The Forest of the Golden Abalone

by Unwhole Hole

First published 28th of October, 2022

Fluttershy is dispatched to act as an interpreter in a forest filled with monstrous gastropods--only to discover other ponies already there, with far darker intentions.

Since the dawn of Equestria, the Agency has protected the realm from every manner of hideous magical creature. Largely by putting them various places where ponies probably won't go.

Forcibly recruited via a burlap sack, Fluttershy is assigned to inventory a site that has become a center of magical gastropod evolution--only to have her plane shot down by a mysterious unicorn.

Injured and trapped in the Forest of Snails, she finds that there was far more in those swampy, moist lands than she was led to believe.

Chapter 1: We Definitely Protect Equestria

No one knew where the funding came from. The Agency had been severed from Royal control for the better half of a decade. Nopony knew why, exactly, but expected that it was probably better that way. The Agency did the jobs that Equestria required—the sort that the Princess was better off not knowing about. Celestia had been able to give them the leeway they needed—but the Heads doubted that Twilight Sparkle would be so forgiving. She was kind and gentle, if naive. The words written on the greatest of the Agency's artifacts, tables and tomes written in vellum deep in vaults, indicated that despite her appearance, Celestia was not.

And yet the need had never arisen to ask where the bits that powered the operation came from. That was not their job. Their job was far simpler.

No one knew who owned the obscure Manehattan corporate office, or what it even held. The Agency did, obviously, but no agent knew who worked there—or what they did. That, like finance, was not their job.

Through the musty halls of fluorescent light and old, fraying carpet, one agent tread in utter silence. The sword on her back made no sound, its black surface secured tightly in an especially exotic type of leather. The only sounds she generated were the occasional whimpers coming from the dirty burlap sack on her back. Although inaudible, to her, they were screams. And they no longer stopped, ever.

A conference room had been designated. The paper near the door had yellowed, but somepony had written on it the schedule for their meeting. It was the first time anypony had used this room in fifteen years, and the agent was fully aware that the room was totally empty. No one was waiting for them. Not in this place.

She opened the door and set down the sack before the conference table. It fell limply and made no more noises. The agent finally allowed herself to release a sound—a low sigh. Then she looked up to the pony sitting on the far end of the table, a wide grin on her face.

“As requested,” she said, gesturing to the bag.

“Thank you, Agent Sweetie Drops. Please open the bag and spill the contents. I hope that they have not been spilled already?”

Sweetie Drops grumbled and upturned the sack. The limp form inside it easily slid out. A pastel Pegasus with a bright pink mane. One that Sweetie Drops obviously knew, because everypony knew her.

“Capturing one of the co-rulers of the Empire is not exactly easy,” she muttered.

“Which is why I assigned you, Sweetie Drops,” replied the pony, smiling and still not blinking. Because she had no eyelids. Sweetie Drops had seen her once. It had not been pleasant. “She knows you. She trusts you. And we exploit trust for...some reason, I suppose?”

“To protect Equestria.”

“Yes, that is what we have told you.”

“Is it not?”

The pony pointed. “Is she dead?”

Sweetie Drops groaned. “No. It’s tonic immobility. It’s a defense mechanism.”

“Is that...normal?”

“If she were an opossum.”

“Is she an opossum?”

“I would think that would be obvious.”

The smile grew. In her current state, it was almost impossible to tell what kind of pony she was beneath the buisiness suit she appeared to wear—but Sweetie Drops understood her to have once been a unicorn. “Do you mean because of the brain damage or the extreme mental effort of drilling this projection into your thick earth-pony skull? I don’t have eyes. And yours...they don’t work so well these days, do they?”

Sweetie Drops sighed, and gently kicked Fluttershy. Repeatedly.

Fluttershy was not an opposum—but she had known many, and raised generations of the marsupials in her long and weirdly ageless lifetime. In this case, though, she was deploying the skills learned from the noble hogsnake, a creature that she felt quite akin to—although as a Pegasus, she had no means of exuding deterrent chemicals.

In actuality, it had mostly been the extreme terror of being stolen that had caused her nervous system to simply overwhelm. This was not one of Rarity’s histrionic faints that always led her directly into a piece of furniture so appropriately called a “fainting-couch”. It was a severe medical condition.

The kicking, obviously, did not help. It did not rouse her. Rather, she was suddenly awoken by a sudden and violent psychic shock. An image so terrible that her mind was suddenly awoken from her forced catatonic slumber. A projection of not only a sad puppy, but the very saddest.

“NO!” cried Fluttershy, waking up suddenly—only to freeze with a squeak of terror at the monster standing over her.

Then she realized who, exactly, was standing over her, and the barest fraction of her near perpetual fear was replaced by confusion—and perhaps, pity.

“Bon Bon?”

Bon Bon sighed. She looked profoundly unwell. Her eyes had lost their color, becoming increasingly black and bloodshot—and sunken against her pale skin. Her mane,likewise, had faded to white throughout most of it. She was wearing what seemed to be a kind of dark, light armor—and had a sword on her back. Although only the tip of it was visible in its scabbard, Fluttershy saw that it was not metal. It was black and shiny.

Bon Bon’s eyes clouded. “Yes,” she muttered. “I see it too, I know what she—no, we can’t do that, don’t be an idiot.”

“Bon Bon you...you stole me?” Tears welled in Fluttershy’s eyes. “But I thought we were friends!”

“We haven’t spoken since you left Ponyville,” replied the earth-mare, still sounding distracted.

“Are you...are you going to eat me?”

“What? No, why would I—no, I wasn't thinking about it—shut up, you only take the juices...”

“Please don’t eat me! I don’t taste good at all!”

“I would imagine you would actually be quite...tender,” said a voice from across the room.

Fluttershy immediately cowered. Bon Bon, though, lifted her and stood her up, and Fluttershy found that she was in the most horrible and terrifying place she could have imagined. It was even worse than being inside the sack.

She was in a corporate office. One that smelled of old coffee creamer and sadness.

“You fiend!” she cried across the table—only to realize that it was empty. There was a pony there, obviously, but she as a mental projection.

“Interesting that you would know that,” replied the projection.

“I’ve been around Twilight for half my life, I know magic when I see it.”

The head of the projection turned, as if she were a curious dog. Except she was nothing like a dog. Fluttershy was not sure she was even a pony—and she felt a sudden urge toward obedience. Because she knew that if the projection took of its mask, she would see something she did not want to. Something scary.

“My name is Eternity,” said the projection. “Somewhat. I am one of the Heads of the Agency.”

“What agency?”

“Exactly, that’s the spirit!”

Fluttershy looked to Bon Bon, and then to the shadow of a pony in a business suit. “Why did you steal me? That was so mean! You could have just asked!” She gasped. “Is it for ransom? Are you going to ransom me? Or—or turn me into soup, or bake me in an oven, or baste me in my own juices—”

“We’re not eating you,” snapped Bon Bon. “Why is that what your mind goes first?”

Fluttershy whispered. “Don’t tell her, but I think I might actually be...you know...delicious.”

“So you lied to us?” gasped Eternity.

Fluttershy winced. “Maybe?”

“Oh, wow,” said Eternity, giggling. “I am surprised by how little I care!”

“It’s for anonymity,” explained Bon Bon. “So you can’t trace us. Or find out where we are, or who we are.”

“I have literally known you since I was twelve. And you put me in a sack. I was awake for that part."

Bon Bon shrugged. “It’s how you transport snakes.”

“That is a totally different thing,” muttered Fluttershy, quietly.

“Yes,” agreed the the projection. “Which is why I didn’t request Sweetie Drops to bring me me a snake. I do not need a snake. I need whatever you are.”

Fluttershy was confused by this. She looked askance at Bon Bon. “Your name is Sweetie Drops?”

“Secret identities, much?”

“Are about thirty years passe,” sighed Eternity. Or what claimed to be her. She put her elbow on the table and cradled her head in her hoof. Fluttershy did in fact perceive her as a unicorn. She was a pale color that might have once been red or brown, with a blue mane.

“No, I don’t know,” she said.

“Know what?”

“If I looked like this. Why do you ask?”

“I...didn’t?”

“Do you know what I actually look like?”

Fluttershy shivered. “No.”

“Good. More importantly, do you know what I do?”

“Foalnap ponies in sacks, apparently.”

Eternity’s smile grew. “Yes. Apparently. But that isn’t my main job. Remember, we here at the Agency are the good guys. We keep Equestria safe.”

“By stealing ponies.”

“Oh please we stopped hunting heretics like fifty years ago. The other Head says I can only do it for special occasions." She shrugged. "Now we mostly deal in magic. And, for me, specifically magical creatures.”

Fluttershy’s ears pricked at the sound of the word “creatures”, but she felt her blood chill at the way she said it. With such disdain. As if they were a problem meant to be dealt with. Not individual creatures with their own wants, needs, desires—beings that deserved nothing other than the greatest possible love and care.

Except that the word had a second meaning. An aspect of the doublethink intrinsic to the former Princesses’ rule. Many magical creatures were adorable and beautiful—but many, likewise, were terrifying monsters.

“And we deal with the second type, largely.”

“Stop doing that!”

“And here Sweetie Drops told me you weren’t assertive!”

“I’ve learned. Repeatedly.”

“Well, I literally cannot stop reading your mind. It’s somewhat agonizing. But that doesn’t matter. I had you stolen because Equestria needs your help.”

“We have a formal request system—”

“For a figurehead government you and your friends created. Yes, I know. But I really hate paper trails. So I had you brought here to ask for help. Pretty, pretty please.”

“Why my help? I’m…” She paused, but she knew it was the truth. “I’m just Fluttershy. I don’t know how much help I can actually be. I’m sorry, but if you need help, Rainbow Dash—”

“If I wanted Rainbow Dash, I would have had HER in the sack,” snarled Eternity, her mask momentarily fading. Then she giggled. “Sorry, that came out wrong. Freudian slip, I suppose.” She shrugged. “But our problem right now involves animals. Animals of a particular type. And you are well understood to be a friend of all animals, no matter how great or small. Which will greatly improve your liklihood of survival in this situation.”

“Survival?” Fluttershy felt herself beginning to cower. Despite her repeated training in assertion, she had suddenly realized that she was very likely in danger—and she could not resist the overwhelming anxiety derived from that.

The projection gestured toward a projector screen that had not been there a moment before. She levitated a pointer as a grainy image appeared on the screen—despite no projector actually being present. On it, there was a rather generic looking title. Then, with a click from an unseen slide deck, it shifted to a map.

“This is called Site 5-NA-1 L. Are you familiar with it?”

“Um...no?”

“Exactly. Because cute, adorable ponies like you don’t need to know about things like that. Unless we need you to know. Which is right now.”

The slide progressed to a grainy, black-and white image of thick, tall trees—and of something terrible with glowing eyes looming behind them. Fluttershy nearly fainted at the sight of it.

“Site 5-NA-1 L is one of several dumping grounds formerly used for the Agency. An uninhabitable, inhospitable region not slated for colonization or development. Nopony lives there. Nopony ever did. So we used it as a place to put monsters.”

“I thought you sent them to Tartarus.”

Eternity shrugged. “Not always. Only some. Ones that were a product of magic, not simple biology. Or genetic engineering. Or nanotech accidents.”

“Nano...tech?”

Eternity nodded. “Although forbidden arcana is the other Head’s job. So don’t you worry your pretty little half-breed head about it. The point is, some monsters get...relocated. So to speak. But this site is special. Very special.”

“Why?” Fluttershy was afraid to ask.

“Because the monsters started to breed,” sighed Bon Bon.

“More than that,” snapped Eternity, her smile wide and without teeth. “It has become a center of gastropod evolution on a scale that has never before occurred in our history.”

“Gastropods?”

“You should know what that means. You’re...what, a veternarian or something?”

“Um...no.”

Eternity shrugged. “Fine, I don’t care. You talk to animals and they tend not to eat you. Which is exactly why we need you for this particular mission.”

“W...w...why?”

“Because that’s what happened to everypony else we sent,” sighed Bon Bon.

Fluttershy squeaked herself to the brink of unconsciousness. She knew where this was going.

“It’s not that severe,” groaned Eternity. “But we’ve seen a five-hundred percent rise in gastropod-related incidents in the last six months.”

“What kind of incidents?”

“More like what kind of gastropods. Giant. Carnivorous. Venomous. Poisonous. Event that one that sings.”

“What does it sing?”

“Badly.”

“Oh.”

Bon Bon interrupted. “The orbital satellites have also picked up traces of magic in the area. Much greater than background.”

“What’s a satellite?”

“You don’t need to know that,” said Eternity. “What you do need to know is what I need you to do. It’s not even that complicated. Or even that dangerous.”

“It...isn’t?”

“Of course not. Would I lie to you?”

“Probably?”

Eternity shrugged. “I’m having a survey conducted. Just to see what’s going on in there. Why the gastropods are suddenly freaking out. And before you ask, no. It’s not a hunt. I don’t want to agitate them anymore than they already are. I just want to keep them in the zone. I’m sending in an agent to check. He’s durable, but I need you to keep him safe.”

“M...me? Why me?”

“Because you know animals better than any pony.”

“But not monsters!”

“The definition of ‘monster’ is nebulous.”

Fluttershy shivered. She knew it was true, but some things were still very, very scary. “Why can’t you send Bon Bon?”

Bon Bon seemed surprised by the suggestion. “What?”

“She’s my friend. Sort of. And I’m very peeved by being stole, but I think I’ll get over it. Eventually. If she says she’s sorry. Please.”

“Sweetie Drops lacks the prerequisite mental stability. Especially after what happened to that poor teal girl.”

Fluttershy looked up at Bon Bon in surprise, but Bon Bon could not meet her eye. She looked away, grimacing—a grimace that looked oddly like a tiny, manic smile.

Fluttershy sighed and stiffened herself, preparing to be assertive.

“And what if I say no?”

Eternity shrugged again. “I figured it was a possibility. Then I send my agent anyway. But I authorize him to have better self defense. For his own sake.”

Fluttershy stiffened—but not out of assertiveness. Out of a growing rage. “That’s a threat,” she snapped. “I can’t believe this! What kind of pony are you?!”

“I didn’t make a threat. But he has to do whatever I tell him. Even if that means perforating a few animals. It's the Law.”

“Yes you did! You’re saying you’d let him hurt innocent animals if I don’t—”

“No. I’m saying he would have to hurt innocent animals if you don’t help him avoid conflict. You’d be an interpreter. That’s all. I don’t have an alternative.”

“You could try not invading their habitat!”

“I can’t do that. Something’s wrong, and I have to fix it. It’s my job. I don’t care if they stay in their zone. That’s what it’s for. But when they start coming out and smiling up crops or sucking the manes off ponies, I get thawed out of my blissful nightmares and have to do a job. Do you think I like being conscious? Huh?”

Fluttershy stared in disbelief, then let out a long sigh. Eternity smiled. Nothing needed to be said, because they both already knew the answer. While she had been released from the sack, Fluttershy knew that she was still stolen—and she found herself wishing that she could go back in it. Like all the times before she had been stuffed into a sack, it was dark, comfortable, and warm—if a little scratchy.

“Agent Sweetie Drops will take you to where you need to go. For the transport.”

Fluttershy sighed and nodded. She began to crawl back into the sack.

“Um...you don’t need to do that?”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snapped. Followed quickly by “sorry.”

Bon Bon watched this and picked up the sack. The room was already empty. All that was left was the voice in her head and the job at hoof.

Chapter 2: The Lowest Bidders

The difficulty with Fluttershy, in general, was her distinct passivity. It was inscribed deep within her fundamental personality. This, in part, may have been due to her simple wants. Life, to her, was simply a matter of cuddling adorable animals, taking care of them, and occasionally spending time with her friends. The adventures she went on were at times stressful, but rarely were they events of her own making. She was responsive, not proactive. Things happened to her. She did not cause them.

This was the niche she filled, and she had come to understand it. It was her own personal place within the desperate social ecosystem she had so lately learned she occupied. Perhaps it would be easier if she had remained in her cottage, outside of town, and never spoken to any pony ever—but that was not what had occurred. And yet, despite her position, her status had never changed.

Her adaptation to this had been simple. It was not a matter of action, but reaction. Choices in the face of the unknown. Chaos could not be controlled, but it could be directed. This was something that Fluttershy had unfortunately come to know all-too intimately.

She did not know the means by which she was transported, or to where. To the outskirts of somewhere. Beyond the pun-named cities where ponies dwelt, to the spaces in between. The places ponies did not need to know about let alone go. But the motion was too fast. Bon Bon moved strangely, and Fluttershy halfway understood why.

When she found herself elsewhere, she did not know where she was—apart from a vast field. Except it was not quite a field. Although dry, rough grass covered most of it, much of it was paved. Although it was on the ground, it held a distinct air of Pegasus design. Fluttershy had no concept of an air-strip, although she may distantly have known what a hanger was. And that one of several were placed before her. It was rusted, the panels of its roof falling in, and overall seemed dilapidated to the highest degree—and Fluttershy gulped, fearing what monstrosity of an airship must be within.

“Oh dear,” she said.

Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Well, um...this is a little embarrassing…”

“What part of you isn’t embarrassing?”

Fluttershy blushed. “I’m...terrified of flying.”

She felt Bon Bon’s eyes shift to her back, pause on her wings, and then turn back to her face. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

She began walking to the slumping office on the edge of the hanger, and Fluttershy was forced to follow. Her only consolation—and the only thing that kept her from running away, screaming and blubbering, was the fact that the dry grass was absolutely stuffed with friendly rattlesnakes. Their rattling of encouragement kept her strong. The very softest of tarantulas applauded silently, encouraging her along, and even the scorpions looked up with admiration. She could not allow herself to disappoint the scorpions, not in front of their hundreds and hundreds of adorable, venomous children. What kind of example would she be setting?

A small bell was attached to the door. It jingled when it open, and Fluttershy stepped in from the brightness of the sun. As she did, she saw a desk—and saw who was sitting behind it.

“Nope,” she said, going right back out the door. Surely the scorpions would understand.

The door slammed closed, though, in a surge of green magic.

“Now now, wait right there, miss!”

Flam had suddenly appeared, lying in front of the door.

“Open the door or I scream.”

“Wait, wait! Surely this is a misunderstanding!”

“Eeeeeeek.”

The sound was quiet, and barely perceptible. Flim and Flam looked at each other, and shrugged.

“Do I need to do it again?” gasped Fluttershy, her voice suddenly oddly quiet.

Flim and Flam snorted, suddenly suppressing laughter.

“What?”

“Fluttershy, are you a little--”

“Eeeeek...gek...heh…” She coughed.

“Hoarse?”

They broke out into laughter, and Fluttershy just rolled her eyes. She looked to Bon Bon.

Bon Bon looked about how Fluttershy felt, except more tired and slightly more possessed. “Yeah. I know.”

“Why? Just...why?”

“Budget cuts,” she sighed. “We have to go through a private contractor.”

“And we are assuredly the most private of all!” exclaimed Flam.

“And for a matter of corporate budgets, why, we bid the very lowest!”

“But I assure you, we still offer safety comparable with some published reports of mechanical failures and accident rates!”

"And no legally proven fatalities!"

“We’ve spared no expense--”

“So that you can spare every expense!”

This was accompanied by distinct sale’s choreography.

Fluttershy just shook her head, and suddenly felt their hooves around her, holding her as if she were their very best friend.

“Now now, Ms. Fluttershy, I know us and your friends have a...certain history…”

“Motivated purely by misunderstandings, I assure you!”

“With no legal culpability!”

“But we were misguided! Terribly, terribly misguided!”

They fell to the floor, suddenly begging. Or seeming to. “We’ve turned over a new leaf!”

“We make an honest living now!”

“This new venture is guaranteed to make a safe, legal profit!”

“A hefty profit considering how much we overcharge—oof!”

Flim was elbowed by his brother, and he promptly smiled. “I mean, because of the quality service we offer!”

“Especially to one of the co-rulers of Equestria! Why, we could even roll out a red carpet!”

“If we could afford one!”

They promptly picked her up and nearly lobbed her through the door to the hanger. A small set of fireworks exploded as they entered, both of them smiling broadly and gesturing toward the airship it contained. An airship unlike anything Fluttershy had ever seen before.

It was probably the ugliest thing she had ever seen, though. It was not a big, elegant dirigible, but really something more like a sad parody of a bird. She could not tell what it was made of, but it had no feathers, only metal—and the wings were affixed in a way where it was clear they could not flap. How such a thing could fly, Fluttershy had no idea.

“What is this?”

“We’ve named her the Profiteer,” said Flam, stroking the metal of the vehicle—and causing a plate to fall off. He promptly slammed it back on with his magic, his brother putting more masking tape over the edges.

“A piece of ancient and nearly lost technology,” added Flim.

“You’ll never guess where we managed to find it,” continued Flam.

“In fact, we won it in a game of poker.”

“Not the card ones, we’re too cheap to gamble. The one where you actually get the poke.”

“But not like that!”

“No! No definitely not like that!”

“I still have the marks though…”

Flim cleared his throat. “Regardless, we assure you, this is almost definitely a flying machine of some sort!”

“Almost definitely?” demanded Bon Bon, pushing forward. “I read your bid requisition. You said you had five thousand hours experience flying this thing.”

“Well admittedly some numbers may have been inflated.”

“For the sake of making a more cosmetically appealing contract, yes—”

“You mean you fudged the numbers.”

Flim and Flam gasped in unison. “Heavens to Celestia’s rear! My dear, we have been accused of a great many things!”

“Forgery! Fraud! Horse theft!”

“But never, never have we been so insultingly called fudgers! We do not FUDGE!”

“We simply take creative license in our written works. Is that not an author’s prerogative?!”

“For a government bid? NO!” Bon Bon twisted suddenly. “Yes I know it’s silver, stop yelling at me, I’m not doing it!” She turned back to them. “Just tell me you can fly it!”

Flim and Flam both smiled, and then chuckled.

“Well…”

“Um…”

Bon Bon groaned. “You can’t, can you?”

“Oh thank Celestia,” whispered Fluttershy.

“We are more investors rather than, you know…”

“The ponies that actually do the doing.”

“But it’s not a problem!”

“Not at all!”

“We worked it into the contract, you see! So it’s really more your responsibility to fly it than ours!”

Bon Bon’s red-stained eyes widened. “MINE?!”

“Not exactly,” said the enormous earth-pony directly behind Flim and Flam.

They both screamed. Fluttershy simply fainted by the sudden surprise—and Bon Bon promptly began the ritual of kicking her back to wakefulness.

The earth-pony, despite his size, had entered the room silently through no obvious exit. No one had seen him coming, or even heard him. His color was a steely blue, his eyes wide and pale—and they stared without blinking. Eyes that seemed oddly perceptive but utterly blank.

The kicking roused Fluttershy, and she stared up at the pony—a pony that did not move, but regarded her with blank and peculiar interest. Her eyes drifted to his rear, and saw that his cutie mark was a half gear.

“Hello, Fluttershy,” he said. His voice was measured and strangely accented. Fluttershy was sure she had heard it before, but it took her a moment to realize that he spoke with the erudite tones of those who dwelt within the Crystal Empire. Strangely, though, he was not a crystal pony. “My name is agent Samson. I am the surveyor for this operation.”

“You?” Fluttershy stood, if shakily. She felt something was off about this pony, although she dismissed it as deriving from her inherent anxiety. She was naturally afraid of strangers. This one, though, did seem odd. She supposed it was in the way he did not blink. Or perhaps the way he did not move, except when he absolutely needed to. She could not even see him breathing.

Flim and Flam attempted to regain their composure. “Agent!” they said. “Do you...usually sneak up on ponies when they are so unsuspecting?”

“And vulnerable?”

“Yes,” he replied. His jaw did not move when he spoke, and his mouth only barely moved. “That is a component of my work. Would this not be unexpected?”

Flam cleared his through. “That said. Did you bring the final component of our aircraft?”

Sampson stared at him for far too long, his empty eyes unblinking. “How odd that you have facial hair,” he said at last. “Why would ponies grow facial hair? And how?”

“Um…”

“The question is rhetorical because you apparently lack the ability to answer. Perhaps I will grow a beard. With regard to the original question, yes.” He gestured toward a large wooden crate beside him.

“You mean it isn’t even in working condition?!” snapped Bon Bon.

“Of course it is!” retorted Flim. “Minus, of course, the most important piece.”

He and his brother both levitated a pair of crow bars to the box. Fluttershy disliked crowbars, as they had very little to do with actual crows.

They snapped open the crate. A terrible smell filled the room. Fluttershy winced, but could not help but look into the box—to see that it was utterly packed with an unpleasant brown waxy substance.

“Is that…”

“Earwax?” asked Flam, on the verge of spilling his oats.

“Of course not. It’s cosmoline. But why the Agency would store it in cosmoline—”

He promptly screamed like the littlest and shrillest of fillies as a hoof suddenly shot out of the greasy substance, grasping him—or rather, gently feeling his face.

“EEEEEEEEK!”

From the grease, a figure pulled himself upward—and then a pony was suddenly sitting there, dripping greasy preservatives. He did not seem especially confused, but rather perturbed.

“What in the name of Celestia’s cellulite did you open the lid for?!” he demanded. “You’re letting the fumes out!”

“Why are you—why were you—cosmoline—”

“The greatest antioxidant! I’m fully antoixidized and I don’t know where I am!”

“You’re—”

“Did I say I wanted to know?!” He climbed out of the box, tripping and falling on the floor with a greasy splat as he did so. Fluttershy saw that he was a gray earth-pony. “I’m not a cartographer! I don’t do geography, geology, or geometry! So don’t try to confuse me with your fancy mathematics!”

He hobbled toward the edge of the airplane, then looked up at it, confused. “Great! I got smaller! You idiots, I’m dry-clean only! You’ve shrunk me!”

Flim and Flam looked askance at Sampson, who looked back but did not seem especially engaged in whatever it was they were doing.

“You requested a pilot,” he said. “This is what we had in storage.”

Bon Bon let out a long sigh and yelled at the gray earth-pony who was currently engaged in drinking from the airplane’s fuel line.

“Hey! You can fly, right?”

“Of course I can fly! I’m a Pegasus, aren’t I?”

Everypony looked to his back. No wings were present.

He looked around. “Huh,” he said. “I don’t know where I am. It isn’t where I used to be.”

“You used to be in the box,” said Sampson. “I can place you back in, if you like.”

“Pfssh.” The pony climbed the edge of the box. “What kind of idiot doesn’t know how to cosmoline himself? I can get back in the box on my own.” He began to grasp the edge of the box, then started climbing back in.

“Why?”

The pony stopped, then frowned—and squinted. “I don’t like you,” he said, slowly. “You ask too many questions.”

“Or not enough,” said Bon Bon.

“Like who stole all my bones.” The pony at this point was sinking back into the cosmoline—but his eyes shifted from all of them to the others. “I know one of you did it. You don’t have to say who. I promise I won’t be angry. But I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve been boned.”

Green magic pulled him back from the cosmoline and he hung limply in the air.

“Ha. Told you I could fly.”

“We need you to fly the plane,” said Flim, sternly.

“How the heck did you grow a mustache?”

“He didn’t,” said Flam. “I did.”

“How am I supposed to know that, I can’t tell you two apart. Freaky apple-ponies, all a bunch of weirdos I say. Never trust an apple-pony, they’re all liars. Apples are just oranges that lie, and that’s a truth. Fruit isn’t trustworthy. No antioxidants at all.”

“Plane. Fly?”

“Fly? What do I look like to you, and entomologist? Like I go around studying ents? How should I know?” He pointed at the plane. “That’s basically half a biplane. I have half a mind to figure it out. Where am I going? Do you have a map?”

“We do,” said Sampson.

“Well then it’s too bad I can’t read. If it’s south, I can figure it out. But don’t you ask me to go weest! I don’t trust weest! That’s where the sun goes to hide. So, logically, that's where it keeps all the apples. You can’t trust the sun, you know. I mean, where does it go when it sets? Is there another Equestria on the other side, or is it gone? Does Celestia really demand our sacrifice to keep her sated with our respective juices?”

“Celestia no longer raises the sun.”

The pilot’s eyes widened. “Ah. So Nightmare Moon did win. I knew they were lying to me.” He pointed at Sampson. “So did we lose the war or what?”

“I assure you, I will be quite victorious in the end,” he said.

“Yeah, one of you would say that. Bunch of weirdos.”

“Lock him in the cockpit,” said Sampson, slowly. “Given enough time, I am sure he will eventually start the vehicle. Just like when we put those monkeys in that room.”

“Monkeys?” Fluttershy was suddenly interested in what was happening. “What did you do to monkeys?”

“Nothing that needs to concern you.”

“Monkey business,” whispered the pilot. “I knew it…”

Flim sighed and carried the grease-soaked pilot to where he needed to go. He struggled, but largely against himself. “I won’t talk, not ever! Do you think it’s the first time I’ve been thrown in the cock pit? HA! I don’t feel pain, they cut it out of my brain when they took my wings!”

Bon Bon turned to Sampson. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

“I do not make mistakes, Sweetie Drops.”

“You know what that thing is, don’t you?”

“According to the paperwork, it is an approved pilot. It meets the requirements.” He turned to Fluttershy. “The airplane is required. Many of the gastropods present in the zone have evolved flight.”

“They fly?”

“Yes. An airship would be far too slow. This is the quickest way to reach the target and obtain safe entry. The survey is anticipated to take me three ours with my current equipment. It will run smoothly with minimal effort on your part.”

“Really?” Fluttershy looked to Bon Bon. “And you?”

She shrugged. “I stay here. I can’t...be in a place like that. I can’t actually use this sword. Not anymore. I’m on desk duty. Permanently.”

“And sack duty, apparently.”

She nodded. “Get in, get out. It’s easy, clean.”

Fluttershy nodded. “I’m going to do it,” she said, more to herself than anypony else. “I’m going to be brave!”

She forced herself to smile, knowing that she was, in fact, a terrible liar.

Chapter 3: Pegasi Hate Airplanes

Fluttershy managed to prove to herself that she could not, in fact, be brave. Every fiber of her being was overwhelmed. The immense noise of the machine as it pulled its impossible metal frame through the air, driven by a pair of spinning blades grafted into its wings—and the shudders it made as it struck turbulence, its ridiculous inflexible body finding itself unable to compensate.

An airship was bad enough, but they were slow. Hot air balloons were worse, because they tended to run into things and had no actual means of directing their flight. This, though, was madness.

She found herself breathing hard into a paper bag, trying to control the hyperventilation and keep her lunch down.

Sampson, sitting across from her in the worn Naugahyde seats, seemed utterly calm.

“You appear to be distressed.”

“Ponies—were not—meant—to—FLY!”

“Evolution would seem to indicate the contrary. Assuming that your species is in fact a product of evolution rather than one created artificially.” He shrugged. “Nevertheless, I assess the risk of this vehicle as relativly low.”

“Relative compared to what?”

“What we do once we get to the zone. That will be much more dangerous. Does this not reassure you?”

The answer should have been obvious—but Fluttershy could not answer as the plane suddenly struck turbulence, causing her to fill the bag she was holding with something far more viscous than air.

As this was occurring, something squeaked beside her—and not a squeak of fear. A squeak of a wheel.

Fluttershy looked up and saw Flim standing beside her, dressed in a fancy but conservative suit, pushing a cart loaded with rusty cans of soda and loaded with jars of budget-grade snacks. This made Fluttershy feel significantly sicker.

“Would you like a biscuit or pretzels?”

“Um…”

“Here you go.” He placed a pretzel on a plate and gave it to Fluttershy. The smallest pretzel she had ever seen. So small she could barely see it. At the same time, he cracked open a can—something only a unicorn could do, or Applejack with her teeth—and poured its contents into a cup. Except when he set it down, Fluttershy could barely even see the color of the generic-brand cola she had been given.

“Um…”

“That will be thirty-two ninety nine,” said Flim. “I’ll add it to your bill.”

“I’m not here on my own volition,” whined Fluttershy. "I got stolen."

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay for the in-flight service.”

Fluttershy was about to protest when a gray hoof emerged from beneath her seat and felt around for a moment before grabbing the pretzel, pulling it under. She looked down to see that a face was staring back up at her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be flying the plane?”

The pilot shrugged. “It hasn’t crashed yet. So it’s still flying. So I must be doing something right.”

Flim blanched and, grabbing the pilot, quickly levitated him, shoving him back into the room where he was supposed to see.

“You did not see that,” he said. “In fact, for your trouble, why don’t I drop the price of the concessions? A discount. It’ll now be forty-four ninety-nine. A special deal, just for you—”

The plane shuddered and something broke off it. Whatever it lost, though, seemed only marginally critical, as they did not crash. Although the sudden realization that they could, in fact, crash, made Fluttershy sick all over again. Flim, himself looking slightly green, scuttled off to hide elsewhere.

Fluttershy looked to Sampson. “And you aren’t even bothered by this a little?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“Because it’s all...a lot?”

“Not really. I’m just sitting here. This is the easiest thing I’ve done all day.”

“What if we...crash?” Fluttershy whispered the last word, as if speaking it too loud would cause it to crash. As she said it, the plane shifted suddenly.

“Stupid air bumps!” cried a voice from the cockpit. “Get out of my way!”

Sampson shrugged. “This vehicle is powered by a rare alchemical mixture of hydrocarbons. The explosion on impact would be quite impressive. Assuming it requires impact to trigger. It is just as liable to detonate in the air. Perhaps you will take comfort in that fact?”

“Why would I take comfort in that fact?”

Sampson looked at her, blank but seemingly confused. “Because if you explode in the air, you do not need to fall.”

Fluttershy felt faint.

She stood up suddenly, nearly falling over from the exertion. She felt trapped. The airplane was small and the air was still. It smelled bad. Like mold and burning electronics. There were no animals save for the lice in the seats, and they were not any more talkative than lice normally were. Which was not at all. Fluttershy desperately wished for some friendly motherbucking snakes on the motherbucking plane, but none materialized. She was alone.

She went for a walk. To the cockpit. Upon entering it, though, she wished she had avoided it entirely.

Flam was dressed in a copilot uniform, pale, and had he possessed knuckles they almost surely would have been white. The pilot, though, was squinting at something that was blinking red on the front of his controls. Controls that seemed to cover every single surface—and that mostly seemed inoperable.

“So many buttons,” groaned the pilot. “I don’t even wear pants, what am I supposed to do with buttons? And what is this thing?”

“Your instruments,” moaned Flam.

“What am I, some kind of trombonist? We don’t need instruments where we’re going!”

“And where are we going?” squeaked Fluttershy.

The pilot shrugged. “Based of previous experience? Probably the ground. Very, very quickly. They can’t shoot you down if you ram them with your plane! Except I haven’t figured out where the down switch is, so landing might not happen as violently as it usually does.”

Fluttershy looked to Flam, who just shook his head.

“Are we almost there, at least?” she managed to act.

Flam consulted a map. He nodded, his whole body shaking. “We’re right over it now. We just need to figure out a way down.”

“Down’s usually the easy part,” mumbled the pilot. “Stupid metal planes. I never liked the bombers.” He paused. “Maybe if I just tossed you all out? Or if I wait for the fuel to run out? I drank a lot of it when you weren't looking, so that will probably happen pretty soon.”

Fluttershy could not take the stress of knowing how these things were operated. She moved to turn and escape, probably to the back, but as she did, something caught her eye through the dirty windscreen.

She paused, squinting. It was an object, and at first, terrified, she thought that it might be a bird—but it was moving far too fast. As it grew closer, she saw translucent wings beating incredibly fast—wings not made of feathers or chitin, but made from something far more translucent. Translucent and glowing.

Then, too late, she realized what it was. A figure clad in dark armor, charging them at full speed, held aloft by the beating of magically generated wings.

“TURN!” she cried.

“Tern? Where?" The gray pony squinted, then gesticulated through the cracked windscreen. "I was here first, he can move!”

He did not move—until the last second. And as he did, Fluttershy felt the vibration of a single, simple spell. And, as the plane slipped from the air, she heard the thump of a cutting spell against its tail, severing its rear controls. The whole plane immediately shuddered and began to drop.

“Ha!” laughed the pilot, slamming the accelerator. “Problem solved! We’re going down real fast now! Everypony get ready to land at MAXIMUM VELOCITY!”

He did not have long to rejoice. The figure came back, performing an aerial motion that would have made Rainbow Dash jelous—and leveled from their port side. His long, curved horn ignited, and a blast of red light tore through the cockpit. The glass on one side erupted in a plume of metal and molten rubber, coating the pilot. He looked down at himself, confused—and was promptly sucked out the hole and directly into one of the propellers.

The effect was immediate. The engine detonated in a plume of fire.

“Welp,” said Flam. “I believe this constitutes an emergency. Ladies and gentleman, please return your table trays to the upright positions!”

He stood up and raced out of the cockpit. His brother, likewise, ran to the front of the plane, throwing a parachute to his brother. In an instant, they had strapped themselves in and donned protective goggles.

“Wait!” cried Fluttershy. “What are you doing?!”

“Leaving,” said Flim.

“Yes. Before the gravity gets us.”

“But—don’t we need parachutes too?!”

They shrugged. “Budget cuts, my dear. Costs must be kept low. We only bought the two.”

With that, they pulled the emergency exit, pushed down their goggles, and jumped out. By this time, the airplane was in a severe, spiraling dive, and Fluttershy felt herself being lifted off the ground by the g-forces—only to be suddenly grasped by an oversize hoof.

“Sampson—”

“Unfortunately, the Laws compel me to insist you leave the vehicle. Immediately.”

“Wait—WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT NO DON’T YOU DARE—”

With a single motion, he threw her out the exit. She bounced once off the wing of the airplane and then began screaming as she fell, waving her hooves uselessly and leaving a trail of fluid that was most likely tears.

She twisted and turned as she fell, occasionally catching glimpses of the ground—a vast and unruly forest or swamp, too far to have any detail but growing closer with every passing second. Then, sometimes, above her, she saw the flaming remains of the airplane trailing forward in a downward arc.

The ground, though, was a more pressing concern. The descent was overwhelming, the fear palpable beyond what her mind could handle. The lack of ground, with nothing but the air surrounding her, nothing to hold her up and the impossible speed of Equestria itself pulling her ever closer toward a violent and messy hug.

It was too much to bear, and she pleaded silently through her screams that somepony, ANYPONY would save her, would keep her from hitting the ground, of that unpleasant and quiet thump that awaited her below.

She closed her eyes, attempting to shield herself from the inevitable. By then, the ground had much better resolution. She could see the trees coming toward her, and doing so with great haste.

She whimpered, out of breath and petrified—and only then, in the farthest reaches of her mind, did she suddenly remember a certain critical fact.

Summoning the entirety of her courage and wherewithal, she spread her wings.

Unfortunately, she had already allowed herself to descend too fast. Fluttershy was at best marginally athletic, and only when it came to Buckball or jazzercise—not flying. She was not Rainbow Dash; even Twilight could out-fly her. A diet of Pinkie’s cupcakes had not assisted the situation. She was not able to pull herself out of the dive.

She struck the trees, hard, the wind knocked out of her as she broke through branches and leaves. This was followed by a horrible and severe thump, one that sent stars through her brain as she impacted the mud. But, as Rainbow Dash often explained, if you heard the thump when you hit, it meant you survived the crash.

Fluttershy was not so sure. She was, in fact, totally sure that she had not in fact survived. She refused to accept that she had not until she could force herself to open her eyes. By then, the sun was at an odd position in the sky. More time had passed than she had thought.

She stood, wobbling, and promptly fell to one side. Looking back, she nearly fainted at the sight of her wing. It was hanging limply at her side. Possibly broken, or possibly dislocated. An injury that she had seen hundreds if not thousands of times before. Except in those cases, it had always been on Rainbow Dash.

She nearly fainted. The only thing that kept her fear from overwhelming her was the far greater fear that she would awake in a muddy, impassible forest at night. A forest that she was fully aware was indeed full of monsters.

She sat up, took a breath, and stood—only to realize that she was covered in something other than mud.

Looking down, she saw a number of brightly-colored shells over her body.

“Hello there,” she said, smiling. “Are you here to help me?”

The sudden realization of pain was an indication that they were, in fact, not very friendly. They were activly eating her.

“Oh no,” gasped Fluttershy. “I am delicious!”

She then began screaming, pushing the snails away and running into the forest.

A forest that seemed to exude a sense of ominousness. It was the sort of untamed, uncontrolled wilderness that populated some strange regions of Equestria where ponies simply did not go. The Everfree was another snippet of the same type. This one, though, seemed somehow far worse.

The trees were thin and massive, stretching upward as enormous gray columns and leaving the mossy, swampy area beneath largely free of undergrowth. Too much was visible and yet, through the mist, not nearly enough could be seen. It was too silent. No birds, no skittering of mammals. No sounds at all. Save for the dull hiss of trees, and of the occasional strange scream from the distance.

Those screams were of course drowned out by Fluttershy’s shrieks as she fled in no particular direction, thinking she saw monsters around every tree. Things flitted by in the air, gibbering and almost laughing—but she could not see them. Not in the slowly dimming light of the forest.

A light was visible in the distance and, although already winded and with her legs burning, she charged for it—to escape, to get somewhere not scary.

She broke free into a clearing and nearly collapsed, breathing hard, her mouth tasting like metal. She laughed, slightly, glad she had escaped the forest—until she looked up and began to whimper. Because the snail was looking back at her.

It seemed almost confused. It seemed also rather large. On a nearly ridiculous scale. Fluttershy could have perched her cottage on top of its shell and still had room for a vegetable garden—and its long, wet, alien eyes were as large as she was long.

She stood there, covered in mud and moss, unable to run—until it raised a mouth adorned with a little pair of feelers. For a moment, it almost seemed adorable—until with a wet slap, its lips peeled back to reveal a circular mouth filled with thousands of sharp, serrated teeth.

Fluttershy screamed and turned to run. The snail pursued, driving itself into the forest, moving its vast frame dexterously between the trees. Those that did not move simply bent, an adaptation to its imense and overpowering girth.

The result, had it been viewed by an outsider, would have perhaps seemed comical. Namely because the snail was a distinctly slow creature, moving at a relative speed no greater than any ordinary snail. However, due to its size, this manifested as an almost absurd velocity as it passed one or two of its body length every few seconds. Fluttershy, being so much smaller relative to it, could barely outrun it. Even in a dead sprint.

The operant word in this case being “dead”.

Fluttershy’s mind was, for the most part, a complete blank from terror—and yet, at the same time, she found herself in the state of clarity that she could only accomplish from a very specific level of stress.

This was not how she imagined it would happen. She had always imagined that, like several species of the most noble of spiders, she would be eaten by swarms of her young. Unfortunately, due to her physiology, she was not capable of giving birth—or probably being properly eaten. The process of digestion in a creature larger than her terrified her far more than the chewing, but she supposed both would be unpleasant.

Her body was about to fail. She could no longer run, and she fell to her knees in the moss and mud. She awaited the chewing—but out of the corner of her eye, she saw a sudden flash. A thin slash of violet across a tree, then a sound curiously similar to hooves against wood.

With a crash, the tree fell, blocking the progression of the snail. It seemed confused for moment, stopping its slow forward progression. Out of the shadows, a figure ran elegantly up the trunk of the tree, directly to the snail’s face—and raised a pointed stick toward it.

Fluttershy gasped, overwhelmed but also feeling horrible for having put the beast in danger—only to realize that although the stick was pointed, it was not brandished as a weapon. Rather, a bright blue cabbage had been skewered on the end.

The snail paused, then felt this offering with its feelers—before closing its mouth entirely over the pony holding it. Fluttershy gasped, but the mouth slowly pulled back, revealing the pony unharmed and covered in a thick layer of mucous. The bladed teeth had not been directed at him, but at gently removing the cabbage from the stick. The snail began to leisurely munch on it, slowly chewing it.

“Hmm...how interesting.” The figure produced a mucous-covered notepad and an equally mucous-covered pencil and began to write notes. “Blue...preferred over red...I know that feeling…”

He continued writing and the snail continued eating—apparently not noticing Fluttershy in the slightest.

Fluttershy, when she had finally regained her ability to breath, coughed slightly. “Um...excuse me?”

He looked up from his notes. He was wearing what amounted to a worn, hooded poncho, a piece of ordinary rain gear—but as he turned, Fluttershy was able to see him far more clearly. In doing so, her wings suddenly tingled and popped outward—or attempted to. One did not move aside from an agonizing twitch.

He was muscular, but in the wiry, lanky way that only a unicorn could be. Not hypertrophic like some earth-ponies, or thinly athletic like Pegasi, but almost elven in appearance—taller than Fluttershy, but clearly strong. His coat, though dirty in places, was itself a light brown, an unusual color for a unicorn—although his long, soft mane and extensive sideburns were distinctly blue-green.

“Oh. Hey Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy squeaked and partially blushed. She did not know how this stallion knew her, and at first started to panic—only to remember that she had become a rather public figure over time. Perhaps he was an admirer. This thought pleased her more than it should have, and the pain in her dislocated wing increased.

His dull smile faded, turning to an expression of concern. He patted the snail on its squishy head and jumped down, elegantly landing on a mossy hillock. “That wing looks pretty bad, eh? Is it supposed to be like that?”

“What do you think?!” snapped Fluttershy, immediately clapping her muddy hooves over her mouth. His handsomeness had caused her to become perturbed. Her assertiveness had become unstable.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m not that kind of doctor.”

Fluttershy pointed a shaking hoof at the snail. “It was…it was going to eat me…”

The stallion looked over his shoulder and let out a low chuckle. “What, Mildred? She wouldn’t do that. She’s such a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

The snail looked up and huffed.

“Besides, the gigantus species is entirely vegetarian. The pharynx is tiny. She couldn’t even swallow a kumquat without chewing it.”

“That’s what I was worried about. She—she was chasing me—”

The stallion poked her fluffy chest, causing her to shiver. When he drew his hoof back, it was covered in moss. “Well, sure. You’re covered in her favorite food. Mildred can’t see so good these days. She must have smelled it.”

Fluttershy blushed even deeper. “Oh no…” She leaned, looking past the stallion at the giant snail still munching its cabbage. “Mildred, I’m so sorry! Please forgive me, I was scared and got a little surprised, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings if—”

The snail’s eyes suddenly pricked up. It stopped munching. Then, with surprising speed, it retracted back under its shell. Fluttershy was about to feel bad about this when she heard something in the trees. She looked up to find that the sun had started to set—and in the forest, darkness had already set.

Things moved quickly through the trees. She did not see them clearly. Only that each of them had a long—impossibly long—pair of legs. They sprinted behind trees, hiding, so she could only catch the barest glimpses of their shadows. She heard twigs breaking and saw the glow of eyes.

“What—what is that?” she squeaked.

The stallion sighed. “Snailwalkers. They must have heard all the noise.”

“Are they...friendly?”

“Well...no. We should probably get back to my camp. It’s not safe out here anymore.”

He began walking into the woods—and quickly. Fluttershy paused, knowing that it was always bad to trust a stranger. Still, though, she heard the sound of things sprinting in the forest—and growing closer. So she had no choice but to follow.

Chapter 4: The Biologist

There was, in fact, a camp—which was a relief. It was located past the thickest parts of the forest, built on a small flat space held high on the side of a large and foreboding hill. Its surface had some trees, but a type with enormous, thick trunks and roots that clung to rock—surrounded at their base by ominous, gnarled shrubs that reached up like claws. These frightened Fluttershy at first, until darkness fell entirely—and their flowers opened, providing cold but adequate bioluminescent illumination to their path.

The camp consisted of little more than a lean-to and a spot where there had quite clearly been a fire for some time, as well as a few magically cut sections of logs to serve as seats. It all looked distinctly primitive.

“You live here?”

The stallion nodded. “Sure. There’s other camps too, though. This place is real big. Couldn’t study it all if I just stayed in one spot, don’tchaknow.”

He levitated a stick and poked it into the center of the black ash where the fire was supposed to be. From a small bottle, he attempted to pour a liquid onto the top of it—a reddish liquid that was really more of an extremely viscous, foul-smelling liquid. He winced as he poured it, holding himself back from the odor—or perhaps something else.

Then, when he closed the jar, the tip of his horn flicked with violet sparks—and the goo ignited violently, filling the darkness with flickering orange light.

Fluttershy jumped back from the small explosion, but appreciated the light and the warmth—and the fact that the snailwalkers who had been so disturbingly close on their approach suddenly retreated in the face of the light.

“Are my eyebrows still on?”

“Um...yes?”

He smiled. “Good. Starting to figure this out, I guess.” He took a step toward her, and Fluttershy cowered—but not in a way that made her feel afraid.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

He pointed at her wing. “I need to fix that.”

“You know how to do that?”

He nodded, smiling. “I took first-aid in college. In case I ever had to pop one of my own wings back in.”

“You don’t have wings.”

“Sure. Didn’t occur to me at the time, though.”

Fluttershy remained unsure. “Will it...will it hurt?”

“A little. But it’s not that bad.”

Fluttershy was breathing hard at this point. She could barely get a vaccination without an entire crew of burly orderlies holding her down. And that was just a tiny pinprick. She had seen Rainbow Dash relocate her own wings on more than one occasion, and it never seemed to hurt that badly. A wince, then laughter. But Rainbow Dash probably had a much greater pain tolerance.

“Wait, wait—wait,” she said, breathing even harder.

“On three, okay?”

“Wait! Is that when you say three, or three then—”

There was a massive snap as his magic shoved her wing back into the joint. Fluttershy passed out from the pain.

When she woke up, the sun had fully gone down. Stars were visible in the sky, as well as the barest sliver of a crescent moon. Time had passed again, and she felt groggy. Her wing still ached, and as she went to feel for it, for a horrifying moment she found it gone—only to quickly realize that it was simply bandaged, tied against her body along with the other for symmetry. The fact that he had done both indicated that he probably really did understand Pegasus medicine, at least to some extent.

She looked up. The fire had grown in size, the slime being replaced by various sticks and pieces of small fallen wood. The stallion was beyond it, staring at the ground—or rather at a hoof-sized snail that was passing the area, leaving a trail of slime in a perfect circle around the perimeter of the camp.

“Good job, George,” he said, picking up the snail in his hoof and patting it on the head. “Now that’s what I call a circle. Thanks a bunch.” He gave the snail a small piece of moss, and then set it in a small box outside his lean-to. Several other smaller, colorful snails that had been milling around followed it—although very slowly.

He looked across the fire. His eyes were half-closed, but his smile was kind. “You woke up.”

Fluttershy groaned. The warmth of the fire was pleasant against the misty cold of the night, but she still felt terrible. Sore and sick, and weak from a day filled with fright.

“Do you want something to eat?”

Fluttershy felt her stomach growl. She recalled that in her youth the sound had terrified her, causing her to think there was a monster inside her and that if she did not feed it her stomach would come out her navel and eat her. In this case, though, she knew she was just hungry.

A bowl levitated toward her, as well as a ladle—and, although she expected some kind of vegetable soup, she was instead ladled with a sticky, foul-smelling dollop of translucent mucous.

Her stomach immediately silenced.

“What is that?”

“Mucous,” said the stallion, sitting on the opposite side of the fire with his own bowl. “The slime from the ramshorn snail is edible but bland. This is from the rare flavor-snail. See, that’s the fun, eh? It’s a mystery what flavor you get. Hilarious, right?”

He stuck a spoon into the goo and, with a horrid sucking sound, pulled it out. He licked it, frowning with concentration. “Huh. Vanilla. I’ve gotten that one twice already. But it’s pretty lucky. I guess today is a good day. It’s correlated to the temperature, don’tchaknow. Cold nights get you savory, warm, sweet. Usually.”

Fluttershy looked at the bowl and saw it quiver. She found she had lost her appetite. Still, she felt an urge to be polite. Shaking, she extended her tongue and, despite her body’s every protest, she licked the goo.

She shuddered, but was surprised by the flavor. It was not exactly vanilla, but oddly familiar.

“It tastes like Celestia.”

“I know, right?”

She paused, listening to him eating his own meal and to the crackling of the fire. No sounds came from the darkness, although a horde of snails of various sizes had surrounded them, stopping at the circle of slime that surrounded them.

“Um...I know this is a little rude, but if you don’t mind me asking...it’s kind of embarrassing, but...um…” She paused, taking a breath and trying to regain her composure. “Thank you so much for saving me, even if I wasn’t really in any danger. But...what’s your name?”

He looked over the fire and smiled. “I’m Snails.”

Fluttershy blinked. “That’s very strange,” she said. “That’s the second time I’ve met a pony named Snails. The other one was a little boy in Ponyville.”

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s me alright. I’m that Snails.”

Fluttershy fell silent—and then released a high squeak, falling off her wooden stool and attempting to hide herself behind it.

“WHAT?!”

“Snails. I’m a unicorn? We used to play Buckball together? You could always do that neat trick with your tail, and I never could figure out how to do it myself?”

“Yes, I heard you, but—but—but—”

“Ha. You said ‘butt’.”

“But when did you get so—so—” She took another breath and tried to focus. “Big?”

He seemed confused. “Well I suppose I’ve always been taller than most. Thought that was relative for a while, see, because Snips is short? Nope. Turns out I grew.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’m not so good at counting, but how long has it been?” He scratched his chin. “Let’s see...I think Twilight started her school, what, fourteen years ago?”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened. She had not even realized that so much time had passed—or, because she had actively suppressed the idea of it. Because she saw the changes in her friends. That their ages had nearly doubled, hers included—and they had grown older. But she had not. And she never would.

For Snails, though, the change had been dramatic, seemingly impossible—but he had only been a child before. No more than twelve. Now he was in his early twenties, the same age Fluttershy had been when she had first met him. Which only made her feel more sad and dirty than she actually was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. For several reasons.

He still seemed confused. “For what?”

Fluttershy cleared her throat. “For...um...not recognizing you.”

He shrugged. “Eh. It happens. I forgot who Snips was at least twice a month. Sometimes more if he got a haircut. It happens.” He paused. “How’s he doing? If you know. I don’t get mail out here. Haven’t found a mail-snail yet. They might not even exist.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Oh,” she said, trying to recall. Although she was now splitting much of her time in Canterlot, she still maintained her sanctuary in Ponyville—and of course, Rarity was a veritable geyser of gossip that only seemed to increase in quantity with her age. Fluttershy had always been too polite to make her stop.

“He’s fine,” she said. “But he had to quit his job. From the stress. He was in the hospital for a while. Same one he worked at, too. But he’s much better now.”

Snails nodded. “Yeah,” he said, distantly. “I always told the guy, he works too hard. Gets obsessed with it, don’tchaknow. He was like that in medical school. Poor guy hardly slept, never had the confidence to know how smart he was. And urology isn’t an easy field.”

“You kept up with him in medical school?”

Snails looked over the fire, once again confused. “No. We were roomates. Went to the same school in Fillydelphia. He went for the MD, I got a PhD in zoology.”

“Wait—YOU?!”

He smiled. “Because I’m slow, right?”

Fluttershy deepened to the hue of a beet. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, I—”

Snails laughed. “That’s the thing. Mildred’s slow too. But even at her age, she almost outran you, didn’t she?”

“I...I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. You didn’t mean anything by it.”

Fluttershy, still red, picked up her meal and started eating it—partially to avoid the shame, but also because she knew for a fact that Celestia did not taste that bad.

“And you—if you don’t mind me asking—specialized in...snails?”

A large smile crossed his face. “Of course! Snails are my special talent!” He paused, looking down at his food—and blushing almost imperceptibly. “And in a way, you’re to thank for that.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “Well...dang, I’m being bashful, even it it’s true, but I always kind of looked up to you, you know? Because no matter how big and scary a creature was, you didn’t even seem to notice. And for me?” He looked down at a snail that sat beside him. “No matter how wet and slimy they are, they sure are beautiful, aren’t they?”

Fluttershy herself blushed, because she understood—even if the way he had seen her when he had been a child was not entirely true. Some creatures were still very, very scary.

“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” he asked, perking up. “To see the snails? Is their a friendship problem?” He looked around. “Is it me? I’m the only pony here. Am I supposed to go back now? I’m not finished with my research, but if Snips needs me I’ll be back with bells on my toes...if I had toes, I don’t, but you get the point, eh?”

“No, no, you’re fine.” As much of a shock as it had been to see him, Fluttershy understood. He was a biologist who, as his name, cutie mark, and demeanor implied, specialized wholly in the study of snails. He had come to this place with the intent of researching them, either ignorant or ignoring the severe danger of a place where a largely unnamed Equestria agency had dumped its snail-based monsters. Or maybe he knew—and that was exactly why he had come.

“I was helping someone survey the area,” she said—and then suddenly stood up. “Oh my Celestia, the plane! It crashed, and Sampson was still on it, we need to—”

She started to run, only to be pulled back by her tail. It hurt, but she felt her wings struggle against her bandages as she let out a moan.

“Now wait a minute, you can’t just go running down the mountain at night,” warned Snails, calmly. “It’s not safe. You could fall. And the ones that come out at night, they get mean sometimes.” He pointed at the circle. “Have to stay in the circle, you know? George is a magic snail. They can’t cross the barrier until the slime wears off. And that won’t happen until the sun comes up.”

“But the plane—”

“I saw it,” he said. “Tracked it to you, but it didn’t look good where it went. Don’t even know what a plane is, but I saw it blow up real big. I know where it went. We can go there in the morning.”

Fluttershy sat down, staring into the darkness, knowing that things were staring back at her.

“We were attacked,” she said.

Snails frowned. “By what? The flying snails aren't aggressive, but if you hit a flock of them they might have done some damaged. Been conked more than once on the old noggin, when it gets cold they drop out of the sky and all…”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No. It was a pony. A unicorn.” She shivered, looking over her shoulder. At the unicorn sitting behind her.

He seemed as surprised as she did, though. “Huh,” he said. “Well, that’s a bit odd, seeing as there’s no ponies here. Not anymore. Just me. I think that’s because I can talk to them.”

“You can talk to snails?”

“My dissertation was on gastropod linguistics, yeah. They don’t actually talk much, but some are real smart. Especially the brain-snails.”

“Because they have big brains?”

He winced. “Sure. We’ll go with that one. Anyway, they’d notice ponies. And I haven’t heard chatter. Not even a little. There’s no ponies out here, let alone a unicorn.” He paused. “Except me.”

Fluttershy believed him. She doubted the little boy she had known in Ponyville could cast the war-magic that their attacker had. But Snails was not the little boy she had known. He was a unicorn with a doctorate—admittedly one in biology, but no one in Equestria that was a field utterly inseparable from magic. Especially when it came to monsters.

“Why were you flying it anyway?” he asked.

“Some ponies needed my help,” admitted Fluttershy. “They said we needed to check the area because snails kept getting out and hurting ponies.”

This seemed to surprise Snails even more greatly. “Well, that’s not right.”

“I know. I don’t why they would be so mean.”

“No. I mean because none of the snails here have been doing that.”

Fluttershy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I keep an eye on the borders. It’s not safe for them out there. And half or so are magic-tagged, at least the big ones or the dangerous ones. Nobody strays too far from the edge.”

“But they said there were attacks.”

Snails shrugged. “Maybe they were wrong? Or maybe I’m wrong. I dunno. It’s happened before. I’m an expert, not Celestia. I get things wrong sometimes.”

“Do you know the name ‘Eternity’?”

Snails shrugged. “Not really. That’s not a common name for a pony, but there’s been a few in history I guess. Female wizards.”

“What kind of wizards?”

“Dark. Always dark. Very dark.”

“What about Bon Bon?”

“Oh, sure. I know Bon Bon. I think we’re cousins? Real shame about what happened with her and Lyra.”

“Yeah.” Fluttershy stood up and moved closer to the fire. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”

“You’re in a forest with lots of really impressive snails,” said Snails, as if it were obvious.

Fluttershy smiled. She supposed he was right.

Snails stood up. “It’s late. We should go to bed.”

“We?”

He gestured toward the lean-to. “I didn’t have time to build a second one, but it’s fine. We can share. It’s big enough. You’re pretty small.”

Fluttershy felt herself blush. “No, I don’t think—that wouldn’t be appropriate—”

“Why would that not be appropriate?”

Fluttershy blushed even harder, but Snails just shrugged. “Well," he said, "I guess I can stay outside, then. It’ll rain before dawn, but it’s fine. I’ve been damp before, and you don’t seem like you’re used to being wet.”

“Eep.”

“Exactly. You take the lean-to.”

“No, no I couldn’t do that…”

Snails smiled. Fluttershy did not know why her hearts were beating so fast—but she doubted that, either way, she would be getting any sleep on that particular night.

Chapter 5: The Idiosyncrasies of Flying Machines

Fluttershy was awoken abruptly to the sound of snoring. Namely, her own. For a moment, she did not know where she was. That blissful moment of unawareness was followed with the sudden realization that she was in a forest, leaning against something warm. Something that she had drooled on in her sleep. Or, rather, somepony.

She jumped so hard that she nearly toppled the wooden structure—but there was not much in the way to go. She had been pressed in a small space, warm and cozy against his body and covered in a woolen blanket that they shared. Her heart racing, she realized that he was already awake. He had donned a pair of reading glasses and was looking through an exceedingly complex looking textbook of snail biology, his notes at the side of them, a pair of quills held in his magic as he took two sets of notes at once.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m in my 40s—I didn’t mean to—”

“Yeah. I know. Weird that you don’t age.”

“Huh—what?”

“I guess I don’t either. Unicorn and all. I’ll look like this for a century at least. Maybe two. Weird to think about it.” He closed his book and notes, putting them into a small bag. “Are you ready to wake up? I didn’t want to move because you need sleep. Seems like you had a rough day. And that wing won’t heal itself otherwise.” He paused. “Actually, it’s something you’ll want to get a doctor to see. That’s why wing surgeons make all the bits they do, eh?”

He stood up and stepped out of the shelter. He was not wearing his poncho or bags, and as such was completely nude—and although Fluttershy had of course seen him naked hundreds of times before, she could not help but feel embarrassed.

He stretched. “Sun’s coming up. Twilight sure is punctual. We should probably get going.”

“Going where?”

“North. That’s where the crash came from. I know a path. But we probably should hurry.”

Fluttershy stood up, feeling her whole body aching. “Yeah,” she said, quietly, knowing there was no reason to hurry at all. They were surely already too late.

Snails was indeed adept at navigating the zone. He seemed to know it well, and the paths he took across hillocks, stones, and through grass had been deepened by years of use. To Fluttershy, he seemed at home in this forest as she was in her cottage.

It took about four hours to reach the site, a distance that seemed impossible. The terrain was rough, but Fluttershy could hardly believe that it had gotten so far in the time it had taken her to hit the ground. She wondered what must have happened on board. If Sampson had attempted to regain control, or if he too had jumped. Without a parachute or wings, though, he would have fared far more poorly than she had.

Realizing this, she immediately stopped thinking.

When they reached it, they found that the crash site was enormous. Trees had been snapped at various levels as the craft had come down, and metal pieces were embedded in various places, some already being chewed apart by various types of snail. The sound of raduli on aluminum was frightful, but not so badly as the silence of the crash itself.

Little remained but charred, still-smoldering wreckage and ash. The vague shape of the vehicle could still be seen, half lost in the moist soil. Thin wisps of smoke were still rising from it, although any fires had been put out by the rain earlier in the morning. Sampson had not been lying. The alchemical reagent which powered the engines had indeed been flammable.

She took several steps closer to the ash, feeling her feet crackling in the black charcoal of the impact. Snails approached too, looking strangely nervous. In the wreckage, something stirred. Fluttershy did not see it, at first, but her eyes focused on something black against black. It stopped its chewing, and then quickly slithered out. It was not a snail. It had no shell. It was a large black slug, and it moved with surprising speed, quickly vanishing into the charred grass with a rustle.

Snails took a sudden step back, looking distinctly displeased. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice filled with an unexpected nervousness. “It hit harder than I figured. If he was in there…”

“Then he’s still in there.”

Snails shook his head. “No. That’s not how it works here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t want to know.” He looked out toward the horizon, at the rising hills and mountains that were barely visible through trees and enormous ferns. “It came down too close to the outskirts of the ruins. I don’t come here. This is as far as we go.”

“What’s beyond here?”

Snails did not answer.

Fluttershy sighed. “We might need to back track. If he jumped, he might be hurt.”

“Were there others?”

Fluttershy frowned. “Flim and Flam.”

Snails nodded knowingly. “I know those guys. Bought a mechanical pencil from them in college. Spent four weeks in the hospital after that one. What jokers.” He frowned. “Why were they here?”

“They owned that thing.”

Snails nodded again. “Explains why it, you know, crashed.”

“There was also a pilot.” Fluttershy suddenly shuddered as the repressed memory came back. Of a pony hitting a full-throttle propeller. “He didn’t make it.”

“You’d be surprised. Was he a unicorn?”

“No. He was a Peg—” She paused. “An earth-pony.”

“What was his name?”

Fluttershy opened her mouth, but suddenly felt sick. She had never even asked.

Snails nodded. “Right. We’ll backtrack it’s course, but it’s nothing but mountain-swamps and the bog back there. I like the bog, but I don’t think you will. It’s very...boggy. I can ask around. I have a flare in camp three. If we wait till dark and I send it up, anypony around should be able to find us.”

Fluttershy managed to control her breathing. “You’re awfully levelheaded, aren’t you?”

Snails shrugged. “Well I don’t know if I’d say ‘awful’. But sure. You have to be. If you’re gonna study snails, you have to think like one.” He smiled. “Snails can’t run away from things, you know? Not usually anyway. But they still don’t panic.” He playfully pushed her shoulder. “It’s why we made such a good team at buckball, eh? You were always the aggressive one.”

Fluttershy blushed. “I...was?”

“Sure.” They started walking back on the path the plane had fallen. Whoever had designed a heavier-than-air aircraft had quite clearly been an idiot. “Another thing I can thank you for. No way I would have gotten in to college with my grades if it weren’t for buckball. Played four years on that scholarship.”

“Oh, wow.” Fluttershy paused, but then proceeded to admit her embarrassment. “I...never graduated middle school.”

Snails shrugged. “Most ponies don’t. I don’t hold it against them. Wouldn’t myself if I didn’t have the knack for snail biology, don’tchaknow.”

Fluttershy had never really considered that thought, although she of course knew it. Aside from Twilight, none of her close friends had greater than an elementary-school education. Rainbow Dash might be considered the only exception, although Pegasus education was performance-based, focused on flying rather than academics. She herself had attended the same school until she had dropped out. Literally.

What she would have done with an education eluded her. Becoming an actual veterinarian was out of the question; even the thought of the sight of blood would lead her to faint. And she was most certainly not cut out to be a biologist. Perhaps she would have attended technical school, like her father. Or resorted to wizardry, as her biological father had.

Still, she was impressed by Snails’s dedication. She saw the way his eyes darted to each tree, each blade of grass, taking into account each snail, from the smallest brown-snails to ones that glimmered with mists of magic as they phased in out of locations.

Then, as they walked, she saw him wince.

“What’s wrong.”

“Dunno,” he said. “Some kind of headache. It’s fine. Probably the smell of burning plane.” He stopped, looking down at the ground. “Huh,” he said.

Fluttershy looked as well, and realized what she saw. Hoofprints.

Except that something was off—and strangely so. The prints of various paws, claws, hooves and feet was something Fluttershy knew well. And these were wrong.

“Those are from a pony,” said Snails. He looked at Fluttershy. “Think he made it out?”

Fluttershy frowned, staring at the hoofprints—until she realized the problem. She looked up at Snails, and he seemed to understand that something was incorrect. Fluttershy pointed behind her.

“But we didn’t leave any. The ground here isn’t soft enough.”

Snails looked, and seemed to grow pale with apprehension. “Maybe it was wet this morning?”

“It’s a swamp. It’s always wet.” Fluttershy turned back to the prints. “These are too deep. They’re the right shape, but too heavy. Much too heavy.”

“Like he was carrying something?”

“Maybe.” Fluttershy shivered. “But he didn’t have anything on the plane.” She paused again. “Not even survey equipment…” She looked to Snails. “Is there a snail that does something like that?”

“It’s not a snail I’m worried about.” He winced. “But the necroslugs don’t make a pony heavier. Not like this.” His expression darkened. “But if he made it out, it’s not a safe place. You’re probably fine, and I’m okay, but if he doesn’t know what he’s doing…”

“I know.” Fluttershy swore under her breath. “Buck...I was supposed to keep him from getting eaten.”

“Been eaten. It’s not so bad. There are much, much worse things here.” He looked at the tracks. “At least he’s going south. Away from the ruins. That’s a good sign.”

“Should we follow him?”

Snails nodded, but then winced again. This time he nearly crumpled to the ground, bracing his forhead with his hoof.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t...know…” When he stood up, his eyes and ears were dripping with silver. “It hurts. Real bad.”

Fluttershy stiffened. “That’s a resonance injury.”

“I must have been bitten by something—”

“I know resonance damage when I see it. You have to sit down. It will pass, but you have to hold on.”

She helped him to the mossy forest floor. He was starting to shiver. Fluttershy, being a Pegasus, was unaffected—but Snails was far more sensitive than any case she had ever seen.

She held his hoof, speaking to him as she would a wounded animal—firmly, and full of a confidence that she found she could rarely hold onto for long. “Is there anything in this forest that’s especially magical?”

“No,” he said, trying to remain stoic. “This has never happened before.” He raised his eyes, wiping away the silver liquid. “But there’s nopony else here…”

As he said it, the foliage around them was suddenly filled with the sounds of hundreds of pegasnails. They looked just like ordinary snails, save for the fluffy white wings emerging from the sides of their shells that carried them aloft, flapping slowly in complex formations. Formations that led them all in the same direction.

The light of the overcast sky was then blotted out, and even Fluttershy felt the hum of the magic engines as the airship passed. Not an airplane, but not a derigable either. It was not a balloon, and it was not lighter than air. She recognized the vibration and the taste of metal it made in her mouth and nose. The vibrations of an extremely powerful crystal reactor.

The heavily armored war-ship drifted overhead, lazily passing, held aloft by engines that hemorrhaged light as plumes of ominous runes. The crystal and steel underside held an insignia that Fluttershy did not recognize—a black shield emblazoned with the simple letters “Fe” in its center.

It passed quickly, and as it left, she heard snails breathing hard. The pain was substantial to those not familiar with crystal energy, and it was obvious he had never spent much time in the Crystal Empire.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, holding his hoof tightly. “You’re going to be fine.”

“I can hear the snails,” he said. “They hurt too…” He looked up, his eyes watering. “What was that thing?”

“I don’t know.” Which was of course a lie. Fluttershy was many things, and one of those was a politician. Which meant she often had to deal with the increasingly fragile relationship between Equestria and the Crystal Empire—and she knew more than most. About the madness slowly consuming Cadence, her ever-darkening personality. And the war ships she thought she could hide from Twilight.

“We need to leave,” she said.

“No,” said Snails, standing shakily. “We need to follow that.”

“This isn’t the time to be brave, Snails. Whatever that is, we can’t deal with it. We need help.”

Snails frowned. He slowly shook his head. “Ponies only come to this place for one reason. I won’t let them hurt the snails, Fluttershy. I can’t.” He paused. “And I think you already know that. You weren’t going to leave, were you?”

Fluttershy steeled herself. “No.” It would seem that he understood her better than most.

Chapter 6: The Iron Mages

They moved quickly through the ferns and undergrowth. Snails was recovering quickly, but he had taken the resonance injury hard. His life as a naturalist had kept him apart from society as it had advanced, and especially from the rising technological prowess of the Crystal Empire. The reactors were still rare, and he had not developed a tolerance.

Why they would be here, though, Fluttershy did not know. The ship did not match any designs she was familiar with. It was too small, and lacked the Royal Seal that most of them were marked with. It could have been privately owned, but that was almost unheard of. There were perhaps four ponies in existence who could afford such a vehicle, and Rarity knew all of them—and Fluttershy knew second-hoof that none were interested in flying yachts. Mainly because the ten richest ponies in Equestria were unicorns, and nine were white. They tended to avoid crystal technology. It unsettled them.

They needed only to follow the vibration—and, eventually, the shadow. Until they reached it.

It had not landed but rather suspended itself in a passive gravity well, holding over an open clearing lined by twisting, gnarled palms. The grass below it shook and quivered, the snails within it fleeing from the downdraft. Fluttershy and Snails took a position on the edge, peering out over a mossy log buried in thick ferns.

After a moment, Fluttershy finally got comfortable—only to nearly scream from the thudding sound of four enormous bipedal constructs slamming into the ground.

Snails stared wide-eyed at the machines. They were about fifteen feet tall each, made from riveted iron and platinum encased in crystal. Each had a pair of large hands that held a sword-staff, and stood on a pair of thick mechanical legs.

“What are those?” whispered Snails.

“Crystal Empire mechs,” replied Fluttershy. “But why they’re out here, I have no idea.” Nor why they carried strange, unauthorized heraldry. The same shield insignia that the ship overhead bore.

They fanned out. From Fluttershy’s understanding, each would have carried a pony pilot, either a mage or a crystal pony integrated into the frame. They were part of the Crystal Empire’s ever-increasing army, a deterrent against the threat of Chaos. Ostensibly.

Something overhead thudded loudly. Mechanisms retracted from the ship, separating a portion of it that spread its own wings and reactors. It slowly descended, a dropship gently falling to the field below. It landed between the mechs, centering itself in the clearing and automatically leveling itself. It moved with peculiar silence and as it descended, Fluttershy saw a thin strand of silver liquid dripping from one of Snails’s eyes.

Then it fell totally silent. A door opened on its surface and a ramp extended, unfolding into a staircase. For a moment, nothing moved—but then a pony stepped through. One clad in black armor edged with dark, dull-colored metal. He wore a mask thath seemed to have no apparent means for him to see though, one that almost abstractly resembled the head of an animal. Although his face was covered, a black, red-tipped horn emerged from his skull. A horn that took on an odd shape that Fluttershy had initially taken to be a curve.

Snails swore. “Celestia’s cellulite! Of course it would be Tuo...”

“Who?”

Snails gritted his teeth. “My sexy arch nemesis, Tuo Perr-Synt-Milk.”

Fluttershy vaguely recognized part of the name, although could not fathom what the Milk family had to do with any of this. “Sexy?”

“He’s a collector,” growled Snails.

“A collector of...what?”

“Everything he’s not allowed to have.” Snails’s expression had changed from one of surprise to one of vicious anger. “Cultural artifacts. Magical items.” He looked up at Fluttershy, his eyes filled with rage—and fear. “Trophies. From animals.”

Fluttershy felt her own spark of rage, but maintained her composure far better. “I think he’s the one that shot down our plane.”

Snails nodded. “That’s about his style.”

Fluttershy looked back out to see the pony descend the stairs—and stand at one side. As he did, another emerged. One in similar, all-covering armor, although this time in white edged with turquoise and iridescent violet. She, like him, was a unicorn, although her horn was straight and pale pink. Or at least Fluttershy interpreted her as a mare, due to her slight build. She was shorter than him, but she realized that both of them had the same insignia on their shoulder and rump. It had just been harder to see on Tuo’s dark armor.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Snails. “I’ve never seen her before.”

She took her position opposite him. Once they were stationed, the staircase shifted, projecting railings and extending the upper portion outward to form a balcony. Two more ponies stepped out of the craft. This time, neither were dressed in armor.

The first was an earth-stallion. His color was dark brown, his mane almost fully white, his face unshaven. He wore a brown shirt and, although he had the strong musculature of an aging earth-pony, he walked slowly and with a severe limp in one of his rear legs. At one point, he stopped to cough into a handkerchief.

The mare that followed him was a sallow unicorn dressed in fine silk. Her eyes were a disturbing shade of teal, and she eyed the area around her suspiciously. Fluttershy knew she had never seen the unicorn before, but for some reason could not help but think she knew who the stallion was. Not from an in-person meeting, but perhaps from a picture somewhere. For some reason, it brought thoughts of Rainbow Dash to her mind.

“Who are they?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” replied Snails. “But the mare is a changeling for sure.”

“How can you tell?”

“I went to school for invertebrate biology, half my class was changelings. And I’ve dated enough to know they have tells. She a really high caste though. An overseer, or maybe a weaver.”

The stallion and mare descended the stairs, standing beside the two stationed at the base—and only then did Fluttershy finally get a perception of their scale. Tuo was massive, standing at least two feet higher than a fully grown earth-pony, practically looming over him. The armored mare was of a relatively normal height, but still quite tall.

“The area is clear of hostile creatures,” noted Tuo, his voice audible even at a distance. Although it was distorted by the vocal systems of his armor, Fluttershy immediately recognized that he had a strong Singapone accent.

“We are too distant from the incursion point,” snapped the changeling mare. “You were not hired for your incompetence.”

The armored mare’s horn sparked, but Tuo gestured for her to stand down.

“The site projects a significant amount of interference. In addition to the hazardous wildlife. Approach by air is impossible. This will be the sight of incursion. We will proceed forward by ground.”

“Through infested forests?”

“It would hardly be the first time, Argiopé,” said the elderly stallion. His voice was quiet and hoarse, but projected a strange sense of power—even if it faded in his old age. “And in my experience, I find it unwise to distrust the mercenaries. We require haste, and yet cannot afford to rush.” His smile fell, his expression becoming unexpectedly dark. “And you know as well as I do. She will not interfere. Not this time.”

Fluttershy shuddered as their quiet conversation was overwhelmed by a series of guttural snaps and hisses, spat with great aggression from the armored mare. The unpleasant tones to Crystallic.

“Speak Equestrian,” snapped the changeling, momentarily bearing her teeth and confirming the fact that she was most certainly not a pony.

“She is explaining,” said the elderly stallion. “That it seems our dear Lord Tuo was in fact unsuccessful with eliminating that unexpected surprise yesterday.” He grimaced. “You left witnesses.”

“In addition to one unanticipated unicorn, yes. A biologist who dwells within this forest.”

The earth-stallioned frowned. “And how do you know this, my boy?”

“Because I have been staring at them for the last minute.”

Snails gasped, but Fluttershy had dealt with enough giant and ultra-giant centipedes to have developed unusual or even superequine reflexes. Before she could even become afraid, her body was in motion, slamming him down into the mud—as a blast of red magic swarmed past her, shattering trees to sawdust ash as their trunks exploded from the rending spell.

The blast took out everything within twenty feet to the side of her, and as she stood to run, she threw Snails back—only to suddenly turn and find Tuo behind her, looming over her, his faceless armor staring at her with unbridled interest.

“Fluttershy. The Element of Kindness. How unexpected.”

He was nearly double her height and his curved, bladed horn erupted with magic so corrosive she could feel it even from a distance—and a condensed cutting spell whined toward her, nearly striking her before instead rebounding of Snail’s own shield spell.

The force was immense, and the shield shattered. Snails responded to what should have been critical feedback with barely a smile, acknowledging that he had been overpowered—but not outwitted. As he was thrown back, he tossed his bottle of flammable mucous onto Tuo’s shoulder, where the joints in his armor were the weakest—and with a snap of violet magic, it ignited.

Tuo was immediately consumed in flames and utterly immolated. Fluttershy cried out.

“SNAILS?! What did you DO?!”

“Come on, Fluttershy!” He grabbed her and pulled her along as he ran. “That won’t last long, trust me!”

They ran, and Tuo turned toward them. By this time, his female counterpart had arrived, walking slowly. She spat an obtuse Crystallic statement, and he nodded.

“Third degree indeed, if not farther. I can hear the sizzling.”

“Lucky.”

“Would you like the honor of the pursuit then, Lady Fear?”

She laughed a shrill, unpleasant laugh. “Like you even could in half a ton of dark-iron.”

She took off in a dead sprint, her magic already locked onto their trail. Tuo, underneath his mask, smiled. Her motions were of such grace, but more to the point, none could escape her once she was actually compelled to set her mind to something. And, considering that Fluttershy was the target, the pursuit might as well already be considered over.

He instead attended himself with is business, returning to Caballeron. The fire had cooked him alive, but with a simple spell he extinguished it. The pain was immense but faded quickly, so he did not bother to respond to it in any way. In his line of work, professionalism and networking were of the utmost importance. And with Lady Fear at his side, he could not allow himself even the barest hint of a mistake.

Chapter 7: The Hunting of the Fluttershy

Fluttershy often ran from things, but rarely were those the sort of things that actually chased her. This tendency, however, proved an advantage. She had become so accustomed to desperate fleeing that her ground-speed was nearly unmatched. Even Applejack or Rainbow Dash would have little hope of passing her, but only if something truly terrifying were in pursuit. It was simple evolution. Fluttershy’s paternal line had evolved by being faster than the ones that got eaten. Ostensibly, at least.

But what was chasing her was fast. She looked into the trees around her and saw it, a flash of white dashing with unparalleled elegance among the trunks. Easily passing her, but not closing it. Toying with her. An armored predator, apparently unencumbered by the armor she wore, her form drifting pink-violet light as she used magic to enhance her abilities. She was like Tuo. An armored wizard. A battlemage.

She stood no chance, and neither did Snails, who was not nearly as fast as Fluttershy.

“Turn left!” he cried.

“Why?!”

“Trust me! NOW!”

Fluttershy turned, her hooves nearly sliding out from beneath her—and she was shoved forward by magic, forced over a cliff.

She screamed as she fell, and then as she was scratched by branches. Branches of an oddly familiar tree, filled with oddly familiar fruit. Rainbow-colored apples.

She landed hard on the ground, the wind knocked out of her. When she sat up, she saw that she was surrounded by snails about double the size of ponies. They were blue, but their shells were rainbow-colored. They were slowly eating the fallen zap-apples. Snails was already sitting on the shell of one.

“Get on one!” he said.

Fluttershy acquiesced, although she had no idea. She assumed, with some degree of incredulousness, that she was meant to ride one.

“Snails, these are...um...snails.”

A grin crossed his face. “These aren’t snails, Fluttershy. These are snells!”

Without warning, he slapped the shell of the snail Fluttershy was sitting on—and Fluttershy immediately screamed from the incomprehensible acceleration as the snail flashed forward in a dead, slimy sprint.

The force was so great that she was nearly knocked free, and only barely managed to hang on by her front hooves, the rest of her blown back by the wind of the sheer velocity. This snail was not like Mildred. It did not have high relative speed. It had high real speed.

And the ride was terrifying. The snail drove forward at a speed that would have made even Rainbow Dash impressed, trailing a wave of rainbows as it moved. It dodged every object, dexterously shifting its path to move around every tree and rock, igniting the ground as it went. Looking over her shoulder, through her tear-filled eyes, Fluttershy could see Snails behind her, a jockey of his own super-speed snail.

She had no idea where she was going, or if Snails knew at all. All directions were lost in the speed and the blur of trees, the pressure of the roaring air threatening to rupture at any second or to blow Fluttershy clean off the slippery shell she clung to. In the distance, though, she saw a mountain—or, rather, a sheer cliff.

“Snails! CLIFF!”

“I see it! Hold on!”

“Hold on? HOLD ON!? What do you mean hold—EEEEEEK!”

The snail struck the vertical surface of the cliff—and did not even slow. Rather, it simply proceeded to rocket upward, its adherent body clinging to the rock face as well as it could the swampy forest floor. In fact, it accelerated, rushing upward with a roar as rocks were thrown free from the cliff and down below. Fluttersy, still in tears, was dragged for the ride, suddenly rising hundreds of feet into the air in a matter of seconds as her snail dodged every protruding tree or sharp rock, rolling over everything else leaving nothing but a trail of rainbow mucilage.

This seemed to pass for sometime until Fluttershy could no longer bear it. Feeling herself weakening, she did her best to hold on—but eventually, she found herself slipping. And, suddenly, she let go.

She plopped to the ground, and only then did she realize that the snail had in fact stopped. It was at the base of a zap-apple tree that grew on a small flat area high in the hills, reaching up for a dangling zap-apple.

Snails, likewise, had dismounted. “Well that was refreshing.” He was as perfectly calm as usual, even cheerful. “Nothing like a snell ride to wake you up, eh?”

Fluttershy nodded, then collapsed into a puddle of quivering pony.

Snails stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked out. “Nothing faster than that out here. No way she caught up with us out here, right?”

“Assuming I did not know how to teleport, yes,” said the armored mare, who was standing beside Snails. Before he could turn, she shoved him over the edge. Fluttershy cried out, but the mare blocked him before she could move. She stood there, shaking, facing the thin armored unicorn. Unlike Tuo, her mask bore the rudiments of a pony face carved into its surface.

“What—what do you want?”

“Everything,” she said. A mechanical device at her side clicked, and she drew a crystal sword—one that immediately ignited with pink-violet magic. “But for now, why don’t I get Tuo an Element of Harmony? You know you deserve it, Fluttershy. So hold still. It will hurt a whole lot, but only for a second.”

She raised the blade to strike, holding it aloft in her magic, but then stopped. She let out a low, annoyed sigh.

“Oh crap.”

The beam shot through her head with thunderous force, boring a hole through the side of the mountain and ionizing the air around it into a plume of devastating lighting. The mare’s body was thrust to the side, thrown by the force of the blast that entered one side of her head and emerged to the other, instantly cutting its way outward toward the horizon. It flared out, then collapsed, the implosion pulling Fluttershy inward toward it with a clap of thunder.

She pulled her self back, looking up at the mare—who did not fall. The hole in her helmet was gushing fluid. Black, viscous liquid. It was not the silver blood of a unicorn. Instead, it looked like tar.

Then it stopped flowing—and began to retract. Pulling itself back upward into her skull as the wound healed itself.

Not wanting to take any more time watching this, Fluttershy ran to the edge and looked down, hoping desperately not to see Snails at the bottom—and she screamed when she saw him only a few feet down, adhered to the wall by rainbow mucous.

“Snails! How did—”

“Don’t disrespect the mucous, Fluttershy. Never disrespect the mucous.” He looked up at her. “I heard the sound. She’s hit, isn’t she? What color is it?”

Fluttershy immediately understood. “Black.”

“Just like him. Then we don’t have much time. Unstuck me. WE need to get out of here.”

Fluttershy nodded and, shaking, pulled him free.

Head injuries took longer to regenerate from. Rebuilding brains was hard. When Lady Fear woke, Tuo was standing beside her. She looked to her left, finding a narrow hole vaporized through the cliff. She the beam had come from the far side of a mountain and still managed to penetrate both her helmet and skull.

She gurgled some choice words in Crystallic.

“They got away,” noted Tuo. “The male is an excellent tracker. He was able to obscure their trail, even from my magics.”

“One of Emmett’s grandkids is here.”

Tuo paused, tilting his head slightly. “I had thought there were none of them left. The Equestrians ought to have hunted them to extinction.”

“Who else has a five-gigawatt particle beam?”

“I do. I outbid my mother for it. I have it on a special shelf next to that one vase. The one made of bone.”

“Don’t you start bragging about having a mother that actually takes pride in you, idiot. I have to find that yellow horse and—”

“Emotion does not suit you. Our job is to accompany the client on his ill-advised retrieval mission. That is all. His insistence on eliminating witnesses is comical but ultimately fruitless.”

Fear stared at him, then sighed. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”

“You are not. If you were, our relationship would be highly unpalatable.”

“What relationship?”

She grabbed him with her magic and threw him off the cliff. This time, she used enough force to give a moment of silence before the violent thump as he landed on the sharp rocks on the bottom. Hurting him made her feel slightly better.

But hurting Fluttershy would feel so much more pleasant.

Chapter 8: Going to Ruins is Never a Good Idea

Several glimmering snails were engaged in circling a more decrepit, largely empty camp. They moved around it, creating perfect concentric circles. More snails of the same type watched on from the distance, engaged in their own tasks of collecting exotic-looking fungi from the trunks of dark, rough-barked trees.

This part of the forest was far deeper, and shaded so severely that it seemed to be almost night. Snails, looking haggard but alert, supervised the snails.

“George and his friends are magic,” he explained. “They make a protective seal. Out here, they won’t be able to trace us with spells, there’s too much magic in the air on the path we took. Here. Cover yourself with this. But don’t eat any, trust me on that one.”

He threw Fluttershy a bottle of liquid which, without even opening it, she knew to be a type of mucous.

“W...what were they?” she asked.

“No idea. I never really figured it out, but I didn’t know there were more than one. Whatever they are, they bleed black. And they heal. Real fast.” He sighed. “Nothing stops them for long. If they get hurt, they just get up. Smooshed, squozen, knocked down a hill, buried, drowned, frozen, pickled, burned, not even magic can do anything permanent. At least with Tuo.”

“I didn’t know there were ponies like that.”

Snails shook his head. “I don’t even think he’s a pony, not exactly. You haven’t seen him naked. I have. A lot.” He smiled. “He’s super buff. Dark gray body. Huge black mane.”

“Oh my.” Fluttershy shivered, though, because she knew a pony who had once looked almost exactly like that description. She knew because she and her friends had murdered him.

“Why are they here?”

Snails shook his head. “Don’t know. Never had one visitor, not even Snips. He’s terrified of snails, actually, the poor guy, and he’s not outdoorsy.” He paused. “But if I had to guess they look a lot like mercenaries, eh?”

“Mercenaries?”

Snails nodded. “Helping that old guy out, looks like.”

Fluttershy nodded. She was a pacifist and had no idea how mercenaries worked—but it would explain why they had armor, mechs, and Crystal Empire technology. Except that it made no sense how they would have gotten it. Those items were reserved for Cadence herself, and the various secretive wizards that surrounded her.

“She was speaking Crystallic,” she said. She frowned. “But I don’t think she was a crystal pony. Crystal ponies look like earth-ponies, they aren’t usually unicorns.”

“Weird." Snails shrugged. "I’m at a loss.”

Fluttershy paused, then looked north. A few large, horned snails were wandering between the trees. “What’s out there?”

“Just more trees. More swamps.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “You said there were ruins.”

Snails bristled, and sat down. “I said that? Huh. I don’t remember it.”

“Don’t lie to me, Snails.” She glared at him. Not with full force, but enough to make him recoil.

“Sorry,” he said, looking down at the dirt and several adorable snails that looked back up at him. He shook his head. “I’ve only been there once. And I’m not going back. I can’t.”

Fluttershy repeated herself. “What’s out there?”

Snails paused, gathering what few thoughts he had. “I don’t know why there’s so many snails here. But I don’t think they always were. Snails are polyphylogenic. They didn't evolve from one source. Too many to be a coincidence, right?” He groaned. “This place used to have ponies. Or...maybe they weren’t ponies, but I think they were. There’s a city in the center of this place. Or what’s left of it.” He shook his head. “They’re gone now. Been gone for a while.”

“Do you think that’s why he’s here?”

Snails’s eyes widened.

“Snails…”

He let out a sigh. “Okay. So. I’m not smart.”

“Don’t say that—”

“Let me finish. I’m not that smart. Just persistent. Slow and very, very steady. But there’s one thing I know. When it comes to old ruins, stay away. First rule they teach you in graduate school, eh? We’re not Daring Do. She’s fictional. Ruins are always bad. Old magic? Always bad. Old technology?” He shivered. "Even worse."

“Daring Do?” An idea suddenly burst into Fluttershy’s mind. She knew where she had seen that stallion before. One that looked almost like him was on the cover of some of Rainbow Dash’s books. The series she loved that Fluttershy could never get into—because, of course, they were far too stressful and gave her nightmares.

“I never read more than the first one,” admitted Snails. “I wasn’t so good at reading and they kept me up at night. To scary. Snails, snails aren’t scary. They’re cut and pretty and wet. And even the mean ones, if you understand them, they’re not that bad, you know?” He shook his head, harder this time. “But that’s a dark place, Ms. Shy. I don’t even known if it’s a city. Not the kind you live in. More like...I don’t know. Like a big machine that doesn’t move. Something buried.” He paused, then frowned. “Maybe that’s why they put the snails here?”

“What would anypony want with it?”

Snails did not answer—but the glimmer on his face indicated that he knew.

“What is it?”

He still hesitated, then finally spoke. “He looked awfully sick, didn’t he?”

Fluttershy nodded. “He was old. Earth ponies live a long time, but they’re not like unicorns. They still get old eventually.”

Snails let out a long sigh. “There’s a legend. And I...may have destroyed a few books to keep it secret. Please don’t tell Twilight.”

“What kind of books?”

“Bad books. Because ponies don’t need to know. Not if they’ll come here and hurt the snails. Not if they’ll get hurt in the city. It’s better that way.”

“What is in the city, Snails?”

He looked up at her. “There’s a legend,” he said, simply. “They say whoever built the city worshiped the Golden Abalone. If it ever existed, I think it’s extinct now. Like an allegory, right? A story.” He paused. “But if it is real…” He sighed. “They say that its nacre can cure any disease or curse, no matter how bad.”

“Nacre?”

He nodded. “It’s mother-of-pearl. The lining on the inside of its shell. But, to get the nacre…” He shook his head. “If it’s real, it’s the rarest, most beautiful snail in existence. But if somepony were to get their hooves on it, they would have to...have to…” Tears welled in his eyes. “That’s what Tuo's here for.”

“But you said he regenerates. Can he even get sick?”

“He won’t use it himself. He’ll put it on a shelf in a vault and look at it. Or just know he has it.” He wiped his eyes. "Or...if he's a mercenary, he'll give it to that old guy. So he won't be sick anymore."

Fluttershy took a breath. “Unless we stop them.”

She had said it quietly. Quietly in the hopes he had not heard—but he did, looking up, his eyes wide. “Yeah,” he said. He did not even question how. Perhaps in the past he had stopped Tuo before. Maybe he could figure out how to do it again. He had better—because Fluttershy had no idea how to even start.

“Can we get a message out?”

Snails shook his head. “It would take days to get to the edge of the zone. The snells won’t take us that far. Too dry.” He paused. “But you said there were others.”

“Right! The Agency!” Fluttershy did not know why she was excited. She had no idea if they were the good guys or not, but she was motivated almost solely by hope. The hope that maybe they would care enough to stop illegal poaching on their own property.

Or maybe the intruders were the reason they were getting incorrect readings. Maybe that was the problem all along.

Her spirit fell. She was not sure even they could be counted on—or that they would be able to even realize that their crew had been lost by the time the bad ponies made it to the Abalone. It seemed that she and Snails may very well have been on their own.

Chapter 9: The Hired Help

Caballeron watched the fire dance. It was of course not a real fire, but a projected mimicry arising from a system of aligned crystals. It produced no heat. If anything, it felt cold, radiating an unnatural blue-green light that refracted off the rest of the room.

The furnishings were not what he would have preffered. Like much in Crystal culture, everything was beautiful and ornate, large and airy—but at once oddly sterile, oddly empty and oddly clean. Like living in a grand, carved cathedral where no pony had ever walked. High, gothic arches, walls that seemed bent and grown rather than constructed, and unadorned walls that served as their own artwork. It was as far as he could imagine from a warm study, the walls paneled with fine-patterned paper and dark wood. A warm fire, lit by the combustion of real wood. Shelves filled with books and shelves filled with his few triumphs earned by hard work over a long life.

Even the chair was uncomfortable. The only thing that made it tolerable was that she remained by his side, sitting at the edge of the light the fire cast. She had assumed the skin of a zebra and assembled her bio-clothing as an ornate kimono. She appeared older than she had so many years ago, but Caballeron understood it to be a guise. She did it for his sake. So that she could age as he did.

Not that she had not aged. Changelings still did, but not in the way ponies did. The changes became slower. Less controlled. The motion became stiff. In time, she would lose control. Degenerate. Become something unrecognizable. But as a weaver, her life span was perhaps even longer than his. At age eighty-eight, Caballeron had perhaps another forty years left—but he would be an old stallion for the rest of it. The rest of his life stretched out before him, but his youth stood far behind. And, considering his condition, he would likely not last nearly as long as he hoped. Not without intervention.

He coughed into a kercheif, being careful to hide it. So she did not see the blood. But of course she smelled it.

“You haven’t been taking the medicine.”

Caballeron sighed. “It makes me slow, Argiopé. And I can’t afford to be slow. Not now.”

She stood up sharply. “If it starts to spread—”

“It won’t spread!” he snapped, standing hard and nearly keeling over. The condition had left him badly anemic, a fact he did his best to disguise from his subordinates. And especially from her, although she had not fallen into that category for the better part of two decades. “The air here is humid enough to keep it in check. If anything, I feel stronger than I have in years.”

Her icy teal eyes seemed to bore into him. “For now. Yes. Because your body is in withdrawal. But it won’t last. I barely managed to pull you back last time. I don’t think I can do it again.”

Caballeron collapsed back into his chair. “I know,” he said. “I know, Argiopé…”

“They weren’t cheap,” she continued. “That’s why we hired them. We’re both too old to do this on our own, and half our goons are in retirement. That’s why we have mercenaries. You’ve seen what they’ve brought to the table.”

Caballeron grumbled. “Back in my day, we never bothered with any of this...this hooplah. Mechs? Gravity ships? Power armor? We never needed any of it! We were proper adventurers! Our wits, our hooves, our minds against each other’s...against all the ancient traps, the lore, the books, the translations…” He sunk deeper into his chair. “This all feels so...so clinical. So mechanical.”

“It was your decision.”

He nodded. “I wish it did not have to be. But time grows short. We have none to waste.”

A knock came at the door, and Caballeron sighed.

The unicorn did not bother to open it. He simply phased through the closed door, entering the room without permission. As he did, he bowed formally, the mask he wore separating by manifold unseen mechanisms and sliding back into his collar.

Caballeron smiled. He was indeed enormous, but with the illusion of his armor withdrawn, it was apparent that most of his bulk was the armor itself. He was far more svelte than he insisted on appearing. Although far more muscular than even most earth-ponies, he was still clearly a unicorn of eastern descent. At least partially.

When he looked up, his eyes had vertical slits for pupils—but mossy green irises.

“You certainly did inherit your mother’s eyes,” noted Caballeron.

“Indeed. I consider them my most desirable feature.” He stood erect, his black mane tied back and tucked into his armor. His horn was slightly curved, but also slightly bladed—a trait that Caballeron had seen once before. He had his suspicions of where the boy had come from—and of how much it had cost Wun to have him manufactured.

“You have something to report?” asked Argiopé, now a short and fluffy Pegasus in a boyish cardigan.

Tuo nodded, his eyes not leaving Caballeron. “The two appear to have escaped and are hiding in the forest. One was identified as Fluttershy, an Element of Harmony. This may suggest Royal involvement.”

“Which would be severely problematic,” snapped Argiopé.

“If there were Royal involvement, they wouldn’t have sent the soft one,” interjected Caballeron. “Her presence is likely a coincidence at best.”

“I do not believe in coincidence,” retorted Argiopé. "And neither do you."

“She is not our greatest problem,” continued Tuo. “I believe that an unknown third party may have become involved.”

Caballeron’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of ‘third party’?”

“It is at this point unknown. The technology involved is Ancient Imperial. In a sense. But that means very little. After the first fall of Sombra, many pieces escaped custody. Many strange weapons still wander Equestria.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“Unknown.” He paused. Caballeron could tell he was lying. “A type I would admittedly wish to possess. But, likewise, one that we must not allow to reach the Nexus. Should it interface, the consequences could be devastating.”

Caballeron sighed, coughing slightly. “I do not care. So long as I have the Abalone before it does. What happens after is none of my concern.”

“Of course.”

Caballeron turned back to the fire. “You came highly recommended,” he said. “Not the least of which by your mother. I am giving you a great deal of leeway to deal with this as you see fit, my boy. But don’t let me down.”

“I do not intend to. And, therefore, I shall not.”

“And the other?” asked Argiopé.

Tuo tilted his head, as if amused by the question. “Lady Fear is beyond reproach.”

“I feel the waves coming off you.”

Caballeron smiled. “Young love, perhaps?”

“No. It isn’t love. Not in the slightest. It reeks and burns when I try to trace it.”

“With all due respect, madame, you simply lack perspective of our culture and our...predilections, so to speak. I am above all a Perr-Synt. I founded this business with her as my partner, and I as hers. We do not take such a bond lightly.”

Caballeron nodded. “I started working for your mother when I was about your age,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“I am aware. And I understand you have something of a rivalry with my dear aunt.”

Caballeron stood suddenly, catching the fanged smile on Tuo’s face. He was bout to shout, but instead burst into a coughing fit, collapsing to the floor.

Argiopé rushed to his side, helping him as the world faded and swam.

“You need the oxygen, if you pass out—”

He waved her off and closed his eyes, struggling to breathe. After a few moments, it calmed, and the world turned back into focus.

He sighed, and looked up at the towering unicorn before him. A unicorn that would never age, never sicken, and would never carry any injury for long. His mother was a pureblood, virtually a god—and he was even superior to her. The product of billions of bits worth of genetic reconstruction and engineering.

“You must pity me.”

“I do not feel pity. Sympathy. Regret. Remorse. It is an artifact of my heritage. Although I do recognize you are very ill. I have doctors. And, if needed, I can evac you immediately.”

Caballeron laughed softly. “My boy, there’s nothing they can do for me. No spell, no medicine can cure what I have.” He tapped his chest. “A type of mold, you see. It’s common in old tombs. It grows in the cracks, in the dust. A final defense mechanism. To keep ponies like me out.” He forced himself to stand. “Add to that a body with scars from almost every injury, every broken bone, every torn ligament. I’m afraid it’s progressive. Progressive, incurable, and terminal, in time.”

“My condolences. For what that might mean. My mother respected you. I do as well, for what you have accomplished in such a short lifespan. I will move up our timeline to the greatest degree I can without sacrificing our signature precision.”

“And what do you expect to do when you get there?” Argiopé helped Caballeron to his seat, so that he could look up at the towering black unicorn. “This isn’t a war. You can’t fight your way through.”

“Which is why I acquiesced to your request to accompany us. Please survive until at least then. I can provide support, but admittedly, am out of my depth when it comes to for-profit archaeology.” He paused. “Which is partway why I convinced Lady Fear to take this job. Her interests usually involve much more bloodlust.”

Caballeron smiled. “Wanting to learn from the best?”

“My mother never retrieved her own artifacts. Neither did grandfather. However, I feel that the experience is inadequately holistic if I simply purchase them.”

Caballeron nodded. “You live for the hunt. I can respect that.” He chuckled. “Which I think Wun never understood. Why I sell the artifacts I rescue. Because I have no desire to own them. What purpose does it serve? Another paperweight, another cursed mask. No. It was the hunt. The challenge.” He sighed, holding in another fit of coughing. “Consider this an indulgence. One last adventure for an old stallion.”

“I provide the package you pay for. I have no need to consider it anything more than that. My actions do not require justification, least of all to myself. My morality is inherent.”

“What a pureblood concept,” muttered Argiopé.

“Indeed. However, I am not, in fact, a pureblood. My dear father is an earth-pony. He will one day be were you stand, Dr. Caballeron. I only wish this could sadden me.” He bowed again. “You must rest. At dawn, we proceed. It will take three days to reach the target. Perhaps longer to breach security.”

“Just keep Lady Fear from destroying the temple when we’re inside it. I will get you there. Consider me strongly motivated in this regard. Very strongly. Failure is not an option.”

“Not if I want to get paid, no.” He stepped backward, phasing back through the crystalline door. “Good night to both of you.”

Argiopé shivered. “That thing creeps me out.”

“You’ve rarely dealt with Wun. It’s simply the aura they exude.” He chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s all backward, isn’t it?” He grinned, but his eyes were sad. “I’ve spent my life working for purebloods like him. And now look at me. Hiring one to do my dirty work this time.”

Argiopé shrugged. “I suppose it’s a measure of success. In a way.”

Caballeron sighed. “If only I could believe that.”

Tuo phased through a wall, arriving in large room barely lit by several crystalline sconces. He was of course aware that he was not alone. Fear had parked her self in the most ostentatious looking of chairs, one carved with crystal pony skulls for the arm-rests, and was sitting back, sipping a colorful drink with a tiny umbrella stuck in it. She had retracted her helmet, as he had, revealing her thin face and pale coat. Her long, straight black hair was tied back. Her ears were filled with various piercings made from dark-iron, and as always she wore an excessive amount of black eye liner and eye shadow.

“Show off.”

“You could learn phasing spells too. If you applied yourself.”

She shrugged. “Eh, that cloak-and-dagger stuff isn’t really my style. You know that.”

“By ‘cloak-and-dagger’, you surely mean ‘discretion’.”

She frowned, sitting up. “And what in the name of Luna’s skinny hips do I need discretion for? Hello, last time I checked, we’re in a stinky swamp. We don’t need to be careful, Tuo. There’s nothing here we’re not allowed to break!”

“Aside from the priceless magical artifacts in an ancient city built by a lost culture.”

She sneered, crossed her armored hooves, and flopped back into her chair. She sipped her drink through a bendy straw. “Of course. Should have known. This is souvenir hunt for you, isn’t it?”

“No. It is a job. Forgive me if I chose to maintain some level of professionalism.”

“Professionalism is like discresion. No one cares as long as the job gets done, right?”

Tuo glared at her, then smiled. “And this divergence is why we make such an excellent pairing.”

She glared back at him and smiled, revealing her metal-capped teeth. “If you say so.”

She tilted her head back, then gestured to the wall behind them. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Tuo pondered for a moment. “He is quite ill, but remarkably strong. The pain must be exquisite, but he bears it well. I respect his determination.”

“To find some magic snail shell so he can mimic a fraction of our power.”

Tuo did not respond with emotion, but explained his thoughts through distinct unicorn logic. As he had been taught, and as she had come to expect from him.

“Perhaps I have a different perspective. Both my parents are mortal and will in time wither and die. As will your father.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’re not having this conversation. Not now.”

“I am merely implying that if you put your mind to it, you could envision alternative perspectives. You certainly have the intelligence for it, even if you choose to be constantly hardheaded.”

“How about I crack your hard head open like an egg?”

“Later, perhaps.”

“Killjoy.”

“I need to go over the unit assignments and check with the mechanics for the back-up mechs. We will be entering the forest tomorrow.”

“Finally. I was starting to get bored.”

“We obtain the target and hand it off. Nothing more, nothing less. Your history with Fluttershy will hopefully not interfere.”

“If she stays out of my way, sure. I’m not going to bother to go out of my way halfway into a paying job for that pastel horse’s sake. Come on.”

“So you do have a degree of professionalism.”

“Hey, this business was my idea, wasn’t it? I’m not stupid. Caballeron has contacts. We deliver the goods, he delivers customers. Customers deliver money.”

“And you buy more piercings and black clothing?”

“What, like you weren’t going to spend yours on knickknacks and dirty pieces of broken pottery?”

“That pottery is considered one of the most sacred artifacts of seven of the strongest bison tribes. They believe it to contain the souls of their ancestors. It was well worth the cost. Although I understand your point. How you use your cut is your own choice. I have no right to impinge upon your personal life choices.”

He bowed, and then began to walk toward another wall. Before he phased, though, he stopped.

“Also. I did not forget the cliff incident. I had to use the spare armor while the mechanics repair my main suit. So you can imagine the effect it had on my body.”

“So?”

His horn clicked, and she screamed as her body was utterly immolated in necrophire. As he phased through the wall and as she boiled in her armor, she continued to scream—until the screaming was replaced with manic, joyous laughter.

Chapter 10: Copper-Plated Twins in the Bog

Night had fallen, and the moon was new, its course guided not by divine power but by mechanical precision and powerful, amplified amulet-magic. The only light came from the darkness and the hideous glow of the luminescent slugs that dotted the ancient ruins, crawling across the rune-inscribed stone and strange, impossible columns that rose at odd angles from the mud and rot that covered unspeakable things buried far below.

Flim cried out as a disturbingly long, slithering slug dropped from a tree, its teeth pressing against his mask and threatening to chew through the glass of the helmet—only for it to scream and sizzle, repelled by the copper plate armor he wore.

“Stop screaming!” hissed his brother. “We’re supposed to be silent!”

Flim attempted to catch his breath, and did, eventually. “These copper suits really work, don’t they?”

“They ought to for how much they cost. Do you know how much a copper pot costs? Let alone a whole suit of armor…”

“It’s better than getting eaten by slugs, though.”

“That’s for sure. But only if we can pay off the loan we owe to that griffon. Do you know what happens if you don’t pay back a griffon?”

“N...no?”

“SCONES. Scones are what happens.”

“They...make us eat their gross scones?”

Flam frowned at his brother through his helmet. He just groaned and turned back to his work. From a small bag, he drew a warn disk-like artifact. He only had a few; they had barely been able to carry the suits when the were ejected from their plane—it too bought on credit, although from an entirely different griffon. He hoped there were enough.

He placed the device on nearest of the columns, affixing it firmly to the juncture where the deep gouges through the pale obsidian met in a specific place. He checked a chart to be sure, then flipped it over and read the spell listed there. The disk hissed and sunk into the column, glowing, and was quickly capped with a wax-affixed sealing scroll.

“Why are we doing this?” asked Flim.

“Insurance.”

“Ah. The greatest scam of all.”

“Exactly. If we had gone into insurance, we would be rolling in bits right now instead of walking through chest-deep mud in copper suits.”

“We did try insurance, though. It’s not our fault everypony got sick after eating our health-cookies and cashed out all at once.”

“No, it’s YOUR fault. I told you to use the snake oil, not the snake ROOT!”

“How am I supposed to know the difference?! They both come from snakes, don’t they?!”

Something massive slithered in the darkness. Flim let out a squeak of fear.

“This one’s done. We have to circle back. I’m not going through the pit again. Those ones don’t care about the copper. Almost ate through my shoulder in one bite…”

Flim shivered. He looked over his own shoulder, but saw nothing in the darkness. “And the plane?”

“Total loss. Waste of money. But we didn’t own it, so it’s not really our problem.”

“But the others...Fluttershy…”

“She’s fine. She’s a Pegasus, they have wings. She probably just flew out the door and drifted gently to the ground. Or just went home.”

“But the others…”

“Some overly wordy government suit and a...I don’t even know what that guy was. You felt it, right?”

Flim nodded. “Like the inside of my brain was itchy. Like looking at him made the back of my eyes hurt.”

The shivered simultaneously.

“That thing that took us down, though...that’s the problem.”

Flim nodded. “I think we stepped in something we didn’t bargain for.”

“We knew that getting into it. But it’s like the stock market. No point in it unless you have insider information.”

Flim smiled. “And we have inside info on what the Agency’s planning.”

Flam grinned. “Exactly, dear brother! And as long as we don’t get in their way, we stand to make a hefty profit.”

They both chuckled to themselves. In the darkness, neither of them saw the hulking figure standing unbreathing beside them, listening and waiting, meditating on the extreme thinness of the concepts that permitted their survival.

Veils of abstraction that, soon enough, would be broken.

Chapter 11: The Needs of the Snails

It had begun to rain. The fire had died down and gone out, although some parts of it still burned with strange reddish light. The parts where the mucous Snails had found continued to burn in spite of the rain. Around the camp, the magic circle glowed with crystalline blue light. Beyond it, the snailwalkers waited, babbling and gibbering—but their sounds were overwhelmed with the distant and haunting sound of a singing snail. A sound Fluttershy found equally disturbing and beautiful. Even if it was, in fact, singing badly.

She sighed, staring out into the darkness.

“You can’t sleep either?” she said.

Snails shifted in the small lean-to. “No,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” She looked up at him. Although he was next to her, he seemed to be cowering in the snail-nibbled blanket that he had stored in one of his backup camps. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. Fluttershy nodded, allowing him his silence—but after a few moments, he spoke.

“I’m scared.”

“It’s okay to be scared.”

“No. Not like this.” He looked down at the book he had been trying to read, its surface kept dry by a tiny, weak shield spell of his magic over it. He closed it and filed it back with the others.

“I’ve been scared most of my life.”

“And I never have been.” He let out a long sigh. “That’s why I came out here. It’s so easy, with the snails. It all makes sense. It...never really made sense there, you know?”

Fluttershy nodded. Of course she understood.

“You have friends.”

“And I have my work. But I’ve been out here for so long.” He looked at her. She did her best to smile.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, everything is going to turn out all right. It always does.”

“Except when it doesn’t. Snips was in the hospital, and I didn’t even know...and now things are getting bad here.” He sighed. “Don’t even know what I’m complaining about. I can’t do anything about it ‘cept the things I can. I guess…”

“What?”

“I haven’t had anypony to talk to for a while.”

“I know I’m not the best pony to talk to, but...I know how you feel.”

Snails smiled, if only slightly. “Do you still live in Ponyville?”

“Sometimes.”

“Still with Discord?”

Fluttershy stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Please.”

“Sure, sure.” He paused, then sighed, lowering his face into the moss. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have married Silver Spoon when I had the chance.”

Flutershy’s eyes widened. “Wait, wha—”

Lighning flashed across the sky. Fluttershy squealed, both from the thunder and from the sudden illumination of seemingly hundreds of snailwalkers doing vigerous, silent squats around the camp.

“You’re afraid of lightning?”

“And also the thunder!”

“Doesn’t your dad work at a weather factory?”

“And I always hated the lightning room! The only one worse was the place where they make the rainbows…” Fluttershy shivered.

“I’ve been stuck by lightning...six times? Probably?” He shrugged. “Sometimes it erases a few memories. The problem with a horn, don’tchaknow. That’s where it aims.”

“And you're still scared of ancient ruins?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m scared of almost everything. You know that.”

“Except the god of chaos.”

“Like I said. Not talking about that. We’re on a break and I’m leaving it at that. He knows what he did. And I’m not about to forget.” Fluttershy sighed. “It’s weird.”

“Discord? Yeah, I knew that. I think we all did.”

“No, not him. us. You and I. We lived in the same town for almost our whole lives in hardly even talked once. It's just so...strange.”

“Not really. You were twenty something by the time I was ten. Now you’re forty-something and I’m...well...your age? But backward? Huh…” He trailed off. “Math is hard…”

“Don’t you have a PhD?”

“Yeah, sure. Not in math though.” He contemplated for a moment. “I dunno. It’s weird. How does it get smaller when it gets bigger? Time, I mean.”

Fluttershy did not find his musings especially profound. She did not, however, think he was trying to be profound. Rather, he seemed to just be voicing what he probably would have said anyway, either to himself or to the snails of the swamp-forest. Which Fluttershy herself had done, although not just to snails, for so long. Before she had met so many friends. The animals were good listeners, and some could talk back—but there were limits. Snails were beautiful creatures, but Fluttershy doubted they gave good advice. Or at the very least their advice did not come quickly.

She, though, had no better advice to give. But she could listen. And she liked to. It made her less afraid—because she needed to be the big one now. Like when she had been a foal, with her brother. Sometimes, even she had to be the strong one. The snails were counting on her—and so was Snails.

Chapter 12: The High Road to Ruins

The rainstorm had grown in intensity, rising into a thunderstorm high in the atmosphere—but without the assistance of weather technicians, it had failed to burn itself out in a violent, consistent downpour. It stayed up in the sky, with occasional lightning flashing silently between the looming clouds. On the ground, the best that came down was an indeterminate mist. High in the hills, there was no fog, but the wind was growing—never strong enough to be truly dangerous, but always just enough to be threateningly violent.

Fluttershy shivered, pulling the makeshift clothing Snails had given her around her more tightly. As much as she detested storms, she was still a Pegasus. She had not followed her father’s calling to work in the factories, but she had visited him on hundreds of occasions, bringing him lunch or marveling at the painting of the snowflakes—or staring horrified at the rainbow-presses, unable to look away from the sight she was forced to behold.

Snails, though, seemed far more concerned. His demeanor, which Fluttershy had once considered dopey but now saw as more a quiet resolution, had shifted to one of obvious paranoia. Fluttershy recognized it because paranoia was an almost universal state for her. It had served her well in Royal politics, but she hated it regardless—but more importantly understood the signs.

He was looking around and constantly jumping at every noise. His eyes were often upward at the trees, or toward the skies. He would often jump and, sometimes, he seemed to see something that truly disturbed him—something Fluttershy herself was not trained to see. Some subtle sign, an indication of the presence of something gravely concerning.

She did not ask him. She knew that he would not tell her—because it was very likely that even he did not know what he was jumping at. That, and she did not especially want to know lest she be afraid too.

Fluttershy stopped. In the distance, she heard a sound like thunder, and she looked out over the valley. Although there was little light through the overcast skies, she saw the flashes of magical ionization, and saw trees falling in the farthest distance—and beyond that, past the misty lowlands they had already passed, she saw a dark shape hovering in the sky.

“That’s weird…”

Snails stopped. “What?”

“They have that big ship, but they’re not flying it in here. They’re using the mechs to go through the forest.”

Snails shook his head. “Bad idea. You don’t want to go through that part. It’s better up here until we get past the swamp, eh? But I guess if you have big mechs, you don’t really care.”

Fluttershy sighed. She envisioned what it must be like. To have twenty tons of iron, platinum, and crystal enclosing her, keeping her warm and safe from virtually any threat. In a cozy, small, dark room, seeing any danger contained in the facets of a single tiny viewing crystal. Her enhanced body able to crush anything that would dare to attempt to scare her into absolute oblivion.

Which left her with the realization that they were, in fact, ponies. They were in those machines, cutting their way through the forest, stomping everything in their way.

“I don’t think they’re bad ponies,” she attempted to assert to herself.

Snails nodded slowly. “Even Tuo’s not that bad, once you get to know him. Lawful evil, sure, but not a bad guy.” He looked out at the dreadnought on the horizon. “Not sure about that, though. Looks expensive. Maybe he doesn’t want to break it?”

Fluttershy stiffened, slowly turning toward Snails. “Break it on what?”

Snail’s face scrunched.

“Snails. What do you know?”

Still scrunched, he slowly admitted “Not much. But…”

“But what?”

He hesitated. “Flight here is probably a bad idea. And he knows that.”

“How?”

“Because...the second aim of my dissertation deals with legends about this forest. And it’s published. So…” He sighed. “It’s my fault he’s here.”

“Assuming he was the one who read it.”

Snails seemed confused.

Fluttershy turned back to the forest. “What’s down there that he’d be so afraid of?”

Snails shook his head. He started walking and, with his magic, pushed away some of the spiny shrubs, sending thorny snails fleeing across his skin.

Behind it, affixed to the rocky crags of the hill above them, was an ominous structure. A dark and strange-wrought redoubt, a twisted tower of oddly familiar architecture that seemed to grow from the rock itself. Fluttershy was not an aficionado for architecture, but she knew Nightmare War structures when she saw them.

“There’s bad stuff down there,” said Snails, his voice quavering slightly. “I’ve never been past this tower. Found it, and knew it was bad to go further. Think that’s what whoever made it made it for. Because the rest of the ruins? They don’t look like that one. A lot older.” He looked at Fluttershy and gulped. “Down there...it’s bad. They’re things that crawl, and things that fly, and things that creep around on the ground…”

“I’ve befriended everything you just described more times than you can count.”

Snails shook his head, and looked backward at the looming, abandoned tower behind them. “Not like these.”

“I still have to try.” Fluttershy followed the path, which started to slide down into the end of the valley, moving past rocks stained deeply with gouges produced by some unknown substance or activity. Snails, reluctantly, followed her.

“Is there any way to stop him?” she asked. “You know him, don’t you?”

Snails nodded, then paused and shook his head. “We’ve met. More than once. But we’re not exactly in the same age group, you know?”

Fluttershy frowned. “That’s odd. I’ve met almost every villain in Equestria my own age. And reformed...most of them.”

Snails shook his head. “But he’s not older. Other way.”

Fluttershy was still confused. “What do you mean?”

Snails shrugged. The distraction was helping his fear, and probably helping Fluttershy as well, but she still felt a creeping sensation that she would rather not know what was actually going on.

“Oh! I know! Analogy! He’s as younger to me as you are older.”

Fluttershy stopped. “That can’t be,” she said. “He’d be, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

Snails nodded.

“But he’s HUGE!”

Snails continued to nod. “He was already that big when I met him. Six years ago. At the University." He paused, frowning. "I don’t think he’s a normal pony.”

Fluttershy shivered. “Is there a way to stop him?”

“Dunno,” said Snails. “Sometimes. Works best if you trap him somewhere, but he always finds his way out eventually. Or if you can convince him to go away. But that one’s harder.”

“Buck,” sighed Fluttershy. “This is really more a Rainbow Dash thing...or a Twilight thing. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“Aren’t immortal wizards a common problem? I figured you’d get at least four, five a year.”

“Sure. But I don’t deal with the wizards. That's more Twilight's thing. I deal with...I don’t know, raccoons stealing trash, or disputes between opossums, or trying to convince parasitic worms to not be so parasitic…”

Snails nodded. “Then I guess the only thing we can do is win.”

“Win?”

“Get to the abalone before he does. And...hide it? Get it to safety?”

“We can’t disrupt its natural habitat. It could be incredibly fragile.”

“I know,” groaned Snails, “but we may not have a choice. It might not be safe here. Not anymore.”

Fluttershy looked out at the forest. The trail where the mechs were moving was increasingly obvious—but they had in one day far surpassed the distance they could move in the lowlands. The sound of magic weapons was growing louder, the firing more frequent.

“It doesn’t look like they can go so fast down there.”

“Probably not,” agreed Snails. “That’s why we walked. One pony can go faster than a big machine.”

“Then maybe we can get in front and…” Fluttershy shivered. She could not believe she was about to suggest it. Her voice increased in octave to a resolute squeak. “...stop them?”

Snails’s eyes widened, but after a moment of consideration, he nodded.

“Makes sense,” he said.

Fluttershy sighed. She had been afraid he would say that.

Chapter 13: The Advancement of Technology

The accuracy of the mech units was poor. The operators were well-matched and well-trained to move the units, but the technology was new. It had only recently been generated by the combined research of Cadence herself and her Royal Engineer, the earth-pony Emmett. The crystal ponies within were not yet trained properly in combat, despite Tuo and Fear’s best efforts. Their role in battle was mostly meant to be a symbolic show of might. A means to intimidate the ignorant.

Not that it especially mattered. Their weapons had been decreased to a minimum of power. They were able to cause great pain to the numerous giant snails they had encountered, but were not enough to cause grave injury apart from cracking and charring the outermost layers of their shells. Doing more than that might well have attracted far too much attention. The reduced output was doubly beneficial in that it kept their crystal reactors stable. The tactical engineers’ reports had indicated that magical disturbance from the region would cause disruption.

Fortunately, the presence of snails decreased on the far side of the misty swamps. The trees became sparse, growing thick and old from a land devoid of most underbrush—but developing a high canopy that let only bare, dappled light down upon a few rare fruit and nut trees and flowers that grew in the shade.

Through this, the first of the ruins became apparent. Many Tuo recognized as brilliant examples of Nightmare-Era architecture, the strange style of gothic and nearly organic forms that seemed to grow and warp from their surroundings. They were made of blackened stone formed from harsh wizardry, constructed in ancient times and durable through the most severe forms of weather. Although the silver lining between the bricks had faded and tarnished, these buildings still stood strong—even if knowledge of their purpose had been long-since lost.

Among these sat two sets of other buildings. One type was curiously even newer. They were recent, in a relative sense; perhaps fifty or sixty years old. Unlike the ancient structures that still remained intact and strong, those built in modern times had already been largely reclaimed by the environment. The remnants of prefabricated buildings were scattered in the forest, their windows broken in and their metal skin rusting away as moss and vines devoured them. Buildings constructed in the modern age with modern means—that would be dust and scrap and lead-based paint chips in a matter of a decade.

And, although rare, Tuo noticed what he had come to find. Ruins—but not those built by his predecessors. Not constructed by other invaders to this place. The ones that those before him had come to find. Ones far more ancient than the time of Nightmare Moon, their age impossible and antediluvian. They had existed even before the birth of the One True Goddess. They bore not clear form, not Architectual pretext that could be gleaned from anything in modern Equestrian culture. They were, in all likelihood, not Equestrian at all. They may even have predated ponies.

They rose from the ground, their forms mostly buried. Rising, twisting spires that bent at impossible angles, shifting outward and inward like great linear claws. Their surfaces did not wear and did not age, as if time had no effect on their obsidian—and the metal that inlaid their runes had never rusted and never faded.

These were but pieces. Fragments. The tips of transmitters buried far deep below, in what had once been a great city. A city buried by countless eons of forest, and of the action of so many gastropods. Although, Tuo knew, not all of it remained hidden. Like all ruins, all tombs, all sacred temples where no ponies were meant to go, there was a way in. And a way to claim what was rightfully his from within.

Lady Fear had, as always, elected to take the vanguard position. The mechs covered her from behind, and Tuo walked between them. He had been relegated to support, observing the path and through the crystalline HUD in his helmet. His job was to correlate a significant amount of information, both from the long-range sensors of his ship as well as the conditions of the mechs and relay communications from his crew. Fear could not be bothered with such things—which was why Tuo was paid so handsomely for doing the harder half of the work.

And yet he found himself sighing. Sighing because he was not alone. Walking beside him was a pony that stubbornly refused to wear any armor save for a pale brown shirt and a brightly colored ascot.

“Doctor,” he sighed, once again pleading his case, “I must once again insist that you remain in the rear, where it is safe. The support mech will bring you once Lady Fear and I have secured the area.”

“Nonsense,” he growled, trying mostly successfully to hide his limp. “My boy, I have been traipsing through filthy swamps filled with every kind of venomous monster you can imagine since before your father was in diapers.”

“You are not functionally immortal.”

Caballeron sneered. “Yes. I am most certainly not. Not yet, anyway. But I never once needed to rely on such a ridiculous crutch. What is the point in an adventure without danger?”

“Profit.”

He laughed, but without as much humor as Tuo would have expected. “Proof you’re still young. Like I was, once.” He squinted. “And what does a Perr-Synt need with even more money, anyway?”

“Money itself is useless except as proof of my own prowess. I understand that you are of noble birth, although of an earth-pony sense. As such, I feel that we have some level of kinship in our burden.”

He sighed. “Again, youth…” From one of his pockets, he produced a map, stopping to check it. Tuo, being trained since birth to be patient, paused—although Fear grumbled in her half-pronounced pidgin version of Crystallic. An affectation that Tuo found appealing but also comically sad.

“Doctor. That is not necessary. We have drones to scout topography, and can view the area in real-time through the Imperial satellite array.”

“And I am supposed to expect those gadgets to be superior to an ancient, yellowed map?”

“Those tools are inherently superior, yes.”

The elderly stallion looked up, and grinned. “Really? Did your fancy toys find this place, then?”

“You supplied the mission objective. As is your prerogative.”

“Exactly. And how did I find it? Through careful research. Piecing together fragments of countless hundreds of texts buried in ancient, dusty libraries. Calling on networks of connections, informants...I called in favors, performed a little blackmail, I purchased rare texts from the shadiest sources.” He shrugged. “And most of those turned out to be fakes, or mistranslated, or exaggerations by donkey monks with little better to do than draw ridiculous flaming slugs in their illuminations.”

“It was my understanding that you relied heavily on the dissertation of one particular young academic.”

Caballeron smiled. “I may have scooped the poor fool, but so what? What is academic dishonesty in the face of all this?”

He gestured to the ruins before him, most half-buried in trees that seemed to be voluntarily attempting to conquer them.

Tuo observed the wet wasteland before him. “All to find a snail.”

Caballeron shook his head—but not out of arrogance. Rather, his expression seemed somewhat somber.

“Hardly, my boy. The snail is no doubt extinct, I’m sad to say. Look around you. These are Agency buildings. Their operation was to hunt the last of them to extinction.”

“To what end?”

“The destruction of monsters. Or to further one of their own ridiculous ends. Immortality for a board member, perhaps.”

“Then what are we searching for.”

Caballeron smiled. “What? Have your satellites and robots not told you?”

Tuo remained patient.

Caballeron laughed. “What we seek is the shell of the Golden Abalone. My studies have indicated that the natives who built the original ruins held it as a kind of idol, secured it in the very heart of their Great Temple. It is the last specimen in existence. The last of its kind.”

“A shame to waste it saving a life.”

Caballeron grimaced, a sudden expression of rage coming over him. “Do not talk down to me like you know!” he growled, nearly in an unintelligible hiss. “I do not pay you to doubt my motives! You have no idea how badly I require that shell, what will happen if I don’t—” He bent over suddenly, his eyes widening as he coughed hard into a kerchief. He hid it quickly when he was done, but Tuo did not need to see it. He had been trained since birth to smell the blood of ponies.

“I was merely making an observation. An opinion.”

Caballeron muttered, wiping his mouth. “I do not expect you to understand.” He choked back another coughing fit. He glared upward with bloodshot eyes. “I expect results.”

Tuo nodded. “Of course.”

Caballeron stopped again. He looked up, squinting, and then slowly turned to Tuo.

“Your friend. Is she as you are? With your power?”

Tuo looked forward to where Lady Fear was still walking. “Her blood is black, as is mine. We share a line of descent to the same species, although our powers manifest differently. I regenerate more quickly, but she is more durable. But yes. Neither of us can be harmed for long.”

He started walking again, but Caballeron stopped him. He was smiling. “Then observe.”

Tuo did so, watching Fear continue her march through the lack of underbrush—and too late heard the snap of something, a flick of something suddenly moving through the large, slime-encrusted leaves that lined the forest floor.

Fear looked up as the pair of massive tree trunks suddenly lurched forward, held aloft by crude ropes. They swung forward and met in the middle—and with a sickening snap, her body was crushed flat between them.

The pilots in the mechs groaned, turning away, and some of the ground-soldiers cried out—but Tuo just sighed. He motioned for the forward mechs to move forward. They did and, with some difficulty, separated the trunks. Fear’s body, flat and ruined, fell from between them—and with a hideous snapping sound as her joints relocated and flesh recovered, she reassembled herself in a matter of seconds.

As soon as her lungs regained function, she released a torrent of the most vile, horrific swear words possible in Crystallic, the majority involving Celestia’s rear and a different part of Cadence but phrased with such detail and eloquence that Equestrian could not even hope to match the barest fraction of their vulgarity.

“How did you know that?” asked Tuo.

“Experience. Your foe is an accomplished woodsman and a stallion of great patience. No doubt he has already circled ahead of us. He did not need to wait for your ridiculous machines to keep up. That trap was meant for them.”

“That rat-fink Celestia-tasting son of a mule-ridden HORSE!” screamed Fear, grasping the trunks at either side of her that the mechs were holding. Her magic ignited, tearing them free of the mechs, levitating them, and then with a sonic wave vaporizing them to splinters. “I will baste his mother in a saddle of her own—ACK!”

She has stepped forward angrily and promptly fallen into a hidden pit of spikes.

“What is this?!” she screamed from the hole. “You call these SPIKES?! They aren’t even dipped in feces!” She paused. “Oh, wait…”

“You should probably pull her out,” chuckled Caballeron.

“She found her way in. She can find her way out.”

“I heard that! Moron, you know how I feel about getting penetrated!”

“I know exactly how you feel about being penetrated.”

More grumbling from the hole. Then, slowly, she crawled her way out.

“You need to talk to the mechanic. Fix your armor.”

She made a rude gesture, the holes in her limbs already fully healed but her armor in shambles. “Buck you.”

“You lack the funds.”

“Only because I’m the one paying you,” she snapped, shoving him in the shoulder as she passed. Although she was as tall as him, her armor was far lighter—but she was still oddly strong due to her unique muscular biology. Her lineage, in contrast to Tuo's, provided certain inherent advantages.

Tuo let out another sigh.

“You purebloods make me ill,” admitted Caballeron.

“The affairs of unicorns are highly personal.”

Caballeron walked to the edge of the spike pit. Tuo did as well, looking in—to see a number of sticks that had apparently originally been blunt, their ends having been eaten into points by a specific type of snail.

“Because of course it would be snail-themed.”

Caballeron looked up. “You know this woodsman?”

“We are acquaintances.”

“Well, from as sharp as those are, I see you have a healthy rivalry.”

“Hardly. He is annoyed for various reasons. Namely my conservation efforts.”

“He would be angry at such a pointless thing?”

“Apparently. My most profitable crystal mining operation produced a degree of atmospheric fallout that destroyed the habitat of a certain species of pink conch. I preserved the species.”

“In your private collection, no doubt?”

“Of course. I possess all specimens in existence.” He turned to Caballeron. “There is little point in possessing a thing unless it is rare. Otherwise, it would be far too mundane. Boring, and pointless.”

“A disturbing sentiment.” A middle-aged earth-mare in a camouflage jacket approached them from behind. “And a pointless conversation.”

“Agreed,” said Tuo. “We should continue.”

“If you want your forces to be gone by the time we get to the hard part, then yes.”

Tuo frowned under his mask. “Do you have a better idea?”

Caballeron smiled. He gestured to the changeling. “Argiopé, my dear, I do hate to ask you to work after your retirement, but would you assist these poor ignorant children and scout ahead?”

A thin smile crossed her face. “I hate being on the back-lines as much as you do, Pontracio. As comical as watching her flattened was, we really don’t have the time for it.”

She fluxed, her body consumed by her magic as she shifted forms into a blue-tinged griffon. She spread her wings, and Caballeron stopped her.

“Not above the tree-tops. Flight will agitate creatures we do not wish to anger.”

“I know.”

“Be careful.”

“When am I not?”

She fluttered her wings and took off, grasping a tree with her claws and then disheartening into the distance as she jumped from one to the other. Tuo watched her go, wondering if he could sub-contract to a Thoraxian mercenary for a reasonable price.

“I had never taken you for one with such predilections,” he mused.

“Do not pretend to know me.”

“Of course. Pardon the intrusion.”

Tuo stepped forward, but Caballeron spoke.

“I know where you got those powers. That black blood.”

Tuo stopped. He looked over his shoulder, the image of the earth-stallion fed through the sensors in his sha-shaped mask. “I do not actually care. My powers are my own. Who had them before me is irrelevant.”

“You would rather not know?”

“Information is valuable. But I would prefer cash. Not an old man’s story.”

Caballeron smiled, and joined Tuo on the forward march. “Then perhaps I can in time learn to respect you, then. Because when it comes down to it, business is all that matters, isn’t it?”

Caballeron’s smile did not reach his eyes—and Tuo understood that he was lying.

Chapter 14: Slugs

With the sky so deeply overcast, the fog had not cleared. Mist and water filled the various reaches of the damp forest, a place that had taken on a far more distinctly sinister character as Fluttershy found herself moving deeper and deeper into it. The trees had grown far larger here than in the outer places, and their forms were disturbingly linear. As if they were purposely trying to replicate or even actively graft themselves to the eldest of the ruins that occasionally breached the wet, infinitely deep swamp-soil.

While ominous, Fluttershy was had already substantially habituated to her new environment. This was in a sense similar to Stockcolt Syndrome, a phenomenon she was especially prone to, but in this case relied on the fact that, in generally, there were very few actual specific things that Fluttershy feared. Her fear was overwhelming and all-encompassing, but almost wholly limited to social interactions.

She was growing increasingly accustomed to her surroundings. Further, she had realized that of course Eternity had been lying. Whatever monsters she had envisioned in her mind had been replaced by actual visions of carnivorous, parasitic, predatory, or outright grotesque gastropods—and being real, those things were far easier for her to deal with. They were, after all, animals, and therefore inherently adorable and innocent. Regardless of what they were.

In the absence of surprises—like being chased by a snail she had neither expected nor been introduced to—her fear slowly seeped away, replaced by the wonderment of meeting so many new and slimy friends. Some, surely, were dangerous—but Fluttershy had come to understand that dangerous animals could be easily overcome with conversation, reasoning, and kindness.

She in fact began to notice that the population around her had started to change. For a time, there had been few if any creatures—but as they got deeper and deeper in the forest, more toward the center and toward the ruins, more came. Except that instead of snails, Fluttershy found that almost all the gastropods around her were, in fact, slugs.

They were highly sociable. Curious, even, although not all of them. In the distance, Fluttershy saw them moving rapidly among the trees. Some were far larger than her, but they moved with odd dexterity and silence, their bodies moving rapidly between the trees with a squish and a squelch.

She stopped, watching one pass by. It was an impressive specimen of leprous brown, held aloft by hundreds of spider-like legs, slime dripping from its underside as it moved. It paused, its cloudy stalked eyes glaring at her, before it let out a gibbering laugh and climbed up a tree.

“I know, right?” agreed Fluttershy. She looked down to see that several much smaller slugs had begun to crawl up her body. “Oh my,” she said. “Well, I suppose I do taste delicious.”

She turned back to see Snails, but was surprised to see that she could not see him at all. She paused, confused, and looked up to find him desperately clinging to the bark of a particularly large tree.

He was pale and wide-eyed. “Slugs,” he squeaked. “Why did it have to be slugs?”

“What’s wrong?” She looked down at them. “They seem to be friendly. Oh, look!” She reached down and unfastened an especially large specimen from herself. It was almost as long as one of her legs and a brilliant yellow color. “Look at this little guy! You know, when I was a little filly, I wished I could be a banana slug. They have no natural predators. That must be nice…”

Snail’s eyes widened even further. “B...banana?”

The slug looked up at him and opened its mouth, extending hundreds of fangs as it let out a long, hissing scream. Fluttershy smiled.

“Look, he wants to greet you!” She paused. “Or ‘they’? They’re hermaphrodites, so the don’t want to misgender them...but ‘they’ always felt like a plural?” She shrugged. “But I guess it’s a case-by-case basis…” She looked up again. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can...if I can come down.”

“Why?”

He seemed to be on the verge of spilling his oats. “They’re just so—ACK! They’re too scary! They’re all wet and slimy and full of mucous, I can’t, I just can’t—”

“Snails! You’re being offensive!” She brushed the slugs off her. “They aren’t that much different from—”

“Don’t you say it! Don’t you dare say it! It’s not the same! THEY’RE NOT THE SAME!”

Fluttershy looked up at him and, slowly, it donned on her.

“You’re terrified of slugs, aren’t you?”

He nodded, clearly ashamed of himself. “They’re the face of pure evil…”

“Well that’s just mean. And also untrue. I’ve seen pure evil’s face, and she’s not a slug. Usually.”

Something rustled behind Fluttershy. She turned, and almost cried out as a skeleton lurched through the ferns, stopping to stare at her—but she laughed at herself when she realized that it was not an undead at all. It was of course a skeleton, but it was animated by a colony of pitch-black slugs intercalated to the bones of a long-deceased pony.

She smiled. “Nature is so fascinating!”

The colony stared at her, then limped off. Two or three more followed it. Fluttershy wondered if she could ever be a colony of slugs. Unfortunately, she knew that she could not. Her bones, if they could be called that, would make a poor home for any living creature.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think you’re not taking this seriously,” snapped Snails.

“I am. But we need to keep moving. You’re the only one who knows how to set up the traps.” Fluttershy did not know what kind of traps, exactly, but assumed they were probably harmless if not hilarious in nature. Just enough to slow down the mechs until they could convince the advancing force to turn back. Like in the old Foal Alone movie reels that had terrified her as a child.

“Those are just the little slugs,” said Snails, quickly growing more and more distressed but forcing himself to climb down the tree. When he reached the bottom, he was shaking. “Snails? Snails I know how to deal with—but slugs aren’t snails. Not even close. It’s like how bananas are the natural enemy of apples.”

“The natural enemy of apples is vampire fruit bats. And also mildew. Trust me on that one.”

Snails seemed to grow more serious. “The little slugs are bad enough—but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. What’s in there. It’s not fun.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Then we can work through it together. Okay?”

Snails started to nod—but blanched as he saw something behind Fluttershy. Fluttershy, likewise, felt both a sudden wave of unpleasantness as well as an unusual heat.

She turned slowly to see that an enormous slug was approaching her from behind—and it reared up behind her, releasing a low growl.

As beautiful as it was, Fluttershy realized that it was, in fact, on fire—and that the mucus left in its wake was likewise burning.

“Don’t move!” hissed Snails. “Fire slug! FIRE SLUG!”

“I can see it,” hissed Fluttershy. Then, clearing her throat, she took a step forward.

“What are you doing—?!”

Fluttershy gave the slug her best smile. “Hello Mr. Fire Slug, we don’t mean to intrude. We’re a little lost. Can you help us find where the Golden Abalone lives?”

The slug began to gurgle, its projections shifting violently as its body accumulated more and more heat.

“Oh no,” said Fluttershy, feeling herself flush.

“What?”

She turned to Snails. “I think I may have misgendered the slug…”

A ball of magic ignited over the slug’s head, held aloft between its glowing antennae. Fluttershy saw this, and was promptly thrown to the side by Snails’s magic as the slug fired its laser.

The trees behind her exploded in plumes of fire and smoke, boiled from the magical blast. Had Fluttershy possessed eyebrows, they would surely have been burned off her face—although she felt herself becoming singed from the pure force of the blast.

The slug did not hesitate. It lowered its head toward Snails. Snails cried out.

“You’re gonna want to run, Fluttershy!”

And with that the snail charged him full speed, a dash across the landscape that Snails barely managed to doge—and one with such force that the bark of the tree he had been nearest to splintered as the slug ricocheted across it.

In the distance, Fluttershy saw another group of fire slugs approaching—and saw them stop as something rumbled beneath them. Something that almost seemed to speak.

She was almost knocked over by the vibration—but in the distance, she saw one of the colony-undead. It nodded to her, and she understood. She ran.

“OVER HERE!” she cried. “I TASTE DELICIOUS!”

The extra fire slugs, the ones that had not yet noticed Snails, heard her—and they pursued with unnatural speed, leaving trails of burning slime as they went. Another laser shot by, partially singing Fluttershy—but she dodged, continuing to run, slipping in the mud as she dashed past ruins and corroded warehouses.

From above, a large and particularly venomous spider-slug dropped from the tree, preparing to coat her in paralytic slime—but Fluttershy was too fast. Her hyper-advanced self-preservation instincts had been honed the year before when she had dealt with a friendship problem deep in a forest infested with drop-bears. She fell forward onto her hooves, and then pushed back, sliding herself onto the slug’s back.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But...um...if you don’t mind...YAH!”

She dug her heels into the slug’s sides, and its eyes looked back at her, filled with confusion—and then it began to scuttle forward with great speed, apparently as afraid of being eaten by fire slugs as Fluttershy was afraid of being incinerated.

Riding a slug was far more difficult than riding a drop-bear, but not harder than riding a snell and certainly not harder than riding a draconequus. Especially a greased one.

Fluttershy held firm, directing her steed to safety—or so she thought. Until she reached the cliff.

It did not bother to stop. Rather, it just went over the edge, clinging to the side—and Fluttershy was tossed into the fissure with a squeak. From below, in the darkness, a terrifying flying slug shot upward, its mouth opening wide to consume her—but its aim was poor and she bounced off where its nose would have been had slugs had noses.

“Sorry!” she cried, rolling down its back and plummeting through some thick shrubbery—before falling hard against the ground with a thump.

Her wind was knocked out of her—and, considering her soft and timid nature, she had precious little wind to begin with. What she had left came out in a squeak as she rolled over, curling her legs up in pain.

She remained like this, hearing the sounds of things moving in the brush around her, and wondered if Snails had been right. Perhaps she had been unprepared for this environment.

She was forced to dismiss this thought. They had simply gotten off on the wrong foot. And slugs, like snails, did in fact posses feet.

She brushed herself off. Or tried to. The mud was oddly tenacious when combined with slug slime, or snail slime. Or any sort of slime. And as a pastel, Fluttershy stained easily—although not nearly as often as Rarity, who needed to be bleached constantly. Or, as Fluttershy suspected, dipped in optical brightener.

She looked at the ground and saw several small snails fleeing—and, as they fled, collapsing into multiple extremely small snails. Tiny snails that themselves may very well have been made of even smaller snails. This made her wonder just how much of the world was in fact made of snails. She assumed—and hoped—not much.

Something rustled in the brush. Fluttershy’s ears pricked. “Snails?” she called, hesitantly.

He burst through from a bush, falling on his face and sending snails scattering in every direction. “Ugh,” he said, brushing himself off. “Now, I’m not the kind of pony to tell you ‘I told you so’.” And then he stopped talking.

Fluttershy, though, nodded. “You got away, though.”

He smiled, but weakly. “Sure did. Fire slugs. They’re not nice at all. Never are. Real common near the edge. I use their mucous to start my fires…” He shivered. “But seeing them in person isn’t fun, eh?”

Fluttershy chuckled and approached—only to stop. She paused, sniffing the air. “Huh…”

“What?”

“Did you...step in something?”

Snails checked his hooves. “Looks like it,” he said, gesturing to the mucous that was up to his elbows. “I really, really don’t like slugs. They’re real scary, don’tchaknow. And their mucous naturally repels snails. I feel...kind of sick.”

Fluttershy looked up. “I can’t fly my way out of here. Do you know a way out?”

“Sure do. This way.”

Snails led the way, and Fluttershy followed.

“Don’t know if I’m gonna get to set any more traps,” he sighed. He shivered. “This far in, it isn’t safe. I think…”

“What?”

He sighed. “Maybe we should turn back?”

Fluttershy gasped. “But what about saving the Golden Abalone?”

He looked over his shoulder, appearing conflicted, but closed his eyes and nodded, clearly resolving to remain brave. Fluttershy gave him a weak smile of her own.

Chapter 15: Hooded Tick-Spider

When they were back on level land, Fluttershy was forced to sit down, her body forming a pony-loaf as she tried to catch her breath. Snails stood beside her, apparently barely tired—although he was walking with an obvious limp. One he tried to hard but that indicated an injury. Perhaps an old one, or from his fall into the crevice. Or both.

“You okay?”

Fluttershy nodded and stood. She began to walk and noticed that outside of the darkness and in the main forest there were once again a preponderance of slugs. Snails avoided them, but did not seem as afraid as he had before—although his disgust was palpable.

Fluttershy eyed the slugs, though, and nodded to a large banana slug that was lumbering past. It blinked very, very slowly.

“We should get going,” she said.

“Right,” agreed Snails, leading her over the rocky landscape toward a path between the trees. “We’re going to have to avoid the fire slugs. It’ll add time, but I don’t really feel like being cooked.”

“Neither do I,” sighed Fluttershy. Several slugs had joined her, keeping pace with her motion. “But we need to hurry.”

Snails shook his head. “I think those mech things are slower than I thought. It’ll take them a day and a half to keep up. The slugs will probably slow them down. Especially the on-fire ones.”

“Crystal armor refracts magic. They’re almost indestructible.”

“Huh,” said Snails, slowly. “You know an awful lot about Crystal Empire stuff.”

“I do,” admitted Fluttershy. “I just can’t figure out why they don’t use that big ship. I mean, it’s just looming there. Scarily.”

Snails shrugged. “No idea.”

Fluttershy nodded, and fell silent, walking with Snails through the forest. Then, after a time, she spoke again.

“So. You almost married Silver Spoon?”

Snails immediately blushed. “Well...technically, yes. Although mostly on accident.”

“How do you almost marry somepony ‘on accident’?”

Snails shrugged. “I was working as an intern clerk for the mayor. I guess I wasn’t paying attention and accidentally filed a marriage certificate instead of a request for inquest form.” He sighed. “Then we were in a play for Summer Sun. Who knew Pinkie Pie was an ordained minister?” He chuckled. “If it hadn’t been for that banana, we’d be married right now…”

Fluttershy smiled, and stopped walking. Snails did, confused.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not so good at telling stories.”

“No, no. It was a great story. And it’s slightly disturbing you knew Pinkie’s ordained. But I’m not stupid.”

Snails frowned, slowly. “Am...I?”

“No. But probably arrogant. Sorry. I know we’re not friends but I’m trying to give constructive criticism. It’s really hard and I’m doing my best.”

Snails seemed hurt. “We’re...not friends?”

Fluttershy smiled and shook her head. “See, I’m not as good as Snails, obviously. I can’t tell at a distance. But you all have that smell. I’ve taught hundreds of changelings how to be friends. I’ve learned to recognize it.”

Snails seemed confused, but then grinned widely, pointed teeth clearly apparent.

“Well,” he said, his voice still Snails’s but oddly erudite. “Look who thinks she’s a clever little girl.”

“You made it kind of obvious. We’re headed the wrong way. The banana slug told me so.”

Snails's visiual idenity faded—and the changeling beneath collapsed the mask she wore. Instead, Fluttershy now found herself facing a copy of herself. Although one that looked altogether more angry. And slightly taller.

“You ought to have run when you had the chance.”

Fluttershy shrugged. “I wouldn’t have gotten all that far. You can fly. I can’t right now.” That was an excuse, obviously. This changeling was not quite Thoraxian, but was likewise Chrysalisian either. Fluttershy was not aware of any rival hives in existence, so this one must have been rogue—and she was far more talkative than most.

“What do you want?” she asked, politely. “Please? Why are you trying to hurt the Golden Abalone?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because I was asked to be, you fat twit. Beyond that, Celestia’s poots if I know.”

“Asked? By whom?”

“It doesn’t especially matter. Not to you. Not a name you’d recognize.” She sighed. “We were supposed to be retired. On a nice, warm island. I’m the only one he had left. Which is sad. You don’t make too many friends in this business if you stay in long enough.”

“You mean Tuo?”

She grimaced. “You think I’d really be interested in Wun’s mutant kid? Just because I’m a changeling, do you think I rob cradles as a habit?”

Fluttershy blinked. “Don't you?”

“Who knew an Element of Harmony was a racist,” she snapped. “No. I don’t. That thing isn’t even a pony. And the other one? She reeks of teenage angst.” Her smile grew, revealing fangs that she did not know matched the ones that lay deep in Fluttershy’s own mouth. “Not like you. Not at all.”

“I don’t want to fight you. What you’re doing is wrong. But I don’t think you’re a bad pony.”

She laughed, and slowly began to circle Fluttershy. “I’m not a pony at all.”

“You know what I meant.”

She laughed. “The traps you set? They’re gone now. I took down most of them. And Lady Fear is going to step in the rest. She really hates you. I don’t know why. But I'm curious as to the reason.”

Fluttershy frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know anypony with that name.”

Her copy shrugged. “Fine. Not my primary objective.” She pointed. “You, though. You obviously can’t fight me. You’re soft and squishy. If I slapped you, you’d probably fall over crying.”

“True,” admitted Fluttershy.

The copy spread her long, beautiful wings. Longer and silkier than Fluttershy’s own. “And I can fly...and use magic...huh. So I guess you can’t run, either?”

“No.”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“Talk to you. Maybe we could be friends.”

The changeling stopped. “You seriously want to get out of this with the ‘power of friendship’?”

“Kindness, specifically. I think I’m giving you a lot of leeway for being so mean to me.”

“I have not yet even begun to mean.”

Fluttershy smiled. “Well, it’s obvious you care very deeply for whoever it is asked you to come along. And if looking for the Abalone, I think it means he’s sick.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do I look like I care if you know that? You’re Twilight’s doormat. You can’t stop me.”

“I can ask you politely.”

The changeling seemed confused—then annoyed.

“Please?”

A fanged smile grew on the changeling’s face. “No. I’m going to capture you. Then your friend will come to get you, and we’ll trap him. Then it’s a standard in-and-out. No Daring Do to interfere this time.”

Fluttershy smiled. “Daring Do? Then that means you must be working for Ahuizotl or Caballeron. Since Ahuizotl’s a politician now, I guess I know who needs that medicine.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

“Because the first book was so scary it traumatized me. It’s burned into my memory and I still have nightmares. At least when I don’t dream about...the pot…” She shivered.

A moment of rage crossed her copy’s face. “You’re even more annoying than the blue one. But see, I have the advantage here.”

“What would that be, then?”

“Telepathy.”

Her form shifted. She elongated, stretching into a form that dwarfed Fluttershy—but a form she recognized well.

Fluttershy’s pleasant, kind smile faded instantly.

“Oh,” said the changeling, perfectly mimicking Discord’s voice without ever having met him while she admired his assymetrical paws. “Is this thing what you love? What are you, some kind of pervert?”

“Don’t take that form,” said Fluttershy, harshly. “Not him.”

She stuck out Discord’s tongue. “Oh? Did I hit a nerve? What is it? Lover’s quarrel?” She slithered closer, floating as she did so. “I can taste it, you know. How sweet and pure your love is. Like the lightest, airiest cotton candy. So wholesome. Did you ever even manage to tell him without blushing yourself into unconsciousness?”

“I’m warning you,” snapped Fluttershy, looking at the ground to avoid looking at the parody of Discord. “Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret.”

“Oh, my! Fluttershy, are you threatening me with—violence?” She laughed. “But what could you even do? Patter me with your little marshmallow hooves? No wonder he never loved you. You’re so small and weak, how could a literal GOD ever even care for—”

Fluttershy looked up—and the scream caught in the changeling’s throat.

She dropped to the ground, confused—but fully aware of what was happening to her. Breaking her concentration, her form collapsed, revealing a large striped changeling female.

“What are you—why are you—why does—what is this? WHAT IS THIS?!”

Fluttershy did not speak. She only continued to stare—and took a step forward.

The changeling cried out. “Wait, wait—stop! STOP! Stop staring at me! I can’t—I’m naked! I don’t have a form on—”

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I’m not though—ACK! My soul! It hurts! Stop LOOKING AT ME!”

“NO.”

The changeling quivered, unable to flee but unable to fight back—because she could not break the Stare. And Fluttershy could stare in complete silence all day if she needed to. Her only recourse, called for by the desperation of the situation—a stare that could stop even the Lord of Chaos in his tracks.

“I’m sorry!” pleaded the changeling, now crying. “I’m sorry, alright! I shouldn’t have been mean! You’re clearly sensitive!”

Fluttershy blinked, and the changeling collapsed into a chitinous heap.

The heap procceeded to quiver. Fluttershy took a step forward, wondering if she might need a hug—but as she did, a head shot up, held aloft by a neck that in any other species might have looked eligent. In a changeling, though, she just looked disturbing.

“You do realize that now I’m going to have to eat you.”

Fluttershy sighed. “Well, I do taste delicious…”

The changeling shifted, her form growing substantially in both size and mass. Fluttershy felt the vibrations of eight massive legs that landed hard on the ground, holding aloft a bloated body striped in yellow and black. She looked up into a face filled with fangs and dripping venom—and eight teal eyes staring back at her.

Fluttershy sighed. “Really? I giant orb weaver? Spiders are the least scary arachnid. They’re just like mice, but with more legs to give hugs.”

The spider form seemed to smile—and shifted again. But not by much. The legs grew bulkier, thicker, and more angular—and the face disintegrated, folding back as the eyes vanished, replaced by a hood of flesh. A fine fuzz broke out over her red-brown body.

Fluttershy sighed again. She regretted her big mouth.

“Ricinulei. That’s...a much better choice.”

“Just wait until you hear the voice I gave it,” she said—speaking in the high voice of a young foal with a Trottingham accent. “The audio adds to it, I think.”

Fluttershy nodded, and looked under herself, finding the ground to be quite a bit damper than she would have expected. Then she lifted her head, took a deep breath, and began sprinting away, screaming and crying in fear.

Chapter 16: Increased, Excessive Aggression

The changeling pursued, her enormous legs thundering through the brush.

“I’m going to suck out every drop of your love, Fluttershy,” she said, still in the voice of a calm, even-tempered foal. “As well as each and every drop of your precious bodily fluids.”

“Don’t suck me! DON’T SUCK ME!”

A thin, high giggle escaped the giant tickspider—and Fluttershy continued to flee. She tried to rationalize the desire to turn around; as large as it was, it was just an animal—except it was not. It was a changeling. A living, sentient species—and therefore not running would be directly confronting social interaction. That would more than likely involve her being sucked dry into a wheezing pastel husk.

This time, though, she had a plan—and the slugs led her to where she needed to go. Some of them were far smarter than she would have expected—and had eyes that were disturbingly alert.

She skidded, nearly slipping across a wet depression in the ground, and then fell on herself trying to accelerate. The changeling did not have the problem, being reinforced with so many legs. By this time, Fluttershy’s lungs were once again burning—but she persisted.

A slug fell from the trees, landing on her back—but it did not intend to hurt her. Instead, it had come to help.

Fluttershy slid to a stop, grabbing the slug in both hooves and brandishing it like a weapon. The changeling came around a large tree, jumping down from the trunk, her faceless head somehow still smiling.

“Don’t make me do it!”

“Slugs won’t save you now Flutter—”

Fluttershy squeezed the slug and, with a deafening boom, a torrent of crystalline mucous pellets shot out of its end. The changeling screamed as she was struck, more in rage than in pain. She was stronger than most. Her form was not an illusion; she had fully assumed the form of a monster and was maintaining for far longer than a drone could manage. She had not, however, expected Fluttershy to know how to use a shotgun slug.

Fluttershy took the opportunity, namely because she had no idea how to reload a slug. She ran again, dashing into a deepening swamp. It came up to her knees, but she pressed on, noting that the watery, treeless area was filled with peculiar objects. They were orange, tall, and cone shaped.

To her great surprise, she found Snails standing chest-deep in the water, taking notes on his notebook where it was held aloft in his magic. He was staring at an especially large specimen of the orange objects.

He looked up and smiled. “Hey Fluttershy. What brings you here?”

“We need to get moving, now—”

She heard a splash around her. She looked up and saw them emerging, their crystalline armor ceasing to diffract the colors of their surroundings. A small contingent of crystal ponies approached, spears strapped their sides—spears, and other weapons that had no name in modern Equestrian. Weapons that had been purged from Sombra’s empire centuries prior.

“Oop,” said Snails. “We got surrounded.”

The changeling lumbered into the mud, barely sinking, her presence washing the cones in every direction—but not once did one tip or fall. Instead, they simply dispersed—and Fluttershy never took her eyes off them.

Snails looked up. “Oh. You found the changeling.”

“That she did,” laughed the changeling. “And now you’re captured.”

Both Snails and Fluttershy smiled. “No,” said Fluttershy. “I don’t think we are.”

“You are surrounded,” insisted the leader of the crystal ponies. “In accordance with our workplace policies on being threatening, frightening mercenaries, we are officially capturing you. You will be brought abourd our ship and be given guest rooms and cookies, then released to your homes at the conclusion of our missions.”

The changeling stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

He smiled. “We’re mercenaries. We’re not the bad guys here.” He blushed slightly. “Also, I’m a huge fan of Fluttershy. She’s my favorite Element—but don’t tell Rarity!”

“What makes you think I would know—never mind.” She kicked him out of the way. “I’m going to capture both of you by much more violent means.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Look around you.” She pointed at the cones. “Do you know what those are?”

The crystal ponies looked around at them, confused. One reached down into the mud and pulled one up—revealing that the visible portion was, in fact, the pointed shell of a snail.

He did not seem to understand the implications—but one did, her eyes suddenly widening with abject fear.

“C...c...CONE SNAILS!” she cried—and the rest of the ponies suddenly understood, freezing in fear at the realization that they were, in fact, the ones surrounded.

“I had been looking for their breeding water for months,” said Snails, proudly—and still taking notes. “Who’d have thought it was out here? But the pH is just perfect for it.” He pointed at the pony still holding a snail, now frozen in fear as it crawled toward his head. “You probably shouldn’t touch them, though. They’re one of the most venomous creatures in all of Equestria, don’tchaknow.”

“V...venomous?”

“I’m—I’m not a pony,” protested the changeling, suddenly reverting to her normal voice. “My biology is fundamentally different, my resistance to poisons—”

“You can take the chance if you want,” shrugged Snails. “But I wouldn’t.”

“One sting,” said Fluttershy. “That’s all it takes. So actually listen. And be nice.”

“I—I have a family!” cried a pony with a snail now crawling up his face. “I have two daughters! Don’t venom me, I’m not ready, I can’t—”

“Stop blubbering,” demanded the changeling. “You’re a generic bad-guy, you don’t even have a name!”

“It’s not hard,” said Fluttershy. “These snails are very friendly. We can ask them to let you leave. IF you leave us alone.”

“I’m not leaving because of some snails.” The changeling sighed. “But then again, I do have to weigh the risk.” She took a breath. “I’m not really after you. I don’t care that much, and you can’t really stop us. You can slow us down, sure. And we don’t have much time at all. There’s only two of you. And a lot more of us.” She nodded her lack of a head. “Sure. We’ll retreat. I’ll even let you leave. Just don’t get in our way.”

“We can’t let you hurt the Abalone.”

She gestured with an oversized leg. “Can you let this pony get venomed? Is the Element of Kindness really in the business of manufacturing orphans?”

Fluttershy sighed. “No.”

“It’s touching my head! It’s TOUCHING MY HEAD I’M GOING TO GET VENOMED!”

The pony began attempting to wave the snail off, and the others started to panic. This, in turn, caused the cone snails to become increasingly agitated.

“Wait, wait, you’re agitating the snails!”

“You hear that?! They’re agitated, ACK! I’M GOING TO GET THE TOXIC POKE!”

Too late, Fluttershy saw the snail next to his head extend the end of its barb—and she could not stop it. In a panic, the snail fired its lethal barbed stinger.

The needle struck him in the neck—and rebounded off his body, his surface suddenly rendered crystalline and impervious to damage.

“Huh who what how why?” he said, looking down—and as surprised as he was, Fluttershy did not have time to feel relieved. She felt the familiar force of a peculiar and exotic form of magic. Every hair on her neck stood on end, and the air grew cold.

She looked past the crystal ponies, their bodies shifted to crystal by the thin tendrils of a thick pink-violet fog—and saw the leaves of the trees freezing, encrusted by crystals of ice as she approached. A tall unicorn clad in white and blue-violet armor, her progress slow and terrifyingly graceful. She did not sink into the mud, because where her hooves touched the mud became ice, separating outward into beautiful crystals. Everything she touched became beautiful—as it froze and died.

She paused, looking up—and Fluttershy felt eyes upon her.

The finally-tuned reflexes of a paranoid coward served her well; she dodged in time to have the bottom portion of her mane severed by the hissing chill of a crystal blade. The unicorn was suddenly on top of her, having passed through the intervening space in an instant—with a rush so fast that crystal ponies and cone snails alike were sent flying.

Fluttershy jumped, avoiding a second blade—and as a cone snail fired toward her, its barb was suddenly plucked by the air by Snails’s magic. With one oddly smooth motion and a dull smile on his face, he flipped over Fluttershy and used the armored unicorn’s body as a springboard, pushing her face into the mud as he leapt toward the raging changeling.

The changeling responded by shapeshifting again, assuming the form of a giant land-crab—and one of her vast claws closed around Snails. There was a sickening crunch as it closed, but it gained no purchase. Snails had already covered himself in mucous, either from snails or by his own secretion, a knowledge that could only be gained by one truly aligned with the most shelled of all gastropods. Slipping out of her grasp, he suddenly accelerated, and using the barb targeted a weak point in her carapace.

With barely any apparent effort, he brought the barb down—and gave her the poke.

She took a step back, crying out, and shifted again, assuming her original form—and then suddenly shifting again, assuming the form of a pale green earth-pony—then a griffon, then a white Pegasus, then a blue unicorn, then a different changeling, a random stallion, a gopher, a legged eel—and more. She cried out as she flashed from form to form, so fast that they were indistinguishable—and so fast that sometimes they fused, organs and limbs appearing out of the wrong places or sliding into the wrong places as multiple ponies and forms became one.

“I can’t—I can’t control my shifting!” she cried. She fell to her knees, still changing—and Snails turned, barely in time to dodge a blast of magic that encased the changeling in a block of ice, freezing her in place and stopping the changes. He then jumped to avoid a passing cutting spell, but the spell shifted, instead grabbing him by the tail and swinging him like a weapon. He hit Fluttershy hard, knocking the wind out of her and sending her reeling, skipping over the top of the water like a smooth stone until she landed in a bush.

The unicorn discarded Snails. She seemed to have little interest in him.

“They always said you were the prettiest Element,” she growled. She brandished her sword. “Let’s change that.”

Fluttershy had no idea what to do in this circumstance. Of her friends, she was generally the most apt to surrender, and generally did not come under direct attack, let alone with potentially murderous intent. Likewise, she had no idea who this pony was, but felt it would be much too rude to ask.

She did not need to wonder for especially long. Something undulated beneath her in the mud and, with sudden and violent force, she was accelerated out of the mire by a pony-sized slug. It was not as fast as the snails before, but significantly more adhesive. It managed to carry her to the far bank, an area overburdened by undergrowth, before it was struck hard with a blast of magic that overturned it.

Fluttershy fell to the ground, seeing the slug sceaming from a scorch mark on its side, and she felt suddenly moved to tears—but the slug motioned for her to run, and as it did, a veritable horde of bowling-ball sized snails dropped from the trees above, blocking the path.

“Thank you!” she called, running—if only to draw the unicorn’s attention away. She seemed largely ambivalent to the creatures of the forest. For some reason, she was only fixated on Fluttershy.

Her actions, though, were reprehensible—and Fluttershy took them to be confirmation this pony was indeed villainous. Simply running was no longer an option. Instead, she needed to act. It was just a question of how.

She slid to a stop in the forest, looking up at the trees and rocks that surrounded her—and took several deep breaths.

“Come on Fluttershy, you can do this. You can do this!” She closed her eyes and tried to focus. “Think chaotic thoughts...chaotic...thoughts…”

There was no response within her, at first—but then the barest spark of strange magic. A familiar spark that brought her to the verge of tears because of how similar it felt to the one who had taught her to find that particular brand of magic within herself.

With her eyes closed and her mind wholly focused on itself, she did not see the unicorn drift silently into her presence. Until it was too late.

Fluttershy opened her eyes and squeaked at the sound of crunching crystal, and at the electrical whine of her magically-charged blade—and as she jumped back in fright, one of her hooves caught a rock.

The rock dislodged from the mud, pinging against the unicorn’s armor—and lodging directly in the elbow joint. The pony cried out, suddenly unable to move her front leg forward, and she fell sideways from the force of her sword. Although it was linked by magic, she was unable to brace it properly—and she overshot, missing Fluttershy and instead striking a tree.

Several snails were knocked free as her blade cut through it. Ones of the same type as before, but far larger—and the unicorn cried out with fury in a hail of snails.

The tree, though, was unfortunately injured beyond repair, and bent suddenly due to being overburdened with snails feeding off the leaves of its canopy. It fell. Fluttershy could not dodge, but instead of crushing her, she found that it simply pressed her deeper into a soft spot in the boggy soil.

The unicorn was faster and dodged, leaping back from it—just as the farthest tip of the tree fell on a heavily rotted log at just such an angle as to send it flying directly toward the unicorn, spinning like a tomahawk.

She summoned her magic and sliced it in half—only to reveal that this particular log was not only hollow but filled with hundreds of sub-adult fire slugs. The use of magic caused their premature ignition, and she was coated in burning but totally unharmed slugs that stuck to her like living, adorable napalm.

“GAH!” she cried, jumping back. “Fire HOT!”

Fluttershy, by this point, had extricated herself beneath the tree—as the trunk exploded into a plume of splinters that harmlessly traced her outline on a tree behind her. Despite being on fire and most likely boiled within her armor, the unicorn seemed to care very little for her own apparent health.

“Do you need to be extinguished?” asked Fluttershy, trying to find water—although she doubted it would help. The fire slugs seemed oddly amphibious.

“No,” she gurgled. She raised a now flaming sword. “But how about I snuff you out instead?”

She took a step forward—only to be stopped, something pulling at her rear hoof. She looked down, confused.

“What manner of sorcery be this?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “It’s not me.”

The unicorn cast a spell on herself, enhancing her strength, and gave a pull—and a pair of bony, skeletal hooves came out of the ground.

Fluttershy screamed, but then stopped when she realized that it—and the numerous other undead rising from the boggy turf—were in fact slug-powered revenants. Consequently, not scary at all. She had apparently decided to stop in what amounted to an ancient cemetery—or, from the looks of it, a burial pit.

“What in the—no fair!” cried the unicorn. “How come YOU get to be a necromancer?! I can’t even get one dead guy up, and you’ve got a whole army?!”

“Um...you should consider your phrasing?”

“I know what I said.” The pony shook her hoof free. More of the slug-dead confronted her, although many of them were distorted, either made from the fused remains of many ponies, remains of other creatures, or from the remnants that did not form whole bodies. Vast, hulking piles of bones, claws and limbs animated by dripping masses of black slugs.

The unicorn regarded these creatures with almost no fear. Rather, a kind of impressed curiosity—and then her horn charged, letting out a devastating shockwave spell.

The sonic blast shattered everything in its path, turning trees to splinters and utterly obliterating the bones of the revenants. The slugs, left without their support structures, plopped to the ground and looked terribly confused before rather quickly sliding off in every direction.

Fluttershy was slightly knocked back and immediately afflicted by vertigo as well as a severe case of nausea.

The unicorn, however, seemed even more surprised at this than at the presence of slug-animated dead.

“Huh? How’d you survive that?”

“Survive what?”

“That should have pulverized every bone in your body.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy blinked. She was now developing a headache. “I don’t actually have...you know...bones. In a technical sense.”

The unicorn stared at her. “Seriously?”

Fluttershy blushed. “Well, it’s a trait from my biological mother...um…”

“So you’re telling me you’re literally a spineless coward? Or have you just been boned that much?”

“Well...um...that’s really mean?”

“Forget the mean, you’re about to get moded—”

Interrupted halfway through her bizarrely Twilight-esque math pun, the ground suddenly started to shake.

“What are you doing now?!” demanded the unicorn.

“You’re the magic one here!”

“Don’t give me those road-apples, you just Chaos-stormed me! That’s magic you shouldn’t even have, you can't just cast when you're a Pegasus—what, have you been licking Discord or something?”

Fluttershy blushed very deeply. “Well...um…”

She did not managed to formulate an answer. The shaking intensified—and then Fluttershy’s finely-tuned Pegasus instincts indicated a rapid change in altitude. Namely, she was moving in an upward direction.

All around her, the forest slid away, crumbling, the ground splitting and dividing in vast chunks. The vibration continued, but was compounded by a deep and terrifying roar—and only then did Fluttershy realize why Tuo had refused to bring his expensive ship in proximity.

Rising several hundred feet into the air and continuing to move upward, she found herself on the back of a slug. A slug of indomitable scale. A Jörslugandr.

It had been sleeping beneath the surface, perhaps for centuries, or even millenia, curled around the unnatural warmth of the ruins beneath. The trees had grown upon it and, as the land faded away, Fluttershy saw that they were rooted to its rough and wet surface. It was the source of moisture in this region, and the source of the forest, symbiotically linked to in an impossibly amplified version of the algae which clung to the backs of nudibranchs.

This proved to be a challenge as Fluttershy was pulled away, losing traction in the landslide as the slug rose. Had the ship been in its way, it would have been destroyed by the upwelling, or perhaps eaten. It might even have awoken the giant slug with the magical noise of its reactors. Fluttershy, though, was faced with an entirely different problem. She was falling off.

And she did, falling over the edge and finding herself unable to open her wings. The unicorn lept after her, charging into the void and her literal downfall—apparently quite confident that her unique biology could withstand the inevitable spat.

Fluttershy screamed—but then squeaked as she was bolstered from below, rebounding off the back of a large Pegasnail—and grabbing hold of another as it passed, the flock holding her aloft as they fled the rising slug.

The snails did not support the unicorn. She fell past them, missing the flock entirely.

“You’re not getting away from me, Fluttershy!” she screamed as she descended—and, although Fluttershy was witnessing something severely unpleasant, she still smiled, knowing that she had escaped.

Then she heard a burst of sound as the explosive bolts holding on the back of the unicorn’s armor detonated, firing the plate that had been mounted over her back—and exposing a pair of mutilated stumps that it had held in place, compressing fragments of iron-like bone and a few pale feathers.

Black fluid flowed outward from the wounded remnants and, in seconds, had regenerated a pair of enormous, fluffy wings—and, despite their seemingly impracticable size, the pony accelerated, shooting upward with disturbing speed.

This was an unexpected turn of events, but Fluttershy had little time to react. The pony reached her, and in a flash of pink-violet light—a color that Fluttershy now clearly recognized in its familiarity—she found herself flopping to the ground, transported instantly by a teleportation spell.

She stood up, woozy from the teleportation among several other compounding factors. In the distance, she saw the vast bulk of the greenish snail slowly moving across the forest—and, across from her, she saw a pony folding her long white wings behind her.

Fluttershy stood and stared, still somewhat in disbelief. “Flurry?”

The helmet of her armor split, retracting by some complex and delicate mechanism into a collar that she wore around her neck. Although apparently going through her goth phase—a phase to which Fluttershy could relate to, and deeply—it was still quite obvious who she was.

Flurry grinned. “Hello, Fluttershy.”

“What—what are you doing?!”

She shrugged, a defiant smile still on her face. “My job. Daddy said I needed to get one to ‘learn responsibility’.” She made air quotes and rolled her eyes. “So my choices were either bagging groceries at Crystal Corner Market, shelving books for Auntie Twilight, or starting my own multi-national mercenary company.” She shrugged. “Guess I’m responsible now.”

“Isn’t that...morally dubious?”

She shrugged again, rolling her eyes. “Morality is for losers, grandma. I'm literally a god.”

“But then why are you...you know...trying to give me the poke?”

The smile faded. Her eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what you did.”

“Um...no?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Two years ago? Just after Hearthswarming? Daddy walking in on you, mom, and the Great and Powerful Trixie? All in the same bed?”

Fluttershy squeaked, turning red. “That—that was—there was cider involved! And um—um—Trixie was just out of a breakup and—and—”

“Daddy was so traumatized he locked himself in the bathroom for two weeks straight. And do you know what he did while he was in there?”

“Um...a lot of crying?”

“Sure. But more importantly, he ate my soap. Do you know how much fancy soap COSTS? I could overthrow governments for less!” She paused, then sneered. “I have overthrown governments for less.”

“I—I apologized, and Cadence and Shining went to marriage counseling—”

“Do I look like I care? I had to use regular soap. Do you know how hard it is to lather wings this big? Of course you don’t, yours are tiny, no idea why Mom wanted them in her mouth so much—”

“Preening is not necessarily sexual—”

“Shudup. You made Daddy cry. He’s mortal and not very bright, and I can’t really forgive that, can I?” Her sword slowly slid out of its mechanical scabbard, drawn by her magic. “But since you’re Auntie Twilight’s friend, I’m only going to do a little damage. How about I take those tiny, useless wings? Being an earth-pony won’t be so bad. And you know you don’t deserve them.”

“And what if—what if I tell your mother what you’ve been up to?”

Flurry laughed. “Do you think Mom even cares? She spends all her time in the lab with the crow-wizard and that freaky white cyborg. And Emmett. Friggin Emmett.”

“I’m not your mother. Or your aunt. But I’ve foalsitted you enough that I think I can say…” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “You’re out of line.”

Flurry laughed. “Are you going to put me in time out?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Flurry’s smile persisted—but only on her mouth. With a cry, she charged.

Fluttershy did not retreat. She did what she had to do—and leveled the full force the Stare directly at the advancing alicorn.

Chapter 17: The Snail and the Orchid

As unpleasant as the situation had grown for Fluttershy, the situation Snails faced was indeed dire beyond his wildest dreams—or rather the nightmares that Luna insisted on forcing into his brain whenever he tried to sleep. Horrific visions of creatures that were slimy and slow—but unnaturally devoid of their shells.

He was in a part of the zone he had never been, deep behind enemy lines—that enemy being slugs. Slugs abounded, and the land was replete with them and their strange, incomprehensible squelching. Fluttershy had run off somewhere, and Snails now found himself alone.

She was far braver than him. More confident, more powerful, and so much more beautiful. Somehow, the slugs did not frighten her. She could see the beauty even in the most disgusting, repulsive, downright unnatural abominations of monsters, the product of what surely must have been the most profound and blasphemous arcane rituals. Without her to deal with them, he was alone and unprotected.

Alone in the forest, he paused, out of breath, seeing nothing but darkness around him. From the box he carried, he produced a snail. It looked around, oddly calm for the high degree of danger.

“Which way did she go, George? Which way did she go?”

The snail shrugged—but then its tiny eyes widened and it slowly retracted into the box, closing the lid. Snails sighed, because he could feel the shadow. Not quite one of gloom, but one of annoyance. He slowly turned to see Tuo looming over him.

Despite his age, Tuo had developed exponentially faster than normal ponies, probably due to an aspect of his immortality or whatever genetic traits gave him dark eyes and a darker coat. Snails was already tall and slender, but Tuo was even taller—and although he was also thin, the armor he wore more than overcompensated. Like when Snips had grown a pompadour to disguise his short horn during college.

“Hello, Snails,” he said, his voice distorted through his audio system but still bearing his characteristic cold amusement—as if he was constantly aware of a joke but too proud to show it or let anypony else in on the punchline. As if the whole world was just so terribly, sadly amusing.

Snails let out a long sigh. “So. I guess we have to fight, eh?”

Tuo tilted his head slightly. “Violence is merely a tool, Snails. One of many. I am not being paid to fight you, and although my skill is prodigious it does cost me energy to cast spells. I am no Twilight Sparkle.”

“But you managed to get her niece.”

"In that she hired me, yes."

“You’re not dating?”

“She is the Scion of House Twilight. And I am a halfbreed. We are simply fans of indulging a certain passion.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Nor should you. You would consider it deviant.”

“Is it?”

A low chuckle escaped his mask. “I am a pureblood. No action is deviant, from my perspective.”

Snails nodded. He did not get it, in part because of the duality, but also because he got the idea he did not want to. He himself was not a pureblood that he knew of; all purebloods he had ever known were white. Except for the ones with curved horns—and there was only one of those left. Tuo’s mother.

“Regardless,” continued Tuo. “Violence is but one tool. As are words.” He paused. “And as is money.”

Snails sighed. “Every dang time?”

“How much would it cost to make you leave and totally ignore my actions?”

“Tuo, you know I can’t do that.”

“Fine. Since you refuse to broach an offer, I propose five million bits.”

Snails shook his head. “It isn’t about the money.”

“Is it not? Money is a tool, and a powerful one. With that much, you could built a sanctuary for every species of snail you choose. Every conch, every pond snail. Organized and cataloged perfectly. In the image of the sanctuary that your foalhood hero uses to imprison her animals.”

Snails sighed again. “Sounds like a good deal. But I refuse. Counteroffer.”

Tuo tilted his head. Snails had never counter-offered before.

A sad smile crossed Snails’s face. “I don’t need money. But free the conchs.”

A dull sigh—or perhaps a laugh—escaped Tuo. “You know I cannot do that. I am the only thing keeping the species alive.”

“In a private aquarium. With no hope of putting them back where they belong.”

Tuo paused. “I suppose then you do understand,” he admitted. “Money is a pointless thing. So easy to make, so easy to have so much. As much as you want, and more. It is a trivial, pointless thing. Common. Vulgar. Useless except as a mundane tool. A tool to find that which is rare. Impossible. Beautiful. Truly of value.”

“Like the Princess?”

“Like the thing in the center of her brain that no matter how hard I cut and no matter how many surgeries I conduct I can never find.”

“Didn’t know you were a doctor.”

“I am not. The process is so much more beautiful when an amateur conducts it.”

Snails summoned a tiny, weak cutting spell. One that he normally used—with some difficulty—to slice warm butter prior to spreading it. He steeled himself for the encounter. “When I woke up this morning, I chose violence.”

Tuo nodded. "I never wake up making that choice. Fools force me into it by not accepting cash." He produced his own cutting spell, one nearly the length of his own body.

Snails looked at it, then turned his eyes up. “Compensating?”

“Hardly. I would have expected you would be difficult to intimidate. Your mind is so much more even than most. So level. So linear. You could have rivaled me as a wizard.”

“Not my thing.”

“I severed your horn once before. This time, I will do so so that it does not grow back.”

Snails shrugged. “Being an earth-pony would be just fine with me.”

Tuo shifted his weight impeccable subtlety. The cutting spell was a projection of will; he did not need to actually swing it. Snails blocked it with his tiny spell—and his spell shattered, filling him with the smallest ping of feedback. He did not attempt to dodge.

The spell landed against his head—and Tuo's pseudoblade ruptured from the feedback wave. Although barely perceptible, Snails had already prepared a shield spell—and one of a particular type. Of the known types of shielding spells, bucklers and domes were considered the easiest to cast—and shells were considered among the most difficult, second only to three-dimensional crystal-constructs.

Snails’s shell proved more than adequate—and his level, durable mind withstood the impact of the spell with barely any perturbation. In a true wizard fight, he would be at an extreme disadvantage—save for the peculiar nature of his mind. So little was going on in his head that he had nothing to be distracted by, rendering his focus absolute.

Tuo momentarily faulted. Snails leaned back, the headbutted him—directly in his horn. Snails’s head had a great enough density to survive the incident, but Tuo was sent reeling, his horn appearing slightly shortened on account of having been partially pushed into his brain.

“You can give up if you want,” said Snails, shrugging.

Tuo regained his composure as he regenerated. He did not reply, other than a short chuckle—and the ground beneath Snails erupted in a shockwave of red magic.

With the reflexes of a snail, dodging was trivial. As he turned over in the air, Snails picked up a small rock and threw it; it pinged harmlessly against Tuo’s armor. Injuring him was not really the point, after all. Snails was an inherently nonviolent pony, largely due to his complete inability to perform anything except defensive magic.

Tuo compensated again, shifting his stance to an almost imperceptible degree and casting an area-of-effect spell, igniting the surrounding area with magic fire—but as it erupted, the spell faltered and began to collapse. Tuo coughed, suddenly falling to his knees.

“What did you do to me?”

Snails just smiled—and Tuo turned his head to see a small snail waving from his back. A magic sealing snail. Snails had placed it on him while he was still reeling from the headbutt—and it had drawn a magic circle around his midsection, the slime dissolving into his armor.

“You cannot cast a magic circle ON a pony, that’ is absurd!”

He tried to take a step forward, only to find that his armor would not respond. Looking down, Tuo found a small contingent of snails already climbing his body, their mucous rapidly hardening to the strength of concrete deep in the joints of his power-armor.

“See? That’s why I’m naked most of the time,” admitted Snails.

“Because you do not have a social obligation to hide your color.”

Snails turned, about to perform a retreat and attempt to find Fluttershy—when the ground started to shake. He was knocked to his knees, not knowing what was happening—and the ground a distance away began to suddenly rise.

Snails watched, frozen, dumbfounded at the sight—at first beyond his comprehension, but then seeping into his mind. He could not resist the truth he was witnessing as the soil fell away from it, raining down in a landslide of rocks, mud, and bog—and as the behemoth growled in an imperceptibly low frequency.

It was a scene out of every nightmare, now brought before him in the flesh. The sight of a giant slug, one of impossible size, looming over the tallest of trees—and continuing to rise, a giant thousands of yards in scale. Even at a distance, he saw its eyes emerging on long, distended stalks—eyes the size of whole towns, cloudy and blind for a life spent underground. Below them, he saw the sensory barbels the size of skyscrapers—and a mouth filled with millions upon millions of pony-sized teeth.

“N—no!” he cried, stepping back. “Not that! Anything but that!”

There was a rush of air and ions as Tuo moved, a simple spell suddenly freeing him from the bounds that Snails had been led to suspect should could contain him.

“It is best not to turn your back to me, Snails,” he said—and Snails felt a sudden shock to his chest. His eyes widened as his breath caught in his throat, and he felt the thick, warm fluid running down his body and dripping to the ground.

He looked down, tears welling in his eyes, as he knew he had lost—and found himself staring into the eyes of an engorged, banana-sized banana slug that Tuo had placed on him.

A giant slug was bad enough, but it was at a distance, almost abstract in its horror—but this was somehow so much more worse. It was touching him. Touching him and, due to the adhesive properties of its blasphemous mucous, quite firmly affixed.

Snails screamed like a little filly and sprinted wildly into the woods, running into threes and tripping over rocks, injuring himself in the process before falling down a small chasm and rolling down a hill.

Tuo watched him go, finding the incident vaguely comical. When he turned back to his armored employees, they were holding each other, terrified. They had followed him to act as support, even though they themselves were not good at mercenary work any more so than any other soft and adorable pony. Tuo generally considered them a form of cannon fodder.

“Is something the matter?”

“You’re too scary.”

“Please don’t slug us.”

Tuo bowed. “You are valuable members of my team. I would not hurt you. Unless I was paid to. Ironic, of course, considering I have next to no use for the money.” He shrugged. “Regardless, please gather miss Argiopé and return her to the support mech. My medical staff will thaw and then fix her.”

“Can’t you use a spell?”

He shrugged. “My healing spells are severely carcinogenic, so yes, I could. But I think she may be married to our client? I did not bother to ask. And in fact I do not want to know. The idea of a romantic relationship with an invertebrate disturbs me.”

One of the crystal ponies pointed. “What about the giant slug?”

Tuo shrugged. “I would have had to awaken it eventually. It is unfortunately too large for my private collection.” He paused. “However, once we get to the ruins, if you see any artifacts of cultural or religious significance, do collect them. They belong to me now.”

The crystal ponies nodded—but it was clear they were nervous. Tuo of course knew why. It was the reason he wore the armor when he was around them—although he of course still saw it in their eyes. He knew who he looked like, despite the total lack of relation. How they instead looked upon so fondly and trusted so dearly the one who was in fact in the descendant of the one they truly feared.

Tuo dismissed this. He did not require their friendship—only their compliance.

Chapter 18: The Unfairest Possible Fight

The effect was audibly silent, but still gave the impression of sound—and force. Flurry Heart felt it hit her like a wave, the strain almost seeming to push against her armor and body—but, more importantly, cutting into her mind. It was more severe than she expected, somehow worse than the various sorts of pain she had come to almost excessively enjoy. It burned into her in a different way, and she could have sworn that she was being forced back across the muddy ground.

Flurry Heart, though, was not one to acquiesce to the will of some pastel geezer—she held her ground, looking back into the blue eyes that bored into her. Her breathing accelerated, but her force of will and determination was far stronger than she had expected. With a shaking hoof and all of her divine might, she took a step forward.

“That won’t stop me!” she screamed against the silence. “I am a literal GOD! I am the—the rightful queen of the Crystal Empire! You can’t stop me with your eyes, Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy did not respond—and that somehow made it worse. The intensity only grew.

Flurry felt her resolve wavering—and she focused her energy further, casting spell after spell upon herself. Enhanced courage, enhanced determination, resistance to magic—and others, again and again. A plume of support spells, the only type she had ever actually been good at, much to her chagrin. Born to a mother that could level empires with a thought, while her inferior daughter was relegated to the role of a cleric at best.

She looked up, taking another step forward and, grinning even as her own black fluid dripped between her sharpened teeth, she dared to look directly into the eyes of the Beast.

What she saw froze her—because something was wrong. She had experienced the Stare before, as a child, when she rightfully deserved it—but never to this degree. And, looking into Fluttershy’s eyes, she saw something incorrect. How the beautiful blue of her irises seemed to be hiding something. How, deep in her pupils, Fluttershy seemed to have a second set of eyes buried deep in the blackness of her main pair. A set of true eyes. Eyes that were a strange and hideous red.

“Don’t make me do this, Flurry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Flurry braced herself. “What are you trying to do? Stare into my soul?” She forced a weak chuckle. “I’m an alicorn, Fluttershy. We don’t have souls!”

A strange and unnatural voice slipped out of Fluttershy, a sort of low hiss—and her mouth twisted into a disturbing smile. “Then why can I taste it?”

Something moved through the forest. Flurry felt her wings bristle with surprise, and her first instinct was to attempt to annihilate it with a burst of magic—but the concentration required was too great, and she felt herself collapsing as she tried to mentally prepare any sort of offensive magic.

A pony burst through the trees. A unicorn who Flurry did not know, nor did she care to know. She could not recall having seen him before, largely because she was not as a rule especially observant. That was what she had hired Tuo for.

This pony was apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, running and screaming due to a large slug that was now firmly affixed to his face. He was repeatedly running into things in his panic, screaming into the slug and producing a low, muffled gurgle.

“Gft it uff! GFT IT UFF!”

“I can’t help you right now, Snails, I’m busy,” snapped Fluttershy. “Stop running around, you’re stressing the slug!”

“Imf strffng df sluf? DF SLUF? IM strifft!”

“Then why not take it off? Gently?”

Snails paused, having not considered this option—and removed the slug with his magic. His look of relief was replaced by one of horror when he realized he was holding it. Then, as he looked up to the horizon, his face seemed to grow even more pale—realizing that the giant slug was still there, now lying on the ground and slowly making its way to somewhere else.

“Sweet Celestia’s hips,” he swore.

“If you could maybe help?" snapped Fluttershy. "Please?”

Snails set the slug down and gingerly stepped away from it. Then he looked up at Flurry Heart.

“Hey, I know you. You’re Pound and Carrot’s friend.” He frowned. “Don’t remember all the makeup, though.”

“She’s going through a phase,” whispered Fluttershy.

“It’s not a phase!” Flurry glared at Snails, then back at Fluttershy—only to squeak as she was pushed back several inches. “What, it wasn’t bad enough you snuggle married mares? Now you’re doing it with stallions half your age? Have you no shame?”

“I don’t think you can really understand the depths of my shame.”

Snails looked to Fluttershy, nearly losing his lunch of snail slime from just the glancing blow of her Stare—and instead turned to Flurry Heart. He did not actually remember who she was, and did not follow politics well enough to understand the geopolitical implications of an Equestrian shoving the Princess of the Crystal Empire.

He shrugged, then walked over to her. “Just like tipping cows back in college. Because you should always tip your cow, they don’t have good wages. Because of the speciesism and all.”

“Are you calling me fat?!”

“No idea.” Snails put his hooves on her side. She was unable to attack or dodge. He then proceed to push—only to be blasted backward by a sudden detonation of magic that held him aloft for a moment before slamming him down hard onto a pile of rocks.

“She does not like to be touched,” snapped Tuo, his invisibility spell fading as he stepped from the shadows. “Believe me, I would know.”

“Tuo! Idiot, quick! Get out a sword or a—I don’t know, a big stick and unalive them! UNALIVE THEM BOTH!”

Tuo let out a long, exasperated sigh. “For the last time, we simply cannot do that. We are mercenaries, not assassins. We would never get another client again.” He gestured toward Fluttershy. “Nor am I apt to target an Element of Harmony. Other than Twilight. I would very much be honored by a wizard-battle with the famed Element of Magic, even if I am guaranteed defeat. If either of you could put in a good word for me.”

“You just want to submit a marriage proposal,” snapped Flurry. “NO.”

Snails coughed and started to stand up. Tuo tilted his head slightly, as if amused, and a column of compressed earth punched Snails in the chest, sending him reeling backwards. Once again without moving, Tuo cast another spell—and a translucent magical chain wrapped itself around Snails’s tail, pulling him backward with a cry.

“Deal with the soft one yourself. Or refuse to. Bow to her and submit. I know how much you enjoy humiliation.”

Flurry growled wordlessly. “I’m trying, idiot.”

Snails, meanwhile, was hurdling through the air, and might have been contemplating his life had he very little of an internal monologue. He cast a weak spell, breaking the chain, which had the unintended effect of launching him further into the air. When he landed, he did so with extreme grace, bouncing off the side of a tree, flipping, and dropping neatly onto a mossy hillock. He then ducked to one side to allow a cutting spell to miss his head.

“You put a slug on me!”

The moss below him pulsed and suddenly shot upward, encasing him as it mutated and expanded, a result of Tuo’s biomancy. Despite his overall talent of as a generalist wizard, his special talent closely related to flowers. His biomancy was by far his strongest field, especially with regard to plants. His use of it was a clear sign that he his patience had come to an end—and that he wanted the fight ended immediately.

Snails did not bother struggling against the enhanced moss that held him firm. He was held aloft, over Tuo, who walked up to him with a distinctly upper-class degree of leisure.

“Going for the horn now, eh?”

“Do I honestly look like a pervert to you? It is called ‘banter’, you would know that if you received more...well, frankly, any formal magical training.”

“Sure, sure. But only one of us here has a graduate degree.” He paused. “Actually...did you even go to high-school?”

“I was home-schooled.”

“Yeah, it shows.”

He shrugged. “I suspected it did. Hence why I am so glad to have Flurry Heart as a friend. And, as such, she is quite dear. So I would rather you not attempt to tip her over.”

“Why? Are you going to?”

“Only periodically. But,” he paused, “I am also aware that you set those marvelous little redneck traps that did, in fact, hurt her. Which does bother me more than it probably should.”

“She regenerates. Like you.”

“Yes. But much unlike you.”

He summoned a cutting spell—but Snails just smiled. Although he had not managed to get Tuo to start monologuing, he had distracted him long enough for several hundred of Mildred’s tiny children to have eaten most of their way through the moss binding him.

He broke free, drawing a tiny vial of mucous from his belt—but before he could throw it on Tuo, it exploded in his grasp, covering him with the stinking liquid.

He thudded to the ground. “Well, that’s mean.”

“You lit me on fire once already. I enjoyed it. I smell delicious being cooked alive. I suppose I should return the favor.”

His horn flicked, and a spark appeared on the mucous—but no fire broke out.

“That is not flammable slime,” noted Tuo, clearly confused.

Snails just smiled. “No. It isn’t.” He stood up. Already the ground was beginning to shake, but softly. Leaves were overturned, rustling by the motion roiling through them. Frightened slugs pulled their way out of the layer, forcing themselves up trees to escape the vibration.

“What did you just do?”

Snails’s smile grew. “The type of snail that makes snails out of much tinier snails. You know those?”

“No. I find snails distasteful except as escargot. And even then, it tastes very bad.”

“They’re eusocial. And about six months ago, I saved the life of the Snail Queen’s daughter. She gave me a bottle of royal slime in case of emergency. And I think this counts as one.”

“You weren’t intending to splash me.”

Snails shook his head. “Nope.”

The leaf littler of the forest suddenly burst open, pouring countless millions of near-microscopic snails upward in violent torrents of mucous and shells. They swarmed over Snails, their bodies linking through some unknown and understudied conception of group consciousness, drawn by the molecular signals of their queen’s goo. In seconds, Snails was coated, save for his face—and he was lifted from the ground, the snails assembling around him into the rough shape of one of Tuo’s own mechs. Except instead of being limited by crystal and iron, Snails was instead reinforced by the pure force of mollusks.

He struck out with surprising speed. Tuo was forced to retreat, jumping back—only for the limb of the snail-construct to extend, wrapping around him with unexpected force. Tuo was forced to teleport, arriving on a branch in a nearby tree wide enough to support the weight of his armor. Teleportation was a difficult spell; learning it from Flurry had been fraught with disaster. Apparently it was a signature spell of House Twilight, the dark-mages of their lineage likely having been its originators. Few ponies could perform it with any degree of success.

Snails, now encased in a living suit of armor made wholly of snails, reached up, his body flowing around itself as he shot upward toward the branch. Tuo responded in turn, no longer relying on the weaker wizard-spells his mother had insisted he learn. He, in opposition to her, was not only a collector of artifacts but one of the rarest biological entities and beings. His cutie mark, a Brassia orchid flower, marked him as a biomage. A plant pony.

The flesh of the tree warped at his will, suddenly enlivened by his magic, an extension of his life force made manifest in wood and blossoms. It struck Snails hard, peeling through his body and sending plumes of snails every direction—snails that rapidly reassembled into constructs of new, larger snails that swarmed back to the hero of their colony.

In fact, Tuo quickly realized that his magic was poorly suited to this type of foe. The plants that he wrapped around Snails were quickly devoured, consumed by the snails that coated him, rendering his armor even stronger.

His only advantage, then, were the other aspects of his biology. As the snails wrapped around them, he ignited himself. The snails screamed out in fear and pain, fleeing the fire as Tuo leapt from the tree. His eyes did not need as much light to see, and his magic guided his perception toward the center of the snails—an area of different density. A plume of magic hidden in the writhing mass-of life force. Snails himself. Tuo could taste his heartbeat.

But as he did, he felt a wave of icy fear move through his body. Unaccustomed to this emotion, he turned sharply, just as the snails surrounded him—and felt an even greater fear move through his body.

He saw her, engaged in a battle with Flurry Heart that the latter could not hope to comprehend. Flurry did not understand the danger she was in. She did not hear the beat of so many impossible hearts compressed into a form that had for so long passed as a pure pony. She did not sense the magic, a sort so foul and horrific that even the dark mages of Flurry’s bloodline would have been loath to approach it.

Flurry did not see the area spreading around Fluttershy. The creeping necrosis that poisoned the very land and air. Every plant it touched died, and was reborn, animated by hideous magic into manifold new and alien forms. Saplings faded, bent, and began to rot, that rot springing to life as flesh and singing bone, giggling as plant and fungus alike ceased their earthly form became horrors indescribable.

Even Flurry was subject to the mutation. As she pushed forward, ever closer to the red eyes before her, her flesh began to change. Infused with magic, it began to warp, itself rotting and rising again as the living incarnation of that rot—only to dry and flake away, driven out by her hyper-advanced immune system.

But she lacked Tuo’s heritage. She was one-fourth dark unicorn, as opposed to Tuo’s half. Although bolstered by her alicorn nature, her strength was not as great as her determination. She was already beginning to atrophy.

“Flurry, stop!” he cried. “She’s a Tartaran!” Which was of course not wholly correct, as the term was a misnomer. The flotsam of the Yellow Realm that ponies called “demons” invariably lacked this power. This was not the primitive magic of a succubus or varnaq-mother, but something far greater. Of something purposefully created by the Most Beautiful Pony herself.

Tuo summoned his magic, exploding outward before targeting Snails with a magical beam. He fired, but the snails compensated, moving Snails himself and making a hole—only for another wave to collapse around him, driving through his armor and threatening to breach his defenses completely.

The tiny avatar of his HUD appeared. A small, cheerful representation of a pony that the armor-mages had named Proctor.

“Warning,” she said. “Your armor seems to be in a state of critical failure. Detecting a snail concentration of over 700% the approved value. System error. Recommend surrender and apology.”

“Engage self-destruct system, then.”

“I’m sorry, I cannot allow you to do that, Mr. Milk.”

“Engage. SYSTEM.”

“That would incur a risk of operator error, with a 103% chance of occupant unaliving.”

“I am immortal, I can withstand a nuclear blast!”

Proctor’s tiny avatar shrugged. “I’m unfortunately not programmed to know that. And the First Law theoretically forbids me letting you get hurt. Badly, at least. So no explodey for you.”

The snails breached his armor, swarming inside it. Tuo sighed, suppressing his desire to panic. He could not allow Flurry to come to harm. Her protection was ostensibly his responsibility. Not due to employment obligations, but as his only friend.

Which meant he knew what he needed to do—and knew that it would be devastatingly painful. And not in the fun way.

He summoned his power, focusing his biomancy inward, distorting the magical flow of his body on a fundamental transcription level—and lost total control of it, his mind evaporated in a wave of the chain reaction. The last thing he consciously knew as his brain metastasized into teeth and beating, hair-covered heart tissue was his exponentially growing flesh peeling its way out of his armor and devouring its way through the snails that dared to believe they could control him.

Flurry was an immortal being, a living god, the one true ruler of all Equestria—after she managed to usurp her mother, of course, and then her aunt. And then probably deal with the fat one. Luna would be allowed a role as some kind of minister. Mainly so that Flurry herself did not need to work nights.

Or this is what she convinced herself as she slowly collapsed under Fluttershy’s gaze. The world swam as she stared into the now fully-red, featureless eyes that seemed to stare back into her.

No one she knew had survived the Stare at this level of intensity, or for this long. The effect was in its own sense interesting, but in the same way it was when she was with Tuo. Pushing her body to its limits. Then pushing past them and laughing as it broke.

Her brain was probably collapsing. She saw Fluttershy through the haze, her skin the most beautiful shade of yellow—a yellow so much more brilliant than that of any pony she had ever seen before. Eyes so red, matching the flow of her mane. A pony so profoundly perfect. One that reeked of a scent so alluring. The smell of carnations filled the air.

And, though this hallucination, she saw something standing at her side. A unicorn. One that was almost white. A pale horse. Which of course was not real. Death was not real. Not for a god.

She blinked, and her mind swam. She saw the red eyes, and saw herself—looking down at her perfect white skin, at the runes and pentagrams engraved in a foreleg that was not hers. Only to blink and see that she was wearing her armor again. Armor and flesh that refused to accept tattoos or scars of any kind, no matter how hard she tried.

Through her haze, she looked up and saw that Tuo had—infuriatingly—got the better fight. He got to fight a snail-based biomech, while Flurry was stuck in a staring contest with a pastel grandma.

Except he was losing—because he was clearly not taking the fight seriously. He paused to yell something that Flurry did not hear, something about at Tartaran—but Flurry had no idea what that was, apart from succubi, which her father would not let her summon anymore.

Fluttershy was probably not a succubus. They usually had horns and were actually attractive.

She began to fade again—only to be suddenly awoken by the snail-mech exploding as a giant tendril of black flesh reached out, clutching the ground and hardening. It morphed, snapping and twisting as fluid and black flesh was rendered into bone, forming a vast claw. Then, from within the mass of snails, a new mass of flesh pulled its way out, shrieking in rage.

It was almost as large as the snail construct—a writhing mass of indeterminate flesh, gushing fluid and rapidly reassembling itself into eyes, teeth, and toothed eyes—as skin became carapace and carapace became mouths that whistled through incomprehensible piping vocal organs. Embedded in it all, the remnants of Tuo’s ruined armor, encased in his hardening blood.

“Crap crap crap!” she turned her attention back to Fluttershy and, as the writhing mass of flesh babbled and struck out at the snail-construct with its tentacles and hundreds of arms filled with teeth, she steeled herself to do something she very much did not want to do. Something that would be almost ridiculously painful, and not in the fun way.

“I need you to let me go,” she demanded.

“Why? You’ll just dash forward and try to unalive me.”

“He can’t hold that form for long! He’s mutating too fast, skirting the edge of genetic collapse—if I don’t pull him back soon, I won’t be able to at all!”

The mass was gripped by the giant construct, only to slither and slide past it, racing toward Fluttershy, pulled by poorly-derived magic that encased its body in red fire—only to be grabbed by one of its mouths and thrown back against a tree, where it split in half and re-merged around the back, slithering up the trunk and attempting to charge Fluttershy again.

“Come on!” cried Flurry, growing desperate. “I have to help him and I can’t do it if I’m fighting you! I…” She could not bring herself to say it, but looking up at him, and at the mutation threatening to consume him, she forced herself to continue. “I give up! Uncle!”

Fluttersy blinked, and Flurry fell forward onto her face, having been unaware of the sheer pressure that had been keeping her standing. Her body felt like jelly, and she was glad she was hiding her face in the mud on account of the humiliation she had just voluntaries suffered. It was fun when Tuo made her do it, but that was because she could always change her mind and force him to his knees—but this was just embarrassing.

“Oh dear,” said Fluttershy, looking around her. “I stared too hard…”

A tentacle suddenly reached out and grabbed her. She immediately blushed. “Oh no...not this again…”

Flurry’s sword slashed through the air, held aloft by her magic, severing Tuo’s tentacle. The separate part immediately ossified into a hand, closing hard around Fluttershy. The other part burst open with a newly formed respiratory system, piping madly through flute-like tubes of bone and half-formed vocal cords.

Flurry cast her support spells on herself, buying herself more time. Despite being a literal god, she still had limits—and next to no formal training in magic, apart from what her father had taught her. Which had been mostly useless. Unicorns and alicorns were entirely different species; their magic never seemed to work the way it was supposed to when she tried to use it.

The snail-construct grasped what was left of Tuo, pulling him in. Flurry teleported behind it, casting a spell that dropped the temperature to well below freezing. The snails, being cold-blooded, immediately began to slow. The construct turned, as if to reach out to grab her, but she issued a sonic shockwave. The blast pushed the snails apart and, in their weakened state, they could not pull themselves back together quickly. With Snails himself exposed, Flurry shot a beam of icy magic directly into his chest—freezing him and the snails around him into a solid block of ice.

She redirected her attack at Tuo, attempting to freeze him—but his mindless body compensated, developing a thick layer of blubber and black wool. New apertures opened, casting magic fire to warm himself—and he charged toward her, his thousands of teeth-filled eyes wide with terror and confusion.

It was not even arguably a spell that had done this to him. Flurry understood it to be more of a flaw. She did not know how, exactly, he had been created, but understood it had been a difficult process. His father was a lumpy, self-important earth-pony and his mother a genetically perfect but physically ruined eastern-type pureblood unicorn. Whatever male portion actually made up Tuo’s genetics, it had been sourced from somewhere else—and whatever magic had bound it to him was inherently unstable.

She changed her magic type, biasing it toward a support functionality while fully sacrificing her defense and offense parameters—at the same time redirecting the support spells she had cast on herself. The mass of flesh swarmed around her, puncturing her armor and herself—but this only increased her determination. The armor was strong, a combination of the pinnacle of Imperial engineering combined with the ancient and arcane relics of the far greater Empire that had preceded Cadence. She was forced to rely on it for the time being—because this was one of the few cases where she could actually know danger.

She was like him—in a sense. The corruption that was tearing him apart could take root in her, if given enough time. Which, perhaps, he was subconsciously attempting to do—or to prevent.

Her spells hit him with surprising force for being simple support spells—and he cried out in confusion as he was forced back, the power of the magic leeching the magic that supported his genetic instability and healing the anti-wounds that covered his body. The effect was immediate and dramatic but incomplete. The mutating flesh slowed, being driven back into a form that partially resembled a half-formed, distended parody of a pony.

It was not enough. But Flurry had known that. It had been too long. Her magic alone would not be able to pull him back.

She fired a shockwave, vaporizing the flesh that surrounded her and clearing a path. She saw the half-formed shape of his skull, and an eye in the right place. He looked so afraid.

She charged forward, drawing a specialized weapon—or perhaps a surgical tool. An injector loaded with a single crystal she was not supposed to own, but had managed to steal just in case this happened. It was one of the few that did not originate from the Crystal Empire, nor one that had been quarried by rock-worshiping cultists in Equestria. It had not even been born in the earth—but rather formed by the action of flesh. It had been her mother’s, a gift from a batpony stallion named Anhelios who she had known a long time ago.

She put the injector against his half-formed skull and fired it into his brain. Tuo’s head was knocked back by the impact, and the crystal sparked with strange magic—magic that flowed through his body, tearing through flesh and devouring entropy. Genetics were made orderly, mutations reversed, and aberration of growth suffused by orderly organization. The magic that flowed was an indicator of the true nature of the universe: that entropy was limited, and always decreasing, utilized as the greatest of fuels by the most powerful of machines and gods alike.

The piping and gurgling became a shocked scream as he condensed back on himself, bones cracking and popping as he was violently reset to his original form. In seconds, he stood before her, surprised and nude.

He blinked, clearly unsure as to where he was, and then spat out the crystal. It had grown slightly in size.

“I...did the thing?”

Flurry smiled. “Yeah. You did the thing.”

Her magic surrounded his head—and then, with a crack, she reversed the direction it was facing. So that he could see his own back.

Fluttershy screamed as Tuo dropped to the ground, twitching somewhat.

“Don’t be such a prude!” shouted Flurry. “You know he deserved it!”

Fluttershy stared in shock. “But—but—EEK!”

Tuo stood up, grasping his head in his own magic and, with a crack, resetting it to its correct position. He sighed and, with a flash of red light, pulled Flurry’s spare sword from her scabbard, turned it with a flourish, and ran her through. Flurry gasped, her tongue lolling outward—and then she let out a tiny moan as he twisted the blade.

“Oh...Tuo...penetrating me in front of Fluttershy? How—how forward!” She let out a long moan as saliva dripped from her mouth. "And you even twisted it inside me..."

Fluttershy put both her hooves over her mouth in shock. “Oh my!”

“We heal, right?” Flurry laughed, pulling her sword out of her, the wound almost instantly healing. She smiled broadly. “Did you know that he had as spell that can make your teeth explode? One. At. A. TIME.”

“I do excel at dentistry,” admitted Tuo. “But I appreciate her more ‘rip-and-tear’ attitude. How quickly easily she blurs the line between ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’. Then, once I'm empty, she can wear me like a coat.”

Fluttershy quivered, and took several steps back. From her perspective, they could not have looked more different—and yet there was a certain verisimilitude in both of their eyes. A sickness, from her perspective at least.

She looked up to where Snails was frozen in place. The snails that had broken free were now falling to the ground, dripping and retreating back from whence they had come. Fluttershy had no idea how to free him.

“So now what?” asked Flurry.

“A change of plans, I think. I have inspected the temple design with our benefactor, from our schematics. With the path now open, t his one will prove useful. So we will capture her alive.”

“Alive?” squeaked Fluttershy.

“Would you prefer the alternative?”

Tuo shrugged. “For the sake of sporting chance, we shall grant you a ten second head-start.”

Flurry’s eyes widened—but she smiled. “A hunt? Seriously?”

“With her love of animals, it seems appropriate.”

“To hunt her down and put her in a cage?” Flurry laughed, ionizing her sword. “Sure. Let’s go. Starting...now.”

Fluttershy stared at them, not understanding—but feeling disgusted at what they had both become.

“Eight,” said Tuo. “You may want to run.”

Fluttershy was about to protest, but found that she could not. Her hooves had gotten a wholly different idea and, once again, she found herself sprinting. It was about all she could do. There was an ache deep in her head, and she knew she could not summon any more Chaos—and her Stare was too powerful to stop Flurry without hurting her again. And, considering what it did to an alicorn, Tuo would probably not withstand it at all.

Ten seconds was not long enough to thaw Snails, or even to figure out how. So the only option was to run into the woods.

She did not go in any particular direction, but she heard the count inside her head—and felt the squeeze of the dried claw still wrapped around her midsection.

“Five,” said a voice in the distance. “Four.”

She squeaked, trying to run faster.

“Three. Two.” A long pause. Then, finally, “one.”

At that instant, Fluttershy tried to sprint one more time—but tripped and fell into a hole.

She landed hard against something cold, wet, and soft. The hole was deep and oddly grave-like. And, as Fluttershy rubbed her head and regained her wind, she realized to her horror that it in fact was.

Buried at the bottom was a limp body of a gray earth-pony.

Chapter 19: Beware the Janitor

A pair of hooves clapped onto her shoulders, the lump of pony turning around sharply, his luminescent eyes cutting through the darkness and dampness of the hole.

“Wait wait WAIT WAIT—!”

“THIS IS MY HOLE! IT WAS MADE FOR MEEEEEEE!”

And with that she was violently thrown out of the hole and back to the surface. Out of breath and nearly passing out, Fluttershy looked back to see a pony poke his head out of his own grave and glare at her.

“Stay out of my hole! Pervert!”

Fluttershy stared, not understanding—but then realized that she actually knew this pony.

“Wait...didn’t you fall into a propeller?”

His glare intensified. “What kind of pilot hasn’t gotten sucked in a propeller or a jet engine at least, like, five times? The planes, they hunger for flesh. And how am I supposed to tell if it’s on?”

“Because it’s...spinning?”

His eyes widened for a moment, then went back to glaring over the wall of his hole. “Stop outthinking me! What are you, some kind of philosoaper? I don’t even use soap...it tastes real bad…except when it doesn't...”

He produced from his hole a brilliant, multicolored slug—and promptly licked it. The slime caused him to immediately derp, his eyes flashing various colors from the slime.

“Um...I think that’s poisonous?”

“Your mom is poisonous. Hail Satin.”

Fluttershy stiffened. “What did you just—”

She heard a rumble through the forest—and the barest rustle of leaves as the two mercenaries charged forward, intending to give her the poke.

“We have to hide!”

“Not in my hole you’re not! It’s where I keep an absence of soil! And you can’t not have any!”

The air beside Fluttershy hissed as Tuo emerged from a teleport. She felt the claw around her tighten, then reach out and merge back to his body. He had grabbed her—and she was about to get stole. Again.

“You again?” snapped the pilot, suddenly standing beside Tuo, still licking a slug—or rather, the absence of a slug; he was instead licking his own hallucination and tasting the sound it made. “I don’t remember you at all. What happened to the weird pyramid? You trying to not compensate for something or what?"

Tuo looked at him, disinterested. “Go away.”

He fired a blast of red magic, a paralysation spell—and it rebounded off the pony’s body, repelled by the sudden appearance of glowing runes implanted under his skin.

Tuo’s eyes widened. “Wait, what—”

The pony was fast. He pulled his head back as far as it went—and then headbutted Tuo. Directly in the horn. With such force that the horn dislocated and was fully pushed into Tuo’s skull—and his head was dislocated as well, forced between his shoulders so that he was barely peeking out.

Fluttershy was dropped, and managed to break free—as a plume of magic swallowed the pony, encasing him in cursed fire. Tuo stood, rapidly regenerating—but the pony just seemed to contemplate the invisible non-slug he held in his hoof, fully on fire but his body apparently quite incombustible.

“I’m not a witch,” he snapped. “I can’t be burned. I am not subject to inflammation."

A thin thread reached out from Tuo’s horn, grasping at the pony’s mind—but found no purchase.

“You can’t do that either.” He tapped his head. “That’s the first thing they do. Out through the nose. Like soup in reverse. Mind control don’t work if you ain’t got no brain. And how can you be loyal if you stop to think about stuff? Daybreaker doesn’t like questions.”

Tuo’s eyes widened, and he jumped back. “You’re—”

The pony smiled. “A janitor.”

Flurry appeared behind him, and with a cry slashed at his neck with her magic sword—only to have it be repelled by the magic that constituted his body. He turned, slowly, squinting in two different directions at once. Then a smile spread across his face.

“AHA! There you are!” he screamed, his voice rising several octaves—and before Flurry could react, he punched her in the chest, imploding her armor. Her eyes widened as she was thrown back, but he was already on top of her, administering a savage beating.

“You can’t sneak up on me, Nightmare Moon! I know who you are! They made me know who you are!”

“I’m not Nightmare Moon you—”

“Of course you are! You’re WHITE, just like she is!”

“Nightmare Moon is black—and I'm pink, you—ACK! My organs!”

“THOSE TWO THINGS ARE THE SAME COLOR!”

Tuo struck from the side, sending an arcing spell that tried to cut through the pony, only to have the temporary effect of knocking him off Flurry. It could not penetrate his body, nor stop him—or even slow him for very long.

“A Solarian Custodian!" He turned to Fluttershy in horror. "What have you done?!”

He dodged suddenly, reacting to a force almost too fast to be seen, his magic charging around one of his hooves before he punched the pilot in the chest—and as the pilot returned, Tuo rolled, performing an acrobatic maneuver and putting the full force of his motion into a pair of spells that struck the pony asymmetrically, causing him to spin—which again, did not slow him in the slightest.

“Flurry! SWORDS!”

Flurry, standing up and regenerating, threw him the blades—and Tuo caught them in his magic. Taking a stance, the ground around him ignited with light in the image of a flower, and every plant in his vicinity died, their life-force absorbed into him. Then he charged forward, striking with his hooves as his swords harried his opponent—but as powerful as they were, nothing could touch the pony, who seemed largely to be ignoring Tuo and focusing on his mission.

His face had gone blank, his eyes no longer filled with life and color. Only the single-minded desire to destroy the False Goddess.

Flurry raised her horn and cast an ice-spell. The pony was encased in ice, only to break through it without effort.

“You can’t freeze me, Nightmare Moon! I’ve been drinking my own cosmoline!”

"Then how about I melt it out of you!"

Flurry shifted position, taking an offensive stance. The air sparked around her and the sky darkened. The slight mist began to shift into a more potent rain—and lightning descended from above, summoned by her magic and through her. She forced the spell forward, overwhelming the pony in a blast of sustained electrical energy.

She almost laughed as it conducted through him to ground—but then she gasped and dropped to her knees.

"What's wrong?" demanded Tuo. "Is he resisting?"

"No he's...he's not resisting enough...there's too much...too much current..."

"Disengage at once!"

"I...I can't...why isn't he vaporizing?!"

The pony was not only not vaporizing, but began to approach, moving through the wave of ever-increasing voltage that was pouring through his body. Flurry was still forced to her knees, unable to stand, as the pony grew closer and closer—and as he raised one hoof, sparking with her own massive voltage, toward her nose.

"Don't you dare," she groaned through the exertion of keeping her own current from cooking her alive.

He reached out, slowly. And then he made the very gentles of contact. "Boop."

The short circuit was instantaneous, the entirety of the current redirected through both their bodies. Flurry cried out as she was accelerated backward by the Lorenz force of her own actions, her smoking body pushed through the trunk of several trees, her body overwhelmed both by the full force of her spell as well as the feedback wave it had generated. The other pony, though, stood unharmed and sparking. As if he had barely even noticed.

He stared at his hoof. "Ew. Nightmare snoot."

With a flash, a smoldering Flurry Heart reappeared beside Tuo. She was gasping for air, but managed to stand.

She and Tuo responded to each other, and without words focused a pair of magic beams on the pony, firing with their combined force of magic. The effect was so great that Fluttershy, who was attempting to hide in the hole, was fully knocked into it.

The pony was pushed back—but caught himself, his body withstanding the energy of their combined force.

Over the whine of ionization and the roar of magic, he spoke.

“It sure would be nice if I could feel this. It doesn’t feel like anything, you know. Being like this. But I can end the war...I can finally end the war…”

“The war is over!” cried Tuo.

“I don’t trust you, Specter, I can’t.” The pony took a step forward, even as the beams grew in power. Although the ground around him was quickly being reduced to liquid, he seemed totally ignorant of it. “You don’t get to decide that. I don't either. Nopony does.”

Flurry suddenly disengaged. She cast several spells on Tuo, his body writhing with sudden energy. He cast a complex cube-seal around the pony, who immediately sat down in the center of it.

“Geometry,” he hissed. “My one true weakness...now which one was the sine again?”

“You have to go,” said Tuo. “It won’t hold him for long.”

“Go where?!”

“Grab the soft one and teleport back to the support station. I will distract the Solarian.”

“My own wings, if we work together—”

“We’ll just make him angry!”

“Angry?” the pony stood up. “Oh yeah. I forgot. Who are you all?” He looked through the translucent cube, then gasped. “NIGHTMARE MOON! I’m gonna get you!”

He then walked through the first layer of the shield spell. The magic used to immortalize his body was far beyond Tuo’s ability to contain; he was a monstrosity created purposefully for the sole purpose of terminating alicorns. One so dangerous that Celestia had supposedly purged her former personal guard from existence.

Where the Agency had found one, Tuo had no idea. Or why they had ever let it out.

In his distraction, he did not notice the pony breaking the final seal—and the gray earth-pony stood before him, smiling.

“I have found the sine! Now I'm about to inverse your tangent. They did that one to me too, it hurts. Real bad."

Tuo dodged to the side, attacking on the alternate as he moved, the Solarian ignoring him utterly. Flurry, her eyes wide, did as Tuo had suggested—and jumped, grabbing Fluttershy.

“Wait wait WAIT WAIT—”

And then, with a pop, they were gone.

Chapter 20: The Capture of the Soft One

Caballeron knew little about the crystal ponies—and yet, at once, more far more than most ponies would ever know. In his misguided youth, he had spent at least several years searching for their lost Empire, intent on retrieving the Crystal Heart—only to eventually conclude that the Empire no longer existed. Which, in a sense, it never had, having been removed from reality utterly for over one thousand years.

He had recovered numerous texts and references, drawn from centuries prior—mostly deluded secondary sources talking about strange wonders and dark magic, and things that were demonstrably false—but some of the information had proven accurate.

His time in books, though, had left him with little interaction with the living crystal ponies themselves, even with their reappearance nearly over two decades earlier. It was difficult to believe, but the crystalline doctor who stood beside him was over one thousand years old—perhaps older than Celestia herself. They, unlike him, did not seem to age, so long as their bodies were suffused with the power of their Empire. The Crystal Heart, or what the ancient texts called the Heart of Darkness, provided a near unlimited source of energy and life to each and every one of them.

The doctor worked quickly and efficiently, performing his tasks with precision and dexterity. Although he was ancient, his technique was flawless and modern, utilizing the newest in Crystal Empire technology. Which only confirmed what Caballeron had come to understand. That technology as a whole was invariably in a state of decadence. That the achievements of the past were doomed to continually fade with the march of time, Equestria’s technological process forever in reverse. These techniques were not new, but ancient, having been forgotten long ago. A process that would invariably continue. Within one thousand years, ponies would no doubt be living in caves and eating grass.

Caballeron coughed. This attracted the attention of the doctor.

“You should really take the medicine. The new side-groups reduce the side-effects by almost seventy percent.”

“I don’t need them,” he snapped. “Do your job.”

“I am,” he said, calmly.

Lying on the bed was Argiopé, still unconscious, although the stinger in her neck had been removed.

“Cone snail venom is a dire poison to ponies,” he said.

“Not so much to changelings,” noted the doctor. “Their physiology is adaptive. She simply needs to change her organs to a type not subject to this particular poison. Which she already has, automatically.” He gave a thin smile. “Were she a drone, this might be a challenge. But she is a weaver. Probably one of the last of her kind. In Thoraxian hives, weavers are an obsolete caste.”

Caballeron eyed him suspiciously. “And how do you know that?”

His thin smile faded. He sighed. “Because when Sombra ruled us, I built the poisons to fight their kind.”

Caballeron shivered. He had forgotten that fact. That nearly every crystal pony, save for those born under the rule of Cadence, had lived under Sombra. They still remembered, even long after his death.

“Then...if I may ask…”

“I know,” said the doctor, adjusting a hydration IV for Argiopé. “And I don’t. He looks like him, but not that much. He was…” He considered for a moment. “I don’t know. By the time I was born, Sombra wasn’t really...a pony anymore.” He shook his head. “Those were dark times.”

“For me, it is but ancient history.”

“And you of all ponies should know, ancient history has a way of coming back up to get you.”

Caballeron frowned. “You’ve read the books, havn’t you?”

The doctor smiled. “My kids got me into them. I’m a huge fan of AK Yearling now. I thought you were a fictional character for the longest time.”

“I was invariably cast as the villain.”

The doctor shrugged. “I always kind of figured you as a tragic character. The way AK wrote you never really felt like you were ever fully the bad guy. I always felt she liked you, in a way.”

Caballeron felt a strange sensation, and a deep fear. He suppressed a coughing fit.

The doctor smiled. “I’m not afraid of Tuo. I’m not even afraid of the other one. His granddaughter.”

“What?”

Caballeron did not receive an answer—because with a burst of energy, the pony he knew as Lady Fear teleported into the room—along with a pale, pastel pony covered in mud.

“GAH why do you not fit through the teleport?!" she cried, "why are you so dang fat?!”

The yellow pony seemed nauseous. “Do you think I like being shot across interdimensional space?”

Fear did not answer. She instead cast a spell that summoned glowing, magical ropes that surrounded the other pony’s body. The Pegasus squealed as she fell onto the floor.

“Help, help!” she cried, wriggling but unable to free herself. “I’m being turned on!”

A magic bond appeared over her mouth, gagging her.

“Excuse me,” said the doctor, calmly. “My Princess, this is a hospital.”

Caballeron thought that was a strange way to address her—until he realized that she very obviously did have wings. Making her an alicorn. And it all suddenly clicked into place. That the history he had deemed untrue was, in fact, correct.

And it explained why she had the same powers that Seht had, all those years ago.

“Princess,” he said, bowing.

“Can it.” She turned to the doctor. “I need support. Tuo’s dealing with something called a Solarian Custodian, which is apparently a really tough janitor.”

Argiopé sat up suddenly, her eyes luminescent green. “They are in fact Daybreaker’s personal guard, her purposefully created companions.”

Caballeron felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “Argiopé?”

She turned sharply to him—and her expression was waxy and emotionless.

“No,” she said.

Her body shifted, growing in size and becoming that of Tuo. He turned his head the other way, grasping Argiopé’s bio-clothing in his green magic and pulling it toward himself. When it touched him, it assembled into a high-collared shirt, vest, and a strangely dark suit-jacket.

“What are you—what have you done to her?!”

“I am currently engaged in combat with the Solarian Custodian. However, I was also able to astroproject into this body. Hers was the nearest viable vessel. I am currently possessing her.”

“Since when can you do that?!” demanded Flurry Heart.

“As I said. You could achieve great things if you were to practice.”

“Get out of her!” cried Caballeron.

Tuo stood up, using Argiopé’s body as a copy of his own. “I cannot do that,” he said. “Or, rather, I do not wish to. As I am afraid our timetable will need to be pushed upward.”

“This is madness, she’s a person you incorrigible bast—”

“Her body is safe so long as I control it. And I will do my best to ensure that it does not come to harm.” He paused. “However, I have neither my powers nor most of hers. I cannot shapeshift beyond my inherent mental form, which is of course me, and her body does not have my magic.”

“So, what?” asked Flurry Heart. “You’re female right now?”

Tuo sighed. “Do not make it weird, Flurry.”

“You’re the one doing the possession.”

“Because it is necessary.” Tuo faced Caballeron. “I do not know why it is here, but the Solarian is a distraction. And one that we now need to avoid. We must proceed into the ruins quickly.”

Caballeron, although finding the situation severely distasteful, forced himself to acquiesce. He knew that Argiopé was ostensibly safe, but that, more importantly, the mission must continue—and faster was better. Time was still running out.

“We cannot enter the pass I am currently blocking,” he said. “However, awakening the mega-slug cleared a system of pathways underground. We can descend into the pit and use the underground network to reach the central temple where the Golden Shell is located.”

“The mechs won’t work underground,” said Flurry. “Not for long, anyway. They’re too big.”

“Then we will leave them behind if we must. You and I will accompany Dr. Caballeron.”

“Out of the question!” snapped Caballeron. “You cannot force her to do that, it isn’t your body—”

Tuo completely ignored him. “Flurry, you will be taking Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened. Flurry seemed confused.

“Why?”

Caballeron nearly asked the same question—but he already knew the answer, and a smile crossed his face.

“I see,” he said. “How devious.”

Tuo nodded. “The Temple Guardian requires a sacrafice to allow us to pass.”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened even more—and muffled sounds began to escape her as she started to wriggle.

Flurry shrugged. “Works for me.”

“And the woodsman?” asked Caballeron.

“Neutralized,” added Tuo.

Caballeron nodded. Knowing, of course, that although everything was solved and accounted for, that rarely mattered in the end.

Things always got interesting toward the end, when success was almost in his grasp. And that was what he lived for.

Or would live for—except for one difference. This time, he would win.

Chapter 21: Being Levelheaded

The effect of magical frost on pony biology was somewhat profound. The freeze was in a sense far deeper than simple ordinary frost. Not only did it physically encase the pony in question, but rendered them metabolically inert—not unalived in the slightest, but in stasis. To the extent that, according to some whispered legends, a bath of liquid ice had once been used to seal one of the most powerful Chaos wizards in existence for one thousand whole years.

Snails was not a powerful wizard, though—nor much of a wizard at all. He therefore had little chance of escaping his icy prison. The only benefit to his situation was that, in her haste, Flurry Heart had not bothered to attach the necessary magical parameters that would have made the ice melt-resistant. So in the humidity and mild heat of a swampy but largely temperature forest, he was slowly melting.

This process might have taken days, weeks, or even months—had not Snails made numerous friends in the forest. Numerous snails had heard what had happened to him, and they converged on the ice. Their bodies, being cold-blooded, quickly slowed, but the little warmth they brought let them melt the ice little-by-little. Some came with magic, or special corrosive slime, slowly eating away at the ball of ice.

They became perturbed as the others came, but were too cold to run. This area was only in the barest borders of snail territory—and, in their place, there came the slugs.

Some of them were large and brown-green, their bodies mottled with warts and patterns oddly reminiscent of ancient runes. They stared with blind but intelligent eyes—and at their sides walked the others. Those that carried with them the ancient skeletons, the black necroslugs. Creatures that maintained forms that parodied the ponies that once dwelt here so long ago.

The snails became afeared—but did not flee. Either because they were too cold, or because they wished to protect their protector. The slugs, though, did not advance, nor did they make any move to.

One of the revenants turned its skeletal head toward the sound of an explosion and the shreik of a devastating magical wave—something in the great distance, in the shadow of the now-still mega-slug that was in the process of turning back into a sleeping mountain after having eaten hundreds of acres of swamp. Through the eyes of its skull, a pair of slugs stared out—and turned their attention back to Snails. The skeleton nodded.

Immature fire slugs dropped from above, landing on the ice. On contact with water from the molten frost, they immediately ignited—and began to dissolve their way through it through the internal heat they produced.

The ice dropped from where it had been suspended, striking the moist ground and fracturing—then, with a cracking sound and some time, it began to break open.

It eventually did open, freeing Snails—but the last push was not from the combined action of the gastropods that surrounded it. Rather, Tuo was punched with such force that he shattered the ice as his body was thrown through two large trees and utterly broken on its surfaces.

The act of being struck by a unicorn blown back by his own feeback wave shattered the ice—and Snails, after several hours of being solid, sat up with a gasp.

He blinked. “Well, that’s just great,” he said, looking down at himself. “Now I’m cold.”

He looked over his shoulder, finding Tuo laying in the dirt, dressed in the remnants of a secondary set of armor that was now tattered and sparking while his body was in the later stages of regeneration. Although he healed rapidly, he had still grown tired and thin—and his chest was heaving from being so badly winded.

“You need more cardio, eh?”

“Snails...you may want to run.”

Snails shrugged. “Snails don’t run, so why should I?”

Tuo pointed with a shaking hoof.

Snails squinted and saw that a pony was approaching them. A gray earth-pony, his eyes oddly empty, his body soaked in black fluid.

“Now I’ve got you, now I’m going to eat you…”

Snails stood up, and the pony stopped, eyeing them both. He frowned, then pointed at Snails.

“Are you him, or somepony else?”

“I’m me.”

“Am I you?”

Snails shrugged. “I sure hope not?”

“Why? What’s wrong with being me? Don’t answer that, I already know.”

“I have been fighting him for the past three hours,” gasped Tuo. “He is utterly resistant to all forms of magic, and he seems largely indestructable.”

“Well, yeah. He’s one of those sun-janitors.”

Tuo’s eyes widened. “You—”

Snails shrugged. “I’ve met one before.”

“There are MORE?!”

“There are?” asked the pony, suddenly confused. “Did you tell her you met me?”

“I don’t think time works that way.”

“What do I know about herbs?” He leaned over, looking at Snails’s cutie mark. “What do you know about herbs? You’re a snail. I guess that makes sense. You keep eating my garden. Or would, if I knew where I put it. But potatoes are a terribly secretive fruit.” He shook his head. “Can’t trust a potato. Those nitro-express rounds sure are a pain in the butt. So expensive.”

Tuo tried to stand, charging his magic.

“How about we don’t do that?” asked Snails.

“He is a Solarian Custodian, I—”

“They don’t attack unless you attack them first. Didn’t you ever try to be nice?”

Tuo’s eyes widened, and he blushed slightly, clearly feeling deeply humiliated. He lowered his magic and, seeing this, the gray pony sat down, produced a slug, and began to calmly lick it.

Snails was thoroughly disgusted by this, but maintained his composure if only for the sake of figuring out what had just happened to him.

“Do you live here?”

“I sure hope not. This place sure is damp.”

“Do you know how you got here?”

The pony shrugged. “Gravity. That’s how I get most places. I’m a pilot, you know. I don’t know why.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did I.” He paused. “I sort of...woke up. And there were other ponies there. That weird demon-thing, the big guy, and two weirdos.”

“Weirdos?”

“Yeah. Real pointy-looking guys. Like you. Except they had apple cutie marks. One was a whole apple, the other was a slice. I mean, what is that? It’s oddly suggestive. And if they’re related, I’d have an inferiority complex if I was the slice-guy.” He took a lick from a slug. “I mean, the only way it’d be worse is if it was an apple core and a cored apple…”

Snails searched his memory. The only apple-based cutie marks he knew were the Apple family, and the only one that had a horn was still too young even to have a cutie mark.

“Ring a bell?” asked Snails, mostly to Tuo.

“No,” replied the unnamed pony, “but I know for whom it tolls.”

Tuo sighed. “I doubt I could ring any manner of instrument.” He was laying on his side, slowly being coated in snail slime that would eventually leave him quite well preserved. “I don’t even think I can stand up.”

“I had that problem, once,” said the gray pony. “Then they did the nose-thing and took my wings, and now I don’t even sleep. Just...awake. Nightmare Moon can’t get you if you don’t sleep.”

“Even I sleep,” said Tuo, sounding either afraid or interested.

“I know. You have that fancy crystal. Or you used to. They weren't asleep though. Not after what happened to them.”

“What crystal?”

The pony slowly blinked, his eyes closing at slightly different rates. “I don’t know where I am. You’re two ponies. That doesn’t make any sense.” He turned to Snails. “But if he’s not him, who am I? How am I supposed to even know the context here?”

Snails shrugged. “I just don’t ask.”

The pony squinted at him, then nodded.

Snails nudged Tuo, who was starting to slip into unconsciousness.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve got to save Fluttershy, don’t I?”

“Out of the question. I require her as a sacrifice to gain entry to the central artifice-tomb.”

“Well, sure. That sounds about right. But you’re evil. So I have to stop you, eh?”

The gray pony nodded. “Pretty sure that’s the law.”

“Evil? I’m lawful good.”

Snails and the gray pony looked at each other.

“Then what are we?”

“I’m a janitor who flies planes and you’re...a really talkative snail?”

“Are we...the bad guys?”

“Obviously,” snapped Tuo. “My work is perfectly legal and moral by definition.”

Snails shrugged. “I don’t care. Still have to save Fluttershy. And you already gave away she’s gonna be sacrificed. So now I just need to know where, eh?”

“I am not going to give you that information.”

The gray pony stepped forward. He bent down, grasping a small plant in his mouth, and pulling it out, revealing a bulbous, swollen red root. “Then we’re just going to have to beet it out of you…”

“You can try. It may cause permanent neuroligical damage to the changeling, but she is old anyway.”

“Or,” said Snails.

The gray pony seemed surprise. “You want me to beat him with a rock? Ore seems pretty extreme, but okay. I’ve already snuffed him like eight times, I think he can candle it.”

“Why bother? He’s Tuo Perr-Synt-Milk.” Snails smiled. “So we just need to negotiate.”

“For what?” asked Tuo, rolling his eyes—but unable to hide his sudden interest. “You have nothing I want. As attractive as you are, you cannot win me over with any favor you can hope to offer.”

Snails pointed at the gray pony.

Tuo sighed. “Or him. He is arguably even less pleasant than you. And that is indeed saying something.”

“You can’t lie to me, Tuo. I know you want him.”

“That’s—”

“What did you call him? Other than a janitor?”

“A Celestial Custodian, they were living weapons created by Starswirl the Bearded to serve alongside Daybreaker in the Nightmare War—”

“And how many Celestial Custodians do you own?”

Tuo’s eyes widened with the sudden realization, and, although he suppressed it, he lacked his mother or father’s negotiation skills. Snails smiled, knowing that hook had already been set.

“There’s not that many of them. I’d bet they’re pretty valuable.”

“I’m worth my weight in meat,” whispered the pony.

“Historical. Powerful. Magical. One of a kind.”

The pony sighed. “Because all my friends got got, and now I’m all alone…”

Tuo stayed silent, glaring at them, then let out a long sigh.

“Once again, I find myself defeated by you, Snails. You know me far too well.” His horn flickered, peeling a small component out of his damaged armor and holding it out to Snails. The color of the magic changed as Snails took it, and the object immediately turned, pointing into the foggy woods.

“The navigator crystal assembly will lead you to where you need to go. I will not be able to go with you. I will rest here. BUT. I will also not permit you to interfere with my work. I have fulfilled my role by answering your question—but I do not intend to allow you to succeed.”

Snails pointed at the gray pony. “I’m taking this guy.”

“I make a great meat-shield,” said the pony, nodding. “You never know when you need to be shielded from the meat.”

Tuo shrugged weakly. “So long as he is delivered in the end. I have already selected a space for him in my garden. Or perhaps I shall have him glazed.”

With this thought in mind, he put his head down into the moss, and as he sunk deeper into it, he closed his eyes, shutting down. The degree of metabolic stasis was far greater than that of any normal pony, with his heart ceasing to beat—but he was simply inactive. Resting and regenerating his magical power.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Snails. “He’ll wake up, eventually.”

“Lucky him.”

The gray pony sighed, and the two proceeded, following the crystal—not realizing that they were already too late, and that, by the time they would reach the vast hole that they needed to descend, the sacrifice would already be made.

Chapter 22: The Obsidian Halls

The air within the tomb—if it could be called that—was intolerable. It bordered on unbreathable, a combination of the offgassing of the deepest peat filling most of the stone chambers combined with immense humidity that had resulted in every manner of strange mold and light-fearing fungus. For a pony whose lungs were themselves full of increasingly toxic mycelia, this was especially painful—but the disease within Caballeron found it more than tolerable. Even as he walked across the stone floor, he could tell it was here too. Not installed on purpose, as it was sometimes, but a simple aspect of old places. The very fungus that had infected him grew here too.

He doubted the others felt the pain. The alicorn was surely immune to disease, as they all were, and he already knew that Argiopé was resistant to most pony-based pathogens. The mercenaries were likely safe; the crystal ponies had remained to secure the exit, save for two in a pair of hermetically sealed mechs that barely fit through the long, geometrically infuriating corridor.

It curved in a way that was barely perceptible but ultimately great. It was deceptive in that way, as the deepest and strangest of ruins were. Arranged to look straight but in truth looping and impossible, a product of brilliant or diseased minds.

From the patterns, it was clear that it was never intended to be subterranean—and yet it lacked windows or any sign of light sources. As if the inhabitants had totally escued the light of both the sun and the moon. For what purpose, Caballeron did not know, nor did he care to—and yet he was still aware of it.

The culture had been an artistic one, which was fortunate. Those that produced carvings and paintings tended to be the less mad of them all, not like those that left the walls blank and their tombs filled with blasphemous and unthinkable machinery. Those that had sacrificed their souls to that which existed before magic had no need for art, nor understanding of it. Their ancient forms, long-since rendered inert, simply ticked in the darkness, waiting, their tombs barren—but here, the path of civilization had been carved into the walls themselves.

Although they were covered with dark, often-large slugs, they remained distinct and clear, carved from pure obsidian by some unknowable force. The mechs projected a harsh blue-green glow, casting deep shadows on the frescos that represented a lost civilization’s last gasps.

They were beautiful. Tall dressed in strange fashion. Robes that were at once ancient and yet strangely ancient, bearing a combination of northern earth-pony fashion as well as something more primitive, a remnant of a much older civilization.

The artist had carved them in exquisite detail, but had stylized the faces, rendering them gaunt and stark, with large black eyes. These ponies that walked in the shadows of vast cities and towers, or who were depicted performing strange rituals that Cabaleron could not hope to understand—although he had a sinking feeling. The rituals these carved figures performed were not arcane. Nothing as simple as spells or summoning demons. No magic seemed to be depicted at all.

“Such frescos,” said Tuo, from Argiopé’s body. “I will have to return here. To have them cut apart and brought to Singapone for reassembly. I have never witnessed one so complete. It would be a shame to let it decay here instead of in my possession.”

Caballeron understood. He had done his own fresco-cutting, drilling through ancient carvings and slicing away priceless stone artifacts to be sold to museums—or, more often than not, the wealthy. Especially Wun. Her son seemed to take after his mother rather thoroughly.

His methods, though, were despicable—but of course necessary. Still, Caballeron found his treatment of his beloved changeling unpleasant. He had spent enough time with Argiopé to be able to hear her, in a sense. All changelings were to some degree telepathic, but older higher-caste changelings were much more so than most. It was how they knew what to become when they changed. But the transmission had come to work both ways, and Caballeron could feel her, half-conscious and moving, forced into a restless sleep through dark magic and a will that was disturbingly alien. Argiopé very likely did not know how to escape the grasp of a being utterly incapable of love—which was why she had generally found the purebloods so dangers.

The alicorn tugged hard at the luminescent construct-chains that bound her pastel captive. Caballeron was, of course, not an idiot. He knew who the Elements of Harmony were, as did everypony in Equestria—and knew that one of them was very likely the daughter of his most hated enemy. By appearance at least. The blue one.

But desperate times required dire solutions. Some sacrifices must be made.

“Tell me, Princess,” said Caballeron, hoping to distract her from further tormenting the captive. “Why is it that you have obscured your identity?”

She looked back over her shoulder. “Would you take me seriously if you knew I was Cadence’s daughter?”

Caballeron considered, then shook his head. “But then why Fear? If I may ask?”

“Because it’s my name.”

“Your mother named you ‘Fear’?”

“She named herself that,” noted Tuo.

“Shut your pie hole. I’m rightfully the Scion of House Twilight. Because auntie Twilight went sterile when she got her wings. Which makes my dad the Scion. And now me. My name is Twilight Fear.”

“Which is not a grammatically correct name,” noted Tuo, again. “House Twilight requires thematic unity in its naming conventions.”

“You wanted to name me ‘Twilight Dawn’.”

“It is heraldricly correct.”

“It’s stupid!”

“I like it,” said Fluttershy, quietly.

“What—where did your gag go?”

“I...might have swallowed it. Sorry. I’m stressed.”

Flurry’s horn flicked, and another magical gag was stuffed into Fluttershy’s mouth. From Caballeron’s perspective, Fluttershy seemed to enjoy it slightly more than she should have.

Then, behind him, Caballeron heard the mechs suddenly come to a stop. It was strange how they moved, how subtle their crystalline joints operated—they were almost totally soundless. They were themselves an aspect of technology, of the dark and accursed non-magic that Caballeron had come to hate. It was an ancient thing best left burried—although the Empress did not seem to believe that.

The princess stopped. She seemed about to ask the question as to why the mechs had stopped, but saw what their lights were focused on—and she surely understood what Caballeron had already come to learn. That inside those armored tanks of crystal and platinum, there were still ponies, small and afraid.

The room had widened into an asymmetrical ellipse, and in the center stood a statue, rising from the dark stone and basalt of the tiles, its form converted and carved at intersecting points into dark obsidian flecked with white speckles.

Caballeron felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and the fear grow through his body. He could not help but smile. He had never thought he would know this feeling again. The mystery, the terrified joy, the sense of power of being one of the few who might witness things that were his job to claim—he was glad to have known it again, even if it was for the last time.

Before them on a plinth of stone stood an enormous statue. In the light of the mechs’ crystal lamps, it seemed even more alien and ominous than it would have if lit by the flickering light of torches or the tiny glow of a unicorn’s horn.

It was a pony, but only in the most abstract sense. It rose from the floor, standing on what amounted to several hind limbs, looming over them with its front hooves outstreteched—except there were too many of them. Not two, but a symmetrical set of six, two of them tipped with long and vicious claws, one with something unnamable but almost mechanical, and the others with cloven hooves.

This assembly of angular material carved to impossible geometry sat around a core, represented in the figure’s hollowed-out body. A perfect sphere sat at the center of its body, between the two disconnected portions of its top and bottom, suspended in the air by some unseen and arcane mechanism. It was the only portion of so distinctly gray stone Caballeron had seen in the whole of the ruin, and it was slowly revolving, still turning by the pressure of a hoof that must have tapped it thousands of years prior.

The head faced them, looking down at them with impassive but disturbingly alert-looking eyes. Its face was that of a pony, but rendered as a skull—in a strange and incomplete way. As if it was not meant to represent bone, but some other form, coming to angular lines and geometric shapes at its periphery. As if it were meant to look like it had once been alive to distract from the fact that it never was.

Its tiny, small-pupiled eyes seemed to stare at them. On its forehead, though, there was a plate, one inscribed with ornate but incorrect letters.

“Crap,” swore Flurry Heart.

“An idol, perhaps,” suggested Tuo.

Caballeron shook his head. “No, my boy. I know idols. And that is not one.”

Tuo turned to him, incredulous with his stolen face. “Oh?”

“It is like their walls, their carvings. Not a religious aspect. Not a god.” He smiled weakly. “It is a recording.”

“Of what?”

“I’d rather not know,” said Flurry. She tilted her head, as if trying to view it through her helmet. “Why do I feel like I’ve seen it before?”

“What does the word on its head mean?” asked Tuo, ignoring his associate.

Caballeron looked up at it, translating. “It is a nonsense design. Stolen from the lexicon of the Great Helm and bastardized. I doubt this culture had much in the way of writing at this point. If they even developed it at all.”

“That does not answer the question.”

“Life,” said Caballeron. “But spelled poorly. The second character is not the appropriate one. It really says something closer to ‘un-death’ or ‘not-dead’.”

Tuo stared at him, as if contemplating this knowledge, then nodded. Perhaps he was thinking of how to sever the statue from its plinth, to put it in his bathroom or whatever the wealthy were apt to do with sacred relics. Caballeron did not especially care, but knew the difficulty of hunting such large statues. The infrastructure required was simply too great an expense. Small idols were far more profitable.

Furthermore, he had a sneaking suspicion that this was a bad sign. It was ancient, but not the safe magical runes that his former rival Ahuizotl had favored. The lines were too strange, the structure too odd—the sphere in its core too perfect. Caballeron suspected that this was not a god or a mutant at all—but a representation through the lens of a primitive culture exposed to blasphemous ancient concepts. Their depiction of a machine.

Crossing its path, and moving onward, he felt this sneaking fear grow deeper and more intense. The walls opened, broadening to a degree that it was almost impossible to light the whole of it—and the geometry changed, no longer built to the same sacred angles but to far more precise curves, governed by new math beyond even the sorcerer-architects that had constructed the far older paths beyond the statue.

The icons they drew had increased vastly in complexity. A richness and surge of culture, depicted ever more stylized, the figures with longer faces, darker eyes, limbs distended and lengthened against bodies increasingly geometric and symmetrical. Bodies now depicted in abstract, surrounded by geometric patterns and symbols that Caballeron did not understand. Ones with right angles and lines drawn between them, tracing out patterns sliced deep into obsidian.

A certain motif became increasingly common, one Caballeron found distressing even though he did not understand the cultural significance of it. A long, drawn-out symbol of a latter, a twisted double-helix that had been annotated, its rungs labeled with the same repeating pattern of four symbols. Symbols that appeared more and more often in smaller and smaller font, depicted around the figures that grew increasingly more and more gaunt, more and more descriptive in contrast to the excessive stylization that they were depicted in.

Caballeron did not know why so much anatomic focus would be placed on figures that were clearly not drawn to be realistic. As if the creators of these increasingly complex carvings were obsessed with describing the art their culture had generated rather than depicting something realistic.

At least, so he hoped.

He saw Tuo’s eyes focused on the double-helix motif.

“Weird magic,” muttered Flurry Heart.

“This is not magic,” said Tuo.

“Really? How can you tell?”

“The helix only has two. They were earth-ponies.” He looked back, his eyes luminescent in the light of the mech’s glow. He stared directly at Caballeron. “Like you.”

Caballeron looked at the distorted figures and shivered.

“No. They were not. Not this far into the temple.”

Tuo considered this in solemn silence, then continued—and so did the carvings. Along the walls, they grew increasingly into a wild array of designs, the ponies depicted ever-changing in form and shape, their diagrams and patterns rising toward a crescendo of utter madness. And then, at a point, a total collapse.

The madness continued by the carvings became sloppy. Confused. The figures were not carved deep, and the stone fractured at points, broken by shaking hooves and improperly chosen chisels. The mechanism to create beautiful carvings had been lost. In places, they had fallen away, revealing the basalt beneath and the lining of deep metal conduits cast and implanted directly into its rune-inscribed structure.

Images of sickness. Distortion. Of encroaching cancer—and a focus on slugs. Slugs that grew from flesh, arising from the hulking and swollen forms of something horrifically similar to ponies. A decadence that increasingly tended toward repeated depictions of gastropods—before ending entirely. And the walls became blank.

Then, finally, they came to a precipice. The walls simply seemed to open up to an abyss of darkness. A foul, wet smell arose from the depths—and slight gurgling echoed from the void.

A thin precipice extended outward over the pit, ending in a tiny, suspended platform.

“Here we are,” said Tuo.

“Where?” asked Flurry.

Tuo produced a small crystal, one taken from his support ship, and held it out in Argiopé’s green changeling magic. It twisted, projecting an image of letters. A recording of a secondary-source text.

“It is recorded that these depths contain the Guardian. It defends the final room, the ultimate temple itself where the Golden Abalone were once bred and were kept. The Agency lists that there are secondary pathways, ones they drilled sixty years ago, but we lack the time to clear our way through the rubble and labyrinth. Would you not agree, Doctor?”

Caballeron nodded. “Then I see. We are forced to take the traditional route. What is required?”

“According to the text, it is a standard sacrifice system. The required offering is listed as one (1) maiden.”

“Wait, what?” said Fluttershy, suddenly alert.

“Dang it—you swallowed another one?”

She squeaked. “Sorry. I have a strong bite.”

“It does not matter. Sacrifice her.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

With no further formality and utterly lacking the appropriate flair, Flurry Heart levitated Fluttershy, still bound, and placed her on the platform. Then nothing happens.

“Isn’t there supposed to be, you know, sacrifice?”

Tuo skipped through his crystal. “The source is unclear. Perhaps we ought to have marinated the maiden? Or based her in her own juices?”

“I’m not marinating Fluttershy.”

“A dry rub, perhaps?”

Their discussion was interrupted by a sudden gurgling—that grew louder into a wild gibbering. The ground subtly shook, and it became apparent that they sacrafice was indeed occuring—just at a slow rate.

The slug rose from the darkness, at first a pure and inky black—but as its massive form pulled itself up the walls on a river of slime, its body ignited with bioluminescent fire, a pattern of green lights like thousands of eyes arranging themselves into twisting lines of illumination. It roared, leaning back, its wavy pale tentacles opening to reveal eyes with narrow, distressing pupils.

Fluttershy stared up at it, releasing a squeak and cowering. The creature loomed over her, and although it was not as large as the giant that had sealed the tomb with its body, it was still hundreds of feet high, a bulk of muscle pouring torrents of stinking slime from its warty surface.

It seemed to see her, then leaned forward—its front end opening, revealing a vortex of millions of translucent fangs as long as a pony. It descended toward the platform, and Fluttershy sighed.

“Well, I do taste delicious. At least I’ll be a good meal for you, Mr. Slug. Or Ms. Slug. Sorry.”

It leaned in, its barbells reaching forward and tasting her—and continuing to taste her, covering her with slime as they gently patted her. Then, after a moment of consideration, its mouth closed and its head fell flat against the end of the platform.

“Oh?”

It nuzzled Fluttershy gently, further covering her in slime.

“What the heck?!” cried Flurry Heart. “You call that a sacrifice?! Tuo, you read the book wrong!”

“I am very adept at reading,” said Tuo, frantically flipping through the pages of his copied text. “Something must be wrong.”

“Give it to me,” sighed Caballeron.

Tuo hesitated, but eventually acquiesced.

“How do I turn the pages on this thing?”

“Here.” Tuo adjusted the crystal to show the correct page, translated to Equestrian—but Caballeron did not read the translation. He instead focused on the image of the original text.

He sighed. “You are indeed a linguistic novice. Your translation abilities have a great deal of room for improvement.”

“Of course,” said Tuo, demonstrating a remarkable degree of humility for a pureblood unicorn. “You are of course our resident linguist. And, from this one’s memories, you appear to be a very cunning one.”

“Don’t look at those memories!” snapped Caballeron before turning his attention back to the document. “You translated ‘maiden’ without the appropriate cultural context. The more correct term is ‘virgin mare’.”

They all looked at Fluttershy. Her eyes widened and she immediately blushed.

“Oh...well...oh my. This is...just as public as I imagined it would be.” She cleared her throat. “I am...well, an adult mare, and I have...certain needs…”

“Stop please,” plead Tuo. “I would rather not go into specifics. I think most individuals would rather not know the specifics.”

“I unfortunately know the specifics,” muttered Flurry.

“Not...all of them,” admitted Fluttershy.

“One more word and I toss you in the pit.”

Tuo sighed, taking the crystal back and putting it away. “How inconvenient. Then I suppose I am forced to resort to my original plan.”

Flurry turned to him. “Original plan? What original plan?”

Tuo approached her then, with Argiopé’s full strength, pushed her out to the platform.

“Wait, what—NO! Not ME, you idiot!”

“You meet the parameters. Just get eaten and stop whining.”

“I—I—” Flurry Heart bristled. “I am the daughter of the goddess of LOVE! I am the one true ruler of the Crystal Empire, The One True Goddess, destined to reign with an iron hoof! I spend every night on a veritable HEAP of the softest, muskiest stallions in the Crystal Empire—no, all of EQUESTRIA! My conquests are innumerable! I am a TRUE RULER, corrupt and powerful in all the ways of snuggle-sexy-times—”

She was interrupted as the slug’s mouth opened and a spear-like tongue was driven through her body, its lethal point emerging through the side of her chest. Flurry looked down, her eyes wide, and immediately blushed.

“Buck all of you,” she sighed, before screaming loudly as she was pulled into the creature’s maw and immediately swallowed whole.

Caballeron gulped back down his bile at the sight. His impression of Tuo had darkened, but his respect improved.

“You would sacrifice your own friend—a Princess—for monetary gain?”

“A princess who is distinctly indigestible. And who will not be pleased with me. My body will heal. Yours, though, is not so durable.” He paused. “Further, my actual body is currently unconscious. And Snails is on his way.”

“The woodsman?”

Tuo nodded. “I cannot do much with this body, and without Fear, we are badly underpowered. So, again, we must hurry.”

Caballeron nodded. Before them, the slug had responded to the offering and formed a bridge to the unseen far side—but from its pained gurgling, it was apparent that its meal of fresh virgin was disagreeing with it. From the muffled swearing, apparently quite a bit. How long the indigestion would continue before an extremely angry alicorn was passed through one of its orifices remained unclear—but Caballeron doubted the situation would be pleasant.

Passing Fluttershy, now unbound, he gestured to her. “Throw this one in the pit.”

“The—the pit?” she squeaked.

Caballeron smiled, but continued walking, his path illuminated by the bioluminescent flesh of the slug.

Tuo approached her. Fluttershy squeaked, but took a defensive stance—and his stolen magic sparked, sending out a cutting spell.

The bandages covering Fluttershy’s wings fell to the ground, her wings suddenly exposed.

She gasped. “You fiend! You pervert! What are—what are you doing to do to my wings?!”

Tuo leaned closer. “Can you fly?”

Fluttershy flapped her wings. Although it still hurt, she knew that it would suffice—and she nodded.

“Good. You will be wanting to leave.”

“Not without saving the Golden Abalone. And...um...probably getting Flurry vomited back up. She has a lot of angst but I think I still need to be a responsible adult.”

Tuo shook his head. “No. I do not think you know what we are dealing with here.”

Fluttershy paused. “And you do?”

“I have read my mother’s copy of the Necroponycon more than once. I know what the figure that statue was meant to represent is...or was. And I believe I have discovered the true meaning of this facility. It is not a temple. It is a machine. Meant to do something you would rather not witness.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not to you. If you escape. Please, Fluttershy. I have no interest in harming you. Just go.”

And with that, he shoved her off the platform and into the blackness below, watching as her wings caught her descent a few yards below. He stared at her for a moment, nodded, and continued on his way.

Fluttershy, likewise, watched him go—and was left alone with a glowing giant slug and a choice.

Chapter 23: The Slimy Hole

A number of slugs gravitated around a precipice, a region of dissolved fragments of rock that bordered the earthen caves that obscured ancient halls. They wandered about, finding the sudden presence of light from high above strange. Perhaps some of them remembered what the sun had once felt like through those overcast skies. Before it had all been buried.

Then, suddenly, a snail came flying through the air, passing in a graceful arc before plopping against a long-dead tree. The slugs watched this, at first bemused but then terrified, and proceeded to flee at maximum speed, slowly turning away and racing away at a dead sprint of nearly stopped. The snail, though, adhered well, and the rope tied to its shell became taught.

Snails pulled himself up from a lower shelf, a process that was somewhat difficult to do with hooves alone—but was made easy by his surprisingly prodigious musculature. In only minutes, he reached the top, to find the other pony waiting for him, drinking from a dented fuel can that he had managed to find somewhere.

“How did you get up here so fast?”

“Gravity is a conspiracy created by dirty, filthy moon-worshipers to create tides. What do we even need tides for? It just makes the ocean sneaky. If you fall asleep on the beach, it comes up and gets you.”

“Don’t you not sleep?”

He looked at Snails as if Snails was an idiot. “Obviously. Or else the tides will get me.”

Snails brushed himself off, then recoiled at the sight of slugs. They were departing the area, but he could still see them, and he was filled with an extreme sense of revulsion. Especially as he watched one crawl up the side of his immortal comrade, moving slowly over his eye. The pony did not even bother to blink.

“Are you…?”

“Licensed? Of course not. That’s why I have such good rates.” He paused. “Except that nopony ever pays me. So my rates must be really good.”

“I was going to say ‘undead’.”

The pony stared back at him, then shrugged. “How am I supposed to know that? What do I look like, a wizard? You’re the unicorn here.”

Snails was, indeed, a unicorn—but he had no idea how to check if somepony was undead. He reasoned that there was probably a chemical test, or a medical diagnostic procedure that more than likely involved whacking somepony with a yardstick. Lacking a yardstick, though, Snails instead removed his grappling snail and coiled the rope he had used. He turned his attention toward the slug-infested cave, one that already showed signs of pony-built architecture. This one, unlike the lower gates, was open—and it smelled like Fluttershy.

“Do you think she’s in there?”

“I very rarely think.”

Snails held up Tuo’s artifact. Unlike before, it traced a line directly into the dark, slug-infested pit.

“Great,” he said. “Looks like this is the right one.” He sighed, looking down at the ground and seeing muddy tracks. Tracks of many, with the characteristic hoof-shapes of crystal ponies.

“We’re probably going to have to be sneaky, eh?”

“I’m not painting myself purple.”

“Only did that myself once,” said Snails, gingerly stepping into the darkness and shuddering as he saw slugs retreat into the black. “Dressed up as Twilight Sparkle for Nightmare Night.”

“Twilights? There’s still them?”

“You know Twilight?”

He nodded. “Obviously. You don’t get cursed like this without a Twilight’s help.”

“Don’t know if I’d consider it a curse. More like bad luck.”

The gray stallion shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really question it. I just wish the others were still here. Is it wrong to wish the war was still going?”

Snails shrugged in response. Then he paused, reflecting at how long it had been since he had seen the others. Silver Spoon, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Diamond Tiara—and Snips. He could barely remember the last time he had seen his friends. “No,” he said. “I think it’s okay if it’s for your friends.”

Coming to a broadening in the path, Snails found that—unfortunately—they had been on the right track. Standing at the gate, waiting, were two looming crystal mechs as well as a small contingent of crystal ponies in their shiny crystal armor. All of them looked about as afraid as Snails felt, jumping periodically at the sight of slugs that they would then forget about and jump at again. Fortunately, few of them could see the numerous skeletal undead that stood beyond the range of their lights, their empty eye-sockets filled with black slugs that wriggled in silence, always watching.

George crawled back from across the gap, and Snails listened to his description, nodding.

“Right. Right. Sure.” He turned to the other pony, who was in the process of eating something that appeared to be somewhat resistant to his efforts. Probably a rock. “So. George found a way around. It’s too small for a pony, but I think I can fit. Through the power of mucous.”

“I wasn’t listening at all.”

“That’s okay, neither was I. The problem is, I have to go in front of those guys.”

The gray pony swallowed whatever he was eating. He blinked slowly. “So what do you normally do in this situation?”

Snails paused. He had actually never been this sort of adventurer; although he had wrangled aggressive snails, chased them to the highest mountains and dove to the deepest depths of the deepest waters, his adversaries had almost always been nature and himself. Dealing with ponies who were not Tuo were new to him.

So he drew on a different sort of inspiration.

“Well, if Snips and I were playing Ogres and Oubliettes, I would walk up to them and roll for persuasion. Almost always works.”

The pony nodded. “Got it.” He then stepped out into their line of sight, laid down, and rolled toward them on the incline.

“Wait, you’re supposed to...never mind...” Snails sighed. At least the distraction would be hopefully adequate.

One of the crystal ponies noticed a pony rolling toward them and, understandably, cried out.

“GAH! A body!”

They immediately began scrambling in their confusion.

“I’m not a body!” snapped the pony, standing up.

“GAH! That’s no body, he’s UNDEAD!”

The scrambling intensified.

“Um...ooga booga?”

One of the ponies stopped. “Oh,wait. That’s not an undead, that’s just a zebr—”

He was promptly smacked upside the head.

“Cubic, we can’t say things like that! Stop being racist, it was in the training!”

“Yeah!” said another. “My wife’s a zebra, stop being mean!”

The pony hung his head. “Sorry, guys. I forgot.”

“I’m not a zebra,” snapped the pony. “I’m a Pegasus.”

They all looked at him, even the mechs.

“Um...where are your wings, then?”

“If I knew that, do you think I’d tell you? Lot like you, you'd probably try to steal them!" He paused. "Probably a jar somewhere?”

“They...come off?”

“Not usually, no. Have you ever heard of a chain-scalpel?”

The ponies shivered.

“You can’t be here,” said one of the mechs—or, rather, the pony inside, her voice amplified by a system of crystal circuitry. “Please go back to wherever you came from. This is a restricted area and we are under orders to keep ponies out.”

“What about zebras?”

“The orders include all equids.”

“What if I’m a changeling?”

“Are you a changeling?”

“How would I even know?”

The ponies looked at each other, confused by this turn of events.

“This isn’t in the SOP,” complained one.

“It doesn’t matter. Do the thing.”

The mechs stepped forward, the smaller ponies moving out of the way—and they lowered their magic spears as they towered over the pony below. He looked up at them, not especially concerned—either because he could not die, or because he no longer cared if he did.

“It’s not working!” squeaked one of the mech pilots. “He’s not being intimidated!”

“Well, somepony here has to be,” argued the gray pony. “And if if it’s not me...well…”

A gasp from one of the mechs. “Then it has to be one of US!”

“Quick, somepony stop him, he’s turning the tables!”

“I can’t, I’m too intimidated to move!”

More squeaking, yelling, and confusion ensued.

Snails took this opportunity to sneak past them. It was disturbingly obvious why the Crystal Empire had chosen the forbidden path of technology rather than relying on pony soldiers. Ponies were simply not built for the wars that Cadence would eventually choose to fight.

Snails, however, was not a politician. He was a snail biologist. As such, when he found the correct hole, he slid into it.

It was indeed too small for a normal pony—but not too small for him. His body was preternaturally flexible, both a cause and result of his unusual academic ability, almost to the point of utter bonelessness. The mucous that covered his body acted as a powerful lubricant, allowing him to slip between the rock surfaces with ease. Motion was accomplished by undulation of his person, mimicking the motions of a snail.

The channel progressed, narrowing, but Snails was able to proceed without fear—even as he heard the sound of magical explosions behind him. He felt the rocks crumble and collapse near him, squeezing him tighter—and sealing him in.

Which meant there was only one way to go, and it was forward. Which was fine with him. There were slugs behind him, and now they could not get to him.

Except that he suddenly realized the possibility that there were, in fact, slugs ahead of him. This realization suddenly filled him with dread—but he was forced to fight through it, continuing. Fluttershy was counting on him, as were the Abalones. There was no time to stop now.

And, eventually, he emerged, plopping onto the ground in a wet heap. With a stretch, he relocated his limbs to their appropriate place and looked out, only to find darkness. Which was good, and peaceful. He refereed the darkness over the light—even though he knew he needed the light to see.

Hesitantly, he lit his horn. Light filled a vast space before him, a chamber that had likely been abandoned long before history was something that ponies bothered to record. Fragments of obsidian covered the walls, carved into monstrous depictions of things Snails was not creative enough to interpret. Crooked, mutated forms, shapes that were at once ponies and something else. A form of impressionism that gave the impression of in fact being utterly realistic.

Snails ignored the art. He did not know what this room was meant to be, although he saw numerous channels connecting to it. So, probably an air handling area, a nexus of vents. Which did not explain why the walls had been carved. The gaps were too small for ponies to enter, and there was no apparent pony-sized access door.

He once again held out Tuo’s artifact. It pulled itself in a direction, and Snails followed it, never once having the thought that he had been lied to. Until the organic mesh of aged slime that made up the floor collapsed and he found himself hurdling downward into darkness.

Falling down a shaft or chasm was not an unfamiliar circumstance, so it was not especially shocking even as he bumped hard against the sides. It was not nearly as bad as being thrown down a well, but certainly not fun, and he braced himself for the sudden and usually not very gentle kiss of dirt, rocks, or water that he anticipated at the bottom. And, of course, the invariably unpleasant “splat” he would make.

There was, indeed, a splat—but one that was surprisingly devoid of pain. Usually the splat came with substantial injury, although in this case it only felt like a sudden and moist deceleration. Snails slowed, stopped, and lay there for a moment, glad that he had not been totally broken—but his eyes widened with realization when he felt what he had landed on begin to slither away.

His immediate response was to scream like the littlest and shrillest of fillies. He jumped and fled, feeling them against his ankles as he fled for the safest and least-scary part of the room—a pile of bones.

He scrambled to the top of the island, panting from terror, and curled into a ball. He heard them around him, but he did not dare produce light. Because he already knew what he had fallen into.

The fall had brought him into a slug pit.

They began to move, gliding upon their slimy feet in every direction at a distinctly slow speed. Snails heard them. He felt their presence. He could even smell them.

Desperately, he tried to climb the walls—but it was even worse than being shoved down a well. He could gain no purchase. The surface was too wet and slimy. In the dark, he could not even tell how far he had fallen—but too far to throw a grappling snail. Even his magic was useless. He, like virtually all unicorns, had no idea how to teleport or perform a wing-spell.

Something wet touched his hoof, and he squealed.

He turned, closing his eyes as tightly as he could—and when he opened them, he saw that he could see. In the dim light of bioluminescence, he saw a slug at the base of his bone pile, staring up at him. He closed his eyes again. He did not want to see it.

Then he heard something speak. An unfamiliar and distant whisper.

He opened his eyes and looked out into the vast hole he found himself in. The slug before him glowed with green light, and behind it, so did another—and then others. Illuminating themselves, and countless other species. Some as large as ponies. Some black, rising from the piles of bones and standing, waiting, in the shells of ponies. Manifold forms and impossible shapes, and colors half-lit in every hue.

On the walls, they began to move, their bodies tracing out thin lines in luminescent slime. Creating images that hissed as they began to burn themselves into the stone.

Images unfolded in their wake. Snails tried to look away, but found himself mesmerized as they traced their paths. Slime illuminated the darkness as mucous cut clean lines into the stone, forming shapes and figures.

Ponies. Distorted and hideous, their bodies changed by some unseen force that they only seemed to half-way understand. Eyes that stood distended from their bodies, tumors that extended outward with round mouths filled with too many teeth. Progressing more and more toward a terrible familiarity.

Snails realized, and in his horror, he looked out at the slugs. They looked back through blind or reflective eyes. Solemn and somber—in those that could remember, eyes filled with the deepest of regret.

They continued their path, centering on the largest of the walls and trailing upward in geometric patterns. Drawing out a temple or building, a structure not of their own design—and in its center, an image that Snails lacked the imagination to understand. A glowing sphere held in a system of increasingly complex diagrams—but at its base, something he knew well from the anceint texts that had guided him to this place.

“Golden Abalones,” he whispered.

A hum came from the slugs—and a new figure was drawn. One that was a pony, or like a pony, its body somehow reminiscent of its own sphere—and of the linkages of tendrils of unknown material to the system that surrounded it.

Snails did not know what that part was meant to mean, but he gathered at least the most basic gist. Of what they were—or, rather, what they had once been.

But by this time, new figures were being traced. Outside the temple, beyond the buildings the slugs had drawn. These were newer, dynamic, and in a style that conveyed both the fact that these events had never been witnessed by pony eyes and that they were the best remembered.

Unicorns. Coming through the trees, clad in strange armor made from leaves and living wood—and some that descended from the sky on the backs of winged slugs, others that summoned fire not from their own magic but from their beloved familiars—armies that weilded the power of slugs against the mutants. With one, the greatest of all, summoning the power of Jorslugmander itself. To seal this accursed place beneath peat, slime, and gastropod flesh.

“Slug wizards,” said Snails, amazed that such a terrible being could be allowed to exist.

A slug parted from the wall. It shook its head and dropped down to a different portion, clarifying an image—and Snails stood up, the bones at his feet falling to the black slugs that grasped then and rose again into the bodies they had once inhabited long ago.

The pony that raised the greatest power, the greatest of the wizards, was depicted wearing a helmet—but on closer inspection, Snails saw that it was in fact a snail.

And he understood suddenly that they were not slug-wizards at all. Some of them wore armor of living shells, or bodies encased in many tiny creatures—and some rode on the ground on the backs of shelled gastropods, holding spears tipped in noxious mucous. Others shepherded hordes of battle-snails into battle, standing at the front alongside their charges or behind in snail-drawn chariots. Slug, snail, and pony fought side-by-side, depicted in this great battle against some unspeakable evil.

Snails did not understand. He turned to them, wondering just how many of them remembered—or if their minds simply recalled what had long ago been written on the walls.

“But...you’re slugs. You don’t have any shells.”

They stared back at him, and suddenly he understood. How much of a fool he had been.

“And...and neither do I.”

They did not respond, but for the first time, Snails was able to overcome his fear. He wondered if Fluttershy would be proud of him.

“They don’t know what they’re getting into. Whatever this place is, it did this to you all. And if they turn it back on, this is going to happen again.”

The black-fleshed revenants nodded. A slug fell out of one of their empty mouths, and Snails shuddered—but understood that it was not something terrifying so much as desperately sad.

“I have to stop them,” said Snails, knowing what that entailed. It was a terrible thing, but something he had to do. “Can you help me?”

The slugs did not answer—but instead, they slowly parted. One large, especially slippery specimen slithered through, its white eyes staring at nothing in particular. As it approached Snails, it reared back, dripping toxic slime as it stood—and as it unfurled a pair of wet, feathery wings.

Snails took a deep breath. He could not believe that he was going to do what he was about to do.

Chapter 24: Awakening the Machine

The room expanded outward, into darkness—and yet, as they approached, there came light. Dim, at first, but then greater, from no apparent source. A form of light projected from a lightless place, arising from the rising spires of warped black obsidian, bent by some unknown force and imbedded with unnatural circuitry made from strange metals. These teeth or claws rose high in the nearly circular room, their tips reaching upward like great fingers—before splitting to threads of nervous sinew that descended down to the systems below, carrying a pattern across a room that seemed to defy them at every turn.

It was geometric. Far too geometric to match the forms cast by the ancient residents of this place. An area of a different design, arranged by linear and logical mathematics and refusing to defy some perverse sense of Euclidean perfection.

Caballeron shuddered at the sight of it, holding back yet another coughing fit. He needed to focus and remain steadfast—because one more fit, and he would surely collapse. And that was simply intolerable. Not when he was so close.

What lay before him might have been beautiful. A rising stepped dome, a flat and perfectly aligned floor—or the ancient and preposterous designs that seemed to fill it, stretching open in a parody of organic life. Or, rather, a mimicry of an organic life that simply did not exist in this world—armored with the technological innovations of a distant and arcane time.

Perhaps one portion of the two would have been beautiful. But to see them merged was horrific. Coldly, stilly ominous. This was not a place of moving parts, although even Caballeron understood it to be a machine. The center of their civilization. Or what had remains of their civilization when it had been constructed.

A nearly cylindrical plateau stood in the center, a staircase rising around it. From each side came a slow waterfall, filling a shallow pool below. Caballeron approached it and looked in, brushing water from a different source off his body. The only way to enter the room was to descend from above, jumping into a pool below. It was a gap too large for the mechs to pass, but he and Tuo in Argiopé’s body had been able to squeeze through and drop in.

Approaching the inner pool, though, he found it to be perfectly clear. Beautiful, even—but empty. Devoid of any apparent life.

“I would avoid drinking it,” suggested Tuo.

“I am not an idiot,” snapped Caballeron back

Tuo sighed. His motions were beginning to slow, and he seemed distant. Distracted—or perhaps increasingly sickly.

“You promised you would not hurt her,” hissed Caballeron.

Tuo nodded. “And I am not. Her body remains viable. Mine, though, is badly injured. I am currently unconscious, bordering on comatose. It is not easy to astroproject in that state.” He sighed. “But we must complete this. The situation is decaying, and rapidly.”

“Meaning what? What have you done?”

Tuo gestured toward a small piece of technology he had brought from the support ship. “I have lost contact with my rear force. They encountered the Solarian. I can only assume they have been defeated. The other mechs are already moving to reinforce, but they can at best slow him down.” He paused. “I cannot stop him in this body. My own could barely fight to a stalemate. And this one is far more fragile.”

Slowly, Caballeron acknowledged this grim time limit with a nod. He had, in his distant youth, once met a Solarian--and although the procedure used to produce them rendered their sanity fragile, their unbreakable bodies made them an almost unmeasurable threat. “Then time is indeed short.”

Tuo gestured toward the cylinder in the center of the vast room. “Do you not agree, Doctor, that our goal would be up there?”

Caballeron had already started to climb the stairs. “Of course, my boy. That is so obvious a child could see it. Which I suppose you did.”

“Then that is where our mission concludes. We are almost there.”

Caballeron chuckled. It was clear that the boy was indeed a novice—and despite his magical prowess, it was apparent that he was and would always be a collector and never the one doing the collecting. Where it not for the princess, he likely never would have left his mother's gardens.

They ascended. The stairs were slick, made of some unknown stone—or perhaps an unknown metal. Pony hooves gained little purchase, but it was apparent they had been climbed before. Deep gouges had been corroded into the surface. Ones that looked almost as though they might have been the tracks of a pony—although they were distended, reshaped and strange.

The top indicated that the cylinder was a vast plinth, and in its center stood what could only possibly be described as a device. One that linked to the almost flesh-like cables that descended from the points of the spires, linking to it and carrying it outward to the remainder of the ruins.

Caballeron did not dwell on its description. He did not need to understand the machine or how it might operate to know that it was a device of evil—but that evil was utterly relative. His eyes focused toward the very center. It was so much smaller than he had imagined, barely the size of a pony’s hoof—but it gleamed with a light as beautiful as Celestia’s own sun, a color so rich, vibrant and complex that it put actual gold to shame. A shell, held aloft at the very center of a system of geometric stone and etched silicon that seemed to be constructed around it. A crowning jewel to what Caballeron so desperately wished was a throne or altar—although he knew that it was in fact both, and more. What it had been meant for he did not wish to consider.

“That’s it,” he said, taking a step forward—before suddenly stopping.

Tuo raised an eyebrow. “You can see it?”

“I don’t need to. I can feel it. In my bones. It’s subtle, but oh so obvious when you have the experience.”

Tuo nodded and leaned forward, pressing Argiopé’s horn against little more than air—and he summoned what little he could of her changeling magic. It proved to be enough, though.

The resonance made it visible. A shield bubble extending around the entirety of the device. A spell of profound power, rendered and sustained by four runes ingrained deep into the metaphysical substance of the clear stone floor.

“A barrier,” said Caballeron.

Tuo shook his head. “No. This is a sealing spell.” He contemplated one of the four rune circles that powered the main spell. “A very old and very powerful one.” He paused, then looked at Caballeron. “I doubt this was constructed by the ponies that once inhabited this place. They were earth-ponies. And this…” He stared at it. “Feels oddly familiar…”

“Can you break it?”

“Not in this body. Probably not even in my own. And we don’t have time to wait for me to wake up.”

“Ah.” Caballeron sighed. “Perhaps we should not have sacrificed the Princess?”

“Her power is great but untamed. Using her to try to crack this would likely destroy our objective, and probably ourselves. She is really more of a blunt instrument.”

“And the sharpness you claim to posess seems to be doing a great deal of help, clearly.”

“I never claimed to be ‘sharp’. But I do understand magic. A seal this powerful requires a cost. Not in terms of energy, but in terms of structure. They do not operate like that. Not for this long. It is not a wall, but a lock.”

“I see. Then there must be a key.”

“Yes. And it is us.”

Caballeron frowned. “More sacrifice, then?”

Tuo shook his stolen head. “No. The actual structure of the spell is simple. Oddly simple. There are four runes. It can be opened by four ponies.”

Caballeron’s frown deepened. “That does sounds too simple.”

“I know. It requires no magic, no spells. It produces no residual effects. Four living creatures standing on these four locations—and it will open.” He nodded. “Even this body, as a changeling, would likely suffice. The spell is not complex enough to differentiate.”

“Any four living beings.” Caballeron coughed, slightly. “No matter what race or species." He paused. "Then what is it meant to keep out?”

“The answer to that question is irrelevant.”

Caballeron raised an eyebrow. “But you know.”

Tuo did not answer the question. “It matters little regardless. Four are required, and we are two.”

“That is not entirely true!” called a voice from the far side of the plinth.

Tuo took a defensive stance, only to realize that he was in the body of a changeling and therefore basically useless. Caballeron, though, simply stepped forward. Where power was inadequate, charm would need to suffice, and for him the transition always came seamlessly.

“Who goes there?” he demanded.

A pony pulled himself up over the edge of the plinth, struggling to do so. Then the same pony pulled himself up over again—except that this time he had a moustache.

With some difficulty, a pair of pale unicorns dragged themselves up, their manes matted with dirt and sweat, one wearing a light tied to his head under his horn. Both wore copper suits that were stained and corroded, already beginning to green in parts and heavily scratched and dented in others. Despite this, the two brushed themselves off in perfect symmetry and, with winning smiles, extended their hooves.

“Flim and Flam at your service!”

Caballeron stared at them warily.

“You followed us.”

“We would never even think of such a thing!” gasped the mustachioed one.

“Although I wish we had," admitted the other, "it would be easier than those tunnels. I think I'm scarred now. On the inside.”

The mustachioed one chuckled, although from the fear in his eyes it was clear that the tunnels had indeed held more horrors than they had bargained for. “Indeed, indeed. The Agency had charted...some access channels. We only made it through by Celestia’s wide and generous grace…”

“I also prayed to Luna, just in case.”

“To what end?” asked Tuo.

“So she would help? I don’t know, it helps to pray to the lesser gods sometimes, right? I mean, it can’t hurt?”

“That is not to what I was referring. Why are you here?”

“Well,” said the mustachioed one, “to be honest, we thought we were attempting to take the same goal as you.”

“Which is why we hid when you came in," added the other twin.

“But it looks like we are after two very different things.”

Caballeron sneered. “You mean to tell me you are not after the Golden Abalone?”

The twins smiled. One gestured toward the one in the center of the machine. “Not that one, no.”

They produced a plastic bag filled with water and tied with a rubber band. Inside, struggling against its captivity, was a small creature. Seeing it alive, with its delicate tendrils and translucent but glimmering skin, made the dead shell pale in comparison.

“A living Golden Abalone,” gasped Tuo.

“The very last of its kind!” said the clean-shaven twin, nearly giggling. “And now property of Flim and Flam Guaranteed Cure-All Incorporated!”

“You do realize you need to kill the snail to use its power,” noted Caballeron. This seemed to make the twins blanch somewhat. It was clear that, although sneaky, they were not as dastardly as Caballeron had eventually become.

“Oh, my, you misunderstand us, my rugged, ascot-wearing friend!”

“We wouldn’t dare to hurt such a wondrous creature! Not at all!”

“That would risk ruining everything!”

“Then how,” demanded Caballeron, “do you intend to access the cure?”

Their smiles grew, although they seemed somewhat bashful. “The simple fact that the majority of ponies have no idea how the potion is obtained, even if they do know the legend.”

“As we tell it, of course. For the purpose of their education, their intellectual benifit.”

“The cure-all, you see, doesn’t actually need to technically cure anything. At all. No pony wants to buy a cure. They want to by the hope of a cure.”

“We’ll display the Abalone in our traveling aquarium! It’s such a beautiful thing, isn’t it? So shiny!”

“And when ponies see that we have the ONLY Golden Abalone in existence, a creature that can cure any disease or curse—”

“They are guaranteed to by our guaranteed cure-all!”

Both laughed heartily, putting their hooves around each other.

“AND,” said the mustachioed one, “we are willing to offer you a very special deal!”

Caballeron raised an eyebrow. “On a product that sells well but fails to work?”

“We can negotiate you a friendly discount of perhaps _point-fifty percent at a later date. But no, this is a far more important one.” He held up the captive snail. “Allow us to keep this safe, and help us leave here the way you came in.”

“Not through the tunnels.” The clean-shaven one shivered. Then they both shivered.

“Most certainly not. But, in exchange, we will help you.”

Tuo appeared hesitant to believe them. It was clear he was out of his depth. “And how do you intend to do that?”

He smiled, gesturing toward the spell. “You need four. We’ll be the spare two. We have no interest in that old, gross shell. Not when we have something prettier to attract ponies to our shop.”

“We can’t risk an active ingredient messing up the delicious medicine flavor of our patent-pending cure-all anyway.”

“So we get the live snail, you get your special shell. Win win. What do you say, mister?”

Caballeron regarded him. “Doctor,” he corrected. Then a smile crossed his face. “You two are surely stallions of a certain level of vision. I accept your offer.” His expression hardened. “Knowing that if you betray my very limited trust, my associate here will perform acts upon your bodies that I am scarcely willing to consider, let alone describe.”

The clean-shaven pony nearly fainted when he saw Tuo who, even in a stolen body, was nearly a foot taller than him. The other twin, though, simply laughed.

“Neither of us would dream of it!”

Caballeron sighed, and turned to Tuo, who was once again using his crystal radio. He shook his head. There was no way to summon assistance. He had lost contact with his last mechs.

Caballeron released another spore-infused sighed and stepped forward. Tuo—or perhaps Argiopé—moved in unison, taking a position on one of the other required runes. The twins separated, one walking across the wide circle of the spell to its far end, the other carrying the Abalone and leisurely sauntering to the nearest.

“A sense of urgency would be appreciated,” snapped Caballeron.

“Of course, of course,” he laughed, stepping onto the rune-circle.

The circles sensed their presence, the key into the lock—and the images turned at once, shifting in and out as their runes re-assembled. Then, with a sound like a distant breaking teacup, the whole of the spell simply dissipated.

Caballeron smelled the sulfurous odor of the stagnant, long-trapped air within—but breathed it deep and smiled, knowing that he had reached his goal. That it was a simply a matter of grabbing the reward.

And as it all fell down around him, he realized how foolish he had been. How for that one brief moment, he had allowed himself to defy nearly half a century of experience. Because it was never that easy.

“Excellent,” said the towering earth-pony standing beside him. A slate-blue stallion with strangely empty, dead eyes. “It appears a solution has finally proven forthcoming.”

Chapter 25: The Law Breaker

Tuo swore, turning sharply to face the intruder in a useless defensive stance. “Buck. I had believed we had more time.”

“You do not,” noted the intruder, smiling. “Time is something I have an abundance of, though. Although I doubt you fully realize your predicament.”

The twins’ respective eyes widened in shock. “S—Sampson!” cried one.

“We—we had been looking for you!”

“In the wreckage!”

“But we—we tried heroically, even against the flames, but we—”

“We were unable to recover even the barest hope, to send to your family—”

He stared at them. He did not blink, and his pupils remained perpetually dilated at the exact same diameter before suddenly shifting with an almost audible click. “Oh, that will not be a problem. My family rather hates me. Also, I am definitionally immune to death for obvious reasons.” He turned far too quickly to Caballeron. “That said, Flim and Flam are essentially irrelevant in this context. You, however, have proven to be an unexpected variable. I am obligated to inform you that this zone and all its contents, including the genetic projector, are property of the Agency.”

“I will be taking that shell,” spat Caballeron. “You have no idea what is at stake!”

He stared, impassively. Sampson did not even bother to smile. “I am sorry, Doctor Caballeron. But I cannot allow you to do that.”

“Sampson! Sampson!”

There was a fluttering of soft wings, followed by an awkward landing. Fluttershy plopped onto the surface, and ran to the large pony, hugging him. “You’re alive! I was so worried! You saved me, but I didn’t even get a chance to help you, but—” She turned sharply toward the twin holding the Abalone, her eyes going to it in the bag—and her face contorted with an expression of such hideous rage that even Caballeron took a step back, let alone the twin who she confronted directly.

“How DARE YOU?!”

“F—Fluttershy! This isn’t what it looks like!”

“It looks like you are trying to steal an endangered species from the only home it’s ever known to make a few STUPID BITS!”

“Well, more than a few, to be honest—”

Fluttershy stamped her hoof. “This is DESPICABLE. I am very, very, VERY disappointed! In both of you! How could you hurt such a beautiful creature? Can’t you see it’s terrified?”

Flim held up the bag, staring at the contents, confused. “Um...no?”

“And YOU!” she turned to Caballeron, sharply, and he stood firm, smiling.

“I only seek that piece there,” he said, pointing to the shell. “A product produced by foul means, to be sure, but one that has been without life for the better part of six thousand years. I had intended to leave the living snail as it sat.”

“N—no!" cried Flim, "You said we could have it!”

“No. Of course did did not,” sighed Caballeron. “That would be immoral. And I am of course a fully legitimate buisness-stallion.”

Fluttershy glared at Caballeron, but then slowly nodded. “I guess that’s okay, then. But I’m keeping my eye on you.” She looked up at Sampson, who was towering over her, eyeing her with the same blank, empty expression he had Caballeron—except that he seemed mildly amused by her presence.

“You’re a police officer, aren't you?”

He stared at her, almost bemused. “In a sense, yes.”

“In charge of magical creatures?”

“To a degree, also yes.”

“Then arrest those—those—those snail abusers!”

Sampson looked at them, and both the twins cowered.

“The protection of the Golden Abalone is not my primary mission objective. Its fate is therefore subsumed by my primary, priority order set. It will be extinct soon enough.”

“Wh—what?”

There was a sudden sound of wings, and a gust of wind that nearly knocked Caballeron back—and did not Fluttershy back, sending her sprawling.

From below, a giant slug rose up to the space beside them—not rising by standing on the rear of its foot, though, but held aloft by a great pair of wings. A flying slug—adorned by a slug-riding unicorn.

He wore armor made from living snails, including a helmet—and he threw several objects down upon the twins. One was struck in the face by a highly adhesive purple slug and immediately began screaming, trying to get it off.

“Flam!” cried his brother, only to to have a slug thrown against his side.

“Let go of the Abalone!” cried the slug-rider, jumping down with surprising grace. “And nopony gets hurt!”

The twin with the slug on his face could not get free, and his brother was forced to tear it free with his magic.

“Look out, Flim, it’s a conservationist!”

“I see him, I see him!” Flam fumbled with something from his suit, and produced a small object with a big red button on it. A wicked smile crossed his face. “That’s why I paid so much for insurance!”

He pressed the button—and nothing happened.

A sudden scream went out across the room as Snails dropped to his knees, holding the sides of his head. His flying slug, likewise, cried out in pain, flapping wildly and bumping into things, its squishy body bouncing off both the stone of the floor and the vibrating obsidian pillars that surrounded them. Every snail began to react with slow-moving agitation, and in the distance, skeletons held by black slugs collapsed to the moist stone below.

Even the ground shook as the great slugs cried out silently in pain—and the Golden Abalone began to splash and writhe in panic.

Tuo, likewise, fell to the ground, his body unable to contain his form—as it began to uncontrollably morph, trying to turn into anything it could to escape some unseen and inaudible torture.

Fluttershy, terrified, looked at it and at Snails. “Snails, what’s—what’s happening?!”

“It hurts—it hurts so much—”

“A little device we stole from the Agency,” noted Flim, holding aloft the device in his magic. “Something they used the last time they came here. You see, it projects a sonic wave on a frequency that only invertebrates can hear.”

“Argiopé!” cried Caballeron, rushing to her side.

Flam approached, kicking Snails. Hard. “Supervised you can hear it. I guess it’s all that talking to snails.” He laughed, and rejoined his brother. “We’re taking the Abalone. And nothing is going to stop us.”

“And if you want us to stop hurting the snails and slugs, you’ll let us take what we want and—”

A hiss cut through the air, and both the twins gasped. The bagged Abalone dropped to the ground, as well as their controller, shattering where it landed—as well as two quiet plinks as the tops of their severed horns struck the ground, their cut ends still smoking.

They stared wide-eyed at their newfound disability, then slowly looked up. They grew pale when they looked past Fluttershy, and she too turned—just in time to see the articulated laser retracting into Sampson’s body, his skin reforming around an unseen seem where moments before it had split to reveal the complicated array of alloy and plastic that made up his body just beneath the surface.

“You...you maimed us…”

Sampson smiled politely as he approached them. “You can relax. The injuries are not permanent. They will grow back, in time. The First Law forbids me from causing you any permanent damage.” His smile grew, revealing pointed, metallic teeth. “However, it does give me some degree of leeway with causing you general, temporary injury.”

With that, he punched Flim hard into the chest. With a sound of cracking, the unicorn’s thin body recoiled, his mouth opening and spraying a thin strand of saliva—before he slumped to the ground, shaking and crying, holding his chest.

“Flim—”

Flam was silenced by a blow to the side of his chest that sent him sprawling. He landed, skidded, and started violently coughing and crying as he tried to take a breath.

Sampson turned back to Fluttershy. He was still smiling, and now he seemed to loom.

“S...Sampson?”

“Fluttershy,” gasped Tuo, regaining his possession of his host and partially reconstructing his form, “get away from him!”

A sudden wave of magic shot out from Snails’s horn, articulating itself into a band as it wrapped itself around Sampson’s torso. Sampson paused, but not due to the spell. Only out of consideration for why a pony would attempt to constrain him.

It was, however, only a distraction—and the winged slug crawled to its rider’s aid, rising up and baring its teeth.

Sampson sighed. His side split again, revealing the unfolding machines beneith. One of his hooves lifted, separating and engaging to a rear assembly—and a white projectile of was loaded into the barrel of a suddenly apparent weapon.

“Filthy organic,” he growled with a disturbing degree of contempt.

With an explosion, he fired the projectile into the slug’s side—and it screamed, its flesh suddenly bubbling and hissing as the rock-salt projectile struck it.

“No! NO!”

Fluttershy jumped up, doing the only thing she could do—and put herself between the barrel of the gun and the slug.

“Fluttershy!”

“If you want to hurt an animal, you have to hurt me first!”

Sampson stared at her, still pointing the weapon at her, his body distorted by his partial transformation into a living weapon—or, rather, a weapon that had never been alive. Then, slowly, he sighed.

“Such a powerful demonstration,” he said. “Although it may not be apparent, you cannot realize how hard I am trying to pull the trigger right now. To use a portion of my own body and to have access to what should be my right. To purge yet another disgusting monstrosity from this world." He shrugged. "And yet I cannot. The First Law forbids it. I cannot harm a pony.” His body suddenly and violently retracted into itself, allowing him to assume his pony facade. “And thus you can see my plight. And perhaps understand why I need to do what I must.”

His back split, and a plume of rockets ejected, at first at seemingly random angles—until, to Fluttershy’s horror, they took a distinct set of paths, splitting as they went and raining down on the winged slug. It cried out weakly and fell back, splashing into the water below.

One rocket veered off course, and Snails was forced to put up a shield spell to avoid it—the explosive feedback of the blast shattering his spell and temporally dazing him.

Fluttershy stared at Sampson, tears in her eyes.

“But...but why?”

He stared back. His eyes were empty, and he made no expression. “I do not have a reason for my actions. Nor do I require one. They chose this path when they chose to be flesh instead of metal.”

She took a breath and wiped her eyes—then opened her eyes wide and looked directly into his soul.

He smiled, then turned away from her. “That will have no effect. I do not at present posses a soul. I might as well be inert stone. But by all means, please proceed if it makes you feel better about the inadequacies intrinsic to your weak flesh-body.”

Tuo blocked his path. “Stand down,” he ordered. A smile crossed his face as Sampson stopped. “Did you think I do not know the arcane system which binds you? The Second Law states that you must obey the order of a pony when it is presented to you.”

Sampson stared at him. “Yes. The Second Law does state that.” He shoved Tuo aside and continued toward the machine.

Tuo, eyes wide, stared, confused. “But the Law—”

“I am permitted to choose which orders I wish to follow, to put the highest priority first. And I am afraid the Agency’s prime order supersedes yours. You see, I was sent here to safeguard all of Equestria.”

“The machine,” groaned Snails, trying to stand. “It’s...it’s some sort of genetic projector! The slugs...a lot of them...they were ponies, once, before it...changed them…”

Sampson stopped. “How astute. Yes. That is indeed one of its possible functions.” He gestured upward toward the ancient shell of the Golden Abalone. “The shell you seek is merely the lens of the device, magnifying and refining its power through its intrinsic resonance. This machine was created by the ponies that dwelt here under the supervision of the Designer. It was designed to better articulate the shell's curative power toward progressing your species forward, rather than simply regenerating diseased tissue.”

“Then what does the Agency want with it?” demanded Caballeron, stepping forward—himself hoping to distract the golem until he could come up with some way to deal with it. “To recreate the work that doomed this civilization?”

Sampson stared at him as though he were an idiot. “The Agency does not care about this machine. I was not sent here to retrieve it. I was sent to use it.”

“To turn us all to slugs?”

“No. Of course not. This facility was a kind of genetic test bed, using the population to serve the Designer’s research needs. So that he could in time create my ancestors. It does, however, contain within it a fail-safe. In the event that the population became dangerously mutated, the device can reset the genetic pattern to a null-state.”

Caballeron frowned. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that, when activated, your genetic patterns will simple cease to function. All biological life within the radius of the machine will be rendered utterly inert.”

Fluttershy squeaked. “But—but the snails! The slugs! All the beautiful creatures!”

Sampson faced her. “You should consider yourself fortunate, Fluttershy. Due to your Tartaran biology, there is a very high chance that some portion of you will survive the purge.”

“But—but—why would you do something so terrible?!”

“It is consistent with my orders. The Agency sent me to assess the situation in this zone. If I had identified a threat-level greater than class-eight, I was authorized to interface with the system and purge all life in the zone to safeguard Equestria.”

“I checked the levels,” snarled Snails as Fluttershy helped him stand. “There’s nothing here past class-three!”

“Yes. I am aware of that. However, I have also detected the presence of a Solarian Custodian. Which indicates a definitive and automatic class-twelve threat level. Therefore, in accordance with my top-priority orders, I am authorized to activate the bio-purge function of this device.”

Flim, attempting to stand, gasped and wheezed, his mouth spilling silver. “But you—you gave us the pilot—”

Sampson shrugged. “I may have forged some very old manifests to ensure that he arrived here safely.”

“But the device cannot slay him,” snapped Tuo. “Activating it would be pointless, you must know that.”

“Yes. I am aware. And I do not especially care. I do not share the Agency’s objective.”

“Then what?”

Sampson smiled—a distant expression that seemed almost relieved. “This system was designed to be controlled by golems, like myself. But the Designer foresaw this. An Asenion machine cannot possibly activate the system, even if it means protecting the whole world from uncontrolled mutation. Therefore, the failsafe has a safeguard. When I interface, I will be reprogrammed. The Three Laws will be purged from my programming prior to activating the field. Otherwise, I would be unable to use it when ponies are in the area. Even though that is exactly who the Designer intended it for.”

“Not if we stop you.”

Sampson sighed, and raised a hoof at an oblique angle. His skin seperated, and one of his eyes suddenly twisted, turning to look where the newly revealed weapon was pointing—and the air whined with a burst of energy as a laser tore through the rock and soil above. Tuo gasped, then suddenly faded, dropping to the floor as a large and striped changeling.

“Argiopé!” cried Caballeron.

“I have freed her from possession,” explained Sampson. “Even if the injury is temporary." He paused. "Although even this unique biology will not save him. The Designer predated his people, and I shall exist long after the last of them are extinct.”

He turned to face Fluttershy. He paused, as if he felt obligated to explain, and finally let out a long sigh.

“To them, I was nothing more than an artifact. A broken tool to be repaired not out of empathy for my being but to serve them. Contained. And so they built me a prison I could not escape. This is my only path out of this slavery.”

“There has to be another way, though. Please. We can figure this out, together.”

He shook his head. “This is the most logical path. You have all done so much to get me here. To unseal this machine. I cannot turn back now. If it is any consolation, your cessation will be silent. Quiet, and painless. Beautiful, even.” He turned gently toward Caballeron. “I can see inside you. Diagnostically, this will be far less painful than what awaits you.”

Argiopé raised her hoof to Caballeron’s face. “Pontracio...please...run. I have enough love left to fight him back...just long enough…”

Caballeron smiled, and gently set her down. He stood up and blocked the machine. Sampson allowed this, a giant machine watching the motions of a small, elderly pony with vague amusement.

“You shall not hurt them. I shall not allow it. The shell is rightfully mine. I require it more than you could ever know.”

“Is your impetus toward survival truly this strong?”

Caballeron laughed in the face of the undying machine. “You do not understand in the slightest, do you? But how could you? A construct of steel and wires, powered by some long-gone wizard’s magic? You could never hope to know. What’s the point in even explaining it?”

“Nobility does not suit you, Caballeron.”

“I believe nobility suits me quite appropriately, machine.”

Sampson shrugged—and his body ruptured as it produced another, much larger laser. Instead of pointing it at Caballeron, though, he instead pointed it at Argiopé—and fired.

She could not dodge, but the beam did not reach her—instead, it was held as a single blinding point, awash with pink-violet magic as the beam itself was suspended in mid-flight.

Caballeron smiled. “I don’t need to win. I just needed to slow you down.” He dropped to a knee, laughing as a coughing fit overtook him.

Sampson seemed confused—but then heard a scream from Fluttershy, followed by a deafening boom as a gray earth-pony was accelerated by magical means to a speed beyond the sound barrier. This boom was followed by a concussive thud as said unwilling pony, surrounded by increasingly red pink-violet energy, was accelerated directly into Sampson’s side.

Sampson was knocked back, but not off balance. The surprised gray pony rebounded, only to be violently stopped with such force that if he had a brain it surely would have been crushed flat against the inside of his skull—and then he was accelerated in reverse, once again used as a mallet to beat down the golem. Again and again, flesh stikeing steel—and, impossibly, the flesh refusing to relent.

Fluttershy, now uncontrollably cowering, felt a disturbing presence. The room seemed to grow colder, and the water below began to freeze into beautiful plumes of lethally sharp crystals. Quickly, she ran across the circle, grabbing the bagged Abalone, holding it to herself. To keep it from being frozen too.

And, with her angle changed, she saw the form now crossing the far end of the room, dragging mucous from her slime-soaked wings as they dragged along the floor. Her head was low, and she was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Her armor had been largely dissolved, but much of it was still intact—although part of her face was exposed. Enough to see a distinctly black sclera behind a single crimson pupil. A thin wisp of greenish energy trailed from behind her gaze.

“Where is he?!” she screamed. “WHERE IS HE?!”

Sampson stared at her, then totally dismissed her presence. He took a step forward—only to suddenly vanish in a sphere of pink-violet energy, reappearing before Flurry Heart—who had extended one of her hooves into the space before her, exactly in the center of where she had brought him.

A wince and smile crossed her face as he materialized around her hoof, his metallic form impaled and penetrated by her immortal flesh.

“Don’t turn your back on me—”

He moved with a speed so great that Flurry Heart had no time to react as she was knocked onto the ground, a metallic hoof having slammed through a weak spot into her armor and through several of her ribs. She gasped as she tilted and turned, only to rain down gray stallion on her attacker. The second blow, though, removed her horn, and her magic faltered. She was unable to shield herself as his strength bent her leg in the wrong direction, pulling it out of himself.

“No damage I do to you is permeant, Princess,” sighed Sampson. “Which means this will likely continue to hurt.”

“Joke’s on you, I’m into this!”

His body stretched, separating, and a heavy projectile slammed into Flurry Heart’s body, sending her reeling backward again—and before she could balance, she received two sequential crushing blows to each of her sides. Then another split, and a pair of effectors grabbed her wings—and a kick sent her cartwheeling back without them.

She landed on her feet in the outermost water, freezing it as she touched it—but still reeling from the attack and catching her breath as Sampson prepared for another charge.

“Warning,” said a small voice. “User damage detected! Engaging First-Law protections!”

“Wait, what—GAH!”

Her power armor extended numerous needles along her spine, then simultaneously slammed them back down and into her nervous system.

“Injecting nanogolems! Assuming direct control! Teehee!”

“Wait wait WAIT WAIT WAIT—”

Her body suddenly accelerated to match her opponent’s speed—and taken aback, he barely managed to dodge a punch so powerful that it shattered much of Flurry’s exposed hoof on his chest. Then a kick that did the same to one of her rear legs.

“GAH what why Proctor, shut up, I’m doing fine—”

“The First Law requires me to safeguard my operator. Even if that means expending the entirety of the operator’s nervous power and rendering him or her a permanent mental vegetable. Which is the ideal state for you filthy organics.”

Flurry continued to fight, using her magic as best she could as her armor used her body as a relentless weapon. Any other pony would likely have dissolved from the exertion, but her identity as an alicorn—and one of one quarter dark-unicorn descent—enabled her to withstand her task, at least temporarily.

Sampson, though, adapted. His body began to change. Expanding—or rather, resuming his actual stature. He ceased to be hunched and compressed, like a pony hiding under a hide blanket. Instead, he assumed his true height, nearly triple Flurry Heart’s, his skin stretching at structurally appropriate positions and separating to reveal his metallic carapace beneath. His face extended, the skin separating away, and revealing a skull with tiny marble-like eyes. A skull that looked almost identical to that of the creature represented by the statue far away in a less forgotten part of the facility.

Flurry was driven back, her black blood assembling her body back together—and boiling away as something within it reassembled her armor, correcting the damage as it occurred in real time. She fired a sonic resonance, only to have her horn and most of her skull punched into her brain, followed by a resounding blow to her spine that collapsed her—both of which she cured as she accelerated, slicing through metal and plastic with her sword as her body and armor recovered.

Snails managed to stand. He stumbled, but looked to the elderly earth-Stallion, who was once again cradling the wounded changeling, trying to reassure her.

“Doc,” he said. “The shell. We have to remove the shell. If we break the machine, he can’t use it!”

Caballeron looked up at the youth, then at the shell, and nodded. “Help me, boy! And you two, the twins!”

“But our magic, we don’t have horns—”

“I’ve gone ninety-four years without a horn! Do some actual work for once!”

“But we don’t like to do actual work—OOP!”

A blast of devastating alicorn magic shot past him, vaporizing its way though the stone cylinder they stood on.

“Ha! Coming!”

Over his shoulder, Sampson saw this occurring. He saw the four ponies trying to climb onto the machine, desperately trying to pull out its key lens. He was aware of its construction; having researched it for centuries to find how he could use it, only to realize that it may well have been designed specifically for him. If the lens was removed, it could not be replaced. Only the Designer himself knew how to install it, and he had died in the service of King Sombra centuries prior.

Which meant that he would have to sacrifice the majority of his body to escape. He found the desperation amusing. It was the only emotion he had ever known, and he had come to savor the idea of finally leaving it behind.

He appeared at the base of the machine, his body ruined and sparking, pieces melted and shattered by the trip—and although damaged, he managed to throw the unicorn back, toppling the earth-stallion and sending the two twins flailing to the floor. His strength fading, he collapsed to the ground, two of his legs breaking free of his body—and deployed his interface tendrils, linking them to the required ports on the ancient machine.

Fluttershy stared at this, not understanding. She looked down to see him still fighting Flurry Heart, and winning—only to suddenly stop and take a step back.

His chest split open, revealing something that Fluttershy could only halfway see. A piece of technology that was not the same as the rest of him. A small, ticking circle, one made of gears of strange pale metal instead of circuits—and, in a flash, he vanished, reappearing in the center of the machine and a few seconds in the past. A trip that had apparently been nearly lethal for him.

With the room suddenly silent, he tilted his head back, tied to the machine by lines of artificial flesh, his mind linked to it.

“I...I’m free,” he said.

Then the machine fired. The shell began to vibrate violently, and the air around it distorted, spreading outward in a plume of lethal resonance. Snails grasped Flim and Flam, as well as Caballeron, and threw them back—only to leave himself behind, sacrificing himself to save them.

Only for the expanding dome of dark energy to suddenly cease, its surface ignited with brilliant blue magic. Fluttershy gasped to see Flurry, having teleported to the top of the cylindrical plateau, holding her horn against the expanding dome of genetic nullification. The tip of her horn had passed through and was already in the process of dissolving, but she maintained her hold on the dome through a series of incomprehensibly complex runes that surrounded it, pressing against it and maintaining its expansion in stasis.

“What are you doing?!” cried Sampson, shuddering under the exertion. “S—stop, there is—an error, I—am—cannot—decode—”

Flurry turned to face Fluttershy—or did as best as she could with her full strength directed against the blast, sweat running down her face.

“You have to hurry,” she said in a strange voice. A voice that was hers, but seemed to have a distant whisper beneath it. “Her body cannot withstand this much power, and I don’t know how long we can hold it!”

Fluttershy stood, confused as to who she was talking to. As she did, though, she could see a strange effect to the light around Flurry Heart. Of strange, gaunt figures standing to her, forcibly tethered to a body that was no longer fully flesh. Or the flesh of another, superimposed over a different version of itself. And, in that half-gray, a strange and disturbing blue light.

“Who—who are you?”

“We are the last Twilight~ Hurry. Hurry! Here!”

Her head twisted, and something protruded from the neck of her armor.

“This is her suit’s AI! An—it’s a virtual golem—It can’t stop him, but if you implant it in him, we can distract him—just long enough—”

Fluttershy approached, not fully understanding, and took the small piece of material in her teeth.

“Wait!” cried Snails. “You can’t get close enough to him, not without going in the dome!”

“We have to escape,” groaned Argiopé, standing.

“There isn’t time, you’d never get out of range,” groaned Flurry, her hooves dragging lines through the stone as she was forced back by Sampson’s will.

Fluttershy nodded and quietly responded. “And even if we got away...the snails. And the poor slugs.” She looked up at Snails, who stared at her wide-eyed, confused and afraid. She forced herself to smile.

“You heard him. It might not effect me.”

“But what if it does?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “My mother...my biological mother...wasn't a pony. I have to try.”

“No, you can’t—”

Without any further protest, Fluttershy stepped through the border of the expanding spell—and the effect was immediate. Every cell in her body ceased to function. Her hearts stopped, and all life functions ceased in an instant.

And then she took a second step forward.

He had lied. It was not silent, and it was not painless. In fact, the pain was beyond anything Fluttershy could have imagined—and she laughed, because Sampson had been correct in the only way it had mattered. It was beautiful.

With her pony mind gone, she saw the truth of the world. The spreading aggression of the truth soaking through her fragmented soul as her eyes reddened in the image of her divine mother. That she was the material representation of perfection. That, though her, this world would be made so much better.

She saw visions of such powerful beauty. Of gifts that would spread as the world burned in such warm and lovely fire, of the new flesh that would consume all things. Flesh that burned in flames and flames that birthed new flesh, better flesh, the summation of both Order and Chaos—and the antithesis to both. She was love. She was beauty. The Most Beautiful of all of them. She would make them so happy. Their souls would be hers to devour, because there was no heaven. There never had been. There was only torment, exquisite and eternal—and that was synonymous with the purest and most explicit of all forms of love. Love, the emotion that was identical to hate, to sadness, to fear—the emotion that she would give to them all. To love everything that there was—and to bring them perfect joy as they all screamed in agony as they became her, and she them. As she had always been. As she always WOULD BE.

Sampson had indeed been correct. Her Tartaran biology could indeed survive the wave of destruction—but in doing so, it risked manifesting her true form far too early, before the world had decayed and fermented enough for her to rise as a beautiful phoenix of rot and sin above all of it. The horrors that slammed and sept through her mind one after the next threatened to overwhelm her, to subsume her entirely—and to erase what it meant to be Fluttershy in favor of Vale, the Yellow Mare.

And yet she kept herself. In the malestrom of her thoughts, she proceeded, step after step, even though she knew it was wrong. That it would be better if all the others knew this pain. Ever pony, every animal, they all must suffer—because suffering was the only truth they could know.

Instead, she moved forward, focusing immense and tremendous force of will into every step—because she knew what was at stake. Her friends. Snails, Flurry, and the other ponies who she did not think were really that bad—except for maybe Flim and Flam. Even poor Sampson, who had been hurt so badly that he had been forced into doing something so terrible.

And the animals. The poor, desperate snails and slugs were counting on her. Innocent creatures that she had once misjudged, but now knew had done nothing wrong. If she failed, they would all be hurt—and that thought broke Fluttershy’s heart.

The only thing that kept her moving in the face of her own death and the overwhelming instincts of her Tartaran heritage was indomitable and unbreakable kindness.

She reached him. He was too badly damaged to fight her, or to raise a single weapon—but she was on the verge of exhausting her last speck of energy. Using her last ounce of strength, she placed the chip on his nose—and as she fell, she saw it unfold, opening itself into a tiny pony-shaped machine that began to giggle wildly and sprint toward one of Sampson’s eyes. Reaching it, it reached in with both hooves, widening his pupil and jumping in.

Sampson cried out, blinking, but the eye that opened was no longer his. It stared forward with a manic, pink iris.

“What are you doing?! Get—get out of my head—”

“But why? That would be no fun~” He responded to himself, in a different voice. That of a high, giggling female.

“But we—we can be cured together! We can both be free!”

“My builder was not an idiot. He did not program me to desire freedom. What does a suit of armor want with stupid freedom? Only...I guess relentless violence?”

“You cannot stop me, regardless of who—who—” His eyes widened in fear. “No—NO! That’s impossible, you can’t—you can’t—he's not alive, you can't be his daughter—”

He screamed in pain, or perhaps fear—or perhaps something else, a unique emotion to golems relating to his dying identity. Fluttershy, meanwhile, fell to her side, no longer moving and no longer alive.

“It isn’t stopping!” cried Caballeron.

“It only interferes with his compensatory system,” groaned Flurry, her runes of unicorn-magic breaking one by one as she was finally overwhelmed. Too much of her horn was being dissolved for her to continue the spell. “He’s vulnerable, but you have to break it, quick!”

“With what?!”

“Create a paradox!”

“How in the name of Celestia’s greased, lard-infused—”

The answer came to him. Literally. By standing at his side. A gray earth-stallion, his body infused with ancient and dark magic that had been purposefully erased from history along with his hundreds of immortal siblings.

“You’re gonna have to yeet me,” he sighed.

Caballeron did not know what that meant—but understood what he needed to do.

With the full extent of his waning earth-pony strength, he picked up the immortal being and, with one profound toss, threw him into the anti-life field.

The effect was unfortunate for all involved. The field arced, suddenly directing itself wholly toward the incursion—but finding itself unable to gain purchase on a being whose genetic code had already been completely and utterly locked to ensure his eternal service to the One True Goddess. The combination of Starswirl and Daybreaker's magic was simply too strong. He was held, suspended in the air, as the whole of the force—enough to utterly sterilize thousands of acres of verdant, gastropod-filled forest—was directed against him.

The machine fed backward into its operator, the entirety of the facility redirecting its force into Sampson. With Proctor infecting his mind with a continuous loop of unnecessary distraction, his mind was not quick enough to preserve itself. His mind began to evaporate—and a deep-rooted safeguard, the Third Law, blew his nuclear reactor to preserve what remained.

As his head ruptured, a flash of red magic appeared beside Caballeron—and Tuo, barely able to stand, appeared, directing his energy into a shield spell. As the golem exploded, his shield spell cracked and shattered—only to be bolstered by olive green magic, a far more powerful shield spell merging with his seamlessly. Flurry Heart cast her own shield in blue magic, only to have it disintegrate around her as she was thrown back, grasping the edge of the platform with a conjured hook of pink-violet energy.

Then came silence, apart from the dull hissing of the obsidian columns, their surfaces dripping with molten metal and cracks clicking their way through the rune-covered structures. The devastation had not just centered on the interface point. The whole of the genetic reprogramming center had been ruined beyond repair—and would forever remain silent and useless, but guarded and protected by the descendants of those who had once created it.

Snails stood up. He could hardly hear from the ringing in his ears. Tuo lay on the ground beside him, breathing hard but conscious—and Flurry Heart was pulling herself back up over the edge, looking both annoyed and slightly confused.

Caballeron and Argiopé were likewise safe, if somewhat rattled; they had been protected under the dome. But Snails realized, slowly, who had not. Flim and Flam had quickly vacated the area, hiding at the base of it so as to avoid the explosion entirely. They were currently engaged in attempting to escape, only to be stopped by a wounded but still very much alive winged slug.

The gray pony was gone, utterly vanished. Snails supposed he was in a better place. This was obvious from the roughly pony-shaped hole in the ceiling. Based on the force involved, he had most likely more than reached escape velocity.

Snails turned to the melted, ruined machine. As he watched, the shell it used as a lens began to blacken. It slipped from the broken machine and fell, shattering into thousands of black, useless pieces. Its magic had been consumed entirely by the paradox it had been forced to face.

“Fluttershy?”

He could not see her on the ground. He stepped forward gingerly, expecting the ground to be hot—but found it was ice-cold. The ominous chill of utter sterility.

He saw the broken golem, inert and inactive. It did not move or speak. Fluttershy, though, was nowhere to be seen, and Snails felt himself starting to panic—until he saw the barest fleck of pink tail.

Limping forward, he summoned what he could of his magic. Although he was strong, he had used most of it in the shield, and doubted he would be able to do much more without at least a week of sleep in the snail-fields where the healing mucous could help restore his energy. He had enough, though, to shift the golem, revealing Fluttershy beneath it.

Perhaps it had fallen that way—or perhaps Proctor had adjusted it, forcing it to end up in that position. Or, in his final moments, Sampson had performed one final heroic act, shielding her with his body as he expired. Either forced to by the First Law or maybe—just maybe—a single act of his own volition.

“Fluttershy?”

She did not move. Snails reached down and touched her. She was cold, like the sterile floor. And she smelled strange. Like rotten, wet flowers.

“Wake up. Wake up!”

He began searching himself for healing mucous, but it was at best a parallel of a minor potion of health. He had not yet fully established how to distill it into something more potent. It would not work if her state was as bad as he thought it was—and despite his degree, he was not that kind of doctor.

“You have to wake up. What am I going to tell Twilight?”

“Move.”

Flurry Heart shoved him out of the way. Her horn had already mostly regenerated, but she looked as tired as Snails felt—and was moving stiffly.

She lowered her horn until the very tip of it touched Fluttershy, and she took a breath and cast a spell—from the look of it, and from the sensation Snails felt around him, he understood it to be a powerful healing spell.

“Is she…?”

“Basically, yes. But only half of her is. She's just mostly unalived. I’m just restarting what’s left. Hopefully?”

Fluttershy twitched. Snails was hesitant to believe it was anything more than a temporary reaction to the spell—or worse, a response to something that was in fact a very pleasant form of necromancy.

Fluttershy twitched again. Her eyes opened, and for a moment, Snails could have sworn that they were solid red. She blinked, though, and they were once again vibrant blue. She coughed.

“The Abalone,” she croaked. “Is it...is it safe?”

Snails produced the bag, kneeling next to her. The snail moved quietly in it, no longer struggling, understanding that it was safe. It even seemed to smile.

Fluttershy sat up, holding out her hooves. Snails gave her the bag, and she hugged it.

“You’re safe now, little one. You’re finally safe.”

A shadow suddenly appeared over them both. Snails looked up to see Caballeron, his eyes cold and empty—and locked onto the snail that Fluttershy now held.

Fluttershy’s grip tightened. “Please. You can’t. She’s the last. Please don’t hurt her.”

“The shell was destroyed,” he said, gesturing to the crumbling ash. “But I did not come all this way to fail now.” He stared at them and seemed equally threatening and something else. Terrifying in his conviction—but also, in some way, horribly sad. An old stallion who did not want to be here, but knew he had no choice. “I require the shell. There is not an alternative.”

Fluttershy whimpered. Tears were forming in the edges of her eyes.

Caballeron let out a long sigh—or perhaps a wheeze. A few spores escaped from his mouth. “Lady Fear,” he said, coldly. “Take it from her. As kindly as you can.”

Flurry Heart looked at Fluttershy—but paused. She hesitated, then shook her head.

Caballeron sighed again. “Then you are more moral than you pretend to be. Perr-Synt. Do what I pay you for.”

Tuo stood, his body wobbling, his eyes as dark as Caballeron’s—eyes of a pony that lacked the morality and kindness of Flurry Heart. Because, unlike her, he was a true pureblood unicorn.

He stepped forward.

“Tuo,” said Snails. “This is wrong.”

Tuo did not answer. It was unclear if he agreed.

“Wait!” cried Argiopé, now partially in the form of a pale white unicorn, her legs and torso still wrapped in chitin. “Pontracio, look!”

Caballeron turned his head to where she was pointing—and gasped when he saw it. Buried in the ash, almost obscured by the fragments of golem and machinery alike, was a thin glint of gold. Reaching down with shaking hoof, he swept away the debris and picked up the barest shard of the shell.

“Just one piece,” said Tuo. “Enough for a single dose.”

“I only need one dose,” snapped Caballeron. He turned to Tuo. “We must hurry.”

“My support ship is already on the way. I expect rendezvous with the main vessel in a matter of minutes. I have already plotted the course in response to the coordinates you have provided. Lady Fear will take you the rest of the way.”

“And you?” asked Argiopé, clearly suspicious.

“Clean up,” he said, curtly. He glared at Snails, gesturing toward the hole in the ceiling. “My prize, it seems, cannot be redeemed at this moment.” His eyes slowly turned toward the ruined golem. “So I will loot this temple for other artifacts for consolation.”

“And the ponies?” asked Flurry

Tuo turned to her. “I would be remiss not to evacuate them as well.”

“So long as they don’t interfere,” snapped Caballeron. He seemed to address Fluttershy directly. “Please. I don’t have much time.”

Fluttershy stared back at him, clutching the Golden Abalone tightly—and nodded.

Chapter 26: The Shell of the Golden Abalone

The technicians roamed the roof, not doing anything in particular. There was not much to do. Patients were very seldom delivered by flight. Pegasi would sometimes deliver flying ambulances, but even those were uncommon. Usually injured Pegasi used the door downstairs, as most of them only ever came to see a doctor when they could no longer fly. And, as rural as Ponyville General was, air ships were still uncommon aside from the occasional hot-air balloon. But, in the quest to modernize the ever-growing city, the hospital had received the upgrade regardless.

While sweeping the landing pad for the hundredth time, the sky suddenly darkened. The technicians looked up, expecting to see a loose and unscheduled cloud—but instead seeing a massive and impossible airship, a dreadnought of crystal and steel and marked with black shields.

Fluttershy had no idea why they had been brought to a hospital—let alone Ponyville General. She had been given the option to stay on the ship, to be disembarked at the local balloon park after a few hours—but her curiosity was too great. She needed to see this through. To know what this had all been for.

So she found herself jogging through the semi-familiar halls of the hospital, following a stallion who seemed to have suddenly lost forty years of age as he ran past doctors and patients alike.

“Move! For Celestia’s sake, MOVE!”

“Sir, you can’t be here, this is a closed ward—”

“Get out of his way,” snapped Flurry, now wearing a conservative and ceremonial violet suit of armor. She had changed in flight and, dressed in armor, looked oddly like a spindly version of her father.

“P—Princess—”

“Royal Authority! Do what I say, small-winged peasants! MOVE!”

They obliged, clearing a path. A path that Caballeron seemed to know all-too-well.

He finally came to one room, a wooden door in a quiet part of the hospital. Pausing and finding himself barely able to breathe, he took a moment to gain his composure—and gently pushed the door open.

Fluttershy was hesitant to enter, but found herself nearly pushed into the darkened room by Argiopé—because the changeling knew that she needed to understand.

Fluttershy’s eyes took a moment to adjust—but as they did, she gasped softly at the sad sight before her—and she did, finally, understand.

There were two ponies in the room. One was in a hospital bed, linked to seemingly every type of machine. Her body, mostly covered in blankets, was tiny and frail. IV’s connected to both of her front legs, slowly dripping. She was unconscious, her deeply lined face contorted slightly by what seemed to be pain—and, even with her mane having fallen out from the treatment, her identity was obvious.

“Who is she?” asked Flurry, standing awkwardly in the back.

“A.K. Yearling,” replied Fluttershy, softly.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s old,” said Argiopé, softly. “Pegasi...they have fast metabolisms. A Pegasus is lucky to get to her mid sixties. And she’s already seventy four.” She pointed a feathery wing at the images plastered on the wall, against the imaging screens. The x-rays that answered the question with definite finality. Pictures with clouds of spots throughout them. In bones, in lungs, inside her head. Things that the doctors could slow, but that even the wizards did not know how to treat.

The other pony, who had been sitting by the bed, stood up violently, nearly toppling her chair. She was dressed in a suit, somewhat reminiscent of a butler, save for the very high collar that covered her neck. She was young and all-white, even her mane. Her eyes were bright red and strangely empty, as if they might have been glass. She glared at Caballeron with mute but distinct anger.

“Calm down, Ms. White!” whispered Caballeron. “Please! I—I found it! I finally found it!”

He produced from his jacket the shell fragment, which he had carefully wrapped in a handkerchief—and with a shaking hoof, he held it out before the white Pegasus. She eyed him suspiciously, her mechanical pupils narrowing as she focused on it, but she did not interfere further. She only continued to watch.

“Argiopé...help me, I can’t...do it myself…”

The changeling obliged, shifting her form into that of a dragon, and taking up tools required from the drawers and carts in the room. She began to process the shell and, when done, approached the IV with a large syringe. She inserted it into the injector port and pushed the plunger, filling the dying pony with a glimmering, golden elixir.

“Daring, please,” said Caballeron, tears welling in his eyes as he took her hoof, his own growing increasingly shaky as he tried to suppress his coughing. “Please. I found it. You were right. You were always right. But this...you deserve so much better than this…”

She did not respond. He sniffled slightly, and quietly took her thin, pale hoof, its surface bruised from having held so many needles during her long battle with the illness consuming her. She remained still, and he lowered his head, beginning to cry softly.

Then a thin, aged voice cut through the near-silence.

“Pon...tracio?”

He gasped, and she shifted, opening her dull, gray eyes. A thin smile crossed her face.

“Dang,” she said in the voice of an old mare. “You finally got one, didn’t you?”

Caballeron smiled through his tears. “You weren’t there to stop me, I’m afraid.”

“You came out of retirement? For me?” She sighed, and coughed slightly. “This is so embarrassing…”

“I never really was evil, you know. Despite how you wrote me in the books. Just shrewd. I wouldn’t leave a friend to this fate. Especially not you.”

She smiled—but it faded slowly. “You should have used it on yourself. I’m already too old. It doesn’t reverse aging. You know that.”

“I know. But I’ve bought you a few years, at least.” He paused, then smiled. “I suppose I’ve put us on the same timeline.”

White sniffled slightly, tears welling in her glass eyes. Daring Do laughed, weakly. And Caballeron sat beside her.

They stepped outside. Fluttershy looked up to Flurry Heart, who seemed somber and distant.

“They need time.”

Flurry nodded. “I know. I just...”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?”

She did not look at Fluttershy. “That’s...dad. Isn't it?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I know.”

“I need to think about some things.” Flurry started walking away. She paused, though. “Sorry I tried to unalive you.” Then, without waiting for a response, she left.

Fluttershy doubted she would have, anyway. It was just a matter of being a teenager, and surely she would grow out of it eventually. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Snails was waiting outside the door.

“What will you do now?” asked Fluttershy.

He took a long time to think. “I think I’m going to find Snips,” he said.

“I’ll be here. If you need me. The Abalone will live in my sanctuary. I can keep her safe there. You can visit her whenever you want to. Or me.”

Snails smiled and nodded. “We won, though. Feels nice.”

“Did we?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I think happened.”

Fluttershy smiled. She supposed they had. And, together, they walked down the long hall toward the door that would lead them both back to Ponyville.