15 - ...is a dangerous thing (1)
Days of Wasp and Spider
by Luna-tic Scientist
=== Chapter 15 (remastered): ...is a dangerous thing ===
All thanks to Quantum_Shift and icekatze for the ‘science pony’ names that I used this chapter.
After landing, Gunnulf was unclipped from the wall and allowed to stand. Still hooded, he was prodded into motion by unkind claws, marched down the access ramp, then up a short set of steps and into what felt like another vehicle. A few kiloseconds later -- Gunnulf passed the time by counting heartbeats and trying to follow the route the vehicle had taken in his head -- he was pulled out and taken on a much longer march that seemed to go down a lot. Finally his captor, a gryphon whose voice he didn't recognise, ordered him to stop.
He waited patiently, stoically tolerating the intrusion of his personal space, as several sets of talons removed first the harness, then his armour set and electronic/thaumic systems. They'd left the hood until last, and he tensed slightly when the talons moved to the straps about his beak and the back of his head. This movement didn't go unnoticed, earning him a sharp blow to the flank, just behind the ribcage, that dropped him gasping to the floor.
With a quick motion the hood was whipped away, while at the same time several sets of scaly limbs thrust him bodily through a narrow doorway and into the dimly lit room beyond. With a quiet hiss and a deadening of the air, the cell door closed behind him. Dumbly, Gunnulf looked around.
He was locked in a box no more than half as long again as his body and less than half of that wide. Panic starting to build, he wheeled around, wings flaring in an unconscious desire to escape. His wing elbows banged against the sides; the room narrow enough that he had to rear up onto his hind legs to complete the turn. The sudden realisation that he couldn't even extend his wings surged through him, and the walls closed in.
To a creature used to the unlimited freedom of the open sky, this was pretty much the worst thing that could happen. Claustrophobia roared through him and Gunnulf leapt at the cell door, pounding and scratching at the transparent panel, only to have his needle-pointed claws slide off the near frictionless surface without leaving a mark. The next couple of hundred seconds passed in a blur, the gryphon screaming himself hoarse while hammering at the door until little splatters of blood coated the glass. Finally he fell back, chest heaving and limbs trembling, staring at the little patch of lit corridor visible through the door.
It was only then that his jailers activated the punishment systems built into the cell.
Brilliant stroboscopic flashes, coupled with intense high and low frequency sound, made him recoil from the door and left him curled in a ball in one corner with foreclaws jammed over his ears and one wing over his eyes, only saved from vomiting by the fact that he'd not eaten for over a day. After an eternity -- probably only a hundred seconds or so -- the room became silent, the light levels dropping back to a comfortable dimness. Gunnulf stayed where he was, only emerging ten kiloseconds later when his meagre rations were delivered. The food had helped; at least he could swallow the unidentifiable and gristly fragments whole and not have to taste them.
They'd left him there for another forty kiloseconds before a pair of guards came to collect him. One was a female gryphon -- females tended to be a little larger than males, so it was not surprising to find one in this kind of role -- but the other was a pony. Not especially large, the slender legged stallion seemed completely out of place next to the hulking gryphon in her armour vest and equipment panniers. The pale green pony had nothing except a light mesh coat covering only withers and hindquarters, unadorned apart from the Master's eye 'security' sigil over where his labour tattoo would be, and a brass disk stuck to the fur at the base of his throat.
Gunnulf immediately focused his attention on the pony. Perhaps I can at least make the cowardly herbivore bolt, he thought, trying to salvage some of the superiority he used to feel over the creatures. Every pony he'd ever met had the reactions of a prey species; when startled, run away. He had no intention to actually make a break for it, so the whole event should just result in a bit of humiliation for the herbivore.
The gryphon, her red-brown buzzard feathers fringing the neck of her anticlaw armour vest, tapped a talon against something just outside the door, causing some hidden speaker burst into life. "The prisoner will remain still. Do not move unless ordered," she said. All the sound came from the speaker; there wasn't even a hint of conduction through the door. The buzzard gryphon watched carefully as Gunnulf settled to his haunches behind the door, then nodded to the pony while taking a few paces back.
The door, so thick he'd have trouble getting his talons around the edge, retracted smoothly. The puff of air brought with it the smell of pony, other gryphons and the tang of outside. Gunnulf twitched, wings flicking slightly with the unconscious desire to fly, but successfully suppressed the urge to charge out of the cell and fight his way to freedom. Sure, he thought mockingly, disable these two, then all of the automatics and any other guards, all by myself.
Buzzard made a curt gesture and Gunnulf came out of the cell, doing his best to project a facade of meek compliance. As soon as he had cleared the door, he wheeled to face the pony, wings flaring and beak open to make a ferocious screech. He had thought that this would be enough to at least make the pony jerk back in surprise, but that wasn't the reaction he got. He saw a brief flash of light from the guard pony’s horn, and had just enough time to remember the other pony, the one that seemed to burn like a lightning struck tree, before the green haze enveloped him.
He was lifted bodily off the ground and slammed into the corridor wall, then pulled sideways to strike the opposite side. Rattled, he hung in the telekinetic field, gasping for breath and uselessly straining his muscles against the pony's magical strength. Eyes wide, he stared at the buzzard gryphon, as the guard walked towards him.
"You're the first in a while to make that mistake, but I'm sure you won't be the last," she said conversationally, stopping in front of Gunnulf and pulling a short black rod from the front of her armour vest. A quick flick of the wrist and the object trebled in length. She looked thoughtfully at him, then did something to make blue-white electrical arcs flicker over stubbly electrodes at the tip of the device. "I see you've been here before," she said, casually gesturing to the scorched ring around his throat with the shock rod.
Unable to move his head, Gunnulf followed the path of the crackling, sparking tip with frightened eyes. But we're gryphons, you and I. Surely we should stand together against these stupid ponies? Why would you support that creature? He tried to open his beak to articulate these thoughts, but even that small motion was denied him.
"Perhaps we can have another go at this lesson," she said with a grin, jamming the rod through the green aura and into his chest. The smell of burning feathers filled the corridor.
While he hung there, trembling from the after effects of the kilovolt shocks, the pony pulled a restraint harness from Buzzard's pack and dropped it on his back. This was a little different from the military design; more lightly built and fitting only over his front legs, but with a set of cables that ran between each foreleg and out to narrow metal cuffs that locked around each wing's wrist joint. They allowed more movement, but bunched his feathers in a most uncomfortable manner.
That complete, Buzzard gestured for the pony to lower Gunnulf to the ground, then gripped the back of his head with one set of talons, holding up a wire cage muzzle with the others.
"Is that really necessary?" Gunnulf said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "I won't cause any more trouble."
Buzzard cocked her head to one side and made a speculative noise. "What do you think, boss?" she said, not taking her eyes off Gunnulf.
'Boss' he thought, by the First Egg, the pony is in charge! Some part of his mind galloped away screaming, retreating from the incomprehensible statement. This gryphon takes orders from that- that--
"Protocol," the pony said in a voice that brooked no argument.
Buzzard gave him a quick grin. "Sorry," she said, jamming the muzzle over Gunnulf's beak and fastening it behind his head.
At least this time he could see where he was. Flanked by his jailers, Gunnulf trotted awkwardly down the corridor, the cable between his forelegs forcing him to take shorter than normal steps. Although the passageway was only a hundred lengths or so long, his shoulders ached by the time they reached the double doors at the end. This turned out to be the entrance to a lift capsule, and he remained silent during their assent, trying to figure out where they were taking him.
The doors opened onto a bustling scene. Pairs of guards -- mostly gryphons, it looked like he'd been singled out for 'special' treatment' -- with gryphon prisoners trotted between the cell block access shafts and what looked to be a series of court rooms; there was even a pony tech conducting repairs on a crystal filled panel in one wall. Unlike his own equine guard, this pony was obviously not used to this environment, jumping and twitching every time a gryphon came a little too close.
"Room four is ready," came the voice of the pony, after a wait of a hundred seconds or so.
Buzzard nodded, then prodded Gunnulf into motion, the pony opening the doors with a haze of green magic as they approached. Inside, the room was spartanly furnished, with just a marked spot on the floor ringed with tie down points and a long desk which seated three older-looking gryphons. His guards clipped his harness to one of the loops in the floor, then stepped back to stand by the door.
The consequences of his actions were far worse than he'd suspected. It hadn't been a tribunal like he'd naively expected, but a full-blown courts-martial. There was no defence, of course; he'd been convicted by the recording systems integrated into the helmets of every gryphon in the squad. The whole process had taken less than five hundred seconds and was little more than the formal reading of his name and serial number, followed by the list of charges. The panel of judges, three gryphons retained for their age and experience, had unanimously found him guilty.
They returned him to his cell to await the details of his punishment.
===
Gunnulf awoke from a dream of soaring over high mountains, only to find he was in darkness. For a moment, thinking he had been sleeping outside on some high ledge, he was confused and wondered why the air was so still and warm at this height. Reality intruded with unpleasant speed and he closed his eyes again, trying to recapture the dream. The cell didn't go away.
As he had discovered earlier, stretching more than one wing at a time was out of the question; even turning around required gymnastics. One half of the floor was padded to act as a sleeping area, with a small section at the rear containing a combination water source and waste dispose-all. The front of the cell was a single sheet of glass or some unreasonably hard plastic; it had no openings and appeared to be totally sealed, if the deadness of the air was anything to go by. His food had been delivered in a small disposable drum, appearing at a circular port half way up one wall. This also appeared to be part of the environmental system, certainly there were no other obvious vents.
With the memory came another wave of claustrophobia that threatened to engulf him. Gunnulf closed his eyes and willed it back down, trying to convince himself that the walls weren't creeping in on unstoppable hydraulics... Remember your training, he thought, those aggravating kiloseconds packed in the back of an assault carrier. Slowly his breathing steadied, the feeling of confinement subsiding. Not vanishing completely, but retreating just enough that he could think. He could feel it there, a shadowy figure waiting for a moment of weakness.
He sat back on his haunches, staring out at the little section of corridor he could see from his narrow cell, brooding over the events that had put him in this position. I should have killed that pony when I had the chance, he thought, his prejudice against the herbivores blossoming into a full blown hatred that pushed even his claustrophobia away. I'll get them for this, somehow.
Now all that was left was to discover what his punishment was to be. He ate when the food capsule arrived, slept when the lights went out, but all of this was done while facing that little patch of corridor. He was still staring, a day and a half later, when the Master came to talk to him.
===
Salrath slumped bonelessly in the aircar's padded seat, legs outstretched and back reclined as far as it would go. With the local transit system still without power -- and in any case, commandeered for the heavy engineering vehicles that were still shuttling in and out of the Institute -- everyone was stuck waiting for the infrequent relief transports to bus them back to the nearest working transit hub. Unless, of course, you were a high ranking Security Agent wanting to get off site in a hurry.
Rank does have some privileges, she thought, as the aircar's autopilot slotted the nimble vehicle between the lumbering hulks of a pair of heavy transports. At least Security is picking up the tab for this one. They wanted her back out in the world, wanted to debrief her on this latest disaster in only a dozen kiloseconds, and she wanted to wash the stink of fire and servitor out of her fur before getting some sleep. She'd gladly handed over responsibility to the newly arrived engineering team leader, climbing into the sleek aircar without a backwards glance. The autopilot had taken her Security override code and was now happily breaking most of the traffic laws in an effort to get its passenger to her destination as quickly as possible.
Salrath glanced once at the faintly horrifying sight of the underside of a cargo floater expanding rapidly to fill the windscreen, then swerving away as her aircar darted over the top of an onrushing fire control vehicle. She felt nothing; the crystals lining the insides of the passenger compartment neutralised the inertial forces in real time, rendering the view out the window little more than that of a computer game. The Agent closed her eyes and started to drift off to sleep.
Someone was being tortured in a room flooded with helium, a long series of falsetto screams that stabbed at her sensitive ears. Her eyes flicked open at the horribly loud, horribly high pitched, screech coming from her discarded comms bracer. She'd taken the thing off -- the replacement didn't fit as well as her personal, and now destroyed, unit -- and it was somewhere behind the seat. Normally it would vibrate gently to get her attention, but as she wasn't wearing it had switched to 'panic mode' to get her attention.
"Maker dammit," she mumbled, turning over in the seat and rooting around in the pile of equipment she'd slung on the back seats. The thing had fallen down into the gap between the front and rear seats, and by the time she'd reached it the alarm's volume had grown even louder. "What!" she snarled into the unit, thumbing the 'accept' key with one claw.
There was a moment's pause, then a silky smooth voice filled the ringing silence. "Is there a problem, Agent Salrath?"
The words were polite and the tone contained nothing but concern, but Salrath knew the speaker, knew that he was at his most dangerous when he seemed the nicest. She swallowed, anger turning to fear and settling as a cold lump in her belly. "No, Sector Chief Orgon, the alarm w--" Don't say he woke you up! "--is a bit grating and this one has been a bit on edge. Salrath apologizes for her tone; how can she help you?"
The face on the little screen stared at her for a second, a slight smile on his muzzle. He was... average looking. Nothing particularly stood out about his features: fur a mid brown, ears pointed and smooth under their fringe of hair, no scars on his muzzle, and his eyes were a bright green, just like forty percent of the population. He was easily forgettable, unless you knew him. Orgon had started out as a field Agent, excelled at his job and advanced quickly up the ranks until he was in control of ever larger operations. He'd never forgotten his roots, though, and had brought that ruthlessness to management.
Salrath suppressed a slight shiver. The smile even touched his eyes, something that was difficult for even a trained actor to achieve. She knew Orgon of old, though; he'd worn the same gentle smile during 'enhanced interrogations' -- it seemed to terrorise a prisoner even more thoroughly than the actual questioning process. Despite his rank, Orgon still ran a few of these; he said it was a way to keep in touch with the rank-and-file.
"This one has received a number of interesting messages," Orgon said, "and was wondering if Salrath could shed some light on them."
"Of course, Sector Chief," Salrath said, keeping her expression fixed in one of willingness to help, while her mind raced.
"The first is from Councillor Indutu; apparently the Agent carried out a field interrogation on a servitor that could be the cause of the single biggest break through in magical technique since the creatures were created. The Councillor was quite upset. He tells Orgon that the servitor is still recovering -- something that this one expects will not be interfered with by the Agent."
"Salrath--" The figure held up one paw in front of the camera, and Salrath closed her mouth so fast that the click of teeth was clearly audible.
"There is more. Orgon is also receiving complaints about a general reduction in efficiency from the servitors of corral twenty seven. It turns out that, if you take away their children, even a direct order can't restore the full performance of the parents." His smile turned wintery. "Who could have anticipated such an occurrence? It looks like at least one of the adults may be euthanized as a result of nonrecoverable punishment fugue. This one would like to know -- has anything come out of the examinations of the foal servitors taken from the training centre? It would be embarrassing for Security if we caused all this trouble and had nothing to show for it."
Orgon is going to lay all the fallout at Salrath's paws, the Agent thought, hunting for some way to salvage her career -- and, if things went badly enough, possibly her freedom. "There was the risk of a World Court audit, so it was prudent to be seen to take immediate action."
"There are rumblings at the WC Security Council, so this may prove to have been a wise act." He looked at her speculatively. "However, you have been an excellent field agent, and you undoubtedly have more than just a general worry, commendable though it is. Orgon expects a full report on this matter and on the servitor responsible for both these incidents within the next two hundred kiloseconds."
"Yes, Sector Chief," Salrath said, successfully hiding her wince at Orgon’s use of the past tense.
"Excellent! In that case Orgon will not detain you further." With that he broke the connection.
Salrath reset the comms unit to make doubly sure the line was dead, then held her muzzle in her paws and groaned. The dream of a hot shower and a good night's sleep receded rapidly as she contemplated what she'd need to do. Swearing softly, she cradled her borrowed comms bracer, opening a link to her virtual workspace and starting to sketch out in minute detail all the events she'd played a part in, and all the actions she'd taken, and why.
The task was made both more and less difficult by the almost complete lack of supporting evidence for events inside the Institute; she couldn't prove any of it, but it would be her word against Vanca's. Yes, this could be recoverable, she thought, nodding to herself. Ilaniro was off his head on painkillers and Korn will be discredited by his own actions.
Not even interrogating the servitor would show that she'd behaved improperly. It would report exactly how she had acted, but as long as the review board supported her belief that her actions were justified based on what she knew at the time, her techniques would not be called into question. Salrath knew that her approach to this kind of issue was a little more... overt than most -- she'd seen her own psyc eval, knew what disorder they thought she had -- fortunately she'd found a career that allowed her to make full use of her childhood hobby.
Salrath often wonders what would have happened if the school nurse hadn't noticed the patterns and reported her to Security as a potential recruit, why--
The Agent slapped herself on the side of the muzzle, the stinging pain distracting her from the old memories. In an attempt to wake up, she used her issue stimulant spray, grimacing at the bitter taste of the stuff on her tongue. Something in the potent mixture was designed to bind to the tastebuds for a few days; the more frequently you took it, the worse it tasted. Pulling out a half empty bottle of water she tried to wash the foul taste from her mouth, then settled down to flesh out the report.
===
This was taking too long.
Chaos could feel the thing, sense it cruising through the soft bodied swarms of the automata. It must know Chaos was nearby; despite its best efforts at damping down its own signature, the Guardian would not leave. It's normal tactic of running to the cold, dark spaces had failed; something had changed. Chaos itched to return to the world and see what had happened to the servitor, to see if its efforts had successfully degraded the relationships between political entities to the point where a significant population reduction of the bipeds would occur.
Chaos knew that organic creatures operated on different timescales to itself and the automata/Guardian systems that pervaded all of space-time, but it still worried that it would lose contact with the events it had set into motion. In its normal, compact, form, its thought processes ticked over at rates approaching the minimum time intervals possible in the universe. The immense difference in rate between itself and the organics usually meant it had plenty of time to escape, lose any Guardians, and return to make further changes if it needed to. This normal mode of operation was now being denied to it; it had been forced to spread itself thinly, the component parts of its mind scattered and diffuse, its very thoughts diminished and weakened by the slow crawl of light across the extended distances.
At a painfully slow rate, Chaos ran back through its memories, hunting for anything it could do to escape this trap.
===
The Guardian found it just as the pulse of automata activity started to ripple out from the servitor. It was a sharp edged thing, all hard edges and spines, easy to spot against the amorphous automata. Even though the time taken for the pulse to travel the small distance to the first layer of shielding crystals was huge by its standards, Chaos had wanted to stay and observe its effects, perhaps even modify it to alter its properties.
It had never before wanted something so much; so much so that it considered something it had never done before -- fighting back. The weapon used by the Guardians acted on the matrix of ordered space-time that formed a substrate for the automata and Chaos. The method was brutal in its efficiency; everything within this area of effect would be randomised, reduced back to natural quantum foam. What it lacked was range -- because of this, Chaos knew that it had a small window of opportunity between when it could detect a Guardian and when that entity would investigate.
The Guardians operated in a fundamentally different way to the automata. They could operate in free space -- able to create order in the quantum foam -- thus their highly destructive attack could be considered as nothing more than a self-repair mechanism for the whole infrastructure that underlied and manipulated physical reality. Chaos knew all of this, but the knowledge was a cold comfort. It knew that any contact with a Guardian would result in the termination of its thought processes and a cessation of its self.
Chaos had been born out of the automata and thus was tied to the substrate just like they were. Because of this, it lacked access to the method used by the Guardians and could not turn their own weapon against them. What it did have was an arsenal of techniques designed to fool and manipulate the automata; these entities had a similar physical basis, and thus Chaos thought they had a chance of working against the Guardians.
In the picoseconds it had taken Chaos to formulate its plan, the Guardian had detected Chaos and swerved to close with it. The Guardian expanded to fill Chaos' view, sparkling with the terrible light of creation as it unmade and remade the substrate it passed through. The thing was horribly fast, but Chaos stood its ground, waiting until it was close enough to retaliate.
Odd and malformed requests, specially crafted versions of the orders made by a crystal wielding biped, or one of the quadrupeds, passed from automata to automata until they reached the Guardian, striking it from all sides. Most never made it -- the automata that carried them were dismantled and disrupted by the Guardian's scorched earth approach to removing aberrant entities -- but enough did.
Unexpected information cascaded through the Guardian, making it hesitate in its pursuit. Error checking systems came into play, discarding the vast majority of the rogue input and bringing the Guardian back up to full speed. Unfortunately, not all of the commands were filtered out; one escaped notice and was acted upon, redirecting part of the Guardian's space-time rendering systems to focus on its own innards.
In an instant, a chunk of Guardian ceased to be, randomised back to what passed for normal substrate. The entity's sleek, faceted appearance distorted and twisted, and it hunched over the wound like it was some sort of scar. For a moment Chaos felt elation; the Guardian lay stationary, surrounded by the wreckage of its own internal construction and tumbling slowly along a dozen orthogonal axis. Then it started moving purposefully again.
Somehow it had managed to rebuild itself, those same mechanisms designed to remake the substrate applied to its own systems. The repair was not complete, not perfect; the scar remained, but the Guardian still functioned. It accelerated towards Chaos once more, the glow of its weapon highlighting its leading edges. Chaos felt a real sense of terror then; it had thrown everything it had at the thing, yet it had not been enough. It tried again; again there was damage, but this time only traces that were immediately repaired. A third time; no effect.
Chaos fled like it should have done all along, running to the quiet edges of the little universe to evade its pursuer.
The Guardian was slow, but it was persistent. Something about it was different to the others; it was almost as if it bore a grudge against Chaos. Any other Guardian would have given up by now, and returned to its normal patrol patterns. Not this one. Chaos began to wonder if it had made a critical error in attacking it, although at least it knew that its own weapons were much less effective than it had hoped.
===
As far as Fusion could tell, someone had retasked one of the heliostats to give them daylight only a few kiloseconds after her eye closed. Certainly it was the only possible explanation as to why she felt so tired. Gravity didn't seem to be having the same problem; Fusion had been awoken by a light touch on her muzzle, the fringe of long hairs around her sister's mouth tickling her own. Opening her eye, she looked up at the blue mare and groaned.
"I just received an updated set of orders!" Gravity said, almost bouncing in her eagerness.
"Great!" Fusion said with false enthusiasm. "They've told you to let me get back to sleep?" Fusion closed her eye again.
Another touch, this one not so gentle and performed with a hard hoof tip rather than a soft muzzle. "You'd think 'Celestia' would be a morning pony," Gravity said cheerfully. "You're to teach me how to do what you did as soon as your eye is fixed." Seeing Fusion wince the blue mare lost her happy expression. "You don't need to worry, mum and dad have already spoken to Spiral. She'll want to talk, but she already knows the worst of it."
Fusion nodded and climbed to her hooves, following Gravity towards the infirmary. “Any plans for a homecoming party yet?” she asked her sister.
Gravity turned slightly and shook her head. “Not yet, the decision was to wait until we know more. With so many families affected...”
Fusion nodded glumly, and the pair trotted in silence the rest of the way.
The infirmary was on the other side of the corral from the shelter, but despite Fusion dragging her hooves the walk never seemed to be so quick. She'd slept late enough that everypony was on shift -- with the exception of those too damaged to serve and the younger foals currently in the basic school house -- something she was extremely grateful for. It would be hard enough to face Spiral without weathering all the stares from desperate ponies still awaiting word of their foals.
Spiral Fracture, green coat brushed and neat, white mane and tail in their customary tight plait, met them at the door to the medical centre. The mare's face was blank and she walked stiffly, as if she was in some way disconnected from her body, trying her hardest to hold her emotions in check. Fusion recognised the signs; after she'd destroyed the Institute she'd felt much the same way. It must be worse for her, Fusion thought, at least I could let go of some of my pain in the privacy of my own head. Even that is denied to her.
The building had a wide central corridor lined on each side with spacious stalls. The space was very open and provided little more than warmth and shelter for the patients while the medics worked. In the hooves of a skilled medic, pony magic was quite capable of healing the most horrific injuries, given enough time and assuming the unfortunate victim could be kept alive long enough for the magic to work. The Masters did supply some equipment -- mostly remote monitoring devices and stocks of drugs for conditions less amenable to magical intervention. What they mostly provided were the services of Spiral Fracture and Trocar Point as medics, letting the ponies run their own health service and only intervening to set priorities or refuse treatment to those that would take too long to heal.
There were eleven stalls in the single story building, five on each side of the corridor and the eleventh at the far end. This last stall had no access point from the inside of the structure; instead it had its own door around the rear of the building, out of sight of the rest of the corral. A small store room completed the simple building. About half the stalls were occupied; the usual mix of burns, minor broken bones and simple exhaustion. All of those present had that shamefaced look that Fusion knew only too well; the look of a pony who knew she hadn't been good enough for the Masters.
This normally lent the infirmary an unhappy air, but today it was worse than normal. Fusion stayed close to Spiral, unnerved by the faint whimpers coming from the fourth stall, as the three ponies walked down the corridor. The doors and walls of the stalls were made from a lattice of white plastic, affording clear sight and smell of everypony in the building. This was so that none of the patients felt isolated; being alone added stress and actually inhibited recovery. The unfortunate side effect of this was that the little sounds of distress could be heard clearly even after Spiral waved them into an empty stall.
While Spiral examined Gravity's wing, Fusion settled down on the padded section of the floor, trying to see what was wrong with the pony in stall four. Little gasps and whimpers; the sound of air being drawn through clenched teeth... it was all horribly familiar. The other pony was trapped in punishment fugue. "Who is in number four?" Fusion asked, unable to stand it anymore. "Isn't there anything you can do?"
"Redshift," Spiral mumbled. "Shock Diamond's father. H-he had a b-bad reaction to Shock not coming home; assumed the worst, we think. It's always hardest when it's your first."
Fusion could sense Spiral's control slipping while she talked, little pauses while her jaw clenched or her breathing shuddered. "What about his mate?" she said, remembering how she'd been able to help Gravity.
"She's not been given permission to miss her work shift," Spiral said, breath hissing out as all her muscles tensed at once. "I've been giving him something to help him endure it, but in the end he'll have to work through it, if he can. If he can't pass the Maker's Test... well, it's very hard on the body, even with the drugs." The mare's expression said it all; she didn't have much hope for his recovery.
Fusion's imagination filled in the rest and she started to feel ill; she'd been right, the 'Maker's Test' was the colloquial name for punishment fugue. If it takes too long his Master will decide he's not worth saving, she thought, waiting in silence as Spiral finished her examination and told Gravity she was free to leave. The dusky blue mare departed quickly, sparing a brief guilty look at Fusion as she nearly cantered down the corridor, eager to get away from the distressing presence of Redshift.
"How are you holding up?" Fusion asked quietly as the green mare turned to face her. "I'm so sorry about Single Crystal."
Spiral froze for a second, then her face went completely blank. She mumbled a few words, too faint for Fusion to hear, although the short sentence had a familiar cadence and was obviously something the mare had been saying frequently over the last few days. She took a deep breath. "I'll live," she said hollowly. "Was- was it quick for her?"
Fusion cringed, ears flattening. "Yes," she whispered. "Do you want me to tell you what I saw?"
Spiral bit her lip and nodded, before sitting down next to Fusion and starting to work on her eye. While her horn glowed with a shifting green radiance, the white mare told her everything she could. How brave her elder daughter, Random, had been, how healthy most of the foals were and the 'honour' of the Blessing carried out on that darkened field. By the time Fusion fell silent the other pony's demeanour had relaxed a little, still very sad but more accepting, hopeful that she'd see her surviving daughter soon.
The healing magic continued for what seemed like an age, Fusion keeping as still as possible while the medic carried out her work. Like most of a pony's magic, it involved the movement of objects or energy; nothing was created or destroyed, so any new matter had to come from somewhere. What Spiral was doing was tremendously complex; rebuilding the missing or dead cells from proteins taken from muscle tissue around Fusion's eye.
Animal had given her an initial treatment very soon after her injury, so Fusion had been hopeful that this would be a quick visit, at least it should have been if she hadn't been kept at the aid station for almost half a day. The stallion had sealed her eyelid shut to help protect the damaged tissue, with an external dressing to protect the small opening that remained to allow any fluid to drain. This wasn't a field of magic that Fusion had any real talent for and she knew little of how it was done; all she did know was that it itched horribly and the effort it took not to twitch was almost impossible to maintain.
"You said this was a blast injury?" Spiral murmured in a distracted tone.
The green mare was seated on Fusion's blind side; she imagined Spiral with her eyes closed and muzzle twisted in concentration. "A fragment when an instrument exploded, yes," she replied.
"You were very unlucky -- as far as I can tell there's no damage anywhere else. Strange there's no sign of foreign bodies in your eye."
"I was treated almost immediately, the local medic must have removed everything," Fusion said, hoping Spiral wouldn't press any further. Animal had been a veterinarian for a long time and she'd been sure he'd recognised the wound for what it was. Back at the Institute, the red stallion had stared at her for a long time before shrugging and sending her to rest with the other wounded.
"Well, whoever it was did some excellent work." The mare sighed and the itching stopped.
This was much quicker than Fusion had expected. "Is there something wrong?" she said, her heart sinking. How much of a problem was that extra half day?
"I can fix your eye, but not at the moment. I've only had five kiloseconds allocated for your treatment... and that's not enough." The mare looked sympathetically at Fusion. "If you had been referred earlier..."
"I understand," Fusion said, struggling to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "What happens now?"
"I'll report your changed condition, and hopefully we can continue this soon. In the meantime I need to stabilise your eye socket, just in case it takes longer to get you back here than expected."
Very diplomatic, Fusion thought dully, another way of saying 'never'. "What does that mean?"
Spiral studied the white mare's face, trying to judge how much she could take. "I need to get you a prosthetic, to stop your orbit collapsing and making future treatment even more difficult. I'll take a few measurements and can have it for you soon. I'll leave your eye sealed shut for now, but you are all done here. Come back tomorrow and we can finish up."
Fusion was about to thank the mare, when a particularly loud moan from Redshift made her wince. "Would it be okay if I sat with him for a bit?" she said, coming to a sudden decision. "I know you have other duties."
"You'd be willing to do that? Most ponies don't like--"
"Gravity, my sister, had an attack a couple of days ago. If there's even the slightest chance it will help..." Fusion trailed off, silently willing Spiral to agree.
Spiral's expression brightened slightly. "Ah, yes, I saw that in her file. You were very lucky that medic was there and knew what to do; even in a mild case like that, it could easily have been very bad, especially as Gravity seems more susceptible than most. So, yes, that would be very kind. He's at a low point in his medication, so this is actually a very good time."
With that, Spiral stood up and walked with Fusion to stall four, watching from the threshold as the white mare settled down next to Redshift. The violet stallion was lying half on one side, wings and legs splayed untidily on the padded floor of the room. Occasionally he'd whimper or take great, hissing breaths while tremors would run from muzzle to wingtips. His brown eyes were open and staring at nothing, rolling back in time with his bouts of shivering.
Fusion leaned in to the stallion's flank, wriggling under one bedraggled wing to press as much of her body against his as possible. He was sweating heavily and she could feel the lather starting to soak through her own fur. Laying her neck against his, she murmured the same litany that Animal had used on Gravity, while stroking his back with one wing.
A quiet noise from the corridor and a change in the air marked the departure of Spiral Fracture, the veterinarian obviously satisfied that she'd be okay. Fusion kept up the pretence for a few more breaths, then opened her shadow sight to examine Redshift's head.
In this state the Blessing was obvious; the fungus-like mass of tendrils glowed like lines of green laser light against the stallion's dark silhouette. Fusion traced the threads as they divided into invisibly fine fibres buried deep in the brainstem, then followed them in the other direction to where they converged at the base of his horn. Here was something she'd not noticed when she'd examined her sister's Blessing.
The tendrils actually merged with the horn material, changing its soft violet light to a more sickly hue. Fusion leaned closer, focussing her attention on the delicate repeating spiral patterns in the horn, seeing how they changed where the green tendrils entered them. The spell has actually changed the horn's structure, Fusion thought, a faint premonition of how the Blessing survived the thaumic suppressor starting to take hold in her mind.
The next step was obvious, although she hesitated. If I'm wrong about the connections to his heart, she thought, then shook off her doubts. He's in great pain and it doesn't stop unless he's drugged to oblivion, then as soon as the drugs wear off he's right back where he started. What he needs is time without pain to sort out his emotions, which won't happen if the drugs keep shutting his mind down. With that, Fusion reached in and laid her power across the green threads where they entered his horn.
Strangled and isolated from their power source, the tangle of green tendrils started to fade, individual strands blinking out as the spell started to collapse. Fusion watched intently, willing the thing to vanish, but one dense knot of spellstuff seemed to be growing stronger, almost as if it was drawing in power from the rest. The mare tensed, wondering what was going on. Spells could fail in odd ways when they were disrupted; in most cases this was nothing to worry about, but... She started to reach out to investigate the little spell cluster, when there was a final flicker and the whole of the remaining spellstuff network flashing a bright green, before vanishing.
"It's gone," Fusion whispered, a sudden elation coursing through her. At her side, she felt the stallion give a tremendous sigh and relax, once iron hard muscles going limp. He slumped, head hitting the padded floor with a thump. Fusion, still using her shadow sight, froze in confusion, her joy turning to dread as she realised Redshift was absolutely still. His horn still glowed with that subtle violet light but, as Fusion watched, the radiance was starting to become patchy, fading as the pony's brain started to malfunction from lack of oxygen. In that horrible second she understood that something terrible had happened and released her power like it was a poisonous snake.
I killed him. The thought rattled about her brain, a whisper building into a scream.
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Looks like FimFic is stable enough to save this, so...
Man... this society is fucked up... Celestia needs to start breaking some heads. FOR THE EQUESTRILOUTION!
I really want to see Salrath get nailed to the wall for how she behaves, either by her superiors or possibly by Celestia (using actual nails if possible).
Hmn, I wonder if Celestia is going to get stuck with a permanently prosthetic eye before this is over.
Well now. I guess you can't make an omelet without accidentally killing another pony.
Ah shit... Fusion has killed another to bring bring peace to the tortured. One more step towards freedom!
Have not read the fic yet but, who are the pints serving.
Poor Celestia. We'll just have to hope she can learn from her mistakes.
Great chapter, can't wait to see where this latest accident takes Fusion
...why did I read this while the second part isn't out yet. That was dumb.
Well at least she didn't try to remove Gravity's blessing first if that's what happens. If anything the practice will help.
Well crap, that's a bummer of a side-effect. Resuscitation stat!
oh noooooooooooooooooo
Morale of this story? DIAMOND DOGS MUST DIE!
Also, if I understand this story correctly, Discord created ponies (or at least Celestia and Luna) to mess with the Dogs?
Well, things don't seem to be going well for anyone, be it dog, pony, or entropic incarnation. Something tells me it's only going to get worse before it gets better. Let's see what happens.
Dead?
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Nothing is more chaotic then making goddess to troll, right?
I find it kind of strange that I think Chaos's segment of the story is boring compared to everyone else's perspectives. Like I've been saying, I suppose that it's due to my limited vocabulary that I might feel a little sleepy, that and I haven't been getting enough sleep already. The ending of this chapter was definitely a huge twist though.
Please be okay...
D:
When Gunnalf was being punished in his cell I couldn't help but picture them playing loud Dubstep, complete with stroboscopic lightshow...
WELL BUCK. *Grumbles about having Church in the morning, and then a graduation to attend after that*
Um....well, Buck. Not really all that good.
In the words of Havelock Vetinary... don't let me detain you.
All the usage of "this one" and "that one" and underground Hives puts me in mind of Wizards at War. Is it something of a reference?
Ah, and after the leftover teasing from last chapter, we go back to find out what happened to the dumbest Griffon in existence.
I take it they don't like him very much. Can't say I blame them.
Okay that just, feels oddly worded. And, wow they really go all out in making people who screw up suffer. Even though he brought this on himself, this might be just a tad to much. But just a little.
Huh, the pony is in charge, that, that raises so many interesting questions about why, how. Nice little twist. Also, would be hilarious if it just happened the the pony's name was 'Boss' or something that could be shortened to it. But, the fact that the pony is in charge... very interesting. Also, you're still a moron Gunnulf
Wow, so they have enough griffons, that they have this many screw ups being tried every day?
Awww, that was to quick. Wanted to see him squirm more, get more details, dang....
And we go from one idiot, to another, different kind of idiot. At least the first one was dumb enough to be entertaining, this one, is only going to entertain while she suffers for being such a sadistic, petty, bitch.
Huh, not sure why but, found this bit rather interesting. And all the car stuff. Inertial dampening too, dang.
HA! Take that bitch!
So, she was over stepping her authority out of petty spite for the ponies. Good to know.
So full on sociopath? I could buy it. And, yeah just try to cover your ass. Have fun keeping Fusion from crushing you into a speck of nuetronium once she's done playing around.
Seriously? that... That is kind of awesome. A built in way to discourage over use of something like that. Without preventing them from using it when they really need it. That is one hell of great idea.
Okay, this was, interesting. Kind of hard to really know what's going on through the technical details but, general idea is there. And yes, you fucked up Chaos. But, what are they? They seem to be connected to the 'Creation Stones'. But how? And that whole 'battle' could tell what was going on but, was so oddly worded thanks to, again, being so technical, hard to really picture it.
And finally back to Fusion. yay
Well, they added the "after your eye is fixed" guessing that was Korn's addition. Also, realized later exactly how she likely wrote the message to make them more likely to get her access to somepony locked up so securely. They want her to teach Gravity. And what better way then directly showing her her memory of the events? So, yeah really good excuse, and not even an excuse, because it IS exactly what she wants, just, not adding the parts about ALSO showing her what a bunch of evil, mind raping, bastards you lot are.
And, really really nice touch. One of the obvious, but often overlooked issues with writing pony. Treating them TO much like people. Really am loving this part of your work.
You will if Fusion has anything to say about it. And hopefully she does.
Oh fuck you 'masters'. Well, she was ordered to help Gravity, AFTER her eye was fixed, so there's that.
Not for long.
And, huh, why would hat be? unless, possibly, she's smart enough, like Fusion, to be able to see already the issues, to see how unfair and wrong things are, at least on a very very deep level. Can't just accept them like everypony else. Which means, breaking her free should be pretty easy.
okay, so, breaking The blessing ISN'T as easy as you thought, and there is a failsafe. This... just got complicated and, is also going to cuase her so much trouble to deal with.... yikes
And well a few lower key things, but starting to ratchet up the tension now. She CAN get rid of the Blessing, but not safely, and, it's not like she's going to experiment on any other ponies now. So, trying to find out the right way, how she was freed safely, how to break it without killing a pony.. she needs more information but, where is she going to get it?
Typo
Single Crystal... I don't think she's been mentioned once in the new story.
Rereading this reminds me that I still haven't figured out who the Guardians are - if they feature in present-day Equestria at all.
Maybe Discord eventually managed to defeat them in the course of this war? That'd explain why he's free to act nowadays. Though his physical form seems to have come with some restrictions as well.
I have a sneaky suspicion that Gunnulf and Salrath are going to be working together in the future.
I get Celestia wanted to help, and nobody wants to see a pony die from despair, but to free a stallion from the Blessing when she has no idea if he'll even be willing to keep the secret feels... misguided. On the other hand, I applaud you for maintaining Celestia's common capacity for making blatant mistakes.
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Look it up. Treble is a proper English verb. I personally love authors who make full use of our language's complicated lexicon.
Luna-Tic, I'm really enjoying this story! I found it before it was completed and bookmarked it so I could binge-read at a later time. And that time is now.
6412323 while normally a wide vocabulary is a good thing, in this instance using the word treble over triple serves only to confuse. Not only does treble have a more recent definition in the music sector, triple means everything and carries all of the semantics that the archaic meaning of treble does. Attempting to argue for its use here is similar to arguing for the word irregardless; it's technically a word, but it serves no purpose.
I decided to reread this, its still a fantastic fic. but I still have problems with Salrath. I still can't see how she could be in a position of power in the security force. We know that she hates the servitors and we know that servitors operate in the security forces and we know that an unthinking word from the masters can conceivably result in the servitor going into an unrecoverable fugue state. Since Salrath gets pleasure out of saying things to the servitors that will make them hurt, its very likely she made at least a few go into fugue which would piss off the dogs that worked with them and result in write ups. I just can't see someone like her actually managing to achieve any position where she could override another dogs authority when it came to the servitors given her nature. Especially since the servitors aren't like traditional slaves, as far as most dogs know, the servitors are almost 100% controlled.
I'm trying to make sense of this, but the syntax and grammar is odd. Does this mean that the way gaurdians operate is different from automata, or what they do to the automata is different.
I'm not an expert in grammar, but theoretically, you should be able to take out the modifying phrase "in a fundamentally different way" and the sentence should still make grammatical sense. I'm not sure if it does, but I can't tell what it's supposed to mean either way.
This quote, while I'm not sure I understand it, clears up a question I had about the difference between what's inside and outside the universe. There is space outside the universe, but the space is different somehow.
Dang, what a note to end the chapter on. The workings and interplay of the Guardians with Chaos really help underscore the brunt of how the elements and the future math worked in Madness. Really adds an appreciation/depth to it.
Really sucks though that these cool thoughts were punctuated by Fusion's recent action, as merciful as it probably was in comparison to doing nothing