Sweetie Belle searches a vast desert world for her lost friend Scootaloo. But she finds a great and terrible secret sought by a number of dangerous ponies. A secret that could spell the end of the world.
Three years ago, ponies discovered Amaranth, a desert world of ancient, abandoned technology and countless mysteries. It has become the frontier for the unscrupulous, the adventurous and the dispossessed. Salvor airships ply the skies, pirates prey on the weak and idealists seek to unify the disparate.
Three months ago, Scootaloo left Equestria for Amaranth. She hasn't been heard from since.
Now Sweetie Belle searches for her lost friend, to find her, tell her the truth, and bring her home. But as she does so, she stumbles upon a great and terrible secret sought by a number of dangerous and powerful creatures. A secret that explains the shared history of Amaranth and Equestria and could spell the end of both worlds.
Primarily an adventure tale with aged-up Scootabelle shipping as a plot element.
A very, very long time ago, when I was young and unburdened by the yoke of experience and loss, my parents took me on a journey across the Great Lake Saudade, singing to me and telling me stories of spectacular, faraway places and the fantastic creatures that inhabited them as we trekked through the night. I remember little about the experience beyond joy and aching hooves, but one detail sticks with me. My constant companion, by my side longer than my beloved. My one anchor to my youth:
Water stretched out around us in every direction, still but for the occasional ripple of the wind and clumsy hoofstep, glowing faintly from the plankton within. On its surface, a reflection of the Scar lay ephemeral, orangish-but-not-orange, its ragged edges twisting with the motion of the water. At the horizon, reflection and reflected kissed – almost. The smell of salt water tickled my nose. In the cold light of the Scar, my shadow bored deep into the water below. And peering out from my shadow was a pinnacle of rock, its pitted surface slicked with moss and bedecked with a few tiny shells. Crustaceans of some sort, I suppose; even now I couldn't name them. Feathery appendages emerged from beneath each shell, meeting, swaying in the water.
The sight – and the contrast – transfixed me. The creatures were so very small. And the lake around us was so very large. The little animals sat on their rock, holding on to one another, surrounded by immensity, extending their limbs a minute fraction of the way into the lake.
Perhaps I was an easily impressed youngster, bewildered by something prosaic. You can add that to my list of faults if you like. But that wonder is as clear to me now as it was then. And I am still bewildered by the thought – if only because now I feel more than a little empathy with those crustaceans.
But this isn't my story (though I did have a role to play in it). It belongs to someone else. Someone who, unlike me, deserves to have her actions remembered.
This is the tale of how a mare named Sweetie Belle nearly saved the world.
She tried so very hard, she endured so very much, and she came so very close, but one thing tripped her up. Something tiny. Something forgiveable. And now she's lying here with her pastern hanging loose from a shattered joint, a chunk of shrapnel buried in her belly, her mind almost wrecked by gnawing whispers. I'm trying to help her, but there's little I can do, because I'm not really here. There's noone else nearby. And upstairs, our quarry is about to unleash an apocalypse.
We are, in a word, fucked.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. You'll want to see the struggle, not the end. Let's rewind.
… It plunged down through the poisonous cloud cover towards the airship, trailing yellow vapour behind its thagomizer. Ivory mandibles, lacquered with slime and saliva …
No. Too soon. Further back.
… The statue seemed to glow from within, illuminating the ancient cabin and the fragments of bone on the floor …
Nearly there. Just a bit further.
… The airship Hinny's Revenge creaked, trembled …
Ah, here we go.
Chapter 1 Salt
The airship Hinny's Revenge creaked, trembled, and then bucked, sending sand and salt and metal shavings skittering across the sun-bleached wooden deck. Sweetie Belle reached out and hooked a pastern over the railing to steady herself until the juddering stopped. The engines, normally roaring, now merely growled, pathetic and fitful. They choked occasionally, shaking the airship and everypony inside it.
Sweetie Belle sighed. Her joints ached. Her lips and nose stung from the salty air. The airship's daemons whispered incomprehensible words in her ears, sticky, sickly susurrations like congealed grease. The not-quite-orange light in the shadows of the railings made her head ache. She scrunched her eyes up, shook her head to clear the growing list of dissatisfactions, and looked out over the railing.
Above her lay the Scar, a vast strip of white with ragged and twisted edges, reaching from horizon to horizon, dividing the otherwise clear sky in two. The salt desert below was off-white, mottled with patches of brown, stretching on and on until it met the smudged horizon, rippling in the heat haze.
Hinny's Revenge had run out of fuel three days ago. Now two parabolic mirrors had been unfurled from her sides, giant tilted chalices offering libation to the sky. They funneled sunlight – but not scarlight – into the furnaces. It was slow, and it hurt the engines, but it kept the ship moving.
Hinny's Revenge would run out of water in three days. Then, parabolic mirrors or no, she would stop. No winds: she would be becalmed. Nothing to drink: her crew would die shortly after.
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes, breathed deep, and took her leg from the railings. There was work to be done. She trotted away from the railings, across the main deck, past the woven diamond envelope bracing cables, past the occasional grim-faced pony, exchanging nods of acquaintance, and down into the hold. The growling grew as she trotted under the boilers, shrank as she passed them, faded into the back as she reached her destination: the glider bay.
Eight streams of sunlight lanced into the gloom from the glider ports. Eight gliders sat on tracks facing aft, wingtip to wingtip, ready for launch. A group of ponies stood at the far end of the bay, looking down and pawing at the ground or muttering in hushed tones: Sweetie Belle's fellow pilots. All Earth ponies or unicorns; pegasi would fly without gliders, covering shorter distances at greater detail. Some she knew as fellow stokehold workers, useless in the airship's current state.
A senior engineer stood beside them. His face was gaunt, his wings ruffled, his mane short but ragged. He looked up when Sweetie Belle entered the bay.
“Name?” His voice was sharp, but she thought she heard an undertone of compassion, a feeling of mutuality in the face of crisis, even though they barely knew each other.
“Sweetie Belle.”
He nodded, and gestured to one of the gliders. “Number four. Your heading is south-south-east.”
Seated in her glider, Sweetie Belle almost had a breakdown. She had just checked the controls – joystick, rudder, brakes, ballast port, balloon switch – and brought the canopy down over the cockpit. The outside of the canopy was dusted with fine grains of sand, clinging with static, not worth the effort of dusting effectively. A filigree of cracks radiated from a point to her left. A couple of holes had been inexpertly filled with translucent resin – ponies had no basis for making something like this; nearly all gliders were constructed from salvaged parts. The glider couch, smooth and cool, pressed against her belly. A lone daemon mumbled nonsense in her left ear. Looking out through the cracks and the plastic and the sand to the glider port and, beyond it, the salt desert, Sweetie Belle felt her insides somersault.
What in Celestia's name was she doing here? She should be back in Equestria, singing, touring, laughing with her friends, holding a lover. But she wasn't. She was here in a glider, on a rusted old airship, in an unmapped desert, on Amaranth, a different world, where the sky was weird and the land was weird and time was weird. For the past two months, every step had taken her further from Equestria. She was terrified, and she was homesick.
But she had to be here.
A muffled clang, whoosh. The first glider hurtled away.
Sweetie Belle blinked the tears from her eyes. “I'll find you,” she whispered.
Clang, whoosh.
“I'll find you, and we'll go home together.”
Clang, whoosh.
The next one would be hers. Sweetie Belle steadied herself.
Mechanisms clicked. Something electrical hummed.
Clang. Whoosh. The glider port raced up to meet her – and the she was in the air. A few moments to get clear of the airship, then she glanced at the Scar to orient herself, took the controls, and turned south-south-east.
Thirty miles. That was the limit. Go thirty miles out, and then, if she found nothing, turn back with a shallow curve so as not to go over the same land twice. She glanced back at Hinny's Revenge. It didn't look like anything ponies could have built: Dull paint, often scoured away, often replaced by patches of rust or patches of additional metal. Spectacularly hodgepodge – cobbled together from salvaged technology on top of Equestrian engineering. It would have suited Discord, Sweetie Belle thought, if he could make the trip through the Funnel.
She had never been in a situation like this, where the ship had to send out gliders. But she had heard stories. Not all gliders came back. Some were found months later by another salvor, cockpit cracked open and pilot eaten by something. Some were found thousands of miles away, with no evidence as to how they got there. And – most clichéd of all – some were never found.
Whatever. Sweetie Belle shrugged, scanned the landscape, flew onwards. And onwards. And onwards. Somewhere out there was salvage and salvation. And when she found it, she could continue her search.
Time passed. She wasn't sure how much. Piloting and searching became automatic. The desert still stretched ahead, remained featureless as if she had not moved at all. Memories of softness and companionship and home tugged at her awareness.
Sweetie Belle manoeuvred her way through the crowds of The Spread Eagle, doing her best to hold six full pewter tankards in her aura without spilling anything. The smell of mingled smoke and beer filled the air, brought close by the low ceiling. The hubbub of the pub's patrons was loud enough that she felt the old floorboards creaking beneath her without hearing them, but even so she could pick out Scootaloo's cheerful voice cutting through the noise:
“And that is why Rainbow Dash is the best flyer Equestria has had for the past century!”
Sweetie Belle couldn't help but smile. Their teenage years, complete with colts and euphoria and tears and fillies and awkwardness and arguments, had had come and gone, but some things still hadn't changed.
There had been a Wonderbolts show earlier in the day. Scootaloo made a point of visiting all of their tour destinations, even as far away as the Crystal Empire or Susa, the capital of Aquileona. But, since this show was in Canterlot, Sweetie Belle was all too happy to accompany her – she would need to be in Canterlot two days later in any case, she told herself, so she may as well make the trip.
Scootaloo's post-show euphoria – and, Sweetie Belle suspected, her association with Rainbow Dash – had attracted a gaggle of Wonderbolts obsessives, most of whom accompanied them to the pub.
Sweetie Belle arrived at their table just in time to hear a rejoinder, delivered in a nasal voice by a young unicorn with a lank mane and a wispy beard that barely covered his jowls:
“Yeah, right. Who cares about raw wingpower? Azure Cometwings had far better manoeuvrability! His turning radius was recorded by the Fillydelphia Retrix Association as less than two metres unaided at 30 metres per second. And that's what counts.” He was called Brambleknees, Sweetie Belle recalled. She wasn't sure where they had managed to pick him up.
Ears pinned, Scootaloo looked like she was about to yell, then she caught sight of Sweetie Belle and she broke into a smile. She dismissed the conversation with a wave of her hoof. “There you are!” she said. “Six beers at once! You're a lifesaver, filly.”
“I could do six normally. I'm just feeling a bit off today,” mumbled Brambleknees.
“Here,” said Scootaloo, ignoring him. “Sit down. Move over, ponies!” She scooched over on the already crowded wooden seat to make room.
Having set the tankards down on the table, Sweetie Belle sat and listened to the conversation, nursing her pear cider and rarely speaking, an outsider to the conversation. She didn't know much about the Wonderbolts that hadn't already been said. The warmth and pressure of Scootaloo beside her was conspicuous. A couple of pinion feathers tickled her side every time Scootaloo shifted her position or gesticulated to illustrate a point about athletics. Sweetie Belle wondered what it would be like to preen them.
She was running her tongue over her incisors, feeling all the ridges and imperfections in the enamel, and considering taking another sip of cider – perhaps she would find it easier to talk if she were drunker – when Scootaloo's foreleg appeared on her shoulder.
“And here,” announced Scootaloo, “is another pony who's awesome. Sweetie Belle has a gig in the Barbican coming up!”
Sweetie Belle found six ponies all looking at her, which brought her back to reality rather quickly. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she suppressed a nervous laugh. “Oh, yeah. It's nothing much. I'm supporting The Draconequi Rebels.”
“Bullshit,” said Scootaloo. “It's brilliant, and you know it.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged and looked down. “I suppose so, yeah,” she said. “I'm really happy about it, anyway. I hope the crowds like me.”
“I'm sure they will,” said a smiling stallion with high cheekbones, a quiff, and an engineered untidiness to his wings – Bluesky, he was called – sitting next to Scootaloo. He nodded wisely. “You'll do fine.”
Sweetie Belle considered reminding him that he'd never heard her sing and had no basis to judge her singing ability, but she just gave a polite smile and said, “Thank you.”
Brambleknees rolled his eyes and muttered something inaudible.
“And what about you, Scootaloo?” said Bluesky.
“Huh?” said Scootaloo.
“What spectacular thing have you got planned this week?”
A frown flickered across Scootaloo's face. It was covered almost immediately by a grin; Sweetie Belle wouldn't have noticed it it she hadn't been looking so intently at Scootaloo.
“Oh, uh, nothing that stands out. My life is just, kinda, always awesome,” she said. “I don't need to plan spectacular things.”
Bluesky smiled – he did a lot of that, Sweetie Belle thought – and said, “Fair enough. I'm sure it is.”
Scootaloo smiled back at him, but didn't say anything. The conversational slack was taken up by another pony – this one's name, Sweetie Belle didn't know – who started talking about the Fillydelphia Retrix Association. Scootaloo, occasionally contributing when prompted, emptied her tankard and excused herself not long afterwards:
“I'm off out for a smoke. When you all get the next round – that's your turn, Brambleknees, ain't it? – get me another Coronet, will ya?”
“Yeah, alright,” said Brambleknees.
Scootaloo left the table, her tail brushing against Sweetie Belle as she squeezed past, and trotted out into the garden. Sweetie Belle watched her go.
“Hey,” said Bluesky. When Sweetie Belle turned to him, he gestured at the door to the garden with his head. “Is your friend okay?”
“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle. She made a move to leave.
“Want me to come with?” asked Bluesky.
Sweetie Belle looked at him, and he shrank back, raising his forehooves.
“Okay, okay. Never mind,” he said.
Sweetie Belle left her seat and followed Scootaloo. Going into the garden felt like going into another world: The bustle and warmth and flickering of candles fell away, replaced by calm and chill in the cold moonlight. Wood gave way to cobbles underhoof. The smell of beer and sweating ponies fell away; out here there was just a faint hint of cedar in the air.
The garden wasn't large. Pitted stone buildings encroached on all sides, just beyond the fence. A few patrons stood around, talking in subdued voices or, in a couple of instances, nuzzling one another.
Scootaloo stood alone by the fence, looking at the moon, the orange glow from the tip of her cigarette illuminating her nose. She didn't seem to notice Sweetie Belle trotting up behind her.
Sweetie Belle was about to speak up when she was seized by a sudden feeling of awkwardness. She fell back, her throat tight. She tried to speak again, just to announce her presence, even, and found she couldn't.
Why? Why this sudden barrier? This was ridiculous. She'd known Scootaloo for over ten years. They'd played together for Sweetie Belle's disastrous first gig. They'd performed an opening act for the Equestria games together. Sweetie Belle had held Scootaloo's mane while she threw up after a night of carousing, and Scootaloo had listened to Sweetie Belle's tearful moping after a fall-out with Rarity.
But now, looking at Scootaloo, serene and melancholic and beautiful for all her rough edges and boisterousness, Sweetie Belle felt a gulf between them.
She grimaced, stepped forward, beside Scootaloo, where she'd be noticed.
“Hey,” said Scootaloo, not taking her eyes off the moon. Smoke from her cigarette tickled Sweetie Belle's nose.
“Hi …” Sweetie Belle was silent after that, trying to find something to say, until Scootaloo looked at her.
“You're finding them a bit much too, huh?”
“I guess,” said Sweetie Belle. She bit her lip, silently berating herself for being so cowardly. “What's wrong?”
Scootaloo frowned. “Just the hangers-on. Y'know, being the centre of attention is fun and all, but it gets tiring quick.”
“No, not that. Bluesky said something and it hit you pretty hard.”
Scootaloo looked back at the moon and chewed on her cigarette. Her forehooves kneaded the cobbles underneath.
“Come on,” said Sweetie Belle. She felt much more confident now. “I've known you for ages. And you've got the worst poker face out of all of us. It's not hard to see something's wrong.”
Scootaloo spat out the remainder of her cigarette and crushed it underhoof. “Okay, fine,” she snapped. And then, after a sigh, she continued more quietly: “Rainbow Dash is set to make captain of the Wonderbolts. Apple Bloom's got a list of design contracts as long as Discord's tail. You're well on your way to becoming, like, the idol of musical ponies everywhere. And me … I'm a junior cloud disperser who makes friends by riding in Dash's wake.” She snorted. “She's amazing, the best sister a pony could ask for, and I love her. I totally do. But I don't wanna live my whole life in her shadow.”
“You're not. Not at all. And you don't need a prestigious job to be awesome. Remember how long Rainbow Dash spent in Ponyville weather team before she managed to get into the Wonderbolts?”
“Yeah, but she knew she could.” Scootaloo flicked her wings. “With these things, I'm never gonna get in. I'm a weak flier no matter how hard I try.”
Sweetie Belle reached out with a hoof, and then froze. Should she? Go on, she told herself. Don't be such a coward. She swallowed, hesitated momentarily, and then put her hoof over Scootaloo's “You … you are awesome, Scootaloo. I promise you. Even if you don't feel like it right now.”
Scootaloo looked at her silently, and Sweetie Belle felt her cheeks warming. And then Scootaloo smiled.
“Thanks,” she said. “You're a great friend. You really are.” She closed her eyes and stretched her wings. “Oh Princesses, moping really doesn't fit my style. Gimme a kick up the rump if I do it again, all right?”
“I .. okay.”
“Gotta concentrate on the good stuff, right? Speaking of which, I think I'm in with Bluesky. So don't wait up for me tonight.” Scootaloo gave Sweetie Belle an exaggerated wink. “I think I'm in the mood for another beer. You coming?”
Sweetie Belle felt a chill go through her, but she tried not to show it. “Yeah, I guess so.”
The two ponies trotted back inside together.
Twenty-three miles out, the desert became host to a giant's board game: Outcrops of rock broke through the salt, lay strewn about the landscape. Some ancient, scoured by the winds to surreal sculptures; others young, bearing the layered birthmark strata of sedimentation.
Nothing the ponies found in Amaranth had aged in a consistent way. There were things out here, an eager palaeontologist griffon back in Omphalos City had told Sweetie, that seemed to have millions of years behind them, that were older than Equestria itself. And then, some things had barely decayed at all when by all rights they should have crumbled to dust long ago. There was only one pattern: Technology, always inhabited by daemons, had aged very little – usually little enough to still be useful. Which made salvor ships like Hinny's Revenge profitable.
Scootaloo had gone home with with Bluesky that night. Sweetie Belle had tried not to cry, and when Scootaloo had finally arrived in the hotel room early the next morning, with ruffled feathers and touseled mane and smelling of sweat, Sweetie Belle had curled up under the covers and pretended to still be asleep. Scootaloo had grown, become an adult, while Sweetie Belle had remained a filly, still timorous and awkward and weak.
Twenty-seven miles out, Sweetie Belle found salvage. A downed ship – it lacked an envelope, so she was reluctant to think of it as an airship – lay on its side among the outcroppings, its belly torn open and its limbs – wings? – twisted or sheared off, its hull covered in the brown scar tissue of corrosion. The normally flat layer of salt had been overturned in a trail behind the ship, where it must have crashed.
When Sweetie Belle saw the wreck, her heart leapt and her worries fell. Right now it was the most welcoming thing in the world: There was a slim chance it held water. She circled it a couple of times, examining the shredded hull, looking for a way in. There: Below the stump of a wing was a rent large enough climb through, just above the ground.
She steadied herself and landed the glider as close to the opening as she could manage. Not too far – maybe a dozen metres. Already feeling the heat in the cockpit, she cast a protective bubble around herself – a skill nearly all unicorns had learned in this place, but one she had learned long before from Twilight Sparkle – and opened the canopy.
She jumped to the ground and galloped over the desert. Even with the bubble, her hooves stung, and she could feel heat against her skin; it felt like standing ever so slightly too close to a bonfire. She leapt.
Going into the ship felt … felt like going into another world. The heat and the glare of sunlight fell away, replaced by calm and chill and dim light flowing in from the desert outside. After the echoes of her hooves entering the airship had died away, there was silence – for a moment. And then, rustling: Daemons. The inhabitants of the wreck for Celestia knew how many years, invisible and insubstantial, but audible. A cacophony of slimy whispers, what sounded like cajoling, orders, taunts in a language she didn't know.
The whispers lasted half a minute. Then most of them died away. Only a couple of daemons stayed with her, and their efforts grew more lacklustre. They had figured out she couldn't understand them, Sweetie Belle supposed.
She was in a large room, a cargo hold probably. But empty. The ceiling, supported by rusted columns shaped like melted wax, was marred by several jagged holes, but it was too dark to see what was on the other side. A few crumpled or shattered domes pockmarked the walls without pattern; if that was a lighting system, it was long defunct.
Sweetie Belle trotted across the the slanted floor, upwards, the clang of each hoofstep reverberating, to a lone door on the far side of the hold and through it to the corridor beyond. The frayed remains of a carpet lay over creaking metal. She traipsed through the airship, searching. Corridors, more corridors, more damaged dome lights, crumpled walls, the occasional wrecked bulkhead blocking her path, the occasional fragment of text so damaged that it would be illegible even to those who could read the script, the occasional beam of sunlight streaming in through a hole. And then, in a small cabin near the front of the ship, she found the statue.
Whatever creature it represented – with antlers, cloven hooves, a blood red mane, a lapis lazuli hide – Sweetie Belle didn't recognise. It had, she though, inspecting its face, an insouciant, world-weary sort of expression.
Something had died here. There wasn't much left – a bit of skull, just eyesocket and cheekbone; the knobby end of a legbone; what looked like it might be a rib. Assorted off-white shards and powder, as if somepony had dropped a stack of porcelain plates. There was a faint but sharp metallic smell in the air, whether from the airship or the statue, she didn't know.
The statue seemed to glow from within, illuminating the ancient cabin and the fragments of bone on the floor. Not as if it had a light source in its core; rather, diffuse light bled out from the whole thing. It looked like it was made of gemstones or stained glass or both – emerald and amethyst and aquamarine and ruby and topaz, joined seamlessly. No sharp edges like one might see on something from the Crystal Empire – every surface smooth and rounded.
Sweetie Belle found herself entranced, looking into the statue, into the opalescent complexity of the substance beneath its surface. A prickle ran down her spine, and she swallowed. A pony could get lost forever in all those minute variations of of colour. She was momentarily reminded of Scootaloo's eyes.
The statue's glow surged. A tendril of light leapt from its antlers to Sweetie Belle's horn.
It felt like somepony had driven a white-hot needle through her forehead – but only momentarily. A fraction of a second later it was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
Sweetie Belle tried to step back, found her legs crumpling under her. Her vision blurred, then dimmed.
Well, if you insist on mucking around in an ancient ship left by an unknown civilisation in a ruined parallel world, what do you expect to happen? Universal peace, love for all creation, and I dunno, a free kitten for every household?
Precisely.
Here's something I want you to consider though: The Equestrians lived damned good lives. Safe, loving, fulfilling. And what do they do when they find Amaranth? A lifeless world filled with nothing but the sparse remains of a long extinct civilisation?
They come over in the hundreds!
Could it be that for the comfortable, hardship is like an oasis of clean water in a desert?
Are they really that perverse?
Chapter 2 Water
Sweetie Belle woke with her cheek pressed against the cold deckplates and damp with drool. A sour metallic taste clung to the inside of her mouth. Disorientation. Darkness. She raised her head, blinked once, twice, waiting for her vision to come back, and when it didn't, she tried lighting her horn. The cabin appeared, tinted in pale green: A statue before her. A shard of bone on the floor. With a surge of revulsion, she realised it had been right in front of her face.
Her knees were shaking, but she was able to stand. The only sounds were the clunk of her hooves and her own breathing, punctuated by little groans. She looked around the cabin again, then back to the statue. It had … attacked her? That was it: She had come here looking for water, run into the statue, passed out. As she remembered, a fragment a dream came back: Scootaloo in that awful foyer with the lilac blinds and vase of yellow daffodils.
Sweetie Belle shook her head and rubbed a hoof across her face, wiping the saliva off. No time to worry about that now. There were more immediate concerns: She hadn't searched the whole of the ship. There might still be water. And if not, she still had to get back to Hinny's Revenge. Perhaps somepony else had found some.
She brushed a few stray curls from in front of her face, shook her head once again, and left the cabin.
This time, she found water almost immediately in a cargo hold like the one she'd entered by. There were no holes in this part of the ship, but the lights were still broken, so she had to rely on her horn, coating everything in sickly green. And while the other hold was empty, this one held several metal cylindrical tanks, all intact and clean. Sweetie Belle tapped on the closest. The clunk echoed about the hold, loud enough to make her jump. Sounded like water. One more test, to make sure. The cargo went dark, and with her aura, she reached through the skin of the tank and swished its contents. Water! Pure, too. “Yes!” she squealed without meaning to.
The ship felt less foreign as she returned to the glider. Ancient and wrecked and mysterious, yes, and the writing on the walls was still illegible and incomprehensible, and the daemons still whispered, but it seemed as though the cloying aura of surreality had been leached out of the bulkheads while she was unconscious. On her way back, she peered into the cabin near the front of the ship at the statue. That was probably worth something as salvage too. Considering what it had done, it was probably a magical artefact.
What it had done. That worried her, even through the joy of finding water. Sweetie Belle hoped it had just knocked her out. If it had done something else … But even if it had, she didn't know what what she could do about it, and there were, at any rate, more immediate problems to deal with.
Outside, the sun was still high, and the heat was still oppressive. She hadn't been out for long then; the ship was probably still waiting. Sweetie Belle galloped back across the cracked salt, entered her glider, and brought the canopy down. As soon as she was inside, the glider's daemon greeted her with quiet jabbering and bits of what sounded like cruel laughter. She didn't mind. She'd found water!
A perfunctory test of the glider's controls, then Sweetie Belle inflated the balloon. Compressed helium hissed, and the glider rose. The mutilated ship dropped away, and she was in the air again. When the glider was high enough, the landscape of young and old rocks far below her, she let the helium out of the balloons, retracted them, and turned north-north-west.
Sweetie Belle was the last to return – no fatalities among the glider pilots – and she was the only one to find water. Less than ten minutes after she had arrived and reported to an officer, Hinny's Revenge had turned for the derelict. The news had swept the stifling melancholy from her decks. Now there was a clamour of activity, raucous shouting, profanity-laden jokes, and hopeful rumours and speculations: Not just water, but they'd found gems; they'd found a statue of pure diamond; they'd all be rich; they'd all get a big thank-you from an important but poor archaeological expedition; they'd all get drunk as lords when they reached port.
Sweetie Belle joined in with the celebrations. She had earned a fair bit of fame and a pat on the back from almost everypony she met, and the boisterousness of the affair reminded her of Scootaloo. What would Scootaloo think if she met her now? Laughing at jokes that were borderline treachery to the diarchy and making promises about how much beer she'd drink back at port? She ran through several different meetings in her head; in every one, though, a swooning Scootaloo told her how awesome she was, forgave her, led her by the hoof – no, actually, she was the one who led Scootaloo – into a private cabin.
After an hour or so of public rejoicing and private fantasies, the excitement reduced to a simmer, and the crew's attention drifted from Sweetie Belle and back to their jobs. Exhaustion catching up with her, and feeling more than a little dazed, she retreated to her bunk and lay staring at the chipped grey paint and pipes of the ceiling.
The aft starboard crew quarters stank of a dozen ponies who worked strenuous jobs with access to minimal hygiene facilities. The bulkheads funnelled the irregular roar of the engines well enough to make the ruste-flecked bunks buzz in sympathy. And the heat blanketed everything, even more than in the rest of the ship.
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and listened to the daemons and the engines and the air and let dreams fall upon her:
A varnished teak table. A flickering candle that made the shadows on Scootaloo's face quiver. Five yellow daffodils in a vase. Sweetie Belle wore her gown, the ruffled one Rarity made her that shimmered in shadow and silver and white when she moved. Her mane was in ringlets, and she had her liquid eyeshadow on. She sat opposite Scootaloo.
“I'm going to Ilmarinen next,” she said.
Scootaloo grinned. Her grin. The one that was at once mischievous and warm. The one that made you feel like the two of you were in on a joke the rest of Equestria couldn't ever hope to get. The one that made Sweetie Belle's hooves tingle. “That's really cool, Sweetie. What're you gonna do there?”
“Look for you …”
“Awesome! Good luck!”
“Um, thanks.” Sweetie Belle looked around. They were on a stage in an empty auditorium.
“The waiters always take way too long in this place,” said Scootaloo.
“Are you there? At Ilmarinen?”
“No,” said Scootaloo slowly. “I'm here with you.”
“Oh.”
“Are you going to, y'know, sing?” said Scootaloo. She gestured at Sweetie Belle's gown.
“There's no audience.” Sweetie Belle looked down. “Unless you want me to sing for you?”
“Yeah there is. Look!”
The statue sat in the front row. Its ears swivelled from one pony to the next as they talked.
“Do you want me to sing?” Sweetie Belle asked the statue. It didn't respond. Of course it didn't; it was a statue.
When she turned back, Scootaloo had left her seat and was trotting through a door as the back of the stage. Sweetie Belle bounded after her, up to the door, but when she opened it there was just a desert of salt a hundred feet below her on the other side.
She stumbled back, into the foyer, and the door closed. A thump behind her. She turned round. Late afternoon sunlight, filtered by half-closed lilac blinds, turned a patch of carpet into alternating golden and brown stripes. The statue stood facing her, not casting a shadow. It opened its mouth to speak, and
Sweetie Belle woke up. She shivered without knowing why, then rolled over and buried her face in her pillow.
Sweetie Belle slept fitfully, interrupted by periods of consciousness that seemed to last an eternity and a few seconds all at once, with a sweat-damp pillow pressing up against her face.
She heard the door open, followed by the clipclop of hooves. A mattress opposite her on the lower bunk squeaked under a pony's weight. Sweetie Belle opened her eyes, then screwed them up. Her sense of balance was off; it felt like the room was spinning.
A sweet voice with an odd intonation: “Did they cross over?”
Sweetie Belle frowned. The was Muttershanks, a fellow stokehold worker.
“What time is it? Have we arrived yet?”
“Later afternoon. And almost. You've been asleep for an hour. Did they cross over?”
“Did who cross over?”
“Daemons. In the airship you found.”
Sweetie Belle turned to look at Muttershanks. “How should I know?” she said and immediately regretted snapping.
Muttershanks didn't seem to mind. “I don't know,” she said. “Did they do anything that made it seem like they did cross over?”
Sweetie Belle sat back and thought. “I don't think so,” she said eventually. “It felt like the ones in the ship had never seen a pony before. And … and I'm pretty sure there was only one in my glider. There and back.”
“And no daemons in the desert?”
“I didn't hear any.”
“Huh,” said Muttershanks. “Interesting.” She climbed off the bunk and headed for the door. “Oh, yeah,” she said, stopping. “Captain's looking for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” And Muttershanks was out the door before Sweetie Belle could respond.
She lay back on her bunk and tried to concentrate on the gentle rocking of the airship's cabin. It was hard to discern through the sense of spinning. Eventually she gave up, rolled off the bunk, and climbed down the ladder to the floor. At least she could still stand, she thought, trotting out the door.
Following some directions from an officer, she found the captain standing at the prow, looking over the desert. The ship was entering the field of rocks that surrounded the wreck.
Captain Gritstone was a heavy-set earth pony with a ragged grey mane. No matter how gruff his expression or manner, he was always let down by his large brown eyes, which in Sweetie Belle's opinion looked like those of a chastised dog and gave him a perpetually sad expression.
“Thanks for coming,” he said without turning. “And well done again. If you wanted to stay in the business, I think you'd make a damned fine salvor. Better than half by most of his crew.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sweetie Belle.
“But you won't, will you? Stay on, that is.”
Sweetie Belle paused, then decided to shoot for honesty. “No, sir.”
“I don't blame you.” Gritstone turned, glanced at her cutie mark, then finally looked her in the eye. “We all have our own dramas. We wouldn't be here otherwise; none of us are meant to live in this place.” He frowned. “Except for Ms. Muttershanks, perhaps. I don't know what to make of her.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. Gritstone looked back towards to horizon. “When you got back you said you found further salvage,” he said. “A statue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you describe it?”
As Sweetie Belle told him, the captain's frown deepened.
He didn't say anything for a while after she finished. She was about to prompt him when he turned to look at her again. “I was talking to a friend a few months ago. Captain Lucille of the Dulcet. She said someone was looking for statues like this. Offering a damned high price for them, too.”
Yes! With her share of the money, finding Scootaloo ought to be much easier. The captain wasn't smiling, though.
“What's the problem?” ventured Sweetie Belle. “… Sir?”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Extremely valuable artefacts with no apparent use. Anonymous buyers asking by word of mouth. None of that spells trouble to you?”
“Oh …”
“Smart salvors stay away from trouble. I'd have much preferred you to have just found engine parts or anthracite.”
Sweetie Belle felt like the deck had dropped away beneath her. An opportunity offered and then snatched away again. “Captain!” she cried. “We can't! Sir, we –”
“Quiet!” The captain's shout, coming without warning, was enough to make her wince, even if his eyes were letting him down. “You do not speak to your captain like that.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Sweetie Belle, looking down.
He stared at her for several seconds before returning to his former tone. “We're going to take the statue. The price is worth being a little stupid. But that doesn't mean we're not going to be careful, you hear? We'll hide it as best we can. Lucille should be in Ilmarinen. I'll go to her directly. I trust her, and she might be willing to buy it off us before selling it on.”
Okay, that was fine. Sweetie Belle relaxed.
The captain continued: “I want you with the salvage team to show them where to find the water and the statue.” He looked back to the desert. “How close are we?”
Sweetie Belle peered over the railings at the mass of rock and salt. “Not more than a mile,” she said, surprised at how quickly she had managed to recognise the geometry of the land.
“You'd best get ready, then,” said the captain.
“Yes, sir.” She turned and trotted towards the salvage deck.
The salvage was without incident. Along with the statue, they also managed to take a few undamaged structural members and assorted engineering parts.
To get better access to the wreck, the crew lowered the paired claws of the ship's crane inside the tear and opened them. The hull gave way with squeal and a crunch, and shrapnel rained down on the cargo hold.
The statue was the last to go, wrapped in greyish woven-glass canvas sheets and strapped to those great steel claws. Sweetie Belle sat in the cargo hold watching it as is rose into the belly of the ship. Behind it the Scar divided the reddening sky in two, framed Hinny's revenge, and was itself framed by the tear in the wreck's hull: the ripped edge of reality surrounded by the ripped edge of artefact.
“Traitor.”
Sweetie Belle jumped, and looked behind her.
“What's the matter? You okay?” called one of the salvors from across the hold.
Sweetie Belle didn't respond immediately. She swivelled her ears back and forth, listening. Just the whine of the crane, the creak of the wreck, the muttering of daemons. “Yeah,” she said, “I'm fine. Just thought I heard something.”
“Yeah, that happens,” said the salvor. “It's a weird place. 'Specially on the ground.” He grinned. “You'll get used to it.”
I really hope I don't have to, thought Sweetie Belle. She returned as sincere a smile as she was able and said, “Okay, thanks.”
“Anyway, looks like it's time to go,” he said, gesturing upwards. The statue was aboard, and crane was descending again. “And then,” he said, grin returning, “Onwards to Ilmarinen. And riches! I'm so pleased you found this thing.”
“Me too,” admitted Sweetie Belle.
They returned hanging from the crane, with their foreknees hooked over the straps, and once they were safely aboard, the ship, with grumbling engines, started towards Ilmarinen.
Using her aura, Sweetie Belle rowed the little boat with its flaking orange paint and squeaking oars across Rannoch Lake, occasionally glancing at the sky. Each gust of wind brought anew the smell of bracken, overpowering even this far from the shore, buffeted the boat, and made her shiver and huddle in her puffy coat. In the steely bluegrey water, the reflection of the pine-covered mountains on the far side of the lake fragmented and reformed.
She stopped rowing, letting the boat drift, and looked up again. An orange shape against the white clouds. At last. Sweetie Belle grinned, and with her horn sent a green flare a hundred feet into the sky above. The shape dropped, executing three wide loops on the way down, then levelled and headed towards her.
Scootaloo landed perfectly, flaring her wings at the last moment to shed her momentum just before she touched down; the boat barely rocked at all. Sweetie Belle felt a little frisson in her chest.
“Heya,” said Scootaloo. She settled at the prow, opposite Sweetie Belle, and looked around. “Cool place. How'd you find it?”
“Rarity told me about it.” Sweetie Belle grinned. “Oh, you'll like this. She had a client who liked to sail here, and he invited her along once. He was flirting with her, and thought it would win her over.”
Scootaloo snorted. “Hah! Must've been awkward.”
“Yeah. Not that she explicitly told me, but it was obvious from the way she talked about it.”
Scootaloo laughed, then gestured at a length of rope tied round an iron loop on the prow. “Want me to pull for a bit? You must be tired, rowing all the way out here without any help.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, you know, a couple things. Mostly how we're not moving.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “No, I'm fine. Let's just sit here for a bit?”
“Sure, okay.”
With the next gust of wind, Scootaloo grimaced and shivered. Silently, Sweetie Belle opened her coat and shifted it to the side as an invitation. With a smile, Scootaloo settled in next to her.
They sat in silence for maybe two minutes, Scootaloo fidgeting and Sweetie Belle looking out across the lake and not minding. Puffy white and grey strings of cloud covered most of the sky, glowing pale where they were backlit by the sun. The mountain went from green to brown as the the pine forest ended, then to grey and finally to white. Ripples danced across the lake.
“So, uh …” began Scootaloo.
“Doesn't it break your heart to see anything so beautiful?” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo stiffened beside her, and she held her breath, waiting for a response.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle pursed her lips and looked down at the floor of the boat. She shifted and tried to lean into Scootaloo a little more. Scootaloo just looked out across the water and gave no indication she'd noticed.
“Hey, uh, Sweetie … I'm sorry, but I'm no good at this 'cooing at landscapes' thing. I'm not really the sort of pony who knows about beauty.”
“Oh!” Sweetie Belle winced inside, but gave her best attempt at a grin. “That's okay!”
“I mean, I tried and all, but I can't. And … I'm kinda bored.” Scootaloo turned to Sweetie Belle, ears pinned. “Sorry.”
Sweetie Belle silently berated herself. Stupid pony! Of course she's not gonna be interested in all that stuff. She's too cool for that. “It's fine! Totally fine. You wanna get moving again?”
Scootaloo nodded. “I'll pull!”
With Scootaloo flying ahead, holding the end of the rope in her mouth, Sweetie Belle was content to sit back and enjoy the view. They continued that way for around ten minutes, after which Scootaloo was clearly exhausted. Sweetie Belle cajoled her down and took up the oars once again, while Scootaloo sat at the prow in silence, chewing her lip.
“What's wrong?” ventured Sweetie Belle.
“Nothing.” Scootaloo stared out over the lake.
Sweetie Belle sighed.
“You're right,” said Scootaloo. “It is beautiful.” She gave a forced smile.
They continued in silence for a while, water slapping against the hull and gulls shrieking in the distance. A dull ache crept into the base of Sweetie Belle's horn. She concentrated on it and avoiding worrying whether the trip had been a failure.
Scootaloo gave in first: “Hey, Sweetie?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think of Amaranth?”
“Amaranth?”
“Yeah.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “I don't know. I haven't thought about it much.” She saw Scootaloo's expectant expression and, realising the opportunity, pressed on. “Oh! I heard some stuff about it from Rarity. She says Twilight has spent hours and hours in meetings with all sorts of high-level griffons. Apparently it's a real political mess …”
“You know, ancient magic and technology and stuff.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her friend, trying to organise her thoughts. “I dunno … I'm sorry, Scootaloo, but to be honest, I don't think I would ever want to go there. It's already contested territory, I've heard it has pirates, and the princesses can't protect anypony there. And if it has ancient magic … what if it's dark magic?” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounds really dangerous.”
“Of course it's dangerous!” said Scootaloo. “It's a frontier! It's where all the cool stuff is happening.”
“Cool stuff happens in Equestria too,” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo flared her wings and furrowed her brow. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, working her jaw. “Maybe for you,” she said.
A sudden juddering and scraping, and the boat came to a halt. Sweetie Belle looked up; they had reached the shore.
Hinny's Revenge flew toward Ilmarinen. The sun fell rippling behind the horizon, and the sky darkened soon after, leaving a starless inkblack background still divided by the Scar. The salt flats below turned orangeish, and the shadows on the deck lay at contradictory angles in the scarlight.
During the night, Sweetie Belle found herself unable to sleep and so paced across the empty decks, stood by the railings and watched the salt pass. There were crewponies on the night shift, but they were down below with the engines or back towards aft. Here she could almost imagine she had the entire vessel to herself. The world to herself. A lone inhabitant of an eternally travelling ship above an infinite desert.
She wasn't sure how long it took – Amaranth can skew a pony's perception of time – but eventually, perhaps in rebellion to the solipsistic conceit, the ship left the salt behind and came across a plane of scoured rock riven with a web of sand-filled fractures. With her reverie thus swept away, she finally retreated to bed.
Day came again, and with it, not long after noon, a second change to the landscape: Bits of unsalvageable material lay strewn across the rock. Occasionally the gutted carcass of an ancient ship or outpost. Occasionally the gutted carcass of an impossible animal, mummified and torn. (Sweetie Belle had once heard that the early griffon and diamond dog salvors had tried eating this meat when stocks were low – the ends of such stories varied from the startlingly banal to the grotesque.) They were close – there were whoops and cheers from the crew for the first few sightings. This was a land they knew.
In the evening they saw Ilmarinen silhouetted against the bloodied sky, a cluster of a dozen balloons floating above the ground. This too drew a cheer. Details sketched themselves as the ship flew onwards: The gorge underneath the city with a thick black pipe hanging from the balloons into the aquifer below; the hyperboloid docking towers surrounded by dozens of gnatlike airships; the forest of cables holding the city in place; more cables and walkways betwixt the balloons and the towers.
Closer. The crew lit the shuttered limelight above the deck and started signalling the city. The nearest tower responded in kind.
Closer still. The balloons of the city – spheres with surfaces of thousands of triangles of glass and plastic – dwarfed Hinny's Revenge. The docking towers dwarfed Hinny's Revenge. Some of the airships dwarfed Hinny's Revenge.
A variety of airships she'd not seen since her arrival at Omphalos: Hastily assembled salvor airships; airships bristling with weapons and armour; airships with steam engines and diesel engines and solar funnels. Some looked like long, slender cigars, with enclosed gondolas built into their structure rather than suspended below – an aquileonan design. At one of the ports floated a lone balloon, railing from a flat-looking ship on the ground.
The growling engines finally stopped. Glistening black prehensile ribbons emerged from the docking tower's nearest port and embraced the ship, pulling her inwards. Teams of ponies rushed to set up and extend a gangway.
Love is not pure; love is not noble; love is not transcendental. It is mucky, messy stuff. The besotted are often selfish, often stupid, often fickle.
Sweetie Belle was – or rather, is – in love. That was one of the first things I learned about her, and it was one of the first things I liked about her.
I, too, am in love.
Consider: Another different species, from a different world, born a million or more years apart. And yet I find in her a fellow feeling. Empathy. I find we are both aching bundles of desire.
As for my beloved: I waited for him for an eternity. And he betrayed me.
He betrayed me.
No, that's not fair …
Ugh. Nevermind. Onwards with the story.
Chapter 3 Ilmarinen
The creak and whirr of machinery, the shouts and grunts and chatter of workers and crewmen which nearly drowned out the daemons' whispers, the acrid stink of smoke mixed with cloying overtones of petrochemicals. On the far side of Docking Tower Three's inner chamber, a crane brought in yellow ochre barrels the size of ponies through a portal in the ceiling. A team of minotaurs unhooked them and lined them up, whereupon more minotaurs, assisted by clicking, buzzing chevaloids, rolled them down the walkway into Ilmarinen proper.
Sweetie Belle and the crewmembers she was with, Whicker and Petallion, followed them. They'd been granted leave almost immediately, and were talking about where to eat. With work and journey finished, Sweetie Belle was was again the centre of attention.
“You ain't been here before, have you?” asked Whicker.
“Nope,” said Sweetie Belle. She grinned at him. “This is as far out as I've ever come.”
“Then there's a fuckin load of stuff you gotta see!”
“Yeah, shops and everything,” said Petallion. “Stick a princess here and it may as well be Canterlot.”
A chevaloid returning to the docking tower stepped across the walkway, directly into Sweetie Belle's path and froze. She stopped, barely managing to avoid running to it.
“The fuck?” said Whicker.
The chevaloid buzzed as Sweetie Belle stared bewildered at its eyeless face.
“Woah! Sorry about that,” said the minotaur who walking behind it. He reached across the walkway, picked up the chevaloid and set it down on the side it came from. It started walking again as if nothing had happened. The minotaur shrugged. “They screw around sometimes,” he said, and continued on towards the tower.
Sweetie Belle looked back. Chevaloid – that was a misnomer. All these mechanical creatures had in common with ponies were the number of legs and something that passed for a head, consisting of a mouthlike clamp and a few sensory dishes. They had no real body – just a thick spine connecting the pairs of legs. They made excellent workers for simple tasks, but were too limited in behaviour to be useful beyond that. She had seen chevaloids working in Omphalos, and a couple aboard the first airship she'd been on.
Petallion snorted. “You finished?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. “Sorry.” She cantered to catch up, and they continued onwards.
At the end of the walkway, the inside of Sphere Three, Ilmarinen opened up before them. Hastily assembled structures were strewn pell-mell in the bowl-shaped terrain at the bottom of the sphere: Domes and arches of adobe; boxes of corrugated iron and chunks of translucent plastic and whatever else could be salvaged; tents and cables of woven diamond; repurposed airship gondolas; occasionally shops and homes with ornate wooden beams. The paths were blotchy mixtures of brown mudbrick and grey tarmac.
Above, the superstructure of the sphere rose up, covering the sky. The jigsaw of triangles making up the skin were of varying quality – some were clear as polished glass, some cloudy, some opaque. A pale grey haze of water vapour clung to the ceiling, with the Scar, patchy and smeared, barely visible beyond. Sweetie Belle glanced at the her shadow. Not a hint of anything like orange; scarlight wasn't penetrating the sphere.
They wandered through the city, Whicker pointing out places he knew. The air began to smell of smoke – and something rather less pleasant. Sweetie Belle wrinkled her nose. The party rounded a corner to find an open air establishment filled with griffons and diamond dogs where skewered rodents were being roasted, flames crawling about their browning flesh.
Further on, from Petallion's directions, they found something more suitable – an indoor bar of salvaged metal and glass, served by two grizzled-looking ponies. They ate chewy, tasteless hay. Whicker insisted they have some ale too, which did make it easier to eat. Then, figuring they could afford it, they bought some lettuce – each leaf of which cost as much as the rest of the meal.
“Wow,” said Sweetie Belle. “I didn't know you could get proper food out here.”
“Fuckin' great, isn't it?” said Whicker.
Petallion nodded. “A couple of the spheres are used for farming,” she said. “The carnivores have it worst, I reckon.”
“Fuckin' trophic disadvantage,” said Whicker. “Poor bastards.”
As she was staring out the window at all the creatures passing by, something caught Sweetie Belle's eye. More colourful than everything else …
The statue.
It was facing towards her, almost looking at her.
Sweetie Belle stood to get a better view, but then it was gone.
“What's the matter?” asked Petallion.
Sweetie Belle peered out the window, searching for another flash of colour. Just the normal creatures; no antlers or glassy hides in sight.
“Nothing,” she said.
After dinner, now feeling comfortably full for the first time in weeks, Sweetie Belle said goodbye to Whicker and Petallion and set out on her own to explore the city. And, she hoped, to find some word of Scootaloo. She passed through the walkways, looked around the other spheres with their little townships, ensconced fields and aeroponic greenhouses, investigated the other docking towers. She listened in on conversations where she could, but in none of them was Scootaloo mentioned.
She took to asking in all the bars and restaurants and repair shops and salvage shops. Outside the sky darkened, and in the absence of Scarlight, hundreds of gaslamps flickered on throughout the city.
“An orange pegasus?” repeated the griffon at the salvage shop. “I dunno, I might've.”
“A mare,” said Sweetie Belle. “About my age, with a purple mane.”
The griffon's expression didn't change.
“With a cutie mark like this …” Sweetie Belle sketched a sparkling green image with her horn.
The Griffon stared at the image until it sputtered out, then flicked his wings in a shrug. “Like I said, I don't know. I don't keep a record of all the ponies who come here.”
“Oh, for … for fuck's sake” shouted Sweetie Belle. She swung around to leave and nearly ran face first into a jennet carrying a coil of glimmering cable around her neck.
“Woah, lass!” said the jennet. “Calm down.”
“I … Sorry,” said Sweetie Belle and cantered around her and out the door before she could respond.
Sweetie Belle continued, away from the town, the ground getting steeper and steeper until, at around 40 degrees, she reached the rim of the ground, where it stopped covering the sphere's outer shell and gave way to those triangular windows. In the night, Sweetie Belle couldn't see the desert outside. Just her own reflection, distorted and swimming in black.
She sighed. Had her lead dried up? After coming Celestia-knew how many miles, after nearly dying in the middle of an unnamed desert, after saving the whole ship? She couldn't even be sure that Scootaloo hadn't come to Ilmarinen – no one here seemed to know either way.
No.
This was just a setback. She could handle that. There were still ponies she hadn't asked. And if nopony could point her in Scootaloo's direction … There was the money she'd get from the statue. She could hire a place on another ship. Maybe even hire ponies to track Scootaloo.
Three months she'd started out from Omphalos with no idea where Scootaloo was. She could start again if she had to – and this time she was familiar with Amaranth. This time she'd have money.
Everything was going to be fine.
It was too late to keep asking around, but tomorrow it would be her first task.
Thus assured, Sweetie Belle heading back down to the city, and from there, to Hinny's Revenge
With perspective, an apparently insignificant joy can sweep away pervasive gloom and render it trivial in its turn.
Yes, the attempt to win over Scootaloo with a trip to Rannoch had been a disaster, both because of the awkwardness during and the aftershocks of oh-dear-Celestia-what-was-I-thinking wincing that followed for a week afterwards. And yet, thought Sweetie Belle as she applied her deep violet eyeliner, even though nothing had since happened to fix things, she could regard the events of the day with detachment.
She put down the applicator and scrutinized her face in the teak desk's mirror. Almost. A minor adjustment to her ringlets – a little more asymmetry – and she was done. Perfect.
A glance at the clock. Five minutes to go. She wriggled a little, and her dress shimmered in shadow and silver and white.
She was going to fix things up with Scootaloo. Of course she was. Get past the awkwardness and maybe try again. Shame is fleeting, after all. (And besides, came a thought, how could anypony not fall in love with you right now? Her reflection gave her a coquettish smile.) But that could wait. She had something more important to do.
Sweetie Belle was performing. Supporting The Breezies in Canterlot Castle – the closest gig to Ponyville she'd had in months. And Canterlot Castle! Everypony was going to be there.
Her heart was fluttering. It always did, no matter how often she performed. There was always that mixture of fear and anticipation that was indistinguishable from joy and made everything seem at once more real and more numinous.
Another glance at the clock. Four minutes. To hell with it! She looked at her reflection a final time, took a deep breath, and headed on stage.
A piano and a harpsichord sat at the centre, angled so they they could both be reached at once from a single seat, with a microphone between them. She scanned the crowd as she trotted across the stage, the clonk of her hooves audible even over their cheering.
Purple. A flash of purple and white – Rarity. They locked eyes momentarily, even across the distance and her sister gave her one of the broadest and most supportive smiles she'd ever seen.
Purple. And orange? Yes, Scootaloo was there too, beside Apple Bloom. But before she could make out their expressions, she was at the instruments.
She smiled at the audience and gave her introduction, punctuated by the shy giggle that was, by this point, almost trademark. Then she began.
You're No Princess, Other Days, Sat On My Roof, and Sunset Baobab took most of the slot. There was time for one more song. Sweetie Belle paused, glanced at the audience. Originally she had planned to finish with Song For The Colt … but …
She smiled at the audience once more, coyly this time, and launched in One Day I'll Have You.
Afterwards, sitting at the side while the Breezies were playing, Sweetie Belle sat in a dazed euphoria, only half watching them. Even for the afterglow, sex couldn't compete. Memories of the past few minutes – of the applause, of the audience's expressions, of being the centre of attention, bubbled randomly. She wondered idly if the substitution had meant anything to anypony but her, then decided she didn't care. Everything would be fine. She could do anything.
The Breezies finished their set in turn to to applause that Sweetie Belle didn't think was all that much greater than hers, played encore, finished once again.
With the crowds shuffling in muted post-gig excitement out from the hall, Sweetie Belle headed into the adjacent castle gardens.
The aristocrats who normally haunted the area scared off by the music, it was empty save some of the royal guard (a few more than usual) and a few of the audience who wanted to wind down before heading onto the streets. The noise of those who didn't was muted to a sussurus by the great hedges. The air was cool, but not uncomfortably so. Dark rags of cloud hung in front of the moon, and most of the light came through the Great Hall's stained glass windows, throwing off the colours and giving everything a faint splay of shadows.
She sat watching the sky.
“Oh, Sweetie Belle, you were wonderful!” said Rarity, trotting up to her. Apple Bloom followed a little way behind.
Before she could respond, she found herself pulled into a hug. She squeezed back. “Thank you.”
“Oh, no, I really mean it!” said Rarity after they had separated. “You've come so far. I'm so proud of you.” And in a stage whisper that was barely quieter than her speaking voice, “Although I must confess I am entirely bewildered as to what appeal the Breezies hold for anypony.”
Sweetie Belle laughed. “Well, then, thank you for enduring,”
“Entirely worth it,” said Rarity.
“Yeah, Sweetie,” interjected Apple Bloom. “You were awesome.” She hugged Sweetie Belle in turn. “Sorry I haven't been able to see many of your gigs recently.”
Sweetie Belle grinned at her. “It's fine. Besides, now we have plenty to talk about.”
“Ah, I still feel a li'l guilty. Still, I hear Scootaloo's been keeping you company?”
Sweetie Belle swallowed. “What … ?”
Rarity frowned. “Speaking of whom, where have those two got to?”
“Huh. They were right behind me,” said Apple Bloom, looking round.
Through the muted chatter, Sweetie Belle heard clearly a laugh that was Scootaloo's laugh. Not long afterwards, Rainbow Dash came sauntering through the gate. Both were so engaged in conversation that they seemed barely aware of the world outside – ponies in their path having having to jump aside to avoid collisions. They were loud enough to be audible from across the garden.
“Oh yeah, and that version of Caribou? Best I've ever heard.” Rainbow Dash smirked.
“Totally! Actually, you know what? They have to use that track at the next Wonderbolts show.”
“Ohmigosh, you're so right!”
When the pegasi were close enough, Rarity cleared her throat. They didn't react, so she did so again, more loudly.
“Oh, hey guys,” said Rainbow Dash. She turned to Sweetie Belle. “Cool music! I mean, okay, a couple of the songs … sorta not my thing, but the rest was really cool! Well done.”
Beside her, Rarity had one of her smiles – the one that said she clearly wanted to chastise, but was holding the urge in.
“Yeah,” Scootaloo nodded. “Really cool.”
“Thanks!” said Sweetie.
They stayed in the garden a little while longer, talking and laughing. Eventually, Rarity announced that she was getting tired and intended to return to her room.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Rainbow Dash, stretching. “I could really do with with some shut-eye right now. What about you guys?”
“No way!” Sweetie Belle announced before the others could say anything. She looked at the castle clock. “Look, we've got ages to go before dawn! I know there are still a few places open – Bloom? Scoots? Crusaders' night out. Whaddya say?”
Rainbow Dash smirked and said to Rarity, “Just performed in Canterlot castle and still not ready for bed. I remember having that much energy.”
“Oh, please. You slept in until noon most days.”
“Well?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Yeah, sure,” said Apple Bloom said. She looked to Scootaloo.
Scootaloo looked at Sweetie Belle oddly for a moment and smiled. “Why not?”
Sweetie Belle grinned.
The following morning, Captain Gritstone summoned Sweetie Belle before she ventured into Ilmarinen. She's only been there once before, when she first signed on to the journey. With the old, creaking desk in place, it was barely large enough to hold another pony besides the captain himself. When she was settled on a frayed cushion in front of the desk, he began:
“I've talked to Lucille. She's coming this afternoon to see the statue. Around four. We'll negotiate a deal then. I want you to be there too.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sweetie Belle. “Thank you.”
The captain waved his hoof. “It was your find. You deserve a cut. And to be there when we sell it.”
“Still …”
“Don't think it's just out of the goodness of my heart.” The captain gave her one of his rare smiles. “Lucille's always on the lookout for lucky salvors. If you sign on with her, I'll get a fee. Anyway – questions?”
“No, sir.”
“See you at four, Sweetie Belle. Don't forget.”
Afterwards, Sweetie Belle headed back into Ilmarinen to continue her quest. This time she went docking tower to docking tower, asking the crews of the dozens of airships. The minotaurs in the freighter that shared a tower with Hinny's Revenge knew nothing. Neither did the the two salvor crews. The griffons of one ship didn't speak to her and just glared and clicked their claws until she left; those of another were very apologetic about not knowing anything.
Docking Tower One – nothing. Docking Tower Two – nothing. Docking Tower Three, Four, Five – nothing. That left just two more.
Sweetie Belle was ambling through one of the spheres when a donkey fell into step alongside her and said, in conversational tone, “Pegasus mare. Orange hair, purple mane, bit o' an attitude. Goes by the name 'Scootaloo', maybe?”
Sweetie Belle's head snapped round. “What?”
It was the jennet she'd run into last night.
“Yeah, thought so. You have t'finesse of a brick flyin' through a plate glass window. Everyone in Ilmarinen knows who you're lookin' for.” She turned to Sweetie Belle. “Your pony were here. Come wi' us, I'll show you.”
“I …”
“Trust me, there's some characters here you don't want knowin' this. Are you coming or not?” With a swish of her tail, the jennet started walking again. “Name's Millie.”
“Sweetie Belle.”
“Am I right in guessin' you ain't been in Amaranth long? Knew it. You've got no clue at all 'bout how things work here.”
Reluctant to speak any further, Millie led her to Docking Tower Seven, through a port into a gondola barely big enough to hold the two of them. She flicked a few levers. The door closed behind them, Sweetie Belle heard the twang of steel rope under tension, and the balloon began to descend.
They dropped quickly, with winds whistling outside and buffeting the gondola. Each time the structure creaked and the angle of the floor shifted. There was a small porthole level with Sweetie Belle's head. Through it she could see above them, the spheres of Ilmarinen; around them, the great desert around them; and below them, the squat craft on the ground.
“You're reight naïve,” said Millie. “Comin' into a stranger's ship with nary a worry. You're lucky I'm on your side.”
“I'll do what I have to,” said Sweetie Belle curtly.
Millie snorted.
Soon, the whirr of gears and winding drums became audible and overtook the gondola's creaking. A juddering, a thunk, and the gondola came to a halt, and the doors opened. Sweetie Belle followed Millie out into a broad room with a low ceiling, sunlit through a row of circular windows along one all. Tools and pieces of machinery – gears, chains, coils of wire, plastic tanks, large batteries, gutted engines – lay strewn on shelves, workstations, tables, and the floor. A triplet of chevaloids stood to attention in the corner. The carpet underhoof had some abstract geometric design in electric indigos and vermilions, overlaid with irregular dark splotches and spatters of oil. She could hear more dameons here than up in Ilmarinen.
“Sorry about t' mess,” said Millie. “I don't entertain very often.”
“What is this thing?” asked Sweetie Belle, looking round. “It's not an airship, right?”
Millie grinned. “I never get tired o' that question. You're right, lass. You're standin' in Dignity. It sort o' … floats … using a cushion o' compressed air. Salvaged the technology myself.”
Sweetie Belle trotted over to a window and stared out. The ground was only a couple of metres below, under a puffy, greyish mound. It felt unnaturally close.
“About your friend,” said Millie. “And I'm only tellin' you this 'cause you clearly have no clue what you're doin' – she were in Ilmarinen a couple weeks ago. Came in on a cargo ship, I think.”
Sweetie Belle's head snapped round. “Where did she go?”
“She joined this big archaeological expedition, went off up north. Some big find there or summat, apparently.
Asked with a raised eyebrow: “Archeological?”
“Yeah. You wouldn't expect it of her, would you?” Millie's faint smile vanished and she looked Sweetie Belle in the eye. “Now listen up: She had someone on her trail. Not long after she left, a bunch of griffons turned up and started asking about her. Proper rough types. And afore you ask – no, I din't invite them down here.”
“She's being hunted?”
“Yeah,” said Millie. “Prob'ly why she went with t' expedition.”
“Oh, Celestia.” Sweetie Belle rubbed her face with a hoof. “I gotta get to her.”
“And pull off a darin' rescue, freein' her from the clutches of evil sky pirates, yeah?”
Sweetie Belle stared at Millie and jutted her jaw forward. “If … if I have to,” she said. The assurance came out a lot unsteadier than she intended it to.
“No offense, luv, but if there's gonna be any rescuin', it's gonna be Scootaloo doing it, from what I've seen.”
Sweetie Belle nickered, and went back to looking out the window. “How come you know about Scootaloo and nopony else around here does?”
“I imagine there are a few who do know,” said Millie. “Don't mean they're gonna say anythin' to the first pony who trots in there and asks.” She smiled. “Plus Scootaloo were my drinkin' buddy the first night she were here – always makes you wanna look out for someone.”
“She was? What did she say?”
Millie shrugged. “Not much. I don't go 'round askin' after sob stories, and I don't give mine out. Listen, I'm takin' a chance tellin' you this – and I'm only doin' it 'cause I'd rather not see Scootaloo get hurt. And 'cause you'll owe me a bleedin' big favour and might feel like repayin' it if we meet again. This mission of yours is none o' my concern – I'm not goin' to get involved, and once you're out of here, I'll have nothin' more to do with it. Clear?”
Sweetie Belle swallowed. “Clear.”
“Good. Now, hold on.” Millie rifled through a draw of papers and pulled one out. “Here we go. T' 'site of interest', it says here, is about a hundred and fifty miles north east o' Pinion Beach railway terminus.”
Sweetie Belle had only heard of Pinion Beach a couple of times – and even then only in passing. There were a couple of ponies back in Omphalos who said it was a legend, or at best a misnomer: There were no large bodies of water in Amaranth.
“'Site of interest'? Like what?”
“I heard they found some Amaranth animals – maybe even alive. Prob'ly a load of shit, but you never know, eh?”
“Thank you,” said Sweetie Belle. “I … I really appreciate it.”
Millie smiled. “Glad to help.”
They trotted back to the balloon gondola. Millie didn't return with Sweetie Belle. “You just hop in,” she said. “I'll send you back up from here.”
Ten minutes before four, Sweetie Belle returned to Hinny's Revenge and met Gritstone outside his office. Soon after, an officer arrived and told them that Captain Lucille had arrived, and they headed out the the docking tower to meet her.
Lucille was a griffon with brown plumage, flintgrey eyes, and painted red foreclaws. Almost as tall as Gritstone, but far more slender. She nodded to the ponies as they left the gangplank.
“Back already?” she said to Gritstone. “I'm jealous. I haven't been in a life-threatening situation for months.”
Gritstone smiled faintly. “Hello, Lucille.”
“And you must be the salvor who found our mysterious artefact,” continued Lucille, turning to Sweetie Belle. “Very pleased to meet you.”
“Hello,” said Sweetie Belle. She shook the offered talon. It was a little intimidating being alongside the two captains, both accomplished and close friends, it appeared.
“Keep an eye on her, Lucille,” said Gritstone. “She's a lucky one. Come on, I'll show you the statue.”
Sweetie Belle trailed behind the two captains listening as they walking across the deck of Hinny's Revenge.
Lucille clicked her tongue. “Maybe you'll be able to upgrade this old junkheap once this business is done.”
“For some reason, I find myself wanting to invest in better water reclamation,” said Gritstone. “And an ansible.”
Lucille laughed.
“How much are we talking here, anyway?” asked Gritstone.
“If I can make a sale … and after my fifty percent cut … around hundred and fifty thousand bits.”
“Celestia …” murmured Sweetie Belle.
Lucille glanced round. “Ha! Yes.” She turned back to Gritstone. “It was a smart move to go through me. And I'm not just saying that because it's making me money. This is some shadowy stuff, Grit, and I'd hate to see you get in the way.”
“Hrm,” said Gritstone.
As they entered the hold, several crewponies were removing the last of the canvas covering the stature. When they finished, Lucille clicked her beak and turned to Gritstone.
“It's worthless,” she said.
“What?” Sweetie Belle pre-empted the captain.
“Worthless.”
“I … Why!?”
Gritstone held up a hoof, a silent command to Sweetie Belle to stop speaking. “A reasonable question, though,” he said slowly. “Any reason?”
“It's not glowing,” said Lucille. “That was a key part of the description. The askers were very particular about it: Luminescent, not incandescent. Cold light.”
Silence cloaked them. Sweetie Belle stared at the statue. “It … was glowing,” she said. “When I first saw it.”
“Sweetie Belle?” Gritstone was frowning.
“I'm sure of it. And then …”
“Regardless, it's not glowing any more. What you have here, I'm afraid to say, is just a great big lawn ornament,” said Lucille.
Gritstone said nothing, but Sweetie Belle could see the muscles around his jaw were taut.
Lucille sighed. “Look, I'm sorry. I can't sell this.” She shrugged with her wings. “Can't win 'em all, right? I'll tell you what, though. I've been dealing with a couple of pawnbrokers who might be interested in it. I'll give you their details. Who knows? You might be able to get a couple hundred bits out of it.”
“All right,” said Gritstone. “Thank you. Let's go up to my office.” He turned to Sweetie Belle, seemed to be about to say something, stopped himself, and settled for, “Dismissed.”
Sweetie Belle, head hanging low, headed back into Ilmarinen. There, over a beer in the establishment she'd first visited, she mulled over the situation.
The statue had been glowing when she first saw it. She remembered how it had illuminated the cabin.
Had it stopped while she was away?
No. She remembered using her horn to light up the cabin when she left. Which was just after …
Sweetie Belle fumbled her beer, barely managing to catch the tankard before it spilled.
… just after she'd woken up. Yes, the statue had done something to her. She'd been unconscious. And she'd forgotten.
Mysterious magical artefact. Apparently highly valuable. And it had done something to her.
“Brilliant,” she muttered under her breath.
Who could she tell? The attack – or whatever it was – would surely put her on the radar of whoever was interested in the objects. Someone with a lot of money, working in secret, with a great interest in the statue. And out here in Amaranth nopony was under the protection of the princesses.
She could head back to Equestria, admit everything, see if Twilight could figure out what had happened … No. She'd return with Scootaloo or not at all. Besides, that would take weeks, and if that jennet Millie was right, Scootaloo was in danger right now.
And Scootaloo …
Sweetie Belle was the closest she'd been since arriving. But now Scootaloo was being hunted? (She snorted in amusement; trust Scoots to get on the wrong side of someone.) And to compound the issue, with the statue worthless, she didn't have enough money to hire an airship. She was close, but stuck.
Wait – she could ask Gritstone! He hadn't mentioned any plans after Ilmarinen. A dig site – that could very likely offer some profitable salvage. And he might still trust her instincts as a salvor – even if the statue wasn't as valuable as they'd hoped, she's still found water.
That was it, then. She had a plan: Go to the dig site on Hinny's Revenge. Rescue Scootaloo before the griffons found her. Head back to Equestria and get Twilight to fix whatever the statue had done to her.
Sweetie Belle took a long draught of her beer and sat back. It wasn't a watertight plan, no; it had more than few bridges to be crossed when one came to them. But it was a plan.
She approached Gritstone a few hours later in his office and told him everything she had learned from Millie.
“An archaeological dig?” said Gritstone with an arched eyebrow. “That's new.” He looked at Sweetie Belle. “Why? Why this site in particular?”
“Well, I …” She paused, brushed a few tangled curls with her hoof, and chewed he lip. May as well admit her intentions, right? “I'm looking for somepony. I think she might be there.”
“I see. And what –”
“There's profit in it for you too! Uh, sorry, sir.”
Gritstone was frowning, but waved his hoof. “Go on.”
“An archaeological dig could have some valuable salvage, couldn't it? And you said I have good instincts as a salvor. I'm not interested in any profit. I just need to get there.”
“That was when we thought the statue was valuable.”
“If I remember correctly, sir, all we wanted at that point was water. And water is what I found.”
“Hrm.” The captain was frowning very hard now. “What if I'm not interested?”
“I'll make the offer to Captain Lucille.” Sweetie Belle thrust her chest out, proud that she'd been able to come up with a save like that on the fly.
Gritstone look her in the eyes; she didn't avert eye contact.
He broke into a smile. “In that case, I think we have a new destination.”
The squeal of an unwinding winch.
“ … and all things pass. Love fades, friends betray one another, flesh ages, homes crumble and become dust. More than that – hopes are disappointed. Reality never lives up to the expectations we place upon it. Suffering is guaranteed – the only reprieve being an unexpected and instantaneous death.”
Blueberry Pancake paused and silently looked at her two bodyguards who sat opposite her in the descending cabin, holding eye contact each for several seconds. Cannons, almost as large as a horse and considerably stronger; and Sorghum, so wiry he looked like he could outrun a cheetah. They were rapt, attention directed entirely towards her, brows creased in concentration.
Their attention was mostly due to her oratory skill, she was sure. She had only touched them lightly with a thrall spell – it had a tendency to remove all ability for independent thought if overused.
She continued so softly they had to lean forward to hear: “Is there no hope for us? Is this state of affairs necessary?” With a smile she sat back. Truth be told, she was glad to have finished her lecture; a daemon was whispering about glory in her left ear, which was more than a little distracting.
The clang of metal, and the cabin came to a halt. Blueberry glanced out the window. Above them, directly in front of the Scar, hung their airship. A woven cable linked a port in its belly to the cabin. Below them, the wounded hull of a derelict lying on the salt flats.
The three ponies left the cabin, and Blueberry led her bodyguards a few metres to a hole on the hull and into a corridor. A moment's pause to orient herself, trying to ignore the voices of the daemons, squinting at the barely legible text on the walls and she set off. Her heart was hammering – as if she were a filly on the eve of the Snowflake Solstice (or Hearth's Warming now, came a sour thought; she pushed it from her mind). She was here. She was finally here – at the final repository. Her journey was nearly at an end!
Finally, unable to contain herself, she broke into a canter, hooves clattering and thudding on the partially carpeted floor. Sorghum and Cannons, good boys that they were, followed her lead. They passed through two more corridors, rounded a corner into the repository's chamber, and –
The repository wasn't there.
The chamber was empty save some bones on the floor, and dark enough that she had to illuminate it with her horn. Blueberry came to a halt and sucked in air through her teeth.
“What's wrong?” asked Cannons, head tilted to one side.
Blueberry stared at the far wall, at the emptiness. “This is it,” she said. “This is the place.”
“But …”
“It's not here.” She walked forward to the bones, and held up a forehoof in the space the repository should have been.
“Maybe we got the wrong ship?” suggested Sorghum.
Blueberry turned on him, and he cowered. “No!” she growled. “We did not get the wrong ship.” She stared at him until he looked down, then continued: “It was right here. I felt it. I … wait.”
She perked up her ears and closed her eyes, listening. The daemons whispered. There were at least half a dozen of them here. She'd thought she'd heard … yes, that was it.
“Yes. It was here,” she murmured to her bodyguards. A pause. Listening again.
… like this one …
… the saviour like the saviour …
… interlopers some with but a single antler who swarm artefacts they know not of…
… great and glorious and she shall grow mighty for she is the nascent apotheosis and the immanent eschaton and the …
… interlopers who took the repository though they were ignorant of its …
“Someone – somepony – took it,” Blueberry told them.
… is not life suffering …
… interlopers ensconced in a vessel …
…. four times has the sun fallen since …
… like the saviour but white of coat …
… female but with a lone antler …
… full of resolve and love and grace and hidden motives …
… like the saviour …
Blueberry grinned at her bodyguards. “Yes, somepony took the repository. But don't worry, I know how to get it back.” She paused expectantly.
“Um … how?” asked Cannons.
“We were beaten by some salvors. But just barely – four days. Ilmarinen is the closest city, so they've probably gone there. Just in case, though: Sorghum, when we get back, send a message to our allies about a white unicorn mare working with salvors, and see if anyone's brought in a new repository.”
She headed for the door. “It looks like this journey is going to take longer than expected. Come along, boys. We're going to Ilmarinen.”
Things are going wrong. You've lost something – money, perhaps. Or a lover. Or a species. You're miserable. And who could blame you? But you make do as best you can.
Then, when you're wandering around, you come across something. Something that says, “Oh, my friend, I see you have problems. But don't worry, for I can fix everything!”
You've come across one of those insidious little fuckers known as opportunities.
You believe it, of course. Yes! Everything that seemed lost a moment ago is within your reach once more! Your heart soars. You mind is aflutter with images of the perfect future within your grasp.
And then … Well … It never quite turns out that way, does it? The result you wanted doesn't come to pass in the way you imagined, and you're still imperfect, still an aching bundle of desire, left feeling foolish for having trusted that opportunity.
Those at-one-with-the-universe types might say that this is just a reminder of the illusory nature of having control over your life, and can do no more than be at peace. I'm not enlightened enough to say such things – even after all this time, the gulf between hopes and reality hurts as much as ever.
Perhaps I should apologise for all the pontificating, but screw it. I'm not going to. The world is about to end, and I'll be indulgent if I damned well feel like it.
Okay, okay. I'm done. Have the story.
Chapter 4 Opportunities
The ship was almost ready to leave – fully stocked with fuel, water and supplies, engines replaced, crew prepared.
Finally, Sweetie Belle accompanied Gritstone to buy an ansible. It cost almost as much as everything else combined – taking up the remains of the ship's finances, plus the two hundred bits Lucille had given them for the non-glowing statue, plus a contribution from Sweetie Belle herself and a dozen other crewmembers who thought the sacrifice worth it. “Damn the expense,” growled the Captain. “I'm not getting caught out again.”
Physically, an ansible was a pair of metal trays, just about large enough to hold a sheaf of paper or, for the nostalgic, a few scrolls. The cost lay in the enchantment, which could only be done by high-level unicorns: Flick a lever on the side of one tray, and its contents would be bathed in emerald flame, vanish – and appear in the other tray.
Sweetie Belle had never told anypony she'd seen this magic used long before ansibles were invented.
Ansible transmissions were always one-to-one, but the administrators of Ilmarinen offered a service: You could leave one terminal in the city's communications office, with an identification number. Send a properly addressed message to them, and they would pass it along through any other ansible in their care. Thus Ilmarinen became a hub – and many airship captains had a special interest in keeping it safe.
The facade of communications office stood out from most buildings in Ilmarinen – an abstract rendering of a phoenix carrying a scroll above a forest, rendered in solar-sintered stained glass that made everything on the other side seem to ripple as you walked by, with wrought iron curlicues to highlight the clouds and treetops. It was here, as they were leaving, that Sweetie Belle and Captain Gritstone ran into Lucille.
“Huh,” she said. “Leaving already? One might think you like running off to far reaches of the world. Is even frontier civilisation getting a bit too much to bear?”
This earned a laugh from Gritstone, which sounded to Sweetie Belle a little forced. “Yes,” he said. “No point is cooling my cannons when there's profit to be made, is there?”
Lucille gestured at the ansible in his saddlebag. “Still, at least you're being more careful now. I'm glad. If you went and got yourself killed off in some desert … who could ask me for favours then?” She clicked her beak. “Even then I bet you'd need me to recover your body from some sort of desert monster and bring it back.”
Gritstone laughed again, more sincerely this time. “Yes, and I'm sure you'd do it just to brag to all my kin.”
“Why else?” Lucille turned to Sweetie Belle. “And I see you're going out again.”
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle.
“It's her idea we're chasing up,” said Gritstone.
Lucille leaned in. “Well! I'm sorry about the statue. But if Grit is following your lead, it means he thinks you're a damn good salvor. And I trust his judgement … well, except when it involves flying past his fuel capacity into uncharted deserts.” She clapped Sweetie Belle on the back with a wing. “Be a good girl and don't die before I've had a chance to employ you. Ha!”
“I'll … I'll try.”
Gritstone snorted. “Anyway,” he said, leading Sweetie Belle forward, “we have to get going.”
“Grit?” said Lucille.
“Hrm?”
“I'll be working close to Ilmarinen for the next few months. And since I figure you might need saving, what's your terminal number?”
Gritstone told her.
“Good, good,” said Lucille. She clicked her beak. “Well, go on then! Off you go!”
Sweetie Belle stood on the deck of Hinny's Revenge, staring out across the gallimaufry of ships clustered around the docking towers. She recognised some: Far below, squat, sitting on the ground was Millie's ship, Dignity, where she had learned where to find Scootaloo; on a far docking tower she could make out the envelope of the Dulcet, clearly defined in gold and blue in defiance to the wind, which out here dirtied and scoured everything.
The sun crawled under the horizon, and the whisperings of daemons, muffled by the endless rumble of docking machinery, seemed on the verge of comprehensibility.
They were ready to leave tomorrow. To head out somewhere new. Somewhere new. How sick of that she was! Sweetie Belle had seen so many somewhere news over the past months that the thought of them all made her nauseous, threatened to overwhelm her.
Amaranth! The whole damned place, just endless deserts and endless mysteries and that supposed seductive quality ponies kept mentioning, felt like an affront to her.
She snorted and tossed her head, then settled and reminded herself how close she was.
“Not gonna get kicked, am I?” said a voice behind her. Petallion. She sidled up beside Sweetie Belle. “Pissed your fancy find wasn't all you'd hoped?”
“No,” replied Sweetie Belle. “Not that. Just … just all of … ” She gestured out across the desert.
Petallion looked. “What?”
“Never mind.”
“Suit yourself.”
Sweetie Belle sighed.
“So,” began Petallion, “rumour has it you're leading this expedition.”
“Sort of. I gave the Captain an idea where to look, that's all. I'm still just a stokehold worker.”
“Ah. Shame, that.” Petallion gestured at a black scorch mark marring Sweetie Belle's foreleg. Below it, from an earlier ember, lay a small hairless scar, an ugly pink ridge.
“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle softly, staring at the marks. “I hadn't noticed.” Something tugged at her throat and asked her to cry; she ignored it.
“Maybe you're meant for greater things than shovelling coal, eh?” Petallion grinned.
Sweetie Belle looked back out past Ilmarinen to the desert expanse beyond and thought about all the places in Equestria she'd performed. “Maybe, yeah …”
Petallion laughed, a little harshly. “Well, modest filly, ain't we?”
Sweetie Belle found she had nothing to say to that.
“You did save our hides out there, so who am I to judge?” said Petallion after a moment. “Anyway, some of us have stuff to do. I hope your new info is better. Maybe we'll even get rich this time.” She walked off.
Sweetie Belle was woken the following morning by ringing and bustle. Outside, the sun was yet to rise, the sky was streaked with red. The air was chill enough to turn her breath into little puffs of condensation, angry-looking clouds bathed in oversaturated false orange light from the Scar.
She wasn't outside for long; she went straight to the stokehold. It was cold and dark there too, but she found the tight space – filled with ten other ponies besides herself and Muttershanks – more than welcome after so long contemplating Amaranthian deserts. Soon after the work began, her horn, gone soft after a week without work, complained mercilessly. Still, it was easier than when had first began; her early hours of labouring, back when she first came for Amaranth, had been a hellish trance, sustained only by thoughts of finding Scootaloo.
The stokehold warmed, brightened as the flames grew. The heat was a pressure against her face and chest. Smoke that didn't escape scratched her nose and stung her eyes. The fuel crackled, the expanding metal twanged, and through the floor, as sensation rather than sound, the engine thrummed. All these sensations had an edge of comforting familiarity by now. The ache at the base of her horn retreated to a small part of her awareness, and she lost herself in work.
It was thus that Sweetie Belle left Ilmarinen, without watching it recede, without pontificating on the size of the world.
Somepony had put on endless stream of jazz and Delta blues on the jukebox of The Hippogriff's Head, Fillydelphia. Sweetie Belle sipped her cider, letting it linger on her tongue just long enough to sting, and refocused her attention on the earth pony opposite her.
He wasn't large, obviously not a pony who'd spent much time working in a field, you could see that under the skin he was all sinew and well-defined muscle. His name was Adrenaline Rush, he was prone to long periods of intense eye contact, and his tone of voice made him sound passionate about everything.
Right now he was being passionate about a tour group he'd led in the rainforests of Southern Aquileona:
“Most ponies have never even seen a zipline before! So there I was trying to convince this Manehatten copywriter that it was possible to get into the harness at all! I mean, everypony in the tour group has to pass a fitness and capability test before they can come, but you wouldn't think it the way some of them are!
“So anyway, I finally do convince him. My assistant goes first, but it's only when our Manehattenite goes off – yelling with glee, too! – that the rest of the group start to realise they can do this. I see them all off, one by one, and the looks on their faces! You just wouldn't believe …”
That last part was spoken in a way that might make you think he was talking about orphan foals instead of rich city ponies.
Rush took a moment to catch his breath, then had a long draught from his beer.
Sweetie Belle had met him after a gig earlier that evening. Not a fan – he'd been there for the headline act, but had been, in his words, “utterly blown away” by her set. They'd got talking in the performance hall's VIP bar, and he'd offered to show he around the city. Nopony had accompanied Sweetie Belle to Fillydelphia, so she'd been happy to oblige.
“Have you travelled much?” asked Rush.
“Yes … sort of. I've performed at a few places, even Susa, but always in cities.” She gave him an apologetic smile.
“You should try it! The thing is, so many ponies are used to living with managed, reliable nature that they have no idea what the real thing is like. Even our travel writers think farms are basically wilderness.”
Sweetie Belle looked Rush in the eye, attention caught. “I think you're right,” she said.
“And all the truly adventurous have run off to Amaranth to look at deserts or something. Ridiculous.”
“Yeah.” She snorted, sharing with him a moment of amusement and derision. “Listen,” she said, “do you have places for more tour operators? Are you hiring?”
Rush blinked a couple of times. “Sure. Like I said, not many ponies know much about adventuring … and fewer want to make a job of it. Are you … ?”
“Not me, no,” said Sweetie Belle. “But I have a friend who I think would love to hear about this.”
Lying in her stiff and chill bunk, Sweetie Belle dreamt:
Following Scootaloo out of the clubhouse into Canterlot Castle's main hall, across the hall and into they foyer with daffodils. A walk became a trot became a canter became a gallop, stumbling and hindered by misplaced furniture and inexplicable clumsiness. She wasn't sure whether she was chasing or being chased; Scootaloo was no longer visible. The foyer led to the cabin beside Rannoch lake led to Ilmarinen led to the clubhouse led to the hotel room …
Something caught her eye as she galloped, through windows or over hedges, always to the side, trailing her. Recognition sparked. “Luna?” she cried out. “Princess Luna? I need your help, I …”
She realised she was dreaming, which meant she was in Amaranth, which meant she was beyond Luna's reach. Looking again, she saw a flash of red mane and blue hide.
Back in the clubhouse, she abandoned her imaginary pursuit and turned towards the window to see not-Luna.
It was the statue, but it wasn't. It was alive – flesh, not crystal. Its muzzle was shorter, its antlers small and less ornate. She caught its eyes for just a moment, and thought them intensely sad. And then it was gone, and
she woke, gasping. Everything was dark. Surrounding her she could hear the snuffles of sleeping ponies and the distant rumble of the engines. Yes, that was okay … she was in her bunk, aboard Hinny's Revenge.
Sweetie Belle rolled over and rearranged the sheet. Remembered fragments of her dream drifted, disconnected and insubstantial, but the creature and its sad eyes remained embedded in her awareness.
After shifting and rolling a little more, she realised that despite her exhaustion, she wasn't going to get to to sleep again. She lit her horn as dimly as she was able to, just enough to sketch the bunks, their inhabitants and the floor in pale green lines, then slipped out as quietly as she could and headed onto the deck.
The ship looked like a stained sepia photograph. She looked out over the desert. It was passing faster now, and the wind tossed her mane and sent ripples down her hair, but she was getting used to the sight, and bored of it quickly.
Walking aft, to the irregularly-placed shadow of the gondola, where to Scarlight wasn't so strong, she saw something move behind one of the woven diamond bracing cables.
“Hello?” she called out. Nothing. She trotted over, curiosity growing.
And there it was. The creature.
Definitely a creature, not a statue. A hide of shimmering cobalt blue scales; a mane and tailtip of voluminous orange-red hair; cloven hooves; delicate antlers. In defiance of the orangeish washout of Scarlight, its colours were bright and clear. It was looking at her, its expression … not just sad, but curious, unsure.
It spoke singsong, like wind chimes, as it walked towards her: “You know him? You love … no, no. That's not …”
And then it vanished.
Sweetie Belle stood silently for a moment, then, without knowing why, walked over the space it had occupied and put her hoof out. She half expected to wake up again, but … no … the world was too consistent, her thoughts too lucid for this to be a dream. She spun round once just to make sure, and nothing changed.
She thought about the statue and fretted about the lack of options. In time, the night lulled her, and with an internal shrug she returned to her bunk.
Millie peered through a telescope at the two airships in the distance.
They were barely visible now. Their cigar-shaped hulls had silvered half an hour ago, giving them the colours of the desert and sky, and they weren't producing any smoke – probably diesel engines. Like that, it would be easy to trail Hinny's Revenge.
And Millie had no doubt at all that's what they were doing.
She'd been an idiot. Of course the naïve young mare would attract the attention of the griffons trailing Scootaloo. And of course they'd follow her after the fuss she'd made. If Millie hadn't said anything, just kept her head down, the mare would be searching vain. She'd still get followed, possibly tortured or killed – but Millie could live with that. It happened. Now, by telling the mare where to look, not only had she involved herself, but she'd also given Scootaloo up.
She snorted. It was hard to imagine unlikelier friends then Scootaloo and the young mare, Sweetie Belle.
Whatever. It didn't matter.
Millie had involved herself, and now her conscience wouldn't stop bothering her until she did something.
She waited until the two ships were no longer visible – she knew where they were going, and it was better to keep out of sight. Then she turned on the engines and headed after them.
As Hinny's Revenge flew onwards, patches of slick black started to mar the solid stone beneath them like gangrene. One or two at first, then more as they neared their destination, until the the ground became mottled. Some solid, some liquid, roiling and churning on the head of the day. They exuded an acrid, greasy reek that glued itself the inside of your nose and mouth and remained as an aftertaste even when you went inside. “Fuckin bitumen or something,” opined Whicker, holding a rag to his mouth and peering over the railing.
A few hours after the rock had given way entirely to the fuckin' bitumen and the only variation was in viscosity, they came upon the dig site.
It was dusk. Sweetie Belle had finished her shift and, knowing the moment was near, was standing on the deck looking ahead and listening to the daemons. She wasn't sure at first – the oily fumes made the view by the horizon deceptive – but as they grew closer, the scene became clearer, and other crewmembers began to notice it too: a divot in the ground.
Details became evident as they drew closer and long shadows separated themselves from ragged edges, cliffs and escarpments. Mounds of shredded bitumen sat by the divot's side – though nowhere near enough to fill it. All the edges smudged into slick curves. It was, thought Sweetie Belle, like the Scar rendered in black muck.
Some shacks and a mooring mast, an outpost, nearby gave a sense of scale. The divot was huge. Deep enough to trap an ursa major. Deep enough to comfortably fit Hinny's Revenge with room to spare.
Other ponies were gathering. “There's no way I'm gonna believe they dug out all that,” said Petallion, standing beside Sweetie Belle. “No way in this world or the old one.”
The crew lit the limelight, opened the shutters and blinked a greeting at the outpost.
No response.
They tried again. And again. They drew closer, signalled a fourth time.
Still nothing.
The Captain moved across the deck, talked to an officer – Sweetie Belle couldn't hear what they were saying – and then to another. Two pegasi scouts came up from below deck, consulted briefly with the officers, then took off, heading for the outpost. After a command through the loudspeakers, the ship slowed to give the scouts time to report back, just in case there was anything that might threaten it.
My beloved was the jocular one. The silly one. The lighthearted one.
I was melancholic, intense, and dour. The closest I could get to humour was sarcasm, often self-deprecating.
What? You're surprised to hear of my hidden depths?
But he could always (almost) cheer me up when I was mired in my own indulgence. When everything seemed hopeless, when I felt I couldn't go any further, his smile, encouraging, pure, almost idiotically optimistic, kept me going.
Even when the daemons came through.
Even when the world was ending around us.
“We'll fix it,” he said.
He was wrong, of course.
Chapter 5 Change of Circumstance
Scattered papers with printed charts and notes and scribbled asides, a couple of pencils, two dinner trays – one with hay, one with reddish chunks of meat Sweetie Belle couldn't identify, both half-finished. On the floor beside the little worktable there was another tray. It had fallen off, spilling its contents: more hay and an upturned wooden bowl on a pile of oats.
The food smelt stale but not musty. It could have been served minutes or days ago. The meat stench was repulsive and gave no hint to its freshness. Sweetie Belle prodded a piece, which squidged slightly, leaving a thin film of grease on her hoof. It didn't look off …
Behind her, Captain Gritstone grunted. “Nothing,” he said.
“No,” agreed Sweetie Belle. She wiped her hooftip on the floor.
Gritstone looked at her and sighed. “Come on.”
She followed him out of the room and into the corridor beyond.
A few metres to their right was the entrance to the outpost; to their left, a ragged hole that let in the sunlight and the stink of the desert. Looking through it you could see a patch of bitumen littered with scraps of metal and punctured by what Sweetie Belle presumed were foundations, and beyond that the great divot. It looked like the back half of the building had been sheared off entirely.
Of the surviving half, it was clear everyone had left in a hurry. Everyone, not everypony – some were carnivores. The papers they had left behind were at first glance unhelpful: papers on drilling techniques filled with obscure technical terms; what looked like the second page of a funding application that talked about the profit potential of native Amaranthian life; a couple of scrawled notes implying passive-aggressive academic feuds; complex technical diagrams; and finally, a black and white, unclear picture of something resembling a snake with insect mouthparts and spikes on its tail.
Sweetie Belle could see, though, that none of that bothered Gritstone as much as the lack of good salvage. They had sent out pegasus scouts to search the area, and they had picked up some heavy-duty drilling machinery, but beyond that, nothing.
In the next room, accessed by a broad doorway, that changed.
Five spheres, each at least six foot across, took the entire floorspace. Speckled in shades of flint and brass with a muted sheen and minute details that almost became iridescence the closer you looked.
Gritstone turned to Sweetie Belle. “Let's hope this isn't another not-really-priceless artefact, eh?” he said, but she could see he was trying to suppress a smile.
“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle touched one; it was warm and dry.
“At least I haven't heard anything about shady payments for big stone spheres.”
Gritstone ordered the crew to set up a net behind the building to haul the spheres back up to the ship. They turned out to be surprisingly light; Sweetie Belle found it easy to roll one out the door, along the corridor and into the net by herself.
Soon after the cargo was loaded, the first of the scouts returned. He had news: “I've found the researchers.”
Gritstone met the pegasus in his office. He invited Sweetie Belle to join them.
“They're in a ship about six miles east of here,” explained the scout. “It's pretty bust up – big fucking hole in the envelope.”
“Did they tell you what happened?” said Gritstone.
“They were attacked.” The scout looked away briefly. “Not pirates. By something they dug up.”
“A snake?” said Sweetie Belle.
The scout shrugged. “They used some fancy name for it. Something like 'worm'.”
“Did they kill it?” asked Gritstone.
“No, sir. They said they got rid of it. Lured it away with a gunship.”
Gritstone sat back and pondered this silently.
“We need to help them,” said Sweetie Belle.
“You have a talent for getting yourself – and us – into scrapes,” said Gritstone. He scratched as his chin. “It's starting look like there's – let's not dance around the word – a monster out there that likes tear things to pieces. If they're telling the truth. Either way, I don't want to run into whatever had a go at the station.”
“Sir,” began Sweetie Belle.
Gritstone held up a hoof to silence her. “I think the smart thing to do would be to leave as quickly as possible. But I also think that leaving these researchers out in the desert is as good as killing them, and that's far too close to piracy for my tastes.”
Sweetie Belle could only smile.
“We'll rescue them and head back to Ilmarinen. That's it. No messing about, alright?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir,” added the scout.
Gritstone nodded acknowledgement at them both, then dismissed them.
They found the researchers' ship on a flattish granite outcrop that poked through the bitumen desert. It was listing, with a tumorous-looking partially inflated envelope looming over its port side.
As they approached, a chatter of flashing limelight sprung up between the ships. Further damage became clear: The brassy hull was wounded in a dozen places – punctured and twisted metal, mechanical guts hanging out through one opening.
Hinny's Revenge dropped, opened the great doors on its belly, and moored itself to the wreck, off to the side so it could extend gangplanks.
Gritstone clearly wasn't wasting time on pleasantries. A team went down to inspect the ship. A few minutes later, they returned, and ragged-maned researchers with drooping heads started filing on board. Drooping shoulders too – some of them were diamond dogs.
As soon as Sweetie Belle saw this, she raced across the decks to get a better view. She searched their colours as they passed. Ochres, shades of red, dark yellows. Orange – on an earth pony. Purple – but it was a coat, not a mane.
She came closer. This was it, right? This was the moment of meeting, of reconciliation, when they could go home together. The stream of researchers trickled. Her hope guttered. “Scootaloo?” she called out, edging around the clustered groups on the deck. “Scootaloo?” Maybe she'd already boarded. Maybe Sweetie Belle had just missed her.
One of the researchers, a gangly, piebald diamond dog, stepped forward and waved at her with a great, meaty paw. “You know Scootaloo?” he said, eyebrows raised.
Sweetie Belle broke into a momentary gallop to get to him. “Yes!” she said. “Oh Celestia, yes. Where is she?”
“Not here.”
She skidded to a halt in front of him and stared. “But … she was, right? What happened?”
“She was. She saved us.” The diamond dog sighed and ran a paw over his head. “Scootaloo signed on with us as a guard. When the aelewyrm attacked us, she took the gunship and goaded it into chasing her and lured it away from her.”
Sweetie Belle sat down heavily Playing the hero. Yeah, that's Scootaloo all right. She struggled to get the words out: “Do you think she's still … still …” She looked across the deck, where the savaged hull of the research vessel sat. “ … alive?”
“I've no doubt. The gunship is fast enough to keep pace with the aelewyrm. But I don't know if she could outrun it, and she wouldn't come back here or go anywhere populated if it were still chasing her.”
“Gunships, aleworms … Oh, Celestia,” Sweetie Belle murmured.
“Aelewyrms,” corrected the diamond dog.
“Right.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and steadied herself. “Thanks for telling me. What's your name?”
“Tom.”
“Tom … thanks again.” She took his paw. “Now, we've got to go see the captain. Come on!”
She dragged him down to Gritstone's office. As they arrived she saw one of the officers and a green mare, who judging by the state of her mane was one of the researchers, enter and close the door behind them. She hammered on the wood and, without waiting for a response, let herself in. A glance confirmed Tom has followed her. He had to duck his head to fit into the office, and even so his ears brushed against the ceiling.
“Sweetie Belle?”
“We can't leave yet,” announced Sweetie Belle. “Uh, sir.”
Gritstone stared at her; the officer is stared at her; the mare stared at her; Tom stared at the wall.
“Sweetie Belle, you may not saunter into the captain's office and –”
“Major, what have you been telling this mare?”
“Please, sir –”
“Only the truth.”
“We have to – ”
“Quiet!” Gritstone didn't shout, but he spoke with such ferocity that silence fell immediately. He rubbed his head against his hoof and muttered, “For Celestia's sake, if I wanted to put up with this, I'd have stayed a schoolmaster.” He gave each of them a penetrating look. “Doctor Sherry has just been telling me about the salvage we picked up. Eggs, apparently.”
The green mare, Sherry, started to speak. Raising his voice to continue: “Which we will not be taking with us. So, Sweetie Belle, I'm not in the mood for further complications. Why the interruption?”
“There's somepony still out there,” she replied. “Scootaloo. She saved them from the … aelewyrm?” She glanced at Tom, who nodded. “The aelewyrm. She lured it away. She's going to come back. We have to wait for her.”
Gritstone turned to Sherry. “Doctor, is that true?”
“Yes. But we shouldn't wait.”
“Are you going to tell us that she is almost certainly dead? That we shouldn't bother waiting for her.”
Sherry pursed her lips. “Not in the slightest, Captain. Scootaloo did us a great service, and I wouldn't insult her like that. Honestly, I don't know whether she's alive or not. I hope she is. However –” She frowned at Tom “– if so, she has a ship and can make her own way back. If she isn't, the aelewyrm maybe returning in her place. Waiting for her is a great risk and has no real benefit.”
Gritstone nodded. “And Major … ?”
“Tom. Just Tom.”
“Tom, then. Anything to add?”
Tom glanced at Sherry and nodded. “The gunship she's in may run out of fuel. Or be damaged. We can't count on her being able to return. And, regardless, it seems unfair to leave after all she's done for us.”
“Noble,” murmured Sherry, “but foolish.”
Tom said nothing.
“Doctor,” said Gritstone. “I'm presuming this aelewyrm is whatever your team dug up.”
“Yes.”
“I've only seen the damage left in its wake. What is it? And what can I expect if it comes back before we leave?”
“We think it's native Amaranthian life. Possibly megafauna related to the builders of Amaranth's technology. Physically: A serpentine body about 210 metres long with eight crystalline eyes, corundum mandibles and thagomizer –”
“Enough,” said Gritstone. “And it didn't occur to you that it might be dangerous?”
“Actually, we spent some time assessing the risk. We even allowed for the possibility it might be alive. Buried monsters often are …”
“But?”
Sherry smiled thinly. “The seismic imagers didn't pick up its wings. We assumed it was ground fauna … and we had an airship.”
“Uh … you had a gunship, didn't you? Is it immune to bullets?” asked Sweetie Belle.
Tom rubbed one paw with the other. “I wouldn't say immune. They annoyed it enough to get it to give chase.”
Gritstone sighed. “I'm sorry, Sweetie Belle …”
“Sir!” she cried. “Please”
“I understand this mare is important to you, but I am not going to risk –”
Sweetie Belle pushed past Sherry and the officer to get to the front of Gritstone's desk. “We can't just leave!”
“Yes we can.” The Captain stood and glowered at her. “As of right now, you've used up whatever goodwill you had left. We are leaving, and when we get to Ilmarinen you are off this ship.”
Sweetie Belle stepped back, looked Gritstone up and down.
“Dismissed,” he said quietly.
“Wait! Wait. I'm off the ship, sure. What if I leave now? Stay on the research ship?
“Not a smart move, Sweetie Belle.”
“I know,” she admitted, looking at the floor. “I know. But I have to.”
“And if she is dead?”
Sweetie Belle didn't look up. There was nothing to be said.
“Very well,” said Gritstone. “Gangplank goes up in fifteen minutes. Decide which ship you want to be on by then.”
“Uh.” Tom has his paw raised. “I'll stay too.” He turned to Sweetie Belle. “If you don't mind, that is.”
Sweetie Belle glanced at Sherry, who was silently glaring at Tom.
“No … I'll be glad to have the company.”
“Good,” said Gritstone. “We're settled.” He turned to the officer: “Get those eggs off my ship.” Then to Sweetie Belle: “As I said, fifteen minutes.”
There was nothing onboard Hinny's Revenge Sweetie Belle wanted to take. She grabbed some rations from the mess, then, searching for somepony to say goodbye to, ran into Muttershanks by the railings.
She explained what she was doing and finished with, “say goodbye to Petallion and Whicker for me, will you?”
Muttershanks grimaced. “You are going to get yourself killed with this sort of behaviour.”
“Maybe,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Take care. I'll tell them.”
Sweetie Belle gave Mutterhshanks a quick hug, didn't get one in return, then cantered off.
At the gangplank, she turned back briefly to look at the austere, ugly, inviting Hinny's Revenge, then forward to the savaged hulk where she would spend however long it took Scootaloo to return.
She took a deep breath and trotted forward.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo stood on the hastily-assembled wooden platform of Omphalos' third train station.
Behind them, from a train on the adjacent tracks, a crane unloaded several tonnes of Everfree timber bound for Amaranth. Ahead of them, a dozen airships loitered around the outskirts of the city, drawn by the promise of novelty and adventure and profit. Like flies on shit, Sweetie Belle thought.
“Come on,” said Scootaloo. “Let's get a tram to the other side.” She trotted ahead without waiting for a response.
“Yeah, okay,” said Sweetie Belle, following. Just let her get it out of her system. Wait till it's lost its lustre. Then tell her.
They trotted past them ramshackle frontier buildings, past the crowds of griffons and ponies, past the great cranes and cableways to the core of the city, the place where universes kissed.
The tram station, one of seven, lay at the edge of an interior ring of structures a couple hundred metres across. Inside the ring there were no more buildings, and the ground became a downwards slope, like a funnel, gradually increasing in steepness until it dipped below view.
Riding the tram down the slope, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo didn't feel like they were going downhill. Gravity remained firmly pointed towards the floor, and behind them the world they'd left seemed to tilt sickeningly.
At the halfway point, Sweetie Belle stuck her head out the tram's window and looked around. The ground was almost a right angle from their starting point now. Looking back she could she they sky of the world they'd left, clouds scattered vertically; looking forward she could see the sky of Amaranth, with a ragged white tear in reality bisecting it. Craning her neck up, she saw a tram pass on the far side of the funnel's neck – upside down from her perspective.
She pulled her head back inside and grinned. Despite her reservations, she had to admit she found the funnel fascinating.
Scootaloo didn't: She was staring at the tram's floor looking slightly nauseated. Seeing her like that, Sweetie Belle felt a twinge of joy; perhaps it was the first step to disliking Amaranth. She reached out and put a reassuring hoof over Scootaloo's.
A jolt of some indefinable feeling. Half like the floor dropping from under you, half a momentary chill. Sweetie Belle felt a wave of thaumic sparks coruscating down her horn; beside her, Scootaloo shuddered.
That was the transition point – the barrier at the neck of the funnel past which neither the Princesses nor Discord could cross. Now they were formally in Amaranth.
She heard a faint muttering.
“Did you say something?”
Scootaloo shook her head sharply, still looking down.
Sweetie Belle rubbed her hoof. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine. I'll be fine.”
Muttering again, in just one ear. Sweetie Belle turned her ear back and forth, searching for the origin.
“Daemons,” said Scootaloo weakly. “Remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
The transition point kept the Princesses out of Amaranth, but it also kept the daemons in. Almost everypony Sweetie Belle had heard opine on the issue thought the trade-off was worth it.
The ground continued to curve below them as the tram climbed out of the hole, until at last they had traversed a full 180 degrees and they were in Amaranth proper.
Sweetie Belle's first daemon was still muttering in her ear when the tram drew into the terminus, with a chime to announce its arrival. She peered out the window, brimming with fascination. At first glance, the far side of Omphalos didn't look that different from the one they'd left: Quickly assembled architecture and industry. A mix of Equestrian and Aquileonan design and citizens, with a smattering of other species mixed in. But an oddity soon became apparent – a colour she'd not seen before lurking in every shadow that looked a bit, but only a little bit, like orange. “Come on,” she told Scootaloo. “We're here.”
They left the tram and walked through the city. It was warmer on this side, like a midday summer in Appleoosa, and a thick soup of odours hung in the air, sweat and smoke and oil and other chemical smells. Airships, greater in size and number, sat ponderous in the sky or swam above them with a grumble and whirr of engines.
They reached the outskirts of the city. An flimsy iron barrier, beyond which the rock ground dropped away. Hundreds of feel below the true desert of Amaranth began: dunes stretching off into the horizon, littered with uncountable metal skeletons and shadowed by uncountable airships.
Scootaloo was still looking a little peaky from the passage through the funnel. Without saying anything she sat down and stared out across the desert. Her expression was shot through with melancholy and, if not disappointment, something very close to it. Watching her, Sweetie Belle felt a surge of longing.
A twitch of orange ear. “This daemon hasn't let up since we got off the tram.”
“Same here,” said Sweetie Belle, sitting beside her. “How do you feel?”
Scootaloo made little noise in her throat. “I dunno,” she said at last. “It's awesome … but I guess I was expecting something a little more …” Her brow creased. “Cooler. Heroic. Cleaner?” She shook her head and swore softly.
Sweetie Belle took a moment to summon her courage, then put her hoof and Scootaloo's shoulder and drew her closer. Scootaloo didn't resist, and ended up with her head resting on Sweetie Belle's shoulder.
“Y'know romance?” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle tensed. “Yeah?”
“I mean, the word. That can also mean, like … when you think something is really perfect, even though it isn't?”
“Um … More or less.”
“I got carried away by the romance.”
“Oh.” Sweetie Belle looked down, then out towards the horizon. It was several seconds before she spoke again: “Yeah, you did.”
“Damn.”
“While I was in Fillydelphia, I got talking to a pony who does adventure tours. Ziplining in jungles and that sort of thing. He's looking for more tour operators. I know it's not quite as much a frontier as Amaranth, but if you were doing that, we'd get to see each other more … and I wouldn't have to worry about my best friend getting chased by airship pirates.”
“Go on …”
Sweetie Belle sat on the slanted deck of the wreck watching Hinny's Revenge.
When the gangplanks were retracted, the tethers released, a whining undertone added itself to the engine's roar. Compressed air being released. The ship rose. The hull at first slid and soon raced upwards, and then was gone, and she was looking upward at the its underside, the doors to the crane, the medley of salvaged additions.
It turned ponderously, then started to move away.
A few metres down the deck the five aelewyrm eggs sat in a shallow hole in the deck. She didn't know what to do with them. In favour of letting them drop onto the desert below and smash, they might hatch. In favour of leaving them be, they might hatch. In the end she'd decided to leave them. Maybe the young would be friendlier than the adult.
She realised with a suppressed shiver that it was back again. That old companion. The feeling of being a tiny filly on the verge of dissolving in immensity like salt in water.
Amaranth again came into searing clarity: The metallic deck grating pressing into her legs and belly, the fake-orange Scarlight hiding in the lengthening shadows, the acrid smell of the bitumen below, the rubbery whispers of daemons, the sense of overwhelming history ground into near shapelessness by the inexplicably inconsistent passage of vast tracts time.
Only crazy ponies would come here.
That includes you, Sweetie Belle, doesn't it?
And Scootaloo?
But she had a reason …
She stood and sought to distract herself from even less welcome thoughts. Behind her an open door led to steps rendered treacherously steep by ship's angle. Sour and anaemic interior lighting dribbled from within and revealed an empty corridor below.
“Tom?”
Padding steps, then a voice: “Yes?”
“Just checking you're alive. Why're you still down there?”
“It seemed like a good opportunity to catch up on my reading,” answered Tom.
“Oh, right.” She briefly considered leaving him to his reading. “The sun's out and … the birds aren't singing, but it's still a lovely day. You shouldn't spend it cooped up inside.”
Silence. Then more padding, and Tom appeared at the bottom of the stairs holding a leatherbound book. He looked her in the eye, and started climbing.
“I'm starting to miss days that aren't sunny,” he said.
Sweetie Belle snorted. “If I get back to Equestria and never see the sun again, if the pegasi decide to keep a raincloud over my head for the rest of my life, I would be happy.” She walked with Tom back to her vantage point over the desert. Hinny's Revenge was smaller now, its engines barely audible.
“Hm. I'm sure Scootaloo would never let that happen.”
She tried not to show the pain on her face and nodded. After a few seconds without a reply, she ventured a different tack. “Major? You're military?”
He shook his head. “I'm not, thank Sirius. It would be really awkward if I were.” He shrugged. “It's just a name. My mother had some … odd ideas about life. I prefer to go by 'Tom'.”
“Oh, right …” She traced her hooftip across the deck grating, changing directions randomly at each corner. It was becoming increasingly clear she had nothing but selfish reasons drag him away from his reading. “What's the book?”
“An old saga. Mostly just dogs from a thousand years ago running each other through with swords and burning each others homes down.” He tapped the leather face. “We had quite a civilisation once, you know. I brought it to remind me of my roots back home. It's easy to lose yourself in a place like this.”
“Can I see?”
Tom opened it about halfway through to reveal two blank, cream-coloured pages. “You can smell.”
Sweetie Belle just looked at him.
“Olfactory language. The paper's impregnated with chemicals in different combinations.” He offered to book.
She took it and tentatively sniffed the top of the lefthand page. The bitumen smell in the air nearly overpowered the page, but she could just pick out hints of lavender, almond, petrichor, overripe pear, and several subtler scents she couldn't put a name to.
“Did … did you show this to Scootaloo?” she asked as she handed it back.
“Yeah.”
“What did she say?
“She said, and I quote, 'Aromatic? I can barely read Equestrian.'”
“Was … was there anything between –”
“Hold that thought,” said Tom. “Your ship is signalling us.”
Sweetie Belle looked up. Hinny's Revenge, a grey patchwork bug hovering near the horizon, was emitting a series of flashes.
“That's an urgent signal,” said Tom. “Come on.”
“Of course it is,” muttered Sweetie Belle. She followed Tom at a cantering pace to the ship's light signal and watched, feeling useless and frustrated, while he lit it and set up the gates.
Everything set up, Tom sent a response.
“What're they saying?” It struck her that here was another language from which her ignorance excluded her, even after being in Amaranth for months. Scootaloo probably knew how to read light signals, she thought ruefully.
“Urgent,” translated Tom. “Yes, we got that bit. Ships approaching. Two. Aquileonan design. Using stealth. Likely pirates. Trajectory … They're coming from the research station.”
Sweetie Belle stopped worrying about language. “Then … they were tailing us.”
“Possibly,” said Tom.
“No,” said Sweetie Belle. “They are. There was a jennet in Ilmarinen. She said pirates were chasing Scootaloo. Griffons.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “And they've followed me to get to her.
Tom said nothing and started sending a message back to Hinny's Revenge.
Sweetie Belle kneaded the ground with her hooves while more messages went back and forth. A sense of urgency clashed with the time it took to communicate.
“Okay,” said Tom at last. “Because the pirates are coming from the research station, your captain has a clear route to Ilmarinen. He thinks he can get there, or at least within range of the Ilmarinen navy, before they catch up to him. Also said he knew he'd need the ansible, and thanks for chipping in.”
Sweetie Belle sighed. “And what about us?”
“We wait here and hope they don't find us.”
“Is that it?”
“I suppose we could signal the pirates and give away our location. That way we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not they knew we were here.”
“Let's wait.”
“Good plan.”
Blueberry led her bodyguards past a team of buzzing chevaloids laden with boxes through the main chamber of Ilmarinen Docking Tower Five. The sound of clanking metal and whining cables echoed off the walls, battering her eardrums and almost drowning out a daemon's soliloquy about magnificence, and the rough floor was doing her hooficure no favours, she was sure.
They had found the missing repository almost immediately, put up for sale by a griffon salvor. And therein lay the problem: It was inactive.
Which meant that someone had used it. And she didn't like that thought at all. But there were still avenues to investigate, so investigate she would.
She glanced out one of the tower's windows at their destination. On the elegant blue and gold envelope, curlicued letters spelled out the ship's name: Dulcet.
“Hello there!” she announced to the griffon standing guard at the Dulcet's portal when they were a few metres away. “The name's Blueberry Pancake. I'm here on behalf of S to look at your merchandise. You were told to expect us, I hope?”
The griffon's eyes widened. “Oh, um, yes.”
Blueberry smiled widely and put a hoof on his shoulder. “Would you tell your captain that we've arrived?”
The captain, a large and lithe female griffon by the name of Lucille with painted talons, met them in the hold where the inactive repository sat amongst other carefully-tended pieces of junk.
“Captain Lucille, is it? I'm Blueberry Pancake, the buyer. I love your ship, by the way. Very nice paintjob. Makes a change from the usual rust-buckets I see around Ilmarinen.”
“Hm … thank you,” said Lucille after a moment, looking faintly bemused. “Would you like to inspect the statue?”
“If you don't mind,” said Blueberry. “Just have to make sure it isn't a forgery.”
She walked with Lucille over to the repository and started into its eyes as if there were some information to be gleaned. Nothing, though. Just a few diminishing thaumic ripples. The repository was completely inactive.
“While ten thousand bits is a price that encourages me to ask no questions …” said Lucille behind her.
“You can't help being curious?” She turned to offer the captain a friendly grin. “Salvor's instinct, right?”
Lucille nodded. “Got it in one.”
“Beautiful and smart. I like that,” said Blueberry. She looked at Sorghum and Cannons. “An inquisitive mind is a sign of intelligence, don't you think?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Sorghum; Cannons nodded silently.
Blueberry stepped forward to whisper in Lucille's ear: “Don't mind these two. They're as inquisitive as a damp flannel.” Then, retreating again, continued out loud, “So ask away.”
Lucille looked from Blueberry to the bodyguards and back again. “Everything I've heard until now stressed that S only wanted luminescent statues. And you, Blueberry Pancake. You're certainly not what I was expecting.”
“You wouldn't believe how often I get that.” Blueberry grinned at Lucille. “But it's just a matter of public relations. I mean, who wants to do a deal with a bunch of raggedy aquileonan privateers, right? I certainly wouldn't. As for luminescent statues … I'm afraid all I can say it it's a special case.” She paused for a moment. “Oh! That reminds me, I need to know where you found this statue.”
“I didn't, as it happens. I bought it from a friend.”
“Even though you thought it was worthless?”
Lucille shrugged with her wings. “Like I said, a friend.”
“How noble …” said Blueberry, adding a twinge of huskiness to her voice. “Did he tell you where he found it?”
“Salt flats south of here.”
“Anything more specific?”
Lucille shook her head.
Blueberry frowned and tried to look like she was thinking. “Could you tell us where to find this friend of yours? I don't want to alarm you, but it could be important for his safety. You know how ancient magical artefacts can be …”
Lucille looked at her silently with briefly narrowed eyes. “I can't. He's gone off on another 'let's get myself in mortal danger' trip. But I'll send him an ansible message and tell him you're looking.”
“Would you? That'd really help,” said Blueberry. “Thank you so much, Lucille.”
She finished up the meeting as soon as possible: She agreed to buy the useless repository, told Lucille her eyes were beautiful, paid ten thousand bits, and retreated to her own ship to await delivery.
“She's lying to protect them,” opined Cannons.
“Of course she is,” said Blueberry, only half paying attention. She stretched out on her chaise longue, soaking in the sensation of soft velvet against her back, then looked again at the roster she'd charmed out of a clerk.
“We should interrogate her.”
“Because kidnapping a griffon from the most heavily policed port outside of Omphalos will really help, right?” Salvor ships, crewed by ponies, that arrived and left again within the past week. There were only three candidates: Hinny's Revenge, The Shrike, and The Crucible.
Cannons kneaded at the floor. “And what about the pony who was able to use the repository?”
Blueberry looked up from the roster and grinned at him. “Don't worry so much.” She closed her eyes and stretched. “Be a sweetheart and put a record on, will you? Something light, if you don't mind. Yeah … the Sweetie Belle album will do. Anyway, it's simple. The white unicorn downloaded the repository. That means she has the location of the hidden city buried somewhere in her brain. All we have to do is find her and dig it out.”
After an hour of waiting in the ship's innards, during which anxiety gave way to boredom, a subsonic thrum crawled through the bulkheads. Soon after, Sweetie Belle heard a clang, and the ship's hull rattled in response.
Tom lifted his nose from the book and grimaced. “Oh, crumbs.”
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. There didn't seem to be much else to say.
They waited in silence, listening. From the deck came the sound of steps and voices. Faint at first, not so faint.
And two griffons appeared at the door, guns under their wings.
“Well,” said one, turning to Sweetie Belle. “Look who it is.”
They led Sweetie Belle and Tom up to the deck. A lone ship held onto the wreck with grapples; a silver-grey cigar, all sleek edges and smooth curves, with a gondola integrated into its hull and no exposed decks. Guns poked out from a dozen places to mar the streamlining.
No gangplank: Pairs of griffons lifted the two of them into an open portal on the gondola.
Makes sense if all the crew have wings, thought Sweetie Belle, and idly wondered why she wasn't freaking out more. She supposed she'd already used up all her freakout points on previous, lesser, problems; now there was nothing to do but wait and see what would happen.
As she reached the ship, she caught sight of the aelewyrm eggs being carried aboard.
The griffons who led Tom and her at gunpoint down the corridors kept muttering too each other. They were taken into a dingy office where yet more armed griffons waited. One in the centre, with a missing digit on his right claw and what would have been magnificent cream plumage were it not riven by bald scars, stepped forward, pointed at her with his stump, and spoke in a voice like the roiling tar below them.
“This her?”
“Yeah. She came up to our ship asking after Scootaloo,” answered one of the guards.
“Scootaloo herself?”
“No sign.”
“She wouldn't be hiding. And the diamond dog?”
“Dunno.”
Okay, so these were the pirates tracking Scootaloo. Now what? If she told them Scootaloo had left in a gunship to defeat a giant flying snake, would they follow? Would she be sending Scootaloo a second enemy?
If she didn't …
Torture. Terror settled in her stomach like an ice-cold rock, and she realised she still had a reserve of freakout points to go.
The lead griffon stepped forward, put his mutilated claw under he chin and lifted her gaze to his. Sweetie Belle tried to recoil, until a gun jabbed into her flank.
“What's your story, huh?” said the griffon. His beak, a carnivore break, made for digging into flesh.
Sweetie Belle said nothing.
“Thought so. It doesn't matter.” He released her and looked at the guards. “We're not going after Scootaloo.”
“We're not?”
“No.” He gestured at the griffon by his side. “Just before we arrived, Gregor here received an ansible transmission. Turns out one of our employers is looking for a white unicorn mare who passed through Ilmarinen just a few days ago. She's worth more than ten times everything Scootaloo has lost us.
“Now, Gregor, reply to their message. Tell them we have the pony they're looking for.”
I was starting to worry the eschaton would be immanentised before we reached this part. The repository is lagging. It's been almost eight minutes since I began, but it seems Her Godliness is also taking her time.
It'll be a few chapters before our proper villain appears. Wouldn't it be ironic if she swept us aside before I get to telling that bit?
Anyway, I may as well crack ahead.
Chapter 6 Appearances
Sweetie Belle, Tom, and the aelewyrm eggs had been left in what she supposed was some sort of cargo hold: unpainted walls poorly lit by a stuttering lamp in the corner, filled with cool, humid air and some faint, unplaceable reek that was, at least, more pleasant than the air outside. It would have almost been relaxing, were they not in mortal danger.
And were it not for the fact that her hallucination had returned half an hour ago.
It – she – sat in front of Sweetie Belle, looking at her with big, lugubrious eyes. She looked more real now, her scale and mane as dark as the rest of her room. Sometimes she would try to speak, but no sound would came out of her mouth, and she would frown, silently curse, and flicker out of existence, only to reappear a few minutes later. Each time Sweetie Belle's horn twinged.
After her third return, Sweetie Belle stood and walked towards her. “What do you want?” she asked softly. “Why are you in my head?”
The hallucination looked up at her when she spoke, then stood too. She reached out a cloven hoof as if to stroke Sweetie Belle's face and said something that from her expression looked very much like I'm sorry.
“What?” said Tom.
Sweetie Belle glanced at him, and when she looked back the hallucination was gone. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Nothing.”
“Must be the most valuable nothing in Amaranth,” said Tom.
Sweetie Belle ambled over and sat beside him. “I suppose there's no point in keeping it secret now.”
“Are you sure? If it gets out, someone might hear about it and try and capture you.”
She glared at him.
Tom shrugged. “What's your story?”
She told him. About finding the statue, about how it had zapped her, about whatever secret organisation was offering huge amounts of money for lit statues, and how this one had gone dark, about the hallucination that had been haunting her since Ilmarinen.
“And,” she concluded, “sometimes I feel like I can almost understand what the daemons are saying.”
“You're … not a lucky mare, are you?”
She laughed despite everything and shook her head.
“So you think they … whoever they are … are chasing you because of what the statue did?”
“Makes sense, right? Maybe they want this creature I keep seeing.”
“How did they find out about you?”
“I don't know. They might've figured out we had a statue in Ilmarinen. Or the griffon we sold it to might've told them. But I don't know why they'd know to go after me.”
When she looked ahead, the hallucination had returned. Her horn twinged again. The hallucination walked across the hold, over towards the Aelewyrm eggs, gesturing at her to follow. She stood and trotted after it.
“What's happening?”
“She's back,” said Sweetie Belle. When she got within a few metres of the eggs, the hallucination vanished again. “Oh, Celestia. This getting …”
What was that?
She walked closer to the eggs, listening intently.
A barely audible scraping, followed by a louder crunch.
The eggs were hatching.
Millie was starting to worry she was out of her depth.
She'd trailed the two ships to the research outpost – inexplicably destroyed. Soon after they had taken off again. East, this time. Again she had trailed them until, maybe four or five miles along, they had separated. One continued east; the other had accelerated and turned back in the direction of Ilmarinen.
That, by itself, was easy to read: Hinny's Revenge had seen them and scarpered, but griffons had seen something else they wanted to investigate. But with that reading came only further mysteries. What had led their quarry east, and what were they now investigating?
But it was time for decisions, not mysteries. She decided to trail the pursuing ship, supposing that Hinny's Revenge was in immediate danger. And besides, a single armed pirate ship might actually be a challenge she could handle.
But there things got more confusing. A couple of hours into the chase, the pursuing ship had given up. It just decelerated, drew to a halt and waited. Soon after its partner appeared on the horizon. Millie moved Dignity out from its path and waited.
Over the past half hour, each of the five eggs had begun to crunch and shudder. Cracks lined their shells, and the motion beneath was clearly visible.
Tom seemed to have forgotten their predicament, and was circling the eggs, staring intensely at them. “What do you think they'll look like?” he said. “Smaller versions of the adult, or some larval stage?” And later, “I wonder what they need to eat.”
Sweetie Belle had to admit that despite everything, the eggs were fascinating. And even if the aelewyrm hatchlings did kill them, it might not be much worse than the fate awaiting her.
With a great cracking sound, the closest eggs split along its circumference and opened slightly. Syrupy liquid smelling of diesel dribbled out from the underside. Motion within – and pincer-like mandibles, glistening wet and the colour of ivory, maybe two feet long, emerged. They clicked together, once, twice, then retreated.
Tom took a step back.
Sweetie Belle took a step forward. She steadied herself and did her best to channel Fluttershy: “Hello there, little one …”
“Sweetie Belle?”
She turned to Tom. “Worth a try, right?”
The hatchling moved again, this time poking its entire head out. Its dark grey skin looked like a cross between dragon scales, tar, and ancient, cracked rubber. Brilliant electric blue compound eyes with hints of gold and copper were arranged in four pairs circling the head.
Sweetie Belle took another tentative step towards it and slowly reached out a hoof.
It looked at her – or seemed to look at her – and clicked its mandibles.
“Hey. Welcome to, um, Amaranth.”
The hatchling responded with a noise halfway between a low pitched chirrup and an untuned cello. It reached forward, pushed its mandibles against Sweetie Belle's hoof and chirruped again.
She grinned at Tom. “See?”
As the other four eggs began to hatch, Sweetie Belle and Tom introduced themselves to each in turn, speaking in gentle tones and getting surreal but evidently friendly noises in return. Soon, the hatchlings escaped fully from their eggs, revealing slender bodies, tapering to spiked tails over ten or twelve feet. From each, three pairs of wings unfurled, covered in the same tarlike skin as the rest of the creature.
They moved gracefully, sidewinding, then flicking out a wing or two to gain traction and change direction. Intermittently they would buzz their wings, lift a short way off the ground, then go back to slinking across the floor to nuzzle Sweetie Belle or Tom, or investigate the walls. Momentarily the eldest took to the air, hovered, then flew across the hold – and went back to struggling.
Sweetie Belle was just getting past a wave of bewilderment and euphoria and starting to worry about what to do next when one of the hatchlings started investigating the hold's metal door. After nosing around a little, it opened its mandibles wide and bit down on either side of the door. A loud clang echoed through the hold. The aelewyrm's chirrup. A squeal as the door buckled slightly. Another chirrup as the aelewyrm retreated, and another clang when it threw its thagomizer against the door.
Cursing from the other side.
The door opened. Sweetie Belle was about to rush forward, but Tom held her back. “What in …” came the guard's voice from the corridor outside. The hatchling chirruped and moved forward.
The sharp retort of gunfire, painfully loud.
The hatchling fell back, but only momentarily. Then, with a sound that was less of a chirrup than a roar, it surged through the door. The guard screamed. The other hatchlings perked up and moved towards the door. More gunfire. Yelling. Aelewyrm sounds that were impossible to put a name to.
The noise began to die away. Sweetie Belle realised Tom's paw was still against her shoulder. She moved it aside, turned to him, and said, “I think we'd better go.”
Halfway towards the door she turned to see him standing in the same place. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “What's the alternative?”
Tom shrugged and moved to follow her.
The corridor outside was empty, the walls pitted with fresh scars and the floor strewn with spent casings. With what she hoped was an air of confidence, she turned right and started cantering. A little way down there a mound of something lying against the wall, all stained feathers and fur. It took a fraction of a second for her to realise what it was. She averted her eyes and kept cantering. After she'd passed she heard something. Tom appeared jogging beside her, a gun in his hand. He glanced down at it as if surprised by it's presence. “I have no idea how to fire this. Oh, crumbs.”
Looking down yet another corridor with no indication of where in the ship they were, Sweetie Belle was beginning to think her plan to trail the hatchlings wasn't going well. The sounds of the pirates fighting – or failing to fight – were getting fainter, and she suspected the hatchlings had split up some time ago. On the upside, she thought to herself, this route meant they hadn't run into any pirates.
Around the next corner they ran into a pirate.
He was alone, and he was looking down the corridor away from them, gun drawn. For a brief moment, Sweetie Belle thought they could escape unseen, but her hooves had given her away. The guard began to turn towards them. Acting solely on instinct, She grabbed his gun in her aura before he could turn it on them. It went off as soon as she touched it – standard anti-magic defence – but the round just hit the wall. She wrenched it from his grasp and sent it clattering away behind her. The griffon advanced on them, wings flared, then drew to a halt as Tom raised his gun.
The seconds stretched out as they stared at one another.
“What now?” said Tom. “I'm not really skilled at hostage-taking.”
Sweetie Belle shuddered, then retrieved the gun she'd taken from the guard and pointed at it. She nodded down one of the corridors. “That way,” she told him. “If you come back, we'll shoot you,”
It looked for a moment like the griffon was going to attack them anyway, but he relented, and with a snarl, headed off the way Sweetie Belle had pointed.
They hurried onwards, hoping to get some distance before he found another gun or an ally.
“I have to admit,” said Tom, “you're far better in a crisis than I thought you'd be when I first saw you.”
“Thanks,” murmured Sweetie Belle as they rounded another corner. And, because she couldn't think of anything better to add, “You too.”
Tom began to say something, but stopped at the sound of pattering claws and paws behind them. They broke into a gallop and a run, but were halted almost immediately by two pirates appearing at the head of the corridor in front of them – the scarred griffon she presumed was the captain and his assistant, Gregor. A glance behind confirmed the pirate they'd disarmed had caught up to them, sporting a new weapon.
Sweetie Belle and Tom were trapped in the middle, an equal distance from both parties. Along one side there were a series of doors, presumably leading to crew quarters. One, behind them, was slightly ajar.
“You're almost as much a pain as she was,” growled the captain. “Sweetie Belle, we might need to keep you alive, but that's not true for your friend there.”
“The ansible said they needed her horn and head. Nothing about whether her legs needed to be intact,” said Gregor.
The captain seemed to grin. “Well, there you go. And after what you've unleashed on my ship, let's say I'm actually rather in the mood to shoot out some kneecaps. So the two of you might want to drop your weapons.”
Sweetie Belle and Tom did so, and on the captain's further instruction, kicked them away.
As their guns skittered across the floor, Sweetie Belle realised she knew a spell.
No, that wasn't quite right. A spell had come into her awareness, all at once. A spell that she knew precisely how to use, even though she'd never seen it before. Even though, she suspected, no unicorn had ever seen it before. And with came a plan of how to escape.
She weighed up the options briefly. Either trust something that had appeared in her head from nowehere … or trust the pirate in front of her.
Well, it seemed like whatever was in her head was valuable.
The captain was speaking again. Something about the aelewyrms.
Sweetie Belle threw up a shield around her and Tom. “Follow me!” she cried, grabbed his paw in her mouth, and pulled him backwards.
A gunshot. A bullet hit her shield, and she felt a spark of pain jab into the base of her horn.
They reached the door. Tom's ears lay flat against his head, but he wasn't resisting. A second bullet his her shield. By luck alone, it held. A third.
The shield fragmented, sending a final wave on pain down her horn.
Sweetie Belle stumbled, her vision dimmed, but they were through. Tom slammed the door closed without being asked and threw his weight against it.
“Wonderful. Now they'll kill me,” he said.
The dizziness from having her shield rupture passed. Sweetie Belle glanced around; the room looked like some sort of crew quarters. “No, they won't,” she said.
A thump against the door.
Sweetie Belle used her spell.
The region of space near the far wall seemed to thicken and then congeal, taking on the quality of rotting milk or old, greasy food. It hung in the air for a moment, rippling, then swam through the wall, leaving a patch with the same glutinous appearance.
“What …” began Tom.
She could feel a deep ache oozing up through her muscles. “Follow me,” she said, and leapt at the wall. It clung to her skin as she passed, cold and slimy, but only for a brief moment – and she was through to the other side. She turned back to see Tom appear. The wall quivered sickeningly with his passage, then reverted to its original texture. A loud bang and muffled voiced came from the other side.
“We have to ...” she said, gesturing at the next wall, similarly affected.
When Tom looked at her, his eyes widened. “Are you okay?” he said.
She shook her head. Something dribbled down the underside of her muzzle and dripped on the floor. Blood. The world spun; her knees buckled, but in a moment, she found herself caught by Tom and hefted through the opening in the wall.
“ … through there” she heard. The corridor was lined with portholes – they were at the edge of the gondola.
“No, let's not …” she murmured.
Movement. Colours fading in and out. Noises. A breeze on her face.
“Aquileonan design,” said Tom. “I forgot. Crumbs.”
Sweetie Belle forced herself back towards consciousness. They stood at a portal, staring out over the bitumen desert hundreds of feet below. There was another airship some distance away. Closer, some griffons had taken to the air. They were firing at something. One of the aelewyrm hatchlings? It hurtled into one of them, leaving a tumbling body. “Good girl,” she said softly. “Or boy.”
Something else caught her attention. A craft hugging the ground on some bulbous cushion. “Millie?”
“What?” said Tom.
Sweetie Belle gestured. “Have to … send her a message.”
“Oh, right. And how do we do that?”
Sweetie Belle sighed and closed her eyes. There was one way, but she wasn't sure she was capable of it. Summoning all her concentration, the remainder of her magic, she threw a giant, glowing green sigil into the air: Scootaloo's cutie mark.
And then she passed out.
A broad balcony with a low barrier of copper filigree composed almost the entire western side of Sweetie Belle's hotel room. There, eight stories up, she could pick out the grandiose landmarks of Susa against the roiling dusk: The fractal spires and domes of the parliament building surround the vast Plaza Of Aquileona; the twelve bismuth-feathered Wings, each bigger than the buildings around them; the Bridge of the Bereft. Beside these monuments the griffons crowding the skyways were scarcely distinguishable from gnats. The air brought in a subtle stink of diesel exhaust. It was stronger each time she came here, and had long since overpowered Susa's original unplaceable odour.
Eyes closed, she took a step back into her room, so the smell of her perfume and swish of her dress swept away the city. She was still riding a wave of post-show euphoria and confidence, and even the grimy, creeping industrialisation of the city felt like something she could sweep aside if she cared to. This was the sort of moment she wished could last forever. There was only one thing missing.
Before her there came a gust of wind and the sound of hooves against tiles. She opened her eyes to see Scootaloo, wings spread and grin broad.
“You were rocking tonight!” Scootaloo frowned briefly. “Well, not literally, but y'know. As much as a piano solo can rock.”
Sweetie Belle took her hoof and led her inside. “I thought it wasn't your kind of your music?”
They sat side by side on one of the beds. “Yeah, well, not usually,” said Scootaloo. “But it's you.” Her wing pressed against Sweetie Belle's side through her gown. “One of my best friends in the whole world. Who – and don't get me wrong, 'cause I'd like your music anyway – who has done me one of the biggest favours ever.”
After stifling a grin, Sweetie Belle put on a modest look. “Just because I introduced you to Adrenaline Rush?”
“Yeah! Totally! This adventure vacation thing, it's something I can do. Something I can do properly, you know?” Scootaloo shook her head and adopted a softer tone. “I can't explain it. Just, really, means a lot to me.”
Seized by a sudden impulse, Sweetie Belle leaned over and nuzzled her. “I'm glad,” she said. “You deserve it.” Through her gown she felt Scootaloo's wing shift.
Scootaloo studied her face. “Ha! Like your music,” she said.
“What?”
“When you're all prettied up like that, with the dress and the eyeliner and stuff. It's not something I'd normally like, but on you you it looks …”
The bedsheets rubbed against Sweetie Belle's pastern. She waited, all innocence, for Scootaloo to finish.
“ … really hot, actually.” Scootaloo scritched at her mane with a hooftip. “I mean, don't be offended or anything, but –”
Sweetie Belle leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. For a lone moment, redolent with unspeakable meaning and everything Sweetie Belle knew she deserved, they looked at one another, then fell into a kiss proper.
“I'm not offended,” whispered Sweetie Belle. The scent of Scootaloo mingled with her own perfume; her tongue buzzed with the echo of touch and taste. She grinned, and as they kissed again, pushed Scootaloo back against the bed.
Outside, the sky tumbled towards night and the silhouettes of ancient monuments dissolved into the background.
Hours later, Sweetie Belle woke entangled in bedsheets. Silence, at once relaxing and oppressive, weighed down on her. A shape in the darkness resolved itself as Scootaloo, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her half-open wings quivered.
Sweetie Belle watched her, trying to image what she was thinking. She pulled the bedsheets away, just loud enough to alert Scootaloo to her wakefulness, then shifted over and began to preen the closest wing.
Scootaloo retracted her wing at the first touch, as if burned. She turned to Sweetie Belle, the faint, distant lights of the city glimmering in her eyes. “Sorry. They're sensitive.”
“It's okay,” said Sweetie Belle. “How're you feeling?”
“Alright.” Her gaze went to the window again while Sweetie Belle waited for a response. “Do you still like me, even though I'm a screwup?”
“One,” said Sweetie Belle, “You're not a screwup. Two, of course I like you. Three –” Her back leg thumped gently against Scootaloo's rear through the covers. “You told me to kick you if you started moping again.”
Gradients of shadow picked out a small upwards curve on Scootaloo's lips. She reached over and stroked Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “You're right. Let's go back to bed.”
Exhaustion.
A deep, throbbing ache, physical or emotional, she couldn't tell.
Then sensation: A dull background roar she felt in her bones as much as she could hear.
Motion that made her want to throw up … except she had already thrown up.
Sour taste in her mouth. Yeah, she'd thrown up.
She'd thrown up on the pirates' ship, just as they were leaving. A sort of goodbye. At the time it had struck her as hilarious, but she had been too tired to laugh.
Memories came back in pieces:
On a balloon, being winched down.
Lying, eyes closed by the portal, listening to the aelewyrm hatchlings call and the guns return.
Millie's hovercraft coming up towards them.
Lying in bed beside Scootaloo.
No, that was something else.
The roar of the hovercraft's engines was distracting her. She grimaced and opened her eyes.
Her hallucination was back. A melodious voice that jarred with a frustrated intonation: “There. Can you hear me now?”
Sweetie Belle blinked and nodded. “Yeah,” she croaked.
“And the welkin rings! At long last!”
“Sweetie Belle?”
The hallucination fell away, saying as it did so, “Oh, fuck.”
Tom stood over her. “How are you feeling?”
Everything ached. “All right,” she said, looking around. The room was small, but she recognised the style: the oil-stained carpet and the bits of machinery on the floor. Yes, this was Dignity. Sweetie Belle was lying on some sort of sideboard covered with greasy rags and sheets which made it slightly more comfortable than bare metal. She looked at Tom again. “How long … ?”
“Six weeks.”
“What?”
Tom cocked his head. “Not long. It's been maybe … twenty minutes since Millie picked us up?”
“Where is she?”
“Piloting. The pirates are following us. This thing has better acceleration, but … “ He shrugged.
“The hatchlings?”
“Dunno. They followed us for a couple of minutes, then turned away. I counted all five, though.”
Sweetie Belle smiled. “Good.” She stretched and rolled off the sideboard. Her muscles still ached, but she was able to stand, if a little shakily. “I need to talk to Millie,” she said when she was certain she wouldn't topple over.
Tom led her out into the hovercraft's main chamber – the room Millie had taken her to back at Ilmarinen – and across it into the cockpit. Millie sat in the centre of the room, strapped into a chair with her forehooves on a crowded control panel in front of her. Occasionally she glanced through a viewport hanging from the ceiling like that of a periscope – a rear-view, perhaps? – or a telescope mounted on the control panel. Five broad windows gave a full 180 degree view clear blue skies bisected by the Scar. Beneath a bloated and greyish skirt, oily desert hurtled past.
“You,” announced Millie without looking back, “are a complete and utter pain in t' arse. But I'm glad you're awake, lass.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Tom here brought you up to speed?”
“The pirates are chasing us, and we have better acceleration?”
“Aye. I put a fair bit o' distance between us when we got goin', but I think –” She looked through the periscope again. “ – they're catchin' up. Not quickly, though.”
“Millie,” said Sweetie Belle. “We have to find Scootaloo.”
“Well –” began Tom.
“Right,” said Millie. “And almost bein' kidnapped by pirates hasn't deterred you at all?”
“No.”
“It didn't him, either.” Millie gestured to Tom. “So that's where we're headin'.”
Sweetie Belle turned to Tom. “You?”
Tom shrugged.
“So here's t' plan. We find Scootaloo. We go back to Ilmarinen. We have a pint. Then I leave you lot to go back home or whatever you plan to do without havin' to get any more involved in this weird magic thing you've gone and got yourself wrapped up in. Sound good?”
Sweetie Belle looked at Tom, then back to Millie. “Sure,” she said.
“Brilliant.”
“I'm gonna … go and wait.”
She retreated back to the main body of the hovercraft, wondered about the room aimlessly, and stomped a rear hoof. It was ridiculous, she knew. They'd rescued her! And she was finally getting to the end. But still the thought was there. This was her mission. She was Scootaloo's real friend, not Tom or Millie or anyone else.
A faint unpleasant and sour taste still adhered to her tongue. After a quick search for a cup and a source of water turned up nothing on both counts, she briefly considered going to the cockpit to ask, then decided not to. She searched again, found a bin, and spat into it several times, which solved the worst of the problem.
Back in the room she'd woken up with, which she took to be her room, she sat on the sideboard and let a morass of negative thoughts storm through her head.
Something occurred to her.
“Are you going to speak to me now? You're listening right?”
She perked up her ears. Waited.
The roaring engine, the whistling wind, the whispering daemons. Then –
“Hello.”
The hallucination appeared before her.
Sweetie Belle looked her up and down, and began to speak “What –”
“What under the Scar is wrong with your brain?” said the hallucination. “It's all tangled up in here. No sense at all. Do you know how long it took me to find the right routes into your visuals? Even now, I can only make it work if you're not distracted. I honestly …” She sighed and held up a hoof. “Right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your heritage isn't your fault, I know. I'm just feeling a little frustrated right now.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “What,” she began again, “is going on?”
“Quite a lot, don't you think?”
“Who are you? What are you?”
“Oh, yes. I forgot to introduce myself, didn't I? My name is Saffron. And I am, I suppose, the last qilin.”
“A what?”
“Well, you won't have heard of us. By the looks of things, I'd guess we went extinct long before your kind evolved. Being from another world probably didn't help, either.” Saffron made a point of looking out the window as the desert beyond, then turned back to Sweetie Belle and gave a grin without a hint of joy. “We were the previous tenants. Sorry about the mess.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her, trying to stifle a growing sense of vertigo. “And you … were in the statue?”
Saffron nodded. “Yes. And it's not a statue. It's … well, your language is too primitive to have a word for it. The best translation I can find is repository. It's …” She sat back and ran a hoof through her fiery mane. “A million years or more,” she muttered with a frown, “and the first lot to come along are barbarians.” She turned back to Sweetie Belle. “It's a complex tool. It does a lot of things. It can hold things. Spells. Information. Minds. But it also does a lot of other stuff. Performing magic, creating spells, communicating … that sort of thing. Is any of this getting through?”
“Sure,” said Sweetie Belle. “You were in the repository. Okay.”
“Well, not just me,” said Saffron.
“What else?”
“The only way I could get out before it broke was to perform a full memory dump. So you've also got … I'd say maybe ten million pages' worth of information, plus a couple hundred thousand complete spells, locked up in that little horse brain of yours.”
Sweetie Belle rubbed her horn. It still twinged. “And one of those spells … That's what happened back on the airship?”
Saffron nodded. “A bit too powerful for you, but beggars can't be choosers, eh?”
Questions were swirling through Sweetie Belle's head, so much so that she was struggling to get them into line.
“That reminds me,” said Saffron. “The things you call daemons, they're not as harmless as you think. When you used –”
“Sweetie Belle!” called Tom from the next room.
Saffon managed to put her hoof against her forehead and sigh before she vanished.
“Great.” Sweetie Belle followed her lead. She slid off the sideboard and opened the door to see Tom. “What?”
Tom paused, apparently taken off guard by her change in mood, then said, “It looks like we're going to get visitors.”
Sweetie Belle followed him up to the cockpit. Millie was once again peering through various instruments. “We've got two things comin' towards us,” she said. “Up in front, summat appeared on the horizon. It –”
“A gunship?” said Sweetie Belle.
Millie shook her head, and glanced through a telescope as if to confirm her answer. “Too small. I can only see t' bugger because it's leavin' some sorta trail.” She gestured Sweetie Belle over to the eyepiece.
Sweetie Belle looked. Yes, there was something definitely there. A faint glittering streak against the sky, just off centre from the crosshairs. As she watched, it moved perceptibly. “And it's comin' pretty sharpish,” said Millie. “I can't tell whether it's headin' towards us or not, but knowin' our luck … it oughta be here soon.”
Maybe it was Scootaloo. Somehow. Sweetie Belle looked again, then turned to Millie. “What's the other thing?”
“Our friends, t' pirates.”
“I thought we had plenty of time before they caught up.”
“Me too. But –” Millie tapped the periscope. “– they've just launched somethin'. Well, in a way. Looks like a couple of their guys with rockets strapped to their backs.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
Millie shrugged and gestured towards the periscope eyepiece. “It'll be a close call who gets here first, but my money's on t' pirates.”
Sweetie Belle looked through the periscope, which showed receding desert. Two sleek airships floated in the distance. Closer, three dark plumes of smoke, coming from small, indistinct shapes. Knowing what Millie had said, though, the shapes did look like griffons with wings outstretched and something on their backs.
“What are we gonna do?”
“If we change direction, t' ships will just catch up to us quicker. Best thing we can do is try and shoot 'em down when they get close enough.”
“We have guns?”
“Harpoons,” said Millie. “They'll do in a pinch.”
“How close will they have to be?” said Tom.
“Close.”
“Uh,” said Sweetie Belle. “Will that … kill them?”
“Prob'ly.” Millie rubbed an ear. “They are meant to punch holes in metal.”
“Can we not? Just knock them out or something?”
“For some reason, it never occurred to me to install knock attackin' griffons out the sky without harmin' them weapons.”
Sweetie Belle looked at her.
Millie sighed. “Alright, you win. I can dial down the air pressure, and I think I have somethin' blunt we can fire instead. Won't guarantee owt, but it'll do.”
Sweetie Belle smiled at her. “Thank you,”
“Don't mention it. Really. Don't,” Millie said. “I'll have to make change to t' harpoon guns. One of you needs to stay up here and keep an eyes on things; the other can come with me.”
Looking at the control panel, Tom said, “I don't think either of us knows how to pilot a hovercraft.”
“Y'don't need to. Just leave it alone and we'll keep going forward.” Millie pointed to the viewports she'd been using. “Check these, and keep 'em centred on our guests so we don't lose track of 'em. Anythin' else, just shout.”
“Right, okay.”
Millie turned to Sweetie Belle. “C'mon. Let's fix those harpoons.”
“You see it over and over again,” said Blueberry Pancake. “Among the ponies, amongst the griffons, amongst the diamond dogs. Even the qilins. The refrain is alike: Life is suffering – Ow!” She pulled her head forward and glared at the chevaloid which had been washing her mane; it stood dumbly by. “A little softer, if you don't mind.” She gave it it a jolt with her aura, then settled back into the bubble bath and looked at Cannons and Sorghum. A second chevaloid offered a glass of rosé wine, from which she took a sip while the first resumed rubbing suds into her mane. “Life is suffering,” she continued, playing with the bubbles on the water's surface. “A universally – trans-universally – acknowledged truth. So doesn't it follow that someone who could change all that, abolish all pain and ennui and mortality, would be a creature of the very highest order? A creature truly deserving of glory? And, furthermore –”
From the bathroom's door came a loud but short knock. “Should I?” said Sorghum, but before Blueberry could reply, the door was forced open and a tall crystal unicorn cantered through, his robes billowing in his wake.
Blueberry smiled up at him. Silently, she gestured with her hoof at her bodyguards to send them to the corridor outside. They traipsed out and closed the door behind them.
“Brother Flay,” she said. “How're you doing?”
Mouth working, his eyes flicked silently to the chevaloid, still working at Blueberry's mane, and back again. “A bubble bath?” he said.
Blueberry swished some of the bubbles around. “It does look like that, doesn't it?”
“An indulgence back in the Empire. In this realm, where water is scare, your sacrilege is magnified a hundredfold.”
“My hair was feeling grimy,” said Blueberry. “You know, if you troubled yourself to bathe more often, all the mares would be after you.” She winked and gave his robes a little tug.
With a blue flash of aura, Flay tore the wine glass from the chevaloid's grasp and threw it against the wall, scatterings its contents across the floor. “Sister Blueberry Pancake,” he said. “Only because of your ability to safely open the repositories have we tolerated your idiosyncrasies. But even there, there is a limit, and were our liege to hear of your recent action …” He shook his head with that special mix of pity and contempt the pious reserve for the wicked.
The chevaloid began to rinse Blueberry's mane. “Our liege,” she said slowly, looking into his eyes. “Would you like to tell him yourself? About your problems with me?” Flay's eyes opened fractionally wider. “When he arrives this afternoon?” she finished.
For a moment Flay looked like he was going to say something, then thought better of it. Blueberry beckoned to him. He glared at her, but acquiesced.
“Come along to his chamber with me,” she whispered. “I'm sure he wouldn't mind. You are such a sincere and devout stallion, after all.” As she finished, she took a clump of bubbles from the water and smeared them across his chin like a beard.
Flay pulled away, brushing away the bubbles. Once again he made to say something, while Blueberry gave him an innocent smile, and once again he didn't.
As Flay turned and stormed out, Blueberry called out after him: “Send my bodyguards back in, would you?” She glanced at the second chevaloid, still offering a drink from a nonexistent glass. “Prat.”
Scarcely had Cannons and Sorghum returned to her side when there came another knock at the door. Blueberry sighed. She'd just been about to resume her lecture. But when Sorghum looked at her, she nodded.
A flustered-looking messenger scampered through. His eyes went wide at seeing the bath, but he didn't comment on it. “Miss Pancake, ma'am. Our employees, the griffon pirates, they sent this …” He held up a scrawled note.
As Blueberry read it, a cold oily feeling dribbled through her. The white unicorn has escaped. And from the bewildered descriptions, it sounded like she'd learned a few tricks from the repository she'd raided.
“Should we … threaten them with death or something?” said the messenger.
That would be Flay's influence, Blueberry thought to herself. She shook her head and steadied her voice. “It's only because they're not afraid of us that they'd send this message. It would be a a bit silly to change that, wouldn't it? No, give them this.” She tore away an unmarked strip from the bottom of the paper and pulled up a spell. A glimmering ball of blood-red fluid manifested in front of the strip and danced across its surface, leaving an cursive trail. Blueberry read the order out loud: “Send every scrap of information you have on the captive. Further, send updates on the situation every fifteen minutes from receipt of this message. As payment, you will be assured 10% of the contract price even if you do not recapture her. There.” She gave the note to the messenger. “Now hurry.”
“Millie!” called Tom. “Sweetie Belle! You might wanna get up here.”
Millie hurried up to the cockpit with Sweetie Belle behind her. “How we doin'?”
“They're close –” began Tom.
Millie shooed him off to the side and looked through the periscope. “Bugger,” she muttered. “You two might wanna grab hold of summat. I don't want you to distract me by flyin' about t' room when we turn.” She sat before the control panel, flipped some switches, and put her hoof through a loop on the central control column.
Sweetie Belle looked at Tom; he responded with raised eyebrows and a shrug, then wrapped a paw around a bar on the wall behind them. She hooked a pastern round the same bar and braced herself against the wall.
Millie checked the periscope again, shifting some dials as she did so. “Hold tight. Three. Two. One. And –”
She pulled the control column to the side. The roar of the engines changed tenor. The hovercraft lurched, rotated. Mottled black scenery swung sideways past the windows, started retreating. In the sky Sweetie Belle could see three shapes: Griffons with rockets, much too close.
Millie reached up immediately and flicked a switch. A thump, and two projectiles hurtled into the air towards the two flanking griffons. One hit true, passing just in front of its target's face and colliding with the nose of the rocket strapped to his back. He shot upwards and out of view. The other griffon swung to the side before the projectile could hit, but in doing so aimed his rocket with him and flew out of view.
“Ha! And that, lads and lassies,” said Millie, “is why handlin' beats thrust.”
The hovercraft continued to rotate, albeit more slowly. It moved sideways. Then almost directly forwards. As the final griffon passed beyond view of the front window, Sweetie Belle saw he was level with the cockpit and not more than a few tens of metres away.
Millie pushed the control column forwards, and Sweetie Belle felt the hovercraft lurch beneath her. Heavy deceleration nearly sent her through the front window. Somewhere towards the rear of the craft came a loud thump. Millie's ears perked up, and she dragged the control column back, and they accelerated again.
“I think that's a full house,” said Millie. She looked through the periscope. “Number one …”
“Couldn't they just fly after us again?” asked Tom.
“Don't think so. They waited a fair while to launch those rockets, which to me says limited range. Once they're off course … number two! … once they're off course, that's it. And they'll exhaust themselves in no time if they try and keep up with us with just their wings.” She frowned, aiming and re-aiming the periscope.
“Fair enough.”
“Where are you hiding, you little sod?” Millie said, searching.
“Problem?”
“One of them's gone walkabout.” Millie swung the craft about so they were moving backwards again. Desert receded behind them. “There's one, and there's two,” she said, pointing at her targets, one of whom was still high in the air despite discarding his rocket, and both of whom were getting rapidly left behind.
Sweetie Belle stared out the window, looking for a third shape. A chill feeling crept its way up her spine. She turned towards the stairwell, wondering if a head might appear from below.
Shattering glass. A gunshot so loud she instinctively cowered.
To the side – one of the cockpit's windows lay in pieces on the floor, and outside, standing level with them on the hovercraft's hull, stood one of their pursuers. Gregor. He lowered his gun and pointed it at Millie. “You might want to stop this thing. Slowly, if you don't mind.”
Ears pinned, Millie nudged the control column and slowed the craft.
Sweetie Belle's mind raced. She realised she could pull Gregor's gun from him and throw up a shield to stop the bullet. Not something she would have dared try before. But the idea fell as quickly as it came. Even as she thought about it her horn twinged. Her magic was still exhausted.
The craft finally came to a halt, though the engines still roared and the skirt remained inflated. Gregor gestured with his gun for Millie to step back from the controls, and when she had done so stepped through the window frame, keeping his gun on her while he did so.
“Let me explain your position,” he said, gesturing out the front window without looking through it. “My friends will be arriving soon. And our ships after that. We only want Sweetie Belle. You two are expendable. That means we have no problems letting you, and your weird ship, go as soon as we have what we want … and that I have no problems shooting you if anything goes wrong. Understand? Understand?”
“Oh, bloody hell. Aye, we understand,” said Millie.
“Why do you want me?” Sweetie Belle paused, almost surprised at her question and her bravery, then continued: “Why am I so important?”
Gregor stared at her.
“Your Captain … he said something about employers, right? Who are they?”
For a moment, it seemed Gregor was considering this.
Sweetie Belle pushed onwards: “I … I'm done for anyway, right? What would you lose by telling me.”
“You're a tricky one,” said Gregor. “I don't know what your game is, but I'm not playing. Ask again and one of your friends loses a limb.”
“Sweetie Belle,” murmured Millie.
Sweetie Belle looked at her, nodded, and stepped back.
Gregor gave them an unpleasant smile. “Though, once we're back on board, there are a few questions the captain would like to ask you, I think. Those pets of yours … Well.” He glanced out the window – and his grin fell away.
Sweetie Belle looked. The sky was clear. No griffons approached.
Outside, just over the sound of the engines, there was a thump of something landing. Then motion? Sweetie Belle couldn't tell. Gregor's smile returned. He kept his eyes – and his gun – on his prisoners.
Something small flew through the broken window, ricocheted off Gregor's wrist. The gun fired, but his aim was off, and the bullet went through one of the front windows. Gregor turned to see his attacker, bringing his gun round. Too slowly. A shape, a metallic blue, flew through the window and crashed into him. The gun went out the front window, bounced off the craft's skirt, and fell out of view. A sound like rushing water mixed with metal sliding against metal, and the attacker spun. A click. They separated – Gregor left with something like a silvered quill embedded in his plumage. He started forward, but his legs crumpled under him, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
And standing above him, bedecked with huge, silvery-iridescent wings, was Scootaloo.
Ah, together at last! Isn't that sweet? Surely everything will be better now.
…
I know, I know. I should stop being so facetious. Sweetie Belle was right when she called me a jerk. Even here at the end, I can't help myself.
Chapter 7 Reunions
Scootaloo – magnificent artificial wings spread, eyes glittering, standing over a defeated griffon.
She'd found her!
Sweetie Belle's quest was over.
A dozen eloquent speeches, each practiced a dozen times, jostled in her mind, drowning each other out. As she grasped for one, any one, they scattered like pigeons, leaving her her with nothing but visions of how wonderful this reunion would be.
It was Millie who spoke first: “'Ey up. We're here to save you!” Then she burst into laughter.
Scootaloo looked over at her and grinned broadly. Her wings retracted with a sort of sussuration. “Millie! Glad you could make it, you old –”
“Oi,” said Millie. She was at the control panel again; Dignity began to accelerate. Wind whipped through the shattered windows.
Scootaloo shook her head, then looked round. “Tom? Sweetie Belle? What in Luna's name …?”
“Hey,” said Sweetie Belle. “I … We … I mean …” Millie's interruption had rather taken the wind from her sails. In the end she gave up and rushed forward to pull Scootaloo into a hug.
For a brief moment she felt a squeeze in return – then Scootaloo pushed her back. She was glaring at her. “Seriously, Sweetie, what the hell are you doing here? What is wrong with you?”
“I came to… ” stammered Sweetie Belle.
“Lassies, can we keep t' soap opera out t' cockpit?” said Millie.
Looking over to her, Scootaloo's eyes flicked briefly back to Sweetie Belle. “Sure thing.”
“Gregor there, I'm presumin' he in't dead?”
“Nope,” said Scootaloo.
Millie looked round at Sweetie Belle. “And I'm presumin' we ain't gonna just toss him outside?”
She shook her head. “N-no. I'd rather –”
“Righto. Tie him up. And this big flying snake you was fightin'?”
“Dead,” said Scootaloo. “I crashed the gunship into its flank,” she added with a grin.
“Good to hear. But we've still got pirates chasing us, so I'm takin' us down to Pinion Beach Terminus. There are a couple of Ilmarinen battleships stationed there. With any luck, these lot won't want to have a go.” Millie turned to look at them. “Now, I think you two have summat to work through. So go on, bugger off out of it.”
Sweetie Belle followed Scootaloo out of the cockpit and into the main cabin. Tom trailed them, dragging Gregor by his rear legs. Before Sweetie Belle could begin an explanation, Scootaloo had retrieved some diamond rope from beneath a shelf, and she and Tom began to tie the griffon. They talked briefly as they did so – about the fate of the rest of the researchers, and about other events Sweetie Belle hadn't been told about. She hovered off to the side, unsure.
Scootaloo's new wings kept drawing her eye. At first they looks like they might be metal, but the barbs of the feathers seemed impossibly detailed. A cobalt sheen resolved into spectral waves that shimmered across the surface as the angle changed. Close to the surface, the air itself seemed to refract light. When they moved, there was nothing mechanical in the motion. Perfectly symmetric, save for one thing – something more solid, almost like a pendant, hooked around the vane of a feather on the left.
When they were finished, Scootaloo sat on the oil-stained carpet opposite Sweetie Belle and stared at her. “Are you gonna tell me what you're doing here?”
Sweetie Belle's voice caught in her throat. She tried again: “I came to find you.” It came out in a tone quieter, more fillyish, than she'd imagined in her head.
“Why? I said in my note not to come looking for me.”
Sweetie Belle scratched at the threads of the carpet. “I know, but …”
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Neither should you!” Sweetie Belle dropped back, surprised by her own outburst. “Fuck,” she muttered. “This isn't … Couldn't you be glad to see me?”
Scootaloo gave a slight smile. “Look at you with the language.” She chewed on her lip. “But no. I didn't want to be followed. I said that. This place is dangerous, Sweetie Belle. And if you get hurt because you came after me … I mean, look what just happened.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the floor.
“And – I'm not going back with you. I'm not going back to Equestria.”
“Scoots,” said Tom, striding over from the trussed griffon, “to be fair to her, she's the reason my team got rescued. And the reason Millie is here.”
And the reason the pirates are here, thought Sweetie Belle, but she didn't say anything.
Scootaloo closed her eyes and sighed. “Thanks,” she said, putting a hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “That doesn't make it okay. But thanks.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “There's something else,” she said eventually. “About me being in danger … I kinda am. When I was looking for you, I got zapped by something.”
From there, she recounted everything she had learned from Saffron, and what had happened when she was captured by the griffons, including the size of the bounty.
“You've talked to her now?” said Tom.
“Yeah.”
Tom scratched his ear. “What's she like?”
“Kind of a jerk, actually.”
Scootaloo slammed her hoof down between them. “See? This is what I was talking about. It's dangerous here. Even if we escape the pirates, what if Twilight can't get this Saffron thing out of your head? What if it …” She looked at Sweetie Belle, her eyes wide and fearful. “And what about the daemons being dangerous? What's going to happen there?”
“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle. “She didn't get around to telling me.”
“Well, she'd damn well better. Do you have to be alone to talk to her?”
“I –” began Sweetie Belle. She was cut off by Dignity shuddering around them. “What was that?”
Scootaloo stood. “I'll go see.” Then, as Sweetie Belle tried to follow her and Tom: “No! Go talk to that thing in your head.” She grimaced as she turned away. Tom followed her into the cockpit.
A lump formed in Sweetie Belle's throat as she fell back and trudged towards her room.
“Love's a bitch,” said Saffron. “Eh, love?”
Sweetie Belle looked up from the blanket she'd been crying into. “What took so long? Its been ten minutes.”
“Bit too much inner turmoil for me to manifest.” Saffron stood on the far side of the room, tail swishing. “Don't worry, though. I'm mapping out that little brain as we speak. Soon I'll be able to appear whenever I want.”
“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle. “Wonderful.” She frowned. “But you still know what just happened? Or what I was thinking?”
“Both,” said Saffron. “I have access to all your sensory input – more or less – and everything in your conscious mind. But nothing deeper than that, so don't expect me to tell you why you're so messed up. Although … ” She shrugged “… I was in love once, and it made me do some pretty stupid things, so I'm not entirely unsympathetic.”
Sweetie Belle held up a hoof. “I'm not in the mood. You heard what Scootaloo said, didn't you? So what's the deal with the daemons?”
The faint smirk playing about Saffron's lips vanished. “Daemons,” she said softly, “are the reason why my civilisation is dead.”
She paused. If she had been expecting an awed response, Sweetie Belle didn't give her one. She just waited for Saffron to continue.
After letting the silence drag out, she did: “Just by whispering. You're immune – so far – because you don't understand the language they're speaking. But if you could …” Saffron turned and looked out the window. “I suppose you could say hearing what the daemons say drains your sanity. But it's more than that: They see the worst part of you, and return it to you, magnified. It's subtle. So subtle you don't notice it at first. But over time, your personality changes, your preoccupations become obsessions, your empathy becomes overshadowed by your own particular set of vices.
“That's how they destroyed us. Twisted our spirits until we could longer work together or care for one another. Seven years after they arrived, we had been reduced to savages, scavenging our past glories to survive. Maybe a decade after that, we were extinct. Barring yours truly, of course.”
Sweetie Belle stared at Saffron. “Why? Why would they do that?”
“They're not intelligent,” said Saffron. “Their effect is just a side effect of their nature. They no more intend to harm us than an insect intends to tickle you when it walks across your skin.” She smiled, but it was a deeply unpleasant expression. “The evil, if you must call it such, came from we, the victims; they merely reflected it back at us.”
“And we're in danger?”
“The daemons are speaking to you in our language – the qilin language. All our spells are in that language; the more you use them, the greater you'll understand our language, and consequently the more the daemons will be able to affect you.”
“Right,” said Sweetie Belle. “So, just we're on the same page: I have access to the most powerful set of spells ever, but using them will knock me out and slowly drive me mad.” She rubbed her hoof against her face. “I should have just brought the Alicorn Amulet with me, It would've been easier.”
“Close enough – except you have enough power to use some of the lower-level spells without hurting yourself. They'll still let the daemons in, though.” Saffron grinned. “Ain't life grand? Oh, and there's one more thing: When the daemons came through, they didn't speak our language. It took a little over three years for them to learn. You work out the implication for yourself.”
Sweetie Belle said nothing for several seconds. She just sat and listened to the oily muttering in her ears, almost drowned out by the engines. Dignity rattled again. “I just need to get back to Equestria with Scootaloo … Twilight will be able to fix everything. Or Celestia and Luna. It'll be okay.”
“I hope you don't mind me coming along for the ride,” said Saffron.
“Can you … leave, please? Now?”
Saffron shrugged as she vanished.
Disconnected shards of thoughts fell through Sweetie Belle's mind while she lay on the sideboard: Her past with Scootaloo, her future with Scootaloo, the entirety of Amaranth, the layers of doom accreting above her, and, briefly, how Saffron must be feeling. Dignity continued to shudder intermittently. She wasn't sure how long she lay in thrall to this malaise, but eventually she shook her head about to clear the murk, and stood. Everything's going to work out, she told herself. You found her! The hardest part is past you. All you have to do now is get to Ilmarinen, then back to Omphalos, and to Equestria. And then, without wanting to: Except you didn't apologise. But now, she felt she didn't want to. Or at least, that could wait until they got home.
She trudged back into the main cabin and, finding it still empty apart from a still-unconscious Gregor, headed into the cockpit. Warm air howled through the broken windows. Millie was still at the controls. Scootaloo sat at the back of the room, Tom beside her. Sweetie Belle suppressed a pang of jealousy, and began loud enough to be heard over the wind: “About the daemons –”
“That can wait,” said Millie. “We got more pressin' concerns. Again, wouldya believe it?”
“What?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Dignity's taken a hit. And …”
“That big snake I killed?” said Scootaloo. “I, uh, didn't.”
This time, no one needed to direct Sweetie Belle to the telescope; through the front windows, a winged shape hugged the horizon, body undulating with each wing stroke. The resemblance to the hatchlings was clear – the mandibles, the bright blue eyes – but even at this distance, she could pick out details that gave away age: Mottled patches of discolouration, radiating cracks across a forward eye, a craquelture of scars like great ridges and canals. It's mandibles opened, and a moment later a roar hit them, so deep, so laced with undertones, that Sweetie Belle felt it through her hooves and in her teeth rather than heard it.
It was still to distance for her to judge its size. She dragged her eyes away and looked round at Tom. “How large did your boss say the aelewyrm was?”
“Big,” said Scootaloo.
Tom nodded. “210 metres long, give or take. Sixteen metres wide in the middle. Wingspan of about seventy metres. It's amazing, really. Anything made of flesh like ours would collapse under its own weight before it reached even a quarter of that size.”
Scootaloo growled. “Thanks, dude. That'll make things so much more bearable when it crushes us like bugs.”
“Hold on,” said Millie, “that's brilliant. This thing is big, and it's heavy, right? How manoeuvrable is it?”
“The airship had no chance.”
Tom stared at Scootaloo. “But with the gunship you had no problems.”
“And Dignity in't a big fat airship.”
Tom stood and strode over to Millie. “The aelewyrm can turn faster than you'd expect. But if you keep those tricks up …” He looked round at Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, scratching an ear. “Crumbs. We might actually survive this.”
“I bloody well hope so,” said Millie. She played with the control panel, and outside the sky shifted until the aelewyrm was straight in front of them. “Now, I wonder …” She checked the rear view. “Persistent buggers, I'll give 'em that. They must've seen it, but they're still chasing us.”
Sweetie Belle cleared her throat. “So we're going to fly – drive – straight past it?”
“Best option,” said Millie. “It's between us and Pinion Beach. And unlike t' pirates, it won't try an' shoot or board us.”
“And running away from both would send us in the wrong direction and give one or both of these things a lead.”
“Yep.”
The four of them remained in the cockpit as the aelewyrm approached. Scale finally became apparent: A pony could hide in the cracks in its skin; each one of its six wings could blanket an ursa major; its eyes were as big as houses. It roared again, a contrabass rumble like an earthquake, and dropped closer to the ground. On its flank, just ahead of the rear pair of wings – where Scootaloo had rammed it with the gunship, perhaps – a fresh wound leaked grey and brown liquids.
“Finally got t' message,” said Millie, returning from the viewscope. “T' pirates are turnin' back. One headin' left, one right.”
Closer still: The aelewyrm was flying straight towards them now, its rear wings intermittently braking against the wind.
“Oh, Celestia,” said Scootaloo. “We're really gonna do this, aren't we? This is awesome”
“Aye, wonderful. Reight glad I came out here.” said Millie flatly. She was doing a bad job of suppressing a grin.
Sweetie Belle said nothing and tried not to shake off the mental image of the cockpit crumpling around them under the force of the aelewyrm's mandibles.
It was less then its own length away. “You know t' drill,” Millie said. “Grab summat and try not to fall out t' window.”
Sweetie Belle and Tom took up the same positions they had previously. Scootaloo strolled over beside them and hook a foreleg round the same pipe as Sweetie Belle.
The aelewyrm continued to slow.
A hundred metres, maybe.
Tens.
The middle pair of wings folded and smacked into the ground, one after the other. They embedded themselves into the bitumen, booming like a giant's heartbeart and kicking up a shower of grey-black fragments. A hundred metres further back, the final pair of wings did the same.
Millie pulled her control column back as far as it would go. Dignity accelerated.
Still the aelewyrm moved forwards, dragged by its inertia, taking immense strides on its wings. It was almost upon them. Glistening, slime-slicked mandibles descended, came towards Dignity – and hit the ground behind, a fraction of a second too late.
Scootaloo whooped as more chunks of bitumen rained down on the cockpit. The front pair of wings came to ground – more crashes – either side of the hovercraft. Sweetie Belle could see the the aelewyrm's belly above them, stretching ahead like a vast bridge.
One of the middle pair of wing-legs lifted as they closed the gap, stepped forwards to crush them. The elbow – or foot – was a pad textured like roughly-hewn marble. It missed, burying itself a few metres from Dignity's skirt. The staccatto clatter of debris against the hull. Again Dignity juddered.
Nearly there.
The final pair of wings stepped and landed before they were in range to step, and Dignity slid past unharmed.
Millie laughed. “Smooth sailin', if –”
“Spikes!” shouted Scootaloo. “Watch out!”
The tail, the thagomizer – tipped with two rings of four crystalline spikes – hung above them. It swept down.
Millie nudged the hovercraft to the left. The tailtip followed, accelerated. Pulling on the control column, Millie sent them back to the right, fast enough to start it spinning.
The tailtip hit the ground, the top bottom spikes entirely buried, and they were passed.
Millie killed the rotation when they were travelling backwards, so they could see the aelewyrm receding from view through the front windows.
It had finally come to a halt and stood like some giant monument on all six wings. Its tail was in the air again, but too far away to threaten. Two, three hundred metres away, its head seemed to be looking off to the side; Sweetie Belle realised a moment later that was all it needed to fix on them with its two right eyes.
Beyond it the two pirate airships were just about visible in the distance, still heading in different directions.
The aelewyrm stood, watching them retreat. Then, with a graceful sinuous motion that seemed impossible for such a large creature, it unfolded its wings and kicked into the air. But it wasn't heading towards them. It turned towards one of the airships and ascended.
“Well,” said Millie as she turned Dignity around, “that went pretty bloody well, considerin'.” To Scootaloo, she added, “You didn't kill it, though.”
“Don't worry. I'll take on the winner,” said Scootaloo. She glanced at Sweetie Belle. “When I get back from Equestria, anyway.”
Here we see Sweetie Belle's more . . . . . . . {TRANSCRIPTION ERROR 317: CORRUPTED INPUT}
Chapter 8 Wings
The ground peeled away below, and grimy bitumen was at last replaced by sandy plains. Dry air rushing through the broken window smelt almost sweet by contrast. The sun fell towards the horizon. The sky reddened.
An hour or more since their encounter with the aelewyrm, and there was no sign of either it or the pirates. Millie kept them on course to Pinion Beach; only there could she hope to find the right parts to fix the damage. Her passengers had the option of either waiting for her to finish – which would take at least a full day – or returning on the train.
Sweetie Belle decided to go by train: “We need to get back as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah.” Scootaloo chewed her lip, then looked over to Millie. “When I come back, we've definitely gotta catch up.”
“You're –” began Sweetie Belle in a soft voice.
“What about you, Tom?”
“I don't know …” Scratching an ear, Tom glanced back down the steps to the main cabin. “Are you sure you can do this alone?” he asked Millie.
“I can handle one tied-up griffon,” she said. “And I've been fixin' up Dignity since I salvaged her.”
“Okay. Train it is, then.”
Sweetie Belle tried her best to look pleased.
“T' job oughta be no more than a day or so. I suppose I could take our griffon friend back to Ilmarinen after you've left.”
“I thought there were Ilmarinen battleships at the terminus?” said Sweetie Belle. “Couldn't they take him?”
“What would that accomplish? If they recognised him, they'd kill him. If they didn't, they'd let him go.” Millie took in Sweetie Belle's stare without reacting. “This is t' frontier, lass, remember? We don't have the means to faff around bein' nice. I'm only takin' him to Ilmarinen because it's t' only place outside of Omphalos even close to puttin' together a legal system.”
Sweetie Belle looked away and shrugged. She lacked the energy to argue. “I guess that's settled then,” she said, heading out of the cockpit.
As she entered the main cabin, she caught sight of Gregor again. Still asleep. He's threatened to kill the others and maim her. Now he might die himself.
Viciousness breeding viciousness. From cruelty or avarice or necessity, what did it matter? Come see the frontier, children. Live in privation. Murder. Get murdered. Pilfer the ruins of a dead civilisation. Go mad from the revelation.
Is there anypony who wouldn't jump at the chance?
“Hey,” said Scootaloo behind her.
Sweetie Belle murmured a half response and didn't turn.
Coming around to face her, Scootaloo continued: “I'm taking you to Equestria, but I'm coming back to Amaranth as soon as I can.” She sighed and put a hoof against the bridge of her nose. Her wings glimmered. “And that's going to be a pain in the ass. I'd hoped to leave quietly …”
“Why?”
“Because I don't want to have to explain myself –”
“I mean, why come back here?”
Scootaloo snorted. “I love it when you respect my wishes.”
Sweetie Belle looked away. The floor wobbled beneath them. Dignity's engines choked again.
The gulf in conversation, in connection became unbearable.
“I like your wings.”
It was a moment before Scootaloo looked back to her, and another before she smiled. “They're pretty awesome, aren't they? I can fly for hours without getting tired, almost as fast as Rainbow Dash.” The wings whispered open, not fully extended and still twice the span of normal pegasus wings. The pendant on the left tip swung back and forth.
“Where did you find them?”
“I, uh …” Scootaloo cleared her throat. “ … liberated them from our griffon friends.”
“You stole them?”
“Well, they're pirates! They were probably just gonna use them to rob someone else. And it's not like they have massive respect for possession anyway, right?” She retracted the wings. “Though I didn't think they'd be quite this persistent.”
“And this is the life you want to return to?”
“Sweetie Belle, I've pulled off a daring raid against griffons. Then while on the run saved a team of researchers from a giant flying oil snake! Of course I do.”
“There's something else,” Sweetie Belle said. “The daemons are going to destroy Amaranth. I talked to Saffron, the qilin. She says they're going to learn our language. And when they do, they'll drive everyone mad. And me first if I use too much magic. This place …” This place isn't meant for us. She would have finished, but she didn't want to argue again.
“Then we'll got to stop them. When we get back.”
“How?”
“Twilight will find a way. Or Celestia, or Luna. Discord? Maybe even Cadence. We've got four alicorns and a draconequus! There's got to be a way.”
Four alicorns and a draconequus who couldn't even find a way to cross the Funnel. Who, thanks to legal wrangles with Aquileona, lacked any sort of jurisdiction in Amaranth.
While Sweetie Belle was trying to formulate a response that wouldn't bring yet another argument, the came a weak laugh from behind her.
“Why so worried? I thought ponies dealt with an apocalypse once a year. At least, that's what they tell everyone.” The last vestiges of a smile dropped away. “You're lost without your princesses, aren't you?”
One of Scootaloo's wings extended a few feet.
“Pathetic,” muttered Gregor. He continued to glare at them.
“You're tied up on the floor. And while you were napping, your friends just got munched on by a giant flying snake.. So if we're pathetic, what does that make you?”
Without quite knowing why, Sweetie Belle found herself walking over to him. She put a hoof against his side, where feather met hair. “What's so special about me? What does your employer want from me?”
“Why in Aquileona would I tell you?”
“We're not in Aquileona; we're in Amaranth. You've lost, and I don't think you're the loyal type. So what's the harm in telling me?”
That carnivore beak, snapping shut, still capable of opening flesh. Sweetie Belle took a step back. Gregor sneered. “Presumptuous little heffer. But what else could I expect from Equestrians?” He paused to wriggle into a more comfortable position. “I think you already know why you're valuable. Summoning demons, vanishing through walls. Spells no pony of your age would have.”
“The aelewyrms aren't mine. That was all your fault.”
Gregor said nothing.
“Who's your employer?”
Nothing.
Green aura cloaked the diamond thread binding Gregor's limbs. Just a smidgen of pressure.
“Sweetie Belle.” Scootaloo put a hoof on her shoulder. “We don't need to know. We just need to get back.”
After a moment Sweetie Belle released her grip. What could she do? Coerce him? How? “Okay. Don't worry.” She stepped back, turned, headed for the cockpit, stopped herself. Right now it seemed as unwelcome as being with Gregor, as unwelcome as being alone with herself.
“I don't know who our employer is,” said Gregor. “Goes by the name S. Only seen his ship once. It looks Aquileonan, but I don't even know if he's a griffon.” He shrugged. “Keeps his word. Pays well. Wants your brain. You're in trouble, unicorn.”
Looking back, Sweetie Belle could see his expression, though hard, was no longer combative. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“Are my shipmates really dead?”
Again, Scootaloo's hoof made an appearance on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “Let's not get chatting with the pirate, eh?”
“Why not?” Sweetie Belle moved it aside gently. “I don't know. You know the aelewyrm? Like those hatchlings that got out on your ship, but as big as an airship. Last we saw it was going after your ships. One might have escaped, but …”
Gregor nodded.
“I'm sorry.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“I didn't want anyone to die …”
“I'm not here to ease your fucking guilt.”
Sweetie Belle turned away again. This time she did return to the cockpit.
The ascent into wakefulness came slowly. The smell of Scootaloo all about; the soft and tangled sheets; sunlight lending a numinous touch to the world; the rush and slap of shower water from the ensuite. Susa, the city of romance.
Perfect.
Except –
Sweetie Belle rubbed her eyes. Her pastern came away smeared with eyeliner. No chance to clean it off, was there? She smiled to herself and rolled over to look out the window. Clouds like mounds of foam, being tended to by griffons.
The shower stopped, and Sweetie Belle sat up in the bed. After a second, she grabbed tissues from the bedside table and tried to get as much of the old makeup off her face as she could. Mirror … there was no mirror!
Hoofsteps. She sent the crumpled tissued flying over to the wastebasket in her aura and hoped she looked prettily dishevelled.
Scootaloo came out of the ensuite, mane damp and sticking up at all angles. “I'm the first one to get up!” she said, smirking. “First time for everything, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Train's at five, right? What do you wanna do 'til then?”
“We could go down to the Plaza of Aquileona?”
Scootaloo hmm'd in the sort of way that said she was trying to find a tactful way to say she hated the idea.
“Never mind!” said Sweetie Belle. “We can do something else.”
“No, if you want to, go ahead. I know how much you like that pretty building stuff. I'll go and check out the cloud factories or something. It's cool.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “Alright,” she said softly. After a few moments of studying the creases in the bedsheets, she looked up to find Scootaloo looking out the window. “About last night …” she began.
“You were awesome. Hah, I mean, wow. Some of that stuff … I never thought you'd …” Scootaloo shook her head. “You know, everypony kept telling me how stands between friends are never good, but I loved it.”
The remark hung in the air for a moment while Sweetie Belle scrabbled to understand it. “Yeah,” she said, putting on a smile. “Me too.”
“So, do you wanna go get breakfast?”
Dignity drove onwards.
The sun was close to the horizon as they approached Pinion Beach. The shadows of imperfections in the land had lengthened into false-orange spikes angled towards them.
Pinion Beach, thought Sweetie Belle. Really? An ocean, a lake? A beach? In Amaranth?
The land sloped downwards. In the distance it was scattered with rocks of varying sizes and surreal shapes. And then, an immense flat expanse.
Too flat.
The reflections in the surface were almost clear, like it was a giant mirror. It wasn't water.
Something disturbed the surface. A rippled hurtled across its surface, momentarily shredding the sky's reflection.
“Quicksilver,” she murmured.
“Not quite,” said Millie. “Some alloy o' gallium, I think.”
The water wasn't water. And the rocks weren't rocks.
Pinion Beach was made of gears. The largest were metres across. Others like pebbles. All sizes in between, and those smaller still, until it was impossible to identify them. Grains of sand, perhaps. They were scattered without order. They came in all types, all manner of designs. Here,intact; there, fragmented. Some stainless, some scabbed with brown or green corrosion.
Dignity slowed and nosed her way through the ruined machinery. Where the liquid metal lake lapped at the beach, the gears looked softer, more rounded, like sucked sweets.
Millie took the hovercraft out onto the gallium surface, where their presence sent tiny ripples skittering away. Here the going was smoother, and they turned left, hugging the beach. In the distance, a few boats with flat hulls like saucers floated. They extended instruments down, seemed to be searching the lakebed.
Ahead, Sweetie Belle could see two moored airships – stout, decorated with spikes and hastily-applied paint, covered with guns. The same type that had protected Ilmarinen. At the base of the mast, a squat, featureless structure poked out from the gears of the beach. Boats milled around the front; from the rear emerged the railway on a series of low arches that extended off into the distance. Millie signalled the terminus with a series of light pulses. It responded in kind. She took Dignity back onto the beach and settled beside the structure.
Sweetie Belle had arrived at Pinion Beach Railway Terminus.
There was a romantic notion about salvage in Amaranth: the lone heroic salvor, heading out into a new world, the spectacular ruins of an ancient civilisation, braving the dangers of death or insanity, to find some unique artefact that would enrich the world in general and the salvor in particular. It didn't matter if you were of the dispossessed races, living in the twin shadows of Aquileona and Equestria. In Amaranth, your etiolated soul could bloom. You'd have no help from immortal alicorns or documents of universal suffrage, each in their own way prevented from passing through the Funnel. You had only yourself. Salvage was the great equaliser – and the great inequaliser, for those who might go out one day and come back with a trinket worth a billion or more bits.
From whence did such a notion spring? The need to justify running from the safety of your homelands? At the very least, it lent a veneer of glory to what was ultimately picking at the carcass of a long-dead civilisation in a broken world for personal gain.
Salvage was the economic driver behind Amaranth, at least. And in its application, romance was as always overturned by the dreary realities of necessity.
For the base at Pinion Beach – comprised of the railways terminus, a port, and a large warehouse for sorting and engineering – the dreary side of salvage ruled. The minotaur and pony salvors, with the aid of an army of chevaloids, dredged a liquid metal lake for lengths of diamond cable, smart fulgin thread, hypercapacitors, inductive heaters, plastic screens, and titanium piping, and did so with steady disinterest. All of these products were reasonably common as salvage went. Nothing to make one a billionaire, but enough to sell and keep the base running.
Sweetie Belle sat beside a wall near the entrance to the beach and watched as the claws of a crane opened to drop its contents into a great rusted container. A workforce of minotaurs had begun to sort it when Millie came trotting up.
“Good news, lass,” she said. “T' managers says you can hop on t' next train. And I can patch up Dignity while I'm here.”
“How long?”
“A day or two, dependin' on whether I can find what I need among the crap they keep stacked up.”
“I mean, until the next train leaves.”
“Ah,” said Millie. She gave Sweetie Belle a look before continuing. “Tomorrow mornin', just before dawn. Where are Scoots and Tom?”
Sweetie Belle tried to sound indifferent. “They went off to look around. Check out the station and the port and all that stuff.” Before Millie could respond, she pushed the conversation to a different track: “The workers don't seem to mind us wandering about here.”
“No,” said Millie. “They're an easy-goin' lot. Y'know the interest what set all this up collapsed just after it shipped them all out here? They've been goin' at it alone, finishin' the warehouses and making their own contracts to survive.”
“Why didn't they just go home?”
“I couldn't say.” Millie glanced around. “Well, I'm gonna go find Scoots and Tom.”
After Millie had left, Sweetie Belle returned to Dignity. She was, in truth, grateful for the extra night. Over the past 20 hours, she'd left Hinny's Revenge, escaped pirates and flying monsters, talked to the last remaining inhabitant of Amaranth, who was now living in her head, and found Scootaloo. That was enough to exhaust anypony.
She passed Gregor without speaking to him and headed to the room in which she'd first woken up. No engines. Just a swaddling void that pushed upon her ears all the minor echoes and daemons whispers of the hovercraft.
After a brief, lonely dinner of dry hay, she fell asleep on the sideboard.
Half open lilac blinds. Later afternoon sun leaving a sequence of golden bars on the carpet. Yellow daffodils – what a flaccid attempt at good cheer. Tom sat on one of the foyer's chairs, except he was a pony. Sweetie Belle didn't want to look at him; she peered out the blinds. Desert below, at once too close and too far. You shouldn't be here. You're just a mote. When she looked back, it was Adrenaline Rush sitting on the chair, glaring at her.
No.
You're in control. You befriended baby aelewyrms. You convinced Millie not to kill Gregor. You're one of Equestria's hottest upcoming musicians, and Scootaloo should be glad to have you.
Audience cheering. Aelewyrm hatchling purring and nuzzling on the stage.
But Rush and Scootaloo were looking at Sweetie Belle again.
Stop it, she tried to tell them.
Stop it.
Sweetie Belle rolled over and nearly fell off the sideboard she was on. She swore under her breath. A daemon was whispering in her ear, and for a moment she thought it said something like confidence. Then it became unintelligible again.
She thought about what Saffron had told her – the gradual collapse of the qilin civilisation. Pictures of gradually eroding insanity en masse, of powerful magics used poorly flickered through her mind as she quietly slid off the sideboard, until she caught sight of Scootaloo and Tom sleeping next to one another on the floor.
No, she told herself. That was ridiculous. They were lying close, but they weren't touching. When they got back, they couldn't have slept next to her, because she was on the sideboard. And yes, they were lying close, but maybe one or both had rolled over in their sleep.
And yes, Tom had been the only one on his ship to wait for Scootaloo, but …
With these thoughts worrying at her heart, Sweetie Belle could barely concentrate on the world around her as she left the hovercraft. Twice she tried to drag herself back, to concentrate on the clacker-crunch of beach gears under her hooves, the reek of corroded metal, the ragged, near-perfect reflection of the Scar in the lake's metal surface.
She hadn't seen Tom show any affection for Scootaloo beyond friendship. She hadn't …
“Seems like you need some company,” said Saffron beside her. Her appearance there felt entirely natural.
“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle.
Saffron said nothing but remained. Truth be told, Sweetie Belle was glad of the distraction. “Did Amaranth really used to be your homeland?” she said eventually.
“Yes.”
Stupid question. “What was it like?”
“Better than this.”
“Oh.”
The tips of Saffron's left hoof were embedded in a small, brass coloured gear. She shifted her balance; the edges of her lips curled up into what might have been a snarl or a smile. “There was a jungle maybe a thousand miles from where I lived. Eudithaumically generated climate. Full of life. There were parts full of humminglizards, electric blue and gold. Trees that went straight up, maybe half a mile. And above them, when you got to the top, you could see the balloon trees another half-mile above, dropping vines down to capture insects and skyplankton. Some friends of ours lived in one of the skytrees. I'd pop over there sometimes with a repository to do some work. And … it was down among the humminglizards where … where he asked me to be his mate.”
In the background, the muted clatter and clang of all-night salvage work whispered like some long-dead language. The liquid metal lake clung to the gears ahead without lapping. Sweetie Belle struggled to imagine herself by the side of such a forest, then to imagine losing Equestria. Neither attempt was successful. What could bridge such a gulf in experience, in empathy? Only platitudes availed themselves to her. “I'm sorry,” she said, and wished she could think of something better.
Saffron shrugged. “In time, all things crumble. When we lost power over the climate and ecology, the jungle died and began to rot. I only saw one colourbomb used – turned a city to sand – but from the look of things, there must have been more since.” She looked out over the lake, then turned to Sweetie Belle. “In time, all things crumble. And yet here I am, a million years after everything I knew fell.”
“Why are you here?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Mn,” said Saffron. “To go back to Equestria with you, I suppose. Then I can get out of your mane, if you'll pardon the expression.” She smiled thinly at Sweetie Belle. “I'm sorry, I've not done a great job of cheering you up, have I? Don't worry, love. Just endure, and you'll be back home.”
As they trudged back to Dignity, Saffron's cloven hooves occasionally landing inside or just above the gears without disturbing them, Sweetie Belle asked her, “What are you going to do when you get to Equestria?”
“Become corporeal. Live.”
“In a barbarian world?”
“Hah! I'll get along. Life is a bitter tonic, but it improves the alternative.”
“And you really think the princesses can make you corporeal again?”
The reply came with an unshakeable assurance. “If they can't, there's someone who can.”
“Uh …”
“Discord.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
It was still dark, with the sky just hinting at red, when Millie woke them. Sweetie Belle had lain next to Scootaloo after returning to the hovercraft; if this surprised her she gave no sign of it.
“T' train has two stops: Red Oak and Skulltown,” explained Millie. “Don't ask me where they get them names from. Anyway, you need to get off at Red Oak. From there, it's an hour to Ilmarinen. Freighters go all the time.” She gave Scootaloo a a bundle of cash. “That should be enough to get t' three of you there.”
After a breakfast of milled oat porridge – “Sorry. Best thing I have for protein content,” Millie explained while Tom stared glumly at his bowl – she led them through the warehouse to the station.
The railway, clearly a product of Amaranth, looked nothing like a railway. It was a shallow, squarish trough made of concrete, studded inside with rows of grey-black blisters. At the far end of the terminus, it retreated off into the distance. Nearby, the train sat – a chain of dull boxcars scabbed with rust and flatbed trucks stacked with scavenged technology. No locomotive – the front was just another boxcar with streamlining – but three pairs of propellers painted a rough, ugly yellow stuck out from either side down the train's length.
“Huh,” said Saffron, appearing beside Sweetie Belle. “I remember this. Magnetic suspension to minimise friction. This is archaic!”
Sweetie Belle glanced at Tom and Scootaloo beside her. “I thought you could only appear when I was alone,” she murmured under her breath.
“Like I said. Getting better at mapping your brain,” said Saffron. “Look at those propellers, though. No propulsion coils. I guess your lot could only get the bearings to work.”
“You seem more chipper this morning.”
“Sorry?” said Tom. Both he and Scootaloo were looking at her.
“Never mind,” said Sweetie Belle. Saffron had vanished again.
Millie, accompanied by one of the station's workers, came trotting down the platform. “Hop on,” she said. “They've got you a place to sit. It's time to go.”
Their place to sit was just in front of the middle propellers: An empty skip with low sides and a few sheets of worn, paint-stained sackcloth scattered on the base. Sweetie Belle scrabbled over the side with the help of Tom, who then climbed over himself. Scootaloo flew over and settled herself.
“Right,” said Millie, looking up at them. “I guess this is the last we'll be seeing of each other for a while. It's been … well, I won't say a pleasure, but interesting, at least.” To Sweetie Belle, “I hope you get home safely.” And to Tom and Scootaloo, “I'm around Ilmarinen fairly often. If you see me, you owe me a pint.”
The bade farewell, and Millie retreated along with the station workers. A klaxon sounded; the propellers began to spin leisurely. A second klaxon. A whistle.
At last, something familiar, Sweetie Belle began to think – but she didn't got the chance to finish before the train shot forward with a great rumble, sending her off her hooves, into Scootaloo, and into the back of the skip. The station flew away behind them. Everything darkened, a combination of soft pre-dawn light and sharp false-orange from the Scar.
Scootaloo grinned up at her. “Awesome! I wasn't expecting that.”
For a moment Sweetie Belle wanted to kiss her, revel in the rush of speed and excitement. Instead, she grinned back, then stood to look over the sides. Rushing air tugged at her mane and tail. The propeller was now a blurred disc, humming away behind them, and the landscape of scattered and cracked gears rushed past beneath.
Scootaloo, now standing, joined her and laughed into the wind. Her mane trailed behind her and danced in the slipstream. Her hair rippled. Her wings flexed.
“That was some acceleration,” commented Saffron from behind. Her voice was clear through the air rushing past Sweetie Belle's ears. “More than these propellers could handle. Some sort of engine at the station, perhaps?”
Sweetie Belle turned round and smiled at her, said nothing.
After falling back, Scootaloo asked, “How long till we get to Ilmarinen?”
“Five hours to the station,” said Tom. “Then we need to take an airship to Ilmarinen proper, which will take another two.”
The sun crawled upwards past the horizon.
Once she had seen off her passengers, Millie dropped by the worker's bar. She returned to Dignity with two pints in aluminium tankards on a tray around her neck.
Gregor was awake. He had given up on glaring and studying the main cabin, and now just looked bored. Millie put one pint beside him and sat with her own a couple of yards away. “I'll warn you now,” she said. “It tastes like piss. Even by Amaranthian standards.”
After looking from the pint to Millie and back again, Gregor attempted a shrug and shuffled forward. He was just about able to pick up the tankard and lift it to his beak. “It'll do.”
“She's a spirited little article, is Sweetie Belle, don't you think? Looks like nothing, but she's been here for a few months and already half of Amaranth is running around either for her or after her.”
“Soft,” said Gregor. “Entitled. Arrogant. Like all of you.”
“All of us?” said Millie, half-smiling.
“Ponies … Equestrians. It hardly makes a difference, does it?”
“Maybe not.” Millie sipped at her beer. “D'you remember t' debates in parliament about what to do about Amaranth? Minister Flavian were in nearly all of them, weren't he?”
She watched Gregor, waiting for the penny to drop.
“Jorvik County?”
“Aye, spot on. Born and raised in the dales. Everyone seems to assume just 'cause you're equine, you live in Equestria. They always forget about all them minor kingdoms Aquileona annexed when it was playing empire.”
“Huh. My mistake,” said Gregor. He stared out the window and clicked his beak. “Did you see the debates then?”
“A couple. When I could get into the stands.”
“And what did you think of Flavian?”
“Oily little bugger. Even when I agreed with him.”
Gregor laughed. “Yeah. He was, yeah.”
“But here we are, living in the world he helped make. 'O land of opportunity'”
“Amaranth,” snarled Gregor. His beak clicked. “Fucking hate the place.”
“Huh,” said Millie. “Maybe coming here to join a gang of pirates was perhaps not t' best career choice?”
“Oh, piss off. It's a shithole. But some things you do because you believe in greater things than yourself.”
“Like thieving and killing?” Millie scritched her mane. “Maybe it's just my stupid equine brain, but it feels like I'm missing part of t' story here.”
Gregor retreated to his beer. “It doesn't matter. And what's your story, huh? Why do you love Amaranth so much? And a lone donkey, all the way out here …”
The surface of Millie's beer slopped about inside the cup. “Now that would be telling,” she said, hoping her tone didn't betray her.
“Of course.”
Blueberry Pancake draped her robe about her shoulders and, looking in the mirror, fitted the ceremonial clasp. It creased in awkward places. Dust collected in the ruckles. Loathsome rag. Symbol of obeisance.
Her makeup box and her blue and gold mane ribbons sat on her dresser unused, calling to her. She turned back to study her reflection, her glittering mane and hair, stifled by a dull grey cotton.
“Yes, my liege,” she said into the mirror, letting the venom run through her voice. “Of course, my liege.”
At least she had a plan. Last night, a trembling pony had told her how they'd lost contact with both of the griffon ships after her quarry. She'd done the best to ease his worries, maintain an air of confidence, made it seem like she'd find a way. And, somehow, she had. Less than an hour later, they'd got news from their telegraph wiretap on the railway. Notification of repairs for a hovercraft at Pinion Beach. All was not lost; her quarry had returned.
But before she could attend to that matter, there was the meeting ahead of her. She sighed, and strode out of her room.
Another airship had docked half an hour ago, just after she'd woken. It was Aquileonan in design, painted mostly black and ornamented with red. Blueberry thought it looked like shit – even more than her own. At the dock, she was met by another pony in a robe, who nodded briefly and without speaking led her through the dimly lit interior corridors. They passed other adherents, none of whom spoke.
“Has Brother Flay been aboard yet?”
“No, sister.”
“Good.”
A door with nothing special to mark it out. Her guide stood to one side and waited, his face like stone in the dull, reddish light. Some lone tendril of anxiety entangled itself around Blueberry's throat; she ignored it and slid open the door. When it closed behind her, things became even darker. Ahead of her, a second door beckoned. She knocked once, waited for the clank of an opening bolt, stepped through.
The air stank faintly of rot and mould. It was large – longer than it was wide. A trickle of light picked out a carpet running to the far end of the room, stopping at the base of a sort of throne. Atop it, what looked like a bundle of fabric, barely visible.
The bundle shifted. An ember of violet was briefly visible.
Blueberry walked over it, to carpet muffling her hoofsteps. The smell became stronger until it filled the air like a soup. About two metres away from the throne, she stopped, bowed. “My liege.”
“Sister Blueberry Pancake.” A voice from a decaying throat: suppurating tones twisted into words, supported by undertones too deep for any pony to have made.
Again the bundle moved, this time to reveal the pony beneath. In the gloom, the openings in the flesh became little more than shadowy pits, a chiaroscuro of rot and ruin. Where a clear wound down to the bone was evident, the flesh wasn't gory – it looked pale, more like wax than meat. The host body always had to be exsanguinated before it was possessed.
The jaw moved. “You do not know where to find Tanelorn.”
“Not … not yet. But I only need one more transform to find it.” There was no sense in letting him worry about the small business with the white unicorn. “Then we will have everything. We can take the qilin weapons, sweep into Equestria –”
“When?”
“It should take a week at most.” That should be enough time to arrange everything.
“Do not fail me.”
“No, my liege.”
“Soon. Soon I will rule all Equestria. And nothing will be able to stop me.”
Blueberry was overcome with an urge to tell Sombra that she was glad his defeat in the Crystal Empire had done nothing to his personality. She stifled it, and instead listened to to his bluster until he told her to leave.
For a moment there I thought the repository was going to break. But it's fine. Everything's settled down for a while.
And I'm back, just in time to introduce you to the villain of our piece.
Chapter 10 Blueberry Pancake
The railway snaked across the landscape on its low viaduct, between shallow mountains leaking sulphurous discharge like pustules on plains littered with the twisted, rusting skeletons of ancient structures, across a field of ragged blackened rocks like rotted teeth. Bereft of wheels, the train rocked sullenly while its passengers chatted, played games, sat in silence and looked out at Amaranth.
Halfway through their journey, while Sweetie Belle was sitting at the back of the skip, dozing, Saffron blinked into existence in front of her.
“Guess what?” she said.
“You've figured it out?”
“Yep.”
Scootaloo looked round at her. “What?”
“Nothing. Just, uh, my qilin.”
“Oh. Uh, right.”
Saffron tilted her head. “Your qilin?”
“Just leave it,” said Sweetie Belle. She caught another glance from Scootaloo. “Can you hear this?” she thought at Saffron.
“I can.”
“Well, while you're here, there's something I wanted to ask you. All those thousands of spells you mentioned – should I learn any?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can't see any good coming of it,” said Saffron. Her tail swished, and the red-orange tip passed for a moment through the side of the skip and back again.
“I was only asking,” said Sweetie Belle.
“What's changed, anyway?” Saffron peered at her. “Last time we talked about this, you were almost offended by the idea of hearing the daemons. And now you're inviting them in?”
Sweetie Belle shrugged.
At the far end of the skip, in her conversation with Tom, Scootaloo laughed. Saffron glanced at her. “Ah.”
“It's not that. Not just that, anyway. What if the pirates … or this S. creature … comes after me? I'll need to defend myself. Just a couple of easy spells I could use to get away. You said they're not all as tiring as the one you gave me back on the pirate ship, right?”
“You also need to stay sane. Say I teach you a spell. That'll bring you closer. Every time you use it, you'll become more susceptible. And … well, you see.”
“And what?”
Saffron looked away briefly, then closed her eyes and massaged the spot between her antlers. Sweetie Belle wondered if she actually got any relief from doing so, or whether all these gestures were just for show.
“And,” said Saffron carefully, “daemons magnify personal vices. From what I've seen of yours, I'm not enthused at all at the prospect of them getting in your head.”
“What in Equestria is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Just drop it, pony.”
Sweetie Belle sighed and and looked again at the passing landscape. Saffron faded out.
Something occurred to her. “How do you avoid them?”
Saffron reappeared. “Pardon?”
“The daemons. They speak your language, and you can hear everything I hear.”
“Ah. You're right. It is a problem, and my solution is actually quite clever.”
“Of course it is.”
“I've set up a subroutine that reads your auditory input. It looks for anything that resembles my native language and purges it before I have access.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
“Do you understand any of that?” said Saffron, shaking her head. “Barbarian culture, honestly …”
“So if someone came up to me and spoke your language, you wouldn't be able to hear them?”
Saffron paused, looked up. “Right.”
“And you can't hear the daemon whispers either?”
“Right.”
Sweetie Belle grinned at her. After giving it some time to sink in, she continued: “Why weren't you affected before? Back before you hid in the repository?”
“Aha!” said Saffron. “I am affected. Just a little, enough to be able to tell. You didn't see what I was like before.”
“But you're not mad enough to start ruining a civilisation, are you?”
Saffron gave her a joyless smile. “Right again. You're smarter than I gave you credit for.”
“So what's the answer?”
“We found a way of repelling daemons, my lover and I. A change in the thaumic background texture. It wasn't enough to save us – limited radius, limited duration, long recharge period. But with just the two of us in a small enough ship, we could keep it clean easily enough.” She sighed and stared off into the distance. “When things got bad bad, we stole the prototype and took our little ship as far away as we could, to try and work out a solution to the whole mess.”
After that, she became reticent. Sweetie Belle could get no more out of her and didn't want to. Eventually Saffron vanished, and Sweetie Belle settled into a corner of the skip to sleep.
They arrived a little after midday at a great plateau of striated grey rock, atop of which Red Oak Station clung. Its name given, perhaps, by some immense dendritic structure of rust-scabbed iron beside it, the station was a flat, off-white box that wore its skeleton of trusses on the outside. Its left side, from their approach, opened into three airship berths, all full – the airships were all Equestrian, with gondolas slung low beneath the envelope.. The right held a gaping square mouth which swallowed the train.
In an instant sunlight and Scarlight fell away and were replaced by the dull glare of incandescent lamps.
As soon as it came to a halt, workers descended on the train to strip of half its payload. “Here we go,” said Tom as they scrambled out of the skip. “It leaves in less than ten minutes, at half past.” He looked at Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. “Was I the only one who listened to everything Millie said?”
“Probably,” said Scootaloo. “But don't worry. You'll learn.”
Once a gangling minotaur with a clipboard had checked them off – the train's passengers itemised along with its scavenged matter – they were allowed off the loading bay. Here, an open chamber with the familiar scene: Salvage loaded and offloaded; labourers accompanied by buzzing chevaloids; cranes grasping hungrily at ancient detritus. Across the station, transparent plastic panels of a partition showed the underbellies of three airship gondolas.
Sweetie Belle saw this as a moment to take charge. “Tom, how much did Millie leave us?”
“Three hundred bits.”
“One of them should be willing to take us. I'll ask that one; you two take the others.”
“Celestia! Are you serious?” Scootaloo came up beside her. “Someone's out to kidnap you, and your first reaction is 'let's split up'?”
Sweetie Belle tried to come up with a response.
“We go together,” said Scootaloo. “We've got enough time.”
Scootaloo in the lead, they traipsed across the station. Before they were halfway to the airships, someone stood out from the hordes of workers.
A crystal unicorn with an extravagantly clean and coiffured mane talked to a diamond dog in overalls: “Yes, yes, I totally understand! You're on a tight schedule, and having me and my cronies drop by unannounced isn't in your game plan. How about this –” She fluttered her eyelashes in a way that reminded Sweetie Belle of Rarity “ – You go do what you need to, and if there's anything left when the train leaves, I'll pick it up. Non-wholesale rates, even.”
“Sure. That's fine, miss,” said the diamond dog.
“Wonderful! Thank you so much. Now you get along. I'll be here.”
Immediately after she was finished, she turned and smiled at each of the three of them in turn. Even in the sour light of the station lamps, her teeth sparkled. “Well, don't I feel popular! Hello, there. What can I do for you?”
“We're looking for a ride to Ilmarinen,” said Scootaloo.
“Ilmarinen? You're in luck. That's my first stop once I leave here, and we have space. That's my ship, there.” She pointed at the ugly, colourful airship. Its belly was open, with a flatbed for cargo and a separate cabin resting beside one another in the berth.
“How much?”
“Make me an offer.”
“Uh … a hundred bits?”
“And just the three of you?”
“Yeah.”
The unicorn made a show of looking uncertain. Then: “Oh, all right then. But only because you all look so cool. But I expect good company on the way to make up for it, alright? Good, good. Pleased to make you acquaintance. I'm Blueberry Pancake.”
When they had all introduced themselves, Sweetie Belle found Blueberry Pancake looking into her eyes. She spoke just before the moment became awkward: “I do beg your pardon, but … Sweetie Belle, the musician?”
“Um … yes.”
“Wow. I hope you don't mind me saying, you're very good. Once you get back to Equestria … you are going back to Equestria, I hope? Good. Once you get back, keep going. You're gonna go far, filly.”
Sweetie Belle brushed her mane back. “Thank you.”
“Well,” said Blueberry. “Come along, and I'll show you aboard.”
Scootaloo didn't move. Her tail swished. “Could we have a moment? Don't you need to wait for that guy, anyway?”
A sort of grinding, a shade too subtle to be a headache, hit Sweetie Belle. It was gone in an instant.
“It's fine!” said Blueberry. “Just come with me.”
A pause. “Okay,” said Scootaloo.
Leading them across the station, Blueberry looked up at Tom “Goodness, you are tall! Honestly, I …”
But Sweetie Belle stopped listening as Saffron's voice sounded in her ear: “Don't act like you can hear me. Listen very closely: You must not get on that airship. This pony is bad news.”
“What?”
“Eyes forward. You can't hear me, alright?”
“Okay, okay. Now, what?”
“She just used an thrall spell on you. That's qilin. She has access to our spells.”
Sweetie Belle took a moment to let this sink in. “Shit.”
“Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I managed to counteract it in your case. If she has that, she might have others. Right now, the thrall is all she's used.”
“ …But if I try and run, she might use something worse.”
“Yes.”
“And if I don't try and run, I'm going to end up on her airship.”
“Yes.”
They were halfway across the concourse. She glanced at Blueberry, who was still flirting with Tom. She was a few seconds from disaster, trapped, and couldn't even warn her friends. What was there? After scanning desperately, randomly, feeling the seconds fall away, her eyes settled in the big clock. 12.28, it read. “The train. If we can get on the train, can we escape?”
“Maybe.”
Sweetie Belle looked to the approaching airship cabin. The glint of hope sputtered. “No. She can chase us in her airship.”
Saffron didn't respond.
“Come on!” thought Sweetie Belle. “Give me something!”
Saffron gave her something.
In the air, barely present, came a new texture. “Elementals,” said Saffron. “Try and scoop some of the air up. Imagine it's wet clay.”
At that moment, Blueberry stopped whatever she was saying and looked over at her, smiling. Sweetie Belle snuffed her horn out as quickly as she could and smiled back. Blueberry looked ahead again and resumed her lecture.
They were close now. Sweetie Belle grabbed at the air as frantically as she could get away with. It fell away from the touch of her aura, the texture tearing like wet tissue, leaving her with rags and fragments.
“Calm,” said Saffron.
Almost at the cabin..
Sweetie Belle clenched her teeth and tried again. The air came together under the invisible touch of her aura and coalesced into something. Invisible yet vital, it quivered, waiting for a command.
“Just tell it what to do. Anything that can be done with air.”
Sweetie Belle looked up at the airship. The engines, she realised. Piston cylinder and pipes. Vulnerable to pressure. The sylph twisted beside her like an eager dog. No, she told it. One thing first.
The doors to the cabin were pneumatic.
“Go.” The sylph swam ahead, slipped into the pipes. Blueberry, unaware, walked past the threshold. Right behind her, Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle grabbed her mane in her aura and pulled back. An inch in front of Scootaloo's nose, the doors snapped shut.
Immediately, Sweetie Belle felt the sylph's exertions as her own, a sharp jab in her chest. No time to process it, though: “Run!” And she swung round to follow her own instruction.
The pre-departure klaxon sounded.
Thudda-thud of hooves on one side, paws on the other. “What –” began Scootaloo, but she was cut off a wail of wrenched metal behind them.
Another fire-hot needle in her chest, and Sweetie Belle stumbled. She put up a shield around the three of them. Her sylph, defeated but alive, flew up to the engines to complete its second task. “Get to the train,” she shouted.
From behind, in a commanding tone, Blueberry: “Stop.”
Scootaloo and Tom faltered. But in a moment, they were moving again.
The clock ahead gave them less than thirty seconds.
Another command from Blueberry. A bolt of some ancient magic glanced against Sweetie Belle's shield. The bubble quivered, soundlessly popped. That was it, then. No shield. Blueberry had her.
From behind them came a bang so loud it came more as pain than noise. Another drain, another needle in her chest – and Sweetie Belle's legs bucked beneath her. She stumbled, hit the ground looking back they way she'd come: Waves of thick white smoke pouring from the airship's engines; twisted open cabin doors; Blueberry Pancake staring up at it, ignoring her quarry.
And then Scootaloo's wing slid beneath Sweetie Belle and scooped her up, dragged her forward. She needed no more prompting, and began to gallop again.
They ran into the crowd. Everyone ahead staring up at the scene behind them – too many, and too absorbed to move out of her way quickly enough. She weaved between them. Nearly there.
A chevaloid blindly stepped into their path – except not blindly. When Sweetie Belle moved to go behind it, it stepped back, turned towards her. Too close.
Scootaloo surged ahead, one glittering wing extending to full span, and swatted the chevaloid away. Clicking and humming away, its arc took it into a pillar which snapped its spine.
A pegasus, almost skeletally thin, took to the air just above the heads of the crowd and moved to intercept them. A wing-gun lay against his feathers. He closed in, aimed.
A paw reached up, grabbed the gun, and pulled it away, sending the pegasus off kilter. Tom was tall, some inappropriately tranquil part of Sweetie Belle's mind commented.
She jumped over barriers onto the deserted platform, crossed it to a flatbed car, leapt – and landed on an empty space behind a bundle of girders.
The train jolted forward, pulling her hooves out from under her. Sweetie Belle looked back in time to see her friends, just a metre away but still on the platform, vanish behind her. She shrieked. The train refused to heed her, and a moment later, she was in the open air, leaving the station behind.
Thump of landing hooves on the girders.
“Scootaloo!” She turned round.
It was the wiry pegasus who had chased her.
Sweetie Belle retreated without thinking; on her second step her rear hoof stepped into nothing. She was at the corner of the flatbed. Below, concrete like a meat grinder hurtled past.
“Just come with me!” called the pegasus.
Cornered, but not helpless. The familiar knot in her belly – but that was manageable. Front pastern hooked around one of the cables holding the girders down, rear hoof on the very corner of the flatbed, Sweetie Belle hung over the side of the train. After a quick glance to assure nothing trackside might hit her, she turned back to the pegasus.
He was no longer advancing.
“If I let go … whaddya think that'll do to your precious treasure?” She tapped her free hoof against her skull.
The pegasus made no move. Rushing air battered against Sweetie Belle's face and sent her mane and tail whipping in her wake. Her eyes were beginning to water. She blinked the tears away to see him still unsure. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.
A rush of colour. Scootaloo came bounding from the car behind, rolled once with the pegasus. They landed, him above, her beneath. She kicked him in the belly, and pushed him off the car's other side as he was still reeling. Sweetie Belle saw his wings extend before the wind pulled pulled him backwards and out of sight.
She eased herself back onto the flatbed and screamed – or perhaps laughed.
The train swayed, slow and lulling, even with the rushing wind. Beside her, Scootaloo said something that Sweetie Belle didn't take in. Her legs were trembling. Her heart was still battering her chest, accompanied by a slower rhythmic throbbing from the sylph's drain on her energy. The sylph! The thought of the exploding airship engine, the danger of qilin magic, and the knowledge that she had made it happen brought a renewed thrill, accompanied by a sense of horror. She closed her eyes and listened to see if the daemons' sussurations were any more comprehensible.
A paw on her shoulder brought her back to reality. Tom – where had he come from? Followed Scootaloo, of course. His chest, like hers, was still heaving. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She stared at him.
“Scootaloo asked you –” he began.
“You didn't need to come with us!” Sweetie Belle hadn't intended it to come out like an accusation – and yet, she had.
Tom looked taken aback.
“Whoah, whoah!” said Scootaloo. “What's wrong with you?”
“I … I'm sorry,” Sweetie Belle said. “I just …” She looked at Tom. “They're not chasing you. You don't need to get caught up in this.”
“Yeah, if I stayed, I'm sure she'd have just patted my head and let me go on my way. ” Tom scritched his ear and considered this. “Oh, crumbs.”
“Sweetie Belle,” said Scootaloo, “what happened back there?”
“That mare, Blueberry. She has qilin magic. She tried to use a … a thrall spell, or something. When you weren't sure about going with her.”
“Right, yeah, that was weird,” said Scootaloo. She frowned. “Shit.”
“Are your legs starting to ache?” said Tom. “Mine are. Skip's over there; let's go sit down before we go any further. Then, uh … then I think all four us need to try and understand what's going on.”
Everything I said here was true. It was my fault. That's another thing I have in common with Sweetie Belle: An entirely justified guilt complex.
And going back over it again makes me wonder why I ever thought going to Equestria and finding him would make any of it better.
Never mind. I don't want to talk about it.
Chapter 11 Skull Resonance
They sat facing one another in the skip while the wind whipped by. Brick-red rocks skated past below the viaduct, and off towards the horizon, some ancient structure that looked like the offspring of an oil rig and a giant spider clawed at the sky amid a tangle of rusted-through pipes.
“Are we all here?” asked Tom.
Sweetie Belle glanced at Saffron, who sat to her left looking bored. “Yes,” she said.
“Good. Honestly, I should thank you. Back in archaeology circles, it would be years before I got to chair a meeting.” Tom scratched some of the worn sackcloth between his thumb and index. “And in much less interesting circumstances.”
“I hope it makes up for the whole mortal danger thing,” said Sweetie Belle.
Tom shrugged.
“Can we get on with it?” said Scootaloo.
“Yes. Uh. Let's start with the big picture: Someone's trying to get Sweetie Belle. First, our griffon friends; second, this Blueberry Pancake and her henchmen. Now, how are they related? The pirates for this mysterious S. character. Does Blueberry? Or is Blueberry S.? Or are they independent?”
“I don't think the pirates would work with a pony,” said Scootaloo. “They're pretty, uh, what do you call it? Something-phobic?”
Sweetie Belle smiled at her. “Xenophobic?”
“Yeah, that.”
Tom nodded. “But S. was a mystery to them, wasn't he?”
“Yeah, there's that.”
“Blueberry knew we were coming,” said Sweetie Belle. “She was waiting for us. She must have even known what train we were arriving on. They had to be in contact.”
“Let's assume they are for now,” said Tom. “What else? Sweetie Belle, do you know how they found out you had stuff in your head?”
“No … ”
Tom paused to consider. “When we were captured, they didn't care about you at first. They were going after Scootaloo until they got an ansible transmission about you, remember? 'A white unicorn mare'?”
Saffron cleared her throat. “The repository.”
“What about it?”
“That's the evidence that you have something worthwhile in your head. And our good friend of the broken airship – good decision, by the way – has qilin spells, which suggests they're familiar with the technology.”
“Lucille,” whispered Sweetie Belle. “Shit.” She relayed what Saffron had said, then added: “When were docked at Ilmarinen, there was a griffon, Lucille. She said the repositories were being sold for a high price. The buyer was secretive, and the offer was word-of-mouth. But only active ones … glowing ones. Ours wasn't, so she took it off us for a lower price.”
“There you go,” said Saffron.
“And from there, someone found the inactive repository and traced it back to you?” asked Tom.
“I guess so?”
For a moment the only sound was the rushing wind and the hum of the propellers.
“All this suggests a big operation,” said Tom. “And one which was going before you crossed their path. Any idea why?”
“Oh, come on,” said Saffron. “It's not difficult.”
Sweetie Belle gave her a pointed look.
“Well, let's see, shall we? Our magic is more advanced than yours.” Saffron counted the points off on her hooftips: “Power. Money. Prestige. Security. There may be a million years between us, but some things don't change.”
“Saffron says the qilin spells themselves are worth pursuing.”
“Of course they are,” said Tom mildly. Saffron snorted and rolled her eyes. Tom continued: “But Blueberry already has spells. If just having them were enough, why is the operation continuing? In secret, no less. Is she just an obsessive collector – gotta find 'em all?
Saffron shrugged.
“So Sweetie Belle is, like, the final hoofball card? Yeah, right,” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle smiled at her. “Knowing my luck, I'll be Dandelion Dreams.” This got a laugh from Scootaloo, and nothing from Tom or Saffron. “Anyway, there are other things in the repositories. Information, Saffron told me. Or minds.
Tom looked at Sweetie Belle sharply. “We could be dealing with another qilin?”
“It's possible,” said Saffron. “But not at all probable. Though you do seem to be a magnet for improbable things.” Sweetie Belle relayed her comments to Tom.
“Maybe they want Saffron?”
“No,” said Saffron. “If they knew I was in here, Blueberry would have been more careful.”
“Do they know now, then?”
“I very much doubt it. I'm your wild card, kids.”
“And there aren't any more qilins in there, I presume? No? Good. What about information? Could that be valuable?”
“Of course.”
“Anything specific?”
“No,” said Saffron. “Something surviving, of course. But there could be hundreds of those. Or none.” She gave Sweetie Belle a thin smile. “I got out before the fall was complete.”
“Okay,” said Tom. “Let's sum up: They're probably not looking for just spells, and probably not for Saffron. That leaves information. Something that still exists. Saffron, how would the repositories be a reliable guide to what's left? I'm guessing it's like writing in a log or a diary – they wouldn't have any information about what happened after the last entry?”
“Well, it's a tiny bit more complicated than that. But basically correct. So I don't know how they could be reliable.”
Scootaloo thumped the skip with her hoof. “So we haven't learned anything?”
“I wouldn't say that. We've eliminated a few possibilities,” said Tom.
“But we still don't know who's chasing Sweetie Belle, why they're chasing her, or what they want in the long run.”
“No, but …” Tom put a paw to his forehead and sighed. “Never mind. Just … go ahead.”
“You're, uh, ceding the floor to me?”
“I'm ceding the floor to you.”
Scootaloo biffed Tom on the shoulder, and a smile passed between of the sort that made Sweetie Belle feel like she was missing out on something. Beside her, Saffron made to say something, then seemed to think better of it.
“Right,” began Scootaloo. “Now we're back in the real world, we have to decide what to do when we get to Skulltown. Either grab an airship straight to Ilmarinen or ride the train back. Either way is probably gonna cost more than Millie gave us, and Blueberry might be waiting at the station.”
“What if there's someone looking for me at Skulltown too?”
“I'll deal with them. Don't worry. Now, about going forward. If we can't pay, we're gonna have to work or stow away. And we're gonna have to do it quickly and quietly – Blueberry will know we passed through Skulltown, so she'll have a good idea of what ships we might have left on. Then she can send her goons after us, or come herself. Then from Ilmarinen we'll have to do the same. That'll be easier because it's busy, but still no walk in the park. Any questions?”
There were none.
Sweetie Belle met Rejoicing Well, a slight earth pony with an untidy mane, under the immense domed ceiling of the lobby of the Hotel Attración in Manehatten. Rejoice, as she went by, was in a tizz, having forgotten an essential item of luggage on her way here: “A harp. A lever harp!” she told the staff behind the rich brown mahogany desk in the lobby's heart. “I need it for the competition tomorrow. Oh goodness.”
That caught Sweetie Belle's attention. “Is that the young instrumentalist award in Las Pegasus?”
“It is! Are you going?”
“I'm competing too!”
Once they made their introductions, Sweetie Belle promised she'd try and help Rejoice find her harp – moments before the harp was brought in through the doors by a kindly porter. Rejoice, now settled, took her stuff up to her room, then joined Sweetie Belle for a drink in the hotel bar.
They spent some time chatting about why they both had to be in Manehatten the night before the competition. Sweetie Belle had an appointment; Rejoice was simply disorganised. They found out they were both taking the early morning airship shuttle; it was the only way to get there in time. And they agreed they should both go to bed soon. Then they talked about music, about Manehatten, about growing up.
Three pear ciders in, Sweetie Belle convinced Rejoice to play some harp for her. This they did in Rejoice's room, with Sweetie Belle sitting on the floor looking up at her hooftips dancing across the strings. She was good. Excellent, in fact. Sweetie Belle felt a pang of jealousy.
A little past midnight, she had to concede that nothing was going to happen with Rejoice, and that she had to be up early for the competition. She bade the mare goodnight and went straight to bed.
The morning brought a mild hangover and too little time to deal with it. She hurriedly showered, packed the rest of her stuff, and went down to the lobby. Rejoice wasn't there, and they hadn't made plans to meet up, so Sweetie Belle set off alone.
She got a cab to the port, which at this hour was barely inhabited. An intermittent breeze set the grass rustling, and off at the horizon the sea was visible, sketched with the little white smudges of breaking waves.
Rejoice wasn't here, either.
The airship to Las Pegasus, a small affair, with silver and cobalt blue paint and space for maybe fifty passengers, landed and was tethered. Sweetie Belle boarded. She chose a window seat and settled in to read an in-flight magazine article about wines from the southern regions of Aquileona. Her fellow passengers numbered no more than fifteen
“Alright,” announced the conductor, trotting down the aisle. “Ready for lift-off.”
At that point, Sweetie Belle glanced through the window. There was Rejoice, loaded with luggage and scrabbling as fast as she could down the street towards the port.
Sweetie Belle looked at the conductor. He'd be happy to ask the pilot to delay the ship for a few minutes for somepony who needed it. It was almost standard practice.
She looked back at Rejoice, still struggling.
Then she went back to her magazine.
Thirty seconds later, the airship left, without Rejoice.
Early afternoon. Muscles saturated with the sort of tiredness that comes of travelling for hours, eyes aching from the relentless sun and endless desert, Sweetie Belle caught sight of Tom peering over the side of their skip. His ears flicked in the wind, and he was grinning. She supposed this was as eager as he ever got in public.
“I can see it! Skulltown,” he explained. “Do you want to look?”
With the distortions of perspective, it took a moment to resolve the whitish mountain ahead into something meaningful. Rounded cliffs became teeth. An immense cave entrance became a nasal cavity. and all the plateaus and ridges clicked into place. Skulltown. The name was literal.
Its owner, when alive, might've regarded the aelewyrm as no more than a bug. And yet, for all their size, those teeth-cliffs were clearly a herbivore's. On what could it have grazed?
As the viaduct approached the skull on ever-higher arches, it became a thread connected to the top of the skull, to one side the nose. The skull's shadow, false-orange in the Scarlight, clung thinly to one side.
“Dude,” murmured Scootaloo.
“I've always wanted to see it …” said Tom.
“Anything we should know?” she asked him.
He was staring at it again. “Awesome.”
“Anything useful?”
“Oh.” Tom scratched his ear. “It used to be special, I think. Something about the skull giving mystical visions or something. But now the town's just supported by mining and trade.”
Sweetie Belle tried to summon Saffron. “What is this thing?”
“Looks like remains,” Saffron said before she popped into existence beside Sweetie Belle.
“Really, though?”
“Beats me.”
“I thought you'd know about your own world …”
Saffron let out a soft fragment of a laugh. “Cute. No, Sweetie Belle. Qilins weren't the first to come to Amaranth. There were others before us. I think this might be one of theirs. Although ...” She frowned. “Look at it again. No, really. I can't see it unless you see it.”
“What?”
Saffron shook her head. “Never mind.”
Over the next quarter they grew closer, ascending on the viaduct. Skulltown itself became visible: A collection of structures on the flattest parts of the crown, reaching from eyesocket to eyesocket and extending down the muzzle. Maybe half a dozen airships hung above the sloping cheekbones, held in place by black ribbons. Off in the distance, the town trailed off between two great stumps.
Antler stumps, Sweetie Belle realised. She looked to Saffron, “Is that a … ?”
“Yes. It's a qilin skull.”
There was a brief issue at the station. The workers weren't expecting any passengers. Again Scootaloo took the lead: What did they know about the departure from Red Oak? A disturbance. What else? Airship damaged; no reports about anything new coming by train. Were they going to telegraph back to Red Oak? Yes, of course. Had this happened before? Once or twice. Perhaps, if it was a problem, they should set up ticket barriers?
In the end, lacking any reason to detain them or send them back to Red Oak, the station workers let Scootaloo and her friends through into Skulltown proper. “Poor communication can be a plus, I guess,” said Tom as they walked past a sign advertising Free Vision Quests.
“Blueberry still knows we're here,” said Scootaloo. “She'll be coming.”
“We crippled her airship, though.”
Scootaloo looked at Tom, then over at the train they'd just left, then back at Tom.
“Ah.” He scratched his ear. “Right.”
“Come on, let's check out the airships.”
The main street, running down the centre of the skull from nose back, turning into steps between muzzle and crown, was paved in thin slabs of rocks that resembled a poor imitation of the streets of Canterlot's Old City. In the buildings too, you could detect a distorted echo of Canterlot architecture in the elaborate stucco fronts, with once-bright paintwork, and occasional panes of leadlight glass. And the citizens – more unicorns, and hardly any griffons. Sweetie Belle found the similarity pulling at a string of homesickness that she'd though she'd forgotten. When Scootaloo led them off the street, the buildings immediately became functional and drab, as if decrying the impractical flamboyance of their cousins. Pavement became bone, going tak-tak beneath their hooves.
First, the left cheekbone. They checked each of the five airships docked there, Scootaloo seeking out the officers and checking whether there was a hope of them taking on passengers or crew. Sweetie Belle watched the ease and efficiency with which she worked, and recalled how clumsy her own efforts had been when she started her search.
Still, they were turned down each time. “We could,” said Scootaloo, “stow away on the one going to the chemical mines. They have pretty poor security. But they're not leaving until tomorrow. Let's try the other side.”
Following her across the skull's muzzle, Sweetie Belle decided she was going to try and take a more active role in getting them out of there.
At the right cheekbone, they did the same: Scootaloo enquiring, Sweetie Belle and Tom standing behind her while she spoke.
On the seventh attempt – a freighter – they were successful. “Actually, we're heading all the way to Omphalos,” said the officer at the gangplank. “We'll be stopping off at Ilmarinen, so we could drop you off there or work something out.” He glanced at Scootaloo's wings, then back at the clipboard floating in his aura. “And you do security … What about these two?”
Sweetie Belle realised she could help out with her stokehold duties.
“Passengers,” said Scootaloo. “They're under my protection.”
The officer looked unsure for a moment, but relented. He went back aboard to speak to the captain, and returned with an okay. “We leave in six hours. You can come aboard any time you like.”
Even with their passage settled, Scootaloo didn't calm until she'd taken them back to the station and checked the arrival time of the next train: Early the following morning.
With six hours to spend in Skulltown, they went to find something to eat. There was only one place which catered to carnivores: A sleazy little enclosed grill, built on sloping bone some distance away from the other structures. A painted sign outside advertised mice as a luxury and several varieties of ground scorpion as staples.
The stench of cooked meat was so bad that neither Sweetie Belle nor Scootaloo could get close to the door. “Even I think it stinks,” Tom assured them. “But right now, I'm hungry enough to eat fish guts.”
“We'll wait outside,” said Scootaloo.
“Scoots,” said Tom. “We're safe. For the moment, at least. I think we can afford to split up.”
Scootaloo stared at him. “Oh, well done.”
“What?”
“Jinxed it,” said Sweetie Belle. She moved to stand beside Scootaloo.
Scootaloo nodded.
“Oh.” Tom scratched his ear and looked at them both.“Well maybe while I'm in there I could throw some scorpion powder over my shoulder and chant three times to the Alicorn Princess of Nonsense. Would … would that help?” He spread his digits.
For a brief moment, Scootaloo said nothing. Then she grinned and pushed towards the door. “Okay, okay. You're right. Go on.” She pushed him towards the door. “But if you get kidnapped and tortured, it's all your fault.”
“Noted,” said Tom as he entered the diner.
The swinging door sent a new gust of meat smell, and the ponies retreated. Sweetie Belle turned to stare at the door. In part, she was glad to be free of Tom for a while. And yet the easy camaraderie with which he and Scootaloo parted stung. “How about we go to that oat place we passed on main street?” she said.
“Sure.”
Their budget, Scootaloo decided, meant they could have a half pint of some cheap looking and cheaper tasting ale with the oats.
“Listen,” she said when they were settled. “About what happened at Red Oak.”
“Yeah?”
“You were …” Scootaloo paused, like she was considering how to phrase whatever came next. “... really, really awesome. She sighed. “And I'm sorry about all the stuff I said when I saw you on the hovercraft. It was just … I really didn't expect to ever see you here, y'know? And it kinda threw me off. I just don't want to be the reason you got hurt.”
“I never expected to ever be here, so …”
“Don't get me wrong. Coming all this way was a really stupid thing to do. But doing stupid things, well …” Scootaloo flexed her wings.
Sweetie Belle smiled at her. “Yeah, not your best choice.”
“But really cool. You should've seen me! But, anyway, you coming to get me. I … I don't wanna sound all mushy here … Well, you know. I really do appreciate it.”
“Even though I got us into this mess we're in now?”
“I started out being chased alone in a hopeless situation. Now I'm being chased with my friends … and we might just get out of this. That's two steps up in my book.”
Sweetie Belle took a moment to sit back and bask in the praise. She took a sip from her beer. “But you're still coming back to Amaranth when we're done?”
Scootaloo nodded slowly. “Yeah … I like it here, Sweetie Belle. It's not that I want to get away from you or Apple Bloom, but …”
“When you left like that,” said Sweetie Belle. “With no warning or anything. With just a note …”
Scootaloo closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “Yeah. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. But at the time I just wanted to … get out. Make a clean break, you know?”
“About what happened …” Tell her. Tell her now.
“Fuck it,” said Scootaloo. “It doesn't matter now, right? At the time it felt like the world had fallen apart, but now?” She shrugged. “It doesn't matter.”
“Okay.”
“Still friends?”
“Friends.” Sweetie Belle smiled and put her hoof against Scootaloo's.
They ate in silence for a while. “So,” said Sweetie Belle, trying to keep up some nonchalance, “what's the deal with Tom?”
“He's awesome, isn't he? Back on the expedition we'd hang out and chat all the time. When I could get his muzzle out of a book, anyway. I mean, for all of them, I didn't realise how badass scientists could be until I saw them come all the way out to Amaranth to dig up a monster. But Tom was my favourite.”
“Did you and he ever … ?”
“Hook up? Is that the sort of thing you think I'd do?” Scootaloo scrunched up her nose and stared at Sweetie Belle for a moment, then laughed. “Okay, yeah, I totally would. But he's not into mares. Or bitches.”
“You poor thing.”
Scootaloo leant in and raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, I was so hoping for some of that sweet collie cock.”
Laughter collided with food in Sweetie Belle's throat and it was a moment before she was able to choke out, “You're terrible!”
“Damn right.”
“I've missed you.” Seeing Scootaloo begin to speak, Sweetie Belle held up a hoof. “That's not me trying to convince you to come home.” It took a moment for her to realise this was a lie.
Scootaloo studied her oats, then her beer, before looking up at Sweetie Belle. “I've missed you too,” she said.
They met up Tom outside the grill. “What scares me most about this situation,” he said, “is that I think I'm starting to like the taste of baked scorpion. I can imagine hiding cans of the stuff away from my friends when I get back home.” He saw the look the ponies were giving him. “Uh … I guess that makes more sense if you're a carnivore. Crumbs. Though … there is this place in Aquileona that serves wolpertinger tandoori, and … Right. Sorry.”
Scootaloo suggested they go back to the airship and settle, but Sweetie Belle, feeling freshly cheerful and curious about the skull, wanted to stay. There were still several hours before they had to leave, and she didn't want to spend them cooped up. On her suggestion, they all tramped up the steps to the crown of the skull and settled on a plain of open bone. Below them, the muzzle stretched out, buildings clinging precariously to its surface like some osteological disease, and after that, the railway viaduct extended threadlike until it was swallowed by the heat haze. Air currents slipping up the muzzle fragmented at the crown and lightly buffeted their manes and hair. Closer, the upper ridges of eyesockets rose either side of them. Even there, buildings clung; another sign advertising vision quests had been put up.
“Saffron? Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I need to know more.”
Saffron, now sitting beside her, arched an eyebrow.
“I have a friend, back in Equestria, who told me the first step to winning is understanding what you're up against …”
“Yes?”
“Twilight Sparkle.” Sweetie Belle took a deep breath. “And I intend to win.”
“Look who's become little miss confident.”
“So I need to understand this. Why is there a giant qilin skull here? What is going on with Amaranth? If qilins weren't the first, who was?”
Saffron was silent.
“You know all this. You were some sort of scientist, weren't you?”
“Onto-thaumic engineer, zeroth class.” The pride in Saffron's voice vanished: “Not that it means anything now.”
“So tell me,” said Sweetie.
Saffron sighed. “All right. Just for you, Sweetie Belle, a quick overview of the universe:
“The qilin came to Amaranth about nine thousand years before my death, through a portal like the one you have here. They were refugees from a global war that started, I'm sure, because of something foolish and trivial. Not that it stopped them from building colourbombs and warships later on. Anyway, back then it was a pretty nice place. Better than what they were leaving behind.
“At least, that's what we learned from history recs.
“It took them a while to get their act together and start exploring the world. It took them longer to realise they were not the first inhabitants. And it wasn't until they were a couple of millennia in that they began to understand anything about the world they were living in.”
Saffron closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing.
“We managed to catalogue over a hundred races of previous inhabitants. Before us there were a race of sentient macaws. Before them, selkies. Before them, cetaceans, garuda, rawheads, arachnids. There were a race of gangling ape things, though they weren't very smart and didn't last long. There were creatures and ecosystems we had to invent new biologies to understand – the aelewyrms were one we managed to revive – and there were things living here even stranger. Creatures made out of nothing but geometry; sentient fragments of free-floating code; living shadows; embodied dreams.
“You see, Amaranth isn't just some piddling little alternate world. It's a hub. Perhaps THE hub – perhaps everyone finds it eventually. And what you see is only a sliver of the true thing.
“Why?” Saffron pointed to the sky, to the Scar. “Because of that. Magic is the softness of reality, the potential for things to be other than they are. The Scar is that potential maximised. Pure magic, if you like. And we're close enough, here in Amaranth, to feel some of that. Reality is here is more fluid. It changes more easily. That spell I gave you to escape from the pirates – you wouldn't have enough energy to do that in Equestria. It only works here.
“Magic is strong enough in Amaranth that you get reality can change spontaneously. Right now you – all of you who have come over – are keeping it grounded by perceiving it. It's locked into some approximation of what you expect a world to be like. But before you arrived, things were different. Only the daemons were there, and their form of reality is much less solid that yours. So in millions … or thousands … of years, things drifted. Even time, distance and geometry were less solid. That's why some places have aged more than others. That's why a normal skull could expand so much while no-one was around. I suspect you lot might even have caused some of it – magic responds to expectation, and you were expecting a strange world.”
Sweetie Belle considered this for some time. She glanced over to Scootaloo and Tom, who were talking softly, then back to the skull below. “If the world has … drifted … so much,” she said, “then why is it still ruined?”
Saffron smiled at her. “I was wrong about you. You're actually a very good student, considering your background. That's an excellent question. There are two reasons. The first is in that word drift: The change was continuous and slow, not immediate. With more time – as far as that term has meaning – they would have changed more. The second reason is because you and I are really very similar. We interpret the world in the same way, and so when you came over, Amaranth solidified in a way that was close to the way it had been when we checked out. If you had been something more exotic, the resemblance would have been less.”
“The daemons,” said Sweetie Belle. “Did they also find Amaranth through a portal?”
For a moment, it seemed as though Saffron had not heard her. She just stared out into the distance. “I suppose you could say that,” she murmured at last.
“Saffron …”
“They found Amaranth through a portal we opened. And when I say 'we', I don't mean qilin. I mean a team I was part of.”
Sweetie Belle was about to speak, but Saffron held up a hoof to stop her.
“And not just that. When we opened the portal, we found a field discontinuity stopped the daemons getting into Amaranth. So what did we do? We fiddled with it. Changed the values to try and understand what was going on. Until it collapsed.” She laughed: A brittle sound, a melodious voice in the service of ugliness. “Listen. I want you to understand the full magnitude of what happened. Amaranth belonged to all existence. It was a refuge and a home for tens of millions of years. And I had a part in destroying it.”
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned …”
Saffron shook her head. “Don't be. Once we started to hear the daemons, I had a year to reflect on this while we were trying to fix it. I think I'm as close to coming to terms with it as I'll ever be.” She turned to Sweetie Belle. “I'm sorry. For … being a bitch. Just … I don't know.”
Without thinking, Sweetie Belle tried to put a hoof on Saffron's shoulder. It passed right through.
Saffron looked at her shoulder, then up at Sweetie Belle. A brief, thankful smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. “Wait a second … There.” She shifted to the side and leant against Sweetie Belle – and this time she felt solid. The touch of warm scales, the slow motions of breathing. They sat together in silence, Saffron's eyes closed, for some time.
Some time later, she shifted. “Look at that,” she said. She directed Sweetie Belle's attention to the old sign. “What do you suppose happening there?”
“I don't know. Quests, of the vision nature?”
Saffron gave her a sidelong glance. “And you think they just stick that sign up when there's nothing magical going on?”
Sweetie Belle frowned at the sign. “I suppose …”
“Let's check it out. I have a … suspicion.”
Sweetie Belle turned to Scootaloo. “I'm gonna go and have a look at the quests. Do you wanna come along?”
“Why?”
“Saffron.”
“Right.” Scootaloo shrugged. “Okay.”
After a still, creaking door, they had to push through hanging strips of rough black fabric to enter the hut. It was dark here, and smelt vaguely of some greasy perfume. Blinds covering the windows were nearly closed; it took a moment for Sweetie Belle's eyes to adjust. Thin blades of sunlight sat on a dull carpet leeched of colour. Shelves, empty save for a coat of dust and a small pile of old books, covered one wall.
Opposite, a unicorn sat on a frayed cushion beside a small desk, looking up at them. Another book lay open beside him, as if in defiance of darkness and reason he had been reading it. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I want to know about the, uh, vision quests,” said Sweetie Belle. She looked at the far wall, facing out away from the skull. It was difficult to see in the gloom, but thin glowing lines defined the outline of another broad door.
“You're in the right place,” said the stallion, perking up. “I presume you're the one going?”
“Actually, uh, could you tell us about it first?”
“Sure. We send you into the skull through the eyes. You wear a harness. There are rails on the roof, so we can lower you down to different points inside.” He went behind the desk, looked about a moment, then pulled out a small chart: A diagram of the skull from above. Lines radiated from each eyesocket, exploring to inside as far as the back of the skull and the muzzle. Points marked at regular intervals with charts of tiny numbers and the abbreviation-laden cant of specialists. The stallion saw her expression. “Basically, the intensity of the visions changes depending on where you are.” He looked up to address Scootaloo and Tom too. “Some of the high intensity areas even work on non-unicorns. Anyway, it takes half an hour to a full hour to start getting visions. You can stay as long as you within reason, or move to a different location. You're advised not to use your horn inside, just because it can stop the visions.”
“That point in the middle,” said Saffron. “The red mark. Ask him about that.”
Sweetie Belle did.
“Ah. That's the red zone. Highest intensity. You'll want to keep away from that. It's not good for you.”
“What,” said Scootaloo, “like it makes you crazy or something?”
“Well … yes, in a way. Back when Skulltown was founded, when we were exploring the inside, there were a few incidents. Sometimes it was just personality changes. Sometimes it was catatonia. You understand, we weren't eager to keep sending ponies in there.”
Tom raised a paw. “I've never seen that mentioned in the documents.”
“Ah, yes, well, the town founders weren't that eager to have the face spread around. Now nopony .. sorry, no one … really cares about the skull anymore, it never got mentioned. I'm telling you because I trust your intelligence not to go burn your brain out … and respect your right to do so if you really want to.”
“Right.”
“I think I know what's going on here,” said Saffron. “Come outside. This'll take some explaining.”
Sweetie Belle excused herself and took the group outside. “I need to talk to Saffron again,” she told them. “What is it?”
Saffron appeared before her, looking almost gleeful. A resonance chamber.
The word snagged something inside Sweetie Belle's mind. “You mean … like a sound box or something?”
“Hah! Yes, but for magic! Look, you can specify all magical activity as quaternion values in each of the three fundamental ontic fields, with –”
“Saffron!”
“Right. Sorry. Use of magic sends out thaumic waves. Like sound waves – the quality of the waves tells you about the magical event. Do you see? This skull is picking up some of those waves and holding them. Ponies go in, pick up all these waves, and get what our poor benighted operator in there calls visions.”
Sweetie Belle looked into her eyes. The same glint she'd seen before with Twilight – and she knew this stage. “And there's something else?”
“I think I might be able to build something to reconstruct a fair proportion of the original signals. Well, I say build; it'd all be in my head... or yours, rather.”
“So we could see where the magic is coming from?”
“Yes. And … ?”
“We could see qilin magic? What Blueberry's been doing? And … maybe we could see ansible transmissions? I'm going on a vision quest?”
“Yes. Yes. Perhaps, depending on how much signal corruption there is; and only if you want to.”
“Of course I want to!”
“Wonderful. Give me half an hour to put it together, then we can go on a quest!”
Later, as the stallion in the cabin was fitting Sweetie Belle into the harness, she caught sight of Scootaloo with an expression sitting on the border between worry and annoyance.
“Are you okay?” she asked, lifting a her forehooves a moment to allow the passage of another strap under her chest.
“We're still being chased, Sweetie Belle, and you want to go running off on this vision quest thing?”
“That's why I'm doing it! You know, intel. Reconnaissance. That sort of thing.”
“And the ship leaves in just over two hours. Are you sure you're gonna have enough time?”
“Sure. An hour to do the quest, and an hour to walk across town. We'll be fine.”
Scootaloo pressed her lips together, looked like she was about offer another objection, then thought better of it. “Okay,” she said. “Be careful.”
“Of course I will.”
“Okay,” said the Stallion. “You're set up.” He gestured to the bundle of equipment on Sweetie Belle's back. “Let's go through this again. This is your attachment to the rail. I'll set it up for you. It's a rack and pinion system, so don't worry about it slipping on inclines. Pull this loop around to drive yourself forward or backward, like so. Push this bolt in to lock the wheel. Finally, when you're in place, pull this loop to lower yourself down. This dial tells you how far along the rail you are, and this one tells you how high you are. Got it?”
Sweetie Belle ran through the controls herself, then nodded.
“Okay, let's go.” The stallion's horn glittered, and a pair of shades came floating out from behind the desk. He put them on and pulled open the hatch.
Painfully bright sunlight lanced in. Sweetie Belle blinked away the sting and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust. She peered through the hatch: A steep, almost sheer drop of off-white bone. A sturdy-looking ladder tinged with rust, leading down to a less sturdy platform of metal grating, also tinged with rust, sat. The eyesocket, distorted into an ovoid by perspective, yawned below.
She started down the ladder. The syncopated clang-clack-clang of hooves as her companion above followed her. The platform, when she reached it, whined under her weight, and she was struck with how precarious the position was: The side of the skull was an immense white cliff; the desert was still hundreds of metres below. Were the platform to collapse, they'd fall right through the eye – though with some luck, she might be able to jump and smash instead against the lower rim of the eyesocket instead.
Morbid thought, but not inappropriate given the setting.
Ahead the upper rim of the socket arced only a few metres overhead. Beyond it, the cranial cavity, enveloped in darkness. And hundreds of metres away, the other eye, giving a view of the horizon. Light streamed through it an illuminated a red disc of sand underneath the skull.
The stallion arrived on the platform. “Come on. Rail number three.” He led her forward to where the rails began. “You know you'll be right above the red zone?”
“I know,” said Sweetie Belle. The rail hung from discoloured bolts bored into the bone and regular intervals. As it left the eyesocket and the underside of the skull swooped upward, it rose more shallowly, with cables holding it up, until it was lost in the gloom.
“So stick to your co-ordinates and don't go any lower. The boundary changes over less than a couple of metres.” He hooked her harness up to the middle rail, fiddled with the equipment and gave it a tug. “Okay, you're ready to go.”
Sweetie Belle took the loop in her pastern and pulled it. Her harness moved forward along the rail, towards the edge of the platform. She looked over – it was impossible to see the ground below. “Thank you,” she said, and stepped off.
It's odd how such a demure little creature could be so arrogant, isn't it? And at the worst possible moment.
Chapter 12 Mistakes
Another tug on the loop, another metallic clink and whine in the rail above her. Darkness enveloped everything except the dials, which glowed a faint sickly green, and the eyesocket view into the desert ahead. Both seemed to float in nothingness, and shorn of context, it was impossible to tell which was near and which far. Her forelegs ached. The air seemed to press against her on all sides. It was chill and humid, with a hint of mildew smell, and left a faint dampness on her coat.
She glanced at the dial again. Still over two hundred metres to go. It already felt like she'd been here forever.
“Saffron?”
The reply came as a disembodied voice. “Yes?”
“Are you picking anything up yet?”
“A few things. Some colourbomb background noise, and what I think might be ansible transmissions. Enough to confirm I was right, but we won't see any details until we get in position.”
“Okay.” Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and pulled herself forward. At least going back would be downhill. And yet, part of her was thrilled to be here. “You know, when I started looking for Scootaloo, I was terrified. Now … I'm almost glad I ran into that repository.”
“I'm glad too.”
“Is that weird?”
“Being happy to get rescued? I don't think so.”
“I mean me, Saffron. Is it weird that I'm glad to have found the repository?”
Another two pulls on the loop before Saffron replied: “You're centre stage. That's what you made your career on, isn't it?”
“That's different.”
“Yes. Of course it is.”
Sweetie Belle had no reply, so she just pressed onwards.
Eventually the dial crawled round to tell her she had arrived: Halfway through the skull, above the red zone. She pushed the braking bolt in and pulled the second loop around the begin winching down.
“Good,” said Saffron's voice. “I'm getting lots of information. We should be able to easily resolve it when we're in place.”
Sweetie Belle glanced at the timepiece. It had taken her nearly twenty minutes to get this far. Longer than she'd expected. If it took her as long to get back, that only gave them another twenty minutes for Saffron to work. Would that be enough.
There The height dial said she was in the right place. She stopped, and tied the descent loop in place.
“Are you getting anything?” she asked Saffron.
“Wait …”
“How long?”
“A few seconds … Okay, I've got some stuff. It'll take a while to resolve properly, but this is pretty good. Do you want to look at it with me?”
“Uh, sure.”
A pause, then – the black canvas in front of her filled with smears and blotches and streaks of colour.
“This is Amaranth,” said Saffron. “Or, rather, a map of Amaranth. Or rather, a few maps of Amaranth. I've folded together a hypervolume, so you can see here all magical activity within the past week. The smearing effect is due to various uncertainties, but it still works pretty well. Do you understand so far?”
“I … I think so. Most of it, anyway.”
“See all those tangled green lines? Those are ansible transmissions. Blue is enchantments. The purple and violet is unicorn magic. See how it clusters around the cities and spatters the airship routes? That blob there is Ilmarinen.”
“What about Omphalos?”
“I think it's there.” A more diffuse constellation lit up. “The distance is making is harder to focus, but that's centred on where the city should be. Now, look what happens when I take out all the magic your lot have been doing.”
The map immediately became more sparse reduced to a few dabs of cherry red.
“Qilin magic?”
“Yes, indeed. Remember where Ilmarinen was? Well, right by it, there is Red Oak.” A fuzzy region flashed.
“The elementals? And Blueberry's spell?”
“Exactly right.”
“Where did I escape the airship?”
“Here.” A smaller but more intense spot.
“Now,” continued Saffron, “look at this point here, far south of Ilmarinen. That's where my ship crashed – where you found me. It's a very distinct signature, caused by the repository burning out. So much so that we can look only at events of that type.” The entire map went blank apart from the spot she had indicated. “Now, remember I said I'm only showing what's happened in the past week? If I extend that …”
Another red point appeared, some distance away. “A month ago.” A third, a forth, then more. “Someone had been opening up repositories for nearly a year.”
“Blueberry?”
“I think so.”
Sweetie Belle considered this. “So that's how she knows qilin magic? That's why she wants the stuff in my head?”
“That seems reasonable.”
“That's … not enough. What else is there?”
“What?”
“Other qilin magic. Every time it's used, something special is going on. We need to find out what the rest of it means.”
A pause. “You're right,” said Saffron. The map of red returned. “I saw a few more interesting things. See this line of events? Minor spells being used, like the thrall. It lines up with breaking repositories, so I presume it's Blueberry messing around. But there's a separate line of spells being used here. All of the same type, all powerful, coming at regular intervals and moving a lot more slowly.”
“What is it?”
“No clue.”
“Oh come on,” said Sweetie Belle. “You're the magic scientist here!”
“Engineer,” snapped Saffron. “And this is how science works. It usually takes a lot of effort to figure out what the data means – we were very lucky to get such a clean answer from the repository events.”
Sweetie Belle sighed. “Okay. Okay. Never mind. What else?”
“A couple of things. This blur? I took me a while to locate it. It's coming from here. Skulltown. A regular source, sending out a signal every few minutes. It arrived when we did, with our train, and it's still emitting now.”
“Scootaloo's wings?”
“I thought so too … but she hasn't used them since we got here. Why would they still be casting spells? And quite strong spells too.”
“They're qilin magic, aren't they? Shouldn't you know how they work?”
“I'm not an expert on every single bit of technology the qilin have ever produced. Wing grafts might do that, but I can't see why.”
“Maybe there's something Tom's not telling us.”
“Maybe,” said Saffron. “Anyway, the second thing, is this.”
“It's close.”
“It is. A few miles northwest. It's sending intermittent signals, just strong enough to pick up.”
“And you don't know what it is?”
“No.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the map. “Anything else?”
“That's it.”
“What about the ansibles?”
The tangle of green lines returned. “There you go. What about them?”
“Could we try and find out who Blueberry's been talking to?”
After a brief pause, Saffron said, “Maybe. We could look at ansible transmissions from where we think she's been, but it wouldn't be very accurate.”
“Well?”
Most of the green lines vanished. “Would you look at that,” said Saffron. “Back when the pirates found you, they had a little exchange with someone close to Ilmarinen who might just have been Blueberry.”
“So they are … were in contact?”
“Maybe. There are other messages from Red Oak to Ilmarinen … but I can't tell if they came from Blueberry, or where they went after that.”
“Why not? Come on, there must be something you can do.”
Saffron sighed. “If I had better resolution, perhaps, but …”
“Then how do you get better resolution?”
“We can't. Not here.”
“Then where?”
“Sweetie Belle …”
“Where?”
“Down. Nearer the Red Zone.”
Sweetie Belle peered past the illusory map into the black void below. She took a deep breath, bit her lip, and said, “Okay.”
“I think we should head back.”
Sweetie Belle checked the clock. “We've got another five minutes.” She took hold of the loop to lower herself. “You'll be able to tell me when to stop, right?”
“What are you doing? Don't be stupid.”
“You will, though?” Sweetie Belle lowered herself a fraction of an inch.
“You are a fool, and you're putting yourself in danger for no good reason.”
Another fraction of an inch lower.
“Yes, I can tell you.”
“Good,” said Sweetie Belle. “And keep an eye on that resolution.” She couldn't help smiling as she slowly, very slowly, went down.
Nothing from Saffron.
Sweetie Belle lowered herself another inch, then another. “Anything yet?”
“I'm getting some clearer time information.”
“Can you tell who Blueberry's talking to?”
“Even if we did see where the messages were going, how would it help?” A pause, then: “I can't even tell if it is Blueberry.”
Sweetie Belle lowered herself further. A couple of inches this time. Saffron said something she couldn't make out. “What was that?”
“I didn't say anything.”
The blackness in front of her seemed to quiver. “Oh.” She looked up to the loop and put her hooves against it. She could go back now, she knew, and they'd have plenty of information. But if she did, if she turned back now and missed some vital clue …
She lowered herself another inch.
This time the hallucinations were clear: Waves of prickles dancing across her skin; a twisted groaning in her ears. For a moment it seemed like everything had flipped upside-down and she was at the top of the rope, being clawed at by some irresistible force. “Saffron?” she asked, trying to keep the panic from her voice.
“I think I can … yes. It's from Blueberry, and I see where it's going. Now go up, get out of here!”
Sweetie Belle grabbed the loop and hauled herself up, past her original height.
The hallucinations followed her. “I ...” she said.
“What is it?”
“I can't …” The world swam around her, resolving into shapes like hundreds of needles and coral bloating into pulsing speleothems and masses of crawling barbed wire and –
Nothing.
“It's not a question of how long,” said the engineer, a confident, youngish stallion from the station. “Setting aside the fire damage, the pistons have burst. I don't know how in Equestria you worked enough pressure to do that, but –”
“If you'd be so sweet as to indulge me, what's the short version?” Blueberry had a lilac silk handkerchief pressed to her muzzle. It was doing a poor job of blocking out the residual reek of smoke and fumes from the air.
As he began to respond, she turned away from the ruined engines, with their remains of pistons like blooming flowers of torn metal, and led him out of the engine room. The clank of her hooves against the metal walkway drowned out the background creaking and whining.
The engineer cantered for a moment to catch up before he replied. “The short version is that this engine doesn't need to be repaired; it needs to be replaced. Now, I know some ponies in Ilmarinen who do this sort of thing. You'll need a tug to get back there, and it'll cost … ”
“How long would that take?”
“Not more than a week or two.”
One week. “Okay. I have some things to attend to first. If I need your friends, I'll come down to the station and ask you, okay?” Once they were out of the engine room and back intot he corridor, she took the handkerchief from her face and offered him a big smile she didn't feel at all. “Thank you for all your help. I truly appreciate it. I honestly do.”
“Uh, there is one other thing. You're taking up a loading berth. We'll need to pull your ship out of it to make space …”
Her smiled thinned. “Of course. I understand. I think you can let yourself out?”
She remained in the corridor as he trotted away, then slumped against the wall and shuddered. Barely had the engineer gone when another set of hoofsteps sounded, coming up towards her. She stood straight.
It was Flay. For the first time in years, Blueberry felt how much taller than her he was. And the way he held his head, so he could use that height to look down his muzzle at her, now seemed less a pompous affectation and more part of the natural order.
“You failed,” he said. Deadpan. A statement of fact. But she knew there was, hiding under that tone, a current of schadenfreude.
She gave him an insouciant grin. “We all make mistakes.”
“After what this mare did to our griffon contact, you should have known she has access to qilin magic. This is not merely a mistake. We have lost her because of your arrogance and your negligence.”
This would be the stage for a comeback, a tease, or some other way of irritating him.
Nothing came.
The smallest hint of a smile crossed Flay's lips. Or perhaps it was one of his more cheerful sneers. “You invited me to tell our liege about your shortcomings. I believe now is the time.” He stepped around her, and began to walk away.
“Brother Flay,” said Blueberry, without turning to look at him. “We both know you're smarter than that. The order Sombra gave us says I have a week to find her. If you go to him to report my failure before then, that would look just a little like contempt for his order and the trust he has placed in me, wouldn't it?”
Silence. Then the sound of Flay walking away.
But still, he would wait.
And when the week was up, the airship would still be broken. Sombra would decide she had been influenced by the daemons and, at the very least, strip her of her leadership. Then she'd have missed her only shot.
Blueberry sighed, then headed back to her quarters.
We all make mistakes.
Everything is fallible.
Nothing is perfect.
She settled her chaise longue and, reaching across the room with her aura, put a record on – Sweetie Belle's record.
In the middle of the third song, she pulled the record from the player, incinerated it. That little bitch.
Blueberry rolled over and buried her face in the soft velvet.
Everything is fallible.
She remembered coming to that conclusion when she was a teenager, barely older than a filly.
Since she was five, the age when her parents finally fell afoul of the regime, Blueberry had been brought up in the Order of Sombra, memorised catechism after catechism about the natural order of the world, her liege's power, and his right to rule. Everything was certain. Everything had its place. Hers was consistently at the top of her class in every subject.
With the position came privileges: Permission to see parts of the library that were off-limits to her peers. There she learned some of the spells her liege had discovered, the riches of some long-dead world. Fragments of what life had been like before he took his rightful place at the head of the crystal empire.
She found these scraps were not enough – there had to be more. Without thinking of the consequences, she disabled a locking spell on a door deep in the library.
There, among the immense smoky quartz shelves, hoofsteps tapping against the tiles, she learned – she learned so many things she could barely contain her joy.
And, after a week being sick with worry, she learned she was clever enough to get away with breaking supposedly unbreakable rules. She spent more time in the library. She spent hours poring over books. Spellbooks. Philosophical treatises. Even fiction: Stories where mares were more charming and vivacious than any pony she had ever known. She read out lines over and over, imagining herself to be one of them.
Perhaps a year later, somepony discovered that one of the lock spells had been tampered with. An investigation turned up several more. It was her own fault – she had gotten sloppy about covering her tracks.
She was questioned, of course. During which she let slip about how she had seen one of the library's other regulars, a young, bookish stallion with an interest in magic and an unhealthy tendency to ask awkward questions in public, loitering near the forbidden doors. After he was executed, she went back to being careful about how she rebuilt the spells.
It was only then that she settled upon the notion that, powerful though he was, Sombra was fallible. And, more importantly, that if she was smart she could run rings around his regime.
Not long after, as if she needed any more proof, came the final downfall of his empire.
The pressure of velvet against her cheek. Recalled pride. A knocking at the door.
Blueberry lifted her head, blinked once, twice, then rolled off her chaise longue. “Hold on,” she called, fixing up her mane in the mirror. When it reached the level of sexily untidy, she unlocked the door and asked the pony to enter.
It was the perpetually-flustered assistant who ferried her messages. “Miss Pancake, ma'am,” he said, brandishing an envelope. It was addressed, simply enough, to S. “We just got this from the ansible.”
“The griffons?”
He shook his head. “Our public ansible, ma'am. The one going through Ilmarinen.”
She took the envelope from him. Yes – it came with her ansible number printed in the corner. “Well.” She raised her eyes to meet his and gave him a tiny smile from the corner of her mouth. “Let's see what's in here, then.”
The typewritten letter inside was from the captain of the griffons they had hired. He and a smattering of his crew had escaped the creature that attacked them and managed, barely, to make it to Pinion Beach. From there he had summoned an old friend of his with a ship. And – as a courtesy, he emphasised – he had sent his message. He was going after the unicorn for revenge, regardless. But if the offer for her head was still open, he would happily accept it.
At the bottom of the letter, there was a new note of the ansible number where he could be reached.
Blueberry offered the letter for the messenger to read and tapped it. “Do you see? This is why we don't threaten people for failure. Now, have you told anypony else about this?”
He shook his head. “No, ma'am.”
“Wonderful.” She leaned in, put a hoof against his chest, and left a small kiss on the top of his muzzle. “I appreciate it. I really do. You may have just saved my rump.” While folding the letter and putting it back in the envelop, she continued: “I'll need you to keep an eye on things here for a while. Can you do that for me? Brilliant. I'm going to take the next train to Skulltown to meet up with out griffon friends. Flay can not hear about the letter – do you understand? He'll just think I'm being desperate and quixotic, so let him.
“What I want you to do is send a letter back to this number to let the griffons know where to meet me.” She smiled at the bewildered-looking stallion and winked. “Don't you worry. I'll be back soon.”
Awareness came back with a jolt, all at once, overwhelming: Something digging into her back – the springs of a hard bed, thin light from a gas lamp rippling on the ceiling, a musty smell. It made her gasp.
Scootaloo appeared by her side and swooped down to kiss her hard on the muzzle. Before she could enjoy it, Scootaloo had pulled back. Then she softly cuffed Sweetie Belle on the side of head.
“What the hay is wrong with you?”
Sweetie Belle put her hoof up to the are where Scootaloo had hit her. “I …” she began, before something ocurred to her. “This is the third time I've been unconscious in the last week.” She looked around. The room was tiny. Between them, the bed, the desk with the lamp, and Scootaloo took up nearly all the available space. Through a small window with rippled glass, a distorted image of the Scar shimmered.
“Unconscious?” said Scootaloo. “You were fucking catatonic! When I got you out, you just stood there, staring into space. Oh, Luna. You were … You … Why did you do that? What happened down there?”
“I just got too close to the Red Zone,” said Sweetie Belle, rubbing her head. “But it's okay. I learned a lot about Blueberry.” She shifted so she could sit on the edge of the bed.
Scootaloo stared at her. “No, it's not okay,” she said quietly. “We missed the airship.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. We got you to a doctor's office, but he couldn't do anything. And by then it was too late. So I spent the last of Millie's money to get us a room for tonight. I figured if you were going to be … like that, you may as well be comfortable.” Scootaloo put a hoof to her forehead and let out a long, trembling breath. “I didn't know how long you were going to be like that. Or if you'd ever get out of it.”
Sweetie Belle felt a knot in her throat, tears welling up inside her. She stifled them. “I'm sorry. I just wanted to be useful.”
“What? You brought Millie to rescue us, and you saved us all with that cool magic in Red Oak. You are being useful!”
“I know, but … I …”
“Or isn't that enough? Does everything have to be about you?”
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
“Fuck it,” said Scootaloo. “Look, here's the plan: The next train arrives tomorrow morning. We're gonna check the station, see if we can find out if they know about any passengers onboard. If we have to, we'll stow-away on the airship. It's going in the wrong direction, again, but we don't have many options at this point. Are we clear?”
“Yeah.”
“And if you learned anything useful from your little vision quest, tell me then. Right now I'm not in the mood.” Scootaloo turned to the door. “I've got to go tell Tom you're awake.” She turned and trotted out the door.
“Bye,” called Sweetie Belle after her.
No reply.
After a moment, she spoke into the air. “Saffron? Are you there?”
“I am,” said Saffron now sitting at the foot of the bed, making a show of inspecting her hooftips. “I just thought I'd keep my nose out until you'd finished.”
“Thank you. I –”
“And Scootaloo is entirely right. You have been very stupid, and besides putting yourself in danger, you've fucked up the best chance you had of escaping. And, just so you know, the only reason you're awake and able to understand that everyone is pissed at you is because I spent the last two hours fixing several important parts of your conscious mind. So, I believe I am owed a massive, grovelling apology.”
“I know, alright? I'm sorry. I really am.”
“I suppose that'll have to do.”
“But … we did learn a lot, didn't we? It's not like the trip was a total bust.”
“Going on a vision quest was a good idea,” said Saffron. “Well, I would say that, because it was my idea. Dropping yourself into the Red Zone, though, was stupid and taught us nothing except how stupid you can be.” She shook her head. “But we did learn some important stuff, yes. Remember that mystery signal a few miles northwest? I didn't realise until Scootaloo mentioned it, but that's where our ride is heading tomorrow morning.”
“Sweetie Belle: Investigator of qilin magic. I like that.”
“Yeah, just don't forget you're being chased by someone who wants to crack open you skull to finish her own investigation.”
Sweetie Belle left her room a little while later. The building was a tiny inn off the side of the main street, where Tom and Scootaloo were sitting and talking quietly. Orangeish light blanketed everything. The shadows on her friends's bodies, pointing in contradictory angles, made them look like something monstrous, something out of a dream. Tom greeted her; he was friendly enough, but she could feel he was angry with her, even if he wasn't showing it. Scootaloo, though, was open about it. When Sweetie Belle said she wanted to go for a walk to clear her head, she forbade it.
In the end, feeling an outsider to her friends' conversation, Sweetie Bell just went to the other side of the street and sat staring up at the Scar.
The source of all magic. When she first came to Amaranth, she had thought of it as nothing but more damage to the world. Now, tracing all those ragged edges, as they split and curlicued and split again until the detail was too fine for the eye to make out, she found it oddly beautiful. Saffron's presence in her skull became palpable; she was admiring it too.
After maybe half an hour, Scootaloo and Tom got up. Scootaloo summoned her with a hoof, and they all went in together. They had to crowd into the tiny room, but by some unspoken agreement which Sweetie Belle had no part in, Tom took the floor, leaving the bed for her and Scootaloo. They cuddled up together for lack of space, and as she went to sleep, Sweetie Belle thought things were, perhaps, not so bad.
It was a hectic morning: Scootaloo, pushing her and Tom, and shouting, “Come on, wake up! We've got stuff to do!” Tom looked as groggy as Sweetie Belle felt, but Scootaloo harried them up and out of the building within minutes. They trailed Scootaloo as she handed the keys in in then trotted off towards the station.
There she had a conversation bordering on an argument with the attendant. Yes, he had received a telegraph telling him what was on the train. No, he wouldn't let her read it. No, definitely not.
At last, through a combination of wheedling and outright lies about them meeting a friend, Scootaloo managed to get him to tell that there was indeed another pony coming. Another three ponies, in fact, all of whom had, unlike Scootaloo's lot, paid to travel.
Scootaloo thanked him, which he didn't acknowledge, then led her friends away. “Right,” she said. “Time to stow away. I'm guessing neither of you know anything about how to do that?”
They didn't.
“Then follow my instructions very closely. I've done this a few times. Well, a couple of times. Well, once successfully. But I have done it.”
Sweetie Belle glared at her.
“I'm kidding! I've done it plenty, believe me.”
She led them to the dock and had them watch the ship they were aiming for. Every so often workers would pass along the gangplank, some pulling creaking, dirty-yellow pallets laden with boxes behind them, some not. “That's our way in. We could almost get away with just walking straight onto the ship. The problem is …” She put a hoof on Tom's shoulder. “They're all ponies.”
“Oh, good,” said Tom.
“C'mon.” Scootaloo jumped up. “This way.” She slipped across the dock and trailed one of the workers who was pulling an empty pallet.
He led them back towards the station, but turned away at the last moment into an adjacent loading area, lined by a wire-frame fence but with an open and unguarded gate. There, dozens of pallets, like the ones they'd seen at the ship, were scattered about, alongside larger skips full of material, dented and grimy barrels, and assorted to goods waiting for the train.
“Wait here,” said Scootaloo. She entered the loading area, casually trotted up to one of the unsupervised pallets, and dragged it back out behind her. She paused to inspect a couple of boxes, then loaded them onboard and carried it out with her.
As she brought the pallet over to them, she flicked open the top of the back box with a wing. “Okay, you two, jump in.”
“Me too?” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo stood on her hind legs and looked in the top of the box. “Yeah. You can both fit. Front box is mine.”
“But –”
“It'll be easier this way. In. Now.”
Sweetie Belle gave up trying to argue. Tom gave her a boost so she could get in, then climbed in after her. They did both fit – just about.
The top closed above them, blocking out all but a thin blade of light. Then the pallet rumbled away.
Later, a stop. A brief moment where she heard Scootaloo talking to someone but couldn't make out the words. Then they were moving again, with the pallet's rattling wheels jostling her and Tom together. Their body heat and breath made the air warm and clammy. This is you, rescuing Scootaloo, she thought to herself.
In time, there were more noises, then at last motion. A short while after, Scootaloo flipped open the box and peered over the edge.
This is the last chance we'll get to rest for a while, so make the most of it.
Chapter 13 Hidden Things
At last, the thrum of Dignity's engines through her hooves. A momentary quivering as the skirt fully inflated, then everything was stable. Millie patted the control panel. “I've missed you, old girl.” She glanced out the new cockpit window. “Yeah, it's only been a day, and you've actually been here all the time. I'm needy, alright?”
She took the control column in her hoof and nosed the craft onto the gallium lake. From there, she headed a little way along, then back across Pinion Beach and onto the desert proper, heading towards Ilmarinen.
It had been a hectic couple of days, that was for sure. And she was still carrying the burden of a captured pirate. But she had to admit running across Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had been invigorating. Fun, even. A welcome distraction from her usual thoughts.
But – Gregor.
A pirate, a bigot, and petulant. He alternated between sulking and a sort of cautious friendliness, which, she suspected, he couldn't help. Millie kept on sifting through her options. Take him back to Ilmarinen. Hand him in to get executed. Let him free, give him a chance to kill and steal. Keep him here with her and be his guard. Take him all the way back to Omphalos, and hand him in to Aquileona.
The last choice, for all the effort it would take and all the weeks it would take from her, was starting to look like an attractive one.
Soon, though, she stopped worrying about it. The desert landscape, the flow of the air cushion below, the handling of the control column became everything. Even the engines were relaxing once you got used to them.
The things Millie loved, truly loved, numbered two: Working on her hovercraft and driving her hovercraft. Those were the things she could lose herself in, almost numinous periods where she could sometimes even let herself think the world was okay. Better in the long term than sex, and more effective than therapy.
Even so, there were limits. After a few hours in the cockpit, some time after midday, her legs were aching and she had to rest. She settled Dignity on a flattish area of dark grey volcanic sand and turned off the engines. They were already a third of the way to Ilmarinen. And by now, Sweetie Belle should have passed through the city and be on her way back to Omphalos and Equestria.
Perhaps, she thought as she walked into the main cabin, Gregor would be in a talkative mood. And with that notion, all the worries came flooding back. Millie closed her eyes and took a deep breath to, if not clear them, then at least tidy them up. Then she went through into the rear cabin where Gregor was sitting, watching the door and waiting for her to come in.
“Ship broken again?”
“Nah. Just wanted a break.”
“Ah,” said Gregor. His beak moved silently. “Shit.” He looked down at the floor, then back up at her. “You got any more beer?”
“Afraid not. I can fix you up a cuppa, if you want.”
Gregor relented, so Millie went a got them each some tea and, after a rummaging about in the cupboard, some oats with water.
“It'd be easier to just let me starve,” said Gregor when they were settled. “You know that right?”
“Aye. 'Cause takin' you to Ilmarinen to get executed is killin' you just the same, so it's a tad disingenuous for me to do owt to keep you alive, right? T'thought had occurred. Well, do as you please. If you don't want it, don't eat it.”
Gregor sipped his tea, grimaced, sipped again.
“I'm thinkin' you're pretty well-known? I mean, I've got bugger all for proper evidence here, but t'folks at Ilmarinen are still gonna know you're a pirate. At least it seems you think so.”
“Well-known. Yeah, you could say that.”
“Why did you come to Amaranth, Gregor? Pirates ain't usually so … self-righteous.”
“Privateers. Not pirates, we're privateers.”
That got Millie's attention. She stared at him. “Aquileona has a privateer fleet in Amaranth?”
“Of course.”
“But our treaty – or all that legal wranglin' what passes for a treaty – keeps the state out.”
Gregor gave a contemptuous snort. “And you think we'd just sit by while the Equestrians got one over on us?”
Millie had encountered that sentiment before, back home. She didn't trouble herself trying to argue. “Is Flavian's lot behind this?”
“Of course.”
Millie sat back and considered this.
Between Amaranth and Equestria, there was a small region of land that had been contested by both. It was notable by being entirely useless, lacking any economic or strategic value. The eventual agreement between the two superpowers was that it belonged to neither, and could be claimed by neither.
Then the Funnel appeared, leading to Amaranth. Right in the middle of the dead ground.
The obvious result, put forth by the Equestrian princesses, was to explore and investigate the region together.
Enter Minister Flavian, a youngish rising star in the Aquileonan Parliament, a lifelong politician, a skilled orator and genius rhetorician. No, he argued. The geometry of the Funnel meant that in some sense off of Amaranth was contained within the unowned region, and thus should itself, and in its entirety, count as unowned. Don't let us be lulled by the soft and manipulative overtures of the ponies. Don't forget that for all the emphasis on harmony, they have no notion of individual rights or democracy.
No, Flavian said, this is an eminently sensible decision. Or the agreement does not prevent private citizens from going to Amaranth – only the appendages of the state. Holding the line, holding back both governments will allow the intrepid individuals who cross the border to succeed, or fail, entirely on their own merits.
Flavian's arguments had won support from the chancellor, a large majority of parliament, and a smaller majority of the populace. Aquileona held to the old agreement with ferocity, and thus renounced its chance to go into Amaranth.
Except it hadn't: It was sending in privateers. Pilfer the salvage from those intrepid individuals who don't share our interests, and take them back to the fatherland. In hindsight, Millie realised it was obvious. Flavian was a genius, but very few trusted him as far as they could throw him. Why wouldn't he go back on his principles, especially when he could justify it as helping Aquileona?
Millie wondered what the future held for Amaranth, and for these endless open deserts she could spend the rest of her life gallivanting around in. And that made her realise that if Sweetie Belle was right about this stuff going on behind the scenes, perhaps Flavian's antics wouldn't matter at all.
Gregor was watching her, she realised.
Well, the end would come when it came, and that would be that. She put it out of her as best she could and brought her attention back to Gregor.
“There's still summat missin',” she said. “You're a patriot, I can see that, but why come to a place you hate? In't there anywhere else you could serve Aquileona?”
“Sure,” said Gregor. “But I've had enough of the interrogation. Especially if you're not going to share anything about yourself.”
“Like what?”
“Lone donkey, running off to the desert. Everyone here had a story,” said Gregor.
“And what makes you think mine is any more interestin' than any of the others?”
“You're here, they're not, and it only seems fair that you share a little.”
“Maybe later,” said Millie. “It's time to hit the road again.”
“Of course,” said Gregor, something of a smirk in the way he looked at her.
Millie stood and stretched. “Push your bowl over here if you don't want it.”
“I think I'll keep hold of it.” He slid over his empty cup. “There you go.”
Millie shrugged, and gathered up the cutlery. At the door to the cabin, she set down the cutlery and, without turning back to him, said, “I'm taking you back to Aquileona. See how things work out for you there.”
She left before he had a chance to reply.
Voices like bubbling tar or shrapnel scraping against shrapnel. Listen to them long enough, and they faded: A background sensation, like the touch of your hooves against the ground or the weight of your tongue in your mouth. It was easy not to notice –
Sweetie Belle opened her eyes and looked around the little cabin. Scootaloo and Tom, rendered as shadowy outlines in the needles of sunlight that came through holes in bulkhead. The vaguely sketched corners of boxes, including the one they'd been smuggled aboard in. She closed her eyes again.
It was easy not to notice when the voices changed. How much they had changed.
But sitting here, thinking about it, listening, it was obvious. A bundle of nonsense syllables suddenly linked up, became meaningful. Became a word, like glory or destiny or pinnacle – except, somehow, in a different language which she shouldn't know.
Most of what the daemons said still meant nothing to her – but these islands of meaning came constantly. Maybe once every twenty or thirty seconds. The hand on a dial slipping closer to the red zone of permanent insanity.
Later, the hum of the engines changed tenor, and Sweetie Belle felt the airship begin to slow. Without speaking, Scootaloo gestured for her and Tom to get into the box.
Waiting in the cramped darkness while docking rattled them about and clanked at the walls. The clanks of Scootaloo hiding in her own box; a period of silence; then the door to the the chamber opening and muffled voices. These too went away, then came the sound of Scootaloo's box opening, and soon after they were in motion. Sweetie Belle leant back against the metal wall as best she could and listened to the daemons again as they spoke over the trundling pallet wheels.
When the top of the box opened, the first thing Sweetie Belle saw was a skeletal tower blurred against the dazzling blue sky. She blinked a few times to clear her vision. as Tom and Scootaloo helped her out. Her hooves banged against a textured steel walkway, and something sour and metallic in the air clawed at her nostrils.
Scootaloo had chosen a quiet alcove to let them out. There was no one else Sweetie Belle could see. Around her, everything was industrial: A web of girders and pipes and cables and walkways all around, centred around the tower and dense enough to obscure a view of the desert below. Some way off, she could see cranes, and beyond them the bulbous blue cap of an airship envelope. Turning around, more industry, and more towers – another four like the one she was standing beside.
“Are we supposed to be here?” Tom asked.
Scootaloo shrugged. “What are they gonna do if they find us? Ship us back to Ilmarinen? That's exactly what we want.”
Tom murmured something in the back of his throat, but didn't reply.
“Same plan as before,” said Scootaloo. “Stick by me, and we'll look for the fastest way outta here.”
As Scootaloo took them on the search for another airship, Sweetie Belle got a better idea of where they had arrived.
The landscape far below below was no longer desert. It looked like a mire, but devoid of life and in all the wrong colours. The surface was a shade of bright, almost luminescent blue, sometimes turning to aqua, and streaked through in places with reddish-browns and metallic greys. There was no way you could mistake it for water, though: From the way it quivered and rippled in the wind, or when bubbles lazily rose to the surface and popped, it looked much thicker, like quicksand. Tangles of rusted wire and other detritus floated about like some alien vegetation.
The chemical mines themselves were five hexagonal platforms, sitting standing in the mire on six fat cylindrical legs, rust-red but stained blue close to the surface. Each was maybe a hundred metres across, set half that above the mire, and packed with machinery, centred around a tower. Broad walkway bridges were slung across the gulfs between each platform, stayed by cables like the middle of a suspension bridge.
Every platform had spaces for two airships, one either side. A maximum of ten, though only six were docked at the moment.
Going down the walkways from platform to platform, from airship to airship, they saw few personnel, mostly ponies and minotaurs, most of whom ignored them. There were ten times as many chevaloids, being operated in teams, carrying equipment or just standing to attention.
“Are the chevaloids yours?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Trust your lot to pick such a self-centred term for them,” said Saffron. “Yes, they are. They're pretty versatile if you know how to operate them.”
“Can you teach me?”
“Yes, but I'm not going to.”
“What about this place? What was it in your time?
“It's hard to tell. It looks like we're sitting on top of copper sulphate. There might have been chemical plants here. Or maybe it was just a waste storage site.”
They had checked out two airships with no luck, and had just stepped off a bridge in search of a third.
From behind her: “Sweetie Belle?”
She recognised that voice. Behind her stood a tall, slender griffon with brown plumage and red painted talons. Lucille!
Half a dozen things went through Sweetie Belle's mind, and she scrabbled to catch them. Relief to see a friend. But Lucille wasn't a friend. And hadn't she betrayed Sweetie Belle? Or had she? Or –
“What in the world are you caught up in?” asked Lucille.
“You know her?” interjected Scootaloo.
Lucille glanced at her. “From Ilmarinen. I like those wings, by the way. Impressive salvage.” She turned back Sweetie Belle. “You know a pony turned up to buy that statue of yours? A real shady type. Then, next thing I know, I'm getting an ansible message from Grit saying he's being chased by pirates and you'd left the ship.” She leant back and looked like she was trying to regain her composure. She succeeded. “I was afraid,” she finished in a more measured tone, “you'd gone and got yourself killed without making me any money.”
Scootaloo stepped forward, putting herself between them. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Oh, I am sorry. Where are my manners? The name's Lucille. I met Sweetie Belle when her captain was trying to sell something. And you are?” She offered a talon.
After a moment's hesitation, Scootaloo shook it and introduced herself. Tom did the same.
Sweetie Belle tried to calm her thoughts. Okay, she thought, if Lucille had sold her out, would she be acting so friendly? Would she have told her about selling the statue?
Scootaloo was about to say something else, but Sweetie Belle made a motion to hush her. Somehow, it worked.
“Who tried to buy the statue?” she asked. “Why did you say he was shady?”
“She,” said Lucille. “Went by the name of Blueberry Pancake.”
Scootaloo caught Sweetie Belle's eye.
“Everything about her screamed weird,” Lucille went on. “First, I was expecting a griffon, considering, y'know, how the call for these statues was spread among griffon networks. Then she wanted to buy the statue, even though it was dark. And … she wanted to find Hinny's Revenge.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Of course not. I'd never sell out Gritstone. Not for less than half a million bits, anyway. I promised her I'd ask after him, and I did … but by that point she'd run off somewhere.”
So, she was being open about Blueberry.
“Look, uh, Lucille,” said Scootaloo. “We need to go talk for a bit. Are you gonna be here long?”
“You go, do whatever you need to. I'll be here for a few hours yet. I'm on my way back to the ship, so just drop by when you're ready. I'll tell the guard to look out for you. It's the Dulcet, just over there.” And, to Sweetie Belle: “We need a proper catch up. Let's have some coffee.”
“We'll be half an hour,” said Scootaloo. “An hour, tops.”
“See you then,” said Lucille.
Scootaloo led them a little way down towards another side of the platform, where they could be alone. Below, the bright blue mire shimmered in the twin lights of sun and Scar.
“She's our way out,” said Sweetie Belle as soon as they stopped. “She can take us to Ilmarinen.”
“You sure?
“She knows me.”
“Is that enough? She was happy to tell Blueberry about all that statue stuff.”
“She didn't know it would affect us, did she? The griffon pirates were already chasing me. Lucille didn't tell them anything.”
“Okay,” said Scootaloo. “Let's assume she's trustworthy. Why would she take us to Ilmarinen? Just because she's your friend?”
“She thinks I'm a good salvor. She wants to hire me.”
Tom cleared his throat. “You can't really escape if you're in her employ, can you?”
Sweetie Belle stared at him. Truth be told, she hadn't thought of that. And then she realised –
“There's something I can trade. When I was in the skull, Saffron said there was some piece of qilin technology here.”
“Like what?” said Scootaloo
“I don't know. We couldn't see exactly, just that it was magical.” Sweetie Belle turned to Scootaloo, feeling eager to brandish this revelation. “See? Going down there was useful! It might just save us.”
Scootaloo gave her a hard look. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Maybe it was, but that doesn't make it smart. So you can trade Lucille this qilin thing, and she'll take us to Ilmarinen? Well …” She closed her eyes and put a hoof against her forehead. “It's worth a try, I guess. But only after we've checked out the rest of these airships, okay?”
“Sure,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Uh.” Tom raised his paw. “There's something else. What do we tell her? Lucille, well, she seems a bit mercenary. She might not have sold you out yet, but if she hears how much Blueberry wants to get hold of you …”
That, too, was something that hadn't occurred to Sweetie Belle.
While she was thinking about it, Scootaloo spoke: “We lie to her. Or tell her it's a secret. I'll work something out, don't worry.”
Blueberry Pancake had found her first meeting with Captain Gaius more difficult than expected. She was getting used to dealing with the expectation that she was a pony rather than a griffon, but this was a special case.
Gaius, when he met her at Skulltown docks, had first reacted with disbelief. Then the sense that she had somehow betrayed him. After she had assured him that, while a pony, she was not a citizen of Equestria, and that the mysterious S. had chosen to deal with griffons rather than ponies because they were more effective, and that the money was still on the table, the captain grudgingly relented.
“Strange that a place like this,” he had commented, looking around the bleached bone the town sat on, “should be chosen by ponies – and only ponies – as a place to live. In my experience, they are terrified by the inevitably of death, and yet here they are upon a reminder of it.”
Whether this had been an attempt to needle her or just xenophobia, Blueberry wasn't sure. Even so, for all his racism and overwrought gruffness, she found she liked Gaius more than Sombra, and idly considered making him a hierophant as a reward when all this was over.
The ships he bought – one large silvery cigar and two smaller, more manoeuvrable scouts – had no gangplanks. A sort of refusal to bow to the needs of the wingless. So she and Cannons had suffered the indignity of being carried aboard; Sorghum followed on his own wingpower. Now she sat in the dingy captain's office of the lead ship, flanked by her bodyguards, waiting for Gaius to finish whatever he was doing.
A small porthole gave her a view of the side of the skull's cheek, a mottled off-white cliff. The cushion she sat on was threadbare, and the floor was uncarpeted and scuffed. In the air sat some sort of vaguely greasy texture, and Blueberry could almost feel her mane getting dirtier by the second. Did this place even have decent showers?
She was inspecting the polish of her hooves when the door opened and Gaius stepped through with two of his own underlings. He pushed it closed with a wing, in a manner far more gentle than you might expect from his appearance.
Dead-eyed gaze fixed on her. “We're ready to leave,” he said in a voice like grinding stone.
She smiled up at him. “Wonderful! Thank you so much for this.”
“You sure she's at the chemical mines?”
“Yes. They stayed here last night, so there's only one ship they could've left on. We're only a few hours behind them.”
“I hope so,” muttered Gaius. He stared out the window. “This little bitch cost me a great deal. My ship, dozens of my crew. I want to make sure her, and her mongrel friend, get what they deserve.”
“When we catch them, the diamond dog it yours,” Blueberry lied. “And the mare too, when we're done with her. How's that for fair?”
Gaius glanced at her briefly before going back to the window. Utterly humourless.
“Why are you here?” he said at last. “You and your bodyguards aren't the whole operation, so I wonder what made you come out here by yourselves. One might think it reeks of desperation.”
Blueberry gave him a broad smile. “You're very astute,” she said, and after a a mock conspiratorial look from side to side, she motioned him closed. “You want to hear a secret?”
For a moment she though Gaius wasn't going to move. Then he sighed and leaned in.
“I want a front-row seat,” she said. “This is my project, you see, and as much S. prefers us to hide in the shadows, I want to get this mare myself.”
Did he buy it? She couldn't tell. It didn't matter so long as he stayed with her long enough to get to Sweetie Belle.
“She's a tricky one,” continued Blueberry. “She may hit back, and she may give us a bloody nose. You know that, don't you? Of course you do. You're bright enough. We'll need a plan.”
“We go in a scout,” said Gaius, “and leave the two other ships flanking the facility to cut off any ship trying to leave. I have fifteen gunships to help with that. Then we send in as many teams as we need to find her. If need be, we can threaten the facility itself to make them hand her over.”
“Very smart,” said Blueberry. “One more thing – do you have any chevaloids?”
“Yes.” Gaius clicked his beak. “Why?”
She leaned in and grinned at him. “She's tricky, but so am I. Chevaloids can be much more useful than you think. Give me a few, and I'll make them fight for us.”
At that, the captain seemed to almost smile. “Any other tricks you got?”
Well, there were the five lengths of inhibitor thread hidden in Blueberry's luggage. And the golem spell she'd been perfecting since her last encounter with Sombra.
“The chevaloids should be plenty,” she said.
Sweetie Belle settled on a plump, comfortable cushion alongside Scootaloo and Tom. Across from them, on the opposite side of a polished metal desk, sat Lucille. Everyone had a little steel cup “Your choice,” Lucille had explained, “is bad coffee with liqueur, or bad coffee without.” The sweet tang of liqueur, Sweetie Belle found, nearly masked the rancid aftertaste.
“So what happened with Hinny's Revenge?” she asked.
“He got back to Ilmarinen with no salvage and a bunch of researchers he'd saved. And not too happy about it, either. All your fault, apparently.” Lucille laughed to herself. “When Grit thinks you're reckless, you know something's up.”
“Oh, right,” said Sweetie Belle. She found she didn't care as much about Gritstone's opinion as she thought she might.
“I think it was mostly bluster, though. He could never say he was worried about your safety, so having a go about you was the next best thing. Now he's planning a new mission.”
“What happened to the researchers?” said Tom.
“They're also still on Ilmarinen, I think,” said Lucille. “They've mailed whoever funded the expedition, but there's no ansible link, so it'll take a while.” She turned back to Sweetie Belle. “And what about you? Your side of the story seems much more exciting than mine.”
Sweetie Belle told her about how they'd found the researchers, how she'd been searching for Scootaloo (this earned her a small snort from her subject), how she'd been captured by pirates who also wanted Scootaloo, how the intervention of the young aelewyrms and Millie had allowed her to escape, and how meeting the elder aelewyrm had saved them.
Then she said she thought there was a connection between the statue she'd found for Gritstone, something about the civilisation that had once lived in Amaranth – and that Skulltown formed the next piece in the puzzle.
“And what puzzle was that?” interrupted Lucille.
Sweetie Belle leaned in. “I can't say. Not yet, anyway. I don't want to give away any of my secrets. Salvor's pride, you know?”
Silence hung between them while Lucille's flintgrey eyes looked steadily into her eyes.
“Fair enough,” she said. “Go on.”
“The thing is,” said Sweetie Belle, “now I need to go back to Ilmarinen as quickly as possible. I can't go all the way back to Skulltown and then wait for a train. I need to leave soon.”
“And you want me to be your ferry service?” said Lucille.
Sweetie Belle gave her a slight smile. “Don't worry. I'm not asking for charity. I have something to give in return.”
“And what's that?”
“Information.” Sweetie Belle leaned forward dramatically. “I know that somewhere under this mine is an advanced piece of salvage. Possibly something no-one had ever seen before.”
Lucille's eyes widened a fraction. “Well,” she said, “that would certainly be worth passage back to Ilmarinen.” She gave a smile that was broad and just a little bit vicious. “If I hadn't already found the salvage.” She began to laugh.
Sweetie Belle sat back. “Oh,” she said, in a voice that felt like it came out an octave higher than she's intended. “I … in that case, I –”
“And I hope I'm not hurting your salvor's pride to guess that you need to get to Ilmarinen so fast because you're still being chased.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. She tried to say something, but no words came. Then came the sound of Scootaloo standing and the rippling sussuration of her wings opening. “If you think you –”
“Don't be an idiot,” she Lucille. “I'm not going to sell you out. If I was, I wouldn't tell you, would I?” She lifted her left foreleg and tapped a talon against the metal surface of the table. “Now sit down. This is my ship, and I'd like a little decorum.”
Sweetie Belle turned to her and gave her a look: Come on. Scootaloo snorted, but retracted her wings and settled down.
Lucille went on: “Still, that was a good try. I thought I was the only one who knew about the artefact under the mine.” This time her smile was much friendlier. “The only reason I haven't left yet is that I can't figure out how to disconnect it.”
Aha! “Maybe I could help,” Sweetie Belle said.
“And how would you do that?”
“I've picked up a few things, even if I am being chased. I might know what it is – then I could pay for passage, and you'd be able to get out of here. It couldn't hurt to let me have a look, right?”
Scootaloo nudged Sweetie Belle. “We don't have time to play around looking at artefacts.”
“What else are we gonna do? Just wait around for someone else to decide what happens to us?” Looking over at Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle realised there was an edge of worry alongside the pragmatism. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'll be careful.”
Talons clicking together. “Alright,” said Lucille in a tone that indicated this was a charitable act, “you can have a go at the artefact.”
After her victory at the young instrumentalist competition, Sweetie Belle, feeling again like she could bend the world to her will, headed down to Southern Aquileona to meet up with Scootaloo at her new job with Bounding Minotaur Adventure Tours.
In the final stretch of a six-hour airship journey from Aquileona, she rehearsed her reasonable excuse for being in Aquileona at all as the rich green carpet of treetops slid by below. They followed a broad pewter-coloured river that carved a deep valley in the rainforest for a kilometre or so, then pulled leftwards towards a small greybrick town in a cleared area.
The cabin doors opened with a shuddering rattle, and Sweetie Belle felt herself enveloped in sweet-smelling treacle-thick air. She looked around the landing pad trying to get her bearings while the rest of the passengers – a couple dozen griffons, three donkeys, and one other pony – walked ahead of her or took immediately to the sky.
“Hey, filly!”
She'd be so occupied, she hadn't noticed Scootaloo glide over from the ticket office. They hugged and smiled at one another.
“Come on,” said Scootaloo. “I'll show you the dorm. Our latest lot just left this morning, and we have a free day.”
As they walked down the street, Scootaloo talked about the town, the rainforest, the activities – ziplining, kayaking, caving – and the various customers, fully half of whom seemed to come from Manehatten. Sweetie Belle was happy to let her speak, only interjecting occasionally: “Okay”, “Sure”, “Really?” Scootaloo was looking healthier and happier than she had for years: Muscles more defined, feathers fluffier, mane still untidy, constantly animated, and even occasionally pronking to emphasise something particularly exciting.
Conversation moved on. Scootaloo asked how the young instrumentalist award went, and Sweetie Belle gave her a dramatic account of how she'd won, skimming over all the boring and unimportant bits.
“That's awesome,” said Scootaloo, grinning at her. “Well done! Ah, here it is.”
The dorm's pale grey brickwork glittered faintly in the sunlight. Inside, it was air-conditioned and smelt strongly of eucalyptus and faintly of stale sweat. Sweetie Belle took a moment in front of the hallway's mirror to rearrange her curls, then followed Scootaloo through a door into what looked like a kitchen.
Adrenaline Rush with sitting at the table with a glass of some lurid pink fruit juice.
He jumped up to greet them as soon as they came in: “Sweetie Belle! Hi there! How are you doing?” His hoofshake left her pastern aching; she rubbed it as she said hello back. “Damn, it's been a while, hasn't it? Scoots said you were coming, and I just had to drop by. Thank you so much for sending her this way.”
“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle. “No problem.”
“Really, she's been such a help. She's awesome at this!”
“Hush, you,” said Scootaloo, and pushed him on the shoulder. “Actually, no. Keep going.”
Rush gave her a lopsided smile that, to Sweetie Belle, seemed over-friendly. “I will! See, a couple of weeks ago we were taking a group of adventurers from Manehatten – actually one of them had this amazing Pronx accent, and she – but never mind that for now. Anyway, we were taking them to a new facility where …”
Sweetie Belle let herself tune out a little during Rush's anecdote; she did notice, though that at this point he put his hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder and let it rest there right through his anecdote and into the next one about accents.
Later, when the heat outside had receded to bearable levels, they took a little airship out to see one of the ziplines. Standing on a wooden platform, Sweetie Belle looked out over the treetops to a ravine in the distance and tried to distract herself from how much Rush and Scootaloo seemed to be talking to each other rather than her, and how much they touched each other. She started to get the feeling that she was incidental to the whole trip, that if she hadn't come, they'd have done al this anyway.
When they returned to the little town, Rush poured them all another glass of pink juice and told Sweetie Belle that he and Scootaloo needed to sort out some stuff in the dorms for the next group of adventurers, and was it okay if she entertained herself for a while?
“Sure,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Awesome. Thank you” said Rush. “Now, if you want my advice, there's a good bar just down that way.” He smiled. “Sorry about this. I know it's so rude to do this, but if we don't get things ready –”
“No, no. It's fine. It's just for an hour, right?”
“Ah, you're a champion! Yeah. As soon as we're done, we'll come and find you.”
At the bar – an open-fronted place with five or six chattering, smkoing griffon patrons – she tried to order a pear cider, learned it wasn't available, and settled for some more juice. This she started at without drinking while the patrons and barman all talked together about Aquileonan politicans she'd never heard of.
She'd introduced them! She was the one who'd found Rush, pointed Scootaloo in his direction, made all this possible in the first place. Scootaloo had been her friend a lot longer than either of them had known Rush. And yet here they were, sidelining her! She turned from her table and glared out the door. She started to drink, then stopped. Its sweetness seemed at that moment revolting.
Instead, she just stared at it and hoped she'd be able to go home soon.
In the weak and pale green light of the cage lift's single lamp, the shaft outside was reduced to fragments of material and great shadows which recoiled as they approached from below and bloomed again as they retreated. Closer, but still rendered in smudges of green and expanses of black, her companions: Scootaloo, Lucille, and one of the mine's workers. Tom had remained above because the lift could take no more than four – and because the top of the cage was too low for him.
Smells changing from acrid to sweet to sharp to cloying, but all chemical. Against a background of a low, continuous rumbling from some unseen machinery came an assortments of bangs, rumbles, grinding, clattering. The winch above them whined.
The daemons were speaking to her, still. For whatever reason, it was harder to evade the clumps of meaning they offered down here. To distract herself, she talked to Saffron:
“What do you think it is?”
“I don't know until I see it, do I? And even then, I might not be able to identify it.” Saffron sighed. “Are you doing this to get a ride, or to play investigator?”
“Can't I do both?”
The lift shuddered and came to halt with a great clank. Ahead of them now stretched a corridor roughly hewn from bedrock and lit only slightly better than the lift with rows of oil lamps. A unicorn waiting there unlatched the lift door from them and swung it open.
“I've made a deal with the miners,” Lucille explained as she led them down the corridor. “When we finally get this thing out, I sell it and we split the profit. Good incentive for them not to tell anyone else.”
The rock ended, and the corridor changed: A firm, smooth pathway under their hooves them, straight walls, flat ceiling, all of some silvery-blue metal, scuffed but mostly intact – the inside of some ancient ship. It returned the sound of their hoofsteps and breathing in a clear but muted echo. The corridor curved gently to the right and, maybe fifty metres along, they came to an arched door. Through there, against the far wall of a large room, sat the artefact. Or, rather, artefacts.
Four identical structures sat in a row. They looked either like upright mechanical insects or sparse metallic ribcages. Each had a cylindrical spine with three pairs of ribs extending forwards. From the ribs hung dozens of matte black ribbons covered in dry, wrinkled octopus suckers. Other things sprouted from behind the spine and draped among the ribbons – some were transparent, and reminded her of medical tubing. In the dull light the assembly cast baroque and spiky shadows like the silhouettes of impossible monsters.
There was more stuff on the floor – masses of cables or pipes, connected to a few flattened beads that looked like they were made of coloured glass or gemstone. More cables and structural members leading burrowing into the wall behind.
Supposing she was meant to be the expert, but not really wanting to, Sweetie Belle edged up towards the apparatus.
“We don't know how deep it goes,” explained Lucille. “And we can't cut any of those cables. Physically, I mean. Ten minutes with an acetylene torch did nothing.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “What is it?”
For a moment it seemed like Saffron wasn't going to respond. Then, in a low voice, she murmured, “An execution chamber. It's not from my time, but I saw one of these things in a museum, and we learned about the operational theory in our studies. It doesn't just kill, you see. It uses the victim's death to build up a thaumic potential, to power spells.”
What was there to say for that? For all the advanced technology, it sounded almost like cannibalism. Turning your citizens into resources.
“How do we disconnect it?” she asked at last.
“There should be a system to unlock it. If we're lucky. Feel inside one of those cables with your aura.”
It felt, in a twisted way, like running your hoof against polished smooth ice. The cable offered no resistance – in fact, it almost dragged her aura down its length until, somehow, she was reaching twenty or thirty feet inside the guts of the ship, and feeling every dent, every turn, every imperfection inside the cable.
The sensation was such a shock that she pulled back her aura and dampened her horn as quickly as she could. And only barely did she avoid crying out.
“Thaumic conductor,” said Saffron. “Somewhere inside you should be be able to feel a joint in the cable where you can unlock it.
“You mean I have to go in again?”
“Yes. Don't worry, I'll show you what to do when you reach it.”
Closing her eyes and sighing silently, Sweetie Belle pushed her aura into the cable again. It was slippery, but easier to manage this time. She followed it deeper, feeling her way along the inside, until she came up against some sort of structure a good way it. It was hard to tell what it looked like by magical touch, but she could feel something vaguely cylindrical, various edges …
“This is it,” said Saffron. “Seems like a standard design. Here.”
Sweetie Belle was getting worrying used to having information dumped wholesale into her mind like that. She twisted to cable in the way Saffron had told her, and felt the whole length come loose.
That left two more to do. She set to work on the second cable. “We're giving them an execution device,” she said. To save our own skins.”
“And what? You don't have to tell them what it is.”
“I mean … it's dangerous, right? What if they figure it out?” The second cable released; she went over to the third.
“Right, because before they uncovered this there was no way anyone in Amaranth could harm another, right?”
“It just doesn't feel right.” She unlocked the third cable anyway. Saffron had gone silent, so Sweetie Belle turned to Lucille. “It's done,” she said. “You can just pull the cables out the wall now.” She pulled one a few metres out to demonstrate, then left the rest of the task to the others.
“Do you know what it does?” asked Lucille.
“No idea,” said Sweetie Belle. She glanced round, then added: “The cables transmit unicorn magic. Maybe they're more valuable than the rest of it.”
“Maybe. Well, anyway, thank you for the help. I'll take you and your friends back to Ilmarinen. I'll even pay you – enough for passage back to Omphalos.
Sweetie Belle gave her a sweet smile. “Thank you. When do we leave?”
“Just give me a couple of hours to get this sorted with the miners, then we'll be off.”
It was obvious the ships had ill intentions: They came in hugging the ground with silvered surfaces, barely distinguishable at first from the shimmering heat haze, so they could get as close as possible without being seen; three of them coming from different directions, appearing on the horizon within ten minutes of each other.
The Dulcet's defence officer had seen them first, but by the time Lucille had informed the rest of the mine and summoned Sweetie Belle and her friends to the bridge, the the lead ship had already sent its first message in flashes signal lamps:
CO-OPERATE FULLY AND YOU WILL BE UNHARMED. LEAVING SHIPS WILL BE FIRED UPON
This it repeated while Sweetie Belle looked through the telescope.
“Shit,” she murmured to herself.
“Friends of yours?” said Lucille.
“Yeah, it's a safe bet they're after us,” said Scootaloo. “We need a plan. Any chance we could fight our way out?”
Lucille looked over to her defence officer, a slight, small-beaked griffon. “Cerise?”
Without looking up, for her instruments, Cerise replied, “We're up against an Aquileonan light cruiser and two armed scout ships and … at least two gunship each. We're armed –”
“Which is more than I can say for Hinny's Revenge,” interjected Lucille.
“ – but these three would kick the shit out of us. At best we might be able to fight off one of the scouts, if they had no support.”
“And the only defence the mine has is a gunship. That's one gunship, to their six or more,” said Lucille.
“Right, so if we stay,” said Scootaloo, “We're screwed. Surrounded, there's not much we can do. Right now, we might be able to make a break for it.”
Sweetie Belle summoned Saffron. “Could I fight them off? With the sylphs?”
“You might cripple the ships, but what about the passengers themselves?”
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. “That's it! If we run, they won't want to risk killing me, so maybe they won't fire. Then all we have to do is get to Ilmarinen in time.”
“Or they might just shoot out the engines and board the ship,” said Tom.
Lucille clicked her beak. “Look, girls, I like you, but I'm not going to risk a trick like that. And I doubt you're going to find anyone else who will either.”
For a moment they were all silent. Outside, the three ships came closer.
“Okay!” said Sweetie Belle. “How about this? We leave on a glider.”
They all stared at her.
“You have gliders, right?”
Lucille nodded, still looking uncertain.
“You can't really shoot down a glider without risking killing whoever's inside, right? So they won't do that. And let's say we release two gliders – one as a decoy. Now, suppose they see that – for all they know, I might be in either of the gliders, or I might have stayed back here. They'll have to split up three ways to be sure. Then, after they've done that, you might be able to get past whoever's left. Or, at least, have a clear escape route.”
“You know this plan is insane, right?” Lucille cocked her head.
Scootaloo grinned. “Yeah, but doesn't it sound fun? One thing, though – where are you going with your glider once you're forty miles away and losing altitude? Once you've used up your balloon relaunch?”
“Actually,” said Lucille slowly, “there are a couple of solar sintering facilities in the desert near here where the mire ends.”
“We'd still be trapped there, though.”
Sweetie Belle leaned in at her and grinned. “You can be my workhorse.”
“Oh, don't you dare –”
“Let's put those magic wings to the test, see if you can pull the glider back to Ilmarinen.”
Scootaloo gave her a mock-angry glare for a few second, which then dissolved into laughter. “Yeah, alright,” she said.
“Uh …” Tom raised his hand. “If we're going ahead with this, let's at least do it properly.”
“Meaning what?” asked Scootaloo.
“Three options won't be enough if we're counting the gunships too. Launch every glider – or as many as you can spare – in as many free directions as you can. Aim some specifically at those solar sintering sites. Maybe that'll draw their attention. We go in a glider that isn't aimed directly to those sites or Ilmarinen, so we look like a low priority. Now, we won't be able to steer the glider without giving ourselves away, so you'll have to rotate the ship to launch. Finally, if we are going all in, I think we should tell the captains of the other ships here. If they decide to try and escape to Ilmarinen when the enemy's attention is divided, that'll just add to the diversion, and be safer than staying here.”
“Damn, dude,” said Scootaloo.
Tom shrugged.
“Well, I guess that's our plan right there,” said Lucille. “Now let's see if we can get it all done in the next ten minutes. One more thing, though. All three of you won't fit in the glider –”
“I'll stay,” said Tom. “I'm the only one who doesn't need to be there.”
“Alright. You're with me then. We'll try and meet up again in Ilmarinen. The rest of you, let's go!” She pointed to one of her bridge officers. “Basil, show them to the glider bays. Come on, hurry!”
The glider cockpit wasn't designed for two ponies, they sat with Scootaloo almost on Sweetie Belle's lap, a constant warmth against her chest, and ragged purple mane occasionally brushing against her nose. The glittering wings were a welcome coolness against her forelegs.
They'd cantered half the length of the ship to get here, and she could still feel the rhythm of Scootaloo's breathing, harmonising with her own.
Another clang as the third empty glider was released. Nearly there – she was fifth. Dulcet swung slowly about her axis, aiming the gliders. Another clang, and away went number four. She prepared herself for that stomach-jolting moment of release.
They'd be heading, Lucille had told her, about thirty degrees away from Ilmarinen, on a path that would take them within two kilometres of the sintering facility, just in case anything went wrong. Otherwise, Scootaloo would take over as soon as it was safe.
Clang – and the glider bay open up, vanished behind them. She strained to look around Scootaloo, to try and catch sight of their attackers, but there was nothing save the expanse of pure blue sky above and bottled blue mire below.
Everything in her body told her she needed to be looking, moving, doing something. And yet all there was sit and wait and avid the controls, while her life was in immediate danger. She tried to concentrate on other things: The soft whistle of air, the muttering daemons, the Scarlight shadow Scootaloo's mane cast on her neck. None of it worked.
A first presence over her hoof made her realise she was hugging Scootaloo. She was about to let go, but Scootaloo's forelegs settled soft and reassuring over her own.
“That was a good plan,” said Scootaloo. “I mean it. You're pretty awesome when you want to be, you know that?”
Sweetie Belle couldn't help smiling even as she tried to be serious: “Thanks. Let's just hope it works.” Then, her smile fading: “And let's hope Tom's okay.”
“Yeah.”
She held Scootaloo a little tighter. Outside, nothing but the sky and the Scar. She thought this must the most relaxing emergency she'd ever been in. And possibly the most romantic.
The poisonous blue mire was soon replaced by silvery-white sand scalloped into gentle dunes. She saw something that looked a bit like an insect in silhouette clinging to the horizon to their left and pointed it out to Scootaloo.
“I guess that's the sintering facility.”
Perhaps ten or twenty minutes later, when she was nearly asleep, there came a faint but unmistakable hum. It grew quickly past a hum and into a roar.
“You hear that?” asked Scootaloo.
“Yeah.”
They both twisted round trying to see anything through the cockpit. A moment later something slipped into sight above them, a greyish brown thing hovering on twin rotors connected to the end of its wings. A gunship. The roar of its engines battered her ears.
Then, louder still, came the thunder of machine gun fire in three short burts. Sweetie Belle held even tigther to Scootaloo, filled with raw animal fear.
But they kept on flying as before. She realised: “They're trying to scare us into turning!”
“Good luck, buddy,” said Scootaloo.
The gunship opened fire again, still avoiding them.
They watched it warily as it trailed them. After a minute or so it pulled ahead of them and, tilting its rotors slightly, turned around to face them. Then, keeping pace, it dropped a few metres until the small plastic bead of its cockpit came into view.
The glider shivered in the gunship's turbulence.
“Shit,” muttered Scootaloo.
“What?” said Sweetie Belle. Then she saw the faint outline of the gunship's pilot in the cockpit and understood. The glider's canopy was silvered the protect against the sun – that would make it difficult for an observer to see the pilot from a distance, but at close range they might just be visible.
The glider shuddered again and dropped a few metres, making her insides lurch and leaving the gunship behind momentarily.
“Listen,” said Scootaloo. Speaking fast, she moved Sweetie Belle's forelegs down until they were encircling her lower body. “Hold on here as tight as you can. Don't worry about hurting me. And do not let go, you hear?”
“What are you going to do?”
The gunship dropped into view again, moving cautiously to the side to avoid disrupting the glider.
“Trade in the glider for something better.” With a soft whispering hum, Scootaloo's wings unfurled as far as they could. Glittering iridescent fields of energy coruscated between the artificial feathers. Her body tensed like a coiled spring. Outside, the gunships' cockpit came into view again.
Sweetie Belle held on.
In one motion, Scootaloo's wings opened, smashed she canopy off the glider, and swept back, pulling her and Sweetie Belle into the open air. The roar of the gunship's engines increased threefold, and the rushing wind clawed at face, her body, threatening to pull her away from Scootaloo. Below them, hundreds of metres away, the desert looked like a glittering silver sea. She tightened her grip more than she thought possible.
Scootaloo didn't even need to flap: They accelerated and hurtled forwards towards the gunship. Sweetie Belle couldn't hear her scream over the noise. A moment later, they were there. At the last moment, Scootaloo reached one wing forward towards the window and punched through it and the fuselage. They landed almost on top of the griffon pilot at his array of controls in the tiny cockpit. Somepony – Sweetie Belle wasn't sure who – brushed against the controls and sent the gunship spinning.
The pilot stared up at them. Sweetie Belle suspected he was even more surprised than she was. Scootaloo wrestled with the controls, trying to pull the gunship out of its spin and, simultaneously, shot a shimmering pinion feather at him. But with the three of them in the cockpit, there wasn't enough room for her wings to open properly, and the feather embedded itself in the wall just above his neck.
At last the pilot moved. He hit something on the control panel, then scrambled over them, over the control panels, and towards the hole in the window. Sweetie Belle tried to grab him, but he kicked out with a rear paw, hitting her in the face. And then he was away, wings spread.
Scootaloo glanced at him and swore, but her attention was still on stabilising the gunship. They tipped forward, tumbled towards the ground. Maybe a hundred metres away, Less. Scootaloo swore again, fiddled with the controls.
And finally, the ship steadied. Scootaloo held them hovering for a moment. Then she ascended and spun the ship around. Sweetie Belle saw the glider ahead of them with its broken canopy, shuddering and angled downwards. It looked like it would crash into the desert soon. The griffon pilot was already flying back in the other direction. “Let him go,” Scootaloo muttered. “By the time he finds his friends, they won't be able to catch us.” She turned the gunship back toward Ilmarinen and accelerated.
Once they were moving safely, they tried to shuffle into a slightly more comfortable position. The gunship's cockpit was bigger than glider's, made to fit a second occupant (to operate the guns, perhaps, thought Sweetie Belle), but it was still close quarters. Actually, considering the wind coming through the hole they'd made, it was a good thing; she huddled up closer to Scootaloo.
Scootaloo looked over at Sweetie Belle. Her eyes widened. “Oh, Luna!” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah …” Sweetie Belle's throat caught. “What is it?”
“Your face.” Scootaloo put a hoof to her left cheek. It stung to the touch, and the hoof came away smeared in blood.
Sweetie Belle checked it herself. The hair was soaked. From the pain and blood, she guessed she's been cut just below her left eye. She'd been too caught up in the scuffle to notice it. “The griffon,” she realised. “He must've had his claws out when he kicked.” Seeing the look on Scootaloo's face, she went on: “I'm fine. It always looks worse than it is for me, remember? Because I have a white coat.”
“Alright. Just keep –”
“Keep pressure on it. I know.” She pressed a pastern to her cheek.
Scootaloo looked around the cockpit, presumably for some cloth. Turning up nothing, she peered past Sweetie Belle at the edges of the hole. “I thought maybe I'd … On the glass, you'd …” She shook her head, a gesture that seemed to be directed more to herself than Sweetie Belle. “I shouldn't have done that. Stupid thing to do.”
“What was the alternative?”
“I dunno. Something less dangerous.”
“Everything's dangerous right now.”
Scootaloo sighed and stared out at the desert ahead. “Yeah. And the last you need is me risking your life too.”
Sweetie Belle took her shoulder and pulled her round. “For pony's sake! I'm not some little foal who needs to be looked after all the time! It's just a little cut. You just said I came up with a good plan.”
“And you did.”
“Then why can't you see me as that sort of pony? I'm not completely useless, you know.”
“I know,” said Scootaloo. She looked into Sweetie Belle's eyes. “And you're right. Sorry.”
Sweetie Belle gave her a soft smile. “Okay. Never mind. Let's go on.”
“Good idea.” Scootaloo turned bacck to the controls, steadied their trajectory. Her attentionsnapped back to the controls. “Wait. Is that …? No way is that possible. Oh shit.”
Sweetie Belle couldn't help snorting with laughter. Of course they couldn't catch a break. “What is it?”
“Fuel. We're nearly out of fuel.”
“Are you serious?”
“He can't have come out here with the tank so low. He must have drained it …” Scootaloo scanned the array of controls for a few moments then pointed to a switch on the far side. “Emergency tank dump.” She back to Sweetie Belle. “We're not going to get anywhere near Ilmarinen at this rate. I could've pulled the glider, but not this … ”
“So what now? The sintering facility?”
“Looks like. Maybe we can find another ship or refuel or something before they find us.”
“And if we can't?”
“We fight.”
The desert outside swooped around as Scootaloo turned the gunship. They'd passed the facility how long ago? Twenty minutes at least. With any luck, the gunship would be faster.
Scootaloo took them in a broad curve – “to avoid the other gunship,” she said.
“Couldn't we fight them? And change ships again?”
“I don't want to risk it. They have the fuel for fancy evasive manoeuvres. We don't.”
Eventually the sintering facility rose beetle-like on the horizon and crawled towards them. Its legs, four pairs of hydraulic-laded struts with fat caterpillar tracks for feet. For pedipalps, bucket chain excavators buried in the sand, full but unmoving. Its carapace, an array of glass lenses, glittered in the sun. Under the bay doors of its abdomen, glass would be stacked up, waiting for the next airship to take it away.
Behind the abdomen a small landing platform jutted out. Scootaloo landed the gunship and turned the engines off. A broad, low portal, blocked with shutters, led into the facility.
Already through the hole in the cockpit Sweetie Belle could smell a sourness in the air. Once the door was open she pulled her leg away from her cheek, barely glancing at the blood-caked pastern.
Scootaloo was out and looking around already. With a flick of her wing she pushed open the shutters; the interior was too dark to see well.“This thing is heavy industry,” she said. “It should be louder than this.” She was right, Sweetie Belle realised – there was nothing beyond the slow creak and groan of the facility's superstructure.
“The buckets at the front weren't moving. Maybe it's been turned off?”
“Yeah,” murmured Scootaloo. “Let's –” She caught sight of Sweetie Belle's face and trotted up to look at her cut. “Here, lemme clean that off for you.” She pressed her pastern against her tongue, then dabbed it against Sweetie Belle's cheek.
“Shouldn't we be looking for a way out?” said Sweetie Belle, but she didn't step away. The touch was uncomfortable and made her cut sting, but was nevertheless soothing. She leant into it.
“We can spare a few seconds,” said Scootaloo. She moved onto her other past and went to work again. “I wish I had some disinfectant. These wings should be able to do that, but …”
“Yeah, they only let you fly for hours, smash holes in ships and shoot fast-acting tranquilliser feathers. What a joke. You should take them back.”
Scootaloo pulled back and gave her a look. Then she turned her attention back to the cut: “That should do. And it doesn't look deep enough to scar.”
“Shame.”
“When did you get so sarky? And yeah, it kind of is, because that would be badass.”
Together they traipsed down the length of the facility, hoofsteps echoing through the cavernous gloom of the rear loading area, where cranes lurked in the shadows like giant beasts. A broad open arch led them to the equally dark main floor lined by rows of conveyer belts. Between the belts were bulbous riveted vats of unknown chemicals, linked by tangles of pipes. Three rows of metal columns held up the roof maybe ten metres above them – it looked like the glass lenses they'd seen from outside were blocked by shutters, turning the ceiling into a grid of blinding white lines against a dark background.
At the front where, had the facility been operational, the bucket conveyers would have fed the facility with sand to be sifted and separated onto the belts they walked up a flight of stairs into the engine room: Two giant solar boilers with quartz windows, lenses for focusing sunlight, steam pipes, transmission axles as thick as a pony. “I guess that rules out finding useful fuel,” Scootaloo commented.
Sweetie Belle wondered why such a heavy piece of equipment would be abandoned like this. Economics, perhaps – it hardly seemed like Amaranth was lacking glass.
A second flight of stairs took them finally into the light, into the control room, circled by panels brimming with levers and switches, and with windows offering full circular view. Behind, a hundred metres of lens-roofing; ahead, a wavescape of pale dunes.
“Well, it looks like we're shit out of luck,” said Scootaloo. “No fuel, no other ships, nowhere else to go. We could hide … but they'd just take this place apart looking for us, wouldn't they?”
By now, the cold grasp of fear on Sweetie Belle's stomach had become almost a companion. She embraced it. “We have to fight then?”
Scootaloo snorted. “I guess so. Maybe I could fly out and pick off another gunship. It's a long shot, but –”
“Could we turn this thing on?”
'Do you know what buttons to press? Because I sure don't.”
“The ones that look like ON buttons?”
“Okay, sure. But why would you want to?”
“The last time Blueberry tried to get me, Saffron showed me how to use an elemental to damage her airship. That was air, but I'm guessing from the name there are others, right? And if we can start the facility, we've got sand – earth – and maybe fire too. Saffron, are you there?”
Saffron flicked into being beside her. “Yeah.”
“That'll work, right?”
“Sure. You can summon elementals out of all sorts of materials, actually, Not just the standard five.” ]
“Didn't you say,” said Scootaloo, “that using qilin magic will make you crazy?”
“Not right away. And it's better than being captured by the pirates or Blueberry, isn't it?”
“You'll have to limit yourself,” said Saffron. “It's easy to create elementals, but they're tied to you: They'll drain your energy when they do work or collapse. If you make too many to start with, they'll easily knock you out when they start fighting.”
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo, then turned back to Saffron. “Can you keep track of that for me.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Saffron gave her a mock salute.
“Now let's turn this thing on.”
In the end, it took them maybe ten minutes of poring over the three giant consoles looking for an ON button. They found seven suitable candidates, plus a set of important-looking switches labelling with a variety of cryptic abbreviations. Scootaloo wanted to try them all, but on Saffron's suggestion relayed by Sweetie Belle, they first searched for a manual. That took as long again.
“It would hilarious if they turned up now, wouldn't it?” Sweetie Belle commented as she peered underneath another gap in the wall.
Eventually, though, Scootaloo pulled out a six-inch-thick document with crumpled corners and print so small you had to rub your muzzle against the paper to read it. “We're never gonna get through this in time,” she said.
Sweetie Belle took it off her. “Let's try the index.”
“Be my guest,” said Scootaloo. Then, after looking up: “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
She pointed.
On the horizon, barely visible, was a ship. No. Two ships. At least two – the gunships would be invisible at this range. Sweetie Belle stared at them a moment, then went back to the index.
There it was – basic startup. She skimmed back through great chunks of tissue-thin pages until she reached number 1006, then pressed her nose against the text.
“That one,” she said. “Then those two, together. Middle switch, then check the dial on the left.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Scootaloo with a grin. “You make reading a technical manual pretty awesome, you know that?” First came a series of clanks as the mirrors opened either side of them. Then the thumps of water pipes opening.
“I know,” said Sweetie Belle. She smiled back at Scootaloo.
“Okay, the dial. What about it?”
“Now using the azimuth-altitude controls, orient the reticule over the lightpoint.”
“Huh?”
Sweetie Belle trotted over. “Turn these wheels until that thing is on top of that thing.”
“Right. Got it.”
Together they oriented the lenses, waited a few moments for the boiler to start, and at last engages the feed. A symphony of thudding pistons, singing gears, roaring engines with undertones so deep you could only feel through your hooves as the floor hummed.
Outsides, the buckets conveyers scooped and sand and carried it into the belly of the machine.
“Now we're ready to start,” said Sweetie Belle, snapping the book shut with her aura. “I'm going to try put some elementals together. Is there any way you could get the last fuel out of the gunship? We'll need some fire.”
“Sure thing. I'll see you in five.” She opened her wings as wide as would fit and launched herself down the staircase.
With the facility active, the main floor felt like an entirely different place to the one Sweetie Belle had walked through half an hour previously. The shutters had opened, and everything was bathed in light. The focal points above the conveyer belts were searing bright. The sand hissed and crackled and spat smoke as it passed beneath them. What came out on the other side didn't look anything like usable glass, but she supposed that was what all the other controls were for.
She stepped up to the nearest focal point, stared at it for a moment, checked Scootaloo wasn't coming back yet, then flopped down on her haunches.
“I don't know if I can do this.”
Saffron appeared beside her. “It's a bit late to duck out now.”
“How much longer before it ends, huh? How long before I get out of this place? I've had enough.”
For a moment, no response. Then the pressure of Saffron's hoof on her shoulder. Not really, of course – just faked sensations. But it was enough. She put her hoof against it, felt the touch there too.
“If we fight, some of those griffons are going to die.”
“Probably.”
“And it's my fault we're here at all. It's my fault they're going to die. My fault if Scootaloo gets hurt If I get captured.”
A sound – a swish of air coming from the loading bay. Scootaloo was on her way back. That meant the pity party was over. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stood. “Thanks,” she murmured to Saffron.
With the kerosene Scootaloo brought lit under the lens's focal point, Sweetie Belle set about making her army of elementals. It was, admittedly, less of an army than platoon: She settled on fifteen, which would be pushing the limits of safety, but not obviously lethal. That divided nicely into five of each type:
Sylphs flitting about in the air like giant, quick amoebas, visible only through their refractions. Salamanders, smaller but even faster, glowing savage blue-white. Pygmies, crawling like giant slugs of sand, incapable of flight but strong enough to twist through a solid beam of steel by constricting around it. Worried about the pygmies, she tried combining it with a sylph. The result was a pleasing flurry of sand that could fly around and then separate into its component elementals a few metres away. Then she tried combining a pygmy with a salamander, which was just as effective, and left the pygmy at the end of the journey glowing with heat.
While she worked through them, she discussed strategy with Scootaloo and Saffron. Fighting wouldn't be enough – they still needed to commandeer a gunship, this time without having the pilot dump the fuel. That was Scootaloo's job. Then the elementals would have to keep Sweetie Belle safe, and once they had the ship, slow down their pursuers.
It wasn't going to be enough.
She added another three salamanders, and answered Saffron's protests by noting, “They can stay in reserve until we're in the ship. It doesn't matter if I pass out for a bit then.”
It still wasn't going to be enough. Against all those pirates? Against all those ships, all those guns? Against Blueberry herself?
“The gunship!” Scootaloo said. “Can you operate the controls?”
“Uh, no.”
“I could teach you a bit … maybe.” Scootaloo frowned, then shook her head. “No. Not enough to fly.”
“Actually, if it's simple enough, I could memorise the sequence for you,” said Saffron.
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo.
“Brilliant! Let's go”
“Just, uh … why?”
“First of all,” Scootaloo said as they trotted back to the landing platform, elementals in tow, “because if I die, you need to be able to get out of here on your own.”
“Don't say that –”
“And second, because this thing is still loaded. It can shoot for a while, even if it can't fly.”
They stepped back outside. “And … if they think I'm inside, they won't want to risk firing back.” She scanned the sky, checking to see how close the airships were. They were clearly visible now – it wouldn't be long before they arrived. Then, looking around to the left – “What's that?”
“What's what?”
Another pirate airship? But it was coming from the wrong direction, from the north. And it didn't look like an airship. It moved with great sinuous strokes. Then she realised.
After looking through the telescope, Gaius was silent for several seconds. When at last he spoke, his deep voice almost trembled: “I can not fucking believe this.” He glared at Blueberry. “And you think she hasn't got powers over that thing?”
She glanced out the window, where the sintering facility was just visible on the horizon. “What thing?”
Gaius grabbed her mane and dragged her towards the eyepiece of the telescope. The motion was so sudden it caught her off guard, and she nearly fell. Before she could get in a comment, he growled, “Look!”
She quashed half a dozen cutting remarks – soon, if all went well, she'd have her pony and be free of this loutish dullard – and looked.
In the distance: Something immense. Serpentine body. Three pairs of leathery wings. The aelewyrm – the creature that had got between Gaius and Sweetie Belle last time.
“That's why she ran!” said Gaius. “That mess with all the gliders. She was buying time to summon the snake … leading us into a trap.”
“Don't be foolish. It's a dumb animal. We've just run into some bad luck.” She peered out the windows at the horizon, trying to see if she could catch a glimpse of the aelewyrm in the distance. Still nothing. “And you know what? I make my own luck, so –“
“No,” he said. “I am not losing another ship to that creature. We're turning back now.” Then, to the bridge crew: “You heard me! Signal the others. We're pulling back!”
Moments later came the pull of deceleration. Blueberry pressed her lips together. She readied her thrall spell, and said to Gaius in a soft voice, “When I made a deal with you, it was because I believed griffons of your stripe were brave enough to do everything necessary to find that mare.”
He ground his break. “We're brave, not suicidal.”
“Oh, please. Can we get there before the aelewyrm? Can we, if we keep going now?”
Under the gentle push of the thrall, Gaius reluctantly answered. “Barely.”
“Then we have a chance of surviving! The only issue is that you think there's too much danger.”
“You're damned right I do.”
“What does it say,” she murmured, so quietly he'd have to strain to hear, “that a little unicorn mare is more willing to face danger than you are?”
He clicked his beak. She waited for him to speak again.
“It wouldn't be my life alone. If we go on, I'd risk the lives of everyone on board. Many of them will die even if we escape.”
“Let them.”
The look he gave her said she'd overstepped her bounds.
She responded with another push with the thrall spell, and went on: “They chose to be here, under your command.”
“Come with me,” he said.
“Pardon?”
Gaius raised his voice for the whole bridge: “We're going ahead in a scout, along with the gunships. This ship and the other scout will pull back and wait at a safe distance.” He turned to the griffon who, Blueberry supposed, was his second in command. “Send out the necessary instructions.” Then, back to her: “But we have to change ships now. Come with me.”
Standing on the loading platform beside the gunship, with the platoon of elementals flitting and crawling about nearby, Sweetie Belle tried to convince Scootaloo that the aelewyrm's appearance was in their favour:
“It'll be another distraction. Between the aelewyrm, my elementals, and my gunfire, they won't be able to stop you from getting a gunship! And it'll keep them busy while we leave.”
“Or it'll attack us while we try to leave.”
“Maybe, but probably not. Out of all the gunships, how likely is it to pick ours? Besides, Blueberry wants me alive – she'll try and protect me if she can.”
“We don't have a better plan, anyway, so I guess we'll just have to go ahead with it.”
The platform gave them a good view of the ships approaching from one direction and the aelewyrm from the other. It looked further away, but then it moved faster – Sweetie Belle couldn't tell who'd arrive first.
After a while, they saw two of the ships – the lead and one of the scouts – had stopped, leaving the other scout to go out alone. Soon after, the gunships began to fan out. “They'll try and come at us from all sides. Makes it easier for us,” Scootaloo said quietly. It was easy to count them now: Fourteen.
Sweetie Belle wondered if Tom and Lucille had escaped. She hoped so.
From behind came that bone-rattling roar. She looked back and saw the aelewyrm, still closer.
“That one,” said Scootaloo. She gestured towards the leftmost gunship. “If you can keep the four or five next to him busy, that should be enough. I guess you know how far these elementals can reach, but don't start shooting until they're about twice as close as they are now.”
“Alright.”
Scootaloo sighed softly. “I don't want to do this.”
“Me neither. I –”
“I mean I don't want to leave you here while everyone's attacking.”
Sweetie Belle looked over at her. “It's okay. I know you'll come back.”
“Yeah,” said Scootaloo. “I hope so.”
Silently, Sweetie Belle checked with Saffron to see if it would be okay to send the elementals out. Saffron returned with a yes, so she pulled aside three sylphs and three salamanders. Best to see how they fared alone – the hybrids could wait until things got worse.
“Those six ships,” she told them. “Take one each. Salamanders on those three; sylphs on the other. Damage the engines. Try not to kill the pilots.” She glanced over at Scootaloo, then back again. “Go.”
A moment later the elementals were gone, zipping away. Now, very faintly, she could hear the rumbling of the engines. It was overtaken by another roar from the aelewyrm.
“They're fast,” said Scootaloo with a tone of approval. “I guess it's time for me to go then.” She briefly nuzzled Sweetie Belle. “Take care of yourself.” She extended her wings to their full width, glittering in the sun and quietly humming with power, and then she was in the air and heading toward her target.
That was it, then. Suddenly Sweetie Belle felt very alone. She climbed into the gunship and activated its guns like Scootaloo had shown her. The incoming ships were still too far away to shoot, but being here, aiming at them and knowing that couldn't fire back even if they were in range, gave her a sense of power that swept away the loneliness.
She felt rather than saw the elementals attack. Three momentary white-hot needles of pain through her chest, coming within a few seconds of each other. The salamanders. When she looked up, three of the attackers were careening and billowing smoke. The pilots ejected; one ship exploded, the other two tumbled towards the desert leaving helical grey-white trails. Then another jab – this she recognised as a collapsing sylph. On top of the others, it made her double over and left an ache through her muscles. When she managed to look up again, she saw another gunship was going down.
They'd only just started, and four ships were gone. Even with the sudden tiredness, she couldn't hold in an elated shriek. “Hah! Fuck yeah!”
“It's not over yet,” cautioned Saffron as a voice in her head.
The other two sylphs seemed to be having less luck, but still looked like they were occupying their chosen ships. Scootaloo's target to the far left was isolated; easy prey.
They were close enough now; she aimed the guns, listened to them spin up and fired.
Noise came like a punch to the eardrums. It seemed to take over everything. The clatter startled her so much that she stopped firing and cowered away from the console. Pathetic She steadied herself, aimed again, and fired.
The roar blanketed everything, but she could feel the gunship rattling on the platform as the guns continued to fire. She stopped after a couple of seconds, her ears ringing. None of the attacking ships had gone down. They were in range now, surely? They were almost on top of the facility.
She fired again, in a longer burst. Then again. And again. Nothing. It was harder than she'd thought to keep the gun aimed while firing. At least none of them were shooting back. Just as she was about the pull the trigger again, another jolt of pain lanced through her. A second sylph gone. In a fit of frustration, she held the trigger down and waved the guns back and forth across the attacking ships.
There – one of them dropped. She'd got it! Had she got it? It pulled back up. Without letting go of the trigger, she focused her fire on the bastard. The only thing she could hear above the gunfire was another roar from the aelewyrm.
Then the noise stopped. The gun barrels kept rolling, vomiting clouds of smoke, but not shooting. Out of bullets. She swore and kicked the control panel. Another pain; another sylph dead – at least this one took down another gunship, which fell off to the side as its pilot bailed.
“Here she is,” said Saffron.
The leftmost gunship, its occupant a familiar shade of orange, bore down on the second platform.
Sweetie Belle called another two salamanders and a sylph carrying a pygmy, and sent them to attack Scootaloo's pursuers. With the rest of her elementals in tow, she galloped across the loading bay to the free platform.
Scootaloo's gunship flew in towards her, slowed. Two hundred metres. One. Fifty metres – it angled its rotors upright, came in at a hover which to Sweetie Belle felt glacially slow.
Clattering gunfire. The ship's right rotor shattered.
Shrapnel embedded itself in the platform a few metres away from Sweetie Belle. As the gunship began to tumble, Scootaloo burst out through the cockpit and flew into the cover of the loading bay. The gunship fell out of sight below the platform – and a moment later there came a deep, loud bang which made the metal plating beneath her hooves shake. It must've hit one of the facility's legs, Sweetie Belle realised as she galloped into the loading bay.
Scootaloo was unhurt, taking cover behind a thick pillar. “Fucking fucking fucking fuck!”she screamed. Yeah, that about summed up it, thought Sweetie Belle as she joined her.
She glanced round the pillar to see what was going on. The gunships were nearly upon them now. Just nine left. The scout was a little way away yet. Where were her elementals?
The answer came as four jolts of pain, one after another. She cried out; her knees buckled, and she found herself lying on on the ground with Scootaloo standing over her. A gluey ache saturated her muscles. She tried to curse, found herself too exhausted to even finish the word.
As Scootaloo helped her up, the gunships reached them and – flew past towards the aelewyrm. “What now?” she managed to get out. The pain was receding a little.
“We try again,” muttered Scootaloo. She put a hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “You alright?”
“Yeah, I'll … I'll be fine.”
Gunfire again, from multiple sources, but sounding shrill and pathetic by the side of the immense rumble-roar that came immediately after. The gunships were attacking the aelewyrm – swarming about it like mosquitos.
Scootaloo watched the scene, brow furrowed, then gestured at the elementals. “Leave them here.”
“But –”
“Do it!” She took off.
“She's right,” said Saffron. “You've lost too many already.”
The aelewyrm had slowed and turned towards the front of the facility. It twisted back and forth, looking almost uncertain what to attack first. Its body twitched, and its tail curled round, narrowly missing one of the gunships. It passed out of sight, and a moment later there came a great scream of shearing metal and shattering glass, making the whole facility shake. Something hurtled into sight – the control room, torn from the front of the facility – and crashed into one of the gunships.
Sweetie Belle was so caught up in this she didn't see the griffon until he landed on her. They fell to the ground, his forelegs wrapped around her barrel. Of course, she realised – the pilots who had escaped their gunships. She struggled uselessly before realising her elementals were still waiting.
Get him off me! she called to the sylph-pygmy hybrid. Then added as quickly as she could: But don't kill him!
The elemental came in as a miniature sandstorm, smacking into both of them. The griffon didn't let go, but his grip did weaken. She wriggled around until she could get aim, then kicked him hard in the belly just before the elementals came in for another hit.
This time he did let go. She scrabbled free and glanced around at the loading bay. The scout had arrived – griffons were flying out from it, carrying chevaloids, it looked like.
Why chevaloids? Then she remembered: Last time Blueberry had tried to get her, back at the station, one had tried to help her.
And there was Blueberry herself, also being carried. She looked ridiculous, Sweetie Belle thought, and smirked to herself. But it was time to retreat. Scootaloo would know … hopefully. Sweetie Belle turned and galloped towards the main floor.
She stopped, crouching between a rivet-lined vat and a conveyor belt carrying a stream of half-melted sand still crackling with heat. She was about to send out another elemental to attack the scout, when she saw the hybrid, still fighting the griffon. They'd moved further back, close to the landing pad, close to where Blueberry was now standing.
A bolt of light flicked between Blueberry's horn and the hybrid.
Another – another – lance of pain through her chest. Sweetie Belle shivered, but managed to stay standing. That was it, then. Blueberry was killing her elementals. Idiot, she thought. Of course Blueberry would be prepared this time.
Ranks of chevaloids and griffons were advancing between the conveyer belts. Maybe ten of each – already too many to handle.
She cantered further forward, keeping her head down to avoid being seen. The sound of the engines and moving machinery here almost drowned out the gunfire from outside – but not the aelewyrm roars. She still had her elementals in tow – but the moment she let them out, they'd get zapped. She had no sylphs left.
“We're not having much luck here, are we?” she said to Saffron.
“We do seem to be pretty fucked, yes.”
“Any ideas?”
Silence.
“Really, Saffron. This would a great time to talk. Lecture me, even. Just do something!”
“Here.”
Sweetie Belle felt a new spell appear in her head. By now it was an entirely familiar feeling.
“Try hitting one of the chevaloids with it.”
She peered round the arm of a crane. There! Two chevaloids trotting abreast. She hit the left one. It froze, whirring, then leapt on its companion, chewing at the spine with its metal jaws.
“That's an attack-everything command,” said Saffron. “Best I could do under the circumstances. Don't get too close.”
Enthused, Sweetie Belle bounded over the nearest conveyer, came up against another chevaloid, this time accompanying a griffon, and shot it.
“She's here!” shouted the griffon, just before the chevaloid leapt on him. They scuffled briefly – then he leapt into the air and threw it into one of the furnace beams. Immediately he was bearing down on her.
Several others were too. More griffons. A lone chevaloid. She zapped it, then turned and galloped.
The griffons took to the air, following her, and –
With an ear-splitting crash, a ragged chunk of metal broke through the wall of the main floor. A ruined gunship. It flew between her and her pursuers, glanced off a pillar, scattering shrapnel everywhere, then skated across the floor, tearing up all the equipment in its path and destroying a couple of chevaloids until it came to rest against the far wall and began to burn. Broken pipes spat great clouds of steam and boiling water; opened conveyer belts dumped sand on the floor; the pillar, now with half its width sheared off, groaned. Her pursuers were, for the moment, blocked by the steam.
She stared at the wreckage, heart in her throat. “Please don't be …” she murmured.
“Keep going,” said Saffron. “She can pick you up at the front, but only if you don't get captured.”
Right. Yeah. Scootaloo wouldn't let herself get caught out like that.
She turned and began to gallop again.
Another crash came from behind. She turned to look – this time, two immense spikes had pierced the wall the gunship had come through. They dragged towards her, opening rents in the metal and snapping structural members, then finally pulled away. The facility creaked again, and the floor shifted beneath her hooves.
Keep going – get the the front!
Griffons flying over the mess behind her. No way she could outpace them. Se sent out another salamander to occupy them.
The facility shuddered as something else crashed into it. She didn't try to figure out what it was. The floor lurched under her hooves, twice in quick succession. Something behind her snapped, then to her left, with a drawn-out groan, the entire wall began to buckle. A cracking sound from above, and a huge shard of glass – a piece of a roof lens – fell. She saw it in time to throw herself to the floor, in the shadow of a conveyer, as the lens-shard shattered and sent missiles of glass across the main floor. A scream from behind her – one of the griffons hadn't been so lucky.
Nearly there – past the engine room, towards the foot of the stairs. Her legs felt like they would give out at any moment. Another crash behind her. And another. She put up a shield to block the fragments of glass. Another needle in her chest told her the salamander hadn't escaped. That left two salamanders and three pygmies.
At the foot of the stairs, she glanced back to see if the griffons were following her. She couldn't see any. The main floor of the facility was more wreckage than machinery; the roof lenses were almost gone, and gouts of smoke and steam blocked the view to the loading bay.
The floor lurched again. Now the facility was leaning backwards at a noticeable angle. She climbed the stairs as fast as she could.
At the top, there was almost nothing – a bit of floor, a rear wall, and a gaping hole where the cabin had been. The dry desert winds stroked her coat, carrying the faint smell of smoke.
The aelewyrm was some distance away, thrashing about, being harassed by four gunships. Were they the only ones left?
Come on, Scoots. Where are you? You know I can't be at the back. Come on.
Come on!
The facility lurched again.
She glanced at elementals. Well – what was there to lose? She pulled out a salamander/pygmy hybrid. “Go to the scout,” she told it. “Get into the engines, do some damage. But go under the facility, and stay out of sight!” If it managed to stay out of Blueberry's way, maybe it would last long enough the kill the engines. Then at least Blueberry would be trapped here too.
Another gunship flew into view, coming from behind, and hovered. There, in the cabin – it was Scootaloo! Sweetie Belle sent a little pulse of green magic into the air. Just enough to catch her attention.
The gunship turned back and forth. Had she seen?
The facility trembled. From far behind came the deep, tortured cry of stressed metal.
The gunship turned towards her and flew forwards. Closer, closer, until it was in front of her, and all she could hear was the pounding of its engines. Scootaloo waved at her from the cockpit. The air was rich with the sickly smell of kerosene fumes.
Pain, again; the elementals she'd sent to attack the airship had been destroyed.
Scootaloo pulled the ship a bit closer and opened the cockpit. She couldn't approach further, Sweetie Belle realised, not without having the propellers hit the edges of the facility. There was no place to land.
Maybe enough space for her to jump?
She stepped back until she was at the lip of the stairs.
Scootaloo leaned forwards out the cabin.
And with a great groan, everything tiled backwards.
Sweetie Belle, caught off guard, fell backwards, down the stairs. Over the side of the stairs. In blind panic she reached out and hooked her pastern over the banister. The staircase itself bent as the facility's superstructure crumpled, but it slowed her descent. She managed to land on her side.
A savage, searing pain ignited down her flank. But there was no time to dwell on that – she was sliding to the rear of the facility, and the remains of the staircase, with other bits of wreckage, was too. Faster than her – it would hit her any second.
Somehow she managed to scrabble to her hooves and stay there. Legs uninjured, then – thank Celestia. Staircase still sliding at her, on top of what was left of the big conveyer belt. She tried to move to the side, but they were already in the narrow passage between the engines.
Engines! She looked back in time to see a blade of steam spraying at head height from a tear in the pipe. She let herself fall down again, and felt the burning heat as she passed beneath.
The staircase hit the narrowest part of the passage and stopped, wedged between the walls and the conveyer belt.
She got up again as she reached the main floor, and came to a halt bracing herself on the branching conveyer belt.
Everything else, all the free bits of wreckage and broken chevaloids, was sliding backwards. Far behind, the back of the loading bay was sitting directly against the desert floor. She couldn't see Blueberry, but the scout was visible through the shattered ceiling.
The facility's back legs must have broken – and then it had tipped up, with its middle legs as a pivot.
Sweetie Belle looked the way she'd come. What now? Would Scootaloo wait for her there?
She glanced back to where the wreckage was accumulating on the desert with a cacophonic clatter. and caught a flash of violet aura. Blueberry's colour, she was sure of it. What was she doing?
Bits of wreckage moved about sideways, clung to each other, collected other bits.
She'd seen this before, she was certain.
Like a timberwolf forming.
But not a timberwolf. Its limbs were twisted girders and broken pipes; its claws were shards of glass and metal sheet; part of its torso was made a broken chevaloid; a crumpled gunship body made up most of its upper jaw. All held together by a violet aura.
A scrapwolf?
The last pieces of wreckage clung to its legs. It stood with the squeal and creak of twisting metal and looked at her.
Scootaloo still nowhere to be seen.
The scrapwolf took a step, paw bracing against the foundations of sheared-off equipment in the floor.
“Saffron? Can I disrupt it?”
“A golem? Not unless you want to pass out again.”
“But she can kill my elementals? That's not fair.”
Aha, elementals! Where were they? She called to them. How many left?
The scrapwolf had already covered half the distance towards her.
Here they were – two salamanders carrying a pygmy each. And sitting in the corner, a third lone pygmy, crawling to her.
“Go, attack! Pull it apart!” she told them.
The glowing hybrids set off through the air, and the lone pygmy became a pile of sand sliding down towards the scrapwolf's paw.
“Don't you dare,” she whispered, looking up at the scout, where she guessed Blueberry had retreated.
As the hybrids reached it, the scrapwolf snapped at them, its steel neck creaking. No contest – the elementals swooped past those hulking jaws and headed for the shoulders. She heard a hissing and crackling as the white-hot sand made contact. The scrapwolf stopped its climb and writhed, trying to get them off as they extended like glowing worms around its forelimbs. Amid the rhythmic thumping of expanding metal, their bodies twisted, tightened, and gradually pinched through all the wreckage.
The scrapwolf started to climb again, but it was too late. On the second step its forelegs came off, leaving cherry-red glowing stumps. It fell.
Sweetie Belle ducked behind the conveyer belt as its head smashed against the ground. Four pulses in her chest – dead elementals. She wasn't sure if she could stand again. When she managed to peer over the conveyer's edge, the scrapwolf was was sliding back, belly scraping and screaming against the floor. The impact had shattered its head, and the aura holding the remains of its body together trembled, stuttered, and vanished. It fell apart with a clatter, and piled up on the desert as an amorphous mass of wreckage.
Sweetie Belle looked behind her. This was the time for Scootaloo to come in and rescue her, wasn't it? Where had she gone?
There was something else, she realised. Something conspicuous by its absence. No more aelewyrm calls.
A clang came from the far end of the facility. Pieces of wreckage slide over each other. A violet aura.
“Oh, come on!” she gasped. “How can you keep going?”
Slowly, slowly, another scrapwolf began to emerge. A different one – same parts in a different order.
Before it was done there came a great shriek of tearing metal, this time from the middle of the facility. The walls and ceiling cracked open, the floor buckled, and everything began to drop. The front end had been up in the air all this time, and the walls weren't strong enough the hold it. Her weight vanished. The slope of the floor vanished. The front wheelbase hit the desert with a vicious thump. More bits of lens roof came away and fell to the floor. Sweetie Belle was thrown down again – her side felt like it was on fire.
She shakily stood, wincing from the pain. The floor was now sloping the other way, but more gently. The loading bay was almost out of sight, hidden behind the facility's broken back, but she could see the top of the scrapwolf's head moving.
And above it – griffons. Just five of them, looking rather worse for wear, but still flying and heading right for her.
Something came from behind her, barreled into the lead griffon, and kicked him into the one to his right. Scootaloo! She darted over to the lead griffon, and just before he landed, pushed him out of the path of the advancing scrapwolf. He fell out of sight, and didn't come back.
Scootaloo swung back and flew over to Sweetie Belle. She flicked her head back. “The hell is that?”
“Scrapwolf,” panted Sweetie Belle.
“This isn't fair.”
“That's what I –” Sweetie Belle didn't get to finish; three of the griffons were nearly upon them, and Scotaloo grabbed her and pulled her forwards.
They half-flew, half-ran, between the engines, over the twisted remains of the stairs. Behind came the clanging steps of the scrapwolf. Just before they reached the entrance of the conveyer buckets, something thumped into them from above, throwing Sweetie Belle onto the floor. She started to slide backwards as Scootaloo extended a wing and smacked the griffon back. “Last gunship's hidden under the buckets conveyers,” she said hurriedly. “Get in.”
“But –” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo leapt up and headbutted another griffon. The third grabbed her from behind, and they fell to the ground. Sweetie Belle tried to run up to them, but found she didn't have the energy.
“Go, now! Fly to Ilmarinen! I can catch up.” She flicked a wing out in demonstration, then used it to smack aside a griffon.
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “They'll kill you.”
“They'll try.”
The scrapwolf was bounding towards them, over the facility's broken middle.
Sweetie Belle stared at her as she wrestled another griffon to the ground.
“Now! Go. For fuck's sake, go!”
Sweetie Belle swallowed, and climbed out the portal into the vicious sunlight. The two bucket conveyers, no longer moving but mostly intact, gave her a path to the sand where the gunship sat with its propellers idling. At least the sky was clear. No aelewyrm – the only evidence of the battle was the wreckage of another gunship lying in the sand.
She started climbing down the conveyer, hooking her pastern round rust-scabbed girders and hanging onto the inner edge. Every movement made her side complain, but she kept going. Halfway down she looked back up to the front of the facility. Crashing came from within.
At the bottom, she dropped to the sand. It was nearly hot enough to burn, but that was nothing compared to everything else that hurt.
Another ear-splitting crash – she was getting far too used to that – caught her attention. The scrapwolf poked its head through a new hole in the front of the facility. It looked at her and began to pull itself through the hole.
She galloped over the sand, opened the cockpit and climbed in. The scrapwolf roared, then pulled its head back. She thought she caught a glimpse of silvery-iridescent wing through the hole as another crash followed.
“Flick those three switches there,” began Saffron.
“I'm not leaving her! Not now, not after –”
Over the remains of the facility, the envelope of the scoutship slowly came into view. They were coming after her.
“Either you go now and let her catch up,” said Saffron, “or you lose everything we've been fighting for.”
She was right, of course. If Scootaloo could get out by herself, she'd have no problem following. If she couldn't, Sweetie Belle could do nothing to help her, and would just get captured if she stayed.
Flicking the switches, pressing buttons, propellers speeding up, ground falling away, angle forward gently, scoutship receding behind. Everything passed as a sort of dream. She didn't even realise she was crying until she had to check the dials and saw nothing but a blur.
They flew onwards, oriented by the Scar towards Ilmarinen. Nothing followed.
“There's something else,” said Saffron.
Sweetie Belle waited for her to continue.
“You took a lot of punishment back there. I had to mess with your hormones after the last elementals died, just so you were strong enough to stay awake. But I'm going to have to pull back on that now, so you don't have a heart attack or something. Just be ready to feel quite strange.”
“Alright.”
“And don't worry about crashing …”
“Alright. Just do it.”
No reply came. No immediate sensation. Just a growing drowsiness without calm. Everything ached. Every movement beyond the essential felt impossibly difficult. So did thinking.
She waited for Scootaloo to arrive.
Time passed. How much? Hard to tell. The sun was still out, but closer to the horizon now. Shadows beginning to stretch.
She still waited for Scootaloo to arrive.
Had she slept? She didn't know.
Something was emerging from the reddening atmospheric haze ahead.
Ilmarinen.
She'd flown all the way to Ilmarinen, and Scootaloo was still gone.
Come evening, Millie arrived at Ilmarinen, its bloated habitation spheres and graceless docking towers casting distorted shadows on the rocky plains in the distance. She registered her docking request with light signals, got an affirmative reply and directions to a free berth, and finally manoeuvred Dignity into place below Docking Tower Two.
In the main cabin, Gregor sat looking about as relaxed as one could be while still tied up.
“Want me to grab owt while I'm up there?” she she said brightly.
He didn't reply.
She stopped at the door to the gondola lift and turned to him. “I'm serious,” she said. “I can get some meat, can't I? Want anything in particular?”
“Why are you doing this?” said Gregor.
“'Cause clearly every once in a while I go a bit mad and become a big softie. Now do you want summat or not?”
He turned back to the wall.
She went in the gondola and began to inflate the balloon. As the doors closed, she heard Gregor call after her: “Mice!”
Soon the balloon was fully inflated, and the gondola began to rise. Millie scanned the other airships. Another Aquileonan pirate ship. Probably not after Gregor, but it was worth being cautious. And, one tower along, a salvor ship she recognised. It was the one Sweetie Belle had arrived on. Hinny's Revenge. That was convenient – if she and Scootaloo had made it back, the captain would probably know.
As she neared the top of her tower, something else caught her eye. Off in the distance, barely visible: A lone gunship. It posed no threat – with the Ilmarinen Navy here, even a battleship would – but it was odd to see one alone.
The air in the tower was thick with bitter residual smoke and sickly-sweet oils. She trotted through it, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be a griffon pirate, and headed past a group of chevaloids and across the bridge to one of the spheres. First order of business, she decided, would be to check in with Hinny's Revenge to see what the captain knew.
She stopped halfway down the bridge and sighed. Why are you doing this? She'd already done her part, done more than she'd needed to. And she was already saddled with Gregor because of her efforts.
Best to just leave it, get the supplies she needed, get Gregor home, and forget about the whole thing.
At the entrance to the sphere, she looked down at the cluster of buildings. Then she turned left and headed towards the tower where Hinny's Revenge was docked.
For Sweetie Belle, everything felt slightly unreal. The same loop kept playing in her head: She'd left Scootaloo behind. She'd abandoned the entire reason she came to this shithole of a parallel world in the first place. She was back to square one, back to Ilmarinen, having made no progress.
She wanted to turn back, but a small thread of prudence kept her from pulling the gunship around. She had no idea how much fuel was left, and gunships got through their fuel very quickly. If she ran out halfway back and crashed, there'd be no way she could help Scootaloo.
She flew onwards, towards the growing cluster of balloons of Ilmarinen, glowing dull red in the dusk. There, perhaps, she could check the fuel levels. Or just sell the gunship – they were expensive – and use the money to get passage back to the facility. She'd have to act fast, though …
Something squat sat on the ground beside on of the docking towers. A hovercraft! Dignity!
Would Millie help? Of course she would. She'd grumble, but she'd help. Especially if Sweetie Belle gave her the gunship. They could go back to the facility and trail Scootaloo from there.
Through the unhappiness and the pain, some confident part of her emerged to offer congratulations on coming up with a plan and thinking on her hooves.
As she approached, one of the docking towers began to flash. Of course. Light signalling; every ship she'd been on had used it before approaching a base. She stared at the array of controls, looking for anything that might be a light button. She asked Saffron, who didn't know either; Scootaloo hadn't shown them that much.
Even if she did find the right button, it wouldn't be any help. She didn't know the signal code. Neither did Saffron.
“I thought you'd have picked it up by now,” she muttered out loud “You've seen it used before, haven't you?”
“I'm smart, and I have some powerful mental tech,” said Saffron. “I'm not fucking omniscient.”
Sweetie Belle brought the gunship to a halt, then after a few seconds continued more slowly. With any luck they wouldn't read her approach as aggressive and shoot her down.
Halfway there, a battleship, one of the Ilmarinen navy, detached itself from city and flew over to meet her. It was a great, savagely elegant thing, with its gondola built into its superstructure, but clearly not Aquileonan. Its belly was a map of guns, cannons, armour, and gunships bays; its nose resolved into a line of five spikes underlining what must be the Ilmarinen sigil.
It came to a halt just before reaching her and swung into a turn. By the time she was level with it, it was facing Ilmarinen.
An escort, then.
It led her back towards the city, turning right near the end of the journey, leading her towards one of the smaller docking towers where a lone salvor ship was docked. On top of the tower, amidst the freight cranes, she saw a line of empty landing pads. When she'd landed and the engines were quiet enough, the battleship addressed her with a hissing loudspeaker:
“Docking is free for two days. After that, one hundred bits per day in advance. If you do not pay, your craft will be impounded.”
“Right,” Sweetie Belle murmured to herself. “Thanks for that.”
The landing pad entangled the gunship's underside with prehensile black ribbons, then offered her a key. She tried the key, found it made the ribbons retract, then activated them again.
With the gunship secured, she headed down a creaking metal staircase into the tower's main room, running through the plan in her head. Find Millie; give her the gunship; go back to look for Scootaloo; go home.
Easy.
Just keep going. One hoof in front of the other.
The primary room of the docking tower was almost empty, lit sharply by a few lamps in the ceiling that made all the shadows splay out. On one side a cluster of fat metal barrels sat beneath the crane hook. Just beyond them was an open door into the evening sky where the airship was docked. A lone, bored-looking pony guarded it.
Sweetie Belle trotted across the room to the bridge. Now, she thought, where had she seen Dignity? To the left, a little more than halfway round the city. She'd need to cross this sphere and the next …
Something tiny flew at her. By the time she noticed, it was already upon her. It hit her horn and stuck.
“Now!” called a mare's voice, and through the door to the bridge, a griffon stepped out. The captain of the pirates who had first captured her, holding a winggun. Behind him, more armed griffons followed.
She put up her shield. Or tried to – the moment she tried, something stifled her aura, and a white-hot pain billowed out from her horn and washed through her body. It left in its wake waves of overwhelming nausea, aches, chills, that sloshed back and forth through her. She cried out – perhaps. She wasn't sure.
When she looked up, the griffons had been joined by three ponies. A big one, a spindly one, and between them, Blueberry Pancake.
“Well,” said Blueberry, smiling, “here we are, together at last.”
The nausea was only slowly receding. Her ears roared. Sweetie Belle managed a look around. One griffon had his gun trained on the ship's pony guard; another was keeping watch down the bridge. The other three, including the captain, aimed at her. The spindly pegasus had a winggun too, but wasn't pointing it at anyone.
Blueberry looked at the guard, who was waiting wide-eyed. “Don't shoot him,” she ordered. “No one has to die here.” Then she turned back to Sweetie Belle. “And just as some advice, sweetheart, you probably won't want to try any more magic while you've go the inhibitor on.”
A streak of stubbornness made Sweetie Belle try and throw another spell a Blueberry. Maybe she was bluffing, after all.
She wasn't.
When awareness returned, Sweetie Belle found her knees had folded under her. She was was shivering, fighting the urge to vomit. Blueberry stood in front of her, leaning down, so close that Sweetie Belle could feel her breath against her nose.
“That was silly, wasn't it?” said Blueberry, brushing some stray curls out of Sweetie Belle's face with the back of a hoof.
A gunshot rang out.
Sweetie Belle looked over to see the guard lying on the ground beneath a growing dark puddle.
Immediately Blueberry was standing straight. “I said, don't shoot him!”
The griffon captain clicked his beak, and his crew turned their guns on Blueberry and her associates.
“You are not in charge here,” he said.
Blueberry took a step back, closer to Sweetie Belle. The wiry pegasus had his wing-gun raised. “Sorghum,” she said quietly. He lowered his gun and stepped towards her. “You too, Cannons.” The other pony also retreated.
“This has to be one of the stupidest betrayals I've ever seen,” said Blueberry. “I mean, thanks to your flunky over there, someone has probably heard us, and here you are messing about and wasting time. What, pray tell, do you hope to accomplish?”
“The amount of trouble you've caused me,” said the captain. “The pegasus you said we'd capture escaped. The number of good griffons who have died because of your recklessness …”
“ … are gone, and will have their sacrifice remembered.”
The captain ground his beak. It took a second for him to reply. “I'm done dealing with some … crazy representative. If S. wants the unicorn, he can make me an offer himself. He can pay for the ships I've lost. And he can pay extra for you – if you come along quietly and don't make us shoot you.”
“Stop being silly,” Blueberry said slowly. “If you lower your guns now, we can get her out of here before someone comes along, and I'll forget about the whole thing.”
“A tempting offer,” said the captain. “But no.”
Blueberry sighed. A silvery shield blinked into existence around her, her associates, and Sweetie Belle.
“Really?” said the captain. “That's the best you have?” He shook his head as if disappointed, then addressed his crew: “Kill h – ”
Blueberry's shield grew spikes – thin lances of glittering silver, two for each griffon, impaling them all. Their guns all fired together as the antimagic safeties were triggered. Then silence.
The shield vanished, and the griffons dropped to the floor.
“Quickly,” Blueberry ordered her associates. “Check those barrels over there. See which ones are empty.” As Sorghum and Cannons rushed over to the barrels, she looked over at Sweetie Belle, who was still barely able to stand. “I said no one had to die. I tried to stop them, but if they insist on being stupid, what's a mare to do?”
She lifted three griffons with her aura and carried them to the open barrels.
In less than a minute, all the bodies were hidden. “I'm sorry about this,” said Blueberry as she lifted Sweetie Belle. “But I don't have time to find a better way.” A violet bolt flicked from her horn, and Sweetie Belle felt drowsiness overcoming her as Blueberry dropped her into a barrel.
It was in the foyer of the Bounding Minotaur Adventure Tours office in Canterlot where Scootaloo first told Sweetie Belle about her plans, her eyes glimmering with excitement.
“It's called Magnesia. It's miles away, on the other side of the dragon territories, but legally it belongs to Aquileona.”
“How long will you be there?”
“Six months. At least. I might go back again!”
Sweetie Belle rubbed at her mane with a hoof and tried to look happy. She looked at the five yellow daffodils on the table between them, at the dull tiled floor, out the window through the open lilac blinds; anywhere but Scootaloo's eyes. “Six months,” she said. “Wow. And they really need you for this?”
“Totally! I'll be helping Rush set up a new adventure course. Right now, half of it's just like, empty rock formations, and …”
“You're going with Rush?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“It sounds like you're really getting on with him.”
“Well, yeah.” Scootaloo had that smile, the one where she briefly, very briefly, chewed at the left side of her lower lip. The one Sweetie Belle knew meant We fucked and it was awesome.
“I …” began Sweetie Belle. “Excuse me.”
The smile on Scootaloo's face vanished. Sweetie Belle swept up from her chair and into the toilet. There, in the mirror, she did the best she could to erase the evidence of the few tears that had escaped, and stifle the rest. Once she'd managed a halfway realistic smile, she went back into foyer.
It wasn't until a couple of days later, driven by nights of pullulating woes, that she finally confronted Scootaloo in the latter's apartment. She arrived unannounced in the early afternoon and launched into it almost immediately:
“Do you have to go, really?”
“Well, yeah, it's an important part of my job.”
“But it's … it's miles away. It's like a week by airship. And for six months!”
“I'll be back before you know it. Come on, it'll be fine. We'll have a load of cool stuff to share when I get back.” Scootaloo put a foreleg around Sweetie Belle's shoulders.
“Like how you're having sex with Adrenaline Rush behind my back?”
Scootaloo stared at her. She moved her foreleg back. Her brow knotted. “What?” she said.
“You heard me! You and he are, aren't you?”
“Well, yeah, but –”
“And you didn't even tell me!”
“Why should I? I don't owe you a report on everypony I sleep with!”
“That wasn't what I meant,” said Sweetie Belle. She swallowed.
“Okay, look. I didn't tell you about me and Rush because … because it's not just sex. It's a relationship. I'm doing the whole relationship thing for the first time, and I didn't want to tell anypony until I was sure it was going steady.”
“We're best friends, aren't we? I thought we were, anyway. I showed you the adventure tours company. I introduced you to Adrenaline Rush! And look what I get in return: You and running off to the end of the world like it's nothing. Without me you'd still be moping in a pub about your wings!”
Scootaloo looked at her silently. She turned away; took a few steps; turned back. “Yeah. Best friends,” she said softly. “You've been a real friend. Yeah, I see that now. You didn't introduce me to Rush to help me out, did you?”
“I did! Of course I wanted to help you. It was what you wanted.”
“And now I want to go to Magnesia. Why aren't you happy for me? It's what I've always wanted, and all you can do is talk about how important you are. I'm grateful for what you did, introducing me to Rush, but that doesn't mean you can run my life.”
“I don't want to run your life. I just … don't want you to go.”
“Well, too bad. I'm going. If you cared about me at all, you'd understand why.”
Icy silence coated the room.
“Fine,” said Sweetie Belle eventually. “Do what you like.” She stormed out the door. It wasn't until she she got home that she started crying.
When something stopped Scootaloo from going to Magnesia like she'd planned, Adrenaline Rush went without her. Sweetie Belle visited a week later, but found the apartment empty, with only a note.
I've gone to Amaranth. Don't follow me.
Sweetie Belle woke lying in the corner of a small, windowless room. Daemons whispered almost comprehensible vengeances in her ears. The floor rocked slowly against a distant engine thrum. The wall dug into her back. She shifted experimentally and found, while her side did sting, it was nowhere near as bad as it had been.
A small lamp on the ceiling cut shuddering, indistinct shadows across metal walls, a reinforced door, a table with two chairs either side of it. She was about to try and pull one of them over with her aura, but stopped herself.
She put a hoof to her horn and found the inhibitor still clinging to it. It didn't move when she scratched it, and responded with a warning jab of pain when she tried harder. That was out then.
She climbed to her hooves and ambled over to the chair that faced towards the door. The interviewee position.
This was it, then. Blueberry had her.
“Saffron?” she asked silently.
“I'm here.” Saffron appeared next to her, sitting in midair.
“I'm glad. I'd hate to be tortured alone.”
“I'll do what I can to help. If it comes to that.”
“Thank you. For that … and for not sugarcoating this.”
“You know me. Never miss an opportunity to put a positive spin on the situation.”
Something on the door clicked and slid. Saffron vanished, saying, “Don't worry. I'm still here. I just don't want to distract you.”
Blueberry entered alone, carrying two cups in her aura. She set them on the table and closed the door. Her mane was less sleek that it had been when they met at Red Oak. A translucent blue strand had escaped the rest of the arrangement.
She saw Sweetie Belle looking and, once she was seated, said, “Yeah, I know. When we get back to my airship, I'm gonna have a lo-o-ong bath. You can too, if you want. I know you deserve better grooming than most of Amaranth has to offer.” This in a tone that suggested they were two friends in some fashionable café by Canterlot's outer districts.
Sweetie Belle said nothing.
“You'd broken a rib when we found you. I've fixed that, but the bone needs to finish knitting by itself, so try not to bump it. Everything else should be healed by now.” Blueberry took a sip of her water. “Anyway, let's get down to business. I am so sorry you got caught up in this. You may not believe it, but I really am. You've been through a lot, and you deserve better. But I promise you, it's nearly over. Being caught like this probably feels like a bad end, but it's actually the best thing that could happen to you. Soon you'll be free. And not long after that, with your help, I'll be able to fix everything forever.
“Everything. I mean it. All suffering, all loss, all death. Celestia may have built her empire of benevolence, but even she couldn't stop that. She couldn't stop the petty squabbles of the griffons, or the existential ache that drives even ponies to this ruined land, or the insatiable spectre of mortality that haunts us all. I can …”
Blueberry frowned briefly, like she'd just realised she'd gotten carried away. The quiet intensity vanished, and she gave Sweetie Belle another friendly smile. “Anyway, I want you to know I'm doing all this for a good cause. All I need from you is something that old statue dropped in your head. Something other than the spells you have. I'm going to use a mind-linking spell to find it. I promise I won't touch anything in your head that isn't mine, okay? But it won't work without your co-operation. All you need to do is read a few things, look at some pictures, and think about them while I do the spell. Then your job will be finished.”
At last she fell silent, and looked into Sweetie Belle's eyes.
Sweetie Belle's mind flicked through the possibilities. How easy it would be; what it might mean; whether Blueberry would kill her afterwards; whether she could even use Blueberry to get Scootaloo back.
“Don't,” said Saffron, still invisible.
Of course, she knew. Giving a pony like this, who compared herself to Celestia, even more power …
Even if she could get Scootaloo back, it wouldn't be worth it.
She shook her head.
Blueberry leaned back. “Oh well, you can't blame a mare for trying. Let's stop messing about then. I am going to save the world, and you're in the way. Leaving things the way they are would be an unfathomable cruelty. More than anything I could possibly do to you. So understand that I won't hesitate to do whatever I need to to get that information. Cannons!”
The door opened again, and the giant earth pony squeezed through holding a rusted toolbox in his mouth. He kicked the door shut with a rear hoof and dropped the box to Blueberry's right on the table.
“We found some of these lying around the ship,” Blueberry said conversationally. She opened the box and began taking out items: “Hammer, screwdriver, soldering iron, blowtorch, bolt cutters …” The last item reached the end of the table with a heavy clank.
“Now, I know what you might be thinking,” Blueberry went on. “You won't speak. We could take you apart on this table, bit by bit until there's nothing left, and then I'll never get what I want. Well, maybe so. Maybe you really are that wilful. Some ponies are.
“But I want you to consider this from my point of view. If I do kill you, what would I do next? You can see I'm very set on getting what I want, and I'd have nothing left to lose. So I guess I'd have to try some other way of finding the information. Who else might know, hm? Perhaps some of your friends? The donkey with the hovercraft. The diamond dog. Scootaloo.”
Blueberry leaned forward, all friendliness gone from her tone. “I promise you, Sweetie Belle, if things get to that point, I will leave you alive. I'll leave just enough of your face intact that you'll get to see and hear her reactions as we start working on her.”
Then, as suddenly as it had gone, the friendliness was back. “Personally,” Blueberry said as she put the tools away, “I think it would be best all round if you told me before then. You get to keep all your limbs, and Cannons here doesn't have to spend the next week picking bits of pony from between the floor plates. Now, I'm going to leave for twenty minutes, so you think it over and tell me your choice when I get back.”
She stood, lifted the bag over to Cannons, and they left. The door's lock clicked behind them.
Sweetie Belle wasn't sure how long she sat staring at the wall opposite, or even after if she'd spoken to Saffron.
When Blueberry came back, Sweetie Belle agreed to give her what she wanted.
Ah, at last. At least the narratator is still working properly. Maybe we'll even get to end this story. Now where were we?
Yes, Tanelorn. The Machine. Dangerous stuff. If I'd pushed Sweetie Belle to be a bit stronger, to do something, make some noble self-sacrifice while she had the chance, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe everything would be fine. But it didn't seem likely … and after everything she'd been through, I didn't have the heart.
Coulda', shoulda', woulda', I suppose.
Besides, I had my own reasons for wanting to get back to Equestria.
Chapter 17 Flight
Reality came back, instantaneous and shocking in its intensity, like falling through thin ice into the water below. She caught the tail end of the spell: A low electrical buzz and a violet aura glow ceasing a fraction of a second later.
She was left with Blueberry's face, close enough to feel the breath on her muzzle. Their horns were crossed. Blueberry's eyes were closed. She looked like everything Sweetie Belle didn't feel: Relaxed, satisfied, comfortable. Beatific.
Blueberry inhaled deeply through her nostrils, opened her eyes slowly and sat back, holding eye contact. “Well done,” she said softly, patting Sweetie Belle on the cheek. “You've been very brave. And you know what? I think we're finished. I have everything I need.”
Sweetie Belle realised she was shivering.
“Of course,” continued Blueberry, holding out a forehoof to Cannons, who had been waiting in the corner of the cell and now took it and helped her up, “I have to keep you with us. Just a precaution, you know. But don't worry. It won't be long – and after that, everything will be fine. And when we change ship I'll get you into some nicer accommodation than this nasty old place, okay?”
Cannons picked up the cushion Blueberry had been sitting on. “Get her something to eat. Best thing we have, as much as she wants,” she ordered him. Then she swept out of the cell with him in tow, and bolted the door behind them.
After they'd gone, Sweetie Belle let her head sink forward until she was resting it on her forelegs, with her nose pressed up against the grainy metal tabletop. Eventually the shivering subsided.
Four sessions. Four sessions of Blueberry poking around in her mind, while Sweetie Belle let her. They were like dreams, but also nothing like dreams. No scenery and images flashing past. Just an attenuated consciousness of some immense silent black ocean, filled with things you could feel but never see or hear, with Blueberry's spell an alien mollusc searching for whatever it was she wanted. No sense of time in that place; it could've been minutes or days.
Afterwards, her muscles and bones felt like old rope and wood, sun-baked and crumbling. The cell light was always on, so she had no sense of time here, either. She slept fitfully and shallowly, sometimes woken for a new session. Cannons or Sorghum brought her food and took away her bucket, but she wasn't sure of there was any rhythm to this. She struggled to eat using just her aura.
At least, she thought to herself, she wasn't being tortured.
And now they were finished. Maybe things wouldn't be so difficult.
Soon Cannons came in with a tray, plonked it down on the table in front of her, and left without saying anything. She stared at the food. Oatmeal as usual, but also lettuce and even a few slices of dried apple. She was hungry, but not ravenous, and she didn't feel up to the task of eating.
“I know,” said a wind-chime voice, “it would be an insult to ask you how you're feeling.”
Lifting her head a little to look at Saffron standing beside her, Sweetie Belle gave a tiny nod. “And I feel it would be an insult to pretend this compares to anything you've been through,” she said without speaking.
Saffron responded with a wry smile.
After the first session, Sweetie Belle had asked her if Blueberry had noticed her presence. “No,” Saffron had said. “She isn't looking for me, and I'm familiar with the spell she's using. It's not hard to stay out of sight.”
Now she said, “Blueberry thinks she's got everything under control.”
“I wonder what gave her that idea.” Sweetie Belle made a show of looking at the cell surrounding them.
“I didn't tell you this earlier because it might've failed, and I didn't want to get your hopes up for no reason, but while she was in your mind, I got a look at hers. Just shallow stuff. Whatever was flitting across her consciousness from moment to moment. But it was enough …”
Sweetie Belle stared at Saffron. “What?”
“A few things, actually. But most importantly, I know the operational frequencies of that thaumic inhibitor.”
“You can get it off me?”
“Well …” Saffron chewed at her lip. “Maybe. The inhibitor works by using your own magic to stimulate a whole range of autonomic responses – everything from physical pain to nausea.”
“I noticed.”
“Right, so, the only exception is if you try physically removing it. In that case, it tries to drain your magic to produce the same effect. With me so far? So if I can counteract that drain, it'll starve the inhibitor of power and muffle the effect. That's where the maybe lies … I can muffle it, but I can't turn it off entirely. It'll be unpleasant, but with any luck it won't send you into a coma.”
Sweetie Belle picked gently at the inhibitor and felt a twinge of pain run through her head. For all its power, it felt so tiny. Like a bit of string glued to her horn. “I guess now they won't be worrying about me too much,” she whispered. “But what then? There's nowhere to go, and Blueberry's way more powerful than I am.”
“Something else I picked up,” said Saffron. “They still have the gunship on board.”
After a few moments of staring at the door, Sweetie Belle gingerly got to her hooves. “Can you do it now?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a moment.” She sat beside the corner of the table and placed the base of her horn firmly against it. “This'll do it, right?”
“That'll do it.”
Anticipation coated her insides like ice. Every instinct she had told her not to do this and brought up as evidence the memories of the last two times she'd tried to rebel against the inhibitor.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Ready.”
Some faint sensation in her horn seemed to shift. “Now,” said Saffron.
Sweetie Belle raked her horn as hard and fast as she could down the corner of the table.
The pain was blindingly hot, all-encompassing, incomparable. Her mind had only one direction: To scream. And she couldn't even do that – her throat seemed to seize up as she tried.
And then it was over. She found herself curled up, face pressed against the floor, shivering again, almost hyperventilating. But the pain and nausea were fading. After a few seconds she lifted her head and blinked the tears from her eyes.
The inhibitor lay in front of her. It did look like string after all – two pieces of black string rolled into a coil, no more than an inch long. It still had a slight curve from where it had been stuck to her horn. She prodded it with a hoof. Nothing happened.
She pushed past a brief burst of terror that its effects were still there, and tried lighting up her aura. A pale green glow came from floor.
She looked over at Saffron. “Thank you,” she croaked, and scrabbled into a better sitting position.
“Now I can ask: How are you feeling?”
“Like I've been chewed up and used as a spitball by a dragon. Otherwise good.”
“Good enough for a daring escape?”
Sweetie Belle glared at her, then looked away, sighed and dragged the tray over. “Yeah … Just give me a moment.”
Once she'd eaten and spent a few minutes resting on the mat, her headache had receded enough for her to feel ready to leave. She asked Saffron where the gunship was being held.
“Turn left. End of the corridor. Down the stairs on the right. Then turn right again.”
Not feeling up to making any more, Sweetie Belle conjured a lone sylph and took it to the cell door. She stared at it for a few seconds. No point in waiting.
She closed her eyes, and reached through the door with her aura. How freeing that felt! On the far side her aura felt the bolt. Not a proper lock; just a bolt. She slid it open, then stepped to the side and gave the door a gentle pull. If anypony was out there, they'd run into the sylph first.
Nothing happened. She peered out, then stepped out into the empty corridor, expecting with every step for an alarm to blare or guards to come running round the corner.
Except there were no guards, she realised. Just Blueberry and Cannons and Sorghum on this ship, and nopony else. So long as she didn't run into Blueberry, she should be fine. She closed the door behind her, put up a shield just in case, and cantered down the corridor following Saffron's instructions until she reached the hangar.
It was poorly lit by two lamps in the ceiling, but on the far end a razor of light lay between the bay doors. Directly in front of it were a set of bays to hold gunships. Only one was occupied.
First she cantered back and forth across the hangar, to the doors themselves, looking for any sort of controls that might open the doors. She found nothing.
Eventually, feeling the growing pressure of every second she remained, she went over to the gunship. The door opened without trouble.
Inside, the controls spread out before her like a bad omen. Every time she'd sat here, disaster had followed: Escaping from the griffons, fighting at the sintering facility, leaving Scootaloo behind.
No, she told herself. She was being silly. She forced herself back to the moment. The fuel gauge wasn't great, but it wasn't disastrous either. She'd be able to fly for a while.
And then?
First things first. The hangar door. She called her sylph into the cockpit – leaving it to go after the engines seemed like too big a risk – and closed the door. Saffron's startup instructions whispered in her head, and she flicked switches across the board in front of her. The engine rumbled. The propellers spun up from a murmur to a roar.
She aimed the guns at a hinge and fired, running from top to bottom. Bullets clattered; metal screeched; and the door was left hanging by a threat of chewed-up metal near the floor. She looked at the ammunition gauge as she aimed at the second door. Nearly empty. She fired again. The door leant over for a few seconds, then came away entirely and tumbled away into the sky. The guns, now empty, spun for a few seconds and eructed smoke.
Golden light filled the hangar. Sweetie Belle held her hoof to her brow and blinked a few times. The sun was low in the horizon. Morning or evening? She had no idea.
It didn't matter. Any stealth she had was certainly gone by now. She brought the gunship to a hover, and edged it forward. Its nose clanked against the remaining door, which gave no resistance, and twisted away, half open and half off.
At last in the open air. Her grin glowed briefly. Now, where to? The gunship could easily outrun the scout, but its range was shorter. She could orient herself using the Scar (so, she figured, the sun lay to the west – it was setting), but she had no idea where Ilmarinen was. She could head back the way the airship had come, which would work so long as it hadn't turned during its journey and she got the course exactly right ...
But what other choice was there?
She tilted the propellers forward and set off as fast as the gunship could go.
Her mane looked terrible, thought Blueberry, as she worked a comb through it. It felt greasy and was clearly beginning to lose some of its glimmer. And the mirror was dirty.
But, she reminded herself, this was the most important mission in the history of existence. Some sacrifices had to be made.
And far more important, she had the transform. It had taken a while to make it work, but now she had it. A hundred incomplete, useless scraps of information she'd downloaded into her head were coming together. It was the keystone, the final point needed for the triangulation, the nth equation that revealed all the unknowns.
Now she knew where to find Tanelorn. She knew its location to within a metre. She knew how to get in, and had a good idea as to what she'd find there.
As a bonus, she'd gained mastery of a few more spells, two or three of which would come in useful. And a few details about Sweetie Belle's personal life, which convinced her that the mare really would be better off when all this was finished.
“What do you think, boys?” she asked Sorghum and Cannons, holding a mane clip in her aura. “Up or down?”
Before either could answer, the room around them rumbled, and a faint roar came through the deckplates.
Blueberry turned from the mirror. “What –”
Again, a roar and a rumble. Gunship fire?
“Cannons, check her cell. Sorghum, come with me!” said Blueberry. She threw the clip to the side and swept out the door.
A few minutes later, the three of them stood in the hangar, looking out at the setting sun through the hole Sweetie Belle's departure had left. The gunship was still visible, just, rapidly retreating.
“Should we go after her?” Sorghum asked.
Blueberry considered this for a few seconds. Sweetie Belle was clearly smart enough to be a threat. But she wasn't the sort to take revenge, and there was no reason to suppose she'd take any more interest in their plan. Besides, once they reached Tanelorn, they'd be close to unstoppable anyway.
“No,” she said. “Even if she has to land, it'll take hours or days to search for her. We keep going.” She gestured at the hole. “Sombra doesn't need to know the details. If anyone asks, we got this in a battle, clear?”
“Clear.”
“Good.” Blueberry led them back in the direction of her room. ”You know, I think I'll try it up for now.”
As Sweetie Belle flew, the sun fell rapidly toward the horizon. A shallow mountain range rose to the east, its slope lit up pink, and ruffled outcrops of rock began poking up through the desert and pointing their long shadows towards it.
The fuel gauge was nearly empty. Sweetie Belle stared at it, then back up at the desert ahead. Maybe Ilmarinen was just over the horizon. Maybe if she flew just a few more kilometres she'd see it.
But though she'd approached Ilmarinen three times now, she didn't recognise the landscape at all. That didn't prove anything, but it wasn't a good sign.
The fuel gauge passed into the red section. A light blinked on the far side of the console.
“We're going to have to land, aren't we?” she said out loud.
Saffron appeared beside her. “I think so.”
Sweetie Belle kept flying. Maybe it was just over the horizon. If she couldn't reach Ilmarinen, at least she'd get close enough to see it..
The fuel gauge crawled down. The sky remained empty.
She looked down at the rock field below, out at the horizon, then back at the ground. With a small sigh, she brought the gunship to a hove above one of the outcrops. Better this than crashing. Slowly she descended and landed on a flattish portion of the outcrop.
To the left, the grainy, whorled surface of the rock descended several metres into a dip, then rose again steeply on the far side; to the right, it dropped away vertically to the desert below. It was still warm for the moment, but that would change soon. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and curled up in the seat. She almost wished she'd stayed on Blueberry's ship.
Scarlight soaked the cockpit in almost-orange, casting shadows at wrong angles across Sweetie Belle's coat. Daemons whispered in her ears, and words she didn't know she understood came sneaking through the sibilant flow without warning: Now; resplendent; attention. The air became colder, but wanting to conserve her energy, she wouldn't cast any warming spells until it became unbearable.
The last few days were stuck on a loop. Everything she'd been through, all she'd learned, and it had come to nothing.
She screamed out some incoherent curse as loud as she could, and slammed her hoof down on the side of the cockpit. That accomplished nothing, so for a few seconds she sat trying to calm herself.
She ran through the past few days again – and realised something.
“Saffron, remind me again how that giant skull can pick up magic from far away.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Right, there are three ontic fields. The field equations for one of those make it extremely effective for the propagation of waves. So much so that nearly every use of magic sends out waves in this field, and –”
“Okay, so if I were to use a spell right now, some echo of that would go out get caught in the skull right now?”
Saffron, now manifesting beside Sweetie Belle, gave a small shrug. “Within a few nanoseconds, yes. But I'm the only one in this place who could make sense of such a signal so if you're thinking of trying to signal for help …”
“It doesn't have to be the skull, though, does it?” pushed Sweetie Belle. “Anyone in Amaranth who was looking for the signal.”
“Yes, but still, you're thinking of screaming for help in the land of the deaf.”
“Isn't there anyone – anyone – who might notice a magical wave?”
“Blueberry and her friends?”
“Anyone else?”
“No! Listen, nobody from your world … wait. No. Wait.” Saffron's face widened into a big grin. “Aelewyrms can sense magic.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “Let's go back to Blueberry as a main candidate.”
“No, not the big one. The hatchlings! They like you. They're already familiar with your thaumic signature, and they're bonded to you. And they have better hearing, if you will, than the big one. I just need to concoct a sort of summoning call and make it into a spell you can you use. Give me a moment.”
Sweetie Belle waited.
“Okay, done,” said Saffron a few seconds later. “There, you feel that spell? It'll be draining, but it should work.”
She was right. The spell seemed to swallow all the remaining strength in Sweetie Belle's muscles as it built. Her horn flashed green briefly – and that was it. She sagged down in her seat and leant over the console. A needle of ice lanced down from her horn to the back of her neck and stayed there.
“Will it work?” she whispered.
“I'm sure … I'm pretty sure it might,” said Saffron.
“Oh, good.” Sweetie Belle shivered. “Don't get me wrong, I'll be glad to see them, but how are they going to help me?”
“You can ride them.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course,” said Saffron. “They're not sapient, but they are very smart, social creatures. Actually, my mate and I were considering raising one.” The thought seemed to trip her up. She stared off into the distance and chewed at her lower lip, then turned back to Sweetie Belle. “Anyway, the adult you've run into isn't representative. That's a lone dominant male. I think he's caught into a sort of permanent musth. Generalised aggression, attacking anything that looks remotely like competition.”
“The hatchlings won't grow up to be like that, then?”
“Probably not.” Saffron cocked her head. “I can't say for sure. I'm an engineer, not a biologist.”
“That's good to know.”
Saffron shrugged. She still looked preoccupied after the mention of her mate.
“What else did you see in Blueberry's mind, then?” said Sweetie Belle.
There was a pause. Saffron looked away. “I thought it would be best to leave that until we'd found safety.”
That caught Sweetie Belle's attention. “It's that bad? Well … I'm here now, and I haven't got anything else to distract me.”
“Tanelorn,” said Saffron. “That's what I saw in her head. Tanelorn.”
“And what's that?”
Saffron gave her a sidelong glance. “A city. No, more than that. The capital city of qilin civilisation. I thought … I thought it was gone. Destroyed like everything else. But Blueberry Pancake seems to believe it still exists.” She smiled faintly to herself. “I know what she was doing. Repositories automatically form networks– they find other repositories nearby and share basic information. Position, that sort of thing. Normally the effect is limited to a few hundred metres. But remember what I said about the world being fluid before you lot came here? Given that, and given millions of years, it's possible the last few repositories left on Amaranth shared information. Fragmentary and incomplete, yes, but Blueberry's been putting it together. My repository held the last piece of the puzzle. And now, if there's repository in Tanelorn, she'll know where to find it.”
Sweetie Belle took a moment to consider this. “So she finds Tanelorn? And what's there – a lot of qilin technology? Is that that she's after for this 'S.' creature?”
“I hope so,” said Saffron.
“What? What else is there?”
“I told you that there were many civilisations in Amaranth before the qilin. One of them left behind a machine. Not a machine in the way you'd understand it – it was closer to a self-sustaining spell, or a defect in the ontic fields, hidden in a sliver of quartz. It was old – we estimated it predated qilin civilisation by at least three million years. It took us decades at the height of our power to understand it. But by the end, we had a pretty good idea of what it was meant to do, even if we didn't understand the mechanism.
“It connects to the Scar – maximum magical potential – and infuses a creature what that potential.” Saffron smiled faintly. “We called it the Apotheosis Machine.”
“It makes you into a god?”
“If you like, yes. You don't have to worry about spells or energy. You get a direct connection from will to effect.”
“So why didn't you use it when the daemons came through? You could use it to get rid of them, right?”
“We stepped up research … that was one of our main attempts to save ourselves near the end, but we never managed to make it work properly.”
Sweetie Belle tried to ignore the daemon whispering in her ear. “Then we don't need to worry about it, do we? If you couldn't make it work, Blueberry has no chance.”
Saffron paused, looked at Sweetie Belle, then looked away.
“Oh, for pony's sake, there's more?” said Sweetie Belle.
Saffron sighed. “I suppose I may as well tell you everything. When the daemons finally learned our language and started to affect us, we still hadn't found a way to stop them. I managed to put together a field generator that repelled them. The problem was it only worked in a single pulse, needed hours to recharge, and was only effective to a radius of thirty metres or so. Then they'd flow back in immediately. And everything was going to hell around us.
“So my mate and I did the only thing we could think of. We stole a small ship, took it out, and used the generator to clear it of daemons. So long as we didn't get too close to any other technology, we could avoid getting any on board.
“We lived together on that ship for two years while civilisation disintegrated around us, trying to make the field generator work properly. Eventually, we fell out. He thought the field generator wouldn't work in time, and came up with a plan to make to Apotheosis Machine work. We …” Saffron paused, looked out into the dark desert ahead. “We had an argument, and he set out on his own. He believed he could get to it before the daemons affected him too much, use the Machine and clear them all out. He said he'd come back to me if he succeeded.”
“So did he succeed or not?”
“I thought he'd died in the attempt … but no. He survived, and must have used the machine. I saw him in your memory when I was trying to find a way to talk to you.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
“You know him as Discord.”
“So, let me get this straight. Discord used to be a qilin like you. Which is why you decided to hitch a ride with me in the first place. Now Blueberry and her friends are going to find the hidden city of Tanelorn so they can make someone – probably S. – as powerful as him?”
“Probably more powerful. The Apotheosis Machine requires an immense amount of thaumic power – I don't think he used it at full power, so the effects were limited.”
“It'll be fun getting the Ilmarinen navy to believe any of that.”
“You're going to tell them?”
“Well, I'm not going to go after her, that's for sure.”
Saffron cocked her head.
“What?” said Sweetie Belle. “What could I possibly do to stop her? I couldn't even escape from her. I came here to find Scootaloo, and that's what I'm going to do. Then we'll all go back to Equestria, you can see Discord again, and it'll be fine. I'll tell the princesses too, just to be on the safe side. But it's not my problem, okay? I …” She looked into Saffron's dark eyes and found she was struggling through a lump in her throat. “I've had enough, okay? Enough. I just … I just want to get Scootaloo and go … go home!” She turned away. Her breathing was ragged and there were tears in her eyes. She brushed them aside with her pastern, and looked out at the desert to try and calm herself.
“Okay,” said Saffron. “I understand. We can just go home and forget about all of this.”
Sweetie Belle nodded, still unable to speak.
She might have slept for a while; she wasn't sure. But when she looked out into the sky again, she saw something in the sky. No, five things. A long way off.
After staring at them for a few seconds, she struggled from her stupor and slammed open the cockpit door. Freezing air enveloped her immediately, but she got out anyway onto the gentle slope of rock. Her shadow in the false-orange light smeared to the side. She trotted to the edge of the rock and waved to the approaching aelewyrms
Ten or fifteen minutes later she could hear their chirrups and sussurations. Soon after they landed in a scattered formation around her.
The closest nudged at her chest and head. “Hello, hello!” she cried, she putting her hoof against its upper mandible and gently wrestling it down. “Yes, I missed you too!” She nuzzled that once, then turned to the next which was pushing forward. “They came. They actually came,” she said, turning to Saffron, unable to stifle a grin. Now she really was crying.
She went from each to to the next and back again, greeting and playing with them. They'd grown – maybe fifteen feet from mandible to tail. They smelt sweet and slightly sickly, and padded back and forth across the rock, occasionally unfurling and stretching a wing-limb, then coming back to nudge Sweetie Belle again. A couple explored the gunship, and one pulled away the fuel cap and investigated inside.
“You need names!” she decided, then hesitated. Five names, when she was only beginning to be able to tell them apart. “Maybe … maybe we should save that till later. Actually, you. You whine a lot. I might call you Chardonnay.”
“The welkin rings,” muttered Saffron, and shook her head. “How about we get out of here and get you rested before you try any more names.”
Sweetie Belle looked up at her. “Yeah … probably.” It was getting colder, after all. “How to I ride one of these things? They're wild, and I don't exactly have any training.”
“No, it should be fine,” said Saffron. “I think.”
“You think?”
“Again: Engineer, not animal trainer. Pick the most good-natured one … I think that one, over there. Go up beside it. Touch its mandibles like you've been doing. Like that, yes. You can communicate a little with your magic …”
After half an hour or so of Saffron's careful instruction before Sweetie Belle at last convinced the aelewyrm to lower the body segment between its foremost and middle pairs of wings. It sat their patiently while she tried to climb up. Eventually she managed. Its body was just a little too wide to grasp comfortably with her forelegs.
“Now, those magical signals we talked about?”
Sweetie Belle nodded and signalled forward.
And suddenly the aelewyrm was in the air, she was shrieking, and it felt like she'd left her stomach two or three feet below. After a few seconds she managed to regain her composure.
She was flying! Not in a cockpit or on the deck of an airship, but actually flying free, with the wind buffeting her face and mane. The other aelewyrms took to the air behind her, and on Saffron's instructions, she took the aelewyrm on a broad circle around the rock. Then, at last, she set off towards what she hoped was Ilmarinen.
I can hear it. No, more than that, I can feel it. The Machine is spinning up. I'd give us a little over twenty minutes before the world ends. That should be enough time to finish the story, though who under the welkin I'll be able to tell it to, I don't know.
Chapter 18 We're Getting the Band Back Together
The black sky cracked in two above, and threw false colours across the landscape. The air was still cold, but the aelewyrm's body warmed her, and with the last reserves of her strength she cast a spell hold off any risk of hypothermia.
Soon after they began, she found her excitement at seeing the aelewyrms wasn't enough to overcome her exhaustion. Now she flew with a grim determination to stay awake and watch for Ilmarinen.
Hours passed.
Eventually, she began to recognise the landscape. The familiar husks of salvage stripped long ago. All the rich resources that had brought salvors this far in the first place. And not long after, she saw a faint glow in the night sky to her left.
She'd found it!
She turned the aelewyrm towards the glow.
The city resolved itself in pieces. First a smear. Its edges sharpened. Soon she could make out the individual spheres, surrounded by their collective halo.
Something else caught her eyes, bounding along the shallow dunes.
It was Millie's hovercraft. Sweetie Belle turned towards its, and urged her aelewyrm onwards as fast as it could. As she approached, the hovercraft slowed, then came to a stop. Ilmarinen was still a bundle of lights in the distance.
She landed the aelewyrms gently on a flat spot amongst all the machinery on the hovercraft's roof. She was just dismounting when a hatch banged open a few metres away and Millie's head popped up out of it.
With her lips pressed together, she looked from one aelewyrm to the other, then turned back to Sweetie Belle, sighed, and said:
“You'd best come in for a beer, lass, and tell me what you bloody hell you've got yourself into now.”
“I suppose it's my fault for bein' an idiot,” said Millie. “I should've known all I had to do to make you reappear was try and do summat else. I bet you wish you'd come back with Dignity now, don'tcha?” She took a sip of her beer and gave Sweetie Belle a wry smile.
“A bit, yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. Sitting on the hovercraft's bridge, she'd recounted everything that happened to her since she left Pinion Beach, and Millie had received it as if it were no more unusual than a visit to Canterlot.
“Anyway, Tom's fine. He's still in Ilmarinen. Last I saw he were havin' a bit of an argument with t' other archaeologists. Pretty serious one – I reckon he was ready to raise his voice at one point.”
Sweetie Belle gave a brief laugh, then said, “I need to see him. And the others – Hinny's Revenge and Dulcet, are they there too?”
“Will be for a day or so,” said Millie.
“Good. Can you take me back to Ilmarinen? I need as many allies as I can get to save Scootaloo.”
“I guess you're includin' me in that?”
“Yes.”
Millie pinned her ears. “You've got a lot of nerve, lass.”
“Thank you.” Sweetie Belle raised her tankard, then finished the last of it. “Will you do it?”
“Them aelewyrms you brought. I can't imagine the Ilmarinen authorities will be happy about 'em, even if they are just babbies. Are they dangerous?”
“They're fine,” said Sweetie Belle. “Maybe it's better if they stay in the hovercraft though.”
“Aye, that's me. Mildred: Glorified taxi service and ancient megafauna storage.” Millie's tail flicked as she put her tankard down. “Actually that wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe then I could at least get paid for this shit.”
“What about …” Sweetie Belle nodded down the stairs to where, along with the aelewyrms, a tied-up Gregor was being kept.
“He knows I'm doin' him a favour by not givin' him in her to get executed, so he can bloody well wait,” said Millie, loud enough that Gregor could probably hear her.
Sweetie Belle slept late in the table bed she'd taken last time she was aboard, and when she woke it was nearly midday. She felt, if not refreshed, then significantly less exhausted. Millie gave her oats, tentatively played with the aelewyrms while she ate, and then took her back to Ilmarinen.
She found Tom in one of the cafes talking to another couple of researchers – one unicorn and one diamond dog. When he saw Sweetie Belle walking up to him he dropped his spoon of powdered scorpion, whereupon it fell from the bowl and clattered to the floor. By that point he was already standing, and as soon as she was close enough he hugged her tightly. After a second he let go, stood, and rubbed at one ear, looking awkward. “Uh, hello,” he said.
“I'm glad to see you too,” said Sweetie Belle. “
He introduced her to his friends, then asked, “Where's Scootaloo?”
Sweetie Belle paused. “I … I lost her,” she admitted. “I think the pirates are still after her.”
Tom stared her. “Oh … crumbs,” he said at last. He looked over at his friends who were still eating. “I have to sort this. I'll see you later. You can have the rest of the scorpion.”
“Oh, right, thanks for that,” said the stallion.
Tom turned back to Sweetie Belle and looked up at Millie. “I think we all need to talk, then.”
On the way to the Dulcet to try and find Lucille, Sweetie Belle once again recounted her story for Tom's sake. She suspected this was quickly going to get tedious.
Tom was silent for a while after she had finished. They walked together down one of the corridors that connected the spheres to the docking towers. At last he said, “So what are we going to do about Blueberry?”
“Nothing. She's not after me any more. I'm going to find Scootaloo, and then we're going to go home.”
“What if she doesn't want to go home with you?” said Millie.
Sweetie Belle glared at her. “I don't know. One thing at a time, alright?” She turned back and chewed at her lip. “We'll rescue her. Make sure she's okay. Then it's her choice what she wants to do.”
“Aye, that works.”
“And the Ilmarinen navy can deal with the rest of them. They're the ones who want to establish a rule of law, so I'll leave them to it.”
Tom said nothing.
At the gangplank to the Dulcet they asked for Lucille, and she came out to meet them personally.
“Ah, Sweetie Belle!” she said. “So you made it at last! I was just thinking about starting to worry.” She frowned briefly, leant forward, and looked around the docking tower. “Are you about to tell me things went wrong?”
“She ain't dead,” said Millie. “Apparently. Just on the run from pirates – sorry, privateers.”
Once again Sweetie Belle told Lucille what had happened, and asked if she would help.
“Let's see,” said Lucille, leaning against the wall by the gangplank. “You dig out the salvage I was hunting – which does look like it'll be very profitable. Then you bring along the fabulous and flouncy Blueberry Pancake. Then you lead her away so we can all get to safety. I don't know where we are on the who-owes-who stakes at this point. But I'll give you a hearing, and you can make your case in my ship. Especially if you can come up with a little incentive.”
“Give me half an hour,” Sweetie Belle told her. “I just need to go and get Gritstone, then we should be done.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” said Lucille, clicking her beak. “I'll be here.”
Sweetie Belle grinned at her, waved a brief goodbye, and headed back down the corridor, with Tom and Millie in tow.
Hinny's Revenge was docked at Tower Two. There, Sweetie Belle found Whicker guarding the gangplank.
His eyes widened when he saw her. “Fuck me,” he said when he saw her. “There you are! You know we've been hearin' all sorts of mad shit about you. 'She's dead', 'She ain't fuckin' dead', all sorts. You found that mare you were lookin' for, then?”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “Yes and no,” she said. “I lost her again. Now I'm going after her properly. I'm looking for any help I can get.”
“Sure fuckin' thing,” said Whicker. “Lemme just –”
“There's no need,” came a clear voice from behind him, and from the ugly door in the airship's hull stepped Gritstone. He walked slowly down the plank and nodded briefly at Whicker as he passed him. “At ease.” Then he turned back to Sweetie Belle. “You're alive. That's impressive. Well done.”
“Oh, uh … thank you.”
“But I'm afraid the answer is no.”
“What?”
“Lucille sent me a message about the ansible. You want help rescuing your friend? I came to speak to you directly as a personal courtesy, I'm not going to help you.”
“But I –” began Sweetie Belle.
“My ship is not yours to play with and put in danger as you please,” said Gritstone calmly.
“You're a smart stallion,” offered Millie.
Sweetie Belle glared at her. “Not helping.” To Gritstone, she said, “What if there was salvage?”
“I can find salvage on my own, with far less risk of piracy. I'm sorry, Sweetie Belle. Goodbye.” Before she could reply, Gritstone had turned and was walking back up the gangplank. She watched him go back inside.
“Tough fuckin' break, filly,” said Whicker.
“It's fine,” Sweetie Belle told him. “I think we can do this without him. Just … could you say hi to Petallion for me? And Muttershanks – I know stuff about daemons now that she'd give her right hoof for.”
Whicker grinned and patted her rather heavily on the shoulder. “Sure thing. You take care now.”
Sweetie Belle turned to Tom and Millie. “I guess that's everyone then.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sweetie Belle found herself sitting in one of the Dulcet's meeting rooms, alongside Millie, Tom, Lucille and the ship's defence officer, Cerise. She had brought everyone up to speed about Saffron's presence, though she had left out the fact that the she had manifested sitting on the tabletop itself.
“Sounds useful,” Lucille had commented when Sweetie Belle told her about Saffron's knowledge of qilin engineering.
“Consider it a possible incentive?”
“Perhaps.”
Sweetie Belle acknowledged this, then began: “When she caught me, Blueberry said Scootaloo had escaped, and the griffon pirates had gone after her. The three ships that came after us …”
“Oh, gods,” murmured Cerise.
“The odds are better this time,” Sweetie Belle told her. “Blueberry took one of the scoutships and killed its crew. And I can promise you they lost all the gunships they had when we last ran into them.”
“That leaves a light cruiser and a scoutship,” said Cerise. “Remember what I said last time? Dulcet could just about break even with a lone scout.”
“We have got support,” observed Lucille, looking over at Millie.
Cerise tilted her head. “Armaments?”
“Harpoons guns,” said Millie.
“… Harpoon guns …” Cerise stared at Millie, then gave Lucille a look that seemed to say this is ridiculous.
Millie leaned in and nodded once, sharply. “Three harpoon guns. And don't get mardy, luv, but I have taken Dignity into battle with some of these griffons before, to save these two I might add, and come out of it alive. She ain't a battleship, but she's more manoeuvrable than owt you have to offer.”
Cerise clicked her beak.
“It's true,” Tom said. “From what I saw, airships have trouble firing at the hovercraft. It's on the ground, below the normal range of their guns, and has acceleration nearly as good as a gunship.” He turned to Sweetie Belle. “Still, all this is assuming they haven't called in any more ships.”
“No,” said Sweetie Belle. “But since we don't have any better information.” She shrugged, and added, “I can also help with my elementals. Sylphs are very good at disabling airship engines.”
Cerise put a single talon to her beak and closed her eyes for a few moments, then turned to Lucille. “Yes, okay. We've from suicidal to merely very dangerous. We might be able to beat these pirates.”
“Privateers,” murmured Millie. This seemed to catch Lucille's and Cerise's attention, and she continued: “I've got one of 'em tied up in Dignity. Told me all about it.”
“Flavian?” said Lucille.
“Aye.”
“I always knew that bastard was up to something.”
Millie grinned at her. “You're alright, you are. I like you. I reckon if this gets out, it'll ruin him. T' revanchists will support him come hell or high water, but most of t' neutralists won't.”
“I wouldn't be surprised if he has five levels of plausible deniability behind this,” said Cerise.
“Sure,” said Millie, “but even his friends don't trust him by now.”
“I feel like I've wondered into a very strange Aquileonan political drama,” Tom said to Sweetie Belle.
She agreed. The tangles of the Aquileonan parliament, though mostly opaque to her, seemed needlessly complicated at best and dangerously unstable at worst. It did seem to give them plenty to talk and get angry about, though.
“You're right. Sorry. We can talk about this later,” said Lucille. “Now: How do we find Scootaloo so we can get into this not-suicidal mission?”
“That's easy,” said Sweetie Belle. “Saffron can help. See, Scootaloo's new wings give off a strong magical signal … ”
“Ah,” said Tom
Sweetie Belle grinned at him. “Exactly. First, we need to go to Skulltown.”
A little less than an hour later, Sweetie Belle went with Millie and Tom up to the offices of the Ilmarinen navy in Sphere Two. It was a more imposing than most of city : a long two-story structure of adobe, painted in the Ilmarinen flag colours of blue, orange and black, and topped with three oversized domes. They sat on the sloping ground near the edge of the bowl-shaped terrain at the base of there sphere and seemed to overlook it.
A wire fence surrounded the whole thing, but the gates at the front had been bolted open as if someone, uncertain of how unfriendly they wanted to make the offices seem, had regretted the earlier decision to erect it. Inside, she ran into no resistance until the front door itself where a stallion asked them for their names, then directed them down a corridor to the right.
The walls were bare, painted white and lined with pipes and wires, but punctuated at intervals with lamps like flower-heads set in ornate brackets. Room 15, said the door in neatly painted letters. Sweetie Belle knocked.
“Come in,” called a voice.
Its owner, a bored-looking unicorn stallion behind a desk so neat it looked closer to a mathematical abstraction than a physical object, glanced up at them as they came in. “Mildred, you're the only one with a ship berthed here. Is that right?”
“Millie. Yes, I am.”
“And you two?”
“Tom. Just Tom. I was a member of the archaeology expedition that was rescued a few days ago.”
“Sweetie Belle.”
A pause while the stallion looked over them. “Right,” he said at last. “I am Captain Proper Order. And what do you have to report?”
Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “Griffon pirates have been docking here a few times over the past few days.”
“We are aware of that,” said Proper. “But we can't police the whole of Amaranth, and we very rarely have actual proof.”
“I understand,” said Sweetie Belle. “But this goes beyond piracy. The pirates are – or were – working with a crystal unicorn called Blueberry Pancake …”
And once again, aided by Millie and Tom, she gave her story – this time a carefully edited one, without Saffron or the aelewyrm hatchlings appearing and with some events glossed over. She concluded with saying she'd learned Blueberry was going after some ancient technology that could make S. very powerful.
Proper nodded slowly when she had finished. “You can see, I hope, why I might find some of this hard to believe.” He skimmed his papers. “A lone gunship docking – yes, I remember that. That was you?”
“Yeah.”
Proper sat back with a creased brow. “You know that counts as an admission you haven't paid your fee for berthing here?” Seeing Sweetie Belle's expression, he smiled briefly. “Don't worry. I won't chase you down for that. If what you say is true, you have plenty of reason not to pay, and if you're not, it's not really an admission. Anyway, I'll look into this and see if we have a record of the other events you mentioned. I should warn you, though, this may fall outside our jurisdiction.”
“Captain,” said Millie, “if you don't mind me sayin', that's bollocks. I know for a fact that the jurisdiction of the Ilmarinen navy were defined in a reight sketchy way. I've seen your battleships protectin' Pinion Beach. You can investigate this if you want to. And believe me, if she's right, the Ilmarinen is under threat.”
Proper was silent for a few seconds as the two of them held eye contact. “As I said, I'll look into it. Is there anything else?”
Sweetie Belle looked to the others, then shook her head.
“Very well. Thank you for your report. Goodbye.”
Out in the corridor Tom said, “That went better than I expected.” Then, when neither Sweetie Belle nor Millie responded, “Do you think he'll do anything about it?”
“I don't know,” Sweetie Belle said. “His choice. Come on, we need to get to Skulltown as quickly as possible.”
Before they left, Millie took her ansible terminal out of the Ilmarinen communications office, commenting, “There ain't no one I really need to talk to anyway.” With the other terminal aboard the Dulcet, the ships would be able to keep in constant communication with each other.
They also agreed that, for the mission, it Gregor would be best locked in one of the Dulcet's cells.
While all this was underway, Sweetie Belle took Tom down into Dignity's hold. She'd told him about the aelewyrm hatchlings, but his eyes widened when he saw them.
“Oh … wow,” he said.
The aelewyrms chirruped and twanged at Sweetie Belle's entrance. They'd developed a new noise since she'd been riding them that sounded like a pipe organ being sat on as it went out of tune. She stepped forward to introduce Tom.
He stayed by the door, stared at her, then tentatively followed.
The closest hatchling nudged toward him. He looked over at Sweetie Belle.
“I think they remember you,” she said. “You can touch them.”
He reached forward slowly and paused a few inches away from the aelewyrm's mandibles, then continued. “This is …” he trailed off, grinned widely and stroking the upper mandible. “Their actually made of corundum, you know,” he murmured. “Like rubies …” He greeted the second aelewyrm a bit more smoothly.
“That one's called Bounce,” said Sweetie Belle. “It's the one I rode here. Those two are Chardonnay and Scruff. I don't know about the other two.”
Tom rubbed Scruff behind the wing and repeated its name to it. “Well, coming up with five names in one go isn't easy,” he said.
“You wanna help?”
Tom looked over at her. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
One of the unnamed hatchlings was wrestling with Chardonnay. The other was curled up nearby making drawn-out, lazy-sounding noises. Tom walked over to them.
“Lind. Benz.” he said, pointing to each in turn.
Saffron appeared beside Sweetie Belle. “That's so beautiful. Really, really, how wonderful.” She snorted.
Sweetie Belle gave her a grin. “Yeah, it is.”
The chevaloid's hooves, wrapped in cotton sheets to soften them, pressed into her back in long smooth motions. Blueberry stretched out a hind leg as far as she could and, face buried in and nuzzling up against a fluffy pink towel, purred, “Yes, there. There. Exactly right.”
The door clicked open and slammed shut again.
Without opening her eyes, and without letting the growling undertones in her voice slip, she said, “Brother Flay. Hello once again. Would you like to join in?”
Silence.
Blueberry let it hang, save for a soft mewl as the chevaloid moved its massage a little further up her spine.
“Our liege has arrived.” Flay's tone had the quality of sharp-edged shrapnel. “Our ships will be docking soon.”
The meeting was an odd affair: Her airship, still engineless, was being tugged by the scout.
“Wonderful. How long?”
“Ten minutes.” Flay sniffed, then finally gave in. “And what is this? Do you intend to appear before him done up as a harlot? Has your respect for our order fallen so low?”
She at last opened her eyes. Flay stood before her, gesturing at a line of blue and gold mane ribbons hanging from the spine of a second chevaloid. “I would never dream of such a thing,” she said, one side of her upper lift pulling up. “Those are for when I get back.” Her aura flickered briefly, and the first chevaloid stopped its massage and stood to attention. With a wriggle, she shifted from the massage table and settled her hooves on the floor. Her robe, held in her violet aura, floated over from where it was folded in the corner and settled about her shoulders. “Well, then. How do I look?”
“Appropriate.” Flay seemed to struggle to make the admission.
Blueberry leaned in close to him. “You're such a charmer,” she whispered.
After staring at her for a moment, Flay trotted out of the room.
Soon afterwards, the bulkhead around her juddered. A distant-sounding clank echoed through the hull.
Sombra had arrived.
As she walked with her guide through the dim corridors, she cycled through her plan for the meeting. How many adherents were on this ship? Not many. Those who looked after Sombra, and performed the transition ritual to sustain him, and a smattering of others. The rest were more distant allies, picked up along the way with promises of wealth and power.
By the door, her guide stopped and looked over at her with an unreadable impression. She smiled at him, spontaneously and sincerely, and slid open the door.
It closed behind her. She knocked on the second door, and waited for the bolt to open.
The familiar smell of mould and rot, thick as soup, insinuated itself into her sinuses. Sombra, sitting impossibly still, and his throne formed a single faint shape in the gloom. At first, only sickly green glow of his eyes was visible; as her vision adjusted, she could make out the faint lines of his cloak.
The old feeling came rushing back, like she was a filly again, alone, all her secret shames on display. She throttled the feeling and stepped forward.
“Tanelorn?” said Sombra.
Blueberry caught sight of the waxen, dry flesh of an open wound in his foreleg.
“I have it. I know where it is. All the weapons you desire.”
The head shifted slightly, like something directed by a puppeteer. “Good.”
Blueberry walked closer. She stamped her rear hoof lightly against the floor, and started walking slowly to the left. Beyond the bound of propriety. “Before we begin, I just want to say …” Stamp “ … what all this means to me.”
“Sister Blueberry Pancake.” The words ended with a warning growl, too deep and too savage for any pony throat to have made.
Blueberry continued her circle of his throne, so she was nearly behind him. Stamp. “Find the crystal heart; rule the world.” She appeared on his far side. Stamp. “Find Tanelorn; rule the world.” Stamp. “Talk about unimaginative! I don't care what this sycophants say. I'm not impressed. Your lack of ambition sickens me.”
“Cease!” The air just in front of his horn seemed to froth, erupting dark aetherial lances towards her. A second later, five spots on the ground glowed briefly, and Sombra's spell dissipated. In that moment, Blueberry could see how small and pathetic the host body looked.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Did I do that?” She looked up from the floor, and her expression of mock surprise fell away. “I know you. I know what you are, oh my liege. A petty tyrant, an arrogant fool who thinks his little followers can't think for themselves.. I … I am so much greater. You want to rule the world. I am going to save it and everything in it. Including you. And when I'm done, you'll thank me.”
She stepped back again as the pentagon of light began to grow. “Don't worry,” she told him. “It's just a pocket dimension. I'll come and get you when I'm ready.”
Sombra's roar was lost inside the shimmering walls that rose to enclose him. Together with his throne, he dropped away as if the floor had opened up beneath him. A second later the light dimmed and vanished, and nothing remained. “Well,” said Blueberry, “I'm glad we had this talk,” and strode out of the room.
That was the hard part done with. Outside, she allowed her guide to take her back to her own ship, where she met immediately with her bodyguards and five chevaloids, including the one carrying her makeup box and ribbons.
“Did you do it?” asked Sorghum. He sounded almost eager.
“Oh, you wonderful boys,” she told them. “I did. Everything is going the way I planned. Now come with me.”
Leading them in a procession towards the bridge, she applied her makeup and worked the ribbons into her mane. When as last she swept into the bridge with her bodyguards, she looked magnificent. Guards briefly tried to block her, but stepped back when they saw her robe.
The chevaloids waited outside. Blueberry and her bodyguards stopped by the front window that looked out over the desert ahead and turned back to face the bridge crew – a total of six ponies, including an acting captain and a robed adherent to whom he was subordinate.
“Sister Blueberry Pancake,” said the adherent. “Please explain your presence here.”
“Of course,” she said, pushing a gentle thrall spell across the whole bridge. “I'm here to announce a change in management. That is to say, Sombra is no longer with us. I am in control here – and I promise I will bring you a far more than he ever could. Any objections?”
“Traitor!” hissed the adherent. “You –” He looked down at the lance extending from her shield through his chest, then back up at her.
Blueberry withdrew it and let the silence hang as he collapsed. “Anyone else?” she said.
I thought I heard Scootaloo there for a moment. I don't know where she's gone.
Sweetie Belle should have told her the secret earlier.
Chapter 19 Wing Signals
“You're not going to anything stupid again, are you?” said Saffron's voice in her ears.
Sweetie Belle laughed quietly. “I'm long past that. I hope.” She lowered herself a little more.
The familiar mildew-scented darkness enveloped her. A glowing patch of desert visible through the skull's eye floated in the darkness, cut away from its context. Beside it lay the pale green glow of her dial, also floating in nothingness. The faint, intermittent squeaks of the rail above were returned in delayed echoes.
Dignity and the Dulcet had left for Skulltown together, with Gregor the privateers transferred to a cell in the latter where he would be easier to handle, and Sweetie Belle riding with Tom and the aelewyrm hatchlings in the hovercraft.
“How close are we?” she asked.
“A couple more inches,” said Saffron. “Right, that's it. Stop here.”
Sweetie Belle stopped her descent and locked the loop in place.
“Do you want a visual?” Saffron said.
“Yeah.”
Indistinct patches of colour appeared in the darkness. “This is everything that happened since we were last here,” said Saffron. “Give it a few seconds to resolve.” The blobs of colours slowly contracted into to something more structured.
Saffron snorted. “See that?” The largest and most vivid volume, a sharp sphere of red, flashed. “That's from our fight at the sintering facility. There's the signal you sent out to summon the aelewyrms, just like you wanted. And that … I don't know what that is. Someone just used a very strong spell a few hours ago – it looks like a containment spell.”
“Is it important?”
“Well, unless there's someone new we don't know about, Blueberry's up to something.”
“What about Scootaloo?”
“Okay … Yes, I see her.” Everything on the map vanished except for the battle and a thin, cherry-red line emerging from it, first on a shallow curve, then changing direction sharply, turning towards Ilmarinen, then being forced away again.
“The signal from her wings?” said Sweetie Belle. “And that's where she is now?”
“Yes, within a few minutes.”
Nothing else was visible on the map. “How close is it?”
“Close. No more than three hours journey by airship, if we set out now. She's flying – either with her wings or in an airship, I don't know. But she's heading east, passing by us. And I think she's slowing down.”
“They're going to catch her.”
“It seems likely.”
“And this is happening right now? We need to go after her! Is there anything else you can see? Anything we can use?”
“I've got it all. Position, trajectory, deceleration, plus estimates. We can go.”
Without saying another word, Sweetie Belle unlocked the loop and began hauling herself upwards as fast as she could.
Lucille was waiting outside the vision quest cabin and talking politics with Millie. The early afternoon sun glanced off the bleached bone ground beneath her and sent ghostly islands of iridescence skimming across her brown feathers as she turned to Sweetie Belle. “Good news?”
“They're going to get her! The pirates!” Sweetie Belle told them as soon as she got out. “I know where she is, but we need to hurry! Come on.”
Back aboard the Dulcet, Cerise unfurled a map showing the location of Skulltown and the surrounding desert, and lay it across a large table. She scattered a few arrowhead shapes cut from metal and painted in various designs on the corner.
When Sweetie Belle had objected to this delay, Lucille had told her, “We can spare ten or twenty minutes to make sure we do this right.” Part of Sweetie Belle had wanted to insist: This was her friend, her plan, her. But in the end she relented. Don't do anything stupid.
Cerise dropped out the counters on the map. Scootaloo's current location and the privateers who were presumably close behind, as Sweetie Belle had told her. The Dulcet and Dignity back and Skulltown.
“We should be able to catch them,” she said, “if we aim about here.” She noted a location with her pointer. “As your qilin friend said, it's about three hours away. If it were a straight chase, the cruiser has a higher top speed than either of us, but we're coming in at close to a right angle. That's assuming they don't turn.”
“If they do?” said Lucille.
“I'd guess that depends on Scootaloo. And if she turns too sharply, it gives the ships a chance to gain on her. So assuming only shallow turns, if we go here and here …” She moved the friendly counters either side of pirates's trajectory. “ … we'll keep most areas in sight.”
“We have to split up? Is that ever a good idea?” said Tom.
Cerise glanced at him briefly and clicked her beak. “In this case, yes. We have a direct ansible connection, so as soon as either sees the target, both can converge on it.”
“Now as for the attack itself. Sweetie Belle, you said you can damage an engine with these elementals?”
“Unless they're killed first, yes. I might be able to damage guns, too. Overpressure, you know.”
“But we only have a limited number at our disposal?”
“Yeah …”
“The scout has four engines and two gun turrets. The cruiser has six engines and eight turrets. Is that too many?”
“Oh, yeah. In my last battle, fifteen nearly killed me … and I don't think I'm that strong any more.”
“Okay, so prioritise. You only need to damage the engines on one side. We get the scout out of the battle first. Millie, you said you had harpoons. With cables attached?”
“Woven diamond,” said Millie with a wide smile. “A couple kilometre of it.”
“Then if the elementals aren't enough for both, you can slow the other ship by grabbing it and hanging on.”
Millie gave her a mock salute. “Yes ma'am. I've done that a couple of times before, no problem.”
Cerise nodded, then turned to Lucille, who said, “I'm willing to help save Scootaloo, but I don't want a full battle here. I've got my own people to look after, so if at any point it looks like we might sustain major casualties, I'm going to pull out.”
“But while we are there,” said Cerise, “We'll engage with the ships to keep them occupied. That way, they'll have to divide their fire between the two of us.”
“Or three,” Sweetie Belle suggested. “I can ride the aelewyrms. Divide their fire more, and I'll get a better vantage point.”
Three hours in Dignity. The continuous roar of the hovercraft's engines and the rapid but shallow undulations of floor beneath the skirt were familiar now.
Tension built like an an overwound spring in Sweetie Belle's chest. It was overwhelming at first, then exhausting. She paced back and forth. She practiced riding on Bounce's back while it padded about in the confined space and Saffron gave her new commands. The aelewyrms alternated between flying on their own alongside the hovercraft, then coming back into the hold.
Sometimes Tom happily played with them, stroking their mandibles and patting their sides with increasing confidence. Then it seemed his own tension would overcome him, and he would go and sit by the side, scratch at his ears, pace, and meet Sweetie Belle's gaze with a grim look. It felt like there was nothing to say. Then he might go to the bridge and talk to Millie – or drive the hovercraft for a while.
Millie, on these occasions, came into the hold to check if the aelewyrms had damaged anything, and chatted idly about how she could never get a moment's peace.
“It'll be borin' once you lot go home,” she confessed at one point, then paused “Still, nowt can be done about that, I suppose.”
“Maybe Scootaloo will want to stay here,” Sweetie Belle offered, idly stroking Chardonnay behind the eyes.
Millie looked at her blankly for a moment, then smiled broadly. “You're not as gormless as I thought,” she said, then shrugged. “Nah. Scoots and me became friends 'cause we was both pretendin' to be lone wolf types. If we started travellin' together, we wouldn't have that anymore.”
“You could stop pretending?”
“There's only a few creatures in this world strong enough to stop pretendin' and start bein', and I ain't one of them.” Millie stared out the window. “Oh, sod. I'm startin' to sounds like a two-bit philosopher here. Better get back to t' controls.” She waved and trotted up the stairs to the bridge.
Sweetie Belle stared after her, until Chardonnay nearly pushed her off her hooves trying to nuzzle her. She turned to it and wrestled gently with its mandibles held in her aura until Tom came back into the cabin.
A few minutes later, Dignity lurched to starboard and accelerated heavily. The aelewyrms stumbled and Chardonnay complained.
“We've got a sighting!” called Millie.
First it was a flickering thread of light on the pale grey horizon. Then, at last, still smudged by the atmospheric haze, she could make it out as an object: A grey, elongated shape. The pirates' cruiser.
Sweetie Belle took her eye from the telescope and nodded.
“Now look at this.” Millie re-aimed the telescope.
Sweetie Belle looked again. The view looked almost the same, a rock-strewn plain with mountaintops in the far distance, except here there was, for a moment, a flash of iridescence.
“Scootaloo!”
“I think so, yeah. They on the same course you – Saffron – predicted. We're in the right place. Lucille's coming in from the other side.”
“Can we catch them?”
Millie looked out at the plain rushing past below the skirt. “I don't know, lass. It's too close to call. Dignity ain't quite as fast as their airship. But even if we can't we'll be on their tail. We can pressure them.”
They closed the distance quickly. Soon the cruiser, scout and Scootaloo's trail knitted themselves out of the distance smudges until there were clearly visible. The Dulcet emerged from behind the horizon.
The privateers must have seen both ships following them by now, but they didn't do anything. They had no gunships, and they were still out of weapons range.
Millie showed Tom how to aim and fire the harpoons. “I'll pilot, you shoot,” she told him. Sweetie Belle watched them while she made sylphs. Only six – more than that and she'd risk tiring herself during the battle.
Outside, the airships swelled. No more than five or six kilometres away. Less. Millie checked her telescope. “They're aiming their guns at last. You'd best get going.”
“Right,” said Sweetie Belle. She cantered down the steps as fast as she could to where Bounce was waiting, and climbed on its back. The giant rear door opened slowly while she summoned her sylphs about her. The other aelewyrms gathered.
“Oh, Celestia,” she murmured to herself, string out into the open sky and the ground hurtling by only a couple of metres away.
Ears pinned, Tom came up to her, handed her some goggles, and grasped her forehoof. “Good luck,” he said.
Sweetie Belle put them on and gave him a weak smile. “Thanks.” And when he had stepped away, she commanded Bounce forward.
Its limbs banged a rhythm agains the floor, then opened them in one sinuous motion – and they were outside, facing backwards. Bounce swooped round immediately; Sweetie Belle felt like she was being crushed by the acceleration. She shrieked – then it was over, and the was facing forward, winds hammering at her body and trying to tear her away from Bounce, Dignity ten metres below her and falling away rapidly. The sylphs, sharpened into needle shapes, flew alongside her, and the other aelewyrms followed behind.
And ahead, their targets, with guns sticking out from the gondolas and propellers slung from the underside of the envelopes.
The aelewyrms were flying flat out to keep up with Dignity at this speed. Sweetie Belle carefully pulled upwards and to the right to put some distance between her and the hovercraft and make them less of a target. With that done, she fixed her gaze on the two propellers on the right of the scoutship. Destroy those, she told the first two sylphs. They crawled ahead – faster than the airships, but not by much.
The cruiser's guns flashed and roared. Part of the Dulcet's envelope erupted and peeled away. A second later, the scout also fired, this time aiming down. Dignity skated to the side, unharmed as far as she could tell.
When Sweetie Belle looked up, she saw the cruiser's guns were rolling towards her. She nearly froze – then pulled Bounce down a second before the guns fired. A familiar ache lanced through her chest: one of the sylphs, too slow in following her, had been destroyed. That left three to work with. She sent another one after the Scout's guns, and final two after the cruiser's engines.
So if – if all succeeded, that would cripple the scout but leave it able to fire, and slow the cruiser. She'd have to leave the rest to her companions.
Come on. Hurry up!
The Dulcet, firing back in short bursts every few seconds, pulled to the side so the scout was between it and the cruiser. One of the scout's guns exploded, leaving a scar in the gondola.
Sweetie Belle saw another turret aiming at her, and dropped out of its reach before it could finish. Below, Dignity danced back and forth across the rocks. A harpoon trailing a strand of diamond weave shot at the cruiser's gondola; missed; fell back to the desert. A second hit true, but came out a second later. The third didn't fire, because the hovercraft had to slide away from another burst of fire.
A dull, distant pop – and the scout's rear starboard propeller was gone, trailing smoke in its wake. It lurched to the side, slowed, and a few moments later its other engine went up. Sweetie Belle felt the sylphs die; her head spun, and for a few seconds it took all her remaining energy to stay on Bounce's back. A third lance of pain; another explosion. The guns?
When she managed to look up again, the scoutship was floundering – wrenched into a starboard turn by its remaining engines and rapidly decelerating.
Dignity fired a third harpoon. This time, it succeeded – the harpoon stayed, and the thread snapped taut. For a second, the hovercraft seemed to lift – then it thumped down again, cruiser slowed and descended a fraction.
The scoutship, crippled and trailing smoke from half a dozen spots, passed overhead, and fell behind them.
That just left the cruiser, leashed and being dragged back. It seemed to rage, guns firing everywhere, smacking against the rock below, tearing into the Dulcet's hull, trailing Sweetie Belle.
Then her final sylph hit. One of the gun turrets exploded. Shrapnel rained out of the smoke. Sweetie Belle held onto Bounce as tightly as she could, but felt herself slipping anyway. Over, over – the ground loomed beneath her. More shots were being fired, but she couldn't tell who was attacking. The world seemed to tip over –
And with one last effort, she grabbed at the aelewyrm's thick hide with her hooves and aura together, and managed to pull herself back up.
There, she caught sight of one of the remaining turrets aimed straight at her. She yelped and reflexively told Bounce to drop.
The world tilted again; the desert plain became a giant wall ahead of her. Gunfire roared into the empty air above her.
She was falling forward. She scrabbled, but this time her hooves couldn't get purchase. Her aura wasn't strong enough. She slid down over Bounce's head, out into the open air.
Something grabbed her tail. Bounce! With his mandibles he flicked her back upwards. The planes of sky and desert tumbled senselessly about her; she screamed and grabbed at something, anything, to steady herself, but her hooves and aura met only empty air.
She landed sideways on Bounce's back, gasped for breath, felt herself slipping forward almost immediately, then pulled back and steadied herself. She didn't feel certain enough to try and get on properly.
A streak of iridescence caught her eye. Scootaloo must have seen the battle and turned around.
She swooped down low, a tiny speck against the bulk of the cruiser, and headed for the aelewyrms. Sweetie Belle gestured at her to go down, towards Dignity, then took Bounce down on a descent too. Gunfire rattled about them; the cruiser was damaged, torn and scarred in a dozen places, but still going. She put together a couple more sylphs as Dignity approached, then sent them up to another two of the cruiser's guns.
Where was the Dulcet? It had already pulled back, anticipating a retreat.
From below, the plains and Dignity flew up towards her. The rear doors to the hold were open, approaching.
The aelewyrms landed together in a clatter of limbs. Sweetie Belle rolled off of Bounce and fell the the floor. The sylphs she'd left behind died, and what little energy she had left went out of her and left her curled up and gasping.
Something twanged and clattered above the roar of the engine. The hold seemed to tilt as Dignity turned. A few more bursts of gunfire came from somewhere, but they were weak and intermittent.
With a shivering foreleg, Sweetie Belle pushed the goggles aside. Glowing columns of of dust and smoke fell from bulletholes in the roof. She managed to roll over onto her belly and just about stand.
Hoofsteps came clattering down the steps from the bridge.
Scootaloo.
She stared down and Sweetie Belle. The moment seemed frozen, as if everything was encased in glass. Scootaloo looked almost as exhausted as Sweetie Belle felt. Her folded wings glimmered and hummed faintly behind her. Then she rushed forward, grabbed sweetie Belle as she was about to stumble, and pulled her into a hug.
Her rough, tangled mane pressed into the side of Sweetie Belle's face. She smelt lightly of oil and sweat. They sank slowly to the ground, both too tired to stay standing.
Sweetie Belle's secret … well, let me say, at this point, there doesn't seem to be much sense in blame. Whatever else you may think of her, I can empathise.
Chapter 20 Powder Blue Rectangle
The swollen sun sat on the horizon like a blood orange, leaving stretched shadows filled in with smeared Scarlight. Scootaloo sat pressed against her in Dignity's main cabin, eating a bowl of oats as loudly as it was possible to do so. It was oddly attractive, thought Sweetie Belle as she ate her own.
“… deserve …” whispered the daemon in her ear. “… eternity …”
“You did it,” said Scootaloo, looking up and attempting without success to brush away some oats stuck to her upper lip.
“Yeah.”
“Every time I tried to get to Ilmarinen, they managed to cut me off. They scored a hint on the wings.I thought … well, even these won't work forever.” Scootaloo went back to her oats for a while before continuing. “What about you? Is Blueberry still after you? And how did you find the hatchlings again?”
“We don't have to worry about Blueberry.” Sweetie Belle stared at the opposite wall for a moment before continuing. “The hatchlings … Saffron gave me a spell to call them. I think I might take them back to Equestria.”
“I think … I'll come with you.” Scootaloo scratched her mane. “I don't know …” She put her hoof to her forehead and sighed. “I like it here, but after everything's that happened …”
Sweetie Belle took her hoof. “Come back. Just to see everypony again. Apple Bloom and Rainbow Dash and all the rest. Take some time to clear your head. Then if you have to, you can always go to Amaranth again.”
“Unless these daemons destroy it …” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, unless that. But I bet they won't be a problem for long once Twilight knows about the problem, especially with Saffron helping. Anyway, if you come back, you'll get to …”
With that thought, she paused for a moment. There was something she'd planned to say. Her apology. Her admission. When she'd been trapped and alone, it seemed like the most important thing in the world. But bringing it up now would destroy this renewed rapport she had with Scootaloo.
She was going to apologise. Just not yet.
“ … you'll get a chance to say goodbye properly. I mean, if you want to leave again. We'll all support you if –”
Tom came clanging down the stairs. “Thought you might want to know,” he said. “No casualties on the Dulcet. We're less sure about the privateers … some probably died when the guns went up, but Millie thinks they got off lightly all things considered.”
The interruption made Sweetie Belle lose track of what she was planning to say. She waved a hoof at him. “Yeah, okay. Good. That's good.”
Looking uncertain, Tom nodded and began to retreat up the stairs. After a few steps he stopped, turned round, and came down again.
Scootaloo was frowning. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, apart from the aches, exhaustion, and general after-affects of having my sylphs die?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Yeah. Why?”
Saffron manifested in the cabin, giving her a concerned look.
“You too?” Sweetie Belle asked out loud.
“Every time you've got into a scrape with these privateers up to now, or anyone else, you've been concerned about not killing them,” said Saffron. “Just now, you seemed utterly uninterested.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her a few second. “Oh,” she whispered. “You're right. The daemons?”
“I think so.”
An ice-cold vacuum seemed to swallow her body from the inside. She looked from Scootaloo to Tom and back again.
“I thought I had it, you know? I mean, I could feel their effect – I really could – but I thought I was holding them off. I was trying so hard not to get carried away, not to do anything stupid.”
“Pacing won't help,” said Saffron.
“It feels like it helps,” Sweetie Belle shot back without stopping. She'd stopped speaking to Saffron out loud, out of some ill-defined fear that it was another sign of encroaching insanity. “I can't be trusted, obviously, I …”
Tom held up his paws. “Wait. You recognised what was happening when we pointed it out. You're not that bad yet.” He frowned. “Right, Saffron?”
“He's right,” said Saffron. She stared at Sweetie Belle for a moment. “Well, tell him then!”
Sweetie Belle did so, and then at last stopped pacing. “But I need to get back to Equestria before this gets any worse.”
Scootaloo followed her put a hoof on her shoulder. “Of course. I'll make sure you get there safely, alright? Until then … I guess this is a pretty good excuse to be a bitch, so make the most of it?”
Looking at her, Sweetie Belle saw a small grin and gave a laugh she didn't feel. “Yeah, okay.”
“These lights are so gloomy. Don't you think these lights are gloomy?” Blueberry asked the guard trotting beside her.
He looked at her, then up at the lights. They coated everything with a dusty red sheen which seemed to discolour his hair, and left ugly vertical shadows under his muzzle. “Yes, Miss Pancake,” he answered, as if still slightly uncertain this was the right thing to say.
Blueberry smiled at him. “It's the aesthetic of somepony who enjoys skulking. Somepony who has to hide in the shadows even when they're in control. As if they're ashamed of what they're doing. Pathetic.” She tossed her head. “And it doesn't complement my mane at all.”
“Your mane looks much better in natural light,” he agreed.
She stopped, leant in towards him until there was only an inch between them, and said, “Well, thank you. That's lovely of you to say.” The moment hung for a couple of seconds, then she started trotting again. “I'd tear it all out and redecorate, but we won't be needing this ship for long.”
He led her to the cell, the room that had once been Sombra's. Outside stood two chevaloids.
The transition had been more trouble than she'd expected. Too many ponies with strong loyalties. With them, the thrall spell wouldn't work unless it was strong enough to rip out all capacity for independent thought. She'd had to make up the space with chevaloids.
There were probably a few working for her who wanted to bring Sombra back, even if they didn't know where he was. Gentle, continuous applications of the thrall spell would change their minds – or, at least, soften their resolve to the point where they wouldn't think to move against her,
The chevaloids opened the door for her and stood ready.
Inside, Flay glared at her.
It was a gaze that had transcended mere petty anger, a sort of acid that had burned away all posturing and falsity to leave nothing but a cold, austere contempt.
“I'm not here to gloat,” she said softly. “We'll be at Tanelorn soon. After the work you've done, I thought you might like to see it even if your liege isn't here.”
Flay said nothing. His robe hung limply around his shoulders. The inhibitor clung off-centre to his horn. To him, she realised, everything she said was just noise.
“No? Well, don't get too comfortable. We'll be needing you soon. ” She smiled at him, then swept out of the cell and gestured at the chevaloids to close the door.
By the time she got back to the bridge, the airship was already slowing. The crew of three worked silently. Outside, less than fifty metres away, the salt flats stretched in all directions, featureless, drawing the eyes to the horizon. In the gloaming and Scarlight, they seemed to glow faintly in some hideous, unreal colour. They crawled past and eventually came to a halt.
“This is it,” said the navigator. She looked up a Blueberry. “The co-ordinates you gave us.”
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“Wonderful. Go on.”
The navigator hopped out of her seat and cantered across the room to the communication funnel. “Lower the dynamite!” she yelled.
“Understood,” came the faint, tinny reply from the tube. A moment later, there came a faint squeal of an unwinding drum through the hull. Blueberry walked up to the window.
Two chevaloids stepped into view on salt still too hot for a pony to walk across. For a few minutes they worked at their chosen spot, digging, planting. When they were done, they retreated out of sight below the airship.
The explosion came with a dull crack. A pale grey cloud bloomed, and detritus pattered against the underside of the hull.
The clearing smoke revealed a crater several metres deep. At the lowest point the ragged salt gave way to something else. Like a buried mirror, giving a glimpse of the evening sky beneath the ground.
“That's it,” Blueberry said. “Lower the ship and give me a view from the fore-starboard hatch. As close as you can please. Then prepare for high turbulence.”
Passing her bodyguards on the way out, she murmured to them, “Make sure you hold on to something, boys.”
By the time she reached the hatch, the airship was already descending. She pulled it open, and looked out: A clear view to the approaching ground below, to the crater, to the surface of the shield. Something caught in her throat as she prepared her spell. How long had it been since she first learned it? More than a year. And now she was finally here.
When it was close enough, she used her spell: A single bolt of aura impacted the mirror
The surface seemed to ripple. Reflections danced across its surface, broke and reformed, distorted, and finally faded. For a second the surface became transparent, revealing a dark cavity.
The crater collapsed inwards, cracks radiated across the plane, and with a deep rumbling sound, chunks of the ground fragmented and fell away. Air roared past them, rattling the corridor, making the airship lurch, and finally dragging it down into the darkness.
Skulltown rose on on the horizon like a mountain, lit up false-orange against the black night sky. How quickly we become accustomed to even the most absurdly surreal things, Sweetie Belle thought, watching it approach. The incomprehensible is just another place to live, work, and fight.
They were stopping at Skulltown to repair the Dulcet and Dignity, and for Sweetie Belle to finish her part of the deal. She'd go into the skull one last time to pick up a proper map. Every bit of magical activity that might be important, every hint to possible buried salvage. After that, Millie would take her back to Omphalos, where she could finally return to Equestria.
But tonight she would rest.
Dignity approached the base of the skull's cheekbone, where a cliff of teeth bigger than airships extended to the left, and parked below the docks in the Dulcet's shadow. Millie sent up a balloon and told Sweetie Belle, “You can go up to Skulltown or sleep here tonight. Either way is fine by me.”
“I'll sleep here,” Sweetie Belle told her.
“Righto.”
Once Millie and Tom had gone up into Skulltown, Sweetie Belle went into the hold where the aelewyrms were playing some sort of game that involved chasing one another in circles. She nuzzled at Chardonnay and patted it behind the eyes.
“Do you ever need to feed those things?” Scootaloo asked, standing at the door. She closed it behind her.
“I don't know,” said Sweetie Belle. “I guess so? They must eat oil or something. But they don't seem hungry.”
“Oils, tars, some silicates,” said Saffron. “But they can go weeks without food – you don't need to worry about that for a while.”
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo who smiled, then looked around awkwardly for a moment.
“Tom told me,” Scootaloo said at last.
“About what?”
“Why we don't have to worry about Blueberry.”
“Oh.”
Scootaloo walked up to her and put a hoof on her shoulder. “You could have told me, you know.”
“Yeah. I was going to. I …” Sweetie Belle busied herself scratching at Chardonnay's mandibles. “I thought you might, you know, get angry with me. Because … I'm not strong enough to deal with her. I'm scared of her. Because my sister saved the world more times than I can count when she was my age, and I just got captured, defeated, and ran away.”
“You didn't run away,” said Scootaloo. “You came to get me.”
Sweetie Belle tried to respond, but her tongue seemed paralysed. She turned to Scootaloo and nodded, then hugged her.
“Besides,” she said at last, trying to keep things practical, “Saffron doesn't think she'll have much luck with it anyway. She doesn't have enough energy, and the whole thing is locked away with some magic she doesn't know about.”
“Well, then, we're fine. Oh yeah! I also wanted to ask … could you have a look at my wings?” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
“I think one of the pirates managed to get a lucky shot.” The left wing extended with a whispering noise, the lamplight glittering faintly off its surface. “It's been jamming every time I try and move it.”
“Wouldn't Millie be better at that?”
“I want you to do it. Besides, you've got a qilin engineer in your head.”
“Ah,” said Sweetie Belle, “Now I feel wanted.” She grinned at Scootaloo.
Beside her, Saffron appeared, looking bored. “Come on, then. Tell her to spread 'em.”
“Open your wings, then,” said Sweetie Belle, giving her a look.
If there was anything wrong with them, she couldn't see it. If there was any way they could go wrong, she couldn't see it. The feathers glided over their support structure with no mechanism. The only thing that looked at all mechanical was the pendant hooked over a feather vane on the left wing.
“Touch them with your aura,” said Saffron. “There, I think I see it. Tell her to close and open again.”
As the wings moved, Sweetie Belle saw a minute jerkiness in the otherwise smooth motion.
“Got it,” said Saffron. “Stress-induced corruption in the beta field. The wings themselves work, but the neural connection is peeling away.”
“And what does that mean?” asked Scootaloo when Sweetie Belle relayed this.
“It means the problem will quickly get worse unless I reset the wings so the connection can heal. That'll take a couple of days.”
On being told this, Scootaloo paced across the hole a few times, then opened and closed her wings. “If we run into any trouble in the next couple of days …”
“Then you'll have wings that work badly. But if we run into trouble after two days, and we don't fix it … ”
Scootaloo sighed, then sat in front of Sweetie Belle. “Okay, have her do it.”
Aura in Saffron's control, Sweetie Belle's horn flashed once. Immediately, Scootaloo's wings closed with a faint whisper.
“That's it?” asked Scootaloo.
“That's it.”
Scootaloo stood and prodded at the closed wings on her back. “This is weird,” she said. “I can't feel them at all.”
“Can't you take them off and fly naturally?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Nope.”
“They're bolted directly into the spine,” said Saffron. “In principle, they could be removed, but for that we're in the realm of major surgery. I think it's better to wait, personally.”
“Wonderful,” said Sweetie Belle, shaking her head. Scootaloo gave her a curious look, so she recounted what Saffron had just told her.
“Huh,” said Scootaloo. She wriggled her back. “Cool.”
Later that evening Millie and Tom returned with food. They gathered together around bowls of powdered scorpion, mice, oats and lettuce, with some beer that Millie dubbed, “Not all that terrible.”
While Scootaloo told them about the issue with her wings, some spot on the far wall seemed to take up most of Millie's attention. “Well,” she said when Scootaloo had finished, “I reckon you got off lucky. T'advanced salvaged tech can be reight dangerous.”
“You have experience with it?” asked Tom.
Millie said nothing, just grabbed at lettuce leaf and chewed at it slowly. Eventually she nodded. “Aye, a couple of times.” After looking at the three of them, she said, “Oh, sod it. You lot're close enough to friends. I may as well tell you.”
Leaning forward, she pushed back the tuft of mane that covered her forehead. Barely visible beneath it, there was a small lump. She sat back.
“Got that about two year ago,” she said, ruffling her mane. “Meant to be a horn, I think, or summat like it. Me and friend found this machine and decided to try it out.”
“Saffron?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Yes. Medical technology, meant for prosthetic antlers Or horns, in your case. But it's meant to be used in a controlled environment, not by … by barbarians. ”
“It hurt worse than owt else I've ever been through, and in the end? It didn't even work.”
“What about your friend?” asked Tom.
Millie cocked her head. “What do you think? She didn't make it out.”
“Oh.”
“'Oh.' That about sums it up, aye. I'm not tellin' you lot so you can feel sorry for me, and I'm not tellin' you any more. There are enough sob stories in the world, and mine ain't anything special. Now let's move on to summat more cheerful.”
No-one tried to get any more out of her.
Before Scootaloo left for Amaranth, but after their argument, Sweetie Belle sat in her room listening to music to try and drown out all the fragmentary thoughts that attacked in waves – about what would happen, what to do, how unfair everything was, what a bitch she was.
It didn't work. She went to sleep as uncertain and upset as she had been when she got back.
The next morning, she lay staring through the window at a featureless plane of pale blue sky for several minutes before she realised what her calm she was. It was the calm of the utterly screwed, and brought with it a sort of clarity. The choice was simple.
Either apologise to Scootaloo, live with her decisions, work towards understanding – or don't, and lose her as a friend and a lover.
Which, considered like that, wasn't a choice at all. She moved the duvet and unhurriedly got out of bed.
She rehearsed, revised and rehearsed again her apology as she walked through the old streets of Canterlot. The scent of hawthorne was thick in air, mixed with a barely-perceptible hint of diesel exhaust.
At the door, she raised her hoof to knock, then realised her mistake. In her resolve, she'd forgotten what day it was – Saturday mornings, Scootaloo always went to the gym. Sweetie Belle swore under her breath, turned away, then turned back again. Her calm was already wavering, and leaving now might ruin it.
She knocked once to make sure, then extracted the hidden key from a cavity beneath the skirting board and let herself in. Scootaloo wouldn't mind – she'd done this a dozen times before.
There was an open envelope on the small hallway table with its contents spilling halfway out. Sweetie Belle glanced at it idly as she pushed the door close with a rear leg, then stared at it.
It was a visa application.
There had been a time when you could go anywhere in Aquileona and stay as long as you wanted. But since the discovery of Amaranth, the Aquileonan government had taken another of its fickle democratic turns, and relations had cooled. Now, for certain lengths of stay, for certain places – like Magnesia, on the far side of the dragon territories – you needed a visa
This was it. Proof that Scootaloo was actually going. She must've planned to post it on her way to the gym and forgotten.
Still calm, Sweetie Belle reached into the pile and pulled out a little powder blue rectangle of card – covered with griffon heraldry, printed numbers and Scootaloo's scratchy writing – and tore it in half.
A chill raced through her. She stood frozen in place for a few seconds, staring at the two halves of blue card in front of her. Then she opened the door, let herself out again, and put the key back in its hiding place.
On her way back through Canterlot, the sky seemed at once oppressive and dreamlike.
She tore the card in half once more, and left each of the pieces in a different bin along her route.
Two ships floated in the darkness like half-remembered dreams. Light from the chevaloids' lamps glanced off the silvery-blue hulls and was lost in the interior space of the hangar. The faint outlines of giant arches overhead sometimes come into view. The hull surfaces – you were unsure whether they were made of metal or crystal or something else – extended seamlessly into spires and spines and other objects. It was impossible to tell the decorative from the functional. The chill air smelt dry and faintly metallic.
“Is this what Sombra was looking for?” asked the navigator.
“Part of it,” Blueberry told her. “One of these could defeat anything in the old world. This and an army, and you could rule everything.” She grinned at the navigator, whose neck was still craned to look at the ships above them, then to Sorghum and Cannons who followed silently. “But our ambitions are greater than that, aren't they? Now come along. I'll show you how it all works.”
Beneath the baroque belly of the nearest ship, between the gracile landing struts, a bulge extended to the floor. Blueberry led them to the sloped front of this extension, and hit it once with a spell.
Part of the wall unfurled with liquid grace. Inside, a strong, fulfilling light – like sunlight from a perfect day – spilled out from a cylindrical corridor painted in some complex pattern of jagged fragments in various shades of grey and blue. The air inside had a different quality – warmer and almost comforting.
Ominous clouds on the horizon? Well, you know, sometimes these things really are literal.
Chapter 21 Cloud Ceiling
Blueberry could almost believe that her new ship was stationary: A fixed palace somewhere, solid and eternal. Even at these speeds, all she could hear was the sussuration of her own breath and the faint whirring of the chevaloid waiting behind her. Resplendent, she called it; the second ship, the one she'd given to her bodyguards, still lacked a name.
The bridge – if it was a bridge – was a dome suffused with soft light that cast no shadows. The walls were smooth but uneven, mapped with ridges and indentations. In the centre of the room, a pillar like a stalactite of lapis lazuli threaded inside with silver hung from the ceiling. Aside from that it was featureless.
Standing in front of the pillar, she could connect to the ship through her horn. Just like a repository. Then it was immediately clear how fast they were moving. Everything was available: Full visuals in any and all directions (the desert hurtled past her and the second ship), air speed, temperature, pressure, thaumic field strengths, internal sensors – everything in as much detail as she could handle and no more was piped directly into her consciousness. Her power over the ship was immediately evident: She could fly, shoot, scan. She could bring up real visual displays on any of the walls and manifest control consoles for those benighted creatures lacking her access.
This was her taster, she supposed. A hint of the power she would soon have. She could see, in a way, why Sombra would have settled for this. But the ship wouldn't be enough. It could build an empire; it couldn't save the world.
Outside, the desert gave way, first in patches then entirely, to a smooth surface of mottled blue, shimmering greasily in the dawn.
She called up the second ship, piloted by Cannons and Sorghum. “Hello boys. We're nearly there. Are you ready?”
Part of her visual feed jumped to a view of the other bridge, where Cannons prodded at a crystalline console in the wall and Sorghum looked up at her. “I think we've got it all figured out down here.”
“Wonderful. You're so clever, I knew you could do it.” She rang off and turned her attention to the ships sensorium.
There was the ratty little chemical mine where Sweetie Belle had escaped her the second time. She began to slow. The deceleration, at least, was something the ship couldn't shield. Thaumic and sonar pings peered into the sulphate mire and located her targets, between two and three hundred metres under the surface. In full view of the mines, a little over a kilometre away and close to the surface, she came to a halt.
“Aim your main cannon down at these co-ordinates,” she told the other ship. “And fire on my mark. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Fire.”
Beams lanced out from the two ships. The surface of the mire erupted, sending up splashes of viscous sludge. The open cavity left behind began to collapse as the surface of the mire flowed back in. From Blueberry's vantage point, the process was silent.
“Again.”
The cavity erupted, this time sending up solid ground: Corroded-looking lumps of stained greyish-brown.
“Again.”
After the third shot, a patch of the mire beside the excavation site began to bubble slowly, releasing yellow-ochre gas.
“Again.”
Resplendent called for her attention. Something had left the mining facility and was heading towards them.
It was a beast of a thing, bigger than Resplendent, its belly a landscape of weapons. And, on its nose, a line of five long spikes underlined the Ilmarinen sigil.
A battleship of the Ilmarinen navy.
It must've been stationed there after her first attack.
“Let it come,” she said to Cannons and Sorghum. “Fire again.”
The hole continued to grow. A ridge of torn-up solid ground blocked the mire from falling back in. A continuous stream of opaque gases bubbled to the surface and rose into the sky.
When the battleship was close enough, it hailed them with its lamps. Blueberry ignored it. It hailed again, then again, more aggressively. Something about how the mining facility had claimed this area and she didn't have the right to go digging around in it.
She kept digging.
The battleship fired a warning shot. Blueberry registered the bullets through her ship's sensorium, but in the bridge itself everything remained silent. No damage, Resplendent told her.
“Should we return fire?” asked Sorghum.
Blueberry let a sense of the ship's armaments wash over her and counted the number of ways she could swat the battleship aside. “No,” she said. Leave it alone.” She smiled to herself, then spoke added: “The crew are ignorant of the tale they take part in. Forgiving them is our act of beneficence.”
The battleship, having fired once more, seemed uncertain of what to do. Blueberry let it be and fired into the ground again. The mire around them roiled and vomited gas from a dozen spots.
And there it was. Outside, the ship told her, the air was all but unbreathable. The pit gaped like the mouth of the soon to be extinguished Tartarus. And at the bottom, grimy and corroded, lay a ship's hull.
Blueberry positioned her ship over the hole and lowered the grapple. No ugly salvor grapple, this: More of a thread than a rope, it lowered smoothly and quietly into the pit and, without any visible means of holding, stuck to the buried hull.
As soon as the grip was firm – the tip of the grapple thaumically held the entire piece of salvage – she pulled.
The line went taut. Now she could hear something: A faint but clear hum as the engines worked to keep Resplendent flying. After a few seconds of calm, the mire bulged. Syrupy fluid ran over and off thicker sludge.
At the edge of the bulge, the roiling surface burst open: Poisonous gas came up in opaque sheets several metres wide, joining a growing cloud above.
At last, the ground split open. The corroded hulk came to the surface. It might've born a family resemblance to her own ship, but its time below had scoured away whatever elegance it started with. Its skin was pitted, scarred, grimed. Amorphous lumps of indeterminate substance slid from its hull and fell. The overturned mire below sagged.
“Help me drag this thing this thing to solid ground,” Blueberry told Sorghum. “And prepare for a salvage operation.”
The poisonous cloud kept growing.
After she woke, Sweetie Belle lay staring at Dignity's shadowy ceiling and listening to the hatchlings murmurations and Scootaloo's irregular sleep-whickering beside her.
That was it. She was Scootaloo's saviour, like she'd planned to be. Everything was (very nearly) fine. And when they got back …
“Saviour,” whispered a daemon in her ear. She ignored it and shifted closer to Scootaloo.
She shifted and moved closer to Scootaloo.
She could tell when Scootaloo awoke because she suddenly and briefly went tense. Next moment she was on her hooves. Sweetie Belle looked up at her and smiled. “Ready to go home?” She murmured.
The reply came after a pause: “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
Sweetie Belle rolled over and stood. Her tail flicked. “Still got my half of the bargain to fulfil.” She'd told them both about Saffron to explain her ability to map Amaranth's magic. Now came another trip into the skull, to make a map of possible salvage points for Millie and Lucille. Worth the effort, at least.
A door at the far end of the cabin clanged open, and Millie stuck her head out. “You three up now? I thought I were going to have to get t'water bucket.”
“Tom's still asleep,” Scootaloo said loudly. “If you still want to give it a try.”
A paw came up, accompanied by a bleary voice: “I'm up. I'm fine.” Then, “Though, actually, a shower would be nice.”
“Can't really spare the water,” said Millie. “I've got plenty of dust though. You want to try dust?”
“Actually,” said Tom, standing and blinking. “I think I'll be fine.” Chardonnay nuzzled at him, nearly knocking him over; he patted its neck.
“Good,” said Millie. She looked over at Sweetie Belle. “Come on, then. Job for you.”
The four of them went up to Skulltown's cheekbone port together, stretching silently in Dignity's gondola as the sheet of bone moved past the window.
The port seemed at once more crowded and quieter than usual. Stepping out, Sweetie Belle heard some of them mutter in a way that reminded her of the daemons. Others were silent. No-one seemed to be doing any work.
Millie pushed her way to the next available space on the docks, where the crowds, looking out at the sky, were thickest.
Clouds. On Amaranth.
And not normal clouds. They looked like ragged bits of stuffing torn from the inside of an old chair cushion. Ugly yellow-brown against the pure white Scar, they left islands of shadow on the desert. They were a long way away, yet – nearly at the horizon – but seemed to be moving closer.
“Unsolved,” whispered a daemon.
Sweetie Belle pulled away from the edge and let someone else take her place.
“You're seeing this, aren't you? Please tell me you have an explanation.”
Saffron manifested beside her. “Nothing I can be certain of.”
“That hasn't stopped you speculating before.”
Saffron looked at her. She exhaled slowly.
“It's Blueberry, isn't it?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Seems likely,” Saffron admitted at last.
At that moment, she was interrupted by Lucille, who stood ahead of the rest of the group. “I'm almost scared to ask,” she said, “but do you know anything about what's going on here?”
“I … I think so,” said Sweetie Belle.
They moved away from the docks to the main road running down Skulltown's muzzle. It was emptier than usual – those who did remain moved in small groups and seemed uncertain or even suspicious. Sweetie Belle was struck by the absurdity of it: You live on a skull beneath a giant hole in the sky; what worries you is a cloud.
The others gathered around her. Her audience, she supposed, small but attentive. Except they were only interested in her as a conduit for Saffron.
She re-iterated what she knew about Blueberry: The Apotheosis Machine, the machine that created Discord, and Blueberry's big plan.
“And what about the clouds?” asked Tom. “Where does that lie in her plan?”
“She's activated something,” said Saffron. “Or dug something up. I don't know precisely. From the direction of the clouds, and their composition, as far as I can tell, I'd guess they're coming from the waste dump. Where your lot are mining chemicals.”
Sweetie Belle recounted this to her audience.
“I don't suppose the something she dug up could be the Apotheosis Machine?” continued Tom.
“No,” said Sweetie Belle, still following Saffron, “The Apotheosis Machine is somewhere else. In an underground city far south of here.”
“You … uh, Saffron … said she can't use the machine?” said Scootaloo.
“There are two things standing in her way. First, there's no source of thaumic potential big enough to start the machine. Even qilin tech would struggle with that. Second, the machine is hidden in a … pocket universe.” Sweetie Belle shrugged and added, “I don't know what that is either. Anyway, if Blueberry tries to find the machine, it just won't be there. And she doesn't know how to open the portal, she can't find it. Not immediately, anyway.”
“Why are you sure she doesn't know?”
“Because,” answered Saffron. “I was there when she was looking through your head. I saw her intentions. There was nothing about a pocket universe.” Sweetie Belle passed this on.
“But,” said Tom slowly, “If you don't know what she's doing now, there must be some things about her intentions you didn't see..”
Sweetie Belle glanced over at Saffron, who sighed, then nodded once.
“And if she does find a way around these obstacles …” Tom let the sentence hang.
“Then the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance,” murmured Scootaloo.
“Yeah.”
Scootaloo stared at Sweetie Belle in silence. Then she said, “It's been ages since since that happened.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that,” said Sweetie Belle.
“So, uh, what do we do?” asked Tom.
“We stick with original plan,” said Sweetie Belle. The others looked at her expectantly. This was it, she realised – now it was her at the centre, and not just as a conduit for Saffron. “I go inside the skull, then we go to Ilmarinen. I still owe you the map, and the skull is the best way to check on Blueberry anyway. Then at Ilmarinen, I'll talk to Proper Order again. He can't ignore her after this.” She smiled at Lucille and Millie. “You get paid. Blueberry gets stopped. Everyone wins.”
“Except Blueberry,” murmured Tom.
“Yeah, Everyone wins except Blueberry.”
Lucille clicked her beak and looked at Millie. “I can't think of a better plan.”
“Nowt comes to mind,” agreed Millie. “You'd best get ready, then, lass.”
“Will do,” said Sweetie Belle. “I'll meet you at the docks when this is all over.”
She waved goodbye, then turned and trotted up the main road towards the crown of the skull.
A moment later, Scootaloo fell into step beside her. She smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Thought I'd come with you,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Sweetie Belle.
“After you've told Ilmarinen … what then?” Scootaloo asked softly. “You still gonna go home?” Then, “I'll come with you. Don't worry.”
An attempt at an immediate answer died on Sweetie Belle's tongue. “I don't know,” she admitted.
She was sick of fighting, but she didn't say that because a glance at Scootaloo's face said that she wasn't. That was Scootaloo: Always ready to keep trying, keep fighting. Even after being saved, she was looking after Sweetie Belle.
The thought came like a sliver of ice behind Sweetie Belle's sternum. She amended her last comment: “If we can do anything to stop Blueberry, we will.”
Sweetie Belle realised, as she lowered herself into the black depths of the skull, that she was becoming quite adept at this. Moving in the harness felt almost natural. Up above, the pony in the cabin had greeted her with familiarity underlined with something between condescension and respect. Ponies don't generally go on vision quests so regularly. Right now, he was talking to Scootaloo about the new clouds.
A daemon whispered in her ear. With nothing else to listen to, she felt like the odd connectives and particles of qilin grammar were on the edge of sliding into place and pulling entire sentences into comprehensibility.
To distract herself, she said out loud, “Question.”
“What is it?” replied Saffron without appearing.
“Blueberry wants to use the Apotheosis Machine, yeah?”
“Right.”
“Blueberry is working for this creature called S.”
“Apparently so.”
“So what's the connection there? I mean, she's a minion. Is she getting it for S.?”
“Maybe it's for herself.”
“Then what's S. doing?”
“I don't know,” said Saffron. “Maybe she was pretending to be S. all along. It's happened a few times in history. Our history, I mean. The big boss wants to do fieldwork, but that's very dangerous if people recognise her, so she pretends to be some operative instead.”
“Huh,” said Sweetie Belle. She thought about it for a bit. “All our wannabe-rulers have been openly hooves-on.”
“It's a barbarian virtue,” murmured Saffron.
“Discord included,” said Sweetie Belle.
For a moment there was no response from Saffron, and Sweetie Belle was left with the gentle squeal and clink of her harness. Then the voice in her ears returned, “Yes, well, there are always exceptions. Maybe I should have told you about him earlier, but … 'Hi, I'm a disembodied spirit who's hitching a ride in your head back to her boyfriend who she hasn't seen in, what, thousands to tens of thousands of years.' Doesn't really work.”
Sweetie Belle smiled faintly. “I guess not.” She stared out at the glowing circle of desert visible through the eye socket. The clouds weren't visible. Daemons whispered in her ears. “What are you going to say to him when you get back?”
“That's the joke, isn't it? It's a tale of romance across two dimensions, spanning the death of a great civilisation and millennia of emptiness, with survival against all odds. We're the last two qilin, except neither of us are really qilin any more. And when I finally see him again, I have no idea what to say.” She sighed. “I feel like a calf again, even after all this. And I don't mean that in a silly, eye-fluttering way. In my memory, I last saw him four or five months ago. He's lived thousands of years, at least, without me, in a parallel world. It's not exactly a quick catch-up over a cup of coffee, is it?”
“I'll put in a good word for you,” said Sweetie Belle.
Saffron laughed. “And I for you, if I get my body back. Okay, nearly there. Let's get to work.”
Again the map of colours appeared before Sweetie Belle, and in a few seconds Saffron picked out all the activity since they'd been here last.
Two spots stood out: Tiny embers of deep red. “The most recent is there, just two or three hours ago,” noted Saffron.
“That's the same place …” began Sweetie Belle.
“As the mining facility, yes. I was right. It's not a spell Blueberry should be able to use.”
“And?”
“From the signature, it looks like it was cast by a machine. In which case …”
“Not the time for dramatic effect, Saffron.”
“I'd say it's actually a pretty appropriate time. You see this other spot? It's far to the south. Not far from where you picked me up, actually. That's … that's Tanelorn! She's been to Tanelorn and she's got herself some qilin technology.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don't know yet.”
Sweetie Belle sighed. “Alright, never mind. Let's get this map done. What do I do?”
“Just wait there. Artefact signals take a while to resolve. I'll record them all and you'll be able to mark the places on a normal map later.”
By the time Sweetie Belle had finished, the sky outside had darkened. She settled her hooves on the platform outside the skull's eye socket, undid her harness, and looked up. Skulltown was in the shadow of a ragged, faintly crescent-shaped cloud. It was nearly opaque; even the Scarlight that normally haunted the shadows seemed muffled.
She climbed the ladder to the cabin to find Scootaloo and the attendant watching the cloud in silence.
“Ready?” asked Scootaloo.
“Yeah, I've got it all,” Sweetie Belle said.
They headed back to the docks at a fast trot, met up with Millie, Lucille and Tom, and boarded the Dulcet. There, in her office, Lucille picked out two large paper maps of Amaranth and unfurled them both across the table.
Sweetie Belle took a pencil and set about marking the locations where Saffron thought an artefact might lie.
“I talked to Gritstone on the ansible,” said Lucille. “He says the clouds haven't reached Ilmarinen yet. But he also thinks something's spooked the navy: They've sent out two ships early this morning, and the others have been doing local patrols. More activity than he's seen in a while.”
“You think they took my warning seriously?” said Sweetie Belle, adding a little graphite circle to one of the maps.
“Maybe. Or they've learned about the clouds too. The chemical mines belong to Skulltown, but Ilmarinen makes a point of looking after nearby outposts. A good five or six of their battleships are stationed around other outposts and facilities. One of those might have seen and called in.”
“At least they're paying attention,” snorted Sweetie Belle. “Done.” She added one last circle to each of the maps and put the pencil down.
Millie and Lucille looked over the two maps, ensuring they were marked identically.
“Your choice,” said Lucille, glancing up at Millie.
“Aye, this'll do nicely,” said Millie, rolling up one of the maps. She slotted it into its container, and stuck the container in her saddlebag. “I hope we'll get a chance to use the bloody things.”
“What about that privateer you captured?” Lucille said.
“Give him to me when we get to Ilmarinen,” Millie said. “I'll take him to Aquileona with this lot.” She snorted. “And Sweetie Belle, I hope you ain't forgotten the babbies in my hold? I want you to look after them.”
It took the chevaloids and her crew a little over two hours to strip the hulk of everything she wanted and bring it aboard. For the first hour, Blueberry bathed; for the second, she retreated to her new quarters – the largest she could find on the ship – and called up her bodyguards. They sat in front of her and listened patiently while she curled up on her chaise longue in a giant towel and had two chevaloids brush her mane.
“The time is approaching, boys,” she told them, “when you and I must part ways. Don't look so down. You will see me again, and when you do, I will be … transcendent. I will be finished. I will have saved the world from all its pains. And you will take your rightful places by my side, forever.”
She smiled to herself, then flicked an ear in which a daemon was distracting her by whispering some spiel about glory.
“By the time I return to Tanelorn, I will be the talk of all Amaranth. But that carries its own burden. They may come after me, and I don't want to risk anything interrupting the plan. You … Hold on …” She buried her muzzle in the soft velvet and, slightly muffled, told the chevaloid behind her, “Yes, there. That's the place. Brush there.” She stretched out a hind leg, wriggled a little with joy, then regained some composure and looked back up at her bodyguards. A strand of her mane trailed over her face, which she thought was effectively sexy. The chevaloid pulled it back with the next stroke of its brush.
“As I was saying, nothing can be allowed to interrupt the plan. I know, they could throw their entire fleet at me and with this ship I could swat it aside in a moment. But something unforeseen could ruin everything. So I want you to stay behind and keep them busy.” She settled her head back against the velvet and let the order hang.
Sorghum, his wings tense over his thin body, looked up at her. “How?”
She held his gaze in silence for a few seconds, smiling coyly. “Defend Ilmarinen. That's what they all care about. Ilmarinen, Ilmarinen, that ugly bundle of overblown balloons. Defend the city from its own navy, and they'll busy themselves fighting to get it back. No-one will worry about little old me, slipping away to find my apotheosis.”
“So we just stay and fight?”
“Yes. Keep them away – until I come and get you. You'll have no problem.”
Outside, somepony thumped at the door. Through the metal-or-crystal hull, the sound was muffled almost to silence. Blueberry flicked the door wth her aura, and it slid open. There he was, her harried-looking messenger. She was nearly as fond of him as she was her bodyguards. She took a moment to enjoy the mane-brush a bit more, then, starting with a purr in the back of her throat, asked him, “What is it?”
“The, uh, work is finished. I mean, everything's aboard. The chevaloids are still wiring the units into the ship.”
“Wonderful,” she said, and as if the messenger were responsible for it all, “Thank you so much. How many units?”
“Six hundred, thirty-two,” said the messenger.
Blueberry smiled up at her bodyguards. “You'd best get back to your ship,” she told them. They nodded and immediately headed out the door. She ordered the chevaloids to finish and extended a hoof to the messenger, who was still standing near the door. “Would you help me up?”
When she got back to the bridge, she connected to the central pillar. She could feel the work as all the salvage units, one by one, were wired up to the ship's systems. Outside, the sky was ridged with ochre vapour. The carcass of another qilin ship lay on the shallow dunes, cracked open and stripped of everything worthwhile. Perhaps. She checked none of her crew was still aboard the hulk, then fired upon it five times in quick succession until there was nothing but shredded hull in a deep pit of sand and rock. Best to remove it if there was the smallest chance it held something that might be used against her.
She turned the Resplendent towards Ilmarinen and set off. Sorghum and Cannons followed her lead. The ship didn't need constant input to follow a straight course, so she disconnected from the pillar once everything was set. The trip would take less than half an hour; and she had a new toy to try out.
Flay sat in the back of his new cell, eyes closed, murmuring to himself. The catechisms, Blueberry realised with a twinge of revulsion. She watched him for a few seconds, silently mouthing the words along with him. A daemon whisper turned into the same phrase, a grotesque mockery of a chorus.
She stopped and steadied herself, then looked at the two pegasi either side of her. They readied their guns. A pair of chevaloids stood alongside them. She activated the door, and it slid aside.
“Brother Flay,” she said brightly. “It's time for you to make your final contribution.”
He stopped his recitation and stared at her and didn't move.
“Bring him,” she told the chevaloids.
Whirring and clicking, they moved into the cell and, grabbing a foreleg each, pulled Flay forward until he was at the door. Blueberry stood in front of him. “It may not mean much right now, but for all our … friction, I cared for you too.” She leant forward until their muzzles were an inch apart, miming a kiss.
To his credit, she thought, he didn't recoil. She swept off down the corridor. “This way!”
Around the next corner, the bright, broad corridor became something monstrous. Machinery covered each wall: A thicket of riblike protrusions narrowed the walking space; matte-black ribbons covered with wrinkled suckers trailed on the floor among a tangle of pipes and wires. The machines blocked most of the lights, dimming the entire corridor. Blueberry thought the whole arrangement spectacularly ugly, an affront to both her and her ship. But then, that was the universe: Ugly.
She glanced at Flay. His eyes trailed up and down the corridor, but his expression gave nothing away. Behind him, the pegasi guards kept their guns raised.
“This one,” she said, gesturing at the nearest unit.
The chevaloids dragged Flay over to it and pushed him against the black plate of the unit's spine. He stood upright on his hind legs. One activated the unit, and the six curved ribs closed around him, embraced him.
“Blueberry,” he said.
Not Sister Blueberry – just Blueberry.
“Stop,” she said told the chevaloids. They froze, holding the sucker-covered ribbons. She walked up and looked him in the eye. “What is it?”
“In the final account …” he whispered, almost inaudibly.
Then, silence.
Blueberry stared at him, then leaned back and looked to the chevaloids. “Go on,” she told them. “Connect him.” The chevaloids started smoothly, laying the ribbons across his neck and chest and forelegs. One flicked a switched, and his eyes closed. Some residual tension in his face relaxed; his breathing slowed. Beneath the unit's ribbons and ribs, he looked serene and almost likeable.
She silently mouthed the catechism. In the final account, all betrayals will be repaid. Nonsense, of course, but knowing that didn't sweep away the effects of its inculcation.
“Thank you so much for all your help,” she said, putting on a smile for the two guards. “You can go to the viewing suite now, if you like.”
The guards nodded and headed off. When they'd gone, Blueberry went to the bridge.
The Resplendent had long outpaced the advancing clouds. They were nearly at Ilmarinen. She stayed connected to the pillar, letting the ship's senses wash over her. She could feel the new units still being connected to the ship – and the potential of Flay's life, waiting to be tapped.
Soon, the outlines of a swollen shape sketched themselves in the atmospheric haze by the horizon. Ilmarinen. “Ready?” she asked Sorghum.
“Yes, ma'am,” he replied.
Already Ilmarinen was clearly visible. Beneath it, the ravine, holding its aquifer, scored the landscape. The Resplendent and the Exultant slowed in unison.
Two battleships pulled away from their holding pattern and came up to meet her. The speed of her initial approach had got their attention – and she suspected a photograph of her ship had been circulated on the navy's ansibles.
The battleships separated; the direct path to Ilmarinen led between them. The one to the left signalled her, an order to stand down. As she came closer, it repeated to order in amplified audio.
“Ma'am?” asked Sorghum.
“Watch,” Blueberry told him. She slowed the Resplendent, fixed her aim on the left ship, and fired.
As if under the blow of an immense, invisible hammer, the ship's aft crumpled and burst. The impact tore through the hull and shredded a good quarter of the gondola. The envelope immediately above the impact tore away, and the ship began to lurch.
A moment later, flashes of flame lit up the battleships' bellies. Smoke billowed from the main guns. High-caliber shells pattered impotently against the Resplendent's hull.
“Your turn,” she told Sorghum. “Aim for the engines. Don't destroy them unless you have to.”
The second battleship's gondola crumpled and shattered a third of the way towards the aft. Not the best aim, Blueberry thought, but then her boys did have to aim manually.
More battleships were pulling away from the city and approaching them.
“Keep them busy,” she told Sorghum. “I've got something else to do.”
She pulled forward through the ranks of attacking battleships, swatting them aside if they got in the way but otherwise happy to let Sorghum fight them. By the time she was close enough, the battleships were retreating to try and regroup. Other ships were pulling away from the docking towers and running.
Let them. Blueberry prepared a chevaloid-command spell and, with the help of her ship, projected over the entire city. Normally, of course, even with everything she'd learned, such a broad spell would be too much for her. But with Flay connected to the ship …
“Goodbye, Flay,” she murmured, and cast the spell.
Outside, its envelope streaked with flame, a battleship sheared in half and sank to the ground.
Aboard Dignity, Sweetie Belle played with the hatchlings, sat beside Scootaloo in companionable silence while Tom took over her duties, or stared out the window at the passing desert. Above her, the Dulcet kept pace with them. The clouds, pulled into bands by the winds, did too.
“Are they just going to keep coming?” she asked Saffron. “How much of that stuff was buried under the mire?”
“I expect they'll stop eventually,” Saffron said. “But you're asking the wrong question. Reality is more fluid here. Giant skull, remember? There was something down there to begin with, but now it's been seen, now it's an idea, the original volume matters less than what is expected of it And since it's so impressive, apparently, it could go on for a while.”
Sweetie Belle stepped back from the window and scratched Benz's upper mandible. It purred across several octaves. “Yeah,” she said out loud. “Magic.”
The steps to the cockpit clanged. Sweetie Belle looked round to see Tom hurrying down them. He stopped halfway, looked to Scootaloo, who was dozing on a workbench, then her. “You'd better come and see this,” he said, and ran back up the steps.
“It's another disaster. I bet it's another disaster,” said Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle followed her into the cockpit.
Millie was standing at the controls. Her ears swivelled towards them as they entered the cockpit. “Lucille forwarded us a message,” she said, gesturing to the ansible by the broken window where Gregor had punched his way through.
Tom offered them two sheets of paper, and Sweetie Belle took them with her aura.
The first was typed in the slightly smudgy, low-quality ink that was common in Amaranth.
Bit of a difficulty here. See what you think. –Lucille
The second, Sweetie Belle recognised as the scratchy but readable mouthwriting of Captain Gritstone.
Lucille,
Ilmarinen is under attack. Unknown ships, very fast very powerful. Even battleships are no match. Will keep you updated but be careful
Grit
“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle. “Shit.”
“Uh-huh,” said Scootaloo.
Millie looked round at them. “So, lad and lasses, what do we do? I'm all for suggestions.”
No one said anything.
“We could,” offered Millie slowly, “skirt round Ilmarinen and head straight for Omphalos. Get you all home.”
Sweetie Belle looked up at her. Her mouth was dry. “I …” she began.
“We only needed to stop at Ilmarinen to let them know about Blueberry,” said Tom. “I'm pretty sure they already know about her.”
Before Sweetie Belle could answer, the ansible flashed with emerald flame. Another arrival – just one sheet this time. Tom grabbed it and passed it round.
Gritstone's message was at the top:
Chaos. Chevaloids turning on us & attacking. None on board thankfully. Half navy destroyed, other half retreating. I will try to find last of crew, then run. Avoid Ilmarinen. –Grit
Underneath, Lucille had typed,
He doesn't get to order me about. I'm going to Ilmarinen. Do as you please, Millie.
Sweetie Belle gave the paper back to Tom. “Me too,” she said softly. “This is Blueberry … she's doing this because of what I gave her .. and with Saffron in my head, I might be the best placed to stop her.”
Scootaloo smiled and put her hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. “Do I even need to say it”
Tom raised his hand. “If I can help … well, I'll do what I can.”
Millie looked over each of them, then back at the message. “I'm surrounded by personified bloody martyr complexes,” she said, shaking her head. She grabbed a slightly grubby pencil in her mouth and wrote a message beneath Lucille's.
In unusually elegant mouthwriting, it said, We're all with you. Sure my passengers will come up with a brilliant, world-saving plan before we get there.
Sweetie Belle grinned at Millie. “Let's hope.”
Millie put the papers in the ansible with her message on top and flicked the switch.
“Now,” she said. “About that plan.”
“So the end result is me dying and Blueberry winning,” said Sweetie Belle. “Yeah, alright, I get it.” She sighed and scratched Bounce behind the eyes. “I don't really want to put the hatchlings in the way of that thing anyway.”
That made five plans, not counting minor variations, all torn apart by Saffron. Elementals wouldn't be enough. A multi-pronged attack wouldn't be enough. The hatchlings would be no match for the ships.
“Where's Saffron right now?” asked Scootaloo at one point.
Sweetie Belle pointed.
Scootaloo addressed herself to the wall: “Nah, no way we'll run into trouble in the next couple of days.” Her tail swished.
“Wouldn't help anyway,” said Saffron.
Over the past couple of hours, the clouds had fattened and merged, forming an immense ribbed vault. According to Lucille, there had been no further messages from Gritstone. It made sense – if Ilmarinen had been invaded then the mail office, which routed ansible transmissions, could be abandoned or even destroyed. Only direct links, like the one between the Dulcet and Dignity would be useful.
“If that's right,” Millie had commented, “Blueberry's really fucked us. Most ships in the region rely on links through Ilmarinen. They're all isolated now.”
Half an hour later, she caught sight of a ship on the horizon, a smudged silhouette against the cloud layer. A ragged sort of thing, most likely a salvor. She pointed it out to Lucille, who, even through the ansible, seemed excited. It might be Gritstone!
But it wasn't.
The Dulcet interrogated the fleeing salvor through light signals as soon as it came within range. Millie watched and translated the responses with her telescope.
Had it come from Ilmarinen? Yes. What did it see of the battle? The first few shots – it was already about to leave when the attack started, and took flight the as soon as the captain saw the Ilmarinen navy going. The last it saw, before Ilmarinen vanished into the haze, was the remaining battleships retreating. Where was it going now? Skulltown – after that the captain was uncertain. Omphalos, perhaps.
Any information on other ships? The Hinny's Revenge perhaps? Nothing.
The salvor asked, was Skulltown still safe? For the moment, Lucille told it.
It had kept flying during the exchange, and by the end of it had passed them. It wished them good luck.
Before it was out of sight, a second ship became visible ahead of them. This one was much bigger. “A battleship,” said Millie as she looked through the telescope. “Maybe this time we'll get some answers.”
The battleship wasn't alone. By the time they were close enough to signal, another four were faint silhouettes in the far distance, apparently stationary. This time, Dignity signalled it.
“They're identifying as the Mettlesome,” said Tom, translating for Sweetie Belle's benefit, “They say they're preparing for an assault.”
“Now there's a death wish and a half,” said Millie.
Tom continued: “They're looking for volunteers. Any ship capable of fighting. Victory unlikely …” (Millie snorted.) “ … lots of bombast about glory and rewards if they do succeed.”
“Do they have a plan?” Millie murmured, tapping away at the lamp switch.
A pause came before the ship responded. Tom said, “Sort of. Two ships attacked Ilmarinen, but their gunship scouts says only one remained. They're hoping they can surround it and then just pile on … By coming in from all directions at once, and swarming the gunships, it should at least take the aggressor some time to destroy them all. During which, they're going to use other gunships to try and board it … or shoot at anything that looks critical.”
The ansible flashed with green flame. Sweetie Belle, being closest, took the new message and read it out. “Lucille says she intends to join.”
“We may as well go with them,” Millie said. “Not sayin' owt about whether we're joining in or not.” She signalled the Mettlesome, while Sweetie Belle relayed the message by ansible.
“They're pointing us to the fleet ahead,” said Tom. “Assault starts in an hour.”
Millie took Dignity's controls again. “Y'know, I'm getting' to like havin' you lot about. Almost like havin' my own crew.”
“Uh, speaking of which,” added Tom, looking through the telescope again, “but here's a thing you might want to look at yourself, Captain.”
“What?” said Millie.
“I might be mistaken, but I think I can see the aelewyrm.”
Sweetie Belle bounded across the cockpit, and lookec through the telescope. He was right: Barely visible, a serpentine silhouette swam against the vault of clouds, approaching from South-Southeast.
“Oh, come on!” she said, stepping back. “No way!” She paused as Millie and then Scootaloo checked the telescope. “Two meetings, sure. Co-incidence. But three? In all of Amaranth?”
“It does seem unlikely,” said Tom.
Saffron appeared in the cockpit. “And while you're at it, I don't think your let-the-aelewyrm-attack-the-enemy gambit is going to work again. You've got one of Blueberry's ships, but a whole fleet of friendlies. The statistics are against you.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Sweetie Belle told her. She stared through the cockpit window. Without the telescope, the sky looked empty.
Millie was watching the aelewyrm. “Judgin' by last time, I'd say we got thirty, forty minutes before it reaches us.” She whickered, abandoning the telescope.. “I'm going to warn the other ships.”
“To do what?” Tom asked her quietly.
“Don't be a smartass.”
Scootaloo came up to Sweetie Belle. “Look, you said it. Three times is too much. Last time it was just you and me. We're the constant.” She glanced back at Millie. “There's something going on here, and we have to figure it out in the next half hour, or this assault will be over before it starts.”
Hey, Sweetie belle. I'm glad we got to relive this bit together. Honestly? It really was fun. You think on your hooves, I'll give you that.
Chapter 23 Lure for Megafauna
Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Tom sat in Dignity's main cabin, working on the problem. The hatchlings moved about, making their detuned cello growls and hoots, calm and apparently unaware of their approaching – Father? Uncle? Cousin?
The remains of the Ilmarinen navy and their allies, meanwhile, had been smarter than Sweetie Belle expected. When Millie warned them about the big aelewyrm, they asked for information. In the end, the fleet, including the Dulcet, had agreed to move their staging area – retreating from the aelewyrm, but keeping the same distance from Ilmarinen, to give themselves more time. They'd also decided to begin their attack earlier. Millie, meanwhile, parked. If the big aelewyrm really was only after her passengers, she might be able to draw it away.
“You're right,” she said to Scootaloo. “The second time was after we split up with Tom. We're the only constant. Well, we and Saffron.” She paused to brush the attentions of Chardonnay, then added, “Something's attracting the big aelewyrm. Me, probably.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Tom.
“Everything's been after me since I got Saffron in my head. Blueberry, the daemons …” She turned to Saffron, who had manifested standing by the wall, and asked out loud, “That sounds right, doesn't it?”
Saffron scratched at her mane while she considered this. “I don't see a mechanism,” she said.
“Mechanism?”
“Blueberry isn't wasn't just drawn to you the moment you found the repository. The daemons are always there, you're just more vulnerable to them. I don't see how my presence would drawn them to you.”
Sweetie Belle speculated for everyone's benefit: “My mind could be sending out a … signal or something. Through my horn. The aelewyrms feel magic waves, right?”
Scootaloo and Tom looked at each other. “Uh, maybe?” said Tom.
Saffron shook her head. “Trust me, it wouldn't work.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her, then looked to the others. “No,” she told to them. “It's not that.” Turning back to Saffron, she said, “So what is it?”
“I don't know …”
“Magic waves!” said Sweetie Belle. She stared at Saffron. “Or waves in the thaumic field. Whatever.”
“Yes?”
“Who do we know is a source of magic waves?”
“Oh. Oh!” Saffron looked from her to Scootaloo and back again. “The welkin rings! I've been such an idiot.”
“What?” said Scootaloo, seeing Sweetie Belle looking at her.
“Your wings! It's how we tracked you.”
“That's it. Continuous signal, even when the wings aren't operating,”Saffron said. “Weak for a lure, but it's the only such source in all of Amaranth, so when the aelewyrm is wandering about with nowhere to go, it latches on.”
Sweetie Belle, grinning at all of them, did a little pronk. “And I'm not finished,” she said. She gestured at Scootaloo to turn around. After a moment's hesitation, Scootaloo obliged. Sweetie Belle peered into the folded left wing and a moment later unhooked something from a vane feather near the tip and held it aloft in her aura: A small pendant. “Saffron, could you check?”
“Hold it close to your horn … Yes, that's the source.”
“Voila!,” said Sweetie Belle, holding the pendant aloft. “This is our aelewyrm lure.”
“Well,” said Tom, leaning back and looking at Scootaloo, “I'm glad we were all present to help figure out that mystery.”
Scootaloo nodded at him, then turned back to Sweetie Belle. “So, it sounds easy enough. We get a gunship, fly that thing far away, and drop it in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yeah. Then we can have our battle in peace,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Wouldn't work. The lure is too weak. It only exerts a minimal influence. If the aelewyrm is already aiming at something – and it's seen us by now – it won't be distracted by the lure.” Saffron paused. “Though I might be able to make the signal stronger.”
Sweetie Belle related this to the others.
“Sweet!” said Scootaloo. “Gunship pilot needed. I'm up!”
Tom raised his hand. “Uh, Saffron? How strong can you make this lure? At maximum.”
“Very strong. For a few minutes, at least.”
“I mean … could we use it to focus the aelewyrm on a single object?” asked Tom.
Sweetie Belle stared at him. “A single ship?”
“That's what I was thinking.”
With a slowly expanding grin, Sweetie Belle turned to Saffron. “So, Miss Can't-Do-This-Gambit-Again, what do you think?” She swung the pendant round in her aura. “Shall we go for a hat trick?”
Saffron made a decent attempt at giving a disapproving look before a hint of a smile crept onto her face.
“So, uh, if we do this,” said Tom softly. “How do we get the lure onto the ship?”
Sweetie Belle looked to Scootaloo, then realised.
“Yeah,” said Scootaloo. “Awesome wings would come in handy right now.” Her tone was light, but Sweetie Belle heard a hint of disappointment under it. For a moment, her mind went back to a conversation months ago in a pub garden: Scootaloo flicking her wings, disappointed by their weakness.
“Griffon,” suggested Tom. “Volunteer from Lucille's ship.”
“Could they get close enough without getting shot down?” Scootaloo asked him. She stopped to consider this. “There's the approach, yeah? Either they go on an airship, which will definitely get shot down. Or they fly in alone, which is gonna be a stamina problem.”
“Could go in on an gunship,” said Tom. “More stamina than a lone griffon, more agile than an airship. If necessary, they could bail and fly back alone.”
“Yeah …” said Scootaloo. She didn't sound convinced. “It might work.”
Sweetie Belle thought about offering to fly in with the hatchlings, but she didn't want to put them in danger – and the lure or the sight of the big aelewyrm might affect them.
Something occurred to her. After a pause to scratch Benz's mandibles, she trottred over to Scootaloo. “Turn around.”
“Again?” said Scootaloo.
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. “I just can't get enough.”
Turning, Scootaloo laughed. “There. Like the view?”
Sweetie Belle reached out with her aura to the joint where Scootaloo's wings met her spine., then pushed through, into the machinery beneath. The machinery so advanced it bordered on biology, structured, resting but ready to leap into motion. Underneath, the connection between wings and flesh slept. She ignored that and looked around it. Structures like tendons or cables. She settled on one and lightly tugged it.
The right unfurled with a whisper. At its full length it knocked over a spare turbine that lay resting against the a desk.
“The wings themselves,” she recited, “are fully operational.”
“Close it, would you?” Scootaloo asked. As soon as Sweetie Belle had done so, she bounded across the main cabin to the steps to the cockpit. “Millie!” she called. “We've got a plan, and you're gonna love it!”
Twenty minutes later, Sweetie Belle watched the approaching aelewyrm from the window of Lucille's office. It was much closer now – she could make out the structure of its wings, its eyes, the scar on its side. The desert below skated past; air whipped at the Dulcet's hull; the engines murmured. A little way ahead, the rest of the fleet – nine battleships and four other ships who had joined the assault – split into three groups. One headed right, one left, and one held steady.
Lucille's claws clinked against her typewriter. A griffon design, littered with so many keys they had to split into four rows. The messages rolled out the top impressively fast. When she'd finished, she pulled out the sheet of paper and sent it through the ansible on her desk.
Sweetie Belle looked round the office again. The map she'd made earlier that day had already been affixed to the wall.
A reply came through the ansible. Lucille read it, then looked up at Sweetie Belle. “We're ready,” she said. “I'll wait above the cloud layer. Millie will be ready to pick you up on the ground if she can get close enough. Now let's get going.” She ushered Sweetie Belle to the door and, at the last moment, paused, and looked back at the second ansible – the one with its other terminal in Ilmarinen. At the last moment before she went through the door, Sweetie Belle saw Gritstone's messages stacked neatly beside it.
Lucille took her out of the office and into the bridge, where Scootaloo was waiting for them.
“Take us through the cloud layer,” ordered Lucille.
“Yes, ma'am.”
Lucille turned to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. “If either of you die, I will be very disappointed. Now get going.”
A crew member escorted them off the bridge. Outside, the yellow-ochre vapour ceiling came down to meet them.
The Ilmarinen navy had been remarkably open-minded about her plan. Or, rather, pragmatic. It went quite well with their own. By starting the assault on the enemy ship, they would draw its attention and fire from her, giving her a better chance. And if she failed, they'd fall back on the original plan to just overwhelm the enemy.
Mind you, if she failed, they would still have a pissed-off aelewyrm in their midst, right on top of Ilmarinen.
Their destination was a small room with a door that led directly into the open air. Here, the escort handed them each a gas mask and separate goggles. The mask, made for beaks rather than muzzles, squashed her nose. She pulled it up.
“Lure,” said Saffron.
The lure was taped to the end of a narrow steel bar about a metre and half long, sitting ready in the corner. Sweetie Belle held it up to her horn. By now, the sensation was familiar: Saffron giving her the spell directly. She applied it with a pale green ribbon momentarily joiing her horn and the lure. It seemed to hum for a moment, in a way that she felt through her aura rather than heard, then went silent again. A dull ache billowed through her chest, leaving tiredness in its wake. Some of her own energy had gone into turning up the lure.
“There. He'll definitely feel that,” said Saffron. “I'd guess the lure will last fifteen to twenty minutes at that strength before it burns out.”
”Right,” said Sweetie Belle. She gave the pipe to Scootaloo.
“Ready?” said Scootaloo.
“No,” said Sweetie Belle. She glanced out the window. Twenty minutes to prepare – to learn as much as she could about operating Scootaloo's wings, to study the photographs of Blueberry's airships and have Saffron comment on the best place to hide the lure. It wasn't enough. And during that time all her enthusiasm had drained away. “But let's go anyway.”
She mounted Scootaloo awkwardly, all the undertones of such an act pressing on her mind, while the griffon, all business, helped apply the set of straps that hold them together and stop her from falling off. Finally, he tucked the bar under a strap along Scootaloo's flank.
“Done,” he said.
Scootaloo took a few steps back from the door. Her coat, shifting muscles underneath, pressed against Sweetie Belle's belly. “Remember what we said. Open the wings the moment we get outside, but not before. And add thrust slowly,” she said.
She's as uncomfortable about this as I am, realised Sweetie Belle. Of course: The plan always sounds more awesome before you have to do it. “Got it,” she said. I won't let you down.
The griffon opened the door for them.
Outside seemed like a different world: The clouds like a ragged mass of foam formed a surreal desert floor twenty or thirty metres below. Above them, just the bright, empty sky, with the sun trailing in front of the Scar.
And then Scootaloo was moving. A leap into a canter became a gallop halfway across the room. Sweetie Belle settled her aura into the opening mechanism of the wings, held herself back. A fraction of a second dragged out – then with a faint whoosh they were outside, falling. Her stomach lurched –
and she opened the wings. Gravity came back. She pushed the wings into thrust, gently as she could – they trailed a faint iridescent glow. As she increased the thrust, the glow became stronger.
“That's it!” said Scootaloo. “Stop there!” She finished her sentence with a shriek of joy. “Yeah! It works!”
Sweetie Belle realised she was smiling. “We did it!” she said. She glanced back at the Dulcet, still huge in perspective, but rapidly receding. Lucille would now take it back below the cloud layer and pull away on a different course to take it out the path of the aelewyrm.
She checked the Scar to orient herself and made a slight course correction.
This was the easiest part. Fly straight for ten minutes. Ilmarinen would be visible ahead – the spire of the highest sphere would poke through the cloud tops. But it would be easy to miss. Her mind ran through the possibilities: Missing the target, going too far, letting the Ilmarinen navy get destroyed and being left without support in the path of the aelewyrm. Or coming out in the wrong spot, too far from the ship. Getting shot down. Failing to get the aelewyrm to follow.
No, she told herself. You would've have got this far if you weren't capable of doing this.
Or maybe this is the point your luck runs out.
A single daemon hiding in Scootaloo's wings whispered at her.
The minutes passed. Up here, everything seemed serene. Another world, where all the strife and grime of Amaranth was left behind. Just her and Scootaloo and the sky. She watched Scootaloo's mane dancing in the wind, the hair on her coat quivering, her ears pinned.
A deep bass rumble came from behind. She looked over her shoulder. There it was. The aelewyrm. Already close. Its middle wings dipping into the clouds and churned them with each beat. Its mandibles glimmered wetly in the sunlight.
Part one of the plan done, then.
“There it is,” said Scootaloo. The tip of the spire, a little antenna poking out of the clouds.
Time for a sighting check. Sweetie Belle eased back the thrust and pulled the tiny gas mask over her muzzle. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” came Scootaloo's muffled voice.
She angled the wings gently. They began to drop.
“Bit more than that,” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle angled more. A moment later the clouds swooped up to meet them. For a moment the world became very small, an opaque and faintly flowing yellow wall surrounding everything. A flash of panic – she'd overshot! She steadied the angle as they came out of the clouds.
There it was – Ilmarinen from above. One of the sphere had been torn open. Elsewhere, it trailed thin lines of smoke from vents. The gorge lay like a scar in the desert. The wreckage of battleships, torn apart and burnt out, lay scattered across the ground.
And there, to the left, was the qilin ship. An ornate, alien, impossible thing. The three fleets approached it from different directions; gunships launched and swarmred around them. Faintly, she culd hear the patter of distant gunfire. The qilin ship swung around the face the nearest of the fleet. A moment later, a sound like a thunderclap – and the nose of the leading battleship crumpled like a paper toy under the blow of a hoof. Bits of shrapnel came away and tumbled through the air.
She took a moment to memorise the position of the qilin ship, then angled the wings again and took them back above the cloud layer. Another turn, decreased thrust. Not long now.
The aelewyrm roared loud enough the hurt her ears. She could hear the steady, deep beat of its wings behind her. Below, gunfire pattered, and another thunderclap came in response. Some of the cloud vapour had infiltrated her mask; it dug astringent claws into her tongue and nostrils.
“This is the spot!” called Scootaloo.
“Oh, Celestia,” murmured Sweetie Belle. She reached through into the wings , cut the thrust, and together they dived through the cloud layer.
Her inside lurched again. The opaque vapour gave way a moment later, and the qilin ship appeared before her. It had moved since – it was still a good hundred, two hundred metres away. To her right, the massive spheres of Ilmarinen blocked the view.
“Up, pull up!” called Scootaloo. “We'll miss it!”
Sweetie Belle did so. The qilin ship fired again, but she didn't see what it hit. When she checked, she saw she'd overcompensated, and dropped again. There – 45 degrees down – heading straight for it. Its hull, a map of swirling curves and baroque decorations, came up towards her. It swung about again.
Towards her and Scootaloo.
Its weapon – not the muzzle of a gun, but a faint bristling sort of undulation the seemed to swim across the surface of the hull – moved up to meet her.
“Turn!” said Scootaloo.
There were too many controls, too many variables, not enough time. Sweetie Belle dived. Suddenly the desert lay directly in front of them. Air whistled past. The thunderclap came, louder than an aelewyrm roar, loud enough to leave her ears ringing; a gentle but powerful pressure pushed against her rear.
The ground seemed to lurch, turn, swing about.
They were spinning she realised. Spinning nose first towards the ground.
“Scootloo!” she shrieked. “I can't – I don't know how!”
Scootaloo's voice was tense but steady, loud enough to hear without becoming a shout: “Left wing, angle up, thrust. Right wing angle down!”
Closing her eyes, Sweetie Bele ran through this instructions over and and over in her head, blocking everything but her aura on the controls of the wings.
Scootaloo's voice again: “Drop thrust. Straighten the wings!”
As she did so, Swetie Belle realised first that her throat hurt, and second that she was still screaming. She opened her eyes again – saw the weapon slinking across the nose of the qilin ship. They were level with it now, less than a hundred metres away. The dive would have only taken a few seconds; the weapon was still recharging.
Her scream became a laugh. She angled the wings and with a kick of thrust sent them up again, out of the weapon's reach.
The weapon fired again – the thunder followed by the faint squeal of metal.
She levelled out – and there it was. Amongst all the surface decorations, an opening. A sort of vent, leading downwards, less than half a metre across.
“Steady!” cried Scootaloo. She grabbed the bar holding the lure, clutched it in her pastern while she aimed, and threw it.
For a fraction of a second, Sweetie Belle thought it was going to miss, but the bar thumped into the hull just above the vent, then tumbled inside, out of sight.
As soon as she was sure it was in, Sweetie Belle turned, checked the weapon, and kicked up the thrust.
Ahead of them now, the assault fleet: One ship in flames, two bearing great warped scars on their nose or flank, another torn almost in half. They were all watching her, she realised; they began to retreat.
Another thunderclap finished off an injured ship. Sweetie Belle glanced at the sky. Come on, where are you? She checked the weapon to keep out of its way. It fired again, crushing the aft section of one of the independent ships.
Then came the aelewyrm's roar.
It plunged down through the poisonous cloud cover towards the airship, trailing yellow vapour behind its thagomizer. Ivory mandibles, lacquered with slime and saliva stretched open and closed with an immense crack.
The aelewyrm had come out almost directly above the qilin ship. It dived and, at the last moment, swung to the side and levelled its decent just below the ship. The ship pulled back as if startled. Its weapon moved across its hull. The aelewym pulled away, towards the assault fleet – and for a horrible moment Sweetie Belle, watching over her shoulder, thought the lure had burned out. But then it turned and headed back to the ship.
As it passed, the aelewyrm bit down on the flank of the ship. Its mandibles clanged against the hull and bounced off. The ship fired; the aelewyrm twitched. One of its middle wings tore from its body and tumbled to the ground like a sycamore seed, trailing some light brown fluid. Its tail flew up into the ship's belly – its thagomizer penetrated – and scored giant scars into the hull as it pulled away.
The aelewyrm swung about again – an uneven and jerky motion with only five wings – and hurled itself into the ship. This was no flyby. It folded its wings and curled its body around the ship. Roaring, it beat at the ship with its tail, bit it again and again. Some attacks bounched off, some dug into the hull.
The ship lurched, turned back and forth. It fired again, where the aelewyrm's body was pressed against its hull. The aelewyrm's skin split open – and so did the ship's. The aelewyrm roared, bleeding thick oils and tars, shifted, and bit into the ship's wound. Its mandibles came back cluching a crumpled mass of interior bulkheads.
Something inside the ship sparked, igniting the oil covering it. A sea of blue-violet flames exploded out to coat both combatants.
The qilin ship, began to list. Its starboard side dipped, then its nose. It descended slowly. The aelewyrm continued to tear at it, pulling out more of its innards. Together they gathered spped, until both combatants, bound together, dived at the ground.
At their scales, it still seemed slow and oddly beautiful, thought Sweetie Belle.
They hit the lip of the gorge together, burst open together, impossible flesh and impossible machinery spilling out, mixing, all coated in flame. The sound, a deep, grinding groan, swamped everything and yet seemed oddly soft.
Where they'd landed, a chip of rock a hundred or more metres across split away from the lip of the gorge. The aelewyrm and ship, now indistinguishable, fell out of sight. A distant sounding boom came from within the gorge, trailed by its echoes, gradually fading into nothing.
First, there was the elation. Landing on Dignity, climbing off Scootaloo's back just so they could leap into a hug. The laughing and shrieking. “Wasn't that awesome!” The brief kiss. Was it platonic or not? Sweetie Belle climbing on Bounce's back, getting it overexcited to the point where it nearly put a hole in the ceiling with its thagomizer. At some point, Tom's weak protests fell away and he got pulled into a hug. Millie retreated to the cockpit and took the hovercraft forward.
The remains of the navy and its allies split into two groups, one to check the wrecks, and one to investigate the city. Sweetie Belle and the others joined the second group.
The docking tower didn't feel like Ilmarinen. Everything she'd associated with the place – the cacophony of machinery, the whirring chevaloids, the banter and arguments of ship crews and tower workers – had gone. Only the background noises remained: The shifting of the wind and occasional creaks from the tower's superstructure in response.
Crew from the fleet – ponies, griffons, minotaurs and others – stepped out from the other portals around the great circular room. The tower was otherwise empty. They arranged themselves into search teams. Sweetie Belle and others joined up with one. As they moved down the corridor to Ilmarinen itself, she noticed the looks she was getting. The mare who won the Battle of Ilmarinen
At the end of the corridor, the sphere opened out before them. Debris was spread over the structures below, glittering like frost.
There were bodies on the streets, lying alone, face-down with a bullet in the back of the neck. Not many – nowhere near enough to account for the population of Ilmarinen. Sweetie belle's team passed four before they found their first survivor – a pegasus stallion – peering out from one of the structures. When he saw them he pushed opened the door and asked, “Are they gone?”
“Yes,” said the officer leading the team, a minotaur. “Ilmarinen is back under our control. Who attacked you?”
Other citizens followed him out of the structure. The stallion seemed unsure for a moment. “Ponies. Crystal ponies.” He amended this: “But mostly chevaloids. The chevaloids turned against us.”
“The chevaloids?”
The stallion gestured with his wings at the cityscape. “All of them.”
“What happened?” asked the officer.
“I, uh …” began the stallion.
A griffon behind him said, “They abducted people.” She shrugged. “Hundreds of them. Chevaloids dragged them away. Ponies directed them. When someone fought back, they shot him. Said they'd kill anyone who resisted. Some did anyway, and …”
“Do you know where they were taking them?”
She shook her head. No-one else in the group did either.
It carried on like that: More survivors, hiding in groups or alone; variations on the same story. The chevaloids turned on them, took citizens. Sweetie Belle lost count of the details, but the faces stuck with her. Those who's seen friends and family shot or taken. Some tearful, some blank. Some hopeful at first, then not when they learned the abducted hadn't been returned.
A chill grew in Sweetie Belle's chest. “Saffron,” she said. “If those people were aboard the ship. If we killed them …”
“Then you made the best choice you could with the information you had at the time,” said Saffron. She manifested walking beside Sweetie Belle and touched her shoulder. “Buck up. I don't think they were.”
“Why not?”
“Two ships, remember? One ran off.”
The same worry had evidently occurred to the other search teams. A while into their search, a messenger appeared bearing news from another docking tower. A testimony from a pony there had it that only one of the attacking ships had docked. The other circled the city to defend it – and the ships holding the abductees had flown off to the south long before the assault.
The revelation, though something of a salve to Sweetie Belle's conscience, wasn't hopeful either. A good fraction of Ilmarinen's population, while not dead, was still missing.
The search continued, turning into an accounting for the dead and missing, for the damage to Ilmarinen itself.
As they moved to check on the mailing office, they ran into another team holding Lucille. “Our heroes of the day,” she said, looking from Sweetie Belle to Scootaloo. “Well done.” She offered a blue-tipped claw for each of them to shake. “Hinny's Revenge is still docked,” she offered in a conversational tone. “Crew's mostly there, but Gritstone isn't.” Her eyes momentarily went to one of the bodies lying in the middle of an intersection. “Have you seen anything?”
Sweetie Belle shook her head. “I'm sorry.”
“It's fine,” said Lucille. She looked around. “He gets into scrapes almost weekly, but I'm pretty sure the bastard's smart enough not to play hero if he knows it'll get him killed. Keep an eye out, would you?”
“Of course.”
The front of the communications office had been shattered: Shards of stained glass littered the foyer. Wrought iron curlicues held bits of the original image, of blue skies meeting green treetops. As she stepped gingerly over the glass, Sweetie Belle caught sight of another fragment, a phoenix head snapped off at the neck.
The contents of the front desk – where you bought ansibles or dropped off mail if you didn't have one – lay amongst the glass. Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Lucille trailed their teams through a door that had been pulled off its hinges into the back room.
The ansible terminals would have been stored here, rows and rows of them on tin shelves, identity numbers stuck to the front of their trays, watched over constantly by staff who would check the number of each message and pass it to the right terminal as soon as it arrived. Now, the shelves had been torn down. The ansibles lay on the floor, some twisted and broken, numbers scraped away. The end of the room was blackened, the shelves warped. Someone had started a fire, but it hadn't spread.
“There aren't enough ansibles here,” someone commented. He was right, Sweetie Belle realised; the number of damaged terminals didn't match the shelf space.
Her team leader called on a number of his crew. “Count them,” he ordered.
The others checked the rest of the building. The records room had also suffered from a fire – this one more effective in its destruction. The room behind that was also filled with damaged ansibles – apparently this was where the news ones were kept. In the corridor just outside, Sweetie Belle ran into Captain Proper Order.
He met her eye. Standing, he had ten to eleven inches on her. “This was Blueberry Pancake?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”
“I think we need to have a talk very soon.” He looked over to the other officers. “We've accounted for three members of the Council, and those on the Admiralty Board who remained on Ilmarinen. For the moment, the navy office is our centre of operations.”
The crew who had been counting the ansibles stepped out into the corridor. “Sir,” one acknowledged Proper Order, then continued, “We were right. There aren't enough ansibles, even accounting for those damaged in the fire. We're missing at least a quarter, possibly more.”
Proper Order stared at them, then at the officers leading the teams. “This could be bad. If anyone out there is still trying to use their ansible – and inevitably someone will be, those messages could go right to the enemy. I want a message sent out among all ships we can contact. Make it known that only direct ansible usage is safe.”
“Yes, sir.”
Proper Order turned back to Sweetie Belle. “Come to the navy office in twenty minutes. Bring whoever you think might help. We need to decide on our next move.”
As he stepped out, Tom's gaze leapt from place to place across the cityscape. Sweetie Belle knew the feeling – the sensation of a familiar, or almost familiar, place distorted into something new and grotesque. By now, teams of navy officers and volunteers moved back and forth, taking stock of the damage, organising the survivors.
The aelewyrms, having drunk about half Dignity's diesel supply, had fallen asleep. With Saffron's assurance that they'd happily be there for another twelve hours, Sweetie Belle had decided she wanted Millie and Tom with her too.
Tom's ears pinned as they passed a makeshift trolley stacked with bodies. “Oh, crumbs,” he murmured.
“You holding up okay?” Scootaloo asked him.
He nodded, ears still down. “I knew Amaranth would be dangerous when I signed up for the expedition. But … I never thought I see so many dead people in my whole life.” He looked around. “The expedition …”
Scootaloo put a hoof on his arm. “I know,” she said. “I haven't seen them, but … they're compiling lists. I think the Navy Office is actually the best place to be if you want to keep up-to-date.”
“Yeah.” said Tom. “I guess.” He turned to Sweetie Belle. “I appreciate you bringing me along, but … why?”
Sweetie Belle gave him a faint smile. “After all we've been through together?”
“Yes, but apart from sentiment.”
“You're good at plans. And figuring stuff out.”
“Ah.” Tom glanced at a volunteer team herding survivors through the streets. “Well, there is one thing I've been thinking about. Maybe you've realised it already.”
“Oh, aye?” said Saffron.
“What is it?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“What does Blueberry need to activate the Apotheosis Machine? Energy. What did she take from Ilmarinen? I think you said a thousand or so people.”
“Okay …”
“Finally, what did we find under the chemical mines?”
Sweetie Belle stared at Tom, then Saffron. “The life-force machines.”
“Yeah, that'd be my guess too,” said Saffron. “I did the calculations, and it works out. There's a lot of thaumic power in a life, and a thousand at once … Well, a suitable mass sacrifice, let's say.”
“Huh,” said Sweetie Belle.
“So, that's a yes?” said Tom.
She realised she'd been assuming the others could hear Saffron too. Why, she didn't know. “Yeah, that's it,” she told Tom.
The gates to the Navy Office had been torn away. But the flag remained, now at half-staff, and the domes were intact. It seemed oddly serene, given the destruction that surrounded it. The guards recognised her immediately. One stood aside, and the other offered to guide her to Proper Order. This small act of deference made her chest swell, like being shown into the VIP area of some performance hall or when her fans recognised her in Canterlot; and even though she knew the feeling was inappropriate, she couldn't make it go away.
They were shown into a room with a large semicircular table filled with people. Proper order, sitting on the right, was the only one she recognised. From left to right, Sweetie Belle was introduced first to the Council – two griffons, a diamond dog, a pegasus and a unicorn – then to the Admiralty Board – a minotaur, a griffon, a pegasus. By the time she had reached the end, she had forgotten all the names.
“First of all,” said one of the council griffons, “We should thank you for your service, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Without your help, it is quite possible that we would not have any navy left by this point, even if we had won.”
Sweetie Belle gave him what she hoped was an appropriate bow.
“Still, even with this victory, we're not out of the woods.” The griffon looked around the table, then checked the papers in front of him. “So we're all on the same page, and to underline the scale of the attack, I offer the following numbers. Yesterday, Ilmarinen had a population of 3,700. Our current best estimates put the number of abductions at 1,200. The navy started with twenty-two battleships. We now have eight. Furthermore, one of our attackers is still out there. If it comes back, it seems to me that there's nothing we could do to stop it. At the very least, we'd lose what remains of our fleet, and that would leave us open as a target to every pirate this side of Amaranth. As it is, we're in no position to look after our allies.” He looked up at Sweetie Belle. “And, according to what Captain Proper Order has told me, that may we be the least of our worries. The details are a little sketchy, though, so could you fill us in on the details of this …” He checked his notes. “Blueberry Pancake?”
Sweetie Belle looked across the table. This was it, then. “I've got a qilin – the ones who lived here before us – in my head,” she explained, then added to Proper Order, “That's something I missed out last time. Her name is Saffron. She's the reason I know what I do about the technology here. Anyway … we think we know what Blueberry's going to do. There's a thing called the Apotheosis Machine. It will make her – or her boss – very powerful. More powerful than Discord. She's going to power it with the people she's abducted.”
Silence from the council. The griffon who had spoken opened his beak and closed it again.
At last, the diamond dog leant forward and cleared her throat. “I see. In that case …”
“You believe me?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Of course I believe you. This is Amaranth, dear. I can't speak for anyone else here, but I've been waiting for some sort of doomsday machine to pop up.” She smiled faintly. “Anyway. Blueberry Pancake has abducted our citizens and plans to rule the world. How do we stop her, and, if possible, get them back? I don't suppose we have another … flying snake?”
Tom raised his paw. “Aelewyrm.”
The council member smiled at him. “Aelewyrm, then. Only one of those, yes?”
“Uh, only one big ones. We've got hatchlings,” said Sweetie Belle. “I don't know how to stop her. Oh … there's one other thing. Apparently there's this dimensional barrier thing that's blocking the way.”
“Can we trust this to stop her?”
Sweetie Belle looked to Saffron, who had appeared beside her, and shook her head. “It might. I don't know.”
“Perhaps it will slow her down, at least. But it won't free our people, and it won't get her out of that ship.” The councillor looked around the table. “Suggestions? Anyone?”
“We may have to call home,” said Proper Order. “Equestria, Aquileona. They have a stake in what happens here.”
One of the admirals spoke up, “We've lost a direct ansible connection to Omphalos. The only way to send a message is by ship.”
“Then we send a ship,” said Proper Order.
“Omphalos is on the other side of Amaranth. That's a round trip of at least fifteen days, not counting time spent in the old world. And what would they be able to do? Alicorns can't come to Amaranth. No ship of significant size can get through the funnel in one piece.”
“Equestria and Aquileona may lack our adventurous spirit, but between them they have some of the most powerful magical artefacts, and nearly all of the most adept magic users. Given the impetus, they may think of something. They may succeed if we fail.”
“Do it,” said the diamond dog councillor. "Put an ansible terminal on a battleship and send it to Omphalos. Pass on the message to Equestria, Aquileona, and all the minor powers.” She glanced around her remaining councillors. “Any opposition?”
The griffon councillor who had spoken first said, “With the time delay, it may be pointless.”
“It may be. We can't rely on it. But I think the potential benefits are too big to ignore. Well? Any objections, speak now.” She looked around, then turned to the admiralty board. “Consider the motion passed. Get to it as soon as we're done here.”
The admirals acknowledged this.
The diamond dog councillor continued: “But we can't sit around for two weeks hoping this Blueberry won't find a way around the barrier. From everything I've seen, she's likely to find a way through it eventually. And until then, she'll be wandering Amaranth doing Sirius-knows-what with her ship. So: Ideas?”
Silence.
“We could go to Tanelorn,” suggested Tom. “It's where she got her ships, isn't it?”
“That's true,” said Saffron. “But, and I hate to say it, she knows a lot more than me. She's been working with the knowledge of a dozen repositories. I haven't seen that city in a while … I didn't even know it was still around until I saw it in her head.”
“Did you see anything else?” Sweetie Belle told her.
“I've told you all I know,” said Saffron. “I can find the city for you. I can show you some empty shipyards. Or, y'know, I could show you Apotheosis Machine if you wanted.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “That .. that's it.” She saw the expressions of the councillors and admirals and said, “Sorry, talking to Saffron. But I have an idea on how we can catch Blueberry! I go to the Apotheosis Machine and open it for her!”
I could eulogise it. But to what purpose? When faced with such a catastrophe, sometimes the only response is to say nothing. Let the silence of the empty streets speak.
Chapter 25 The Remains of Tanelorn
Spots of light roved through the darkness. They revealed little: A slate-grey wall, smooth, featureless, glittering slightly under the push of illumination. About three hundred metres high, and a little over a kilometre across. Blueberry called up her other sensors and checked other readouts – everything from echolocation to ambient radiation. The results were similarly empty. The ship sniffed the thaumic field and told her that yes, there was some sort of residual magic here, but it was so faint that any further analysis was impossible.
In the ship's systems, she could feel all her sacrifices-to-be. Two to a unit; not ideally efficient, but it would easily be enough.
She disconnected, feeling a little lost and wishing she'd bought Cannons and Sorghum along. Why? So they could bear witness to her setback? No Too her victory? They'd see that soon enough. There was no reason to have her boys here, but she wanted them alongside her anyway.
For a moment the bridge felt horribly alien. Her ship. The Resplendent. Except it wasn't really named that, and it wasn't really called that. Daemons lurked in its superstructure and stroked her ego. She was cocooned in a mass of materials and technology whose modes of operation, for all she'd learned, she knew almost nothing about. A thing that had been built and abandoned long before she or Sombra or the Crystal Empire had been born. Perhaps in that sense it was the apotheosis (ha-ha) of her entire life? Pulled from her family, lurched a millennium into the future by a despot's mad backup plan when she was still a filly. Blueberry, deracinated.
Connecting to the pillar again seemed repulsive, but she did it anyway, and summoned the messenger. Not a messenger any more, of course, but she still thought of him that way.
The put a visual display on the front of the bridge and, when he arrived, stood watching it.
“Yes, Miss Blueberry?'
She looked over her shoulder at him smiled, and summoned him forward. “What do you make of that?”
“I, uh, I don't –” He paused, caught her eye and looked again. “A wall? Is that the Apotheosis Machine?”
“This is where it should be,” she told him.
He looked again. “Maybe it was moved. Or … the map that mare gave us was wrong.”
“I don't think so. Everything else here is … well, my sort of city. This is just a giant wall. There's something here. I can see it. The ship can see it.” She trotted up the image. The spots of light held steady. Connecting with the pillar again, the pulled the Resplendent back. “Every step of my journey, I've had obstacles. Flay, my liege, Sweetie Belle. I've swept past them. This is no different.” Having said this, she wondered whether it was to reassure her messenger or herself.
The faint feeling of being oppressed by the city remained. She took the ship back outside. The desert, at least, was slightly familiar.
“Open the Apotheosis Machine?” said the diamond dog councillor.
“Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo said flatly. “That's crazy.”
Sweetie Belle grinned at her. “I know! But really, it's the only thing she's after.” Her smile faded and she looked slowly round the room. A performance, yes, like any other. The message: This is serious. She continued:
“I'm sick of running from her, running around after her. This time, I make the first move. We make the first move. We take the intiative and put her where we want her.”
“I don't think the Apotheosis Machine is where we want her,” said Tom.
“I know! But there's nowhere else. I can't think of anywhere, can you? And if we wait, she'll probably get through on her own. At least this way, we'll be there waiting for her.” Then she held up a hoof to the others. “Come on, Saffron, back me up here.”
“How?”
“Blueberry gets to the Apotheosis Machine. What does she do to activate it? Can we stop her?”
Saffron sighed. “Maybe. If the ship is her power source, it would be held in place. She'd have to get off it anyway to activate the Machine.”
Sweetie Belle recounted this to the others and added, “There! We lure her off the ship. We stop her … and we save all your citizens. If they're gone, her plan's over anyway.” As an aisde to Saffron, she said. “We can do that right? Save them?”
“Yes,” said Saffron at last. “But it won't be a matter of just opening the doors and herding them all out.”
“Twelve hundred people,” said the griffon councillor.
“With a big enough ship … ” said the minotaur admiral.
“Exactly!” said Sweetie Belle. “And –”
“Quiet, please.” The diamond dog councillor held up a hand to stop her. “Before we go further, does anyone else have a plan? The beginning of a plan?
Nothing.
“Then I'll give you some time to think of one. Meanwhile, let's help Sweetie belle flesh out hers. I want something a lot more detailed than open the barrier before we sign off on it.” To the admirals, “Tell her whatever she needs to know about her capabilities.” To Sweetie Belle, “And you tell us everything you know about this ship Blueberry has. We reconvene in two hours.”
Outside, Sweetie Belle found Lucille and her old shipmate, Petallion, in part of a small crown surrounding a list of names posted by the outer gate. The sky was growing darker, and a smattering of Ilmarinen's streetlamps were coming on in the distance.
“Excuse me,” said Tom, moving forward and trying to squeeze through the crowd without pushing anyone.
Lucille and Petallion moved away from the front of the crown and came up to meet her.
Sweetie Belle hugged Petallion; it felt like they hadn't seen each other in ages. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself, little miss adventurer,” said Petallion. “When I said maybe you were meant for greater things than being a stokehold worker, I didn't know you'd go this far.” She smiled faintly as they parted.
Sweetie Belle looked to the list. “What's the news?”
“Miss Sweetie Belle,” called one of the admirals behind her.
“Wait,” Sweetie Belle told him without looking round. Petallion's eyes widened slightly, but she didn't say anything.
“Grit's not here,” said Lucille. The next sentence seemed to stop her for a moment, but she continued, “Not among the dead, though. Probably taken.”
“Left the ship,” Petallion explained. “Not very clever.”
“Well,” said Sweetie Belle, “I'm going to get them all back. She gestured round at the admirals waiting behind her. “We're hashing out a plan now.”
Lucille looked up at the admirals. “I'm in,” she said. “If you need her, the Dulcet's at your disposal.”
“I'll see if anyone from Hinny's Revenge wants to come along,” added Petallion
Sweetie Belle grinned. “Sure. We'll be in here. They should let you in if I tell them.”
The meetings began with Sweetie Belle standing in front of a row of three chalkboards. Like the Ponyville schoolhouse with her as the teacher – except her students were an odd collection of Ilmarinen admirals and various friends she'd picked up on her travels, and the lesson plan was being delivered in real time by a long-dead qilin sharing her skull.
“We start with the givens. First, the battleground. When you get through the barrier, it opens onto a sort of cave. Technically speaking, and with the help of some topological magic, it's not actually in Tanelorn; it's in the sky, right next to the Scar. Really? That's so – Right, anyway, it's a holding bay for the biggest qilin vessels – two kilometres long, seven hundred in diameter. At the end, there's a platform leading into the machine itself. This is where Blueberry will have to stop. She'll need to plug her ship into the machine, then go on hoof to the control room.
“Now, the ship itself. She has a Cygnet class light scout.” Sweetie Belle sketched out a side view of the ship.
“Those were light scouts?” said one of the admirals.
“Look,” said Saffron, “By our standards, your lot have barely made it past rafts made of reeds and shit. Just be glad she didn't pull out anything powerful.”
“Qilin tech is pretty advanced,” Sweetie Belle translated. She stared back at Saffron while the other gave her a dark look, then the lecture resumed: “It has its weak spots. Places where we might just be able to get inside.”
“A vent?” came another question.
“No, not a vent. What do you think we are, stupid?”
“Not a vent … but, uh, the hull is thin in three places. Most importantly, right here on the back.” The circled a sot on one of the swooping curves. “There aren't any vital systems there – just corridors. But that suits our purposes. We might be able to break a hole and get in.
“Finally, the life-force units. We need to disconnect each one individually. Once they're all connected to the Apotheosis Machine, there's no way to pull them out without killing the captives.”
Tom raised his paw. “Um, question?” he said. “Why?”
This time, Sweetie Belle gave up an reported Saffron's answer verbatim: “She says they're made to perform executions. Safety of the condemned isn't exactly the highest priority.”
Tom lowered his paw.
After glancing at Saffron, Sweetie Belle looked around. “Now we begin the actual plan. Questions, comments?”
Of course there were:
“Are our guns strong enough he break through the hull?
“Two kilometres away? The moment we get close to that thing, it'll shoot us down.
“She'll be off it, surely?”
“But she might have allies.”
“Okay, okay!” said Sweetie Belle. “One more thing. The cannon we saw used today only faces forward. There are aft weapons, but they're not as powerful. And they have a shadow, here. She sketched out a top view of the ship, then drew a wedge behind it. “About 250 metres long and 100 wide at the base.”
“It can't shoot at something directly behind it?” said Tom. “Well, that's …”
“Soon as we invent a way to teleport ships,” said Cerise, “We'll be fine.”
“Yeah, that.”
Proper Order leaned forward, brow creased. “It might be doable. If we fly in fast enough. Use decoys to draw their fire. I'm more worried about timing. Once we get there, we have to find a way to break through the hull and rescue all the captives one-by-one. What's to stop her getting in her ship and turning round, and shooting us down so she can continue in peace? Or, if not her, her crew?”
Silence.
“We could hold on,” said Millie.
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “Harpoons?” She frowned, listening to Saffron. “That might actually work. Blueberry's ships actually pretty light.”
“I'm not sure we can cross that gulf quickly,” said Cerise. “No matter how fast we fly, we have to come to a halt. That makes it about acceleration, not just speed. And airships are lousy at acceleration.”
“And that hull. Really, that's thing's tough. What if our guns can;t hurt it.”
Sweetie Belle, trying to keep up with all the problems together, settled for the last one. “Maybe not a gun, but something more powerful?”
“Could crash a gunship into it,” someone joked.
“Could crash all of 'em,” said another.
And then the options were in the air. Suggestions coming up as often as problems. Each one Saffron commented on – yes, no, maybe. And the plan began to take shape.
“Okay,” said Proper Order at one point. “What if she turns on the machine while we're still trying to break through the hull?”
“I'm the bait,” said Sweetie Belle. “I'll be between her and the machine. I can keep her busy – after all, I only have to delay her until you guys are finished.”
“Alone?” said Proper Order.
Though Scootaloo answered him, her eyes were on Sweetie Belle: “No, not alone. Never alone.”
A little over an hour later, they put the plan before the Council. Twenty pages of detail in small type, with Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Proper Order taking turns presenting the salient points. The diamond dog councillor studied both cautiously.
At one point she looked up. “As much as I admire your audacity … and, shall we say, self-confidence … do you really think she'll buy this?”
“I really do,” said Sweetie Belle. “Every time I've run into her, she's underestimated me. I escaped her several times using qilin magic. She thinks I'm affected by the daemons.”
“Are you?”
No, the answer almost came out without her meaning to.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I …” She looked around her friends. “I can feel them. But I have it under control.”
The councillor was silent for several moments. “Okay,” she said. “So run it by me again.”
“She knows I have qilin magic. She knows by now her other ship has been destroyed. So say she's looking at some of our ansible transmissions, and hears that some white unicorn has swooped in and abducted even more citizens. She hears what I say, because obviously this unicorn rants and brags like she does. What's the conclusion? It's me, stealing her plan. And I've let slip I know a way to open the barrier. She rushes to the site to follow me. And there she is.”
“And in this hypothetical scenario, why would some airships be sending out ansible messages when they don't get any response?”
Sweetie Belle glanced at Proper Order, who stood by the door, listening. “Because someone inevitably will.”
The councillor smiled faintly. “Very well.”
Following that, the Council retreat for a short debate. After fifteen minutes, the vote came out: Three to two in favour of the plan.
The following morning, Sweetie Belle woke in Dignity's main cabin, pressed against Scootaloo. Tom was already awake, staring out the window. The hovercraft's hull creaked faintly; the aelewyrms made atonal melismatic sussurations in their sleep; a daemon whispered all such glory all such beauty the performer stands before before lapsing back into nonsense. As she watched, the light in the cabin dimmed slightly, brightened again a few secons later. She shifted so she could see out the window. The clouds were thinning out. Now they passed in ragged ochre ribbons.
Tom's ears swivelled towards her. “Time for the announcement,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. She rolled over and stood up. “I never asked … how are your friends? The research team.”
“None dead. All missing.” He scritched at his ear briefly. “Crumbs. I don't know if I can do this.”
“You don't have to come along,” said Sweetie Belle.
Tom stepped away from the window and sat down, leaning against the black-grey undulating body of one of the aelewyrms. “Remember the good old days when the most we had to worry about was being abandoned and captured by pirates?” he said.
Sweetie Belle smiled at that. “We did it, though, didn't we?”
“Will you two quiet down?” muttered Scootaloo into the wall. “We'll do it, alright?”
“Are you sure you don't want to hear more about how we rescued you?” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo groaned.
At last, they got up and returned to Ilmarinen. The night-shift of the navy had already got the work. The Mettlesome, the least damaged of the Navy fleet, hung in its berth, draped in cables. Pegasi and griffons swarmed about it; other workers hung in harnesses, helping to bolt on another layer of makeshift armour to the nose. Two gunships were already affixed to its flank.
In Sphere Seven, a stage had been set up. The survivors, a crowd of two and half thousand, gathered on the sloping land. Someone had put up an Ilmarinen flag, which hung limply in the stagnant air. As Sweetie Belle approached, one of the guards summoned her to stand on the stage. She brought Scootaloo with her, but Tom and Millie held back.
When everything was settled, Proper Order took to the front of the stage. “You've seen the list of the missing,” he said loudly. “The ponies who have them are a threat to the world. Both worlds. We have a plan to stop them and get our people back. We leave this afternoon. I'm telling you this because we want volunteers. He paused here, looked over the crowd. “If can fight, if you can't. Either way, you can help. Now, I won't mince words. The mission is dangerous. We are expecting fatalities. It's quite possible none of us will come back. Don't be under any illusions about what signing up entails. But if you want to volunteer, come to Sphere Two in the next hour. There, we'll do a head-count and assign you to your teams. That is all.”
The volunteers were counted, sorted into combat-capable and not, then passed onto Sweetie Belle. Acting as a proxy for Saffron again, she introduced them to the design of the execution units, demonstrated how to deactivate them. Proper Order came in again briefly talk about how to handle the abductees as they became conscious again, then Sweetie Belle moved onto the ship design, putting up a deck plan of the ship – “We don't know where the units will be,” she explained though Saffron, “but given the number, they're almost certainly in the corridors. This is the order we proceed in … ” The volunteers copied their deck plans, then moved on to other training.
Millie was among them. When Sweetie Belle asked her about it, she shrugged and said, “What else am I gonna do? Have a pint and wait for all this to blow over? Suppose I could, but it's too late now.”
Tom was there too. In the non-combatant group. Lucille had convinced some of her crew to come with her. Others, apparently, would be looking after the Dulcet in her absence; if she didn't come back, her first officer was to take Gregor back to Aquileona in her stead.
When she had a free moment, Scootaloo came up to Sweetie Belle. “Look at this!” she said. The thips of her wings made a whispering sound and flexed slightly. “They're starting to work again!”
Elsewhere, others worked. Messengers checked all the ships with ansibles, found which ones had terminals which might have been stolen, and recruited their help. The Council put together what seemed like plausible messages of panic that would attract Blueberry's attention, and the captains of the ships copied them out in their own writing.
Millie supervised a team of workers in detaching the harpoon guns from Dignity and affixing them to the Mettlesome.
When Sweetie Belle saw the ship brooding in its berth, it had shed whatever elegance had been in its design to begin with. The nose, already spiked, bristled with harpoons and another layer of armour. Cables looped round its waist tethered gunships – sixteen in total, arranged into two circles.
Finally, they took her to see her decoy, an Aquileonan-style scout named the Shrike. An ugly, sharp-nosed thing in grey and dirty-white, with a swollen belly and oversized engines. Big enough to hold her imaginary hostages, but fast enough to keep up with the battleship and get to Tanelorn in a day.
The afternoon had come. It was time to leave.
Just before they left, Sweetie Belle and Tom went back to Dignity. One of Lucille's crew had agreed to look after the thing while Ilmarinen was evacuated.
They sat with the aelewyrms a while, scratching their mandibles and necks, played a little, fed them some more diesel, then opened the main cabin doors. They looked up at the sky, back at Sweetie and Tom Belle, spread their wings, closed them, scampered back and forth across the cabin.
Eventually Sweetie Belle shooed them away. Bounce took flight first and circled in the sky above Dignity. At last, its siblings joined it, with Chardonnay going last. They swung about Ilmarinen once more, then turned Northeast.
Best to keep them out of danger; if she got back, she could summon them back. She hoped they understood.
The sky clear again. The bulbous sun hanging over the horizon. The ground still strewn with the remains of half the navy, their burnt-out husks striping the desert with orange-stained shadows. The Scar opening above and the gorge below, the latter still trailing smoke.
Ilmarinen receding into the distance. It would be evacuated for the next couple of days – the four remaining battleships looking after a quarter of the fleet each, in case Blueberry came back.
Sweetie Belle rode on the Mettlesome. The austere, angular symmetry of the interior corridors held firm against the near-chaos inside: Triage facilities, training areas, awkward groups of volunteers under the direction of a frontier Navy, itself no ideal of discipline. With the others, she was shown what she needed to know of the ships systems. Hollow pipes ran through the bulkheads for shouted orders; they came with mirrored insides and strong lamps at either end in case things got too loud. Sweetie Belle wished she'd learned the light code.
In between their training sessions, some of the volunteers wanted to talk to her. Did she really summon the aelewyrm to kill the other ship? Sort of. Was she really the sworn nemesis of Blueberry Pancake? Not intentionally. Was she available? After this, would she consider … ? Let's get through this first.
“I wish they'd leave me alone,” she lied to Millie.
Saffron appeared infrequently. “Tanelorn,” she said once. “I'm going back to Tanelorn.” Later: “I don't know if I can do it. No, that's bullshit. I can. I'm just loath to have all those memories brought up again.” She smiled weakly. “Emotional repression suits me down to the ground.”
In the morning, the desert had turned white. A scratchy, dull white that stretched on to the fat, red arc of the sun peering over the horizon.
“You recognise this?” she asked Saffron.
“Where you found me. Well, within a few hundred kilometres, anyway.” Saffron laughed. “I know it well. You know this used to be a great lake? I walked across it a lot.”
“Walked across it?”
“Qilin can – could – walk on water. Yeah. After the end, I came back here. It was shallow then, but not empty. After my ship was attacked, I knew it was going to crash, so as a last resort I uploaded myself into the repository. I hoped that if he used the Apotheosis Machine, he'd be able to get me out and fix everything. Instead, he spent the next few millennia messing about in your world, so, y'know, that worked out well.” Saffron stepped back from the windows, closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “Anyway, it turns out someone thought the Great Lake Saudade was the best place to hide Tanelorn. Tell me when we get there.” She vanished again.
A little over two hours later, and the sun crawled up towards the Scar, they reached the co-ordinates.
At first, given her conversation with Saffron, Sweetie Belle thought it was a lake: A circular hole in the salt half a kilometre across, an immense staring eye reflecting the sky and the Scar. But its surface was too smooth, too calm. Almost featureless. It was slightly concave, giving Sweetie Belle the impression that it was a tiny part of a sphere buried beneath the desert.
“That's exactly what it is,” Saffron commented. “A shield around the city. If I'm right about its size, we'll need to prepare for turbulence”
With the two ships positioned a few metres above the shield in the centre of the circle, Sweetie Belle headed down to the belly of the Mettlesome. A guard opened a door for her so she could look out and down.
They were close enough that she could see her own reflection, her set expression, looked out from the bulk of an upside-down battleship.
Not the face of a filly, she thought.
Saffron gave her the spell, and she used it. The shield quivered the moment she hit it with her aura. The reflections fragmented. Patches of colour skated away across it surface. Then it vanished. A downdraft roared. The ship lurched, dragged down into the darkness below. Bulkheads whined, squealed. For a few seconds, Sweetie Belle thought it was going to tear apart.
The rattling faded, then stopped. The trickle of light from outside vanished, and everything became quiet.
For a moment, Sweetie Belle stood staring out the open door into an infinite blackness. Daemons whispered at her; the battleship creaked around her.
“Remind me what that was?” she asked Saffron.
“Pressure normalisation. This space is a few kilometres deep, at least. Don't worry about the downdraft when we want to get out – I just have to change the spell a bit.”
Sweetie Belle made her way back to the bridge, By then, the Mettlesome's giant lamps had come out, picking out a web of glinting edges floating in the shadows. It took a few moments for her eyes to become accustomed.
Tanelorn. The capital city of the qilin.
Close by, the tallest thing in the city. A spindle shaped tower that reached the ceiling, and went down do deep into the shadows that she couldn't see the base. It was hard to say how tall it was. Kilometres, at least. Flat, triangular plates, like horizontal blades of grass, extended from it in a sort of helical spiral. As the battleship moved forward, they passed over one: Quaint little houses with overhanging eaves. Winding pathways between them. Coated in shadow, a sculpture, or maybe a fountain. A village, like Ponyville – standing on a platform kilometres off the ground, stricking out from the side of a giant tower.
“Port forty degrees,” said Saffron, voice drained of affect. “Then keep going for twenty kilometres or so.” Sweetie Belle relayed the orders to Proper Order.
The ships turned from the tower and proceeded forward above the cityscape. In their light – powerful, but still swamped by the dark – the city looked incorporeal, on the verge of physical reality and ready to tumble away into nothing.
They passed more buildings. Not as large as the tower, but still immense. They seemed to be arranged into districts by style, but there were more styles here than Sweetie Belle had seen in Equestria and Aquileona put together. Here, a sort of gothic shading into organic, with sweeping arches that looked almost skeletal. There, something almost classical – domes and pillars, long structures that looked liked canals, all perfectly symmetric. Then the buildings were all straight lines and irregular angles, asymmetric and chaotic like shards of quartz and knives. After that, a single distributed thing a soft, smooth curves, like a river viewed in a frozen instant, or a mass of flowstone among speleothems. Then the bucolic again: Dainty structures sprinkled across rolling hills and rivers – except the water and grass had long since gone.
They passed something resembling a forest – giant trees, stripped of foliage and apparently petrified – then followed an avenue as wide as the battleship itself, lined with three aqueducts supported by gracile arches.
And finally, near the edge of the city, where the shield offered a distorted reflection of the way they'd come, they found the entrance to the Apotheosis Machine: A pale white wall cliff face, smooth as a wall. Behind it, just flat ground abutting the shield.
Saffron manifested again. “Move to the window, would you?” she asked Sweetie Belle. Then, pointing at a large, open building in the shape of a prism, a bit like a hangar: “You can hide your battleship in there. Blueberry's ship won't be able to see you through that.”
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Proper Order.
“Very well,” he said. He put a hoof on her shoulder. “Good luck.” And, turning to Scootaloo, “Both of you.”
Scootaloo grinned at him. “Same to you.”
They made their way down to the bay while the Shrike and Mettlesome docked with a shudder and a distant clang.
“How are you wings?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Can't fly, but I can open them properly now!”
Where the corridor opened up into the docking tube, their friends waited for them. Petallion, Whicker, Muttershanks, Tom, Millie, Lucille. Even Cerise.
Seeing them all that made something catch in Sweetie Belle's throat. She bounded into a hug with Tom, who stood nearest. He recoiled at first, then at last accepted. “Alright,” he said at last. “Calm down. It only might be our last every meeting.”
She hugged him harder, until it began to get a bit embarassing, then moved on.
“Woah, lass,” said Mille. “You're not doin' that to me. Don't you even think you are.” She looked Sweetie Belle in the eyes, patted her shoulder, and sighed. “I'm no good at this emotional crap. Just … try not to die, alright.”
Sweetie Belle smiled at her and shook her hoof.
“And if you fail at that,” said Lucille. “It's been nice knowing you.” She did hug Sweetie Belle – briefly and firmly.”
At last, the pilots of the Shrike had all disembarked. The Shrike was ready. When they'd finished their goodbyes, Sweetie Belle feeling on the verge of crying, she and Scootaloo headed aboard and retracted the gangplank.
They traipsed through the empty corridors, trailed by the metallic echoes of their hoofsteps. All of it for all the others and yourself with a daemon whispered in her ear. The bridge was a poky little room with windows on three sides and two ansible terminals placed either side. Both connected to the bridge of the Mettlesome.
She settled behind one set of controls, and looked over at Scootaloo with a faint smile. “Ready?”
“As I'll ever be,” said Scootaloo.
They pulled the Shrike away. While the Mettlesome retreated towards the hanger, they swung round and nosed up against the blank white wall ahead.
“Okay,” said Saffron. “Here you go.”
A spell jumped fully-formed into her Sweetie Belle's brain. The opening key to the Apotheosis Machine. Looking straight out through the front window, she used it.
The wall seemed to fade, smear. It became overlaid with something else, like a doubly-exposed photograph. A few seconds later, there was no wall; just a cavern opening straight ahead.
The cavern enveloped them, distant on all sides. Its surfaces were dark, smooth, covered in gentle ridges like ribs that arched horizontally, then netted together. Threads of glowing white were woven through them in some pattern too complex to follow, trailed by smeared reflections in nearby surfaces. It made Sweetie Belle think of the interior of some giant gothic-style hall, mutated and turned half organic, where the walls, floor and ceiling flowed into one another and became indistinguishable.
At the far end, the cavern closed up. Halfway up the end wall a semicircle platform stuck out about, leading to a deeper cavern. Above it, an array of skeletal looking spines jutted out. “The interface to the Apotheosis Machine,” Saffron offered.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo brought the Shrike to a halt below the spines. From the bottom of the gondola, they unfurled a rope ladder to covered the last few metres down to the platform. Sweetie Belle carried the two ansibles in her aura.
Standing on the platform looking back offered a succession of framed images. First, and closest, the inelegant bulk of the airship like a roof; then the liquified gothic of the cavern; finally the backdrop of Tanelorn itself, looking at this distance like a charcoal painting.
“How are your wings feeling?” she asked Scootaloo.
Scootaloo opened the wings to full length and retracted them, then smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Better,” she said. “Good enough to fight with.”
They trotted through the wall of the cavern deeper towards the machine. An already broad tunnel eventually broadened out into a giant round chamber. The floor wasn't all there. At seemingly arbitrary places, it dropped away like a cliff edge; sometimes the drop was sheer, sometimes odd little overhangs would stop a fall. A few broken repositories lay in various places. And other bits of unplaceable detritus – rods of some corroded metal, cables, trinkets.
There were more threads of light here too – but not threads anymore. They were three or four feet across, so bright you couldn't distinguish any internal structure beyond a vaguely cylindrical shape. They came up though floor and headed serpentine to the ceiling.
“If this was a research facility,” asked Sweetie Belle, “Why does it look so much like an ancient temple?”
“All the qilin aesthetic is ostentatious,” said Saffron.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“But not in the way your Blueberry Pancake is. Not to show off. We'd solved nearly everything else. The entire population lived in wealth and comfort. We'd long passed any design limitations on technology. In which case, why not go as far as you can with creativity and curiosity?”
Sweetie Belle looked around. “So what are the lights?”
“The Scar. We're not underground anymore, remember. We're in a facility on top of the Scar. It's woven into this place so the Machine can use it.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “The actual Scar?”
“Yes. Speaking of which. Take that metal rod off the floor and poke that bit of the Scar with it.”
“Is … is that safe?”
“You'll see.”
Sweetie Belle did so. The rod entered the thread of light without resistance. But when she pulled it back, it was a foot or so shorter; the part of it inside the light hadn't come out. The cut was impossibly smooth.
“So don't touch it, right?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Well, that's good to know,” said Scootaloo. She looked around. “So I guess here's the best place to make our stand?”
“I guess so.” Sweetie Belle stopped for a moment, listened to the daemons whispering in her ear. “Hide behind the statues and jump out when she comes through the door, right?”
Scootaloo laughed. “Yeah, we could do that.”
Sweetie Belle laughed too. When she'd finished she was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I'm glad you came with me.”
“Are you kidding? There's no way you'd be able to stop her by yourself.” Scootaloo grinned at her again. “C'mere.” She pulled Sweetie Belle into a hug. “I'm glad I'm here too. I mean, uh, it kinda sucks that we have this madmare trying to become a god and all, but since we can't help that … well you know. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's really awesome that you came up with all this to stop her. And that we can do it together.”
Sweetie Belle stepped away from the hug and nodded. “Eloquent.” They both laughed again. She realised in that moment how convinced she was of winning. The only question that seemed to remain was: How? What the most awesome way she could smack down Blueberry, get her revenge for all the pain she'd been through, and convince Scootaloo to fall in love with her? Some finishing move, some coup-de-grace that would establish her as the hero of the whole thing.
She realised Saffron was saying something to her. “ … Are you there? There's something else we can do.”
“What?”
“There's something more we should do. I can sense a working repository.”
There was another door – or opening – on the far side of the chamber. “This way,” Sweetie Belle said. “Saffron has an idea.” Then: “So what is it?”
“Suppose she sees you here when you … jump out. And then she teleports past you.”
Sweetie Belle wrinkled her nose. That would be embarrassing.”
“And, potentially, the end of the world. Both important considerations. Anyway, I can set up a counter to all teleportation spells in this area. And a counter to some of the other nastier ones that she might know.”
“So she'll have no magic at all?”
“Not quite. Some spells can't be stopped. But it should make things easier for you. I was also thinking I'd give you all the spells I know that still work.”
“At last.”
Saffron sighed. “All or nothing situation, I suppose.”
Carrying the ansibles with them, they went through the opening down a short corridor, and into another room. It wasn't as broad as the previous chamber (which Sweetie Belle dubbed the antechamber), but it was much higher. So high, in face, that she couldn't see the ceiling; the walls stretched up and up, like the inside of a tube, punctuated by the same threads of light coming through oval windows – until they faded from sight. A helical staircase wound up around them until, a hundred metres above, it stopped by a hole in the wall.
A repository stood by the base of the stairs. Its glowing, insouciant face seemed almost ridiculous amid such ostentatious architecture.
Sweetie Belle trotted up to it and stared at it for a moment. Last time she'd seen this was … the time she'd had Saffron dropped into her head.
She reached out with her aura and connected to it.
The sensation was so rich it was almost sickening. A sense of the whole facility, a map in three dimensions, and everything in it. A sense of the Scar running through it. All the thaumic wiring and machinery hidden in the walls. She could feel the airship they'd left outside, she could feel Scootaloo and herself along amongst the ruins. It was like some absurdly complicated diagram – everything was there, but there was too much to take in.
“This'll take a while,” said Saffron. “Just keep calm. You'll get used it it.”
While Saffron worked (Sweetie Belle could feel this too, like a stream of information washing over her consciousness), she concentrated on the most comprehensible part of the facility: The physical map. First, the platform they'd arrived on. Then through a corridor to the antechamber. Then this room – the staircase room. And at the top of the stairs, the end. The interface itself.
That was the battlefield, and that was the prize. They had to keep Blueberry away from that.
“Done,” said Saffron.
The connection ended, and Sweetie Belle found herself back in the real world. She wobbled slightly, and a moment later Scootaloo was as her side to hold her up.
“You alright?” she asked.
Sweetie Belle blinked a few times, then nodded. “Yeah, I'm fine.” When she'd recovered, she picked up the ansibles and cantered over to the staircase. “I want to see the interface room,” she told Scootaloo.
“Why?” asked Saffron.
“It's better to be familiar with the whole facility, isn't it?” Sweetie Belle was already a few steps up.
Scootaloo shrugged and followed her.
The canter became a trot, then a walk, then an amble. Sweetie Belle was just beginning to regret her curiosity when they reached they top. The repository below looked tiny; above, the walls still stretched beyond the limits of vision.
An arch gave onto some dark room. Before she turned towards it, Sweetie Belle caught sight of the view through one of the windows.
It was hard to make sense of it at first. It was an ugly sort of mottled plane. Mostly shades of yellows, oranges and browns, but other colours were mixed in. Lurid blue, white. When she leaned to the side, she got a glance at a painfully bright disc to one one side. She pulled back, blinking. As the afterimage faded, she realised.
“Amaranth?” she said.
“Yes. The view from the Scar.
Amaranth – and the sun – from above.
Sweetie Belle shook her head and went through the arch.
The interface room. It was dimly lit. No – that wasn't quite right. It was inconsistently lit: The floor was not just black, but dark; the walls were so shadowed it was hard to tell if they were there at all. She got the sense of a vaguely dome-shaped space, but it could just have easily been a infinite black void hanging above them. More fat threads of light slithered up through the floor, twisted about, and vanished into the walls. The air smelt wet, some combination of sweet and rotten, like overripe fruit.
Her hooves made muffled thumps against the floor. Even moving into the room, it was hard to get an idea of its size. It wavered between intimate and immense. She had a haunted feeling that it really was changing size when she wasn't paying attention.
And it the centre, something glowed.
“That's …?” she asked Saffron.
“The interface,” confirmed Saffron. Then, after a moment: “It's actually a repository. It does that when it's plugged into the system. We never figured out why.”
Sweetie Belle walked up to it, staring. Just to confirm her suspicion. It was her. Rendered in all the colourful, glowing translucence of a repository, yes, but not a statute. In the portrayal, she floated a few feet off the ground. She seemed to be in the process of falling; some sort of silk robe trailed up above her. Though she was stationary, everything in the image suggested motion. Her eyes were closed, face expressing a serenity she'd never felt in real life.
“Everyone sees something different,” Saffron offered.
t's me.”
“Ah.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the image of her face a little longer before pulling back. The room seemed too large again. “What is it for you?”
“I'd rather not say.”
She asked the same of Scootaloo, who said she couldn't describe. “It has wings,” she offered at last. “Too many of them.”
Sweetie Belle reached out with her aura and connected with the repository. It felt the same as the one below, except – something else lurked in there, almost invisible, but bigger than everything else.
I could do it, she realised. As soon as Blueberry's connected, activate the repository, do it myself. Become a god, fix everything. Rewrite history. Blueberry, out of the picture. Amaranth too. Me and Scoots together. Bring Saffron back, get her together with Discord.
It would kill a few thousand, of course. But she'd been responsible for other deaths by this point, hadn't she? The thought came with a sort of detachment alongside everything else: Ships damaged, glass broken, blood spilled. Well.
She wondered if Saffron could stop her. If she would try to stop her, even. She had a stake in this too, didn't she?
Through the repository's sensors, she saw herself. And Scootaloo watching her, waiting. Something sickly welled in her throat, and she pulled back, and disconnected from the repository.
“Let's go back,” she told Scootaloo.
On their way down the staircase, a message came through one of the ansibles: Blueberry's ship had just been spotted entering Tanelorn.
The Mettlesome crouched in the shadows of the hangar. The bridge was already dark, but as soon as Blueberry's ship – barely visible near the top of the window – came into view, the crew fell silent.
For a while, all Millie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. The air already stank of too many animals in a confined space, taut with anticipation. As the qilin ship passed, a wave a tension went through the crew. They'd all seen what it was capable off. If it noticed them …
But it didn't. It slipped easily through the portal Sweetie Belle had opened, the passed out of view.
The silence continued, as if no one knew how to change it. Then came Proper Order's voice:
“Battle stations! Get those lights on. Check all sections for combat readiness!”
A flurry of motion. The lights came back in two stages. Communications officers called back reports: “Assault teams one through five reporting in!”; “First-wave gunships operational.” A growing thrum animated the bulkheads and the diesel engines came back online.
At last: “All stations report readiness.”
“Good,” said Proper Order. “What's the word from Sweetie Belle?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Take us forward anyway. Get us in position.”
“Yessir.”
A distant boom sounded from outside the ship. Then, from one of the ansible operators: “Message from Sweetie Belle. The Shrike has been destroyed and the enemy is in position.”
The Mettlesome moved into position near the portal, a little to the side where it would be out of sight of Blueberry's ship.
“Communications officers,” said Proper Order. “Prepare a message to the whole ship. Begin: 'This is the Captain. Our fight begins now. Amaranth, Equestria, Aquileona. Their fates will determined by what we do today. I trust each and every one of you to do the job to the best of your ability. That is all.'” He looked over at Millie. “Anything you need to add?”
“Yeah, actually.” Millie checked with the communications officers to make sure her message would be going to the whole ship. “Millie here. In the quite likely event of an emergency, put your head between your knees, and kiss your arse goodbye.”
Proper Order stared at her. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” said Millie. “Yes, it was.”
He sighed, then turned his attention back to the crew. “Full acceleration on my mark. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark!”
The floor lurched. The twelve gunships leashed to the hull pulled in unison with the main engines, an extra force the ship was never designed for. A few crewmembers stumbled and steadied themselves on the bulkheads. The ship's superstructure groaned, but held steady.
“Release the first wave,” said Proper Order.
“First wave is away!”
Ahead of them, the length of the cavern – ridged, immense, threaded with light – came into view. At the far end, three kilometres away, the qilin ship sat. A thin, twisting band of light tied it to a set of gnarled spines.
“Open fire,” said Proper Order. The chatter off far-off gunfire came, punctuated by the intermittent bangs of larger shells, all of it concentrated on the qilin ship's weak spot.
Two minutes to go. It seemed a horribly long time.
Gunships pulled into view. These ones were unleashed. A couple at first, then three, four. Ten in total. The first wave. They pulled ahead of the Mettlesome, spread out, weaved back and forth. They fired together, joining the battleship in their focus on the weak spot.
A thunderclap, followed later by a deeper boom echoing through the hull. The bridge shuddered. “They're returning fire!” called someone.
“You think?” Millie murmured to herself.
A communications officer called out a damage report.
Another thunderclap. One of the first-wave gunships seemed to fold up, its nose pressed into its tail. It tumbled down. A shot made the Mettlesome shudder. In the far distance a sound like shrieking metal came through.
They were still accelerating. Nearly halfway there now.
Gunship One of the First Wave reached its target. Its allies stopped firing. Its pilot, a pegasus, bailed out at the last moment, and the gunship barrelled into the rear of the qilin ship. The gunship, laden with explosives, blossomed into flame as it hit. The pilot swooped away unharmed, and the impact left the hull stained with soot.
“Halfway point, sir,” called one of the communications officers.
“Hold it,” said Proper Order. Noises battered the ship from all directions. Then: “Reverse thrust!”
The communications officers went straight to their channels, signalling or calling out orders. The Mettlesome and the gunships hauling it reversed their thrust together. The hull whined, groaned, shrieked. The bridge seemed to tilt forward.
Millie looked ahead to the qilin ship, where another gunship crashed against its hull. The wound it left looked burnt, twisted, but was still intact. Proper Order had left it too long, she knew. They couldn't stop in time –
Another crack of thunder; the bridge twisted to the side, nearly throwing her off her hooves. Metal shrieked as the ship righted itself.
“We've lost a tug gunship!”
Now the Mettlesome definitely wouldn't be able to stop in time . But perhaps it was enough.
The qilin ship swelled up ahead. Closer, closer, closer. The guns stopped. The last of the first-wave gunships ejected its pilot and crashed into the weak spot. The explosion left a scattered map of cracks in the crystal-or-metal.
“Everyone brace!” shouted Proper Order. “Prepare the harpoons!”
“Harpoons ready.”
The harpoons; the tiny bit of Dignity coming along for the show. Come on, girl. Don't fail me now.
“Fire!”
The harpoons went out, clang-clang-clang. The first bounced off the cracked hull. The second penetrated, knocking the metal away. So did the third and forth.
The cables tying the airships together went slack immediately as the Mettlesome bore down on its prey. Slow now – maybe twenty, fifteen miles an hour – but still too fast.
It slowed.
It approached.
It collided.
Millie, foreleg wrapped around a console, was pulled free and thrown forward. The bridge tumbled about her. Glass shattered. Metal tore. A dozen smaller sounds trailed: Bulkheads shearing away, beams twisting, and the like.
The Mettlesome drifted back almost lazily. Millie looked around as she pulled herself up. Proper Order had fared better then she had, though he now sported a cut across his brow. “Tighten the cables!” he shouted. “Now!” The crew scrabbled to get the order out, and a moment later the ship pulled in again. Through the ragged-edged remains of the front windows, Millie saw the soot stained wall of crystal-or-metal.
“We've got a hold” said one of the communications officers.
“Good. Assault teams have a go.” Proper Order turned to Millie. “You'd best get going.”
Sweetie Belle, hiding behind a broken piece of equipment in the antechamber, found herself grinning. My game now, bitch. But no – not yet. She needed to concentrate. Hold her at the antechamber. Fall back to the stair room of you have to. But don't let her get any further. Just delay her, yes, just delay her until the captives are rescued.
A soft clipclop of hooves came from the corridor. That was her. Blueberry.
The sound was trailed by a more diffuse noise. A patter, whirr, buzz. Chevaloids, she realised, and a lot of them. Of course Blueberry brought backup. But Sweetie Belle had spent the last few minutes making an army of elementals. Sylphs, salamanders, gnomes. Enough to keep them busy. And she had Scootaloo by her side. No contest.
“Ready?” said Saffron.
“Ready.”
They came flooding in. Spells, too many to count, all learned perfectly. So much power! She grinned again.
Blueberry stepped into view, head up, broad smile, clean tresses of mane dangling over her translucent neck. Chevaloids trailed behind her in rows of three.
Then, from all the way back in the cavern came a faint sound like distant thunder. It was quickly followed by others – undertones of gunfire, fighting.
Blueberry's composure dropped immediately, and she looked back the way she'd come. Good! The attack was unexpected.
As this one would be.
Sweetie Belle leant out from behind her piece of wreckage and threw her simplest spell – a bolt of aura – at Blueberry.
The lead chevaloid reacted before she did; it threw itself in front of Blueberry before the bolt hit. As the chevaloid was thrown back, Blueberry's gaze snapped to Sweetie Belle, and she put up a shield.
Oh well. Sweetie Belle put up her own shield – something stronger than she'd used before – and walked out from behind her cover. On the far side of the chamber, Scootaloo did the same.
For a second, the only sound was the distant battle. Blueberry's look of surprise faded and a thin smile flickered across her face. “The two of you, together again! What a pleasant surprise,” she said.
Sweetie Belle looked over at Scootaloo. “Here's the plan,” she said. “You take the robot army and I'll take the superpowered psycho bitch.”
Scootaloo grinned. “Works for me.”
Blueberry regarded them for a few moments. “Of course,” she said at last. “I've been had. Just … one question.”
Why not, if it helped delay her?
Blueberry continued, looking only at Sweetie Belle: “The other ship, that was you wasn't it?”
Sweetie Belle kept her gaze. “Yeah. That was me.”
“Cannons and Sorghum. My boys. You killed them.” Blueberry looked away for a moment. Her shield quivered. “Everything I love gets taken,” she murmured.
Sweetie Belle said nothing.
Then Blueberry looked back up and smiled again. “It doesn't matter, you know. I'll bring it all back. And your little plan to try and stop me? Well.” She teleported away.
Sweetie Belle burst into a gallop towards the spot where Blueberry had been. Get the chevaloids! she ordered her elementals. Scootaloo raced in from the other side.
A second after she'd gone, Blueberry reappeared. Her eyes widened. “You sneaky little –” She got no further as Sweetie Belle, still at a gallop, headbutted her.
A six-foot wide chasm: On the far side, the charred and ragged breach into the qilin ship, two and half decks high. Sheared-through bulkheads billowed steams or erupted into occasional showers of sparks. The harpoons burrowed deep inside. On the near side, the open portals on the Mettlesome's nose.
Cables held the two together. The winged were already crossing, helping the assault teams to extend gangplanks across the gulf. Inside, a whirring, clicking sound, silenced by gunfire. The ships swayed independently, puling the gangplanks back and forth.
“Oh, crumbs,” said Tom, staring into the opening. “We really didn't have enough training for this.”
“Hey! We're on the clock here!” called Cerise from the inside of the qilin ship. “Come on!”
Millie nudged him. “Get on my back.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Tom obliged her, and she leapt across the gangplank. He said nothing, but she could feel him tense up. A second later they were on the qilin ship.
“Okay. Off! Off now!”
Tom swung himself off Millie and looked around. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
Millie grabbed a mouthgun from the holster on her shoulder and said through her teeth, “Yeah, yeah. Let's go.”
Millie, Lucille, Cerise and Tom. Assault Team One. They'd studied the map enough to know where they were immediately. They pushed forward. Following them came Assault Team Two – four minotaurs – then the support team, carrying canisters of oil and boxes of explosives to leave at vital points. The backup plan, if everything else failed.
Round the next corridor, they came upon a group of chevaloids. Millie and Lucille fired, took the first two down. The others began to retreat; Cerise came in to help take down the stragglers. From elsewhere in the ship, gunfire echoed. Someone cried out, then went silent.
The lights on the corridor flickered fitfully. Bulky objects filled with irregular edges covered each wall. It took Millie a moment to see what they were: The execution units. Two creatures in each one.
Tom came up to the nearest unit and flicked through the deactivation sequence. Together he and Millie pulled away the black tentacles. “Together on three. One. Two. Three.” They opened the unit;s ribs and caught its occupants – two unicorns, barely conscious – together as they slipped forwards. As they lowered the captives to the floor, Lucille and Cerise fired at something up ahead.
The minotaurs were working on the unit on the other wall. Tom and Millie moved onto the third on the far side, and repeated the procedure. The first two captives were beginning to wake. They looked around with a faint but growing alarm. “You're bein' rescued,” Millie told them. “So calm down and wait here.”
The fourth unit, the fifth, sixth, seventh. Fourteen captives already. The corridor was beginning to get crowded. Cerise and Lucille didn't seem to be having many problems holding the crew back. That was something to worry about. The support team joined them from behind.
“Okay, you lot,” said Millie, gesturing at the captives who were awake enough to move around. “Time to go. Any of you good with a gun?” A couple were. She singled out one of the guides. “Arm 'em, and take 'em back.”
With the group gone, she went back to helping Tom deactivate the units. A tedious but tense exercise. She sweated, and her legs began to ache. “Any problems?” she called up to Lucille after reassuring another group of captives.
“Pretty clear so far,” called Lucille.
“I don't like it,” said Cerise. “They've got something planned. And we're dawdling.”
Millie paused to help lower another captive to the floor. “Not much choice on that one, lass.”
At last the corridor was empty. They pushed forward, past the broken remains of some chevaloids. Next: A room filled with units. She sent Team Two in to deal with them, and kept going forward. The following corridor was lined with even more units, and a storage room that was, thankfully, empty.
As Millie and Tom set about freeing the captives, Cerise and Lucille peered round the next corner, then pulled back at the sound of gunfire.
“There's our problem,” called Cerise. She glanced out round the corridor, fired, then pulled back again. “There's crew there too. And they've armed the chevaloids.”
“How many?” said Millie, deactivating another unit.
“Hard to tell. I counted five chevaloids, two ponies, but I'm pretty sure there are more.” Gunfire followed from the far end of the corridor.
The support team came up the corridor from behind. Millie explained the situation. “You two, up the front there. The rest of you, help get the rest of these captives freed. Give the combat capable weapons and bring them up to speed.”
She trotted up to the front of the corridor, mouthgun raised. Before she reached it, a juddering mechanical gallop sounded from the corridor up ahead.
Blueberry, blood smeared from her left nostril, scrambled to her hooves, horn glowing. Sweetie Belle dissolved her shield as it began to form a spike, put a shield of her own up in time to block an aural bolt. Dancing together, another volley of bolts, shields, and dissolving spells that ended in stalemate, they moved deeper into the antechamber.
The army of chevaloids broke into a canter. From the left, Scootaloo's outstretched wing swatted the first couple of rows into those behind. Salamanders descended on those further back, clutching their metal spines and melting through them.
Blueberry pulled up a cloud of shrapnel telekinetically and hurled it Sweetie Belle. It battered against a shield formed at the last moment. Sweetie Belle ran through her spells: A wall of frozen air (Blueberry melted through it); liquified floor (Blueberry hovered, and Sweetie Belle dragged her back down again.)
Her next attack was cut off as a chevaloid thumped into her side. She went sprawling as Scootaloo came up from behind and dragged the thing back – “Sorry about that!”
Blueberry was – where?
Galloping across the antechamber, of course. Sweetie Belle chased her, dissolved her shield, then with a long reach aura pulled her rear hoof. Blueberry went face-first into the ground. She look round and threw a bolt back at Sweetie Belle. It was far away enough to dodge, and by the time Blueberry had prepared another Sweetie Belle had caught up with her.
Again, they weaved back and forth through the spells – shattered rock, flying bolts, flying shrapnel, lightning, venomous snakes striking from interdimensional portals, bursts of fire so hot they made the floor glow red and fracture. Sweetie Belle managed, bit by bit, to push her back towards the middle of the antechamber.
Broken chevaloids lay scattered across the floor. The others had spread out – were there less of them than before? – and Scootaloo was chasing after them to stop them getting too close. The salamanders burnt themselves out after a few attacks; Sweetie Belle felt the small needles in her chest with each one. She was getting tired, but so was Blueberry.
The colour of their attacks fell back. The defence became the same old formula: Bolt or telekinesis; shield; dissolve. Blueberry's chest heaved.
Just keep her busy. That's it. Just occupy her until the others save the captives. Defeat her and win and win Scootaloo and become the glory the power the – The thought – or was it a voice – came from nowhere.
The distraction only came for a moment, but the next thing she knew, Blueberry was galloping towards her, hoof raised. It thudded into Sweetie Belle's nose. She stumbled, trying to find a spell in retaliation, knowing it was too late.
Scootaloo's wing came in from the side, collided with Blueberry's head, knowing her over. As Sweetie Belle got up she saw a pale blue bolt flick from Blueberry's horn to Scootaloo's wings. The wings folded up with a whisper.
A look from Scootaloo told Sweetie Belle everything she needed to know. The wings had stopped working.
But Blueberry was retreating, stepping back slowly while the smattering of surviving chevaloids gathered around her. Her horn glowed. Sweetie Belle put a shield round her and Scootaloo, but the spell darted off to the side. As it left her horn, Blueberry stumbled. Something exhausting, then.
The torn-apart chevaloids, lit in a faint violet glow, began to move. They scraped across the floor and slowly came together in masses to the left and right. Sweetie Belle recognised the motion: A scrapwolf. She hunched down, strengthening her shield, and began knitting together sylphs from the air and pygmies from the sand.
But the scrapwolves, as they formed, didn't attack. As soon as they could move they stepped backwards with great clanking sounds, until they flanked Blueberry and her little entourage of chevaloids.
Blueberry struggled to stand upright. Her mane was tangled, her makeup smeared, her muzzle bloodied. She looked even more exhausted than Sweetie Belle felt.
“We should talk,” she called.
“Yeah, right,” said Scootaloo. “That's not gonna stop us kicking your ass.”
Sweetie Belle put a hoof on her shoulder. Just keep her busy She held Blueberry's gaze and stepped forward. “What's there to talk about?”
“We can't go on like this, can we?” Blueberry, exhausted as she was, still managed to give Sweetie Belle a winning smile. “And you don't seem to be the power-sharing type. No, the thing is … back when I was looking in your mind – remember that?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I saw some other stuff too. And …” Her, Blueberry smiled again and turned to Scootaloo. “You know your girlfriend here betrayed you? Went into your apartment and tore up your Aquileona visa. Just after that argument you had.”
The chevaloids came galloping down the corridors in rows of three, firing blindly. They were doubly armed, holding guns and long knives in their pincer jaws. When one fell, another from the row behind leapt over its body.
The attack gave them their first casualty: When one of the chevaloids got to close, one of the minotaurs from Assault Team Two has picked it up before it could impale anyone and twisted its spine in two, and in doing do had caught a bullet in the neck. Millie had never learned his name. Lucille had been shot too; her injured wing lay tense against her body.
After that, there had been a lull. Millie crouched, handle of her gun pressing against her teeth, and looked up the corridor. Smoke hung in the air. Dead chevaloids lay on the floor. From elsewhere in the ship, she could hear distant gunfire. Behind her, To and few of the support team worked to free and reassure the last of captives.
“You done yet?” she asked them.
“Nearly there,” said Tom, ears flat against his skull.
“If we retreat …” said Cerise.
“We don't have much choice.”
Before things could continue, a new wave of chevaloids appeared at the end of the corridor, firing. Millie pulled back. “That's it!” she called. “Pull back.”
“We haven't finished,” said Tom.
“Go! Get 'em out of here.” She leaned back out and fired into the mass of chevaloids advancing through the smoke. A couple of the nearest went down. Behind her, she heard Tom hurrying away the mass of captives and support team.
The first row went down together. A pause. The next came galloping through the smoke, scrabbling and leaping of the bodies of their compatriots.
The realisation came late: One of the chevaloids had made it to the end of the corridor where she waiting. A blade clutched in its jaws, aiming for her.
Millie threw herself to the side, kicked out with her hind legs. The hooves connected with the chevaloids spine, threw it against the far wall. It kicked against the wall, pushed forward, and its moment carried it past her into the corridor behind. The noncombatants had all cleared out except for Tom, who was opening up the last execution unit.
Two things happened simultaneously. First: Lucille, who was closest, swept forward, fastened her beak on the chevaloid's spine, and bit down hard enough to snap it. Second: The chevaloid's blade went into Tom's belly.
“Oh,” he said, watching the blade as it slipped out “Crumbs.”
Another group of chevaloids was coming.
The minotaur retreated first, picked up Tom midway through his fall and held him under one arm, then took the still-unconscious captive under the other.
At last, Millie and Cerise, the last of the front lines, fell back too.
They fell back like that, past the empty execution units, to one of the storage rooms. How many captives had they saved? Would it be enough to stop Blueberry? And if not, could they justify pulling the qilin ship back now and killing those who remained?
The chevaloids were still advancing, faster and more numerous. It wouldn't be enough to retreat, Millie realised. She had to stop them here.
Well, that left one option. As she passed the next canister of oil, she kicked it over. Watery brown fluid spread out ahead of them. She had to stop to reach into her saddlepack for a match.
“Millie!” hissed Cerise.
She looked up with a brief glare. No time for anything else. By the time she retrieved her match, Cerise and the others has retreated further down the corridor, and the chevaloids were about to reach her. Their hooves splashed weakly in the oil. One raised a gun.
The storage room! The door was still open. She leapt into it as the chevaloid fired, threw the match behind her, and – a flash, a whooshing noise and a rush of heat – pulled the door shut.
The fire warbled faintly. Inside, stacks of boxes and barrels were lit in faint ghostly outline by the glow of a qilin statue. She could see no more weapons, no way of defending herself. Her allies were gone, retreating. Perhaps the whole battle was on its way to being lost.
“Well, shit,” she whispered.
Silence. A second stretched out to unbearable lengths. A coiled strand of main hanging in front of Blueberry's smug grin.
Then Scootaloo's voice, starting off defiant: “Yeah, right –” Scootaloo meeting her eyes.
Realisation.
Oh.
(Yes, she did betray me.)
And then Blueberry struck.
A bolt of light hit the side of Scootaloo's head. It impact like something physical. Knocking her to the side. Sweetie Belle retaliated immediately. Not a planned attack; just an outburst of rage. Again, a chevaloid leapt in front of Blueberry. It shattered under the force of the impact.
The two scrapwolves were already in motion. One brought its paw down on Scootaloo and batted her to the side with a powerful motion that at that scale looked oddly gentle. It sent her sliding across the floor, to a ledge. She lay there, unmoving, for a second, then rolled off. The second scrapwolf reached down with its jaws, and Blueberry clambered into a gap between its shrapnel-teeth.
An anti-golem spell? There it was. A powerful thing, though. As Sweetie Belle was charging it, the scrapwolf carrying Blueberry leapt over her head, landed with an immense clang. The other brought its paw down towards her.
She fired the spell.
The first scrapwolf slowed. Its aura faded. Its paw came down short and, as it hit the floor, fragmented. At last, it came apart into a rain of debris, falling on the remaining chevaloids.
Before it had collapsed, Sweetie Belle was thinking. Try and save Scootaloo or stop Blueberry?
The choice was obvious.
I'm sorry. She turned and galloped across the antechamber.
The scrapwolf, at a crouch, was slinking under the arch leading to the stair room. She charged another spell. And as she was about to fire, it leapt into the air.
She galloped through the arch to find the scrapwolf already thirty or forty feet up, irregular spine curled, clinging to the spiral staircase. Its body opened like a spring; it leapt to the other side of the chamber and gained another twenty feet or so.
Sweetie Belle started up the stairs without slowing, trying to get a good aim on the scrapwolf. After it had leapt again, she fired. Blueberry fired back.
Two spells, green and violet, passed each other. The first burrowed into the scrapwolf. The second hit Sweetie Belle.
A physical impact like a kick in the ribs. It threw her to the side. Another thump as she hit the wall, then the world seemed to tumble. It took her a moment to realise she'd fallen off the stairs. Not a long drop, but long enough. A final thump as she hit the floor, a fiery pain in her front pastern, then silence.
She opened her eyes. A couple feet away, the repository glowed, reduced to a colourful smudge by her tears. Her pastern hung off the joint at an odd angle. But never mind that. She looked up, saw the scrapwolf above dissolving.
Come on. Fall already!
As the scrapwolf dissolved, it reached forward with its jaws, and deposited Blueberry on the stairs halfway up. Then it fell.
It tumbled almost gracefully, remnants of the spell just about holding it in one shape. Then it hit the ground and came apart all at once. Shrapnel flew out in all directions.
On her three good legs, Sweetie Belle tried to stand. White hot pain billowed from her side. She shrieked and collapsed again.
As the pain receded, she looked over to her side. Her coat was soaked with blood. A piece of a chevaloid, torn into a spike, protruded several inches from her belly. She wasn't sure how long she stared at it. Far above, the faint clipclop of Blueberry's hooves became a tinny echo. She tried to move again, but the pain stopped her.
A background hum shifted pitch, a higher tone, reaching toward something.
The ansible sitting at the foot of the repository flashed green in her peripheral vision. With her aura she reached out and pulled the new message out of the tray. Please, she thought. Say you're done. Say you've got the captives free. Say I won.
Proper Order's neat, hurried handwriting told her the mission was failing. The crew, aided by an army of chevaloids, had repelled the attack. They were already invading the Mettlesome and taking hostages. It's up to you, read the final line.
Sweetie Belle stared at the message for several seconds, then laughed. The volume of her voice surprised her. She craned to peer at the arch, and shouted Scootaloo's name. The stair room gave her words back to her in echo. There was no response.
The background shifted again, becoming louder. The ribbons of light knotted through the chamber seemed to shiver.
She looked back up to where the walls faded into infinity. Her jaw tightened. Okay, fine. I can do this. It's only pain. I just have to get up the stairs. She's alone, and so am I. It's only pain. It's only pain. I can do this.
She stood up.
Except – she didn't. The wound in her side seemed to tear wide open; her side coated in white-hot molten metal. It melted her resolve in an instant, and she found herself on the ground again, shivering.
“Saffron!” the hissed. “Do something! Mute the pain!”
“I'm doing as much as I can,” Saffron told her.
Sweetie Belle stared at the floor. After a moment, she tried to stand again.
This time the pain was even worse.
She slumped down, shuddering, and let her head droop. The tip of her horn scraped the ground. Daemons whispered fragmented admonishments in her ears.
Another pitch-shift. The air seemed to whine. Now the ribbons of light leap into motion, twisting and knotting in some complex pattern. The Apotheosis Machine, she though, beginning to spin up.
That was it. No clever plans, no tricks hidden up her sleeve. She'd lost – she'd lost Scootaloo, and she'd doomed the world, all through her own arrogance.
Sweetie Belle began to weep.
And so we reach the end – or, perhaps the beginning.
I wasn't sure we'd get there to be honest. With all the interruptions, it's taken nearly twenty minutes to get this story out. I suppose it took a while for Blueberry's goons to fill up their airship again.
But they must've done it. I can hear the Machine entering its final stages now.
I wonder if anyone will ever read/view/dream this, and under what circumstances.
Part of me wonders why I bothered to make this story when it'll all get swept away in the end. And part of me knows exactly way. Because when faced with a universe that will sweep away all you dreams and achievements, what else do you do but fight it, even when the battle is already lost?
Let's start again: Who are you? What are you? And how are you on this channel.
Calm down, love. It's me, Millie.
Millie the donkey?
Aye, that's the one. And you're Saffron, the genius engineer from an advanced civilisation? I can see the nouse from here.
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm under a lot of pressure right now. How are you on the network?
I'm connected to a repository in Blueberry's ship. I were trapped in here when the fightback began. I managed to block the door, but I don't know what's going on outside.
But you don't have antlers. Or a – no, you do, don't you? The implant! Ha! Okay, you're connected to that repository, and it's formed a network with this one.
Is that why I keep seeing my thoughts in that weird story thing you're writing?
Have you? Hold on … Huh. I didn't notice that. The narratator is a clever thing. And you see who else is there?
Blueberry.
She's on the network too. Makes sense. She's connected to the repository upstairs.
Is there owt you can do to stop her?
Yes, of course I can stop her. That's why I've spent the past twenty minutes telling a story and lamenting our fate. No, the only way to stop it is break the connection, or go up and tear her away from the repository.
I'd love to help, but, y'know.
Well, I'm glad we got to have this chat before the world ends, anyway.
Yeah, me too. But maybe we should try and figure a way out of this mess?
- Untitled
The voices in her head were comforting, in an odd sort of way. At least they gave her something to concentrate on beyond her own failure.
There were the bits about glory, power, importance, whispered in both ears in fragmentary aphorisms. She was sick of these. But then there was something else. They weren't quite voices. More like an awareness of communication in the abstract; something between speech and writing. A get-together among friends? That was more interesting. She wanted more of that.
Then she realised.
“Hey, Millie. We're talking telepathically with the aid of of thousand-year-old crystal statues. Isn't that cool?”
The voices stopped, leaving the daemon whispers. For a horrible moment, she thought she'd all imagined it.
Then came the distance communication. Millie. “Aye, it is at that.”
“Saffron, did you say anything could become an elemental?”
On a cleaner, more direct signal: “Anything that counts as a substance, yes.”
“Including ansible fire?”
“I … suppose Where are you going with this?”
“Ansible fire … dragon fire. I studied this magic when I was a filly. We use it on paper, but it can transport anything combustible.”
“Such as …” began Saffron.
“Oh balls,” said Millie.
“ … flesh.”
Silence on both channels.
“It's not one of the spells I disabled,” said Saffron. “It might work.”
“I know,” said Millie at last. “You can't do it.”
“You'll make a great saviour,” Sweetie Belle told her. She smiled faintly.
“Yeah, sure. You tell me that again when we all make it out of here alive. Give me a second.” A pause. “Okay, I'm ready.”
Sweetie Belle opened her eyes. The light seemed to drive a needle through her forehead.
There it was. The ansible. She reached forward with her good hoof, winced at the pain in her belly, and pushed the handle down. Green flame washed the tray. She reached out with her elemental spell and gathered it.
A dragonfire elemental. It seemed to struggled for a moment, then pulled free in a long, glowing strand. As soon as it was in the air it separated into two.
Perfect.
“Go,” she ordered. “Pick her up.” She pulled Millie's co-ordinates from the repository and gave them to one half; the other, she sent to the top of the stairs to wait.
Mille stood waiting. Her weapon – a metre-long bar of something or other – felt awkward and chill in her teeth, and the bit of thread under her tongue threatened to choke her.
Come on. Come on.
The fire outside had gone out some time ago. She'd blocked the door well enough and they'd given up on trying to open it. Bigger things to worry about, she supposed.
Then, from under the door, a faint green glow. A moment later, a flattened sheet of flame worked its way under the door. Once through, it gathered itself into a glowing amoeboid, floating a few feet off the ground and growing steadily.
She tightened her grip on the weapon.
The ball of green flame flew at her.
Blueberry, connected to everything. She felt the facility, every thread of the Scar weaving through it, preparing to give her her final reward. Everything she'd dreamed of, an eternal throne at the heart of the world, everything safe, everyone bowing to her achievement in the face of insurmountable odds.
She felt the thaumic pulse ripple through the chamber. She sensed the motion behind her. The jennet? Now, that was unexpected. She decided to ask Sweetie Belle how she'd managed to accomplish this one.
Soft hoofsteps. The jennet – Millie – holding her crude weapon. The chamber, its dimensions uncertain and unsteady, holding them both. Blueberry pretended she didn't notice, until Millie was halfway (more or less) across the floor.
Then, without disconnecting, she swung round and threw an impact spell.
A soft thump. The bar went skittering across the chamber. Millie ended up on her side on the floor, foreleg twisted.
Blueberry walked over to her. Barely visible ribbon of aura rose from the tip of her horn and arced over to the repository.
“One last shot, is it?” she said, smiling sweetly. “I'm sorry it didn't work.”
Millie glared up at her. She said nothing.
“But why did she send some flunky to do her dirty work? Couldn't Sweetie Belle make it herself?”
Millie said nothing.
Blueberry stepped right up to her and smiled. “Nothing to say, hm? Don't worry, I'm used to it. And I understand. It won't change anything, but it's the most dignified way to lose.”
Millie raised her head, and spat at Blueberry.
Blueberry recoiled. A sticky sensation at the top of her horn. “Well, now. That was just rude. I …” Her connection to the repository had been cut. Millie was beginning to stand. Blueberry tried to swat her down with another blow – a moment later found herself on the ground, swamped in nausea.
The thread on the base of her horn.
She fought through the nausea and scrambled to her hooves. “It doesn't matter,” she told Millie. “It's already programmed. It's already centred on me. Even this little trick was for nothing!”
Millie cocked her head. “Now that,” she said, “was a daft thing to say.” She leaned in a bit down on Blueberry's horn. And then she pushed.
Blueberry tried to hold her ground. She set her hooves firmly against the ground and pushed back. But Millie was stronger than her, and she had to take a step back to stop herself from falling. Then another, and another.
“Is that it? Is that your plan? Come on, this is ridiculous.”
They crossed the room haltingly. Out the corner of her eye, Blueberry caught sight of the repository: Herself rendered in glowing crystal, head held high, with some impossible combination of infinitely glorious and infinitely tasteful tresses; and her tail between her legs like some chastised filly.
Her real tail flicked out in frustration. Then its tip seemed to light up in agony. She stifled a scream. For a moment, Millie stopped pushing.
Blueberry couldn't see behind her, but on the far reach of her peripheral vision she caught the faint false-orange glow on the floor. One of the threads of the Scar. Inside that – what? Nothing. Matter would dissolve so thoroughly as to vanish entirely.
“Okay!” she cried. “I surrender. Take me back! Reform me! Make me your friend. That's what you people do, isn't it?”
“Not my department,” said Millie through her teeth. She pushed forward again.
The dragonfire elemental had burned out when it transported Millie. The next thing Sweetie Belle remembered was the clipclop of hooves down the last of the stairs. She struggled to raise her head. Millie stood at the bottom. Her hair was matted, soaked in dark red.
Even through her exhaustion, Sweetie Belle's eyes widened. “Are you okay?”
“Huh?” Millie looked down at her coat. “Oh, yeah. There's a lot of blood in a pony, in't there? Even just the front half.” She brushed ineffectively at her chest and stared at the blood on the floor. “Tom got stabbed. I … hope he made it back.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her.
“Anyway, I wanna get back to the ship before the PTSD sets in. I guess that ansible there isn't working?” Millie kicked at the terminal. “Where's the backup?”
“Antechamber, near the front, to the right.”
Millie started towards the antechamber, and Sweetie Belle called her back:
“Millie?”
“Yeah?”
“Find Scootaloo? Please. She … she fell.”
“Sure thing, lass.”
After that, Sweetie Belle passed out for a while. When she next woke, she was being put on a stretcher. There were others moving around, but she couldn't make them out. Orders passed back and forth. A daemon continued to whisper in her ear, but she ignored it. She asked the bearers about Scootaloo, but didn't get a response. She apologised, but she wasn't sure who to. Then she passed out again.
A tiny windowless room with a bulb in the corner. Some bedding below her that didn't stop the deck from digging into her back. A few pewter flasks cloaked in the spiced and slightly rancid smell of zebra potions stood beside her head; a corresponding taste gumming together the hairs around her muzzle and clinging to the inside of her mouth. Her eyes watered.
She lifted her leg (a strenuous task in itself) and looked as the cast around her cannon and pastern. The pain in her belly stopped from trying to move more. A daemon still whispered in her ears.
She tried to call, but her voice didn't seam to work. Instead, she stared at the ceiling for a while. She was in the Mettlesome, she was sure of that. She could hear the chug of the engines. Occasionally, the bulkheads around her creaked unhealthily and shuddered
Eventually the door at the far side opened. A minotaur came through – a medic, it seemed.
And following him, Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle couldn't help smiling. “Hey,” she said.
Scootaloo smiled back, but it was drawn and awkward. “Hi,” she offered flatly.
The medic checked Sweetie Belle's dressing and made her drink some more of the potion. “Try not to move too much for the next twenty-four hours. In a week, everything should be back to normal.”
Scootaloo avoided eye contact, so Sweetie Belle turned her attention back to the medic. “What happened?” she asked.
“We left Tanelorn three hours ago,” he said, as if reciting from a dull fact sheet. “We're towing the qilin ship, so the trip'll take two or three days.”
“Is Tom okay?”
The medic looked at her blankly.
“The diamond dog?”
“I don't know,” he said. “Things are still a bit chaotic here. We have a lot of casualties, the ship's taken on a lot of damage, we have prisoners, and we're trying to organise all the captives we rescued.”
Sweetie Belle felt foolish for asking. “Okay,” she said, ears pinned.
With that, the medic headed out, closing the door behind him. This time Scootaloo did look at her. “I haven't seen him either,” she said at last.
“Oh.”
Silence.
“What happened after the scrapwolf hit you?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“I don't really remember much about it. They said I fell onto one of ledges. Two or three metres.” She smiled faintly, a ghost of her normal mischievous grin. “I got off easier than you, it looks like. No broken bones, anyway.”
“Listen … what Blueberry said … I'm sorry.”
Scootaloo's smile vanished. She looked away. “Yeah, I know.” She stepped towards the door. “There are things I should be doing. I'm going back to Equestria, so we can talk about it later”
Sweetie Belle stared at the door after she'd gone. At once close and distant, the airship's superstructure groaned, then settled.
Later, when she felt up to it, she called on Saffron, who manifested immediately.
“You did well,” she said.
“It doesn't feel that way,” murmured Sweetie Belle.
“Ah, no. That's not too surprising.”
“I really screwed up.”
“You also saved the world.”
“Millie did.”
“You did quite a lot to help her.”
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes.
“And, for what it's worth, I've screwed up too.” She put her hoof against Sweetie Belle. They stayed like that for a while, until Saffron said. “Just call on me if you need me. Otherwise, I'll stay out of your way.”
Time passed. The daemons continued to chastise her. Sweetie Belle slept occasionally. The pain on her leg and belly faded slowly. She didn't know what time it was, and didn't really care. Hooves and paws thumped at the corridor outside. Sometimes the medic came in. He was always alone.
When someone knocked at the door, she spent a few moments expecting him to come through, then realised he never knocked.
A voice from outside: “May I come in?”
Tom's voice. For the first time since she'd woken up, Sweetie Belle smiled.
“Sweetie Belle?”
“Yes, it's me!” she said. “Come on.”
The door opened, and Tom came in, inching along with the help of a metal cane. He closed the door behind him, then grinned at Sweetie Belle. “Oh, hey, injury buddies!”
Sweetie Belle snorted. Her side flared up in pain, and she gave him an exaggerated glare. “Then you should know not to make me laugh!”
Tom had made it to the wall beside her. He leaned back against it, changing hands with the cane. “I heard you made it out alive. Still, I didn't quite dare believe it until now …”
“The medic didn't know anything about you.”
“Oh, that't nice. Glad my contribution didn't go unnoticed.”
For a while, they struggled not to laugh. It died down into a sort of companionable silence.
Sweetie Belle gestured at Tom's bandages. “Sorry about that, though.”
“Sorry? Why?”
“It's kinda my fault all this happened.”
Tom stared at her. “I don't think anybody blames you.”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “It's because of me that this happened. Because I did all the stupid stuff I did, because I gave in to her.”
Silence.
“I saw Scootaloo,” Tom said. “I asked her about you. She said you were alive, and … kinda left it at that.”
“I'm not surprised.” Sweetie Belle snorted, then looked down. “That's my fault too. I betrayed her. Everything I did her, trying to get her back … it was all false. I … I've screwed up a lot, honestly. I know I don't deserve her. I'm just a lost filly, like I always was, and whenever I think I can do something, I just become arrogant, and make things worse, and …” She stopped, feeling the lump in her throat. The speech had come without warning, and now she'd admitted it to Tom, she wasn't sure how to continue.
Tom, with some difficulty, moved over and sat down on the floor beside her. “Not exactly feeling the victory, then?” he said.
“Not really, no.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “I haven't seen the whole picture, I know. And … I'm not really the go-to guy for emotional support.”
“That makes me feel better.”
“Yeah. Anyway. From what I've seen, you're incredibly capable. I mean, look at you. You led a battle to save the world. Whatever mistakes you've made, you done your best to fix them, and you've gone far beyond that.”
She looked over at him. “But … even if that's true … I can't let myself believe it.”
“Why?”
“The daemons. They're still here. I can get carried away, and … and …”
“Okay, so I don't have an easy solution for that one. But we'll be back I Equestria soon. And if you do get carried away? You've got me to keep you steady. And the hatchlings – I hope you haven't forgotten about them? And … perhaps … Scootaloo.”
Sweetie Belle smiled faintly. “Yeah, sure she will.”
“Just give it time.”
By the time they had arrived at Ilmarinen, Sweetie Belle was able to stand. Putting too much weight on her bad hoof, or moving too fast, still made her wince, but it was enough. She'd taken to pacing back and forth across her cabin, feeling the need to move, but being unwilling to head back into the Mettlesome.
At Ilmarinen, there was the meeting. Those who had just come back to the city, waiting for the news; and those returning from Blueberry's grasp. Tearful reunion, or its absence, which brought more tears. The pathos felt muffled, like music from a room at the far end of a cheap hotel. People came up to thank her. She was as friendly and humble as she could be. Some asked questions about Blueberry, which she invariably struggled to answer.
She saw Scootaloo at a small ceremony later that day beside the Navy Offices, where they were both awarded medals. The conversation was short, civil. It was hard to know what else to do.
Leaving the ceremony, she met up with Lucille and Gritstone, standing so close the Lucille's feathers almost brushed against Gritstone's coat.
Gritstone seemed to have fresh layers of exhaustion etched into the lines of his face, and it took him a little more effort to stand. Still, he smiled when he saw her. “'Sweetie Belle,” he said. “I understand I have you to thank.”
“Oh, uh, I guess I did a bit,” said Sweetie Belle.
Lucille smiled. “I found him at last,” she said. “Only when we were halfway home.” She cocked her head. “I didn't see you at all, though.”
“I had to stay in my cabin,” said Sweetie Belle. She offered up him still-bandaged pastern as evidence.
“Well, listen,” said Lucille. “We've decided something. I had a talk with Millie. We all know things are different now. With the daemons, Amaranth is unsustainable. Things need to change. And that won't happen unless Aquileona and Equestria agree to a proper treaty.” She fluffed her feathers. “So I'm going to become a politician!”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “I, uh, don't really know what that entails.”
“Minister Flavian is the one holding everything back. I'm going to present Gregor to the chamber. Tell everyone that the government's been sending in privateers – and that those privateers were also helping a bunch of ponies, and that they nearly caused the end of the world. Flavian will lose his allies – the neutralists and most of the revanchists. The electorate will be pissed. A collapse of the coalition and a new government is in sight.”
Gritstone shrugged. “I don't really understand it either,” he told Sweetie Belle. “But as I understand it, it means Aquileona will be much more willing to compromise with Equestria to sort out the problems. Lucille's going to try and get elected to help it along.”
Lucille leaned her head to rest against Gritstone's and grinned. “And you're coming to live in Susa with me.”
Gritstone rolled his eyes. “Yeah, looks that way.”
Sweetie Belle bounced forward and hugged them together. “That's great! What about your ships?”
“I'm selling to Dulcet to Cerise,” said Lucille. “With that salvage map she should have no problem paying for it. Anyway – that's what I meant to offer. We're taking it back to Omphalos. You're free to come along.
Sweetie Belle accepted, smiling.
She found Scootaloo near the entrance to the office, leaning against the wall and smoking.
“Hey,” Sweetie Belle said, trotting over. She relayed Lucille's offer. “Are you coming back to Equestria?”
“Yeah,” said Scootaloo. “I said I would, didn't I?”
Sweetie Belle looked at her. “Yeah.” This acceptance, cloaked in an awkward distance seemed so much worse than that time they'd first met, than the refusal back then, threaded through with all of Scootaloo's passion. There seemed to be nothing more to say, so she pulled back.
That left one more thing.
She slipped into to office to give Proper Order a quick warning, then cantered out to the docking tower. There, looking out across the desert, still littered with wreckage, she sent out a spell to summon the hatchlings.
Two days into a week-long journey across Amaranth, back home. Sweetie Belle had finished her course of potions, her injuries reduced to a minor twinge that would fade in time.
The crew, for the most part, treated her with respect sometimes shading into a sort of awe. Daemon whispers said she should bask in it; she did her best to ignore them.
To occupy herself she watched the hatchlings flying alongside the Dulcet in sequence. She talked to Tom – he'd left his research group behind and planned to write a monograph and popular science book about aelewyrms. They made up a plan about how they could both look after the hatchlings.
She let Saffron use her horn to draw humminglizards, balloon trees, sights of Tanelorn, as they discussed the past in Amaranth and the future with Discord.
She watched the desert. And she found herself humming – experimenting with melodies, imagining chord progressions to accompany them. How to get across that immensity of desert, they sky torn in two, the scale of history hidden away or reduced to fragments of an incomprehensible and unsolvable puzzle? At last, she began to sing – bits of lyrics as they came to her. She realised it was the first time she'd done this since she came to Amaranth.
How much was in there? An album's worth, at least. A daemons told her about she could make herself famous like that. “Yeah, sure,” she told it. The image wouldn't fade, though.
She was standing by a window near the bow, looking out, singing softly, when she noticed. Scootaloo had come up to stand beside her.
She fell silent.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Outside, the aelewyrms flew in a ling, sinuous waves running down their length and wings beating in sequence.
“Look,” said Scootaloo after a moment. “What you did … it was a really shitty thing.”
“Yeah, I know,” whispered Sweetie Belle.
“And it's not like I can just forgive. I mean, I want to … but even now when I think about it, it hurts.”
Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and nodded.
“I just need to get that out in the open first. But … the thing is … I've also seen you be incredibly awesome. I mean … seriously, I knew you were awesome, but everything you've done here. My point is … ugh, I don't know how to compare those.”
“Me neither.”
“And you and me … I don't know if it'll work. But y'know what? After all we've been through in Amaranth, I'm willing to try.”
Sweetie Belle stared at her. “You mean … you love me?”
Scootaloo recoiled and stuck her tongue out for a moment. “Don't use that word. But … yeah, okay. I think I do.”
They looked at one another in silence, until Scootaloo leaned in towards her. The warm touch of coat.
“But some ground rules,” she continued, more softly. “We don't own each other, alright? I have my own life. I want to spend at least some time here. A few months away, a few months back home. If you can't handle that, the deal's off.”
“I think I can handle that.”
“Good.” Scootaloo grinned at her, muzzle a few inches away. “So me and you. You wanna?”
Sweetie Belle just kissed her.
So I suppose I've been a bit cheeky, leaving in all those misleading comments. But, hey, if you're reading this in the Canterlot Archives – or wherever else it gets to – you know the world didn't end. And what I said is as much a record as anything else in these pages.
If you want the complete account: After we talked to Millie, I kept the narratator running. I downloaded the whole file into her head, plus the narratator program itself, when she got picked up, then filled the end out from her memories. It's traditional round here to publish your adventures (have you read those Daring Do books?), so that's what I'm doing. With Sweetie Belle and Millie's permission, of course.
When we got back, Sweetie Belle got her head cleared of the daemon influence. Some sort of harmony spell – I'm still studying it – which serves as a perfect counter, emphasising all those qualities that the daemons stifle. Then there were the celebrations, followed by some interminable hugging. Sweetie Belle has even more medals now. I got to see her big sister, and all her friends. Apparently this saving the world gig is becoming a family tradition. Then the work started. With some help from Discord, I got out of Sweetie Belle's head so she could finally get some private time with Scootaloo.
A month or so after we got back, Aquileona had a snap election. Now we do indeed have Minister Lucille, who's working on a proper treaty with Equestria. The privateers were recalled. Quite a lot of officials went on trial. And the two superpowers are working together on a solution to “the Amaranth problem” – getting rid of the daemons, fixing up some sort of framework that'll stop any more dangerous incidents popping up, but still letting the place retain as much sovereignty as possible.
When it comes to the daemons and ancient technology, of course, I'm the go-to girl. I'm working with some of this world's primary thaumic specialists. Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie Lulamoon, Sunburst. They're all a lot quicker than I would have expected from barbarians. I don't want to get soppy here, but it's hard to ask for a better group of students and co-workers. Even if there are ego-clashes every other day.
I keep in contact with Millie. She's actually pretty helpful – one of our network of salvors who keeps us updated on salvaged technology. At the same time, I know she loves Amaranth as a frontier – and she's helping us end that. Even ruins can be dreams, and to tidy them away is to destroy them. I don't know what she'll do when she's lost her wild space.
What else?
The aelewyrms. Sweetie Belle has three, Tom has the other two. But whoever's busy often gives their share to the other to look after . Tom has become whatever passes for a celebrity in the small world of academia based on his studies. At the time of writing, Bounce has just passed ten metres from mandibles to tail, and its siblings are rapidly catching up.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. They're still together. They, too, have an arrangement. Right now, the plan is that four or five months of the year, Scootaloo will be in Amaranth, helping get the place under control. Both seem reasonably satisfied with that – it gives Sweetie Belle time to work on her music, or look after the aelewyrms. And, if I may take the risk of psychologising, Scootaloo at last seems to have a sense of purpose. I don't know if they'll work out in the long run. But who can ever be certain about the future? The signs look promising, as that's enough.
That leaves me. I can't honestly say what's happening between me and Discord. We talk sometimes. We're not lovers.
When I became corporeal again, I faced a choice. Qilin or not? But … Even if I came back, even if I came back pregnant like that, there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity to sustain the race. The qilin are extinct, and that's that. So I became a pony instead. A unicorn to be precise.
