I really don’t feel good,” Sonata moaned, fins wrapped around her body. Green light pulsed out of her rotting guts. “Something’s wrong!”

Sonata screeched and threw her head back. Green light poured out of her mouth like a spotlight, reaching up into the sky. In her belly, something burned like a coal, brighter and brighter with every moment.

“Eating the necromancer that brought you back might not have been a great idea,” I said, backing away from her. She was a bomb on the verge of exploding, and I didn’t know how long we’d have until it went off. My foot hit the raised edge of the roof, and I glanced back and looked down. I couldn’t see what was below us. At best it was five stories onto concrete and being hurt badly enough Midnight would have to drag me back to the portal. At worst I’d fall through the mist and get swallowed up by one of those bottomless rifts cutting through the earth.

Lightning tore out of Sonata’s flesh, raking across the other Dazzlings and wrapping around them. The energy surged, pulling the sirens closer together. They all screamed as Sonata finally split open entirely, a dull wet whomp and crackle of pins and needles across my skin accompanied by blinding light.

For a brief second I thought it might be over.

“What did you do, Sonata?!” Adagio yelled.

I blinked the light out of my eyes.

“What the buck?” I asked.

“That’s not what I would have expected,” Destiny said from my pocket.

The three sirens were surrounded by a corona of sparks, the necromatic energy fading away or being absorbed. Calling them the ‘Three Sirens’ might have been incorrect now, though. The energy had done something bizarre, forcing them together and merging their battered, broken bodies into one. Three long necks curled out of their shared body, a single forked tail with twin fins whipping at the air behind them and fins splayed in a peacock-like array of multicolored scales.

“It’s not my fault!” Sonata whined, shrinking down to below the eye level of the other two Sirens. “That weird thing I ate made me sick! It’s their fault!”

“I swear if there isn’t a way to fix this I’m going to tear my own head off just to get away from you!” Aria roared.

Midnight leaned in to whisper to me. “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I whispered back.

“Let’s kill them, then figure things out,” Adagio said firmly. “We’re a team, girls. We can get ourselves apart, but first we need to get our act together!”

“Murder does sound good,” Aria agreed, turning away from her family to fix her glare on us instead.

“Maybe if we eat them, it’ll make my stomach feel better!” Sonata suggested, smiling happily and licking her lips.

“Bad,” I decided.

The sirens beat their huge, sail-like fins and charged at us, screaming for our blood. If this had been my first giant monster rodeo I would have been terrified. Now, I had all the instincts drilled into me. I knew exactly what I needed to do to win. I’d just jump at the last moment, then fly onto its back and--

I realized flying was going to be an issue when the peak of my jump was considerably lower than my ambition.

Instead of gracefully landing on the back of the conjoined monstrosity, I was clinging to Adagio’s snout. She crossed her eyes and tried to focus on me.

“How about we call this whole thing a draw and try again later?” I suggested.

She didn’t like the idea. Aria and Sonata went for me at the same time Adagio tossed her head back to try and throw me into the air. Blue and purple snouts came together in a fang-filled kiss that left both of them confused and two-thirds of the brainpower of the sirens (by volume, not quality) forgot they were supposed to be flying. Adagio lunged for me, and looked bewildered as her body carried her downwards against her will.

They hit the ground first, going right past the roof and down through the fog, slamming back-first into the street and throwing up a cloud of ash and dust. I dropped into a safe landing on their belly, the soft flesh bouncing me like a trampoline.

“Oof!” Sonata gasped, finally getting her fangs untangled from Aria’s.

“How could you mess that up?!” Aria demanded.

“It wasn’t my fault, she’s tricky!” Sonata complained.

Adagio groaned, struggling to pull her head out of a ruined bus. The sirens started to turn over, getting their fins under them. I jumped off, running and hiding behind a mailbox.

“There has to be some way to kill them,” I whispered to myself. “They’re even dumber than I am, and I know I could outsmart myself!”

“Maybe you could throw a really big rock at them,” Destiny helpfully suggested.

Adagio reared up, the van still on her head, and unleashed a blast of sonic energy, the shockwave tearing the car apart like a bomb. Shrapnel blasted across the street, shattering the few intact windows and gouging chunks out of the concrete. Debris rained down from the shattered facade.

“Throw a rock at them, huh?” I asked. “Maybe we’ll try that.”

I stood up and waved my arms.

“Hey! I’m over here!” I yelled.

“I know!” Sonata chirped. “You weren’t hiding very well. You’re like, twice the size of that mailbox!”

“Oh.” I lowered my arms. Coughed. “So--”

Aria and Adagio roared and threw themselves at me. I yelped and ran for it, bolting inside the building behind me, which had been some kind of department store. The triple-headed monster tore through mannequins and racks of dusty clothing, bowling them aside and shattering concrete support beams as easily as it did the rotting fixtures, ignoring everything in its enraged pursuit.

Cracks shot through the ceiling, and rumbling started behind me. I picked up the pace, an extra layer of mortal danger motivating me to find a new reserve of strength. I could see the fire escape door. Pebbles were coming down in my path, a hailstorm right before the avalanche of destruction.

I jumped and slammed into the door, going through it and into the alleyway beyond, rolling in the ashes and skidding to a stop. The department store creaked, and the last of it all gave out, the top floors pancaking down all the way to the ground, uncountable tons of concrete crushing the Sirens.

The roar took ages to finally fade into silence. Everything was still.

“Think that rock was big enough?” I asked.

“You really take the living disaster thing seriously, don’t you?” Midnight asked. She was leaning on the alleyway wall behind us. I had no idea how long she’d been there. “I was going to step in, you know. If something went wrong.”

The rubble shifted. Midnight’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed her knife. I spun around. A massive, finned talon raised out of the broken slabs of concrete, shuddering and straining.

“No way,” I groaned.

“Nobody could have survived that!” Destiny said.

The talon went limp, collapsing. Everything went still again. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“That’s the end of them,” I said, collapsing down to sit on the ground. “I don’t want to fight any more monsters today. Not unless I can get a cool sword.”

“Yeah, it’s not fair to the monsters unless you have a handicap,” Midnight joked.

The light shifted around us. Grey nothing was replaced by the red of the twilight, the crimson of a sun about to dip below the horizon. I looked back, and found myself looking up at that huge building, twice the size of anything around it and topped with an impossible castle looking down at the city from cloud level.

The light wasn’t the sun. The sun was distant, far away and above everything and just a background to what went on around it. The sun wasn’t personal. The ball of flame in the sky over the castle was focused and intent, an eye staring down at me and daring me to meet its gaze.

“I think someone noticed us,” I said quietly. It felt like the eye was listening in, even from a mile away.

The mist in the street parted, blown aside by a gust of hot wind and showing a clear path all the way to the base of that skyscraper, the tallest building I’d ever seen.

“And they want to meet us,” Destiny added. “I don’t think we can refuse.”

---

“Welcome to my home,” a voice echoed. The castle was dark and somehow slightly too warm, despite the altitude. I stepped out of the elevator and my feet sank into plush red carpet, decorated with an abstract pattern in crimson and gold.

The door closed behind us, the elevator buttons going dark. Midnight met my gaze and shrugged. We’d been gently directed through an empty lobby to an express elevator with no buttons or switches, lined in gold and exotic wood. It was an elevator for people who were summoned, who weren’t even in control of the situation enough to choose which floor they went to.

We walked into the hall, and it was as big as a little girl’s imagination of what a castle should be like, arching overhead with ornate rafters and windows showing slivers of the dead sky outside. The entire far wall was one giant window, with a desk bigger than a banquet table set in front of it and a single person behind it, looking out of the window with one arm behind her back and the other holding a delicate glass.

“I originally considered purchasing a castle from overseas and having it shipped here brick-by-brick,” she said. “But every one that I toured left something to the imagination. People here all think so small. So I designed this one myself.”

She turned to look at us. She was young, only a little older than I was. I’d been expecting something other than an attractive redhead in a black suit.

“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” she said, motioning in front of her desk. Two chairs appeared in flashes of black and red flame. For just a fraction of a second, I felt the same kind of power that radiated out of Flurry Heart, and then it was instantly gone. The way she could hide it was more terrifying than the power itself. “I assume you’re here to see me. Can I offer you some wine? It’s literally the best in the world.”

“I’m good,” I said, stepping closer and trying to play it cool. It was never a good idea to seem afraid.

“I prefer a stronger vintage,” Midnight said, trying to reclaim at least some fragment of her usual cool. She sat down in one of the offered seats at an angle, looking very nearly at ease.

Sunset’s free hand erupted in a burst of flames, leaving behind a champagne glass half-full with something thick and darker than any real wine. She offered it to Midnight, who took it in mute shock. “You don’t have to be so afraid,” she said. “I am not your enemy.”

“And you’re not my friend,” I said, almost automatically.

Sunset’s smile widened. I saw the same predatory look Midnight had when she was ready to murder me under the Sirens’ control.

“I see we have mutual acquaintances,” Sunset said. “But only one of us said no.”

“How’d that work out for you?” I asked. I looked past her to the window.

She didn’t even flinch. “It’s done wonderful things for my skin. I’m told I look excellent for my age.” Sunset raised her glass to us. “So, you came here to ask me a favor, didn’t you, Destiny?”

“Hello, Sunset,” Destiny chirped from my pocket. “I really didn’t think you’d be alive.”

Sunset laughed, exactly once. A sharp ‘ha’ that lasted as long as a stab in the back. “I’m glad I could defy your expectations. I’m just sorry you didn’t last the same way. If you ask nicely, I might be able to do something about that.”

“I don’t believe your masters would want to help me,” Destiny said.

“Because you fought them?” Sunset asked. “Don’t be absurd. Strength is the only thing that matters. If you succeed, you were stronger. It doesn’t matter if it was because of planning or preparation or brute force or even luck. All of those are types of power they respect.”

“Thanks, but I’m doing fine,” Destiny assured her.

“Have it your way,” Sunset shrugged. “They’ll be around when you’re ready to make a deal. So what can I do for you? Do you want to borrow a thaumonuclear device? A cure for vampirism? The truth about what Celestia kept in her private diary?”

“Of all of those, I believe the diary thing the least,” Midnight said. She took a sip of the blood.

“When I was a foal I didn’t really understand boundaries well, and I read everything I got my hooves on,” Sunset said. “Mostly she wrote about her dreams, if you’re curious. She could sometimes see the future in them.”

“I want your private key,” Destiny said. “We have a file we need to open.”

“Really? You crossed between worlds just to ask me for my old passwords?” Sunset looked bored. She sighed. “That’s so… mundane.”

“It was sent to my family by Kuulas,” Midnight explained. “It’s got to be something important. We can’t get it open without your key.”

“If it came from that machine, it’s absolutely vital,” Sunset admitted. “But if it’s locked with my key…” she tossed her glass aside casually, and it vanished in midair with a puff of flame like it was nothing but flash paper. “There weren’t many projects under my direct control. All of them were something more…” she pursed her lips. “More for my personal goals than anything else.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Mostly ways to kill Princess Celestia.” Sunset shrugged. “Not that I’d ever do it, but it amused me to think about it. It’s a real challenge, and I never found a good solution to the problem. Not without killing a lot of ponies, and that’s going too far even for me!”

A distant rumble of thunder rolled through the air.

Sunset hopped off her desk. “Let me go take care of something.” She walked back to the windows and pressed a button set into the frame, opening a wide set of double doors in the glass wall. She motioned for us to follow and stepped outside.

I gave Midnight a look and she shook her head. I nodded understandingly and followed Sunset outside.

The air was thin out on the balcony, but there should have been wind at this altitude, an almost constant flow. Even in this alien body I could tell the stillness was unnatural. Dead air hanging over the rotting corpse of the earth.

Sunset walked right up to the edge, looking down a hundred stories to the city streets.

The sirens tore their way out of the rubble that had collapsed on top of them, rising into the air, singing a tritone that vibrated through my whole body.

“I really thought you’d gotten them,” Sunset said. “Maybe I underestimated those three.”

“Do you have a big gun I could borrow?” I asked.

“Please, you’re my guest. Let me take care of this.” She offered her glass to me. “Hold this for a moment, will you?”

She hadn’t even been holding a glass a moment ago. She’d created it just so she could ask me to hold it. Sunset cracked her knuckles.

The world went dark. In the pitch black I could see the triangles in the sky, still in the same places, holes of nothing in a field of absolute darkness, an invisible pattern of black on black that should have been impossible.

The darkness collapsed into a point and burst into flame. Crimson fire erupted into life, and magic as hot and stifling as a steel smelter roared to life. It was so thick I could choke on it, the power of an alicorn with no temperance or restraint. A star on the knife-edge of a supernova. A reactor surging towards critical.

Huge wings of fire beat at the air, lifting the creature of scarlet flame into the air. A crown of golden fire burned on top of her head between twisting horns, and smoke and embers clothed her form.

Sunset Shimmer looked down at the Sirens. They opened their maws, unleashing a triplicate burst of pure sonic force. I could see the air rippling.

The crimson queen motioned dismissively, and the air split apart. There was a loud, crackling pop, and it took me a moment to realize what she’d done. She hadn’t countered the effect with a spell or deflected it with a shield, she’d simply removed the air between them, creating a vacuum. It should have been impossible.

She didn’t care about other people’s opinions on ‘impossible.’

Sunset sang a single note. It resonated through the air, burning runes into the sky. The sirens focused their energy and sang at a different pitch, disrupting it just before it hit. I could feel Sunset’s amusement.

She started singing, not in words but in the voice of sorcery itself. Every note in the chaotic tune was a killing stroke. The sirens tried to keep up, changing their song to try and match her. Flashes of black and white cascaded across the space above the dead city.

The sirens made a mistake. Sang the wrong note, and Sunset’s spell burned through them, tearing the three apart in a burst of energy that returned them to their original forms and cast them down to the street below.

The demon queen watched them for another few moments, then turned back, satisfied.

Sunset landed, hooves landing on the balcony and burning into the rock. She turned to me for a moment with her featureless face, and seven eyes opened up just before the heat and force vanished, the world flashing to black in a soft pulse outwards, a ripple of anti-light.

She was human again, brushing imaginary dust from her sleeves. She stepped away from the burning hoofprints in the rock, unaffected by the heat. I was on my knees. When had I fallen down?

“Thank you for holding that for me,” Sunset said, taking her glass back and taking a sip. “That was fun! I think once they’ve licked their wounds a bit I’ll invite them up. I could use some company.”

“You didn’t kill them?” I asked. My voice was rough. My throat felt dry.

“I don’t have anything personal against them,” Sunset explained. “Mercy is something the strong can afford to offer the weak.” She laughed to herself. “Listen to me! I’m starting to sound like Sunbutt!”

She sighed.

“I miss her,” Sunset said quietly, to herself. She was clearly out of habit of filtering her thoughts.

“Um. Sorry,” I mumbled.

“A wise man once wrote ‘better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.’” Sunset shrugged. “I’ll get you my code key. Is there anything else you need before you leave? I don’t want to be a poor host.”

“No, uh. That’ll be enough,” I said.

“Kicking us out pretty quickly, aren’t you?” Destiny asked. “Got a lot on your schedule?”

Sunset smirked. “It’s for your own good. There are some dangers here I don’t want you tracking into Equestria.”

“The Darkness is already leaking through,” Midnight said.

Sunset hesitated. “I’ll try to pull it back. If it doesn’t work, you can destroy the mirror, but I’d prefer to keep that as a last resort.”

“Why?” Destiny asked. “I thought--”

“Even if I can’t go home again, I’d like to pretend I could someday,” Sunset replied, her voice slightly fragile. “Someday, Equestria will heal, and maybe there’ll be a place for me. I might reign in Hell, but it’s still Hell.”

She turned away from us, coughing.

“Anyway. Let’s get that key and you can be on your way.”

Comments

[Enaris]

Just finnished reading up to this point and man it is a ride. I really like how you done it. Implementing skyrim and others in the universe of fallout eq. and it somehow works well. Dunno how you did it, but you have done it. Excellent work, cant wait for more.

[Reese]

"Adagio groaned, struggling to pull her head out of a ruined bus."
"Adagio reared up, the van still on her head"
"the shockwave tearing the car apart like a bomb"
Was it a bus, a van, or a car?

[Friendly Lurker]

“I originally considered purchasing a castle from overseas and having it shipped here brick-by-brick,” she said. “But every one that I toured left something to the imagination. People here all think so small. So I designed this one myself.”

So, did Sunset have a Xanatos moment?

[Ahsoka Tano]

Prefer reformed sunset :P