The Lyrist and The Tempest

by Valiant wind

Chapter 18

Grey Wind was standing above nothing. The space she was in was pure white, no distinct borders on visual. She looked down upon herself. She saw her grey coat, her hoofs, and her pegasus wings. They felt sore but fully functional.

Is this…her brows knitted, is death supposed to feel like this?

It was strange. It didn’t fit any of her hypotheses. She’d guessed that she would ascend to a higher plane of existence like how it was told in Equestrian and Xa’natarian legends, or, more likely, her consciousness would turn into a flicker of electromagnetic energy that would be forever lost in the void of space, but now…

She flexed her wings. She could feel every single feather on them, every single stick of fur on her coat. She could even feel the slightly chilly temperature of this space. Her senses, including her consciousness and memory, appeared to be fully intact. The place she was in was obviously not a part of reality, yet she could feel solid ground beneath her hooves. No, this could not be death. It was more like …a poorly rendered dream.

This can’t be…she gasped. This is not right. Her consciousness should’ve been destroyed the second she activated the termination code. But if she was still standing here, then it could only mean one thing.

“The reconstruction code.”

She heard her own voice coming from afar. A grey silhouette appeared on the edge of her vision. It was slowly pacing up to her, and Grey Wind crouched down and half-spread her wings.

She was coming face to face with herself.

“It seems, even after ten Centuries…” she couldn’t feel any emotions from the other “Grey Wind”’s voice or expressions, “the lifeforms of this world never learn from their mistakes.”

“The Gray Tempest…” Grey Wind bellowed. She scratched her hoofs against the floor. She figured out what had happened almost in an instant.

Lyra…Nightjar…how can you be so foolish?!

“I know what you are thinking,” the Gray Tempest shook her head, “but it’s no use. We don’t have other choices. We are enemies of all life. The only way to survive is to destroy them before they destroy us. There’s not yet a single weapon in the Universe that could stop us. You had your chance to end us, and those creatures wasted it with their putrid evolution flaws.”

“Yet you are still here, talking to me in my dream, instead of conducting the massacre you’d planned.” Grey Wind said.

The Gray Tempest did not reply and instead closed her eyes. Grey Wind smirked. She guessed right.

“The portal must’ve been sealed when the reconstruction code was activated,” she straightened her back, glaring at the pegasus in front of her, “the signal didn’t make it to the home cluster. The majority of your subunits are still back there, no more than a useless pile of fundamental particles. You are trapped in this world.”

“This changes nothing. The outcome will be the same,” the Gray Tempest said coldly, “I still have your subunits. It took the creatures of this world three years to build a functioning portal. I’m sure I can do better. Then I shall find the reconstruction code and waken our kins.”

“There is another way,” Grey Wind lowered her body. A green light was shining upon her wings, “if I kill you right here, you will never get the chance to do so.” She stomped her hoofs on the ground, “Your consciousness will die just like any other ‘organic lifeform’…”

Beams of green plasma launched from her wings and flew straight towards the Gray Tempest. The pegasus disintegrated into millions of tiny grey spots, flying off in all directions.

“I wonder what those creatures did to your algorithms,” its voice was still echoing, “you are fighting a war you cannot win.”

“You won’t know unless you try!” Grey Wind roared, you taught me this, Lyra. I hope you are right.

“Very well.”

A deafening hum was arising around her. Countless grey clouds were sipping into view, leaking from every corner of the space. Nanomachines were constructing in front of her, forming a grey wall endless in all three dimensions. All her vision was filled with grey.

“Do I need to remind you? You are one, but we are many. Your voice is but a single error in millions and trillions of lines of codes…”

The wall was shifting, growing, turning into an enormous tide crashing down upon her. A thousand pulses of emerald energy were shining across its entire surface—they were weapons and lasers, loaded and ready to fire.

“We are Nar-Di-Shav. We are the full might of the Gray Tempest…”

Grey Wind tensed up her every nerve. She stretched her wings to full width, ready to fly at whatever the Tempest was going to throw at her. The dome of nanomachines had closed above her. She was surrounded.

She knew her chances were minimal. All her algorithms were screaming at her, urging her to give up, to make this less painful, but she refused all of them. She is the only thing standing between pony kind and extinction. She had to fight. For Lyra, for Nightjar, for Nebula, for Cirrus, for Warmhoof, for Memento, for every place she’d never got her chance to visit, for every pony she’d never got the chance to meet.

For Equestria.

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“WHY IS SHE NOT WAKING UP?” Nightjar screamed. Both her front claws were upon Grey Wind’s chest, as if afraid that her heartbeat would suddenly go away, “WARMHOOF!!!”

“I don’t know!” Warmhoof’s eyes were darting furiously between his many monitors and his notebook, “CBC, Heart rate, X-ray…all her statistics are normal!” He landed a hoof on Grey’s forehead, then sharply retracted it as if he’d just touched burning charcoal, “it’s searing…this is no simple fever!”

“Lyra?” Nightjar was looking at her pleadingly, “how is it? Say something!”

“Almost…there…” Lyra grunted. She was navigating her magic through Grey Wind’s body, trying to find why in the world was she still unconscious. The magic flow within her body was extremely chaotic. Each of her subunits seemed to have a separate mind of its own, emitting rounds and rounds of magical bursts that made it nearly impossible for her magic to reach her central nervous system. Finally, she managed to catch a river of magic flowing through her spine, rising her magic all the way to her brain—

“Urg!” A burning pain shot through her head. Her eyes snapped open as her head swung back, ember sparks exploding out from the crack on her horn.

“LYRA!” Nightjar squeaked, “wh—what happened?! What’s wrong?”

Lyra blinked and stared. The intense magical energy floating into her horn a second ago almost shattered it on the spot. Grey Wind’s brain was filled up with waves and waves of wild magic. Every single one of her neurons was as bright as lamps on a Hearth’s Warming tree. She recognized this kind of symptom. It was as if she was having the worst nightmare anypony has been through, only that it was at least a hundred times fiercer than any case she’d read.

“It’s—I think she’s having a dream…” she stammered, “but…but it is really bad, really, really bad—"

“Cirrus, out of the way!” Nebula’s voice came from downstairs along with a thud of something being pushed into a wall. There were stampedes upon the stairs as the violet unicorn rushed into the room. She threw Warmhoof aside and placed a hoof directly on Grey Wind’s head.

“She’s having a dream, isn’t she?” she blurted.

“Yeah…” Lyra nodded, “but—”

“I’ve seen this kind of situation before. Something has invaded her brain. There’s another pony in her mind, and it is trying to take over her body,” Nebula interjected, for the first time her voice was full of dread and panic, “if this continues…she’ll be devoured.”

“There’s another pony in her body?” Warmhoof shuddered.

Nightjar gasped. Lyra’s eyes went wide. They met each other’s eyes, exchanging a horrifying glance.

The Gray Tempest. The reconstruction code had brought it back as well.

And Grey Wind is in there alone, facing the entirety of a monster that could consume the entire Universe.

“We have to help her!” Nightjar shouted. She grabbed Nebula’s front hoofs, “Nebula, how do we help her? We can’t leave her by herself!”

“I know a spell that can send you in,” Nebula said, “but my magic is…I can only send two of you into her mind at once.”

“Hrrrrrg!!!” Grey Wind suddenly groaned. She was wriggling in bed, her face distorted in pain. Chokes were coming out of her throat while her entire body spasmed.

“Her vitals are dropping!” Warmhoof exclaimed.

“Send us in, NOW!!!” Lyra shouted.

“Close your eyes, quick!” Nebula said. She coated her horn with a white layer of magic, “be careful in there. If you die mentally, you’ll perish physically as well!”

Lyra shut her eyelids. She felt Nebula’s magic wrapping around her body, lifting her into the air. A plan is already nesting in her heart. A plan even an all-knowing mastermind like the Gray Tempest would never expect. It was, desperate, even ridiculous, and she had no guarantee that it’d work. She knew if she’d guessed wrong, Equestria would fall, and every pony would die. But if she’d guessed right, she would earn a chance to save Grey Wind and end this thousand-Centuries-long nightmare.

Just hold on a tiny bit longer, Grey, she prayed, her brows locking tightly against each other, we are coming, we are coming...